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Havoc
By Christopher Bollen
Harper, December 2024, 256 pp.

The Short of It:

Quirky. Fun. Batshit Crazy.

The Rest of It:

Eighty-one-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt came to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are relaxing at this threadbare luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile. ~ the publisher

A luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile? Yes, please. Except, the Royal Karnak is dusty and threadbare and coming out of a pandemic shutdown. It has lost its luster, but for Maggie, recently widowed, she considers the staff her family, and the hotel, her home. It still possesses all the charm she needs, and the people within it are an added bonus.

Except, Maggie isn’t all that she seems. Older, yes, sweet, certainly can be, but she has a nose for trouble and has no problem sticking it into people’s business if she sees a reason to do so. Here, I will tread carefully so as to not give anything away.

If she sees a married couple whom she suspects is not happy, Maggie to the rescue. Inquisitive children seen with a single parent? What’s the story there? Where is the father? She befriends these folks as a service of sorts, whether it’s welcomed or not but this gets her into trouble.

As endearing as she is to the hotel staff, and loyal too, she is carefully warned by her beloved hotel manager, that she is 80 and should be living a life of peace and calm. Not running around in the ungodly heat. She takes these warnings lightly and does what she sees fit to do.

I can’t go into more without giving the story away. This is definitely a wild, crazy read and the title is fitting. HAVOC is what you will experience while reading this one. It’s very well done, in my opinion, but I’d put the book down and say to myself, “Phew, that is outright crazy” and then pick it right back up again.

The characters are very well drawn. My book club chose this book for discussion this month and at first I wasn’t sure there would be enough to discuss but oh boy, there’s plenty. There are two main characters in this book and both are off kilter which makes it a wild, fun read.

Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

Red Pill
By Hari Kunzru
Vintage, 2021, 304pp.

The Short of It:

Kind of a mind trip.

The Rest of It:

“After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives,a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life. He soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all.” ~ from the publisher

I am not going to mince words, Red Pill was really hard to get into. It meandered and seemed somewhat dreamlike, to me. Our protagonist is, in my opinion, living the dream getting to do what he supposedly loves, writing, but he’s unfocused and unmotivated and on the verge of going astray.

Relegated to an open office concept to do his work in, he finds himself completely unable to write anything. So, he wanders. Past grave sites, believing that happiness cannot be found on earth. He meets Anton. A very eccentric guy and also the creator of Blue Lives, the violent show that our narrator is obsessed with. After a night of drinking and going from one place to another, our narrator is convinced that Anton is red-pilling his viewers to brainwash them with his alt-right views.

Reality? Fabricated? As I reader, I am not quite sure but our narrator loses his mind. Or maybe his mind was gone all along?

This book came out in 2021 but there are a few passages that I screenshot because they speak directly to those of us concerned about a select few reaping the benefits of what should belong to many.

Paragraph from Red Pill talking about the elite.

The times we are living in now, most definitely benefit the HAVES, not the have nots. Every now and then, as I was cruising along in this book, a truth bomb would drop and I’d be like, oh… yeah. Wow. Red Pill is that type of read. It’s not “in your face”, much more subtle. You will have to dig a little to find meaning.

Did I like it? Honestly, at 60% in I decided to let it go. I wasn’t enjoying it but since it’s a book club pick, I pushed through and then it began to pique my interest. So no, I didn’t love it but as a discussion book, there is plenty to discuss.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

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