Review: The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

title: The Flame Alphabet [purchase here]

by: Ben Marcus

pages: 287

genre: literary fiction

published: 2012

source:  New York Public Library

"In his early writings, Thoreau called the alphabet the saddest song.  Later in his life he would renounce this position and say it produced only dissonant music.
     Letters, Montaigne said, are a necessary evil.
     But are they? asked Blake, years later.  I shall write of the world without them.
     I would grow mold on the language, said Pasteur.  Except nothing can grow on that cold, dead surface.
     Of words Teresa of Avila said, I did not live to erase them all.
     They make me sick, said Luther.  Yours and yours and yours. Even sometimes my own."  (page 187)


This book *almost* made it on to my 30-Before-30 list, and has been on my holds list at the library for ages.  It's a bit funny, actually, that I ended up reading it instead of one of my 30-Before-30 titles.  But look at the cover!  I am a sucker for a gorgeous cover!  I really have no self control when it comes to gorgeous books...superficial, I know!


Marcus' The Flame Alphabet has a fabulous premise:  an epidemic gradually spreads across the country wherein the speech of children has become toxic to adults.  The story follows one family (Sam, his wife Claire, and their teen daughter Esther), and Sam in particular, as he cares for his wife and adjusts to find a means of coexisting with the lethal member of the family.  


This book takes on a lot:  the bonds of marriage and family; religion (in the story, Sam and Claire are "forest Jews," Jews who venture to the forest once a week to a hidden hut to worship, but are forbidden to speak about their practice, even to each other); science; ethics; morality; and, above all, how a world communicates when communication itself is lethal, which in and of itself would pose a massive challenge to the novice writer.


The first third of the book was incredibly strong.  I really respect how Marcus treats his reader as an equal; he writes as if we already have the context we need, and he trusts in the reader's intelligence.  As opposed to over-explaining, he lets us make discoveries and draw conclusions for ourselves as we read, which I really appreciated.  Marcus is really good at world-building.  This reality he constructs for his characters is chilling but also super consistent and easy to imagine considering the events in the story.


The one problem I had was with the character of LeBov.  I don't want to give anything away, but there was a scene or two between LeBov and Sam toward the middle of the story where it definitely felt as if Marcus was directly channeling some sort of Bond-era super villain, which took me out of the story a bit.  Seriously, throughout the whole second part of the book, every time LeBov entered a room, despite Marcus' descriptions, this is who I pictured (and consequently giggled a bit):

Part three of the book was a bit jarring.  The story stopped and picked up at a completely different point, which at first felt a bit like cheating on Marcus' part, as he had seemed to have written himself into a hole at the end of part 2 (for those of you who have read the book, that was a deliciously unintentional pun).  Marcus does, a few chapters down the line, fill in the gaps, but this jump still interrupted the flow a bit and as a result, the last part of the book didn't flow as easily as the first two.  But from a stylistic perspective, considering the events of the end of the narrative, this jolt and stumble may have been intentional. 


Rubric rating: 7.  I'm absolutely going to check out The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women at some point.  

Coming next week...

Sorry for the lack of daily posting this week.  I've been spending my evenings watching the morning's Olympic tennis matches!  Of course, I've been pulling for John Isner (who I caught live at the US Open last year and who is also unfortunately out of the running for gold) and Serena Williams and the Bryan brothers, but my heart and allegiance belong to Novak Djokovic and his ridiculous ability to DOMINATE the court...sigh...

(I studied dance for 13+ years and was NEVER that flexible...)

 (I love how, even from this far away, his calf muscles are INSANELY defined!)

(He's so dreamy...)

Semifinals are this morning...REALLY looking forward to catching the Murray-Djokovic match on DVR after work.  But I promise, once Men's and Women's Singles gold medals have been awarded (hopefully Serbia and America respectively will come out on top) you will have my undivided attention again ;)

Here's what to look for on the blog next week:

1) Review of Understories by Tim Horvath

Summary (from the Strand website):  "What if there were a city that consisted only of restaurants? What if Paul Gauguin had gone to Greenland instead of Tahiti? What if there were a field called Umbrology, the study of shadows, where physicists and shadow puppeteers worked side by side? Full of speculative daring though firmly anchored in the tradition of realism, Tim Horvath's stories explore all of this and more? blending the everyday and wondrous to contend with age-old themes of loss, identity, imagination, and the search for human connection. Whether making offhand references to Mystery Science Theater, providing a new perspective on Heidegger's philosophy and forays into Nazism, or following the imaginary travels of a library book, Horvath's writing is as entertaining as it is thought provoking."

2) Ask and ye shall receive!  I was recently asked by a reader to share my thoughts on Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, a book I've mentioned several times here but never formally reviewed...so look for that next week as well!

Summary (from the Strand website): "'Time's a goon,' as the action moves from the late 1970s to the early 2020s while the characters wonder what happened to their youthful selves and ideals. Egan takes the music business as a case in point for society's monumental shift from the analog to the digital age. Record-company executive Bennie Salazar and his former bandmates from the Flaming Dildos form one locus of action; another is Bennie's former assistant Sasha, a compulsive thief club-hopping in Manhattan when we meet her as the novel opens, a mother of two living out West in the desert as it closes a decade and a half later with an update on the man she picked up and robbed in the first chapter. It can be alienating when a narrative bounces from character to character, emphasizing interconnections rather than developing a continuous story line, but Egan conveys personality so swiftly and with such empathy that we remain engaged. By the time the novel arrives at the year '202-' in a bold section narrated by Sasha's 12-year-old daughter Alison, readers are ready to see the poetry and pathos in the small nuggets of information Alison arranges like a PowerPoint presentation. In the closing chapter, Bennie hires young dad Alex to find 50 'parrots' (paid touts masquerading as fans) to create 'authentic' word of mouth for a concert. This new kind of viral marketing is aimed at 'pointers,' toddlers now able to shop for themselves thanks to 'kiddie handsets' the preference of young adults for texting over talking is another creepily plausible element of Egan's near-future. Yet she is not a conventional dystopian novelist; distinctions between the virtual and the real may be breaking down in this world, but her characters have recognizable emotions and convictions, which is why their compromises and uncertainties continue to move us.Another ambitious change of pace from talented and visionary Egan, who reinvents the novel for the 21st century while affirming its historic values."


I'm almost finished both Claire Vaye Watkin's powerhouse of a short story collection, Battleborn, and Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet, so reviews for those should be up soon as well!

What I'm Reading

A few of the titles I'm reading this week...

1.  The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

Finally arrived from my holds list!  Fist of all, such a well designed cover!!!  I'm about 20 pages in and am finding it to be a really strong read so far...

Summary: (from the Strand website) "A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents’ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition. Ben Marcus is the author of three previous works of fiction: Notable American Women, The Father Costume, and The Age of Wire and String."

Here's what the good folks at NPR had to say about The Flame Alphabet

2.   Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins

I won this title through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and I'm really excited for it to be my subway read.

Summary: (from the Strand website) "A debut collection of 10 short stories re-imagines the mythology of the American West through the experiences of protagonists who endure hardship and violence in the face of such challenges as a foreigner's erotic changes at a prostitution ranch, a hermit's attempt to rescue an abused teen and a woman's role in a friend's degrading Vegas encounter."

3.  There Is No Year by Blake Butler

Impulse library pick up.  The premise sounded really cool, so I'm excited to start it.

Summary: (from the Strand website) Blake Butler’s inventive third novel (Ever, Scorched Atlas) is dedicated 'For no one' and begins with an eerie prologue about the saturation of the world with a damaging light. At times grotesque, at times sexual, always pushing the bounds of plot, form, narrative, and reality, the novel presents a demanding yet unique read - a totally convoluted tale of a family in extreme distress.