Books: My Ex-Life By Stephen McCauley (2018)

"David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7. The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him. Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her 17-year-old daughter. That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices. When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago―they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix."

Stephen McCauley has always excelled at creating wonderful relationships between gay men and straight women in his works, which includes his first and most well known novel, 1987’s The Object of My Affection (a good book that was turned into so-so movie). In his seventh novel (and the first one since 2010’s Insignificant Others), My Ex-Life delves into David and Julie’s long and sometimes difficult friendship. And much like Jonathan Tropper or Tom Perrotta or Michael Chabon (and even Richard Russo), McCauley is fairly brilliant telling modern social commentary comedies that will appeal to anyone, gay or straight, male or female, young or old. The idea is that while family is important, what is more important is love and affection.

So while he books themes of what lies and truths we tell each other to keep us sane and happy are fairly universal, the book never falls into parody that some of these tales (what I call Men Lit) do. It’s a story of deep friendship and love that time can never destroy, and how even if we’ve thought too much water had flowed under too many bridges, the secrets we needed to tell but somehow (and maybe hoped) would never come to life, can be told and will (cliché here) really set us free.

So My Ex-Life is often snappy, funny, sad, and truthful. What life seems to truly be.

Books: Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles by Thomas Lennon (2019)

“Fourteen-year-old Ronan Boyle is the youngest and lowliest recruit to the secret Garda, an Irish police force that handles the misdeeds of numerous magical creatures. Ronan’s parents are in jail, but Ronan is convinced that they were framed by the wee people. So, despite his small size, poor eyesight, and social awkwardness, he’s determined to learn all he can in the Garda in order to prove his parents’ innocence. To show he’s got what it takes, he’ll have to confront a fiery leprechaun, a sinister harpy, and a whole world of monsters hidden in plain sight next to real-life Ireland.”

In an age of Harry Potter knock-offs, actor/screenwriter and first time novelist Thomas Lennon gives us a delightfully weird, funny, oddly charming fantasy novel that resembles the legendary wizard boys series, but never fully becomes embolden to it (I was also reminded of Piers Anthony’s Xanth series at times). This fantasy genre does have limitations, so it’s nice when someone comes along and can give us variation on a theme, but is able to build on it, as well.

I loved the idea that leprechauns are drunkin-addled creatures who are, basically, rotten-to-the-core and will do anything and everything to make their lives better at the expense of others. While Lennon takes on the traditional mythology of these Irish wee-folk, he adds a bit sinister aspects as well -who knew that sub-genre of crime thrillers involving leprechauns would be so fun and interesting? There is a lot of slapstick, some spookiness, and some chaos to go along with some potty-humor and some deliberately designed gross-out passages to amuse the kids.

All of that leads up to a cliffhanger ending, which was a surprise and means I’m reading another series of kids books.

Books: Tiamat's Wrath by James S. A. Corey (2019)

As mentioned last time, there was a thirty year time jump between 2016’s Babylon Ashes and 2017’s Persepolis Rising, which was designed as a kick-off for the endgame of this series. With Tiamat’s Wrath, the penultimate installment of The Expanse, authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (collectively known as James S.A. Corey) put the crew of the Rocinante into more danger as they face challenges from old enemies and new threats that lie within ring-gates themselves.

Good or bad (as Doctor Who has made this part of its formula), for this eighth volume, the crew of the Rocinante are separated, with Holden still on Laconia as he was at the end of the previous novel. Naomi Nagata is hiding in shipping containers trying to coordinate a resistance; former Martian Marine Bobbie Draper and pilot Alex Kamal are plotting strikes against Laconian forces; mechanic Amos Burton is missing in action, somewhere deep within enemy territory. And Chrisjen Avasarala has died (which is literally the first sentence of the book), which may be the saddest thing to read. Then there is Laconia’s leader, Winston Duarte, who has made himself immortal by some of technological advances discovered by ring-gate aliens. He has some lofty goals for humanity, after proclaiming himself to be the High Consul of the Laconian Empire. He and his forces took control of the home solar system, and established a new regime to oversee the colonized systems.  But one thing has become clear: he is convinced that the aliens who killed off the aliens who made the ring-gates are now trying to shut off the whole Sol system, and in typical military response, launches a few first strikes at them. But things don’t go as plan, and things happen that will probably take full measure in book nine.

Still, Tiamat’s Wrath has a lot to set up before the last book comes out (but I’m also thinking that while there will be a ninth and final book in The Expanse series, I think the authors will continue it in some form). In doing so, there is not much that actually really goes on, beyond a lot of introspective thoughts and feelings about leadership and whatnot. In many ways, this makes the book less of a compelling read, as the action is a bit wildly spaced and the reunion of the main characters takes us well over 500 pages to happen. And then it ends.

Also, as much as I continue to roll my eyes at authors approach to making the villains so over-the-top, this is still a wonderful series and look forward to see how it all ends.

Books: The Spy in the Ointment By Donald E. Westlake (1966/1987)

J. Eugene Raxford is the leader of a small pacifist group, who is inadvertently contacted by terrorists who mistook his group for a similarly-named terrorist group. The terrorists are plotting something big (the UN Building), and the Raxford’s long-time antagonists, the FBI, persuade him to go along with it as a spy. Part of his cover story, one designed to keep him alive while he plays double-agent, is that he’s also a wanted murder suspect. Now Raxford –who slowly loses all his master spy material provided to him- must keep his pacifist lifestyle in check, as he now surrounded by men and women who being willing kill as easily as they breath.

The Spy in the Ointment is one of Westlake’s earliest comic novels (his 8^th overall, but his first published under his own name that did not carry a murder mystery plot), and while not as strong as his later humorous heist novels, it’s certainly a fun read. Raxford comes off more like a variation on Cary Grant’s character of Roger Thornhill in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1959 film North By Northwest, a man forced into the underbelly of American crime because of a mistaken identity. This book also pokes fun at the FBI, who seem to crib everything from Ian Fleming’s master spy, James Bond. By the way, at the time, everyone was doing this sort of variation on spies and mistaken identities, as Graham Greene’s hugely successful 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana (and it’s hugely successful 1959 film version) is considered to be the first of this genre. So, for the next few years, the Hollywood Studios and novelists began releasing variations on this theme. Some were successful (at the time), but most have passed into the mists of time, a bygone era when no one really believed any one person could destroy the world.

A lot of humor comes from the terrorist –a madly group of discordant nuts- who pool their talents and don’t really care that their larger goals don’t exactly match. Basically, if they reach their end goal –blowing up the UN- then they can work together. As usual with Westlake, there is some great comedy bits within this disparate group, but he does add some serious violence towards the end, as some of the terrorist begin to get killed off.

It's a bit dated (and only a certain group of older people would know what a mimeograph machine was, and a lot of the action does not begin until the third act, but even as an early comic novel, it still better than average.