10 minute read
NEVER by Ken Follett
the riotous aftermath. Santee’s quest barely begins before she escapes an attempted assault at the Négus, a popping nightclub, which then burns to the ground before her eyes. After a rambling ride with a taxi cab driver, Santee meets a young man, whom she incorrectly calls Ronaldo Milanac when she mistakes his tattoo of the famous footballer’s name for his own. Santee continues her search, and de Souza’s incessantly swift prose translates the racial and religious kaleidoscope of the Mauritian experience into a deceptively compact novel. Also noteworthy are the faithful incorporation of Francophone Creole and moments of unexpected wonderment, as when rambunctious monkeys interrupt Santee and Ronaldo’s Bollywood dance number. Long overlooked in the United States, de Souza and his compatriots deserve to be celebrated stateside.
An electrifying portrait of a tiny island nation on fire.
THE LIVING AND THE LOST
Feldman, Ellen St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) $17.99 paper | Sep. 7, 2021 978-1-2507-8082-9
After finding refuge from the Nazis in America, a young Jewish woman returns to her native Berlin in 1945, as the Allied occupation begins. As we learn from flashbacks, Millie Mosbach and her younger brother, David, fled Germany as teenagers in 1938, sponsored by a generous American couple. Now Millie, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, and David, an American military officer and combat vet, have signed up for official duties in their homeland—Millie as part of a de-Nazification program, David to help with displaced persons. Millie is in turmoil, though, holding out hope that their missing parents and younger sister may still be alive—and hiding what she sees as a shameful secret about her escape. This book feels different from other historical novels about the Holocaust, partly because of its postwar Berlin setting. Author Feldman offers nuance, even irony here. While not giving any slack to the evildoers, she reminds us that some ordinary Germans also suffered under the Third Reich—Millie meets one woman whose son was murdered by the Nazis because they thought he was “mentally infirm.” The author also reminds us that antisemitism was rife in the U.S. when this story takes place. (Gentlemen’s Agreement, Laura Z. Hobson’s novel about discrimination against American Jews, was published in 1947.) Feldman’s writing is mostly workmanlike, though her description of the shattered Berlin—a “bombed out Wild West”—is striking. The last section of the book disappoints. It turns out that Maj. Harry Sutton—Millie’s boss and love interest—has been harboring a secret too much like Millie’s. Millie also falls and bloodies herself—literally—once too often, with Harry always rescuing her. In general, loose ends get tied up too neatly.
An often thoughtful and affecting page-turner, some clumsy plotting aside.
NEVER
Follett, Ken Viking (816 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 9, 2021 978-0-59-330001-5
A complex, scary thriller that feels too plausible for comfort. Republican President Pauline Green is trying to steer the United States through a dangerous world. China spends billions in Africa to extend its global influence, while North African countries like Chad are beset by criminals and terrorists. But that’s secondary to the real problem: Rebels in North Korea try to overthrow the Communist dynasty and reunite the North and South, which scares
ON THE COVER Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A foray into noir fiction reenergized the versatile genre writer of horror, science fiction, and fantasy
BY MICHAEL SCHAUB
Martin Dee
Let’s face it: 2020 was a bizarre year for all of us. But it was especially weird for novelist Silvia MorenoGarcia, whose horror novel Mexican Gothic became a surprise bestseller shortly after its June release. While publisher Del Rey rushed to print more books—the novel’s initial print run was 12,000 copies—Moreno-Garcia upgraded her computer and tried to get used to talking over Zoom.
It would be understandable if Moreno-Garcia decided to take a break after the whirlwind year, but she’s decided to double down. This year sees the reissue of two of her previous books, The Beautiful Ones and Certain Dark Things, as well as a brand-new one: Velvet Was the Night, (Del Rey, Aug. 17), a noir novel set in 1971 Mexico City.
The book follows two young people: Maite, a 30-year-old lovelorn legal secretary, and Elvis, a 21-year-old violence-averse enforcer for a government-sponsored black-ops gang. Both are in search of Leonora, a missing college student—Maite wants her to return to their shared apartment building so she can stop catsitting for her; Elvis has been tasked to find her by his mysterious boss, who desperately wants to recover some incriminating photos he believes she has.
Maite and Elvis, with their shared love for Frank Sinatra–type crooners, aren’t your typical 1970s noir characters. “They’re out of date and they’re not hip,” Moreno-Garcia says. “That’s the point. They’re going to stand out in a crowd badly because of those kinds of tastes. They very much do not exist within the contemporary world and the world of the others; they exist in a fantasy, romantic world.”
Music plays a big role in Velvet Was the Night, just as it did in her 2015 debut novel, Signal to Noise, about a nerdy teenage girl who discovers she can cast spells with the help of her favorite music. Moreno-Garcia’s love of music comes naturally: Her parents both worked at radio stations, and she grew up in Mexico surrounded by a huge vinyl record collection. Like Maite and Elvis, the young MorenoGarcia’s taste in music was not exactly contempo-
rary; she favored out-of-time albums like Paul Williams’ soundtrack to the cult-classic movie Phantom of the Paradise, directed by Brian De Palma.
Velvet Was the Night isn’t Moreno-Garcia’s first foray into noir. She tackled the genre in her 2020 novel Untamed Shore, about a young Mexican woman who meets three rich American tourists who turn out to be not exactly who they seem.
The genre also gives her, in her words, “the capacity to explore characters that have shades of gray.”
Moreno-Garcia knows from evil. There’s no shortage of villains in her earlier novels and stories, which span genres—she’s tackled horror, science fiction, and fantasy and clearly doesn’t have any trouble hopping between genres. She says she wrote Untamed Shore and Velvet Was the Night at a moment when she was longing to do something new.
Her work on the noir novels proved just the thing to shake things up a bit.
Despite her busy schedule over the past few years, Moreno-Garcia won’t be taking it easy in 2022. She’s involved with the upcoming Hulu series adaptation of Mexican Gothic, though she warns her fans not to hold their breath for any announcements about the show soon.
For fans clamoring for her next book, though, there’s some good news: 2022 will see the publication of The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, her take on the H.G. Wells classic. She credits her experience writing Untamed Shore and Velvet Was the Night with her pivot back to science fiction.
“I was able to get happy with writing again, so that after I finished Velvet Was the Night, I wrote The Daughter of Dr. Moreau,” she says. “I was able to do that rather quickly, whereas before I was really dreading doing anything related to books. So it was a good switch. It was a really good switch.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR. Velvet Was the Night received a starred review in the July 1, 2021, issue. young adult
the bejesus out of China. They fear the peninsula’s reunification, “a euphemism for takeover by the capitalist West.” The Chinese believe America and Europe want to destroy China “and would stop at nothing,” so the last thing they need is a bordering nation with West-leaning sympathies. And domestically, Green faces “blowhard” wannabe president Sen. James Moore, who thinks there’s no point in having nukes if you won’t use them. Even her personal life is complicated: Her husband “was a good lover, but she had never wanted to tear his clothes off with her teeth.” In fact, the first spouses are quietly drifting apart. Yet she “could not fall in love” with another man. “It would be a hurricane, a train crash, a nuclear bomb.” Speaking of which, both superpowers have ironclad commitments to protect their allies, even if some crazy third parties get their hands on nuclear weapons. Will China and the U.S. be drawn into all-out war neither wants? This novel deals with the same great-power issues as Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis’ recent 2034, and both will give you the willies. Follett could have cut back on the North African subplot and delivered a tighter yarn, but then you mightn’t have learned that “a helicopter glides like a grand piano.” Anyway, that’s Follett: You’ll be so absorbed in the story threads that you’ll follow them anywhere—and you’ll suddenly realize you’ve read hundreds of pages.
On one level, it’s great entertainment; on another, a window into a sobering possibility.
MACARTHUR PARK
Freeman, Judith Pantheon (384 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 12, 2021 978-0-593-31595-8
Childhood friends from a small Utah town reconnect in Los Angeles, with unexpected results for both. Dumped by her husband of almost 20 years, 37-year-old Verna decides to head for LA. She finds temporary refuge there with Jolene, the free-spirited best friend she hasn’t seen since high school, who is now a famous performance artist. But things are clearly tense between Jolene and her husband, Vincent, and working-class, undereducated Verna feels out of place with this wealthy, intellectual couple. She finds a job in MacArthur Park and an inexpensive apartment nearby, “my own private place in the churning city.” A few months later, Vincent visits with the news that Jolene has left him and moved to New York. Verna finds herself drawn to this odd, aloof man, and though he admits “I have difficulty showing my feelings,” he soon proposes and they are married. Flash-forward 30 years: The couple is still living in Verna’s MacArthur Park apartment, but the building is about to be sold and they will have to leave, a severe disruption for change-phobic Vincent. At the same time, Jolene reappears, dying of cancer and asking Verna to take a road trip back to Utah with her. These developments background Freeman’s extended explorations into the complexities of marriage, friendship, and art. Verna has been able to accept and cope with Vincent’s Asperger’s-related peculiarities as Jolene could not; she remains grateful that he gently introduced her to the worlds of literature and art. Now, at 67, Verna is a respected writer, to Jolene’s rather condescending approval. Their long drive to Utah, in addition to showcasing Freeman’s bravura descriptions of diverse American landscapes, spotlights Jolene’s arrogance and egotism; she pontificates about feminist art, American politics, and the meaning of their childhood friendship, while Verna quietly seethes. Yet she does love this difficult, complicated woman, and the trip brings their relationship to a new equilibrium as Jolene prepares to die. Readers may find it frustrating that warm, perceptive Verna has spent so much of her life adapting to the demands of two self-absorbed people, but Freeman asks us to understand that committed relationships necessarily involve conflict and compromise.
