Friday, March 28, 2014

In The Blood by Lisa Unger


I never doubted my belief in the veracity of this story. 

This was a spell-binding psychodrama thriller: murder, mayhem, and more.

Psychopaths on the rampage (if you can spot them), battling psychiatrists!  Who’s on top of the I.Q. ladder, i.e., who’s manipulating who?

Plots and sub-plots unfold – who can you trust?

A 24-hour read: 340 riveting pages.

The author’s got a half a dozen other books out:

  Heartbroken

      Darkness, My Old Friend

         Fragile

              Die For You

                  Black Out

                     Sliver of Truth

                         Beautiful Lies

So you can see a “shrinky” bent here.

Whether you’ve only taken one course [Child Psych 101 or Abnormal Psych 200] or even if you’ve got your PhD in Psychotic Drugs or Sociology of Abnormal Psychosis, this will hold your attention to the end, and you won’t know who to trust:

not the cops,

not the shrinks,

not the teachers,

not the kids,

not your family,

and least of all, not yourself.

 

Everyone’s wacko, and everyone has an agenda.

 

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simoson


Back to back coming of age tales -- or is it three in a row before this month? All teens: Cat’s Table, Brooklyn Tree, Flower Language.!  This time the protagonist is not 16, but 60, and transitioning through male menopause.

Ms. Simonson opens with the portrait of a stodgy old fuddy-duddy, an iconic English “Major”; then the author proceeds to awaken his feminine side, transforming the Major into an emotional, feeling, caring, amorous, and waltzing multi-cultural hero after the application of several doses of estrogen.

This story was pleasant to read because it had a nice balance of plot, narrative, and description.  We, as a group, have complained recently that this sort of balance was missing from our library selections.  For me, having lived the better part of a decade in England, there were many reminders of small town English life.

There were a great number of quotable bon mots, mostly voiced by the Major, and most of which I will leave to others to cite, but two that tickled my English-trained funny bone were: [p.175] in response to “where would we be if we were honest”, the Major retorts, “On a dry spit of land known as the moral high ground”; and [p.203] in response to “I’m in love with an unsuitable woman!” the Major retorts, “Is there really any other kind?”.  Simonson has provided us with a read that is a level up from our recent undertakings: more balanced, more urbane, much more broadly-based in scope.

If there is any fault with this otherwise good book, it lies in gender characterization.  And while yes, I feel the gender portrayals are “spot on” for women; they are a bit off the mark for men.  In “American” argot, she doesn’t get men.  It’s a book written by a middle-aged woman, for other middle-aged women.  The Major’s transformation: philosophically, physically, metaphysically, and culturally takes amazingly little time.

The men are all single-layer stereotypes.  This starts with the Major, who “hates women drivers.”  He is a rock-solid, confirmed bachelor at the onset of this story: golf once a week with his friend Alec (a name only, never developed); periodic telephone updates from his son, Roger [who is the epitome of a self-centered child who think that elders aren’t capable any longer of self-care]; and passing relationships with the local Vicar and other golf club buddies.

Additional men are added as the plot develops: the fundamentalist kid, Abdul Wahid; the Major’s freshly deceased brother Bertie; Mrs. Ali’s deceased husband (Ahmed: a nice guy we are assured); Colonel Peterson (not quite yet dead); Mrs. Ali’s deceased husband’s brother Dawid (a fundamentalist sympathizer at least when it comes to misogynist views on women).

Now with the women, we’ve got a large, yellow, sweet 2-pound onion to be carefully peeled, layer by layer, throughout the story.  Mrs. Ali is real; so is Grace, so is Sandy.  We empathize with dancing Amina; despise the old crone, Mummi.  We don’t really like Bertie’s wife Marjorie, nor Sadie Khan but we do root for Alice B Toklas, along with the women’s club ladies: Alma and Daisy, the Vicar’s wife.

There is no moral – other than, the rich get richer
                              and the poor get to have love and babies

Sunday, March 2, 2014

February Reader's Theater

Here are the video links for the Feb 2014 one-act plays put on by the River Friends of the Library
Time Sandwich (about aging)
a
a

Wanda's Visit (Marriage Comedy)
b
b

James Agee's Depression Era Study
c
c

Crab Cakes (male aging)
d
d