St. Louis Noir

Shirley J.          Adult Fiction              Melancholy Fiction all set in the St. Louis Metro area

St. Louis Noir by Scott Phillips    267 pages

A book of all noir stories set in the St. Louis metro area.   I loved this book.  Definitely dark stories but all told so well you won't be able to stop and will wish there was a volume 2.    Various authors either from St. Louis or living in St. Louis came to show tales that call up a black and white movie in your head.    They pull you in,  mab a little rough, maybe a little seedy but all great takes on people, places and events taking place in the STL.    I highly recommend this book especially to those readers who may not always want a happy ending, just a satisfying one.  Well told tales, my compliments to each author.   I highly recommend this book perhaps better slated to adults than teens.

Sisterland

 Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, 400 pages    

The book is set in St. Louis, mostly during 2009. Kate and Violets are twins who have 'senses'. Kate

rejects her senses while Violet embraces hers. Kate just wants to live a normal married suburban life. That goal is challenged when, after a small earthquake, her sister Vi predicts that there will be a much bigger earthquake on the local news.

The story blows up gaining a lot of local and national coverage. Vi doesn't know when but Kate gets a feeling about a certain date in the next couple of months. As the date approaches Kate doubts whether she will be right but prepares anyway. Along the way she grapples with relationship with her sister, her childhood and family history. 

The author lived in St. Louis and the local references rang true to me. Sittenfeld leaves the reader in suspense and throws in some twists for good measure. I didn't find the exploration truth and belief to be that strong. I would recommend this as a good (but not great) fiction read, especially if you want something set locally. 

Josephine Baker's Last Dance

Josephine Baker's Last Dance by Sherry Jones

I was attracted to this biographical novel simply for its subject: Josephine Baker. I knew a little about her. An African-America woman, she left the Jim Crow-era America and was singing and dancing in Paris’s nightclubs by the time she was sixteen. That’s about it. Readers get an insightful and well-researched novel about Baker---singer, dancer, movie star, French Resistance member during World War II and Civil Rights activist---that is at times slow, at times despairing yet a fascinating story of a groundbreaking woman, well before her time.

The story starts off in Paris, in April 1975. Josephine doesn’t know if, but readers get a glimpse of her final performance. Then the story skips ahead to her childhood in St. Louis. She is considered an ugly child. Her mother, a bitter woman, forces her to work for the neighbors by the time she is seven years old, making only a pittance, none of which Josephine ever sees. Life was so incredibly difficult that Josephine tries to blot it from her mind and tells anyone who might ask that she is from New Orleans. It’s heartbreaking to read about the line of abusive people in her life, from both her parents to every man she seems to meet.

By 1915, young Josephine has a new employer, one that treats her like a person, not an animal. But her security doesn’t last long. By 1919, she has spent two years singing, dancing, playing instruments with the Jones Family Band. 
The story continues to recount her time in Paris. Sometimes it drags a bit as the tediousness of her life in the theater evolves. The World War II breaks out, and Josephine wants to do her part.  She joins the French Resistance. I didn’t feel this section was deep enough, but maybe there isn’t enough documentation or evidence out there to make it more compelling.

It doesn’t matter though, I enjoyed this book thoroughly, couldn’t put it down. That’s why  “Josephine Baker’s Last Dance” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

St. Louis Noir

St. Louis Noir edited by Scott Phillips 240  pages

This is the latest installment of Akashic Noir’s Midwest series, following Chicago, the Twin Cities and Kansas City. In total, the Akashic Noir Series has about 75 titles, set around the world.

This particular collection has 14 entries, 13 dark, short stories and one poetic interlude. I recognized six of the authors for a variety of reasons. John Lutz and Scott Phillips are nationally recognized for their work: Lutz for “Single White Female” and Phillips for “The Ice Harvest.” Poet Michael Castro is the City of St. Louis’ Poet Laureate and locally famous before he was awarded the position. Jedidiah Ayres I’ve heard of from writer Joe Schwartz, and L. J. Smith I know from the local writing scene. Calvin Wilson is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

It was fun reading stories that take is familiar landmarks. The book is broken into four section, much like the metropolitan area itself: the City, the County, and Across the River (Illinois). The poetic interlude speaks to the large network of creative talent that call St. Louis home.

Phillips did a bang-up job with his Introduction: “High and Low Culture.” That describes St. Louis to a tee, past and present.

The collection gets off to strong start with the first story, “Abandoned Places” by S. L. Coney. In this story, after Ian’s father disappears, most assume he’s dead. But Ian isn’t so sure. He follows his stepmother one night and discovers that his father is held prisoner. There is some wonderfully vivid imagery especially involving the slitting of a throat. Without giving anything away (I hope), that one sentence that stood out among the rest was: “The skin gaped on either side, of that opening, giving (deleted to prevent a spoiler detail) a second smile.” This always gives me the shivers.

While “Abandoned Places” was my favorite, my least favorite was “Deserted Cities of the Heart,” by Paul D. Marks. It was rather existential, really didn’t have a plot and mostly seemed to center around loner Daniel Hayden lying under the Gateway Arch.

The rest of the authors cover the bases; it’s all here: a 1950s story about racism that also has no plot, a mentally unstable African-American man after a tour in Vietnam, slackers, femme fatales, divorces, death, missing children, skinheads, ending with a twist, convicts and drugs and drug dealers.

All in all, except for the first story, I felt that all the others were just okay. St. Louis Noir receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Dead Ice

Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton, 566 pages

This is another typical Hamilton book: vampires, shapeshifters, witches and sex, with Anita Blake at the center.  The main story is about Anita trying to help the FBI with a case that seems to involve a necromancer that is capable of raising a zombie that appears to be human.  These zombies are being used in sex films and Anita and the FBI are determined to stop him.   Of course, nothing in Anita's world is ever simple, so this case becomes even more awful than she could have dreamed.  In between, she is trying to plan weddings and commitment ceremonies and work out politics in her world with the vampires and shapeshifters.  I liked the book.  I think that people who are fans of her books will probably enjoy it.  However, the people who were fans before all of the sex, who liked them because of the fantasy aspect and fell away because of the sex, definitely will not want to come back to this one.

Twenty Seventh City

The Twenty Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen, 517 pages

St. Louis, Missouri, is slowly falling off the map. Once hailed as the fourth largest it has fallen to twenty seventh. Crime is up, and businesses are fleeing for the county, or elsewhere. But the new police chief, named S. Jammu intends to fix all of that. But as crime figures drop a series of political terrorist attacks rock the city. Though she vows to find and stop these terrorist, people cannot help but notice the attacks seem to be helping Jammu more than hurting the city.

I read this book after hearing two coworkers talking about Franzen’s work. This piqued my interest and so I started at the beginning. At first I really liked this book. It used neighborhoods I am familiar with, and I could really picture the buildings and intersections as he mentioned them. But as the book went on, I became more and more frustrated with Franzen’s change of scenes. There was the classic blank line to let you know that he had hopped characters, but no introductory line to let you know to whom you were now reading about. Eventually this could be extrapolated from the text, but at times this took many paragraphs. I even caught myself skimming ahead to find out whose storyline I was in. If it wasn’t for this vagueness, I think the book would have been great, but as it is I can only call it good.

The Twenty Seventh City certainly merits reading, especially if you are from St. Louis or lived here long enough to know the area. It is sad to say, but I could easily see this book being played out today.

Knockout Games

Knockout Games by G. Neri, 298 pages

Erica has just moved to St. Louis in the aftermath of her parent’s break-up.  A white girl in a mostly African-American neighborhood and school, she quickly becomes entangled with a group in the neighborhood called the TKO Club.  The club’s main form of entertainment is trying to knock out unsuspecting people on the street by punching them.  Erica has a video camera and videotapes several of these incidents and shares them among the members of the club and their friends.  At first being with then group, especially their leader, Kalvin, feels great.  She finally feels like she has some control. But more and more, as the game goes on, she starts to feel uneasy.  The victims are mostly people from the neighborhood who she sees after the attacks and some of them seem pretty badly hurt.  She worries that what they are doing is not just a fun game, but could be dangerous and possibly land her or other members of the club in jail.  A good portrayal of a real problem in St. Louis and other parts of the country, any teens who live in major metropolitan areas might like to read this book.

Knockout Games, G. Neri

Knockout Games, G. Neri   298 pages

  
     This book disturbed me from the very beginning to the very end, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. A new girl moves to St. Louis amidst the divorce of her parents, and has a really hard time fitting in at her new high school.  She ends up falling in with a group of kids who play a game known as the Knockout Game.  One of the more enjoyable parts of reading this book was the fact that it was set here, and that G. Neri gives SLPL a shout out, but the book felt familiar.  He is able to discuss issues of race and class in a way that is palatable for teens and so very relevant to our times and climate surrounding the city as of late.