Michael Helm (1)Rezensionen

The three stories here are all unsettling and creepy. Is it sci fi? Maybe. Ecofiction? Also maybe, but that is not the focus. We have unreliable narrators who themselves are surrounded by unreliable narrators within their stories.

I thought the first (with Ali) was fantastic--moody and creepy, the narration was great, and the ending was open and very very creepy. Ali is considering being a whistleblower regarding the pharmaceutical she helped develop (and samples regularly). But maybe this nice isolated place she rented for the winter is not quite so peaceful as she though--or is that the drug talking?

The second story (with James) was interesting but too long and a bit boring--it seemed that it might connect to the first in the mysterious pharmaceutical mentioned? James takes an odd job as a literary detective, hired to help figure out who the popular mysterious poet might be. But it seems everyone who reads too closely thinks these poems are all about their own lives and they become obsessed.

The the third story (with Celia) again featured scientific research (on pathogens, not drugs), and was also creepy and a bit too long and I just ended up being confused. Celia learns she has become the star of her father's new friend's artwork--without her knowledge or consent. And her father does not seem to care. This story reminded me of the movie Time Trap but went a different way (and I did not really understand the way it went).

I thought all of these stories had great ideas and a lot of potential, but only the first succeeded. Maybe this is an audiobook issue?

Michael Helm’s fearless, spellbinding, challenging, overlong, meandering, uncompromising, fascinating, often perplexing novel After James tells three separate, but appropriately conjoined, tales of people who are searching for answers to questions that have to do with identity, observation, perspective, scientific curiosity and the nature of artistic creation. In the first section, “Alice after James,” Alice is a neuroscientist who has designed and developed a creativity drug which has reached the clinical trial stage. However, one of the trial participants has killed himself after being taken off the drug, and Alice plans to blow the whistle on the pharmaceutical company, which has refused to end the trial. To protect herself, she has retreated to a secluded cabin in the woods and here, after sampling the drug, she confronts a crisis in the form of a twilight of the mind as the border separating fantasy and reality begins to break down. Part two, “Decor,” tells the story of a failed writer named James who is hired by August Durant, a mysterious American academic living in Rome, to identify the curator of an internet site where someone is publishing poems that seem, both obliquely and more directly, to make reference to circumstances in Durant’s life. James himself is trying to solve the mystery of his parents’ deaths: two years earlier they were working with refugees in Turkey when they were found in their car by the side of the road, both dead from trauma. The police called it an accident; James has his doubts. James regards Durant as deluded and fanatical about the website, but as he studies the internet poems, he detects references to his own situation, and his curiosity likewise turns into obsession. In the final section, “The Boy in the Water,” Celia, a virologist who studies ancient plagues, has never had a straightforward relationship with her father, a paleontologist, who has always been obsessed with work. Meeting up with her father for the first time in a while, she discovers he is undergoing a spiritual awakening under the tutelage of a mysterious German artist named Koss, who, from Celia’s perspective, wields an unsettling degree of influence over him, and she subsequently grows suspicious that her father is being exploited. When Koss and her father disappear, Celia travels to Berlin to attend an exhibit of Koss’s new work, thinking she will find them both there, but discovers instead that Koss has appropriated her image and her life in his work. Helm’s dazzlingly complex tripartite novel resists easy summary. All of his main characters confront aspects of themselves in the conundrums they face, each of them tends toward compulsive behaviour. All of Helm’s characters are profoundly intellectual, creative, eccentric, professional thinkers, immersed in the life of the mind. Not only do these people think deep thoughts and pursue ideas the way others pursue collectables or objects of beauty, they are curious about what thinking means and question and discuss the nature of human intelligence, the links between the body and the spirit. In After James Michael Helm has written a unique work of fiction, one that stimulates and confounds in equal measure but tempts the reader to go back to the beginning as soon as he finishes it. To this add the exquisite language, an abundance of startling, ingenious metaphors, stunning visual descriptions and the author’s astounding erudition. An astonishing and deeply rewarding reading experience.

This novel is more like three inter-connected stories than a single narrative. We have Alice, who has isolated herself in rural Canada while trying to decide if she will blow the whistle on her employer. The company has designed a creativity drug which has a suicide as an undisclosed side-effect. In the second, a young man his hired by Alice's father to determine who is behind a poetry site where the author's poems seem to reflect Alice's father's own life. Finally, we have the story of a virologist (who another reviewer says is Alice's sister...but I missed that!) whose life story (and Alice's) have been appropriated by a conceptual artist.

The three threads are interesting and all speak to reality vs perception. But things were a little to obscure for me at times and I'm sure I missed more than Celia's relationship to Alice. As someone said, this book might be richer if read a second time, but I wasn't interested enough in most of the characters to subject myself to that!

** I received an advance reader copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **

I really can't make up my mind whether I like this book or not. It's very well written and the stories and characters are intriguing and well developed. I suppose it's just a bit too dreamy and poetical for me. I enjoyed reading it but wouldn't want to re-read it. Still I think I would have given it a 3.5 stars if that were possible!

After James by Michael Helm is a so-so novel told in three loosely connected storylines. Disturbing and atmospheric, After James features stylistic, existential and dense prose resulting in a feeling of unease. The three parts of the novel represent three types of genre fiction: the gothic horror, the detective novel, and the apocalyptic.

The first part follows Ali, a neuroscientist who abruptly leaves her job and isolates herself in rural Canada. She plans to blow the whistle on the drug she helped create, Alph, which enhances creativity but also induces suicide in test subjects. The second part follows James, a literary detective hired by Ali's father as he tries to find Ali by decoding the work of an internet poet who writes with precise details about the disappearance and murder of people. The third part features Ali's sister Cecilia, a survivor of a miscarriage, who has her identity stolen by a conceptual artist.

After James is an ambitious novel that has brilliant parts but doesn't quite live up to its lofty goals. Part of the reason for this is the prose itself, which tends to be incredibly detailed. When this prose turns toward the characters, who are excessively reflective about everything, it is easy to lose track of any direction the stories are taking. They become pages of characters wallowing in their own thoughts while leaving the reader struggling to keep reading. I never felt any connection to them or had even begun to care about what they were thinking.

And, if I'm totally honest, Helm had to do a lot of making up to me as a reader concerning Ali and her dog. Ali, for an intelligent woman, needed more assertiveness and should have pulled out her cell phone and made a few calls. I don't think I ever quite forgave Helm for what happened to Ali's dog and her hazy nonchalant attitude toward him being missing. It's never good if I'm mentally talking back to an author about characters and choices. It didn't bode well for the next two parts. In the end even the passages that were incredible couldn't overcome all the passages that left me struggling to keep reading (and I am a reader who tries very hard to understand the author's intent and very, very rarely does not finish what I start.)

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/2016/09/after-james.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1752247460

Three novellas, each of which is related to the others through threads of dreams or foreshadowing. The plots all explore the nature of reality, viewed through lenses of madness, near death, hallucinogens, flickers of recognition from strangers, or writing which seems to capture one's own history. The threads weave back and forth within and sometimes between the stories, and even the title of the book and the order of the stories seem designed to help construct the web.

The first story concerns a scientist who has designed a creativity drug which led to the death of a trial participant named James. She has quit the company and moved away to rent a home from a couple she's never met. The wife has left her notes about a neighbor who may have killed his wife. That is, if she hasn't hallucinated the whole thing in her mental illness. On the brink of historic flooding, the scientist tries the drug herself and while under its influence is rescued by this same neighbor. How can she decide if he is someone to fear?

In the second novella, which was most satisfying of the three, a poet named James becomes involved with a poetry web site which every viewer thinks is about him or her. Are the poems in code? Can they be manipulated to form direct links to the mysteries of people's lives? Who is the poet? And is the hallucinogen One Two, which James ingests, the creativity drug or is this a parallel reality to the first story?

The third story tells of a virologist (who has just lost a child she thinks of as "James") and her paleontologist-turned-mystic father. They have a relationship with a German artist who makes moving art based on the virologist's life but also reflects events from the first story. In the course of a visit together, the father and daughter explore a cave in which they almost die, and there are questions about whether the events which follow actually occur or are the dreams of the dead.

Brilliant plotting, frustrating at times, and requiring close attention. I'm sure I've missed many clues and connections, and the book probably needs to be read more than once or twice to fully appreciate the complexity of the design.

Some novels are made of light and air. Others are made of earth and water. But earth and water are light compared to the density of In the Place of Last Things. Each page, paragraph, even sentence presses down with neptunian gravity, a density that becomes curiously physical (yes, the book is remarkably heavy). That makes reading the novel a daunting project. It’s like wading through molasses. That’s just what it felt like. Those individual sentences were often so rich in meaning and metaphor that they each seemed to be demanding to be savoured, which rather slows the pace of the prose and of the plot.

At times a meandering road novel, at other times a meditation on the impossibility of true communion, Helm seems uncertain whether he wants to write a noir thriller or an academic love story. Russ Littlebury, the principal of the tale, is a burly Saskatchewan farm boy who is the muscle on the local hockey team but also, apparently, a natural talent with latin and greek. His once hell raising father, Mike, is a born again Christian whose fundamental goodness grates on Russ. In Mike’s last cancerous year, Russ finds himself in Toronto teaching the foundations of western thought in a college, finding love and conflicts of principle, before shedding his academic and amorous skin to head home and see Mike through his final days. Yes, and after that it becomes a road novel as Russ and his “aunt”, Jean, and an orphan whom Mike has fostered, Skidder, head south to Tucson. Along that route they pick up a possibly pregnant teen named Lea who charges Russ with the improbable task of finding her absconded lover, Jack Marks, somewhere on the Mexican border and delivering to him a letter in which she sets out her plight. That’s when things switch into noirish mode. Any one of these stories might have made a rich and thought-provoking novel. Compacting them into the space provided, presumably by exhuming all the air and light, has resulted in a fragrant, undoubtedly bio-rich, mulch.

Michael Helm is clearly well-versed and capable. He can write a sentence with heft. I just wish he’d let his story breathe a bit. Regrettably not recommended.½

Helm's novel begins with a powerful and wrenching scene of violence that catches the reader by surprise as much as it does the victim, a young woman named Kim Lystrander. Kim's assault on a dark Toronto side street has repurcussions far beyond her own trauma and pulls her deep into a world of ghosts: people living in the country illegally, her dying mother, and her wayward, guilt-stricken father Harold, a historian of Latin America whose hazy past becomes for Kim an obsession. Helm's prose is layered and searching and profoundly intellectual, and the moral imperative at work here is urgent and affecting. But what's often missing is drama, action that could engage the reader on a visceral level. In the end, this is a book that is more easily admired than enjoyed and upon reaching the end, one does not know if it was worth the effort. Long-listed for the 2010 Giller Prize and short-listed for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Michael Helm's "Cities Of Refuge", is not a book I couldn't put down. Why? It made me feel uneducated. Why? Because I didn't get it. Although Mr. Helm's writing is beautiful and complex and he really delves into the lives of his characters, the story just didn't come together for me. A lot of issues were dealt with: violence/trauma/healing, secrets, unresolved guilt, immigration,extended disfunctional families, etc...I felt there was too much going on, too many issues. The end of the story fell flat and left me wondering what it was I just read.