Book 2009 #1: Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery
Filed Under: Novel, Recommended Media
The first book I have read for 2009 probably shouldn’t count. I started it in 2008. But I set the rules and I have decided that it is books finished in 2009 that count. Maybe I will finally get through War and Peace after all this time. Unlikely. The Russian authors have rarely done much for me. Although, now that I think about it, Crime and Punishment gave me some nasty nightmares in high school. Something about a bloody hammer. No bloody hammers here, but there sure was a lot of blood in general.
So I read the rather long titled Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery. I picked this one up after having seen the really interesting cover a couple of times at the book store and reading the back copy. I wasn’t quite sold, but then Cory over at BoingBoing posted a glowing Doctorowian review andconvinced me to give it a shot. Speaking of Cory, I think I’ll put Little Brother up on the chopping block next. I’ve been meaning to get to that for a while and I suspect thematically it’ll go down well after the six course meal of this book.
Sheesh, that’s a lot of words without actually talking about the book itself isn’t it? I was talking with Nick Mamatas about this one and he said he thought it read like budget Pynchon. I’ve never read any Pynchon but I trust Nick knows what he’s talking about. I’m actually looking forward to reading some Pynchon now based on that comparison. (Finally, I address the book itself, eh?)
Yeah, I liked this one for a lot of reasons. The prose is wandering and wild and full of words that go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Just some great writing here, and it breaks rules of POV and such in lovely ways that just make everything slightly surreal, and yet still grounded. This is science fiction, but there are ghosts. Are they metaphorical? I guess you could say that. If this weren’t genre, you wouldn’t even ask that question though.
Post economic collapse America sounds a hell of a lot more ghoulish than I imagined it personally. For one, Slattery sees slavery coming back. I had a hard time buying that at first but it does make a kind of gruesome sense. I hope he’s wrong if things ome to that.
The main character here is really America (post collapse, but our history as well). Everyone else, especially the protagonists, are just supporting cast. That’s not to say they aren’t well-characterized. I’ll probably remember Marco in particular for years to come. But I like a book with a broad character like that once and a while. It’s something I would love to pull off some day, as I work to grow as a writer.
And everything here is so fucking cool. It’s almost Beats cool. The Slick Six are very slick, very suave and I think there’s almost a comic book atmosphere at play here. They’re larger than life in some ways, particularly Marco (especially Marco). It’s so weird to me that Slattery has made his post-collapse America seem cool, but it really is. Bursting with weirdness and cool. There’s a scene in particular that I am thinking of, involving a confrontation between Marco and an assassin that is just great and so so cool.
Also, the villain’s name is the Aardvark which may be more ridiculous than cool, but I liked that. What kind of villain goes by that istead of the Hammerhead or the Wolf or something suitably frightening? Aardvark is not a word that strikes fear in anyone unless you happen to be an ant.
This book will stick with me for a while, I think. I am definitely looking forward to the next one by Slattery. I may even read this one again, more carefully this time, to enjoy the prose at my leisure. I recommend this one if you like post-apocalyptic fiction, gonzo style road trip novels, or ninjas.
