The Bookian » History

The Wooden Sea: A Novel

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:44:17 +0000

Small towns. Police chiefs. Resurrected dogs. Like TC Boyle, Jonathan Carroll is part history, part personal bard, but with an additional mixture of scifi and magical realism. The Wooden Sea is an excellent purview of what life in a small upstate new york town might be like if Neil Turoks physics were in charge of the town council. The lives of everyone and everything seem permeated across multiple dimensions with everything, and everyone, else. Carroll is an impressive writer with more than a few books out, kind of an authors author, more known amongst other writers than a broad public. If you havent read him yet, The Wooden Sea is one of his strongest novels, although Bones of the Moon is a close second. – reviewed by jim

The White Voyage

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:15:17 +0000

An excellent adventure set in earlier times. Along the lines of Jack London, The White Voyage is about a ships crew, with all the psychological suspicion and tension of a submarine crew locked underwater, turns into a shipwreck, and a struggle northward. – reviewed by kreya

Worlds End

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:13:17 +0000

For those who enjoy aging, woods-dwelling mycologistic retired history professors exhibiting signs of hyper-intelligence coupled with excessively talented storytelling and liberally doused with 100 proof perception, even when they have given up the ghosts and moved to sunny southern california, you could do no worse than T. Coraghessan Boyle. Time and time again he has ploughed the deep waters halfway between the left bank of the 1960s and the right of the 1660s and come up with at least a few small shad to reuse for bait. Enough with the platitudes. The story, an old one, is worth revisiting, especially for its softly fictionalized examinations of the mid hudson valley, rank with old mansions and estates, and in part, because of the expanding conurban habitation migration which, in endlessly circular time, is playing out the old operas once again. As booming young wealthyites move up to nestle amongst the glitterati deep in the cicadia laden forests, and the younger among them find themselves ploughed off to cheap ramshackle rentals out of which it is impossible to move anywhere with the slightest incline, its a pertinent moment to fall back and reexamine the ancient roots which led through many small insurrections, including the renters wars, in which Hudson, afraid of a few warpainted instigators, called for the help of Albany and its troops: and upon whose arrival, after the troops had decimated the town and the rebels snickered back into the deep woods across the river, they later called upon Albany to save them from… and even more. Either way, Worlds End, having won a slew of its own prizes, needs no further mention here, except for a good rereading. – reviewed by vanBrunt

Mason & Dixon

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:24:17 +0000

Mechanical ducks. Kool Keith sez: Mechanical Legs, Mechanical legs, and apparently, it was true of the early American Pioneers. I would describe this book using the word Western, but Id be taken to task, so I wont. Its just another awesome Pynchon. Much denser and intimate in terms of characterization, and a touch steampunk, but mostly just plain. old. bitchin. Pynchon. – reviewed by mechoduck