HARM | Brian W. Aldiss | Del Rey | Having read loads of Brian Aldiss’s sci-fi stuff in the 70s, I thought for sure he must be dead by now. But at 80, with more than 75 books under his belt, he’s not only alive and kicking–he’s kicking hard. His latest is a feverish novel examining paranoia in a terrorism-obsessed world creeping toward totalitarianism. British citizen Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali has written what he considers a comic novel a la P.G. Wodehouse. But in one passage of his book a couple innocuously jokes about blowing up the British prime minister. That and Paul’s Pakistani heritage are enough to get him hauled off by the Hostile Activities Research Ministry. Sequestered in a Guantanamo-like prison, he’s relentlessly questioned and tortured. A companion story develops, perhaps through Paul’s nightmares or a split in his personality, about a futuristic world called Stygia, populated by humans–including Paul’s alter ego, Fremant–who traveled there over light-years and were “reconstituted” upon arrival. These people retain their identities but no memories, and therefore no animosities. It doesn’t take long for the new humans to start being inhuman again, killing the insectlike natives and building tribal alliances. Aldiss’s tale is harrowing–for better or worse, the reader feels almost a part of Paul’s delirium. | Jerome Ludwig
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION | Michael Chabon | HarperCollins | Yiddish and the hard-boiled language of noir collide in this absorbing new novel from Michael Chabon. Extrapolating on a proposal the FDR administration actually brought to Congress, he transforms Sitka, Alaska, into an autonomous but temporary homeland for displaced Jews after Israel falls to the Arabs in 1948. On the eve of the region’s reversion to American control, alcoholic detective Meyer Landsman begins investigating a murder committed in the fleabag hotel he calls home. Work on the case opens a door onto the gumshoe’s troubled past as well the history of Sitka, which is plagued by an underground group of Orthodox “black hats” whose sinister dealings aren’t restricted to organized crime.
THE ZEN OF FISH | Trevor Corson | HarperCollins | In his new book, journalist Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters, traces the development of sushi from its humble origins in a method of preserving old fish to a trend so in vogue that some American restaurants have built their own in-house tanks (an unfortunate practice, Corson says: fish can be too fresh). It’s a compelling cultural history; unfortunately, it’s woven into a subpar narrative about a group of students at the California Sushi Academy, a down-at-the-heels school run by a once lionized, now forgotten chef. These people are so vapid–and the Dick-and-Jane prose style doesn’t do them any favors–that it’s never clear why we’re supposed to care. Corson speaks Japanese, a skill I wish he’d put to better use, perhaps reporting from Japan instead of telling us what chefs talk about behind the sushi bar (tits, apparently). Still, there’s a dinner party’s worth of wonderful facts here. For instance: supposedly, Sigmund Freud’s first med school assignment was to figure out where eels hide their testicles. According to Corson, he failed. | Nicholas Day
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER | Larry Doyle | Ecco | “Think A Christmas Story meets American Pie,” you can almost hear the Hollywood suits saying of this debut novel. Ironically, I Love You, Beth Cooper had its origin in a “scriptment” by Larry Doyle that an LA talent agency rejected as uncastable. Now it’s been optioned by Chris Columbus and picked up by a studio; “Lindsay Lohan would be perfect for Beth Cooper,” Entertainment Weekly gushed. “The book’s obviously a mash-up of teen comedies,” Doyle has said, and sure enough, straight from central casting, we have the nerd, the bully, the wisecracking sidekick, the bimbo, the rich bitch.
Effacement is the theme, from the literal rubbing out of names on gravestones to the darkly comic scene in which Kaddish and Lillian undergo nose jobs. Finally Pato is disappeared, snatched by goons and spirited to a prison God knows where. We see nothing from his perspective in the last two-thirds of the novel, which follows Lillian and Kaddish’s futile attempts to locate him; their frustration at the hands of an impenetrable bureaucracy recalls Kafka’s The Castle. By the end Lillian’s still consumed with hope; all Kaddish seeks is a proper grave for his son. | Kate Schmidt
