“And his girl was sleeping beside him, her wonderful blue-and-white flowered nightgown twisted up around her bare, freckled waist. Soft belly rising a little with each breath, her warm damp head resting on Lamb’s outstretched arm, sweat shining at her temples, her mouth open, her little lips open – Christ, she was small – and he was swearing mutely into the space above him that this was good for her. That as long as he was honest and approached this thing from every possible angle, everything would line up and fall into place of its own accord, like atoms helixed and pleated tight within the seeds of cheatgrass needling the hems of her tiny blue jeans: fragile, inevitable, life-giving, and bigger than he.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 12, 2011)

David Lamb has the emotional life of a Rubik’s Cube. All the pieces are there but it seems impossible at times to get his emotional life organized, put together, and working well. He’s like a chess game played by one person, every piece under his dominion, tutelage and control. Only he can checkmate his own self. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Lamb’s father just died, he is recently divorced and his boss wants him to take a leave of absence because his affair with a co-worker is detrimental to the functional dynamics of the office-place. Lamb is fifty-four years old going on seventeen, graying in the hair, thickening in the middle, and skin loose in places where it once was tight and firm. He lives with adolescent angst in a world of one where his ego is as big as the universe, a narcissist of the first order.

Lamb lives in Chicago and one day is approached by a pubescent eleven year-old girl named Tommie who asks him for a cigarette. Lamb realizes that Tommie is the brunt of her friends’ joke and he decides to get to know her, to make something of her and to teach her about the real world. If this sounds like shades of Pygmalion, it is.

Lamb meets up with Tommie on several occasions and proposes to her that she go on a five-day trip with him to see the true west. He tells her they will go as equals and only if she acquiesces. Tommie agrees and they head out in Lamb’s car to a west that exists only in Lamb’s head; for where they go, there is not much more to see than some domesticated cows, deer, birds, and flora mixed in with strip malls and cheap motels. No matter that Tommie has a mother that will most likely report her missing. Lamb concocts a story that he and Tommie will share so that no one will know the truth about what they are doing together.

Lamb tells Tommie that his name is Gary and he begins to call her Em. Their relationship crosses many distinct and indistinct boundaries with Lamb’s narcissism its guiding light. He believes that Tommie needs him in order to know what possibilities exist in life, to learn what real love is and how it is possible. Is Lamb a pedophile? Is he grooming Tommie in a predatory way? These are questions that arise throughout the novel.

Together, Tommie and Lamb plot out a plan so that Tommie sees herself as a willing accomplice on this trip. She will be gone for only a short time – away from her mother, her friends, her school, her home – and in these few days Lamb will teach her to become worldly and wise, in his eyes positively impacting the path of her future.

Lamb’s hubris knows no bounds. The relationship between him and Tommie, at first restrained and non-physical, becomes more laden with inappropriate intimacies initiated by Lamb. He sees himself as Tommie’s savior. Tommie is at the cusp of adolescence and she is hungry for unconditional love and acceptance.

The author inserts herself into the book in an effort to garner empathy for Lamb and Tommie’s situation. She refers to them as “our Lamb” or “our man” and “our Tommie” or “our girl.” If they are of us, how can they be bad, repulsive, disgusting? At times, these authorial insertions felt manipulative.

Nadzam understands predation and coercion. Lamb, a man who lies, has a grandiosity to the extreme and a pedophilic streak, manages to be rendered by the author as a lost and misguided soul. Tommie’s emptiness needs to be filled and she is the perfect vessel for Lamb.

Lamb is a book to be read in doses. It is as heavy as a pocketful of bricks. Bonnie Nadzam speaks to the universal need and search for love. Lamb has never outgrown his adolescence and Tommie is eager to begin hers. They magnetize towards one another and get sucked deeper and deeper into a plan that goes more and more awry. This is not a gentle book nor is it meant for the faint of heart. It is, however, a thrilling book, a psychological feast and feat. Nadzam manages to make both Lamb and Tommie sympathetic characters at the same time that the reader cringes with disgust.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 29 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (September 13, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bonnie Nadzam
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Bibliography:

• Lamb (September 2011)

“Odd thoughts were entering my head again. And like before I had no idea where they were coming from. Odd, crazy thoughts: another job just about done, after running stupidly about for weeks, all the tracking, waiting, time spent and wasted, and what do you get but another dead body, then on to the next hit, another city, another bastard to track, another doomed man, to be taken out by me or someone else, it really made no difference, dead is dead. The same story, the same routine. You pull the trigger, the man falls. But what if you didn’t pull the trigger? That would be different. That might even be exciting. That would change everything.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  SEP 1, 2011)

Calling Mr. King by Ronald De Feo is an exhilarating read. It is poignant, funny, serious and sad. It grabs the reader from the beginning and we go on a short but rich journey with Mr. King, a hit-man, an employee of The Firm, as he transforms himself from a killer to a would-be intellectual and lover of art and architecture.

Mr. King is one of The Firm’s best marksmen and, as the novel opens, he is in Paris to do a hit. Something about the job starts getting to him and he postpones his hit repeatedly. He puts off an easy mark day after day. When he finally does his hit, it is with a bit of trepidation, anger and regret, wishing that he had something better to do.

This “something better” begins to take shape in his life as an appreciation for art, especially the Georgian architecture of his adopted city, London. He gets excited, going from bookstore to bookstore and collecting books on architecture and works of art by John Constable, the artist. His employer, however, is not happy with him. They are upset about the amount of time it took for him to do his job in Paris and they decide to send him to New York on a vacation. Mr. King feels he is long due for a vacation so this is not the worst thing in the world for him.

In New York, he devours the bookstores and museums, daily increasing his knowledge and excitement about art and architecture, expanding his interests and horizons in this area. He becomes interested in Regency style and art nouveau. He goes to see the Constable show at the Frick Museum after a clerk at Rizzoli’s bookstore recommends this to him. He also becomes interested in John Turner and artists who paint the English countryside.

He was known as Peter Chilton in London and he uses this alias to its full advantage in New York, acting like a rich and well-appointed Englishman. It is hard to tell where Mr. King ends and Mr. Chilton begins. He dreams of living in a Georgian home of his own some day. He takes on an English accent and his identity becomes obscured. He is now Peter Chilton, the art aficionado on vacation from his manor in England. He decides to dress the part and purchases a $215 shirt. This is his entry into the world of fashion as well as art. The shirt represents the possibility of something more, of his presenting himself as the real Peter Chilton, a man to whom fashion is paramount.

One day while resting in his New York hotel, the phone rings and it’s a call for Mr. King. This is the code name for The Firm calling him when they want a hit to be done. He is quite put out about being disturbed on his vacation but he leaves the hotel to return the call from a pay phone which is The Firm’s way of doing things. He is going to have to do a hit in New York. He is sick of The Firm. He finds his bosses stupid, “onions,” not up to his caliber. He does his hit within four hours in the hope that he’ll be able to rest and continue his vacation. However, he is transferred to Barcelona.

Once in Barcelona, Mr. King becomes so immersed in the architecture of Gaudi and the city’s art nouveau décor that he is overwhelmed. He knows that he has an important hit to do but by this time his bag of books is much, much heavier than his clothing and accoutrements. He is a man possessed by learning and potential.

We learn a bit about his early life. His father was a rage-ridden gun-crazy man, teaching Mr. King how to shoot animals – not how to play games or sports. His mother paid more attention to cleaning the house and taking care of her flowers than she did to Mr. King. When Mr. King left his home in a small suburb of New York when he was about twenty, it was in a traumatic way, and he was never to return except for his father’s funeral.

Mr. King often wonders what his life would have been like had he been exposed to things besides guns and hunting. He is excellent at what he does but could he have been something else, something of the mind? The reader wonders this along with him because he is caught up in a life he can never leave alive. A life with The Firm is a life forever with The Firm. No matter how much art and architecture he sees or yearns for it can never be enough. And when will his time run out?

Mr. King goes through existential angst with nods to Camus and Sartre as he feels like a stranger and has an overwhelming sense of nausea about his identity and his place in the world. He is alone and a loner, someone who has never thought of himself as one with the world. Since childhood, he’s been an outcast and finally, through his intellectual endeavors he is finding himself. The irony of this is that the closer he comes to finding himself, the further he travels from his required path.

This is a first novel by Mr. De Feo and it is an excellent piece of writing, one that had me devouring this book quickly. Mr. King made me laugh and feel deeply saddened. I was with him on every step of his journey and loved every minute of it. I hope that Mr. De Feo continues with his writing as he has quite an understanding of human nature.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ronald De Feo
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More hit men: For the Dogs by Kevin Wignall Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

Bibliography:

• Calling Mr. King (August 2011)

“He was fifty-five years old and for the first time he understood that nothing bad had ever happened to him. He lived in a house worth a fortune with his wife of thirty years. His children’s lives had worked out, no-one was on drugs or in prison, no-one had died of AIDS. Everyone he knew led a nice life and on and on it was supposed to go.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (APR 30, 2011)

The sixties generation broke free of the duty-bound rigors of their Depression era parents and the social constraints of materialism, creating a counterculture of hippies dedicated to revolutionary change. As a secular Jewish middle-aged baby boomer, I can well relate to Linda Grant’s portraiture of aging boomers that once embraced the youth and change and idealism of a new and outrageous culture of acid rock music, heady hallucinogens, diversity, and sexual freedoms.

Grant is the British author of Orange prize-winning When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), about a displaced London Jew who heads for Palestine, and The Clothes On Their Backs (2008), about a daughter of Jewish immigrants, which was short-listed for the Booker prize. Moreover, Grant is an award-winning journalist who closely observes the effect of a social climate on its inhabitants. In her latest novel, she creates an atmospheric arc that extends from the radical sixties and moves through historical landmarks and landmines such as Bosnia, 9/11, 7/7, and the Internet.

The novel succeeds with sublime precision, avoiding soapboxing and sentimental ruts. Its power arises partly from the narrative form that deepens with the accretion of detail and the passage of years. Chapters alternate with multiple viewpoints of various characters, but don’t expect an equal distribution or conventional symmetry of voices. Grant intentionally changes tenses and perspectives throughout, sporadically keeping us in the dark about who is talking. The dissonant intervals bear close attention, which heighten the reading experience, so it appears that the author had a purpose in her contract with the reader. There was something Stravinsky-like about its force, pushing the boundaries of convention with its provocative rhythm and unpredictable turns.

The first half of the novel lacks a visible anchor. It roams forward at a slight remove, but there’s an assured and poised undercurrent that keeps the reader trusting the author. There isn’t a lot of plot action in this multigenerational epic; the big events are a background for the more interstitial tale of people that revolted against their parents’ ideals and desperately sought self-realization, while grappling with apathy and complacency and the succor or rancor of their childhoods.

Stephen Newman, the central character, a high-strung hypochondriac and secular Jew from California, born in 1946, is the son of a Polish Jewish immigrant and a Cuban refugee mother. He meets a trio of intellectual hippies while studying science at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1968, and they all become lifelong friends. After some unexpected downturns, he marries one of them, the Pre-Raphaelite looking Andrea, in order to avoid the Vietnam draft, and finds love and contentment in Islington, carving out a dignified career making documentaries for the BBC and raising their two children.

Andrea, an intuitive offbeat beauty with crooked teeth and luxuriant, tawny hair, finds her niche as a psychotherapist. Her best friend, Grace, the astonishing beauty with a plump trust fund and deep psychic wounds, is a rebel even for the sixties, and globe-trots from one country to another with her pent-up rage and hand-made clothes. Ivan becomes a successful investor and godfather to the Newman’s children, Marianne and Max.

So what happens here? Is this a cautionary tale, homage to the sixties, a character study of self-realization against a backdrop of social change? Grant illuminates the often frustrating dissatisfaction of ideals–how time eradicates the hope and potential of a generation that hung onto the promise of youth.

“How can I be fifty, he asked himself, when I only just began?” Stephen had it so good–or did he? His free-floating anxiety about the choices he has made and the promises to himself he didn’t fulfill careen like a bad twitch through his soul. Theirs was the generation of eternal youth, and that was their privilege. They were supposed to be exceptional, not settled into routine.

As the story unfolds and expands to include three generations, the novel becomes a map and a mirror of the human condition, of each generation’s desire to break out of the mold of their parents and embark on a trajectory of trail-blazing success, or maybe just to become invisible. The metaphor of illusion is brilliantly summoned in the chosen professions of Max and Marianne.

Beyond the current, quick pace of everyday life in the millennium and a tendency to conclude, respond, and move on with instantaneous speed and recovery, this is a rare book that will germinate in the mind of the observant reader after the closing pages. Its esteem rises with each passing day of reflection. Like the lush and dense gardens that bloom between its pages, this story grows as it is tended and cared for with time and patience. What is apparent at first becomes a portal to more, and continues to nurture the hearkened soul of the dedicated reader.

“…no one wants to open the doors of perception anymore, acid was about revelation, about the vision of what lies beyond the rim of the knowable, it’s a drug for revolutionaries, and they have no interest in revolution. And the other thing…it takes up so much bloody time, eight hours minimum and then a day or two to recover. If I had to market it I’d aim the product exclusively at retirees.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (April 26, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Linda Grant
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Golden Country by Jennifer Gilmore The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle

Bibliography:

• The Cast Iron Shore (1995)
• When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) 
• Still Here (2002)
• The Clothes on Their Backs (2008)
• We Had It So Good (April 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution (1993)
• Remind Me Who I Am, Again (1998)
• The People on the Street, a writer’s view of Israel (2006)
• The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter (2009)

“Was his life really so restricted that major events taking place in the outside world never had much effect on him? What aspects of life had upset him? Pictures of children who had been badly treated, of course – but he had never been sufficiently moved to do anything about it. His excuse was always that he was too busy with work. I sometimes manage to help people by making sure that criminals are removed from the streets, he thought. But aside from that? He gazed out over the fields where nothing was yet growing, but he failed to find what he was looking for.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (APR 09, 2011)

Henning Mankell’s Wallender mystery series has come to an end with The Troubled Man, the last book in this popular series that was also made into several movies for public television with Kenneth Branaugh playing the part of Wallander. Wallander has turned sixty in this book and he is obsessed with looking back on life and not seeing much for his future except growing old. He dwells on the past a lot. At one point he considers entering a restaurant that he used to patronize, that had a waitress there he liked, but he changes his mind. “He knew why he didn’t go in, of course. He was afraid of finding somebody else behind the counter, and being forced to accept that here too, in that café, time had moved on and that he would never be able to return to what now lay so far away and in the past.”

Wallander is a police detective who carries the world on his shoulders. He suffers from diabetes, drinks too much and is very lonely. He often dwells on the dark side of life. After his fiftieth birthday party, thrown by his colleagues, he starts to write a list of everyone he knew who has died. The list depresses him so much that he has to stop because there are so many suicides on the list.

Recently, Wallender went on a drinking binge and for some reason took his police revolver with him, leaving it at a restaurant. He was reported and put on administrative leave. During the time he is on leave, his daughter Linda has a baby. This is the one bright spot in his life. He agrees to go to Linda’s prospective father-in-law’s 75th birthday party. While there, Linda’s prospective father-in-law, Hakan Von Enke, tells him a very troubling story. Early in the 1980’s, while he was in the navy, he was an officer on a Swedish submarine. The Swedish submarine detected a Russian submarine in Swedish waters where it should not be. Remember, this was still the height of the cold war. The protocol was to scare the ship and if the ship did not retreat, the protocol was then to drop depth charges to force it to the surface. For some unknown reason, the commander was told to leave the ship alone. The ship was let go and Von Enke has become obsessed with what or who was behind this order. On top of that, he is acting fearful, as though there is someone after him. At one point in his conversation with Wallender, he hears a noise and his hand goes inside his jacket. Wallender suspects that Von Enke is carrying a gun. There is also someone suspicious lurking outside the window.

A short time after Wallender and Von Enke have this talk, Von Enke disappears. He leaves for his morning walk and never returns. On top of that, Louise, his wife, also disappears some time later. Wallender decides that he needs to look for them and find out what happened. After all, they are Linda’s prospective in-laws. He is still on administrative leave when he begins to look for them, fairly sure that their disappearance is connected in some way to the story about the submarine. Wallender gets to learn a lot more about the cold war than he ever knew before. Once Wallender is back at his job, though he is not officially part of the investigation to find the von Enkes, he continues to look for them. Suffice it to say, nothing is what it seems and the plot unfolds with many unexpected twists and turns leaving the reader spellbound. Most importantly, this book reflects real life and the consequences, both intended and unintended, of past actions.

Though this is a mystery, it is much less action driven than a typical American mystery. We get to know a lot about Wallender: his fears about aging, his loneliness, his philosophy of life and his generalized depressive attitude. The book has many twists and turns but is ultimately character driven. It is a fine book about a detective that has won the hearts of many readers. I know that I will miss him a lot. However, Mankell is very versatile and besides mysteries he has recently written a fine book called Daniel. Whatever genre Mankell chooses to continue with, I look forward to reading his books.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 65 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (March 29, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Henning Mankell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Daniel Italian Shoes The Man from Beijing The Fifth Women Also feeling their age: All the Flowers are Dying by Lawrence Block The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald

Bibliography:

Kurt Wallander Series:

• Faceless Killers (1991;1997 in US)
• The Dogs of Riga (1992; 2001in US)
• The White Lioness (1993; 1998 in US)
• The Man Who Smiled (1994; 2005 in US)
• Sidetracked (1995; 1999 in US)
• The Fifth Woman (1996; 2000 in US)
• One Step Behind (1997; 2002 in US)
• Firewall (1998; 2002 in US)
• The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases (1999; 2008 in US)
• The Troubled Man (2009; 2011 in US)

Stand alone novels:

• Chronicler of the Winds (1985; June 2012 in US)
• The Return of the Dancing Master (2000; 2004 in US)
• Before the Frost (2002; 2005 in US)
• Depths (2004; 2009 in US)
• Italian Shoes (2006; 2010 in US)
• Kennedy’s Brain (2007; 2008 in US)
• The Eye of Leopard (2008; 2009 in US)
• The Man from Beijing (2007; 2010 in US)
• Daniel (2010 in US)

Teen Read:

• Shadows in the Twilight (2008;  2010 in US)

Movies from books:

• Wallander: Sidetracked / Firewall / One Step Behind (2009)
• Wallander (Faceless Killers / The Man Who Smiled / The Fifth Woman) (2010)

“Mohammed was afraid. Afraid of having to climb mountains, pyramids of stones. Afraid of tumbling into the ravine of the absurd, of having to face each of his children, over whom he had lost every scrap of authority.  Afraid of accepting a life in which he no longer controlled much of anything.  He lived through his routine, the long straight line that carried on regardless.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (FEB 26, 2011)

In a palace in the old village Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the elegiac and moving story of a simple man from a small village in Morocco, who feels completely lost in the fast moving, modern world. Mohammed had to change “from one time to another, one life to another” when back in 1962, this young peasant was persuaded to leave his remote village in Morocco and join the immigrant labour force in France. Now forty years later, he is about to start his retirement and this new situation preoccupies and worries him deeply. From one moment to the next, it will end the years of daily routines which have made him feel safe, secure and needed. They have also protected him from reflecting on his life and its challenges: “Everything seemed difficult to him, complicated, and he knew he was not made for conflicts.” Why does he have to retire at all? It is “a trap,” a strange, “diabolical” invention! In this gently and simply told story, Tahar Ben Jelloun explores themes of home, immigration, faith, the social and cultural discrepancies between immigrants and their French surroundings, and last, but not least, the resultant mounting estrangement between parents and their children.

In his musings, much of it conveyed in direct voice, Mohammed recalls images of different stages in his life: his childhood, his marriage, the first ever sighting of the sea… all memories that he cherishes and contrasts with his life in France. It is his firm grounding in Islam, however, that has always guided his thinking and behaviour: “His touchstone for everything was Islam: My religion is my identity. I am Muslim before being a Moroccan, before being an immigrant.” Tahar Ben Jelloun delicately elucidates the intricate correlation between faith and reality in Mohammed’s life and, interestingly, he links it to the concept of “time.” When Mohammed was young, time was structured around the five daily prayers and the year around major festivals throughout the seasons. We, as readers, can easily perceive why, after decades of time-keeping through his work at an automobile plant, he feels completely lost in these early days of “tirement,” as he calls it. How can he fill time now and in France – “a place where he does not belong at all?”  Time stretches without structure, unless – Mohammed realizes – he takes on a new project and sets out planning it: he will build a house for the whole family in the old village… Surely, that will bring his children back to him and the traditional life, as it was before, can be rekindled.

A man like Mohammed, barely literate, who only speaks his Berber language, has never felt the need to make an effort to learn French beyond the basics. He can cite the Koran in Arabic, but cannot express an independent thought in this holy language. He has come to France to work, get paid and to return home to his village every summer and eventually for good; his emotional centre is only there. His five children, on the other hand, are growing up in the French environment and speak only French to him. The author, while seeing the world primarily through Mohammed’s eyes, such when he describes his hero’s attitude towards his wife and inability and unwillingness to comprehend his children, nevertheless encourages us as readers to see beyond Mohammed’s narrow and naïve interpretation of his surroundings and place his perspective into a broader context. And we, in turn, feel growing sympathy both for Mohammed’s efforts to rebuild his life and for his taciturn, acquiescent and submissive wife. Will he, once ensconced in his new project, convince the now grown children and their children to follow his plans?

Tahar Ben Jelloun, who also emigrated as a young man to France in 1971, is intimately familiar with the issues that face North African immigrants in France. Son of a village shopkeeper, he was fortunate to do well in school and was able to pursue his studies in Paris after his release from prison in Morocco. He is a prolific and much revered author of many novels and other writings. Despite his own education in Arabic, he writes exclusively in French – a language he feels is better suited to the social topics he wants to address in his fiction. As for his hero, Arabic for him is a sacred language which commands reverence and humility from those who use it. While completely at ease in the French environment, he stated in an interview with the Paris Review in 1989: “When I tell a story, I feel Moroccan and tell it like a Moroccan storyteller, with imagery and a construction that is not always realistic, but where poetry can reside.” His language in this novel fully reflects his intentions: his affection for the Moroccan landscape and life in the village shines through in rich and poetic imagery. The fine line between reality and mysticism becomes opaque. For me, these passages are add some of the most precious aspects in this touching account. “I tell a story in the hope that it will incite reflection, provoke thought.” That indeed he does with this insightful novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin; Original edition (January 25, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tahar Ben Jelloun (In French)
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Last Friend The Blinding Absence of Light

Bibliography:

• Solitaire (1976)
• The Sand Child (1985)
• The Sacred Night (1987)
• Silent Day in Tangiers (1990)
• With Downcast Eyes (1991)
• Corruption (1995)
• This Blinding Absence of Light (2001)
• The Last Friend (2003; February 2006 in US)
• Leaving Tangier (March 2009 in US)
• Rising of the Ashes (February 2010 in US)
• A Palace in the Old Village (January 2011 in US)

Nonfiction:

• Racism Explained to My Daughter (1998)
• French Hospitality: Racism and North African Immigrants (December 1999)
• Islam Explained (2002)

“No, the thing was that sex – and this is what they were trying to show in Last Tango in Paris, which no one understood – was redemption, and Roni had an urgent need for redemption. Redemption with boys her own age was impossible, because they just hadn’t suffered enough to know anything about it yet, and so since the age of fourteen or so she’d been looking for someone to fuck her like Marlon Brando did Maria Schneider: angrily, passionately, pouring all his loneliness into her, because she could contain it, she could; it would be her real matriculation. And it would be someone she could return the favor to by also saving him from something, it didn’t matter what, maybe from himself.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (NOV 29, 2010)

Yael Hedaya was a screenwriter for the acclaimed Israeli TV drama series Betipul (In Treatment), which was adapted for the United States and currently airs on HBO. This background shows in her novel, Eden,  with her attention to the emotions, human interactions and the inner workings of the characters’ minds. Eden’s translator, Jessica Cohen, does a stunning job. The book flows without awkwardness or hesitation.

This is a book about the intertwined lives of the people of Eden – the good, the bad, the indifferent and the morally ambiguous. Until tragedies hit, they go about their lives in a very insular way. Even with tragedy, they are more apt to talk about it than to take action.

Eden is a community in Israel’s Moshav. Part rural and part suburban, the people who live here are yuppies. Most are well-heeled financially and concerned with their own lives and interests. It is the rare Edenite who reaches out to larger causes or concerns. The book delves into the lives of the main characters and the novel flows from there, exploring the inner lives and actions of Eden’s populous. What is specific to this sense of place is the constant fear that the Israelis have of terrorism and intifada.

Dafna and Eli have desperately been trying to get pregnant for the past seven years without success. Despite fertility treatments, each month Dafna hears the nurse tell her “I’m sorry.”  Eli is a corporate attorney who commutes to Jerusalem every day for work. He would like to halt the fertility treatments and get on with their lives, perhaps adopt a child but Dafna won’t hear of this. Dafna works for a mostly ineffective non-profit agency intent on making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Dafna is depressed most of the time, disheartened about her infertility and unfulfilled at her work. She feels like she and Eli are drifting apart.

Alona and Mark have been separated for two years but their lives are still very intertwined with their children. Mark runs an Italian restaurant in Eden and Alona is an editor for a high end literary publisher. Currently, she is editing a book by an author named Uri who is driving her crazy with his insecurity and dependence. She and Mark have two children, Maya and Ido. Alona worries that Ido is suffering from depression but Mark thinks Ido, a bright and inquisitive little boy, is just fine. Mark has a daughter, Roni, from a previous marriage. When the book opens Roni is almost 16.

Reuven is a bureaucrat who takes delight in turning down customers’ requests. He is also a lech, given to staring at women’s breasts and and butts. He has a son Dudi who is in the Israeli army and lives with Reven and his wife when he is at home. Reuven would like nothing better than to hook up with Alona. When Reuven discovers a very disturbing secret about Dudi, it appalls him but he takes no action.

A great deal of the book focuses on Roni who is sexually involved with several men many years her senior. As the book commences, she is having affairs with Eli, Uri, and her driving instructor , all of whom are 12 to 25 years her senior. The driving instructor disgusts her but that doesn’t stop her from having sex with him. She thinks she is in love with Uri but Roni is emotionally stalled, searching for a life that mirrors the sex scenes in Last Tango in Paris. For Roni, “pain was redemption.” Her emotional life thrives on pain and she is not able to access pleasure. Her emotions are black and white and she does not see any grey in what she does. Her father and Alona are unable to set boundaries and this leads Roni even further astray.

When Roni suffers a tragedy, her family is brought together and it appears, for the first time, that Roni may be starting to mature. This is a book about people and their day to day lives. In Treatment is about individual psychotherapy and this book reads like it could be the basis for a group therapy show. All the people have their issues, they repeat their mistakes without insight about change and the lives of Eden are opened up to the readers eyes, not unlike a soap opera.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Metropolitan Books (October 26, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Yael Hedaya
EXTRAS:	Excerpt NY Mag interview with Yael Hedaya
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another you might like: Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjilian This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Bibliography:

• Dramatis Persona (1994)
• Housebroken (1997; 2001 in US)
• Accidents (2001; 2005 in US)
• Eden (2005; October 2010 in US)

“I’ve lived for years within bar lines, within metronome markings. When did I learn that music was paradoxical — that it depended on control and hyperbole, discipline and excess — and that real expressiveness was the struggle, the conversation, between these?”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (SEP 23, 2010)

Lila Jameson is a professional pianist living in Montreal. She specializes in chamber music — that is, playing with one or two other musicians rather than solo — so intense intimate interactions with others are an integral part of her life. But right now, her musical exchanges are in danger of being eclipsed by her personal ones. Her mother is dying of cancer and has rejected further treatments. Her husband, Rob, a professor of history, has become distant and Lila suspects an affair. Her daughter, Lindsay, is breaking up with her boyfriend. And Lila herself, at fifty-three, feels herself at a crossroads of her life, both blind and naked at the same time.

Take away the music, and the ingredients of this middle-class, middle-age crisis would be somewhat familiar, in both literature and life. But that is not to say uninteresting or uninvolving. Kathleen Wall is full of gentle surprises, as she veers smoothly away from expected patterns. Rob’s occasional soliloquies show while he may not, on this occasion, be an adulterer, his underlying attitude is manipulative and ultimately even more toxic. Two other men take a significant part in Lila’s story: there is Kevin, her violin partner, who is gay; and there is Stuart, the cellist, a late arrival whose own emotional needs both intensify their interaction and make it much less predictable. And the background story of the dying mother, which forms the narrative spine of the book, which spans four months in 2002, proves to be a source of strength rather than anxiety. Early on, Lila confesses: “My mother’s absence in two or three or four months’ time is terrifying, but it’s abstract and theoretical.” But she goes on: “The challenge is getting her there with her self intact.” It is a beautiful way of expressing the goal of terminal care, and Lila succeeds brilliantly, with the help of Stuart’s cello and her mother’s surprising mental resilience.

All the same, I am not sure that Wall herself succeeds entirely. There seems no reason for the 2002 date other than to get in a few spurious references to Bush and Iraq. The device of writing some chapters in Rob’s voice or Kevin’s seems strange when the person we are most truly interested in is Lila. Stringing the novel on the twin timelines of the mother’s dying and the rehearsals for a trio concert leaves the book curiously shapeless after both events have taken place; the description of the concert itself, with the long program notes on the two works by Brahms it contains, fails to work as the metaphorical summation the author presumably intended. All the same, if there is anything that raises these events above the humdrum, it is the world of music in which they are set.

I myself work in music; athough my professional activity is in opera, my amateur involvement is as a chamber music pianist, so I share a lot with Lila. I could see immediately that Wall loves music in a far from superficial sense, but something about the interactions between the professional partners did not ring entirely true. Perhaps as a result of the need to express it in words, there was always something expository, analytical, even didactic about their music-making, rather than the practical problem-solving that is the more typical activity. I sensed that Wall herself is more familiar with writing program notes than playing the actual pieces. On the other hand, convincing novels about musicians are few and far between; there is Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, but few others come close. One thing that Wall handles supremely well, however, is the use of music as a metaphor. I began with Lila’s thoughts near the beginning; here she is at the very end, tackling Bach’s Goldberg Variations:

“I have been working on the Goldbergs, largely for my mother. I can imagine them being written for the metaphysical insomniac, and hope they will put her wishes for me to sleep. She would have loved the paradoxical simplicity and complexity of them, the wordless portraits of moments of being we have no need to describe to others since Bach has done it for us. Some are contemplative, and move with the fluidity of lucid, personal thought. Others are extroverted and social. I could explain those differences by talking about the dance forms of Bach’s time. But you would say I’m being slightly dishonest, or even disingenuous. Some of them are lived; others are merely thought or dreamed. It’s hard work to get your hands to express these differences but worth the effort. And to remain, suspended, in that musical effort, is enough.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Brindle & Glass; 1st edition (September 15, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kathleen Wall
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another music book recently reviewed: The Immortals by Amit Choudhuri An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell

Bibliography:

• Blue Duets (September 2010)

“It’s not his fault that sorrow overwhelms him, that’s just middle age, buddy, everybody regrets something. He and Beth were together for thirteen years, and that’s a lot of emotional momentum, a runaway freight train rolling downhill, nothing but tanker cars full of toxic waste and high explosives, and sometimes he feels like he’s tied to the fucking track. ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (JUL 3, 2010)

A few weeks ago on NPR, there was a discussion: “What Does it Take For You to Give up on a Book?” Reading the novel Next reminds me of that discussion because while most of the novel is good, it is the last 50 or so pages that is especially gripping reading. If, as some readers on that NPR show admitted, you put down the book prematurely you’d miss it. So it’s best to work this one through.

As Next opens, 50-year-old Kevin Quinn is on board a plane to Austin, Texas. He has a run-of-the-mill job at the Publications Program for the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His personal life is also on unsure footing. After a break-up with Beth who he was with for 13 years, Kevin is in a tentative relationship with a younger woman, Stella. But midlife angst begs him to leave it all behind, to reboot. So it is that he follows a job listing all the way to Austin. Stella, who is herself working in Chicago, doesn’t know any of this yet.

As Kevin boards the plane, he is plagued by anxiety—there has been a terrorist attack somewhere in the world and he assumes it is only a matter of time before the terrorists hit again, this time on American soil.

Once on ground in Austin, these general anxieties about terror take a backseat to his general laments about where life is headed. While he has had many sexual encounters, he is unhappy and rootless. Significant sections of the novel involve Kevin recounting his past relationships and their subsequent disintegration. One particular stinging indictment was rendered by a woman known as the Philosopher’s Daughter. She told Kevin that he lacked tenderness and passion—a statement that seems to have left a deep scar on his psyche. “Even if it wasn’t true when she told me, it’s been true ever since because she told me,” Kevin says.

On the plane from Ann Arbor, Kevin runs into an Asian woman whom he is immediately attracted to. As luck would have it, while Kevin is whiling away his time at a coffee shop, waiting for the interview, he spots the same woman on the street. Guided by some sort of sexual attraction, he follows “Joy Luck” (he names her that after the book she reads on the plane) all around the city, at a safe distance. This meaningless pursuit forms the backdrop against which Kevin lays bare his life’s narrative.

Tucked into this narrative are some wonderful descriptions and funny send-ups. Hynes describes an airport as “only an island in an archipelago nation of glassed-in atolls where everybody speaks a sort of English and lives off warm cinnamon buns and day-old turkey sandwiches.” There is even a spot-on description of a food store called Gaia, which sounds very much like Whole Foods.

Next is set over the course of a single day—from the time that Kevin boards the airplane to the day’s end when he shows up for his interview. Digressions and flashbacks aside, to create a novel out of just one day’s events, is difficult. Unfortunately Next suffers from the problem of cataloging too much detail from the smallest of events. Here is an example: “Kevin pauses to slug down the rest of his tea in one long, wobbling gulp. By now it’s as warm as his sweating palm, it’s like drinking some bodily fluid of his own, and as Joy Luck sways downhill toward the river, he tosses the empty cup in a trash can and plods after her.”

As for that famous ending, it’s extremely well done and hits home precisely because its tone and urgency is so different from what has come before.

The problem with the novel is that Kevin is a character who can start to grate on one’s nerves. He refuses to grow up, to confront his anxieties, to make something meaningful out of his life. He is 50 and if indeed, as some have suggested, he is supposed to be Everyman at 50, it’s a very depressing thought. Endless self-absorption is tiring especially when presented in a novel.

The best part about Next is that it is one of the few novels that truly reflects what it is like to live our lives in this, our American landscape. The silent vein of terror that infects everything, the dullness that permeates lives—the subtlest of these observations are brilliantly captured by Hynes.

When Kevin boards the plane and likens the aircraft to “A Pringles can with wings packed full of defenseless Pringles,” you can totally see the analogy working. Kevin’s fears may be extreme but given our generalized anxieties and collective malaise it isn’t too much of a stretch to see where he’s coming from.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 59 readers
PUBLISHER:	Reagan Arthur Books; 1 edition (March 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Hynes
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Speaking of airports: Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles And another book on the times we live in: The Unknown Knowns by Jeffrey Rotter

Bibliography:

• The Wild Colonial Boy (1990)
• Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Terror and Tenure (1997)
• The Lecturer’s Tale (2001)
• Kings of Infinite Space (2004)
• Next (March 2010)

“I think I had to get this old to understand some things I really needed to know. I needed to suffer some humiliation and to pick up a few battle scars. It’s made me less shallow, and for more appreciative of everything…. Getting older is hard, you lose an awful lot. But I don’t know, I think it’s worth the trade.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (MAY 22, 2010)

Why would anyone want to attend their fortieth high school reunion? We find out in Elizabeth Berg’s bittersweet novel, The Last Time I Saw You. The author introduces us to a diverse group of people in their late fifties who still remember what it was like to be an adolescent at Whitley High.

Fifty-eight year old Dorothy Shauman is divorced and desperate to reconnect with the best-looking guy in the class, Pete Decker, “the football player, the prom king.” As Dorothy gazes at herself in the mirror, she “raises her chin so her turkey neck disappears.” Her imagination runs wild as she predicts how she and Pete will banter, flirt, and subsequently leave the others behind to spend some quality time alone. Mary Alice Mayhew had been shunned by her high-school classmates because of her dowdiness and lack of social skills. Although she has never been married, she claims to be content with her quiet and solitary existence. “She has learned not to let hurt take up residence inside her.” However, there will be someone at the reunion whom she has thought about and would like to see.

Widower and loner Lester Hessenpfeffer is devoted to the animals he cares for in his veterinary practice, and would rather not attend the reunion at all; however, his assistant, Jeanine, hounds him into going. Pete Decker left his wife, Nora, for a younger woman, and now regrets his rash behavior; his mistress is vapid and his wife has started dating someone else. He hopes to win her back at the get-together. Candy Sullivan, the most desirable female in the class, is miserable in her marriage to an aloof and controlling husband. She needs to get away from him while she makes some tough decisions about her future.

Berg has a field day with her lively and diverse cast, all of whom still have a great deal to learn about life. As the former classmates ponder who they were forty years earlier and how they have changed, they are forced to admit that some of their choices may have been misguided. They wonder if it is too late to seek the happiness that has eluded them. Can a loner find companionship at an age when most people are thinking of retirement? Is it possible for an unhappily married woman to start over, either alone or with someone else?

In the wrong hands, this could easily have been a maudlin, predictable, and heavy-handed work of fiction. Fortunately, Berg hits all the right notes in this crisp, succinct, sometimes profound, and often hilarious novel. She explores her characters’ confusion, insecurities, and fears with compassion, subtlety, and wry humor. As people age, they may develop wrinkles, gain a few pounds, and become a bit more set in their ways. However, most people never lose the desire for love, acceptance, and fulfillment. The Last Time I Saw You is touching but never saccharine. To her credit, Berg does not resort to a clichéd resolution for each character’s problems. Instead, she wraps everything up satisfyingly and intelligently, showing respect for us and for the stalwart men and women who dare to display their vulnerabilities. As one woman says at a truth-telling session in which everyone bares his soul: “I’ve finally gained some perspective that lets me laugh about things that used to make me want to tear my hair out.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 757 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (April 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Elizabeth Berg
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another reunion:  A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve And another woman facing middle age: The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

Bibliography:

• Durable Goods (1993)
• Talk Before Sleep (1994)
• Range of Motion (1995)
• The Pull of the Moon (1996)
• Joy School (1997)
• What We Keep (1998)
• Until the Real Thing Comes Along (1999)
• Open House (2000)
• Ordinary Life: Stories (2001)
• Never Change (2001)
• True to Form (2002)
• Say When (2003)
• The Art of Mending (2004)
• The Year of Pleasures (2005)
• The Handmaid and the Carpenter (2006)
• We Are All Welcome Here (2006)
• Dream When You’re Feeling Blue (2007)
• The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation (April 2008)
• Home Safe (Aril 2009)
• The Last Time I Saw You (April 2010)
• Once Upon a Time, There Was You (April 2011)

Non-fiction:

• Family Traditions (1992)
• Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True (2000)

“I have to smile, even as I chafe, as always, at our family’s patented inability to express emotion during watershed events. There is no occasion calling for sincerity that the Foxman family won’t quickly diminish or pervert through our own genetically engineered brand of irony and evasion. We banter, quip, and insult our way through birthdays, holidays, weddings, illnesses.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (SEP 23, 2009)

This is a grand book – hilarious, poignant, thoughtful, emotional, and real. It is one of the best books I have read this year and a book I intend to give to many of my friends and family members. It is THAT good.

The book is told in the voice of Judd Foxman. It starts off with Judd finding out that his wife of ten years is cheating on him with his boss, a radio jock. Shortly after realizing he’s a cuckold, he gets a call from his sister telling him that their father died and that his father wanted them to sit Shiva. (This is a Jewish ritual that the immediate family participates in for seven days after the death of a loved one). Judd immediately leaves for his mother’s house to meet up with his two brothers, his sister, and his mother.

The Foxman clan is riotously over the top. When someone says something reasonable, “we all stare at her as if she just started jabbering in ancient tongues. We have always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrated a dangerous cultural ignorance”.   Listening to the Foxmans reminded me a bit of watching “All in the Family,” only better.

There is mom, a famous writer who wrote a book on how to bring up children. She is also famous for her double-D cleavage and the amount she likes to show. Phillip is the youngest of the clan. One can never be sure if what he is saying is true. His favorite activity is sex, lots of it. He arrives late to the funeral in a Porsche, bringing with him an older woman, his ex-therapist, to whom he is engaged. There is Wendy, the sole female sibling. She is married to a financier who spends little time with her. He spends most of his time on the phone discussing business, even at the funeral and during sitting Shiva. She has three children and it all seems just too much for her. Paul is the oldest of the boys. He runs the family’s sporting goods business. He also carries around a lot of anger, mostly directed at Judd. He was once headed for the major baseball leagues and had a baseball scholarship to UMass. This was all ruined when he got attacked by a Rottweiller while he was coming to Judd’s defense. His pitching arm was maimed severely and his baseball career ruined. He and his wife, Alice, have been trying to get pregnant. Alice is on an emotional roller coaster from her fertility treatments.

And then there is Judd. He is an emotional wreck. He still loves his wife but can’t get over the fact that she’s been cheating on him for a year. He’s out of a job now, not wanting to work for the man who’s shtupping his wife. He’s been living in a basement, eating pizza and take-out Tex-Mex. Basically, his life is a royal mess. The thought of spending seven days with his family is a nightmare because they never get along, and that is putting it mildly. Sitting Shiva creates more problems for him. “Suddenly, I can’t stop seeing the footprints of time on everyone in the room. The liver spots, the multiple chins, the sagging necks, the jowls, the flaps of skin over eyes, the spotted scalps, the frown lines etched into permanence, the stooped shoulders, the sagging man breasts, the bowed legs. When does it all happen? In increments, so you can’t watch out for it, you can’t fix it. One day you just wake up and discover that you got old while you were sleeping.”  Judd doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he sees all the old folks come and go from his family home.

During the course of sitting Shiva, the Foxman clan fights, loves and learns a lot about one another – – sometimes more than they wanted to know. I loved reading this book from the first page till the last. It’s everything a book should be, and more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 206 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (August 6, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	This Is Where I Leave You
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jonathan Tropper
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read a review of How to Talk to a Widower More humorous dysfunction: The Family Man by Elinor Lipman Mailman by J. Robert Lennon Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom

Bibliography:

• Plan B (2000)
• The Book of Joe (2004) (a.k.a. Bush Falls in UK)
• Everything Changes (2005)
• How To Talk to a Widower (July 2007)
• This is Where I Leave You (August 2009)