Patience rewarded.

I was drawn to Ariana Franklin's second novel, City of Shadows, mostly due to its setting. The image I have of 1920s Berlin is mostly a combination of decadent nightclubs a la Cabaret and sleek modernist designs from the Bauhaus. But the Berlin of Franklin's novel has a definite dark underbelly, populated by characters desperate to survive in a city that cannot feed its own, in spite of the glittering clubs. Esther Solomonova sees both sides of the city, working for a flamboyant club owner while still recovering from the nightmares of the Russian pograms that left her scarred both physically and emotionally. When her boss, Prince Nick, latches onto a mysterious woman in a local insane hospital who claims to the be the last of the Russian royal family, Esther is given the task of molding her into a believable princess. But with the arrival of Anna Anderson/Anastasia Romanov, Esther finds that the ghosts of her past are not far behind.

Neither, apparently, are the ghosts of Anna's past--and soon more are added. First, the club matron is brutally murdered, then a cabaret showgirl. Esther suspects that anyone with connections to Anna is in the killer's sights, but it is not until Inspector Schmidt of the Berlin police takes the case that Esther's theory is investigated. But as Berlin throws itself into the rising power of National Socialism, the prestige of claiming Grand Duchess Anastasia is a powerful political coup--and at odds with Schmidt and Esther's search for justice.

City of Shadows is a little different from most other suspense novels, in that it took quite a while for the story to really get underway. Franklin uses much of the first portion of the book to create a lush portrait of Berlin and the characters that inhabit it, making the going a little slow at first. But the care Franklin pays in setting the stage pays off in the second half of the book, where the mystery and suspense really start to shift into gear. The depth of characters give that suspense much more of a bite, as I was much more invested in the characters, really caring about the injustices paid to them, and struggling to understand how some could turn to the hateful message of the Nazis.

Anna Anderson was a real person, and many of the events in the book actually happened as Franklin recounts them. But it is as much the nuanced portrait of a city on a brink that gives City of Shadows an authenticity that I sometimes find is missing from many mystery novels. It took a little while to warm up, but I'm glad I stuck with the book as I found myself getting drawn into it more and more. By the end, I was reading at a breakneck pace, hoping it wouldn't end.

The beautiful voice in print.

If you were to ask people in the know about the goings on of the opera world, they would probably agree that Renee Fleming is the closest artist that could be called current American diva. Especially after the release of her most current disc, Homage: The Age of the Diva, it would appear that Fleming herself isn't adverse to the title. So it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise that Fleming has released (in 2004) The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer: a memoir, not of her life, but of her voice.

It's an interesting concept, but one that has some inherent problems. For instance, where does the voice end and the singer begin? How does such a book different from a singing how-to (or even an extended voice coaching session)? Opera singers sometimes like to refer to their voices as 'instruments,' a concept that almost makes the singer and the voice two distinct entities. Fleming herself has noted that she doesn't like to think of her voice in that manner, but there is the sense from Inner Voice that we're getting a lot on the voice and not so much on Fleming herself. Much of the book reads like the responses to a very friendly interviewer, leaving the singer herself somewhat distant. There's a little bit of confusion over to whom the book is being addressed as well. Fleming offers considerable advice and examples of how she produces her sound and how to avoid the fatigue and vocal damage that often plagues classical singers. Puzzlingly, some simple musical terms, such as legato, are defined in the text, suggesting an audience with little formal training. Yet more difficult concepts ('tessitura') receive no explanation.

On the positive side, Fleming writes with a down-to-earth sensibility that immediately dispells any notion of the stereotypical touchy diva. If Inner Voice suffers from some a lack of focus, at least one can say that it is a breeze to read, and the moments where Fleming does get into some personal history offer honest, engaging depictions of the hectic life of an opera star. As such, I'm still glad that I took the time to read it. Die-hard Fleming fans, voice students and opera enthusiasts interested in the 'how it's done' aspects of singing would probably find The Inner Voice most satisfying. Fleming's artistry and career are likely important enough to encourage future books; perhaps she'll write a more traditional memoir in the future. In the meantime, this interview and performance on MPR's Saint Paul Sunday provides a satisfying portrait of the artist.

Frosty's been iced.

I'm a sucker for macabre twists, so it was just a matter of time before I picked up Snow Blind, P. J. Tracy's procedural set in the frigid expanses of rural Minnesota. The twist to this mystery lies in the method by which the killer(s) go about disposing of their victims. In suitable cold weather fashion, they encase their victims in snowmen, complete with carrot noses. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

The story has some fairly formulaic touches: the detectives are cranky veterans who are leary of venturing beyond their Minneapolis haunts and a rookie sheriff finds herself facing down dangerous criminals before she's even figured out how to get to her own headquarters. The pace is typical thriller, moving at a fast pace and zooming between character perspectives. But most of the story is told from the perspective of Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth of the MPD, and their newbie colleague in Dundas County, Iris Rikker. When a snowman appears in the rural northern county, Magozzi and Rolseth find that all clues seem to lead to the Bitterroot Corporation, a front for an abused women's shelter. While trying to unearth the motives behind the murders, Sheriff Rikker makes some unpleasant discoveries that suggest the mysteries behind the snowmen murders has a much longer history than anyone could have imagined. Snow Blind is a fast read (it took me two working days to blow through it), and it's not wanting for plot turns. Astute readers will probably figure out the ending, but Tracy (in reality a pseudonym for a mother-daughter writing team) wisely creates an ending worthy of the topics surrounding the mystery.

I did have one complaint about Snow Blind, however. This is a Monkeewrench novel, named after the computer security firm that Magozzi and Rolseth enlist to hack into websites for clues. I've never read any of the other Monkeewrench titles, which I didn't think would be an issue as the novels all seemed standalone. In retrospect, I probably should have started with the first title which might have given a little more background. Otherwise, I was rather lost on the first few sections in Snow Blind dealing with previously established characters. On the whole, Snow Blind, while mostly sticking to formula does that formula quite well, providing the excitement that whodunits should.

Short and (sometimes) sweet stories of the heartland.

If it were not for an article published in the Star Tribune last year, I would have had no inkling that a small film called Sweet Land had recently been filmed in the rural streatches of western Minnesota. And if not for seeing the movie, I would have missed Will Weaver's 1989 collection of stories, the title story "A Gravestone Made of Wheat," being the inspiration for the screenplay. I just love it when coincidences all lead to an author that I had almost forgotten, and find a satisfying read in the process.

The stories in A Gravestone Made of Wheat and Other Stories all have connections to the small farming communities of the Midwest, particularly Weaver's home state Minnesota. Weaver's sense of the pull the land has on the Midwestern psyche is pitch perfect in his writing, creating characters that react to their various situations in ways that ring true. In the title story, elderly Olaf's intention to bury his wife Inge on their farm despite the objections of the local sheriff echoes the quiet determination and dignity the young couple faced when postwar prejudices led to snub Inge because of her German birth. With "The Bread-Truck Driver," Weaver creates a humorous take on a delivery man intent on wooing the bored wives of northern Minnesota's lake country, and "The Cowman" gave me a chill when I read the depiction of a marriage breaking under the strain of farming responsibilities. A few stories left me cold: "Heart of the Fields" never captured my interest, "Blood Pressure" was simply strange and "The Undeclared Major" was unremarkable in style and plot.

But in addition to the title story, I was taken with the final story, "You Are What You Drive." Following the ownership of a particular black Buick, the story reveals the cyclical pull of the seasons, life and relationships in a small town. It was a good close to a collection of solid, if not revolutionary writing, but satisfying none the less. Weaver has also released another collection of stories including some from Gravestone and newer publications, which I'll probably pick up soon. And the film is definitely worth checking out, a sincere and beautifully filmed portrait of Minnesota in the 1920s. One good film, a good read and the prospect of another enjoyable collection: not bad for one newspaper article.

A human story hidden in a disaster account.

This is as close as I get to a thriller. And Mark Levine’s F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century, a description of the freakish outbreak of storms in April 1974 has a definite ‘thriller’ feel to it. But with weather books such as this, there’s often the issue of exploitation hanging over writers (and readers) who are profit from or are entertained by other peoples’ astonishingly bad luck. Levine generally avoids that here; his account creates real, dignified people who are not entirely defined by the tornadoes that swept through their lives.

The April 1974 outbreak spawned hundreds of tornadoes over multiple states, killing hundreds and flattening more than a few communities. Levine examines the storms through the perspective of Limestone County, Alabama, which was struck twice within hours with deadly twisters. I especially like Levine’s opening scene with a young couple driving through the storm, a motif that reoccurs throughout the book. I should note that Levine, in addition to his journalism writings, is also a successful poet, a background that gives the language of F5 not only an immediacy but stark beauty as well.

Levine makes a few missteps, however. His efforts to cast the disaster in the light of Watergate woes, racial tensions and overall malaise slows the momentum and worse, runs against the notion of natural calamity appearing out of nowhere. Nixon may have been a conniving scoundrel, but the storms were not the result of a vengeful God smiting a morally bankrupt nation. Levine skips over most of the science behind the storms, and even that is mostly tied up in the work of Dr. Tetsuya (Ted) Fujita, at the time very much the public face of tornado research. It’s a humanity driven book, and that coupled with the strength of Levine’s writing, raises F5 a notch above most natural disaster books.

O editor, where art thou?

It seems appropriate that of all the characters in classic literature, Elizabeth Kostova chose to resurrect Dracula for her 2005 tome The Historian. There's no shortage of narrative threads to take up from Bram Stoker's original creation, but most importantly, the central character is notoriously hard to pin down to any one time and place. So voila, your novel can leap from locale to exotic locale, across several centuries and still have a reasonable shot at maintaining a plausible plot.

Kostova's detailed settings are the best aspect of The Historian, a novel that jumps from Cambridge, England, to the bazaars of Istanbul and into the dark forests of Romania and Bulgaria. The reason for all this travel is all a little murky, as the plot of the novel unfolds painfully slowly. The historian of the title is nominally a bookish diplomat, living in Amsterdam with his teenage daughter, who serves as the book's first narrator. She dutifully follows him on his diplomatic travels, but when he suddenly disappears following a trip to the University of Cambridge, she sets out to discover the truth. Coming upon a cache of her father's letters, she learns how intertwinded her history is with the legend of Vlad the Impaler, and how her father's love of scholarship and books sent him on a chase that would put him face to face with the legendary tyrant.

Kostova's plot echoes some of the points of The Da Vinci Code--legendary figures, clues hidden in libraries, mysterious forces trying to thwart intrepid scholars and of course the continuous border-hopping--but while that book had a breakneck pace to keep the reader occupied, The Historian unfolds at a painfully slow rate over its 642 pages. Kostova moves it along fairly well over the course of the first 200 pages or so, but then quickly becomes mired in details that I felt did little to add to the story. Adding to its ponderous pace is the use of several different narrators, a technique that only serves to lengthen the proceedings by requiring backstory for each. The germ of the story is a good idea, and there were portions where I was really gripped by the plot turns. But just as quickly, I was back to slogging through minutae. With tighter editing, The Historian would be more appealing, but asking someone to pick through over 600 pages is a request that only the most dedicated readers would likely undertake.

La vie en rose, Quebec style

The tiny hamlet of Rapide Blanc in northern Quebec would hardly garner anyone’s attention, even if the town still existed. Created in the late 1920s to house workers at the nearby hydroelectric plant, Rapide Blanc was just as summarily wiped from the map when a nationalized utility company determined the cost of manning the dam would be more than simply running it remotely. So in 1971, the people who had founded the town packed their cars and left the area to return to its natural state.

Rapide Blanc no longer exists, but Quebecois artist Pascal Blanchet creates a fine portrait of the town in his graphic novel White Rapids (his own translation from the original French). As far as plot goes, there’s not a whole lot: the bigwigs at the power company decide to build a dam and a town for its workers, people enjoy their lives far in the Quebecois wilderness, the town becomes more connected to the world, the power company decides to put an end to it all. That’s pretty much it. But the story is simply justification for Blanchet’s lovely, stylized silhouetted figures with a sort of composition reminiscent of 1950s era advertising. They’re warm, glowing images, colored in varying shades of brownish gray, brilliant whites and muted oranges. Blanchard’s art conveys not a utopia—this is a working town, not one founded on any particular moral premise—but a definite sense of camaraderie and whimsy. One particular image of a house party in full mid-50s swing practically pulses with the bonhomie of good music, good company and a fine summer night. In fact, not even the eventual decline of the town can cast a shade over the pictorials; the final sensation is not that of loss, but more like the natural passing that comes with sunset.

Blanchet’s errors are limited to the types of fonts chosen for the text. Some were virtually impossible to make out either due to letter design or color. The story of Rapide Blanc would hardly constitute a paragraph, but in graphic format it works. Blanchet has had little else published in either French or English, focusing instead mainly on illustration and cartooning. His other work La Fugue might be worth tracking down, or else hope that more of this talented artist’s work becomes available in the U.S.

Fiction as accessory.

If accolades for fiction were handed out based solely on title or premise, Patricia Marx's first novel Him Her Him Again The End of Him would stand a good chance of raking in the awards. Marx's title is one of the wittist ones I've seen, and that snazzy cover begs to be shown off at your local trendy coffee spot. In fact, Him Her would make great reading for quick lunch hours or coffee breaks, as Marx's slight novel works best in small doses.

Him Her opens with our unnamed protagonist, a throughly neurotic graduate student currently trying to avoid doing her dissertation at Cambridge University. In the midst her studies appears the erudite, uptight psychological philospher Eugene, who quickly sweeps our heroine off her feet with his musings on Newton and sweet nothings that she pretends to understand. No sooner does she commit to this towering intellect than she discovers that he has run off with a Hellenistic studies major to the Dalmatian coast. More irked than heartbroken, she finds a way to get even with him, and--well, from the title you can fairly easily figure out the end.

Him Her is something of a satire of chick lit, but like that genre, the plot is terribly thin. At times I was really pushing myself to get through to the end, waiting to see if the plot would kick in. Marx's strongest writing came with the portrayal of 'Her' work at a lesser-known New York-based comedy show 'Taped But Proud,' where some of her best one-liners were delivered. But what plot there is seems only there for the delivery of such lines, leading Him Her to sound more like a worn SNL sketch or a plumped up humorous short story rather than novel material. Having read and enjoyed some of Marx's work in The New Yorker, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, I know she can write well for articles. As a novel, Him Her Him Again The End of Him has its moments, but even for light reading, it doesn't quite live up to its promise.

Aussie ramblings in the Arctic.

This is probably the most obscure book that I've pulled from the shelves yet, having never heard of the title, the author or its subject matter. As the title implies, Cassandra Pybus' 2002 work The Woman Who Walked To Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend is just that: Pybus' attempt to track down one Lillian Alling, who reportedly walked across Canada's densest wilderness in the 1920s, all in an attempt to get home to Siberia. It sounds implausible, yet when Pybus hears of Lillian's legend, she immediately packs up and jets off from her balmy Australian home, meets up with a long-lost friend, and starts wandering through the wilds of British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and into Alaska.

Pybus' trek doesn't start out on a promising note, as she's unable to find much information on Lillian and her friend turns out to have changed drastically, a fact made all the more trying by the close quarters the two are forced to share. Pybus strays more from Lillian's story as the trail goes cold, instead weaving in tales of the Yukon gold rush, stories from the inhabitants along the way and overall impressions of a region that has become, if anything, more isolated in the decades since Lillian's feat. As Pybus crosses over the border into Alaska, she is nearly convinced that either the epic walk never actually occurred, or that time and imagination had added to the truth as to make it unrecognizable. But just as Pybus is about to leave the Arctic, she stumbles on a possible explaination that might provide a satisfying conclusion to Lillian's improbable walk.

I had pretty high hopes for this book, as it started out strongly enough. But once Pybus actually hit the trail, I started to lose interest. Much of this had to do with her personal problems with her traveling companion, and as I noted with Driving Mr. Albert, it's never a good idea to bring such emotional baggage on a trip, and a much worse idea to chose to write about them. Once Pybus is on her own, though, I still wasn't really able to muster up much interest in her travels, which seemed mostly intersted in the ordeal of Jack London during the gold rush, and the fate of those drawn to the wilderness (especially Chris McCandless, chronicled in Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into the Wild). I really only kept reading to learn more about Lillian, but the dearth of information on her is too frustrating for both author and reader. Overall, the premise was promising, but like much else in the forbidding wilderness Pybus crosses, The Woman Who Walked to Russia concludes with a great sense of emptiness and missed opportunity.

The force of her friendship.

I can't recall exactly why I decided to pick up Sigrid Nunez's novel The Last of Her Kind. I vaguely recollect seeing a review or a blurb somewhere that mentioned it, or maybe it was the cover design that appealed to me, a look that oddly brings Ikea to mind. Whatever the reason, I was drawn into Nunez's tale of a relationship between two very different women drawn together by the ideals of the counterculture '60s, only to discover years later the emotional price of that unchecked idealism.

The Last of Her Kind takes shape as a memoir, penned by Georgette George, a scholarship student thrust into the liberal hotbed of Barnard College in the fall of 1968. A child of a broken, violent home, Georgette finds herself the roommate of the brilliant, radical Ann Drayton. Determined to rid herself of the 'bourgeois affectation' of her wealthy upbringing, Ann informs Georgette that she had hoped to be placed with a roommate as entirely different from herself as possible, but in spite of her disappointment in having a white roommate, the women become friends. But as Ann becomes increasingly obsessed with correcting injustices in the world, an irrepreable rift seems to end the relationship. Several years later, though, Ann is convicted of murder, and Georgette is again reminded of how intertwined her own life is with Ann's, her own relationships with her family and lovers shaped by the force of Ann's rise and fall.

Nunez makes references to The Great Gatsby throughout the text, and indeed The Last of Her Kind concerns itself with the same themes of lost idealism and the experiences of a particular generation. Georgette and Ann (or their kin) seem to take in the full '60s experience--everything from acid to Woodstock. Some parts seem a little cliche--I skimmed the overly-long love letter penned to Mick Jagger, a result of an especially bad acid trip. Despite a misstep here and there, Nunez's writing is well-crafted, carefully creating the web that keeps the two women connected in spite of their distance from each other.

As a portrait of '60s counterculture, The Last of Her Kind sometimes strains belief. It fairs better as a novel of the forces of friendship over time, and closes with a hopeful note on the power of humanity in the face of an all-consuming ideal.

The kids are all right. Avoid the parents.

It seems Americans like to have some sort of constant crisis in education, the only change being what form this dire emergency takes. The crisis de jour is not so much failing schools, burned out teachers or the appalling disparity in quality in public schools between low- and high-income areas--these problems have been with us for so long as to have practically expected. No, the major issue now is far more serious: the possibility that some children will be rejected at elite, private schools, and just may--gasp!- be forced to attend public school.

The topic of overachieving children and the race to get into the 'right' college has been a hot topic as of late. Alan Eisenstock joins the fray with his expose on the private, elite kindergartens that are the first step towards the Ivies. The Kindergarten Wars: The Battle to Get into America's Best Private Schools charts the process of several families as they attempt to get their four-year-olds into elementary schools that cost where a year's tuition rivals that of many private colleges. Eisenstock is himself a former board member for a private, independent school in California, so he knows this ground well. In addition to following the parents through the process (and I stress that it is the parents that are worked up into a lather over these schools; the kids are off blithely enjoying what's left of their childhood), Eisenstock looks in on the almost entirely subjective admissions process with the people that are paid to determine what tot to take and which to reject.*

The results are fairly predictable. Focusing on the mothers (fathers tend to be absent in the pursuit of the thick admissions envelope), Eisenstock portrays women growing increasingly desperate to get their child into the 'right' school, their interviews punctuated with 'I's and 'we's, and strategizing over interview tactics. Admissions officers aren't much better, scorning the sense of entitlement and elitism displayed by some parents, but never entirely addressing the role money and social connections play in selection. The interactions between parents, school directors and other interested parties (educational consultants and directors of so-called 'feeder nursery schools') comes off as a battle of nerves, with parents freaking out over the perceived high stakes.

Eisenstock observes all of this with as objective an eye as could be expected, given his background. His Amazon book description states he was a former screenwriter, and this shows in his recreation of dialogue and plotting. If anything else, Kindergarten Wars is compusively readable, for its cast of 'good' and 'bad' parents and nerve-wracking questions of who will get in where. But Kindergarten Wars' major failing is that it presents the insanity of the race to get into these elite enclaves as a major problem in education. Focusing so much on the problems of these bright, well-cared for kids is interesting, and it is a pity that they can't get into the school of choice, but if they don't they still have a high chance of succeeding in society. Other than a brief discussion of the problems with the No Child Left Behind law, Eisenstock focuses entirely on how people get into the elite schools, and gives almost no attention to why the parents see these schools as so much better than local public ones. By concentrating solely on the upper escelons of education, Eisenstock misses the real story.

*I should mention that Eisenstock disguises the names and, with the exception of New York City, the location of the elite schools he writes about. He instead (to this reader's great annoyance) substitutes aliases based on names and places mentioned in Pride and Prejudice.

Behind the fourteenth door.

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a bit of a departure from my usual reading in a few ways: I don't usually read children's works, nor do I tend to listen to audiobooks. Yet in the name of trying something different and because I was facing a lengthy drive to see family, I picked up Gaiman's little tale.

First the audio aspect: Gaiman does his own reading on this three disc set, accompanied by the spooky electronic sounds of The Gothic Arches. First-time listeners might need to get a little used to Gaiman's British accent, especially over the din of a rough hightway, but he does a marvelous job of personifiying of each of his quirky characters. The major complaint that I had was in the timing of the individual tracks. There are only about 5 tracks per disc, which translates to roughly 15 minutes per track--entirely too long for easy browsing. It's puzzling that the discs were recorded as such, as Gaiman's text has numerous natural pauses that would be ideal for a new track.

Coraline is Gaiman's first novel for children, and has the blend of the fantastic and the real world that is Gaiman's trademark. Coraline is a girl bored with her surroundings and oddball neighbors until her harried mother recommends that she count the number of doors and windows in their new flat. Discovering a door that opens to a brick wall, Coraline's interest is piqued. The next morning, the door suddenly opens to reveal a long hallway leading to her own flat and her Other family. Lured by the promise of things to do, Coraline is tempted to stay, but is uneasy with the Other Mother who seems just a bit too intent on her remaining. When Coraline discovers the bodyless voices of lost children in a closet, Coraline knows she must escape through the door to her old life. Thrown into a battle of wits with her Other Mother, aided only by a scheeming cat, Coraline has to find the souls of her real family and the lost children before she can return to the life that she now fully appreciates.

I wouldn't call Coraline a plucky heroine--determined and strong are adjectives that suit her better. Her early boredom with her life and struggle with the lure of her Other Mother makes her human, and one can't but pull for her while she fights her way back home. When Coraline appeared in 2002, it was awarded the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, as well as a few others. I don't usually read fantasy novels, but Gaiman's fantastic worlds are just a warped enough version of reality to appeal to those who generally avoid the genre. Its fable-like premise might turn off teen readers, but for upper elementary and lower middle school kids, Coraline's parallel world is worth exploring.

Comment bugaboo.

Just a note regarding leaving comments on this site: I've opened up the comment moderation so that any comments that are posted appear immediately on the site, rather than going to my email for me to post after reviewing them, as originally structured. I do read the comments and I've tried to respond to some in the past, but due to a sluggish DSL connection, or a full hard drive on my computer, I've been unable to post responses. So, long story short, if you want to comment, feel free to do so, and I'll try to work out the problem, or respond from another computer. As I figure out where this blog is headed, any suggestions are welcome!

Not worth the repreve.

In theory, I ought to find The Queen's Fool absolutely riveting: set in the volatile, intrigue-ridden England of Edward VI and Mary I, the story encompasses war, religious upheaval, sex, heartbreak, diplomacy and political maneuvering of the highest order. The title character, Hannah Green, is herself playing a role, hiding her Jewish faith and her sex as she and her father try to make a new life in England after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Hannah's reputation for divining the future lands her squarely into the center of the royal court, required to spy for Lord Robert Dudley, for whom she has more than a passing fancy. When Mary ascends the throne, Hannah finds herself drawn to the queen's strong character, yet endangered by the same woman's determination to rid England of its Protestant faith. Torn between a safe, but mundane life with her betrothed and the intrigues of the court, Hannah's fateful decisions place her at the very center of the turbulent events surrounding her.

And yet...

Honestly, I just couldn't get into The Queen's Fool. I tried (it's a 500 page book, and I stuck with it to the end), but Philippa Gregory's epic of Tudor intrigue just never really came to life for me. The whole purpose of a historical novel is to recreate a particular world, mixing the well-known figures with characters of the author's imagination. It's especially tricky with characters that are as well-known as Elizabeth I and her fractious family, and to her credit, Gregory has done her homework regarding history and life at the court. But they all still feel somehow...flat, I guess would be the best way to describe it. I had read another of Gregory's novels, The Virgin's Lover, a few years ago, and the feeling was the same. Another issue centers on Hannah. Gregory goes to almost absurd lengths to place Hannah at the center of the action, undermining any sense of belief in her character. Was it possible for someone like Hannah to witness Elizabeth's trysts with Thomas Seymour, be summoned to face charges of heresy and be present at the fall of Calais? It might give Gregory the opportunity to describe those events, but it doesn't work as fiction.

The Queen's Fool is part of Gregory's retelling of the Tudor era, the latest of which is The Boleyn Inheritance. Gregory's books always seem to hit the bestseller lists, which isn't surprising given their emphasis on intrigue and scheming. In spite of Gregory's efforts, though, her Elizabethan world still remains impervious.

Shock and awe through an objective lens.

God knows there are plenty of books out there on the subject of Iraq and the mess we're currently in. I wasn't really looking for a book about the war until I happened to spot Anne Garrels' account of the buildup and opening days of the war come across the circulation desk. I had remembered catching some of Garrels' reports from the battlefield on NPR and being impressed with her work, but I was a little hesitant about picking up a work that was probably outdated.

But after four years of war, reading Naked in Baghdad adds a touch of clarity. A veteran of numerous war zones over the course of her nearly 30 years as a journalist, Garrels knows how to write compelling, gripping reports while keeping a clear, objective eye on the facts. Naked begins in the fall of 2002, as UN inspectors are still trying to determine what sort of weapons Saddam may or may not have and ends in May 2003, around the time of "Mission Accomplished". Arriving in Baghdad, Garrels uses her status as a woman and a correspondent for the relatively-under-the-radar NPR to gain access to the parts of Baghdad where she can get a real sense for how Iraqis feel about their leader. Or so the idea goes. Garrels spends as much time trying to twart the attempts by the Iraqi government to manipulate the news that much of Naked reads as a manual for doing journalism with uncooperative authorities as it does a narrative of a city preparing for war. As the rhetoric and violence escalates, Garrels finds herself part of a dwindling press corps, relying more on her own wits and the bravery of her driver, Amer, in getting the real story. In this sense, Garrels succeeds: the portrait that she creates is an Iraq filled with tension and uncertainty, voicing concerns that will become a familiar refrain over the next few years.

Garrels' Baghdad account in supplemented by email bulletins written by her husband Vint Lawrence, to family and friends. Lawrence is also a talented writer, and his perspective of a husband waiting on the homefront for a loved one provides an illuminating counterpoint to Garrels' war zone experiences. Still, if given a choice between the emails and more of Garrels' reporting, I would go with the latter. Garrels' gutsy reporting in the face of real danger and her insightful portrayal of a complex city makes Naked in Baghdad as relevent to today's Iraq as the Iraq of four years ago.

Neither time nor patience.

Frustration, thy name is Elizabeth George. With her lush writing, English settings, a complicated lead character with an abrasive partner and thorny mysteries, I should be devouring all of her mysteries. Instead, I find myself picking up her books with the anxious hope that I won't have to force myself through to the conclusion, just to find out who commited the crime.

Okay, perhaps we ought to begin at the beginning. Elizabeth George is best known as the author of the Inspector Thomas Lynley mysteries, a series that, since A Great Deliverance was published in 1988, has grown to 14 titles. A perennial best-seller, the Lynley mysteries have gotten a boost since 2002, when Mystery! began airing its own series based on the books. After I saw and thoroughly enjoyed the series, I turned to the books.

George bases her mysteries in the conflicts in and around her central investigator, D.I. Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard, who also happens to be the eighth Earl of Asherton. Uncomfortable with his status, yet unable to escape his own sense of duty afforded by his priviledged birth, Lynley is a study of inner turmoil, bordering on angst. Lynley's foil is his working class partner, Barbara Havers, stubborn and headstrong, yet with vulnerabilities of her own that she hides behind a shell so thick that she doesn't even acknowledge it to herself. This pairing gives George enough material to work with to drive multidimentioned mysteries full of ethical and moral dilemmas.

When George sticks to the conflict between Lynley and Havers and the issues immediately surrounding the mystery at hand, her formula works--even for the 400 or so pages that most of her mysteries run. But too often, George turns to outside characters that are often only connected to the plot by the thinnest of threads (and usually turn out to be annoying to boot). Along with an unfortunate tendency towards the melodramatic, George's novels sometimes come off as bloated soap operas.

Without all the window dressing and emoting, George's mysteries at their core are tightly constructed crimes, without any clear-cut moral answers. The last of her books I read, Missing Joseph, had all sort of juicy moral dilemmas that remained unsolved at the conclusion. But I had to slog through 400 pages before the mystery actually took center stage. Until George returns to focus on her central characters, I won't be continuing with this series.

Simply magical.

The following excerpt is from Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking:

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylght with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themsleves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themsleves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their frief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them. On the night John died we were thrity-one days short of our fortieth anniversary...
I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted him back.

Rather than risk the possibility of farkeling up a review of this book with my amateurish opinions, I will just say that Didion's memoir of grieving following the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne stayed with me for quite a while after I had finished it. There's been a lot of critiques of the book, especially since it won the National Book Award, and while some may call Didion's prose too removed or cold for a book on grieving, I felt that her tone was that of someone trying genuinely to cope, to rationally think through a process that isn't rational at all. But reading Didion's strong, unique voice, simply contemplating the emotions and memories that accompany the loss of someone so close can be its own comfort. The Year of Magical Thinking does all the things that a good memoir should--deeply honest and beautifully written, it takes us for a brief moment into the mind of its creator.

For more on Didion and her memoir, check out an interview she did with NPR's Terry Gross.

Forget the stickman--cue the gunman.

In no less than three places in and on The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards, is a terse statement: 'This book is not affiliated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.' This little disclaimer is vital, lest the reader assume that the Academy (those folks behind the Oscars) wanted to reveal the inner workings of its annual bash. From the stage, it's all glamour and stars, a night where the film industry gathers to recognize those deserving films that epitomize the art of cinema.

Whatever. Anyone who's ever sat through an entire Oscar telecast (admit it, you've done it, and you cheered when Titanic won) has to know that whomever is involved in mounting the production has to have a few loose marbles by the time it's all done. Thanks to Steve Pond, we now have proof. Pond (he's the one between Chris Cooper and the very pregnant Catherine Zeta-Jones in the back flap photo) gained backstage access to over a decade's worth of Oscar productions, revealing a process that tries sanity and could be reasonably blamed for at least one premature death. The story here isn't so much the stars, although there is plenty of humanizing (and demonizing) tidbits about them. Rather, Pond concerns himself more with the people planning the show, revealing the struggles to do the impossible: bring the show in at a three hour duration, avoid any nasty surprises from overly profane or political winners (or hosts) and ban the tedious thank-you lists from winners determined to have their minute (or five or ten) in the spotlight.

Pond reveals some surprising and humourous aspects to the show, such as the ticklish situation presented by the explicitve-laden nomination of "Blame Canada" for best song, and the potential for the use of rubber bullets in case some acceptance speeches carry on too long. In retrospect, the powers that be behind Oscar might have regretted pulling back the curtain for Pond's little book, but certainly with all the disclaimers, no one will be the wiser, right? At any rate, when you tune in on the 25th for the 79th incarnation of the Oscar bash, keep your fingers crossed for anyone who goes too far over the time limit--they may be in the crosshairs.

How the 0.0046% live.

I'll admit it: I love looking at home decor books. Not so much for the decoration or design of the places (let's face it--it's unlikely I would ever be able to afford the contents of a single room, much less an entire house), but for what the homes reveal of their owners. In most cases, the homes in such books are owned by very wealthy, but fairly anonymous figures. Architectural Digest, however, occassionally features homes of the rich and famous, thereby merging star oggling with the voyerism of looking at their homes.

Part of viewing other people's homes is the smugness that comes with assessing their tastes, and in that sense Hollywood at Home does not disappoint. Never a town (or nowadays, industry) known for restraint, many of the homes easily reflect their owners' larger than life personalities. The best example of excess goes to Jayne Mansfield's infamous Pink Palace, with its bathroom boasting pink shag carpeting on every flat surface (including the ceiling), but is also apparent in Cher's Italian Renaissance villa overlooking the beach, John Travolta's hangar-like home (complete with runway) or Jack Warner's 9-acre estate. Still, for every gargauntuan spread, there's a home that almost looks like mere mortals could reside within its walls. Not surprisingly, these most often belong to Hollywood stars of the past--James Stewart, Katherine Hepburn and Danny Kaye's seem almost quaint in their homey style.

The quality of the essays and photos varies across the book. Some essays concern themselves with the architectural or decorative characteristics of the house, while a few seem more like mini biographies of the famous occupant. The selection of homes is nicely mixed (including some in New York, New England and Ireland), as is the mix between old and new. Some stars are included for who they are rather than for their homes (Marilyn Monroe is here, in spite of the poor quality of images of her homes). But the point of Hollywood at Home's large, glossy format is for display on a coffee table or persual during viewings of Entertainment Tonight, and in that sense it serves its purpose admirably.

A walk braving bears and Katz.

If one were to undertake a 2,100 mile walk through much of the eastern United States, it's likely that a number of memorable incidents would occur in the course of the trek. If it happens to be Bill Bryson taking that walk, then it is fairly guaranteed that every bizarre possibility imaginable will occur, along with the likelihood of a few other unforeseeable calamities. Thankfully for readers, Bryson did attempt such a stroll, and lived to write about it in A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

For anyone unfamiliar with Bryson's work, A Walk in the Woods is pretty representative of his humourous travelogue style. Irreverent in tone, Bryson has the uncanny knack of revealing the subcultures and history of a particular part of the world, all while displaying an astounding ability to attract the most bizarre characters and experiences during his travels. In tackling the Appalachian Trail, Bryson gets plenty of material to work with. Joined on the trail by his woefully out of shape but divinely humourous companion Stephen Katz, Bryson sets out on the trail in Georgia, hoping to avoid the fearsome black bear and inbred hillbillies. The bears never appear, but Bryson and Katz do manage to stumble across truly frightening examples of humanity, including the annoying Mary Ellen, the forever lost Chicken John, and Ralph Lauren-clad day trippers whom Bryson and Katz get the better of.

While tromping through the woods (or seeking out the least scary motel in he can enjoy some of humanity's comforts), Bryson tells of the trail's convoluted history and reflects on the changing environment of the trail as it falls under heavier use. Part travelogue, misadventure story, cultural study and environmental cri de coeur, Bryson's walk never fails to entertain, even if it won't help you avoid a black bear.

Message in a bottle.

I have to say that I'm impressed with Koren Zailckas. Not so much for the fact that she's written an engrossing memoir while only in her mid-20s, but rather for the fact that she even remembers anything of the period of which she's writing. For much of her teens and early 20s, Zailckas spent much of her time getting drunk, drunk, or recovering from binging. Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood is both the story of Zailckas' struggle with alcohol and a warning of how the dangerous drinking has become a destructive means for young women in particular to overcome feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy.

Zailckas points out early in her book that she was never an alcoholic: she never physically required the buzz from a couple of drinks. A good student from a middle class family, she turned to alcohol beginning at the age of 14 to compensate for her perceived social awkwardness. Stories of increased sexual assult and alcohol poisoning in women often appear in the news, but when Zailckas recounts (or sometimes reconstructs from recollections of more sober friends) her experience having her stomach pumped or memories of relationships that revolved around bar hours, her struggle becomes more personal, or in some cases, familiar. Occassionally Zailckas uses grandiloquent language in describing her drinking, an aspect that I found rather annoying, but when she reins in her language, the reality of her experience comes through strongest.

There are several points at which Zailckas makes attempts to curtail her drinking, but when she falls off the wagon she is frank in pointing out her own poor choices. But she also reveals the pervasiveness of alcohol in society and the often contradictory stances toward what is, at its root, a drug. There's a sense of struggle in Zailckas' writing, that the craving for the courage offered by a drink will be something that may never leave her. Her story isn't likely to leave her readers.

Le meurtre dans la ville lumiere.

As of late, I've been drawn to mystery titles published by the Soho Press, a little company that specializes in works set in diverse locales and unusual investigators (just browsing through the library shelves, I've seen crime stories set in Sweden, Afghanistan and the Arctic). Their list includes some well known authors (they publish Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series), but some authors are often new to most mystery readers.

One such author is San Francisco-based Cara Black, who sets her main investigator back a decade and on another continent. Aimee Leduc, resident of Ile St. Louis in the center of Paris, makes her living investigating mostly computer crime in the heady early days of the Internet. Yet in Murder in Belleville, Aimee finds herself literally thrown into the search for a murderer after witnessing a car bombing. Roaming far from the well-trod center of the city, Leduc searches the gritty streets of Belleville, a suburb of Paris tense with clashes between Algerian fundamentalists and a government intent on cracking down on illegal immigrants. There's a lot that Leduc has to wade through to get to the truth behind the woman killed in the bombing--and much of it leads to friends of hers and the highest levels of the govenment. Her job is made all the more complicated by shadowy figures intent on keeping her from that truth.

Black creates a multilayered, complex knot of a mystery, fast-paced to the point that it's almost impossible to recall all that's going on. I will admit to be entirely confused by many of the events, some of which tended to assume a strong grounding in the history of Algerian/Franco relations--an area that I'm woefully deficient. But part of the mystery played upon Leduc's relationships with Rene, her brilliant (if mostly off stage) partner, and an Inspector Morbier, whom Leduc seemed to rely on in the past. Murder in Belleville is the second in Black's series (Murder in the Marais is the first), so perhaps anyone interested in Black's P.I. would do best to start with that title. For my tastes, I found Black's frantic pace and sprawling cast of characters a little too confusing. But Black's efforts to provide a different twist to a city that seems so familiar is worth a look for anyone searching for murder in unfamiliar territory.

Travels with chilly.

With so many travel books out on the market, it sometimes hard to capture a reader's interest with yet another story of ramblings about one country or another. So what better way to draw attention to your foray into the genre than by undertaking what any sober person would consider an insane endeavor--an attempt to hitchhike around the whole of Ireland with a refridgerator?

Tony Hawks, to be fair, was not sober at the time he undertook a bet to do just that. Round Ireland With a Fridge is just that--Hawks' month-long journey around the island with a dorm-sized fridge, relying on only the generousity of picking him up off the side of the road in spite of his unusual baggage. Or so the original plan went. Hawks garnered some radio backing, with periodic on-air appeals to give him a lift when rides were slow in coming. I don't know if I would consider that real fulfillment of his bet--nor the use of anything other than a full-size Kelvinator as his traveling companion--but still, it's enough to give Hawks an unusual look at Ireland than if he had been a typical tourist. There's a lot of scenes that happen in pubs and the like (Hawks makes no secret of his desire to enjoy Irish hospitality--preferably with available Irish ladies), but Hawks and fridge also take some forays into some unexpected sidetrips.

Hawks' day job is that of a comedian for a British radio show, and his story is told in a humorous irreverent tone. Following his hilarious description of an especially memorable night in a rural hostel, it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to look at anyone planning a backpacking vacation without feeling pity for them. A twist on travelogues of the past, Hawks' Round Ireland has much of the offbeat feel of Bill Bryson, with the tone of a Dave Barry.

A most compelling 'hero.'

I picked up The Talented Mr. Ripley because it was the selection for the sole book club that met at a convenient time for me. So I wasn't really eager to delve into Patricia Highsmith's dark, literary style, which made for slow going in the first portion of the novel. But such detailed characterization leads directly into the mind of Tom Ripley, or as close to an understanding of the motives that drive him to commit his crimes.

The novel opens with Tom posing as an IRS representative, running small con jobs while brooding over his own feelings of deprevation and persecution. When he's enlisted to retrieve a wayward son from Italy, Tom sees his chance to have that life to which he feels entitled. Through manipulation and the use of his incredible talents , Tom sets about to get that life. To say more would be to give away much of the plot, but the story arc is not necessarily the best part of the book. Rather, it's Highsmith's ability to make Tom the sort of person that blurs the distinction between the repulsive and the compelling. Tom is always on the edge of being discovered and all his plans exposed, but much of the suspense lies in whether we want to see Tom come to justice--a question that I doubt would be easily answered. It's a pity that Hitchcock never made The Talented Mr. Ripley into a film (as he did with another of Highsmith's novels, Strangers on a Train), as the atmospheric settings of 1950s Italy would have provided a great backdrop for the suspense of the plot. But Highsmith's carefully crafted work requires no visual interpretation to bring to life her chilling story, and a central character who will likely linger in the minds of anyone who encounters him.

The harshest peace.

Being a child of the '80s, my personal perceptions of the Cold War consists of mostly stock images and quotes: duck and cover drills in schools, Spam-stocked bomb shelters, ICBMs paraded through Red Square, JFK's 'Berliner' moment, and always, always the image of a mushroom cloud looming on the horizon.

Of course, the intricacies of the Cold War go well beyond a few points in time. John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale, has completed several hefty tomes on the subject. Fortunately for those of us who aren't well-versed in diplomatic history, Gaddis has provided an approachable yet thorough introduction to the period in The Cold War: A New History, published in 2005. Writing over a decade after the fall of the USSR, there's never any question in Gaddis' text whose decisions would prove decisive. Gaddis' theories aren't going to break a great deal of new ground: still, even those who are well-versed in the events of the day will appreciate Gaddis' ability to explain clearly the motives of both sides in spite of the tangled geopolitics of the time.

Since The Cold War serves as an introductory text, Gaddis did sacrifice details of events and personalities for the sake of theories and grand strategies. Those looking for a detailed description of the Cuban Missile Crisis or Reagan's words to Gorbachev at Reykjavik won't find either here. But in a war that was just as much about battles that didn't happen, Gaddis' work is indespensible in understanding why events played out as they did.