On Hatred

Bradley Soileau with a gun?

Have you ever charged into the beginning section of a story and realized that you absolutely despise every character and what they’re about? It’s an odd feeling, especially if it comes after a benchmark idea or foreshadowing that makes you want to read more. I finished Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell during lunch breaks and I had the oddest sensation of wanting to put the book down every couple of paragraphs, combating this overwhelming urge to figure out what the hell is actually going on in this guy’s head and how it is all inevitably going to come crashing down. It’s a story about a rapist who gets out of prison and doesn’t understand why the world treats him poorly. Each line makes you cringe as you’re forced to follow his thought processes, and it’s murder to finally understand Mr. Jenner’s motivations (dun dun). The parents are horrible, the phobia is a nightmare, and the “good guys” are tools. I hated the book, but at the same time it was really good. As an aside, Ruth Rendell is this British grandmother type, writing about horrific mental processes. It’s boggling and stunning.

I had a similar experience reading Vernon God Little, wherein I just hated the main character and every other character and ever scene and all events, but was quite taken with the story and the narrative style. Conflict just drives you to read the book, because if it’s compelling enough, you know that your mind will be eased (if only slightly)by the awaited completion of the winding, nauseating tale. There are readers out there with stronger stomachs than I, holding out for the amazing narrative style and character building, but I can say that I really struggle when I see the cover of the book poking out of my bag and knowing that I’m about to hate something that’s well written, and compelling enough to pull me in. Against my better judgement, I know I’m going to read on.

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~Sam Scrimger

Possible Lives

I have just this instant finished reading Sebastian Faulks’ A Possible Life and am wowed by this collection of short stories. Short stories (as a genre)  and I have had a heart to heart and we’re making up nicely, with The Complete Saki and Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures preceding this recent delve into the form. Faulks has characters that are creepy as hell, but you don’t realize it until you the end, and you are left with an odd feeling. Like something in your fridge is off, and you know it,

five whole parts!

but you can’t tell what.  I had this unique and, not altogether unpleasant (despite analogy) feeling in each of these shorts. Nothing really goes well for the characters, but the book is about possible lives taking place on Earth at different times: a British spy sent to a concentration camp, a future scientist who discovers the physical compartment for the self and soul, a man who falls in love with his wife’s sister while they all live in a tenement in Victorian England. All of these stories are worth reading for a compelling, understandable and subtly brilliant look at what is not but could be. A properly titled piece, A Possible Life is more than worth taking a look at. Fast-paced, well written contemporary compartmentalized fictions that will linger with you after you put it down and stare at the fading light of the evening from the chair you meant to have vacated an hour before. Take a look.

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~Sam Scrimger