Bent Twisted Broken

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

New York : Square Fish, Henry Holt and Co., 2021.

1st Square Fish ed. 

291 p. ; 22 cm.      

Pretty much everything I wrote about Kraus' earlier novel, Scowler, applies to this novel. I wanted to like Bent Heavens, but I found it profoundly unsatisfying on several levels. I feel bad being so negative because Kraus explains (in an author's note at the end of the book) that he wrote this as a protest against the torture regime implemented under the Bush-Cheney administration.  It feels odd to dislike this book so much since it got starred reviews in Booklist and School Library Journal. 

The premise of the book is interesting. High schooler Liv's father (a high school English teacher) had a complete mental breakdown years previous when he insisted he was abducted by aliens. Then after being released he actually disappears and has been gone for two years. He left behind gruesome contraptions for trapping said aliens. Liv and her loner friend, Doug, check the traps weekly until one day, they catch an alien! 

Instead of turning the creature in to the authorities, Doug suggests torturing it as a way of both punishing it for what the aliens did to Liv's father and possibly getting it to reveal what happened (it can't speak but can squeal and whimper). There's a lot of gruesome beatings, cutting, and hurting that goes on in a torture shed on Liv's property - and I just NEVER believed Liv would go along with it.  I also think that Doug is that stereotype oddball loner type that supposedly is predisposed to sadism. By two thirds of the way through the book, I had guessed at the "wow" plot twist that ends the novel and so was neither surprised nor moved (unlike reviewers).

Well, obviously I did not like this novel. Instead of the heavy handed torture, a more subtle use of torture like that endorsed by Bush-Cheney would have been more pointed - e.g. forced nudity, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, water-boarding, etc.  Also having the alien able to communicate in some basic ways would have been more effective, too. Instead the plot zig zags into the nonsensical and absurd which left me wondering if I even read the same book as the people who starred this mess.

Not a Good Spiral

Spiral: trapped in the forever war by Mark Danner
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
267 p. ; 24 cm.

Spiral may make you angry.  Spiral may make you sad.  Whatever your reaction, Spiral is a timely and urgent book that you should read.  Danner, a veteran reporter makes a very damning case that in the reaction to the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government has embarked on an unending security/military mission that has increased the spread of global terrorism, has fostered a dangerous and antidemocratic culture of fear, and has perhaps forever destroyed significant parts of the Constitutional framework of US law (and wrecked the already weak framework of international laws of war and human rights that emerged out of the ruins of WWII).

His book is not easy reading.  He presents the details of torture and lawlessness committed by US agents that were the hallmark of the Bush years - none of which were (as required by law) investigated, and some of which (e.g. mass surveillance and assassination) have been codified and expanded by the Obama administration.  He pointedly notes that Obama - by protecting the torturers of the Bush era from prosecution - has essentially made the strict US and international laws against torture all but meaningless, likely guaranteeing that torture will be committed by US operatives again in the future.  He also notes that the expansion of secretive war operations -whether by drones or special forces - has made US military actions free of any democratic oversight.

Danner also presents strong evidence to bear on the fact that not only has the mult-trillion dollar war on terror not ended global non-state terrorism, but has lead to a vast growth in the numbers and reach of global terrorism.

He ends his book with a few suggestions of how the "forever war" could be reigned in and perhaps ended.  They are steps that were unlikely when the book was published and that are clearly not going to happen for at least four more years based on the elections of November 2016.  It's  a heavy book, but well written and researched.  For anyone concerned about the future or interested in the recent past, it offers much to think about.