| I review books
for Publishers Weekly magazine,
the American Library Association's Booklist
Magazine and syndicate a monthly book review column
called
Donna's Reads, Rants & Ratings.
Here's what I've been reading lately:
* Money Shot by Christa Faust,
crime fiction, 4.5/5: Faust busts into the boys’ club that is Dorchester’s
Hard Case Crime Series with this gripping debut about retired porn star
Angel Dare who now owns Daring Angels, a “high-class adult modeling agency.”
When Angel finds herself stuffed into the trunk of a beat up Honda Civic –
beaten, raped, shot and left for dead – after a visit from a foreign waif
who’s looking for one of Angel’s clients she engages the help of her part
time security guy, Lalo Malloy. The two of them take on bad guys from the
sordid sex slave business and, well, while they don’t exactly win, they
don’t exactly lose either. You gotta read it to know. I liked Angel a lot
and hope Faust pens more of her adventures sometime soon.
* The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta, fiction, 4/5: After high
school sex ed teacher and single mom Ruth Ramsey is directed by the
administration to teach abstinence only – a policy she disagrees with – she
makes an offhand remark in class that puts her job in jeopardy. Meanwhile
her daughter’s born-again Christian soccer coach, Tim Mason, risks his own
job when he leads the girls in a team prayer. Ruth wants him outta there and
she sets out to make sure he won’t ever mix sports with religion again.
Perrotta (Little Children), who likes to explore what happens when
people become involved in unusual relationships, reaches a personal best
here as these two face off against each other and suffer the consequences of
the force of their own convictions.
* The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller, fiction, 4.5/5: Delia Naughton is
the perfect wife for former senator and ladies’ man Tom Naughton. Over the
decades she tolerated his womanizing while his charisma charmed voters and
colleagues alike; a much admired statesman. Once he retired, however, Delia
and Tom parted ways. No divorce. They simply live amicably apart. She enjoys
life in half of a historic New England duplex and keeps an apartment in
Paris that she visits twice a year. Tom drops in for holidays with the
children and the occasional romantic romp. They’re in their 70s when Meri
Fowler and her college professor husband, Nathan, move into the other half
of the duplex. Although Meri and Delia become friends the elder woman keeps
her private life to herself, testing Meri’s ability to control her
curiosity. Miller has a knack for full, rich character portrayals. I liked
this one because of that and the way the relationship between the two women
evolves. You really get a sense of each person’s psyche.
* Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Giles Brandreth,
mystery, 5/5: Another really good one. This one is for fans of mystery,
literature and history. Flamboyant author and playwright Oscar Wilde
discovers the body of a young man, an artist’s model, who has been murdered
in a ritualistic way. But by the time he returns to the scene of the crime
the body is gone and the place has been wiped clean of evidence. No one
seems much interested in the case, however, since the teen was considered a
runaway, a street kid. Through a mutual friend, poet Robert Sherard, Wilde
meets Arthur Conan Doyle and enlists the man’s help in trying to solve the
murder. Between Doyle, Wilde and Sherard they track down the murderer with
Wilde utilizing some of Sherlock Holmes’ best techniques. What a fun read!!
It’s devilishly clever and kept my rapt interest up to the very end. Read
it. You’ll enjoy!
* Home School by Charles Webb, fiction, 5/5: If you’ve ever wondered
what happened to Benjamin and Elaine (of The Graduate fame) after he
interrupted her wedding Webb herewith provides the answer. Eleven years
later they’re married, living in a suburb of New York City (far away from
Mrs. Robinson) and they’re home schooling their two young sons. But the
local school’s administration is giving them a hard time about it, trying to
force them to enroll the boys in regular school. Pushed up against a wall
Ben and Elaine have to resort to desperate measures, seeking help from the
dreaded mother-in-law who has been all but court-ordered to maintain a
distance from the family. The worried parents also go to their home
schooling mentors, a far out hippy-dippy couple – she’s still breastfeeding
her son who is 11 -- from Vermont who end up being no help at all. I laughed
out loud throughout this book. That Mrs. Robinson is still the same and that
Benjamin hasn’t changed a bit – still that hesitant, deadpan way of dealing
with life – make this my favorite read so far this year.
* By the Time You Read This by Giles Blunt, mystery/police
procedural, 4/5: Detective John Cardinal of the Algonquin Bay, Ontario
police department suspects his wife’s death – a fall from the roof of an
apartment building – is murder despite the fact that she left a suicide note
and was being treated for severe depression. But the department has labeled
it a suicide, so…case closed. Meanwhile Cardinal’s partner, Lise Delorme, is
investigating internet child pornography that seems linked to their
community. Cardinal tries his best to help her even though he shouldn’t
really be back at work so soon after losing his wife and even though he’s
secretly investigating “murder” clues to her so-called suicide. Blunt keeps
the tension going at a slow-but-steady (may be too laid back for some) pace
throughout, but I liked the characters and was curious enough about how all
this was going wrap up so I kept reading.
* An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel by
Brock Clarke, fiction, 3.5/5: Raise your hand if you’ve ever picked up a
book on the strength of it’s cover picture or title alone. Uh huh. You’ve
probably guessed what attracted me to this one. While I’ve found that most
of the time the catchy title ends up being the best part of the book, this
one was kind of an exception. Kind of, I say, because overall it left me
rather unimpressed but it does have moments of brilliance. The main
character, Sam Pulsifer, became an accidental arsonist/murderer at 18 when
his careless cigarette caused a fire in the museum/home of Emily Dickinson.
He was sent to prison and emerges ten years later a raging neurotic. Of
course, he had been more than a little on the way to full-blown neurosis
before the fire. But when he gets out of prison and tries to re-invent
himself as normal the result is a disaster. When the museum/homes of other
authors begin burning down Sam looks to the pile of hate mail that
accumulated while he was in prison for clues as to who is trying to frame
him for the fires. Clarke has a gift for the humorous turn of phrase (my
favorite is: "There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail --
the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions.") and a gift
for creating a perfectly annoying protagonist, but in the end I felt this
book was a bit too long.
* Where Did I Leave My Glasses? The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory
Loss by Martha Weinman Lear, nonfiction, 4.5/6: Relax. Odds are very
good that those frequent, irritating lapses of memory are perfectly normal,
says Lear. Once she experienced – or noticed she was experiencing –
forgetfulness she decided to do a little research on the topic. The result
is this easy-reading-but-informative book that ought to reassure those
boomers among us she refers to as the “worried well” that we are most likely
not headed for the straight jacket just yet, or ever. However, for those in
the workplace who must compete with the sharp-as-a-tack minds of those
smart-alecky twenty-somethings she offers a selection of antidotes and
exercises that should help stave off memory loss for a certain amount of
time at least. As for the future, well, she learned about a number of
treatments ranging from pills to surgery to robotics that may or may not
prove to be all that they promise. |
