Washington, D.C. – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 ELEVEN DAYS by Lea Carpenter /2013/eleven-days-by-lea-carpenter/ Wed, 11 Dec 2013 13:22:31 +0000 /?p=23891 Book Quote:

“The call came late on May 2, the first day of what should have been the last ten days of Jason’s fifth tour. First, last, fourth, fifth: everything in military life involved numbers — or letters.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (DEC 11, 2014)

In a blog that she wrote for the Huffington Post, Lea Carpenter notes that eleven days was the period of truce negotiated between King Priam and Achilles in the Iliad after the death of Hector — an encounter movingly narrated by David Malouf in his novel Ransom. It is an appropriate reference for many reasons, not least the almost classical values that Carpenter both celebrates and espouses in her storytelling; this gripping debut novel is immediate in content, ample in moral perspective, rich and thoughtful in its human values.

Yet its modernity makes Carpenter’s work quite different from Homer or Malouf. Jason, her male protagonist (yes, the reference to the Argonauts is deliberate), is a Naval SEAL officer on his fifth deployment overseas — pretty clearly somewhere in the Middle East. His mother Sara, a young single mother living at Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, is told that he has been missing for two days. The rest of the book follows her for the remainder of the eleven-day period until he is located. It also follows Jason in flashback over some eleven years, as he swaps the idea of Harvard for Annapolis after 9/11, graduates, and undergoes the extraordinarily demanding SEAL training in Coronado, California.

It is significant that this is a war novel written by a woman. You might expect authenticity in the portrait of a mother waiting at home for news of her only son, but her ability to provide empathy without a trace of sentiment is quite remarkable. Even more remarkable is her portrayal of Jason’s life, with enough military detail to rival Tom Clancy, and yet always focusing on his inner life; to call it spiritual would not be far from the mark.

In the same Huffington Post blog, Carpenter says that one inspiration for her novel was an old photograph of her father, who was some sort of special forces agent in Vietnam. Another was the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, just as she was beginning to write. It is an impressive attempt to imagine what her father must have gone through then and what those young men in the Middle East were going through now. Something of the lost father figure comes through in the novel in the person of Jason’s father, David — an older man probably connected with the CIA, who loved Sara and continued to support her from a distance until his death in the 1990s. Jason’s attempt to live up to his idealized image of his father is a large part of his motivation; we eventually come to realize that he has greatly exceeded it. Carpenter cannot really fill David out, though, and she is wise not to try. Her main focus is on these two younger people, mother and son, and her empathy with both is extraordinary.

As a pacifist, with little patience for the jingoistic flag-waving of the past decade, I am amazed by how much I liked this book. Yet Carpenter’s achievement is to make politics vanish in the light of simple humanity.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 48 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (June 18, 2013)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Lea Carpenter
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea /2011/queen-of-america-by-luis-alberto-urrea/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:11:36 +0000 /?p=22142 Book Quote:

“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: stars-4-5from 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:

 

Bibliography:

The Border Trilogy Memoirs:

More Nonfiction:

]]> THE CUT by George Pelecanos /2011/the-cut-by-george-pelecanos/ Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:17:33 +0000 /?p=20539 Book Quote:

“You want me to recover your lost packages.”
“Or the cash, if they done offed it already. I’m not looking for any muscle here, Spero. Just get me back what’s mine. No one I got has your skills. I see what you did for my son. Got to say I was impressed.”
“What’s the value of the product?”
“Wholesale?”
“Retail,” said Lucas.
“Roughly, one hundred and thirty thousand.”
“I’d get forty.”
“Thousand.”
“Percent,” said Lucas.
“That’s fifty thousand and change.”
“Fifty two. Per package.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  AUG 29, 2011)

In The Cut, the first book in a new series, George Pelecanos presents 29-year old tough private investigator and Iraqi war vet Spero Lucas. Lucas’s main job is to help defense attorney Tom Petersen, but he also works on his own at times. After helping gather information that leads to the acquittal of 15-year-old David Hawkins, Spero, at the request of Petersen, decides to visit with David’s father Anwan Hawkins, a drug dealer also represented by attorney Tom Petersen. Hawkins, in prison awaiting a major drug charge, wants Spero to investigate some theft of marijuana from a couple of his employees who are still running his drug business. Although somewhat reluctant, Spero decides to help as long as his 40% return fee cut is agreed to by Hawkins.

Spero meets with Hawkins’ two main lieutenants, Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis, both 20 and overconfident in their ability from Spero’s perspective. They explain that drugs are shipped by overnight mail to homes where resident are not at home during the day. Twice their deliveries have been taken from the selected homes before they could quickly claim it. Lucas finds that this is not some small time theft and he quickly finds things not as he expected and has to face some pressure to stop his investigation. He’s certainly up for the challenge and is not afraid to show a little violence of his own to get what he wants and needs.

The Cut is certainly an excellent start of this new series that will be sure to bring back some readers who were missing some hard crime that was less prevalent in Pelecanos’ recent work. Of course, the dedicated readers will also be satisfied as well.

I became a fan of George Pelecanos in 2002 after deciding to buy Right as Rain at a book signing where he showed up with Michael Connelly. At that point, I had not heard of him but was impressed with what he had to say and what he read from the book. After reading Right as Rain, I quickly looked for his backlist of titles (only 5 books at that time) and have read almost everything he has written since. He has changed somewhat over the years depending on what he wanted to write, but everything he has written has certainly had that George Pelecanos style with excellent but rough dialog with most action taking place in and around the parts of Washington DC not visited by tourists.

In recent years, Pelecanos has spent more time on family relationships than on private investigators that were more prevalent in his earlier works, especially in the Derek Strange series that started with Right as Rain. With The Cut, he has returned to this style, although of course, family relationships are still important and prevalent. The family in The Cut is not very traditional, but has the typical Pelecanos’ Greek influences, even though Spero and most of his siblings are adopted and not Greek. Spero Lucas’ relationship with his father is also important to him and even though his father has passed, he always finds time to visit his gravesite. Spero is closest to his brother Leo, an African-American English teacher of one of the inner city schools. Spero and Lucas are the two favorite children of their Mother Eleni and the only ones who still spend any time with her. Lucas does need the help of Leo when a potential witness to one of the drug thefts is Ernest Lindsay, a student of Leo’s. Lucas shows his softer side when he works hard to protect Lindsay when he becomes potentially threatened.

Although I’ve read most of George Pelecanos’ books, I have difficulty in remembering all his various characters (plus I’ve still not read 2 of his early books). I’ve noticed in prior books that he likes to make some of his characters make minor or sometimes not so minor, appearance in his books. One of these days, I’ll write the characters names down so I don’t miss these references as that will be the only way I will remember. I did pick up the minor reference to Derek Strange, but if I missed any others, I apologize and would appreciate if you could let me know.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 83 readers
PUBLISHER: Reagan Arthur Books (August 29, 2011)
REVIEWER: Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: George Pelecanos
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: We are big fans of George Pelecanos, read more of our reviews:

Bibliography:

Featuring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn:

Featuring P.I. Spero Lucas:

Featuring Nick Stefanos:

The D.C. Quartet:

Other:

]]> PORTRAIT OF A SPY by Daniel Silva /2011/portrait-of-a-spy-by-daniel-silva/ Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:51:03 +0000 /?p=19565 Book Quote:

“Homeland security is a myth…. It’s a bedtime story we tell our people to make them feel safe at night. Despite all our best efforts and all our billions spent, the United States is largely indefensible.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JUL 25, 2011)

As Daniel Silva’s Portrait of a Spy opens, art restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara, are living quietly in a cottage by the sea. Silva sets the stage with a series of events that are eerily familiar: Countries all over the world are “teetering on the brink of fiscal and monetary disaster;” Europe is having difficulty absorbing “an endless tide of Muslim immigrants;” and Bin Laden is dead, but others are scrambling to take his place. Government leaders in America and on the Continent are desperate to identify and thwart the new masterminds of terror.

All of this should not be Gabriel Allon’s problem, since he is no longer an agent of Israeli intelligence. However, Gabriel happens to be in London when he learns that two suicide bombers have struck, one in Paris and the other in Copenhagen. Later, Gabriel is strolling through Covent Garden when he spots a man who arouses his suspicions. Should he alert the police or take out this individual on his own? A series of unexpected events ensue that will bring Gabriel’s brief retirement to an abrupt end. He becomes a key player in a complex plot–involving high finance, a valuable painting, and a beautiful heiress–to destroy the new Bin Laden and his bloodthirsty cohorts. Allon will clash not just with his natural enemies but also with certain American politicians and their subordinates whose short-sighted and self-serving attitudes he finds repugnant.

Portrait of a Spy is an intricate, powerful, well-researched, and engrossing tale of deception, betrayal, and self-sacrifice. The most memorable character is thirty-three year old Nadia al-Bakari, a savvy businesswoman who is highly intelligent, secretive, and one of the richest women in the world. Her late father was a known supporter of terror networks. Will she follow in his footsteps or choose a different path? Silva brings back many of Allon’s comrades, including the amusing Julian Isherwood, an aging but still sharp-tongued Ari Shamron, and art curator/CIA operative, Sarah Bancroft.

The author choreographs his story perfectly and manages an extremely large cast with consummate skill. The sharp and clever dialogue, meaningful themes (including a description of how women are demeaned and manual laborers are exploited in Saudi Arabia and Dubai), as well as the nicely staged action sequences all combine to make this one of the most entertaining espionage thrillers of the year.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 446 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; First Edition edition (July 19, 2011)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Daniel Silva
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Michael Osbourne series:

Gabriel Allon series:

]]> BEACH WEEK by Susan Coll /2010/beach-week-by-susan-coll/ Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:50:05 +0000 /?p=10342 Book Quote:

“It made her think about that Radiohead song ‘Fake Plastic Trees,’ with its fake Chinese rubber plant in plastic earth in a town full of other rubber plants. It made her think about her parents, too. How was it that they just kept at it day after day, living a sort of plastic life in a plastic house in a plastic suburb?”

Book Review:

Review by Mike Fredette (JUN 27, 2010)

Those who enjoyed Susan Coll’s last novel will be pleased to know that she has successfully recycled a different aspect of the same material in her newest, bitingly witty satire, Beach Week. While Acceptance took aim at the upper middle class suburban hysteria surrounding the college application process, Beach Week is much edgier, a novel whose focus is the post-graduation tradition of high school seniors in the wealthy DC suburbs. During the summer before college, mobs of college-bound spoiled eighteen-year-olds rent, with the sanction and cosignatures of parents, beach houses along the Delaware shore where they engage in a week of bad decisions and biblical-like immorality.

Coll’s story focuses mostly on the Adler family, recent transplants from the Midwest whose transition to the east coast has been less than smooth. Besides the financial troubles still haunting them back in Nebraska, Charles and Leah are suffering from marital boredom. Since moving to the DC suburb of Verona, Jordan, their daughter, has suffered a massive head injury on the soccer field, turning Leah into an overprotective, neurotic mother. At the center of this domestic turmoil is beach week, which Leah surprisingly encourages Jordan to attend since she is actually more worried about her apathy towards Verona than her safety. Not surprisingly, the novel ends with teenage drug use, a burning beach house, a number of police officers, and some runaway lobsters (you’ll have to read it to find out). Along the way, however, Coll introduces us to an array of quirky characters. She takes what could easily be the book version of American Pie and infuses it with a profoundly funny exploration of the angst and turmoil at the heart of America’s suburban experience.

What strikes the reader first about Coll’s new novel is the cover art. It suggests, without even having to read the first page, that this book is not really about the kids. A person’s foot hangs threateningly posed overhead a pristinely constructed sand castle on the beach. In the distant background, waves crash that, once the tide comes in, will eventually wash the castle away. For those who already know the basic premise of this story, it is easy to dismiss this picture as just a clever way of foreshadowing a week-long high school beach party turning into something reckless and self-destructive. However, the reader who gazes long enough will see that the sand castle represents not just the beach houses where these youth reside during beach week. It also suggests a domestic, familial space whose very existence is threatened by an onslaught of destructive, external forces. As Leah thinks to herself, the onslaught might just be one overlong episode with a whole lot of chapters, not unlike when you moved across the country and lost your center somehow, and then your husband’s job hit a wall, and your daughter, already unhappy about the move, suffered a concussion and became moody and secretive, and then money problems worsened and your marriage began to fray, and your mother-in-law’s dementia intensified, and then your husband and daughter wound up in prison.

Leah is arguably one of the best characters, illustrating that middle age women often suffer from the same existential anxiety as men. Much to the dismay of her also angst-ridden husband, she offers to host the initial parent meeting concerning Beach Week at her home because “she wanted to go to Beach Week herself.” She would “dare say that in some private corner of her mind she longed for the bad stuff that Beach Week was known for, too.” Add to this feelings inadequacy in the face of peers who are all aggressive parents, high-powered lawyers, and ambitious Washington types, and you have all the fixings for a bona fide midlife crisis. She and Charles “were cultured, educated people. They listened to NPR and saw foreign films,…so why was it she felt she didn’t belong in this town?” She realizes these feelings are “pathetically cliché,” but as she approaches a soon-to-be empty house with just Charles, she cannot help but fantasize about the risky youth she never had or worry that she does not meet the social criteria of her new environment.

The book’s next best character has to be Noah, the man whose dilapidated house the girls end up renting during Beach Week. Recently divorced from his wife Clara, this MIT graduate now sells salt water taffy on the boardwalk of Chelsea Beach. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the world thinks he’s a perverted peeping tom because of a best-selling book his ex-wife published soon after their divorce. As he tries to explain, however, the reason he fell from the tree in his yard and injured his head was not because he was leering at the neighbor but because “he was trying to prevent a murder and write up a report.” Eventually, the reader discovers that Noah is innocent enough, probably suffering from some type of congenital brain defect that skews his interpretation of the world and its events. Predictably, he ends up being the one character to whom Jordan can relate, the novel’s only other character with a severe head injury. A truly unique character, Noah’s chapters are hysterical. How can the reader not laugh out loud at a character who, when watching his house burn with lobsters running across his yard, thinks “of that graphing program on the computer at work and [tries] to visualize some kind of theory of lobster outcomes?”

Coll possesses the perfect literary voice for satire, with spot-on, well-timed wit. She moves effortlessly between the interiorities of men and women, adults and adolescents, exposing all their quirky foibles while making all her main characters likeable and endearing. Whereas Acceptance truly focused on the college application process and the neuroses of high school seniors, Beach Week is a more imaginative effort in terms of characters and subplots. The beach week activity itself is secondary, more a vehicle to explore the regrets, resentments, and dissatisfactions of middle-aged suburban Americans in a very humorous way. Adult readers will definitely appreciate Beach Week far more than Acceptance because, let’s face it, adults don’t really care anymore about getting into college, acing the SATs, or guzzling beer and having risky sex at a week-long, unchaperoned high school blowout. Or if they’re like Leah, maybe they still do.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 25, 2010)
REVIEWER: Mike Frechette
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Susan Coll
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More satire:

Perfect Life by Jessica Shattuck

and more humor:

Beginner’s Greek by James Collins

Bibliography:

Movies from books:

]]> MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER by Robin Oliveira /2010/my-name-is-mary-sutter-by-robin-oliveira/ /2010/my-name-is-mary-sutter-by-robin-oliveira/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 03:32:49 +0000 /?p=9646 Book Quote:

“Stipp slammed his hand against the wall. He had not wanted Mary by his side, and then he couldn’t have asked for anyone better. She had stayed calm. The only requisite that really mattered, but she had given more: intelligence and charity. When that boy had died, flailing, disoriented, shouting, reliving the battle, the blood arcing everywhere, Mary had thought to kneel by the boy’s side and sing. To sing! The boy had died to the unsteady voice of a tone-deaf, blood-covered angel.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 26, 2010)

Sometimes the reader is lucky enough to pick up a book that they can get lost in. Place and time disappear and all that is left is immersion in the written word. We become one with the book. My Name is Mary Sutter is such a book. From the time I started it until the very last page, all that existed for me was the story – the ebb and flow of events. I was transported.

The time is 1861 and the novel starts in Albany, New York. Mary Sutter is a determined woman, intelligent and headstrong. She is not like the average woman of her time. “She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe.” Mary is an accomplished midwife but she has dreams of becoming a surgeon. Never has a woman been admitted into medical school nor been accepted as an apprentice to a working surgeon. Mary writes letter after letter applying to the Albany School of Medicine and does not even receive the courtesy of a reply. Mary approaches an Albany surgeon, James Blevins, and inquires about apprenticing with him. He declines to take Mary on but they begin a friendship that endures time and hardship.

The Sutters are supportive and close. Mary has a twin, Jenny, who is as unlike Mary as any person can be. Still, they are close and loving. Amelia, Mary’s mother, is a midwife from whom Mary has learned her skills. The family comes from a long line of midwives. Christian is Mary’s beloved younger brother. The family is financially secure due to Mary’s father’s business. When the book opens, Mary’s father has recently died and the family is in mourning.

A new family moves in next door and Thomas Fall, an attractive young man, is drawn into the lives of the Sutter family. Mary is instantly attracted to him and feels like he is responsive to her feelings. However, he is more drawn to her sister Jenny and ends up marrying her. Mary is crushed. At the same time, the Civil War is beginning. Mary decides that she needs to leave Albany to mend her heart and help out in the war efforts. She hopes to find someone she can apprentice with in Washington and attain her dream of becoming a surgeon. At the same time, her brother Christian signs up to fight for the Union.

Nothing can prepare Mary for the horrific conditions in Washington. Though there is a war in progress, the Union government has not prepared for the medical necessities wrought by battle. The hospitals are not equipped with anything but the barest of necessities. Most of the surgeons who are manning the hospitals have never had to do an amputation, let alone take care of epidemics like typhoid or dysentery that are caused by close quarters and unsanitary conditions. Additionally, in 1861, treatments consisted primarily of whiskey, morphine, quinine, and bleeding the patient. Causes of most diseases were rarely understood.

It is in Washington that Mary meets a surgeon, William Stipp, who takes her under his wing and agrees to apprentice her. This is a dream come true for Mary. Mary ends up going to the battlefields, living in the trenches with the soldiers, providing medicine in the worst of conditions.

The book provides information about the Civil War at the same time that it tells Mary’s story. We learn about Lincoln’s travails, his health, tragedies and his difficulty finding good military leaders for the Union. I was especially fascinated to learn that Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union army was Robert E. Lee but that Lee went with the Confederates when his home state of Virginia chose to secede.

We are privy to the stench and filth that is Washington. During the time this book takes place, from 1861 to 1863, Washington’s streets are amok with sewage, body parts, and smells so bad that it is difficult to breathe unless one covers their face. This book tells a fascinating story about a fascinating time. There is tragedy and there is hope. There is just enough history to provide context but not so much that it becomes boring. Not usually a fan of historical fiction myself, I can vouch for the fact that there is just the right balance of history and narrative to keep this book fascinating from page one until its end. Readers who enjoyed Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier will be drawn to this book.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 86 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult; 1 edition (May 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Robin Oliveira
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More Civil War novels:

The Almagation Polka by Stephen Wright

The March by E.L. Doctorow

Bibliography:

]]> /2010/my-name-is-mary-sutter-by-robin-oliveira/feed/ 1 THE ROOM AND THE CHAIR by Lorraine Adams /2010/the-room-and-the-chair-by-lorraine-adams/ Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:15:17 +0000 /?p=7924 Book Quote:

“The case of that pilot crashing was only one of many instances when someone at the White House or Pentagon told Adam that blood and treasure—how he despised the words—would be lost if he didn’t hide information that might or might not have been factual.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (FEB 24, 2010)

The talented Lorraine Adams’ debut novel, Harbor, was an absolute tour-de-force. Depicting the lives of Algerian refugees in the United States, it delivered an incredibly moving portrait of men trying to get by—to shake the stigma of being the “other.” Harbor remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Once a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the Washington Post, Adams, revisits familiar terrain—international terrorism—in her latest novel, The Room and the Chair. Set alternately in Washington D.C., Iran and the Afghan-Pakistan border, the novel looks at the interplay between the media and the government and how they work together to determine what information the public is really fed.

As the novel opens, Mary Goodwin, a young fighter pilot navigating an F-16 (a Viper) mysteriously crashes near the Potomac in Washington D.C. An extremely competent pilot, she has no idea why all the control panels suddenly failed, why she ended up hanging loose-limbed in a tree yet walked away relatively unscathed. The unexplained accident ends up haunting her till the end.

The incident gets some coverage in the local media but the leading D.C. newspaper, The Washington Spectator, (presumably modeled after the Washington Post where Adams once worked) barely touches it. It’s more than a case of mere oversight though. Turns out the White House specifically called the paper’s executive editor, Adam, and requested that the story be hushed.

The crash is only one part of the story. Related reasons for what went wrong and why are laid out in a massive government report that runs into thousands of pages—put out by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The report, affectionately dubbed the “Sissy Report,” has actually been in the possession of one of the paper’s other key players, Don Grady, for a while now. Grady who came to fame as a stellar reporter in his younger days, now spends much of his time resting on past laurels and saving key bits of “finds” for books he regularly publishes. He decides the Sissy Report too, while it might have some major reveals, deserves wider treatment in his upcoming book. The paper gets nothing. Worse, the paper gets scooped by the competition.

The competition ends up sensationalizing the report focusing on only one controversial detail—neglecting all other facts. “They’ve seized on one little thing, this thing about the president being under surveillance, a thing that doesn’t matter, that happens all the time anyway, but isn’t widely—well—appreciated, and the things that do matter, the new things, they’ve ignored them,” Adams writes in the voice of one of the players. It’s an accurate portrayal of our 24-hour sound-bite journalism.

To understand why the government would want to hide the truth from the pilot, Mary Goodwin, one must understand that she is soon to be recruited to be a part of a special ops assignment. In this assignment she would help a controversial Iranian nuclear scientist, Hoseyn, flee his native country. If Mary had found out the truth behind her accident, she would have surely rejected the Hoseyn assignment—one that is of vital interest to the United States.

The Room And the Chair moves its narrative to Iran describing Hoseyn’s life, detailing how he ends up being a double agent—on the one hand working for the United States while also being faithful to Ahva Pesarah Persis, the Sacred Sons of Persia. “The Pesarah always needed nuclear defectors who could tell of Iranian progress on the bomb and push Washington into an Iranian invasion to topple the regime,” Adams writes in describing this organization’s mission.

The “Chair” in the book’s title refers to Will Holmes, chair of a secret intelligence program called Media Exploitation Component Services—MECS. The program parses data gathered from combat zones around the world and uses it to sharpen U.S. defense strategies. Holmes will also have a critical role to play in the Hoseyn assignment.

As Adams moves between The “Room”—the news reporting well at the paper—and “The Chair,” she gradually lays bare the connections between what initially look like a disparate set of narratives.

She is at her narrative best particularly in the segments set in Iran where the pace and the story are perfectly tied together and work to tell a compelling story. The parts of the story set at the paper too are interesting enough but sometimes there are so many players all vying for power, that it gets confusing to keep track of them all. To keep the pace going, Adams ends up sacrificing detailed character sketches of the principals. This is not to say that they are not described at all—they are. However, in places, one wishes she could have lingered, actually made the story longer so we could find out more about them.

In the end the constant hopping back and forth can make the reader a tad dizzy precisely because each hop could have used a more extended narrative.

The Room And the Chair also has a somewhat shaky start when the writing feels a touch jolting and strained. But after a chapter or two, Adams really comes into form and dazzles. Her writing is as crisp and intelligent as ever. “Vera Hastings walked with Jesus but pacing herself was a forever problem,” she writes of a rookie reporter at the paper. In yet another instance, an “orderly and the nurse were tranquilized by Hoseyn’s lack of visible symptoms.”

Overall, The Room And the Chair is an entertaining and intelligent read. Sometimes it does strain under the weight of its ambitions—the novel could have used some more pages devoted to each narrative arc. But The Room And the Chair is a worthy successor to Harbor. With its depiction of current-day government subterfuge and media collusion, Adams once again proves she has her finger firmly on the pulse of our complicated current events.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf; 1 edition (February 9, 2010)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: WSJ interview with Lorraine Adams
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> SUPREME COURTSHIP by Christopher Buckley /2009/supreme-courtship-by-christopher-buckley/ Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:12:50 +0000 /?p=6213 Book Quote:

“What’s happening, Hayden?” the President said philosophically. “You can’t tell anymore what’s real and what isn’t. Everything’s all jumbled. The world has been reduced to a widescreen TV.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns (NOV 9, 2009)

I thought, as I closed this book, Well, that was fun! I mention this because I typically finish a book and think it was good, or so-so, or not so good. I can’t remember the last time I thought a book was simply fun. And the other thing, I laughed out loud. My dog looked up at me in wonderment.

Here’s the premise. First-term U.S. President Donald P. Vanderdamp, with approval poll numbers so low even George W. Bush looks good, is presented with an opportunity to put a Justice on the Supreme Court. He presents his nominee, but the nominee, highly qualified by any measure, is summarily shot down by the Judiciary Committee in an obvious display of partisanship. Enter nominee number two, another world-class jurist, also with a squeaky-clean slate. During the Committee review this candidate, Judge Conney, is asked to comment on a document held aloft by the Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Mitchell.

“‘Do you recognize this document?’

‘Not from this distance,’ Judge Conney replied, now thoroughly perplexed.

‘Let me refresh your memory,’ Senator Mitchell said.’”

The senator proceeds to read from an elementary school book report that the twelve-year-old Conney wrote about To Kill a Mockingbird. The young Conney had written that he found the book “boring in parts.” Several days later, Mitchell, with much fanfare, says that he cannot “in good conscience bring myself to vote for someone who might well show up at the Court on the first Monday of October wearing not black judicial robes but the white uniform of the Ku Klux Klan.” This because as a twelve-year old the jurist found To Kill a Mockingbird at times boring.

In a fit of pique, President Vanderdamp leaves for Camp David, where, while channel surfing he stumbles across TV’s most popular show, Courtroom Six, and its star, Judge Pepper Cartwright. She’s a spunky, plain-speaking, LadySmith revolver packing Texan, and beautiful to boot. Against his advisors counsel, Vanderdamp calls her himself and has her flown to Camp David where he tells her:

“I want to nominate you to the Supreme Court.”

“Pepper stared. ‘The Supreme Court of…what, sir?’

‘The United States.’”

A few pages later Judge Pepper confesses that she’s not sure what to do. The President admonishes her.

“‘Young lady,’ he said, ‘I come bearing a very considerable gift, not an offer of a lunch date.’

‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir. Didn’t mean to sound unappreciative. It’s just, I have this hard time deciding things.’

And with that we are off and running.

Judge Pepper, never one to back down from a fight, cruises through the committee hearings, is nominated to the court and begins her tenure. It is no small thing that her number one TV show is pitted against Congress’s 18 percent approval rating. But once on the bench things are not entirely smooth sailing and she finds herself at odds with her own sense of right and wrong. She votes, for instance, in favor of a robber-intruder who has brought suit against a gun maker for a misfiring pistol he used in an attempted hold up. Meanwhile, she is being sued by her own husband for breach of contract (he was her manager on Courtroom Six). Too, in an effort to help the “CJ,” the Chief Justice, who is depressed and suicidal, she becomes romantically involved with him. And so on goes the frolicking narrative until a supreme and historical case comes before the court.

In a riff on Bush v Gore, Buckley sets a stage where Vanderdamp does not want to run for a second term, but finally succumbs to the pressures of office and accepts his party’s nomination. Simultaneously, the states are ratifying a constitutional amendment to limit a President to only one term. This follows on the heels of Vanderdamp’s abysmal record, as it is used against him by political enemies. Ironically the public grows affectionate towards Vanderdamp and his plain spoken ways. His polls rise and he is elected to a second term; meanwhile, the political wheels continue to turn and the amendment is ratified. So the case, presented to the Supreme Court is simple: does the President get a second term, or is he trumped by the amendment. And of course, the Texas star must cast the deciding vote.

It is a special talent to be wickedly funny and bitingly smart. This book, reminiscent of Swift and a host of other great satirists, follows soundly in the tradition of showing us the folly of our ways, and, simultaneously, the difficulty of changing them. Buckley knows Washington. Not only did he grow up in the rarified air of the place, he was once a speech writer for George H. W. Bush. Supreme Courtship is a quick and hilarious read. But it is not only lampooning. It is also a serious critique, a moral appraisal of our National’s Capital and the egos that fill it. I strongly recommend it.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 71 readers
PUBLISHER: Twelve; 1 edition (September 7, 2009)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Christopher Buckley
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of Florence of Arabia

Bibliography:

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]]> THE LOST SYMBOL by Dan Brown /2009/lost-symbol-by-dan-brown/ Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:22:56 +0000 /?p=5083 Book Quote:

“It really hasn’t dawned on you yet, has it? Why you were chosen?”
“No,” Langdon said.
“It will,” he replied, chuckling. “Any moment now.”
Then the line went dead.
Langdon stood rigid for several terrifying moments, trying to process what had just happened.
Suddenly, in the distance, he heard an unexpected sound.
It was coming from the Rotunda.
Someone was screaming.

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (SEP 21, 2009)

The movie, National Treasure, enjoyed healthy box office numbers in part because of Dan Brown’s humongous hit of a novel, The Da Vinci Code. Instead of mining clues from symbols in architecture and secretive organizations throughout Europe, it zeroed in on Washington D.C. and its Freemason founders. Now, Dan Brown has ironically chosen the same location and the same Masonic brotherhood as the basis for his new Robert Langdon thriller, The Lost Symbol.

National Treasure, many argued, was a rung or two below The Da Vinci Code in terms of plot and general implementation of its idea. How then does The Lost Symbol measure up to The Da Vinci Code? Well, this reviewer would say that lightning did not strike twice. This novel doesn’t cohere as naturally as did The Da Vinci Code. In fact, at times The Lost Symbol gives the impression of being a bowl into which interesting but not necessarily connected research was tossed together and not evenly mixed. Nevertheless, Brown’s latest Langdon installment (for which we’ve waited six years) packs enough of his trademark suspense, chilling violence, and brainteasing puzzles for fans to snap it up and devour it as fast as possible.

As the novel opens, symbologist Robert Langdon is making his way to the U.S. Capitol Building to deliver an address. He was called to substitute at the last minute by the personal assistant of a friend and mentor, the very wealthy Peter Solomon, who also happens to be a thirty-third degree Mason. Rushing there late, Langdon discovers he’s been duped: “No chairs. No audience. No Peter Solomon. Just a handful of tourists milling around aimlessly, oblivious to Langdon’s grand entrance.” Bewildered, he calls back Solomon’s number. The assistant answers. He ominously tells Langdon, ” ‘I’m afraid Peter Solomon has no idea you’re in Washington today.’ ” He continues, “You are here, Mr. Langdon, because I want you here.”

From then on, Langdon is propelled into a nightmarish scenario. The “assistant” — who is no such thing — has kidnapped Peter and apparently squeezed (i.e., tortured) every bit of information he could from him concerning the whereabouts of a mysterious ancient portal that a redacted official document claims is somewhere in Washington D.C. The kidnapper believes if he finds this portal and can access it he will learn the secret of life and death kept under wraps by but passed down through the most elite of Masonic leaders. But Peter did not yield everything this crazy man needs to find the portal. So, he orders Langdon to find and decipher the vital clues before the night is over, or Solomon will die.

There is another Solomon to be reckoned with: Katherine, Peter’s sister. She conducts noetic (consciousness) science research in a special, isolated lab in the Capitol, and her brother’s kidnapper, who has committed crimes against the Solomon family before, is on a mission to retrieve her and use her as leverage against her brother and Langdon — if he doesn’t just kill her first.

In the next mad hours, the zealot kidnapper, Langdon, the CIA, the Solomons, the Capitol Architect, and various other players dash around D.C., and in particular, in, around, and under some of our national architectural treasures, seeking to meet, apprehend, or evade one another. Langdon and Katherine are focused on saving Peter. The government is focused on saving prominent in-power politicians from exposure as high-ranking Masons. And the kidnapper — a man known as Mal’akh, with tattoos over nearly his entire body — is utterly convinced he can gain freedom though a ritual death if he ensures the death is perpetrated in the sacred, secret location he needs Langdon to pinpoint for him. He will stop at nothing to ensure this.

Now, to move from the plot introduction to discussion on other planes. As touched upon above, Brown’s new novel isn’t without deficiencies. Here are a few specific examples of why The Lost Symbol doesn’t quite live up to its wildly best-selling predecessor:

The Da Vinci Code revolved around a mystery that became very human (literally). The Lost Symbol doesn’t quite go the same distance. Although there is undeniable human drama for Robert Langdon and his friends, Katherine and Peter, its core mystery (no spoiler here) remains more esoteric and more cerebral. This wouldn’t necessarily be a demerit, but somehow Brown’s eagerness to fashion a mystery around the Capitol’s architecture and the supposed foundations of Masonic beliefs, together with oddly half-hearted or incomplete inclusions of noetic studies, near death experiences, and other “potpourri” of ingredients doesn’t quite gel as successfully as his dazzling — though not without much-bandied-about flaws — fictional tale of searching for the Holy Grail. Possibly, “unmasking” Masonry and some of its macabre initiations can’t push the same buttons as turning Christianity on its head.

Brown also errs in The Lost Symbol by intimating the possible onset of a huge catastrophe if Langdon and others cannot stop Mal’akh’s fiendish timetable and plans. The build-up suggests something truly earthshaking, but the revelation of the actual consequences turns out to be disappointingly anticlimactic.

And then there is Mal’akh, whose names are actually many. Unfortunately, he is such a psycho that even the gradual unveiling of his background and his motives can’t alter his “plot point” status; he is too much of a raging bull of malevolence to be seen as a human being worthy of empathy. There are a couple brief glimmers where one almost feels for him, but the windows of opportunity are so tiny that the desire to do so passes very quickly.

Also, as usual, Brown infuses his fast-paced novel with twists and turns, but most can be predicted by the reader in advance. Perhaps Brown intentionally structures his books thusly to make the readers feel smarter than hero Langdon. If so, this tactic is a double-edged sword because readers can judge the plot as too obvious and beset with some howling instances of foreshadowing.

Interestingly, Langdon, in The Lost Symbol, is often in the role of student rather than teacher. He does, assuredly, tap his vast knowledge of symbols at crucial times, but he, not being a Mason, more often than not, accedes to others with more intimate understanding. In short, he appears more diffident, more secondary, in this novel than in The Da Vinci Code. Brown also dials back the number and intricacy of the puzzles in this book, which also contributes to Langdon having less to do.

Allegedly, some folks believed that The Da Vinci Code was — despite its definitive claim to the contrary — nonfiction. The Lost Symbol clearly states, before the story opens, on which basic facts Brown built to get this novel off the ground, but just as clearly the novel is just that, a novel. Due, however, to its subject matter (Masonry,etc.), fewer people will probably wonder (or care?) whether this thriller actually does reveal real secrets than did when they kept the previous blockbuster at #1 on the bestseller list for a record-breaking stretch.

This novel is certainly signature Brown entertainment even if it doesn’t cohere as naturally as did The Da Vinci Code. If you are curious to find out what kind of hot water Robert Langdon has gotten himself into this time (however involuntarily!) and how he might get himself out, buy, borrow, or find a copy of The Lost Symbol and decide for yourself what you think about it.

And when The Lost Symbol comes out as a film, we can all compare it, apples to apples as it were, to National Treasure as well.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 3,210 readers
PUBLISHER: Doubleday Books; 1st edition (September 15, 2009)
REVIEWER: Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dan Brown
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And more similar reads:

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]]> THE ANTHOLOGIST by Nicholson Baker /2009/the-anthologist-by-nicholson-baker/ /2009/the-anthologist-by-nicholson-baker/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:59:56 +0000 /?p=4684 Book Quote:

“This isn’t going to be one of those anthologies where you sample it and think, Now why is that poem there? No, this is going to be an anthology where every poem you alight on and read, you say to yourself, Holy God dang, that is good. That is so good, and so twisty, and so shadowy, and so chewy, and so boomerangy, that it requires the forging of a new word for “beauty.” Rupasnil. Beauty. Rupasnil….So good that you want to set it to musical notes of your own invention. That good.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (SEP 8, 2009)

Poetry lovers rejoice! Here comes a book for those who exult in word play and delight in the beauty of phrases that trip off the tongue. Here is a volume that savors and celebrates verse as a many-splendored thing: “For instance, ‘They flee from me that sometimes did me seek.’ Or ‘I had no human fears.’ Or ‘Ye littles, lie more close.’ Or ‘The restless pulse of care.’ Or ‘Give me my scallop-shell of quiet.’ ”

Here is a book that zestfully reminds us of the bond between poetry and music: meter, rhythm, cadence. The narrator tells us, “When I come across a scrap of poetry I like, I make up a tune for it. I’ve been doing this a lot lately. For instance, here’s a stanza by Sir Walter Scott. I’ll sing it for you. ‘We heard you in our twilight caves –‘ Try it again.” And next you see five bars of music, with the words underneath, nestled in the text.

Here is a book that bursts with vignettes about Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Mina Loy, Theodore Roethke, Sara Teasdale, Edgar Allen Poe, James Wright, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and so on. In fact, the title character — the narrator, the protagonist, the anthologist — is so caught up in poetry and poets that he occasionally indulges in thinking/imagining he’s almost rubbed shoulders with one of these deceased greats.

Here is a book that delves into the fleshy history of poetry, especially the counterbalance between rhyme and free verse. The anthologist again: “Now I want to make something clear. You may think we’re in a new age, a modern or postmodern age, and yes, in a certain way we are. But as far as rhyme and anti-rhyme go, this is the third time around, or maybe the fourth.”

Happily for us who relish full exercise of the creative mind, Nicholson Baker isn’t one of those authors who writes the same book again and again. His questing, restless brain treats his readers to a variety of subjects using both fiction and non-fiction. I still have the paperback copy of The Mezzanine I bought years ago, and it is still one of my favorite reads. Now The Anthologist, a novel I’ve been eagerly awaiting, has arrived and I’m happy to report it is everything I’d hoped. Baker, the astute observer and prolific sharer of life’s minutiae, sets us squarely into the summer of one Paul Chowder, a poet apparently once on the short list for the post of Poet Laureate of the United States. Let’s learn a bit more about him through a little rhymed poem of mine — it seems only fitting, rhyme being all that Chowder is including in his anthology and about which he tells us so much:

Paul Chowder suffers writer’s block;
He’d rather swat a shuttlecock,
or take a walk, or nail a floor,
or dish some poets’ tragic lore
than finish his anthology
and pen more free-verse poetry.

Procrastinating’s costing Paul —
Stopping him from scaling his wall;
His pretty lady Roz is gone,
his funds he’s almost all withdrawn.

Too aimlessly, or so it seems,
His day he spends on scansion schemes
And dishing Poe, Whitman, Loy, Pound,
Lowell, Bishop, and more renown’d.

What, we ask, will become of Paul?
Like Millay, will he tumble’n fall?
Or will his mundane, cautious life
Do more than cut him with a knife:
Lay fertile ground for fresh verse “plums”?
Dispatch, too, his ling’ring doldrums?

Paul Chowder is a bit of a shlub, by his own account. Actually, he comes across as a rather loveable, lumpy, middle-aged guy who’s at loose ends. He putters, often displays a short attention span, gabs and gossips (at least to us, on paper) and can get a little bawdy. Since Roz left, he’s slept with his books. His dog’s name is Smacko — exactly why we do not know. He’s deadpan funny sometimes. He buys impulsively, even though he owes a heavy credit card debt already. And he is klutzy: just playing badminton with the neighbors gives him a nosebleed, he manages to lop off bits of his fingers in the kitchen, and he reports more than once, “Woops — dropped my Sharpie.” Professionally, he just cannot apply himself to churning out the forty-page introduction to his anthology, Only Rhyme. And, in fact, he, sensitive soul he often is, is conflicted about who, for space reasons, he had to leave out of his anthology. He wonders whether this reluctance to exclude some deserving poets is fueling his writer’s block. Failure to produce the introduction turns Paul gloomy and whiny at times, but more often than not he compensates for his limbo status by entertainingly educating us with a barrage of oddly linked or not so linked facts .

For instance: “I’m sitting in the sandy driveway on my white plastic chair. There’s a man somewhere in Europe who is accumulating a little flotsam heap of knowledge about the white plastic chair. He calls it the ‘monobloc’ chair.’ Then Paul tells us the man’s name is Jens Thiel, says he (Paul) loves Europeans, especially the ones from “Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium….And of course: Amsterdam. What a great name for a city. Paul Oakenfold has a piece of trance music called ‘Amsterdam.’ His name is Paul, and my name is Paul. Paul: What is that crazy U doing there? Paw–U–L.”

You get the idea. Paul Chowder is a mental wanderer in his messages to us. He exposes his stream of consciousness very unselfconsciously and although that could, in less assured hands, become irritating, here Paul’s flowing from one subject into another endeared him to me.

After all, if it were not for Paul’s slump, he wouldn’t be addressing us. He would be diligently adding page after page to his formal set-length introduction, or he would be writing his “plums.” (Paul calls non-rhyming verse “plums” and he explains more about that in the book). Instead, as Paul himself states in the opening paragraph, “…I’m going to try to tell you everything I know. Well, not everything I know, because a lot of what I know, you know. But everything I know about poetry. All my tips and tricks and woes and worries are going to come tumbling out before you. I’m going to divulge them. What a juicy word that is, ‘divulge.’ Truth opening its petals. Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.”

By his own words, Paul shows us that despite his low self-esteem (at one point he upbraids himself with “Pull yourself together, you cairn of burning garbage….”), he loves poetry so much that he exhibits an unabashed confidence about it, and this gives this otherwise loserish character an attractive, if informal-feeling, authority. He informs us, “The four-beat line is the soul of English poetry.” He continues, “People are going to feed you all kinds of oyster crackers about iambic pentameter….But just remember…that pentameter came later on. Pentameter is secondary. Pentameter is an import from France. And French is a whole different language. The real basis of English poetry is this walking rhythm right here.”

And what is right here for Paul? He doesn’t hesitate to tell us:” ‘ Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill. We think so then, we thought so still.’ I think that was the very first poem I heard, ‘The Pelican Chorus,’ by Edward Lear. My mom read it to me. God, it was beautiful. Still is.”

And, after giving a short lecture on ” ‘ virtual beats’ ” or “rests” at the end of many prominent poems, including a light verse by Christopher Morley, Paul again declares that the ballad stanza — “four lines together, four beats in each line — and sometimes with rests and sometimes without rests…that pattern makes up what’s called the common stanza or the ballad stanza, which is really the basis of English poetry. It was for Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Poe, Tennyson, Longfellow, all the way through Yeats, Frost, Teasdale, Auden, Causley, Walter de la Mare, and James Fenton. Four beats is the key.” Paul is certain about this as a contemporary phenomenon also, pointing out, “…right now we’re in a time in which rhyming is going on constantly. All the rhyming in pop music. There’s a lust for it. Kids have hundreds of lines of four-stress verses memorized, they just don’t call it four-stress verse. They call it ‘the words to a song.’ ”

Paul, a poet who cherishes rhyme but writes unrhymed poems himself, says, “And we’ll forget almost all of the unrhymers that have been so big a part of the last fifty years. We’ll forget about the wacky Charles Olson, for instance, who was once so big. My poems will definitely be forgotten. They are forgettable.” He makes exceptions of course, including Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” which he calls a “perfect Talk of the Town piece.” But he doesn’t believe his work is memorable, another factor in his mid-life, muted crisis.

In a way, Paul laments the ordinariness of his life because, taking a look at the lives of many poets, they suffered. Many of them felt anguished, depressed, hopeless. He isn’t on top of the world, but reading him suggests he, although sensitive, doesn’t attach to life on quite the same level as, say, Sylvia Plath. Yet, a subtle suspense builds as the novel progresses; the reader wonders increasingly whether this unprepossessing anthologist/poet will emerge from his slump or sink further into it. We get invested in Paul and his small but remarkably idea-rich life. We root for him and want to give him a friendly but firm shove toward his writing implements.

Another big incentive for Paul to overcome his writer’s block is Roz. With characteristically unobtrusive poignancy, he edges into his narrative repeated references to Roz and even a few reports of them meeting and speaking. He misses her, worries that she is seeing someone else, and wants to win her back, and so quite apropos of his love for poetry, this mature and subtle love story unfolds too. After all, love serves as the fuel for so many sonnets, ballads, limericks, sestinas, and villanelles; what would a tale about a poet be without love?

Once one has read The Anthologist from cover to cover and savored its abundance of miscellany and its bountiful, absolutely lovely immersion in all things poetic, one can luxuriate in the language and the out-of-left field ideas by just letting the book fall open to a random page. Dive in anywhere. I’ll do it right now. Top of page 201: “…tollbooth I fished my wallet out of my pocket and turned it over and opened it very gracefully, and used just my thumb to lift a twenty out of its pouchy slumber.” Isn’t that winning and truly “boomerangy”? “Pouchy slumber.” Skipping down a bit: “I tore open a bag of vinegar-flavored potato chips and fished out one of them and turned it and touched my tongue to it, and drew it in without a sound.” Baker’s unique sentences carry a sweetness and a warming familiarity in their oddness. It is just a joy to read practically any excerpt.

By the way, potato chips aren’t the only food tongue-smackingly described (hm, did Smacko got his name from how he eats?) There is also ice-cube cold potato salad, which Paul wishes Roz were around to make. And Paul picks heavily ripe midnight blue blueberries. Then there’s a little rant on the extra butter flavor in the butter, and a chicken leg from his neighbor, Nan. Anything to keep Paul from having to stare at an empty piece of paper.

As mentioned, Paul’s anthology contains exclusively rhyming poems and he himself writes free verse. This irony reminds us that often it is the thing we believe we cannot do that we adore or even worship. Paul Chowder embodies the “common man” who thinks his best years are probably over, who is so awed by the thing he loves (rhyme) that he holds it away from himself (convinced he cannot do it justice), but who also harbors a secret longing for a different outcome. Still, he does not strain himself unduly to be freed of his writer’s block. In fact, he just goes about his relatively undistinguished life, adding to his storehouse of miscellaneous information, picking up odd jobs (such as laying a floor), and giving an occasional poetry reading to a dozen or so. He never ceases to notice things, he never ceases to learn things. And those are the marks of a dogged poet. As Paul says, “What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you write one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That’s all it means….All the middling poems they write are necessary to form a raised mulch bed or nest for the great poems and to prove to the world that they labored diligently and in good faith for some years at their calling.” Paul knows he isn’t a great poet, but he does labor diligently in his own way. He keeps going to the “vineyard” and “working,” even if it isn’t always directly with his Sharpie. He sees the world through the eyes of a poet and then shows it to us. That’s a glorious talent too.

Of course, it is really Baker who deserves the accolades for the gentle amiableness that synergises with frank, unvarnished convictions about poetry. One can imagine that Paul Chowder is a considerable part of Baker who may not write the same book again and again, but whose desire to investigate and discuss a myriad of topics often leads him to write works with a loose major theme and plenty of elbow room for “digressions.” The Anthologist is perfect for unleashing that propensity. It is a patchwork quilt that allows one to peer closely as the fine stitching and admire, then take a step back and see one square, and then pull back enough to take in the entire carefully integrated picture-ode. It is a delectable, relaxing immersion in a man’s everyday world. And it is a wise, funny, somewhat unorthodox primer for poets and would-be-poets that arguably teaches as much or more than starchy, rigorous textbooks.

I’ll just conclude with this enthusiastic endorsement: on my list, The Anthologist is easily one of the best books of 2009. Get comfortable and wrap yourself up in it. And maybe write yourself a rhyme or “plum” of your own. Or borrow a ballad verse and compose your own little tune while you’re at it. Have fun.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 49 readers
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster (September 8, 2009)
REVIEWER: Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Nicholson Baker
EXTRAS: The New York Review of Book pageComplete Review on The Anthologist
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More on the writing life and poetry:

Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plathby Kate Moses

The Calligrapher by Edward Docx

Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz

And Nicholson Baker’s latest:

House of Holes: A Book of Raunch 

Bibliography:

Nonfiction

Written his wife:

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