Book Review: Sycamore Row by John Grisham

Sycamore Row

Author: John Grisham

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Date of Publication: October 22, 2013

Pages: 464 (Hardcover Edition) 

  You have to give John Grisham his due.  Year after year he spins out great stories filled with memorable characters and just the right amount of tension.  A Time to Kill was his first novel (which I read shortly after I read his breakthrough novel The Firm) and Sycamore Row is a worthy sequel.  Grisham reprises most of the characters from his first book, including young and struggling attorney Jake Brigance.  It is three years after the heralded murder trial from A Time to Kill (the late 1980s).  Jake still runs his practice on a shoestring budget, fending off creditors and looking for business.  "Business" finds him in the form of a letter from an elderly white male, in the terminal stages of lung cancer, who hung himself from a Sycamore tree shortly after penning the letter to Jake.  Included in the letter is a hand-written will which leaves the bulk of his considerable estate to his black housekeeper and specifically excludes his derelict children.

  It's hard to believe that a 460 page novel about a contested will could be interesting much less entertaining, but Grisham achieves both.  The cast of characters is large and they are portrayed well.  Even though the author is describing "typical" Southerners, he doesn't wallow in stereotype or cliche.  The disgruntled heirs and their "big city" lawyers who swoop in like turkey vultures on roadkill, the locals who all have opinions fueled by gossip and innuendo, Jake and his family and a multitude of other minor characters all keep the story vibrant and moving.  

     Like A Time to Kill the main theme here is race and bigotry.  The difference in Sycamore Row is that the race issue is more simmering with overtones everywhere but it is not as bluntly in your face.  The final message is that events of decades past can indeed have serious repercussions generations later.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It is just what you would expect from this author: a fine story, great characters and a very satisfying resolution.  What more could a reader ask?

    

Book Review: Visitation Street by Ivy Pachoda

Visitation Street

Author: Ivy Pochoda

Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher

Date of Publication: July 9, 2013

Pages: 320 (NOOK Edition)

     Visitation Street is a "lost girl" novel.  The set up is interesting.  One summer night two bored 15 year old girls searching for adventure decide to take a small raft onto the river near their Brooklyn home.  One is found on the shore the next morning near death, amnesic for events surrounding the raft ride.  The other remains missing, her fate unknown until the very end of the book.  The book studies the effects of this disappearance on a complex urban neighborhood.  There are many other main characters.  They include the girls' music teacher who also is an alcoholic, a troubled African-American teen who encountered the girls on their way to the water, a Muslim convenience store owner and the extended families of the girls and these other characters.

     This is a first novel for Ms. Pochoda and there are certainly flashes of writing brilliance in Visitation Street.  My problem with the book is that it never decides what it is.  It is not a police procedural, since the formal investigation is almost never mentioned.  It tries to be a complex character study and succeeds on certain levels, but the author has so many characters involved that none ever get the full attention they deserve.  It also has hints of a sociological study of an urban neighborhood, with conflicts between the dwellers in the projects, the original inhabitants and new intruders trying to revitalize the waterfront.  All of these conflicts are alluded to but never completely developed.  Several of the characters have the ability to "communicate with the dead" and there are scenes of  the missing girl channeling through yet another girl as well as making appearances in a mirror to the other raft rider. 

     Overall, this was a good book, kept me turning the pages and had spots of sparkling description.  I would have been happier with a less complex story that focused more on just a couple of the main characters. 

Book Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch

Author: Donna Tartt

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Date of Publication: October 22, 2013

Pages: 784

     The Goldfinch is many things.  First. it is a remarkable character study.  The main character, Theo Decker, suffers an unspeakable tragedy.  At age 14 he loses his mother in a terrorist attack.  He spends the rest of the book reeling through abandonment issues, survivor's guilt and self-loathing.  There is a second main character.  Boris is a Ukranian whose mother has also died and whom Theo meets in school in Las Vegas.  They become inseparable.  There is also a huge cast of well drawn supporting characters.  Second, it is a captivating sociological examination of growing up in a modern world: latch-key teens, readily available alcohol and drugs, materialism and celebrity culture.  Third, it is a philosophical treatise on the role of fate and chance in our lives and asks the question: How much control do we  really have over what happens to us in our lifetime?  Finally, all 784 pages of this book are a primer on exactly what challenging and spell binding creative writing should be.  Every detail of setting creates the atmosphere necessary for the story, the dialogue is crystalline and pitch perfect and the story, although lengthy, is perfectly rendered.  There is not one word, phrase or sentence which should have been edited out.  As an example of this author's writing skill, here's Theo describing arriving in Las Vegas:

 "My new room felt so bare and lonely that, after I unpacked my bags, I left the sliding door of the closet open so I could see my clothes hanging inside.  From downstairs, I could still hear Dad shouting about the carpet."

     This book has three sections which occur in two main locations.  The book starts with Theo and his mother in New York.  After the bomb blast Theo lives for a few months with an affluent family on Fifth Avenue.  His heretofore estranged father reappears and Theo moves to Las Vegas with him and his live-in girlfriend.  It is in Las Vegas where Theo meets Boris, who is just as out of place in Vegas as Theo.  Their shared strangeness unites them in a catastrophic  friendship.  The story concludes with the young adult Theo back in New York.  The final scenes occur in Amsterdam.  Although there are multiple settings, The Goldfinch is a total celebration of all things New York:  ethnic restaurants,  the art and theater scene, funky specialty shops, the great melting pot of different peoples and the general chaos that is life in "The City."  Las Vegas is included to show the exact opposite of New York: overbuilt and barely inhabited subdivisions on the outskirts of the dessert, false glamour, failed promises and total shallowness.

     The writing here is truly marvelous.  The author packs a ton of detail into this story, although at times you feel that there is too much.  You come to realize though, that each detail adds a layer of complexity to this already very complex tale and each detail is necessary to comprehend the sum of what the author is trying to do.  The author is also extremely clever.  There is one particular scene late in the book where Theo is having coffee with a young lady in a Greenwich Village coffee shop.  Theo notes that Bob Dylan is playing on the music system in the background.  A few pages later Theo observes a young couple walking arm in arm down an otherwise abandoned Village street.  I almost fell off of the stationary bike at the Y when I realized the author had described the cover art of Dylan's legendary album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"!
                                           
                                                
 
     The one constant in this otherwise constantly morphing story is a small 16th Century masterpiece painting called "The Goldfinch."  Theo's mother had been mesmerized by a print of this as a youth.  An exhibit featuring the actual painting prompted the ill-fated visit to the art museum which culminated in her death.  Theo walks out of the chaos of the museum bombing with the small painting in hand and keeps it in hiding throughout the story.  The painting is at once a talisman which connects Theo to his Mom, an object of beauty which Theo adores and a pervading source of angst for Theo.  What happens to him if he is caught with the purloined painting?  He becomes obsessed both with the painting as well as the need to keep his possession of it secret.

     Late in the story Theo is discussing antiques and collectibles with Hobie, an aging artisan who restores furniture and becomes a surrogate father for Theo after he returns from Las Vegas.  Hobie says:  "Caring too much for objects can destroy you.  Only - if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it?  And isn't the whole point of things - beautiful things - that they connect you to some larger beauty?  Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?"  Theo considers this and later reflects: "I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality.  And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful."

     The real ambition of The Goldfinch is it's attempt to define what role fate and chance have in our lives.  How much of what we wind up doing and becoming is really under our control and how much of it is thrust upon us by circumstance and just plain luck (good and bad)?  The final chapters of the book have Theo reunited with Boris.  Boris' life has taken some radical turns, most of which are on the wrong side of the law.  Theo and Boris reflect on their tumultuous time together in Vegas and their subsequent divergent life paths.  Boris says this to Theo: "Maybe sometimes - the wrong way is the right way?  You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be?  Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?"  More Boris: "What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God?  What if the pattern is pre-set?  No no - hang on - this is a question worth struggling with.  What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good?  What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way?"  This is not the "stuff" of an average novel.


     This book took me a very, very long time to read.  This, however, is not a criticism.  The reason it took me so long to read is that I found myself re-reading paragraphs, pages and whole sections over and over again because I couldn't believe how well written they were.  The first two hundred pages or so, in fact, are probably the best description of a terrorist attack I have read to date.  The whole event (the melancholy morning leading to the ill-fated trip to art gallery, the visit to the gallery itself and the bomb and its aftermath) is told by Theo in a dream-like, slow motion, detail packed way which is totally mesmerizing.  You feel like you are experiencing the attack and its aftermath yourself. 

   Take the time to experience The Goldfinch.  It is worth it.

The Doctor as Patient

 

The Doctor as Patient

   Arnold Relman has written a fascinating article in the February 6, 2014 edition of The New York Review of Books entitled "On Breaking One's Neck".  In it he recounts his experience with a near fatal accident which he suffered in June of 2013.  He talks about his experience in the modern medical system and his long and arduous rehabilitation efforts.  What is unique about his experience and his recounting of it is his perspective.  Arnold Relman is a 90 year old Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and was the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigious of American medical literary journals, for fourteen years (1977-1991).   His perspective is unique.  He has reviewed his own medical record and had many conversations with his treating physicians, many of whom were friends and colleagues.

     He relates problems common to all critically ill patients - the fear, apprehension and physical pain.  He includes many details of his particular injury and care.  He notes that his family found him "more affectionate than usual"; his reasoning for this is that he needed them so much.  He relates how his care changed as he moved from the acute care setting to a rehabilitation setting.  He laments that he was not talked to very much, and that there were almost no references in his electronic medical record (which he terms "repetitious boilerplate language and lab data") to his mood or "state of mind".   He noted that as his physical capacities slowly returned he was "sobered by the realization of the fragility of my existence and my limited future."

     As a keen observer of the practice of medicine for three quarters of a century, he has some incisive further commentary.   After all of this time, he notes the critical role of the bedside nurse:  "I had never before understood how much good nursing care contributes to patients' saety and comfort, especially when they are very sick or disabled.  This is a lesson all physicians and hospital administrators should learn."

     He summarizes the enormous cost of his care and his good fortune of still being covered by the faculty health care plan, limiting his actual personal financial burden.   He then opines: "Is it justified to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend a nonagenarian's life a little longer?"  He realizes that his opinion would be extremely biased by his current predicament and never answers the question, but it is compelling that he would even bring that up.

     Finally he ponders why he lived through this when by all rights he shouldn't have:  "There was something else that helped to sustain me.  I wanted to stay around as long as possible to see what was going to happen to my family, to the country, and to the health system I was studying so closely."

       I can relate to Dr. Relman's article all too well, having endured a life threatening illness myself seven years ago.  I would echo all of his sentiments, including the tremendously discomforting experience of confronting your own mortality.  I can also heartily agree with the sustenance one gains during trying times by the support and love of family.  The one thing that I would add to Dr. Relman's article that was important for me was prayer.  I never understood the comfort of being prayed for, but  I definitely could feel the prayers being prayed on my behalf in a way that is really difficult to put into words.  I am certain that prayer contributed greatly to my recovery.  I would never wish a major illness on a colleague, but I think an experience like Dr. Relman's (and mine) does give a physician an appreciation for many things routinely taken for granted.  Thank you, Dr. Relman, for sharing your experience and insight.

Book Review: The Son by Philipp Meyer

The Son

Author: Philipp Meyer

Publisher: HarperCollins

Date of Publication: May 28, 2013

Pages: 576 

     This book has received nothing but glowing reviews.  Author Kate Atkinson (Life After Life, Case Histories) went so far as to say “The Son stands fair to hold its own in the canon of Great American Novels. A book that for once really does deserve to be called a masterpiece.”  This is the author’s second novel.  His first, American Rust, won the 2009 “Los Angeles Times” Book Award and was one of “The Washington Post’s” top ten books of that year.  This fellow can write   The Son is a challenging read at 576 pages, but well worth the effort.

     

     This novel is a multi-generational saga of the McCullough family.   It begins with 13 year old Eli McCullough being taken captive by a Comanche raiding party.  He survives only after witnessing the brutal destruction of his family.  Eli eventually is embraced by the Indians and he learns their language, culture and skills.  The descriptions of the Comanche ways of life are riveting as much as they are eye-opening.  Eli returns to “civilization” such as it was and becomes a Texas Ranger, a Confederate Colonel and eventually a land and cattle baron.  His legend both fuels and haunts subsequent generations.  The story unfolds over the decades through Eli’s son and great-granddaughter.  The McCullough family’s story is intertwined with the economics, politics and history of Texas. 

    

     The story is not told in chronological order.  Chapters of each of the main characters are interspersed with each other.  At first I found this distracting and somewhat confusing.  Once I was able to keep all of the characters straight it made each of the stories a bit more compelling.  Each story enlightens the others, subtly revealing motivations, character flaws and cause and effect relationships.  The author’s ability to create unforgettable characters is unparalleled.  His craft in weaving these characters into historical context is brilliant.  The author not only is able to examine history, but also the sociology of the region.  He manages to even make Texas politics somewhat understandable.  In one sequence Jeannie McCullough, the heiress to the family oil and cattle fortune meets Lyndon Johnson, then a young politician running for the State Senate for the first time.  Jeannie gets a quick lesson in the cost of political favor.

     

     The Son is more than a fantastic historical novel.  It has tremendous characters, pulse pounding action sequences, plots which mesmerize and prose which absolutely amazes.  This book, however, is first and foremost about power and, most importantly, land.  The author reminds us that the land was stolen from the Indians who had, in fact, stolen it from other Indians.  Spaniards came and stole it again and finally the whites came and stole it yet again. The topography of the land and harsh extremes of climate shape all of these peoples in one way or another.  The McCullough familial drive for more cattle, more oil, more money and more land becomes a character of its own.  The story of the McCulloughs is really the story of the trap of the American dream: that more is better, that the kinds of things that wealth can buy always translate into real-world advantages.  For the McCulloughs that doesn’t exactly work out.  There is always a price to be paid.

    

     A bit of warning: The Son is not for the squeamish.  The violence in this book is vivid and intricately described.  The rape and murder of Eli’s mother and siblings by the Comanche will at the very least make you uncomfortable.  There are other sequences where the violence also comes fast and furiously.  It is a necessary part of this brutal story but one which may be shocking to many readers.  This is by far the best book I’ve read all year and maybe one of the best ever.   Will it become part of the great American Canon of literature?  Only time will tell.

A Warm November Day

It was a warm Friday afternoon, especially for November, in Washington, D.C.  Our sixth grade class was engaged in copying spelling words or some such busy work.  It was silent in the room except for the hum of the fluorescent lights.  The blinds were drawn to cut the glare from the sunshine.  Many of my classmates had their heads on their desks, fighting sleep.  I couldn’t wait to go home, get rid of my starched white shirt and neck tie and run down to the neighborhood playground and see if anyone was there for a pick-up basketball game.

The principal at my school, St. Ann School in Arlington, Virginia, was Sister Joseph Marie (or “JM” as we called her).  We all lived in mortal fear of her.   We were never summoned to her office because we had done something really good.  She never came to the classroom.   We were all shocked out of our reverie when the door exploded open and JM stormed in like her habit was on fire.  Her face was crimson and her hands were trembling.  She glared at us.  She thrust her hands on her hips to try to calm herself.  She was stooped over and looked suddenly very old.  What in God’s holy name had we done to incur this wrath?

She collected herself finally and in a cracking voice announced: “Your President has been shot and you better pray!”

That was it.  She twirled around and stomped towards the next classroom.  Our homeroom teacher was a younger nun. (Exact nun ages are hard to guess.)  She calmly told us to take out our rosaries and we recited the requisite “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys”.  Lacking any other direction, we lapsed into an even more intense silence.  My eyes focused on dust that was floating in the air and highlighted by the afternoon sun while questions bounced around inside my brain:  “Who? Why? How bad?”  Dismissal time came and we walked silently, singe file, into the coat room.  Contrary to every other day in the coat room, there was no chatter or banter.  I looked at my best friend Danny and our eyes locked.  He then rabbit punched me in the shoulder, wheeled around and returned to his seat.  I grabbed my jacket and lunch box and returned to my seat as well, trying to ignore the throb in my deltoid.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic president.  He was young and therefore in direct contrast to the men he had followed.  He had a beautiful wife and little kids.  He was an idealist.  We all idolized him.  My Republican parents bought a new television (which was extremely out of character) to watch his inauguration.  My older sister had volunteered for his campaign.  JFK was bigger than life.  We felt like we knew him.  We trusted him.  We felt safe with him in the White House.  (It had only been a year since he called the Commie’s bluff in Cuba and made Khrushchev back down, after all.)  He audaciously promised Americans would walk on the moon by the end of the decade and, for some crazy reason, we all believed him. 

I walked briskly home, noticing that there was very little traffic.  The brilliant sunlight brought out the vivid reds and yellows in the crinkly leaves on the sidewalks.  When I got home, the house was empty.  My Mom didn’t work or drive and I don’t really remember where she was.  I had a house key and let myself in.  I ran for the TV in time to see Walter Cronkite take off his clunky black glasses and, fighting back tears, announce that John Kennedy had just died. 

We lived the rest of that day and night in a numb cloud.  My mother came home shortly thereafter and my Dad drove home early from work in downtown D.C.  We hardly spoke.  I don’t remember what we ate for dinner, but being Friday, it was probably frozen Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. The meal was eaten off of unstable aluminum TV tray tables as we were assaulted with images of a frantic Jackie Kennedy scrambling on the back of the black Lincoln limousine for a fragment of her husband’s skull, a somber Lyndon Johnson taking the Oath of Office on Air Force One and anguished mourners on the streets of cities around the world.  Most of our food went uneaten.

Saturday was an even more spectacular weather day as was Sunday.  We went to Mass which should have helped but didn’t.  Back at home I finally had had enough funereal television viewing and needed to go shoot some baskets, run around the block, do anything but sit stunned in front of the TV.  I stood up in our small family room, stretched, and was about to depart when they announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin, was to be transferred to another jail.  While watching that, a man named Jack Ruby emerged from a cluster of bystanders and fatally shot Oswald at point blank range on live television.  At that point I was sure that the world had gone officially mad.

I had similar feelings over the ensuing years.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and rioters nearly destroyed my city.  Bobby Kennedy was killed while running for President, ending the hope of a quick resolution of the Viet Nam war.  The war itself escalated and too many of my contemporaries were killed or wounded.  Images of dead and maimed teenagers in the jungles of Southeast Asia emanated from the same television screen which had shown me Jackie Kennedy in her pink coat stained with her husband’s blood. The nation was then deceived and nearly destroyed by Richard Nixon and his cronies as the drama painfully unfolded, again, on national television. 

Even the cumulative shock of all of those events pales, however, compared to the warm November day that my president was shot.

Book Review: The Museum of Dr. Moses by Joyce Carol Oates

The Museum of Dr. Moses

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Date of Publication: August 4, 2008

Pages: 240 (Trade Paperback Edition)

     The Museum of Dr. Moses is a collection of ten stories written by Joyce Carol Oates over a number of years and published in various literary and mystery magazines.  They all are very eloquent pieces of writing with superb descriptions and character developments, even within the confines of the genre (short fiction).  Each story contains a macabre character (or two) who carom through the lives of more or less sane folks around them.   I read this book while vacationing at the Outer Banks during the week of Halloween.  The beach was deserted and the northern beaches were dark and quiet.  This was the perfect book to read that week!

     Many of the stories channel the energy and madness of Edgar Allan Poe.  Valentine, July Heat Wave resonates with the horror of The Telltale Heart.  The final story in the collection, The Museum of Dr. Moses is as horrific as any penned by Poe.  There are several stories which study serial killers and their psyche, including Dr. Moses, Hi, Howya' Doin'? and Bad Habits.  

     The author does a masterful job of examining the effects these depraved characters have on their families, co-workers and even innocent strangers.  The best example of this is in Suicide Watch, where a father confronts his imprisoned son who may or may not have killed his own son.  Meeting with his son in a court-mandated psychiatric hospital, the father realizes what his son is capable of:  "There was something wrong with the son's eyes, set deep in their sockets, bloodshot, with a peculiar smudged glare like worn-out Plexiglass."  Another story which hones in on this ripple effect is The Man Who Fought Roland Le Strange.  In this story a boxer loses his big fight which leads to a downward spiral in his personal life.  His best friend sorts through the wreckage of both of their lives. 

     This is a strong collection of stories for which the reader needs to be in the right frame of mind.  Like Poe, Joyce Carol Oates shocks the reader by presenting characters who appear fairly normal on the surface but have a macabre inner core which most never see.  In particular, it's hard to forget Dr. Moses.