Tag: Jess Walter

Review 2630: So Far Gone

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Rhys Kinnick has been leading a relatively isolated life for seven years. Back then, he lost his job as a journalist, was dumped by his girlfriend, and at a Thanksgiving dinner at his daughter’s house, got into such a big dispute with his ultra-religious, conspiracy theorist son-in-law that Bethany said she never wanted to see him again. At that point, he decided the world had no more use for him, so he moved to his grandfather’s off-the-grid shack in Eastern Washington.

But now, he finds three people on his front porch. Anna Gaines, Bethany’s neighbor from Spokane, has brought him his grandchildren—14-year-old Leah and 7-year-old Asher. Apparently, Bethany left home for somewhere unspecified, leaving instructions with Anna that if her husband, Shane, left to try to find her, she should bring the kids to her father.

Given their rocky relationship, Rhys is surprised. He has only seen his daughter and her kids once since their falling out, during Covid, when Bethany came to visit for a few minutes.

Asher is worried about missing a chess tournament, so Rhys drives the kids into Spokane, where they find out they got the date wrong. But two big thugs appear, saying that Shane has asked them to pick up the kids and bring them back. Rhys has already learned that there is a plan in Shane’s religious group to betroth 14-year-old Leah to the pastor’s son, so he is reluctant to agree. When he tries to come along or get them to agree to call Shane, one of the men hits him in the head with a black jack.

Rhys is now determined to get the kids back, because Bethany entrusted them to him. His ex-girlfriend Lucy hooks him up with ex-cop turned P. I., Chuck Littlefield, who traces them to the Rampart, a religious compound in Northern Idaho. Rhys and Chuck set off to bring them back.

This description makes the novel sound like a thriller, but although it certainly is full of action, it’s really about Rhys trying to pull his life together and recognize his responsibilities to his family. It is also about the dangers of extremist thinking, which really strikes a chord within me these days.

I see that Walter has written quite a few more books than I have read. I need to catch up, because I always enjoy his books, and the three I’ve read have all been completely different from each other.

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Review 1756: The Cold Millions

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Best of Ten!

Sixteen-year-old Rye Dolan and his older brother Gig are wanderers through the Northwest, among thousands of other men looking for work when they can get it, in 1909. Indeed, the town of Spokane is teeming with them. It is a thriving town that has grown rapidly, and at first glance it seems to consist only of fabulously wealthy mine owners and the destitute.

The mine owners only accept workers through corrupt employment agents. Men pay a dollar, a day’s pay, for a referral for a job they may not get, and most of the money gets kicked back up the chain to the employer. Gig is a member of the IWW, or Wobblies, who are trying to recruit members to their union during a Free Speech Day that protests against the employment agents, the poor pay and working conditions, and the corrupt Spokane police department.

Rye isn’t so sure he believes in the union, but on Free Speech Day when the police begin beating and arresting the protesters, he is inspired to jump on a soapbox next to Gig and sing the union songs. So, he and Gig are arrested and thrown into jail along with 500 other men, into packed cells and brutal conditions.

Rye, because of his age, gets out of jail early with the help of a lawyer and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a crusading 19-year-old union firebrand (an actual historical figure). However, Rye sort of unwittingly makes a deal with Lem Brand, a mine owner, to give him information in exchange for getting Gig out of jail.

This novel vividly depicts the kinds of conditions that made unions evolve in the first place and the fight the unions had to stay in existence. Does that sound unexciting? Well, this novel has an appealing center around the two brothers, features a historical figure we should know more about, and is full of intrigue, action, and skullduggery. It is harrowing at times, alternating narrators among several characters who don’t always end up alive at the end of their narratives. I was enraptured.

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Day 399: Beautiful Ruins

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Cover for Beautiful RuinsAt times I wasn’t sure how much I liked this novel, whether it wasn’t going to wrap its many threads into too neat a package. It does wrap things up, but ultimately in a satisfying way.

The novel begins in 1962, when Pasquale Tursi is a young man. He dreams of turning his very small Italian seaside village into a tourist attraction, so he is futilely trying to create a beach on a small strip of waterfront when a boat pulls in. It is carrying Dee Moray, an American actress who has been working on the troubled set of the movie Cleopatra. She has fallen ill and has come to Porto Vergogna to wait for her lover at Pasquale’s hotel, the Hotel Adequate View. Pasquale is immediately smitten.

In present-day Los Angeles, Claire Silver is contemplating leaving what she thought was her dream job, as chief development assistant for the legendary film producer Michael Deane. Claire’s vision for the job had been that she would help develop many exciting projects, but unfortunately for her, Deane hadn’t produced a hit in years until Hookbook, a TV “reality” show, like Facebook for dating. Since then, she has spent her time listening to pitches for sleazy reality programs.

This day might be her last Wild Pitch Wednesday, when anyone who can get an appointment can pitch her an idea. If she takes the new job she’s been offered, she’ll return to film archiving–for the Church of Scientology.

Shane Wheeler is on his way from Portland, Oregon, to present an idea at Wild Pitch Wednesday. A failed novelist, he has decided to trying pitching an idea for a movie about the Donner Party. On the way into the building, he encounters Pasquale, who has come all the way from Italy to try to find Dee Moray. Pasquale’s only lead is an ancient business card he got from Michael Deane, who was an assistant on the movie at the time, taking care of problems such as those posed by the scandalous affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Shane, Claire, and Michael Deane soon find themselves involved in helping Pasquale find Dee.

These are only a few of the characters we encounter as the story moves backwards and forwards in time, moves from person to person in point of view, and takes us from rural Italy to Rome to the inner circles of Hollywood to the Fringe Festival of Edinburgh to an amateur theatre performance in Idaho. On the way we are entertained by wry observations on the Hollywood film business and the music business, and the straight narrative style is carried forward by partial movie scripts, acts from plays, pitches, pseudo-pitches, a chapter from a novel, and some brief notes.

At times knowing, at times amusing, at times sweet, Beautiful Ruins is an engaging postmodern love story and commentary on the entertainment industry.