4 Stars for The Story of Murder by Patrick Suskind

Perfume: The Story of Murder by Patrick Suskind

Summary:

Patrick Suskind’s classic novel is a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s smell becomes a passion so intense it leads him to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with a gift, an unusual keen sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to unravel the odors of Paris giving them a source. He later apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him to create the “ultimate perfume” It is the scent of a beautiful young virgin. In this obsession, Grenouille becomes a serial killer leading to the one girl who possesses the scent he wants to bottle. Perfume is a passionate, powerful tale of murder.

Review:

In Perfume, Patrick Suskind creates an original, unforgettable story about murder placing the reader in the precarious position of sympathizing with the killer, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It is the same sympathy Vladimir Nabokov seems to want the reader to feel in his story, Lolita. A story about Humbert, a man who obsesses over a girl much too young for him. For myself, sympathy is a feeling of pity for another human being, with sympathy being measured on a scale of 1-10, ten being the highest level of sympathy.

Grenouille and Humbert get about a three from me, but it is enough to make me read their stories, and root for an outcome of ethical resolution. Humbert is not allowed to possess young Lolita, and Grenouille is not allowed to kill another human being specifically young virgins.

Grenouille is a fascinating character one could easily describe as moldy cheese delightful with green fuzz cut off his edges. With Grenouille, his specific genius and planning to create specific scents took on a magical quality that often changed the ugly person he felt he was born into; the moldy cheese. He could wear a scent that made him invisible, or loved. The intrigue of this kept the reader on the edge of each of his break throughs understanding and sympathizing with him at each turn he took, hoping for a compromising resolution.  

The plot twist leading to the climatic ending kept me guessing and hoping for Grenouille, and yet rooting against his deepest desire. Everything leading to this point in the book, the climax – worked; however, the ending strayed away from the believability set up in the initial exposition of the story. The ending is like the wind, who woos. It is inconstant personifying that which the reader has barely come to accept like how Grenouille can create his own scent.

The ending is a bit like a party after a self-discovery journey that should have led to the quiet tranquility of the outdoors. It simply did not work for me. But even though the ending did not work for me, the rest of the book did. It is a terrific twist on a murder which utilizes scent. The descriptive, setting, and characterization flavored this original tale placing the reader in each vivid scene. A must read, but be forewarned, it is not for the light of heart, but it is also not horribly creepy. It should be noted, I’ve never finished Lolita, too ethical, too sympathetic, too easily creeped out. 

5 Stars for Lost Moon

Summary: 

In April 1970, during the glory days of the Apollo space program, NASA sent Navy Captain Jim Lovell and two other astronauts on America's fifth mission to the moon. Only fifty-five hours into the flight of Apollo 13, disaster struck: a mysterious explosion rocked the ship, and soon its oxygen and power began draining away.

What begins as a smooth flight is transformed into a hair-raising voyage from the moment Lovell calls out, "Houston, we've got a problem." Minutes after the explosion, the astronauts are forced to abandon the main ship for the lunar module, a tiny craft designed to keep two men alive for just two days. But there are three men aboard, and they are four days from home. As the hours tick away, the narrative shifts from the crippled spacecraft to Mission Control, from engineers searching desperately for solutions to Lovell's wife and children praying for his safe return.

The entire nation watches as one crisis after another is met and overcome. By the time the ship splashes down in the Pacific, we understand why the heroic effort to rescue Lovell and his crew is considered by many to be NASA's finest hour.

Lost Moon is the true story of a thrilling adventure and an astonishing triumph over nearly impossible odds. It was a major Oscar(R)-nominated motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon.

Review:

On the outside, Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger tells story about three astronauts that almost didn’t make it back from space, but inside this book is the deeper story of a nation bent on beating another, creating a paranoia and fear beneath the umbrella of Communism and The Cold War. Russia started this cold competition with Sputnik, leading to greater space flights before we could catch up.

Russia lost its lead on July 20^th, 1969 when our Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even if folks don’t know many of the details, most people know what Neil Armstrong said when his feet touched the moon – “That’s one small step for man, and one giant leap for man-kind.” After, Russia lost a craft on the moon and gave up. We won. The days that followed were the glory days of the Apollo space program. And then, disaster struck with Apollo 13. Astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise lost oxygen due to an unexplained explosion.  

The next line we remember as a nation about the NASA space flights are Jim Lovell’s words, “Houston, we have a problem.” Now, in as much as heroism followed Armstrong when he landed on the moon and captivated plethora amounts of fans; we should also follow Lovell, Swigert and Haise. As these men continued to lose power and oxygen; they remained calm brainstorming solutions with Houston back home until they landed in the ocean back on earth.

Lost Moon is loaded with engineering jargon, which I admit took my literary mind more than a second to grasp tiny fragments of the engineering genius it took to get home, meanwhile oxygen levels minimalized. The understandable knowledge that held my attention revolved around the central idea held by the three men – oxygen levels could support two, not three of them, if they couldn’t figure a way to power home soon. This kind of deadline kept you reading.

The other information exposing the dangers of space flight to these astronauts/heroes happened prior to their flight. Not long before Lovell jumped aboard Apollo 13; he lost his friend Ed White to a fire that started in the cockpit of a rocket during training. Before I read this book, I took our incredible space flights for granted. They fell in line with a whole other list of heroic activities due surfeit amounts of respect and awe, but with my little understanding of the complications, problems and pure brilliance that made history.

Other than awakening a further understanding of space flight, Lost Moon, did a more than adequate job on the characterization of Jim Lovell. This book made him come to life with small details painting him human. For example, when Lovell was a kid he stumbled into a corporate office asking for potassium nitrate, Sulphur, and charcoal, so that he and his seventeen-year-old friends could build a rocket. Just so happens though, unless these three ingredients are packed right they create gunpowder - not rocket fuel.

This told me two things about Lovell making me root for him: 1) Lovell loved flying from an early age, and followed that dream. 2) Because Lovell didn’t know about the gunpowder, he had a lot to learn, and so he did. He played a massive part in saving his friends, Swigert and Haise, flying home in Apollo 13.

Five Stars for Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Summary:

The armies of Good and Evil are amassing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witch-finders are getting ready to fight the good fight, armed with awkwardly antiquated instructions and stick pins.

Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon -- each of whom has lived among Earth's mortals for many millennia and has grown rather fond of the lifestyle -- are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture.

If Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the Antichrist (which is a shame, as he's a really nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. . . .

Review:

Two indisputable reasons to read Good Omens: 1. Laughter 2. Supernatural.

Good Omens made me laugh out loud. This type of occurrence happened with one other book: Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Good Omens like Confederacy of Dunces screams absurd stupidity. Picking up either of them on my own to read – impossible, not happening and all that; however, Good Omens reminded me of the TV show Supernatural, and I’m a huge fan, so maybe not so improbable.

Other reasons to read Good Omens:

1.      “It’s not enough to know what the future is, you have to know what it means.” In Good Omens the future is written in the Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, but it doesn’t exactly give you dates, times and places of the exact incidences. I was raised Southern Baptist, and nothing is more annoying than what C.S. Lewis calls the watered down Christian. The Christian who takes the biblical word at, well – its word.

2.       Good Omens answers pertinent questions like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

3.       Campy catch phrases: “That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you.”

4.       Because we are people …

“And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow”

The fourth reason can be attested to by Rick Springfield when he played Lucifer on Supernatural. Those Springfield episodes bagged a lot of souls.

4 Stars for The Fireman by Joe Hill

Summary:

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin.

When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as

The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

Review:

After reading, Joe Hill's NOS4A2 and Heart Shaped Box, The Fireman fell short to high standards. The concept kept high marks, original, thought-provoking, and tantalizingly morbid for an apocalyptic book. Hill definitely carries his father's (Stephen King's) DNA when it comes to creative ideas. Unoriginally, disease and sickness from the flu to zombies paint the dim setting for the apocalyptic novel, but a disease carrying spore that burns its victims alive is different.

Hill did a nice job with characterization. Harley, the protagonist of the story became the kind of heroine the normal average American wanted to see win. Harley reeked with flaws on top of a grand liberal heart that wanted to save not just her own life, but every one else's.

Hill did a fascinating job creating  mystery around the Fireman before letting the reader into his heart. Other characters included children like Nick and Allie who showed incredible strength in the midst of paranoia, and hatred for their kind.

This book fell short in pacing. It was too long, and would often spend pages in pointless dialogue that did little to move the plot forward. For example, in one scene where the Fireman and Harley began to get to know each other better, several pages of dialogue followed on whether or not Harley was a Beatles, or a Stones girl.

Now, why this conversation is interesting, it did spend a lot of time away from the plot. I found myself skinning large sections in order to find out what happens next. This particular scene did enhance the characterization, but it fell towards the end of the book where the reader should have been already attached to the characters. The scene felt like it was more for the writer than the reader.

Would I recommend The Fireman by Joe Hill? Absolutely, if you don't mind skimming a bit to read interesting characters in a world bleeding with the fresh and profound.