BOOK REVIEW: "A Mercy" By Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is back! A writer of singular talent, her work is always provocative and elegant. However, recent novels such as Love and Paradise haven't quite reached the heights of her masterpieces Song of Solomon, Sula, and Beloved. Well, after reading her newest novel, A Mercy, I am delighted to say that Ms. Morrison is at the top of her game.

A Mercy, like Beloved, focuses on the lives of the most powerless people in society. In Beloved, the action centered on enslaved African-Americans. A Mercy, set a century earlier, explored of the lives of indentured servants—black, white, and Native American-- a dimension of American history of which many readers will be unaware.

A Morrison novel wouldn't be a Morrison novel without a terrible tragedy at its heart. I won't spoil it here, but Florens, the novel's main characters, struggles to mend her spirit, although the act that caused it is the "mercy" of the title. As in Beloved, we see how destructive a mother's love can be.

A Mercy is a short novel, but potent like strong whiskey. Take your time with it, as each sentence packs a wallop and if you don't watch yourself, you'll be hungover when you're done. These characters will haunt you and won't easily let you go.


For the TRUE Morrison fans out there, you can hear her read from A Mercy on NPR.

Or watch a great interview with Charlie Rose here.



--Tayari Jones
imagineatrium.com


Tayari Jones is the author of Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling.
Check her out at tayarijones.com

BOOK REVIEW: "Ghost Radio" by Leopoldo Gout

Ghost Radio, the debut novel from producer/director/graphic artist Leopoldo Gout, is an enjoyable, easy read, and will strike a chord with those that remember the punk scene of the late 1980s, as well as fans of comic books and the paranormal.

The story involves two boys, Gabriel and Joaquin, brought together by a terrible tragedy in their teenage years. Bound together by this experience, they discover a common love of music. They form an experimental punk band, and during a pirate radio gig in Mexico, another terrible tragedy strikes. Joaquin wakes up in the hospital without Gabriel, and with no memory of how he got there.

After the loss of Gabriel, Joaquin channels his energy toward a radio call-in show he hosts called “Ghost Radio”, where callers talk about their paranormal experiences. Bolstered by his technical producer Watt and his beautiful Goth girlfriend Alondra, Joaquin is doing alright. He’s stable and his show has just been picked up in the States—yet when we join the story, unexplained things have started happening to him, and he is starting to get stuck between the stories his callers tell and reality as he knows it.

I had a good time reading this book. As a punk-loving former teen from the time period, I caught the inside references and recognized the names of the bands, although I actually swung between nostalgia and feeling like the name-dropping was a little heavy. However, I really love the fact that the characters are Mexican, and that the story doesn’t treat Mexico as a Third World country or some exotic locale, but as a legitimate place to live, with a youth culture that both mirrors the United States, yet preserves its own past and history.

Also, the concept of the show “Ghost Radio” is fantastic. The ghost stories woven throughout the narrative are the best parts of the novel. In each one, you can sense the caller’s particular viewpoint, and how confused they feel by their contact with the paranormal. Plus, the stories are just realistic enough that they’re pretty spooky.

However, for all the enjoyment I got out of the first two thirds of the book, the ending was completely confusing. The publisher describes this book by saying that Joaquin “opens the doorway into the paranormal, giving voice to the dead and instigating an epic battle for the souls of the living.” What epic battle? Souls of the living? I don’t know that anyone’s soul was really in jeopardy. Maybe Joaquin’s. It was really hard to tell, though. To me, the novel was like one of those episodes of the old “Twilight Zone” show, where the boundaries between reality and madness/paranormal/aliens/etc. are blurred and weird things start to happen, but the show ends with the main character realizing they’re totally screwed, so you never find out what happens. Ghost Radio's ending involves radio waves, electricity, the missing Gabriel, some sort of Mayan cult, and perhaps messages from beyond the grave, but depending on your expectations, might leave you a little frustrated, as it did me.

Aside from the disappointing ending and jarring use of multiple perspectives, the novel was still really enjoyable. Also, each chapter is illustrated with Gout’s fantastic drawings. If you like old-fashioned ghost stories and appreciate the Dead Kennedys, you’ll enjoy Ghost Radio.


---Kimberly Guinta
imagineatrium.com


For more info on Ghost Radio, visit the Official Site

Attack of the Clones - Exactitudes

Many of us like to believe that we are unique and special, but in reality we conform to a certain GroupThink in our actions, mannerisms, ways or speaking and dressing, and value and belief systems.

Artists in the Netherlands have pounced upon this phenomenon and taken it to a bit of an extreme, maybe to make the point that in their rush to be different, many people are really quite like others and don't even recognize it.



From the Exactitudes Web site:

Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since October 1994. Inspired by a shared interest in the striking dress codes of various social groups, they have systematically documented numerous identities over the last 14 years. Rotterdam's heterogeneous, multicultural street scene remains a major source of inspiration for Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, although since 1998 they have also worked in cities abroad.

They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.

Design the Future with Jacque Fresco

Imagine a world where war is outdated, there is no shortage of resources, and every human being enjoys a high standard of living.

Welcome to the future...by design.

Imagine Atrium will be showing the remarkable film, Future By Design, which profiles Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project, on Friday, November 14 @ 7pm, free of charge.

If you're in the NYC area, stop by and join us!

More info: www.imagineatrium.com

BOOK REVIEW: "Conspiracy in Kiev" by Noel Hynd

I was left with a mixed feelings about Noel Hynd's thriller, Conspiracy in Kiev. On the one hand, it includes everything you want in a good thriller - lots of exciting locations, well-planned murders, dramatic explosions, morally ambiguous underworld figures. On the other hand, it took a lot longer to wade through than your average spy novel, partly due to the continuing annoyance of the heroine's cloying perfection and the very occasional annoyance of some really bad writing.

Conspiracy in Kiev tells the story of Alex LaDuca, a Treasury employee charged with investigating financial scams like the ubiquitous "send your money to Nigeria to help out the king who will reward you handsomely" emails. The plot really gets going when Alex is tapped to go to the Ukraine in advance of a controversial and dangerous Presidential visit. Her ostensible purpose is to broker a deal with (and keep an eye on) a major local gangster who owes the U.S. money. She earns this assignment because of her almost too-good-to-be-true resume - fluent in five languages, athletic, beautiful, brilliant, composed, and morally flawless. After brief training in the Ukrainian language she is off.

Without giving away the exciting moments, Alex ends up embroiled in an international event much larger than tax evasion. After her trip to the Ukraine, Hynd's ambition really shows itself - he continues the story several months past what could have been the climax of the novel and manages to rebuild excitement around a second line of plot development, this time centered in South America, but all spiraling back to the events in the Ukraine.

Hynd clearly is a master of plotting and this skill is what made the book most enjoyable. What detracted from the pleasure was Alex's otherworldly goodness - I kept waiting for some small chink in her armor and was disappointed to find none. She has bad moods and personal traumas to settle, but her essential character, besides having all the skills and talents listed above, is one of perfection - she is kind, wise, sensible, assertive, dedicated, pious, nearly fearless, and makes the right moral choice in every instance. At times this got almost ridiculous. This appeared to be Hynd's main concession to the genre of "Christian mystery" he was writing in, aside from character development related to Alex's church attendance. Perhaps he did not want his protagonist to show any un-Christian flaws. The only other qualm I had in reading this novel was the occasional turn of phrase that was jarringly awful. For instance, "The design was endlessly intricate and delicate, as if made by hands guided by angels." Or consider this description, smack in the middle of a good action sequence: "The sweat rolled off her so furiously that she felt as if a fat person were lying on top of her."

Despite this, Hynd's novel is enjoyable, if light, reading. I also learned something about the intricacies of the European criminal underworld. He tied up all his loose ends, leaving the completist in me satisfied by the scope of this ambitious and interesting novel.


---Katy Wischow
imagineatrium.com

BOOK REVIEW: "Inkdeath" by Cornelia Funke

Inkdeath is the third volume of the Inkheart trilogy. The story of Meggie, her parents, and the other characters picks up where Inkspell left off. By the end of Inkspell, a central character, Dustfinger, had been taken away by the White Women; and the evil Adderhead had been made immortal by Meggie’s father, Mo, in a bargain to win his family’s life and freedom.

Inkdeath begins with the quest (mainly of the boy Farid) to bring Dustfinger back into the Inkworld. The main part of the plot, however, revolves around the adventures of the Bluejay, Mo’s chosen identity when he is with the Black Prince and his men. It is a classic struggle of good against evil. At the heart of the struggle lies Mo’s goal of reversing the damage he did by making the Adderhead immortal. The Adderhead must die in order for good to win out.

At the core of the Inkheart is the interweaving of fiction and reality and the erasing of boundaries between worlds. The central premise of the first book is that someone with the gift to do so can read characters out of books and people into books. At first we know only that Meggie’s father, Mo, can do it, but later we find out there are others as well.

Coming in at 563 pages and 81 chapters, Inkdeath is a book of considerable heft, especially for smaller (younger) hands. The plot takes many turns, but not especially difficult to follow. The relatively short chapters neatly break the big book into manageable bites.

Since I have read both prior volumes it is a bit difficult for me to judge whether it could stand on its own, but I believe it can. I was a bit disappointed with the second volume, Inkspell. Whatever apprehensions I had about Inkdeath, however, soon disappeared. In this book Ms. Funke once again weaves a magic tapestry of two (or more?) worlds and takes her readers on a fantastic adventure. The characters are developed further and really come alive. The twists and turns of the plot keep you turning the pages in fear, anticipation, hope and joy. The descriptions of the Inkworld and its inhabitants leave enough room for the readers’ imaginations to take flight.

Originally my 11-year old son (who has also read the first two volumes) was supposed to read and review Inkdeath. Unfortunately, school work got in the way. He will most certainly read it eventually, and I hope he will enjoy it as much as I did.

--Tiina Medel
imagineatrium.com

Buy Inkdeath from an independent business in your community.

Find your local bookstore at Indiebound.org