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Nowhere Special is something special that will melt the hardest of hearts. If you loved The Quiet Girl and Aftersun, this touching film starring a moving James Norton is for you. Happy #FilmFriday. My latest review for Film-Forward.

[willywaldo]

A powerful piece by Phil Klay on Guernica's cowardly decision to pull an essay by an Israeli author (without the courtesy of informing her first) because of objections from the magazine's staff and writers.

Klay argues that pulling the piece is a "betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help u see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

"Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives."

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My review, which was a Book of the Week, ran in the January 18, 2024 issue of First Clue, a weekly mystery reviews newsletter. The book is published on May 21, 2024 so pre-order your copy now or reserve at your public library.

Following his acclaimed debut, Better the Blood, Michael Bennett’s compelling sophomore outing in his crime series starring Māori detective Hana Westerman proves the New Zealand screenwriter and author is no one-hit wonder as a mystery writer. In the wake of the traumatic events recounted in the first book, Hana has resigned from the Auckland CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) and returned to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she helps her father, Eru, prepare local Māori teens to get their driver’s licenses. But the calm Hana is trying to rebuild is shattered when her 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers the skeleton of a young woman in the sand dunes. Investigators suspect the bones may be those of Kiri Thomas, a Māori teenager who disappeared four years earlier. Although Hana is no longer in the police force, she begins to probe the possibility that Kiri’s death may be connected to the 21-year-old unsolved murder of Paige Meadows, whose body was found in the same dunes. Likewise, Addison becomes obsessed with Kiri’s fate, threatening her friendship with her non-binary flatmate and musical partner, Plus 1. In a nod to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the storyline is interspersed with the dead Kiri’s haunting first-person narrative. Bennett, who is Māori, immerses readers deeper into Māori culture and traditions as he expands on Hana’s loving relationship with her father and tense interactions with her chilly second cousin, Eyes. An atmospheric thriller that will have readers booking flights to New Zealand. Bennett is adapting Better the Blood into a six-part TV series for Taika Waititi’s production company.

[willywaldo]

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

I am most myself when I am sitting in an armchair holding a physical book. I am an underliner, a dog-earer. I like a patch of sun, a cup of coffee and a dog somewhere nearby. This is heaven.

[willywaldo]

Anyone can come up with a great idea for a book, but you don't make a book out of ideas, you make them out of language. --Sigrid Nunez

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A beautiful poem by David St. John. 

Happy #Thanksgiving. 

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When 19-year-old Smilla Holst, a member of a wealthy local family, and her ex-boyfriend Malik Mansour disappear without a trace, Detective Inspector Leonore Asker expects to lead the investigation as section head at Malmö’s Serious Crime Command. But she is unexpectedly replaced by Jonas Hellman, a rival detective from Stockholm with a personal score to settle, and relegated to the police headquarters’s basement as temporary chief of the Resources Unit. In this obscure department, nicknamed the Department of Lost Souls, odd, cold cases and odd employees linger in obscurity. But as Asker quickly discovers, her new colleagues display unusual talents that come in handy when she probes a strange case involving a model-railway club and the ominous placement of miniature figurines that represent missing people, including the latest two victims. While Hellman pursues a kidnapping angle, Asker becomes convinced that her Resources Unit predecessor, now hospitalized in a coma, was on the trail of a serial killer who preys on urban explorers who wander into abandoned structures like factories and underground military facilities. The best-selling author of “The Game” trilogy launches an exciting, atmospheric crime series that introduces an appealingly smart and tough female protagonist with a troubled backstory in the vein of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, although not quite as edgy. The twisty, spine-tingling mystery that unfolds is creepy and sinister, laced with a touch of dark Scandinavian folklore.

My review for FirstClueReviews. The book will be published in April 2024 so pre-order your copy now.

[willywaldo]

But it feels strange to be happy?

 Yes! We are living in the strangest period of human history. We are ending this year with two wars: in Ukraine and Israel. Then there are natural disasters. Things are not getting better. We have to understand that the only reality we have is living every day as if it’s the last. Which is also the philosophy of performance: to be in the moment. How important are we? We are dust. I was also thinking how interesting it is that in war, when everybody was making art that reflected what happened, Henri Matisse was painting flowers. I finally understand that. The way to fight is not to reflect horror and put your spirit down. It’s to create something with beauty that gives you hope.

[willywaldo]

My friend shared this poem on FB, and I'm resharing on Tumblr. Given the hideous news of the past few years, this powerful poem hits the mark. Cruelty begets cruelty. When will the cycle of violence end?

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Slow Reading

What’s your favorite book to assign to and discuss with your students at Princeton?

Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping.” I once asked some students how fast they could read, and one of them said she could cover 100 pages in an hour, so I decided to use “Housekeeping” to teach the students how to do slow reading. (Books written to be consumed at one sitting or in a day don’t interest me.) We read a chapter a week, and the students keep an extensive reading journal. They read not by scanning the text or summarizing the gist of a chapter or making conclusive and/or judgmental statements. Rather, they read word by word, sentence by sentence, and they ponder over an unfamiliar word choice, a fleeting gesture, the shadow of an image, and the ripple of a sentence seen in the following sentence. The collection of their thoughts, observations and questions is very touching. It’s a testament to the art of reading with not only five senses but also with memory and imagination. And I hope it’s the most important thing I can teach my students: not merely the crafts of writing but the importance of paying close attention, to the world in a book and to the world beyond a book.

The art of slow reading and paying close attention.

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When a country holds its leaders accountable. This powerful and moving documentary draws on over 530 hours of televised coverage of the 1985 trial of Argentina's military rulers who "disappeared" thousands of Argentines under the guise of waging a war against 'terrorists." Their victims ranged from high school students who dared to join their student councils to middle-aged mothers looking for their missing children. What I found chilling was the parallels with today's right-wing movement: the disregard for the rule of law and the tendency to dehumanize their opponents (which makes it easier to torture and kill) by labeling them as "subversives" (or as with today's right-wing: "communists", "leftists",: "libtards", "globalists", etc.). The excellent Oscar-nominated film Argentina, 1985 drew on this trial, but this is the real thing. Today's the last day it's playing at Film Forum, so hopefully, it will be picked up by one of the streaming services.

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My latest review for First Clue Reviews.

t’s 1869 in the newly renamed capital of Tokyo, a year after the political revolution known as the Meiji Restoration overthrew the ruling Tokugawa shogunate that kept Japan in feudal isolation for over 200 years. It’s a time of rapid social change and political turmoil; not everyone is happy with the new government’s policy of Western modernization. Law enforcement, such as it is, is represented by five corrupt rasotsu (police officers) who are more interested in lining their pockets than in protecting the public. But they are reluctantly enlisted into the services of two chief inspectors from the Imperial Prosecuting Office as they investigate government corruption and a string of impossible-seeming murders. One inspector is the elegant and handsome Keisherō Kazuki, who cuts an odd figure in his old-fashioned clothes that make him look like “a courtier who had stepped out of the Heian period.” He is also obsessed with making the new government a just one and has imported a French guillotine as a more humane means of execution. His older colleague,Toshiyoshi Kawaij, is more down to earth, but he too is an outsider. The two men share a friendly rivalry as they probe several gruesome, supernatural-like killings. They are aided by Esmeralda, a beautiful Frenchwoman who followed Kazuki back to Japan (much to the dismay of Kazuki’s fiancée and her father) and who now is studying to become a miko, a Shinto shrine maiden with shamanistic powers that enable her to speak for the dead. How these crimes connect to the book’s title is resolved surprisingly and cleverly in the final section. Although the plethora of Japanese names can at first be confusing (a glossary of Japanese terms would also have been helpful), Karetnyk’s stylish and witty translation (there’s a lot of humor in this dark, bloody tale) quickly draws readers into Yamada’s atmospheric world. And Kazuki and Kawaij (a historical figure considered the father of the modern Japanese police force) make for a memorable sleuthing duo. Noted for his ninja novels, Yamada has written an engrossing, twisty tale that will appeal to fans of well-designed puzzle mysteries and international crime fiction with a fascinating historical setting.

[willywaldo]

Happy #filmfriday. My latest review for film-forward.com. My Sailor, My Love is a sensitively directed drama of a late-in-life romance that offers outstanding performances as well as the scene-stealing Irish landscape

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Happy #MondayMovie. My latest review for film-forward.com. Save your $$ and wait to stream this entertaining, if ultimately unsatisfying, documentary.

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My latest review for firstClue Reviews.

Lennon, who has always played with a range of genres in his literary fiction (Broken River, Familiar, Mailman) now dips his pen into more commercial waters with the same inventive, adventurous flair. His new thriller, first in a series, revolves around twins (fraternal, not identical) Jane and Lila Pool. Thirty-five-year-old Jane leads a quiet suburban life in upstate New York, working in a dead-end administrative job at the local college, checking on her absent-minded professor father, and trying to parent adolescent Chloe despite the obnoxious interference of her disapproving mother-in-law. But her comfortable, if boring and unsatisfying, existence is turned upside down when she receives an encrypted email in the guise of spam from her long-estranged sibling. Lila has found their mother, who abandoned the girls 20 years ago, and she wants Jane to come with her to track and confront the wayward Anabel, who may or may not be a CIA agent-turned-drug-queen-pin. As the sisters embark on a whirlwind journey that eventually takes them down to Central America, alternating chapters recount the twins’ lonely, isolated childhood and teenage years as they spy on their distant and remote mother, savoring the few moments of kindness she shows them (“the marvelous, elusive feeling of their mother’s attention”), until Anabel’s final disappearance and an unexpected act of violence propel the girls on a traumatic road trip of escalating bad decisions. Along the way, readers discover who the true hard girl is. Mixing elements of a chase novel with an espionage thriller, this is also a touching story of sisterhood and motherhood in all their complications. Despite a muddled climax, Lennon’s well-written mashup of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Thelma and Louise, but with a happier ending, will appeal to his fans and attract new readers.

[willywaldo]

Rest in peace to an English-born French film and fashion icon.

[willywaldo]

All my life I have loved the past as a place that can keep you safe from the present, an inert world, sleeping and finished, that can't push you around. --Thomas Mallon, Up With the Sun