But how did it all end?

Book: How It All Began

Author: Penelope Lively

Published: 2011 (Viking)

Pages: 229

In the first couple sentences, an old lady is robbed. In the next three or four chapters, this robbery and her subsequent broken hip shift pre-established events and schedules so that her married daughter falls in love with one of the old lady's reading students, the old lady's employer's niece meets a guy who swindles her out of business, and the niece's lover is outed as an adulterer. 

Promising start! None of the coincidences are contrived, although an unnamed narrative pops up to harp on them three or for times. So then what happened?

Uh, well, you know. Life. Things. 

The employer's sections were the most fun because he was a gone-to-seed academic historian who had no idea of the giant gap between his grand ideas and their banal actualities. The rest of the affected people, most especially his niece, were refreshingly practical about their situations, which got me to like them but did not result in an ending that tied everyone together again. I was half-hoping and half-dreading that kind of ending but figured the rest of the book had enough sense to do it well. 

But I never got to find out, because everybody just drifted apart. In a coda that was completely unnecessary seeing as how we were told he never affected the story ever again, the author tells us that the mugger was shortly robbed himself.  

Well all right then. 

Where are the badgers?

Book: King of the Badgers

Author: Philip Hensher

Published: 2011 (Faber and Faber)

Pages: 436

Where are the badgers? Show me the badgers. I am not reading about any badgers in here.

Also, decide whether the little girl kidnapping story is the backbone event here or just an excuse to show how gossip works in a small English town. Either way is acceptable, I swear, especially considering how well-written both pieces are. But Checkov's gun does not get waved threateningly without being shot, and the driving subject of secrets shouldn't fade away only to flare up again on television and leave again without comment when the six o' clock news ends.

And about those secrets: uh, I'm pretty sure they're not. If they are, only one does any damage, meaning only one causes any conflict both internal and external, meaning only one actually DOES anything, this one that has nothing to do with the little girl kidnapping.

Why the HELL is there nothing else about the schizophrenic couple who have "neighbourhood watch" meetings that are just them and like five imaginary people the husband pretends to chair? WHAT? That was a BIG REVEAL that could've tied in SO WELL.

Typing this review, I've become uncertain as to why I actually like this book a great deal. I guess reading about all the different well-drawn characters was like nibbling on a box of assorted chocolates, offering a different sort of tasty in each bite while keeping a consistent underlying theme. Except a box of Whitman's tends to congeal into one lump that takes an embarrassingly long time to get out of my system, while this book didn't come together at all in the end. I have no idea what the title means or refers to.

But they baited me by watching Doctor Who in the last scene and talking about it so that between their dialogue and the book's publication date, adjusting for writing time and BBC transatlantic jumps, I've figured it's the series four finale. "Parallel worlds" is a dead giveaway. 


(These are the kinds of calculations I do when I finish a book but there's no time to get into another one before a Hunger Games loaner comes through for me to read before the movie comes out.) 

I give in to Prachett pressure.

Book: Making Money

Author: Terry Pratchett

Published: 2007 (Harper)

Pages: 404

Of course I like Terry Prachett. He prods at social and government structures (like the concept of paper money and the gold standard) with offhand British humor, reluctant heroes and glare-y villains who secretly know they’re a little ridiculous which makes them try all the more to compensate, general fantasy-tinged shenanigans, and a small mutt dog as majority shareholder of a bank that falls into the hands of the postmaster general who used to be a studied criminal until he was hanged only enough to let him escape into a different name.

Psychologically, I had to get over three things:

• My disinclination to read anything of a series, especially a giant multi-book and –decade fantasy series like the Discworld novels, aka my horror of reading epics out of turn and missing vital things just because the library doesn’t have the whole set and how will I know to invest in the series if I don’t read all of them in the right order and ahhhh! First world bibliophile problems make the Constant Reader brain melt.
• Overhyping of Pratchett, aka I’ve heard so much good that there’s no way he could be as witty as everyone keeps telling me. But he is. Like Douglas Adams, only with a little more sex and slightly less overt wordplay (subliminal pun count could still be anyone’s game).
•  Wondering why I hadn’t yet read this, aka I vaguely remember buying this in the school bookstore like two years ago and if I haven’t managed it yet there must have been something TERRIBLY WRONG with the first sentence or something. Turns out my excuse was “or something,” which means none at all.

So. I understand the Prachett lure now. (Every time a book blogger types that, another fantasy author gets his/her black oversized cowboy hat.)

Dark tea-time of the soul

Book: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Author: Douglas Adams

Published: 1987 (Pocket Books)

Pages: 306

Ah, humorous British sci fi. I will always compare you to Dr. Who. But don’t worry, Douglas Adams; I’m pretty sure you taught the Doctor a thing or two about looking adorably incompetent while actually knowing exactly what’s going on.

I found this paperback in my dorm’s “library,” by which I mean one of three bookshelves shoved into our common room along with the old (comfortable) furniture and boxy non-HD TV that nobody wanted out in the open. I went down there a lot of Friday nights last semester to soothe my raging weekend boredom and loneliness and also to watch The Soup.

A friend of mine introduced me to Adams in high school by lending me a giant paperback edition of all four (five?) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels. I loved them. I loved the absurdity-driven adventures and I loved the characters who seemed so human even if they were two-headed aliens and I loved Adam’s apparent delight in playing with logic—really playing, as in having fun with it and writing all this fun down in a way that only seem like random tangents until you get to the end of them.

He brought a lot of this to this book, minus a little bit of the wacky. This is a mystery about who killed a not-so-well-liked computer company CEO; was it his cellist sister, or her forgetful awkward boyfriend who writes music using intervals found in nature, or his old (very, very, old) professor who’s afraid to use his time machine apartment for more than petty magic tricks ever since he accidentally caused the extinction of the dodo, or the stupid magazine editor who loved his work but was pushed out of it when his dad the owner died, or the detective Dirk Gently himself while denying his psychic abilities and trying to tie everything in the world together while eating other people’s pizza? Or possibly the Electric Monk that’s programmed to believe everything?

SPOILER ALERT: It was aliens. In ghost form. Uh huh.

I liked this story, but my favorite part is the author photo, in which Adams is holding a tea cup and saucer and looking like he wants to shove said tea cup and saucer up the bum of whoever suggested it. I like to imagine him thinking, “I’M BRITISH WE GET IT.”