Mike O'Connor, Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe ****

When Mike O'Conner was a kid, his family would often sneak away from their home in the middle of the night for reasons that he and his sister never understood. The parents would tell them that their trip to Mexico was an adventure and golden opportunity, but the kids knew it was something else.

I was fascinated by the mundane details of this memoir of life on the run from a child's point of view, and I was kept guessing about the nature of the family's crimes -- even though I was reading the book for the second time. (I'd forgotten how it turns out! Because you know what? It doesn't really matter!) The final section, which solves the mystery and tells the parents' story, is anti-climactic and written in rather flat prose.

Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe would make a great double feature with Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, another memoir about growing up with problematic parents who tell their kids stories to justify their odd behavior.

China Miéville, Three Moments of an Explosion ****

I read Perdido Street Station many years ago and still remember how impressed I was by Miéville's world-building. I picked up Three Moments of an Explosion to see how he might apply that skill in short bursts in a story collection.

As varied as they are, the stories all take place in variations on our own world. Nonetheless, Miéville's sociological acuity shines though. It often takes a while before the fantastical element of the story kicks in, by which time I was fully invested in the setting and character psychology. His prose is far more artful than is typical for the science fiction and fantasy genres. The therapeutic jargon in "Dreaded Outcome," the island life in "In the Slopes," the romantic getaway in "Säcken": they're all totally convincing and wouldn't be out of place in a more literary setting.

I wasn't a fan of every story –– has that ever happened? –– but I really enjoyed a majority of them, and the book has an impressive range.

There are a couple of big bookshops in town which stock a bunch of [specialist magazines]... Me and Mom would stand together and pick up some publication, the only rule being that it had to be about something neither of us had any interest in or knowledge of. ... Within seconds of browsing we were learning the jargon and terminology, we had a sense of the big controversies, the pressing issues, even the micropolitics of a hobby. ... I'd become a firm supporter of one side or other in a debate the existence of which I'd had no clue of seconds before.  –– "The Bastard Prompt"

Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances ***

I really like the first section of this novel, but it starts to lose me about a third of the way through. The narrator, a psychiatrist named Leo Liebenstein, believes his wife has been replaced by a simulacrum, and he sets out to find his real wife. He is also looking for one of his patients, who believes himself to be a secret agent able to control the weather.

When Leo is dealing with his wife (or her simulacrum), the story has a strong emotional core under Leo's psychosis. When he ties his wife's disappearance to meteorology and heads off to Argentina, it is far less grounded and loses my interest. I think it was a mistake to introduce two crazy people and two largely distinct delusions.

In other words, I like Atmospheric Disturbances to the extent that it is an experimental novel "about the mysterious nature of human relationships," and I'm disappointed in it to the extent that it wanders away from that central theme.

Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question *** 1/2

Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and the question he asks is, "Does the world embody beautiful ideas?" Not surprisingly for a physicist, his answer is "a resounding Yes!"

The title and the theme of this "meditation" suggest a New Age-y approach, and the cover has a blurb from Deepak Chopra to complete the impression. However, Wilczek's hard science background keeps his speculations grounded in fact. The book discusses Pythagoras, Plato, Newton, and Maxwell before plunging into his specialty of quantum theory. His aesthetics for theories comes down to one principle above all: symmetry.

I wasn't particularly captured by Wilczek's question nor his attempts to answer it. However, I was very intrigued with his unconventional (idiosyncratic?) presentation of the theories of gravity and electromagnetism. I feel like I understand them in a new way, and that I even made progress toward conceptualizing the crazy world of quantum theory. It's all fluids!

Halldór Laxness, Independent People **** 1/2

To prolong the glow of our recent trip to Iceland, I reread Halldór Laxness' masterpiece Independent People. Perhaps I was inspired by seeing the book in the window of every book shop and souvenir stand in the country?

Independent People tells the story of Bjartur of Summerhouses, a sheep farmer living in a turf-roofed croft in the Icelandic highlands. His sole goal is to not be in debt to anyone, neither financial debt nor social indebtedness. It's an admirable goal, but it makes Bjartur difficult to get along with, especially for his wives and children.

Most of Independent People takes place at Bjartur's croft. We learn a lot about the sheep and about the harsh, beautiful moors that form his land. The outside world intervenes only rarely until near the end. Laxness' prose is sardonic and lovely. There are a few vivid chapters that I'll not forget: the night of terror that Bjartur's first wife Rosa spends alone in the croft, Bjartur's nearly fatal search for a missing ewe, the crofters discussing the stroke of good fortune provided by World War I. The relationship between Bjartur and his (foster) daughter Asta Sóllilja is well drawn and even heartwarming.

The book loses some of its power when it expands its borders in the final 50 pages or so. On the one hand, introducing the politics of wider Iceland helps put Bjartur's struggles into perspective, but at the expense of the focus on character and setting. It also felt a little rushed to me; I'd adjusted to the pace of Bjartur's life.

Michael Steinberg, The Fiction of a Thinkable World ***

The Fiction of a Thinkable World argues that Western philosophy and institutions presuppose a false picture of people as autonomous thinking subjects confronting stimuli that is external to the self. In fact, our conscious thinking is not independent from, but rather continuous with, our subconscious and social actions. However, modern capitalist society depends on the myth of independent autonomous individuals –– in economics, in the voting booth, in the marketplace –– and our everyday experience therefore reinforces the illusion of an integrated self.

The author takes a different approach to denying the mind/body distinction. The question is not whether thoughts are any more than brain states, but whether abstract thought is in any way distinct from the subconscious activities of our bodies. He also shows how deeply engrained individualism is in modern society, and some of the ways it is destructive to our well-being.

Unfortunately, though, he doesn't even attempt to describe an alternative way of thinking/acting. A couple of times he says that other social models existed before Western capitalism bowled them over, but he doesn't describe them beyond some vague hand-waving in the directions of Taoism. I was left with a compelling critique but nowhere to go with it.

Sjón, From the Mouth of the Whale ** 1/2

Not surprisingly, bookstores in Iceland promote Halldór Laxness and various Icelandic crime writers. I've read several Laxness books and wasn't interested in the crime genre, so I went for a book by Sjón, the Icelandic novelist, poet, and playwright.

As expected from a book by a poet, From the Mouth of the Whale is stronger in its imagery than its plot. The narrator is Jónas Palmason, a self-taught healer in the 17th century. His talent for curing "female maladies" and his obsession with examining dead ravens make him an outcast, suspected of witchcraft. He is banished to a deserted island off the coast, where he considers man's origins and his place in the natural world.

From the Mouth of the Whale has some striking passages, especially in its vivid depictions of the world from Adam's perspective, but it completely lacks narrative drive. Maybe I should have tried one of the crime novelists.