THE MAGUS

The Magus, John Fowles, Little Brown and Company, 1965, 582 pp

At last I have read this iconic book, actually thanks to a man my age who recently joined one of my reading groups. He has a basement full of books from the 1960s and 1970s and seems to want to revisit those years of his reading life. He talked the group into reading The Magus, which he considers to be great literature.

I was expecting something magical and mysterious. I should have known, from The French Lieutenant's Woman, but the title threw me off. It is in fact a psychological coming of age romance. Because it is set mainly in Greece, I felt I was in familiar territory, having read much fiction set there as well as Will Durant's The Life of Greece.

Fowles' writing impressed me and if he dragged out his story for quite a bit too long, the writing kept me going. His many twists and turns left me continuously wondering where he was going with his plot which did make the book mysterious.

Ultimately though, a young man who is full of himself, a wanker as the British say, has to grow up, stop treating women as mere sexual objects, and learn to be accountable for his actions. Along the way, he acts like a Philip K Dick character, refusing to be denied but freaked out by the machinations of the Magus. The Magus himself came across to me in the end as someone like the Wizard of Oz crossed with that guy in Iris Murdoch's Flight From the Enchanter.

So I was left underwhelmed but like Nicholas (the wanker), I certainly knew I had lived through Something. Then there is the famous indeterminate ending with that piece of fourth century Latin poetry (now easily found translated on the internet.) Even John Fowles changed the ending in his 1977 revision (though in my opinion, not for the better.) But all that is just the sort of thing reading geeks love, myself included.

I would have loved this book had I read it in 1965 when I was 18. If you are in your late teens or early twenties, read it now! It is much better than Twilight but the two books have similarities.

(The Magus, the revised version, is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. For the original version check your local library or used book stores.)

THE STRANGER'S CHILD

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The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst, Alfred A Knopf, 2011, 435 pp

Here is another book I might have put off reading had it not been for The Tournament of Books, in which it went up against Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. I struggled with both books and I suppose the struggles were good for me as a reader. Bottom line: I did not really like The Stranger's Child.

It is carefully and exhaustively written, so just reading the prose was somewhat enjoyable. Hollinghurst covers more than four generations of British history including two world wars, telling the much worked over tale of the decline of the gentry. 

Cecil Valance, the character around whom this long, somewhat disjointed novel is built, was a poet. I have my own issues with poetry, basically feeling that like classical music, its day is long over. The heyday of poetry was probably during the Golden Age of Greece and, in my opinion, a love of writing, reading, and reciting poetry coincides with the absence of recording technology and radio. Possibly the best contemporary poetry is that created by rappers.

But I digress.

Cecil Valance was also bisexual and his two favorite lovers were George and his sister Daphne. All manner of confusing and mysterious sexual affairs litter this novel, demonstrating that such things cross class lines (no new news there), while acting as a quasi-historical account of homosexuality, mostly male, over the last hundred years.

Another theme or thread, the one I enjoyed most, concerns the art of biography. In face, Hollinghurst in his coy but mannered way, delves so deeply into the methods, combativeness, and trials of biographers that I predict he will write one himself.

I recalled this author's 2005 Booker Prize winner, The Line of Beauty, as a good, gripping read. But when I looked back at my short recap, it sounds pretty tepid.

If I had been the judge in that round of TOB, I would have given it to The Tiger's Wife simply because Obreht's wild and messy novel is wild and messy. Hollinghurst's characters are wild and messy but his writing in The Stranger's Child almost strangled me.

(The Stranger's Child is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS

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The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, McKay Publishing, 1957, 240 pp

For anyone born in the mid-twentieth century, The Hidden Persuaders is an intriguing look at the beginnings of advertising and marketing as it influenced our wants and needs, our purchasing decisions, our political views and even (possibly a stretch) led to our current economic situation. I read it as research for my memoir. I was 10 years old when it came out and I remember my dad talking about the book.

Some people call Vance Packard the first Malcolm Gladwell. I have not read Gladwell because I had the idea that he was a sociology-light sort of guy, but perhaps now I will check out one of his books. Packard's book opened my eyes to a sinister trend in which we all participate.

I already knew that after World War II, when American industry was at peak production due to the demands of war, manufacturers needed new markets for products. The answer was to get the American public to consume like never before. The obstacles were our Puritan background and the effects of the Great Depression, both of which created habits of making do on less, making things last and living simply.

So retail sales people and advertising agencies teamed up with psychiatry to use our deepest wants, fears, and insecurities as motivations that would get us to buy stuff. "Planned obsolescence" (you know: you feel you must have the latest smart phone, tablet, car, appliances, not to mention fashion) has led us to a practically obsolete planet.

Though the reprint I read had ridiculous amounts of typos and though Packard's style is pretty dry, it was quite a sobering read.

(The Hidden Persuaders is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

POOR NO MORE

Poor No More, Robert Ruark, Holt Rinehart & Winston Inc, 1959, 832 pp

Robert Ruark's earlier top 10 bestseller was Something of Value, 1955. It told the story of the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya from the viewpoint of white British farmers in that country and I enjoyed it as both a novel and a historical perspective.

Poor No More, the # 10 bestseller of 1959, is more than 50% longer, set in the world of United States business, finance and investing, and the main character is basically a scoundrel. Sam Price grew up dirt poor in the South, determined to break out of poverty. So he did, at the expense of every positive human trait he had.

Ruark lets a good 100 pages go by before the plot takes hold. He then fills another 732 pages showing how Sam lost his innocence as he gave up on being a decent person and took to using any break than came along to his own advantage. He grew addicted to the excitement, the stress, and the material rewards of business, becoming an extremely wealthy man. But he never learned a single lesson as to why he was so alone in the world, since he preferred being free to do as he pleased to finding any happiness with other people. 

Because this is not an original tale, though one that Americans seem to like reading over and over, and because Ruark gives it a few different twists but takes much too long to bring it to an underwhelming conclusion, I enjoyed it more than 50% less than Something of Value. Ruark was evidently trying to be Hemingway in the earlier novel. In this one, he took after Theodore Dreiser and John O'Hara. Too bad he did not figure out how to be Robert Ruark.

(Poor No More is out of print and I could not even find it in any of my local libraries. It is available from used book sellers.)

THE WORLD JONES MADE

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The World Jones Made, Philip K Dick, Ace Books, 1956, 199 pp

Jones, first name Floyd, is able to see the future. He is a tormented misfit in a strictly controlled postnuclear world. The military controls society and it is forbidden to even dream of a better world. The ruling philosophy, Relativism, has made right and wrong irrelevant; basically anything goes except for dreaming about the good old days or even about any different kind of days.

Cussick works in security for the FedGov and comes into conflict with Jones, because the man has somewhat unintentionally become a messiah of forbidden dreaming and must be stopped. When Cussick's new wife joins the cult of Jones, life becomes seriously difficult.

That is the plot as far as I could tell. The World Jones Made is Dick's second novel and shares some clunky attributes such as wooden characters and dialogue but lacks the excitement of Solar Lottery. I found no character I could really place my hopes on. His theme of moral ambiguity becomes the state of the world in this story; even Jones is caught up in it.

Despite mutants being developed for life on another planet and weird protoplasmic, cloud-like entities, despite a possibly happy ending for some and disaster for others, I was a bit bored while reading. That is not to say Dick was unable to see the future himself. The world he creates has alarming parallels to our current one, including the probability that those in charge don't really know what they are doing.

Possibly The World Jones Made is too similar to the one we have allowed to come into being.

(The World Jones Made is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BLAME

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Blame, Michelle Huneven, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2009, 291 pp

Because I live in the Los Angeles area, Michelle Huneven, who lives in the suburb of Altadena, is a local author, beloved by the LA Times and friendly to our local bookstores. I've been meaning to read Blame ever since it was published. One of my reading groups picked this title from among my suggestions and thanks to them, I have finally gotten to it.

Often I read as an armchair traveler, visiting locations I will never go to physically. But there is a special pleasure derived from a book set in my own city. No matter how proficiently an author creates a sense of place, I never feel as much "there" as when I have actually been there myself, driven or walked the streets, experienced the weather and the sunsets.

Patsy MacLemoore, history professor and functioning alcoholic, is a character I might have met in Altadena or Pasadena. Her friends, lovers, associate professors, and her eventual husband are all familiar to me. Patsy's downfall and gradual rebirth as a sober, mature and self-confident woman resonated with me and made her a more sympathetic character.

Truthfully, Patsy is not a wholly admirable person. She specializes in bad decisions, she survives at the expense of others, and she does not like people that much, including herself. Thanks to the tragedy which took her down and thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, she does straighten out her life and acquire some likable traits.

Blame has a twist. It is a good one, along the lines of the view that life is neither predestined nor driven by one's choices but is essentially random. Unfortunately I had read some reviews with spoilers, so I knew what was coming. Knowing this and waiting for it did spoil some of my reading experience.

Michelle Huneven has written a novel that covers the human condition, that addresses crime and punishment, and most of all she delves into the female psyche as well as any of my favorite female authors. Without sentimentality or heart-warming conclusions, Patsy's story is not what I would call hopeful but it is true to life and uplifting. She is a survivor because she is intelligent. Intelligence can be a burden and in the end Patsy willingly shoulders it.

(Blame is available in paperback and audio-book by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ADA'S RULES

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Ada's Rules, Alice Randall, Bloomsbury USA, 2012, 334 pp

Any woman who has ever been on a diet would enjoy this book. Ada Howard is a large 220 lb black woman, wife of a preacher at a Nashville church. She carries more weight than her own pounds, running a daycare center, caring for her aging parents, keeping track of her grown daughters, and serving on numerous church committees.

When the sexual side of her marriage to the reverend has dwindled to zero, an invitation to her college reunion brings back memories of Ada's first love, who will be there. She resolves to lose 100 pounds, go to the reunion, and if possible cheat on her husband! It's a big deal because Ada takes her Christianity and its commandments seriously.

I am a rabid fan of Alice Randall's two earlier novels, The Wind Done Gone and Rebel Yell. They were written in a more literary style and in my opinion she is at her best being literary. Ada's Rules is more along the lines of How Stella Got Her Groove Back; a sort of lightweight and light-hearted shout out to women of color and their strengths.

But still, this is Alice Randall who never writes without an issue or two up her sleeve. Here it is the health problems that accompany obesity, especially diabetes, and the eating habits as well as the "food deserts" that plague black populations in America.

I am a white woman who tends to pudge, hence a serial dieter since I turned 30. Alice Randall has also struggled with her weight. The introductory chapter in Ada's Rules is entitled How To Us My, Ada Howard's, Novel As A Diet Book. As far as I know, that's not been done before, and it works: a diet manual that is also a novel.

I couldn't put it down and I felt for Ada as she drank her water, walked her 30 minutes, and watched her portions, but also as she not only transformed  her body but found her true self underneath all that fat. I have never come across a more realistic and sensible book about dieting (which is just another name for eating properly.) 

If you are naturally slim with a high metabolism you are forbidden to read it!

(Ada's Rules is available in hardcover and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LIGHTNING RODS

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Lightning Rods, Helen DeWitt, New Directions Books, 2011, 273 pp

I was prepared to be grossed out by this book. I only read it because it was on the Tournament of Books list, pitted against Salvage the Bones, of all things. After all, reading about a loser who turns his sexual fantasies into a profitable business is not something a self-respecting feminist does.

Who knew that Helen DeWitt has actually created a feminist attack on not only sexual exploitation but also sales as a profession, corporate life, men in general, and much more. She did this without preaching or moralizing, without stridency and with hilarity and great insight.

She probably didn't plan it that way, but she has contributed to my inadvertent 2012 study of satire. If you enjoy a good satire, this is one of a select few.

Joe is a failed salesman who is sitting around doing what bored male losers often do when he gets a lightning bolt to his deadened mind. The result is Lightning Rods, a business which provides anonymous sexual relief throughout the working day to alpha-male employees, thereby saving employers from those dreaded sexual harassment suits.

DeWitt creates this voice, which she gives to Joe and almost everyone else; a sort of deadpan, cliched speak which always begins with "the way I see it is..." Somehow she manages to keep it up throughout the novel without it being annoying. In fact, it becomes part of the hilarity.

Whenever Joe gets stumped he calls in Lucille, one of his lightning rods, who always comes up with a good solution. By the end of the story several women have saved Joe's career, income, and business many times over.

The way I see it is, this book is not for everyone. Judging from some of the reviews, including those of the TOB judge and commentators (all male), I don't think a lot of readers actually get it. If you are squeamish about sex as a commodity, or about sex in general, or if you like your sex combined with romance, Lightning Rods is probably not the book for you.

If however you enjoy seeing male chauvinist pigs taking it in the you-know-where, along with Big Business, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Christian Right, give it a try. I'm glad I did and I doubt I will ever forget it.

(Lightning Rods is available in hardcover, paperback and audio CD by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HENRY AND THE PAPER ROUTE

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Henry and the Paper Route, Beverly Cleary, Harper Collins, 1957, 192 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Good old Henry Huggins wants a paper route but isn't quite old enough. Instead he ends up with a new kitten, names her Nosy, and thereby upsets good old Ribsy.

After another adventure with paper, known as a paper drive, in which Henry's clever advertising method succeeds way beyond his wildest dreams, bad girl Ramona's bad ideas help Henry finally get his route.

I will never forget the summer my sons had a paper route. I worked long hours that summer, including weekends. So the boys often spent weekends in the country with their cousins. Meaning I had to get up at dawn and do their route, often accompanied by thunderstorms. Wish I'd known about Henry back then. Me and the boys would have had some good laughs reading it.

(Henry and the Paper Route is available in paperback on the 8-12 shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

WEST WITH THE NIGHT

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West With the Night, Beryl Markham, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 294 pp

A friend lent me this memoir with the recommendation "this book has been loved, very." Well, I loved it as well. Beryl Markham was a woman who lived large and refused any attempt to mold her.

She was born in England in 1902 but was taken to Kenya by her father when she was four. These were the years when the British East Africa Company had colonized both Kenya and Uganda (according to wikipedia), bringing along British settlers who mainly farmed. Beryl was raised by her father, learning to run wild and hunt with her native childhood friends. She barely ever attended school but was a big reader.

Eventually, after a stint in her late teens and early twenties as a race horse trainer, she became a pilot. She flew all over Africa delivering supplies, performing rescues in the bush, and escorting safari hunters after scouting from the air for big game. 

In the book she relates all of the above in marvelous prose. She clearly loved Africa and horses and flying. She wasn't exactly fearless but she was entirely brave and addicted to adventure.

As for the controversy over who actually wrote the book (some say it was her third husband Errol Trzebinski, a professional ghost writer), who knows. The writing is really quite exceptional; perhaps they collaborated. The slightly ironic tone towards colonialism, the love of Africa, the resigned sorrow over what became of Kenya in her later years, and the flippant attitude towards propriety sounded genuine to me.

Markham had mostly male friends and according to her biographers they were also lovers. She married three times. It all fits. In 1936, she was the first woman to attempt a solo flight west from England to New York. She lived to be 83 and died in Kenya.

I say: what a woman! Reading her memoir got me excited to be alive, renewed my own spirit of adventure and my pride in being a non-conformist.

(West With the Night is available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE AGE OF MIRACLES

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The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker, Random House Inc, 2012, 278 pp

Lotsa hype on this one, which was released today. It will probably do well because the writing is accessible, not too challenging, and the pages whiz by. Also while it is being marketed to adults, I found it equally suitable for readers 14 and up.

Julia is looking back at her life. She was 11 years old when the rotation of the earth began to slow down, the days and nights gradually getting longer, the environment deteriorating and life getting weirder month by month. As adults and the governments of Earth freak out and try to deal with these changes, Julia and her friends proceed through the usual coming of age experiences: soccer, bras, periods, boys.

In her Southern California suburb live regular middle-class families including Mormons, green living types, and the remnants of broken marriages: the standard 21st century American neighborhood in affluent cul de sacs. As things get increasingly strange, conflicts break out and Julia's parents begin to fracture as a couple. So she has plenty to deal with.

I liked the book just fine while I was reading it but by the end I had qualms. Because though all the elements of good fiction are there (characters developing throughout an imaginative plot), it just seemed a little too calm and dreamlike when actually the world was going to hell.

Nothing really bad happens to Julia, except that she and everyone around her lose all of life as they knew it. It's as though the author is breaking it to us gently that the world is going to end. Will we really be that well adjusted if global warming and environmental meltdown is our future?

My conclusion: good read while I was reading it but unbelievable after I finished. A few days later I went to my granddaughter's middle school graduation. As one of the honors students gave her talk, I thought I heard her say that her goal was "to grow up and help fix the mess you have made of our planet." Ha! Now that is my idea of a contemporary eleven-year-old female.

(The Age of Miracles is available in hardcover and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GREAT HOUSE

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Great House, Nicole Krauss, W W Norton & Company, 2010, 289 pp

Nicole Krauss is one author I wish wrote more novels because I enjoy reading her so much. Yet for some reason I have not ever read her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room (2002), which I must remedy right away. And I did not get around to Great House until it was picked by one of my reading groups. Her second novel, The History of Love (2005), was one of my best loved novels ever. I feel a bit abashed for allowing novels of much less quality to crowd out Ms Krauss. It is almost as bad a watching TV instead of reading.

Much has been made of the desk in Great House and it is pivotal to the structure of the novel. In fact, the structure confounded me and several other members of the reading group. Like blind people trying to describe an elephant, we talked among ourselves until we got it mostly figured out.

I wasn't bothered by a persistent feeling of confusion while I read because I like a novel that requires the reader to so some of the work. I wasn't too concerned about how and when the desk went here and there, because the sheer power of the narrative kept me reading closely and as rapidly as I could, wanting to savor the prose but wanting even more to know and understand the characters.

Another odd facet was that not one of the ten or so characters was exactly admirable, though somehow they were all sympathetic. Because of that, the story's somewhat fantastic elements were outweighed by what felt like reality. People suffer and thus lose hold of what makes them admirable. They survive doing whatever holds them together and once in a while achieve understanding and even happiness. 

I think that is pretty true to the way life is. My personal discovery while reading Great House was that I expect people to be admirable, including myself, but the best of us have flaws and the worst of us have good reasons.

Great House is a great book.

(Great House is available in paperback on the shelf and in hardcover as well as eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HENDERSON THE RAIN KING

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Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, The Viking Press, 1959, 341 pp

This is the fifth Saul Bellow novel I have read. I started with his first, The Dangling Man (1944) and moved along. I don't know that he is currently read much (and I don't know why), but I just love his novels. I would think that an author who won three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize should be an American treasure.

Henderson is a character who could only have been created by Bellow. Larger than life, literally and figuratively, socially embarrassing, personally challenged as a husband and a father, and richer than Croesus, he moves through life leaving a wake of disaster.

Due to various events including having become bored of being a pig farmer, Henderson decides to go to Africa, looking for adventure and personal redemption. He finds both, his well-intentioned but calamitous antics among the natives affording him access to tribal royalty.

As I read on, enjoying every page, I began to see that simmering below the picaresque and the improbable was satire of the highest order. Is this the year I learn to understand and appreciate satire? It keeps popping up in the most unexpected novels and I have learned that it must be tastefully done or it drives me mad.

So in 1959, Bellow published a novel that spoofs the mid-life crisis, the search for personal fulfillment, the African safari, and the American can-do attitude. At the same time, Henderson actually resolves his mid-life crisis, finds personal fulfillment, has the best ever safari (yes, there are lion hunts), and refines his American bull-headed ways.

How did he do that?

(Henderson the Rain King is available in paperback and on CD by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LOIS LENSKI'S AMERICAN REGIONAL SERIES

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the link I have used in my reviews of this series is no longer openly available. All of the original hardcover editions of the books are out of print, but can be found in libraries or purchased from used book sellers. This year an indie publisher, Open Road, has begun to release the series in eBook and paperback. So far seven titles have been released. This is good news because the books preserve a way of American life that is virtually gone: different regions of the country with varying ways of life and traditions. Ms Lenski's series is an important historical legacy for children in my opinion.

THE LIST

Bayou Suzette 1943

Strawberry Girl 1945 (Newbery Award 1946)

Blue Ridge Billy 1946

Judy's Journey 1947

Boom Town Boy 1948

Cotton in My Sack 1949

Texas Tomboy 1950

Prairie School 1951

Mama Hattie's Girl 1953

Corn Farm Boy 1954

San Francisco Boy 1955

Flood Friday 1956

Houseboat Girl 1957

Coal Camp Girl 1959

Shoo Fly Girl 1963

To Be a Logger 1967

Most of the titles are reviewed on my blog or soon will be. Just enter the title in the search window and you will find the review. I would be interested to know of anyone who has read these books as a child or is reading them to children now, at home or in schools or libraries. Feel free to leave comments and especially to tell of the reactions of modern kids when they hear or read the books.

FLOOD FRIDAY

Flood Friday, Lois Lenski, J B Lippincott Company, 1956, 94 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

I am almost caught up on reading all the books from Lois Lenski's American Regional Series. Flood Friday is #12 out of 16. (Unfortunately the excellent link to a full Lois Lenski bibliography, which I have included in many of my earlier reviews, has gone to limited access. But I found another link here.) In my next post I will present a complete list of titles in the series.

Flood Friday is another one that stands out in my memory as a favorite; one that I read over and over. When I reread childhood favorites, I always try to figure out why I loved them so.

On Friday, August 19, 1955, after days of relentless rain, the three major rivers in Connecticut flooded, driving many people from their homes. Flood Friday is a fictional account of what this was like for several children in the area. There are dangerous rescues by boat and helicoptor, some houses are completely destroyed, and families are sheltered in school buildings.

Sally and her family are lucky. They still have a home when the water that almost reached their second floor finally recedes. But it is a house soaked and mud covered. While it is being cleaned up and repaired, they stay with neighbors who live on higher ground.

I think what I liked as a child was the sense of danger.  This is one of Lenski's most dramatic stories. Also, the idea of staying at a neighbor's house where one of your best friends lives, camping out on floors and sofas, and eating whatever food can be found, would have been my idea of a great adventure. I bet it was a complete pain in the neck for the adults.

(Flood Friday is out of print in hardcover, but may be found at libraries or from used book sellers. It has recently been released in paperback and eBook by Open Road Media.)

BLUE NIGHTS

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Blue Nights, Joan Didion, Alfred A Knopf, 2011, 188 pp

I went into this book prepared to have trouble with it. It took me close to three years to get over my Mom's death. I have not ever lost a child, despite two close calls. I just did not feel ready to read a book about mourning. I read it for a reading group.

Instead, I fell in love with Joan Didion. Here is a woman who has lived a long life, mostly in her mind. She has achieved respect, a good income, some say notoriety, by the use of her intellect. She had a long and happy marriage with a soul mate. Now she has lost the husband, followed by her adopted daughter who suffered a long illness.

No matter what opinions people may hold about Joan Didion, she has done a lot of living: the highs, the lows, the hard work, the celebrations, and the day-to-day. She is still going in her mid-seventies, still writing her way through her life.

The writing in Blue Nights is perfect for the subjects addressed. It is filled with finely wrought images. She meanders the way memory does with no loss of her signature control. What might be somewhat new is the degree of emotion displayed, never maudlin or self-pitying, but the product of a search deep into her self. Doubts about her suitability for motherhood, failings as a mother, and anxiety over her future run through the pages like a dirge. Yet her pride in that daughter flares like a beacon through the gloom.

I will turn 65 this summer. I don't care what they say about 65 is the new 45 or any such blather. The fact is that I am fortunate to be healthy and fairly fit but my "elderly" years are just around the corner. I have no desire to live past the time when I am still healthy and fit; to be in the hands of doctors; to linger in less than a condition of having my full faculties. I see in the women ten years or more ahead of me that either it comes on gradually or there is a sudden decline.

As I read about Ms Didion's experiences with all this, I felt a sisterhood with her. Fears of walking the streets of New York alone, of falling, of living by herself, are possibly worse outcomes for such a woman than losing the two most important people in her life. Oh my, oh my.

(Blue Nights is available in hardcover, paperback, and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HOME

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Home, Toni Morrison, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 147 pp

A new novel by Toni Morrison is always cause for celebration in my world. In her tenth novel, she follows the life of Frank Money who escaped from his small Georgia town by joining the army, as so many disenfranchised young men have done. He fought in the Korean War and returned to America traumatized and troubled, only to find the same old racism under which he had always lived. 

Adrift, half crazy, he gets a message that his only sibling is at death's door. So he leaves the only person who has brought him peace to go to her rescue. He is an African American Odysseus.

Home is an exercise in restrained understatement, an exposition of Toni Morrison's recurring themes that morphs from the tale of a black man who fought for freedom to the story of a black woman who learns the true price of freedom.

It seems to me that ever since Toni Morrison became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, literary critics have mostly criticized the novels she has written. Paradise-heavy-handed foreshadowing and contrived plot devices; Love-haphazard; A Mercy-fared better but some complained it was too slight. Home has been called too short, too plain, too simple, lacking emotion.

I admire this writer. I am enthralled by anything she writes. Judging by reader review in such places as Amazon and Goodreads, so do most readers. Thankfully she does not write for the critics. She obviously writes for readers.

Home reads like a blues song, like an epic poem. It has a symmetry and balance which sang to me as a former songwriter. It is in fact short, it is not on the surface "luminous" or "lyrical," but like any classic epic or song, it moves along, circles back, and tells of lives being lived and lessons being learned.

THE WAR LOVER

The War Lover, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1959, 404 pp

The trouble with John Hersey is that he always has an agenda in his novels. Plenty of authors who write fiction have an agenda, in fact many of my favorite ones do, but the trick is to embed it so the reader figures it out herself, not to bludgeon us over the head with it.

So The War Lover is clearly anti-war and also carries a large dose of Freudian thinking. Buzz Marrow is an ace pilot, an American flying out of a base in England during WWII. He is a jerk in his personal life who brags about his female conquests every chance he gets. Except when he is flying a bombing mission, he is chronically in a bad mood, drinks heavily, and generally belittles both his superiors and his crew.

Bowman, his co-pilot, tells the story of his initial hero worship for Buzz and its gradual disillusionment as his flying team approaches their final mission. The missions in those months prior to D-Day were so dangerous and nerve wracking that once 25 missions had been accomplished, the pilots and crew were reassigned to something less intense.

Finally there is Boman's English girlfriend Daphne, a combination of English wartime resignation and perfect, understanding, sexy goddess. When Boman isn't stressing out about the next mission, he is driving himself batty over whether or not Daphne is also sleeping with Buzz.

The story has tension by the bucket load. Hersey is actually quite a good writer. But due to the chapters that alternate between a countdown of the final mission and the back story, I was never really sure what time it was. By the end, I didn't care.

The point of all this? Men like Buzz, who love war get off on annihilation more than they do on sex, are in fact impotent, and have a death wish. I guess if the human race were rid of such types, we wouldn't have war? Sorry, Mr Hersey, I don't think it is quite that simple.

(The War Lover is out of print. I found a copy in my local library. It is also available from used book sellers.)

BITTER IN THE MOUTH

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Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong, Random House Inc, 2010, 282 pp

I was completely enchanted by Monique Truong's first novel, The Book of Salt. Of course, it was set in Paris, with a fictional Vietnamese immigrant who served as cook to Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. So tasty.

Bitter in the Mouth is set in the American south, but as I know from William Faulkner, the south can be another country to a northerner like me. In that area of the United States they have their own customs, including a finely honed talent for not noticing the most obvious matters when they don't fit the customs. Women who marry but don't have children, anyone who drinks too much, homosexuality, any other race than white, women who break the mold, are just a few of those matters of which one may not speak, except by way of gossip, alluding, or backstabbing remarks.

Linda grows up knowing she was adopted, knowing that her adopted mother does not love her, depending on her father and uncle for love, closeness and any happiness there is to be found. She is a character for a reader to admire: highly intelligent, a reader herself, in a love/hate relationship with words. She and her best friend Kelly have written letters to each other since grade school, even when they lived just a few houses apart. But Linda has auditory-gustatory synethesia, a "secret sense" that causes her to taste words, sometimes a blessing, often a curse.

Much happens in such a medium length novel. The writing made me feel respected and intelligent as a reader. I love that approbation from a novelist. The coming-of-age, the long slow process of learning about herself, the stratagems Linda adopts in order to survive, are all presented from Linda's viewpoint and revealed to the reader only as she gains understanding about her life and the people in it.

Monique Truong says she used To Kill A Mockingbird and Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms as inspiration as she wrote Bitter in the Mouth. I'm glad I didn't know this before I read the book, but knowing it afterwards explains why I felt so much familiarity with her characters.

The end of the book, where Linda makes her peace with life, was a bit too melodramatic for me. a little too spelled out in terms of what she, and therefore the reader, realized. I would have preferred a few more rough edges remaining. But getting to that point surely made a satisfying and moving story.

(Bitter in the Mouth is available in hardcover, paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE LAST BROTHER

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The Last Brother, Nathacha Appanah, Graywolf Press, 2011, 164 pp (Editions d"Olivier, France, 2007, translated from French by Geoffrey Strachan)

I loved this book. It was a contender in the third round of the Tournament of Books. The writing is stellar; because it was translated from French to English, I am also praising the translation. 

The elderly Raj is looking back on his childhood on the island of Mauritius, set in the Indian Ocean. Due to poverty and an alcoholic, abusive father, childhood was hard enough but when the boy's two brothers died on the same day, life for this nine-year-old child became almost insupportable.

Because of another brutal incident Raj meets David, a child his own age, who becomes both burden and savior for one of the saddest boys I have ever met in a novel.

In less than 200 pages, the author wove a story of loss and longing, survival and guilt, love and friendship, family and social life, disaster and the effects of war. All of that would be enough to weigh down a 600 page tome. Instead she wrote a fairytale set in the intersections between humans and the natural world.

Raj and David are mostly ignorant of the tragedies that brought them together, as was I before I read the book. If you read other reviews, you get too much information in my opinion, which lessens the impact. Raj as an old man finally learns about the historical events of his childhood and thus is delivered from all that he has carried for over 60 years.

(The Last Brother is available in paperback and Google eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)