Happy Thanksgiving to all! Hope your travels and gatherings are safe and enjoyable.
The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe
Somewhere I ran across an author/poster I follow who mentioned that they had recently read this book. In their blurb, they said something about not loving Wolfe’s writing style but still enjoying the book.
I’ve never read any of Wolfe’s work before. At least for this piece, I loved his writing and the book.
I have seen the 1983 movie based on The Right Stuff many, many times. Or at least parts of it, back when it used to run on cable often. So I knew the basic story, the tale of the seven astronauts selected for the United States’ Mercury project designed to put a man in orbit. The movie is fun.
The book is more fun.
Wolfe writes in a breezy style that you are never quite sure if he’s totally into the mythology of the astronauts or making fun of it. That gets applied to everyone involved in the story, from the astronauts’ wives to politicians to NASA administrators to the media of the era. He often adopts the perspective of his subjects, and does so in a very 1950s, gee-whiz manner. This is a serious subject, but he never takes it too seriously. He’s not looking to explain the science behind putting a man into space, but rather exploring the personalities involved and the public reaction to them.
The Sun Down Motel – Simone St. James
Another one of the “scary” books I put on hold back in early October that also came through after the spooky season had ended. And, again, it worked out perfectly, as this book is split into two overlapping sections, one in November 1982, the other in November 2017. You know how I am about reading books in their proper moment in the calendar.
In the 1982 portion, Viv is on her way to a new life in New York City from Illinois before she gets stranded in a strange little town in rural New York. To earn some cash to complete her trip to the city, she begins working the overnight shift at a small motel. A motel where weird shit happens. She eventually learns of a series of strange deaths and disappearances, and begins investigating them. This leads to trouble.
In the more modern section, Viv’s niece Carly moves to that same small town to look into the disappearance and presumed death of her aunt 35 years early. She stays in the same apartment, gets the same job, and runs into some of the same creepy stuff her aunt ran into. And she begins finding connections between her aunt’s disappearance and the ones Aunt Viv was looking into.
This is one of those books where the resolution isn’t super surprising. How St. James get there is what makes the book fun. There is some truly creepy stuff and a highly satisfying and deserved end for one character. A good page turner as we drift into the dark months.