Ursula Leguin. Orsinian Tales (1976)

    Ursula  Leguin. Orsinian Tales (1976) Leguin’s tales sketch an outline history of Orsinia: a central/east European country at the mercy of its more powerful neighbours to the east and west. Leguin’s skill at evoking a whole culture makes these more like documents than fictions, and like documents, we are somewhat distanced from the characters. In this, she reminds me of Mavis Gallant, but Gallant’s stories have the ring of experienced truth, while Leguin’s feel more like case histories. But both exhibit a certain ruthlessness: both external and internal forces construct a person’s fate. There’s no Hollywood-style happy endings here. ** to *** (2012)

Jack Womack. Terraplane (1988)

     Jack Womack. Terraplane (1988) Womack wants us to take his dystopian future seriously. He uses a version of English as he imagine it might evolve, but his sense of linguistics is laughable: the dialect is impossible. The setting is late 20th century US with a few gadgets thrown in. The story is basic gangsterism and thuggishness, with some kind of multi-national spy-thriller plot tossed into the mix. I read the first 20 or so pages, and lost interest: maybe if I were 50 years younger I’d find it intriguing, but I’ve read too much of this stuff. I sampled a dozen other pages here and there, which merely confirmed my first impression. The cover blurbs praise the book, I don’t. * (2012)

Jay Ingram. The Science of Everyday Life (1989)

     Jay Ingram. The Science of Everyday Life (1989) Jay Ingram hosted CBC’s Quirks and Quarks for many years. Here, he’s written a number of essays on questions that a curious mind might ask about its immediate surroundings: walking, cocktail parties, asparagus, swarming insects, yawning, and so on. The essays are clear, explain what can be explained, and indicate what’s not (yet?) understood. Bite-sized chunks, ideal for casual reading; I enjoyed this book, and read it faster than was likely good for my appreciation of the universe’s enduring mystery. **½ (2012)

Peter Ustinov. The Old Man and Mr Smith (1990)

     Peter Ustinov. The Old Man and Mr Smith (1990) God and Satan decide to take a fact-finding tour of Earth, which gives Ustinov the opportunity to poke fun at various nations. He uses, abuses, and blows up the stereotypes, which allows for humour, satire, sentimental cliche, and wry wisdom. The kind of book that could be used in a certain kind of college “humanities” course. Worth reading, but I found it best taken in small doses. **½ (2012)

Berke Breathed. Bloom County Babylon (1986)

     Berke Breathed. Bloom County Babylon (1986) Ah, Bloom County: a place where all the American stereotypes live together in more or less happy harmony. If only real life were like that. This book is now 26 years old, yet almost all of it could be written today. The only clues to its age are the pop-culture references (eg, Star Trek instead of Mad Men) and the technology (the Banana computer looks like an Apple IIe). I have most of the Bloom County books, my children and grandchildren like them too, and we reread them at intervals. **** (2012)

Ellis Peters. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1987)

     Ellis Peters. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1987: #14 in the Cadfael chronicles). Three plot lines: a cruel master hunts for an escaped villein; a fierce matriarch wants to marry her newly orphaned grandson to a neighbouring squire’s daughter in order to consolidate the land; and a bloodied horse indicates the murder of Queen Maud’s messenger. Peters interweaves these with her usual skill, showing how human frailties, vices, and virtues threaten injustice and worse. Cadfael’s skills and his friendship with Hugh Beringar help these plots come to satisfactory conclusions, wherein justice is tempered with mercy, and the law yields to justice. As a puzzle, the mystery ranks low; as a visit to Cadfael’s world it ranks high. We fans of the soldier turned monk and physician like the (somewhat sanitised) version of late medieval history that Peters serves up. *** (2012)

Edmund Cooper. Transit (1964)

     Edmund Cooper. Transit (1964) A nicely conceived variation on the cast-away motif: Richard Avery finds himself transported to an alien place, along with three others, who like him are failures. There’s Tom, a public school man who is incapable of a human relationship; Mary, a clerk who thinks of herself as plain and plainly useless; and Barbara, a TV personality who has retreated behind a mask of glamour. Richard himself still grieves over the death of Christine many years before. He’s hardly able to decide to get up and perform the chores needed to enable him to do his job as an best accidentally competent teacher. These four must not only mature and become the people they were meant to be, they must also compete against four other humanoid beings who have been placed on the same island as themselves. Why? Because the immortal beings who placed them there want to know which of the two races should be nurtured as their heirs in the business of guarding and guiding this sector of the galaxy. The humans win, of course, but just barely.
     Cooper’s conception is better than his skill in conveying it. He’s a writer who tells rather than shows. What he mostly lacks is the ability to do much more than sketch his characters, but the sketches are convincing enough that we care for them, and are pleased when they reveal themselves capable of change and growth. They must all find that they are not only capable of loving but deserve to be loved. They must learn how to forge a community. And of course when the test comes, they must be willing to risk death in order to save their community from destruction by the competitors. **½ (2012)