Like most gentlemen, I traverse the thoroughfares of my city via the most elegant means: the humble old-timey unicycle (or penny-farthing, if you prefer). (The modern one-wheel unicycle is a circus performer’s tool: fine for agitating depressed exotic animals, but certainly not an elegant way of traversing the boulevards between peer’s parlors and unicycle repair shops.) Sure, strong crosswinds and gawking motorists present hazards, but one large wheel, one ridiculously tiny wheel, two pedals, a steering apparatus, a medium-sized handheld bell, and, should you require luxury, a seat, are all one needs to travel in style and in possession of the higher moral ground. Armed with this obvious truth, it’s to be expected that I turn a skeptical eye on bicycles. Two wheels, sure, but making them the same size is downright ostentatious, and you do not need me to explain why. So gentleman rec-heads (what my fans refer to themselves as, I assume), may be surprised to find me recommending a book so tied to a device that replaced so many unicycles in the homes of undiscerning pedalists. But, first, look at that author’s name: Joe Mungo Reed. There are three names, two of them are mundane, and one of them is Mungo. It makes for a quailty name. It’s fun to say. Mungo.

Also, the book is really good, even if, as this positive review points out, Joe Mungo Reed doesn’t always nail cycling parlance, and as my positive recommendation currently points out, he never pays tribute or even mentions a penny-farthing or old-timey unicycle despite there being, at times, dozens of cyclists in his scenes, at which point any one of them could organically say something like, “While I’m being sufficiently transported by this racing bicycle I am currently riding, I’d be remiss if I failed to pay tribute to the first excellent two-wheel vehicle, the penny-farthing, or, if you prefer (and I do), the humble old-timey unicycle. Now there was an apparatus upon which one could travel elegantly!” Clearly such dialogue would have enhanced the novel (and it’s up for grabs if Joe Mungo Reed is compelled to produce a sequel), but there is still much to recommend the book.

Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Joe Mungo Reed”

Sometimes you read a book that’s so good you want to recommend it every month, or at least quarterly. (But then you reflect on the swarms of rabid library blog readers and their hunger for fresh recommendations and the quiet disappointment they would feel should the same recommendation with slightly different wording and a varying quantity of references to the recommender’s fondness for snacks and monocles be what greets them as they enthusiastically “ask Jeeves” to retrieve the latest recommendation from “that book recommending gentleman,” and the recommender realizes, variety, even when what varies pales in comparison, can be useful, particularly in diets and reading material, and so you do the noble thing, and recommend a different author, at least until the author of that astounding novel you want to constantly recommend writes another book deserving of the recommender’s unhinged enthusiasm.) “A Naked Singularity” the first novel by Sergio de la Pava is such a book. Fortunately, his third novel, “Lost Empress,” is similarly magnificent, and so now I can recommend it and him again.

Devoted DBRL blog readers will no doubt remember de la Pava’s bio, and thus how massively deserving he is of his talents and success, but I will deliver a brief version: he is a public defender in New York, and he writes big, brilliant novels when he’s not publicly defending people for a slim fraction of what he could make if he was privately defending corporations. Given that he is a public defender, it’s logical that the justice system plays a large role in his fiction, and it’s even more logical that he would enumerate on the horrifying injustice that dominates our justice system. What might not seem logical is how his enumerations on injustice could be simultaneously compelling, hilarious and heartbreaking. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Sergio de la Pava (again)”