“In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novels of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely…Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays?”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (NOV 16, 2011)

“Reader, I married him.”

What sensitive reader hasn’t thrilled to the last lines of the novel Jane Eyre, when the mousy and unprepossessing girl triumphantly returns to windswept Thornfield as a mature woman, marrying her one-time employer and great love, Mr. Rochester?

That era of these great wrenching love stories is now dead and gone. Or is it? Can these time-honored stories be rewritten for our current age, adapting to the accepted forces of sexual freedom and feminism? That’s the main focus of Jeffrey Eugenides’ new novel and the theme shows up early on. He writes about his key character: “Madeleine’s love troubles had begun at a time when the French theory she was reading deconstructed the very notion of love.”

You’d expect the author of the ground-breaking Virgin Suicides – a beautifully-rendered mythology about the suicides of five secluded sisters as seen through the eyes of neighborhood boys – and Middlesex, the exhilarating Pulitzer Prize winning multi-generational saga focusing on a hermaphrodite – to bring a fresh energy to the topic. And indeed, Mr. Eugenides does.

The” marriage plot” is a term used to categorize a storyline centered on the courtship rituals between a man and a woman and the potential obstacles they face on the way to the nuptial bed. It often involves a triangle – typically, the woman and man who are fated to be together and a strong rival for the woman’s attention.

So it is here. Madeline Hanna – the center of this new marriage plot — is a privileged Brown University student, a young English major whose books range from the complete Modern Library set of Henry James to “a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Eliot, and the redoubtable Bronte sisters.” Her brain is tantalized by her readings of deconstructions like Roland Barthes in her Semiotics 211; her heart, though, is firmly tethered to the literature of a century or two past. The other two sides of the love triangle are composed of Leonard Bankhead, a charismatic, sexually charged, intellectual, and intense college Darwinist, and Mitchell Grammaticus, the spiritually inclined seeker who has been delving into various religious mythologies including Christian mysticism.

But – Eugenides being Eugenides – someone who does not shy from complex characters – he adds a twist. Leonard is not only tall, dark and brooding (he wears a leather jacket, chews tobacco and is uncontrollably moody. Think: David Wallace Foster), he is also bipolar. What follows is one of the most breathtaking descriptions of this mental condition that this reader has ever read:

“As Leonard strode along, thoughts stacked up in his head like air traffic over Logan Airport to the northwest. There were one or two jumbo jets full of Big Ideas, a fleet of 707s laden with the cargo of sensual impressions (the color of the sky, the smell of the sea), as well as Learjets carrying rich solitary impulses that wished to travel incognito. All these planes requested permission to land simultaneously. Leonard radioed the aircraft, telling some to keep circling while ordering others to divert to another location entirely. The stream of traffic was never-ending…”

How do you carry on a relationship with someone who is hostage to his emotions and at the mercy of Lithium, which leaves him dulled and somnambulant, plump and often impotent…yet often magnetic? Indeed, there are times the reader will question exactly what the attraction is and why Madeleine succumbs to it. But wait – in the wings is the man who still carries the torch and who is currently overseas working out the big questions: the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

There are those who will consider the plot to be vaguely misogynistic. After all, Madeleine is the “prize” between two very determined men; she is hardly “I am woman, hear me roar.” Rather, “it turned out that Madeleine had a madwoman in the attic: it was her six-foot-three boyfriend.” Mr. Eugenides is not trying to make politically-correct statements; rather, he is working within the confines of the traditional marriage plot, with wisps and tendrils of everything from Jane Eyre to Anna Karenina. And he does so smartly. He deconstructs not only the deconstruction of the marriage plot, but answers the question about why we still rejoice in this timeworn style. And he does it with page-turning fervor to show how reading about love affects the ways we fall in love.

With devastating wit and a nod to intellectual and academic influences, Jeffrey Eugenides creates a fresh new way to approach the predictable marriage plot, revealing its relevance in today’s world. It is an achievement.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 392 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 11, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jeffrey Eugenides
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Middlesex

Bibliography:

• The Virgin Suicides (1993)
• Middlesex (2002) 
• The Marriage Plot (2011)

Movies from books:

• The Virgin Suicides (2000)

“Psychopaths are individuals who don’t have the capacity for empathy or remorse. How their actions affect other people is a matter of complete indifference to them. They lie, they try to control the world so it runs their way. The smart ones are glib and manipulative and learn how to fit in.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (SEP 24, 2011)

Scottish author Val McDermid is arguably best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series. This series (7 in all so far), featuring psychologist Tony Hill and Detective Inspector Carol Hill became the basis of the television programme Wire in the Blood. McDermid also created the Lindsay Gordon series and the Kate Brannigan series as well as a number of stand-alone mysteries. Now comes Trick of the Dark — an excellent crime novel that may well herald the start of an exciting new series.

The protagonist of Trick of the Dark is lesbian Manchester-based psychiatrist Charlie Flint who lives with her civil-union wife, dentist Maria. Charlie, currently barred from practice pending the outcome of an investigation conducted by the General Medical Council, and vilified by the press, is troubled by her past involvement in a court case. One morning, she receives an anonymous package of press cuttings concerning a notorious murder case. The case is the bold battering murder of a groom just moments after his wedding took place in the grounds of Charlie’s old Oxford College. The murder of the groom, an extremely wealthy young entrepreneur named Philip Carling, has apparently been solved; his business partners have been charged, tried and convicted for his death.

Charlie discovers that the now widowed bride is Magda Newsam–the daughter of Charlie’s old college mentor, Dr. Corinna Newsam. Intrigued by the connection and the anonymous package, Charlie travels to Oxford at Corinna’s insistence. Corinna is convinced that Philip was not murdered by his business partners, and Charlie is shocked by Corinna’s revelation that the newly-widowed Magda has begun a lesbian relationship with successful business entrepreneur and celebrity author, Jay Stewart. While Corinna is alarmed by the fact that this is a lesbian relationship, she also claims that Jay is a serial killer. Charlie senses that Jay moved in when Madga was at her most vulnerable, and Charlie silently acknowledges: “if my daughter was running around with Jay Macallan Stewart, I’d be shouting for the cavalry.”

With a sense of obligation to Corinna, and with spare time on her hands, Charlie begins to investigate the crime. There are some aspects to Philip’s murder that leave a stench, but what’s rather more disturbing is that a series of mysterious deaths surround Jay’s phenomenal career. Whenever someone appeared to stand in the way of Jay’s success, they met a violent end. How can so many murders be in one person’s past?

Trick of the Dark is an interesting tale–not just for the mystery that surrounds the fabrications of Jay’s celebrity life, but also because the book is not shy about tackling lesbianism. While Charlie investigates the truth behind the stories of Jay’s past, her relationship with Maria, normally loving and nurturing, is under a considerable amount of strain. It doesn’t help matters that Charlie, bewitched by a lesbian self-help guru is considering straying outside of her monogamous relationship. The intelligent but flawed Charlie Flint would make a marvelous series detective, so for this long-term Mcdermid fan, I hope we see many more Flint novels to come.

There are some complaints that the book has a “lesbian agenda” which seems nonsensical to this reader. Mcdermid’s characters, and a vast number of them in the book are lesbians, are a fairly mixed bunch–the good, the bad, and the indifferent. One of the book’s major themes explores the real vs. fictional self–from minor lies to full scale deception, and sexual orientation falls into some of this. The issue of lesbianism raises its head at every turn, and Mcdermid shows, with great sensitivity, how sexual orientation deeply affects the lives of her characters. At one point, for example, Charlie is accused of expressing “lesbian solidarity,” and at other times she faces bigotry and must decide whether or not to let it pass or make a stand. This is, therefore an unapologetic novel written by a lesbian, featuring lesbian characters and touching on issues that affect lesbians. If you are bigoted enough to have a problem with that, then you’re about to miss an excellent McDermid novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 24 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bywater Books (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Val McDermid
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Val McDermid reviews: Beneath the Bleeding Fever of the Bone A Darker Domain Hostage to Murder Star Stuck

Bibliography:

• The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories (1997)
• A Place of Execution (1999) /
• Killing the Shadows (2000)
• Distant Echo (2003)
• Stranded: Stories (2005)
• The Grave Tattoo (2006)
• A Darker Domain (2009)
• Trick of the Dark (2010; August 2011 in US)

Lindsay Gordon Mysteries

• Report for Murder (1987)
• Common Murder (1989)
• Final Edition (1991) (called Open and Shut in US)
• Union Jack (1993) (called Conferences are Murder in US)
• Booked For Murder (1996)
• Hostage to Murder (2003)
• Deadline for Murder (2005)

Kate Brannigan Mysteries

• Dead Beat (1992)
• Kick Back (1993)
• Crack Down (1994)
• Clean Break (1995)
• Blue Genes (1996)
• Star Struck (1998)

Dr. Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Mysteries

• Mermaids Singing (1995)
• The Wire in the Blood (1997)
• Last Temptation (2002)
• The Torment of Others (2004)
• Beneath the Bleeding (2007)
• Fever of the Bone (2009; 2010 in US)
• The Retribution (2011)
• Cross and Burn (2013)

Non-Fiction:

• A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Private Eyes (1994)

“I am imprinting this upon my memory,” she said. “The southern exposure of a winter morning light, the sounds of thaw, water dripping off the eaves, the squirrels…Sometimes I seem to know, in the split of a second of a moment, that it will be a moment I’ll want to keep.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster  (SEP 12, 2011)

This is a beautiful book. If you want to read something that has the same effect as gazing at a vast and perfect ink-wash painting, calming and yet utterly absorbing, reach for this. Like the tiniest haze of seeping ink will be skillful enough to convey a distant village nestling in the hills, or the flight of a crane; there is not a word misplaced in this small and lovely work. Its theme is poetry, and indeed the exquisite style does full justice to the subject.

The plot follows the lives of a handful of graduate poetry students and their teacher. The initial focus is on their interactions and early relationships during university years, but as the story progresses the camera lens zooms with painful precision on subsequent pinpoints of time.

The technique of the writing is such that it leaves one with an impression of overlapping layers rather than a well-woven tapestry, the latter of which is the more usual impression in a well-plotted novel. Life depicted here is more a palimpsest than a continuous narrative. There’s an almost fatalistic crystallisation of the view of the past seeping into the present (or the ongoing) that’s highly peculiar, and entirely seductive.

It’s even more astonishing to find such alluring excellence in a book that is essentially about writing. Generally, tomes ranting away about the torment of literary endeavours and the social inadequacies of their perpetrators are best put out of their misery immediately by means of a swift bonfire. But rather than wallow first-hand in the self-absorption and uncertainty as so many of these efforts tend to, Chang depicts a view onto these same themes that’s as unnervingly detached as a high-resolution spy satellite picture: taken from space, but accurate enough to read the print on a newspaper. The style is formal, bordering on the stilted, the tone even and quiet.

Two of the central characters are the poetry student friends Roman and Bernard. Roman is driven, moderately gifted, insistently handsome and, eventually, inordinately successful. Bernard is his counterpart, with caricature-like introversion, religious torment and more than a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder born out in poverty, and the novel makes no bones about his role in the narrative as the “traditional” poet.

These extreme stereotypes should be flat shadows by rights. Instead they’re almost luminous, depicted by refraction, like a painter using the space that is not to denote the presence of an object. These two characters vie with each other, in their peculiar way, for the attentions of their teacher Miranda Sturgis, the acclaimed and established poet. Their differing approaches, viewpoints and degree of success in gaining her approval and attention are at the core of the novel.

Along with the much-debated question of “why write poetry,” the novel explores facets of the role of the teacher (or mentor), the relationship of the mentor with the recipient, and the progression of the student in turn becoming mentor. The development here is linked structurally and thematically to the ageing process, which gives the novel as a whole a feeling of natural evolution; something organic and inevitable. Perhaps this is why I can’t remember reading anything with so little a sense of contrivance. Despite, or perhaps because of, the meticulous precision with which it’s put together.

The character reveal is also atypical. It’s not so much a reader discovering an already-formed entity but the entity and the reader making the discovery together. Again, the sense of extreme detachment fused with extreme intimacy is slightly dizzying.

If you read action thrillers exclusively, then I suppose this book is not for you. Apart from that I’d recommend it to anybody. You don’t need to know about writing or poetry, just be ready to think about why art is necessary for life. And read a jolly good story in the meantime, complete with romance, betrayal, suspense and verve. It’s quiet, but it’s a page-turner.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 15 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 12, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Lan Samantha Change
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another book on poetry: The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

Bibliography:

• Hunger: A Novella (1998)
• Inheritance (2004)
• All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (September 2010)

“Baseball was an art but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It did not matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. […] What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (SEP 7, 2011)

Set in the world of college baseball, this is a book about aspiration, failure, and recovery. There are many good things in it, both about baseball and college, but not enough of them for me to recommend the novel wholeheartedly. Harbach captures the baseball world (as in the quotation above) with convincing authenticity; more of this in a moment. He also has some spot-on observations of academe, as in this remark by an English Professor opening a class:

“In lieu of our usual business, I hope you’ll be so indulgent as to listen with me to a recording of the dear dead anti-Semite Thomas Stearns Eliot reading aloud his longish poemlike creation THE WASTELAND, and meanwhile to meditate on the ways in which modernism rejects, retains, or possibly even transforms the traditional elements of orality we’ve been discussing throughout the semester.”

Nice! The shadow of English Departments, here and elsewhere, hangs over the book throughout, though generally lightly. Guert Affenlight, the President of Westish College, is a former football jock from the same college who has built an entire career on a chance discovery of notes made by Herman Melville for a lecture at the college late in his life, and parlayed this into a seminal book on 19th-century literature and academic stardom at Harvard. He is a likeable character, and the only significant non-student in the novel. In one of his smaller epiphanies, he reflects on the downside of literature: “It could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your own critical faculties.” Nice again, but ouch! As a reader myself looking in the mirror, this is a little too true. But turn it around: does Harbach think it permissible to treat fictional characters as cadavers for his intellectual pleasure? He might have done well to glance into his own mirror too.

Three of the other major characters are students on the college baseball team. Henry Skrimshander is a phenom, a shortstop with the accuracy of a laser and grace of an angel. Mike Schwartz, as huge is Henry is light, is the team captain, the man who first spotted Henry and recruited him, and remains his personal coach, mentor, and guru throughout his student career. The third is Owen Dunne, Henry’s roommate, brilliant, beautiful, and gay; he plays baseball almost as an afterthought, spending most of his time in the dugout reading until called in as a pinch-hitter. Add to these Guert Affenlight’s beautiful daughter Pella, in flight from an early marriage, who will become involved with each of the other three in different ways.

The crux of the story, as described in the excellent back-cover summary, comes during a crucial game in Henry’s junior year. Now the most famous player on the team and already being scouted by the major leagues, he makes a single disastrous throw, the first error of his college career. His world falls apart, and the lives of his friends with it. This is certainly a worthy theme for a novel, both literally as it applies to baseball, and as a parallel for life. Baseball players (whom I have observed only at a distance, like other fans) are indeed expected to be artists with the predictability of a machine, as Harbach says. The same is true of actors and musicians, the subjects of my professional work. And we surely have all come into contact with the devastating effect of failure that comes about, not through incompetence, but fear of success. With such a subject, and his obvious knowledge of the game, Harbach could have written a book that went as far beyond baseball as Joseph O’Neill in Netherland went beyond cricket.

So why didn’t he? Largely because of a certain frivolity that leads him to treat his characters as personal playthings rather than rounded human beings — the very thing that Guert Affenlight condemns in himself. There is a clue in many of the names: Westish itself; Chef Spirodocus; players called Loondorf, Arsch, and Quentin Quisp; and the title of Affenlight’s seminal (yes) book, The Sperm-Squeezers. Was the book intended as satire, I wondered? But the humor is not consistent. Harbach writes well for the most part, but now and again you see him reaching a little too hard, such as “his daughter ducked her beautiful port-colored head” and “As he twisted his combination lock in its casing, right left right, he could sense a gentle depression, like the hollow of a girl’s neck, each time he reached the right number.” Then there are the implausibilities, starting with Westish accepting Henry solely on the word of a sophomore, and ending with a sequence of bizarre events that serve no useful purpose other than to bring the novel to a close. But what finally sunk the book for me were the sexual relationships, none of which I could believe: a case of true love at first grope, the cliché of a tense young man getting (almost) cured by the simple fact of getting laid, and an entanglement central to the plot which no reader would accept in a straight context, but which we are asked to swallow simply because it is gay.

Harbach’s themes are valuable, but he will not succeed in making the most of them until he can create rounded characters and let himself be led by them.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 900 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (September 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Chad Harbach
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Netherland by Joseph O’Neill The Brothers K by David James Duncan

Bibliography:

• The Art of Fielding (2011)

As Editor:

• MFA vs. NYC: Two Cultures of American Fiction (February 2014)

Then he decided Kayla deserved as close to the truth as he could get.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Some of them don’t deserve the education they’re getting. They think things will always go easily for them. That they’ll always get their way. Some of them have a lot of money, but they don’t have much more than that, especially parents who think twice about them. And some of them are nice kids, smart kids. I don’t know, Kayla. They’re a mixed bag, like people everywhere.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  SEP 3, 2011)

Voice, an Hyperion imprint, marketed Charlotte Bacon’s The Twisted Thread as a mystery, but it’s more a mainstream novel with elements of suspense. The action takes place at Armitage Academy, a prestigious boarding school for children of the rich and a few scholarship students from the surrounding, and much poorer, community. Much of the mystery surrounds the death of Claire Harkness, one of the most popular girls in the school. She is found, naked in her room, showing signs of recently giving birth. Not only had no one realized her pregnancy, but where is the missing baby? And why did she feel she had to keep it a secret in the first place?

These are the questions that fuel the storyline and about which there is much speculation. Two of the characters who play key roles in the investigation are detective Matt Corelli, a scholarship student at Armitage who broke the mold to enter the police force in Philadelphia but returned home in hopes of less grisly crime. And Madeline Christopher, an intern in Armitage’s English department, finds herself smack in the middle of the investigation because of her allegedly closer relationship to the students and her innate curiosity. Bacon gives life to her characters especially Madeline, whose faults —- she’s a bit of a klutz —- endears her to readers. Corelli, too, rings true with his ability to see both sides, having attended Armitage but who grew up locally. These characters, with their very humanness, lend credibility to Bacon’s story.

Although not part of the story per se, Bacon does a nice job of building Claire’s character, so we get to know her almost better than some of the fairly well-developed supporting cast members. Bacon uses multiple alternating viewpoints to tell her story, a method that introduces different voices but also gives us varying viewpoints.

The Twisted Thread has a number of layers. On the surface, it’s a murder at an elite boarding school, but the author delves deeper, giving social commentary on privilege and wealth as well as insight into hazing, secret societies and bullying that occur at boarding schools. Bacon’s story moves at a methodical pace as she drops clues here and there that ask as many questions as they answer. She deftly has the reader thinking one thing and then gives information to change direction. Bacon introduces a subplot, too, that while interesting, doesn’t add a whole lot to the story.

Rich with vivid descriptions and issues that serve as food-for-thought long after the book has been closed, I enjoyed Bacon’s tale. I found myself going back to read some paragraphs just for the sake of hearing how they sounded. The mystery is solved long before the end of the book, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 39 readers
PUBLISHER:	Voice; Original edition (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Charlotte Bacon
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Split Estate

Bibliography:

• Lost Geography (2000)
• A Private State: Stories (2003) 
• There is Room For You (2004)
• Split Estate (2008)
• The Twisted Thread (June 2011)

“When Cass, in all the safety of his obscurity, set about writing a book that would explain how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience — so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost — and when he had also, almost as an afterthought, included as an appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, […] he’d had no idea of the massive response his efforts would provoke.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (FEB 20, 2011)

With a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton, Guggenheim and MacArthur (genius) awards, several novels, and non-fiction studies of Gödel and Spinoza under her belt, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is nobody’s fool. But I can’t decide whether her decision to populate her latest novel exclusively with people like herself is good or bad. Set in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts, partly at Harvard but mainly at another elite university which might be a fictionalized Brandeis, the entire cast of characters seems to consist of academic philosophers, psychologists, mathematicians, or theologians, all determined to prove that they are smarter than anybody else. Readers who enjoyed the intellectual name-dropping of Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of a Hedgehog might well like this, but it can be hard going. I soon began to wish for at least one character who did not know the Wittgenstein Paradox or Heideggerian Hermeneutics inside out. After about 80 pages, however, I found myself drawn into the strange world of the book, for three main reasons. I list them in increasing order of importance.

1. Goldstein can be very funny. There is splendid scene when the great professor Jonas Elijah Klapper (think Harold Bloom) makes a state visit to the Valdener Rebbe, head of a Hasidic sect headquartered in a building described as “A Costco that had found God.” In the ensuing dialogue, the professor tries hard to impress with obscure references to early Jewish mystics, while the Rebbe merely wants to discuss how best to secure federal matching funds. Nevertheless Klapper treats this as deep rabbinical wisdom expressed in parables, silencing a doubter with the words: “You are the sort who, should she witness the Messiah walking on water, would be impressed that his socks had not shrunk.”

2. The chief character, Cass Selzer, is the least pretentious of the lot and really very likeable. A psychologist, he has recently published VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS ILLUSION, vaulting him to the New York Times bestseller list and a Time Magazine feature as “The atheist with a soul.” The 36 Arguments of the book’s title form the appendix to Selzer’s book, reprinted as a 50-page appendix to the novel. Each argument is laid out in clear syllogistic form only to be dismissed by equally clear analysis of its flaws. But for the most part, Cass leaves the logical legerdemain to the appendix. As a character in the story, he speaks normal conversational English, and is really quite sympathetic as he moves from hero-worship to rejection of the monstrous Klapper, and tries to find a life partner among a sequence of dauntingly brilliant women.

3. The book does indeed have a soul. The visit to the Valdener Rebbe (a distant relative of Cass) is more than a comic tour-de-force. Cass also meets the Rebbe’s son, Azarya, clearly a mathematical genius and as lovable for his personality as amazing in his desire for knowledge. At the age of only six, he explains discoveries in number theory that he has made by himself, describing the various classes of primes as orders of angels as real to him as Cherubim and Seraphim. Uniquely, he unites religion and science, not as opposites, but in a single world view. There is a great set-piece which is an ecstatic description of a “shabbes tish” or ceremonial meal, which draws me further into the spirit of Hasidic life than anything I have read before, including Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. Towards the end of the book, Cass argues against the existence of God in a public debate at Harvard. But the last chapter is not left to the arguments of philosophers but to another celebration at the Valdener shul, a glowing scene that somehow makes the entire debate almost irrelevant.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 70 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Rebecca Goldstein
EXTRAS:	36 Arguments website with excerpts and reading guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More on the subject of God: God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr. And, our review of: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Bibliography:

• The Mind-Body Problem (1983)
• The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989)
• The Dark Sister (1993)
• Strange Attractors: Stories (1993)
• Mazel (1995)
• Properties of Light (2000)
• 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (January 2010)

Nonfiction:

• Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (2005)
• Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (2006)

“I take words at face value. Gretchen had said she wanted to know everything. I don’t do well overriding what people say about themselves. I don’t put body language and tone of voice over words themselves. I should, I know that now.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (SEP 27, 2010)

An American living in Cambridge, England, Winslow sets her first novel of psychological suspense at Cambridge and tells it through five successive narrators, each harboring secrets.

Polly, a New Hampshire girl, opens things up. She and a British student, Nick, have a romantic encounter, which she violently rejects, although she’s clearly thrilled at the same time.

“There was this line. I wanted to be on one side of it. I tried to stay there and haul him back. But he couldn’t see the line. All he knew was that I was still leaning into him. He kissed me all down my neck, and then lower, down into where my shirt was open from the first two buttons. It made me crazy, in a good way, and it made me angry, which was strange.”

Polly ends the encounter by throwing up in a trashcan beside Nick’s desk. Before she can see him again, and possibly explain, Nick disappears, soon becoming a face on posters scattered around town.

Polly’s story then drops back to earlier in the term, when she was new in Cambridge. She hungrily befriends Liv, an outgoing California girl. “I met her my first week. It wasn’t the way she talked that gave away her nationality. She hadn’t even spoken yet. It was that she sat cross-legged on the floor in a public place. British people don’t do that.”

Together they meet Nick and the three go everywhere together, including pitching in to help Liv with her job sorting pictures for a blind professor. Gretchen Paul, the daughter of an author who gave up writing to concentrate on motherhood, plans to write a book about her once-famous mother. But the history recounted in the photos doesn’t always accord with Gretchen’s memories.

Each of these four gets a turn, plus Morris, a cop with an academically distinguished brother (Nick’s adviser), a middling marriage, and a job that consumes him. Each of these sections casts a new light on events – echoes of the famous Kurosawa movie Rashomon, showing how perception of events differs from individual viewpoints.

This idea engages Winslow, though her characters diverge from their common history, giving us more puzzle pieces as the story advances and revealing family secrets that impel each of them. Winslow exposes bits of these secrets as the plot advances, maintaining suspense as she goes and building to a final, dramatic crisis.

The author’s characters ring true: her undergraduates’ self-absorption, insecurity and penchant for drama keeps the reader guessing as to whether they are psychopaths or just kids. The later-in-life disappointments and posturing of the professor, her husband and the cop make for a solid counterpoint.

Winslow draws the reader into her ideas as well as her story and characters, integrating the elements into an absorbing whole complete in all its parts.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Delacorte Press; 1 edition (May 25, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Emily Winslow
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another one of those books that is surprising good: No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

Bibliography:

• The Whole World (May 2010)

“A therapist who rushes to help forgets to listen, and therefore cannot understand and therefore cannot see. The eager therapist, the one who’s determined to offer salvation, involves himself and seeks his own salvation. The good psychologist keeps his distance and does not involve himself in the results of his work. The right distance allows a deep and clear gaze. The good psychologist reserves the business of closeness for family members and beloved pets and leaves the business of salvation to religious bureaucrats and street corner eccentrics.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (AUG 3, 2010)

Noam Shpancer has written a heady and unique novel that takes its primary form as therapy sessions between a psychologist and a stripper. The psychologist has a limited clinical schedule in his anxiety clinic and teaches a university class to augment his income. He also plays weekly basketball with a group of guys that he barely knows. He’s been involved in a love affair with another psychologist, Nina, and they have a child together. This relationship is ebbing.

The Good Psychologist is the protagonist of this novel and also the referent of the university class on clinical psychology – what makes a good psychologist. The Good Psychologist is never given a name. The author is very knowledgeable about many psycho-therapeutic modalities, especially cognitive behavioral therapy. As a clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist, I found this book fascinating. It reads somewhere between a textbook and a novel of clinical methodology.

The chapters switch between sessions with the psychologist’s 4 p.m. client, a stripper named Tiffany, his university teachings, his time or phone calls with Nina, his basketball games and an odd chapter or two where he is alone or getting his piano fixed. The gravitas is in the session time. It is in the classroom where the psychologist’s knowledge, charisma and sensitivity come to light. The author describes the university classroom as though it were real. It brought me back to my clinical work in graduate school and I was impressed with the class’s accuracy and thoroughness.

As the novel opens, the psychologist and Nina are ending a passionate affair, one in which she wants to become pregnant by him. She loves her husband but he is ill and unable to provide her with a child. She will never leave him. She and the psychologist have an agreement that he will never try to see his child. Nina and the psychologist have an easy relationship, speaking frequently and e-mailing one another for personal and professional reasons. As the novel progresses, their interchanges become more professional and less personal and finally start ebbing altogether. Nina is the person to whom the psychologist is closest and he is losing her.

His 4 p.m. appointments with the stripper are often troubling to him as he traverses the difficult issue of boundaries. He consults with Nina about this and tries to be ethical and correct in his treatment. However, he often trips himself up or is tripped up by extenuating circumstances. Tiffany, the stripper, is a difficult client with a lot of baggage, some of which she transfers onto the psychologist.

We get to know some of the students in his class and learn to appreciate the knowledge he imparts. He utilizes Socratic teaching methods, eclectic psychoanalytic methodology and cognitive behavioral modalities. Additionally, he utilizes narratives, metaphors, and stories from the old masters. His students seem to respond to him and it is clear to the reader that he is making some bold inroads to his students’ thinking.

The psychologist is lonely and alone. He lives in a sparsely furnished apartment with cherished gifts from his clients and one mondo-sized piano. He has no friends or acquaintances. He is a world of one whose life is acted out in his clinic and in his classroom. Without Nina in his life, he has no one left who is dear to him. He yearns, from time to time, to see his daughter Billie, but remembers the promise he made to Nina. This creates strong tensions for him.

I loved this book. I don’t think it is a perfect choice for every reader but I think that any reader that is interested in psychotherapy, clinical sessions, and the heart of what makes a good psychologist, will be transfixed by this remarkable book, a debut novel written with the wisdom of a master writer.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 34 readers
PUBLISHER:	Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Noam Shpancer’s PT blog
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another “shrink” who writes great novels: Irvin D. Yalom

Bibliography:

• The Good Psychologist (August 2010)

“We don’t have formal preparation.  Admissions work is something people just find they’re good at.  Or they don’t.  Or, they may be good at it, but they discover it’s very difficult for them emotionally.  It does affect you.  You’re very aware of what’s out there, and the stress these kids are under.  And they’re very deserving.  You want to say yes to them all, but you can’t.  People either make their peace with that or they need to do something else.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Eleanor Bukowsky (MAY 24, 2009)

Admission is a novel that examines the complex process of selecting incoming freshmen for Princeton University from a large pool of eager and often superbly qualified applicants. Jean Hanff Korelitz draws on her experience as an “outside reader” for Princeton to add verisimilitude to her story.  She also spoke with deans of admissions and college counselors to gain a broad perspective on what has become, for many, a harrowing and competitive race to the finish line.

The protagonist is thirty-eight year old Portia Nathan, who has been a reader in Princeton’s Office of Admission for the past decade. She is passionate about her work, identifying with the “kids” whose orange application folders contain a mini-portrait of their backgrounds, accomplishments, and ambitions. It is part of her job to visit feeder schools and deliver a sales pitch to encourage high school juniors and seniors to consider Princeton. Sometimes she manages to recruit a gem during her travels, such as “the Inuit girl from Sitka, Alaska, who’d won Princeton’s sole Rhodes scholarship last year.”

Unfortunately, Portia is in a rut. She has been living with an English professor for sixteen years, and they have little of substance to say to one another these days. She has few friends and little contact with her sixty-eight year old mother, Susannah, a gregarious do-gooder who spends much of her time volunteering for a host of worthy causes. Unexpectedly, during her visit to the Quest School (whose mission is “to open doors, not close them”) in rural New Hampshire, Portia meets a warm and compassionate teacher named John Halsey who remembers her from their days at Dartmouth, as well as Jeremiah Balakian, a seventeen-year-old autodidact who has terrible grades but is a zealous and voracious reader. These encounters will shake up Portia’s life in ways that she could never have foreseen.
Korelitz is a fluid writer who provides a minutely detailed view of the whole admissions ordeal–especially what it costs parents and their children in angst, expense, and emotional upheaval. One clever and original touch is the inclusion of an excerpt of a typical college application essay before each chapter. Some of these are cloying, others smack of desperation, and a few are poignant and even profound. The essays convey more about admissions than the author’s encyclopedic explanation of every aspect of this incredibly complicated rite of passage.

Although Portia is a likeable and engaging character with enough wit and charm to make us care about her, she cannot carry the book by herself. What eventually sinks Admission, besides its excessive length, are its one-dimensional secondary characters and its regrettable descent into soap opera. The author expects us to buy two incredible coincidences that induce Portia to take a hard look at the bad decisions she has made. As Portia clumsily deals with the fallout from her mistakes, Korelitz wraps things up disappointingly with a trite and predictable conclusion. The title, Admission, has a double meaning, referring not only to the college admission process, but also to the importance of admitting painful truths to oneself and our loved ones before it is too late to make things right. It is too bad that Korelitz relies on clichés and heavy-handed plot elements. These keep what could have been a sharp and timely work of contemporary fiction from realizing its full potential.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 175 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grand Central Publishing; First Edition edition (April 13, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jean Hanff Korelitz
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and a New York Times blog review
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More “college” books: Moo by Jane Smiley (brief review) Death of a Writer by Michael Collins Indignation by Philip Roth Also by this author: You Should Have Known

Bibliography:

• A Jury of Her Peers (1996)
• The Sabbathaday River (1999)
• The White Rose (2005)
• Admission (2009)
• You Should Have Known (March 2014)

Movies from books:

• Admission (2013)