“The walkie-talkie didn’t work. I could hear my mom but not the other person. I hadn’t thought of that. And in a lot of conversations, most of what she said was mm-hmm. I hadn’t thought of that either. With us, she said a lot. I had to be completely still so she wouldn’t hear noise through the device. Most of the time, I just heard her moving in her room, singing Joni Mitchell songs, off-key. “

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (APR 15, 2014)

Miles Adler-Rich is a precocious teen-ager, very much upset by the changes in his family. His parents have recently divorced and his mother has taken up with a new boyfriend named Eli Lee. Eli says he works for the National Science Foundation and professes to love Miles’s mother, Irene, very much. However, there is something about Eli that seems off to Miles.

Miles, along with his best friend Hector, decide to investigate Eli along with the help of a private investigator named Ben Orion. There are things in Eli’s stories that just don’t add up. Is he really divorced from his wife? He said he had pituitary surgery but has no scars. He came to visit with a dog that he borrowed from a friend. Who borrows a dog? He told Irene that he’d loan her a million dollars and that he’d contribute money to their household. Most importantly, he said he’d marry Irene but in the six years that they’ve been seeing one another, no marriage has occurred. Also, Eli is supposed to live in Washington, D.C. and Miles is sure he saw Eli with a woman and child in Pasadena.

Miles and the Mims, as he calls his mother, are quite close but Miles is prone to snooping, prying, and eavesdropping on her. As he says, “I was a snoop, but a peculiar kind. I only discovered what I most didn’t want to know.” Miles looks in his mother’s drawers, on her computers and opens her mail. He also hot wires her telephone. What he finds out has the power to implode the family. What started out as curiosity has taken on a power of its own.

The novel deals with serious issues of good and evil, right and wrong, and the morally ambiguous. The story is narrated by Miles who appears to be a reliable narrator. Over a period of about eight years, from pre-divorce through the time that the Mims spends with Eli, we see Miles grow and develop into a young man. He complains about his younger twin sisters known as the Boops but we also see him care for them tenderly when his mother is not up to snuff.

Miles is looking for certitude in an uncertain world, a world that is not fair and often cruel. He has gone too far in his mission to know the truth and there is no turning back for him. His choices have been made and he is now living with their outcome. Ms. Simpson has written a very intriguing book, one much better than My Hollywood and one not quite up to Any Way But Here. The book held my interest and the characterizations were excellent. Some of the book was repetitive and could have been edited more stringently. There were parts of the book that appeared like snippets and could have been left out, or else the book could have been made longer and these parts developed. Overall, this is a fine book which I recommend.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf; First Edition edition (April 15, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mona Simpson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: My Hollywood And another kid detective: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Bibliography:

• Anywhere But Here (1986)
• The Lost Father (1992)
• A Regular Guy (1996)
• Off Keck Road (2001)
• My Hollywood (2010)
• Casebook (April 2014)

“She knows that she is the obvious — the inevitable — literary agent for this project. And there’s also one very obvious acquiring editor for the manuscript, a close friend who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, no matter how ludicrous, no matter what level of lunatic the author. He used to have impressive success with this type of book, even by some of his less rational authors; there’s apparently a good-size book-buying audience out there that inhabits a space beyond the margins of sane discourse. He’ll be motivated to publish another. Especially this one, about these people.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (APR 6, 2014)

Isabel Reed, a literary agent for ATM, spends all night reading, The Accident by Anonymous, the new manuscript from her assistant Alexis who was very enthusiastic about it. The book has startling information about Charlie Wolfe, a major media figure with major political connections that is hoping to run for office himself. The information in the manuscript, if true, would certainly end Wolfe’s career as it describes a crime he apparently covered up while a student at Cornell University.

Isabel’s agency and the book business in general have not been doing well, and she knows immediately that this new book is one that will make a lot of money for everyone. She also knows she needs to be careful with whom she works with or it could get out from under her control. She therefore goes to one of her best friends, Jeff Fielder, an editor for McNally & Sons, Inc. Soon after meeting with Jeff, Isabel visits her assistant Alexis to make sure she has not given away the manuscript but she finds her dead in her apartment. This leads Isabel to fear that the wrong people may be working to assure The Accident is never published.

The author of The Accident is very intent on assuring the book is published and has gone to many lengths to stay hidden and to assure that the book is given to the right people. Slowly throughout this novel, more and more information is given about the author, his life and what he has done to assure the story about Charlie Wolfe is revealed. Some of what is revealed is not that surprising while others are major twists that only add to making this an even more enjoyable read.

Hayden Gray, a CIA operative apparently working on his own time, is working with Charlie Wolfe to assure that The Accident is never published. He seems willing to take whatever means are necessary to find out who and where the author of the book is and to eliminate all copies of the manuscript. These conflicting objectives and challenges lead Isabel Reed, Jeff Fielder and many others on one long adventurous day in this very entertaining book.

Pavone includes a lot of characters in the book, along with lots of twists and really you need notes to keep track. I normally do this when reading a book I’m reviewing, but if you are not one to do it, you will need to do it for this one or you probably will get lost. Pavone also likes to change the point of view through many of these characters as well. He rewards the reader with a great story if you can keep up, but otherwise you may be frustrated. Pavone also uses his many years in the book business to provide a realistic and interesting portrayal of the people and difficulties they face.

I was fortunate to meet Chris Pavone in Bouchercon in Albany last year, but at the time I did not know anything about him, although I certainly enjoyed my time talking to him. I was impressed though that he, along with a few other authors, were volunteering in the Concierge area where I was also volunteering. I was happy to see later that he won the Anthony for The Expats, his first novel and that I was able to obtain a copy of The Accident in my Bouchercon book bag. (As as a Boucheron volunteer, I obtained a few extra books and I made sure this was one of them.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 98 readers
PUBLISHER:	Crown; First Edition edition (March 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Chris Pavone
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of another murder story: Death of a Writer by Michael Collins

Bibliography:

• The Expats (2012)  / 
• The Accident (March 2014)

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 21, 2014)

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.” For four friends, that line was crossed during their late teenage years, when one of them was poisoned, perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally, lingering in a physical limbo state until she finally dies years later.  The young man, Boyang, remains in China; the two young women, Ruyu and Moran, move to the United States. Each ends up living in what the author describes as a “life-long quarantine against love and life.”

Kinder than Solitude is not primarily a mystery of a poisoned woman nor is it an “immigrant experience” book, although it is being hailed as both. Rather, it’s a deep and insightful exploration about the human condition – how one’s past can affect one’s future, how innocence can be easily lost, and how challenging it is to get in touch with – let alone salvage – one’s better self.

“To have an identity – to be known – required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a traceable track lining one place to another – all these had to be added to that ego or one to have any kind of identity,” Yiyun Li writes.

In the case of Moran, who married and divorced an older man she still cares for, what she called her life “…was only a way of not living, and by doing that, she had taken, here and there, parts of other people’s lives and turned them into nothing along with her own.” Riyu, the most enigmatic and detached of the characters, is an empty vessel, unable to connect or to experience much pleasure or pain, who strives to receive an “exemption from participating in life.” And Boyang, a successful entrepreneur with a cynical sense of the world, has discovered that “love measured by effort was the only love within his capacity.”

This is a deeply philosophical book, one that delves into its characters, with an ambling narrative that shifts from the shared Chinese past to the present –China, San Francisco, the Midwest. It is not for everyone – certainly not for readers who are anticipating an action-packed, page-turning suspense novel. But for those who seek insights into the human condition and love strong character-based novels, Kinder Than Solitude offers rich rewards.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (February 25, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Yiyun Li
EXTRAS:	Q&A and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Pen/O’Henry Prize Stories 2010 edited by Laura Furman

Bibliography:

• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories (2005)
• The Vagrants (2009)
• Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories (2010)
• Kinder Than Solitude (February 2014)

“He wanted a new case. He needed a new case. He needed to see the look on the killer’s face when he knocked on the door and showed his badge, the embodiment of unexpected justice come calling after so many years.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 17, 2011)

Harry Bosch is the real deal. Michael Connelly’s The Drop is another superb entry in this outstanding series about an L. A. cop who is cynical and battle-weary, yet still committed to doing his job. Harry has had his share of troubles over the years, but now that Maddie, his fifteen-year old daughter, is living with him, he has cleaned up his act. He no longer smokes and avoids overindulging in alcohol. Harry is determined to be there for his little girl as she grows into adulthood. Maddie, who is smart and observant, has announced that she plans to follow in her father’s footsteps. She already has the makings of a good detective; she notices small but significant details, handles a firearm like a pro, and can spot a liar by looking for “tells.” The scenes between Bosch and his precocious teenager sparkle with warmth, humor, and love.

Harry knows that his days working for the LAPD are numbered. He has already “unretired” once, but in order to stay on the job, he will need a special dispensation under a program called DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Plan). Meanwhile, he is working on two investigations. As a member of the Open-Unsolved Unit, he is assigned to a cold case that involves the abduction, rape, and strangulation of nineteen-year-old Lily Price. New DNA evidence has come to light, but the data that it reveals raises more questions than it answers. The chief of police also orders Harry to look into the apparent suicide of forty-six year old George Irving, the son of a former ex-cop turned councilman, Irvin Irving. The outspoken and arrogant councilman loathes Bosch, but respects his ability to ferret out the truth.

The author’s crisp writing, use of jargon (“high jingo” means that higher ups are involved, so watch your step), and colorful depiction of police procedure imbue The Drop with energy, immediacy, and realism. The reader observes Harry making some tough decisions. Should he pull in a possible perp for questioning or first try to gather more evidence? Should he surreptitiously search a suspect’s home before obtaining a search warrant? How should Bosch deal with the brass, the media, and his skittish partner, David Chu? When a new woman enters his life, Harry is attracted to her, but is the relationship worth pursuing

Connelly juggles his plot brilliantly while he keeps us guessing about the outcome. Although Bosch can be brusque, tactless, and dismissive, he is willing to put his reputation on the line and is unafraid to make powerful enemies in his obsessive pursuit of justice. At times, Harry worries that he is starting to lose his edge. He needn’t be concerned, since he still has the expertise to read a crime scene, interview witnesses, and follow all of the clues to their logical conclusion. Even the way that Bosch assembles his “murder books” testifies to his tireless dedication to catching predators. If Harry’s performance in The Drop is any indication, he still has what it takes to put the bad guys away.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1,290 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Connelly
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Harry Bosch reviews: Nine Dragons The Overlook Echo Park The Closers The Narrows Lost Light City of Bones Michael Haller: The Fifth Witness The Reversal Brass Verdict The Lincoln Lawyer Stand-alone mysteries: The Scarecrow Chasing the Dime Bloodwork

Bibliography:

LAPD Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch Series

• The Black Echo (1992)
• The Black Ice (1993)
• The Concrete Blonde (1994)
• The Last Coyote (1995)
• Trunk Music (1997)
• Angels Flight (1999)
• A Darkness More than Night (2001) *
• City of Bones (2002) /
• Lost Light (2003)
• The Narrows (2004) ***
• The Closers (2005)
• Echo Park (2006)
• The Overlook (2007)
• Nine Dragons (2009) ****
• The Drop (2011)
• The Black Box (2012)

Mickey Haller:

• The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) /
• The Brass Verdict (2008) **
• The Reversal (2010) **
• The Fifth Witness (2011)
• The Gods of Guilt (October 2013)

Other:

• The Poet (1996) ***
• Blood Work (1998) *
• Void Moon (2000)
• Chasing the Dime (2002)
• The Scarecrow (2009)

* Terry McCaleb is in these novels
** Harry Bosch is in these novels
*** The Poet is in these novels.
****Mickey Haller is in this novel

Nonfiction:

• Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers (2006)

Movies from Books:

• Blood Work (2002)
• The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

“Who is more of an outlaw than a saint?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (NOV 30, 2011)

Like its predecessor, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Urrea’s sequel, Queen of America is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It starts where the first book left off, and can be read as a stand-alone, according to the marketing and product description. However, I stoutly recommend that readers read The Hummingbird’s Daughter first. The two stories are part of a heroic saga; you shouldn’t cut off the head to apprehend the tale. You cannot capture the incipient magic and allure of Teresita without her roots in the first (and better) book. Urrea spent twenty years researching his family history, border unrest, guerrilla violence in the post-Civil War southwest, and revolution, so poignantly rendered in his first masterpiece.

At the center of both stories is the enigmatic and beautiful heroine, Teresita Urrea, named the Saint of Cabora by her legion of followers, when at sixteen, she was sexually assaulted, died, and subsequently rose from her coffin at her wake. She was denounced as a heretic by the Catholic Church but declared a saint by her devotees. An accomplished horsewoman and botanical shaman, she discovered the miracle of healing with her hands. Vanquishing pain and suffering with touch, Teresita has embodied her role with dignity, and sometimes despair, as she sacrifices her personal desires in order to combat social injustice and conquer disease.

Solitude is impossible, as she is followed by humble pilgrims and pursued by the Mexican government, greedy henchmen and dangerous lackeys. In the sequel, Teresita continues her journey and evolvement, with the primary question and theme of her life– whether a saint can find her life’s purpose and also fall in love. Along the way, she is entangled in conflicts between celebrity and simplicity, material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Although she is idolized as a saint, she is, alas, human, with human emotions—such as lust, love, sorrow, pain, temptation. She makes mistakes, and is periodically confused and conflicted. It’s hard to be a saint when you’re made of flesh and blood and hormones.

After the Tomochic rebellion in Mexico in 1891, Teresita Urrea flees to the United States with her aging but ripe swashbuckler father, Tomas, known as Sky Catcher. She experiences romantic and cataclysmic love with an Indian mystic and warrior, eventually causing a serious breach with her father. When events spiral out of control, Teresita’s journey takes her further and further from her homeland.

From Tucson, to El Paso, St. Louis, San Francisco, New York, and places everywhere in-between, this sequel is a journey from poverty and pestilence to an unknown, glittering, bustling, and modern America, a place that offers new opportunities for immigrant Teresita—-prosperity, new romance, and celebrity. She is hunted by assassins, who claim she is the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution; harassed by profiteers, who want to arrange a consortium to exploit her healing abilities; and haunted daily by pilgrims everywhere, begging her to cure their ills.

Dickensian in scope, this ribald novel is peopled by the humble and the haughty, the meek and the mighty—pilgrims, prostitutes, yeoman, warriors, cowboys, vaqueros, royalty, revolutionaries, financial exploiters, gamblers, tycoons, corrupt politicians, drunks, rogues, and outlaws. It’s gritty, bawdy, tender, and tumultuous, and sometimes turgid, as it meanders down several long and winding paths. When it stalls at intervals, patience and the love of prose and colorful character will keep the reader fastened. This will appeal to fans of high adventure, mixed with folktale wisdom and mystical fantasy. Big, vast skies and rough and tumble travel, this is an unforgettable story of love, purpose, and redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; Import edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Luis Alberto Urrea
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Highway Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

Bibliography:

• In Search of Snow (1994)
• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction (2002)
• The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005)
• Mr Mendoza’s Paintbrush (2009)
• Into the Beautiful North (2009)
• Queen of America (December 2011)

The Border Trilogy Memoirs:

• Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993)
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border (1996)
• Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life (1998)

More Nonfiction:

• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (2004)

“There were too many people here now, a crush of bodies on the sidewalks and too many cars on the highways, people crowded into houses and apartment buildings in Santa Ana, in Anaheim, cities that used to be good places to live. The landmarks of Scott’s youth, the burger stands and the diners, were now covered with the grimy stains of time and something else, an alien presence.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (OCT 17, 2011)

From the looks of it you could never tell that the beautiful Torres-Thompson home in fancy Laguna Rancho Estates, is on the cusp of unraveling. But look closely and you can see the edges of the tropical garden coming undone, the lawn not done just right; and these are merely the symptoms of greater troubles. For the couple Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson the country’s financial crisis has come knocking, even in their ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood.

Scott Torres once spearheaded a booming software company that went broke in the software bust. As the book opens, he is reduced to doing mundane work for a new software firm. The family is beset with enough financial insecurities that Scott and Maureen let go of two staff members in their hired help team—the gardener, Pepe, and the babysitter, Lupe. 

The one maid left standing, Araceli Ramirez, once only held cooking and cleaning responsibilities but now finds herself, much to her annoyance, occasionally watching the boys, Brandon and Keenan and the baby, Samantha.

As Araceli cleans and cooks, she silently watches the dynamics of the family unfold. One day, Maureen, tired of cutting corners from the lavish lifestyle she once knew, decides she will splurge on a new desert garden—one that will replace the decaying tropical one that gardener Pepe once so lovingly tended. The astronomical sum she spends on the landscaping is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Scott and Maureen have a heated altercation, witnessed by Araceli. The next morning, Araceli wakes up to find both her jefe and jefa (there’s a little Spanish left untranslated in the book, some of which can’t be made out just by context) gone with the baby. The boys are home alone with her. As it happens, Maureen and Scott leave independently each one assuming, through a set of coincidences, that the other spouse will be around to take care of the boys. Neither is; the boys are left completely alone for three whole days.

At the end of the third day, at her wit’s end, Araceli decides she will bring the boys to Los Angeles where she is sure their Mexican grandfather (Scott’s Dad) lives. The three set off on an adventure to find grandpa. Predictably they never do.

In the meantime, Maureen and Scott have returned home only to find the boys and the housekeeper missing. They immediately jump to the conclusion that the boys have been kidnapped. The police are called in and all hell breaks loose.

The fact that Araceli is an illegal immigrant complicates the situation tenfold and soon the case makes national headlines. After a series of adventures, the boys are reunited with their parents. But the case has by now developed a life of its own. Scott and Maureen for their part become the stand-in for rich, privileged folks who get constantly shown up as the poster children for bad parenting.

Then there’s Araceli. On the one hand she is worshipped by fellow Mexicans as the exploited, underprivileged Mexicana—someone who represents all the collective immigrant angst in the United States. On the other hand, there’s the flag-waving crowd—members of whom insist that Araceli needs to be deported if not permanently jailed for her crimes. As the book makes its way through to the end, Araceli decides to take some of these matters in her own hands.

The Barbarian Nurseries starts out with a good premise but at every stage it moves so predictably that one can see the ending coming way before it actually arrives. The author, Hector Tobar, won a Pulitzer as part of a team at L.A. times covering the L.A. riots. Unfortunately his journalistic brio doesn’t translate well to fiction. The Barbarian Nurseries has one coincidence too many woven into the story until it totally strains credulity. For example, when Maureen leaves home with Samantha and goes to a spa, the delays that hold her there for three whole days are really difficult to swallow.

Tobar does have keen insight into the various segments of the California narrative—the ultra-rich millionaires, the hired help, the immigrant psyche—but he falls short of weaving these narratives into a compelling story. One would have loved to learn more about Araceli’s past in Mexico, or even about Maureen’s Midwestern roots for example. But too often Araceli and her owners fall into clichéd stereotypes, for what people like them should say and do. Even the media circus that attends the “kidnapping” case drags on way too long.

To his credit, Tobar successfully raises some essential questions: about the act of parenting in these intensely wired times and about the place of immigrants in our larger social fabric.

The Barbarian Nurseries has been billed as the great contemporary California novel and it certainly has all the elements for one. Unfortunately its somewhat predictable story has the book degenerating into precisely the thing it derides the most — a sound bite.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 14 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Héctor Tobar
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Bibliography:

• The Tattooed Soldier (2000)
• The Barbarian Nurseries (September 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States (2006)

“There is the need for the interdisciplinary reading of bodies with students, for breaking away from dichotomies, ruptures that are enviable and deforming.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (AUG 3, 2011)

In this artful, cerebral novel spanning four decades and encompassing the tribal conventions and counterculture movements of the 70’s and 80’s, the reader is plunged into a cunning world of philosophy and hedonism that is best described as baroque rawness or stark-naked grandiloquence. If these terms appear to be incompatible pairings, the reader will grasp the seeming polarity as axiomatic soon after feasting on Edie Meidav’s complex narrative style. A carnal vapor infuses every provocative page of this unorthodox psychological crime thriller.

Contrary to the suggestive cover, title, and product description, this will not appeal to fans of chick lit or genre suspense thrillers. This is more in tune with Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie, with a peppering of TC Boyle and Dan Chaon. Muscular, sweat-producing, and erudite, the satisfaction of reading these pages rests on the reader’s consent to capitulate control of predetermined ideas and conceptions and enter into a contract with the author, giving Meidav permission and authority to rule the aesthetic jurisdiction, and to accede to the flow, command, and demand of its prose.

The eponymous title refers to Lana Mahler and her best friend, Rose, who meet as teenagers and form a bond that graduates from symbiotic to alpha/supplicant (Lana as alpha). They call themselves Lola One and Lola Two. Lana’s parents are both esteemed academics; her father, Vic, is a neuroscientist cum philosopher of the counterculture variety, and has his own willing supplicants known as “shaggies.”

Lana’s mother is an ethnologist/feminist who has garnered popular fame. As noted, the novel takes place primarily in California, with an emphasis on the analysis of California lifestyles and attitudes, particularly the free-thinking Berkeley. Lana and Rose parted ways many years ago, but the psychodynamics of their early relationship continues to haunt both of them.

The book opens in 2008 in the Alcatraz penitentiary. Vic Mahler is on death row, with an execution date less than two weeks away. The author takes us into Mahler’s mind, which gravitates from hearty to hallucinogenic. We learn that he hasn’t seen his daughter in twenty years, but that Rose has been writing him letters and offering her assistance as an attorney. Juxtaposed with the prison opening, the story takes us to Lana, who is on her way to a desert spa with her latest boyfriend and her twin boys, a place right out of Boyle‘s The Road to Wellville. Rosa is on the verge of tracing Lana down after a twenty-year separation.

The disclosure of Vic’s crime and fate, as well as the unveiling of the Mahler family and Rose, is gradually revealed by positioning each character in alternating chapters. They examine their lives, past and present, and dissect each other, so that the reader is shown each character through various lenses that eventually coalesce into a prism of overlapping and juxtaposed realities.

Like Chaon’s Await Your Reply, the narrative unfolds with an intricate opacity toward transparency. Meidav has a knack for shocking the reader at intervals, like the best thrillers do. Just as the Lolas once worked as strip-tease dancers together, the author unveils surprises in increments like a strip-tease act for the reader.

Lana and Rose are the locus of the novel, and the narrative forms a mosaic or tapestry of several dialogues and narratives between them and their relationship with the external world, much like Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children is a tapestry of texts and collage of languages that form a unity of what is virtual and what is real. There is a constant flux between the Lolas, and a tension between what is true and what is illusive, what is implied and what is extant.

It took me about one hundred pages to relax into Meidav’s style, the wrap-around sentences and esoterica of neuroscience and philosophy, the limbic arousal and dourness of Martin Amis.

“…people’s faces work to hold up new veils by the minute: the all-time favorite is dignity, as is the visage of sex-transcending enlightenment, a new kind of spiritual chastity armature.”

Meidav’s bare-bones plot–a crime, a perpetrator, and a fate–are less important than the characters that inhabit this dystopia of false and renegade idols. Nature, the pliable state of consciousness, and the desire to reclaim the credo of youth and supple confidence, is the plaintive hope and recursive doctrine. We are all disciples of the mind; we are prisoners of our bodies.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Edie Meidav
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows The Legacy by Kirstin Tranter

Bibliography:

• The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon (2001)
• Crawl Space (2005)
• Lola, California (July 2011)

“Cleaning other people’s houses—their cherished possessions in both good and bad taste, the chipped dishes they eat off of, the ratty sofas they make love on, the unlevel, puckering floors they shed curly hairs on—is the most intimate relationship you can have with them. Yet every boss I’ve worked for wants that relationship to be unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. I have done my best to live my life in between those two places, intimacy and invisibility. Over the years I’ve absolved the remains of a thousand indiscretions without judgment, and have learned not to ask questions. Men staying over, friends moving in, children moving out; none of this is my concern. If my job is done right, what you find when you get home is a comforting antiseptic, fresh Band-Aid smell, spotless floors, and no evidence another human being, a cleaning lady, was ever there. ”

Book Review:

Review by Terez Rose (JUN 23, 2011)

The silent, overlooked residents of Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood play the starring role in author Brando Skyhorse’s debut, The Madonnas of Echo Park. The novel, really more of a collection of short stories, each narrated by a different character, presents to the reader different facets of both the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in multicultural Los Angeles. Skyhorse, winner of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award for this novel, was born and raised in Echo Park. An Author’s Note sets the story (it should be noted, though, that the author calls it a fictionalized account). The sixth-grade Skyhorse, unaware of his Mexican heritage—he’d been told he was American Indian—inadvertently insulted a classmate, a girl named Aurora Esperanza. This novel, then, is his apology to her, his attempt to share with the public the world of Echo Park.

“Bienvenidos,” narrated by Aurora’s father Hector, starts the novel in a highly readable, compelling fashion. Hector, while born in Mexico, has been living in the U.S. his entire life and has no memory of Mexico. Without citizenship or papers, however, work options are limited, and when the restaurant he worked at for eighteen years closes, day labor is all he can find. While on a job, Hector witnesses a crime and faces a moral dilemma: help justice be served by reporting the crime, which will require him to reveal his own illegal immigrant status, or remain silent and thus avoid deportation. The conflict is sharp, affecting, and, like so many of the stories, packs an emotional punch.

One of Skyhorse’s greatest skills, besides writing stellar prose, is the ability to write convincingly from the perspective of a wide variety of characters. Ex-convicts, gang members, estranged mothers, rebellious, hopeful teens all ring true. In “Los Feliz,” we are in the head of Felicia, Hector’s ex-wife, who cleans houses while struggling to raise a teen daughter and assimilate into the wealthier culture that provides her income. Felicia shares her story without a trace of self-pity, while observing the clear dichotomy between her world and that of her clients.

“In Los Feliz, I needed to be invisible and inaudible. Mrs. Calhoun and I managed to communicate without ever saying a word to each other’s face. The massive double front doors made a loud, drawbridge sound when I unlocked them, letting her know I’d arrived. I’d shout “Good morning” in English until Mrs. Calhoun responded with an echoed “Good morning,” often from one of the bathrooms. That was my sign to start at the opposite side of the house. When I finished a room, Mrs. Calhoun stepped inside and read a magazine until I finished the next room. Like the arms on a clock, we moved together through six bathrooms, five bedrooms, the split kitchen, two “recreation” rooms (a name that confused me; I didn’t have a room to create things in, let alone “re”-create them), and a living room as big as Aurora’s school cafeteria. We could spend the day inches apart and never see each other.”

Skyhorse does not vilify the wealthy in any way, and the conflict remains clear, blameless, in the subtle tension behind Felicia’s interactions, or lack thereof, with her client. Less convincing, however, is the friendship that blossoms between Felicia and Mrs. Calhoun after a year of strained formality. Mrs. Calhoun suffers from an emotional malaise that never quite gets pinned down. Depression? Ennui? Fear of being left alone? Agoraphobia? Marital strife? As a reader closer to Mrs. Calhoun’s description than Felicia’s, I found it annoyingly murky. For all the marvelous work Skyhorse has done in bringing the Mexican-American characters and their friends to life, this segment of the population, the wealthy white woman, struck me as a shallow, half-finished depiction. Which, given the story’s intent, still manages to be appropriate. Felicia’s English is self-admittedly poor, so it would be difficult to imagine her fully understanding what made Mrs. Calhoun tick. A special friendship? Harder to buy.

Petty gripes aside, this is a very important chapter and story, as the reader learns the full backstory of who the “Madonnas” of Echo Park were. Felicia and her daughter Aurora were among a group of mothers and daughters who liked to dress up like the singer Madonna and dance to her music in the street. Tragically, at one such event, the group gets caught in gang crossfire, in which a three-year-old girl is killed. This pivotal scene has long term repercussions and is the link that ties together so many of the novel’s stories, in startling and sad ways.

One of the most outstanding stories in the collection is “Rules of the Road.” Bus driver Efren Mendoza has been marvelously rendered, so achingly real and human, I feel like I know the man, and I respect him, even as I don’t wholly like him. Having left home at fourteen in order to evade membership in the gang both his brother and father belong to, he has fought to earn a respectable place in society, even at the risk of becoming hardened, unsympathetic.

“My salary of $21.27 an hour relies on my punctuality (I carry a back-up watch; you are penalized if you are one minute late for your shift). It’s a fair wage, one we had to go on several strikes—five during my time—to protect. Those socialist Che-worshiping Reconquistadoras complained these strikes hurt poor Mexican workers who cannot afford a car the most. You’re a Mexican, they say, trying to bond with me by speaking Spanish. How can you turn against your own kind? they say. But they aren’t my kind. They’re not Americans. They’re illegals, and the benefits to law-abiding Americans like me outweigh whatever inconveniences these people face breaking our laws.”

When things go wrong on one of Efren’s shifts, the reader feels it all: the shock, the frustration that this is not how things in his world are supposed to go, his moral and professional dilemma, the troubling but very real conclusion. Great stuff. I will never forget this story.

The Madonnas of Echo Park is a vivid, intricately woven story of eight disparate voices that come together to portray a once-invisible neighborhood steeped in cultural identity, violence, incidental beauty, now caught in the grips of change brought by time and gentrification. Spanning thirty years and stories from three generations, filled with emotional heft and bittersweet truths, along with a dollop of magical realism, Skyhorse’s debut serves up satisfying fare indeed.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 34 readers
PUBLISHER:	Free Press (February 8, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Terez Rose
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Brando Skyhorse
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Previous Pen/Hemingway winners: A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living by Michael Dahlie Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris Graceland by Chris Abani

Bibliography:

• The Madonnas of Echo Park (February 2010)

Memoir:

• Take This Man (June 2014)

“Said it was like someone pried off the lid and showed him how Hollywood really works.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JUN 20, 2011)

Imagine a kick-ass action flick–say one starring that perennial crowd-pleaser, Bruce Willis, and then imagine the source material, and you’d just about have an image of Duane Swierczynski’s latest book, Fun and Games. This is the first entry in the Charlie Hardie trilogy. Hell and Gone follows in October 2011, and the third novel, Point and Shoot is scheduled for publication in March 2012. Fun and Games delves into the old Hollywood story that studio fixers leap in to stabilize publicity nightmares. This legend has bounced around Hollywood for decades and still lingers over the deaths of notables such as Jean Harlow’s husband, Paul Bern. Recently actor Randy Quaid and his wife fled to Canada and applied for refugee status on the grounds that they are in fear of their lives due to the “Hollywood Star Whackers.” They state that their claims are substantiated by the mysterious deaths of various Hollywood luminaries, including David Carradine.

In an art-follows-life sort of way … enter Fun and Games….

The main character in Fun and Games is professional house sitter, Charlie Hardie. This is the latest gig for a man who hails from Philadelphia and has a shady past which includes a nebulous relationship with Philadelphia police and the FBI. But that was a few years back, and these days, Hardie is in danger of becoming a couch potato:

“Yes, he sort of used to be something like a cop. But that had been three long years ago. A lot of drinking and poor eating and general sloth had atrophied his muscles. He was slower, larger. His liver wasn’t talking to him anymore, and his heart gave him little friendly reminders every so often that he might want to get his ass up and move around a little. The mornings he felt good simply meant that he’d passed out before he could have any more to drink.”

House-sitting allows him to drift around the country while he lives out of a suitcase. Hardie likes to keep it simple, and he has a few rules for house-sitting: “He didn’t do plants, didn’t do pets. He made sure people didn’t steal shit.” His dream gig is to stay in a house, alone, and watch old films. He has only one rule when it comes to film. He won’t watch anything made after he was born. Hardie’s latest job is to watch the isolated Hollywood Hills home of Andrew Lowenbruck, a Hollywood music producer. Given that Lowenbruck has an extensive classic film library, it looks like a dream gig to Hardie, but he hadn’t counted Them into the equation….

When Hardie walks into Lowenbruck’s home, he walks slap bang into a “narrative” about to be staged by The Accident People. This is a team of highly trained, and deadly equipped assassins who are about to snuff out bit part action flick actress, Lane Madden. The Accident People have tried and failed to kill Lane in a fake car accident, so when Hardie walks into the deadly scenario at Lowenbruck’s home, he enters completely unprepared to meet a bruised, terrified, washed up-actress who’s fighting for her life against pissed-off, time-stressed assassins. Not good.

Fun and Games is breathless roller-coaster ride of non-stop action from cover-to-cover. There are simply no down times in the story, and Swierczynski’s comic book roots are evident in the plot and action sequencing. Hardie and Lane make a good team. Hardie is the laconic, practical sort who has walked away from a life he can no longer handle while Lane Madden is the bimbo bit player who discovers untapped reserves of courage and ingenuity. It’s no exaggeration to say that once I picked up this book, I was reluctant to put it down. I’ll hazard a guess that Swierczynski has a hit trilogy in his future.

Has Fun and Games been optioned for the film version yet? If not, Hollywood, what are you waiting for?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 35 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mulholland Books; Original edition (June 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official blog for Duane Swierczynski
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bust, Slide and The Maxby Ken Bruen and Jason Starr Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Bibliography:

• Secret Dead Men (2005)
• The Wheel Man (2005)
• Severance Package (2008)
• The Blonde (2007)
• Expiration Date (2010)

Charlie Hardie trilogy:

• Fun and Games (June 2011)
• Hell and Gone (October 2011)
• Point and Shoot (March 2012)

“If it did happen again, if his and Lise’s baby died, too, would they survive? Would their marriage? The thing is, there’s no telling. From where he sits, less than a month away from fatherhood, he sees that what they’ve done together acknowledges the possibility of its own undoing: that what there is to gain is exactly equal to what there is to lose.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (MAY 9, 2011)

Ann Packer’s newest book, Swim Back to Me, is comprised of a novella and five short stories. They are all “emotionally searing stories” dealing with issues of intimacy, misunderstandings that cause distancing, betrayals, and the problems that people have with understanding and knowing one another. Each story is strong and brilliant.

“Walk for Mankind,” the novella in this collection, just sings. It is a coming of age story but to just describe it as that would be like saying it’s a beautiful day and to leave out what makes it beautiful: the smell of the greenery, the feel of a breeze, the sensation of the the sun on your skin and the overall feeling of beauty and abundance inspired by being part of this world.

The novella takes place in 1972 Palo Alto, California close to the Stanford campus. It is told from fifty-year old Richard’s memories of his fourteenth summer. Sasha and Richard are both fourteen years old and are friends, the kind of friends who play scrabble, go to the beach, ride bikes together and play truth and dare. They have fun. Sasha is the more dominant one in the relationship and she has a real independent and wild streak to her that Richard lacks. Sasha decides that she and Richard should do a 20-mile Walk for Mankind and raise so much money that they are “heroes” of a sort. Just before the walk, Sasha meets Cal and begins a sexual relationship with him. Since Cal is a drug dealer, pot also enters the picture. Sasha starts smoking a lot of weed and Richard soon embraces it as well. Pot becomes a big deal for Richard as he “laughs the ocean-wave laughter of the stoned, up and down and down and up, and it was incredibly intense and at the same time locked away from the real world, safe behind a wall of glass.”

Richard loves to go to Sasha’s house where her free-wheeling parents are fun and exuberant. Richard lives with his stodgy father, a history professor, and a housekeeper. His mother left them ten months ago to “find herself” and Richard sees her once a month for a weekend. Richard’s relationship with his father is distant and he loves Sasha’s family as much as being with Sasha. There comes a time in their relationship, however, when sexuality enters and they begin to distance, not understanding one another and their new roles.

The underlying theme of this beautiful novella is the distance and pursuit of two adolescents who do not know themselves or each other and are trying to navigate the world of intimacy. This quickly turns into perceived betrayals which distance the two friends, leaving them in a place of anomie. They learn to perceive the treacheries, dreams and misfortunes that comprise life, songs in a dissonant key.

In “Things Said and Done” Sasha’s family is revisited during the festivities of her brother’s marriage to a woman much younger than him. Her parents are long divorced and Sasha has come to realize that her father is a narcissist. She is his emotional caretaker. She has left her wildness behind her and lives a staid life as an academic.

In “Molten” a mother grieves the death of her teen-aged son. “Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief.” She has lost her grasp on life and tries to relive her son’s days by listening to his rock music non-stop and finding meaning in the music and instrumentation he once listened to. She has moved away from her family and at a bereavement group “she felt molten. She didn’t want friends, compassionate or otherwise. She wanted to scream in a padded room, scratch her arms till they bled.”

“Jump” is a story about a shift supervisor at a copy store who has a urinary tract infection. Her car won’t start and a co-worker drives her home. On the drive she finds out he is not who she thought he was and that they are both trying to escape from certain parts of their lives without success.

In “Dwell Time,” a newly married woman has to deal with her husband’s habit of just disappearing for days at a time, something he did in his first marriage but she did not know about. Should she leave him or can she find a way to make this marriage work? Interestingly, the term dwell time “is how long soldiers have between deployments.” Could her husband think of their marriage as a war zone, and these disappearances be his way to find peace?

“The Firstborn” is a poignant story of a woman whose firstborn son died at five months from crib death. This destroyed her marriage. She is remarried now, pregnant and about to give birth to a child. The couple’s fears and hopes are examined, along with her memories of her firstborn.

I am a lover of short stories to begin with, but I gather light when I read something as engaging and brilliant as this collection. Ann Packer has matured so much in her writing since The Dive From Clausen’s Pier. She is well on her way to becoming a master.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 21 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (April 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ann Packer
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Songs Without Words The Dive From Clausen’s Pier

Bibliography:

• Mendocino and Other Stories (1994)
• The Dive from Clausen’s Pier (April 2002)
• Songs Without Words (August 2007)
• Swim Back to Me: Stories (April 2011)