Three Women by Lisa Taddeo Review

Title: Three Women Review
Author: Terrence L. Brown

Three Women

by Lisa Taddeo

Gray Planet Commentary

• Compelling narrative of three women and their desires

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 93/100
• Literature Index: 91/100
• Magic Factor: 65/100

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo is the story of the sexual desires of three women (Maggie, Lina and Sloane) told by Taddeo in narrative form based on extensive interviews with the women and their friends and relatives.

The book is an impressive piece of journalism. Taddeo handles her material with confidence and the result is an involving set of stories.

There is little commonality among the three women. Maggie is in her early twenties, but was in high school when the defining moments of her story occurred—she had a consensual affair with one of her teachers. The affair left her distraught, not because it happened, but because she was devastated by the loss of her lover. A few years later, Maggie files sexual abuse charges against the teacher. The resulting trial is, in some ways, even more devastating for Maggie than the affair. Maggie’s inability to understand the depth of what is happening to her during the affair, her immaturity and her romantic misinterpretation of the events, make the reader realize the necessity of laws and systems that try to prevent this kind of exploitation. But the trial explicates the danger women face when pursuing any remedy after they have been abused like this. It emphasizes the apparent inability of our judicial system, and of our culture, to take seriously the emotional damage done to women in these circumstances. Maggie’s story is powerful and sad.

Lina has two children by her husband but considers her marriage loveless and her husband distant and cold. Lina defines her marriage and her life through what she sees as the lack of passion, respect, and love from her husband. She just wants to be physically loved. Desperate, Lina seeks out Aidan, her boyfriend from high school. She leaves her husband and devotes her time to arranging trysts with Aidan. Lina’s needs are simple, but they are intense, and when unsatisfied they threaten to destroy her. Her story is one of desperation that she cannot avoid.

Sloane is unique—a woman born with means, a woman who controls her own destiny through the power of her personality, but who suffers from deep conflicts and uncertainties. Sloane is beautiful because she makes herself beautiful, powerful because she refuses to be otherwise, but strangely passive as a result of two past events that changed her life and left her malleable, looking for love. In the end, despite her personal power, Sloane is manipulated by her husband’s desires.

What stands out in all three of these narratives is the detail that Taddeo brings to the inner stories of her subjects. Although common in fiction, this type of narrative detail and power is not common in non-autobiographical nonfiction simply because it is nearly impossible to know such detail about another’s inner life. The three stories read like individual memoirs, the voice is different for each, and the detail is memoir-like.

Taddeo spent eight years researching this book and, as she says in her author’s note “I have spent thousands of hours with the women in this book”. Taddeo “based my selection of these three women on the relatability of their stories, their intensity, and the way that the events, if they happened in the past, still sat on the women’s chests.”

Indeed, Taddeo has created a work that lays bare the innermost desires, thoughts, and feelings of Maggie, Lina and Sloane and allows us to understand the stories of their lives with a depth and closeness most of us rarely experience with others even in our own lives.

This is a powerful and revelatory work, but it is not for the faint of heart. The sex is raw and startlingly frank at times. But it is also real, and fraught with feeling and meaning. Even though we may be shocked by it, we also realize its power to transform the participants, although not always for the better.

Taddeo’s work brings these women to life. She makes us think of each woman individually, to consider that we know them. This is a powerful narrative that gives us a unique perspective on the lives of these women.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman--A Review

Title: Subnurn
Author: Terrence L. Brown

Sunburn—A Review

by Laura Lippman

Gray Planet Commentary

• Formulaic
• Mysteries slowly revealed
• I don’t like the characters
• I don’t like the ending

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 50/100
• Literature Index: 25/100
• Magic Factor: 20/100

Sunburn by Laura Lippman is marketed as a “noir gem” with blurbs from prestigious authors and publications. I was drawn to the book after reading an interesting article about Laura Lippman’s writing.

But Sunburn is a formula story. In Sunburn, everything is mysterious. There is Polly Costello, a mother who walks away from her husband and daughter for mysterious reasons. There is Adam Bosk, the private detective hired to follow her and find where she is hiding a supposedly large sum of money. Bosk’s background, his client, and his motives for accepting the job are unknown.

The story switches between Polly’s and Adam’s viewpoints. In each chapter (there are forty-six of them), we are teased with a bit more revelation about each character’s secrets. Polly is hiding a complex history of mistakes behind various deceptions and playing a waiting game with an unknown goal. Adam is a reluctant investigator who finds himself attracted to his target, Polly, and even more conflicted than usual as a result.

At first, this teasing is effective and makes for compelling reading. But, for me, it grew old as each tease became less interesting and as Polly and Adam entered into a relationship where neither was truthful in the least, while still maintaining, in their thoughts, that they were truly in love. I started to lose interest but I kept reading, hoping for a final revelation and resolution that would allow me to feel better about these two people whom I no longer trusted or liked and now had no sympathy for.

It never happened. The revelations didn’t feel significant enough to justify the long tease and there was no resolution, only an almost off-camera deus ex machina that was just an excuse for a final passage explaining another tease.

The book was frustrating and I am not particularly happy I spent the time to finish it.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides--A Review

The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

Gray Planet Commentary

• Interesting, compelling
• Purposely manipulative

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 55/100
• Literature Index: 25/100
• Magic Factor: 35/100

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a thriller, a puzzler and a murder mystery. It is a compelling read, more compelling as it proceeds. It is the story of Alicia Berenson, who has been convicted of murdering her husband, Gabriel, and is now confined to a mental hospital called The Grove. She has been completely silent since the murder, which occurred a few years before the time of the story.

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who is so fascinated by Alicia’s story he applies for work at the mental hospital where Alicia is confined specifically so he can treat her. He wants to help her to understand what has happened to her and move past it.

As the story proceeds, we learn that Theo has his own mental struggles and has been helped by a therapist to overcome his traumatic childhood. Indeed, Theo makes comparisons between his traumatic childhood and Alicia’s childhood. Theo makes attempts to engage Alicia in therapy, earns her trust, and finally, she gives him a copy of her diary, in which she explains the events leading up to the murder of her husband.

We also discover that Kathy, Theo’s wife, is having an affair. This devastates Theo and he struggles with whether to confront her with this knowledge, or to follow her, find her lover and confront him.

Michaelides handles these multiple storylines quite well as he proceeds to expose more and more of the details. As the reader learns more, it becomes clear that there is something hidden, something waiting to be exposed, something not quite right. As Alicia begins to speak and we learn more about her history, and as Theo’s investigations tell us more about his wife’s lover, the tension builds.

Now for a bit of a spoiler. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that I understand why A. J. Finn, the author of The Woman in the Window, blurbed this book. In fact, given the stories about A. J. Finn, I wondered if he had actually written this book. The Silent Patient, like The Woman in the Window is based on a lie to the reader, on information purposely hidden from the reader for the sole purpose of making the denouement more surprising.

I feel that this is dishonest. Michaelides has a great story, with a compelling mystery and the details are well worked out. He should have presented it more cleverly instead of succumbing to the temptation of pure manipulation and dishonesty in his ending.

Although I liked the book, I feel like reading it was a waste of time. But, if you liked The Woman in the Window, you probably won't feel like I did.

Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O'Keefe Review

Velocity Weapon

by Megan E. O’Keefe

Gray Planet Commentary

• Creative and surprising space opera with an expansive scope
• Dudley Do-Right chapter cliffhangers

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 84/100
• Literature Index: 30/100
• Magic Factor: 72/100

Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe is an interesting and fun space opera with a little bit of everything, including some irritating style quirks.

Sanda Greeve is a gunship pilot in the Ada Prime military. After being on defensive patrol near Icarion space, she suddenly finds herself awakened after being preserved in an evacuation pod, apparently after a space battle she doesn’t remember. She has lost part of one leg. She finds herself aboard an Icarion (the enemy) AI Class Cruiser, The Light of Berossus. The ship AI introduces himself as Bero. Bero tells Sanda that 230 years have passed after the Battle of Dralee in which Sanda’s gunship was destroyed. As part of the battle, Ada Prime, Sanda’s home planet was destroyed by a special weapon deployed by the Icarions.

230 years before, at the time of the Battle of Dralee, Sanda’s younger brother, Biran, is a newly graduated Keeper. The Keepers are specially trained leaders of Ada Prime and have computer chips implanted in their skulls. The chips don’t give them any special abilities, but rather contain encrypted data on the construction of Casimir Gates, the interstellar jump points that tie together the Prime Universe. This secret data allows the Primes to maintain control of interstellar space.

The remainder of the novel is written in chapters that alternate between Sanda’s point of view and Biran’s point of view, 230 years apart. We are also introduced to another group of characters, led by Jules, a young woman from the lower cast in the Prime Universe who works with a criminal gang living in lower class neighborhoods.

There are also interludes that give us two other points of view. The first is that of Alexandra Halston, an historical character who was the businesswoman who led Prime Corporation, which developed space commercially and built the first Casimir Gate. The history of the Prime Universe is dated from the development of the first Gate.

The second Interlude point of view is that of Callie Mera, Ada Prime’s favorite newscaster. Callie does have an important role to play, but unless that role is significantly increased in sequels, Callie seems superfluous.

The velocity weapon of the title is Bero, who is an interstellar capable ramscoop ship. As a weapon, Bero can accelerate masses to relativistic velocities, thereby increasing their mass and making them dangerous projectiles. This is the edge Icarion uses in their opposition to the Gate monopoly the Primes hold.

The story hinges on Sanda’s struggle for survival after being awakened on Bero, and on Biran’s struggle to find his sister and save her, if she is still alive.

Sanda’s struggle is the stuff of science fiction adventure–she is faced with lots of problems and has to be clever to solve them. But O’Keefe also provides a lot of twists and turns for Sanda, most of them interesting at least, and many of them pretty surprising. After being alone for some time, she is joined in her struggle for survival by another rescued soldier, Tomas. Tomas is an enigma and Sanda is not sure if she should trust him. Their relationship is well-developed and interesting.

Biran’s story is a political one where he must work within the existing power structure of Ada Prime’s ruling Protectorate of Keepers to be sure the possibility of Sanda’s survival and her rescue is a high priority. Biran also fights against what he thinks is the Protectorate’s mismanaged approach to the war with Icarion. As he seeks information about Sanda, Biran uncovers a variety of deep and significant secrets within the political power structure of the Protectorate.

Velocity Weapon is an enjoyable ride, although at times I found myself aware of the writer’s manipulative ways. There are 80 chapters and six interludes in the book, and maybe they don’t all end with cliffhangers, but most of them do, particularly in the last half. This is a bit overdone, but it is effective. O’Keefe keeps giving us more and more as the story goes on, but she effectively handles the complications (albeit with a few deus ex machinas thrown in) and uses most of her surprises to complicate and deepen the story.

O’Keefe adds interesting and well thought out plot twists and science fiction elements that kept me interested. She has constructed a universe where the science fiction elements (her space travel technology and where it came from, the Keepers and their secrets, what Jules and her fellow criminals discover and are caught up in) are an integral part of the plot. This gives the book a depth that most space opera no longer has for me. As a space opera, this book is a big success.

O’Keefe is good enough with her characters that I care about Sanda and Tomas and Biran. The motivations of their antagonists are subtle and complex and serve to expand the action and provide interest.

I want to follow the adventures of Sanda and Brian and others as they figure out what’s really going on in their world and how to control it.

Much of this novel contains major surprises which I won’t reveal as they would ruin the story. There are also myriad minor surprises and cliffhanger moments along the way, sometimes too many. But O’Keefe manages make it all hang together and and keeps the story coherent.

I really liked the book and am ready for volume two.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett--Review

Mostly Dead Things–A Review

by Kristen Arnett

Gray Planet Commentary

• Unusual
• Kind of a downer through most of the book.
• Unsympathetic characters
• Very satisfying ending

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 83/100
• Literature Index: 86/100
• Magic Factor: 40/100

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett turned out to be a very odd read. The book has received many glowing, high profile reviews, particularly for a first novel. Most reviewers have described the book as unusual in one way or another. I would agree.

Jessa Morton is the first person narrator of the story. She was raised by her mother and her taxidermist father along with her younger brother Milo, in Florida. Taxidermy is the common thread in the novel–it is her father’s passion as well as the family livelihood. Jessa is groomed from a young age to help her father in the taxidermy shop and he favors her over Milo. From an early age, Jessa understands that she is gay and she is singularly attracted to Brynn, a girl her age. Jessa and Brynn become both friends and lovers as teenagers. Their relationship is complicated as Brynn also is involved with boys. Brynn eventually marries Milo, but Jessa and Brynn maintain their affair even through the marriage and children.

The story starts with the suicide of Prentice Morton, Jessa’s father. He shoots himself in the head in the taxidermy shop and, knowing that Jessa will be the one to find him, leaves her a private note. We also learn that Brynn ran away a few years ago, leaving Milo, her children (Bastien and Lolee) and Jessa to wonder where she went and why.

The chapters of the novel occur in two timeframes. The first, with titles like Sus Scrofa–Feral Pig, take place in the past, with Jessa describing growing up with Brynn and Milo and her family. Chapters that are labeled with numbers take place in the present time of the novel, starting about a year after the suicide.

In the novel, Jessa deals with multiple issues. First, is her father’s suicide and the note he left which asks her to take care of things. The full contents of the note are never fully disclosed. Instead, it becomes almost talismanic and Jessa uses it to attempt to understand or control the major issues in her life–her relationship with her father, her mother, her brother, and her lovers. The note remains mysterious and is full of power for Jessa. She feels it is her responsibility to follow the instructions in the note, even to her own detriment.

Jessa’s life has been subtly controlled by her relationships with her father and with Brynn, her lover. Both have now deserted her, her father by suicide, Brynn by running away. Any remaining support system she has–her mother, Libby, and her brother, Milo, are dysfunctional and distant. Following her husband’s suicide, Jessa’s mother can only focus on prurient, pornographic art which consists of sexually posing taxidermy available to her around the house and at the shop. This angers and concerns Jessa. To Jessa, it is demeaning to her father’s legacy and work, particularly because Libby portrays her dead husband as a participant in her stagings.

Milo floats through life after Brynn deserts him and their children, unable to focus on either his parental responsibilities or his work or personal hygiene. Milo and Jessa’s relationship is close, but complicated by the intertwining of their relationships with Brynn and the fact that Brynn left them both.

Jessa’s attempts at connecting with others (Lucinda, a love interest, for example) leave her dissatisfied and bereft as she is unable to define, connect with or feel her own grief. It is this grief, this dissatisfaction with life, that colors the entire narrative of the book and drives its tone using the primal process of taxidermy as its symbol. As the taxidermist deconstructs his subject and delves into the smells, the slime, the blood and guts of it, before reconstructing it with parts on hand and baling wire, so Jessa does with her life in the alternating chapters.

This emotional angst colors Jessa’s descriptions of the world around her. Everything in Jessa’s life, even things that are traditionally beautiful and joyful, are made grotesque and sad when Jessa describes them. For example: remembering Milo and Brynn’s wedding, Jessa describes the flowers she and the other attendants hold:

We held flowers that attracted bugs. Clutching our bouquets, we swatted and let the petals fall in wilted clumps on the grass. It clouded up and threatened rain for over an hour, but the sky refused to break open.

This negative context wears on the reader and we despair, as the book goes on and on, that there is anything other than her father’s fate–a gun to the head–awaiting Jessa. Unlike some others, I did not find absurd humor in Jessa’s narrative, only sadness. Jessa seemed doomed to this distorted view of the world and the people in it and I really didn’t want to read more about it.

Jessa attempts to control her destiny, but her narcissistic efforts result in tragedy. After her mother’s prurient art work is destroyed, partly as a result of Jessa’s actions, Jessa attempts to reconnect with her mother by showing her the suicide note from her father. Libby doesn’t care and tears up the note. This angers Jessa and she initially separates herself even further from her mother. But, after a time, with her last connection to her father now destroyed, Jessa is able to see her life differently.

In a moving scene, Jessa visits her mother, and finds her hiding in the bathroom, unkempt physically and nearly catatonic. She washes her mother’s body as she would a child. The description of this is as clinically detailed and personal as her descriptions of deconstructing a dead animal’s body for taxidermy. But from this clinical viewpoint comes loving kindness, and Jessa is transformed by it. The family’s dog, Sir Charles, stuffed by Jessa’s father and Libby’s husband watches this symbolic cleansing occur, almost a participant. After wrapping her mother in a towel, Jessa takes her to the living room where she “turns on the tortoise”, a phrase her father used to describe turning on a lamp with a green shade so he could see more clearly. In this new light, Jessa and Libby redefine their relationship. They lay to rest the demons that have beset them both—Prentice and Brynn, father, husband, lover.

It is this scene that saves the book. Arnett handles this deftly. She ties together all the themes and characters in her book tightly and creates an ending that is subtle, deep, and profound. Like taxidermy, life is messy and sometimes it stinks. But, if you can can see clearly what you learned in the deconstruction of the body, if you can use what is on hand to create from the destruction a new and lasting beauty, life can be good. Taxidermy preserves beauty. Love, whether lost or ongoing, preserves life.

I initially gave the book a mediocre rating—around 60/100. But this book and its ending have stuck with me over the past two weeks and grown larger in my memory. Jessa’s narrative of despair and dirt, of guts and gore, of sadness and loss, was necessary to make the ending as powerful as it was. The novel at times was a slog to get through—but the travails of the journey were necessary to make the end of the journey sweeter.

Longer by Michael Blumlein--A Review

Longer

by Michael Blumlein

A Review

Gray Planet Commentary

• Boring
• Confusing
• Poorly Written

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 9/100
• Literature Index: 5/100
• Magic Factor: 3/100

Longer by Michael Blumlein is a book I looked forward to based on hearing about it, and wanted to like. There turned out to be almost nothing to like.

The story presents itself as a science fiction puzzle story—an asteroid is captured and brought back to near Earth orbit and there is an object of interest (OOI) on it. Gunjita and Cav are scientists working for a pharmaceutical company on board an earth orbit station investigating a new drug for rejuvenation treatments. The pharmaceutical company, Gleem, is also a mining company and it is Gleem’s mining probe that has brought back the asteroid. In addition to their responsibilities investigating new rejuvenation pharmaceuticals, they are also the scientists on scene to investigate the asteroid and the object it brings with it. Is it alien life or not?

Gunjita and Cav are also husband and wife, and have been for 60 years. But now, Gunjita has taken her second rejuvenation treatment and is young again, while Cav is delaying his and is in his 80s.

So, what happens? Well, it turns out the story is really about Cav and the reasons he wants to delay his rejuvenation and why. The asteroid, the development of a new rejuvenation drug, and the complex and presumably portent filled history of Cav and Gunjita and and old friend (Dashaud) and an unexplained historical event called the Hoax and a few other things are just throwaway ideas that allow Blumlein to fill pages in the book.

This still could have been a good story. The problem is, that Blumlein is not up to the task. He dumps page after page of exposition on us and it is boring. He attempts, in dialogue, to hint at complex relationships and personal histories filled with portent. The problem is that his dialogue is confusing and unclear, his hints are so vague they confuse rather than intrigue, and his puzzles—the asteroid’s possible harboring of life, and the possibility of a breakthrough in rejuvenation drugs—are discussed in simplistic dialogue with no substantial technical information imparted, and no resolution at all of any of the issues.

For some reason, I finished this book. I am sorry I wasted my time even though I skimmed much of it. I hoped at least for an interesting answer to the asteroid question, some insight into an alien life form. I got nothing. You won’t either. Avoid this one.

Normal People by Sally Rooney Review

Normal People

by Sally Rooney

Gray Planet Commentary

• Relentless intimacy
• Flawed characters we love anyway

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 93/100
• Literature Index: 91/100
• Magic Factor: 82/100

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a work of depth and perception unlike any novel I have ever read. It is a Bildungsroman, a very complex and personal one in which two very different coming of age stories are intertwined.

The first story is Connell’s, a young man who in high school is a popular athlete and casually brilliant student. Connell comes from working class family with little money and no social standing. The second story is Marianne’s, whose family is very well off, who is not popular in school, but is also intelligent and a good student. Connell’s mother, Lorraine, works as a housekeeper for Marianne’s family.

The story takes place in Ireland over a period of four years, starting when Connell and Marianne are in high school in a small town, and continues through their first years at Trinity College in Dublin. From the moment they meet when Connell picks up his mother at Marianne’s house, both Connell and Marianne feel a deep attraction. This attraction drives the narrative with a force that is both engaging and relentless. Rooney’s prose and her intimate narrative of the thoughts and actions of her characters draw us into the emotional world of Connell and Marianne, and we can’t get out.

This is not an easy book. The characters are so real, their interactions so deeply personal, heartfelt, and sometimes cringeworthy that we find ourselves at one moment wincing with embarrassment and at the next exalted by a deeply personal insight. But even though Connell and Marianne feel they know the other better than they know themselves, simple things cause misunderstandings and the novel becomes an emotional roller coaster, much like Connell and Marianne’s relationship. It seems inevitable, even as their social roles transform, that they must be together. Over time, they are and then they aren’t and then they are again. Each of them grows and changes significantly over time, but there is one constant–the depth and importance of their connection, or perhaps, addiction, to each other.

The scope of Rooney’s story feels narrow at first, but it becomes expansive as we learn how Connell and Marianne struggle into adulthood and move toward and away from each other. As they grow, their personalities solidify in unexpected ways that lead to conflicts and challenges, both personal and relational, that they must face and overcome.

The ending is the weakest part of the novel, particularly on first reading. After the emotional complexity appears resolved, suddenly Rooney thrusts us back into another cycle of their relationship and calls into question the accommodations that Connell and Marianne have made for each other. After more careful reading the ending is consistent, but it does not leave the reader with closure or satisfaction and so it disappoints given how effective the rest of the novel is.

Even so, Normal People is an exceptional book, an engrossing experience that is impossible to put down. It is compelling, not in the manner of a thriller, but because we care about Connell and Marianne as if we are them. Connell and Marianne are “normal people” and we are better for having known them.