Tag Archives: Gladiola Overdrive

An Aggravating Amount of Paperwork

The promotional materials for any novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series must include one reference to Herron being the John LeCarre of current spy novelists. Peruse the press for Slough House, Herron’s seventh installment in that popular series, and you’ll easily find it. No, not on that page. Go back a few pages . . . stop . . . no, one more . . . there it is.

The lazy and frivolous compliment is an insult to both. LeCarre was a savant who elevated the spy novel to art. Herron is a master entertainer with a sharp eye for absurdity and an acerbic tongue. They’re only the same in terms of their intentionality. Herron is intentionally funny. LeCarre is intentionally not.

LeCarre is the master of ceremonies in the spy fiction genre, and there is justice in that. Genius will always be welcome at any literary feast. But what about the talented and amusing entertainer? Shouldn’t that writer get a prominent seat and full plate as well?

Herron’s Slough House certainly qualifies as entertaining. Even better, in terms of storytelling, it’s one of the stronger installments in the series. It’s fast and fun to read. If you’re unfamiliar with the novels, Slough House is where Britain’s MI5 puts its Slow Horses – those incompetent, unlucky, or annoying spies that the service doesn’t want to deal with anymore. Slough House is where they work under the insufferable Jackson Lamb, a hilarious HR nightmare. The hope is these agents will become so bored they decide to quit, because firing people involves an aggravating amount of paperwork.

This installment opens with MI5 celebrating another “bold new enterprise.” That’s usually bad news for the Slow Horses. And, sure enough, Slough House has been erased from MI5’s database. The Slow Horses are still getting paid but otherwise it’s like they never existed. As with everything they do, the Slow Horses can’t decide whether they care about it or not.

This is probably unrelated, but a certain Russian dictator has sanctioned a hit on a double-agent Russia swapped with Britain. MI5’s “bold new enterprise” is a revenge killing. Putin now wants tat for that tit, and someone has informed him that the Slow Horses are skilled assassins. Now two of them are dead. Others are being tracked, as if they might be next. Slow Horses are experts at nothing, but “once the label’s been applied, the facts cease to matter.” So it’s the Slow Horses up against Russian-trained assassins in cynical London where no one can be trusted, especially the people who are supposedly on your side. I wonder who will win. The reader, of course.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

This Isn’t Twain’s Jim

What is it that guitar-shredding word slinger, Everlast, says about perspective and storytelling?

I stroked the phattest dimes at least a couple of times 
before I broke their hearts.
You know where it ends, yo,
it usually depends on where you start.

That's it.  Thank you, Mr. Everlast, there's no fiction in your diction.

So if I’ve correctly interpreted Everlast’s hip-hop tribute to Finnegan’s Wake, his observation is irrefutable. It’s not disputable. Perspective is mutable, and everything depends on how fortunate the storyteller is in life’s lottery.

Take, for example, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s narrated by Huck Finn, a brilliant storyteller. But would his “adventures” look different if they were told by someone else? Someone with a different upbringing. Would they even be Huck’s adventures? Take Jim, the enslaved man who runs away from Miss Watson. He and Huck spend a lot of time together floating down that grand Mississippi. I wonder if Jim saw that journey as an adventure.

Well, I need wonder no more because Percival Everett has written James, and from the beginning it’s clear Jim sees things differently. First, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer aren’t Twain’s mischievous scamps. To Jim, they’re “little bastards”. Second, that muddy Mississippi isn’t Huck’s freedom trail. It’s a “vast highway to a scary nowhere”.

Everett is wise. He has no intention of re-telling Twain’s classic, because that would be foolish and impossible. Instead, Everett aims to bring more nuance and depth to Jim, and he succeeds. Like Huck, Jim is a skilled and engaging narrator who’s easily up to the task of telling his story. Many of Twain’s characters show up as well, but they’re depicted as Jim sees them. Most are still recognizable. Huck’s street smarts and moral clarity are still evident. The Dauphin and Duke are still scoundrels, but Jim’s assessment of Judge Thatcher may surprise those familiar with Huck’s opinion of the man.

Strange diction and dialect aren’t just points of pride for Everlast and Mark Twain. They’re the difference between life and death for Jim and his enslaved community. As Jim teaches the children, “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them . . . The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.” It’s harsh but undeniable. In the United States from colonial times until the day after tomorrow, the better white people feel, the safer black people are.

Jim runs away when he learns Miss Watson intends to sell him. This and several other events are consistent with Mark Twain’s story; however, Everett does eventually abandon the Hucklebery Finn plot and crafts a different narrative entirely. Jim spends his time on the river learning to “befriend” his anger. “I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.” This isn’t Twain’s Jim. This Jim learns how to feel anger. More importantly, he teaches himself how to use it. He becomes James, a name he gives himself. When he returns home to free his family, he’s ready for whatever may come.

The Mississippi meanders, but this story doesn’t. It’s not a raft adrift on a current. It’s a cigarette boat on a drug run. The ending, with its sudden explosion of violence, resembles Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained more than anything Mark Twain wrote. But it works because this is a story told from the perspective of an enslaved black man just as the American Civil War is getting started. Jim’s dialect is gone now and so is Jim. James has mastered his anger and forged a new voice. And it thunders. “I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night . . . I am a sign. Your future. I am James.”

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

The Play’s the Thing

There is much to like about Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, assuming you can ignore the title, which is taken from Macbeth. Oh, yes, you’ll also need to ignore all the other references to Macbeth in the novel. But if you’re able to do that (and good luck), you’ll find the novel is an engaging look at video games and the impact they’ve had culturally over the last forty years.

The story relates the decades-long love affair between Sam and Sadie. Refreshingly, the affair isn’t sexual. Their love is built upon a deep friendship and a fruitful creative partnership. They meet in a hospital when Sam is twelve and Sadie is eleven. Sam’s foot has been destroyed in a horrific car crash. He needs multiple surgeries and essentially lives in the hospital for months. Even after the surgeries, he’s crippled – and not just in the physical sense. Sadie’s sister has cancer, so Sadie is a daily visitor to the hospital for much of the time Sam is there. They bond over video games.

The importance of play in life is undeniable. But Zevin’s observations on video games and play have heft, because Sam is the perfect avatar. “Sometimes, I would be in so much pain. The only thing that kept me from wanting to die was the fact that I could leave my body and be in a body that worked perfectly for a while – better than perfectly, actually – with a set of problems that were not my own.” That’s powerful. However, at other times, Zevin’s celebration of play and video games is silly. “To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.” Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean play and video games are unique. The same thing could be said about gardening, being pen pals, going on long drives, or doing anything with someone you have an intense connection with. The activity isn’t relevant, the connection is. And Sam and Sadie have an intense connection that can be tempestuous.

The novel follows their relationship into adulthood where they form an artistic collaboration (because, as Zevin convincingly argues, video games can be art) that becomes a successful business. They have strong personalities and opinions, which give birth to petty jealousies and major clashes of vision. Still, their friendship survives and evolves.

Zevin succeeds with these themes, but she isn’t satisfied. Intimacy built around art, creativity, collaboration, and friendship are all well and good, but Zevin wants you to know her novel is art, too. And it’s important. She conveys this through frequent references to Emily Dickinson and William Shakespeare. Her obsession, however, with Macbeth is strange within the context of this novel. Macbeth is a different kind of play, and it doesn’t seem well-suited for Zevin’s story.

In Macbeth there is no redemption or rebirth. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow is how Shakespeare begins one of his great soliloquies. The one that ends with life is a “brief candle . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Death is final in Macbeth, as it is in everything. Except video games. Zevin alludes to this herself and does so unironically. “What is a game? . . . It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.” Fair enough, I guess. That is, after all, a great description of a video game but it’s a lousy one of Macbeth.

So what are we to make of Zevin’s constant allusions to Macbeth? Is life, friendship, art, and play nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing? Her novel suggests the opposite, that there is solace and meaning in intimacy, creative collaboration, and even video games. So why bring nihilistic Macbeth into all this? It’s a puzzling distraction in an otherwise compelling and enjoyable story.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Not Just Another Nepo Baby

Reading Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater reminded me of something profound I just made up. Only the delusional or masochistic read Vonnegut hoping to find an intricate plot or a deep analysis of a character’s psyche. If anyone reads Vonnegut these days, they do so for his moral clarity and barbed humor. To that I say sign me up, as long as I can still be masochistic in all the other aspects of my life. What’s that you say, Dear Reader? Ouch, that hurt! Say it again, daddy.

The protagonist and hero in this story is Eliot Rosewater, a trust fund baby who is a “drunkard, a Utopian dreamer, a tinhorn saint, and aimless fool.” He also owns and manages his family’s charity, which is worth millions. He tires of his privileged life in Manhattan and moves back to Rosewater, Indiana, a neglected rust belt community that’s also his ancestral home. He wants to become an artist. “I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive. That is going to be my work of art.” Most artists have a God complex, but Eliot is a modern-day Christ figure, and just like Jesus he has a difficult and domineering father.

That father is a U.S. senator, who has “spent [his] life demanding that people blame themselves for their misfortunes.” He disapproves of Eliot and would desperately like a grandchild he could approve of. One that would take over the charity and be less charitable. There’s another person who’d like to do the same. He’s a lawyer and he believes he’s found a way to replace Eliot as the charity’s manager. He just has to prove Eliot is insane, and Eliot is doing a wonderful job of unintentionally helping the lawyer prove his case. So who will control the charity? The welfare of Rosewater’s destitute citizens depends on the answer.

In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Vonnegut skewers the purported legitimacy of inherited wealth. “I think it’s terrible the way people don’t share things in this country. I think it’s a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country . . . and let another baby be born without owning anything.” Published in 1970, the story is as relevant now as ever. The novel is the perfect introduction to, or reminder of, Vonnegut’s simple grace, moral outrage, wicked humor, and deep intellect.

But let’s say you only read novels with intricate plots and complex psychological analyses, then read this instead. It’s the best summation of Vonnegut’s works, and it happens to have been written by that grand curmudgeon himself: “Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled.”

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Never Ending

Stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are legion, but they usually end before or at Arthur’s death. After all, what’s left to say about Arthur and his knights after the legendary king dies? Nothing. The story is over.

Then again, Arthur is the once and future king, so perhaps stories about Britain after his death are as pertinent to the Arthurian myth as the ones during his life. Maybe stories don’t end just because certain characters, even main ones, die. Perhaps the stories continue, but with new characters and different adventures. Just maybe the stories go on forever. Lev Grossman thinks that might be the case, and he makes a compelling argument in The Bright Sword, his thoroughly enjoyable addition to the Arthurian myth.

The story opens with a knight, Collum, traveling to Camelot to join King Arthur and the Round Table. Collum is a poor orphan, and he’s wearing stolen armor. His chances of acceptance into this elite fighting group appear slim, but his timing is perfect. Many of Arthur’s bravest knights never returned from the quest for the Holy Grail. And then there’s Mordred, King Arthur’s bastard son. Just days ago, Arthur and Mordred killed each other in a battle that claimed most of the remaining Round Table.

Britain is now a dark and divided land. While Arthur brought unification, order, and peace, he was the “last light in the darkness.” Old Britain is asserting itself. The fairies never went away, but they’ve become bold again. Christianity is in retreat, and threats from foreign lands are everywhere. The remaining knights are ragtag so they can’t be choosey. Collum is in.

He isn’t without talents. At seventeen, Collum is incredibly strong and quick. He’s the greatest fighter his island, Mull, has ever seen, but Mull is tiny and remote. Regardless, he’ll be handy on a quest. And what do you know? These undistinguished knights suddenly have one. They must find the rightful heir to the throne. Arthur was tall, but this task is taller.

As they travel across Britain and Fairyland, the knights encounter all the major characters from the Arthurian legends, but Guinevere, Merlin, Lancelot, and Morgan le Fay aren’t the romanticized characters you might remember. They help make this addition to the canon all the more appealing.

Like all quests, this one is full of enchantment and danger. A successor is found, but the cost is great and much is uncertain. But that’s a quest for you. “Stories never really [end], they just [roll] one into the next. The past [is] never wholly lost, and the future [is] never quite found.” Quests, like stories, never really end. They’re never quite resolved.

That’s good news, my friends, because your grail is still out there, and you’ll never attain it. But like Collum, you can have wonderful adventures as you try. Quest on and quest well.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Myths of Self-Reliance – My Favorite Myths

In Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, Barbara Van Laar, a thirteen-year old at summer camp in the lush Adirondacks, has gone missing. The most important rule at this remote camp is “When lost sit down and yell.” Barbara hasn’t done that, which is strange because her wealthy family owns the camp. She’s aware of the rule. Her family also owns the mansion overlooking the beautiful mountain lake next to the campgrounds. Barbara knows the area. She’s not lost.

This is also strange. Barbara’s brother, nicknamed Bear, went missing in the same area fourteen years earlier in the summer of 1961. He was only eight years old, and he was never found. Stranger still, Jacob Sluiter, whose ancestors previously owned the ancient woods surrounding the mansion and campgrounds, escaped from prison a few weeks before Barbara disappeared. He’s a notorious killer, convicted of murdering eleven people between 1960 and 1964. He was blamed for Bear’s disappearance. That’s a coincidence, I’m sure, because there are rumors that Barbara has a much older secret boyfriend, and she may have run off with him.

All of this means there’s some urgency to the search for her, and the state troopers are brought in to lead it. Judyta is a young woman in her mid-twenties, and she has just been promoted to investigator. She doesn’t have much experience looking for missing children, but she does know how to work within patriarchal systems. Since this is 1975, those skills serve her well, as the patriarchy is everywhere.

There’s much to like about this book. Moore does a nice job jumping between the timelines relating to each child’s disappearance. She’s devised an interesting plot with two engrossing mysteries. The exploration of female empowerment working within a suffocating patriarchy is effective and authentic. Moore isn’t afraid of irony or poking fun at patriarchal and capitalist mythology. The Van Laar’s Adirondack mansion is named Self-Reliance, but it was built by the local townsfolk, and time and again the Van Laars must rely on the locals for help.

While the book is an enjoyable read, it falls short of being great. Judyta is a distant, less compelling, cousin of The Silence of the Lambs‘ Clarice Starling. At times the prose is silly and clunky. “When one’s parents and grandparents have already quested and conquered, what is there for subsequent generations to do?” But the real problem is the ending. The mysteries are solved, but only one resolution is satisfactory. The other one is ludicrous. Throughout the story, Moore correctly shows how self-reliance is a hypocritical myth perpetuated by the patriarchy. However, she then takes self-reliance to absurd lengths to mythologize female empowerment.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

The Epic of Dogtown

Don Winslow’s City on Fire has quotes from The Aeneid and The Iliad throughout. Those epics are about the siege of Troy, the original city on fire, so the quotes are apt. Winslow’s story is an epic as well, but his Troy is Providence, Rhode Island, the land of “I know a guy.” That’s an unexpected setting for an epic, but it works. Just substitute the ancient Greeks and Trojans for Italian and Irish mobsters in the 1980s. The Irish control the docks. The Italians control the trucks and almost everything else. The merchandise that falls off the boats and trucks supports both gangs and their respective rust belt neighborhoods. Each respects the other’s territory, meaning the Italians rarely venture into Dogtown, the name of the Irish section where slaughterhouses once attracted feral dogs.

A beautiful woman emerges from the sea on a hot summer day. Here’s our Helen, except her name is Pam, because it’s Providence. Danny Ryan knows immediately that she’s going to be trouble. “Women that beautiful usually are.” Just ask the Greeks and Trojans. Danny is in his late 20s, and his father-in-law runs the Irish gang. Danny is “faithful like a dog,” so he isn’t going to be the Paris in this story. That role is reserved for his brother-in-law, who steals Pam away from a high-ranking Italian mobster. Jokes are made at this mobster’s expense, and when “people start to disrespect you in one area of your life, it leaks into others.” The initial weapons are bats, but soon bullets fly and bodies fall. Danny moves up the chain of command. He’s never been tested like this before, and it’s going to take everything he has to get himself and his family out alive.

Mob stories make for great epics. They have all the requisites built in: violence, greed, lust, family, and loyalty. There’s just one problem. Our popular culture is rife with these stories, so it takes a talented writer to craft a captivating one that’s fresh. Fortunately, Winslow is such a writer.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor.

Frankenstein Meets The Children of the Hill

The cover of Jennifer McMahon’s The Children on the Hill includes a quote from a book promoter who proclaims, “This novel is an all-nighter!” That’s called marketing, my friends. You can tell because it ends with an exclamation. Having read that assessment, I was surprised to find I had no problem putting this novel down for a good night’s sleep. That happened on successive evenings until I finished the book.

Ms. McMahon is a fan of Frankenstein, and The Children on the Hill is her reinterpretation of Mary Shelley’s classic set in contemporary times. She succeeds there but you shouldn’t wait for a string of movies culminating with The Bride of The Children on the Hill or The Children on the Hill Meet the Wolfman.

The story bounces between 1978 and 2019. In 1978, Vi is living with her brother and grandmother in Vermont. The grandmother is a doctor “famous or helping patients others couldn’t help.” These patients are “people who had done terrible things not because they were terrible people, but because they were sick.” One day Gran brings home a thirteen year old girl to live with them. She’s the same age as Vi, and they become “Sisters . . . not by blood, but by something else. Something deeper.”

The intense connection is related somehow to Gran’s work. That should be no big deal, but the girls learn sweet old Gran is into eugenics and believes the “survival and overall success of the species is dependent on those who are superior weeding out the weak and inferior.” This discovery sets off a chain of events leading to disaster. One sister disappears and the other goes to foster care.

In 2019, one sister is a self-described monster who is likely responsible for the disappearance of several teenage girls. The other sister has changed her name to Lizzy Shelley (with an intentional nod to Mary Shelley) and has (conveniently) become a monster hunter with a significant social media following. The monster initiates a cat and mouse game with Lizzy, and we all know what happens to the mouse in that game.

Lizzy loves monsters. Ms. McMahon does too, and she’s happy to get pedantic about it. “Here’s why the world needs monsters: Because they are us and we are them.” Huh? Assuming that’s true or intelligible, it doesn’t explain why the world needs monsters. She follows that incongruous statement with “We all have a little monster hiding inside us.” Now, that’s true and intelligible, but it isn’t new and insightful.

Of course, the sisters confront each other in a surprise ending that disrespects the reader. Up until this point, the novel was diverting. The ending, however, is abrupt and silly. The cat and mouse game was gratuitous, a mere plot device to enable Ms. McMahon to write a Frankenstein story. A simple phone call or a handful of texts between the sisters would have saved everyone a lot of time and highway miles.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

When You Google It, Just Remember – It’s Penal, Not Penile

Published in 2023, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All Stars is influenced by some of America’s sports/entertainment behemoths, including the National Football League, Reality Television, and the World Wrestling Foundation. If you think of capitalism as a game, throw that one in, too. Each has a “bloodsport” element to it, so it’s understandable that Adjei-Brenyah draws from them, because Chain-Gang All-Stars is the “crown jewel in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program.” It allows felons “under their own will and power . . . to forgo a state-administered execution or a sentence totaling at least twenty-five year’s imprisonment” to participate in a spectacle where they can travel the country, get some fresh air, and perhaps become a hero. Oh, yeah, every couple of weeks or so, they’ll have to fight each other to the death in sold-out arenas and on pay-per-view television. But if they survive three years in the program, they may be granted clemency or a full pardon. Yippee! Where do I sign?

What’s that, dear reader? Yes, you’re correct. This has been done before. Several times, in fact. There’s the movie, The Longest Yard, and the re-make of that movie, also called The Longest Yard. And the movie, Running Man, and the other movie, Escape From New York, and the Hunger Games franchise. So it’s not really a fresh idea.

Except, here, everything in the penile, dammit, penal system is privately owned, and the competitors have corporate sponsors. Oh, yeah, that’s been done before, too.

How about this? Adjei-Brenyah wants you to take his premise as seriously as he does. And he’s not afraid to preach. The system is evil, evil, evil. He’s going to smack you in the face with the horror of it all, because he’s concerned you won’t figure it out on your own. These prisoners are humans, who’ve had traumatic upbringings. In case that’s inconceivable to you, he has characters say things like “These marks (tattoos showing the number of kills they have) don’t mean we aren’t people. These chains don’t mean we have to do it like they want.” He has footnotes! They cite statistics!! Some are relevant!!!

All of this is to impress upon the reader that America’s penal system is dehumanizing and evil. And the reader is like no shit, I already knew it was awful and in desperate need of reform. The fact that you’ve come up with a bloodier version of a more-than-twice-told tale doesn’t shed more light on the subject.

The outlandish premise would have been perfect for a satire, and that seems to be what Adjei-Brenyah initially intended. But about halfway through, he abandons that approach and turns to evangelism. The story is violent, bloody, and angry. Those are its strengths. There’s just one weakness. All that preaching and self-seriousness gets to be a bore.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Ripped From the Headlines

London Rules is the fifth installment in Mick Herron’s Slough House series, and once again he asks what does Britain do when James Bond is on holiday? It turns to the Slow Horses, of course – that woeful group of misfits and losers who’ve been relegated to MI5’s dusty top shelf where they will hopefully either retire or die from boredom.

These novels have a ripped from the headlines feel, and London Rules is no different. It opens with an armed assault on a defenseless Derbyshire village. Twelve men, women, and children are murdered, and ISIS, much to MI5’s relief, immediately takes credit. It’s always good to have outsiders to blame, but these days, when a spy agency wants to blame outsiders for something hideous, you better take a close look at what the insiders are doing. Soon, another attack happens, and more are promised.

It’s not London Rules because London is ruling anything anymore. That was long ago. No, the title refers to rules of behavior that MI5 never strays from. “London Rules were written down nowhere, but everyone knew rule one.” It’s cover your ass, but because this is merry old England, they say arse. Oh, those silly Brits. I swear. Sometimes, it’s like they aren’t even talking English.

Anyway, it’s going to be hard for MI5 to cover its ass when the terrorists are operating from a playbook it wrote. As the head of MI5 observes, the terrorists are using “our own imperial past as kerosene. It’s the propaganda coup to end them all.” Fortunately, MI5 can pull the Slow Horses from the shelf, dust them off, and saddle them with all the blame when inevitably everything blows up. Oh, and by the way, someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho, the Slow Horses’ IT guru. But, of course, that makes for a long list of suspects, all of whom may be acting out of a deep sense of civic duty.

The Slough House series isn’t a success because Herron crafts meticulous plots laden with psychological drama. The plots are serviceable and there is suspense, but those are secondary to the maliciously fun characters and the delightfully acerbic humor. The standout character is Jackson Lamb, who’s always in “his hippo-at-rest position: apparently docile, but you wouldn’t want to get too close.” Roddy Ho has also emerged as one of the more entertaining characters in the series, which brings me to the problem with London Rules. Roddy Ho disappears one third of the way through, and Jackson Lamb is also missing in large chunks of the story. London Rules is still a fun read, but it doesn’t have as much of the misanthropic joy driving the earlier installments.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor