Mark Stevens's Blog, page 54

Maximilian Werner – "Crooked Creek"

[image error]"Crooked Creek" inspires a bit of word association so here goes:

Rugged. Raw. Tough. Hard. Chiseled. Unsettling. Brutal. Serene. Chilling. Beautiful.

"Crooked Creek" is rich with language and imagery. It's a quick read but it forces you to slow down. It's episodic and carries a strong through-line. It arcs over generations. It's arty (and by that I mean, written with care) and yet unpretentious. The Ron Carlson quote on the back nailed it: "measured prose."

The opening paragraph gives a clue about the nature-laden story ahead. In four sentences, we get rain, aspens, a rabbit, alfalfa, barn swallows, bats, grass, a coyote, weeds and wood. And a boy. That pace never lets up—and neither does the ongoing study of men and women finding their way in nature, up against the brutal elements of Utah in the late 19th century. The story plays with time. Violence erupts when you don't really expect it, followed by moments of tranquility and beauty.

Werner sees everything—but it's really his characters are doing the seeing, or at least noticing.  The writing carries you along. "Crows cawed in the trees like macabre fruit."  "The coat's pewter buttons had sunk into the soft bone of the child's sternum and its hands lay at its sides like strange fossils of crabs." "All the while the far off clanking of a blacksmith's hammer divvied the silence and made audible the pulsing of the rubbish fires that burned high or low against the backdrop of the already dark eastern mountains."

The story follows a family on the run and trying to re-connect and re-establish their lives in a new land. We know it won't be easy. Nothing is. The family is disjoined, neighbors are suspicious and wary. Everything feels transient except the rocks and mountains. "The two men had had their share of hard words over the years, and even now their disagreements over the land and how to live on it hung between them like smoke in the air and these troubles would outlive them both."

There are guns and rifles and the weapons are an extension of all the human traits—including carelessness, hate and distrust. As Werner tells us so simply, to confront a strange land is also to confront the strangeness of the self.

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Michael Harvey – "We All Fall Down"

Thanks to Mystery Scene magazine (love that publication) I recently learned that Eric

Ambler's "The Dark Frontier," his first novel, included anticipation of the atomic bomb. "The Dark Frontier" was written in 1936.

Quoting from a 2005 review on Amazon: "It stars an unlikely secret agent, Professor Barstow, a middle-aged and overworked physics professor, who turns into Conrad Carruthers, debonair agent determined to stop nuclear proliferation."  The same review said "The Dark Frontier" is part "great spy story" and part adventure story. The reviewer offered up four stars.

Michael Harvey might be just as prescient. It's easy to believe we'll encounter something along the lines of the citywide attack he imagines in "We All Fall Down." Harvey's concern is biological weapons. In the author's note to "We All Fall Down," he quotes scientists and experts (without naming names) who say the biological weapon scenario he envisions—or something even more frightening—is plausible.

For me, however, the mash-up of mystery and sci-fi/thriller doesn't quite work. The story felt like Michael Connelly stirred with Michael Crichton or Elmore Leonard (Detroit-era Leonard) crashed into the movie "Contagion." Dope peddling bad guys in one scene, talk about black biology and released pathogens in the next.

One line of narration straight out of an urban crime novel: "Marcus climbed down the fire escape and sat with his back against the building. He pulled seven bullets out of his pocket, loaded four into the revolver, and clicked the chamber shut. He'd only had the gun a week when he and Twist found the dead doper, curled at the edges and lying in the basement of a rock house."

And another out of a sci-fi thriller: "I pushed down on the second button. Images of scientists in suits collecting samples appeared on the upper quarter of my visor."

One line of dialogue out of an urban crime novel: "Tell him the Korean's out. Your crew's gonna be dealing directly with us for product."

And another line of dialogue out of a sci-fi thriller: "Scientists work with something called BioBricks—very specific strings of DNA with defined functions. An example might be a BioBrick that represents the molecular expression of the lethal properties of bubonic plague."

The combination left me unfocused. I had a hard time believing PI Michael Kelly would be given such a huge role in protecting and assisting with the subway tunnels that are the focus of the black biology portion of this story.

One other minor complaint is the shift from third person to first and then, on top of that, the story is told from multiple points of view.  (I'm usually a fan of multiple points of view but the switches on first- and third-person too just left me jarred.)

That said, Harvey can certainly write. There is energy, imagination and sharp dialogue here in abundance. I thought the connection to the Greek writer Thucydides was a good touch. And it's easy to be deeply troubled by Harvey's scenario here. Easy. Please don't share your copy with the bad guys.

I gave "The Chicago Way" five stars after I read it last year. ("…a pretzel bag full of salty twists and pages of quick, sharp dialogue.")

Here, Harvey continues to tap the style of Chandler and Cain, two of my favorites.

But "We All Fall Down" made me yearn for more time with Kelly's pure PI instincts and the real streets and current threats of Chicago.

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Patricia Highsmith (This Sweet Sickness)

Patricia Highsmith's works are dark, edgy and occasionally disturbing. No writer I've ever experienced has given me the willies—the I'm really worried now vibe—quite like her.

"Strangers on a Train." "The Talented Mr. Ripley." "A Suspension of Mercy." "This Sweet Sickness." And many more.

I bring her name up in writing circles and usually get a blank stare, until I mention the titles that have made the transition to movies. Then the look is along the lines of "oh, you must like really warped stuff."  (Why "A Suspension of Mercy" has never reached film status is beyond me—it's a wonderfully tense story.)

Highsmith's heroes aren't likable, it's true. They are obsessed with their needs and desires. Of course, Patricia was also self-absorbed. I've read both major biographies of [image error]Highsmith and her ability to stay self-absorbed and also tap that inner well for her fiction is, to my mind, a towering achievement.

Joan Schenkar, who wrote the more detailed of the two biographies, said Highsmith "is our most Freudian novelist."  I have to agree.  Highsmith's works find their way into your bones, your soul and down deep in the visceral guts of your psyche. My wife says she's the only writer who has given her nightmares.

Highsmith also wrote a terrific book about how she did

it: "Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction."

In it, Highsmith confesses in the preface it is not a how-to-do-it handbook.  It is, she says, "impossible to explain how a successful—that is, readable—book is written. But this is what makes writing a lively and exciting profession, the ever-present possibility of failure."

That's a typical Highsmith take on her craft, dwelling on the dark side.

In "Plotting and Writing…" Highsmith focuses on miscues in attempt to save writers from suffering the same errors. I highly recommend this book to all

writers of suspense, mystery and thrillers. I think her tips would apply to anyone who wants more tension for any reason in science fiction, dystopia, YA, paranormal or straight-up serious Iowa Writers Workshop level serious fiction. She might have something you can use to shade, darken and enrich your story.  All genres (and non-genres) need tension and Patricia Highsmith knew a thing or two about conflict and making a reader squirm.

A few of my favorite lines and ideas from her book:

On finding ideas: "Some young writers drive themselves too hard, and in youth this works quite well, to a point. At that point, the unconscious rebels, [image error]the words refuse to come out, the ideas refuse to be born." So don't surround yourself with the wrong kind of people, she advises, "or sometimes people of any sort. People can be stimulating, of course, and a chance phrase, a piece of a story, can start the writer's imagination off. But mostly, the plane of social intercourse is not the plane of creation, not the plane on which creative ideas fly. It is difficult to be aware of, or receptive to, one's own unconscious when one is with a group of people, or even with a single person, though that is easier."

On growing that idea: "The developing of an idea is often not at all logical, and there is such an element of play in it. I can't call the process a serious activity, thought it may involve spots or hard thinking. It is still part of a game. Writing fiction is a game, and one must be amused all the time to do it."

On bad guys: "…I rather like criminals and find them extremely interesting, unless they are monotonously and stupidly brutal. Criminals are dramatically interesting, because for a time at least they are active, free in spirit, and they do not knuckle down to anyone."

On being in tune with your work: "Good books write themselves, and this can be said from a small but successful book like Ripley to longer and greater works of literature. If the writer thinks about his material long enough, until it becomes a part of his mind and his life, and he goes to bed and wake ups thinking about it—then at last when he starts to work, it will flow out as if by itself."

On liking your characters: "It is skill that makes the reader care about characters. It must start with the writer caring. This is much of what that rather stuffy word 'integrity' is about. Good hack writers may not care a damn, and yet through their skillful methods give an illusion that they do, and furthermore convince the reader that he cares, too. To care about a character, hero or villain, takes time and also a kind of affection, or better said, affection takes time and also knowledge, which takes time, and hack writers don't have it."

I'm writing this to jot down a few key ideas for myself and also to highlight what I think is increasingly rare: a writer tapping his or her soul and then driving those emotions into the work, the art.  I highly recommend this book, but not for the nuts-and-bolts diagram stuff of "plotting and writing," but a peek into the messier stuff—the motivations and inspirations—and how to tap those veins in the name of suspense.

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R. J. Rubadeau

"Gatsby's Last Resort" is the story Carl Hiaasen might have written if he

abandoned his beloved beaches and quirky sun-splashed state of Florida and moved to the mountains and quirky tucked-away town of Telluride, Colorado.

Let's just cut to the chase: the thin air is taking its toll. Or maybe it's the excess wealth washing around the town, or the infestation of self-important, self-absorbed citizens who have plenty of time for various forms of shenanigans and hanky-panky, all of which give The Last Resort Detective Agency plenty of fodder for potential income.

Wit Thorpe is the LRDA's brain trust and, well, that means trouble right there.  "Idiot is my middle name," he explains. "Wilford I. Thorpe was the birth record legacy handed down from my long departed father…It still enrages the bigots in the Four Corners area that a half-breed Ute would carry a moniker that suggests he is ironic and funny at the same time. Enraging bigots is the second best thing I do."

Wit's team includes his pre-teen daughter Cody, a wealthy barber and several other "under-employed locals."  In the main action of "Gatbsy's Last Resort," Wit bounces from spats over spouses and houses, running into and skewering a variety of colorful local characters. Does it help that he's married to the local district attorney? Probably not.

The writing captures the town's enigmatic essence and follows Wit around Telluride and other corners of southwest Colorado, including to nearby Paradox, where he visits a watering hole tended by a Yugoslavian (yes, not Irish) named Mick. "The dust lay thick in the shadows of the bar. Harsh slivers of sunlight from the windows exposed the old tables and mismatched wood chairs scatted about the undulating riprap of scarred and battered, pastel-tinted linoleum. Hot, high plains desert waited just outside the heavy metal door. Melancholy was not exactly the right word to describe the mood. I searched for a substitute. Pride in my vocabulary was one of my many faults. Glum might be the word I was looking for."

Because, of course, Wit is also obsessed with writing. He's working on a short story that seeks to invoke the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald crossed with a classic noir vibe. Long sections of that work in progress are interspersed with the main action of "Gatsby's Last Resort" and let's just say the steam factor rises in these well-done passages.  (The short story sections show Rubadeau's real talents—the style here is distinct from the main action.) The two strands intertwine as the "sudden apparition" of a main character from his story sachets into Wit's world.

Complicated? Not at all. "Gatsby's Last Resort" is refreshing, colorful, edgy, racy and fun. The jokes fly, the intrigue increases and Wit pursues his case and his craft with his own bumbling, spirited determination. Here's hoping "Gastby's Last Resort" is the start of a long-running series.

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Margaret Coel

Margaret Coel is known for her Wyoming-based "Wind River" mystery series. "The Silent Spirit." "Drowning Man." "The Eye of the Wolf." "Wife of Moon." "Killing Raven." And many more.

The way Tony Hillerman put a stamp on New Mexico with Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, Margaret Coel put a stamp on Wyoming. Hillerman brought us the Navajos through the mystery format (and so much wry, spare humor he is virtually in a class by himself) and Coel brought us the Arapahos. She was writing Wyoming country long before C.J. Box and Craig Johnson.

So who can begrudge her a chance to stretch her writing chops with the new Catherine McLeod series, about an investigative reporter in Denver? "Blood Memory" came out in 2008 and now Catherine is back.

"The Perfect Suspect" is a clean, quick-moving thriller. Yes, we know who did it before our credit card is swiped at the check-out stand. Ryan Beckman is a female Denver detective with a dicey set of problems, including having shot and killed her boyfriend, an up and coming politician. McLeod squirms, fights to be heard among her fellow investigators, avoids danger, sees through a frame job. As Beckman notes, McLeod is "edgy and distrustful." She operates "on instincts that defied logic." She is one of those "intuitive types."

McLeod leans on all her intuition, follows every instinct. If there's a category called "thriller cozy," this might be it. There are deaths but Coel doesn't linger over the blood and guts. She's more interested in what McLeod is thinking, how she processes information. You don't get Coel's trademark doses of American Indian history and culture here, of course. The setting here is Denver but any modern American city would work. Even as McLeod analyzes, "The Perfect Suspect" is 90 percent breezy plot. Events crank along at a nifty clip. This isn't cat-and-mouse, it's cat-and-cat. (There are multiple points of view, all female.) At the end, the snarls turn wicked, claws out. Right down to the last.

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Ted Conover

Human disasters wash over us. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, famine. We stare at the images on television, write some checks. We move on. What's next? From time to time I tell people I covered the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that killed 10,000 people (maybe 15,000—estimates vary) and they blink and stare. That was so many tragedies ago.

Some rush in to help. Some (celebs?) make a splash. Some come and go. And others stay. Ophelia Dahl and Partners in Health are there for the long haul. Their mission is, quite simply, to do "whatever it takes."

From the PIH web site: "When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill."

In this slim, tantalizing profile "The Fair Ophelia," Ted Conover gives us a glimpse of the woman who leads this unflappable organization—one that, as Conover puts it, has "challenged the world's public health experts to recalibrate notions of what's affordable or reasonable for the poor, asserting, in so many words, that we can do a whole lot better."

"The Fair Ophelia" begs for a full book. We get Conover's trademark eye for detail—the string between a Haitian child and a kitten's neck, the pink paisley bandana on the head of an anesthetist with a dark mustache. We get Conover's inviting prose, which opens the door to a story in such an easy way that we feel welcomed and placed smack in the scene itself.

But these staccato moments are a tease. We learn about Ophelia Dahl's parents—children's book author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal. We get a taste of Ophelia's upbringing and a quick glimpse at the relationship between Ophelia and Paul Farmer, who is PIH's "public face." We get a sense of the cult-like staff that surrounds Ophelia and a sense of how the organization functions but, like how all good journalism, we want more.

Let's hope that's in the works. In the meantime, for $.99 we get a Kindle-only "single" and a taste for the leadership and personal style of this unique figure. I'd gladly pay more for a full "LP."

Ophelia Dahl is out there on the fine line between life and death in the battles over public health in desperate communities around the world where "to be, or not to be" isn't within each individual's personal control. Ophelia Dahl and PIH are saying, it's up to us.

(Yes, Ted Conover is a friend. I stand by every word.)

 

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Dean Koontz

"The Wizard of Oz" is paranormal storytelling, right?

"Harry Potter" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," too.

Paranormal "designates experiences that lie outside the range of normal experience or scientific exploration (Wikipedia)."

Para = besides and/or "at the side of," in this case, normal.

And you certainly wouldn't classify The Emerald City, Hogwarts or the Usher abode as normal.  But I can buy into all three examples of these "paranormal" fictions.

(Okay, the truth: not so much with Harry Potter. To me, the series is a good demonstration of the fact that not all great stories require good writing.)

Which brings me to Dean Koontz.  A good friend said try "The Bad Place." I have enjoyed a bit of Koontz and I have to say "The Bad Place" starts strong.

Sure, there was some whacky stuff going on—a frightened, spooked-out Everyman (Frank Pollard) who has no idea what happens to him when he sleeps.  I really didn't know Koontz could portray relationships so well and I was pulled into the bond between married detectives Julie and Bobby Dakota.  To add to the surprise, a sensitive portrayal of Julie's younger brother Thomas, who has Down's syndrome.

And then, about two-thirds of the way through "The Bad Place," I felt like I was run off the rails. The story grew, well, too paranormal. Was it the giant spiders?  The bizarre stacks of cash? The red diamonds? The telepathic bridges?  Close to the end, the sexual mutations of the bad guy and his family just left me thinking one thing: ugh.

A bit of "Twilight Zone," a touch of "The Outer Limits" and a dash of "The Time Tunnel" and off we go.

Maybe a tad spooky, a little weird…but hardly scary.

Wish I knew why I "buy" some paranormal and shake my head at others. I'm not sure I understand the craze. I think it has something to do with the characters staying grounded, staying human, staying real.  I wish "The Bad Place" had stayed closer to ground, not quite so "para."

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Harry Dolan

One word came to mind reading Harry Dolan's prose:

Unadorned.

Okay, another: straightforward.

And that's not to say it's not powerful.

"Bad Things Happen" is pulled-tight, clenched jaw stuff.

There's a lot to like here, particularly the idea of setting a murder mystery in and around the staff of a mystery magazine, Gray Streets.

The start provides a genuine jolt; one of the best three-page hooks you'll come across.

I loved some of the character names, but don't ask me why. Elizabeth Waishkey is a name developed by an author who likes odd monikers and wants them to stick. Bridget Shellcross, another. Michael Beccanti. Valerie Calnero. Cassimir Hifflyn.

David Loogan is another but it's special for its own reasons. I'm not giving anything away here.

And then there's the writing. I searched high and low for a bit of poetry, some imagery like they teach in the fancy writing schools.  Not much, not here.  A sample:

"The door to Bridget Shellcross's townhouse had been answered by a woman with a pageboy haircut. She was tall and athletic and dressed for a workout; her bare arms were well toned. She led Elizabeth to a sitting room decorated with designer furniture: squarish shapes in leather with bands of dark wood and burnished metal."

This is as dry as Raymond Carver (and kind of refreshing in its own way).  There's nothing forced here. It works. Dolan never strays from his style.

I thought there were too many scenes where characters sat around imagining various "what if" scenarios to think about who might have killed whom. (Yes, more than one.) And I'm not a big fan of confessions/back stories while the guns are drawn but before the final shoot-out (so to speak) but in "Bad Things Happen" the dark, dry vibe is relentless and it will draw you in.

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Ethan Canin

You're a writer. You've got a story to tell.

What details do you choose to cram into the prose?

"You can describe anything—the sunset, the clouds, the trees, the leaves on the trees, the way the leaves are swaying. But how do you know what to describe?"

This is Ethan Canin—in The Atlantic—talking about mistakes he sees in young writers.

"When do you stop describing?" he asks. "If you're describing a character's clothes, do you stop at the shirt and pants? The watch? The headband? And the answer to all those questions—the single fundament of knowledge from which all other directives flow—is that if you deeply imagine yourself as your character, you will describe what the character would notice. It's very easy, and it's not conscious. If you're a bank robber walking into a coffee house, for instance, you'll notice different things from those a woman about to give birth will notice. The bank robber might notice the back door and the cops. The pregnant woman might look for a phone, a couch, and boiling water."

It's attention to detail—the right details.

Take "The Palace Thief."

I have rarely felt that I was being pulled, inexorably and respectfully, into a story.  It's magic when it happens and Canin manages the feat in all four stories here. They are each memorable in their own way. The reading experience is exquisite.  Canin's stories are so bold and so clear that you have the feeling that you are being told just the right details and key moments in a life.

No strokes are wasted.  In each of these stories, there is that "gulp" moment. In "Accountant," I suppose I should have seen it coming.  The opening line is killer: "I am an accountant, that calling of exactitude and scruple, and my crime was small."

The way Canin works with time in "Accountant" is brilliant, showing us how childhood buddies drift apart and then come back together with powerful consequences. When the "gulp" moment comes, Canin draws it out with delicious power and we squirm and fidget and sweat.  In "Batorsag and Szerelem," I found Canin's dialogue and rhythms perfect, especially using the made-up language and words among young teenagers who live very much in their own world of secrets and knowledge. "The City of Broken Hearts" got to me in part because I've lived in Boston and I'm a Red Sox fan and this story starts with a reference to Carl Yazstremski, who "was still making his name in the majors, a bird-legged lefty with a funny swing." The father-son strains here are captured perfectly–and then twisted around.

As he does in "Batorsag…" Canin also plays with changing generations, new lifestyles, new ways of thinking about sexuality and relationships. The way Canin paces the revelations in "The City of Broken Hearts" are brilliant.  And, finally, "The Palace Thief."  Again, Canin arcs a story over decades but doesn't waste our time.  I love a good story set in the stuffy, arrogant halls of academe and this is as good as it gets.  It's a bit preposterous but deliciously enjoyable, too.  The narrator believes "this is a story without surprises."  Hardly.  "The Palace Thief" is a wonderful tale about conviction, standards, privilege, morals and politics.  The situations are terrific but I'd recommend Canin for his style as much as anything else–a great combination of casual story-telling and forceful, highly-charged moments that become key emblems of these lives.

Like drinking cream straight from the carton, reading Ethan Canin forces you to slow down. You can't swallow quickly. You don't want to. You appreciate the way words coat your brain, the way images want to linger. It's not as if every sentence is doing back-flips and waving a big flag saying "look at me, look at me." There's plenty of good, plain-vanilla prose as well but Canin peppers his stories with the kinds of details that give his stories punch and life. In "Carry Me Across the Water," the story careens casually around the life of one August Kleinman, who has experienced a big chunk of the 20th century. I loved the long look-back arc to this story, all told in a fairly compact (200 page) manner.

"Carry Me Across the Water" is reflective but not inactive. The end comes with a taut war scene, enemy vs. enemy. Blood and guts. Knife to the heart. Kleinman is taking it all in, making sense of what he's done and where he's been. He's evaluating the "fruit and dirt" of his life. "He had killed one man and possibly a second, told Lyndon Johnson he was a coward after paying two hundred thousand dollars to meet him, grown rich in a business that was abidingly anti-Semitic, beaten all the odds, and then lost the great love of his life before returning, if not to his former self, then at least to a man who could pass as that."

The book flows effortlessly, using telescopes and microscopes to examine Kleinman's life and make sense of it all. Memorable and, in its own calm way, oddly riveting.

As much as I liked "The Palace Thief" and "Carry Me Across the Water," and its riveting morality tales, "America, America" left me indifferent. The writing alone might be worth it, however. Sentence by sentence, the prose is flowing and enticing. I listened on audio CD and Robertson Dean's narration was brilliant and engaging throughout.

The setup? Politics.  Big sweeping American politics. Big powerful families. And secrets, misdeeds and gaps of influence, gaps of wealth, gaps of moral values. The opening? How could you not read more:

"When you've been involved in something like this, no matter how long ago it happened, no matter how long it's been absent from the news, you're fate, nonetheless, to always search it out. To be on alert for it, somehow, every day of your life. For the small item at the back of the newspaper. For the stranger at the cocktail party or the unfamiliar letter in the mailbox. For the reckoning pause on the other end of the phone line. For the dreadful appearance of something that, in all likelihood, is never going to return."

As someone who first really focused on a U.S. Presidential campaign in 1972, it was a treat to see how Canin inserted a fictional character into the real events from that era—beautifully done. As a former reporter, I also enjoyed Canin's lens on journalism as his main character becomes a newspaper publisher and watches a young reporter, Trieste, and marvels about how the journalistic approach has changed. But, overall, the tone is too laid back in "America, America." The energy sags. I wanted Corey Sifter, the book's narrator, to stop reflecting on events and jump in the middle of the action, to step into the flying jump ropes and start dancing. It doesn't happen. This is a read for a comfy chair and a pot of coffee, if you're up for it. It's languorous and beautiful, but needs a jolt. It is, however, eminently readable (and enjoyable). It's all in the character-based details.

 

 

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Curtis Sittenfeld

Guts.

That's what I thought about the entire time I was reading "American Wife." It took enormous guts to write this book, to dive into the psyche of Laura Bush and write from the first-person (for 555 pages).

And to write and imagine with such utter, unflagging discipline. The pace is relaxed, reflective. The phrase "page turner" does not come to mind and that's a good thing as long as you don't mind sinking into the psyche of Alice Lindgren/Laura Bush and watching a woman come to grips with her politics, marriage and, ultimately, her power.

I am not the target audience for "American Wife." (I don't think.) I'm a guy in my late 50's and I can say up until reading this book I had no real interest in learning anything more about Laura Bush. And, yes, "American Wife" isn't directly Laura Bush and, yet, of course it is. Key character points, key plot points about Laura's views on abortion and the war in Iraq and, of course, the tragic auto accident as a youth that colored, changed, modified her entire life.  Or did it…confirm her point of view about the world? It stays with her; how could it not? At least, from Curtis Sittenfeld's imagination the accident affected everything that followed. My hat is off to Sittenfeld for imagining—and imagining so deeply—this woman's complexities.

Writing in first-person, Sittenfeld starts with young Alice Lindgren and develops her over the course of four main chapters in her life. I don't know blow-by-blow how the details of Alice Lindgren's life match up with Laura Bush but I think the key issue Sittenfeld is addressing is this:

How does an "American Wife" decide when and how to speak up, when and how to declare independence (in the case of Laura/Alice, it's not much) and when and how to stand your ground? And, I wonder, does Sittenfeld consider "wife" a pejorative? Especially when coupled with "American?" In showing how hard it is for one woman to speak up, to assert herself, is she saying more women should?

What's seductive about Sittenfeld's tale is the voice she has given Laura/Alice—and how much is going on beyond her staid and Plain-Jane exterior. (Didn't think I would encounter so many R-rated passages, for instance.) Laura/Alice is deliberate, thoughtful and only somewhat self-aware. She is dressed down, late in the book, by someone nearly twice her age. She gives in too much, stays too quiet and yet she is also somehow true to herself. At her core, she's a librarian and all the stereotypes (not necessarily accurate ones) are at the forefront to her personality: meek, laid-back, quiet. At-your-service.

So when she gets sucked up into the world of the White House, she is still suppressing her personal attitudes. And then, just by an inch, she shifts and Sittenfeld captures that moment of self-recognition and awareness. Yes, it's taken forever. Yes, you may have screamed at Laura/Alice long ago for her snail's pace adjustments, but to me it's Sittenfeld's dedication to the character that is the marvel. If you're angry, it's because Sittenfeld has been successful at capturing her upbringing and the life-defining moments that shaped her character.

Of course Sittenfeld must also deliver a worthy husband for Laura/Alice and Charlie Blackwell is a sharply drawn fictional George Bush—full of himself, brash, confident, self-assured and extremely well motivated. And yet, Sittenfeld also gives us reason to see what kept them together as a couple and how Laura/Alice did her part to keep Charlie from his own bad habits, especially drinking.

I wanted Laura/Alice to be more forthright, more assertive. Who wouldn't? But, in the end, she does things her own way and in her own style and that's also what I admired about Sittenfeld's talents, to stay so true to the character.  "American Wife" is a piece of work—and considerable imagination.

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