June is Audiobook Month: REVIEW: The Lost City of Z, by David Grann

The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. Published 2010 by Vintage. Audiobook version narrated by Mark Deakins. Nonfiction.

The Lost City of Z is a fascinating book of history and memoir, the story of adventurer Percy Fawcett and his obsession with a lost city deep in the Amazon jungle; his last failed mission to find it; and the people and times that made the Amazon what it was- and what it is today. It's also the story of author David Grann's efforts to make his own attempt at solving the mystery of Fawcett's final disappearance into the jungle along with two others, his son and his son's best friend.


Along the way, the reader is treated to some Victorian social history, the story of South American colonization and exploitation and much information about the conditions of jungle exploration, in the days when the Amazon really was almost completely untouched. With all the bugs, disease, heat, starvation, dehydration, dysentery and hostility, it's enough to make this New England girl want to never leave the city again! In all seriousness though, Grann conjures up images at once frightening, fascinating, breathtaking and heart-stopping. Listening to narrator Mark Deakins rattle off the litany of insect menaces, tropical diseases and apparently non-stop dangers the explorer faced, one wonders how anyone could be prepared to take it on.

Telling for me is the comparison Grann draws between Arctic and Amazon exploration; in the Arctic, stress comes not just from the cold but from the absolutely unchanging landscape. You look at the same thing, all day, every day, with no variation. In the jungle, you're bombarded by a never-ending series of dangers, always changing and never letting up.

And when Fawcett, a fearless and gifted explorer of the jungle, brings along an equally gifted explorer of the Arctic, as he does in what makes for one of the most riveting stories in the book, you can believe it doesn't end well. Also compelling is the story of James Lynch, a modern Brazilian finance man who takes an interest in Fawcett's final mission and endeavors to find out what happened to him. To find out what happens to Lynch, you'll have to read the book. Grann tells the first half of Lynch's story at the beginning, to hook the reader in, and it works; you'll want to stick around for the end of this tale!

Finally, there's the story of Grann's own attempt at Amazonian exploration. There was a touch of Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods in Grann's adventures, which start at his local outdoors store and take him some places he doesn't quite expect. All in all, I'd strongly recommend The Lost City of Z for the reader interested in the outdoors, in the history of science and the history of indigenous peoples in the New World- and for any reader who wants to do some armchair traveling with a great storyteller. I liked listening to the audio over reading for this one; Deakins' narration helped me to visualize the settings and all the crazy things these people go through in pursuit of their obsessions. It's a great summer read, however you choose to enjoy it. And you'll appreciate your can of OFF more than you ever thought you could!

See more information about June is Audiobook Month here.

Rating: BEACH

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

REVIEW: Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner

Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner. Originally published 1984. This edition 1995 by Vintage Contemporaries. Literary Fiction. Winner of the Booker Prize.

Hotel du Lac is a quiet novel that nonetheless has a lot to say. Winner of the 1984 Booker Prize, it's the story of Edith Hope, a writer on a self-imposed exile at an out-of-season Swiss hotel, which she shares with a small group of (mostly) women. Mrs. Iris Pusey is a narcissistic grande dame on perpetual holiday with her spinster daughter Jennifer; their primary occupation is consumption- shopping and eating. Monica is a tall, striking woman accompanied by a small dog but otherwise alone, a single middle-aged woman looking for what the Puseys already have, a wealthy man to support her. An older woman also resides at the hotel, staying on until the end of the season, at which time her family will send her elsewhere to be looked after. And then there is Edith, alone for entirely different reasons, who forms slight attachments to each but remains definitively on her own.

What we do know about Edith is that she's desperately in love with David, a married man and art dealer, to whom she writes detailed letters about the people and goings on at the hotel. But David is not the primary scandal she's escaping, and he won't be her redemption, either. That story unfolds slowly as Edith gets to know a Mr. Neville, a single and well-off man also in residence at this placid hotel that nonetheless buzzes with the quiet desperation of its inhabitants.

At the core of this slim novel is character- Brookner's and Edith's sharp character studies of the ladies, especially the Puseys, and Edith's own arc as she makes difficult choices about the next stage of her life. For a long stretch her future is open-ended and uncertain as she steps through each day walking the town, writing and navigating the genteel minefield of the other ladies' own emotional landscapes. The setting reflects Edith's state of mind, perpetually gray and blank. Color comes from the ladies' clothing and conversation. She's recovering from a major trauma, and more than that, has to decide what to do next; uncertainty is the dominant tone. Towards the end decisions agendas are revealed that change that landscape and lead to Edith's final choice, and it feels so right and well-drawn that it's hard to imagine it turning out any other way.

Hotel du Lac is a fine literary read that readers of thoughtful womens' fiction will savor and enjoy. Brookner mixes pathos and humor- her portrait of Mrs. Pusey in particular has moments of real hilarity- in a novel that resembles Jane Austen written in a contemporary style, but with an emphasis on the pathos. She uses the very Austenian theme of women's economic vulnerability but instead of marriage solving life's problems, she asks if the material rewards of dependence engender a kind of complacency or even rot. But the novel is smarter than to be so simple-minded in its message; Brookner also sets up contrasts that ask if being alone is the worth the price it demands as well. Overall thoughtful, thought-provoking and lovely, Hotel du Lac is a beautifully crafted narrative that will reward the careful reader.

Rating: BUY

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

REVIEW: The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink. Published 1997, 1st Vintage International Edition. Literary Fiction. Translated from the German.

The Reader is a slim little book that packs a big punch. Bernhard Schlink's meditation on guilt and accountability is set in post-World War 2 Germany, as a young man named Michael Berg embarks on a sexual affair with a mysterious, 30ish woman named Hanna who lives alone and works on a trolley. She is passionate but curiously withdrawn- and then one day she is simply gone. When she reappears, she is on trial for crimes Michael never could have imagined- and she has a secret.

Schlink doesn't shy away from showing the negative consequences of Michael and Hanna's relationship on the rest of his life- failed relationships with lovers and children, difficulties getting his career off the ground- which suggest something poisonous even before we know it for sure. Of course, a sexual relationship between an adult and a child is bound to produce negative consequences for the child but Schlink gave me the feeling that something more is at play, something about Hanna specifically that goes beyond the psychological dysfunction that would lead her to take advantage of a young boy. Neither character is exactly sympathetic, but I think the point is to create complex characters that defy easy categorization.

I found The Reader to be a challenging, moving book, filled with questions and ambiguity- moral ambiguity most of all. Schlink's theme is responsibility and choices- the responsibility of an individual or of a society for the choices it's made or allowed in its name, and the burden of guilt borne by the generation of Germans that both lived through the war and that which came after, for the Holocaust and for the Nazi regime in a broader sense. Schlink's literary style and first-person approach, so we see Michael's psyche at close range, produce an intimacy and immediacy allowing the reader to understand both Michael's perspective and its limitations. Definitely a tight, literary page-turner of psychological suspense, I'd recommend The Reader to anyone interested in a strong character-driven novel of ideas and morality. It's a book I won't soon forget.

P.S.: Candy at Not a Walking Encyclopedia tells me that there is a film adaptation of The Reader about to be released, starring Kate Winslet. I think I'll be there opening weekend! Thanks, Candy! And please go check out her terrific blog!

P.P.S. Lorri M. gave me the IMDB link for the film, out in limited release December 10 and in wide release January : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/. Thank you Lorri!

Rating: BUY

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

REVIEW: Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey

Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey. Published by Vintage International in 1997. Literary Fiction. Booker Prize winner.

Oscar and Lucinda is the best book I've read so far in 2008, and with a mere two and a half months left, it's likely to be the best book I will have read all year.

Winner of the 1988 Booker Prize, it's the story of two misfits who fall in love in nineteenth-century Australia, a wild time of speculation in a wild frontier, when, if Carey is to be believed, Great Britain was in the process sending out missionaries, capitalists and criminals in hopes of establishing its dominance on the island continent. And sometimes it was hard to tell who was who.

But the story starts in the English countryside, in the modest home of Oscar Hopkins and his strict religious father. As a child, Oscar, whose lifelong gambling addiction will wreak havoc on his life for the rest of his life, lets a child's game determine his fate when he changes religious adherence, leaves home and goes to live with an impoverished clergyman and his unorthodox wife. Oscar's loyalty to this erstwhile preacher sets him up for a lifetime on the margins- in school and later on in professional and personal life. Lucinda Leplastrier is also the daughter of an iconoclast- in her case her mother, who teaches her not to think herself limited by her gender, and from whom Lucinda inherits enough money to make her independent and unbeholden. Unfortunately what neither inherits is understanding of how each is judged by others, and how those judgements affect the course of their life.

Eventually the two end up in Australia and meet- Lucinda by now the owner of a glassworks and Oscar a struggling priest. Their love story is tender and sweet and fraught with tension; keenly aware of propriety their behavior follows the letter of propriety if not its spirit, and there's something of Edith Wharton's deluded Lilly Bart in their blindness to how they appear to others, even as appearances fail to reflect the reality of their relationship. They even lie to each other- it's frustrating and alluring at the same time, this narrative of missed connections and missed opportunities. Soon after the story begins it becomes clear that the narrator is no detached third person or authorial voice, but a character with a very personal interest in the outcome of the story, but it's not until almost the very end that the reader can begin to understand what story the narrator is telling, and whose. The story comes to a tense, taut climax when Oscar and Lucinda make a foolhardy gamble which ends up destroying them both.

Carey does an amazing job with Oscar and Lucinda. The writing itself is gorgeous, literary and loaded- more like a nineteenth century love story than one written in the nineteen-eighties. I like that he chose a style that reflected the time and place of the story's setting rather than a more modern style. It's a wonderful throwback to the days when characters were rich and nuanced and novel structure more formal and stylized. It's also highly readable, with an engaging plot and characters you come to know well and care for. Carey evokes his settings beautifully as well; Australia comes across as an anarchic frontier of gamblers and predators, victims and saints. The action keeps going right to last sentence, and I didn't want it to end. I wish every book could be this good!

Rating: BUY

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

REVIEW: The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros. This edition published 1984 by Vintage Contemporaries. Literary Fiction.

The House on Mango Street is one of those books I looked at in bookstores probably dozens of times before I finally read it; I'm sorry it took me so long.

A collection of short stories comprising a larger narrative, it's a little gem of a story of a young girl coming of age in a poor neighborhood. Each chapter is an individual story or vignette of young Esperanza's neighbors and friends, little episodes from her life. The young narrator shows different facets of her own personality through each portrait- a sense of humor, a sense of outrage, hope, optimism, sadness, pity, pride, shame, and compassion:

One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house.
Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.
Rats? they'll ask.
Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy.

This passage shows her hopes for herself (bettering her lot in life, owning her own home, having friends over for dinner parties by a fireplace- an idyllic middle class life), as well as her naivete- maybe her homeless friends upstairs would like to come down, too.

The simplicity and openness of Esperanza's tone in this and other passages belies the book's serious undercurrents. Though the individual vignettes have an innocent charm, themes of desperation and fear run throughout, through stories of her neighbors and friends, many of them women, trapped, by poverty, by abuse, by illness, by a lack of education, or by a lack of imagination. By the end of the book we come to understand that she uses her writing as a means of escape, and so there is hope.

The House on Mango Street is a lovely, sweet book for teens and adults about what it means to grow up and find meaning in life. I'd recommend it for just about anyone.

Rating: BUY

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

TBR Challenge: A Little Love Story, by Roland Merullo

A Little Love Story, by Roland Merullo. Published 2005 by Vintage. Literary Fiction.

A Little Love Story will feel like familiar territory for fans of Roland Merullo, author of the novels Breakfast with Buddha and Revere Beach Boulevard, among others. The protagonist is a regular Boston-area guy, a carpenter as a matter of fact, privileged by upbringing but carrying some guilt. In Breakfast with Buddha, Merullo's protagonist dealt with his bourgeois ennui by trying to be a good liberal; in this case, the main character, Jake Entwhistle, deals with it by rejecting a career in medicine for the less glamorous (but still remunerative) life of a successful tradesman and artist.

When Jake meets Janet Rossi, a beautiful and whip-smart political aide with a difficult chronic illness, it's a year after his girlfriend Giselle has died on the plane over Pennsylvania in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The book chronicles Jake's efforts to forge a relationship with Janet with death always close at hand, as well as deal with his lingering sadness and the after-effects of 9/11. In that way, this book is similar to Perrin Ireland's Chatter, another story of post-9/11 angst among the bohemian bourgeoisie. The terrorist attacks are a metaphor for instability and the fragility of life- not that we need a metaphor since we have Janet, who weakens before our eyes.

It probably sounds like I didn't like the book very much; actually I'm ambivalent. As always with Merullo I admire his writing- he's a superb craftsman- and his compassion and respect for his characters. Even the slimy governor, Janet's former lover and the key to her survival, is treated with a certain amount of dignity. As in Breakfast with Buddha, Jake relies on a quasi-religious figure (this time his brother) to help him stay focused; in fact, sometimes A Little Love Story read almost like a rough draft for Breakfast with Buddha, a much better novel. I can't say I liked Jake very much, although he acts with great love and devotion towards Janet. I just found him to be almost too good, and I didn't find their relationship, their great romance, very convincing either. Merullo doesn't show any ambivalence in Jake, any complications to his personality, or to Janet's. Jake keeps telling us how smart Janet is, but I didn't see much evidence of that either. They both just came across as bland. Maybe it was too workaday, too ordinary- an ordinary story about ordinary people, where what appeals to me sometimes are stories with greater narrative flourish. They're both supposed to be wildly admirable people, and I guess they are, but the whole saint thing didn't work for me.

Well, it's not a bad book. It just wasn't that great. If you're interested in cystic fibrosis or a decent novels about the heroics people are willing to undergo to hang on to a lover, you'll like A Little Love Story, probably more than I did.

Rating: BORROW

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

REVIEW: The Sea, by John Banville

The Sea, by John Banville. Published 2006 by Vintage. Literary fiction. Winner of the Man Booker Prize.


John Banville's The Sea won the Man Booker Prize in 2005 and so I had high expectations- not only did I expect it to be an excellent book but I expected to really enjoy it. I don't think it would have stood out for me on the bookshelves had it not been for that perky little gold sticker. You know, yet another novel about some old guy reminiscing about his first crush. Yawn, right? Some of my favorite books have been Booker winners though- my all-time favorite novel, Possession, by A.S. Byatt, won in 1990, and others like The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (no, I didn't like the movie), The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, are books that I treasure. Then there's Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan, 1998's winner, so they're not all golden, but I digress.

I think The Sea is quite polished and accomplished- like the best student in class, it's neat and clean, sits with its hands folded at the front of the room and turns in its excellent work on time but lacks the spark of real genius. The book opens as the narrator, Max, whose wife has just died after an extended illness, moves into the Irish boarding house that was the scene for his first experiences with love and death. One followed quickly upon another one brief summer when he was 11, and it seems fitting to return there now that once again he has experienced the death of a beloved. (Fitting in a literary sense, anyway- I'm not sure a real person would end up back there in any sense but the psychological.) The narrative goes back and forth between three time lines- the childhood summer, his years with his wife Anna, and the present tense, Max's unhappy after-life boarding with the spinstery Miss Vavasour and an enigmatic loner known only as the Colonel.

The tone of The Sea is elegiac, mournful- slow and heavy and the writing is characterized by the same literary artfulness as the premise. Occasionally some violent emotion bursts through the otherwise calm surface and the reader gets a sense of Max's turmoil- his hopelessness and grief and loss. I wish there had been more moments like this, more touching the wound as it were. I know the book is very well-crafted but sometimes it felt over-composed. Perhaps the effect is intentional, meant to contrast with the outbursts and show Max's fragility. Still I found it difficult to connect with Max. He's not really that likable- he wants to appear worldly but his irony and sarcasm (not to mention his alcoholism) undercut his sophistication. He seems to lack affection for his daughter, who he describes as unattractive and unambitious, yet attached to a man he deems unworthy. And his memories of Chloe, the little girl he loved, are detached and don't sound to me like the way an 11 year old would experience first love, although I've never been an 11 year old boy so what do I know. His outbursts, his testiness and his anger, do render him more human, however.

We know early on that his memories of the house itself aren't accurate so it's possible his other memories are equally distorted. Later we find out that there were some adult goings-on in the household that his childish perception missed entirely, and we find out one important fact in particular at the end, to do with the identity of a character who would otherwise have faded into the background. I have to say that I really wish I had known this thing at the beginning; holding back this little fact struck me as parsimonious. I mean, I know it's meant again to underscore the overall artistry of the novel but it wasn't really that crucial, not some 180 spin, just a little twist, like a quarter of a turn, and I think I would have enjoyed the book more had I just known. When the realization hits, though, it crashes down hard, and that moment- a casual, throw-away remark- was for me the most dramatic of the entire book.

Overall, I think The Sea is certainly deserving of the recognition it has received from the Man Booker committee and is definitely a worthy, meaty, literary read, if you're into that kind of thing. It's one of those books that I appreciated but didn't really like. Oh well.

Rating: BACKLIST

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