What I'm reading now

I am slowly reading Underground Railroad, by Whitehead Colson, and also reading Jane's Fame by Claire Herman.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter of Herman's book is the one entitled, Divine Jane, which chronicles the rising popularity of Austen (only among some: I think I recall reading that John Irving never read Austen).

Herman talks about Austen's reputation as a miniaturist and I'd like to reread that again. I think Austen valued that subject and I think "miniatures" were a popular thing in the 18th and early 19th century. Today I think many think Austen too romantic and possibly too trivial. I don't agree with that assessment and I want to read Herman's book again with an eye toward collecting evidence to support my point of view.

What I've read recently

I read Martin Cruz Smith's somewhat surprising Girl from Venice, a World War II story set in the Venice lagoon. I think of Smith as a Follett-like thriller writer but the Girl from Venice is enchantingly lyrical, meticulously researched, romantic in the best sense, and an easy read. I thought it was beautifully written, and the information conveyed about fishing and the Venice lagoon's ecosystem made me think of Randy Wayne White and Melville.

I just read Deadline by John Sandford.  I found it a very funny book, about people who appreciate camo, guns, and dogs, sometimes all at the same time and not necessarily in that order.  There's a lot of blue language in the book which makes it a little bit harder for me to recommend, knowing that many of the readers who might enjoy this book would be bothered by that.

Loved reading 101 Things About Jane Austen:  I knew a lot about Austen, but was interested to learn more details about her family, their literary interests and especially about her mother's talent for versifying.

Walk through the Woods by Colin Dexter

This is one of the later Inspector Morse novels, and it's the first one I've ever read.

I loved it.

I thought it was so clever (the mystery's solution is advanced by the letters column of the local paper where enthusiastic amateurs offer the police their assistance in deducing clues from a poem ostensibly written, and published in the paper, by the murderer).

I was also charmed and bemused by Inspector Morse's need to correct the grammar of the suspects he is interrogating.

I felt the ending was very surprising.  Of course, I should say that I am not as good as guessing the ending as many other mystery readers, and I think I'm looking for local color, character, surprises, and originality rather than solutions.  Plenty of color and character here.  

The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri

This is the third book I've read in this series, and I've read them out of order.
First, I read The Shape of Water, which I loved.  It had plenty of local color and satire.  Then I read the Voice of the Violin, and was a little disappointed by what I viewed as a more conventional mystery.  I couldn't help noticing, however, what an odd jumble of characteristics Inspector Montalbano had - loved classical music, was clearly an avid connoisseur of fine cuisine, but also seemed to be intolerant, impatient, rude, judgmental and impulsive.  Well!

Now that I've seen the Italian TV show I know that the gourmet Montalbano has flat abs and couture clothes as well as the tastes of a gourmet.  Who knew?

I loved the Snack Thief, however, because while it was partly about how we live today in that there was a subplot about illegal immigration, it was also about how we would like to live in that Livia, Inspector Montalbano's long-time love, finds great joy in caring for an orphan.

Livia and I must be sisters under the skin, because I always find I enjoy a mystery more if there's a subplot involving an orphan in peril.  

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey/All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

After Visiting Friends is a memoir told like a mystery tale.  I thought it was very well written.

How important is good writing to a memoir?  I think it's very important.  I think it's like the old tale of The Pot of Broth (per Yeats) or Stone Soup (per Danny Kaye).  With creativity and writing skill you can make a lot out of a little.

On the other hand, in his memoir, Hainey himself writes that the secret of good writing is good reporting.  I know when I have talked to students I've said that a good term paper requires good research.  It is almost like a sculpture.  If you have plenty of information to work with, it's much to shape that information in a useful and aesthetic way (including by cutting things that don't fit your shape).

Hainey grew up with unanswered questions about his father's death, a loss he suffered when he was six years old. (Actually, there are so many intriguing little things about this short memoir that I could write for paragraphs about it:  At one point, Hainey speculates that he might have been a better man if his early loss had not been deepened by the secrecy surrounding it (I longed to know more!); in a publicity video on the Simon & Schuster website, Hainey, a fascinatingly soft spoken man, states that the memoir is really his parents' love story, a claim I'd like to see him prove).

Hainey includes many of his memories of his boyhood in the seventies on the northwest side of Chicago.  I think that there's no question that folks who've lived in Chicago, especially in this period, will enjoy revisiting some of the moments and places that Hainey visits in his quest for the truth which is also sometimes a sentimental journey. Hainey's father was a newspaperman and he is a magazine journalist and editor.  He's a good storyteller, and I both enjoy and respect that.  I think different kinds of readers will find different reasons to enjoy this book.

All the Bright Places is a YA novel.  Two teens have perhaps the "cute meet" of all time when they are both thinking about suicide and independently find themselves on the six story-high ledge of a campus bell tower.  One talks the other down and they find a great deal of meaning in their ensuing friendship/romance.  The boy, Theodore Finch, ensnares the girl, Violet Markey, in a road trip of sorts:  a Geography class assignment to wander the wonders of Indiana.  This proves to be charming, amusing and affecting and my favorite was the bookmobile farm they visited (but the farmer's backyard roller coaster was great fun, too).  This book reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a long time but which I think is important: the stigma surrounding mental illness and the natural reluctance of those affected to be pigeon-holed in that category.

I've unfairly given both these titles short shrift because of time's winged chariot, etc.

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey/All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

After Visiting Friends is a memoir told like a mystery tale.  I thought it was very well written.

How important is good writing to a memoir?  I think it's very important.  I think it's like the old tale of The Pot of Broth (per Yeats) or Stone Soup (per Danny Kaye).  With creativity and writing skill you can make a lot out of a little.

On the other hand, in his memoir, Hainey himself writes that the secret of good writing is good reporting.  I know when I have talked to students I've said that a good term paper requires good research.  It is almost like a sculpture.  If you have plenty of information to work with, it's much easier to shape that information in a useful and aesthetic way (including by cutting things that don't fit your shape).

Hainey grew up with unanswered questions about his father's death, a loss he suffered when he was six years old. (Actually, there are so many intriguing little things about this short memoir that I could write for paragraphs about it:  At one point, Hainey speculates that he might have been a better man if his early loss had not been deepened by the secrecy surrounding it (I longed to know more!); in a publicity video on the Simon & Schuster website, Hainey, a fascinatingly soft spoken man, states that the memoir is really his parents' love story).

Hainey includes many of his memories of his boyhood in the seventies on the northwest side of Chicago.  I think that there's no question that folks who've lived in Chicago, especially in this period, will enjoy revisiting some of the moments and places that Hainey visits in his quest for the truth which is also sometimes a sentimental journey. Hainey's father was a newspaperman and he is a magazine journalist and editor.  He's a good storyteller, and I both enjoy and respect that.  I think different kinds of readers will find different reasons to enjoy this book.

All the Bright Places is a YA novel.  Two teens have perhaps the "cute meet" of all time when they are both thinking about suicide and independently find themselves on the six story-high ledge of a campus bell tower.  One talks the other down and they find a great deal of meaning in their ensuing friendship/romance.  The boy, Theodore Finch, ensnares the girl, Violet Markey, in a road trip of sorts:  a Geography class assignment to wander the wonders of Indiana.  This proves to be charming, amusing and affecting and my favorite was the bookmobile farm they visited (but the farmer's backyard roller coaster was great fun, too).  This book reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a long time but which I think is important: the stigma surrounding mental illness and the natural reluctance of those affected to be pigeon-holed in that category.

I've unfairly given both these titles short shrift because of time's winged chariot, etc.

Miracle on Monhegan Island by Elizabeth Kelly

What an unlikely book!  No wonder it has not yet taken the world by storm!

I loved it.

I hate to try to describe the book's plot because I don't think I can do it justice. I think I read the book mainly because I had a professor who summered on Monhegan, and perhaps also because a book set on an island seemed appealing.  I didn't choose it because of its description because the story of a troubled family, narrated by its dog, didn't seem immediately compelling.

Three generations of a family live on Monhegan Island.  The grandfather is a pastor; the uncle is a painter; and the grandson is only twelve. Although the father is a pastor there's little that's mild about him and his sons frequently compare notes and speculate about their father's plans and intentions. He's a  master manipulator and they're a little bit afraid of him, too.

The story begins when the absent son/brother/father, Spark, decides that he has neglected his son too long, and must return home to try to grow/repair their relationship.  Along the way, he steals a purebred Shih-Tzu from the back of an idling Mercedes.

This is quite shocking to the dog and to Spark's companion, but Spark cheerfully insists he loves the dog already.  The dog, who narrates this tale, soon loves Spark in return.

The dog, now renamed Neddy, falls for Spark because he is sure that he can intuit that beneath Spark's sarcasm and banter is a wounded, sensitive soul who has buried his pain very deep indeed.

The charm of this book, in my view, is its narrator.  Is it interesting and entertaining to know what the dog is thinking?  It certainly is.  But Neddy has a very unique viewpoint, equal parts affection, concern, loyalty, and a sure sense of self.  Neddy is an avid and entertained observer of the family's dynamics, and seen through Neddy's loving eyes they become important and fascinating.

In the book's acknowledgements, the author thanks her agent for "letting me have what for" and thanks her editor for editing and offers as evidence of her devotion the news that she cut her favorite joke from the book at her editor's suggestion.

Kelly's humor and sensibility is what brings Neddy's irresistible charm to life. This is her third book: her others are Apologize! Apologize! and The Last Summer of the Cumperdowns. I hope she will write other books because the glimpse I've had of her view of the world is engaging.

Murder on the Quai by Cara Black

Like A Fine Summer's Day (by Charles Todd) and Blind Goddess (by James R. Benn) this novel in the Investigator Aimee LeDuc series (set in Paris) is a wonderful way to get started in a long-running series by coming in at the beginning, so to speak, without actually going all the way back to the beginning.

Aimee LeDuc is a snappy dresser, a medical student, and the daughter and grandaughter of cops.   This book tells the "creation story," the story of how Aimee went from being a frustrated medical student to a private investigator working in her father's firm.

If you love Paris, and especially if you love eating in Paris, you will be charmed by this book.  After I read it, the first thing I thought was, "I wonder if I should learn French cooking." My jealousy was that acute.

I really enjoyed this book, and I think that in addition to visiting the different streets of the 8th arrodissement, and enjoying Aimee's wonderful dress sense, I loved the pacing of this book.  It swept me up and carried me along.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

This novel begs comparison with John Green's The Fault in Our Stars because both stories feature teenagers grappling with illness.  There the comparison must end, as Andrews' book, while well-constructed, is much less "painterly" than Green's novel.

Part of what I loved about this novel is that one of the characters frequently feels compelled to say funny things to his sick friend and I found myself laughing out loud.

I also enjoyed the departures in narrative style that Andrews adopted.  Some of the dialogue is presented as a film script; some in bullet points.  As in Jennifer Egan's A Visit to the Goon Squad, I found these alternative storytelling forms highly engaging.  In fact, Andrews has a good ear, and recounting of dialogue using bullet points didn't diminish his ability to capture the way we talk now in any way.  A very funny book with quite a bit of bad language.

The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian

I enjoyed this novel, cleverly structured for maximum suspense.  It's set in Florence, in the 1950's, and centers on a female detective (a novelty at the time) investigating a serial killer who seems to have a vendetta against a aristocratic family.  She herself is a former partisan who lived and worked in the area.  She was traumatized by the war and as she investigates the case she learns that the family who is the target of the vendetta also suffered greatly at that time and has a daughter close to her own age.

I love books set in Italy and that was why I guessed I'd enjoy this novel.  Chris Bohjalian is a veteran writer and the author of other novels (his most recent being another suspense novel, The Guest Room). Bohjalian is not a suspense writer, per se; the last novel he wrote was Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, featuring a teenage protagonist trying to survive in Maine after a nuclear plant meltdown. He's also the author of The Sandcastle Girls, a historical novel about the Armenian genocide.

I enjoy reading author acknowledgements and in this case was delighted to learn that Bohjalian's portrait of the Tuscan family was based in part on writer Iris Origo's account of her own family's experiences trying to survive and protect their farm during the Second World War.  I don't know much about Origo but I loved her book The Merchant of Prato and would strongly recommend it to anyone planning a visit to Avignon.

Brighton by Michael Harvey/The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

Brighton by Michael Harvey is a wonderful novel.  It's very true that if you like Dennis Lehane you'll like this novel.  It's not just that it's set in Boston but that it also features a pretty clear-eyed view of the tensions inherent in the urban scene.

This novel is very suspenseful and in part, that's because the author carefully offers tidbits of information as you go along but also because there is a major plot twist at the end of novel which I didn't anticipate.  There were no red herrings, however, which I appreciate.  Michael Harvey's use of street slang and highly poetic metaphor side-by-side delighted me.  It's so fun, and somewhat unusual, to be surprised by excellence and beauty in prose style.

The Whites is a wonderful novel.  I read Brighton and The Whites back to back and as much as I enjoyed Brighton I loved The Whites even more.  It's hard for me to figure out why.  Part of it may be just that there was so much going on in The Whites: the protagonist has his dementia-burdened father at home, a man who slips in and out of the present but is capable of dispensing wisdom, intimidating his son, and helping his son out of a big, big jam regardless.  His friends from the force are all so interesting as individuals.  There's a lot of details about how we live now.

In both novels there are elements that strain credulity but to me that is more than counterbalanced by the richness of characterizations, the excellence with which the plot has been structured, and the realistic view of urban life.

The Granchester Mysteries: Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Temptation by James Runcie

A friend gave me these books for my birthday.  I feel very fortunate - I love them!  I guess what I like about them is that each books is made up of several novellas, so they are very easy to read in one sitting, something I really appreciate as a busy person.

Runcie, the son a former Archbishop of Canterbury, is well versed in the political as well as practical aspects of church administration and drops just enough authentic details about that world to give the stories a realistic grounding that appeals to the practical side of my nature.

On the other hand, because of his role as a clergyman, Runcie's hero, Sidney Chambers, is able to know people from every strata of society, from his charwoman to a Brit of African descent who owns a club in Soho.  I suppose Runcie would have been wonderful company for Jane Austen, or vice versa.

Last, but far from least, in the books Sidney Chambers wrestles quite a bit with how Chritianity prescribes behavior. He wrestles with his own feelings, and with what expectations to have of others. It's more explicit in the book.

In this book, Sidney is married to Hildegard, and in one of the stories they go to visit Hildegard's family in East Germany. This story is dark and while it's very much like the village mystery in that everyone knows each other and that the buried secrets of the past emerge, the change in setting makes it feel quite different.

I personally think the covers are delightful, too.

All the characters from the TV series are here:  Amanda, Mrs. McGuire, Leonard, Hildegard, Sidney's sister and his club-owning brother-in-law.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWit

I really enjoyed this novel.  It's a quick, easy read, and it has a happy ending.  I also thought that Mr. deWit's prose style was exemplary, and I thought it beautiful. 

It is a great book for reading on a bus, train or airplane - you can read for the rollicking action, or slow down, take your time and appreciate the prose.

It is, however, a very violent novel. 

I would definitely recommend this for you if you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino's movies.

It is the tale, set in the American West around the time of the California Gold Rush (1848) of two (arguably) psychopathic brothers (Charlie and Eli) who are paid killers.  Eli and Charlie are very close, but very different.  As the novel progresses, Eli demands, and gets, a reckoning.  After I'd finished it and considered its ending, I had to admit that it reminded me of Voltaire's Candide.  And, now as I consider the high amount of absurdity in the story, I have to say that it reminds me of Beckett, too.  That erudite Mr. deWit! I think I should probably suggest that Mr. deWit stop showing off his prodigious gifts, as they make the rest of us look bad.  But until he does, enjoy.

Billy Boyle: a World War II Mystery by James R. Benn

This title is the first in the series about an Army investigator by James R. Benn.

Really enjoyed it, although I thought the prose style was a little creaky, featuring a few too many adjectives in its description.  Blind Goddess, a later novel in the series, has a prose style I really enjoyed with more economy in its description.

The plot concerns Allied plans for an invasion of Norway.  It won't surprise you to hear that I didn't know any of the details of the invasion of Norway.  I had, however, heard of the "Bus," the fishing boats that ran back and forth from Scotland to Norway during the war.  I heard it about when I watched Shetland, a BBC TV series based on the novels by Ann Cleeves,

Billy's backstory is part of the charm of this novel.  He's a guy who's really never been out of his own backyard, Boston's neighborhoods:  Beacon Hill, North End, South Boston, and he finds himself catapulted into Eisenhower's command.

I read this with a book group and they loved it.  

A Good Family by Erik Fassnacht

I really enjoyed this book.  It took me longer to read than my average book, I think because I read so many mystery books that are written for plot development and in which characterization and psychological insight is often sacrificed.  I think I had to slow down for these carefully etched portraits of ordinary people.  But I found myself sneaking glances at the book at times when I was doing other things, thinking:  gee, do I have to do this right now?  I wonder what's happening in the story.. It wouldn't hurt anything if I read it right now, would it?

Fassnacht is not shy about dropping brand names:  NPR, Chicago magazine, 7-Up, New Balance, TrendStar.  I haven't read so many brand names since I read Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie.

When Barkley, the main protagonist of the novel, arrives at a school for his first day of work as a teacher, he looks down at his New Balance shoes.  I found myself wondering, "Is this significant?  Is this cool?  (Or does it just mean that real teachers wear real comfortable shoes?)"  I looked down at my own New Balance shoes and wondered, very briefly, if they made me cool.  I decided that any shoe with a velcro fastener can't be considered cool.

Many places in Chicagoland are mentioned in this novel, like Diversey Harbor.  I found myself thinking, if you don't know Diversey Harbor, how will you picture this place?

Fassnacht's portrait of Barkley's transition into a professional as he takes his first teaching job and deals with students, both the challenging and the troubled kind, bosses, and office politics generally, is really quite stirring. He experiments, responds to changing conditions and finds his footing. Teaching is a kind of performance, after all.

Nevertheless, the combination of familiar situations and locations, and yes, brand names, lends the novel a wonderful, intimate air of immediacy. I think that this is one of the many ways to tell a story that will resonate with readers.


 

A Question of Honor by Charles Todd (A Bess Crawford mystery)

I have to admit that I was interested in reading this novel both because of its plot, which seemed intriguing, but even more because I loved the cover, which shows The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India.  The Golden Temple doesn't really figure in the story, however.

Charles Todd is a mother-son writing team and they write historical fiction mysteries.  They write two series, the Bess Crawford series and the Ian Rutledge series.  I had already read the Ian Rutledge novel A Fine Summer's Day.  (I can hardly believe it, but this novel is the 17th in the series, and there's a new Ian Rutledge novel out now, No Shred of Evidence.)

Bess Crawford is a nurse serving in the First World War.  She grew up in India, where her father was a regimental colonel.  The early part of the novel recounts events from her childhood in India and I found that part very interesting and enjoyable.

As an adult, she is serving at a field hospital when a stuck truck is pushed out of the mud one night by a group of men, one of whom she thinks she recognizes as a man who served under her father and who disappeared the same day police came to arrest him for murders in both England and India, forever conferring an air of scandal on the regiment Bess's father commands.

The back story of the murders in England, as Bess uncovers the mystery, is fascinating.  I found myself feeling dissatisfied with the motive for the murder and wondered if other readers would feel disappointed as well.

City of Women by David R. Gillham

City of Women is set in Berlin; it opens in 1943, in a movie theater.  Berliners are facing food and other shortages, their men at away at war, neighbors turn in each other to the authorities and an atmosphere of distrust prevails. Sigrid is lonely, harried by her mother-in-law, and meets a strange man at the cinema with whom she starts an affair.  She also meets a young woman who comes to her for aid when the police come into the cinema looking for people with false papers.  These chance encounters change her life irrevocably.

City of Women has elements that remind me of other novels. Like the Paris Architect, the first 100 pages are incredibly suspenseful, and as in both The Nightingale and Paris Architect, apolitical and war-weary individuals nevertheless become engaged in the resistance. Essentially, these individuals come to the point where they say, no more, and their concern for friends, lovers, and strangers overwhelms their sense of self-preservation.

It's partly a novel about female friendship and how that is tested by extreme situations like war.  Over the course of the novel, everything deteriorates.  Danger comes closer for everyone.

Charles Finch, the Chicago-based author of a the Charles Lenox series (an amateur detective in Victorian London), wrote a lovely and thoughtful review of this novel for USA Today.  Here's the link:  http://usat.ly/1Qcy8WL

I think most readers who enjoyed The Nightingale and the Paris Architect will enjoy City of Women as well.  I do think that the sex here is portrayed in a less delicate way that in those other novels, in part because here it's a really important mover in the plot and the changes that Sigrid undergoes.

Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

I've struggled to figure out what to say about this novel.  It's interesting to me because it is about old age and "end of life" issues.  That's not a super popular topic for novels.

I enjoyed the novel because I found that Jill McCorkle used details and voices for her characters that made them seem authentic and alive to me.  I liked her writing style.

Finally, I greatly admired the fact that McCorkle portrayed real drama in the lives of nursing home residents and showed that in this stage of life the inner life continues to be passionate and interesting.

There is a murder in this novel, but this novel is not a mystery and the murder is not solved.  To me, the brutality and tragedy of this murder seemed like an alarming departure in tone from the rest of the novel.

I read this book with a book group and some (not all) were offended by its portrait of aging.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I loved this novel about several generations of a family that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I recognized the themes that I've seen in other Anne Tyler novels: the longing for closeness, disappointments and grievances, rejections and frustrations.

There were several things I really loved here.  One was the legacy of the past represented by the story of how Abby's in-laws met and married, and the seemingly random nature of both this marriage and Abby's own. One was the decades-long conflict between the emotionally withholding, frequently absent and commitment-phobic son and his increasingly perplexed mother, a conflict finally dissolved by grief.

Another thing I loved was Tyler's language, and the way she told the story.  While the novel's not short, it seemed to me to be a novel written in a style with great economy and realism.

This novel really spoke to me, although she was revisiting themes she has explored before.  The tension between the past and the present, the coexistence of love and exasperation, the constant rub of disappointed idealism and how the passage of time alters our passions and perceptions, feels authentic and familiar.

The other novels I've read by Anne Tyler were her first, If Tomorrow Ever Comes, The Accidental Tourist, and The Breathing Lessons, which featured a parental anxiety like Abby's.

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson

This is a novel in the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson, a Yorkshire-born Canadian crime writer.  I'd read a good review and I thought I might enjoy it.

Inspector Banks is called to the scene of a suspicious death.  A man in his sixties has been found on an old railway right-of-way that has been converted into a paved walk.  The embankment is steep enough, and the site far enough away from the nearest village, that the place seems strangely isolated and is mostly frequently by dogwalkers.

The deceased, Gavin Miller, is a disgraced college professor who had fallen on hard times.  And he has 5,000 pounds in his pocket when he's found.

The occasion of Miller's dismissal on sexual misconduct charges produces three suspects; a former student is another; and finally, the circle Miller knew as an undergraduate at the University of Essex provide another two. The character Miller, like the author himself, travels to Canada for his master's degree.

Banks is divorced and spends a lot of his free time at home, listening to jazz and pop while sipping Laphraoig and listening to the rain on his conservatory roof. Loving Van Morrison - and wondering what a Veedon Fleece is - comes up twice in the novel, as well as references to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and other bands of the '60's and '70s.

I found the opening somewhat clunky and prosaic - both the pace at which the tale was told and the character of Inspector Banks himself. (Inspector Banks is refreshingly normal, strategizing ways to get home without driving after going to the pub, for instance.)  Yet I quickly fell under the spell, which is saying quite a lot, I think. I recall that when I read Harlan Coben's Six Years, the unpacking of the mystery - and the many road trips, between New England and Virginia, if I remember correctly - seemed a bit tedious. (I suppose the TV equivalent is folks getting in or out of their cars.)

SoHo Sins by Richard Vine

There's so much to say about this novel I hardly know where to begin.

First, it's published by by the Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Books, self-described as one that "brings you the best in hard-boiled crime fiction, from lost pulp classics to new work by today's most powerful writers, all in handsome and affordable editions.  The yellow ribbon represents your assurance of quality" (from the back cover).

These crime paperbacks always have the kind of covers used for cheap crime pulp fiction from the 50's and 60's and I know I'd always wanted to read one since I saw a Lawrence Block novel perhaps a year ago.  When I came across this ARC copy of Soho Sins, I was a goner.  In fact, this cover has a Marilynesque woman in a red dress sitting on the ground in alley, gazed upon by a man wearing a fedora and a brown overcoat - right next to a garbage can.

The story is set in the past - in the eighties or nineties. Jack is a gallery owner and art dealer, and an owner of several buildings in Soho, in New York City, as the real estate market there heated up.

He recalls a wealthy couple he knew, and his gratitude to them for befriending him, "taking him up," after his wife had died. What they shared was a passion for art, and this is backdrop for this murder noir.

The wife is killed; the husband immediately confesses. But it's not that simple: while he'd always strayed, at the time of his wife's death, he'd been seeing a beautiful young artist for several years and his wife was planning divorce. The other wrinkle, more profound, is that the husband, Phillip, has a degenerative brain disease that is robbing him of his memory.

There are other suspects: There's Phillip's first wife, living in the suburbs and trying to continue her career as an artist while raising their now twelve-year-old daughter. She's never quite gotten over her ex-husband.

There's the wife's shady performance artist lover, young and good-looking but involved in underworld business ventures, with members of the Italian mafia and Chinese gangs.

Then there's the cabal:  the circle of executives at Phillip's tech company that have a lot to lose as Phillip deteriorates and something to gain from his wife's death.

Phillip's lawyer hires a private eye who's an old friend of Jack's and who insists that Jack use his access to the art world, and Phillip, to help him with his inquiries - all the while making sardonic remarks about the ill-gotten gains of Jack's wealthy clients.

About 75% of the way into the novel, when I realized that the shady boyfriend's illegal doings were pornography I thought about bailing on the novel. (I did ask myself what it was that I expected, after all, when I picked up a crime paperback with a pulp fiction cover.) I decided to stick with it and was rewarded with another couple of major twists to the plot, all the way to the last pages.  Whew!

Richard Vine is the nom-de-plume of this debut novel author, an editor of a fine art magazine.

The story reminded me a little of Bonjour Tristresse, although this was far more shocking.  If tales of domestic crises are too tame for your beach reading. this jaw-dropping, totally not-in-the-best-of-taste roller coast ride might be the perfect vacation read for you.

The Revenant/The Hateful Eight

It surprises me that two Western movies were nominated for Academy Awards this year.

I loved the cinematography of The Hateful Eight; it made a great impression on me and is a large part of why I enjoyed the film.  I think the acting was wonderful, too.

The Revenant was also very beautifully photographed, and the locations in which it was shot were spectacular.

Both films were terrifically entertaining, perfect summer movies.  The Revenant was based on a true story, but after reading a few articles on the Internet, I concluced that the only overlap between the movie and reality is that fur trapper Hugh Glass really was horribly mauled by a grizzly and really did survive, was abandoned by his companions, and subsequently recovered enough to walk into camp 80 miles away.

I wonder if, in our age of anxiety, it is more comforting to look backward than to look forward.

The dictionary definition of revenant, by the way, is one who returns from the dead or long absence.

Heirs and Graces by Rhys Bowen

I enjoyed this book, and was impressed by how closely it seemed to hew to the Agatha Christie formula:  plenty of suspects, class tension between the local constabulary and the suspects, a drawing room unmasking of the murderer.  I also thought it was well-written and nicely paced.  It's part of the Royal Spyness series, and there was a little expositionary background offered to help folks who hadn't read the rest of the series to be introduced to all of the returning characters.

In this series, the detective is a duke's daughter who is 35th to the throne, and the murder takes place at a aristocratic home in rural Surrey, complete with fox hunt, so it did feel like very much like something that a Downton Abbey fan might enjoy.

I read it with a book group and several folks described it as fluff.  I found myself wondering why that was, exactly, when to me, the book seemed like such a classic Agatha Christie-type mystery.

I'm not sure but I'd guess that tastes have changed, and Agatha Christie-type mysteries seem tame compard to today's suspense thrillers.

Also, this particular book had a surprising ending, one that I didn't at all anticipate, but it perhaps just didn't have the bite and menace that Christie mysteries have.

Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta

This book was recommended to me by an enthusiastic reader of fiction.

I found it original and refreshing and truthfully, a little opaque.  The review I read in Entertainment Weekly after I finished the novel helped me to understand that love of cinema is a theme that runs through the novel
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I thought it merited description as a novel about the way we live now, and about the tension between art and morality, but it is not comforting fiction.  It is also about friendship.  Spiotta captures the complex dynamic between two friends who are as different and as close as Carrie and Meadow -- sometimes competitive, sometimes judgmental and impatient but nevertheless striving to be loyal, caring and supportive.

Carrie and Meadow are filmmakers and lifelong best friends.  Meadow creates documentaries that offer a fresh perspective on topics such as the Kent State shootings. Carrie's work is more conventional.

Amy, whose nickname is Jelly, is a woman who engages in what the author calls, in her "Acknowledgements," as "proto-'catfishing'".  She calls men in the movie industry and talks to them about their work and other topics.  She calls herself Nicole in these phone calls, and she starts them by pretending it's a wrong number.  She loves these conversations and they are thoughtful conversations, but ones in which she is manipulating the person on the other end to be increasingly interested in her.  Spiotta describes how Jelly sits while she's talking on the phone, how she arranges herself to be comfortable or changes position while she's talking on the phone.

Spiotta's last book, Stone Arabia, was a finalist for the National Book Book Critics Circle Award.

The Big Short/Steve Jobs

Both of these movies were adapted from books.  The Big Short was adapted from the book by Michael Lewis, and Steve Jobs was adapted from the biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

As The Big Short began, I found myself wondering: how can this work?  I was very pleasantly surprised.  I think it worked very well.  I found it very enjoyable.

The scene in which Margot Robbie, sitting in a bathtub full of bath bubbles, explains selling short, would probably be worth the price of admission alone to some viewers.

The movie captured the story of the book, the individual stories of these iconoclastic individuals who bet against the system and won.  I think it also captured what I would call the "sheep" mentality of seemingly many bankers who assumed that low quality mortgage-backed securities could not fail because no one refused to sell them and sellers didn't have much trouble selling them, either.

The ending was sobering, as the filmmakers pointed out that no one has gone to jail for selling something worthless or putting families into mortgages they could not afford, and that nothing else has changed, either.

I found Steve Jobs to be less successful.  The tremendous compression of event into the three acts was kind of overwhelming.  One exception, I think, were the scenes between Jobs and Scully.  That, I think, was completely successful in conveying the very complicated relationship the two men had.  In retrospect, I think Jeff Daniels' acting was just sublime .. an accomplishment all the harder to achieve, I think, because it was a very "playey" film, that felt like the film of a play.  In retrospect, I have to say I think the acting was great.

The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

I'm reading this now.  I'd gotten interested in it because the plot seemed so clever, and because I saw that it was a popular book club book.

Lucien is an architect living in Paris, two years into the German occupation.  He's a man with few political convictions, and he's somewhat desperate because he hasn't had an architectural commission since the Germans invaded.  The city of light is now bleak and dreary.  Many of the population have fled and it's difficult to get any but the most basic food.

He's approached by a wealthy industrialist, Manet, with a surprising commission.  Manet wants Lucien to design an undiscoverable hiding place for a Jew on the run from the Gestapo.  Lucien is shocked, angered and terrified by this request.  Manet sweetens his well-paid offer with the promise of a commission to design a factory to be built for the Nazi war effort.  Lucien, a frustrated modernist, can't resist the lure.

I thought that this would be a suspenseful book, and it is - I've left off reading at Chapter 25 because I'm so terrified.

I was resolved to finish, and so I have.  The book became even more terrifying.  Lucien experienced so many reversals of fortune, as did the people around him.

I was amazed when I came to the final chapter.  I thought I was still many pages from the end.  It turned out that that was because I was reading a paperback book club edition, with book group discussion questions, an interview with the author, and an "Acknowledgment".

I was interested in all of them.

One of the book discussion questions, number 14, was this:  "If you were a gentile living under the Nazis in World War II, do you think you would have had the courage to hide Jews?  What consequences are you willing to face to help others?"  I spent a lot of time, while reading the book, thinking about this question.

I think one reason I spent so much time thinking about this is that Lucien was initially very unwilling to help Manet in his effort to hide Jews.  Lucien was terrified by the very idea.  He thought that the chances that they all would be caught were very great, and he knew that they would all be killed.  As a matter of fact, the novel opens with a death.  It underscored the terror of living in Paris under the Occupation. While the Germans were not intent on killing the French, they were ruthless in making examples of anyone they could to frighten the French into abandoing all hope of fighting back.

Lucien is persuaded to accept this dangerous commission because food is getting more and more expensive in Paris, and his dependence on his wife's savings has hurt their marriage, already strained by his wife's inability to have children.  The far more powerful reason is that he not only has not had any work since the start of the war but he has never been successful in getting his career going; he's never had a major commission and he has never been able to build a building in the style he most admires, the modern style professed by the Bauhaus architects.

As the novel wears on, however, while he continues to be ruled by his ego, and often notes in his own mind that architects are very influenced by their egos, Lucien changes.  His experience awakens feelings that he didn't know that he had.  He's quite a different person by the end of the novel.

In The Nightingale, Isabelle was a resistance fighter.  She escorted downed pilots across the Pyrenees.  She was a heroine, but she was quite different from Lucien.  She knew, as soon as France was invaded, that she had to do something to fight back.  Lucien is more like Isabelle's sister, who became increasingly worn down by the war but the escalation of food shortages, murders and deportation formed in her a resolve to fight back.

While war certainly brings out the worst in us, as you would expect chronic fear and deprivation to do, in this novel it brings out the best in Lucien.

In the interview with the author that was printed in the back of my copy, I learned that he is an architectural historian who's written several books about architectural history.  I was delighted to learn that he is an Anne Tyler fan, as I have been since I found a discarded copy of If Tomorrow Ever Comes someplace. Belfoure said that as a native of Baltimore, as Tyler is, he has enjoyed recognizing the places she names in her novels.

In his Acknowledgement, author Belfoure thanked his editor at Sourcebooks (the publisher).  I was so glad to see this, as I think that editors have an important in shaping books.

I read this book with my book group and one member called it a real "page turner" and no one seemed to find any fault with it which is a distinction in itself.

Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

I read this on Saturday.  I enjoyed it very much.  I'm struggling to figure out which elements made me enjoy the experience.  I find myself wondering if I'm stuck in a Downton Abbey mindset:  when, for instance, Maggie Hope is roundly rebuked for not dressing for dinner, I think, "Hmm.. that's interesting .. dressing for dinner is still important in 1941."

I wonder if the quality that I enjoy is that it doesn't seem too real, and it doesn't seem too frightening. I know from reading the acknowledgments that MacNeal did some research, especially in reading the memoir of the real-life governess who cared for the royal princesses in Windsor Castle.  Maggie, despite her disappointment at spy school, is someone who is surprising lucky, competent and capable.  She always comes out on top!

I knew from reading reviews that at least one critic thought that the second book in the Maggie Hope series was not as strong as the first; I can't say that I perceived much difference.  In both books, the mystery is, who can be trusted?  And while I was much less surprised by the big reveal in the second novel, I did not predict all the twists and turns.  It may be that the guilty parties were too obviously signaled by the author -- I'm not sure.

As the novel opens, Maggie is excited -- but exhausted -- to be at spy school in Scotland.  Sadly, her physical strength is just not great enough, and she is in danger of failing to pass the physical strength and endurance tests.  At the same time, there's a murder at Claridge's Hotel that suggests not only that there may be a spy or spy network at Windsor Castle, but that there may be a connection to the spy at Bletchley Park that Edmund Hope, Maggie's father, has been working undercover to try to discover.

Frain, the head of MI-5, pulls Maggie out of spy school to pose as a math tutor to the teenage Princess Elizabeth, who is living, with her sister Margaret, at Windsor Castle.  The Luftwaffe bombings have made London unsafe for them.  Maggie's job is to discreetly keep her eyes and ears open while avoiding any suspicion.  This is the perfect job for Maggie, who is a talented mathematician who once aspired to attend MIT.

Of course, on her first night, Maggie is roundly criticized for not dressing for dinner.  She begins to meet the many folks working at Windsor Castle -- the librarian, the ladies-in-waiting, the governess, the cook, the falconer .. the list goes on and on.

I think I appreciated the details like knowing that the Royal Mews is located on top of the castle and that that is where the falcons are kept.

Maggie saves the day, as usual, but this time with a big assist from a stout-hearted and enterprising Princess Elizabeth.

In the next book,  His Majesty's Hope, Maggie is dropped into France, and the story begins in Germany.  Stay tuned! 

Golden Egg by Donna Leon

The Publishers Weekly review of this book concludes this way:  "Appreciative of feminine charms, the deeply uxorious Brunetti amply displays the keen intelligence and wry humor that has endeared this series to so many."

I always feel suspicious whenver I see the word uxorious: it reminds me of when Jonathan Franzen didn't want to be named an Oprah author because he believed men would not buy his book.

By the way, the Merriam-Webster.com definition of uxorious is:  having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife.

Can't agree with Publishers Weekly's assessment:  I'd say Commissario Guido Brunetti is smart.

When his wife calls him at work to tell him some sad news, that the disabled man who worked at their neighborhood cleaners has died and that she feels bad because she doesn't know how to help or to honor this man's life, he clearly feels that she is being oversensitive.  But he is careful to hear her out, to sound saddened as well, and to call her a pet name as he ends the phone conversation.

It is his wife Paola's concern for the dead man, David Cavanella, that starts in motion Commisario Brunetti's investigation of what appears at first to be an accidental death.  The investigation is difficult:  the dead man's mother shuts her door in Brunetti's face.  He figures a roundabout direction is the best way to investigate further:  the neighbors aren't talking either, and he wonders if his colleague Vianello's wife would be the right kind of person winkle some truth out of the neighbors. But Vianello, somewhat to Brunetti's surprise, turns him down.  Eventually, he turns to his Neapolitan colleague, Griffoni, and also has seeks the help of another colleague, the redoubtable Elettra, his superior's well-informed secretary and a longtime ally.  And, he learns a lot about all of his colleagues, as they struggle over their abilities to manipulate suspects and the tug of loyalties to family and work that sometimes conflict.

The theme, to me, is surprising:  it's about bad, I mean really bad parenting.  Guido and Paola make a strong and convenient contrast.  It's also about the joys of language, perhaps not surprising for an author (and her audience). As wholesome and happy and Guido's family seems, the dark mystery he unravels is very dark indeed.

Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich

What a great read!  It's easy, fast and engaging.

Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter who works for her cousin Vinnie, a bond bailsman.  Bonds bailsmen finance the bonds that that people are who are charged with crimes have to pay in order to guarantee that they will return for their court date.  When those with bail bonds fail to show for their court date, it's Stephanie's job to pick them up and take them back to jail.

Stephanie has problems.  She's not really cut out to be a bounty hunter:  she owns a gun, but she doesn't have any bullets.

She has two men who are interested in her:  Ranger, the "super-hot" head of a local private security firm, and Joseph Morelli, a sweet, mild-mannered man whom she loves .. but who has just broken up with her.

She's charged with finding a college student whose nickname is "Gobbles."  He's charged with striking the dean of students at a local college.  Stephanie works hard on this case, but each time she visits campus the mystery of just what it is that Gobbles is mixed up in deepens and something bad happens.  On one visit, Gobbles' fraternity brothers do something very, very bad to her car.  On another occasion, there is a big explosion and fire.

Stephanie says of her trusty sidekick, Lula:

"Lula was originally a respectable 'ho.  A couple of years ago she'd decided to relinquish her corner to take a job as a file clerk for the bonds office.  Since almost all the files are digital these days, Lula mostly works as my wheelman.  She's four inches too short for her weight, her clothes are three sizes too small for her generously proportioned body, and her hair color changes weekly, her skin is a robust dark chocolate.

"I feel invisible when I stand next to Lula, because no one notices me.  I inherited a lot of unruly curly brown hair from the Italian side of my family, and I have a cute nose that my grandma says is a gift from God.  My blue eyes and pale skin are the results of my mother's Hungarian heritage.  Not sure where my 34B boobs come from, but I'm happy with them, and I think they look okay with the rest of me."

And Stephanie has family:

"My mother and Grandma Mazur were in the kitchen eating lunch when I walked in. Grandma Mazur came to live with my parents when Grandpa graduated from this life to the next.  My mother, being a good Catholic woman, accepted this living arrangement as her cross to bear and gets by with help from Jim Beam.  My father developed selective hearing and spends a lot of time at his lodge.  And now that we took his gun away we feel that it's safe to leave him alone with Grandma."

This is a great book for a trip (or as an audiobook for a car trip) or a doctor's appointment.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I'm at about page 250.  Roxane Coss is one of the most accomplished sopranos living; Mr. Hosokawa is an opera mad Japanese industrialist who has been lured to an unnamed South American country where the government is eager to attract foreign investment by the enticement of a birthday party for him at which Roxane Coss will sing.  The party is held at the Vice President's home.

Roxane Coss sings and as she finishes her final aria the lights go out; terrorists swarm the premises, having entered the building through the HVAC system.  All of the guests, all of the kitchen workers and staff are held hostage.  The terrorists are surprised and confused when they discover that the President, who was scheduled to attend and was their quarry, is not there.

Two weeks later, a Swiss man named Messner enters the house.  He is a arbitration expert who just happened to be in town on vacation when the hostage event occurred, and has remained long after his vacation should have ended, and he should have returned home, to act as courier and communicator between the terrorists and the authorities.

He thinks to himself that he most likes to talk to General Benjamin; General Benjamin seems intelligent. He finds himself worrying about General Benjamin because the General has a terrible case of shingles that is red, angry, obviously painful and seems to be creeping across his face to reach his eye. Messner reminds himself that it is a mistake to become attached to anyone here, captors and hostages alike.  He knows that situations like this always end badly.

At the same time, Roxane Coss has discovered that one of Mr. Hosokawa's colleagues at his electronics firm is an excellent pianist, and would be happy to accompany her so that she could practice.  All she needs now is sheet music.  She approaches Messner with a list she wishes him to convey to her management in Italy.

The young priest in the house, Father Arguedas, overhears her request to Messner as it is translated by Gen, Mr. Hosokawa's translator.  He rushes to insert himself into the conversation and struggles to get Gen's attention.  His friend lives two miles away and is a music librarian.  Father Arguedas' friend Manuel can get them the Chopin, the Faure, the Bellini, Verdi and Puccini, that they want and more besides. He's so eager to help because he became a priest so that he could help others:  that is his reason for being.  But his great interest, his great comfort, his great passion is opera.  He, like Mr. Hosokawa, is a little in love with Roxanne Coss.  The beauty of her singing moves them so greatly, that love and deference occur to them naturally.

It was at this point that I burst into tears.

Christmas movies: Mr. Holmes/Woman in Gold/Star Wars/Spectre/Spotlight/She's Funny That Way/Brooklyn

I loved Mr. Holmes.  In it, Sherlock Holmes is elderly, retired, living in the country and keeping bees. He's having problems with his memory, and it bothers him.  He struggles to remember his last case. As he struggles to remember, snippets of memory swim into his consciousness, and as they do so, he grieves the past anew.  Milo Parker (who will remind you of Thomas Brodie-Sangster from Love Actually) plays the son of Holmes' housekeeper, who is, increasingly, the old man's friend.  The plot is clever, and the acting is wonderful.

I put off watching Woman in Gold, and put it off, and put it off some more because I think I thought it would be dreary.  As I imagined, Helen Mirren was wonderfully charismatic and charming.  As a creature of my time and place, I felt pained by the "underdog" story -- we all know you can't fight City Hall - but in this case, unassuming people did win.  It's lovely, sad and instructive all at the same time.

Star Wars was a lot of fun.  I think a pulse of electricity rolled through the audience as the first battle sequence began.  Daisy Ridley seemed like a revelation.  It will be so interesting to see how her career unfolds.

I really enjoyed Spectre, and especially loved the opening scenes in Mexico City.  I thought it spectacular and entirely engaging.  I thought that Christoph Waltz was miscast.  I think villains are somewhat boring but I feel that Waltz' acting reveals his intelligence and this interferes with projecting evil menace.  I had read reviews which complained that the plot was somewhat muddled, and I felt in retrospect that that may have been a fair criticism, but it didn't occur to me while I was watching it, and it didn't interfere in any way with my enjoyment.

Spotlight was very well written, well paced, well acted, and quite enjoyable.  It deals with a difficult subject that not everyone will want to view.  I think everyone in the cast wore khakis except for Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo's hair cut was awful, just awful, which I believe we are to understand is the kind of haircut that journalists sport.  I'm making fun, and I was surprised, but I appreciate the seriousness of the plot and the costumes.

She's Funny That Way is a film I saw on video; I'm not sure how I found it. It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich.  It's a "quirky" comedy that reminds me very much of a sixties comedy starring Barbra Streisand I saw on the TV the other day (For Pete's Sake, actually not from the sixties), which reminds me that this material is meant not just to be funny but to be funny in a comforting way.  It's a movie for movie buffs.  Obviously, no one thinks that this movie is a masterpiece but I realize that I admire it.  It's entertaining, escapist, and ends happily.  Imogen Poots plays the title character; at the end of the film she rues her debut play closing in a week, saying, "Long Island housewives just want to escape."  I think a lot of people just want to escape and this movie offers that.  Somehow this reminds me of Sullivan's Travels, and I want to say that Veronica Lake and Barbra Streisand were wonderful comic actresses.  I think Imogen Potts carried on the tradition in this film, and I think that's quite nice.

Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan, was a film I felt I had to see because I had read the novel.  I'd found the novel very troubling.  I wasn't sure if Eilis was really happy with her choice.  Had she really chosen freely?  Or, had she allowed herself to be persuaded to do something that she wasn't really ready to make a commitment to do?  The movie suggests that she did choose what she really wanted and that she was happy with her choice.

The movie is so beautiful.  It's really true to the action of the book.  Saoirse  Ronan is so beautiful; the costumes are spectacular and so are the scenes shot in Ireland.   The movie is set in the '50s.  It's the story of an immigrant, and the pain of immigration - not wanting to leave, but being forced by a complete lack of opportunity.

I'd never read anything by Colm Toibin at that time; I found out about the novel because the Chicago Public Library chose it for their "One City, One Book" program.