Violet Hetherington is an English woman who wrote some poetry in her youth. Widowed in her middle age, she´s thinking about writing again. Lucky for the reader, she doesn´t stare out the window and try to dream up poems. She gets on a boat and sails to America, to visit an old poet friend.
There’s humor on every oceangoing page of Dancing Backwards. Yes, it’s a soulful voyage, and Vi looks back over some painful life passages. Yes, author Salley Vickers was once a psychoanalyst, and Vi’s journey is an Atlantic-borne five-day self-analysis.
But she learns to foxtrot, and the theft of her diamond ring leads to intrigue, and she tends to bring out the best in some of her fellow passengers. Miss Foot–who sees Vi’s aura and is thought of by some passengers as a nut–turns out to have real perceptions. And the savage theatre critic becomes quite lovable in Vi’s company.
As for the painful flashbacks: Even if the dreadful man with whom Vi was once involved is humorless, and even if she allows him to behave at his worst, he is memorable, like something out of Edgar Allan Poe. (He’s not a fantasy character at all, but he has this purse made out of a bat’s wing.)
Vi has gone through some changes when she reaches New York, and it was a pleasure to have accompanied her on the journey.
Thanks as always to Cheryl Holtsclaw of the West Indianapolis Branch
The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
Frank Machianno has a routine; it’s how he gets through the day. Up at 3:45 to open his bait shop, then hit a couple of waves on his surfboard, off to check on his linen delivery service, a couple of stops to see if restaurants are satisfied with the fish he’s had delivered—chat ‘em up, suggest the shrimp—then on to check on his rental properties. Along the way he’s got to fix the garbage disposal for his ex-wife before heading off to wine and dine his girlfriend. He’s getting up there in age, but still doing pretty well maintaining, he thinks—until somebody tries to kill him. And so begins the winter that Frank Machianno, aka Frankie Machine, finds himself fighting for his life. Winslow makes excellent use of flashbacks to let us know who Frank is, who he’s been. And even though Frank is not exactly who we thought he was, Winslow is such a talented writer that we’re still rooting for Frankie Machine to come out okay.
Due Diligence by Jonathan Rush
Mike Wilson is the CEO of Louisiana Light and he has decided that buying BritEnergy will be the deal of a lifetime for him. To do the deal, he turns to Dyson Whitney, an investment banking firm; it will be up to them to raise the money for the purchase. Wilson wants the deal done in an incredibly short time and everyone at Dyson Whitney, which stands to make tens of millions of dollars in fees, is pushing hard to make the deal happen. When Rob Holding, a very junior analyst is put on the team to analyze the financials, he begins to see red flags telling him that there’s something not right. But everybody wants the deal to go through and nobody is listening to Rob. Worse than that, he may be putting himself in danger if he continues to speak out about his suspicions. The book jacket says “Jonathan Rush is the pseudonym of a strategy consultant who has worked with some of the world’s largest corporations.” If this story was based on his experience, we all might need to be worried.
A Conflict of Interest by Adam Mitzner
If you’re a lawyer, there’s never a bad time to talk business with a prospective client. Alex Miller is the youngest partner with one of the top law firms in New York City and on the fast track to success. So even though he’s at his father’s funeral when Michael Ohlig, his father’s long-time friend, asks him for help, Alex listens. Ohlig’s brokerage firm is being investigated for scamming investors; in short, doing a pump and dump scheme. Ohlig doesn’t blink when Alex tells him he’ll need a million dollar retainer. Ohlig offers to double that amount and they have a deal. But it’s not long before Alex begins to wonder if it’s a deal with the devil. Ohlig is complex at best, by turns charming and domineering. As the trial progresses, Alex finds himself having to deal not only with Ohlig and the trial demands, but also with his own personal weaknesses and failings. Much like Rusty Sabich in Presumed Innocent, Alex Miller is a flawed human being trying to find his way. Mitzner’s writing style is reminiscent of Scott Turow’s as well.
Flipping Out by Marshall Karp
For my money, nobody can top John Sandford when it comes to cop dialogue, but Marshall Karp comes close. Lomax and Biggs are homicide detectives in California. Lomax has his own sad story to tell, but it doesn’t interfere with his tenacity when it comes to finding killers. Biggs is equally tenacious, but since his dream is to retire from the LAPD and then become a stand-up comic, he gets all the fun lines. Karp’s debut novel featuring Lomax and Biggs, The Rabbit Factory, may have frightened potential readers off due to its length–632 pages for a mystery? Still, it was a great read and entertaining enough to make the pages fly by. Flipping Out is pared down considerably and shows that Karp’s just getting better and better. Oh yes, the plot line: someone is killing cop’s wives. But really, even though Karp plays fair and follows the rules for mysteries, his books are all about the dialogue. And with dialogue that good, the plot line is just a bonus.
Sister by Rosamund Lupton
This is sooo not my kind of book. In spite of its being a mystery, it was one of those “girly” books, in the form of a letter that one sister is writing to another. Yech! And yet …. When I found myself on page 144 and still reading, I was totally appalled and thinking about wrapping the book in a brown paper wrapper so people wouldn’t think I’d sneaked into the “literary” camp of readers. The story itself was standard fare: young woman is murdered, police don’t investigate thoroughly, grieving relative keeps digging and solves the case. Lupton’s style was more poetry than hardboiled detective, and yet it worked. It was a story about love, and finding oneself, and hearing the songs in the world, and accepting people for who they are even though they might travel in swoopy lines while your path tends more toward straight and narrow. And, for me, it was about finding a gem of a story where I’d least expected it. Dare I say it? Sometimes you really can’t judge a book by its cover.
The Informationist by Taylor Stevens
I’m not sure which is more interesting reading, the book or the Taylor Stevens bio. Well, here’s a tidbit from her website: “Cut off from personal family, at times under the care of sadistic individuals and without access to books or television from the outside world, imagination became a survival mechanism.” Sounds a lot like the character in her book. Like Stevens, Vanessa Munroe was exposed early in life to sadistic people; thus the survival skills. Munroe is tormented by her past and the extent to which it influences the path her life has taken. She specializes in gathering information—for a price—but this time around, her mission is to find a young woman who disappeared while in Africa. Stevens, having lived in a cult there for 4 years, writes with incredible knowledge of the landscape and culture. And, I suspect, she also writes with incredible knowledge about the horrors that her main character experienced.
Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens
I would not want to live inside this writer’s head. Her first book, Still Missing, was scary enough. Now comes Never Knowing and Stevens has creeped me out again. Sara Gallagher grew up adopted, with a less-than caring father and daydreams of what her real mother and father are like. Now Sara’s all grown up, with a family of her own and life is good. Still, she can’t resist tracking down her birth mother who, sadly, wants no part of Sara. Why? Turns out Sara’s father is a serial killer and Sara’s mother is his only victim who managed to escape. Sara is justifiably horrified, but soon begins to wonder if she has inherited some of his violent tendencies. Events begin to spiral out of control as “John” learns of her existence and begins calling her. If she talks with him, she risks endangering her family, but if she doesn’t take his calls, people can die. Stevens manages to pull you in with a story that keeps you reading, but stays just short of the line where you decide the story isn’t worth the nightmares that are sure to follow.
Butler University´s Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series begins its spring session on February 8th, with one of the co-founders of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and wraps up in April with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and story writer.
In between are the author of dazzling novels (that word was used in two different periodicals about two different books) and a poet and translator who believes that Sir Gawain’s green knight is Supernatural, yes, but also flesh and blood. He is something in the likeness of ourselves, and he is not purple or orange or blue with yellow stripes. Gawain must negotiate a deal with a man who wears the colors of the leaves and the fields. He must strike an honest bargain with this manifestation of nature, and his future depends on it.
All programs are free and open to the public.
Anne Waldman
Wednesday, February 8
Eidson-Duckwall Recital Room, Robertson Hall
7:30 p.m.
In the Room of Never Grieve : New and Selected Poems, 1985-2003 (2003)
This second culling from Waldman’s vast oeuvre includes excerpts from Waldman’s acclaimed Fast-Speaking Woman, and arrives up-to-the-moment, covering the Florida election debacle, September 11, the 2003 war in Iraq, and the third and latest installation of Waldman’s ongoing epic exploration into maleness, Iovis. If early work found her most engaged with the New York School, these later poems integrate her passions for Buddhism and ethnopoetics into a unique style of vocal, unabashedly current-event-laden, collagistic, wide-ranging work. Waldman’s quest to find forms appropriate to her shamanistic, didactic content is particularly compelling in Marriage: A Sentence, with its liquefied gender roles and synthesis of influences ranging from Stein to Corso: “That’s for sure for when you are married people people understand understand you do not have to answer answer a doorbell because sex sex may happen happen without delay delay. You will hear everything twice, through your ears & the ears of the other. Her or him as a case case may be be. He & he & she & she as a case case may be may be.” . . . Waldman’s untiring efforts to link language, ritual and political action come through clearly, urgently and often beautifully. — Publishers Weekly
Manatee/Humanity (2009)
Buddhist thought has inspired many American poets since the Beat era, perhaps few as directly as Waldman, whose latest book springs from her interest in Kalachakra initiation–a practice that moves the subject toward heightened empathy with the natural world–and a profoundly mystical, personal encounter with a manatee, transformed here into a metaphor for peaceful transcendence. Though this may sound like a recipe for New Age-y self-indulgence, Waldman skillfully synthesizes her meditations on the nature of consciousness, evolution, neuroscience, and threatened species into a vibrant poetic discourse, employing a variety of literary devices–litany, parallel texts, historical narrative–to channel the urgency of her ecological message. “Surely our conscious plans have precursors in animal brains,” she writes, and by thoughtlessly slaughtering other species humanity risks erasing a critical clue to its own nature: “sentient being’s connection to the visceral animal.” In speaking “for the wild universe,” Waldman has contributed a substantive addition to the growing body of ecopoetry. — Library Journal
Simon Armitage
Tuesday, February 21
Krannert Room, Clowes Memorial Hall
7:30 p.m.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation (2007)
Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight beautifully captures the wit and verve of the original Middle English poem. Like Seamus Heaney (whose translation of Beowulf appeared almost a decade ago), Armitage brings his own poetic gifts to a difficult project and produces a fine and enjoyable translation. It is no easy task to keep faithful to the demands of the alliterative forms of the poem and the quirks of the northern dialect of Middle English in which it was written while also conveying the soul of the poem itself, but Armitage accomplishes both. This translation will introduce new students to the poem without alienating them with its scholarly difficulties, and it will be a pleasure for the general reader and for all who are interested in the Middle Ages. — Choice
Seeing Stars (2011)
Armitage, the author of many books of poetry and prose, is among Britain’s most popular poets (and poets are actually a bit famous over there), though this is only his second individual collection to appear in the U.S. It’s about time we started seeing his work: Armitage is drily funny, clever, technically adept, and dark, but not too dark . . . In little prose stories and dramatic monologues, Armitage manages to touch on everything from the concerns of the sperm whale (”Don’t be taken in by the dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets of the ocean”) to “the ruins of sex” and ill-conceived ventures like “Cheeses of Nazareth (”I fear for the long-term commercial viability of the new Christian cheese shop in our neighborhood”). The moral of all of these fables might be “don’t get your hopes up,” although Armitage does let a glimmer of light show through here and there, albeit at an odd angle, as when a married couple draw a curtain in the middle of their house, dividing them for life while simultaneously keeping them “inseparable and betrothed.” — Publishers Weekly
Nicole Krauss
Tuesday, March 6
Reilly Room, Atherton Union
7:30 p.m.
The History of Love (2005)
The last words of this haunting novel resonate like a pealing bell. “He fell in love. It was his life.” This is the unofficial obituary of octogenarian Leo Gursky, a character whose mordant wit, gallows humor and searching heart create an unforgettable portrait. Born in Poland and a WWII refugee in New York, Leo has become invisible to the world. When he leaves his tiny apartment, he deliberately draws attention to himself to be sure he exists. What’s really missing in his life is the woman he has always loved, the son who doesn’t know that Leo is his father, and his lost novel, called The History of Love, which, unbeknownst to Leo, was published years ago in Chile under a different man’s name. Another family in New York has also been truncated by loss. Teenager Alma Singer, who was named after the heroine of The History of Love, is trying to ease the loneliness of her widowed mother, Charlotte. When a stranger asks Charlotte to translate The History of Love from Spanish for an exorbitant sum, the mysteries deepen. Krauss ties these and other plot strands together with surprising twists and turns, chronicling the survival of the human spirit against all odds. Writing with tenderness about eccentric characters, she uses earthy humor to mask pain and to question the universe. Her distinctive voice is both plangent and wry, and her imagination encompasses many worlds. — Publishers Weekly
Great House (2010)
Krauss, in her follow-up to the best-selling The History of Love, tells her story entirely through the voices of her characters. All of the elements of literary fiction are conveyed through the monologues of five people: a writer from New York, an angry Jewish father from Jerusalem, an American woman studying in Oxford, the baffled husband of a Holocaust refugee, and an éminence grise who wraps things up–but not too tightly. Readers follow the trail, set forth in straightforward narrative and flashbacks, of an immense desk, which casts its shadow (sometimes literally) over the lives of all five characters. The plot is intricate and rewards careful reading. Krauss’ masterful rendition of character is breathtaking, compelling . . . In addition, the points of view of the various narrators, taken as a whole, present a broad picture of plot and motivation . . . This tour de force of fiction writing will deeply satisfy fans of the author’s first two books and bring her legions more. — Booklist
Linda Gregg
Tuesday, March 27
Krannert Room, Clowes Memorial Hall
7:30 p.m.
Too many reviews of poetry collections in the same blogpost can cause readers to break out in rashes, so we’re going to allow Ms. Gregg to speak for herself.
Two poems, one set in New York City and the other near the small town of Marfa, Texas.
“Fragments” and “The Presence in Absence” are both from In the Middle Distance: Poems, © 2006. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.
Fragments
You can’t call the exhausted people on
the 1 or 9 line beautiful. Especially
the drunk at the back yelling and stumbling
and grabbing the pole gracefully just
in time. Beauty has a strangeness.
The old man leaning against the cement
column at the station on 42nd (when I
changed to the N or R) has three holes
in his pants. Neon and magazine covers
about a new couple. I believe everyone
is going home. This is the way.
The Presence in Absence
Poetry is not made of words.
I can say it´s January when
it´s August. I can say “The scent
of wisteria on the second floor
of my grandmother´s house
with the door open onto the porch
in Petaluma” while I´m living
an hour´s drive from the Mexican
border town of Ojinaga.
It is possible to be with someone
who is gone. Like the silence which
continues here in the desert while
the night train passes through Marfa
louder and louder, like the dogs whining
and barking after the train is gone.
Maile Meloy
Tuesday, April 3
Atherton Union Reilly Room
7:30 p.m.
Liars and Saints (2003)
The consolations of ardent faith, as well as the harsh demands of religious dogma, supply the leitmotifs of this dazzling novel of a Catholic family’s life over five decades. Meloy . . . writes with wisdom and compassion about the secret guilt that shadows three generations of the Santerre family. Yvette Grenier and Teddy Santerre marry in California in 1945, just before Teddy ships out to the Pacific. Their wartime separation sparks Teddy’s fears of Yvette’s infidelity, and when naive Yvette is moved to confess an experience of sexual temptation to her priest, his strict penalty for her “sin of omission” creates enduring tension in the marriage. When one of their daughters gives birth at age 16, Yvette contrives to pass off the baby boy as her own son, convinced that God has chosen her to bear this burden . . . The alternating points of view of eight main characters shine with authenticity and illuminate the moral complexities felt by each generation. The rich emotional chiarascuro and fine psychological insight of this haunting novel mark Meloy as a writer of extraordinary talent. — Publishers Weekly
A Family Daughter (2006)
In her dazzling second novel, Meloy continues the story of the Santerre family, introduced in her first, Liars and Saints. Abbey, age seven, is sent to live with her grandparents while her parents sort out the sticky arrangements of their divorce. Bored and suffering from chicken pox, she develops a close relationship with her uncle, launching a series of events that will eventually touch every member of the family and that form a dark sexual secret that neither Abbey nor her uncle wants exposed. Readers get wrapped up both in their taboo saga and their coping mechanisms, especially the fictionalized account written and published by a more mature Abbey. By the time the rest of the family has read Abbey’s novel, no one can keep track of where family secrets end and her fiction begins. Meloy creates the voices of this Catholic American family, and various people who orbit around them, with a keen, satirical ear. Riveting and engrossing, Meloy’s tale of a family struggling with guilt and forgiveness spans decades and crosses continents, proving her status as one of the best literary observers of contemporary American life. — Booklist
Jhumpa Lahiri
Monday, April 16
Reilly Room, Atherton Union
7:30 p.m.
The Namesake (2003)
This first novel is an Indian American saga, covering several generations of the Ganguli family across three decades. Newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima leave India for the Boston area shortly after their traditional arranged marriage. The young husband, an engineering graduate student, is ready to be part of U.S. culture, but Ashima, disoriented and homesick, is less taken with late-Sixties America. She develops ties with other Bengali expatriates, forming lifelong friendships that help preserve the old ways in a new country. When the first Ganguli baby arrives, he is named Gogol in commemoration of a strange, life-saving encounter with the Russian writer’s oeuvre. As Gogol matures, his unusual name proves to be a burden, though no more than the tensions and confusions of growing up as a first-generation American. This poignant treatment of the immigrant experience is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details. Readers who enjoyed the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, will not be disappointed. — Library Journal
Unaccustomed Earth (2008)
The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children–and that separates the children from India–remains Lahiri’s subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake . In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen’s reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri’s stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals. — Publishers Weekly
Happy Chinese New Year! To get the Year of the Dragon started, we have a novel about Pearl S. Buck, a biographical work about Galileo and his daughter, a novel about slavery and another about segregation in the 1960´s. And we’re featuring “one of the few English books written for grown-up people.” (That’s what Virginia Woolf said about Middlemarch.)
On Thursday, February 2nd, Kathryn Stockett´s novel The Help will be discussed at the Warren Library at 10:30 a.m.
Set in Stockett’s native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family, and watched the children they cared for commit bigotry. In Stockett’s narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they’re published anonymously, the risk is great; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension pervades the novel as its events are told by these three memorable women. Is this an easy book to read? No, but it is surely worth reading. It may even stir things up as readers in Jackson and beyond question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present. — Library Journal
Anchee Min’s biographical novel Pearl of China will be discussed at Franklin Road Library on Monday, February 6th at 6:30 p.m.
Pearl S. Buck, who grew up in China and became the first American woman writer to win the Nobel Prize . . . first appears as a bright, inquisitive girl who conceals her blond, curly hair beneath a black knit cap to be less conspicuous in the Chinese town of Chin-kiang, where she lives with her courageous American missionary parents. We get to know Pearl through her best friend, Willow–impoverished, smart, plucky, and Chinese–as they share mischievous and harrowing adventures, a disastrous mutual love for the famous poet Hsu Chih-mo, and a string of tragedies yoked to the paradoxes and horrors of the Boxer Rebellion, China’s civil war, and Mao’s catastrophic rule. Exiled and heartbroken, Pearl achieves world renown by writing about China, while journalist Willow is brutally punished for remaining loyal to her “imperialist” friend. Ardently detailed, dramatic, and encompassing, Min’s fresh and penetrating interpretation of Pearl S. Buck’s extraordinary life delivers profound psychological, spiritual, and historical insights within an unforgettable cross-cultural story of a quest for veracity, compassion, and justice. — Booklist
The Wayne Library will host a discussion of Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter on Monday, February 6th at 6:30 p.m.
All have heard of Galileo, but not many have heard of Galileo’s daughter, Virginia, who, born out of wedlock, was entrusted to a nunnery. Suor Maria Celeste, as she came to be called, was pious and bright, affectionate, and dedicated to her father. Father and daughter corresponded regularly through letters, though they lived not too many miles apart. They wrote to each other on matters of significance as well as trivialities. Her fond letters soon became a source of immense strength for her genius-father, especially in his later years. Only the daughter’s missives have survived; the father’s have perished beyond a trace. In this fascinating book, written with much grace, intelligence, and erudition, writer Sobel recreates for the reader, through the letters, the science and related conflicts of the time, and the social conditions and the ecclesiastic adamancy surrounding Galileo. The letters reveal that the great scientist was also a deeply sensitive man of faith, who had the intelligence to know that if reason and observation spoke differently about the world, that was a greater revelation from God than any ancient texts holy because of age. The letters also show the deep love and caring that Suor Celeste had for her aging father. The world of scholarship is indebted to Sobel for bringing to light one more human side of Galileo. — Choice
George Eliot’s classic novel Middlemarch will be discussed at Central Library on Tuesday, February 7th at 6:00 p.m.
It is not a romantic novel, though it is a very passionate one. It is anti-romantic. It does not lead from frustrated love to fulfilled love to climactic marriage. It begins with the mistaken marriage choices of its “heroine” and “hero” and shows the inexorable workings of their coming to terms with their folly . . . When I was younger it was fashionable to criticise Eliot for writing from a god’s eye view, as though she were omniscient. Her authorial commenting voice appeared old-fashioned. It was felt she should have chosen a limited viewpoint, or written from inside her characters only. I came to see that this is nonsense. If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist. We were taught to laugh at collections of “the wit and wisdom of Eliot”. But the truth is that she is wise - not only intelligent, but wise. Her voice deepens our response to her world. — A. S. Byatt, writing in The Guardian
And at Brightwood Library on Tuesday, February 7th, Breena Clarke’s novel Stand the Storm will be discussed at 6:00 p.m.
Clarke returns with a bittersweet slavery-era saga, partially set–like her smash 1999 Oprah-pick, River, Cross My Heart –in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown. On Ridley Plantation in rural Maryland, Gabriel Coats picks up his mother Annie’s seamstress skills with remarkable ease, but is sold at age 10 to established Georgetown tailor Abraham Pearl. For eight years, Gabriel works hard and keeps an eye on freedom for his family as the Washington abolitionist movement gains momentum. Master Ridley’s nephew Aaron begins overseeing the tailoring shop, and Gabriel and Annie busily create sartorial masterpieces as war steadily approaches. By the time freedom becomes a reality, only a few of the Coatses emerge with their pride and abilities intact. Clarke gets the details–emotional, political, domestic, religious–right across the board and crafts complex and appealing characters. Her knowledge of the period and the novel’s dense, deliberate narrative create a poignant story about the intricacies of human bondage and its dissolution, built around a family’s unshakable faith in one another. — Publishers Weekly
Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones will be discussed at the Fountain Square Library on Thursday, February 9th at 1:30 p.m.
The strength of maternal love overcomes obstacles in this shrewdly constructed, beautifully written novel by award-winning New Zealander Jones (Mister Pip, 2007). A young African woman employed at a Tunisian hotel becomes involved with a client and bears his son, then unwittingly signs adoption papers before the father takes the baby back to his home in Berlin. Desperate to find her child, she somehow survives a dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, part of the human trafficking from Africa to Europe, and makes her way north. Much of the story is told by the people, most of them men, she encounters along the way, in what readers later learn is testimony for a trial. Then the protagonist, known as Ines Maria Luis, is given voice and her own perspective on events, which is sometimes at variance with those heard earlier. Jones’ prose is as insightful as it is lovely (e.g., describing the intimacy of a marriage of many years “that enfolds one life with another”) as he details the lengths to which a mother will go to see her child. First- and third-person accounts add depth to characters ranging from the 71-year-old blind man for whom Ines is a companion to the various men she beds to the woman who is raising her son. A memorable account of the transcendency of human bonds. — Booklist
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! will be discussed at the Irvington Library on Thursday, February 9th at 1:30 p.m.
O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather’s first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier– and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather’s heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the windblasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra’s devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself. At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were. — Willa Cather Foundation website
Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations–One School at a Time will be discussed at the East 38th Street Library on Monday, February 13th at 6:00 p.m.
Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse’s unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town’s first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson’s efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers’ hearts. — Publishers Weekly
The Flanner House Library will host a discussion of Brenda Jackson’s novel A Silken Thread on Monday, February 13th at 6:30 p.m.
For Erica Sanders, finding a soul mate was the easy part. Brian Lawson is the man she wants, and everyone agrees they’re the ideal couple. Almost everyone. The one exception is Erica’s mother, Karen, who prefers her daughter marry another man. Karen even hires a private detective to investigate Brian, but the truth he uncovers is the last thing she expected—a devastating betrayal that rips both families apart. Convinced that her relationship can’t be salvaged, Erica ends her engagement. Yet she has lingering doubts over her decision . . . Simon & Schuster
Abraham Verghese’s novel Cutting for Stone will be discussed at the Lawrence Library on Tuesday, February 21st at 10:15 p.m.
Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother’s long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese’s weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. — Publishers Weekly
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory will be discussed at the Spades Park Library on Thursday, February 23rd at 6:00 p.m.
A rich and compelling novel of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her heart.When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family’s ambitious plots as the king’s interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. — From the book jacket
Joan Medlicott’s novel The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love will be discussed at the Southport Library on Monday, February 27th at 6:30 p.m.
The three widowed 60-something women who lend “golden girl” power to Medlicott’s episodic debut would be very much at home in Jan Karon’s Mitford. Amelia, Hannah and Grace all live in a Pennsylvania boardinghouse, unhappily confronting the insults and injuries involved in aging. When Amelia inherits a deteriorating farmhouse in Covington, N.C., the three decide to move in together, gearing up to rehabilitate both the farmhouse and their lives. Although their alternately neglectful and overprotective grown children are disgruntled at their mothers’ unconventional new lifestyle, the women find the time to become themselves, enjoying a combination of companionship and independence. Between gardening, cooking and exploring photography, the spunky trio jointly weather many trials and adventures including flood, fire, a claim on their property and romance . . . Medlicott’s idea is a winner: women in their twilight years finding alternatives to large group homes or living alone. Solving an all-too-common housing dilemma, the three ladies inspire by forming a community in which they thrive and find new careers and loves, all with dignity and autonomy. — Publishers Weekly
I haven´t posted anything about detective Matt Scudder, this year, so I´d better get cracking. I just finished reading A Drop of the Hard Stuff, the wonderful 2011 series installment, in which author Lawrence Block does another one of his backward time-jumps.
Matt´s drinking problem, and his involvement with Alcoholics Anonymous, have played an important part throughout the series, and that’s especially true of this most recent title.
For those of you approaching Scudder for the first time, I´ll draw a helpful diagram of the 17 novels. Not all of them are currently owned by the library.
Is this working for you?
The red arrow covers the first novels in the series, in the course of which Matt consumes a great deal of alcohol. He’s is a divorced ex-cop and unlicensed private eye. (As he puts it, he does favors for people and they show their gratitude with money.)
Matt occasionally shows up at AA meetings, but he never says anything, and makes no real attempt to kick the habit. If you’re just starting the series, you should skip the first three and return to them only if you become a devotee. Not because Matt’s drinking, but because they’re not as well done as the later books.
At the end of the fifth novel, Eight Million Ways to Die, Matt speaks up at an AA meeting.
”My name is Matt,” I said, and paused, and started over. “My name is Matt,” I said, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
And then he starts crying. The beaming little sun in my diagram is a symbol for this redemptive moment. Lawrence Block thought he had finished the series.
But then he wrote a Matt story, from way back in the detective’s drinking days, and he wrapped another story around that story, and he ended up writing the first Scudder book I read, which is probably still my favorite.
I can’t remember if Matt is bothering to show up at AA meetings in the course of When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, which gives me an excuse to reread it.
It begins with an armed robbery at an “after-hours” place called Morrissey’s (”They performed a humanitarian service, the Brothers Morrissey,” someone recalls in the most recent Scudder novel. “Made sure a man didn’t die of thirst just because it was past four in the morning.”)
Then there’s the matter of a drinking buddy who is accused of murdering his wife, and there are someone’s crooked books. Matt does some favors for people, and they express their gratitude.
From this novel onward in the series, Matt will be sober, or trying to stay that way; and Ginmill is a wonderful place to jump in, with Matt looking back over his shoulder at these strange inebriated days.
In Out on the Cutting Edge, the next in the series and Matt’s first as a sober guy, he makes the acquaintance of a career criminal named Mickey Ballou.
For much of the rest of the series, Mick functions as a shadow figure for Matt. Mick drinks whiskey, while Matt sips a Coke or club soda. They engage in some violent behavior together, spend nights telling stories, and sometimes go to an early morning mass attended mostly by butchers. Lawrence Block has spoken in interview about the connection he feels with Ireland and its people. Giving Matt this Irish-American criminal as a soul mate and scapegoat is one way to help our detective stay sober.
To be real, though: Matt has a wonderful AA sponsor, Jim Faber, and–starting in the next novel–a girl friend. I shouldn’t make too much of Ballou’s powers as a shadow-guide.
The yellow line represents Matt’s path of sobriety. The red X stands for the novel in which a bottle of whiskey finds its way into Matt’s hotel room, where it torments him. I can’t remember the novel in which this happens, but I don’t think I’m making it up.
The dark 16 is my way of saying that I haven’t been able to finish All the Flowers are Dying, the sixteenth book in the series. I enjoyed A Dance at the Slaughterhouse and some of the other “vigilante” titles that repelled other readers; but the gruesomeness of Flowers has put me off, at least for now. I may be getting soft.
Some commenters on the Web speculated that Flowers would be the last in the Scudder series, and perhaps the author considered the possibility. BUT . . .
Back in time we go again, I think to 1980. If the year is given anywhere, I missed it. The Rubik’s cube is a new phenomenon. Gay men are suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma, and no one knows why.
Jack Ellery, an old acquaintance of Matt’s, and himself an alcoholic, is murdered. His AA sponsor believes that the killing may have had to do with Jack’s attempt to work through the eighth of AA’s twelve steps: making amends.
The sponsor–who admits to being a real “step Nazi,” and feels responsible for having pushed Jerry too hard and getting him killed–tells Matt, “I’d like you to do me a favor.”
In the course of Matt’s investigation, alcohol once again finds its way into his hotel room. Its appearance this time is stranger and more aggressive than in the earlier (unnamed) novel.
Block may be intending to wrap the series up, but if he can go on writing books like this one by jumping around in time, I’m ready to be transported.
The red arrow covers the first novels in the series, in the course of which Matt consumes a great deal of alcohol. He’s is a divorced ex-cop and unlicensed private eye. (As he puts it, he does favors for people and they show their gratitude with money.)
The yellow line represents Matt’s path of sobriety. The red X stands for the novel in which a bottle of whiskey finds its way into Matt’s hotel room, where it torments him. I can’t remember the novel in which this happens, but I don’t think I’m making it up.
Back in time we go again, I think to 1980. If the year is given anywhere, I missed it. The Rubik’s cube is a new phenomenon. Gay men are suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma, and no one knows why.