Book Reviews

Alexandra Fuller writes a sad tough story about a real-life hyper-active, big-hearted young Western roughneck tragically killed in an all-too-common gas rig accident. She brings to life the folks who make their meager perilous livings in the fuel mining industry, speaking in their style and portraying also the magnificent environment they love to hunt and fish in.

If you have not already read it, hie thee to a library or the Amazon website and get hold of Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, The Lacuna. Wonderful Mexican characters (don’t know how she gets into their heads and styles of speech) and scenes.

But much more than that. She artfully advocates the causes of The People (to which our government pays lip service while serving the corporations and the wealthy, like most governments) by bringing to life Trotsky and family taking refuge in Mexico and his assassination by a Stalinist agent, the McCarthy anti-communist campaign and throughout the damnable role played by yellow journalism, the unfairness of war waged by the rich and powerful but suffered by the poor soldiers and their families,all cleverly conveyed by a writer who purports to be writing non-political Mexican historical novels. She also brings to life Diego Rivera and his artist wife and the naive hopes of the world communist movement, corrupted by Stalin and demonized by the Cold War and McCarthyism.

Kingsolver artfully speaks to our time while purporting to be writing history.

Tracy Kidder’s nonfiction account of Northampton, Mass., reads like a novel, speaking in the voices of a good Irish cop, an obsessive-compulsive businessman, a grant-supported single-mother Smith student on welfare, an incorrigible Hispanic drug-dealer and informant, a sometimes lenient judge, a budget-cutting socially responsible woman mayor and many minor characters.
He teaches us to look below the surface of life in a small town and to consider its history as part of its present.
We are let into the secrets, unorthodox behavior, temptations, shortcomings and struggles most familiar figures conceal.
He pictures many factions: blue collar, academics, old money, petty criminals, teenagers, wives, girlfriends, exotic dancers, professionals, abnormals, senior citizens, et al. as they cope with the shifting present scene emerging from the pervading history of their small town.
Most surprisingly, all of what reads like fiction is in fact a portrayal of real people.

Isabel Allendes’ tale of a powerful woman in Spain’s exploration and settlement of Chile is of necessity mythical but it is grounded in historical, often brutal and shocking, detail.  Ines becomes the mistress of Pedro de Valdivia, indefatigable conquistador, who never stops battling the equally determined Chilean Indians of Southern Chile.  Later she marries a nobel spirited junior officer to Valdivia who becomes governor for a time and elevates her to the status and possessions of a governor’s wife.

Throughot it is Ines who copes with the survival needs of the colonists from food to medical aid while the men tend fo battles and politics.  The unbelievable hardships of these new world invaders as well as the tribes they exterminate is made clear as well as the ruthless warring of the Pizarro brothers in Peru.

The Swedish writer Marianne Fredriksson helps us experience the problems and prejudices both toward and by immigrants in this story of an unlikely friendship between Swedish born Inge and Chilean emigre Mira. What brings them together is a common love of flowers; what keeps them together is their feminine experiences with men and life in general

All new to me were the insights into the Cilean revolution and brutal suppression abetted by our CIA assassination of legitimate reform presiident Allende. Also the bigotry of the Chilean upper classes toward the lower.

Harriet Doerr has certainly lived in Mexica, and as I have visited San Miguel and lived in Lima, Peru, I found this little gem of a novel particularly appealing.  Painting with a spare brush she  brings to life the tiny town of Amapolis and a handful of American and other outlanders who briefly take up residence there.

This is also the end-of-life story of an 83-year old woman, Ursula Bowles,  with whom I could relate. And there is an appealing  ending for a divorced woman who is surprised by a happy reunion with her ex-husband.

Ray Bradbury’s new, for the most part, small book of short stories is perhaps all too reminiscent of Dandelion Wine and other early favorites. Many are focussed on death (The Graveyard, I Got Something you Ain’t Got)  The language is at times too self-consciously poetic.  Some are not so macabre and lead to a good resolution, like the relationship between a teacher and student in These Things Happen.  Most grisly is the narrative by a serial killer in At Midnight in the Month of June.  On the whole, the abnormal and the dark side are Bradbury’s domain.

Lewis Robinson has written an appropriately enigmatic novel about a coastal Maine family: young Bennie eventually comes to understand his intensely guarded older brother, who comes under suspicion following  the  mysterious disappearance in a blizzard of  one of the contestants in  a paint gun fight.

Water dog is a nickname for their pet  Labrador  as well as  the father and three children of this family, the latter trying to heal themselves of the sudden loss by heart attack  of their much loved father and biathlon coach. The title fits the setting on the shore of the wintry ocean from and around which so many of the inhabitants make their living.

With the help of friends and despite the malign intentions of an invidious small town cop,  the three young people make progress toward maturity.

British novelist Martin Currick gives us a cleverly plotted mystery disguised as an autobiography.  Unless we take note of a phrase in the opening paragraph, “a man going by the name of” we do not recognize it as a mystery until the end is near.

The man going by the name of James Watson Bolsover is a self-educated mechanical engineer who has read widely not only in his field but also in literature, physics and philosophy.  His recollections tell us the intimate and touching story of the delicate, dark-haired, passionate but somewhat obsessive  girl whom he loved passionately until her death after twenty years of married life.

We see that his is an unusually sensitive, creative and inquiring mind and we share his insights into human interactions and the role that chance plays in their destinies.

This is the single most useful source of information on Afghanistan that the Obama Foreign Policy Team could read.  Greg Mortenson has spent the last13 years building dozens of secular schools, especially for girls but also supporting teachers in refugee camps and others, in the areas near the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders.

As his co-biographer, Relin, notes, this is the only way to overcome terrorism.  As the devastated scenes in this book clearly show, war only fuels the jihad movement.   Saudi and Pakistani fundamentalists are also building schools to teach hatred of the Western democracies.

Greg Mortenson probably knows the terrain better, speaks more of the languages, and has the most influence of any single man on the planet.  He would not want to be on the Obama team.  He refuses to align himself with the military, because that would destroy the trust he has earned with his disinterested, self-sacrificing efforts. He has  worked for a pittance and endured incredible dangers and hardships working on the ground to enable the construction of schools as well as clinics and other supportive endeavors.

He should be used as a consultant and his advice and contacts pursued.  It takes three cups of tea with a trible leader: the first as a stranger, the second as an honored guest, the third as a family member.  There can be no power grabbing or military advantage involved.  The offer to do good must be genuine.  After the Russian retreat, the US promised aid, which was never delivered.  Yet there is a residue of ooodwill from the American effort to oust the Russians which can be built upon.

This is the only way to combat terrorism.

Sara Gruen tells two stories here: the day-to-day contretemps and frustrations of a decrepit old man in a nursing home….a fairly friendly one but still a nursing home…and his recollections of his days as a circus vet which begin with his dropping out of Cornell Veterinarian School just before his final examinations because his parents, already almost insolvent because his depression-era clients can’t pay his father their vet bills, are killed in an automobile accident.

Depressed and desperate, Jacob Jankowski, college drop-out, hops a freight car and finds himself with some workers in a small time circus.  Narrowly avoiding being thrown out, Jacob begins the first of eights years working with circus animals including proud prancing horses, an almost human elephant, a toothless lion, winsome apes and treacherous tigers.

Workers in a small traveling circus, often not paid, traveled and sometimes slept with the animals but were usually fed in a time when food was scarce.  The performers fared better than the workers, but even they confronted dangerous situations more often than not.  This circus comes to an end when a fire stampedes the animals right through the Big Top.

Adding to the excitement is the violent jealousy of a psychotic animal trainer,  the love of a beauteous lady horse-troop mistress, and the revenge of a terribly mistreated elephant.

Jacob goes on to successful years with a big circus and then a municipal zoo and even his nursing home tribulations yield to one last adventurous excusion.