The Gauntlet

Always good things going on with  Alex Good, with a long article about the perils of reviewing.

Tiny type, so bring your magnifying glass.  

Alex has been holding the line out there in the book world in Canada, at least as long as I’ve been aware of it.  Will probably have more to say once I get right down in it.

 In the meantime, just finished Three Day Road.  You hear that T? The gauntlet is thrown. My prediction came true. Sort of. This is all to say I’m looking forward to the first Skeez Dreams crossover, as T and I discuss the merits of Boyden’s book, in which will see if T can do it without being distracted by his hotness.

Soon to Come

Fake Spies Part I

Wanted to do this post for a while– getting a bit behind the times here. But quick catch up then — read Graham Greene’s Our Man from Havana.

Had no idea what to expect from Greene the first time I read him was last year– that would be Brighton Rock, story of a teenage gangster in fifties (?) Brighton, a real evil blighter and his wicked bride,  each with a Catholic sense of destiny– they’re going straight to Hell and they know it. Literary, but a real ripping story too, hard to complain there about that.

 Our Man From Havana has been around our house for a while and I needed a crack at something solid.  The book was about an Englishman living in Cuba, a meek and not very succcesful vacuum-cleaner salesman whose finances are strapped by the growing demands of a teenage daughter. Then along comes a British secret agent who offers a stipend to be their local spy. Lacking any real skills or actual contacts, he begins to fake his reports, which is fine until they start coming true.  

Again, story is king in Greene’s book. What struck me was the structure, tightly crafted with each new brick taking the tension to a new level. That and the dialogue, cracking give-and-take between Wormold and just about anyone who suspected he wasn’t what he appeared to be.  Through all this Greene crafts a surprisingly sympathetic world, one that outgrows its comic plot to show the story of a man becoming a man and  in doing so strikes out against the callousness of nations at war.

Not to mention scenes that crackle with perfect-pitch tension. Who knew a  company dinner or a game of checkers could be so deadly?