“My poor family was in shambles.

It had not always been thus. Ten years before, we’d been a solid unit, dollhouse style, mother, father, boy, and girl.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (AUG 1, 2011)

The Astral, by Kate Christensen, gets its title by way of its namesake, the Astral building in Brooklyn, New York. This building houses the protagonist of this book, an aging poet named Harry Quirk. His last name befits him and his family. They are interestingly dysfunctional in many ways.

Harry was once a somewhat well-known poet, teaching poetry workshops and writing his lyrical poems in rhyming and sonnet style. His publisher and mentor has moved to Europe and his style is now out of favor in the United States. His wife, Luz, decides after thirty years of marriage that Harry is having an affair with his best friend, Marion. Despite Harry’s pleading innocence – and he is innocent – Luz does not believe him and she kicks him out of their apartment in the Astral. It is true that Harry did have an affair twelve years ago with a young poetry student, but since that time he has been true to Luz.

Now homeless and without a job, Harry gets a room in a local flophouse and spends his days drinking at a local watering hole named Maureen’s. He finally lands a job at a Hasidic lumber yard through his crack-smoking Hasidic musician friend, Yanti. Here Harry works in accounts payable and is able to rent a one room apartment in the Astral. He figures that if he lives in the Astral, he’ll be closer to Luz and better able to keep an eye on her comings and goings. He is unable to accept that things are over with Luz and he is determined to win her back.

Harry’s daughter, Karina, is a freegan – she believes in getting all of her possessions for free. She gathers discarded things from the curbside, dumpster dives and goes to supermarket and restaurant trash bins to pick up food. She is very clear that the food she picks up consists only of tossed items with expired dates or unused edibles.

Harry’s son, Hector, is living on a commune and mired in a cult called Children of Hashem. They believe that the Messiah will be coming soon or is already here. Hector is being groomed as the new messiah and also is preparing to marry Christa, the cult’s leader. Karina and Harry want to do an intervention, hoping to get Hector out of the cult.

This is, in its way, a parody of today’s life and also a mirror of what is going on within a certain group of people. These people all live in a little area in Brooklyn and have been friends since the 1970’s. Despite Brooklyn being in New York City, this neighborhood is its own little enclave with everyone gossiping about everyone else. The friends are all interconnected, to the point of all of them seeing the same therapist. The novel makes a big deal of this and the unethical practice of Helen, the therapist they share.

The novel reminded me of what Zoe Heller does so well in her writing and what Christensen tries hard to accomplish but doesn’t quite succeed in pulling off. The parody comes off as stilted and without subtlety. For good parody to work, the reader must be able to see him or herself, or someone they can identify with, in the characters or culture. This doesn’t happen here. The characters are very black and white without hues of gray. For instance, Harry is a complete atheist and Hector and Luz are absolute believers. Things are described as either right or wrong. Luz is a moralistic bully while Harry is a moderate and giving guy. There is a lot of repetition of subject matter as if the author is not sure that the reader remembers what has transpired earlier.

Despite its flaws, Christensen can draw a good description and give frailty to the characters she creates. There is pathos, narcissism, stupidity, and a distinct humor to some of the characters and their situations. Though the book didn’t work for me as well as I’d have hoped, I think that a lot of readers would appreciate it more than I did.

I am a fan of Christensen’s and loved Trouble and The Epicure’s Lament. I continue to look forward to her writings.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 26 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kate Christensen
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read a review of: Trouble The Great Man

Bibliography:

• In the Drink (1999)
• Jeremy Thrane (2001)
• The Epicure’s Lament (2004)
• The Great Man (2007)
• Trouble (2009)
• The Astral (2011)

Nonfiction:

• Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites (July 2013)

“They did not know that Vaclav and Lena would wander past the famous Coney Island Sideshow and see magic tricks and Heather Holliday and her golden fringed bikini for the first time. They could not know that this would be the beginning of everything.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JUL 4, 2011)

Once upon a time, in the exotic land of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a young boy named Vaclav – an aspiring magician – falls in love with a thin, skittish girl named Lena.  And, like any alchemy, the combustion is magical…and it endures.

There is a refreshing fairy tale quality about Vaclav & Lena, a lovely debut book by Haley Tanner.  Slowly but surely, I fell under the spellbinding tale of this would-be magician and his girl.  It’s an endearing tale that unfolds with gentle fireworks rather than major pyrotechnics – rather like the magic seen in the starlit sky on a summer’s night in Coney Island.

Vaclav is a young boy hero:  extremely bright, precocious, very loyal and good, and filled with innocent dreams of becoming a famous magician. Central to this goal is the assistance of Lena, a troubled and introverted girl who is imprisoned by her lack of an English vocabulary.  In the midst of their grand plans, Vaclav’s caring mother, Rasia, unearths a tragic secret about Lena’s home life with her negligent, drug-addicted aunt.  And overnight – for Vaclav – Lena vanishes into thin air, like a cruel magic trick.

Fast-forward seven years.  Vaclav is now a tall, handsome teenager, attending Brooklyn Tech, thoroughly assimilated into American culture, with a svelte American girlfriend.  It’s all come together with him with one exception:  he misses his childhood love.  Eventually, the reader is reacquainted with Lena and we learn what has happened to her in the interceding years and who she has become in the interim.

In a less capable writer’s hands, this book would simply be a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-regains-girl formula book, with the Russian émigré theme as a major overlay.  But Haley Tanner is more than “merely capable.” She writes a love story and like all real love stories, there’s a touch of magic that’s part-and-parcel with the theme. In one interview, she says, “Magicians are like story-tellers in that we know that the quarter does not disappear, that the woman is not sliced in half, but we suspend our disbelief for a time and allow ourselves to be carried away.  It is the same thing we do when we read a novel about a character we know to be fictional, but we cry and laugh and love along with them anyway.”

We believe in that magic.  There is inevitability in this book, a strong belief that love will eventually find its way and what’s meant to be will be.  “How did it happen,” Vaclav ponders, “that Lena went overnight from a yearning to an addiction? She seems to have planted herself into this life and sprouted, almost instantly, without his knowing, from a tiny seed into an entire jungle.” We become enchanted with the idea that Vaclav possesses the determination – and Lena possesses the will – to trick ordinary fate and prevail.  As a result, we are able to strip away the minor flaws in the plot and pacing (such as repetition) and surrender to the overall ambiance.

Vaclav & Lena crosses over to the YA category in the best way; as instruction on the distorted thinking of young and unaware children and the awkward diction and resulting problems of non-English-speaking immigrants. It has much to say about trauma and healing, the role of repressed memories, the assimilation of Russian immigrants, and the real magic we can perform through healing lies and unconditional love.  And, as a one-time Brooklynite, I felt the sense of place was excellently depicted.   Simply magical.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	The Dial Press (May 17, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Haley Tanner
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:  The Seas by Samantha Hunt Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

Bibliography:

• Vaclav & Lena (May 2011)

“Disbarment had been a real possibility, so much so that my six-month suspension for admitted drug use actually came as a relief.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 24, 2009)

In this debut novel, Justin Peacock offers the reader an intense courtroom thriller. From page one, I was hooked and stayed hooked until the very end. As with the best page-turners, you won’t want to put this novel down until you find out what happens.

Joel Deveraux is working at a top-notch, white collar law office in New York City when he decides that he wants to date his legal assistant, Beth. Not only is this potentially unethical, but Beth also has the air of something forbidden; she is an adventurer in life, perhaps on the dark side. Joel soon finds out that Beth is playing with fire, a powdered fire called heroin.  While Beth is really into this drug and has already let her professional life flounder, Joel joins her as a weekend partier. He fools himself into believing that because he uses only on the weekend, he’s really okay. One day, at work, Beth overdoses and dies. Joel is at the center of the investigation and loses his job. He is given the option of resigning before he is fired and he takes this option. He also finds himself at the losing end of a civil lawsuit filed by Beth’s father who mistakenly believes that he was the one who got Beth into drugs. Joel loses his license to practice law for six months and finds himself unable to land a job at any reputable law firm. Word travels fast on the grapevine, even in Manhattan. Joel finally secures work as a public defender in Brooklyn. Though he’s not there for the idealistic reasons that many public defenders share, he appreciates the work. He’s not using heroin any longer but he’s not in a good recovery program either.

Joel has been working as a public defender for about six months, primarily doing arraignments, when his boss offers him the chance to play second chair in a murder investigation. This is where things begin to pick up and get really interesting. The reader is privy to intricate courtroom dramas between the public defender’s office and the prosecution, between lawyers and clients and between victims and perpetrators. We are shown the ugly head of racism as it peaks out from every corner, especially in jury selection and in impulsive judgments about clients. The dialogue is very realistic and the lingua franca of the city projects appears to be genuinely portrayed.

Joel is paired up with a senior defender on his team, Myra Goldstein. She is a seasoned six year veteran of the public defender’s office – tough, assertive, self-assured. She doesn’t see the need to have a second chair but her boss is concerned that she won’t have enough time to give to this case. Myra is also working on an appeal for another client who she believes is innocent but has just been sentenced to life in jail. Joel likes to be in the courtroom, an experience he did not have at his posh law office. The murder case also interests him a lot. A jewish student from Brooklyn College has been murdered at the projects. A second man, a black drug dealer, has been shot in the back twice and is alive. The alleged perpetrator, Lorenzo Tate, has been identified by an eye witness but continues to assert his innocence. It is a case with a lot more than meets the eye at first look. Joel learns that it is often not the best case that wins, but the best story. But what is the real story of this case? That’s what this book is about.

The title of this book is interesting in itself and forms one of the backdrops for the story. Myra says to Joel that “the day tries to correct the night’s mistakes. Most of my cases, people have done something they never would’ve dreamed of doing in broad daylight.” Joel asks Myra if that makes them the night janitors. Myra says “We’re absolutely that … What else do we do but clean up after it? That’s why we’ll never run out of work. Not unless someone invents a cure for night.”

While the novel is riveting at times and always a page-turner, the ending is a bit of a let-down. Despite fitting together nicely, I expected more of a drama and revelation than I was given. It seemed a bit too pat and a bit too far-fetched at the same time. Despite my disappointment with the ending, I could not put the book down until I got there. It had me in its clutches like a pit bull and I lost quite a bit of sleep last night.

I think that Justin Peacock has a good career ahead of him as he polishes his style and continues in this vein. I haven’t read such a good courtroom drama since The Juror by George Dawes Green or The Thirteenth Juror by John Lescroart. Peacock has a wonderful way with dialogue that keeps the nail biting going strong. I wanted better physical descriptions of Joel and Myra from the author but I made them up for myself. Peacock knows the courtroom. He understands the confrontations and the ethical dilemmas. He understands addiction and the rationalizations that addicts make to themselves when they’re not in full recovery. He knows how to keep the reader turning pages. I look forward to his next book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 58 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage (October 6, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	A Cure for Night
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Justin Peacock’s blog Daily News article on Justin Peacock
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More courtroom drama: Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell The Legal Limit by Martin Clark The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly The Last Goodbye by Reed Arvin

Bibliography:

• A Cure for Night (2008)
• Blind Man’s Alley (August 2010)