Darwinia

Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson was originally published in 1998. My paperback copy is 372 pages. This is an alternate history science fiction novel. In 1912, after shimmering aurora-like lights played across the sky world wide, almost all of Europe disappears and is replaced by an alien, primeval wilderness. This event is eventually called the Miracle. In the first part of the book, an expedition is assembled to explore the new continent, called Darwinia. Guilford Law witnessed the Miracle as a boy and he is the photographer of the expedition. We eventually learn that Darwinia is not what it seems to be and several characters, including Guilford, are not who they seem to be.

Wilson's novel held my attention and had great promise until the middle, where it takes an abrupt turn in the plot. One reviewer adeptly described this twist in the middle as resembling The Matrix meets The Lost World. For me, the fusion of the two stories was unsatisfactory. As I see it, Wilson could have improved the novel by going one of two ways. He could have stayed true to the Lost World storyline or more fully developed The Matrix-like angle. It's not a bad novel, but it had the potential to be so much better. Rating: 3.5

Description from cover:

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle is an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire.

Leaving American now ruled by religious fundamentalism, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe.

Quotes:

"Guilford Law turned fourteen the night the world changed." opening sentence

"But the event itself, the terrible knowledge of it and the diffusion of that knowledge across what remained of the human world, lacked parallel or precedent." pg. 4

"From Berlin, Paris, London, all the capitals of Europe, the rippling light enclosed the entire span of the sky." pg. 4

"It was not what a forest ought to look like or smell like, and - perhaps worse - it was not what a forest should sound like." pg. 12

"Buckley felt a prickle of heat and pressure as the creature pierced the cloth of his trousers and then the skin above his knee with the point of its daggerlike muzzle." pg. 13

"...the sheer enormity of what has happened began to emerge....there was no Ireland, no England, no France or Germany or Italy... nothing but wilderness north from Cairo and east at least as far as the Russian Steppes. as if the planet had been sliced apart and some foreign organism grafted into the wound." pg. 15

"... Europe transformed, the miracle continent the newspapers still called Darwinia." pg. 22

"The generally accepted explanation for the Miracle was that it had been just that: an act of divine intervention on a colossal scale." pg. 47

"The summer of 1920 was a chill one, at least in Washington, for which people blamed the Russian volcanoes, the fiery line of geologic disturbance which marked the eastern border of the Miracle and which had been erupting sporadically since 1912..." pg. 105

Snow Angels

Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan was originally published in 1994. My hardcover copy has 305 pages. This first novel by O'Nan looks at a slice of time in fifteen year old Artie's life when his parents marriage disintegrated. At the same time it follows the story of Annie, Artie's former babysitter, and her failed marriage and murder. With haunting and true to life characterizations, O'Nan seamlessly weaves the two stories together. Rating: 4.5

Synopsis from cover:

"Western Pennsylvania, 1974. On a snowy winter afternoon, the winter of his parents' breakup, Arthur Parkinson's high school band practice is interrupted by the sound of gunshots. Too close for deer hunting, it is the sound of the murder of Annie Marchand. Once Arthur's babysitter, and the object of his childhood admiration, Annie is a young woman for whom life didn't turn out quite right, who could find no one to blame, and who could not keep herself, or her loved ones, from harm.

With exquisite feeling and perfect pitch, Snow Angels weaves together two haunting stories: Arthur's account of how his family fell apart and everything went wrong the year he turned fifteen, and the shifting-focus story of Annie Marchand and the broken life she cannot seem to reassemble - a story that will draw Arthur into its deepening eddy as it nears an inevitable conclusion.

At once deeply moving and darkly funny, Snow Angels is a virtuoso performance, an extraordinary first novel from a unique and masterful talent."

Quotes:

"I was in the band the fall my father left, in the second row of trombones, in the middle because I was a freshman." first sentence.

"Beside me Warren Hardesty muttered something - a joke, a rejoinder - and then we heard what I immediately identified....as gunshots. A clump of them. They crackled like fireworks, echoed over the bare trees on the other side of the highway. They were close. The band turned to them in unison, something Mr. Chervenick could never get us to do." pg. 3

"What we had heard was someone being murdered, someone most of us knew, if dimly. Her name was Annie Marchand, and I knew her first - years before this - merely as Annie the babysitter." pg. 4

"My mother and I never talked about what happened.... I now see that she (and myself, though I did not acknowledge it at the time) was going through her own slow tragedy and needed her grief for both herself and me." pg. 10

"I know that once we touch down I will not be able to think clearly, that every remembered Pizza Hut and body shop, every stretch of road I know intimately, will stun me like love." pg. 16

"Looking down at the farms and fields, the two schools separated by the interstate, the black bean of Marsden's Pond, I think that....if I concentrate on the details I will be able to make sense of the whole, that I will finally understand everything that happened back then, when I know that I can't." pg. 16

"My mother insists that the snow never left that winter. According to her, the first flurries struck in mid-November and we didn't see grass again until spring." pg. 107

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

Movie night:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

Twice

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin was originally published in 2005. My paperback copy has 719 pages, including notes and index. Winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, for Biography, this is the definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It is a great example of a well researched and carefully written biography, however, it is also a massive, very thorough biography. If you are simply mildly curious about Oppenheimer, then you might want to consider a less detailed account of his life. Excellent biography Rating: 5

personal note: It was quite interesting to note that the Oppenheimer family originally owned the Van Gogh painting, First Steps (After Millet) and later brother Frank had to sell it due to his being black listed and unable to find work as a physicist. I have had a print of this painting in my home for years.

Description from cover:

J.Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer's life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.

Quotes:

"Robert Oppenheimer's life - his career, his reputation, even his sense of self-worth - suddenly spun out of control four days before Christmas in 1953. Opening sentence, preface pg. ix

"As the tide of anticommunism rose in postwar America, Oppenheimer became increasingly aware that 'a beast in the jungle' was stalking him. His appearances before Red-hunting congressional investigative committees, the FBI taps on his home and office phones, the scurrilous stories about his political past and policy recommendations planted in the press made him feel like a hunted man. preface pg. ix

"Those years were some of the finest of his life. That they were so easily used to silence his voice a decade later is a reminder of how delicately balanced are the democratic principles we profess, and how carefully they must be guarded." preface pg. xi

"Some knew him as their gentle teacher and affectionately called him 'Oppie.' Others knew him as a great physicist, a man who in 1945 had become the 'father' of the atomic bomb, a national hero and emblem of a scientist as a public servant. And everyone remembered with deep bitterness how, just nine years later, the new administration....had declared him a security risk - making Robert Oppenheimer the most prominent victim of America's anti-communist crusade." pg. 3

" 'I was an unctuous, repulsively good little boy...My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.' " pg. 21

"Robert's seemingly brittle and delicate shell actually disguised a stoic personality built of stubborn pride and determination, a characteristic that would reappear throughout his life. pg. 21

"Robert seemed to divide the world into people who were worth his time and those who were not." pg. 72

"His physics was good, but his arithmetic awful." pg. 88

"Students felt free to interrupt Oppie with a question. 'He generally would answer patiently....unless the question was manifestly stupid, in which event his response was likely to be quite caustic.' " pg. 170

"Years later, Oppenheimer claimed wryly that, 'The government paid more to tap my telephone than they ever paid me at Los Alamos.' " pg. 405

Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?

Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? is giving away a copy of The Likeness by Tana French! She rated it 100 out of a 100 so it looks like a winner. Go visit her to read the details.

Stewart O'Nan fan club

The Stewart O'Nan fan club is now in session with two new book reviews.

Last Night at the Lobster

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan was originally published in 2007. My hardcover copy has 146 pages.This is a brilliant, exquisitly crafted novel. It rings true on every page. It's short, but every word was carefully chosen and every description is perfect. In Last Night at the Lobster we are following the day of Manny, the manager of a Red Lobster on its last day of business. We're privy to his thoughts as he follows his routine and company policies, as he manages the employees who do show up, and as he deals with the snow outside that is developing into a blizzard. A perfect novel. Rating: 5

Synopsis

Perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall, the Red Lobster hasn't been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift. With four shopping days left until Christmas, Manny must convince his near-mutinous staff to hunker down and serve the final onslaught of hungry retirees, lunatics, and holiday office parties. All the while, he's wondering how to handle the waitress he's still in love with, his pregnant girlfriend at home, and where to find the present that will make everything better.

Last Night at the Lobster is a poignant yet redemptive look at what a man does when he discovers that his best might not be good enough.

Quotes:

"Mall traffic on a gray winter's day, stalled. Midmorning and the streetlights are still on, weakly....The turning lane waits for the green arrow above to blink on, and a line of salted cars takes a left into the mall entrance, splitting off as they sniff for parking spots." pg. 1

"He could be a broker, or a floor associate from Circuit City taking his coffee break, except the nametag peeking from beneath his unzipped leather jacket features a garish lobster above his name: MANNY." pg. 2

"Two months ago Manny had forty-four people working for him, twenty of them full-time. Tonight when he locks the doors, all but five will lose their jobs, and one of those five - unfairly, he thinks, since he was their leader - will be himself. Monday the survivors will start at the Olive Garden..." pg. 3

"Their SUV's chew through the snow and plug the parking spots, for one day justifying their pricey four-wheel drive." pg. 30

"Someone's going to show up, and if no one does, we're still going to be ready for them. We're still in business, and we're still getting paid." pg. 57

"He wants to believe that with another cook - someone with more patience and less of a temper - Fredo would have made it, but he's never worked with a cook like that. Honestly, a cook like that probably doesn't exist. Pg. 58

"[A]s he's standing there he notices the ceramic holder that should be full of sugar and Equal and Splenda and Sweet'n Low packets has been picked clean - always a danger with these cottonheads, their memories of the Depression pushing them beyond thrift into greed." pg. 66