Here are some of the books the author has recently read (and a few movies, too). Feel free to quibble with the opinions, but please keep it clean.
- Micro-Review #157: Beartown
by Fredrik Backman This isn’t the best hockey novel ever written (that title of course goes to BODYCHECK, by Steven Owad, ha), but it’s a close second. A crime in a small, hockey-mad town in Sweden sets the locals on edge and pits the residents against one another. The premise sounds recycled, but this first book in Backman’s wildly successful trilogy delivers on many levels. A hockey ethos runs through the Beartown inhabitants like a potentially fatal current. The related human emotion and folly transcend anything you think you might know about sports.
Backman’s narration in this novel is at times overwrought and a tad cheesy, but a certain emotional truth underpins everything and more than makes up for it. The only real quibble: the almost-flawless English translation repeatedly refers to defensemen as “backs.” Couldn’t they have found a hockey person to go through this before publishing it? I would’ve done it for free.
- Micro-Review #156: You Like It Darker
by Stephen King People keep gifting me Stephen King books, and I keep feeling obligated to read them. In this case, I’m glad I did, even if the cover is cheese of the moldiest variety. This collection of short stories disposes of King’s slow-build storytelling style and gets straight to the point. The tales range from short to novella length, and from stark and simple to subtly intriguing. Some have meaty themes and others are just cool and surprising, no thematic theorizing required. Most of these are a joy to read. They’re also an indicator that King, after all these years, still absolutely loves to create fiction.
- Micro-Review #155: The Every
by Dave Eggers This is my least-favorite novel by one of my most-favorite authors. It’s a near-future tale about a woman striving to bring down an all-powerful Google/Meta/Nvidia company that controls just about everything that everyone everywhere does.
Our main character’s quest is simple: get a job at the Every and then kill the company from the inside. The way this plays out is at times satirical and at times dry. Some sections are hilarious; others are conflict-free compendia of the evils of social networks and smartphone reliance. The hero, Delaney, takes few active steps to do what she sets out to do. Her journey and conflict come across as mechanical window dressing for lengthy authorial criticism of over-reliance on social engineering through free-market techno-development. The ideas are brilliant. The dystopia is palpable. It’s an important book, but at times it just doesn’t feel like a novel.
- Micro-Review #154: Emilia Perez
Directed by Jacques Audiard Nominated for a whopping 13 Oscars, this Spanish-language musical about a transitioning Mexican narco-boss has as many haters as it has supporters. Is it a good movie? Sort of. It’s watchable and engaging, but it fails on an essential level. The film’s compelling premise—a struggle to transition—is weighed down by pervasive cognitive dissonance. A person seeking inner peace? Great. I’m there. A ruthless drug lord seeking inner peace? Less I could not care.
The request to suspend morality is awkwardly made. There’s plenty of pathos vis-à-vis the legions of murdered and disappeared drug-war innocents (by far the film’s most powerful element), but does that, in itself, turn Emilia into a good person? And if we’re not supposed to get behind Emilia, then why are we spending so much time on her journey? (Spoiler alert: the ending tries to address this question, but it makes the whole trip kind of pointless.)
The acting is strong, and on a mundane, thriller level, the story grabs. Most of the musical numbers might be good, but the need to read subtitles during song-and-dance routines kills some of the intended effect (at least for musically awkward souls like me). The story does stir emotion at times, but not often enough—and it doesn’t change the big, overstretched fact that our hero goes from psycho killer to principled social crusader—as if transitioning automatically makes a bad person good. The film deserves an Oscar in the category of Biting off More Than Can Be Chewed.
- Micro-Review #153: A Complete Unknown
Directed by James Mangold Eight Oscar nominations suggest this film is a juggernaut. It kind of is—but only if you’re a fan of Bob Dylan’s music and of the village folk scene in the 1960s. The story follows a young Bobby Zimmerman’s rise from Midwestern Woodie Guthrie fanboy to the headliner at the Newport Folk Festival. The facts of young Bobby’s life aren’t all that interesting (possibly because he refuses to talk about himself), and, as Joan Baez says to him, he’s “kind of an asshole” throughout the film.
Perhaps because of the lack of gripping source material, director James Mangold gives us more music than story—a long string of Dylan’s greatest early hits, all capably sung by Timothee Chalamet. Fans of Dylan will love this. Fans of the era will delight in the portrayals of Baez, Pete Seeger and others. Non-fans might decide Mangold gives us 140 minutes of painting lipstick on a pig. I belong to the former group. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing.
