Patti's Pages

HELPLESS by Daniel Palmer

2012-01-25T07:19:00.000-08:00

There's no time like January for a good beach read. The writing is fair, but the plot is a winner. This was one of those books that I looked forward to resuming every night. Tom Hawkins is a girls' soccer coach whose daughter Jill is the star player, but her mother has so poisoned Jill's opinion of Tom that the extent of most of her text messages is "Green," meaning that all is well. Now that Jill's mother/Tom's ex-wife has died under mysterious circumstances, Tom hopes for some sort of reconciliation with Jill. However, due to a plethora of incriminating evidence, Tom has come under suspicion of trafficking in child pornography and of having sexual relations with Jill's best friend Lindsey. This dark cloud threatens the progress of Tom and Jill's bonding but also costs him his job and reputation. Obviously, Tom will eventually be exonerated, but I was still curious how everything would unravel. Tom's sadistic army buddy's wife, Adriana, bails Tom out of jail, leaving me thirsty to find out what motive lurks under her sugary sweet exterior. There's also a burgeoning attraction between our former Navy Seal hero and a female FBI agent who tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to subdue her secret hope that Tom will somehow turn out to be innocent. The fact that this book is hitting the market in the wake of the Penn State child abuse scandal is no doubt coincidental, but it's certainly fortuitous. In Tom's case, there are no eyewitness accounts—just a lot of technological shenanigans and an over-zealous cop with an axe to grind.

I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS by Tom Wolfe

2012-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

I wasn't sure I could handle 738 pages of college debauchery, and this book's length is really my only complaint. The title refers to the mantra of a freshman from the mountains of North Carolina, attending elite (fictitious) DuPont University in Pennsylvania on scholarship. Culture shock is immediate in her coed dorm, where she finds that the reassurances from the resident assistant about sex and drinking are all bunk. For the first half of her first semester, Charlotte sticks to her principles, burying herself in her studies, and yet wallowing in her loneliness. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, Charlotte is pretty. Her smarts, looks, and frankness attract an assortment of guys, including a basketball player (JoJo), a Rhodes Scholar wannabe (Adam), and a handsome frat boy (Hoyt). Adam is linked to her other two suitors in that Adam is JoJo's tutor, and Adam, as a writer for the school newspaper, wants to print a story about Hoyt, in which Hoyt and a friend stumbled upon the California governor in a compromising situation. To me, the book is about seduction and how these four characters veer from the paths to their goals. JoJo is seduced (well, sort of) by the adulation of groupies after he has become more academically-oriented, and he loses his edge on the court when he feels threatened by a new recruit. Adam is seduced by JoJo, who, before JoJo earned the nickname Socrates, compelled Adam to write a massive research paper for him overnight. More obviously, Adam is seduced by Professor Quat, but I don't want to give too much away with regard to that relationship. Hoyt, who has visions of becoming an investment banker, is starting to sweat the slippage of his grades, due to over-indulging in partying. And Charlotte, literally seduced by Hoyt, loses her self-respect and is ultimately seduced by notoriety, after initially being mortified and depressed by it. Charlotte's experiences churned up both thrilling and supremely embarrassing memories of my college days. Once again, Tom Wolfe does not disappoint. He may have exaggerated some aspects of campus life but probably not that much. It is indeed a time for experimentation and recovering from one's mistakes, and I would venture to say that no one comes away unscathed.

THE BIG SHORT by Michael Lewis

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

Leave it to Michael Lewis to explain the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in terms that we laymen can understand. More importantly, he chronicles the steps that three financial entities took to gamble that a debacle was coming and therefore profit from it. These guys all recognized that the so-called financial experts weren't. The real culprits, though, seem to have been the ratings agencies, Moody and Standard & Poor, who were feeding the frenzy with ridiculous AAA ratings on financial products made up of mortgages obtained by consumers who couldn't possibly afford them. As always, Michael Lewis has examples that will blow your mind. So how did anyone profit from the collapse of the bond market? They bought insurance against it, in the form of a product called a credit default swap. And, you ask, who would sell insurance on risky mortgages? AIG, of course! The three profiteers are a 3-man group called Cornwall Capital whose only investors were themselves, plus 2 hedge funds. There's actually one more guy, Greg Lippmann, a trader at Deutsche Bank, who also foresaw what was about to go down, and bought some credit default swaps also. He persevered in wooing one of the hedge funds, whose principals kept asking, "How are you going to f--- me?" In short, the credit default swap buyers were very nervous that this opportunity couldn't possibly be real but invested millions anyway. They reaped many more millions in returns.

SUPERFREAKNOMICS by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

2012-01-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

Levitt and Dubner are back with more social behavior phenomena in this follow-up to Freakonomics. Once again we have a fascinating mishmash of topics. One segment delves into the topic of how to identify a terrorist before he strikes by examining the money trail of some known terrorists before they were apprehended. Another describes several of the many projects and patents being pursued by a group of scientists that formed the company Intellectual Ventures. Their various solutions to global warming involve atmospheric tinkering, but the authors raise the question as to why this is considered so repugnant, given that we obviously have no qualms about depleting natural resources. If we can take away, why can't we give back? The authors keep coming back to the treatise that the simplest solution is often the best, citing the huge safety impact of seat belts in automobiles and the marginal, at best, impact of car seats for children over the age of two. My favorite is the segment that debunks Adam Smith's centuries-old claim that animals cannot be made to understand the concept of exchanging goods for the benefit of both parties. This experiment with the use of money by monkeys is fascinating. The adage that prostitution is the oldest profession rings true.

ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION by Temple Grandin

2012-01-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

"Humane slaughterhouse" may sound like an oxymoron, but Temple Grandin has made it her specialty. She has found that her autism gives her special insight into the way animals think, because apparently autistic humans and animals have some brain similarities that cause them to see too much detail rather than the big picture. Consequently, a cow can become nervous about reflective puddles, stray paper cups, yellow raincoats, and changes in light intensity. Her checklist for rating a slaughterhouse has only a handful of items, all measurable and all related to animal handling, not construction and layout. This book is chock-full of information about how animals think and behave and how to know if an animal is going to be smart and flighty or dim and calm. (Hint: We now refer to our cat as a low-fear, big-boned girl.) Oddly enough, high-fear animals are also more curious and will cautiously check out new items in their environments. And it should be obvious, but it's somehow counterintuitive that bigger animals, such as cows and horses, are prey animals, and they have different behavior motivations from predators, such as dogs and cats. Some of the most fascinating passages had to do with selective breeding, which can have unexpected negative results, such as belligerent roosters and less intelligent collies.

WHAT THE DOG SAW by Malcolm Gladwell

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

At least one of the essays in this collection was expanded into a book that I'd already read, and one about the Dog Whisperer was reminiscent of Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, but most of this was new material for me. Now I'll always know the difference between panicking and choking. When you panic, you forget to think, and when you choke, your over-analyzing keeps you from relying on your instincts and muscle memory. Gladwell also has an unusual perspective on copyright infringement. I think he sees it more as flattery than theft. I loved his analysis of Enron's collapse. Apparently their leaders valued talent over anything else, promoting the brightest and giving them free rein to do whatever they liked. Successful companies, like Southwest Airlines and Procter & Gamble, emphasize organizational strengths.

THE BLIND SIDE by Michael Lewis

2012-01-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's been a few months since I listened to the audio version of this book. All I have to do is remember Sandra Bullock touting her NRA membership to residents of a Memphis ghetto to recall what this book is about, right? Well, not exactly. The subtitle of the book is Evolution of a Game. Lewis interweaves the heart-warming story of Michael Oher's adoption by the Tuohy family with football history, starting with the addition of the forward pass. I may not totally understand the spread offense, but now I do understand how Lawrence Taylor, a bulldozer of a linebacker for the NY Giants, made the left tackle's role vital and lucrative. We all know that Michael Oher went on to become a left tackle at Ole Miss and then with the Baltimore Ravens, but did you know that he was the state runner-up discus thrower in high school? He may have looked like a shot putter, but he taught himself to spin and throw the discus at his first track meet. That was an early indication that his agility would set him apart from other athletes of comparable physical size.

WHAT IS LEFT THE DAUGHTER by Howard Norman

2012-01-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

In Nova Scotia in the 1940s, Wyatt becomes a teenage orphan when his parents jump to their deaths on separate bridges. Both mother and father were in love with the same female switchboard operator, and, although this might seem humorous, the novel is dead serious. From this point onward, Wyatt seems to be buffeted from one unfortunate situation to another without sufficient backbone to extricate himself. His role in the novel's pivotal event has a huge negative impact on his life, particularly his relationship with Tilda, his beautiful cousin who is adopted and therefore not a blood relative. He might have succeeded in winning Tilda's favor had he been a little more forthcoming in declaring his intentions, and if Hans, a German college student, had not appeared on the scene. Now we have another love triangle of sorts, and the consequences are just as dire. Tilda's father, addicted to war reports on the radio, cannot abide Tilda's love for Hans, and his hatred of Germans intensifies when a U-boat attacks a Newfoundland ferry. I read this book in a hurry, and the rush may have reduced my enjoyment a bit, but I think I would have found it frustrating anyway. The book is structured as a series of letters from Wyatt to his daughter Marlais, and I had hoped that the reader would become aware of her reaction. No such luck. It's basically an outpouring of Wyatt's life, perhaps to atone for his absence, but I couldn't glean an explanation for why he hadn't made some effort to insert himself into her life. Instead, he relies on Cornelia, a baker in his hometown, to give him second-hand news from Denmark, where Marlais grew up. Perhaps his two main occupations provide a clue. For a while he was apprenticed to Tilda's father, building sleds and toboggans. Now, these are vehicles without rudders (I think) and perhaps a metaphor for Wyatt's uncharted life in which he doesn't seem to steer in a particular direction. Later he becomes a harbor gaffer, collecting shipwreck debris, all of which has to be accounted for. In one case, he and his co-worker rescue soggy volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, which the co-worker keeps for her children to use. My take on this is that the encyclopedia represents Marlais, the one thing worth hanging on to from the crumbs of Wyatt's past.

THE BLUE ORCHARD by Jackson Taylor

2011-12-27T07:40:00.000-08:00

Verna Krone, the author's real-life grandmother, narrates this novel, beginning with her departure from school in the eighth grade, so that she can work to help feed her mother and siblings. Raped by her first employer, she aborts his baby with the help of a concoction that renders her comatose for three weeks. Another pregnancy produces a son, Sam, but the father of this child is married to another woman, so that Verna abandons Sam to her mother for upbringing. The two main conflicts in the book center around Verna's difficult relationship with her son and her emotions about her eventual position as a nurse, assisting a black abortionist. The job is lucrative, and Verna's own experiences certainly enable her to empathize with the young women who come to Dr. Crampton for help, but it's the 1950s, and the political climate in Harrisburg, PA, is changing. Dr. Crampton's friends in high places are losing their clout, and the new Catholic district attorney is not so tolerant of Crampton's illegal sideline. Verna is forthright and principled, but she makes some bad decisions where men are concerned and is a little too flagrant in flaunting her ill-gotten wealth. Her rise from poverty and her ultimate refusal to perjure herself make this novel worth reading, but just barely. Verna's clandestine profession precludes her from having a large number of friends, and that's a shame, because she is definitely a person worth knowing. In fact, it would have been far more gratifying to have known her than it was to read about her.

WHAT IS THE WHAT by Dave Eggers

2011-12-21T07:04:00.000-08:00

Should we be content with what we have or reach out for the unknown? The title stems from a fable that poses this question, and legend has it that the Sudanese chose the contentment route. Frankly, it has not worked out very well for them, as civil war has ravaged the country for years. The "lost boy" who narrates this fictionalized biography is transported to the U.S. on the heels of the 9/11 tragedy, after having lived in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya for most of his life. He does not even know the fate of his parents until he is a young man. The variety of first names by which he is known—Achak, Valentino, Dominic—underscores the fact that his identity is a moving target. His idea of "home" is always the community of his childhood, and he never gives up the notion of going back, despite the constant turmoil there. His story swings back and forth between his current struggle to finish his education in Atlanta and his previous struggles and suffering in Africa. One might assume that his life in the U.S. would be far superior, but, no, safety is still an issue. He's beaten and tied up by burglars and then is treated as a non-person at the hospital where he seeks medical attention afterward. His spirit, though, is resilient, having survived exhaustion, starvation, and disease during his several treks, with thousands of other children, from the perils of the Sudan. He reaches out for the "what"—the unknown future that awaits him, somewhere other than Atlanta.

BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey

2011-12-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

I've never watched 30 Rock, but then I guess not many people do, despite its critical acclaim. Although Tina Fey doesn't consider herself particularly adept at impressions, she certainly does a spot-on Sarah Palin. She also does some other funny voices, and for this reason, I recommend the audiobook, which she reads herself. (The last CD has photos and video clips as a bonus.) She covers a lot of ground, from being a late-in-life family addition to her contemplation of having a second child and how that decision impacts the fate of her TV show and its hundreds of employees. She's definitely a soaring example of how to laugh at one's self—from her myriad self-deprecating comments about her looks, to her interview with Lorne Michaels for a position as a writer for Saturday Night Live. I loved the irony in the fact that she has no particular difficulty shouldering her role as "bossypants" for 30 Rock but can't bring herself to scold the nanny for cutting her daughter's fingernails too short. There's also a healthy dose of feminism, broached with humor, ranging from Second City's preference for a male majority in their traveling improv groups, to her response to several pundits who proclaim that women are not funny. She's certainly proven them wrong.

BIRD CLOUD by Annie Proulx

2011-12-15T06:20:00.000-08:00

I thought this memoir would be similar to Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun, and it was, in a way. Of course, this book is about the building of new house in Wyoming, as opposed to restoring an old villa in Tuscany, but many of the problems are the same: acquiring the property, poor workmanship, budget overruns, plumbing disasters, the difficulty of living in a space that is under construction, etc. In both books, the most reliable and skilled workers become almost like family. However, Bird Cloud opens with an overly long section about the author's father's family history, and this just seemed like filler to me. The middle section is about the process of designing and building the house, and the pace of the book picks up after the genealogy section ends. The final section is devoted to birds on the property, and I have mixed feelings about that section. I think she wanted to make a point about the fact that no matter how much effort and expense you put into building a house that is friendly to the environment, you are almost certain to disrupt some habitats. In one instance, a flock of birds (I forget the species) stopped feeding near the house because the landscapers replaced the weeds with a native grass. The finale is an homage to the bald and golden eagles that take up residence near the house and is immensely sad, while at the same time depicting their resilience. Certainly the fact that the house is unreachable in winter is a showstopper, but possibly her guilt over its impact on the wildlife may taint her love of the surrounding beauty enough to force her to sell it. We'll see…

ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT'S ME, CHELSEA by Chelsea Handler

2011-12-14T06:30:00.000-08:00

Some of Handler's stories are just plain embarrassing, and I have to hand it to her for owning up, assuming all of them are basically true. On the other hand, in some cases there was just too much information. I didn't actually read this book; I listened to the audio version, and I think that's the way to go. She does a fake English accent to re-create a scene in a London restaurant, and her other vocal imitations evoke vivid images of everyone from her dad to her fellow inmates at a women's prison where she was incarcerated briefly for a DUI. She refreshingly eschews political correctness with her tale of a drunken, manipulative dwarf and stashes a lover under the bed while another lover dumps her. Her mouth lands her in various chases that end with scraped knees and dishevelment, including a rumble that she unwisely initiates – emboldened by her kickboxing training – with a group of Latinas,. She's scrupulously honest at times, including the admission of a re-gifting to a woman who lied about having a birthday, and on other occasions finds herself way out on a limb, after having begun telling some fiction on a lark. The best LOL moment is when she keeps a food journal for a nutritionist and recounts the exact number of items she ate at a shower, including more than a dozen jalapeño poppers and pigs-in-a-blanket.

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' by Rick Bragg

2011-12-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

Rick Bragg's memoir is like Angela's Ashes set in rural Alabama. His mother repeatedly has to bundle up her family and return to her mother's farm to escape the wrath of her alcoholic husband. For her three sons, anything is preferable to life with their father, where starvation is just around the corner, since his employability makes them ineligible for welfare. Like Frank McCourt, Rick Bragg's love of books helps lift him out of poverty. Bragg manages to inject a good amount of humor into his story as well, but I could have done without the bad grammar that just helps propagate the myth that all Southerners butcher the language. The book became less engrossing after the author reaches adulthood, working as a reporter for a string of newspapers. I have to say, though, that the most moving section of the book was his account of his mother's accompanying him to New York to receive his Pulitzer Prize.

THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO by Terry Ryan

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

I don't think Terry Ryan will win any awards as a writer, but I enjoyed this memoir just the same. Terry's mother, Eveyln, managed a household of ten children with no help from her hard-drinking Irish Catholic husband Kelly. Evelyn, though, refused to wallow in self-pity and instead demonstrated endless spunk in her quest to provide life's essentials and a few extra niceties for her family in the 50's. Armed with a passel of 4-cent stamps, Evelyn focused her surplus energy (how did she have any with 10 kids?) on contests in which the entrant supplied the last line of a jingle or described a product in 25 words or less. The book is filled with many of her winning entries and a lot more that resulted in zilch. It's interesting how the simplest line sometimes won, and sometimes the most obscure reference won. We discover what Evelyn already knew: the entry needed to fit the demeanor of the advertising company that was judging the entries. Evelyn couldn't resist sending in a few humorous ones to the stodgy judges and vice versa. She also had to be creative in avoiding sending in multiple entries under the same name. She won a big contest in her son's name that included a trip to New York to be on TV. She accompanied him on the trip, while the rest of her family tried in vain to watch from home on a TV that malfunctioned during a storm. Many of the contest windfalls arrived in the nick of time—twice just before eviction from their home. Each time she won a car, she had to sell it, since a family of twelve had no use for a two-seater sports car. Indeed.

MR. PEANUT by Adam Ross

2011-12-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

This is a book within a book—maybe. I definitely found it difficult to distinguish between what was reality and what was imagined, but I guess it doesn't really matter, since the whole book is a product of the author's imagination. However, there is an aspect of reality, as one of the main characters is Sam Sheppard, who was convicted in the1950s and then acquitted 10 years later of his wife's murder. Sheppard, who is depicted as a man with a sex addiction problem, has abandoned medicine to become a cop. His partner, Hastroll, has marital problems of his own, as his perfectly healthy wife has not left her bed in five months. The main character, though, is David Pepin, who loves his morbidly obese wife Alice just the way she is. The pivotal event in their lives is when she has her first miscarriage in an airplane toilet on the way to Hawaii. All three wives at some point expect their husbands to intuit what is on their minds, and all three husbands entertain fantasies of murdering their wives. I felt that Hastroll and Pepin were both quite justified in their perplexed frustration, though not to the point of murder, obviously. Divorce seemed a reasonable option, but both men inexplicably love their difficult wives. As for Sheppard, he is despicable in his adulterous liaisons, pushing the limits of what is acceptable even to his male buddies. Then there's the diminutive, devilish Mobius, a private eye hired by Pepin when his wife vanishes for months, who misconstrues his role as that of a hit man. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Nathan Harold, an airline employee whose job is to cater to the Pepins' every need during their stay in Hawaii—a "fixer" of a different ilk. Both Harold and Mobius seem to be marriage problem-solvers—one who advises flexible conciliation and one who has a more drastic solution. This dark novel is just as way out as it sounds, with the author keeping all of the characters at arm's length, and that may be just where they belong—out of reach and beyond sympathy or understanding.

PAPER CHILDREN by Marcia Fine

2011-12-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

Her writing may not be spectacular, but Marcia Fine knows how to tell a story. This book comprises the lives of three Jewish women—Paulina, her daughter Sarah, and Sarah's daughter Mimi. Paulina grew up in Warsaw with custom-made clothes and a house full of servants. She marries Nathan, a Russian businessman, who ventures to the U.S. and finds the allure of freedom there undeniable. Paulina, now with two children, is very reluctant to abandon her extended family and pampered life for the unknown. Finally, threatening her with divorce, Nathan persuades Paulina to join him in New York. Nathan turns out to be a good provider, even during the Depression, but is an intimidating husband and father. Daughter Sarah longs to pursue a career in photography, but Nathan has no use for artistic endeavors. Meanwhile, back in Europe, where Hitler has ascended to power, Paulina's father believes that his wealth and influence will protect him, despite pleas from Paulina and Nathan to join them in the U.S. Nathan's family of Russian peasants, on the other hand, have all come to New York, ever grateful for Nathan's financial help but never learning English. When Sarah's photojournalism job leads her to Europe after the war, she learns the sad fate of her grandparents. Inspired by the life and stories of her grandmother, Ms. Fine's novel is heartbreaking but never wallows in despair or grief. All three women lead lives of unplanned adventure, and their responses to their situations make for very captivating fiction.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST by Stieg Larsson

2011-11-30T08:20:00.000-08:00

Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder and has been shot in the head. Her surgeon, Dr. Jonasson, just wants to save her brain and her life, regardless of what crimes she may have committed. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist, her sometimes friend, sometimes lover, sometimes neither, just wants to expose the corrupt system that has victimized Lisbeth since she was a child. There are more Swedish characters here than I could possibly keep up with, and that wouldn't be such a problem, except that I occasionally got confused as to who was a good guy and who was a bad guy—or gal, as the case may be. The primary bad guys are Lisbeth's brother Niedermann (whose name I word-associated to Neanderthal), who cannot feel physical pain, and the ultra-sleezy psychologist Teleborian. The plot, along with various subplots, conspiracies, and intrigues, builds to a crescendo with Lisbeth's trial, in which the whole hornet's nest is exposed to all parties, right up to the prime minister. This may not be a literary thriller, but it is certainly a gripping one, and a beautifully fluid translated one; there are none of the awkward phrases that so often annoy me in a translation. Realism may not reign supreme here, but at least the two main characters are heroic without being flawless. Lisbeth is amazingly resourceful but manages to antagonize even her supporters at times with her refusal to divulge even the most benign secrets. Mikael's relentless endeavor to clear Lisbeth's reputation and record is sullied slightly by his philandering ways. This book seems to have more female heroines than the previous two, including Mikael's latest paramour, the statuesque Inspector Monica Figuerola, plus Lisbeth's lawyer (and Mikael's sister) Annika Giannini, and Milton Security's Susanne Linder, whose client is the eternally gutsy Erika Berger. Thank heavens it doesn't end in a cliffhanger.

ILLUMINATION NIGHT by Alice Hoffman

2011-11-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

Alice Hoffman seems to like misfits. This book has both an outrageously tall man, Eddie, and a 4-year-old boy, Simon, who is not growing at the normal rate. The little boy's parents are Andre, who restores motorcycles, and Vonny, a potter. Next door, Jody, a headstrong teenager, has moved in with her grandmother, Elizabeth Renny, who has recently acted on her belief that she can fly. Oddly enough, Elizabeth's and Jody's cohabitation is the best thing that could have happened to either of them. Jody develops a crush on Andre, of which he's fully aware, and Vonny develops agoraphobia and is afraid to leave her house. Vonny's disorder is a mixed bag for Andre, as he can't decide whether to bask in Vonny's dependence on him or to make an effort to help her overcome it. It also has mixed results with Simon, who suddenly starts getting taller as Vonny has to relinquish some of her over-protectiveness. After toying with a series of boys her own age in order to make Andre jealous, Jody falls for "the giant," who avoids being seen during the daytime. His life has some parallels, in fact, with Vonny's, as they are both restricted in their contact with the outside world but due to very different types of fear. A tragedy befalls this island community, and Simon, who has been heretofore shielded from the word "death," suddenly has to bear a very heavy burden of guilt and grief, especially for such a young child. I would say, though, that fear—of the dark, of ridicule, of abandonment—is the predominant theme here. There are many ways to deal with it—repress it, outgrow it, or seek help to conquer it.

SECOND NATURE by Alice Hoffman

2011-11-22T07:08:00.001-08:00

A story of a boy raised by wolves? Only Alice Hoffman can pull that off. And the story is really about the man after he rejoins civilization. Uncommunicative and possibly violent, Stephen is handcuffed for his trip from the hospital's psych ward to the state mental hospital, when Robin impulsively hoodwinks his guards and whisks him to her home. Word slowly leaks out about the man, and guess who gets the blame when a teenage girl turns up dead, her throat neatly slit? In the meantime, though, Robin has fallen in love with him. Now Stephen is torn between his love/lust for Robin and his desperate need to get back into the wild. This would be a much better book if it weren't so unfailingly predictable, but I was still curious enough to find out how things would ultimately play out. My take on this was that we all tend to fear that which we don't understand, and even the strongest relationship is susceptible to doubt and mistrust when the pressures and prejudices of the outside world start closing in.

FORTUNE'S DAUGHTER by Alice Hoffman

2011-11-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Lila is reading tea leaves for a living when she meets Rae, a single mother-to-be. Rae is about the age that Lila's daughter would be and awakens Lila's desire to meet the daughter she gave up for adoption. Now Lila is married to Richard, who is unaware of the daughter and is frustrated and hurt by Lila's sudden mysterious trip back east. Meanwhile, Rae needs a birthing coach to stand in for her double-crossing boyfriend Jessup, and Richard may as well step in while Lila is gone. There's plenty of melodrama to go around, and eventually it seems that everyone comes full circle. I enjoyed reading this book, but I don't think it really breaks any new ground. Plus, both women annoyed me somewhat. Lila is keeping a secret from her husband for no reason that I can see. He already knows that she attempted suicide, and I think that's more shameful than bearing a child at 18 years old. And Rae repeatedly sacrifices her self-respect to let Jessup back into her life. I wonder if the author intended to depict these women as courageous, since they appear to me to be succumbing to their respective weaknesses.

THE MASTER by Colm Toibin

2011-11-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

The term "Jamesian" has been used to refer to anything related to William James, philosopher/psychologist, or to things related to his brother, author Henry James. I would have liked Toibin to have explored more fully the relationship between these two brilliant men, but instead he focused on Henry James and his other relationships. He depicts James as a conflicted homosexual who attracts women as well, one of whom may have committed suicide over him. Toibin writes in a Jamesian style here—stilted and formal. In fact, I think the book would have been more effective if it had been written in first person. However, the third person narrative has one distinct advantage: it further imitates James's style by using real people—in this case, Henry James himself—as inspiration for fiction. Several of James's friends recognized themselves in his novels and were more likely to feel flattered than offended, even if their doppelganger was an unsavory character. To me, though, this period in James's life, between the huge failure of his play Guy Domville and the publishing of his novels The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl, is quite boring. Toibin does describe the events that James may have seized for the plots of his later novels, but nothing much at all happened in this time period, except that he bought an old house in Rye, where his drunken staff members embarrassed him in front of his occasional guests. In fact, the major events, particularly the deaths of friends and family, did not occur during this time period and are presented as retrospective ruminations, triggered by various accusations and implications. Henry James seemed to have a lot of friends and was supposed to have been very good company, but his reticence with regard to his relationships, both male and female, made him seem standoffish, self-centered, and quite dull.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR by David Lodge

2011-11-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge fan of Henry James, but David Lodge does a fair job of channeling him in this somewhat fictionalized bio, written in a formal, Jamesian style. It focuses mainly on two aspects of James's life—his failed attempts as a playwright and his friendship with George Du Maurier, a more successful but less gifted writer. James struggled between good will toward his friend and jealousy of Du Maurier's popularity. He could never have imagined that The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove would be made into major motion pictures later in the twentieth century. Lodge characterizes James as a celibate homosexual, married to his art, who never realized commercial success during his lifetime. On the other hand, although Du Maurier created the character Svengali whose name has entered the lexicon, his work has not stood the test of time, but his granddaughter Daphne's has. There are several other well-known writers of the period, including Edith Wharton, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and H.G. Wells, who peripherally figure into James' life. It was especially interesting to me, though, that Du Maurier's grandchildren by his daughter Sylvia were the boys who inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. Also, James's agent's daughter married Rudyard Kipling. What a small, interconnected, and talented world Henry James inhabited.

UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand

2011-11-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

Louis Zamperini was a juvenile delinquent in Torrance, California, before he discovered running, at the behest of his track-star brother, in the 1930s. Louie gained some notoriety as an Olympic athlete and then became a bombardier in the Pacific during WWII. His plane went down some 2000 miles east of Japan, and he and the pilot survived 47 days of starvation, thirst, exposure, and shark attacks in a poorly equipped, bullet-ridden inflatable raft. Louie's resourcefulness in creating mischief was channeled toward survival—capturing food and rainwater, dodging bullets, warding off sharks—as they drifted toward land. Impossible as it may seem, the worst was yet to come. The Japanese had a reputation for extreme brutality in the treatment of POWs, and the truth exceeded even the most horrible rumors. Louie's defiance did not serve him well in the various prison camps where he landed, but the conditions were horrific and the beatings severe for all the POWs there. Reading page after page of this became somewhat of a challenge for me, as Louie's situation became more and more unimaginably gruesome. His survival is, of course, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, but I was even more amazed at the ability of Louie's body to recover from so much physical abuse, some of which was self-inflicted. The photos, particularly those of Louie's crew and friends who did not survive, are gems that I lingered over, contemplating who they were and how their families suffered unfathomable grief and in many cases the torturous uncertainty that accompanied the disappearance of a loved one whose fate and whereabouts were unknown.

THE SUBMISSION by Amy Waldman

2011-11-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

A hand-picked jury is debating the merits of the various submissions to a design contest for a memorial at ground zero. The jury does not know the identities of the entrants. Claire, whose husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks, lobbies for "the garden" and wins over the majority. The jurists are thrown into a tailspin, however, when they learn that the winner's name is Mohammed Khan—obviously a Muslim. Someone leaks this juicy tidbit to the press before the official announcement, and political bedlam ensues. The author treats this controversy with the seriousness that it deserves and posits two sides to a moral dilemma with no perfect solution. My favorite line is the book is this quotation from a music executive: "'It just makes me uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable makes me even more uncomfortable.'" This perfectly describes my feeling about the situation. We all love that American stands for freedom, but our gut feeling is that having a Muslim-built memorial for a site destroyed by Quran-quoting terrorists is a recipe for disaster. Is the memorial really a martyr's paradise? Such was not Khan's intent, but his motives are not clear to the public, because he's not talking. Born in Virginia, he's indignant that his lineage has caused his allegiance to be called into question. From the public's perspective, he's an enigma, but he's really just too proud to buckle to the scrutiny he deems unfair. Claire, for all her high-minded initial support of Khan, begins to vacillate when a loathsome reporter plants a seed of doubt about Khan's political leanings. The reporter's lack of ethics and her success in duping Claire made me angry. I wanted there to be some non-Muslim who supported him unequivocally. Alas, Khan's egotism and intransigence ensure that even American Muslims ultimately abandon his cause. I love the title and all of its possible meanings. There's a comment in the book that Islam is submission, but isn't all religion submission to a higher power? Then there's also submission to public opinion, to emotion, to ambition, to political pressure—all of which come into play here. My only criticism would be that we never get close enough to Claire or Khan to experience their inner turmoil. The author brings focus more to ourselves and our own principles, and how we as a country and as individuals respond to this type of polarizing argument.