Book Review: Later by Stephen King

 

Later by Stephen King 

Paperback, 248 pages

Published March 2nd 2021 by Hard Case Crime 

 

 I love Stephen King on many levels. I love his impact on the genre, his commitment to story-telling, his dog, his support of other writers. No writer is going to have a perfect track record when they release as many books and written as many words as he has. The early novels come from unique place and some mistake the quality as being a product of a pre-clean author. There is a false idea out there that the quality dipped after the intervention during the writing of Tommyknockers.

 The change had more to do with King becoming an institution. The world’s bestselling story teller with no asterisks. There are more books on shelves with the name Stephen King than anyone alive. It is not exactly a hot take to say that Salem’s Lot, The Stand and The Shining are works of genius. A victim of his own success in the later years King has become a writer who could write books hundreds of pages longer than they need to be and no editor would stop him.

 That said I still read them, I am a constant reader even if I am 60/40. 60% good to great and 40 percent doesn’t connect with me. I don’t love them like I used to. My tastes as an older reader really don’t mesh with King. I like well plotted and structured stories without extra fat. SK famously rarely (he says never) plots or outlines and writing by the seat of his pants means diversions happen, stories he doesn’t know how to end happen. I think the best stories in King’s 21^st century output are the ones where the ending was clear and he had no choice to build to that target. Doctor Sleep is an example of that, his novellas are almost always stronger for that reason.

 The Outsider started strong but lost me at 150 pages in, Elevation was OK, and The Institution felt recycled. I have been dying for this. A truly great Stephen King novel from start to finish. Released from the Hard Case paperback line this book is a pulp crime story but it is also straight horror fiction and firmly in the wider King mythos. As a horror fiction tale it might be the most effective novel for turning on the creeps that King has written in a long time.

 The story of Jamie who sees dead people. Yes, it has the same set-up as Sixth Sense and Jamie addresses that. This is a similar set-up but goes in very different direction so don’t worry about that. Jamie lives with his struggling single mother, who is dating a woman who is a dirty NYPD detective named Liz. Long after Liz is supposed to be out of their life she can’t forget Jamie’s talent. Seeing the dead, being able to talk to them. Even against their will they speak truth to Jamie.   

 I was thinking about how I normally don't enjoy first person in novels. If a story is good enough, I will forget about it, but I constantly nitpick moments when authors cheat.  I always point to Stephen King's Delores Claiborne as an example where the narrator NEVER cheats.  Later is GREAT first-person written in a kid's voice and it NEVER cheats.

 SK has skill for writing children and speaking in their voices. In this novel he is doing subtle and genius things to those moments of young person’s POV. Jamie is telling this story as a young man and SK is in perfect command of this. The word LATER is so important to the narrative not just because it is the title. Jamie is telling this story of his childhood with the gift of insight insight, so he often gets ahead of the boy in the story. I didn’t understand that until later, or I would learn later.

 The information that is ahead of Jamie or to be revealed later is often the drive of the story. It is a neat trick and it was the only way Jamie could tell this story without cheating. You see Stephen King knows Jamie is not the storyteller he is, but SK uses this method to pace out the story. A weaker story teller would have withheld elements because of plot. SK wisely knows that Jamie lives in fear of telling his secret to anyone. Jamie has to convince you the reader first of what he can do before he can hit you with the last two reveals. So, he is choosing to withhold things for a reason. Jamie is trying to build the reader’s trust.

 Along the way events happen that tie the novel to one of King’s classic novels. I had this spoiled for me but honestly, I have not read that book in 30 years so it didn’t affect me as a reader at all. I would have totally missed it if I had not heard. The connection however is deeper that it appears on the surface, readers paying close attention to little details will make a neat connection.

 In my opinion this is the best King novel since Doctor Sleep or maybe 11/22/63. It might be his best in this century. The quality is up there with his Full Dark novellas like Good Marriage or 1922. It may sound like hyperbole but I really happy to report this. I don’t want to spoil the twists but the first one is gnarly and scary, the second is just gross and disturbing. I don’t entirely know how I feel about accept once again King got me in the feels.

 

Book Review: The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions That Shape Our World by Ziya Tong

 

 

 

The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions That Shape Our World by Ziya Tong
Hardcover, 366 pages
Published May 2019 by Allen Lane

This is not the book I was expecting. The author Ziya Tong is less familiar to people south of the border as she is a Canadian TV host and science communicator. I first heard of her book through Sean Carrol’s podcast Mindscape. I didn’t listen to the full interview as I decided I wanted to read the book first. The book I was expecting was basically the first couple chapters where Ziya Tong points the various blind spots humans have because most people don’t understand the basic science of biology and physics that surround us every moment of the day. This lesson is taught on the macro galactic scale and micro-biological scale.

“Our first blind spot is that reality is not human-sized. What we call reality is only a tiny sliver in the grand scheme of things.”

These early chapters look at the science that makes up our lives in ways that most people don’t think about. It is an important lesson and one I was here for. I like being reminded how small we are compared to the expanding cosmos or how few we are compared to the vast micro-universe.  Carl Sagan pointed that we are made of star-stuff and this provides a perfect example of how Ziya Tong expands these concepts in the book.

“The iron that makes our blood red was made in the final moments before a star died. For all of us, then, our very lifeblood began with a spectacular death in a solar system.”

Had the whole book been this kind of neat science meets humanity stuff I would have been a very happy reader indeed. I was looking forward to that book. The Reality Bubble is only 1/3 that book, and don’t get me wrong the rest of the book is actually more important. The reality is most people don’t extend their awareness more than a few feet around themselves. Some people lack awareness of what happens in their neighborhoods let alone in the national news. Now ask people what happens to their trash? Where their water or food comes from and you’ll get blank stares all day.

The rest of the book is about just that. It is a wake-up call for people to consider how their blind spots are literally killing the planet. As a vegan for almost three decades who has been preaching climate action since Al Gore was too busy with the senate to make documentaries, I am not the target audience. The audience for this should ideally be the people who never think or take responsibility for their day-to-day actions.

I care enough about I research how my almonds were raised to make sure bees were not harmed or that my coconut milks were not harvested using monkey labor. I don’t pretend to be perfect but I try. My eyes were first opened to the injustice of animal agriculture by hardcore music and ultimately reading John Robbin's seminal book Diet for New America. I feel like this information is out there now – films like Earthlings and Forks over Knives help get the information out there but simply don’t want to know.

Those who value animal's lives as less don’t want to accept the idea but the dreaded comparisons to slavery and the holocaust are undeniable when you burst the reality bubble.

“Over seventy billion animals a year meet the grim reaper in industrialized settings, but what’s equally shocking is how invisible all this killing is. After the Second World War and the Holocaust, we may have thought the grotesque horrors of the gas chambers had ended, but for animals, the method was reintroduced in the 1980s and ‘90s…”

I can already guess that many negative reviews will focus on Tong’s call to action. It is one thing to point out capitalism is bad, but another to ask people to look in the mirror and change themselves. To shake up their own lives. It is impossible to really burst that reality bubble and not confront our relationship with animals and the natural world. While this book is not an Animal liberation book in the same way that a Peter Singer or Carol Adams book is, it is a book that promotes animal freedom.

“Property, whether it's an object, a cow, or a slave, does not have right of movement without the owner's consent. “It” cannot change its conditions even if it's unhappy, because it has no rights. The key point here is that rights are incompatible with ownership when it comes to living things. After all, if rivers and chimpanzees have rights, what's next? Will our bacon and eggs demand freedom? Our lumber and paper? Our leather shoes and our wool sweaters? All of this life, or extinguished life, is defined as our property to do with as we please. To begin to question that fundamental authority of our ownership of life would be to upend our whole system of thinking. That's because the core tenet of our entire economic system can be eviscerated by asking one simple question, which is: What does it even mean to “own” something anyway?”

Ownership is a false reality. Just like all these words, I am using or Ziya Tong are using are made things that we have just agreed to. It is one thing for Humans to agree on what is reality but another for us to force that on others.

This is a great and important book. Big Thumbs up.



 

Book Review: Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

 

Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

Hardcover, 304 pages
Published February  2021 by Atria Books 

Check out my podcast interview with the author! 

My interview with Sarah Langan on YouTube

Audio on Apple Podcasts 

Sarah Langan is an author I am overdue to read. She’s received three Bram-Stoker awards. She’s a founding board member of the Shirley Jackson Awards. So I don’t know what took me so long but I am fixing that problem now.  I was scrolling the just ordered list on the library app and saw this title. I got it entirely on the strength of the author's reputation and went in as cold as I could. I didn’t read the dustjacket description or the blurbs. This is a case where I think knowing the concept or the ideas will not mess with the expectations. After three hundred pages and a literary experience, it is hard to remember exactly what I was expecting, but I think I was in store for a dark horror mystery.

Good Neighbors is a novel that resists tight genre distinction but if you really want to know it is I would call it a horror social satire. What blows my mind is that I read a few reviews so far and not one seems to notice or comment on the intentional in your face word for word tribute to the classic Twilight Zone episode The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. What is wrong with young people?

I mean I knew as soon the street was named Maple street, and the last act of the book being named The Monsters Arrive on Maple Street.

I suspect there are mico-details throughout this book that I am just missing as I have never been a suburban resident. I mean loving the Descendants song Suburban Home is about as much as I know about life in the suburbs. I have always lived in cities or college towns. None the less we all know the environment to a certain level through cultural osmosis.

“Like, if your life isn’t perfect, you keep your mouth shut and don’t talk about it until it is perfect, and then you brag.”

Maple Street is a microcosm of the suburbs, a long island tract home neighborhood that the author clearly mapped out in details that extend way beyond the narrative. Langan’s neighbors might be nervous looking for shadows of them as they read the book.  The various parts of the novel have updated maps with the addresses of everyone on the street and who is left. This tells me that the part of the story we are seeing is the chuck of ice above the surface. I know as much as there are elements of the Maple street story below the water line there are also themes and ideas below the surface.

Give me a book I am thinking about long after I close the book and I tend to like it more and more weeks later. Good Neighbors is one of those books.

The story is a simple one, the lead characters are the Wilde family. Arlo is an ex-rock n’ roller, and his former beauty pageant wife Gertie doesn’t fit in with the other families. This sore thumb status makes them the target of the street’s Queen-bee busy body Rhea Schroeder. The pressure and attention builds like a steam engine on a train pulling out of the station.

That is when the stinkhole happens.  I can only guess what I think the giant hole represents, the weather and the natural horrors of the novel are things that happen to regions like Arizona and Florida. The stress of the changing climate when we were young was considered far off. Our parents punted on climate change not realizing that these pressures would one day be a factor in the neighborhood drama.

When Sally Rhea’s daughter disappears in the sinkhole it is not so simple as the events take a surreal, and or supernatural turn. The paranoia and suspicion turn a normal neighborhood game of telephone and rumors into murder.
 
The narrative is mostly third-person following the relevant characters at all the right times. Much of the details and stunning revelations are done in a fun set of fake articles, reports, and book excerpts that tell us these events were big news nationally as well as the local grapevine.

The rising temperature of the near future and the adjacent stress is the reason Good Neighbors is a sly Cli-Fi novel. The heat and the climate issues simmer early in the novel, if there was a thing, I am critical of is I could have used a little more of this element closer to the forefront of the last 100 pages or so.  I am aware that might be my personal bias speaking.  

So, let’s talk about that Twilight Zone connection. The Monsters are Due on Maple Street is a Twilight Zone episode I once watched in school. We watched it in an English class and the teacher was talking about fiction as a political allegory. That episode in the small 24-minute TZ was about many of the same themes as this novel. What Langan does in the process of modernizing and expanding the suburban paranoia is pretty impressive. This novel has several deft tactics to make the classic story modern. Readers who don’t know that Twilight Zone episode are missing the most amazing elements of creation in this novel.  Langan transfers cold war fears to climate change and the fear of communist or alien invasion to the neighborhood race for status. Much of this happens through a prism of social media and Langan hits with precision.

"Our language is reduced to a series of agreed-upon signs reflecting not nuance, but binaries: like/dislike; good/bad; yes/no. We are even more lonely for the failure of it…”

Good Neighbors has a giant sinkhole that is horrifically described as well as any monster novel but this modern horror addresses mob mentality. Bullies make Tik-tok videos, neighbors pay attention to who liked their stay-cation photos on Insta, and which carefully chosen emojis were used as passive-aggressive Facebook reactions.

The ultimate modern suburban horror novel, the monsters have indeed arrived on Maple Street. Do yourself a favor and read Good Neighbors. This book does for the burbs what American Psycho did for Wall Street assholes and I am here for it’s scares and biting satire.

Book Review: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

 

My Heart Is a Chainsaw  by Stephen Graham Jones

Hardcover, 416 pages

Expected publication: August 31st 2021 by Gallery / Saga Press

 

I was worried when I reviewed the Only Good Indian that I was drifting into hyperbole. It was my top read of the year, Jeremy Robert Johnson and I took time out of HIS interview to proclaim the NEED to throw all the awards at the book.  The amount that I love that novel and Mongrels is hard to chart honestly. On a 5-star scale, it was a twelve if I could give that novel all the missing stars from all four and three stars books I read in those years I would have. Those books are not the only genius but they affected me deeply as I read them.

Stephen Graham Jones is an author who I like as a person and a storyteller. The hardest part of reviewing his books is not using hyperbole because he is so goddamn great. Here is the funny thing I did not like My Heart is A Chainsaw nearly as much as the last three SGJ books I read but that is in part because of the impossibly high bar this dude has set.

Mongrels worked in part because it was a love letter to werewolf movies, novels, and myths. I love stories about werewolves but I am not a slasher fan. This book actually is the thing that taught me that. My Heart is a Chainsaw is the love letter wrapped inside of socially aware horror novel. It is clear on almost every page of this book that the only person more in love with slasher movies than Stephen Graham Jones is our main POV Jennifer Daniels AKA Jade.

Jade is a teenager in Proofrock Idaho, a small town in transition just like Jade herself. While she has just graduated (one class to finish) a new community of rich and famous people called Terra Nova is opening across the lake from her. Jade has knowledge of Slasher movies that would make IMDB jealous so when two European tourists die in the nearby Indian Lake she is convinced it is the work of the killer sure to rise.

I have read a few of the early reviews of this book and I am wondering if the majority of the early readers are missing the point. Maybe I am missing the point? But let me tell you what I think is going on without spoiling the fun. Jade is half-Indian and while it can be easy to get lost in the horror elements this novel is a subtle take on her Indian experience in America. I don’t know if academics will be able to divorce the slasher aspects to think of this novel that way but it is all done with graceful touches. I don’t think they can miss the point but sometimes SGJ operates in that space that floats just over some reader’s heads.

A good portion of the book is a third-person narrative, but many of the most important moments are written by Jade herself in the last assignments she needs to graduate. A series of history reports for her favorite teacher Mr. Holmes. Taking the age-old writing advice, she writes what she knows and her subject a mix of Slasher movies and observations about the town.  

These Slasher 101 reports appear in the book in a different font that might seem like asides about movies that can be skipped. DO NOT DO THAT, they are very important. Jade is dissecting the history of her hometown while trying to explain the history of these movies. As she writes these reports she makes connections, who is the final girl in the narrative of her town, who has the motivation to become a slasher, and can she solve the mystery in time?

There comes a point when Jade realizes “She’s not supposed to figure it out yet.” The movies have structure and she knows it like the back of her hand. She doesn’t want to get ahead of it. Even when her Dad bags up all her movies in a not-so-subtle order to trash the shit but she is undeterred. The cops are on to her and some of my favorite parts of the book are when she interacts with the sheriff or his department. When she gets locked up by the sheriff. She demands to know what she is being charged with. When she calls to report her findings the sheriff has warned his people to expect her call.

It is a funny scene but it is important. Jade will tell you the cops are always morons and not helpful in a slasher movie. I am just not sure you can trust Jade when it is Stephen Graham Jones who is telling the story. His novella last year Night of the Mannequins was a narrative sleight of hand and you should understand that nothing in this book is at face value.

I promise I will not tell you any more about the story but at this point, I am going to speculate on the theme. I have no idea if I am right or wrong but the title is so important.  You can’t trust your heart, feelings that come from the heart, not the brain can lead us in the wrong direction.

The prologue is a beautiful tribute to a short story that SGJ and I both gushed about in the interview I did on my podcast for the Only Good Indian. That classic story was foundational for me as well, and that knowledge changed how I viewed the book. The clues were there but Jade was getting the wrong messages. She was watching the wrong movies. Is the scene with the slasher movies in the trash bag on her bed more important than it seems? Her dad is hardly a dad, he takes this action and doesn’t talk to Jade about it. I think this is a scene and the father's absence is something you should pay attention to, but again I may be wrong.

All sounds amazing, right? It is awesome but one thing held this reader back. It is not you 'My Heart is a Chainsaw' it is me. Slashers are not my favorite genre of horror. The only reservation I have with the book is the references to Slasher movies started to overwhelm me.

I mean I have seen them; I am a horror guy so I know Twitch of the Death Nerve/Bay of Blood. I get most of the in-jokes about Black Christmas, Trick or Treat and Nightmare on Elm Street. I just don’t love this genre nearly as much as SGJ does and for that reason, it didn’t knock my socks off like the last two books.

Your mileage will and should vary. This is totally on me and my high bar. The reality is My Heart is Chainsaw is an absolute genius piece of work. The concept of a novel doing meta-exploration of Scream doing meta-exploration of the genre should not work as well as it does if it were not for SGJ’s skills. Witty moments and next-level prose cut through the concept that didn’t do much for me. I can’t read SGJ’s work fast because there are moments and details that are both subtle and profound. If you zoom through it, you’ll miss it. If you give Jones the attention there are rewards on almost every page.   I mean enjoy asides about raccoons being nature’s janitors as the major social and political themes the cool thing is you’ll get both.  

My interview With Stephen on Youtube

The interview on Apple podcasts 

Book Review: Fragments of a Revolution by Seb Doubinsky

  

Fragments of a Revolution by Seb Doubinsky

Stalking Horse press
Hardcover, May 2021
ISBN: 9781734012651

 

Sometimes when you read a new release from an author you first thought is where the hell have I been? Why have I not heard of this author before? I was even collected in an anthology of Hamsters stories to benefit Fabolous Raye alongside Doubinsky. Before starting this book I looked him up and His Babylon trilogy looks so up my alley that I kinda felt guilty. So after reading this book we are going to talk for the podcast and fix all that.

 

My interest at the onset was who published this book. Stalking Horse press is a pretty safe bet, the indie press that is the passion and brainchild of James Reich makes one-of-a-kind books. There is no clear marketing, just stuff James likes and so far, he has a high batting record of fascinating books.

 

Fragments of a Revolution is a short but thought-provoking slice of fiction composed in short but vivid vignettes of powerful prose. As narrative and structure junky most books that use this style challenge me. It is not that I don’t enjoy experimental prose, in the hands of the right author like your Kathy Ackers of the world it can be a surreal literary journey. What I liked about this tale told in fragments is that it was not surreal.

 

Doubinsky gets experimental with the format and there is plenty of empty white spaces, no chunk of the story is told over more than three pages. That said the story is vivid, powerful, and realistic. The summer of 1969 in Mexico comes to life. It is easy to forget one year after the summer of love in the states that radical activism was happening everywhere. Mexico the year before exploded with radical activism as the students protested the summer games.

 

I don’t know the history to be honest. I don’t know how much of this book is based on history or fantasy. Some of the moments of the book feel almost too ideal but I hope moments like this ring true.

 

            “Are you going to execute us, senor?” The woman’s voice was strangely calm now.

           

Lorenzo exchanged a glance with Joselito, who had just walked inside the small room. “No why?  

 

The woman shrugged majestically. “People like us are always executed in revolutions.”

 

“Sorry, not this one.”

 

 

The actual radicals of the era and the place I have no idea about really. The narrative of this story is told years after the events, Lorenzo clearly didn’t succeed in his struggle and now approached by a German revolutionary he is asked to recall his story. So in a meta sense, the reader is just the wider audience for the tale. That is of course the genius of the Fragmented narrative because our narrator doesn’t remember. He is telling this tale through the haze of memories clouded by his glory days and the idealism of his radical young adulthood.

 

            “…I owe him this piece. He wants to know.”

 

            “Yes but if it brings back bad memories…”

 

            Lorenzo sighed and caressed his wife’s back. “I don’t know if they’re bad memories…I can’t remember what happened, that is the problem…I can see some faces, a few names have come back to me, but that is it…”

 

Living now in Denmark with a comfortable life Lorenzo is aware that his wife and son don’t know about his past, and he is afraid of them getting more than those fragments. The prose in this short novel is fantastic evocative enough to paint a clearer picture than the novel with 1,000 times the word count. Lorenzo’s fears are real you can’t blame this narrator for being unreliable.

 

Radical fiction requires a delicate balance, the choir loves preaching and as a member of this choir, I enjoy protest fiction. I like it subtle and soaked in allegory but it is always fun to read something clear and direct about actvism. This is not unapologetic however, one of the strengths of this book is that it is a story of revolution told by a father with years apart from the struggle.

 

A great read for fans of radical activist fiction. Pre-order this now if that is you.

 

Book Review: Our War by Craig Dilouie

 

Our War By Craig DiLouie

Hardcover, 400 pages

Published August  2019 by Orbit

One of my favorite genres of novels is the warning novel. 1984 and Alas Babylon are taught in schools because of what they say about authoritarianism and nuclear war. Not every novel written as a dire warning is taught in schools but I personally love sci-fi that does this.  Speculative fiction as a genre has many tricks up its sleeves but the ability to look at an oncoming disaster and dramatize it is the very best reason to write it. We can debate that point, it is subjective but I think the argument is strong to almost be objective truth. Warning novels are important. So like Sinclair Lewis It Can’t Happen here felt like a well-timed warning 90 years after it was published.

With Our War, Craig DiLouie was put in an uncomfortable place as the author of a warning novel that appeared to be coming true on January 6th, 2021. When right-wing seditionists tried to start the very conflict, he warned about it. I told you so’s from an author safely north of the border don’t make for the most natural book promotion but if the target audience is me – sold. I can relate to DiLouie’s situation as I am the author of a climate change warning novel (Ring of Fire) about wildfires I have had to debate often if I should hold my tongue or look callous promoting it.

That was not the only reason why I jumped on this book as it was also set 53 miles from my hometown in Indianapolis. It is a city I have spent lots of time in so the idea of a Second American civil war novel that was about the battle of Indianapolis had me curious. I will say I had to divorce some of my knowledge of Indy while reading this book but that is not the author's fault and should not affect most readers.

Our War released in 2019, probably written directly in the middle of the Trump years is a solid warning novel. It is about a President who after he is impeached refuses to leave office. I know it sounds familiar. Many of the events mirror reality, President Marsh’s followers in the book get a little further and many blue cities in red states become battlegrounds.

 Like many great war novels, Our War follows many different POVs. The narrative is structured in a smart way to balance parallels in the storytelling. Hannah is what I would consider the most important character, she is a ten-year girl left homeless after her parents are killed and she is separated from her brother Alex. She ends joining the Free Women a group of leftist resistance fighters, and of course, Alex ends up fighting with the right-wing militia. They were too young to have ideals before the war started and Dilouie uses these characters to highlight how both sides form their ranks. It is a trope of civil war fiction the family is torn apart and facing off in the war, but in this case, it is important and done well.  

The adult characters have plenty of meaningful parallels as well. Including Abigail whose ex-husband fights for the other side. Gabrielle is a French-Canadian worker for UNICEF looking for evidence of child soldiers in Indianapolis. She befriends a local reporter a black journalist named Audrey. On the right side of the conflict, we have Mitch who believes he is on the right side of history, despite my feelings as a leftist myself I was glad he was not painted as mustache-twirling and given his logic for his actions. In many senses, he had more regrets than the liberals about who was fighting on his behalf.

In hindsight, Our War might not seem prophetic but honestly how many of us thought we would see the supporters of a sitting president under his direction storm the capital and try to stop the transfer of power. Well apparently, this Canadian Journalist turned author primarily known for writing horror novels did. He will join fellow Canadian Journalist turned author of The American War Omar El Akkad who wrote disturbing American Civil  War novels.

Two very different books, Our War goes less into the future, and Akkad was trying to reflect the madness our country caused in the middle east by reflecting it back. Our War is about the bi-partisan conflict here and now. It is easy to point the finger exactly to the roots.

“Social media had promised to bring people together but only helped polarize them along new tribes isolated in separate echo chambers.”

It can seem dehumanizing and like a video game when it is a battle of names and profile avatars but Our War seeks to explore this conflict spilling into the streets.  To take the rhetoric that nebulous when written in comments on Facebook and Twitter and put the conflict into the real world. The narrative is helped by Indianapolis losing power and being cut off from the rest of the country. Otherwise, the conflict probably would have been live-streamed and posted all over. That is one aspect DiLouie missed, the nut bags live streaming putting their feet up on the speaker’s desk and recording for the FBI their acts of sedition is so modern treason but that is the reality. I can see why Dilouie chooses not to focus on that. It wasn’t the point.

As for the role of Indianapolis.  I had to divorce my knowledge of Indiana a little bit. It is clear that Dilouie did his research…

“Indy was a blue city, in a sea of Red. At the start of the war, the militias had gained control of the countryside easy enough. They’d roll into town, find out who was in local government, make some changes. None of it was planned. It just happened, a nationwide protest that snowballed into a revolution.”

There is a difference between reading, researching, or even visiting a place and knowing it. Why is Indianapolis a blue city in a sea of red? A couple of reasons, and while there are some progressive artist types on the north that is not the main reason. A huge aspect of Indianapolis overlooked here is the large African-American population. I know from organizing a little in the city that the community is somewhat dubious of young white progressives.  That should not bother readers, not from Indiana. That said the black community being underrepresented in the story is the one and only real knock against this novel for me.

I think this novel should be read because it is warning about violent partisanship. That message is more important than the details of the story.  

The Brother and Sister's storyline is at the heart of this novel. It is the emotional core as much as it drives a huge chunk of the story. Hannah and Alex were relatable characters who represent a very important class of Americans. Not everyone feels perfectly represented by Democrats and Republicans, but our stupid system only lets citizens choose between Coke and Pepsi. You can’t escape it.

That seems to be the warning of Our War. It is where all the hatred and partisanship go if left to fester.  The woman shot storming the capital was Q conspiracy nutbag but she was from our neighborhood in San Diego. The local news interviewed her mourning family. Her grandfather who didn’t share her views lost a loved one to the crazy partisanship as much as the bullet that tore through her.

This is where the novel addresses that issue, I think is not getting enough attention right now. Can we forgive the president and party who caused this because Trump and Ted Cruz were not shy about stoking these flames? Hannah a ten-year-old in the book brings it up. “Sabrina said they should be punished. She said there’s no going back after this, no living with them again. Not after what they have done.”

“I can see her point they declared war on reality and elected a maniac who almost broke the country. When he failed, they rose up and broke it themselves. You can’t reason with them, and they hate our guts.”  

They declared war on reality. Can anyone really argue this didn’t actually happen?  In the case of Our War the ultimate result is open warfare, and don’t assume because Trump lost this time that this novel won't be relevant again someday. This is a great warning novel, worthy of your eyeballs and attention.
 


Spoilers…

I did want to comment on something that I consider spoilers.

“This is no place for a child.”
“I’m not forcing her to do anything,” The woman said “I don’t like it either. But after what she has suffered, she can make her own choices.”

“You see a child,”Rafael said. In some ways, she is as old as you.”

And later this results in the most powerful moment of the book.

Hannah Miller knelt on the debris-strewn floor amid shredded bodies, staring into space and hugging her brother’s body.
Something inside Mitch broke.

Mitch has a chance at this point to kill Hannah. She blew up a squad of his men and with it her brother. Mitch points his rifle and can’t do it. She is just a child who is already suffering because she killed her brother. This is the moment of ultimate partisanship taken to its most awful extremes.  I enjoyed the fact that while DiLouie appears sympathetic to the left throughout the book at this moment he gives logic and strength of character to Mitch. Alex has a chance to kill his sister and can’t. Hannah is the one who ends up killing her brother and is wracked with guilt. Mitch sees the horror of all this at that moment. Powerful stuff. Excited to talk to Craig about these scenes when I interview him for my podcast so stay tuned for that…