Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Two Book Reviews in One Week -- WOW



EXIT HERE!!!!

Let me start off by saying that I never met a Douglas Kennedy book that I didn't love!! This book had arrived a few days ago (ordered from Amazon UK because it came out there first) and, each time I passed the table where it was sitting, I actually got a tingle just seeing the name Douglas Kennedy on the cover and knowing that something great was between those covers.

I like to think I discovered Douglas Kennedy all on my own many, many years ago when I read The Big Picture. At that time, whenever anyone asked me to recommend a great book, that's the one I told them to read. Kennedy followed up The Big Picture with The Job....another great roller coaster ride of a book. I don't know if something changed in his life at that point because all of the following books were very different. They were specifically about women or couples who were going through major rifts in their lives. As far as I'm concerned, no one can get inside of the head of a woman like Douglas Kennedy can. I wouldn't want to be his wife.

Kennedy writes that "All novels are about a crisis and how an individual -- or a set of individuals --negotiates said crises." In Leaving The World, the main character Joan Howard lives in the world of academia having gotten her PhD from Harvard and is now working as a professor at a New England college. I think Kennedy makes her so intellectually superior so that some of the things she does end up making her look more than intellectually challenged. Obviously doomed by her impulses, Jane finds herself mixed up in one predicament after another. It's how she deals with her crises that gives this book the depth that Kennedy's readers know he will deliver. She cannot stick to anything or anyone and finds herself lost in a world of people who continually leave her.

Until one day she decides that she will leave them. This is where Kennedy shines as he now puts Jane in charge of her own life and her own destiny and where we see shades of the excitement found in The Big Picture seeping through each page. While some people might say this book starts out slowly, they would be right because this is the way Kennedy sets the stage for things to come. He wants his reader to be totally invested in his character before he asks them to understand her. When we first meet Jane, it is in the present moment but, like everyone else, she has a back story and it's the understanding of this back story that will eventually help the reader to understand why she does what she does. In the book Kennedy says, "Life can only be lived forwards and understood backwards." And so we really come to understand more and more what is propelling Jane. There are times in the book where I was screaming, "NO Jane...don't do it", only to have my words fall on deaf ears.

Jane's life is one of ups and downs never seeming to find that happy medium between living and actually being happy doing so. Kennedy says in the book, "Unhappiness isn't simply a state of mind; it is also a habit." Reading this book is a journey as Jane tries to break this habit. It's another examination of the psyche of a woman by a master storyteller. In the hands of Douglas Kennedy, it becomes an expedition and one I was happy to take.

I know I've quoted Kennedy a lot in this review but some of the things he says in this book had such meaning to me. I leave you with one of the best...."Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that somebody might be looking." Well, I'm now your conscience looking at you and watching to see if you read this book!!!

My Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5 stars

Saturday, April 18, 2009

This Week's Book In Review



JUSTICE SERVED THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

Having just finished Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer a month ago, I was eager to read this next book featuring defense attorney, Mickey Haller. As if another Haller book wasn't enough of a gift to his readers, the author further rewards us by injecting Harry Bosch into the mix. Be still my heart!!! Haller and Bosch together!!! It's a dream come true for Connelly's avid fans. If you're not familiar with Connelly's previous books, Harry Bosch is the homicide detective who has appeared in more than ten of them and is greatly loved by all of Connelly's readers.

One might say that each of these characters is cut from the same cloth. But almost everything about them is the flip side of the other. One serves the prosecution while the other serves the defense; one lives on one side of the mountain while the other lives on the other side; one has one view of the city while the other has a different view. But this book will show how much they are truly alike and the words "cut from the same cloth" can perhaps be taken literally. I think the thing I enjoyed most was seeing Harry Bosch through someone else's eyes and being able to get a new take on an old and much beloved character. At one point, Harry is standing outside of police headquarters listening to an Ipod. Mickey Haller is as surprised by this as is the reader who has followed Harry for years. There's no way I can picture Bosch standing on the street listening to music through an Ipod. We actually find out it wasn't music he was listening to which puts Harry back where he should be in the reader's mind.

In The Brass Verdict, Connelly dishes out my kind of justice...the brass kind....as Mickey Haller is defending an arrogant Hollywood bigshot charged with some serious murders. Prior to this, Mickey had been on leave for a year after the conclusion of The Lincoln Lawyer forced him to take some time off. The death of a former colleague brings him back to the defense table when he inherits that attorney's cases. Haller is great at picking apart the prosecution's case but, as with all of Connelly's books, it's more about the journey and not the destination. The things the reader learns along the way, about the characters Connelly so obviously loves, makes each and every one of Connelly books something to be greatly appreciated.

When I read The Lincoln Lawyer, I loved it but had no idea that The Brass Verdict would be as good, if not better, than the first book in this series. It's obvious that Connelly has the desire to make all of his books connect in some way. Pairing Bosch and Haller was the greatest of all connections for this reader. When I read books that are part of a series, I keep notes on each main character so I can go back and reference them from time to time. There was a note I made in The Black Ice that told me this connection would come one day. I didn't know who the character would be but I knew it would happen. If this doesn't make you loyal Connelly fans read this book, I don't know what else will.

Monday, April 13, 2009

HAPPY EASTER!!!



Best line of the day on Regis and Kelly........



Navy Seals 3


Pirates 0


Edit: I actually wrote this a few days ago but every time I tried to post it, my computer froze. So better late than never.



Friday, April 3, 2009

I'm on a Book Review Roll



Riverton's Past Revealed

This is one book I bought specifically because of all the five star reviews at Amazon.com. Sometimes I buy books based on the old cliche "because of the cover" and sometimes I buy them because I'm familiar with the author. And then there's those times I'll buy them because so many other readers have recommended them to me. But then every once in awhile, I'll come upon a book I've never heard of and don't think the cover is all that interesting yet it has all great reviews on Amazon. Such was the case with The House At Riverton. I was intrigued and that was enough for me.

One hundred pages in, I went back to read all of the reviews again just to make sure I had purchased the right book because, at that point, it wasn't grabbing me. I had just finished watching a few Netflix BBC series all set in the early twenties so I felt my recent connection with this era would surely make me feel right at home at Riverton. Such was not the case. While it had all of the requisite elements of a good Gothic story set in Edwardian times.....the old manor house, its wealthy inhabitants, servants who gossip, secrets revealed, the challenge of female emancipation, the war and its sacrificial lambs and the never-ending desire to escape one's past....for some stange reason it just did not resonate with me.

I do enjoy novels where an elderly person is reliving their past and the book floats between two places in time. While this book did this seamlessly, I just never really felt invested enough to care about the residents at Riverton or even to care about the mystery involved therein.

Grace is the elderly woman in question, once a lady's maid at the esteemed house and now forced to relive her past as a result of a movie being made of an apparent suicide at the same great house. During the course of her many years of service, she had seen enough and heard enough to last a lifetime. She had also been asked to keep many secrets, many of which she'll take to her grave. Or so it would seem until she begins her life "on tape" to be given to her grandson. There is one secret here that I wish the author would have expanded upon and it might have given me reason to add another star to this review. But the secret is left out there without the reader being able to witness what it would have meant to the person involved had they known its truth. I would have to say the last third of the book is much better than the beginning. It's at this point many of the secrets are revealed but, by that time, this reader was just counting the pages until I was done with it.

So suffice it to say I'm in total disagreement with most of the other reviews of this book and that's why I say every book has its day and this day wasn't the day for this book for me.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

My Most Scathing Review Yet!!

The Hour I First Believed I Did Not Like This Book!!!

Like many of Wally Lamb's fans, I waited with great anticipation for this book to come out. I had read his two previous novels, She's Come Undone (just okay in my opinion) and I Know This Much Is True (a great read), and was wondering if this next one would put Lamb on the list as one of my admired authors. Based on I Know This Much Is True, I knew he had great potential to be added to a list that includes such esteemed authors as Pat Conroy and John Irving. Unfortunately, with this latest offering, Lamb does not make the cut. Not only does he not make the cut, but, after spending hours upon hours reading this book, I'm not even sure if I'd give him another chance. That's how much I did not like this book.

It all started with the writing which, in many places, can only be called "fractured". I found this kind of writing to be very disconcerting within the context of the story. Here are some examples and these are the actual sentences: Last night? I got up and started combing her hair. And here's another: A maintenance crew, from the looks of it, nine or ten women with shovels, hoes and hedge cutters. Now I ask you all....where is the verb in this last sentence? This went on and on throughout the entire book. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, Lamb constantly repeats himself. He tells a story of Zinnia always hugging Caelum on page 124 and had already told the exact same story earlier in the book. This was done numerous times and it ultimately began to feel like deja vu.

As with many authors who write a great book and get much publicity for doing so (Oprah pick), it must be hard to pen that next book trying to make sure it lives up to the all the adulation the author received from his last book. I think the "Aftermath" section of this book explains this fear and Lamb's own trepidations in trying to come up with a "story". They latch onto something that "might" work and then weave other stories into it. In this case, the author has taken every tragedy imaginable....The Civil War, The Korean War, Columbine, 9/11, The War in Iraq, Katrina....and made it all part of this story. The end result is.....it doesn't work!!!!

In my opinion, one of the most important jobs of an author, especially an author who is asking his reader to invest hours and hours of their time on a 700+ page book, is to create characters and develop them in such a way that the reader feels invested. This is the story of forty-seven year old thrice married Caelum Quirk and his younger wife Maureen, who move to Columbine, Colorado after an unfortunate set of circumstances forces them to leave their home in Three Rivers, Connecticut. For as long as I can remember, I've always associated "Three Rivers" with the city of Pittsburgh. Let's face it, the Pittsburgh Pirates played in Three Rivers Stadium for thirty years. Pittsburgh is famous for its three waterways....the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers. Yet Lamb has "his" Three Rivers located in Connecticut. I can't tell you how unsettling this was for me every time Three Rivers was mentioned. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren't in Pennsylvania but in Connecticut.

There wasn't one minute that I liked either Caelum or Maureen or any of the other myriad of characters who entered these pages. Since you know right away that they're moving to Columbine, you immediately know there are going to be characters there that you won't like either. Even though Maureen is in the school at the time of the shootings, I never felt any empathy for her even though she had been through a horrendous experience. And Maureen and Caelum's relationship was never developed enough for her own husband to feel the empathy Lamb is obviously expecting his reader to offer up.

This book will take the married couple from Connecticut to Colorado and back to Connecticut. It will also take the reader back in time as Caelum explores his heritage after finding some interesting items in his aunt's attic. As Caelum investigates his heritage, as a reader, I got confused keeping everyone straight. The reason for this is that Lamb has given everyone of the narrator's female relatives a name beginning with the letter "L". We have Lizzie, Lolly, Lydia and Lillian. After awhile, I didn't know who was who.

And to me the biggest mistake an author of fiction can make is inserting his own political beliefs into the novel. Once an author does this, whether I agree with his beliefs or not, I'm turned off. Richard North Patterson used to be one of my favorite authors but, with each book he wrote, he jammed his politics down my throat. I haven't read another book of his since. Unfortunately, Lamb has fallen into the same category with me. If he wants to be political, he should write some Op Ed pieces for the New York Times....not insert his views within the fictional pages of his book.

In closing, I don't know how so many reviewers can state that Wally Lamb is their favorite author before even reading this book. Their favorite author of what??? Two books?? (By the way, these last two fractured sentences are reminiscent of Lamb's writing if you're wondering why I did this). If I was going to claim that someone was my favorite author, I think I'd like to have read more than two of their works. I could say that Pat Conroy is a favorite author of mine as is John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates. Each of these authors has many, many books in their repertoire and I've read almost all of them.

I think that in the case of this book, I would have liked to have known the ending before reading the middle because it might have explained a lot and perhaps I might have enjoyed it more. I'm not sure. The jury is still out on Lamb as far as I'm concerned. He needs to come up with a much better book to seal his rank as an author whose books I must read.

And lastly (yes I'm almost done with this), I think this review is so scathing because I wanted to like this book. No, I take that back. I wanted to love this book. I wanted to love it as much as I loved I Know This Much Is True. And I didn't and I'm angry about that and, mostly, I'm so very disappointed.