tob! 3/10 All the Birds Singing by Evie Wylde . and Marlon James Brief Hist of Seven Killings

TMN tob March 2015

Tuesday 3/10/17

All the Birds, Singing *
 John Warner:Spooky and propulsive

lkg thr bks, stand out of int to me:
Annihilation *

/read Kindle samples!/

also maybe int in
 narrative of   Evth I Nvr Told You

 ~ Station 11


think Marlon James seems the excellent author.  (of all here).
I wld read Bk of Night Women first.
huh wasnt that the surprise in its tob year?  was it seeded 4 even?  or maybe 2 or 3 but not yet read by cmmtrs so seemed the up&comer.
here Seven Killings seems a 1; got it as a 2.
y Bk Night Women was a 4.
in 2010.
went three matches.  of wh the first:
www.themorningnews.org/tob/2010/a-gate-at-the-stairs-v-the-book-of-night-women.php
J Warner:  I thought it was an amazing, powerful, propulsive read. C. Max Magee compares it, justifiably so, to last year’s tourney champ, A Mercy, and I agree except to say that The Book of Night Women is way better /th Toni Morrison. so./  It hit me with a force similar to The Known World by Edward P. Jones, which is to say it bowled me over.


but~
-itsonlyzach: I kept waiting for the pay off -any pay off- in Brief History, and it just never came. It did feel like an accomplishment, having read it, but nothing about it will stay with me. I wish I liked it. The reviews all said it was worth sticking with, and I did. For me, in the end, it was sound and fury signifying nothing. Ultimately it was a book I enjoyed putting down much more than picking up.
All the Birds Singing, however, is one of those books that makes me so happy that the Tournament of Books exists. I never would have picked this up had it not made the shortlist, and I'm so glad I did. The atmosphere and strong female voice presented in that clever structure made me not want to put the book down. And that's why I'd move this book on to the next round without hesitation.
--Brad McGinty:  Yaaaaaaah! Every single thing you say is accurate.
--Drew: The achievement in Brief History is that James manages to spin out a yarn that captures several decades across countries in the sort of polyphonic exploded view that you can't *get* from living through it. It's a history book but one that tries to see every possible angle. Maybe its true that he tries to tackle too much stuff (everything from reggae to the crack epidemic to how bad Rolling Stone is) but the sound and fury the point.
-zach:Man, I really wish I read the book you described. It just didn't work for me. I admired it, but I didn't like it. And I feel like as I get older, I care a lot less about admiring books without enjoying them.
So, we disagree. I still read your reviews quite often. :)
-Drew: The admiration gap thing is a really good point, and it's why I guess I can't really begrudge the people who dislike this one. I think that's an intangible thing in criticism (I feel like a lot of the major reviews I've read of the new Ishiguro, for example, are very much "we admire but do not enjoy") that I wish people said outright more often. Life's too short to not enjoy what we read, even if it's admirable.
(also, cheers, my good man)
-CDHermelin:  I feel the same way as you! Drew cheer-led me through reading this book and I felt that yes, James achieved a lot and wrote with an incredible facility about difficult subjects and characters. His grasp of dialect and patois was incredible. He made me believe his characters existed. But I ultimately didn't like his book.  I did, however, love the ghost character whose name escapes me, a feat of James' that I enjoyed AND admired.
-Sir Arthur... something...
He /the ghost? or James?/ was great at summarizing the end of each part, in a really great way.

-Marinus (Naoko JunDo) //oh! so this year liked Bone Clocks ? - took cmmtr handle of Marinus = char fr that, one of the h_____ ppl who live centuries in diff bodies. / name JunDo was bcs liked Orphan Masters Son that tob year.  / and hmm was Naomo fr book ~ Time ___  last year? y: A Tale for the Time Being //   I'm almost done with Brief History, and by almost done I mean I have 6 hours of audiobook to go. I've nearly given it up every time I listen to it. I haven't yet, though, wh is something. It's impressive, yes..
//this int, maybe a reason ok th I will skim Birds:  But I'm still much more taken with Brief History than I was with Birds, which I wanted to like more (the descriptions I had read of it made it sound like my kind of book). My problem with Birds is a problem I have with any first-person narrative that withholds from the reader key information that the narrator knows all along. Yes, there's an effort, relatively effective, to show that Jake has blocked off and suppressed memories such that they might not come to the surface, but still--the reveal is just artificial. There is no authentic reason for reveal. In other words, if we knew Jake's "secret" from the first, what would be lost? For me, what would be lost would be the sense of being cheated by a false mystery.
/wonder if I agree...  maybe am okay w artificial mystery and reveal fr author to reader.
/ maybe can get All the Birds fr libr
or ~ if like sample first chp, actually buy on Kindle.  good to get my Kindle out too. /

--Brandon:  Maybe this is my flawed reading of All The Birds, Singing, but to me what the narrative reveal was didn't especially matter, so long as there was something significant. I loved ATBS as an exploration of trauma and a low bar version of still making your life meaningful for you. I was wishy-washy on whether or not Jake was actually seeing the beast and wondered if she was just experiencing some PTSD symptoms. So as we get closer to the event, and her symptoms get worse, I wondered where exactly we'd be going, and what her fate would be. Wyld does tension like an expert horror writer and I loved taking that journey with her. I was rooting for ATBS in this battle but figured A Brief History would win on scope. I worry it won't have the zombie votes, but I desperately hope it does.
---3 hours ago
I like your comment, Brandon. I think ATBS was ultimately about healing, even though the characters have to go through the trauma again and again to get there. Someone one said yesterday in one of these discussions that, as bleak as the beginning of ATBS seems, it is actually so much better than what came before in Jake's life. It kind of *is* her happy ending.



----->> dlww  all  & this,  edit there//
-Ah, I'm so disappointed. I loved All the Birds, Singing. The Bookstore, thank you for recommending it since it was my favorite book that I've read in a long while. Jake is a great, strong character, and I loved the pacing of the novel. I read it quickly, in the freezing Maine winter, in front of the woodstove /mm/, and still can't stop thinking about it. And that ending, man, I didn't think there was any slow burn about it. /oh good.  one person saying end not a letdown.
9  Reply  < oh and 9 upvotes so that is encouraging re ending ATBS

--That's the huge thing about ATBS for me. I loved the atmosphere and the dual narrative/shifting timeframe, but Jake is the big draw. She's not like anyone else: her complexities and her world and her fullness are comprehensive and unique and layered and true. /mm/
M James layers everything with different and all very distinct voices giving us overlapping perspectives on the same events. It's a really successful way of building a kaleidoscopic view of moments in time.
But Wyld puts all the layers within Jake: the kaleidoscope is inside her head. I relish it.
//the Tolstoy v Dostoevsky//

-CDHermelin:  I think one thing this tournament has taught me is I love novels that face inward, as Wyld's did, plunging through the depths of consciousness to unravel one journey that the character has been on. Her inventive structure played with that type of storytelling, and it was a thrill.


-I thought it was fantastic, but this tournament has a large number of excellent books. What impressed me about ATBS was that I expected a certain big reveal and got something quite different, but one that fit the story very well. I loved that.


-I felt like Wyld was withholding info only for the sake of adding tension. She writes beautifully, and the novel is damned evocative and atmospheric, but .. I was curious about how it would end, but I didn't care enough to carry on through the narrative machinery to get there.  It's possible I read ATBS too soon after Catherine Lacey's Nobody Is Ever Missing, which I thought had similarities to this book but were both stronger, more unpredictable reads.
--I thought that the Lacey hit harder with the psychological stuff whereas AtB relied a little too much on the creep-out factor without anything weighty to back it up.
--I'm so glad you mentioned Nobody Is Ever Missing. It stuck on me harder and faster than anything else in the past year.  / well look at that too then.  do like the title./
--- it did not do anything for me. I had the reverse reaction. I felt like I knew all too well what Lacey was trying to do and she didn't surprise me at all. But with Wyld I was completely drawn in.
//so my guess, but it's an open qstn to me, is I will like Wyld more.
see I like the conversatn making qstns for me abt wh I will think.

-Wyld's book felt like a ghost story. The mood is so pervasive and sticky. I finished it several weeks ago but reading this discussion brings it all back, effortlessly. I love that as a reader and admire the writerly accomplishment. //mm ghost story.  bcs y Nobody is Ever Missing.
Di Piero  Hardy  the woman calling  traces  if not there we will generate
and, bio of DFW (by ~ Max .. who was a tob a judge? and seems smart) w DFW line I think? as title  Every love story is a ghost story.
is that right?   bcs y ~ Nobody is always there.  always traces and always absence.   (too trite to say? cldn't feel the absence without the presence?  ~ less obvs th th oppos is true, but maybe to feel deeply.)

......now in mind 'opposite'  > Always ask yrslf, wh if it's the opposite?
Knaussgard.  I do really like.  = find deeply interesting.  very smart I giess.





-MrHilary: I couldn’t wait to get back to All the Birds, Singing, because it was the perfect slow burn of * poetry, danger, What Is Happening? *  and Holy Crap That’s What Was Happening And There’s More?!   But it really does sort of peter out, wh is understandable, because it’s pretty perfectly paced for quite awhile, and that’s tough to establish or maintain, still a letdown.






______________________________
-reviewer-contender connections Jeff VanderMeer, the Author of Annihilation, wrote a lovely review of All The Birds, Singing. *  Those were probably my two favorite surprises for the tournament  /y how I am feeling

-Right after reading this / Elliot Ackerman / judging, I added his book Green on Blue  since  I loved what he wrote about these two books so much. Another great thing about the tournament is discovering great writers that have judged in the tournament, last year was Roxane Gay.

so nb 2014 roxane gay as judge:
www.themorningnews.org/tob/2014/the-goldfinch-v-the-people-in-the-trees.php
JWarner:   it would be hard to find a working writer/editor/critic who I respect more than Roxane Gay. I’ve been recommending her as a judge for a couple of years. PANK, the journal/small press she co-edits, puts out fantastic issues and books (and even had the good taste to publish a story of mine). Her essays ranging across all aspects of our culture are sharp and thought-provoking. It was also her review of Long Division that put it on my radar. Her Twitter feed is one of my go-to spots for book recommendations, and her novel, An Untamed State, should be a contender for ToBXI.

^ in re that
- There seem to be themes every year in the TOB, and this year it seems like some apocalyptic stories //Annihilation.  and Station 11, right? and another? // and books about sexual violence. // Untamed by R Gay, re woman kidnapped.  and the Marlon James.  re rape. and other bks here?


&
-the books I've read for the TOB so far: all are bouncing around in time /huh/



www.themorningnews.org/tob/2015/how-it-works.php
-chico mcdirk:  Another ToB is upon us! It's like a family reunion, where all the family members use fake names. So, exactly like my family reunions