Category Archives: Reading . . .

*****The Fragrant Harbor

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Hong Kong, city at night

(photo: c2.staticflickr.com)

By Vida Chu – I don’t usually review poetry, it being strictly a case of “I know what I like,” but my friend Vida Chu has published a lovely, evocative collection of 43 poems, The Fragrant Harbor (Hong Kong), and I like it a great deal.

Her poems recall the legends of ancient China and the terrors of the Cultural Revolution, the dislocation of being far from one’s roots and finding home, and the attenuation of family relationships across generations. In beautifully quiet images, she indelibly describes Hong Kong, writing (“Fragrant Harbor”):

The city’s colored lights and stars
Embroider the velvet water.

I especially liked the poems that recall the days of scholars and monks, Emperors and concubines (from “Things I Never Told You About Chinese Painting”):

That Wu Daozi once brushed a huge landscape
onto the palace wall. When he pointed to the grotto
and clapped his hands, the entrance opened.

He stepped inside the painting
and disappeared
in front of the Emperor’s eyes.

The family dynamics Chu describes in many of the poems are universal. What people leave unsaid, the haunting family ghosts, moments of joy (from “Wedding Rain”):

With rings on their fingers
The couple sobbed in each other’s arms
The heavens applauded with a downpour

Like all émigrés, always a bit out of time and place, and in a way that for her has sharpened her perceptions, Chu also describes her roots in America (from “Foreign Students”):

Our lives no longer can be packed in suitcases.
We return to visit as tourists.

We have grown complacent in the rich feeding ground.
We have lost the passion to swim upstream.

This is a collection to read time and again. A special gift for a special person. Yourself? Enjoy!

*** New Jersey Noir

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New Jersey NoirEdited by Joyce Carol Oates. It isn’t a coincidence that I’m reviewing this 2011 book of noir short stories in the middle of two weeks of Sunday blog posts about a celebration of JCO’s teaching. When I knew I was going to the event, I grabbed this book from the “to read” pile.

Noir is distinguished from other types of mystery and suspense fiction by having a protagonist who’s a suspect, a perpetrator, or even a victim—an insider to the situation. Pretty much anyone but a detective/investigator. Often the main characters have a boatload of problems, usually of their own making. My favorite definition of these protagonists is crime writer Dennis Lehane’s: “In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.”

I’ve been an “in principle” admirer of Akashic Books’ now lengthy series of place-based noir anthologies, and picked up New Jersey Noir at a local bookstore event, where Oates spoke about it and introduced (I think) one or two of the contributors. Now I’ve finally read it and am disappointed to say many of the 19 stories and poems felt as if they could have happened anywhere.

Sheila Kohler’s creepy “Wunderlich,” for example, is about the bleak territory of aging, not the peculiar dynamic of New Jersey. Various other tales have no more than a whiff of Garden State verisimilitude, which violates the underlying rationale of the series, I’d think. Collectively, these stories hardly scratch the surface of the state’s noir potential, as a glance at any of our daily newspapers would reveal. People in New Jersey fall from curbs like lemmings.

Too many of the stories (for my taste) lean heavily on substance abuse problems, which it won’t surprise the reader to learn cause all kinds of heartache. I rather liked the Bradford Morrow story set in Grover’s Mill, perhaps because I’d just spent considerable creative time there, myself. “Glass Eels” by Jeffrey Ford captures the loneliness of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, but is too similar in action to Robert Arellano’s “Kettle Run.” A story by Oates, “Run Kiss Daddy,” delivers a sufficiently oppressive atmosphere and dark underbelly to be the setup for a longer piece of writing. To me, the most interesting story is Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Too Near Real,” in which the protagonist follows the Google street view vehicle around Princeton, then watches himself “on the map.” Fresh and entertaining.

***How the Light Gets In

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Dionne quints, Louise Penny

The Dionne Quintuplets (photo: wikimedia)

By Louise Penny. Narrated by Ralph Cosham. Louise Penny’s Quebec-based Chief Inspector Gamache novels are wildly popular—this one was nominated for several awards, and it’s the second I’ve listened to. The story’s multilayered plot (no spoilers here) is a mix of the intriguing and barely plausible, but Penny’s characters and setting are nicely developed, not the cardboard cutouts that populate many mysteries. Penny’s first novels initially were called “The Three Pines Mysteries,” and this one brings in the remote village of Three Pines and its clutch of eccentrics quite believably.

In this book, ninth in the series, two investigations are under way. One involves the death of the last of the Ouellet (WEE-lay) quintuplets, modeled on Ontario’s exploited Dionne quintuplets from the same pre-fertility drug era. Penny might have been inspired by the photo of the real Dionne quintuplets, above, in devising a theme for her fictional quints of one being always a bit apart, separate, beginning even before birth.

The other, much shakier plot, is political. It suffers from the stakes-raising trend among mystery writers, who have decided an interesting death or two isn’t enough to capture readers’ attention.

Penny has a habit in this book of withholding from the reader. “He made two telephone calls before leaving the office.” Only later will we find out what those calls were. Use this device once or twice, OK, but it occurs so often, it starts to feel manipulative—I hear the author behind the scenes hammering together cliffhangers.

Apparently Ralph Cosham, who narrates the series, is well regarded for bringing Gamache to life, and he did grow on me a little, but generally I find him plodding. The book’s title comes from fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I didn’t tumble to the Cohen connection, though I understood the title and the cracks, even without the author’s explanation near the end. Ironically, in a post-story conversation between Penny and Cosham, she talks about the kinds of things that should be left unsaid because “the reader has to do some of the work.” I totally agree, and thought the title, which captured the book’s entire theme, was work I could have done and had done.

****Glimmer Train – Fall 2014

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Jewish man, Miami beach

(photo: by Sagie, Creative Commons license)

Glimmer Train doesn’t usually announce theme issues, except for the “Family Matters” issue, but a clear current in the 11 short stories in this issue is the desires and dislocations of immigrants and the desperation of those who want to immigrate. This is also the issue that includes the wonderful interview with Junot Diaz, covered in part by the First Draft blog.

The frustrations of would-be immigrants are explored in the story “Stowaways,” by Joseph Chavez, in which a man falls from the sky; in the poignant story “Hialeah” by Kim Brooks, about a gathering of Jewish men in Miami, strategizing how to convince the Roosevelt Administration to let a boatload of Jewish refugees land (you’ll remember this real-life episode of the SS Exodus 1947), and “Maghreb and the Sea,” by Robert Powers, which takes on the voice of a would-be African immigrant facing impossible hurdles trying to get to Europe, America—away. Told without dialog, it has the genuine feel of writing from that part of the world.

Other stories tell the trials and uncertainties of people newly in America and the pull of “home.” As author Mehdi Tavana Okasi says in his biosketch, his mother is convinced that, in Iran, he would have become a doctor. “Perhaps she is right. But there is no way to know the other scars I would bear. These are questions that can never be answered, and as immigrants, our lives are filled with them, the what ifs and if only I hads. It’s fantastical and dangerous.” And, thus, the stuff of fiction.

The wide-ranging interview with Junot Diaz also touches on immigration, in his case between the Dominican Republic and the United States. Of the two countries, he says “their shadows fall on each other.” He finds it a useful metaphor because, “all of us are haunted by the other world we call our past.” The immigrant can double down on that haunting.

10-28-14 ****Bastard Out of Carolina

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Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison, Southern gothicBy Dorothy Allison – The West Windsor Library’s annual book sale is where I stock up on books I should have read a long time ago. Set in Greenville, South Carolina, this debut novel, published in 1992, was probably somewhat more shocking as a tale of parental oversight and abuse at the time, and so beautifully written it’s no surprise it was a National Book Award finalist. It remains a powerful and empathetic portrayal of class and gender differences in the 1950’s.

Prior to this book, Allison had published two volumes of poetry sharing the same main title, The Women Who Hate Me, and it’s interesting how she’s able to tamp that back and stay in the voice of the pre-teen first-person narrator, Ruth Anne Boatwright, whom everyone calls Bone, even as she reveals great depth and precision of language. Bone both lovingly and mercilessly describes the hard-drinking, violence-prone Boatwright men and the frustrated and hard-working Boatwright women. They may be poor—“trash” people call them and they call themselves—but they are tender toward Bone and her only thin protection against her mother’s new husband.

You may be familiar with the 1996 movie version of the novel, but I haven’t seen it. Anjelica Huston directed, and it starred Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ron Eldard, Christina Ricci, and Dermot Mulroney. Jena Malone played Bone. A 100% critics rating from Rotten Tomatoes!

10-24-14 ***Still Life with Bread Crumbs

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Anna Quindlen, Still Life with Bread CrumbsBy Anna Quindlen (2014). Unanimity in my first book club meeting about this book—thin, unrevealing, wish fulfillment for 60-year-olds. This was my first Quindlen, so I was glad to hear from others who’ve read many more of her books that this one is an aberration. It’s the story of a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattan photographer, age 60, who moves to an upstate New York cabin to save money while she sublets her apartment.

The man who comes to evict the raccoons in her attic happens to be very handy around the house, in more ways than one, and her biggest quandary is whether to succumb to someone 15 years her junior. There are a few more plot elements, most of which lack believability, as does the portrayal of small-town life. But it’s well-written and an easy read for a day when you’re not up to much of a challenge.

I don’t scoff at reading for entertainment, but the “everything tied up neatly at the end with a bow on it” resolution strained my patience. The book group debated whether this was pure chick lit—I say “yes.”

Mysteriously, it was well reviewed. NPR said Quindlen “still has her finger firmly planted on the pulse of her generation.” Not so the 20 members of her generation in my book club. They were particularly riled by Joanna Rakoff’s New York Times review, which called the book “a feminist novel for a post-feminist age.” What could that possibly mean? Especially applied to a character notable for not taking charge of her life in any plausible way.

This is a book you can skim. It’s kind of like eating a Dunkin Donuts cruller. You know there’s no sustenance there, but if you’re in the right mood, it might taste pretty good.

****Sandrine’s Case

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Sandrine's Case, Thomas H. CookBy Thomas H. Cook & narrated by Brian Holsopple. This psychological suspense novel provides a day-by-day recounting of the capital trial of Professor Samuel Madison, accused of the murder of his wife Sandrine. A first-person narration, Madison tells the reader up-front that he did kill her, which gives the author a tall mountain to scale in order to make this protagonist likeable, so he doesn’t try. The prosecutor, the police, his defense lawyer, possibly even Sandrine herself, and certainly the reader decide Sam is “one cold fish.”

Sam and Sandrine are erudite college professors at a second-rate college in a small Georgia town. He claims her death from too much alcohol and too many pills was suicide; the police and prosecutor think otherwise. He calls a note found by her deathbed a “suicide note,” but hasn’t read it. It turns out to be about her academic work, about Cleopatra, and when the police detective refers to “the Egyptian Queen,” Sam—instead of behaving like a recently bereaved husband, confronted with his dead wife’s last words—says, “Cleopatra was not Egyptian.” She was Greek, evidently. This and similar pedantics show how intellectually superior he feels to the authorities and the jury, an intellectual condescension that puts him, as he slowly realizes, in considerable risk of his life.

At first, the day in court punctuated by Sam’s lengthy flashbacks to his and Sandrine’s life together seemed awkwardly handled, though I got used to it. For the middle third of the book, I thought “too much Gone Girl,” but other readers will have to decide that for themselves. In a way, this book might not have worked if Gone Girl hadn’t preceded it. I can’t be sure, because I can’t unread those pages.

The plot is nevertheless intriguing and ends up in an interesting place. The characters—especially Madison’s attorney and several minor characters—are people the reader can imagine breathing real Georgia air. Not so much Sandrine and the daughter Alexandria, but that’s the thing with a first-person narration—is may just be that Madison’s view of them is not quite in focus, either. Holsopple does an excellent narration of most of the characters, especially the relentless prosecutor, but the venomous way his Alexandria spits out the word “Dad” in nearly every line of her dialog became like the jabbing bite of Cleopatra’s asp.

****Alice

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Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Stacy CorderyBy Stacy A. Cordery – Drawing on diaries and personal papers previously unavailable to biographers and scholars, this detailed portrait of Alice Roosevelt Longworth reveals a woman passionate in her opinions who kept herself in the middle of Washington’s political scene for eight decades. Although she’s known as a wit and for her legendary skewering of political figures, especially her disdain for the Hyde Park Roosevelts—Franklin for his politics and Eleanor for, well, being Eleanor—it was her ability to converse on any subject, her vivacious style, and her political acumen that made her parties the refuge of Washingtonians in and out of office. When the Kennedys invited Pablo Casals to the White House, they seated Alice next to him, and the two talked about his previous visit there, in 1904, when Teddy Roosevelt was President.

Alice was 16 when her family moved into the White House in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley. The media and the public fell in love with this high-spirited teenager and soon dubbed her Princess Alice. When Teddy Roosevelt received complaints about her behavior, he said, “I can be President of the United States—or—I can attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” Nevertheless, when she was only twenty-one he sent her as a goodwill ambassador on a four-month East Asia trip where she impressed the 75-person U.S. delegation as well as the leaders of the countries visited. It was a remarkable transition from teenage party girl to trusted political adviser, a shift made in large part to gain the elusive attention of her adored father.

Ultimately she was just too smart to for him to ignore. And from Teddy Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter, few Presidents did, even when they disagreed with her strongly held views. For Republicans, as Cordery says, she was “part court jester, part Machiavelli.” Not surprisingly, Richard Nixon found her “the most fascinating conversationalist of our time.” An autodidact, she read incessantly, could recite poetry by the yard, and could converse easily about history, science, philosophy, and first, last, and always, politics. She opposed the League of Nations and entry into World War II, yet socially she was liberal. The famous needlepoint pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me” shows she was good-humored about her jibes, and she did rip off some good one-liners. When told the nomination of Wendell Willkie as the Republican presidential candidate in 1940 came from the grassroots, she melded her quick wit and political savvy, saying, “Yes, from the grassroots of 10,000 country clubs.”

Unfortunately, the men in her life never achieved the high ambitions she had for them. Her father lost his 1912 presidential bid and died before he could make a comeback. Her brother Ted lost a close race for New York State governor, was appointed Governor of Puerto Rico and Governor-General of the Philippines, and died in France in World War II after heroic action on Utah Beach. Alice’s husband Nick was Speaker of the House, but further career advancement suffered from the combination of alcoholism and womanizing. And long-time lover Idaho Senator William Borah (father of Alice’s only child) repeatedly missed opportunities for national leadership through a stubbornness of personality. As Janet Maslin in her New York Times review put it, “However fraught her relationships with men may have been, politics remained her first love.”

Alice Roosevelt Longworth died in 1980 at age 96.

Cordery chairs the history department at Monmouth College in Illinois and obtained access to the remarkable cache of personal documents that informed this biography through Alice’s granddaughter, with whom Alice had an unusually close relationship. This biography would appeal to anyone interested in 20th century U.S. political history or feisty women!

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**** The Golden Hour

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Todd Moss, diplomacy, thriller,The Golden HourBy Todd Moss (sounds like a nom de plume, doesn’t it?). Read by Peter Marek. This was the best, most realistic (to me!) political thriller I’ve read in recent months. For a first-time novel, impressive. I bought it after reading this Washington Post profile of Washington insider Moss. The book tells the story of an Amherst academic, Judd Ryker, who develops a theory that the period for action after a military coup is limited—just a few days—otherwise the usurpers will be too entrenched and it will be impossible to easily get rid of them and reestablish the (presumably) more legitimate government. He calls this period “the golden hour,” taking the name from emergency medicine and the limited period after a massive traumatic injury in which medical treatment is most likely to avoid death. Ryker is recruited by the State Department to test his theory in real life and promptly ignored.

The book is not only about a newbie in the shark tank of seasoned diplomats, a coup in Mali, the kidnapping of a powerful Senator’s daughter, and U.S. security imperatives, but also about finding out whom you can trust. I liked that the main character isn’t an armed-to-the-teeth master of 20 forms of martial arts. He’s just a guy, a very smart guy, using his wits. He doesn’t meet up with a woman character as a flimsy excuse for the author to write a couple of steamy sex scenes. He doesn’t make decisions that had me silently screaming, “Why are you DOING that?” He doesn’t fall predictably off the wagon–a dead giveaway that things are going to go very wrong. Instead, he goes quietly about his business, calls his wife, checks on his kids at the beach, and learns who his friends really are. When he makes one most fateful decision, you understand he makes it based on his principles, not the external exigencies of the author’s plot.

Thriller writer John Sandford called it “A tough, realistic, well-written tale of American diplomats scrambling to reverse an African coup amidst intense turf battles – State, Defense, White House, Congress, and CIA – and ever-shifting facts on the ground. Moss is an insider who knows how these things are really done – and how thin the line is between triumph and disaster.”

The narration may make Judd sound a drop more tentative than necessary, but Marek’s portrayal of the African characters and military were beautiful. Awesome first book by Todd Moss. First of a series.

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* The Highway

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By C.J. Box – I met this popular and award-winning thriller author at a conference two years ago, and he was so highly praised there, I figured I was missing something by CJ Box, The Highwaynot having read any of his books. I still am. Box, a Wyoming native, sets his books in the West, with his series character, Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden. This book (a gift) isn’t part of that series, and it was a real disappointment. The book is told through the eyes of several of the characters, including long-haul trucker Ronald Pergram, who calls himself the Lizard King, for his well developed schemes for trapping, torturing, and murdering “lot lizards,” the prostitutes who prowl the parking areas of the big Interstate truck stops—and any other women he comes across when the need to “go hunting” overtakes him.

Being inside the head of this character and privy to his disturbed (and not very original) thoughts is some especially sordid category of TMI. It’s a relief when Box switches to the point of view of the women in the story. We follow Cassie Dewell, a new Investigator for the Lewis and Clark County (Montana) Sheriff’s Department. Inexperienced and unsure of herself, she ends up alone on the trail of disappeared teen sisters—disappeared, as the reader knows, by Pergram. And parts of the story are told from the perspective of the younger of the sisters, sixteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan. Box handles girl teen-speak rather well, and the girls seem plausible enough, as is Cassie.

The book doesn’t lack for tension. During the early scenes in which Pergram is chasing down the girls’ little red car in his 80,000-pound Peterbilt (teach your daughters to pay attention to the “check engine” light!), I wasn’t sure I could keep reading. A number of Amazon readers’ comments show mine was a common reaction: “I almost took an early exit from ‘The Highway.’” “I hope that ‘The Highway’ was just the result of [Box] taking a wrong turn on a bad day.” “I love the Pickett series, but I just couldn’t stomach this one.” I may have to try again.

The West is a great place to live in, but Ronald Pergram’s head is not.