Tag: obsession

Review 2792: #NovNov! West

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Here’s my second book for Novellas in November. Bess is 10 when her widowed father, Cy Bellman, decides to go west. He has read an article about the discoveries in Kentucky of the bones of massive animals. What if they are still alive in the vast West? Maybe Lewis and Clark didn’t see them, but what if he took “excursions” from their path? His brain is afire with excitement. He converts most of his money into trinkets for the natives and leaves Bess with her Aunt Julie.

While Bellman is bumbling around, Bess is waiting, sure he will return in two years, as he promised. Out West, Bellman has hired a 17-year-old Native American, a skinny boy named Old Woman From a Distance, as an assistant. They never learn each other’s language. Cy seems unable to drop his obsession.

As time passes and Bess nears her teens, two local pedophiles have their eyes on her.

This little novel leads you on in a subtle way so that you don’t feel you can stop. I found the ending a tad abrupt and unsatisfying, but overall, once you start it, you won’t be able to stop.

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Review 1759: White Tears

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

You may think you know what’s going on in White Tears, but you don’t. Kunzru provides a few clues to that effect, but it’s easy to glide right over them.

Seth is a nerdy outcast in college when he meets Carter Wallace, a good-looking, popular rich kid. The two bond over sound and music. Seth has been immersing himself in techno when Carter introduces him to the gritty sounds of old-time Black country soul on vinyl and even older 45s.

After college, the two form a recording company, with Carter as the face and Seth doing the creative work and sound engineering. They are beginning to become famous for an old-fashioned sound, produced entirely by analog instruments. But Seth notices Carter losing focus and becoming more engaged with collecting.

One day, Seth is indulging his hobby of walking around New York recording noises when he catches someone singing part of a blues song, “Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own.” He plays it for Carter, who becomes obsessed with it. Carter uses the fragments from Seth’s recording to make what sounds like an old-time record, complete with cracking noises. Then he mocks up a picture of a 45, invents a singer, Charlie Shaw, and advertises the fake record on a collectors’ website.

What starts out as a seemingly harmless prank has serious consequences. Soon, apparently meeting a collector who wants to buy the fake record, Carter is severely beaten and left in a coma. Seth finds out his company and their apartment are both owned by the family corporation, and he is immediately dispossessed, the family claiming he is just a hanger-on. But Seth and Carter’s sister Leonie want to know what happened to Carter.

This novel is dark and unexpected. At first, I wasn’t so interested in the story about Carter and his fanboy Seth, neither of whom are that likable, but eventually I got sucked in. Again, it’s a novel I wouldn’t have chosen for myself, but I read it for my James Tait Black project.

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