Tag: book review

Company of Three

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O’Connor, Varley. Company of Three. Chapel hill: Algonquin Books, 2003.

There is mystery that surrounds Company of Three. At face value it is the story of three actors struggling to see their name in lights on Broadway. New york City in the 1970s is a hub for creative activity such as dance and the theater and Robert, Patrick and Irene stand in the spotlight, ready as ever for their close ups. Company of Three follows their successes, their failures, their struggles. It examines their friendships and love affairs and what they mean to one another. Ultimately, it is the story of how far they would go for their careers and for each other.

In truth, it is that friendship that has me scratching my head. At one point in the story the three friends vow to always be there for one another and someday run a theater together. They even seal the deal in blood. Yet, despite their close bond and the pact they have made, Patrick keeps some very dark secrets from his friends. Curiously, he lies continuously so his connection to Robert and Irene is questionable.

Best quote (and why I think people take up acting): “Acting was not the departure from myself that I thought it would be, but rather a journey into the very parts of myself I thought I would rescue me from” (p 57).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “All the World’s a Stage” (p 7).

Why Things Bite Back

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Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

I first became interested in Why Things Bite Back when I thought of the title in relation to health and flu vaccinations. The more aggressively we try to fight the ills of the seasonal flu the more resilient the virus gets.  Now with the vast-reaching and rapid spread of the H1N1 virus Why Things Bite Back seems even more telling.

Edward Tenner takes an in-depth look at the technology that first set out to make our lives easier, more convenient, and faster: technologies that include chemistry, invention, ingenuity and just plain luck. The advances science and medicine don’t come without fault and failure. It’s these drawbacks that Tenner describes as “revenges.” Seat belts that save adults but kill children, for example. The unexpected thrill to Tenner’s book is that it isn’t dry and didactic. There is actual humor hidden in the irony.

My favorite line (for obvious reasons), “…what are we to make of stepping from office elevators into our cars and driving to health clubs to use treadmills (a feature of nineteenth-century prisons)…” (p 10).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 66).

Fire Next Time

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Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

The Fire Next Time is a slim yet powerful 120 pages. Baldwin does not waste a single page on empty words or phrases. Every sentence is an argument for America to beware of “the fire next time.” He implores the reader to take a page from history and not turn a blind eye to it; we must change the course of racial inequality in order to survive. Even though The Fire Next Time was published not even ten years after the integration of Little Rock’s (Arkansas) Central High Baldwin’s fiery words hold true today.

The title, The Fire Next Time, is drawn from a “recreation of the Bible in a slave song” – ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time’ (p 120), yet there are several examples of such warning scattered throughout the entire book. This warning is in a couple of my favorite quotes.

“But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history” (p 71), and “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets ans one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time” (p 105).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two chapters: “African American Fiction: He Say (p 10), even though it isn’t fiction, and again in the chapter “Essaying Essays” (p 81).

Little Friend

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Tartt, Donna. The Little Friend. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

In a nutshell The Little Friend is about Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, a twelve-year-old girl who decides she simply must solve the mystery of who killed her nine-year-old brother when she was just an infant. All Harriet knows of the incident is that little Robin was found hung from a tree on Mother’s Day and nobody knew why. During her attempts to solve the mystery Harriet and her sidekick Hely get themselves into troubles far more adult than their years. Larger Mississippi-southern issues such as poverty and prejudice encircle  more complicated crimes such as deception, drugs, and death.

I love the way Donna Tartt writes, but was confused by plot. 555 is a long time to be reading about a mystery that doesn’t really get solved. The ambiguous ending is ripe for a sequel. Yet, there are seemingly unimportant characters that float in and out of the plot without an apparent role in the story (like Harriet’s sister Allison). Could they come back with a stronger presence in another book? One other concern is that The Little Friend is supposed to be a story set in the 1970’s. Were there meth labs back then?

When you first meet Harriet you think she has all the beginnings of a serial killer: “She could set the house on fire if she wanted to, and no one would be there to stop here” (p 67), and “…this was the hallmark of Harriet’s touch: she could scare the daylights out of you, and you weren’t even sure why” (p 74).

BookLust Twist: There is no doubt in my mind that Nancy Pearl loved this book and thought of it often. Case in point: it’s mentioned in Book Lust in the chapters “Families in Trouble” (p 82) because after little Robin is found murdered, nothing is ever the same for his family, and “Girls Growing Up” (p 102) because Harriet, Robin’s sister, grows up between the 555 pages of The Little Friend, as well as in the introduction (p xi) where Pearl says she knew she would love The Little Friend from the very first sentence. Little Friend is also mentioned in More Book Lust in the chapters “Lines that Linger; Sentences that Stick” (p 143) – the same first sentence Pearl mentioned in Book Lust, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (p 238) because of its creepy doll face – a total of five mentions between the two Lust books. I can’t blame Pearl because Little Friend does fit nicely into each and every chapter mentioned.

Sorrows of Young Werther

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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther. Boston: Frances A. Niccolls & Co., 1902.

There are so many little facts about this 134 page story that I just loved! First, I find it enticing that this eighteenth-century novel was written anonymously. It was if it really was meant to be autobiographical. There are many similarities between Young Werther and Johann Goethe. Another interesting tidbit about The Sorrows of Young Werther is that the story was both banned and embraced in eighteenth-century Germany.

To put it simply, Sorrows of Young Werther is about a young, impressionable artist who moves to a new, yet fictional town. He is enamored with his surroundings and shares his new-found joy with his friend, Wilhelm, through enthusiastic, vividly descriptive letters. For the first month the letters contain glorious accounts of the landscape, the sights, the sounds, and the people – everything around him. After that first month though, Werther’s entire focus centers on a young woman he met at a party. It’s obsession at first sight and he can think of nothing else but to be with her constantly. Unfortunately, Werther’s affections are doomed as the object of his affection, Charlotte, is already engaged to be married to a “worthy” gentleman. In an effort to remain near to Charlotte, Werther befriends her husband-to-be. Things becomes complicated (as they also do in this kind of situation). Of course this love triangle cannot last and ultimately ends in tragedy.

Telling lines: “We should deal with children as God deals with us, – we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions” (p 35), “…a man under the influence of violent passion loses all power of reflection, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane” (p 47), and “I sometimes cannot understand how she can love another, how she dares love another, when I love nothing in this world so completely, so devotedly, as I love her, when I know only her, and have no other possession” (p 81). In these three quotes we see Young Werther growing more and more obsessed with Charlotte. It can only end badly and as we see on the very last page, it does, “The body was carried by labourers. No priest attended” (p 135).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Epistolary Novels: Take A Letter” (p 79).

Semi-Attached Couple

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Eden, Emily. The Semi-Attached Couple & The Semi-Detached House. New York: Dial Press, 1982.

From everything that I have read it seems that Noel Perrin single-handedly revived an interest in Emily Eden’s The Semi-Attached Couple, calling it “what to read when you run out of Jane Austen.” He mentions this in his book, A Reader’s Delight and again in The Washington Post.

The Semi-Attached Couple is a humorous and witty look at a Victorian couple who didn’t exactly marry for love. Surrounding their romance, or lack-thereof, is busybody family members, a cultural protocol for decorum, and good, old-fashioned Victorian society standards. Of course, Sarah married too young and Lord Teviot married too quick. Neither understands the other and isn’t sure of themselves. There is plenty of gossip, secrets, and satire in The Semi-Attached Couple.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in two different chapters. First, “The Book Lust of Others” (p 34), and “Viragos” (p 227). Pearl basically says the same thing in both chapters: Emily Eden is a recommendation of Noel Perrin (as mentioned before).

Hole in the Universe

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Cole, K.C. The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything. New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001.

January is quickly becoming my month for nonfiction (sorry, S.!). The Hole in the Universe is what Nancy Pearl calls a book about nothing and author K.C. Cole supports that with her subtitle, “How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything.” Cole combines physics, science fiction, literature, mathematics, and humor to make her case. Who knew a book about nothing could be so entertaining? Cole has the ability to take scientific fact and not-so-exact speculation and make nothing about something.

Line to scratch your head over: “Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing” (p 3). From that sentence on, I knew I was in for an interesting time.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust” in the chapter called, “Zero: This Will Mean Nothing To You” (p 256).

In Search of Robinson Crusoe

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Severin, Tim. In Search of Robinson Crusoe. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

I have no idea why but in the beginning of reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe I couldn’t tell if it was fact or fiction.

Reading In Search of Robinson Crusoe reminded me a great deal of the show “Myth Busters.” Everyone knows the story of (or at least heard of) Robinson Crusoe. Tim Severin sets out to explain the landscape of Daniel Defoe’s imagination, beginning with the Isla Robinson Crusoe, 400 miles off the coast of Chile. Weaving together fact, fiction, myth, mystery, history and adventure Severin is able to produce a believable retracing of one of literature’s best known castaways, Robinson Crusoe. What’s more, Severin is able to retrace the ancestry of Man Friday as well.

Oddest sentences: “The overpowering influence is the surrounding ocean. Its weather system brings over 40 inches of rain each year, and although the average temperature is a mild 15 degrees Fahrenheit, the daily conditions veer abruptly from warm sunshine to gusts of cold wind and rain showers” (p 46).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Islands, Desert and Otherwise” (p 128).

Echo House

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Just, Ward. Echo House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.

Covering three generations equaling 90  years of politics and power struggles, Ward Just follows the lives of the Behl family starting with Adolph and Constance Behl and their quest (notice I said their quest) for the White House. Adolph’s son, Axel and grandson, Alec continue the saga with their own political ambitions (although Alec goes the legal route becoming a lawyer). Supporting them, and sometimes leaving them, are the women who forever loved them, loved power and had ambitions of their own. Ward Just includes an entire host of Washington characters as well as well-known political events through history. At the center of it all is the Behl family mansion, Echo House. Built to be the next White House it is the scene of secrets of all kinds. Dirty secrets, family secrets, secrets told, secrets kept, secrets that help, secrets that hurt. While nothing terribly exciting happens it’s what doesn’t happen that makes Echo House such fun to read.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Ward Just: Too Good To Miss” (p 135), and from the chapter, “Politics of Fiction” (p 189).

Lost Steps

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Carpentier, Alejo. The Lost Steps. New York: Noonday Press, 1956.

The Lost Steps is about a man who takes a journey that becomes more than travel to him. Married to an actress who barely has time for anything but the stage, he takes a trip to South America with his mistress with the mission of finding primitive musical instruments for a museum curator. In the beginning of the story the man is fixated on making himself happy. For example, caught in the middle of a violent revolution where the streets are riddled with gunfire, he cannot think of getting himself to safety. Instead, he is fixated on returning to his companion for fear she has already (within minutes) taken up with someone else. Throughout the story his priorities change and he begins to imagine the wild landscape back in time, before mankind. His imagination takes him to unchartered territories that are vividly described. Carpentier’s observations are astute and he writes with remarkable clarity. The landscapes of South America are breathtaking.

Favorite lines, “When my birthday was celebrated among the same faces, in the same places, with the same song sung in chorus, the thought invariably struck me that the only difference between my previous birthday and this one was the extra candle on the cake, which tasted exactly like the last one” (p 9). “In this country, I was told, passing from power to prison was the normal thing” (p 60). “Silence is an important word in my vocabulary” (p 109).

Something else I found interesting: The New Yorker claims The Lost Steps begins in New York City yet Alejo Carpentier prefaces the story with a note that begins, “even though the site of the first chapters of this book does not call for any specific location…” (p v). The New Yorker must have gotten the New York City information from another version.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Cubi Si!” (p 68).

Wonder Boys

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Chabon, Michael. Wonder Boys. New York: Villard Books, 1995.

From what I understand, Wonder Boys was made into a movie. Of course, that means I haven’t seen it. I don’t even know if it was any good when it first came out.

Wonder Boys was a pleasure to read once I actually sat down to read it. The story is written from the point of view of aging, graying, heavy-weighted, writer/professor Grady Tripp but it’s really about his writing student, James Leer. James is a young, quiet, skinny, troubled, yet talented writing student who is obsessed with Hollywood suicides. Almost like a party trick he can recite style of suicide along with date of death and no one finds this strange. Somehow Leer and Grady become involved in a couple of crimes together and the rest of Wonder Boys is their journey in search of redemption and sanity. Michael Chabon’s style of writing is eloquent with a bite of sarcasm. Humor and sadness hold hands on nearly every page.

A few of my favorite passages: “Her own parents had married in 1939 and they were married still, in a manner that approximated happiness, and I knew she regarded divorce as the first refuge of the weak in character and the last of the hopelessly incompetent” (p 30), and “They weren’t my family and it wasn’t my holiday, but I was orphaned and an atheist and I would take what I could get” (p144).

BookLust Twist: Spotted a couple of times in More Book Lust – first in a chapter called, “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 30). Also in “Lines that Linger; Sentences that Stick” (p 143). Just so you know, I didn’t quote the sentence that drew Ms. Pearl in. I found others I liked better.

High Five

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Evanovich, Janet. High Five. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.

I always read chick lit in a day or two. For some reason it goes by a lot faster than other, more serious reads. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t any good. I thought it was great. Perfect for New Year’s Day.

Stephanie Plum is a sassy bounty hunter who starts out High Five looking for her uncle as a family favor (seeing as how she finds people for a living). Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems, and soon Stephanie is hip-swinging deep in a murder mystery, flanked by two very attractive, very sexy, strong men vying for her attention. The action never stops for Stephanie. If she isn’t beating up an angry little person or gorging on junk food, she is being stalked by a rapist, narrowly missing being blown up by bombs (twice), or being harassed by a supposed bookie. Add a former prostitute, a sassy grandmother, an astute gerbil, and a sarcastic Arab teenager into the mix and the fun never stops. In a word, High Five is fun. Something I would appreciate of all series is the fact you don’t have to read Four to Score in order to get High Five. The characters allude to previous Plum escapades, but they don’t confuse the story at all.
It took me a little while to get the purpose of the title until I remembered the elaborate high five/handshakes Stephanie could never get the hang of throughout the story. What cracked me up was even her grandmother knew how to do one.

An example of Stephanie Plum’s sexuality, “The note wasn’t signed, but I knew it was from Morelli by the way my nipples got hard” (p 25).

Something I admired of Stephanie – after she binged on junk food she mentions not owning a scale. She didn’t own one. Instead, she judged her weight gain and loss by how her jeans fit.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Ms. Mystery” (p 171). I have to admit I am thrilled I will be reading the entire series.

Walls Came Tumbling Down

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Deal, Babs A., The Walls Came Tumbling Down. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1968.

The Walls Came Tumbling Down is very much a late 1960s book. In the beginning I wasn’t sure I would get into it or even like it. It is the story of seven sorority sisters still living in the same small town, still friends as adults. Their friendships are tested when a skeleton of an infant is found in a wall of their sorority house. An investigation would prove the baby was hidden during a renovation that happened during a summer when only those same seven young women were living in the house – twenty-four years earlier. The majority of Deal’s book is filled with busybody gossip, small town snobbery and the uncovering of many secrets besides a hidden pregnancy and birth. Adulterous affairs, the inability to trust one another, and the growing suspicions and prejudices are all brought to light when literally and figuratively, the walls come down.

My favorite line: “I do not want to believe I fell in love with a smile” (p 56).
One of the most telling viewpoints of the times: “His secretary was Miss Wilson. She had been an airline hostess until she got too old. She was thirty-two: (p 109). Thirty-two is too old? Yikes?

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Southern-Fried Fiction (Alabama)” (p 206).

ps~ I found it interesting that Babs Deal had a small obsession with what kind of cars her characters drove.

Tortilla Curtain

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Boyle, T. Coraghessan. The Tortilla Curtain. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

From the very first page this book had me cringing. The back cover of Tortilla Curtain reads, “…from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact…” The opening scene is the freak accident and it sets the tone for the entire story. To be honest I cringed my way through the entire book. Like watching a movie with one eye squeezed shut I could barely stand what devastating thing would happen next. There is nothing more tragic than misguided trust laced with preconceived notions about another individual. Reminiscent of House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III Tortilla Curtain is the story of two couples hopelessly fated to forever misjudge and distrust each other. The color of their skin provides a blinder for each pair. While how they react to their blindness differs from person to person their prejudices identically driven. Delaney Mossbacher and his second wife, Kyra, are a well-to-do couple living in the newly gated community of Arroyo Blanco. They worry about coyotes taking their family pets and the real estate market (Kyra is a successful realtor). Below them, scraping out an existence in the dessert are Candido Rincon and his wife, America, two illegal immigrants from Mexico. They worry about where they will get their next meal and when they will be sent back across the border. Two totally different worlds living within yards of one another. Inevitably the two will collide with disastrous results.

Favorite line: “He took the phone off the hook, pulled the shades and crept into the womb of language” (p 32). I wish I had more time to do just that.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Growing Writers” (p 107).

Soloist

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Salzman, Mark. The Soloist. New York: Random House, 1994.

I hated to put this book down. I started off reading it at the same time as two other books (which shall remain nameless), but soon I found myself favoring The Soloist over the other two. Which, when you think about it, isn’t a very smart move because when I finished The Soloist I was left with the lesser liked books.
Lesson learned. There is a reason why dessert is served at the end of the meal – save the best for last. It tastes sweeter that way. That goes for books as well, especially The Soloist. I can’t wait to read Salzman’s other books.

In a nutshell The Soloist is about a man who is struggling with who he was as a child in relation to who he has become as an adult. As a child Renne Sundheimer was a prodigy who mastered the cello and thrilled audiences world-wide. As an adult, having mysteriously lost his talent, Renne has become a cello teacher for a university in Southern California. His life revolves around the music he used to make until two completely different events happen. First, Renne is summoned to jury duty where he hears a case involving a murdered Buddhist monk. Second, Renne finds himself the tutor of another cello prodigy, a nine-year old Korean boy. In both situations Renne started out an unwilling participant. He was convinced he didn’t want to serve on a jury and planned to profess an undue hardship. He was also convinced he didn’t want to give private lessons to an introverted Korean boy. In both cases he fails to extract himself from involvement and ultimately ends up changing his life.

Favorite lines: “Human beings are primates, and primates weren’t designed to tie themselves up into knots and hold still (p 99). I’m not sure how my yoga friends would take to this comment, but I found it funny.
And the last lines of the book are perfect, “I don’t think about the past as much as I used to, and I hardly ever think further than a semester ahead. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, though. I’m starting to think that the larger picture is overrated” (p 284). Precisely.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Mark Salzman: Too Good to Miss” (p 194).

Off topic comment: When Pearl introduces Salzman in her second Lust book she mentions not going to readings given by authors she likes. She is always afraid of not liking the person behind the words, or thinking of the author’s voice when reading his or her newest offering. I’m like that with music. Once I see the musician I can’t get their image out of my head and sometimes, often, it skews the music.