Book reviews from MarkMilner

Savage Night

by Jim Thompson

I recently enjoyed Jim Thompson's Savage Night.It’s centered around Carl Bigelow, who’s either a hitman sent to kill somebody set to rat out on the mob or a young man going to teacher’s college. Most of the book hinges around on identity: if Bigelow is really somebody else, who else is pretending – and who are they after? Appearance-altering contact lenses and fake teeth play a large role in this novel.This paranoia spills all over the place. Routine events become the setting for a double-cross. A bakery-worker neighbour isn’t just another killer hired for the same purpose, but maybe one planning to kill him, too. The wife wants the husband out, but is she working with the cops? And just why are the cops so friendly, anyway?Savage Night is a short book packed with violence, lying and tons of paranoia. And in between bouts of killing, it’s punctuated with disturbing imagery from biblical verses spelled out of ripped-apart magazines to deformed bodies. The book gradually moves from crime novel to a disturbing horror story, but given Bigelow’s state of mind, it’s fitting. Every corner is a trap, every person out to get him. Whenever he kills someone, it’s not because they needed to, but because of what they could do.It’s vintage Thompson. It’s a somewhat typical story turned on it’s side, then flipped around and back and forth. It builds up to an insane, schizophrenic finish. And it’s a hell of a ride, too. Sure, it occasionally trips over itself as it zigs and zags and it’s occasionally hard to follow, but overall, it’s a fun, disturbing ride. I’m not sure it completely works, but when it does, it really does. Recommended .

Where I'm Calling From

by Raymond Carver

A collection of 37 stories, Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From is a great sampler of Carver's work. His stories are lean, spare and punctuated by what isn't said. They're often blunt, dealing with people in a low point of their lives. These are stories about people dealing with their son's death, breaking down after a divorce and marriages crumbling. They should be sad, but they're not, they're just honest. This is how things turn out sometimes. Take the first story in this collection, Nobody Said Anything. It's about a boy skipping school to go fishing, but it's also about his approaching maturity and his family approaching a splitting point. The story directly deals with those through the fishing and bringing home his catch. These are stories that have stuck with me since I read them. If you've never read Carver before, this is a great place to start: the first, and longest, section of this book is basically Carver's greatest hits. And if you have, the newer stories here rank among his best. All in all, a must-read for anybody interested in modern fiction.

Lives Of the Later Caesars

by Anthony Birley

This is an odd one. It's maybe a literary forgery or hoax, but it's also a valuable source for this period of rome; the stuff it assumes you know for granted - Herodian's wall across England, for example - is an interesting mix of history from the Roman Empire while the stuff it tells you is more or less false.On one hand, it's nice that Anthony Birley has taken the time to annotate the hell out of this thing, marking off what's fiction (and sometimes pointing out what really happened), especially when he elaborates on an odd statement in the middle of something completely fake. On the other, he only translated the first half of the MSS this came from. Where does this book stand? More or less where Birley assumes it's supposed to: as a sequel to Suetonus. It spreads unflattering truths and insane fiction about the dirt of some really depraved guys like Commodus and Elagabalus while heaping praise on nicer people like Marcus Aurelius. He even goes into the usurpers, of which there are more than a few, all of whom meet the same fate. On the whole, it's a fascinating and weird book but one which does a good job at painting Rome's leaders in a period of crisis, both from within and without; the whole time I'm read this, I kept thinking this would have been a killer third season for HBO's Rome. If you liked The Twelve Caesars, you'll like this. Otherwise, start there first