Snap Judgments

Our critics weigh in on new books, albums, and films.

By Mia Lipman, Jim Welte, Jaimal Yogis, Jonathan Kiefer, and Sheerly Avni

BOOK
VENDELA VIDA: THE LOVERS

(Ecco)

San Francisco author and editor Vendela Vida’s magazine, The Believer, publishes epic literary discussions under the mantra “length is no object.” Her deft, brief third novel embodies the opposite principle: Not a word or gesture is wasted, and much of the drama relies on what we’re not permitted to see. Yvonne, anxious and lonely, returns to the site of her Turkish honeymoon seeking respite from the fact that it’s been long enough since her husband’s death for her sympathetic friends and disconnected children to expect some measure of recovery. In a series of finely sketched encounters connected to the elusive owner of her rental house—an exchange of confidences with his unhappy wife, an awkward run-in with his housekeeper—and several nostalgia-driven visits to a neighboring town, Yvonne becomes immersed in the new potential of a place haunted by memories that no longer match her life. The tension of watching her transformation unfold is equaled by the pleasure of noticing the strength that Vida, never lacking in raw talent, has gained as a novelist. By the end, both she and her heroine impress us—and, I think, themselves—with how much they’ve come to understand. A

—MIA LIPMAN

ALBUM

MEKLIT HADERO: ON A DAY LIKE THIS…

(Porto Franco)

As a beaming Meklit Hadero rattled off a list of people to thank at her recent record release, it was clear that the hundreds gathered in front of her were more than just fans. “I feel like introducing each of you to each other,” she said. Since her arrival in San Francisco six years ago, the Ethiopian-born Hadero has turned herself into a vital cog in the city’s music and arts scene—she says her early discovery of the Mission’s Red Poppy Art House was so transformative, she never wanted to leave. She eventually became its director, began composing music for a host of local arts organizations, and garnered a prized TED Fellowship last year for her work with musicians from the Ethiopian diaspora. Hadero has now crystallized all these efforts into an absolute joy of a debut album, which shows off a singer-songwriter steeped in jazz and folk traditions but bold enough to move beyond them. Backed by a slew of stalwart local musicians, Hadero channels Miriam Makeba on a breezy rendition of an Ethiopian song, bravely covers Nina Simone, and displays a lyrical gift to watch for years to come. B+

—JIM WELTE

BOOK

MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: SWEETNESS AND BLOOD

(Rodale)

The king of Morocco institutes a surf school to combat Islamic radicals. Punks in Munich dodge local police to surf urban rivers. A Californian doctor sneaks surfboards into Palestine for the Gaza Surf Club. What’s happening here? When you think about America’s global pop-culture influence, Beyoncé, George Clooney, and Michael Jordan come to mind long before Kelly Slater. But journalist, avid surfer, and former SF Weekly theater critic Michael Scott Moore does a fine job of arguing that surfing—yes, as in Point Break—may be our country’s most influential cultural export. (The sport is Polynesian in origin, but its modern incarnation is distinctly American.) Moore travels to unlikely surf destinations worldwide, dredging up fascinating historical tidbits and interviews, many of which debunk long-held myths: For example, the first surfers to ride waves in Indonesia were not Australian hippies in the ’60s but an American couple, Bob and Louise Koke, in 1936. You don’t necessarily come away from Moore’s book convinced of his thesis, but his irreverent style and diligent research capture a truer—and sometimes darker—aspect of the surfer’s sacred search for the perfect wave. A-

—JAIMAL YOGIS

FILM

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

(Focus Features)

For the gay-marriage movie du jour, we could do a lot worse than The Kids Are All Right. Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon) directs fellow SF State alum Annette Bening, along with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, in a slight but bittersweet tale about a neurotic L.A. lesbian couple whose formerly anonymous sperm donor becomes their potential home wrecker. It’s a nice touch that this smugly comfortable two-mommy homestead—with one child named after Joni Mitchell (Mia Wasikowska) and another named Laser (Josh Hutcherson)—has become a bastion of bourgeois complacency, fully susceptible to all manner of marital and midlife crises. The family members are intended to seem more like familiar people than identity-politics placeholders; the risk is that they also seem more like indie-film eccentrics than people. But Cholodenko brings out the best in her performers, dwelling generously on their expressive faces and prioritizing their great instincts over strict obedience to the sometimes trite dialogue she wrote with Stuart Blumberg. Cinematographer Igor Jadue-Lillo’s sallow, unglamorous digital-video aesthetic is conducive to warts-and-all revelations, neatly mitigated by the optimistic idea that bobo funkiness and family values might indeed live happily ever after. B+

—JONATHAN KIEFER

BOOK

JOSHUA MOHR: TERMITE PARADE

(Two Dollar Radio)

The three highly unreliable narrators of San Francisco writer Joshua Mohr’s second book are self-destructive, self-loathing, and frequently too drunk to be self-aware. Mired, whose taste for liquor is matched only by her colorfully bad taste in men, may or may not deserve the violent judgment meted out by her current boyfriend, Derek, the disturbed son of a damaged Vietnam vet—but neither of them deserves the voyeuristic sadism of Derek’s brother Frank, a failing filmmaker intent on inventing a new style of cinema that he calls “the unveiled animal.” In alternating chapters, this trio of lost souls offers competing versions of one very bad week in their lives, full of broken hearts, broken trust, and, of course, broken bottles and teeth. The scene of the crime is an apartment (rent-controlled, one suspects) on the no-longer-even-slightly-seedy stretch of 20th Street between Valencia and Guerrero, but the drama and profane poetry are pure 16th and Capp. At its best, Mohr’s prose—which earned him kudos from O magazine in 2009 for his first novel—strikes a delicate balance between revulsion and beauty (starting with the metaphor behind his title, which we won’t give away here). Termite Parade is a treat, an unlikely redemption story with a distinctly San Francisco flavor. B

—SHEERLY AVNI