Book Review: Imperial Dreams, by Tim Gallagher

Imperial Dreams: Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker Through the Wild Sierra Madre, by Tim Gallagher, is an account of the author’s travels through the Sierra Madre mountain range in Mexico in search of the imperial woodpecker. Presumed extinct since the 1950s, the imperial woodpecker–the largest of its species in the world!–is a close cousin of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which Gallagher claimed to have encountered with a birding team in Arkansas. This book represents one of his many in-depth searches for a rare, possibly extinct bird.

I’m a birder (though not on Gallagher’s level), and in addition to having birded in some cool places, I’ve also been lucky enough to have traveled throughout Mexico as a result of my father’s family still living there. So really, this book seemed as though it was tailor-written for me!

However.

Book Review: Netsuke Nation: Tales of Another Japan, by Jonathan Magonet

Netsuke Nation: Tales from Another Japan, by Jonathan Magonet, is a short-story collection unlike anything you might have encountered before–unless you are familiar with netsuke, small and elaborate decorative carvings that are part of proper Japanese dress. Magonet, who has lived and taught in Japan, became enamored of netsuke and began to collect some of his own. Netsuke Nation is the result of his fascination with the carvings: partly short stories based around the imagined lives of individual figurines, and partly an ethnographic exploration of netsuke life, including politics, art, entertainment, and even sexual relationships.

As I read, I found myself wishing the Magonet had dropped the enthnography conceit entirely, and instead focused solely on the personal histories he had created surrounded his own personal netsuke. Those chapters, to me, felt the most in-depth, realistic, and creative. There are stories about a geisha cat, a pair of elderly sumo wrestlers, a fox priest, a professor, and more. They range from exploring themes of loneliness, relationships, and politics, with just a twist of magical realism, and are written with a certain detached wryness that I thought was appealing. Enough of the “other Japan” comes through in these stories, in bits and pieces that occur naturally as our characters navigate the world, as to make dedicated ethnography chapters seem flat and overly-expository. The geisha cat, for example, introduces the reader to the role of a geisha–to be a conversational, charming, objective of beauty–in addition to what her days and nights might look like, without necessarily going into a formal study of geisha culture. It probably also helps that I was the type of kid that totally believed her stuffed animals were alive, and had all sorts of fun adventures the moment my back was turned. It was very easy for me to fall under the spell of the netsuke characters!

Review: Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

My experience with Colson Whitehead’s Zone One mirrors my that of a similar novel, Justin Cronin’s The Passage. First, I get excited at the prospect of literary fiction taking on genre fiction subjects (zombies and vampires, respectively). Then, I get even more excited once critics and readers flood magazines and blogs with positive reviews. Then, I actually read the thing and inevitably find myself disappointed. Either my expectations are too high, or literary fiction stylings of sci-fi and horror tropes are just not for me (which, how can that be possible?!).

Zone One is, on a macro level, a story about the end of the world. A nameless plague has swept through the United States, turning humans unlucky enough to get bitten into “skels,” so named for their increasingly skeletal appearances. We never discover how or why this happened; people are more interested in surviving and resettling. Zone One refers to the portion of lower Manhattan that will be one of the first parts of the city to be resettled, thanks to the Marines killing the first wave of skels and a wall that protects them from outside hordes. Mark Spitz, our main character, is part of a sweeper team–soldiers and civilians who kill off any “straggler” skels–working its way, block by block, to a skel-free future.

The city had long carried its own plague. Its infection had converted this creature into a member of its bygone loser cadre, into another one of the broke and the deluded, the mis-fitting, the inveterate unlucky.

I like being dropped into a world, without a lot of backstory or a long, tortured prologue, and that is how Zone One appeared–at first. But the flow of action was quickly stifled by endless flashbacks. The novel’s opening, for me, was excruciating to get through: while being attacked by three skels, Mark Spitz drifts in and out of memories, including an explanation of a popular tv show whose character inspired a hairstyle worn by one of the skels and his feelings about one of his former teachers. This info-dumping of related and unrelated memories continued for the entire book. I would often lose track of which events were occurring during what time, which was disorienting and often forced me to flip back to the chapter’s beginning. I can intellectually appreciate that Whitehead did this purposefully, to depict through form the manifestation of Mark Spitz’s PSAD, but as a reader I had to wonder if disrupting the flow of the story to such an extent was worth it. It certainly hampered my enjoyment, and almost caused me to put the book down after 20 pages.

Review: Auraria, by Tim Westover

I’m a Northeastern girl through and through. I was born in Manhattan, raised on Long Island, and lived in Queens post-undergrad; I went to college and grad school in Rhode Island; the majority of my friends and family are spread between Boston, Providence, and New York City. The furthest south I’ve been in the U.S is South Carolina. So it was with slight trepidation that I approached Tim Westover’s Auraria, a novel centered on a small Southern gold mining town and steeped in rural Georgian history, culture, and myth. With very little background knowledge of the area, I was still able to understand and connect with Westover’s cast of mysterious, quirky, and downright magical characters.

Those characters were one of Auraria‘s biggest strengths. The residents of the town range from a piano-playing ghost to a Great and Invincible Tortoise to fish spirits to the assorted humans who happen to be just as odd as the non-humans. Out of our large cast, I liked Princess Tralyhta and Abigail the best. Both were presented as strong, fearless, and competent, and both were able to take Holtzclaw under their protection from some of the more dangerous elements of the town. The Princess managed to be mysterious, childlike, and threatening by turns, and I enjoyed her random interactions with Holtzclaw, as well as her explanation of how gold forms and why Auraria needs to be rid of it. Abigail, a tough young lady who sees visions of gold, was just excellent, and I would have gladly read an entire novel from her perspective. These unusual small-town folks helped to give Auraria the charming, dusty feel of a sepia-toned photograph–the story of a time that has come and gone.

For me, the weak link was actually our main character, Holtzclaw. As an outsider to Auraria, sent on behalf of his employer Shadburn to buy up property, Holtzclaw is a logical choice to serve as our point-of-view character; we can meet the rest of the cast through his eyes. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, and for good reason (hello, Great Gatsby!). However: Holtzclaw is presented as competent from the start–there is no real arc for him to go from surprised and frightened of the living local legends to deftly negotiating with them. Even when he fails in some of his early business deals, it’s not because he is freaked out by the ghost or the moon maiden or whoever–it’s just because his arguments fail to sway them. He is rarely surprised or impressed by any of the bizarre sights he is confronted with, which was honestly difficult to believe. Despite following him around for most of the novel, he remained a cipher to me (albeit a cipher who liked squirrel brains and a good claret).

Review: Evolution in a Toxic World, by Emily Monosson

Did you know that oxygen used to be toxic? That some species, like killifish, have already evolved resistance to some water pollutants? That it is mosquitoes’ ability to duplicate alleles that allows them to develop pesticide resistance?

If those sound like things you would be interested in learning more about, you might want to pick up Evolution in a Toxic World: How Life Responds to Chemical Threats , by Emily Monosson. She details how various living creatures have evolved to survive–and even thrive–when faced with a constant onslaught of toxic substances, starting with the primordial origins of life and ending in the present day. In the process, we learn about the functions of various structures of our bodies as they adapt to changing conditions.

The third part of the book, which deals specifically with humans, was the most interesting to me. (This maaaay have something to do with the fact that my graduate studies revolve around environmental health and environmental justice impacts on humans…). It introduces current toxics, like PBCs and CFCs, and the sorts of effects they have had and continue to have our on bodies. It also seemed to be the most accessible section, with  the least dependence on highly scientific terminology. Monosson’s discussion of evolution itself, and the generational evolution we are able to observe in creatures like killifish and mosquitoes, was incredibly interesting and very well-put.

That being said, I don’t think this is a book for the general layperson, with no environmental health or toxicology previous experience. The first two sections of the book especially are difficult if you are not familiar with the functions of DNA, mitochondria and other cells, and basic toxicology. There were some sections that I found dense and confusing, myself, and I do have some familiarity with the subject. This is a book to take slowly and carefully, and where you may need to look up things if you don’t understand them on the first read. At the same time, it is highly informative and provides a broad range of environmental health issues under the umbrella of one subject: evolution. If you have some interest and experience with toxicology or cellular biology, be sure to check this read out!

I received this book free for review from the publisher through NetGalley. Evolution in a Toxic World was released on April 2nd, 2012, and is available now.

Bookwanderer Rating: Three stars