The Aubrey-Maturin Series, by Patrick O’Brian

Not to stretch a naval metaphor, but I’ve been in a reading doldrums. Nothing satisfies. At these times I fall back on one of two tried-and-true authors: Terry Pratchett or Patrick O’Brian. Pratchett pops up pretty regularly on Blogging for a Good Book, but I am amazed to see that we have never written about O’Brian, whose 20-volume Aubrey-Maturin series fills an entire library shelf.

Set in the world of the royal navy during the Napoleonic wars, O’Brian’s novels are first and foremost the portrait of a lifelong friendship between Jack Aubrey, affable and resolute ship’s captain, and Stephen Maturin, surgeon, naturalist, and intelligence agent. The series pretty easily finds its audience of men (and women) who are interested in age-of-sail adventures on the high seas; I’m not sure it always finds its audience of women (and men) who enjoy Jane Austen’s prose style, well-crafted sentences and characters, or the complications of Regency-era manners.

The New York Times may have called them “the best historical novels ever written,” but I avoided this series for years based solely on the infernal diagram of sails that opens every volume. No one wants to have to memorize sailing terminology just to get into a good story. Even as I began to be won over by O’Brian’s carefully-chosen words and dry humor, I simply refused to care which sail was a spritsail.

Fortunately, there is so much more than sails to care about as you turn the pages: there are also debauched sloths. Battles, mutinies, French prisons, typhoons, desert islands, music, birds, rich vocabulary, and a whole Dickensian roster of colorful secondary characters. There is indeed a lot of naval jargon, but the reader is not beat about the head with it, or if he is, he has a sympathetic ally in his ignorance in the person of Stephen Maturin. Stephen is also a landlubber, an outsider looking in to the regimented world of the royal navy, and he does not care any more about how many masts a ship has than I did.

Jack is famously lucky at sea, a skilled, courageous ship’s captain who will take, burn, and destroy the enemy at every opportunity, while on land, he is easy prey for speculators or a pretty face. Stephen is an Irish-Catalan physician with a passion for natural philosophy, and is forever cluttering Jack’s ship with beetles, wombats, and diving bells. If you cross him, he will fleece you at cards. If you double-cross him, he will find you, he will shoot you, and then he will dissect you. Their world of naval battles and subversive intelligence work occasionally collides with the domestic sphere and the polite drawing rooms of Jane Austen, usually with disastrous results, and then they are back to sea to escape debt, lawsuits, wives, sweethearts, and mothers-in-law.

And if you do begin to care about spritsails, there are many fine books to help you explore Aubrey and Maturin’s world, whether you’re interested in the vocabulary, the geography, the ships, or even, heaven help you, the food (probably the only cookbook in the library with a recipe for rats in onion sauce).

Check the WRL catalog for Master and Commander.

Or try the audiobooks. Patrick Tull and Simon Vance are both fantastic readers.

Read Full Post »

Possession, by A. S. Byatt

In addition to mysteries and science writing, I am also easily won by books about scholarship, research, occult books, and academia.  One of my long-time favorites in this category is A. S. Byatt’s luminous novel Possession.  Probably her best known work, Possession explores romance, scholarship, and literary detection in elegant language.

As in many of Byatt’s stories, Possession features a complex plot that moves both between multiple storylines and alternating time periods.  Byatt relates parallel stories.  The first involves two contemporary literary scholars, and the second two nineteenth century poets whom the modern scholars are studying.  As their research progresses, the modern scholars bring to light an undiscovered relationship between the poets.  At the same time their shared research interests spark a relationship between the scholars.

Byatt moves easily  between the present and the late nineteenth century, and she has a gifted ear for dialog and language of both periods.  Of added interest are the forays away from the standard narrative form.  Byatt creates letters, poetry, and journal entries in the voices of her various characters.  These more personal sections help create completely believable characters.  Byatt’s writing frequently explores the challenges and difficulties of relationships between her characters.  She is clear-eyed and fearless in her depiction of both the pleasures and the possibilities of deep sadness that we open ourselves up to when we fall in love.

Possession will appeal to a wide range of readers.  Anyone who loves clear, thoughtful prose will delight in Byatt’s style.  Readers interested in literary scholarship or poetry will find Byatt an able guide to those fields.  And those looking for a moving examination of the human condition will be amply rewarded.

Check the WRL catalog for Possession

Read Full Post »

Looking for a Ship, by John McPhee

I have written about John McPhee before, but in looking back at my reading list, I came across this book of McPhee’s that I had just re-read.  I enjoyed it immensely.  McPhee’s interests are truly catholic, and he has written about everything from oranges to Scotland to geology, and he has profiled characters as diverse as Bill Bradley (in his college basketball playing days) and environmentalist David Brower.  There is however a common thread that runs through all of his writings.  McPhee always connects his stories to people.  McPhee’s classic work The Pine Barrens examines not only the unique ecology of this remnant of the great eastern forests, but also the lives of the people who have chosen to live in this remote place.

In Looking for a Ship, McPhee profiles Andy Chase, a merchant mariner who is “looking for a ship,” as well as examining the state of the U.S. Merchant Marine at the end of the 1980s.  He does this by joining Chase on the S.S. Stella Lykes, a carrier ship that takes on Chase as Second Mate.  As in any McPhee book, we learn a lot about the workings of the ship, from the engine room to the bridge, and we get thoughtful and clearly drawn portraits of the crew from  the captain on down.  They are a fascinating bunch, if a bit idiosyncratic.

Looking for a Ship shows McPhee’s strengths in many areas.  He is a nature writer without peer, his delight in the ocean and the smaller waterways is evident.  McPhee also has an eye for both details and for the larger picture, and his descriptions of the Stella Lykes echo the issues in the larger Merchant Marine.  McPhee also has a clear curiosity for how things work and how individuals do their jobs.  He seemingly effortlessly conveys this enthusiasm to readers leaving them equally fascinated.

With appealing characters, writing that is both detailed and crisp, McPhee can be read and enjoyed by a broad audience.  Looking for a Ship is a great starting point.

Check the WRL catalog for Looking for a Ship

Read Full Post »

Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens

Each winter for the past several years I have gone back to the late 19th century to read one of the classic novels of that period–Dickens, Hardy, Trollope. Last year my book of choice was Bleak House (thanks, Charlotte, for the great suggestion). This year while browsing the Dickens shelves, Nicholas Nickleby caught my eye, and I am glad that it did!

Like all of Dickens, Nickleby is a sprawling story that shifts from London to Yorkshire to Portsmouth and back. Originally published in serial form, the story moves briskly for all its length, with short chapters alternating between the trials of the various characters. And what characters they are. How could you not be drawn in to a story populated by such folk as Wackford Squeers (a despicable schoolmaster), Lord Verisopht (a naive nobleman who redeems himself at the cost of his life), Charles and Ned Cheeryble (twin brothers involved in international trade who assist Nicholas), the miserable Smike, who finds a friend in Nicholas, and many others.

The story is common to Dickens in that it follows the ups and downs of a young man (in this case also those of his sister and mother) who is orphaned and left to fend for himself in an unforgiving society. Nicholas and his sister Kate can expect no help from their rich uncle Ralph, who seems to delight in making their lives as difficult as possible. Unexpected friends turn up and some apparent friends turn out to be less than they seem. What makes this story particularly appealing though is that Nicholas refuses to let himself be simply a victim of fate. Over the course of the story, Nicholas works as a teacher in a dreadful school for boys, as an actor in a traveling company, as a French tutor, and finally as a bookkeeper. At each step along the way he makes decisions that affect his life. He is no passive pawn.

There is a great deal of humor here. Nicholas’s time with the traveling players is delightful, and Dickens clearly had some experience with actors from his portrayal of the Crummles family, including “The Infant Phenomenon,” and their colleagues Miss Snevellicci, Mr. Folair, and Mr. Lenville. And as always, Dickens does not spare the tragic. The death of Smike from tuberculosis and that of Lord Verisopht in a duel defending the honor of Kate Nickleby both show Dickens at his most moving.

I think that what keeps me coming back to Dickens each year is the obvious affection he has for his characters and his great compassion. Oh, and the character’s names. I look forward to the next trip to Dickensian London.

Check the WRL catalog for Nicholas Nickleby

Read Full Post »

The Judas Field, by Howard Bahr

Shell shock. Battle fatigue.  Soldier’s heart.  As early at the 1600′s it was known as Swiss Disease.  In the 1860′s some even called it “nostalgia,” thinking that simple homesickness could account for the disorientation, straggling, malingering, alcoholism, “cowardice,” and desertion that plagued the Union and Confederate armies.  In Howard Bahr’s novel of the Civil War, the debilitation follows a small group of comrades back to their Mississippi hometown, where they continue to relive their war experiences.  Those experiences gradually center on the heartbreak of the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.

Cass Wakefield and Roger Lewellyn enlisted in the rebel army in those heady days when it appeared that the war would be over by the end of the summer of 1861.  Serving in the Army of Tennessee, they fought at Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, and the Atlanta Campaign, along with the dozens of smaller actions and skirmishes throughout those years.  They saw men die in every conceivable way, from the gruesome to the mundane, losing comrades at each step of the long march that brought them to Franklin.  They also picked up a boy, a toughened orphan named Lucifer, who they promptly renamed Lucius.  On his own, Lucius would adopt the name Wakefield and become mascot, comrade, and fellow sufferer in the line of battle.

Now, twenty years after the war, Lucius is addicted to laudanum, Roger carries the deep psychic wounds of an artist confronted with butchery, and Cass uses alcohol to numb his pain.  All three, and most of the men of their town, wander the streets in the middle of the night like ghosts in search of a place to haunt.  But when Alison Sansing, daughter of their regimental commander and sister of the dashing Perry, asks Cass to help her recover the bodies of her beloved father and brother, he agrees to accompany her to Franklin.

What Alison, one of Cass’s oldest friends, doesn’t tell him is that she is dying of cancer and this trip is the final obligation of a life filled with her own pain and heartbreak.  As their train rolls through the Southern countryside, she begins to see the landscape through which the men of her acquaintance marched and fought.  And Cass begins to recall and relive both painful and humorous episodes from his soldiering life.  It isn’t until they reach Franklin that they discover that both Lucian and Roger have followed them, and their emotional journey becomes a volatile one.

Howard Bahr is a rare combination of historian and author, skilled at gently and gradually exposing details of the soldier’s life and their direct battle experiences at places like Franklin while exploring the deeper battles hidden in human memory.  His writing is both insightful and evocative, with a perfect balance between description and psychological depth, while his characters are fully realized in all their glory and agony.  It’s not for nothing that his novels have been named Notable Books by the New York Times.  (Hey, Pulitzer people: were you asleep?)

For a historical account of the Union’s commander at Franklin and Nashville, check out Benson Bobrick’s Master of War.  Robert Hicks’s Widow of the South is a fictional account which details the life of Carrie McGavock, whose house was a Confederate hospital and who almost singlehandedly dug up and reburied Confederate dead on her own land.

Check the WRL catalog for The Judas Field

Read Full Post »

The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

What is it about California that makes it so attractive to writers of hardboiled fiction?  Is it the tension between the gorgeous weather and the darkness of the human soul?  Is it the quintessential Land of Opportunity trashed by intimidation and competition?  Just as the fertile coast is divided from the desert interior, California divides the survivors from the victims and it takes a brutally clear voice to describe that social Darwinism.  James Crumley was such a voice.

That’s not to say that The Last Good Kiss is strictly a California book, because it covers a good bit of the West, carrying the reader on a booze- and speed-filled journey with stops in Sonoma, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver, Elko, Montana, Washington, and Oregon.  In fact, so much time takes place in cars that the two main characters— investigator C. W. Sughrue and his quarry-cum-road partner Abraham Trahearne—come to that place of friendship and hatred that can only be created on road trips through desolate country.

After finding Trahearne on behalf of Trahearne’s wealthy ex-wife, Sughrue accepts a quixotic assignment to find the daughter of the owner of the bar where they meet.  For $87, Sughrue agrees to look for Betty Sue Flowers, who disappeared in San Francisco ten years before. Betty Sue is a legend to all who knew her, exuding a premature sexuality that haunted the men and alienated her from the women around her.  The trail has all but disappeared, but Sughrue, accompanied by Trahearne, still gives it his best shot and turns up some inconsistencies.

But his first client demands the return of her ex-husband to the compound where she lives with Trahearne, his second wife, and his domineering mother.  Back to Montana they go, and Sughrue steps into a snakepit of relationships and barely stifled violence.  The ex-wife is sexy, the second wife is interesting, and the booze is free, so Sughrue sticks around until his conscience puts him back on Betty Sue’s trail.  And that trail leads to death and destruction for many—some who deserve it and some who don’t.

Like all good hardboiled heroes, C. W. Sughrue is a philosopher (with a Master’s in English Lit) hidden behind a scarred body and bashed-in face, with an incredible tolerance for booze and a certain (though ill-defined) quality that draws beautiful women.  He retreats to his Montana home from the ugliness he has seen in his life, but doesn’t hesitate to go out and confront more ugliness.  And while he isn’t a romantic, he is just idealistic enough to believe that he can make a difference, even when we, the readers, know he’s heading for another fall.

Check the WRL catalog for The Last Good Kiss

Read Full Post »

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

To continue last week’s leitmotif of books of cat poetry, I have gone back to what many people consider the original and the best. Rather than a series of poems from the cats’ own perspective, like I Could Pee on This, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is a series of narratives and how-tos about cats. It was first published in 1939 and has been in print ever since. Our library owns several versions with black and white drawings. We also have a winsomely illustrated version with only three of the poems called Growltiger’s Last Stand.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats is based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I have never seen the musical and can’t quite picture how it would work as a musical, but I know it was hugely popular on the stage and is available at our library to borrow on DVD.

In some circles T.S. Eliot is most famous for his serious poetry like “The Waste Land” or “The Hollow Men.” Many students of English literature are familiar with these poems (willingly or not). And many of these same students of literature are surprised that the mind that produced the dark and cynical lines of his serious poems could also produce his light and lilting poems about cats.
Compare this gem from “The Waste Land”:

“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”

And from “The Hollow Men”:

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

To the rollicking:

Macavity’s a mystery cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the flying sqad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

And

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats

T.S. Eliot’s skill and dexterity with language show through in both cases, lilting or dark. These are great read-aloud poems that roll off the tongue. Some of our copies of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats are shelved in the children’s section, and the poems are certainly suitable for and loved by children, but I also recommend them for cat lovers and lovers of language.

Check the WRL catalog for Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Read Full Post »

Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

Following her success with Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel won a second Man Booker prize for this second volume in a historical trilogy bookended with executions. In Bring Up the Bodies, Mantel continues to flesh out her portrait of Thomas Cromwell, self-made man and adviser to Henry VIII. (One reviewer calls him Henry’s consigliere.) We’re still only a sixth of the way through the Tudor mnemonic rhyme: Divorced, beheaded, she died…, but the atmosphere of doom is palpable.

Anne Boleyn’s days are numbered. The king is watching another woman, plain, “bun-face” Jane Seymour; Anne hasn’t given him a son; and Henry’s own brush with mortality reminds everyone how badly peace in England depends on establishing an uncontested succession. Always alert, Cromwell is the first to sense the direction of Henry’s thoughts, but it isn’t always obvious whether he’s making use of events or triggering them. It’s a credit to Mantel’s storytelling that she makes so much of this history seem fresh and immediate, when we all know what’s going to happen. When Henry falls from his horse and is thought dead, we know this isn’t how he’s going to end, but we’re still caught up in Cromwell’s panic as he envisions the political chaos and civil war about to break loose.

Bring Up the Bodies covers a briefer time span than Wolf Hall, and the prose is more fanciful and meditative. At the same time, events are moving quickly, overtaking even calculating Cromwell’s long range plans. Less than a year passes between the king’s first infatuation with Jane and Anne’s demise. Fortunately, Cromwell, like many a fifty-year-old, spends a lot of time thinking about his past. It helps to bring readers back up to speed on the convoluted court politics, as well as to trace the very long roots of reward and revenge that guide Cromwell’s actions.

Even as we follow Cromwell’s thoughts in Mantel’s close first-person, present tense style, it’s not as easy as you’d think to make out his intentions. A literary Hans Holbein, Mantel builds her depiction out of layers and layers of conversation, rumor, and inner monologue, while reminding readers all the while about how haphazardly history chooses which details remain and which are forgotten. Cromwell himself, constantly sifting the gossip of the court to separate useful facts from scurrilous fancies, manipulates the fact that it’s Anne’s reputation, rather than her actions, that will make or break her as Queen. As I reread, I’m still trying to work out which “facts” Cromwell is learning from Anne’s treacherous ladies-in-waiting and which “facts” he’s inventing to take her down. No mere Machiavelli, though, Cromwell wants what every good father wants: a better life for his son than the one he had. Charming, hospitable, generous and utterly ruthless, he, Cromwell is a fascinating man to spend time with.

There are only two things missing: first, I always want more of Anne’s blustering uncle, Lord “By the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!” Norfolk. His scenes in this novel are fewer and his role more chilling, as he wolfishly presides over the sentencing of his niece. And second, although I can’t believe I’m saying this about such a cracking good novel, footnotes! Endnotes! What I wouldn’t give for a look at Mantel’s research.

Gorgeous turns of phrase and a convoluted plot make Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies excellent candidates for re-reading, or re-listening. Both novels are great audiobooks, read with gravitas and dry humor by Simon Vance.

Check the WRL catalog for Bring Up the Bodies, in print or audiobook.

Read Full Post »

Faith, by Jennifer Haigh

Two years ago, all my siblings were gathered together for the first time since 1989.  Those old easy ways quickly fell into place and we were soon laughing and arguing about who was going to do the dishes.  We also reminisced about past gatherings, trips, and our frequent knock-down-drag-out fights over the TV program we were going to watch. Then other memories started cropping up. A conversation with the daughter of slaves during a trip to Colorado. The road trip when the youngest got left behind and we didn’t discover it until we were 90 minutes away. The ski trip to West Virginia where one brother slipped and knocked down Gerald Ford.  In other words, the stuff that never happened. At least, I know they never happened, though some of my siblings swear that they did.  It just goes to show that no two people grow up in the same family.

That’s the way it is with Sheila McGann.  Her brother Arthur Breen (their mother’s first child) is several years older but she and Father Art, a Catholic priest in Boston, talk frequently and know each other’s secrets.  Her younger brother Mike never really knew Art, but he and Sheila are close enough that they can still finish each other’s sentences.  Art grew up in a single-parent urban household, Sheila and Mike in a working-class suburban home ruled by their devout mother and alcoholic father.  Art was a devout boy who left for seminary when Sheila was still very young;  Mike and Sheila did the Catholic school thing, but she’s now agnostic and he’s not a particularly observant churchgoer.

Then a seismic shift tests the bonds between them.  Art is accused of molesting Aidan Conlon, the son of a recovering addict he’s been helping.  Caught in the midst of the rising tide of priest-abuse accusations and lawsuits, he is summarily removed from his parish (on Good Friday, no less).   He is exiled to a generic apartment complex, and blocked from contact with his friends.  He can’t even speak with Church officials to defend himself against the charges.  His parish is divided between those loyal to him and those who retroactively remember something odd about him.  All Father Art has left is his family.

Sheila flies to Art’s defense, returning to Boston from her Philadelphia home.  But she finds that Art’s last refuge is compromised. His mother is ashamed of the accusations and deals with it by withdrawing.  His stepfather, memory stripped by his alcoholism, is no help.  And Mike immediately accepts the truth of the accusation, egged on by his wife.

As the story progresses, though, the characters slowly begin to shift places.  The more Sheila learns the more doubt she begins to feel.  And Mike, driven by a need for a definitive answer, begins insinuating himself into Aidan’s mother Kath’s life.  He succeeds in coaxing Kath to tell the story of her relationship with Art, but at high cost to himself.  And when he knows the truth, his faith in Art is complete.

Sheila is looking back as the sequence of events unfolds, foreshadowing, guessing, stitching together the facts she knows and filling in the blank spaces to recount this story.  In doing so, she keeps the child abuse scandal in the background and focuses on the McGanns as they try to come to grips with—or avoid—dealing with the enormity of the situation.  She also keeps the reader wondering whether or not to sympathize with Art as Sheila releases details through the narrative the family is constructing even as events transpire.  This is not, however, a story that will be shared over the dinner table.  It’s more likely that it will join the deeply hidden secrets that have governed this family from the first.

Check the WRL catalog for Faith

Read Full Post »

The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers

Iraq War veteran and Virginia native Powers has transformed his experiences in Mosul and Tal Afar into a story that captures both the intimacy of comradeship and the larger impact of the war on soldiers’ lives.  And while many of the situations are brutal, Powers’s beautiful language redeems this story of combat and survival.

Privates Bartle and Murphy are a team, though hardly of equals.  At times, it seems as though the eighteen-year old Murphy could hardly have passed the minimum intelligence level to even join the Army, but Bartle takes very seriously the role of protector assigned to him by their sergeant and by Murphy’s mother.  In training, in garrison, and in combat, Bartle watches over Murphy, but there’s one place he can’t protect his buddy:  Murphy’s own mind.

While Bartle and Murphy’s relationship is the center of the story, there is a third man who looms over them.  Sergeant Sterling is their team leader, a career soldier who earned the Silver Star during his first rotation, and who has no illusions about what they are going back to.  He shifts from moderate affection to fierce protection to anger at the hapless soldiers he can’t keep from harm.  But Sterling has a dark side as well, with self-preservation trumping all other emotions.

Bartle narrates the story in multiple timelines, but each seems immediate rather than recalled from experience.  As he shifts settings, the reader comes to learn more about his transition from civilian to warrior, and from warrior to guilty survivor.  He holds back the worst of his experiences until he can no longer hide them from himself or from those who turn to him to understand what happened in Iraq.  It often escapes the reader that Bartle is only in his early twenties—it seems as though the trauma he has experienced has aged him out of his youth.

While this is not an emotionally easy read, there is pleasure to be had in Powers’s manipulation of language, setting, and character.  His skill at these belies his own youth, and we can only hope this first novel will be followed by many more.

Check the WRL catalog for The Yellow Birds

Read Full Post »

The Watch, by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

It seems as though it took years for fiction writers to process the impact of the Vietnam War in a meaningful way.  It also seems as though the fiction emerging from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is more immediate, rawer, and as significant as any that came out of Vietnam.  I don’t know why the two wars differ in that respect, nor which of the newer novels will survive, but in terms of sheer impact, The Watch has a good chance of being that book.

The story: at a remote outpost guarding access to the mountains of Kandahar, American soldiers maintain a vigilant watch against Taliban fighters.  After a brutal night attack which leaves the Americans on edge, a legless young woman arrives on the plain outside the base.  She has wheeled herself on a cart through the tortuous landscape to retrieve the body of her brother for proper burial.  Suspicious of her motives, afraid of a suicide bombing attempt, and unable to communicate with her, the Americans order her first to leave, then to stay outside the perimeter.  Negotiations, if her stubborn refusal to leave and their refusal to release the body, can be called negotiations, proceed very slowly, until an uneasy truce is achieved.  While the events are slowly unfolding, we see through the eyes of the various characters that this culture clash is both unavoidable and irreconcilable.

The moral heart of the story is occupied by Nizam, the Pashtun woman, and by Americans Lieutenant Nick Frobenius and First Sergeant Marcus Whalen.  Frobenius brings the benefit of his classical Dartmouth education to the reader, recognizing Nizam’s stand as parallel to that of Antigone in Sophocles’ play.  He also represents the disillusionment of men who joined the military from patriotic motives only to discover that they were being used as pawns in a game of chess with ill-defined goals, as well as one whose relationship has suffered during his deployment.   Whalen is the competent career man, the bridge between the officers and the lower ranks whose sense of duty keeps him going despite his exhaustion.  And Nizam is the person who has right on her side but no power to claim it.  Now her family’s sole survivor, she wants to fulfill the final rite of a courageous warrior.  It is impossible for her to envision anything outside her traditional role in Pashtun society, but she brings the dignity and strength of a person secure in her identity to the battle of wills. Other chapters are narrated by different characters, but their stories revolve around their interactions with these three, and around the questions raised by the force of their characters.

Roy-Bhattacharya uses the atmosphere of the war zone effectively.  The Americans are running on uppers in the wake of the night attack, drowsing on their feet and experiencing vivid and all-too-short dreams of home.  Isolation and vulnerability,  and the harsh conditions—dust storms, freezing nights, hot days—reinforce to them that they are aliens.  Their base is cramped and smelly, but the expansive plains and looming mountains outside the walls may conceal threats.  And the close quarters can make them hate the comrades they must depend on.

Who should give way when an individual with right on her side meets powerful people with might and a strict code of conduct?  That question has been explored in literature and art, and lived out by individuals determined to change their world.  That question isn’t on Nizam’s mind, but the reader can’t help but confront it.  This is a tragic tale, told with power and precision by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya.

Check the WRL catalog for The Watch

Read Full Post »

Ghosts by Gaslight, ed. Jack Dann and Nick Gevers

Steampunk is a growing sub-genre of science fiction that combines a fascination with technology and scientific innovation with, usually, a late 19th-century setting.  As science fiction generally does, Steampunk explores the “what ifs”  of innovations and their effects on society. In Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers, seventeen contemporary authors offer stories that share a fascination with scientific exploration, occult books, lonesome graves, and tormented spirits. All of these stories have the feel and tone of the wonderfully creepy ghost tales of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.

As in any collection of stories, each reader will find his or her own favorites. I found “Music, when soft voices die” by Peter S. Beagle particularly chilling. Beagle tells the tale of a medical student whose experiments in electric generation go terribly awry, leaving him haunted by a voice of infinite sorrow. As in all of Beagle’s writing, the characters leap off the page and into your heart and mind.

Another fascinating tale is “The curious case of the moondawn daffodils murder” by Garth Nix, a superb writer of eerie fiction. Here, a second cousin of Sherlock Holmes arrives at a police station to help solve a murder, attended by his “keeper.” Sir Magnus Holmes (an echo perhaps of M. R. James’s Count Magnus?) is currently an inmate of an insane asylum, though allowed out if accompanied. The story involves dark spells, enchanted objects, and a mysterious society bent on evil. The ending here is dark and almost Lovecraft-ian.

Two stories, “Why I was hanged” and “The jade woman of the luminous star” demonstrate the dangers of becoming involved in the spirit world, as both protagonists end up accused of murder (which may or may not be the case). Other tales involve grave-robbing in Egypt with dire results, revenants haunting the scene of their transgressions, and an ill-thought-out attempt at creating an army of golems.  All of the stories create a strong feeling of unease without ever being explicitly gory or visceral. The horror here is psychological. Of particular interest is a short essay by the author after each story that gives its origins and sheds some light on the tale.

M. R. James and LeFanu would be delighted with this collection.

Check the WRL catalog for Ghosts by Gaslight

Read Full Post »

A Whisper in the Dark, by Louisa May Alcott

While most readers think of Louisa May Alcott as the writer of classic family stories such as Little Women and Little Men, she had a darker side that appeared under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. These stories were Gothic thrillers that explore madness, revenge, and jealous passion. As is to be expected, they helped pay the bills, though Alcott did not acknowledge the stories as her own till the end of her life.

I have to confess to having only read bits and pieces of Little Women, so I did not really have a preconceived notion of her style or really any expectations about the book. I came away, though, with the thought that Alcott can certainly tell a story that draws you in and does not let you get away. These are not fast-paced thrillers, filled with gore and action. Rather, they are psychological studies of good and evil and particularly of the way that evil intent is often shrouded in a seemingly pleasant countenance.

This collection starts with “The Modern Mephistopheles,” which tells the story of a young writer desperate to be published (desperation is always a bad sign in these sorts of stories). Who should appear at the door but Mr. Helwyze (hmm, no foreshadowing there!), offering a deal. Book deals, broken hearts, and tragic romances ensue, all with an air of the supernatural.

Then there is “The Abbot’s Ghost,” another Christmas tale of hauntings. Here, an ancient family curse, wandering spectral monks, and a vast inheritance form the plot for a chilling narrative.

In all of these stories, Alcott deftly mixes romance, thrills, and generally at least a hint of the uncanny. Whether you have never read Alcott before or you know her only as a writer of children’s tales, these powerful explorations of the human heart will surprise and delight.

Check the WRL catalog for A Whisper in the Dark

Read Full Post »

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie

Confession time?  I never read anything by Salman Rushdie until I picked up Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002.  I found his essays on everything from “Being Photographed” to “Going to Electoral College” to be funny, pointed, and written in approachable, engaging language.  So what was holding me back?  Perhaps it was that intimidating glare, which makes him look as if you’re going to disappoint him no matter how hard you try.  (Of course, looking for the picture I was thinking of yielded only photos of a smiling, avuncular wiseman.  Strange.)

On a whim, I picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories and began reading it aloud to my wife.  It quickly became a standing date–9pm each night we’d sit down and I’d dive into The Sea.  Rushdie’s enchanting story drew us along right to the wonderfully satisfying end.  It practically defines what I love to see in totally escapist reading, but with a punch that few writers can pull off.

Haroun is the son of Rashid, a famous storyteller who lives in his own imagination and sometimes visits the “real” world to perform the pieces he finds in his fancy.  Haroun’s mother Soraya sometimes frets over money, but is largely happy until a nasty neighbor poisons her image of Rashid, and the two run off together.  Haroun rejects his father’s fantastic view of the world, and Rashid loses his storytelling facility.

Unfortunately, it’s election time in the country Alifbay, where Rashid has been hired to enchant voters so the politicians can tell equally large whoppers to earn votes.  Without his skill Rashid cannot perform, and only professional pride makes him go to his last gig in the isolated Valley of K to entertain provincial voters.  Haroun talks them onto a wild bus ride with a driver named Butt, who delivers them to their putative employer Snooty Buttoo and his fantastic houseboat.  But aboard the houseboat, Haroun finds himself flown away to an invisible moon that houses the Sea of Stories.  An immense ocean whose currents of standard storylines flow together to create new tales, the Sea is also being poisoned by “popular romances” which have turned into “long lists of shopping expeditions, and “talking helicopter anecdotes” that are spoiling the rich imaginative source that has nourished both tellers and listeners for all of human history.  The poison leads back to the enemy of storytelling, “Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech” Khattam-Shud, whose name means “The End.”

With Haroun’s assistance, the good Guppees, the Plentimaw fish, and the people of P2C2E (Processes Too Complicated to Explain) defeat Khattam-Shud and his Chupwalas, and balance returns to the moon.  With the Sea of Stories saved, the world undergoes a transformation that ensures the defeat of the colorless and the victory of the whimsical.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is called a children’s story, but it would be an exceptional child (indeed an exceptional reader of any age) to catch all the puns, literary allusions, political caricature, and meaningful verbal tics Rushdie gives his magical characters.  Haroun is a marvelous stand-in for readers living in the dull world.  His sudden gift of a wildly psychedelic experience reminds of what we set aside as we “grow up.”  It must have been a Chupwala who decided it belonged outside the realm of those who need it most.

Check the WRL catalog for Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Read Full Post »

Oil on Water, by Helon Habila

It’s a popular question these days, mostly because the closest we get to oil is the pump at the nearest gas station.  But at ground level, in a place where there’s no safety, no regulation, and no hope of the wealth being shared, it’s entirely possible that the residents reverse the question.

Helon Habila takes us deep into Nigeria, where the promise of oil wealth has long been transmuted into the reality of oil industry.  The countryside is locked in a battle between lawless militants, many of whom say they’re fighting to share in the supposed prosperity, and the lawless military which is supposed to protect the oil infrastructure.  Caught in the middle (as usual) are the ordinary people who want to stay on their ancestral lands, worship at their shrines, and fish their waters.

The journey into this particular heart of darkness is narrated by Rufus, a young journalist looking to take his first step into the big time.  An Englishwoman, wife of a petroleum engineer working in-country, has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers want to open negotiations by proving she’s alive.  They issue an open invitation to the country’s media, and Rufus is among those to take up the challenge.  Along with several other reporters, including his idol Zaq, Rufus heads upriver for the meeting.

Nothing goes as it should, and Rufus becomes a firsthand witness to the brutality of both sides, and to the devastation of the environment.  The water is choked with oil.  Dead birds and fish are everywhere.  Abandoned drilling rigs overshadow villages.  Gas flares light the night sky.  No place is safe because the military suspects everyone of helping the militants, and the militants suspect everyone of helping the soldiers.  Raiders from both sides descend at will, stealing food, burning homes and boats, interrogating, even torturing and murdering random residents in sight of their neighbors and families.  Rufus, searching for what Zaq calls “the perfect story”, barely survives to return to his home in Port Harcourt.

The story behind the story, the true story, is the result of the ubiquitous oil drillers.  Using the implied promise of jobs and the practical demonstration of power, these men and the Company they work for represent the worst vestiges of colonialism left in the world.  Even as they rape the land, buy the leaders, and ship money and oil out of the country, they live lives of ease in their city strongholds.  Like oil and water, they do not–they cannot–mix.  But they are vulnerable to the blackmail and terror raids of the militants, and the kidnapping of Company employees has become the militants’ most lucrative industry.  When Isabel Floode disappears, her value to the various factions skyrockets and a miniature war breaks out as everyone tries to get their hands on her.  But even her kidnapping isn’t what it appears to be, and the deception has fatal consequences.

Habila immerses the reader in the chaos, heat, disease, and distress of the Niger Delta, where the rivers and waterways braid in myriad paths and where each turn may yield danger or comfort.  He also writes much of the dialogue between Rufus, Zaq, and the people they encounter in the pidgin of the Delta, which houses a multitude of ethnic groups and languages.  While the language may seem odd at first, context and growing familiarity make it easy to comprehend, and even to get some sense of the cultures that lie behind it.  I suspect, though, that those interested in learning about these cultures or reading Mr. Habila’s book aren’t the ones who need to understand that “our” oil carries a much higher cost than we see at the pump.

Check the WRL catalog for Oil on Water

Read Full Post »

The Inverted Forest, by John Dalton

Summer camp, notwithstanding Bill Murray’s view of it, is supposed to be a quintessentially formative experience, both for the campers and the counselors.  How then to deal with a summer camp that begins with the hasty dispatch of the trained counselors and ends with a murder?  No, it isn’t Friday the 13th, but a well-drawn, sensitive, and shocking novel by John Dalton.

Three characters dominate the story of Kindermann Forest Summer Camp: owner Schuller Kindermann, camp nurse Harriet Foster, and counselor Wyatt Huddy.  Kindermann has been in charge of the slowly-failing camp since its founding, but always at a slight remove from the daily operation.  A narrow and judgmental man, his ideal is the manufactured and manageable world of model railroads and paper sculpture.  Harriet Foster and her five-year old son James are the only African-Americans in camp.  An outsider by virtue of color, age, and professional background, Harriet is the person with perhaps the clearest view overall of the camp’s operations.  She does have a serious blind spot–she continually second-guesses her understanding of white people.

Wyatt Huddy, along with most of the other counselors, is a last-minute hire.  Born with Apert’s Syndrome, Wyatt hides himself away from people as much as he can.  When the camp job comes up, he and his friend/employer, Salvation Army Captain Throckmorton think working with non-judgmental children is the best way to build Wyatt’s self-confidence.  So off he goes.

Little does he, or any of the new counselors, know what is in store for them.  For the first two weeks of their season, Kindermann Forest hosts the residents of the Missouri state institution for profoundly mentally disabled people.  Even before he’s unpacked his few things, Wyatt is given charge of four men whose need for individual attention would try a saint.

Not that these counselors are saints–some are ordinary teenagers, some have serious troubles of their own, and some just don’t think they can deal with the 24-hour responsibility of these campers.  But as the summer begins shaking out and everyone adapts to the routine, Kindermann Forest looks like it might just turn out to be, if not idyllic, at least a good place.  But trouble lurks, and when it strikes, one character will die, two others will have their ordered lives upended, and Kindermann Forest will be forever changed.  The story doesn’t end there, but to say more would be to reveal the most wonderful section of Dalton’s novel – a sequence of sacrifice and redemption that closes the story.

Dalton used a line from a fictitious poet created by JD Salinger in a 1947 novella -

Not a wasteland, but a great inverted forest with all the foliage underground

for his title, and the novel is filled with those reverses of perception.  It seems obvious in two principal characters, but his deeper reading of all the characters shows each of them presenting one face to the world and another hidden underground.

Check the WRL catalog for The Inverted Forest

The Inverted Forest will be added as a Gab Bag in Fall 2012, and I’ll update the catalog link then.

Read Full Post »

This Beautiful Life, by Helen Schulman

My recent post on the immortality of your online presence offered a consoling, even redemptive, view of the digital world.  This Beautiful Life offers a searing look at the other side of that coin.  And even though the conceit centers on the Web, the impact of events illuminates a web of fissures within one family and hints at a network of flaws that will inform the direction of our society.

The Bergamot family recently relocated to Manhattan from a comfortable life in Ithaca, New York.  As the public face of Columbia University’s program to build a new campus in an area of urban blight, Richard capably dances the fine line between vision and community politics with delight. That leaves his wife Liz, with her Ph.D. in Art History and sporadic history of teaching as an adjunct at Cornell, managing their Upper West Side apartment and preparing for the move to a faculty home provided by the University.  In other words, the slightly bored housewife is watching her professional dreams fading in the rear-view mirror, with little to occupy her but the endless cycle of dropping off and picking up her daughter at school.

And what a school it is.   One of the perks of Richard’s position of power and prestige is that his children have a tuition-free guaranteed spot at Wildwood, a premier academy for the 1%.  Jake, the fifteen-year old, is at the Upper School with bored, sophisticated, seemingly self-confident kids already immune to the ravages of the outer world but still struggling with the fears of adolescence.  Coco, their six-year old Chinese adopted daughter, is at the Lower School, enjoying sleepovers at the Plaza Hotel, round-the-island birthday cruises, and other events created by wealthy and competitive moms for the City’s princesses.

Then Jake makes a mistake.  Or rather he takes someone else’s mistake and compounds it.  After a bored Saturday night spent trolling through the City for something to do, they wander up to a schoolmate’s party.  The girl is in eighth grade, home alone in her family’s mansion (her parents are on Cyprus, dodging taxes), a place with lots of beer and bedrooms.  A drunken Jake winds up making out with her, but pushes her away when his classmates mock him for robbing the cradle.  When Jake wakes up hungover the next morning, he opens a message from the girl on his cell phone, and discovers that she’s filmed herself in an explicit video.  Without thinking, he forwards it to a friend.  And from there…you can imagine.

The ensuing scandal gets Jake and the guys who forwarded the video suspended from school.  Richard is also invited to take a step back from his project–his name has been connected to the video, making him toxic for a project that requires a squeaky clean leader.  Liz finds herself searching the Web, appalled and fascinated by the quantity and variety of porn she sees.  And Coco is influenced in ways no one expects.  Trapped in their small apartment, with no friends to support them, and advice bombarding them from every direction, the pressure builds until their underlying issues burst forth and the family’s defining moment looks like it’s going to be their dividing moment.

While the topic might be sensational, Schulman digs past the surface muck to the real heart of the story, which is a family’s response to the high profile screw-up by one of its members.  Schulman leads the reader to think about parental involvement, the use and misuse of technology, and the early sexualization of both boys and girls, but doesn’t apportion blame–the mirror she holds up to us is enough to show us the fools whose knowledge will always exceed their wisdom.

Check the WRL catalog for This Beautiful Life

Read Full Post »

The King’s Gold, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

One advantage to shelving books is occasionally coming across new titles by favorite authors that you missed when they first came out. I have enjoyed Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste series since the eponymous title was published in 2005. I had, however, let the books slip to the back of my mind, so I was delighted to be reminded of this excellent series when I came across the fourth entry, The King’s Gold.

Like the early books in the series, The King’s Gold features plenty of swordplay in the streets of 17th-century Seville, but there is more to these books than just flashing rapiers. Alatriste and his protégé, young Iñigo Balboa, are back from the wars in Breda, no richer for the wounds they received and with little expectation of recognition from the Spanish court for their service. But Alatriste’s friend, poet and courtier Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, greets the pair on their return with an offer that might earn them both gold and honor.

King Philip IV and his chief minister are unhappy with the smuggling of gold into Spain from the South American mines, and Alatriste is commissioned to recruit a band of swordsmen to see that a large shipment of contraband gold is brought to the royal authorities. Iñigo is more mature here, and takes his place in the fighting. There is also an elegiac feel to the tale, as death seems to follow in the wake of the Captain and his band, and references are made to Alatriste’s own death on the field of Rocroi sometime down the road.

But, as Iñigo says, that is all in the future, and the tale of assembling the company and taking over a ship carrying the gold is told in Pérez-Reverte’s superbly lyrical style. With fragments of poetry and a strong sense of place, Pérez-Reverte creates a completely believable world. Readers who are looking for stories of honor, friendship, and action will find much to like here.

Check the WRL catalog for The King’s Gold

Read Full Post »