A Head Full of Ideas that were Driving Me Insane....

Another short story collection -- of course, because Borges never wrote any longer fiction.

These stories, from the years leading up to 1970 (the year when Borges turned 71) are mostly realistic tales of life in his homeland, Argentina, in the early decades of the 20th century. Borges seems to have abandoned the wild imaginings of the 1930s and 40s -- stories like "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "The Library of Babel," and "Funes, His Memory."

And, though these tales are mostly "mundane," they are well worth reading, rich with the (mostly lower-class) culture of Argentina, and generally with a nasty twist in the tail.

Several of them are about duels of one sort or another, generally with knives, but some with words, and one with kindness. Some are bloody -- never pornographically so, but sometimes a bit shocking, as violence ought to be.

The last two stories are very odd, and quite different from the others; indeed, the last, titular story is almost a throwback to the days of those stories I named above.

"The Gospel According to Mark" is about a young student who finds himself trapped in a farmhouse, during a flood, with an illiterate family. He reads them the titular Gospel; they want to hear it again. The result is shattering and unexpected.

"Brodie's Report" is the manuscript of a Scottish missionary, first to Africa and later to South America. It tells of an impossibly primitive people Brodie met in Africa and their astonishing culture -- as he reports it, anyway. It is funny and, yes, rather horrifying in places.

The overall impression I have here is of a writer still very creative but focussing more and more on the years when he was young, not sentimentally, but analytically, as if he were diagnosing what Argentina was and how it got to be that way.

But he is never so crass as to tell us these things. He shows us.

Holly Gibney is, for my money, the most engaging character Stephen King has ever created. This is the sixth book in which she has appeared, and the first full-length novel in which she is the main character. (She was also the main character in the novella, or possibly short novel, "If It Bleeds," in the collection of the same title.)

Holly is a woman with a number of issues, many of them exacerbated by her controlling mother, whom she mostly escaped in the course of the "Bill Hodges trilogy." As the main story of the book begins, in July of 2021 Holly's mother has recently died of COVID after denying it existed, like a good Trumpanzee, and refusing to wear a mask or get the vaccinations. Holly gives a eulogy in an online memorial service, but keeps her camera off because she cannot bear the thought of anyone seeing her crying.

But the actual beginning of the book is the first of many flashbacks, told from the point of one Jorge Castro. In October of 2012, Jorge is out running in the evening, when he sees a van parked by the side of the road. He recognizes the couple outside the van as two elderly professors from the college where he teaches. The wife, Emily Harris, is in a wheelchair, which (they explain) has run out its battery, and Rodney is too old and frail to push it up the ramp into the van. Jorge agrees to push her up the ramp; as he does so, he feels a sting in his shoulder.

Rodney Harris has just injected him with a dose of ketamine, large enough to put him out in seconds. He wakes up in a cage. Things quickly get worse.

Then we get to Holly and the funeral.

Holly takes a phone call for the detective agency she runs, Finders Keepers, and, though she is inclined not to work until her grieving process is through, something about the caller -- a mother frantic about the disappearance of her daughter -- cause her to take the case.

The story continues, alternating flashbacks to the Harris's various victims with Holly's work on the case, and gradually cluing the reader in to what the Harrises are actually doing. It is (as one expects from King) rather horrifying; it is not supernatural (something the blurb gives away, so no real spoiler there), which somehow makes it worse.

And that's enough summary!

King's writing, as always, goes down smooth as -- no, not a fine whiskey, but as a cold canned cocktail, at any rate. He will never be mistaken for Faulkner, James, or O'Connor, but his plain style is, I think, right up there with Twain as a great American storyteller.

Holly's usual supporting cast is present in spades, and her mother (of course) has left one last surprise for her, a decidedly mixed blessing.

In short, I enjoyed the Hell out of Holly.