And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

I really enjoyed this book:  thought it grabbed your attention right off, was a quick read, had an interesting and engaging narrative structure, and had some interesting things to say about caretaking.

Newsroom and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist

Earlier this week I saw Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist.

I've heard folks say that the genre of romantic comedy is dead, because the relationships between men and women are no fraught that's it's hard to find humor.  I thought this romantic comedy was charming and I wonder if that fact that the couple is still in high school makes it easier to believe.  Of course, all the action in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist takes place in 24 hours!

I saw Newsroom for the first time this week (the first season is out on DVD, and it stars Emily Mortimer and and I thought that the acting was fantastically good at times.  The premise, of course, is absurd.  But, it's a feel-good romp - another romantic comedy.  And the act of viewing a fictional universe where people talk about doing things well simply because they can is deeply wish fulfilling.  

Liverpool Fantasy by Larry Kirwin

Larry Kirwan must be a very interesting man; he's written a very interesting book.

Mr. Kirwan is the leader of a New York Irish-American band called Black 47; he was born in Wexford.  Their records are available on Amazon.com.  He's also the host of a radio show called Celtic Crush.

Liverpool Fantasy is alternative history of the Beatles, and of Britain, one in which John Lennon has a disagreement with George Martin and stomps out of a recording session in 1963 (or 1962?  can't keep those dates from the dawn of time straight).  George and Ringo follow him out; Brian Epstein continues to manage Paul McCartney's career, taking him to America where he becomes Paul Montana, king of the Vegas showrooms.

In Larry's alternative reality, Lennon is threatened by the National Front, a paramilitary fascist organization that is part of a Tory coalition government. Lennon's son, Julian, is an "up and coming" captain in this organization.

This is a dystopian novel, and the fictional characters Kirwan has created are quite different in some ways than their real-life counterparts.  The fictional Lennon is a kind of cartoon character, a kind of caricature.

As a writer, Kirwan endlessly displays his fandom knowledge; he does have a tendency to place lyric fragments in characters' mouths, and that is a fictional practice of which I disapprove.  In my experience, our speech is very much influenced by what we read and hear, but no one I've ever met talks like this.  It's all a display of cleverness:  the concept, the execution, the expert fandom; to put lyric fragments in characters' mouths is inconsistent with the rest of the piece, distracting, and analagous to breaking the fourth wall: it reminds that you are consuming a piece of fiction instead of allowing you to experience the world of the novel.

I was amazed that Kirwan managed to incorporate a reference to Mr. Acker Bilk into his novel; I found myself wondering at times if I, playing along at home, should be assigning bonus points for the most obscure references.  If I thought of something that Mr. Kirwan didn't, should I award points to myself?

Kirwan is also a writer who surrounds his dialogue with a great deal of stage direction.  This reminds me of my friend who dismissed Faithful Place, saying, "Too many words!"  It's a cliche, but true:  there is much to be said for economy.

Nevertheless, I admire Kirwin for his daring and passion in reimagining such famous lives.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I loved the twist in this novel.  The premise seems "ripped from the headlines," and with the familiarity of the story comes a some certainty about the ending.

I expected a series of revelations.  I did not expect the big twist more than halfway through the book, which I found delightful in part because so unexpected.

The tone of the novel begins to shift at that point and I wonder if other readers begin to feel that the end of the novel doesn't quite match the beginning.

I was part of a book group that discussed this book, and I was very surprised that the group seemed a) not to like the book; b) think the author had some serious psychological problems; and c) not be interested in considering what the story has to say about marriage or about the way that our perception of the world is shaped by our experience of TV and movies and of the news (which is, in turn, shaped by TV and movies).

I knew from reading an interview with the author online that she consciously sought to use the suspense story as a vehicle for talking about marriage, and for blending the genre of suspense and women's fiction.  That made me think that it was a legitimate topic for discussion but it didn't interest any one else there.

Nevertheless, I have to admire this book for the twist!

The Light Between Two Oceans by M.L. Stedman

This book is currently on the NYT bestseller list; I read it for a book group.

Stedman is an Australian who's lived in Britain for some years (I honestly can't remember how many); this is her debut novel and there was a bidding war among British publishers for it.

I see this book as Anna Karenina meets the two entrepreneurs of Solomon.  I have not read Anna Karenina for many years, but I recall it as an psychological exploration and explanation of how a married woman could come to break her marriage vows by someone who viewed that as clearly wrong and almost inexplicable.  This novel also examines how a great crime came to be committed by people who were otherwise normal and law-abiding (albeit living under great stress).   It's also a portrait of loss, as there are many losses and bereavements in the novel.

A WWI vet, deeply troubled by his wartime experience as well as the breakdown of his parents' marriage, welcomes a posting to man the lighthouse at Janus Rock, a several hour boatride from the nearest southwestern Australia town.

The two oceans referred to are the Indian Ocean, along Australia's western shore, and the Southern Ocean, the body of water between Australia and Antarctica.  The place where the two oceans meet at the southwest corner of Australia is a place of strong, treacherous currents.

In town, before his posting, the vet meets a lively and attractive young woman.  Having lost both her brothers to the war, she not only is immediately attracted to the lighthouse keeper but feels that her life has shown her the importance of not wasting any time.

She pursues him, they marry, and she goes to live with him on Janus Rock.  After several painful miscarriages, a baby in a boat washes ashore and the wife insists that she and her husband keep the child and pass it off as their own rather than report the event to the authorities, as is customary and required.

With grave misgivings, her husband, who not only loves her but credits her with saving him after the emotional numbness he felt after the war, agrees.  As the years pass, guilt gnaws at him.

The child's mother leaves in the same town from which the lighthouse receives its supplies, and it's perhaps obvious that it's just a matter of time until the lighthouse keeper meets the mother of his adopted child and is confronted with her loss and suffering.

This book is beautifully written.  I disliked that the author sometimes told the reader something that I hope could be inferred, such as that it was easy, in the isolation of life at the lightouse, to imagine that there would no harm caused by keeping the baby.

In the opening of the novel, the author describes the founding of the town near Janus Rock, as if that town's history, too, were part of the story of this baby and all the people who loved her.

The Gift by Danielle Steel

I chose this book to read because Danielle Steel is enormously popular with some folks and I chose this title in particular because I'd been told by someone I can't remember now that this was one of her better books.

In this book, a very close-knit and happy family is devastated by loss when their 5-year-old daughter dies of illness.  The marriage is strained; the lost child's brother starts taking his suppers at a local diner because his mother never cooks any more.

At the diner, he meets a young waitress.

Her story is that she went to prom, and her date got drunk, and somebody else took her home - and he knocked her up.

Her dad goes ballistic and insists that she go to a convent-run home for unwed mothers.  She can't stand it, and she decides to take a bus anywhere, as long as it's somewhat far from home.

The first stop the bus makes on her journey is a truck stop where a sign in the window advertises that the restaurant is looking for a waitress.  She applies and is hired.

The two young people fall in love and what is interesting about the female character is how very level-headed and restrained she is.  And, while she is not going to school, she keeps up her studies so that she can graduate on time.  I am very impressed; I wouldn't begin to know what to do to keep up with my studies in a similar situation.  I'd probably just read nineteenth-century novels and discuss Anna Karenina with bartenders.  I mean, wouldn't you?

City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

I loved this book by John Berendt about Venice in the aftermath of the fire at La Fenice, the Venice opera house.

While I was listening to it, I had a nagging feeling .. why, I kept asking myself, does this all seem so familiar?

Well, one obvious answer is that I'd read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, his account of a scandalous murder trial in Savannah, Georgia that became a runaway nonfiction hit (kind of a rare animal), as well as a film by Clint Eastwood.  That book also featured a cast of eccentrics and a city members reacting to threats to the city's traditions and cultural assets.

But another, more basic reason, is that the swirling speculation about the causes of the La Fenice fire reminded me so much of Michael Dibdin's Ratking.

Berendt also writes at length about James's the Aspern Papers, which is still vaguely familiar to me from having read it in college.  The connection is that James based his story on having heard a similar real life story of Claire Clarmont, the half-sister of Mary Shelley and the lover of Lord Byron, surviving to the ripe old age of 80 in Florence.  Of course, James changed the setting to Venice, which conveys with it a sense both of beauty and decay.

I had a profound sense of having been there before; and I loved it.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Neuromancer was a novel that I knew was assigned reading in some Humanities courses, and this is what led me to want to read it.  It wasn't held in the print collection of my library so I checked it out on audiobook.

Listening to Neuromancer as an audiobook is especially difficult because it makes the story that much harder to follow; Gibson is given to abrupt juxtapositions and changes of scene.  The psychedelia of some of his images and scenes are drawn with higher contrast because of those abrupt juxtapositions, I think.

The impression listening to the audiobook gave me was of being surrounded by radio theater.  I found the book dark and I felt unable to escape from its darkness and perhaps unwelcomely influenced by the "tough guy/street tough" character of Case.

This book was published in 1984 and it has a cinematic quality that reminds me of Bladerunner and Black Rain; in fact, parts of the beginning of the novel are set in a future Japan, a place where black market transplants, surgically implanted prostheses and plastic surgery are commonplace.

His protagonist, Case, is a "cowboy" (data thief, or in today's parlance, a hacker) and a drug addict with a strong self-destructive impulse.  Just when he's scraped bottom, he's rescued by a mysterious man named Armitage who is accompanied by a Yakuza enforcer named Molly who has mirror shades for eyes and steel fingers that extrude from underneath her fingernails like Wolverine.

Armitage's goals are mysterious and he takes Case to a variety of settings:  the "Sprawl," a megalopolis that extends from New York to Atlanta; Istanbul; Japan again and other places I can't remember.  Case's whole world is a port city full of strangers from faraway places thrown together.

I read this book in part because I wanted to try to understand the genre of "cyberpunk," which this novel is said to have begun; while Case is clearly a hacker and his life is influenced by living in a world, both in cyberspace (a term said to have been coined by Gibson) and in the real world of foreigners shorn of nationality, there are elements of fantasy and metaphysics that seem out of place in a world in which technology has given both freedom and rootlessness.

The audiobook contained both an introduction by the author and an afterword by an author, unknown to me, who described himself as a friend of Gibson's as well as a fellow Virginian, and who argued that the novel is suffused with a sense of an Appalachian past.  I'm not quite able to see all of his point but I have to agree that there is something about the novel, that I can't quite put my finger on, that points to the past as well as the present.

There's a interesting and brief discussion of the impact that Neuromancer had when published and its relation to the development of the Internet at schmoop:  http://www.shmoop.com/neuromancer.

I realized what Neuromancer reminds me of, finally - The Maltese Falcon.  The novel opens in a bar in Japan, I think in Chiba City (I don't really remember).  The bartender is a Russian who makes little observations about Case who's a has-been addict but manages to cushion the barb with his obscure metaphors.  (I like Quentin Tarantino to direct.)

Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

In this romance by a well-known romance writer, there are a bunch of people who are in trouble.  By the end of the novel, they're not in trouble anymore.

Rachel's husband left her when he faced legal trouble; overnight, her world collapsed and she was left with nothing.  Once looked up to in her community, she's now despised.  Her sudden change in fortune has changed her personality; as her finances become more desperate, so does she.

When her car breaks down outside a tumble-down drive-in movie on the edge of town, she meets the irksome owner who insults her little boy.  Bowed but unbeaten, she asks the guy for a job, and to sweeten the deal, makes an outrageous offer.

Despite this unpromising beginning, she gets the job and finds that helping the ornery owner fix up his tumbledown drive-in movie parking lot surprisingly fulfilling.

Last to Die by Tess Gerritsen

I really enjoyed this book and I was surprised that I did.

I had the impression that this book would have a lot of "action," which it did, but I found that I really enjoyed it anyway.

Characterization was not very deep, but the main plot of the book turned on some orphaned children.  I wouldn't have guessed it, but I enjoyed the characters of the children.

Part of the story was the relationship between Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles, and that was a smaller part of the story than I anticipated.

I'd love to talk to someone who's read some of the other books in the series and could tell me if that's typical.  Of course, one of the problems with reading a book in a series out of order is that the "backstory" will not (or should not) be repeated for you as a newcomer.  For myself, although I'm curious about the backstory, I probably will never have time to read the other books in the series.

However, if I find a paperback from this series floating around in a drugstore or a used book sale, I'll grab it.

An enjoyable discovery.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

I'd long looked forward to reading some Sue Grafton.

I was a little disappointed, and I think that's probably for a number of reasons.

The novelty of a female detective is no longer so great.  Some of the plot points were lacking in originality, as were some of the characterizations.

Some elements I did admire.  When Kinsey Millhone, the detective, goes to interview the murder victim's first wife, they have a conversation in which the first wife really springs off the page:  her portrait and dialogue seem realistic.

However, the first book in a series is often not as fully developed as later installments; I've often wondered if it isn't smarter to select a book from later in the series when I'm reading a new detective for the first time.

The Firm by John Grisham

The Firm is one of many John Grisham books that has been made into a film; while I read it, I often thought of the film but I did not feel that having seen the film kept me from enjoying the book fully.

I once started a Grisham book, years ago, and disliked it intensely.  At a time when I rarely gave up on books, I quickly stopped reading it and not only never picked it up again but never felt any desire to read another Grisham book.

However, I did enjoy this book.  I thought some of the ideas he presented were novel.  

I value his power as a descriptive writer.  Even though I was prejudiced against him as a writer when I started the novel, I found myself feeling that I could imagine what the firm's building looked like, on the basis of his description, and even what downtown Memphis looked like.  I thought that I could see the poolside at the Quins' house and the restaurants that Abby and Mitch visited.  

And I found this book exciting.  I did find it thrilling.  Of course, having seen the film, I knew something about the outcome.  But the film's plot was quite streamlined compared to that of the book, and it would have been quite easy for me to feel impatient with the drawing out of the discoveries that Mitch makes, and the actions that he undertakes.  

Reflecting on the book, I realize that I find some plot twists improbable.  I find some other things curious.  An FBI agent is preparing an indictment (do FBI agents do that?) and it's a preliminary indictment because the investigation is not complete.  Among the charges he lists, he "throws" in mail fraud because, he reasons, mail fraud is almost always a charge.  I assumed that this was a jab since Grisham has worked as a criminal defense attorney, and I'd guess that extra charges, no matter how trivial they are, just make extra work for defense attorneys.

Grisham's strength is his descriptive ability but I find his perception to be superficial.  He's excellent in describing what people look like and how the details of their appearance and mannerisms denote their class identity.  I found the attitude of the omniscient narrator calculating and cold, and a shrewd observer.  Perhaps shrewdness, while useful and possibly hard-won, is just not that attractive a quality.

The Reason Why by Vickie Stringer

Vickie Stringer is the author of a very popular fiction book, Let That Be the Reason.  Imagine This was the sequel to Let That Be the Reason, and The Reason Why is the "prequel" to Let That Be the Reason.  The Reason Why is the only one of these three books I've read; it was deeply discounted at Borders one day and I bought it.  As with so many books I read, it's just serendipity.

The Reason Why is most concisely described as a cross between Romeo and Juliet and The Sopranos.  Neither of the young lovers die in this book, but they have a sweet "first romance" that is thwarted by the by imprisonment of Chino, the head of a drug dealing street unit.

Chino meets Pam almost accidentally; to avoid a police dragnet he drops his pistol into her purse knowing that the police won't search the ladies.  Pam, a student at a Columbus, Ohio university, finds Chino to return the gun, and an instant attraction between them, full of braggadocio, flares.

To me, the charm of this book is its dialogue and the story of young lovers. When Chino is meeting with his subordinates, their dialogue is very musical.  The first time they each say "I love you" is a major moment in their romance, as is the first time Chino takes Pam to the condo he bought for them to live in.

When Chino first meets Pam, he spends a lot of time bragging about nothing in particular.  Pam is impressed, and has no thought that getting involved with Chino might not be wise or have consequences she would find heavy to bear.

Chino is making a lot of money, and sets Pam up in business.  For several chapters, their relationship deepens.  Chino plans to make a lot of money and get out of the drug dealing business.

When Chino's business is disrupted by a major bust in another area and rivalry with an adjoining gang, he is sent to prison.  While in prison he learns from a friend that Pam has been seen in public with another man.  Unable to believe that she is not cheating on him, their relationship deteriorates.