BAD NEWS OF THE HEART
Like “Man,” other stories in Bad News of the Heart graphically depict the elusiveness of happiness and peace of mind. But Glover skirts monotony by leavening each one with quirky observations and frank sexuality. In the title piece, a former mental patient reveals that he falls in love only when he skips his medication. The self-loathing academics in “Iglaf and Swan” use sex as a physical release rather than an act of love; the Bel Air couple in “A Guide to Animal Behaviour” have a swimming pool with an undertow. In “State of the Nation,” a man reeling from a disastrous voyeuristic fling with the woman across the street recalls words spoken by another woman long ago that could have come from many of Glover’s creations. “She said,” he remembers, “‘We are just roadkill on the highway to nowhere.’” –Michael Marsh
In his seventh novel, Bay of Souls, Robert Stone takes the trappings of workshop fiction–academia, adultery, alcohol–and drags them mewling into his own oeuvre, rife with bad faith, personal betrayals, government intrigues, and metaphysical quandaries, foremost among them the yearning for a life more abundant amid the persistence of dread. Borderline-nebbish professor Michael Ahearn strays into a love-and-death affair–complete with Rilke poem–with a colleague who may be a spook, both literally and figuratively. She may have no soul (it’s been taken from her by voodoo) and she also may be a government op stranded by the cold war.
Southern Illinois University Press
Patricia Sarafian Ward
DEVIL’S MIDNIGHT
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Akashic heavily edited this satanic thriller by Russian exile Yuri Kapralov, who took decades to write it in the first place. Credit the hard-won material, the refinement, or both–the effort’s worth all the trees that were ripped down to print it. Set against the gruesome 1919 war between the Bolsheviks and the White Russians, the punchy Devil’s Midnight barrels lucidly through nightmares with relentless narrative drive. The players here are mad locomotives and even madder drug-guzzling field commanders; witches searching for a meteorite on the orders of a quaint Russian devil called the Chort; and the dry, canny voice of irony that slips out in lines like “I have nothing against Satan or Samson. This is all a slight misunderstanding.” The characters are vivid; even the femme fatale–actress Nata Tai, who is trained to serve the Chort but turns to killing witches–has a resonant, aching soul. As the strands of the narrative come together, it’s clear that Nata and the Chort are the leads in a slick, dank tragedy that unfolds with unsettlingly deliberate power. Humans crazed by strain are terrifying to watch. But damn can some of them scrawl a warning. Next time, can we please keep the elections clean? After this, a civil war doesn’t sound like any fun whatsoever. –Ann Sterzinger
