1950s – 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 RENATO THE PAINTER by Eugene Mirabelli /2014/renato-the-painter-by-eugene-mirabelli/ Sun, 19 Jan 2014 13:15:15 +0000 /?p=25105 Book Quote:

“I don’t know how you can confuse drawings by Gustav Klimt with drawings by Egon Schiele. Schiele’s line jerks and cuts like a knife being dragged through flesh–his own, I suspect–whereas Klimt has fluid, caressing stroke. Schiele made a lot of interesting sketches of young girls, but wasn’t careful and eventually got himself a couple of weeks in jail. All I know is, if you let them hang around your studio and do whatever they’re forbidden to do at home, like reading a book or eating french fries or whatever, after a while they’ll relax and sprawl this way and that and now you’ve got yourself a spicy little twelve-year-old model, plus a chance at prison time.”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JAN 19, 2014)

Renato the Painter by Eugene Mirabelli is a fictional memoir about a contemporary painter living in the Boston area. The novel starts when Renato is just days old, a foundling, and continues to the present time, when he is in his 70’s. Renato is a man with a fierce pride in his art, unrepentant sexual appetites and strong personal loyalties. He is very dissatisfied with his status in the art world, feeling that the art world has left him behind. He hasn’t had a gallery show in some time and is getting depressed about his prospects. His family life is complicated. He lives in his studio on one side of the Charles River and his wife, Alba, lives in a condo on the other side. Their relationship is passionate, but sometimes combative. Both Renato and Alba appear comfortable living separate lives. Renato has children by Alba, his wife, and by Zoe, a sometimes lover. He sees both women who know and like each other. Renato has numerous friends, mostly other artists who he meets for drinks or coffee and to bemoan the state of the current art world. His best friend died some time ago and he misses him. He’s worried about his prostate and getting old and being forgotten.

Renato is living the life of the macho painter of the 1950’s. His life is filled with exuberant sex and no less exuberant memories. He has as much time as he wants in his studio. His wife, Alba, lives on the other side of the river, available for occasional sex, for good food, thoughtful advice and being a good mother. He regularly sees Zoe, one of his former lovers, with whom he has a child. Alba, Zoe and all their children know each other and are comfortable with the complicated family. Renato, for all his complaints about lack of recognition, appears to have no real financial worries. He gets to paint, to worry to his heart’s content, and to enjoy the love, lust and affection of others. His social life with other male artists is his chance to enjoy complaining about the sorry state of current art affairs.

Renato is in his 70’s, and the time is supposed to be now, but he graduated at 17 from High School in 1948, so he would be 82 or 83 today. His voice reminds me of artists I have met who would be in their 80’s today. The voice of his youth fits with the 1930’s. The novel captures that period well, and pretty accurately captures the voice of artists I knew in 2000, when they were then in their 70’s. His voice recalls the romantic machismo of the Beats, the abstract expressionists and their artistic progeny. There is an authentic ring to how he speaks about art and life, but it is somewhat anachronistic.

I found the book very enjoyable, although the last part rambles a bit. Renato is someone I would have liked to meet. I hear his voice loud and clear, but I can’t quite see the paintings. I understand Renato’s fears of ageing and dying unknown; his glorification of sexuality; and his artistic idealism. Peaceful coexistence within the complicated family is a bit implausible, but consistent with the myth of the bohemian artist.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: McPherson (May 14, 2012)
REVIEWER: Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Eugene Mirabelli
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More on painters / artists:

Bibliography:

]]> THE SLEEP ROOM by F. R. Tallis /2013/the-sleep-room-by-f-r-tallis/ Sun, 15 Dec 2013 20:00:12 +0000 /?p=23611 Book Quote:

“Physical pain, no matter how bad, was never the equal of mental pain.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 15, 2013)

The Sleep Room, by F. R. Tallis, is set in England in the 1950s. Dr. James Richardson is offered an opportunity to work with Hugh Maitland, a well-known scholar and “the most influential psychiatrist of his generation.” After he is hired, James travels to Wyldehope Hall, in rural Suffolk, a hospital with twenty-four beds and a narcosis room. Severely disturbed patients are given drugs to induce sleep for twenty-one hours a day. Nurses monitor the patients’ vital signs and rouse them at regular intervals for meals, bathing, and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. James observes that the sleep room is run like a “factory production line;” the patients, who wear white gowns, resemble “compliant ghosts.”

Most of the story is narrated by Richardson, an insecure and intense young man who interacts with nurses and the occasional doctor, but spends much of his time alone or with his sleeping patients. It is unsurprising that his imagination soon starts playing tricks on him. He has upsetting dreams, hears strange noises, and notices that objects are disappearing or disturbed. Is there a supernatural explanation for these peculiar phenomena? We sympathize with the increasingly anxious Richardson as he grows ever more uncertain about the efficacy of narcosis and the wisdom of his remaining at Wyldehope. Fortunately, James finds much-needed solace in the arms of Jane Turner, a lovely nurse to whom he is deeply attracted.

Frank Tallis is a talented writer — his Max Liebermann series of historical mysteries is outstanding — who foreshadows the spine-chilling events to come by creating a creepy and sinister mood and setting his novel in a remote and forbidding locale. Tallis, an experienced clinical psychologist and an expert in the history of his field, educates us about bizarre and frightening treatments that were once routinely administered by respected medical practitioners. The conclusion is sure to generate controversy. Some will pronounce it clever; others (myself included) may find it gimmicky and contrived. Nevertheless, The Sleep Room is a compelling exploration of the nature of reality, the fragility of the human mind, and the arrogance of power-hungry physicians who cruelly exploit the men and women in their care.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Pegasus (October 1, 2013)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Frank Tallis
EXTRAS: Writing The Sleep Room
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

The Liebermann Papers:

Writing as F. R. Tallis

Nonfiction:

]]> 11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King /2011/112263-a-novel-by-stephen-king/ Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:34:45 +0000 /?p=21953 Book Quote:

“It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life…A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (NOV 8, 2011)

Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s Time and Again, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.

For King fans, the voice is familiar—the hapless, reluctant, lonely, courageous, romantic, destiny-bound hero/scarred social warrior. The story is King-esque– towering, prophetic, and flamboyant. For non-King readers, this may not chime. It may seem melodramatic, exaggerated, histrionic. But he isn’t attempting to write a deep and complex revisionist history. This is mainstream entertainment; King is King of what King does—the unruly escapist story with a huge and sentimental heart. The “Constant Reader” will approve.

This is not horror, in case you are strictly old school fans. However, there is a touch of the supernatural via time-travel. And there is blood and gore sprayed here and there. If you liked Under the Dome,  you will likely enjoy this one. If you are new to King, and are reading this for more insight into the fateful day of 11/22/63, or a “what would the world be like if…?,” this is not King’s principle design. It hovers, yes, and is material only to the primary theme.

Somewhere in the space-time continuum between preservation and progress is the “obdurate past” and the malleable future. Do we have the moral right to alter history, if we could? This is Jake Epping’s noble journey–to answer that question—and, even more so, to ask it. The thrust of the story centers on Jake and the other fictional characters King created; however, JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and other historical characters are an essential backdrop and stimulus to the events that unfold. King’s best nuances illuminate how the past and the present have a harmony that echoes, sings, dances, and shadows.

“It’s all of a piece…It’s an echo so close to perfect you can’t tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning.”

English schoolteacher Jake Epping is introduced to a portal to the past by his friend, Al Templeton, who owns a greasy spoon diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Al discovered it years ago, and has made many “trips” back and forth, but he is too sick now to return. The portal brings you to September 9, 1958, 11:58 am. No matter how many days, months, or years you stay, you always return two minutes later on the day you left, 2011 (but you will biologically age).

Jake’s mission is to stay five years, keep tabs on Oswald and uncover the truth of the Kennedy assassination controversy—and, if Oswald acted alone, to stop him. King provides details that make the time-travel plausible—suspending disbelief in that sense is playfully easy. Compounding Jake’s goal is his desire to change other pieces of the past—to change other tragedies, which confronts the prophecy that “the past is obdurate,” those words that he returns to.

Jake assumes the identity of George Amberson, and makes a couple of trial runs before committing to his five-year stay. He eventually lands in the fictional town of Jodie, Texas, a town north of Dallas, where he can earn a living as a teacher, and tail Oswald during his off-hours. It is in Jodie where the moral questions and most of the adventure lodge in the reader’s heart. Jake/George becomes emotionally invested in the people, the town, and one attractive librarian, Sadie Dunhill. Inevitably, his mission and his new life rub together, generating poignant conflicts and urgent demands that threaten to undermine his quest.

King’s strengths include his sense of place and time. He renders 1958 so specifically that you will be transported. Ten-cent root beers with foam; fin-tailed Chevrolets; cigarette smoke wafting inside and out; Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis from the jukebox; dancing cheek-to-cheek; mink stoles and Moxie soda; rotary dial phones and party lines, and so much more to texturize the “Land of Ago.” There’s even a meta-fictional surprise in Derry, where characters from a former novel appear, connecting George with the past’s push on the present. King makes it credible for memories to branch arterially from past to present, for different time periods to cast hazy shadows and intersections on each other. Parallels flourish, coincidences shade.

The novel is both story and character-driven, but there’s no question of the white hats vs. the black hats here. King removes the guesswork, which can be a drawback to discovery. Dialogue is earnestly overstated, motives occasionally simplified, and plot devices conveniently executed, or with a bait-and-switch technique. He isn’t one for much subtlety, justifying (too many) coincidences by cleverly making coincidence part of the theme. But it works, and beneath it all is an enchanting story. The reader cares as passionately as Jake. Sadie, however, is the unforgettable character in this book. Jake/George may be the hero, but Sadie is the spirited touchstone. Comely, fetchingly clumsy, and wounded, she dances off the pages.

Despite the voluminous research done by King into the Oswald controversy, his conclusions are woven into the book rather cursorily, but emphatically. Does this matter? It might, especially to readers who feel that authorial intrusion into the narrative was intemperate. The reader doesn’t have to necessarily agree with a character’s actions, but if a historical context is displayed as fact, but the facts don’t add up for the reader, then it falls apart.

No popular author closes a story like Stephen King. Consummately sublime and serendipitous, he builds deft bridges and ladders that are not only cosmic and mystical, but also fitting and relevant. He captures in a few chapters what an evocative song can capture in a few minutes. Whatever his flaws, his rewards are plentiful. Classy, cosmic, mystical, and kaleidoscopic–it was radiant and clear, through a glass, darkly.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 2250 readers
PUBLISHER: Scribner; Original edition (November 8, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Stephen King
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*1Takes place in Castle Rock, Maine
*2Takes place in Derry, Maine
*3 Takes place in Little Tall Island, Maine
*P These two books have one “pinhole” vision into each other

The Dark Tower Series

Originally written as Richard Bachman

Co-written with Peter Straub

Non-Fiction:

And the Movies created from his books:

]]> MAKEDA by Randall Robinson /2011/makeda-by-randall-robinson/ Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:50:01 +0000 /?p=20880 Book Quote:

“Her eyes came open. Fully open. But she could no longer see the Abyssinian mountain that the Sabbath sun had turned like fire…
She could no longer see anything. She was blind.
For a long and disconcerting moment, she did not know who she was or where she was.  Only five to eight seconds later did she begin to realize that she had been dreaming.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (SEP 10, 2011)

Makeda is the title character of Randall Robinson’s astounding, thought provoking, and highly engaging novel. A blind retired “laundress,” Makeda’s life is anchored in her tiny, often sun-filled, parlour in Richmond, Virginia. Her modest circumstances, after a life of hardship, stand in stark contrast to her appearance and demeanor: at home, at church and in the market, she is usually clad in richly embroidered beautiful African gowns and she radiates wisdom and emotional strength, instilling respect wherever she goes. Some unknown visitors leave gifts for her, or speak to her as if she were somebody else…

Often, when she lifts her unseeing eyes toward the sun, her posture and diction change: she appears to have moved from one instant to the next – like a time traveller – into a far away place. She dreams “in pictures – color pictures, pictures of people, pictures of odd places – though she had never in her life seen a human soul…” she tells Gray, her youngest grandson, later. Recalling her dreams in great detail, she will only allow Gray, her “spirit child,” to share her secrets. “I remember at that point she said to me: Things are almost never what you, with your two eyes, can see them being. Sometimes they are less, but most of the time they are more. Worlds and worlds more, son.”

Makeda’s dreams, the “special ones,” take her to different places in Africa, regions that all have a special spiritual connection to African-American history. The dream stories are so vividly told, and, with each recurrence, grow in such intricate detail, that they pull the reader into those past lives just as much as Gray, letting us forget that it may be “just a dream.” Or is it? Is there more to it? Makeda knows where she has been and who she is in her dreams; did these places really exist at some time in the past? Is there surviving evidence of them today? Why those places and not others? What are the connections of those people to her own life and time? Many questions occupy her mind. Her curiosity grows to the point that she, after warning her grandson not to share his knowledge with anybody, instructs him to investigate any factual bases of what she tells him. Especially the amazing story of the Dogon people in Mali, West Africa, fascinates both: Dogon cosmology claims to have known about Sirius and his three stars hundreds or, maybe, thousands of years before science could prove their claim. Gray, by then a college student, will have to find a way to make this journey for his grandmother, and as it turns out, also for himself.

Robinson, recognized for his extensive non-fiction writing on topics that range from African-American socio-politics to international human rights, ventures with Makeda beyond any confines of a more traditional novel. The very moving account of Gray’s coming-of-age journey, the depiction of his close ties to his grandmother, set against the backdrop of the family’s difficult circumstances in nineteen fifties and sixties, represent by themselves a richly rewarding story. Yet, Makeda’s dream travels are more than a key for Gray’s own journey in search for identity and, eventual, love. They are like virtual spiritual doors that Robinson opens that lead us into his multi-layered vision of a broad-based African-American identity that, while recognizing its contemporary challenges, is intimately connecting it back to its African roots and its African historical and spiritual heritage.

To expand on his theme, the author introduces fictional and existing expert voices that speak to the young people in Gray’s college environment. For many students and readers, these are provocative and challenging propositions. For Gray, through the many talks with his grandmother, they are, more than anything, confirmation of his learning and evolving vision of his own role in life.

Robinson is an exquisite writer and stylist who brings the different narrative strands and themes harmoniously together and into one fascinating and enriching reading experience. I want to add on a personal level, that I found Robinson’s choices for Makeda’s “dream places and times” highly relevant for the themes of the novel. For me, they have been meaningful also as they reminded me of my own journeys of discovery into Africa and, especially of my very own very similar experience in Mali’s Dogon region.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: OpenLens; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Randall Robinson
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

]]> A DEATH IN SUMMER by Benjamin Black /2011/death-in-summer-by-benjamin-black/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:23:36 +0000 /?p=20420 Book Quote:

“You think you’ve seen the worst of the world,” she said, “but the world and its wicked ways can always surprise you.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  AUG 25, 2011)

Irish author John Banville continues to pick up a number of literary prizes (including the Booker Prize in 2005) for his novels, but he sidelines with the pseudonym Benjamin Black for a series of ‘50s crime novels set in Dublin. Banville aka Black has produced these crime novels steadily over the past few years: Christine Falls (2006), The Silver Swan (2007), The Lemur (2008), Elegy for April (2010), and now A Death in Summer.  The Lemur is a stand-alone mystery which shifts from New York to Dublin, but the other novels comprise the Quirke series–a series of mysteries featuring a Dublin pathologist. Banville states that reading the roman durs of Simenon inspired him to try his hand at writing crime fiction. While reading Simenon, he noted the “simple language and direct, lightweight narrative,” accompanied by existentialist thought and decided to “try it.”

In A Death in Summer, pathologist Quirke, a slipping-off-the-wagon middle-aged alcoholic with a fascination for amateur sleuthing is called to the scene of a death. The dead man is the fabulously wealthy newspaper tycoon, Richard Jewell, known to his few friends and his many enemies as Diamond Dick “a ruthless bastard, …, who would tear out your heart as quick as look at you.” Jewell is dead from a shotgun blast at close range, and someone put the gun in the victim’s hands in a poor attempt to pass the death off as a suicide. Only a rudimentary knowledge of guns is enough to know that a shotgun is not the natural or easy choice for a suicide, so Quirke who arrives on the scene soon after Inspector Hackett knows he’s looking at a murder case.

The book’s opening scene takes place at Brooklands, the palatial country estate of Dick Diamond. What should be an entrancing, delightful summer day is marred by the bloody, violent crime:

“It felt strange to Hackett to be standing here, on a fine country estate, with the birds singing all about and a slab of sunlight falling at his heels from the open doorway of Jewell’s office, and at the same time to have that old familiar smell of violent death in his nostrils. Not that he had smelled it so very often, but once caught it was never forgotten, that mingled faint stink of blood and excrement and something else, something thin and sharp and insidious, the smell of terror itself, perhaps, or of despair—or was he being fanciful? Could despair and terror really leave a trace?”

This scene, the juxtaposition of calm countryside beauty side-by-side with violent death sets the tone for the rest of the book as Quirke pokes around those connected to Jewell. These are the wealthy society elite of Dublin–an impenetrable set who holiday together, conduct business together, party together and whose lives contain many dark secrets. Quirke senses that there’s something not quite right about the family scene at Brooklands. Jewell was murdered and yet apparently no one noticed. Jewell’s servants, including the shifty yard manager Maguire, are noticeably shaken by the crime whereas Jewell’s family treats his death like some sort of minor social inconvenience. Jewell’s cool, elegant French wife, Francoise d’Aubigny, a woman Quirke met once before at a social event, was off riding one of her horses when the murder took place, and Jewell’s half-sister, Dannie is disinterestedly lounging on the sofa drinking gin and tonic when the police arrive:

“Dannie Jewell lifted her glass from the arm of the sofa and took a long drink from it, thirstily, like a child. She held the glass in both hands, and Quirke thought again of Francoise d’Aubigny standing at the window in the embassy that day, with the champagne glass, of the look she had given him, the odd desperateness of it. Who were these two women, really, he wondered, and what was going on here?”

With a man as despised as Dick Jewell, there’s no shortage of suspects. Carlton Sumner, Jewell’s crass business rival who is trying to take over Jewell’s newspaper empire declares he’s amazed that it took this long for someone to murder this much-hated man. Jewell’s wife, the French trophy wife, Francoise doesn’t seem to exactly be the grieving widow. While Inspector Hackett finds himself comparing Francoise to the cool impeccability of Ingrid Bergman, Quirke is inexorably attracted to the new widow. He’s intoxicated by her perfume and her glance. Turning a cold shoulder to his actress girlfriend, Isabel Galloway, Quirke begins peppering his thoughts with French phrases, buys French newspapers, and tries desperately to limit his alcohol consumption to just a few drinks a day.

As with any series detective novel, the private life of the protagonist (Quirke in this case) is juggled with the crime under investigation. A Death in Summer finds Quirke half-heartedly investigating while struggling with his interest in Francois. A large portion of Quirke’s private life in this novel contains Phoebe, Quirke’s daughter and her relationship with Sinclair, a pathologist who works with Quirke. For those late to the Quirke series, some mention is made to the story threads from earlier volumes in the series, but these references are woven into the plot so effectively that it’s easy to catch up with these prior relationships.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 62 readers
PUBLISHER: Henry Holt and Co. (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Benjamin Black
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

Also by John Banville:

 

Bibliography:

Stand-alone:

]]> NEXT TO LOVE by Ellen Feldman /2011/next-to-love-by-ellen-feldman/ Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:54:14 +0000 /?p=19606 Book Quote:

“They love one another with an atavistic ferocity, though, it occurs to Babe sitting in the sunporch, these days perhaps they do not like one another. But she is asking too much of them. Friendship, like marriage, is not all of a piece.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JUL 28, 2011)

“War…next to love, has captured the world’s imagination,” said the British lexicographer Eric Partridge in 1914. And indeed it has. in English classes, we rapidly become acquainted with The Naked and the Dead, All Quiet on the Western Front, For Whom The Bell Tolls, From Here to Eternity, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five…the list goes on and on.

But here’s what we don’t read about: the personal battles that are fought on the home front. We don’t get an upfront-and-personal look at the women behind the men and what war means to them…and to the children they create together.

Next To Love starts out very strong. We meet three childhood friends in Massachusetts – Babe, Millie, and Grace – whose men are on the cusp of going off to World War II. Ms. Feldman deftly juggles their stories and breathes life into their characters. Grace is the beauty who is married to the heir of one of the town’s most illustrious citizens and has a young daughter; Millie is married to Pete, the pharmacist’s son; and Babe is the feisty wrong-side-of-the-tracks gal who is in a committed relationship with an upstanding man who wants to become a teacher.

The period details are handled beautifully. Ellen Feldman summons up an age where instant communication (cell phones, Internet, etc.) did not exist and when lovers wrote their heart out in letters. It’s an age where women were divided into “nice girls” and “tramps” and men kept a stiff upper lip and talked about “honor” and “duty.” And it’s an age when the telegram is feared and one town can suddenly lose several of its beloved American boys overnight.

It’s also a time when there’s a clear divide between men and women. “The husbands speak the language of drills, marches, and officers who don’t know which end is up; the wives speak the dialect of carping landladies, dirty bathrooms and no hot water to wash their hair, and endless spirit-killing games of bridge. Since there is no common tongue between them, they communicate in sex,” writes Ms. Feldman. In this aspect, the book calls to mind another excellent one: Siobhan Fallon’s You Know When The Men Are Gone.

Profound change comes after the war. The novel takes on a lot in a scant 300 pages and the characters I had come to love in the first half begin to feel a little bit like stand-ins as the forces of history flow past. Yet Ms. Feldman’s riveting style keeps the reader in a “what’s next?” mode.

We are at their side as they try to understand the men who have been forever changed by the horrors of war; one of them has what would be called post-traumatic stress disorder today. We see the toll it takes on their young children who can only fantasize about the fathers they have never met. And we are on the sidelines of what is now familiar milestones: the way that black veterans are shuffled aside after the war, unable to participate in the new prosperity; the treatment of women as frivolous things, not worthy of jobs or deep thoughts; the bigotry against Jews, ironically, after a war where six million of them were callously murdered.

Ultimately, the book is focused on female friendship – at turns, courageous, poignant, and fragile. The friendships are not idealized, but rather portrayed to be sustaining, enduring, and nurturing. At its core, it is about survival through life, love, children, war, grief, and resurgence, delivered with just the right amount of drama and intensity.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 88 readers
PUBLISHER: Spiegel & Grau (July 26, 2011)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Ellen Feldman
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: As mentioned above:

Read our review of Ellen Feldman’s:

 

Bibliography:

]]> WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK by Manuel Munoz /2011/what-you-see-in-the-dark-by-manuel-munoz/ Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:48:02 +0000 /?p=17042 Book Quote:

“You’ll understand one day, her mother had said at the bus station. When you find a man of your own, you’ll know why you’ll run toward him.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 28, 2011)

What do you see in the dark? Well, that partly depends on your perspective. In Munoz’s stylistic mise-en-scène novel, the second-person point of view frames the watchful eye and disguises the wary teller. Reading this story is like peering through Hitchcock’s lens—the camera as observer’s tool and observer as camera–with light and shadow and space concentrated and dispersed frame by frame, sentence by sentence.

Munoz applied the famous director’s noir techniques to create a story about murder, madness, and longing amid the desire and antipathy of a working-class California town. Lives intersect, scenes juxtapose, and shades of gray color the landscape of the novel. Scenes of tenderness dovetail with acts of menace, plaintive music integrates with the rattling of chains, dark interiors annex the stark white heat of day.

In the hushed and dusty working-class town of Bakersfield, California, in the late 1950’s, the locals jealously watch the fresh and guarded romance of Dan and Teresa. Dan is the rugged bartender/guitarist and sexy son of Arlene, a bitter waitress at the downtown café and the abandoned wife of a motel owner out on the changing Highway 99. Teresa, a shoe saleswoman and aspiring singer, is the willowy Mexican-American daughter of a mother who left her to chase dreams of love in Texas. The narrow-minded prejudices of the town encroach upon the open bud of romance, and the ill-fated romance takes an ineluctable bloody turn. We know from the start that that someone dies, but it is the why and how and where that sustains the tension of the story.

At the height of Dan and Teresa’s love story, the glitter and fantasy of Hollywood comes to Bakersfield as the crew arrives to shoot select scenes of the iconic movie we know today as PSYCHO. The unnamed Actress and Director reveal themselves implicitly through details of the unnamed film-in-progress. It was evident when they scouted exterior shots for the motel, and during the illustrious shower scene. The interior monologues of the Actress and the frame by frame shoot of that most renowned scene in movie history is worth the price of admission alone. It felt as if Munoz had been standing next to Hitchcock. The author’s interpretation of historical data are transposed with polished clarity into film as words, and the searing silences that Hitchcock is so famous for lands on the page in the spaces between passages.

There are superbly captured details and Hitchcockian motifs that add subtlety to the story and incite the reader’s suspense, such as stairwells, keys, mothers, blondes, confined spaces, as well as loss of identity and optical symbols. The plate glass window of the café serves up a film frame metaphor (and the lens of a camera). Moral ambiguity, mirrors, bars and grills, and kisses, and of course—the MacGuffin, are all woven in with care and control.

My primary criticism is that the narrative is dry and cerebral. I was academically stimulated by the author’s style and complexity of techniques, but occasionally it felt studied and detached. The muted coolness kept me at a distance; I wasn’t emotionally engaged, but I was intellectually absorbed. The frequent jump-cuts were its strength, but also its drawback.

So what do you see in the dark? The eyes, said Hitchcock, the eyes said it all.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 17 readers
PUBLISHER: Algonquin Books (March 29, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Manuel Muñoz
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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]]> FOREIGN BODIES by Cynthia Ozick /2010/foreign-bodies-by-cynthia-ozick/ Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:43:38 +0000 /?p=13671 Book Quote:

“And still it was the return to the quotidian; to the life before. Before what? Bea contemplated it. She had journeyed out as a kind of ambassador, she had turned into a spy against every ingrained expectation, and it was true: sometimes an ambassador serves as a spy, sometimes a spy is appointed ambassador. She had gone roving for Marvin to begin with – for Marvin, yes, but was it only for Marvin? Something had altered. She had a stake in it, she was embroiled. It was no longer Marvin’s need. The world was filled with need – wherever she looked, need!”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (NOV 19, 2010)

Cynthia Ozick, author of The Shawl and Trust, two of my favorite books, has written a gem of a novel in Foreign Bodies. A slithering and taut comedy of errors, this book examines issues of betrayal and trust, literal and emotional exile, regret and rage, Judaism in post-World War II Europe and the meaning of art in one’s life. While based on themes similar to Henry James’ The Ambassadors, this novel is distinctly and uniquely Ozick’s.

It is 1952 and 48 year-old Bea Nightingale has been teaching English to boys in a technical school for decades. They are more interested in other things than Shakespeare and Dickens but Bea gives it her best shot each semester. Once briefly married to Leo, a composer and pianist, Bea has been divorced for decades and Leo has gone on to do very well as a composer of scores for Hollywood movies. After Leo left Bea, he also left his grand piano which takes up a huge place in Bea’s small Manhattan apartment. Leo was supposed to pick up the piano and never did. It has sat untouched for years, an homage to Bea’s anger and loss, along with its symbolic meaning of art as creation.

One day, out of the blue, Bea gets a letter from her semi-estranged brother, Marvin, asking her to to find his son Julian, an ex-pat who took a college year abroad and has not returned after three years. Marvin is a legend in his own mind, an arrogant, controlling, rude man who has made his fortune in airline parts in California. His wife Margaret, is a blue-blood who Marvin met at Princeton when he was there on scholarship. She is now in a rehab center ostensibly because the loss of Julian has sent her over the edge. Julian was always the lost child, the one who Marvin considered a loss. He had his head in the clouds and his desire was to write though Marvin wanted him to become a scientist. He has one other child, Iris, who is on the mark and following Marvin’s goals for her to become a scientist. Marvin tells Bea in his letter, that he knows she is going on holiday to Paris and he’d like her to look up Julian and get him to come home. He feels that she must do this for what else does she do in her life but teach thugs. (As a matter of clarity, Marvin’s last name is Nachtigal and Bea’s is Nightingale. She changed her name because she thought it would be easier for her students to pronounce).

On Bea’s trip to Paris, she makes two minor attempts at the end of her trip to contact Julian but is unsuccessful. He has already left his apartment and his where-abouts are unknown. Bea returns to New York and gets a scathing letter from Marvin all but ripping her to shreds. How she is able to stand his abuse is a comment on her own sense of self-deprecation. Marvin has a new idea. His daughter Iris is close to Julian and knows him well. He will send Iris to Bea’s for a few days and she will tell Bea all about Julian and then Bea will again venture to Paris “knowing” Julian and better able to find him. What ends up happening however is the beginning of a long line of betrayals for which Bea is responsible. Iris does come to New York but instead of Bea going to Paris, Iris goes and Bea makes up a story to Marvin about what is happening. Whatever Bea touches comes back inside-out.

Iris writes to Bea and tells her she plans to stay in Paris. Bea goes back to Paris, this time in search of Iris as well as Julian. What Bea finds in Europe is that Julian is married to Lili, a Romanian holocaust survivor several years older than him. He works part-time in cafes and lives on the money that Marvin sends him. Julian and Iris want nothing to do with Bea and give her the cold shoulder. Instead of returning to Manhattan, Bea impulsively flies to California and contacts her ex-husband, starting off a chain of events that leads to artistic obsession. She also contacts Margaret in her rest home which also leads to dire consequences.

Bea’s betrayals are numerous and though often done with good intentions, end up with horrible repercussions. She is passive in her life but feels like she is able to take control when it comes to others. She has this grandiose sense of what is right for those around her. Bea gives a lot of thought to exile and sense of place and these themes resonate throughout the book. While Julian has chosen to exile himself from his father emotionally and as an ex-patriate, Marvin then chooses to exile Julian from his life unless Julian is willing to take a bribe and come home. Bea again intervenes and betrays Marvin. It is hard to see what is going on in Bea’s mind but there are a lot of deep feelings, especially anger, rage, and regret. While her actions might seem magnanimous to her, they often seem controlling, misguided and horrific to the reader.

Cynthia Ozick has created a small treasure with this novel. Its twists and turns, keeping the reader enthralled and emotionally transfixed. We are led through a maze of human frailty, often disguised as strength, as we are swept away with the undercurrents of duplicity and displacement. This is a must-read for Ozick fans and, for those not familiar with her writing, a good place to start.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 58 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (November 1, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia on Cynthia Ozick
EXTRAS:
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]]> LET THE DEAD LIE by Malla Nunn /2010/let-the-dead-lie-by-malla-nunn/ Sat, 11 Sep 2010 21:22:45 +0000 /?p=12074 Book Quote:

“That a life could be so easily taken without justice or recognition was a lesson he’d learned in childhood. Leading a company of soldiers through war confirmed that nothing was sacred or precious. It was strange how, after four years of training and fighting, the memory of his mother’s death still lurked in the shadows, ready to ambush the present.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (SEP 11, 2010)

Swaziland-born Nunn’s second 1950s South Africa novel opens with a prologue in 1945. Series protagonist Emmanuel Cooper, a major in the South African army at the time, comes across a murdered washerwoman in a Paris doorway and immediately abandons the night’s pleasures to stay with the body until the police arrive: “…it was an insult to abandon a body in a city where law and order had been restored.”

The main narrative opens in May 1953 in Durban and while Cooper remains true to his convictions, his life has gotten more difficult. After his unpopular success solving the murder of a police captain out in the veldt (A Beautiful Place to Die), he finds himself thrown off the police force and racially reclassified – a hazardous position in apartheid South Africa.

Doing some undercover work for his old boss, the Afrikaaner Major van Niekerk, spying on smugglers in the city dockyards, Cooper discovers the body of a murdered white boy, with two young Indians, one a would-be gangster, nearby. Fear replaces defiance when Cooper (falsely) identifies himself as a cop.

“With the National Party now in control, the police had become the most powerful gang in South Africa. The air went out of the Indian’s hard-man act.”

In 1950s South Africa, to be a non-white suspected in the murder of a white is to be already convicted. Cooper recognizes the child – a slum kid who ran errands along the port – and notices that the boy’s notebook, in which he recorded orders, is missing.

But the night is not over for Cooper who encounters the first in a series of reversals. Undaunted, he continues his surreptitious investigation into the killing until finally he is arrested for the boy’s murder and a couple more besides. Though the (planted) evidence is airtight, Major van Niekerk manages to spring Cooper from jail, giving him 48 hours to solve the crime or be re-arrested.

The characters come from various race classifications and nationalities and each has secrets, including Cooper, who’s haunted by the voice of an old soldier. “Like a vulture, the voice of his sergeant major from army basic training eight years previous appeared only when there was a fresh carcass to feed on. If the Scotsman was here in Durban, that could mean only one thing.”

And, of course, there is a woman, Lana, a beautiful confederate who seems to thrive on risk as much as Cooper does and who reveals a new aspect of herself – and another dangerous secret – with every appearance. As the relationship develops Cooper grows to understand more about himself and the women in his life:

“Lana disappeared around a corner, hips swinging, heels clicking. It was no wonder his marriage to Angela had failed. He’d asked too much of her. His buried childhood, the war, police work and an attraction to women with experience of life’s dark places…he couldn’t change who he was. There was no cure for the past. Whether or not he got out of this, he resolved to write Angela and wish her well.”

The one thing all the characters (including a couple from Nunn’s first novel who reappear in Cooper’s life) have in common is fear. Apartheid permeates every aspect of society; the police and the even more dreaded Security Services are the face and might of apartheid.

Nunn, a screenwriter, has a visual way with words and a knack for the noir turn-of-phrase. Introducing a secondary character who will play a fairly substantial role in the story: “The driver of the Chevrolet was a skinny white woman who’d given up being a blond. A trench of dark brown hair ran down the center of her head like a deserted landing strip.”

And a gangster’s Indian guard: “Closer up, Emmanuel saw that the guard was one of those men whose life was best summed up by a series of ex’s. Ex-boxer, ex-wrestler, ex-barroom bouncer.”

The plotting is complex and suspenseful and every scene conveys the sinister feel of South Africa’s apartheid culture. Cooper’s ambiguous racial classification has a suspense all its own.

Cooper’s decency is rock-solid and his character develops with experience. Though Nunn’s books stand alone, you may want to read the first to get the full enjoyment of Cooper’s growing complexity.

Nunn’s fans are also likely to enjoy Deon Meyer’s gritty novels of contemporary South Africa – his second Insp. Benny Griessel novel has just released – and the wonderful apartheid-era crime novels of the late James McClure, featuring white Lieutenant Kramer and black Sergeant Zondi. Most of McClure’s novels are out of print, but Soho Crime has set out to remedy that. McClure’s first two, The Steam Pig and The Caterpillar Cop have been reprinted in paperback this summer, with the other six to come over the next couple years. Highly recommended.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 16 readers
PUBLISHER: Washington Square Press; Original edition (April 20, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Malla Nunn
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
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]]> ELEGY FOR APRIL by Benjamin Black /2010/elegy-for-april-by-benjamin-black/ Thu, 20 May 2010 01:50:54 +0000 /?p=9549 Book Quote:

“Before he went on the latest drinking bout, when he was supposed not to be taking alcohol in any form, he used to take Phoebe to dinner here on Tuesday nights and share a bottle of wine with her, his only tipple of the week. Now, in trepidation, he was going to see if he could take a glass or two of claret again without wanting more. He tried to tell himself he was here solely in the spirit of research, but that fizzing sensation under his breastbone was all too familiar. He wanted a drink, and he was going to have one.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (MAY 19, 2010)

Black’s third 1950s Dublin thriller featuring pathologist Garret Quirke (after Christine Falls and The Silver Swan) finds Quirke in a rehab hospital, from which he will shortly spring himself, for his daughter’s sake.

“Quirke had never known life so lacking in savor. In his first days at St. John’s he had been in too much confusion and distress to notice how everything here seemed leached of colour and texture; gradually, however, the deadness pervading the place began to fascinate him. Nothing at St. John’s could be grasped or held.”

The fog does not dissipate all that much once he’s out, however. Quirke buys himself a fancy car, though he can’t drive – this injects some comic moments into an essentially dark tale – but it can’t quench his thirst for drink, which he fights and succumbs to throughout the story.

Quirke’s daughter Phoebe sets the plot in motion – her friend April Latimer, a junior doctor and very independent woman, is missing though no one will admit it. April’s prominent family has essentially washed their hands of her and most of her friends assume she’s gone off with some man. But Phoebe asks her father to investigate.

Quirke consults his friend Inspector Hackett, stirs up the hornet’s nest of April’s family, and questions April’s rather brittle circle of friends – devious journalist Jimmy, beguiling actress Isabel and exotic and polished Patrick Ojukwu, a handsome Nigerian student, suspected of sleeping with everyone, including April.

Black’s characters, even those who strive for type, like April’s snooty family, become individuals as the story progresses, which doesn’t always make the reader like them better.

Quirke, a canny, opinionated, floundering loner, works at himself, but succumbs easily to temptation. Selfish as he is, though, he is not self-absorbed and his idle reflections often lead to thoughts of others, particularly Phoebe and her concerns.

“Idly he pondered the distinction between solitude and loneliness. Solitude, he conjectured, is being alone, while loneliness is being alone among other people. Was that the case? No, something incomplete there. He had been solitary when the bar was empty, but was he lonely now that these others had appeared?

“Had April Latimer been lonely? It did not seem probable from everything he had heard of her so far.”

Black’s (aka John Banville) plot rises from these well-fleshed characters and the damp, wintry setting as Quirke probes corrosive family secrets and challenges the reign of the Catholic Church in an insular, hidebound city.

Readers of Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin will enjoy Black’s fine atmospheric prose and noirish insight.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 68 readers
PUBLISHER: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Benjamin Black
EXTRAS: Excerpt
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