THE GHOST: A Review

Every other review of this book makes reference to it's roman a clef nature - the main character Adam Lang is a thinly veiled portrait of former British Prime Minster, Tony Blair. They go on and on about the clever plot and dialogue and point out all the parallel political tidbits. But, I don't give a damn about the political nature of the story. No one single reviewer has pointed out the major glaring (and fatal) error which forced me to literally THROW THIS BOOK ACROSS THE ROOM and say "Screw you, Mr. Harris, be a better writer."

A quick summary: Former British prime minister Adam Lang is up against a firm deadline to submit his memoirs to his publisher, and the project is dangerously derailed when his aide and collaborator, Michael McAra, perishes in a ferry accident off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. To salvage the book, a professional ghostwriter is hired to whip the manuscript into shape, but the writer, who is never named, soon finds that separating truth from fiction in Lang’s recollections a challenge. The stakes rise when Lang is accused of war crimes for authorizing the abduction of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, who then ended up in the CIA’s merciless hands. As the new writer probes deeper, he uncovers evidence that his predecessor’s death may have been a homicide and begins to fear for his own life.

Okay, sounds fine. The book opens with the ghostwriter meeting with the publishers and taking on the job of finishing the Prime Minister's memoirs. He has one month to take the unreadable manuscript and turn it into something salable. It will be his largest pay day ever - $200,000 for four weeks of work. The writer has made a decent living churning autobiographies of rock stars, celebrities and sports figures, but this assignment is the opportunity of a lifetime.

He also has to sign a confidentiality clause and is under strict guidelines as how and where he can work on the manuscript. He can only work on the manuscript at the palatial house on Martha's Vineyard where the PM and wife are living. He cannot discuss the manuscript with anyone. He cannot make copies. His laptop on which he is writing and editing the book, cannot leave the mansion. The writer has no problem with that ... hey, he's making $200,000 to basically re-write a completed manuscript.

So what does this idiot do? On page 98 of the novel, after an interview session with the PM, the writer e-mails a copy of the manuscript to himself so he can work on the book at night while he's in his hotel room -in essence, he makes a copy of the manuscript. That was the moment when I tossed this book. The only reason for this idiotic action was to give the novel its plot. Who cares if it goes against everything we have learned about the character? It's the plot that counts.

And another thing: if it was so important for the manuscript to stay secret until publication why in the hell is the writer staying at a deserted hotel in off season Martha's Vineyard? Why wasn't the writer sequestered in the mansion with the PM and wife and staff and secret service? Why? Because then, there is no plot.

"Screw you, Mr. Harris. Be a better writer."

BIBLIO SAYS: Stay away from this piece of junk.

Recommended Alternative Reading: The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.

THE GOLD COAST & THE GATE HOUSE: A Review

Okay, so I know how much other critics love these two books. I am also a Demille fan. The
Charm School, Word of Honor, The General's Daughter and Plum Island are all good books. Exciting thrillers and well written.

I read The Gold Coast when it was first published in 1990, and remember not being impressed at all. FAST FORWARD to 2009 - with great hype, Demille's sequel to Gold Coast was published so I decided to go back and re-read the book before I read the new one.

Halfway through Gold Coast for the second time I found myself very impatient. One question kept popping up in my head: Who the f*@k cares? I found nothing about any of the three main characters sympathetic.

In fact, by page 350 I was hoping everyone would die. Alas, only the so-called "bad guy" Frank Bellarosa gets it in the end. Frank's crime was being an Italian and daring to move into the cloistered white-bread preppy culture of snobs and shallow people along the Gold Coast - and tempting his ultra uptight neighbors John and Susan Sutter. According to the book description, John's narrative voice is "sardonic - often hilarious." Someone at the publishers has a different definition of hilarious than most of us.

I was thankful when it was finished, and pissed that John and Susan were still breathing valuble oxygen. So it was with trepidation that moved on to The Gate House. Ten years after his wife Susan killed Mob boss Frank Bellarosa, John Sutter returns to the cloistered life on the Gold Coast. John spends pages and pages ruminating about how terrible life is at the country club, on his yacht and in his mansion. Most of his problems are due to the fact that he is too much of a wienie to actually say "screw it" and leave the so-called good life behind. His annoying wife Susan is still annoying. She has a six-figure income from a family trust fund and is a spoiled bratty bitch. What John sees in her - other than her money and taste for kinky sex - is beyond me. So, if you enjoy reading about spoiled, self-important people clinging to an out-dated lifestyle I can recommend several books about Charleston in the 1860s. Stay away from this piece of boring crap.

HINT: next time have the editor actually edit the book. Cut out the boring shit -75% of this book.

BIBLIO SAYS: Stay far, far away.

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD - A Review

Margaret Atwood is the perfect example of the concept that quality is determined by general consensus. That is, something is good when enough people agree it is good, even if it truly is crap. Other examples would be the music of Madonna, the fiction of James Patterson, TV's Survivor and every Quentin Tarrentino movie.

Not only is Margaret Atwood a hack, she's a boring hack. And, worse than that, she is a deluded hack. The Year Of The Flood is a companion novel to 2003's Oryx and Crake, which portrayed the world being destroyed by catastrophic climate change and genetic engineering.

TYOTF centers on the lives of Ren and Toby, female members of a fundamentalist sect of Christian environmentalists, the God's Gardeners. Led by the charismatic Adam One, whose sermons and eco-hymns punctuate the narrative, the God's Gardeners are preparing for life after the prophesied Waterless Flood. The believers are ingrained with Adam One's pacificist and environmentalist's teachings - enviro-theology. They are vegetarian - unless you get really, really hungry, and then you start eating from the bottom of the food chain up.

Just to show you how nutty the entire thing is, Atwood had created new saints for God's Gardners to emulate - Al Gore and Rachel Carson.

Al Gore has been proved to be nothing more than a modern-day flim-flam man making millions of dollars off sketchy and unproven theories of global warming. He is either one of the most evil men in the world, or one of the most deluded.

Rachel Carson is nothing less than the greatest mass murderer of the last century. Her book Silent Spring so effectively advocated the banning of DDT against mosquitoes that politicians blindly rushed to pass a ban. Fifty years (and 30 million deaths from malaria) later, Carson's theory that DDT is harmful to the environment, humans and other creatures has been so thoroughly discredited than anyone who uses her name to defend environmental causes must be delusional, like dropping Hitler's name to discuss your support of Jewish culture.

But politics aside, Atwood has violated the first law of writing fiction: IT'S BORING! Nothing happens. And what does happen is so silly and flimsy that only someone as deluded as Al Gore could take it seriously.

BIBLIO SAYS: Ignore!

Companion Read: The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. A true dystopic masterpiece.