Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flipout ***

According to Gary Shteyngart, The Nimrod Flipout is "the best work of literature to come out of Israel in the last five thousand years -- better than Leviticus and nearly as funny."

Keret reminds me of an Israeli George Saunders. He writes stories that are short, satirical, and off-kilter, with a funny narrative voice. They have a casual, tossed-off quality that works against them when they don't land. I thought that about half of the 30 stories worked. Many of the others seemed like preparatory sketches, especially when similar themes and characters recurred in adjacent stories.

Robert M. Martin, There are two errors in the the title of this book ***

The subtitle correctly characterizes this book as "A Sourcebook of Philosophical Puzzles, Problems, and Paradoxes." It includes a wide range of stories that illustrate philosophical issues, such as the Liar's Paradox, the Monty Hall problem, and runaway trollies. It would be a great resource in discussion forums, but alas was less interesting to read cover to cover. Frankly, I just didn't stop long enough between stories to really think about the issues. 

Herman Koch, The Dinner ****

The narrator of The Dinner starts out as a pleasantly cranky complainer with little patience for social conventions and jealousy of his politician brother. There's something going on with his 15-year-old son, that's clear from the beginning, but Paul is more concerned about making it through dinner without snapping at his brother's annoying habits.

As the story progresses, we learn more about the son's issue and about Paul's unusual personality. We're treated to interesting discussions about racism in film and the number of assholes killed during the Second World War. In other words, things escalate in a deliciously misanthropic fashion. I would have handled things a bit differently in the closing pages (I disagree with Paul's assessment at the end of Chapter 43), but the overall effect is solid.

The recommendation on the back cover from Gillian Flynn is fitting, because like Gone Girl, The Dinner surprises the reader with the full extent of the narrator's nastiness.

Simon Garfield, On the Map ***

The description on the inside flap of this Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks promises "a stimulating journey grounded in the idea that maps hold the key to what makes us human." However, it's really more of a miscellany on the theme of maps: the chapters are largely independent of each other, and are written in a human interest style that shies away from technical detail.

The book looks and feels great. A hardcover in trade paperback size, with a nicely designed cover and plenty of illustrations. It tells entertaining stories about treasure maps, illusory islands and mountain ranges, forgery, board games, and our developing sense of the globe. I just didn't find it all that informative. The clearest example is the chapter "What's the Good of Mercator?"It describes who Mercator was and mentions the existence of other projections, but doesn't really explain their relative merits.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go *** 1/2

Never Let Me Go is a perfectly constructed novel. Its plot and narrative voice exactly suit its themes. It tackles nothing less than the meaning of life. Objectively it deserves a better rating than I've given it, but Ishiguro's reserved tone held me at arm's length even as I recognized its appropriateness. I admire the book more than I enjoyed it.

The story puts a science-fiction gloss on a British coming of age story. It's about the things we "know and don't know" about our lives and how this uncertain state influences what we do. This theme is even reflected in that way our narrator Kathy tells her tale: Every chapter has at least one instance where Kathy refers to an event as if we readers knew the reference ("that evening we were sitting out in the ruined bus shelter"), then goes back in time to provide the context, then implies that the incident will have further repercussions later. We know and don't know what the event represents.

Full disclosure: I saw the film version of Never Let Me Go before reading the book -- or half-saw it, since it was on a seat-back screen halfway through a trans-Atlantic flight. So I knew more about where the story was going than a fresh reader would have.

Philip Conners, Fire Season ***

Fire Season is a short memoir of a summer Conners spent as a fire lookout in southern New Mexico. As usual with such books, it combines lyrical paeans to nature with scientific descriptions of fire behavior and historical interludes about government wilderness policy. Conners is especially interested in the issue of prescribed burns versus total suppression.

I appreciated the straightforwardness of Conner's prose -- not too many flights of fancy, even when describing sunset over the mountains. My favorite parts were the day-to-day details about the job:

We measure humidity with a nifty tool called a sling psychrometer. It holds two thermometers, side by side, in a metal casing on the end of a chain. One of the thermometers has a small sleeve over the bulb, which is dipped in water. Spun by the chain in the shade of a tree, the thermometers offer two different air temperatures, one wet, one dry.

He is less skilled at navigational descriptions. Despite many passages describing the orientation of his lookout tower, I never got a good sense of the layout of the wilderness area.

 

The Paris Review, Object Lessons ** 1/2

This collection of stories from The Paris Review "is intended for readers who are not (or are no longer) in the habit of reading short stories. We hope these object lessons will remind them how varied the form can be." Although it is surprising for a book with authors as diverse as Lydia Davis and Evan S. Connell, the stories all share a certain je ne sais quoi of literariness that makes them seem not varied at all. Is it because of the editorial standards of The Paris Review? Or because the stories were chosen by writers? For whatever reason, most of the selections favor style and character sketches over narrative resolution.