Rachel Cusk, Outline ***

Outline recounts ten conversations that the narrator has during a visit to Athens to teach a summer writing course. We learn very little about the narrator herself -- by design, as we learn from the title and from one interlocutor's insight:

While he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her... a sense of who she now was.

Each chapter feels like a (very successful) writing exercise, with the author conveying ideas in an oblique fashion. Most of the conversations concern relationships between husbands and wives, or rather ex-husbands and ex-wives, and how those relationships affect a person's understanding of life.

I started Outline expecting monologues from a variety of characters, each in their own distinctive voice. However, the narrator describes most of the dialogue in the third person, which gives all the characters an unfortunate sameness.

John McWhorter, The Language Hoax *** 1/2

This book is a manifesto. I will oppose... the idea that people's languages channel the way they think and perceive the world. ... The idea that grammar channels people into thinking of time as cyclical is catnip.

Catnip indeed. My original motivation for studying linguistics was the tantalizing possibility that I could glean secrets about people's world views from the way they speak, and I've been an avid reader of books purporting to rehabilitate the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The Language Hoax presents a convincing case that the tantalizing possibility is false. A person's language does indeed influence his or her thinking to some degree in experimental settings, but not in any interesting way.

I appreciate how McWhorter highlights the fact that linguistics reveals the diversity of languages in ways that are interesting in and of themselves. I also liked his close reading of a randomly overheard English sentence ("Dey try to cook it too fast, I'm-a be eatin' some pink meat!"). I wasn't as happy about the amount of time he spent railing against the well-intentioned paternalism inherent in much of popular Whorfianism: it's a good point, but it's independent of the question of the truth. 

Benjamin Markovitz, You Don't Have to Live Like This ** 1/2

A group of friends who met at Yale, led by a friend with political ambitions, try to single-handedly gentrify the outskirts of Detroit. Their naive idealism brings them into conflict with the existing residents, because neither side really understands where the other is coming from.

Everything about the book cover -- its aerial photo of Detroit, the quotes from the Washington Post and Literary Review, the tone of the author's bio -- promises a sardonic but nuanced examination of class conflict and inner-city life. ("The Wire scripted by J.M. Coetzee," says The Independent.) But the book does not fulfill this promise. Once every fifty pages or so there's an interesting insight about how different people experience life differently, but the majority of the story is like our narrator Greg Marnier: aimless, passive, and superficial. Almost all of the action happens in the last couple of chapters.

It's a squandered opportunity, because the setup offers a wealth of material.

Rachel Kushner, The Strange Case of Rachel K ****

A literary amuse-bouche: three impressionistic sketches from Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers. Kushner has a mesmerizing prose style, and these short pieces are a wonderful way to appreciate it.

China Miéville, The City and The City ****

Yes, another China Miéville book so soon. I enjoyed his story collection Three Moments of an Explosion enough to send me almost immediately to one of his novels.

The City and The City is fundamentally a noir-esque detective novel. The narrator is a detective who catches a murder case involving a young woman who was studying at a controversial archeological dig. His investigation leads him into dangerous subcultures and suggests larger forces at work. As I say, a detective novel.

The fantasy element comes with the locale. The detective lives in the (Eastern European?) city of Besźel; the murder victim came from the city of Ul Qoma. Besźel and Ul Qoma are neighboring cities with distinct clashing cultures, but they happen to occupy the same physical space. Citizens of each municipality learn to "unsee" everything about the other municipality. Our hero has to solve the case without "breaching" the boundary between the city and the city.

It's a great concept, impressively pulled off. It was tough going early on as I tried to imagine the logistics of unseeing, but I eventually settled into it and got engaged with the plot. The book's imitation of the detective genre extends to the resolution: our narrator spouts a bit too much exposition when he faces off against the perpetrators.

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"