The Book of Speculation
by Erika Swyler
Easy Reader (3/28/2015)
This is the story of a family forever damned to watery death by -- a book?, a curse?, genetics? What becomes certain to the protagonist, Simon Watson, librarian, is that his family history is disturbing and there may be immediate repercussions for its living descendants. So far, so good. There is a story here, and some strong place and time opportunities, but in the end, everybody could have been living in the same time and place. For me, there wasn't adequate explanation of the occult side of things, though the characters were attractive and I could see this as a movie. It seemed to me the Easy Reader version of a real sic-fi thriller.
The Quick
by Lauren Owen
Not So Quick (4/9/2014)
This story of late Victorian London had little new or thrilling to offer- no romance, no suspense, no clever twists and turns. The ending was totally predictable. It was not badly written, but not well-written, either. All in all, very average.
The Cairo Affair
by Olen Steinhauer
Almost thrilling (12/4/2013)
The main character in The Cairo Station is Sophie. A Harvard graduate who married a fellow Harvard grad in 1991, Sophie agreed with husband Emmett that America wasn't where real life was happening. They went to Eastern Europe on their honeymoon, Sophie acquiescing despite her desire to see Paris, and then spent a few days in a small village in the Balkans just as the war was heating up. There they met Zora, a mysterious and compelling woman who showed them the sights. Two incidents from this time haunted Sophie in future years. First, her souvenir bust of Lenin was stolen by a child in the streets, and second, they became involved in a life and death situation whose details comprise the better part of the plot and take a while to emerge. Suffice to say that both incidents seemed to impact Sophie equally, though the latter would be the one to cause trouble 20 years later when they were stationed with the US government in Cairo and Zora turned up again.
In early 2011, the Arab Spring had begun. The Libyans were in revolt, and Cairo was abuzz. Agents from different countries vied for information. It was impossible to tell who was lying, who was just ignorant, and what the heck was going on. Were the Americans trying to hijack the revolution now that the Libyan masses had taken first steps to freedom themselves, or was Ghadafi using an old CIA plan to rid himself of opponents? Here begins the real plot, and suddenly the book becomes all about misdirection. Stories are told and retold from different perspectives. Characters speculate about the myriad possibilities. Is X lying? Does he even know what's going on? What if this is true? On the other hand, maybe that is true? What is truth? Who can know? Who are the heroes, which of the characters has altruistic motives and which are cynical? Which are devoted to their country and which to money? As the story unfolds, refolds and unfolds again, the extent of Sophie's involvement becomes clear, layer by layer.
The writing is average. The character development is average for a thriller. An attempt was made to explain the various motivations of the characters, but failed in my opinion. Sometimes I actually cringed at the sex scenes. I was put off by the cliches about Americans--there is a scene at Logan Airport near the end which was offensive and filled with trite observations. The plot was average. The misdirection was massive and tried my patience.
I would give it an average grade overall.
Lost Luggage
by Jordi Punti
Four of a Kind (8/12/2013)
I enjoyed reading Lost Luggage despite the fact that I skimmed large parts of the book. It reminded me of The Tiger's Wife in that traumatic issues were discussed, but without real feeling, making them more like fables or legends than realistic fiction. I also thought both books were engaging in plot and structure despite flaws in the development of the main character (Grandfather in The Tiger's Wife and Gabriel in Lost Luggage), and excessive development of secondary characters. The plot of Lost Luggage is basically simple, but the twists at the end made me glad I read it all the way through. I don't think it would be the very best book club read.
Golden Boy
by Abigail Tarttelin
Better than Defending Jacob (12/31/2012)
Golden Child is the story of a nearly perfect child whose caring and successful parents, confronted by a dilemma involving this child and which has implications far beyond their family circle, disagree on what should be done to the extent that the family fractures.
So far this sounds much like Defending Jacob, and it is very reminiscent, but Golden Child is better in that the parents are not totally blind and deaf, the science is not ridiculously exaggerated, the child's feelings are included along with those of the sibling, a friend, the doctor involved, as well as both parents, giving a much more balanced and complete picture, and finally, the resolution is not insane. I liked the writing style and the structure, which I thought opened up the characters and made them much more three-dimensional. The resolution of the problem is nuanced as well as complicated and has the advantage of being possible in the real world assuming the essential normality of the characters involved. If you like Defending Jacob, you'll like this better!
With or Without You: A Memoir
by Domenica Ruta
Too high up (11/25/2012)
Domenica Ruta is a courageous woman, and an admirable fighter for her own life. With or Without You is the story of her first 30 years and her struggle to recover from an abusive childhood. Nikki uses humor and her great intelligence to protect herself when her family, especially her mother, exposes her to harm. Even while she understands her mother's flaws, she is strongly connected to her. She frees herself by stages, and as Nikki's alcoholism grows worse and worse, she inches towards a decision in favor of survival. Nikki's story is sadly familiar. She is an insightful writer who has learned to hide her feelings so thoroughly that she tells her own story from 30,000 feet, as it were. I don't know if Nikki will ever come to terms with her feelings, and if she does, she might just choose to keep it to herself. I would love to hear from her again in this or any other format, but on the basis of her first book, I would especially like to see her try fiction.
Sharp: A Memoir
by David Fitzpatrick
Sharp (6/25/2012)
It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the suffering of the author; it's not that I don't admire his writing skill. I actually feel little guilty that I wasn't more moved by this tale of Fitzpatrrick's sad life as a victim, a non-suicidal cutter, and a manic-depressive professional mental patient. I always have trouble summoning up much empathy for people who accept victimhood as passively as David Fitzpatrick did. It's my nature to fight with all my strength, and I don't understand those who submit. Fitzpatrick tells us that self-punishers like him are competitive, and usually stop in their thirties when they begin to understand the essential futility of continuing on this path. David, on the other hand, didn't stop cutting and burning himself until he was over 40, a degree of stubborn hubris that he appears to think is his proudest life achievement. He leaves hints about sexual preoccupations, about family sadism, about religious confusions, and severe drug abuse, but he never puts it all together. His self-punishing, which was always non-suicidal, still seems to be his main source of self-esteem, judging by the attention he devotes to his episodes. Getting better is a process and this is where he is right now, but not where he may end up. I wish him all the luck in the world.
The Age of Miracles: A Novel
by Karen Thompson Walker
Almost good (5/13/2012)
I was immediately captured by this book and its main character, a sixth grader with a crush on the mysterious boy on the skate board, who while grappling with puberty, must also come to terms with the end of life on Earth. I loved the idea of the sudden and inexplicable lengthening of days and nights, and the way that small alterations in the way the Earth spun on its axis quite gradually changed everything about our complicated ecosystem. But in the end, neither the plot nor the science could live up to its early promise. I would not hesitate to recommend The Age of Miracles for YA readers, but not for adult fans of dystopian novels.
A Land More Kind Than Home: A Novel
by Wiley Cash
a land more kind than home (3/3/2012)
"A Land More Kind Than Home" is a thriller set in a small town in the mountains of rural North Carolina. It is the story of a local church whose practices are extreme and dangerous, and the impact of this unhealthy religion and its sociopathic pastor on one family. The novel starts slowly, but builds to a stunning conclusion. Using three narrators, the author takes an old story and multiplies its impact, effectively building suspense by means of both structure and language. I found myself racing through the book to the next revelation, and finished it in a single day.
Losing Clementine: A Novel
by Ashley Ream
Losing Clementine (2/3/2012)
Clementine Pritchard is a financially successful artist who has made a life decision. Her mental illness is unendurable, with her prescribed medications or without them. She decides she has no choice but to commit suicide, and gives herself thirty days to get everything ready so that those left behind will not be forced to clean up a big mess --literally and figuratively. In her disorderly way, she begins to set her affairs in order, one day at a time, revealing along the way what has brought her to this desperate decision. The book is funny and ultimately touching. I was enjoying it moderately until the middle, when it suddenly became a book I couldn't put down. Clementine, as the narrator, tells a story as mixed up as she is, but have patience. All will be revealed, and it's worth the effort.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
by Katherine Boo
Ordinary Lives (1/7/2012)
This book requires reflection, and the writing is so densely packed with information and interpretation that I had to stop reading after every few pages to digest it all. Katharine Boo is a journalist who worked among the Hindu and Muslim people of the Mumbai slum called Annawadi, following them for years until they forgot she was filming; prodding them to express their thoughts aloud; hoping that her efforts would somehow illuminate universal concepts about global development, poverty and unfairness. She makes the lives she chronicles understandable to people who've never missed a meal or contracted jaundice or worms from a sewage lake that adjoins their neighborhood. And she makes slum dwellers precious to us by revealing their inner lives.
Her heroes and heroines are clawing their way up the economic ladder by stealing, swindling, and defrauding the government, charitable organizations, and each other. Hospital workers sell life-saving drugs in the streets while nurses refuse to touch patients in the wards. Policemen extort citizens who are beginning to make money, ruining their lives. Death comes early and often as neighbors refuse to help a man who needs an operation and step over a man lying injured on the sidewalk, leaving him to die. Suicide and accidental deaths are common occurrences. In this environment, Boo says, the need to beat out others in order to survive strangles empathy as well as organized resistance to corruption. Each family must be dedicated only to their own survival, and must put aside finer feelings in order to make progress into the middle class.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Boo suggests that it is not foolish to hope in Annawadi. She maintains that life is improving for the impoverished, although very slowly and unevenly. The playing field is tilted against them, and they are prevented by their condition from joining together to reform the governments which ought to be helping them but are too often making things worse due to corruption.
This is a stunning and sometimes difficult book to read, but well worth a bit of discomfort. I think that Boo succeeded admirably in finding universal truth in the lives of ordinary people, and I think some lessons could be learned for our own lives and country.
The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel
by Adam Johnson
Trauma narrative (10/13/2011)
Adam Johnson describes his new book, The Orphan Master's Son as a trauma narrative, and it is. But it's also beautifully complex, densely plotted and peopled with memorable characters struggling to live in the twisted world of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. It's horrifying, exciting, touching, funny, demanding, and impossible to describe adequately in 50 words. If you love David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, I believe you will adore The Orphan Master's Son.
The Kitchen Daughter: A Novel
by Jael McHenry
Cooking with Spirits (4/3/2011)
Ginny Selvaggio is a 26-year-old woman who lives at home with her father, a doctor, and her overprotective mother. As the book opens, she is attending her parents' funeral. They have died years before their time, in a vacation cabin, of carbon monoxide poisoning. It becomes obvious immediately that Ginny has a problem. She cannot look people in the eyes or read social cues. She responds to touch by screaming or escaping into a dark closet for hours. She has a photographic memory and becomes engrossed in esoteric topics. The author has Ginny tell her own story, and does a fine job depicting her disability via her behavior and her thoughts. As a psychologist who worked with children, I was able to diagnose Ginny's problem long before she herself became aware of what made her a little different. She was preoccupied with the idea of normality, and cut up advice columns, pasted them in a book, and read them often to remind herself that nobody really knows what normal is. Ginny has a younger sister named Amanda who feels it necessary to take over where their mother left off in protecting Ginny from the world. Without consulting her, Amanda decides to sell the family home and make Ginny move in with her and her husband and children. Ginny is aghast and gathers her strength to resist Amanda's plan. Forced to take care of herself, Ginny improves her coping skills. Instead of hiding in the dark, she thinks about carmelized onions, or sesame oil, or a favorite recipe. Ginny's mother taught her to cook, and she cooks for comfort rather than to actually eat. After the funeral, Ginny makes the bread soup that her Italian grandmother made and wrote out for her on a recipe card. As she finishes, her grandmother's ghost suddenly appears on the kitchen stool, wearing a Shaker sweater and white Keds (she died in the '90's) She gives Ginny a cryptic warning, and the rest of the book involves Ginny sleuthing to find out what the warning means. She deduces that all she has to do to summon a person's ghost is to cook a recipe written in their hand. But it only works once, so she has to be sure she knows what she wants to ask. This is not so easy, and she summons several ghosts before she can understand the issues. She is supported in her fight to remain independent by her mother's cleaning lady, the Cuban-Jewish Gert, who not only gives her good advice, but also provides her with a way to get out of the house and make a life for herself. There were a couple of twists that caught me by surprise, which usually means I'm so busy enjoying the details that I don't stop to think about where the book is going. There is a lesson for us all in Ginny's growing understanding that appearances can't be trusted, that normal is indefinable, and that communication is difficult at the best of times.
Three Seconds
by Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom
Three Seconds (11/29/2010)
I wanted to review "Three Seconds" because I am a huge fan of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the pioneers and unchallenged masters of the Swedish police procedural, as well as Henning Mankell, who has followed in their footsteps with his charming and clever Wallender mysteries. "Three Seconds" is heir to the traditional formula in that it combines an intricate plot with pointed criticism of the Swedish state. Several crimes that are initially thought to be unrelated are shown to be part of the same larger picture. The lead detective is flawed, eccentric and interpersonally-challenged. The humor is missing, however, and therefore the book reads much more like a thriller a la James Patterson. I was distracted by the repetition of information, and by the occasional Britishisms in the translation (Can you really describe the indisposition of a cold-blooded criminal as a "dicky tummy?") At first, the rapid switches between stories and characters was difficult to follow. On the other hand, the plot was engrossing and the jumpy structure probably enhances the suspense as intended. There is a sort of a trick ending, but the impact is reduced by the fact that the reader has already figured it out, and is just hanging around to find out how it was done. In spite of its flaws, I enjoyed reading "Three Seconds", and I would rate it an above-average thriller that should appeal to those who like this genre.
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