REVIEW: THE COINCIDENCE ENGINE by Sam Leith

If HG Wells, Dave Barry and Jasper Fforde had a child, it would be Sam Leith.  Refreshingly original and smart, this novel follows multiple points of view ranging from a lovesick youth, a thug with no ability to judge consequences, a mastermind with a cutting sense of humor and an agent with a troubled past.  

It begins with the unlikely incident of a hurricane assembling an airplane out of scrap metal.  This tips off the secret agency, the Department of the Extremely Improbable, that something is afoot.  It seems a coincidence engine, a machine that bends the psychics of chance and will, is on the move and a number of forces want to capture it.  The hunt is on, though no one quite knows what they are looking for.  It's an adventure for the well-drawn characters as well as the reader.

Part steampunk, part road trip, part comedy of errors, The Coincidence Engine is entirely readable.  The language is rich and swirling and, thankfully, very British.  Too often American publications include a stripping of dialectic idioms.  I love how eccentric the writing is allowed to be.  

Here's an example:

"Herbert Owse's Antiquarian Omnium Gatherum stood on Burleigh Street, and was manned by a rubicund numismatist with a wild beard and a liking for checking shirts and moleskin waistcoats. His socks, though this is of scant relevance here, were held up with suspenders.  His name was not Herbert Owse."

Leith finds an admirable balance between silliness and poignancy in his debut novel.  Witty, urbane and comic, I look forward to reading Sam Leith in the future.

Many thanks to Rachel and the folks at Crown Publishing for the review copy.

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Hardcover | February 07, 2012 | Pages: 288 | ISBN: 978-0-307-71642-2

REVIEW: IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS by Erik Larson

For more than a decade now Erik Larson has been digging up episodes lost to history and bringing them to the forefront.  In Issac's Storm, he revealed a fledgling National Weather Service and recounted a hurricane of horrifying magnitude in 1900.  With The Devil In The White City, he pitted the very best and very worst of human nature against each other as the collided in the 1893 World's Fair Chicago.  In Thunderstruck, Larson followed the development of Trans-Atlantic communication, Marconi and a killer who was caught using the new invention.  

In all of these, Larson seeks to present a time that was a turning-point in history.  His newest, In The Garden Of Beasts, elucidates some of the everyday life in Berlin at the beginning of Hitler's regime.  Larson's main thesis seems to be that if hindsight is 20/20, then the circumstances surround Third Reich Germany were not only short-sighted, but blurred as well.  

The Dodd Family disembarks in Hamburg, 1933

The book focuses on the US Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd.  He accepted the post from President Roosevelt in 1933 and moved to Berlin, bringing his family along -- Wife Martha (Mattie), son Bill, and daughter Martha.  A professor at the University of Chicago, he was hardly the obvious choice (though he had studied in Leipzig years before and spoke German fluently).  He was not a politician, or wealthy.  He was rather looking forward to a quiet retirement on his Virginia farm to reenact his Jeffersonian philosophy and finish writing his monumental history of The Old South. Yet it seems his desire to leave a greater mark overcame his initial leanings and he settled into working at Bendlerstrasse 39, near the famed Tiergarten.  

The US Embassy at the time of Dodd's service

Dodd struggled from all angles.  He was put in the impossible situation of collecting exorbitant reparations from Germany, owed from the Treaty of Versailles; he eschewed the typically ornate and grand lifestyle of a European ambassador; he was constantly deflecting negative comments from his own State Department; and he was trying to decipher just what was going on in the new German government.  How could anyone, let alone a professor untrained in diplomacy, be expected to predict what was to come?

Ambassador Dodd at his desk, a far cry from the simplicity he craved

There were inklings of political unrest, often explored by Larson through the eyes of daughter Martha who seemed to have little discrimination in choosing her lovers or even her casual dates.  Her beaus included Rudolph Diels, head of the Gestapo in '33 and '34; Ernst Udets, a high-placed Luftwaffe officer; Louis Ferdinand, the Prince of Prussia; Ernst Hanfstaengl, an aide to Adolf Hitler; and Boris Vinogradov, a Soviet intelligence (KGB) official.  Based on her owns accounts, she was both excited by the adventure of it all, and oblivious to the true underpinnings of the Reich.  

A jet-setting Martha Dodd

Indeed, even Americans were doubtful of the reports that made their way across the Atlantic.  Incidents, at first, were sporadic and seemingly random -- and quickly quelled with an official apology from the government.  They were written off as growing pains experienced by every revolutionary movement.  Yet just under this peaceful facade boiled a caustic formula that was to disfigure half of the world.  

Title page of Dodd's diary, complied by his children.  One of Larson's main sources.

Larson again uses primary sources for his research as well as archived diplomatic documents and old maps to recreate the Berlin of the early 1930s.  The voices of his subjects come through very vividly.  What is somewhat lacking is the sense of tension present in his previous books.  I think this comes mainly from the fact that we, as modern readers, are completely ignorant on his topics.  In this case, although I knew nothing about the Dodds and their milieu, I was certainly very familiar with the time and knew what was to come.  Somehow, being aware of this made their story less shocking or revealing.  Of all of those involved, Martha is the most fascinating.  Her naivete is stunning and I wish the book focused on her even more, though I imagine there was less extant resources regarding her.  

Still, Larson has once again resurrected a story that proves truth is stranger than fiction. 

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On Sale: May 10, 2011

Pages: 464 | ISBN: 978-0-307-40884-6

Thanks to the folks at Crown Publishing for the advance reader's copy.

QUICK REVIEW: OTHER PEOPLE'S REJECTION LETTERS

This tome is a collection of letters, ephemera, notes, cards and documents, all indicating some form of rejection.  Edited by Bill Shapiro, he and his assistants sifted through these chronicles, looking for glimpses into everyday life.  Shapiro notes in his introduction that in addition to the hurdle of convincing people to open up, is the primary problem of finding people who saved such brusque remembrances.  Yet there are plenty of interesting anecdotes in this collective memoir.  

 

Some are funny, some are pointed, and some are touching.  Shapiro includes not only a "typical" rejection letter, but things like eviction notices and break-ups via text message.  There are also documents from the famous.  A thanks but no thanks from MoMA to Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix's discharge papers.  But they are smartly mixed in with everyone else's, for that is what they are - just like everyone else.

Other People's Rejection Letters: Relationship Enders, Career Killers, and 150 Other Letters You'll Be Glad You Didn't Receive
Hardcover, 192 pages
May 11, 2010
Price: $22.50

QUICK REVIEW: ONLY MILO

I recently won a copy of this book from The Book Studio, a great site with tons of interviews and contests.  If you like books at all, make sure you check their site often.  I had sort of forgotten about it until it arrived in the mail yesterday.  Within two hours I had finished it.  Granted, the truncated language of the first-person narrator made that task a little easier.  But I couldn't put it down.  I stood over my grill, cooking dinner, with the book in my hand.  

First-time novelist Barry Smith is a finance professor at the University of Kansas.  By day.  By night, he has imagined a sadistic yet sympathetic character who wants nothing more than to be recognized as the brilliant writer that he is.  Milo crosses the line once, then finds it is easier to cross each time -- especially when literary fame lies just on the other side.  Like all struggling writers, he dreads the rejection letters that fill his mailbox.  Tired of facing the disappointment, he stacks his manuscripts in a closet and takes a job as a ghostwriter.  Then he begins to make ghosts of his own.

It is dark, funny, compelling and is a truly original voice in the noise of shoddy thrillers.  Kudos to Inkwater Press for championing this one.  Read more about Only Milo here.