David Schwinghammer's Blog, page 11
January 25, 2017
Every Thing You Want Me to Be
Mindy Mejia's new mystery deals with some contemporary problems.
It all starts with the murder of Hattie Hoffman, a budding young senior in high school with all the talent in the word as an actresss. He wants to skip college and move to New York. She's currently portraying Lady MacBeth. Symbolically the part comes with a curse, according to her friend, Portia.
The book flashes back to Hattie's viewpoint, and she explains how she came to meet Peter Lund, her high school English teacher. After her death, the cops find chat line correspondence between Holly G. and LG (Literary Geek) on her computer. Eventually both Peter and Hattie realize who their correspondents really are.
Hattie is an actress in more ways than one. She plays different parts in real life, depending upon whom she's with. Peter will have nothing to do with her, once he realizes she's his student, but she develops a relationship with Tommy Kinakis, a football player, trying to make Peter jealous.
Another first person character is Del, the sheriff, whose best friend is Hattie's father. Tommy is a suspect, as is Peter Lund; then there's Peter's wife, Mary, who's obsessed with her mother who's dying, pretty much cutting Peter off, making him more susceptible to Hattie's charms. Elsa, the mother, doesn't like Peter. He's a vegetarian for one thing, and he's repulsed by Mary's facility with a knife when she dispatches chickens. He's a city kid and would much rather be living in the Twin Cities where his friends are. The only reason he takes a job in Pine City is because of Mary.
I read a lot of mysteries, write some, too, but I must confess Mindy Mejia faked me out of my jock. A mystery writer usually shows the murderer early in the novel, then tries to hide him or her, using the red herring trick. So then most prolific mystery readers automatically start looking for hints as to who the real murderer is. I thought I had him or her pegged. Boy was I wrong.
It all starts with the murder of Hattie Hoffman, a budding young senior in high school with all the talent in the word as an actresss. He wants to skip college and move to New York. She's currently portraying Lady MacBeth. Symbolically the part comes with a curse, according to her friend, Portia.
The book flashes back to Hattie's viewpoint, and she explains how she came to meet Peter Lund, her high school English teacher. After her death, the cops find chat line correspondence between Holly G. and LG (Literary Geek) on her computer. Eventually both Peter and Hattie realize who their correspondents really are.
Hattie is an actress in more ways than one. She plays different parts in real life, depending upon whom she's with. Peter will have nothing to do with her, once he realizes she's his student, but she develops a relationship with Tommy Kinakis, a football player, trying to make Peter jealous.
Another first person character is Del, the sheriff, whose best friend is Hattie's father. Tommy is a suspect, as is Peter Lund; then there's Peter's wife, Mary, who's obsessed with her mother who's dying, pretty much cutting Peter off, making him more susceptible to Hattie's charms. Elsa, the mother, doesn't like Peter. He's a vegetarian for one thing, and he's repulsed by Mary's facility with a knife when she dispatches chickens. He's a city kid and would much rather be living in the Twin Cities where his friends are. The only reason he takes a job in Pine City is because of Mary.
I read a lot of mysteries, write some, too, but I must confess Mindy Mejia faked me out of my jock. A mystery writer usually shows the murderer early in the novel, then tries to hide him or her, using the red herring trick. So then most prolific mystery readers automatically start looking for hints as to who the real murderer is. I thought I had him or her pegged. Boy was I wrong.
January 16, 2017
The Whole Town's Talking
Supposedly this is Fannie Flagg's last novel, but she does leave some room to change her mind. This may be Fannie's strangest novel. It's sort of a cross between “Spoon River Anthology” and “The Lovely Bones”. In other words it's about dead people who don't sound dead.
THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING starts when Lordor Nordstrom emigrates to America in the 1870's; he finds a beautiful little valley in Missouri that would be perfect for a dairy farm. Then he takes out an ad in the paper asking for other farmers to join him, and they do. When he hits his mid thirties, he realizes he needs a wife, so he takes out an ad in the newspaper looking for a mail order bride. Katrina Olsen, a maid in Chicago, is worried she'll be a maid for the rest of her life. She answers the ad. They get married but he doesn't talk to her. He tells her he's dumb; he only has a fifth grade education. She says it doesn't matter; from then on he talks her ears off. They have two kids, Teddy and Ingrid. He builds her a town and plots out a cemetery above the farm.
Eventually people start to die; the first one finds another man already buried there who was scalped by an Indian in the 1850's. He knows this because the man tells him. As more people die, they realize that they like looking at the stars, experiencing the seasons and having their friends and relatives come talk to them. They see airplanes flying overhead. Eventually somebody dies and explains how they work. They hear about other changes and wonder what will come next.
When you read this book, make sure you have a pencil and paper handy; there are so many characters, it's hard to remember who's related to whom. I'm still not sure how Aunt Elner is related to Lordor if she is at all.
Eventually people start disappearing at the cemetery. The first one to go is the old cowboy who was scalped. The readers think this is just a way station; they have to wait until there's an opening in Heaven. Wrong-o. You won't believe it.
There are also several other subplots. Lester Shingle, a peeping Tom, is murdered leaving the bowling alley. He thinks one of the four state champion
women's bowling team hit him in the head with a bowling ball. He bides his time, waiting for them to die.
Lordor's son didn't want the farm, which had grown to a full blown dairy with three barns. He sells it to a neighbor boy at a loss, who loved the place as much as he did. The boy's daughter is born deaf, and that's another subplot. The man she marries is a conman. Lordor made the boy promise he'd never sell the farm out of the family. Hanna Marie lives up to the promise ,until something terrible happens.
Fannie Flagg has always centered her novels on small town life. Some cynics would sneer at the plot line and claim places like this just don't exist. People aren't really this nice, and they don't care about each other as much or help each other out during the rough times. I suppose that's why there are a couple of creeps added to the list of characters with a couple of murders thrown in. But I was raised in a place like Elmwood Springs, Missouri, and I can tell you she's not that far off.
THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING starts when Lordor Nordstrom emigrates to America in the 1870's; he finds a beautiful little valley in Missouri that would be perfect for a dairy farm. Then he takes out an ad in the paper asking for other farmers to join him, and they do. When he hits his mid thirties, he realizes he needs a wife, so he takes out an ad in the newspaper looking for a mail order bride. Katrina Olsen, a maid in Chicago, is worried she'll be a maid for the rest of her life. She answers the ad. They get married but he doesn't talk to her. He tells her he's dumb; he only has a fifth grade education. She says it doesn't matter; from then on he talks her ears off. They have two kids, Teddy and Ingrid. He builds her a town and plots out a cemetery above the farm.
Eventually people start to die; the first one finds another man already buried there who was scalped by an Indian in the 1850's. He knows this because the man tells him. As more people die, they realize that they like looking at the stars, experiencing the seasons and having their friends and relatives come talk to them. They see airplanes flying overhead. Eventually somebody dies and explains how they work. They hear about other changes and wonder what will come next.
When you read this book, make sure you have a pencil and paper handy; there are so many characters, it's hard to remember who's related to whom. I'm still not sure how Aunt Elner is related to Lordor if she is at all.
Eventually people start disappearing at the cemetery. The first one to go is the old cowboy who was scalped. The readers think this is just a way station; they have to wait until there's an opening in Heaven. Wrong-o. You won't believe it.
There are also several other subplots. Lester Shingle, a peeping Tom, is murdered leaving the bowling alley. He thinks one of the four state champion
women's bowling team hit him in the head with a bowling ball. He bides his time, waiting for them to die.
Lordor's son didn't want the farm, which had grown to a full blown dairy with three barns. He sells it to a neighbor boy at a loss, who loved the place as much as he did. The boy's daughter is born deaf, and that's another subplot. The man she marries is a conman. Lordor made the boy promise he'd never sell the farm out of the family. Hanna Marie lives up to the promise ,until something terrible happens.
Fannie Flagg has always centered her novels on small town life. Some cynics would sneer at the plot line and claim places like this just don't exist. People aren't really this nice, and they don't care about each other as much or help each other out during the rough times. I suppose that's why there are a couple of creeps added to the list of characters with a couple of murders thrown in. But I was raised in a place like Elmwood Springs, Missouri, and I can tell you she's not that far off.
January 7, 2017
Bellevue
I'd always associated Bellevue with an insane asylum, but apparently I got that idea from movies and stand-up comedians. Today, only 1/3 of Bellevue patients receive psychiatric treatment, and those with severe cases are sent elsewhere.
Bellevue began as a mansion that was converted to an almshouse and more famously as the go-to hospital for yellow fever patients. Later it became the haven for any patient who couldn't afford medical care, and it still is.
Bellevue should also receive credit for many medical innovations, including the horse and buggy ambulance, forensic medicine and pathology.
They took the tough cases. They were ready for AIDS victims before they even got one; when they did, he was a doctor, and they saved his life. Bellevue was there when Sandy struck, and a retaining wall collapsed, flooding its basement, where gasoline was stored to fuel its back-up generators on the thirteenth floor. Nurses, orderlies and doctors hauled gasoline up the stairs to keep the generators operating until the hospital could be evacuated. All thirty-seven elevators were down. Once more doctors, nurses, police men, firemen and the national guard spent a day and a night removing 700 patients to safety. Nobody died.
So . . . where does the insane asylum myth come from? That would be from Nellie Bly who wrote a series on Bellevue for Joseph Pulitzer's WORLD. She later wrote a book about her experience, TEN DAYS IN A MAD HOUSE, most of which occurred on Blackwell's Island where the serious cases were sent. She did see some seedy looking characters at Bellevue, but that's because they almost never turn anyone away.
Bellevue has also gotten some bad press at times. A doctor was murdered there. She was killed by a man who'd been living in a janitor's closet for several days. Another man had been living in the basement for two weeks. Yes, Bellevue was a haven for the homeless at times. It was the only place they could go. But security was seriously stepped up after the murder.
Bellevue has also been the go-to place for medical students to get practical experience. For years they had a mutual relationship with Colgate, Columbia, and NYU medical schools. There was almost no disease they wouldn't be exposed to at Bellevue, and the hospital never went begging for applicants.
As the Sandy episode shows, these people are heroes, and the American public doesn't even know it. New York City government is also heroic. Through the years, they've spent millions keeping the hospital for the destitute open. Those governments include republican, democratic, even Tammany Hall, but they all agreed that Bellevue was a necessity, a shining beacon signifying that we have a responsibility to treat the less fortunate.
Bellevue began as a mansion that was converted to an almshouse and more famously as the go-to hospital for yellow fever patients. Later it became the haven for any patient who couldn't afford medical care, and it still is.
Bellevue should also receive credit for many medical innovations, including the horse and buggy ambulance, forensic medicine and pathology.
They took the tough cases. They were ready for AIDS victims before they even got one; when they did, he was a doctor, and they saved his life. Bellevue was there when Sandy struck, and a retaining wall collapsed, flooding its basement, where gasoline was stored to fuel its back-up generators on the thirteenth floor. Nurses, orderlies and doctors hauled gasoline up the stairs to keep the generators operating until the hospital could be evacuated. All thirty-seven elevators were down. Once more doctors, nurses, police men, firemen and the national guard spent a day and a night removing 700 patients to safety. Nobody died.
So . . . where does the insane asylum myth come from? That would be from Nellie Bly who wrote a series on Bellevue for Joseph Pulitzer's WORLD. She later wrote a book about her experience, TEN DAYS IN A MAD HOUSE, most of which occurred on Blackwell's Island where the serious cases were sent. She did see some seedy looking characters at Bellevue, but that's because they almost never turn anyone away.
Bellevue has also gotten some bad press at times. A doctor was murdered there. She was killed by a man who'd been living in a janitor's closet for several days. Another man had been living in the basement for two weeks. Yes, Bellevue was a haven for the homeless at times. It was the only place they could go. But security was seriously stepped up after the murder.
Bellevue has also been the go-to place for medical students to get practical experience. For years they had a mutual relationship with Colgate, Columbia, and NYU medical schools. There was almost no disease they wouldn't be exposed to at Bellevue, and the hospital never went begging for applicants.
As the Sandy episode shows, these people are heroes, and the American public doesn't even know it. New York City government is also heroic. Through the years, they've spent millions keeping the hospital for the destitute open. Those governments include republican, democratic, even Tammany Hall, but they all agreed that Bellevue was a necessity, a shining beacon signifying that we have a responsibility to treat the less fortunate.
December 24, 2016
In a Dark, Dark Wood
Reese Witherspoon says in one of the blurbs that she bit her fingernails off during the suspenseful scenes in Ruth Ware's IN A DARK, DARK, WOOD. Maybe she said that because she bought the rights to the movie, but it just didn't affect me the same way.
Nora (Lee, Leo) Shaw is invited to her former friend Claire's “hen party” (bachelorette party). She's perplexed because they haven't spoken in ten years. We eventually learn they've known each other since elementary school, when Nora was a loner everyone else ignored, and she stuttered. But the beautiful, popular Claire sat with her and made sure she was picked for playground games and other activities.
This is quite a crew who've been invited. Flo is certainly mentally unbalanced. This is her aunt's glass house they're using for the party. She idolizes Claire, going so far as to wear the same clothes, and she's determined to organize the best “hen do” for Claire of all time. Nina is another childhood friend with a penchant for sarcasm. She's also gay, as is Tom, a playwright, a friend of James, the fiance'. Melanie needed to get out of the house as she's the new mother of a six month old. She misses her baby. They play games, including the Ouija board, which during one attempt to reach a spirit spells out “murder”. They also go skeet shooting so everybody knows how to use a shotgun, a rather lame foreshadowing device. There's also a shotgun hanging above the fireplace, which Flo's aunt used to scare rabbits away from her garden. It's supposed to be loaded with blanks.
I don't think it's giving away to much to say that Claire invited Nora to her hen party because she wanted to tell her she was marrying, James, Nora's old boyfriend whom she hasn't gotten over yet. James dumped Nora in an undignified fashion.
Ware then jumps to a scene where Nora is in the hospital. She has cuts all over her face, hands, and feet, and she has two black eyes. She can't remember how she got that way, although it gradually starts coming back.
Ruth Ware wrote the best-seller, THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10, so she obviously knows how to write a mystery, but she just can't create a believable red herring in this one. We're more worried Nora will be arrested for something she didn't do. So, that's my main objection. It's too obvious who the villain really is. If you didn't know by page fifty, you don't read many mysteries.
Nora (Lee, Leo) Shaw is invited to her former friend Claire's “hen party” (bachelorette party). She's perplexed because they haven't spoken in ten years. We eventually learn they've known each other since elementary school, when Nora was a loner everyone else ignored, and she stuttered. But the beautiful, popular Claire sat with her and made sure she was picked for playground games and other activities.
This is quite a crew who've been invited. Flo is certainly mentally unbalanced. This is her aunt's glass house they're using for the party. She idolizes Claire, going so far as to wear the same clothes, and she's determined to organize the best “hen do” for Claire of all time. Nina is another childhood friend with a penchant for sarcasm. She's also gay, as is Tom, a playwright, a friend of James, the fiance'. Melanie needed to get out of the house as she's the new mother of a six month old. She misses her baby. They play games, including the Ouija board, which during one attempt to reach a spirit spells out “murder”. They also go skeet shooting so everybody knows how to use a shotgun, a rather lame foreshadowing device. There's also a shotgun hanging above the fireplace, which Flo's aunt used to scare rabbits away from her garden. It's supposed to be loaded with blanks.
I don't think it's giving away to much to say that Claire invited Nora to her hen party because she wanted to tell her she was marrying, James, Nora's old boyfriend whom she hasn't gotten over yet. James dumped Nora in an undignified fashion.
Ware then jumps to a scene where Nora is in the hospital. She has cuts all over her face, hands, and feet, and she has two black eyes. She can't remember how she got that way, although it gradually starts coming back.
Ruth Ware wrote the best-seller, THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10, so she obviously knows how to write a mystery, but she just can't create a believable red herring in this one. We're more worried Nora will be arrested for something she didn't do. So, that's my main objection. It's too obvious who the villain really is. If you didn't know by page fifty, you don't read many mysteries.
December 15, 2016
News of the World
Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, who reads the news from the big cities in the United States and feature stories from such cites as London in outlying parts of Texas for a living, takes a job to deliver a former Kiowa captive, ten-year-old Johanna Leonberger, to her aunt and uncle near San Antonio, four hundred dangerous miles from Wichita Falls. He's paid with a fifty-dollar gold piece.
Johanna is a marvelous character. She was taken when she was six and has forgotten how to speak English. She wants to go back to the Kiowa, but she and the “Kep-ton” soon develop a bond. She can count to ten and she remembers a few German words from when she was six. She is smart as a whip. During one scene the Captain is offered money to sell Johanna to a sex trafficker. The Captain arranges a meeting but sneaks out of town instead; the man follows them, and a gun battle breaks out. The Captain has a six shooter and a rifle that shoots only bird shot. The pimp has Indians with him with conventional rifles. Johanna figures out how to extend the range of the Captain's rifle and saves his and her bacon.
As they travel along, he keeps teaching her English words. She mixes them up on purpose, displaying a wonderful sense of humor. By the time they get to the aunt and uncle's home in D'Hanis, he isn't about to give her up to the wrong people. But we know that's going to be the case before they arrive.
The captain is 71 when the trip begins and 72 when he arrives in D'Hanis. He already has two grown daughters he's raised, but he sympathizes with Johanna. She's lost her parents, then she's lost her Kiowa parents, she forms a relationship with the Captain, and now, she's supposed to start over again.
This is a heart-warming story with sympathetic characters. There's even some satire when the Captain stops to read his newspapers in a town that's divided politically. This is Reconstruction era Texas, and before the Captain can finish reading, a fight breaks out in the audience. The Captain charges a dime to each person who wants to hear him read the news. The can containing the money has been spilled all over the floor, the money trampled. The Captain gets down on his knees to pick it up so he can get Johanna home.
Johanna is a marvelous character. She was taken when she was six and has forgotten how to speak English. She wants to go back to the Kiowa, but she and the “Kep-ton” soon develop a bond. She can count to ten and she remembers a few German words from when she was six. She is smart as a whip. During one scene the Captain is offered money to sell Johanna to a sex trafficker. The Captain arranges a meeting but sneaks out of town instead; the man follows them, and a gun battle breaks out. The Captain has a six shooter and a rifle that shoots only bird shot. The pimp has Indians with him with conventional rifles. Johanna figures out how to extend the range of the Captain's rifle and saves his and her bacon.
As they travel along, he keeps teaching her English words. She mixes them up on purpose, displaying a wonderful sense of humor. By the time they get to the aunt and uncle's home in D'Hanis, he isn't about to give her up to the wrong people. But we know that's going to be the case before they arrive.
The captain is 71 when the trip begins and 72 when he arrives in D'Hanis. He already has two grown daughters he's raised, but he sympathizes with Johanna. She's lost her parents, then she's lost her Kiowa parents, she forms a relationship with the Captain, and now, she's supposed to start over again.
This is a heart-warming story with sympathetic characters. There's even some satire when the Captain stops to read his newspapers in a town that's divided politically. This is Reconstruction era Texas, and before the Captain can finish reading, a fight breaks out in the audience. The Captain charges a dime to each person who wants to hear him read the news. The can containing the money has been spilled all over the floor, the money trampled. The Captain gets down on his knees to pick it up so he can get Johanna home.
December 7, 2016
Cruel, Beautiful, World
CRUEL BEAUTIFUL WORLD is about the Gold family with varying viewpoints, including the villain.
Iris Gold takes in two little girls, Charlotte and Lucy, who turn out to be her little half sisters, which is rather hard to believe since at one point Iris is eighty and Charlotte is in her early twenties. But her father was married several times and he always had a preference for younger women. Do the arithmetic.
The plot thickens when sixteen-year-old Lucy runs off with her unconventional English teacher, who is thirty. He has a job in a progressive school where the kids decide what they're going to study, or if they're going to study, which eventually grates on him, since he's really a controlling type.
Charlotte and Iris have no idea what happened to Lucy. She just disappeared. Eventually she sends a postcard, telling them that she's okay and happy.
The setting occurs during the Manson trials, and Lucy is scared being alone out in the country. William buys her a gun. As a reader you're thinking, “Oh, no, that's not good.” He tries to teach her to use it, but she's so scared she hurts herself. But, for some reason, she keeps it in her bedside table.
Lucy has nothing to do out there, but write, which she's rather good at, one of the only classes she's good at; whereas Charlotte is an academic superstar until she starts college at Brandeis, where she soon finds she doesn't have enough math or science to compete. Lucy's boredom leads to long walks where she eventually runs across a roadside stand that sells veggies, fruit, and flowers. She asks Patrick, the owner, for a job and she gets it. Comparing the two men in her life leads to a realization that she's miserable. That's when we get the big twist rather like the one in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, where the main character is killed off by a murderous Mexican drug thug.
Eventually Charlotte gets a call from Lucy asking her to come and get her. But Charlotte has a job as a veterinarian intern and doesn't want to risk losing it, so she waits until her shift is over. She has the shock of her life when she arrives at the cabin where Lucy was living with William.
Now Charlotte turns detective, tracking down William, whom she has a feeling is still at large. Author Caroline Leavitt intrudes with a late life romance involving Iris, who was at one time married to a gay man, whom she never left. Some readers might be grossed out by Leavitt's sex scene involving two eighty-year-olds, but it kind of reminded me of Kent Haruf's handling of these types of situations in PLAINSONG.
Some of you are going to hate this book because of the unrealistic plot and the fade away ending with some plot lines unresolved, but I thought it had likable characters, some of whom could have passed for real life people. And sixteen-year-olds do make poor choices, and sometimes eighty-year-olds meet the love of their life when they're eighty.
Iris Gold takes in two little girls, Charlotte and Lucy, who turn out to be her little half sisters, which is rather hard to believe since at one point Iris is eighty and Charlotte is in her early twenties. But her father was married several times and he always had a preference for younger women. Do the arithmetic.
The plot thickens when sixteen-year-old Lucy runs off with her unconventional English teacher, who is thirty. He has a job in a progressive school where the kids decide what they're going to study, or if they're going to study, which eventually grates on him, since he's really a controlling type.
Charlotte and Iris have no idea what happened to Lucy. She just disappeared. Eventually she sends a postcard, telling them that she's okay and happy.
The setting occurs during the Manson trials, and Lucy is scared being alone out in the country. William buys her a gun. As a reader you're thinking, “Oh, no, that's not good.” He tries to teach her to use it, but she's so scared she hurts herself. But, for some reason, she keeps it in her bedside table.
Lucy has nothing to do out there, but write, which she's rather good at, one of the only classes she's good at; whereas Charlotte is an academic superstar until she starts college at Brandeis, where she soon finds she doesn't have enough math or science to compete. Lucy's boredom leads to long walks where she eventually runs across a roadside stand that sells veggies, fruit, and flowers. She asks Patrick, the owner, for a job and she gets it. Comparing the two men in her life leads to a realization that she's miserable. That's when we get the big twist rather like the one in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, where the main character is killed off by a murderous Mexican drug thug.
Eventually Charlotte gets a call from Lucy asking her to come and get her. But Charlotte has a job as a veterinarian intern and doesn't want to risk losing it, so she waits until her shift is over. She has the shock of her life when she arrives at the cabin where Lucy was living with William.
Now Charlotte turns detective, tracking down William, whom she has a feeling is still at large. Author Caroline Leavitt intrudes with a late life romance involving Iris, who was at one time married to a gay man, whom she never left. Some readers might be grossed out by Leavitt's sex scene involving two eighty-year-olds, but it kind of reminded me of Kent Haruf's handling of these types of situations in PLAINSONG.
Some of you are going to hate this book because of the unrealistic plot and the fade away ending with some plot lines unresolved, but I thought it had likable characters, some of whom could have passed for real life people. And sixteen-year-olds do make poor choices, and sometimes eighty-year-olds meet the love of their life when they're eighty.
November 28, 2016
The Wonder
Lib Wright is a Crimean War nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale. She is called to a small Irish village to watch a young girl, Anna O'Donnell, who claims she hasn't eaten in four months. Lib, along with a Catholic nun, has two weeks to ferret out whoever is feeding Anna on the sly. She thinks she can do it in a couple of days.
Author Emma Donoghue, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her screenplay for her novel ROOM, sets this novel approximately seven years after the potato famine. Anna's family is extremely religious. They say the rosary every day and Anna keeps repeating what Lib interprets as the “Dorothy” prayer. Eventually we discover she's saying “adore” in reference to God or the Virgin Mary. She says it thirty-three times a day. If you fast and say the prayer every Friday, it's supposed to help get someone out of Purgatory.
Eventually Lib figures out who's been feeding Anna, but by then Anna has begun to refuse even those small morsels. Lib worries that her and the nun's constant surveillance is starving the poor child to death.
Obviously Donoghue wants to show the danger religious zealotry can lead to, but she also saves a few zingers for the government (and perhaps ours). She goes on a walk one day on a road that stops in the middle of nowhere. This road was built by people too poor to buy food during the potato famine, but the government didn't want to just hand out free food. They had to work for it. People are buried along the side of the road. The side of the road is like quicksand, and Lib has trouble walking. Eventually she realizes she's been walking on bodies that haven't been entirely decomposed.
This is a read downer of a book. If you have a weak stomach, don't read it. There are really only two twists. Most of the time Lib is watching Anna die. She tries to get the parish priest, the village doctor and the committee formed to investigate Anna's situation to call off the watch. No one will listen. It's hard to know the motivation of the people involved. Are they looking for a tourist trap, or do they really believe Anna is some kind of saint?
Author Emma Donoghue, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her screenplay for her novel ROOM, sets this novel approximately seven years after the potato famine. Anna's family is extremely religious. They say the rosary every day and Anna keeps repeating what Lib interprets as the “Dorothy” prayer. Eventually we discover she's saying “adore” in reference to God or the Virgin Mary. She says it thirty-three times a day. If you fast and say the prayer every Friday, it's supposed to help get someone out of Purgatory.
Eventually Lib figures out who's been feeding Anna, but by then Anna has begun to refuse even those small morsels. Lib worries that her and the nun's constant surveillance is starving the poor child to death.
Obviously Donoghue wants to show the danger religious zealotry can lead to, but she also saves a few zingers for the government (and perhaps ours). She goes on a walk one day on a road that stops in the middle of nowhere. This road was built by people too poor to buy food during the potato famine, but the government didn't want to just hand out free food. They had to work for it. People are buried along the side of the road. The side of the road is like quicksand, and Lib has trouble walking. Eventually she realizes she's been walking on bodies that haven't been entirely decomposed.
This is a read downer of a book. If you have a weak stomach, don't read it. There are really only two twists. Most of the time Lib is watching Anna die. She tries to get the parish priest, the village doctor and the committee formed to investigate Anna's situation to call off the watch. No one will listen. It's hard to know the motivation of the people involved. Are they looking for a tourist trap, or do they really believe Anna is some kind of saint?
November 17, 2016
The Valley of the Shadow
I first discovered Ralph Peters when I read a fictionalized novel about the Civil War, FADED COAT OF BLUE, which was exceptional. He wrote it under the pen name Owen Parry.
Recently he's switched to his real name, but he's still writing fictionalized versions of Civil War battles. The emphasis in the Owen Parry novels was more toward characterization. In his most recent novels he's trying to bring little known Civil War heroics and the ordinary soldiers more to the forefront. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW deals with the battles occurring in the Shenandoah Valley while Grant had Lee under siege just outside Richmond at St. Petersburg. What Grant didn't know was that Lee had sent Jubal Early and his corps to try to frighten the North into negotiating an end to the war. And he would have done it if it hadn't been for Lew Wallace. Yes, that Lew Wallace, author of BEN HUR. Wallace's objective was to fight a delaying action with soldiers who had for one reason or other been deemed unfit and with willing civilians. They wouldn't have been able to hold long if Wallace hadn't stopped a train containing a division commanded by James B. Ricketts. He had orders to take his troops to another position, but once Wallace explained what was happening, he was willing to throw his troops into the fray. By the time they were forced to retreat Grant was able to send enough troops to scare Early away from Washington.
I didn't know about Lee's sly maneuver, and I was a history major. But this book is really about General Sheridan vs. Jubal Early. For those who know a little about some Civil War battles. Early was in charge of a corps at Gettysburg. On the second day, Lee sent him a message telling him to attack if the situation presents itself, or something equally ambiguous. Early chose not to attack and you know what happened on the third day during Pickett's charge. Early also replaced Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who was accidentally killed by his own men at Chancellorsville. Let's just say he had a bad psychological complex and was tired of losing. He was also a crude old boy Southerner who constantly chewed tobacco. In contrast, one of his division commanders was General John Brown Gordon who was more of a Southern aristocracy type with charm and ability; his men loved him, and Early was jealous. We get to see Sheridan and Early fight three battles. In one Sheridan gets the jump on Early with a death defying maneuver; in another it's Early's turn, but not for long. This is where there's a glaring problem. Peters shows us General Gordon and another general looking for a way to get the jump on Sheridan. I'm not sure if Gordon knew Sheridan was in Washington dealing with Halleck, the general of the army, and Secretary of War Stanton who wanted him to set up a defense of Washington. Of course Little Phil wanted to destroy Early's army once and for all. Anyway they climb to a mountaintop and notice that Sheridan's army is pointed in the wrong direction, expecting Early to attack what looks like a dangling flank. So . . . if Gordon can find a ford to cross the river he can sneak up behind Sheridan and drive him from the field. The problem is there's a fork in the road. Gordon puts a branch across the fork leading to the ford. But when he gets there the next morning, the branch has been moved to the other side. Gordon sends an officer to ask a farmer where the ford is; the farmer says it's the second branch that's correct, and he's right. There are also some union sympathizers in a boat on the river who see Gordon and the other general snooping around. They decide to tell the union commander, but they don't think he'll listen. To me, this was some discombobulated foreshadowing; neither incident made any difference.
We also meet some familiar people during the battles. Rutherford B. Hayes is one of the generals. Those of you who know your presidents will recognize our 19th commander in chief. William McKinley was also a young lieutenant during some of the battles. And George Armstrong Custer led a cavalry unit and later a division. Finally, Peters has confederate private George W. Nichols tell part of the story. One of Peters's sources was Nichols's memoir: A SOLDIER'S STORY OF HIS REGIMENT (61st Georgia).
Recently he's switched to his real name, but he's still writing fictionalized versions of Civil War battles. The emphasis in the Owen Parry novels was more toward characterization. In his most recent novels he's trying to bring little known Civil War heroics and the ordinary soldiers more to the forefront. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW deals with the battles occurring in the Shenandoah Valley while Grant had Lee under siege just outside Richmond at St. Petersburg. What Grant didn't know was that Lee had sent Jubal Early and his corps to try to frighten the North into negotiating an end to the war. And he would have done it if it hadn't been for Lew Wallace. Yes, that Lew Wallace, author of BEN HUR. Wallace's objective was to fight a delaying action with soldiers who had for one reason or other been deemed unfit and with willing civilians. They wouldn't have been able to hold long if Wallace hadn't stopped a train containing a division commanded by James B. Ricketts. He had orders to take his troops to another position, but once Wallace explained what was happening, he was willing to throw his troops into the fray. By the time they were forced to retreat Grant was able to send enough troops to scare Early away from Washington.
I didn't know about Lee's sly maneuver, and I was a history major. But this book is really about General Sheridan vs. Jubal Early. For those who know a little about some Civil War battles. Early was in charge of a corps at Gettysburg. On the second day, Lee sent him a message telling him to attack if the situation presents itself, or something equally ambiguous. Early chose not to attack and you know what happened on the third day during Pickett's charge. Early also replaced Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who was accidentally killed by his own men at Chancellorsville. Let's just say he had a bad psychological complex and was tired of losing. He was also a crude old boy Southerner who constantly chewed tobacco. In contrast, one of his division commanders was General John Brown Gordon who was more of a Southern aristocracy type with charm and ability; his men loved him, and Early was jealous. We get to see Sheridan and Early fight three battles. In one Sheridan gets the jump on Early with a death defying maneuver; in another it's Early's turn, but not for long. This is where there's a glaring problem. Peters shows us General Gordon and another general looking for a way to get the jump on Sheridan. I'm not sure if Gordon knew Sheridan was in Washington dealing with Halleck, the general of the army, and Secretary of War Stanton who wanted him to set up a defense of Washington. Of course Little Phil wanted to destroy Early's army once and for all. Anyway they climb to a mountaintop and notice that Sheridan's army is pointed in the wrong direction, expecting Early to attack what looks like a dangling flank. So . . . if Gordon can find a ford to cross the river he can sneak up behind Sheridan and drive him from the field. The problem is there's a fork in the road. Gordon puts a branch across the fork leading to the ford. But when he gets there the next morning, the branch has been moved to the other side. Gordon sends an officer to ask a farmer where the ford is; the farmer says it's the second branch that's correct, and he's right. There are also some union sympathizers in a boat on the river who see Gordon and the other general snooping around. They decide to tell the union commander, but they don't think he'll listen. To me, this was some discombobulated foreshadowing; neither incident made any difference.
We also meet some familiar people during the battles. Rutherford B. Hayes is one of the generals. Those of you who know your presidents will recognize our 19th commander in chief. William McKinley was also a young lieutenant during some of the battles. And George Armstrong Custer led a cavalry unit and later a division. Finally, Peters has confederate private George W. Nichols tell part of the story. One of Peters's sources was Nichols's memoir: A SOLDIER'S STORY OF HIS REGIMENT (61st Georgia).
November 1, 2016
Surrender, New York
Caleb Carr is a historian who wrote the widely acclaimed best-seller THE ALIENIST, about a turn of the 20th Century profiler, Dr. Lazlo Kreizler. In SURRENDER, NEW YORK, Carr moves to the 21th Century with his main character Dr. Trajan Jones.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of the novel is that Trajan tells the story, basically telling rather than showing. The book is about so-called “throwaway” children who are popping up dead in upstate New York, where Trajan has a lab on his great aunt's farm along with his friend, forensics expert, Michael Li. Trajan and Dr. Mike think the deaths are suicides; the police and the assistant district attorney think a serial killer is on the loose.
Trajan spends a lot of time bad-mouthing modern forensics experts whom he thinks are in league with the police and prosecutors, jumping to conclusions about who committed a crime, then trying to prove it. Trajan and Mike believe investigators should be independent, collecting the evidence, then trying to finger the most likely culprit. One is reminded of the O.J. case and the defense's theory that the police only had one suspect.
Trajan and Mike soon find two young men spying on them, apparently inspired by their blind sister, Ambyr. Trajan notices one of them, Lucas Kurtz, has a knack for investigation. He likes the idea of having an in with the throwaways, as kids are called whose parents have skipped out on them. Both Lucas and Ambyr are throwaways as is their friend, Derek, for whom Ambyr has a guardianship.
The boys were originally curious about Trajan's wild dog, who turns out to be Marcianna, a cheetah he rescued from a petting zoo. Caleb Carr apparently owns a Siberbian Tiger, Masha, and that could be why she takes up so much space. She's basically a prop.
Trajan and Mike think rich people are in cahoots with a mother figure in Surrender, who convinces the throwaways they can have a better life in New York City. Just about everybody hates the foster care system, since some substitute parents take advantage of the kids in one way or another. Thing is so do the rich people in New York City that Trajan and Mike think are responsible for the suicides. There doesn't seem to be any hope for the throwaways who accepted the “better life,” and they resort to suicide.
We never do get to meet any of these substitute parents in New York City, which I was sort of looking forward to. As a result the story comes to a grinding halt. Maybe Carr is thinking of a sequel.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of the novel is that Trajan tells the story, basically telling rather than showing. The book is about so-called “throwaway” children who are popping up dead in upstate New York, where Trajan has a lab on his great aunt's farm along with his friend, forensics expert, Michael Li. Trajan and Dr. Mike think the deaths are suicides; the police and the assistant district attorney think a serial killer is on the loose.
Trajan spends a lot of time bad-mouthing modern forensics experts whom he thinks are in league with the police and prosecutors, jumping to conclusions about who committed a crime, then trying to prove it. Trajan and Mike believe investigators should be independent, collecting the evidence, then trying to finger the most likely culprit. One is reminded of the O.J. case and the defense's theory that the police only had one suspect.
Trajan and Mike soon find two young men spying on them, apparently inspired by their blind sister, Ambyr. Trajan notices one of them, Lucas Kurtz, has a knack for investigation. He likes the idea of having an in with the throwaways, as kids are called whose parents have skipped out on them. Both Lucas and Ambyr are throwaways as is their friend, Derek, for whom Ambyr has a guardianship.
The boys were originally curious about Trajan's wild dog, who turns out to be Marcianna, a cheetah he rescued from a petting zoo. Caleb Carr apparently owns a Siberbian Tiger, Masha, and that could be why she takes up so much space. She's basically a prop.
Trajan and Mike think rich people are in cahoots with a mother figure in Surrender, who convinces the throwaways they can have a better life in New York City. Just about everybody hates the foster care system, since some substitute parents take advantage of the kids in one way or another. Thing is so do the rich people in New York City that Trajan and Mike think are responsible for the suicides. There doesn't seem to be any hope for the throwaways who accepted the “better life,” and they resort to suicide.
We never do get to meet any of these substitute parents in New York City, which I was sort of looking forward to. As a result the story comes to a grinding halt. Maybe Carr is thinking of a sequel.
October 5, 2016
American Heiress
When Patty Hearst was found guilty of bank robbery and firing a machine gone to help her friends Bill and Emily Harris escape from an especially brave sporting goods clerk, I must admit I was angry. Would she have done any of these things if she hadn't been kidnapped?
It's pretty clear from Toobin's book that she did become a full-fledged member of the SLA. There were a couple of reasons for that: Angela Atwood would talk to Patty in her closet prison as if she were a long lost girlfriend, and Willie Wood, would read to her from radical literature and from Karl Marx's COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. Patty adjusted to her circumstances, just as she did when she was released, when she readjusted to being a rich heiress. According to Patty, everything was the SLA's fault, including her communiques in which she sounded like a member. Then there's the Stockholm Syndrome which wasn't widely known when Patty was tired. It maintains that some captives take on the personalities of their captors. F. Lee Bailey could have used that defense when he took her case.
For me, the most interesting part of the book was Toobin's background information on the SLA and its members. Donald Defreeze or Cinque' had a thing about Marcus Foster, the black Oakland superintendent of schools. Before Foster arrived Oakland's schools were a mess. Rather than hire off duty policeman to provide security, he hired his own team. Defreeze saw this as a fascist ploy. He was also jealous of the attention Foster was getting. Foster's murder was a public relations ploy, in other words. Two other members, Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik, were directly involved in the Foster murder, but the getaway drivers, Joe Remiro, who was still in jail prior to the release of the book, and Russ Little, who got off on a technicality during the trial, were the only two tried for the murder. After Foster's murder, Cinque and the others decided murder was too extreme to get any public sympathy for their cause: sticking it to the man, helping the poor. They saw Patty Hearst's wedding announcement in the paper and staked out her apartment.
For me, the second most interesting aspect was Kathleen Soliah's involvement with the SLA. She spoke out against the killing of the SLA members in a wild shootout with the LA police and the FBI SWAT teams. She was also a member of the New World Liberation Front, which relied more on bombing police cars and stations to get attention. Almost forgot, most people will want to know why the Harrises and Patty weren't at the SLA hideout during the shootout. Luck. I'll let you read it for yourself. Anyway Soliah provided a connection between the Harrises, Patty Hearst and Jack Scott, who hid them on his mother's Pennsylvania farm for most of the year, ostensibly to write a book about them. The cops screwed up when they captured Patty and the Harrises; they could've captured the whole gang, but they didn't cover all the bases. As a result Kathleen Soliah became Sara Jane Olson, a soccer mom married to a doctor in Highland Park, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul. Thanks to a TV show, she was captured more than twenty years after the events described in the book. Minnesotans know all about Sara Jane Olson. Toobin doesn't tell her whole story for some reason. He just says she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
Seems like I remember watching the shootout between the police and the SLA on television. I was fascinated; it was like an earlier version of the O.J. fracas. There's a picture of Patty as a sixty-year-old matron at a dog show with her pooch. As Jeffrey Toobin so aptly says, “she had become another version of her mother,” whom she had derided in her SLA communiques.
It's pretty clear from Toobin's book that she did become a full-fledged member of the SLA. There were a couple of reasons for that: Angela Atwood would talk to Patty in her closet prison as if she were a long lost girlfriend, and Willie Wood, would read to her from radical literature and from Karl Marx's COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. Patty adjusted to her circumstances, just as she did when she was released, when she readjusted to being a rich heiress. According to Patty, everything was the SLA's fault, including her communiques in which she sounded like a member. Then there's the Stockholm Syndrome which wasn't widely known when Patty was tired. It maintains that some captives take on the personalities of their captors. F. Lee Bailey could have used that defense when he took her case.
For me, the most interesting part of the book was Toobin's background information on the SLA and its members. Donald Defreeze or Cinque' had a thing about Marcus Foster, the black Oakland superintendent of schools. Before Foster arrived Oakland's schools were a mess. Rather than hire off duty policeman to provide security, he hired his own team. Defreeze saw this as a fascist ploy. He was also jealous of the attention Foster was getting. Foster's murder was a public relations ploy, in other words. Two other members, Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik, were directly involved in the Foster murder, but the getaway drivers, Joe Remiro, who was still in jail prior to the release of the book, and Russ Little, who got off on a technicality during the trial, were the only two tried for the murder. After Foster's murder, Cinque and the others decided murder was too extreme to get any public sympathy for their cause: sticking it to the man, helping the poor. They saw Patty Hearst's wedding announcement in the paper and staked out her apartment.
For me, the second most interesting aspect was Kathleen Soliah's involvement with the SLA. She spoke out against the killing of the SLA members in a wild shootout with the LA police and the FBI SWAT teams. She was also a member of the New World Liberation Front, which relied more on bombing police cars and stations to get attention. Almost forgot, most people will want to know why the Harrises and Patty weren't at the SLA hideout during the shootout. Luck. I'll let you read it for yourself. Anyway Soliah provided a connection between the Harrises, Patty Hearst and Jack Scott, who hid them on his mother's Pennsylvania farm for most of the year, ostensibly to write a book about them. The cops screwed up when they captured Patty and the Harrises; they could've captured the whole gang, but they didn't cover all the bases. As a result Kathleen Soliah became Sara Jane Olson, a soccer mom married to a doctor in Highland Park, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul. Thanks to a TV show, she was captured more than twenty years after the events described in the book. Minnesotans know all about Sara Jane Olson. Toobin doesn't tell her whole story for some reason. He just says she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
Seems like I remember watching the shootout between the police and the SLA on television. I was fascinated; it was like an earlier version of the O.J. fracas. There's a picture of Patty as a sixty-year-old matron at a dog show with her pooch. As Jeffrey Toobin so aptly says, “she had become another version of her mother,” whom she had derided in her SLA communiques.
