Review: Cold by Stella Cameron

In Cold, Stella Cameron introduces amateur sleuth Alex Duggins in what will hopefully be a long series.  Alex has returned to Folly-on-Weir, the Cotswold village of her youth, after her high-flying London marriage fell apart.  She bought the local pub and a big stone house in the hills.  But when she finds a dead body in the snowy woods, her little village doesn't seem quite so cozy.

Cameron knows how to spin a tale, with an authentic setting and plenty of village characters, including a pair of bookish spinster sisters with a tea shop, a handsome childhood buddy now all grown up, horsey rich manor owners, wandering monks, and a pub-full of possible suspects. Add a blizzard, a sharp-eyed detective, and a galloping plot and Cold is a great way to spend a winter weekend. 

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: Things We Set on Fire by Deborah Reed

Things We Set on Fire is a detail-rich family story by up-and-comer Deborah Reed that will suck you in from the first pages. 

When marital misfortune and physical collapse bring sisters Elin and Kate back to their mother, three generations of tough but damaged women finally come together to deal with a 30-year old tragedy that had splintered the family.  Reed never sugar-coats the story, but her evocative prose brings out every nuanced emotion as these women learn the truth and learn to forgive.   

With a strong Southern Gothic vibe, believably flawed characters, and a heart-tugging plot, Things We Set on Fire will linger long after the cover is closed.

  

NOTES

Things We Set on Fire is Deborah Reed's first literary novel.

Carry Yourself Back to Me (reviewed here), shares the lyric voice and hardscrabble Florida setting of Things We Set on Fire.  She is also the author of two sassy thrillers, A Small Fortune (reviewed here) and Fortune's Deadly Descent (reviewed here), both published under her pen name, Audrey Braun.

Review: Worthy Brown's Daughter by Phillip Margolin

When Oregon became the 33rd US state on February 14, 1859, it entered the Union as a free state, prohibiting slavery.  But the new state's Constitution also included a racial exclusion clause banning black people from emigrating to Oregon, owning land, entering into contracts, or filing lawsuits.

Philip Margolin's new novel, Worthy Brown's Daughter, is set against this backdrop of Western expansion and racial conflict.  Worthy Brown is a freed slave accused of murder in the attempt to rescue his captive 15-year-old daughter.  Struggling lawyer Matthew Penney is torn between his client's innocence and his own self-interest.  A crooked judge, a dangerous gold digger, and a crowded cast of frontier socialites and ne'er-do-wells keep the many-branched plot twisting and turning to the exciting finale.   

Loosely based on a true story, Worthy Brown's Daughter is an exciting Wild West adventure with serious themes.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Oregonian

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NOTES

Phillip Margolin writes fast-paced contemporary thrillers like his hugely popular Gone, But Not Forgotten and the recent best seller, Capitol Murder.

Review: Parachutes & Kisses by Erica Jong

Parachutes & Kisses is the third book in Erica Jong's Isadora Wing trilogy that started with the terrifically good Fear of Flying (noted here) and How to Save Your Own Life (reviewed here).  I ate up the first one, really liked the second one, and am cool on this third one.  The writing is magnificent, but Isadora as an emotionally whirling divorcee is a less likeable and occasionally tedious, as she juggles multiple lovers, grieves the death of her marriage, and tries to talk her ex-husband into returning.

The best thing going in this book is Jong’s unabashed homage to her literary heroes, including Cheever, Roth, Bellow, Updike, Keats, Henry Miller, and Colette.  I was struck by the idea that this was her “Updike” book the way Fear of Flying was a “Roth” book and How to Save Your Own Life was a “Miller” book.  This story of bed hopping in the Connecticut suburbs is the female version of so many John Updike novels.  She even ends with an (acknowledged) appropriation of Henry Bech’s cultural exchange trip to Soviet Russia.

Although crowded with sex scenes (one that actually nauseated me), Jong’s literary reflections and several exemplary passages redeemed the book, but just.  For example:

Isadora’s generation is middle-aged. . . . They have reached the age where they meet their new lovers at A.A.; the age where some of their friends are addicts, some of the friends are bankrupt, and some other friends are dead; where their children want real horses, not toy ones, and where they no longer worry about their own pregnancies but about their daughters’.

That kind of dense summing up that crams together so many details and ideas is why I read Erica Jong.  At her best, she is right up there in the American fiction pantheon.  I would not recommend Parachutes & Kisses as a standalone novel, but for readers who loved Isadora Wing in the earlier books, there is something to be gained by finishing the trilogy.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of How to Save Your Own Life
My review of Bech: A Book by John Updike
My review of Serenissima by Erica Jong

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Review: What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies

 


Francis Cornish was an eccentric Canadian art collector who, in The Rebel Angels, died and left his enormous, disorganized, uncatalogued, and partially pilfered art collection to be sorted through by three co-executors of his estate. What's Bred in the Bone is the second book in Robertson Davies’ “Cornish Trilogy,” which concludes with The Lyre of Orpheus.

This second volume tells the remarkable, and stand-alone, story of Cornish’s life. Born to affluence in a backwoods Canadian town, Cornish was the poor little rich kid bullied by his roughneck schoolmates, all but abandoned by his politically influential parents who spent their time in Ottowa, and raised by an eccentric bunch of relatives and family retainers. While studying art and philosophy in pre-war Oxford, Cornish was recruited to act as an unpaid British spy and sent to Bavaria to report on Nazi concentration camps with the cover of working as an apprentice for a master art restorer.

As if all this wasn’t plot enough, the art restoration project turns out to be an elaborate swindle to undermine the Nazis and save European art treasures. Cornish is in it up to his eyeballs, wrestling with his conscious as an artist as well as the international art community.

Davies wraps the compelling story in bigger ideas about human nature, art, religion, and family. It’s a book to recommend to anyone looking for a ripping yarn, but also one to stand up to multiple readings.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I read What's Bred in the Bone as one of my books for two of the TBR challenges I am doing this year: The MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Review: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile picks up the story of Amanda McCready ten years after the end of Gone, Baby, Gone. Amanda is missing again and Patrick Kenzie gets roped in to find her, with help from his firecracker sidekick, Angie Gennaro.

Dennis Lehane knows how to pack in details, keep the action moving, and make the dialog snap. Between the Russian mob and assorted thugs and cons, there is no knowing who will shoot who next or where the story will land. It is exciting right up to the last page.


OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

It is not necessary to read Gone, Baby, Gone before Moonlight Mile in order to understand the story. Moonlight Mile rehashes enough of the earlier story to give context. It also spoils the ending of Gone, Baby, Gone, so if you are inclined to read both, read them in order.

I won Moonlight Mile in a giveaway on Knitting and Sundries -- Thanks Julie!  I should have read it right away, but fell down in my blogger duties.  I finally read it now as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Review: Beast in View

Beast in View won Margaret Millar the Edgar Award for the best mystery of 1956, the third year the award was given. Set in the seedier parts of 1950s Los Angeles, this psychological thriller involves a reclusive young heiress and her dysfunctional family members, all being harassed by threatening telephone calls.

Millar followed the hardboiled examples of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but did it with a feminine twist.  In particular, she gave her female characters more edge, as shows even in this short snippet: 

June knocked on the door and waited, swaying a little, partly because the martini had been double, and partly because a radio down the hall was playing a waltz and waltzes always made her sway. Back and forth her scrawny little body moved under the cheap plaid coat.

Although the themes are a little stale and most of the characters now look like noir stereotypes – back alley pornographers, daytime drinkers, and closeted gays are just a few examples – the book is more than campy, vintage fun.  There is a lot going on and the plot has some decent twists to it.  Every one of the major characters, and a few of the minor ones, seem at one point or another like they could be the villain. 

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Beast in View counts as one of my books for the Vintage Mystery Challenge.

Review: The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Most books you can read, analyze, and review, but some you just have to accept. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass is a book I had to take on its own terms.

The hero of this postwar German classic is Oscar Matzerath, who thought like an adult from the moment he was born.  At his birth, he heard his mother exclaim that he would get a tin drum on his third birthday, while his father announced that the baby would someday take over the family grocery store.  Having no interest in running a grocery store, baby Oscar determined that he would stop growing on his third birthday and remain forever a toddler with a tin drum.  Which he did.

Oscar can also shatter glass with his voice, which he does in dozens of creative and destructive ways.  (The scream singing and a glass shattering are reason enough to skip the movie adaptation.)

Oscar narrates his life story from an insane asylum where he is confined awaiting the outcome of an appeal of a criminal trial.  The story begins with his grandmother rescuing and marrying an escaping arsonist, continues through childhood with his two "presumptive fathers" (his mother's husband and her lover), follows Oscar as he tours with a troupe of performing dwarfs during World War II, to his later role as the leader of a youth gang, and finally his career as a jazz drummer in an avant-garde club where the customers eat raw onions.

So, yes, The Tin Drum is a crazy book, with so much imagery and so much going on and so many ideas swirling around that it is impossible to make sense out of it.  It's a book only a Ph.D. candidate could love.  I had to just let it roll on, laughing at the funny bits – and there are many – mulling over the ideas that grabbed me, and letting go of the rest of it.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I've had a copy of The Tin Drum on my TBR shelf forever, but it daunted me.  The whole notion of German literature daunts me.

But I saw that my library had an unabridged audio version of the new translation of this Nobel Laureate's classic, and decided to go that route.  I never would have gotten through the paper version.  I highly recommend the new audiobook from Blackstone Audio.  The reader, Paul Michael Garcia, was over-the-top good. 

Review: Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

In Lavinia, Ursula Le Guin reimagines the story of how Aeneas (of Virgil's Aeneid) fought the locals of Latinum, married the king’s daughter, and founded Rome. By telling this story from Lavinia’s perspective, Le Guin brings a domestic element to an otherwise military tale.

Le Guin relies on Virgil's account for the backbone of her story. Lavinia is an imperfect narrator because she lacks the personal knowledge needed to describe the battle scenes. So Le Guin provides Lavinia with the necessary information through a series of visions brought on by Lavinia's religious rituals. In these visions, Virgil visits Lavinia from the future and tells her the story of his Aeneid, which Lavinia uses to narrate her contemporaneous tale.

As Anita Diamant's The Red Tent did for the Old Testament, Lavinia brings a female and familial viewpoint to the epic myth of Roman civilization. Le Guin concentrates on the quotidian details and traditions of ancient Rome, admitting that she drew on her imagination as much as on known history.

For me, there was not enough home front content to balance out the battles. The most interesting part was the author's Afterword, where Le Guin explains her love of Virgil's Aeneid, particularly when read in Latin. If I had her devotion to the original classic, I would likely have greater appreciation for Le Guin's retelling.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I read Lavinia as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Review: A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse

A Prefect's Uncle is P. G. Wodehouse's second published book. Like his first, The Pothunters, it is set in an English boarding school for boys. Except in the long passages describing cricket matches, it is a charming and funny book that hints at the hilarious style Wodehouse later perfected.

The initial gag about the Prefect's uncle arriving at the school provides the title and is quite funny. But that storyline peters out and the main plot involving a poetry contest is not as clever.

The big weakness of the book is Wodehouse's unrelenting concentration on cricket. He describes cricket matches play by play and devotes pages to cricket strategy and other bits of cricket minutia.

Diehard Wodehouse completists may be willing to skim over the cricket passages to glean the funny bits. But those new to Wodehouse should start with one of his later, more popular books.


OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

A Prefect's Uncle was one of my books for the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour). 

Review: The Gathering by Anne Enright

It is comforting to think of memory as a recording of past events that can be played back anytime. But the brain does not store memories – especially traumatic memories – in such an orderly and retrievable fashion. In The Gathering, Anne Enright grapples with the chaotic, fragmented, and twisted ways we remember the traumas of childhood.

The memories belong to Veronica, one of the nine surviving Hegarty siblings, gathered for the funeral of their brother Liam. Veronica tries to deal with her grief and make sense of her brother's death by piecing together their family history. She uses her imagination and objective clues to give context to distressing images from the time she and Liam lived with their grandmother.

Veronica's struggle is authentically idiosyncratic. Her grief and the secrets she carries drive some kooky behavior and alienate her from her husband, her mother, and her own daughters. She can be an unattractive, if believable, heroine.

Veronica's off-putting conduct and Enright's sometimes too-obtuse prose makes The Gathering a difficult book. But Enright earned her Booker prize for tackling a harrowing subject and concluding with the important lesson that a problem cannot be solved until it is acknowledged.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Gathering is one of the books I read for the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Review: Independent People

Independent People, first published in Iceland in 1934, secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize in 1955. It is the grim saga of Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family, early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level. The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.

The book is rich, although the plot is meager, following Bjartur from the acquisition of his farmstead through the loss of two wives and three children. Vivid scenes punctuate long passages describing geography, weather, and peasant conversations about sheep ailments and Icelandic politics. For example, in one scene, Bjatur clings to the furry antlers of a reindeer as the animal drags him across a half-frozen river. Meanwhile, his first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut -- kills and butchers a ewe, salts down the meat, and then gorges herself on a pot of offal stew. The cognate, while false, is apt.

Dark humor is woven into the story but does little to lighten the somber mood. With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy. Many readers praise the book's genius; others will find it a heavy slog.

OTHER REVIEWS

CaribousMom

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NOTES

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 480 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

Review: A Sand County Almanac

A Sand County Almanac was published in 1949, a year after Aldo Leopold's death, and remains a formative work of conservation philosophy.

There are three parts to the book. The first, the Almanac section, is a collection of 12 essays, labeled by month, discussing the "wild things" of Leopold's farm in the "sand counties" region of Wisconsin. Birds are a recurring topic, as are trees, prairie grass, weather, hunting, fishing, and the ecology that connects them all.

The second part, "Sketches Here and There," includes essays inspired by places: Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, Arizona and New Mexico, Chihuaha and Sonora, Oregon and Utah, and Manitoba. Although the subjects vary, Leopold's consistent theme is how human access to wilderness and mechanization – well-intentioned or not – has altered the land's natural system.

In the last section, "The Upshot," Leopold raises philosophical questions about why and how to correct the ecological imbalances created by man's use of the land. He advocated a "land ethic" that considers aesthetic and other non-economic interests when making land-use decisions.

Leopold's tone is musing rather than didactic. His position could be described as small-c conservative, with the goal of conserving the wild parts of nature while accommodating man's use of her resources. He acknowledges the paradox inherent in these goals:

But all conservation of wilderness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

He offers no solution to this dilemma, criticizing private land owners, government programs, and consumers alike. He sees conservation as "too large, too complex, or too widely dispersed to be performed by government," and concludes that an "ethical obligation on the part of the private owner is the only visible remedy for these situations." But once proposed, Leopold offers no method to create such an ethic. We still wrestle with the same environmental conundrum.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Aldo Leopold inspired many environmentalists and conservation organizations, including the Property & Environment Research Center (PERC) in Montana and the Sand County Foundation, based in Madison, Wisconsin, which manages Leopold's old farm.  Among other things, the Sand County Foundation works on removing dams to restore Wisconsin's natural floodplain.

A Sand County Almanac has been on my TBR shelf for years.  I finally read it as one of my non-fiction choices for the TBR challenges I am doing this year: the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Review: Word Up! by Marcia Riefer Johnston

Word Up! How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraphs (And Everything You Build from Them) 

by Marcia Riefer Johnston

 
Trying to review Marcia Riefer Johnston’s Word Up! daunts me. She starts with a chapter advising vigorous deletion of all “to be” verbs. Ack! Good advice, but it stymies my ability to write a review, lest a stray is, am, was, or are bogs down my prose.

But it must be done. So I’ll offer my opinions and risk straying from the path Johnston’s advice, with a reminder to myself that good writing is a continual process of practice and honing.

Word Up! takes a holistic approach to strong writing, rather than rehashing the same old rules about grammar and punctuation. Johnston covers a lot of ground, but always focuses on getting the most out of every word and sentence. She preaches energetic and repeated editing – to eliminate bloat and flab, make sentences punchy, and create compositions that resonate with readers.

There is just enough jargon and technical guidance in the book to appeal to grammar geeks and punctuation buffs. But the strength of Word Up! lies in Johnston’s enthusiasm for teaching powerful writing. This is a book to turn to again and again for guidance and inspiration.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee

 

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee

Thomas McNamee took on a yeoman's task with his biography of Alice Waters and her iconic Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. So many people move in and out of Water's life and the Chez Panisse story – as friends, advisors, business partners, lovers, chefs, collaborators, and enablers – and there are so many near misses, splashy successes, headline grabbers, and petty squabbles, that the book could have been buried under lists of names and dates.

Instead, McNamee concentrates on Water's personal development arc from the starry-eyed, Francophile hippie who opened Chez Panisse in 1971 to America's cultural leader on local food sourcing, sustainable agriculture, and the Slow Food ideal. He uses the restaurant's history for context and color, including menus, recipes, and interviews with Panisse intimates.

While it includes unflattering details, the book is not intended as hard-eyed criticism of Water's business efforts or policy ideas.  Instead, McNamee gives an entertaining, insider's view of a famous restaurant and its charismatic, influential star.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse counts as one of my books for the Foodies Read Challenge (hosted by Vicki at I'd Rather be at the Beach), the Mt. TBR Challenge (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block), and the Off the Shelf Challenge (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Review: The Gun Seller

 

Hugh Laurie is best known as an actor – the volatile but brilliant Dr. House or Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves – but he occasionally branches into other creative arts, like jazz music and writing. In 1996 he published a just-this-side-of-spoof espionage thriller called The Gun Seller.

Part Wodehouse, part Robert Ludlum, Laurie's only novel finds ex-soldier Thomas Lang bamboozled into infiltrating a terrorist group in order to short circuit an embassy attack orchestrated by an evil munitions manufacturer as a marketing stunt. The plot is complicated enough to stay interesting and internally consistent enough, just, to stay acceptable.

Best of all, it is funny. It is really funny, which is really hard to do. Laurie definitely channels his inner P. G. Wodehouse, but through a spy thriller filter, so it comes out like a James Bond story written by Mark Steyn.  Pure fun.  Too bad Laurie hasn't come out with a sequel.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I bought this on a whim and finally read it for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Kitchen Remodel, Week Four: Canopy & Cocktails

Drywall is boring. Glad as I am to see walls in the new kitchen, there is nothing exciting about drywall. And drywall was the only thing that happened in our new kitchen this week.

Outside, we saw the beginning of a long-awaited canopy over the back door. It still needs its trim and the little copper roof like on the roof of the adjacent bump out. 

But already I can imagine finally having a stoop to set down the groceries with the canopy to keep off the rain -- instead of the meager concrete steps exposed to Portland's unfriendly weather that we've lived with for five years.

The stoop will connect with a concrete terrace on top of the garage, so I've also been daydreaming about warm summer evenings with the grill going and neighbors over.  The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto has me ready to start those evenings observing the sacred cocktail hour, the "pause in the day's occupation" that "marks the lifeward turn."




DeVoto wrote history books, novels, a magazine column for Harper's and this delightful homage to the cocktail hour.  First published in 1948, my edition is a reprint from Tin House with an introduction by Daniel Handler.

Written in a style Handler describes as "deadpan fascism," The Hour extols the virtues of the only two drinks DeVoto accepts as cocktails -- a "slug of whiskey" and a dry gin martini.  DeVoto advocates two of either at 6:00 o'clock with a few friends in a quiet setting as a necessary segue between the labors of the day and dinner.

He makes a good case.  And his pillorying of anything that falls outside his defined cocktail rituals is still very funny, even with his Dorris Day-era views on women.  His diatribe against rum, grenadine, mixers, anything sweet, olives, and novelty bar ware is a masterpiece of curmudgeonly eloquence.

NOTES

I read The Hour as one of my choices for the Foodies Read Challenge and as one of my non-fiction books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review: The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes explores memory, loss, and lives built around the empty spaces in his Booker-winning novel, The Sense of an Ending. Ostensibly the reminiscence of the recently retired and contentedly divorced Tony Webster, the story deepens to tragedy when Tony reconnects with his college girlfriend and re-examines what he thinks he remembers about his past.

As Tony bit-by-bit abandons his understanding of passed events, he gives up the assumption that “memory equals events plus time” and realizes that “time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent.”

This scrutiny of memory makes the novel reverberate. Because I try cases on behalf of adults who were abused when they were children, I deal daily with imperfect memories, forgotten details, and re-created stories as my clients and the people we sue patch together their history. I’ve learned that truth – or as close as we can get – is three-dimensional and can be built only collaboratively.

Or, as Tony muses:

[A]s the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Sense of an Ending deservedly won the 2011 Booker Prize.  

Review: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons is not the chick lit fluff to be expected from the title. There's plenty of meat on those Bon Bon bones.

The title refers to the facetious name of a women's book club, suggested by one member's mean husband. The five Angry Housewives live on Freesia Court in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The story follows the women through 30 years of friendship and shared books, from young housewives with babies, through career choices, divorces, social upheaval, family deaths, and empty nests. Since a novel would go nowhere if the characters lead placid lives, the women face seemingly insurmountable obstacles – including abusive or philandering husbands, secret childhood shame, a brother damaged by Viet Nam, single motherhood, and cancer – but learn, of course, that their friendship will see them through.

Each chapter focuses on a different member of the group as they take turns hosting the book club. The chapters are headed with the name of the book under discussion and a little note about why the hostess chose the book or what food she served. The biggest disappointment is the lack of discussion about the books. Many chapters never mention the book at all, but for the title. If mentioned, the books typically only get a line or two, rarely any conversation. Another distracting drawback is that the chapters flip back and forth between third person narrative for some of the characters and first person narrative for others, making it difficult to sink all the way into the story.

Still, the book club theme is appealing and the story of friendships that grow over 30 years of shared experiences is rich and satisfying, if not original. Fans of Anne Tyler or Maeve Binchey would enjoy this American Midwest take on the Aga Saga genre.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Angry Housewives counts as one of my books for the three TBR challenges I am doing this year.

Review: Just Enough Liebling

A. J. Liebling is best remembered for the long piece journalism he wrote for The New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963. A native Manhattanite and avid gourmand, his favorite subjects were food, Paris, boxing, and horseracing.

Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer is a collection of his best pieces from that magazine and other publications. Organized by category, the articles cover dining in Paris; Liebling's experiences as a World War II correspondent in Tunisia, liberated France, and a merchant marine convoy; life on the make in New York; boxing; journalism; and Earl Long of Louisiana, Huey Long's brother who stepped into the gubernatorial seat after Huey's assassination.

Like John Mitchell (Up in the Old Hotel), his friend and contemporary at The New Yorker, Liebling delighted in his subjects and had a keen eye for the kind of detail that makes a story blossom. He put himself into the stories as an active narrator, often with self-deprecating humor. For example, one of the strongest and most memoir-like of the essays, "Quest for Mollie," begins with Liebling passing a dead American soldier on a transport route through northern Tunisia and leads to him tracing the dead man's colorful history back to the bars and union halls of Hell's Kitchen. Liebling took his quest personally, concluding:

It cheers me to think there may be more like him all around me – a notion I would have dismissed as sheer romanticism before World War II. Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.

It is just this personal connection with his subjects that make Liebling's essays as full of human interest today as when he first wrote them.

OTHER REVIEWS

Up in the Old Hotel by John Mitchell, here on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of any of Liebling's books listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.  (If you reviewed Up in the Old Hotel and would like it listed, please leave a comment with a link on my review post for that book and I will add it there.)

NOTES

Just Enough Liebling is one of the non-fiction books I read for the TBR challenges I am doing this year. Because Liebling's first love was food, every piece in the book -- even those about boxing -- talk about food.  So this also counted as my first book for the 2013 Foodies Read Challenge.  Finally, at 534 pages, it was the first chunkster I read for the 2013 Chunkster Challenge.

I am also adding Just Enough Liebling to my French Connections list because of the section on dining in Paris and the WWII pieces about France.