Alen Mattich’s first of a series may just be the most fun since Tarantino’s movie Reservoir Dogs hit the silver screen. In Zagreb Cowboy, the secu Alen Mattich’s first of a series may just be the most fun since Tarantino’s movie Reservoir Dogs hit the silver screen. In Zagreb Cowboy, the security landscape during the breakup of Yugoslavia into Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Montenegro (did I miss anything?) is more than a little farcical, with teams of security personnel following each other, carrying Bulgarian knock-offs of Berettas that misfire with ammunition that doesn’t kill. When it makes (financial or political) sense, the pursuers will align with the object of their pursuit against a third team in a constantly shifting series of pas de deux.
Mattich gets the tone just right by creating a series of hapless but sympathetic characters--some more sympathetic than others—who are less zealous defenders of the political realm than they are working men and women finding ways to keep body and soul together while stoking dreams of emigration. I don’t think anyone actually get killed, though there is plenty of shooting going on. There is much praise given to German engineering and the civilized British lifestyle, comparing everywhere--Italy, Spain, France, and America--more favorably than home.
But one of my favorite passages in this book describes the pleasures and blessings of a simple country life “at home”:
Strumbi had around twenty rows of vines, along with fruit trees, mostly plums and pears, which he picked in the summer, fermented, and then cooked into a potent spirit alcohol. And then there was the ancient cherry tree that turned the ground purple with its juice in August. The house itself was built on top of an old wine hut. The thick and roughly made concrete-and-stone walls now formed a self-contained ground-level cellar, where Strumbi matured the wine he made from his own grapes, distilled his spirits, and hung cured hams and salamis that he bought from the local villagers. Above the cellar was the house he’d built, one full storey under a steeply pitched roof. In all there was a large sitting room and balcony that looked out over the valley, a kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which Strumbi used as an office. But mostly when he was there, Strumbi sat in the cellar or at a rickety table by the side of the house under the huge cherry tree’s canopy. It was an idyll…and [our hero, della Torre] always looked forward to invitations there.
Our intrepid hero, della Torre, comes from Istrian stock: “Political maps showed that in her ninety years, della Torre’s grandmother had lived in six different countries without once moving from the village in which she’d been born.” He works for Department VI, the UDBA’s (state intelligence) internal investigative service. He is a lawyer, primarily responsible for investigating extrajudicial killings the intelligence service might be involved in. He is a good man in a confusing world. He’s someone we’d be pleased to know…I think…unless he comes to visit leading that string of hitmen…
A second book in the series, Killing Pilgrim is due out in the fall of 2013. But do take a look at this while you are waiting. ...more
If you’d ever thought Christmas was a mad, mad time of the year, check out this laugh-out-loud funny story of a twice-divorced mother, Clara, who loveIf you’d ever thought Christmas was a mad, mad time of the year, check out this laugh-out-loud funny story of a twice-divorced mother, Clara, who loves the Christmas spirit so much that she continues to host her two ex-husbands and her former mother-in-law every year along with her own extended family for a wild and merry day.
Christmas tradition is sacrosanct and our heroine (what else could we call her?) manages to make especial truffle treats for the vegetarians of the group while satisfying everyone else’s wish for family favorites. She spends more on the people she doesn’t like than the people she does like simply because she puts it off longer and doesn’t want to offend. She uses old Christmas decorations along with new, but makes each year a more beautiful and perfect version of the past.
If you are exhausted in the rush to make Christmas perfect, take a moment to savor the world created in this novel: the girlfriend secrets, the mother-daughter, mother-son, and sister-sister interactions are all priceless, to say nothing of having one’s ex-mother-in-law to one’s idea of a perfect holiday. All that can go wrong will go wrong, but for the stalwarts among us, Christmas is a state of mind. ...more
”For most people who write thrillers and mysteries, creating crooks is more than half the fun. They’re intrinsically interesting because they’ve rejec
”For most people who write thrillers and mysteries, creating crooks is more than half the fun. They’re intrinsically interesting because they’ve rejected the standard set of values and, since we all need values of some kind, they’ve invented their own. It was probably just a matter of time before I came up with a series that’s essentially all crooks.”—Tim Hallinan
Tim Hallinan wrote the quote above in the “Author’s Note” to the first book in his new series featuring Junior Bender ("Burglar to the Stars") in Los Angeles. For those readers unfamiliar with Hallinan’s work, he has written a series set in Thailand featuring Poke Rafferty, a travel writer with a heart of gold and karma to burn. Rafferty makes a lot of sense (and friends) defending the underdog in unequal transactions and seems to grasp the essentially welcoming Thai society is not as morally deficient as it is painted by some critics, but has a strong sense of values that are easily transgressed by unwitting or unthinking Westerners.
In the Junior Bender series Hallinan turns his eagle eye on Los Angeles for a change. The reader can tell he is having a blast with the range of folks and the shifting sense of morality he encountered there. Hallinan still has a strong instinct for protecting the underdog: witness his lack of judgment about the drug addiction of his latest fictional charge, a young female actress on a downward spiral snookered into making a porn film. These are verboten subjects in Western educated circles but Hallinan doesn’t let it faze him. He has the “come to me with your handicaps” generosity of the Dalai or the Pope. And if those two men of god will fix your afterlife, Hallinan, and his henchman Junior Bender, will fix the here-and-now.
The pace in this novel is fast—the whole thing takes place in a couple of sleepless days (the reader may experience this also)-- and the subject matter is edgy. California is once again on the leading edge in reformulating “moral man.” But everybody is a crook of some sort, as Hallinan said in the opening quote to this review, so one has to roll with the attitude and take the material for the laughs. Moral insights are there, however, as they always are with Hallinan’s books, which makes it thought-provoking and good discussion material. How far would we be willing to go, given the same constraints or circumstances?
Check out the genesis of this series on Tim Hallinan’s website. Hallinan is a man who doesn’t let a little negativity let him down. When his long-time publisher didn’t want an L.A. series, Hallinan self-published until Soho Crime picked him up. Now he has sold the film rights and the audio rights. But he’s got it going on now: visit this review by blogger and former Valley girl Nancy O. ...more
When we lost Rakoff, we lost someone who could point out our failings with humor and compassion, but also with righteous anger and fury. In this book When we lost Rakoff, we lost someone who could point out our failings with humor and compassion, but also with righteous anger and fury. In this book of essays, Rakoff scoures those whose wealth or celebrity have removed them from the ranks of the commonly courteous, he nails unholy politicians to the cross, and he riffs with a bleak optimism about finding cancer raging when one has thought it has left one in peace. He has a loving voice and he will be sorely missed....more
The inimitable narrator, Dorcas (Dork) of this…well, fable, really… says,
“[Many postmodern writers] have little respect for character. [They] carry o
The inimitable narrator, Dorcas (Dork) of this…well, fable, really… says,
“[Many postmodern writers] have little respect for character. [They] carry on as though the human personality were some trivial thing, and it’s not, it’s not, it’s everything. It’s the great mystery…We can make predictions about our own behavior based on what we’ve done in the past, and how we feel about it now, and what niggling horrors we come awake to at three o’clock in the morning, but they’re only predictions. We don’t even know if we’re good, until it’s all over, and then it’s too late. We can be decent our whole lives and then at the last minute do some inexplicable unforgivable thing.”
And ain’t that the [unvarnished Yankee] truth? Dorcas, daughter of the Mayflower, sister of Aphrodite Abigail, lover of no man, librarian extraordinaire, tries to be just and fair, but in the end finds within herself unexplored nooks and unfathomable depths. It is a family story, this, and of twins no less. Twins that are close but don’t tell each other everything:
“we rarely got personal. Twins are hypersensitive about that sort of thing. We are intimate enough by our very natures. We don’t like to push it. Most people are alone in their lifeboats, for the duration of their lives; twins share theirs, and so our lifeboats have deck plans, drawn up over time, it isn’t all shared space. It couldn’t be. You’d go nuts.”
I could go on quoting from this book all day. My copy is porcupined with post-its, pointing to some character-defining passage, or choice of phrase, or turning point. Jincy Willett has a unique phraseology. But she is a storyteller most of all, and she has created characters that grow and change and get bruised and fight back and in the end, surprise us all.
So the story, as such, is this: two character-opposite sisters live in a small Rhode Island town. A very strange humanoid is introduced, which changes everything....more
John Bellairs captures youthful uncertainty and insecurity so completely, one cannot help but wonder about the man himself. But he also has an unrestrJohn Bellairs captures youthful uncertainty and insecurity so completely, one cannot help but wonder about the man himself. But he also has an unrestrained joy evident on the very first page of this book by giving his pudgy main character purple corduroy trousers that go “whip-whip” when he walks.
A friend introduced me to John Bellairs, and shared a 1974 edition graced with drawings by Edward Gorey. A ten-year old orphan travels by bus to stay with an uncle who “smoked, drank, and played poker. These were not such bad things in a Catholic family…” but his Baptist aunts had warned the young boy about his red-bearded uncle—he also practiced magic. Thus begins the marvelous, funny, involving story of Lewis and Jonathan in New Zebedee, Lewis’s search for friends, his introduction to sorcery, and the House with the Clock in its Walls.
After reading this novel, I wanted to know more about the author. Wikipedia says that he initially wanted to write this story as an adult book, but at the time (early 1970s) the market was limited for such books so he adapted it for young readers. Learning this, the mind races to imagine how he would have presented an adult novel. His sense of the absurd was exceptional and he knew everything about human frailties and fears, so this reader wishes he’d been able to share whatever he wanted with us. Apparently he wrote and rewrote this novel before it was published as a young adult novel in 1973 and instantly was recognized as the masterpiece it remains.
There is a website devoted to things Bellairs (!) at bellarsia.com. The site was created by longtime fan Jonathan Abucejo who explains his interest and plans for the website in a web interview. Some of the Bellairs books have been made into audiobooks and some into films, so those of you who find yourselves mesmerized by this talented storyteller will have hours of pleasure searching for his lasting legacy.
Finally, nearly every picture I’ve seen of the man Bellairs has him smiling widely. Whatever personal disappointments he had in his life was just grist for the mill. I think he would find it endlessly amusing (and gratifying!) to know he is so sorely missed.
----------------- Later. Just noticed there was a passage in the book I'd marked and it made my mind wander far away:
Before the mirror lay a beautiful hooked rug. Jonathan claimed that Mrs. Zimmermann's great-grandmother had made it. The pattern of the rug was "Autumn Leaves." Scalloped-edged leaves, bright gold and deep blood-red, with some green ones thrown in for contrast. The rug seemed to float before the mirror, and the leaves swam in the pool of bright sunlight...Lewis liked to stand on it in the morning while he was dressing. It made him feel that he was free of the earth, if only for a little while.
Hmmm. Great visual. Might try something like this....more
David Rakoff is a man o' mine. With this riff he hits every high note and takes me with him. I love him for making the effort--he says writing is painDavid Rakoff is a man o' mine. With this riff he hits every high note and takes me with him. I love him for making the effort--he says writing is painful. I wonder if it is actually the writing or the remembering that is so painful. Let's face it: when we were kids and found out that humans were not really perfect, it bothered us. Later, when we found out our friends and lovers were not perfect, it was an even bigger bummer. Later yet, we had to admit some of our own errors were rather glaring and that human beings as a race were somewhat difficult to reconcile with a loving God.
But Rakoff did it so well--the remembering, the writing, the turning of the knife...He deserves to be remembered long....more
Can Ian McEwan write a bad book? Probably not, but in its totality this was not my favorite of his. Still, he makes me laugh. All the markers I have fCan Ian McEwan write a bad book? Probably not, but in its totality this was not my favorite of his. Still, he makes me laugh. All the markers I have for remembering passages in this book end at page 50. But how I loved the set-up and his introduction to just-past-teenaged Serena, who has a talent for mathematics: “I knew the answers to questions before I even knew how I had got to them. While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling for what was right.” Of course, Serena soon discovers after entering Newnham College at Cambridge to read maths “what a mediocrity [she] was in mathematics.” But that was fine because Serena now had plenty of time to read rather than work at achieving a "first" in maths.
And dear Serena loved to read:
“My needs were simple…Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn’t mind so much if they tried their hand at something else…It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say “Marry me” by the end…Nor was I impressed by reputations. I read anything I saw lying around. Pulp fiction, great literature and everything in between—I gave them all the same rough treatment.”
Ah. Serena would have lots of friends on Goodreads.
And Shirley! Shirley is Serena’s friend in the boring government office where she works:
”Despite her limited circumstances, [Shirley] had been around more than most of us. In the year after university she had hitchhiked alone to Istanbul, sold her blood, bought a motorbike, broke her leg, shoulder and elbow, fell in love with a Syrian doctor, had an abortion, and was brought home to England from Anatolia on a private yacht in return for a little onboard cooking.”
Shirley is a mover and shaker, a chameleon, a star. Yes, McEwan can create characters, and he clearly enjoyed creating these stellar examples of his craft. His male characters suffered in comparison, and the story became bogged in a not-very–important “undercover” job for MI-5 which turned out…
As it turns out, McEwan hits his stride again in the final pages of the book in the form of a letter. Much of what was missing in his novel finds its home here, telling us that McEwan does indeed know what he’s about. But the book felt insufficiently his, outside of his female characterizations and this long letter at the end, as though he needed to “just get it out” of his notebooks despite its incompleteness. I note the book is dedicated to McEwan’s long-time friend Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps the story-line was a recurring conversation the two had, amidst much joshing and ribaldry. Anyway, I like McEwan’s mind, his politics, his humor, and his writing, and give him thanks for introducing us to the reader Serena. ...more
This is the second book about Las Vegas I’ve read in a short cycle. Don’t know the significance of that—I don’t really enjoy gambling. But this book wThis is the second book about Las Vegas I’ve read in a short cycle. Don’t know the significance of that—I don’t really enjoy gambling. But this book was a bit of a gamble since I'd never heard about the author. This is apparently the third in a series and Ewan succeeded admirably, a tongue-in-cheek mystery that features a failed? failing? part-time mystery writer, Charlie, who manages to supplement his income by being a petty thief as well. But he has a good heart: Charlie doesn’t like to steal from little old ladies or people down on their luck.
I listened to the AudioGo production very ably read by Earphone Award-winner Simon Vance. The pace is quick and Vance manages to make the character somewhat seedy and upright at the same time: the perfect combination for a confidence man. One imagines a well-groomed, well-spoken Brit who can lie disarmingly and perform righteous indignation while stealing your wallet.
Charlie brings his agent, Victoria, with him to Vegas, and she finds a way to upstage him at every turn. So many things go wrong while Charlie tries to steal his way out of a bad situation, that one becomes convinced Charlie is a part-time thief because he can’t quite make it pay. This is very good-hearted fun and a very enjoyable listen and I look forward to seeing the charming but bumbling Charlie Howard go at it again. ...more
Hallinan has a series featuring Poke Rafferty, an Anglo-Asian male living in Bangkok. In Hallinan’s hands, Bangkok becomes an international center of Hallinan has a series featuring Poke Rafferty, an Anglo-Asian male living in Bangkok. In Hallinan’s hands, Bangkok becomes an international center of intrigue focused on its restive Muslim south and juggling its overheated, overaged male spy population who had happily retired themselves only to be called back into harness. More importantly, Hallinan has created his most interesting and powerful female character yet, Ming Li.
Ming Li is the Anglo-Chinese step-sister of Poke and she aids his latest attempt to uncover a psychopath bent on destroying those who know his shadowy past. Young, (female), smart, (vulnerable), and irreverent, Ming Li blasts through accepted modes of spycraft to intuit actions of the players in advance. She does not spare her brother who, as a member of the male ruling class, had no need to learn lessons of body language and intent early on.
What I loved: 1) Poke Rafferty’s humanity. When attacked by a man with a gun, he manages to save his attacker before rushing off to save himself. Fearful as Poke might have been, he was a good man first. Rafferty is willing to believe the best of people he suspects, reserves judgment on their behalf, and stretches to preserve their basic dignity despite their iniquities—not including the really bad man who deserved everything coming to him. 2) Ming Li. Where Rafferty sees ambiguity, Ming Li cuts through the dross with a rapier mind and lays flat broad swathes of bad folk. 3) The way the author ratchets up the tension by having a long-winded Russian collaborator slow the action with pages-long detail at a critical moment when Rafferty (and readers!) just want the facts. It’s a gentle, funny way to tense us up and preserve forward momentum.
Hallinan did very well in raising the temperature of this thriller, but didn’t succeed without flaw: I disliked what I saw as the artificial character of “Treasure” when I first met her. Later, I realized how entirely possible it was to have such a character, neglected, abused, and exploited, when a psychopath is in charge. But the psychopath and the daughter felt like weak links.
And herein lie my only quibble: I would have preferred, were it at all possible, to have a bad man with more ambiguity, depth, and moral equivocation than our bad man here. He was so dark, he seemed like a caricature, and made everyone else a little like a caricature also. I believe the general outline of these characters and places are quite the real thing, with only a few of their sketch lines missing.
But you know what? It would have been a completely different book had Hallinan made it difficult for us with moral ambiguity. One could even argue the bad man wasn't as bad as he made out, since he did something uncharacteristic for his nature at the end of the book, one assumes because he was a father after all. And after the big event in the final pages, only one body was found instead of two, so one of the two that were "taken out" will be back, I fear. Which will it be?
I like Hallinan’s books very much, and when one needs a dose of the heat and flavour of Southeast Asia, or of Thailand's wonderful, complicated "anything goes" acceptance, I recommend having your moral compass realigned by reading a couple of Hallinan's books. Onward [Buddhist] soldier…and tell us more tales. ...more
Percival Everett is an American national treasure. He has to be one of the most prolific and best authors you have never heard of. Several years ago IPercival Everett is an American national treasure. He has to be one of the most prolific and best authors you have never heard of. Several years ago I “discovered” him on the shelves of my local bookstore, and ever after have wondered why it took me so long to find him. Every book he writes is different from the one before, and he writes a lot. He is funny, inventive, real, clear, and looks truth hard in the face. I can’t figure out why books of his aren’t on every bookshelf in America. With his repertoire, everyone is bound to find one that makes them sit back in wonder at what he was able to accomplish with words alone.
This book is a western dressed as farce. But nothing is ever strictly one thing or another in Everett’s books, and as always, there is a deep red vein of truth running through it. Our narrator, Marder, runs into Colonel Custer who gives us a piece of his thinking:
”I suppose you’re all too familiar with the heinous activities of one Big Elk…That Indian’s scalp will be the crowning feather in my cap. The heathen has no respect for the ownership of land. I mean, we take it and they want it back, keep coming back. Hunting lands, they say. Fishing waters, they say. That’s not it, though. I know why…I’ll tell you why. To confuse me. To confuse us. To make us question ourselves, our values. We must have more land than we need. It’s essential to our maintaining a balance between greed and hypocrisy, between unhealthy subsistence and needless, uncontrolled growth…”
This is a book for a time when you are sunk in the absurdity of daily life and you seek affirmation, relief, companionship. But it will nudge you as well, for it will remind you that there are good people out there. We just have to be sure not to kill them all off. ...more
A favorable review today in The New York Times said Jess Walter’s new book is like a film script, but to my way of thinking it is more like Walter as A favorable review today in The New York Times said Jess Walter’s new book is like a film script, but to my way of thinking it is more like Walter as a one-man performance artist, who suddenly pulls all kinds of horns, drums, bells and other props out of his bottomless pockets to illustrate a point, to make us laugh, to break into our attention and to declare: “are we entirely mad?” His work is brilliantly interpreted and performed by Edoardo Ballerini on audio, and to hear the thick and heavy tones of Richard Burton declaiming in a small outboard floating off the coast of Italy is to feel a stab of remembered joy.
Fifteen years from conception to production, this is Walter at his crazy, mad, funny, piercing best, for he skewers us and our lives by reflecting popular culture back at ourselves, but showers us with tender mercies at the end. The novel covers a time frame from the early sixties through at least the last decade, and covers at least as many personalities as years. But what a wild and happy party it is, with all the usual suspects: love, greed, envy, pride, lust, infidelity…and, I’ll say it again, finally love. “It’s a love story,” we hear as Hollywood producer Michael Deane pitches his latest to the studio executives at the end of the book. And I guess it always is, in the end, for that is all that really matters.
Take this trip, and if you have eschewed listening on audio for whatever reason, throw aside your inhibitions and do yourself a favor. This is performance art, and may be listened to with great effect. We have a nubile Hollywood actress with a bit part in an Elizabeth Taylor film, a Hollywood producer, a small Italian coastal village, a young man pitching a story…you get the idea. There is lots going on but it always with the greatest clarity that we can see that life ”isn’t always easy” and that we usually find our hapless ways despite, or perhaps because of, our questionable choices. ...more
I am thrilled to see a writer of Hyland’s gifts create a series with an Aboriginal heroine called Emily Tempest. Hyland’s use of language is so specifI am thrilled to see a writer of Hyland’s gifts create a series with an Aboriginal heroine called Emily Tempest. Hyland’s use of language is so specific to the region that readers unschooled in the language of the Australian bush might not be able to comprehend. There is a glossary--for Aboriginal words and Australian slang—but still. For me, however, it is pure bliss.
Strains of music can be heard throughout the book and one is tempted to read while listening to those artists mentioned to see what it is about each one that defines character. Lucinda Williams, the Louvin Brothers, Paul Kelly, the Warumpis, Slim Dusty, Nick Cave… If one has downloaded the book to an ereader, one can crank up the Pandora® app, select these artists for the background, plug in earphones, and get down to it.
Emily Tempest is half white Australian and half native Aborigine, which gives her entree to both circles. Descriptions of her native ground do not stint on the realities of bush dwellers’ (white and black) unusual habits and habitats. But she also has a fascination with geology, and that clinches my certainty that this is more than just a very funny mystery about an underreported culture—it is a mystery that goes to the very heart of Australia itself. The discussion of geology raises the level of discourse and makes one’s mind wander to the unique characteristics of the continent and its inhabitants.
Author Adrian Hyland won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction in 2008 for this debut novel and first book in a series. It suffered a title change when it was published in the United States to Moonlight Downs from Diamond Dove. Since that early success, Hyland has produced another title in the series: Gunshot Road. It is likewise published in the United States by Soho Press and both are available as ebooks.
Hyland himself worked in Central Australia for ten years as a community developer in remote Aboriginal communities, so knows whereof he speaks. He has a clear eye and sense of the absurd that allows us to revel in a remarkable indigenous culture. The beauty of the Australian bush comes through strongly—its riches and treasures are celebrated. Hyland also wrote Kinglake -350 about the devastating bushfires in the state of Victoria in 2009, and which is considered a masterpiece of reportage. It has been shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2012. ...more
I have just realized I have never reviewed any of Alexander McCall Smith's series, though I have read from each one. McCall Smith's series are primersI have just realized I have never reviewed any of Alexander McCall Smith's series, though I have read from each one. McCall Smith's series are primers in "how to be kind." He calmly and rationally helps us to negotiate everyday conundrums that plague us and make us anxious and bitter. The thoughtful reactions he puts in the voice of Mma Ramotswe are kind and comforting, her solutions sensitive and gracious.
If blue shoes can bring happiness, it may be worth owning them even if they are too small. And, there is evil in the world, but most people want to do the right thing. It’s just that people are weak. One should recognize one’s weaknesses: if they are inconsequential or will make your life (or the lives of those around you) a misery to change, it may be better to just live with it.
Mma Ramotswe is a forgiving woman. She doesn’t chide her assistant for small failings, like purchasing blue shoes that are too small, nor does she agonize over her own “traditionally-built” size. She knows she should diet, but if she wants (and deserves!) cake, is it so very wrong to have a small piece?
Every book in this series is a little vacation for the mind. We are given time to consider problems that many of us face, and see how elegant solutions can be found that satisfy. The voice of Lisette Lecat defines the series. Her voice is such a perfect vehicle for the writing that I prefer to listen to these books published as downloadable files by Recorded Books.
Billy Lynn is a hero…a gad-dam gen-u-wine hee-row…a nineteen-year-old Silver-Starred hero who watched his best friend die in his arms and got medalledBilly Lynn is a hero…a gad-dam gen-u-wine hee-row…a nineteen-year-old Silver-Starred hero who watched his best friend die in his arms and got medalled for it. “Raped by angels” is how he and his fellow BRAVO team describe the firefights of their experience in “Eye-rack.” Now back stateside to a hero’s welcome…a two-week blitz through the swing states…culminating in talking a movie deal with a part-owner of the Dallas Cowboys. They are publicly lauded/humiliated during a sleet-filled losing game where the soldiers and Beyoncé are the halftime show. The fireworks come as a surprise and as BRAVO heart rates spike, and their eyes come loose in their sockets, they have a hard time holding their insides together and their hearts from jumping right through their mouths.
This is a brilliant mix of trash talk from the boys who keep us safe, and sober (well, somewhat sober) reflections on the state of America, our way of life, what we have done with our great resources and how we have created and shared wealth. The boys are going back, and they go back with their eyes opened to what they are defending, and what they are fighting and dying for. It should come as no surprise that they fight for one another, more than any ideals. America has shown herself to be less than ideal.
Ben Fountain has a real classic here. He has written a Catch-22 for today, and this should be widely read, shared, talked about.
One cannot help but wonder how long Spencer Quinn can go on with a series featuring a canine narrator. Each time I open one I expect this will be his One cannot help but wonder how long Spencer Quinn can go on with a series featuring a canine narrator. Each time I open one I expect this will be his swan song, but the author simply doesn’t flag--each new book in the series is as entertaining as the last! He manages to inhabit the minds-eye of a dog looking at human habits and create a voice for what a dog may think. If you imagine this cannot be funny for the fifth time, think again. Quinn has done it.
This is perfect beach reading. It puts you in a good mood, ready to laugh. It doesn’t take a lot of concentration to wonder how the pair, Bernie & Chet, are going to manage the investigations they get involved in. Bernie is perpetually broke; he keeps buying Porsches & wrecking them; and Chet tells us the background on each of the perps. He tells us things about them no self-respecting narrator would bother with: how they smell, for instance.
In this book, we are treated to a close-up of the film industry. Little Charlie, Bernie’s son, gets a speaking role! Which makes one think…Lassie and Rin Tin Tin were film stars…perhaps one day the name Chet will be in lights?! ...more
Wetta has written that rare novel that can truly be called a “crossover,” in the sense that it speaks to adults just as it speaks to teens. It raises Wetta has written that rare novel that can truly be called a “crossover,” in the sense that it speaks to adults just as it speaks to teens. It raises questions that are not really resolved, and speaks to the nature of fiction itself. If we change just one thing in one’s life, does that make all the rest a fiction?
Jack presents us with two alternate histories: one in which his brother is transgresser, and one in which his brother is transgressed upon. In the first history, his father is a rough and a cad, while in the second, he is vulnerable yet protective of his sons. The fact that alternative histories are presented tells us something about Jack’s ambivalence, though one of the histories lay on the cutting room floor at the end of the novel.
I remember those days of childhood when one begins to perceive the outlines of “truth;” when another person’s truth is not precisely as we ourselves have observed it to be. We begin to suspect those others; we begin to suspect ourselves.
This is a book, I guess, about love. But it seems more a book about a family (“Families live on loyalty more than love…”), or perhaps just a young boy: a young boy just discerning the truth about people, about his family, about his neighborhood, about black people and Jewish people, about policemen and villains.
It is a story of a stiff-spined boy who grew into a stiff-spined man. He claims to have had a brother and father who taught him forgiveness could be weakness. He was saved by his mother, a kind woman, though she recognized some failing in him: “You’ll be a lot harder than your father or brother ever were. You’ll never do anything wrong, not you. But my God you’re going to be hard.” Jack may have thought that was a good thing—a carapace of steel should save him from the vagaries of love and loyalty.
Jack Witcher begins his story when he is thirteen and “already tragic.” Exceptionally imaginative, he has a hard time sorting truth from fiction, and creates an alternate universe in which the haunting experience of finding a corpse in the woods merges with the perfectly normal wish for an older brother to get his come-uppance and his parents’ divorce explained. “Maybe I might have killed him.” Jack is uncertain exactly how to deal with an unruly older brother, but one thing is clear. He’ll create a story in which that brother is dealt with severely. How much is truth and how much is fiction? That is where we will differ.
Sometimes when I am confused about something, my head feels filled with white noise; Jack’s confusion produces a cacophony and Wetta captures the mind-buzz perfectly:
”I started thinking about the hot shack and the pissy mattress and the cicadas. I saw myself lying in all that stink with a knife in my chest. Meanwhile the gnats and the mosquitoes and the bees and the flies and the wasps kept buzzing. Add to that the airplanes and the jet fighters leaving vapor trails and the helicopters and the lawn mowers on Lewis Street and the vacuum cleaners and the other appliances and the fans and the air conditioners and the traffic north on Cherokee and the traffic south on Matson and the trains on the tracks beside the river and the chemical and pharmaceutical plants next to the interstate pumping pollution into the air and the barking of neighborhood dogs and the frogs croaking along the banks of the creek and the snapping and buzzing from the satellites circling the earth and the cicadas in my mind that never stopped singing." (p. 298)
This may be a good book to carry on the family vacation this summer. It has clever observances that make us laugh out loud, it raises social issues, and it plays with our sense of reality. It might make for good conversation around the campfire or dinner table. ...more
Longmire seems less like a western sheriff and more like some generalized representation of Justice in this latest in the series. He calms wild fillieLongmire seems less like a western sheriff and more like some generalized representation of Justice in this latest in the series. He calms wild fillies (Sheriff Lolo Long), handles wild dogs (Rez Dog), and doesn't pull his revolver when people (Clarence, Lonnie, Artie, Herbert) threaten him. He stays when he should go, and tries to talk his way to truth and safety. And so he does.
His daughter Katy weds, dressed in white buckskin. Longmire describes the scene for us: the scent of cedar, wild sage, and sweetgrass wafting over a meadow at the head of the valley that leads down to the springs. Hanging from poles set in a line, Indian paintbrush tied with pale blue ribbons stir in the breeze. Longmire is asked to give his daughter away and his Indian words “This is my daughter. He may take her” very nearly did me in.
As hard as it is for me to imagine such a kind figure as Sheriff, I am willing to suspend disbelief when Johnson comes out with a new story. Wyoming and Montana never seemed so interesting. Love the addition of Lolo Long. ...more
Lysander Reif, actor and hapless lover, is given brief speaking parts in Waiting… through the prop of a diary prepared for his Viennese psychoanalyst.Lysander Reif, actor and hapless lover, is given brief speaking parts in Waiting… through the prop of a diary prepared for his Viennese psychoanalyst. Otherwise we watch in wonder (a laugh behind our smile) as this young British pawn in pre-WWI Vienna is turned this way and that in canny and knowing hands and is subjected to the voracious appetites of more mature personalities. Lysander, like the Shakespearean character of that name in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, experiences a magical twist in his affections from the tall, fair, svelte Blanche to the dark-haired and gamine Hettie while at the same time being “run” by British Intelligence.
Never boring and never entirely serious, Boyd’s novel allows us to enjoy romping good theatre: he portrays agonizingly real motivations and maneuvers which leave our hero momentarily on the defensive. But Lysander is nothing if not imaginative and resourceful, and he finds ways to sort through the complicated set of constraints he is handed, while at the same time mentally discarding or recategorizing the bits he doesn’t choose to remember.
Boyd’s writing is magic, for it is big fiction—big and complicated enough for one to want to get lost in for days. It is wry and funny and true enough. It is always a pleasure to have a new novel of his to look forward to—one never knows where he will lead. Certainly I never expected sexual dysfunction and the psychoanalyst’s couch, but that added to our attraction to the immensely-likeable Lysander, young innocent that he was, and wily interpreter of truth that he turned out to be.
I freely admit, however, that I am still not exactly sure if I "got" the the final pieces of the book. I have a feeling I might have misinterpreted the final sleight of hand by our fine, and by this time, thoroughly grown-up Lysander. Boyd could have wiped the smile off our lips by hurting our main man, but he chose not to, and I thank him for that. But Lysander had borne the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and was far wiser than just by half....more
Skios may a play posing as a novel, but it is in good company: practically all the characters in this very funny farce are pretending to be someone thSkios may a play posing as a novel, but it is in good company: practically all the characters in this very funny farce are pretending to be someone they are not. And those that don’t pretend to be someone else have it forced upon them. I listened to the audio production of this book, performed with great comedic timing by Robin Sachs, and feel sure that this book is best enjoyed as a performance rather than as a reading experience.
The Fred Toppler Foundation, established by a once-stripper wife of Fred Toppler on the the charming Greek island of Skios, hosts renowned social scientist Dr. Norman Wilfred to give a talk to the movers and shakers of the monied world about the scientific management of science—a topic sure to engross wealthy foundation donors like high-level political figures from Greece, robber barons from Russia, bishops and priests from the Hesperides Archipeligo, and the second-richest couple in Rhode Island. But when performance artist Oliver Fox decides on the spur-of-the-moment to impersonate Dr. Wilfred, things begin immediately to unravel.
Frayn cleverly involves us in the riot that follows by presaging the novel’s action with a word or a phrase, giving us time to laugh in advance and allowing us to give our own imaginations full rein before he pulls us back with yet another, deeper, more unlikely authorial intervention. This is a light-hearted, sunny farce, and I hope Frayn spent lovely warm days enjoying the embrace of an island foundation to write it. That is the perfect revenge. ...more
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