The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

I had no idea what this would be about when I got it. I thought it would be about a photographer in the 1800s who specialized in photographs of Native Americans. I don't know why I thought the name was Sawtelle- I think the name I really meant was Curtis. In any case, I thought this would be an account of this photographer, nonfiction.

Not so. It is a lengthy first novel, finely crafted, about a boy and his family in northern Wisconsin. I may have missed references to the time frame. My guess is it takes place in the 1950s or 1960s, maybe 1970s.

Edgar Sawtelle was born without a voice. He could hear but could not speak. Doctors could not determine the cause or a solution, so he learned sign language. Over time, he modified sign language to include his own idiosyncratic signs, which his mother and father, Trudy and Gar, learned easily.  The family business is the breeding of dogs - a special breed - "Sawtelle dogs". When Edgar's grandfather began breeding, he did not care about pedigree. Instead, when he saw a dog with characteristics that he found special, he would acquire the dog to breed with his stock. He did this over the years, hoping to impart special qualities to his dogs.

Another aspect that set the dogs apart from traditional breeders is that the Sawtelles realized that too many dogs are "ruined" by incapable owners in their first year. So they did an unusual thing: they did not sell puppies. Instead, they sold fully trained young dogs, trained to their exacting specifications.

Edgar loves the dogs and loves working with him. One special dog, Almondine, was there when Edgar was born and became almost his other half. They did everything together.

The small family is doing reasonably well when Gar's brother Claude shows up out of the blue. He had been in prison and Gar lets him stay for a while. The two have conflicts, however, and in time Claude is invited to leave. He moves into the small town nearby and does odd jobs.

Then Edgar and Trudy's lives are turned upside down. Edgar is there when his father has some kind of seizure and falls to the floor. Edgar is unable to use the telephone, although he tries. He even damages it in the process of trying to make himself heard. Gar dies before anyone can get to him.

Trudy and Edgar are then in a precarious position. It is difficult to manage the home and business between the two of them, and harder still when Trudy becomes very ill and has to stay in bed. During this time Claude offers some help, and gradually works his way into the family. Edgar, however, never accepts him. In fact, after a time he has a memory of seeing something that makes him wonder about Claude. It is here when the story takes on more than a hint of Hamlet. Complete with ghosts.

When there is another accident and the vet dies in their barn, Edgar takes off with three of the dogs. He manages to make his way through the northwoods without being spotted, existing on very little at first but eventually finding a way to feed both himself and the dogs. It is then that the small group has an emergency that results in their meeting Henry, a lone man who lives in a remote cabin, and a tentative friendship develops.

And finally, a dramatic finish worthy of Hamlet, very suspenseful in the last pages.

The story caught my attention but I never fully embraced Edgar. I know that part of my difficulty is with the breeding. I am very opposed to the breeding of dogs. Any breeder has to destroy animals that do not come out right. There are many missteps in deliberate genetic manipulations. It's not simple science. I am also disturbed by the belief that purebred dogs are superior to "mutts". I have never known this to be true in real life. But that's, of course, for another dissertation. The point here is that this large aspect of the story disturbed me. It was hard for me to ignore it, to separate my personal ethics from the story.

The training was another aspect that at times made me suspicious. The author consulted training books ad infinitem and I am sure that much of what he writes is what many trainers do. I just did not like all that I read. But I feel that this is an area of evolving practice, and here in 2012 I learn about types of training that probably did not exist at the time of this novel. What is clear is that the dogs matter to the family, that they are special, that they are loved.

I was enough attached to Edgar to want better for him, to want his suspicions to be verified to others. I wanted more than a tragic ending, frankly, after getting to know him and his dogs for so many pages.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

A writer of fiction, Elizabeth McCracken found herself in France in an old house in the country, pregnant. She and her husband like to visit different places when not required to be home. Thus the French country. The two of them arranged for a midwife and had access to a hospital about 40 minutes away. All checkups went well, until the last one, when there appeared to be something amiss.

The baby was stillborn.

This book is the story of that baby, the months before and after, the way Elizabeth and her husband coped with the loss. It is written simply and freely, from the heart. Yet, although she says she did very little editing, she seemed to have a sense of how to tell the story. We know from the start that the baby dies, but we know no more about it until well into the story.

What we learn goes beyond the grief. We learn how a tragedy can be associated with a place to such an extent that the place is forever ruined. We learn that it is important to say something to the grieving parents, not to ignore the grief.

We learned, in this case, that McCracken does not want to forget the happy days, months, before the birth, even though she never wants to see those places again. It's important to remember.

McCracken wrote the book, she says, so that she does not have to keep telling the story, so that she does not have to answer the question, "Is this your first child?" It hurts to keep explaining, "No, the first was stillborn". Better that acquaintances already know.

A simply-written memoir that manages to sidestep the maudlin yet lets us in on the fullness of a mother's pain. 

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

What a pleasure! An interesting array of characters and plenty of action, but that is not all.

The central character is Joanne, who suffers a great loss when she is six. We get to pick up on her life thirty years later, where we find she has become a doctor, is married and has a baby son she adores - and may be threatened by the same man who destroyed her family 30 years before. Joanne is kind and thoughtful and just possibly stronger than she looks.

On another track is Louise, a police detective particularly obsessed by cases of violence against women. She too is married, to an understanding and unflappable doctor, but she feels the need to test their bond again and again. She is prickly and aggressive.

Jackson Brodie is a former detective (also former police detective and former military guy), newly married yet on a trip to see a young son whose mother insists is not Jackson's. By a stroke of luck, Brodie has inherited big bucks so does not have to work, but he does not feel he really earned it so does not flaunt it. Brodie was central in Case Histories and One Good Turn, Atkinson's previous two novels, as well. His trip is more adventurous - and dangerous -than he would like.

Primary driving force, though, is Reggie. Reggie is a sixteen-year-old girl ("with a boy's name") who takes care of Joanne's baby and dog when the doctor is at work. Having struggled through quite a life already, Reggie is remarkably open to affection and is tough and resilient. She is also loyal and determined. It is Reggie who really brings everyone together. Reggie is also quite the little scholar, learning primarily on her own. Atkinson nails the teenage speech, which I found highly entertaining.

Joanne disappears one day and Reggie seems to be the only one who thinks there is something suspicious about the story her husband offers. The baby is with her but not the dog. And not a few other things that Reggie in particular insists would have been with her.

Beyond the suspense of the story there are the characters. All fully-formed persons, we get to see how they make decisions, good and bad, and act intelligently or not. We also get a great sense of place and custom, without being overwhelmed by it. The book is enjoyable for its quiet humor and believable characters, beautifully drawn, so fun to watch.

Sea of Poppies - Wendy's Review

It was Kabutri’s question that triggered Deeti’s vision: her eyes suddenly conjured up a picture of an immense ship with two tall masts. Suspended from the masts were great sails of a dazzling shade of white. The prow of the ship tapered into a figurehead with a long bill, like a stork or a heron. There was a man in the background, standing near the bow, and although she could not see him clearly, she had a sense of a distinctive and unfamiliar presence. – from Sea of Poppies, page 7 -

Deeti, an Indian woman who grows poppies, has a vision of a ship – an odd vision because she lives 400 miles from the sea and has never seen a boat such as this…but her vision is a premonition and the ship has a name: Ibis. Thus begins Amitav Ghosh’s sprawling, historical saga Sea of Poppies. What follows is a story with a vast cast of characters whose paths ultimately cross enroute to the island of Mauritius aboard the Ibis – a former slave ship manned by a motley crew including an opium addicted captain, a freed American slave, and a foul-mouthed first mate with a penchant for cruelty. The voyagers include Paulette (a French woman with a sense of adventure who is fleeing an unacceptable situation in India), and Neel (a man who has been convicted of a crime he did not commit). But it is the Indian indentured workers who take center stage in a novel about caste, freedom, and human connection. And it is Deeti who becomes the central figure – a strong woman who marries beneath her caste and is respected by the other women aboard the ship.

The novel is beautifully imagined and captures the hopelessness of the opium factory workers, the daily lives of the villagers, the violence of ship law, and the diversity of an India in the mid-nineteenth century. Ghosh’s use of language in the novel is brilliant. Filled with strange words, pidgin English, and unusual sentence structure – the book at first seems unwieldy. But Ghosh succeeds where other less talented authors might not. The language, used with appropriate context, becomes almost like a musical score in a movie. Ghosh’s use of language demonstrates the way language can unite or divide people, and confuse or clarify situations. It is a powerful technique that works.

Historically, Sea of Poppies is set just prior to the Opium Wars and revolves around the British involvement in India and their trade practices exporting opium from India to China. Ghosh reveals the damage done by British colonial rule and the devastation wreaked upon the Indian economy, as well as society at large. Although apparently Ghosh’s creative inspiration was the indentured people of India, he says in an interview: “[...] once I started researching into it, it was kind of inescapable – all the roads led back to opium. The indentured emigration [out of India] really started in the 1830s and that was [around the time of] the peak of the opium traffic. That decade culminated in the opium wars against China.”

Ghosh is skilled at creating character…and in Sea of Poppies the characters are memorable and complex.

This was a personage of formidable appearance, with a face that would have earned the envy of Genghis Khan, being thin, long and narrow, with darting black eyes that sat restlessly upon rakishly angled cheekbones. Two feathery strands of moustache drooped down to his chin, framing a mouth that was constantly in motion, its edges stained a bright, livid red: it was as if he were forever smacking his lips after drinking from the opened veins of a mare, like some bloodthirsty Tartar of the steppes. The discovery that the substance in his mouth was of vegetable origin came as no great reassurance to Zachary: once, when the serang spat a stream of blood-red juice over the rail, he noticed the water below coming alive with the thrashing of shark’s fins. How harmless could this betel-stuff be if it could be mistaken for blood by a shark? – from Sea of Poppies, page 13 -

Although filled with adventure and interesting plot twists, Sea of Poppies is also about what makes us human in the face of crisis. One particularly memorable part of the novel to me was when Neel loses his caste and is convicted of the crime of forgery. Thrown into jail, he is forced to share a cell with an Asian named Ah Fatt who is hopelessly addicted to opium and lies in his own waste. For Neel, a man of stature who is fastidously clean, the situation is almost unbearable. And then he makes a self-discovery about what it means to care for another human being:

To take care of another human being – this was something Neel had never before thought of doing, not even with his own son, let alone a man of his own age, a foreigner. All he knew of nurture was the tenderness that had been lavished on him by his own care-givers: that they would come to love him was something he had taken for granted – yet knowing his own feelings for them to be in no way equivalent, he had often wondered how that attachment was born. It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened: was it possible that the mere fact of using one’s hands and investing one’s attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one’s care – just as a craftsman’s love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated? - from Sea of Poppies, page 300 -

It was moments like these in the story which elevated it above the typical historical novel.

Some readers have found the ending of Sea of Poppies to be abrupt and unresolved. I would agree. However, this book is the first in a planned trilogy which may explain the ending. At any rate, Sea of Poppies completely enthralled me and I am looking forward to the next two books.

Readers who love world and historical literature, and who enjoy richly textured sagas will love Sea of Poppies.

Highly recommended.

Read more about the book and planned trilogy.

Read more about Amitav Ghosh and his work at the author’s website.

Read an interview with the author.

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly

The "Lincoln Lawyer" returns. After a year's hiatus, during which time defense attorney Mickey Haller goes through rehab and stays straight, Haller is abruptly thrown back into the world of law when a fellow attorney is murdered. Haller takes over most of the cases, including the "franchise": a prominent film producer accused of murdering his wife and her lover.

In addition to having to get up to speed quickly, to sort out what is going on in each of the cases, Haller is concerned that his own life may be threatened. In part for this reason and in part because the murdered attorney had been his friend, Haller begrudgingly lets LAPD detective Harry Bosch in. Haller wants the murderer caught as much as Bosch does, but is limited by law in what he can do to help Bosch. Their alliance is an uneasy one but one that seems to develop into almost a mutual respect.

As is the case with other Connelly novels, this one is replete with the details, is exacting in getting them right. Thus we can step right into Haller's shoes and feel the pressure as he takes steps to reconstruct a calendar, to track down clients. We also can breathe with him as he resumes his habit of working out of his Lincoln Town cars (three of them, rotated), watching the Suitcase City pass by as he is driven from one appointment to another.

It was a pleasure to read a Mickey Haller novel in which Bosch figures so prominently. It gives us a different perspective on the sometimes-explosive man-on-a-mission. It was also a pleasure to get to know Haller better, to follow his efforts to get back into the real world and perhaps to take steps to win his ex-wife back.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell loves studies and statistics. He hunts down the lesser-known and bends them to his will - in a good way!

In this book, Gladwell takes on the myth of the self-made man (or woman). He treks down various roads: the roads of birth dates, birth years, cultural backgrounds, and especially the road of opportunities. He finds connections between these elements and the potential for success in different fields. He shows how in hockey and several other sports, the month of birth is critical to the person's access to special opportunities that can lead to success. He follows airline pilots in different countries and shows how the cultural background of each can affect the number of accidents involving the pilots.

He takes us to the life of 13-year-old Bill Gates and shows how Gates was uniquely positioned to reach the pinnacle of power he now has.

In essence, he shows us how individual success is actually the success of a community, of circumstance, of the luck of birth far more than it is of a person simply working hard - but notes that working hard is always at the heart of it nevertheless.

What's more important is that when we understand these elements we can effect changes so that these opportunities are available to a greater number of persons. We might even find hints here for the raising of our children.

Breath by Tim Winton

You could summarize Tim Winton's Breath by saying it's a novel about a two Australian teenagers who perfect their surfing skills under the tutelage of a reclusive mentor. Of course, that would be like saying Fight Club is a novel about young men in an illicit fighting club.

Breath may be built around surfing but the story, told from the viewpoint of Bruce "Pikelet" Pike, is about what the title says -- breath, both as a life sustainer and as a metaphor. Pike's story focuses on his relationship with his best friend, Ivan "Loonie" Loon, and how Bill "Sando" Sanderson, a star surfer, takes them under his wing and becomes their guru to the dismay and resigned acceptance of Sanderson's wife, Eva. Breath serves to illustrate the routine of life and how the desire to challenge that routine can be, at the same time, exhilarating and dangerous to the point of deadly.

Within a moment of a newborn's first "rude shock of respiration," breathing becomes so routine we rarely give it another thought unless and until it is threatened. Thus, Pike wonders over the years whether the risks he took with Loonie, Sando and Eva "were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath." While an adult might deplore risks they took when young, as a youth the sense is "that life renders you powerless by dragging you back to it, breath upon breath upon breath in an endless capitulation to biological routine, and that the human will to control is as much about asserting power over your own body as exercising it on others."

This portrayal of breath appears at the outset of the novel, years after the main events. It is also a focus of Pikelet and the appropriately nicknamed Loonie as they rebel against the mundaneness of their life in a small town in relatively remote western Australia. It starts with challenging each other to see who can dive and hold their breath for the longest period of time, often pushing themselves to the point of blacking out. Their feats produce exhilaration even though fraught with disaster.

Pike and Loonie also become enthralled with surfing and come to meet and know Sando, a former world class surfer who, with his wife, has become essentially a hippie recluse. Sando sees in them a capacity to take on surfing challenges above and beyond ordinary mortals. Thus, not only does he take these barely teenaged boys to surf in shark-haunted waters, he teaches them how to analyze where storms will produce the biggest swells and takes them miles into the ocean to challenge huge waves only he has surfed.

Loonie and Pikelet encounter similar as well as differing coming of age challenges, some of which they will exult over, others of which will scar them for life. Throughout the book, there is an undercurrent of walking the line between acceptable risk and disaster. Breath doesn't try to tell us where to find the appropriate ground among routine, challenge and jeopardy. Instead, breath becomes a vehicle by which to reflect upon adventure and addiction, courage and self-destruction.

The Private Patient, by P.D. James: audio version

There is always something different about listening to a book as opposed to reading it. I enjoy listening to audio books as I drive around town and especially when I am on a long trip, but the experience is very different from reading one at my leisure, when I can ruminate over a passage or reread a section easily.

I admit that I did not hear - or absorb - every word on this CD set. Certainly I didn't skip any parts, but at times my mind went elsewhere while driving and I missed a bit here or there. Not much, I suspect, but perhaps some sentences that were important.

As is typical with P.D. James' novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard, this one starts with the characters central to the plot, in particular with the murder victim herself. And we know right off that she is the one. Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative reporter in her mid-forties, meets with a plastic surgeon, George Chandler-Powell, to have him remove a scar that has been on her face since childhood. She chooses to have the work done at a manor house that has been converted to a part-time clinic. The surgeon divides his time between London and Cheverell Manor, keeping the manor available for very private - and generally very rich - clients.

When she meets with Chandler-Powell she tells him only that she wants the scar removed because she "no longer has need of it". Chandler-Powell is struck by the explanation but does not ask further questions. Throughout the book I looked for the reason but was never satisfied that I'd got it. I may have missed a connection somewhere.

Subsequent to a lengthy description of Gradwyn's preliminary stay at the manor (to get the feel of it) and her activities leading up to the day of the surgery, as well as a venture into her childhood, we meet the employees at Cheverell Manor, one or two at a time, find out how they came to be there and what their feelings are at the time.

Thus we don't get to the main action until disk 4 (out of 12).

It is rather satisfying to meet the characters this way rather than after the murder. We get a better sense of them and can follow them as they react to the murder and can consider who might have done the deed. We also get to see them through the eyes of Commander Adam Dalgliesh (A.D. to Kate, his subordinate), a quicker scan of how they appear then.

As well as we did get to know Rhoda I felt much was left out. She was private in more than one sense and as Dalgliesh considered later in the book, perhaps it is arrogant to hope to understand the motives of others. We do know she met with a young gentleman friend, Robin, who is excited about her visit to the manor and who mentions that he is a cousin of the assistant surgeon. He wants to visit Rhoda while she is there but she is emphatic that she will not welcome any visitors. I get the sense that she accepts Robin as an occasional dinner partner but is not interested in his ventures nor in becoming better friends. I sense she doesn't have close friends although she does have admirers.

A.D., Kate, and Benton, from Scotland Yard, arrive soon after the murder is discovered. They have been called in because somebody at the manor has connections and wants the best. They set off to interview everyone in the manor, to investigate the mysterious nighttime comings and goings of somebody, and down the line to follow up on other leads.

As is typical of old-style English mysteries, the only realistic suspects are the small group living at or on the grounds of the manor. James' mysteries differ from the old style, however, in the development of the characters of the main investigators, in the changes that enter their lives. It is perhaps better to read these novels in sequence, whereas with Agatha Christie, for example, it does not matter.

A.D. is looking forward to his marriage with Emma. At the same time, Kate manages to maintain an attraction to him and perhaps a better understanding of the whole man, but she knows the attraction is not returned. Unlike characters in other novels I have read, Kate does not pine and agonize and try to get A.D. to fall for her. She knows where she stands and she accepts it.

After the various twists and turns have resolved, in a sense, and the case is solved, once again we get a glimpse of the different characters and where they have gone, how their lives have changed. A rather neat wrap.

book rating:

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News?: A Novelis the second novel that I've read by Kate Atkinson. As I was reading it, I realized that it is written very similar to Case Histories: A Novel, her other book that I've read. Not necessarily in the story line, but in the way that the story is presented. It is an intriguing style and one that I really enjoy.

To picture her style, imagine a few pieces of yarn, laid side by side, and parallel. They go on for a while not touching and the one overlaps one, and then another overlaps another. This continues slowly until eventually all of the pieces of yarn are woven together. This is what her writing is like. At first, you don't see how the characters are related at all. And I admit, that I am sometimes confused, but then you start having these a-ha moments. Where you think...hey, what a minute, is she the girl that he saw at the beach?

From Amazon:
In Atkinson's stellar third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie (after One Good Turn), unrelated characters and plot lines collide with momentous results. On a country road, six-year-old Joanna Mason is the only survivor of a knife attack that leaves her mother and two siblings dead. Thirty years later, after boarding the wrong train in Yorkshire, Brodie is almost killed when the train crashes. He's saved by 16-year-old Regina Reggie Chase, the nanny of Dr. Joanna Hunter, née Mason. In the chaos following the crash, Brodie ends up with the wallet of Andrew Decker, the recently released man convicted of murdering the Mason family. Enter DCI Louise Monroe, Brodie's former love interest, who's tracking Decker because of a recent case involving a similar family and crime. When Dr. Hunter disappears, Reggie is convinced she's been kidnapped and enlists the reluctant Brodie to track her down. A lesser author would buckle under so many story lines, but Atkinson juggles them brilliantly, simultaneously tying up loose ends from Turn and opening new doors for further Brodie misadventures.

I know it sounds confusing and convoluted, but she does it so subtly, it isn't jarring at all. After reading the Amazon reviews, I realized that there are 3 books, so I am definitely going to find the second one.

I give this 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Many people believe the U.S. is in a mess. But the history David Hajdu recounts in his latest book might provide a handy scapegoat: comic books. Stop and think about it. For nearly two decades, the men in the Oval Office -- and even longer for Congress -- have been of the generation that grew up reading comic books, a communication form claimed to amount to little more than "cultural slaughter of the innocents."

The latter phrase is just one of many epithets -- and laws -- thrown at comic books from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, as Hajdu details in The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. Recently released in a paperback edition, the book traces a popular culture battle between two generations, a battle of mores in which rhetoric outweighed fact and that often reflected societal change.

Here's how bad comic books were, according to those who campaigned against them: "I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry." "The old dime novels in which an occasional redskin bit the dust were classic literature compared to the sadistic drivel pouring from the presses today." Comic books are "the greatest intellectual narcotic on the market.... Every hour spent in reading comics an hour in which all inner growth is stopped."

Relying upon extensive interviews with those in the comic book industry and historical records, Hajdu shows the evolution of the war, its ebb and flow and its combatants and victims. The Ten-Cent Plague takes us from the earliest comics, such as the Katzenjammer Kids in the Sunday papers, through the evolution of not only comic books but how they spawned publications like Mad magazine. Once they graduated from booklet reprints of the Sunday funnies, comics relied heavily on crime stories, whether it was a detective, Superman or some other character. But adults began to view these comics not as cautionary tales but ones that undermined the morals of youth.

As early as 1940, one newspaper series accused "these lurid publications" of depending upon "mayhem, murder, torture and abduction." In the years immediately following World War II, these claims found a wider audience among a populous no longer focused on a war (one in which comic book crime fighters helped battle the Axis). With no evidentiary basis, juvenile delinquency was laid at the feet of the crime comics. Communities throughout the country took steps to ban comics containing "objectionable material." The city of Cleveland even assigned two police officers to a permanent comic book detail.

Government wasn't alone. The Catholic Church and other organizations took stands against comics. They encouraged the public to boycott stores that sold comics and encouraged children to bring in comic books perceived as objectionable. The latter frequently led to public burnings of comic books. That, however, provoked a bit of a backlash, with the bonfires perhaps too closely resembling the all too recent book burnings by the Nazis.

Hajdu also shows how the comics industry wised up. In addition to creating a largely ineffective code, "romance" became the new focus. And like much of popular culture, imitation was the standard. At the end of 1947, only one romance comic was being published; three more were added in 1948. With the increasing criticism of crime comics during those years, though, there were 148 romance comics in 1950, issued by 26 different publishers. That didn't necessarily make them any less subversive. At a time when domestic bliss was the mainstream story line, the comics rarely focused on happy couples. Rather, the stories often tended to suggest that domestic life in the suburbs was the equivalent of the "levels of Hell."

But the romance fad, too, began to wane. The new focus became horror and the macabre. By the end of 1952, nearly one-third of all comics were of the horror genre, with more than a dozen publishers churning out 150 horror-oriented titles. And as the blood and gore increased, things got hot again, so hot that Congressional hearings were held across the country in 1953 and 1954, some of which were televised.

This is where The Ten-Cent Plague may be at its best. Hajdu compares and contrasts McCarthyism and the renewed attacks on comics as a cause of juvenile delinquency. "It was a bad time to be weird," one comic book artist told Hajdu. "You were either a Communist or a juvenile delinquent." He examines the lack of foundation for the "scientific" studies of the leading critic of the effect of comic books on youth. The book vividly details the televised hearings in April 1954, particularly the events leading to and the testimony of Bill Gaines, the owner of EC Comics. With one impromptu answer to a question, Gaines unwittingly helped seal the fate of comic books, the enactment of laws throughout the country regulating comic books and the adoption of a comic book code with provisions that, among other things, forbid "disrespect for established authority."

The impact was dramatic. Some 18 months after Gaines' testimony, EC Comics, once one of the major players in the industry, issued its last comic book. The only survivor was Mad, which EC moved to the magazine section of the newsstands. EC wasn't alone. Between 1954 and 1956, more than half the comic books sold on newsstands disappeared and the number of titles dropped by nearly two-thirds. One of the more sobering aspects of the book is an appendix listing more than 800 individuals who were among the "artists, writers, and others who never again worked in comics after the purge of the 1950s."

While The Ten-Cent Plague can tend to drag a bit at times, it seems to gain momentum as it moves toward this climactic moment. Moreover, Hajdu doesn't focus just on the events but gives a feel for the people involved in the profession. And without coming right out and saying so, he leaves us with the conviction that if the country is messed up today, it certainly isn't due to comic books.

(Also posted at A Progressive on the Prairie and Blogcritics)

No One Heard Her Scream, by Jordan Dane

I should know better. Or maybe not. I found this book on the Publisher's Weekly notable books list for 2008. It was listed under "mass market". Mass market paperbacks do not have to be bad, I can certainly attest. In this case, though, I should have looked more closely before ordering the book from a fellow paperbackswap member.

I did not realize it was in the category of "romantic suspense", a slight improvement over straight "romantic". It's a category I don't particularly like but that I occasionally read, mainly because somebody gave me the book.

The two main characters are Rebecca ("Becca", of course) and Diego, both thirty-something or below, both coping with issues of trust, both strong and highly attractive blah blah blah...in other words, the usual characters in romantic suspense novels.

Becca is a detective in the San Antonio police department, while Diego's position is a bit more shady, man on the inside of a powerful empire led by a wealthy fifty-something man with unsavory predilections.

Becca is still trying to cope with the disappearance and apparent murder of her younger, teenage sister when she takes on an arson case that results in the discovery of a body, dead seven years. The body is of another young woman who disappeared, and the two cases appear to be connected.

From here we get romance, danger, really bad people with no redeeming qualities (not for Jordan Dane a complex antagonist), and fairly sketchy policework. Dane knows some things about police and fire procedure but not enough. Ask me about the blood spatter in the hotel room where Becca's sister was held...no, don't ask because I'm likely to forget this book within a few days.

I recommend this book to people waiting in line, people stuck on airplanes, people trying to get through the time. Or LifeTime movie producers.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - Wendy's Review

A child dies in this book: a baby. A baby is stillborn. You don’t have to tell me how sad that is: it happened to me and my husband, our baby, a son. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 6-

Author Elizabeth McCracken lived briefly in France, with her husband, in her early thirties. It is there she conceives her first child - a son named Pudding - and begins to dream of his life and how it will enrich her life. And then the unthinkable happens. In her ninth month of pregnancy, the child she and her husband have been anticipating dies. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is the story of loss and how one woman moved through it.

Elizabeth McCracken has written a stunning memoir from the heart - a love letter of sorts to her first son and her husband. Her writing is never maudlin, yet is profoundly moving - and despite the bleak subject matter, it even manages to be funny at times. But it is McCracken’s honesty which makes the memoir powerful. She never pads the emotions or avoids the uncomfortable - instead she takes the reader through one of the most devastating years of her life with candor and grace. Lest the reader shy away from the book because a baby dies, it would be remiss of me not to mention that a child is also born and lives in this book…an event that is at the same time joyous, healing and bittersweet.

I will admit that this book hit me like a sledgehammer. It sent me reeling. I felt blindsided by the intense emotions it stirred up for me…because I lost a child too. No, I have never been pregnant. My loss arrived through infertility. And McCracken’s prose resonated with me. She writes about other women’s pregnancies after her unbearable loss:

Still, I wouldn’t have minded a pause in the whole business. A sudden harmless moratorium on babies being born. Doctors would have to tell the unfortunate pregnant, “I’m sorry. It happens sometimes. Tidal, we think. For everyone else, nine months, but for you, eleven months, maybe a year, maybe more. Don’t go outside. Don’t leave your house. Stroke your stomach, fine, but only in your own living room. Keep your lullabies to yourself. We’ll let you know when it’s time.” -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 43-

AND

No, I insist: other people’s children did not make me sad. But pregnant women did. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 111-

She writes of that horribly destructive behavior called Blame which threatens to stand in the way of moving forward through grief:

Blame is a compulsive behavior, the emotional version of obsessive hand washing, until all you can do is hold your palms out till your hands are full of it, and rub, and rub, and accomplish nothing at all. And so we grieved but looked straight ahead. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 143-

I found myself nodding in agreement when McCracken spoke of the pain of answering those innocent questions about children posed by unsuspecting strangers. She wishes for a stack of cards she can hand out which say ‘My first child was stillborn‘ whenever a person coos over her second son and asks, “Is this your first?” How I wish I had a similar stack of cards reading “I am infertile” for every time someone asks if I have children.

McCracken writes:

I want people to know but I don’t want to say it aloud. people don’t like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 73-

Yes. I agree.

McCracken’s great gift is that she reveals to her reader her deepest sadness, and her greatest hope. And in the end, she leaves us with a message which can sustain those who have experienced intolerable loss:

It’s a happy life, but someone is missing. It’s a happy life, and someone is missing. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 184-

This memoir is highly recommended, but with a cautionary note. I believed I had accepted my childlessness until I began reading McCracken’s words. I found myself closing the book often to weep, and yet I kept going back to read again. For women who have either lost a child or have never been able to conceive, this is a difficult book to read - but, it is also a hopeful book and one which reminds us we are not alone in our grief.

The Brass Verdict - Wendy's Review

Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Clients lie. Even jurors lie. There is a school of belief in criminal law that every trial is won or lost in the choosing of the jury. I’ve never been ready to go all the way to that level but I do know that there is probably no phase in a murder trial more important than the selection of the twelve citizens who will decide your client’s fate. -From The Brass Verdict, page 239-

Defense attorney Mickey Haller unexpectedly gets thrust back into the legal arena (after a year recovering from prescription drug addiction) when his colleague Jerry Vincent is found murdered in a parking garage. Vincent’s entire caseload - including accused double murderer Walter Elliot (a famous movie studio executive) - is transferred to Haller in Vincent’s will. Haller eagerly steps into Vincent’s shoes, but quickly discovers that nothing is as it seems…and Vincent’s killer may be one of his own clients. Detective Harry Bosch is the lead investigator on the case and is himself somewhat of an enigma. Before the novel comes to a close, both Bosch and Haller will need to cooperate from both sides of the law in order to catch the killer.

Michael Connelly’s novel is fast-paced and gripping, with twist and turns that will keep the reader guessing until the end. This book is a continuation of Connelly’s previous novels (which I have yet to read). But it is not necessary to have read Connelly’s work beforehand in order to enjoy The Brass Verdict.

Connelly has a firm grasp of the legal system and creates memorable (and believeable) characters who are not always predictable. His dialogue is tight and compelling.

For readers who love suspenseful legal thrillers, The Brass Verdict is one they will enjoy. This was my first Connelly novel, but I would not hesitate to pick up another of his books. The Brass Verdict was released October 14th through Little, Brown and Company. Connelly’s previous novels include The Lincoln Lawyer, Chasing the Dime, Void Moon, Blood Work, and The Poet. For more information about the author, visit his website.

Recommended.

Unaccustomed Earth - 3M's Review

Although I haven’t yet read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies, after reading Unaccustomed Earth, I can understand why the committee was so impressed with her writing. Her stories of the Bengali immigrant experience were very well developed, and they had closure to them, something I’ve noticed is often times lacking in modern short stories. All the characters in the book have similar backgrounds — high intelligence and high potential — yet each story was unique. Each character was struggling with his or her own set of issues, most of them due to the individuals’ adjustment, or lack thereof, of living in a culture so different from their own or that of their parents.

Themes explored include family, loyalty, duty, and honor. Relationships encountered were father and daughter, husband and wife, brother and sister, roommate to roommate, and childhood friend to childhood friend. Birth, life, marriage, children, divorce, and death. These few stories covered a wide range of experiences of the Bengali immigrant living in America and illustrated well how being Bengali shaped the characters’ choices.

Highly recommended. I will definitely be reading Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake at a later date.

2008, 333 pp.
Rating:

Breath - 3M's Review

Breath by Tim Winton
2008, 218 pp.


Ugh. I thought this was about a teen boy surfing in Australia. I wanted it to be about a teen boy surfing in Australia. And it was, for about 150 pages, then it goes off into a weird and extreme area that I will not mention here. I feel ripped off because I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book, but then to have to be subjected to...blech.

Pikelet and Loonie are two teenage boys obsessed with surfing. They meet up with Sando, a guy in his mid 30's who coaches them in the sport and sometimes encourages them to go a little too far with it. Sando's wife, Eva, was an extreme skier but now has a blown knee. Consequently, she's bitter because her husband still gets to do what he loves and because he's not spending any time with her. Breath is about pushing everything in life to the extreme to see how far one can go.

I'm giving it 2 stars because Tim Winton is a good writer and I enjoyed all but the last fourth (which totally ruined the whole thing for me.)

Here's an example of a passage I did enjoy:

I will always remember my first wave that morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air. How the wave drew me forward and I sprang to my feet, skating with the wind of momentum in my ears. I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light. I remember the solitary watching figure on the beach and the flash of Loonie's smile as I flew by; I was intoxicated. And though I've lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

2008 Publisher's Weekly (PW) Best Books

Fiction

• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• Roberto Bolaño, trans. from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
• Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben
• The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly
• Master of the Delta, by Thomas H. Cook
• The Konkans,by Tony D'Souza
• The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich
• The Likeness, by Tana French
• Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
• Ritual, by Mo Hayder
• The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon
• Day, by A.L. Kennedy
• My Revolutions, by Hari Kunzru
• Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Sway, by Zachary Lazar
• The Boat, by Nam Le
• The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane
• Flesh House, by Stuart MacBride
• How the Dead Dream, by Lydia Millet
• Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill
• Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock
• Lush Life, by Richard Price
• Serena, by Ron Rash
• Breath, by Tim Winton
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewsk

Mystery

• Wild Inferno, by Sandi Ault
• Lie Down with the Devil, by Linda Barnes
• Ghost at Work, by Carolyn Hart
• The Private Patient, by P.D. James
• The Messengers of Death: A Mystery in Provence, by Pierre Magnan, trans. from the French by Patricia Clancy
• Death's Half Acre, by Margaret Maron
• Salt River, by James Sallis
• Fear of Landing, by David Waltner-Toews
• The Calling, by Inger Ash Wolfe

SF/Fantasy/Horror

• The Living Dead, Edited by John Joseph Adams
• Pump Six and Other Stories, by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Ink and Steel, by Elizabeth Bear
• City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear
• Fallen, by Tim Lebbon
• Filter House, by Nisi Shawl
• Half a Crown, by Jo Walton

Mass Market

• No One Heard Her Scream, by Jordan Dane
• The Face, by Angela Hunt
• Deadly Deceptions, by Linda Lael Miller
• Heart of the Wolf, by Terry Spear
• Private Arrangements, by Sherry Thomas

Nonfiction

• How to Live: A Search forWisdom from Old People(While They Are Still on This Earth), by Henry Alford
• Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes
• The Journal of Hélène Berr, by Hélène Berr
• The Solitary Vice: Against Reading, by Mikita Brottman
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life, by Michael Burlingame
• The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins
• Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed
• Standard Operating Procedure, by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
• Champlain's Dream, by David Hackett Fischer
• The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu
• Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris
• Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time, by Susan Madden Lankford
• God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570–1215, by David Levering Lewis
• The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, by Steve Lopez
• The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer
• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir, by Elizabeth McCracken
• How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken, by Daniel Mendelsohn
• The Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists, and the Indian Rhinoceros, by Hemanta Mishra with Jim Ottaway Jr.
• Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality, by Loretta Napoleoni
• Descent into Chaos, by Ahmed Rashid
• Epilogue: A Memoir, by Anne Roiphe
• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, by Alice Schroeder
• The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War, by Asne Seierstad
• Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, by Jim Sheeler
• Audition: A Memoir, by Barbara Walters
• The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria

Religion Fiction

• The Shape of Mercy, by Susan Meissner
• Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, by Anne Rice

Children's Fiction

• Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 2: The Kingdom on the Waves, by M.T. Anderson
• The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall
• Masterpiece, by Elise Broach
• Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
• The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
• Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
• Bog Child, by Siobhan Dowd
• Dark Dude, by Oscar Hijuelos
• Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
• Savvy, by Ingrid Law
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart
• Sunrise over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers
• Nation, by Terry Pratchett