Dead Sleep

Greg Iles is the author, and what fun it is to find a new author to read. I picked up a couple of his books (Dead Sleep and The Quiet Game) at the library after reading a recommendation of him in a book column. I am glad I did.

Dead Sleep is especially interesting - a dynamite premise starts the book, although the resolution isn't nearly as inventive. But we begin with Jordan Glass, a female war photographer who has made a name for herself - Pulitzer Prize and all. While in Asia, she comes across an art exhibit of a series of nude women who appear to be either sleeping or dead. It soon becomes clear why the other patrons and museum staff have been staring at her, however, when she confronts a painting that appears to show her - Jordan - as one of the Sleeping Women.

It is only then that we learn that Jordan is a twin, and that her sister Jane was abducted many months earlier. Jane's body was never found. And eight other women abducted in New Orleans before and after Jane have not been found either. How many of them are subjects of one of the Sleeping Women paintings?

Jordan contacts the FBI but also begins to investigate on her own, putting her own life in danger as she gets closer to the mysterious artist.
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Other books read since last entry - more Susan Howatch (Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers) and Iles' Quiet Game.

The Rich are Different

Another by Susan Howatch.... since I am economizing lately, I have been in the library more than in bookstores, and after reading Cashelmara (below), I decided to fill in by picking up several of her books. This should keep me busy for a while, as she has a backlist.

The Rich Are Different is another historical novel, this one regarding investment banking before and into the 1929 Great Depression. The fall of the market being the backdrop, Howatch then delves into the life of flappers and bootleg liquor, infidelity, and illegitmate children in the lives of some wealthy New York and London wealthy. The six sections of the novel are written from viewpoints of five different characters, and each has his or her own personality down pat. Howatch likes to give each a burden and then speculate on how that burden or secret influences the person he or she becomes. It is an interesting device.

This is not deep reading, but it is entertaining in its way.

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Other books read since last entry - Absolute Truths, also by Susan Howatch; Virtually Normal by Andrew Sullivan.

The Emperor of Ocean Park

What a lovely book - sent to me by my Aussie pal, this is a family saga and a mystery combined together. Also, it is an insightful look into the tone of the lives of middle-class African Americans, a topic I seldom run across in popular fiction. But Stephen L. Carter has written an intriguing book.

Talcott Garland, the younger son of conservative judge Oliver Garland, has felt strain between himself and all of his surviving family members (brother Addison, sister Mariah) since the Judge went before the Senate as a nominee to the Supreme Court - and was humiliated publicly, and ultimately forced to withdraw his name. The humiliation centered around the Judge's friendship with a man suspected of having mob connections, who makes his living (everyone believes) by murder.

The book opens as the Judge has died under circumstances that Mariah feels are suspicious. Involved in this are the many questions Tal has always had - including questions about his youngest sister Abby's death in a hit-and-run accident many years past and why the Judge didn't disavow his mobster friend who also happened to be Abby's godfather.

Additionally, Tal has other concerns. His wife, Kimmer, is under consideration for an appointment to the federal court of appeals. Of course, he also suspects she is having an affair, but that should not surprise him since she had an affair with him when married to her first husband.

A very interesting book with a good twist at the end.

Outlander

- and other books in the series by Diana Gabaldon. (The Drums of Autumn, Voyager, Dragonfly in Amber, The Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes).

My Aussie friend sent me Outlander, the first book in the series. Claire Randall is an Englishwoman who worked as a nurse during WWII, and whose husband, Frank Randall, is an historian but otherwise a bit of a dull fellow. As Claire had actually felt useful for a bit during the war, she's casting about for a more useful role for herself.

While in Scotland, where Frank is doing research, Claire stumbles upon a stone circle, a mini-Stonehenge, and is surprised to find that, for some people, these circles are portals into time. When Claire recovers from her trip through time, she finds she is in 1743. Scotland is rumbling with the rebellion that will lead to the massacre at Culloden, and Claire's medical skills make people think she is a witch.

In Outlander, she meets (and is forced by circumstances to marry) a young Scot warrior named Jamie Fraser. But in this marriage, she finds both the passion and the partnership that was lacking with her "first" husband. The series leads us through the first early years of their marriage, their separation as Jamie goes to face his death on the Culloden battlefield, while Claire returns to the present to birth and raise their child. Later, after Frank's death, Claire connives to return to 1700s Scotland and her Jamie.

Excellent series, with a modern woman coping with the customs of two hundred years past, and the history of Scotland, and later, the American Revolution, wrapped about a romance that is solidly constructed.

Pawn of Prophecy (et al)

A series by David Eddings (fantasy) that my Aussie bookcrossing pal started me on. She sent me Pawn of Prophecy -- then I read the rest of them (Queen of Sorcery; Magician's Gambit; Castle of Wizardry; Enchanter's End Game) in that series, plus a couple of "stand alone" books (Belgarath the Sorcerer; Polgara the Sorceress). A fun series, although not all that original. A boy grows up an orphan, not knowing who he really is, and turns out to be the descendant of kings, destined to finally kill the evil god Torak. He has help - his Aunt Pol, who is actually Polgara the Sorceress, and her father, Belgarath the Sorcerer. There are also many members of the company that searches for the magical orb so he can return it to the hilt of the ancient sword that is destined to slay Torak.

Good characters, a light read but nothing we haven't seen in many other fantasy quest books.

The Host

Stephenie Meyer is best known for her young-adult Twilight series, about a mortal girl in love with a teenage-appearing vampire. The Host is her first novel for "adults", but the Twilight series isn't all that juvenile, and The Host isn't all that adult. The tone is very similar and one should not be surprised that the author is a Mormon housewife. There is much more here of romance and idealistic relationships than there is of the more cynical sex and violence that we are used to in adult novels.

With that, The Host has a very creative and unique premise - alien invaders of Earth who are basically souls without bodies, whose practice is to take over planets by having themselves installed into the neural systems of the dominant species. The main character is Wanderer, who has lived seven previous lives in different alien species, but this is her first time as a human. She is injected into the body of Melanie. But humans aren't as simple to subdue as other species, and Wanderer finds that Melanie continues to fight her possessor. And Wanderer soon understands that Melanie is influencing her thoughts, her beliefs, and her needs.

There are human rebels that have not yet been possessed, and eventually Wanderer is drawn to join them. She is to learn that Melanie yearns for her younger brother and her rebel lover, who escaped together even though Melanie herself was captured. Wanderer finds that the life of humans, as violent and indifferent to others as it is, still has experiences and emotions that the invaders never had nor anticipated.

Recommended highly. The unique premise more than makes up for some of the romanticism of human behavior.

Expecting Adam

This lovely true story by Martha Beck is both spiritual and very, very human.

What happens when two Harvard graduate students, type-A, achievement-oriented control freaks find out that the child they are expecting has Down's syndrome? How do they cope? How does it change them?

The answers are amazing - not the least because their struggle is titanic. Martha is ill throughout her pregnancy. John is busily trying to handle research in Singapore with writing a doctoral dissertation in Cambridge. And both of them are dealing with family issues, the expectation of perfection, and doubt that bringing the child to term is in fact the right thing to do.

But something magical happens as they are expecting Adam.

Read this one with an open mind - for even if they are delusional people, the things they learned are valuable lessons for us all.
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Other books read since last entry - Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

The Dresden Files

A series by Jim Butcher, these novels take the private investigator genre to a new twist, as Harry Dresden, wizard, takes on cases including murder and mayhem by using his magic to track missing items, follow suspicious people, deal with vampires, faeries, and ghouls, and other such adventures. He is assisted by police lieutenant Karrin Murphy of the Chicago Police, a spirit trapped in a skull who goes by the name of Bob, and a thirty-pound cat named Mister.

Other characters in later volumes include Michael, a Catholic Knight of the Cross, Thomas, a White Vampire who feeds through sex instead of blood, and a massive dog known as Mouse who is sensitive to magical and supernatural powers.

A wonderful series of books, and each builds upon the events of the previous books as Harry grows, changes, and learns.

Titles in the series: Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, and White Night.

A Spot of Bother

This lovely novel by Mark Haddon is a well-crafted story of a dysfunctional family - each member of which is presented with a quirk that is developed into a beautifully drawn personality. George Hall is the father, slowly going insane now that he had retired and he is coming to terms with his own mortality. But George doesn't have a habit about talking about his problems, so he finds it difficult to cope with his fear that he is developing cancer.

Jean, his wife, is finding George's retirement a bit inconvenient as it makes it a little more difficult for her to meet with her lover, one of George's former co-workers who had taken early retirement himself and now pays her attention and compliments that George has never offered her.

Their daughter, Katie, is once divorced with a young son and now living with Ray, who is steady and hard-working but doesn't equal her in intellect and education. Nevertheless, Katie is about to throw her family into chaos by announcing her intention to marry Ray.

And then there is the son, Jaime, who is gay and dating Tony, but who doesn't want to bring Tony along to the wedding, because that would mean that they are more seriously involved than Jamie wants to admit. But Tony understands the message and calls it quits, which leads Jamie to understand that the relationship was more important to him than he wanted to admit.

It's a very British novel, with only brief moments of high drama against the longer passages of thoughts from each character's point of view that creates depth. But the moments of drama are excellent - George discovering Jean's affair, his attempt to excise his "cancer" by cutting it off, and the highlight when he begins a fistfight at the wedding reception.

Wonderful.
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Other books read since the last post -- Home, by Julie Andrews; Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman; Bar Flower by Lea Jacobson.

The Bourne Supremacy

Robert Ludlum's books on Jason Bourne are now well-known due to the excellent films starring Matt Damon. Yet returning to the books after having viewed the movies leads to disappointment on many levels.

The plot of the book has very little to do with the movie - and several plot points in the film are completely contradictory to the book. But the biggest contrast, I believe, is in the speech and manner of the characters. In the movies, Jason Bourne/David Webb is reserved, efficient, deadly. Even though his memories are spotty, he doesn't sink into despair.

But the book - Ludlum's writing - is rife with doubt, emotion, despair, confusion... and the most annoying thing is the way Ludlum writes dialog. Everyone in his world speaks with an excess of exclamation points and italics that emphasize stress with every third sentence. It is extremely annoying!!! After all, what person really speaks as if every third word has to be shouted into the atmosphere!!???

Couple this clunky and unnatural dialog with a plot as convoluted as a bucket of spaghetti and, after a while, reading it becomes a chore. I put down this book four times in the course of reading it to dip into other novels that were actually more fun to read. No more Ludlum for me. I will see the movies again - they are fun. The novels are not.

Cashelmara

By Susan Howatch, published in 1974. Certainly not a new book, but new to me.

This was actually sent to me by my Australian BookCrossing buddy, who told me it was one of her favorites. I liked it, and I do like this type of book, too. It is a style/genre that isn't written much any longer, but was very typical of the 1970s and 1980s -- the family epic novel. They became formulaic after a while, and deteriorated into glittery tomes where everyone was rich, alcoholic, sexually promiscuous, and gorgeous. But Cashelmara, like another favorite novel (To Serve Them All My Days), is more finely and skillfully drawn.

We begin with Edward, an English lord of mature years, a widower with four surviving and mostly adult children. Besides his London home, and his English estate, he also owns the family estate in Ireland known as Cashelmara.

On a trip to America, he meets some distant cousins, and eventually proposes to young Marguerite. When they marry, he is somewhere near sixty and she is seventeen. When she comes to England to marry him, she then has to learn to cope with her new stepchildren - three women older than she is, and the only son, Patrick, who is just a few years younger. Edward doesn't appreciate her attempts to smooth relations between her husband and his children, and Marguerite quickly understands that the marriage is not going to be what she thought.

The next section is from Marguerite's viewpoint, and relates the birth of her and Edward's two sons, and a daughter that lives only a short time. Other section include one from the point of view of Edward's son Patrick, Patrick's wife Sarah, Sarah's lover, the criminal Maxwell Drummond, and finally Patrick and Sarah's son, Ned.

Some of the topics - homosexuality, infidelity, and murder - were probably more scandalous to readers in 1974 than they are today, but Cashelmara is still a good, gossipy read.

A Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin launches a new fantasy series with "A Game of Thrones", first in a five-book series. (Book 5 is not yet published.) I usually resist reading series until all the books are available, if I can help it, ever since I got hooked by David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series, which the author still has never finished writing. Be that as it may....

Martin's approach to this wide-ranging tale of kingdoms, lords, direwolves, dragons, and war is to write from multiple characters' viewpoints, rotating chapters so we see events as they unfold from different viewpoints. We get to know the characters not only by what they do, but by how they interpret what they witness. It's a good device if used skillfully, and in Martin's case, it is.

Also helpful is a map of the Seven Kingdoms, which helps the reader place the events. It takes a good while to work through the various characters and their alliances, but the method of storytelling allows this to unfold naturally. The reader never feels as if s/he is subjected to what I call "info dump". (Less skillful authors resort to this from time to time, especially in SF/fantasy, where the reader is forced to swallow myriad pages of history or other background information in a huge undigestable lump. Martin, thankfully, spares us this.)

A Game of Thrones is primarily concerned with the Stark family, holders of the northern kingdom of Winterfell. There is Ned Stark, father and lord, friend to the high king. Other chapters introduce us to his wife, Catelyn; bastard son Jon; legitimate son Bran; and daughters Sansa and Arya. In the north, even in summer, it is cold and snowy, and the summer has lasted nearly ten years, but soon real winter will be coming.

The king, Robert, comes to Winterfell to ask Ned to serve as the Hand of the King, the second in command in the Seven Kingdoms. With Robert comes his wife, Cersei; Cersei's twin brother Jaime; and their dwarf brother Tyrion, all from the house of Lannister which is known for its treachery. When Bran Stark, seven years old, sees something he should not, he suffers a fall that is meant to kill him.

A great start to what promises to be an absorbing series.

Joe College

Tom Perrotta pens what feels like a semi-autobiographical novel (the protagonist, Danny, is attending Yale, Perrotta went to Yale; Danny is an English major, Perrotta taught English, yadda yadda). It isn't that great. The book is full of "quirky" college students, contrasted with the folks back home in New Jersey where Danny spends his spring break driving his father's lunch wagon to office parks and construction sites.

There are not many good novels set at college -- probably because it is an "unreal" time of life, as the student moves from childhood to adulthood, but in a setting where things are both unreal (no mortgages, usually no kids) and yet are desperately important (learning to love, to succeed or fail solely on the strength of one's own self-discipline) and with obvious repercussions that influence the rest of one's life. In this case, Danny is not much of a role model. Which may be the point.

Danny makes a lot of stupid decisions, as college students often do, and doesn't seem to know what he wants or who he is, as college students often don't. But is he wiser at the end than he was in Chapter 1?

As a writer myself, I have always believed that a stand-alone novel is supposed to depict the most important event in the character's life. It is what changes him, teaches him, strengthens him or kills him -- sometimes all of these. But Danny isn't significantly changed by the events in the novel. While that may be the author's point, in my opinion a novel that is about nothing much is worth nothing much.

Full Dress Gray

I read Lucian Truscott's first novel, Dress Gray, many years ago and really liked it. It gave an intriguing view of what it was like to be a cadet at West Point. In one word, it was brutal. Who, I wondered, would ever want to go through such humiliation, but it fascinated me akin to staring at a car wreck.

Too bad Truscott apparently only had one (good) novel in him. I suspect Dress Gray's authenticity had to do with the fact that it was largely autobiographical. Certainly the semi-sequel, Full Dress Gray, is in no way a comparable novel.

If you have a predictable plot, telegraphing the solution of the murder mystery in the third chapter, populating the book with one nasty general, one earnest cadet, and one wise good man, you aren't going to excite or intrigue your readers. If the author twists the plot with coincidences too neatly convenient to be believed, one might keep reading, but perhaps with more disbelief than enjoyment.

What I resent most of all is what happened to the main character, Ry Slaight. In Dress Gray, he was an interesting person -- flawed, but stubborn in his determination to solve the mystery of a dead cadet. This man, thirty years later, has lost almost everything that made him interesting. In Full Dress Gray, he has dinner with his wife. They talk about food and wine. He goes to his office, gives a few orders, but because of his position he stays out of the investigation. At the end, he gets to embarass a congressman in a Congressional hearing, but other than that, he doesn't act and really doesn';t seem anything like the character from the first book. Well, what fun is that?

Sorry to say it, because I've also recently read another of his novels, Heart of War, and it wasn't any better. So on the basis of available data, I have to say that Truscott is a one-hit wonder.

Ammonite

Nicola Griffith's science-fiction novel (and what seems to be her first published novel) is amazingly inventive and doesn't "talk down" to the reader. You don't really know at first what is going on -- just as the main character, an anthropologist named Marghe, doesn't know what she will find when she heads down to "Jeep" - a planet inhabited only by women. The reader learns, as she learns.

A virus killed all of the men who landed on Jeep as part of the Company's exploration of the planet. Many women died as well, but those that survived were changed, somehow, by the virus. The Company, unwilling to lose half their crews to the disease, has developed what they believe is an effective vaccine. Marghe is to test it, but her agenda is to learn about the social structure of the native women who are the descendents of survivors of the first colony. The biggest mystery -- how have they managed to reproduce?

The background -- climate, society, way of life -- are rich with detail. An all-female society is no more a perfect one that ours is, and the women we meet are full characters. Women are bullies, silent and undisclosing, insane, killers -- as well as nurturers, gardeners, storytellers, healers.

Echoes of "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin in the handling of sexuality and gender roles in a new and intriguing way, this novel is definitely worth a re-read. Maybe even a permanent place on the bookshelf.

Atonement

I picked up this novel by Ian McEwan only because it has been made into a film, which brought it to my attention. I share the sentiments of some reviewers who say it is slow going (i.e., filled with lots of description as opposed to action, and covering the main events in overlapping accounts from various characters' viewpoints). I also agree with others that feel the characters are drawn with marvelous insight, and that each is a unique - albeit flawed - individual.

I did find the end a bit surprising. I tend to read openly, not trying to think ahead and guess what might happen, but simply let the writer draw out his or her story and follow where he or she leads me. So, often, I get to the end and have to page back and re-read some pieces to draw the conclusion together in my mind. In this book, McEwan is so subtle that I missed the clue, but in going back I saw clearly that he hadn't cheated to get there.

Having read the blurb, I knew that the setup would be that younger sister Briony would witness something involving older sister Cecilia and the housekeeper's son, Robbie Turner. At each event, I would wonder - "Is this it?". But that is a little cheat - possibly the fault of the publisher, not of the author - because what Briony sees and misunderstands (and must atone for) is not, strictly speaking, between Cecilia and Robbie, although their interactions do set up Briony's act. It is believable that, from the point of view of a young girl, she interprets their actions as she does. I simply wish I hadn't read the blurb on the novel first, as it mislead me as a reader.

McEwan's skillful use of language and description is worthy of attention for those who love the deft use of words to build images. Readers who love dialog and action scenes won't like this book. Perhaps the film would satisfy them more, for in film something has to be happening all the time or people will get bored and walk out. But I think there is a richness in this novel that we seldom see in publishing nowadays, and I liked it.

Intern

I will pretty much read any medical memoir, since I have a fondness for physicians and tend to select that profession (among a few other favorites) for the profession of characters in the novels I write. So I have always been interested in reading what "really happens" in order to write authentically about my characters' lives.

I think we idealize medicine in a way that obviously, we should not. Sandeep Jauhar's account of his medical school and intership/residency training makes it clear that medical training is somewhat like boot camp, tearing the person down to build them up again in a new way. That happens with the sleep deprivation and the unreasonable workload that Jauhar recounts experiencing in his internship year.

And it is frightening to see the model we now use in hospital care, where there are many resources to help a patient -- doctors, nurses, techs -- and a lot of expensive equipment and tests available -- but that the knowledge applied to any one patient is superficial. The surface symptoms are treated, but seldom does anyone have the time or concern to go deeper.

We as a culture have managed to make medicine like factory work. Jauhar cites the need to avoid lawsuits for unnecessary tests and interventions - that sometimes for fear of not doing enough, doctors do too much.

This is a nicely constructed memoir, honest and insightful.