This book put me in a bind: while I found the story and characters engaging, fun, even, there are aspects that offended me. As I read, I would wonder: "Is this attitude or behavior endorsed by the author, or just described by him in depicting this place and these personalities?" By the end, I decided that there are definite ideologies at work here, including the beliefs that when it comes to family, blood is all; that the younger generation is responsible for squandering the hard work of their parents'; and the conservative viewpoint that if one only works hard enough, one can be successful. Other troubling attitudes that are questioned by characters but nevertheless feel condoned by the narrative: blaming victims of rape or sexual coercion; treating women as objects; racism; masculine pride as more important than the lives of loved ones.

After I finished the book, I read several reviews as I tried to work out my opinion of it. These mention that Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature but that this may not be his best work; that he used to be a social progressive but became a conservative who ran for president of Peru; that some characters appear in other books of his; that some elements are based on real events and his own life.

The book is divided between two alternating and converging narratives with separate protagonists, both fitting the "discreet hero" label of the title. The stories take place in two different areas of Peru, one Lima, one provincial, and their plots appear to have no connection. When they link up, it's very satisfying, even though the connection is quite minor. Each plot has elements of a mystery-thriller that propel the story; I found it hard to put down. The characters are often charming and easy to root for (until they're not). In story one, a man who worked his way up from nothing and owns a transport company is anonymously threatened unless he pays for protection; he refuses. In story two, a man on the verge of retirement and a long-awaited trip with his wife and son finds his life upheaved when his wealthy boss decides to marry his servant to punish his errant sons; at the same time, the protagonist's teenaged son is being approached by a mysterious stranger who may or may not be real, the devil, an angel, or just the kid fucking with his parents (this last mystery is left ambiguous).

Other elements I enjoyed included the relationship between the second protagonist and his wife, his feelings about art's role in life, the police sergeant from the first story, and learning about Peruvian life across two settings.

This is the second novel in a row I've read (after Enchanted Islands) that's written as a sort of memoir from the perspective of an older person looking back. I'm not overly fond of traditional memoirs and wonder if this may in part account for my less than enthusiastic reaction upon finishing.

What this book does have going for it is a charming, somewhat unreliable narrator. Her asides and style as a storyteller often delighted and amused me. Mary is a naive girl at the start, and as an adult seems not much wiser. As a reader you may arch your brow at the gaps in her knowledge or what lies beneath her personality quirks (e.g. as a woman in her 50s at the end, she has developed a kind of fetish for reverends, owing to her first love, explored throughout the book). Mary is so plucky (and often critical of others) that I assumed she was still a child when the story began (in fact, she's a young lady already).

Returning to what I'm describing as memoir-ish--and an author's note explains that Mary's father was a real person, if not the whole family--there's only so much narrative thrust to the story. The plot advances in short chapters interspersed with others that give some background to the characters and to whaling. Essentially, Mary relays an account of a particular whaling season in Australia, most significant for her because she meets her first (and only romantic) love.

The novel was pleasant enough to read, but I needed something more and was also left confused by the end. Why end on that moment?

From the Tournament of Books longlist.

What a hot mess. Judging from reviews on Amazon, I'm in the minority with that opinion, but I found it difficult to follow protagonist Frances Conway's arc through the story. There's a huge gap between her 16 and 50-something year-old selves, decades briefly highlighted, and the two did not connect for me. Frances/Fanny goes from naive teenager to something of a resigned spinster in few pages. I never quite caught up from that whiplash.

The novel spans Frances's whole life, from child of Jewish immigrants in Minnesota, to Chicago with her best frenemy, Rosalie, to a farm in Nebraska, then onto California where she works at the Office of Naval Intelligence peri-WWII and is eventually asked to marry officer Ainslie Conway and move with him to the Galapagos Islands, where there are an awful lot of Germans (an awful lot for such a small, wild place), to engage in spycraft. The book's title indicates that this period will be the story's focus, but it comes in much later than expected. The first third or so of the novel therefore feels like it's treading water as we follow Frances and Rosalie's friendship, their "break-up," and reunion years later in San Francisco. I wish the book had been either larger, to more fully explore Frances's journey, or shorter, narrowing in on the time on the Galapagos.

I never came to care much for any of the characters or to get a grip on Frances and her shifting emotions. Add to that some cliche prose (though, judging by the highlights, often the very moments other readers found profound) and bizarre, unbelievable (even when true) additions to the plot, such as FDR's non-appearance of an appearance and the fact that, oh, by the way, Frances wrote some books (Enchanted Islands is based on a real person who did in fact live on the Galapagos and write about her time there, a fact which I learned only after completing the novel and doesn't excuse the haphazard way in which her writing is introduced), and you have a novel that I periodically considered dropping. Each time I'd think, "But I've already read this far, and I want to get to the Galapagos," or, "I want to see how this spy stuff plays out and what happens with Frances and Ainslie." I should have trusted my instincts and quit after the second eyeroll.

A/N: I'm reposting this because I just realized when you save a draft and then post it later, it posts under the original date and time. #themoreyouknow

Guy had been less interesting to the media, just a man doing what men had always done, but the girls were made mythic.

Why have the Manson murders made such a cultural impact, from 1969 to the present? Why do they fascinate us in a country with so many murders (or so much interest in them) there are now entire TV channels dedicated to true crime? One possible explanation is that, along with other events, like Altamont, the murders signaled the ending of an extended summer of love and of the counterculture, or showed us their dark underbelly, what happens when love is too devoted and social justice motivations are twisted. Another possibility is the unforgettable, crazed face of Manson himself.

But really, it's the girls.

How could so many girls be held in such thrall as to murder on command? How could they kill a beautiful, young, pregnant starlet? Young women make familiar victims. When they become victimizers, it puzzles, shocks, and disturbs, as if rabbits suddenly turned into predators instead of prey. As the quote above mentions, a man killing is nothing new. A woman killing...unnatural, we think.

A strength of Emma Cline's The Girls is that, though the girls flock around the Manson-like figure of Russell, it's really the protagonist's relationship with one of them, Suzanne, that takes center stage. As she notes of her meetings with Russell, I was eager for our encounters, eager to cement my place among them, as if doing what Suzanne did was a way of being with her. 

First, what this book isn't. It isn't an omniscient picture of a Manson Family-like group or of the fictionalized murders, though certainly you get an idea of the former through the lens of the first-person narrator, Evie, who is a temporary fixture at their farm. Evie learns the details of the murders through the media, like everyone else, but we're only given snapshots, disturbing but not too graphic. If you want a play-by-play of the real thing with gory details, google it or read Helter Skelter. That's not this novel's focus or raison d'etre.

It's also not a sweeping portrait of America in the '60s. I've seen some readers complaining that there isn't enough of this or that, mostly the sorts of things we've come to associate with that period whether we lived at that time or not: counterculture, protests, hippies, Vietnam. Those things are mentioned, and Russell preaches love and the ills of money while getting it where he can via the girls, but the book's not a history lesson (also, many forget that the majority of Americans did not participate in the counterculture or oppose the war in Vietnam). Evie is a fourteen-year-old girl; she's not oblivious to larger goings-on, but they're not as important as her feelings and desires and her immediate situation and environment.

If anything, The Girls is a coming of age story. It's split between Evie as a grown, older woman in the present and as a teenager in 1969, with a focus on the latter. She's become a caregiver but seems isolated. A run-in with an old friend's son and his girlfriend dredges up the past and reminds her what it feels like to be paid attention to. Evie comes to realize little has changed when it comes to the dynamics of young men and women, and it's a lens through which she sees herself in the past (and vice versa, her experiences in the past shedding light on her present observations). Her friend's son knows she was a part of "that cult," and his and his girlfriend's questions prompt her to consider how and why she didn't become a murderer herself.

As a fourteen year-old, Evie's life is familiar: she has a best friend, divorced parents, longs for the attentions of her friend's older brother. A fight with her friend and a disintegrating relationship with her mother (whom Evie blames for the divorce, as so many girls blame their mothers and pardon their fathers) leads her to help one of the girls she'd seen from the farm when they encounter each other at a pharmacy. Evie is immediately drawn to Suzanne; it's the book's opening scene. Evie begins spending time at the farm with Suzanne and the others, mostly girls, and eventually is introduced to their charismatic leader, Russell.

What follows mirrors what most know of the Manson Family: drugs, sex, communal living, a man who knows how to play to girls' insecurities to get what he wants. Russell knows a man from a popular rock band and wants a record deal; Evie becomes a sort of gift or bribe in those efforts, which ultimately fall through and culminate in violence.

Evie knows only so much about the other girls and their backgrounds, including Suzanne. She herself is conscious of her cleanliness and nice neighborhood, where she spends less and less time (her mother thinks she's with her friend), and of the boarding school she's being sent to at summer's end. But she finds some measure of acceptance at the farm, and the feeling of belonging (and Suzanne's attention) is intoxicating.

I highlighted more passages in this book than in any other e-book I've read. Cline has so many smart and revealing observations about girlhood (or girl into womanhood), and her prose is sharp and unique. I wouldn't be surprised if she wrote poetry as well. In terms of her writing style, YMMV (your mileage may vary); I've seen some put off by it. I ate it up (in contrast, I couldn't even finish the sample for Fates and Furies the language was so cloying to me). It's isn't overwhelming or flowery, just consistently startling. If you read the opening, you'll immediately have an idea of the book's prose and tone and whether or not it appeals to you.

There's a reason the book's description references The Virgin Suicides. Like that novel, there appears to be a mystery in need of solving, but there are no pat answers. Instead of the boys' perspective, as in Suicides, we have that of a young girl who was there. The Girls is clear about how and why Evie became who she is instead of someone else, and it's a line as fine as a thread, which is the most disturbing of all. The question isn't "Why those girls?" It's "Why not me?"

I love feeling like I've been taken on a journey when I read, and this book spans years, multiple character perspectives, and the wasteland that is the arctic. I wouldn't call it a "saga," but by the end I couldn't believe where I ended up given where I started.

The Terror is based on the lost Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s. Given evidence later found at the sites where the expedition was known to have been, all the crew likely died, from scurvy, starvation, and lead poisoning, in addition to ailments like tuberculosis (not known to be contagious at the time) and pneumonia. Yet most remains were never found, while others were amazingly well preserved in the ice.

This means that going into the novel, you know most or all of the characters will die. But you can't help but get attached to particular characters, to hope for their survival, and to lament their deaths. I had to pause my reading a few times because I was so upset at the course of events.

Simmons invents around the known facts, his chief invention being a monster that hunts and kills many of the crew, on the ice and even on their ships. You don't know exactly what this monster is; the characters mostly assume it's a polar bear, but it's too clever and malicious. The monster has a mysterious connection to an Inuit (Esquimaux) girl who's been taken in (or imprisoned) by the crew. By the end of the novel, all is made clear, and the most surprising thing is that the monster is less an invention of the author's than it would seem.

In addition to the "heroes" of the story, there are definite villains. In particular, one caulker's mate who is referred to as a "sea lawyer." He sows discord, is manipulative...and fucks other men. For a time it concerned me that those traits were associated with one another, given a history in pop culture of gay characters being villains. But later two other queer characters' perspectives are explored, a younger and older man who were in love, had a relationship on shore, and are now good friends who rarely get to see one another during the voyage. For me this mostly counteracts the idea of queerness as associated with villainy.

My only other concern with the storytelling was Captain Crozier's "second sight," which felt like it came out of nowhere. I know we're supposed to assume that his alcoholism for much of the story has blocked it, but some sort of foreshadowing would have been appreciated (though I wouldn't rule out the possibility that I missed some).

This book was suspenseful, funny, sad, violent, and thrilling. Above all, I thought about the actual human beings who made the voyage and died on the ice looking for something they only accidentally may have found.