Paul Jaskunas, Hidden ****

On page 1, Maggie Wilson barely survives a violent assault. She accuses her husband, who goes to prison, but six years later another man confesses to the crime. Maggie spends the rest of the book trying to reconcile her memories with the apparent facts of the case.

I first read Hidden in 2005 when it came out in paperback, and I stand by everything I said in the four-star review I gave it then. I would add that the descriptions of the Indiana backroads are strong, and they complement Maggie's introspective nature. Overall, the book has a hushed tone, as if it's being told around a picnic table in the summer twilight. My only complaint is that Maggie and Nate's marital troubles seem to develop too quickly.

I ended my 2005 review by saying, "I look forward to Paul Jaskunas' next book." Alas, Jaskunas has yet to publish a second book.

Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy **** 1/2

Wondrous things do happen here, but they take place amidst great tranquility.

If I may use cinematic analogies to describes this lovely, odd, short book, it reads like a collaboration between Terence Malick (for framing the story with quiet beautiful natural context) and Jean Pierre Melville (for its objective distance and focus on routine) with a dash of Tarkovskian spirituality.

A rabbit skitters forward in the priest's garden and twitches a radish leaf with its nose before tearing it loose. Ears tilt as it hastily chews and settles over its paws.  

The story takes places in 1906 at a convent in upstate New York. Mariette is a 17-year-old postulant whose attractiveness and fervent piety inspire diverse reactions from the other Sisters of the Crucifixion, even before she starts to show signs of ecstatic contact with Christ.

Hansen maintains the meditative spirit of life in the convent even as events grow more "wondrous." He conveys the personalities of the nuns and their differing reactions to Mariette with very few words, using the same kinds of telling details as he does for the natural descriptions.

John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers ****

The Mapmakers is a history of cartography. It explains the technical innovations of mapmaking in the context of the contemporary worldviews and the adventures of discovery. It nicely balances concise scientific explanations with personal tales about the innovators to tell a compelling story of progress. The prose is classic technical writing: clear presentation that you never notice.

The book becomes less interesting once it reaches the 20th century. The advances are almost purely technological at that point, so the story loses the momentum and interest that came from the adventures of early explorers. The loss of narrative balance makes you notice the incompleteness of the technical explanations.

B. Catling, The Vorrh ***

The Vorrh is "easily the current century's first landmark work of fantasy" (says Alan Moore) and makes Terry Gilliam "realize how little imagination I have." The title refers to a vast, sentient, magical forest that sounds like the planet in Solaris, and the back cover promises a story that will "rearrange the molecules of your being." Cool and possibly difficult, right?

I'll grant that The Vorrh is imaginative and that it is chock-full of sensuous imagery. The author is particularly fond of ascribing concrete adjectives and verbs to abstract nouns.

[His mother] would come to say good night while he was in the bath...but she never stayed, and the nanny was always left to dry his cooling hope and dress it for sleep. (p 54)

One section that demonstrates Catling's strengths comes when a formerly blind character gains her sight. He describes how her perceptions changed, not entirely for the better. An interesting perspective comprised of distinctive imagery.

One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city's sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of the night... High above, the swallows turned into bats.

However, the individual scenes don't pay off in longer narrative threads. For example, one character is a Cyclops living under the care of robots under an abandoned house. (Robots made of Bakelite and filled with a milky fluid.) A mysterious cabal provides material for the robots to educate the boy... to what purpose? We never find out. Another character dispatches the robots, and the Cyclop's character arc has nothing to do with his unknown origins. The same concern applies to Peter Andrews and his bow made from the remains of the prophet Irrinipeste, the tribesman sent to intercept Andrews, and the Scottish foreman who oversees the mindless Limboia in their forestry.

The Vorrh is apparently the first book in an intended trilogy. Is it all just an elaborate origin story for the Cyclop's unborn baby?

Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers ***

Eli and Charlie Sisters are hired killers, headed to San Francisco and the gold country for their latest job. Eli, our narrator, is questioning his choice of profession and showing compassion for his slow, one-eyed horse Tub. His laconic, off-beat, and humorous musings set the tone for this pleasant Western story. 

Eli is most concerned with the question of what makes a man's life good. His vision of the perfect future is the quiet, orderly life of a shopkeeper; Charlie would like to become a rich, dissolute man like their employer the Commodore. Over the course of their travels, the Sisters brothers encounter a number of people who offer other potential models, such as their current target Hermann Warm who lifted himself up by his bootstraps using his own ingenuity. Eli's consideration of the various lifestyles provides the thematic underpinnings to the story.

Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World ****

The artist Harriet Burden conducts an experiment in perception: she recruits three male artists to present her work as their own, to see how the art world reacts to the work differently coming from a man. The experiment goes a bit awry when few people believe she is the true artist behind the masks.

The Blazing World deals with questions about personal identity. How much of our self-image is affected by gender norms? How do our family relationships change us? Why does our personal feeling of accomplishment depend on recognition from others? How do others' perspectives influence the way they feel about you?

This is a very smart book that makes a lot of subtle points. The premise is interesting. Most of the characters are intriguingly enigmatic; they come across differently depending on who is describing them. The story runs out of steam before the end, although the chapter with Harriet's death has a domestic tone that contrasts nicely with the earlier chapters.