Book Review New York

New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I read Danielle Steele's The Ring when I was 11 or 12 and, since then, I've been a sucker for books that follow a neutral item through history.  I walked around my house for weeks afterward, looking at things that I knew belonged to my parents, wondering where they really came from  and what stories they could tell.  It's a fascinating way to learn history and it is telling that I still love that book, though I despise romance novels. And Danielle Steele.  



Therefore, knowing my love for The Ring I should love Edward Rutherfurd, right?  He has made a career doing what Danielle Steele does in The Ring but without most of the romantic schlock and with a larger focus;  not a ring but a whole forest, or a whole city.



But New York left me a bit cold.  Rutherfurd seems to have called this one in, with lazy story-telling, sketchy details and a choice to focus almost entirely on one family, bringing in supporting characters that eventually disappear.  I wanted to know where Hudson's descendants were in 2001.  And Pale Feather's.  But I didn't get that and the book is less rich because of Rutherfurd's choice to make it mostly Anglo-centric. 



Rutherfurd does follow a wampum belt around and it figures in the final moments but it disappears for much of the story and doesn't really provide the kind of thread that makes books like these extremely fun to read.



Rutherfurd does have moments of social-commentary clarity;  when he describes wampum inflation, he gets to the heart of the difference between white man and native;  to the native, wampum is worth something because of its inherent beauty and the concept that suddenly one would need MORE of that inherent beauty to buy the same thing that less of that inherent beauty bought last week ... well, that's just cheating.  And in New York of the 60s, a bittersweet poke at old money's propensity for setting verbal traps for folks not in the know;  "It's not Peabody, dear.  It's pronounced Pee-bdy."  And near the end, when you know Ruthurfurd is building up to 9/11, a lady at a dinner party goes on this gentle diatribe;



"I was reading Virginia Woolf the other day, and she remarked that at one period of her life, she was able to get so much done because she had three uninterrupted hours to work in every day.  And I thought, what on earth is she talking about?  Only three hours a day?  And then I looked around the office at all the people working their fourteen-hour days, and I thought, how many of you actually spend three hours in real, creative, intellectual activity in a day?  And I reckoned, probably not one.  And there's Virginia Woolf achieving more than they ever will in their lives, on three hours a day.  It makes you think.  They might do better if they worked less."



Cue the towers falling and everyone re-evaluating their rat-race lives.



Cheesy, but certainly one of the most effective parts of the book.





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Book Review The Tragedy of Arthur

The Tragedy of Arthur by William Shakespeare: The First Modern Edition of His Lost Play, with an Introduction and Notes by Arthur Phillips by Arthur Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hmmmm.  An author named Arthur writes a book narrated by an author named Arthur who has two sons, as does the author named Arthur.  The narrator Arthur the author names the books he has published, which are the same as the author Arthur.  So when the narrator Arthur writes about his twin sister, his convict-forger father and his dissolving marriage one wonders if author Arthur has a twin sister, convict-forger father and a dissolving marriage.


So one spends a lot of time wondering how meta this book really is and marveling at the conceit of the book; an author named Arthur writes a book about an author named Arthur whose father, Arthur may or may not have forged a "found" Shakespeare play about, you guessed it, King Arthur.


The bulk of the book is an "introduction" to the first publication of this found play.  What it is is a memoir (though narrator Arthur spends much energy making fun of the memoir genre, even while gleefully buying into the concept)  Following the introduction is the "new" "Shakespeare" play.


I must confess by the time I got to the play, I was worn out.  And though I tried to read it, just to see how many inside jokes and meta references and ironic twists and mentions might be in it, I soon gave up and acquitted myself to a surface skim.


But one really doesn't need the play at all; one is sated by the introduction (though near the end, I found myself gasping in exasperation at the plot stretches and the actions of people who had seemed mostly like people until they were required to do and say things just to fit into plot).  Arthur Phillips is a clever chap;  his Anti-Stratfordian theory, though entirely tongue-in-cheek and presented as an idea his twin came up with, and developed over many years, just to anger their convict-forger father, could be propped up to actually hold water (save for a couple of details) in academic circles.  His ponderings, though narrator author, Arthur, about what makes Shakespeare great or, rather, why we have all spent endless energy throughout western civilization creating the myth that Shakespeare was great, even though he wasn't, is thoughtful and rather brilliant.  "(A) We judge him the best.  Or (B) He has survived all this time.  But really, what if it's the other way around?  Is he who we've got because he's good, or do we judge him good because he's who we've got?"


And Phillips writes so well;  at one point, a young, female public defender is trying to talk some sense into Arthur Phillips senior, the convict forger;  "Well, okay, so we've come to the plea phase?  And it's like they're saying, 'So what do you say for yourself, mister?'  I know, I mean, obviously, I know that you know all this, but just to square our T's.  Now, I don't want you to say anything to me yet.  Let's just lay out what they're all lining up against you?  Their side of the story?  And then we can see what sort of answer is the best one for us?  To make?"  One needs no further description to see and hear this young lawyer with utter clarity.


Describing an assignation with a stranger; "... I put the thought out of my mind that she and I were already off on disparate adventures with diverging lessons and retroactive importance, only sex and scenery in common."


Describing his dissolving marriage; "The next morning, on my way out of the apartment to the airport, my wife and I had one of those fights that are entirely unnecessary, in which everyone is simply reciting lines scripted by their worst impulses, a dull sequel to old fights, a dull prologue to later fights, a DVD frozen on the same stupid mid-blink face of a normally good-looking actor."


A very enjoyable read with enough fluff to make it light and enough depth to make it dark;  chiaroscuro, though one can read it just from the chiaro perspective.  Or just the scuro.


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Book Review Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David M. Eagleman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'll stop short of calling this brilliant but perhaps I shouldn't.  In the forty tales, I only shook my head at the idea Eagleman was stretching once or twice and that's perhaps the highest praise I can give to a book that exists solely as an imaginative, philosophical stretch.


I hear tell, though, some of the stories have been done before, a blatant rip-off of Neil Gaiman here, a Benjamin Button-like tale there, but to decry Eagleman's original and inspiring work as derivative and insipid would be going too far.   I'll deem it "origative," perhaps.  Certainly it was a book that made me think, reflect, smile, frown and cock my head to the side in a contemplative fog more than once.  Sum is full of touching moments and more tangential insights than should be legal in such a minimalist work.


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Book Review The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs

The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty G. Birney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A nice little collection of vignettes designed to encourage us to open our eyes to the world around us and be tourists in our own town.  And also to be better folks.   Magical realism for the elementary set.


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Book Review Gregor the Overlander Series

Gregor the Overlander Box Set by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Collins, who is now more famous as the creator of the dystopian-future-riffic Hunger Games trilogy, started out on her authorial path with this five book series.  Inspired by her imagining what a big-city kid would find if he fell through a manhole like Alice fell through her rabbit hole into Wonderland, Collins has created an underland that has urban grit where Wonderland had bucolic oddity; a world of giant roaches, bats and rats, as well as regular sized humans with violet eyes and a violent nature.



The series is a well-constructed page turner with wonderful lessons on the futility of war, though one has to get through a lot of blood, gore and battle to learn the lessons.  Like most series of this nature, the tint gets darker as the plot progresses;  Gregor starts out as an innocent 11 year old boy but by the last book, though he is only 12, his world has been tainted by experiences and lessons that would scar any fallen adult.  There are many deaths, an Underland holocaust complete with allusions to gas chambers, and creatures who only know how to solve problems by killing other creatures. 



Yet, in the end, the reader is told that war is not the answer.  Even though it was for Gregor and the Underland.



A dichotomy.  Like life.



Pre-reading for my 7 year old;  I won't let him touch them until he's at least 10.



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Book Review Cranford

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this up because I watched the BBC miniseries entitled "Cranford" recently and thought the production quite entertaining.


The book was lovely (though fans of the miniseries should know that the script writers took material from several other of Gaskell's books to round out the story of the miniseries;  the book, Cranford is much more limited in scope and plot).  I cannot decide whether I would have liked it without having seen the very well-acted and charming series, with Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton and other lights of the British screen.


But, then again, perhaps I would have liked it if I had come to it without the BBC.  The book itself is charming.  The world Gaskell describes is rather foreign but one finds foothold quite quickly.  These are ultimately human characters, even if their spinster world of elegant economy and living on a yearly stipend is rather an unknown quality these days.


There is insight, too.  Gaskell writes, "I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why.  The letters were as happy as letters could be - there was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living hearts that so expressed themselves could never die, and be as nothing to the sunny earth."


And humor.  Lots of humor.  Take Miss Pole, for example, the town busy-body and gossip.  A conjuror comes to town and Miss Pole, determined to prepare scientific explanations for what she is about to see, sits down with an Encylopedia.  " Ah!  I see;  I comprehend perfectly.  A represents the ball.  Put A between B and D - no!  between C and F, and turn the second joint of the third finger of your left hand over the wrist of your right H.  Very clear indeed!  My dear Mrs Forester, conjuring and witchcraft is a mere affair of the alphabet!"


All in all, a lovely read.  Highly recommended.


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Book Review Guys Read: Funny Business

Guys Read: Funny Business by Jon Scieszka
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Eh.  Perhaps I didn't find this funny because I'm not a guy.


I did like the Adam Rex story, "Will."  I simply adored "Your Questions for Author Here" by Kate DiCamillo and Jon Scieszka.  But other than that, I was rather unmoved and, often, rather offended, particularly by the first story, which was about manipulating people and using people.  Not funny.


But I might buy the book someday for my kid, if only to get my hands on the two stories mentioned above, which rate much higher than the two stars I'm giving the whole thing.


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