“I don’t think I saw the way he was threatened by his own desires, or how jealousy and desire ran so close in him he had to demean a little the thing he wanted. For example, me.

Or not me. It was hard to tell.“

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 21, 2011)

Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, has written a new novel called The Forgotten Waltz. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne’s sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.

When Gina first sees Sean at Fiona’s garden party, she is happily married to Conor. There are no outward signs that there is trouble in the marriage and, as I read this book, I did not see the marriage and any shortcomings as a reason for the affair. Gina saw Sean, felt lust, and let her impulses prevail. Sean is married and has a child named Evie who, at the time that Gina first meets Sean, is four years old.

The novel is not told in any particular linear order. It is related to the reader in fragments of memory that Gina recalls. “So don’t ask me when this happened or that happened. Before or after seems beside the point. As far as I was concerned, they were happening all along.”

Always playing a key role is Evie, Sean’s daughter. When she is five she begins to have childhood seizures that continue for many years. Annette, Sean’s wife, is vigilant about Evie’s medical care and appears not to notice that Sean is otherwise preoccupied with Gina. Evie, however, has the sense that something is happening in her home that is not quite normal. At one point, she even sees Sean and Gina kissing on the stairs of her home.

The novel takes place at the start of Ireland’s economic boom in the nineties and progresses to the depressions that hits later on. As the novel starts, people are making more money than they know what to do with, buying second homes with ocean views and dropping hints about all the money that they have. By the time the novel ends, people are lucky just to have jobs. Their houses have been on the market for a very long time and no one is buying. The market has seen a real depression.

Gina tells the whole story in the first person and we go along with her as she does her best to remember what happened between her and Sean. She strongly believes that Evie is responsible for her and Sean’s love. Evie’s watchful eyes, times of poor health, and perspicacious study of her father and his lover mark an ever-present omen for Gina.

As the affair progresses, Gina finds out that she is not the first person Sean has been unfaithful with. There was a young woman in his office, many years ago, that Sean had courted and loved. Gina is careful not to ask Sean too many questions about this as she wants to see their relationship as special and romantic, which it is, but as life goes, it is not that unique. “Every normal thing he said reminded me that we were not normal. That we were only normal for the twelve foot by fourteen foot of a hotel room. Outside, in the open air, we would evaporate.”

During the course of the affair, Gina deals with the death of her beloved mother, Joan, her estrangement from her sister, Fiona, and the breakdown of her marriage to Conor. She tries to see these events in relationship to the affair but they all have a full life separate from her love for Sean.

It takes Sean a long time to leave his wife, time that Gina waits for him in agony and pain. She had hoped they’d be together by Christmas but as April comes around, Sean is just beginning to move into Gina’s home. “It was delicate business, being the Not Wife.”

The affair takes on a triangular pattern – Sean, Gina and Evie. “I said it to Sean once – I said, if it had not been for Evie, we would not be together – and he looked at me as if I had blasphemed.” “As far as he is concerned, there is no cause; he arrived in my life as though lifted and pushed by a swell of the sea.”

The book is filled with musical metaphors and reads poetically. Enright is a master of the inner mind and our deepest thoughts. She not only tells a story but she captures lives, sparing no moment, no movement and no detail. Nothing is too small for her to notice and reflect on. In fact, it is the small things that make up the big deeds that change our lives from one second to the next.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 27 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company (October 3, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Anne Enright
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Gathering

Bibliography:

• The Portable Virgin : Stories (1991)
• The Wig My Father Wore (1995)
• What Are You Like? (2000)
• The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002)
• The Gathering (2007) 
• Yesterday’s Weather : Stories (2008)
• The Forgotten Waltz (October 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004)

“I am imprinting this upon my memory,” she said. “The southern exposure of a winter morning light, the sounds of thaw, water dripping off the eaves, the squirrels…Sometimes I seem to know, in the split of a second of a moment, that it will be a moment I’ll want to keep.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster  (SEP 12, 2011)

This is a beautiful book. If you want to read something that has the same effect as gazing at a vast and perfect ink-wash painting, calming and yet utterly absorbing, reach for this. Like the tiniest haze of seeping ink will be skillful enough to convey a distant village nestling in the hills, or the flight of a crane; there is not a word misplaced in this small and lovely work. Its theme is poetry, and indeed the exquisite style does full justice to the subject.

The plot follows the lives of a handful of graduate poetry students and their teacher. The initial focus is on their interactions and early relationships during university years, but as the story progresses the camera lens zooms with painful precision on subsequent pinpoints of time.

The technique of the writing is such that it leaves one with an impression of overlapping layers rather than a well-woven tapestry, the latter of which is the more usual impression in a well-plotted novel. Life depicted here is more a palimpsest than a continuous narrative. There’s an almost fatalistic crystallisation of the view of the past seeping into the present (or the ongoing) that’s highly peculiar, and entirely seductive.

It’s even more astonishing to find such alluring excellence in a book that is essentially about writing. Generally, tomes ranting away about the torment of literary endeavours and the social inadequacies of their perpetrators are best put out of their misery immediately by means of a swift bonfire. But rather than wallow first-hand in the self-absorption and uncertainty as so many of these efforts tend to, Chang depicts a view onto these same themes that’s as unnervingly detached as a high-resolution spy satellite picture: taken from space, but accurate enough to read the print on a newspaper. The style is formal, bordering on the stilted, the tone even and quiet.

Two of the central characters are the poetry student friends Roman and Bernard. Roman is driven, moderately gifted, insistently handsome and, eventually, inordinately successful. Bernard is his counterpart, with caricature-like introversion, religious torment and more than a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder born out in poverty, and the novel makes no bones about his role in the narrative as the “traditional” poet.

These extreme stereotypes should be flat shadows by rights. Instead they’re almost luminous, depicted by refraction, like a painter using the space that is not to denote the presence of an object. These two characters vie with each other, in their peculiar way, for the attentions of their teacher Miranda Sturgis, the acclaimed and established poet. Their differing approaches, viewpoints and degree of success in gaining her approval and attention are at the core of the novel.

Along with the much-debated question of “why write poetry,” the novel explores facets of the role of the teacher (or mentor), the relationship of the mentor with the recipient, and the progression of the student in turn becoming mentor. The development here is linked structurally and thematically to the ageing process, which gives the novel as a whole a feeling of natural evolution; something organic and inevitable. Perhaps this is why I can’t remember reading anything with so little a sense of contrivance. Despite, or perhaps because of, the meticulous precision with which it’s put together.

The character reveal is also atypical. It’s not so much a reader discovering an already-formed entity but the entity and the reader making the discovery together. Again, the sense of extreme detachment fused with extreme intimacy is slightly dizzying.

If you read action thrillers exclusively, then I suppose this book is not for you. Apart from that I’d recommend it to anybody. You don’t need to know about writing or poetry, just be ready to think about why art is necessary for life. And read a jolly good story in the meantime, complete with romance, betrayal, suspense and verve. It’s quiet, but it’s a page-turner.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 15 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 12, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Lan Samantha Change
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another book on poetry: The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

Bibliography:

• Hunger: A Novella (1998)
• Inheritance (2004)
• All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (September 2010)

“What Gary wanted was the imagined village, the return to an idyllic time when he could have a role, a set task, as blacksmith or baker or singer of a people’s stories. That’s who he really wanted to be, the “shaper,”  the singer of a people’s history, which would be one and the same. What Irene wanted was only to never be alone again, passed around, unwanted.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 18, 2010)

Many people think of Alaska as wildness with great open spaces in a mountainous wildernous with sub-arctic cold, dark and long winters, ever-light summers, bears and moose. This is not the Alaska of David Vann. His Alaska consists of what sounds like an area most likely the Tongass National Rain Forest. This is the northernmost rainforest on earth, and it extends into southeast Alaska. Trees here are huge but grow close together here much like in the Amazon. It rains up to 400 inches a year in this part of Alaska and the days are often dark and dismal with damp that cuts right through you. There is no vista in this forest; all you have are the trees that hem you in.

It is in this Alaska that Gary and Irene realize that their marriage is falling apart, that they go through the motions of one last try at redeeming their moribund marriage. They decide to build a cabin on Caribou Island, a place both isolated and isolating. Gary has no coherent plans and their cabin ends up as a bunch of sticks stuck together every which way with huge gaps everywhere. The elements are not kept out and the rain, snow and wind wails through the cabin even as the last nail is hammered crookedly in.

Irene blames Gary for her life, for not having fulfilled what she might have been without him, and Gary blames Irene for his life’s failures as well. Once he was a promising dissertation student at University of California Berkeley. Now he goes from ill-conceived project to ill-conceived project, each one failing and losing money. Irene was once a happy hippy chick who now goes weeks with horrific pain in her head for which doctors can find no source. They have two children, Mark and Rhoda. Mark is barely in their lives but Rhoda has a dream of helping them find salvation with each other.

Irene is the survivor of her mother’s suicide. Her father was cheating and her mother decided to take her own life instead of living for Irene. Rhoda is on the verge of marrying a dentist who has already begun to cheat on her during their engagement. He has things all planned out. He’ll keep switching receptionists, having affairs with them and then letting them go. It sounds like Rhoda is heading for the same train wreck as her mother and grandmother – a distant marriage and an unfaithful husband. Many of these themes appear in Vann’s brilliant first book, Legend of a Suicide.

Caribou Island has many of the same themes as Legend of a Suicide – the inability to find intimacy with others, the desire to hurt those we try to love, and not knowing how to do things right in our own lives and for others. This book is not for the weak-hearted. It is bold and brutal, never a syrupy sentence or a hi-jinks kinda laugh. It is as serious as the death of a loved one. Even aspects of the book such as boat rides take on a dire nature and I had to wonder what awful thing would come next.

This is a reader’s book. It is a book for people who love to read and it is why we read. It is one of the best books I have read recently and it knocked my socks off. More importantly, it changed how I see the world. It is THAT good.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 76 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (January 18, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	David Vann
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Legend of a Suicide Another review of Caribou Island Also, see our review of a T.C. Boyle novel: Drop City

Bibliography:

• Legends of a Suicide: Stories (2010)
• Caribou Island (2011)
• Dirt (2012)
• Goat Mountain (September 2013)

Nonfiction:

• A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea (2005)

“And still it was the return to the quotidian; to the life before. Before what? Bea contemplated it. She had journeyed out as a kind of ambassador, she had turned into a spy against every ingrained expectation, and it was true: sometimes an ambassador serves as a spy, sometimes a spy is appointed ambassador. She had gone roving for Marvin to begin with – for Marvin, yes, but was it only for Marvin? Something had altered. She had a stake in it, she was embroiled. It was no longer Marvin’s need. The world was filled with need – wherever she looked, need!”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (NOV 19, 2010)

Cynthia Ozick, author of The Shawl and Trust, two of my favorite books, has written a gem of a novel in Foreign Bodies. A slithering and taut comedy of errors, this book examines issues of betrayal and trust, literal and emotional exile, regret and rage, Judaism in post-World War II Europe and the meaning of art in one’s life. While based on themes similar to Henry James’ The Ambassadors, this novel is distinctly and uniquely Ozick’s.

It is 1952 and 48 year-old Bea Nightingale has been teaching English to boys in a technical school for decades. They are more interested in other things than Shakespeare and Dickens but Bea gives it her best shot each semester. Once briefly married to Leo, a composer and pianist, Bea has been divorced for decades and Leo has gone on to do very well as a composer of scores for Hollywood movies. After Leo left Bea, he also left his grand piano which takes up a huge place in Bea’s small Manhattan apartment. Leo was supposed to pick up the piano and never did. It has sat untouched for years, an homage to Bea’s anger and loss, along with its symbolic meaning of art as creation.

One day, out of the blue, Bea gets a letter from her semi-estranged brother, Marvin, asking her to to find his son Julian, an ex-pat who took a college year abroad and has not returned after three years. Marvin is a legend in his own mind, an arrogant, controlling, rude man who has made his fortune in airline parts in California. His wife Margaret, is a blue-blood who Marvin met at Princeton when he was there on scholarship. She is now in a rehab center ostensibly because the loss of Julian has sent her over the edge. Julian was always the lost child, the one who Marvin considered a loss. He had his head in the clouds and his desire was to write though Marvin wanted him to become a scientist. He has one other child, Iris, who is on the mark and following Marvin’s goals for her to become a scientist. Marvin tells Bea in his letter, that he knows she is going on holiday to Paris and he’d like her to look up Julian and get him to come home. He feels that she must do this for what else does she do in her life but teach thugs. (As a matter of clarity, Marvin’s last name is Nachtigal and Bea’s is Nightingale. She changed her name because she thought it would be easier for her students to pronounce).

On Bea’s trip to Paris, she makes two minor attempts at the end of her trip to contact Julian but is unsuccessful. He has already left his apartment and his where-abouts are unknown. Bea returns to New York and gets a scathing letter from Marvin all but ripping her to shreds. How she is able to stand his abuse is a comment on her own sense of self-deprecation. Marvin has a new idea. His daughter Iris is close to Julian and knows him well. He will send Iris to Bea’s for a few days and she will tell Bea all about Julian and then Bea will again venture to Paris “knowing” Julian and better able to find him. What ends up happening however is the beginning of a long line of betrayals for which Bea is responsible. Iris does come to New York but instead of Bea going to Paris, Iris goes and Bea makes up a story to Marvin about what is happening. Whatever Bea touches comes back inside-out.

Iris writes to Bea and tells her she plans to stay in Paris. Bea goes back to Paris, this time in search of Iris as well as Julian. What Bea finds in Europe is that Julian is married to Lili, a Romanian holocaust survivor several years older than him. He works part-time in cafes and lives on the money that Marvin sends him. Julian and Iris want nothing to do with Bea and give her the cold shoulder. Instead of returning to Manhattan, Bea impulsively flies to California and contacts her ex-husband, starting off a chain of events that leads to artistic obsession. She also contacts Margaret in her rest home which also leads to dire consequences.

Bea’s betrayals are numerous and though often done with good intentions, end up with horrible repercussions. She is passive in her life but feels like she is able to take control when it comes to others. She has this grandiose sense of what is right for those around her. Bea gives a lot of thought to exile and sense of place and these themes resonate throughout the book. While Julian has chosen to exile himself from his father emotionally and as an ex-patriate, Marvin then chooses to exile Julian from his life unless Julian is willing to take a bribe and come home. Bea again intervenes and betrays Marvin. It is hard to see what is going on in Bea’s mind but there are a lot of deep feelings, especially anger, rage, and regret. While her actions might seem magnanimous to her, they often seem controlling, misguided and horrific to the reader.

Cynthia Ozick has created a small treasure with this novel. Its twists and turns, keeping the reader enthralled and emotionally transfixed. We are led through a maze of human frailty, often disguised as strength, as we are swept away with the undercurrents of duplicity and displacement. This is a must-read for Ozick fans and, for those not familiar with her writing, a good place to start.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 58 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (November 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia on Cynthia Ozick
EXTRAS:	Daily Beast interview with Cynthia Ozick His Futile Preoccupations review of Foreign Bodies
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Heir to a Glimmering World

Bibliography:

• Trust (1966)
• The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971)
• Bloodshed and Three Novelllas (1976)
• Levitation: Five Fictions (1982)
• The Cannibal Galaxy (1983)
• The Messiah of Stockholm (1987)
• The Shawl (1989)
• The Puttermesser Papers (1997)
• Heir to a Glimmering World (September 2004)
• Foreign Bodies (November 2010)

Essays:

• Art and Ardor (1983)
• Metaphor and Memory (1990)
• What Henry James Knew and Other Essays on Writers (1993)
• A Cynthia Ozick Reader (1996)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Character: And othee Essays on Writing (1996)
• Fame & Folly (1998)
• Quarrel and Quandary (September 2000)
• The Din in the Head: Essays (June 2006)

E-Book Study Guide:

• Study Guide for THE SHAWL (July 2002)
• Study Guide for THE PAGAN RABBI (July 2002

“Everybody has some kind of scar, and I have already explained how I have come to have mine. Lines drawn across my face divide my horizons–mark the end of my childhood and the beginning of another phase–these fractions of my life blur together if I am honest now. ”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (AUG 27, 2010)

This is a short but pungent tale about crime, betrayal, passion, love, and a scar–both real and psychic. How juicy is that? Especially when you blend in the Côtes du Rhône-Villages wine made from the dark-skinned Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Cisault grapes. Throw in a pivotal love affair, a chateau, a virulent father, and an odious priest, and you have the crushing, pressing, and fermenting ingredients of a serious page-turner. The title refers to the legacy of the protagonist–the chateau, estate, and wine cellar he is set to inherit.

In a tiny village at the foot of the Dentelles Mountains, sixteen-year-old Christian Aragon is finishing up his education at the village lycée. The year is 1920, and his brother Eugene has already died in the Great War several years ago. His father (Papa) runs the wine chateau of Montmirail and expects Christian to honor his legacy and enter the family business. His mother has no influence on the racist, violent, and hateful rages of Papa, and Christian is often the beneficiary of undeserved beatings and mental cruelty.

“In the countryside, where the village is the kingdom and the child is the peasant, the father is king. The son is like a granite rock on the edge of a vineyard; his job is to reflect, and his destiny is to remain in that place forever.”

Christian is a headstrong, fearless young man who has experienced loss and deep sorrow. Besides the death of his brother, there was a boy, Couderc, who inflicted a large facial scar on him with a hunting knife. Cicatrice is the French word for scar, and for a time this became Christian’s sobriquet. Coudrec died of TB a year later, and Christian grieves for him. They shared an enigmatic glance the last time they met in the village square, right before he died.

Christian is psychologically advanced for his years; he’s a complex, self-willed, and passionate young man that hails the freedom of the spirit, the self, and the soul.
“I believe most of all in the inherent capacity man and woman possess to change.”
“…to become what we want, and to refuse to continue to be who and what we are if those manifestations do not reflect our own desires.”

Fate brings opportunity and a school trip effects a turning point for Christian. Desire leads to love and consequences, and a crime could bring ruin on Christian’s life and the life of his beloved, Vivienne Pleyben, his geography teacher. To add brimstone to the fire, the Jesuit priest, Father Leterrier, inadvertently learns of Christian and Vivienne’s relationship and tries to turn it into a sordid affair. Letterier is an obsessive fanatic and a hypocrite who is mired in his own secret desires and contradictions. He comes in twice a month to instruct the adolescents on moral welfare and “Holy Purity,” and delivers his sermons with a frightening zeal.

Christian does have a friend, George Phavorin, his father’s foreman, who offers indefatigable loyalty and fatherly love. His character is a striking contrast to Christian’s bully of a father.

The narrative is told by Christian in a solemn style that fits the times and setting. There is a mournful rim, but the tone is blended with the compelling and muscular verve of the protagonist. The final scene is foreshadowed with a hint of danger and a tortured suspense, and the ending is satisfying and messy, but strangely immaculate.

Conor Bowman is an Irish author who spent many summers in France. Like George Moore (1852-1933), he is a largely naturalistic writer that was obviously influenced by the French realist writers, like Émile Zola (1840-1902). However, there is a healthy dose of Romanticism in this tale that offsets the harsh darkness and pervasive pessimism of the former writers. This is his first novel published in the United States. I look forward to his next novel, The Redemption of George Baxter Henry.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Permanent Press (August 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Conor Bowman
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s page on The Last Estate
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another that might be of interest:  No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

Bibliography:

• Life and Death and in Between: Stories (2004)
• Wasting By Degress (1998)
• The Last Estate (2008; August 2010 in US)
• The Redemption of George Baxter Henry (2008; August 2011 in US)

” A thousand cartoons and TV shows and teen movies would lead you to believe that when you’re drawing something at your desk in school, a pretty girl is going to say ‘What are you drawing?’ and you’ll tell her and she’ll go ‘That’s neat’ and your artistry will reveal to her the secret sensitivity in your soul and she’ll leave her football-player boyfriend for you. These cartoons and TV shows and teen movies are wrong.”

Book Review:

Review by Mike Frechette (FEB 6, 2010)

Darren Bennett likes to draw. This hobby makes him insecure 1) because he’s a sophomore in high school and he’s insecure about everything, and 2) because he knows that whatever he draws will result in a false label: “If you’re drawing the female figure, you’re a pervert. If you’re drawing the male figure, you’re gay. If you’re drawing superheroes and haven’t gotten around to drawing the masks or capes or whatever yet, you’re gay.” Nevertheless, it provides a fantastical escape from his increasing isolationism in an unremarkable Arizona suburb where he lives with his good-natured but neglectful father and complete hooligan of a brother, an arrangement that resulted when his “mom kind of went haywire.” When fellow outcast Eric Lederer compliments one of Darren’s drawings after class, a friendship forms that leads to “the biggest mistake of [his] life” and perhaps the worst false label of all. From a perfectly executed prologue to a thrilling sci-fi finish, DC Pierson’s debut novel will undoubtedly captivate readers and remind them of the limitless potential of the coming-of-age novel.

The book is called The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, a mouthful of a title to be sure. However, the plot and prose move quickly, sustained by an original voice that embodies the essence of the contemporary adolescent experience – the parlance, the peer pressure, the drugs, the angst, the awkwardness around girls. At the same time, Darren and especially Eric possess a precocious, sarcastic wit that will engage a broad adult reading audience as well. Their nerdy, adolescent ineptness together with their mature humor makes for a great combination and stands out as the novel’s most endearing quality. In a pitiful attempt to prank Darren’s brother and his friends, Darren and Eric collect cheese slices, eggs, and rope, a hodgepodge of items that “makes it pretty clear [they’ve] never gotten revenge on anybody.” When Eric sees this, he realizes, “It looks like we’re going to make an omelet…rappel in through somebody’s window, and serve it to them.”

Such mature wit – on Eric’s part at least – is due largely to the fact that he literally cannot sleep and never has – hence the title. Instead of sleeping, he spends his nights pursuing his interests, getting homework done in advance, learning, aging beyond his years. As Darren tells him, “You’ve been awake while the rest of us have been asleep. You’ve actually had more life…so you’re twice as old, in terms of experience. You’re like thirty.” Such smarts make him a great creative partner for Darren as he attempts to develop a multimedia extravaganza for the sci-fi epic he’s been slowly piecing together in his imagination. For a jaded teenager like Darren, Eric is not just a friend but “a signifier that anything can be real” – that superpowers are possible. On the flipside, he bears the burden of ongoing consciousness. As Darren later realizes, “the poor kid has to live through everything.”

Besides that, the subconscious energy expended by all other people during dreams is expressed by Eric in painful, waking hallucinatory episodes. When he starts helping Darren with his sci-fi epic, the characters and storylines become more than just words and images on a page during these hallucinations. Meanwhile, a strange man claiming to be from a local church begins pursuing Eric when he discovers through Darren’s brother that Eric does not sleep. What Darren and Eric begin to question is just how powerful the imagination is and the very nature of reality itself.

Sustaining a literary career is difficult work, but DC Pierson is off to a good start. With youth and creativity stacked in his favor (he just graduated from college in 2007), he holds promise as a literary voice resembling Christopher Moore or Chuck Palahniuk. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep is not just another book for the likes of Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts (though it is that), but it’s also a profound, funny story about friendship, betrayal, and regret. The only regret in reading it is that the end comes too quickly, and we cannot continue with Darren to the next phase of his life. Maybe, like Darren and Eric’s project, it’s only a small piece of “a TV series culminating in a movie trilogy interspersed with books and graphic novels with any remaining holes in the epic filled in by a massively multiplayer online game.” Or maybe not. Either way, it’s still a really good book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 47 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage; 1 edition (January 26, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Mike Frechette
AMAZON PAGE:	The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	DC Pierson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and Author Interview
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More unique coming-of-age novels: Wolf Boy by Evan Kuhlman The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Bibliography:

• The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To (January 2010)

“Writing can be an exorcism of fear and of hatred; it can be a way to overcome prejudice and pain. At least if you can write you have a chance to express yourself…you can put your thoughts out into the world, and regardless of whether anyone actually reads them or understands them they are no longer trapped inside of you. Bottle them up…and one day you’re likely to just explode.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (OCT 10, 2009)

R. J. Ellory’s A Quiet Belief in Angels is the heartrending story of Joseph Vaughn, a boy who grows up under an unlucky star. The narrator is only eleven when his thirty-seven year old father, Earl, dies in 1939, leaving him and his impoverished young mother to fend for themselves. Earl’s death leaves Joseph and his mother deeply shaken. The boy is further traumatized when a classmate is found dead, after having been stripped, beaten, and assaulted by an unknown perpetrator. This girl’s murder is just the first in a long string of calamities that will dog Augusta Falls, Georgia, where Joseph and his mother live. The specter of death constantly haunts this tragic tale of hopes dashed and innocent lives snuffed out prematurely.

The author eloquently and vividly evokes the atmosphere of rural Georgia before the Second World War, where people make do with very little, gossip is a way of life, neighbors help neighbors, and outsiders are never fully accepted. There was “a richness in friendship and community” that helped compensate for a lack of material wealth. Joseph, who is highly intelligent, sensitive, and imaginative, is given a much-needed boost by his beloved teacher, Miss Webber, who encourages him to become an avid reader and try his hand at creative writing.

This multi-faceted novel blends disparate elements that do not always smoothly coexist. Side by side with scenes of gothic horror are poignant romantic encounters. Humor and tragedy intermingle freely. Although Joseph benefits from a few close friendships, he also endures unspeakable betrayals. Throughout, he recalls in flashback the high and lows of his tumultuous life. Vaughn is a three-dimensional protagonist who holds this somewhat sprawling book together when it is in danger of sinking under its own weight. In an electrifying conclusion, Joseph decides that it is his responsibility to mete out punishment on behalf of the many people whose lives have been ruined by a psychopathic and manipulative villain. It is likely that Ellory tries to do too much in this murder mystery/ coming-of-age story/ exploration of family angst/ and study of small town life. Still, A Quiet Belief in Angels has a gripping quality that draws us in and keeps us on tenterhooks until it culminates in an explosive confrontation between good and evil.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 38 readers
PUBLISHER:	Overlook Hardcover (September 8, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	R. J. Ellory
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Georgia novels: Ravens by George Dawes Green Swan by Frances Maye In the Dark of the Moon by Suzanne Hudson Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones And a new novel by RJ Ellory: The Anniversary Man

Bibliography:

• Candlemoth (2003)
• Ghostheart (2004)
• A Quiet Vendetta (2005)
• City of Lies (2006)
• A Quiet Belief in Angels (2007; September 2009 in US)
• A Simple Act of Violence (2008; June 2011)
• The Anniversary Man (2009; June 2010 in US)

“Every event, every memory, every conversation, however innocuous, demands examination, each word and detail culled, dissected in the harsh light of this new terrible knowledge – – that for the past four years her husband has been sleeping with another woman.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 8, 2009)

There are some books and authors that I’d like to have with me on a desert island. Mary McGarry Morris is one of those writers. I have always been drawn to her books, their dark and brooding nature with the sentience of doom and fatality omnipresent. I can almost smell the darkness when I read her novels, feel the desperation of the dissolute and the outsider. I have read all but two of her books and those two I’m saving for a very special time and place – – a desert island kind of moment. She’s THAT good a writer.

The Last Secret is powerful and unflinching.  It builds up slowly but the tension and angst keep coming. The characters are disgruntled, desperate, despairing, fragile, with huge currents roiling through their being as they try to keep their inner and outer storms at bay. Some characters are loathsome, despicable and pathetic. These are juxtaposed with others who try to stay strong, keep one foot in front of the other, and maintain independence at all costs. What Ms. Morris is so excellent at portraying is that while people try to fool themselves into believing that they have certain attributes better, worse, or more unique than others, most people are actually quite alike in that they harbor these components: the good, the bad and the evil.

When she was seventeen years old, Nora ran off with a troubled young man named Eddie Hawkins. During the week she was with him she drank a lot, got into situations that were outside her comfort range and behaved in ways that she thought were completely outside her moral compass. At one point Eddie asks her to come on to an older man and encourage him to follow her outside a bar so that Eddie can rob him. The older man follows her and something dreadful happens. Nora is never sure of the exact details but she has a recurrent nightmare that the man has his face bashed in by a tire iron and that she is the one who commits the crime. What she also remembers, is that after the “incident” she is covered with blood and that she hitches a ride with a semi driver who manages to get her away from the scene of the crime and encourages her to call her mother. She calls her mother and returns home, bringing with her a lifetime of guilt and nightmares.

Skip forward twenty-five years. Nora is now happily married (so she thinks) to a man named Ken and she has two teen-aged children, Drew and Chloe. She has married into old money and works on the family-owned newspaper in New England. From the outside, everyone is happy and the family looks perfect but, as Nora believes, “Happiness so often trails a long shadow.” She soon finds out that Ken has been having a “relationship” for the past four years with one of her best friends. Nora’s world is shattered. Her family is torn apart and in the process other, and often darker, secrets come to light. “Behind every truth lurks a darker truth. Behind the simplest reality, betrayal.”

Nora is philanthropic and she is deeply involved with the volunteer board for Sojourn House, a home for battered women. Sojourn House has received national attention and Nora is being photographed by Newsweek magazine for her work there. Eddie Hawkins, sociopathic and narcissistic, sees Nora’s picture in the magazine and recognizes her from their week together twenty-five years earlier. He travels across the country to Nora’s hometown and sets himself up there in a cheap hotel. He contacts Nora who does not know what he wants but she has a stomach-turning, gut-wrenching uneasiness about seeing him. Her gut reaction is that he has sought her out to blackmail her for the role she had in what she thinks may have been a murder twenty-five years previously. She is a victim of perceived blackmail. Eddie Hawkins arrives just as her marriage and life are falling apart. Though fragile, angry and unsure on the inside, Nora comes across as independent, strong and almost cold on the outside. This is a common theme in Ms. Morris’s books – – the outside harbors the seeds of the inside, and vice verse.

As Nora is dealing with one family secret and betrayal after another, the book proceeds to get darker and darker, with a deeply ingenious plot and wonderfully deep and crisp characterizations. I felt like I could reach out and touch the characters, they came so alive. Characterization is one of Ms. Morris’s greatest gifts (and she has many). She examines the inner and outer worlds of her protagonists and leaves no stone left unturned. That, along with a breath holding plot, make this one of the best books I’ve read this year. I finished the book in two days, hardly coming up for air. My only disappointment was that I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to continue to be a fly on the wall watching, and watching, and watching some more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Shaye Areheart Books; Stated First Edition edition (April 7, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mary McGarry Morris
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of Light from a Distant Star Songs in Ordinary Time More authors to enjoy if you like this one: Joyce Carol Oates Anita Shreve Michelle Huneven

Bibliography:

• Vanished
• A Dangerous Woman (1993)
• Songs in Ordinary Time (1997)
• Fiona Range (2000)
• A Hole in the Universe (2004)
• The Lost Mother (2005)
• The Last Secret (2009)
• Light from a Distant Star (September 2011)

Movies made from books:

• Dangerous Woman (1993)
• Songs in Ordinary Time (200)

“She. Anju. This …” He shakes his head forcefully, deeply irritated. “This is for the best.”

“The word ‘this” he pronounces with eyes closed, whether from reverence or need of sleep, she cannot tell. Linno knows, has always known, the definition of ’this.’ She wants an admission from Ammachi or Melvin, both of whom have gone about the house maintaining the careful pretense that Anju’s newfound artistry is perfectly natural.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen (SEP 29, 2009)

At its heart, Atlas of Unknowns is a story about family, especially the relationship between two sisters. Linno and her younger sister, Anju, grew up with their father and grandmother in Kerala, India. Their mother’s apparent suicide is alluded to but not discussed although her death haunts both girls in different ways. At age 13, Linno, a budding artist, loses her hand in an accident with a firecracker. She sinks into despair and leaves school after falling too far behind her classmates, resigned to living as her father’s servant or in a loveless marriage. She trains herself to write and draw with her left hand, but she has few career options as a woman, let alone a handicapped one.

Anju, the brains of the family, applies for a scholarship to spend 10 months in America attending the Sitwell School in New York. She stumbles through her personal interview, realizing she has little unique to offer until she claims Linno’s artistic talent as her own. She wins the scholarship, but at the price of her relationship with her sister as Linno won’t speak to her at all. As she leaves for America, she pictures Linno as an embittered old woman, still holding a grudge.

Neither girl’s life stands still while Anju is in America. She attends school but takes measures to avoid exposing her lack of talent until the school discovers her secret and she runs away from her host family’s home. She heads to Jackson Heights and moves in with Bird, an older Indian woman who befriended her soon after she arrived in America. Unbeknownst to Anju, Bird also had an ambiguous friendship with her mother, Gracie. Anju has plans to obtain a green card and bring her family to the United States, but she doesn’t communicate with them at all during her time in Brooklyn. She hopes that in the proecess she’ll get to know herself  better and take control of her life rather than being the pawn of those around her.

Linno, too, has had a turn of luck when a friend recognizes her talent and hires her to design invitations for her business. Linno creates customized cards that incorporate intricate folding designs. She hopes the business, too, will enable her to obtain a Visa to go to the United States to search for her missing sister. Betrayal and an ocean may separate them, but they remain sisters, and more often than not, love outweighs anger and bitterness.

Tania James’s debut novel, Atlas of Unknowns, gets off to a slow start. Lengthy descriptions of India’s landscape permeate the first few chapters, weighing down an already-languid pace. Then, the plot noses its way through, giving the reader a story to follow. Atlas of Unknowns has multiple layers and touches on a number of issues: including immigration, the importance of fitting in and female empowerment and freedom. James introduces the reader to a number of characters outside Anju and Linno’s family, all of whom have their own personalities and quirks. Sonya Solanki, Anju’s host mother, is a host on a TV show, who is always on the hunt for an “important” story because she doesn’t think her producer takes her seriously. Rohit, her son, doesn’t go anywhere without his video camera. He searches for the perfect documentary and finds it in Anju as she travels the twists and turns in the U.S. Immigration process. Most interesting though is that while the reader knows the thoughts of all the characters including Anju and Linno, they don’t communicate with each other. For example, the family doesn’t discuss Gracie’s death, they avoid the topic of Anju’s calling herself an artist and Linno doesn’t give a reason for her unwillingness to go through with a proposed marriage. James has an ear for dialogue and pacing in her tale once it gets moving. Alternating viewpoints keep the reader’s attention as they hurry through one chapter to find out what happens next in another storyline.

Linno’s character appealed to me the most because she grew the most during the novel even though she had more obstacles to overcome. From a desperately distraught one-handed little girl, she grew into a successful, forgiving and thoughtful young woman. Anju also changed throughout the story, as she starts to take responsibility for herself and recognizes that excellent grades don’t necessarily amount to success.

James also brings home the point that while some people covet citizenship in the United States, some can find contentment right where they already live. Gracie dreamed of moving to the United States while her husband, Melvin, wanted nothing more than to care for his mother and his children. The novel leaves some loose ends, but perhaps that was on purpose. Overall, it’s a poignant and thought-provoking story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 20 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (April 21, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tania James
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Sister stories: Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The Sister by Poppy Adams I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman

Bibliography:

• Atlas of Unknowns (2009)
• Aerogrammes: Stories  (May 2012)

“That’s how it is, isn’t it? If you’re going to die, you might as well live. Death on a full belly is better than a life of hunger.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Beth Chariton (AUG 10, 2009)

If you become numb to the conflict of constant war, does it prevent you from dealing with your own personal battles? In The Last War, by Ana Menéndez, Flash and Brando get paid to travel and document war – he the “Wonderboy” journalist, she the photographer/wife that follows in his shadow.

Brando travels to Baghdad, while Flash stays behind in Istanbul, waiting for photography equipment, travel papers, or any other excuse she can find to avoid joining him. He calls her from Baghdad, sometimes twice a day, from the rooftop of the mansion he’s staying in, while she answers from their four-bedroom apartment with the fabulous view. Their type of reporting allows them to live several classes higher than their means, and all on Brando’s company’s bill.

Any intimacy between them has slowly diminished from exposure to war, human hatred and revenge. They get by on small amounts of surface dialogue, the war too devastating to discuss out loud or often, and daily topics of conversation too trivial compared to the surrounding destruction.

At first, Flash enjoys her time alone, glad for the break from their strained marriage. While Brando waits patiently for her arrival in Baghdad, she continues to accept small freelance jobs and visits her list of desired tourist destinations in Istanbul.

After two weeks, Flash receives a letter stating the Brando is having an affair in Baghdad, and Flash’s inner battle begins – the constant, internal dialogue, the nagging pre-occupation with not knowing the truth. She starts to wonder if she ever loved him, and if he truly missed her or just the fact that she follows behind him. Consumed by doubt and resentment, she searches his office, looking for clues. She struggles with insecurity, realizing how much time she’s spent in their marriage waiting around for him to return from assignments. Rather than confront him by phone, she tells herself she’s waiting to see him in person, to see his face when she asks. He senses through their phone conversations that something isn’t quite right, and now, he’ll be the one waiting for her.

In the days following the arrival of the letter, she wanders aimlessly through the city, obsessing about the letter and the supposed sender, Mira. Feelings of insecurity, paranoia and inferiority overwhelm her, depleting her concentration and preventing her from working.

Then Flash realizes she’s being followed by a mysterious woman in a black abaya, and that she’s seen her a number of times in her daily travels. The woman finally reveals herself outside Flash’s apartment, and she instantly remembers Alexandra from their previous travels in Afghanistan. She continues to show up unexpectedly and uninvited, and her beauty and charisma make Flash feel awkward and self-conscious. Flash is suspicious of her constant presence, and wonders if Alexandra has anything to do with the letter. But Alexandra denies having anything to do with it, and her reaction is cool, calm, and unsympathetic.

Insomnia and migraines take over, and Flash paces through the nights while her upstairs neighbors argue violently, screaming and dragging furniture across their floor. Unable to decide whether she should return to the States, or join her husband in Iraq, exhaustion takes her on a downward emotional spiral of packing and unpacking the new suitcase she purchases in the marketplace. It’s no longer clear to her where her true home is.

Alexandra’s presence stirs up many restless memories for Flash. Night and day she’s consumed with flashbacks to her time in Afghanistan with Brando, Alexandra, and Alexandra’s boyfriend, Amir. Then Alexandra’s lonely, insecure side is exposed at a party they attend together, and Flash relaxes around her, feeling a mutual empathy for their situations. But it’s the last she’ll see of Alexandra in Istanbul. A week later, she sends Flash an e-mail, saying she’s leaving on a flight for Amman.

An unexpected tragedy forces Flash to realize that her self-righteous martyrdom has conveniently distracted her from her own shortcomings, leaving her a self-made victim. Four years later, Flash runs into Alexandra, who confesses the real reason she pursued Flash in Istanbul. Relishing the moment, she finally exposes the truth to Flash about the hurtful betrayal they had ignored all along. Now both women would have to deal with their own sordid pasts in order to get on with their lives.

Maybe it’s Flash who figuratively threw the first bomb, or shot the first bullet on the battlefield of her marriage. But who would be the first to wave the white flag? Universal or personal, there are no winners when any war ends, and the true enemy is sadly revealed after the damage has been done.

This novel is well written, and just the right length. Ana Menéndez does a wonderful job of bringing the character’s humanity to the page. Written in first person, the author places us right in Flash’s psyche, along with her anxieties, insecurities and their extreme accompanying emotions. The intricately layered themes of war and conflict on all levels are something that every reader will relate to while reading this story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 28 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Beth Chariton
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Ana Menendez
EXTRAS:	An earlier interview with Ana Menedez (2001)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More war torn stories:The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward Certainty by Madeline Thien More by Ana Menendez: Adios, Happy Homeland

Bibliography:

• In Cuba I Was A German Shepherd (2001)
• Loving Che (2003)
• The Last War (May 2009)
• Adios, Happy Homeland (August 2011)