Reading roundup

The Eye in the Door
Pat Barker

This was the sequel to Regeneration, Barker's excellent anti-war novel of WWI. A psychological thriller of a sort, The Eye in the Door keeps a lot of balls in the air in its tightly written 277 pages, with its portrayal of the oppression and repression of homosexuality, pacifism, and leftism in wartime Britain, the psychological trauma associated with trench warfare as well as subterfuge, and the inner turmoil of characters navigating complex moral dilemmas. A justly celebrated book. I'll eagerly move on to the third in the trilogy.

The Feral Detective
Jonathan Lethem

A dystopian novel of post-Trump America, it takes place in the desert hinterland east of Los Angeles, and features competing tribes of off-the-gridders: the (male) Bears and the (female) Rabbits. Pitched as an edgy detective novel, it is also a fairly ham-handed allegory of Trumpian America and our gendered political and cultural divide. Lethem still seems to be phoning it in, compared to the brilliant promise of some of his earlier work, and only five years after its publication, The Feral Detective's message seems more stale than insightful. Still, Lethem phoning it in is a better writer than many: If you're in the market for a detective story as well as a quirky love story, you could do worse. 

The City Inside
Samit Basu

William Gibson goes to Delhi in this high-energy, near-future romp. I liked the characters, and I liked the buzzy language and plausibly bleak but somehow still hopeful vision of authoritarian India after post-Modi fundamentalist turmoil. 

Infinity Gate
M.R. Carey

It's the multiverse. Travel between dimensions is a bit like travel between planets or galaxies, but all you have to do is step on a platform and shazam! you appear in the same place and time, but in an alternative history. Alternative evolutionary paths across these histories have made some people look more like cats or bunnies than humans. Huh. Apparently a lot of people liked this book. Maybe it improves after the point where I turned off my kindle and re-joined the here and now... 

The Mercy
Philip Levine

Levine's poetic voice was disarmingly plain. One page of Levine is a good antidote to 150 pages of M.R. Carey. It will restore your faith in the beauty and power of the written word.