Force of Nature
Kim Baldwin
Bold Strokes Books
1020 Livezey Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119
ISBN: 1933110236, $15.95, 235 pp.
Arlene Germain
Reviewer
Kim Baldwin returns with her second novel, Force of Nature, which is distinctly different from her award-winning debut work, Hunter's Pursuit. The wonderfully entertaining Pursuit was primarily an action/thriller with the focal point being the one main character's skill in survival at any cost. Force of Nature is action-packed, has fast-paced thrilling rescue scenes, but here the author has chosen to focus her character development on the two main characters.
Gable McCoy is a forty-six year-old pharmacist who is also in her rookie year as a volunteer firefighter in a rural Michigan community. After having survived a tornado, she begins her task of search and rescue in the area. She comes upon the devastated home of Erin Richards, a thirty-nine year-old teacher who has recently moved to the area. Erin is alive but unfortunately trapped in her basement bathroom. Completely surrounded by debris, Gable must await other rescuers before extricating Erin and taking her to safety. Throughout the long night, Gable keeps Erin occupied with conversational anecdotes and mutual family histories. This is no easy task since Erin is both claustrophobic and has a fear of the dark. However, as the hours wear on, a friendship develops, which, unbeknownst to either woman, will face even greater challenges as their story progresses.
Baldwin has a natural gift for creating a scene and immediately immersing the reader. Compelled by the tumultuous tornadic winds, both Gable and the reader hit that three-foot wide drainpipe just in time to escape almost certain death. "It was upon her in an instant, trying to suck her from the pipe, tugging at her with fierce determination" (p. 15). The reader can feel the vacuum inside that pipe, can experience the hands sliding helplessly along the narrow algae-covered walls, and can feel the pelting stones and sticks as they assault the exposed legs. The reality of the situation is skillfully conveyed through the concise syntax and expert word choice.
Another hallmark of this novel is the manner in which Baldwin takes the mundane and prosaic events of everyday living and juxtaposes them with that thankfully rare catastrophic natural occurrence. These are ordinary women with jobs and lives; they are not superheroes in any way, and this very credible casting delivers much more of an impact for the reader. The suspension of disbelief is admirably achieved. It is also refreshing to read a novel where comely twenty-somethings are not cavorting across the chapters. Both Gable and Erin are attractive, professional, and responsible older women. That the author has chosen to write about this demographic is much appreciated by this reader.
Creating the uncertainty about Erin's sexual identity and developing the necessary sexual tension between these two main characters could very easily have lent itself to the tried and cliche coming-out experience. However, Baldwin surpasses this hurdle with wonderfully humorous exchanges of dialogue. She has a gift for creating resonant and realistic conversations among her various characters as well as a genuine sense of what genuinely coincides with any given situation. There are many conflicts presented throughout the course of the novel, but Baldwin offers clear and appealing resolutions for all.
Force of Nature is an exciting and substantial reading experience which will long remain with the reader. Likeable characters with plausible problems and concerns, imaginative settings, engrossing events, and a well-tailored writing style all contribute to an exceptional novel. Baldwin's characterization is acutely and meticulously circumscribed and expansive. It is indeed gratifying to see a new author attempt and succeed in expanding her literary technique and writing style. Kim Baldwin is an author who has achieved both in Force of Nature.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Alfred A. Knopf
www.aaknopf.com
ISBN: 0375412026, $35.00 US $47.00 CAN, 721 pp.
Bonnie Trotter
Reviewer
In 1951, our elementary school, located in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., conducted air raid drills to prepare us for the possibility of an atomic bomb attack. While our teacher led us single file across the entire campus, I worried that an atomic bomb would certainly not wait for us to reach a safe place. Once the student body assembled in the cafeteria, each of us crawled under a desk, pulled our legs up under us, and covered our eyes by burying them in the crook of an arm.
That bomb never did drop. I kept waiting for it. When I was in high school, my heart still thundered at the sound of any kind of whistling or whining from the skies above. As of now, 2005, it still hasn't dropped. Who and what protected us? Surely not the designers and manufacturers of the first atomic bombs, the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, ending WWII when Japan surrendered a few days later.
I was wrong. Reading American Prometheus (the name of the Greek god who took fire from Zeus and gave it to humans), I learned that the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), spearheaded the movement to contain this dangerous weapon after it was successfully used on Japan.
When a riveting and highly-acclaimed biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer reached the shelves, I bought it, read it, and chose to review it because I want to know happened behind the closed doors of government during the era of the gestation and birth of nuclear war technology.
American Prometheus greatly intrigued me by its tale of how Oppenheimer, during the aftermath of its use against Japan, advocated before Presidents and generals its control and containment through coordinated effort by all nations, in the end martyring his career as a prominent member of the government's scientific community.
Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer, this brilliant man of such stark contradictions? The authors paint a vivid portrait: rail thin, penetrating blue eyes, dark hair. He wore a porkpie hat. After he bummed a cigarette from a friend while a youth, he chained smoked for the rest of his life. To direct the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, even though he failed the phyical because he was 27 pounds underweight.
His strength and stamina, however, showed that he was no weakling. He thrived on long, arduous workdays at Los Alamos, extended horseback rides on a horse named "Crisis" that only Oppenheimer could ride, and reckless sailboat excursions through tempestuous waters.
Surviving a painful, prolonged adolescence, the shy and awkward young man matured to become a captivating lecturer and conversationalist, his verbal generosity warm and sprinkled with dry wit, particularly at social gatherings where friends and colleagues considered him a marvelous entertainer.
At 36 years of age, he married Katherine Peuning Harrison, "Kitty", and they stayed married until the end of his life. Kitty, although plagued by emotional illness and alcoholism, stepped forward to help her husband very effectively through excruciating ordeals, particularly the Atomic Energy Commission's hearing in 1954 to determine whether or not the physicist's top security clearance should be extended. It was not. Her testimony during this hearing was truthful and articulate, while still shedding the best possible light on her husband.
Robert Oppenheimer enjoyed a close relationship with his younger brother Frank, an experimental physicist. The authors describe how Robert detested and avoided experimental physics, an area in which Frank excelled. Unlike Robert, Frank joined the Communist Party and admitted this later on to the government interrogators, getting himself blackballed from teaching and research positions. Frank became a cattle rancher.
For many years he and Frank leased the "Perro Caliente", a ranch in New Mexico, to use as a getaway for themselves and their friends and colleagues. It was here that Robert "adopted" the cantankerous horse, "Crisis", that he rode for days through treacherous mountainous terrain.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, brilliant and creative theoretical physicist, embraced two diametrically opposed sides to his personality, an inner conflict that could have splintered the average person. On the one hand, he was the scientist assigned by the government to direct the development of a combat weapon that would dwarf all others.
The other side of his personality revealed his strong sense of ethics ingrained in him as a youngster at the Ethical Culture School. When the Nazi government persecuted and slaughtered Jews, Robert arranged and paid for his parents' escape to the United States, as well as that for Jewish physicist friends and colleagues. These experiences made him despise fascist governments like Hitler's, compelling him to support left causes, all of which were being hijacked by the American Communist Party. These kinds of involvements would get him into trouble with government interrogators years later.
The physicist's love for and dedication to humankind extended to the literary arts. As a linguist he was fluent in several languages. He was an accomplished writer who immersed himself in such giants as Marcel Proust, Henry James, and Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, eventually quoting it after the birth of his atomic bomb, "Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The authors describe Oppenheimer as naive, as if they are surprised in the light of his scientific genius. To me he seems naive in his dealings with government interrogators, but only from the standpoint of someone whose main interest is protecting his job. Knowing the dangers of the new nuclear war technology, Oppenheimer was most interested in protecting humankind, so he clung like a barnacle to high-level government positions as long as he could. From that standpoint, he was not in the least naive. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He believed that, inside the system, he could most effectively wage his campaign to contain and control the technology, even at the expense of his career.
I feel that his work during this tenure halted the government's headlong thrust toward what he considered catastrophic destruction, ultimately helping to protect us from that bomb that I kept waiting for. Over time, even after Oppenheimer was banned from government employment, military officials, and Presidents, began to pay attention.
The authors give each of the many secondary characters a dimension you don't normally see in the minor figures of a story. President Harry Truman "wrote to (Dean) Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a 'cry-baby scientist' who had come to his office 'some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.'"
During the Atomic Energy Commission's hearings on whether or not to renew Oppenheimer's security clearance, its chairmen Lewis Strauss sent President Eisenhower progress reports. "Ike cabled him in a reply from his Augusta, Georgia retreat, thanking him for his 'interim report'. He also informed Strauss that he burned his interim report, apparently not wanting to leave any evidence that he or Strauss was inappropriately monitoring the security hearing."
The authors show a remarkable ability to incorporate facts and dates without interrupting the flow of the narrative, enriching for the general reader as well as the scholar. Reading about Oppenheimer, you learn what it is like to choose between obeying the dictates of those in power, with possibly disastrous consequences for the many, and protesting their decisions, risking your loss of position and reputation. You never know when you will be forced to make such a choice. Oppenheimer's experience can give you the courage to make the right one.
The author Martin J. Sherwin, who lives in Washington, D.C., began his research of Oppenheimer twenty-five years ago. Sherwin, the Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History at Tufts University, also wrote A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize and the American History Book Prize.
Co-author Kae Bird, also a resident of Washington, D.C., wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms, and he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Bird is a contributing editor of The Nation.
Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
Philip Yancey
Waterbrook Press
Colarado Springs USA
ISBN: 1578568188, $12.95, 330 pp.
Brenda Daniels
Reviewer
Soul Survivor: how thirteen unlikely mentors helped my faith survive the church is a biographical tribute by Yancey to thirteen individuals who helped to shape his faith and work. I selected this book because I identify with Yancey's poor experiences of church and the title offered hope and an alternative to finding soul food in an institution I was ready to give up on. People with similar experiences will appreciate Yancey's self-proclaimed honest approach. He says, on page 270, "When I began writing openly about my faith, I concluded that I had only one thing to offer: honesty."
This book will speak to Christians who wrestle with intellectual doubts about their faith and who struggle within the confines of church fundamentalism. For two reasons it is also a book filled with hope. Firstly, because Yancey's 13 mentors, some found only in literature, provide an alternative to traditional thinking. Secondly, because those mentors, described in all their fallen humanity, teach lessons which build faith. Martin Luther King's life, for instance, helped Yancey face his own racism and repent of it. G K Chesterton provided an example of how to enjoy salvation and Dr Paul Brand prompted Yancey to consider a love for the poor and outcasts of society.
As the book progresses it is Jesus who emerges as the hero. Henri Nouwen, who gave up a successful career to live and work in a home for the mentally and physically disabled, posed a startling example of how not only to minister to the needy (p295) but "to find Jesus within them". Jesus' life, which displayed the principles of reconciliation, humility and vicarious sacrifice, was something Ghandi admired. Ghandi, however, could not reconcile the disparity he saw between Christ and Christians. Although Yancey does not 'church bash' his constant juxtaposition of church ideologies with the lives of real people casts the church, in this book, in a pharasaical light.
Soul Survivor, like other books by Yancey, is a journey with an open end. Although I appreciate Yancey's probing style some of his points are not succinct and this book would benefit by, if not providing a conclusion, at least an explanation of where the author is at. Yancey, by his own admission, "spent most of his life in recovery from the church." Having grown up in a racist, legalistic and fundamentalist church, much of his writing is a struggle to pursue a faith he cannot leave alone. Other titles by the same author include: Disappointment with God, Church: Why Bother? and What's so amazing about Grace?
Yancey provides book lists and a reading group companion for readers wishing to further their knowledge. I was prompted to make my own list of mentors and in so doing learnt to treasure my faith anew.
Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam
Larry Heinemann
Doubleday
ISBN: 038551221X, $22.95, 243 pp.
B.A. Brittingham
Reviewer
Although it did not garner national attention or give rise to any widespread outpourings of remembrance, this past April marked the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The most lasting impression we have - aside from that gleaming granite commemorative engraved with 58,000 plus names on the Washington Mall - seems to be the quintessential "bug-out" photo of a chopper on the roof of the American embassy, a too-long tether of people desperate to clamber aboard.
As is often the case, the years have been kind to Vietnam annealing some of its sharpness, if not in the memories of the generation that served there, then at least in terms of the original stigma attached to it. Perhaps as a country we have mellowed enough to see that it had some unpleasant but necessary lessons to pass along. All wars do, though it is the young who must purchase that knowledge for us. But even with that, there remains the lasting stench of defeat, along with the awkward doling out and acceptance of blame by aging politicians, whenever the word Vietnam is uttered.
According to the record books, American soldiers were long gone by the time those frantic Vietnamese began queuing up for the last chopper out. But when it comes to war in general and Vietnam specifically, the records aren't always on mark. Which is why three decades later books like Heinemann's Black Virgin Mountain are still being written and read. We simply cannot get enough of the subject to affix it with a permanent, acceptable label and then hang it away like an out-of-fashion coat.
The mountain of the title was the focal point of Heinemann's year in hell. He had already returned to the country a number of times in the1990s, often in conjunction with writers' conferences, when he and another writer, Larry Rottmann, took the trip to what is known in Vietnam as Nui Ba Den.
The text crackles with an anger that, by Heinemann's own admission, remains unabated despite the passing of thirty-seven years since his tour in 'Nam. Having lost two brothers to those residual emotional conflicts that simmer long after the actual combat is over, he is brutally frank about his experiences ("Every human vitality is taken from you as if you'd been skinned; yanked out like you pull nails with a claw hammer; boiled off, the same as you would render a carcass at hog-killing") and his opinions concerning the conduct of the war. It is difficult to decide which leader bears the greater brunt of his scathing commentary - LBJ or William Westmoreland.
Happily, the entire book does not focus solely on the author's lingering revulsion for the war. There are large travelogue segments, life slices of rich imagery showing how the Vietnamese have moved along with far less lingering acrimony than have we since the end of what they call the "American War." Included is a wonderful description of the French colonial era bureaucrat's home-turned-guest-house at which they stayed in Hanoi. Its exotic past (koi pond, louvered windows with a dozen coats of paint) resonates like something straight out of 1940s cinema - Casablanca on a different continent. Anyone who has grown up in a large city like New York (this reviewer's birthplace) or Chicago (the author's) can appreciate the absurd notion of quiet at the center of a city with a million people but virtually no mechanized traffic. (Yes, Virginia, there are urban areas with no trucks, sirens, or 120 decibel music thudding from SUV speakers.)
Heinemann includes engaging snippets of a portion of one trip involving the Vietnam Railway and its sometimes idiosyncratic train station employees. Something we don't expect after all those plane loads of bombs and Agent Orange, is the spectacular scenery. Perhaps most revealing of some kind of personal transformation is a statement he makes after watching the Southeast Asian panorama from the train's window, "And there it was, the country at peace, the thing I had come to see."
In contrast to the many positive things Heinemann has to say about that nation - some critics feel he is too positive too often when it comes to all manner of things Vietnamese, but then this is his story, not theirs - in the latter part of the book there is the patently unnerving visit to the tunnels at Cu Chi. Juxtapositioned next to his own middle-aged physical discomfort at "duckwalking" through a small section of the enlarged-for-tourists-maze, Heinemann gives us a palpably frightening description of what it was like for an outfit's smallest soldier to be pressed into service as a tunnel rat. Fear, claustrophobia, the myriad things to remember to listen for, to smell, to see in order to scope out a tunnel and stay alive - if after reading it you don't come away with the distinct itch of something crawling on your skin, the feel of dirt sticking to the sweat on your bare back, then you may already be dead.
Language rampages back and forth between politely literate and gritty street talk, oftentimes within the same sentence. Normally this would be where a caution against placing it in the hands of middle school children doing history papers might be placed. But there is little early teens have not already heard. For obvious reasons, anything related to that period of time is best displayed in the lingo of the day. Heinemann's choice of words may have been his way of showing us that he can walk both sides of the line, i.e., that he is an accomplished writer with a well-developed, post-tour vocabulary, but whose awareness is forever etched with the earthy, peppery talk of men at war. He may also be enjoying his ability to keep the non-military reader a little off-balance: the seriously out-of-kilter, day-after-day world of the average soldier. And whoever predicted the pending demise of the semicolon, hasn't read Larry Heinemann.
But to the rest of those doing research on the embattled 60s and 70s, this is a seminal book, one that stands outside all the political posturing and sociological conjecture. It is an invaluable look into the dehumanizing influences of combat by someone who lived it.
So, once again to war and its lessons. Our unglamorous departure from Saigon over thirty years past remains a thorn in the side of many, though for an assortment of different reasons. It is a picture we need to keep close to us as we devise our exit strategy for Iraq after destroying their corrupt, sadistic, but functioning political infrastructure. It would be lamentable if history were to look back on our crucial departure from Baghdad only to have it described by some future Heinemann as "an agony, and an orgy of unambiguous betrayal … right to the end and still, a bungled tangle…"
In Too Deep
Ronica Black
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
314 Conestoga Rd. Wayne, PA 19087
ISBN: 1933110171, $15.95, 336 pp.
Cheri Rosenberg
Reviewer
Ronica Black's debut novel, In Too Deep, is the outstanding first effort of a gifted writer who has a promising career ahead of her. Black shows extraordinary command in weaving a thoroughly engrossing tale around multi-faceted characters, intricate action and character-driven plots and subplots, sizzling sex that jumps off the page and stimulates libidos effortlessly, amidst brilliant storytelling. A clever mystery writer, Black has the reader guessing until the end.
Called in to investigate a murder, newly appointed homicide detective Erin McKenzie of the Valle Luna, Arizona PD, ends up going undercover as bait to investigate a rash of serial murders. The suspect is none other than the affluent, powerful, sexy, skilled seductress and positively drop-dead gorgeous elite lesbian nightclub owner Elizabeth Adams. It is Erin's job to lure Liz hoping to get close enough to the woman for a confession. In addition, who better to teach a straight married woman how to be a "lesbian on the prowl" than a lesbian, namely, detective Patricia Henderson. Patricia knew Erin before the assignment but when she notices Erin's wedding ring is missing she is intrigued. In fact, Patricia can't help but notice everything about Erin, including her sexy vulnerability and good looks; she becomes more than just smitten--protective seems more like it. She even contemplates that a commitment would be a dream come true.
Patricia wonders if her attraction to Erin is just "…so desperate that a polite 'how are you feeling?' could leave her panting and ready to pounce" [p. 36] or is there really more to her feelings? It doesn't help that the two women have to work very closely on the case, which has Erin questioning her sexuality as new feelings surface. Emotional floodgates threaten to open after Erin meets and falls hopelessly in love or at least lust for Liz Adams, while still having feelings for Patricia. The fact that she is in the throes of divorce from her cheating husband, investigating a high-profile murder, all the while questioning her "previously unsuspected attraction to her own sex," [p. 76], and you have the makings of a complicated romance with Erin torn between two desirable women.
Erin searched Patricia's face, a note of desperation in her voice. "This doesn't mean I'm gay…does it" [p. 37]. She feels like she "had been given the key to a whole new world. The door had been unlocked and she was seeing what she had never noticed before--the allure of the female body…" [p. 46]. As if the investigation of a potentially dangerous murderer isn't enough, Erin has to deal with her own confused feelings.
Is Liz Adams really the calculated killer the police have made her out to be or is there a human and very innocent woman just hungering to be let out? Black does a convincing job of leaving plenty of room for doubt. The reader is on a merry-go-round when it comes to whom Erin should stick with, Patricia or Liz, but knowing that Erin's happiness is the most desired outcome.
Ronica Black uses metaphors like an Olympic swimmer gliding through water snatching up Gold. From the very first absorbing page to the last, there is a richness in the text that resonates in each sentence, bringing the reader that much closer to the character's actions, emotions, and the vivid setting in which they live. Black makes everything clearer when she describes Erin's attraction to Liz, "Liz swallowed hard, and Erin noticed. She was noticing everything now. The beauty of the woman before her, the fragility masked by indifference and distance, the delicate pulse that beat just beneath the damp skin on her neck. She was human. And that was something it seemed no one had ever considered before" [p. 163].
Every time the reader has a handle on what's happening, Black throws in a curve, successfully devising a good mystery. The romance and sex adds a special gift to the package rounding out the story for a totally satisfying read.
In Too Deep, by newcomer Ronica Black, is emotional, hot, gripping, raw, and a real turn-on from start to finish, with characters you will fall in love with, root for, and never forget. A truly five star novel, you will not want to miss In Too Deep and will look forward to Black's next novel, Wild Abandon, coming out in 2006.
The Wild Girl
Jim Fergus
Hyperion
77 W 66th St, New York, NY 10023
ISBN: 1401300545, $23.95, 348 pp.
Coletta Ollerer
Reviewer
This is an exciting story about events that took place in the early 20th century when a small band of Apaches still roamed the southwest with hate in their hearts for anyone not Apache.
Ned Giles is orphaned as a teenager and takes his father's written advice and buys a camera. Photography has been a huge interest in his life. He works for a wealthy gentlemen's club in Chicago and finds posted there an advertisement asking for volunteers to pledge to go on an expedition into Apache territory and rescue a child who had been abducted by the natives some years before. The posting about The Great Apache Expedition is directed at wealthy members as an interesting trip for which they are to pay. Ned writes to the address given asking if he might go as a paid member of the party. Before he can receive an answer he loses his job. He decides to buy a car and take his camera to Douglas, Arizona in hopes of signing on as an employee of the expedition. As luck would have it he manages to meet up with a photographer there who is looking for an assistant and he is hired.
He is settling into the routine there when a professional game hunter comes into town with an Apache girl he captured in the wilderness. This is the wild girl. "There I witnessed a sight such as I have never before seen. An Indian girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, was tethered by a rope to a hitching post in front of the jailhouse. She sat on her haunches in the dirt, peering out at the crowd through fiercely tangled hair. . . . . The girl was filthy, streaked with dirt, sweat, and blood, dressed in a soiled man's shirt and high moccasins. Even from a distance I could smell her." (p122) She is young, filthy and ferocious as she bites and draws the blood of anyone who comes near her. The authorities manage to get her into a jail cell where she curls up and prepares to die. Ned's photography skills allows him to gain entrance into the jail where he takes pictures of her and there he becomes intrigued by her wildness.
The idea is formulated that the girl should be taken on the expedition as a trade for the young kidnapped boy. Ned convinces Joseph, an apache scout with the expedition, to talk the girl out of her resolve to die and convince her she should make the trip. They set out with the wild girl to find the Apache tribe who is holding the kidnapped child. After a few days on the trail the girl becomes less stressed and is freed from her bonds and she takes the opportunity to run off. They set out to find her and the adventure escalates.
The author's technique of telling the story in the form of Journals kept by Ned is especially fascinating as it pulls the reader into the action as if he himself were present. Action being the key word here. This is a tale full of hazards and risks as the last hold-out of wild people try to protect their way of life from invasion of the `white eyes'. It is an enjoyable read full of extraordinary events about a tribe of people who continue to fascinate Americans and Mexicans alike. It is not a story soon to be forgotten.
Kristin Lavransdatter
Sigrid Undsett
Penguin Classics
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
405 Murray Hill Parkway, East Rutherford, NJ 07073
ISBN: 0394432622, $44.95, 1088 pp.
Many novels set in the Middle Ages happen to have a few people and a few human values in them. Authors dwell upon the trappings of the times, ensnaring their characters in endless descriptions of clothing and castles, until the stories read like a 6th Grade history text, in which a child hero takes the reader through the facts and figures of the era by recreating A Day in the Life of A Knight. Or a Monk. Or a Serf.
Then, there's Sigrid Undsett's 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' written in the 1920s and winner of a Nobel Prize for Literature. This novel contains strong people with real attitudes, who happen to live in 14th Century Norway. Universal themes create a link between the Medieval era and modern times, the same way the motifs of 'Romeo and Juliet,' or 'Othello' link the Renaissance to the 21st Century.
The epic story (over 1100 pages) focuses on Kristin, the strong-willed and somewhat spoiled daughter of the knight, Lavran. Intelligent but impetuous, Kristin struggles through her teenage years, breaks an engagement to the embarrassment of her parents, and marries Erland, a man of whom they disapprove.
Kristin and Erland have a rocky, but at the same time joyous marriage. In some ways, he is a disappointing husband. He is a passionate lover, but cannot manage money or land, and has no common sense about people. Forced to become the brains of the family, Kristin constantly struggles between keeping her place as a woman, and managing finances and fields.
As her children grow up, Erland gets on the wrong side of national politics and plunges the family into poverty. She copes. Eventually he dies in a fight. She becomes a nun. .
Sigrid Undsett takes Kristin through every phase of development, from a little girl terrified when she thinks she sees a forest nymph, to a teen refusing to see the wisdom in guidance her parents are trying to give her, to becoming a mother and understanding exactly what they meant, to making peace with herself at the end of her life.
More exciting, the author places other characters, Erland, Kristin's parents, her children, siblings, family priests, in-laws, and friends, in situations very similar to hers. But they have their own ways of reacting, depending on their temperaments and backgrounds. This creates layers and layers of human thought and action for a reader to compare and contrast in 'Kristin Lavransdatter'.
Undsett also varies the pace of the book, balancing character action with contemplation. She holds the description of Kristin's surrounds to what she needs to drive plot and character, giving a picture of 14th Century material culture without excessive detail. She manages this in part because she grew up with an archaeologist father, who specialized in the Medieval Period. From early childhood she heard about artifacts of the Middle Ages and their uses. When she did her own research for 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' she had long passed infatuation with castles, and could concentrate on the humanity of the knights living in them.
'Kristinlavransdatter' was written in Norwegian. The original English translation, dating to 1951, imitated Medieval grammar and usage. The result was a dense and complex tangle of phrase, paragraph and sentence, which made the book difficult to read.
A translation finished this year by Albuquerque writer Tina Nunnally stripped away the faux Old English. Ms. Nunnally used simple, modern language with an occasional nod to earlier forms.
The combination of skillful author and sensitive translator makes 'Kristin Lavransdatter' an attention-holding read despite its length. Students of human nature will love the story. So will people who like historical fiction. Young adults will identify with 'Kristin Lavransdatter' as will their grandparents.
Butter Brown
Torrance Stephens
Infinity Publishing
1094 New DeHaven Street, Suite 100, West Conshohocken, PA 19428-2713
www.buybooksontheweb.com
ISBN: 074142407X, $13.95, 162 pp.
"Butter Brown" is the latest of several short story compilations from Georgia writer Torrance Stephens (A Matter of Attention). The stories, mostly written in first person narrative, for the most part have a common theme of boy meets girl in an unfamiliar place and decides whether to pursue love (or lust) with her.
In "Butter Brown," we meet characters that could just as easily be found in a Walter Mosley or Langston Hughes novel, such as Gas Pump who is frustrated with racism and class issues and Sabrina who is engaged to be married but still has feelings for another man. The stories in this compilation are easy to read and the reader should empathize with at least one of the characters.
"Butter Brown" is one of the best short story collections Stephens has written. His writing is uniquely descriptive, intellectually written, and even humorous at times. Although some of the stories take too long to develop, and the author has an uncanny habit of using footnotes in his fiction, the vivid writing (which allows readers to escape to far off places without having to leave home) manages to overcome these minor flaws. Expect great things from this author in the near future. Highly Recommended.
The Dream of the Decade, The London Novels
Afshin Rattansi
Booksurge LLC
ISBN: 1419616862, $23.99 US 19.99 GBP, 620 pp.
Fiona Fine
Reviewer
"The Dream of the Decade" comes with high praise. Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan is an admirer of the book and says that 30-something Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." But with the first British publication of this quartet, it's easy to see that these characters are very much living with us today.
It's always difficult for a new novelist to break through the household literary name strata. And, often, more difficult for the aspiring writer is answering questions as to what their work is about. J. D. Salinger would have found it difficult to describe immediately why the plot of "Catcher in the Rye" was inherently interesting. Norman Mailer would have had trouble with "An American Dream". It's the "hook" books like "A Handmaiden's Tale" or "The Satanic Verses" that are altogether easier.
There are hooks in Afshin Rattansi's debut novels, four of them published in one volume and all loosely connected, not least that they centre on life in London. The first book is about the growing divide between rich and poor just as balsamic vinegar was becoming fashionable amongst the new yuppie class. There follows a book on how Londoners respond to a terrorist bomb scare and another on how property prices began to dominate life in London. The final book is a very thinly disguised satire, or what looks like a satire, on news values at the BBC. But what unites the quartet is an ineluctable quality of the writing.
The thirty something British-born writer, whose Kenyan father is an expert on Sir Isaac Newton and alchemy, is slightly dismissive of the publication of the book.
"I went through two agencies, Curtis Brown and A.P. Watt and I can't say I was helped much and now it's twenty years on," he says about to pull another cigarette from a packet on the table and then replacing it. "I think publishers in the eighties and earlier nineties were more interested in my Indian origin than the subject matter of the book."
The first chapters of the first book were written at a time of resurgent Commonwealth writing. Rattansi, himself, worked on stories about Salman Rushdie during the Satanic Verses affair when he was on Tariq Ali's groundbreaking Channel 4 series, Bandung File.
Dressed in fashionable jeans and a black T-shirt, Rattansi is sitting in a Chateau Marmont seat after being interviewed by Los Angeles' most progressive radio station, KPFK. On the same programme was the now dead activist and former co-founder of LA's notorious Crips gang, Stanley "Tookie" Williams whose clemency pleas didn't prevent him from being injected with Sodium Pentothal.
"Los Angeles has always fascinated me and it was Mike Davis' book, City of Quartz, that enlightened me so much as to why. Whereas London is two organisms, the centre and the suburbs, Los Angeles is a myriad directly opposing entities. It has a sophisticated left, a developing world level population, a strong harbour union, fabulous colonies of wealth and it creates rightwing propaganda. And natural disasters have repeatedly shocked and devastated the area."
The prologue begins with one of the lead women characters of the books, now settled in marriage, relocating to the site of the 2005 Asian Tsunami. It is as if the person who most embraced the new opportunities that privatisation and a city that encouraged entrepreneurship is most shattered by its consequences.
"There is even a theory that the reason why Diego Garcia wasn't affected by the tsunami was because there was no commercial prawn fishing there. In Sri Lanka and Aceh, increasing commercialisation of the shrimp industry destroyed the protective reefs."
Rattansi sees politics in everything. He worked as a chief risk analyst at the insurers' Lloyd's of London after they had lost billions of pounds. His expertise was in catastrophe analysis, both environmental and political. But the books are in no way political tracts.
"One of the most moving letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald is the one he writes to his daughter, urging her to read Marx. His novels may be liked by criminal conservatives like Jeffrey Archer but whether a novel is political one way or another is in the eye of the beholder.
"What animates the title novel, I hope, is that I was part of a generation which was convinced that the social fabric that was ripped apart by Mrs. Thatcher would take a long time to mend. It's perhaps difficult to remember for those in their twenties that there was a time when music and politics were incredibly sophisticated and polarised. Well, perhaps popular music is still as polarised. And it was a time when one section of society leapfrogged at the expense of another."
Despite looking in his later twenties, Rattansi is on Jonathan Coe's eighties' territory about the post-punk, post-New Romantic time of The Smiths and the Orgreave battle of the Miners' Strike. But The Dream of the Decade is much more international than Coe.
"I always envisaged that the four main themes or even obstacles that the characters would have to circumnavigate were class, political terrorism, property and the media. They are vague but actually impact on everyday life. Well, at the time, terrorism didn't impact on daily life and the book rather explodes the myth that it does. But certainly, property does. As for the media, its place is an education system for adults - a dangerously flawed education system. I actually wrote a novel about education but it wasn't up to scratch."
Rattansi's first job was at The Guardian and he has a younger brother who followed him into journalism, now anchoring world news from CNN in the U.S.
The novels do have a distinctly American feel about them even though they capture the texture of London, something that many publishers commented on as he received his rejection slips. Rattansi was born in Cambridge but has lived all over the world, covering wars and political stories and just writing. Among the places he's lived in are Vancouver in Canada, in Los Angeles and in Havana and Caracas. In Dubai, for two years, he headed up the developing world's first 24 hour English language news station, devoted to an incredible remit that at times, according to Rattansi "made Al Jazeera look like Fox News."
"It was a station devoted to issues of globalisation and international capital except 'from below' and the brother of the Crown Prince of Dubai footed the bill. Someone obviously told someone that this station was very much not in the mould of Bloomberg and the station was closed down. I sometimes feel as if my approach as editor of the channel was just as it was in setting about writing the novels."
From there, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Returning to the BBC where he had worked as a producer for a number of years, he found himself at the Today programme under one editor - Rod Liddle - who resigned and then under no editor, just as the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction led up to unprecedented resignations by the Director General and Governor's Chairman of the BBC.
"Today was a hell of a place to work. Liddle may have been quite mad but he was a startlingly original editor. When I came back after being editor of a whole station, I was dreading Television Centre. I expected it to be staffed full of the usual wire-copiers whose idea of originality in journalism stretched as far as a vox pop. Rod was very different and he recruited staff that were inspired enough to take on the Government spin machine with relish. The whole David Kelly disaster was terrible. Even more so for our realising how little power the Today programme could, in the end, exert when it came to stopping the madness of the Iraq war."
Apart from the final novel, which reads as a Scoop for the twenty-first century, Rattansi's characters are usually doomed in love, either because of distances, class or the overpowering pressures of life in London. But this isn't Bridget Jones. There's a real anomie in the characters - whether they are drinking champagne or sitting injured in cardboard boxes - which recalls Beckett as much as F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and Jose Saramago, said that he could still feel the force of "The Dream of the Decade." The novels are not historical. The evocation of London, in particular, is as palpable as in Peter Ackroyd's biography of the city. Sometimes, it is to the capital city as Bukowski's prose was to Los Angeles - indeed the Barfly himself read it and found it uplifting. At other times it is strictly Waugh. Whereas most journalists' fiction demonstrates that being a hack is an Enemy of Promise, Rattansi creates big characters which we feel for because he examines the minutiae of their emotions. But, as one would expect from someone who covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and who worked at the controversial Arabic satellite TV station, Al Jazeera, the themes are far from small.
Scotland and its Whiskies
Michael Jackson
Photography by Harry Cory Wright
Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Ltd
PO Box 33, PYMBLE NSW 2073
ISBN: 1884831221, AU $39.95, 144 pages
Rose Glavas, Reviewer
www.astrologyrealm.com
An excellent book about my favourite all time drink! That's how I would describe this well written, beautifully photographed and intricate journey through Scotland, describing its whiskies.
The author, Michael Jackson, has won numerous awards for his writing in various publications. He has actually written many articles, including ones about beer and sake as well as single malt whiskies.
Harry Cory Wright is a leading landscape photographer who continues his fabulous work in 'Scotland and its Whiskies'. I have never been to Scotland, but through Wright's photography I not only see what it looks like but I can feel the type of atmosphere the various locations would have.
His work is internationally celebrated and is sold in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York. Harry Cory Wright's work covers many genres of photography, from advertising to publishing, to public and private commissions; from gallery exhibitions to editorial work.
Working together, Jackson and Wright have put together a combined piece of verbal and photographic artwork. The information provided is very educational, but enjoyable, with historic and technical information entwined with Jackson's fireside conversational style making this a pleasure to read. I can't reproduce the photography but I can give you a sample of the style of writing from page 63:
"After I had breathed the air of early Christianity and Celtic myth, the journey back was slow. It was not just the two hours' drive from Fionnphort to Tobermory, the main town of Mull, but also the otherworldliness of the landscape."
This book has been broken up with the chapters as follows: Overture; The Islands; The East; Coda; Directory of distilleries; Glossary, Index and Acknowledgements. I liked the maps each section had that showed where distilleries were either operating, operating with visitor centre, mothballed or operating intermittently; or closed. This information would come in handy if you are planning on visiting the areas yourself.
'Scotland and its Whiskies' is the perfect gift for that special person who has everything (including you!). It is an informative and enjoyable read; while pleasing the eye at the same time.
Ping: A Frog In Search of a New Pond
Stuart Avery Gold
Newmarket Press
18 East 48th Street, New York, NY 10017
newmarketpress.com 212-832-3629
ISBN: 1557046824, $15.00, 90 pages
Peter Hupalo
Reviewer
If you enjoyed Who Moved My Cheese?, you'll love Ping: A Frog In Search of a New Pond. Ping is about a frog who loves to jump and spash around but whose pond dries up. Ping sets out to find a new pond. But he's foiled by the dense forest.
Avery writes: "He felt defeated and disheartened, a sad, inept creature, doomed to a miserable life with no possibility for tomorrow, and that, quite simply was that. …Who was he to think he possessed the abilities to get what he wanted out of life? …it's probably safe to say there are limits to what a frog's psyche can endure…."
Just as he was most dejected, Ping meets a wise old owl who teaches him about life. Owl helps prepare Ping for a dangerous journey across Spat River. According to Owl, beyond Splat River is Emperor's Garden, a frog paradise.
Owl advises, "If the path you travel has no obstacles, it leads nowhere." (Oh, yeah, great advice coming from a bird). Owl says, "Too many wait for just the right time and just the right place to act. The very act of waiting actually pushes the desired events away. You must do in order to be."
Owl then gives Ping a crash course in risk analysis. "Owl explained that in order to experience wonder you have to experience the taking of risks. Risk converts opportunity into reality."
Then, it gets a bit weird. Owl puts Ping on a serious Rocky-type exercise regimen to get him into shape for swimming Splat River. Ping hangs from a tree with one pound rocks between his toes. And, of course, Ping does plenty of jumping jacks. Eventually, Ping is ready to brave Splat River. Avery surprises us with a twist in the ending.
Ping: A Frog In Search of a New Pond is a well-written and clever book. It's illustrated with cute drawings of Ping. My favorite shows Ping sitting in a yoga-meditation position on a tree stump. This book is a great inspirational gift idea for the holidays.
Godlike
Richard Hell
Akashic Books
P.O. Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
ISBN: 1888451777, $13.95, 142 pp.
Keith Potempa
Reviewer
"the wack, the tang, the brassiere / the poop eye candle-flame / slick and cold banana popsicle fuck / in the face the eye the prick slit of it"
If you like nonsensical poetry, excessive philosophical wonderings, and plotless novels, then you'll love Richard Hell's new book.
GODLIKE tells the story of Paul Vaughn, a middle aged married poet who becomes infatuated with a Kentucky runaway teenage boy, Randall Terrance Wode ("T") in the late 1960's, early 70's. At first, T worships the work of Paul, but as the novel progresses, the relationship flips, Paul is soon submissive to T through the powers of sexual youth. After a dramatic scene in which the legitimacy of the word "turd" in a poem is argued between T and Paul, T triumphs and then considers himself the better poet as well as the "man" of the relationship. Paul is almost irrevocably drawn into a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship by a boy almost half his age. This relationship is the main focus of the meager plot stuffed between Paul's lengthy philosophical debates with himself.
T's character provided the only trace amounts of entertainment I received from the novel. His comical behavior in bars, snappy dialogue, and ponderings (which almost seem to mock Vaughn's) are scattered sparingly throughout Paul's rambling, providing a few good laughs. Even though T is supposedly the main focus of the narration through Paul's eyes, these instances unfortunately few and far between.
The novel is told completely through Paul's memoirs written some thirty years later in a nursing home. His writings are sometimes in first person, other times in third, but always in the same overly poetic voice that typically conveys nothing at all. For example, a whole paragraph early on is spent describing soap and pop bottles ("…the soft gleamings, the complexity of the light, the humility, the blue labels, the uniform bottle shape in the random blob of clustering…"). Important scenes where the plot actually progresses often take place in a blank space with barely any description. Generic places and forgettable, faceless characters continually fade in and out of the background with no real purpose in the plot whatsoever.
Unlike many other authors (like Lauren Sanders or Jamie O'Neil) who can depict the love and sheer beauty of a gay or lesbian relationship, Hell manages to make his narrative as repulsive as possible. He constantly describes gruesome details that do anything but heighten our perception of the love Paul apparently feels for T. For example a description of Paul's anus after weeks without showering and frequent anal intercourse brings nothing to the reader besides disgust.
Through the countless pages of intellectual theories about the idiocy of America, poetry, art, modern societies, and the fear of death, (just to name a few) Hell projected through his narrator, as well as senseless metaphors ("They call me the Chinese Monkey. Smear me like icing.") I found very little entertainment. Paul's character was nearly impossible to relate to. His decisions as the story progressed seemed under motivated or just plain extreme in my eyes. His attitude on life and love ("I'm not a faggot. I just have a queer streak.") was frustrating to say the least. And his pompously pretentious tone of narration made him near unbearable. His style seemed to be directly ripped off of Sartre's classic NAUSEA except without any sound philosophical arguments presented.
The end of the novel addressed none of the issues I, as a reader, was waiting for it to get around to. Nothing is said of moral ramifications, Paul's wife and child (who disappeared halfway through) or even the circumstances that landed him in the nursing home. I put down GODLIKE with no connection to a story, characters, emotions, or location. But only a sigh of relief to finally be rid of Richard Hell's ramblings.
On the Ice
Gretchen Legler
Milkweed Editions
Open Book Building, Suite 300, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55415-1246
ISBN: 157131282X, $15.95, 207 pp.
Kelly Kristine Zavala
Reviewer
Gretchen Legler is a PhD wielding, two-time Pushcart Prize winning, teacher/ journalist/ author. Already the author of All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman's Notebook, Legler is often praised for her "beautifully written and eloquent chronicles of outdoor life." Continuing in this trend is On the Ice.
On the Ice strives to explore the glacial deserts and warm hearts of a little known land, Antarctica. Legler is flown in and set down in the bitter cold at bustling McMurdo Station to observe and record information for the National Science Foundation. She immediately sets forth to gather history of the land, of the first brave people who inhabited the unknown continent of ice, and of the scientists who devote their lives to scientific discovery and understanding. While deeply involved in her work, Legler is unexpectedly confronted with romantic feelings for a new friend. She struggles to understand the recent break-up that sent her to the ice, and to find and take courage from the land to enter and explore the waters of this new relationship.
From the very first page, Legler provokes a sense of wonder at the land. The first building she sees when she arrives is a church, which she describes as "something you might expect to see on a hill in rural New Hampshire with cows grazing nearby, but here, instead, … it's unlikely backdrop a barren, sweeping plain of ice and the far-off dark arc of the Transarctic Mountains." She continues with this wonderful imagery throughout the book. On an expedition one day, she says, "I drove out onto a horizon like I had never seen. The snowy wind moved like a fog over the ground, like a slinky, elegant, snaky thing, throwing off my sense of balance, blurring the edges of my vision."
Also noteworthy, is Legler's brevity. The whole book reads like journalism. The scenes are all very beautiful and poignant, like poetry, and yet most of them don't last more then half a page. The result is a brief, yet engaging, scene or sentence that doesn't easily escape the mind.
Gretchen Legler is a master weaver. She succeeds in weaving together the cold, clinical data necessary for the scientific atmosphere of McMurdo Station and the legend-esque stories and data of previous adventurers and explorers. Added into the mix are the stories of her co-habitants, most of whom fled to Antarctica to escape their off-ice lives. She also works into her narrative braid bits and pieces of her family life, and how in a dream she "went to visit [her] parents and their house was entirely bare, echoing hollowly," explaining further that her family was never close. Though the slightly dreamy, haunted way she slips in the ghosts of her past does pull at one's curiosity, her near lack of detail here fails to draw one in completely. Even so, she transitions her passages beautifully. In one sentence she can be talking about how her family life felt frozen. In the next, she is comparing her "frozen family life" to the frozen tundra, and how it is all barren and lonely.
Still, Legler falls short on her earnest attempt to hook the reader. Legler promises stories of love, of revealing the beauty of Antarctica, and of her own personal story and why she fled. Unfortunately, she doesn't follow through. Except for a brief mention of her barren and lacking family, Legler doesn't get into her own story until halfway through the novel.
Legler is a tease until then, skirting her own personal story for whole paragraphs of thought-filled self-questioning. These reflective passages are far from convincing. Legler attempts the philosophical, often asking questions like "What will Antarctica teach me," followed by a quote from Thoreau, or Shelley, or another dead poet or essayist. The story gets lost in the middle of these meanderings, and these portions of the book end up sounding like the beginning of a bad essay. Combine this with an indiscernible plotline and very little story arc, and frustration with the reading comes easy.
When Legler stops trying to impress and just gets to the narrative, the book is more engaging. She succeeds in showing the "achingly beautiful prairie of ice" that is Antarctica, but falls short in presenting a polished piece of work. On the Ice reads like a first draft: fit and interesting, but not necessarily complete.
The Dao of the Press: A Humanocentric Theory
Shelton A. Gunaratne
Hampton Press Communication Series
Hampton Press, Inc.
23 Broadway, Cresskill, NJ 07626
ISBN: 1572736178, $23.95, 194 pages
Lee Morris
Reviewer
The American press views itself as an enlightened, democratic, reason-based medium for promulgating truth. In fact, all Western press considers itself bedrock for accuracy, authenticity and validity. This appears to be perfectly acceptable. After all, the incorruptible principles of Western media stand upon everything Descartes, Newton, Locke, Voltaire and the constructors of the Constitution held fit. Individualism, free will, reason-based science and human rights are all fundamentally etched in the mindsets and standards of the Western press. Therefore, when Shelton Gunaratne takes it upon himself to assail the adherents of these core press ideas, accusing them of Eurocentric bias and obliviousness to complete world history, he seems to be unjustly negating their importance. On the other hand, is he?
In his new book, "The Dao of the Press: A Humanocentric Theory," the Minnesota State University Moorhead professor proposes a framework that takes into account the relationship between Eastern philosophy and Western rationality. He argues Western "systems of communications outlets," or his preferred term for the mass media, are not so enlightened as outwardly presumed to be.
Gunaratne begins by probing different theories of Western and Eastern democracy for the purpose of contrast, so he may bind Eastern democracy and philosophy reflected in Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Daoism with Western democracy and science. He does so to offer an intriguing view on Eastern philosophy's congruence with quantum physics: that they share an inherent oneness. Gunaratne uses this oneness argument to venture into a philosophical vantage point. He compares quantum physics' subatomic relationships, the clash of the positive and negative charge of particles, with the Chinese yin and yang to show polar opposites are present throughout all of nature.
In "Dao," Gunaratne contends both elements need each another to maintain balance and this paradoxical opposition is ubiquitous. Therefore, the opposing philosophies of libertarianism and authoritarianism are actually the companions of one another and need each other to subsist - and together produce "various shades of social responsibility." Next, Gunaratne employs the living systems theory as a framework to devise a bold communications theory, one which accounts for Western and non-Western history. This is especially germane as Gunaratne claims the widely accepted four press theories are Western biased. According to Gunaratne, the four press theories were concocted out of ignorance of Eastern history. Gunaratne balances Eastern and Western cultural differences in an elaborate attempt to stitch one, cohesive press theory and one that integrates all of world history. Using the holistic view that the world itself bears more importance than its community and nation-state parts, Gunaratne partitions the world into an entire world system, the nation-states that comprise it and the individuals contained in the nation-states. Gunaratne matches this holistic view with and against Eastern ontology and Western epistemology, as well as other ideas, to articulate why the whole is more crucial than the sum of its parts.
Gunaratne now arrives at a humanocentric outlook, or an overall and coalesced view of history, which embraces both East and West in its systems of communications outlets. He incorporates all the elements he discusses and shows how they are relevant to the world system as a whole as well as the Western "individual" and the Eastern "individual-in-network." Before concluding with direction for further application of his theory, Gunaratne reverts to the topic with which he began his book, democracy. Gunaratne claims there is an inevitable link between the governmental system of country and its system of communication outlets. This also relates to his yin-yang explication, joining the media and government through the same transmuting process. He argues there is no such thing as the Fourth Estate, that it is nonexistent in the West due to capitalism and has always been unneeded in the East due to trust in government. Gunaratne points to the conglomeration of American media as evidence of this point.
In the end, "Dao" proffers a new and pivotal view of the media. As world markets merge and technology races onward - as the world becomes smaller and flatter - a more integrative mass media theory will be essential to analyzing the press. It is guaranteed Gunaratne proposes a complex theory, one that raises as many questions as it gives answers. Gunaratne means for "Dao" to be looked upon from a Western angle, intended to change the West to accommodate more for Eastern philosophy than vice versa, although it applies to both. By utilizing quantum physics as a basis for his argument, Gunaratne puts forward a back-and-forth view of libertarian and authoritarian forces, probably the most interesting facet of his book.
"Dao" is not a trouncing of the West and its values but an introduction of humanocentrism, a more incorporating press theory. If Western and Eastern media are ever reconciled, Gunaratne can take some credit. The book could not have been written by a Westerner, it took someone with Gunaratne's unique tutelage and outlook to create.
The Final Crumpet (A Royal Tunbridge Wells Mystery)
Ron and Janet Benrey
Barbour Publishing
1810 Barbour Drive Uhrichsville, OH 44683
ISBN: 1593108702, $9.97, 348 pages
Nancy Mehl, Reviewer
www.nancymehl.com
"The Final Crumpet" is the second offering in the marvelous "Royal Tunbridge Wells Mystery" series written by Ron and Janet Benrey. Once again, the Benreys allow us to share the adventures of Nigel Owens and Flick Adams, the director and the curator of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum in Tunbridge Wells, England.
While tending to some rather sick Assam bushes in the museum's garden, a body is uncovered. It turns out to be the remains of Britain's noted "Tea Sage," Etienne Makepeace, missing for forty years. When news gets out that the famous tea expert has been found, the media descend like locusts upon the hapless museum staff. As Nigel and Flick try valiantly to handle the situation, the bank that funds the museum threatens to withdraw their support, appalled by the unwelcome notoriety. Nigel and Flick, who are falling in love, must discover just how Makepeace found his way into their garden. It is clear that solving the mystery might be their only chance to save the museum. But the secrets that may have led to the tea expert's early demise are not the love struck pair's only problem. They each house their own deeply held secrets. The real mystery lies not only in the truth about Etienne Makepeace but in the ability of the wily sleuths to handle the truth about each other.
Written in a style reminiscent of Agatha Christie, this cozy is a mystery lover's delight. Nigel's British sensibilities create the perfect foil for his American partner's lovable spontaneity. "The Final Crumpet" is a novel that requires a cozy fire, a comfy chair, and a delicious cuppa. It is highly recommended.
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
Elaine Sciolino
Free Press
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0743284798, $15.00, 432 pp.
Mona Lisa Safai
Reviewer
In 1979, Elaine Sciolino, then Newsweek reporter boards an Air France Boeing 747 jet amidst fellow journalists, reporters, photographers, and soon-to-be Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on a journey that would take her through Iran and back for two decades. "Persian Mirrors" chronicles U.S. and Iran relations, examines the veneer and restrictions of private and public realms, and enhances one's understanding of Iranian society and culture.
Although, Sciolino's book, "Persian Mirrors" illuminates many Iranian facets, one solid portrait does not emerge. Many political, economic, and sociological paradoxes and contradictions arise in Iranian culture. Compared to Americans, Iranians live in a much more fluid and complex environment; "knowing how to improvise is the only way to get things done-and sometimes even to survive." The lines between public and private realms are constantly changing; sometimes without any notice, without just cause. Iranians must be ready to adapt immediately and resilience, strength, and innovation are core features of their culture.
By observing the key events Sciolino has laid witness to remarkable changes in Iranian society. She comments on the women's struggle and "their growing political clout to press for more rights, more important jobs in government, and the same pay, work benefits, and promotions as men." Most intriguing might be the misconceptions that accompany Iranian women. Their level of education, duty, and fundamental desire to succeed is in no way inferior to their counter gender. Rather, women "want power." Daily, they rebel through fashion, challenging the limits with how much hair they show, the length of their garment, colors of their scarves. All their actions impact societal impositions.
In Iran, religious and economic systems have all undergone dramatic changes which affect the entire population. But, the younger population (under 35 years old), experiences Iran through freedom deprived eyes. In an interview with Ali-Reza Shiravi from the Ministry of Guidance, when asked what the Iranian youth wanted he replied: "When you know there's more out there, you want more." Iran is a politically charged country. The youth clearly understands their dilemma. Sciolino notes the political position that many young take. A revolution is not underway. Rather, a democratic movement is through the rule of law. She discusses the governmental changes from pre-Shah, Shah, Khomeini, Khatami to Ahmadinejad's recent upset victory.
As an American correspondent to the New York Times, Sciolino's access into the far reaches of Iranian society grant her advantages which many simply do not have to delve into the misconceptions and mysteries of Iran. "Persian Mirrors" is a compilation of researched information, anecdotes, and touching tales of Iranians about their world which Americans remain removed from, even Elaine Sciolino. Despite Sciolino's treks into Iran, one cannot help but sense the distance between Sciolino and her subjects' views. While she appears intrigued by Iranians, a feeling of detachment fills her pages as well. The book resembles many newspaper feature stories weaved together as if to create a front page story. The strengths of her book is the subject-Iran and exemplary research on the author's part. Iran's portrait shines, in part, without boundaries because of constant movement. The enigmatic nature of Iran strengthens its progression forward.
There is some peculiar suppleness, some inherent flexibility in the Iranian character which has enabled it to withstand shocks which would have sent more rigid people reeling or would have broken their national spirit.
-- Roger Stevens, the Land of the Great Sophy
Pax
Meg Davis
Booklocker
P.O. Box 2399, Bangor, ME 04402-2399
http://www.booklocker.com
ISBN: 1591134579, $12.95, 132 pages
Paul Lappen
Reviewer
These are dark times for the people of the Golden Circle Alliance. The elves, dwarves and humans have been defeated by a nameless enemy from the north, shattering the alliance. Just before the end, King Thine, leader of the alliance, hid his daughter (and heir) so well that many thorough searches have failed to find her.
This might not be so significant, except for the fact that the end of the Golden Circle Alliance had long been prophesied. Also prophesied was the emergence of a human heir, King Thine's daughter, that would re-forge the bonds between the races. After many years of fear and distrust between former allies, few are willing to consider this alleged savior as anything more than a folk legend. Does Pax really exist, or is this just a tale to raise people's spirits?
This story may seem a little basic, but keep in mind that at the time of publication, the author was only 16 years old. If this is the work of a teenager, then keep an eye on this author, for in the future she will be a force to be reckoned with. This is a good story to introduce people to fantasy fiction, and fantasy veterans will enjoy it.
German English Words
Robbin D. Knapp
Robbsbooks.com
PO Box 1038, Capitola CA 95010
ISBN: 1411658957, $14.95, 171 pages
Barb Radmore
Reviewer
As the World Wide Web becomes more and more prevalent, as language is shared among nations and people, it is blending and changing the words we use, the lexicon is altering. In addition, American English has always been a fluid language that adopts the words of its many varied people as they join our culture. So it is becoming imperative to the history of language to study and keep record of these changes.
Robbin Knapp has done just this with his book German English Words. In a readable format he has chosen to explore 300 words that have made their way from German into American English use. Each word includes the meaning in German, its meaning in English and then the fun begins. He has researched the use of each word and included many actual quotes using the words. The quotes are fascinating as he uses such a variety of sources from books to magazines to current TV shows. The alphabetical format, with chosen words in bold italic, make this an easy book to read in small, relaxing sittings but also makes it hard to put down. Each word creates a curiosity in the reader to see which word Knapp chooses to investigate next.
By selecting a variety of words such as common ones (hamster, hamburger), specific terms such as (rinderpest-cattle disease) with surprises such as "Pez." Knapp has written a book for both the serious linguist, the hobbyist and the everyday reader to equally enjoy. Based on his popular website, GermanEnglishWords.com, this self published book is a fun read for all.
Devil Talk
Daniel A. Olivas
Bilingual Press
Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University
P.O. Box 872702, Tempe, AZ 85287
480-965-3867
ISBN: 1931010277, $13.00, 170 pages
Jennifer Redmond
Reviewer
Daniel A. Olivas is an uncanny writer. And not just because he seems to get inside characters' heads and talk like young women, old people, and even children. He's uncanny because he writes like people I know talk - not just my Hispanic-American family, but my friends who hail from Los Angeles. How does he know people so well, who he doesn't even know?
This collection of short stories is part Bradbury, part Kafke, but Olivas' tales of modern life in L.A. are peopled by a predominantly Chicano cast. This is not a limitation: From the main characters to the "extras" who walk in and out of the narratives, these are mini movies of contemporary American life - it is written from a Mexican-American angle, yes, but all of us will relate. The issues range from the angst of middle age; the daily strife of love relationships, the hell of dealing with aging parents, and how to go about figuring out one's basic priorities in a hectic, over-stressed life.
The settings are ordinary and everyday - an office, car, gym or suburban home in the San Fernando Valley, but the awful wonder and magic comes in at odd angles - in one case, right into the kitchen through the back door. The crises (large and small, real and imagined, petty and profound) hit suddenly, often unpredictably, and often are not so much resolved as simply dealt with, or managed. The writing is deceptively simple, but when the characters began to speak, both internally and out loud, I was hooked.
Writing in a foreign language is always a challenge - how much to add, how much to translate, and how exactly to decide what the readers will understand. I don't speak fluent Spanish - I grew up hearing the language and graduated to mangling it - and very few phrases baffled me for long. Part of it is context, of course, but mostly it's a kind of literary osmosis. The words just seep right in.
All collections have an emotional arc; I felt this one started rather high and then leveled out a bit, with the last stories being the least dramatic, but those came as a welcome respite from the stormy emotions that preceded them. People often use the phrase "page-turner" about books, but I was definitely turning pages as fast as I could read - In fact, I read all of the stories but the last in one sitting, something I did not intend to do.
My only (minor) complaint is that the somewhat lurid cover makes the collection look like standard Southwestern-Borderlands-Magical Realism, which it is not. However, these are not stories for the prudish or the faint of heart either; there is no exploitation in these pages, but language is not timid at all and there is plenty of hot, sweaty sex, not to mention a few incisions into the flesh and spurts of the blood of real people. This is life in Southern California today - a hi-tech, hi-speed, driven world - so hang on!
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0064409422, $8.99
I had my teacher hat on when I read this book aloud to my fourth grade students. It had been twenty years since reading the series in college and the experience was even more delightful this time around. I would even say magical. For those not familiar with the plot, a group of four children find themselves embroiled in a fight of good verses evil in a land called Narnia. An evil witch has cast a spell over Narnia, causing winter to appear year round until Aslan the Lion appears. To make matters worse, the witch uses her magic wand to turn subjects into stone if they displease her. I have read some criticism about the language being dated and the voice of a storyteller taking the reader out of the story. My opinion happens to be quite the contrary. The "dated" language was very charming and added a touch of British culture to the story. We chuckled over the rich assortment of slang words and metaphors. Interestingly enough, most students understood the gist behind the words without any explanation. They could even correlate it to phrases common today. The storyteller voice was interesting. Parentheses appear in the middle of many sentences, as the author whispers little details on the side. It was odd at first until we adjusted to the style, and then we rather enjoyed the sidebars. If there is one comment to make, it's the author's penchant for never-ending sentences. I had to quickly abandon the practice of only taking a breath at commas. The logical debate present in the dialog contrasted nicely to the gentle storytelling. The book has depth and merits the attention it has been given. Ages 8 to adult.
Silver Dreams
Sondra Rice Newman
Robert D. Reed
Bandon, Oregon
ISBN: 1931741565, $24.95
Shirley Roe, Reviewer
www.allbookreviews.com
Leigh Meredith, advertising executive leaves the glamour and hype of Manhattan and moves to the slower paced Virginia town of Fox Creek. After finding a job at the local newspaper she follows an eccentric rancher's suggestion and buys a horse. Silver Dreams is a one eyed, gelding with a history of abuse and Leigh immediately falls in love with him.
Rancher, Bibs and Leigh soon discover that Silver Dreams has some potential as a race horse and Leigh decides to hire a trainer. Lecherous farrier Tom Watkins would like not only the job but a chance to get to know Leigh intimately. Whit Riley, drunkard and recluse is hardly anyone's idea of the ideal trainer but he does know his horses. Soon sober and enthusiastic, Whit and Leigh have Silver Dreams entered in his first race and history is made on that day. Will Bib's lose her ranch for non-payment? Will Whit return to the bottle for consolation or will he succumb to the wealthy widow? Will Silver Dreams really become a champion? Where is Leigh's life heading?
Author, Sondra Rice Newman grew up in Xenia, Ohio where she became enthralled with horses and thoroughbred racing. This experience combined with her journalism career, have contributed to the realistic approach to her characters, settings and equine behavior in an enjoyable read.
This reviewer's only criticism is that the villain could have had a larger part in the story, but otherwise this is a pleasant well-written read for a lazy afternoon. Good character structure, emotional turmoil is included without overpowering and the plot moves along at a good pace. Horse lovers will find this novel well researched and genuine. This is a pre-pub review, no cover was supplied.
Trust the Children: Games and Guidelines for Home and School
Anna Kealoha
Bookwave
992 Litchfield Ave., Sebastapol CA 95472
www.bookwave.net
ISBN: 0964482959, $TBA, 274 pages
Shari Maser
Reviewer
Trust this book! Anna Kealoha is clearly a connoisseur of teaching and learning, and she is happy to share her "secret recipes" for joyful and successful home education. This encyclopedic cookbook of recipes for learning is jam-packed with creative ideas that will appeal to parents and children of all ages. It is incredibly comprehensive, with a wide variety of games, curriculum outlines, inspirational essays, lists of resources, and more.
My husband likes the logic puzzles and book lists. My older daughter likes the math section, where she finds endless inspiration for charting, graphing, and calendarizing her life. My youngest finds the word games exciting. And I find a welcome surprise on every page! So, like Grandma's recipe book, this wise and wonderful guidebook has never yet made it onto the bookshelf at our house -- because someone is always using it!
This review appeared first in Peace Corps Writers November 2005 issue.
When your first novel is an Oprah Book Club Selection and a New York Times Notable Book of the year, it's a daunting task to come up with an encore. So if you're wise, you create a novel different enough from the first that makes it unfair to invite comparison. Icy Sparks author Gwyn Hyman Rubio succeeds both with this and with the tale in her latest, an epic multigenerational family saga.
The story, set in the longleaf pine country of post-Civil War south Georgia, revolves around Dalia, the daughter of Monroe Miller, a prosperous turpentine business owner. Monroe loves his family in his own bumbling way, but all is not well at the family's lavish home. Dalia's sister Nellie Ann, blind from birth, joins Dalia in alternately loving and scorning their father, a heavy drinker who spends long periods away at his turpentine camps. The girls' mother, a well-bred women contemptuous of her husband's coarse, unrefined ways, hides away most the day in a laudanum-induced fog. Beneath these family conflicts, however, lurks a darker, more devastating secret.
The discovery of this secret and the tragic consequences that play out deliver the reader into Part II, where, four years later, Dalia has moved on to settle in Samson, a small town where she hopes to recreate a new life for herself. The canny, resourceful Dalia initially achieves all she set out to do, but finds that it comes with a price. She has two children, first Marion, a boy she finds difficult to love due to his resemblance to his father, whom Dalia has grown to despise. When Clara Nell, a longed-for daughter arrives years later, Dalia smothers her with excessive love and attention.
Part III, narrated mostly from Clara Nell's perspective, chronicles Clara Nell's coming of age and her subsequent forays into independence. This creates rather predictable dissent in the family and conflict ensues. Ultimately, Dalia learns the hard way that you cannot protect the ones you love from life and what it brings.
Rubio, a Georgia native, excels in vividly detailing the longleaf pine country, as well as late 19th century daily life. The description of a shantytown commissary - its apothecary jars filled with herbs; barrels of dried beans and black-eyed peas; drums of flour, grits, cornmeal lined up against the wall - paint a vivid portrait, as does the description of the cured hams, "dotted with so many flies that they could have been mistaken for cloves if not for the buzzing."
She lyrically describes the pastoral scenery: The scuppernong arbor glittered in the sun. The slick, copper-colored skin of the grapes peeked out from among the leaves like a blanket of cat's-eye marbles. A soft-spoken breeze tickled the moss in the grand oak trees.
Characters are well-portrayed, like a child from the turpentine camps, with "his patched dungarees and flour sack shirt," his dirt-creased neck and his eyes, "too close together, of no pure color, grayish brown like the bark of one of [the] trees." As well, there's the deliciously unlikable Dr. McKee, with skin "as blanched as peeled almonds; his fingers, long and delicate, like those of a pianist, not a dentist." He spoke "in a voice that wasn't exactly effeminate, yet bleached of virility, as though it had crept into the soul of a male fetus by mistake."
Another standout is Katie Mae, an African-American who served the Miller family and now rejoins Dalia, providing both her and the story with wisdom and sass. Clarice, Dr. McKee's housekeeper and cook, is another compelling character, a potential source of conflict for Delia and the story, but one that never fully actualizes.
This takes me to my greatest complaint. The first two-thirds of the story succeeds with its rich, memorable characters and its swirling undercurrents of tension and haunting emotion. Thereafter, however, the antagonists - and thus vital tension - disappear. Rubio's smooth plotting and excellent detail still drive the story forward and make it interesting to read. The story here is not without conflict, but it seems to settle into more commercial fodder that lacks startling turns of events and difficult choices that trouble both character and reader. Granted, the issues of the past still haunt Dalia and manifest themselves in her efforts to control and protect her daughter, but they didn't haunt me as the reader. Instead, her compulsive, predictable behavior rather annoyed me, heralding the approaching conflict with the subtlety of a marching band in a living room.
Part of this could stem from the fact that I did just what I claimed would be unfair to do - I compared this work to Icy Sparks, Rubio's first novel, a luminous, highly original work that seemed to breathe life with its characterization and heartbreaking premise. In The Woodsman's Daughter, Rubio's intention seemed to be to cast a broader scope, that of a flawed family whose problems come full circle. And in this she succeeds, lyrically and descriptively. While fans of Icy Sparks might not find the story they long to see repeated, they'll find a new facet to Rubio's writing that should win her new readers, particularly those who like Southern and/or family-saga fiction.
Bethany's Bookshelf
Family Traditions in Hawai'i
Joan Namkoong
The Bess Press
3565 Harding Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96816
1573062278 $14.95 1-800-910-2377 www.besspress.com
Beautifully illustrated with full color photography throughout, Family Traditions in Hawai'i is a basic primer concerning birthday, marriage, funeral and cultural customs in Hawai'i. Covering a wide range of ethnic groups - Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese/Okinawan, Korean, Filipino, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese, and Laotian - Family Traditions in Hawai'i offers succinct summaries of different worldviews and practices, and the occasional wry comment on how mixed marriages may deal with clashing traditions. Although Family Traditions in Hawai'i is brief, it is a superb and fascinating introduction for non-specialist general readers to the richness and variety of ways in which the people of Hawai'i celebrate and commemorate life.
Ambient Flowers
Jumby Bay Studios/Vat19.com
11783 Borman Drive, St. Louis, MO 63146
8-26058-03342-6 $29.95 1-800-476-1991 www.vat19.com
The "Ambient Art" series are nine individually themed DVDs designed for television sets, and based on the concept of turning that TV screen into a simulated fireplace, aquarium, or other calming, mood-setting, or sleep-inducing experience for the viewer. Ambient Flowers: The Ultimate Video Garden and Reference DVD is the newest addition to this enthusiastically recommended series. The pictorial images present a flower garden which bursts into bloom with over 325 gorgeous flowers presented in a high definition format with customizable audio track that features nature sounds, classical guitar, classical music, or a combination of music and SFX.. Ambient Flowers is also packed with invaluable reference and botanical information for each of the flowers. This information can be readily accessed by simply hitting the "enter" button on the DVD remote control when that particular flower is on the screen. Viewers can also use the multiple angles feature of their DVD player and enjoy Ambient Flowers with a lower third providing the background information details. The Ambient Flowers DVD also comes filed with more than 150 PDFs that provide detailed reference information about the flowers. The DVD technology of Ambient Flowers allows the viewer to enjoy the flowers in seven different ways: five scenes divided up by bloom color, an informative narrated scene that provides fun facts about the flowers, or a video montage of the entire garden with or without botanical information. With a total running time of 121 minutes, Ambient Flowers is optimized for both standard and widescreen television sets. Also highly recommended are the previous titles in this unique, technologically flawless, thoroughly "user friendly", and simply outstanding DVD series: Ambient Art (8-26058-00132-3, $19.95, 68 minutes; Ambient Calm: The Ultimate Relaxation DVD (8-26056-00292-4, $14.95, 120 minutes); Ambient Fire: The Ultimate Video Fireplace DVD (8-26058-00262-7, $14.95, 190 minutes); Ambient Kittens: (8-26058-00302-0, $14.95, 63 minutes); Ambient Party (8-26058-00142-2, $14.95, 118 minutes); Ambient Sleep (8-26058-00102-6, $14.95, 95 minutes); and Ambient Water: The Ultimate Video Aquarium DVD (8-26058-00272-6, $14.95, 190 minutes).
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Betsy's Bookshelf
Celebrate Breakfast!
Bonnie Winger
Guest Cottage
PO Box 848, Woodruff, WI 54568
1930596359 $15.95 1-800-333-8122 www.theguestcottage.com
Enthusiastically recommended, "Celebrate Breakfast!" is an impressive compendium of delicious, nutritious, "kitchen cook friendly", breakfast oriented recipes contributed by members of the Innkeepers of the Michigan Lake to Lake Bed & Breakfast Association combined with travel guide information for visitors to the Lake Michigan area. A handy and quite portable cookbook/travel guide combination, "Celebrate Breakfast!" includes succinct descriptions of the participating inns (including a black and white sketches of them), a State Map pinpointing their respective locations, a guide by city of the participating inns, Michigan facts, "Innkeeper's Tips for Breakfast Preparation and Presentation", a Directory of Michigan Lake to Lake Bed & Breakfast Association Membership, and an index of the recipes. From Honey-baked Shrimp; Versatile Make-ahead Crepes; and The Torch Lake Almond Chocolate Bliss; to Glen Arbor Honey Vanilla Granola; Baked Caramel French Toast; and Spicy Pears in Cranberry Sauce, "Celebrate Breakfast!" offers easy-to-prepare, gourmet quality, appetite satisfying dishes that would grace any family's breakfast table. Also highly recommended and published by Guest Cottage is the Minnesota Bed & Breakfast Associations" combination cookbook and travel guide, "More Minnesota Mornings And Beyond" (1930596375, $15.95).
Living It Up At National Review
Priscilla L. Buckley
Spence Publishing Company
111 Cole Street, Dallas, TX 75207
1890626597 $27.95 1-888-773-6782 www.spencepublishing.com
Living It Up At National Review is a memoir by Priscilla L. Buckley, who spent forty-three years as an editor at National Review. The exploits of her brother William F. Buckley among many other "brilliant but highly combustible" characters come alive in this engaging and folksy collection of true tales of daily life amid a national icon of conservatism. An index allows for quick reference in this highly readable and enjoyable reflection on the highs, lows, and weirdness present in the author's remarkable and vivacious working life.
Betsy L. Hogan
Reviewer
Betty's Bookshelf
Dealing In Murder
Elaine Flinn
Avon Mystery
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022-5299
www.avonmystery.com
ISBN: 0060545798, $6.50, 368 pp.
Dealing in Murder is Elaine Flinn's first novel. Really. It says so in the back of the book. If I hadn't read that, though, I'd have never known, and I've been reading mysteries for a long time. And to my delight, it turned out that Flinn's heroine, Molly Doyle, is my kind of woman.
Life, in the person of her crooked husband and his equally dishonest girlfriend, has destroyed Elizabeth Porter's high-rolling life as an honest, extremely wealthy Manhattan antique dealer, leaving her holding the bag - a very empty one - and an unfairly tarnished reputation among the other NY dealers.
So, she reverts to her childhood nickname and maiden name and goes into hiding in Carmel, where she takes up running a junk shop for her sympathetic friend Max and his pain-in-the-ass lover Pablo. It's a far cry from her elegant shop in New York, but it's only until she can put her life back together and save enough money to move to New Orleans and start over.
Then, suddenly, she finds the body of a much-disliked dealer and gives a bad first impression to the responding homicide cop (on the lam himself from big city politics and pressure). At first, Randall just thinks she's hiding something. Then, when she turns up at another murder site, he reluctantly begins to wonder if maybe she might be the killer herself.
But Molly knows that all she's hiding is the Manhattan scandal, since it will blow her junk shop gig out of the water if news gets around. She's determined that, one way or another, the real killer will be found. No way is she going to lose her hiding place and temporary job until she can move on up to something better!
However, the real killer is equally determined that someone else is going to take the fall for it, even if more death is the result. Complicating matters, Molly has to put up with Pablo's drama while she tries to whip the shop into better shape, get to know her new neighbors (while trying to figure out if one of them is a killer) and deal with her growing affection for her new home town. Topping it off is an uneasy feeling that her prickly relationship with Randall might be hiding something completely different. Can she pull it all together or is an explosion imminent?
The California antique business is an important part of this story and it's handled very well. This is no surprise, since Flinn was involved in the San Francisco Bay area antique scene for many years. Common wisdom for writers is, "Write what you know," and that's what Flinn decided to do here. I enjoyed this book immensely, staying up way past my bedtime to find out "who dun it", and I can't wait to read the next book.
Tagged For Murder
Elaine Flinn
Avon Books
HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd St., New York, NY, 10022-5299
www.avonmystery.com
ISBN: 0060545801, $6.99, 304 pp.
Molly Doyle is back, and this time it's a friend and fellow antique dealer who turns up murdered. As if that's not bad enough, Molly's flakey, long-estranged sister Carrie has come back into her life, just long enough to stir up old emotions and dump her twelve-year-old daughter into Molly's lap before disappearing again.
When another dealer turns up dead - and has ties to Molly's dad that might make her angry enough to kill - she's pitchworked into another murder investigation, to the dismay of Police Chief Randall. Then, when a close call shoves her into Randall's arms, the question becomes, what exactly is their relationship, anyway? And does it really matter? This time, he may have to put her behind bars for good.
Flash Writing: How to Write, Revise and Publish Stories Less Than 1000 Words Long
Michael Wilson
Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
P.O. 9949, College Station, TX 77842
ISBN: 1589396375, $14.95, 178 pp.
Flash Writing may be Michael Wilson's first book, but it probably won't be his last one. Wilson teaches creative writing classes and facilitates writers' groups in the Columbus [Ohio] area and has been a featured speaker at various area writers' conferences, so he undoubtedly has a lot more to say about writing of all kinds.
However, his current hot topic is flash fiction (also known as short-short stories, sudden, postcard, minute, furious, fast, quick, skinny, and micro fiction) and when he discovered that there really wasn't anything in print about it, he decided to write something that would fill that gap.
He begins [in chapter 1] by explaining what flash fiction is. Flash fiction can be anywhere from 250 and 1000 words long and it has all the features of a normal short story: conflict, character, and a beginning, middle, and end. The main way it differs from other forms of fiction is that a flash fiction story is extremely compressed.
Although this does make them easier (and quicker) to read, it doesn't make them easier to write. The shorter a piece of writing is, the fewer scenes and characters you can include and the more necessary it is to make every word count. Or as Wilson says in Chapter 15 (Compressing the Narrative for Flash Fiction): "Flash fiction has to tell the story of an entire life in a single page."
Flash fiction isn't a new story form. It has been around for a long time in the guise of fairy tales, nursery rhymes, tall tales and legends, and (a more recent version) urban legends. However, it has now come into its own, with entire web sites, magazines and books devoted to flash fiction stories. Makes sense to me - modern society has less and less time to read, and it takes far less time to read a flash fiction piece (or even a collection of them) than it does to read an entire novel.
There are certain tricks to being successful with flash fiction and they're all covered here to one extent or another, from getting ideas and creating characters to working on setting and point of view. My favorite part of the book, though, is its treasure trove of writing exercises, first lines, and quick topics that can be used to inspire you when you're stumped for ideas, and the Do It! exercises that follow many of the chapters, encouraging you to use what you just read about.
Been wanting to try your hand at fiction, but don't have the time or attention span required for a novel? Try flash fiction. Who knows? You might turn out to be a natural. And even if you don't, working in this genre will help you tighten up your writing. Robert Southey once said, "It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. " If that's true, this book will have you playing with fire in no time!
The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less
Peter Bowerman
Fanove Publishing
3713 Stonewall Circle, Atlanta, GA 30339
www.wellfedwriter.com
ISBN: 0967059844, $19.95, 282 pp.
Peter Bowerman lives up to his title, with a client list that includes Coca-Cola, MCI, BellSouth, IBM, UPS, GTE - well, you get the idea. He is indeed a well-fed writer, and his book is about showing readers how they too can become (as stated in his introduction) "...a well-respected, well-compensated, fulfilled writer." Chapters like Let's Get Started, How Much Do I Charge?, and Dos, Don'ts, and Don't Forget's lay out a clear map through the copy-writing jungle to an oasis of success. Once you've finished reading what Bowerman has to say, you'll be ready to make some real money with your writing.
Now, if you think writing business copy is too boring for words, that business writers themselves have no souls, and that starving in a garret is the only real choice of a true "artiste", then you can put this book down right now and go back to trying to find a word that rhymes with "silver". But if you're tired of subsisting on ramen noodles and cold cereal seven days a week, tired of shuffling your feet when someone asks you what you do for a living, tired of wondering how you're going to make your next car payment, then this book and its contents may be just what you've been looking for.
Betty Winslow
Reviewer
Bob's Bookshelf
Manana Manana: One Mallorcan Summer
Peter Kerr
The Lyons Press
ISBN: 1592284078, $14.95, 231 pp.
Released in paperback, this delightful memoir follows the further misadventures of the author's family's relocation from their Scottish homeland to rural Mallorca. Adjusting to a new life on the sun-kissed isle, where they would support themselves by growing oranges, involves many changes for the Kerrs.
In "Snowball Oranges: A Winter's Tale on a Spanish Isle", Kerr covered the move from Scotland and the initial adjustment his wife and two sons had to make. In this sequel it is obvious that, although they are part of the community now, the Kerrs still have much to learn about their new neighbors and friends. Their resolve to make the move work continues to be tested along with their stamina and sense of humor. Fortunately, the emigre family is getting the hang of it as their colorful and somewhat eccentric acquaintances help them through the transition.
The author finds a perfect balance between explaining the myriad problems that can accompany fitting into a new culture with why such a relocation ultimately does succeed for his family. This highly entertaining, straightforward, and unpretentious account of Kerr's experiences will be enjoyed by armchair travelers as well as those who have vacationed on the island.
Trouble Shooter
Greg Hurwitz
William Morrow
0060731419, $24.95, 311 pp.
Author Greg Hurwitz explained he had to do a crash course on corpses and cadaver preparation as well as field work on the outlaw biker culture before he sat down to write this latest Tim Rackley thriller.
Deputy U.S. Marshall Rackley is called in to corral two renegade bikers whose high-stakes escape on an L.A. freeway resulted in the deaths of a couple of his colleagues. The high ranking members of the Laughing Sinners are free and ready to lead a bloody gang war with another group of bikers.
Tossing Rackley into the imminent melee will either avert the disaster or exacerbate the conflict. Can the former Army Ranger keep the streets of L.A. from becoming a savage battlefield where a war will be fought to control the newest drug to hit American soil? Of course, but the cost will be high in this take no prisoners face off.
Bob Walch
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Father Browne's Trains and Railways
E. E. O'Donnell
Currach Press
c/o Dufour Editions, Inc.
PO Box 7, Chester Springs, PA 19425-0007
1856079163 $32.95 1-800-869-5677 www.dufoureditions.com
Father Browne's Trains and Railways is the sixteenth published photography book from the archives of Father Browne's 42,000 images. Most of the black-and-white railroad photographs in Father Browne's Trains and Railways were originally taken in Ireland during the 1930's, although some pictures of trains as far away as Suez and Sydney are included. Photographs portray images of tracks, engines both at rest and in motion, the interior of passenger cars, train stations, and the often bustling passengers who depended on the railways for transportation. Each picture has a very brief caption referring to its time and place; aside from this and the three-page introduction, Browne's remarkable and vibrant photography speaks for itself. A superb addition to railroad buff and photography shelves, and also a great visual reference for model railroad hobbyists. Also highly recommended are previous photography books from the Browne collection, including "Annals of Dublin" and "Father Browne's Titanic".
A Business Of My Own?
Marjorie Cleveland Fisher
Enfield Publishing
PO Box 612, Whitefish, MT 59937
0976113503 $24.95 1-800-735-8285
Written by a small business owner of 20 years experience, A Business Of My Own? 21 Steps To Successfully Starting and Running a Small Business is a practical-minded guide to going into business for oneself. Chapters address the personal characteristics required to run one's own business (for example, individuals unwilling to risk a fluctuating income or who have poor people skills are advised to reconsider), sample occupations and professions to start a business for, business structures and plans, pitfalls to avoid when choosing a location, setting a budget, and keeping records, marketing, building a client base, and much more. A host of sample forms from brochure samples to thank-you letters, subcontractor agreements and logs of potential clients round out this omnibus starter guide, written especially to be accessible to lay readers and budding entrepreneurs of all backgrounds.
How To Succeed With Your Own Construction Business
Stephen Diller and Janelle Diller
Craftsman Book Company
6058 Corte del Cedro, Carlsbad, CA 92009
www.craftsman-book.com
0934041598 $28.50 1-800-829-8123
Construction industry professionals Stephen Diller and Janelle Diller present How To Succeed With Your Own Construction Business, a no-nonsense, step-by-step walkthrough of the fundamentals of setting up a new construction company and getting to work. Chapters cover the different manners of structuring one's company and the advantages and disadvantages of each; how to get business; how to interact with clients; necessary legal matters; how to estimate with accuracy; finding and keeping good employees; running an efficient office; buying insurance (critically important in this industry!) and much more. Written in no-nonsense, down-to-earth terms, How To Succeed With Your Own Construction Business is a "must-have" for anyone considering an entrepreneurship in construction, and is also packed cover-to-cover with practical advice for aspiring business owners in any field.
John Haygarth, FRS
Christopher Booth
American Philosophical Society
104 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-3387
0871692546 $60.00 www.amphilsoc.org
Physician and historian Christopher Booth presents John Haygarth, FRS: A Physician of the Enlightenment (1740- 1827), a meticulous biography of an educated man from Yorkshire whose idea for introducing separate wards in the Chester Infirmary for patients with fever became the stimulus for the development of fever hospitals in nineteenth century England. His writings on medical and financial matters were highly influential, and he played a key role in founding the Bath Provident Institution for Savings, a model for the savings-bank movement in England. His distinguished life and contributions to history, and his efforts to help elevate hospitals into a place for the sick to turn to in times of need rather than a death-trap to be shunned and feared speak for themselves. A meticulously researched accounting of a remarkable man's groundbreaking life.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
Creating Historical Drama
Christian H. Moe, Scott J. Parker, and George McCalmon
Southern Illinois University Press
PO Box 3697, Carbondale IL 62902-3697
0809326426 $50.00 1-800-346-2680
Now in an updated second edition, Creating Historical Drama: A Guide for Communities, Theatre Groups, and Playwrights is a straightforward manual for transforming events and figures from American history into masterful dramas. Written by three former directors, producers, writers, and teachers of theatre, Creating Historical Drama covers features of biographical, pageant, and epic drama, how to lead and organize a theatrical group, how to energize community resources and evaluate a production site, and much more. An in-depth guide offering sample script excerpts, black-and-white illustrations, and a wealth of expert detail, Creating Historical Drama is an excellent reference and resource for community and professional performance groups, and an invaluable tool for aspiring playwrights seeking to capture the nuances of history upon the stage.
Timing in the Fighting Arts
Loren W. Christensen and Wim Demeere
Turtle Press
PO Box 290206, Wethersfield, CT 06129-0206
1880336855 $16.95 1-800-778-8785 www.turtlepress.com
Timing in the Fighting Arts is a guide for intermediate to advanced martial artists, from boxing professionals to ordinary men and women honing their skills for self-defense. Written by two expert martial artists, both with extensive experience in police work, Timing in the Fighting Arts covers everything from Hick's Law (that reaction time increases the more choices one has - therefore it's faster and more effective to have one simple defense than a dozen complex ones) to improving one's posture to approaching a potentially dangerous person and timing a grab, to "need-to-know" information - and debunked myths - about translating sport fighting to a street situation. A wealth of recommended drills and exercises for physical self-improvement round out this valuable supplementary self-defense resource.
How Not To Destroy Your Career in Music
Bruce Haring
Lone Eagle Publishing Company
1024 North Orange Drive, Hollywood, CA 90038
1580650643 $18.95 1-800-815-0503 www.hcdonline.com
How Not To Destroy Your Career in Music is a practical guide for anyone starting a career in music, written by musician, filmmaker and award-winning author Bruce Haring. Recognizing that the music industry has transformed radically in the past five years due to the digital revolution, How Not To Destroy Your Career in Music covers such topics as music publishing, marketing and promotion, retail and direct sales, the age barrier, touring, the do-it-yourself movement, why one shouldn't hand over one's assets to the first A&R person to show up with a check, and much more. Written in plain terms accessible to the lay reader, How Not To Destroy Your Career in Music is an absolute "must-have" for anyone aspiring to make a profit off of their musical talents.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years, Volume One
Joe Kubert
Dark Horse Comics
10956 SE Main Street, Milwaukie, Oregon 97222
1593074042 $49.95 www.darkhorse.com
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years, Volume One is a graphic novel archive of Joe Kubert's 1970's Tarzan comics, in full color. Stories include an adaptation of Burroughs' first Tarzan novel and others inspired by the classic adventures of the powerful, intelligent and honorable hero, all written and drawn by Kubert himself. The at times philosophical plots and action-packed art style bring Tarzan's adventures to life without unduly sacrificing realism, in this collection that forms as rousing a read today as it did thirty years ago. Highly recommended.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
Essentials of the US Health Care System
Leiyu Shi and Douglas Singh
Jones & Bartlett Publishers
40 Tall Pine Drive, Sudbury, MA 01776
076373151X $51.95 www.jbpub.com
Department of Health Policy Management Professor Leiyu Shi and School of Public and Environmental Affairs Associate Professor Douglas Singh present Essentials of the US Health Care System, a concise and accessible introduction to available US health care. Written as a textbook especially for students considering a profession in the field, yet also accessible to lay readers, Essentials of the US Health Care System includes basic information concerning the effects of modern medical technology, the roles of different providers and professionals in US health care, managed care and health networks, long-term care services, and much more. Graphs, charts, and black-and- white photographs round out this excellent primer of basic terms and concepts; each section features a neatly summarized conclusion and a list of references for more information. Also highly recommended is the author's previous textbook, "Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach".
Corporate Governance Adrift
Michel Aglietta and Antoine Reberioux
Edward Elgar Publishing
136 West Street, Suite 202, Northampton, MA 01060-3711
1845421388 $45.00 1-800-390-3149 www.e-elgar.com
Corporate Governance Adrift: A Critique of Shareholder Value is a harsh indictment of corporate capitalist culture in the wake of financial scandal. Economics Professors Michel Aglietta and Antoine Reberioux postulate that a basic tenet of capitalism - that companies should be managed solely for their shareholders - is fundamentally flawed in the modern-day environment filled with liquid markets, greedy investors, and recurring financial instability. Proposing a new model in which companies are managed with common objectives in mind for all stakeholders, and a fundamental emphasis on the democratic principle in order to reduce financial instability on a large or long-term scale, Corporate Governance Adrift offers revolutionary yet practical solutions to complex and worrying economic problems. Highly recommended.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Cassandra's Bookshelf
The Portrait
Iain Pears
River Head Books
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson St., NY, NY 10014
ISBN: 1573222984, $19.95
This is a surprising complex historical mystery that trips the light fantastic between the art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries like a cat on a hot tin roof. If you liked Picture of Dorian Grey or The Lady in White you are going to love this novel.
For art lovers you'll recognize take-offs on such outstanding figures as critic, Roger Fry as a stand-in for Pears's character William "the critic." Henry, the painter could be any of a number of well known portrait painters of the period such as Whistler or Duncan Grant. Evelyn, a fellow student and artist most closely resembles Gwen Johns and the working-class Jacky is a combination of a Rubinesque and Lucian Freud type model.
The story concerns an artist who has opted out of the London and Paris art scenes for mysterious reasons and retired to an Island. Set against the variable untamed landscape of Brittany the story unfolds with dark determination. This is a novel about a man driven to extremes. It is also about individual perceptions and points of view. Henry opinion of Jacky. He claims her expression is "inscrutable" and that no matter whether you insult her or compliment her expression remains unchanged. "It's like trying to peer through a dirty window. You do not see true, and end up seeing only your own faint reflection instead"(39). The truth of this, of course, is the truth of the portrait painter in general. The subject after all is merely the means by which the painter expresses himself/herself. The contempt Henry shows is not reserved for Jacky alone but for many of his wealthy sitters as well. Henry learned to paint particular people because of the exposure it gave him, the contacts and for the money.
Commenting on "the drabness of the English climate" Henry claims "it produces drab people, wrapped up, desperate to keep the outside at bay. They wear an emotional overcoat throughout their lives and scowl upwards, wondering whether it is going to rain again."(63). This is a metaphor Pears uses to get his judgments across to the reader. He goes on to comment "Now only the government Kills and they have become properly efficient at the task. Only politicians know the sensation of taking a human life--which you must admit, is a bad thing for painting as so many subjects involve death and violence."(118) You find yourself wondering why the painter is goading his subject and abusing him.
Henry's acquaintance, Evelyn is a different kind of painter. She goes her own way. She paints in secret rarely showing her work. She is "a thing apart" who "wanted to learn not what everyone else was doing but rather in "seeing what lies below the surface." She exiles herself from the art scene while still living in London and paints her dream. It is this dream/reality that becomes the lynch-pin of Pears plot.
Henry's recollections center around a commission to paint William's portrait. In order to do this William must travel to the remote Island of Houat that Henry has isolated himself on. The entire novel consists of Henry's point of view--his recollections of La Vie Boheme. He seems to be half in love with Evelyn but she is not the least bit interested in him. She put everything into her pictures and she uses the "inscrutable" Jacky as her model, in fact they become fast friends. Something that Henry finds impossible to understand as they seem to have nothing in common.
As William poses for his portrait the painter talks about their shared past. He talks about the critic's character; his generosity, his cruelty, his attitudes, and his crimes. The pretext of creating the artist as the sole voice of novel can be tedious at times but it is worth going along with for the final outcome. What the reader discovers is that this is a book about "rendering justice" - to make sure the guilty are made to pay for their crimes. We get a real insight into William's true character when Henry tells of the moment when he realized who the critic really was. "It was when he was posing for him with his three year old son on his lap. Suddenly a an expensive crystal glass shattered and skidded across the floor towards them. The critic moved is child very quickly a few inches into the path of the flying glass making him a shield." William protected himself at the expense of his child. It was over in a moment but in that moment the painter said "I saw your soul." In summing up his portrait of the critic he says "you became an outlaw acknowledging no restraint but your own power. You sinned against the very art you existed to protect and nourish. And you know what I think about sin. And punishment, of course."(180)
This is a short and horrifying novel well worth the read. What Pears has to say about the art of portraiture, the act of painting, what a truly gifted artist is, and the role of the critic is a short course in art appreciation and morality.
Maine: A Legacy in Painting, 1830 to the Present
with essay by art historian, Bruce W. Chambers
Spanierrman Gallery publisher
45 East 58th St., New York, NY 10022
ISBN: 0945936737, $65.00, 212-832-0208
Most folks are overwhelmed when they enter a gallery. Who can blame them. Here they are surrounded by art that is beautiful and expensive. Depending on one's vantage point the experience of gallery going can be wonderful or intimidating. The art world is both social and economic and the pressures are intense. This is perhaps why dealers and galleries in general have gotten a bad reputation. The through-the-roof prices, the slick look and the robotized sales people are a total turn off for most people. But not all galleries are hi-tech, vacuum sealed temples for the rich and celebrated to browse in.
Ira Spanierman's gallery on East 58th St. in New York City is one of those best kept secrets that we New Yorkers like to keep to ourselves. It is a comfortable oasis in the middle of the chaos that passes for the world of art these days. It is a place where the true meaning of the spirit of American art bodies forth. It is a place where you can rest your eyes and look at marvelous art. But the promotion and buying and selling of art are not Spanierman's sole interest. This is attested to by Maine: A Legacy in Painting. The exhibition out of which this book grew was on exhibit through November 9, 2005. It was a benefit exhibition for the Farnsworth Art Museum of Rockland Maine (featuring twenty-three works on loan from the museum). So for any of you who may have missed it the book stands in for the actual display. And, you can always see the paintings at the museum when you visit Maine.
With over 23 arists and 109 color illustrations this is a perfect gift book. Some might accuse me of retro madness but I really adore landscape art and I love American art so for me this book is a treasure trove. Maine is a beautiful state that has been inspiring artists for over 175 years. In his essay Dr. Bruce Chambers, the author of the catalogue describes it as "a country of mythic forces and primordial conflicts." He goes on to characterize Maine as a country of "violent storms and placid waters," as well as "fishing shacks, lush summer gardens, and granite summits."(5) Certainly this is what artists including the luminist painter Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) experienced. The tonalist painter Hermann Dudley Murphy spent the summer of 1907 at Ogunquit and was inspired by the vast open sea and sky as was the artist John Marin. Impressionists like Childe Hassam painted lyric homages to the poet, Celia Thaxter's garden in such works as An Island Garden and Winslow Homer found the restless sea at Pout's Neck dramatic and uncompromising, characteristics he himself embodied.
"This is the real thing," Robert Henri wrote to his parents immediately after arriving on Monhegan Island. This was before he became renown father of the urban art-for-life-sake school of painting. One of Maine's most famous artists, Andrew Wyeth was first introduced to Cushing Maine by Betsy James, whom he married in 1940. It was Betsy who introduced him to Christina (yes she of the famous painting) and Alvaro Olson, who lived in a weather-beaten hilltop house overlooking the sea. To Wyeth they were symbols of New England and Maine and ancient maine ", witchcraft, all sorts of things like that. That's what really got me into the Olsons environment." But of all the artists in this book I think I like Fairfield Porter best. He was twenty-three when he first summered at Great Spruce Head Island and from that moment on his work became associated with all things Maine. He claimed that painting evening primroses of uniquely beautiful yellow, and field roses of an equally unique pink with the colors of lichens on the rocks, gray-green and orange..." were much harder than painting people.(17)
This is a terrific book to add to your library shelves. Just imagine the pleasure you can have in enjoying it yourself and introducing all of your friends to these glorious images of visual culture of the past 17 decades or so. Lose yourselves in flights of fancy without any single dominating art world fashion. It's about remembering and it's not prepackaged nostalgia but rather a free association journey through the history of Maine and of art.
Elizabeth Murray And Popped-Art: A Boxed Set
D.A.P. Publishers-Museum of Modern Art
Internationally- Thames & Hudson
www..momastore.org
Elizabeth Murray ISBN: 0870704931, $55.00, 200 pp.
Popped Art ISBN: 0870704958, $19.95, 15 pp.
Available in boxed set for $70.00
This lavishly boxed set is a labor of love. Born in Chicago in 1940, Elizabeth Murray has come a long way. These books were produced to accompany a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This is a major accomplishment for any artist--more so for a woman artist.
Murray's art grows out of the modernist traditions of Cubism and Surrealism that were most influential during the period between the Wars (WW I and WW II.) By the end of the 1960s the snythesis that had been forged by American Abstract Expressionism was falling apart and being replaced by Pop Art (art based on popular culture as in soup cans and coke bottles). Working in the what critic Harold Rosenberg dubbed, "The Tradition of the New," Murray and a host of younger artists came of age during this chaotic period in the history of art. Wanting to distinguish herself from her peers, Murray moved to NYC in 1967. She spent her time juggling a teaching job, child care, and studio time. Hers was not any easy art but it was an art that focused on the world around her. Turning everyday objects in to lushly romantic, comic, and three dimensional subjects, By the 1980s Murray used a wonderful variety of artistic styles to express the character of every day things: A "Trembling Foot" (1988), a pair of worn sneakers in "Das Pair" (1989-90), a cracked coffee cup all become the stuff of poetry. There is a certain innocence to her choice of subjects. Like Chardin with his still life paintings of pots and pans, Murray's work is complex and strong and her built-out paintings collapse the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture.
By 2000, Murray's work took on new depth and complexity. Her art began to look like a multidimensional cartoon thought balloon. I particularly liked her jazzy "Do the Dance" (2005) with what Mr. Storr called "its jumbled framework," where "one encounters not only faces, bodies, bottles, and clattering floorboards but also direct allusions to Miro, Picasso, and all of the artists whose idioms Murray has incorporated into her own transformational grammar of shapes and colors."
Murray's outlook is colored by her being a woman in a man's art world. By concentrating on her own world she brought to her art an elegance, authority and passion that few contemporary artist's working today can rival. Her large scale, multidimensional constructions, with their vividly colored surfaces and interlocking parts almost leap off the walls at the viewer. And, while the books aren't the exhibition which wa
