The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers

This film seems not to have made much of an impact on awards season, but there are so many ways in which it's a tour-de-force.

The sound design, the photography, and of course, the writing and acting. It's a film full of beautiful dialogue, with references to sea lore - "Old" reprimands "Young" for killing a gull, telling him that it's bad luck to kill a sea bird.

It's a psychological thriller, and I found it difficult to watch. I found that surprising, in a way. I've never really been a fan of horror, whether it's novels or films. But I really liked Hereditary and Get Out and I thought I should have felt the same way about The Lighthouse. The sense of claustrophobia induced by the film made me feel squeezed.

But the acting was so wonderful. In one of the features, the director said that Robert Pattinson said to him that he really only wanted to do really strange stories, and on that basis, Eggers offered the role of "Young" to him. Willem Dafoe said that the theatre shaped him, and the skills he developed there he was able to use here. And there was a perfect seamlessness to their performances. They really committed; it all seemed very real. This felt experimental, in the sense that the dialogue, the cinematography all contribute to an unreal, dreamlike feeling.

Motherless Brooklyn by Edward Norton

I wanted to love Motherless Brooklyn, and it is certainly true that in the beginning of the movie, I thought: this is watercolor fantasy for urban planners. Norton bought the rights to Jonathan Lethem's novel, which I haven't read, but seems to have changed the story to make it about Robert Moses.

Robert Moses is famous, and perhaps notorious figure. He had a very long career, and having worked in New York State government, became the most powerful figure in New York City development between the 1930s and the 1960s. He built parks, expressways, and bridges, and destroyed many working-class neighborhoods in order to build those structures. Jane Jacobs, famous for her influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, opposed him and helped turn the tide of public opinion against him. Moses represents destroying neighborhoods for the sake of providing movement for cars, prioritizing cars over public transit, and for a model of urban renewal that called for large-scale demolition for the sake of new building.


The character in the movie based on Moses is called Moses Randall (or Randolph) and is played by Alec Baldwin. The movie has a wonderful cast: Willem Dafoe, Cherry Jones, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. 

As the movie progressed, I felt that the quality of the plot, the dialogue, and the acting suffered. When the heritage of the character played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw was revealed, I found myself feeling that this had been done before, and better, in Chinatown.

A year or so ago I heard an episode of Terry Gross's Fresh Air, from National Public Radio, in which Robert Caro talked about his award-winning biography of Moses, The Power Broker. Caro said that one source of his power was his ability to dig up dirt on his political opponents:

     'But all of a sudden, the key official, a lawyer for the council to Mayor [Robert] Wagner       changed  his mind, and wrote a letter saying Moses' route was good. So when I was talking to Moses I said, "What did you do to Henry Epstein?" And he said something like, "Oh we hit him with an ax." I said, "What do you mean?" And he said in their investigation they had found that he had a girlfriend. He was a married man but he had a longtime girlfriend. He said, "I said to Henry, you and this chum of yours. And Henry said, "She's not my chum." And Moses said, "Oh yes, Henry, she's your chum all right." So Moses said to me... "So Henry wrote his letter."'

Here's a link to that podcast: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713413916/biographer-robert-caro-on-fame-power-and-working-to-uncover-the-truth

Absolutely Anything

Terry Jones passed away, and my library put up a very discreet display of Terry Jones items as they do when famous people die.

When I got there, all the materials were checked out except Absolutely Anything, a video that I'd never heard of .. with a front cover with a photo of Kate Beckinsale, Simon Pegg, and a dog wearing glasses.

None of this enticed me, but I reminded myself that everything at the library is free and one really ought to try new things, early and often.

I checked it out, and as I watched it I thought: "I know this story!" I thought it was Jesus and Satan in the desert, like in Paradise Lost, but now that I think about it, maybe it's the Book of Job. Anyway, I really loved it. The last 25% was a little bit weaker .. (endings are hard, or so I've heard), but just when I was getting quite worried the plot ended itself very happily. Later, I thought: is this an overlooked film, or is it the case that you are a sucker for a plot in which an affectionate, adorable dog saves mankind?

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

I wondered if I would like this book so soon after reading Will in the World. Well, I loved it, and I think I might enjoy reading it again. I read it last year.

It's an account of the plays of 1599, and what Shakespeare's world was like in 1599, with a great emphasis on the political events in London that year. In fact, this book is really "about" how political events affected Shakespeare's work and I found this account both entertaining and a great improvement to my understanding of the plays. Henry the V, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar were the plays Shakespeare wrote in 1599, and I enjoyed the discussion of Julius Caesar the most.

The book opens with a wonderful adventure story: Shakespeare and his fellow Globe shareholders take apart The Theatre, their playhouse just north of London's city limits, and carry it off to re-erect it as The Globe in Southwark. They'd lost their lease to the land on which The Theatre stood. They'd built the theatre, but anticipated trouble with the landlord over removing The Theatre building, so this was a covert operation.

Sadly, the book closes on a less festive note: with Essex's rebellion and execution. The queen was increasingly unpopular, in part because she would not name a successor, leaving everyone with a sense of uncertainty. Perhaps also because the very fact that she was so old meant that it was time for something new and the younger generation was impatient for something new to begin. Finally, there were exclusive licenses being given to favorites, and this caused resentment. The impression that I carried away was that Essex was all out of chances; without a court position he was broke. He'd lost favor when he was sent to Ireland and, in the eyes of many, bungled it. Shapiro's view is that Essex had a vision of service and gallantry that was outdated.

Shapiro discusses censorship in this period, and I found myself feeling surprised that Shakespeare never ran afoul of the censors. In fact, the character of Falstaff was first named for a censor; the name had to be changed and it was changed to Falstaff. In a sense, he did not get away with that - but I think Jonson was imprisoned more than once. How did that smart mouth Mr. Shakespeare get away with that? I guess he was just that popular.

Mr. Shapiro is a Shakespeare scholar who has made quite a few public appearances and presented a television show on the historical Shakespeare. You can find these on YouTube.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

I loved Normal People. It'd gotten a lot of publicity and praise, and made it onto the "best of" year-end book lists. It came in second in the general fiction category after Margaret Atwood's The Attachments (the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale) in the Goodreads Choice Awards for 2019.

"Don't tell Mam about this," he says. Marianne shakes her head. No, she agrees. But it wouldn't matter if she did tell her, not really. Denise decided a long time ago that it is acceptable for men to use aggression toward Marianne as a way of expressing themselves. As a child Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it isn't any interest to her, which in a way it isn't. Denise considers this a symptom of her daughter's frigid and unlovable personality. She believes Marianne lacks "warmth," by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her. " (p. 68)
   
"Unable to form such straightforward views or express them with any force, Connell initially felt a sense of crushing inferiority to his fellow students, as if he had upgraded himself accidentally to an intellectual level far above his own, where he had to strain to make sense  of the most basic premises. .. One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma when it seems like Mr. Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and walk home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He's amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectually unserious to to concern himself with fictional people marrying each other. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it "the pleasure of being touched by great art." In those words it almost sounds sexual. And in a way, the feeling provoked in Connell when Mr. Knightley kisses Emma's hand is not completely asexual, though its relation to sexuality is not direct. It suggests to Connell that the same imagination that he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them."

"People in Dublin often mention the west of Ireland in this strange tone of voice, as if it's a foreign country, but one they consider themselves very knowledgeable about." (pp. 70-72) 

In the closing pages surprising but wonderful.

Normal People reminded me of Eleanor and Park, because in both novels the couples are seemingly misfits who have little in common with each other; the woman suffers emotional or physical abuse at home; and the relationship offers the woman emotional escape.


I looked up Normal People in Novelist because I wondered which other books would turn up on the Novelist "Read-Alikes" list for Normal People. (Novelist is a readers' advisory database subscribed to by many libraries for use by their staff and library users; it offers information about authors, lists of their work, book reviews, and finally "read-alike" lists: suggestions for new reading that fans of the book in question are likely to also like.) Eleanor and Park was not on the list much to my surprise.

(The books listed were Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi; One Day, by David Nicholls; The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBridge; Daniel Deronda by George Eliot; Purity by Jonathan Franzen; Skippy Dies by Paul Murray; The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud; Eileen by Ottesa Moshfegh; and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.)

I like this excerpt from the review of Normal People that appeared in the Kirkus Reviews online:

"Rooney's  genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney  elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney  precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people  as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become. Absolutely enthralling. Read it."

Having done everything I can to avoid talking about what I think of the novel it is this: Like the Kirkus reviewer, I love the the psychological insight that permits Rooney to "articulate everything that's going on under the surface,"; I love that Marianne believes that Connell's love for her has "redeemed" her, giving the healing power of love a little shrine; I love that Rooney has captured the strange psychology of teenagers; I love that, to me, both Marianne and Connell are refreshingly surprising. Both Marianne and Connell are more, and very different from, what they seem. Asserting the healing power of love is in no way new; but Marianne and Connell's particularity and vulnerability means to me that Rooney has successfully reworked an old theme and made it fresh.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

As the title implies, this book is, among other things, a true crime story and a wonderfully written and entertaining one. Keefe said in one of his interviews that he worked hard on the structure. It permitted him to tell a story that was suspenseful, propulsive, sometimes amazing, but full of detail.  It provides context.

It begins with the story of Jean McConville, a Protestant woman who married a Catholic, and though a recent widow with ten children, was disappeared by the IRA. The story of what happened to her, after she was dragged from her apartment in front of her children, is the frame for the book.

It mostly focuses on four people: Brendan Hughes, an IRA commander, two women, Dolours and Marian Price, and the former leader of the Sinn Fein party and the leader of the IRA in Belfast, Gerry Adams.

It deals at length with all four of this figures. Hughes and the Price sisters made sacrifices as IRA soldiers that made the Good Friday Agreement a very bitter pill for them to swallow. Hughes specifically said that every death, civilian or paramilitary, was a worthless sacrifice.

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

When I found out that my book club was reading this book, I was a little bit disappointed. I had really enjoyed reading Malcolm Gladwell's books in the past, but for me, the bloom was off the rose because I'd read an article online by two academics who criticized Gladwell's approach as incautious and misleading. The notion that I might have been misled had troubled me, and had dimmed my enthusiasm.

The book opens with Gladwell telling the story of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who was arrested in a traffic stop in Texas, and unable to raise bail, hung herself in her cell about three days after she was arrested. Interestingly, Gladwell does not mention that Bland was unable to raise bail in this book. The fact that she was unable to raise bail has always troubled me, and I'm grateful that there's currently a trend to reduce bail for poor suspects in certain cases. Had Sandra Bland not been in jail for so many hours and days she might still be alive. That's not to take away from the analysis presented in the book; it's not directly relevant to Gladwell's thesis, which is about how often we rely on visual cues for assessing people we don't know and how often judgments based on visual cues are erroneous.


What I found as I continued to read was that this book, like Gladwell's others, is very entertaining. I read almost the entire book in one sitting, which really surprised me. And, Gladwell has modified his approach; this book has extensive footnotes.

Gladwell explains that an experiment in Kansas City indirectly led to setting the stage for Sandra Bland's arrest. Social scientists identified the blocks with the greatest number of criminal incidents. Patrol teams were assigned to these special blocks in one neighborhood, and asked to aggressively police, by which I mean that they were instructed to pull people over for small infractions of traffic laws and look for any evidence of other crimes. In these special areas, this strategy was successful. However, this practice of pulling people over for small infractions has been misapplied to neighborhoods that are not "hot spots" for crime and this is the context for Sandra Bland's arrest. The case of Sandra Bland is a complicated one, and Gladwell is not offering a policy prescription, but I infer from this case that police forces using this strategy in low-crime areas is inappropriate.

Two of the topics Gladwell discusses in presenting support for his theses are areas he's explored before: facial expressions (in Blink) and suicide (in The Tipping Point). In his discussion of facial expressions, Gladwell mentions Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and the Animals, which collected research from others and asserted that expressions of aggression, sorrow, etc., are universal. I'd read The Expression of the Emotions in college and loved it, and so was disappointed to learn that research has recently been done to show that abilities to read facial expressions are not universal. The research is complicated; as presented, the different results in an attempted replication of experiments may result from different methodology.

In The Tipping Point, Gladwell wrote of the "contagious" quality of suicide: that the suicide of one influences others. I accepted this as true, because I knew of a such case in my high school.

Here, Gladwell writes about the context of suicide. When San Francisco's authorities proposed creating a net or a barrier to prevent suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge, members of the public opposed the move, believing that potential suicides will find another way. Interestingly, Gladwell cites a case that shows this is not necessarily true. And he frames it in an interesting way, telling the story of the suicides of the poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

In the years in which the British used "town gas" in their stoves, which contained a large amount of deadly carbon monoxide, suicides like Sylvia Plath's, rates rose. After "town gas" was replaced with natural gas, which contained almost no carbon monoxide, suicide rates dropped. Gladwell found a second example of this phenomenon. Suicides like Anne Sexton's, where she closed the garage door and sat in her car while her garage filled with carbon monoxide, have dropped markedly since catalytic converters were introduced; catalytic converters emit a very small amount of carbon monoxide which is not lethal. Gladwell is saying that the ease with which a suicide can occur influences the individual. I find this fascinating; I wish I could easily learn whether scholars and researchers who study this topic agree with Gladwell's conclusion. (Here's an online article that does seem to agree with Gladwell's conclusion: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide). It certainly has policy implications; it suggests that it would not be a waste of time and money to create a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. I must note that Gladwell has been criticized for drawing false or misleading conclusions: https://archives.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.php

Sandra Bland's experience was an example of what Gladwell calls mismatch, the misreading of visual (or behavioral) cues. It's relevant to the Sandra Bland case because the officer who arrested her reported that she was agitated and that he feared for his safety; it appears that he misread her anxiety as guilt.

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

I personally thought this book was a tour-de-force and I enjoyed it and would recommend it. I'm so glad this book was so heavily publicized; otherwise I might not have found it. This is a book for lovers of writing style. There's no chance Kevin Barry will run out of words and he uses them the way a jeweler uses gems.

"..She held things unsaid within--sly deposits--and it was her secrecies that enslaved him. They shared a telepathy..As they watched from their eyrie at St. Luke's, the winter crept in with greys and dense mists and the city fell to a drugged slumber. It was moving to watch the city lights burn through the riversmoke at dusk."

"She wanted to go to Maroc and live in one of the camps. She wanted a place that did not know the meaning of her grief.

"She wanted to travel to the far recesses of herself and see what she might find back there."

Two retired drug smugglers wait, and wait, and wait at the Port of Algeciras, waiting for the night boat from Tangier to land. To me, the story is kind of alchemy. (I thought: oh, this is Waiting for Godot .. not just the waiting but the metaphysical nature of Charlie and Moss's musings .. the way Charlie answers his own questions, the questions he poses to the informacionista in the ferry terminal). The patience of Charlie and Moss as they wait is a wearing combination of boredom and longing. By the end of the novel, Barry's "irradiated the dross of life," as my professor said, and granted Charlie and Moss a remarkable, unlikely resilience. I really like this book.

Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

I just finished Ayesha at Last a few days ago and I must say, I am a big fan. The conflict between an arranged marriage and a marriage made for love is explored, as is other aspects of the immigrant experience, giving the novel a needed ballast. On the one hand, I felt the book worked perfectly well as a novel of a young immigrant woman in the West, without the Austen connection; on the other hand, I must admit I was thrilled when the author set up situations that mirrored events in P & P and even included Austen dialogue verbatim (!!! thrilling !!!). Halfway through, I found I could not put it down -- I had to find out what happens! Even though I *knew* what happens!

No Holly for Miss Quinn by Miss Read

Miss Read was recommended to me years ago by a friend and I found this novel quite surprising.

As I began it, I thought, this is a rather twee but very well-written novel of village life. Easy to read but not exactly my cup of tea. I was quite surprised to arrive at the end and discover that it's really a book with a very feminist perspective. I feel a little abashed - I was so effectively fooled until the very end.

The Bensons, a retired couple, acquire Holly Lodge and build an in-law apartment for Mrs. Benson's elderly mother. Sadly, in a matter of months, Mrs. Benson loses first her husband and then her mother. She decides to rent the in-law apartment, and after a suggestion from a friend, rents it to Miss Quinn, personal private secretary to somebody named Barney.

The village is all a-twitter at the arrival of a new inhabitant, and first the vicar, and then others, imagine unmarried Miss Quinn is exactly the person they need to serve their various charitable endeavours:

          '"But what about that nice Miriam Quinn?" he asked of his friend. "We met her the other night at Joan Benson's."

          "But she must be very busy with her job," protested the vicar.

          "She's home by about six.  Why not ask her if she would like the job? She might be glad to meet people."

          The same kindly thought had occurred to other people in Fairacre, particularly those on committees needing secretaries, treasurers, and that vague amorphous quality called "new blood." Here was a clever woman, obligingly free of family ties, in good health and possibly lonely, who could prove a godsend to the various organizations in need of help.

         Henry Mawne was the first to approach Miriam on behalf of the short-staffed Church Fabric Committee.  She welcomed him to her shining house, gave him sherry, sparkled at his jokes, and declined the invitation in the most charming manner.  Henry retired, hardly realizing that he had been defeated.

        The Brownies needed a Brown Owl, the Cubs an Akela. The Women's Institute needed a bookkeeper, as the last one still worked in shillings and pence, and in any case had lost the account book. The Over-Sixties Club could do with a speaker on any subject at any time suitable to Miss Quinn.

        The Naturalists' Association, the Youth Club, the Play Group, the Welfare Clinic, St. Patrick's Choir, and the Sunday School were anxious to have Miss Quinn's presence and support, and Miriam soon realized, with amusement and resignation, that much more hummed beneath Fairacre's serene face than she had imagined.

        Her tact, her charm, and her intelligence, baked by her formidable resolve to keep her life exactly as she wanted it, enabled her to stay clear of any of these entanglements.

        Baffled, and slightly hurt, the villagers retired worsted.

        Mrs. Pringle summed up the general feeling about the newcomer.

        "No flies on Miss Quinn! She knows her own value, that one, but she ain't for sale!"

I find that there are many things to like about this book. It's short: 148 pages. It's funny. It has illustrations. And there are no flies on Miss Quinn!

I actually think this book would make an excellent Christmas present: light-hearted and easy to read. And while the library copy I read was printed in 1976, Miss Read's books are available in paperback.  There seem to be several with a Christmas theme. There's one called "Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre," and now that I know a little about Mrs. Pringle's probity and vocabulary, I'm truly interested in reading a little more about her.
        
I thought "Miss Read" was a very odd name for an author; the only authorial name I can think of that is at all similar is Mrs. Gaskell. So I looked up Miss Read on Wikipedia and learned that her true identity was Dora Jessie Saint, and that "Saint's novels are wry regional social comedies, laced with gentle humour and subtle social commentary. Saint was also a keen observer of nature and the changing seasons."

Life Drawing for Beginners by Roisin Meaney

Limerick, Ireland-based Roisin Meaney is a prolific author, and last week I finished her Life Drawing for Beginners.

When I started reading it, I suddenly realized that its "night class" theme reminded me of a Maeve Binchy favorite, Evening Class, and I looked forward to it with anticipation.

In the opening pages, I found several things I liked:

Audrey, the art teacher at the heart of the story, sets off on a walk because there is no bus in the direction she's going, with a sense of the promise of adventure; along the way, she sees a puppy in the window of a pet shop: this puppy will change her fate. Audrey falls in love with the puppy and takes her home, naming her "Dolly," for Dolly Mixtures, because Dolly is a mixed-breed dog.

Audrey's single and she's secretly hoping that teaching the night class might help her meet a possible partner. We get to know a little bit about her five students, all of whom, we learn, have problems they're working through as well.

By the end of the novel, two of Audrey's students have begun a relationship, another contemplates a move to France, Audrey herself meets someone she's interested in, and one of the students, Irene, leaves her husband.

Irene's story is the most interesting aspect of this novel for me. Irene is a beautiful woman who did not want to have children. When she became pregnant, her husband begged her to have the child, and against her own wishes, she did. When the novel opens, her daughter is a toddler and has an au pair to care for her. Irene is frustrated and lonely because her husband, whom she loves, has withdrawn from her. Irene believes he is punishing her for her lack of interest in her child. Irene fires her au pair, and her daughter starts to regard her with suspicion. This is the backdrop for Irene's decision to leave.

There are book club questions in the back of the book. Question 3: "What do you make of Irene? Is Irene a good person? Why or why not?" I would love to be in a book group meeting and hear what the readers would say.

The interlocking stories of this book remind me very much of Maeve Binchy's work, and I think fans of Binchy would enjoy these books, too. The publisher got blurbs from Barbara Delinsky and Debbie Macomber, but I think Binchy's a better fit.

Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty

I had long wanted to read Adrian McKinty, undoubtedly because I've been reading publicity about Adrian McKinty for years. Lately, McKinty's been tweeting on Twitter, and this reminded me: "Oh, yes, I've been meaning to read McKinty for years; why don't I do that now?"

Although Dead I May Well Be is definitely a thriller, it doesn't have a red and black cover as so many do. Just a photo of a guy lying in bed beside a handgun.

If I'd known what Dead I May Well Be was about, ever, I'd forgotten it by the time I started the book. At first, I thought, "Oh, it's about the Troubles." A few pages later, I realized that this book was really going to be about living in New York as an immigrant, and a gangster, in the 1990s.  And the gangster part ensured that there would be a lot of violence, and my heart just sank. I didn't want to read a book about a man making a living as a gangster.

However, I talked myself into trying to read the book anyway. I was thinking about the fact that I've hated the first chapter of almost every book I've read over the last two or three years; I've come to think of my appraisal at the end of a first chapter as entirely unreliable, or unimportant. I suppose that I used to enjoy crime fiction more than I do today. I suppose, too, that having formed a plan I'm a little reluctant to deviate from it.

A seeming stroke of luck opens the novel. "Belfast confetti," surprisingly, pricdes a windfall for some. Mikey seems to be lucky: another bomb has exploded in Belfast, and he and several other young men hanging out on the street experience a windfall. They're hired to put up replacement glass. A news photographer takes a photograph of the men and Mikey loses his unemployment benefits.

With no prospects for any kind of employment on the horizon, and knowing that his grandmother cannot afford to keep them both on her benefits, he very reluctantly agrees to move to New York and work on the crew of a drug peddler in an Irish part of Harlem.

The description of his barren apartment is a metaphor for how starved of spirit his life is in New York. But it gradually emerges that he, and his acquaintances on the crew, are all graduates of the Troubles. That is, they learned about violence as members of paramilitaries. Early on Mikey comments that the stakes were higher in New York: death instead of kneecapping.  If that knowledge doesn't provide enough dramatic tension, Mikey is having a secret affair with the barely legal, very beautiful, and distant Bridget, girlfriend of his boss's boss. As utterly tragically stupid as this is, the poverty of his inner life, symbolized by the sparseness of his furnishings, makes this more plausible.

That's another thing about this book. It defied my expectations by presenting Mikey's gangster life as a wild veering between colossal stupidity and creative problem-solving.

Mikey commutes on the elevated train to meet up with his crew at the Four Provinces. He reads on the train. One one of his journeys, early in the novel, he reports that he's reading a book about a guy who won't get out of bed. Suddenly, it hit me: he's talking about Oblomov! I couldn't believe it.

He's winking at the reader. Oh my god, I'm the reader! He's winking at me! This is so exciting, I'm beside myself. 

I'm ashamed to respond to pandering, but I couldn't help starting to really like Mikey at that moment.

Later in the book, Mikey offers another cryptic clue to the book he's then reading: "rich people in Long Island, a death." He's reading The Great Gatsby. Mikey's ex-military and sets up observation posts two or three times in the novel. For one, he listens to an audiobook of War and Peace. He opines that later in the novel, he's grateful when a few characters die as the high number of characters was confusing him.

     "The train again. This time it was full of commuters and slightly more cosmopolitan. Harder getting a seat, but I managed in the corner. I got out my paperback. Rich people, Long Island, days gone by. A death.

     "The crowd thinned as we edged out of Manhattan. I put bookshop bookmark in and as I did so I noticed that a note had been written on the back of it. 'Too much reading, not enough f*****.' Bridget's ornamental handwriting. It ticked me off. Bloody dangerous. What if someone in the Four P. says, 'What's that you're reading there, Mike?' grabs the book, the bookmark falls out, sees the scrawl, recognizes it? Jesus. I ripped up the bookmark and dropped it on the floor."

As I read it, I thought, this really reminds me of Dennis Lehane. Cities feature in both writers' work. Like Lehane, McKinty writes wonderful dialogue and uses it to reveal character. There's quite a bit of attitude, for lack of a better word, and real feeling. These writers have something to say. And, it also reminds me a little bit of Ian Rankin. After finishing the novel, I looked back on the shape of the plot and couldn't help feeling that the emotionally cool Bridget owes a little something to Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

There's something epic about this action-filled thriller. I find myself thinking it's an epic poem, wrapped in an account of the immigrant experience, wrapped in a thriller. I think that makes this book a literary thriller. This book is witty, clever, sarcastic. When McGinty talks about setting up an observaton post, it makes sense and whether he knows or did the research, it's a success.  feels like a giant statement of bravado. Is it pretentious that McGinty draws your attention to his knowledge and his skill? Perhaps it is, but I think it's also a promise of commitment to literary culture. And I have to admit, I really like this novel.

The Longbourn Letters by Rose Servitova

I've finished The Longbourn Letters by Rose Servitova, and I enjoyed it hugely. What I liked about it most was its consistency in language. Servitova imitates Jane Austen's style in Pride and Prejudice, (and even quotes Austen at points) and her mimicry is inspired and consistent, her style beautiful and engaging. I found her fidelity to the original deeply satisfying. It's a real domestic comedy in which family members, including Mr. Collins, are quite often ridiculous, but one is which the importance of family is emphasized.

It's an epistolary novel, a form I really enjoy, and it's short (150 pages), recording an imagined correspondence between Mr. Bennet, the witty, sarcastic, judgmental and impatient father of the five Bennet girls, and Mr. Collins, his cousin and a socially inept clergyman with a comically pretentious manner.

In the novel, Pride and Prejudice, at a family dinner, Mr. Bennett mocks Mr. Collins' obsequious manner by offering a seemingly innocent question: does Mr. Collins offer "delicate compliments" to Lady Catherine de Bourgh spontaneously or does he practice? Mr. Collins answers the question frankly, by offering that that he does practice in his spare time. Mr. Bennet never betrays through his expression his mockery; the family struggles to hide their mirth.

This gentle mockery is continued in the correspondence of Mr. Collins and Mr. Bennet, and the tone is perfectly maintained throughout. What surprises me is the gradual evolution of a sincere friendship of the two men, despite their great differences (and despite a brief dust-up between the two when Mr. Bennet, urged by Mr. Collins to oppose a match between Kitty and Colonel Fitzwilliam, does absolutely nothing; here, again, Mr. Bennet's talent for doing absolutely nothing seems to benefit his family).

The portrait of Mr. Bennet is entirely consistent with that of Pride and Prejudice, but here is fleshed out so that we learn Mr. Bennet loves a joke, especially those of a practical nature, loves science, and while occasionally sharply satirical in his comments about his wife and daughters, generally accepts them. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet is often wry, witty and playful, but is obviously impatient with his wife and daughters. Servitova's exploration of Mr. Bennet's character presents him as a man who enjoys science, etc., softening some of Mr. Bennet's hard edges. The Longbourn Letters suggests the being the only male in a family with six women has the potential to be quite lonely.

Fans of Pride and Prejudice will, I think, enjoy learning the eventual fate of the entire family and I imagine that must have been fun for Servitova to imagine these stories and share them.This is my favorite "Jane Austen spin-off" novel that I've ever read. For fans of Pride and Prejudice, I imagine that it will be pure entertainment.