Thursday Book Review — Will You Love Me Tomorrow? Danny Gillan

book reviews, , , , ,

(This was originally posted in October of 2013. In honor of the upcoming vote on Scottish independence, I am repeating my review of this novel, and will keep this on the front page for at least a couple of days.)

Danny Gillan is one of those indie writers I’d heard good things about. Where does one hear good things about indie writers the uninitiated may ask? In this case, the Amazon and Amazon UK forums where every once in a while readers-who-aren’t-writers will mention good reads or promising authors. Gillan also participates in some threads (as do I) and always comes off as intelligent and not an asshole. So when I discovered  a free Kindle promo for Gillan’s 2011 novel, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, I went for it.

(For the 99.9% of Amazon users who were unaware of the existence of the forums, you can find them by clicking the word “Discussions” from any book’s Amazon webpage.)

Will You Love Me Tomorrow is the story of what happens when an obscure, forty-something (or very close to it), Glasgow rocker is “discovered” by a London record producer, three days after his suicide.

It’s a great example of taking a situational premise and running with it. There’s a perfect tag line on the cover – “Some musicians wait a lifetime for a record deal. Bryan Rivers waited three days longer.”

The story opens with Bryan’s suicide. As we don’t know Bryan yet, it’s not heartbreaking or too maudlin for the reader to bear. What it is, is perfectly clinically accurate, and I say that as someone with an MSW who spent years working with people in crisis. This was a really well done rendering of how someone who has been clinically depressed for years and just wants it all to be over would think and act.

Opening with a character who will be dead by the end of the chapter is a bold gambit. I wondered as I read on whether or not we would get Bryan from beyond the grave looking in on any of the action that follows. Thankfully, we don’t.

What we get instead are those he left behind, including his widow, Claire, his dog Toby, the best friend who’d sort of given up on him and now feels very bad about it – Adam, and assorted members of Bryan’s family. Those are the Glasgow characters. We also get London, mostly in the form of the rock and roll journalist turned record producer, Jason, who happens to hear the demo Bryan sent in shortly before his death. Jason falls in love with it without knowing that the writer was a tortured soul, recently departed.

The narration is close third person from different characters’ viewpoints – mostly Claire’s, Adam’s and Jason’s. Gillan writes women well. Claire is fully realized. Gillan’s technique of shifting point of view allows us to see Claire as she sees herself and also as others see her. She’s strong and beautiful and smart, but it’s a hard-won strength, and it can push others away.

Being a New Yorker, I appreciated the Glasgow setting. I’ve never been there, but feel I know something now about what it’s like that I wouldn’t have gotten from any one-day tour.

I wouldn’t classify this as either chic-lit or lad-lit, but there is an undercurrent of romance, a feeling early on that Claire will wind up falling into bed with either Jason or Adam. That’s not to say it’s predictable. There’s very little certainty about which one will win the prize or if anyone will really win in the end.

It’s easy to imagine this book as a movie or even a play, an intelligent full-bodied drama (with a little bit of comedy) about mostly likable characters. Gillan is not a sentimentalist, and deals realistically with Bryan. Tortured geniuses do not make the best husbands, friends or brothers. Suicide adds a great burden of guilt for the survivors – add to the mix that the deceased has suddenly become posthumously famous with adoring fans romanticizing his pain. Characters need to come to terms with their feelings, and Gillan gets us there.

This may not be a great work of literature, but it’s fine intelligent story for grown-ups. After spending a couple of months (at least) trying to slog through A Naked Singularity, it was a great relief for me to pick up a book I could devour greedily in less than a week.

The only thing I wasn’t crazy about it, I can’t tell you as it would be a spoiler. I will say that there is a climatic moment for one of the minor but important characters which involves a very sad thing happening. I won’t call it contrived, but I wish the writer had come up with another way.

You can’t get it “free” at the moment, but it’s regularly only 99 cents, and that’s quite a bargain.

(You know who else has written a thing or two? Check out a novel that’s mentioned on a wikipedia page.)

Where Jesse Goes

Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog,

(Yeah, I know. fan fic  is the lowest of the low, but it’s my blog and I can do what I want, and I have to do something to get through the feeling of intense loss and emptiness, now that it’s all over. This is just my way of getting through a rough spot. Feel free to add your own scenarios in the comments section. Also warning: This does involve spoilers for people not up to date on Breaking Bad.)

Jesse drives to his house. Partly it’s instinct, partly it’s because there isn’t much gas in the car and he’s hungry and he needs a bath. His house has not been seized, but there is a notice that it will be, for unpaid taxes. Badger and Skinny Pete have been squatting. He doesn’t tell them much about where he’s been or what’s happened. They notice how bad he looks, but when they ask if he was in Alaska, he says, “What do you think?” And they ask him if it was cold.

They tell him about the laser pointing, and Heisenberg’s plan to get the money to his son. Jesse wonders if Walt Jr should know about this, or maybe know that Walt at least begged for Hank’s life. But he isn’t sure what to do with this information or whether ignorance, in this case,is bliss. He starts charging Badger and Skinny Pete rent (retroactively) and tells them no drugs in the house. Not even weed. Not even beer. He’s done. He orders pizza and takes a shower.

He finds a non-criminal criminal lawyer who cuts an immunity deal for him. He confesses to everything he did or witnessed except Gayle’s murder. Something he overheard Uncle Jack tell Todd helps lead to recovering a large chunk of the money. Lydia’s associates at Madrigal and in the Czech Republic go down. Jesse’s name is redacted from the records, so no one can get any ideas about forcing the greatest living meth cook to cook again.  Marie is there to corroborate his role in trying to apprehend Walter. They have a moment together and discuss telling Walt Jr and Skylar that Walter begged for Hank’s life. Marie doesn’t feel it changes anything. “He pulled that trigger the day he decided to cook meth,” she says. He doesn’t tell her about the money coming for Jr.

He finds a job, first as a dishwasher than as a short order cook at a dinner. He makes a deal with the city so he can pay his back taxes, but he still plans to sell the house and move to Alaska, once everything is straightened out.

He visits Brock at his grandmother’s, but doesn’t tell him about his role in Andrea’s death, only that he was “away” when it happened. Brock doesn’t question this, but he’s hard to read. Brock reminds him Walt came to the house looking for him a few weeks before Andrea’s death.

“She called you. I was there.”

“Yeah. He’s dead now. He’s never coming back.”

“I know. I saw him on TV. He was Heisenberg.”

Brock put it together that Jesse worked for Walt, and Andrea’s death had something to do with Heisenberg. He wants to know if any more “bad people” are going to visit.

Jesse tells him they aren’t.

“How do you know?”

“They’re all dead.”

Brock says, “Good.” Then he pauses and says, “I don’t think you should come back.”

Jesse gets his GED and enrolls in a community college, partly because he needs to exercise his demons by occupying his mind. Besides they offer stuff he wants to be better at like graphic story production and basic carpentry He’d had ADHD as a kid and then started on Ritalin, which he’d wound up trading for other things, but now he finds 12 step meetings, meditation and yoga help him focus. For the first time, he does well in school.

He practices Tibetan Buddhism which makes it easier to deal with his past. He volunteers at a no-kill animal shelter and becomes a vegan. He meets a woman in yoga class. She encourages him to stay in school. He gets into a carpentry apprenticeship program. Eventually, he becomes a carpenter, and also teaches woodworking in a vocational high school. Unlike Walter White, teaching is something he loves. He has finally learned to apply himself. He feels alive all the time, but he doesn’t always feel good. He wakes up screaming sometimes, and his nightmares are too horrible to share.

He never leaves Albuquerque, but for his twelfth anniversary, he and Susanna, his wife take a cruise to Alaska, with their two young kids and his younger brother. On the boat, his little girl starts playing with a little boy who is the spitting image of Drew Sharpe. Jesse begins to cry. Susanna senses it’s his past again.

“You’re a good person, Jesse,” she reminds him. “Every single day you help people.”

He knows she’s right, but he also knows he’ll never really leave it behind.

(Yeah I know the above is all tell and no show. It’s just a sketch. You can read my [definitely NOT-fan] fiction here.)

My Homeland Recap Somewhere Else

Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog, ,

Hey kids. One of my favorite places to waste time and keep up on current events, Wonkette, now has a little sister, HappyNiceTimePeople, a new place to waste time and keep up on art and culture stuff! This week, they are featuring a recap by moi, of last night’s Homeland. Please go there now so they will be impressed by my gazillions of followers and make this a regular gig.

Thanks!

Walter White And His Legacy

Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog,

(If you haven’t seen the Breaking Bad finale, this post contains spoilers.)

After the despair of Ozymandias (perhaps the most perfect single hour in television), and based on hints dropped by cast members and Vince Gilligan, I expected the Breaking Bad series finale to be an unambiguous tragedy, including the death of the less guilty, and the innocent.

I’m thankful I was wrong. With the deaths of Andrea and Hank, we’d had enough.

Although Walter’s demise one way or another, onscreen or off was foretold, I expected to be surprised in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I’m thankful to have gotten that.

Below are a few of my favorite (unexpected) moments:

1. The shout out to the ending of that other gangster show when Walt warned Gretchen and Elliot if they didn’t follow his orders, how they might be anywhere in the world, and suddenly the hitman would take them out before they even knew it, and their world would go black.

2.The revelation that those hit men, were two meth-heads with laser guns (and the chance to say good-bye to Skinny Pete and Badger.)

3. The MacGiverness of Walt’s automatic weapons system.

4. Walt’s being more honest than he ever was before when he wrote his own epitaph, “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I really, I was alive.”

5. The return of Walt’s compassion when he saw the condition that Jesse was in and decided to save his life.

6. The death of Todd, and that Jesse got to do the deed.

7. Jesse’s final “no” to Mr. White, before he drives away, and our knowledge that he is truly free and actually has a future (possibly involving woodworking).

8. Lydia’s having a couple of days to ponder her coming death.

9. Knowing that no one is left who is a threat to the Whites.

10. The glimpses we got of all the family, even if only flashback.

11. And yeah, even though he didn’t “deserve” it, it was satisfying to watchWalter White go out on his own terms, as a badass.

We never found out what exactly happened between Elliot, Gretchen and Walter. What was the great wrong they committed, the one that even at the end, kept Walter from wanting a penny of their money? Last week, I pondered that the truth might change our entire perspective, but maybe there wasn’t any dark secret, just three irreconcilable versions of events, each distorted by time. Memory is the least stable element.

(Feel free to comment on your own favorite moments or take on the finale. Have a look at some other posts on topics of interest. Or if you’re done here, go have a look at some other examples of Marion’s work.)