Poole's Paradise by John Vorhaus

When you're Alexander Poole, everyone’s your teacher: a skeevy stereo salesman, master of the bait and switch; a flaky folk singer and his dog that reads Tolkien; a drug dealer loan shark with a passion for trees; a ballsy townie chick who turns you on to Springsteen; your wiseass roommate whose favorite pastime is smoking your dope; even your one true love. Together they point you to paradise — Poole's Paradise – but what will it cost to get in?

Poole's Paradise is set in 1974 in the "wilds of Western Connecticut", among the Berkshires to be more specific. It's the story of Alexander Poole, a Cort College sophomore in the fictional town of Greenville. As the blurb implies, Poole is trying to assemble a personal code of ethics, or philosophy for life, from the interactions he has with several people in his life. There's a certain level of naïveté to his demeanor. He's too trusting and deals with the world in an open and honest way that, while admirable, is dangerous—the cover features the tarot card of "The Fool" for a reason. As Poole is willing to apply this approach to everyone, he inevitably winds up in a serious predicament involving a sizable stash of drugs and cash. Ultimately, he has to choose between abandoning this philosophy or figuring out how to make it work in order to save himself and his friends.

In the first third of the book, Poole's Paradise seems like it's going to be "Zen and the pursuit of the perfect stereo." Poole engages in several discussions about stereo equipment, and it serves as a great introduction to those characters. My father is something of an audiophile, and I grew up listening to him expound upon the merits of music media (vinyl vs tape) and the constant refinement of his stereo gear: turntables, amplifiers, speakers, and more. Reading the exchange between the characters on this subject had me fondly recalling those days.

There are also other conversations that ring true in the story, particularly between Poole and his roommate, Dawkins. Whether they're talking about music, weed, or women, the dialogue is dead on for the 70's. The college kid vs. townie dynamic is accurate, having witnessed it myself in the small towns of Western Connecticut. Vorhaus knows people and how they interact. Each character, major and minor, is finely crafted. He has a mastery of dialogue and characterization that strikes me as effortless.

There were two problems I had with the story. The first was that I live in Western Connecticut and the setting didn't match in the slightest. The second was with the ending. At first, I was shocked and confused. It took a couple read throughs and some thought before it clicked. It wasn't the ending I was expecting, but as I reflected on the course Poole took, it made sense.

Poole's Paradise is a solid coming of age story set in the 70's. With a well-rounded cast of characters and accurate dialogue, Vorhaus places the reader smack dab in the middle of the most important days of Alexander Poole's life. Whether you fondly recall vinyl, want to know what college life was like for your parents, or just enjoy stories with realistic characters, Poole's Paradise is for you.

For more information about Poole's Paradise, check out the author's website.

Ghosts of the Multiverse by Harald Hansen

Poor Jeremy Fade. He lives in Goom, suburb of San Francisco, with his second wife and three kids. He worries. About his wife, about his ex-wife, about his kids, about his job. An engineer-turned-salesperson, his career and peace of mind depend upon the closing of his first sale, that of a huge software package to an unnamed university. But first he has to negotiate all the postmodern everything-is-a-social-construct politics and then kiss up to the Bursar, who decides everything. And he keeps seeing a ghost.

The beginning of the book deals with the various characters and their feelings of deserving things: Fade, his sale; the Bursar, deferential behavior; Fade's drug-counselor-wife's patients, her time. All are pursuing their agendas with varying degrees of success.

The University faculty is distracted from their usual concerns by the impending visit of a delegation, headed by an Imam Walid, from the Islamic Institute of Wyrigistan. Pakistan has been defeated by India. Its remnant joins with Baluchistan, Waziristan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to form Wyrigistan, “balanced in power between the Pashtuns and the northern tribes.” It also is capable of relatively large-scale nuclear war. The delegation's secret purpose is to decide if San Francisco is too corrupt to go on, and is deserving (that word again) of nuclear wrath.

Enter Invention, Jeremy's brown-hooded ghost. Ghosts are the product of unlimited human possibilities, of at least three humans thinking outside the box simultaneously, reifying multiple universes. Invention, who has access to multiple universes (called “cosmi” in this case) believes that Jeremy's sales success is tied to his helping to prevent the Waziris from destroying San Francisco.

We wind up with a rather cartoonish team of bunglers from the various parts of Wyrigistan (plus a couple of American converts) sent out to plumb the most depraved depths (as they see it) of homosexuality to decide if San Fran can live or not. Their adversaries: Jeremy; Phil, a gay African-American ex-linebacker who works as a drug counselor; Homer, a Chinese-American accountant; and Ricard, a Filipino sportswriter-turned-mystery-author. The FBI and CIA are in on it, too. I was a bit disappointed in Ricard's quick synopsis of the Golden Age of Spain, when it was run by Caliphs after the Arabs (he calls them “Islamists”) conquered the not-too-swift Visigoths and held sway over a burgeoning of literature, philosophy, mathematics, music, and architecture that brightened the otherwise Dark Ages. He then cites 1492 as the “real” emergence of Spain as a superpower, while many readers will recognize the year as the one of the Expulsion of the Jews and Arabs and the rise of the Spanish Inquisition. While I don't relish the idea of living under a Caliphate nowadays, in 1000 C.E I would have preferred it over being tortured by Visigoths. Every civilization has its ups and downs.

Things get more interesting when the Norse Pantheon enters the fray. It all is very complicated, but many characters we have already met turn out to have both human and divine identities. There is violence and death and some destruction. Harald Hansen handles it all deftly; the writing is superb and holds your attention through all the wild events. He also includes some wonderful quotes from Neal Stephenson, Virgil and other august characters. A very satisfying book.

Undercover White Trash by David Kilpatrick (A)

Comedy is hard to pull off, but David L. Kilpatrick does just that in Undercover White Trash. The novel begins when Big Billy Barnes, owner of a chain of BillyMart stores, questions the advertising campaign put together by the Dickey advertising agency.

“A typical American family?” Barnes repeated as he lifted up the ad with one hand and pointed at it with the other. “What’s this man wearing, son?” he asked as he pointed to the father figure.

“A...suit. A suit and tie. And a white shirt,” I observed.

Barnes replied softly, “A suit and tie. And a white shirt, right?” I nodded.

Barnes’ face suddenly flushed and he shouted at me so loudly, I could smell his cigar breath all the way across the conference table. “Son, the only people who come into my stores wearing ties are cops looking for one of my employees for a parole violation! And the broad; she looks like she just stepped out of the Neiman goddamn Marcus catalog, pearls and all.” Barnes took a deep breath and continued. “You ever been in one of my stores?” he asked. I thought for a minute and shook my head. He then looked at the other executives. “Any of you shitbirds ever been in a BillyMart?”

And so begins the quest of Edward Prescott III to discover the ins and outs of the white trash culture. Undercover White Trash is a good piece of writing. The first thing that impresses me is the simplicity of the concept—a guy enters an alien culture incognito in search of its secrets. Kilpatrick spins the spy trope in a fresh way and shows what creativity is at it’s best—taking what is already familiar to the reader and spinning it in a new way. The author also moves directly into the protagonist’s problem—living in a different culture than that which he comes from, creating tension by juxtaposing a privileged young man with a subculture that is as alien to him as something in the pages of National Geographic, then plunging him into it, “like Jane Goodall with the monkeys”

As we witness Prescott pack for his three month adventure, we can’t help but wonder how he will be altered after contact with the world he’s about to visit. How will the people and events that are about to happen to him change him? There are many dangers that he flirts with: being swallowed up by the world into which he ventures, his lines of communication and safety cut off and him becoming a stranger to his old friends; or becoming entangled to his detriment in relationships with the member of this subculture.

The book shows differences between the world of privilege and want in America as the protagonist goes in search of the BillyMart consumer, a missing link between rural poor and suburbanites. Prescott inserts himself into a trailer park community, then uses a bait in order to start a relationship with Conley, the father of the family that Prescott decides to study. As he enters the lives of the people he studies, he learns that they are pretty much okay, and learns that his old environment is filled with backstabbers.

Undercover White Trash steers clear of pastoralizing the underclass or taking the well-worn road of cheap humor at their expense. There is in this story a lot of humanity with which Kilpatrick treats his subject and characters, making the book one of those rare independent novels that are worth a read. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this one was optioned by a movie producer because it has cinematic potential.

I had a bit of a gripe with this ending—too hopeful for my taste—and I would have liked to see more comedic tension milked out of the near encounters that the protagonist has with his privileged pals—more dramatic irony, please--but despite my pet peeves, the book is, still, very good, and Kilpatrick is a totally talented writer whose work will most likely end up on the big screen.

(This review is not based on a submission but a reaction to reading a free ebook on the Author's Site)

Update 3/16/11: Mr. Kilpatrick's website is gone.