Bunheads

Bunheads

By Sophie Flack (294 pages)

Published by Hachette

Bookish rating: 4

Bunheads is precisely the type of book I would have loved to read in middle school. Or high school. Or, well, I actually loved reading it now, in my (ack!) thirties.

Hannah is a 19-year-old corps member of the Manhattan Ballet, which is, of course, really the New York City Ballet. Flack actually was a member of NYCB’s corps for several years and did the whole leaving home, School of American Ballet thing as a young dancer, so her portrayal of the dance world—in America’s best dance company—rings very true. I mean, I believe her when she says the snow in the snow scene—everyone’s favorite Nutcracker scene (mine included) is swept up and reused each performance and includes dirt and lost earrings and gets in dancers’ mouths and tastes like poo.

The plot? Hannah, totally dedicated to her dance career, starts to waver as she gets an inkling that there’s an entire world outside the theater. This, of course, coincides with a love interest, Jacob.

The novel is neatly and well constructed and the pacing is right. The writing, a little on the bland side, doesn’t give Hannah much of a voice, but Flack makes up for this by including little details that take Bunheads to the next level: the billowy rush of cool air on stage as the curtain rises, concentrated heat of the spotlight, and so on. The other thing I loved? Hannah—and, Flack I suspect—genuinely loves ballet. Sure, she’s destroying her body in the pursuit of a promotion, but she adores being on stage and the sensation of her body doing what she wills of it.

Hannah quotes Rimbaud (slightly awkwardly, but we’ll let that pass): “ ‘I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.’ . . . I’ve always like the image. It makes dance sound like something that exists in the larger world and not just in a dark theater” (p. 171).

Nothing profound there, but I liked that Hannah finishes the novel still in love with dance, its special-ness still preserved. Recommended, for dance fans and young adult lit fans alike.

The Crimson Petal and the White

The Crimson Petal and the White
By Michel Faber (894 pages)
Published by Canongate Books
Bookish rating: 4

The best word to describe Crimson Petal is bawdy. The novel consists 894 pages of crude, icky, arguably perverse sex. And yet . . .  it's insanely well written.

Set in Victorian London, we meet a prostitute named Sugar. Pushed into the trade as a child by her appalling mother, she's our heroine. We root for her, even as she uses her feminine talents to seduce a thoroughly unlikable, thoroughly selfish wealthy man, William. After all, doing so is a matter of survival.

Though she cares nil for her, um, benefactor, she outsmarts him, ensuring things like clean linens and firewood by essentially playing to his ego. And so it goes for just under a thousand pages.

The narrating point of view is omniscient, entering each character's mind as the narrator wills it, even addressing the reader in a delightfully condescending tone. It works. The narration is wry, often ironic, and hopelessly crude. The end result is disturbing, heartbreaking, and often weirdly amusing. Mostly, the novel takes the reader deep into the trenches of Victorian whoredom, exposing it as nothing short of sex trafficking, child abuse, and horrifying exploitation. Voluntary in a way, yes, but every case Faber shows us stems from the hooker's powerlessness.

I read this book via Kindle during many, many, MANY 2:00 a.m. feedings of my baby girl---perhaps not the most wholesome literature for the wee hours of the morning. You know, when only those awake include whores and sleepy eyed mothers. At any rate, the novel is good. Recommended.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (304 pages)
Published by Harper Perennial
Bookish rating: 3.5

As you may know, Washington Post columnist Caroyln Hax has the power to affect what I say, do, and read. She's quite powerful. This book--a parenting classic, which I'm certain MY parents never read (but that's neither here nor there)--is one of those parenting books Hax repeatedly recommends during her chats and whatnot. And because almighty Hax rarely leads me astray, I decided to read How to Talk in hopes of gleaning some communication kernels of wisdom to apply to my child who often seems to just not listen to me.

Lesson #1: Charlotte may not listen to me, but do I listen to her? Ruh-roh.

This is one of those books you read that causes an unsettling ick in the pit of your tummy as you realize that you're doing everything all wrong. While I don't agree with everything Faber and Mazlish suggest---for example, some conversation examples are far too wordy for young children--the overall premise is a good one: shut up for a second and LISTEN to your kid.

Doing so, they argue, will bring down the tantrum level and increase compliance. So, I tried this with Charlotte. Currently, my first-born is going through a phase in which she doesn't want to wear pants. It's endearing when she's decorating the Christmas tree, especially if she opts for her Elmo slippers, but it's problematic if we actually need to leave the house.

So, instead of all out war to get her to put on pants, as before, I tried the following:

Charlotte: I don't want to wear pants! [starts crying]
Me: [letting her know I hear her] You don't want to wear pants! Charlotte does NOT want to wear pants.
Charlotte: [stops crying, looks at me, nods while snot and tears run down her face]
Me: [calmly] You don't want to wear pants. I wish you didn't have to wear pants. I wish you could wear just undies ALL day.
Charlotte: [listening remarkably intently]
Me: I wish you didn't have to wear pants, but when we go to church, we wear pants. Mommy had to put on pants, too.
Charlotte: [sniffles]
Me: How about the pants with flowers? Lorelei's pants also have flowers on them today, remember?
Charlotte: [nods and starts putting on her pants]

The idea is that you validate your child's feelings. I admit, this sounds really  . . . . loosey goosey touchy feely. The thing is, doing so works. After all, one of the things that ticks me off more than anything is when I feel like Chris isn't hearing what I'm trying to say, either tuning me out or bypassing a gripe of mine. Then I get frustrated. Really, really frustrated. And a little difficult to live with. Why on earth would a young child be different?

Another tidbit I found useful is how to encourage autonomy and good behavior. Charlotte is fiercely independent, and I need to reign in some of that independence, so she uses it for good rather than evil. What to do? Well, Faber and Mazlish argue you should DESCRIBE what your kid does well rather than just label something as fantastic (or crappy). This one is tricky, because we parents have a knee-jerk reaction to describe everything as just great that our kid shows us or does, but we have to be specific in a way that essentially praises their effort.

So, again, I gave it a whirl. During meals, Charlotte's table manners are less than stellar. She would eat soup with her fingers if allowed. Obviously, meal times have been reduced to a back-and-forth arguments of "use your fork" and "no, I use my fingers!"

What could a new approach hurt? What I was doing certainly wasn't working. This time:

Me: Here's a fork for your cheese muffin [cut up English muffin with melted cheddar].
Charlotte: [eyes it suspiciously]
Me: [sitting down next to her] Mommy has a cheese muffin, too.
Charlotte: Like Charlotte?
Me: Yup. I'm going to eat mine with my fork. [I stab a piece of food.]
Charlotte: [uses fork to take a bite]
Me: You just put that bite on your fork like a big girl.
Charlotte: [grins] I'm a big girl!
Me: I like eating next to you when you eat with your fork like a big girl.
Charlotte: Can I have some milk, please?
Me: Yes. Thank you for asking for milk so nicely. It's easy for me to know what you want when you use your words like that. [I get her milk.]
Charlotte: Thank you. [I shit you not.]
Me: You're welcome, sweetie.
[Daddy arrives home.]
Charlotte: Daddy, I'm eating a cheese muffin with Mommy!
Me: [meaningfully, tone aimed at Daddy] Daddy, Charlotte is using her fork, just like a big a girl.
Daddy: [catching on, thankfully] Good!
Charlotte: All done! [She takes her plate and puts it in the sink]
Me: [catching Daddy's eye] Thank you, Charlotte. That's really helpful to me when you put your dishes away by yourself.
Charlotte: [beaming, returns to her spot and starts talking to herself] Where does this go? Oh, right. [Takes her princess placemat and puts it in a drawer on the opposite side of the kitchen. We have never, ever witnessed her do this.]
Me: You also put away your placemat! Now your spot at the table is all clean. Thank you!

Obviously, there's a major cheese factor in talking to your kid like this, but the thing is, describing the specific things you like and why does seem to work and actually does appear to elicit MORE good behavior later on. Huh.

The book has a zillion other dos and don'ts, along with the reasoning behind them that I can't really cover in this review. And although the authors get a bit long-winded at times, and there's a huge gaping hole in what to freaking do if your kid is completely defiant in a situation, despite your newfound communication skills, this is a parenting book that actually can make you a better parent, not just a more paranoid parent. Recommended for those with kids.

The Gentleman Poet

The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest
By Kathryn Johnson (324 pages)
Published by Avon
Bookish rating: 3.75

Bookish ethics require me to disclose that I took a writing course with the author of this novel, which may have affected my impression and subsequent review of it.

Set in 1609, our heroine Miranda--a servant of a bitchy lady--is thrust into a storm on her way to Virginia. (The storm scene is fantastic.) They end up in the Bermudas, and there she takes on the role of cook for the stranded, making the most of her cookery knowledge and the stuff the islands contain.

Meanwhile, she is wooed by a guy named Thomas (whom she shuns), and she develops a friendship with a poet traveling under a different name but whom she learns is Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare aspect is a central part of the novel, but the reader is already completely aware that this man is Shakespeare, so it seems like forever until Miranda figures it out and following her train of thought when you already know where she needs to get to gets a little tiresome. The same issue occurs for her romance with Thomas, but hey, that's just the nature of romance.

That said, the stranded-on-a-deserted-island idea is extremely common, but Johnson's version is genuinely original. The characters aren't stereotypical, the language has a historical cadence without old timey cheese or being overdone, and the text is obviously carefully crafted (if a tad on the bland side) and well researched.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare who is seeking a fun what-if sort of read.

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne
By David Starkey (400 pages)
Published by Harper Perennial
Bookish rating: 3.75

One can't spend all her reading time consuming fiction, even if it's literary (or not). No, one must occasionally read nonfiction and glean a fact or two, a sense of a historical era, a grasp of how many freaking people Queen Mary burned for heresy.

Like most, this Protestant ain't a big fan of Queen Mary.

But Elizabeth? Oh, we all love Elizabeth, don't we?

This biography of Elizabeth I is smart, a tad spunky, and deeply researched, but it's also intended for a non-academic audience. It's not a textbook. It does not have the logo of a university press on its spine. It's price point is that of your average paperback.

The text is well written and Starkey successfully gives us a non-romanticized glimpse of Elizabeth. He portrays her as the historical evidence reflects her, which is hugely intelligent, politically calculating, genuinely religious, and probably insanely intimidating. We get a sense of her childhood and relationship to Henry VIII, and even her mother Anne Boleyn. Before, you know, her dad had her mom's head chopped off.

As the book's subtitle suggests, the vast majority of the biography focuses on Elizabeth's path to the throne, which was exactly what I was looking for. Her coronation wasn't easy--or a given, that much I knew. But all that in-between stuff, from Henry VIII's death to Elizabeth's rule was unclear to me. So, I got filled in.

The text isn't a fast read--history rarely is, at least for me--but I'd recommend it to anyone who fancies all that is Elizabethan.

All Souls

All Souls
By Christine Schutt (240 pages)
Published by Harcourt
Bookish rating: 4

Set in 1997 at a prestigious private girls' school in Manhattan, the senior class of 40 girls, plus some teachers, cope with a classmate's rare form of cancer, along with their own angst.

Yes, this is yet another prep school drama, but who doesn't love that genre? This is a very carefully crafted novel--the writing is original, pitch-perfect, and just disjointed enough to make exactly the right point in a non-cliched way. One of my favorite lines was: "Lisa Van de Ven said, 'I can't wait to get out of here.' Then she said college as if she were making a wish, and she shut her eyes" (p. 207). I mean, public or private school, who among us didn't imbue that blessed word with such hope and importance her senior year of high school? Hmmm?

We meet a wide cast of characters, each believable and uniquely drawn. The insecurity of girls is presented in a fresh, poignant way, along with their teachers. Ultimately, the novel feels as though it's written from the teacher's point of view, for better or worse. I think it works, though some of the girlishness and spurts of playfulness that make these girls likeable is portrayed in a sort of wry, distanced way---like: oh, those naive girls listing their inside jokes in the yearbook and getting all emotional at the end of the year, so sweetly silly.

Overall, a huge contribution to the prep school drama genre. Recommended.

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill (164 pages)
Published by Vintage
Bookish rating: 4

I managed to squeeze in one more spooky book before Halloween. The Woman in Black is a the best, most classic type of gothic chiller. The creepiness occurs less in what we see and more in what we don't. Like our narrator, Hill lets our imagination get the best of us--in a very good way.

Arthur Kipps must tend to the estate of an old (now dead) woman who lives way past civilization in a mansion on some goopy marshes. Hauntings begin, of course. Sounds, sightings, general dread and creepiness.

During the book's climax, I was reading while feeding Lorelei in a dimly lit room, as wind and rain pelted and rattled the windows. It was dark outside. Chris had gone to the store with Charlotte, so we were alone and. . . . I might have had to set the book down once or twice to settle my nerves. That's awesome writing, my friends.

This is the perfect sort of pre-Halloween read to get you in the mood for stormy weather (oh, hello, Hurricane Sandy) and spooky autumn atmosphere. Recommended!

The Leftovers

The Leftovers
By Tom Perrotta (355 pages)
Published by St. Martin's Press
Bookish rating: 4.25

This is my first Tom Perrotta novel, and I'm a fan. The Leftovers sort of satarizes a typical suburban family after a rapture-like event takes over the globe, in which people just vanish. Of course, it's not the real rapture, as a bunch of good Christians are left behind, scratching their heads. Nobody can explain it, oodles of cults pop up, and the world sort of kind of moves on. Or tries to.

So, we meet Kevin, the patriarch of his little family who later becomes mayor of Mapleton; mom-and-wife Laurie, who abandons her family to join a wacky cult; older child Tom, who drops out of college and joins the following of a questionable, self-proclaimed prophet with a penchant for child brides; and Jill, the straight-A student now struggling at school and doing charming things with guys in dorm-drama-like scenarios.

We also meet Kevin's love interest, who lost her entire family in the non-rapture. She's by far the msot interesting and heartbreaking character.

Perrotta has an amazing ability to sum up the complex, layered, and often ridiculous nuances of suburban family life--such as the mom who views each task in her day as grains of sand, taking up time, rushing her to uncomfortable efficiency, whether she's vacuuming or having sex, or a 4-year-old's insistence on drinking apple juice in a cup without a lid, letting her, and then going nutso with a touch of profanity when she inevitably spills it--and nobody makes a move to clean it up, assuming Mommy will do it. At the same time, the novel is most definitely comic, poking fun at suburbia with such tiny details as a mom exaggeratedly waving her hand in front of her face near a smoker.

This tension between satire and heart creates a fascinating result: a novel simultaneously deeply amusing, insightful, and utterly heartbreaking. I don't quite know how Perrotta did it--the writing is unlike anything I've come across in a long, long time---perhaps ever.

Highly recommended.

The Hangman's Daughter

The Hangman's Daughter
By Oliver Potzsch (448 pages)
Published by AmazonCrossing
Bookish rating: 3.25

I read this book for two reasons. First, the premise seemed interesting: a series of murders in a small, 17th-century German village lead to accusations of witchcraft. Second, this was a wildly successful translation (from German) that Amazon's international publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing, bought and published. Since much of what Amazon publishes is cheaply (or freely) acquired, I was super interested to gauge the quality of  a bestseller.

Meh. The plot is good enough and the idea of humanizing and going into the head of a hangman is an interesting approach. Potzsch gives a good flavor of the town and its politics, and overall the novel isn't bad. However, the writing is bland and often cliched, which could be partially due to the translation. Hard to say, since I didn't read the original German version. Plus, you know, I can't read German. An excessive! use! of! exclamation! points! often makes the novel seem overdone, with a Batman-like (wham! bang!) cheese factor, especially with dialogue.

Some scenes are genuinely scary, such as when the so-called "devil" sneaks into a sick child's room to kill her (she escapes), and the "witch" torture scenes are blessedly not needlessly gratuitous--torture for the sake of drama and gore instead of plot movement is one of my pet peeves. Potzsch balances this very well, considering the village hangman (who's in charge of getting confessions via torture) is the main character and accusations of witchcraft abound.

In short, the novel is okay. Not bad, not great. I doubt I'll read the sequel.

Book of Shadows

Book of Shadows
By Alexandra Sokoloff (320 pages)
Published by St. Martin's Press
Bookish rating: 3.75

Well, it's October and that means it's time for spooky, scary stories, no?

I discovered Sokoloff's thriller and somewhat demonic writing while at a huge publishing expo I attended for work. In the exhibition hall, publishers literally hand you books (ahead of print). I was wandering along and a marketing guy literally pulled me aside and said I looked like their demographic (I was youthfully in my mid-20s at the time) and said I should read this spiffy new book, The Harrowing. The author, Sokoloff, was there and she signed the book for me. I was too shy to explain that thrillers ain't really my thing, so I left with the signed book and it sat on my shelf for a year or two.

For whatever autumnal reason, I got in the mood for something dark, picked the book and loved it. It was bubble gum entertainment, but well done spooky bubble gum entertainment. A win.

So, I picked up my second Sokoloff novel, Book of Shadows. In Boston, a wealthy college girl is murdered in what seems like a satanic ritual. Ruh-roh. We get the story from the point of view of one of the embittered detectives, which works fine. The plotting and pacing are very good and the writing is tight and not cheesy. (I hate cheesiness when it comes to whodunnits or thrillers or investigative whatever--I can't even be in the same room as an NCIS episode because I roll my eyes and editorialize too much, driving Chris batty).

The book is dark, gruesome, genuinely scary, and engrossing. Everything you'd want from a mid-October read.

The Sweet Far Thing

The Sweet Far Thing
By Libba Bray (819 pages)
Published by Delacorte Press
Bookish rating: 4

So, remember in my previous post on Rebel Angels, I made a fuss of extending (good) trilogies out, so I can draw out my bookish pleasure? Well, I just didn't make it this time. After Rebel Angels, the second book of the Gemma Doyle trilogy, I simply missed the Gemma Doyle world. The library had an e-copy available of The Sweet Far Thing, the third and final book, and after debating whether I could read 819 pages before it was due back, I downloaded it to my Kindle.

Done in 8 days. Granted, I've been on maternity leave since yesterday--without a baby to show for it--so I've had an unexpected and delightful amount of time to read in the past 36 hours. Time I shall soon long to have back, methinks.

I very much enjoyed this third book, but of the entire trilogy, this one was probably my least favorite. The plot gets a tad confusing, as Gemma must determine what to do with the power of the realms. Like the Harry Potter books, the fantasy element of the Gemma Doyle novels is deeply symbolic, almost religiously so. However, aspects of the realms got confusing and I didn't fully understand the mechanism that required this sacrifice or that one.

But really, no matter. Gemma Doyle is no Harry Potter, but oh, she is a girl! My very favorite thing about Libba Bray's three novels is how incredibly girly they are, but in a way that pushes them to be bold, powerful, brave, and smart, without being annoyingly obvious about it. She continually uses the corset as a metaphor--in an effing brilliant way, such as: "Should. That word, so like a corset, meant to bend us to the proper shape" (p. 562). Or, when observing her classmates preparing for their debuts to society and a cloistered life of weak tea and good behavior, Gemma describes the whole "coming out" process as "squeez[ing] their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it" (p. 784). Oh, Gemma loves herself a gaudy pink dress with beads and diamonds, but that doesn't mean she wants to be married off to the highest bidder and fill the rest of her days carefully grooming her social status and reputation via balls, teas, and so on.

Bray so obviously LOVES girls, and all three books really celebrate them, in myriad ways, without being cutesy or shallow. At the end of this final novel, Gemma overhears her straightlaced old headmistress generating a laugh that can only be described as a giggle. She says, "It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become" (p. 813).

I just love that.

Rebel Angels

Rebel Angels

By Libba Bray (548 pages)

Published by Ember

Bookish rating: 4.25

I adored the first book in Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, A Great and Terrible Beauty (read it! read it! read it!), so after a suitable time had passed (I like to stretch out trilogies and stories that I’m enthralled with), I started this second book, Rebel Angels.

Set at an English boarding school and in London during Christmastime in the 1890s, Gemma and her fabulously well-drawn friends, seek the temple that will allow her to bind the magic of the realms (an “other” world that Gemma can cross into at will). Did I mention there’s some hocus pocus? There is. The backstory is too complicated for me to fully explain, but suffice it to say that the realism of London, the girliness of Spence Academy, the wit of the girls, the occasional ball and pretty dress, and the magic of the realms makes for an engrossing, fun, and very satisfying read.

The books in this trilogy are the sorts of the books that remind you why you love reading so much.

Although you do indeed need to read the first book to make much sense of Rebel Angels, this second novel mercifully dodges the sophomore slump that ruins so many series or trilogies. Sure, it’s a transition book to get us to the (800-plus-page) final book, but the novel is genuinely good in its own right.

Confession: I don’t think I’ll manage to wait a “suitable time period” to tackle the third and final Gemma Doyle book.

Recommended, obviously.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Luncheon of the Boating Party

By Susan Vreeland (448 pages)

Published by Penguin

Bookish rating: 3

Vreeland’s historical, artsy novel explores the creation of Renoir’s huge, popular painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. She takes us to Bohemian Paris, and surmises on the crowd of models shown in the painting and Renoir’s angst in painting it, and she conveys some of the contemporary debate and criticism of Impressionism at the time.

Vreeland successfully showcases lots of historical and French cultural detail, not to mention the sense of what Paris was like 100+ years ago, and she depicts the turbulence of an art movement still in flux, not yet fully understood or appreciated. However, the novel lacks enough plot to move it forward, so we readers are subjected to pages and pages and PAGES of banter among the 13 models and teeny tiny, inconsequential scenes. This results in a choppy read. One could argue that Vreeland’s choppiness is intended to mimic the short brush stokes that give a viewer of Renoir’s work an “impression” of the subject, but I highly doubt that’s what she was aiming for. If it was, well, then I’m not a fan.

I never got terribly absorbed in the story, because there was so little story to hang onto. Parisians exchanging witticisms is interesting for a paragraph at most, but not full chapters—though Vreeland obviously does this to fill up scenes in which Renoir is painting. I mean, what can they do besides verbally interact? Each sitting of the models is mostly the same, and again, though Vreeland has carefully written these redundant scenes with clever dialogue (way too much dialogue, in my opinion) and little nuances and details that show she knows her stuff, it’s simply tiresome to read.

This is not a bad book, and it should appeal in many ways to those who love Impressionism and Renoir. However, the novel failed to grab me. I had no plot to follow, except for Renoir fussing about his painting, and the characters were (a) too numerous, (b) not super likable, and (c) not terribly interesting. Yes, parts were of the novel were done well, and Vreeland is a good writer. But overall, I just didn’t enjoy the novel that much.

The Pleasure of My Company

The Pleasure of My Company

By Steve Martin (176 pages)

Published by Hyperion

Bookish rating: 4

Okay, seriously, who doesn’t love Steve Martin? Yeah, he’s a comedic goofball, but he’s also a renaissance man! I mean, the dude can play the banjo, act a hugely wide variety of roles, is hilarious, and apparently he’s a genuinely not-sucky writer.

Did you even KNOW that he was a writer? Oh yes, he has a memoir, which I now totally want to read, and he also wrote Shopgirl, which I haven’t read, but I loved the movie (which starred Martin and Claire Danes).

The Pleasure of My Company is narrated by Daniel, who has some sort of mental health issue—autism, Asperger’s, or some sort of obsessive–compulsive disorder. We never quite know what the condition is, but Daniel is nevertheless a heartbreakingly decent guy, stuck in the mind of neurotic obsessions, compulsions, and fears.

Daniel lives by himself in his Santa Monica apartment, observing the world but unable to participate in it, due to his fear of curbs, need for balanced light wattage, and so on. His narrative voice is very matter-of-fact but also sort of disarming. He pines for three different women—his state-supplied shrink, the pharmacist at the Rite Aid, and a realtor showing the apartment across the street.

Overanalyzing absolutely everything, Daniel hyper-plans ways to interact with these women, mainly trying to appear normal. Eventually, he becomes the go-to babysitter for a toddler of one of the women, and Daniel’s narration of how the little boy interacts with him is extremely amusing and probably my favorite aspect of the novel. The toddler’s lack of predictability and logic matched up Daniel’s need for extreme order and a cause-and-effect is brilliantly portrayed, but they also have moments of being totally on the same wavelength. After all, like a toddler, Daniel loves his patterns and rituals.

The ending was a tad too tidy and almost rushed, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, recommended. Surprisingly.



The Three Weissmanns of Westport

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

By Cathleen Schine (292 pages)

Published by Picador

Bookish rating: 4.25

This wry, snarky novel—an updated take on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—follows three women as they relocate from swanky Manhattan apartments to a dingy cottage in Westport. And there, they tinker in love.

Betty, the somewhat silly matriarch, is left by her husband (who decides to keep the apartment) after 48 years of marriage and dramatically refers to herself as a widow. Miranda (based on Austen’s Marianne) is the theatrical and rather naïve literary agent whose career just went down in flames. And steadfast Annie (based on Austen’s Elinor) moves in with her mom and sister to keep an eye on them. She’s the only one who watches the household budget or is gainfully employed.

 Schine mimics Austen’s ironic tone, but she does so with a New York (and often Jewish) twist, and the result is hilarious but also sort of poignant. The women are so flawed but believable—in a ridiculously non-believable sort of way. I can’t quite explain it. Schine also narrates from an omniscient point of view, flawlessly bouncing from one character’s point of view to the next. The result is delightful observation and introspection, with nothing muddled or sloppy about it.

 If you’re an Austen-phile, you may read along the entire book, thinking you know how it ends. You don’t. And that was one of my favorite parts of this novel.

It’s refreshing to read a novel as well-written as Three Weismanns, with line upon line of wit, irony, parody, droll observation, and even a little romance. Recommended.



Galway Bay

Galway Bay

By Mary Pat Kelly (550 pages)

Published by Grand Central

Bookish rating: 4

Galway Bay qualifies, I think, as an “epic.” Spanning about 60 years, we follow Honora Kelly, from the “before times” in Ireland during the 1840s, through the Great Starvation, across the Atlantic, and during her life in Chicago.

Kelly covers a lot of ground in 550 pages. She sets up a sparkling Irish ideal, with (a few too many) fairy or ancient stories, pipe music, green hills, and the blue Galway Bay. Then “blight” on the potato crop three times in four years combined with evil landlords and an effed up government blocking aid cause around 1 million Irish peasants die. Although difficult to read, especially as Honora narrates as a mother with starving children, the years of blight are the most compelling of Kelly’s novel.

Galway Bay is good historical fiction. Honora has a unique and believable voice, the story is steeped in thick historical context, and the writing is very good. Although not written in dialect (thank goodness—dialect always reads as forced to me), Kelly effectively conveys that lively Irish lilt in in the dialogue as well as the rest of the writing. Irish words are sprinkled throughout, blessedly with a glossary at the back of the book. Although lending a nice Irish element, the syntax (I know, how boring) is really where Kelly pulls off a believable Irish tone for the book. The language sometimes veers a little too sentimental and preachy in Honora’s internal pondering, but it’s not terrible. Just a tad distracting and a little cheesy.

Kelly falls prey to a glitch I often see in historical fiction, especially epic-type fiction: the compulsion to include every possible historical event as personally affecting the heroine. The Great Starvation and Civil War I get. But loads of Irish politics, Irish-American politics, the Chicago fire, every influential Irish person, and on and on stretched credibility. The final 150 pages or so felt like a speedy, packed , bulleted list of Important Irish-American Moments in History, and I found myself anxious to get to the last page.

Galway Bay is a long but rewarding read for those interested in Irish, Irish-American, and Chicago history. Recommended, if you’ve got the time.

Catching Fire

Catching Fire
By Suzanne Collins (391 pages)
Published by Scholastic
Bookish rating: 3.5

I don't really care for writing reviews for books like Catching Fire, the second book in the wildly popular Hunger Games trilogy. Thousands upon thousands reviews already exist; I can't add much to the conversation.

But here we are. Is Catching Fire as good as The Hunger Games? No, but it's still quite good. We meet up with our archery heroine Katniss, who finds herself wanting to start a rebellion against the Panem (futuristic North America) government as well as in a Twilight-esque love triangle with Gale and Peeta.

Like the first book, Collins excels at plotting and pacing. She raises the stakes at the exact right spots, which makes for lots of page turning. Or, well, Kindle clicking. Lots of characters come and go, and Collins at subtly highlighting those you need to remember and those who aren't so important.

Catching Fire is clearly a transition novel, capitalizing on the adrenaline of the first book and steering us to the big climax and conclusion in the third book.

If you read and enjoyed The Hunger Games, recommended.

The Off Season

The Off Season

By Catherine Gilbert Murdock (300 pages)

Published by Graphia

Bookish rating: 3.5

I wasn’t absolutely in love with Murdock’s Dairy Queen, the first book in this sporty farm girl series, and yet I found myself coming back for more D.J. Schwenk.

The Off Season picks up almost immediately where Dairy Queen left off, with D.J. playing football on the (boys’) high school team, her family’s dairy farm facing major economic strife, her boyfriend who happens to be QB for her school’s rival team, and her family that can’t communicate worth cow poo. (The family dynamics—especially between D.J. and her remarkably-complex-for-a-YA-novel dad—remain the strongest part of this book.)

First, D.J. effs up her shoulder, requiring her to choose between finishing the football season or being healed enough to play basketball, when the latter can almost definitely ensure her a college scholarship (and her folks are broke). Then her brother, who plays college ball for the University of Washington, gets a major spinal cord injury during a game. She hops a plane to Seattle to care for him, and frankly, much of this part of the book seems eerily similar to Season 1 of Friday Night Lights. Just saying.

A few quibbles. First, whether D.J. and her fam live in Wisconsin or not, I cannot imagine them all referring to UW (that is, “U-Dub”) as “the University of Washington” or even “Washington” among themselves and to each other, especially if their son or brother is second QB for UW. If you have spent more than 14 seconds in the Pacific Northwest, you know it’s U-Dub. So, that whole UW aspect just didn’t ring true to me.

Second, if we have to hear all about Wisconsin, a little detail on Seattle—since D.J. travels there—would’ve been nice. Was it drizzly? Anything? There was no sense of PLACE when she was in Seattle, unlike every other location she jumps around to.

Last, my biggest quibble is the same I had with the first book—oh, those interminable internal monologues that go on for pages and pages. Murdock can cover 4 or 5 events with nary a line of dialogue, which makes for the temptation to SKIM. I get that she’s trying to give us D.J.’s “voice” and all, but lordy. And speaking of voice, countless reviews rave about D.J.’s unique, fantastic, oh so witty voice, but I’m not crazy about it. Her tone comes across as too young and naïve—too “well, shucks” or something. Honestly, it sounds like a grown-up trying to write “young and insecure,” but maybe I’m just cranky or something.

Despite that my “quibbles” section takes up more space than anything else in this review, I actually did like the book. The family farm stress paired with the football is refreshing for YA literature (though the book could’ve used a lot more football). And, despite her sounding too young and written by the heavy hand of a Grown-Up, I do find D.J. Schwenk endearing, perceptive, and ultimately a character that I—and, more importantly, adolescent girls—can root for. What the heck, recommended.

When Washington Was in Vogue

When Washington Was in Vogue

By Edward Christopher Williams (285 pages)

Published by Amistad

Bookish rating: 3.5

When Washington Was in Vogue is one of those tricky books to review, because it has a lot of value but turned out to be a bit of a chore to get through.

The book is “a lost novel of the Harlem Renaissance,” which means it was found as published in The Messenger from January 1925 through June 1926, as an English PhD student, Adam McKible, was doing research for his dissertation. Certainly, there is a special “discovery” element that, frankly, is so often absent from literary research. I mean, it’s hard to compare with discovering new fossils, miracle drugs, or planets, such as in the sciences.

So when English nerds discover something, it’s pretty exciting.

The novel is a simple love story, told through letters via Davy Carr’s narration. Well read, well educated, and quite contemplative, Davy has an opinion on pretty much everything. As a piece of historical writing, this is useful for revealing some fascinating nuances, habits, fashions, manners, and dynamics of Washington, DC, and the DC “Black Bourgeoisie” of the 1920s. Also, as someone pretty familiar with DC, having lived there for awhile, Davy's descriptions of areas almost a century ago were eerily fascinating.

This is, of course, a novel of the Harlem Renaisssance, but Davy’s criticism of racism is surprisingly understated. For example, he writes to his friend Bob, “The downtown theaters here segregate colored people, and some of them will not sell them seats anywhere but in the gallery. Naturally, that lets me out. You will say, of course, that since I can ‘get by,’ such a rule should not bother me. But for some reason difficult to explain, it does” (p. 15). The reason it bugs him seems pretty clear to me!

More interestingly, Davy criticizes how folks—women in particular—who are light-skinned enough to “pass” not only do so (and really, who could blame them?), but leverage it against other Black women. Davy describes a shocking scene in which some light-skinned women who can pass and thus attend certain theatrical events that are absolutely closed to Black people, chat among themselves, asking a dark-skinned woman her opinion of such performances, knowing perfectly well that she cannot attend them. Davy, livid, views what he calls “the color line” among the Black bourgeoisie that places higher  value on lighter skin as “a dreadful confession of admitted interiority” (p. 75).

When Washington Was in Vogue has a lot of charm and tremendous historical value. It is, however, not literarily fantastic or amazing. Descriptions get long-winded and tiresome, and Davy can be a tad stuffy and unlikable at times. Although it’s a nice book, and most definitely an asset to furthering understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, ultimately, from a strictly literary point of view, it’s just a nice little love story.

The Princesses of Iowa

The Princesses of Iowa

By M. Molly Backes (464 pages)

Published by Candlewick

Bookish rating: 4

Backes is a brand-spankin’ new author on the young adult literary scene, and she has come in strong with her debut novel, The Princesses of Iowa.

Our first-person narrator, Paige, is the popular Midwestern girl, entering her senior year and about to close in on the OMG event of the fall, HOMECOMING ROYALTY COURT. However, during the prior summer, alcohol and driving mix, resulting in an accident that could’ve killed her and all her friends—but didn’t. This bullet-dodging event launches the story, sparking Paige’s sudden introspection.

Tension builds between Paige and her BFFs and hunky hunk jock boyfriend for various reasons supremely important to teens, but Paige begins to sense that having her whole damn life peak at homecoming might not be the best long-term plan, nor does it give her much joy. As she starts to come of age, so to speak, she begins a creative writing class with a grad student from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (described in another book review), makes friends with peeps who have actual substance, and finds that she has a bit of a knack for writing.

Overall, what carries this novel through (and it’s a long one—464 pages, to be exact) is the quality of writing. Backes practices what she preaches in the fictional creative writing class, and her writing is lively, fresh, and witty, and she’s not above dropping quite a few f-bombs. When appropriate, her well-timed descriptions of the Iowa landscape or autumn or a parking lot are nicely executed and wonderfully descriptive, NOT overwritten, NOT flowery, and NOT forced (as often happens in YA lit).

Backes’s fictional high school world is also incredibly believable, the dialogue is spot on, and the parents appropriately flawed.

I found it so refreshing to read a well-written YA novel deliberately lacking a dark edge, vapid gimmick, or supernatural element. The novel was playful and fun while still full of big, substantive themes. I genuinely enjoyed reading the book, and I highly recommend it. I’ve become a Backes fan, and I hope her novel is read widely enough for her publisher to beg her to write another one—because I wanna read it.

State of Wonder

State of Wonder
By Ann Patchett (384 pages)
Published by Harper Perennial
Bookish rating: 4

Have I mentioned that one of my favorite reading combinations is escapism + non-stupidity? Well, it is, and State of Wonder serves up a delightfully non-stupid, escapist read--I mean, we get to go into the freaking Amazon!--in an intelligent, well-written novel.

Marina, a doctor now working for a pharmaceutical company, must go to the Amazon to get information about a co-worker who croaked under somewhat mysterious circumnstances. There, she must deal with her former mentor, who is working on a miracle drug for the company. There are anacondas, bugs, heat, foilage, and a surprising dose of made-up-yet-weirdly-believable science.

Marina's mentor, Dr. Swenson, is the strongest and most interesting character. She's super flawed, in a really fascinating way. We also meet a little deaf native boy who is extremely compelling---he probably generated the most conversation in our book club.

Patchett evokes the intimidating thickness of the Amazon, its hiding creatures, buzzing bugs, and the sense that the jungle itself is vibrating and alive. I had the joy of reading the last several chapters of this novel in a very hot, humid house after losing power during our "land hurricane," so I felt particularly immersed in the moist jungle world Patchett created.

If you're looking for a an old-fashioned good read that takes you to another world, along with good writing, State of Wonder should do the trick. Recommended.

The Gospel of Ruth

The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules

By Carolyn Custis James (224 pages)

Published by Zondervan

Bookish rating: 4

I must admit that I have a soft spot for Carolyn Custis James. She calls herself an “evangelical thinker,” which of course brings to mind images of Joel Olsteen and his too-many-teeth smile—at least until you get to the “thinker” part of phrase. At that point, the phrase sounds like an oxymoron.

But James is a thinker. And I heart her. Why? Because, like me, she is in that in-between spot between conservative Christianity’s steadfast nature and liberal Christianity’s let’s-love-everybody common sense. She has devoted her career to promoting greater leadership of women within the church and she is oh so skeptical of the whole wives-submit-to-your-husbands bit. (Disclosure: I’m a member of a “liberal” Protestant denomination, but not until after a lot of mental tug-of-war in which I came to believe that the traditional views on—and treatment of— women, gays, lesbians, and dinosaurs [evolution] were too black-and-white or, um, wrong.)

Although I suspect our opinions on many issues differ (or hey, maybe they don’t), James has done very, very good things for women.

In The Gospel of Ruth, James does an old-fashioned exegesis of the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, of the Old Testament. (I love the book of Ruth—in fact, our wedding ceremony centered on this text.) Instead of presenting the story of Ruth and her so-called rescuer, Boaz, as sentimental or romantic, James details the ancient Hebrew laws and customs, the historical context, and the entirely disenfranchised status of widows—especially those who have lost their children (read: sons) or are barren. In doing so, James shows how ballsy Ruth is—and what a rule breaker she is.

Ruth breaks all sorts of rules and customs aimed at keeping her down—or even protecting her—because she is a woman.

I won’t detail all of James’s theological points, but James herself makes a ballsy move by seriously challenging the wisdom of dissuading present-day women from making noise in their churches or becoming leaders. And yes, much to my delight, she (albeit very politely) deliberately and thoughtfully refuses to buy into the myth of wifely submission.

Friends, this is the first time I’ve ever read such words from an evangelical, or in a book published by Zondervan.

I hope that I’ve just been reading the wrong books.

James also does great favors for women by openly discussing miscarriage and infertility, or what the Old Testament would charmingly call “barrenness.” In the church, particularly more conservative ones, pregnancy, children, and raising children are highly lauded. Honestly, pregnancy loss might actually be dealt with BETTER in such churches, as the loss is never minimized. Everyone is very aware that a BABY has been lost, and that it is a great loss.

But infertility? No one talks about that. In today’s culture, even church culture, it’s devastating and isolating. In Ruth’s culture? During a famine? Your lack of status or sons to care for you could literally mean your death.

James, who struggled greatly to conceive, zeroes in on this aspect of Ruth’s story. She gives voice to the woman struggling to have a baby. It’s a powerful segment of the book.

James writes to a broad audience. Her book isn’t intended for PhD candidates seeking to get confused by big words or the nature of God. Though well researched and reasoned, The Gospel of Ruth is aimed at the lay reader. As such, the tone of her writing can be almost annoyingly polite. Or something. Personally, I like more edge, more voice to the tone of writing, even in the more scholarly stuff, and James’s writing voice is a bit on the bland side for me.

That said, there’s a lot of good stuff in The Gospel of Ruth, no matter where you land on the Christianity conservative-to-liberal scale. Recommended.

Wordiness

This blog is ultimately about words, so I’ve decided to devote a post to using them more economically and correctly.

Wait! Don’t leave! Keep reading! HEAR ME OUT!

See, one way to alienate your friends and acquaintances is to be that über annoying person who corrects grammar, saying, with a nose tilted upward, “Whom not who.”

Disclosure: Despite making a living with the word “editor” in my title, I don’t consider myself a “grammarian.” I lack deep, deep understanding of exactly how the English language is constructed, and I’d rather read an insipid Danielle Steel novel than debate split infinitives or whether “website” should be one word or two.

My grammatical wishy-washiness is not helped by the fact that my career started when publishing was very much in flux. When budgets for editorial work got cut, so did editorial standards. Publishers merging with other publishers often led to lack of oversight and quality control. The reduction of print and boom in online jabber have made the written word much more fluid and ongoing. Production schedules shrank. From what I understand, systems--and people--to train and mold grammar sticklers are now few and far between. The result is a freelance pool overflowing with poorly trained, unqualified editors who edit on the basis of what "sounds right." Of course, technology ain’t all bad. Programs abound that allow for manuscript tracking, redacting, detection of plagiarism, verification of references, and so on. Heck, even a simple PDF is highly searchable and incredibly useful if you need to check the consistency of a single word’s use throughout a 1,000-page book without losing two weeks of your life. The tools are there to improve editorial quality.

But no, I’m no grammarian. Mostly, I’m a rule-follower. I won’t take a stroller on an escalator, cross a street without a crosswalk AND a walk signal, or wear white after Labor Day. Thus, once I learn a grammar or editorial style rule, I follow it.

Less charmingly, I become sort of a stickler for it. I cringe when “impact” is used as a verb (which occurs in damn near every other sentence on CNBC) or a hyphen is used in place of an en dash.

That said, I get a tad annoyed when people freak out about a typo in the newspaper, or a minor inaccuracy in a book. Statements like, “The editor should’ve caught x, y, or z” from people who have no clue about publishing are aggravating. Readers really have no idea in what kind of condition that manuscript was submitted, what sort of prima donna author that editor is dealing with, that editor’s workload or pay scale, the quality of the copyeditor or proofreader the editor was stuck with, the deadlines forced on the publication, or the internal drama surrounding it.

Devoting a post to grammar, punctuation, or sloppy wordiness does little to dispel the notion that I copyedit or proofread for a living, which I’m pretty sure is what most of my family members think I do. I don’t. In fact, I don’t like to copyedit or proofread, because it’s really hard to do it well and you can't build an interesting career doing it (although you can bring in some extra cash). Most importantly, it’s BORING. Important  . . . but boring.

One thing that decent copyeditors can do is reduce word counts. Tight writing is a crucial part of good writing. Why, why, WHY use 9 words to say the same thing 1 or 2 might say?

So, for the good of the English language, I’ve managed to compile a list of obnoxious phrases I’ve recently come across and suggest words that can easily take their place (ahem, I mean substitute).

• the majority of = most
• is able to = can
• make the assumption that = assume
• has/have the ability to = can
• is defined as = is
• for a comparison of = to compare
• provided with = given
• my hope is that = I hope
• a multitude of = many
• would still be able to = could
• and therefore = , so
• put the emphasis on = emphasized
• for the purposes of = to
• the manner in which = how
• come to an understanding of = understand
• through the addition of = by adding

See, none of the original phrases is wrong. Each is simply wordier than necessary, at least within the context it was used.

Why do I tell you this? Mainly, to bring attention to the importance of words. To raise appreciation of the error-free Facebook status update (I hypocritically type this—mine are riddled with errors). To give credit to good basic writing that can then be tweaked, inverted, and pushed in the service of literature.

Words are important!

Red Hook Road

Red Hook Road
By Ayelet Waldman (343 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4.25

Red Hook Road has a horrifying yet catchy premise: A bride and groom are killed in an accident during the limo ride from their wedding to the reception.

What follows is four years of both families--the well-to-do bride's family and the working-class groom's family--coping with their losses.

Waldman takes a big risk with the novel's "inciting incident," which could have easily been reduced to a gimick or overdramatic, sentimental poo. Fortunately, Waldman steers clear of everything threatening to tank a novel about loss and premature death. In doing so, she illustrates the complexity and gravity the topic deserves.

That's not to say the novel is heartless. Waldman drops little bombs that are utterly overwhelming to anyone with a shred of maternal instinct. For example, Iris, the bride's mother, arrives on the accident scene and sees a body bag--and tiny strands of blond hair stick ever so slightly out of the bag's zipper. Hair she had brushed, blonde curls she delighted in, and on and on. Yeah, I had nightmares the night I read that scene.

The writing is very good, and the characters, particularly Iris, are well-drawn. Waldman, perhaps unintentionally, approaches the gruff character of Jane, the groom's mother, with some condescension. Jane is working-class, uneducated, small town, and Protestant, while Iris is well off, a literature professor at Columbia, living in New York City, and Jewish. Truthfully, the character of Jane seems to be written by Iris--and, well, Iris and the author are quite similar. Just saying.

That said, Iris's access to literature and music (her dad is a retired world-class violinist) takes the novel up yet another notch by deeply revering literature and music. Totally neccessary to the novel? Not really. But it's a nice perk.

Some back story gets a little long-winded, and the dialogue isn't always quite right, particularly that of a young girl in the novel. Another minor quibble? Waldman gives lovely descriptions of the lavender wedding colors and the decor inside the historical hall in Coastal Maine where the reception was supposed to occur, but the cover shows an outdoor wedding reception with peach tableclothes. I mean, really?

Overall, Waldman gives us a non-gimicky, non-cheesy, and non-sentimental novel that explores the deepest kind of grief. Recommended.

The Lonely Polygamist

The Lonely Polygamist
By Brady Udall (624 pages)
Published by W. W. Norton & Company
Bookish rating: 4

Obviously, the irony of The Lonely Polygamist is right there in the title. How can a dude with four wives and close to thirty children be lonely?

But lonely our male polygamist lead, Golden, is. In this rather long novel, Udall examines the dynamics and weirdness of polygamy. Although I do think that Udall glosses over some extremely problematic aspects of polygamy (e.g., sexual exploitation of young girls, its community's often cult-like isolation), his nonjudgmental approach allows characters to be more fully developed. Overall, I Udall's overall portrayal of polygamy is too freaking rosy, but that rosiness also differentiates the novel from other literature and tell-alls dealing with the topic (e.g., The Chosen One [which I highly recommend], The 19th Wife, Escape).

With a cast as large as Golden's huge family, Udall neccessarily focuses only a select few: Golden, the husband; Trish, the discontented and bored fourth wife; and Rusty, the neglected and somewhat wacky child. Through these three main characters, Udall manages to effectively illustrate the power struggles and competition among wives; the kids' yearning for attention, the chaos of almost 30 kids; the preciousness of each child's life, even in the midst of SO MANY of them; the pressure to PROVIDE for everyone; and so on.

The novel has no overarching plot; instead, it moves forward with a simmering pressure, and eventually all hell breaks loose at the climax. It works. That said, Udall's writing can get a tad long-winded, and at over 600 pages, it's really not neccessary. He also does a LOT of jumping back and forth, depending heavily on flashbacks. For the most part, jumping backward timewise works just fine, but it can get distracting.

Overall, The Lonely Polygamist is a must-read for anyone interested in the bizarre world of polygamy. The characters are incredibly drawn, the writing is simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious (especially when we have Rusty's point of view), and the nuances of the family life are extremely believable. Recommended.

Bicycle Days

Bicycle Days
By John Burnham Schwartz (253 pages)
Published by Summit Books
Bookish Rating: 3.5

Schwartz does a lot of things right in this coming-of-age story of a young American college grad working a stint in Japan. Initially published in 1989 as Japan--and the rest of the world, I suppose--was starting to capitalize on high-tech, the novel is definitely dated--but in a sort of historical way (when is the last time you heard the phrase "word-processing terminal"?).

Schwartz effectively evokes the out-of-placeness of Alec, Tokyo city life, and Japanese culture. However, the novel seems overwritten. Schwartz simply tries too hard. Alec has all sorts of flashbacks to his parents arguing and their eventual divorce, which I guess he decides to emotionally work through while in Japan. Why? I don't know. I'm not sure Schwartz does either. I guess he needed some sort of Deep Mental Conflict or something. I dunno.

Alec wants to view himself as deeply pensive and troubled, which eventually climaxes in a seaside town when he's feeling particularly deep one morning and goes into an inexplicable funk. I didn't buy it.

Other things just didn't fit. For example, Alec goes to visit the grandparents of the girl he's screwing in a remote village. He stays there for a few days, having more Deep Thoughts. Again, readers are left clueless as to why he went there. It just seemed weird.

Finally, the women, who are Japanese, are portrayed in what I think tends to be a typical way for American men: docile geisha girls. Schwartz tries to sidestep what is essentially a sexist and racist portrayal by making one girl smart, kind, and--to prove how progressive he is, I guess--an old lady in her early 30s. And she is, of course, exotically beautiful, with a "swan neck, and, despite charming deference during the day, she's wild in bed at night. Of course.

Lust interest #2 is essentially a hooker, whom Alec meets in a set-up catering to businessmen.

Overall, the book is good enough. Though significantly flawed, it's not bad, and it has some good things going for it. I admit that while reading it, I craved hot sake and sushi, neither of which are particularly recommended for pregnant women such as myself. As a temporary escapist trip to the Japan of 20+ years ago, the novel is fine but not really recommended.

The Thin Man

The Thin Man
By Dashiell Hammett (201 pages)
Published by Vintage
Bookish rating: 4

I'm about 80 years late to the party on this one, but the fact that Hammett's mystery novel is still in print speaks to its awesomeness.

In this super sexy mystery, which takes place in the early thirties (when--duh--it was written), a former private detective, Nick Charles, gets sucked into a murder mystery. Not only do we get to enter the atmospheric world of New York City speakeasies and morning cocktails, but we also get a witty comedy of manners to boot. The dialogue, Nick's narration and wry observations, and characters such as his wife, Nora (based on Hammett's real-life main squeeze Lillian Hellman) are in addition to a complex, clever mystery. Or perhaps vice versa.

The amount of alcohol consumed by Nick and his peeps makes the guys of Mad Men seem like lightweights. I could argue--and if I had more time, I would--that alcohol itself is a main character. The writing and language is 1930s perfection--I mean, when is the last time you read the phrase, "What a dame!"?

Finally, the character of Nora fascinated me. I'm extremely familiar with Lillian Hellman (fun fact: there's yet another new biography out on her, which I haven't read and thus can't vouch for, but I CAN vouch for this Lillian Hellman biography, which came out in paperback last summer), but to see her mannerisms and character via Nick (meaning, via Hammett) has always been somewhat of a missing piece for me.

I plan to read the rest of Hammett's work, including the lesser known novels. In the meantime, read this one. Preferably with a scotch. And if you're not a scotch drinker, well, just make a very strong cocktail, sit back with some jazz playing in the background, and try to integrate the word dame into your next conversation (in a nonsexist way, please).