Trek Books

2012 Fiction Reads

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
An Unexpected Guest, Anne Korkeakivi
The Shoemaker’s Wife, Adriana Trigiani
Defending Jacob, William Landay
All That I Am, Anna Funder
The Shooting Party, Isabel Colegate
Norumbega Park, Anthony Giardina
The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, Elizabeth Speller

Carol’s 2012 Reviews

Carol is a Top Reviewer on Amazon

Defending Jacob, William Landay- a legal mystery that gut-wrenchingly explores nature vs. nurture. It portrays a horrific family crisis that turns blithe normalcy into a twisted tempest of contempt, blame, guilt. A ‘happy’ 35-year marriage changes in a day. Regrets. Redemption? A compelling read. *****

Paris Versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities, Vahram Muratyan- Nifty birthday gift from mAdBen. He met Parisian graphic artist Vahram Muratyan and had him sign his new book for me. It is a clever delightful artistic comparison of la vie quotidienne, daily life in each city. Laugh-out-loud brilliant fun. Another motivation to get back to gay Paree. *****

The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje- Ondaatje’s new fiction surprised. It draws you up the gangplank of the Oronsay as it sets sail from Ceylon and engrosses until it docks in England in the 1950′s. Three young boys form a tight trio of cast-offs, members of a remote table of secretive passengers adrift in their respective worlds. I’m no fan of cats. But the cats v. dogs metaphor is subtle and beautifully intertwined in story lines portrayed against the dominant backdrop of the ship’s intrigues. A voyage from childhood’s unencumbered innocence to muddled adult memories crashes on the rocks of reality, redemption, forgiveness. Ondaatje is the writer in this creative cubistic reminiscence. ****

The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, Elizabeth Speller- Downton Abbey meets Easton. As with Downton this year, the brutally devastating impact of World War I is sharply drawn in daily English country life at Easton. Heiress of the manor, little Kitty’s accidental disappearance provokes pervasive rampant guilt upstairs, downstairs, all around the village. Plot twists and turns, an ancient church, a maze. Fun not to have guessed the ending. ***

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel- Cromwell Unplugged. Mantel takes us inside Thomas Cromwell and his mature macro worldly view. She changes Cromwell’s voice from first to third to omniscient with a literary facility that transcends tense and time. In doing so, she reduces Henry VIII and the English aristocracy around him to parochial, debauched, naive pawns. ‘Wolf Hall’ was worthy of its prizes. Reviewed 2010. *****

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel- As good as Wolf Hall was, this isn’t. First, the title. Neither appealing, relevant, nor catchy. Obscure at best. Philippa Gregory’s Danielle Steel-esque novels were better told stories. If great writing sets Mantel apart from the riffraff, this doesn’t rise to that standard. Cromwell was a complex, well-developed, empathetic character in Wolf Hall. In this sequel, he and all of the characters are two-dimensional names that fleet by. Even if you’d read Wolf Hall immediately before reading this, I doubt you would care about the crazy amount of people who crowd this drab narrative, for no particular effect. Lazy rehashed research. A poorly crafted plot. How can you make the story of Anne Boleyn boring? Seeing it through Cromwell’s eyes had so much potential. Too bad. May 2012 **

Elaine’s RIP 2011. SanFran Book Club Reunion, March 2001.

SideTrek’s Best of 2011

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
Derby Day, D.J. Taylor
SnowDrops, A.D. Miller
Blood, Bones & Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton

Carol’s 2011 Reviews

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern- A magical clockworks metaphor, it’s a tightly wound time piece. Nocturnal wonderment. Transcendent love. Boundless imagination. Morgenstern’s first novel is a tour de force.  5 stars. As you read it, and you must, pay close attention to chapter headings and dates. When I finally got the “Bailey” joke, I laughed out loud. Morgenstern writes with gorgeous detail about clothing design, decor, dance, architecture. This was one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time.  *****

Rules of Civility, Amor Towles- Written by a man, the voice is decidedly feminine. Disconcerting in a good way. New York-phillic, it’s an architectural nod to the landmarks and real estate in their hey day. A slice of late-30′s Village, Jazz, Upper Manhattan Swell Scene. Sparkling twenty-something lives; some that fade with time, others shine. Longed for more Evie, Valentine. ****

Derby Day, D.J. Taylor- An homage to the Victorian novel. Taylor deftly conjures the genre, although only a few characters resonate. He defies any period in his portrayal of Rebecca, the central female figure. She is the epitome of enigmatic evil. Delicious. More Hardy than Thackeray, Taylor paints bleak Lincolnshire countryside mist or decrepit Fitzrovia alley blight with a finer brush than Belgrave Square’s West End Society. ****

Snowdrops, A.D. Miller- This short Man Booker short-listed novel got mixed reviews in our house. I thought the narrator’s confession style was good, but the story of a mature man getting sucked in by two pretty Russian grifters silly. Dr.Husband found this ex-pat’s descent into debauchery and immoral behavior under the spell of corrupt modern Russia compelling. There you go. **** / **

The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst- Strange book. It’s the contorted, hacked up tale of a semi-famous mediocre gay poet who dies fighting for England in WWI. As generations evolve, other gay guys become obsessed with him. The author seems to think every guy is gay whether they know it or not. OK. Finally, a vengeful gay jerk decides to “out” the dying old hapless central female character, Daphne, for being a slut. A big so what. The only thing to recommend this novel is that it gave me something to read by flashlight in the Oct ’11 snow storm. **

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides- Marriage Plod. It’s never good when you start skimming the first pages of a novel. There were too many skippable spots. Tedious listings which read like BrownU’s syllabi of the early 80′s in Derrida deconstruction detail. Relevance was in then. A mangled menage a trois struggles with religion, manic depression, and feminism. The triangle confronts difficult life choices after college with some compassion and strength of character. I did like the ending. ***

That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo- Marriage in the ‘sandwich years’. Relatable to us of a certain age. Coming to grips with elderly parents, young adult kids while our generation is trying to navigate retirement and the next phase. It ain’t easy to make sense of life in that context. Russo shines a sweet glimmer of hope in this light yet poignant quick novel. ****

The Paris Wife, Paula McLain- Ernest Hemingway’s early years after World War I when he lived in Paris, skiied in Austria, and was married to first wife Hadley from St. Louis. During this period he frequently traveled to Spain where he became obsessed with the bullfighting corridas, producing ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and later ‘Death in the Afternoon’. It’s hard to believe that Hemingway and all of the famous and notorious of the times could be portrayed as boring as they seem in this novel. John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, painted as pale characters. Hemingway and especially Hadley are drawn as two-dimensional, vapid lovers. Found it absurd. **

The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt- Runner-up to Wolf Hall for the 2010 Booker Prize it’s 900 pages of twisted wonderland starring a wicked mother. The Carroll-esque maze of subterranean tales is interspersed with dysfunctional family drama in pre-WWI England. Byatt gets mired a bit in social, political, artistic mores of the day. Reading as a writer, it’s a lesson in ‘know when to end it’. Yet, it’s a compelling sojourn on sultry nights under the porch light. ****

The White Queen, The Red Queen, Philippa Gregory- Formulaic precursors to Henry VIII series. Danielle Steel does War of the Roses. If you can keep track of the myriad of Elizabeths, Edwards, Edmonds, Richards, and Margarets, you are good. It’d be best to read these two overlapping tales together if you have air or beach time to kill. Otherwise, skip ‘em. **

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef , Gabrielle Hamilton-Enjoyed this ‘Glass Castle’-esque memoir. Gabrielle Hamilton learns butchering and natural cooking from erratic eccentric parents in a ramshackle Pennsylvania silk mill. When she finds herself on her own at 14, she survives by working in catering and camp kitchens from Northampton to New York City. Sporting scars, tatoos, and drug history of a migrant cook, she develops into a wife, mother, featured food writer and James Beard award-winning chef. Her acclaimed East Village restaurant, Prune, opened in 1999, still ranks at the top of 2011 lists. ****

It’s no wonder that Northampton restaurateur Linda Schwartz didn’t recognize her former quirky college line cook from the 80′s. “After retiring from the restaurant business in the 90′s, Schwartz became a culinary arts professor and enjoyed reading essays by a young food writer who shared her distaste for pretentious chefs posing at farmers’ markets with baskets on their arms. Schwartz learned that this writer, Gabrielle Hamilton, had opened a restaurant called Prune in New York. Schwartz couldn’t wait to go to meet her, so went to the East Village and introduced herself to Hamilton after dinner. Looks of familiarity passed between them. Hamilton shrieked, ‘I worked for you when I was at Hampshire College!’ This sophisticated chef-owner looked very different from the avant-garde student who worked at Curtis & Schwartz Cafe back in the day.” -excerpted from Table’s Edge, 2005.

The Last Hundred Days, Patrick McGuinness
The Widow, Joyce Carol Oates
The Princess of Burundi, Kjell Eriksson
Kamchatka, Marcelo Figueras
The Sense of An Ending, Julian Barnes
The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell
Warsaw Anagrams, Richard Zimler
Wish You Were Here, Graham Swift
At Last, Edward St. Aubyn
The Hangman’s Daughter, Oliver Potzch
Open City, Teju Cole
The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
Almost a Family, John Darnton
To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild
In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson

Spring /Summer- 2011

The Greater Journey, David McCullough
Breakfast With Buddha, Roland Merullo
A Dog’s Purpose, W. Bruce Cameron
Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson
The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova
Great House, Nicole Krauss
Three Stages of Amazement, Carol Edgarian
Table’s Edge, Carol Colitti Levine
The River Gods, Brian Kiteley
The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Room, Emma Donoghue
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman

SideTrek Bloggers’ Best of 2010

The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Millennium Trilogy, Stieg Larsson
The Black Prince, Iris Murdoch
The Master, Colm Toibin
How I Became a Famous Novelist, Steve Hely

Trek Reads 2010

The Inheritance of Loss, Desai
Griftopia, Taibbi
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Ford
Falling Leaves, Yen Mah
1421, Menzies
Mayflower, Philbrick
Ransom, Malouf
The Bridge, Remnick
Christianity, MacCulloch
Cutting for Stone, Verghese
The Invisible Bridge, Orringer
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, Schaffer
Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto, Chapman
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, Daum

2010 REVIEWS- Pithy Vinegar

Goodbye to All That- Not since reading Sebastian Faulks’ “Birdsong” have I been so engaged by WW1. Robert Graves was a war poet who published his memoirs in 1929. His account of the war has remained fresh and urgent. I felt regret as I finished the last page.

The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt (shortlisted for Man Booker Prize- went to Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall), focuses on social/political/artistic movements of the late 19th, early 20th centuries in England.  Three unorthodox (read dysfunctional) inter-connected families play out their lives against the backdrop of this remarkable period.  You may have read Byatt’s “Possession”… each one of her books is a must-read, as are novels by her sister Margaret Drabble.  Some literary genes these sisters have!

La Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver – never read BK before. Young boy goes to Mexico ca late 1920s with his liberated, jazz age mother. Meets Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, then becomes cook/secretary for Leon Trotsky. Good read, sometimes boggy in second half of book.

Restoration, Rose Tremain- Robert Merivel, medical student with tendency to skip class in favor of whoring, introduced by his glove maker father to Charles II who installs him at court. Colourful, bizarre account of man whose appetites for sex, food, booze and the king’s mistress cost him everything.

Avignon Quintet, Lawrence Durrell- Huge volume, small print, left behind in London. Three people: a man plus another man and his sister have obsessive, triangulated relationship with whiffs of homosexuality, incest, murder/suicide, Proustian musing, navel-gazing. Still, enjoyable enough to finish if I could find the individual novels with large print.

The Slap- Read this in June. Can’t remember author. This is a swell read. The consequences of a man slapping an out-of-control child not his own. Whew!

Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson- Another tale about Jackson Brodie, private investigator. Love this writer. Exploration of unsavoury criminal underclass, equally unsavoury police department and the few good people who take them on.

Corduroy Mansions- an apartment building in Scotland, Smith has such insight into his characters, a gentle and absorbing read.

Quite Honestly, John Mortimer- author of Rumpole of the Bailey books, amusing, a do-gooding young woman becomes praeceptor for ex-con thief and falls for him.

Carol’s 2010 REVIEWS

Wolf Hall, Cromwell Unplugged, by Hilary Mantel. Mantel takes us inside Thomas Cromwell and his mature macro worldly view. She changes Cromwell’s voice from first to third to omniscient with a literary facility that transcends tense and time. In doing so, she reduces Henry VIII and the English aristocracy around him to parochial, debauched, naive pawns. ‘Wolf Hall’ is worthy of its prizes.

Franzen’s Freedom: See amazon.com reviews. Mine is one of the 45 one-stars, “Tom Wolfe, definitely NOT”. As you’ll see, it’s quite the range of stars, but I agree with the other 44 to date, Sept., 2010.

The Black Prince, by Iris Murdoch came to us from PithyVinegar on a rainy day in Australia. I’m so glad I read it. It’s an older gem, published in 1973. Murdoch described her own life as filled with “muddled” relationships. The novel is replete with them. It’s a story from the point of view of Bradley Pearson, who fancies himself a writer. His maudlin view of the arts comes from an insecure place; he’s ultimately a dotty old dude. Bradley’s relationships are muddled and enmeshed with all of the players in the story. Julian, the daughter of Bradley’s friends, is the most muddled character, beginning with her ambiguous name. Murdoch’s writing is wonderful, the concept beyond its time, the execution intriguing.

Rhoda Janzen’s memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is pithy, funny, loyal to her heritage and customs yet perversely aware of their oddities in the modern world. She returns to her “people” after her abusive husband of 15 years leaves her for Bob whom he met on gay.com after her hysterectomy at 43 years old. So far, you’re not on board? Then she has a car accident which propels her to return to the Mennonite nest to heal all of her wounds. She reflects on her lot with a self-deprecating jaundiced eye. Her mother is a “hoot”. Although Janzen overuses words like kerfuffle and hortatory, it’s a light read with nuggets of brilliance. I could relate to both her wit and writing style. As with Meghan Daum’s pursuit of the perfect house, Janzen is still in the middle of her life’s tale with no clear ending.

Island Beneath the Sea. Allende gives a clear vision of life as a slave anywhere, but particularly in the late 18th century in Saint Domingue, the French colony which became independent Haiti. It delves into the history of the revolution which created this first emancipated nation with less success. Zarite (Tete) and her sugar cane plantation master Toulouse Valmorain are well drawn characters in the first half of the book. Once they move to New Orleans, the vision becomes fuzzy where the plot loses its way into a contrivance of predictability. “The island beneath the sea” is a netherworld mentioned once at the beginning and again at the end of the book. There is no clarity of that place nor its spiritual meaning to these people. In the meantime July 2010, Anderson Cooper, Former Prez Bill Clinton, Sean Penn are showing us the disappointing results of generous donations to this partial island nation in the midst of the Caribe still shaken from the recent earthquake. I wish I’d gotten a sharper focus into the unique Haitian culture from reading the book. It’s obvious that we just across the sea have little understanding of the people of voodoo, Jesus, and tragedy even today.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand: Pettigrew was a lousy father who had a tragic but rotten son. The Major’s relationship with a lovely Pakistani woman redeemed him somewhat, but I found the book lukewarm insipid.

Millennium Trilogy. Finally finished “Hornet’s Nest” the last of the “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” trilogy. As is typical the first was the best, deep character development as well as intriguing story line. “Played with Fire” the second was an action thriller and page-turner, made the protagonist Lisbeth Salander larger than life, brought the villains into sharp focus. Semi-spoiler alert: “Hornet’s Nest” fails on three levels- first and foremost too little Salander. Second, nastiest villains not part of most of this plot, flimsy corrupt government guys not compelling. Stieg Larsson, or since this was published posthumously, maybe editors got preachy about feminism and political conspiracies. Yawn. Third, Larsson didn’t build on nor weave into this last story the wonderful relationships formed in “Tatoo”, watered down at best. Bottom line- more Salander, better book.  I will miss her.

The Little Book, Selden Edwards: Time travelling seems to be the new fiction fad.  This one beams its characters back to 19th century Vienna from 20th century America. Edwards worked on this first novel for over 30 years.  That amount of time and research may be the reason he dropped so many historical celebrities into his tale.  The famed of their day pop up at every turn; world leaders, writers, composers, rock stars, and of course Freud.  The plot seemed contrived to include all of them. I found it distracting.  (Local note: one of the central characters is from Amherst and went to Smith College in Northampton.)

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown: “Lost” to be sure.  Another physically freakish villain kills off unsuspecting secondary characters as he chases two-dimensional family members around Washington D.C. landmarks to uncover a silly string of Masonic codes and magic squares which lead to … absolutely nothing!  Apologies to George Washington, Ben Franklin, Isaac Newton.