An opaquely told story of the mob figures and other rare characters in Havana in the 50s, Dancing to Almendra often left me confused. The main narrator is an ambitious young journalist who is told that the escape and killing of a hippopotamus is a message sent too late to a mob figure who had recently been killed in the U.S. Interesting idea, but mystifying. A few of the...
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell. Reviewed in the post 3/22
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell. Reviewed in NYT 11/18/07
I listened to much of this audiobook twice because my walking (and listening) were interrupted by sickness. There are few books that I would be agreeable to listening to twice in such short order. Run, and probably most books by Ann Patchett are like comfort food — satisfying, pleasing, and leaving something with you. The story moves along pretty predictably, though...
What a terrific book! The omnivore’s dilemma refers to the result of having many choices for dinner and the complications that brings. The omnivores in question refer to humans in the long term and larger questions than choosing a restaurant. Like the rat, humans can digest a variety of foods and must develop ways to determine which will not kill them, learning for example which...
Ann Enright’s Man Booker prize winner is a grim exploration of dissatisfaction within a large Irish family. The pivotal event is the suicide of one of the sons, Liam, the favorite sibling of the narrator, Veronica. The mother is described as a ghost, and her other siblings are alcoholics, psychotic, her husband hates her, she hates him, and so on. Then she goes back a generation to...
When I read a review in the Post by James Reston, Jr. of the book God’s Crucible; Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis, I was moved to pick up this book Jim bought 10 years ago. For the first century and a half after Muhammad died, the Moslems assumed they would complete the dictum of the imposing sharia, God’s law as revealed to Muhammad, on the world. ...
Mark Hadden wrote the very appealing and funny Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, told from the point of view of a boy with autism. This time he has made a 60ish man going a little crazy laugh-out-loud funny. George, who keeps losing his grip on reality, in the merriment by his family: his wife is having an affair with a former colleague of George’s, his daughter is marrying...
The main storyline of The Tenderness of Wolves involves the murder of a trapper and shady character in the wilds of Canada in 1867 and the efforts of others to find the murderer. The effort largely seemed to involve tracking through the miserable cold and snow — beginning with the setting off immediately after the murder of a very young man who was the lover of the murder victim...
Audiobook. I was surprised at the poetic nature of this book; for the first third of the book, the idyllic, if unconventional lives of a family living in Provincetown is described. Mr. Maytree is a poet and handyman and Mrs. Maytree lives the simple life. And we hear about their unconventional friends. Just as I began to wonder if this description could continue to be of...
This first novel written by woman born in India who grew up in Cardiff and now lives in London is about an immigrant family living in Wales. The intensity with which the father, an academic, focuses on making his daughter a math genius makes the helicopter parents we know appear neglectful. Every moment of her life is scheduled and almost all of her schedule involves studying...