Posted on by Joelendil · 2 Comments

PKD on Drugs

Title: A Scanner Darkly
Author: Philip K. Dick
Genre: Drugged-out Sci-Fi
Pages: 304
Rating: 2.5 of 5

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live with a bunch of people who are slowly destroying themselves through drug use, this is the book for you. While it includes definite sci-fi elements (e.g. undercover narcs wear “scramble suits” that completely hide their identity when interacting with other law enforcement), it is primarily PKD’s semi-autobiographical portrayal of the 70’s drug scene.

We are presented with a constant stream of paranoia, delusion, mania, lust, deception, desperation, crime, and any other form of mental illness and misery you can think of. Law enforcement and rehab people serve as little more than sources of additional cruelty, misery, and corruption. I suppose that this has value in that it gives a gritty inside look into the world of addiction and mental illness, but it was just plain depressing and hopeless. This is my third PKD book, and I’m pretty much done with him…writing skill and cool concepts aren’t enough to keep my coming back to his bleakness and cynicism.

(Also, this is my second book completed for Roofbeam Reader’s TBR Pile Challenge)

Posted on by Joelendil · 5 Comments

Shakespearean Crime Fiction

Macbeth: William Shakespeare's Macbeth Retold: A Novel by [Nesbo, Jo]Title: Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare)
Author: Jo Nesbø
Genre: Literary Crime Fiction?
Pages: 446
Rating: 4 of 5

The Hogarth Shakespeare series asks popular novelists to retell Shakespeare’s works with their own twist (e.g. Othello as a schoolyard conflict, The Tempest in a prison, The Taming of the Shrew without the Stockholm syndrome). I have been impressed with (or at least entertained by) the ones I have read so far, including this one.

Jo Nesbo reimagines Macbeth as gritty crime fiction. The setting is an unnamed, vaguely located (Scotland? Norway?) coastal city with rather contrived geography and a major drug problem. The central conflict revolves around control of the city with most of the main characters appearing as members of the police force that is trying to shake off its corrupt past.

Nesbo plays up the “Hecate and Weird Sisters as manipulators” aspect/interpretation of the story and finds lots of clever ways to work in well-known lines and situations from the original. In fact, it might be good to read/reread the original before diving into this so that you can catch all the allusions, not just the big obvious plot points.

Obviously, you shouldn’t expect a happy story when you read any version of Macbeth. Nesbo ratchets up the darkness beyond the original level, and might occasionally be a little “over the top” in terms of action. I saw a review that compared this to a Quentin Tarantino movie, and while I might not go that far I can totally see it. Overall it was an interesting take on a classic tragedy that kept me turning the pages just to see where he was going with it.