If you enjoyed the book Running With Scissors, (by Augusten Burroughs) you will really like this book too! Its that kind of “different”. I couldn’t put this one down, and ended up reading it really fast. Josh Kilmer-Purcell has written down his memories of the years he spent working in advertizing by day, and working as a drag queen named Aqua by night. The book is fascinating and scary, and I was amazed that someone could live like that for so long and still have the brain cells left over to write a book with when all was said and done.

Kilmer-Purcell is gay, but not interested in becoming a woman. His alter ego, Aqua, is a drag queen with all the style and drama one might expect, and, with goldfish swimming around in her clear plastic breasts. I had no idea how long it actually takes to transform oneself like that, and was also very impressed with the variety of creative outfits and designs that Kilmer-Purcell created for Aqua. I don’t know how he managed to drink and occasionally do some coke while out at the clubs every night, sleep for a few hours only, and then get to work again the next day in one piece, and, to manage to do this for days and days on end, and actually remember most of what happened in that time. More than I could do! I need my sleep!

This book also describes the relationship Kilmer-Purcell had with a boyfriend named Jack, from the start of the relationship to the end. It started rather sweet, and got more and more scary as Jack, who worked as a male escort, became more and more addicted to crack.

The book is hysterically funny in places, especially some of the stories that take place in the clubs the drag queens do shows at. It’s also scary, and sad, and completely gripping. The book will be out sometime in February. I got to read an advanced copy, because I work at a bookstore. This is a very captivating book, where the reader will constantly wonder what will happen next, and then guess wrong each and every time.

I wanted to like this book. I just couldn’t get into it, and I don’t really have a good reason why that’s the case. Its well written. It just didn’t grab my attention. It might be because most of this book is really sad, and I tend to not enjoy sad stories.

Or, it could be because I had nothing in common with any of the characters. I don’t really know. The story is from the point of view of Michael, an 11 year old Irish Catholic kid, growing up in Brooklyn in the late 1940’s. Michael’s dad died in “The War”, and Michael’s mom works a lot. Michael hangs out with other Catholic kids in the neighborhood, and plays baseball, and goes to church, where Michael is an altar boy. Most of this book is a snapshot of what it would have been like to grow up in Brooklyn in a mostly Catholic neighborhood during those years. Hamill also captures perfectly the way that many pre-teenagers think in Michael’s thoughts. Everything is either black, or white, either good, or evil. Michael spends most of the book trying to figure things out, and he also is becoming very passionate about what he believes.

One day, Michael is heading out to church early on a Saturday, to be an altar boy, and there is a huge snowstorm! Michael struggles through it, and on the way, notices that the Rabbi from the local synagogue is calling to him. The Rabbi needs a Shabbos Goy to turn the lights on for him, since he can’t do anything that is considered to be work on that day. Michael goes to help him, and this leads into a friendship between Michael and the Rabbi. Michael teaches the Rabbi English and about Baseball. Both are very interested in the new career of Jackie Robinson, who, since he is Black, is the center of much controversy. The Rabbi teaches Michael Yiddish, and all about Prague, where he was from, and about Jewish traditions and mythology. One of the things that captures Michaels attention is the story of the Golem.

There are some bad “kids” in the neighborhood. Well, more like teenagers, really. A “Gang” in the 1950’s sense of the word. The ringleader beats up a man who owns the candy store, and Michael and his friends are witnesses. Michael ends up being very afraid, because he does not want to tell the cops what he saw, and be a “rat” or a “squealer” (Something his Irish mother has told him is a very bad thing), but at the same time, he learns from the Rabbi that saying nothing about a crime is as bad as the crime itself. He is torn up about this for most of the book.

From there, things get worse and worse. Bad things keep happening. Things get more and more violent, and nothing seems to be able to stop it from happening. The cops aren’t helping, and Michael can’t talk to them about the many things he has seen. Michael, towards the end, in an act of faith and desperation, attempts to raise the Golem, who alone, he believes, can make things right again. I was suprized to read that, and even more surprized by the outcome of the story. The last part of the book made dragging through the rest of it more worth it. It is a great ending. I just wish the rest of the story was as enthralling.

Cayce Pollard is a “coolhunter”, which means she has a gift for spotting the next cool trend. Big companies hire her to find that for them, and also to judge if their next logo is going to work for them or not. She leads a very solitary life, traveling from country to country for work. In her spare time, she has become enamored with something called “The Footage”, which appears to be parts of a movie, snipped up, mixed up, and sent out onto the Internet, somewhere, for people to find and comment on. This book is a Thriller, of sorts, as Cayce finds the seperate spheres of her work and her hobby colliding. Her search takes her around the world, and into a bunch of little secret holding cultures. It moves rather fast, at time, with lots of questions. One gets answered, somewhat, and leads to more questions. For most of the book, its unclear exactly what it going on, but, by the end, it is all very nicely revealed. The entire story takes place from inside Cayce’s head, and the reader only knows what she knows, and only knows her thoughts, not the thoughts of any of the other characters. It comes across a litle bit fragmented, at first, but is something I got used to quickly.

This book is more than a Thriller, however. Gibson has captured the isolation of what its like to “know” people solely from reading posts and sending email back and forth. I think a lot of people live in that world today. Parts of the book are emails, written in darker type, with as little punctuation, paragraphs, etc. as what most people really do send in email. The inclusion of “actual” emails fits the story, and the time it takes place in, really well.

The story takes place right after 9/11, and Gibson also is very adept at capturing the wierdness that many Americans were feeling at that time. The isolation, the feeling that the world has ended, or at least changed, into something not before seen or expected, the paranoia. It’s all there. There are some descriptions of when the Towers fell, and the walls and walls covered with photos of the missing, and some other things that happened in the days and weeks after 9/11, mostly because Cayce lost her father that day, and he was never found, alive or dead, after that.

I thought this was a very good book, done in a fresh new way, (even though it does cover 9/11, which so many books and short stories have done since then). You can read it as a Thriller, or as a commentary of how things changed after that day, or as a story about loneliness and isolation. Very beautiful, in it’s own way.

This is the best book I have read in a long time! If you enjoyed Birth of Venus by Dunnant (I think), you will enjoy Leonardo’s Swans by Essex. Its what I would call “historical fiction”, and based on the lives of two sisters, Isabella and Beatrice, who actually existed. Both were alive in Italy around the time of the Rennaisance. Both were born to a very rich family, and both were bethrothed to men they had not met, when each girl was 5 or 6 years old. The entire story is from the viewpoints of one or the other of the sisters.

Isabella, blond, thin, intelligent and refined, is to marry a Marquis, when she turns 15. Francesco is handsome, despite being short, and having bulging eyes. He is also very charismatic, and young (about 25 or so). He pays a lot of attention to Isabella, “courting her” before the two are married. Beatrice, on the other hand, who is shorter, plumper, less educated, but much more adept with horses, is to be wed to a 40 year old Duke, who ignores her, and continually pushes off the wedding date. Everyone knows the Duke has a mistress, who he has been treating as a wife, and who might be pregnant. At first glance, it seems that Isabella has the better match, by nothing more than a twist of fate. As the story goes on, things change around, until by the end, its impossible to say which of the two sisters really had a better life.

The book is much more than just a report of the two sisters romances, though! It is filled with vivid descriptions. Of the different parts of Italy, of the clothing the women are wearing, the horses they ride, the homes they live in, and, much more importantly, of the art they commission. The Duke has an employed an artist to create sculptures and painting for him, and its none other than the Great Leonardo Da Vinci! If you are at all familiar with his work, you will be delighted by the descriptions in this story. The actual history about who appears in his paintings is woven into the story masterfully. Its a treat to view the paintings through Isabella’s eyes, who sees them all as brand new and miraculous.

As if that were not enough for one book, Essex adds more. The book is filled with political intrigue! Many small and large power struggles are going on in the years the book takes place, and Essex has described them as they occured in a very interesting way! Some of it is like watching a chess match, some is like watching a soap opera.

I think this book should be available soon. I got to read an advanced copy because I work at a bookstore. Whenever it is available, rush out and get it! You won’t be disapointed!

This is the next in the series of “Year’s Best SF”. I was so much more impressed with this one than with the previous one! It has the same editor, David G. Hartwell, who once again points out that these are all examples of “Hard Science Fiction”, and who writes each little blurb about individual authors before their stories appear. Some of the authors in this one are the same as in the last one, and some are new. This book contains the Best Science Fiction Short Stories published in the year 2001. Its a much better read than Year’s Best SF 6 for a few reasons. One, each story in this book seems to be finished, which was nice. No more one or two pages of ideas presented as a whole story! Two, each story had an idea that made me think about the implications of it long after I had finished the story. Its good when books make you wonder about things! Made the stories that much more enjoyable for me. And three, each story was “full” enough to be extended into a book, if the author wanted to do so. Very good read!
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