New on the bookshelf: July 31, 2021 – Kankakee Daily Journal

Allure of fast riches; perils of misplaced ambition

Its not hard to understand. Three buddies struggling to keep their Wyoming construction business afloat get a call from a California lawyer who wants them to finish building her mansion.

They might be so eager to get away from roofing and drywalling jobs that theyd ignore questions such as: Why did the last contractor quit a lucrative gig? Why does the owner want the house finished in only four months?

Huge bonuses have a way of dispelling such concerns, as was the case when Gretchen Connors offered that sum to Teddy, Bart and Cole, co-owners of True Triangle Construction. Therein lies the setup of Godspeed, Nickolas Butlers intermittently effective but overwritten thriller that, at its best, is a bracing reminder riches often come at a steep cost.

Those riches would solve a lot of problems, though. Teddy, a married Mormon, could use that money to pay medical bills. Cole, soon to be divorced, fantasizes not only about fancy watches and a nice townhouse but also about whether childless, never-married Gretchen ever could fall for him.

Only Bart says the job doesnt feel right. At Coles insistence, they take the gig, but the pressure gets to Bart. As he did in his younger days, he turns to drugs to help him maintain the energy required for a backbreaking schedule.

Butler has thrown many other elements into this mix, including holdovers from the previous contractor who might be spying on the new crew, a pair of murders, a ruthless drug dealer and a health issue that might affect the outcome of the job.

Eventually, the book reaches nifty plot twists and fine character sketches. Butlers writing sharpens as the story turns grisly, and he excels at describing mysterious elements, such as the strange gleaming that comes from beyond the propertys hot springs.

Godspeed feels like a novel from a different era, with white, tough-guy protagonists driven by sex, money and power. Butler might not always know where to shine his spotlight, but he knows this much: A jog on a treadmill in pursuit of riches might produce fitness of a sort, but watch your step.

Michael Magras, Star Tribune

Beautifully accomplished ballet-themed thriller

Dara, the heroine of Megan Abbotts new thriller, The Turnout, has spent her life in her mothers shadow. Together with her sister, Marie, and husband, Charlie, who was once their mothers star pupil Dara runs the Durant School of Dance, the studio her mother founded.

As refined as Daras world is, it also is characterized by ruthless ambition and the intense competition the sisters foster between their students.

After a fire, as theyre ramping up for the annual production of The Nutcracker, the sisters hire a contractor to rebuild. Equal parts rube and fairy tale monster, Derek epitomizes everything Dara thought she had banished from their lives. To make matters worse, he starts sleeping with Marie. And the job seems to be taking a lot longer than he promised.

As it becomes apparent Derek has ulterior motives, his presence in the studio strains the relationship between the sisters, and Dara must face truths about her family she has hidden from herself for years.

Dara and Marie live with chronic pain, and dancing has all but crippled Charlie.

Even if we dont always like Dara, who has internalized the worst of her mothers ideas, we sympathize with her desire to discover the truth and free herself from her mothers legacy. Scandalized by Maries fling with Derek, Dara thinks of her sister as an animal. Sex turns Daras world on its ear. Nearly everywhere, with Derek in the studio, Dara sees or hears innuendo.

Because Dereks such a buffoon, its fun to watch the ease with which he gets the best of Dara. Brash, vulgar, leery, hes a comic villain until it seems he might not be the villain.

Similar to most domestic noir, The Turnout is a slow burn. After a long wait, when violence comes, it seems much more arresting. Were Abbott not so accomplished, we might tire of reading before the stakes become clear. But from the first page to the reveal at the end, a palpable sense of menace and the sympathy we feel for Dara as her world unravels make it impossible to look away.

Tom Andes, Star Tribune

Fascinating memoir of Utopian Indian city

The most surprising aspect of Akash Kapurs Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville is the authors well-disposed view of the leaders, beliefs and practices of Auroville, a planned city founded in 1968 outside Pondicherry in southeast India. It was here Kapurs wife, Auralice, lost her mother to suicide and her adoptive father to a mysterious wasting condition.

Among those attracted to the place was Auralices mother, Diane Maes, and John Walker, who later became Dianes partner. The authors parents, too, had been drawn there. Akash and his future wife had been childhood playmates.

The early history of Auroville follows the pattern of other attempts to transform society and human nature. Aurovilles physical planning came from organizers in Pondicherry who envisioned a rigorously designed futuristic city of 50,000 with a complex infrastructure. The actual residents, however, tended more toward hippies, counterculturists and spiritual seekers, people who believed the place should develop organically.

In time this led to the organizers cutting off funding, and many of the residents hardened into ideological zealots who embarked on their own cultural revolution, complete with interrogations, purity tests, book burning and violence.

TAlthough this painful phase eventually passed, a benign view of nature and rejection of medical intervention persisted. Diane slipped off a tall building under construction and, though horribly injured, refused to be taken to a hospital. Ailments often were understood to be the symptoms of hoped-for cellular evolution. As John, too, shunned doctors, the cause of his long decline and death remains unclear; still, parasitic invasion seems a good guess if one can judge from the two 10-inch worms that emerged from his body at different times.

Despite this and other tragedies recorded here, the book provides a fascinating picture of an Ideal City brought into being by the ceaseless, grueling work of its first residents, idiot savants of endurance, as one man dubbed them. It is also a shrewd portrayal of some of the experiments key players and of the backgrounds and beliefs of Diane and John, two stubborn, driven, spiritual adventurers.

Katherine A. Powers, Star Tribune

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New on the bookshelf: July 31, 2021 - Kankakee Daily Journal