Much has been written about not judging books by their cover. And yet by now most people will avoid (at least this blogger) blood-red books displaying swastikas on their cover or a slew of books sporting the “Norwegian Style” which are the books that mimic the look of Stieg Larsson's novels.
But it was a book cover that sparked my interest last March when I visited the new fiction section of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. I was instantly curious to the contents of book in which its cover title was displayed vertically so I had to twist my head to read The Vaults by Toby Ball (fully horizontal).
I took the book home and read it that evening. I was amazed at the atmosphere of the book which this unliterary blogger might just call style. It was different.
As a successful magazine in photographer in Vancouver since 1975 I can attribute much of my success in that my photographs have a clearly identifiable style. It is a style that is my own. I recognize in The Vaults such a style, a unique one. In this day and age of Flickr and digitally extruded photographs it is almost impossible to find photographs where you might be able to identify the photographer. So many photographs look the same.
Thus in fiction there I see an emphasis on plots and complex characters and in many cases unlikely events that most of the time end in a most likely manner. For style I look to José Saramago (whose events are most unlikely!) Andrea Camilleri, John le Carré and now Toby Ball.
I remember reading Robert Harris’s Fatherland in 1992 which was an alternative history novel in which Kennedy was the president of the United States. The wowing wrinkle was that the Kennedy in question was John Kennedy’s father and Hitler had won the war. The ubiquity of four door VW beetle taxis and that the Lufthansa airliners at La Guardia were Junkers kept me reading and the book made me a fan of Robert Harris to this day.
I can say the same with Ball’s The Vaults. The city, never given a name and perhaps set in the 30s is reminiscent of a decaying Detroit in the 80s and 90s. It is believable and real. This city is washed with characters amongst which, the journalist (a kind of journalist that is becoming extinct in our present time of citizen journalism) Frank Frinks is full of idealism but happens to be addicted to pot. The city houses blacks called negroes who live in separate sections of the city. The mayor is corrupt and blames the Communists for his troubles. Anybody trying to organize labor to improve wages and working conditions is persecuted as commie. There are shades in this novel that point to similarities to the state of New Jersey and its present governor!
Toby Ball has written a sequel, Scorch City (St. Martin's Press, August 2011 ISBN: 978-0-312-58083-4, ISBN10: 0-312-58083-5,
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 384 pages) with Frank Frinks still smoking pot 15 years later. I have read the first three chapters sent to me courtesy of the author. I am in a hurry to write here that The Vaults are alive and well and live in Scorch City!
The first paragraph reads:
Moses Winston had learned from years of being a stranger everywhere he went – such was the life of an itinerant musician – how to recognize trouble and how to avoid it without backing down. It never did him any good scrapping in a place he wasn’t known. So as he walked through the smoky shantytown alleys, breathing fumes from the tar roofs baking in the sun, he kept his head up and his eyes on nothing in particular, save the occasional passing woman who, even today, earned his glance. This day, of all days was one to stay out of trouble.
Soon we find out what the trouble is. A dead white woman has been found on rocks on the wrong side of a river that divides the negro shantytown from the city. Frink is summoned by one of the black leaders to see if in some way the police can be persuaded to investigate the death (we do not yet know the circumstances of her death) as if the body had been found on the white side of the dividing river.
That is more than enough to inform anybody reading this blog that Scorch City will keep you reading in much the same way as The Vaults did.
The names of the protagonists were one of the many delights of The Vaults. I enquired with the author via email who explained:
I’m often asked about the names that I use in The Vaults (and will use in my next book, Scorch City, due in August). I saw picking names for the characters as part of the effort to create the city where The Vaults is set – a dystopian, multi-ethnic, 1930s American city where corruption is rampant. I wanted the names to convey a variety of European ethnicities. Where do they come from? The quick answer is that if you follow international soccer, most of the last names will be familiar to you: Frings, Henry, Bernal, Puskis (changed from Puskus), Van Vossen, Altabelli, Pesotto, etc. National team rosters are a great resource for last names, some so good that they seemed too good to use – Morpheo, for instance.
A few others had different origins. Feral Basu, for instance, started as Feral Singh. The idea was to have a character with a nickname that indicates the fear he invokes in his acquaintances but also conveys a mistaken sense of savagery. Feral is very dignified despite his capacity for violence. I changed his last name from Singh to Basu. Both are Indian last names, but Basu seemed like it would be harder to definitively place (the mayor can’t figure out his ethnic background).
And Toby Ball has now informed me further on the naming of names:
Scorch City continues the practice of using soccer player's names, with Wome, Westermann, and Grip springing immediately to mind. I've been working so much on the third book that Scorch City seems like a distant memory at times.
Those of us who may be fans of The Vaults and soon to be fans of Scorch City only hope that Toby Ball take care of himself and finish that third novel. We will be waiting.
The Vaults a Borgesian novel
