Michael Chabon, Telegraph
Avenue. Chabon tells readers of
this novel almost as much about the used vinyl record business and its music as
he tells us about the comic book business in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The novel is set in Oakland about 2005 and
the main characters are two partners in Brokeland Records and their
families. One partner is black and the
other is white, although his current wife is black and he has more or less
assimilated into the black community in Oakland. The partners’ wives are mid-wives. The future of the record store is doubtful,
because a billionaire former NFL star quarterback plans to build one of his big
box media stores just a few blocks from Brokeland. His stores are called “The Dog Pile” and
include extensive used record sections.
The story is about the problems of marriage and fatherhood, midwifery
and attitudes about childbirth in the black community, zoning and environment
in fragile communities, and the conflicts between big business and family
business. Chabon handles it all brilliantly,
as usual. Words and ideas come at the
reader so fast that one doesn’t realize how many hours he or she has been lost
in this story. April 2013
Adam Gopnik. Angels
and Ages. Who knew that Lincoln
and Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809? Gopnik uses this as a starting point for what
are really two essays, one on Lincoln and the other on Darwin, and tries to
draw some parallels between them. He
notes that both were great writers in their way and that both used their chosen
disciplines, the law and biology, in ways that changed the world. It works fairly well, but it doesn’t matter
whether or not he has succeeded in pairing these two great men in a meaningful
way, because his treatments of each could stand alone. In the case of Lincoln, there is the
unanswerable question of what Stanton said when Lincoln died. Was it “Now he belongs to the angels” or “Now
he belongs to the ages.” As for Darwin, I didn’t know a lot about him, but I
came away an admirer not only of his work but also of the man. April 2013
Joanne Harris.
Gentlemen and Players.
John Snide is the porter at St. Oswald’s, a prestigious private boy’s
school in the UK. Snide’s 12 year old
attends the local public school but wants to be a part of St. Oswald’s. Overtime the kid finds a way to pretend to be
one of the school boys, takes the name Julian Pinchback and even develops a
friendship with Leon Mitchell, a St. Oswald’s boy about 2 years older. Julian knows everything about the school and
has copied Snide’s keys. Julian can go
anywhere and even get into the students’ lockers and faculty’s offices. One night Julian takes Leon up on the roof of
the school and when they are seen Leon falls to his death as they try to escape
without being identified. Julian does
escape but his father, who failed to rescue Leon, commits suicide. Julian is taken to Paris by his mother. She had divorced Snide years earlier and had
been living in Paris with her new husband.
About ten years later, Julian returns to St. Oswald’s as a new teacher
or “fresher.” Julian’s credentials are
counterfeit and Julian’s purpose in being there is to destroy the school in
revenge for Leon’s death. Julian plays
on the arrogance and self-satisfaction of the faculty and nearly brings the
whole thing crashing down. It’s very
hard to write about this without revealing key elements of the plot, so let me
just say there are many surprises as we learn the story of Julian. April 2013
Lars Kepler. The
Hypnotist. Swedish detective Joona Linna is very
different from Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander. Joona has total confidence that he will
succeed and takes great pleasure in saying to his superiors: “I told you
so.” There is a triple murder in Tumba,
and Joona coerces a psychiatrist named Erik Maria Bark to hypnotize a 15 year
old boy who survived but is gravely wounded.
In the interview under hypnosis it becomes clear that the boy has
murdered his own family and he could be a danger to his older sister. The boy also threatens Bark for revealing his
guilt under hypnosis. Then we start to
get the back story from 10 years earlier when Bark was using hypnosis to
conduct group therapy for seven severely damaged people. When one of them attempted suicide and cited
Bark as the reason, his funding was pulled and he started doubting his method
and swore off hypnosis therapy forever.
Reports of Bark’s use of hypnosis on the boy setsoff a chain of events
that involves several more murders, the kidnapping of Bark’s son and a final
showdown on a frozen lake in Lapland. A
great read. April 2013
Henning Mankell. Sidetracked. What intrigues me about a Mankell novel is that
he keeps us readers ahead of Kurt Wallender and the other detectives and takes
us through their thought processes as they methodically work toward solution of
the crime or crimes and bring us to a conclusion. There are always surprises for the police and
for us readers, but we have a better idea of the direction things will go than
Wallander does. This one starts with
Wallander unable to stop a girl of about 17 from burning herself to death. Next three prominent individuals are murdered
over the course of about a week; their heads are split open with an ax. We meet the killer as he cuts down his first
victim. Wallander’s first problem is to
find a connection among the three victims.
All the while he is trying to finish up so that he can go off on holiday
with the Latvian woman he met in The Dogs
of Riga. In the course of the
investigation, Wallander comes across a white slavery scheme which explains the
suicide he witnessed and eventually leads to the killer and his motive for the
killings. The account of Wallender’s
investigation is long and detailed, and it’s a pleasure to accompany him. I do wish he would sleep more, change his
shirt more often and eat more balanced meals.
April 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment