And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass

Was this book over-hyped.?

Everyone loved “The Three Junes”.

That was a unique story.  The plot lines here are a recently trendy topic – finding oneself after adoption or some other mysterious birth.

I found it slow moving.  Of course I had just finished “The Cairo Affair”, which was fast-paced, an opposite swing of the pendulum.

Besides the tempo, I was also put off by the supercilious use of language.  Some might like these sorts of sentences – I didn’t.

“With insulting alacrity, in his old domain sprouted the fifth Marc Jacobs boutique within a four-block radius, compounding the sense of real-estate déjà vu in a neighborhood where stretches of once-quite-idiosyncratic merchants have been replaced by a prolific redundancy of glossy, mirrored spaces and miniskirted mannequins, each new establishment about as distinctive as a slab of brie from Trader Joe’s.”

 

I think my timing was wrong for this book.  This might have been a great summer read, if only I’d been comfortable spreading it out over ten weeks, forty pages a week. 

 

 

 

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer

This book was very reminiscent of Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet”, one of my classic favorites.  And this is not just because of the Egyptian setting; or post-recent “Arab-Spring wars”; but also because of the author’s deftness of handling multiple voices for narration, an always difficult undertaking.

Alas, this is not (yet) a quartet, albeit a riveting 400-page read.  As with Durrell’s book, the plot lines fall somewhat within the domain of the foreign services, the secret ones.  I’m starting this write-up only having arrived at page 100 of 400, but I’m already caught up in the depth of the plotlines, a myriad of them.  

The depth comes from thoughtful, human characterizations, of which JC Oates is my capable standard.  The reader feels that this story is so believably real, that even as characters are shot and killed, the others move on, as they must, as though this is a necessarily acceptable part of life.  The women are written really well: no need in the movie for reed-thin Eurasians, nor booby blondes.

I’ll tune back in half way through.

Just as le Carré is always saying, the espionage world messes with the minds and morals of those who engage within it.  Lying, cheating and deception are so engrained in their way of life that they can no longer tell up from down.  Even time becomes difficult to grasp ahold of, “What did I tell her yesterday and what will I say to her tomorrow?”

Wow.!  Good through the final page.!  Not a twist; but an unexpected outcome.

All of my early praise continued to be justified throughout.

 

 

The Age of Miracles

Reading at Spring time in California is inspirational.  The glorious month of May with Mother Nature reveling in her fecundity and looking forward to the joys of her summer sunshine along the River.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so, we have been given a small book to read to take away all our normally deterministic cares and concerns; our plans for future actions and deeds (good and bad).  In place of our hopes and dreams, we are provided with an argument for theological fatalism; an omniscient God(s) as found at the roots of historical religions.

I read about a third of this book, then switched into speed-read mode and finished it the next day.

Sorry, the narratives on girl-cliques, training bras, and cool guys, have become unenlightening to me in my dwindling years.

So, we’ve got permission to run the sprinklers all summer long, drink to excess, and run the air-conditioner at max all the time. 

Que sera, sera.