Book Review: Dexter in the Dark (2007)

This is actually a review of the first three books in Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series: Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and  Dexter in the Dark. In regard to their similarity to the Showtime series based on the character, the first season is loosely based on the first novel, but other than that the books and show are separate story lines with distinct canons. Is one better than the other? Without a doubt, I can easily say I prefer the TV show. The writers masterfully create a suspenseful plot that constantly builds towards a climax. But, in each of the novels that I've read, I'll find myself around 2/3 of the way through without feeling much tension at all, wondering how Lindsay is possibly going to be able to write a complete story in the remain pages. I'm frankly quite amazed at how little can happen over the course of 300 pages (now approaching 1000 pages after 3 novels).

Another difference is the character of Dexter. Though largely similar in both media, there are big differences. While Showtime Dexter seems to grow more human-like with each season, Lindsay's Dexter mostly retains his psychopathy. [Note: Let us recall that a psychopath is not "a crazy person who hurts people without remorse." Rather, a psychopath's defining characteristic is a diminished capacity to feel emotion and to empathize with others.] TV Dexter treats foster father Harry as his main guide and companion while book Dexter has a greater emphasis on the "Dark Passenger." The latter becomes a central problem in Dexter in the Dark, as the Dark Passenger leaves Dexter, essentially robbing him of his essence and making him seem rather emasculated. And in taking away that essence, Lindsay took away what is appealing about Dexter. It is reminiscent of a piece I read in Entertainment Weekly, which criticized some cop show I don't remember the name of because the main character was perhaps too flawed and not all that good at his job. The author asked the question, "Would we be as interested in a show like Breaking Bad if it was about the 6th best meth cook in Albuquerque?" Without the Dark Passenger, Dexter loses what makes him interesting. But more than that, it makes the Dexter the man simply a conduit through which the Dark Passenger operates; it seems that the title character should be about the demon rather than the possessed.

Not at all unlike the TV show, Dexter's foster sister Deborah is superbly irritating, even more so. When every one of her sentences is laden with profanity, tension is lost because at no point does she seem more excitable than any other. It is all but impossible to feel any built up tension if there is no where to build it from.

Character development in the novels also is fairly weak. While the show allows us to see the supporting characters in scenes absent Dexter, I don't recall this occurring in any of the books. We lose the richness they offer to the Dexter world and they become little greater than extras.

As such, I cannot recommend Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series, even to those who are fans of the show. It strangely feels like one is reading a fan-fiction, one by the time you reach the end feel that it is not about the "real" Dexter.

Book Review: East is East (1990) by T.C. Boyle

This is the final review in the "Books About Asian Women" series. These are the previous entries: Memoirs of a Geisha, The Joy Luck Club, and Shanghai Girls.

Although East is East was meant to be my final review in the books about Asian women series, it's not really about Asian women. Rather, it is about a half-Japanese, half-American sailor named Hiro who, in attempt to escape a Japanese society that won't accept him, jumps ship for the expected greener pastures of America. He instead finds himself a fugitive on an island off the coast of Georgia, which is the location of a writer's and artist's retreat. His attempt to survive and escape from the island is probably the funniest and most entertaining part of this novel. One part that was laugh out loud funny to me is when he goes into a convenience store and, after making his purchase, bows and says obscenities, thinking it to be polite, because of what he saw in a Clint Eastwood movie. As well, he is able to stay at a wealthy, elderly woman's home because she mistakes him for a composer that she saw in Atlanta. Unfortunately, these are the best parts about this novel.

Later, he is helped by one of the writers, a mid-twenties woman who is dating the son of the retreat owner. She leaves him food and offers to let him stay in her writer's cabin. However, her intentions are not as pure as they seem. She has been having writer's block and is hoping her experience with Hiro can help her along her way to win the Pulitzer; in fact, when she thinks he has left her, she says "to hell with him." She is also quite childish in her envy of a former classmate who has been much more successful in the writing game than she. "All she writes about is sex!" she says. And perhaps this is unfair of me, but I can't help but feel like her experience must reflect that of the author, T.C. Boyle. Is it a sign that you don't really have a story that you're itching to tell if one of your main characters is a writer who is struggling to find something to write about?

The novel largely revolves around the struggle of these two; we aren't really brought into the struggles and desires of the surrounding characters. When we are, though, it is not central to the plot. Thus, the only character I feel any sympathy for is Hiro, making at least half the book something I don't care about. And when the reader does get to follow him, it seems like just one long chain of suffering and fighting to survive. It was not very enjoyable to read; if not for my resolve to finish it wouldn't have been. It has no redeeming value in terms of history or culture that the previous novels in the series do. If it does have a side benefit somewhere, it might be in the vocabulary one picks up. It was as if the author had a heart-felt need to prove himself through his vocabulary. But I feel like I can safely make the recommendation to skip East is East.

Book Review: Shanghai Girls (2009)

 Shanghai Girls is a novel about two sisters living in Shanghai at its pre-WWII peak, working as model girls for an ad painter. They are just becoming adults, and are stuck between the cosmopolitan lifestyle of modern Shanghai and the customs of their parents. Similar to the stories of the mothers in The Joy Luck Club, turmoil strikes and they are forced to make their way as immigrants to the United States, or more specifically, San Francisco. However, this book goes much deeper into the Chinese immigration experience and is a better story for it. Indeed, the sense of history Lisa See provides the reader is the most charming part about the novel. We feel the struggle and pain of the characters, who have to go through hell just to live in a land where they are treated perpetually as foreigners and with suspicion. They have to live cautiously as not to be accused of being Mao sympathizers. I am ignorant of the factual history that Chinese immigrants of this period faced, but if Ms. See's fiction could be considered accurate then it is masterfully told. BUT, and this is a big "but" for it is all-caps, the novel's non-ending left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I can hardly recommend it or even suggest it without placing this large caveat on it. It was as if the author felt like the story was getting long enough and just chose to end it. If the condition of literary blue balls exists, then this novel surely causes it. Needless to say, I felt quite a sense of let down with the author. I have followed her for 300 plus pages, forsaking all other reading materials to read her story. Why would she sell herself short and call this a finished work? Thus, if I can summarize this work, it is an interesting and graphic dramatization of the Shanghai of the period and the Chinese immigrant experience. It has hiccups with predictable circumstances that try to be passed off as dramatic revelations and issues with some slow sections that don't contribute to the overall plot and test the reader's attention. The non-ending cannot be merely brushed off as something to let the reader fill in the blanks. There is just too much left untold. It is difficult to recommend as a novel, and I need to do my own research before being able to pass it off as an educational tool if one wishes to learn about the period.

Book Review: The Joy Luck Club (1989)

The Joy Luck Club is an inter-generational novel about four mothers who grew up in China and emigrated to San Francisco and their daughters. Every chapter is told in the first person perspective of one of these eight women, each one getting two chapters; the first set are the mothers' experiences in China, the next are the childhood experiences of the daughters growing up as the children of immigrants, then those children as adults, and finally the recent experiences of the mothers, along with further details of their lives since being in China. Being such, it reads more like a set of independent short stories rather than a cohesive novel. A further difficulty is that the experiences of the daughters are so similar (more so when they are adults than as kids, the latter of which are much more entertaining to read) that I had trouble keeping them straight and they became more of a homogeneous blob of information rather than unique stories. But this apparent blemish can actually be turned into an advantage, which I will explain. It is the stories of the mothers that make The Joy Luck Club worthwhile. The reader is told of stories of one mother who lived in an impoverished village but made local women feel like trendy socialites by hosting potluck gatherings where they would play mahjong. Such comforts weren't to last, however, because this village was soon to be encountered by the invading Japanese. We witness the hardship of this mother who had to carry by hand everything that was precious to her, including her twin infant daughters. Another one of these mothers faced the difficulties of an arranged marriage and gives a humorous account of how she dealt with it. And another tells the story of how she came to live with her mother who was one of the many wives of a well-to-do man. It was stories like these that I was looking for when I began my novels about Asian women binge. The advantage I mentioned is that these auxiliary stories about their daughters could imaginably be skipped over without losing much of the overall flavor of the book. Thus, if one is interested in the subject, I would highly recommend the chapters pertaining to the elder generation with the advice that the cost of skipping the middle chapters is quite low.

Book Review: Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)

Chicken Man goes on a "books about Asian women" binge. First is Memoirs of a Geisha. Prepare yourself for more.
Note: In recent years it has been fairly rare that I take the time to read fiction. This is because reading tends to be a time-intensive process and I demand to come away with something (most often new knowledge about some subject of interest). Perhaps unjustly, I have taken modern fiction to largely be for purposes of entertainment and without the benefit of learning much of anything. Film seems to be a superior substitute if only for the benefit of taking less time to enjoy. Hence it is rare that I would recommend a novel to someone. Please take that for what it's worth.

What truly struck me about Arthur Golden's novel is the sheer amount of detail the reader experiences through the eyes of the heroine, Sayuri (who is called Chiyo as a child). She is able to weave a tapestry of similies and metaphors as if her words can create nature as well as Bob Ross' brush. It's almost as if her ability to do so alone makes Memoirs of a Geisha worth reading; Mr. Golden is like a poet in his creation of the thoughts of Sayuri. It is more than that, though the way it is written may be its most attractive feature. Another part of the appeal is stepping into the kimono of a rural Japanese girl of the 1930s who is essentially forced into human trafficking, albeit the most glamorous portrayal of human trafficking that I know of. That is not to say "glamorized" though, for the plight of little Chiyo is one in which it is hard not to sympathize. A recurring them throughout my "books about Asian women" binge is that of the lower status of women in many Asian cultures, and hopefully by the end the reader will realize why the phenomenon of seeing little old Asian ladies at the gym is so prevalent: they are tough! And so it is with Sayuri, who loses her only friend early in the story and has to grow up without another. This is one feature of the story that seems difficult to believe: nearly everyone Chiyo encounters goes out of her way to make her life hell. Such lack of sympathy raises questions about human nature. As such, one cannot help but cheer Sayuri on and take her cause as one's own. Memoirs of a Geisha is a joy to read and, for the most part, reasonably well-paced. It does get a bit long in passing the 500 page mark but it doesn't feel as though much filler was used (which seems to plague too much fiction). Without a doubt, it is one of the most refreshing novels of recent memory and I cannot say that I regret having read it.

Book Review: The Last Juror by John Grisham (2004)

 

At my current place of employment, I spend a lot of time listening to audio of various forms. I would listen to movies on my DVD player (Jackie Chan movies are far more entertaining to watch), to various podcasts, to basketball games during the NBA season, and audiobooks. The most recent selection that I finished happens to be the one reviewed here. It certainly began as a breath of fresh air after listening to Orwell's depression-inducing 1984 and is brilliantly read by Michael Bick. While I usually could stand one hour-long disc at a time of Orwell, I was hooked into listening to four discs in one sitting with Grisham. It certainly began as an engaging story about a young journalist fresh out of college and buying a weekly newspaper that served rural Mississippi. It is told in the first-person perspective of him recalling the events decades later. 

I will refrain from talking too much about the plot, as this tends to spoil things. In fact, I would advise against reading the back cover synopsis (and would extend this advice to just about any novel) since in this case it happened to detail events that did not occur until three or four discs in. Luckily, I had not looked at the synopsis until after finishing the audiobook. However, I am willing to make some general points. Though it started well, The Last Juror seemed to taper off into side plots that had no worthwhile resolution. Indeed, the book ends abruptly with several loose ends. This left me quite unsatisfied, feeling as though I had gone through the trouble of complying with a lengthy process to get a free offer only to find out that the offer was not free at all.

If one is looking for a touted Grisham legal thriller, this is not it. It is mildly entertaining, but if you have a backlog of books to read and movies to see, this should not be near the top of your list.