Books on Film: Stephen King's Advice for Aspiring Writers.

Maybe not entirely safe for family viewing.



"I can do better than this, and this got published!"

TSS: Teaching Voltaire to 13-Year-Olds

Last week I mentioned that I would be teaching the Enlightenment to my 7th graders which is no easy feat.  I resorted to computer animated trickery using Blabberize.com.  Modern technology makes it possible to bring history to life, or at least for middle school teachers to come up with a few gimmicks that might capture the attention of a middle schooler in late May.  The results are below.  Imagine them projected onto the big screen.



I did the same with the John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and a couple of others.  My morning class loved them and was shocked to find out that all of the voices used were mine.  I didn't think my accents were all that good.  They tended to slip in bad Monty Python French after a few lines.  My afternoon class sat there like a bunch of lumps.  I could  tell they were all thinking, when will he just go away and leave us alone.  Both classes liked my Voltaire the best.

If you're wondering, the answers to the questions Voltaire asks are that he belived in freedom of speach and that he was put into prison several times and forced to flee both the city and the country several times.  Thesedays many people say they believe in Freedom of Speech, but Voltaire walked the walk.  And if you haven't read his novel Candide, you really should.  It's a riot.  Many of my 7th graders would probably love it, but it's not at all appropriate for 7th grade.

Dakota's Favorites: The Master by Colm Toibin

The Master was my first encounter with Colm Toibin.  I've since read more of his work and have come to love it.  I think if I'd been more familiar with Mr. Toibin's books I probably would have given The Master five stars instead of four.  It's probably the best of a very impressive body of work.  Upon reflection I really hate the comparison at the end of this review.  A Faberge egg does not have to hatch to be fabulous.  How silly of me.  This review first ran in March of 2008.

The Master by Colm Toibin is an excpert imagining of the life of novelist Henry James, author of Portrait of a Lady among many others. The Master is a haunting, engrossing book; one that you can lose yourself in but also one that I found fairly easy to put down.


Toibin's prose is rich, as rich as that of Henry James. His novel is so full of detail, so subtle in it's portrayal of the novelist, that every moment in it is entirely believable. It would be easy to convince me that James himself wrote the book. Take for example Toibin's portrayal of James's romantic attachments--there is one at the start of the novel and a second in the novel's closing sections. In the first, James enters into a friendship that becomes quite close, one that he becomes slightly obsessive about. Eventually it becomes clear to him that he is entering dangerous ground, the Oscar Wilde trials are underway, people may begin to talk, so he finds reason to break off the relationship. In the second example, he becomes a mentor of sorts for a young American sculptor whom he meets in Italy. He convinces the sculptor to visit his country home in England in the hopes that the sculptor will open a studio nearby. Soon, it becomes apparent that the sculptor is destined for the vibrant art scene of New York and that life in the English countryside with the aging novelist will not be a life the sculptor can accept.

Both of these stories are portrayed with the exact level of subtly that a nineteenth century novelist, a respectable novelist like Henry James, would have used. So subtle that you could easily miss just how profound the attraction between the characters is. Nothing physical ever happens between James and either young man, but a careful reader can feel the attraction and appreciate the loss James experiences each time. The level of depth in the characterization, the beauty of the descriptive language, the fragility of the plot points and climaxes are what make The Master such an entrancing read. Once you are into the book, it becomes a welcoming place, like a visit with an old friend you have not had a chance to talk to in a long time.

The problem is that once you've stopped reading for the night, there is very little to compel you back into the story the next day. The plot goes forward and backward in time painting an interesting and complex picture, but it's a static picture, not a motion picture. It's exquisite, but it's not going anywhere. Like a Faberge egg, you can look at it from many angles and always enjoy the view, but if you're waiting for something to happen, for the egg to hatch, you're going to be disapppointed.

So, in the end, I'm giving The Master by Colm Toibin four out of five stars. I'm glad I read it, and I am recommending it, but the rewards it offers are rewards the reader will have to work for. I think it is worth the effort.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Waking up begins with saying am and now.

Opening to A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Does knowing an author's biography affect reading his work?  It's not possible for anyone who has seen the documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story to read Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, without connecting its story to Isherwood's own life.  Christopher Isherwood met the love of his life, Don Bachardy, when he was 48 and Don was just 16.  In spite of this eyebrow raising age difference, the two stayed together for over 30 years until Isherwood's death at the age of 81.  They lived openly as a gay couple at a time when doing so was virtually unheard of.  They were happy together, except for a period of time when Don Bachardy left Isherwood and attempted to break off their relationship.  During this period, Mr. Isherwood wrote his novel A Single Man.

A Single Man details a day in the life of George, a forty-something British ex-pat who lives in Los Angeles where he works as an English professor in a local college.  George is recovering from the loss of his long time partner who has died in a sudden auto accident.  Because none of his neighbors and few of his colleagues knew the true nature of George's relationship, he has not told them that his partner died, but that his roommate has moved back east.   This way George can avoid facing his grief at every turn.  He has removed all traces of his partner from his home, all belongings, all of their  pets.  He is pretending that he is not a grieving man and doing fairly well at keeping up the charade.  Only his close friend Charlotte knows what really happened.

One can't help but read George as Christopher Isherwood.  In A Single Man, Isherwood, a man whose partner has left him, created a fiction about a man whose partner has died.  By extension, Isherwood is pretending his partner has died while his fictional character pretends his partner has left him. 

I was struck by how much A Single Man reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Hours by Michael Cunningham.  All three novels take place during a single day and all three deal with the minutiae of their characters' lives as a vehicle to reach a deeper understanding of the characters.  But much more than this, I felt an overall tone in A Single Man that I also felt in The Hours.  A sense of  unexplainable loss.  In each book the characters mourn for a particular person, but there is also a sense of morning for a way of life that has perished alongside the person who died.  A sense that the totality of the loss one must recover from is much more than a person.  When someone is lost we don't just lose the person, we lose the person we were when we were with them. 

None of this is said in so many words in A Single Man, and the book is not nearly as heavy as I'm making it sound.  George has  made his peace with the loss of his partner before the book opens.  He is still grieving, grief never stops completely, but his grief has already begun to be part of the background of his life.  Grief is not something one can "move on" from, but George has begun to move on, his grief still in tow.

*********

Here is Christopher Isherwood on the pleasure of books:

The living room is dark and low-ceilinged, with bookshelves all along the wall opposite the windows. These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise.  It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, according to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly--despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public--to put him to sleep, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to gossip him out of his melancholy, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon.

Here is the trailer for Chris and Don: A Love Story which I recommend.. 

Full Disclosure: The photograph of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy come from Alt Film Guide.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Those who saw him hushed.

Opening sentence to Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

I want to make two points about Colum McCann's novel Let The Great World Spin.  First, it's an excellent example of how movies have influenced literature.  In the 1960's Robert Altman started making movies with ensemble casts, like M*A*S*H and his early masterpiece Nashville.  These movies featured a wide range of characters each involved in their own plot.  Their paths crossed during the movie, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly, but their plots remained their own.  Robert Altman continues to make movies like this and many other directors have followed his example from Paul Thomas Anderson with Magnolia to Paul Haggis with Crash to Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros and Babel.  The point in each being that our lives are interconnected in ways we cannot completely understand.  Six degrees of separation.  I won't be at all surprised when someday soon the characters in one movie begin to appear in another. 

In Mr. McCann's wonderful novel, Let The Great World Spin, the connections hang by a thread, or rather a reinforced steel cable.  A radical clergyman who lives among the prostitutes in the rougher parts of New York City's Bronx neighborhood, an uptown woman living in an East Side penthouse apartment, a twice divorced mother who has lost three sons to the war in Vietnam, and a tightrope walker who dreams of stretching his cable between the towers of the almost finished World Trade Center along with their friends and family make the cast of narrators in Let The Great World Spin. 

Anyone who has ever lived in a city can tell you that there really aren't any cities, just very big villages.  Live in a city long enough and you'll find out everyone knows somebody who knows somebody else.  Maybe you didn't see the guy who walked across the Twin Towers, but someone in your building probably did, or knows someone who did.  And we can't read a novel about the day in 1974 when Philippe Petit made his famous walk without thinking of the day in September almost 30 years later when the towers fell.  One of Mr. McCann's narrators points out the foreshadowing in Fernando Marcano's photograph of Philippe Pettit (below).

I've been thinking about these ensemble cast movies and books and their literary antecedents.  While large casts of characters were typical in 19th century novels.  Dickens, Trollope, Hugo, Elliot,  what I think separates movies like Nashville and books like Let The Great World Spin from works like Bleak House and Les Miserables is the way the characters in 19th century novels tend to serve as a means to advance the plot.  While Mr. Altman and Mr. McCann are concerned with plot, their main loyalty lies with their characters.  In order to explore their characters, they'll both leave the audience hanging in ways that Dickens or Hugo would never consider. 

Not that Mr. McCann leaves his readers hanging.  Let The Great World Spin details only glimpses into the lives of its characters, but these glimpses illustrate each character's life with spotlight intensity.  His light never illuminates the entire stage at once, but his spotlight shows each character in such extreme emotional detail that we learn all we need to know about them.  Mr. McCann shows us how our entire lives can be present in the action of a single day.  All that we are is the sum of all that we have been. 

The second point I want to make about Let The Great World Spin is how much I found Mr. McCann's writing to match his description of one of his characters:

She rose and went to the record player.  I couldn't see the sleeve of the record she took out.  She cleaned the vinyl with a soft yellow cloth and then she lifted the needle.  She did everything small as if it was extraordinary and necessary.

Mr. McCann writes everything small, as if it is extraordinary and necessary and he writes it all well enough to show that it is, in fact, extraordinary and necessary even when it seems like something inconsequential. 



Full Disclosure: I received a copy of Let the Great World Spin free from the publisher and there is a very good chance that this book will end up on my favorite reads of 2010 list.

SS: Why is Huffington Post So Darn Dumb? Can You Trust Wikipedia? Why Should 12-year-olds Care About Voltaire?

This week Huffington Post ran a photo series called The 12 Greatest Literary One-Hit-Wonders.  Normally, this is just the sort of thing I enjoy, lists of books.  But the good people at Huff Po don't even understand what a One-Hit-Wonder is.  The term comes from popular music and refers to bands that records a single hit song and are then never heard from again.  For example, The Ruggles who recorded the first song/video ever played on MTV, Video Killed the Radio Star.

Huff Po lists some books/authors who are clearly one-hit-wonders: Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Anna Sewell's Black Beauty.  I'm not convinced it's fair to label an author a one-hit-wonder if they were prevented from writing more by death, but I'll play along.

What I won't play along with is calling an author a one-hit-wonder when they wrote more than one successful book.  Charlotte Bronte published four novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald published five, William Golding published 12, Joseph Heller published 7, Herman Melville published more than Moby Dick and Jack Kerouac published more than On the Road.  Maybe not much more I'll grant, but more.  They are not one-hit-wonders.

And why not include Dante, Cervantes and Chaucer on the list instead? What about Henry Roth's Call it Sleep and  and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces? 

While I like mindless lists of books, put a little thought into it next time Huff Po!

Also recently on Huffington Post, Sarah McCarry wrote a piece on women book bloggers called Faking Nice in the Blogosphere: Women and Book Reviews.  See if this passage makes you nod your head in agreement or shake your fist in rage.

Book bloggers and reviewers--female book bloggers and reviewers especially--often seem to subscribe to a kind of cultlike apologism, in which they feel the need to defend the author as a person even if they are temerarious enough to be displeased by her book. Negative reviews are met with a resounding chorus in the comments: the author is a wonderful person, the author worked hard, the author did her very best. The idea is, apparently, that women are so exhausted by the intellectual labor required to produce the text in question that we are unable to withstand any subsequent critique, and ought instead to fall back on some kind of rosy-cheeked sorority of lady writers, exchanging stain-removal tips and sob stories. It goes without saying that male writers are accorded no such coddling, and that entry into this misty realm of sisterly solidarity requires acquiescence to a strict set of codes of behavior. Nice lady writers don't rock the boat, they don't hurt people's feelings, and they sure as hell don't write about topics that make other lady writers uncomfortable. But instead of promoting community, this obsession with niceness wields a potent silencing force.

Ms. McCarry does raise some interesting, and probably valid, points in her article and anyone who can correctly use words like temerarious deserves some respect.  The topic of why so few people post bad reviews comes up regularly.  In fact, it comes up so regularly that one can't help but wonder why Ms. McCarry doesn't seem to know this.  While women book bloggers are a friendly bunch, I would not describe them as  a rosy-cheeked sorority of lady writers exchanging stain-removal tips and sob stories.  There may be a sob story here and there, but I've never once seen a stain-removal tip. And I actually have quite a few stains I'd like to remove......

In other news this week......

I've had to change the design of my blog again. The template with the birds flying off at the top of the page vanished this week. I don't know what happened, but one morning the birds were gone.  Flew the coop.  The next day the text background color mysteriously switched to black making everything too difficult for me to read.  So, I found this new template.  Not sure I like it, but it is easier for me to read. 

And, I found out that Ready When You Are, C.B. is listed on Wikipedia in the footnotes to an article about an author I interviewed here.  I've been a bit obsessed with Wikipedia lately-- just finished reading a book about it's history.  Many people, teachers especially, condemn Wikipedia outright because anyone can write or edit an article on it.  Most condemn it without having actually looked into it, I might add.  So I decided to look into it and see just how easy it is to make a change.  It's very easy.  Sign up, long in, make your edits wait and see it anyone adds to them.  I added some information to the article on Patrick Ryan who wrote Send Me and Saints of Augustine, two of my favorite reads.  All of my additions were factual, by the way and I did provide footnotes.  I'm planning on posting more about the experience when I review The Wikipedia Revolution later this week or next. 

Lastly.....

Friday I spent the morning trying to teach my 7th grade students about the ideas of several major Enlightenment thinkers.  This is the first time I've made it to the last chapter in the history book which is on the Enlightenment.  In my heart, I just think it's a little bit crazy to try to teach a roomful of 12 and 13-year-olds about the Enlightenment.  Hobbes? Voltaire? Locke?  Try getting a bunch of 7th graders interested in the natural rights of man with just 13 days of school left.  Heck, try to get me interested.




Full Disclosure: Temerarious means reckless or rash according to Dictionary.com.

Friday Picture Reading

For information about this book see here.

The Traitor Game by B.R. Collins

It made sense that it happened on that particular day.

Opening to The Traitor Game by B.R. Collins

Something went terribly wrong at the English comprehensive school Michael used to attend, and Micheal ended up the victim.  Afterwards, his mother decided to put him in public school where he meets Francis, the successful student Michael wants to be, unconcerned with the pressure to conform, willing to stand up to bullies but able to avoid outright physical fights.  From the start of their friendship Francis knows Michael's secret-- he spends his free time creating a fantasy world he calls Evgard.  Instead of making fun of Evgard like  Micheal thinks any of the other boys at school would, Francis becomes enthralled with it.  Together they invent elaborate maps, complicated battle histories, mythologies, an entire world built over a series of Saturday afternoons spent together up in Michael's room. 

All is well until one afternoon when Michael finds a note stuffed into his school locker, "I know where Evgard is."  Instantly, he concludes that Francis has betrayed their secret, told someone, probably laughing about it as he did.  Micheal won't confront Francis directly because to do so risks bringing up what happened to him at the comprehensive school.  Francis doesn't know why Michael  becomes so cold towards him but he suspects it's because Michael has discovered his own secret--that he is gay. When Michael starts a rumor that Francis made a pass at him, Francis thinks he has been betrayed, outed by his former best friend.  But Michael didn't even know Francis was gay; saying so was just a form of revenge,  the "worst thing he could think of saying."

The story of Francis and Michael shares the stage with alternating chapters set in Evgard.  The fantasy novel within the novel is probably written by Michael--it certainly changes course to match his own real emotional life.  The Evgard story concerns a boy who is captured by a rival kingdom, forced through a deadly game for his captors' amusement and then befriended by the son of his enemy.  This story is at least as compelling as the main plot and is one of the few times I've encountered a story within a story that really could stand on its own.  It provides a fascinating look into the creative process and how events in real life can be translated into fantasy.  It's a boy's adventure story, but it also reveals Michael's darkest fears, that he'll be betrayed, and attempts to deal with his own act of betrayal.  The main story only hints at what happened at the comprehensive school, but by the end of the book it's clear to the reader how profoundly bullying can affect the bullied. 

What does not work so well is the way the author explains what Michael wants to say as compared to what he actually says.  It is interesting to hear Michael's thoughts, to understand that he wants to say much more than he actually does, but the way this is written becomes a bit hard to follow.   I found myself wondering did he say this or did he say that more than a few times.  For example:

'OK.' He stared at Francis.  'Yes. It's lame.  It's really lame.  But I'm sorry. I didn't mean to - I can explain if you'll let me - please - I'm sorry -'  Oh yes, great one, Michael. A brilliant bit of rhetoric. Well done.  But what else was he supposed to say?  'It was a misunderstanding, I never actually meant to screw your life up irrevocably'? 'Forgive me, O lord and master'?  'Please, Francis, I'll do anything you want, please just be my mate again'?  Christ......He bent and picked up the bin-bag at his feet, holding it in both arms like an animal.  It felt clumsy and awkward.  'Do you want this, or shall I throw it away?'

I believe that confusion is a part of reading, but I got a little too lost in Michael's thoughts here and there.

But at the end of the novel, when I read the brief author's biography I was shocked to find that The Traitor Game is written by a woman.  B. R. Collins gets what it's like to be a boy, to be unsure of whom you can trust enough to share your fantasy life with and to be incapable of explaining your feelings in so many words.  Finding out that Ms. Collins is a woman left me stunned.  I think that speaks volumes for her ability as a novelist.  I hope she'll write more.

Books on Film: George Orwell Demonstrates How to Make Tea From the Trenches of the Spanish Civil War.

George Orwell is the author of the classic novels Animal Farm and 1984.  He volunteered to fight against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.  He wrote about his experiences in the wonderful memoir Homage to Catalonia.

The tea-making begins at 2:30 minutes.  From BBC Four.

Sunday Salon: Looking for New Blood, II

Last week I asked everyone if they'd read any good new blogs lately.  Several of you left a comment with short lists of recommendations.

Evening Reader recommends May-on-the-short-story.  Retired literature professor Charles May blogs about short stories.  This is a great site for fans of the genre.  You're sure to find an interesting story each time you visit.

The Literary Lollipop likes The Glittering Burn and so do I now that I know of it.  Run by The Tea Lady who lives in Scotland, The Glittering Burn features just the sort of wide ranging material I like to find on a book blog.  Tea Lady also blogs about music and video which makes for a nice change of pace.

Jackie at Farm Lane Books sent along three promising  recommendations:

BoofsBookShelf  - a British book blog that's hosting a giveaway, with rules and everything! And quite a few reviews of interesting sounding books that I've never heard of.  That's one thing I like in a book blog.
Kinna Reads - a good mix of literary fiction and poetry.  I like it. More please.
Iris on Books - a student living in the Netherlands blogs in English about both English and Dutch literature.  I love getting a chance to hear from around the world.  Iris on Books makes a very nice addition to the book blog map.
 
Jessica at one of my new favorite blogs, Park Benches and Bookends sent along four recommendations.
 
This Bookish Life is kept by Zara who lives in small town America and writes about a wide variety of popular fiction. 
Learning to read is run by three guys, or it might be run by two guys one of whom has an alter ego.  I'm still trying to figure this one out.  But I'm interested. 
Book mole is kept by a North Carolina resident who blogs about books and their adaptations and is very interested in character. 
Words Words Words is the brainchild of Bethany, a college student who has a great post about rejection that all hopeful authors should have a look at.

If you have read a new blog you'd like to recommend, please leave a comment. 

Dakota's Favorites: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

This review first ran in March of 2008.  As far as I can tell Thirteen Reasons Why has not become the success I thought it would be.  I expected to hear about it on the news, running into trouble with local censors.  I also thought I'd see more copies of it in my students hands.  I do see it regularly, but just now and then.  Still.  It's a very good book.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher is built around a terrific idea for a plot. Clay Jenson, possible high school valedictorian, recieves a package with no return address. Inside are seven cassette tapes. These are so archaic he has to dig out an old stereo system to play them. What he finds is the voice of classmate and ex-crush Hannah Baker who, two weeks earlier, committed suicide. The tapes are Hannah's suicide note. Each one tells part of her story, part of the reason why she took her own life. Thirteen people are responsible; each of them has one side of one tape. The box also contains a list of names. Once one person listens to them all, the box must be sent to the next person on the list. If not, a second set of tapes will be made public. Clay does not understand why he is on the tapes. He cannot think of anything that he did to Hannah that would lead her to suicide. But he also cannot stop listening either. Through the night he listens. He listens and travels through town, following the stars on a map Hannah sent prior to the tapes.

The book intermixes the voice of Hannah with the thoughts of Clay. Hannah's story is compelling. Each tape builds on the previous one. The story begins with Justin, Hannah's first kiss. Hannah dreams what it will be like; in a playground Justin will call to her, and she will slide down a long slide and into his arms. She is even able to make this dream really happen by asking Justin to meet her in the park after school. Her first kiss is wonderful, but the next day she finds Justin has told his friends that much more than a kiss took place. Hannah, new to the school, cannot escape the rumors--her reputation is cemented. The events that follow snowball around this first betrayal; Hannah's isolation increases, and no one sees it well enough or does enough about it to prevent her eventual suicide.

I read the book in one night just as the narrator tells it in one night, but a colleague of mine found the book much easier to put down. What any reader will do depends on their reaction to the structure of the book. Hannah's voice and Clays reaction to her story are intermingled throughout the novel; most of the pages contain each. There are a few breaks when we only get Clay's story but very few points where we just hear Hannah's voice unencumbered with Clay's account of what he is doing while he listens. Clay is the more realiable narrator but his story is not as compelling. Hannah becomes more problematic as her story goes on. She definately has her reasons, but she does not see that there are people reaching out to her, there are people she could have gone to for help. Towards the end of her story both Clay and the reader begin to lose some patience with Hannah.

Some readers may also begin to lose patience with the novel's struture. Whether or not you come to enjoy the intermixing of voices or to find it as a bit gimmicky will determine you much you enjoy the book. What the book does best is show the long term consequences of our actions. Justin starts a rumor about Hannah but until he gets his turn with the tapes he is probably unaware of just how far reaching his lies were. This message is one many students and many adults could benefit from hearing. I think Thirteen Reasons Why is one book every high school library should carry. It's one of those books that should not be pushed on readers but left in plain sight where they are sure to find it. Find it they will.

A Different Kind of Library Loot

Suspicion by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Inspector Barlach had checked into Salem--the hospital overlooking the town hall and old parts of Bern--in the beginning of November 1948.

Opening to Suspicion by Friedrich Durrenmatt translated by Joel Agee

Suspicion is the second of two novels featured in The Inspector Barlach Mysteries by Friedrich Durrenmatt published by The University of Chicago Press.  Getting your hands on a copy probably won't be easy, but it will be worth the effort.  Both feature cynical, ailing Inspector Barlach, diagnosed with a terminal illness in The Judge and His Hangman, with just a few months left to live in Suspicion. 

While in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, waiting to get well enough to undergo surgery, Inspector Barlach receives a visit from an old friend, a Jewish man who survived the Nazi concentration camps.  His friend tells him about a particular doctor infamous for performing experimental surgery without anesthesia.  Barlach's friend is the only prisoner known to have survived treatment at the hands of the notorious Dr. Nehle.  Dr. Nehle escaped the invading Russian army only to commit suicide a few years after the war.  The only known photograph of the living Dr. Nehle was taken during surgery while the doctor was wearing a surgical mask. 

Except Inspector Barlach's friend insist that Dr. Nehle is still alive and is practicing under the name of Dr. Emmenberger at a nearby health spa where the very wealthy go to receive his special treatments.  Inspector Barlach will let neither ill health, forced retirement, nor impending death keep him from investigating the case, and he is soon convinced that his friend is correct, that the successful Dr. Emmenberger is really the notorious Dr. Nehle.  To prove he is correct, Inspector Barlach arranges his own transfer to the health spa where he will be cared for by Dr. Emmenberger/Nehle and where he will have the chance to interrogate the doctor about his past.

As pure thriller, seldom have I found anything as hard to put down as Suspicion.  Imagine a laconic Hercule Poirot crossed with the urgency of Sorry Wrong Number.  At just over 100 pages Suspicion is a detective thriller stripped down to its essence.  There are no McGuffins here, no quirky characters diverting our attention into subplots, no forays into local color for the sake of travelogue.  Every action, every character serves the purpose of developing the plot as Inspector Barlach rushes into danger in spite of his confinement in his own death bed.  He practically solves the case from beyond the grave.  As a police procedural, Suspicion works quite well, but here even Inspector Barlach eventually reaches the limits of police work. 


In the end, he has just about nothing to go on but his own suspicion.

Short Story Monday: "Erasing Sonny" by Kelly McQuain

Sonny Cicarelli goes on dates with his sister.  He's her cover.  Who would believe that an 18-year-old would take her kid brother along on a date?  This way Maria Cicarelli can escape her mother and father who do not approve of her older boyfriend Richie.  Sonny doesn't like hanging out with the other boys in the neighborhood or the way their gatherings end up in fistfights.  He'd rather spend time with his sister and her boyfriend. The three of them hang out in Richie's apartment, drinking, smoking pot.  One day Sonny notices the Donald Duck tattoo on Richie's arm and says he'd like to have one just like it.  Richie considers himself something of an artist, says he knows about tattoos, why doesn't he give Sonny the tattoo himself?

Sonny agrees.  They decide to tattoo Sonny's back because his arms are so thin.  Maria falls asleep.  Sonny tries to ignore the pain; he enjoys feeling Richie so close to him.  In the end, instead of Donald Duck, Sonny has two words tattooed across his back.  The two words make him a big hit in the locker room at school, but he has to hide them from his parents. 

In a quickly moving 20 pages Kelly McQuain paints a vivid portrait of a young man on the cusp of adulthood, about to discover his sexuality.  Sonny will come into his own by the end of the story.  He'll see through both his mother and his father, survive his sister's relationship with Richie, and come to an understanding of his own place in the world.  This is a lot for a single short story to do, but it's also what the best short stories always do--put a big picture into a brief moment or a small collections of moments. 

You can find "Erasing Sonny" by Kelly McQuain in the anthology Men on Men 2000.

Sunday Salon: Looking for New Blood

I have an unmet goal this year: to dedicate a post to new book bloggers.  My goal was to spend a day looking over everyone's links list and checking out all of the book bloggers who've recently become followers here or left comments on a post.  I remember how difficult it can be to get visitors when you start blogging.  Ready When You Are, C.B. lingered in the 30 visits a day range for over a year.  I know we all say we blog for ourselves, and this is true, but it's nice to have visitors.  And it's nice to find a promising new book blog, too.  Unfortunately, almost half the year has slipped away and I've yet to meet my goal. 

So, I thought I'd use today's Sunday Salon to ask if you have found any new book blogs, or new to me book blogs, that you can recommend.  If so, please leave a link or just the blog name in the comments.  I'll try to get a master list posted next week.  Maybe we can help speed a few new book bloggers on the way to a wider readership.

I'll start off with one new blog I've been reading, Park Benches and Bookends.  Park Benches and Bookends is run by Chris and Jess, a married couple who live in Surrey England.  Chris and Jess post about a nice mix of titles from the popular to the slightly literary.  They've been playing along in the Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge as well.  If you have a chance, do give their blog a visit.

And if you've a new or new to you book blog you'd like to recommend, please leave a comment.  And, what the heck, if you're new, feel free to recommend your own blog. 


Full disclosure: I found the picture of Nosferatu at the Democratic Underground.

Read the Book, See The Movie Challenge Updates: A Winner and Current Mr. Linky

Dakota and I are late choosing a winner for March/April.  We tried to use a fancy new video program, one that I hoped would let me use green screen technology with my students, but we've not been able to figure it out yet.  I'm still hoping.  I think it would be so much fun to film my sixth grade geography class giving speeches about a place and then have a video with them actually standing in that place just like they do on television.  There's still hope.  I've not given up yet.

In the meantime, here is Dakota.



Andrea, please send me your mailing information at 204mountain at comcast dot net.  I'll get the book in the mail to you ASAP.

Since I'm going to be at Yale during July and Dakota will be back in California, I'm going to wait until I return home in August to select the next prize winner.  So please use the Mr. Linky below for your May/June/July reviews.  I promise to throw in a bonus prize or two.  Hope everyone is enjoying the challenge.  If you haven't joined yet and would like to, please do. You can sign up here.

Post your new reviews below:

Friday Picture Reading

Boy reading newspaper, New York, 1944 Photograph: The Estate of André Kertész/Courtesy of Stephen Bulger Gallery  from The Gaurdian's website.

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

So that's settled, then; we bury her alive in the iron bridle.  That'll keep her tongue still.

Opening to Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

In 1348, a group of people, strangers, come together in an attempt to out run the plague as it spreads across England.  Nine strangers in all, each with a secret, something they can only reveal at the risk of losing their lives.

The narrator is a seller of phony religious relics.   He is joined by two Italian musicians, a master and his apprentice  on their way to the next town, unable to return home to Italy for reasons they will not disclose.  Soon  they meet a an unmarried couple on the run from their parents.  Because she is pregnant they join an entertainer with a wagon she can ride in sitting alongside  the 'mermaid' preserved in a glass jar, the main feature in the entertainer's show.  The last members of their group are a young girl who reads the future int the runes she casts and the woman who accompanies her.  As they flee northwards, they form a very uneasy alliance and they tell stories, their own well as others.

It's all very like a dark Canterbury Tales.

Company of Liars is a very entertaining, a highly literate, air-plane book.  It's very much a melodrama akin to a Victorian sensation novel, or perhaps Michael Lewis's Gothic novel, The Monk.  The secrets each character keeps are extreme enough to shock; some even offend modern sensibilities.  Ms. Maitland lets their revelation play out slowly, teasing her readers, almost goading them, to keep reading with a playful sense of suspense.  Company of Liars isn't a thriller in the narrow escape from death sense of the genre, but the sheer volume of secrets revealed keeps the reader glued to the pages just as well.

If you read historical fiction in order to learn about a period of time, Company of Liars will deliver the goods.  Ms. Maitland presents a wide range of Medieval England's under-belly.  Becuase no one in the company is a respectable citizen, thehistory presented in Company of Liars is not the history learned by careful study of court life or church history. 

However, Company of Liars is not without a few problems.  First, the dialogue is very contemporary.  It's not anachronistic, there's no one telling anybody to "shut up" or "get back to me," but listening to Ms. Maitland's characters talk I felt they could easily be sitting at the table next to me in the coffee shop.  This is probably a concession to modern readers that cannot be avoided--any attempt to make the characters sound medieval risks making them them sound pretentious as well.   But everyone sounded very American to me. Second, while I'm willing to accept that nine random people could all have very dramatic secrets,  I had trouble believing that only one of the nine would be dramatically offended by their revelation.  The other eight are remarkably tolerant, especially for the mid-14th century.  Honestly, I woudl have a very hard time accepting some of the secrets the characters hide.   And, I did guess  seven of the eight secrets well before they were revealed. 

But even with these reservations, I'd still recommend Company of Liars by Karen Maitland very highly.  If you happen to find yourself on an airplane headed towards England, or anywhere else this summer Company of Liars will keep you well entertained.



I can't say why without spoiling a secret, but I'm counting this books towards The Challenge that Dare Not Speak It's Name.

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland by Philip K. Dick

As he drove, Jim Ferguson rolled down the window of his Pontiac, and, poking his elbow out, leaned to inhale lungfulls of early-morning summer air.
Opening line to Humpty Dumpty in Oakland by Philip K. Dick

Long before he became Science Fiction's best know paranoid, Philip K. Dick wrote several mainstream novels.  Long overlooked and forgotten, they were finally published in England several years after his death and in the United States in 2007. Dick's Science Fiction is characterized by paranoia and by plot twists that reveal what the reader, and the main character, thought was real is not.   Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, though set in the real world of 1960, feels right at home in Philip K. Dick's paranoid world view.

The novel's  two main characters share a common workspace.  Jim Ferguson is an older man forced into retirement from the auto garage he runs and owns by a bad heart.  Al Miller, a younger man, runs a low-end used car lot in space he rents from Jim.  The two have  a tortured relationship.  Ferguson at turns needs and is repelled by Miller.  Some times he feels sorry for him and wants to lend him a leg-up; other times he turns on him with venom, berating him for his lack of ambition and the dirty tricks he uses to sell cars that have no value.  At times, Al tries to look out for Ferguson, to protect him from shady dealers who might want to take advantage of him. Other times he rails against the older man for selling his business leaving Al in the lurch.

Like In Milton Lumky Territory, reviewed here, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a novel about work. The ins-and-outs of running a garage, running a used car lot, and later running an independent record company and land development business, make up much of the nove'ls plot.  It is rare to see a portrayal of an average working life in modern fiction.  Philip Dick's portrayal gets at the "quiet desperation" of so many men trying to eek out a living on the margins of society, fearing that those with more money and more power have stacked the deck stacked against them.  It's easy to feel for Philip Dick's protagonists.

Even to feel for a shyster used-car salesman like Al Miller.

It's also easy to see why these early novels by Philip Dick were rejected by publishers.  Look at that opening sentence above--do you want to read the rest of this book?  Philip Dick's science fiction elevates the pulp nature of the genre, takes it to a level where his paranoia becomes a comment on modern society.  His realistic fiction makes that paranoia seem, frankly, just paranoid.  Science Fiction is considered by many to be a lower genre of fiction, it largely was in the early 1960's.  But I'd argue that Philip K. Dick had to take a step down into a lower genre in order to rise.  He stooped to conquer.  If you're curious about him, go with his classic Science Fiction, A Scanner Darkly or The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  If you're already a fan of those and want to know how the author got there, you might want to check out Humpty Dumpty in Oakland. 


Full Disclosure:  I found the cover image from the first edition at Wikipedia.

Books on Film: Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

"I want to have living, breathing, flawed people."

From a the New York State Writer's Institute, 2007.