Book Beginning: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

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MY BOOK BEGINNING

The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly -- in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier.

-- Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Chapter 1 is headed April 1962, Porto Vergogna, Italy.

This is my Books Club selection for July and I can't wait to dive into it.

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

If you would like your review of The Tin Drum listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

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: 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

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

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

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

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

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

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: 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

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

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)

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

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

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

Review: The Tuesday Club Murders

The Tuesday Club Murders is a collection of 13 short stories by Agatha Christie and was the second published volume in her Miss Marples series. Christie organized the stories around the idea of Miss Marples and a group of her friends taking turns telling about a mystery in which they were personally involved and making the others try to solve it.

Each snappy little story is jammed with clues, but still satisfactorily resolved by Miss Marples after the others kick it around for a while. Jane is at her best – draped in lace shawls, knitting away, and drawing insight from homey village events.

The stories and their set ups are varied enough to keep the reader's attention, right up to the final piece, in which Miss Marples solves a contemporaneous village mystery with the help of Sir Henry Clithering, an ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard and one of the original members of the Tuesday Club.

Like any collection of short mystery stories, The Tuesday Club Murders lacks the heft of a full-length novel. But unlike a novel, these stories can be gobbled down like the stack of yummy Agatha Christy cookies that they are.


OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Tuesday Club Murders was my first book for the 2013 Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block.  The challenge has a "Scattegories" theme this year and this book counts as my "Calendar of Crime" choice.

Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is sad and beautiful. Set in the aftermath of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the short novel focuses on two couples, womanizing Tomas and his tormented wife Tereza, and Tomas' long-term mistress Sabine and her new lover Franz.

There isn't a lot of plot to the story; it is a novel of ideas and philosophy, but on a human, personal level, as Milan Kundera considers whether life is difficult because it is heavy with responsibility and consequences, or impossible because it is meaninglessly light. The characters induce sympathy, even when they act less than admirably, either trying to live with political and intimate situations beyond their control or to assert control when they can.

OTHER REVIEWS

Vapour Trails

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I finally got around to reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being because my 2013 TBR challenges involve reading all the books on one of my TBR shelves, which I chose at random.  I put off reading the book because I didn't care for the movie.  The book was far superior.

It also counts as one of my books for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  

Review: The Prestige

Why did I assume I would dislike The Prestige? There were several reasons:

• It is about magicians, a class of entertainers I tolerate only slightly better than mimes or clowns.
• It is set during a period of time I am bored with, no matter how enduringly popular in novels – the Civil War through World War I.
• I had already seen the movie, and I dislike reading a book when I already know what the story, especially a story with big secrets like this one.
• I really do not like speculative fiction in any of its broad forms – fantasy, paranormal, or science-fiction.

But I read it anyway because it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and I am working my way diligently through that list. I am so glad I did!

Christopher Priest's novel is the story of two rival magicians at the turn of the 20th Century, vying to outdo each other in an illusion featuring a disappearing man. Both have secrets that follow them to the grave – and beyond – that are only revealed when their grandchildren meet up decades later.

Because Priest is such a first class storyteller, he created a drama that is entirely believable – no matter how scientifically farfetched – and mesmerizing, even for readers who know the secrets from the movie. I was completely entranced.

Even though The Prestige runs contrary to many of my book prejudices, it could end up as my favorite book of 2013 – pretty big words, considering it is only January.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Prestige counts as my second Black winner for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, which runs through January 31, 2013.   I have now finished that challenge.  Whew!

Review: The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a long, slow slog through a lexicon of Cold War spy jargon. The sequel, The Honourable Schoolboy, is ten times more enjoyable. For one thing, the plot to atmosphere ratio is weighted to the plot side. Instead of being almost all atmosphere, there is an exciting espionage story involving drug runners, Hong Kong tycoons, glamorous ex-patriots, and the political legerdemain of wrapping up the Vietnam War.

It starts with a long but vivid section describing how the entire British international intelligence network had to be dismantled in the aftermath of routing out the mole in Tinker, Tailor. Then it really picks up and gets delightfully complicated when George Smiley sends a semi-retired operative to Hong Kong to find one Chinese informant buried in the rubble of the earlier undercover operations.

What atmosphere there is is pitch perfect. Le Carré frames the story as one of British Secret Service lore, expressed by the omniscient narrator with an ideal balance of admiration and world-weary cynicism.

OTHER REVIEWS

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy here on Rose City Reader

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on chaotic compendiums

The Honourable Schoolboy on chaotic compendiums

Smiley's People on chaotic compendiums

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold on chaotic compendiums

If you would like your review of this or any other John le Carré book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Honourable Schoolboy won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and counts as one of my Black choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, challenge.  It also counts as one of the books for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges, since it has been on my TBR shelf since 1983.

Review: The Book and the Brotherhood

Iris Murdoch’s 1987 novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, is subtitled “A Story about Love and Friendship and Marxism,” which pretty much sums up the themes of her 23rd novel but only hints at the scope and complexity of the story.

The book begins when a group of longtime friends meet at an Oxford ball only to have their sentimental reunion jarred by the reappearance of their charismatic former leader, David Crimond. Years earlier, as young, liberal university students, the group had agreed to fund Crimond's writing of a book on their political philosophy. The book never materialized and the brotherhood never came to much. Now Crimond is back and bent on rekindling his affair with one of the women.

The story swirls around this original group of friends, pulling in siblings and other relatives, lovers, and hangers on. Lots of things happen with these people, from ice skating parties to suicide pacts, in between which they ponder and discuss the moral vacuum of Marxism, the possibility of religion without a personal God, the Platonic ideal, abortion, real estate, marriage, and parrots.

Murdoch is at the top of her game with this novel. She is droll in the telling, but forgiving with her characters, never sarcastic, and comfortable with moral ambiguity as she tells their stories without drawing conclusions or passing judgment. There is no pat ending and the various storylines demand further contemplation long after the cover closes.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Book and the Brotherhood on Hannah Stoneham's Book Blog
The Book and the Brotherhood on Musings
The Sea, the Sea on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of this or any other iris Murdoch book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

The Book and the Brotherhood was 602 pages long, so counts as one of my 551 - 750 page books for the Chunkster Challenge. It also counts for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf challenges.

Review: Fortune's Deadly Descent

 


Audrey Braun’s first thriller, A Small Fortune, was an unputdownable race through the jungles of Mexico to the the high-finance world of Swiss industrialists. In the rollicking sequel, Fortune's Deadly Descent, heroine Celia Hagen is back on the run, this time trying to find her kidnapped son while keeping one step ahead of the bad guys, the cops, and her possibly unfaithful husband who she is in no mood to talk to.

The action starts when Celia’s young son Benny disappears after their train breaks down in the South of France. Interpol suspects Celia, but could Benny have been stolen by Gypsies? Or is her evil ex-husband, imprisoned though he may be, behind it all?

Fortune’s Deadly Descent is just as exciting as A Small Fortune, right to the finale. Braun has an eye for detail and makes the most out of the French village setting. She also balances the action with the honest emotions of a distraught mother.

Read both of Celia’s adventures. And look forward to the third book in the trilogy!

OTHER REVIEWS

Mysterious Reviews
The Washington Post

NOTES

Braun is the pen name of novelist Deborah Reed, author of Carry Yourself Back to Me, a Best Book of 2011 Amazon Editors' Pick..

My Rose City Reader review of A Small Fortune
My Rose City Reader review of Carry Yourself Back to Me
My Rose City Reader interview of Audry Braun
The Deborah Reed/Audry Braun website
 

Review: May We Borrow Your Husband?

Short stories are hard. They are, legend has it, hard to write. They are certainly hard for me to read. I generally skip a short story collection for a novel every time because I usually find short stories either pointlessly atmospheric or gimmicky.

But Graham Greene's little collection of 12 stories, May We Borrow Your Husband?, won me over. The title story about two gay men who woo away a honeymooning husband is a pitch-perfect Mid-Century period piece on closeted homosexuality. The others range from wryly comic to tragic, but all share a nerve-twinging honesty.

"Cheap in August" about a wife seeking a fling and "Two Gentle People" about star-crossed lovers are probably the best of the bunch from a literary standpoint. But my favorites were "A Shocking Accident" about a father killed by a pig, which I found delightful all around, and "The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" about a self-absorbed young writer, which made me cringe and laugh at the same time.

May We Borrow Your Husband? made me reconsider the short story genre. And it raised Graham Greene even higher on my list of favorite authors.

OTHER REVIEWS

The New York Times (April 30, 1967)
My review of The Comedians

If you would like your review of this or any other Graham Greene book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this book for the Graham Greene Challenge and for the Books Written in the First Years of My Life Challenge.

Review: Doctor Zhivago

I probably watched Doctor Zhivago three or four times in high school and college and never could remember the plot, beyond the basics about Omar Sharif being in love with two women – his earnest wife Tanya and the elusive, flawed, and beautiful Lara. Other than that, it was all snow, trains, battles, furry hats, theme music, and Julie Christie's doe eyes.

The book is the same, but without the balaclava music or Julie Christie.

There is a chronological order to it, but with big gaps. Some threads take so long to tie together I had forgotten where they started. And in between scenes of snow, trains, trains stopped by snow, trains buried by snow, battles, battles in snow, battles on trains, and more of the same, were rambling discourses on religion and political philosophy. And I thought the movie was slow!

The themes are grand and the writing, even in translation, is beautiful. Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize because of the book, although the Soviet government forced him to renounce the honor. There are many reasons to read Doctor Zhivago and many reasons to enjoy it. But it is a long and often frustrating read.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this one for the Eastern Europe Reading Challenge, the TBR Pile Challenge, the Mt. TBR Challenge, and the Off The Shelf Challenge. Since Pasternak won the Nobel Prize, I also made some progress on that list.

Review: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

When a venerable member of the Bellona Club is found dead in a wingback chair, Bellona member, Lord Peter Wimsey, is called in to make some discreet inquiries into the time of his death. The inheritance of a large fortune depends on just when the old fellow shuffled off.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club finds Lord Peter at the top of his game, always urbane and witty as he unravels a series of knotty clues and evaluates myriad suspects. There are many moving parts to the puzzle, but Lord Peter and his technologically savvy butler Bunter never lose their cool, right up to the surprisingly dark ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of Clouds of Witness is here.

If you would like your review of this or any other of Dorothy L. Sayers book listed here, please leave a comment with a link.

NOTES

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, first published in 1928, is Dorothy L. Sayers' fourth book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. It was one of my Golden Age Girls choices for the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block.

Review Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates

Michael Bond is best-known for his beloved books about Paddington Bear. But he has also written a series of 16 mystery novels featuring the gourmand sleuth, Monsieur Pamplemousse, and his faithful hound, Pommes Frites.

Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates is the sixth book in the series and finds Pamplemousse trying to thwart a plot to humiliate his boss, the editor of France's premiere restaurant guide, and ruin the company. He is helped along the way by his clue-sniffing dog and an attractive computer expert who can cook a pot-au-feu just like his mother (including plugging the bones with potatoes to keep the marrow in).

The humor is a little silly (Pamplemousse loses his clothes and has to go in drag, for instance) and the computer crime so dated as to be incomprehensible, but the book has a decently puzzling plot and the charm needed to make a successful cozy, plus a Paris setting and plenty of food talk. Perfect for a chilly autumn afternoon.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other books in the Monsieur Pamplemousse series, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the Foodies' Reading Challenge.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review: Paradise Postponed

When it comes to humorous literature, I see a continuum from books that are almost purely funny, with only a fragile plot for framework, to serious literature written by a witty author able to leaven a heavy story with a little comedy. I personally put P. G. Wodehouse at the one end and Jim Harrison at the other, with Christopher Buckley, Nick Hornby, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge, and Kate Atkinson in the middle, more or less in that order subject to aberration for particular books.

With that in mind, I can't say that I was disappointed with Paradise Postponed, the first book I've read by John Mortimer, an English author noted for his humorous books (including his popular Rumpole series), but I was thrown off. Without rational basis, I had it in my head that his books were going to be closer to the Wodehouse end of the scale and Paradise Postponed was much closer to the Harrison end – somewhere between Lodge and Atkinson. It took a while for me to enjoy the story while my expectations readjusted.

I ended up enjoying Paradise Postponed well enough, even if I didn't love it. It is my favorite kind of comic story about English village life with the requisite nutty vicar, illicit lovers, country doctor, and mix of difficult and lovable family members, all involved in a series of funny adventures. The story moves between the present in the 1980s back to post WWII days, as two middle-aged brothers try to figure out why their father, a communist clergyman, left his estate to a Conservative cabinet minister.

None of the characters were very likeable, and snarky jibes at Thatcherism have lost their bite after twenty-some years, but the story pulled me in and there were plenty of funny bits. I'm up for the sequel, Titmuss Regained, and will give barrister Rumpole a try.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other John Mortimer book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counted as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

Review: The Spectator Bird

No one can strip a marriage down to find the twinging nerve like Wallace Stegner, but he does it with such a deft and gentle touch that it is beautiful to observe. In the case of The Spectator Bird, which won the 1977 National Book Award, Stegner combined his marital vivisection with an elaborate backstory about a family of faded Danish aristocrats trying to live down their scandalous past.

Joe Allston, a retired literary agent, feels he has gone through his life as a spectator, falling into his career, his marriage, friendships, and fatherhood without much conscious effort on his part. But Joe and his wife Ruth have lived with a pebble in the shoe of their marriage for twenty years, ever since an extended trip to Denmark following the death of their son. When an unexpected postcard from their Danish friend startles Joe out of his grouchy retirement funk, Ruth uses the opportunity to finally learn what happened all those years ago. For the first time, Joe is forced into an active, thinking role in his long-enduring marriage.

Stegner uses Joe's journal from their Denmark trip to move back and forth between the Allstons' current life as affluent retirees on the stormy California coast south of San Francisco and the remarkably gothic story of the Danish aristocrats with whom they became entangled. In between late night sessions of Joe reading the journal to Ruth, they deal with the disruptions of daily life – bad news about a neighbor, storm damage, and an unexpected visit from one of Joe's eccentric former clients.

Combining Stegner's elegant composition with a terrific plot, curmudgeonly humor, and spot-on set pieces about growing old, sex in contemporary fiction, and the "homeland" myths of second-generation immigrants, The Spectator Bird is the rare page-turner that lingers.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Wallace Stegner book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES 

The Spectator Bird is my favorite read of the year so far and I can't see anything replacing it.  It may make my all-time Top 10 list if I can think of what to bump off it.  It is an incredible, wonderful, entertaining novel.

It also counts as one of my two National winners for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version.  There is still time to sign up for this challenge, which involves reading only three or four books.  Click the link above or the badge below for details.

 

Review: Greene on Capri

 

What literature fan would not want to read a book called Greene on Capri: a Memoir, by Shirley Hazzard? Graham Greene. The enchanting island of Capri. Written by a National Book Award winner.  All good.

But wait. The title explains both its appeal and its limits. This is Hazzard's memoir, her memories of Greene, focusing only on his time, in his later years, when he owned a house on Capri and regularly spent a month there every spring and autumn. The two met at a Capri restaurant in 1960, when Hazzard interrupted a conversation between Greene and his dining companion to offer the lines of a poem Greene was trying to remember. She and her husband remained friends with Greene until his death in 1961.

Although their friendship lasted many years, it was mostly limited to a seasonal series of cocktails, dinners, and outings on Capri's rocky shores, followed up with occasional correspondence. There is only so much one can write about that kind of social relationship, mostly distilled to observations of Greene's personality and character, rather than descriptions of particular events. For example, Hazzard examines Greene's disinterest in aesthetic beauty, including the spectacular natural beauty of Capri. In contrast, Greene was a voracious and eager reader:

Promptly generous with time and public praise for new books that please him, he brought enthusiasm to his reading. A fresh book never ceased to be a possibility, a promise. It was, I think, his only consistent form of optimism.

Hazzard's memoir is worthwhile for these observations, but they are not enough to fill a book, even one as short as this.  She fills in the spaces with Roman emperor Tiberius' lingering influence over Capri, the island's history as a haven for artists and writers since at least the 1700s, and thumbnail portraits of famous and infamous member's of Capri's 20th Century expatriate population, including Norman Douglas, Harold Acton, and Compton Mackenzie. This is all fascinating stuff, even if the connections to Greene are slim.

What is noticeably missing is a little more information about Hazzard herself, which would go a long way to provide context for her relationship with Greene. By the time she wrote Greene on Capri (published in 2000), Hazzard had published two volumes of short stories, three non-fiction books, and three novels, including The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1980. But in this memoir, she does not mention her own writing at all, leaving any reader unfamiliar with her work wondering what she had in common with Graham Greene that would develop into a 30-year friendship and why she had the clout to write about it. Even less is said about her husband Francis Steegmuller, although he was quite a distinguished man of letters who had won two National Book Awards for his non-fiction.

Greene on Capri is still a wonderful book, even if it is tantalizingly incomplete as any kind of biography of Graham Greene or history of Capri.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

It might be a short book, but it inspired a long review! This one counts as one of my choices for the TBR Challenges I  have going and for the Memorable Memoirs Challenge.  It also put me in the mood for the Graham Greene Challenge.