Category Archives: Books

I heard this was the “It” book of last summer, enthusiastically backed by the legion of Ann Patchett fans that now seem to be everywhere. I was just a tad leery because I didn’t care for her last novel called “Run,” but alas, “State of Wonder” is a whole different can of worms and much better. Like the Amazon world it conjures, “State of Wonder” is teeming with a wide range of issues, layers and characters.

It’s about a pharmacologist in Minnesota, Marina Singh, who is sent to the Amazon to find out the circumstances surrounding her work colleague’s death and the scientist he went to meet, the eccentric Annick Swenson. Swenson is Marina’s former medical school mentor whose research on a new fertility drug in the jungle has been shrouded in mystery. Marina is sent to find her and investigate the progress on the new drug. But once she gets there, her world is turned upside down by the tribulations she faces and the miracle drug she witnesses.

Part “Heart of Darkness” mixed with a little “Island of Dr. Moreau,” “State of Wonder” is influenced by various works, including “Orpheus and Eurydice” and the Werner Herzog film “Fitzcarraldo,” according to Patchett. (In light of this, I’m curious to rent the 1982 Herzog film, which I haven’t seen.) I found the novel to be an adventurous, engaging read; it definitely keeps you going and places your feet firmly in the heat of the Amazon. But I thought the surprise ending a bit abrupt, flung together and sort of dropping off after its initial jolt, leaving one like a wet rag to wonder about the loose ends it leaves.

After wading through its dense jungle and contemplating malaria and the fertility of women over a certain age, I’m sort of Ann Patchett’d out at the moment but will definitely return to her books in the future. For more on her and “State of Wonder” check out her recent appearance on the Colbert Report, the independent bookstore Parnassus she co-owns in Nashville, and her hour on the Diane Rehm show. Continue reading →

“Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” was a perfect novel to end 2011 on. It’s a witty, entertaining read about a retired British army officer who’s a widdower living in a small English village. Sixty-eight-year-old Major Pettigrew is old-fashioned and set in his ways (definitely a character! he calls them like he sees them), but then at the start his brother dies and he meets Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper, also a widdower who shares his love of literature and begins to broaden his perspective. In due time, the Major is smitten with her, but prejudices of the snobby village residents (a bit harsher versions of Hyacinth in PBS’s “Keeping Up Appearances”) and their families come between, threatening to end their chance at romance.

The novel hums along on the happenstances of the retired Major, who like it or not, is apart of the village mileau, out golfing, duck hunting and attending family functions and parties. His son, Roger, is an obnoxious social climber who doesn’t exactly share his father’s polite charm. How the Major placates him and the brash villagers while his affections for Mrs. Ali grow is quite a hoot — not to be missed. Nor is the ending of this adorable story, in which the Major dashes into action in the nick of time. Hip hip hooray for the Major! An unlikely but lovable hero.

I agree with the New York Times’ Janet Maslin who wrote: “It’s about intelligence, heart, dignity and backbone. “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” has them all.” For sure, it does. Amazing, too, that it’s such an assured debut novel. The English-born author Helen Simonson gives plenty of insight into the small-town life of her home country. But it’s her gifted storytelling that makes it such a delightful and easy read. Continue reading →

Ten years after Sept. 11, 2001, the new novel “The Submission” is a powerful reminder of the charged atmosphere that emerged in the wake of the terrorist attacks. It’s a clever premise that revolves around a ground zero-like memorial competition in 2003 that gets mired in turmoil when the jury selects a design it later discovers is by Mohammad Khan, a Muslim-American. As the jury waivers in what to do, the winner’s design becomes leaked to the media and soon a huge uproar erupts over the choice. The victims’ memorial design stalls as a battle ensues over anti-Islamic sentiments vs. the rights of Muslim-Americans. (Can anyone forget the real-life furor that arose over the “ground zero mosque”?)

The novel convincingly captures the intensity of the aftermath in New York through various characters: namely, through the talented architect who’s never been much of a practicing Muslim and believes his winning design should move forward and through victims’ family members whose emotions run the gamut but whose majority are against a Muslim’s design. There’s also a tabloid journalist who apparently will stop at next to nothing to get a scoop even as it fans the fire and crushes lives.

“The Submission” is heady stuff but immensely readable and reminded me a bit of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987) but with more feeling and less satire. It’s so thorough one feels the heavy weight of the decision of the memorial design from both sides and the affecting culmination at the book’s end. It’s not surprising the author reported on 9/11 back then for the New York Times, but to come up with a debut novel of this scope and depth is quite remarkable. Even the insights into architecture and the atmosphere of the Bangladeshi neighborhood in Brooklyn were impressive.

There have been so few good novels about 9/11 or its aftermath that it’s quite refreshing that this one has defied the odds and proved it could be done. Continue reading →

I recently joined a small book club, which had picked this bestselling French novel to discuss, but unfortunately none of the others really liked it. I liked it in parts though. The novel doesn’t seem too easy at first because it reads a bit more like a series of philosophical essays by two narrators who swap chapters throughout the book than a real story.

First, there’s Renee, a 54-year-old, short, ugly plump widow, who works as a concierge at a luxury apartment building, where the residents are all rich. For 27 years, she’s promoted herself as a lazy, low-level, uneducated servant to her employers, while in reality behind the scenes, she’s a cultured autodidact who immerses herself in the world of art, philosophy, music and Japanese culture. As for the novel’s title, Renee is said to resemble a hedgehog, covered in quills on the outside, but with the same simple refinement on the inside as the hedgehog.

Then, there’s Paloma, the 12-year-old little genius who lives in the building with her family and wants to end her life before her 13th birthday so that she doesn’t end up like the rest of society in life’s “goldfish bowl.” She too is an intellect, like Renee, who disdains the vacuous, rich folks in the building, and adores the beauty in music, nature and Japanese culture.

Renee and Paloma are two peas in a pod, outcasts by their own accord who meet and become friends in the second half of the book, thanks in part to a wealthy Japanese man (Ozu), who moves into their building. This is where the novel begins to pick up and move a bit beyond a walking philosophical exercise. Ozu comes to save both Renee and Paloma, earning their trust and seeing through their fronts in a heartwarming, though tragic last section. I found Paloma’s passages particularly amusing, and the book’s heart and messages on finding happiness in small things, worth the work of plowing through the dense or redundant parts.

Apparently, “The Hedgehog” is now a movie, and came to the U.S. in August (in French with subtitles), though I haven’t seen it playing anywhere. Keep your eyes peeled if you’re curious about this adaptation. Continue reading →

I consumed “The Hunger Games,” whose fans by now are legion, over Labor Day weekend pretty lickety-split. No matter if it’s meant for young adults or not, the novel is an action-filled, post-apocalyptic survival test that’s hard to put down.

The first in a trilogy, it’s set in the future, where the country Panem rules what was once North America. Every year, its capital forces the country’s 12 districts to send two young people to fight to the death in the popularly televised and watched Hunger Games, somewhat reminiscent of gladiator events in Roman times.

The protagonist is 16-year-old Katniss, who takes the place of her younger sister when she’s picked to compete. Along with the baker’s son, Peeta, from District 12, Katniss goes up against stronger tributes of other districts who have been training for the Games their whole lives. It’s a battle to the death, that makes for quick page-turning, and also sets up Peeta’s and her friend, Gale’s vying affections for the tough, independent Katniss. Does this sound a tad Twilight-ish?

The novel is well done and very visual. Perfect for a movie adaptation — so hopes Lions Gate, which is launching the film due out March 23, 2012, and betting its pennies that it will take off like “Harry Potter” or “Twilight”; see the L.A. Times story. Filmed in North Carolina, time will tell if actress Jennifer Lawrence can live up to the character of Katniss in the book. Admittedly, I fell for the fantasy-action novel pretty much hook, line and sinker but am just a little concerned the two follow-up books, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay,” won’t live up to it now that these Games are over. Am I wrong? Continue reading →

I must admit I have a bit of a crush on Chris Cleave; his novels seem so immediate and at times powerful. One can sense the humanity in them. I read “Little Bee” (2009) last summer and then his first novel “Incendiary” (2005) just recently. Both are dark, sad and disturbing tales, yet the characters and situations are quite a rush.

“Incendiary,” which is about a terrorist attack in London, came out right before London was hit by terrorist attacks in July 2005. Subsequently, the novel was pulled from some shelves and buried temporarily. Apparently Cleave had written it in response to the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It was written six years before Osama bin Laden was found and killed, so reading it now is a bit like looking back.

“Incendiary” isn’t an easy novel to swallow (Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times thought it in poor taste); it’s narrated by a working-class mother writing to Osama bin Laden, as if conversationally: Osama this and Osama that, which might drive you a bit nuts. At times, it’s laced with biting humor: “I don’t know if you’ve ever walked with a crutch through the gangs of kids down Bethnal Green Road on your way from the tube … Osama. I should hope so. I mean we’re the kind of people you’re bombing so I would of hoped you’d chosen us personally.”

The mother is shattered after her husband and son are killed in a terrorist bombing, which she witnesses, to make things worse, on TV while messing around with another man. She becomes suicidal and barely functional, eventually finding solace in a police superintendent, that is, until he tells her something about the bombing, which is truly haunting and leads to her undoing.

Not to give it all way — I found myself caught up with the mother/protagonist and the dire circumstances after such a terrorist attack. “Incendiary” rings true about living in the aftermath with bomb scares and fear, curfews and grief, panic and pandemonium. The psychological effects of terrorism are raw and chilling in this very potent debut novel. Continue reading →

I had to find out what the fuss was about with this very popular novel and pleasantly wasn’t disappointed. “The Help” makes a great summer read, fast and easy to delve into. I wanted to read it too before the eagerly awaited movie of it releases on Aug. 10, which lists a pretty wide, star-studded cast.

Set in Jackson, Miss. in 1962, during the early days of the civil rights movement, “The Help” tells the story of an inspiring white journalist and author, Eugenia Skeeter Phelan, who secretly interviews a number of black women on what it’s like to work as maids in white households, where they’re deemed good enough to raise white children but not allowed to use the same facilities as whites.

The chapters switch narrators and are told through the eyes of Skeeter and two of the maids, Aibileen and Minny. All three narrators are equally interesting and bring the segregated times and white households vividly to life. Hilly Holbrook, president of the Junior League, is the main menace in town who makes life hell for the maids and those who don’t share her white, elitest views.

I found “The Help” quite hard to put down. Chalk it up to good pacing and to the suspense of what will happen to the black women and Skeeter whose lives are literally on the line. I found the author, Kathryn Stockett, especially brave to put herself in the shoes of the maids and her use of dialect. The novel took a lot of guts to write, but obviously paid off. I found it sugary in a few spots but still able to successfully navigate its way through a minefield on race relations to deliver a pretty heartfelt, vivid tale of the times and the injustices done to black women and of those who boldly resisted despite such grave consequences. Some of the trailers of the movie look more cute than the book comes off being, but I still plan to see it. Continue reading →

Congrats to Tea Obreht for winning Britain’s Orange Prize for fiction today. I just finished her debut novel “The Tiger’s Wife” and thought it might win the award, which nets her about $46,200 and a bronze statue.

I didn’t know much about “Tiger’s Wife” before I started it besides hearing of its praises. But don’t confuse it with Amy Chua’s “Tiger Mother” book, that’s a whole different cup of tea! There are quite a few tigers in books these days. Remember Booker Prize-winning “White Tiger” or Life of Pi”? The latter will come to the big screen next year.

“The Tiger’s Wife” is a bit hard to fully describe. It’s set in an unnamed Balkan country that’s been through years of war. The main character, Natalia, is a doctor on a mission to inoculate orphans in a far-off town, where diggers are looking for a body in the fields. But on the way, she learns that her beloved grandfather has died on travels away from home. She begins to investigate why he has journeyed to the place where he was found. Along the way she unravels tales about her grandfather of the “deathless man” and the “tiger’s wife,” which help her understand him better and what he was up to at the time of his death.

The stories of the deathless man and the tiger’s wife make up threads that run throughout the book alongside the one of Natalia in the present. I found myself caught up in these mythic-like tales of a man doomed to immortality and a deaf-mute woman who befriends a tiger.

It’s not a totally easy beach read; you have to concentrate especially toward the end when the threads come to a close. It bogs down a bit in places, but also creates a vivid image of the Balkans and the coming to grips of the dead.

Obreht is a skillful storyteller; while reading along, I couldn’t believe the author is only 25; it was a bit astonishing in fact. No wonder Obreht, a Serbian-American, is being hailed as the next big literary deal. If you’re wondering: she started college at 16 and graduate school at 20 and wrote the book in a few years at eight hours a day (from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.). Good luck doing that. Continue reading →

The past two summers I’ve read one book from Stieg Larsson’s best-selling trilogy. And I must say, they do make good page-turning summer reads. This second one is focused much more on Lisbeth Salander, the computer hacker tough girl who helped journalist Mikael Bloomkvist crack the crimes in the first book. From that, she’s gotten rich off the Wennerstrom money and goes traveling around the world without telling anyone she knows. She even gets a boob job in Italy (in the book). But finds herself in trouble almost as soon as she returns to Stockholm — when her fingerprints are found on the gun at a multiple murder scene, leading her to go into hiding to figure out who’s behind it.

“The Girl Who Played With Fire” unlocks secrets behind Salander’s abusive childhood and how she came to be institutionalized for awhile. The murders, with a connection to Blomqvist’s Millennium magazine, deal with a loathsome gang of drug- and sex-traffickers. Like “Dragon Tattoo,” this book dwells on men’s violence toward women, which leads many readers to question is the sexual violence of these books just titillation and misogyny on the part of the author? Or is Salander a kind of feminist avenger? To which I’d say I’m more in the latter camp. Salander seems almost like an antihero superhero in the book, who has problems but confronts the bad guys and deals out justice in gutsy ways.

The Swedish movies follow the books pretty closely and do a good job. But they seem a bit more plodding than the fast-page-turning books. I liked both books almost equally well but perhaps found this one more suspenseful. The ending leaves Salander in a heap of a mess. All the more reason I’ll tune in next summer for the last book “Hornet’s Nest.” Continue reading →

Just picked up the mass paperback and boy is this a quick read — nearly all-842 pages of it. Now I know what all the fuss was about. Apparently Stieg Larsson was the second bestselling author in the world in 2008 (even though he died in 2004) — thanks to his Swedish “Millennium” trilogy, of which “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is the first. The trilogy has sold more than 12.5 million copies, and soon enough I’m sure to pick up book number two. I can’t recall being so consumed by a murder mystery, thriller since perhaps Scott Turow’s “Presumed Innocent” in 1987.

“Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” starts out as protagonist Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-age financial journalist and co-owner of Millennium magazine in Stockholm, hits rock bottom when he’s found guilty in court of libel against shady businessman Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, despite the fact that he knows his story is right but can’t prove it. Exhausted by the case, Blomkvist decides to take time off from the magazine, and accepts an offer from industrialist Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance of Vanger’s great-niece 40 years ago from the secluded island that the powerful family owns, three hours by train to the north.

On remote Hedeby Island, Blomkvist finds himself in the depths of winter, trying to make sense of a case long grown cold, and a family that is more than a touch unsettling. The backdrop of the place and the frigid landscape are described vividly enough to make frostbite and darkness feel very real. It might conjure up memories of the 1992 Danish murder mystery “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” which comes to a head on a glaciated island off of Greenland. Brrr.

Simultaneously, “Dragon Tattoo” also delves into the world of Lizbeth Salander, a 24-year-old pierced, tattooed whip-smart computer hacker whom Blomkvist comes to enlist in time to help crack the case. Salander, who at the beginning is on the verge of being institutionalized for behavioral problems, is a hell of a character, prepared to kick ass and take names later. In a grisly scene, she’s been abused by an appointed guardian and takes it into her own hands to wage a heavy payback.

Blomkvist and Salander make a great investigative combo. Getting to know them in the beginning and middle parts of the book are the best, as new evidence surrounding the creepy Vanger family and disappearance slowly start to emerge. The fact that Blomkvist and Salander start sleeping together while on the case, even though she is half his age, adds an element of complexity (though I don’t think I like it for the characters) with Blomkvist still linked to his partner, Erika Berger, at the magazine. The last part of the book seems to get a bit too tidy with almost all of the pieces falling neatly into place, case cracked, and some of the earlier intrigue losing hold. The ending goes on a tad long and isn’t as good as the rest. But still “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” proves to be the quickest page-turner of the year.

Ps. A Swedish film of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” came out in 2009 but apparently didn’t get wide release in the States. Catch it if you can. Continue reading →