In Search of Eden by Linda Nichols is a sweet story. After I read it, I checked a few reviews on Amazon, and there were some who complained about it being predictable and having a happy ending that tied up all the threads. I suppose some people prefer threads left dangling and unhappy endings. Maybe that’s more “realistic.”
What I like about the novel is that it’s unpretentious. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. It’s a story about a 15-year-old girl who’s forced to give up her newborn baby, and how she spends the next 11 years looking for the child, and looking for herself. She finds both, and a lot more, in a small town in Virginia.
I like how Nichols blends the message of faith and belief into the story, so that it’s natural, not forced or awkward, but simply part of what’s there. I like how the characters are three-dimensional, with scars and hurts and resentments. I like how the theme slowly emerges, the theme of forgiveness. And I like how Nichols writes a good story because she simply wants to tell one.
Yeah, In Search of Eden is women’s fiction. But I liked it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Message is Also the Medium
On his blog today, literary agent Nathan Bransford asks a question -- how does technology affect writing style? And I recall a conversation I had with a university English professor in a writing class, circa 1985.
I was in a masters program, and the course on writing was an elective. (For what it's worth, I received a B in the class -- the professor didn't like the way I wrote -- it wasn't literary enough.) And we were having a discussion in class about writing tools. The year before, I had received my first computer at work -- an IBM desktop (I think it was the IBM 286). And I found myself puzzled by something -- I wrote differently depending on what tool I was using. I mentioned this, and the professor was absolutely fascinated. I was fascinated, too -- it was the only thing I said that semester that he actually paid attention to.
Now you would think that an IBM Selectric (with correcto-type) is not radically different from a desktop word processor. But I found myself writing in different ways. I was more precise and slower on the typewriter. I was more "stream of consciousness" on the computer.
Then came the most startling discovery. I was writing a lot of of speeches at the time, and the writing requires you to write for the ear as opposed to the eye (makes sense -- speeches are supposed to be heard, at least first). For certain kinds of speeches, and sections of speeches, I was frustrated with both the typewriter and the computer, especially when it came to writing the more soaring, more emotional stuff as opposed to the more analytical. Both the typewriter and the computer didn't lend themselves to that, for some inexplicable reason.
One day I walked away from both tools, and sat in a conference room and wrote an emotional section of a speech -- by hand, on paper, with a pen. And it worked better than either the typewriter or the computer. In fact, it worked phenomenally well. The particular speech ended up blowing people's socks off when they heard it given by an executive in Denver.
I still do this today, with all kinds of writing. If I need to employ emotion and empathy, I write it out on paper with a pen. Then I type it on the computer. And it works.
I can't claim to understand why it works. It just does.
I was in a masters program, and the course on writing was an elective. (For what it's worth, I received a B in the class -- the professor didn't like the way I wrote -- it wasn't literary enough.) And we were having a discussion in class about writing tools. The year before, I had received my first computer at work -- an IBM desktop (I think it was the IBM 286). And I found myself puzzled by something -- I wrote differently depending on what tool I was using. I mentioned this, and the professor was absolutely fascinated. I was fascinated, too -- it was the only thing I said that semester that he actually paid attention to.
Now you would think that an IBM Selectric (with correcto-type) is not radically different from a desktop word processor. But I found myself writing in different ways. I was more precise and slower on the typewriter. I was more "stream of consciousness" on the computer.
Then came the most startling discovery. I was writing a lot of of speeches at the time, and the writing requires you to write for the ear as opposed to the eye (makes sense -- speeches are supposed to be heard, at least first). For certain kinds of speeches, and sections of speeches, I was frustrated with both the typewriter and the computer, especially when it came to writing the more soaring, more emotional stuff as opposed to the more analytical. Both the typewriter and the computer didn't lend themselves to that, for some inexplicable reason.
One day I walked away from both tools, and sat in a conference room and wrote an emotional section of a speech -- by hand, on paper, with a pen. And it worked better than either the typewriter or the computer. In fact, it worked phenomenally well. The particular speech ended up blowing people's socks off when they heard it given by an executive in Denver.
I still do this today, with all kinds of writing. If I need to employ emotion and empathy, I write it out on paper with a pen. Then I type it on the computer. And it works.
I can't claim to understand why it works. It just does.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Travis Thrasher's "Ghostwriter"
I like how Travis Thrasher writes. He’s written 11 novels; I’ve read four of the most recent – Isolation, Sky Blue, Admission and now Ghostwriter. Earlier today, I posted my review of Ghostwriter at Amazon. It’s a novel that sticks.
Ghostwriter falls in the suspense/horror genre, and it’s got all of the characteristic elements – a ghost, a serial killer, the possibility that the main character is only living his own horror writer’s imagination and slowly going mad, and enough tension that builds to the point you wonder if you can stand any more. The novel succeeds simply as a suspense/horror story.
But it’s more than that. And it’s the “more,” rather than the story’s ghost, that’s haunting me right now. The “more” is about creativity and faith, and I’ve read this novel at a moment in my life when I’m wrestling with both. And Ghostwriter has helped me see that I’m actually wrestling with one thing, not two, and His name is God.
I’ve talked before (OK, I’ve bragged before) about the incredibly creative team I have at work. For more than two years now, the team has had an unparalleled run of innovation and accomplishment. A handful of lightly regarded functions was brought together and given the chance to excel. And excel they did, beyond anything thought possible. Our website was transformed. Our internal communications went from coach to first class. Our involvement in social media was launched. A research function was created and soared right out of the starting gate. Issues management was fundamentally changed from reactive to “we’re playing in this space so watch out.”
A lot of people have pointed to my leadership of the team. I knew better. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t the wellspring of all the creativity. I contributed some things (like helping hire good people) but I added one critical thing – my belief that all people have the same inherent value (which I’ve often talked about at work), the inherent value that comes from all of us being made in God’s image. That part is more problematic to talk about in the workplace; possible but problematic, and only done very carefully.
Things at work are now changing. It’s hard. My focus has shifted from creativity to helping people deal with the change and not be changed by it.
At the same time, church is changing. We’ve attended a church for several years that we really enjoy. And now church is changing, beginning to embrace a more “relevant” and contemporary approach. We left our last church because the focus became relevance instead of worship and discipleship. And I’m struggling to cope here, too, questioning a lot of what’s going on and my own beliefs as well.
Then I read Ghostwriter. And it tells me that, like the main character, I’m trying to control what I really can’t, at both work and church and all other parts of my life. A novel did this. It’s going to haunt me for a while, and I needed to be haunted. So, Travis Thrasher, you did more than entertain and tell a good story. You challenged and provoked.
Good writers tell good stories. Great writers challenge and provoke, and help change people’s lives.
Ghostwriter falls in the suspense/horror genre, and it’s got all of the characteristic elements – a ghost, a serial killer, the possibility that the main character is only living his own horror writer’s imagination and slowly going mad, and enough tension that builds to the point you wonder if you can stand any more. The novel succeeds simply as a suspense/horror story.
But it’s more than that. And it’s the “more,” rather than the story’s ghost, that’s haunting me right now. The “more” is about creativity and faith, and I’ve read this novel at a moment in my life when I’m wrestling with both. And Ghostwriter has helped me see that I’m actually wrestling with one thing, not two, and His name is God.
I’ve talked before (OK, I’ve bragged before) about the incredibly creative team I have at work. For more than two years now, the team has had an unparalleled run of innovation and accomplishment. A handful of lightly regarded functions was brought together and given the chance to excel. And excel they did, beyond anything thought possible. Our website was transformed. Our internal communications went from coach to first class. Our involvement in social media was launched. A research function was created and soared right out of the starting gate. Issues management was fundamentally changed from reactive to “we’re playing in this space so watch out.”
A lot of people have pointed to my leadership of the team. I knew better. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t the wellspring of all the creativity. I contributed some things (like helping hire good people) but I added one critical thing – my belief that all people have the same inherent value (which I’ve often talked about at work), the inherent value that comes from all of us being made in God’s image. That part is more problematic to talk about in the workplace; possible but problematic, and only done very carefully.
Things at work are now changing. It’s hard. My focus has shifted from creativity to helping people deal with the change and not be changed by it.
At the same time, church is changing. We’ve attended a church for several years that we really enjoy. And now church is changing, beginning to embrace a more “relevant” and contemporary approach. We left our last church because the focus became relevance instead of worship and discipleship. And I’m struggling to cope here, too, questioning a lot of what’s going on and my own beliefs as well.
Then I read Ghostwriter. And it tells me that, like the main character, I’m trying to control what I really can’t, at both work and church and all other parts of my life. A novel did this. It’s going to haunt me for a while, and I needed to be haunted. So, Travis Thrasher, you did more than entertain and tell a good story. You challenged and provoked.
Good writers tell good stories. Great writers challenge and provoke, and help change people’s lives.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sam Batterman's "Wayback"
I finished reading Sam Batterman's Wayback, and I've posted the review at Amazon (may take a while before it's visible, though; Amazon publishes reviews anywhere from immediately to 48 hours later). It's a great story about a "what if" -- what if the Biblical account of creation and the flood found in the book of Genesis were true -- and scientists had the means to verify it?
Batterman mixes science, action, history, a little romance -- and serves up one powerful story.
What impressed me the most, though, was his ability to describe settings -- the landscape. I was in that control center where the scientists have congregated. I was seeing the antedeluvian world for the first time, feeling and inhaling the water-saturated atmosphere and shocked, like the characters, at seeing herds of dinosaurs. I was walking the streets of Jersualem right before the Six-Day Way begins in 1967. I was running with the crew down the streets and into the sewer of the ancient city that doesn't know it's doomed. The detail is amazing, representing some exhaustive research. In the case of the antedeluvian world, the descriptions and detail are speculative but no less real.
Batterman, in his first novel, is clearly a master of setting of the scene.
Batterman mixes science, action, history, a little romance -- and serves up one powerful story.
What impressed me the most, though, was his ability to describe settings -- the landscape. I was in that control center where the scientists have congregated. I was seeing the antedeluvian world for the first time, feeling and inhaling the water-saturated atmosphere and shocked, like the characters, at seeing herds of dinosaurs. I was walking the streets of Jersualem right before the Six-Day Way begins in 1967. I was running with the crew down the streets and into the sewer of the ancient city that doesn't know it's doomed. The detail is amazing, representing some exhaustive research. In the case of the antedeluvian world, the descriptions and detail are speculative but no less real.
Batterman, in his first novel, is clearly a master of setting of the scene.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Going "Wayback"
Thirty years ago, I went through a science fiction phase in my reading. I believe it started with Frank Herbert's Dune series; by the time the phase ended, I had devoured Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Arthur Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Ben Bova and scores of others, all of them great storytellers. Previously, the closest I had come to science fiction was Michael Crichton -- The Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, other best sellers, and then the mega-hit (and mega-movie) Jurassic Park.
There was a gap for me between Terminal Man and Jurassic Park -- I was on to other genres. But what always impressed me about Crichton was his ability to embrace science in his novels, and make the speculative totally believable.
I'm almost finished the novel Wayback by Sam Batterman, and I may have found another Michael Crichton.
Wayback is about an idea -- the idea that scientists have figured out a way to travel back in time, and a team goes to a time shortly before the Great Flood of Genesis. The scientists on the team represent the gamut of belief -- from ardent Christians to atheists. They don't know that Middle Eastern terrorists are right behind them, terrorists who are not interested in scientific knowledge but something sinister.
It sounds implausible. It sounds like believability will be a problem. But you start reading the novel and wham!, it's got you. Sam Batterman has that same ability to utilize science and speculative science that Michael Crichton had. The breadth of the research he's undertaken for the novel is extraordinary. And the novel does what good speculative novels have to do -- suck you into the story and move fast. You find yourself exploring the world of Noah with all the wonder of the novel's fictional scientific team.
I'll have a more in-depth review, but I can say right now that Wayback is a terrific, and thought-provoking, read.
There was a gap for me between Terminal Man and Jurassic Park -- I was on to other genres. But what always impressed me about Crichton was his ability to embrace science in his novels, and make the speculative totally believable.
I'm almost finished the novel Wayback by Sam Batterman, and I may have found another Michael Crichton.
Wayback is about an idea -- the idea that scientists have figured out a way to travel back in time, and a team goes to a time shortly before the Great Flood of Genesis. The scientists on the team represent the gamut of belief -- from ardent Christians to atheists. They don't know that Middle Eastern terrorists are right behind them, terrorists who are not interested in scientific knowledge but something sinister.
It sounds implausible. It sounds like believability will be a problem. But you start reading the novel and wham!, it's got you. Sam Batterman has that same ability to utilize science and speculative science that Michael Crichton had. The breadth of the research he's undertaken for the novel is extraordinary. And the novel does what good speculative novels have to do -- suck you into the story and move fast. You find yourself exploring the world of Noah with all the wonder of the novel's fictional scientific team.
I'll have a more in-depth review, but I can say right now that Wayback is a terrific, and thought-provoking, read.
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Engaged Consumer
In earlier posts, I wrote about a speech I gave at a Conference Board meeting last week in New York. The meeting was called "Corporate Communication and Web 2.0," and it was all things social media. As I was speaking, an attendee commented on my presentation in a series of 12 tweets on Twitter (well, it was about social media; what did I expect?).
And then today, a blog called The Engaged Consumer posted this. And the blog post is now being tweeted on Twitter.
Oh, boy.
And then today, a blog called The Engaged Consumer posted this. And the blog post is now being tweeted on Twitter.
Oh, boy.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Back to College with "Admission"
I posted a review of Travis Thrasher's Admission at Amazon.com, and I won't repeat or recycle it here. It's sufficient to say I liked this mystery/suspense novel. Anyone who's ever been a college student or known a college student will recognize the intensity of college life (including the binge drinking), how things seem to matter so much more than they ever will again, and the college pranks and practical jokes and what happens when they go wrong.
The novel is the story of how one former college student has to find out what happened in an incident from 11 years before. Thrasher keeps you guessing throughout. Someone did something, and you gradually begin to suspect what the something was, but the mystery is who might have done it and the details of what actually happened. The story is structured and tied together well. You finish Admission and you're satisifed. This is an author who writes for his readers, and he writes very well indeed. I've previously read his Isolation and Sky Blue, and all of his books are good.
Admission also provokes long-buried memories. You think back to your own college days and about things that happened that you remember or heard about. It reminded me of college "names," the student "wheels" on campus. And then the book connected me to the memory of going to the police jail in my college town on a cold, overcast Sunday morning. A friend and I, he a "name" in student government and I a "name" on the student newspaper, went there to see if we could get a girl we knew released from custody. She'd been arrested because because she was with her boyfriend when he was arrested for drug possession (this was the early 1970s).
The girl was a type -- sweet, naive, innocent and wildly in love with her boyfriend, who was also a "name" in student government. And, shocking everyone, a drug dealer. We talked with the police; they listened and told us to leave, but they did release her about an hour later and never pressed charges against her. Some time later, another student government "name," who was one of the university's official, card-carrying-and-proud-of-it "leftists," suddenly quit school. It turned out he was actually a narc, and had been the one to turn the guy, and many others, in.
The narc's girlfriend, another "name" in student journalism, was a good friend of mine (we'd even dated a couple of times). She was devastated. Think what that would have meant for her --dating a guy who turned out to be narc who turned in his friends, then disappeared. She loved the guy, but she was only part of his cover, and their relationship a complete sham, as was his commitment to the campus leftist political association he was part of (which, by the way, never recovered from the scandal of having a narc in its midst). This sounds like a novel, but it actually happened.
There's an intensity about college life that's hard to describe -- you have to live it to understand it. That's what Travis Thatcher captured in Admission.
The novel is the story of how one former college student has to find out what happened in an incident from 11 years before. Thrasher keeps you guessing throughout. Someone did something, and you gradually begin to suspect what the something was, but the mystery is who might have done it and the details of what actually happened. The story is structured and tied together well. You finish Admission and you're satisifed. This is an author who writes for his readers, and he writes very well indeed. I've previously read his Isolation and Sky Blue, and all of his books are good.
Admission also provokes long-buried memories. You think back to your own college days and about things that happened that you remember or heard about. It reminded me of college "names," the student "wheels" on campus. And then the book connected me to the memory of going to the police jail in my college town on a cold, overcast Sunday morning. A friend and I, he a "name" in student government and I a "name" on the student newspaper, went there to see if we could get a girl we knew released from custody. She'd been arrested because because she was with her boyfriend when he was arrested for drug possession (this was the early 1970s).
The girl was a type -- sweet, naive, innocent and wildly in love with her boyfriend, who was also a "name" in student government. And, shocking everyone, a drug dealer. We talked with the police; they listened and told us to leave, but they did release her about an hour later and never pressed charges against her. Some time later, another student government "name," who was one of the university's official, card-carrying-and-proud-of-it "leftists," suddenly quit school. It turned out he was actually a narc, and had been the one to turn the guy, and many others, in.
The narc's girlfriend, another "name" in student journalism, was a good friend of mine (we'd even dated a couple of times). She was devastated. Think what that would have meant for her --dating a guy who turned out to be narc who turned in his friends, then disappeared. She loved the guy, but she was only part of his cover, and their relationship a complete sham, as was his commitment to the campus leftist political association he was part of (which, by the way, never recovered from the scandal of having a narc in its midst). This sounds like a novel, but it actually happened.
There's an intensity about college life that's hard to describe -- you have to live it to understand it. That's what Travis Thatcher captured in Admission.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)