I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (SEPTEMBER 2024 EDITION)

[defrog]

Momentum arrested!

Ah well.

Impossible Things by Connie Willis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I generally enjoy Connie Willis’ novels, so when I came across this collection of novellas and short stories (all initially published between 1988 and 1992), I was keen to give it a go. And it’s a pretty diverse set of stories that cover a lot of the usual bases for Willis – bureaucratic chaos, science nerds, politically correct dystopias, Shakespeare conspiracy theories and comedy of errors and screwball comedies. Sometimes all in one story.

It would take more time and space than I have to go through each story, and in any case I enjoyed most of them. I will say the opener, “The Last Of The Winnebagos”, is the most difficult story in the bunch, and a daring one to put at the front – partly because of the depressing background premise (a plague has killed all the dogs), and partly because Willis opts to shift to flashbacks with no warning whatsoever, which keeps you on your toes but slows down what is otherwise very good and accessible prose.

If you can get through that, the rest of the collection is more or less a breeze. “Chance” (about a woman returning to her college alma mater and being haunted by her past) is perhaps the weakest and bleakest story here, and “Jack” (a vampire story set during the London Blitz) is a bit too predictable. And for some of these, it helps if you love gabby screwball comedy with lots of running gags as much as Willis does (which I do). Anyway, I enjoyed it, and will be reading more Willis in future.


Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like Graham Greene’s novels more often than not, but despite this being one of his classic titles, I’ve tended to stay away from it, mainly because I had the impression it was about teenage gangs, which is a subgenre that doesn’t interest me as much as the spies, hit men and whiskey priests Greene often writes about. Still, I figured I’d read it one day, and it turns out the only teenage gangster in it is the sociopathic anti-hero, Pinkie Brown, who has just taken over a small gang in Brighton from his predecessor Kite, who was killed by a hitman after newspaper reporter Charles Hale exposed his illegal slot machine racket.

The story opens with Pinkie’s gang killing Hale, who is in Brighton distributing prize cards for a newspaper contest. While Hale’s death is ruled a heart attack at the inquest, Pinkie discovers that teenage waitress Rose unknowingly has information that can blow his alibi. Meanwhile, boisterous pub entertainer Ida – who was with Hale right before he disappeared – believes he was murdered and decides to investigate herself. The plot follows Pinkie’s increasingly paranoid attempts to cover up the murder (which includes pretending to romance Rose to prevent her from talking to the police), whilst also dealing with the fact that Colleoni, the boss of a rival gang (whose success Pinkie is jealous of) wants to take over all rackets in Brighton.

This was Greene’s first novel to explicitly explore themes related to his Catholic faith regarding the nature of sin and morality – both Pinkie and Rose are Catholics, although Pinkie mainly sees it as another system he can game. Their beliefs in the nature of Good vs Evil – and Pinkie’s cruel misanthropy – is pitted against Ida, who is driven by a more secular, humanistic and equally strong morality of Right vs Wrong. For me, the only real problem is why a gang of older, experienced mobsters would allow an unbalanced 17-year-old sociopath to run their gang in the first place. On the other hand, I love the twist of Ida being the “hero” of the story, which drives Pinkie nuts because he can’t for the life of him understand what she wants or how she fits into all this. Bits of it have certainly aged poorly, but overall it’s a solid entry in Greene’s work.

View all my reviews

So you wanna be a gangsta,

This is dF