House Odds by Michael Lawson

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 25, 2013

John Mahoney is the minority leader in the House of Representatives. His daughter Molly has been arrested for insider trading. Mahoney turns to his fixer, Joe DeMarco, to get Molly out of trouble. Is Molly guilty? Is someone trying to frame her to put the squeeze on her father? The fast-moving plot involves a lobbyist, a shady investment manager, a crooked casino manager and the mob boss who employs him, a former NFL linebacker, assorted thugs, devious politicians, a hyper-aggressive SEC lawyer, and an unsolved murder that occurred while some of the characters were still in their college years.

Politics is a dirty game and Mahoney is a dirty player, which means his go-to-guy DeMarco isn't your usual squeaky clean thriller hero. In the Washington of House Odds, bribery and blackmail are business-as-usual. Apart from the creative wrongdoing that keeps the plot moving, Mike Lawson peppers the story with the everyday shenanigans of congressional politics: the tricks pulled by the out-of-power political party to become the in-power political party; the use defense appropriations bills to fund projects that have nothing to do with defense. Lawson has fun with the nonsensical babbling that substitutes for political discourse in the House of Representatives, as well as the scuzzy nature of politically motivated federal prosecutions. If you're cynical about politicians (and who isn't?), this is the book to read.

Fortunately, Lawson writes with a light touch, avoiding the overbearing attitudes that too often mar novels set within a political milieu. Politicians of both parties are dirty in House Odds; this isn't a partisan rant. The scheme that Mahoney cooks up and that DeMarco executes to get Molly out of trouble would make Machiavelli proud. Some of the novel's events are just a little too convenient for the real world, but given the novel's tone, I was willing to accept the unlikely for the sake of amusement. House Odds is the sort of novel you can read while giving your brain a rest, the literary equivalent of junk food: not particularly nutritious, but satisfying.

RECOMMENDED

The Humans by Matt Haig

First published in Great Britain in 2013; published by Simon & Schuster on July 2, 2013

An alien (specifically, a Vonnadorian) comes to Earth to destroy evidence of a breakthrough made by Andrew Martin, a Cambridge professor of mathematics who proved the Reimann Hypothesis. To accomplish his mission, the alien must assume the unfortunate professor's identity and eliminate the unfortunate people who might know of Martin's discovery, including his wife and son. The alien Martin is equipped with the usual array of alien powers, including the ability to induce heart attacks and to heal blind dogs.

The alien's mission gives him a chance to study the odd species with midrange intelligence called humans. The Humans is the alien's account of his experiences on Earth. Like most anthropological examinations of humans through alien eyes, this one is quite funny. Martin ponders the meaning of human life (pursuing "the enlightenment of orgasm" seem to be "the central tenet") and draws pointed conclusions about the meaninglessness of most human activities: consumerism, war, sexual embarrassment, bad poetry, the endless need to state the obvious. Oh, and social networking, which "generally involved sitting down at a nonsentient computer and typing words about needing a coffee and reading about other people needing a coffee, while forgetting to actually make a coffee." Human concepts are bewildering, particularly delusions like love and free will. "Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible." The alien finds it difficult to distinguish between madness and sanity and is amazed at the human capacity for hypocrisy. The many uses humans find for cows, on the other hand, fascinate him.

To some extent, The Humans is a throwback novel, echoing the feel-good message that was common in science fiction of an earlier generation: humans are special, humans are unique, human traits (curiosity, tenacity, empathy, hope) will always assure their survival. The message is slightly tempered by the modern tendency toward realism (or cynicism) but the novel's weakness is the alien's all too quick and all too predictable realization that humans are not primitive beasts but lovable beings standing on the threshold of greatness. At times, the novel is embarrassingly gushy in its praise of humankind ("a miraculous achievement"). It's also crammed with enough simplistic platitudes to rival a self-help book.

A funny story about an alien who reviles humans but is forced to become one is bound to follow a predictable path. The notion of an alien embracing human emotions and beliefs after taking human form isn't new, and the reader suspects that the alien will eventually be a better human than was Martin because that's how these stories work. The human characters also tend to be predictable, including the son who suffers because he can't live up to the standard set by his brilliant father. I appreciated, however, Matt Haig's willingness to make the alien Martin true to himself, and to avoid a contrived ending to the story.

I don't entirely buy the notion that by taking human form, an alien who views humans as repulsive would so quickly decide that one of them is lovely, much less embrace human conventions of romance (without, at least initially, having much of a clue about sexual desire). Would an alien raised in an environment of peace, beauty, and immortality really reject the "dullness" of that life in favor of the pain and loss that characterizes human existence? That notion is the foundation of the plot but Haig didn't convince me to buy into it. The story's predictability and doubtful credibility make The Humans an unsuccessful drama, but the novel works well as a comedy.

RECOMMENDED

The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy

Published by Harper on June 11, 2013

The theme of The Illusion of Separateness -- the connections among people living in different times and places, and their witting and unwitting dependence upon each other -- is telegraphed by the title. Even when we are apart from the people we know (and from people we don't know), we are not truly separated.

Martin is a handyman in a retirement center where residents pass their days "remembering the lives they once inhabited." He is the first of several characters who come into focus as the novel progresses. Their stories are so diverse that The Illusion of Separateness creates the illusion of reading several separate novels at once, yet the characters have much in common, including their ongoing attempts "to unravel the knot of their lives" and, in some cases, their understanding of what it means to be hated.

Some of the characters connect in France. Martin is the adopted son of Parisian bakers who, in 1955, make a sudden decision to move from Paris to Los Angeles. In 1942, a pilot named John takes a picture of himself on Coney Island, standing in front of a Ferris wheel with Harriet, his wife. His plane is shot down over France. In 1968, a schoolboy finds the picture of John and Harriet in the wreckage of the airplane. Years later, the photograph resurfaces in another country.

Some characters connect in England, a country that becomes important to John's story. After the war, a man with a serious head injury, stripped of voice and identity and mistaken for French, slowly recovers from his wounds in Paris. Named Victor Hugo for the book in his pocket, the man eventually relocates to Manchester, where his neighbor is a young boy named Danny.

Some characters connect in the United States. Danny moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a film director. The retirement center where Martin works is also in LA. John's blind granddaughter, Amelia, lives on Long Island, as did John before the war.

To say more about how the characters relate to each other would risk ruining the story's considerable charm. Some of the connections, revealed in the final chapters, are surprising, dramatic but (for the most part, at least) believable. To the extent that some seem like stretches, it's useful to remember that life is full of coincidences that are no less improbable than those that Simon Van Booy invents.

The novel's best moments are reminders of how people, with generosity and kindness and sometimes at risk to their own security, make it possible for others to go on living, or to live better lives. The most involving chapters -- certainly the most intense -- are devoted to John and his struggle during the war, although Hugo's story is probably the most moving. That, again, is a tribute to Van Booy's writing ability, since Hugo isn't the kind of character with whom most readers would instinctively sympathize.

Van Booy crafts deceptively simple sentences that conceal a depth of meaning. A few moments in the novel are so sentimental that they border on corniness -- I had the occasional sense that I was being manipulated with "feel good" stories -- but Van Booy writes with such sincerity and conviction that I was able to let those reservations slide. Some of the characters articulate the novel's messages in terms that seem too obvious and the ending is a bit abrupt, but again, those are quibbles, not serious flaws.

RECOMMENDED

Wrecked by Charlotte Roche

First published in German in 2011; published in translation by Grove (Black Cat) on May 7, 2013

The first several pages of Wrecked are devoted to the narrator's frank and detailed description of the steps she takes to give sexual pleasure to her husband. Elizabeth Kiehl's narration is alternately clinical and erotic, and occasionally touches upon the science and psychology and politics of sex. Readers who don't approve of graphic language will want to stay far away from Wrecked.

The sex is followed by a considerably less interesting discussion of cooking, which turns into a discussion of motherhood, from Elizabeth's perspective as both the daughter of a domineering mother and as the mother of an eight-year-old girl, the product of her first marriage. This leads to the story of how Elizabeth met her current husband (Georg), which leads to an analysis of the role sex plays in a marriage, which amounts to: love is just an excuse to have sex. Filling out organ donor cards (because love is intertwined with death) is the height of their romantic relationship. Elizabeth wants to have sex with a man who isn't her husband (but only with her husband's approval), a desire that provides what passes for dramatic tension in the novel: will she or won't she?

As the title suggests, Elizabeth is a wreck. She has panic attacks. She has body issues. She has odor issues. She has control issues. She is plagued by feelings of guilt. She hates her mother. She hates her stepmother. She has a father complex. She has worms (did we really need to know that?). She is rigidly opposed to change. She is "hostile to life." She often contemplates suicide. She's ambivalent about some of her husband's kinkier desires but she's unable to say "no." She fears that her husband (and every other man she knows) is a pedophile who will sexually abuse her daughter. She is always afraid that something bad is about to happen -- with some justification, given the bad things that have happened to her. According to her therapist, her hypersexuality temporarily displaces her fear. Therapy defines her.

When she's not recounting the tragedies that have comprised her life, Elizabeth reveals every thought that passes through her mind, from the environmental impact of dishwashing to corporal punishment to gray hair and breast size and the many ways in which she and everyone she knows might die. A character with this many tribulations and odd thoughts should be interesting, but the engaging aspects of Elizabeth's stream-of-consciousness narration are too often overshadowed by her tedious nature.

As I was reading Wrecked, I was trying to work out whether Charlotte Roche meant it to be a comedy. Parts of the novel are quite funny (including Elizabeth's interaction with her desperately needed therapist, with whom she discusses -- you guessed it -- her sexual fantasies), and at least some of the humor is clearly intentional. Other bits made me laugh because they were just so over-the-top -- like deciding which partner she and Georg should choose in a brothel (because she feels a need to give Georg everything he wants) or offering to show him her worms. I give Roche credit for her humor, which is the novel's redeeming value. On the other hand, the story's most dramatic moment, recounted from Elizabeth's memory, seems contrived, created only to add tragedy to Elizabeth's life. In fact, I came to believe that it was inserted into the story just to give Elizabeth something meaningful to talk about during therapy.

As a psychological study of an extreme case, Wrecked is moderately interesting, if a little creepy. As an exaggerated commentary on therapy and therapists, Wrecked has value. As an exploration of the relationship between sex and death, or a statement about feminism, or a complaint about the unfair expectations placed upon wives and mothers, or an illustration of a child's rebellion against a parent or an indictment of monogamy and double-standards ... well, that's all been done before in novels that make those points without lecturing the reader. Perhaps I should be sympathetic to Elizabeth despite (or because of) her maddening nature, but Roche only made me feel happy to have her out of my reading life when the novel ended. I appreciated some of what Roche is trying to do, and I enjoyed some of the comedy as well as a few of the less clinical descriptions of Roche's sexual adventures, but since the novel ultimately left me feeling wrecked, I can't recommend it.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer

Published by Ecco on June 25, 2013

Is it ever possible to be the person who, as a child, you dreamed of becoming? That's the question that animates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.

Greta experiences "true sadness" when, within a period of months in 1985, her twin brother Felix dies and Nathan, her live-in lover, leaves her for another woman. After conventional treatment for depression fails, she turns to electroconvulsive therapy. Greta assumes she's hallucinating when, the following day, she wakes up in a bedroom that isn't quite hers with a face she doesn't recognize. She eventually realizes she's living in 1918, having exchanged bodies with a Greta from a pre-AIDS Manhattan where Felix "lived, but did not live well," and where she married Nathan, who has gone to war. Another treatment, this one administered in 1918, sends Greta to 1941, to an even stranger life where Nathan is living at home with her, but as a less-than-faithful husband.

If Greta isn't hallucinating, perhaps she is traveling through time to parallel universes, or (as the 1985 version of her Aunt Ruth suggests) perhaps she is experiencing the transmigration of souls. Perhaps this is happening because all three versions of Greta want to escape their lives, to make them perfect. As she cycles through the three time frames, the 1985 Greta, eager to change her own and her brother's life in the earlier times, finds that the other Gretas have been mucking about in her 1985 life. In each life Greta must make choices, but the right decision in one life might be the wrong decision in another. In each life, Greta's heart wants what it wants, but as she bounces from life to life, what her heart wants is not always clear. "If only we just loved who we're supposed to love" is a thought that runs through the novel, but how do we know who we're supposed to love? Andrew Sean Greer's point (which he eventually states explicitly) is that we each have many heads and many hearts. Another (albeit less obvious) point is that it's fine to change your own life but it's generally best not to meddle in another's.

Change is a theme that dominates The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Each Greta is fundamentally the same but subtly different, as are the Nathans and Felixes, the changes dictated by the times in which they live ("It takes so little to make us different people"). Changing times are most notably reflected through Greta's brother, who refuses to acknowledge his true nature in 1918, stays in the closet in 1941, and is openly gay in 1985. On a more intimate level, the novel addresses the need to find that part of ourselves that all our friends know we should change but lack the courage to tell us. Yet the story is also about the illusion of change. In 1918, at the end of the war and in the midst of a flu pandemic, Greta is the only person who knows that a new world war will begin in twenty years, that an HIV pandemic will spread death in sixty years. In each life, people die, lovers disappoint. Perhaps the perfection Greta seeks is unattainable; perhaps some things can't be changed. Perhaps fate dictates our lives, no matter what choices we make. Perhaps it is only our memories that change, the present altering the past.

Although Greer addresses a number of interesting ideas, it's probably impossible to pull off a story like this in a way that is entirely satisfying. At times, Greer strives without success to make simplicity out of complexity. Melodramatic moments undermine the parts of the story that seem genuine. Greer too often serves up platitudes, although I appreciate his occasional acknowledgement of different perspectives (Greta's "live for today," for instance, is countered with her brother's "It only works if there's no tomorrow"). Dialog occasionally hits a false note as characters utter philosophical pronouncements that are a bit too obvious. The plot falters toward the novel's end. It resolves a little too easily, sidestepping hard questions in favor of easy answers. Although the novel is flawed -- a strong concept imperfectly executed -- it offers enough moments of insight to make it worth reading.

RECOMMENDED