Author Archive
A. D. 1156, and it’s the end of the world. Or at least that’s what it feels like when an earthquake rips open the earth around Glastonbury Abbey, long reputed to be the site of Avalon, King Arthur’s final resting place. In the chaos, a terrified, dying monk sees mysterious figures burying two bodies in a fissure, bodies he is convinced are those of Arthur and Guinevere.
Twenty years later the abbey has burned, revealing the coffins of the reputed Once and Future King and his lady. With Welsh rebels waging war in the name of Arthur, King Henry II wants to prove once and for all that Arthur is dead. And only Adelia Aguilar, the Salerno-born, throughly unconventional Mistress of the Art of Death can unravel the bones’ history.
In Grave Goods, her third book in her Mistress of the Art of Death series, Ariana Franklin adds an element of the Gothic to her fast-moving plot. Once Adelia arrives at the blackened ruins of the abbey, she immediately senses that the near-deserted town and its wild surroundings hold real evil. Sick with worry over the disappearance of her friend Emma in the nearby countryside, Adelia and her Arab assistant Mansur try to uncover the truth in the lawless hillsides. The mutilated skeleton of Guinevere haunts Adelia’s dreams, goading her to find the murderer. But the mystery of a long-dead king and queen hold terrible danger for the living, threatening to claim someone dear to Adelia. Astute mystery readers might guess some of the plot twists, but Franklin’s strength lies in her characters, especially Adelia’s supporting cast of misfit companions, as much at odds with their constricting medieval society as she. In its denoument, Grave Goods suggests some unfinished business and tough decisions that promise a strong continuation to an already entertaining series.
May 14th, 2009
Katie H.
With the sixty-fifth anniversary of the D-Day invasion rapidly approaching, the number of books published on ‘the good war’ shows no sign of abating. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority present the reconquest of Europe from the Allied forces point of view, giving little attention to the liberated lands once Allied tanks rumble past. Historian William I. Hitchcock offers a different view of World War II, one that picks up where most war histories leave off. In The Bitter Road to Freedom, Hitchcock considers the civilian side of the liberation and its lasting repercussions.
It’s not a pretty picture. Hitchcock focuses mostly on northern Europe and Poland, regions particularly familiar from films and historical studies. Drawing on civilian memories and regional records, the image of an orderly conquest and welcoming crowds is replaced with scenes of utter devestation, created as much by inaccurate Allied bombing as German shelling. Hitchcock details the wretching decisions by Allied commanders to bypass Nazi-occupied Holland in favor of a war-shortening drive into western Germany, leaving millions of Dutch to face starvation. Eastern Europeans, trapped between the retreating German army and a Soviet army trying to exact revenge after from its own brutal invasion, hardly had a sense of liberation as their lands fell under Communist rule. And the Jewish victims of Hitler’s death camps continued to suffer under terrible conditions for months as the hoped-for exodus to Palestine became a political hot potato among British authorities and Jewish groups.
Hitchcock doesn’t mince on details, and the descriptions of camp life especially are very graphic. Puzzlingly, Hitchcock almost entirely avoids discussion of Italy’s liberation, instead concentrating on the efforts of the UN’s early efforts to provide aid to displaced civilians. It’s perhaps a topic that has recieved little attention in the past, but the gap in coverage is annoying in a work that purports to cover all of Europe. However, Hitchcock’s blend of anecdotal personal accounts with analysis of the larger forces at work makes for really readable history, and the sprinkling of photos and maps puts visuals to the story.
May 1st, 2009
Katie H.
Lin Enger starts out his first solo novel* with a bang-literally. Within the first fifteen pages of Undiscovered Country, seventeen-year-old Jesse Matson, out hunting with his father, hears a single shot and realizes something is terribly wrong. Scrambling through the frozen woods, he discovers his father sprawled below his hunting stand, the top of his head missing.
The authorities rule it a gun accident, tragically common in the bleak landscape of northern Minnesota. But Jesse can’t shake his suspicion that his normally stable, reassuring burly bear of a father would opt to end his life without any warning or note. When Jesse, gripped by grief, sees the bloodied figure of his father appear late one night, he is convinced: Harold Matson was murdered, and his uncle Clay is the killer.
If it sounds a little familiar, it should. Updating Hamlet to 1990s Minnesota, Enger uses the isolating bleakness of a northwoods winter as his Elsinore, the disillusioned, lovely Genevive takes up the role of Gertrude and Christine, an immigrant from Mexico whose love for Jesse tempers his rash decisions, makes a resiliant yet vulnerable Ophelia. But Enger strays enough from the original play to keep readers guessing as to what the outcome will be, and writing from Jesse’s perspective adds to the suspense as Jesse questions what his responsibilities are to his dead father versus his remaining family.
Like a lot of first time novelists, Enger sometimes succumbs to clumsy ‘literary’ effects (labored descriptions and metaphors, as well as a curious absence of quotation marks). After the initial death, the first part of the book moves at a glacial pace, apt for the setting perhaps, but frustrating for those more accustomed to a faster narrative. Much like Per Petterson’s novels (an author whose work I kept thinking of as I read Enger), the heart of the novel isn’t so much the characters and their actions, but the landscape. Enger’s wintery world presses down on its inhabitants, the fierce snowstorms are literal embodiments of the confusion Jesse feels. It is the dream-like, isolating atmosphere that plays on the pyschological landscapes of the characters, slowly building the suspense that pushes the novel towards its inevitable conclusion.
*Enger has trod the north woods before in mysteries he co-authored with his brother and fellow novelist Leif Enger.
April 17th, 2009
Katie H.
On a given weekday, a woman’s day begins by seeing her husband off to work, getting her school-aged children out of bed and dropping them off at school, and then she spends the day running errands or doing chores. After picking the kids up, she will help them with their homework or take them to piano lessons, make dinner and finally greet her husband after his long day at work. Tomorrow and the day after she will have the same routine.
It sounds like a scene out of the fifties, but it’s not an unusual scene in today’s neighborhoods. Forty years after Betty Friedan wrote of the creeping depression of many housewives in her epochal work The Feminine Mystique, journalist (and mother) Leslie Bennetts writes that a new generation of women are moving back into the household, with potentially disastrous results for them and the workforce in general. In The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? Bennetts’ resounding answer to her own question is yes.
Bennetts considers many examples of women, often highly educated and well-off, who decide to give up their careers either permanently or temporarily in exchange for raising their children. Opting out of their career, their focus shifts to home life, volunteering and domestic pursuits, leaving the husband to earn the paycheck. Bennetts interviews stay-at-home women who cite the women’s revolution as giving them the choice to stay at home, and consider themselves as much as feminists as working mothers.
Bennetts sees this as false security, and her book is filled with examples of women who have regretted staying home. Mainly, her concern is economic independence; even women married to men with high-paying, stable jobs can see their incomes plummet following a divorce, health crisis or other calamity. Earning potential lost during a hiatus of several years to raise children can never be recovered, nor, as Bennetts points out, can the experience gained through continuous employment, making job hunting at a later age difficult. She expands her argument to the psychological effects joblessness creates in the family, including the added pressure on husbands as sole breadwinners, micromanaged children and anxiety rooted in the loss of work colleagues and a set schedule. In the end, Bennetts asks, is it really a smart decision for a women to bet her entire future on her husband’s paycheck, in return for what is essentially the temporary job of childrearing?
It’s an intriguing question, and one which has been getting a fair amount of attention recently. Bennetts states early on that she isn’t interested in getting involved in ‘mommy wars,’ but her tone reflects a condescending view towards women have chosen to take a different track than her own. Worse, Bennetts’ research seems limited to women married to wealthy professionals, largely residing in New York City or well-to-do Connecticut suburbs–hardly an accurate slice of today’s workforce. It’s a pity, as the economic problems women face are a major concern (and as a recent Time article noted, are becoming acute in a tightening economy). Despite its flaws, however, The Feminine Mistake is worthwhile reading for anyone concerned about the future of gender equality in the U.S., and demonstrates how much remains to be done.
Looks like I agree with Lisa on this one.
March 29th, 2009
Katie H.
It’s apt that Carrie Fisher’s new memoir/one-woman show Wishful Drinking features her iconic image of Princess Leia on the cover. Just as Leia occupied a galaxy long ago and far away, the real Carrie Fisher knew only one world from birth, more bizarre than any galazy occupied by wookies and giant mobster slugs–the world of a Hollywood daughter. It’s the sort of place where normalcy is relevant, and in her breezy account, Fisher makes light of dark aspects of growing up famous.
Before she was Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame, she was Carrie Fisher, daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and the much married singer Eddie Fisher. Their tortured marriage saga, complete with shoe barons, beauty queens and questionable remarriages (helpfully charted by Fisher) is the source of some of her best material. Out of this colorful background, Fisher herself doing the normal thing (for Hollywood)–enrolling in drama school, auditioning for a space saga and seriously discussing with George Lucas the ramifications of underwear in space (she was for, he against). Add in some surreal experiences as Mrs Paul Simon (great for songwriting, bad for a stable marriage), too many drugs and undiagnosed mental illness, and even Cary Grant has to get involved in the effort to save Carrie.
Wishful Drinking, basically a print version of Fisher’s one-woman show, reads as quickly as a comedy routine (it took me about two hours cover to cover). The impetus for the book was Fisher’s struggles with manic-depression, drug abuse and drinking–all of which she frankly addresses and weaves in and out of her narrative. Still, for all of Fisher’s off-the-cuff humor and wisecracking one-liners, there isn’t a lot of substance, and little sign of editorial oversight. Fisher has the material, but Wishful Drinking would be more memorable in a longer-length autobiography. As it is, there isn’t much to this routine.
February 18th, 2009
Katie H.
Every so often, newspapers and television reports will break stories 
revealing shocking hazing at college fraternities or reports of sexual assults on campus, prompting outrage, questions and calls for reform. On a lesser level, parents worry about ‘hookup’ cultures among college-aged men, or shake their heads in disbelief when confronted with the amount of time their sons spend playing video games instead of attending classes. The final straw comes as college educated men return to their childhood homes, much to their parents’ disbelief. In all these cases, a common refrain emerges: What is wrong with these guys?
The answer, writes SUNY-Stony Brook sociologist Micheal Kimmel, lies in the little understood world of Guyland. Guyland, Kimmel writes, is a homosocial culture that men in their late teens and early twenties create in an effort to transition into the responsibilities of manhood. Advocates consider it a rite of passage, but Kimmel points out that Guyland’s culture of silence and conformity helps nurture cruel behavior, foster debasing images of women, promote violence, and leads to just plain stupidity.
Why the bizarre behavior from seemingly intelligent, well-adjusted young men? As Kimmel writes, much of Guy behavior is driven by insecurity: other men are perceived as having more sex, able to tolerate more alcohol or simply having more fun then most, pushing men to chase a non-existant pacesetter. And much has to do with a sense of entitlement: as women and minorities have made strides in both education and employment, Guyland offers a spot where guys (whom Kimmel’s reveal are almost always white) are insulated from political correctness, challenges from women and the repercussions of violence that seem to threaten their particular definition of maleness. It blithely divides the world into a dichotomy of those who play along with Guys rules versus those who don’t (and therefore don’t matter in Guyland). While most guys grow out of the stage without any lingering negatives, the fact that the darkest aspects of Guyland occur at all means that more men (and other college groups) need to put aside the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and find the courage to speak out against abusive cultures.
Kimmel, a specialist in gender studies, conducted scores of interviews with young men, college administrators, coaches and young women in his research for Guyland, and he presents an engaging and readable argument. But there’s also plenty to argue with here as well. I believe Kimmel’s book tends to present Guyland’s lifestyle as the only option for college men, a fact made more noticeable by the lack of any perspective as to how many men actually succumb to the worst excesses of loutish behavior. And Kimmel never fully addresses how so many men can navigate the same school environment and avoid such problems. But like a lot of other books that try to decipher the peculiar behavior of the sexes, the appeal is as much in sparking conversation or following up footnotes as it is in reading. In that respect, Guyland is an accessible road map into the strange territory of the American Guy.
January 2nd, 2009
Katie H.
A while back, someone with a good understanding of my obsession with English costume dramas suggested that I watch Cranford, the new PBS/Masterpiece production based in part on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of the same name. Having never read anything by Gaskell and associating her, unfairly, with the most sentimental of Victorian English novels, I didn’t get around to the DVDs until recently. I soon realized that my previous prejudices were completely wrong, and I was smitten. After enjoying the series, I picked up the original novel, curious as to how Gaskell’s serialized novel of 1853 would stand up to readers 150 years later.
Happily, Cranford turned out to be a throughly enjoyable and surprisingly modern read. Centered on the tiny town of Cranford in the 1830s, Cranford tells the story of two sisters of a slightly advanced age, trying to maintain a genteel existence while fending off modernity. Their main comfort is gossip, and since Cranford is populated almost entirely by women in circumstances very similar to their own, Miss Deborah and Miss Matty find plenty to talk about. Gaskell’s later books are primarily concerned with class differences and an increasingly industrial nation, and through several vignettes, many of the same issues pop up with a more muted tone in Cranford. Miss Matty hopes to reconnect with a man whose lower class status made him unacceptable in her youth, and the town is thrown into an uproar when suspicious strangers (men, no less) seem to threaten the peace. In the final chapters, Miss Matty comes to grips with the realization that she might have to undergo a profound change late in life, which even her resourceful friends might be hard-pressed to help with.
Gaskell creates her characters and their adventures with an affectionate tone that still has a slightly satirical edge (Miss Pole, my favorite character in both book and film, is a creation that both Dickens and Austen would have been proud to have invented). Yet their stories of struggling to retain their independence despite economic problems and a changing way of life still resontates today. Fans of such modern authors as Jan Karon, Jennifer Chiaverini and even Debbie Macomber might find the women-centered, small town setting of Cranford to their liking, while neophytes to Gaskell could consider the novel a good introduction to her longer, later works.
December 11th, 2008
Katie H.
At the young age of 18, Beryl Bissell took what she thought would be the final, and most momentous step in her life. When she entered a Poor Claires convent in the late 1950s, she expected to live a long life, but her identity as Beryl had ceased. She would hereafter be known as Sister Mary Beatrix, and her life would be God’s.
In her memoir The Scent of God, Bissell recounts a life that is as much a coming-of-age story as a search for spiritual fulfillment. Raised in typical circumstances by a middlingly devout family, Bissell was drawn to a life of poverty and contemplation by a desire to find deeper meaning in a life given to God. Against her family’s protests, she enters into a life filled with the routine of rising for midnight prayers, raising food for the convent’s needs and trying to achieve a deeper connection with God. But life within the convent walls proves much more difficult in ways that Bissell could not imagine. Hoping to be seen as especially devout, Bissell struggles with anorexia, and develops a fixation on the novice mistress that threatens to distract her from contemplation.
After leaving the monastary to tend to her ailing father in Puerto Rico, Bissell meets Vittorio, a charasmatic priest who stirs her interest. As the changes of Vatican II begin to relax the routine of the Poor Claires, Bissell begins to wonder if living in the world holds greater meaning for her than what she views as her increasingly unsatisfactory experience in the convent. Leaving the order in 1972, Bissell returns to Puerto Rico and Vittorio, ready to begin anew. But life outside of the convent proves to be a greater challenge, testing her faith beyond anything she could have imagined.
The emphasis here is more on how Bissell’s religious search shaped her relationships, rather than a meditiation on her spiritual quest. She shapes her true story almost as a novelist would, recreating dialogue, capturing the atmosphere of her travels in vivid language and creating a sense of suspense when things don’t always go as planned. There isn’t as much insight into her spiritual path–the question of why she wished to become a nun in the first place is never fully revealed. Other former nuns and laymen have gone over this ground somewhat more thoroughly (Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness and Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk being two good examples). But for a story of a woman coming into her own after a false start, The Scent of God is a gripping account of life’s trials and its ultimate grace.
December 5th, 2008
Katie H.
Quentin Jacobsen is your average teenager. Among his fellow classmates in the Orlando-area high school he attends, he pursues some usual adolescent vices and joys: hanging out by the band room, trying to convince his parents to let him use the car, trying to attain some medicoum of popularity, dreaming about the future. But in one aspect of his life, Quentin has always known that he is extraordinarily lucky: he lives next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Witty, popular, and something of a badass, Margo and Quentin were close friends before a time and life caused them to drift apart. But just before graduation, Quentin is suprised by Margo’s appearance outside his bedroom window. For one night, he joins her in a set of wild pranks as she settles scores. The following morning, Quentin hopes that there’s a chance to revive their friendship. But Margo has disappeared. At first, Quentin isn’t surprised. Margo had run away before, only to turn up without much explaination in nearby Mississippi. But as graduation approaches, Quentin grows increasingly concerned about Margo’s whereabouts, and begins to suspect the worst.
Author John Green blends mystery, road trip antics and ruminations on identity in his latest young adult title, Paper Towns. The title refers to places on a map that don’t actually exist, but are used by mapmakers for copyright reasons. Quentin learns that Margo has something of an obsession with the concept, and he tries to track down the nonexistant town where he thinks she is hiding. But as he pieces together clues, he finds that the question is not so much where Margo is, but whether he even knows who she really is. When Quentin and Co. hit the road, the action becomes an increasingly manic whirl in desperate pursuit of Margo.
Green has traveled smart boy/enigmatic girl territory before in his Printz Award-winning Looking for Alaska. What was a winning combination in that book works with a lighter tone beautifully in Paper Towns. Green has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and his cast of characters throw off zingers with aplomb (”getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds”). But under all the humor and pranks, there’s the looming question of the fate of friendships as childhood comes to a close. This is my second Green title, and I’m once again impressed by how adroitly he blends humor and wit with the sometimes painful aspects of growing up. I’m already waiting impatiently for his next title.
November 15th, 2008
Katie H.
It was a type of wound that Commissaire Adamsberg thought he would never see again. Three stab wounds perfectly aligned, each the exact same depth on the victim’s stomach, as if made by a trident. For most of his life, Adamsberg had pursued the serial killer known as the Judge through multiple victims in every corner of France, but never saw the man brought to justice. Fifteen years ago, Adamsberg’s quest ended when he witnessed the Judge’s burial after a natural death.
Which makes the reappearance of the Judge’s modus operandi especially chilling. In Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, the stakes get much more personal for the detective. Shortly after the discovery near Strasbourg of a young woman’s body with the telltale marks, Adamsberg is called away to a workshop in Ottawa. After a night of drowning his sorrows, Adamsberg wakes up alone and bloody on a deserted walking path, with no recollection of the previous hours. When Canadian investigators find the body of a troubled woman with whom Adamsberg had a one night stand, the police immediately close in, forcing Adamsberg into the impossible position of fleeing one set of authorities while trying to work with his own Paris Serious Crime Squad in tracking down the Judge. In the effort to convince his colleagues of a resurrected Judge, Adamsberg struggles with the possiblity that his own demons might have gotten the better of him.
French author Fred Vargas is well known for her complex characters, and this third installment in the Adamsberg series does not disappoint. The secondary characters are vitally key to Vargas’ intricate plot, as their strengths and failures have serious consequences on Adamsberg’s guilt or innocence. Adamsberg knows second in command Danglard has unquestionable loyalty–although who that loyalty is towards remains murky. Cool-headed and perceptive Lieutenant Retancourt startles everyone, including Adamsberg, with the depth of her abilities and resources.
Fans of Georges Simenon’s might find Adamsberg’s blend of humor, perception and tenacity a fitting modern counterpart to the classic Maigret series. Unlike that series, however, Adamsberg relies on a much larger and unexpectedly talented cast of characters to unravel crimes. Vargas, a winner of the CWA International Dagger, has penned three other titles in the Adamsberg series, with another set for release in 2009.
September 24th, 2008
Katie H.
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