Book review: The Heavy Side by Ben Rogers

cover of The Heavy Side

The Heavy Side

by Ben Rogers
Publication Date: November 16, 2019 by CQ Books (indie)
ISBN: 173430670X
Pages: 263
Genres: literary, thriller, romance

The Heavy Side explores the unlikely and fateful collaboration of a hotshot Silicon Valley programmer and a Mexican drug cartel. Vik Singh has developed a clever app for drug dealers, and now both the DEA and the cartel are after him. Narrated by Vik’s girlfriend, Remi, the story grapples with America’s insatiable hunger for drugs and the human toll it takes on our neighbors to the south. We witness a young man confronting his artistic pride and a young couple trying to make up for past betrayals. ‘The Social Network’ meets ‘Narcos’ in this suspenseful and intelligent literary thriller.

Check out my Storygraph review of The Heavy Side for content warnings.

 

My thoughts

“You’re the math guy. You know you can go halfway forever and still never get somewhere.”

This quote basically sums up the book. A character-driven literary novel with boring characters and pages of dry conversation poorly dressed up as quirky. With a few unnecessary references to Zeno’s paradox and Heaviside function thrown in.

Actually, the premise of The Heavy Side is quite good – a nerdy Indian coder who teams up with a wannabe drug lord, making an algorithm that revolutionizes the cocaine dealing business. If it were marketed and written purely as a thriller, I think it would be a decent read. Unfortunately, it is not. The pacing (except Part II, which I rather liked) is mind-numbingly slow.

Even worse, most of the story is dedicated to the narrator and love interest, an underemployed girl with an English lit PhD who steals things, listens to Radiohead, and looks like a character from Baywatch. For some reason, she’s weirdly conscious of her gender (female) and ethnicity (half-Persian).

Some incredible gems from her internal dialogue:

 

I set the tumbler down and blotted coquettishly at my mouth with a cocktail napkin.

I was utterly enthralled with the man sitting across from me.

From the male lead:

 

He wanted to embrace me, this hardcore girl who now seemed too fragile to touch.

(Yeah, that’s not how you should write female characters.)

The author’s understanding of race relations and the experiences of Mexican and Indian immigrants also seems to need some work. This was so apparent that halfway through the book, I actually looked him up because I was curious what his ethnic background was.

As for the setting, I’m in computer science and I’ve experienced the Silicon Valley culture. And I can say that it’s just not convincing to me. Sure, Burning Man, Lake Tahoe, skiing… it just feels very surface level. Also, most SV yuppie-types I’ve met are not this boring. The parts about Vik while he’s coding are… passable. Certainly not inspired, and there were a lot of details that threw me off (like the part about a Russian server), but maybe a layperson wouldn’t notice.

Overall rating

The Judgment
Writing      
Plot     
Characters      
Creativity      
Themes    
Enjoyment      
Overall      

The problem about this book isn’t the writing quality or the story itself, but rather, it just doesn’t pass muster as a literary work. This is a thriller about two normal middle-class-ish characters, a man and a woman, escaping from a Mexican drug cartel. It doesn’t say anything meaningful, and it seems poorly researched, like a book written by an outsider. The subject matter simply isn’t treated with respect. Sounds familiar (America Dirt), right?

Do not recommend.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

 

Book review: The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai

cover of The Ardent Swarm

The Ardent Swarm: A Novel

by Yamen Manai, translated by Lara Vergnaud
Expected publication: February 1st 2021 by Amazon Crossing
ISBN: 1542020476
Pages: 174
Genres: literary, political, satire
Original language: French
Literary awards: Prix de l’Algue d’Or Nominee (2018)

From an award-winning Tunisian author comes a stirring allegory about a country in the aftermath of revolution and the power of a single quest.

Sidi lives a hermetic life as a bee whisperer, tending to his beloved “girls” on the outskirts of the desolate North African village of Nawa. He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. Heartbroken, he soon learns that a mysterious swarm of vicious hornets committed the mass murder—but where did they come from, and how can he stop them? If he is going to unravel this mystery and save his bees from annihilation, Sidi must venture out into the village and then brave the big city and beyond in search of answers.

Along the way, he discovers a country and a people turned upside down by their new post–Arab Spring reality as Islamic fundamentalists seek to influence votes any way they can on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections. To succeed in his quest, and find a glimmer of hope to protect all that he holds dear, Sidi will have to look further than he ever imagined.

In this brilliantly accessible modern-day parable, Yamen Manai uses a masterful blend of humor and drama to reveal what happens in a country shaken by revolutionary change after the world stops watching.

Check out my Storygraph review of The Ardent Swarm for content warnings.

 

My thoughts

“Read”-the first heavenly word, the first commandment, and the key to all things.

How much I agree!

This novel, published originally in French, is very short and very charming, a deceptively simple but well-crafted allegory of politics in the Arab world after the Arab Spring.

It reminds the Western reader – in areas with conflict or poverty, problems don’t just magically go away when you replace a dictatorship with democracy. After the revolution is over, after the world stops watching, what happens?

How many people think about this question? Or have we simply brushed off our hands and closed our eyes to the aftermath?

 

What was easier to hijack than democracy? Like most things in the world of men, democracy was principally a question of money, and the prince had plenty.

From time immemorial, the gifts of princes have always been poisoned.

In the unnamed North African country where the story is set, newfound democracy, press freedom, and burgeoning sensibilities for civil participation are exploited by a small, gas-rich Arab state called “Qafar”. Qafar’s political interference brings a fundamentalist wave which takes over their world, and along with it, an invasive species.

In real life, Qafar and its ruler Abdul ban Ania, and the Kingdom of Arabia and its King Farhoud do not exist. The North African country in which most of the book is set is also conveniently anonymous. On the other hand, more politically distant countries, such as Japan, China, and Italy are directly named, and Silvio Berlusconi even gets a cameo role.

Although it’s fairly obvious that Qafar is Qatar and the Kingdom of Arabia is Saudi Arabia, not using real place names and setting part of the novel in Japan lends the story a certain universality.
It describes patterns of politics – populism, change, modernity and tradition – things broadly familiar to many times and many places.

That is not to suggest that The Ardent Swarm should be literally applied to some other post-Arab Spring country with a totally different history, culture, and political situation from Tunisia. Or as thetranslator, Lara Vergnaud , puts it, “Tunisia does not equal Egypt does not equal Syria”.

The Ardent Swarm is hilarious, a true pleasure to read, and full of pithy quotes like:

 

Other people. Again. Often hell, sometimes salvation.

“Can we talk about night beards, who vandalize, and day beards, who govern? Is there a link between the two?”

I really liked Sidi, the main character, because he’s definitely a relatable guy in some ways. Seeing how messed up the world is, he just wants to bury his head in the sand (or in his case, in a bee hive) and ignore all other humans. Unfortunately, he lives in a society, and he just can’t escape that fact.

The conceit, beekeeping and politics, played out well and didn’t feel heavy-handed. Although there are some very dark moments in the story, it was a lighthearted, optimistic read, full of comedic and satirical elements.

I chose this book from January 2021’s Amazon Kindle First Reads.

Overall rating

The Judgment
Writing      
Plot    
Characters      
Creativity      
Themes    
Enjoyment      
Overall      

Overall, the book is great, a masterful political novel. However, the author used a deus ex machina resolution (which sometimes works, but felt forced on this occasion). The ending was also weak and somewhat unsatisfying – everything was just too convenient. Maybe if there were a few more chapters, it would be much improved? This is unfortunately the case for so many novellas and short novels. Regardless, I think it’s worth reading!

 

 

Book Bingo: 25 Classic Books I’m Reading in 2021

Time to read more classic books!

I typically read a lot (proportionally speaking) of classic books, but last year, out of the 80 books I read, only 4 were classics!

To remedy this situation, I decided to accept the Classic Bingo Challenge on Goodreads. The tl;dr is that each cell on the bingo card has a reading prompt, and the ultimate goal is to fill every cell with a book.

This year, I’m trying to read more poetry, more Russian literature, and more literature in translation. With this in mind, I picked out 25 classic books for the challenge. It’s a bit overambitious, but you know what? Shoot for the stars, and if you fail, you’ll hit the moon! Or something like that.

Bingo card

Like my bingo card? Here’s the template.

Classic bingo challenge card

25 Classic Books for 2021

Column 1
B1: Book From Our Group’s Shelf Prior to 2021
Paradise Lost by John Milton
B2: Book That Has Been Made Into Film
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Maude translation)
B3: Booker Prize Winner
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
B4: Classic Romance
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
B5: Classic of Europe
Don Quixote Introduction By Harold Bloom by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Grossman translation)

Column 2
I1: Classic Adventure
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I2: Book Published or Written 1700 or earlier
The Odyssey by Homer (Wilson translation)
I3: Classic Short Story Collection
Dubliners by James Joyce
I4: Book Published in the 19th Century
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (P/V translation)
I5: New To Me Classic Author
Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

Column 3
N1: Nobel Laureate
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
N2: History or Historical Fiction
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
N3: Reader’s Choice
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Tyler translation)
N4: Classic Satire or Comedy
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
N5: Newberry Medal Winner
The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg (subject to change)

Column 4
G1: Classic Female Author
Middlemarch by George Eliot
G2: Book Published in the 18th Century
Candide by Voltaire
G3: Nonfiction
Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
G4: Book Published in the 20th Century
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (Parrott translation)
📖 G5: Book From Another Book Club or Library List
Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem by Harry Martinson from the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Around the Shelf in Eight(y) Years Challenge

Column 5
O1: Classic of Africa
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
O2: Classic Mystery, Suspense, or Thriller
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
O3: Pulitzer Prize Winner
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (subject to change)
O4: 100 Must-Read Classics in Translation
Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments by Sappho
✅ O5: Book From Our Group’s 2021 Bookshelf
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (GR | AMZN)
Read: Jan 19 – Feb 3, 2021 ✦ Rating: 5★ ✦ Review: WIP

 

 

I’m really looking forward to a fresh year of reading. So pumped seeing all of the titles on this list.

This post will be updated periodically as I complete (or switch out) books. It’s also cross-posted to my Goodreads challenge thread. All the books on the list are shelved here.