“In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novels of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely…Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays?”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (NOV 16, 2011)

“Reader, I married him.”

What sensitive reader hasn’t thrilled to the last lines of the novel Jane Eyre, when the mousy and unprepossessing girl triumphantly returns to windswept Thornfield as a mature woman, marrying her one-time employer and great love, Mr. Rochester?

That era of these great wrenching love stories is now dead and gone. Or is it? Can these time-honored stories be rewritten for our current age, adapting to the accepted forces of sexual freedom and feminism? That’s the main focus of Jeffrey Eugenides’ new novel and the theme shows up early on. He writes about his key character: “Madeleine’s love troubles had begun at a time when the French theory she was reading deconstructed the very notion of love.”

You’d expect the author of the ground-breaking Virgin Suicides – a beautifully-rendered mythology about the suicides of five secluded sisters as seen through the eyes of neighborhood boys – and Middlesex, the exhilarating Pulitzer Prize winning multi-generational saga focusing on a hermaphrodite – to bring a fresh energy to the topic. And indeed, Mr. Eugenides does.

The” marriage plot” is a term used to categorize a storyline centered on the courtship rituals between a man and a woman and the potential obstacles they face on the way to the nuptial bed. It often involves a triangle – typically, the woman and man who are fated to be together and a strong rival for the woman’s attention.

So it is here. Madeline Hanna – the center of this new marriage plot — is a privileged Brown University student, a young English major whose books range from the complete Modern Library set of Henry James to “a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Eliot, and the redoubtable Bronte sisters.” Her brain is tantalized by her readings of deconstructions like Roland Barthes in her Semiotics 211; her heart, though, is firmly tethered to the literature of a century or two past. The other two sides of the love triangle are composed of Leonard Bankhead, a charismatic, sexually charged, intellectual, and intense college Darwinist, and Mitchell Grammaticus, the spiritually inclined seeker who has been delving into various religious mythologies including Christian mysticism.

But – Eugenides being Eugenides – someone who does not shy from complex characters – he adds a twist. Leonard is not only tall, dark and brooding (he wears a leather jacket, chews tobacco and is uncontrollably moody. Think: David Wallace Foster), he is also bipolar. What follows is one of the most breathtaking descriptions of this mental condition that this reader has ever read:

“As Leonard strode along, thoughts stacked up in his head like air traffic over Logan Airport to the northwest. There were one or two jumbo jets full of Big Ideas, a fleet of 707s laden with the cargo of sensual impressions (the color of the sky, the smell of the sea), as well as Learjets carrying rich solitary impulses that wished to travel incognito. All these planes requested permission to land simultaneously. Leonard radioed the aircraft, telling some to keep circling while ordering others to divert to another location entirely. The stream of traffic was never-ending…”

How do you carry on a relationship with someone who is hostage to his emotions and at the mercy of Lithium, which leaves him dulled and somnambulant, plump and often impotent…yet often magnetic? Indeed, there are times the reader will question exactly what the attraction is and why Madeleine succumbs to it. But wait – in the wings is the man who still carries the torch and who is currently overseas working out the big questions: the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

There are those who will consider the plot to be vaguely misogynistic. After all, Madeleine is the “prize” between two very determined men; she is hardly “I am woman, hear me roar.” Rather, “it turned out that Madeleine had a madwoman in the attic: it was her six-foot-three boyfriend.” Mr. Eugenides is not trying to make politically-correct statements; rather, he is working within the confines of the traditional marriage plot, with wisps and tendrils of everything from Jane Eyre to Anna Karenina. And he does so smartly. He deconstructs not only the deconstruction of the marriage plot, but answers the question about why we still rejoice in this timeworn style. And he does it with page-turning fervor to show how reading about love affects the ways we fall in love.

With devastating wit and a nod to intellectual and academic influences, Jeffrey Eugenides creates a fresh new way to approach the predictable marriage plot, revealing its relevance in today’s world. It is an achievement.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 392 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 11, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jeffrey Eugenides
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Middlesex

Bibliography:

• The Virgin Suicides (1993)
• Middlesex (2002) 
• The Marriage Plot (2011)

Movies from books:

• The Virgin Suicides (2000)

“It was time it happened, the determination that this should never be allowed to repeat itself, the hatred and the bitterness of not being able to decide whether to thrust a knife in her or start to weep so that she could console me like a second Linda, for I was no child any more and yet I was, and I wanted to be neither, but someone else, again.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (SEP 28, 2011)

Navigating that shaky bridge between childhood and adulthood is never easy, particularly in 1961 – a time when “men became boys and housewives women,” a year when Yuri Gargarin is poised to conquer space and when the world is on the cusp of change.

Into this moment of time, Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen shines a laser light on young Finn and his mother Gerd, who live in the projects of Oslo. Fate has not been kind to them: Gerd’s husband, a crane operator, divorced her and then died in an accident, leaving the family in a financially precarious position. To make ends meet, she works in a shoe store and runs an ad for a lodger for extra money.

To complicate the situation, Finn’s father’s second wife – a now-widowed drug addict – views the ad and unloads on the family Finn’s half-sister, Linda – a young girl who appears to have mysterious problems that are only gradually revealed. Figuratively, this “poor mite got off the Grorud bus one dark November day with an atomic bomb in a small light blue suitcase and turned our lives upside down.”

Linda becomes the mirror in which Gerd, Finn, and others (including the lodger Kristian) eventually define themselves. Gerd, who identifies strongly with Linda, is transported back to an abusive childhood and views herself in the little girl. Finn — who is the first-person narrator — battles jealousy, bewilderment, and eventually, stirrings of love as he defends Linda from the Norwegian educational system and the school bullies. He reminisces: “Linda was not of this world, one day I would come to understand this – she was a Martian come down to earth to speak in tongues to heathens, to speak French to Norwegians and Russian to Americans. She was destiny, beauty and a catastrophe. A bit of everything. Mother’s mirror and Mother’s childhood. All over again.”

Not unlike his regional compatriot, Per Petterson, Roy Jacobsen is (as one publication stated about the latter), “a master at writing the spaces between people.” He succinctly and beautifully captures the incomprehension of a young boy who is trying to make sense of the adult world and his place within it. The increasing bond between the boy and his accidental sister is explored painstakingly and is exquisitely poignant. The portrayal of Linda’s evolution to her new family is genuinely heartrendering.

A pedestrian and at times downright awkward translation does not serve the stream of consciousness sections well. In the best translations (such as the talented Ann Born’s translation of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses), the reader loses sight that the book is a translation. It takes a little while to get into the cadence and the rhythm.

But the authenticity of Roy Jacobsen’s vision wins out with its universal themes: how others become gifts in our lives, unveiling us, and the lengths we go to preserve relationships with those we love. Or, in the words of the author, “Something happens to you when someone spots you – you see yourself from the outside, your own peculiar strangeness, that which is only you and moves in only you, but which nonetheless you have not known…” This quiet book is a hopeful testimony to transformative change.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Roy Jacobsen
EXTRAS:	Blog with all sorts of Roy Jacobsen info
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersen

Partial Bibliography (translated):

• The New Water (1987; 1997 in English)
• The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (2005; 2009 in English)
• Child Wonder (2009; September 2011 in English)

“Calm down. Just calm down. It will all be fixed tomorrow. Change the brake light and touch up the paint, it won’t take all day.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  AUG 31, 2011)

Very early in the morning of August 31 1997, Princess Diana was killed when her car crashed at high speed into a pillar in a road tunnel near the Pont de l’Alma in Paris. Evidence at the crash site suggested that the driver of the car might have lost control after side-swiping a slower-moving car, a white Fiat Uno, near the tunnel entrance. It was not until 2006 that the driver of this car was identified as a young man of Vietnamese origin, but at the time that Laurence Cossé published this novel in 2003, the Fiat still posed a mystery, leaving the author to imagine a story of her own. Clearly wanting to follow the astounding success of Cossé’s A Novel Bookstore, Europa Press has commissioned a translation of this earlier book, produced with Europa’s trademark elegance. But this is a less relaxed, more edgy book that will appeal to quite a different audience.

Conspiracy theories aside, the driver of the Fiat was clearly not directly to blame for the crash, so the big stumbling block is to find a convincing reason for his or her not going immediately to the police. The driver in the real situation might have had many reasons: momentary panic, fear of involvement, then fear of being blamed for not coming forward earlier; the details do not really matter so long as the driver is just a name in a newspaper. But once we get to know the driver as a real person, once we get into her heart and her head as the protagonist of a novel, the reasons had better be good ones. Cossé uses her feminine empathy (yes, Laurence is a female name in France) to imagine a young woman, Lou Origan, a 25-year-old cook at a Paris restaurant, returning home to the suburbs. Her initial reactions are entirely credible; the huge black Mercedes bearing down on her at more than double her speed, knocking into her not once but twice, then bursting into flames; no wonder she drives home in shock.

It is only when Lou wakes up and listens to the radio that Cossé really runs into problems. No doubt wanting to plunge into the story at breakneck speed, she has not had time to establish Lou as a fully-dimensioned character; her relationships with her live-in boyfriend Yvon (an aficionado of fast motorbikes and sleek sailboats) and her co-workers at the restaurant are sketched in only later. So all we have of Lou is her panic. Cossé’s empathy produces only the kind of girly helplessness that I thought had more or less vanished from serious fiction. Lou’s attempts to take control of the situation are generally negated by fecklessness in carrying them through. Before long, she feels herself hunted and in fear of her life, running around in circles despite her determination to make a clean break. But to a large extent, these problems are inherent in Cossé’s choice of subject. A Novel Bookstore contained elements of suspense and detection also, but it was held together by the author’s deep love of books and appreciation for the people who write, read, and sell them. This, by contrast, is a book about a woman falling apart.

The novel does pick up half-way through when another character enters the story, a man who knows Lou’s secret. Now Lou has another person to contend with, a situation which brings out reserves of courage, endurance, and (in the one climactic scene) inspiration that she had not the opportunity to show before. But despite this one addition to the cast, we are still basically trapped inside Lou’s mind, and the feeling of going around in circles continues. Unfortunately, too, the climax comes too early, so the last section of the novel just runs out of steam — though Cossé springs a nice ironic twist as a final flourish.

Readers who enjoy the woman-in-peril genre may find themselves biting a few nails in delicious anguish, and there is always the interest of the Di-and-Dodi crash (since Cossé stays very close to the facts). But these are unlikely to be the same readers who so enjoyed A Novel Bookstore.  (Translated by Alison Anderson.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Laurence Cossé
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Novel Bookstore

Partial Bibliography (translated books only):

• A Corner of the Veil (1996)
• A Novel Bookstore (2009; August 2010 in US)
• An Accident in August (2010; August 2011 in US)

“Harry could feel the adrenaline rush, the trembling that always came when he got first scent of the brute. And after the rush came the Great Obsession. Which was everything at once: love and intoxication, blindness and clear-sightedness, meaning and madness. Colleagues spoke now and then about excitement, but his was something special.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (MAY 12, 2011)

Harry Hole is a Norwegian detective especially trained in catching serial killers. He spent some time in Quantico learning these skills but serial killers are very rare in Norway. It just so happens that right now there is a serial killer loose in Norway. He’s been active for over fifteen years and his emblem is a snowman. Whenever he kills someone, he leaves a snowman in their yard. He has been nicknamed “The Snowman” by the Nowegian police force and this has been picked up by the civilian population.

Jo Nesbø has created an unremitting page-tuner in The Snowman. It was hard for me to come up for air. The writing excels, the pace is adrenaline pumping, and the clues take roundabouts throughout the book. The translator, Don Bartlett, is excellent. The writing is smooth, readable, and I would never have guessed that this book had been translated.

Harry Hole, like many police officers, is tortured by demons. He struggles with alcoholism, is still in love with his ex-wife, is the bad boy of his department and is afraid of the dark. At home, his walls are torn down because of a mold problem so he doesn’t even have a comfortable place to rest.

The Snowman is attracted to women with children. He does not target men or single women unless they are getting too close to finding out his identity. Harry Hole gathers a team of four and together they seek out this serial killer who uses a sadistic means to kill his victims. Sometimes he will even behead them and put their head on top of the snowman.

Harry and his team travel from Bergen to Oslo in search of this monster and they keep thinking that they have found him, only to realize that they have been tricked and he is still at large. The Snowman is smart, always one step ahead of them and Harry has a feeling that he is being watched and that the Snowman is someone he knows – someone in his personal or professional circle.

The Snowman doesn’t ever leave any clues. The crime scenes are immaculate, there is no DNA nor are there any fiber traces. The cuts are clean and immaculate. Sometimes, there is not even a body to be found which drives Harry to the brink.

I’ve read many police procedurals and hardcore mysteries but this is the best one I’ve ever read except perhaps for Deon Myer and Lawrence Block. They are special in their own way. There is not one part that lets up interest. Once picked up, the reader is bound to the book like super glue.

I was amazed to learn that Jo Nesbø, author extraordinaire is also a musician, songwriter, and economist. He published his first Harry Hole book in 1997 “and it was an instant hit, winning the Glass Key Award for the best Nordic crime novel (an accolade shared with Henning Mankell and Steig Larson). This is my first Harry Hole novel but it won’t be my last. I just ordered two more and can’t wait to start them. I checked his reviews on Amazon and they are consistently excellent. I am always excited to find a new author and Jo Nesbø is it for me.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 67 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jo Nesbo
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Seeing the World Through Books Review of The Snowman
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Star Nemesis

Bibliography:

• The Bat Man (1997)
• The Cockroaches (1998;)
• The Redbreast (2000; 2006 in UK; 2007 in US)
• Nemesis (2002; 2008 in UK; January 2009 in US)
• The Devil’s Star (2003; March 2010 in US)
• The Redeemer (2005; March 2009 in UK; not in US)
• The Snowman (2007; March 2011 in US)
• The Leopard (October 2009)

Stand-alone Novels:

• Headhunters (2008)

“There was a simple clarity to killing, and it was his only way forward. He had to remind a group of multimillionaires who had gotten used to thinking of themselves as immortal that death could overtake them at any time. He also had to teach them that even a solitary enemy could do them terrible harm.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (MAY 07, 2011)

One of Thomas Perry’s most iconic characters is “The Butcher’s Boy,” a professional hit man with an impressive resume. In his prime, he was the go-to guy for gangsters who wanted to get rid of their enemies. Taught by his foster father, Eddie Mastrewski, who worked as a butcher but also rubbed out individuals for a fee, the Butcher’s Boy (who now goes by the name Michael Schaeffer) is mentally tough, remorseless, practical, and a perfectionist who has stayed alive by taking nothing for granted. He is a master of weaponry and surveillance; is good at blending into the background; can bypass most alarm systems; and has a sixth sense that alerts him to subtle clues in his environment. Although he can improvise when necessary, he prefers to plan ahead. He does not toy with his victims; he strangles, shoots, or stabs them, and then quickly vanishes.

In The Informant, Michael is in his fifties, and has lived in England for years with Meg, his beautiful and aristocratic wife. He prefers a quiet existence to his adrenaline-fueled and violent younger days. Unfortunately, ten years earlier, he was spotted by a thug who recognized him, and more recently, three men tried to kill Michael and his wife in their home. Michael returns to the States to see if he can rout his adversaries once and for all. He embarks on a one-man killing spree, and Elizabeth Waring, who works for the Justice Department, sees an opportunity to take down various crime figures whom she has been after for years.

Michael travels by plane and car to New York, Washington, D. C., Texas, Illinois, California, and Arizona, seeking information and trying to get the drop on his opponents. Waring, who is an expert on Organized Crime, is on the outs with her tightly-wound and bureaucratic boss, Dale Hunsecker. Without Hunsecker’s permission, she tries to get Michael to turn informant in return for federal protection. Michael and Waring are both mavericks who have succeeded through hard work, commitment, and keen intelligence. However, they are on opposite sides of the law and are understandably wary of one another.

Perry keeps his story moving briskly with well-choreographed action and chase scenes, exciting confrontations, lots of bloodshed, and a large body count. It is entertaining to watch Michael meticulously prepare for each step of his journey. With his savvy and willingness to take measured risks, he could have been a huge success had he used his skills, say, as an investment banker on Wall Street. Perry’s dialogue is amusing and the author keeps us on tenterhooks, wondering how Michael will extricate himself from the gigantic mess he has gotten himself into. Although The Informant is fun, it is also pure fantasy. There is no human being on earth as perfect as Michael (he rarely makes mistakes), and it is a stretch that Elizabeth would risk her job and the well-being of her family to get the Butcher’s Boy on her side. It is also hard to accept that a cold-blooded killer is capable of having a warm and loving relationship with a woman. Fortunately, Perry keeps us from taking these far-fetched plot elements too seriously by keeping us thoroughly engrossed in Michael’s wild and perilous escapades.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 25 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (May 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Thomas Perry
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nightlife Silence Runner

Bibliography:

• The Butcher’s Boy (1982)
• Metzger’s Dog (1983)
• Big Fish (1985)
• Island (1988)
• Sleeping Dogs (1992)
• Death Benefits (2001)
• Pursuit (2001)
• Dead Aim (2002)
• Nightlife (March 2006)
• Silence (June 2007)
• Fidelity (May 2008)
• Strip (May 2010)
• The Informant (May 2011) *

*The Butcher’s Boy returns

Jane Whitefield series:

• Vanishing Act (1995)
• Dance for the Dead (1996)
• Shadow Woman (1997)
• The Face-Changers (1998)
• Blood Money (1999)
• Runner (January 2009)

From 1998 until 2011, we posted approximately  2,800 reviews.  Good books never go out of style, so please take time to peruse our website.

Today’s featured review: OXYGEN by Carol Cassella (e-book on sale October 9th only)

Kindle Daily Deal

KINDLE BOOKS $3.99 OR LESS DEAL EXPIRES LAST DAY OF THE MONTH!

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to take a look at the “post 9/11″ books we’ve reviewed at Mostly Fiction…. that is books that seemed to hit at the cultural changes within our country, post 9/11.

So here’s what I have for my first pass — please add your comments on the ones you can think of:

• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• The Last Good Day by Peter Blauner
• Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff (also see author  interview)
• Harbor by Lorraine Adams
• The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
• Shalimar the Clown by Salmon Rushdie
• Flight by Ginger Strand
• Terrorist by John Updike
• America’s Report Card by John McNally
• Cranberry Queen by Kathleen DeMarco
• Bannerman’s Ghost by John Maxim
• A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

Books that speak directly to the day:

• In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
• The Garden of  Last Days by Andre Dubois III
• What We’ve Lost by Graydon Carter
• 9-11 Commission Report

And just to think about pre-9/11:

• Trudy Hopedale by Jeffrey Frank