Book Reviews by Mitchell Waldman

AIRPLANE NOVEL by Paul A. Toth

Raw Dog Screaming Press

9781935738138

www.rawdogscreaming.com

Passengers, please, buckle your seat belts, we've hit some turbulence that will make the ride a little bumpy from here on out….Welcome to Airplane Novel by Paul A. Toth.

Just as the subject of this novel centers around one of the major criminal acts of the modern era - 9/11 - so, too, may it be said that author Toth has committed a major act of fiction in this new novel, due out in July. The author of such prior novels as Fishnet, Finale, and Fizz, Toth is a wildly original writer. Consider that the narrator is as unlikely a narrator as we have seen in recent times, none other than the World Trade Center's South Tower, itself. Overall, this book is most likely unlike any other books you have recently read.

Toth's story begins with the building's addressing its audience -- readers on an airplane headed for who-knows-where. His story introduces us not only to the personalities of the South Tower (which likes to refer to itself as Cary Grant) and its neighboring North Tower (Gary Cooper), but to the lives of an assortment of characters (people who are referred to as a group by the Tower as "spider monkeys") who inhabited or had dealings with the Towers at various times. These persons include a worker who is obsessed with pornographic movie theatres, a veteran who lives in the suburbs and hates his life and everyone in it, everyone, an Arab who emigrates to the United States, a Jew who becomes particularly hateful of a Muslim man who lives in his apartment complex, a high wire trapeze artist, a man who climbs one of the towers, and others whose individual stories relate to the Towers.

The story promises us an ending we are all very aware of, but keeps us moving toward that inevitable day with visions of the lives of some of these "spider monkeys," the narrator letting us in on his story building all the way through - the need to build tension, the need to develop sympathetic characters (the narrator, itself, asking us, at one point, "Am I sympathetic? I must know, since this story requires me to be the most sympathetic character of all? Have I held your interest and caused the appropriate rate of pages turned per minute?...") All the while the author/narrator jettisons the so-called rules of fiction writing and writes the story the way he wants to, paving his tale with various creative and often humorous building blocks, giving us the often odd but ultimately sympathetic perspective of the South Tower, flowing in and out with historical information, the lives of his characters, and the unique perspective, thoughts and feelings (yes, the building does become a feeling structure itself) of the Tower itself.

In short, Toth's inventions and writing in AIRPLANE NOVEL are a breath of fresh air in the sometimes stagnant landscape of modern fiction. Toth is a unique, gifted stylist whose prose is at times sharp, unpredictable, humorous, and always engaging. There have been a lot of books about 9/11 but I promise you none like this. So, sit back and enjoy the ride in the sometimes not so friendly skies and enjoy a very nontraditional novel that will keep you reading till the very last moment.

--As reviewed in Midwest Book Reviews.

FISHNET by Paul A. Toth

Fishnet by Paul A. Toth, is a story about a marriage falling apart which parallels the story of the deterioration of the small California town of Mercy, in which the couple – Maurice and Sheila – live. Maurice is an artist who inherited money from his father and is obsessed in his attempts to capture an image of his wife, the Sheila he used to know. He has a habit of escaping reality, hearing voices talking to him, voices that come in the form and shape of various persons, real and imagined. Both Sheila and Maurice are trying to reconnect with the people they used to be and the relationship they used to have. Meanwhile, the small California town where they live is falling about, on the verge of bankruptcy. A cast of colorful characters converge to try to save the town, just as Maurice attempts to salvage his marriage.

Paul Toth is a unique, inventive writer who, in Fishnet, tells a Vonnegutian-type tale. His writing is fresh and his tale is one that keeps the pages turning. What will become of Sheila and Maurice, who waffles between reality and the fantasy world he takes refuge in? What will become of the small town and its people, who we are shown glimpses of in the book? There is an assorted cast of characters – Holly, Sheila’s closest friend, Uncle Albert, who is in love with a younger woman from Norway, Phipps, the rock star, Ray Pulaski, the security guard, and the father and sons who diverge on Mercy to stage the fireworks show that is part of the town officials’ scheme to save the town from financial ruin with a huge Fourth of July celebration.

Fishnet is a quirky tale that wanders between reality and fantasy and one that will keep you riding the wave of the impending disaster that is headed for Maurice, Sheila, and the entire town of Mercy, until the very last page.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

THE MUSEUM GUARD by Howard Norman

Howard Norman's The Museum Guard brings us a compelling, page-turning, quirky story told by a museum guard named DeFoe Russett, whose parents were tragically killed in a zeppelin crash, and who was, as a result, raised by his uncle Edward in the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. DeFoe's "family" is the staff of the hotel where he has lived for so many years. DeFoe's life is a narrow one. He has never left Halifax, has followed his uncle in his choice of careers, and in no way considers himself worldly like his uncle, who spends nights boozing and chasing women, and may or may not show up to work the next morning at the art museum where both he and his nephew work.

DeFoe falls in love with a half-Jewish woman, Imogen Linny, who works at the local Jewish cemetery. DeFoe's experience with women is limited, and his relationship with Imogen, after two years, has become strained. It is upon the appearance in the museum of a painting entitled "Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam" that Imogen starts to change drastically and pulls further away from DeFoe, herself, and reality, her world becoming that of the woman in the painting. And all this while word of the Nazis development of their world-dominating machine of terror is being reported daily from Europe by a radio journalist named Ovid Lamartine, whose accounts Edward listens to religiously every night.

This is a first-class novel, one that will keep you turning the pages. Its unique characters and underlying tragedies fill the novel with the stuff of daily life in 1938-1939. The impending horrors of the coming Nazi occupation in Europe, while seemingly faraway to most in Halifax, Novia Scotia, in such times is not seen so by Imogen and Edward, affecting them both profoundly in different ways, transforming Imogen and taking her into the center of the approaching Nazi storm. It is a story both of a young man in search of his own life, living in the horrific aftermath of the loss of his own parents in one tragic holocaustic moment, and the horrors approaching the world in the late 1930's where even half a world away from the coming storm, there appears to be no safe haven.

You will get to know love, and weep real tears for the characters in The Museum Guard. It is a novel about holocausts affecting individuals and humanity, the lines between art and reality, and about a world colored by madness. An awesome read by a gifted writer and one that is highly recommended.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

THE LANGUAGE OF THE ELK by Benjamin Percy

The Language of Elk, the debut book by writer Benjamin Percy, contains 8 stories about the people and life in a place called Oregon. As the jacket text reads, The Language of Elk assembles its cast from the mountain towns and low-life taverns and high desert ranches of Oregon -- a state that in isolated pockets remains a still-unfinished place, the frontier."

The stories in this book show us some unique characters and surprising situations. There a man who digs up and steals Native American relics, including the mummified corpse of a dead man, in his living room, a former small town high school football hero trying to find his way in adulthood, the owner of a ranch where soft men come to play cowboy and hunt their own game for a few days, a man who hunts for Sasquatch, a man who work together on a marijuana farm, and a man who falls in love with the bearded lady at a circus that comes to town.

Benjamin Percy is a promising young author who can tell a story and whose descriptions of relationships are very strong. His prose is sharp, right on, his settings strong, and his characters unique and memorable. These are stories that will linger in your mind for a long while after reading them. Overall, this is a strong first book from a talented young man, whose work engages his readers' imaginations and hearts, and will have you wanting for more. This book is highly recommended!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

DUST IN THE WIND by Tom Morrow

Dave White is a seventeen-year-old boy in a small town in Oklahoma where nothing much happens. It’s the summer of 1960. The country’s in a recession, and, at the beginning of the novel, Dave loses his summer job to a man with a family. He’s had his eye on a car, his dream, and now that he’s lost his job, the dream is gone. The car is soon sold and despite the support of his family and friends, he gets the wanderlust. There isn’t a job to be found in town. His girlfriend, Gayle, doesn’t understand him. He wants adventure, so when another boy suggests that they go on the wheat cutting circuit for work, he soon warms to the idea. Then, in a search for adventure, and a way out of his small town (and for work), he goes in search of work on the wheat cutting circuit as a "wheatie." He soon finds out that the world is much harder away from his little town and little life, is exposed to the prejudices piled up on "wheat tramps" and gains a new sensitivity for prejudices he and others around him have long held.

He meets up with a wheatie named Frank who gives Dave a job as a driver even though he doesn’t even know how to drive, and before long Dave is on his way, learning the wheat cutting trade. He learns the prejudices the wheaties must endure from townsfolk, the horrors that occur to some workers, the losses of love, the alcoholism, and, of course, the hard but unappreciated work that is involved in cutting wheat for farmers and for consumers. It’s a hard life full of long hours, heavy drinking, and enduring the heat, dust, dirt, and prejudice, but it’s a life, at least for the summer, that leads Dave on the road to becoming a man. He travels with the group from place to place, learning the trade, observing various personal horrors, as we follow the characters, who are as lifelike and colorful as can be. Dave and Frank become close; Frank serves almost as an older brother or father-figure to Dave, teaching him what it takes to become a wheatie and, most of all, a man in the world.

Dave meets a girl, too, in Colorado, and instantly falls in love with her, and she with him. And after that, the story becomes one of whether, when Dave returns to the wheat cutting trail, he will return to his love, and whether they have a chance together, these two young people, on the edge of innocence and from very different backgrounds and worlds.

This is an exceptional book, one that takes the reader along with him. The narration is a personal one, written in the first person. We’re with Dave all the way, as he treks out into the world, rooting for him. It is very realistic, with a cast of fully realized, colorful characters that we come to love. The story is well paced and exhibits the writer’s great skill as a storyteller. Although at times he tells a little bit too much about the technical aspects of the wheat cutting business, at least for this reader, it does make the story a fully realistic one. By the time Dave falls for Mary Anne in Colorado, in less than two days, and leaves to go back on the wheat circuit, the seed of her love locked in his heart, it’s difficult to put this book down, eager as we were to find out what will happen with Dave. Will he get back with Mary Anne, his first true love? Will he return to his hometown, Crane, Oklahoma, and get back together with Gayle or even the pretty eighteen-year-old waitress, Sara, who works with Dave’s mother, has already been married and apparently divorced, and has treated Dave like a younger brother?

In short this is a wonderful story about a subject that few are very familiar about. In addition to its educational value, it offers much more than a coming of age novel about a young man in search for his place in the world, but shows a strong young man who faces his fears and dreams on his way down the road to becoming a man.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Twenty-Six Pack by Timothy Gager

I felt like I was in the bar with a lot of these characters, talking to them, remembering the

days. Down and out and finely written, compelling little stories about life on the outside.

Bukowski-esque in all their glory. The working man and woman. Life on the almost-skids.

The writer's life. Sensational stuff. Highly recommended.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Philip Roth writes a story of "what if..." that is totally plausible, and he writes it from the

eyes of a boy named Phil Roth growing up in Newark, New Jersey. This is a wonderful

book, showing Mr. Roth's flexibility and creativity as a writer, giving the story the human

touch that is so often lacking in this kind of book. He reminds us of the constant threat of

ignorance, hatred, and bigotry in this country, the subtle twisting of facts into lies making

this a both horrifying and realistic story of what could have and what could happen. We

must be ever vigilant and questioning. A great write, well worth reading.