The Anomaly

 The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier is a thrilling read. Unfortunately, I learned too much in a review before I picked up the novel, and I felt that diminished some of my enjoyment reading it, so here I will avoid most summary. Just know that the novel recounts a global response to a major event, an event that shifts humanity's perception of reality. There are big surprises, and mind-bending explanations for the events of the text. Well-written and suspenseful, The Anomaly is difficult to put down. I read it in a weekend. Though certainly plot-driven, it's also an ideas novel, and the speculative philosophy--with roots in French Existentialism--is probably the most interesting aspect of the book. It's impossible not to ponder the large questions at its center, even as you're forging ahead to find out what happens. Relentlessly, the text doesn't quit, and the last few pages literally raised hair on the back of my neck. It was unsettling and disturbing and creepy and wonderful. 

Reading the novel so quickly removes some of my evaluation until later, on reflection. There were some artistic problems in The Anomaly. In a way, I was reminded of Richard Powers's The Overstory, in that the science and ideas of the novel were fascinating, the characterization less so. With their big casts of characters, both Powers and Le Tellier achieve some empathy, but leave out huge gaps. Antagonists are therefore reduced to cardboard caricatures. For Powers, it was the buffoons in the Timber Industry; for Le Tellier, it was for the simple-minded religious. In both cases, the other side exists more like a shrill social-media stereotype than an actual group of people. Late in The Anomaly, there's a scene involving religious leaders that reads very similarly to a clumsy passage in Yann Martel's overrated Life of Pi: narrow-minded fuddy duddies thwart the good-faith inquiry of curious protagonists. They bicker and throw stones at the other religions, but have no self-awareness, humility, or sense of wonder. I know many religious leaders, and none of them behave like these characters. Tellingly, the religious are all American, and Le Tellier writes from secular France. One of the thoughtful (good, secular) main characters, in a television interview, simply says "I don't understand" those people. Even when the omniscient narrative enters the mind of a zealot, it is clear that Le Tellier does not either. 

Still, this gap in empathy and--I would argue--creative integrity and realism, did not ruin the text for me. If anything, it stood out as a clumsy divergence from an otherwise excellent read. 

Babylon Remembered

 Babylon Remembered by David Malouf is a poetic, post-colonial novel set in Australia. There is no single protagonist--each chapter centers a different character--but the novel is concerned with the story of a white man who stumbles into a nineteenth-century outback village after being raised, mostly, by Aboriginal Australians. Most of the villagers treat this man with suspicion. Using hazy, impressionistic vignettes, Malouf tells a story of frontier life, poor communication, racism, poverty, and sadness. Some of the narration was convoluted, purple prose that overwhelmed the clarity of the story. In other places, the details were illuminating and haunting. 

The "Babylon" of the title was difficult to locate. Was it the Aboriginal society? England (or for some characters, Scotland)? Was it the colonial era in general, as the last chapter is set fifty years hence? Since none of those were given more than a half chapter or so, each, they did not seem to drive any character's motivation. Ultimately, the text was beautiful in places and consistently melancholic, but would have benefitted from greater cohesion in the narrative. 

The Dakota Winters

 The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash is thoroughly enjoyable. It reads like a Brat Pack novel. I was reminded of Less Than Zero, only without the horrific subject matter. The novel charts the early-twenties malaise of its narrator, Anton Winter, as he drifts through New York City in 1980. Winter's father is a former talk show host, and they are friends with many celebrities, so many that I thought the novel was a little too name-droppy in its first half, but I think Barbash settled in and pulled it off in the end. 

A key figure in the novel is Anton's building neighbor, John Lennon. While Lennon's death is foreshadowed by a handful of recurring details--the fans outside the building, the general violence of 1980's New York--the novel does not wallow in it. It's sad in places but mostly a celebration of a great life in a great city. Page by page, The Dakota Winters retains its coolly jaded tone and inviting pace, and I read it hungrily, longing to turn up some synthesizer music and go for a drive under neon lights.