Love Will make You Drink & Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night

Love Will make You Drink & Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night by Shelly Lowenopf
White Whisker Books: 2/26/2014

Trade Paperback, 186 pages
ISBN 13: 978-0983632986
www.lowenkopf.com

Love Will Make You Drink and Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night brings a number of Shelly Lowenkopf's previously published short stories together in a single volume. Lowenkopf is best known as a master instructor of fiction writing and a book editor. He taught for over thirty years at the University of Southern California, and now at the noted College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. All the while, he's been publishing these short gems. All the stories revolve around life in Santa Barbara, the oceanside city north of Los Angeles, where people go after they've burned out in San Francisco and L.A. But there's no safe haven anywhere. Interwoven into Santa Barbara's picturesque setting, the people in these twelve stories reveal what their hearts and souls encounter in relationships. Their misreadings, mistakes, and misadventures bare what happens to people who love another. "Shelly Lowenkopf is a gifted, humane story-teller," says author Aram Saroyan (Rancho Mirage). "'Love Will Make You Drink and Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night' is a delight."

My Thoughts:

Love Will make You Drink & Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night by Shelly Lowenopf is a highly recommended collection of 12 short stories. All the stories are set in Santa Barbara, California, and can best be described as dealing with a variety of relationships, how emotions are expressed, and the forms that love can take in various stages and types of relationships. All of the stories have an urbane, cosmopolitan flair to them.

The title has to be based on the Billie Holiday blues song many people have heard: "Fine and Mellow." That alone could add a star in a review just because, for me at least, this knowledge help set the tone for the whole book.
"Love will make you drink and gamble
Make you stay out all night long
Love will make you drink and gamble
Make you stay out all night long
Love will make you do things that you know is wrong"
YouTube video

While I enjoyed several stories immensely, there were others that, while they weren't bad by any means, were more so-so for me. I think fans of the art of the short story will appreciate this collection more than most casual readers because they are going to recognize Lowenkopf's talent and the skillful writing ability behind these stories.

Contents:
I've Got Those King City Blues - Charlene is looking for a relationship.
The Ability - a woman is hired by a college to write thank you letters. I adored this story and will forever think of The Binky Letter.
Mr. Right - a couple is looking for some special help
Absent Friends -  a man has a cat and relationship issues. Well written and heartbreaking.
The Man Within - seniors looking for love
Molly - a man wants to own his friend's dog. I really liked this story
Witness Relocation Program -  man, his friends, and a dog
Death Watches - a man trying to make amends or at least come to terms with his past.
Love Will Make You Drink and Gamble, stay Out Late at Night - much like the song, love can make you change your behavior
Messages - two people in a relationship
Between the Acts - an actor finds a new part
Coming to Terms - a man starts a new relationship

Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book for review purposes.  

Quotes:

"From the moment of Chuck's invitation to tea, Rachel has suspected him of an agenda in which every step has been calculated. She is waiting him out but giving nothing in the process. Even though the tea is frothy and refreshing, the pastry's stuffing is delicious, she has not acknowledged this to him nor has she responded to his praise about what she has come to think of as The Binky Letter." "The Ability" pg. 17

Late one spring night, during a satisfying buffet and agreeable conversation at one of Reeva and Jerry Zachary's gatherings, Lessing understood with an ardent certainty that he intended to steal their dog, Molly, and somehow contrive to rear her as his own. "Molly" pg. 69

Milan can't figure out what these guys have in common except they seem to hang out for morning coffee. "Witness relocation" pg. 80

"What more could an actor want? Bender had been living in a 1986 Volvo 740 station wagon for nearly a month before the police found him." "Between the Acts" pg. 143

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Shirley

Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell

Blue Rider Press: 6/12/2014
Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN-13: 9780399166457

Two imposing literary figures are at the center of this captivating novel: the celebrated Shirley Jackson, best known for her short story “The Lottery,” and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, a literary critic and professor at Bennington College. When a young graduate student and his pregnant wife—Fred and Rose Nemser—move into Shirley and Stanley’s home in the fall of 1964, they are quickly cast under the magnetic spell of their brilliant and proudly unconventional hosts.

While Fred becomes preoccupied with his teaching schedule, Rose forms an unlikely, turbulent friendship with the troubled and unpredictable Shirley. Fascinated by the Hymans’ volatile marriage and inexplicable drawn to the darkly enigmatic author, Rose nonetheless senses something amiss—something to do with nightly unanswered phone calls and inscrutable accounts of a long-missing female student. Chillingly atmospheric and evocative of Jackson’s own classic stories, Shirley is an elegant thriller with one of America’s greatest horror writers at its heart.

My Thoughts:

Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell is a recommended novel of suspense.

In Shirley, Susan Scarf Merrell has written a novel with two literary giants, novelist Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, as the main characters. It is 1964 and newlyweds Rose and Fred Nemser are moving to Vermont where Fred will be teaching alongside Hyman at Bennington College. The young couple is invited to live with Jackson and Hyman, which is exciting for both of them. Fred enjoys Hyman while Rose is entranced by Jackson and jealous of her friendship.

The entire story is narrated by Rose. As the Hymans drink to excess and pop pills, Rose observes their open marriage, she finds herself gratified at Jackson's insults as if they were a form of kindness. As the year progresses, a pregnant  Rose sees another side to Jackson and questions her devotion to her as well as Hyman's influence on her husband. And what is the truth behind the coed from Bennington who went missing years ago. The locals view Jackson as a witch and are openly hostile toward her. She is fodder for gossip. Perhaps she had something to do with the missing young woman. Or perhaps it was Hyman.

This fictional account has the feel of a real biography with a mystery intertwined in the narrative. While the writing is superb and Merrell does an excellent job highlighting an atmospheric tension based on obsession, the actual plot lacks the focus needed to create any real overwhelming suspense. The focus is more refined when looking at other literary figures or alluding to Jackson's writing.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Blue Rider Press for review purposes.

SynBio

SynBio by Leslie Horvitz
Premier Digital Publishing: 7/1/2014

ebook, 415 pages
ISBN-13: 9781624672309

Scientists now have the capacity to hack into DNA the same way that hackers can infiltrate computer systems, manipulating organisms by inserting new DNA or exploiting genetic mutations that can trigger fatal heart attacks or induce bipolar illness  or Alzheimer’s.  These biohackers as they’re known can perform their experiments in their kitchens using equipment purchased for next to nothing on eBay.

Most of these biohackers are like Seth Stringer in Cambridge, MA who’s made a name for himself exploring the frontiers of genetic manipulation. He’s young, brash, ambitious and obsessed with his work. but also a little naïve.   When his former professor Marcus Adair holds out the possibility of coming to London and going to work for an international pharmaceutical company called Chimera, he jumps at the chance.  He can make good money and cement his relationship with his girlfriend, who has misgivings about his future prospects as a breadwinner. He fails to realize until too late that the principal business of Chimera isn’t the manufacture of generic drugs but the production of lethal genetic products for well-heeled clients.   This will then be used to assassinate or debilitate presidents,  prime ministers and CEOs using their own DNA against them - a method that not only makes it difficult to identify the perpetrator (a cold virus can deliver the engineered DNA) but makes it almost impossible to determine that a crime has been committed in the first place.

My Thoughts:

While SynBio by Leslie Horvitz had a great premise, the hacking of DNA, the plot deteriorated into something other than a science fiction thriller. While the suspense was still there, it became a novel about a series of hook-ups to gather DNA from various men and lost much of the initial excitement. In the end it was so-so and a forgettable book for me.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the author for review purposes.

The Red Hot Fix

The Red Hot Fix by T. E. Woods

Random House: 6/10/2014
ebook, 288 pages
ISBN-13: 9780345549273
Justice series #2
https://www.facebook.com/tewoodswrites

A little more than a year after the Fixer killings, Detective Mort Grant of the Seattle PD once again has his hands full. In the last four months, seven men have been murdered in seedy pay-by-the-hour motels: first strangled, then tied with rope and set on a bed of crushed mothball with a red lipstick kiss planted on their foreheads. Speculation abounds that the killer is a prostitute who’s turning her tricks into dead men. The press has taken to calling her “Trixie.”
As Mort follows scant leads in the case, he can’t help but feel continued guilt over his involvement with the Fixer. Though the public holds her up as a folk hero, a vigilante who seeks justice when the system fails, Mort cannot shake the fact that serious crimes have been committed. And though legend says she has vanished, Mort knows exactly where the Fixer is—and he’s conspiring to keep her hidden.
As Trixie strikes again, Mort suddenly finds himself and his family in the crosshairs. Because these new murders are not random, and their perpetrator is hell-bent on luring Mort into a sick and twisted game. If he’s not careful, he’s going to need Fixing.

My Thoughts:


The Red Hot Fix by T. E. Woods is the very highly recommended second book in the Justice series that began with The Fixer. 
 
Detective Mort Grant and psychologist Lydia Corriger are back! In this exciting second book three different story lines are being developed simultaneously. 

Mort is trying to find a serial killer, a woman presumed to be a prostitute that the press has nicknamed Trixie. Trixie is killing Johns and leaving a red lipstick kiss on their foreheads. The body count is rising and Trixie is not leaving many clues.

We are also following Ingrid and Reinheardt Vogel, owners of the Seattle Wings basketball team. The team is in the playoffs, but the star player, LionEl, is giving the owners some headaches - but he may not be the only problem the Vogel's are experiencing. 

While Lydia plays a lesser role in this book as she is recovering from injuries sustained in the first book, she does do some "fixing." She is especially tender and loving as she develops a relationship with a young girl, Maizie, who needs a caring adult friend.

Once again Woods does an excellent job developing her characters while keeping the plot engaging and interesting. This time Woods gives us additional character development to some characters we've met previously as well as several new characters. There is also more personal history of the characters shared, for example we learn more about Mort's daughter and Jimmy De Villa. 

Woods own personal background as a clinical psychologist continues to give her keen insight into human behavior. She is able to describe her characters and their struggles and flaws, in such a way that they feel like real people. As I said previously, "They all come across as real people, flawed and wounded, but real." 

The writing was also superb - again - and the story will keep you engaged right to the end. Woods again keeps the pace quick and allows suspense to build right up to the end. 

In the past I've occasionally mentioned that a book is an "airplane book" meaning an engaging book that will hold your attention but you won't cry if you lose it or misplace it and miss the ending. After a recent marathon bout of traveling, I'm adding a new airplane rating: a "stuck overnight at the airport book" meaning this book will keep you up, awake, and entertained with minimum trips to find coffee or a distraction and you will cry if you misplace it and don't read the ending.

The Red Hot Fix is a "stuck overnight at the airport book." I can hardly wait for the next Justice/Fixer novel.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes.

The Travel Writer

The Travel Writer by Jeff Soloway

Random House, Alibi: 6/3/2014
eBook, 240 pages
ISBN-13: 9780804178174
Travel Writer Series #1

Award-winning author Jeff Soloway debuts an entertaining new mystery series featuring a globe-trotting, caper-solving travel writer with a witty voice and a penchant for landing in sticky situations.
 
At a posh South American resort tucked into the lush jungles of the Andes, an American journalist has gone missing, leaving the hotel’s PR agent, Pilar Rojas, with an international incident on her hands. Which is why she offers her ex-lover, travel writer Jacob Smalls, an all-expenses-paid trip to the resort in exchange for a puff piece extolling its virtues—and some behind-the-scenes digging into the disappearance. Intrigued by the prospect of winning Pilar back—and eager, as always, for freebies—Jacob hops the first flight to La Paz, Bolivia.
 
Although he hasn’t seen Pilar in years, Jacob finds her just as intoxicating as he did when they were together. But from the moment he hits the city’s cobbled streets, Jacob attracts all the wrong kinds of attention. Political flunkies and goons of all stripes try to scare him off the trail, while the missing woman’s not-quite boyfriend insists on shadowing Jacob’s every move. And amid ancient Incan hillside terraces, a world-class hotel conceals a secret that may kill.

 
My Thoughts:

The Travel Writer by Jeff Soloway is a recommended debut mystery series featuring Jacob Smalls as a smart aleck travel guide writer turned sleuth. When veteran American travel editor Hilary Pearson is missing and presumed kidnapped from the Matamoros, a Bolivian Hotel,  Pilar Rojas, the PR agent and an old friend of Smalls contacts him. Pilar offers Smalls an all-expense paid trip to the Bolivian resort if he will just write a complementary piece about the hotel. 

Smalls admits, "I’m a travel writer, and corrupt as they come. I’d sell my journalistic principles for two nights at the Four Seasons with a free meal and a massage. I’ve been wheedled and bribed and plied with bottles of wine worth more than my laptop, and I’ve rarely failed to succumb to the temptation of providing a puff review. But I was not entirely without ambition. That afternoon I had for the first time inspired hate, not just disdain, from a hotel employee—if that’s what Gonzales was. I had stumbled onto something, perhaps a crime worth uncovering, or at least a story worth writing about." (Location 142)

All Pilar wants is a shill to write the pro-Matamoros propaganda piece, but Smalls decides to investigate Hilary's disappearance with some help from Kenny,  a goofy, naive co-worker of Hilary's who is sure they have a relationship. Smalls is a rather hapless, but clever narrator who displays plenty of self-deprecating humor and some interesting descriptions and outlooks on life. He's hardly anyone's first choice for an investigator. “What makes you think you can find her?” she asked. “The FBI couldn’t. You’re just a guidebook writer.” Guidebook writers are the peasantry of travel writers. Apparently my magazine work hadn’t caught Lisa’s attention, which wasn’t surprising. It hadn’t caught anyone else’s." (Location 323)

While the actual plot isn't full of suspense or intrigue, the beauty and fun in Soloway's debut novel is in his laugh aloud descriptions:
"I slipped the clerk my passport, and he hammered my name, two-fingered, into his computer keyboard, pausing for one heartbeat between each letter, perhaps to facilitate the computer’s comprehension of the outlandish 'Jacob Smalls.'"
Or  "Her placid eyes widened in respect, as if she’d been told he owned a unicorn."

The Travel Writer is an entertaining start to a new series. I laughed along with Smarts and liked him. Now let's hope he has a more intriguing, tough mystery/crime to solve in his next outing.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House via Netgalley for review purposes.

Problems with People

Problems with People: Stories by David Guterson

Knopf Doubleday: 6/3/2014
Hardcover, 176 pages
ISBN-13: 9780385351485
davidguterson.com

Ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars: stunning explorations of the mysteries of love and our complex desire for connection.

Ranging from youth to old age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer tender, unexpected, and always tightly focused accounts of our quest to understand each other, individually, and as part of a political and historical moment. These stories are shot through with tragedy—the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son’s death at sea; poignant reflections upon cultural and personal circumstances—whether it is being Jewish, overweight and single, or a tourist in a history-haunted land; and paradigmatic questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies—all across America, and in countries as distant as Nepal and South Africa—these stories showcase David Guterson’s signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional and moral suspense, and evocations of small-town life and the natural world. They celebrate the ordinary yet brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives, as well as the return of a contemporary American master to the form that launched his astonishing literary career.

My Thoughts:

Most of the characters in Guterson's stories don't even have names, which enhances the sense of isolation and solitude that surrounds them. Each story is a small picture of a character that is being developed subtly,  gently, by an author with an understanding of human nature and its nuances.

Most of the characters in Guterson's stories don't even have names, which enhances the sense of isolation and solitude that surrounds them. Each story is a small picture of a character that is being developed subtly,  gently, by an author with an understanding of human nature and its nuances.

This is a well written collection that should resonate with those who enjoy thoughtful short stories that focus on character development and the frailties of human nature.

Contents:
Paradise - a couple in their sixties who met through an online dating service are starting a new relationship
Tenant - a landlord struggles over his questions about his new tenant
Pilanesberg - an adult brother visits his dying sister in Africa 
Politics - a man admires a beggar tenacity at first and then has enough of him
Feedback - a woman obsesses over Hamish McAdam's name and its seemingly incongruous ethnicities
Hot Springs -  a judge who ignores being Jewish is reminded of his heritage
Krassavitseh - a father and son tour Holocaust memorials in Germany
Shadow - the retired narrator has developed short-term memory loss which negatively impacts his life
Photograph - a couple grieve over their grown son's drowning death, while the wife blames her husband
Hush - a friendship develops between a dog walker and her gravely ill customer

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

Reach for Infinity

Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan

Solaris: 5/27/2014
Trade Paperback. 352 pages
ISBN-13: 9781781082034

An original collection of new short science fiction from the biggest and most exciting names in the genre. The latest in the Infinities collections edited and comissioned by multiple award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan.

What happens when humanity reaches out into the vastness of space? The brightest names in SF contribute new orginal fiction to this amazing anothology from master editor Jonathan Strahan. Including new work by Alastair Reynolds,Greg Egan,Ian McDonald, Ken Macleod, Pat Cadigan, Karl Schroeder, Hannu Rajaniemi, Karen Lord, Adam Roberts, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Aliette de Bodard Peter Watts, and others!

My Thoughts:

Reach for Infinity is the highly recommended third anthology of hard science fiction short stories in the Infinity series edited by Jonathan Strahan. The first two are Engineering Infinity and Edge of Infinity.

In the 14 short stories Strahan includes, he writes: "Many of the stories take place on Earth in the next hundred years, looking at points in time where people, or a person, look to make a critical difference and push forward towards something greater. Some of them take snapshots from places – deep within the future colonies of Mars or perched in the chromosphere of the sun – where humanity as a whole is pushing its boundaries and stretching its limits in order to achieve more. All of them are about, one way or another, reaching for infinity from within and without."

This collection presents a good variety of stories by accomplished authors from the hard science fiction genre.  While all of the stories included are beyond a doubt well-written and great examples of the short stories you will find in hard sci-fi today, as in any anthology, some resonated more closely to my own preferences than others. All in all, this was a good collection and I enjoyed it immensely. To be honest, it was refreshing to tackle a shorter collection like this  versus the usual huge and unwieldy "best of" collections that Strahan (and others) also edit.

Contents:
Introduction by Jonathan Strahan
Break My Fall by Greg Egan
The Dust Queen by Aliette de Bodard
The Fifth Dragon by Ian McDonald
Kheldyu by Karl Schroeder
Report Concerning the Presence of Seahorses on Mars by Pat Cadigan
Hiraeth: A Tragedy in Four Acts by Karen Lord
Amicae Aeternum by Ellen Klages
Trademark Bugs: A Legal History by  Adam Roberts
Attitude by Linda Nagata
Invisible Planets by Hannu Rajaniemi
Wilder Still, the Stars by Kathleen Ann Goonan
‘The Entire Immense Superstructure’: An Installation by Ken MacLeod
In Babelsberg by Alastair Reynolds
Hotshot by Peter Watts

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Solaris via Netgalley for review purposes.