It’s absurd, it’s profound, it’s allusive and distinctly un-English. No matter how often and how drastically this illusion is shattered, they always manage to patch it up again, accepting that he contains multitudes. Haller eventually realises the fallacy of Faustian duality, instead concluding that all human beings are born with an absolutely compulsive need to imagine themselves as unified wholes. The novel eventually descends into surreal existentialism, as Haller scrambles to find reasons to carry on living, somehow ending in his attendance of The Magic Theatre, a psychedelic space in which Haller fights a war against cars, murders his lover and plays chess, using the infinite subdivisions of his soul as pieces. Railing against the unending mundanity of bourgeois existence, Haller splits his soul in two, designating all of his primal and carnal urges as part of an alternate personality, Steppenwolf (literally “wolf of the mountain”), which his intellectual side cowers in fear of. Previously an academic, Haller has turned his back on a 1920s Germany that he sees as morally depraved and increasingly tending towards insular nationalism, as his mental health spirals in a ceaseless cycle of depression, self-loathing, and suicide attempts (cheery). mirror that of its author – coincidence?) entitled Harry Haller’s Records (For Madmen Only). In summary, Steppenwolf takes the form of a book-within-a-book by Harry Haller (whose initials H.H. Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf is a German novel published in 1927, a novel whose title has seemingly been overtaken in the popular consciousness by the rock band and DC Comics character of the same name. One of the joys of exploring literature is rebellion, and for me that was a rebellion from a notion of an exclusively English canon of “classical” texts.   Review by Hari (English Language & Literature)

Hermann steppenwolf author

Berkley, I love him for uttering such terrible lines with professional conviction. What about Harry Berkeley’s performance did you like? They piled up on me making the read careless and messy. I know, I know un-plug your brain and try to enjoy it, but there were a lot of these kinds of things. A body was incinerated so badly dental records couldn’t be used to ID the body, but her wedding bands were only marred and not a puddle of melted goo. A wayward teen is taken in by a schoolteacher, but no one in county social services or child welfare is notified. We’re going to launch some spook mission into drug cartel territory, but we’re not going to do a trace on who sent the Fed-ex package. If you are a stickler for how the world really works, this book will annoy you. I had to suspend my disbelief too much in order to get through the plot mechanics of this book. What was most disappointing about Maya Banks’s story? Man up Ranger’s, former Marine, and former Navy Seal, this Army Vet thinks you’re all pathetic. I admit it, it’s me and my own jaded bias against men crying, but seriously the dad cried, a brother cried, and Ethan must have broke down crying at least six times. But the over the top masculine posturing was killed by the number of times these brawny boys started bawling. I was just waiting for a scene where they all got drunk, beat on their sculpted naked former military chests, and chanted cadences together. The book is littered with Alpha males, a big ol’ family of alpha males with alpha male buddies and alpha male adopted friends. What disappointed you about The Darkest Hour?

Flash fire by tj klune