bookpagedev

Fiction

Lifestyles of the rich and shameless

Review by bookpagedev

If Dickens were writing in 21st century Los Angeles, he might produce something akin to Bruce Wagner’s capacious new novel. Part social commentary, part gothic potboiler, I’ll Let You Go is set among the very rich and the very poor, in intersecting worlds of unspeakable excess and shameful want.

At first glance, the Trotters of Bel-Air appear to be one of those fabulously wealthy but hopelessly shallow extended families so familiar on nighttime soaps. But spend just a few minutes behind the baroque edifice of their estate, and it is apparent their world is more David Lynch than Aaron Spelling. The aging patriarch spends most of his time in quest of the perfect design for his tomb, while his wife drifts into dementia. Their son Dodd trots the globe shoring up the family fortune, and their daughter Trinnie is a drug-fueled landscape designer who specializes in topiary mazes. Trinnie’s husband Marcus Weiner disappeared long ago.

It is the Trotter grandchildren who are central to what unfolds in the novel. Trinnie’s son Tull is a bit of a loner who spends a lot of time with his beloved Great Dane. Cousin Edward is a brilliant invalid afflicted with a disfiguring congenital condition. Edward’s sister Lucy is a self-styled "girl detective," and it is her inquiry into the strange secret behind the disappearance of Marcus that leads the trio into the seamy world of downtown L.A. There is a small army of secondary characters, and a tangle of subplots emerge when all their stories begin to intertwine. Trinnie’s mazes become the overarching metaphor, with Wagner freely borrowing Borges’ dictum that there is no difference between a book and a labyrinth. Wagner’s narrative style is unique sometimes lushly romantic, other times acerbically satiric and he tells his tale as a Victorian novelist might have, with parenthetical comments to the reader and even footnotes. But he also fills the book with "inside" Hollywood references. These may seem strange choices for a postmodern novel set in the most postmodern of American cities, but Wagner manages to pull it all off with considerable aplomb.

Bob Weibezahl is a writer in Los Angeles.

If Dickens were writing in 21st century Los Angeles, he might produce something akin to Bruce Wagner's capacious new novel. Part social commentary, part gothic potboiler, I'll Let You Go is set among the very rich and the very poor, in intersecting worlds of unspeakable…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

A debut novel with deadly secrets

Review by bookpagedev

If ever the adage "things aren’t always what they seem" applied to a novel, it would be to The Lake of Dead Languages. In her debut novel, Carol Goodman spins a tale that keeps the reader guessing on multiple fronts. The novel begins in the present day, when protagonist Jane Hudson returns to her alma mater, the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks, to teach Latin. Newly divorced, Jane seems to have fled to Heart Lake to take refuge and re-evaluate her life. But the reader quickly discovers she has a past to reconcile when a page from her teenage journal reappears after more than two decades . . . and one of her students tries to kill herself.

Part two of the novel flashes back to Jane’s teenage years. Here the reader has a chance to get to know the younger Jane, a lonely girl who lives on the other side of the river ("in Corinth, it’s the river and not the train tracks that divide the haves from the have-nots"). Her mother encourages her to take Latin for the sole purpose of meeting, and hopefully befriending, the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers. And it is in Latin class that Jane is befriended by siblings Matt and Lucy Toller two of the three teenagers who later commit suicide during Jane’s senior year at Heart Lake School.

The reader looks on as Jane steps through the veil of young adulthood when she loses her virginity and faces the death of a parent. But the trials of growing up are further complicated as the circumstances of the trio of tragic deaths are slowly unraveled. The reader begins to wonder if the student deaths were really suicide and comes to realize that Jane may be the only one who can answer that question.

While avid mystery readers may find they can figure out "whodunit" before the final page of most novels, The Lake of Dead Languages holds its secrets to the end. If it weren’t for Goodman’s keen ability to weave a mystery of multiple layers, each revealed with exquisite timing, her picturesque prose would be reason enough to keep the reader turning the pages.

Amy Rauch Neilson is a writer and editor in Belleville, Michigan.

 

If ever the adage "things aren't always what they seem" applied to a novel, it would be to The Lake of Dead Languages. In her debut novel, Carol Goodman spins a tale that keeps the reader guessing on multiple fronts. The novel begins in…

LifestylesHealth & Fitness

The role of hope in healing

Review by bookpagedev

To what extent can our minds be instruments of our own healing, and are there biological bases for this self-help phenomenon? These are the puzzles Jerome Groopman attempts to solve in this series of case studies and reports, most of which are from his own medical files. Groopman holds a chair at Harvard Medical School, heads the experimental medicine division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is a staff writer on medicine and biology for The New Yorker. In presenting this gallery of patients whose destinies were apparently altered by the presence or absence of hope, Groopman is quick to draw the line between “false hope,” which fails to acknowledge the seriousness of a disease and to cooperate fully in its treatment, and “true hope,” which understands that mind and medicine may be powerful enough to delay or derail what appears to be a certain death sentence.

One of the most fascinating case studies is Groopman’s account of his own struggle with debilitating back pain after he ruptured a lumbar disc in 1979. Despite operations, physical therapy and a severe curtailment of movement, the pain plagued Groopman for 20 years. Finally, he sought relief at the Spine Center of New England Baptist Hospital, where Boston Celtic star Larry Bird had been helped. There, a doctor examined Groopman and told him, “You are worshipping the volcano god of pain” meaning that he had forfeited normal activity in the hope of avoiding pain. The doctor recommended a regimen in which belief in recovery slowly blunted the pain of stretching unused muscles. It was an arduous trip back, but Groopman eventually conquered the pain and “felt reborn.” Since his recovery, Groopman has continued to investigate “the biology of hope” the mechanism between body and mind and his studies have convinced him such a connection exists. “Each disease is uncertain in its outcome,” he concludes, “and within that uncertainty we find real hope.” Edward Morris reviews for BookPage from Nashville.

To what extent can our minds be instruments of our own healing, and are there biological bases for this self-help phenomenon? These are the puzzles Jerome Groopman attempts to solve in this series of case studies and reports, most of which are from his own…
Memoir

A son reclaims his father’s dream

Review by bookpagedev

<B>A son reclaims his father’s dream</B> Before he died, Dennis Covington’s father, who never earned more than $14,000 in a year, told him: "To my knowledge, no Covington has ever left anything to anybody. I don’t intend to be the first." Angered because he had been swindled in the purchase of a sight-unseen plot of worthless Florida land, he then willed the deed to Dennis. Dennis interpreted this departure from family custom as a challenge from the grave: to redeem his inheritance.

Some years later, Covington drove from his Alabama home to take a look at the two and one-half acre parcel. That trip led to a series of harrowing experiences he relates in <B>Redneck Riviera: Armadillos, Outlaws, and the Demise of an American Dream</B>. Unlike other cheated landowners, Covington refused to yield his claim when he found himself encircled by an ornery subculture that endorses the mere notion of "he deserved it" as a justifiable reason for maiming or even slaying another person.

Covington defies gun-toting yahoos and squatters who, with the assent of compliant sheriff’s deputies, have denied access to the legal owners and taken over the land as their own. He is greeted by clear messages that he is unwelcome on his own property: his Jeep has been trashed, his crude cabin has been strafed with bullets and its canvas walls slashed, and, as the ultimate warning, a dead armadillo lies on its back in the middle of the floor. Covington, whose <I>Salvation on Sand Mountain</I> was a 1995 National Book Award finalist, excels as a storyteller. Although the pursuit of his father’s folly drives his new book, Covington is able to mix the retelling of his mission with happy thoughts about growing up with his family. He reminisces in such an appealing way that some readers probably will be prompted to put the book down for a few minutes and recall tender moments when their own parents counseled them. When a writer inspires a response like that, a reader can’t ask for much more. <I>Alan Prince lectures at the University of Miami School of Communication.</I>

<B>A son reclaims his father's dream</B> Before he died, Dennis Covington's father, who never earned more than $14,000 in a year, told him: "To my knowledge, no Covington has ever left anything to anybody. I don't intend to be the first." Angered because he had…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Stories to soothe the miseries of war

Review by bookpagedev

It seems somehow inappropriate to call a book so mired in war and misery magical, but in the case of When the Elephants Dance, there’s no other word for it. Tess Uriza Holthe’s first novel is a collection of supernatural Filipino legends recounted in her family for generations. Even with a backdrop of a brutal World War II battle during which women are raped, malaria is rampant and the lush land of the Philippines is destroyed, Holthe’s writing is luminous and her characters so engaging that whole chapters go by without the reader remembering that war is central to the book.

After the Japanese occupation, Filipinos are forced into hiding to escape the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers and the bombs dropped by American planes. Trapped in a dark, crowded basement, the Karangalan family and their neighbors are desperate to forget their rumbling stomachs and the destruction of their island, so they begin telling stories to distract themselves. The book swings between the present gloom of their situation and the narration of these ethereal tales. Among those we meet are a beautiful peasant who sells mysterious potions and seeks the unattainable love of an aristocrat, and a boy who renounces his neglectful family in exchange for the affection of a powerful fisherman.

Interspersed with these beautifully told legends are perilous attempts to find food and survive the war, related from the alternating viewpoints of the Karangalan’s young son and daughter and a neighbor guerilla warrior. Holthe’s well-researched scenes of raging war and harrowing brutality are unrelenting and lead to a devastating and surprising climax.

Although Holthe grew up in the United States, her writing is obviously that of a woman born into the valued Filipino tradition of storytelling. The author based her book on the recollections of her Filipino parents, who often told her of their teenage years under Japanese occupation. At the age of 13, her father was captured and tortured by soldiers who hung him by his thumbs until they broke and bled. Holthe is haunted by the ordeals her family encountered, but doesn’t allow this to cloud her writing with sentiment. Rather, she retells the stories with an unflinching passion and spirit that announce a bold new storyteller in the family.

Amy Scribner writes from Washington, D.C.

 

It seems somehow inappropriate to call a book so mired in war and misery magical, but in the case of When the Elephants Dance, there's no other word for it. Tess Uriza Holthe's first novel is a collection of supernatural Filipino legends recounted in…

An epic tale of desert survival

Review by bookpagedev

In June 1815, Capt. James Riley and the crew of the U.S. merchant ship Commerce set sail for Gibraltar near the Portuguese coast. Fate intervened, and two months later, the brig foundered at Cape Bojador on the western beaches of North Africa, where Riley and his men were captured by nomadic Sahrawi Arabs. Naturally suspicious of all Christian whites, the natives forced the sailors into slavery and dragged them along on a two-month, 800-mile journey across the hostile Sahara Desert.

The ravages the captives suffered are wholly unimaginable: pressed into hard labor by their new masters and clad only in tattered rags, they endured sweltering Torrid Zone heat; battled for survival in a desolate land of sand and scorpions; and had to accept meager rations that often consisted of goat meat and camel urine. Most of the 12 sailors lived to return to freedom, including Riley, who wrote an account of the harrowing adventure in 1817. Noted naval author and biographer Dean King has drawn upon Riley’s book and other documents to craft this unsentimental retelling of harsh desert life led under barbaric conditions. He successfully illustrates the mental toughness Riley and his men had to summon in order to stay alive throughout their ordeal, which was ended when an honorable Arab tribal leader brought the exhausted and nearly broken men to the provincial trading post of Swearah, where local British official William Willshire paid the ransom for their freedom.

King’s prose is mostly of the “just-the-facts, ma’am” variety, but its straight-ahead pulse never wavers in recounting the seemingly endless horrors of the protagonists’ journey and in depicting the alien (and quite fearful) trappings of nomadic Saharan life. In an age where seagoing film adventures such as Master and Commander hold sway, and King’s inspiring, true-life chronicle should invite the interest of many history-minded readers.

In June 1815, Capt. James Riley and the crew of the U.S. merchant ship Commerce set sail for Gibraltar near the Portuguese coast. Fate intervened, and two months later, the brig foundered at Cape Bojador on the western beaches of North Africa, where Riley and…
FictionHistorical Fiction

Dew’s family drama shines

Review by bookpagedev

Ever since the last of her four children left home during the war, Agnes Schofield had looked forward to their return. After it happens, in 1947, Agnes, widowed many years before, finds that things are not the same. They all come back with new lives of their own, yet the encumbrances of the past have not disappeared. Agnes still harbors a sense of guilt at her husband’s death and the children have not outgrown their sense of superiority to the scenes and people of their youth. They felt sorry that they could never explain real life to their parents, or their aunts or their uncles, who no doubt believed that the important things that happened to them were whatever had happened in Washburn, Ohio. And so the Schofield family hangs in there in this multigenerational trilogy of which <b>The Truth of the Matter</b> is the second book, after <i>The Evidence Against Her</i>.

Once again, as so often before, Robb Forman Dew gets it right. And not just right, but close to perfect. This is one of the best books of the year, and if it won its author another prize, it wouldn’t be too soon. (She received the National Book Award in 1982 for her first novel, <i>Dale Loves Sophie to Death</i>.) The plot is not unique; it’s what the author does with it that impresses. The nuanced story unfolds in revealing increments, like family history. Furthermore, Dew doesn’t always get the credit she deserves for the covert humor she unearths in the dynamics of functional families. For example, there’s a delicious scene when a pregnant mother, fresh from reading Freud and Spock, endeavors to forestall sibling rivalry in her four-year-old daughter. Somehow she gets carried away with her metaphor of life being like a park bench. At the end, the four-year-old fell fast asleep in self-defense. The truth of the matter is that, if there’s anything you learn as you get older, it’s that there are some things you only learn when you get older.

<i>Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.</i>

Ever since the last of her four children left home during the war, Agnes Schofield had looked forward to their return. After it happens, in 1947, Agnes, widowed many years before, finds that things are not the same. They all come back with new…

FictionHistorical Fiction

On the run with the Dillinger Gang

Review by bookpagedev

James Carlos Blake, renowned for his violent novels about notorious historical figures (James “Jimmy the Kid” Youngblood in Under the Skin, William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson in Wildwood Boys, John Ashley in Red Grass River, etc.), has penned his most commercial work to date: a fictional portrait of the Dillinger Gang through the eyes of John Dillinger’s right hand man, Handsome Harry Pierpont. Although comparable in setting to Blake’s previous novels most take place between the mid-19th century and the era of Prohibition Handsome Harry is something of a departure for Blake. Underpinning scenes of bank robberies, jailbreaks and bloody shootouts is a surprisingly intimate story of friendship, honor and desperate love. After Dillinger helps to break Pierpont and others out of Michigan City prison by smuggling in guns, Pierpont repays the favor by busting Dillinger out of an Ohio jail and killing the sheriff in the process. With the gang together and their women by their sides, their legendary four-month crime spree across the Midwest begins. Throughout the daring stick-ups and dangerous getaways, there are two constants in Harry’s life the unconditional love of his girlfriend Mary and the deep camaraderie of friends like Dillinger and Fat Charley Makley. But with the FBI, the National Guard and police officers all over the country looking for them, their luck is destined to run out.

It’s difficult to identify the bad guys in this extraordinarily realistic and brutally graphic novel. Is it the members of the Dillinger Gang, who towards the end of their crime spree were folk heroes whose exploits were cheered by Depression-weary families? Or were the real villains the banking institutions that mercilessly foreclosed on people’s homes and businesses as the economy deteriorated? A masterful social commentary on Depression-era America, Blake’s latest is as bloody as it is bittersweet. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

James Carlos Blake, renowned for his violent novels about notorious historical figures (James "Jimmy the Kid" Youngblood in Under the Skin, William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson in Wildwood Boys, John Ashley in Red Grass River, etc.), has penned his most commercial work to date: a…
Nonfiction

Lighting up the sky

Review by bookpagedev

For most of us, Christmas isn’t Christmas without strings of bright lights adorning the houses and trees of our neighborhood blocks and city streets. No matter how tasteful or tacky, there’s magic in those holiday lights. Georja Skinner thoughtfully tells the story of how this decorating tradition got started in her charming and heartwarming The Christmas House: How One Man’s Dream Changed the Way We Celebrate Christmas. Skinner introduces her father, George Skinner, who was stricken with polio in his early 20s and told he would never walk again. Determined to overcome his disease, Skinner thought back to his fond memories of the Christmas season and vowed that once he regained his strength, he would make Christmas memorable for every person in his town, despite the Great Depression sweeping the nation. Thus, the Christmas House was born. Skinner and his father spent months decorating the inside and outside of their Los Angeles home with beautiful lights, artificial snow and garland, and their Christmas spectacle became a legend, attracting 80,000 people each year and receiving national media attention. The Christmas House is the story of dreams come true, triumph over adversity and the true meaning of the holiday season. To make it even more special, Skinner’s book is leather bound, with lovely family photos throughout: a gift to be treasured.

For most of us, Christmas isn't Christmas without strings of bright lights adorning the houses and trees of our neighborhood blocks and city streets. No matter how tasteful or tacky, there's magic in those holiday lights. Georja Skinner thoughtfully tells the story of how…
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

T.R. Pearson’s latest slice of small-town life

Review by bookpagedev

In Polar, Deputy Ray Tatum has two mysteries to solve: the disappearance of Angela Dunn, a wordless child who wanders into the woods, never to be seen again by her parents, and the sudden prophetic powers of the formerly worthless Clayton, a shiftless town institution best known for his preference for the porn channel. One mystery will be solved, while the other remains tantalizingly out of reach.

But these strong narrative engines are not what really drives Polar, T. R. Pearson’s latest novel. What Pearson seeks to do, instead, is capture the feel of small town life and the myriad personalities that give it texture, without resorting to the usual platitudes that pretend such towns have more than their share of unspoiled innocence. In other words, Pearson’s small-town Virginia is no Mayberry. Nor is it inhabited by the Cleavers.

The novelist thinks nothing of interrupting the flow of his narrative to give the life story of a minor character who may never appear in the book again. This doesn’t constitute an aesthetic flaw. After all, the true, unvarnished motivations of man are what Polar is really all about.

It’s about characters like Ivy Vaughn, a woman who remains in such a high dudgeon she never pays attention to the road and leaves a trail of dead animals in her wake. It’s also about Mrs. Dunn, who turns the loss of her daughter and husband into profit, launching a career as a radio celebrity whose collective losses make her an authority on flagging American morals.

And, of course, there is Clayton, whose television satellite is arced over his garage at an angle that betrays, for all to observe, his addiction to televised erotica. Clayton seems an unlikely candidate to be blessed with the gift of second sight. But fate, which has a definite sense of humor in a T.R. Pearson novel, chooses Clayton to become a small-time, small-town prophet.

Only Deputy Tatum is able to turn Clayton’s obscure prognostications to good purpose in his search for Angela. Motivated by the haunting memory of his own dead child, Ray pursues Angela’s story long after the media, the FBI and even the girl’s parents have given her up for lost. Using the prism of Tatum’s grief, Pearson critiques small-town pretensions and, by extension, America’s chronic hypocrisies.

In Polar, Deputy Ray Tatum has two mysteries to solve: the disappearance of Angela Dunn, a wordless child who wanders into the woods, never to be seen again by her parents, and the sudden prophetic powers of the formerly worthless Clayton, a shiftless town institution…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Real-life figures join WWII spy story

Review by bookpagedev

John Lawton’s striking new suspense novel, Bluffing Mr. Churchill, is set in the period between the height of the London Blitz and America’s entry into World War II. In this prequel to Lawton’s Inspector Troy series, an Austrian who has insinuated himself into the upper echelons of the Nazi SS and has spied first for Poland and then for the United States is now on the run. The narration rotates among several points of view those of the spy, his Nazi pursuers, his American handler, several British agents and the British policeman who ultimately must make sense of what has occurred. As the main action is playing out, Nazi officer Rudolph Hess lands a plane in Scotland on a mysterious true-life mission that has never been fully explained.

The author also brings other historical figures such as Reinhard Heydrich, a brutal SS chief, to life, and grants memorable cameos to a number of famous men and women who personified the times. One of the most chilling scenes involves Heydrich’s examination of the hands of a corpse that the fleeing spy has tried to pass off as his own. A surgeon has neatly removed the hands from the corpse and Heydrich’s assistant has a great deal of trouble deciding how to carry them into the room. He settles on a silver desert tray, and the fastidious Heydrich examines them very casually as if it were all part of a perfectly normal day. Another of the cameos is made by H.G. Wells, and in a comment that illustrates Lawton’s deftness in handling a broad range of tones, Wells is described as “having endured as much of his own silence as he could manage in the course of a single meal.” Freddie Troy is kept mostly on the sidelines in this novel, but all of the characters are vividly sketched. The exposition of their backgrounds is pointed and efficient, and their voices are differentiated enough for the reader to keep them straight but not so much that they seem caricatured. Overall, Bluffing Mr. Churchill is a historically fascinating story that is masterfully told. Martin Kich is an English professor at Wright State University.

John Lawton's striking new suspense novel, Bluffing Mr. Churchill, is set in the period between the height of the London Blitz and America's entry into World War II. In this prequel to Lawton's Inspector Troy series, an Austrian who has insinuated himself into the upper…
Nonfiction

And then there’s the party

Review by bookpagedev

Party guest lists become even more delicate around the holidays, when you don’t want to exclude anyone. But what if you simplified the guest list issue, and just invited every person on Earth? <i>New Yorker</i> cartoonist and all-around funnyman Bruce Eric Kaplan answers this question in his entertaining, original and witty <b>Every Person on the Planet: An Only Somewhat Anxiety-filled Tale for the Holidays</b>. Rosemary and Edmund are an average couple who decide to have a holiday party for friends and family. But their guest lists just keeps growing as they think of friends-of-friends and distant relatives in need of invites. Frustrated by trying to include everyone, Rosemary and Edmund decide to just invite every person on the planet. What results is a party unlike any you’ve ever been to, yet the universal truths remain the same: only eight of the billions of guests who attended RSVPed, no one knew if they should eat before coming or if dinner would be served, and as always, everyone ended up in the kitchen, despite a living room full of space. No matter the size of your holiday party, Kaplan’s wise little book will have you laughing and more than anything patting yourself on the back for not inviting every person on the planet.

<i>Abby Plesser lives and works in New York City. She can’t wait to go home for the holidays.</i>

Party guest lists become even more delicate around the holidays, when you don't want to exclude anyone. But what if you simplified the guest list issue, and just invited every person on Earth? <i>New Yorker</i> cartoonist and all-around funnyman Bruce Eric Kaplan answers this question…

Fiction

Sensing wisdom from a parked car

Review by bookpagedev

The gentle humor of Calvin Trillin captures in a fictional tale the best and worst of New York City around the time of the millennium.

Anyone who has ever chosen simply to sit in a parked car and read will feel a connection to Trillin’s central character, Murray Tepper. This seemingly ordinary man makes a habit of parking at sought-after spaces in the city, feeding the meter and sitting back to read his newspaper. It’s a legal spot, the aging Tepper calmly tells those who covet it. And no, he’s not going out. He still has time left on the meter.

Those sick of looking for a space snarl and shout, but Tepper doesn’t budge. In his refusal to go out of a space, he’s as determined as Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, who politely responds "I would prefer not to" to every request.

With Tepper, is this alienation or depression or an assertion of the rights of the individual? Nobody knows for sure. The tone of the story is not dark, but as whimsical as a piece by James Thurber. If Tepper is protesting the fast-changing world around him, he’s found a splendid way to do it.

After a reporter discovers Tepper and writes about him as a unique and wise man, desperate New Yorkers line up outside his Chevy Malibu for advice. "There’s always something," Tepper says on hearing each person’s troubles, and then gives some vague advice. It works, fame follows and on its heels comes a book contract. One of the best portraits in the novel is that of Tepper’s would-be agent who assures him a celebrity author need never worry about content.

Fans of Trillin’s clever columns in The New Yorker will rightly anticipate a twist before Tepper’s story is done. When the paranoid mayor attacks Tepper’s right to park and read, politics enters the picture. What started as a simple hobby has become arguably a disruptive practice. Will Tepper keep it up, or has time finally run out on his meter? The surprise ending will leave you chuckling and wondering.

Anne Morris is a writer in Austin, Texas.

The gentle humor of Calvin Trillin captures in a fictional tale the best and worst of New York City around the time of the millennium.

Anyone who has ever chosen simply to sit in a parked car and read will feel…

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