Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Shining City, By Seth Greenland
When I travel, I like to bring along a few reliable books, which usually means books by authors who have made me smile in the past. On my most recent vacation, I took books by Julia Glass, Jenny Shortridge, Mary Doria Russell and, reviewed here, Seth Greenland.
In discussing The Bones a few months ago, I praised Greenland for giving depth to even his most minor characters. I have a place in my heart reserved for authors who treat their characters with compassion and give them great complexity. Even a villain has an internal logic that comes from somewhere other than an inherent evil. And in Shining City, Greenland’s villains all make sense as people instead of being cardboard cut-outs. While Shining City’s protagonist, Marcus Ripps, is not the most complex man in fiction, he’s got dimension — as does his wife, his son, his mother-in-law, his attorneys, his competitors, his boss, and his “business associates.”
About those business associates — they’re hookers. Early in the story, Marcus loses his job as a factory manager. His wife, Jan, owns a failing boutique, and their middle-class life is about to disintegrate in a flood of debt and over-extension. Conveniently, Marcus’s estranged brother dies, bequeathing to Marcus a business known as Shining City drycleaners, which is really a front for an escort service. In desperate need of both income and validation, regardless of source, Marcus takes over this little goldmine, eventually bringing in Jan as his partner and her mother as their bookkeeper. Of course, this is not a simple business, and the unique twist that Marcus gives it is cause for some of the humor. Greenland keeps the story moving, and I was sorry to see it come to an end.
The only problem I had with Shining City was the appearance of a competitor in the escort service business. I keep mentally “fixing” her interactions with Marcus, which seemed like they could have been mutually beneficial while still allowing Greenland to proceed with the rest of the story as planned. Every novel asks us to suspend belief in at least one spot, but my brain couldn’t let go of this particular passage. That’s not a flaw, however, it’s just an observation. As with The Bones, I strongly recommend this book. If you have to pick between the two, in fact, I suggest Shining City.
As for animals, there is a terrier named Bertrand Russell who shows up periodically and comes to no harm. The death of a goldfish is mentioned in passing, and Marcus feels as if a coyote is following him. So this book is completely SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy!
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton
I am tagging this as historical fiction because Kate Morton does a fairly good job of evoking the years surrounding WWI. However, this is primarily a story about loyalty, secrets, miscommunications, love — and the frustrating lack of career options available to women until recent decades.
As a teenager, Grace Bradley is sent to work as a servant at Riverton House, one of those British mansions that seem to inhabit most novels set in England. Over time, she and one of the family’s daughters develop a bond, so that when Hannah marries, Grace goes with her. Grace is one of three people privy to what really happened when a young poet supposedly killed himself — and the way this is constantly being referred to, you know that it didn’t happen that way. The book has a frame, in which the elderly Grace is taken back to tell the tale of the death, which makes Grace more knowledgeable than she would be had the entire book been told in real time.
In fact, the narration is a problem for me. I don’t have a problem with the frame, and I don’t have a problem with Grace as a character or narrator. My issue is that Grace learns much of what she narrates by eavesdropping, hanging around, overhearing and, eventually, flat out admitting she couldn’t know what she’s about to tell and explaining how it came to be told to her. It’s as if Morton couldn’t decide between having a first-person or third-person narrator. I do think she made an understandable choice by going with Grace, but I sort of got fed up with the “lingering in the library” excuses. Grace is a participant in the book’s events, but she is not the driver. In fact, I believe Hannah would have been preferable as the narrator.
I also believe that much of the book, especially up front, could have been thinned out. It’s almost 500 pages, and it really shouldn’t have gone over 400. It seems as if Morton wanted to offer a picture of a large mansion and its inhabitants, maybe one of those sprawling family novels, but narrowed her focus too much and ended up with some flab in the story. Again, narration by Hannah might have allowed Morton to do everything she wanted with the plot while eliminating some of the rambling excuses Grace had to give to explain how she learned certain things.
But the ending … wow! And I’m not talking about the poet’s death. The real ending (which still could have worked with Hannah as narrator) packs a whallop, as they say.
I will recommend this to people who like this kind of book to begin with and don’t mind the perpetually lurking lady’s maid contrivance. It’s a good book, it’s just got some flaws.
As for animals, there are a couple of brief mentions of hunting casualties, plus a couple of references to horses and lap dogs, really nothing upsetting. So this book is SAFE for animal lovers.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Murder with Reservations, by Elaine Viets
I’ve long thought of Elaine Viets as one of the better “brain candy” mystery writers, and I have enjoyed her Dead-End Job series quite a lot. When I finished this book some weeks ago, I did not feel enlightened, more knowledgeable, a better person, enriched, or any of that good stuff. Instead, I felt like I’d jammed strawberry-flavored salt water taffy into my brain.
Sometimes, you need a brain full of strawberry-flavored salt water taffy. This is a book for such times. Viets does her research on the dead-end jobs. She does the work herself or trails people doing the work or both. So there are job details. But this is still brain candy.
And what is Murder with Reservations about? Well, the Dead-End Job series tells of Helen Hawthorne’s attempts to make a living while evading her angry ex-husband, who has a fairly substantial court judgment against her even though she only destroyed his precious car after finding him in bed with another woman. And with Google, we can all find out everything about everybody, so in order to remain undetected, Helen has to take some low-wage jobs where she’s paid under the table. In this book, she’s a hotel maid in Florida, where she’s resettled.
(Actually, at this point Helen would be wise to up and move to Montana, with another name change and dye job. Supposedly, there’s a pattern to where “missing” people go when they’re on the run, and Midwesterners like Helen tend to go to Florida. Then again, Viets herself is a Midwesterner who moved to Florida.)
Anyway … the body of another maid is found in a dumpster, there’s a cursed room, and Helen once again learns that people occasionally skip out on these dead-end jobs because they’re dead. Of course, she has to solve the crime in order to keep the police, her ex, and the real criminals from finding out who she is. By now, she’s gotten really good at that. Except this time, the ex has finally found her.
Brain candy awaits — buy this book to have on hand for the next time you need something light and insubstantial to read. You’ll likely enjoy it.
Now, since this blog is for animal lovers, I must talk about the various animals that appear in the book. There’s a parrot, Pete, who’s a regular character. Pete comes to no harm and is often amusing. Similarly, Helen has a 6-toed cat, Thumbs, who will live to see another day. And the dead maid’s cat goes without food for a couple of days, but that is rectified. However, she also misses her owner, which is briefly poignant. Anyway, this book is SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Agnes and the Hitman, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
One of the first things I did when sitting down to write this review was to visit Amazon.com and see if Crusie and Mayer have another book in the works. Great news: they do, to be issued next year! Now, do you really have to ask if I liked this one, their second effort together?
I’ve already reviewed their first collaboration, Don’t Look Down, which I really liked. But that book felt to me like they were trading chapters or segments of chapters instead of writing the book together. Agnes and the Hitman, on the other hand, reads like it was written by two people sitting side-by-side at the same computer. On her own, Crusie writes highly irreverent and hysterically funny romance novels with a mystery or problem-solving element that keeps slamming the two protagonists together in spite of themselves. Bob Mayer writes thrillers and adventure novels. And together, they are an inspired partnership in which Mayer’s fast pacing and aura of imminent danger and pacing adds urgency and heat to Crusie’s hilarious, passionate, and initially reluctant lovers.
So, what’s this book about, anyway? Agnes Crandall is a struggling chef and caterer who has staked her entire reputation and net worth on pulling off a wedding that the mother-of-the-bride seems intent on sabotaging. Enter the Mafia-equivalents and Shane, the hitman. While trying to sort the various heroes and villains from among her friends, acquaintances, and business associates, Agnes falls for Shane, Shane falls for Agnes, an alleged $5 million fortune may or may not be in the basement, the wedding is imperiled, a bridge gives out, and someone tries to kidnap Agnes’s dog, Rhett. And that’s just the outline. Sample passage: “…being shot at by a strange man shortly after having angry sex, shortly after having tried to kill your fiance, shortly after having a dognapper point a gun at you was a bad night for anybody, even a woman as tough as Agnes.” Read this book — you’ll love it.
About Rhett: the purpose of this blog is to steer people away from books in which horrible things happen to animals and towards books in which animals are treated well. So, spoilerish though it may be to say so under normal circumstances, I must say that Rhett comes to no harm. He’s fine. The kidnapper says on page 6, “I wouldn’t kill no dog,” and he doesn’t. Rhett does have some interesting little adventures, but he mostly sleeps. In other words, he’s a dog. There are also flamingoes, which go bonkers when isolated from their kind. Flocking birds need to be in a flock. Rest assured that any flamingo isolation is temporary, however. There’s also an alligator, briefly. I am happily declaring this book SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy!
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Dumbfounded, by Matt Rothschild
All books should be this much fun to read.
I picked up Matt Rothschild’s slightly-fictionalized-but-mostly-true autobiography with some trepidation. No, it wasn’t that he played with a few situations in order to make them read better — since he’s not Winston Churchill or some other historical figure, I’m not a purist about the details. My question was whether he’d turn out to be whiny. And he wasn’t. Instead, he was very, very funny in describing the misadventures of his sometimes poignant childhood.
Matt’s mother gave him to his grandparents to raise, but that doesn’t mean he was unwanted. He was very much wanted by those very grandparents. Matt frantically whips out one anecdote after another about the 19-room Manhattan apartment, the occasional questions about his parents, his acting out in school and resulting expulsions, being singled out for being Jewish, the chauffeur, the bossy butler, his monster of a mother, and the questions as to whether he was gay (or bisexual — as he humorously put it when he speculated that perhaps the occasional Cindy Crawford fantasy was more about greed than interest in women). And yet his eccentric grandparents, Sophie and Howard, gave him the foundation all children need, that of knowing they are loved and valued no matter what (and Matt gave them plenty of “what” to overlook). That foundation in turn allowed him to make a courageous stand toward the end of the book, when he did something that one of my favorite people lacked the cojones to do when faced with a similar decision.
So yeah, I am now a member of the Matt Rothschild fan club. I don’t just like him as a writer, I also like him as a person. Do I recommend this book? Of course!
This blog exists for animal lovers who don’t want to read about unpleasant incidents involving animals. Dumbfounded is completely SAFE for such readers. There is a dog, Static, who is loved despite his imperfections and Matt’s assumption that Static likes other people better. But Matt takes responsibility for Static, showing that he did indeed learn some important lessons from his grandparents.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Bones, by Seth Greenland
I officially fell in love with Seth Greenland’s storytelling on page 192 of this book. Up to that point, it had been a flirtation, with the rarely-needed decision to overlook minor flaws. But on page 192, when I realized that he was giving me fully fleshed-out characters — and nothing but fleshed-out characters — and treating them all (or mostly) with great fairness and even compassion, well, that’s when I declared it love. Because nothing warms my heart more than a guy who gives me three dimensional characters. I love, love, love that in a man!
This is not to say that I loved all of his charaters. The title character, Frank Bones? Ick. What can you say about a person so self-centered, self-absorbed, and selfish that he steals his girlfriend’s post-op painkillers? You can say that he’s scum, for starters. But Frank makes sense to Frank, and seen over Greenland’s shoulders, we can only expect Frank to steal the painkillers, because that is what Frank would do. See, part of what I mean by saying that Greenland treats his characters fairly and with compassion is that Greenland makes them so full of who they are and consistent that he hardly ever sets them up. So when Frank is being a scumbag, that’s okay, because he’s not a cardboard, one-dimensional scumbag. He’s a complex, multi-dimensional scumbag. And he’s funny and entertaining and not always vile, and that makes him worth following.
At one point, before I fell in love with Greenland’s writing, I sort of wished he’d written the book about the women. Honey, the rightful owner of the post-op Vicodins? A very interesting woman, more interesting than Frank in my opinion, and Greenland has fun with her, too. You know the old cliche about dumb blondes in Hollywood getting breast implants? Honey’s implants make her smarter. And more assertive. And a better actress and a better person all around. The closest Greenland comes to creating a cardboard character is Stacy, who manages to surprise the reader eventually as well. Stacy is married to Lloyd, who wishes for more than his career as a successful writer of sitcoms. Be careful what you wish for, Lloyd.
So, what’s this book all about, anyway? Does it matter? Okay, it probably does. It’s about people in Hollywood, making it or trying to make it in some form of show business. It moves fast, because Frank is the main character (though I don’t think of him as the protagonist) and Frank moves fast. Lloyd, in his fantasies of breaking from his shell, allies himself with Frank at exactly the wrong moment, and his life is turned upside down. The book is more humorous than sad, and I still want a book about the women, but The Bones is brilliant and I feel fortunate to have stumbled across it. I recommend it.
As for animals, there’s nothing but a cat. No harm comes to the cat, so this book is ENTIRELY SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy!
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Scenic Route, by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Floating around on the Internet are Sex and the City quizzes that supposedly tell you which of the four female friends you are most like. Sylvia Landsman, protagonist of The Scenic Route, would have no use for such a quiz, as she is clearly a Miranda. In case you never watched the series, Miranda often came across as emotionally cold, like she couldn’t break down the internal barriers to be nice to someone even when she wanted to be. She was also emotionally passive, often accepting the people who came into her life and not considering that she had the right to choose them or in any way shape them. That’s Sylvia.
Sylvia falls in with people. She fell in with her husband, who was really just a friend. And when she heads to Europe after losing her job, she falls in with Henry, a married man with a rich wife. They travel around Europe together, seeing the sights, making love, eating well, and staying in 5-star hotels. And to the extent she can feel anything, Sylvia sort of falls in love, although it seemed like this was something she decided rather than felt. Henry sort of falls in love, too, but I was never sure who he thought he’d fallen for.
There are many sins of omission in this tale, and there are many strangely cold people, including Sylvia. Bud did she ever have a chance to be different? I don’t think so. Sylvia is entertaining — with her family background and childhood, she has lots of stories. Her mother was awful, her brother is a jerk, and Sylvia spent her childhood trying to not fall into a well of sadness.
She also has a friend back home who shows every sign of raging manic-depression. That friendship never quite made sense to me; I wasn’t sure what Sylvia got out of it, or what Ruby saw in her. Then again, Sylvia is passive, so it makes sense on that level.
A protagonist who’s funny and wry and who also holds herself back is a tricky thing for an author to write. Kirshenbaum did a great job, and I’m glad to have discovered her. I spent a lot of time thinking about this book after I’d read it, and that doesn’t happen very often. I definitely recommend it.
As for violence to animals, there is some. There is a series of childhood incidents caused by one of those little bastards destined to be a serial killer as an adult. But the violence is entirely skippable. Stop reading on page 164, where it says “Among the dead:” and resume reading on page 167, the last line, where it says “It’s as if with death comes instantaneous absolution.” You’re good to go from there.
Otherwise, there are a few unpleasant images. A family pet is euthanized due to illness, there are a couple of bad fish-related incidents, and a few other disturbing moments. If you don’t like to read about sad things happening to animals, you can probably manage this book, but I would be cautious and skip the sections I noted above. Nonetheless, I am declaring this book PARTLY UNSAFE for animal lovers.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs
After loving The Friday Night Knitting Club, I had high hopes for Kate Jacobs’ next novel, Comfort Food. I will admit that there was a point early on where I felt a bit let down, mostly due to the syrupy perfection of Augusta (aka Gus), the protagonist. Then things picked up, the book took off, and I started laughing out loud. I don’t recall Knitting Club as being this funny, so I am here to announce that Kate Jacobs can pull off the humorous scenes as well as anyone in the business.
In a nutshell, Gus has her own cooking show and, in an attempt to boost ratings, the network pairs her with Carmen, a preening, ambitious, former Miss Spain. Gus already has her hands full with two difficult adult daughters she raised alone, an ex-future-son-in-law, a new love interest, a reclusive neighbor, and a contest-winner, all of whom end up on her show, along with assorted others. I did think Gus was an overbearing mother, and I did not sympathize with her the way I suspect Jacobs wanted me to, but Gus lightens up toward the end. It all comes together, as Gus fights to preserve her career, Carmen fights to start hers, the daughters just fight, the love interest fights to get a word in edgewise, and I fight laughing out loud in public.
(Yeah, it’s a simple plot. It works.)
This is brain candy, by the way. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just telling you. And I recommend it to those in the mood for brain candy.
Animals? There are two cats who show up briefly and are not bothered or abused or neglected in any way, shape, or form. So this book is perfectly SAFE for animal lovers.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
First up, I have two very strong objections to this book, a rewrite of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice into a rather juvenile goof.
Objection #1: Everyone knows Mr. Darcy is a werewolf. Come on, Seth. You screwed this up big time. If you were going to do this, you could have at least done it right. And now I’m to understand that someone else has written Sense and Sensibilities and Sea Monsters? No, no, no, a thousand times no! Here are the correct match-ups of Austen and monsters:
- Pride and Prejudice and Werewolves
- Emma and Zombies
- Sense and Sensibility and Shapeshifters
- Persuasion and Sea Monsters
- Northanger Abbey and Vampires
- Mansfield Park and Witches
Get it right, people!
Objection #2: Seth over-edited the beginning. Granted, Austen often starts slow, but in the early pages, Mr. Darcy makes these weird comments that make me think, “who is this guy, how did he get here, and why is he sitting around spouting random, out-of-context, rude remarks?” Fortunately, this is a temporary problem, and anyone familiar with Austen’s original story will be able to fill in the blanks. But still … the guy isn’t given his due as a werewolf, and then he’s also the weirdo in the corner who blathers autistically? Not right, Seth!
These two objections aside, this is a wonderful book. I loved it, I laughed at it, and I recommend it. Only a prig wouldn’t enjoy it. In fact, it was recommended by a woman I consider to be one of the most devoted and knowledgeable Jane Austen scholars not employed by a university. So buy it. Make Seth rich and further his career. The fact that he mucked up Darcy’s werewolfishness becomes a detail once you get into the story.
And as this blog exists for the purpose of warning people about books in which animals are harmed or neglected or otherwise meet bad ends, I have to get serious. There are lots of horses, and since they are often the key to people escaping the zombies, they are worried about and protected. That’s not to say there’s never horse on the menu in Zombieland, but it’s referenced, not shown. There are also deer, who are dear to the Bennet girls. They’re not harmed, either. So this book is SAFE for animal lovers.
And Darcy is a werewolf, dammit!
About
This is a picture of Priscilla, who lived to be an old lady cat of 19 1/2 and passed away on July 21, 2008. As Dave put it the next day, she was a great cat. I was privileged to adopt her in 1994, when her first family moved overseas and decided they couldn’t take her along. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife or a real “Rainbow Bridge” or any of that. But love lives on, and so I would like to dedicate this site to Priscilla and my first two cats, Hillary and Rabbit.
Like most blogs, this one includes random thoughts and observations, but its primary purpose is to provide book reviews for animal lovers. Please feel free to add comments or make suggestions of books that are animal-friendly.
