Elliott Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel *****

The blade crunched going in and somehow I'd never thought much one way or the other about bones. You think of shoving a knife into somebody and the picture is all meat and steel, with no bones.

You think of a noir crime novel from 1953 and the picture is all urban and cynical, with no outdoors or conscience. The lovers in Black Wings Has My Angel match the profile of the genre – he's an escaped ex-con, she's a classy escort disguised as a ten-dollar tramp, and they have a plan for an elaborate heist – but they have more complex characters than you expect in a pulp novel. Tim questions his own compulsions, loves the freedom of the Colorado mountains, and retains hope for the future. Virginia may or may not be looking to double-cross Tim, but she enthusiastically supports him.

The story has plenty of the traditional pleasures of the genre, such as stylized dialogue, the slow revelation of the planned caper, and uncertainty about Virginia's motivations. It also has lovely sequences about camping, the satisfaction of a job well done, differences between the South and the West, and differences of opinion regarding what constitutes the good life. Most noir novels (and films) have a fatalistic worldview, but this one still believes that joy is possible.

Ben Macintyre, Agent Sonya ***

Ben Macintyre writes non-fiction spy stories for general audiences; I previously read The Spy and the Traitor.  He has a talent for building a compelling story, injecting the right amount of context and psychological supposition into the facts of the narrative. However, he covers so broad a territory in Agent Sonya that it undermines the inherent drama.

Agent Sonya is the true story of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew who spent a lifetime spying for the Soviet Union. She was recruited as a young (and pregnant) wife in 1930s Shanghai and helped establish spy networks in the Far East, Switzerland, and Britain. Near the end of the Second World War, she was a valuable conduit for intelligence about the British atomic weapons program. She accomplished all of her espionage while raising three children (from three different fathers) and maintaining her cover as a housewife. She ended her career in East Germany as an author of young adult books.

Macintyre efficiently sets the scene for each episode, situating Ursula's adventures in the larger history. For example, he paints a vivid picture of Shanghai during the period of international concessions. But there is just too much material: not only 25 years of clandestine activity from Ursula, but multiple hotbeds of international intrigue (pre-revolutionary China, Japanese-occupied Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War, WWII-era Switzerland, early Cold War Britain) and contact with other infamous and colorful characters. Nearly every chapter includes a story that would benefit from closer attention: a plan to assassinate Hitler, near exposure by a jealous nanny, friendship with the Nazi arms dealer next door in Manchuria. 

It is surprising that Ursula avoids capture for so long given that her father and brother were well-known public communist sympathizers and her first husband a convicted Soviet agent. She also works closely with several different people introduced with claims of importance such as "Alexander Allan Foote is one of the most important, but also one of the most enduringly mysterious, figures in modern espionage history" (p 149). So many important and obvious spies in her orbit!

Macintyre is a strong writer of narrative but less skilled at developing characters. Ursula comes across as cold-blooded in pursuit of her ideals, but she also has loving and sexual relationships with several of her colleagues. She seems drawn to unstable men. I would have liked a better sense of Ursula's personality. (I had this same comment/complaint about The Spy and the Traitor.)

Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies *** 1/2

 Ayad Akhtar is best known as a playwright, so it should come as no surprise that the best parts of this "novel" come in the dialogue. Akhtar has Big Ideas to convey about the nature of the American Dream, for immigrants and Muslims in particular, and he puts those ideas into the mouths of his conflicted characters. His father, his mother, his college professor, his benefactor: they all have distinct world views that flow from a unique insight. Those insights are mostly thought-provoking and usually arise naturally based on the action of the story. However, the characters (and their Weltanschauungen) don't interact with each other, making the overall book feel disjointed.

I put the word "novel" in quotes because the book takes the form of a lightly(?) fictionalized memoir or essay collection. It believe Ahktar could take one more pass over the material and integrate it into an awesome play.

One other thing: While Ahktar generally creates rounded characters, he presents himself with a less critical eye. He comes across as a passive character shaped by others' ideas, which seems disingenuous. He mentions several times that people find his plays controversial and problematic, but willfully ignores any investigation of why that might be.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear ** 1/2

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the true story of a town (Grafton, New Hampshire) taken over by libertarians and how an increasingly aggressive bear population took advantage of the resulting lack of community services.

At least that's what I thought the book was going to be about. In fact, it's a collection of anecdotes about the eccentric denizens of Grafton and their crazy schemes. Only a handful of the folks who flock to Grafton are true libertarians; many of them are the kinds of loners, cultists, survivalists, and extremists you would expect to find in comparably small communities in Alaska or anywhere at the edge of civilization. For example, one chapter starts by introducing Doughnut Lady, who feeds doughnuts to the local bears, but ends up telling the story of Goat Man, whose 252 goats took over his property. In another chapter, the author speculates about whether the townsfolk (and/or the increasingly aggressive bears) are suffering from toxoplasmosis.

In 2004, a small group of libertarians launched the Free Town Project. They planned to take over Grafton and essentially eliminate its government. I have always thought that libertarianism is an intriguing concept that quickly turns problematic in practice, so I wanted to find out how this social experiment went. However, the Free Towners did not take over Grafton; they simply joined the already tax-averse population of the town and made lots of speeches at town council meetings. As the author's own research shows, it was not a qualitative change in the town's history.

The same goes for the bears. The increase in human-bear interactions is shown as the inevitable consequence of long-standing attitudes about wildlife and government funding.

There is only one chapter that (semi-)seriously looks at the libertarian project and compares Grafton (unfavorably) to its nearest neighbor Canaan in terms of its tax burden and quality of life. Another short section points out that "today's New Hampshire bruins are so different from their forebears of just five hundred years ago that they might be mistaken for another species." But these honest attempts to grapple with the issues get drowned out by the author's desire to be clever, exemplified by the title of the book and the alliterative chapter titles.

William Price Fox, Dixiana Moon *****

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I read a lot of this type of "madcap" book about colorful misfits roaming the American byways; Tom Robbins is perhaps the king of the form. Dixiana Moon was my favorite of them, and it retains its charm for me even after the others have lost their appeal. 

The difference is in its narrator. My previous review remarks on Joe Mahaffey's level of enthusiasm, which is definitely his most endearing quality. Joe also appreciates fine craftmanship: he works in the product packaging industry and often comments on the great color registration or heat sealing on products he comes across: 

A.J. was from Louisiana. He had a '62 Cadillac pulling a '69 Airstream and lived with two black Labradors and four cats. His dogs and cats were eating dry kibble. He bought it in fifty-pound bags. Good, heavy-duty, triple-ply bag with a built-in tear-string. World Wide Paper had some board-of-directors deal on this business and no one even tries to compete.

But Joe is also a regular middle-class Northerner, something of a straight man, leaving the true wackiness to other characters. This trait makes him easy to identify with even though his personality is completely different from mine.

During this reading, I noticed how consistent the book was in addressing its theme of optimism in the face of the end of an era. The age of the traveling salesman is almost over, television is replacing the circus and tent revivals, and packaging is becoming cheaper, but the characters don't spend time lamenting their fate:

The old peddlers were dying off. Maybe we were already dead. But the tent circus was dead, too. And the circus-and-religion combination wasn't going to cut it either. But Buck wasn't worried. Loretta wasn't worried. They both knew that down the road was something new. Something bigger and wilder and better, with more money and more fun and more everything of everything.