B. Morrison's Blog, page 79

In the Temple of a Patient God, by Bejan Matur

Matur's poems ache with power. Her words and images barely control the deep, rumbling force that threatens to explode in blinding light. A Kurdish Alevi from Southeastern Turkey, she draws on that dark heritage of war and defeat and loss and exile to create the poems in this collection, selected from her four books published in Turkey. Perhaps related to that loss is the fact that she writes in Turkish, not the Kurdish of her childhood. In the Introduction, Maureen Freely says that Matur...

Innocent Blood, by P.D. James

Now that Philippa has turned eighteen, she can request that her adoption file be opened so that she can learn about her birth parents. A supremely self-confident young woman, she's applied to the Registrar General by herself, without telling her adoptive parents. Maurice Palfrey is rather famous as a writer and teacher of sociology and blessed with wealth inherited from his first wife, daughter of an earl. His second wife, formerly his secretary, is a timid woman who is only truly happy in...

Wash the Blood Clean from My Hand, by Fred Vargas

A small newspaper article puts Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg back on the trail of a serial killer he's been tracking for thirty years. The killer's M.O. is unmistakeable: a knock on the head and three puncture wounds in a row, equally spaced and equally deep. No one by Adamsberg even accepts that the murders are related since the killer always provides a fall guy: someone too drunk to remember his actions and conveniently holding the ostensible murder weapon. One of those fall guys was ...

Hamlet (Michael Almereyda's 2000 film)

What an interesting film! Almereyda has set Shakespeare's play in a modern urban landscape, such as New York City, where all the surfaces are smooth and slick. Young Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) is home from school and trying to come to terms with the changes in his family. Hamlet's father (Sam Shepherd) is dead and Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) has not only taken over his brother's role as king and CEO of Denmark Corporation but has married Gertrude (Diane Venora) his brother's wife. Hamlet's...

The Most Dangerous Thing, by Laura Lippman

The death of Gordon "Go-Go" Halloran brings together four people who had been inseparable for a few years in the late 1970s but have since lost touch. The two girls, Gwen and Mickey, became friends with the three Halloran boys—"Crass Tim, Serious Sean, Wild Go-Go" —after barging into their kickball game. The five of them spent long summer days exploring the wild and overgrown woods nearby before stumbling into a mystery that would challenge and change them forever.

The story also includes...

A Night Too Dark, by Dana Stabenow

With the power out all week thanks to Hurricane Irene, I've had many nights that were too dark recently. This 17th novel in the Kate Shugak series starts when a pickup truck is discovered on a rarely traveled road in Alaska with a suicide note taped to the steering wheel. It could have been there an hour or over a month, so a search is organized for the missing driver. Kate, a private investigator in the small town of Niniltna, is drafted by the short-handed police force to conduct the...

All the Strange Hours, by Loren Eiseley

Although I found this memoir by the famous anthropologist hard going at first, I have to say that the book rewards persistence. At first the book's structure seemed based on free association. While loosely chronological, Eiseley skips around in time, jumping decades forward or back to recount a meeting with some colorful character. He admits that this hopping about makes the book difficult for the reader to follow, but obviously it was up to me to adapt or stop reading. Eventually I began to ...

The Man of the Forest, by Zane Grey

Although he started out as a cowboy and still occasionally visits the village of Pine, 30-year-old Milt Dale prefers the solitary life of a hunter. Roaming the White Mountains of Arizona accompanied only by his semi-tame cougar, Dale's woodsmanship is sufficient to supply him with everything he needs. One day, taking refuge from a storm in an abandoned hut, he accidentally overhears Snake Anson and his gang meeting with a local landowner. Beasley hires Anson to kidnap his rival Al...

Breaker, by Sue Sinclair

This is the third book of poetry from the Toronto-based Sinclair, though the first one I've read. Or rather, immersed myself in, since I've read and reread it, set the book aside for a few months, and read it again. Poets are often advised to go deeper, to make space for more profound meaning to emerge. Sinclair's poems show me how far short of that goal I've fallen. They disturb and entrance me. They make me look at the things of this world in a new way.

In talking about the difference...

Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane

In this sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone Lehane brings back Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. That brilliant and disturbing book centered on their search for the missing four-year-old Amanda. Now, twelve years later Patrick and Angie are the parents of their own little girl, Gabriella. Patrick is struggling to make a living as a private detective while Angie finishes her master's degree, but the tough economy has him reluctantly hoping to turn piece-work for a big firm into a permanent job...