Nora Ephron Remembers Everything!

She may have titled her latest book I Remember Nothing but nothing could be further from the truth! This woman remembers every little slight and disagreement she ever had with anyone and how these altercations made her feel at the time. The good news is that she doesn't seem to hold a grudge so the overall tone of her book is one of reflection and acceptance.

After having roared my way through Ms. Ephron's previous book, I Feel Bad About my Neck, I expected another laugh a minute from her new one, but such was not the case. This book would make a good addition to a women's history course as Ms. Ephron talks about her first jobs after college graduation doing various gopher work at the New York Post. So much for that prestigious degree in the 1960's!

Still, she worked her way up to writing positions and has managed to build a glorious career for herself writing, directing films and hobnobbing with fascinating folks in the literary and movie stratosphere. Her relationship with the infamous Lillian Hellman made for a very strange chapter.

 Reading this account of Nora Ephron's life made me want to go back and revisit the book Heartburn, about her devastating breakup with husband and father of her children, Bob Woodard. And the film, Hanging Up, which was based on her famous family of siblings, has renewed interest for me now that I read her sister Hallie's blog every day.

Still, for those of us who have the "so many books, so little time" mentality, I guess I'd have to say that you could take a pass on this one. The wait was long but the reading took no time at all.

What else is going on? Tomorrow evening my friend Maryellen and I will traipse over to Sanibel to hear one of our favorites, Anita Shreve. Will tell you all about it this weekend.

I had not one, but two book reviews printed in the Feb. 1st edition of Library Journal. Neither book knocked me out I'm sorry to say, especially about the Mary Gordon for which I had big hopes. Here's the link, scroll down for Gordon and Napolitano.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviewsbook/888567-421/fiction_reviews_february_1_2011.html.csp

Moonlight Mile - third time's a charm

Not once, not twice, no, three times I had to download this book to my nook from my library's ebook website in order to finally read it through without having the license disappear on me. Not that it didn't hold my attention - au contraire, mes amis. It's just that I had way too much going at the same time. Yes, I'm still traveling with Charley in my car, hiking in Galilee with Avram and Ora, learning the history of Nanking with Mo Hayder as I walk, and preparing a book discussion about the fall of Saigon - The Lotus Eaters - for March.

So what a respite it was when I put all the others aside and gave a few concentrated days to my man Dennis Lehane, an author my colleagues and I have had our eyes on since our first Southwest Florida Reading Festival, hmmmm, twelve years ago? Oh dear time, where do you go?

I first met Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro in Lehane's debut novel A Drink Before the War and, though you could satisfactorily read the series in any order as stand alones, I don't recommend that. Much like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, Patrick's and Angela's back story is imperative to understanding how they can be happy, pumped even, in such a dangerous line of work. As a pair of unlikely private detectives, their business thrives on the sick underbelly of the Boston area where mob mentality, political corruption, and gang activity run rampant. Even their best friend and protector is a "killer with a heart."

Readers took a shine to Patrick and Angie so when Lehane broke out of the detective fiction box with psychological thrillers like Mystic River and Shutter Island, fans clamored for more about their favorite sleuths. Lehane was in the middle of his huge breakout historical novel, The Given Day, and had apparently moved on, when we suddenly read that yes, he was working on another Kenzie/Gennaro book.

I believe that I can say unequivocally that Lehane wrote Moonlight Mile to bring a satisfying end to the Patrick/Angie series. This novel is a follow up to Gone Baby Gone, in which four-year-old Amanda McCready was kidnapped from her derelict mother, found by Patrick and Angie, who violently disagreed about the right thing to do for Amanda, and ultimately returned  to a drug addled mom because Patrick opted for the law over Angie's desire to follow her gut feelings.

Twelve years later Patrick and Angie are married and the parents of a four-year-old themselves. They are struggling financially while Angie tries to finish up a masters' degree and Patrick plays at being politically correct, working at a large firm that provides much needed health insurance. I love Lehane for the way he always wears his left-leaning politics on his sleeve. Through his characters and their situations he generously shows readers the perils of trying to do the right thing in a less than perfect world.

When Amanda McCready's aunt contacts Patrick to tell him that Amanda, now a sixteen year old on the fast track to a Harvard scholarship, has gone missing again, Patrick and Angie are sucked back into the old life they've been trying so hard to avoid.

Here's where it gets a bit dicey. Suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride. Sure, it's a tad over the top - the Russian mob, a baby selling ring, a lost Russian Orthodox artifact - but the constant smart ass dialogue and the repartee between Patrick and Angie make it a fun read and, for me at least, a much needed break from the darkness of Vietnam and Israel.

To The End of the Land

This is another book that I would have probably picked up simply based on the beauty of its cover but I had also read about it somewhere among all those blogs I subscribe to. I'll be darned if I can remember where.  My very favorite literary blogger, Sam Houston, http://bookchase.blogspot.com/, wasn't as impressed as I am. As a matter of fact I believe this might be my favorite of the new year.

Mr. Grossman wrote his novel in Hebrew so kudos must also go to translator Jessica Cohen for her lovely conversion to English. I have no doubt that she had a gorgeous book to work with. The language is so emotional, so full of life and feeling and passion, as it should be when one realizes that they are reading a love story that attains epic status as it spans twenty years of the Arab/Israeli conflict.

In 1967 three young people,  victims of a fever that finds them in a near empty hospital in Jerusalem, slowly come to know each other, telling their stories and sharing their loneliness, as war ramps up outside the doors. Avram, Ora and Ilan fall in love, each with the other two, forging a bond that will last the threesome through marriage, childbirth, war and its inevitable suffering, down several generations.

The story unfolds ever so slowly but the pace feels fine because the pleasure is in the words. This is not a novel to be rushed through even though our new county policy means that I'm accruing fines on my library card even as I type!

 Mr. Grossman is a marvel at portraying his female character, Ora. Who says that a man can't feel what a woman feels at childbirth? Grossman disabuses us of that myth when he speaks through Ora about her relationship with her first born, Adam, and then later with her son, Ofar.

That visceral connection is nowhere better imagined than when Ora, finally able to be free of of a constant, overriding dread, as Ofar served his three years in the military, plans for the two of them to take an extended hike in hopes of reconnecting and getting to know each other again.

Ofar, instead, chooses to re up for one more mission. Ora's agony and fear overtake her and, rather than sit at home by the TV waiting for the unimaginable news that she's sure will come, she chooses to leave her home, find Avram,  the victim of post traumatic stress from his experiences as a prisoner of war, and force him to accompany her into the countryside on the hike she was to share with her son.

Through Ora's storytelling, and through flashbacks, readers  begin to appreciate the complicated web that has encircled Avram, Ilan, Ora, and her children for years. This is such a rich novel that I feel inadequate in my ability to do it justice for you. There's no doubt in my mind that this is the author's plea for peace in the Middle East and a love letter to his son Uri who died, if my reading is correct, while  Mr. Grossman was writing this beautiful work. Even one more death is too many.

First Disappointment of the New Reading Year

Nancy Pearl! What are you doing to me? I even bought your latest book because I was so sure I'd want to be writing in the margins and underlining all your recommendations for travel reading (note to Nancy - librarians shouldn't have to buy books but, yes, we do). The best part of the latest issue of Book Lust - Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers, I'm sorry to say, is the title!

I love Nancy Pearl and am thrilled that she was named Library Journal's Librarian of the Year, so I say this with a heavy heart, but I think that the "book lust" theme has worn itself out. It's time for something new. I own all the Book Lust books thanks to friends who have gifted me with them. The latest was just too light. There's no substance here, nothing to tell me why I would like a certain book. Sometimes Ms. Pearl only uses one sentence to describe a book she's recommending. That just leaves me with a little too much guess work. I can do that just by looking through our library catalog.

What I don't feel in this latest iteration is the passion that I've come to expect from the country's favorite shusher. I love the layout of the book. As a matter of fact, I'd like to imitate it but then write my own impassioned plea for travel, travel writing, and reading. The countries represented each form a chapter, in alphabetical order, naturally. Nancy then tells the reader about several titles, fiction and non, that would make good reading if you're never going to leave your couch. Ouch! What about those of us who want to live the experience? Nada. Maybe it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is?

Also decided to see what all the hoopla was about with Henning Mankell. I notice on GoodReads that my friend Maryellen is in the middle of one of his novels right now and will be curious to hear what she thinks. I decided to listen in my car but I've also make a resolution for the new year to only give books on cd one cd's worth of time before I change it for something else. Mankell didn't make the cut. Perhaps the video series is the way for me to proceed.

I decided to switch Mankell for a classic that I had never read before and I'm thrilled with the change. Steinbeck's Travels with Charley is an absolute delight. Written in 1962, you might think it was a more idyllic time and that the book might sound dated but that's not the case at all.
In fact, for those of you readers who even remember 1962, it was a very scary time. The "cold war" was the buzz word - though it certainly beats the current "forever war" - Kruschev came to the UN banging his shoe on the table - my parents discussed, in hushed tones, building a bomb shelter in the back yard and I saw the aurora borealis one night and believed we were in the midst of a nuclear war.

The author's voice is so authentic. I feel as if he's speaking only to me and as a real friend. Charley, his doggy companion on this cross-country road trip, is a person in his own right. Having made some trips in a truck camper myself, not my fondest memories, I can just visualize Steinbeck's description of the interior after a particularly jouncy day over mountainous back roads. Books, papers, and even, want to laugh? the typewriter (yes, that is dated) are strewn from one end of the little home on a truck bed to the other.

This is not a travel guide about great cathedrals and natural wonders, although these things all have their part in the book. This is a travel book about people, those we meet along the road and allow into our lives for a fleeting moment, but remember forever. This is travel writing we can believe in!

Emma Donoghue's Room - No View

Whew! I finally finished listening to Emma Donoghue's remarkable novel Room without having anything else go wrong. Donoghue had me worried. I often think that I should transfer to a library farther from home just so that I can have more time in my car to listen to some of these outstanding books. This is definitely one where the hype was not hyperbole. I surmise that one really MUST listen to this book to get the full impact of the narrator's voice. Five year old Jack is one of my favorite characters in literature now.

This book has been getting a lot of good press and has been a finalist for several awards. The problem with writing about it is that one can't say too much without being a spoiler. Are you familiar with the metaphor of Plato's cave? If so, you will get the gist of this story of a young woman, kidnapped by a monster of a man, and held in a hidden, windowless room for years, to be used as a sexual slave. Raped repeatedly, the young woman gives birth twice, once to a still-born daughter and then to Jack who literally and metaphorically saves her life.

At the mercy of this monster, the young woman has to use every ounce of wit, skill, and courage that she possesses to appease the monster often enough to keep a minimal amount of food coming in, electricity for heat and air, and the very basics needed to raise her son. At the same time, she must make life in this single room seem "normal" to the growing boy, teaching him about a world he may never see, doling out information about "the outside" in bits and pieces as Jack seems able to absorb it. After all, in Plato's cave one's perception of the world is only what one knows for sure is true.

This is a deeply disturbing novel, not least of all because a similar scenario played out in San Diego a few years ago and was all over the news for weeks. I don't think that the horror of such captivity can be fully realized in fiction or in reality but Donoghue does an amazing job of illuminating the small wonders that Ma, our young captive, uses to give herself and Jack a reason to wake up every morning. The strength of the loving bond between a mother and child has never been more fully realized.

Enough said. Read this book!