The Hermit

In 1996, I was deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina on a peace-keeping mission. It was a cold year as the Balkans have ridiculously strong winters. The novelty of snow wore off quickly; that happens when you have to sleep in a tent without showers for a couple of months.

It was a difficult year full of isolation, but not without its rewards.

That was the year I turned 20. The friends I made during that deployment would stay with me the remainder of my military career. Also, I was deployed somewhere! I was halfway across the world, getting to know about a place that I never thought I would see. My personal philosophy on tourism isn't very positive: I don't like being a tourist.

But living among Europeans in their torn country...it was like I had gone back home to El Salvador.

An image from El Savador during the civil war

An image from Bosnia during the civil war

Of course, you have to understand that the isolation is unimaginable now. These days, soldiers have access to social media while deployed. We did not. The internet was there in 1996, but it was in its infancy. I actually had a pen pal, a girl from the Midwest, who I wrote to regularly. Letters and packages from home were a welcome delight.

Waking up daily to go to work and nothing more is an experience unlike any I have had since.

***

I think I am in the beginning of a similar period. My social life is non-existent right now. And thanks to certain family members, I am in debt instead of surplus. Yup. Family can screw you and steal your identity to open accounts, which they later max out before you find them out...

So, I'll be paying that off this year and will likely spend the first half of the year to accomplish it. But it will get done.

That means I have to give up certain amenities and trips. I can't go to Starbucks as often. I won't be able to go to conventions until the end of the year.

And dating? Right...

This is all for the best, I suppose. It popped the enthusiasm bubble that grew after I finished the LAX story. That was necessary for me to write. Being a hermit will hopefully help me focus on the difficult road to becoming a published author of fiction.

My goals for the first half of the year are, therefore:

1) Refine the short stories completed.

2) Refine and complete the short stories drafted (that I want to refine and complete)

3) Draft the three short stories that I want to draft.

4) Draft the screenplay I want to draft.

5) Let friendship find me, don't seek it out.

6) Stop using women for sex.

7) Let my imagination create fictions, not fantasies.








LC / LA

The Girl on the Train, a review...

And so, here we are again...

A project completed. The LAX story went down at four this morning and at four twenty I was already revising it! I am again sad that I won't see my characters for a while. I'm also sad for another reason. This is the first story I've written that deals with experiences I've had in the recent past.

Before, my fiction centered around ideas I had, some taken from events in my life or the news, but mostly from my imagination. The LAX story is almost a log of the things I went through with my Josephine and the ANA ticket counter account. Most of it is fictitious, but the forty percent that is not is drawn almost word for word from interactions I had at the airport. Now that it's over, it feels like I completed therapy. I got it off my chest. I'm lighter.

Yes.

My Josephine really did a number on me. But there are other projects that need my attention now. Before that, however...

With the LAX story complete, I'm catching up on my reading. I will do this for a few days before I go into 2015 phase 2. And then, my friends...that's when things start to get interesting.

I have to say that I picked The Girl on the Train because our library has a list of over a hundred people waiting to read a free copy. Many liken it to Gone Girl, a book which I enjoyed, so I thought I would give this a try.

My experience with the book was different than my experience reading Gone Girl. I can tell you right now that the two books are nothing alike. Sure, the premise is the same, but in the end, The Girl on the Train is a classic whodunit; Gone Girl starts out that way, but does a paradigm shift midway through the book and becomes a sort of thriller.




Overview:


Author: Paula Hawkins
Genre: Mystery
Premise: Dysfunctional, alcoholic Rachel tries to help solve the disappearance of Megan, a married woman who repeatedly cheats on her husband with her therapist.




What didn't work for me:


Comma splices

Here is an example of a comma splice in The Girl on the Train:

She'd have driven him mad in the end, I really think that--she'd have ground him down, she'd have made him into something he's not.

The text of The Girl on the Train is full of them. They are more persistent in the first half of the book and wind down by the end.

Now, normally, I would be okay with a writer manipulating the English language for stylistic reasons. We take liberties with grammar to create effects. Some writers take advantage of this, while others are strict about adhering to grammar rules.

It's.

Just.

A preference.

There is an effect in the example above. We have been trained since childhood to stop when we reach a period. It signals an end, like the red light signals you to stop when you're driving. We don't think about it. This just happens naturally while we read.

We writers know this and take advantage of it.

The important thing is to create an effect that is understandable, letting the reader know that you're trying to do something different! Otherwise, it comes across as a mistake. Or worse, the writer takes such liberties with the text that it comes across as chaotic and confusing. Imagine reading a book with no punctuation! Or imagine reading a book that just had sentence fragments.

For the life of me, I didn't understand why Paula Hawkins had so many comma splices. What was the effect? You're supposed to pause when you find a comma in a sentence. And I did. After. Each. One. Ahhhhhh! Why is she doing it? Why? Tell me Paula, why? Am I too stupid to get it?

Naturally, this distracted my reading and I sometimes found it hard to focus.

Seriously, what was the effect?


Plot pace

The mystery doesn't start right away. I have read reviews that say this plot is lightning fast, but I didn't think so. You have to read more than thirty percent of the book before Megan disappears. And when the mystery finally starts, it moves as fast as that train that Rachel rides every day to her non-existent job.

After that, the story is a little more interesting. The pace doesn't become lightning fast until you're about ninety percent done with the book.

This is ironic since the book is short. At just over three hundred pages, The Girl on the Train should have been a fast, fast read.


Characterization 

Oh, man, there are so many fucked up people in this book! Normally, I would enjoy this--since messed up people are more interesting.

With The Girl on the Train, it is clear that the author just wants to give clever twists to typical whodunit characters of hardboiled detective fiction.

There's the detective, in this case Rachel. In most private eye novels, the detective has a drinking problem. Rachel is a full blown alcoholic who has black outs--a plot device. The twist is that her misery takes center stage during that first thirty percent of the novel before Megan disappears. Joy!

There's the femme fatale, in this case Megan. She is the typical seductress willing to get men to do her bidding by manipulating their sexual desires; she comes complete with a seedy past. The twist here is that she is also the victim.

And then there's Scott, Megan's husband, who is the patsy and most obvious suspect. This isn't even a spoiler! His only purpose in this book is to give us another red herring. Did he do it? He's violent. He's jealous. He's too obvious. In the case of Nick from Gone Girl, I really didn't know if he had done it or not; that author beautifully focused on him and his actions. The twist for Scott is that we never know what happens to him in the end. The story mentions his name, but who knows what happens to him.




What worked for me:


Okay, so I'll be fair and say that once you get into it--after you get used to Rachel's misery--the book is interesting. I couldn't stop reading it after I got to the 70% mark. Before you get there, though, there are other reasons to keep going. The main one is the realism.

The Realism

What is most gripping is the realism in this story. This book builds its rails and stays on them. Pun intended.

My biggest complaint about Gone Girl is that at one point, it becomes a fantasy. Mad evil genius? Come oooooooon...

That point never came in The Girl on the Train. Rachel's behaviors as an alcoholic are typical, but not to the point where I felt I was reading a textbook case. Many times an author will describe a person with a problem like alcoholism and it reads like a pamphlet. The black outs, the messes with vomit, the hiding of liquor and those gin tonics... all well done.

Scott, though too obvious to be the killer, works well as a jealous husband. The way he tries to check up on her and check her browser history and do those little things that jealous men do... It works. You really do get pissed with Megan and sympathize with him. But really, why would anyone this jealous get with a woman like Megan? It is excellent.

Kudos!

The crime, when the killer is revealed, is so mundane and realistic that it's disturbing. The things the killer does to try and get away with it are so stupid that you can believe that a regular person--who isn't an evil genius--would come up with the same ideas and make the same mistakes.

And then there's the final action in the book. There are no superhero moments here. Actually, the violence is apprehensive; the killer, when found out, believably wants to find some other way out, a peaceful way that will leave all parties alive. But throughout the novel, the author pushes and pushes these folks to a state of hysteria and bottled up aggression.

Rachel can't give up Tom, her former husband, and sinks deeper into alcoholism, which brings about more black outs during which she does bolder and more dangerous things. Tom doesn't know what to do with Rachel, who won't leave him and his new wife Anna alone; one time she even took hold of their newborn baby while completely drunk. Anna can't convince Tom to leave that city, that house, and start fresh somewhere away from Rachel; every time Rachel comes by, drunk, or calls the house, she is pressured into looking for alternatives in dealing with her. Scott slowly, but surely, builds up all the aggression that comes from having a pretty wife he rightly suspects is cheating on him. And Megan can't overcome the guilt that is the result of the things she did in her past and cannot function as a wife because of it--she's always trying to run away. And then there's the therapist, Kamal, whose affair with Megan nearly destroys him; it's horrible that she can't let this go and keeps trying to get him back for more.

These are just people pushed to a point where murder is an unfortunate, animal choice.



Overall:


If you have patience, The Girl on the Train can entertain you for hours--if you fly to another country, for example.

It's not a perfect book, though, and often I wanted to put it down to do other things; Facebook was an attractive option during my reading of the book.

Overall, it's a fair little mystery that will likely lead to more improved versions of it as the author (hopefully) gets into her groove as a writer. For that reason, I'm going to buy another Paula Hawkins book when she writes one.

I can tell you though, if I see a comma splice in her next book, I'm putting it down!





LC / LA

The Causal Angel, a review...

The past two weeks have been less productive than I would have liked. My Josephine (more on that name) is giving my imagination too much to process. Most of its creative power is going to the current situation. The only silver lining is that these experiences will fuel the fiction that will become Tommy and Me, which I'm working on after The Wizards...

The Wizard of Santa Monica is coming along though. It's not the pace I would like, nor is it the quality I would like. However, if there is one thing I am proud of it's that I'm an excellent revisionist.

***

"The enemy is death." That is an idea that resonates throughout the novel. It is interesting that while the characters certainly are "alive", theirs is not the kind of living that we would identify with here in our century. This novel does a good job of bringing otherworldly science and our own theoretical physics into one sphere that is not very understandable!

However, if you can get past that, then the confusing science creates a mesh of world-building that seems almost mystical.

Overview:

Author: Hannu Rajaniemi
Genre: Science Fiction

Premise: The legendary thief, Jean LeFlambeur and a young Matjek Chen must overcome numerous obstacles to rescue Mieli from the Zoku and prevent the Sobornost and the villainous All-Defector from finding the Kaminari Jewel (which grants certain individuals the power to change the universe).



What didn't work for me:

This novel could have done more philosophically. The Causal Angel is a very thin book, compared to the other two, so I thought it had space to muse on certain philosophical issues. The main question of identity is never really delved into.

Really, when you exist alongside other copies of you, what are the consequences for your identity? Are you still you if there are fifty of you walking around and more of you can be created? If the Self becomes digitized, is it still 'Self' or 'Community' since the information that makes up 'Self' is no longer unique? Is your humanity just a collection of quantum states that can be copied and recopied? And what about the question of Nature vs. Nurture when there are multiple copies of you that are you, but with new and unique life experiences to shape them?

All of that could have been looked into. Rajaniemi plays with some ideas and the plot occasionally wanders into that territory, but for the most part it is left untouched.

A consequence of not truly exploring this issue is that it made the ending feel like a cheat. I won't say what the ending is, but it leaves open the possibility of more Jean LeFlambeur stories, though I'm not sure if I can invest in the character if a new copy can continue on with the series...

It's a shame.


What worked for me:

Everything else worked for me. Some of my favorite elements were these:

There is this tease in the beginning where young Matjek Chen reads the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia and complains that everyone dies. So, I thought, they are all going to die by the end of the book. But that's part of the playfulness of the story: If you can self replicate or be 'saved' like videogame progress, can you truly die? And what's more, young Matjek Chen is horrified at his older version's infamous accomplishments and by the fact that he will become that when he's older. But will he become the very thing that horrifies him as a child? Who knows. This is a digitized human.

The world, as always, is a pleasure to explore. This time the action takes place in a number of environments like deep space and several planets, like Saturn. Though the focus of the world-building is spread apart, you never truly feel like you've been cheated. There is enough here to give a satisfying setting for the story and plenty of room for it to grow (oh, vast amounts!).

The Kaminari Jewel is an element of the book that truly belongs in a Fantasy novel. Yet, the author manages to keep it in the realm of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics. Unless you study the things the author has studied (and understood it), the science will be confusing. This was a negative point in the last review, but this time it works to the novel's advantage. The jewel itself is a pseudo-magical artifact that grants unimaginable power. The mystical texture comes from the confusion the reader will likely experience when the narrator explains the science behind the jewel.

Here, I also wanted to note that the storytelling is a Science Fiction take on the old way of telling stories, the serials of old where the main character did not have to develop permanently, only as long as the adventure lasted. Rajaniemi adds a twist. His main character learns things, but he is just a copy of a Prime version. Each new copy (for future adventures I'm guessing) will start from scratch without the benefit of the previous version's experiences. Whether or not the Prime learns from his copies is left a mystery.


Overall:

This possibly could have been a longer work with more of the great things that made the previous two installments memorable.

It did feel a little light in content, but that helped since the science fiction exposition can drain you substantially if you read it for long periods of time.

If you're a hardcore Science Fiction fan and have an Engineering degree or have studied physics, etc., then you will get more out of this than most readers who have not. I'm almost tempted to read about this stuff even more just to see how that layers the story.




LC