“When I think of Nilsen now, how he came and vanished again in the one day, I don’t feel any warmer towards him in the remembering than I did when he was here.  I don’t even feel grateful for what he gave me, because he and his kind kept it from me for so long.  But I do think of the difficult journey he made, and why he made it.  What set him off, he told me, was seeing me being interviewed on television, after Khalil Khazar’s death.  He said he’d watched the interview over and over.  He’d wanted to feel what I felt.  But you cannot feel what another person feels.  You cannot even imagine it, however hard you try.  This I know.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (DEC 28, 2014)

On December 21, 1988, almost exactly twenty-five years ago as I write, Pan American flight 103 from London to New York was brought down by a bomb and crashed over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard and eleven more on the ground. Although others may have been implicated, only one man was convicted of planting the bomb, a Libyan national who was released several years later on compassionate grounds; he died of prostrate cancer in 2012. His death may well have been the trigger for Scottish author James Robertson’s imaginative and morally profound novel; it is certainly the event with which it opens. Not that Robertson mentions real names: the airline, places, and foreign countries involved are left anonymous, and the convicted bomber, his presumed accomplice, and the chief witness are given pseudonyms. But as every detail that Robertson does give — even down to the date, time, and 38-minute duration of the flight — are precisely the same as the Pan Am crash, he is clearly not trying to disguise his intended subject.

Or rather, not his subject. For although he goes into the crash and subsequent investigation in detail, his focus is on aspects of such a story that are not put to rest by a simple verdict. Do law enforcement agencies ever bend the facts to fit a politically expedient narrative? Can vengeance be exacted against a scapegoat who may not in fact be guilty? Is there such a thing as true closure? What happens when a man’s grief turns to an obsession that prevents him from leading a meaningful life? When truth is found, will it stand out like a pristine shining object, or will it be a tarnished affair of accident and compromise?

Alan Tealing is a Lecturer in English at a new university in an old Scottish town (I imagine Stirling). After losing his American wife and six-year-old daughter in the bombing, he devotes his research skills to following the case in every aspect. But some things at the trial convince him that they have got the wrong man, and he takes his doubts public. As the book opens, he is giving a television interview proclaiming that the death of the convicted bomber will change nothing. But it does change something. It brings to his door a former CIA/FBI operative named Nielsen who needs to make peace with his own conscience before dying. What he tells Alan will send him off to Australia, where the novel reaches its climax in the midst of a series of devastating bush fires. The antipodean leap from the first part, entitled “Ice,” to the second, “Fire,” is the one weak point in an otherwise superb novel, requiring that the reader shares Alan’s obsession enough to follow even the slimmest of clues. But his encounters with the two principal people he meets there will propel the story into new depths, and open him to disasters other than his own. The action climax is magnificently handled, but even more magnificent is the quiet settling that follows it, so much more meaningful than a pat solution to some mystery or conspiracy theory. A truly fine book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (September 10, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on James Robertson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another real event fiction: An Accident in August by Laurence Cosse The Submission by Amy Waldman

Bibliography:

• Close: Stories (1991)
• Ragged Man’s Complaint: Stories (1993)
• Scottish Ghost Stories (1996)
• The Fanatic (2000)
• Joseph Knight (2003)
• The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006)
• And the Land Lay Still (2010)
• Republics of the Mind (2012)
• The Professor of Truth (2013)

“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)

“What are you waiting for, Tommie? If there’s something that can save you, what could you possibly be waiting for?”

“I can’t say that either. The jury doesn’t want to hear things. Nobody wants to hear certain things, because nobody can believe certain things even if they hear them. There’s strange things that happen in the world sometimes. I’ve come to understand that, and they don’t fit in with the rest of our lives. These things, they’re like a burl in a tree, Willie – they don’t belong there. They get in somehow and the tree has to work around it. Or else die.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JUN 21, 2011)

Tommie Cluverius is on trial for murder in the first degree. The charge is that he killed Lillie Madison and threw her into a reservoir where she drowned. The year is 1885 and Richmond, Virginia is the scene of the crime. Did Tommie kill Lillie or was it suicide? Did someone else kill Lillie and try to pin the crime on Tommie? The outcome of the trial will determine whether Tommie lives or goes to the gallows.

The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson is a moving and fascinating story of two brothers and the woman they both love. Tommie has always had ambition and things came easily for him. He was his parents’ favorite child while his brother, Willie, was more easy-going and wanted to live off the land. His goal was to farm the land or be a sawyer. Tommie set out to college and became a lawyer, joining up with the prestigious firm of his mentor.

Both boys were raised by their Aunt Jane. Their younger brother died when he was six years old in a drowning accident and their mother started drinking very heavily. At the same time, their father lost his farm in the depression following the Civil War. Aunt Jane was childless and had money and love to raise the two boys so they were sent to live with her. When Willie was sixteen, their cousin Lillie was also sent to live with Aunt Jane. She was having troubles at home and Aunt Jane took her in.

The novel weaves back and forth in time and we learn that Willie and Lillie were in love for many years. Tommie was engaged to Nola, a neighbor whose family had wealth and land. Though Tommie wasn’t in love with Nola, he saw this as a good match for himself, an opportunity to expand his wealth and achieve his social ambitions. He did not intend to fall in love with Lillie, but it happened. Though in love with Lillie, he planned on marrying Nola.

The reader gradually learns that Lillie has family secrets, especially about her father who has been physically abusive and sexually inappropriate with her. Aunt Jane sends Lillie to boarding school for a while and Tommie goes off to college at the same time. Tommie likes to visit the brothels very regularly. In today’s parlance, one might consider him a sex addict because he spends money he doesn’t have on prostitutes, is obsessed with going to the brothel and makes it a major part of his life.

The novel opens with the following sentence: “On March 14, 1885, a body is floating in the old Marshall Reservoir…”. The body turns out to be Lillie and she is eight months pregnant. The first thought is that it was a suicide but there are two sets of footprints. One set appears to belong to Lillie and the other set is a larger size, most likely a man’s. The coroner determines that Lillie was killed. A search for the killer begins and all the evidence leads to Tommie. He is picked up and charged with the murder.

The setting of the story and the trial is Richmond, Virginia and the surrounding area. The author gets the feel and ambiance of the environs and time to a tee. The reader can almost smell the streets, feel the political charge in the air and know what it’s like to live in Richmond in the late nineteenth century.

Willie and Tommie are very close and as the trial progresses, Willie does everything he can for Tommie. However, does he really believe in his brother’s innocence? The early part of the book alludes to Tommie’s guilt but as the book progresses it gets much more difficult to figure out how much of a roll Tommie played in Lillie’s death or if he killed her at all. The court scenes are exciting and the characters of the defense attorneys and prosecution are very well done. My only gripe with the book is that the author told me too much, not letting me figure out the subtle emotional backdrop to the story and the people. I wanted to let things play out in my mind and not always see them in black and white, on paper.

Mr. Thompson has written several works of non-fiction and has published short stories but this is his debut fiction novel. This is a novel based on an actual criminal case that the author researched. “The details of the case, then, were the fence posts on which I hung the story. The tragic love triangle at its heart was my invention, but it was suggested by the facts.” It is an admirable achievement and one can tell that he knows the south very well. He has lived there all his life and his familiarity with the people and sense of place comes through marvelously in the telling of this tale.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (June 21, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	John Milliken Thompson
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of another Virginia mystery involving brothers, but in current setting: The Legal Limit by Martin Clark

Bibliography:

• The Reservoir (DATE)

Nonfiction:

• Florida and the Southeast (1997)
• America’s Historic Trails (2001)
• National Geographic Guide to America’s Outdoors: Southeast (Nature Adventures in Parks, Preserves, Forests, Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness Areas) (2001)
• Wildlands of the Upper South (2004)
• America’s Western Edge (2005)
• The National Geographic Almanac of American History (2005) (with James Miller)
• Our National Parks: Tours with Rangers (2006)
• National Geographic Traveler: Washington, DC, 4th edition (February 2011)

“Irish nor English, Jerseyman nor bushborn nor savage, not Roman or Episcopalian or apostate, Judah was the wilderness on two legs, mute and unknowable, a blankness that could drown a man.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (APR 8, 2011)

Michael Crummey opens his new novel with Judah, sitting in a “makeshift asylum cell, shut away with the profligate stink of fish that clung to him all his days.” Only Mary Tryphena Devine comes near him these days, urging him to take a little food – or, if he doesn’t want to eat – to just die. Judah’s story is the primary, yet not the only otherworldly theme that glides through this multigenerational family saga, touching everybody in its wake. The novel is set in one of Newfoundland’s wild and rough eastern coastal regions, and, more specifically, in two remote fishing villages, Paradise Deep and The Gut.

Crummey, himself a Newfoundlander, has written this highly imaginative, superbly crafted folkloric tale that blends with great ease strands of supernatural magic of old fairy tales and beliefs into a chronicle of the early colonists’ precarious existence. Spanning over one hundred years, starting with the early eighteen hundreds, the author spins a tall tale of life in the early settler communities, that delves deep into personal relationships, social strife between the Irish and West-country English, the political and the religious powers, competing for influence and control.

In the first few pages, Crummey hints at important future developments, but then he quickly moves back in time to events when Mary Tryphena was a child and a whale had beached itself on the shore of Paradise Deep. The villagers, starving and desperate for food after another meager fishing season and an icy-cold winter of scarcity, cannot believe their luck. However, when they carefully cut through the animal’s flesh, a human-like body emerges from its belly. Devine’s Widow (Mary Tryphena’s grandmother and one of the most powerful personalities in The Gut) while preparing the body for burial, turns him over, and the strange, completely white figure starts coughing up water, blood and small fishes…! He cuts an unusual figure among the locals and he stinks of sea and rotten fish, a smell that is so overpowering that nobody wants to be near him…

The locals, God-fearing yet illiterate, and with the priest not due for a visit for some time, cannot agree which of the biblical names belongs to the “story with the whale” and as a compromise decide on “Judah.” While suspicious of him from the outset – not just physically is he an oddity, being completely white from head to toe, he also appears unable (unwilling?) to speak – the villagers, who have a tendency towards superstition, start blaming the intruder for all the mishaps that are befalling them. Until, that is, when Judah joins one of the fishing boats and leading them to the most amazing catch. Is this a one-off occurrence or will the fate of the poor fishermen from The Gut finally change for the better?

Judah’s survival is intricately linked to the Devine family, the most important clan in The Gut. Paradise Deep is controlled by the Seller clan, wealthy merchants who own more than their share and exert their power over the communities by any means, legal or not. The clans’ disputes and quarrels go back to a personal fight between Devine’s Widow and King-me Sellers, the matriarch and patriarch of the respective clan, but over the generations it expands into a constant rivalry between the Irish and West-Country English, between poor illiterate fisher folks living in The Gut and the merchants/land owners from Paradise Deep. Crummey weaves such an intricate six generation portrait of the two clans and the people around them that it is difficult to go into details without revealing too much of the events or the many individuals that stand out as full-fleshed characters. For his realistic and factual backdrop, the author touches the political developments on Newfoundland, such as rise of the first fishermen’s union at the turn of the nineteenth century, and far away places where some of the younger generation escape to or fight in the first World War. Nonetheless, he never loses his focus on the local people of the two villages and, especially the women who carry a tremendous burden to ensure the survival of the next generation.

To help the reader through the myriad of names and characters that come to life in the story, a genealogical chart is displayed upfront with the names of the numerous offspring through the six generations. I can only recommend, however, not to look at this chart, if at all possible, prior to at least reaching part 2 of the novel. While such a chart is useful to remind us who is related to whom, and in what generation we find ourselves, it does hint at some surprising cross connections that are better discovered in due course as it will take away some of the pleasure in discovering and reading this rich tale.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 78 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press; Reprint edition (March 29, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Michael Crummey
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another “whale” of a tale: Fluke by Christopher Moore Another “folklore” novel: The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Bibliography:

• Flesh and Blood: Short Stories (1998; 2003)
• River Thieves (2001)
• The Wreckage (2005 in Canada only)
• Galore (2011) Commonweatlth Prize

Poetry:

• Arguments with Gravity (1996)
• Hard Light (1998)
• Emergency Road Assistance (2001)
• Salvage (2002)
• Went With (2007)
• Under the Keel (April 2013)

“Basically, my relationship with Ivona had been from the start nothing other than a story, a parallel world that obeyed my will, and where I could go whenever I wanted, and could leave when I’d had enough.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (MAR 23, 2011)

The title and the description on the back cover suggest a familiar story of adultery as in the movie The Seven Year Itch: husband, getting bored after seven years of marriage, looks for a younger and prettier woman elsewhere. And indeed there is something of this. But Swiss author Peter Stamm goes out of his way to minimize any normal comparisons between the women. Alexander, the first-person narrator, is married to Sonia, a fellow architect, but more brilliant, more determined than he is, from a wealthier family, beautiful, and self-assured. The other woman, Ivona, is actually an earlier acquaintance, an undocumented Polish worker, dowdy, inarticulate, religious, not at all attractive, yet familiar: “I had known her body in all its details, the heavy, pendulous breasts, the rolls of fat at her neck, her navel, the stray black hairs on her back, and her many moles. I knew how she smelled and tasted, how her body responded to touch. I knew its repertoire of familiar and less familiar movements.”

The story does not even focus on that particular seven-year mark, but is a series of reminiscences, each about seven years apart, stretching back for 21 years in all, to around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of its action takes place in Munich, where Alexander and Sonia meet as students. It opens at an art gallery, where an old artist friend of Sonia’s, Antje, is having an exhibition. Antje had been partly responsible for bringing the two of them together, and now asks Alexander how they are doing. His answers over the next day or so take up most of the book, as he confesses his dithering between Sonia and Ivona before his engagement and his comparatively rare encounters after that time. Much of his story is not about Ivona at all, but concerns their marriage and the growth of their architectural firm, which at its height had over twenty employees. This was of special interest to me, since I was once engaged to an architect much like Sonia, and Stamm’s evocation of this world seems utterly authentic — though I admit that my coincidental identification may well bias my appreciation of the book.

If Sonia is by far the more dominant of the two women, if Alexander makes no claims to love the homely Ivona, and if the sex is not particularly good in either relationship, then what is his defection about? For whatever reason, Stamm seems reluctant to pin it down, leaving readers to make up their own minds. Alexander’s first encounters with Ivona, though stopping short of consummation, seemed to me so twisted that I thought of heading my Amazon review PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS. This soon passed, however, and I wondered if the answer might be social: “I could understand Ivona’s feelings. I too was moving in a circle I didn’t belong in, only, unlike her, out of cowardice or opportunism I had managed to come to terms with it. The splendid family holidays with Sonia’s parents, the visits to concerts and plays, the male gatherings where fellows smoked cigars and talked about cars and golf, they were all part of another world.” Or was it simply the difficulty of being married to somebody so high on her pedestal that you can only look up admiringly from below?

I now think it mostly has to do with Alexander himself, and his need for some part of his life that is free from high expectations and where he is in control; architecture, after all, is all about control. His marriage to Sonia is actually a pretty good one; not only is she a wife whom any husband could be proud of, they soon settle into a relationship of close friendship, comfort, and mutual respect. In their architectural partnership, she does the designs and he supervises construction, a practical arrangement for both of them, but one which emphasizes their underlying differences: “I remembered listening once to Sonia explaining to a school janitor why the bicycle racks couldn’t be made any bigger. She talked about proportions and forms and aesthetics. He looked at her in bafflement, and said, but the kids have got to park their bikes somewhere. Sonia had looked at me beseechingly, but I had just shrugged my shoulders, and said the janitor was right. She shook her head angrily and stalked out without another word.”

This novel, in an excellent low-key translation by Michael Hoffmann, is nicely bound with a pale grey cover. In many ways, it is a pastel book, a domestic story where nothing earth-shaking happens. The few surprises along the way are gear-shifts rather than changes of direction. For a long time, I was chugging along in what, in Amazon terms, would be solid four-star territory. But I was getting attached to the characters, especially to Alexander despite his stupidities. And certainly drawn into their world. Then at the very end, when we have returned to the present time-frame, the author does something surprising. No, not a coup-de-théâtre, a quiet sigh rather than a loud Wow. But something so true that it authenticates everything that had gone before. I realized that, despite the lack of drama, I had been reading a portrait of a marriage so real that it brought tears to my eyes. So five stars at the end, absolutely. Read this, but give it time.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (March 22, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Peter Stamm
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More novels that explore marriage: The Women by T.C. Boyle My Wife’s Affair by Nancy Woodruff The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

Translated Bibliography:

• Agnes (1998)
• Unformed Landscape (2001; 2005 in US )
• In Strange Gardens and Other Stories (2003; 2006 in US)
• On a Day Like This (2006; 2008 in US )
• Seven Years (2009l March 2011)

“ ‘No relationship with me, I’m already married.’… All at once the double meaning jumps out at him. The psychoanalyst laughs out loud.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 4, 2011)

Thomas loves Louise, a lawyer. Louise is married to Romain, a scientist. Louise loves Thomas. Yves, a writer, loves Anna. Anna, a psychiatrist, loves Yves, a man she finds “unsettling.” Anna is married to Stan, an ophthalmologist. Thomas is Anna’s psychoanalyst. No, this isn’t an LSAT logic problem or a torrid soap opera. These are the characters that comprise Le Tellier’s urbane, au courant Paris comedy, a droll romp that is nevertheless intimate and complex within the playful pages.

Lots of light, saucy bon mots flash through this story (“Everyone should have analysis. It should be compulsory, like military service used to be.”  Or, “She sees herself as slim, lives being slim as synonymous with being rigorous. Gaining weight, she is convinced, is always a lapse.”), but there are also small earthquakes that convulse now and then. At 228 pages and 51 short chapters (and an epilogue), most chapters are structured in pairs, such as “Thomas and Louise” and “Anna and Yves,” alluding to couples, as well as Abkhazian dominoes, a game that is close to Yves’ heart. “He is a writer who has readers, but not a true readership.” He may obscure himself further by titling his next novel after that titular game.

Throughout the wry novel, the coupling and uncoupling of husbands, wives, and lovers overlap and cross, and sometimes meet. The themes and ideas may be common but the characters are genuine and close. The dialog is inspired, not prepared or clichéd. The prose slides creamily off the tongue, like a filled croissant, and is peppered with paradox and the double entendre, pointed aphorisms and learned allusions. And life can be turned into aphorisms, instructs Thomas to his patient, Anna, a way of fixing life into words.

“…what attracts us about another person has had more to do with what makes them fragile…Love is kindled by the weakness we perceive, the flaw we get in through, wouldn’t you say?”

There’s a gravitas that manifests subtly, an accretion of observations and details that examine love from every curve and angle. You can visualize this dialog-heavy book as a film, or a play. There is no way not to compare Le Tellier to the best of Woody Allen–a little bit Lubitsch, a little bit Jewish, some Annie Hall, some Stardust Memories, a profusion of Freud. But this is French, and you will imagine that you are walking through Jardin du Luxembourg or running across the Quai des Grands Augustins on a grey, Paris day. It’s eclectic, though, with American as well as other infusions. The savvy prose serves up a savory atmosphere, drifting through outdoor cafés and public squares. Some of the time, though, you are indoors, near a bookcase, and often a bed…

Cultural icons, such as François Truffaut, are included, not just as a reference, but as meaning to the story at hand. Thomas emails Louise, after they first meet, that doesn’t a scene in Stolen Kisses anticipate the future of email? But the scene he shares, in detail, is the buttering of his desires.

There is even a postmodernish, double-column chapter; on one side is Yves’ dry, but increasingly inventive lecture of the word “foreign,” with emphasis on the fact that the French have only one word for it, l’etranger. Juxtaposed on the other side is the cuckolded Stan, seated in the back row, agonized in a stream of invective consciousness. The linguistic stunt work by the author is more than a showcase; it concludes in a probing, poignant place of alarm and discovery.

The characters in these triangular love affairs share universal elements– sex and death, guilt and virtue, grief and ecstasy, illusion and certainty, passion and ennui. And, of course, love. But enough about love.

Eminent credit goes to Adriana Hunter for her luminous translation from the French.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (February 1, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Hervé Le Tellier
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Guy Savage’s review of Electric W
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More “love:” The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

Partial Bibliography:

• A Thousand Pearls (for a Thousand Pennies) (1998;  2011 in US)
• The Sextine Chapel (2005; 2011 in US)
• The Intervention of a Good Man (2007;  2011 – Kindle)
• Enough About Love (2009; 2011 in US)
• A Thousand Pearls (for a Thousand Pennies) (2009; 2011 in US)
• Electric W (2011; June 2013 in US)

“As for me, I made myself scarce. I had enough problems with it at school, and it was too much to cope with dashed expectations on the faces of strangers. It wasn’t my fault that I had grown up. I couldn’t stay a seven year-old forever, trapped on the pages of the books. I was still just about recognizable as the boy in Lila’s drawings and the comparison was not a favorable one. I came to learn the national characteristics of disappointment: the resentfulness of the English, the downright hostility of the French, who looked as if they might ask for their money back, the touching sadness on the gentle faces of the Japanese – such pain that I both was and wasn’t the boy in the books. I was Dorian Gray in reverse: my attic was in every bookshop in the world.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (DEC 24, 2010)

The first half of Mr. Toppit takes its readers for a grand ride. This debut novel, written by Charles Elton, has had quite a following in the United Kingdom and has just been released in the United States. It is a novel about speculation and conjecture, the ‘what ifs’ of life, and wishing things might have been different. Mostly though, it is about Luke Hayman and how he became immortalized in his father’s Hayseed Chronicles as the boy who eluded Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood.

Arthur Hayman has led a somewhat ordinary life working in the film industry as a writer of small scenes for mostly grade B movies. At the same time, he has been writing a series of books for older children called The Hayseed Chronicles. The series is about Luke Hayseed and how he has tricked and evaded the evil Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood. Mr. Toppit is not only evil but he is cruel, invincible, invisible and, like the worst dreams of a child’s nightmares, ever-present. There are five books in the series and, though Arthur has a publisher, these books have not done very well and are not well known.

One day, Arthur is walking down the street and gets run over by a truck. Laurie Clow, an American tourist in London who has a part-time radio show in Modesto, California, sees what happens and goes to Arthur’s side. She stays with him until he’s placed in an ambulance. Arthur dies from the injuries and, somehow, Laurie manages to get herself invited to the family home and becomes an indispensable fixture. There is Martha, Arthur’s flaky and obtuse wife, with secrets up the yin-yang. Then there is Rachel who, left out of her father’s books entirely, lives her life abusing drugs and experimenting with life on the wild side. Luke, up to this time, has lived his life as a relatively conforming child. He has not yet become famous. This is about to change. There is also Lila, a laugh-out-loud funny character, who has been the artist for the books. She hates Laurie and will go to any length to try and get her out of Hayman’s home. Lila is histrionic and a hypochondriac, a mixture that garners some good laughs.

As the book opens Luke is twelve years old and Rachel is sixteen. Laurie returns to Modesto and decides to read the books live on her radio show. This creates a sensation and the books become mega-sellers – think Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh. Charles Elton, during an interview, stated that one of the reasons he wrote this book is that he wondered what happens to the characters that books are based upon in mega-sellers such as Winnie the Pooh. Meanwhile, Laurie moves to San Francisco and then Los Angeles where she has a syndicated television show. Her contact with the Haymans is much less but they live with the fallout of their instant fame.

Once Laurie reaches her zenith of fame, the book slows down and the story becomes more drawn out and less immediate. The reader is privy to Luke’s struggle with his own identity as Luke Hayman and NOT Luke Hayseed. He spends a lot of time trying to track down his sister who is often out of contact. He reflects on how his life would have been different if he was not known as Luke Hayseed. And why did his father write just about him? There was plenty of room to share with his sister. By the time the book ends, Luke is a university student and Rachel is a young woman. Family secrets abound and many of them are revealed in part two. However, there are parts of the book that are just left hanging and don’t come together, parts I was waiting to learn about – like Laurie’s relationship with her friend that went sour. What happened with Martha and Ray?

The book is immensely readable. I went through the close to 400 pages in three days and felt like I really had a sense of each character. Charles Elton is an author to watch. He has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a wonderful gift of imagination.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 32 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press; 1 edition (November 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	BookPage interview with Charles Elton
EXTRAS:	Excerpt (see look inside on publisher’s page)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Not the same, but still a childhood affected by a fictional hero: Dream City by Brendan Short

Bibliography:

• Mr. Toppit (2009; November 2010 in US)

“Why write about Montaigne?

One answer is that he is one of the most appealing, likeable writers ever to have lived. Another is that he helped make us the way we are. Had he not existed, or had his own life gone slightly differently, we too would be a little bit different. ”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (OCT 20, 2010)

I was first introduced to Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) about thirty years ago. I was in graduate school. I don’t remember the class, nor the other required readings. But I remember Montaigne. I eventually dropped out of graduate school, but Montaigne stayed with me. It was, perhaps, and I honestly mean this, the most important contribution to my intellectual development from that period. If not the most important, certainly the most long-standing. In fact, when this book came to my attention, How to Live, and I received the reader’s advance copy, I happened to be reading Montaigne yet again, as I have done off and on since we were introduced.

I say, since we were introduced purposely, for that is what it felt like at the time. I read him in that class and recall thinking, Who is this, this kindred spirit, this wise new friend? And the magic of that moment continues to this day. I read him still. I read him this morning. Over and over again, I turn to my old French friend. Let me tell you about him.

It was the 28th of February, 1571, the thirty-eighth birthday of this unusually educated nobleman, Michel de Montaigne, and he had moved a chair, a desk and a thousand books into the château tower of his family estate in Bordeaux. Here, as he writes, he took up a contemplative life of reflection and self-examination, residing “among the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, already more than half expired.” He figured that he’d spent the first half of his life in public service, of which he had grown “long weary” –he’d had a successful career as a Counselor in the Bordeaux Parliament and in recognition of his services was awarded the highest honor of the French nobility. He determined that he would spend the second half trying to figure himself out, using, as he put it, the pen as the vehicle of portraiture. It didn’t happen quite so cleanly, as his wisdom and experience was called upon repeatedly throughout the ensuing years. Yet, in the process of his self study, he would single-handedly create a new literary genre, the essay (essayer – to try). Perhaps, of more importance, he would etch out, revise, add, subtract, color, and etch again an enduring profile of what it means to be human, a profile that would influence thought and literature from Shakespeare to Nietzsche (who wrote: “That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this Earth”) to Virginia Woolf and Flaubert. “Read Montaigne…He will calm you,” wrote Flaubert, then added, “read him in order to live.” His influence still pervades today. (And it’s not just writers and thinkers. From his essay, On Fear he struck this note: “The thing I fear most is fear.” Sound familiar?) He was quintessentially human. For instance:

“If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all stepped in it, one as much as another; but those who are aware of it are a little better off–though I don’t know.”

I mentioned above his unusual education. His father. Pierre, had him raised in a peasant village by a wet nurse, so he would develop an appreciation for the humble and the common. When education began, he was returned to the estate where his tutor, Dr. Horst, taught him Latin. Indeed, the household was prohibited from speaking anything but Latin to the young man.

“My father and mother learned enough Latin in this way to understand it, and acquired sufficient skill to use it when necessary, as did also the servants who were most attached to my service. Altogether, we Latinized ourselves so much that it overflowed all the way to our villages on every side, where there still remain several Lain names for artisans and tolls that have taken root by usage. As for me, I was over six before I understood any more French or Périgordian than Arabic.”

Later, Greek would follow, though it never took root, as the language of ancient Rome did. And it was not just the ancient language that took root. Montaigne was steeped in the ideas and philosophies of antiquity. Hence, you are likely to find, upon opening any random page, quotations from Seneca, Lucretius, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, to name a smattering.These are the ancient fields he plowed, seeded and nurtured, the fruit of which would inform his thought and writing. Principal among these influences was Stoicism. For example:

“A painful notion takes hold of me; I find it quicker to change it than to subdue it. I substitute a contrary one for it, or, if I cannot, at all events a different one. Variation always solaces, dissolves, and dissipates. If I cannot combat it, I escape it; and in fleeing I dodge, I am tricky.”

It is here, regarding the ancient thought from which Montaigne drew, I find Bakewell’s book to be most illuminating. The word stoic is part of the common vernacular; less common, but still familiar are the words Epicureanism and Skepticism. It is easy to forget that these words represent ancient schools of thought with doctrines and methodologies long lost to most of us. Not so Montaigne. Writes Bakewell:

“About academic philosophers, Montaigne was usually dismissive: he disliked their pedantries and abstractions. But he showed an endless fascination for another tradition in philosophy: that of the great pragmatic schools which explored such questions as how to cope with a friend’s death, how to work up courage, how to act well in morally difficult situations, and how to make the most of life. These were the philosophies he turned to in times of grief or fear, as well as for guidance in dealing with more minor everyday irritations.”

Mind you, Montaigne is searching for tools among the ancients, implements with which to live a better more examined life. He is not a preacher nor a proper philosopher nor academic. He is like us, and wants to understand what it means to be alive. All the better for the reader.

I have often, through the years, wondered how one might organize a biography of Montaigne. Imagine a subject who, over more than two decades writes of virtually everything that comes to his mind, revising and editing thousands of pages up until the day he died. So it was equal parts curiosity and thirst that I picked up Bakewell’s book. I hesitate to call it a biography, though it contains all the elements of biography: history, background, genealogy and so forth. But the book reads more like a streaming narration of an intelligent reader reading Montaigne, a sort of parallel reading experience. Like the subject, rambling, introspective, discursive and curious, How to Live, does not follow a strict chronology or sequence of events. She does not attempt to “straighten him out,” but rather compliment his idiosyncratic path.

For instance, she educates us on the religious wars which surrounded him. Though gruesome and horrid, Montaigne never writes about them specifically; instead he uses them as a platform to explore intolerance and persecution. “Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.” She tells us raging plagues and infestations, the background upon which he philosophizes on death and mediates on immortality (or lack thereof). “If we have known how to live steadfastly and tranquilly, we shall know how to die in the same way.”

How does one write a book about a man who admits, “My mind does not always move straight ahead but backwards too. I distrust my present thoughts hardly less that my past ones and my second or third thoughts hardly less than my first.” He is the quintessential moving target. In turn, How to Live I is something of a meditation on a meditation. Bakewell has taken twenty major themes from Montaigne and organized his thoughts, such as they are, roaming and far from definitive, into chapters around these themes. Each theme is presented as a response to the question, How to Live? They are:

Don’t worry about death
Pay attention
Be born
Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted
Survive love and loss
Use little tricks
Question everything
Keep a private room behind the shop
Be convivial; live with others
Wake from the sleep of habit
Live temperately
Guard your humanity
Do something no one has done before
See the world
Do a good job, but not too good a job
Philosophise only by accident
Reflect on everything; regret nothing
Give up control
Be ordinary and imperfect
Let life be its own answer

Bakewell has done a yeoman’s job of organizing Montaigne’s thoughts along these themes. It is a creative approach and affords one a perspective on the man that is hard to gain in the ramblings of the essays. It is a compliment to the work, certainly. But just that, a tangential and redacted compliment. Part of the lasting nature of the man and his thoughts is the fluidity of his presence in his writing. He heads in a direction as his curiosity leads him, only to switch course, express doubt (“What do I know?), head off on another tangent, then perhaps hone back in on his target. Perhaps not. One will be reading an essay on a stated subject, for instance, and he will pursue the subject, then go off on a direction; we will chase him, attempt to keep up. Perhaps he will circle around to the subject. Perhaps not. His humanness confronts us on every page and we consequently relish in the connection. I was reading To Philosophize is to learn to die this morning. My wife said, what’s so funny? There was no way I could explain how I was reduced to giggling while reading a work of the late Renaissance, by a nobel frenchman sitting in his castle thinking about death and how to “philosphize” about it. How does one possibly convey how that happens? You can’t. You have to experience it and when you do, it is wonderful.

There is an argument to be made that Montaigne was the first modern man, if by modernity we accept the premise that the modern man/woman is given to self-reflection in a fashion that escaped our ancestors. Augustine perhaps invented the auto-biography. But the good Saint wrote with a purpose beyond himself. He was not self-reflective in the modern sense. He was a man with a message, but like so many writers and thinkers through the ages we call dark and mediveal, Augustine was writing with a goal beyond the self. Montaigne set that tradition on its ear. His most immediate literary predecessor, Plutarch, wielded immense influence over him. “I think I know him even into his soul,” wrote the frenchman. Some say Plutarch, not Montaigne, invented the essay and there is some credence to that. But Montaigne found inspiration in Plutarch from which he devised his own lasting and unique scheme of literary pursuit. He became the modern man on the shoulders of Plutarch. Regardless, Bakewell helps us understand, not only the influence Montaigne left behind, but the ones upon which he took action. How to Live is very interesting, even helpful, in this regard. I worry, though, that in assembling Montaigne in this fashion, under this worrisome self-help title, one looses the magic. Only Montaigne can pull the curtain back to reveal himself. The magic is the revelation that words can make for immortality and that the immortals still talk to us. It is the fundamental difference between original and secondary texts.

Let’s close by reading Montaigne’s preface to the Essay’s, To the Reader:

“This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. I have had no thought of serving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose. I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have had of me more complete and alive.

If I had written to seek the world’s favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray. My defects will here be read to the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the public has allowed. Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in sweet freedom of nature’s first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.

Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.

So farewell. Montaigne, this first day of March, fifteen hundred and eighty.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (October 19, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Sarah Bakewell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

• The Smart: The True Story of Margaret Caroline Rudd and the Unfortunate Perreau Brothers (2002)
• The English Dane: A Life of Jorgen Jorgenson (2005)
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts to Answer It (October 2010)

“She takes aggressive strides, as if kicking the air. She is oblivious to the fact that, crossing the street she now walks along, she will be hit by an oncoming car. And that while she is feeling the pain of just having turned sixteen, she will soon be feeling a different pain, in some ways a more accessible one: that of her right leg breaking in three places.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUN 22, 2010)

David Trueba has written an interesting intergenerational family saga translated from the Spanish by Mara Lethem. At nearly 600 pages, this book is truly a tome. Learning to Lose follows the adventures of 16-year-old Sylvia, a high school student, her father Lorenzo, and her paternal grandfather, Leandro. The book is also about a professional soccer player named Ariel. The story is told in chapters that alternate between the perspectives of these four characters.

As the book opens, Aurora, Sylvia’s grandmother, breaks her hip. Leandro takes her to the hospital for care. While he is waiting with her he peruses the sex pages in their daily newspaper. A particular advertisement about a “chalet” draws his attention. He has no formal intention of visiting this brothel but he ends up there anyway. Thus begins a sex addiction that escalates out of control. Leandro is obsessed with a particular Nigerian prostitute and is spending down his retirement in almost daily visits to her.

Leandro was once an aspiring pianist who tried to make it professionally but did not succeed. Instead, he ended up teaching piano at a prestigious Spanish school. The book talks about many conductors, pianists, and professionals in the music field.

Sylvia is sixteen and very insightful for her age. As she is crossing the street one evening, she is run over by 20-year-old Ariel, a professional soccer player who has recently immigrated to Spain from Argentina. Sylvia ends up with some contusions and a broken leg. Later on, Ariel and Sylvia begin a passionate affair. The book discusses a lot about soccer and this will appeal to soccer fans.

Lorenzo has just killed his cheating ex-business partner, Paco, when the book opens. Because of Paco, Lorenzo has been wiped out financially. Lorenzo is Sylvia’s primary parent, as his wife has left him for another man and Sylvia resides with him. We are privy to Lorenzo’s concerns about the police and his thoughts about the murder. We are voyeurs to his somewhat kinky sexual appetites. He worries about Sylvia but is not good at connecting with her. Lorenzo begins to date Daniela, a childcare worker in his building.

The novel raises interesting questions about morality, ethics, loss, love, and intimacy. The narrative is a bit blunted and not as fluid as I would have liked. I presume this is due to the translation. However, the reader will be kept turning pages, wondering whether Lorenzo will be caught by the police. Will Aurora find out about Leandro’s sex addiction? Will Sylvia and Ariel’s affair become public? If so, will they be harmed since Sylvia is a minor? There is a lot going on in this novel and I look forward to reading more of David Trueba’s work.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (June 22, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on David Trueba
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel set in Madrid: Child’s Play by Carmen Posada

Bibliography:

• Learning to Lose (June 2010 in English)