Fiction | Book Chatter

Hating Olivia
By Mark SaFranko
HarperCollins
November 2010
262pp

The Short of It:

Hating Olivia is about obsession and lust and how easily we can lose ourselves when we are confronted with it.

The Rest of It:

Max is the type of guy who cruises through life. He’s educated, but unfocused. He would rather write, than make ends meet but the writing doesn’t happen too often. Although a bit unstable when it comes to finances, overall he’s a pretty happy guy.

Enter Olivia Aphrodite. Olivia is drop-dead gorgeous. She too, is not too stable in the finance department and has made a living working dead-end jobs and letting men (with money), take “care” of her.

Although their personalities are quite different, Max and Olivia move in together and it goes downhill from there.

The story is told from Max’s point of view so what we get is the incredible frustration he experiences in loving a creature like Olivia. Max is consumed by her and completely obsessed with her. As their relationship progresses, he realizes that he needs to break it off, but how? How does one extract himself from an addiction such as this?

I must tell you right off, that there is a lot of sex in this little novel. A lot of sex, and a lot of language that you may not be comfortable with. Putting that aside, I found myself able to relate to both characters. Although you may never experience a relationship such as the one Max has with Olivia, you’ve probably known someone who has.

The story is a bit repetitive because this couple flounders over and over again while trying to make it work. But there was something about the novel that kept me reading. Perhaps, I wanted Max to find a way out. Perhaps it was a bit like watching a train wreck. Either way, I could not pull myself away from the novel and found myself completely wrapped-up in the story.

The writing is tight and the characters never waver. Also, Max is quite the reader so there are lots of literary references that you might enjoy. Overall, I enjoyed reading it even though it’s not something I would have normally picked-up on my own.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.

Safe from the Sea
By Peter Geye
Unbridled Books
September 2010
256pp

The Short of It:

A quiet, simple story about a father and a son. Told in simple, but beautiful prose, Safe from the Sea reminds you what it feels like to read a really good book.

The Rest of It:

Noah returns home to take care of his dying father, Olaf. The two have not been close for several years, so Noah is surprised at his father’s request. Although the decision to return home is not an easy one and is not a decision his wife Natalie is happy about, he decides to make the trip back to the lakeshore landscape of northern Minnesota. There, the two grapple with their past and what brought them to this place in their lives.

Peter Geye’s writing is simple and clean. There are no extraneous details to be found. Every word is thoughtfully chosen and blends seamlessly into the story as a whole. The characters are genuine and weathered to a degree, which makes them all the more endearing to the reader.

Most of the novel takes place in a cabin on the lake. Surrounded by the chill of winter, you can smell the fire in the wood stove, feel the crispness of the snow beneath their feet. This is one of those novels where the setting certainly adds to the story, but Geye manages to allow it to exist within the background, quietly. It doesn’t compete with the rest of the story, and I found that the same can be said for any of the components within this novel. They all mesh beautifully with one another.