RidgewayGirl Reads in 2014 -- Part Three

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Read in 2014

January
Night Film by Marisha Pessl
Toronto Noir edited by Janine Armin
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
Sorry by Gail Jones
Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Schneewittchen Muss Sterben (English title: Snow White Must Die) by Nele Neuhaus

February
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Limpopo Academy of Detection by Alexander McCall Smith

March
A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
The Passage by Justin Cronin
In the Forest by Edna O'Brien
Gillespie & I by Jane Harris
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawkin
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
Never Go Back by Lee Child
The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

April
Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

May
Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Das Muschelessen by Birgit Vanderbeke (English title: The Mussel Feast)
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Die schönsten Jahre: Vom Glück und Unglück der Liebe by Elke Heidenreich
Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Frederica by Georgette Heyer

June
The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
Vintage Ford by Richard Ford
Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World by Pico Iyer
1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz
The Carrier by Sophie Hannah
The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley
Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
Moranthology by Caitlin Moran
Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman
The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic by Redmond O'Hanlon

Read in 2014

July
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Blind Eye by Stuart MacBride
The One and Only by Emily Griffin
Faith by Jennifer Haigh
Bitter River by Julia Keller
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch
Save the Date by Jen Doll
We Are All Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

August
Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
Orfeo by Richard Powers
Nineteen Seventy-Seven by David Peace
History of the Rain by Niall Williams
The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman
The Secret Place by Tana French

September
Springtime for Germany by Ben Donald
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
Buffalo Jump by Howard Shrier
Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories by Tony Earley

October
At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen
The Rattle-Rat by Janwillem van de Wetering
What You See in the Dark by Manuel Munoz
The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles
The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes
Stay Awake: Stories by Dan Chaon

I've fallen behind on my museum reviews, which is great, since it means I'm actually seeing more exhibits.

Gunther von Hagens' Koerperwelten (Body Worlds)

Fourteen years ago, I saw an earlier version of this same exhibit, which was shown despite controversy. Von Hagens has developed a method of preserving soft body parts, called plastination, and his exhibit shows bodies featuring various systems, such as the vascular system, skeletal system, etc… Since they are created using actual body parts, there was an outcry surrounding the original exhibit in the various cities in which it was shown. This new version seems to have taken the complaints to heart and the result is a show that is much more educational and largely lacking the slight air of circus sideshow that it's previous incarnation had. I preferred the earlier version. But it was still interesting.



That last picture is a bear. There is a show featuring animals; the bear was included (somewhat haphazardly) at the end of the show I saw. Also, the hall was packed, and yet there was utter silence. It was eerie.

Stefan Hunstein – Im Eis (Ice)

Hunstein is a German photographer who has created a show around the photographs he took in Greenland in 2012. There were 25 large (154 cm by 114 cm) photographs exhibited. He printed them using some sort of UV printing method directly onto glass, which gave the pictures a luminosity. I'm a sucker for pictures of remote regions and these were both lovely and eerie.

From your previous thread, I hope to read it soon, much like many of the other books on my shelves. That's the story of my life!

M.T. Wetzlar Silberschmiede, gegründet 1875 – arisiert 1938 (M.T. Wetzlar, Silversmith, founded 1875 - aryanized 1938)

When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Jewish-owned businesses were "aryanized" - the businesses were sold to Germans for nominal sums. Soon thereafter, Jews were required to turn over all valuable items, again for a nominal sum. The Wetzlar's owned a prestigious silversmithing firm in Munich, which they were forced to sell. They then emigrated to London but, having lost everything, were forced to live in much reduced circumstances.

The exhibit shows the history of the company, with special attention paid to the last generation of the family, which included a WWI veteran. The final member of the family returned to Munich and recorded his memories. These were played in the background in a room of family photographs.

Most of the silver handed over/stolen by the Nazis was melted down, but some survives. The purpose of the exhibit was both to draw attention to Jewish businesses that were destroyed and to try to find owners for the surviving silver pieces.

>7 RidgewayGirl: How beautiful, and sad

Those images from the Stefan Hunstein exhibition look great.

A few people, who normally read Very Serious Books, have mentioned that they find Georgette Heyer's romantic novels set in England during the Regency, to be the perfect escapist read. Then my library added several of her novels to their ebook collection and it seemed a good time to give her novels a try.

I have to agree with the consensus. The two I read, Frederica and The Grand Sophy, were hugely entertaining, combining a light, good-natured plot with rigorous historical research and a wonderful vocabulary. Yes, there is a romance, but it's secondary to, well, the secondary characters, who are a lot of fun.

The first novel, Frederica, concerned a family of limited means, lead by Frederica, who come to London to give the younger sister a proper coming out in the hopes of her making a comfortable marriage. To effect this, Frederica imposes on a sort-of relative, Alverstoke, a Marquess who is easily bored. He finds himself drawn into Frederica's family, mostly due to the exploits of the two youngest boys and their Baluchistan Hound, causing him to become less bored. This was a charming story, in the best sense of the word, without becoming cloying or twee. My one complaint about the story was that it was continually pointed out that Frederica gave no indication of showing any interest in Alverstoke, and this was shown as the reason he fell for her.

This was not the flaw of The Grand Sophy, which features as strong a female character as can be found in any novel. Sophy, raised in an assortment of diplomatic and military environments in Europe by a negligent father, is sent to London in order to find a husband. Sophy, who has her own money and her own ideas, simply ignores the rules and expectations put on young women. She quickly comes into conflict with the oldest son of the house, who disapproves. What made this book fun was that it concerned a meeting of equals. There was one egregious example of anti-semitism in this book, with the character of a Jewish money-lender being so over the top as to cause Charles Dickens discomfort.

Georgette Heyer became sort of a guilty pleasure, after Chris introduced her books to me. I think the first I read was Venetia. I remember reading Frederica and The Grand Sophy (a favorite), and enjoying both. Another favorite, although not a favorite of a lot of her fans, is An Infamous Army. It takes place at the time of the battle of Waterloo. Her well researched and detailed descriptions of the battle seem to be the part that detracts from the story for most of her fans.

Colleen, Heyer really did her research. To the point of it being almost invisible. But all that stuff about the various carriages and dress styles and idioms is fantastic, even if the dictionary on my ereader is not really up for it.

I'm also reading a Georgette Heyer novel, The Reluctant Widow which I'm finding highly entertaining. I like your description A few people, who normally read Very Serious Books, have mentioned that they find Georgette Heyer's romantic novels set in England during the Regency, to be the perfect escapist read. - very apt!

>11 NanaCC:

I remember liking Venetia. And... Devil's cub. There's swordfighting (fencing) in it, although not by the heroine. Don't recall these two Kay read, they sound like typical Heyer. The leads being "equal" and appreciating each other's maturity. It's sad to think that this was a big thing (still is, I guess).

I skimmed a Hugh Walpole novel the other day (didn't buy it), from the 1930s, and the hero lovingly gazes at his beloved (candid guileless blue eyes, dimples, timid stammer) who is "such a baby, such a perfect baby"--a grown woman as it happens, not an actual baby.

>1 RidgewayGirl:

Ha! In Canada women didn't legally become "persons" until 1929, but in 1915 ALREADY the men were "politically subject". And they said hysteria is a female affliction.

Georgette Heyer the queen of the paperback novels. You could always find one of her novels on the second hand shelves way back in the last century. I have never read one, but my mum loved them.

Georgette Heyer . . . a name from the past. Way back in my yoot, I tried but was never able to get into her. But now that I have soooo much more experience, it might be time to try again.

>5 RidgewayGirl:, Gorgeous photos.

Now I'm caught up with you!

>1 RidgewayGirl: ... harem government
That's too funny!

Lola, Avid, these guys might not have been illogical (I think that's the term traditionally tossed out by a guy losing an argument), but they sure were prone to panic.

I never heard about Georgette Heyer before LT, and Club Read! But given some of the covers, I can see her populating the dusty corners of used bookshops.

Kris, I'm glad to see you here!

Vintage Ford is a hodge-podge collection of Richard Ford's writing, consisting of mostly short stories, from both early and later collections, a magazine article about his mother and an excerpt from his most famous novel, Independence Day. I'd never read anything by Ford, and this seemed a good way to see if I would like his writing.

The first few short stories, written early in his career, were very much in the Raymond Carver-Hemingway vein; manly men, or boys trying to become men, in difficult circumstances. They were well-written and the settings were vividly drawn. It's the later stuff that shines, though. The later stories holding more subtlety and depth than I had expected, with each character, even those given only a few sentences in passing, fully real and complex.

The best part of this collection was the article that Ford wrote about his mother. It's the story of an understated love between mother and son that was no less strong for the space it gave both of them to live their lives. Ford's language here is understated and perfect.

Vintage Ford was a good introduction to an author I should already have some familiarity with. I'm inclined to read his later stuff first, with Canada, Women with Men and Independence Day at the top of my list.

"It's the later stuff that shines, though. The later stories holding more subtlety and depth than I had expected, with each character, even those given only a few sentences in passing, fully real and complex.

Sound very good, Kay.

Hmm, I've never read any Richard Ford either, although I have owned Rock Springs for years. Maybe I'll give it a try.

I've got a few Richard Ford books on the shelves that I've never read. One of these days...

It is reassuring that there are people out there who have also never read Richard Ford. I am constantly finding authors that everyone seems to have already established an educated opinion on and I'm running along behind, figuring out what they've written.

I have Canada around here somewhere and will have to read it soon.

>7 RidgewayGirl: (and #208 in the previous thread): The Wetzlar exhibition sounds very moving. Was there anything the Nazis didn't take over, exploit, co-opt, smash to bits, or otherwise destroy? One marvels that there are any artifacts left at all.

I'm reminded of Susan Hiller's J Street Project video installation, which I saw when it was at the Tate. It explores the tensions between past and present in contemporary Germany, in particular, the indifference to the commonplace reminders of Germany's Jewish culture. One of her points is that this indifference itself is systemic and contributory to both current and past manifestations of anti-Semitism.

Hiller's installation shows how even things that don't seem significant are impactful on both personal and societal levels: "I had just gone to Berlin and I was wandering around the centre of town and I saw a sign that said Judenstrasse – Jew Street. The language of that is rude, not very polite. It is like that slight difference in English between calling someone a Jew and saying that they are Jewish."

http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/article71fd.html?articleid=168

One has only to look at the internet comments vis-à-vis the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act to know that people have trouble accepting the idea of institutionalized prejudice. "Things are better now, so these indirect actions don't matter." Or, "That's not real prejudice; it's not the same as segregation." Dog whistling all the way to Dixie.

>10 RidgewayGirl: I've never been able to see the appeal of Heyer, despite reading a few of her books, but your reviews make both Frederica and The Grand Sophy sound charming.

>20 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I've only read Canada by Ford which I loved. I think I'll try this collection of short stories as well some time.

Diana, thanks for the link to that article. I just saw an exhibit at the Haus der Kunst which had previously shown at the Tate, so maybe it will make its way over. It is interesting finding small bits of history all over Munich, which has a small and modern Jewish Museum in the centre of the old town.

And then, coming home yesterday, there was a tiny demonstration against the "Islamization" of Munich. No idea sounds good coming from a bullhorn, and I could tell before I could understand the words that it wasn't going to be pleasant. On the other hand, there were less than ten people involved that I could see and everyone else ignored them entirely.

Oscar, Canada has had good reviews. I'm glad I have a copy waiting to be read.

It had seemed, at the time, a good idea, this holiday in Pyongyang.

Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World is a series of essays about the parts of the world isolated by politics, geography or culture. Pico Iyer spends time in the places you'd expect, like North Korea, Cuba, Bhutan and Iceland, but also in Argentina and Australia. Iyer comes across as a more thoughtful, less humorous Jon Ronson, able to insert himself into interesting situations, offbeat locations, and to get people to speak openly with him, without becoming the focus of his tales. Even the one in which police officers had a great deal of difficulty determining whether "Pico" or "Iyer" was his first name revolves around life in a Cuban village.

Back in the Gran Hotel, the receptionist greeted me in Hindi, a cockroach was waiting to welcome me in my bedroom, and a sudden thunderstorm turned the hotel corridors into rivers, a few dead leaves floating by my door. In the beautiful dining room, where La Madama had once held masked balls and taught le tout Asuncion to polka, four men in ponchos were putting on a show of Paraguayan culture, featuring songs from Mexico, songs from Cuba, and songs from Peru.

Iyer spends time in each of the places featured, returning to some years after his first visits. He falls into the daily rhythms of the places he's staying in, becoming familiar with Saturday markets or the movies being shown at the local cinema. The book itself is a bit dated, having been written twenty years ago but, for me at least, it has lost little of its appeal, the countries that he wrote about remain as exotic and unknown as they were when he wrote the essays.

Sounds like an interesting read. Making a note . . .

the countries that he wrote about remain as exotic and unknown as they were when he wrote the essays

That's somewhat encouraging. Enjoyed your review

1914: A Novel by French author Jean Echenoz begins, predictably enough, in August of 1914, as Anthime, out to enjoy the day with his bicycle and a book, hears the tocsin being rung from every church bell in the countryside. He rides home to find that war has broken out and so he enlists although, unlike the others, he doesn't think that it will all be over in a few weeks.

There is nothing here that anyone with a passing knowledge of the First World War will be surprised by, but the vividness with which Echenoz describes the life of a soldier in the trenches certainly drives the futility and inhumanity of this war home. And that seems to be the point of this slender novel in which men die or are injured in all the expected ways and those who survive are not always able to pick their lives up where they had left them when they marched off, full of patriotism.

Kay, have you read Birdsong? I found that one to be a very good description of the soldier's experiences in the trenches and tunnels, and the effect on their physical and mental well being.

Colleen, yes. That and the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. I should reread those as it's been a good decade (at least) since I read them.

>31 RidgewayGirl: those who survive are not always able to pick their lives up where they had left them when they marched off

Many years ago, I saw a silent British documentary that had been shot right after WWI. It focused on shell shocked veterans living in a psychiatric hospital, and it was appalling how little compassion was shown them. Even today, we seem to feel PTSD is something people should just get over after enough time has passed. We still have a long way to go in terms of recognizing that mental diseases are physical.

Have you read The Living Unknown Soldier? It's an interesting examination of the way French soldiers returning from the trenches were treated, but it also looks at how WWI's terrible cost of life changed French society irrevocably.

Diana, I haven't, but I'll look for it.

The Carrier continues Sophie Hannah's series of crime novels loosely centered around a small group of detectives working in the fictional Culver Valley in England. In this one, a businesswoman named Gaby discovers that a man she had had a sort of relationship with has confessed to the murder of his disabled wife. Gaby is certain that he could not have killed her, which causes her to rush back to save him. Returning to a group of old friends, she finds things are quite a bit more complicated than she'd assumed, but her faith in the man's innocence is undaunted. Meanwhile, the detective leading the investigation, Simon Waterhouse, is dealing simultaneously with his conviction that something is wrong with the case as well as the machinations of his somewhat unhinged boss.

Hannah writes as though Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine had combined their novels (yes, I do know they are the same author), with Vine's odd and compelling psychological suspense forming the heart of each novel, but with Rendell's solid and intuitive police work going on simultaneously. Of course, Wexford and Burden would be shocked and dismayed by the sheer unprofessionalism of Waterhouse and his colleagues, but their determination and interest in motivations are similar.

Hannah's plots are growing more convoluted, and I'm not sure that she entirely sold me on the resolution to this one. But her books are always fun to read and to puzzle out and I'm happy that she's allowing both Zailer and Waterhouse, her lead detectives, to become more rounded as characters and to begin to give the reader the background needed to understand why Waterhouse is such a repressed and angry individual. Secondary characters were also fleshed out, which makes the crime-solving team much more enjoyable to spend time with. I really enjoy this series, in part because Hannah is willing to create central characters who border on the unlikeable, although they are growing on me.

>36 RidgewayGirl: Uh Oh... another series that I want to try. I've never read any Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine either. Dare I?

I picked up The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley knowing nothing about it except that it has a pretty cover. I thought I was getting a Kate Morton-style story, but it was something entirely different.

After Eva's sister dies, she brings her ashes back to Trelowarth House, in Wales, where they had spent their summers as children. Soon, odd things begin happening; Eva hears voices in empty rooms and then she keeps finding herself in the same place, but 300 years in the past, when Trelowarth House was owned by an infamous group of smugglers.

So, I was surprised to find a time-travel romance but, hey, smugglers are almost as fun as pirates and this story came complete with hidden caves and unscrupulous customs officers. And the writing was good enough not to get in the way of the story. In the end, however, the flaws outweighed the fun of this novel. I'll set aside the idea of going back to the eighteenth century to find a boyfriend, but what ended up bothering me about this story was the protagonist's passiveness, and the careless way the author explained time travel. Eva takes no real action until the final chapters of the book and is happy to pretend to be mute for much of the story.

How the author handled the questions of both how time travel worked and how the inhabitants of the past handled having someone show up claiming to be from the future irked me. If you were involved in dangerous political matters involving succession that could well result in you and your family's imprisonment or execution and someone showed up from the future, would you ask them who the next king was? Would you be curious about the future, or would you simply decided that it was better not to know, thanks anyway? Would everyone around you go along with this? And even though dismissing witchcraft out of hand is easier nowadays, would mental illness occur to you as a more likely explanation for a stranger claiming to be from the future than that she really was from the future? Time travel is such an interesting idea and the book never explores any of that, with everyone being bizarrely uninterested in the topic.

So while I can't help but like this book for having smugglers in it, in the end it missed the mark, lacking both adventure and characters with a healthy sense of curiosity.

Too bad! Smugglers are fun, but time travel can be iffy, as unfortunately this book seems to have shown.

It sounds like I can skip The Rose Garden, Kay. The premise sounds fun though.

I agree: Smugglers are awesome, and I'm still searching for a great fiction read about them myself.

Also, I have plans to read Susanna Kearsley, so I'm very glad to hear she is not a Kate Morton readalike. The Forgotten Garden is on my worst reads list.

Rebecca, there are good novels exploring time travel. Time and Again by Jack Finney was a lot of fun, and I was just informed that Daphne du Maurier wrote one. But this was more a romance novel than a book exploring the idea of time travel, and one in which the historical smugglers were hot guys with a strong feminist viewpoint. Which also bugs -- that people who lived three hundred years ago could have a worldview that is more forward-thinking than most people today.

Colleen, there are too few books about smugglers.

I don't know, Diana. I liked the one book I read by Kate Morton enough to put her on a list of authors to maybe read something else by. I won't be reading more by Kearsley, even if there are more smugglers.

41> I suppose you've already read Jamaica Inn? I think there were smugglers in it, but it's been a long time.

One book about time travel is In the Garden of Iden. I only gave it 3.5 stars at the time but I still remember it fondly. Not a life changing experience but it did explore some interesting aspects of time travel. Such as, if you know enough about the future to make smart investments, plus you can jump 100 years in the future to reap the compounded profits, you can make a lot of money.

Awesome review, thumbed! And yes, hadn't thought of it before, but where are the good books about smugglers?

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by...

>43 FlorenceArt: Yes! Actually, I prefer the film, although I know most people don't count it as one of Hitchcock's good ones.

I also liked Smuggler's Moon far less than I thought I would.

There is also Moonfleet. I haven't read the book, but the movie was great. There is a book, isn't there?

>46 FlorenceArt: Yes, and it's been on my TBR for ages. Time for a bump, maybe. J. Meade Falkner's other books sound intriguing, too, although they don't involve smuggling.

The movie does look good. I've seen most of Fritz Lang's films, but not this one. Off to see if Netflix has it. Thanks!

>44 wandering_star: and >46 FlorenceArt: Moonfleet is indeed a book, what was considered at the time to be a children's book. I reread it in 2012, and although it was a bit dated in the Lorna Doone sense, it still had lots of adventure and real smugglers.

Between, Georgia tells the story of Nonny, from her birth in Bernice Frett's entryway, through her quiet upbringing by two spinster sisters, one deaf and the other subject to crippling bouts of anxiety, and her attempts to divorce her feckless husband, who is still trying to get his band some traction. Nonny is also the center of unrest in her small town. Born to a frightened, teenage member of the shiftless and criminal Crabtree family, but raised by the prominent Baptist Frett family, Nonny's existence heightens the tension between them.

Joshilyn Jackson's books are marketed as pleasant women's fiction, but to consider them as such is to ignore her biting wit and deep understanding of what it means to be a Southerner. These are strong women, molded into steel, but with that thin coating of perfect manners to hide the sting of their words. There are people getting by on cheap booze and disability checks who have as much kindness in them as the woman who is raising her granddaughter to be quietly terrified that her friend who goes to the Methodist church is going to hell. All that in a charmingly-told story of eccentric people in a small town. Jackson writes with both love and a clear eye.

>49 RidgewayGirl: I listened to Jackson's Gods in Alabama years ago, and I remember really enjoying it. I think I will put Between, Georgia on the list.

Nice review of Between, Georgia, Kay. I regularly interact with families from small towns in north and central Georgia at work, so this book is of interest to me.

A spate of light reading at the beginning of summer.



I discovered Caitlin Moran in 2000, the year I moved to England for the first time and went a little wild with all the newspapers. She recently wrote a funny book about feminism and that was enough to get a collection of her newspaper columns published as Moranthology. It's a solid collection of her writing, although I thought it was a mistake to leave out her review of Wife Swap, and there were a few longer pieces included only because the person she interviewed and wrote about was really, really famous.

Caitlin Moran is very funny. She's also opinionated, a feminist, a geek and really very funny. She writes about what she calls "the bangingness of Sherlock," her unconventional childhood as a one of eight children being home schooled by "the only hippies in Wolverhampton," and binge drinking. She gets Keith Richards to talk like a pirate and visits the set of Doctor Who.

In this feature, the BBC let me go around the Doctor Who studios, where I found the Face of Boe in a warehouse and sat on him. For two years, a picture of me doing so was the screensaver on my laptop. There is no doubt in my mind that, when I'm dying, and my life flashes before my eyes, that particular picture will get a longer slot than many other pivotal life moments, with a caption saying "WINNING!" flashing over it.

She also speaks seriously about the importance of libraries and what it was like being raised on benefits. These columns make for every bit as compelling reading as her account of her teenage job deliberation, which had her debating being a check-out clerk at the grocery story, a prostitute or a writer. I'm glad she chose writer, although she would have made being stuck working the late shift at the supermarket a lot of fun.

Walking the Perfect Square is the first installment in Reed Farrel Coleman's crime series about Moe Prager, an ex-cop who is asked to look into the disappearance of college student who disappeared one night after he left a Manhattan bar. Set in the mid-seventies, this is a classic hard-boiled, with the hard-nosed but tender Prager going up against various shady characters who are out to either intimidate him or to use him for purposes of their own.

What fun to read a novel that both respects the rules of the genre, while keeping the story feeling fresh and interesting. Prager is an interesting character and I'll be looking for other books in the series.

>53 RidgewayGirl: Ack! Another series that you may have put on my wishlist. :)

Colleen, it's a solid noir set in the seventies. What's not to like?

>52 RidgewayGirl: OK, that Doctor Who bit has sufficed to put Moranthology on my wishlist immediately. Funny geek gals are always welcome on my bookshelves!

bragan, she is very funny. There is also a very funny article in which she plays World of Warcraft as a ginger dwarf named scottbaio.

she plays World of Warcraft as a ginger dwarf named scottbaio.

LOL!

Rebecca Musser grew up as the daughter of a second wife in a polygamous marriage. Isolated in Salt Lake City, where they lived in a basement, rearranging sleeping arrangements whenever another baby is born, she grew up in quasi-hiding, never allowed to run around much outside for fear of the neighbors. The first wife was abusive toward Rebecca and her siblings and some of her own children joined in. Rebecca only felt free at the school run by Rulon Jeffs, the prophet of the FLDS, the prophet and leader of the polygamous mormon sect she belonged to, and in Short Creek, an area isolated between Arizona and Utah where polygamous groups live openly.

While she is naturally curious and questioning, she is also integrated into the sect and works hard to both "keep sweet" and avoid all contact with boys in general and Warren Jeffs, Rulon's son, in particular. When she turns eighteen, she is called into Rulon Jeffs' study to be told that it's time she marries. While she asks for more time, this is denied and she is quickly married to Rulon Jeffs, the prophet himself, as his nineteenth wife. Jeffs is elderly and while she has been taught to revere him, she does not enjoy her nights with him. He quickly marries many more women, but when he has a stroke, his son takes over the group. Quickly marrying off more and more girls to a small group of men, the younger men are declared apostates and sent away and the girls being married off become younger and younger. After being told she was to be remarried to Warren Jeffs, Musser runs away and struggles to build a life without an education or any usable life skills.

After Warren Jeffs is arrested, along with many of the men in his inner circle, Musser testifies against them, as well as helping law enforcement to understand the customs and beliefs of the FLDS.

Musser is an interesting person, leaving the sect and yet still being sympathetic to their beliefs and way of life. She was careful in how she portrayed the members of the FLDS which, I think, made her into a somewhat opaque character in her own memoir. Since most of her family are still part of that world, I can see how she didn't want to burn any bridges, although the reactions of her family members to her testimony indicates that she may never be welcomed by any of them. Musser is a determined individual, and she had to be, to have the courage to run away, but it's also clear that she is lonely and doesn't entirely feel comfortable in the world outside of FLDS.

I'm not sure I learned anything new from this book, having previously read David Ebershoff's The Nineteenth Wife, Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven and having watched Big Love. Despite Musser's reticence, I felt a little voyeuristic while reading the parts of The Witness Wore Red set in the world of the FLDS. It's so alien, and they clearly do not want outsiders to know what goes on. On the other hand, it's also clear that this is not a healthy way to live, with women reduced to a number and required to "keep sweet" and never indicate any opinion of their own and men focussed unduly on sexual matters. The lack of education for the children and the dishonest and sometimes criminal activities engaged in by the sect are also worrisome.

It makes me angry just to read about how the women are treated in this world!

The interesting part of The Witness Wore Red is how sympathetic Musser is to the FLDS way of life. They must at some level all still be family to her.

Me, I would lock up all cult leaders, including the Pope.

>61 baswood:

Hear, hear!

>59 RidgewayGirl:

I have no words the New York Times would print.

61 and 62> Bravissimo!

It was clear from the book that the men in the FLDS did not really regard women as people, but rather as prizes and servants. It's depressing that that still exists in the US in 2014. And then there's the Supreme Court ruling. And I have a friend who just left an abusive husband. His subsequent actions are making it clear that he doesn't love her, he's just angry to be losing a possession.

On the bright side, I finally finished The Prague Cemetery (which was brilliant, but difficult) and it's July. Happy Canada Day everyone!

I saw Musser being interviewed on "The Today Show" after the book first came out. She was brave to do what she did, but seemed a very troubled person. (No wonder.)

We realized we had gone too far; the idea of a three-headed devil who banqueted with the leader of the Italian government was difficult to swallow.

The protagonist of Umberto Eco's novel, The Prague Cemetery is not a sympathetic character. His first words to the reader are in the form of an epic rant in which he disparages and reviles every single group he can think of; women, Jews, Catholics, Germans, the French, Jesuits, and Freemasons are among those singled out for his disgust. And Simonini never does a single thing to endear himself to the reader.

And that's my quibble with this outrageous, conspiracy-driven book. It's similar to Foucault's Pendulum, being full of arcane plots and secret societies, and to Baudolino with an opportunistic main character who deals in forgeries. But while Casaubon and Baudolino were engaging characters despite their flaws, Simonini is a guy who inspires only a mild distaste. With a complex plot that requires concentration and a good grasp of nineteenth century European history (among other things), I needed someone to hold on to through the cyclone of events and obscure references.

Simonini gets his professional start forging wills and titles for an unscrupulous lawyer, until that gentleman dies and leaves Simonini his business, in an unexpected will. Simonini is then asked to implicate his friends in an imaginary plot, which then lead to an assignment with Garibaldi's forces in the South of Italy and on to further work in Paris. Simonini is less a spy than someone who is able to enjoy the reputation of a spy and to convey that reputation into a steady income. But his masterpiece, one that takes much of his life to complete and use appropriately, involves an imaginary meeting of rabbis in the Jewish cemetery in Prague in which they agree on a series of protocols that will allow them to control the world.

The conspiracies that Simonini is involved in are fantastic. More than a few times I'd be reading along and think, "hey, that sounds a little like that scandal/affair/coup," only to realize that it was that scandal/affair/coup and that Eco has the entire event based on Simonini's forgeries and groups with devious intentions.

This is a book I struggled with in part because my grasp of the history of that time is shallow and unsteady. I'd like to reread this book in a few years, with a bit of advance reading under my belt. I suspect I will like it more with a second reading.

Interesting review, but I think I'll skip this one. My appreciation of Eco is pretty spotty. I really enjoyed The Name of the Rose and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, but have had trouble getting into some of his others.

Ha, I managed more than "mild distaste" for Simonini. But I thought he worked well as a narrative linchpin, or rather, I liked the way Eco used him to bring together all the strands he wanted to talk about.

And certainly the book would reward repeat readings. Incidentally, have you read/are aware of Will Eisner's The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Eco wrote the foreword for it. It might help to define the end point of Eco's tale, what his novel converges onto.

>67 janeajones:

Jane, I think chances are good you might find it interesting if you liked those two. As in the Rose, there's the background of a historical movement--religious heresy in the Rose, social revolution in the Cemetery--and the structure of a catalogue as in Queen Loana. Also the memory loss prompting the character to recall the past, giving it a similar tone.

I've had this on the TBR for a while and I guess I'll get to it eventually. Thanks for your review.

Lola, I saw where Eco was going with the rabbis in the graveyard plot. That one was at least one of the clearer ones! I did manage the big events, like the Dreyfus affair, and I thought the bits about Freud were the funniest.

If Lola hadn't mentioned the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I was going to. The conspiracy surrounding that forgery and its shocking consequences are basic to what Eco is getting at in this novel. The Protocols have been blamed at least in part for the virulent anti-Semitism that rose up in the early 20th century. To me, this is why The Prague Cemetery is such an important book, disagreeable though the protagonist is.

Redmond O'Hanlon is used to hiking through rain forests in the Congo, Borneo or Brazil, but when personal circumstances require him to stay closer to home, he comes up with the idea of writing about the wild places in Britain. Most people would decide that meant hiking in the Pennines or walking the length of the Ridgeway, but to O'Hanlon wild entailed traveling through the North Atlantic. On a deep sea fishing trawler. In January. While a hurricane raged.

Trawlermen are well paid, not just because of the very real dangers they face, but because a fishing trip lasts two or three weeks in which each man will sleep only a handful of hours, while performing dangerous and arduous tasks in very cold weather. O'Hanlon, in his fifties, didn't keep up with the younger men, but he did stretch himself to his limit, gutting fish and packing them in ice alongside the others. He was there to help a graduate student in marine biology working on his dissertation, which made for the most interesting parts of Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic. Luke had an exhaustive knowledge of the geography and zoology of the North Atlantic, and his monologues and explanations made for riveting reading. Also compelling were the personal lives of the trawlermen, whose working hours and conditions made it difficult for them to maintain relationships.

The weakness of the book, where it bogged down for me, were when O'Hanlon was monologuing. Extreme exhaustion causes all the men to talk without filters and while the others might go on and on about how working affected their marriages, the wonders of the Wyville Thomson Ridge or the defense mechanisms of the hagfish, this was welcome in a book about the North Atlantic. But O'Hanlon's areas of expertise; native customs of the Congo or famous naturalists he has known, are out of place and took me out of what was going on on the Norlantean. On the other hand, O'Hanlon did a beautiful job of describing what utter exhaustion felt like as well as the fear and violence of a force 12 hurricane.

I remember thinking that O'Hanlon kind of got in his own way in No Mercy. Still, this sounds like a worthwhile read.

It's not like affluent white guys living in New York don't have problems. But a book about the anxieties of an affluent New Yorker will have to work harder to get me to care. Joshua Ferris is a fantastic writer, but even he could not get me to do much more than shrug about his protagonist's worries.

In To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Paul O'Rourke, newly divorced, Red Sox fan and a dentist with a successful Manhattan practice, is driven by doubt. He's made it the center of who he is, even as he longs for a father figure. His ex-wife is Jewish and he longs to be a part of her extended, affectionate family and despite his atheism he has thrown himself into the celebrations and rituals they practice. He's also terrified of death, his own, but mostly the potential loss of anyone he loves, causing him to refuse to have children or even own a pet. Then someone creates a website for his dental practice, interspersing segments from a biblical-sounding document in with the staff biographies.

There's no doubt that this novel is both clever and humorous. It reminds me of The Finkler Question in many respects. But, in the end, I was not won over, despite Paul's desperate desire for connection. I have been more diligent with my flossing, however. A novel about a dentist will do that.

>74 RidgewayGirl: Not that I was planning on reading this book anyway (for some of the reasons you identify at the start), but when I got to It reminds me of The Finkler Question in many respects I knew I had to stay away because I really disliked that book!

74> lol

Rebecca, I hated The Finkler Question. In Joshua Ferris's defense, his portrayal of women was much, much better than Jacobson's.

Well, I hated it too; I just was trying to be polite by saying I "really disliked" it! I thought it was antisemitic as well as misognynistic, and I just don't get that kind of English "humor".

The Shining Girls has a most amazing premise; what if there was a serial killer who could travel through time? How on earth could he be caught? And the best part about this book is that Lauren Beukes almost pulls it off. Along the way, she's written a story that's a lot of fun to read, too.

The beginning is a little shaky, with a series of disjointed segments too short for me to become invested in any character or situation before the next segment began with another character decades removed from the previous one. But eventually Beukes introduces Kirby Mazrachi, the girl who lived, and the story settles down to follow Kirby as she tries to do what the cops have be incapable of; to find the man who killed her dog and left her for dead.

Kirby's great. She's got a lot of baggage, what with her unconventional upbringing, the aftereffects of what happened to her, and the media storm that surrounded her afterwards. But she's plucky and resourceful and willing to follow leads that are taking her into some very odd territory. She's got help in a sportswriter who once covered the police beat and now serves as her mentor.

As I said, the start is rocky, but once this odd tale got going, I had a hard time putting it down. In the end, there are some pretty big holes in the explanation of how this guy found the girls he murdered and the means he used to travel through time, but if you don't look too closely, it's a fantastic summer read.

Warning: I'm currently reading fluffy books, books of negligible substance and a few that float upwards if nothing is set on top of them. Be warned. I'll still review them, as that's a habit that's hard to break. The most serious books I'm reading now are crime novels -- and a few of them are anticipated (Megan Abbott's The Fever) or worthwhile for other reasons (David Peace's Nineteen Seventy Seven), which should tell you all you need to know.

That is all. I'll let you know when I return to the land of the literate. Until then, skip or skim.

>80 RidgewayGirl: I'm planning the same for my vacation. It's too hot to think.

I'll be interested in your thoughts on Abbott's foray into pseudo sci-fi. The reviews I've read have been lukewarm.

Great review of The Shining Girls, which is on my to be read soon list. Did you feel the author tried to explain the time travel and failed, or that it was a time slip novel?

Edited: typo

Diana, the time travel in The Shining Girls was unexplained, but through a very interesting vector. I would have loved even an unsatisfactory attempt at an explanation! I look forward to finding out what you think of it.

Stuart MacBride writes a series of gritty crime novels set in Aberdeen, Scotland, following the career of Logan McRae. In Blind Eye, the police department are trying to solve a series of brutal blindings of Polish immigrants, while trying to control the rising crime rate. Then a Scottish crime lord is also blinded and violence erupts.

The series is always dark, certainly falling under the description of "tartan noir," and McRae is, as always, a mess. He's drinking, which is par for the course, but it is beginning to affect his ability to do his job and he makes some pretty stupid mistakes along the way. Really, he isn't a very good cop, despite his distain for the abilities of everyone he works with. The story was interesting, but many of the characters are drawn in such broad strokes that they become cartoons. I also think that MacBride's portrayal of McRae's female boss has moved from the funny to the offensive.

I'll continue with the series in the hope that MacBride regains his footing with the next book.

I have not heard of "Tartan Noir" before; I suppose Ian Rankin's Rebus was the forerunner.

>83 RidgewayGirl: Now have have to read something by MacBride just so I can have the tag "tartan noir" in my library. Oh look, how convenient, a Wikipedia page with authors! Let's just add one of everything to my TBR.

>83 RidgewayGirl: I just added the series to my list of series in FictFact. It will stay on my not started list for a while, but Tartan Noir was too interesting to pass by.

Bas, yes, but for me, Denise Mina was the introduction.

lesmel, it is an excellent tag to have added to one's library. Off to look at the wikipedia entry…

Colleen, the first book, Cold Granite, was excellent.

I've read a few of Emily Griffin's fun, chick-lit novels and enjoyed them, so The One & Only: A Novel looked like just the thing to keep me company on a long flight. The story is about Shea, a girl who grew up in a small Texas town with a solid college football team. Her entire life is consumed with the team; she works for the athletic department, her best friend's father is the coach, and she is dating a guy who once played for the team. But when her best friend's mother dies, a woman she's known since infancy, she finds she needs to stretch herself. She takes a job writing for the sports section of a newspaper and even a new boyfriend -- a hot NFL player. Things are looking up, but despite her shiny new life, there's a man she can't get her mind off of.

And this is the beginning of what didn't work in this book. That guy is her best friend's father. A man she's looked up to as a father figure and known since she was a baby. It wasn't the age difference, but the near incest that tainted the relationship, not to mention the power disparity; Shea has worshipped the coach her entire life. So there was a significant ick factor that didn't work in what was intended as a light, entertaining read. The relationship was deeply troublesome throughout the book and had he not been "Coach," I suspect she would have been calling him Mr Carr even when they made out.

But that's not my big issue with this book, it's that Griffin used domestic violence as a convenient plot point. She is cheating on her boyfriend, but that's fine, because later he turns out to be a little bit grabby, jealous and almost-rapey. This is a serious thing. Not something to be added to allow Shea to remain a sympathetic character, even as she cheats and lies to the people around her. Griffin pulls her punches and has the boyfriend turn out to be a bad guy so that Shea doesn't have to be. Then, when his usefulness has ended, Griffin has the bad boyfriend fade away, leaving behind only a few grateful texts in which he apologizes and seeks treatment. Abusive, controlling guys don't politely bow out when a woman breaks up with them. Even when the woman acts all empowered. Making domestic violence an exciting, but temporary episode does a disservice to the women who have to deal with this. Just don't do this.

>88 RidgewayGirl: I hope the disappointing book didn't ruin your flight. I always need a book I can get lost in when I fly.

Colleen, as if I would walk onto a plane holding only one book!

>90 RidgewayGirl: hahaha.. Of course. How silly of me. :)

Sheila grew up in a respectable Irish-American household near Boston. Her older half brother even became a priest, a great source of pride for her mother, although her father, now falling into dementia after a lifetime of alcoholism, has never had much respect for the Church. Then her brother is accused of molesting a child.

Jennifer Haigh is good at bringing out the nuance of situations and creating complex characters. In this she reminds me of Tom Perrotta; she never takes the expected path. In Faith she's taken a controversial topic that everyone has strong opinions about and tells a story, not of monsters and victims, but of damaged, complicated people with histories and reasons. And all without having written anything that feels exploitative. Faith is also a vivid picture of a specific place and culture.

I liked most of Jennifer Haigh's other books a lot better than I liked Faith, which I felt had a bit of an agenda.

Point taken, Rebecca. I still have Baker Towers and The Condition to read.

Bitter River is a mystery novel set in the mountains of West Virginia. It follows Bell Elkins, the prosecutor for a small county that is slowly dying of poverty, and the sheriff, Nick Fogelsong. The mystery concerns discovering who killed a promising young high school student, who turns out to be pregnant, making the prime suspects her boyfriend and his family. This is a mystery novel of the classic kind, where the pool of suspects is finite and the story follows the investigators as they gather clues and interview witnesses.

The setting is a gritty coal town, slowly dying. Local businesses are going out of business with people going to the chain stores and restaurants on the highway out of town. There's drug abuse and many who still live in the area are scraping by on welfare or what they can cobble together. Bell's an interesting character; she's too arrogant to really be likable, harsh and with a giant chip on her shoulder. Fogelsong's the classic sheriff, gruff and kind-hearted underneath it all, he cuts corners here and there, but is dedicated to his job. He's a walking stereotype of the Longmire variety.

Then the author, Julia Keller, decided to make the story Much! More! Exciting! by adding a Middle Eastern terrorist, snipers, explosions and a schizophrenic wife, among other plot twists and it all became too improbable and short changed both the central story and the setting which made this book a bit more interesting than the books beside it on the shelf. Keller's writing and her knowledge of the region are enough to make a solid mystery novel that is worth reading. The added thriller elements detracted from this and reduced my enjoyment in what might have been a very good vacation read.

>94 RidgewayGirl: The Condition was the first Haigh I read, and then I backtracked and read her earlier books, including Baker Towers. I also enjoyed her short story collection, News from Heaven, but it helps to have read Baker Towers first.

The other Haigh I've read was Mrs. Kimble, which I think was her first novel. I thought it was very good. She writes unobtrusively, which is to say she puts a lot of work into making her words stay out of the way of the story she's telling.

>95 RidgewayGirl: It sounds like Bitter River exploded a bit at the end. That's too bad, because until you got to that part, I was tempted.

Colleen, I have no luck at picking out books without knowing anything about them beforehand. I should really learn from experience and stick to my sizable wish list, or at least take a look at the LT reviews before I bring the book home.

>97 RidgewayGirl: I liked Mrs. Kimble too.

Marc is a GP with a thriving practice, a husband and a father to two adolescent girls. He's also a big jerk, but if you read Herman Koch's previous novel, The Dinner, this will come as no surprise to you. He hates his patients' bodies and petty concerns. Most of his patients are artists of some sort or another and he hates to attend the various openings and viewings they invite him to. Arrogant and contemptuous in his inner life, he nonetheless manages to put forth a genial and easy going face to the world and his patients like him. Then he meets Ralph Meier, a well known stage actor who takes a liking to him (and especially to Marc's wife) and invites Marc and his family to join them at the Summer House With Swimming Pool they've rented for the season. Marc has his own, less than admirable reasons to want to be there and so he engineers things so that his wife's misgivings are overridden. And then things begin to go seriously wrong for everyone present.

Less extreme than The Dinner, this new novel still features a few reprehensible individuals. Koch manages to make Marc, despite his own horribleness, into the one the reader is pulling for.

When he worked like this, he didn't drink, which we all appreciated. He'd been diagnosed with diabetes a few years back and shouldn't have been drinking at any time. Instead he'd become a secret drinker. It kept Mom on high alert and I worried sometimes that their marriage had become the sort Inspector Javert might have had with Jean Valjean.

Rosemary's family is fractured, her father's drinking being by far the most minor of symptoms. Her brother has left, her mother is depressed and no body speaks of her sister at all. As for Rosemary, she's off kilter to the ordinary world, finding it difficult to negotiate friendships and relationships. Of course there's a reason, which is revealed fairly early in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, but I'm not going to reveal anything.

Rosemary's voice is wonderful. She's observant, honed from her years of being a loner and having a professor for a father. She has a wry sense of humor and an odd way of looking at the world. There is also a lot in this book about language and families and social interaction, all of which is fascinating. The telling of the story is not linear. When Rosemary was young, she talked all the time, causing her father to ask her to start her stories in the middle, and that is what she does here, flowing back and forth with the connected randomness of memory.

This is a good choice for for the American debut into the Booker Prize race.

Intriguing reviews, Kay.

Enjoying your reviews Kay

I enjoyed Jen Doll's memories of the various weddings she has attended in Save the Date, but I don't think that this book is something that would interest more than a few people. Doll writes lightly and with humor and she seems like she'd be a fun person to have a drink with. I'll be eager to see if she writes something more substantial next.

gasp!!! @ #1

I know, right?

I'm not that pretty.

I always go to "first unread" so I didn't see what you were gasping about until I scrolled up. Wow!

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a book of short stories by Swamplandia! author Karen Russell. I wasn't surprised to find each story to be inventive and unusual, but I was unprepared for how much variety and heart Russell put into a slender volume of stories. From an eerie story about homesteaders in Nebraska, to a group of former presidents reincarnated as horses, each story was fantastic. I'm looking forward to more from Russell.

Loosely based on the myth of Orpheus, whose musical ability saved the Argonauts and almost allowed him to rescue his lover from Hades, Orfeo tells the story of Peter Els, a talented but obscure composer who has taken up amateur genetic manipulation in retirement. Things go terribly wrong when someone spots the home lab and a government agency arrives to confiscate his equipment and question him.

This portion of the story is very much just a background to the larger story of Els' life. He's talented, but not able to take responsibility or make decisions for himself. His life path is determined by a girlfriend, his divorce by his inability to forge his own path or to take his life seriously. I was frustrated by the character, who came across as less of a valiant hero and more as a guy who just goes wherever the wind takes him. Had he been younger, he would have been the classic slacker dude, just wanting to make his music and letting a series of disillusioned girlfriends make the big decisions.

Els has one good friend in his life, although at the time the book opens they have not spoken for eighteen years, a hot-headed choreographer who pushes Els to greater accomplishments, even as his blowhard style causes them to constantly fall out.

There is a great deal of music described in Orfeo. Music, like visual art, is difficult, if not impossible, to describe with words if the reader hasn't experienced those works for themselves. I wish there had been a way for Richard Powers to communicate the deep love and understanding Els has for music without the detailed descriptions, which made up a large portion of the book. Maybe he should have gone further and incorporated the music into the text somehow (shouldn't this be possible with an ebook or an audiobook?). There was a theme of our shrinking attention spans, which is echoed in Powers' use of brief snippets of Els' thoughts to break up the book into segments instead of chapter breaks.

I can see why Richard Powers has the reputation he does and why the Booker Prize committee has put Orfeo on their long list. But my appreciation of his skill remains more theoretical than actual. I'm glad I've read something by this author, but I don't have any plans to renew the acquaintanceship.

>111 RidgewayGirl: But my appreciation of his skill remains more theoretical than actual. I'm glad I've read something by this author, but I don't have any plans to renew the acquaintanceship.

That's the way I felt when I read The Echo Maker.

As a professional musician, I try to avoid books that try to describe music with words. I've found few if any can pull it off. I'm pretty sure I'll pass on Orfeo.

>111 RidgewayGirl:

Hmm, too bad, I haven't got to that one yet, but I'm a fan of Powers, through better and worse books. Music is a huge theme in The time of our singing too and I wonder now whether its larger cast of characters wouldn't have made for a more sympathetic introduction to Powers for you. (Its other big theme is the history of race relations in the US.)

He can be precious, preachy and obvious (especially regarding emotion, morality, human sentiment), but I love his enthusiasm for science, his love of science. It's so rare among fiction writers--actually, I can't think of anyone comparable in that regard.

My favourites are Galatea 2.2 and Plowing the dark, exploring artificial intelligence and virtual reality, respectively.

Intriguing review of Orfeo. You haven't put me off, but I am forewarned.

Orfeo is already on my wish list, and I appreciate your review. It will be an interesting read, one way or another.

Ok, Lola, I'll keep your endorsement in mind if I run across a book by Powers that looks intriguing.

I'd hate to put anyone off a book (well, there are books that I feel no guilt about saying, "this book stinks."). Powers does write well and it's clear there is a reason for his reputation. But it didn't work for me, which is not to say he might not become someone else's favorite author. There. Have I sufficiently hedged my bets?

Jack Whitehead is a seasoned journalist haunted by the spectre of a murdered woman. Bob Fraser is a cop married to the daughter of a legendary officer, with a bright future and a clean reputation. He is also involved in an obsessive relationship with a prostitute which may not be entirely consensual. In the flawed and dirty world of the villages and towns near Leeds, in Yorkshire, in Nineteen Seventy-Seven, they are the good guys. A violent sexual murderer, called the Yorkshire Ripper, is hunting down the prostitutes of the region, but there are questions about whether all the dead women were killed by the Ripper and about possible police involvement.

The second installment in David Peace's Red Riding Quartet is as violent and relentless as the first. This is Noir in its very darkest and bleakest incarnation. The Yorkshire of Peace's imagination is devoid of hope or even basic human decency, where Blacks and Gypsies are the targets of police brutality as a matter of course and where women are victimized with callous disregard. Whitehead and Fraser have reasons for pursuing their search for the killer, but they have their own demons to fight, which might just prove more formidable than the corrupt and venal system they operate within.

One needs a strong stomach to read this series, but they are compelling; the violence is graphic but it never feels gratuitous. After reading the first book in the series, Nineteen Seventy-Four, I rushed right out to get a copy of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, which I then eyed distrustfully for several months before reading. I'll be doing the same with Nineteen Eighty.

I agree with you completely about this series: strong stomach needed, but compelling.

Rebecca, given the ending of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, I'm going to have to read Nineteen Eighty soon.

I find it easier to review a book I hated, or one I liked, much more than that rare book that I love. It makes for boring reviews to say something along the lines of, "I loved it sooooo much," over and over in various iterations. Nevertheless, I will try.

History of the Rain is a odd book by Niall Williams about books, family history and Ireland. Ruth is a plain girl, twin of the golden Aeneas, daughter to a beautiful, determined mother and an impractical, poetic father, who is haunted by his own eccentric history. Set on the western edge of county Clare in Ireland, History of the Rain is Ruth's story, written from her attic bedroom, surrounded by the thousands of books collected by her father, which have formed her writing style and which she is determined to read.

Told in a meandering style, History of the Rain reminds me of some of Kate Atkinson's writing. It's the journey through the pages that delights; this is not a book that proceeds forward with any urgency. Longlisted for this year's Booker Prize, I recommend this book to anyone willing to slowly wander the water-soaked meadows along the Shannon and to page through yellowing paperbacks. It's not a book for someone who wants a quick pace or a linear plot.

>121 RidgewayGirl: Glad to hear you loved this! It's one of about 4 books I am interested in reading from the Booker long list this year.

>111 RidgewayGirl: this a good reminder of why I actually want to read Richard Powers. I might not love it, but I think I will find him rewarding in some ways. I have The Echo Maker on a shelf somewhere.

>121 RidgewayGirl: enjoyed your review. I wasn't sure what to make the title, which I find dangerously sappy.

>121 RidgewayGirl: History of the Rain reminds me of some of Kate Atkinson's writing.

That sounds like a good reason to add it to my list.

Jennifer and Colleen, from what I know of your reading, you may well also love it. Or hate it. It had mixed reviews.

Daniel, while I didn't connect with Orfeo, I am glad to have read something by Richard Powers.

Saturday I was in central Munich and it was raining, so I went by the Haus der Kunst to see what was showing and went in to see Matthew Barney's show, River of Fundament, because it is the soonest gone. The Haus der Kunst was once the Nazi showcase for what they considered appropriate art. It's a terrible building, all grey rock and hard corners, but it survived the war and so something had to be done with it. It was, after serving as recreation facilities for American officers, turned into a showplace for rotating exhibits of cutting edge art, the stuff Hitler hated. How wonderful is that?

So Matthew Barney's exhibit was a stretch for me. The pieces were made during public performances of an "opera" based on Norman Mailer's book Ancient Evenings, only with the human protagonists replaced by American automobiles. Mailer died before the performances, so there is also an element of tribute. One piece is about his attic workspace, with a golden straightjacket representing the time it took him to write Ancient Evenings.

I needed quite a bit of explanation for each piece on display, which looked like vaguely mechanical metal blobs without the backstory. Barney also included a pencil streak around the main gallery. He did this using an enormous chunk of graphite which was pushed around the room by the soccer team Munich Cowboy Ladies in order to try to combine muscle training through resistance with the making of art.

I've been to a few exhibits by current artists and found them interesting and bold. This one was more weird and over-worked, but I am still thinking about it, days later.

Here's Norman Mailer's attic:



Here's one of the melty blob things. This one represents an Egyptian burial chamber.

Good review of History of the rain There is a lot of rain in Ireland. I like the sound of this slow paced thoughtful book.

Usually you need a lot of background information to appreciate art as modern as Mathew Barney's

Your comments about History of the Rain really captured my interest. That type of book can really fit the bill when the time is right.

Suzanne, it really is a book that needs the right mood. I'm glad it hit me at the right time.

Bas, it did need a huge amount of explanation! The Haus der Kunst give booklets out with its exhibits and usually these are mainly the artist's background and then some reproductions of the works on display with slightly longer explanations. The Matthew Barney booklet was all about this particular exhibit -- what with the literary allusions, the references to myth and the replacement of humans with cars built in Detroit and some porn and smelting and environmental concerns thrown in, I kept backtracking to find the train of thought. Still, it was interesting.

The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman follows a woman from the end of the Second World War and through her marriage and widowhood. Nell meets Charlie when she's still getting over a previous relationship, one which ended badly. Still, Charlie wins her over and they embark on a life together, he as the editor of a small, liberal-leaning magazine and she as a journalist often writing for that same paper. The magazine is lucky enough to receive support from an arts foundation, and Nell and Charlie start a family and travel quite a bit for the magazine.

I love the Mad Men era setting of this book, a time when you really could move to New York, get a job in publishing and work your way into a comfortable life, full of interesting parties and meaningful arguments. Nell's determined to keep working, even as a mother and she's got a passion to shed a light on injustice everywhere, marching with civil rights demonstrators and even traveling to Russia with a theater group to see conditions there for herself. When Feldman slows down and lets us experience Nell's life, the book comes alive.

The flaw of The Unwitting is that Feldman is taking on a long swath of history, meaning that much of Nell's story is told in summary and that the important political events of the cold war take precedence. This chops the book up and removes the reader from the immediacy of Nell's life. I really wish that either Feldman had chosen a tighter time frame or written a much longer book. Feldman is fantastic at rendering the telling details of a scene, of capturing the atmosphere of a time and place, a skill used beautifully in her earlier novel, Scottsboro. But she is less adept at the broader strokes of books set on longer time frames or with a large cast of characters. Those scenes in which she takes her time to give us one woman's perspective of a party or a conversation are pitch perfect.

Tana French's latest novel is a good one. The setting of The Secret Place is new; a posh girls' boarding school, but the themes are ones that French returns to book after book. There are two familiar characters this time and the book opens with Holly, Frank Mackey's daughter, waiting to talk to Stephen Moran, the young detective in Faithful Place. Holly goes to St. Kilda's, an expensive private school in Dublin. A year ago, a boy from the nearby boys' school was found murdered on the grounds. Despite an extensive investigation, the case has stalled out. Holly found an anonymous postcard on a school bulletin board saying, "I know who killed him." Stephen's been waiting for a chance to work with the Murder Squad and so inserts himself into the investigation with the spiky Antoinette Conway, a woman who never played along with the boys and after blowing the St. Kilda's case has been a pariah in the squad room.

In form, this is a classical mystery. There's a limited number of possible suspects; eight girls who could have posted the anonymous note, and a limited time; the entire book taking place over one single, exhausting day. Teenage girls are a cipher, with their tight bonds with one another and ability to freeze out adults. Holly and her friends share a tighter bond than most, having boarded together in the same room for a few years and sharing the same distain for the games being played by their contemporaries. Conway knows that once they are allowed back together the detectives will have no chance of finding out what went on that Spring night in the early morning hours and so she and Stephen work to decipher Girlworld, with its shifting allegiances and language all its own.

French returns to the theme of her first book, that of what makes a good partnership, the effortless give and take, the feeling as though you can read the other person's thoughts. Conway and Moran are very different from Rob and Cassie, but their working relationship, begun under duress, begins to develop into something that Stephen hopes might continue, and not only because he is desperate to move up into the Murder Squad.

Holly and her friends are another set of relationships. Having roomed together for years, having formed an allegiance against the queen bee and her follower, and having become closer to each other than to their own families, they each have secrets, ideas of what really happened and strong reasons to protect each other. French beautifully captures the cadences of girl speak, the stylized patterns that disguise real feelings and deep communication.

They always act like they're having an amazing time, they're louder and high-pitched, shoving each other and screaming with laughter at nothing. But Becca knows what they're like when they're happy, and that's not it. Their faces on the way home afterwards look older and strained, smeared with the scraps of leftover expressions that were pressed on too hard and won't lift away.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret Place. It reminded me of both the masterful Skippy Dies, Paul Murray's look at boys attending a posh boarding school in Dublin and Megan Abbott's latest books about teenage girls.

Kay, I am skipping your review of The Secret Place, until I can read the book myself. I plan to download to Kindle on Tuesday when it comes out here. There are only a few authors where I feel I have to read the book as soon as it comes out, and French is one of them.

Yay for the review of The Secret Place! Sounds like an interesting premise. I'll probably read it in the next couple months.

Those are two good reviews - on the Feldman and the French, although I might prefer to read Skippy Dies and Scottsboro than these. I suspect I would like French, but am hesitant to pick up any mysteries.

Daniel, both Scottsboro (a fictional account of the trial of the Scottsboro boys told from the point of view of a young communist sent down to help them out. Feldman really does her research and because this book has a short time frame, she is able to take the time with each event) and Skippy Dies are excellent and definitely not mysteries.

Ben Donald's book, Springtime for Germany, was both frustrating and informative. It aims for a humorous look at those wacky Germans, which is a niche that is sadly under filled, given the sheer quantity of similar books focusing on the French, Italians or even Brits. There are just not a lot of fun ways to learn about German culture and customs or even books that just give a feel of the place.

Springtime for Germany had a bad beginning, starting as it does with the fictional and silly premise that the author comes under the helping hand of a travel therapist, because he has lost his love of exploring new places. This therapist, a ridiculous German American named Manny, send the author to various places in Germany, each time having his concentrate on a different aspect of the German soul. It also begins with a snarky tone of amused contempt for the Germans, which made the first few chapters less than enjoyable.

But as Donald proceeds along in his travels, he settles down and begins to be interesting. I've been living here and knew most of the cultural references to some degree or another, but he often was able to provide me with a deeper understanding of several of these. And it's always fun to run into references to these cultural tics, as they are not well known outside of Germany. For example, there is a New Year's tradition here to watch a short British film called Dinner for One. This is something every German is as familiar with as we in the US are with How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but I've never met a non-German who ever saw it. This guy knows German culture and he had some interesting things to say about the reasons Germans value order and rules so much and why it isn't a big deal for them to sit in a sauna naked with strangers.

All in all a useful and interesting book marred by the author's need to force the humor. He's genuinely amusing when he isn't trying so hard.

Not just Germans! My (Dutch) husband also, he introduced me to it ...well it may have been on/around our first New Years, actually, lol. He was astonished I didn't know it!

Of course, I can't read Springtime for Germany without thinking of this.

PM, that is so funny. I would say that you should tell him that his sense of humor is positively German, but that probably would not be taken well. Have you seen it? Are you also astonished that this is the thing that everyone is united on thinking is hilarious?

Rebecca, the author is British and they are even worse than Americans at always referencing Hitler, from that Fawlty Towers episode to the British press bringing up WWII every single time there is a sporting event between an English team and a German team.

Hahaha, he showed it to me probably around NYE of 2009/10. It was, erm ...odd, but I think I laughed? :P

Drinking helps.

LOL

#138 - Rebecca - yes, that's what I thought of too!

the author is British and they are even worse than Americans at always referencing Hitler, from that Fawlty Towers episode

I have to admit that the first time my husband and I went to Germany we walked around the first day hissing into each others' ears "don't mention the war!"

I'm searching my brain for a combination of "German" and "humour" and coming up blank. Does the English speaking world know anything about German humour, or are they just not funny?

I recently went to see a German stand-up comedian performing in London (in English). One of the biggest laughs he got came from the line: "it's not easy being a German comedian. As a comedian, I want to make people laugh; as a German, I want to provide correct information."

As far as I can see, German humor appears to be largely slapstick. German is a more direct language than English, so the kind of humor based on ambiguity or miscommunication is not as common. Seinfeld did badly here & was cancelled after a short run.

>145 RidgewayGirl: Seinfeld did badly here & was cancelled after a short run.

You know, I'm beginning to like those Germans more and more...

Eddie Izzard has done gigs in Germany in German. I wonder how he fared.

Robert

I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins to both be polite and to prove a point. I know a couple of atheists, and they've been interesting to talk to, and they've known a lot about Christianity and the Bible. It just seems fair to understand their point of view by reading the book most associated with atheism today. And, in an internet conversation, I backed myself into the corner of having to read it now, rather than at some vague, future date.

So it's an interesting book. Dawkins gets in his own way more often than he should have, especially with his point that atheism is the only rational choice. But he presents the basic reasons for atheism and the criticisms he has of religion in a clear way. It was one of those books I'm happier to say that I've read, than I was to actually read it, but it was informative.

If you've ever followed the topics of religion and science, even casually, probably none of the issues he raises will be unfamiliar. And much of the arguments he raises are against a fundamentalist, anti-science version of Christianity which very few Christians espouse. But in addressing some of the science of our beginnings, he does go into some very interesting areas, with clear, engaging explanations of issues involving natural selection, fascinating creatures and chemistry. He's less sure-footed on topics like linguistics, but the issues he's raised are worth thinking about. He's a polarizing guy, who expresses himself forcefully and not tactfully. It's useful to know what he actually has to say, as opposed to what people say that he's said.

Excellent review of The God delusion

Interesting, and I'm a little entertained you read Dawkins to be polite. But you did not make me want to read him.

>

I am an atheist, but did not enjoy reading The God Delusion. In fact, I found Dawkins so unsympathetic in the book, that his poor attitude to Christians spoilt his whole argument for me. He came across as quite an ass.

Thanks, Bas

Daniel, I'm happy to have read it. I have received a few suggestions for better books on the topic, but it'll be a while before I return to the subject. When he talks about biology, he gets excited and forgets to preach. It made those sections really enjoyable.

Edwin, he is an ass. He's made some really unfortunate comments recently that appear to be offensive just for the fun of it.

Richard Avedon Murals and Portraits



There was a retrospective of Avedon's photography at the Brandhorst Museum. With the exception of a documentary about his career being shown in a nearby room, this exhibit had nothing to do with his fashion photography, instead focusing on three enormous murals, one of American officials in Saigon during the Vietnam War, one of the poet Allen Ginsberg with his extended family of respectable aunts and uncles, and one of The Factory with Andy Warhol (see above).

There were many other portraits of prominent people taken between 1952 and 1994, along with portraits of people in a Lousiana state mental hospital and photos he took during an extended tour of the American west and in Vietnam during the war. His method, of shooting the sitter unadorned in front of a white background is beautifully effective.



And this was my favorite, of Georges Braque and his wife, Augustine. They just seem to like each other.

Richard Avedon a brilliant photographer whose work in the studio produced some stunning results. Thanks for posting some of the portraits.

The Factory people - a bunch of posers?

Weird photo with the insects. Flies? Bees?

I like the photo of Braque and his wife too. I didn't know much about Braque but there was a retrospective this year in Paris which I enjoyed very much.

I agree with you; that photo of Georges Braque and his wife is lovely

Bas, he was brilliant. While I was familiar with many of the photographs, they have a much greater impact as large silver gelatin prints. As for The Factory people, sure a little pretentiousness there, but also they were non-conformists willing to put a lot of themselves out there. And consider this was the sixties.

Florence, the photo is of a beekeeper. Those are bees. I would love to have seen that Braque retrospective. One exhibit at a time…

Rebecca, it really is. And it stands out among the many photographs of people being very serious for posterity.

The Post Office Girl is Stefan Zweig's last novel. Christine lost the best years of her life to the First World War, which began when she was just 16 and which also took her father, her brother, her family's wealth and her mother's health. Through connections, she manages to find a job as a post office clerk in an isolated village. The salary, barely adequate for one, is stretched to also care for her mother and means that they live as unwelcome tenants in a damp attic room. Now in her late twenties, Christine lives a quiet life, until an aunt and uncle, visiting from America, invites her to stay with with them in a Swiss resort town.

Christine blossoms under the care and luxury of this alien life. She dances and laughs with witty, well-dressed men and discovers a new way of looking at life, but eventually and too soon, she returns to her old life as the post office girl and finds that she can't return to her earlier acceptance of her straightened circumstances.

The Post Office Girl is beautifully written and so perfectly captures Christine's inner feelings as she moves from blind acceptance to elation to a clear-eyed awareness of the bleakness of her life. The War to End All Wars destroyed more than young men's lives and the economic depression that followed robbed many of all hope, while the well-off danced, blithely unaware of the suffering around them.

I'd expected this to be a serious and somewhat dour read, but found instead an impossible to put down novel about a vibrant woman destroyed by circumstances beyond her control. It's not a feel-good story, but it's also not without hope and the ending was pitch perfect and occurred at the right moment.

>158 RidgewayGirl: The Post Office Girl sounds intriguing, and I may have to check that one out. Very nice review.

I've never read any Zweig works, but I just bought Chess Story and expect to get to it before the end of the year.

I have that one on the TBR but have only read Chess Story, Burning Secret, and Beware of Pity. I do mean to get to more Zweig eventually.

Your excellent review of The Post Office Girl somewhat reminded me of Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi which was set before the First World War but written in 1923. I wonder how these books compare.

Good review of The Post office Girl

Colleen, I had expected The Post Office Girl to be an effortful duty read. It wasn't. It was an unexpected joy.

Jennifer & Rebecca, there are an infinite amount of books to get to soon! I have a few more by Zweig on hand and really do plan to read them soon.

Thanks, Monica. I'll look for a copy of Skylark.

Thanks, Bas.

>158 RidgewayGirl: This is a good reminder to read Zweig sometime.

I added The Post Office Girl to my wishlist. The French title is very different, at first I thought it was a mistake in the LT database: Ivresse de la métamorphose.

Wow, that is different!

Daniel, he is much more readable than I had expected. But I have since read that he was an enormously popular writer when he was writing. I can see why.

Florence, the title kind of makes sense, but it's a lot more pretentious than the book itself.

Inspector Imanishi Investigates is an old school police procedural set in Japan. Written by Seicho Matsumoto in the early sixties, it's a peek into Japan, a generation ago. In a structured society, still recovering from the aftermath of WWII, Imanishi hunts for the killer of a man found murdered at a rail yard in Tokyo. The investigation takes time, with information requested by letter and with Imanishi following though with every elusive lead.

This book reminded me of the Martin Beck series by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowell, where the investigation isn't wrapped up quickly and there are no guns fired, but the case is solved by solid and dogged police persistence.

>169 RidgewayGirl: The setting makes that one sound interesting, Kay. Was there much reference to the occurrences of WWII?

169 -
I can't believe it was two years ago already that I read that book. Feels like it was yesterday! I really enjoyed it as well and loved the "slowness" of it. It felt like a real police procedural instead of the unrealistic proceedings we get from other books of this genre.

170 -
As far as I can remember there really is no mention of WWII at all. It just has nothing to do with the story itself other than establishing a time period (so you know understand the slowness of the investigation).

There was a plot point that depended on the destruction of WWII. And very much a feel of a society moving forward.

172 -
My bad then. I didn't remember that part at all. Mind telling me in a private message what that plot point was? I'd look it up myself but the book is in another country. :)

The murderer was able to change his identity by inventing a couple in an area badly bombed. It was an exception to the strict ancestry registration logs kept -- since the records all burned and there was no one to say otherwise, he was allowed to give his own information, which was then recorded as fact. It allowed his connections to the village the victim was from and his own background to be hidden.

That's for lilisin. No one else look.

>172 RidgewayGirl: That sentence confused me for a while, how can you destroy WWII? Then I got it. Oops.

174 -
Oh, ha! Yes, now I remember! Thanks for reminding me. That's the thing with mystery books; I enjoy them while I read them and I remember enjoying my reading of them but I can never actually remember the actual pivotal point of the book. Oops!

A good crime novel is one that knows when to follow the rules of the genre and when to play with them. Buffalo Jump is a hard-boiled PI tale that knows the rules and breaks them with style. Jonah Geller works for a large detective agency where he was, until recently, a rising star. A mistake has left him with the scar and pain from a bullet wound and a reduction in his duties to filing paper and running errands for other PIs. Geller is both the classic PI, living alone, a little lonely, with a quick mouth and temper as well as an extensive knowledge of karate; he also deviates from the mold, refusing to carry a weapon and nagged by his mother, who would just like him to settle down, like his brother.

Geller's co-worker begins by having him type up his notes, but then goes on to having Geller look in on a nursing home, asking questions in connection with a case involving the possible under-medication of a resident. Geller is also paid a visit by a member of the crime organization that shot him earlier. Ryan is a hit man with a problem. He's been asked to kill an entire family. The problem is that the son is the same age as Ryan's own son and he finds that he just can't do it. His solution is to "ask" Geller to find out who ordered the hit, so that Ryan can convince him to change his mind.

The result is an entertaining, fast-paced caper featuring an unlikely partnership. Geller's an enjoyable guy to spend time with and Howard Shrier's writing never gets in the way. There's also a vivid picture of Toronto, albeit a gritty one filled with crime and people on the edge of getting by.

>177 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like one for my wishlist. :)

I sat at my window now in a state of terror and the terror would not recede. I stared down at Ellis Avenue until it was blurry. I simply could not imagine setting foot on the street below. Two professorial-looking men walked by, one swinging an unopened black umbrella, the other with a raincoat hooked onto a finger and slung over his shoulder, like a TV star. People and their lives. People and their pictures of themselves. It was astounding and it gave me motion sickness to think of it. How could I ever find a place among them and how could I ever learn to want to?

I was too young to see Endless Love when it was first released, and so I've had only the vague idea that it was a sexy movie about being in love with Brooke Shields. Scott Spencer's 1979 novel is not that, nor is it much like the movie, which I watched after I had read the book.

During his senior year of high school, David Axelrod meets and falls in love with Jade Butterfield, who is a year younger than he is. He also falls in love with her chaotic, free-wheeling family, so different from his polite, politically active parents. The Butterfields live in a large Victorian house that is often filled with an assortment of artists, musicians and people who simply show up. They've raised their three children to be without hang-ups, in a particularly late sixties way, and so when David practically moves into their daughter's room and their relationship becomes primarily physical, they hide their unease. But Jade has reservations as well, so when she brings her worries to her parents, they tell David that he needs to stay away for a month, to allow things to cool down. And David can't do it. He lurks outside the house, staring in through the large, uncurtained windows until he comes up with the plan of lighting a small fire, then walking around the block, timing things so that he runs into the family as they emerge from the house to find out where the smoke is coming from. They'll be forced to talk to him then, he reasons. But things don't work the way he had planned, and he ends up sent to a private psychiatric hospital for treatment, a sentence Jade's father finds egregiously lenient and David himself also finds intolerable, as it keeps him away from Jade.

This isn't a book about pure love thwarted. David isn't a hero; he's charismatic and manipulative, ingratiating and self-involved. Neither he nor the reader ever really gets to know Jade. When he thinks of her or pays her a compliment, it's always to do with some aspect of her appearance. He loves her obsessively, but as one would love a treasured possession. Nor is he able to care for anyone but himself.

I thought then as I was to think later: It was too late in his life for me to help and if I couldn't help, then where was the profit in caring?

Spencer takes the reader down the rabbit-hole of David's obsession, and every event and relationship is recounted only from David's slanted perspective, outside of a few brief letters sent to him. It makes for compelling reading, but it's not always an enjoyable experience.

Oh, so interesting to read about your reaction to Endless Love. I did read it when it came out (it was a sensation at the time), and I think I didn't like it, although it was a compelling read. But, pre-LT, I can't refresh my memory!

>179 RidgewayGirl: That movie came out when I "should" have gone to see it (I did learn how to play the song on the piano, that's as close as I got). I assumed it was some schmaltzy teenage romance tripe, but it sounds a lot more complicated than that.

avidmom, the movie is a teenage romance. While some of the scenes and characters were similar to the book, the central character became a guy who spent a lot of time breathing heavily and staring intensely. And the socially awkward, brainiac brother was played by a young James Spader, so he became the cool, hot brother with good hair and a sort of entitled demeanor instead. With James Spader, what else could they do? Brooke Shields was well-cast, though, since Jade was sort of a cipher, a very pretty, malleable cipher.

Rebecca, this was a book I liked more during the first half. It was a little drawn out. And there was one sex scene that was interminable.

>182 RidgewayGirl: And there was one sex scene that was interminable.

The older I get, the less patience I have with sex scenes in books. Generally speaking, my imagination is better than the author's narrative.

>183 rebeccanyc: I'm completely with you! I've never had patience for sex scenes and it's only got worse with age. I can only imagine how I'll feel about it when I'm twice as old as I am now.

I don't mind sex scenes, as a rule, especially when they illuminate a relationship or advance the plot, but this one went on for thirty or forty pages. On the other hand, sex scenes in audiobooks are always cringe-worthy.

Darryl and Cheryl were married in a civil ceremony in South Carolina because the idea of their families mixing at a formal wedding was simply too painful to contemplate.

Mr. Tall: a Novella and stories is a wonderfully crafted collection by Tony Earley. Set in North Carolina and various parts of the Southern Appalachia, it is a diverse, witty and compelling collection. Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands is the first story and concerns a couple who have just had an unsettling visit with their college-age daughter and who then venture further afield for a brief getaway in the Outer Banks, as the fault lines in their marriage become increasingly hard to ignore, while the titular story follows Plutina, as she marries and moves away from home for the first time and up to an isolated mountain farm in 1932, with her equally young husband, Charlie.

Each story moves in unexpected directions that make perfect sense. From The Cryptozoologist, where a woman reflects on her marriage to an older artist, while the FBI hunts the surrounding area for a wanted murderer, to Just Married, where Early ties together three seemingly unrelated stories, each tale reflects on relationships, from the tentative to the long-lasting. The final, longer story is different, being a meta-fairy tale in which a local folktale character, Jack, confronts his own history as well as his disappearance from local knowledge, met along the way by Tom Dooley, of the ballad, and some of the people Jack has wronged.

And as a child of the mountains his aversion to blank horizons was inbred and inalienable. Jack thought, How bleak a vista viewed from the doldrums of a squandered life! Then he spat disgustedly because, as a plot man, he distrusted metaphor.

This is the first book I have read by Tony Earley, but it won't be the last. His stories are deeply rooted in the mountains of Appalachia and the South and remind me of Ron Rash and Tim Gautreaux.

I've wanted to read At Play in the Fields of the Lord since I saw the movie version, several years ago. In it, Peter Matthiessen tells the story of what happens when a group of American Protestant missionaries come to a remote outpost on a tributary of the Amazon river. There they clash with a pair of American mercenaries trying to get their passports back from the military leader and earn enough money to fill the tank of their airplane with gas so they can leave. The military leader is looking for an excuse to wipe out an unruly indigenous group, the Niaruna.

In At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Matthiessen demolishes the idea of the White Savior rescuing a minority group through selflessness and dedication. While there are several important characters, the two who are the most interesting are Martin Quarrier, a selfless and self-examining missionary who really wants to understand the Niaruna, and to protect them from the forces threatening them, from annihilation by the government to the missteps of missionaries who break-down tribal ties and encourage dependency, and Lewis Moon who, because he half Native American, has never found himself belonging anywhere. In the Niaruna he sees what might have been for his own culture and so is determined to join the Niaruna and to guide them in how to avoid assimilation.

Through the prism of the mist, the heat of the low jungle sky seemed to focus on this wretched spot, where tarantulas and scorpions and stinging ants accompanied the mosquito and the biting fly into the huts, where the vampire bats, defecating even as they fed, would fasten on exposed toes at night, where one could never be certain that a bushmaster or few-de-lance had not formed its cold coil in a dark corner. In the the river, piranhas swam among the stingrays and candirus and the large crocodilians called lagartos; in adjacent swamps and forests lived the anaconda and the jaguar. But at Remate de Males such creatures were but irritants; the true enemies were the heat and the biting insects, the mud and the nagging fear, more like an ague, of the silent hostile people of the rain forest.

While the Americans, despite bringing only harm, are portrayed with nuance and the Niaruna themselves with respect, the military commander, as well as the indians who support him and live in the town, are treated by Matthiessen with not much more than contempt. It would have been a stronger book had he been able to treat those living between the Americans and the Niaruna with the same complexity as the other characters. Still, At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a fascinating story of what happens when good intentions are not enough.

The last two both sound good. Enjoyed your reviews.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord has been on my TBR since before I read, and loved, Matthiessen's Shadow Country. I'll have to get to it sooner rather than later.

Thanks, Dan. They were both worth the time spent reading them.

Rebecca, several years ago, I gave up halfway through Killing Mr Watson. After reading At Play in the Fields of the Lord, I'm ready to give it another try. My reading has changed substantially since I joined Club Read, so maybe I'll be able to appreciate it now.

Did you try Killing Mr. Watson as the original stand-alone book or as part of Shadow Country? I loved Shadow Country so much I bought the original three novels that he revised as SC, but have yet to read them.

I have the stand-alone novel. Should I read Shadow Country instead?

I would read Shadow Country. Matthiessen revised the three novels extensively, some more than others, to make them all hang together better.

Then I'll keep an eye out for Shadow Country. I have friends in Florida and that might be a good choice when I visit them.

The Rattle-Rat by Janwillem van de Wetering is one of a series of Dutch police procedurals taking place in the early 1980s. In this installment, the detectives have to find the murderer of a corpse found in a burning dory floating in the Amsterdam harbor. The victim came from Friesland, on the northern edge of the Netherlands, and so there most of the action takes place.

The mystery plays second fiddle to the interactions between the detectives, to jokes about Friesland and to showing how the changing roles of women affect everyone. There's a lot of odd comedy, which I couldn't tell if it was Dutch humor or simply the author's own, but I found it very funny with a weird combination of sarcasm and charm. The title of the novel comes from the rat they are asked to petsit in exchange for using the house of a Friesian police officer on holiday. The rat, Eddy, rattles rather than squeaks and his behavior, as well as the reactions of people to him, made him a suitable choice for the title.

The changing role of women in the Netherlands is a major theme in this novel. For the most part, van de Wetering handles the subject with agility and humor although, to modern ears, a few of his jokes misfire badly. He almost, but not quite, manages to make the female characters as fully real as the male detectives. Here, the lead detective, the commissaris, speaks on the phone to his assistant:

"Have Grijpstra called. He should phone me." The commissaris waited. The phone was quiet. "Dear?"
"Sir?"
"Is that understood?"
"You didn't finish your request."
"My request is quite finished."
"No," the soft female voice said. "You never said 'please,' so I'm still waiting, as is customary these modern days."
"What are you?" the commissaris asked. "A communist? A feminist? I gave you an order. I don't have to say 'please.'"
"I'm not your slave."
"Please," the commissaris said, "dear."
"Thank you," the secretary said. "I won't insist that you call me 'miss.'"
"Is that so?" the commissaris asked. "The new rule allows for exceptions?"
"I think you're a dear, too," the soft voice said. The telephone clicked.
The commissaris watered his begonias, while reflecting. They were right, he thought in between his reflections. They were abused, yelled at, repressed, underpaid, and over-worked. It had to come to an end, but why today?

The appeal of this book lays in the characters that van de Wetering has created. I'll be looking for other titles in the series.

Manuel Munoz's novel, What You See in the Dark, has the feel of film noir, from the classic story of girl with dreams meets boy and things go horribly wrong, to the fading Hollywood actress sent to film a handful of scenes for a new movie in Bakersfield, California. There's a crime here, but no mystery, unless it lays in the buried dreams and motivations of the residents and migrant workers.

This was a beautifully written book, with as vivid a setting as could be hoped for. Set fifty years ago, in an agricultural town dependent on migrant labor, there'e a wonderfully nuanced cast of characters, from the girl, Teresa, who lives in a room above the bowling alley, and who is a little lonely and a little hopeful, to her boyfriend's mother, whose income depends on a motel on the road into town, a motel that will be bypassed by the interstate being built a few miles away, to the actress, who wonders if this next film will mark the end of her career and whether she cares.

I'll be looking for Munoz's short stories and I'm looking forward to seeing what he writes next.

>196 RidgewayGirl:. Another interesting review. My wishlist just fell over.

I feel your pain, Colleen. LT is the worst thing that ever happened to my TBR.

This book was a surprise to me. It's a large book with a pretty, but generic cover. I knew it was worthy and historical and set somewhere in South America; all of which were fine things, but not things that called me to read it. So the amount of enjoyment I got from this book, the sheer fun I had reading it, was unexpected. I didn't know beforehand that Frances de Pontes Peebles had written a rip-roaring adventure story that ran the gamut from hardscrabble survival in the Brazilian hinterlands to coastal high society to political turmoil to life in an outlaw gang, evading the law and enacting vengeance, all set during the last few years of the 1920s to the first few years of the 1930s.

The Seamstress follows two very different sisters, being raised by their aunt, who teaches them a trade and manners. Emilia longs for a more elegant life, the one depicted in the magazines handed down to her by her employer. She refuses to look at the stolid farmer's sons who would court her, setting her sights on the refined sewing teacher from the capitol. Luiza, tall and with an arm crippled in a fall from a mango tree, has no use for the things Emilia loves. She likes her life in her aunt's house, although she is prickly and rebellious. Circumstances sent one sister to live in luxury in Recife, the provincial capital, while the other joins a band of bandits, led by The Hawk, a feared but canny outlaw. Brazil is changing rapidly, and those changes challenge each woman. Both Luiza and Emilia are complex, interesting and believable characters. They are both strong women, although their strengths fall in different areas.

The book begins slowly, but it wasn't long before I was hauling it around with me to read a few more pages whenever I could. Generally, I only travel with an ereader or a light paperback, but I was willing to lug The Seamstress around with me until, all too quickly, it came to an end.

Many thanks to avaland for reviewing this book over on her thread quite some time ago.

Oh my, you are hitting me again. :)

What You See in the Dark sounds great!