Ruth Rendell’s The Monster in the Box is her most psychologically twisted thriller yet, and that is saying quite a lot. Rendell always delves deeply into what makes a killer kill, a murderer murder, or a mutilator mutilate. What makes the killer in The Monster in the Box her most chilling character ever is that this one seems to kill without any motive at all. Lack of motive is what prevented Wexford from arresting the killer decades ago, during Wexford’s first murder case as a young policeman. Haunted by the case for years, Wexford has a second chance to nab his man when the monster returns to Kingsmarkham (Rendell’s imaginary English town). Wexford is sure, once more, of the killer’s identity and his m.o. but again, the killer’s motive eludes him. When the motive gradually becomes clear to Wexford, it is horrible. Innocent people die, and one death can be laid at Wexford’s door, or garden gate, quite literally.
Rendell never lets anyone off easy in her wonderful novels, least of all her intelligent, self-analyzing, inquisitive, and intuitive detective, Inspector Wexford. Those of us who are Rendell/Wexford aficionados are given a good dose of the inspector’s personal history in this book, including details about his first fiancée and his first forays into books, art, and culture. Rendell also gives us the usual wonderful assemblage of recurring supporting characters and unique plot-specific characters. She prods, exposes, and examines them all to come up with truth that is sometimes ugly, sometimes comforting, and always compelling. Anyone who reads Rendell’s Wexford books (and everyone should read all twenty-two of them) has been treated to the maturing of a detective, the multi-layered Inspector Reg Wexford, and the sharpening and honing of a writer’s skills, the supremely talented Ruth Rendell.
Per FTC rules, the book I review here was a review copy received from the publisher.
Tweet This Post
Forgetting English, short stories by Midge Raymond, are unsettling and tightly-recorded revelations about relationships, exploring and dissecting the connections between siblings, spouses, and friends. Perhaps the most disturbing relationship Raymond probes, then reveals, is the link within: the relationship each person has with their internal selves. We are multiples: who we were as a child, an adolescent, and now; who we think we will become; who we want to be; and the one we fear we actually have become. And within that multiplicity of connections, there is pain, fear, and sorrow, and, occasionally, hope.
Using taut language, straightforward plots that give a sudden twist, and unflinching characterization, Raymond brings us face to face with people once sure of themselves, now unsure; once standing on solid ground, now they are rocked out of complacency or dormancy of their desires, and brought back to life, hard and fast. They are no longer secure, but they are more alive than before; they are no longer somnolent but wakefulness has a price: to be awake is painful. No happy endings here but there is potential for something better – a fully engaged life.
Per FTC rules, the book reviewed here was a review copy supplied by the publisher, Eastern Washington University Press.
The Hidden Life of Deer by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas does what other great books on nature do: it prods dormant observation muscles, urging them through solid example and promises of great reward back into use. After reading this book, I found myself flexing and stretching my skills at looking around me and finding, once again, the quiet and beautiful aspects of nature all around.
In this season, fall, the drama of nature is both splendid and desperate, the last bursts of color before the onslaught of killing winter. The leaves this year seem especially spectacular in variations of red, orange, and gold, both on branches and in swirling mounds of color on the ground. Light itself has changed: without the filter of green the sun is stark and hard, and as the days shorten, the cold comes on. Winter is on its way and wild life prepares: chipmunks are scurrying to gather food for the hibernation, squirrels are burying acorns in my whiskey barrel planters, and whole legions of birds are passing by on their way south. The deer are out too, gathering the last of my shrubs and flowers, snapping the buds off my fall pansies and the final leaves off my Montauk daises, and slurping through the final pathetic colors of my very last flowers.
There are many people in my town who hate the deer for their decimation of plants and bushes, for the danger they pose on the roads, for the ticks they carry. But I like deer, I like to see them in my backyard, with their spindly legs and huge dark eyes and white as snow tails, lifted high as they dart away. Like Thomas, I feel that “deer are more important than exotic ornamentals” and although I don’t understand why for four years running they left my Montauk daisies untouched and this year, in contrast, found them as addictive as I find candy corn, I do not begrudge them the food they clearly need. I will not start laying out corn for them, as Thomas did in a winter of very low acorn production and recounts in wonderful detail in The Hidden Life of Deer – but I will start looking at them with even more sympathy — and empathy — thanks to Thomas’ book.
What is striking about this book, and other books by Thomas, including The Hidden Life of Dogs, is that there is nothing so much that these animals hide but there is very, very much that we just do not see for lack of looking. We take neither the time nor the space to sit still and watch what the animals and birds all around us do, both as individuals and as members of a social group (and I mean that both ways: for the most part humans don’t individually or socially observe animals or birds individually or in groups). But Thomas does watch, and she writes about what she sees. We are lucky to be treated to nature through her eyes.
Thomas is not a florid or particularly descriptive writer but she is detailed and clear, and very genuine. We get a real sense of Thomas the person, personality and characteristics, and she shares freely and instructively her knowledge of the many, many people and animals whom she has observed to great length her whole life. Reading her book was like spending a long winter afternoon with a learned, gifted, and wide-eyed nature guide. I will never look at deer the same, nor at mice, rats, coyotes or bears, all animals she discourses upon in The Hidden Life of Deer, and from all of whom we can learn some lesson, including tolerance, wonder, cooperation, and preparation for the coming frost. And if we are very, very lucky, and very, very quiet, we may even get to hear a mouse sing on a kitchen counter or see a fawn sleep, curled up tight under the fronds of a low branch: gifts from the natural world, received via the lessons transposed for us by Thomas.
per FTC rules, the book I reviewed here was a review copy provided by the publisher
Summer Brenner’s I-5 is a grim and gripping noir novel about the sex slave trade: its victims, its perpetrators, and its ability to flourish in the shadowy outcrops of civilized life. Under the guise of business, Anya and other girls from Eastern Europe are plucked from the streets and brought to the U.S. by promises of work and help for their families. Kupkin, manager of the evil empire, holds them indentured and enslaved without hope of escape until all debts are paid off. He ruminates on the care he takes of his girls and his business: “forty girls have passed through orientation. Nine have worked their way out of the system after a production period of five years. Two have died…This latest enterprise has transformed Kupkin from rich to extremely wealthy.”
The book begins with a slow but steady introduction to Anya, a young girl from Moldova. We meet her during a breather; she’s been given a few days off from the constant hours of prostitution to rest up, to regain her appetite and plump up for another round of endless sex dates, horrible incarnations of twisted desires and pathetic release. She’s been in the trade for four years and she is desperate now for the end to come, for her freedom to be granted. But a seemingly simple trip from Los Angeles to Oakland turns into a nightmare of accidents, encounters, and glimpses of freedom offered, then ripped away under Kupnik’s ensnaring power.
Brenner writes boldly and with seething clarity. She hooks us first with characterization, including the girl/woman Anya who dreams of her dead babushka; a trader in bodies who quotes Pushkin; a multi-religious “Number Three Son of the First Man” who deals in body parts; and a petite prostitute whose name was changed to Cerise from Mary because few men want reminders of the Virgin when cheating on their wives (and for those who specifically do want to sleep with the Holy Mother, that and any other request can be accommodated). Brenner reels us in with a plot fluid with movement, heady with suspense, and heavy with portents, light on hope. Against all the odds of oppression, powerlessness, and vulnerability, I found myself hoping for Anya’s safety and her escape. When Brenner exacts her own harsh revenge on the abductors, traffickers, and abusers who make money in dealing in human flesh, I took grim satisfaction in seeing them suffer the awful flip of fate that they so easily conjured up for others.
Final comment: I-5 would make a GREAT movie, thrilling and moving, suspenseful and satisfying.
sh by Sapphire is an amazing novel that took me by the throat from the first sentence and then wrapped around my brain and buried itself deep in my heart. I will never forget this story of Precious Jones. There are novels written that are meant to entertain, and there are ones written to instruct (enlighten) or displace (offer escape) or promote (sell something) and then there are ones like Push. Push was written to communicate a universal truth by telling a very individual story. For most of us, Precious is an unknown, her story is from a world we cannot imagine, and what she has had to endure is horrifying. The story is not told to convey the horror but to convey the humanity: Precious is one person alone and she has no chance at survival, no chance at all, until she is no longer alone. She is a person who — like all people — needs respect, care, and acknowledgment in order to thrive. She is a child who requires protection in order to live. She is a poet and a visionary who has to learn how to read and write to be able to find herself. She is a mother who needs support to be able to — she wants to –nurture her child.
Readers of Push will come to the novel from different places. For me to read Push is to become witness to a world I do not know and to recognize how much I share in my needs and my desires with this battered and abused child. Push took me outside of myself and placed me within a life of hard challenges, small victories, great pain, and occasional joy. For a person from Precious’ world — failed by society and by family — Push is a testament to the hurdles faced and also a promise of, a glimmer of, hope. For anyone who reads this book, the communication of genuine feeling will result in an understanding — an affirmation of what is suspected, known, or denied — of all that is lost when one child is left unprotected, and of all that can be gained when one person is given hope, safety, support, and opportunity.
When Precious begins to read and to write, her world — past, present, and future — opens up. She comes to understand her past, that she was abused when she should have been cared for; her present, that she has something inside to be shared; and her future, that she can keep going up those stairs described so well by Langston Hughes (”It’s had tacks in it,/And splinters,/And boards torn up,/And places with no carpet on the floor“) and make a life for herself and her child, maybe even rescue her first child from life in an institution.
Or maybe not: the book does not end with a promise that Precious will achieve the future she dreams of. But even if Precious fails in her dreams (and the odds are heavily stacked against her), the acknowledgment of her right to have dreams is an acknowledgment of her humanity. To quote another great poem by Hughes, what happens to “a dream deferred?/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a sore? And then run?/Does it stink like rotten meat?/Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet?/Maybe it just sags like a heavy load./Or does it explode?“ Can acknowledging (allowing) a dream save it from stink, fester, or explosion?
As readers, we cannot give Precious what she needs to see her dreams come true; as readers, we can only give our attendance to her story, our recognition of her existence, and our engagement with her struggle. Push is a novel but the truth of it is undeniable and unforgettable. What we give to Precious is more than doubled back in what we get from her story: an affirmation of life. Every life.
Hold Love Strong by Matthew Aaron Goodman is an extraordinary novel for its voice, its vision, and its promise. The voice is that of Abraham Singleton, born to a thirteen-year old girl and an absent twenty-year old father; the year is 1982 America and the place is the projects, Ever Park building in Queens, New York. The vision is Goodman’s Singleton family, a realistic, full, and inspiring portrayal of what it takes to be a family and hold love strong amidst an environment that is relentless in its hopelessness, merciless in its dispensation of pain, and isolated behind walls of ignorance — not the ignorance of the inhabitants but of those on the outside, all those who live beyond the world of Ever Park and have no clue of what really goes on in the inner city, and even worse, do not really seem to care. The promise is that there are boys and girls who can survive places like Ever Park, through luck, through someone watching out for them, and through someone on the outside taking an interest in what goes on inside the neighborhood, and inside the hearts and minds of its inhabitants.
Abraham’s narration is genuine and clear; he is a boy we watch turn into a man and the process is painful, frustrating, awkward, and beautiful. Abraham’s voice is one of conflicting emotions, uncertain status, threatened identity, and in turns hopeful and hopeless. Paragraphs of questions underscore the uncertainty of Abraham’s life — “Who was she? Who was this woman who so loved me while I slept yet was so uninterested in me when I was awake? And which Abraham was I, the one my mother saw or the one my grandma knew; the one who needed to be scolded and coddled or the one who was deemed a man, albeit prematurely and without warrant?“; the questions that just keep coming, more and more questioning as Abraham grows from childhood into adulthood, questions that demonstrate the level of insecurity in terms of present needs (like food and medical care) and of future prospects (employment, health, family): “what chance do I have?“ Abraham wants to be a man but a man unlike the men he sees around him causing so much pain:”I had witnessed the damage other men caused and I didn’t want any part of being like the others, not their presence or absence.”
The most harrowing question posed, again and again, by Abraham and by the people of his community, is “What are the living supposed to do?….Should I cry out?…Should I demand to know why? Do I plea for justice and peace?…I don’t know.” How to go on, when there is no future that can promise peace, sufficiency, stability? Survival is through family (bonds of love), church (bonds of faith), or sadly, through escape via drugs that while destroying life, provide a buffer from pain and hopelessness that have become intolerable, or via mental illness, as seen in the character of Lindbergh, veteran of the Vietnam war and creator of magical helicopters to fly up and out of Ever Park.
Goodman creates a moving and unique relationship between Abraham and Donnell, the cousin who, although just five years older than Abraham, becomes his care giver, his protector, his touchstone, and his most faithful, believing, and exacting friend. It is Donnell who must grow too soon into a man, and who skirts the line between what is legal and what is required for his family to survive; in the end, Donnell will be the one who blows his anger and frustration out in a game of basketball that is really a proclamation of worth, a manifestation of will, and a desperate bid for respect: “You leave it here. Everything. All the blood, sweat, tears. Ain’t nothing that can stop you.” When Abraham has to take stock of what his life has been and what he wants it to become, he recognizes the debt he owes to Donnell and the strength of the love he bears for him: it is a love that sustains Abraham as much as it sustains Donnell.
That is the strength of the hold of family love: it gives back as much as is given out. Love is the only lasting definite in the lives of the Singleton family, their existence rife with transience (anyone could be shot dead at any time or hauled off to jail or just disappear into drugs) and uncertainty (lives, wasted and wasting, surround them). But alongside the harrowing realities of daily life, love is the constant, whether it is the love of Donnell, protective and demanding; the love of Nice, so powerful that he cuts off all contact with his family when his own pain is too much for them to bear; the love of the grandmother, who does whatever it takes to keep the apartment and its inhabitants safe; the love of Aunt Rhonda, with her affectionate and obstinate pride in her family; or the love of Abraham’s mother, demonstrated through the care she takes of Abraham though she is still a child herself. Love is a circle enveloping the Singleton family, even through its darkest hours of sorrow, hate, pain, and hopelessness.
Hold Love Strong is a powerful novel about one boy’s epic journey of survival against all odds. That communities of insidious hopelessness, nonexistent opportunities, and failed political and civic promises exist is well-known and Hold Love Strong makes its truth a condemnation: communities of plenty are failing communities of need. But Hold Love Strong is much more than a social commentary on failures of our society: it is a testament to the will to survive and to surpass. The book is fiction but every word of it rings true: in following its cycles of misery and possibility, of abandonment and connection, of loneliness and of brotherhood, we are all made witness to the enduring possibility — and our shared responsibility to foster that possibility — that any child can find wings and fly.
Two of my favorite perennial story-tellers have come out with their yearly books and although both satisfy, neither excite. I have been reading Dick Francis mysteries for years and have read all forty-three of his horse-centric tales of suspense and thrills, every one of them helmed by a tough hero and variously anchored by a love interest or a sibling or a friend; in the end, the hero is always alone in his final battle and he vanquishes, but often with a dire price to pay and lasting wounds to heal, both psychic and physical. Francis has written the last three books assisted by his son Felix and I reviewed their second collaboration, Silks one year ago, lauding its “resolute action by the hero that is spine chilling and cracking, and quite gratifying as well“. This year’s title is Even Money and it offers a thorough introduction to the world of at-track and on-line betting on horse races. It also follows through with the usual solid, solitary, suffering-but-not-showing-it-hero, an afflicted love, compelling supporting characters, and, for something new, a particularly twisted family history. When Ned Talbot, bookmaker, finds himself face to face with a father he had thought long-dead, the fast-paced action starts and keeps up at a steady rate until the all-out (but less satsifying than usual) final show-down. What works in Even Money is the complex plot with its two story-lines and nice backdrop of betting and hedging bets on the racing of horses; the book also brings in the latest on bet-making, horse-identifying (tattooed lips in the United States and electronic chips everywhere else), mental illness, cell phones, iPods, and the old-as-the-hills fraudulent tendencies of man. What doesn’t work so well is the level of suspense: there is none. The who, what, and why of the danger facing Talbot just never builds to a dramatic point and although I enjoyed reading the book, I was never in a state of frantic page-turning, desperate to know what happened next. The other problem with this novel — and for me, this was huge — is the complete absence of horse and horse-sensibility from the story. Francis has written novels which do not feature horses front and center but he has never written one which so callously offers up the brutal killing of horses without comment or regret. It is Francis’ love of horses and his understanding of them, and of the world of racing, jumping, breeding, and doctoring them, that have always made his books distinct, alive, and compelling. Without the horse-love interest, the story itself was fine but nothing more.
Aaron Elkins’ Skull Duggery is his sixteenth in the Gideon Oliver, skeleton detective, series. Elkins follows his usual formula of the lovable but bone-addled and addicted Gideon stumbling across a body and using his formidable skills of forensics, along with his curious, active, and stubborn mind, to solve the question of when, why, how, and where the body came to be a dead bundle of bones in the first place. His also lovable wife Julie is here again, and the location is a tiny village in the Oaxaca state of Mexico. As usual, there are meals of great interest (and thoroughly described), shifty characters as well as ones provided for comic relief, and at least one attempt on Gideon’s life. Also as usual, the best part of the novel is the forensic bone-puzzle solving part of it all. Skull Duggery takes way too long to get us to Gideon’s investigation but once he starts in on the body (and as more bodies come under his discerning gaze) the work that Gideon does is truly fascinating and thoroughly engaging. Unfortunately, the accompanying story line this time around is a bit weak and although I have to admit the final twist really surprised me, the identity of the skeletons was less than surprising and I saw the attack on Gideon coming a mile (or five pages) away.
Francis and Elkins both hold their place in my pantheon of beloved story-tellers, despite their less-than-awesome entry onto this year’s reading list. With such classics (that can be read again and again) as Longshot, Break In, Bolt, Risk, Odds Against, Come to Grief, Whip Hand, and Banker (just writing those titles makes me want to start a Francis-a-day project starting NOW) by Dick Francis, and Fellowship of Fear, Good Blood, Little Tiny Teeth, Old Bones, and Twenty Blue Devils by Elkins, both of these writers deserve to be read, and often, and repeatedly.
Peter Applebome’s book Scout’s Honor is a wonderful memoir of his years as the parent of a Boy Scout. Actively involved with his son’s scouting activities, Applebome is in turns funny, reflective, descriptive, and soul-searching as he struggles with everything from the first canoe trip (mastering the J stroke) to procuring the right socks (woolen) to camping in leaky tents (rain is an inevitable part of scouting) to acting as scoutmaster at summer camp (tequila sneaked onto the premises by needy dads) to the year 2000 Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on gays in scouts by the Boy Scout Association (no joke here: it saddens me). Applebome joined in with the Scouts to please his then sixth-grade son, and ended up pleasing himself as well. He thoroughly appreciates the real time spent with his child without distractions of work or home; he reconnects to his own childhood mixture of freedom and activity; and he finds within himself not only skills of camping (not too many of those, actually) but the ability to slow down and appreciate the moments of life, as time passes inexorably by.
Scout’s Honor is a must-read for anyone involved in Scouts in any way, even as just an observer of their annual float in the Memorial Day Parade, and it is a must-must read for anyone who has a son contemplating Scouts or currently involved in Scouts. (To say nothing of the legions of ex-Scouts: just mentioning this book set my husband off on a long monologue of reveries from his own scouting days.) Not only does Applebome offer his hilarious and heart-warming memories of Scouting, but he wins the merit badge for historical delving. He’s done his research on Boy Scouts, turning up fascinating tidbits and solid facts about the founding of the Scouts in England at the beginning of the 20th century by Lord Robert Baden-Powell (where it was viewed as almost revolutionary for how it brought together diverse classes of boys) and its subsequent migration across the sea. The Boy Scouts image changed shape under the diverse (and sometimes conflicting) influences of American leaders Ernest Thompson and Daniel Carter Beard, and then morphed again in the 1950s in response to the Cold War and fears of godlessness. It has been changing with the times ever since, nevertheless the basic tenets of loyalty, courtesy, cooperation, and sympathy first laid out by Baden-Powell in 1907 still remain the foundation of Scout troops everywhere. As Applebome demonstrates through his own personal history with the Boy Scouts, those tenets plus a healthy dose of the outdoors (and a complete disengagement with technological fixes for the duration of the outdoor experience) are still the best that scouting offers, and that best is very, very good.
Scouting began as an inclusive and enlightening opportunity for pre-teen boys to begin a journey towards both self-reliance and group cooperation; through the measures proposed by Applebome in that final chapter of Scout’s Honor, the Boy Scouts of America can bring new life to the Scouting program, and new boys into the adventure, wonder, and community of Scouts.
The five stories of “Music and Nightfall” contained in Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro display Ishiguro’s virtuosity in creating fiction that is both illuminating and pleasurable. Reading his works is always an experience of multiple satisfactions — characters, landscape, plot — and the themes he explores are consistently brought to a new place of examination and understanding. My favorite story in the collection was “Crooner”, with its narrator both innocent and wise, its underlying themes of regret and passage, and its conclusion that music (and the comfort that it gives, no matter what its motivation or how unintentionally given) is on the highest plane of human endeavor. Writing — when it is as good as these stories are — is also on that plane, and Ishiguro gives great comfort, pleasure, and insight with these stories.
Ishiguro never takes the easy way out in his fiction; he doesn’t write stories with a clear demarcation of right and wrong, light and dark, and yet he does insist on a line of human decency. His characters yearn for what is best not only for themselves but also as a reaching outward for someone or something else. Even when they fail, miserably or, as demonstrated to great affect in two of the stories, humorously, they are trying to do the right thing; Ishiguro’s characters want to be the right person for the job, to answer the needs of the people (acquaintances, wives, agents, friends, memory of a mother) making demands all around them, and to bring some gratification, some pleasure, somewhere. Rarely do they please themselves, but that is life, both in Ishiguro’s stories and in the real world. Learning to live with dreams that have not quite come true, with loves that do not answer all needs, with the injustice of how life’s rewards and punishments are meted out, is learning to live, period. And in Ishiguro’s stories, the lesson is learned through moments of pain, of grace, and of laugh-out-loud chaos.
Per FTC rules, the book I reviewed here was a review copy provided by the publisher.
Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto provides another stunning example of the power of the Graphic Novel. I loved this book. Right up there with Stitches by David Small and the Persepolis books by Marjane Satrapi, Cancer Vixen conveys through vivid drawings, straightforward commentary, and genuine dialogue, the harsh experience of a very difficult situation — and makes all readers participants in the story. I experienced cancer through my sister’s diagnosis, treatment, and death, but Cancer Vixen deepened my knowledge of what is suffered, what is feared, and what is hoped for. As in Stitches and the Persepolis books, the story told is very personal and yet its ramifications are universal. Family dysfunction and political dysfunction are exposed in those books: Cancer Vixen exposes both the bland and the horrific aspects of cancer.
As in other graphic novels, many of Marchetto’s drawings involve faces looking straight at the reader and the dialogue is often directed towards the reader. The result is an engagement between the reader and the story that feels personal and also special, as if Marchetto is sharing an intimate confidence. It helps that Marchetto is a very likable person, a woman struggling to find her place in the world while also trying to have a good time, make a living, and be a decent person. We like her and when she takes us in and makes us witness to the diagnosis of cancer and the aftermath of its treatment, we care; we care a lot. Marchetto shares her story as a one-on-one conversation, a personal saga shared between two friends, and we are grateful for the conversation.
While providing details about diagnosis and treatment that illuminate the common experience of cancer, Marchetto also provides us with context of what having cancer meant to her personally through flashbacks to life “b.c.” (before cancer). She offers up her history as a young, carefree, and skinny fashionista brought horribly down to earth by September 11th. The World Trade Center destruction happened literally in her back yard and she recorded her personal experience of September 11th for Talk magazine. Reproduced here, it is a heartbreaking recording of the horrors of that day. Three years later, when Marchetto is in love with a wonderful man and selling cartoons and happy again (although never happy-go-lucky again) cancer strikes. Drawn as a skinny bitch in a gray hooded mantle, Cancer is death-come-calling but Marchetto is determined to fight back, and fight hard.
Marchetto uses humor and bitter truth to illustrate, through both words and drawings, her experience of cancer, and it is a triumph when she succeeds in fighting back death. There are costs to her battle (babies in the universe of her future disappear, one by one) but there are also lessons gained — and shared with us, her devoted confidants — about love, friendship, maintaining perspective, and never, ever taking anything for granted.
Per FTC rules, the book that I review here I read as a review copy received from the publisher.
