Collection of short stories highlights black youth

By Kelundra Smith

In her debut, short-fiction collection "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," Danielle Evans gives voice to black, middle-class, young adults in stories of identity, sex, parent-child relationships and love. She covers a lot of material in these eight stories relating to the formation of racial identity, yet slides the effects of racial identity in so smoothly that they are relatable across color lines.

Sex and its complications are themes in almost all of the stories, especially in “Virgins,” which was previously published in Paris Monthly and "Best American Short Stories 2008." This story is about teenage girls experimenting with sex without the maturity to handle its consequences. Evans addresses these issues again in “Harvest,” this time using white, college girls selling their eggs to pay for tuition or buy designer clothing as its context.

Evans poignantly writes how the build of this resentment starts for “barely middle-class black families where the girls were always called Courtney or Kelli or Lindsay or Brooke, and the family forgoes vacation and savings and stock for a nice house in a nice neighborhood in the hopes that the neighbors will forget they are black.” In both stories sex, and the desire for it, is a dividing point between friends, and men are seen as predators to be loved and feared for their ability to take and protect.

Biracial identity, family and mental health are all subjects explored in perhaps the best story in the collection — “Snakes.”

This story is about a biracial girl named Tara reflecting on the summer she spent with her white cousin Allison and grandmother Lydia in their Florida country club neighborhood. The girls busy themselves by playing in the lake behind their grandmother’s home, until, in a moment of frustration, Grandma Lydia tells Tara that there are snakes in the lake. This seemingly small lie engulfs the entire family, changing their relationships and shaping their futures in unforeseen, pitiful ways. This is also the only story in the collection that does not use college as a pivotal point that characters are striving to, or from which they are recovering.

Evans even infuses the male perspective into these stories in “Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go,” about a soldier trying to re-integrate into civilian life after serving in Iraq, and in “The King of a Vast Empire,” about the damage divorce and trauma have caused a dysfunctional brother and sister. These are both good stories, but Evans’ female voice infiltrates the narration of “The King of a Vast Empire” in a way that makes one question the narrator’s sex until it is revealed in the story, and not in a good way.

“Robert E. Lee Is Dead” is a wonderful ending to an overall well-crafted collection of short stories. It is a new take on a classic tale of being from the “wrong side of the tracks,” with its narrator Crystal like a black, more educated Maniac Magee. In this story, white flight and the need to be accepted are set against the football game between Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee high schools. In this environment, black students are trying to thrive in a glorified old South legacy that reaches its pinnacle at the height of black oppression.

This story is especially well-written, because the narrator’s language changes as her identity changes “…I’d slipped through our school’s de facto segregation...” she says about being criticized for being smart and as a result losing social acceptance.

And as screwed up as some of these characters are, it is refreshing to read literature about black people that are educated, middle-class and passionate in spite of themselves. Evans has mastered the art of a good build while also examining the psychology of middle-class, black youth. "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self" is a book of untold stories, crafted in a way that makes them each worth reading a few times.


Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
By Danielle Evans.
Riverhead Books. 232 pages. $25.95

The Joys of Last Love

By Sarah Grace Smith

Old love is so often forgotten. But Helen Simonson chooses to remember in “Major Pettigrew's Last Stand” that even those nearing 70 still have hearts. Her debut novel is a welcome alternative to the tales of first love that flood the market.

A charming Sussex village, Edgecombe St. Mary, is the backdrop for this tale of unlikely love. Maj. Ernest Pettigrew is the epitome of an English gentleman: stolid, patriotic, polite. A widower, he still finds joy in his garden, his golf club and his tea. Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani, is the village shopkeeper. A widow, she defies convention by having taken over the shop after the death of her husband.

The two come together after the death of Maj. Pettigrew's brother. Mrs. Ali provides unlooked for support and understanding, and the two quickly grow to like each other's company. They build their relationship on conversation and Kipling. These parts may be dull for those used to fast-paced love stories, but Simonson writes with language that is both beautiful and witty. The sweet is balanced by the snarky.

But with such an unusual couple, complications arise. These come in the form of family and friends. The Major's son, Roger, provides quite a few etiquette headaches, and Mrs. Ali's nephew disproves of the budding romance. The society that Maj. Pettigrew moves in is complex at best, and throwing in a biracial relationship does not make it any easier. Simonson's modern take on the novel of manners has been compared to those of Jane Austen. Like many of Austen's characters, Pettigrew is often stretched to the limit to maintain his sense of decorum while also maintaining his sense of what is right.

This contrast is what distinguishes Simonson's book from the other light romances on the shelves. Though its classification could lead it to be passed over as an insubstantial read, it deals with issues that give the reader something to chew on besides the author's descriptions of teacakes. The plot deals with the problems of racism, preservation and conservation, and even the age gap that causes so much misunderstanding today. The discomfort of new love seems negligible compared to the discomfort of rejection because of one's nationality.

What holds the reader's interest and keeps the novel grounded is the character of Maj. Pettigrew himself. Though staunchly traditional, he is not static. The book is interspersed with his wry thoughts and opinions. At one point, his ideas about young men are offered: “The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry.” Simonson creates a character that is convinced of his own correctness, and only slowly shows the reader how incorrect he can be. These faults seem only to endear him further with the reader, though. They lend believability to a character who would otherwise be too upright.

As the novel progresses, the love story encounters the aforementioned bumps in the road. But towards the end, Simonson seems to have included one bump too many. Her carefully crafted love letter to the Sussex where she grew up careens out of control. Eventually, it reaches the expected happy ending, but not before throwing the reader into situations that feel much more like “Days of Our Lives” than Jane Austen. With a little more work, it seems Simonson could have concluded her book with events that didn’t break so drastically from the style of the rest of her novel.

Despite this slight hiccup, Simonson's book is still an enjoyable read. Its light and pretty prose makes it quick, but the subject matter and characters make it interesting. “Major Pettigrew's Last Stand” shouldn't be Simonson's last foray into authorship.

Fairy tales reveal truth of loved one's past

By Courtney M. Holbrook

Do you remember sitting on your grandfather’s knee, listening to stories of the past?

Half reality, half folk tale, those stories developed our lives, teaching us lessons while entertaining our childhoods. They were fairy tales.

Yet, entwined amongst elves and Aesop-like animals were morsels of truth, waiting for us to grow up and recognize their worth.

Téa Obreht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” is the story of Natalia, a young doctor vaccinating orphans in the Baltics, and the fairy tales her now-dead grandfather told her. The grandfather, Dr. Stefanovic, has passed away after leaving his home for a strange town. His copy of “The Jungle Book” — which never left his side — has gone missing.

It is in Stefanovic’s fairy tales that Natalia will discover the truth of his past — and the horrors of the Baltic Wars.

To understand both Stefanovic and the destruction of the Baltics, one must understand “the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like rivers through all the other stories of his life.”

This is a devastating novel, one where truth lies thinly veiled beneath the twists and turns of myth.

At 25 years old, Obreht’s ability to play with language and fantasy is remarkable. Though Obreht left Yugoslavia at 12, she has a keen sense of the damage wrought upon an entire people trapped in the aftermaths of war.

Obreht’s talent lies in her vivid writing style and sense of youthful optimism, which keeps such dark material from drowning in turgid prose. Her ideas of war and blood surprise you. They are not mindless evils, but things that trap you through “hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them.”

“The Tiger’s Wife” is not told in a linear fashion, but through stories. This may turn some readers away — at times it is difficult to hold onto the plot when Obreht gets going.

However, these literary flights are not signs of an overeager young writer, but a classic tool of Baltic writing. Obreht has clearly absorbed the stories of her own Yugoslavian culture, where animals do speak and men live forever.

The magical elements of the tale are placed in stark contrast to Natalia’s own experiences. Orphans die and men dig up dead bodies to appease superstitions.

After reading “The Tiger’s Wife,” one realizes that it’s not just a story of war or a girl coming of age, but of how a way of life can vanish.

That is why Natalia’s grandfather tells his stories.

That is why our grandfather told us his own tales.

Our elders narrate their stories so that we can glimpse the lives they once lived, the loves they once had — and for a moment, understand a past that will never return.

Fictional travel book doesn't really go anywhere

By Colin Frawley

Road novels can be great fun – pick up Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” or Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” for a look at the merits of tetherless adventuring.

These types of stories provide boundless opportunities for zany encounters of every variety. It’s a great setup for a tale, allowing a character to drink in a bounty of culture while in pursuit of a singular goal.

Unless there’s no culture.

Unless there’s no goal.

So, what happens when a travel book fixes its gaze on its own feet? You get Joshua Ferris’ “The Unnamed.”

Ferris’ follow up to his debut novel, 2007’s National Book Award-nominated “Then We Came to the End,” starts off as a domestic drama with a pathological twist. New York City lawyer Tim Farnsworth is doing exceptionally well compared to most men in their late forties: He has settled comfortably into partnership at his longtime law firm, looks great for his age, and has a relatively solid relationship with his wife Jane. At the novel’s outset, however, he walks into the couple’s house wearing a grave expression and simply announces, “It’s back.”

What’s “back” is Tim’s long-dormant but inexplicable disease, which causes him to walk uncontrollably over excessive distances. He might be sitting in his corner office, meeting with a client or preparing a report, when he will simply shoot up and out of the building and begin a long jaunt to nowhere. It’s an original concept that leaves the door open to a multitude of possibilities for Tim. Unfortunately, the whole thing becomes repetitive almost instantly – all of Tim’s early journeys just end with Jane picking him up late at night.

Ferris characterizes Jane mainly by showing us how she deals with Tim’s affliction. In this light, she is a fantastically sympathetic character: Despite the annoyance of having to continually fetch her husband from odd places at odd hours, Jane is unflaggingly supportive and faithful. Through all of her patient suffering, Ferris manages to avoid drawing her as a submissive, do-all China doll: Jane works in real estate. Jane keeps the couple’s pissy teenage daughter on track in school. She goes to incredible lengths to make sure her husband is comfortable. Strong and prudent and always believable, her character is one of “The Unnamed”’s greatest triumphs.

This little victory demonstrates that Ferris is more than capable of getting down to ground level and really living inside his stories. As such, it’s a little tragic that he doesn’t perform this task more frequently throughout the novel. While the first half of “The Unnamed” provides the reader with a nuanced, detailed picture of a strained family situation, the book hits cruise control halfway through and never puts its foot back on the accelerator.

Three days after finishing this novel, I’m still wondering why Ferris bothers to give us a cast of such authentic characters. All he does in the second half of “The Unnamed” is remove us from them. It’s not giving away all that much to reveal that Tim eventually takes off for good, backpacking aimlessly around the U.S. with nothing but his next camp site in mind (supposedly for the good of the family, which I don’t buy for a minute). Meanwhile, the reader is stuck in his consciousness, which never grapples with anything more than garden variety existential angst – mind vs. body, religion vs. secularism, etc. The novel’s promising setup gives way to an excruciatingly cyclical journey through cardboard landscapes featuring throwaway characters. It’s as though Ferris needed a novel-length story, but didn’t know what to do with his protagonists, his premise or his talent. I have a hard time believing this is the most careful work of a National Book Award-nominated novelist.

I would love to see a rewrite of “The Unnamed” that preserves the first half and takes the rest in a new direction. There is too much emotional investment here to be wasted on such a lazy and unsatisfying ending. “The Unnamed” shows that Ferris still has the chops to hold a reader’s interest – but it also shows that those chops aren’t hot enough to let him sleepwalk through a project without people noticing.

People still read, Joshua. Next time, please – give us a little something for the effort.

'Anarchy' has substance, but too much style

By Rebekah Baldwin

Justin Taylor falls prey to many of the pitfalls encountered by first time novelists in his “The Gospel of Anarchy," published by Harper Perennial this year. The book is replete with indulgences, omissions and, at times, incoherency. It did, however, keep me interested with vivid detail, mysterious plot lines and unique storytelling approaches.

“The Gospel of Anarchy” tells the story of a group of anarchist kids living in a run-down house in Gainesville, Fla. called Fishgut. From the beginning, the main characters have differing ideas about what life as an anarchist looks like, but they all live in harmony, allowing each to his own. But peace in the house is disturbed after several of the young anarchists start a cultish religion that’s a kind of twisted off-shoot to Christianity. They call it Anarchristian, and it is based on the journal of an old housemate, Parker, who has gone missing.

The story begins with David right before he meets the Fishgut crew in the summer of 1999 and drops out of college to join them. It seems that he will be the book’s main character, but four other characters are the center of perspective for different chapters, and some chapters are told through a third-person omniscient narrator. Some of the story lines overlap, and it is helpful to see situations from multiple angles. This writing technique leads to a more complete picture of Fishgut than seeing it from one person only would. Also, it gave readers more of an opportunity to connect. Maybe I identify with Anchor, the young girl who becomes part of the scene for a summer but returns to school once classes start again, but someone else might relate to Katy, the powerful, alluring nymphomaniac. This story-telling approach was a welcome surprise.

Another unexpected element to “The Gospel of Anarchy” that I enjoyed was how mysterious it is in parts. After an intense description of a dream, that Katy and Anchor have simultaneously, was left as a cliff-hanger, I just had to read the next chapter to find out what they saw. The mystery surrounding Parker held me in suspense, also. Who was Parker? Would he return to Fishgut?

Just as soon as I would get into the story, I would be stopped in my tracks by confusing, nearly incoherent sentences. I would re-read them to try to make some sense, but usually came up with nothing. For example, “If we could create a world in which everything that is possible is also desirable, then there would be no possibility of hypocrisy or conflict between desires” — I've read that several times now and I'm still not understanding it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having to read something multiple times to decipher its meaning. In fact, I enjoy it every now and again. But Taylor’s philosophizing came across as total bullshit. Can anyone tell me what, “Desire is a strange attractor. Your longing warps the arc of the world's emergent truth,” means? Perhaps it went over my head. There were some clear ideas, but they were greatly outweighed by the nonsense.

Another thing that annoyed me about “The Gospel of Anarchy” is what seemed to me to be indulgences by Taylor — namely the lengthy descriptions of internet porn and the many vivid accounts of orgies. I wasn’t bothered by their inclusion in the plot — I understand that both served to further the story — but the length of time spent describing them seemed gratuitous and unnecessary. I don’t know if Taylor thought he needed the graphic sexuality to keep his reader’s attention, or if he just really enjoyed writing it, but I, for one, was turned off by it.

On top of that, “The Gospel of Anarchy” was highly unrealistic in places. Call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that a bunch of kids in their late teens and early twenties are participating in orgies and polyamory. Even if they are, how are they not teeming with STDs? Why hasn’t anyone gotten pregnant? I would say it’s safe to assume that they aren’t using birth control or condoms, since they only live off of what they can scrounge out of dumpsters.

The detail with which Taylor describes Gainesville and its locales do help bring the story back to earth, at least. “I walked past the library, out to where East University becomes Hawthorne Road, and the sidewalk grew cracked and weed-split, and the homes needed paint jobs they wouldn't get,” he writes. I can picture the setting, and thanks to Taylor’s vivid depictions, I feel like if I were to drive to Gainesville I could find them.

This dedication to detailed description and other elements of Taylor’s writing style lead me to believe that he has potential. Overall, “The Gospel of Anarchy” is well-written and interesting, however, the fact that it is unintelligible, unrealistic and unnecessarily lewd make reading it a fairly unpleasant experience.

'The Imperfectionists' is perfectly imperfect

By Ashley Bene

When you’re bored at work, have you ever tried to imagine what your coworkers’ lives may be like outside of the office? Tom Rachman’s comic novel, "The Imperfectionists," appears to be his inter-office day dreams in print; it’s like a book version of TV’s "The Office," but about journalists instead of paper salesmen.

Broken into sections, each named for the person it is about, the novel explores the lives of the workers who are all connected to an English-language newspaper in Rome. We see a cranky corrections editor, a has-been foreign correspondent, a copy editor who fights sexism in the office every day and a young stringer who makes one mistake after another trying to land a job with the paper.

At the end of each of these sections, there is another story in italics. These are chronological as the novel progresses and tell key events of how the paper started and inevitably died. The last of these sections ties the novel together, as it sums up what happened to each person we read about after the paper shut down. It leaves readers with the beautifully described, yet haunting image of an empty newsroom, the perfect way to wrap up the story.

The layout of "The Imperfectionists" allows you to enjoy it in episodes, only needing to remember who characters are when they are mentioned in other sections. Each section could stand alone as a short story, but since the characters lives are all intertwined and linked through their work at the paper, the stories work together to make a greater whole. The majority of the action takes place outside the newsroom, and it becomes apparent to the reader how little these coworkers know about each other and how wrong their assumptions about each other are. Perhaps this is Rachman’s way of commenting on the increasing lack of communication among colleagues.

On the surface, "The Imperfectionists" is about the death of a newspaper and what happens to its employees in the years and days leading to its demise. Much deeper than that, this is a carefully constructed study of the human psyche that so thoroughly understands each and every one of the variety of characters in the novel it is astounding.

Rachman explores everything about the imperfections of these human beings, down to little quirks like feeling the need to put a hand up in the background of someone’s photo, locking yourself into their memories forever or needlessly popping hard candies in your mouth to get through the day.

One of my favorite sections of the novel is on the Cairo stringer, Winston Cheung. Cheung is trying out for the position as a stringer with the paper, and one mistake after another later, he ends up letting his competition for the position, a much older Rich Snyder, stay with him in Cairo, taking advantage of his young naivety. Snyder gives the kid hints and tells Cheung, “You are getting this job. I have total faith in you,” all while running off with Cheung’s laptop for several days at a time and convincing Cheung to stop working on his application piece to help Snyder research his. Pitying Cheung but laughing all through the section, anyone who has fumbled through the beginnings of a career can relate.

Rachman’s perfectly imperfect characters live and breathe on the page like the coworkers you see in the office every day, making "The Imperfectionists" a must-read for anyone who has ever made an assumption about one of their colleagues.

The title doesn't say it all

By Daniel Suddes

Books such as Paul Murray’s 'Skippy Dies' increasingly feel like the exception rather than the norm. Here is an intelligent book about teenage life that rewards its readers. Naturally, it has not made as big of an impact as it should. I can only hope that changes. This is one of the best novels I have read in quite some time, a novel that combines the best elements of J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon yet manages to be universal in its themes. That alone shows some hope for literature. In a world that has been saturated by the "Twiligh" saga, "Skippy Dies" represents some hope for the future of literature.

"Skippy Dies" does not have a plot in a conventional sense — rather, it has a framing device. Each of the characters have their own stories, but are all connected to Skippy and the events that led to his suicide at a donut eating contest (spoilers be damned, it’s the title of the work). The novel takes place in the fictional Seabrook College, an Irish boarding school, where the titular character, 14-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster (whose nickname is derived from a kangaroo on a children’s TV series) resides. He has several friends, including his science whiz roommate, Ruprecht, who dreams of discovering parallel dimensions, and Mario, a sex-obsessed youth who carries around a lucky condom. Skippy falls in love with a girl named Lori after seeing her at a Halloween dance. However, he suspects that Lori is secretly seeing the school bully and drug dealer, Carl, and this suspicion leads to disastrous consequences for all the characters.

The most striking thing about the paperback version of the novel is how it is divided. The novel is in three parts, and each part is packaged as its own separate novel. This makes the contrast between the various parts incredibly pronounced. The third part, which deals with the aftermath of Skippy’s death, contrasts mightily to the first part, which deals with teenage angst. While the presentation may appear gimmicky, it actually does help emphasize the passage of time and the changes in the characters.

Unlike other works of meta-fiction, which depend far too much on their gimmick, the ploy actually works.



This is one of the few books published recently about youth that seems to actually understand the tribulations of youth. It is not condescending (as "Twilight" seems to be), but sympathetic. Lori’s chapter discussing a blowjob she gave and her pregnancy scare is exquisitely written. For example, Lori describes the invading sperm as an army that is invading her body. This sort of simple analogy works in the minds of teenagers who are still confused about what their bodies can do. The scenes with the schoolteachers are also well done, particularly that of Howard Fallon, a depressed history teacher who has become infatuated with a substitute teacher. Each of these characters literally leaps off of the page, burrowing into a reader’s consciousness. That alone makes it a great book.

But Murray wants to push the boundaries of what is typically found in such novels. That is why, immediately after a discussion of drug abuse and sexual frustrations, characters talk about the multiverse theory and even try to set up bizarre experiments. These moments still feel as organic as the moments of teens selling drugs. It is very rare for a single novel to achieve such a wide variety of teen life — from kids who do discuss such scientific matters to the school bullies who make the long lasting emotional impact that real bullies make.

"Skippy Dies" is only Murray’s second novel, but he has already demonstrated a considerable talent that some authors never seem to possess throughout their entire careers. Murray has demonstrated himself to be highly creative, very erudite and knowledgeable of human nature. It will be exciting to see what Murray will create next.

Take pleasure in rejecting 'The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection'

By Chantai P. Meadows

French author Martin Page’s latest offering, "The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection," is disappointing. This, his second novel to receive an English translation following the success of the critically acclaimed "How I Became Stupid," is a sophomore slump embodied.

Although full of intelligent and inventive writing, "The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection," lacks one fundamental element — an interesting story arc that entices readers.

"The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection" follows Virgil, a socially awkward yet self-absorbed loner who is thrown into a journey of self-discovery after a stranger coldly dumps him on his answering machine. The novel’s premise is interesting enough to warrant a thumb-through, but after a few chapters, the slow-moving plot becomes dreadfully tedious. Each chapter, ever so sluggishly guides readers from one scene to the next with no deliberate intention to entertain.

Along the way, readers are invited into the dull world of Virgil that, coincidentally, is filled with out of the ordinary elements that rarely translate into stimulating plot.

Virgil is a peculiar fellow who is obsessed with maintaining the stability provided by his orderly routine. Despite his greatest efforts, his life is marked by curiosities that are more conducive to a life of spontaneity and excitement. Everything in Virgil’s life contradicts his fixation with normalcy: his residence in a whorehouse, his lesbian best friend, his thriving career in advertising and his remarkable sense of style. Even so, Page manages to fit all of these factors neatly into Virgil’s boring world, making them seem just as inconsequential and dreary as Virgil himself.

The only thing encouraging readers to tread on is the sheer possibility that Virgil and the illusive woman on the machine, Clara, will meet.

Beyond a very mild change in Virgil’s personal outlook, nothing happens. That’s right, nearly 200 pages of prose: no action. It was like reading a suspenseful murder mystery sans suspense. It was without climax and a resolution that felt more like a literary surrender (on behalf of the author) than a deliberate ending to a story.

The only thing "The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection" did deliver was mystery. I’m still wondering who Clara is and why she broke up with Virgil in the first place.

Then again, perhaps the novel doesn’t aim to entertain, but instead to provoke thought and self-reflection among readers. In which case, it is successful. Virgil’s character, though terribly boring, is everyman. Beneath his self-assured shell of confidence is an individual who questions virtually everything he does. He is confused, unsure and in constant conflict with his self-perception and the guise he shows the world.

Virgil’s journey reflects a universal experience that everyone endures. In his efforts to find Clara, he evaluates his childhood, relationships, goals and identity. Ultimately, he finds himself, so to speak. In that case, I suppose the discreet pleasures of rejection are the hard lessons experience teaches us.

Perhaps this novel’s real meaning got lost in translation along with the brilliance that made Page’s first book a critical and commercial success.

"The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection" is like a bad episode of "Seinfeld" in novel form. Instead of witty banter between quirky characters facilitated by the humor of everyday life, there’s slow moving, intimate, self-evaluation that’s neither humorous nor entertaining. It’s just plain boring.

"The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection" Review
Martin Page
Penguin Books 2010
182 pages

Hope is unexpected find in Super Sad True Love Story

By Hal Tift

Gary Shteyngart has carefully examined the palm of our contemporary United States, and in "Super Sad True Love Story" he tells us, in hyperbolic fashion, just where this runaway train could be heading.

In Shteyngart’s dystopian world, an indistinct near future, people are more connected than ever thanks to powerful descendents of smartphones called äppäräts. An äppärät is a phone, computer, television and streaming video camera wrapped into one tiny mobile contraption (the newest version, the äppärät 7.5, is a pebble-sized pendant worn around the neck).

Protagonist Lenny Abramov, an unassuming, somewhat pathetic soul on the brink of 40 years old, would be the first to admit that for all their interconnectedness people are often lonelier, more isolated than ever. As he dines with a colleague, for instance, any eye contact is filtered by a “data fog” of äppärät projections, hovering over their table.

The notion of privacy is all but archaic. The common way to socialize at bars is to FAC (Form A Community), which in defiance of its name means to flash statistics about yourself for all to see, concerning mostly your sexual attraction to others in the bar and, of course, their sexual attraction to you; any need for physical interaction with others is essentially gone.

While Shteyngart doesn’t give us a precise year or even decade, there are hints that Lenny’s world is not so far removed from the contemporary world we readers know. Lenny’s parents were adults during the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, for instance, and he occasionally references then-extinct 2010 staples like NPR or Starbucks. At one point, a rival colleague looks at Lenny’s out-of-date äppärät and scoffs, “What is this, an iPhone?”

Lenny is the bridge to ourselves, to an earlier time and civilization that made sense. He owns and occasionally even reads books (or “nonstreaming Media artifacts”), items that baffle most characters who are confronted with their existence. Even he cannot completely transcend his era though, as he proclaims elegantly in his journal, “I’m learning to worship my new äppärät’s screen, the pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.

But before one ever opens the book, there is the inescapable impression that Lenny’s earnest pursuit of happiness is fleeting. The words Super and Sad hang heavy like dark titular clouds over the entire story, injecting even the happiest moments with a deep pathos

You expect their relationship to be as broken as the country is, especially given the age difference and Lenny’s overwhelming shortcomings as they are publicly perceived in this future, but their love for each other consistently amazes you for how genuine it is, especially the love that Eunice returns to Lenny, which catches you off guard; it is an oasis of hope for the reader in a mostly hopeless America. The question is whether the reader can really embrace that hope with such a title looming.

This vampire romance sucked, and not in a good way

By Jennifer L. Johnson

In the fictitious Caldwell, New York, boots are called shitkickers, rhetorical questions end with “true” and every vampire is at least 6’5.

With "Lover Unleashed," the latest installment of the "Black Dagger Brotherhood" series by J. R. Ward, the author proves entirely incapable of crafting a male character that is any different from the ones she’s already written.

I suppose after penning eight books with similarly-speaking hard-assed vampire warriors that listen to hardcore rap and fight bad guys that smell like baby powder (I kid you not), the author may be a little too used to writing this kind of dialogue.

The "Black Dagger Brotherhood" series is rife with violence, dark humor, foul language and — for many of her characters — sexual proclivities that are nothing short of taboo. That a series that takes these risks would become popular enough to warrant a hardcover publication — the second for the series — is very unusual for the contemporary and paranormal romance genres.

Fans may have flocked to Ward’s saga for the noble yet aggressive characters, but it was the complex plotlines and narrative arcs that often developed into a single cohesive unit that kept readers eagerly anticipating the shocking climaxes that left them emotionally twisted and desperately seeking the resolution that would make it all OK.

That is, until this novel.

If you had even the slightest hope of understanding what was happening if you skipped one of Ward’s massive, meandering tomes, I would tell you not to read "Lover Unleashed."

Even though I’ve been a loyal reader since book one, I found it hard to jump back into the Brotherhood’s complex world and keep up with exactly what was happening. You know that the author doesn’t care about the casual reader when it takes her a full 100 pages to remind you how the main character was paralyzed in the final three pages of her last novel.

The main character of "Lover Unleashed" was only introduced to readers in the last book. Payne, twin sister to the Brother Vishous, has just crossed over from the Sanctuary, a heaven-like safe space for the deity of the Vampire race, to receive care for an injury that left her paralyzed. When Vishous’ mate Jane reaches into the human world to enlist the help of a former coworker, the mutual attraction of patient and doctor threaten the bond between Vishous and Jane, as a band of warriors enters the Brotherhood’s territory seeking revenge for the death of their leader, the twins’ father.

Though the three plotlines seem thick with strife, very little seems to happen in the novel's 500 pages, partly because the principle characters that Ward uses to carry the saga forward are so wooden. Payne is barely more than a stock character. Ward expends too much effort trying to make her speech antiquated with more ‘verily’s’ than you can shake a stick at, when instead the author should have spent more time developing Manuel “Manny” Manello, the incidental character she yanked out of book five and placed in a starring role as the wannabe-lover.

In a disappointingly lazy move, Manny’s language and thoughts are just as dark as any of the Brothers: “Candace was one of those Manhattan social types who was nothing but a pimp away from being a prostitute, and in a lot of ways, she was like any other wasp — ignore the nuisance and it’ll go land on something else. Or someone else, as it were.”

Ward could have easily given the celebrated surgeon his own, more appropriate vernacular. As someone who has read — enjoyed — each of her other books, it seems like she ran out of Brothers to speak the lines she wrote for them.

Though this book focuses a great deal on Vishous and Jane (who had their own 450-page novel earlier in the series), Ward ignores many of the Brotherhood characters that made the books as engrossing as every single one until Unleashed has been.

This was a mistake, true?

"Lover Unleashed" (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 9) by J. R. Ward
Hardcover, NAL, $27.95