Rainbow Reads - September 2015

This month's Rainbow Reads run the gamut of personal experience. "Darkness The Color of Snow" and "Was" both take place in the mid-West. They couldn't be have more different yet they still capture a darker aspect of life below the poverty line. "A Little Bit of Spice" and "The Garden of Lost and Found" take place in New York state. "Death and Mr. Pickwick" details the adventures of Mr. Pickwick: this one an aristocrat with a respect for life's finer pleasures.

Darkness The Color of Snow (Thomas Cobb)

"Darkness the Color of Snow" could be considered a Man's novel. It is a novel about small town political manipulation, scapegoating among the desperate and needy, greed, and friendship. It practically oozes testosterone. Rookie cop Ronny Forbert is patrolling an empty back highway in a very small town when he pulls over a Jeep full of townies. What begins as a routine DWI ends in a hit and run. Police Chief Gordy Hawkins is determined to prove that Forbert was doing his job when tragedy struck. The town decides that Forbert must pay.

"Darkness" is low on emotional connection but high on visceral descriptions of action and violence. The focus characters are plain spoken, salt of the earth types to whom routine is sacred and emotions' depths are uncharted territories. Female characters are less sexy lamps with a note and more indescript coat hangers on which male characters hang histories. For all this, Cobb's writing is good. He, like his characters, writes in a no-nonsense, direct style. Reading Cobb is like watching a modern cop drama. He whisks the reader away to a life more harrowing than one's own. There's a solace in his depiction in how things could be worse than they are.

"Darkness The Color of Snow"
Thomas Cobb
William Morrow Publishers
$25.99

A Little Bit Of Spice (Georgia Beers)

"A Little Bit of Spice" is about love and beer. Andrea Blake is a sales manager at chain grocery Hagan's. Kendall Foster is the sales manager for her family's microbrewery. They are old school rivals and now they must work together toward a common goal: delicious beer. By teaching Andrea the ins and outs of beer brewing, Kendall starts them on a trajectory towards romance. With the help of their fluffy friends, their rocky friendship blooms into a stable love match.

"Spice" is fun. It's a not too complicated lesbian romance about realistic but not impossible problems. Andrea and Kendall are pretty people who assume they'll never find love but then do find it in unexpected places. Georgia Beers writing is cute and witty. Her descriptions are easy on the imagination and inventive. The beer sounds delicious and there is a lot of talk about beer. This novel would be great for a read on the beach or on a winter's day curled up with a blanket and a winter ale. An appreciation of beer is helpful but not mandatory.

"A Little Bit of Spice"
Georgia Beers
Brisk Press
$14.95

Was (Geoff Ryman)

"Was" follows the intersections of perceived reality and art. Originally published in the UK in 1992, 2015 marks its second printing. It is a semi-realistic interpretation of Frank L. Baum's "Oz" books and the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz." Dorothy Gael is an innocent, dim child who's lost her family to diphtheria. Aunty Em and Uncle Henry are impoverished farmers who live in a one-room shack. Theirs' is not the idyllic portrayal from the movie. Francis Gumm (aka Judy Garland) is a small town actress turned Hollywood star used as a pawn by her parents in their bitter arguments and infidelities. Lastly, but not least, Jonathan is an HIV+ actor touring Manhattan, Kansas with his manager/boyfriend.

While the summary of this novel may appear complicated, Ryman ties each of the plotlines and their dreary narrations clearly and imaginatively. Ryman peels away their fates in dark and vivid minor tragedies. His characters struggle towards hope, as we conclude that none is deserved.

"Was"
Geoff Ryman
$16.00
Small Beer Press

The Garden Of Lost and Found (Dale Peck)

"The Garden of Lost and Found" is difficult to follow. It is the story of James Ramsay, transplant to New York City and recent orphan to a mother he never knew. Ramsay weaves in and out of lucidity. His narration jumps forward and back on a timeline that is rarely clarified and not entirely believable. We know that he has inherited a building from his mother, that the tenant has one longtime tenant, Nellydean and that Nellydean's niece is pregnant. He could sell the building and make a tidy profit but that would put his new friends on the street. He avoids making a decision as his health fails.

Dale Peck wrote a peculiar, hallucinatory novel about modern day life as a gay man who may or may not have AIDS. The prose is well written; sometimes violently emotional, frequently unhinged, always interesting. The dilapidated state of the New York City apartment building is an easy metaphor for Ramsay's mental health, stuffed and crumbling. We aren't entirely sure if we can trust Peck's characters but it's well worth the read to find out.

"The Garden of Lost and Found"
Dale Peck
$16.00
Soho Press

Death And Mr. Pickwick (Stephen Jarvis)

The novel known commonly as "The Pickwick Papers" was Charles Dickens' first novel under the pseudonym Boz. He took up the writing of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" after the death of illustrator Robert Seymour. Seymour's widow alleged that the idea for "The Pickwick Papers" was the intellectual property of Seymour. This is an idea that Dickens copiously denied. In the novel "Death and Mr. Pickwick," writer Stephen Jarvis asserts that the known histories of "The PIckwick Papers" are false. Jarvis presents an alternative, true account of the history of Mr. Pickwick and his many adventures.

Jarvis' writing is more accessible than that of Dickens'. The novel is presented in a modern style that is highly influenced by English literature. The majority of tales weaved so skillfully together by Jarvis appear as a tale within a tale as told by Pickwick or an associate. The characters and their environs are delightfully Dickensian and reminiscent of a London captured in "The Threepenny Opera" or "Sweeney Todd." A word to the wise: this novel is long. Jarvis covers a great history of Mr. Pickwick's adventures. It is well written but plumbing the depths of the novel requires more than an afternoon's study.

"Death and Mr. Pickwick"
Stephen Jarvis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$30.00