Tag: book review

Affliction

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Banks, Russell. Affliction. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Wade Whitehouse could be an ordinary guy. He could be that small town, hard-working, have a beer with the boys, all-around nice guy. Except bad luck not only follows Wade like a hungry dog, it bites him when he’s down. No matter how caring Wade Whitehouse is on the inside, no matter how well-meaning he is, when things go wrong people know not to stand in his way. The smarter ones walk away. The entire tiny town of Lawford, New Hampshire knows Wade and his troubles. It’s no secret he has a mean streak that runs to the center of his very core. Alcohol and a nagging toothache only widen that streak until it takes over his whole being. In theory it’s not all Wade’s fault. Abused by his father during his formative years, Wade loses his wife, home and daughter when he himself turns violent. All he wants is more time with his daughter, a decent paycheck and a simple way of life. When none of these things come easily Wade sets out to unveil the truth and right the wrongs, using violence as the vehicle to do so. What makes Wade’s story so fascinating is that it is told from a younger brother’s perspective. Being in Massachusetts he is a comfortable distance from both his brother and the memories that have scarred him as well.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Oh, Brother” (p 180).

South Wind Through the Kitchen

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David, Elizabeth. South Wind Through the Kitchen. New York: North Point Press, 1998.

The cover of South Wind Through the Kitchen has Elizabeth David posing with a glass of wine in her hand. You can tell the shot is 1950’s staged. Elizabeth is supposed to be lounging with a glass of wine in her kitchen. Instead, she is delicately leaning against a counter, one foot angled just so from her body. She looks away from the camera with only a hint of expression on her face. She does not look comfortable and yet pulls off a sophisticated housewife glamor.

South Wind Through the Kitchen is a collection of Elizabeth David’s best everything – best recipes, best essays, best foot forward (as the cover photograph implies) compiled by friends and family. It is a multi-personality publication, part cookbook, part leisure reading, part reference. Any one person can pick it up for a multitude of reasons, whether to graze lightly through its pages or gorge on them entirely. It’s a great sampling of Elizabeth David’s writing throughout her career.
As for my reading pleasure, I found myself grazing lightly for in the Book Lust challenge I will be reading French Provincial Cooking, Italian Food, A Book of Mediterranean Food, and English Bread and Yeast Cookery. I felt that it was only fair that I skip those excerpts (since I’ll be reading them again in their entirety at some point) and concentrate on the commentary and the excerpts from the books I won’t be reading: French Country Cooking, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, Harvest of the Cold Months, and French Country Cooking.

My favorite part of South Wind Through the Kitchen was the praise for Elizabeth David not only as a cook, but as an accomplished writer. For example, one favorite line illustrates that praise, “I remember marveling at the quality of the writing, sitting entranced on a radiator…and quite forgetting to poach the eggs at all. A constant danger with E.D. is being distracted from the actual cooking. -Prue Leith” (p 61).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Food for Thought” (p 91).

Truth & Bright Water

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King, Thomas. Truth & Bright Water. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999.

The title of this book fascinates me. Here’s why: I’m reading the book in honor of April being National Dog Month (indeed there is a dog named Soldier in the book), yet the story is about two coming-of-age Native boys. The title comes from the geography. Truth is an American town on one side of a river and Bright Water is a reserve on the Canadian side of the same river. Truth and Bright Water are sister cities, or tiny towns to be exact.

Truth & Bright Water is more about a Native teenage boy named Tecumseh than it is about the small towns of Truth and Bright Water which he calls home. Tecumseh is fifteen and life for him consists of keeping peace with his separated parents, keeping his abused cousin company, learning how to drive, trying to find a job, understanding what it means to be Indian during tourist season, unraveling the mysteries surrounding his aunt, and finding things like a baby’s skull with his dog, Soldier. While Tecumseh is an average kid his community is anything but. Truth & Bright Water opens with Tecumseh and his cousin, Lum, spying on a woman who not only empties a suitcase over a cliff, but appears to have jumped off after it. Was it suicide? Then there is Monroe Swimmer, a famous artist returned home, who lives in a church and has big plans to make said church disappear. And what of the baby’s skull found with a ribbon threaded through its eye holes?

There are several quotes that I liked. Here’s one, “…maybe ground squirrels… are just like people. some are lucky, and some aren’t. Some get to drive nice cars, and some end up by the side of the road” (p 91).

There are several scenes that I also liked. I thought the dialogue between Tecumseh and any adult was amusingly accurate. Tecumseh would ask a question and to avoid answering it the adult would ask a different question over it or simply ignore his question completely. In several instances Tecumseh and the adult are having two different conversations that only converge if the subject isn’t sensitive. Here’s an example of a conversation between Tecumseh and his mother who has been gone on vacation:
“So, how was Waterton?”
“”You need to put your sleeping bag away,” says my mother.
“Did you stay at that fancy hotel?”
“And you forgot to knock all the mud off your shoes.”
“I suppose you took the bus out to the lake” (p 203).

Tecumseh wants information about where his mother went and she is clearly ignoring the questions. Tecumseh sums it up later by saying, “Sometimes the best way to get my mother talking about a particular topic is to change the subject and then work your way back to where you wanted to be” (p 204). Classic. The whole book is full of scenes like this. I liked King’s writing so much that I’m definitely adding him as a favorite author on LibraryThing.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and again in “Great Dogs of Fiction” (p 104).

Belshazzar’s Daughter

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Nadel, Barbara. Belshazzar’s Daughter. New York: Felony & Mayhem, 2006.

The pronouncement, “The Donna Leon of Istanbul” meant nothing to me, I am sorry to say. It didn’t make me like to book any better. Nor did the curious “icon” information. According to the publisher the icon of a gun meant I was holding a book from the “Hard Boiled” category, meaning the language was going to be stronger, the bad guys a little badder, the violence a little more graphic. An “R” rating, if you will – only I would give this book an “X” rating for the weird sex scenes. Natalia seems to like her sex with a gun and rough…and that’s all I’ll say about that.

The overall story of Belshazzar’s Daughter was a little tedious. Technically, there is no daughter of Belshazzar in the story. It’s the story of Englishman Robert Cornelius and his obsession with Natalia Gulcu. It is also about Inspector Ikmen and his quest to solve the brutal murder of an elderly Jew. Robert Cornelius happens to be in the area when the crime is committed and becomes a suspect due to his prejudice-laced past. The crime scene is overly horrific and obviously hate-driven with addition of a giant swastika, but Inspector Ikmen isn’t convinced. Using historical profiling, Ikmen starts to unravel the mystery of who killed Leonid Meyer. At the same time Natalia’s family history is revealed. Their history is stranger than even the murder.

With the addition of several smaller plots Belshazzar’s Daughter is a drawn-out thriller-mystery. The sex scenes are over the top while the characters are watered down to the point of stereotyping. First, I found myself annoyed with just the character of Robert and his blinded obsession with the heaving bosoms of Natalia, but by the end I didn’t care for any of them.

BTW: I didn’t find any quotes that jumped out at me.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “Crime is a Globetrotter: Turkey” (p 61).

The Yearling

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Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Yearling. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to get a copy of The Yearling with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. It’s the edition I remember from my childhood, with “Penny Tells the Story of the Bear Fight” (p54) being my favorite. I remember thinking it was the perfect illustration of story-telling and could easily take place in a fish house on a remote island.

The Yearling is tragic. It’s the story of Jody Baxter, a twelve year old boy growing up in Florida in the late 1800s. Jody’s family is poor. While living remotely is a blessing for privacy it is hard on employment and sustainable nourishment. The Baxters depend on their farm animals for food in the leaner months. It’s this food supply that drives the story of The Yearling. First, there is the emergence of Old Slewfoot, a bigger than life grizzly bear that manages to kill the family’s prized sow. This sow, Betsy, would have been responsible for offspring that could have sustained the family through the upcoming long winter months. Then, later in the story, there is the dilemma of Flag. Through a series of events young Jody has come to adopt a fawn, a pet he has dearly wanted. As this fawn grows it creates conflict within the family. He begins to eat their hard earned corn supply and the corn, like Betsy’s offspring, was supposed to feed the Baxter family throughout the colder months. Ma Baxter is the iron will of the family. She sees the trouble the family is in are in if Flag continues to eat them out of house and home. When she takes matters into her own hands Jody childishly runs away. His return is one of adult understanding. This is ultimately a story of emerging maturity, of new knowledge and acceptance of sacrifice.

Favorite line: Penny Baxter, Jody’s father is about to set out to hunt Old Slewfoot. He tells his wife, “Don’t look for us ’til you see us” (p 26). This reminded me of a saying I first heard on Monhegan, “Hard tellin’ not knowing.” Classic old timer wisdom.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Florida Fiction” (p 89). I have to admit, aside from the alligator jerky there was little to remind me of Florida…

Armful of Warm Girl

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Spackman, William M. An Armful of Warm Girl.New york: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.

Barely 130 pages, this was a silly little book. I found myself rereading sentences because I wasn’t sure what I just read. The entire text seems to be written in a tongue-in-cheek manner. To sum up the plot of An Armful of Warm Girl, it is about a man who, after being divorced by his wife, flees to New York City where he hasn’t been in over seventeen years. There he bounces from place to place looking for a substitute for his wife. He has many to chose from since upon his arrival to New York he is instantly attracted to just about every young girl in a skirt. After re-establishing a relationship with one such woman he is pointedly pursued by yet another woman. In the end he has to decide between the two.

I didn’t really have any favorite quotes. There is a great deal of gushing and carrying on in the dialogue. It would have been funny to quote some of that, but out of context it really wouldn’t have made much sense. For a sample of what I mean go to page six when Nicholas Romney rings up his adult daughter in New York. She can hardly believe her “darling daddy” is in town…without mummy.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “And the Award for Best Title Goes To…” (p 13.) I love the title of this book, but it would have been more appropriate to call it “Which Girl is the Warm Armful?”

Making of a Quagmire

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Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1964.

The only way American citizens were in touch with the Vietnam War, at all, was through the eyes of reporters. They were responsible for bringing the fighting as well as the politics of South Vietnam into the forefront of public awareness. They were credited for keeping the public more informed than in the dark. It has been said that not many could cite what we were fighting for “in the jungle.” Not many more could find Vietnam on a map. Yet, with the publishing of the Making of a Quagmire David Halberstam sets up to explain just how involved the U.S. was before the conflict erupted. In a comprehensive manner he explains our country’s commitment to the political struggle in South Vietnam. Despite pressure on all political sides Halberstam never compromised his view of the crisis. He refused to publish propaganda to support either side. The Making of a Quagmire is simply unflinching and honest.

Most interesting quote: “In many areas the war had come to a virtual halt because vital units were practicing for the parade” (p 45). I find this interesting because Halberstam goes on to say, “It seemed unbelievable, but it was true; the public was not to be allowed to watch the ceremonies” (p 46).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter simply called, “Vietnam” (p 238). Also in More Book Lust in the chapter called, “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p 112). Interestingly enough in both chapters Nancy Pearl gives Halberstam’s book the complete title of  The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era yet nowhere on my copy of  Making of a Quagmire is that subtitle printed.

Mountains Beyond Mountains

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Kidder, Tracy.  Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. New York: Random House, 2003.

This was given to me as a gift, a well-timed, meaningful gift. I added it to the February list in honor to the Haitian people.

Mountains Beyond Mountains can be seen as a biography about Dr. Paul Farmer within the context of his love for Haiti. Mountains Beyond Mountains can also be seen as a travel book, a great way to learn about Haiti’s culture and climate, it’s people and politics. Haiti is a conflicted country so there is a lot to tell. Kidder is sensitive to Farmer’s intense passion for medicine and does not diminish the magnitude of sacrifices Farmer has made for it. Relationships and health suffer when Farmer single-minded tenacity neglects everything else.

There were a lot of really good quotes so my advice is just this: read it for yourself.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Guilt-Inducing Books” (p 110).

Jennifer Government

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Barry, Max. Jennifer Government. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

Jennifer Government is fast paced and thrilling. Max Barry has everything from corporate greed, kidnapping, the NRA, and of course, murder. Set in the plausible near future there is a level of sexiness to the way Barry writes. He makes his characters move around each other in a cat and mouse manner, always flirting while outsmarting each other. In the center is Jennifer Government. She lives in a world where people take the place of their employment as their last names (Hack Nike and Jennifer Government and Billy NRA to name a few), 911 won’t respond to emergencies unless the capability for payment can be established, and taxes are outlawed. Jennifer could be the next Laura Croft, fighting old demons and new crimes. So, when her daughter is kidnapped things get personal. But, that’s the climax of the story. It all starts with Nike cooking up a marketing scheme to build of street cred for a new line of $2,500 sneakers by committing murder…

 Favorite quotes, “but he liked New Zealand, he really did. At first he was apprehensive; it was so far away, tucked down in the bottom of the world like something Australia coughed up” (p 22), and “Companies claimed to be highly  responsive, Jennifer thought, but you only had to chase a screaming man through their offices to realize it wasn’t true” (p 285).

Then there is this favorite scene: Hack is trying to tell the police his girlfriend might have killed someone with a toaster. The agent is not listening, arguing with Hack for not having an appointment (p 69-70). It’s an amusing scene but it gets even funnier. Hack finally gets to see a different agent. Hoping to be taken seriously he again tries to report the murder. Only this time the new agent is preoccupied with the capabilities of the toaster. “Can you do bagels in that?” he asks. I can just see the scene played by Nicholas Cage (as Hack) trying desperately to get someone to check on an alleged murder and Steve Martin as the second agent distracted by a bagel-toasting toaster.

I love that there is a Max in Max Barry’s story. It’s a small part, but a highly effective one.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Plots for Plotzing” (p 183).

Goodnight, Nebraska

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McNeal, Tom. Goodnight, Nebraska. New York: Vintage, 1999.

This could have been a movie for me. It is the coming of age, and redemptive story of Randall Hunsacker. Although he is just a teenager Randall has been sent to Goodnight, Nebraska to turn his life around. He has escaped a violent past and left behind a broken family in Salt Lake City. Redemption is not what Randall is seeking, at least not at first. Goodnight is a small tight-knit community and Randall’s inclusion is not readily welcomed. He rebels with ridicule in letters to his sister and remains a mystery in school. The only place Randall allows himself to feel anything is by being violent on the football field. Over the course of ten years Randall slowly starts to settle down with a wife and an occupation. It is during this time that Randall realizes redemption is what he needed all along.

My one complaint? At one point the story breaks away from Randall and follows his wife, Marcy, when she decides she needs a fresh start. After Randall starts drinking and becomes progressively violent she leaves Randall behind and escapes to California. There is no real explanation for Randall’s behavior and you almost want the marriage to fall apart.

Favorite lines – one really short and one really long: “Me. I believe in me” (p 126), and “…there are some kinds of love, the ones we’re all after, that are meant for open air and natural light, but there are other kinds too, more than we’d like to think, that come out of the dark and drag us away and tear parts from our bodies, kinds of love that work in their own dim rooms, and harbor more sad forms of intimacy and degradation and sustenance that those standing outside those rooms can ever dream of” (p 260).

BookLust Twist: From more Book Lust in the chapter called, “The Great Plains: Nebraska” (p 108).

Wall of the Sky

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Lethem, Jonathan. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye: stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998.

I like that way Nancy Pearl describes Lethem’s style of writing. Basically she says (in Book Lust) you never get the same book twice. Even within his short stories in The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye you don’t get the same short story twice. Nothing is the same. Even the style of writing is different. Like a box of chocolates with only one candy containing chocolate…

Here’s a list of the short stories:

  • The Happy Man ~ a weird sort of deal-with-the-devil story about a man who is dead, but isn’t.
  • Vanilla Drunk ~ a story that mentions Michael Jordan over 40 times.
  • Light and the Sufferer ~ brothers, an alien, drugs and New York City. What’s not to love?
  • Forever, Said the Duck ~ a virtual party where virtually no one is who they say they are.
  • Five Fukcs ~ I have no idea how to describe this story. It’s all about getting screwed over…
  • The Hardened Criminal ~ a very strange story about a man who ends up in the same prison cell as his father…only his father is built into the cement wall.
  • Sleepy People ~ there is a group of people who sleep through anything…including sex.

Because of Lethem’s copyright statement I am not going to quote favorite lines (and yes, I had a few). Just leave it that I liked the entire book (even though I would have liked more description about the Sufferer from “Light and the Sufferer”).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 145).

Turtle Diary

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Hoban, Russell. Turtle Diary. New York: Random House, 1975.

I love Russell Hoban’s work. When Turtle Diary didn’t arrive at the library in time for my surgery I promised myself I would read it anyway – no matter when it came in. It was supposed to be a February book in honor of two things – Hoban’s birth month and a birthday gift to myself (being about sea turtles and all). Instead I read it in one day on March 2nd.

Turtle Diary is alternating diary entries about a singular subject. Two lonely Londoners are captivated by three sea turtles at the London Zoo. William G. and Neaera H.  both write about how lonely they look and what it would be like to free them from captivity. Soon their fascination turns to a mutual obsession and wordlessly they begin to hatch a plan…with the inside help of a senior zoo keeper. What is remarkable about William and Neaera is their ability to rationalize their off-kilter worlds. The way they think, feel, and interact with the relationships around them is poignant and sad.

Favorite lines from William: “There must be a lot of people in the world being wondered about by people who don’t see them any more” (p 16), ” Maybe I’m just one of those people so accustomed to being miserable that they use the material of any situation to fuel their misery” (p 68), and “No place for the self to sit down and catch its breath” (p 95).

Favorite lines from Neaera: “I live alone, wear odds and ends, I have resisted vegetarianism and I don’t keep cats” ( 11), “I’m always afraid of being lost, the secret navigational art of the turtles seems a sacred thing to me” (p 31), and “Polperro seemed to me like a streetwalker asking for money to maintain her virginity” (p 38). Someone else had underlined that sentence, too.

PS ~ this was made into a movie, too.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Russell Hoban: Too Good To Miss” (p 113).

Certain World

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Auden, W. H. A Certain World: a commonplace book. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Commonplace books are, in my opinion, an easy way to “write” a book. Compile passages, find poems, collect essays and whatnot, make a few comments about why these selections were made and what they mean to the writer and suddenly a book is born. Someone produced a commonplace book. I think I would enjoy them more if the compiler took the time to respond to every inclusion. Why are these poems important? Did you agree with that essay? W.H. Auden definitely could have added more personal commentary and perspective to round out A Certain World.

From Michael Alexander to Andrew Young W.H. Auden includes such well-known authors as William Blake, Anton Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, and Henry David Thoreau. In addition to excerpts, poetry, plays, and essays Auden includes riddles, puns, epithets, and jokes. A wide range of subjects like sex, birds, God, machines, time, commas, and Eskimos are mingled with emotions like rage, love, dejection and hope. An eclectic and entertaining mix of topics are compiled. The sole regret is that very few include commentary on their importance to the author.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Commonplace Books” (obviously), (p 52).

Warriors Don’t Cry

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Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High. New York: Pocket Books, 1994.

If you stop and think about it, 1957 was not that long ago. Think about the span of a lifetime, on average. Think about the course of history and how slowly it moves. 1957, given all that, was yesterday. While we do not have clear lines of segregation that we did back then (water fountains, bathrooms and backs of buses to name a few) we still have the invisible lines that separate white from black. If that were not the case we wouldn’t have the rash of “firsts” that we have had recently: first black coach to win the Superbowl, first black President of the United States…These firsts would have happened years ago if the invisible line didn’t still exist to a certain degree.

I cannot imagine Melba Patillo Beals’s life. One of the scariest scenes for me was when she first tried to go to Central High after desegregation was declared. The hatred and violence she described seemed subhuman, barbaric even. Could we really live in a society that contained so much hatred? The obvious answer is yes, and we still do.

True to Beals’s title, Warriors Don’t Cry is a “searing memoir of the battle to integrate.” Every day was a struggle. Civil rights were hardly observed in a civil manner. Utter hatred spawned uncontrolled violence. For Melba Beals this hatred was not something she read about or glanced at on the television. She live it in every step she took. She experienced it first hand simply because of the color of her skin. How brave of her to write it all down! How lucky for us she decided to remember it all! Warriors Don’t Cry is not an eye-opener. We have seen these things all along. Her memoir keeps it all in view.

While I didn’t find any quotes that struck me one way or another I was moved by Melba’s experience with her “own” people. In addition to whites who were having an extremely hard time accepting integration, there were a fair number of blacks who didn’t want it either. Melba was making enemies on both sides of the color divide.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Civil Rights and Wrongs” (p 49).

Hiding Place

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Azzopardi, Trezza. The Hiding Place. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

    I have to start by saying I would love to meet William Gedney just to ask him about the photograph on the cover of The Hiding Place. I guess Francine Kass (who designed the cover) would be more appropriate to ask of these questions. Nevertheless, here are the things I would ask of either:

    1. The girls are in the kitchen obviously paring something (apples? potatoes?). Why do they all have one leg up; why are they standing like storks?
    2. The painting of the Last Supper – was that meant to be symbolic since the girls are standing in a kitchen?
    3. There is a fourth pair of feet and evidence of a little knee behind the child leaning on the refrigerator. Who is she and why isn’t she more visible? I took this to be Dolores, the narrator of The Hiding Place. She is the youngest daughter and paid attention to the least. More symbolism?

    The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi is sad, sad, sad. Dolores Gauci is the youngest of six daughters born to Maltese immigrants Frankie and Mary. Her view on the world is both tragic and innocent. She is at once stoic and childish; solemn and naive. What Dolores sees is a family slowly dismantled by a gambling and always losing father. As her siblings are bartered away Dolores must face a grim childhood with fewer and fewer protections as even her mother’s will to survive slips away. Serving as the backdrop for the Gauci family is the 1960s landscape of Cardiff, Wales, an immigration town populated with citizens hardened enough to do just about anything to survive.

    Favorite lines: “Her fury travels down the spoon and into Luca’s dinner. I am breast-fed: I get rage straight from the source” (p 22), “As with all truth, there is another version” (p 75), and “She’ll be scrubbing the steps again, probably – it’s a job best done in anger” (p 126).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).