Tag Archives: literature

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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – A Book Review

I’m not going to lie to you, this book took a tremendous amount of effort and, while reading it, I hated almost the entire thing.  I say this as an avid reader and an outspoken lover of literature.  My favorite authors are Chabon, Proulx, Auster, and McCarthy, so it’s not like I’m unaccustomed to challenging reads.

But then something miraculous happened … After I finished the book, I started to like it more and more.  It’s almost like how exercise stinks while you’re doing it, but when you see the end result, you love it.

I can’t explain the book.  I just can’t.  It spans centuries, there are six different storylines that brush against each other, Mitchell splits up the six storylines into two different sections strategically placed within the larger context of the novel, he plays with language and sentence structure to the point it’s nearly incomprehensible … just read it.  Or don’t.

I read this book for two reasons.  The first, and strongest, was pride.  The smartest guy I work with read it and loved it and challenged me to read it … how could I say no?  The second reason, and you book lovers will relate, I wanted to experience it before the movie came out and altered my perceptions of the characters and settings.  I managed to get it read right before the movie came out, but it’s taken me this long to work up the nerve to try to review it.

Maybe I should have listened to my instincts and resisted that urge.

Okay, try to focus, Scott.  The book is difficult but ultimately rewarding.  It is not a page turner, but it will join your essence after having completed it.  You will be confused much of the time, but through thought you will appreciate it all the more.

On a side note, I still haven’t seen the movie, but I bought the soundtrack and it is excellent.  I listen to it all the time as I write.  It gets my creative juices going.

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New Neil Gaiman Novel In June

I just learned that Neil Gaiman has a new novel due out on June 18th, and this excites me.  Gaiman won me over for life with his Sandman comic book series, and some of his books such as American Gods are splendid.

Amazon has only this to describe the book: “This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real…”

I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming months, but you can already count me in!

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The Fault In Our Stars by John Green – A Book Review

The Fault In Our Stars is a must-read, and I don’t use that term lightly.

There are some books that simply must be experienced, and this is one of them.  From now on, when anyone asks me for a book recommendation, this book will be at the top of my list.  I say this not because it changed my life—it didn’t.  But, as an avid reader, this book resonated with me so deeply that it will forever be ingrained as a part of my existence.

The story is all too real.  A sixteen year old with terminal cancer meets a contemporary who happens to have been cured of his cancer.  They hit it off immediately, and she introduces him to a book that she loves, and he falls in love with it, too, as well as the girl.  Of course, falling in love with someone who has terminal cancer is a complicated situation at best.  Before long they take it upon themselves to reach out to the author of their favorite book, and the result is not exactly what they expected.  Furthermore, as one would imagine with a book featuring cancer afflicted characters, heartbreak ensues, but not necessarily in the way most readers predict.

Green’s teenagers are precocious, witty, and downright hilarious.  This is a difficult juxtaposition for many readers because these characters, for the most part, do not expect to live normal lives or, in some cases, to live at all.  It feels inappropriate to laugh at things these characters say and do, but I think that’s the point Green is trying to make.  Life is horrible, wonderful, and everything in between, and when we’re not crying, we’re laughing.  The teens pull no punches, they accept their reality, and they force the reader to make peace with their burden as well.

Green has written a book unlike any other I’ve ever read, and I’ve read quite a few.  At one moment he had me rolling, the next he had me nearly in tears.  The Fault In Our Stars never felt completely realistic only because the characters—Hazel, Augustus, Isaac, and both sets of parents—were too charismatic to be real.  They leapt off the page and demanded to become a part of my everyday life.  I struggled with this, because I don’t know anyone quite as charming, funny, or quick on their feet as these characters.  But, that’s also what makes them so utterly lovable.  They are not real, and so they are allowed to say the exact right thing at the exact right time.  They are welcome to charm the heck out of us.  A book like this is meant to be magical in many ways, and tragic in others.  After all, nearly all of the characters are made to suffer, so why shouldn’t they get to go down as some of the most dynamic literary figures to have ever existed upon the page?  Why can’t they be the coolest kids in the room?

I am a married thirty-six year old father of two, an English teacher, an author, and I generally don’t read much young adult literature.  With all that being said, The Fault In Our Stars is now counted among my favorite books and I urge you to read it as soon as possible.

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Winter Journal by Paul Auster – A Book Review

An eclectic collection of miscellaneous thoughts, Winter Journal is exactly what the title asserts.  Always brutally honest, Auster reflects upon his sixty-three years thus far, paying special attention to the many trials and tribulations his body has withstood throughout its lifetime, the myriad places he has called home, those he has loved over the years, and (though not as explicitly as some would have you believe) his mother.

While this all sounds rather pedestrian, I assure you, Auster renders it fascinating.  Of course, it helps to be an Auster fan where this book is concerned.  As a work of nonfiction, it reveals much about the man and offers insight into his fiction.  However, even if this is one’s first encounter with Auster, the expert writing and vivid description will titillate.

Furthermore, and I can’t emphasize it enough, Auster’s honesty is astounding.  I’m amazed at what he’s willing to divulge about himself, especially because this is a man who doesn’t need to take chances anymore.  His name could sell his book alone.  Fortunately, Auster is always the inventor, forever the innovator, and so he invites us into his life and discusses things I wouldn’t tell my best friend.  Perhaps this is why he has become so successful over time – he has no fear when it comes to the written word.

To read this book is to experience Auster’s life itself, and I can offer no author a greater compliment than that.

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The Red House by Mark Haddon – A Book Review

As a huge fan of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident Of the Dog In the Night-Time, I was delighted to receive an advance copy of his latest work The Red House (though it is in stores by now).  I was cautious, though, because while I loved his first book, I did not enjoy A Spot Of Bother, his second novel, nearly as much.

The Red House falls somewhere in between.

I have to admit, in the beginning, the book absolutely captivated me.  The Red House is the story of a middle-aged brother and sister meeting in the country at a charming little cottage.  The sister, Angela, has brought along her husband, teenage son and daughter, and a pre-teen boy.  The brother, Richard, is accompanied by his beautiful wife he has just married and her difficult teenage daughter.

I’ll get to the characters in a moment, but they are not what initially ensnared me.  The book’s structure is what really got me excited.  The book is broken into days instead of chapters, each representing a countdown to when the families’ holiday is over.  Furthermore, each “day” is chopped up by a character’s particular perspective, and Haddon works tirelessly to make each character’s voice and point of view unique.  Though I should probably be ashamed to admit it, I especially relished each vignette because, by and large, most of them were not more than a few paragraphs long.  This meant that I could pick the book up at any given moment, read for a few moments, and then put it down and still feel as though the story was uninterrupted.

The style of the book made it a very quick read and, considering the numerous plots, assured it kept a nice pace.

While I enjoyed Haddon’s characters, truthfully, I didn’t feel most of them broke any new ground.  Angela, the seemingly most mundane of them, ended up interesting me more because, in my opinion, her development proved the most radical.  The rest of the characters, while appealing, really dealt with things we’ve read about before or perhaps even experienced.  Maybe that was Haddon’s point, though?  Even though I’d read their general plots before, that admittedly did not make me like them any less.

I will say that next to Angela, another character that was meant to be the second most mundane was thrust into a plotline that I felt was the most forced and even patronizing.  I won’t go into detail for fear of spoiling things, but had this character progressed with either one or the other storyline, I would have been fine with it, but to juxtapose the two developments for this one character simply did not feel consistent with her previous characterization and, as I said, came off as something more political in nature than an organic evolution.

To conclude, The Red House did not recapture the lightning in a bottle that was The Curious Incident Of the Dog In the Night-Time, but it was a really interesting character study, particularly in regards to Angela, and executed an unusual technique that I felt only enhanced the overall story.

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What People Are Saying About “Send-Off”

I’ve gotten lots of interesting responses to my short story “Send-Off” which can currently be found in the latest issue of Euphemism.  Here are a few of my favorites …

“whoa, that was intense! very good job! it was definitely a bit unsettling, but in the best kind of way:)” -Natalie F.

“Great story! And yes, a bit disturbing, but I like disturbing!” -Linda W.

“maybe just a little too racy! : )” -Heather S.

“I really liked it, very creepy” -Natalie M.

“That’s a pretty messed up story!  Good, but messed up!  LOL” -Larry F.

“Very perverse…you sick bastard!” -Drew S.

So there you have it.  What are you waiting for?  Go read it for yourself!

http://english.illinoisstate.edu/euphemism/issues/vol_7/issue_2/foley_sendoff.html

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My Latest Published by Euphemism Literary Journal

It is my distinct honor to announce that Illinois State University’s literary journal, Euphemism, has published my latest story entitled “Send Off.”

I do hope you’ll give it a read at the provided link, but be warned – it may disturb and unsettle you.

http://english.illinoisstate.edu/euphemism/issues/vol_7/issue_2/foley_sendoff.html

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Stay Awake by Dan Chaon – A Book Review

I’m a Dan Chaon fan.  His unusual ideas and interwoven plots are typically a pleasure to read.  It’s true that his work characteristically tackles difficult subject matter, but I’ve never been outright disturbed by his stories … until now.

For me, Stay Awake proved a grueling read.  Not because it’s badly written – that’s not the case at all.  Chaon is an excellent writer.  No, it’s because this book is dark – extremely dark.  Chaon’s too classy to go for the gratuitous.  It’s the suggestiveness within the book, those horrific details stated matter-of-factly that put me on edge.  Babies die.  Mother’s die.  Children die.  People get hurt.  People suffer.  And it’s not just one of the stories where these things happen … it’s all of them.

Perhaps it’s testament to Chaon’s skill that he consistently ravaged my nerves.  I’ve read stories such as these before, but they never felt so real … so … personal.  Chaon’s characters, though we barely know them at all, are living, breathing people that easily could live next door to us.  Maybe it’s because his characters are so universal that his writing dug so deep.  For an entire book, he reminds us that tragedy can strike at anytime to anyone.

So did I like the book?  No, quite honestly, I did not.  However, I like Dan Chaon very much, and I like virtually everything else he’s written very much.  For me to say I didn’t like Stay Awake is not an attack on the book itself, for I admit I am not being objective.  I admit the subject matter disturbed me and agitated my own fears.  As a result, I truly didn’t want to finish it (though I obviously did).

Stay Awake is well written.  It does everything from a technical standpoint that you would expect from a writer of Chaon’s caliber.  Its characters are identifiable and interesting.  Its plots are unusual and provocative.  It will probably trouble you.