My first Mash Note in a long time
Apr. 26th, 2011 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogNot as-in-Klinger-MASH, but a spontaneous expression of Major Like (as opposed to Major Burns) for a serendipitious library find that I devoured over the past week.
I'd finished #16 on my Books Read List, and the to-be-17th, my friend Clea's second new novel of the year, was late in arriving from Amazon, so I wandered into a library branch that I usually don't get to, being up that way to visit the adjacent cophouse and get my accident "report." I saw no familiar names in the new-book or nearly-new sections, but something about this jacket just stuck out-
-so I gave it a shot. And so, dear readers, should you.
----
The author turns out to be relatively local- from near Syracuse originally, but attending UB before going onto Emerson for her MFA (the same path![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
believeitup took, albeit a few years behind her and both long after I trod the muddy trails of the Amherst Campus), and she sets this book mainly in a fictional Central New York town that could be any of dozens in the vast current waste that is Upstate. Briefly at the beginning, she injects her Easterner characters into the strange world of near-present-day Southern California, where her male lead discovers the strangeness and wonder of ordering from In-and-Out Burger.
Yet that is only a double-double foretaste of the strange and wondrous things to come back in Ruby Falls.
----
I rarely bail on a book, no matter how hard it is to understand, much less like. If you want a good shot at it, though, make most, if not all of your characters utterly unlikeable. Give them quirks that are annoying rather than endearing. Make them so far from my world that I can't relate to them, or so close to it that I feel their pain a bit too much.
Yes, Franzen, I'm talking to YOU, but I am most certainly not directing it to Kate Racculia. She somehow managed to give me 300-plus turns of page in which I felt every voice was ringing- resounding, even- just right, and true. I've read (even recently edited) fiction with YA-aged voices in it that sounded right to me compared to the real voices of that age I hear from our daughter and her friends; I read even more where the characters are closer to my own age and experience. It's rare for a book to get both generations' voices right, but this book does- and even throws in accurate-sounding and graceful glimpses of an even older generation in a minor but important character named Bert.
Another important measure of a work for me is my Guffaw Index (Reg. U.S. Pat Off.). I don't need a book to be Dave Barry Funny (and, frankly, shy away from stuff as over-the-funny-top as his), but I remain aware of how many lines, or sights, in a story produce a smile or better. This book comes close to Joshilyn Jackson's sacred territory of one AOHPP (a-ha! or ha-ha! per page). I can also say, with complete confidence, that the chapter title within this book, cryptically named "WWPTD?" may not be the funniest you'll ever read, or even necessarily the shortest, but letter for letter, in its context once suddenly revealed, is the shortest AND funniest I ever have or likely will. (And don't ask, because I'm not telling:P)
To the extent there's a mystery in the plot, the pieces of it are blatantly dumped in your lap, literally, as soon as you open the cover (at least if you're reading a hardcover with a dust jacket on it); it's then reprinted in its entirety in the prequel of a first chapter. Yet it remains mysterious almost to the very end, and contains bits of the whodunit that last until, and in some ways beyond, the final chapter.
If you're an art lover, a loud music lover, especially a cat lover (there's just one, named Ray Harryhausen, and Emily recognized that reference instantly from her RIT film studies and will be reading the book as soon as I can secure a pwned copy for her)- or heck, just someone who loves a good story well told, put down that book you didn't want to finish anyway, and start this one.
----
Since these days it seems to be what one does, I send a friend request to Kate on Facebook, expressing some of this appreciation, and promising more if and when she responds. Her own story begins with an out-of-the-blue snailmail of its day, so it seemed fitting to send one of my own after enjoying hers so much. Or, as I had to put it, "How novel."
I'd finished #16 on my Books Read List, and the to-be-17th, my friend Clea's second new novel of the year, was late in arriving from Amazon, so I wandered into a library branch that I usually don't get to, being up that way to visit the adjacent cophouse and get my accident "report." I saw no familiar names in the new-book or nearly-new sections, but something about this jacket just stuck out-
-so I gave it a shot. And so, dear readers, should you.
----
The author turns out to be relatively local- from near Syracuse originally, but attending UB before going onto Emerson for her MFA (the same path
believeitup took, albeit a few years behind her and both long after I trod the muddy trails of the Amherst Campus), and she sets this book mainly in a fictional Central New York town that could be any of dozens in the vast current waste that is Upstate. Briefly at the beginning, she injects her Easterner characters into the strange world of near-present-day Southern California, where her male lead discovers the strangeness and wonder of ordering from In-and-Out Burger.Yet that is only a double-double foretaste of the strange and wondrous things to come back in Ruby Falls.
----
I rarely bail on a book, no matter how hard it is to understand, much less like. If you want a good shot at it, though, make most, if not all of your characters utterly unlikeable. Give them quirks that are annoying rather than endearing. Make them so far from my world that I can't relate to them, or so close to it that I feel their pain a bit too much.
Yes, Franzen, I'm talking to YOU, but I am most certainly not directing it to Kate Racculia. She somehow managed to give me 300-plus turns of page in which I felt every voice was ringing- resounding, even- just right, and true. I've read (even recently edited) fiction with YA-aged voices in it that sounded right to me compared to the real voices of that age I hear from our daughter and her friends; I read even more where the characters are closer to my own age and experience. It's rare for a book to get both generations' voices right, but this book does- and even throws in accurate-sounding and graceful glimpses of an even older generation in a minor but important character named Bert.
Another important measure of a work for me is my Guffaw Index (Reg. U.S. Pat Off.). I don't need a book to be Dave Barry Funny (and, frankly, shy away from stuff as over-the-funny-top as his), but I remain aware of how many lines, or sights, in a story produce a smile or better. This book comes close to Joshilyn Jackson's sacred territory of one AOHPP (a-ha! or ha-ha! per page). I can also say, with complete confidence, that the chapter title within this book, cryptically named "WWPTD?" may not be the funniest you'll ever read, or even necessarily the shortest, but letter for letter, in its context once suddenly revealed, is the shortest AND funniest I ever have or likely will. (And don't ask, because I'm not telling:P)
To the extent there's a mystery in the plot, the pieces of it are blatantly dumped in your lap, literally, as soon as you open the cover (at least if you're reading a hardcover with a dust jacket on it); it's then reprinted in its entirety in the prequel of a first chapter. Yet it remains mysterious almost to the very end, and contains bits of the whodunit that last until, and in some ways beyond, the final chapter.
If you're an art lover, a loud music lover, especially a cat lover (there's just one, named Ray Harryhausen, and Emily recognized that reference instantly from her RIT film studies and will be reading the book as soon as I can secure a pwned copy for her)- or heck, just someone who loves a good story well told, put down that book you didn't want to finish anyway, and start this one.
----
Since these days it seems to be what one does, I send a friend request to Kate on Facebook, expressing some of this appreciation, and promising more if and when she responds. Her own story begins with an out-of-the-blue snailmail of its day, so it seemed fitting to send one of my own after enjoying hers so much. Or, as I had to put it, "How novel."
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 07:09 pm (UTC)Randomly, I have a novel I should send you. It's actually somewhat insufferable, but I read it and kept reading it because it was set in a renamed Cazenovia, New York, and I just couldn't look away from the sense of locational familiarity...
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 12:29 am (UTC)