bookpagedev

Children's & YA

Thorns and all

Review by bookpagedev

Permanent Rose is the third of Hilary McKay’s books about the Cassons, a quirky and wonderful English family. Although Saffy’s Angel and Indigo’s Star featured other children at center stage, Permanent Rose, the youngest, has always seemed the heart of the family and of these stories. Now Rose gets her own book, and what a delight it is.

The Casson children include Caddy, Saffy (technically a cousin), Indigo and Rose. The head of the family, Bill Casson, a successful London artist, is more and more absent, physically and emotionally. The rather dotty but doting mother, Eve, also an artist, spends a lot of her time in the garden shed, her favorite place in the world. She does not cook. ( We’re starving to death, Saffron says at one point. Ring for pizza, says Eve.) Fans of these books will not be surprised to find that life is once again chaotic in the Casson household. Caddy, home for the summer from college, is engaged to darling Michael, her former driving instructor, and she manages to lose her diamond engagement ring. Saffy is on a quest to find her biological father. (Her biological mother was Eve’s twin sister.) Indigo has survived a hard patch of bullying in his school the past year, in part thanks to an American boy named Tom, who’s returned to the States. Now Indigo is tentatively beginning a new friendship with David, a bully trying to reform and eager to be part of the family.

It’s the end of August, and unbearably hot. Permanent Rose (the actual name on her birth certificate) is unhappy. Rose had a special friendship with Tom and misses him awfully. She also misses her father, who has a new girlfriend in London. With all these confused changes, it’s no surprise that Rose has taken up a new, secret pastime: shoplifting. But real surprises await Rose before summer’s end, as she sets off on an unexpected journey. If you’re looking for a wonderful summer read-aloud for the whole family, don’t miss the amazing world and lovable characters Hilary McKay has created in Permanent Rose. But, if you’re the one reading aloud to the kids, be forewarned: you won’t be able to resist reading ahead. Just don’t give anything away!

Permanent Rose is the third of Hilary McKay's books about the Cassons, a quirky and wonderful English family. Although Saffy's Angel and Indigo's Star featured other children at center stage, Permanent Rose, the youngest, has always seemed the heart of the family and of these…
FictionPoetry

A poet with popular appeal

Review by bookpagedev

If you don’t count Jewel, then Billy Collins just may be the most popular poet in America. In June, Collins was appointed to the post of U.S. Poet Laureate, and this month he celebrates the release of his seventh poetry collection, Sailing Alone Around the Room, which includes almost 100 poems, 20 of them new.

The work follows the success of his previous offering, Picnic, Lightning, which has sold some 40,000 copies bestseller status for poetry. Collins’ broad popular appeal is often attributed to the accessibility of his distinctive tone, described by one critic as a casual, blue-jeans kinda style. In his new work, he disarms the reader by writing about himself: how much he used to enjoy cigarettes, what kind of house he lives in. He uses clear language, routinely incorporating humor even as he shows marked insight. In fact, the poet who usually finishes a poem in one sitting describes humor as a door into the serious. Collins also calls his poetry a form of travel writing and likes to question life from a different perspective, as he does in Walking Across the Atlantic. But for now I try to imagine what this must look like to the fish below, the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing. Collins will probably be doing a bit more traveling now that he has a three-book, six-figure deal with Random House, an unheard of offer for a literary poet. The lover of jazz and good whiskey is a professor of English at Lehman College and lives in Somers, New York, with his wife, Diane, an architect.

 

If you don't count Jewel, then Billy Collins just may be the most popular poet in America. In June, Collins was appointed to the post of U.S. Poet Laureate, and this month he celebrates the release of his seventh poetry collection, Sailing Alone Around…

History

The clash of cultures at Jamestown

Review by bookpagedev

The story of the Jamestown colony the first permanent English settlement in the New World is familiar to most of us, but it has often been hard to separate the facts about the colony from myth. Combining a gift for storytelling with meticulous scholarship, historian David A. Price sorts reality from legend in his splendid new book, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation.

At the center of Price’s narrative is the clash of cultures between the newcomers, led by Captain John Smith, and the natives, represented by Chief Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas. Most of the original colonists had come expecting to find riches, but instead found themselves victims of disease or Indian attack. Smith believed it was important to understand the language and culture of the natives and to use a combination of diplomacy and intimidation to keep Powhatan’s tribes from crushing the colonists. He was no less strict with the settlers themselves: during his brief presidency of the Jamestown council, Smith made it clear that those who didn’t work wouldn’t eat.

In 1619, a General Assembly was established in Jamestown, and broad-based property ownership was introduced, both “critical milestones on the path to American liberty and self-government,” Price points out. Just after the close of the Assembly’s first session, in a strange historical coincidence, the first ship of Africans landed in Jamestown. Although historians differ on their original status, Price suggests these Africans may have had the legal position of indentured servants. “It is too unbelievable to credit, but nonetheless true, that American democracy and American slavery put down their roots within weeks of each other,” notes the author.

Although he would never achieve an official position in the colony to match his talents, John Smith’s contribution to the founding of America extended far beyond Jamestown. His 1608 account of the new colony was the first to reach the public. This engrossing narrative of the settlement and Smith’s role in it is superbly done. Roger Bishop, a Nashville bookseller, is a regular contributor to BookPage.

The story of the Jamestown colony the first permanent English settlement in the New World is familiar to most of us, but it has often been hard to separate the facts about the colony from myth. Combining a gift for storytelling with meticulous scholarship, historian…
Children's & YA

The creature from the deep

Review by bookpagedev

Before Loch Ness came to fame, a serpent came to Gloucester, Massachusetts. Way back in 1817, the creature was spotted offshore, and for days it frolicked in the harbor. The next summer, it even came back. Massachusetts resident and award-winning children’s author M.T. Anderson has penned a lovely and lively verse that chronicles the incident, narrated by a young boy from Gloucester. Anderson’s verses ring forth like a sea chantey, echoing, It came from the sea, from the lonely sea/It came from the glittering sea. Soon word gets out beyond the town, and folks come from far and wide to get a glimpse of the strange beast. By the following year, pirates with peg legs and knives arrive in a mob, ready to kill. Anderson writes: They stumped down the lane, singing killing songs/And lifted their patches to squint and to look. The narrator sets out in a rowboat behind the murderous crowd, praying that the serpent stays out of sight. I won’t reveal the outcome of the hunt, but will say that it is rewardingly riveting.

Complementing Anderson’s exciting verse are absolutely marvelous paintings by Bagram Ibatoulline, who used 19th-century maritime paintings as his inspiration. They offer gorgeous glimpses into the life of an early American fishing village. For instance, Ibatoulline paints a haunting portrait of the beast shimmering in the moonlight, and his gang of spear-bearing marauders look like they stepped right out of the pages of Treasure Island. Elementary school children will revel in this tale, enjoying the excitement and mystery surrounding the serpent and the hunt, while learning much about life in an earlier time. There’s much to prompt classroom discussions here, including the topics of mass hysteria, mob justice, the American fishing economy and a young boy’s beliefs and heroism.

Most of all, though this is a mighty good sea-going yarn. Don’t miss this heartwarming tale of a wondrous and apparently real event. Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

Before Loch Ness came to fame, a serpent came to Gloucester, Massachusetts. Way back in 1817, the creature was spotted offshore, and for days it frolicked in the harbor. The next summer, it even came back. Massachusetts resident and award-winning children's author M.T. Anderson has…
Children's & YA

Out of Africa

Review by bookpagedev

Most girls don’t fall asleep to the roar of lions. Rachel Sheridan, however, is not like most girls. Rachel’s parents met in an orphanage in England before moving to Tumanini, an African village, to open a missionary hospital. After losing her parents in the African influenza epidemic of 1919, Rachel is at the mercy of her plotting neighbors, the Pritchards. Although Rachel has a deep love for Africa, the Pritchards have nothing but disdain for the African wilderness. After the death of the Pritchards’ daughter, Valerie, Rachel is ensnared in the plan to return to England.

Rachel is forced to assume the identity of Valerie Pritchard, a spoiled and selfish child who had been used by her parents to get closer to her grandfather’s estate. As Rachel goes from her hand-me-downs to Valerie’s fur coats, she never forgets the life she had back in Africa. Despite a bed 10 times more comfortable than she’d been used to, she cannot sleep in her new surroundings because she cannot hear the squawking of birds and the rumbling of lions.

Rachel tells her new grandfather stories of Africa in an effort to combat her own homesickness. Rachel and her grandfather are both birdwatchers, and they bond over stories of their bird sightings. Rachel, however, feels more and more trapped. She knows that the grandfather is very ill. If she were to tell him that she isn’t Valerie, she is sure it would kill him. But Rachel isn’t ready to give up being Rachel, and she still longs for her village in Africa. Can Rachel stay true to herself and help save the man she’s been sent to deceive? Gloria Whelan’s Listening for Lions is written in the same compelling style as her National Book Award-winning novel for young readers, Homeless Bird. Through subtle metaphor and vivid details, readers will feel as if they, too, have been transplanted from Africa to England. And they will be drawn into Rachel’s dilemma as she grapples with the question of whether honesty is always the best policy. Tracy Marchini is a writer in Hyde Park, New York.

Most girls don't fall asleep to the roar of lions. Rachel Sheridan, however, is not like most girls. Rachel's parents met in an orphanage in England before moving to Tumanini, an African village, to open a missionary hospital. After losing her parents in the African…
Biography

A passionate poet’s eventful life

Review by bookpagedev

Who will enjoy reading Savage Beauty, the passionate biography of poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay? Just about anybody who remembers the poet’s name from high school English class. Readers will be shocked and fascinated to learn of Millay’s complex, controversial life. Biographer Nancy Milford, who wrote the million-selling Zelda, gained exclusive access to the thousands of papers that belong to Millay’s estate and spent 30 years compiling the details into the compassionate, resonant portrait that is Savage Beauty. Born into extreme poverty and virtually deserted by both parents, the brilliant young Millay was sponsored at Vassar by a wealthy matron. At college, the misbehaving, promiscuously bisexual young seductress (friends called her Vincent) became a nationally acclaimed poet. By age 28, she had published 77 poems over a three-year span, all the while conducting casual affairs with many of her editors. Millay’s intense friendships with famous people, her sold-out poetry performances, her rock star fame (her collection Fatal Interview sold 33,000 copies in 10 weeks during the height of the Depression) make this biography a compelling one. In 1923, she married Eugen Boissevain, an aristocratic Dutchman. Though the famous Millay strove for a quieter image, privately, she and Boissevain had an open marriage. She wrote best when fueled by infatuation and began an intense affair, a liaison Boissevain attempted to turn into a menage `a trois.

The first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, in the end, Millay succumbed to years of illness and gin and morphine. She died in 1949 of a broken neck from a fall down a flight of stairs at Steepletop, her beloved home. A new volume of her verse from the Modern Library, edited by Milford, quotes the poet on the timeless appeal of her own work. I think people like my poetry because it is mostly about things that anybody has experienced, she says. You can just sit in your farmhouse, or your home anywhere, and read it and know you’ve felt the same thing yourself. Who will enjoy reading this tragic, engrossing biography? The simpler question is, who won’t?

 

Mary Carol Moran is the author of Clear Soul: Metaphors and Meditations, (Court Street Press). She teaches the Novel Writers’ Workshop at Auburn University.

 

Who will enjoy reading Savage Beauty, the passionate biography of poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay? Just about anybody who remembers the poet's name from high school English class. Readers will be shocked and fascinated to learn of Millay's complex, controversial life. Biographer Nancy…

History

Remembering history’s heroines

Review by bookpagedev

<B>Remembering history’s heroines</B> Virtually anyone who has taken an American history course knows something about Sojourner Truth, the former slave who became a powerful abolitionist. Or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who spent her life fighting for women’s right to vote. Even Margaret Sanger, the woman who promoted the use of contraception, registers some name recognition.

But few know of Rahel Gollup, the Jewish immigrant who came to the United States in 1892 to escape persecution. Gollup snuck across the Russian border with her aunt, made her way to Ellis Island and came of age in working class Manhattan. While her story is every bit as powerful and courageous as that of any American woman, it is virtually unknown.

That’s the genius of Gail Collins’ new book <B>America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines</B>. Collins reminds us that for every Susan B. Anthony, there are thousands of Rahel Gollups, women whose stories may have been overlooked by history, but who have collectively shaped American culture.

Collins the first woman to oversee the <I>New York Times</I> editorial pages offers a comprehensive, beautifully narrated history of America as seen through the eyes of women, famous and otherwise. She achieves the rare feat of presenting an exhaustively researched history that isn’t exhausting to read. Quite the opposite, <B>America’s Women</B> is so fascinating and detailed it could almost be called <I>Everything You Wanted to Know About American Women But Were Afraid to Ask</I>. How did colonial women handle menstruation and childbirth? Why did women submit to unwieldy hoop skirts and corsets so tight they caused miscarriages? How did the pioneer women of the late 1800s handle living in homes dug out of the sides of hills? But the book is not just a collection of interesting tidbits. The greatest accomplishment of <B>America’s Women</B> is that it weaves together the voices of so many different females. In Collins’ hands, it’s not hard to find the common thread between these women and to imagine the notion of a helpless fairer sex banished for good.

<B>Remembering history's heroines</B> Virtually anyone who has taken an American history course knows something about Sojourner Truth, the former slave who became a powerful abolitionist. Or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who spent her life fighting for women's right to vote. Even Margaret Sanger, the woman who…
Memoir

Life on the farm

Review by bookpagedev

Today’s literary marketplace is awash in memoir. And, while the writing of many tell-all tomes might engender positive therapeutic experiences for their authors, readers often do not fare as well. This, though, is not the fate for readers of Rose Castillo Guilbault’s charming memoir, The Farmworker’s Daughter: Growing Up Mexican in America. From its evocative opening I see the desert, vast and expansive . . . Saguaros stand still and idle . . . guarding their domain of sand and heat, where nothing moves faster than the measured slither of a snake to the last heartfelt phrase, Guilbault is gentle, but honest, giving us unaffected, direct prose about a Sonoran girl’s formative years in a small California community with her farmworker family.

Guilbault came to America at age five with her divorced mother and eventually became a journalist, growing this memoir from a column, Hispanic USA, that she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in the early ’90s. Twenty-seven essays, each almost a stand-alone story, lead chronologically through Guilbault’s life in the Salinas Valley, and touch upon the seminal people, places, objects and events that shaped her inner and outer worlds.

If you were young and Mexican it was understood you would work in the fields. . . . My first time was when I was eleven, she writes in one of the many unequivocal statements that reveal the grueling work lives, poverty and cultural prejudices endured by California’s emigrant and migrant Mexican farm communities. Inspiring and insightful, Guilbault’s narrative shines a necessary light on a darker aspect of life in a western paradise.

Today's literary marketplace is awash in memoir. And, while the writing of many tell-all tomes might engender positive therapeutic experiences for their authors, readers often do not fare as well. This, though, is not the fate for readers of Rose Castillo Guilbault's charming memoir, The…
Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

When Hubert H. McAlexander, a professor at the University of Georgia, first told Peter Taylor he wanted to be his biographer, Taylor replied, Oh, no, I haven’t had a very interesting life. But Taylor, a 20th century master of the short story and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, in fact had many fascinating stories to tell.

As McAlexander relates in Peter Taylor: A Writer’s Life, Taylor (1917-1994) was personally engaging, a keen observer of humankind who was devoted to his art. The future author was born in Trenton, a small town in western Tennessee, where his father was an attorney and politician. Soon the family moved to the city first to Nashville, then to St. Louis and Memphis. Early on, Peter developed a strong historical consciousness and literary bent. After studying at Southwestern (now Rhodes College) and Vanderbilt, he went to Kenyon College because John Crowe Ransom, a professor, poet, critic and founder of the Kenyon Review, was there. Ransom was primarily interested in poetry, and years later Taylor acknowledged that Ransom’s teaching him so much about the compression of poetry was what led him to be a short story writer rather than a novelist. At Kenyon, he developed life-long friendships with Robert Lowell, his roommate, and Randall Jarrell, who would later be a teaching colleague in North Carolina. Taylor is often referred to as a Southern or regional author. In that regard, it is interesting to follow his development as a writer and as a teacher of writing not only in the South, but also at Ohio State, Kenyon and Harvard. About his own fiction Taylor once wrote, In my stories, politics and sociology are only incidental, often only accidental. I make the same use of them that I do of customs, manners, household furnishings, or anything else that is part of our culture. But the business of discovery of the real identity of the images that present themselves is the most important thing about writing fiction. Ultimately it is the discovery of what life is all about. Anyone interested in 20th century literary history will find McAlexander’s book an absorbing work. His beautifully rendered biography should inspire readers to read or reread Taylor’s elegantly executed fiction.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

When Hubert H. McAlexander, a professor at the University of Georgia, first told Peter Taylor he wanted to be his biographer, Taylor replied, Oh, no, I haven't had a very interesting life. But Taylor, a 20th century master of the short story and a Pulitzer…

LiteratureArts & Culture

The ABC’s of the OED

Review by bookpagedev

His pupils at the London school adored him and said he “knows everything.” Adolescent hyperbole notwithstanding, Dr. James Murray was indeed the master of many subjects. Knowledgeable in more than 20 languages, he was said in his earlier days to have taught cows to respond to the Latin names he had given them. So, when he was named editor of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary, he sensed that his appointment was “what God has fitted me for.” And in that job he showed his erudition by writing or editing almost half of the first edition’s 15,490 pages.

In his new book, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, author Simon Winchester says Murray and his sponsors committed one major miscalculation: They figured the dictionary from the letter A to the word zyxt would require a decade to complete, but after the fifth year Murray and his assistants had only reached the word ant. Thus, the enterprise had to continue for another 44 years until 1928, when the last of the 10 original volumes came off the press.

One of humanity’s monumental intellectual accomplishments, the dictionary was worth the wait, and wordsmiths will appreciate Winchester’s skillful narration of why it took so long. Certainly, limited funds and the incompetence of some assistants delayed progress to a degree, but the main factor appeared to be the nature of the work itself. Murray himself explains the tedium and frustration in the pursuit of perfection: “Ten, twenty or thirty letters have sometimes been written to persons who, it was thought, might possibly know, or succeed in finding out, something definite on the subject . . . It is incredible what labour has had to be expended, sometimes, to find out facts for an article which occupies not five or six lines.” The dictionary’s lofty purpose was to list, define and give the pronunciation and history of every word in the English language, as well as to provide quotations from printed matter to show the evolution of each word’s changes in meaning throughout the centuries. To accomplish this gargantuan task, Murray depended on thousands of volunteer readers; among them was Dr. C.E. Minor, the insane American whose story Winchester told in his magnificent bestseller, The Professor and the Madman. Murray built an ugly, corrugated iron hut and, in a reverential salute to the workplace of medieval scribes in earlier centuries, named it the Scriptorium. There, he paid his children a penny an hour (as each of the tots celebrated a birthday, the wage scale rose a penny to a maximum of six cents) to help sort the millions of quotations submitted by the volunteers. With no more than pen and paper, Murray painstakingly wrote and edited entries for 36 years, in addition to carrying on his voluminous correspondence. He died in 1915 while working on the Ts. Among those who helped to complete the work was J.R.R. Tolkien, who said he “learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life.” At a celebratory dinner marking the dictionary’s completion, Stanley Baldwin, England’s prime minister, declared, “Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays they are all in this one book.” As he did in The Map That Changed the World and Krakatoa, Winchester blankets his subject with rich details in anticipation of readers’ questions. Thus, we learn that zyxt is an obsolete form of the verb see as in “thou seest.” And that’s the last word on the last word. Alan Prince lectures at the University of Miami School of Communication.

 

His pupils at the London school adored him and said he "knows everything." Adolescent hyperbole notwithstanding, Dr. James Murray was indeed the master of many subjects. Knowledgeable in more than 20 languages, he was said in his earlier days to have taught cows to…

Nature

Seeing the forests through the tree

Review by bookpagedev

Rooted in the remote Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, a golden spruce stood for more than 300 years, capturing the hearts, imaginations and scientific curiosity of local tribes, explorers and naturalists. The result of a genetic mutation, the golden spruce stood out like a miracle in a sea of its ordinary green fellows. The Haida tribe of British Columbia cherished that miracle and wove it into their mythology and very sense of self. Commanded to flee his perishing village without looking back, says Haida mythology, a Haida boy has regrets and turns around for one last look. At that moment, he takes root and changes into the magnificent spruce that is both a miracle and a warning.

It’s interesting to note the differences between this myth and the story of Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt when she defied God and cast a backward glance at Sodom and Gomorrah. There is no compassion wasted on the Biblical failure, but the symbolism of the golden spruce, a far more vital and beautiful image than the salt pillar, is more ambivalent. As the boy struggles against his transformation, his grandfather comforts him with these words: "It’s all right, my son. Even the last generation will look at you and remember your story."
 
That cultural icon was shattered when Grant Hadwin stole into the forest with a chainsaw and destroyed the tree. A former forester turned conservationist, Hadwin meant his destruction as a protest against irresponsible logging practices. "We tend to focus on the individual trees like the Golden Spruce while the rest of the forests are being slaughtered," he told a journalist. "Everybody’s supposed to focus on that and forget all the damage behind it."
 
In The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, John Vaillant tracks Hadwin from his beginnings as a highly paid and highly skilled forester through his conversion to eco-activism and on to a crime that places him, for some, in the same ranks with Timothy McVeigh. Vaillant’s book is also the story of the golden spruce itself and of the Haida whose decimation by disease-bearing colonists is the backdrop to the tree tragedy. It is Vaillant’s depiction of the Haida that gives his book a hopeful grace note. With the golden spruce’s stump as a rallying point, they are lobbying with some success to regain control over their native lands. The future of forests generally, Vaillant seems to say, depends on their success.
 
Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

Rooted in the remote Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, a golden spruce stood for more than 300 years, capturing the hearts, imaginations and scientific curiosity of local tribes, explorers and naturalists. The result of a genetic mutation, the golden spruce stood out like a…

FictionClassics

Roger Miller’s ‘New & Good’

Review by bookpagedev

Like Mark Twain, I have a whole library of books not by Jane Austen. Though my knuckleheadedness in not being able to appreciate Ms. Austen is as incurable as it is inexcusable, I can appreciate the fanatical devotion of her admirers, because I feel almost the same way about Dawn Powell.

Just as the Janeites cannot understand why everyone doesn’t fall under the spell of their adored one, so do I find it unfathomable that a Dawn Powell novel is not in the hands of every literate person in the country. Alas, the truth is that the coterie of Dawnites remains fairly small, despite periodic attempts to boost her.

The latest noble effort is by the Library of America, which has brought out a two-volume collection of her novels under the supervision of Tim Page, Powell’s biographer and editor of her collected letters. The two new volumes are Dawn Powell: Novels 1930-1942 and Dawn Powell: Novels 1944-1962, each $35. Anyone seeking to discover one of the most twinkling wits and deftest satirists of 20th century America can find her here.

They will also discover one of the keenest chroniclers of Midwestern small-town life, because Powell’s 15 novels (nine of which are included here) fall into two camps: Those set in Ohio (Powell’s native state) in the early 20th century, and those set in the sophisticated Manhattan world of artists, writers and actors from the 1930s through the 1950s. Both are autobiographical, the former more heavily so.

While the Manhattan novels are unquestionably wittier urban pretensions and disputes seem to offer readier targets than rural the Ohio novels are far from being simple accounts of grim life on the late Middle Border. The human comedy is no less comical among the bumpkins than among the glitterati.

For instance, in My Home Is Far Away, probably the most directly autobiographical of all, the mother in a family dies, and three young girls are left to the untender mercies of their feckless father, a blustery, hail-fellow-well-met type who believes possessions can cure any woe, though he has neither possessions nor the gumption to acquire them.

The girls are bounced from pillar to post, from relative to relative, including their grandma, whose nurturing is less than fussy. Grandma has a brother, Wally, whose daughters and sons refused to take him in because, they claimed, he had turned Unitarian in his travels. Later, when one of the daughters breaks down and takes him in, she makes him sleep in the barn, where after not showing up for meals for a couple of days he is found dead, and the horses wouldn’t touch the hay for days. When Midwestern provincials get to New York which journey, Edmund Wilson wrote, is Powell’s essential theme they (and we) find life no less piquant. Angels on Toast is my favorite of the Manhattan novels, but A Time to Be Born is worth a special look because of the way in which characters can be traced to real personages familiar to Powell.

Like Angels, A Time to Be Born concerns a set of characters who use, and scramble over, each other to achieve their ends in life and love. It employs a catalog opening, a trademark of Powell’s, in which she lists happenings, trends, things in the air, to set the scene.

The story line, too, is standard Powell, and in its basics is nothing more than feuding and fussing over men or, in a word, sex. (Compared to Powell women, Powell men seem more passive than predatory, though they rarely pass up goods on offer.) Men and women want women and men who want other men and women a constant mismatching, until everyone begins to wonder if his or her original choice was wrong.

The chief predatory female is Amanda Keeler Evans, supposedly based on Clare Boothe Luce, who uses her ruthless but somewhat dopey husband, a publishing magnate, to further her career. As in other Powell novels, other characters have real-life models, such as Andrew Callingham, a Hemingway figure.

In My Home, the girls’ grandpa, an enthusiastic if undiscriminating reader, says, If books was anything like real life nobody’d want to waste time reading ’em. I’m afraid Powell is using grandpa to pull our leg. There’s no time wasted in reading these and other highly lifelike novels collected here: Dance Night; Come Back to Sorrento; Turn, Magic Wheel; The Locusts Have No King; The Wicked Pavilion and The Golden Spur.

Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer in Wisconsin.

 

Like Mark Twain, I have a whole library of books not by Jane Austen. Though my knuckleheadedness in not being able to appreciate Ms. Austen is as incurable as it is inexcusable, I can appreciate the fanatical devotion of her admirers, because I feel almost…

Fiction

Trapped inside a modern-day nightmare

Review by bookpagedev

The fast-growing crime of identity theft lies at the core of Jenefer Shute’s riveting novel, User I.D., but she takes the phenomenon to a whole new level. Vera de Sica, an ESL teacher in New York City, travels to Los Angeles for a conference and, upon her departure, loses her rental car to a con artist’s elaborate scam. Vera is amazed that the police seem neither surprised nor particularly upset over the crime; she herself feels Guilty. Foolish. Violated. She returns to New York, astonished at her stupidity, but assuming that the embarrassing incident is behind her.

The scene abruptly shifts to the small L.A. apartment shared by Howie, a slovenly and abusive con artist, and his girlfriend Charlene, who sells cosmetics at the local Revco. Howie passes Vera’s credit card slip from the glove compartment of the rental car to Charlene a business opportunity he occasionally shares with her so she can make something of herself. And make a new self she does: armed with Vera’s credit rating, place of employment, address and birth date, Charlene applies for five new credit cards with a combined credit line of $75,000 in Vera’s name, some of which she spends on a spur-of-the-moment visit to the local Botox clinic.

Vera, in the meantime, finds her untenured job is soon to be eliminated. On top of that, her relationship with Colin, a computer whiz whom she met online, is becoming a constant free-floating sense of unfulfillment. When she discovers someone has stolen her name and even her e-mail address, Vera is devastated. Caught in a bureaucratic catch-22 between the local police and the national credit bureaus, Vera and Colin plan an online counterattack, leading to an unexpected, face-to-face denouement.

Shute’s ingenious narrative is injected with acerbic wit and perceptive characterizations, resulting in a probing look not just at identity theft, but also at the psychological changes undergone by both victim and perpetrator, and their unlikely melding in the end. Deborah Donovan writes from Colorado.

The fast-growing crime of identity theft lies at the core of Jenefer Shute's riveting novel, User I.D., but she takes the phenomenon to a whole new level. Vera de Sica, an ESL teacher in New York City, travels to Los Angeles for a conference and,…

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