Liquor, by Poppy Z. Brite

Short version: Brite conclusively breaks out of the horror ghetto with this charming mainstream novel about two New Orleans cooks who open a restaurant. Full review at Green Man Review:

I know you know who wrote this book—her name is right there at the top of the review, about a quarter-inch above this sentence— but pretend for a moment that you don’t. Pretend you never read a horror novel called Exquisite Corpse, featuring two gay necrophiliac cannibals, or else pretend that you, like I, never started it and couldn’t get past the first disgusting chapter. Pretend you never read any short stories by a woman with a certain gloriously improbable name, not even that sizzling demonstration of the fine line between arousal and terror called “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves.” Most importantly, pretend you never read a book called Lost Souls and forget all about its cast of Goth vampires drinking Chartreuse in the steamy streets of decadent New Orleans.

You don’t have to pretend quite so hard that you never read Drawing Blood, in which a haunted house provides the backdrop for a touching romance between two troubled young men. And if you happen to have come across the short mainstream novels Plastic Jesus or The Value of X, you may not have to pretend at all.

Clear your memory of all preconceptions, and read this excerpt from a novel called Liquor, by some woman named Poppy Z. Brite, in which a young man reminisces about being a cook at the Peychaud Grill :

Rickey sometimes wondered what would have become of them if the Peychaud crew hadn’t imploded one night in a marathon of apocalyptic drunkenness. No one remembered much of this night, but by the end of it, two cars were totaled, the sous chef and the bartender were in Charity Hospital, the chef was in jail, and the grill guy’s wife was filing for divorce. The owner decided to close the place and they found themselves jobless. Rickey guessed this kind of thing was known as a “wake-up call.”

Liquor has no vampires, no serial killers, and no steamy, swampy, Gothy New Orleans clichés. It doesn’t need them.

Rickey and G-Man are young cooks in a distinctly unglamorous New Orleans. They’ve been best friends since fourth grade and lovers since they were teenagers, and their relationship has the playfulness and ease of true love that’s lasted for years. They’re sick of slaving away as line cooks in lousy restaurants and getting screamed at by cokehead managers. While drinking vodka and orange juice in the park, Rickey gets an idea. Since people in New Orleans love drinking so much that it’s legal to get your cocktail in a go-cup so you can walk from the bar to your house without letting your throat go dry, why not open a restaurant called Liquor, in which every dish contains alcohol?

As G-Man points out, there’s the slight problem that the two of them are both unknown and broke. But Rickey’s not going to let persnickety matters like that get in the way of his really great idea. Soon they’re cutting deals with deceptively amiable crooks, renting a fixer-upper of an abandoned restaurant that’s perfect as long as they can convince a booze-hound reporter not to publicize its unfortunate past, hiring eccentric dessert makers and fat-phobic grill men, and hoping Rickey’s vengeful ex-boss won’t snort too much coke and come after him with a sharp kitchen implement.

The details of work are one of the most enjoyable subjects to read about. Often when reading some mystery or sf novel or thriller, I wish that the writer had left out the plot in order to focus on the more interesting subplots involving the characters’ jobs and relationships. Brite concentrates on the fascinating business of cooking and running a restaurant, on the kitchen camaraderie and the New Orleans restaurant scene, and on the sweetly companionable relationship between G-Man and Rickey. There's not much plot but it isn't missed at all.

Brite’s lush horror prose style, in which every noun has an adjective, every kiss has a flavor, and every place has an entire perfumery of smells, is discarded here in favor of an omniscient voice which is crisp, witty, and casual in the way that can only be achieved with great care and skill. The characters are likable, their relationships feel real, and the milieu is irresistible.

If you liked Anthony Bourdain’s foodie memoirs Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour, you’ll like Liquor. If you never heard of Bourdain or Brite but are looking for a good absorbing novel that will leave you cheered and emotionally refreshed, albeit hungry and longing for a stiff drink, you’ll like Liquor. If you liked Poppy Z. Brite’s horror novels for their romances between young gay men, you’ll like Liquor. If you liked Brite’s horror novels for their purplish prose, air of doomed romanticism, and pale fragile souls too sensitive to live, you’ll have a shock in store for you. But you’ll probably like Liquor anyway. It’s just that sort of book.

I missed her signing in LA yesterday, alas. I had and have a nasty cold and didn't make it to karate either. (I think it's unsociable to share viruses.) But I was pleased to read on her livejournal (docbrite) that she enjoyed a formal Korean banquet.

Liquor, by Poppy Z. Brite

Short version: Brite conclusively breaks out of the horror ghetto with this charming mainstream novel about two New Orleans cooks who open a restaurant. Full review at Green Man Review:

http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_brite_liquor.html

I missed her signing in LA yesterday, alas. I had and have a nasty cold and didn't make it to karate either. (I think it's unsociable to share viruses.) But I was pleased to read on her livejournal (docbrite) that she enjoyed a formal Korean banquet.

And vanished from all mortal ken...

First let me explain that the reason I've been maniacally posting all weekend is NOT because I don't have a life, it's because I have a cold and feel too lousy to go out and too feverish to concentrate on reading or writing or DVDs for more than half an hour at a time, so I'm bored.

Also my agent has my memoir and I can't do anything with it till I get his notes, and I'm way too reely-headed to think much about my next project, and the two books from Green Man that I should have reviewed a month ago remain unfinished because about once I week I pick them up, read three pages, and think of something better to do. Like dusting my cats. When I finally do force myself to finish them, the reviews will be undoubtedly be pure snark, and Mia and Grey will be amused even if the authors won't.

Anyway, while making a more-than-usually desultory attempt to cull books so I can fit all the ones I own into the bookcases with none double-stacked or scattered about handy flat surfaces, I noticed that I have a number of books whose authors only seem to have written one or two, then vanished forever. But what they wrote was choice. I think all of these are out of print, which happens when you only write one book. In some cases the book was so polished and assured that I am baffled that the author was apparently never heard from again. Presumably it didn't sell well, but still...

FLYING IN PLACE, by Susan Palwick

I am a sucker for books about abused children triumphing over their horrid circumstances, but even allowing for my bias in favor of the subject matter, this is an awfully well-written book. Emma is a bright girl whose doctor father is abusing her, and whose English teacher mother uses literature to keep unpleasant realities at bay. When Emma starts to think she can't take it any more, she gets visited by the ghost of her older sister, who died before Emma was born. Ginny knows the family secrets. Ginny can teach Emma to leave her body and fly. But Ginny has secrets of her own. Unsentimental but heart-felt, and with the page-turning qualities of a thriller.

Palwick has published a few short stories since her first novel, all well-written but less noteworthy, but her second novel has been forthcoming for more than ten years. I'd be very curious to know if she got a WONDER BOYS-worthy case of second novel trouble, or if she delivered something the publishers deemed uncommercial.

SWAN'S WING, by Ursula Synge

This is one of two novel-length re-tellings that I know of which concern the fate of the seventh swan-brother, the one whose coat of nettles had one sleeve unfinished and whose left arm remained a swan's wing when the rest of him was restored to human form. The other is by Nicholas Stuart Gray, but I prefer Synge's version. It has all the flavor of the original fairy-tale, of innocent girls and tormented young men facing cruel and poetic fates, with sexual undercurrents reminiscent of, oh, everyone who's retelling fairy-tales now, but it startled me when I read this one. The ending is notably uncompromising.

I think this is Synge's only novel.

THE FORTUNATE FALL, by Raphael Carter

I can't believe this book is out of print. I think it's the best sf novel to be published in the last fifteen years. The protagonist, Maya, is a camera: a journalist whose audience plugs in to experience what she experiences, sound, touch, mental associations, and all.

"I will not let you explore the twining pathways of my thoughts as I explore them-- not again. I will hide instead behind this wall of words, and I will conceal what I choose to conceal. I will tell you the story in order, as you'd tell a story to a stranger who knows nothing of it: for you are not my friend, and what you know is far less than you think you know. You will read my life in phosphors on a screen, or glowing letters scrolling up the inside of your eye. And when you reach the end, you will lie down again in your indifferent dark apartment, with the neon splashing watercolor blues across your face, and you will know a little less about me than you did before."

This is not just good writer. This is sell your soul to the Devil writing. If all Carter had going as a writer was that stunning prose, it would be enough. Add in rich characterization, intriguing sfnal extrapolation, and serious moral themes, and you get one astounding novel. Beg or borrow, but if you steal this book you'll be tracked down and slain by its enraged owner, and then you'll go to Hell.

Carter has written one short story, "The Congenital Agenesis of gender Ideation," which is thought-provoking and also rather funny. That's it. I asked a couple people who know Carter what's going on and if another novel is being worked on, and all they say is that Carter is a very private person and they don't know.

And vanished from all mortal ken...

First let me explain that the reason I've been maniacally posting all weekend is NOT because I don't have a life, it's because I have a cold and feel too lousy to go out and too feverish to concentrate on reading or writing or DVDs for more than half an hour at a time, so I'm bored.

Also my agent has my memoir and I can't do anything with it till I get his notes, and I'm way too reely-headed to think much about my next project, and the two books from Green Man that I should have reviewed a month ago remain unfinished because about once I week I pick them up, read three pages, and think of something better to do. Like dusting my cats. When I finally do force myself to finish them, the reviews will be undoubtedly be pure snark, and Mia and Grey will be amused even if the authors won't.

Anyway, while making a more-than-usually desultory attempt to cull books so I can fit all the ones I own into the bookcases with none double-stacked or scattered about handy flat surfaces, I noticed that I have a number of books whose authors only seem to have written one or two, then vanished forever. But what they wrote was choice. I think all of these are out of print, which happens when you only write one book. In some cases the book was so polished and assured that I am baffled that the author was apparently never heard from again. Presumably it didn't sell well, but still...

FLYING IN PLACE, by Susan Palwick

I am a sucker for books about abused children triumphing over their horrid circumstances, but even allowing for my bias in favor of the subject matter, this is an awfully well-written book. Emma is a bright girl whose doctor father is abusing her, and whose English teacher mother uses literature to keep unpleasant realities at bay. When Emma starts to think she can't take it any more, she gets visited by the ghost of her older sister, who died before Emma was born. Ginny knows the family secrets. Ginny can teach Emma to leave her body and fly. But Ginny has secrets of her own. Unsentimental but heart-felt, and with the page-turning qualities of a thriller.

Palwick has published a few short stories since her first novel, all well-written but less noteworthy, but her second novel has been forthcoming for more than ten years. I'd be very curious to know if she got a WONDER BOYS-worthy case of second novel trouble, or if she delivered something the publishers deemed uncommercial.

SWAN'S WING, by Ursula Synge

This is one of two novel-length re-tellings that I know of which concern the fate of the seventh swan-brother, the one whose coat of nettles had one sleeve unfinished and whose left arm remained a swan's wing when the rest of him was restored to human form. The other is by Nicholas Stuart Gray, but I prefer Synge's version. It has all the flavor of the original fairy-tale, of innocent girls and tormented young men facing cruel and poetic fates, with sexual undercurrents reminiscent of, oh, everyone who's retelling fairy-tales now, but it startled me when I read this one. The ending is notably uncompromising.

I think this is Synge's only novel.

THE FORTUNATE FALL, by Raphael Carter

I can't believe this book is out of print. I think it's the best sf novel to be published in the last fifteen years. The protagonist, Maya, is a camera: a journalist whose audience plugs in to experience what she experiences, sound, touch, mental associations, and all.

"I will not let you explore the twining pathways of my thoughts as I explore them-- not again. I will hide instead behind this wall of words, and I will conceal what I choose to conceal. I will tell you the story in order, as you'd tell a story to a stranger who knows nothing of it: for you are not my friend, and what you know is far less than you think you know. You will read my life in phosphors on a screen, or glowing letters scrolling up the inside of your eye. And when you reach the end, you will lie down again in your indifferent dark apartment, with the neon splashing watercolor blues across your face, and you will know a little less about me than you did before."

This is not just good writer. This is sell your soul to the Devil writing. If all Carter had going as a writer was that stunning prose, it would be enough. Add in rich characterization, intriguing sfnal extrapolation, and serious moral themes, and you get one astounding novel. Beg or borrow, but if you steal this book you'll be tracked down and slain by its enraged owner, and then you'll go to Hell.

Carter has written one short story, "The Congenital Agenesis of gender Ideation," which is thought-provoking and also rather funny. That's it. I asked a couple people who know Carter what's going on and if another novel is being worked on, and all they say is that Carter is a very private person and they don't know.