Book Review: Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

Disgrace

Author: J. M. Coetzee

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Date of Publication: October 31. 2000

Pages: 220 (Trade Paperback Edition)

       Disgrace diminishes the disgraced.  J. M. Coetzee hammers this theme home in this brilliant study of a despicable college professor who loses his job after his tawdry affair with one of his students comes to light.  Twice divorced, Professor David Lurie retreats to the South African countryside to stay with his daughter during the aftermath of his fall from grace.  What happens during this sojourn is pure karma.  Does the professor get what he deserves or has the world gone mad?  

     Every word (including the diminutive "Disgrace" on the cover) is pitch perfect.  The author has masterfully created a totally unlikeable main character.  It is impossible, really, to like or feel sorry for David Lurie.  His arrogance is displayed often and early:

 "He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood;  also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world.  The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing."

Later, even as he accepts humble jobs cleaning in a veterinary clinic he still manages to irritate the reader through his constant use and abuse of vulnerable women.    As evil befalls both him and those around him you feel he is reaping what he has sown. 

     This is a book about power and the abuse of power.  Professor Lurie abuses the trust placed in him by the University and the parents who send their children for education. The consequences of his actions on some levels seem unfair, in that the collateral damage affects innocents around the shameful academic.

     This book succeeds on many levels.  First, it is an expertly crafted work of literature.  The settings and tone are expertly conveyed.  It also succeeds as an in-depth character study, mainly of Professor Lurie.  The reader is repelled by this man's constant rationalization of his aberrant behaviors but, at the same time, gains tremendous insight into his psyche and lack of moral integrity.  This book was not a "fun" read, but a very thought provoking and intense one.  

Book Review: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

The Book of Strange New Things

Author: Michel Faber

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Date of Publication: October 28, 2014

Pages: 500 (Hardcover Edition)

     This book is itself somewhat of a strange new thing.  The main character, Peter Leigh, is an Englishman, a recovered alcoholic, drug addict and petty criminal.  He reinvented himself as  a Christian minister after being befriended by a nurse during a convalescence.  This nurse becomes his wife and partner in his ministry until he is selected to go alone to another planet to spread the Word of Jesus to aliens on a recently colonized planet called Oasis.  The colonization project is run by a nebulous company identified only as USIC

     It takes a while for Peter to become acclimated to his new planet and even longer to meet and begin his work with his new parishioners.  The author does a masterful job of describing this new world, including details of agriculture, climate, topography and the native inhabitants, called "Oasans" by Peter.  Peter is able to communicate with his wife, Bea, via an inter-stellar e-mail.  Just as Peter's ministry begins to flourish, troubles at home strain his relationship with Bea.  As he desperately tries to reconcile his missionary success with his personal failures, suspicion regarding the motives of USIC muddy the waters.  

     One can't help but be reminded of Mary Doria Russel's The Sparrow.  In The Sparrow the missionary is a Jesuit priest and the theology espoused is most definitely Ignatian.  In The Books of Strange New Things Peter's denomination is never characterized other than "Christian" and the religious concerns bounce around from issues of faith, suffering, redemption and salvation and even predestination.  There is not a particular theology presented, although the Bible is thoroughly explored as Peter translates Jesus' parables and teachings (Oasans prefer the New Testament).   

     The Book of Strange New Things is a marvelous exploration into faith and sharing.  It raises serious issues of being so concerned with others that you lose track of what's going on to those right next to you and trying to find that balance of saving the world but being true to your own relationships. 

Book Review: Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Broken Monsters

Author: Lauren Beukes

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Date of Publication: September 16, 2014

Pages: 448

     If Thomas Harris and William Peter Blatty got together and wrote a book, it would be Lauren Beukes' Broken Monsters.  Most of this well-paced thriller is the story of a particularly twisted serial killer preying on diverse victims in Detroit.  The ending changes the tone of the book into a hallucinogenic, paranormal freak show.  

     Set in contemporary Detroit, Detective Gabriella Versado investigates a series of horrific murders involving seemingly arbitrary victims.  The crime scenes are particularly gruesome because the killer engages in post-mortem mutilation of the bodies.  Versado searches for connections or similarities in the victims while also single parenting her teenage daughter Layla.  Distracted on both the professional and domestic fronts, the detective can't seem to get a handle on either role.  Layla's story is one of an unsupervised teen who, left to her own devices, finds all kinds of trouble on her own while trolling internet chat sites.

     The author is a native of South Africa but nonetheless paints a terrific portrait of a decaying and troubled American city.  The violence is disturbing but so is the despair and gloom of an abandoned urban landscape.  The author seems to be making a statement that the blighted environment played a major role in the development of this particularly sick criminal.  There is an eventual link to the art scene in Detroit and the author includes interesting depictions of contemporary urban art and culture.  

   
     Broken Monsters also makes a valid statement regarding the media and its ability to be part of the story instead of a detached, unbiased information source.  One of the main characters is an attention seeking video blogger who feeds into the killer's need for publicity which incites the criminal and hinders the police investigation.

     This author's writing is very vivid and Broken Monsters is fast-paced, entertaining and thought provoking.  It's not for everybody, however, as the crime scene descriptions leave little to the imagination and are horrific.  The strengths of the book are the depictions of urban chaos and the Detroit art scene and the overall quality of the writing.  Layla's story is an interesting diversion and a cautionary tale for parents of teens.  The ending  was for me, well, weird, but did wrap up all of the subplots into a satisfying conclusion.  Broken Monsters is a very good contemporary crime novel and is well worth the effort to read.  

Book Review: The End of Power by Moises Naim

The End of Power

Author: Moises Naim

Publisher: Basic Books

Date of Publication: March 5, 2013

Pages: 320

     This book is the first selection in Mark Zuckerberg's 2015 "Year of Books" Challenge.  It is a thought provoking and intriguing read.  The author has served as editor-in-chief of "Foreign Policy," trade minister for Venezuela and as executive director of the World Bank.  He has a grasp of how things work, or, as is more likely these days, how they don't work.

    The End of Power is like a Malcolm Gladwell book on steroids.  Naim takes a contrarian view of current power structures and backs this view up with charts, data and informed opinion.  The author feels that it is urgent for us to change the way we think and talk about power.

     He spends a great deal of time explaining what he calls the "More, Mobility and Mentality" revolution going on world wide.  First, there is more of everything: more people, more interest groups, more factions and more wealth.  Everyone is also more mobile.  He cites immigration statistics for multiple peoples and it does appear that populations are on the move at an unprecedented rate.  This is rapidly changing the demographics of communities and entire nations.   There is also an over-all more educated international populace which is acutely aware of trends, lifestyles and discrepancies.  All of this leads to more "players" in every power dynamic, be it the business world, education, politics or any other social system.  We live in a world where small start-up companies can challenge and usurp industry leaders in a very short time.  An educated and enraged group, spurred on by such recent technology such as social media,  can topple governments in the "Arab Spring."  Fraction groups such as the Tea Party can control an established political party.  This creates an atmosphere where power dissipates and no one has control.  Naim uses the term "vetocracy" to describe the gridlock in the United States and other nations where nothing gets done because power is so dissipated.

     The author does propose some solutions to this seeming conundrum of government paralysis.  The main way to restore order, he says, it to restore trust in government and our leaders.  He concludes:

"Restoring trust, reinventing political parties, finding new ways in which average citizens can meaningfully participate in the political process, creating new mechanisms of effective governance, limiting the worst impacts of checks and balances while averting  excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, and enhancing the capacity of nation-states to work together should be the central political goals of our time."

The End of Power is a challenging and frightening book.  It helps the reader understand some of the chaos we now live in and, by proposing some reasonable solutions gives at least some hope that we may arrive at a compromise between totalitarian control and anarchy.   

Book Review: When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs by Charles Kimball

When Religion Becomes Evil

Author: Charles Kimball

Publisher: HarperCollins

Date of Publication: October 13, 2009

Pages: 304 (Nook Edition)

    This author currently is the Presidential Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. Previous to this he was the Chair of the Department of Religion and the Divinity School at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.  He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and earned an M.Div. degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is an ordained Baptist minister and also received his Th.D. from Harvard University in comparative religion with specialization in Islamic studies.  The reader also learns from this book that Professor Kimball has served as Director of the Middle East Office of the National Council of Churches and has traveled extensively in the region in that capacity.  He has met personally with the Ayatollah Khomeni during the Iran Hostage Crisis and is regarded as an expert on Islam and conflict in the Middle East.  He has more than adequate credentials to write this book.

    This edition is a re-issue of the original book which was published shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Kimball has updated sections and included new examples of problematic religious practice.  This book is an excellent overview of religious fanaticism.  In the forward to this new edition the author addresses the current problem of widespread information which is without a coherent frame of reference for understanding and interpretation.  He attempts (and generally succeeds) in correcting that flaw and even better gives the reader "a gentle introduction to the critical study of comparative religion."  He also spends some time discussing "evangelical atheism" (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, etc...) and the thought that religion is the underlying problem to most of the world's ills.  These authors argue that religious world views are anachronistic and that religion itself is, therefore, irrelevant.  The author retorts that within religious traditions  "one finds the life-affirming faith that has sustained and provided meaning for millions over the centuries"  and therefore should not  be so summarily dismissed.  He also cites various authors including theologian Houston Smith and journalist Thomas Friedman. The author acknowledges that at the same time, there are corrupting influences that "lead toward evil and violence in the world."  The remainder of the book explores five major warning signs of human corruption of religion.  He notes that the inclination towards these corruptions is strong in the world's two major religions (Christianity and its 1.8 billion adherents as well as Islam with its 1.3 billion).  

     Kimball is very careful not to call any group evil.  His objective is to illustrate the warning signs that alert us to the potential for evil human behavior within the framework or justification of organized religion.   As he states: "The more effective we are at identifying dangerous patterns of corrupted religion the more likely people of good will can avert disaster inspired or justified by religion."  So what are these dangerous patterns we should look out for?

    The first is "Absolute Truth Claims":   "When zealous and devout adherents elevate the teachings and beliefs of their tradition to the level of absolute truth claims, they open a door to the possibility that their religion will become evil."    A contemporary example the author uses for this is when anti-abortionists support murder.  The author also notes that rigid truth claims, particularly in times of conflict, are the basis for demonizing and dehumanizing those who differ.    

     Secondly, we should be wary of the abuse of sacred texts.  Sacred texts, according to Kimball, are the most easily abused component of religion.  Further, "Manipulative exploitation of revered texts can lead to violent zealotry."  He notes that a highly selective reading and interpretation of the Qur'an is the foundation for the exceedingly powerful and destructive phenomenon of suicide bombings (including the 9/11 attacks). 

    The third red flag is the demand for blind obedience, often seen in religious cults and sects.  The author uses the example of the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan which was responsible for the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system in 1995.  Kimball notes that all religious traditions began as what we today would call a sect or a cult.  These sects and cults often follow a charismatic authority figure who demands blind obedience ("Exhibit A" being Jim Jones and The People's Temple which resulted in the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana). 

    The fourth signal is when religion tries to establish "the ideal time".  All religions, Kimball says, state that we are not living in an ideal time and that we should strive to identify what that is and how to attain it.

    Finally, religions can turn evil when they resort to an "end justifies any means" mentality.  This can come in response to defending a sacred space (The Crusades) or reinforcing group identity against "outsiders."  This can lead to racism, classism and sexism.  Protecting "The Institution" at all costs has led to such grievous events as The Inquisition and, more recently, the suppression of the sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. 

    The author uses the rest of the book to explain and define the "Just War doctrine", especially as this might apply to the contemporary war on terror.  He also uses the end of the book to defend Islam as a religion of peace and explains the true meaning of jihad (striving or struggling in the way of God).  The concept of jihad has been corrupted by radical Islam in all of the ways Kimball has explained in the previous chapters in the book.    The author also takes one more opportunity to warn the reader that we must continuously pursue peace with justice and be wary when political leaders seek to justify policy on religious grounds.  He gives further advice on how religious people need a new paradigm both for the ways we function both within existing traditions and for our more contemporary multicultural and interfaith engagement.  He suggests that we think of God as a direction rather than an object, much as Stephen Covey has described God as a compass.  He also encourages us to embrace diversity as enriching rather than threatening and approach our fellow humans with the basics of faith, hope and love.  Kimball states: "As people of faith look toward the future in the Middle East and in their own communities, we would all do well to focus on the two-fold mandate to love God and to love our neighbor."

     This book is an excellent look at the frightening issue of evil in the world waged in the name of organized religion, told within the framework of the study of comparative religion.  The author does a great job of not singling out any particular religion for the spotlight.  Instead, he points out that all of the world's religions are human constructs and, as such, are equally susceptible to the corruptions he defines which lead to evil and horrific consequences. 

     When Religion Becomes Evil is an excellent introduction for individuals wanting a better understanding of radicalism within established religious traditions.  It also lends itself well to group study and discussion.

Book Review: The Diamond Lane by Karen Karbo

The Diamond Lane

Author: Karen Karbo

Publisher: Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts, Inc.

Date of Publication: September 23, 2014 (Re-issue, Original DOP 1993)

Pages: 377 (e-book edition)

    This is a re-issue of Karen Karbo's 1993 "New York Times" Notable Book in trade paperback and e-book editions.  Twenty years after its initial release, The Diamond Lane still succeeds as biting satire and an indictment of fame, celebrity culture and the shallowness of modern life.

     On the surface this is the story of two sisters, Mimi and Mouse Fitzhenry, products of the Los Angeles suburbs who took very divergent paths following high school.  L.A. is described by the author as "a world where the unexpected happened and the expected didn't."  Mimi chased the Hollywood dream, working as a secretary in a talent agency while trying to find acting jobs and taking classes in "How to Write a Blockbuster."  Mouse goes to film school and then abandons the traditional movie scene to make obscure documentaries in Nigeria.  They are reunited following sixteen years of separation after their mother suffers a freak accident (she is struck in the head by a falling ceiling fan at an "all you can eat" buffet).  

     The sisters' adolescent love/hate relationship picks right up where it left off sixteen years before.  This involves typical sibling rivalries, guilt trips, ex-husbands, boyfriends and competition for everything from Mom's attention to movie contracts.  The title refers to the high occupancy vehicle lanes on the California freeways where everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere.  This metaphor runs throughout the novel as each character is constantly in helter skelter motion, most often without a defined destination.  The last half of the book also involves a scathing indictment of the trappings surrounding modern weddings, including flowers flown in from Europe, gold engraved invitations, etc...

     My only criticism of the book is the way the author handled Mouse.  Midway through the story Mouse's character turns from a counter-culture artist unconcerned with fashion or modernity to a self-conscious, self-obsessed consumer.  This seemed like a fairly radical switch for a central character.  That criticism aside, this book succeeds as a very funny social satire that, despite being technologically dated (allusions to "box phones"), rings true today as much as it did when it was first released in 1993.  Enjoy The Diamond Lane.  It is a fun read. 

Book Review: The Crime of Julian Wells by Thomas H. Cook

The Crime of Julian Wells

Author: Thomas H. Cook

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Date of Publication: August 7, 2012

Pages: 288

    This novel by previous Edgar Award winning author Thomas H. Cook really has it all.  The author has created terrific, sympathetic characters, a clever serpentine plot and describes locales with atmosphere galore. The book has a surreal quality to it with an atmosphere of mystery that is hard to actually pin down.  The basic story is fairly mundane:  A writer of non-fiction novels about grotesque serial killers commits suicides and leaves cryptic clues as to why.  His sister and his best friend from college begin a quest to discover what drove him to his desperate act and what, if anything, either of them could have done to prevent it.

     Philip Anders is a Julian's slife-long friend and book critic.  He explores Julian's books for clues to his madness and constantly revisits a post-college trip that he and Julian took to Argentina.  During that trip they met a lovely young lady named Marisol, assigned by the American embassy to them as a guide. Marisol disappeared during their visit, a turn of events which disturbed Julian greatly.  One of the clues that Julian left behind was a map of Argentina onto which he had circled Marisol's hometown.  This leads Philip on a quest to ferret out the cause of Julian's despair. Philip and, eventually, Julian's sister Loretta travel to Paris, Slovakia, Budapest, Russia and finally Argentina.  The thread connecting the dots in this quest is Julian's work: his documentary writing about sadistic serial killers.  Cook goes into much detail of these true horrific and macabre killers' stories which lends an even more dreary tone to an already dreary story.

     The resolution of the story and Julian's true motive come as somewhat of a surprise and illuminate the sometimes strange twists and turns in Julian's life which Philip and Loretta discover during their travels.   The disappearance of Marisol and Julian's complicity in that disappearance are the keys to the whole plot which don't become apparent until the very end.   This is a very good book with all of the elements of a good mystery, but also with well drawn characters, expert description of locale and a steady tone of unease throughout the entire story.  I recommend it very highly.