Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

We all have our guilty pleasures and one of mine is watching political train-wrecks from a distance.  Just as I could not look away from the Rob Ford Crack-mayor of Toronto carnage, I am now unable to ignore the Trump administration. So when I heard about Michael Wolff's fly-on-the-wall tell-all book, it was not a question of whether I would read it, but how long I could hold out before I succumb to its temptations. Apparently, not very long at all.

I feel I don't really need to say too much about the specific allegations of the book, since anyone who has not been in a coma for the last month, has probably already heard the most outrageous, salacious accusations in the book.  We have all seen Steve Bannon's career crash is the past few weeks, and we have observed (and at times participated in) the endless debate on whether the book proves that Donald Trump is unfit for office.  From a personal perspective, judging Trump's fitness for the highest public office in America has never been especially challenging.

Although, the book offers enormous insight into the probable factions and their impact on policy within a highly dysfunctional White House, in many ways it is merely a predictable reflection of the outer chaos that we can all see.  That being said, it is worth the cover price just to read about the sudden arrival and equally sudden departure of the "Mooch."

More importantly, the book offers insights into the broader political environment that created Trumpism, the nature of truth and authenticity in politics, and the utter cynicism and moral bankruptcy that has allowed Trump to be elected and for this administration to continue.

The first thing that struck me in the book is the author's assertion that nobody within the Trump campaign expected Trump to win.  Speaking of Trump's campaign team, Wolff writes: "The unspoken agreement among them: not only would Donald Trump not be president, he should probably not be.  Conveniently, the former conviction meant that nobody had to deal with the latter issue."  If they weren't "in it, to win it" then why were they supporting Trump as a candidate. According to Wolff, Trump saw the entire adventure as a branding exercise.  He would come out of the campaign more famous than ever.  His hanger-ons were no doubt making equally cynical and self-serving calculations, and nobody really felt the need to address what a Trump presidency would do to America, as it could never happen.

Then once Trump was unexpectedly named "leader of the free world," it became surprisingly easy for the Washington establishment to adapt themselves to the new reality. Indeed if there is one lasting impression that this book leaves, it is the image of modern politics as a viper's nest of politicians, party operatives, campaign volunteers ("a range of silly, needy and opportunistic figures"), and "difficult, even sociopathic, rich people pushing the bounds of their own power." Each figure pursues his or her own agenda, driven by desires totally unrelated to the public good.  It is both dystopian and (dare I say) farcical.

For those who already find themselves mired in the Boschian world of Trumpian politics, Fire and Fury is required reading.  For those who have not yet been dragged into the quagmire, I recommend you find yourself something light and escapist to read instead...perhaps Brave New World or 1984.

Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀 (but only if you really can't stop yourself).

When the Music's Over by Peter Robinson

Over the last couple of months I have not read a single book.  It's a shocking confession for a bibliophile, but life sometimes gets complicated with work and family obligations. You find yourself exhausted at the end of a busy day, and your brain revolts at anything more taxing than binge-watching Game of Thrones. Of course, the hiatus demolished my plan to read (and review) 52 books in 2017.  I have only achieved 2/3 of the goal (35 reviews in total), but as the great poet Meatloaf once said "Now don't be sad/ 'cause two out of three ain't bad." With my long silence, and the end of 2017, I was tempted to stop writing reviews all together. Life is busy, and I know I will have even less time to read and write reviews in 2018--why bother?  But in the end I decided that I like the tension of trying to get a posting up by Sunday afternoon, and I engage more fully and more critically with texts when I know I must share my thoughts with others. In 2018, my reviews may be more sporadic; I will not set a goal for the total number of books (but I secretly want at least 26); and I hope any readers out there will forgive my recent silence and continue to follow along.

So after two months of reading nothing but legislation, policy documents and Hansard transcripts, I turned to an old and trusted friend to ease me back into books: Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, or rather the recently promoted Detective Superintendent Banks. Robinson is one of those mystery writers who dutifully and somewhat miraculously publishes a new book almost every year. It is a quality that I greatly admire, and the Banks books are among a handful of series that I look forward to reading every year.  So it came as a surprise to realize that When the Music's Over is actually from 2016 and not the most recent title in the series.  Somehow I had managed to miss a year. Normally that would not matter, but When the Music's Over focuses on two "ripped from the headlines" stories from the UK.  The first is the investigation of historical sexual abuse by popular television personalities and the second the grooming of underage girls by Pakistani gangs for the purposes of prostitution. Although only a year old, with the advent of the #metoo movement, some of the references and attitudes in the book already feel a little outdated.

Within the novel, Robinson weaves his story around two time frames. This technique is one of his specialties, and he always pulls it off beautifully.  While lesser writers might lose their readers with sudden shifts in time and location, Robinson seamlessly joins the narratives.  In the present, Bank's protege, DI Annie Cabot, is investigating the vicious murder of a young girl found beaten and naked on a quiet country lane. Meanwhile DSI Banks is investigating accusations that a former TV host had committed numerous sexual assaults on under-aged girls during the 1960s. Throughout he offers a richly layered exploration of the sociological contexts that these crimes occurred within, and the individual personalities of the investigators, victims and perpetrators.

Banks is less haunted by past traumas than many contemporary detectives; not for him the alcoholism and other self-destructive behaviours that plague the Rebuses and Harry Holes of the world. This brings a calmness to the novels, which makes them easy to recommend to readers who are perhaps not as hardcore in their tastes as I am. In other words, I would loan them to my elderly mother. However, in this instance the darkness of the crimes committed, the shocking levels of depravity, and the realization that it is all based on actual events makes me hesitate to recommend When the Music's Over to all audiences. But it is a must read for hardened mystery fans.

Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀

Heart of the City by Robert Rotenberg

Heart of the City is the fifth novel in Robert Rotenberg's mystery series set in Toronto and featuring Homicide Detective Ari Greene. I love this series, and if you aren't familiar with it, you should start with the first book, Old City Hall.  Like all good series, the characters and their relationships evolve and develop and if you start on book five, it will ruin many a plot twist.

So why do I love this series? I can sum it up in one word: authenticity. Rotenberg is a criminal lawyer, and he brings a depth of understanding of the Canadian legal system, police procedure, and court process to his novels. His books cannot be strictly described as police procedurals since often the focus is less on what has led to a suspect's arrest and more on the actual trial.  I once spoke with a Crown Attorney, who told me how a murder trial can be all consuming and leave one drained, and that is exactly what Rotenberg portrays: that tight claustrophobic world from the inside.  He reveals process and procedure and legal strategy, but in such a way that it never feels like you accidentally stumbled into a dry criminal law seminar at Osgoode Hall.

The other reason I love this series is how he captures the essence of Toronto. As a former resident, I feel transported back to the city. Every detail he offers up, from the gargoyles on Old City Hall to the decor of the local Tim Horton's, rings true. He has a wonderful eye for detail and explores every corner of the city: its diversity and dark alleys, as well as its dreams and obsessions.  And in Heart of the City, he dives into one of Toronto's biggest obsessions--real estate development.

At the end of the previous novel, Ari Greene had left the police services and moved to England for a year, but now he's back in the city and working in construction. Greene is clearly not meant to live the simple life of a labourer, for at the end of his first week on the job he discovers a dead body on the construction site. The victim is Livingston Fox, the boy wonder developer who is transforming the skyline of Toronto. Along the way Fox has accumulated a broad range of enemies, including activists who are protesting his most recent development in the iconic Kensington Market neighbourhood, fellow developers who may want to take over some of his projects, and dissatisfied clients and business associates who are suing him for various reasons. Toss in a bitter ex-girlfriend and slightly daft parents, and you have an intriguing range of potential suspects. Although Greene claims he wants to turn away from his former life, he cannot help but insert himself into the investigation.

As in all his novels, Rotenberg not only presents a satisfying murder mystery, but also delves into Toronto's larger issues: the rapid development and foreign investment that is making it unaffordable for many to live in the city; the strong NIMBYist tendencies as traditional neighbourhoods come under threat; and the rise of social media journalism and its uncomfortable relationship with traditional media.

I would highly recommend the whole series.

Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀

American War by Omar El Akkad

American War is the second dystopian novel, I have reviewed this year.  There just seems to be something about 2017 that makes it hard to believe our civilization has a bright future.  While Station Eleven focused on a single apocalyptic incident, the spread of a super bug that kills most of humanity, American War offers up a cornucopia of misery.  The novel envisions a near future for the United States that includes massive human displacement from global warming, the banning of fossil fuels, an American civil war, not one but two human-engineered plagues, and monstrous out-of-control war machines that randomly rain death from the skies.

I believe that speculative fiction can be most powerful when it provides a portal to view our current issues from a new perspective.  It can provide insights into the potential consequences of our actions by showing intelligent alien life or people from the future looking back on our follies. It can also question our assumptions about deeply ingrained cultural beliefs by presenting similar behaviours but in a different context, like the 1969 Star Trek episode "Let that be your last battlefield," that explored the madness of racism.  American War provides so many opportunities to reframe our awareness it can be almost dizzying to establish the main takeaway.

The timeframe of the novel focuses on 2074 to 2095, the years of the Second American Civil War.  Much of the country has already been ravaged by climate change: coastal regions are underwater, farmland is parched, and the political and economic centre of the country has moved to the midwest. Civil war is triggered when the northern states try to impose a national ban on the use of fossil fuels, and the south rises up in defiance.  The story follows the members of one family who find themselves caught in the dangerous and soul-destroying business of trying to be civilians in the midst of war.

The novel is richly layered.  We not only must contemplate the impact of our current actions on climate change, but how we are responding to the international refugee crisis. In El Akkad's future the Middle East forms a stable empire (after the fifth Arab uprising) and Americans and Europeans are fleeing their homes for safety and opportunity. Throughout, the war feels like any one of America's  proxy wars being fought currently in the Middle East or thirty years ago in Central America. Small dirty wars, orchestrated from abroad, and intending to create maximum chaos to destabilize the region.  It leaves one with a sense of how it must feel when your home becomes the battlefield for some other nation's ambition.

But it is also about the impact of war on the human psyche: how propaganda and the constant need for revenge fuels war, how tribalism springs from conflict and how children raised in a refugee camp can easily be manipulated to assert their place in the world.

In some ways, American War feels prophetic while simultaneously feeling out of date. It was published in April 2017, and although it predicts many of the fault lines broken open with the Trump administration, it also seems to miss some of the major themes. For example, by October 2017, the the only thing that feels implausible about a second American Civil War, is that it would take so long to break out. 2074 is over fifty years from now.  Also the novel is strangely silent on the issue of race. In light of the recent resurgence of blatant white supremacy, it is hard to imagine a future civil war between the north and the south where race would not be a triggering issue. Reading American War actually makes me feel nostalgic for the lovely innocence of 2016, when we still believed that the President of the United States could be trusted to denounce the actions of Neo-Nazis.

The vision El Akkad offers of the future is bleak and provides little space for the reader to imagine redemption, either personal, political or global.  Yet for those who are willing to contemplate the potential consequences of our actions and to imagine their world transformed from one of privilege to marginalization, American War will both provoke and enlighten.

Four smileys out of five: 😀😀😀😀

Martin John by Anakana Schofield

I think for the first time since I started these reviews, that I have been tempted not to finish a book--just toss it aside and move on to something else. And if I had not invested so much time into it, and had allowed myself enough time to read another book and still meet my weekly deadline I probably would have. That is not to say that this is not a good, possibly even great, novel, but it drained me of thought and energy. It is utterly exhausting.

Martin John is the story of mentally ill man told largely from his own perspective.  I am no psychologist, but he seems to suffer from obsessions and compulsions, hoarding, paranoia, hallucinations, memory loss (possibly faked or possibly the result of his medications), and a disturbing range of sexual dysfunctions.  Much of the novel is told in a stream of consciousness inside Martin John's own mind. It is random, repetitive, disjointed, chaotic, and utterly exhausting. The fact that it so envelops you in his mental state is proof that the novel is powerfully written.   Indeed, Martin John is a master class in the use of perspective and voice. But I was disturbed by the lack of order--it moves through different timeframes, jumps from the perspective of Martin John to his mother to a woman he has assaulted and random observers. Each character offers up a slice of the story, but in ways that make it difficult to establish a coherent chain of events. No doubt this disorder is indicative of the protagonist's state of mind, but it just tired me out.

The descriptions of his actions and the motivations behind them are evocative without being compelling.  Any woman who has had a strange man rub up against her inappropriately in a crowded train (and let's face it that's just about every woman who has ever ridden in a crowded train) will recognize him.  It brought back strong memories of similar situations from my own past. Yet that recognition doesn't seem to be offered up with any startling insights, so it strikes me as sad, pointless and utterly exhausting.

It does have moments of wit, but they do not make up for the sheer tediousness of being in Martin John's head for so many hundreds of pages.  Sadly, I can only recommend it to someone with more sympathy and significantly more energy than I have.

Two and half out of five smileys.😊😊😶

I Hear She's a Real Bitch by Jen Agg

I honestly just don't know what to make of this book.  No matter how I think about it, I just don't get it.

Admittedly, I had never heard of Jen Agg or The Black Hoof restaurant before I started to hear all the buzz for I Hear She's a Real Bitch. I had no idea what to expect, but as a bit of a foodie, and a bit of a feminist, and a former resident of Toronto, I was intrigued. Besides, it's got a catchy title, Agg looks dead cool on the cover, and the publisher blurb said "A sharp and candid memoir from a star in the restaurant world, and an up and coming literary voice." I'm a total sucker for a good publisher blurb, even though I used to write them and should know better.

So I came to this with limited expectations, but a desire to believe that she's probably not a bitch, and I thought I was pretty open minded.  However, a few chapters in I began to wonder about it being described as a memoir.  In my mind the difference between memoir and autobiography is that the essence of memoir is the self-reflective voice.  This voice not only tells you what happened, but how the narrator feels about the experience after reflecting on it with what one hopes is honesty and self-awareness.  Autobiography is much more a linear description of events, starting in childhood and moving forward.   With these definitions in mind, I felt that I Hear She's a Real Bitch, could be much more accurately described as a celebrity autobiography.

She begins by describing her childhood, growing up in Scarborough, and focuses on stories that prove both her precociousness and her strong need to rebel, which led me to my next thoughts on the book.  In all probably she is not a bitch, but she sure comes across as a bit of a narcissist. Throughout she shows an over the top tendency to describe herself as a woman of extraordinary good taste, intelligence, artistic ability, business acumen, and vision. Not that there is anything wrong for someone to go through life with a healthy dose of self-esteem. As she puts it herself, "I had spent my whole adult life believing in my infallibility, because I had to teach myself that I was just as capable as a man, despite all the subtle and not so subtle cultural signals to the contrary."  Yet, on the other hand there is something desperate sounding in her constant need for recognition and approval. The louder someone protests their accomplishments, the less inclined I am to believe them--I call this the "Trump Inversion."

As I moved further into the book I began to wonder if she was just trying to do a hatchet job on people who have disappointed her in the past.  She seems sharply aware of every time someone betrayed her, but simply glosses over her betrayal of others--just ask her high school best friend. There also seems to be a strong undercurrent of blaming others for her failures and taking full credit for her successes. It was her first husband's fault her first bar went bankrupt, and an amazing amount of stuff was her first chef/partner's fault. Yet in the end, I must admit there is more to the book than that.

At one point I thought it might be a lovingly produced promo piece for her restaurants.  She waxes poetic about every fixture, drink, dish, bar stool and strip of wall paper in all her restaurants. It reads somewhat like one of those glossy brochures for a new condominium development.  But again, I clearly don't get it, because in the end all the talk from inside the industry just left me with a desire to stop eating out and cook at home.  There is apparently way too much status seeking in the restaurant world for me to ever fully value and appreciate the experience I would be offered.

There is a breathlessness to her prose, that is sometimes charming but other times sounds like a ten year old trying to relate the plot of all the Star Wars movies in under ten minutes.  She speaks strongly about gender inequality, but with an innocence that leaves me with the impression she is completely unaware of the numerous waves of feminist action and theory that preceded her.  There is also a surprising amount of vulgarity, and I can't quite decide whether I think that is to establish her rebel credibility or her feminist creditably.

So in the end all I can say is that I just don't get it.

Two and a half smileys out of five. 😀😀😶

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable

A Paris Apartment is a fictional treatment of a fascinating real life event. In 2010, a 91-year old woman died in the south of France, leaving in her estate an apartment in Paris that had not been touched for 70 years.  She had inherited it from her grandmother, but abandoned it in 1942 and never returned. Her grandmother, Marthe de Florian,  had been a Belle Epoque courtesan, and her apartment was a time capsule filled with fine furniture, books and newspapers, and most spectacularly a never-before-seen portrait of de Florian by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. I recall hearing about it at the time and thinking, "What a fantastic idea for a novel." Apparently Michelle Gable did as well.

Gable builds her fictional world around April Vogt, an antique furniture appraiser working for Sotheby's to catalogue the find and help prepare it for auction.  She is enduring a rough patch in her marriage, so she jumps at the chance to leave New York and work in Paris.  Upon arrival she falls in love with the Boldini portrait and becomes obsessed with finding out more about the original owner, the glamorous and mysterious Marthe de Florian. The two women's stories are interwoven, as April slowly reveals her own secrets while also reading entries from Marthe's diaries.

The novel offers rich and fascinating details of Paris in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century and the author has a talent for pacing and creating suspense. However, it struck me as somewhat formulaic.  There seems to be a current fashion in novels where the author takes some historical period or incident, overlays it with a modern narrator, throws in both a romance and a mystery, fills it with lots of historical detail, shakes vigorously, and shazam, it's a bestseller.  Gable has managed to combine all, but occasionally falls into predictable and cliched situations.  At times I was left wondering if I was reading an art history text book, a contemporary travel guide to Paris or perhaps a Harlequin romance.

In order to keep the interest level high, Gable layers multiple stories into the narrative, so we are introduced not only to April's husband, his ex-wife, her step-children and the handsome Parisian lawyer Luc, but also learn about her conflicted relationship with her own father and mother--in addition to all of Marthe's loves, friendships and rivalries.  Eventually it feels a bit too much. Like the apartment it describes, the novel is jam-packed full with the beautiful, the arcane and the trivial, all demanding the reader's attention.  A Paris Apartment might have been more successful, if it had been slightly less ambitious.

Three smileys out of five. 😀😀😀