Giveaway - The Dispatcher (Ryan David Jahn)

I have ONE copy of The Dispatcher, courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours to give away. To enter, simply fill the form below.

The usual stuff:

1. You don't have to be a follower of my blog to enter the giveaway.
2. You must be over 13 years of age.
3. Only US/Canada please. (The publisher is mailing out the copies.)
4. The giveaway will stay open until I chose the winner on Feb 29, 2012.
5. Fill the form.

The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn

As soon as he hears the name, Maggie Hunt, Ian's lips go numb, and like a low note plucked on a taut metal cord running through his middle, a strange vibration ripples through him. Nausea in F-sharp minor.

He swallows.

'Maggie?' He inhales through his nostrils and exhales through his mouth in a long trembling sigh. 'Maggie,' he says, 'it's Daddy.'

Ian Hunt is working a regular day at the dispatch office, receiving more prank calls than genuine ones at the job, when a call comes through from a payphone. The distressed caller is a girl who introduces herself as Maggie Hunt, Ian's own daughter who has been missing for the past seven years, and whose funeral was arranged four months earlier to give her mother closure. She had just managed to escape and is hoping for help, but her abductor manages to get her in time. Ian, now convinced that his daughter is very much alive, will stop at nothing to get her back, even if it means punching a few noses, chopping a few fingers or killing someone.

This book is not really my usual fare, but I only chose it because Ryan David Jahn wrote it. After loving the ingenuity of Good Neighbors, I was looking for more magic when I opted to read this one. Unfortunately, this one just didn't do it for me. I know it is my elevated expectations that spoiled my enjoyment because otherwise, The Dispatcher was a pretty good crime novel.

One of the main strengths of this book is its characters. There are quite a few narrators, from Ian to his daughter, from her abductor to Ian's friend. Except for Maggie, the daughter, all the other narrators were very well-etched. Maggie felt quite weak to me, and I guess it's because of the minimal information I got about how she has been managing for seven years - her education, her mental condition, her emotional maturity, etc. She didn't appear too affected by the abduction - there is a lot of anger but not any of the emotional effects I would expect to see.

The Dispatcher was pretty fast paced and a bit gruesome. There are some really stomach churning moments and a lot of bloodshed in the book. I didn't feel all that uncomfortable reading the book, but it should be stated that there are quite a few kidnappings and child killings in the book, in case that's something that gives you a headache. The gruesomeness was pretty vivid in Good Neighbors as well, but I think The Dispatcher will take the cake in that department.

The plot itself was pretty well setup. My usual problems with crime novels are how much the writer teases the reader - the good guy will be thiscloseto catching the bad guy before something happens, he escapes and I roll my eyes. I didn't feel manipulated in this case - the expected things happen, and then some unexpected things happen, but nothing that involves the police coming in at the last minute after all the gunshots are fired. The setting being in Texas, there is a lot of landscape descriptions that are not really my cup of tea but will be delicious to anyone who loves a good setting.

One of my issues with this book has to do with my ebook copy itself. I read it via Kindle, sent directly from NetGalley, and the copy was pretty badly organized. The paragraphs weren't properly split up between perspectives. The transition from one narrator to another is not so obvious that sometimes I am a couple of paragraphs into the next person's story before I realize it. This was my first time reading NetGalley copies on the Kindle app - I usually read on my Nook. Not a big issue, but a jarring note, nevertheless.

Despite all the wonderful things I wrote about this book, it didn't really intrigue me much. The middle portion of the book slowed down quite a bit and there wasn't much happening either to move the story along. There are many other characters who come and go through the book. I was disappointed that some of them aren't explored more considering the strategic placement of quite a few subplots. I also felt that Maggie's abductor was occasionally acting out of character - of course, what's out of character for a kidnapper is debatable. His wife was quite frustrating most of the time that I wasn't sure what her ailment was. It was these weak characterizations that eventually took away my enjoyment. I did however like how the author left the ending ambiguous, and although I would love to know how Ian manages after it all ends, I do see how I will be dissatisfied with whichever ending the author chooses.

I received this ebook for free for review from the publisher via TLC Book Tours and NetGalley.

Yet another Monday! (Feb 20, 2012)

Sheila @ Book Journey wants to know what we're reading. I'm only too happy to oblige!

This Saturday, husband and I went with two of my best buddies for a strenuous but really wonderful and amazing three-hour mountain hike to the Sharp Top peak in the Peaks of Otter area nearby. The view that greeted us once we reached the top was so breathtakingly beautiful that we could have sat there all day. The weather was perfect too, and quite the contrast with Sunday's cold snowy day. Not that I'm complaining - I'm thrilled that it snowed finally!

This week, I started reading Dance Lessons by Áine Greaney, for the Indie Lit Awards shortlist. I have just one more book to go after this and will be done with the shortlist by the end of this month. So far, it's been an interesting list of books, and I can't wait to start voting!

Which pages were turned...

  I finished reading Ryan David Jahn's The Dispatcher hours ago - a book I chose simply because I loved his Good Neighbors to death. I enjoyed this one but it didn't pull me in the way his previous book did.
  I am still reading Eli Gottlieb's The Face Thief - which is really good so far, I'm just not getting enough time to read it with all the other reading commitments.
  Short Story of the week - Bohemia (click for my review) by V.S. Naipaul.

...And other news
  Review: American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar
  What the rest of February looks like.

Happy reading!

Bohemia by V.S. Naipaul (Short Fiction review)

Continuing my desire to read more short works by authors on my must-read list but who somehow never seem to move up from there, this week I chose a short story from V. S. Naipaul's book, Half a Life. I know Naipaul has many fans and haters - his public comments tend to drive readers to polar camps, and whatever I think of the man he is, I do want to read his books. And since I came across one of his short stories at The New Yorker, I decided to start with that.

I'll say right upfront that I wouldn't exactly recommend this piece, simply because it is a chapter from a novel, than a standalone story, although I should say it functions somewhat decently as a single story. I did however sense the lack of an ending or a closure when I finished the story, which is what prompted me to go looking for information about it. The book, Half a Life, from which Bohemia has been shared, is a story of an Indian guy going to study in London - initially as someone very passive about his surroundings, but soon becoming very interested in what happens around him and opinionated in all kinds of matters. Bohemia probably belongs to part 1 of the book - where his passive lifestyle is explored and the seeds for his change are being sown.

Since I'm not trying to recommend this story, I'm going to say about what I felt once I finished it, and whether I'm any more or less inclined to read his books. Despite its inconclusive ending, Bohemia was a nice story - a good introduction to Naipaul's style of writing and many of the writing traits that I believe he is known for. The protagonist of the story, Willie Somerset Chandran has been named by his father after an English cricketer. He only knows of two places in London - Buckingham Palace and Speakers' Corner - both places eliciting vivid images of grandeur and dazzle in his mind based on what he had learned of them, but both falling far short of his expectations. After blindly siding himself for years with one or the other side of any home issues because his family probably sided on the same side, in London, he found himself free to invent himself from scratch - free to chose his own ancestry and twist the truth to emphasize half-truths.

He began to get friendly with a Jamaican student of mixed parentage, Percy, who teaches him how to live in London. Although Willie is initially somewhat dependent on Percy, he soon transforms into someone capable of making his own decisions and cheating on his friend. It's interesting how the transformation came about - as a result of one's societal ego - when Willie decided that based on their ancestries, he was definitely a few rungs above Percy and hence he had no reason to feel secondary or like a follower. I had to shake heads at that because that was so typical of some people in a society that visibly demarcates people according to their differences by financial standing, race, caste, etc. (Like thinking - oh, since he's from a lower caste, I can walk like a king around him and learn things from him without feeling uneducated.) Although this isn't mentioned in the story, my guess is that Willie grew up feeling and believing in the superiority of his Brahmin caste over other castes in India.

By the end of the story, I realized that I despised Willie. I got especially turned off when this guy felt cool with feeling up his friend's girlfriend right in front of the friend, and I'm not sure I expected his character to feel okay with that. I don't know whether reading about his life is going to be worthwhile, but I should say I am impressed by Naipaul's perceptions in the story. I liked how he explained the beginning of Willie's desire to learn more about the world around him. He decided to start with reading the paper. Though soon, Willie realizes that reading the paper is like reading a series - there is no way to get context unless you read the previous related articles of a particular news item. When he then goes to an encyclopedia for refuge, he gets lost in the tons of data out there.

He began to read about the Egyptian crisis in the newspapers, but he didn't understand what he read. He knew too little about the background, and newspaper stories were like serials; it was necessary to know what had gone before. So he began to read about Egypt in the college library, and he floundered. It was like moving very fast and having no fixed markers to give an idea of position and speed. His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

I did close the book with a greater desire to check out Naipaul's books. I enjoyed his comic take on certain matters, and the sense of lost, self-discovering characters lacing the book, even though Willie just rubbed on my bad side. I wonder if that's because of a lack of context, and whether knowing more about Willie might change that.

I read this book online on the The New Yorker. Go ahead and read it. Check out more of Naipaul's stories here.

American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar

Almost from the moment Imran could speak, he'd been asking about his father. And, sensing there was more to know than the vague, unsettling outline of a story his mother told him - that there had once been a man who had been his father, but then he'd left, and so was his father no more - Imran turned to others for answers. Indeed, it wasn't long before each new male visitor to the house would find himself besieged by the young boy; Imran would climb up a leg and into the man's embrace. "Are you my dad?" he would ask.

For a long time, young Hayat Shah has heard the same stories from his mother - about her best friend Mina and her mischievous disposition. When newly divorced Mina arrives at their home in the US to protect her son from her ex-husband back in Pakistan, Hayat is entirely captivated by her. From Mina he learns to read and worship the Quran, and is inspired to try and become a hafiz (someone who has memorized the entire Quran). But when Mina falls in love with a Jewish man, Hayat begins to feel betrayed and angry. Around the same time, Hayat begins to hear anti-Semitic stuff that he believes to be true, thus adding to his resentment, leading him to do things that will destroy a lot of lives.

I guess that synopsis kind of sounds intriguing. (I hope so - I struggled to write it.) The book however was just so-so. What I struggled most with was the amount of religious matter in it. I see the point to it - without all that content in the book, I don't think I would be convinced as to how much Hayat fell under the "spell". (I say 'spell' because he was believing what he wanted to believe and there was no one to correct him. At such an impressionable age, that just spells disaster to me.) The stuff did make me uncomfortable and sometimes angry (that's just me), but then I remembered that the person thinking these thoughts was a really young kid. I appreciated the author for not censoring anything while writing this book - that made the book all the more atmospheric.

Having never read a book like this - on one of the ways how religious fervor is born, I liked the insight I got into Hayat's mind. He had good people on his side to help him out, though I felt it's mostly that destructive thing he does which changes him. I did however find it strange that his parents never bothered to tell him that whatever crazy stuff he heard were wrong. For a person all insistent on an atheistic life and hating any form of incendiary talks, Hayat's father felt like a weak character to me. He seemed to more fulfill the role of the dissenting voice in the book than a responsible father who should worry about what his son listens to. Unfortunately, there are lot of fathers like him, so I can't really say that this is the fault of the book. It's just the way a lot of the families are - somehow the nastier aspects of religion, politics and sex education are allowed to collect dust in the attic.

The parts of the book I enjoyed have to do mostly with Mina's four-year old son, Imran. Growing up without a father was tough for him, making him look at any Pakistani man and ask if he was his father. When he is introduced to Mina's lover, Nathan, Imran isn't at all happy about it and sulks most of the time. Imran instead looks at Hayat's father as his own father and this drives Hayat jealous. I loved the dynamics between these two boys, who were like brothers sometimes, and other times, Hayat's jealousy would make him do desperate things.

American Dervish is a really fast read, and although it was challenging for me, it was also engrossing at some level. I was mostly curious as to how Hayat gets transformed (which we know right from the start). And although there were times when it felt hard to look at Hayat as a child and instead as a very troubled person, the author did remind me of that many times. The religious aspect of the book is probably its strongest suit (never thought I would say that), but I felt that the plot was a bit unstable, and a couple of the characters, especially Nathan, felt too comical to me. There are however a lot of stereotypes in the book - most of the "not good" guys are painted as too orthodox or too fanatical. While that gets the point across, I doubt it does much for the Pakistani culture. Overall, the book was just alright. Pity because I love the cover too much.


I received this book for free for review from the publisher.