Today is one of those days where everything is crumbling down around my ears. So let us focus on this insanely creepy book I just finished this morning. Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann, read by Katherine Kellgren who happens to be one of my favorite readers. She does the best British girl accents and has good comedic timing with the funny pieces of the books she reads.
This book, however, was devoid of funny parts. I picked it because of the title, which comes from this poem by Wallace Stevens:
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
I dearly love this poem, and it is read actually at the end of the book, but other than that it doesn’t have much to do with anything. The novel follows five people, a husband and wife, the wife’s cousin who is also her best friend, and then the two women’s children a boy and a girl. It spans from near the end of WWII to I think like 1967ish, and there are five chunks narrated by each of the character’s involved. Some bits overlap with each other, which I have to say is my favorite element of the book. You get several of the same pivotal scenes told from various character perspectives, and the effect works competently to fill in bits other characters may have missed or to get a different take on the situation. This is pulled off quite well, but the five different non linear narrations are sort of a mess. They cut ferociously this way and that in time and because there are five of them spanning generations we end up with a lot of weird background or events we don’t really need. There’s no real character to latch on to, and as soon as you become invested or things start falling into place that perspective is snatched from you and you’re given someone else’s.
Though it’s set in a later time it reminded me a great deal of The Great Gatsby which I have never been a huge fan of. While it lacks the long passages of beguiling prose that Gatsby possesses, and doesn’t come together in any kind of coherent fashion, its characters possess that same desperate extravagance, same selfishness that populate Gatsby’s world. There are also the same sordid elements of corruption; though in the case of Tigers it’s a bit more chilling. By the time Gatsby (spoiler alert) ends up dead in that pool I was just relieved the whole thing was over, whereas this book left me feeling bewildered and rather slimy. I really do not know what to make of the ending, which may or may not suggest that being a serial killer is OK, as long as in the end you love and care for someone… anyone at all.
So it left me with a bad feeling in my mouth, but it was engaging and I was kept interested the entire time. The five perspectives that are so displaced in time were just too much for the novel and the writing to handle or earn. Also there are all kinds of strange and disturbing episodes thrown in, that seem as though they should connect to something or set something up, but never really go anywhere. You could chop out one entire perspective from the story and be left with pretty much the same book. I felt as though I was watching an ambitious but badly scripted film where they’d only had certain actors for a short time on set and were trying to make the most with their random scenes.
That said, while it doesn’t have anything close to the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleberg and their spectacles, some of the characters I found more intriguing and interesting than those in Gatsby. Once I overheard a girl say of Gatsby “I just didn’t want those people in my head for that long” which sums up exactly how I feel about the book. But the characters in Tigers are different. I have to say they are the best, and at points, the most creepy part of this novel. However you never get quite enough of them, and this leaves one frustrated. It all ends up feeling splintered and mystifying, as well as though you were just recently coated in a layer of grime.
So what did I really think of this book? It’s certainly an entertaining enough listen, but quite unpleasant and never comes together satisfactorily. Though I think I did like the ending, I don’t know why and I don’t understand it. It’s not at the top of my recommendation list, but I give it credit for ambitions, some of the characters, and a bit of panache with technique even if it didn’t come off. Really though I’d rather listen to a bunch of Wallace Stevens poems, as he is one of my heroes. Did you know he was an insurance salesman who wrote his poems at work and now he’s considered one of the best contemporary poets of all time? Unfortunately though I predict many reading this have not heard of him even. Oh what sad ambitions we poets have.
Now I’ve jumped right into a book called Hounded, part of something called The Iron Druid Chronicles. One of these young adult series that sticks all sorts of mythology from all sorts of cultures into our modern times in “witty” wise cracky sort of ways. (For an excellent non trashy example of this, read American Gods by Neil Gaiman) I eat these things up like chocolate cake and this one has started off jaunty and with promises of fun after the slimy somber weirdness of Tigers, which the more I think of, it just didn’t succeed in what it wanted to be about. It wanted to be about this family and its history. But when you throw in a serial killer nonchalantly into the mix, it’s going to become about the serial killer inevitably. Like this girl at college who was constantly writing these plays and stories about one thing or another, but would throw incest into the middle of them. You can’t just casually have incest in a story, it doesn’t work, it draws too much focus. The same issue happened here I think.
Enough. Enough of all this. I’m tired. I haven’t eaten lunch because it’s something frozen and I have to walk down to the microwaves to heat it up and for some reason this seems very soul crushing to me at the moment. Maybe I will just skip it. It’s not like I need the food anyhow.
Out Loud Writing 