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July 2002 Book Reviews by Meg Wood | ||
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Very funny novel about a kooky middle-aged woman, Sandra (playing
a fictional version of herself), trying to come to terms with the fact her
life hasn't gone quite as she planned. She's been struggling to write a
novel, and failing. Her quirky, comic column for a new women's on-line
magazine gets cancelled when she sort of accidentally insults the new
editor (oops!). Her TV show, based on her column, never gets off the
ground. Her eye bags and extra ten pounds are driving her nuts. Etc.
etc. All in all, not really a story we haven't heard before (think
Bridget Jones). And, additionally, Loh's style, full of cross-outs and
parentheticals and lots of tangents, started to grate on me after awhile.
It's really a style better suited for short pieces. This meant that the
sections that were essays Sandra wrote for the web site were wonderful --
and the narrative in between was kind of too cutesy for its own good.
Nevertheless, there were many parts that made me giggle so madly that
people on the bus started to move away from me -- always a good sign.
And I will probably look for more of Loh's work (though will stay away
from her novels, most likely). Recommended for anybody looking for a good
beach book or for people who are already a fan of Loh's and just want
to spend some more time inside her very wacky head.
Oh
man, is there ANYTHING better than a Spenser novel? Ooh! Ooh! Yes! A
NEW Spenser novel. And this one is a mighty fine one, to boot. This
time, Spenser is hired to help a lawyer who is defending a woman accused
of murdering her husband. Both the lawyer and Spense are convinced the
woman is FAR too stupid to have actually done it. And that conviction is
only strengthened when someone starts tailing Spenser and, ultimately,
tries to kill him. Clearly, someone doesn't want him to find out the
truth about the man's death. But, well, don't these bad guys read Spenser
novels? That's exactly the kind of thing that makes Spenser's entire day!
An excuse to use those boxing skills and that sharp, sleuthing brain! An
excuse to hurl fabulous and literary insults! An excuse to get Hawk on
the case with him! Bad guys, you're such fools! Of course, the plots of Spenser novels are always secondary to me. The
best part of about them is getting to spend some time with the regular
cast again. And they're all here, of course -- Spenser, Susan, Pearl the
Wonder Dog, Hawk, Belson. All here and all just as hilarious and
wonderful as ever. Everybody's older (Pearl, especially) and their
relationships are just as realistic and strong as they've always been.
The writing made me laugh out loud more times than I could count, and I
read the whole novel in one sitting because it's the perfect length, with
a great story, a great cast, and some of the greatest lines ever ("when
you make tea, you burn the WATER!"). Typical Parker in every way --
fantastic. If you have never read a Spenser novel, you're the biggest
fool I know. Highly recommended!
Short novel written in the form of a letter from a man, Russell,
to his married lover, Kay. It recounts their last encounter -- their
first encounter since Kay went back to her manipulative husband six years
ago. An encounter that began purely by chance. A hurricane shuts down
the roads out of a small town and, unbeknownst to them both, they check
into the same hotel for refuge. Upon seeing each other, all the old
feelings come flooding back to them and they spend the next several days
wild with passion and, at times, overwhelmed with pain. Though they make
promises to stay together this time, they both seem to know, deep down,
that it won't happen. They try to live in denial of it, but, as the
letter shows, their determination to make it work this time fades almost
the moment they separate and return to their regular lives. The letter is
a valentine to Kay -- a soft, quiet plea for her to reconsider her
perpetual decision not to try to break free from her husband. Her
perpetual decision to break Russell's heart over and over instead of doing
what they both really want. The fact that she does that, and the fact
that he lets her, is so realistic. It's something you don't often see in
a story about lovers of this type. I found this to be an incredibly real
and moving description of the anguish of impossible love. Nothing like
it, really. And that feeling -- you never ever forget it, even if your
life's new path takes you somewhere you love just as much. Beautiful.
Recommended.
If
you've been keeping up, you'll already know I stumbled on this series a
few weeks ago, when I read
Harstad's most recent novel in the Carl Houseman (a small-town Iowa
deputy) series, "Code Sixty-One."
I then read the first in the series, "Eleven Days." Loved 'em both so
much,
I promptly put all the others on hold at the library. This
one features all the same regulars: Hester Gorse, Carl, Lamar, Sally;
and this time
it doesn't have anything to do with anything too freaky (61 was about
vampires, 11 about satanists).
Well, okay, it's about an anti-government militia group (wait, is that an
oxymoron?) -- that might be
considered kind of freaky in some circles. But at least there are no
children of the night and upside-down crucifixes, right? Anyway, the
head militia guy,
a notorious killer named Gabriel, has been preparing to rob five banks in
Nation County. When two thieves break into the house where he's been
staying, he murders them to
keep them quiet (and also because he thinks they are FBI and he hates
FBI). This gets Carl, et al,
on the case, of course, though at first, they suspect a friend of the two
dead robbers. Just because he seems to
have been the only person who knew they were going to be there. Soon,
however, they discover Gabriel has been back in town and, not only
that, was crashing at the scene of the crime
while he plotted a massive heist. First of all, Carl and the gang need to
figure out
which banks are going to be hit so they can get teams in place before it
goes down. Second of all,
it would be nice to find out just where Gabriel
is. Really nice. Fortunately, two of Gabriel's men are arrested and are
all too happy to give Carl information
on the plan -- especially after Gabriel tries to have them killed while
they're in custody. Unfortunately,
they're both stupid and Gabriel never really trusted them with any serious
details. The last
hundred pages of this novel were so suspenseful and marvelous, I
had to stay up WAY past my
bedtime to finish them. There was just no putting the book down once the
bank heist began. This is, like the
others I've read, just a magnificent mystery with fantastic, funny
characters and a supremely entertaining
and clever plot. If you're a fan of small-town cop mysteries and you
haven't started this series yet,
you've got a lot of great reading in store for you. Can't wait to read
the others!
Ninety year old Rachel Matson lies in bed, paralyzed from the
neck down by a progressive neurogenic illness that will soon take her
life. Mostly, she spends her time looking at the hundreds of photographs
she took during her lifetime, remembering the wonderful times spent with
her long-since-deceased, beloved husband Jocelyn. When her
son Dick comes for a visit out of the blue, she is immediately suspicious
he is up to no good. Sure enough, he tells Rachel he'd just seen one of a
pair of valuable antique pistols that belonged to Jocelyn on the "Antiques
Roadshow." The pistols, a gift from Rachel to celebrate Jocelyn's safe
return from a WWII POW camp, have tremendous sentimental value to her.
Clearly Dick is merely interested in selling them for cash, however, so
instead of taking him up on his offer to help track the missing gun down,
Rachel shoos him away. She then
has her nurse pull the old pistol case out of the hiding hole she had put
it in years before. Sure enough, one of the guns is missing. And, not
only that, she remembers Dick saying the Roadshow expert had devalued the
missing gun, saying it had been put away dirty after firing and was
damaged as the powder sat against the metal for a time. Knowing Jocelyn
would never have neglected to clean the gun, let alone allowed it to be
separated from its mate, Rachel enlists the help of her trusty and
delightful nurse Dilys and the two of them begin making calls. Together,
they begin a search that ultimately leads Rachel back to her husband's
friends from WWII. A group of them, all survivors from the same POW camp,
had formed an organization after the war. One story about the group in
particular stands out in Rachel's mind. Something about some stolen
money, a broken engagement, and then a disappearance. But Jocelyn had
always been very secretive about it all. Convinced that that story and
the two
guns are connected, Rachel becomes determined to uncover the truth before
she dies. No matter how many closeted skeletons she has to let out in the
process. This was a
totally riveting novel. Fascinating plot -- complex, original, and packed
with absolutely wonderful characters and history. I just loved it.
Highly, highly recommended!
Terrific novel that has a murder
mystery plotline as its backbone but is really about a lot more. It
starts with the story of three young boys (Jimmy, Sean, and Dave) -- all
friends -- and a kidnapping that changes their relationships forever.
Then the novel leaps forward about twenty years. The three boys are now
men, complete with families, careers, and a lot of baggage. They are brought back together when
Jimmy's daughter Katie is murdered; Sean, now a police detective, is put
on the case; and Dave rapidly becomes the prime suspect. But this novel
is really more about issues of social class, small town life, family
loyalty, psychological scars, and the difficult choices all these things
force us to make at times. Choices we so often make so instinctively. So
thoughtlessly. And sometimes so regrettably. In a lot of
ways, this novel reminded me of "Snow Falling on Cedars." I mean, really,
two books couldn't be more different, but at the same time, they felt very
similar to me. Both feature a murder as the skeleton, but are made much
heavier with the meat of social and familial issues. In both novels, love
makes people do crazy things -- and it also threatens to destroy some of
them. Two very fine "literary" mysteries. Both highly recommended!
Two high school girls are chatting
in the school bathroom one morning when they hear gunshots in the hallway.
Suddenly, the gunman, a classmate, burst into the room and sees them
there. He quite calmly announces that he's going to kill one of them. And
then he asks them to choose. Diane, without hesitation, says, "Kill her.
Not me." And he
does. That's
Chapter One. In the rest of the novel, we see Diane as a
middle-aged woman, still tortured by what she said back in that bathroom.
Her shame is intense -- stemming not only from the fact her words got her
friend killed, but from the fact they were so instinctive. So immediate.
So cowardly. Everything about her life has been colored by the fact that
the very existence of her life at all is so horrific. As the novel
progresses, we see both Diane's vibrant youth and her solemn middle age
and how inevitable a life can seem when it's looked at backwards. How much
of life is lost to youth and bad choices -- and how much can be gained
from that loss. This is a stunningly original and moving novel. Intense,
sad, beautiful, tragic, and highly recommended.
The title kinda says it all -- this
is a fascinating non-fiction book about the various methods used (past and
present) to determine time of death. Though many of us are under the
impression this is a relatively simple task (after all, they do it on tv
all the time!), in reality, it's actually one of the most difficult
calculations a medical examiner is asked to make. And, unlike many of the
other realms of forensic science, it's one area where natural methods
trump technological ones. Plants, chemicals, and insects found on or near
the body are turning out to be the fiercest weapons in the forensic
scientist's arsenal. This is not only an interesting
look at the history of a criminal investigation tool, but also a
remarkable and almost beautiful examination of what happens to our bodies
when we give them back to the earth. A must-read for all armchair
forensic expert wannabes or anyone else who just thinks science is damn
cool. Recommended!
Extremely comic novel about
40-something Miles Roby, proprietor of the Empire Grill, a greasy burger
joint located in the heart of the small Maine town Empire Falls. Though
Roby is sort of the central focal point of the novel, it's the characters
who rotate wildly around him that really made this story a blast. First,
there's his teenage daughter (who is everything you'd expect from a
teenage in a small town with divorced parents). Then there's Roby's
ex-wife Janine, his cantankerous father Max, and the rich, manipulative
widow Francine who owns the Grill and takes an almost sick joy in making
Roby's life difficult. There are
so many plotlines in this novel -- everything from romance to social class
satire -- that you'd think it would drive you nuts trying to keep track.
Instead, Russo is somehow able to keep every storyline in steady orbit
around our Good Guy hero Miles. And the result is a novel that feels both
controlled and chaotic. An epic of both large and small proportions, if
that makes any sense. Even without the characters, this book would have
been amazing, just in scope and structure. But add to that a town full of
characters that have the power to make you laugh even as you ache with
them from their miseries and what you have is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Highly recommended to anybody who appreciates a finely crafted piece of
fiction. Or who is just out for a really great ride.
This is a pleasant little memoir about Kimmel's childhood in a
small (pop: 300) rural community in Indiana. Lots of stories about pigs,
chickens, dogs, and her crazy friends and family. But, to be honest, in
my opinion this book lacked whatever it is that usually makes me so love a
memoir. Maybe it's that the stories are very short and not terribly
cohesive. Maybe it was that occasionally Kimmel's writing kind of irked
me (more than once, she used an analogy that sounded clever but actually
made no sense to me -- like describing an overweight lady who'd just
fallen in a mud puddle as lying there spread-eagled "like an artifact."
Huh?) Maybe, too, it was the fact that I didn't get much of a sense of
who Kimmel is today, as the result of her experiences. Her stories are
funny and I laughed out loud more than once. But they seemed impersonal.
Detached, somehow. As though she'd heard them from someone else and was
relating them, not as though she'd experienced them, they'd changed her,
and she wanted to share them with us. While most memoirs make me feel
close to the writer (occasionally so close that I actually worry about
them later!), this one really made me feel nothing. I was amused, but I
wasn't affected. And I'm left with no real curiosity for how the rest of
Kimmel's life has turned out. Kind of a disappointment.
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