Review: BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS, by Lawrence Osborne

Beautiful Animals, by Lawrence Osborne. Published 2017 by Hogarth/Crown/Random House. Literary Fiction. Crime Fiction.

Beautiful Animals lives in that yummy space between literary fiction and the crime novel. Set on the Greek island of Hydra and among the fashionable rich, author Lawrence Osborne tells the story of Naomi Codrington, a young woman retreating to her parents' world of privilege after a humiliating professional setback, and Faoud, a Syrian refugee who washes up on Naomi's playground.

The reader feels right away that there is something toxic in Naomi's idle boredom, which preys on her and leads her to temptation. Crucial to this alchemy is Naomi's burgeoning friendship with Sam, an altogether ordinary young woman spending time with her parents. The women form a bond that just teeters on sexual but never quite loses its balance; both become infatuated with Faoud, a handsome young man whose origins are murky but seems to come from a privileged background himself.

In Beautiful Animals, Osborne treads familiar ground- what happens when the ultrarich mix with the poor and desperate. Faoud is a man of Naomi's own creation; she creates a narrative for him in which she herself will figure prominently, and soon Naomi writes the chapter she thinks will make for him a happy ending. Naomi lives with her wealthy father and stepmother, whom she disdains, and she concocts a plan to help Faoud at what she is sure will be little cost. Of course these things never go as planned, and soon the costs climb higher than anyone could have imagined.

I would love to see a movie made of this book. Osborne's writing is so atmospheric and evocative; you can feel the heat of the sun, the salt of the water and stain of blood as you read. Later on Osborne introduces a kind of detective character and the book wakes from its delicious paresse and takes on a crime-novel pace, then settles in for a low-key, dark finish. Beautiful Animals would be a wonderful choice for the literary reader's beach bag, a great follow up for fans of Katie Kitamura's A Separation or similar. Lawrence Osborne never disappoints.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review.

Review: JANE AUSTEN, THE SECRET RADICAL, by Helena Kelly

Jane Austen, The Secret Radical. Published 2017 by Alfred A. Knopf. Nonfiction. Literary essays.

So this is a pretty fun read if you're a Jane Austen fan, and a pretty insightful read whether you consider yourself a Janeite or not. Author Helena Kelly, a scholar and writer who's taught and written extensively on Austen, leads us novel-by-novel examining social and political issues that we may have missed, or glanced only fleetingly.

She starts with Austen herself, what we know of her life and publication history and how she was viewed during her lifetime. Kelly is working on the premise that most people consider Austen's books merely delightful, or as the forerunner of modern chick lit and womens' fiction, or know her mainly or best through the various film adaptations.

Then she takes us on a tour of Austen's six novels starting with Northanger Abbey and ending with Persuasion. She covers topics like entailments, slavery, enclosures, social niceties and gender roles, and the ephemerality of society itself. Some of the topics she covers are particular to Austen's time and place; entailments aren't legal in the United States and haven't been (I think) in practice in Britain in a long time. Enclosures were an entirely new subject to me and I had no idea the role they play in Emma, one of my favorite Austen novels.

I was certainly aware of some of the issues Kelly talks about; I knew that Sense and Sensibility, for example, devolved around the economic fragility of womens' lives, and that slavery played a role in Mansfield Park, which I'd often thought of as Austen's most overtly political novel. But Kelly goes deep and brings out the nuances even seasoned Austen readers might have missed. And she does it with a light touch. Wholly accessible in tone and style, Secret Radical is a book for the lay reader, for the afternoon sofa if not maybe the beach bag. In it Kelly shows us how much more there is to Austen than gentility and sweetly tidy love stories. By the end I was doubting even my beloved Captain Wentworth. It certainly opened my eyes to a more detailed examination of books that I've read and re-read, enjoyed and shared.

As a friend said, it's a very attractive notion to think of Austen as a secret radical- more so than thinking of her as a secret reactionary certainly. And Kelly's book is both delightful and pointed. I strongly recommend Secret Radical to all Austenites, Janeites and readers of any stripe. It will make you think and wonder, and probably make you want to re-read your favorite Austens once more to really see what she's getting at. Or maybe you'll be intrigued enough to try her for the first time. I'm ready to have another go at my favorites. I can't wait to hear how you do with yours.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON, by Luke Harding

A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvenenko and Putin's War with the West, by Luke Harding. Published 2017 by Vintage. Nonfiction.

If you want to read something that will keep you up at night, A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvenenko and Putin's War with the West is as good as any thriller out there- with the additional zing that this is a very true story about an inept but ultimately successful plot to kill a journalist and the investigation that went all the way to the top of the Russian government.

Alexander Litvenenko was a journalist who became an enemy of the Putin government when he threatened to expose its role in scandals that shook Russia, in particular an apartment bombing that killed several hundred Russians and may have been orchestrated by the Kremlin to promote public support for the war in Chechnya. Litvenenko ended up fleeing Russia with the help of oil oligarch Boris Berezovsky, himself an enemy of the state, and lived for a time in London with his wife and son until two bungling henchmen poisoned him with polonium, a radioactive element that is only produced at a couple of labs within Russia. So while from an official point of view no charges have been pursued against Putin, from another point of view there's really no question who's responsible.

Journalist Luke Harding tells this harrowing and tragic story with verve and enough detail that the reader will feel fully immersed in the details of the killing, the investigative aftermath and the bureaucracy and corruption surrounding the whole affair. It's also incredibly frightening on any number of levels. Litvenenko's is not the only dead body in the story and though I will say it loses some momentum about 2/3 of the way through it picks up again right towards the very end.

I really couldn't put the book down. It probably took me about a week to read it and I wanted to be reading it every waking minute of that time. Last year I read Masha Gessen's scary The Man Without a Face, her story of Vladimir Putin's rise, and the Litvenenko murder was part of that story; this book fleshes it out and gives us a level of detail Gessen could not, but you don't need to have read her book for this one to chill you to the bone. If you're interested in the current head of the government who is so admired by the head of our own, A Very Expensive Poison will make it hard to sleep at night, one way or the other.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.

Review: BORN A CRIME, by Trevor Noah

Born A Crime, by Trevor Noah. Published 2016 by Spiegl & Grau. Nonfiction, memoir.

I'm a fan of Trevor Noah, host of "The Daily Show," but I would have read this book in any case. Born A Crime is a memoir of his childhood in South Africa and a very particular story it is. His mother is African and Xhosa, and his father is European and Swiss; he was raised by his mother and later a stepfather and has straddled three worlds racially and culturally- the black South African world, the white one, and the "colored" one, which is the world of mixed-race people. And he was "born a crime" because sexual relations between races was illegal and his mother did in fact go to jail for a time.

Overall the book is a delight. You can hear Noah's voice as you read and that voice is frank, intelligent and no-nonsense. He's also very funny and tells stories both dark and humorous with a light touch. I really enjoyed it cover to cover.

So that said, Born A Crime can be choppy and somewhat difficult to follow in terms of a clear timeline but what is very clear is his sense of joy, confusion, his struggle to find a place for himself, and above all his love for his mother Patricia, an independent and nonconformist woman who taught Noah that anything is possible. But you do have to read between the lines to get a full sense of what it was like to grow up Trevor Noah; we only learn about his stepfather towards the end of the book but the experience of living with a man who was constantly trying to push him out and dominate the family must have colored his entire childhood. He doesn't tell us that, but if you look for it I bet you can find it.

He recounts stories from school, from outside of school with his friends and "entrepreneurial associates" (my term) one might say- the people with whom he established quasi-criminal off-the-books businesses pirating music and doing DJ gigs. He tells us about the time he was arrested and the truly terrifying prospects of landing in a South African prison. He tells us about his relationship with his father, a distant but loving man who accepted Noah without question but played his cards close to the vest. To this day Noah says he hasn't been to Switzerland or met his Swiss extended family, although I wonder with the publication of this book if that's still the case.

The best parts of the book, both the easiest and the most difficult to read, are those about his relationship with Patricia, who brought him up hard and awash in love and support. He couldn't, and didn't, get away with anything, even when he thought he did. Finally we meet his abusive stepfather Abel, who alternately charmed and terrorized the two of them as well as Noah's young half-brother. This abuse climaxes when Abel shoots Patricia in the head; she survives, but something died that day, even if it wasn't she herself.

Like I said I would have read Born A Crime whether or not I was a fan of Noah's, just to read a first-hand memoir of growing up in South Africa at the tail end of apartheid and the beginning of the democratic era. There's a lot of information here; I learned a lot but like other books I've read about South Africa I'm left with plenty more questions and the realization that there is still so much I don't know. So that makes Born A Crime a terrific read on several levels. It's funny and entertaining; it's heartbreaking; it's educative, and it leaves you wanting more.

Rating; BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received a galley copy from the bookstore where I work.

Review: A MAN OF GOOD HOPE, by Jonny Steinberg

A Man of Good Hope, by Jonny Steinberg. Published 2015 by Knopf. Nonfiction.

South African journalist Jonny Steinberg's deeply wonderful book is a combination of biography, interview and journalism examining the life Asad Abdullahi, a Somali man who moves across Africa and ultimately to the United States in search of the things most of us take for granted- a stable safe life, a family, and a future.

When A Man of Good Hope opens Abdullahi is a young teen whose family has just been destroyed by Somalia's civil war. He sees his mother killed and is charged with the care of an older female relative, which soon proves impossible. At first he goes to live with some relatives, but things don't work out, and he tossed from one makeshift home to the next to the next to the next, to one marriage, to another, to different ways of earning a living and ways of just staying alive, and you'll have to read the book to start to understand the cultural maelstroms he fights his way through, the obstacles and the odds which are never in his favor.

Steinberg tells the story mostly from Abdullahi's shopfront in South Africa, where for a time he runs a convenience store until local residents unhappy with the influx of refugees from across the continent nearly kill him. The South Africa portion of the book was the hardest for me because after everything he went through to get there and to try to settle down, it was awful to see it snatched away.

It's excruciating. What kept me reading was the reassurance, because the book is based on Steinberg's interviews with him and Steinberg makes the interview process part of the story, that Abdullahi is still alive and actually made it through what he went through. I don't know if I could take it if the end was a tragedy.

So it's a tough read but so rewarding and so worth it. It's one of those books where I learned a lot but still feel like I knew less than I did before. And those are really my favorite books- the ones that teach me something and show me how much more I have to learn at the same time. It was without a doubt one of the best books I read in 2015 and I recommend it strongly to readers interested in learning about the forces large and small that impact the lives of people with no country to call their own.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: THE CITY OF MIRRORS, by Justin Cronin

The City of Mirrors, by Justin Cronin. Published 2016 by Random House. Literary Fiction, Science Fiction.

So, I finally ate the whole thing. Late Friday night I finished the last few pages of The City of Mirrors and with it Justin Cronin's Passage trilogy comes to a close. Wow.

To catch you up, humankind has been laid waste by a deadly virus that originated in the jungles of South America and came to the United States as an experiment by a Harvard scientist working for the US government. Timothy Fanning is Patient Zero, the first infected in the jungle and the leader of the general contagion. The government scientists infect twelve men on death row and a little girl named Amy in furtherance of a project which hopes to produce a race of supersoldiers but instead creates a race of monsters ("virals" or infected persons) from ordinary people. In The Passage (volume 1) and The Twelve (#2) we see the origin of the virus and its devastating, immediate effects, and then move forward and see how humanity is faring about 100 years in the future. In short, the news isn't all that great.

All three books concern a core group of survivors- Peter, Alicia, Michael, Sara, Hollis, Theo, Mausami and Amy- and the original 13 infected men. Cronin introduces new characters along the way too as people have children, or move, or supporting characters from one section move to the center of the stage elsewhere. The City of Mirrors is long like the first two, and mostly weighted towards action with sizable chunks of exposition and backstory. In particular we learn about Timothy Fanning in great detail through an extended soliloquy near the beginning of The City and get to know a new character that Cronin introduces at the very end.

Plot-wise, The City of Mirrors recounts the end of the viral period and the beginning of a new world. There are several endings as the characters branch off to different destinies, and then there is a final ending, poetic and emotional, that loops us right back to the beginning. Have your tissues ready.

Did I like it? Yes. Cronin does a masterful job tying up the loose ends and giving his characters appropriate and satisfying endings. There was a little bit of bloat and I will admit to some skimming when it came to the backstories, especially the final bit when the book was about to end. At that point I was impatient for the plot to move and wasn't interested in the life story of someone who I was going to stop reading about in ten pages. But never let it be said that Cronin doesn't create richly drawn characters; that's what kept me reading, these people I'd come to care about so much.

If you are new to the Passage trilogy you should start with book one, The Passage, because these books depend on being read together and that's the best one anyway. But once you read The Passage be ready to be hooked. And when you get to The City of Mirrors you'll be too busy crying to worry about anything else. If you've already read the first two you will want to read this no matter what I say, and you should.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: CHARLOTTE BRONTE: A FIERY HEART, by Claire Harman

Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, by Claire Harman. Published 2016 by Knopf. Nonfiction. Biography.

Award-winning critic and writer Claire Harman portrays the author of Jane Eyre as an introverted genius devoted to her craft and her family in this novelistic and deeply satisfying biography.

I don't read a lot of biographies, but when I do it's usually because I'm already a fan of the person being written about, so you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to leave me dissatisfied. In other words, the chances of me not liking a book about the author of one of my favorite novels are pretty slim. That said, I did love Harman's new Brontë biography, which covers her entire, short life, from birth to the start of her life after death.


Harman portrays Brontë's family as close and inwardly-focused, dominated by the paterfamilias Patrick, a minister with a temper and a tight rein on his five children Maria, Branwell, Emily, Anne and Charlotte. Charlotte was very close to all of her siblings and a biography of her is in large part a biography of this family. Maria died too young to be a part of the creative hive that the remaining four developed later, which continued until Anne and Emily passed within months of each other. Branwell's story is also tragic, his life lost to alcohol and addiction and a hopeless and scandalous love affair. Charlotte's career was bumpier than I realized, even after the success of Jane Eyre, and she remained haunted by a failed love of her own, until she married and briefly settled down until her premature death in her mid-30s, possibly, Harman tells us, due to complications related to pregnancy.

Charlotte Brontë is absorbing read that held my attention completely; I read it at the gym so it was competing with a lot of ambient noise and I could only read it 45 minutes at a time, but I actually started working out more so I'd have more time for it. It's a treat to hear Brontë's voice through her letters and early writing and to learn about Brontë family, especially her father and sisters. Emily in particular seemed like someone with a rich interior life. Brontë's relationship with Elizabeth Gaskell, also an important Brontë biographer, is a big part of Brontë's adult and professional life. I'd recommend the book strongly to fans of any or all of the Brontës, or for anyone who likes a good character-driven novel. It would make a great brainy summer read.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Knopf.

Review: FATES AND FURIES, by Lauren Groff

Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff. Published 2015 by Riverhead Books. Literary Fiction.

Fates and Furies, the latest book from celebrated author Lauren Groff, has been all the rage since its release last fall. It's been likened to Gone Girl with its his-and-hers story of the marriage Lotto, a wealthy bottled-water scion, and Mathilde, a young woman of murky background. They meet at Vassar and go on to live a charmed life, first in genteel West-Village poverty and later as Lotto becomes a lauded playwright and Mathilde his loyal and devoted helpmeet.

Or that's the story you could glean from the first half of the story, told from Lotto's perspective. And even in that first half the reader can see how self-centered he is and how many things might look different from Mathilde's point of view. In the second half some of those gaps get filled in.

I have a lot of thoughts about Fates and Furies. I would join a book club just to talk about it, because I feel like I need to talk about it with someone. There were things I loved about the book, like Groff's insight into Mathilde's character, the writing itself, so descriptive and lush, and the skill with which she both draws and skewers Lotto, a decent if myopic man. But I had some problems with it too, mostly to do with the amount of melodrama larded over situations that don't need it. I think there is a trend in the literary world right now towards overwrought emotional and sexual melodramas (hello A Little Life) and if you loved Hanya Yanagihara's blockbuster you will probably like this one too (although I admit I haven't read Yanagihara's book and probably won't, the talk about it is roughly similar to what Fates has to offer).

I was a big fan of Groff's last book, Arcadia, which also centered around a young woman shaped by abuse; I thought that book was excellent and very insightful, and I admire Fates but I think too often she just went to far in investing her characters with uber-angst. Mathilde's childhood as Groff shapes it is the stuff of nightmares; it's hard to believe she would walk away from that. I think a young woman who's been neglected the way she is, and who has had the lack of parenting she's had, would be drawn to bad relationships and have the attitude towards childrearing she does, but it's all so overwrought. And that's assuming she just physically survived it, which I don't think is a given. I don't know what to say without big spoilers- this is why I need people who've read it.

And the comparisons to Gone Girl are off the mark too. Mathilde isn't evil or a schemer or a murderer, and if anything the revelations about her role in the marriage seem overcooked. Her emotional detachment is both extreme and uneven; Groff tells us Mathilde loves Lotto, is devoted to him, but she lies to him in shocking ways, driven by more than just fear of not being loved for who she is. Again I don't buy that this person would be able to do what she does, given what she's been through. I think toning down or reshaping the melodrama of her childhood and early adulthood would have helped to make her more  believable overall.  I don't know that I'd recommend it to Gone Girl fans just based on the two-sides-of-a-marriage premise. I think that Fates might be a little overwritten for die-hard crime fans too and there is no real element of horror here, telenovela-worthy sexual melodrama aside.

So yeah, ambivalence from me. I get why people like it; I get why they don't. Just before I finished the book I glanced through GoodReads reviews to see what folks were saying, if it fit with how I was feeling about the book and I found that I agreed more or less with the good reviews and the bad. Should you read it? I have no idea. I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity about it though.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: CITIES OF SALT, by Abdelrahman Munif

Cities of Salt, by Abdelrahman Munif. Published 1989 by Vintage. Literary Fiction. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux.

Cities of Salt takes place in the 1930s, in a nameless Persian Gulf state, and examines the impact of the discovery of oil on a small town, its inhabitants and its diaspora. Wadi Al-Uyoun is a backwater, a stopover for caravans and a place where it seems like life has changed little in a long time. Then oil is discovered, but nobody tells the locals what's going on. People go on the move, form a new community based on the priorities of the foreigners, an Arab one and an American one, separate and different and each mysterious to the other.

The novel seemed to me to be written as a series of episodes moving forward in time, with different sets of characters spotlighted as different conflicts erupt and subside. A mother who has been keening for her lost son who left Wadi Al-Uyoun a long time ago becomes further distraught as the chaos sets in and her plight becomes emblematic. Another man becomes a ghost haunting the wadi. Further in, as the new town is set up and divided between the Americans and the Arabs, more conflicts come up. A man working for the company dies in an accident and the consequences will ripple for years to come. The Americans are a faceless horde, aliens and regarded with suspicion, derision, humor and indifference by the Arab characters who are just trying to adapt and stay afloat.

People from all walks of life come in and out of the story- doctors, travelers, workers, hapless bystanders. Munif portrays them with compassion, except for emir and his handler, who are portrayed as a bumbling idiot and a conniver respectively. The emir, a fool enamored with anything shiny and new, leaves everything up to the Americans and his handlers are too busy currying his favor to step in. I get the sense that this might be a bigger problem in the sequels (Cities of Salt is first in a quintet). Here it feels like a counterpoint to the stress and tension building among the rest of the characters.

Did I like it? I liked it enough to keep reading, but I'm probably not going to read the sequels. It was honestly hard for me to keep track of everything that was going on, and none of the narratives seemed really compelling or powerful enough to hold my interest for too long. I get the point about the culture clash, the alienness of the Americans, the mix of fascination and fear with which the Arab characters viewed them, especially the women. Cities of Salt is a very immersive book and will find admirers among fans of historical fiction but the drama is low-key and quiet.

This is book #2 for the #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks challenge.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: WIDOW BASQUIAT: A LOVE STORY, by Jennifer Clement

Widow Basquiat: A Love Story, by Jennifer Clement. Published 2014 by Broadway Books. Biography/Memoir.

Reading Widow Basquiat reminded me of my cool college girlfriend Kate who wore her expensive asymmetrical haircut above chic black outfits and seemed to know everything about movies, art, food and travel. We bonded over the Robert Mapplethorpe poster in my dorm room. She would have known all about people like artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his lower-Manhattan milieu of the 80s, the setting for this combination of memoir and biography. It's the story of Suzanne Malouk, a young Canadian woman who came to New York in 1980 with red-lips-and-cigarettes dreams and met and falls in love with Basquiat and remained his friend and lover through all the ups and downs until his death in 1988.

Jennifer Clement, a novelist and friend of Mallouk's, writes in a chatty, nonchalant style and interleaves her narration with extensive quotes from Mallouk herself. The effect is like two friends reminiscing, and that's exactly what the book is. It's also a colorful and lively portrait of New York City in the 80s- the art world, the AIDS crisis, drug use and more.

As much fun as the book is, there's a dark side too, something to do with the consequences of fast living and the price of addiction, but what shines through is Mallouk's passion for life and her love for Basquiat and his art.  I blew through the book pretty quickly and enjoyed the quick pace, the flurry of detail and the rich evocation of a time and a place that has ceased to exist through the passage of time and gradual gentrification of Manhattan. I highly recommend it to readers interested in art and New York. And if you're like Kate, you should read it for sure.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from Random House for review.

Review: ELDERS, by Ryan McIlvain

Elders, by Ryan McIlvain. Published 2013 by Hogarth/Random House. Literary Fiction.

I had Elders in my to-be-read pile for a long time, just about since the paperback came out, and yes, what prompted me to finally pick it up was going to see the musical "Book of Mormon" on Broadway this summer. That said, this beautiful, bittersweet book is nothing like what I saw on stage (which I also loved). Elders is an absorbing and accomplished story about growing up and testing limits and finding what it takes to take the steps you need in life.

The book focuses on two Mormon elders on their mission in Brazil. Elder McLeod is an American from an elite family. He is partnered with Elder Passos, a Brazilian convert from a poor background who is both zealous and ambitious. Elder McLeod has the relaxed attitude of someone who takes his faith for granted. It's simply the air he breathes, but sometimes he can't quite.  Passos is a convert with something to prove to himself and others. Alongside his holy mission to bring new people to his church is Passos's personal mission is to gain admission to Brigham Young University and a make life in the United States, and he is equally dedicated to both.

McLeod and Passos work together just fine and get along okay, enduring the daily grind of prospecting. McLeod has even invited Passos to stay with his family in Utah if Passos succeeds in his mission to get into BYU. But when they meet Josefina, an attractive woman genuinely excited about converting to Mormonism, things begin to fall apart. Josefina's husband Leandro neither shares her enthusiasm nor trusts these handsome young men who pay so much attention to his wife, and as it turns out the very Mormons who hold the key to Passos's future have some things to say about Josefina's conversion too.

As their relationship with the couple develops, fault lines open up between the two men. McLeod finds Passos rigid and difficult; Passos finds McLeod lazy and spoiled. Each questions his relationship to the church for different reasons and also the necessity of their partnership as time goes on. When the situation with Josefina erupts into open conflict their relationship deteriorates alongside it.

I loved Elders and strongly recommend it to readers of literary fiction. McLeod and Passos are believable and detailed characters; their lives felt very real to me. McIlvain's writing is excellent; he draws with a sure hand. His portrayal of these men and their life is nuanced and thoughtful and thought-provoking. He captures a piece of religious life not often seen in mainstream fiction and he captures it beautifully with its beauty and its flaws.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: STONE MATTRESS: NINE TALES, by Margaret Atwood

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, by Margaret Atwood. Published 2014 by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Literary Fiction. Short Stories.

I don't know what I can say about the incomparable Margaret Atwood that hasn't been said already. She's probably the most prolific of my favorite living writers (A.S. Byatt doesn't publish that often; Ludmila Ulitskaya only has a handful in English, etc.) so not a lot of time goes by before there's a new opportunity to enjoy her wonderful storytelling. Stone Mattress is her most recent book, a return to the short-story form after a bunch of wonderful novels. It's also the first story collection of hers I've read; I'm not a big short-story reader generally. And it's a great collection, of course.

The first three stories are interconnected, focusing on a writer named Constance W. Starr whose fantasy series Alphinland has made her famous. The stories wind in and out of a group of artists and writers, telling events from different perspectives. Subsequent stories have the feel of fairy tales or nightmares, dark and by turns comic and ominous. "The Freeze-Dried Groom" was probably my favorite, about a man who wins an auctioned-up storage space only to be confronted with a nasty surprise. I absolutely love how this story ends, the final words. The title story is about a woman on a trip to the Arctic who takes revenge on the man who hurt her a long time ago. "Torching the Dusties" is an over-the-top dystopia that makes the final chapters of The Bone Clocks look optimistic. One of the stories acts as a sequel to her 1998 novel The Robber Bride, a bonus to long-time fans. Several of the stories touch on the dangers of underestimating a woman's power, whether that power be to create or destroy.

Atwood fans need to read this; I'd also recommend it to readers of dark fantasy and scary tales. I had a lot of fun with these stories. They're caustic, funny, disturbing and wonderful. They're classic Atwood, and maybe just plain classic.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: THE GIRL WHO LOVED CAMELLIAS, by Julie Kavanagh

The Girl Who Loved Camellias, by Julie Kavanagh. Published 2013 by Random House. History. Biography.

As much social history of 19th century France as a biography of the life of courtesan Marie Duplessis née Alphonsine Plessis, Julie Kavanagh's book has romance, glamour, high society, low life, and tragedy. Much like the life of its heroine, Kavanagh's book is short and interesting and just a little sad.

Marie Duplessis, as she came to be known, was the woman on whom Alexander Dumas fils based his book, La dame aux camélias, or The Lady of the Camellias, a book that was adapted for the theater, the opera, the ballet, and the screen. The book came out in 1848, a year after Marie's death at the age of 23. While she lived, she enjoyed wealth and an enviable position in Parisian demimonde society, the lover of many prominent men and a woman respected, to a degree, for her own intelligence and love of literature and learning.

You might not think there would be so much to say about the life of a courtesan (read: prostitute) who died so young, and you wouldn't really be wrong, but Kavanagh manages to string a pretty interesting book out of Marie's story, which is as much about the social and economic life of Paris in the 19th century as it is about one woman and her lovers. Personally I have always found that time and place fascinating. So much great literature and art came out of the period, and it had such an influence on modern life. European and American society was transformed; revolutions and economic shifts created the world we know today. And somewhere in all of that flux were the lives of women who enjoyed considerable economic power for the first time.

Now, granted, that power came at a price, and prostitution at the level at which Marie practiced it had its benefits but we have to be careful not to glamorize it too much. So it's important to read The Girl with a slightly critical eye. I still think it's worth reading if you're interested in the period or in French social history more generally. Prostitution at her level was an established part of Parisian life and she was only one of many women who lived this life. Kavanagh tells Marie's story with energy and good documentation; a glance at the bibliography shows histories, memoirs and novels of the period as her sources. She has a chapter on her sources at the end, and an introduction explaining why we should be interested in Marie's life in the first place with an emphasis on the longevity of her life's story in multiple art forms. It's definitely an entertaining read, a history book for the beach bag. The sad part for me is that even though she died young, she would not have had much to which to look forward had she lived. Her life may have seemed enviable in some respects, but like many women in her position, it was more doomed than it was ever charmed. Kavanagh's book doesn't quite shout that message, but I think it's there anyway.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review.

Review: THE LOST BOOK OF MORMON, by Avi Steinberg

The Lost Book of Mormon: A Journey Through the Mythic Lands of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Kansas City, Missouri, by Avi Steinberg. Published 2014 by Nan A. Talese. Memoir, Travel, Religion.

This is a book that's just a pleasure to read. Avi Steinberg's first memoir, Running the Books, came out in 2011 and was also a pleasure to read, albeit one that tackled a very different subject- prison libraries (and I recommend that book if you liked Orange is the New Black, just by the way.). The Lost Book of Mormon is part travelogue, part meditation on the nature of writing, part history. Steinberg starts in Jerusalem, where he has lived on and off for most of his life, examining the sites in that city that are connected to the Mormon faith. He really starts by trying to locate an actual copy of the Mormon holy book in Jerusalem, and that story alone is worth reading as a comic portrayal of life in the holy city.

But things really get going when Steinberg embarks on an organized tour of Mormon holy sites in the new world- Mayan sites in Central and South America to be precise. He hitches his wagon to a group of Australian and American Mormons, a big extended family traveling together, and Steinberg virtually the sole outsider, non-relative and non-Mormon. This section of the book is funny, fascinating and very enjoyable, kind of like A Walk in the Woods only on a bus and with a group.

He keeps this outsider's perspective throughout the book, thinking about Joseph Smith, the uses of storytelling and fiction, and the religion as an idiosyncratic product of American culture. He doesn't support the Mormon faith per se but doesn't criticize it either, rather he uses the phenomenon of Mormonism as a jumping-off point for meditations on literature and religious scripture as a literary creation. This is not a book about the Book of Mormon so much as it is about Steinberg's encounter with the faith, and especially so when he gets to his participation in a reenactment of episodes from the Book.

Along the way he talks about his own struggles and in particular his faltering marriage. Not everyone is going to be interested in his personal life and the mixed reviews on social media bear this out. Personally I enjoyed the whole thing cover to cover. I think I just like his voice and point of view. I would definitely recommend the book to memoir readers but warn readers expecting a conversion story or something very pro-Mormonism to stay away. Again it's not critical- it's just not about being an endorsement or serious analysis pro or con. It's a quiet, kind of meditative book, and well worth your time.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review from Random House.

Review: THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH, by Richard Flanagan

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan. Published 2014 by Knopf. Literary Fiction.

This year's Man Booker Prize winner is a tough, tough read, but a very rewarding one. Australian novelist Richard Flanagan tells the fictional story of Dorrigo Evans, a doctor and survivor of the Japanese POW camp that built the Burma Railway between Bangkok and Rangoon in 1943. The railway was built using forced and slave labor; thousands of people died constructing it under unimaginable conditions. The novel documents the experiences of Dorrigo, several ordinary soldiers on the line including Darky Gardiner, a young man who tries to find the good in every day even when circumstances are at their bleakest.

And there always seems to be a new low. Flanagan gives us excruciating detail on the privations and suffering the men endured- the starvation, the long long miles of walking, the arduous work done without proper tools, the ever-increasing demands of the soldiers directing the work, and the brutal beatings and humiliations inflicted by the guards. He also gives his characters startling humanity, including the guards and taskmasters who regard suffering as a matter of course and the POWs as less than human, because they are prisoners, alive and not dead.

The cruelties of the Burma Railway have been documented in other books and films- The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Pierre Boulle's 1952 novel that became the David Lean film being the most famous example- but what Narrow Road brings to mind for me is the more recent nonfiction Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand's recounting of the Louis Zamperini story, particularly his time as a POW in Japan. Zamperini was not involved in the Burma Railway but Flanagan's story echoes some of the the same themes and particulars, especially the POWs' living conditions. Hillenbrand's book also explains in historical terms why the United States ceased prosecuting Japanese war criminals, which I found very helpful in understanding those parts of Flanagan's book in which the story moves to the guards' post-war experiences.

Because Flanagan does try to tell the story of the railway from their perspective too, a choice I think is brave and challenging. Those passages were also hard to read, the rationalizing of torture and cruelty, and Flanagan, without justifying anything, I think is trying to talk about how someone can be capable of violence, and comfortable with it. I think he's trying to talk about how a culture of violence perpetuates itself, showing the whole life cycle of it, from earliest humiliation to its effects far downstream, on people on whom a hand was never laid.

In this book, those people are the women in Dorrigo's life, particularly his wife Ella and his many mistresses. Dorrigo marries Ella out of social expectation; he's deeply in love with his estranged uncle's young wife Amy, whom he believes has died while he was at war. He spends the rest of his life trying to bury his grief and his post-war trauma in affairs and in his public life. In his post-war life he becomes a kind of spokesman for the POWs on the railway and becomes a very well-known public figure. At some point, he has to reconcile all these parts of himself, find a way to move forward.

There is a beautiful, terrible poetry to The Narrow Road and I found the book very hard to put down. I would read short passages at a time, take breaks, come back, read more, come back. It's disturbing, sometimes terrifying, sometimes bleak and almost impossibly sad, and yet I didn't want it to end. Flanagan has written a wonderful and difficult book that I would recommend to just about anyone, a classic deserving of the recognition it's received.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: A SPY AMONG FRIENDS, by Ben Macintyre

A Spy Among Friends, by Ben Macintyre. Published 2014 by Crown. Nonfiction, History, Cold War.

Here's another great page-turner by one of my favorite writers of nonfiction. Actually I think Ben Macintyre may be the only writer of nonfiction whose books I will pick up and read without hesitation. A Spy Among Friends tells the story of Harold "Kim" Philby, one of the most notorious spies in the history of espionage- his rise and fall, and the friendships that helped him all along the way.

A scion of the upper class, Philby fit right in the gentlemens' club that was MI6. He became a Soviet agent early on and as he rose through ranks of MI6 he handed over an unknowable amount of intelligence to the Soviets, intelligence gleaned from both his official duties and his lively and often alcohol-fueled social life. For Philby, as for much of MI6 the way Macintyre portays it, work and play were one and the same. But Philby always had the upper hand as operations were ruined, plans went afoul and people went to their deaths while he bantered and partied his way through countless lunches, dinners and soirees with his friends.

Macintyre tells Philby's story, which has been told before many times, through the lens of the most important of those friendships, which he shared with fellow MI6 operative and gentleman Nicholas Elliott. Elliott was, like Philby, a product of the British upper class and lived much the way Philby lived- traveling the world, drinking heavily and giving his all to his work while also maintaining a conventional home life. Problem was, while Philby's work, not to mention his marriage, wasn't what anyone thought it was, Elliott remained Philby's staunchest defender until proof of Philby's treachery became incontrovertible.

Along with friendship, Macintyre emphasizes both the role of the British class system in helping Philby maintain his position within MI6, and the role of alcohol in making his treachery possible on a personal level. Philby seemed to have always been drunk, and alcohol seemed to lubricate the relationships he depended on to keep him from detection. He would probably have drawn attention to himself if he hadn't drunk as much as he did.  And it's not surprising that someone emotionally detached enough to do what he did, would need to use a drug to maintain that detachment. Alcohol abuse and mental illness lead to the sad fate of his second wife Aileen and ruined the life of Guy Burgess, Philby's fellow traitor. And being a "member of the club" was what helped Philby hide in plain sight in the first place.

It's a sad story when you get right down to it. Lives ruined, lives destroyed, and all for nothing. I found the book almost impossible to put down, even though a quick browse of Wikipedia told me the end of Philby's story. But I wanted to know the why and the how, and see what happened to Elliott and how he felt as a result. It's easy to imagine at least some of how he must have felt. Macintyre portrays him as stalwart to the end, not defending his former friend but moving on and keeping his upper lip stiff. The story is  the product of a specific time and place in history, yet what makes it universal is the unwavering commitment that Philby had to Communism, the same kind of political devotion we still see all the time. Philby's story is the cost of that devotion, in many kinds of coin. Nothing could make him feel remorse or regret or even make him waver in his commitment, right to the end of his life.

If you've enjoyed any of Macintyre's previous books (I've read Double Cross and Agent Zigzag; Operation Mincemeat is still on my shelf to read, and he's got a bunch of others) you definitely need to pick this one up. Otherwise I'd recommend it to readers interested in the Cold War and espionage generally. It's a really engaging, terrific fun bit of history, and history that's actually quite tragic when you get down to it. Philby was a bad man whose actions hurt a lot of people and really amounted to nothing in the end. What a waste.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.

My Thoughts: The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell. Published 2014 by Random House. Literary Fiction, SFF.

I finished The Bone Clocks last night, finally. It's been with me for a couple of weeks now, given that it's a long book and my life has been hectic and I haven't always had much time to read. But reading has provided a nice escape and needed breaks from the chaos of moving and I've been glad to have such a meaty book to escape into.

The book blends literary fiction and urban fantasy, like Cloud Atlas, but powered by the paranormal rather than technology. He also uses interrelated narratives to tell the story. And just for fun, a couple of characters from that book have a cameo appearance in this one. But you don't need to have read Cloud Atlas to enjoy The Bone Clocks.

The main character is Holly Sykes, an ordinary Londoner whose life becomes a battleground in a war between two races of immortals. Mitchell starts when Holly is a teenager and runs away after fighting with her mother over a boyfriend. He introduces the main characters and sets up the battle in this section, then shifts perspective, telling Holly's story from the points of view of the men in her life for much of the middle of the book. Finally he rounds back to her and changes course again for a depressing post-apocalyptic vision of the future. But he finishes out with a satisfying ending that ties it all together at long last.

For me this book was good escapism. Sometimes it was confusing, especially during the big epic showdown between the Anchorites (bad guys, think of them as a kind of vampire) and the Atemporals (good guys, think of them as benign body-snatchers) and the infodump contained therein. And sometimes I questioned the import of those long Holly-less passages. But I loved the characters and wanted to see how it would all turn out.

I'd definitely recommend literary and science fiction readers try it. It got a very positive write-up in SFX Magazine, one of the premiere sources of information in science fiction and fantasy. I usually enjoy the books they rate highly and I enjoyed this one too. I can't say it's a favorite but it was worth the time I gave it.

Rating: Backlist

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive a copy of this book for review.

Review: THE BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER, by Lawrence Osborne

The Ballad of a Small Player, by Lawrence Osborne. Published 2014 by Hogarth Books. Literary Fiction.

"Sometimes one can feel that one has suddenly lost something that one never had in the first place. It just slips out of the hand and breaks."

This sentence appears about halfway through the haunting new novel by travel writer and novelist Lawrence Osborne but its message and impersonal tone could be said to sum up the entire story. An Englishman on the run from the law and from himself, an ordinary man who styles himself "Lord" Doyle, is hiding out in the casinos and hotels of Macau, playing baccarat but really playing at winning and losing himself and his soul.

Baccarat is his favorite game because the way he plays it, it is pure chance. Nine is the magic number, and soon he finds himself on an unprecedented winning streak. But before he gets there he becomes besotted with a mysterious prostitute who is not what she seems. He falls ill and they spend a hazy time in her apartment; she feeds him, takes care of him and he wallows in this reverie until reality in the form of his gambling addiction takes hold again. Then he must navigate his way out of the dream and find out what's real, what will break and what won't.

I loved this book less than his first novel, The Forgiven, which had a stronger plot, but I was still entranced by this moody travelogue and tale of desperation and love. Osborne uses his travel-writing skills to immerse the reader in the setting- the smoky hallways and shady characters come alive, along with the bland hotel rooms, impersonal restaurants and overwhelming atmosphere of loneliness. The Ballad of a Small Player is above all a book for the senses and I'd recommend it to armchair travelers and those intrigued by slow simmering suspense and illusion.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review.

Review and Store Staff Pick For April: REMEMBER ME LIKE THIS by Bret Anthony Johnston

Remember Me Like This, by Bret Anthony Johnston. Published 2014 by Random House. Literary Fiction.

This month the bookstore staff has decided to have a single staff pick- Bret Anthony Johnston's novel Remember Me Like This. It was published last week from Random House.

Remember Me Like This is a luminous and beautifully written family story about what happens when a disappeared boy returns home and his parents and brother reintegrate him back into the family all the while dealing with their own demons. It's a book that everyone should read, a lovely and engrossing page-turner that will break your heart and make it whole again. It deserves all the support we can give it.

Set in the present day, it tells the story of Justin Campbell, a Corpus Christi teen who went missing years before the book opens. His father is having an affair with a neighbor,  his mother loses herself in volunteering with sick dolphins and his brother Griffin is just doing his best to grow up. Then one day Justin is found. His father gets the call, and Justin is back. And, it turns out, he was never that far away. Now the family must navigate the tricky terrain of bringing Justin back into the family and dealing with the fallout from the arrest of Justin's captor.

I like this book a lot for domestic-fiction readers and book clubs; Johnston writes the interior lives of all of the main characters except Justin, so we experience Justin's return the same way his family does,  without Justin's own experience, his own point of view and private thoughts remaining just that- private. I like the way this choice plays out and the work that we must do as readers to fill in the gaps.

So I definitely recommend Remember Me Like This. Make sure to read it soon!

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Random House.

Review: HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, by Thomas Cahill

How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill. Published 1996 by Anchor. Audiobook narrated by Donal Donnelly. Nonfiction.

I've been to Ireland before, but I really don't know that much about Irish history so I thought it would be interesting and fun to listen to How the Irish Saved Civilization since it's one of the few books on the subject I was able to find on audio. It doesn't quite live up to its title but it's still a lively, informative and fascinating book.

The book starts off with a lengthy recap of the last days of Rome- its culture, political life and the reasons for its decline. This narrative leads into discussion of the barbarian invasions and the early Catholic Church, with particular emphasis on the influence of St. Augustine. From there we head north, and get to know a little about ancient Ireland- its economy, culture and literature. We learn about the Tain, an ancient Irish epic and through it gain access to the distinctly Irish joie de vivre, still alive in the culture today. Then, we meet a British man kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave, Patricius. He becomes St. Patrick, not the first but the most influential early Christian missionary, who converts the Celts. Afterwards we learn about Irish monastic life, the influence of the Irish monks on continental religion, and finally hustle through the Vikings, the British, and modern-day Ireland.

I really enjoyed this book. It is not an academic history by any stretch of the imagination but rather a fun and effervescent retelling of how Christianity become established in the western-most edge of Europe and how those religious men and women preserved the knowledge of the classical world that still informs ours. Along the way I learned how joyful and vibrant the early Irish church was, and by extension how different from its later incarnation. Cahill doesn't make the point himself but anyone familiar with the Ireland of the last and current century cannot help but notice the contrast.  It's a short book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in that lovely country, or in early Catholic history. Donal Donnelly is a great reader who held my attention and I recommend the audio. I learned that I want to learn more about Irish history, too, which is a great take-away from any book.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.