I’ve been pretty terrible this year. I haven’t been reading very much, and what little reading I have done hasn’t inspired much writing. So I’m just going to throw these reviews into a box, just to remind myself that I like doing this.
Y: The Last Man (Vol. 1) (3 stars)
Set in a post-apocalyptic America where all mammals with a Y-chromosome (including sperm and embryos) suddenly and simultaneously die – except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. What’s left is a world trying to pick up the pieces and find some way to keep moving forward despite the inevitable extinction of the species. Yorick, having spent weeks in isolation, finally attempts to reach his maybe fiance, who was in Australia the last time he spoke to her. His mother is Representative Jennifer Brown, a pro-life Democrat member of Congress from Ohio.
I thought this was okay. I didn’t love it. And the art was good – but I didn’t love it like I did Saga, a future series also written by Brian K. Vaughan.
I thought the concept was interesting, but the characters fell a little flat for me (especially Yorick). Also, this series started in 2002 and it feels like it. Given that all men are dead, trans men do play a role in the story. Except they’re called “cross dressers” and “tranny”. Yikes on that last one, but I may be misremembering it’s use. Don’t hold me to that. Either way, I don’t think the book has aged super well. It feels a little dated. I also don’t think that’s a criticism, really. It doesn’t seem fair to blame creators for not being able to predict how the culture changes over the decades. But it was pretty jarring seeing it thrown out there so blatantly.
This series has always kind of been there in my TBR pile. I’ve known about it for close to 20 years now, and it seemed interesting. I’m glad I read it, and think it’s worth a look if you’re in a similar boat. I don’t regret finally picking it up.
But I’m in no hurry to pick up volume 2.
Hell of a Book (4 stars)
Unbeknownst to me, I occupy the same geographic space as a National Book Award winner. Not only that, but he and my wife worked with one another. They didn’t know each other, but they both worked at the same Verizon call center for a few months (and they both found it a miserable experience, it seems). This has nothing to do with the book. I just thought it was interesting.
I don’t feel that I can review this book adequately. I read it a couple months ago, thought I reviewed it already, and tucked it away in my brain to not be thought about again. I’ve already forgotten most of what I thought and felt while reading it. Even the plot has kind of spread out in a thin layer of my memory, barely visible beneath subsequent layers of podcasts, TV shows, and daily life. It’s a disservice to this book – which I did thoroughly enjoy.
I can say that it’s told in alternating chapters from varying perspectives. The most prominent is a semi-autobiographical narrative about an author touring to promote his most recent novel: Hell of a Book. He’s dealing with a great deal of critical praise, pressure from his editor to work on his next book, and the ennui of drifting through airports, hotels, and book stores without having something to anchor him. He left his job at a call center for a major cell phone carrier to write full-time, and is quite successful. The Author has a young black kid following him on the tour, but he also has an overactive imagination and sometimes has trouble telling reality from fiction. These chapters are intercut by the story of a young black boy nicknamed “Soot” because of his dark skin tone. Soot’s parents are over-protective and have delayed having “the talk” with him. This talk being, of course, a discussion about policing in America and what that means for a young black kid. He also believes that, if he just tries hard enough, he can become invisible.
Soot’s story is heart-rending, and the Author’s story is aimless, but endearing.
Fundamentally, there’s a deeper layer to this book that’s worth exploring. My general feeling while reading it was that Mott was exploring the idea of what it means to be a black novelist in an age of Trayvon Martin, Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd. It felt like he didn’t want to write a “black book”, so decided to write about the pressure to write that kind of book rather than writing that specific kind of book. If that makes any sense.
Anyway. I liked it. It’s well worth reading, I think.
Dead Man’s Walk (4 stars)
Lonesome Dove is one of my favorite books, and I just discovered it last year. I talked a co-worker into reading it, and he also loved it. Pardon me for being 40 years late to the party – but it’s a damn good book.
Then I read Streets of Laredo and thought….well. I liked it, but felt that it was kind of missing some of the magic of its predecessor. But it was great in that it did precisely what McMurtry wanted to do with Lonesome Dove: undermine the doe-eyed mythologizing of the West. Call, ostensibly the hero, is old, slow, and arthritic. Pea Eye wants nothing more than to be at home with his family. Brookshire is a coward. The hero of Streets of Laredo is Lorena, who was a prostitute trying to piece her broken life together in Lonesome Dove.
Dead Man’s Walk, then, occupies a kind of weird liminal space between the two. If Lonesome Dove is the centerpiece, and Streets of Laredo is McMurtry really hammering his point home, what is Dead Man’s Walk, the story that begins the whole saga? It feels like kind of an after-thought. If Lonesome Dove is the unfulfilled promise of a mythologized West, one could be forgiven for thinking the first story in the series is setting up the mythology McMurtry later wants to tear down.
But, it doesn’t. Not really. It’s just the story of Call and Gus as young, inexperienced men, sprinkled with real world people and events from the period in time in which it is set. It feels so detached from Lonesome Dove that it was kind of hard to get into. It didn’t really even feel like the same story.
For all that, though, I still enjoyed it well enough. But it lacked the magic of Lonesome Dove and even Streets of Laredo.
Hemlock Island (3 stars)
This little novel kind of took me by surprise.
Laney Kilpatrick’s only real possession is her home on Hemlock Island, in Lake Superior. She got it in her divorce from Kit. And though she loves the home, she can’t afford it and is forced to rent it out to tourists, who have been breaking the rules. They’ve been lighting campfires, vandalizing the property, and leaving messes behind. Her most recent guests fled in horror after finding blood and claw marks in a closet. Laney shows up with her niece to investigate the property, and gets stranded there along with her ex-husband, former friend, and her former friend’s brother.
What follows is a kind of ghost story/paranormal haunting mystery that offers few chills, but was still fairly engaging.
I can’t really say why I generally liked the book. It’s in the realm of a popcorn movie. I wasn’t expecting great literature, just something light and enjoyable and easy. And that’s precisely what it was.