The Librarian, His 'Stache, and the Most Dangerous Book on Earth

Here is an article you might want to read over at mental_floss. Enjoy.

Fury

by Salman Rushdie

The story of Fury is that of Professor Malik Solanka, who one day up and left his wife and young son in England and moved to New York City. There, he walks the streets, constantly annoyed, drinks too much and has frequent blackouts. While he is there, a trio of girls is murdered and he cannot be 100 % sure that he didn't do it with all the blackouts and all.

His only actual friend is Jack, a former journalist, who eventually forms his own tragic bond to the killings. Then there is Mila Milo, who takes Malik - whom she recognizes as the creator as Little Brain, a doll who has all but taken over world domination - on as a 'project'. There is also Neela, a stunning woman affecting everyone around her, who is Jack's girlfriend and then Malik's girlfriend and, later, a revolutionary in her tiny, shaken home country.

The title does not only refer to Malik's state of mind, but also to the mythical Furies, that occasionally make an appearance in the book.

Doña Gio was still singing, but the screaming of the Furies momentarily drowned her voice. The hungry goddesses were beating around both their heads, feeding on their rage.

The furies eventually take the forms of the women in Malik's life - his lover Neela, his by then business partner Mila and his estranged wife Eleanor, who all show up in his bedroom at the same time.

Salmen Rushdie really is a brilliant writer and this is one of his finest works, in my opinion.

8/10

In Athens the Furies were thought to be Aphrodite's sister. Beauty and vengeful wrath, as Homer knew, sprang from the selfsame source. That was one story. Hesiod, however, said that the Furies were born of Earth and Air, and that their siblings included Terror, Strife, Lies, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Fear and Battle. In those days they avenged blood crimes, pursuing those who harmed (especially) their mothers - Orestes, long pursued by them after he killed bloody-handed Clytemnestra, knew all about that. The leirion, or blue iris, sometimes placated the Furies, but Orestes wore no flowers in his hair. Even the bow of horn that the Pythoness, the Delphic Oracle, gave him to repel their assaults proved to be of little use. "Serpent-haired, god-headed, bat-winged," the Erinnyes hounded him for the rest of his life, denying him peace.

The Interpretation of Murder

by Jed Rubenfeld

This is a murder mystery woven around Sigmund Freud's only visit to the United States in 1909.

Dr. Freud, accompanied by Carl Jung and Sándor Ferenczi, is invited to hold a lecture at Clark University. The week before the three spend in New York City, taken car of Dr. Younger. It is from Younger's perspective that the story of the book is told.

Nora Acton has been attacked in her parent's house and lost not only her memory of the event but also her voice. Therefore, an arrangement is made for a psychoanalytical treatment - on suggestion by Freud, Younger is to be treating her. The attack appears to be connected to one, possibly two previous murders. As the case gets ever more complicated, almost everyone making an appearance in the book appears to have their own agenda.

There is also a plot unfolding with the aim to discredit Freud and have Clark University cancel his appearance and also establishing Jung as the authority on psychoanalysis.

As explained in the author's note, the case is of course fictional but many of the people in the book are historical figures. Also, although the timeline has been changed, some of the conversations involving Freud are reported to have taken place, but not during his visit to New York. The split of Jung and Freud is also rooted in history but occurred a few years after the book is set.

The story is very dense and seems to be hurling off in different directions, at first, with apparent suspects having credible alibis and the attacks turning out to not quite be what they initially looked like.

As for the European visitors, everything Freud adds to assist Younger in his analysis of Nora comes back to incestuous desires and Oedipal complexes. And I mean everything. But he still comes off much more likable than Jung, who is petty and jealous of Freud's standing and goes slightly off the rails in the course of the story.

Quite interesting read.

6/10

Generation A

by Douglas Coupland

The book is set in the near future in a world where bees are extinct. Then, five people get stung by bees shortly after the other.

The five are:

Zach, Mahaska County, Iowa
Zach is stung while drawing a giant penis into a cornfield during a drought. This happens during a video chat he has with another guy. The video, of course, goes viral. Zach is also naked at the time, which makes for interesting viewing.

Samantha, Palmerston North, Wanganui, New Zealand
Sam is stung while on contact with a young woman from Madrid. The two are making an Earth Sandwich - they take a photo of a slice of bread lying on the earth from their opposite sides of the world - which is apparently a big thing in New Zealand.

Julien, 12th Arrondissement, Paris, France
Julien is stung right after he is thrown out of World of Warcraft after having played forever. Julien is not only an arrogant Parisian (as one would expect), he is also more interested in video games than he is in school (of course, he attends the Sorbonne).

Diana, North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Diana, who suffers from Tourette's Syndrom and has a crush on her pastor, is bitten after a not-so-nice scene involving said pastor, his wife and a dog beating neighbor.

Harj, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka
Harj, who works in a call center for Abercrombie & Fitch, is stung while giving an interview about his "celebrity room tone" (silence supposedly recorded in the rooms of famous people).

The five - referring to themselves as the Wonka children, get picked out of their familiar surrounded and spend the next few weeks incarcerated individually in a room without window or any kind of destruction. There, blood is taken frequently, they only communicate with a mechanical voice and are fed jell-o-esque food.

When they all go back to their respective homes, their former houses are uninhabitable, because they have been checked, stripped, taken apart and crowds hang around in front of them, trying to catch a glimpse or - better yet - harvest some of their famous DNA. Also, the prescription drug Solon pops up all over the place. It makes people content with being by themselves and has a 100% addiction rate. Only the five are allergic to it.

They disperse into different directions but are once again picked up and - now together - brought to a remote island, inhabited only by a small tribe. There with them is Serge, someone that has been monitoring Julien after he got stung. Serge urges them to tell stories, something that he passes off as a scientific test. They soon learn, however, that Serge has apparently gone rogue and they have been used in experiments connected with Solon. Specifically, a protein that only they possess and that apparently is what attracted the bees to them in the first place, can be used as a basis for the production of Solon and its antidote.

In the end, the small tribe gets hooked on Solon, the five get the truth out of Serge and they flee into the wilderness, while they start becoming more like a hive the more time they spend together.

Classic Coupland (read: weird).

7/10