The Leftovers a novel by Tom Perrotta

In The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta uses a startling premise to produce a realist portrait of the fault lines that fracture modern society.  The story is set in a small suburban town somewhere on the east coast.  It is a few years after the Sudden Departure, when millions of people, instantly and without explanation, vanished from the Earth.  Was it the Rapture spoken of in the Bible?  But then, many who vanished were not Christians.  Mr. Perrotta leaves that question to hang, while he explores the effects of the traumatic event on a town full of ordinary people. 

This isn't a book with a lot of plot twists.  People move through their lives. Some try to keep things normal while others form cult movements.  A messianic figure may have a genuine gift or he may be a charlatan; his unborn child may or may not be the savior of mankind.  Some funny stuff happens in between the darker moments.  One memorable character  is the woman who lost her husband and two kids. She watches Sponge Bob Squarepants because it was the show her vanished children liked. She is obsessive, but organized about it. At first, she goes through a marathon of cartoon watching, but soon begins to ration the number of daily episodes to keep them fresh. Her attempts to rebuild a social life are the ungainly efforts of any recently divorced person, writ large. It is safer to retreat but hard to be alone, even if all you can do is have a guy watch cartoons with you.

Perrotta has been called the Balzac of the suburbs, a Cheever for our times, and a lot of other heavy titles that reviewers like to hang on authors, as if to see whether they can bear the weight.  I haven't read his other books, though I gather The Leftovers is something of a departure for him.  But the book conveys humor and affection for people, even while it shows them as deeply flawed. The author gives us the common threads that we share with his characters, which is what makes the book so readable.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This book was originally marketed for teens, but it is now wildly popular among adults and adult reading groups. It is a fast-paced and imaginative view of a dystopian society. America is now a country called Panem, derived of a capital city and 12 (once 13) districts. After district 13 attempted an uprising against the powerful capital, the rebels were wiped out and the capital instilled “The Hunger Games” to remind the districts of the devastation that resulted from the unsuccessful campaign. For 70 + years now, each district must enter their children, ages 12-18 into a lottery. Two are chosen, one male and one female, to enter into the Hunger Games, a televised to-the-death battle which changes yearly. Twenty four tributes enter the games, not knowing what challenges or terrain they will face, but only one can survive to be crowned the winner. This first book in the Hunger Games trilogy introduces readers to Katniss Everdeen’s epic journey of self-discovery.

This book is extraordinarily written, with deep characters that become very real to the reader. We are caught up in the struggle to understand the Hunger Games, as well as the children who are sent there to be warriors. Publishers Weekly hit the nail on the head: “It's a credit to Collins's skill at characterization that Katniss, like a new Theseus, is cold, calculating and still likable.” In contrast to Katniss, we also get to know her District 12 counterpart, Peeta, whose sweetness of temper and own personal agenda make him a dangerous competitor.

The Hunger Games is rich with political intrigue, a touch of romance, and a bird’s eye view at what horrors people can inflict on one another for “entertainment.” I personally read the trilogy so quickly that I felt I must have missed things and had to reread sections until I was satisfied. Collins successfully hooks the reader and we struggle along with Katniss to grasp the multifaceted strategies of the games. This book is fascinating and honestly, a little scary due to the fact that it’s not terribly difficult to believe that the human race can sink to this level. A must-read, especially since the movie will be released in early 2012. Try The Hunger Games, surely you’ll be wanting to read Catching Fire and Mockingjay too.

The Map of Time a novel by Felix J. Palma

I picked up this book because it had great cover art and an interesting title.  These seemed to promise a grand adventure of some kind, perhaps fantasy or science fiction, with a strong dash of steam punk and some interesting characters.  Does selecting a book this way make the reader shallow and unthinking?  When the book becomes something completely unexpected, does the reader have reason to be angry or disgusted?  In truth, friends, when was the last time that you read something that induced so much introspection and self-doubt?  If you knew that the subject was time-travel and the book’s characters included H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker and Joseph Merrick, wouldn’t you expect a bit of a romp?  A quick glance at the readers’ comments on Amazon show that some folks hated this book for the very reasons I have mentioned here: it wasn’t exactly what they expected.

 At first, the pace of this novel is so slow that one is tempted to abandon the book.  A young man contemplating suicide on the opening page is still alive and still suicidal on page 75.  The book is 600 pages; you may begin to question your stamina.   Suddenly, the perspective changes, the pace quickens, the story focuses on new characters, and the narrator steps out of third person voice to make sly jokes.  What is the author doing?  Well, dear reader, he is toying with you.

All authors manipulate their audiences.  This is why we come to fiction.  We allow someone else to temporarily direct the narrative, to bend our perceptions in a particular direction and perhaps even to subtly affect our values.  Mr. Palma insists on underlining that fact, yanking back the curtain that ordinarily conceals the writer to show you the man behind it, pulling levers and turning gears.  Why does he risk alienating the reader?  He is showing us the very heart of his novel: the complex relationship between what we experience, what is real and where our imaginations take us.

If you are patient and willing to take the journey the author proposes, you will be rewarded.  There is adventure, true love and yes, time travel.  Mild-mannered and unassuming, H.G. Wells emerges a hero.  Palma has said of his book:

Apart from entertainment, I would like to leave the reader with the idea that the imagination can make our lives more beautiful.

The more I read, the more riveted I became.  Will The Map of Time have the same effect on you?  As it says on page one:  “Your emotion and astonishment are guaranteed.”

The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan

It’s clear how self-aware Glen Duncan was of the tradition he attempts to navigate in The Last Werewolf, focused on the final months of the moribund race of lycanthropes. He negotiates a genre of horror we’ve become accustomed to, a vogue of monstrosity that’s returned from the depths of our imaginations after several decades of hibernation in which werewolves were merely fodder for satire, a campy terror that no longer haunted the nightmares of our subconscious. Not unlike Anne Rice’s Vampire series, Duncan invites the readership to reexamine lycanthropes, both to understand aspects of their humanity—or rather the crisis of being physically ripped from it each full moon—and view them within a narrative that’s persisted in folklore for hundreds of years. Jacob Marlowe’s narration is possessed of a certain eloquence, his speech fragmented with astute literary allusions, so off-handedly quipped that we come to understand him as a man very much in love with words and the importance of recognizing those storytellers that matter, just as Duncan does not presume to ignore the multitude of literary renderings the werewolf has undergone. Marlowe’s tendency to wax poetic is construed as his medium to wrestle with notions of morality while so Cursed. Duncan parses lyrical sentences with oblique references to Blake or Tennyson to give the reader a sense of the vital importance words have for Marlowe, a meta-commentary on his own risk to reimagine lycanthropy. However, this eloquence breaks down further into the narrative as the tempo increases.

Apart from establishing Marlowe’s verbosity, the first chapter immediately sets the pacing of the novel. The reader must scramble through the first several chapters to become orientated to the narration, to make sense of the sudden deluge of information. Just as Jake is suddenly in the throes of a desperate battle for survival, the reader must quickly adjust to the lack of quiet or stillness in the prose. Everything is told with a foreboding immediacy, the plot given a sense of movement. Unlike Rice’s Vampire novels –which include chase scenes but focus primarily on the morality struggles of blood kin, heavy and sometimes opulent cogitation—Duncan’s werewolf is one uncomfortable in the stasis of contemplation. Marlowe is clearly a creature of kinetic energy, constantly prowling about the world to escape the hunters and prey—he has the same vagabond temperament as the wolf that lurks within him. With the quick pacing of The Last Werewolf, it reads more like a thriller than an epic exploration of the boundary between the bestial and human. Duncan invites the reader to understand the life of rapid travel Marlowe leads, the sense that remaining in a single place is antithetical to the nature of the werewolf, one that seethes with the single mantra Fuckkilleat. The speed is instinctual, quickened by chapters that are merely several sentences, forcing the reader to flip immediately to the next page.

Despite Duncan’s modern take on lycanthropy, discussing were-viruses as our contemporary world continues to whip up vaccines that no longer stave off violent disease, and his metanarrative recognition of the difficulty of writing something new and exciting and visceral about werewolves, I don’t feel as though the foundations of the genre have been at all shaken. Duncan straddles suspense and elegance, though remains unsure of his footing. As we are increasingly accelerated to the climax of the novel, one finds oneself wishing to read more spoken from the mouth of the intellectual, brooding Jacob Marlowe, less the animal that finds satisfaction in pure action.

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Matter by William Derediewicz

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Or, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

Basically, this is a book about cognitive dissonance, which is defined as:
an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

In other words, most people, when confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to overcome self-justification.

Chapters focus on prejudices and blind spots, psychology, politics, law, and personal relationships. By far, the most fascinating sections for me were those dealing with politics, law, and the relationship between cognitive dissonance and self-esteem.

If you've ever wondered how politicians justify taking large kickbacks and bribes, the authors explain it: corruption happens with one small, innocent step (having lunch with a constituent) and, through cognitive dissonance, snowballs into accepting an all-expenses paid golfing trip to St. Andrews from a lobbyist. As the authors state, "Politicians are the most visible of self-justifiers, which is why they provide such juicy examples. They have the refined art of speaking in the passive voice; when their backs are to the wall they will reluctantly acknowledge error, but not responsibility."

The law section includes the complicated issues of eyewitness and expert testimony, the problems with current interrogation methods, and the controversy of repressed memory syndrome and its use as legal evidence.

Regarding dissonance and esteem, interestingly enough those with more humility (and/or lower self-esteem), because they tend to allow for divergent opinions and don't stick to their guns as often as people with high self-esteem (or downright arrogance), have far fewer problems with cognitive dissonance. Special mention also needs to be made of the pithy (and humorous) anecdote on page 41 relating a visit to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

The science in the book is well-documented yet very accessible to a wide range of readers. Someone in my book group chose this as a selection, and it made for a lively and engaging discussion. I would definitely recommend it!

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists and this is her first book to appear in English. The story revolves around the search for a missing older woman who was left behind in the Seoul train station when she was separated from her husband in the rush to board a departing train. As the chapters unfold we learn the woman’s “back story” as remembered by her oldest daughter, oldest son, husband, and, later in the book, herself. The stories touch on all aspects of her life in a poor rural South Korean village and span the time from her youth during the Korean War and its aftermath, her marriage, the birth and rearing of her children, and her decline into older age.

While the story provides an excellent view into a family’s life in Korea, this reader found it difficult to enjoy. The use of the omnipotent second person narrative voice (used in 3 of the 5 chapters) was off-putting. Perhaps 2nd person is used more widely in conversational Korean and I was unable to adjust to the translation or maybe the author used it deliberately to impose the guilt and regret felt by the characters onto the reader. Whatever the reason, the relentless use of “you” (even though the narrator’s “you” was referring to one of the characters in the story) felt like an accusatory pointing finger which made me uncomfortable. I also had little sympathy for the martyred “Tiger Mom” and her selfish, insensitive children and spouse. So for me, this was a B- read; it was well written and interesting, but it only rarely touched my heart.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A Visit from the Goon Squad begins by introducing us to Sasha, an intriguing character, in the first chapter, who is a kleptomaniac. Then in Chapter 2, we are introduced to Bennie, who is Sasha's boss at a record company. As you wend your way through the story, you discover that each chapter is a story loosely connected to the person before it. By the time you reach the last chapter, you've come full circle.

Goon Squad is well written. Egan has done a masterful job at weaving together the lives of different characters from different points of view at different time periods in their lives. The PowerPoint chapter likely put Egan in the winner's circle for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. It's an innovative telling of an entire story in PowerPoint.

The most troublesome thing about Goon Squad is that some of the passages go beyond the average reader's head. Chapter 9, a reflection on a celebrity interview gone awry, has footnotes about quantum physics and protons. There's a continual sense of hopelessness running throughout the book: people get old, people die, people are miserable, and everybody in the book does, or has done, drugs at some point in their lives. Goon Squad offers a sad depiction of life with few glimmers of hope. A few chapters are boring.

A Visit from the Goon Squad has an innovative chapter, instances of good writing, and masterful weaving of tales and timelines.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

      A fascinating and unexpected debut novel that examines the dark nature of humanity in the face of illness and loneliness. The book describes the rich landscape of 1907 Wisconsin and delves into how the harsh winters can affect the people of a small isolated town. Ralph Truitt, the wealthiest man in town, is surprised when Catherine Land steps off the train. He has placed an ad in the newspaper for “A Reliable Wife” and Catherine does not match the photograph she sent.

     The book chronicles the uneasy start of Catherine and Ralph’s marriage and the reader comes to find that Catherine is certainly not the pure, faithful woman she claims to be. Ralph, too, proves to be more than he appeared at first sight and encourages Catherine to help him locate his estranged son. The story escalates when Catherine begins poisoning her husband slowly and we are allowed insight to the tortured thoughts of a conflicted woman.

     A Reliable Wife is an interesting character study where each player is deeply developed. They may not be entirely likable, but each character is real with histories and intricacies that make them both believable and endearing. I also enjoyed how Goolrick turned color into a character all its own, with beautiful descriptions. Woven into the main plot are fascinating vignettes of how easily “cabin fever” can turn to madness when a small town is cut off from society. This book is not for the faint of heart; it is dark and sometimes sad, but the conclusion is satisfying. I would recommend this title for the reader who doesn’t mind desperate and truly flawed characters.

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

      This debut novel by British author, Rosamund Lupton, is a mystery which builds incrementally, relentlessly and brilliantly to its well plotted and harrowing conclusion!

     At the opening of the book, I was slightly disoriented as Lupton plunges the reader headlong into the story. But, in short order, you come to understand that Bee's younger sister, Tess, has gone missing and is later found dead. Was it a suicide as the police surmise, or was it a murder? Bee flies from New York to London and tries to uncover what happened.

     As the police become more thoroughly convinced that Tess took her own life, Bee's intuition and her close lifelong bond with her sibling

inform her differently. Much more than a mystery story, Lupton expertly weaves together a wider context of both familial and romantic love, well developed characters, and surprisingly, the politics of medical research to create an engrossing book.
     Though by no means a light read, I finished this book in two days, dying to know how it would turn out! If I were rating it with stars, I'd give it 5 out of 5.

The Silent Land by Graham Joyce

     At just under 300 pages, this is the book to pick up if you want something you can finish in an evening, on a plane ride or on a day at the beach. It is definitely for you if you were addicted to the TV show, Lost.

     The story takes you to the high peaks of the French Pyrenees on a breathtakingly beautiful early morning. Jake and Zoe have the pristine snowy slopes to themselves as they push off on their skis. In the blink of an eye, light hearted sport turns into a terrifying race against the crushing waves of a tumultuous avalanche.
     They manage to survive this near tragedy, only to discover that the world they left behind as they made their early morning ascent up the mountains has become a silent and eerie land. What has happened and why are they here?

     Skillfully written, you will travel this terrain and puzzle along with the young couple as more and more clues bring this story to an ultimately satisfying conclusion. A short book, a short review and no desire to give away too much, this is a story that will entertain and keep you reading!

The Red Leather Diary; Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal, by Lily Koppel

     This paperback found its way into my hands in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the way Florence Wolfsan’s diary was discovered by New York Times journalist, Lily Koppel. Mine was a last minute addition from a pile of “buy two get one free” books and Florence’s diary was retrieved from a dumpster in Manhattan. Bought as a kind of throw-away read, this book was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed several days gaining real life, personal insight into what it must have been like to come of age in New York City between 1929 and1934.
     Adolescent angst could have become tiresome in less skilled hands that Koppel’s but, perhaps because she saw so many parallels between her life and Florence’s, the author was able to make five years worth of short diary entries into something vital and interesting. It doesn’t hurt that the protagonist is spirited, creative, privileged and widely traveled, and that she is surprisingly explicit about her sexual exploration, but it is her love of life and her search for the answers of life’s fundamental existential questions that give the book its charm. Who am I, what is the meaning of my life, what makes me happy, where and how do I find love: aren’t these the very questions we ask ourselves at every transition in our lives? Just as rereading her diary restores a sense of wonder and excitement to 92 year old Florence, getting to know Florence as she grew from age 14 to 18 inspired me to pull out my own diaries and to see them through slightly different eyes. Looking back and looking forward thought the eyes of Florence Wolfsen and Lily Koppel provides a nostalgic and enjoyable read.

Winter's Bone: A Novel by Daniel Woodrell

Author Daniel Woodrell creates a memorable heroine in 16 year old Ree Dolly. Ree desparately wants to escape the poverty of her Ozark community and enlist in the Army ("where you got to travel with a gun and they make everybody help keep things clean"), but she feels duty-bound to her family. Her meth-cooking dad has posted the family home as collateral, then jumped bail. To save her younger brothers and mentally ill mother, Ree has to ask some tough questions about her father's fate. The folks with the answers to those questions don't take kindly to being asked. The language of the novel is gritty, genuine and suspenseful. Ree's grim humor and determination are certain to catch you up in her story.

Chronicles (Annals) of the Black Company by Glen Cook

You ever want to spend some time with an old friend or visit a place you've been before? That's the way I felt a week ago or so, and I picked up Glen Cook's, Chronicles (Annals) of the Black Company (the first 3 books in one volume) and sat down to have a rollicking good time. It's a classic sword and sorcery epic tale with love and hate, politics, and maybe just a little romance...

It's a straightforward quick read, but yet, I keep coming back every few years and reading it again and enjoying it every time.

So what's it all about?

A hard-bitten, experienced mercenary company is recruited by "the Lady" to take part in her war to create a new empire. This mercenary company uses mis-direction, trickery and a little sorcery to do everything they can to avoid stand up fights, although when they have them, they show their quality... This is the story of that company.

Other readers who have served in various military organizations say the dialogue is on target for the mentality and way they remembered it really being. There's not a ton of 'battle scenes" or honestly a tremendous amount of sorcery. What the books really do well, are to be outstanding character studies of people and Machiavellian political intrigue twists to keep the reader interested.

If you pick it up, I hope you enjoy... I did, visiting an old friend again.

The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart

 

     You might look at the cover image, think Western, and pass this one by and, most times, I would be right there with you.  (Forgive me if Westerns are a favorite genre).  What gave me pause were the words of high praise from Tim O'Brien on the back cover of the book. And,  at the time the book cover caught my eye, I was looking for something out of my comfort zone.  I was intrigued with the idea of reading a masculine book, a book about men and the relationship between fathers and sons.
     Set at the turn of the century, this is a harsh story that matches the hardscrabble landscape of a Texas farm owned by an embittered, and, at times, cruel farmer, Vaclev Skala, who drives his sons hard, to the point of harnessing them to the yoke to plow his fields.  Valclev is land hungry and, at heart, a gambler and he therefore accepts a challenge from a wealthy Mexican landowner, Guillermo Villasenor, also avaricious for more land.  Villasenor offers his three daughters in marriage to three of Vaclev's sons, should his horse win, thus laying claim to Valclev's landholdings or ceding over his own considerable land holdings should he be the loser.
     The outcome of this race, ridden by Vaclev's youngest son, Karel, causes a powerful rift between him and his three brothers, from whom he is already alienated and which endures for years until a near tragedy creates the circumstances for forgiveness and a chance to overcome the past.
     The language is perfectly matched to the landscape and the characters are complex and sympathetic. Though completely out of my reading bailiwick, I loved this book.  I was completely transported to another time and place and my heart ached for these men and the circumstances of their lives.  In the words of Tim O'Brien, "The prose is polished and evocative, the physicality of rural Texas in the year 1910 shimmers with loving exactitude, and the story of Karel Skala is a gripping American drama of misplaced guilt, familial struggle, and a search for identity.  What a fine, rich, absorbing book."

When The Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle

      Serendipitously perfect for summer, the locale of T. C. Boyle's newest book is the Channel Islands off the coast of California--a very real place that has been the site of countless assaults over time on the islands' unique animal and plant populations. Ranching, farming, rogue species hitching rides on seafaring ships, which landed on the islands, all wreaked havoc on  the ecology of these isolated bits of land. In 1980, the islands became a national park. These are the facts.
     Boyle's contemporary novel pits Dave LaJoy, a fiery and fanatical animal rights champion against the cool minded academic, Alma Takesue, PhD, a National Park Service spokesperson and protector of the islands' indigenous species. Her agenda includes killing the invasive species, including rats and feral pigs, which are threatening the ecosystem. And, this is where the fun begins.
      Those who have read T. C. Boyle's other books will now be ready to fasten their seat belts and prepare for a wild ride replete with over the top plotlines and an escalating sense of suspense. It's a ripping good story, very beautifully written, and a provocative examination of how we come to value, set priorities and rationalize our regard for other living things. Boyle has woven together a story with a complex history and portrayed two warring characters, who ironically might both have been on the same side but neither of whom fully understands or examines the dimensions of their opposing positions. This is a very timely issue treated by a consummate storyteller.
     No spoilers, but the crowning and most outsized scheme of LaJoy culminates on the very last page of this book and was immensely satisfying to this reader! This is not a perfect book and some will find it too long but I heartily recommend that you give it a try. Another title by Boyle which is shorter and a real page turner is his Tortilla Curtain, which juxtaposes and then brings into direct and explosive contact, the lives of a sushi eating LA couple living in a gated community with a family of illegal Mexican immigrants. You will not be able to put this book down!

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Gretchen Chamberlin