Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War ** 1/2

The first truly weak entry in the Aubrey/Maturin series finds our two heroes sailing on other people's ships as spectators to real-life sea battles from the War of 1812. Between voyages we get unconvincing and uninspiring espionage in Boston. O'Brien's unique writing style is intact, and many of the usual elements are there, but the lack of agency from Jack Aubrey leaves the book feeling tired. Disappointing.

P.S. The War of 1812 ended up as a leitmotif of my reading this year, its bicentennial. I started with War and Peace in January, read Pierre Berton's history of the Canadian border war, and now The Fortune of War.

Benjamin Hale, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore ***

This ambitious novel is narrated by the world's first chimpanzee to develop the power of speech. Bruno doesn't just learn to speak, he develops a Nabokovian love for metaphor and colorful language. He narrates his life story with the verve of a raconteur.

My reference to Nabokov is not incidental. The early chapters of the book show the clear influence of Lolita: An eloquent murderer telling his story from prison; illicit sexual attraction; justifications of brutish behavior; a love of wordplay. Bruno also introduces many interesting thoughts about the role of language in human consciousness and how our experience of the world would be different without it.

The tone of the story shifts several times over the course of the long novel. Later sections are more straightforwardly comic, less Nabokov than John Kennedy O'Toole or Alexander Theroux.

Despite being littered with stray insights and clever turns of phrase, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore fell short of being the "brilliant, unruly brute of a book" promised to me by the cover. Too often I found myself tripping over an inability to suspend my disbelief. Bruno's narration is chock-full of literary and cultural references, right next to passages where he describes everyday activities that he doesn't comprehend, like riding in an elevator. Like, say, Forrest Gump where Forrest's apparent level of intelligence changes to fit the situation, Bruno's cultural sophistication is unbelievable and widely variable.