Customer Reviews:
Not too exited about it.......2007-06-10
I have no idea where do those 5 stars from the numerous reviews come from. This book is closer to a soap opera then to a serious mystery novel. It reminds me little of M.C. Beaton novels, only that in my opinion those are significantly more enjoyable to read. Perhaps it has been a mistake to start with a 5th book in the series, if the 1st book in the series comes my way I will give it a try, if only to verify that the rest is not much better then the 5th. I guess these books are targeted towards female audience.
On the other thought, I might give this author miss in a future it took a considerable effort to get to the end of this book. Not my cup of tea.
Love the author.......2007-01-09
I love this author. Her writing is whitty, and intelligent. I am also a great fan of her other mystery series.
Where, Oh Where.......2005-01-04
Where, oh where, is another Vicky Bliss novel? Although I'm a major fan of the Amelia Peabody series, beginning with Crocodile On A Sandbank, I'm also a fan of Vicky Bliss (is it just me, or do others find her last name amusing, given her determination to be taken seriously?). Vicky and her fellow characters are an incredible bunch, and I've always enjoyed her adventures. This time it's off to Egypt, where she begins to doubt her own sanity, and as always, the sincerity of her some time lover, John Smythe. But fear not, gentle reader, all will be explained. Usually with the wit and humor this series is famous for. Elizabeth Peters writes wonderfully amusing dialogue, and the scenes crackle. My only complaint is that we haven't seen Vicky in a long time, and I, for one, miss this series. This one is a roller coaster in the manner of Indiana Jones. Don't miss this one, it's a real treat for fans!
A must read!.......2004-10-30
Elizabeth Peters is one of the best authors I have read any books from, ever. In Night Train to Memphis, which was the first one I read in the Vicky Bliss series, I became absolutley hooked. Imagine my joy then, when I found that she had four more in the series, beginning with Borrower of the Night, proceeding to Street of Five Moons, which is succeeded by Silhouette in Scarlet, to Trojan Gold, and then back to Night Train to Memphis. It is much better to read them in order, I have learned, but it's ok if you've already started. I have read them all maybe 100 times and still love them. I have my fingers crossed and hands entwined in prayer that she will write another Vicky Bliss. To tide you over, I highly reccomend her Amelia Peabody Series, which starts with Crocodile on the Sandbank and has many things in them that are so fun to read in the Vicky Bliss books, such as the wit and strong female character.
Vicky and John (and Schmidt) go to Egypt.......2004-06-10
and have many interesting adventures there.
In this 1994 adventure, the 5th, and unfortunately latest, in the Vicky Bliss series Dr. Vicky Bliss is approached to foil a planned robbery of Egyptian artifacts from the Cario museum. She is asked to pose as an expert on a Nile cruise, a cruise geared for amateur Egyptolists. Vicky protested her unsuitablity for this assignment until she realized that the suspected thief was none other than her sometime lover, the mysterious "Sir John Smythe".
Naturally Vicky does join the group, and does find her lover there - along with his mother and new bride. The adventure then takes off at a typical Peters breakneck pace, filled with bodies, false identities, lies, wild chases through the desert night, fantastic escapes and....well if you've read any of Peter's work you get the picture and if you haven't you should, just don't start with this one.
For fans of Peter's work there are many wonderful little treats in this one, John claims a name from his past as his own, hints at a long family connection to Egypt (could his real last name be Emerson?), Schmidt is developed as more than a cardboard comic character, a husband and wife Egyptologist team of the past century is mentioned and a 'writer of popular Egyptian mystery adventures' makes a cameo apprearance.
This is a particularly fun read, only marred by the fact that it is the last Vicky Bliss - so far - I refuse to give up hope!
Book Description
All aboard!
Tonight everyone's riding the night train -- mothers and fathers, teachers and jugglers -- they're all sleepyheads, ready for bed, ready to ride the train to Tomorrow. Everyone, that is, except wide-awake William, who is too excited to sleep. William can't resist exploring the train from end to end, discovering its secrets, until his mother convinces him that the train won't go and Tomorrow won't come until he settles down and shuts his eyes . . .
With dreamy illustrations and a text filled with a rocking bedtime rhythm, this appealing picture book captures the anticipation felt by any child who is setting out on an exciting new journey.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful book!.......2007-01-04
My son adores trains, but you don't need to be a train lover to enjoy this beautifully illustrated book about William's journey to tomorrow. My husband and I are always thrilled when he selects this one because it is such a joy to read and look at. The illustrations are gorgeous. The story is fun and simple. My son frequently shouts out, "All daboard! All daboard de night train!". I highly recommend this book.
Sweet Go To Sleep Book.......2007-01-04
I love this book! My son loves trains, and is forever figuring out how to postpone the moment when he must finally close his eyes and go to sleep. This book explains that you just can't get to tommorrow, unless you will close your eyes and board the night train. Great Concept, Great Pictures.
Very cute.......2006-08-22
With a son named William who loves trains, I couldn't pass this up. I love the illustrations. The story is cute.
Bedtime Favorite.......2006-05-21
My 3yr old received this for his birthday a couple of weeks ago and it is THE favorite for both bedtime and naptime. He loves this story and night after night asks the same questions about William and his mama. And just this week he decided to "read" it to me. But the sweetest part of the story in my opinion, is when William's mama finally gets him to calm down and he is lulled to sleep by her heartbeat. Listening to each others heartbeat has added another bonding moment for my son and I as he rides his own night train to tomorrow.
Rhythmic and enjoyable bedtime book.......2006-04-23
We got this book because of the title; my son shares the main character's name. So for that alone, we loved it.
The pictures are lovely and have lots of the kind of small details you can use to engage a child in a book. And the rhyme scheme, while not entirely consistent, has a very train-like quality to it. Read aloud, your voice falls into the pattern of an accellerating steam train, with the lines getting longer as the train moves faster. It's not completely consistent, but it carries the train motif into the very sound of the words of the story. This 'choo-choo' ness is not just in the meter, but in the consonants of the words themselves; I found it was a fun book to read for that reason.
This was a bedtime favorite for months, and not just because my son thought it was about him. The comforting rhythm and gradually hushing sounds of it drew him to it again and again.
Customer Reviews:
"Chop Stuart".......2007-09-30
Travellers come in many flavors, just like ice cream. Some try to "get in" with the natives of the places they go in order to learn more about foreign ways and perceptions. Others prefer to challenge themselves with tests of strength and endurance, paddling up jungle rivers or scaling giant peaks. There are innumerable variations. However, there is one type of traveller whose tales tire me very quickly. That is the type who likes to regale their readers (or listeners) with the total awfulness of everything, to impress (?) people with what they had to put up with, and to tell how ___________ the people were. (choose from among....greedy, stupid, venal, tricky, persistent, dirty, lying, impossible) Occasionally they meet one or two different individuals who only prove the point about the rest.
Stuart Stevens did not know anything about China. His attitude seems to hover most of the time around the level of "frat boy goes China". He managed to recruit two other babes in the woods, plus Mark Salzman, who did know Chinese, had spent a couple years in China already and had written a decent book about it. It would be interesting to hear Mark's opinion of this trip. That travelling rough in Third World countries tends to be difficult is hardly news. Of course, it all might not have been nearly as bad as Stevens says because he is so securely fastened into the "vomit, spit, and urine everywhere" school of travel writing. Stevens had the idea to contact a famous solo traveller from the 1930s, Ella Maillart, a Swiss lady, who had journeyed with a British man along the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Xinjiang province (once known as Chinese Turkestan). He tries to retrace their steps, but fails totally and completely. He is forced by Chinese bureaucracy to take the usual tourist route around the north of the desert, winding up in Kashgar, almost to Pakistan. This is an interesting part of the world, and when Stevens can get away from his lightweight moaning about the primitive conditions, the cold (who told him to go in December ?), the bad food, and duplicitous, intransigent Chinese, he writes a nice description. In fact, I would say that this is a well-written travel book with nice flashes of humor, but focussed mostly on the negative. The author takes a leaf from Carlos Castaneda in his "Conversations with Don Juan". He just repeatedly fails to get the message. If he had only decided early on that Chinese hate to tell others "NO" directly, but prefer to give some excuse which may sound lame to Westerners, but which indirectly tells the recipient that "what you are asking is not possible", we could have been spared all the incredulous, open-mouthed astonishment at the Chinese bureaucrats' "lying ways". What we have here is a failure to communicate. I'm sure this is all part of a non-organized trip to Turkestan, but it is not the major part, nor is it a very interesting part. If you are into the Yuck School of Travel Writing, this work is just up your alley. If you would like some sort of perspective on Xinjiang, its people, history and problems, give this book a miss.
It's all about the journey.......2002-04-21
Stevens provides a humorous recounting of a romp through Western China attempting to follow the trail of 1936 travelers Fleming an Maillart along the ancient Silk Road. Night Train to Turkistan is entertaining for its quirky characters including infuriating bureaucrats, reluctant Chinese interpretor (Mark Salzman, author of Lying Awake and Iron and Silk), a six foot female athlete who draws a crowd of suitors and gawkers everywhere she goes, and proprietors of various roadside establishments.
The four travelers are just outrageous and creative enough to actually make their way from Beijing to Kashgar and back, despite a multitude of bureaucrats that seems hellbent on prohibiting them from doing just that. The book starts out with the quartet delivering skis to a national ski team in a country with no ski areas, in the hopes of obtaining a vaguely official-looking reference letter that might unlock some door somewhere. It goes on from there.
This was a fairly quick read, and, as other reviewers have noted, it's not heavy on anthropological or historical insights. But I don't think the intent of the book was to provide these insights. This is a case where getting there is all the fun. The book is all about the journey, and those who have attempted to journey through bureaucratic developing nations are likely to recognize the types of frustrations and seemingly inexplicable events and policies recounted here. The book is all about crammed unheated buses and trains and low-flying planes and various other conveyances. It's about imperfectly built Russian hotels and incomprehensible bus stations and greasy roadside noodle stands and scheduled group pit stops and increasingly implausible explanations from government workers, desk clerks, and pencil pushers. This all sounds like an incredible bore, but Stevens' entertaining descriptions take you there and hold your attention to the end. If you are looking for an anthropological or historical treatise on Western China, you will be happier looking elsewhere. But as a humorous recounting of a journey through Western China, this one fills the bill. It is primarily from the perspective of a traveler, and the insights are limited, but the observations of a traveler are well worth the price of the book.
As an aside, several of the other reviewers suggest that this book was set in 1989 or around the time of the protests in Tiananmen Square. In fact the book was published in 1988, and the journey occurred in 1986, both prior to the protests in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. It is unfair to suggest that the author was minimizing the events of that spring, as they had not yet occurred.
Probably his best.......2001-08-11
As I have stated in other reviews, I do not like the author's personality too much(favorite quotation from another review: "Stu's a jerk, but...") But this book takes an unlikely premise and turns it into a very gripping account of a travel through Asia. I also highly recommend the book written by one of the other travellers here, Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk.
Very funny, but lightweight........2001-04-04
Stevens and three friends (including author Mark Salzman) follow the route of Fleming and Maillart, a 1930s adventure couple from Beijing to Kashgar, the capital of Chinese Turkistan. This is a fun little book, at times truly hilarious, as Stevens blithely recounts the squalid horrors of traveling in a Third World country, or is challenged again and again by mendacious, obstinate bureaucracy who will say anything to prevent them from traveling. But there's not much history or anthropology to speak of, other than a few comments about the Tibetans or Uighurs, or passages from Fleming's book. Nor does Stevens come to any novel or shrewd insights about China, other than the Cultural Revolution must have sucked, although no one will talk to him about it, and its bureaucracy is like an army in its cold homogeneity. It even dismisses the Tienanmen Square riots at the end! A lightweight, amusing travel piece; it could have bean more meaningful, such as Salzman's books or Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy.
It is better to travel than to arrive........2000-03-15
Especially if you are *not* travelling in a metal tube at thirty thousand feet, rebreathing used air and eating microwaved pap. If you travel by the same means as the local people, you will not only meet normal people, you will experience actual life. Remember the anecdote "Solipsism? I refute it thus!" (kicking a stone). In a bus bouncing along a chinese road you will have reality pressed upon you for hours, and you'll notice and remember. Train travel is far more comfortable but not always possible. I had read the book, and arrived at Golmud remembering what he said about the pit toilet (confirmed at a similar site, though no dead rats seen), and the Golmud hotel (hot water available and friendly staff for me) as was the confusion when trying to extract clear statements. His descriptions are accurate, and although seeming a little intemperate from the armchair viewpoint, they are the common currency of those who have actually struggled with the reality of being there. Yet the area is worth the journey, fascinating to anyone hopelessly romantic enough to go there. Those who have to live at Golmud have other views, very understandable ones.
Average customer rating:
- Not Zahn's Best
- Sophisticated Sci-Fi thriller in which nothing is what it seems
- A Disappointment
- Meh. Stumbles along.
- Murder on the Galactic Express
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Night Train to Rigel
Timothy Zahn
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
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ASIN: 0765346443 |
Book Description
HUMANITY’S LAST HOPE
It begins when a man delivers a message for former government agent Frank Compton—only to fall dead at his feet. The message is a summons from the Spiders, the exotic and mysterious creatures who run the Quadrail, an incredible transportation system connecting civilizations across the galaxy. The Spiders believe that someone or something is preparing to attack their entire network and the worlds it serves, by smuggling battleships through the Quadrail—something that should be impossible to do. Compton, with the aid of a beautiful but enigmatic agent of the Spiders, is their last hope.
Because nobody else has been able to find the elusive enemy who seeks to enslave the entire galaxy…and Earth is its next target.
Customer Reviews:
Not Zahn's Best.......2007-10-09
A lot of times I read a Timothy Zahn book in a matter of days. With this book it took me a few weeks. It just kind of drags along. Frank Compton is a kind of a fed up ex-operative who is definitely the best character in the story. Some of the people in it are really wooden. That is explained when we find out what's really going on. But Zahn takes too long to get there. The last 100 pages are entertaining, but I had to work hard to get to it. Don't be deceived by the title either. They never make it to Rigel. If you've never read any Zahn, I'd recommend you start with something like The Cobra Trilogy or Manta's Gift
Sophisticated Sci-Fi thriller in which nothing is what it seems.......2007-09-19
Set in a future galaxy in which interstellar travel takes place via the "Quadrail" which is a giant network of faster-than-light trains - yes, trains - running between solar systems. Spaceships are used only to travel within a solar system, e.g. between planets and the point in an inhabited system where the quadrail station is located.
The quadrail was built 600 years ago and has been operated since then by a mysterious race nicknamed the "Spiders" who are part organic and part machine. Until now they have always tried to stand aloof from politics between other races. Apart from the spiders, there are twelve other intelligent races recognised as major powers by virtue of having at least five inhabited systems: the human United Nations, with exactly five worlds, is one of the least significant of these twelve powers.
The story is told in the first person by Frank Compton, who used to be a top investigator for "Western Alliance" intelligence until he was fired for blowing the whistle on the bogus reports which had been used to justify the colonisation of Yandro, earth's fourth colony and hence the one which got UN officials the status of being a recognised empire.
Frank has just emerged from a meeting at which he was offered a new job, when he is accosted by a young man who has just enough remaining strength to utter Frank's name before dropping dead with multiple bullet wounds. The message which the man has given his life to deliver brings Frank to the Spiders, who want him to investigate a threat to both the Quadrail and the Galaxy. They tell him that someone, they don't know who, appears to have found a way to smuggle warships through the Quadrail and is preparing to launch a war.
Frank and his assigned partner, Bayta, who appears to be a human female but is very strange, begin to investigate. They soon begin to discover evidence of a vast and dangerous conspiracy which appears to threaten the entire galaxy - but is it the same as the one the Spiders warned about? And does Frank have a conflict of interest?
Frank and Bayta are soon enmeshed in a complex web of intrigue in which nobody and nothing, including Frank and Bayta themselves, is quite what they seem.
I had a little difficulty suspending disbelief in one or two of the ideas in this book - for example, how a railway network between the stars could be flexible enough to cope with the fact that stars move,and that the transfer stations would either have to orbit those stars or tend to fall into them. Once I'd got past that point and into the story I found it an entertaining and interesting read.
Most of the other plot ideas are not as original as the idea of an intragalactic railway, although they way they are put together is unusual. I didn't feel the charactisation was as good as this author usually manages.
Overall "Night Train to Rigel" is not up to the same level of brilliance as the best of Zahn's recent work such as "Warhorse", "Deadman Switch", or "The Icarus Hunt." However, I thought it had a lot more going for it than some of the strongly negative reviews here make out, and I did enjoy reading it.
A Disappointment.......2007-07-22
I've read at least 6 books by Zahn. All great. But I couldn't finish this one. I don't care what happens to these characters.
Meh. Stumbles along........2007-05-20
I found this book based on the SCI FI ESSENTIAL BOOK tag, as well as having read the Heir To The Empire trilogy numerous times.
Alas, I found this book to be plodding, inconsistent, and just plain boring. It attempts to be a sort of futuristic Raymond Chandler-Noir story. I think it failed at this.
I admit that I have not read much of his non-Star Wars material; maybe I had to lofty expectations for Zahn. Whichever, I can still fall back and appreciate that man purely on his past work.
Murder on the Galactic Express.......2007-03-25
I just finished this book, which I enjoyed very much. I am astounded to see all the poor reviews. I can't imagine they all read the same book.
This is the first book by Zahn that I have read, so I have nothing else to compare it to, or to feel that part of this book is a repeat of any of his other books. I also was not expecting anything heavy or mind blowing. This story is obviously a fun romp melding mystery-on-a-train, space opera, military SF with a bit of noir for flavor. It was a fabulous page turner.
The story was quite gripping, with many twists and turns. There was just enough foreshadowing to alert the reader to things not being what they seem, without giving it away. There were layers upon layers of mystery, and good tension between the two main characters.
The mystery on a train, was the setting that ran through the whole story. It was well done, not only as transportation from one local to another, but as hideout, and setting of some parts of the adventures. The main characters, humans, meet and interact with many alien species on the train.
Besides the main mystery that sets the story in motion, there is the mystery of the Spiders, the Quadrail itself, and what and who the two main characters are, and what other secret aims they are trying to achieve.
The Space Opera portion is the many alien species, and the sprawling galactic civilization that connects them all. We meet many aliens, and learn a bit about them as people and about their species. The civilization and how it all works is often discussed, but there are hints of other explanations. Zahn works all the details in without using an infodump, and makes an interesting tapestry.
There is also a bit of military SF with commandos and battles, along with the noir. The action moves the story along without overpowering it as some are wont to do.
It reminds me of some of CJ Cherryh's early stuff. The writing is good, the story interesting, and the characters are strong. The ending was satisfying, and wrapped the story up, but I would like to see this as the start of a series.
Average customer rating:
- Was This an Experiment?
- Difficult but Worthy
- "That ticket costs you everything you have..."
- not the greatest thing
- Misunderstood book
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Night Train
Martin Amis
Manufacturer: Vintage
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ASIN: 0375701141
Release Date: 1999-01-26 |
Amazon.com
On a beautiful night in a second-tier American city, a beautiful astrophysicist with the clichéd everything to live for shoots herself dead with a .22. Tough-talking detective Mike Hoolihan, quickly summoned to the scene, has witnessed every sort of victim: "Jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters." But this case is different. Mike has known the young woman for years--she's the daughter, it turns out, of Mike's mentor, Colonel Tom Rockwell. And the colonel is desperate to find a perp, despite massive evidence to the contrary.
In Night Train, Martin Amis has fixed his sights on the American female--with a difference. Mike is in fact a woman--a hulking, chain-smoking, deep-voiced alcoholic who comes complete with a squalid family background and a none-too-happy foreground. She even lives in a building next to the proverbial night train and can't survive without her tape with eight different versions of the R & B "hymn to the low rent."
Did this novel begin as narrative flexing, yet another test the hypertalented author--and number-one Elmore Leonard fan--wanted to pose to himself? If so, he has passed with flying colors. True, Mike's search occasionally pushes her up against pulp pathos, but mostly the genre keeps Amis true. "Police are pretty blasé about ballistics. Remember the Kennedy assassination and 'the magic bullet'? We know that every bullet is a magic bullet. Particularly the .22 roundnose. When a bullet enters a human being, it has hysterics. As if it knows it shouldn't be there."
Mike spends her time weighing the evidence, wishing it would point to murder, and letting us in on some current police realities. Whatever television tells us, in real life (not to mention postmodern crime fiction), there's no neat solution. Even that old standard, the good cop-bad cop approach, no longer works: "It's not just that Joe Perp is on to it, having seen good cop-bad cop a million times on reruns of Hawaii Five-O. The only time bad cop was any good was in the old days, when he used to come into the interrogation room every ten minutes and smash your suspect over the head with the yellow pages." With such discourses, Amis is stretching the rubber band of his book's realism. But in the end, all his fancy footwork doesn't stop us from admiring and pitying his heroine, and hoping she won't board the ultimate night train: suicide.
Book Description
Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case--this case--has gotten under her skin.
When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.
Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.
Customer Reviews:
Was This an Experiment? .......2007-03-27
My first Amis book was "The Moronic Inferno," which fairly well roasted, if not scorched, a few American literary heroes, such as Mailer and Capote. Amis has published mainly fiction since then, and I have to say that "Night Train" was only my second Amis book, and my first novel.
A tiny bit of research based on street names will convince you that the setting is Seattle, Washington (plus, Mike's quick side trip to Vancouver to meet with Phyllida). Not mentioning the city the novel is set in is a curiosity akin to the opening line, "I am a police." Narrator Mike tells us that this is how all of her crime-fighting colleagues speak -- but we know that no one speaks that way (this is what made me think at first that this was set in a distant future where some changes in the language had made "I am a police" common usage).
As I read this, I had somewhat the same feeling as when I read Franz Kafka's "Amerika." Kafka had never been to America, and the America he described was clearly unrecognizable as America. In "Night Train," we find "Mike" Hoolahan speaking in Britishisms that I doubt a cop in Seattle, even one born in Vancouver, would use -- such as "shift" rather than "move," and so on.
"Mike," herself, strikes the reader as something of an oddity, as I'm sure Amis intended. The name, of course, emphasizes masculinity, but we're never quite sure of it. She never really convinces us of her femininity, either. Her sexual impulses are there, but they are truncated, and the reader knows she is not going to indulge them -- largely because she is such an artifact, a kind of put-together person, a male part here, a female part there, a "police" part here. Amis gets her to walk, but her stride is Frankensteinian and graceless.
Amis uses some interesting devices, especially with dialog, and I think they work. There are two major failings in the book, in my view. First, there is in the end no compelling reason for "Mike" to be female. It's fine that she is, and that creates certain psychological overtones, but ultimately her being female is not necessary to the story. Naming her "Mike," I think, has to be a clue that we do not have a either a man or a woman here, but a kind of simulacrum of the author (freely speaking British English, not American). Second, and perhaps fatally, the life and death of Jennifer is presented in such a perfunctory manner, and in the end she becomes little more than a symbol for the other characters' failings. We are apparently supposed to believe in her superiority and to be shamed by her suicide, which is presented as an act of world-weariness -- she is in despair because she is such a great intellect trapped in dank Seattle with friends, bosses, lovers, fathers, and acquaintances who just can't live up to her level. The realization of her superiority drives the hero(ine), "Mike," to the edge, as well.
Jennifer's portentous insight into the universe, and her consequent suicide (a rather odd act of hostility, insofar as it was elaborately disguised) is given to us as a sort of tag-on to the novel, rather than as an integral insight -- because it is not prepared for in the narrative. Jennifer is, at first, a nice, happy, carefree astrophysicist everyone loves and who loves everyone; and then we "learn" (but are not shown) that she was actually a neurotic snob with passive-aggressive personality dysfunction. Jennifer is not portrayed in retrospect as any more alive than the naked corpse sprawled on a chair at the beginning of the novel.
Difficult but Worthy.......2007-03-02
Our book club's novel for February was Night Train, by Martin Amis, which we'd selected from a series of proposed books that our members described as "quirky" or "out of the ordinary." We picked Night Train not only because of the author's reputation but also because of its brevity (175 pages).
Our discussion started with a fairly lengthy of what exactly genre fiction is. Night Train has all the elements of a traditional hard-boiled mystery: a hard-edged, bitter, cynical female cop who has been done dirt by the world, and who is barely holding on to her few remaining relationships. It also has what one would consider a traditional plot--the narrator's ("Mike" Hoolihan) mentor's daughter has committed suicide, but no one can accept this--and Mike is dispatched to find out what really happened. And, finally, the book is told in what could be considered the common sort of criminal/underworld/police patois that we have seen in noir fiction for decades (and which led some of us to wonder if people ever really talk(ed) like this, or if this is a hyperstylized made-up language that is "real" only in the world of fiction).
So why, then, does the book feel so surreal, and so non-standard? The book takes place in an unnamed American city with a reputation for being tough, but the language seems more British than American, beginning with the opening line "I am a police." Such an opening line almost sets up the expectation that you're going to be in a world you don't recognize or know much about--and that does indeed turn out to be the case. While the investigation does proceed on a more-or-less understandable, the book's final "reveal" is disturbing and completely unexpected (I can't say more without spoilers, but anyone who has read this book will know what I mean).
And it was in the ending that we had our most intense discussion, with the members pretty evenly divided. Some felt that reading the book had been an off-kilter experience for them throughout, as if they were caught in a strange alternate reality somewhere between fiction and real life. Others felt that the book and the ending were all the more satisfying because they are more "realistic" in terms of what life is really like--inconsistent characters, a series of events more than a "plotline" created and maintained by an author/narrator, and a conclusion that doesn't fit anyone's expectations of how a crime novel should end.
All in all, while we were divided on how much we "liked" the book, we all agreed that it was a singularly worthy read--a book, unlike so many mysteries, that can sustain long bouts of discussion. What I personally found so interesting about the discussion was that I was able to see all points of view. I understood why some people felt so passionately about the book's ground-breaking aspects, and I also understood why some people felt so frustrated (even robbed) by it. This is certainly an important book, and I think it's worth a read if you can handle intense discussions of suicide, alcoholism, and many other unpleasant things about life.
"That ticket costs you everything you have...".......2006-12-26
44-year-old female detective and recovering alcoholic, "Mike" Hoolihan, takes on the job of investigating the apparent suicide of Jennifer Rockwell, the only daughter of police brass, Colonel Tom. Tom is a powerful father figure for Mike: he saved her life by getting her off the booze. Now he wants her to explain what happened to his daughter. Jennifer had everything anybody wants: beauty, wit, health and a stimulating career. So the discovery in her orderly apartment of her naked body with three shots to the head strikes Hoolihan not just as a shock, but as an endlessly troubling mystery. As she attempts to solve it, Amis takes us down the well-worn paths of the traditional detective story: the crime scene, the autopsy, the interviews with Jennifer's doctor, lover and colleagues, mostly set in offices, bars and smoky police cells. The resolution is original while still remaining reasonably faithful to classic crime conventions. As Borges once observed, the American detective story is generally a disappointment precisely because its solutions don't satisfy the curiosity the plot has stirred. But Amis, to my mind, nails it. The ending is incredibly bleak and quite unexpected, though some readers will undoubtedly find it ambiguous... So much of the criticism of this startling little novel misses the mark by holding it to a standard it doesn't attempt to meet. The one thing we can be sure Amis is not doing here is attempting a conventional noirish crime novel. Rather, he borrows the conventions of one genre and uses them for something else: in this case, he takes the "detective story" as the narrative architecture for an existential drama, much like Paul Auster did in "The New York Trilogy". As "a police", Mike needs to be interested in the what and the how, and less in the why. But as Amis shows, the why is everything. The why is our central dilemma. I read "Night Train" in one sitting and enjoyed it immensely. I suspect the hatred it inspires has more to do with the average crime buff's disappointed expectations and/or the corrosive and now-automatic distaste many critics have for Martin Amis, and less to do with the book itself. It's good. They don't call him Smarty Anus for nothing.
not the greatest thing.......2006-05-19
Well when i got this book i thought that there was going to be more action in it. But it is just a story about a girl who did suicide (i am not done with it yet). This book also has to many swears in it, no one talks like that, only teens do (that are immature). I can't wait to be done with this book.
Misunderstood book.......2006-03-27
Much of the criticism of Night Train vents spleen at the fact that it isn't a Chandler, or a Leonard or any standard cop novel.
No, Amis doesn't do straightforward novels. He dispenses with standard form, he writes about how things are. Endings don't come neatly packaged, nicely resolved. Most things in life are difficult, messy, loose stranded. So it is with the case of Jennifer Rockwell - the seemingly perfect woman: beautiful, from a loving family, tender partner. Found dead in her armchair having fired three shots in her mouth. Suicide, with no explanation. Amis may mock the standard form of detective drama, but he certainly doesn't mock suicide. Prepare to have your preconceptions on people who die by their own hand shaken up in this curious novel.
Then there are those who say that Amis gets his Americanisms wrong. Night Train is set in a nameless, second tier American city, evidently one with mean streets and plenty of homicide (I'm thinking Amis had something like Atlanta in mind, following from some investigative journalism he undertook on homicides there in the 1980s). The first line 'I am a police' is apparently not common parlance in the states, which is admittedly an inauspicious start, but I found that much of the dialogue was sharp enough, jazzy enough and witty enough to create a vivid picture of the hard boiled underbelly of American urban life.
That great granddaddy of literature John Updike shuffled in on his zimmer frame in a notorious review of this book. 'Apparently young people these days are talking about post humanism' he informs us. Updike doesn't see how a hard boiled piece of detective fiction can work without a coherent plot. And what does Updike know about tough crime fiction anyway? His rogues are viewed like the girl strolling through Baltimore at the start of the musical Hairspray. Everything is just wonderful in his pretty drawn world, even the bums on their bar room stools wave kids on their way to school. No, when it comes to the world of crime, Amis knows the score, the lingua franca, the terrain.
But even given the errors, what choice did Amis have? In Britain, the crime scene simply doesn't have the savage, underworld aura of the American scene. Think of our cop dramas on this side of the Atlantic - Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders, Hetty Wainthrop Investigates - solve a murder in a sleepy village then have a nice cup of tea. Even our investigators don't have the tough talking effect that US guys do. Middle aged men in drip dry rayon with sweaty armpits poring over forensics? I don't think so.
So it has to be set in the US. Where a cop like Mike Hoolihan (female) can be operate. A sort of Martin Amis in drag. Recovering alcoholic, so beaten down by life it's a wonder she has any emotional sinews left.
So whatever Updike and the rest think, this is a well worked and important piece of fiction.
Book Description
Martin is an ordinary Australian twenty-something, whose comfortable, well-ordered life gets turned on its head when he starts seeing and hearing things each night at the nearby semi-deserted railway yards: mysterious lights, people who disappear when followed, steam trains that aren¿t supposed to be there. Taken to the edge of sanity, Martin eventually learns that he is to ride the ¿night trains¿ every night back to wartime Europe to rescue Jews and help the resistance. But before the war ends, Martin will have to confront his SS nemesis, save the woman he loves, and face a terrible secret from the past that can destroy him before he can accomplish his mission. This is an extraordinarily original work, mixing a modern-day setting with alternate reality and time travel; it¿s both a supernatural war thriller and a fascinating psychological profile of what happens when your life gets turned upside down by events outside your control. Imagine Steven King meets Robert Ludlum on a night train crossing in Nazi-occupied Europe. A superbly original first novel!
¿Tense, witty, frightening and complex, Night Trains is both a gripping, edge-of-your-seat supernatural thriller and a haunting, intelligent exploration of reality, and how the past can continue not only to disturb
but shape the future. Starting in a shared flat in a typical Australian city in an unremarkable present, it begins to shade first into the terrifying landscape of nightmare and madness, and then into the even greater terror of wartime Poland. Though it has the disturbance-of reality quality of an M.R. James or a Stephen King, Night Trains is startlingly original in its substance and its impact. And Arthur Chrenkoff has managed to pack more incident, character, and meaning into his short, punchy yet luxuriously vivid and sensual novella than many writers manage in twice the length. It is, quite simply, an unforgettable novel, with remarkable filmic qualities.¿ ¿ Sophie Masson, author of Forest of Dreams (The Lay Lines trilogy) and The Lady of Flowers (both Random House) among many other books.
Customer Reviews:
A Poem On The Underground Wall.......2007-06-19
Thank you, Mr. Chrenkoff, for bringing back the edgy tension and fire I once found in fiction but only in the beginning, in my teens. This brought it back -- brought it all back. Future editions might correct the occasional typos and grammatical errors; minor editorial input might have removed an odd elbow here and there -- but this edition I'll cherish because the printing flaws subtly add to the mini-cam/16 mm quality of images in feverish motion: jumpy, raw, washed out, jarring, etched in contrasts. What a ride. And what a journey. I knew something of the geography but not the settings; I knew certain events but not the people; but I took a ride on a riveting, well crafted piece of story-telling and came away with living memories. A separate thank you for that. And a tip for readers: don't wait.
Night Trains.......2007-03-16
I started reading this book from my library and got so into it that when I had to return it only partially read I imediately purchased my own copy.
My initial experience was, that this was a neat premise by the author. But then I got very involved in the story as the time shifts present to holocaust became more vivid. What would I do if it were me making these trips and having to live in that world, rather than my own.
I cant recommend this story too highly for anyone who is interested in WWII, the holocaust, and of course trains.
Enthralling.......2007-01-18
I too bought this book because I so enjoyed reading Mr Chrenkoff's blog. I don't read much fiction at all and so I knew this would be a stretch for me. And it was. However, it was rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I had to work at it at first as I'm not used to reading fiction and the storyline had a typical "fiction" feel to it, the way characters were introduced and scenes set up... but as I got my balance I was able to really enjoy it and flew through it in a couple of days (ok, I was home sick with a cold) .
Good job Arthur. I look forward to your next book. (and I still check your blog once and again to see if you'll start posting again...)
Philosophy... not Reason.......2006-11-26
This book is thought-provoking and philosophical in a way that manages to be so without being dull or pedantic. I read it in a single sitting, literally unable to put it down. Ask yourself the question with which the main character finds himself confronted: If faced with existential evil and with no way to do anything about it except what seems like marginal activities that promise little return, no reward, and grave danger (and with every opportunity to simply ignore it without personal consequence) what would you do? Turn away? Or risk everything even if it seems hopeless? And why?
Don't try to read this as a thriller with a plot, story, and ending that ties everything up into a neat narrative. This is a book about the emotional and philosophical journey made by characters who are real and believable for all that they are briefly and only cursorily described... in a way, Mr. Chrenkoff's characterizations remind me of the short stories of Chekhov (if you're interested in that sort of thing).
Regardless of literary merit, however, there is action and suspense and romantic interest in the sort of desparate and doomed way that makes the best tragic drama. All of it is set in a pseudo-noir atmosphere of literal (as well as existential) night, complete with the forlorn scream of the whistles and the rattle of the steam trains that provide the title. That these trains travel on harrowing journeys that echo the screams and journeys of the human characters is an amazing and gripping device that will drag you to a conclusion. And that conclusion will truly make you think on the journey you have just taken.
What makes us moral beings in an existential world of free will? What causes us to do the right thing, even at cost and without reward? Read this book and, when you get to the end, ask yourself these questions.
An Outstanding First Novel from a Great Writer.......2006-11-23
Night Trains was entertaining, thought-provoking, and an all around great work of fiction.
Whereas most first-time authors play it safe and don't write anything complex, Arthur Chrenkoff molded an intricate web of time travel, deceit, genocide, and personal strife into a suspenseful, fascinating, coherent novel.
Being familiar with Chrenkoff's non-fictional work, I wasn't sure how well his proven talent with writing would do in a fictional genre, but from the opening paragraph I was captivated. His characters were well built, the plot was extremely interesting to follow, and I couldn't put the book down until I was finished.
It's clear that the author mingled his personal experiences from growing up in Cold War Poland with his life in modern Australia, which made for a more unique, believable, and enjoyable perspective throughout the book.
I highly recommend this book to fans of all genres looking for a great read, as well as to young writers who could use a gutsy example of how to write an outstanding first novel.
Book Description
A brilliantly imagined, lavish, and transporting novel of a young woman's search for the truth about her family's mythic past
Meg Mabry has spent her life with her back turned to her legendary family legacy. In the 1890s her great-grandmother Hannah Bass composed starkly revealing diaries of her life on the southwestern frontier, first as a Harvey Girl at the glamorous Montezuma Resort in New Mexico and later as the wife of brilliant, and often-absent, railway engineer Eliott Bass. A generation later, Hannah's daughter, Claudia Bass, renowned historian known to all as Bassie, staked her academic career and reputation on these vibrant accounts, editing and publishing them to great acclaim. Thanks to the journals and to the industry Bassie created around them, Hannah would forever be one of the most romantic and famous figures of southwestern history.
Meg, however—Bassie's granddaughter—finds the family lore oppressive. When an excavation on the old Bass family property beckons a now-elderly and viper-tongued Bassie back to the fabled land of her childhood, Meg only grudgingly consents to accompany her. Determined not to live under the shadow of her ancestry, Meg has never even read the journals. But when an unexpected discovery casts doubt on the history recorded in their pages and harbored in Bassie's memories, Meg finally succumbs to the allure of her great grandmother's story and ventures even deeper into Hannah's life to unlock the mystery at the journal's core.
Reminiscent of Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries and the novels of Anita Shreve, The Night Journal is an enthralling tale in which Indian ruins, majestic desert hotels, and the hardship and boldness of frontier life fit seamlessly with a modern-day story of coming to terms with loss, family secrets, and shattering truths that lie shrouded in memory.
Customer Reviews:
History trumps romance.......2007-07-27
There are at least two stories here. One is that of Hannah Troy Bass, who came to New Mexico in the 1890s and left a series of journals which, as edited by her daughter Claudia ("Bassie"), became famous as an authentic record of frontier life. The other is the present-day tale of the now-elderly Bassie returning to New Mexico with her thirty-something granddaughter Meg to supervise some archaeological excavations around her mother's old home. For a long time, the older story is more interesting than the modern one; Hannah's voice speaks from the page with an immediacy that makes Meg pale by comparison. It is clear that a lot of research has gone into this, and the reader is caught up in historical events as in the trivia of daily life.
About halfway through the book, there is a gear change and the modern story takes center stage. But the transition is poorly handled, many of the revelations are predictable, and the genre shifts uncomfortably between historical novel, romance, mystery story, and -- perhaps most interesting -- a study of the bonds and tensions within families. These may be too many balls for the author to juggle. I found myself getting interested in Meg and her feelings only to end in frustration, and the final sections of Hannah's journal make for very unpleasant reading that no amount of plot resolution can make palatable.
One can understand the recent popularity of books that confront present-day characters with records from a past age.* The device expands the scope and implications of the novel, allowing the author to write about people whose lives have something in common with those of the readers, without reducing the whole action to a humdrum level. It also addresses one of the prime functions of the modern novel, which is to make sense of the present existence in relation to the past. But it is also a difficult structure to bring off, without making one narrative seem constructed merely as a prop for the other one, or allowing the more vivid of the two to eclipse the paler. The danger can be reduced by strong characters and meticulous research, but good history always trumps merely competent fiction.
*Some examples, almost at random: John Darnton's THE DARWIN CONSPIRACY, Umberto Eco's THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA, Janathan Safran Foer's EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, Dara Horn's THE WORLD TO COME, Nicole Krauss' THE HISTORY OF LOVE, and Jennifer Vanderbes's EASTER ISLAND (probably the closest parallel to THE NIGHT JOURNAL).
I must have missed something.......2007-07-25
This novel reads like a second rate mass market dimestore romance. The journal references are unbelievably contrived, and the thin plot is padded with uneccessary and uninteresting copy. Where was the editor? I am an avid reader, but cannot imagine how this novel can appeal to anyone who enjoys reading well-crafted, provocative material. Although I am on page 292, I will probably abandon this book in favor of Cormac McCarthy's new book "The Road", that I purchased the same day. I am angry with myself for wasting as much time on it as I have already.
rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible romance..........2007-05-30
In the recent film Notes on a Scandal, one of the characters remarks that "we are bound by the secrets that we keep." That sentiment is tailor-made for the women of Elizabeth Crook's THE NIGHT JOURNAL. Each generation of the Bass family has their secrets and passes them on to the next generation. Claudia "Bassie" Bass, headstrong writer and historian, is the daughter of Hannah Bass, known for her seminal journals of a young woman's life in the Southwest that have become classics worldwide. Since Hannah died when Bassie was a child, these journals were the only way she came to know her mother.
Meg Mabry, Bassie's 37-year-old granddaughter, has always cringed under the spotlight of her family's famous heritage and has never read the journals themselves: "Bassie had built her life around them [the journals], and founded her career on them as a professor of southwestern history, transforming them into these six published volumes that had become, through the years, a kind of cult literature for lovers of the American West and the Victorian era. Bassie worshiped her mother and the journals. But for Meg they were a source of embarrassment, documenting the story of an ancestor whose life had been more dramatic and interesting than Meg could ever hope hers would be."
When Bassie learns of a new addition being built on the land of her mother's home in New Mexico, which has now become a museum, she insists that the family dogs are buried there and they must be exhumed and moved before the building can begin. Bassie is determined to travel to the family homestead to oversee the operation, and Meg reluctantly decides to accompany her. Upon their arrival in New Mexico, they meet up with Jim Layton, an archeologist who runs the museum and is in charge of the exhumation of the bones. Jim has known Bassie for years and knows just how to finesse her prickly personality; he soon finds that he has a great deal in common with the more reticent Meg.
Perhaps it's because she finds herself surrounded by her family's history that Meg relents and begins reading Hannah's journals. Meg learns of her great-grandmother's journey from Chicago to the Southwest, her work as a Harvey girl, her marriage to railroad worker Elliot Bass, and the establishment of the homestead at Pecos. But when the excavation turns up human bones, everything that was known about the family is called into question.
Elizabeth Crook, author of THE RAVEN'S BRIDE and PROMISED LANDS, deftly blends historical fiction and mystery as she tells the story of four generations of women in the American Southwest. The passages from Hannah's journals illuminate the experience of a young woman in untamed country, trying to carve out a new life for herself and feeling conflicted over two important men in her life. The modern-day story of Meg, her indomitable grandmother and their "push-me, pull-you" relationship, as well as Meg's flirtation with the married but troubled Jim, is endearing and realistic. Both Meg and Jim have something to prove to Bassie and try not to buckle under her strong hand: "Some of us are living the lives she wanted us to, and some of us are living the lives we chose in defiance of her wishes. But her influence is still there." Add to this potent brew the element of mystery in the form of the unearthed body on Dog Hill, which calls all of Hannah's and Bassie's accounts into question.
With rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible romance, THE NIGHT JOURNAL grips the reader from the start. As the story alternates from the 1800s to the modern day, it paints an accurate and entertaining picture of life as the Bass women lived it.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
A look into the past.......2007-05-24
The Night Journal describes the rare opportunity for a member of the current generation to look at her family's past -- their personalities, the times they lived in and most of all their secrets. I was uncertain how I would like the book at first as the main character, Meg, is not really all that likeable. She's an angry young woman, cut off from her own feelings and still rebelling against her mother and grandmother. It wasn't really all that easy to like her grandmother, Bassie, either, but as secrets were revealed through Meg's great-grandmother Hannah's journals, I came to care about them all inspite of their faults. I liked it that everything wasn't fixed and perfect at the end of the story. It has a good, satisfying ending and not the happily ever after ending that would have been so tempting to write.
Absorbing, but not captivating..........2007-05-03
What in heck does that mean? The story, supported by well-developed, but not always likable characters, was fresh and intriguing in varying degrees throughout. The settings were real and came alive through very satisfying description. Intriguing in varying degrees - one moment, I was reading with purpose, the next, I was quite content to put the book down - and not return to the story for days. What does that say? It wasn't moving fast enough; it wasn't delivering enough mystique to keep me turning pages. I enjoyed the story. I got a bit tired of Bassie's consistently cantankerous behavior - well-explained, to be sure, but tiring in the reading experience. Oh, to see more of her softer side and less of poor Meg's hopelessness.
You know how you feel when you've read a real humdinger? You can't wait to tell your friends about it, recommend it to friends of like appetite - and in my case, to file it on that special shelf of "keepers", to be re-read in my old age. Not this one, I'm afraid. After reading that last page, I was consumed with the opinion that this story could have been told in about 100 less pages. Some people love it when the author uses 1000 words to describe something that could benefit just as well from a well chosen 50. Not me - so I'm feeling relieved to have finished The Night Journal so I can move on to something more stimulating...and captivating!
Book Description
Thomas thee blue train works all day while Percy the green train works all night. Told in the simplest language, here is a charming tale of what they each do. PerfectÑand portableÑfor toddlers and their caregivers.
Average customer rating:
- All Aboard for a wonderful ride
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Night Train
Caroline Stutson
Manufacturer: Roaring Brook Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Sense & Sensation
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| Science, Nature & How It Works
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| Ages 4-8
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This Train
ASIN: 0761315985 |
Book Description
A majestic, streamlined locomotive sweeps into the pages of this striking picture book and a little boy climbs aboard for a nighttime journey. Through the countryside and on to the city, passing farms and houses and trucks on the highway, the journey is seen through the wide-open eyes of a child taking his first train trip.
Customer Reviews:
All Aboard for a wonderful ride.......2002-03-20
Reading this beautifully illustrated poem about the pleasures of riding a passenger train through dusky country and lit up cities is enough to make one wish to go "all aboard!" The illustrations have a sense of motion, in elongated forms, and slightly out of focus distant viewpoints. The rhythm of the poetry adds to the feeling of the movement of the train. The colors are warm golds and oranges and greens, against cool blues and grays. The magic and romance of a train trip are very much in evidence here; let's hope that the children who read this book will have the chance to experience the reality of train travel as well.
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