How Do I
Jane's Picks
| Rash, Ron Nothing Gold Can Stay Short Stories |
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| These stories, all set in the fierce beauty of the North
Carolina mountains, are literary gems. Rash’s cast of characters includes
a struggling young couple who are willing to bet it all at a local
casino, a pompous British folksong expert who meets his match in the
backwoods, a convict on a chain gang who charms a sweet young thing
at a remote farm and thinks he’s found his way out, and a frustrated
accountant who decides to cure his sexual dysfunction with a homemade
remedy using the paw of a freshly killed bear. Nothing works out
the way these people expect, and that’s what makes these stories so
delicious. And there’s another story here of a young woman who drowns
in a river, and we see what she sees as she’s dragged down through
the darkness. It’s tender and beautiful. Rash knows how to weave a
tale, and these stories are haunting and tough. Can’t wait for his
next collection. Recommended May 2013 |
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Mathis, Ayana The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Fiction |
| Hattie Shepherd has married the wrong man, and the decision
to move with him from the Jim Crow South of Georgia to Philadelphia
doesn’t turn her life in the right direction. It’s the 1920s, and
African-Americans are moving North to begin life in a supposedly non-segregated
environment. Hattie and her husband August join this migration, but
after losing her first two babies to illness she loses her joy in
living and her hope for the future. Nine more babies can’t stop the
pain, and each grows up with his own story of despair and frustration.
These eleven children (and one grandchild) are Hattie’s "twelve tribes",
and each child’s story is highlighted in the twelve chapters of the
story. Hattie can feed and clothe them all (barely), but cannot seem
to love any of them. All of her children author their own disappointments,
but it is their mother’s remoteness that keeps them from discovering
how to start again. These stories are grim, but the writing is fine,
spare yet descriptive, and the tales are captivating. "Grim" is the
word I keep using when I describe this book to potential readers,
but I believe it’s a book worth reading, especially because it illustrates
an important time in American life. For a thorough history of this
period, I also recommend Isabel Wilkerson’s National Book Award winner
The
Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,
a spectacular nonfiction account of this period. Recommended February 2013 |
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Stedman, M.L. The Light Between Oceans Fiction |
| Tom Sherbourne has survived the horrors of World War I,
and now he returns to Australia to put the horrors of war behind him.
He takes a position as a lighthouse keeper on an island off the coast,
a job he believes will give his life purpose and the solitary existence
he craves. But on a trip to the mainland he meets Isabel, a woman
who will marry him and share the stark beauty of life on the island.
Two miscarriages and a stillborn child seem to end their dream of
starting a family, and then a small boat with two passengers washes
up on their shore. The man is dead but the baby in his arms is alive.
Tom is certain that as a government employee he must immediately report
the incident to his superiors. But Isabel, in her profound grief,
convinces Tom to put their own happiness ahead of the uncertain future
the child might face. What happens when fundamentally good people
make disastrous choices? What is the nature of forgiveness? Is it
really more difficult to forgive than to seek revenge? And who deserves
happiness? Beautiful descriptions of the Australian coast, fascinating
– really – explanations of the inner workings of lighthouses, and
deftly drawn supporting characters add dimension and realism to the
novel. A wonderful, sad story that ends the only way it can – with
broken hearts all around. Recommended December 2012 |
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Novak, Chase Breed Horror |
| If you like to read in bed before sleeping, or if reading
is your way to unwind at the end of the day, do not try this one.
Or at least wait until daylight. Alex and Leslie Twisden live on Manhattan’s
Upper East Side and have everything money can buy, except a biological
heir to the family’s massive fortune. Desperate to conceive, they
travel to Slovenia to visit the truly creepy and highly recommended
Dr. Kis, who promises instant fertility. After an excruciating and
gruesome session in the doctor’s office, Leslie is pregnant. The birth
of the Twisden twins (or was it triplets?) is merely the beginning
of the story. Ten years later the family is still living in New York
City, but the once palatial Twisden mansion is now in ruins, family
pets are constantly “misplaced,” and the terrified children sleep
behind locked doors each night. Following a clever escape, the children
must convince other adults in their world that their parents are the
enemy. But Alex Twisden is smart, freakishly fast and strong, and
anticipates their maneuvers through the city. This is a tale that
is part Hansel and Gretel, part Rosemary’s Baby, and all horrifying. Recommended November 2012 |
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Rachman, Tom The Imperfectionists Fiction |
| Cyrus Ott decides to establish a small English-language
newspaper in Rome in 1953. The long-term survival of newspapers is
uncertain, but Ott, with his own agenda, moves ahead and staffs his
paper with handpicked writers, editors, and executives. But this really
isn’t a story about the obsolescence of the printed word. In fact,
most of the employees seem eerily unconcerned and disconnected from
the paper’s fate. It’s the story of the people whose lives intersect
at the paper, professionally and personally. Each chapter is its own
short story, and we learn about the ambitions, the terrors, and the
souls of each of these newspaper people. Twenty pages into this book,
I knew I’d be recommending it to everyone I know who loves clear prose
and the wonders of human nature. You’ll have your own favorite character
– mine was the aging war correspondent, still looking for that one
big story that will catapult him to his Pulitzer Prize as he looks
for his next free meal or place to crash. Can’t get to Rome this year?
Grab a glass of iced tea and enjoy this wonderful book this summer. Recommended July 2010 |
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Grann, David The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession Non-fiction |
| Murder? Madness? Obsession? What three better lures can
entice a reader to these fascinating essays? Each of the essays stands
alone, but all are connected by these themes. David Grann, staff writer
for The New Yorker, introduces a Sherlock Holmes scholar found dead
under mysterious circumstances. Clues abound. Murder most foul? Something
else? Grann then tells of a recently executed murderer on Texas’ death
row. Justice or a terrible legal mistake? A French con-artist passes
himself off as the missing son of an American family, and nearly gets
away with it. Why does he do it, and why does the family go along
with the charade? A New York City firefighter can’t recall what happened
to him during the first furious moments in Manhattan on 9/11. The
only survivor of his company, he wonders why. Other essays tell of
an obsessed New Zealand giant squid hunter, an American baseball legend
struggling for one more shot at the big leagues, and the working life
of the men who build and maintain New York City’s crumbling sewer
system. Well-written, filled with detail, never dull, this collection
will leave you with more questions than answers, giving you plenty
of jumping off places to read more about these fascinating people. Recommended June 2010 |
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James, P. D. The Murder Room Mystery |
| What do long winter days and long airline flights have
in common? Both offer wonderful opportunities to pass the time with
a good book, and especially a good mystery. James’ Commander Adam
Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is assigned to a grisly murder that may
or may not have a connection to MI5, the UK’s Homeland Security division.
There is definitely a copycat killer at work with his (or her) inspiration
coming from a quirky museum in the English countryside. The Dupayne
Museum is a small family affair, and when a charred body is discovered
on the museum grounds, the family provides plenty of suspects. Employees,
volunteers, unhappy children, and rejected lovers keep the Commander
and his interview team busy. Stir in a poignant old-fashioned romance,
add a surprising touch of 21st century love and lust, and most certainly
a few gruesome crime scenes, and you’ll wish that your flight were
delayed just a bit longer. Recommended April 2010 |
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McCann, Colum Let the Great World Spin Fiction |
| An ordinary summer morning in New York City, 1974. Suddenly
a crowd gathers in lower Manhattan and all eyes focus on the top of
the World Trade Center towers. A man, it appears, has rigged a cable
between the towers and is walking, now running, now dancing in the
air. For a few moments strangers on the streets of the city are connected
to Philip Petit and what will become an extraordinary American event.
Meanwhile, an ambulance races to the scene of a gruesome car accident,
and nearly no one notices. Against the backdrop of this summer of
Watergate, the first aftershocks of the Vietnam War, and the seedy
pre-Guiliani streets of Manhattan, lives intersect, some briefly and
some profoundly. A resilient prostitute mother/daughter team, immigrant
Irish brothers, an artist and his wife, and grieving parents all find
their way through various kinds of pain on this day. “The thing about
love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.” Recommended February 2010 |
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Waugh, Evelyn A Handful of Dust Fiction |
| The story of Percy Fawcett’s disappearance in the Amazon
was still fresh in the minds of the British in 1934 when Evelyn Waugh
wrote this searing indictment of manners, morals, and marriage. Tony
Last describes himself as the happiest man on earth, living comfortably
on his family estate, spending his days hunting, and sharing this
world with his beautiful wife and child. As his domestic life falls
apart, he can neither comprehend what has gone wrong nor deal with
what comes next. He decides to travel to the Amazon to find some peace
and discovers something else entirely. The last few pages of this
story are unforgettable, as is Waugh’s delicious prose. Recommended January 2010 |
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Grann, David The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon Nonfiction |
| Percy Fawcett, gentleman explorer on assignment from
the Royal Geographical Society of London, disappeared in the jungles
of Brazil sometime during 1925. His search for the treasures of what
he termed the Lost City of Z or El Dorado ended in tragedy, but his
travels inspired others to return to South America to search for him
and his lost party. Hundreds of these searchers also died in their
quest to find Fawcett and the fabled lost civilization he was convinced
lay somewhere in the jungle. Recently named one of the New York
Times 100 Notable Books of 2009, this story is a fascinating
look at the bravery and self-reliance of Fawcett, who traveled to
an uncharted wilderness with few provisions and a simple compass.
Fawcett’s story has inspired future generations of explorers and artists,
including Evelyn Waugh whose novel A Handful of Dust is reviewed
below. Recommended January 2010 |
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Darnton, John Black and White and Dead All Over Mystery |
| The New York Globe is a fictional big city newspaper
struggling with the real problem of how a print daily can retain its
place in the changing world of journalism. This is the setting for
a few extremely creepy murders. When the paper’s assistant managing
editor is murdered in a deliciously macabre manner, the list of suspects
is long and keeps growing longer. Young and ambitious reporter Jude
Hurley is covering the story for the Globe and sets out to
unravel the mystery with the help of an energetic and eye-catching
NYPD detective. Darnton creates a thinly veiled cast of newsroom characters
(Nat Dreck, snarky internet columnist, for example), and part of the
fun is trying to figure out the famous people he’s hidden on the Globe’s
staff and on the ever-expanding list of suspects. Even if you can’t
decipher all the characters, this whodunit is a good one. Recommended August 2009 |
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Gordon-Reed, Annette The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Nonfiction |
| This year’s Pulitzer Prize for History was awarded to
this scholarly investigation of eighteenth and early nineteenth century
American life through the filter of American slavery. While the life
of the Hemings family is certainly bonded to the life of Thomas Jefferson,
it is the story of the African-American side of this tangled family
tree that is the centerpiece here. Beginning with the “unnamed African
woman” who became the grandmother of Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s “concubine,”
in the language of the newspapers of the day, other members of this
family are given historical importance. In addition to the Hemings
family story, Gordon-Reed gives a vivid and carefully researched vision
of daily life for both the elite and the enslaved in early America.
You won’t forget her graphic description of the first crude–yet amazingly
successful–attempts at smallpox inoculations. Recommended June 2009 |
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Faust, Drew Gilpin This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War Nonfiction |
| Until the latter half of the 19th century, most Americans
were born, married, and died in the same town or city, and sometimes
even in the same house. In fact, families rarely traveled more than
a few miles from the homestead or the town center. The Civil War changed
all that, and for the first time American families were denied the
ritual of spending last days and moments with their loved ones, and
even more traumatic, sometimes never learned where their family members
had died, how they died, or where they were buried. Drew Gilpin Faust,
President of Harvard University and a Civil War scholar, has written
an absorbing examination of how the slaughter and death during our
American Civil War forever altered how we view the process of dying,
and even changed our conception of life after death. Desperate to
know whether their sons and husbands died a Victorian “good death”
– a death marked by some sort of religious blessing at the moment
of passage – survivors began long, frustrating, and often unsuccessful
journeys to find the remains of their family members and provide a
family burial. Bodies were often buried in mass graves at the site
of the battles, and it was the mission of grieving family members
to find a way to identity and return these bodies to family cemeteries.
The Civil War also saw the beginnings of the embalming industry, military
cemeteries, and charlatans who preyed on the grief of family members
by claiming to be able to reach their loved ones through séances –
for a price, of course. Before the Civil War, most Christians defined
life-after-death as the presence of God in some sort of heavenly bliss.
Following the trauma of the Civil War, this definition was expanded
to include the reuniting of family members after death, and the promise
of heaven embraced the face-to-face reconstruction of the family.
Praised by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2008,
this fascinating history adds an interesting dimension to our expanding
knowledge of 19th century American life. Recommended May 2009 |
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Capote, Truman The Complete Stories of Truman Capote Short Stories |
| The recent death of John Updike reminds me that there
was a time in American life when some of the most famous and admired
persons in American culture weren’t movie stars or singers or vapid
heiresses (although we did have Zsa Zsa Gabor, didn’t we?). Writers
were our rock stars, and no American writer of the 20th century embraced
and squandered his talent and popularity more than Truman Capote (1924-1984).
If you only know his name from his non-fiction masterpiece In
Cold Blood or from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance
in Capote or from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
then prepare to be dazzled. The stories in this collection are about
many things, some personal, some universal. But it’s Capote’s prose
style that is the reason to read and reread these stories. I can’t
begin to guess how many books I’ve read during my lifetime, but I
can tell you that there are only a handful that make me read just
to savor the poetry of the language. The poignancy of his unhappy
life and early death lends an eerie quality to the prose. It's the
dissonance that makes the reading so bittersweet – to know that his
luscious writing style and heartbreaking observations came from such
a sad, troubled soul. Fellow Capote lovers (and there are many of
us here at CLP) have their favorite Capote stories. My favorite is
“A Christmas Memory,” a childhood remembrance of baking fruitcakes
with an elderly cousin in the backwoods of Louisiana, and it is included
in this collection. To learn more about Capote, Gerald Clarke’s Capote:
A Biography, is regarded as the best history of the author. Used
as source material for the film Capote, it is diligently
researched and beautifully written. Enjoy. Recommended April 2009 |
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McCaig, Donald Rhett Butler’s People Fiction |
| As many times as I’ve watched Gone with the Wind,
there’s a part of me that always hopes Rhett Butler will change his
mind, put down his bag, and sweep Scarlett O’Hara back up that staircase.
McCaig’s story doesn’t change the outcome of Margaret Mitchell’s book,
but it does fill in the back-story of Butler’s misspent youth in Charleston,
highlights his troubled relationship with his father, and follows
the circuitous path that leads him back to Tara. While GWTW
purists may balk at the irreverent suggestion of a happy ending for
these two characters, McCaig makes a convincing argument that they
do, indeed, deserve each other. Filled with rich historical details,
the question is, frankly, will you give a damn? I think so. Recommended February 2009 |
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Allende, Isabel Daughter of Fortune Fiction |
| I’ve loved Isabel Allende's writing since The House
of the Spirits, and her mixture of South American history, romance,
adventure, and fantasy continues here. Set in Chile and San Francisco,
the daughter of the title is Eliza Sommers, abandoned on a doorstep
and then adopted by a brother and sister in nineteenth century Valparaiso.
Eliza travels from Chile to America as a stowaway to find her lover
who has abandoned her and her unborn child. Along the way, she rekindles
a friendship with Tao Chi’en, a Chinese doctor whose devotion and
love take her on another sort of unexpected journey. Allende mixes
the temporal and the sensual with the fantastic and we often wonder
where the narrative ends and the fantasy begins. No matter, really
– what‘s important here is the tale and it’s a lovely one. Recommended January 2009 |
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| Icaza, Jorge The Villagers (Huasipungo) Fiction |
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| Arguably Ecuador’s most famous literary lion, Jorge Icaza
shines a light on the horrific living and working conditions of Ecuador’s
most vulnerable citizens, its indigenous Indian population. Reviled
upon its publishing and the subject of an attempted ban within Ecuador,
The Villagers (Huasipungo) is as illustrative of the horrors
of workers, who never will be able to make a living, in the same way
that Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was in our own country
(both books were published in the 1930s). Icaza places the blame on
many shoulders – the wealthy landowners, government officials, the
police, and the Catholic Church, all part of the larger social problem
of racism. Icaza follows the story of ruthless businessman Don Alfonso
who makes a deal with wealthy foreign investors to build a road through
a forest which contains the hovels of his native workers. By supplying
the workers with alcohol during a religious celebration, Don Alfonso
assures that the workers won’t be paying attention as rising flood
waters force them out of their homes. When workers, women, and children
drown, it’s all in a day’s work. Yet there is great beauty in this
land, and the novel shows us this beauty as well. Recommended December 2008 |
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Stein, Garth The Art of Racing in the Rain Fiction |
| First of all, let me say that (with the glowing exception
of Bugs Bunny, lapin magnifique) I don’t appreciate anthropomorphism
in film or literature. Secondly, I am not a dog lover, but a dog liker
under only the most well-controlled circumstances. Well, now I’ve
found another exception to my no-talking-animals rule – Enzo, the
wonder lab, the narrator of this quirky story about love, death, auto
racing, and what we all might learn from those who never speak to
us in words. As Enzo ponders his life on the eve of his final trip
to the vet’s, we see how he has learned more about living as a human
than most of the humans in his world. Fully prepared to be reincarnated
as homo sapiens the next time around, Enzo convinces us that he deserves
to be a real live boy. Of course, perhaps life as a dog will always
be superior to that of a person, but he knows that part of the joy
of life is to love so well that you are guaranteed to have your heart
broken. He also knows that promises are meant to be kept, and he is
a faithful friend to Denny, Denny's doomed wife Eve, and their daughter
Zoe. Hilarious, poignant, and chock full of inside information about
how to handle a race car, you’ll be recommending this book, too. Recommended November 2008 |
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