A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

I spoke about the Chief Inspector Gamache novels at our last book club meeting.  As a preparation to recommending the series of books, I checked the Library catalogue and found them all there, but all on hold, so I put a request in on half a dozen, thinking maybe I’d get one or two over the next month or two.  I was overwhelmed to find four waiting for me the next week.  I wanted to confirm that these books were as good as I initially thought they were.  A Trick of the Light is every bit as good as How the Light Gets In.  I found the deep psychological analysis even better.  These novels are definitely cerebral exercises without the thriller special effects that so many American authors employ.

Of all those I checked out I am returning this week A Trick of the Light and A Rule Against Murder, which is six years old now.  Based on my “Trick Light” experience I will try The Beautiful Mystery for my next serious read.  I haven’t had a serious read for a while now.  Maybe the Investigator Yashim Series by Jason Goodwin was the last, three years ago.  Of course I don’t include continued reading of JCO or Parker (a modern author: prolific in death), Gibson, Allende, Martin Cruz Smith, Anne Rice, or Patchett.  These are all automatics, when they write.

I found it pleasing and refreshing to note that Penny hasn’t fallen into the trap of continually escalating plotline scenarios as she develops characters in a series of books.  Robert Parker fell into that trap with his Spenser series.  In the end he had to start afresh (!?) with Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and a Cole&Hitch western sheriff series. 

This book wasn’t one of our monthly reads so I’ll provide a short synopsis.  All the stories revolve around the sleepy little Canadian village of Three Pines just north of the Vermont, USA border; not unlike Lake Woebegone in Minnesota.  This is a well-used, but still great foil for introducing a set of mystery characters like in the game “Clue do”.

This story examines two themes: (1) the Canadian art world: artists, critics, and galleries and (2) the world of addiction and AA are involved, specifically OxyContin, Alcohol, and Percocet.  Several of the Montreal elite of the art world come to visit Three Pines before and after the murder.  Three Pines has its own artists and addicts.  Even the Sûreté and the Justice System have addicts and suspects.  The twelve steps of AA are integral to the solution of the crime. 

What I love so much about this story was that the entire action takes place in Three Pines, surrounded by our familiar cast of regular players.  This book could easily be dramatized in four acts: The Murder; The Suspects; Cases are Made; The Solution.  Within town there is: The B&B; the Bookstore; the Park, and Peter&Clara’s house.  There is nothing much to get in the way of a truly cerebral mystery story.  There are just the interactions between characters (classic drama) to advance the plot: chess games of the mind.  Classic mystery story.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

What a great story, or series of nested stories, expertly woven together to create a wonderful summer diversion.  Yes, I think this is a book I can recommend to others as an enjoyable read. 

Take your pick of sub-plots, there’s half a dozen offered up, across space and time, in this 333-page-turner.  I found it difficult to put down; wanted to keep pressing on to the next episode.  There’s time-zones of the sixties, the eighties, and now.  There’s Love, Marriage, Hollywood, WW-II, and theater.

A few of the walk-on characters don’t make it across the time-zones, like Alvis Bender and William Eddy, Dick & Liz.  But the top six central characters all persist to the last chapter.  In order of adoration: Michael Deane (total self-love); Pasquale Tursi (Saintliness); Claire Silver (the everyman); Debra Moore (motherly love); Shane Wheeler (all our kids); Pat Bender (everyone else’s kids). 

Plot twists, which are many, don’t surprise you as they do in thrillers; instead they refresh you with new ideas from a different direction.  This is an innovative novel; no formulaic tale here.  And for me, each new directional shift was pleasantly accepted, “Why not?” or better “Why didn’t I think of that?  What a great idea!”.

Did this start as a wannabe memoir from some actor, writer, or director cast aside on their way to fame and fortune.? When is Michael Deane releasing the movie?

 = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Just to join in the half-a-century old, seven degrees of separation fun, I’ve attached here and will pass around for any interested, a 1964 response letter from one of Richard Burton’s staff [RB/jb] to my mother about Burton’s NYC Hamlet that year and a dropped hint about the film yet to come.

From Wikipedia:

“He then put his stage career on hold to concentrate on film, although he received a third Tony Award nomination when he reprised his Hamlet under John Gielgud's direction in 1964 in a production that holds the record for the longest run of the play in Broadway history (136 performances).^[ The performance was immortalized both on record and in a film, which played in US theatres for a week in 1964, as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne. Burton took the role on just after his marriage to Taylor. Since Burton disliked wearing period clothing, Gielgud conceived a production in a "rehearsal" setting with a half-finished set and actors wearing their street clothes (carefully selected while the production really was in rehearsal). Burton's basic reading of Hamlet, which displeased some theatre-goers, was of a complex manic-depressive personality, though during the long run he varied his performance considerably, as a self-challenge and to keep his acting fresh. On the whole, Burton had good reviews. Time said that Burton "put his passion into Hamlet's language rather than the character. His acting is a technician's marvel. His voice has gem-cutting precision."  The opening night party was a lavish affair, attended by six hundred celebrities who paid homage to the couple. The most successful aspect of the production was generally considered to be Hume Cronyn's performance as Polonius, winning Cronyn the only Tony Award he would ever receive in a competitive category.”

 

 

 

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.

The 100-Year-Old Man

Pretty much everybody thought “Forrest Gump” was a silly, stupid book/movie.  Then again the world is full of stupid readers and silly film-goers, so why not Gump-II: History Revisited Again?

I’m sorry to say that I won’t be able to use any of the standard phraseology of critical literary review: the elements of literature are totally missing in this 400-page spoof.  It would be like trying to review an edition of “Mad Comic Books”.  I used to love MAD.  It was a great, fun read, … .. when I was 13. .

I’m sorry that we were subjected to this tripe.  I rarely say that it was a waste of time.  I usually find that the author tried to write something of value and simply failed in their endeavor.  This author was writing as a stoned-13-year-old, simply wanting to snub his nose as authority, politics, the world, and anyone over 14.

Possibly I’m objecting too much because I’ve spent the last 63 years of my life being over 13.  I actually had to have a job at 14 in order to buy hamburgers, cokes, and car parts.  I’ve been around for most of Jonasson’s “history”.  A few dare-devils in my high-school class drove dynamite trucks, summers, for Kaiser-Permanente in west San Jose; I worked in a machine shop.

OK, I’m going to chill.  2,000,000 bought his book, then again, 99.97% of the world’s population didn’t buy his book.  There will always be crap out there on the remainder tables; I’m always for giving people shots at succeeding as authors.  Let there be 20 bad books for every good one [Julia Grass has a good one out there right now – Sacred Night], but as a library reader’s group (implicitly somewhat literate), possibly a community leader in book selections], let us hope that we often pick and read the good ones.

I found no redeeming merits for having this book as a Sonoma County Library recommended read.  In fact I find it embarrassing that an SCL selection committee would stamp their approval on this book.  In makes a mockery of SCL’s and the Foundation’s management capability to oversee libraries and advise patrons on issues of literacy.

 

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.