A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal

Published by Penguin Books on March 26, 2013

A Map of Tulsa is both a love story and a coming of age novel. The former is more successful than the latter.

Jim Praley is back in Tulsa for the summer, having finished his freshman year of college. He soon finds himself hanging out with Adrienne, the sexually adventurous daughter of a wealthy family. Having dropped out of high school, Adrienne wants to be an artist (an avocation Jim encourages by sharing the knowledge he gained in the art history class he took during his freshman year) or a singer.

Jim is an odd duck, sometimes too odd to believe. He tells us that buying condoms is an "embarrassment that was endemic to my heart." Apart from his questionable use of the word "endemic," this story isn't set in the 1950s when buyers had to ask a pharmacist for condoms that were kept behind the counter. I find it hard to believe he couldn't go to Target (his favorite store in Tulsa) and toss a package of condoms into his shopping cart without upsetting his heart. Jim can't take Adrienne to Target because Target reminds him of his childhood and he "kept certain parts of myself back," including -- for reasons I can't begin to fathom -- shopping at Target. Jim seems to think that's deep, but I thought it was a little silly.  Too many instances of silliness masquerading as depth mar this novel.

Part one establishes Jim's relationship with Adrienne. Part two begins with Jim's return to Tulsa five years later. Adrienne's life has changed drastically, while Jim (despite living and working in New York) hasn't changed in any meaningful way. In a conventional coming of age novel, the protagonist makes a life-altering decision, faces a moral crisis, or in some other way loses innocence, gains wisdom, or takes a significant step toward maturity. True to the convention, Jim does learn something about himself in part two, although I'm not sure he's any more "adult" at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning. More significantly, he learns something about the meaning and nature of love,.  While the lesson isn't terribly enlightening, it is the novel's strength.

Benjamin Lytal conveys honest emotion when he writes about Jim's feelings for Adrienne. In other respects, his prose is troubling. A writing style that seems determined to be witty or ironic or profound too often comes across as childish. I had the impression that Lytal was striving for the voice of an eloquent Holden Caulfield. The result is discordant and occasionally jarring. In his apparent determination to be literary, Lytal produces sentences like "She was unconscious, but her lips were grim and full of knowledge." Whatever does that mean? Her lips were ready to take their SATs? I was equally puzzled when, referring to the exhaust from cars on the highway, Jim says "I took in the fumes like sea air." Poisonous gasses are like sea air? Literary prose should seem effortless, while too many of Lytal's sentences are forced. He has some skill as a writer; I hope his next effort is more consistent.

Lytal makes some noteworthy observations about the nature of friendship, particularly the American tendency to abandon old friends and seek out new ones as we move on with our lives. Jim's reflections on his time with Adrienne seem genuine, although they're never as moving Lytal must have intended them to be. I can't say that A Map of Tulsa is a successful novel, but it has its moments.   There are just too few of them.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins

Published by Orbit on March 26, 2013 

Wolfhound Century leaves the reader with a bucketful of unanswered questions. I imagine a sequel is in the works. Until it arrives, I'm not sure whether to call Wolfhound Century fantasy or science fiction. The strong elements of fantasy may turn out to have a science-based explanation -- there are some hints of that -- but for the moment, they have no explanation at all.

Angels have been at war for four hundred years. Some have fallen to Earth (or an alternate version of Earth), landing in the Vlast (an alternative version of Russia). When Archangel fell, he became stuck in the planetary crust. His goal is to escape from his prison and return to the stars as the dominant force in the universe. Before that can happen, he must destroy the Pollandore.  What is the Pollandore?  That's one of the unanswered questions.

Josef Kantor, like his father before him, is a rebel who supports a free and independent Lezarye. He is plotting a coup to bring down the Vlast's leadership. But does Kantor have a hidden agenda?

The hero of Wolfhound Century (to the extent that one exists) is Vissarion Lom, a police investigator stuck in the provinces who has been denied promotion for eleven years due to an "attitude problem." Lom is summoned to the Ministry of Vlast Security in Mirgorod and tasked with finding Kantor. He is bedeviled in that duty by ... well, perhaps they are best described as "unseen forces." But Lom is different from most police officers. For that matter, he's different from most people, for reasons that only start to be revealed toward the novel's end.

Wolfhound Century is full of characters, and they are all bestowed with unique and detailed personalities. They make the novel worth reading. Lom's friend, Vishnik, roams Mirgorod, documenting its decay with his camera. Vishnik is one of the few with knowledge of the Pollandore. The only people who can set the Pollandore free are Maroussia Shaumain and her batty mother, while Kantor and Lavrantina Chazia, the evil Commander of Vlast's Secret Police, would like to destroy it (if only they knew how).

Initially, I had my doubts about reading yet another book featuring warring angels. I soon became absorbed in the story. This isn't just another book about warring angels (whether, in fact, they are angels in the usual sense of the word is one of the many questions left unanswered). Despite the angels and some giants and various evil forces that populate the story, Wolfhound Century isn't clearly grounded in the supernatural, although it might be. Fortunately, the focus is rarely on angels. Ultimately, the novel is about humans reacting to adversity.

Peter Higgins' writing style is impressive. His prose is lively and rich. The story maintains a brisk pace without sacrificing characterization. My most significant reservation about Wolfhound Century is that, upon reaching the end, I wondered what I had just read. It's frustrating to know that I'll need to read the next book to find out.

RECOMMENDED

The Stud Book by Monica Drake

Published by Hogarth on April 9, 2013

It's difficult to know what to make of The Stud Book. Most of the story is breezy, light comedy, good for a few chuckles, perhaps with the not-fully-realized intent to make some serious points along the way. The novel's ironic ending takes a dark turn. I understand (I think) the point the story is trying to make, but the plot twist is contrived and incongruous. What is supposed to provide a cathartic moment for certain characters results in a "what was that?" moment for the reader. The novel's message -- "everybody matters" -- is expressly stated for readers who might not otherwise get it, but the message is too obvious to be meaningful.

The middle-aged women in The Stud Book are preoccupied, if not obsessed, with babies. They spend much of the novel thinking and talking about babies, although their thoughts and words tend to be the well-worn output of new mommies, non-mommies, and wannabe-mommies. Fortunately, the characters are more interesting than their conversations about babies. As you'd expect in a novel like this, each woman is struggling (although not always believably) with the drama of life.

Georgie and her husband Humble have a new baby, but given that Georgie uses a bottle of Oxycodone as a rattle, she might not be cut out for parenting, her PhD notwithstanding. Her best friend Sarah has no baby but, despite a history of miscarriages, has been working hard to make one (usually with her husband Ben). Dulcet, who teaches high school kids how to avoid pregnancy and generally believes that humanity is a disease, doesn't want a baby. Nyla is a widow; her daughter, Arena, is already in high school.

With the exception of Sarah (who is a bit over-the-top), the female characters -- particularly Arena -- are reasonably convincing. Monica Drake weaves humor into their lives and careers. Sarah works in a zoo, where she can make jokes about animal husbandry while envying the ease with which animals procreate. Arena's expulsion for something she may or may not have done gives Drake a chance to lampoon public school bureaucrats. Nyla's eco-friendly store reflects Portland's acceptance of an amusing counter-culture, while Dulcet gets high and photographs nude women when she isn't teaching students about their bodies.

The male characters are little more than window-dressing, unrealistic stereotypes who exist only to give the women a chance to complain about masculine behavior. Ben fantasizes about his former girlfriend (realistic enough) but what he does in a men's room in his office building is something real guys just don't do in that setting. Humble plays drinking games in a bar instead of hanging out at home with his new baby. Ben joins Humble in the bar instead of staying home with Sarah when she's experiencing a serious health problem. Is there something about Portland that turns men into shameful, insensitive louts?

At times, The Stud Book comes across as a book that follows a recipe: one new mommy, one veteran mommy, one woman striving to be a mommy, one woman who doesn't want to be a mommy, stir together and wait for fun to emerge. The contrivance of four friends representing four contrasting views of motherhood is more forgivable in a comedy than it would be in a book that poses as serious drama, which is one reason why the dramatic moments in the final pages just didn't work for me. To the extent that the novel tries to be Sex and the City (of Portland), it follows a reliable comedic formula. Sometimes the laughs seem forced, but more often they come from genuinely funny situations -- as, for instance, when Nyla uses her kickboxing routine against an unskilled robber, much to her daughter's dismay. It is when the novel becomes ironic and dark that it also becomes unsatisfying.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Frozen Solid by James Tabor

Published by Ballantine on March 26, 2013

During the first quarter of Frozen Solid, I thought James Tabor was telling an unoriginal story but telling it well. After about a third of the novel, when the plot began to move in new directions, I was hooked on a clever, intelligent story that continued to be well told. Although a bit light in its character development, Frozen Solid is a fun, fast-moving novel that's more imaginative than the stories so commonly told in thrillerworld.

Hallie Leland, a microbiologist with the CDC, travels to a research station at the South Pole to replace a dead scientist who had found something unusual in deep ice-core samples. The scientist's apparent death from a drug overdose becomes suspicious when Hallie stumbles upon evidence of foul play. Eventually there are more deaths, apparently from natural (albeit unlikely) causes, but always involving women. Since Hallie must puzzle out both the cause of the deaths and the identity of the killer, Frozen Solid combines a whodunit with the fast action that characterizes a thriller.

Early in the novel we meet a group of scientists who are trumpeting something called Triage. It soon becomes clear that they are involved in a conspiracy of Ludlumesque proportions. A secondary (but, for the most part, undeveloped) plotline concerns Hallie's lover, Wil, who tells her, just before she leaves for the South Pole, "There are things you don't know about me." The attempt to humanize Hallie by giving her a life is a small (and ineffective) part of the story.

Once it winds up (and it doesn't take long for that to happen), Frozen Solid tells an exciting story. Tension is palpable during the novel's action scenes, particularly when Hallie is diving in frigid waters where hypothermia is just one of the dangers she faces. Some aspects of the novel strain credulity -- Hallie's ability to cheat death on multiple occasions and to fire flares so that they land atop her target with unerring accuracy -- but that's common in modern thrillers.

Hallie is a resourceful heroine with a take-charge attitude. If someone needs to climb down an icy crevasse to save a trapped scientist, she's there to do it. Yet unlike so many action heroes, she isn't a martial arts expert and she doesn't carry a gun. She relies on wits and determination, making her a more interesting protagonist than the big guys who are always fighting their way out of trouble in standard action novels.

Tabor seems to have done his homework before writing Frozen Solid. The description of the polar environment and its effect on the people who work in the research station is convincing. Whether Tabor is explaining carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean, the mechanics of climbing sheets of ice, or the perils of diving in the Antarctic, his writing reflects solid research.

Apart from a slightly cheesy ending (the kind where all demons are excised and people who hated each other throughout the novel are now joining hands and singing Kumbaya), Frozen Solid is a well-told tale. I haven't read the first Hallie Leland novel but Frozen Solid encourages me to give it a try. 

RECOMMENDED

Constance by Patrick McGrath

Published by Bloomsbury USA on April 2, 2013 

Constance Schuyler wants a better father than the one she has so, with predictable consequences, she marries Sidney Klein, an older, stuffy Englishman with a son from a previous marriage. Constance is "shackled to the conviction that her father had wrecked her life." As Sidney sees it, Constance has serious self-esteem issues resulting from her failure to gain her father's approval. Sidney believes he can give her the approval she's been missing, but he also understands and sympathizes with her father, attitudes that Constance comes to view as a betrayal. Over time resentments form and their marriage becomes tumultuous, although (at least in Sidney's mind) the make-up sex makes it worthwhile -- until it stops.

The novel begins with Constance's first person point of view, then shifts to Sidney's as he dissects Constance. Point of view alternates as the story progresses. Constance and Sidney are very different people, at different stages of life, and as you might expect, they have very different views of their relationship. Standing alone, neither Sidney nor Constance is a reliable narrator. Sidney's dispassionate tale of "reeling in" Constance and his psychoanalytic descriptions of her are evidence of his manipulative personality, a trait that Sidney refuses to recognize in himself. Constance, on the other hand, has a warped view of her father and uses it to justify her self-centered bitterness. Sidney sees Constance as a lightweight while Constance regards Sidney as controlling, just as her father was. The differing viewpoints of Sidney and Constance allow the reader to piece together a more honest portrait of each character than they are capable of providing independently.

We eventually encounter a blockbuster revelation about Constance's family that makes her feel like "a drawer torn violently from a desk and turned upside down so its contents spilled out." It's the sort of thing that could be melodramatic but Patrick McGrath plays it straight, revealing the secret and then backing up, allowing Constance to explore it, to absorb it and react to it. More family drama follows and additional blockbuster events occur toward the novel's end. While there might be one too many scenes that come close to being the stuff of a cheesy soap opera -- and in the hands of a lesser author, they would be -- I give McGrath credit for combining restraint with unflinching realism. Some aspects of the final chapters aren't entirely convincing but nothing is outrageously unbelievable.

In the end, Constance is a stark portrayal of two partners in a marriage who, notwithstanding their sentimental moments, don't understand (or care) how much pain they are inflicting on each other. McGrath reveals Constance and Sidney in such detail that, on the one hand, it's easy to understand and even sympathize with them, and on the other, impossible to like them. Sidney is a condescending academic whose conservative notions of morality and personal responsibility inform his judgments, not just of the society that is collapsing around him but of Constance. Constance compares falling in love to the clinical symptoms of depression and seems quite incapable of abandoning her grievances long enough to feel love for anyone. The novel's most likable character is probably Constance's sister Iris. She has a tendency to drink too much and to fall in love with married men, but she has a big heart, a trait Constance recognizes but is unable to emulate. Constance notes that it takes courage to be warm and understanding and generous. "It's so much easier to be sour." Self-pitying sourness is a state that Constance and Sidney both know too well.

Is it possible to like a novel without liking the primary characters? I think so, but many readers want to see themselves in the books they read, or at least want to admire the characters. Constance is probably not a good choice for those readers. But for readers who want to know how two difficult characters see themselves and each other, Constance offers fascinating psychological profiles of complex individuals.

RECOMMENDED