Find Skuld! and find McKinty
"Call me fuckin’ Ishmael."
If that opening suggests American-style hard-boiled attitude and sullen slacker wiseassery on the part of the novella's Italian creators, its subtitle evokes over-the-top new-pulp sensibility with a touch of the old-time British adventure story. That subtitle is Chimaera: Anti Nazi Squad. The story, in other words, is a fine piece of global genre-hopping.
Find Skuld! takes a two-man commando squad deep under a castle hideaway to rescue Skuld from the Nazis. What is Skuld? Read the book to find out.
If this suggests Indiana Jones to you, know that the imprint of which the novella is a part is called Popcorn, and its slogan is "When reading a book is like watching a movie with some pop corn and a coke!" (Other Popcorn authors include Victor Gischler and Anthony Neil Smith.)
***
I've read the book in galley form, too, and I'll add to the reviewer's comments that it reminds me in a small way of Dashiell Hammett's story "Fly Paper." It's no wandering daughter job but, like Hammett's story, McKinty's novel embraces a hoary murder-mystery motif and works it with great success into a story that is far from a traditional mystery.
© Peter Rozovsky 2013
Labels: Adrian McKinty, Anthony Neil Smith, Dashiell Hammett, Ireland, Italy, Marco Piva Dittrich, Matteo Strukul, Northern Ireland, pulp, Victor Gischler
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 5:26 PM
16 Comments:
I cannot think of an opening line that would be less of a motivator: I will skip the book.
RT, Peter
I cant remember the name of it but I think theres a satiric book from the 90's that begins: Call me, Ishmael. The comma being the important insertion there...
Adrian, I'm unsure if I remember such an opening. I do know that I have made the easy crack that "Call me, Ishmael" would make a fine appeal from a long-suffering mother.
Peter
Ok I'll see if I can find it. But God knows how...
Peter
Well that was easy. Apparently it was The Vale Of Laughter by Peter De Vries
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview29
I really should read more Peter DeVries. Comfort Me With Apples was hilarious.
The opening line: "Call me, Ishmael. Feel absolutely free to call me any hour of the day or night at the office or at home . . ."
Six minutes, it took you. Not bad.
And later I will see what John Sutherland has to tell me about how to read a novel.
I liked the way they used Call Me Ishmael in the recent Moby Dick opera. But it wasn't exactly what you'd call funny.
What did the opera do with the line?
That would be a spoiler.
I shall look for recordings or at least reviews before I come back, begging.
I don't think it will be all that hard to find a summary if you're determined. I thought it was a very good opera.
From a Times of New York review:
"Listeners waiting for the famous opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” should not hold their breath."
Same as mothers saying "Call me, Ishmael."!
Better, I'd say. More sensible and less obvious.
R.T., I would certainly never try to talk you into liking the line or to suggest you are wrong to like it. I will say that I like the line's brashness. Needless to say, I think its target is not Melville, but rather a culture of shorthand worship of bits at the expense of knowledge of the whole.
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