Great Titles
from 2004
My Picks for the Best
of 2004
Aloft,
by Chang-Rae Lee, The
Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst, You
Remind Me of Me, by Dan Chaon, The
Liberated Bride, by A. B. Yehoshua, Little
Children, by Tom Perrotta, The
Love Wife, by Gish Jen, Crossing
California, by Adam Langer, Elizabeth
Costello, by J. M. Coetzee, The Way the Crow
Flies, by Ann Marie Macdonald, The Falls,
by Joyce Carol Oates, Deception, by Denise
Mina
Great
Titles for February 2004
The
Way the Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald
This new
book by Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of "Fall on Your Knees", takes us back
to the early 1960's in Canada. Madeleine McCarthy is eight years
old when her father Jack is posted to a quiet air force base near
the Canadian-American border. It is an optimistic time, when the
world seems in good order and anything seems possible. In addition
to Madeleine, Jack has a beautiful wife, Mimi, and an 11-year old son Michael.
Life on the military base seems to be well-ordered and predictable, until
a series of events, including the murder of one of Madeleine's classmates
and Jack's unwitting involvement in spy activities, destroys the facade
of well-being surrounding the whole community. A teenager is wrongly
convicted of the murder, and Madeleine, who has been molested by her teacher
is afraid to tell anyone, and Jack doesn't provide exculpatory evidence
because of his sworn secrecy about his spy activity. These secrets
fester and lead the happy McCarthy family into its own form of unhappiness,
and although the nomadic military family moves on to another posting, wounds
remain unhealed.. It is not until almost 30 years later that Madeleine,
now a successful comedienne on television, begins to remember the events
of that year and goes in search of answers about the past. This is
a wonderful book, extremely complex, with much vivid detail about the time
and place it evokes. I remember that time myself very well -- the
mood in the early days of the Kennedy administration, the fashions, the
optimism and hope. But then, as in any time, human behaviors and
secrets wielded their power over all our destinies.
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Double
Vision, by Pat Barker
Kate Frobisher
is a successful sculptress living in the English countryside. It
is the aftermath of September 11, and the countryside is still full
of the smell of burning cows due to mad cow disease. Kate's husband
Ben, a photojournalist who was in New York during 9/11, has been recently
killed in Afghanistan, and in the throes of mourning, she has a serious
car accident. Ben's friend Stephen Sharkey, a print journalist who
was with Ben in both New York and Afghanistan, has returned to England
and the break-up of his marriage. He retreats to his brother's guest
cottage near Kate's house, intending to write a book about violence and
the reporter's complicitness in it, using Ben's photographs and his own
thoughts.
When Kate
is released from the hospital, she is unable to raise her arms and work
on a commissioned sculpture of Christ for the local cathedral, and is forced
to hire a young man to help her. The young man, Peter Wingrave, is
recommended by the local vicar is quiet and a good worker, but soon his
behavior becomes very disturbing. Meanwhile, Stephen has taken up
with his brother's 19-year old au pair, Justine, who just happens to be
both the vicar's daughter and Peter's ex-girlfriend.
All of
the predictable complications ensue, but what makes this book important
is its profound meditations on violence and the world we live in now, fraught
with peril and danger, with world leaders seeming to create more rather
than less of it. In her other works, Pat Barker has written profoundly
about past wars and how traumatic events from the past can wreak havoc
on the present. This book paints a very clear-eyed, insightful picture
of complex individuals in an increasingly complex world.
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Elizabeth
Costello, by J. M. Coetzee
I cannot
find words to describe this novel. J. M. Coetzee is a great, great
writer, but for me, reading this particular book was absolutely awe-inspiring.
Really more a collection of philosophical statements in the form of eight
formal addresses made by Elizabeth Costello, an aging Australian writer,
and observations about her from the point of view of her son, it covers
a range of topics from the essence of existence itself, the nature of animal
consciousness and the proper moral stance towards them, to all aspects
of human relationships. I can honestly say that the writing and thought
in this book is breath-taking. I know I will have to read it again.
When I picked it up I did not put it down until the last page. I
have read all of Coetzee's novels and been deeply moved by each one of
them, but this is in another class entirely.
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Walking
Into the Night, by Olaf Olafsson
This novel
imagines a loyal butler of William Randolph Hearst's at Hearst Castle.
It is the early 1930's and Marion Davies and Hearst are at the height of
their powers. Christian Benediktsson is Icelandic, quiet, dignified
and formal, and he has been at the Castle for twenty years, silently carrying
out his master's will. But Benediktsson is the carrier of dark memories
and a huge burden of guilt coming from the actions that caused him to leave
his homeland. The son of a poor fisherman who managed to attend college
in his homeland and marry up into the family of an importer-exporter in
Reyjkavik, Christian increases his wife's family fortune after his father-in-law's
death, and they have three beautiful children. Meanwhile, he begins
travelling for business to America, where he continues to expand his success.
But soon the darker angels of his nature and a sense he has always had
of not belonging and of wanting more take over, and he falls in love with
the fiancee of his best American friend and associate, a beautiful actress.
The affair becomes so serious that after postponing his return to Iceland
for months, he returns home resolved to end the relationship, but ultimately
cannot do so. He leaves Iceland with only a part of his wealth, leaving
the rest behind for his wife and children, and disappears in New York.
The tragedy which becomes the fate of his new relationship drives him further
into obscurity, and he lives only to serve the needs of Hearst, his castle,
and his mistress, a woman who is portrayed as pathetically unhappy and
almost desperate. Meanwhile, he lives with his own constant memories,
obsessively writing letters to his former wife that relive their past together,
none of which he ever mails.
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The
Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler
As Tolstoy
so famously wrote in Anna Karenina "Happy families are all alike; every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In some ways, this new book
by Anne Tyler could be her attempt, on a far smaller scale to be sure,
to portray an unhappy family and an unhappy marriage from its inauspicious
start to its ultimate complete failure. Immediately after Pearl Harbor,
all the young men from Michael Anton's Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood
in Baltimore are rushing to join the armed services and go to war.
Michael, a 20-year old working in his widowed mother's grocery shop, is
swept away by this energy but even more by pretty Pauline Barclay, who
stumbles into the shop after cutting herself jumping off a bus. She
is not from the neighborhood, but from the minute he sees her Michael is
smitten, and as soon as he enlists they marry hastily before he ships out.
But Michael and Pauline should never have married, and from that time through
the next four decades they argue and watch as their different natures collide
and damage not only their own lives, but those of their children.
Tyler beautifully describes the life of the poor couple and their Polish
neighbors in the 1940's, their move to the newly minted suburban life of
the 1950's, the rebellion and hope of the 1960's and on through the decades,
with the pretty Paula's hair and clothing changing along with the times.
But one thing never changes -- the miserableness of their marriage and
their inability to understand each other and change. When Michael
finally decides to leave, almost 40 years into the marriage, we are as
relieved as Pauline is stunned. The interesting thing about this
book is that although it would seem to be about such an unpleasant situation,
it is actually moving and entertaining at the same time, as is all of Anne
Tyler's best work.
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The
Murder Room, by P. D. James
Great Titles for April-May 2004
The Liberated Bride, by A. B. Yehoshua, The Lucky Ones, by Rachel Cusk, San Remo Drive, by Leslie Epstein, Vernon God Little, by D. B. C. Pierre, The Best Awful, by Carrie Fisher
The
Liberated Bride, by A. B. Yehoshua
Israeli
author A. B. Yehoshua surely must be on someone's short list for a Nobel
Prize. In this, his latest novel, there is a cultural richness and
depth that is truly remarkable. Yochanan Rivlin, a professor of Near
Easter Studies at Haifa University, is deeply in love with his magistrate
wife Hagit, and deeply troubled by the breakup of his son Ofer's marriage.
He is also suffering from writer's block in his work, which is an attempt
to decipher the cultural roots of excessive violence in modern Algeria,
and he has a complex relationship with one of his Palestinian students,
a young woman named Samaher who seems to be preoccupied with getting his
attention. Rivlin sets about to uncover the reason for the end to
his son's marriage by contacting Galya, his son's ex-wife, now remarried.
He is rebuffed and begins to undertake an elaborate ruse to get at the
truth, displeasing both his wife and his son. He also becomes involved
with Rashid, a young Palestinian who seems to navigate easily between the
Arab and Israeli territories.
There
is so much plot here, and so much which is of intense and timely interest
to anyone interested in the situation in the Middle East, especially as
seem from the point of view of a character like Rivlin, a modern Israeli
intellectual who isn't the least bit Zionist. In fact, it is through
the eyes of Rivlin that we see that Orientalism (the study of Arab cultures
by Israelis) is a very strong field of study. This is a truly unforgettable
novel.
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The
Lucky Ones, by Rachel Cusk
This is
a novel of five interconnected stories, with the relationships between
the characters revealed slowly through events rather than description.
Rachel Cusk's spare prose is razor sharp and full of subtle but profound
insights. A poor young girl is pregnant in prison, convicted of a
murder she didn't commit. Without funds, she depends on her lawyer
to care about her predicament, but we find in another story, this one about
him and his wife, that he is dying of cancer, and his colleague has left
the practice because she has no stomach for his clients' hard knocks.
We hear about another woman's car accident in an early story and then meet
her in another in the unhappy days before the event. All is woven
together gracefully and precisely. When we meet each story's main
character, we have already heard about them in another, and they emerge
effortlessly from the background to the foreground.
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San
Remo Drive, by Leslie Epstein
This semi-autobiographical
novel about the Jacobi family of Beverly Hills is seen through the eyes
of the narrator, Richard Jacobi, who recalls a series of incidents throughout
his life that were critical to who he is now, at the beginning of the new
Millennium. Richard is the son of Norman and Lotte Jacobi,
Norman being a successful Hollywood producer and director, Lotte his glamorous
larger than life wife. In reality, Leslie Epstein is the son and
nephew of Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein, who wrote the movies Casablanca
and Arsenic and Old Lace, among others, and I believe the house on San
Remo Drive was actually their home. In the 50's the Jacobis lives
are irrevocably altered by Norman's testimony to the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee, and after Norman's premature death, they are forced to sell
their house on San Remo Drive. Richard's brother Barton is mentally
unstable, and Lotte remains stubbornly eccentric, with Richard forced to
watch over the family even as he builds his own career and later in life
buys back the house they lost. Throughout the episodically
told tale, the themes of racism and anti-semitism, as they re-occur throughout
the family's life, are dealt with very poignantly.
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Vernon
God Little: a 21st Century Comic Novel in the Presence of Death, by
D. B. C. Pierre
This book,
a first novel, won the Man Booker Prize in 2003, and it uses black humor
to deal with a subject that is otherwise completely horrifying. 15-year
old Vernon Little narrates the story, which begins after a high school
shooting involving his best friend, Jesus. The local police and even
his mother have Vernon implicated, while Vernon knows that the high school
math teacher could probably give some details to explain what happened
and exonerate him. Vernon decides to run away to Mexico and find
the cabin he saw in the movie "Against All Odds", but the police -- and
the TV crews -- are in hot pursuit. When the novel climaxes in a
death row reality show we know we are in the hands of a first-rate post-modern
satirist, and we just go along for the ride.
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The
Best Awful, by Carrie Fisher
As a writer,
Carrie Fisher is possessed with blinding wit. In this novel, the
third featuring Suzanne Vale, Fisher's alter-ego who was first introduced
in "Postcards From the Edge", we find our heroine divorced and depressed,
a sober, bi-polar celebrity talk show host with an ex-husband who left
her for a man. But as her depression deepens, Suzanne stops taking her
medication, and soon her life is spiraling completely out of control with
drugs, reckless behavior, and genuine insanity. Reading this book
one realizes that Carrie Fisher knows crazy -- and how. It was in
the news in the last year or so that she had been hospitalized following
problems with her medications, and we are treated to a seat inside a mind
that becomes truly deranged. It is to her great credit that she possesses
the literary ability to describe these states of mind in such scary detail,
and still manages to entertain us.
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Great Titles for June 2004
Aloft,
by Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae
Lee, the much honored and multiple award-winning author of Native Speaker,
and A Gesture Life , has more than outdone himself in this book.
While his earlier novels dealt with immigrants from both Korea and Japan
and their struggles to assimilate, this book is written from the point
of view of an American man and his family on Long Island. Retired
from his landscaping business, Jerry Battle spends a lot of time alone
in his private airplane, which is really a symbol for the distance he has
tried to put between himself and the rest of his family. We learn
about the circumstances which led to this, including the mental illness
of his dead wife, and his own struggle to raise his two young children
who are now grown and involved in complex problems of their own.
His father is in a nursing home and not happy about it, his academic daughter
Theresa disapproves of him, and his son has taken over the family's successful
landscaping business and has transformed it into something that provides
him and his acqusitive wife the ability to live in a McMansion, far beyond
what Jerry believes are their means. Adding to all of this is his
estrangement from Rita, his live-in girlfriend of 20 years, who has finally
moved on from his disengaged self into the arms of one of Jerry's old schoolmates,
now a wealthy lawyer.
When Theresa
and her new husband Paul come for a visit, however, everything begins to
change. Theresa announces not only that she is pregnant, but that
she is suffering from a cancer that she refuses to treat because it would
damage the fetus, which she refuses to abort to save her own health.
Theresa and Paul move in with Jerry, and this and other circumstances conspire
to not only get Jerry to be involved in his own life again, but to face
the consequences of the past and their implications for the future.
This book is a quantum leap for this already formidable writer.
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The
True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, by Elisabeth Robinson
This is
a first novel by Elisabeth Robinson, a film producer and screenwriter,
and it is very, very good. Olivia Hunt is a Hollywood producer whose
ambition has always come before both relationships and family, and her
life shows it. She has just been fired from Universal Studios after
her project, a 'Babe' rip-off called 'Lloyd the Hamster', tanked, her artist
boyfriend has moved out and won't answer calls or letters, and she's almost
broke. Her career hopes hinge on a 'Don Quixote' film to which she
owns the rights, and she's trying to do the complicated dance of lining
up a cast that will attract financing, a director the studio will accept,
and maintaining some degree of artistic integrity, when her father calls
with devastating news. Her younger sister, Maddie, has leukemia.
Olivia flies home to Ohio and becomes completely absorbed in Maddie's treatment
and in the complicated dysfunction of her Midwestern roots.
All of
this is told in the form of letters, faxes, and e-mails from Olivia to
those in her life: her sister, her father, her mother, her estranged
boyfriend, the potential producers, directors and numerous agents involved
in her film, and to her best friend Tina. Olivia is wonderfully observant,
funny, and dead-on about the movie business, but she is also passionate
and sensitive, and totally dedicated to her little sister. I read
that Elisabeth Robinson actually experienced something like this in her
own life, and it couldn't be rendered more beautifully. Heartbreaking,
funny, and uplifting -- all at the same time.
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Little
Children, by Tom Perrotta
In this
very modern novel about thirty-somethings and their marriages, Todd is
a gorgeous stay at home dad who has been trying to pass the bar exam for
years while his wife Kathy makes documentaries and envies him his time
with their toddler Aaron. Sarah is a former feminist who is now living
a life of domesticity with her husband Richard and their toddler daughter,
spending her days with a group of women in a play group who simultaneously
stifle and entertain her. They call Todd 'the Prom King', and when
Sarah approaches him on a bet and then spontaneously kisses him in front
of all the mothers, some sort of genie is let out of the bottle and the
two soon begin a torrid affair. Tad is the kind of guy Sarah (who
is not conventionally pretty) would have never seen herself sleeping with,
and Tad is shocked that he feels so much for a woman who is far less attractive
than his beautiful wife. Nonetheless, they embark upon a train wreck
of a relationship, even going to the point of spending two whole days together
while Kathy thinks Todd is taking the bar exam. Meanwhile, Sarah's
husband Richard is becoming more and more distracted by Internet porn.
Into the
midst of all this comes a creepy sex offender, just released from prison.
A former cop who has befriended Todd is obsessed with harassing the
man, and of course all the mothers are terrified that he is living
in their small town. Ultimately the two plot strands -- Todd and
Sarah's affair and the sex offender's presence in their city --- collide,
in a shocking climax to a novel that is very very smart about today's world.
It is both satirical and completely human.
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One
for My Baby, by Tony Parsons
Alfie
Budd has returned to London from Hong Kong after a brief, idyllic marriage
that ended tragically. He is living with his parents and trying
to deal with his grief and figure out what to do with the rest of his life,
while his parents are sliding into their own life-changing crisis.
Alfie's father is successful after having written an 'Angela's Ashes' type
book about his childhood, but is now suffering from massive writer's block
and an overblown mid-life crisis which is revealed rather alarmingly at
the surprise birthday party his wife throws for him. Added to this
is the plight of Alfie's 'Nan' who seems to be slipping into something
like Alzheimer's disease.
Alfie
gets a job teaching English to immigrants at a Language School, and soon
finds himself sleeping his way through the females in his classes.
Somehow he sees nothing wrong with this until a few circumstances present
themselves and he realizes the inappropriateness of his behavior.
When he meets Jackie, a young single mother who is the cleaning woman at
the school, he gets a little more than he bargains for when she asks him
to tutor her for her 'O' levels so that she can go to college and get a
degree.
Despite
Alfie's sadness, this is a highly entertaining novel, filled with humor
and insight and real emotional growth.
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A
Hole in the Universe, by Mary McGarry Morris
Mary McGarry
Morris is a master of depicting the depth that exists in ordinary people
and their daily lives. In this novel, she explores the life of Gordon
Loomis, just released from prison after 25 years served for a senseless
murder in which he participated at eighteen. Other than relating
a few details about the murder, this event is not really examined or dissected
-- it is his attempt to readjust that is rendered in painful and painstaking
detail. His brother Dennis, a successful and married oral surgeon,
is expecially anxious for Gordon to establish a 'normal' life and cannot
understand why Gordon, always stolid and stoic, insists on living in their
deceased parents' old house, sleeping in his childhood bed, and getting
a low-paying job at a local mom and pop market. But Gordon can only
move at his own pace and in his own way, and the fact that he is occasionally
recognized doesn't help either. And then there is Delores DuFault,
a woman he knew in high school, who was the only one besides his brother
who wrote and visited during his 25-year sentence. Delores is lonely
and hoping for more from Gordon, but he just can't respond. His isolation
is almost total, perfected by years of needing to survive prison life.
Complicating the situation is Jada, the young daughter of a drug-addicted
neighbor. Jada is pathetically poor and hungry, and latches on to
Gordon in such a way that could and does become damaging for him.
And finally, as the story progresses, we see that the success of his brother
Dennis is far from unqualified or complete. This novel is complex,
layered, and profound.
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Mourning
Ruby, by Helen Dunmore
Helen
Dunmore writes deep and original novels about dark subjects. There
really is no other way to describe them, and each one deals with subjects
somehow related to family issues at the deepest level. This book
is no different, except that while it deals with things that are almost
unbearably painful, it ultimately ends on a hopeful note. Approximately
thirty years before the book's opening, a newborn baby was left in a shoebox
on the back step of a small Italian restaurant in London. That baby
was Rebecca, the novel's main character, and we meet her as she mourns
the tragic accidental death of her five-year old daughter Ruby. The
novel experiments in time, as we are given a vision of Rebecca's life before
her marriage and Ruby's birth. After a childhood with adoptive parents
who were distant and unimaginative, Rebecca meets Joe, a Russian history
scholar with whom she forms a bond as close, or closer, than brother and
sister. Joe introduces her to her husband Adam, a neo-natologist,
and when Ruby is born her life finally exists somewhere outside of the
knowledge of that long-ago shoebox. The knowledge of Ruby's death,
which we possess since the beginning pages, becomes all the more devastating
as we learn Rebecca's life story. In fact, her sorrow is so great
that she has to separate from Adam and becomes immersed in a powerful career
with a hotelier, Mr. Damiano, whose own back story involves belonging to
a family of trapeze and side show artists. Then -- in another experimental
twist -- Joe, who has been living in Russia with a woman, realizes
he will never really love anyone but Rebecca and moves to Vancouver to
live in a cabin, and in doing so begins to write a novel that could possibly
be the history of Rebecca and even himself, dating back to World War II,
which took the life of his father, whom he never knew. In the end
we find Rebecca making her way back, one simple step after another, in
a heartbreakingly beautiful way.
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My
Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
I've reviewed
many of Jodi Picoult's books on this site, because she can always be counted
on to provide a consistently good read with great characters. Another
feature of her novels is that they deal with controversial issues, and
this book is no exception. Anna is a thirteen-year-old girl whose
very existence is because of her older sister Kate's illness. As
a small child Kate was diagnosed with a serious and rare form of leukemia,
and no match could be found to give her a bone marrow transplant.
Her desperate parents conceived Anna as a perfect match, and within
days of her birth the transplant took place. Kate got better, but
a few years later relapsed. Anna then was forced to go through procedure
after procedure to help her sister, and now that Kate is sixteen and in
kidney failure, Anna is expected to give Kate one of her kidneys.
We meet her as she is consulting a lawyer, Campbell Alexander, who has
a reputation as a hotshot. She wants to sue her parents for emancipation
and control over her own body so that she can keep her kidney. Needless
to say, this creates a minefield in their family, including her mother
Sara, whose entire life is administering to Kate's medical needs, her father
Brian, and of course, her older sister Kate, the closest one of all.
This is a heart-wrenching story, full of medical details (we learn in the
author's introduction that she herself is the mother of a child who underwent
countless surgeries in the first years of life), turmoil, heartbreak, and
surprises, even in the life of the seemingly-cynical lawyer Campbell who
takes Anna's case. Great read.
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Babes
in the Woods, by Ruth Rendell
Again,
a reliable read -- all of Ruth Rendell's books are worth reading, and this,
one of the Inspector Wexford series, is no exception. When two teenagers,
Sophie and Giles Dade, turn up missing, along with the woman who was staying
with them while their parents were in Paris, their hysterical mother first
thinks they have drowned in the huge flood they are all experiencing.
But soon that idea is proven to be the folly Wexford always thought it
was, and many more sinister elements emerge, including a strange religious
cult and the fact that Joanna Troy, the 'babysitter' was something less
than a desirable companion for young boys. Page-turning ensues.
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The
Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler
Five women
and one man meet each month to discuss one of Jane Austen's novels.
Each month, one of the participants conducts the discussion about the Austen
book she/he has chosen, and in a brilliant and delightful way, Karen Joy
Fowler illustrates the universality of Austen's wonderful writing by having
the life of the group's monthly host somehow mirror the dilemmas and lessons
illustrated by the choice of that month. Jocelyn, the woman who thought
of the group, sees herself as a great matchmaker, much as does Emma, the
eponymous character of Jocelyn's book choice. Both Jocelyn
and Emma go through similar changes, centuries apart. And on and
on, lightly and gracefully, the stories unfold, with the focus on Austen's
immortal prose, seen through the prism of modern, likeable lives. Great
read.
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Murder
on the Leviathan, by Boris Akunin
Boris
Akunin is a best-selling novelist in Russia, due to his original novels
and his very original sleuth, a young Russian diplomat named Erast Fandorin.
Set in the late 19th century, this novel takes place on a luxury cruise
ship, the Leviathan, populated with characters who would make Agatha Christie
proud, if not a little envious. Paris Police Commissioner "Papa"
Gauche is conducting the murder investigation of eccentric antiquarian
Lord Littleby and his ten servants on board the Leviathan, because the
only clue found at the murder scene was a golden key which is actually
a ticket of passage on this great steamship. He focusses on all the
ship's passengers who lacked the key for different stated reasons, and
as the days go by he questions and observes them, keeping them all together
in one group. But when Erast Fandorin boards the ship in Cairo, the
investigation really takes off. Egyptian mythology, ancient treasures,
and the mysterious pasts of all the suspects make this a lively and colorful
ride indeed.
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Brother
and Sister, by Joanna Trollope
Anthony Trollope, Joanna Trollope's esteemed ancestor, was championed as
the master of the quotidian novel, and it would seem that Joanna is well
on her way to the same mastery. I have included five of her novels
on my web page over the last few years as imminently readable, and this
one is no exception. David and Nathalie are grown brother and sister,
both adopted, both dearly loved, and both with different birth mothers.
They are extremely close to each other, but when Nathalie decides she wants
to find out who her birth mother is and wants David to do the same, he
balks. David is married to Marnie, a solid earth mother to their
children. His life is solid, settled. Nathalie, however is
unsettled. Living with Steve and being a mother to Polly, she has
never found a satisfactory creative outlet, and now she is determined that
she must find out where she came from. Her relationship with Steve
suffers from her obsession and from her dissatisfaction. When David
relents and agrees to join Nathalie's quest, the ensuing events create
havoc throughout the family. David's birth mother has been living
a successful, cosseted life, with no one knowing about her giving birth
to David earlier in life. When her discontented son finds out about
David, he turns violent and threatening. In Nathalie's emotional
and sometimes physical absence, Steve falls into an affair.
Trollope's ability to portray complex emotional situations in believable
and human terms is by far her strong suit. This book is extremely
absorbing from beginning to end.
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Twelve
Times Blessed, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
It is
a statement to Jacquelyn Mitchard's novelistic ability that I read this
500+ page novel from beginning to end while simultaneously finding her
heroine True Dickinson most irritating. I really didn't like her
very much, but Mitchard puts in so many other interesting characters with
interesting thoughts along with a lot of background color and information
about other subjects that I just kept reading. In fact, I think that
a person like True Dickinson would probably be mostly irritating and in
that way the novel is very honest. True is a successful entrepreneur
who has a business called "Twelve Times Blessed" that is just way too cute
in its concept, and she is the mother of a ten year old boy named
Guy with whom she has 'date nights', the daughter of the disapproving
Katherine who works and lives on her premises, and the true blue friend
to many around her who all adore her, including one clever gay man (are
there any gay men in literature who aren't clever?) On her 43rd birthday,
True has her birthday at a new restaurant called, cleverly, 'That One Place',
and she meets an impossibly handsome man ten years her junior who happens
to be the restaurant's owner. They begin an affair and in a recklessly
short time get married. The rest of the book is about the myriad
and multiple problems such a situation could, and does, create. Hank
is his name, and his life, including his Cajun family roots, is also extremely
colorful. True turns out to have an extremely short fuse, a terribly
jealous nature, a constant need to be right, and an endless appetitie for
argument. We are treated to full portions of all of these traits
throughout the story, and when True gets pregnant, watch out. True, Guy,
Hank and Katherine give new meaning to 'warts and all.' Nevertheless, I
read on, and was ultimately satisfied and even impressed by the book.
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Great
Titles for September - October 2004
You
Remind Me of Me, by Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon
has written a brilliant novel set in the middle of the country, in South
Dakota, where people live in mobile homes and small houses and have few
options in life. The book opens in 1974, when a little boy named
Jonah is savagely attacked by his grandfather's pet Doberman, leaving him
hideously scarred for life. It then shifts to 1977, in another small
town, where a young boy named Troy Timmens spends his days hanging out
with his drug-dealing cousin and his wife, and their young son, and then
back to 1966, to a home for unwed mothers, where a young girl named Elizabeth
is preparing to give up her baby for adoption. All of these elements
are brought together in the 1990's, when Jonah begins looking for the older
brother he knows is out there somewhere after his mother, the same Elizabeth,
dies. He locates Troy and moves to the same small town where Troy
lives and works. Troy is trying to get his life back on track.
After drifting into a life of small-time pot dealing, Troy served some
time in prison and is on work-release with a band on his ankle. He
has lost custody of his beloved son to his ex-mother in law who won't let
him see his son, Loomis. All of this takes on an eery weirdness when
Jonah gets a job at the bar where Troy works, befriends him, but then doesn't
tell Troy that he is his brother. Instead, he becomes like a stalker,
obsessed with Troy's life to such an extent that when he reveals the truth,
it backfires explosively.
Just describing
the plot of this novel does not do it justice. Dan Chaon's short
story collection, "Among the Missing" was a finalist for the National Book
Award, and this book deserves the same recognition. His characters
- ordinary, almost faceless people all - are unique, finely drawn, and
completely human. Jonah is a tragic figure who nonetheless is totally
recognizable. Troy is a nice guy who is sort of blown sideways through
life, yet manages to keep our sympathy throughout.
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What
to Keep, by Rachel Cline
This novel
is about Denny Roman at age 12 in 1976, at age 26 in 1986, and 36 in 2000.
Denny is the daughter of Lily and Charles, neuroscientists newly divorced
in 1976, and married to others in the other times, and about Maureen, the
person who actually parented Denny in the early years. The author
employs a light tone and creates fascinating and humorous characters, but
there is an undertone of sadness in all of their relationships. Denny
never seems to be able to get Lily's full attention, and the relationship
never becomes easy. At the novel's end, Denny is a playwright who
has written a play which is really about her parents' relationship with
each other, and when both parents and their new spouses attend, there is
a sense of something having come full circle.
This is a delightful book.
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I
Dream of Microwaves, by Imad Rahman
This book
of interconnected stories is hilarious. The main character, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, is a Pakistani actor living in Los Angeles whose most substantial
ongoing gig has been portraying bad guys on "America's Most Wanted".
When his ex-girlfriend Eileen sends him a Greyhound bus ticket to Ohio,
he welcomes the change. Eileen wants him to impersonate a Bosnian
refugee for her philanthropic grandmother to get some money, but she actually
wants to use it for the Bosnians. He goes up against an actor hired
by her sister who is impersonating the head of a tribe of cannibals.
In another story, Eileen has left him, and Kareem's acting job is to dress
up as Zima Zorro and promote drinks at the Ancient Mariner Sports Bar and
Grill. In yet another, he roughts up Unrepentant Videotape Privilege
Abuse Perpetrators as a rental-video repossessor. This writer will
be around for a long time.
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Coal
Run, by Tawni O'Dell
I reviewed
Tawni O'Dell's first book, Back Roads (click
on title for review) in 2000, and this one is just as good. Set in
Coal Run, Pennsylvania - an old coal mining town, it begins in 1967, the
day "Gertie", the local mine 'blows'. "Gertie" is the employer of
7-year old Ivan Zoschenko's Russian immigrant father and the father and
brothers of nearly all of their neighbors. Needless to say, the town
is changed forever, and when we revisit Coal Run, Ivan is the 40-something
deputy sheriff, having returned only recently from Florida, where he has
lived since his professional football career was aborted on the eve of
its beginning because of a terrible accident in the very same mine that
killed his father. We learn from present events that Ivan had been
called "the Great Ivan Z" throughout high school and college and is still
considered a local hero, although his life now, full of booze and pills,
is far from heroic. In truth, he has only returned to town because
Reese Raynor, a member of his high school class, is soon being released
from prison for the murder of his young wife, an event that coincided with
Ivan's career-destroying accident.
The characters
in this powerful novel are all deeply scarred by life. There is Ivan's
childhood hero Val Claypool, the next-door neighbor who went to Vietnam
after the mine blew up and lost a leg, and who only now -- over 30 years
later, shows up to attend the funeral of Zo, Ivan's mother's best
friend. There is Ivan's sister Jolene, a beauty queen many times
over with three sons by three different men she chose not to marry and
who polishes her crowns to relax, and there are the rest of the sad, poor,
and oppressed who make up the remnants of the dying coal industry in a
dying town.
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Great
Titles for November 2004
Queen
of Dreams, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni is the mistress of Indian-American angst. I have
read all of her books and featured a number of them on this page.
I myself have spent a lot of time with East Indians and in India, and have
long recognized her characters as realistic and resonant figures.
Rakhi, the heroine of 'Queen of Dreams' is no exception. An artist
and divorced mother living in Berkeley, her life has been overshadowed
by her mother, who is a dream teller, capable of of interpreting the dreams
of others. Rakhi has longed all of her life to share this gift and
be close to her mother and to learn of her mother's past in India, but
it isn't until her mother dies and Rakhi discovers her dream journals that
she begins to gain insight into this mystery. These insights and
then the horror of September 11 re-shape Rakhi's life in ways she couldn't
have anticipated.
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The
Love Wife, by Gish Jen
Gish Jen,
like Divakaruni for the Indian-Americans, is the mistress of Chinese-American
angst. I have featured her books on this page in the past, including
'Who's Irish?' This is a delightful and moving book. Carnegie
Wong, a second-generation Chinese-American, has lived a life dominated
by two women -- his mother, the indomitable Mama Wong, an immigrant whose
wealth is entirely self-made, and Blondie, his big-hearted American wife.
Carnegie and Blondie are the adoptive parents of two Chinese orphans and
one very blonde baby boy of their own, and lead a good-humored and comfortable
life, at least until Mama Wong's death, where her will seems to strike
a huge blow to their marriage from beyond the grave. In her will
Mama Wong stipulates that they must bring a long-lost Chinese cousin to
live with them and take care of the children. Lan, the cousin, is
a bit older than Carnegie and the antithesis to Blondie - quiet, contained,
and completely Chinese. The girls, especially, take to Lan, and soon
Carnegie finds himself stirred by her himself. Blondie finds her
life taking a direction she had never anticipated, and sees her family
falling apart. But the story takes many unexpected turns and resolves
itself in a completely unexpected way. Gish Jen is a wonderful writer,
and this book is her best yet.
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Deception,
by Denise Mina
Denise
Mina is another favorite re-appearing on this page this month. A
crime writer with a unique voice, she writes with an energy and an edge
that I haven't found anywhere else. This book, 'Deception' is no
exception. This book takes the form of a diary written by Lachlan
Harriot, the husband of Dr. Susie Harriot, a psychotherapist who had been
convicted of the gruesome murder of one of her own patients, a serial killer
who had been released from prison. This diary was presumably retrieved
from the deleted computer files from Susie's own computer, and it is the
day-to-day account of Lachlan's experience as his beloved wife goes through
her murder trial and he himself discovers his wife's case notes.
Lachlan reveals himself to be particularly uxorious, a man happy to stay
at home with their young daughter while his wife continues her career,
living only to continue the happiness he feels he has with his wife and
daughter, now interrupted by the strange event of his wife being charged
with a murder she could not have possibly committed. But as he goes
through the boxes of his wife's papers, Lachlan begins to discover that
all was not as it seemed with his beloved Susie, and events begin to play
themselves out for him in a much different, and more shocking, way.
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Crossing
California, by Adam Langer
The 'California'
in the title is California Avenue in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood,
which separates the upper-middle and lower-middle class Jewish families
in 1979. The book covers the years 1979-1981 in the lives of a number
of remarkable and colorful characters who populate this absolutely wonderful
book. Jill Wasserstrom is a studious and idealistic eighth-grader
who finds herself on the left side of every social issue, while her hedonistic
and beautiful older sister Michelle disdains one and all. Their father,
a hapless fellow who can't seem to keep a job or get over the tragic death
of his wife, loves his girls but has no idea of what is going on for either
of them. On the other, wealthier side of California, Larry and Lana
Rovner are Michelle and Jill's counterparts. Larry is a newly observant
Jew, and sings pro-Israel songs with his rock band called 'Rovner!'
and struggles with chronic masturbation. Lana is a budding anorexic
and kleptomaniac, and a little snob, something her mother, a therapist,
recognizes but would just plain rather not deal with. Their father
is obsessed with pornography and while his wife thinks he's a closeted
homosexual, contents himself with visits to peep shows. And finally
Muley Wills, Jill's best friend, is an African-American and a clear genius
who cannot figure out how to get Jill to accept his unrequited love.
All of these people are portrayed against the backdrop of the Iran hostage
crisis and the threat that was the Ayatollah Khomeini (oh, for more peaceful
times) in this delightful story.
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Great
Books for December 2004
The
Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst
Nick Guest
is fresh out of Oxford, twenty years old, and happily ensconced in the
posh home of Toby Fedden, a schoolmate he has idolized for years.
Toby is away, but Nick has ingratiated himself to Gerald Fedden, Toby's
father, a Conservative in Martha Thatcher's parliament, Gerald's beautiful
wife Rachel, and their daughter Catherine, a bipolar young woman who becomes
Nick's responsibility. Nick is gay but he is a virgin, and in the
'anything goes' sexuality of the early eighties, he begins a romp in a
world that stuns him with excitement. He enters a promiscuous, drug-fueled,
and wealthy circle of young people and in particular a dysfunctional relationship
with Wani, an impossibly rich and beautiful East Indian - the 'prince'
of a supermarket dynasty who is ostensibly engaged to a young woman.
But this
is not predominantly a sexual story although towards the end the epidemic
of HIV intrudes into their lives. It is a portrait of what, to me,
was the horror story of the eighties everywhere, but no more horrific than
in Martha Thatcher's England. This book won the Booker Prize and
while it was labeled as the first 'gay' fiction to do so, it is more dazzling
in its portrait of a time, including a couple of elaborate set pieces describing
the parties of the day, including one at the Fedden's home attended by
Mrs. Thatcher, treated as a deity by her Conservative toadies.
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The
First Desire, by Nancy Reisman
It is
1929 in Buffalo, New York, and Goldie Cohen -- schoolteacher, sister, quiet
presence in the Cohen household -- has disappeared. Irving Cohen,
the 20-something youngest brother of the family visits his sister Sadie,
the only married member of the family to let her know about Goldie, and
Sadie knows that something has irrevocably changed. The Cohen household
is ruled with an iron fist by Leo, the father, who owns a jewelry store
and has an openly adulterous relationship with Lillian - a woman who runs
a stationery shop. The final two members of the family - Jo, a woman
working in a law firm, and Celia, whose mental instability prevents her
from functioning successfully in any environment. Goldie had been
the cement holding the family together after the death of their mother,
and her disappearance truly does change everything. Soon we as readers
find out what has happened to Goldie, but it will be many years before
anyone else in the family will know. Through the lives of the Cohens
we are given a description of America itself and American Jews in
particulary during the years of the Great Depression and all the way through
World War II. We see the situation through the eyes of different
family members in different chapters, and the portrait that is painted
is entirely poignant and involving.
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Banishing
Verona, by Margot Livesey
This delightful
novel by Margot Livesey is an exceptional character study and oddly skewed
love story. Zeke is a 29-year-old painter and carpenter who has undergone
a mental breakdown in his past, rendering him phobic about any number of
things, including contact with other human beings, travel, breaking of
routine, and dealing in particular with his mother. He suffers from
Asperger's syndrome, and is happiest functioning in situations with clear,
concise boundaries. His painstakingly well-ordered existence is set
on its ear one day as he is renovating the home of some vacationing clients
when a hugely pregnant woman turns up at the door. Verona says she
is the niece of his clients, and they proceed to spend two days together,
during which Zeke falls madly in love. But when Verona disappears
suddenly on the third morning, and it is revealed that she is in fact unrelated
to his clients, Zeke is desperate. Soon he does find out her real
identity, and they begin to make contact, Verona every bit as besotted
as Zeke, but a mystery surrounding her life creates one obstacle after
another, including Zeke's first plane flight to New York, his parents'
disintegrating marriage, and his father's heart attack. This is a
highly entertaining and intriguing novel, and both Zeke and Verona are
wonderful characters.
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Being
Committed, by Anna Maxted
Anyone
who visits my web page with any regularity knows that Anna Maxted is one
of my reliable favorites. Whether in "Running in Heels", "Getting
Over It", or "Behaving Like Adults", she has a wonderful, quick-witted
contemporary style that turns traditional topics (relationships, relationships,
relationships) into something both hilarious and insightful. In this
novel, Hannah, the victim of a disastrous divorce at the young age of twenty,
simply does not believe in marriage. She is complacent with her
boyfriend of five years, Jason, and sees no reason to rock the boat.
But when Jason takes her on a "romantic" weekend and suddenly proposes,
Hannah feels she has no choice but to refuse, and Jason reacts by immediately
moving on to another engagement -- this time to someone who not only cooks,
but is a "proficient seamstress". To make matters worse, Hannah's
close relationship with her father Roger, tempered by what she seems to
recall as her mother's infidelity many years ago, begins to appear as though
it really isn't as close as she's always believed. Hannah is forced
to explore what it was about her marriage to Jack that ended it, and what
it is about her relationship to her father and mother that might not be
what she has always assumed.
This is humor and heartache
at its best.
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Eventide,
by Kent Haruf
This novel
is the follow-up to "Plainsong", a quietly dignified novel featured on
this page a couple of years ago. It revisits the small town of Holt,
Colorado, where the bachelor brothers Harold and Raymond McPheron took
in pregnant teenager Victoria Roubideaux when she had no place to go.
Victoria and her daughter are now integral parts of their lives, and they
are facing another change as she prepares to move to Fort Collins and go
to college. We also meet some new characters in this book, including
11-year old DJ Kephart and his grandfather Walter. An orphan, DJ
lives with his grandfather and is old beyond his years, cooking, studying,
and taking care of his grandfather during his monthly trips to the tavern.
When a terrible ranching accident disrupts the McPheron brothers' life
forever, and Walter Kephart falls ill with pneumonia, DJ's life becomes
intertwined with many other members of the community. We also meet
Luther and Betty, a mentally-challenged poor couple who are the parents
of Richie and Joy Rae, children who are subjected to abuse at school and
then at the hands of Betty's cousin Hoyt who wreaks havoc on them, forcing
Social Services to remove the children from Luther and Betty's custody.
This is a small town and its inhabitants cross each other's paths
with frequency. Kent Haruf writes with a simple style that reveals
complexity and most especially, profound humanity, in his characters.
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