I remember breathlessly telling my twelve-year-old niece, Jaycie, that if Amy Bloom’s name were on the cover of a phone book I’d read it and enjoy every line. I’m a bit of a Bloom fan, and still remember buying her first novel Love Invents Us in hardcover at the B. Dalton in the Eden Prairie Mall just because I liked the title.

After reading Where the God of Love Hangs Out her newest short story collection that affirmation is truer than ever.

What I like so much about Bloom’s writing is that she populates her stories with intelligent, capable people. I like that her characters often make what could be considered the wrong decision knowing full-well that it isn’t the smartest thing to do. But they are some how compelled to try something new, to go beyond the boundaries of their bourgeois, successful lives. I like these kinds of characters because I think they have the most at stake, they risk everything and reading how that turns out is fulfilling.

This collection is unlike any I’ve read before. That’s no exaggeration. Where the God of Love Hangs Out features two sets of four-interlinked stories and a few stand alone stories. It sort of reads like two novellas with some short stories in between. This isn’t a complaint because both of those novellas are really, really good. So good in fact that it makes the stand alone stories pale in comparison (and not because they’re bad, it’s just the interlinked stories are that good).

The first set of stories features William and Clare, college professors who have been best friends for years when they randomly decide to become lovers even though their respective spouses are asleep upstairs. We follow the pair through their illicit trysts which are at turns totally hot and miserable failures. Alone William and Clare are not particularly likable but in their relationship they become wholly lovable. And when their final story comes it’s kind of heartbreaking, both in the actual story and in the fact that we don’t get to read more about them.

The second quartet of stories features Julia and Lionel. Oh boy. It opens with nineteen-year-old Lionel’s father and Julia’s husband having just died. In their grief Julia and Lionel fall into bed together. Reading the pages that lead up to this event filled me with a sense of dread it was as though I wanted to look away from the story because I knew that trainwreck was coming. Ouch. Filled with guilt, Julia sends her stepson away. The three stories that follow show the repercussions of that one night and how Julia tries to put her family back together again.

As a writer I am fascinated with how other writers convey grief and loss without a flood of tears and various synonyms for sad. When I think about this I often go back to a scene in Ethan Canin’s America America which involves a vase of flowers on a table that so perfectly sums up how a man feels about his recently deceased wife. Bloom has a scene like that between Julie and Lionel. In this small, short scene she perfectly expressed the loss both Julia and Lionel are feeling without having either character shed a tear or utter a word. It is scenes like this that make reading the whole collection worthwhile.

There are other stories in the collection and they are good. Especially, “Between Here and Here” which chronicles the relationship a daughter has with her emotionally abusive father after her mother dies. This one was a little painful to read because some of the scenes hit a little too close to home. But here writing is so spot on that it’s hard to resist. Here she writes about the main character how she landed a man who is nothing like her father.

I won him the way poor people occasionally win the lottery: Shameless perseverance and embarrassingly dumb luck, and every time I see one of those sly, toothless, beaten-down souls on TV holding a winning ticket, I think, Go, team.”

If you’ve never had the great fortune to read any Amy Bloom, Where the God of Love Hangs Out is a good place to start, especially if you like smart, emotionally-honest writing that can be both painful and funny at the same time.

Short Stories Amy Bloom, Ethan Canin

When you were little, do you remember staring at your pile of wrapped birthday presents and being so excited to see a huge box? Small boxes surrounded the big box, but they weren’t nearly as important as what was in that monstrous box. It’s got to be something great since it’s that big, right?

I was always disappointed by the big box. Inevitably it was the first I’d want to open because it just had to be good, but it was usually a sleeping bag or a box of clothes. When I was turning eight, my oldest sister filled a huge box full of old blankets, pillows, silverware, and rocks so that when I’d shake it I’d have no idea what it was, which made it even more exciting. She did include a present in the box, a set of Encyclopedia Brown books, which I liked, but I was still let down that the present did not represent what was advertised.

The excitement and ultimate let down of the big box is exactly what I felt like reading Wormwood, Nevada by David Oppegaard. In the first half of the book there was a slow build up, enough to keep me entertained and wondering where it was going, but then the last half was like opening the big box and finding it full of new socks and underwear. I didn’t hate it, but it was a let down.

In Wormwood, Nevada we follow a young couple, Tyler and Anna Mayfield, as they move to and explore the town of Wormwood. Anna starts having apocalyptic nightmares as soon as they enter the town and Tyler starts seeing a little alien, who is described like you may imagine – short, gray, with big almond-shaped eyes. Tyler is usually drunk or high when he sees the alien, which brings into question whether or not he’s really seeing it, but I was excited about the prospect of an alien encounter. Other townspeople were excited about it, too, especially when a meteorite crashes in the town. One resident even sits next to the meteorite holding a “The End is Near” sign.

The idea of aliens visiting Wormwood lingers throughout the story, with Tyler joining a secret alien society that believes aliens are already on their way to help us usher into a new, peaceful, prosperous era, which is what we always hear alien enthusiasts say – “They’re coming in peace to help us because we’re ruining our planet.” We’ve heard that before, but I was still along for the ride in Wormwood, Nevada to see how this would all end.

The momentum that was in the first half of the book didn’t really go anywhere in the last half. Anna still continues to have her nightmares and Tyler still continues to see an alien around town. Anna’s dreams are different each time, as are Tyler’s sightings, but there are no raised stakes or surprises to keep it all going, and then ending is boring when it could have been amazing.

I didn’t hate Wormwood, Nevada, but it was just lacking something that I needed to really enjoy it. I think it has all the components to become something great, but where it is right now just wasn’t enough for me.

Fiction, MN Authors, Novel David Oppegaard

By all accounts, I should have really liked Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves. That makes the fact that it’s a wretched failure all the more disappointing.

The Swan Thieve, Kostova’s second novel, begins with the admission of Robert Oliver, a painter of some renown, to the psychiatric care of Andrew Marlow. Oliver had been committed after attempting to damage a painting at the National Gallery of Art and now will speak to no one about the incident. Investigating the source of Oliver’s derangement sends Marlow down a path cluttered with meaningful paintings and even more meaningful encounters with the women who litter Oliver’s past. I’ll end my plot synopsis there to preserve whatever stale crumb of originality remains, but know that the novel travels back in time to 19th century France (or a postcard version thereof) and pivots on a series of love letters expressed in the quaint, demure manner authors like Kostova seem to think people of that era used.

The first of Swan Thieves’ many flaws is with that premise. To create The Swan Thieves, Kostova unabashedly borrowed from works like Possession and The Time Traveler’s Wife and even added a whiff of The Da Vinci Code. Even liberally cribbing from bestsellers past, Kostova can’t get a firm grip on her subject material. Her characters exist on their descriptions – “I am a lonely psychologist.” “I am a mysterious and beautiful woman painter” – but have the depth and emotional range of cardboard. Her plot slides forward with something like bland inevitability; of course the ex-wife will take a shine to the inquisitive doctor, naturally the subject of that painting will turn out to be significant. Whereas The Swan Thieves sources – excuse me, inspirations – represented something real and exciting, Kostova’s work is empty and lifeless; a hologram rather than a work of meaningful fiction. It’s like she’s a child playing dress-up; “Look at me, mommy! I can be an author too, just like them!”

For a novel that is supposedly about the spell love can cast over people, Kostova’s writing is asexual and bloodless. There is no passion, no lust, no desire, no yearning. What passes for smoldering romance is that series of letters, and I apologize if expressions like “your humble servant” and “with fondest regards” don’t exactly make my heart beat faster.

Kostova’s writing is just as limp elsewhere in the novel. She describes a woman’s eyes as “ocean blue.” First, she can’t be more original than a Crayola box? And second, has she ever even seen the ocean? Frequently it isn’t blue at all – what she must be comparing the woman’s eyes to is a can of paint she once saw called “Ocean Blue” because only a marketer would think “ocean” is a good descriptor for “blue.” Kostova’s sentences are unvaryingly simplistic in their structure, her vocabulary insultingly facile. For reasons known only to her, she is utterly afraid to attempt anything that might be mistaken for a literary device.

If this is an especially lacerating review, it’s probably because I am jealous. Kostova went to Yale and got her MFA from Michigan. Her first novel, The Historian, is the only first novel in history to debut at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Kostova has enjoyed the success she has. Whatever pact she has made with the devil, I need to make too. It also angers me that Kostova had so much to work with and produced this result. Romance should never be this insipid or history this broad-brushed. It should be a crime to take painters and psychiatrists – inherently interesting professions, after all – and make them so soporific.

I fully regret every 576 pages of this book.

Novel AS Byatt, Audrey Niffenegger, Dan Brown, Elizabeth Kostova

Some things you glance at, do a double-take, and then go ewww, still unable to take your eyes away. That’s what I did with the cover of John-Ivan Palmer’s, Motels of Burning Madness – Confessions of a Male Stripper. The cover shows a lit cigarette being dropped into a male g-string that looks like a miniature tuxedo? Who would not want to read this book? Well, I could think of a few people, but I’m not going to go there. I was intrigued.

The novel revolves around Huey Dubois, a sympathetic stripper who readily admits to having more than a few flaws.

I may have been somewhat an authority on how to conduct myself at a party in a g-string, but love was always beyond me, uncontrollable, not subject to manipulation like sex. You think you learn everything from one relationship gone bad and then a whole new set of problems comes up in the next one, and the next one, and on forever until you realize no matter how experienced you think you are, you’re never experienced enough. p. 3

Through the sleaze bars, competition of fellow strippers, affairs, jealous husbands (including a cop), Huey has an attraction for older women — and an infatuation for one older woman in particular — Gloria. As if his world wasn’t crazy enough before, Gloria becomes his obsession, and she takes full advantage. Like playing cat and mouse (or more like a cat toying with a mouse before the final pounce), Gloria leads him deeper and deeper into a world of a different kind of trouble than he regularly deals with.

I buried my nose in the loose skin of her neck, and when I reached up to touch her hair, my hand grazed a hard, silicone breast. . . She felt me everywhere and sniffed me like a dog, but we had no sex. Plenty of sexual tensions, but it wasn’t released. . . When I woke up she was gone. p. 101

I don’t want to give away any of her many secrets, so I’ll stop here.

Palmer writes with a flair that gives his characters a believable life in a world where most of us will never venture close to, let alone understand. He’s obviously done his research (something I’d love to ask him about one day). The humor is dark, wry, ironic, and very funny. He delves inside the business of male dancing, removing layer upon layer of the glamour of stripping. Males make nowhere near the money as their female counterparts and as is common in both sexes, often resort to other means for larger tips.

There’s nothing graceful about running for your life. I burst through what I thought was the back door, but instead of going outside I went into a dark garage full of boxes and bug spray and lawn equipment. It was an obstacle course in terror. p 41

Motels of Burning Madness took me to a world I’ve always been curious about, but never had the courage to step into, at least not with both feet. Now I don’t feel the need. It’s a short book, only 195 pages, and a fast read. You’ll be able to easily read it in one or two sittings (and you’ll probably want to – it’s hard to put down). Believe me when I say, dear readers – this is not the Chippendales.

Fiction, MN Authors, Novel Huey Dubois, John-Ivan Palmer, male stripper

The character John Coetzee, as written about in a fictionish-like sorta memoir, is socially awkward, not a real man, does not emit any sort of sexual vibe, and was never a great writer embraced by the collective.

Summertime by JM Coetzee is delivered as a novel with an alternative story format. Vincent, an English biographer, is conducting interviews with people who knew Coetzee in the early 1970s when he was living in a ramshackle place with his father in South Africa and teaching English. Vincent is trying to eke out anecdotes from the subjects that get to the root of John as a person for a biography that he concedes that few will read. By this time, the fictional John has died in Australia. Instead Vincent gets a handful of reluctant interviewees who confess that they barely knew the man and didn’t necessarily like him.

It starts with Julia, a former neighbor who was introduced to Coetzee when he delivered a bad touch at the grocery store. Julia is married to an absentee husband known for his extracurricular romances, and as a response absorbs Coetzee into her life. They bumble and fumble in the bedroom, just once actually syncing up sexually, and then dissolve from each other’s lives. Julia moves to Canada and barely gives John another thought. Meanwhile, she may have appeared in character-form in at least one of his novels.

Margot is a cousin who was once very close to young John, but time has accentuated their differences. She tells Vincent about a family reunion that Coetzee attended, weirding out his relatives. Margot stays in touch briefly afterward, sending John letters filled with advice on how to get normal. Adriana is a fiery Brazilian dancer whose daughter is studying English with John. She invites him over for dinner and immediately questions his credentials and his manhood, not to mention his relationship with her young daughter. Meanwhile, John falls nutso futso for her, sends her countless love letters and shows up in her dance class. Martin met John when they interviewed for the same job, and the two maintained a friendship. He talks about John as a writer. Sophie was a former colleague who eventually fell into bed with the writer.

As to what imprint I may have left on him, that I’m not in the position to judge,” Sophie says. “But in general, I would say that unless you have a strong presence you do not leave a deep imprint; and John does not have a strong presence. I do not mean to sound flippant. I know he had many admirers; he was not awarded the Nobel Prize for nothing; and of course you would not be here today, doin gthese researches, if you did not think he was important as a writer But — to be serious for a moment — in all the time I was with him I never had the feeling I was with an exceptional person, a truly exceptional human being.”

Ouch.

This worked better for me when I was in the mindset that I was reading something pretty damn close to the truth than read as pure fiction. Imagine being involved with a room full of people gossiping about you, but you are the puppetmaster of the conversation and through yourself, you are described as an asexual loony bird with a undefinable relationship with your father. It is navel-gazing at its finest and most self deprecating. As straight-up fiction, parts run cold. Dispatches from John’s cousin bored me so much I almost jumped ship, until I reminded myself what the writer was doing. Then I got all woozy-goozy into it again.

Fiction, Novel JM Coetzee