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Crawfish Mountain
 , by Ken Wells
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
Pop quiz: some of the characters in a novel are named Julie Galjour, Grace and Justin Pitre, Minna Cancienne, Buddy Dupere and ‘Ti-Ray Lajaune. Where is the novel set? If you didn’t say Louisiana, you just haven’t been reading widely enough or have a tin ear. Ken Wells does NOT have a tin ear and the characters are as euphonious as their speech: “He got banged as hard as a Mardi Gras drum” is typical. Unfortunately for this reader, so was the situation in “Crawfish Mountain. While I certainly have sympathy for the environmentalists and not much for the oil companies who are destroying the bayou country of Louisiana without about as much regret as they have demonstrated over destroying other areas of the globe in order to exploit resources at all costs, this story of a semi-corrupt Louisiana governor, Joe T. Evangeline (yeah, Longfellow is grinding his molars), his lovely and smart-as-a-whip colleague Julie Galjour and the pure-as-the-court-boullion Pitres has been told before and the plot moves in a predictable straight line from corruption to comeuppance. One does hanker for some of the shrimp, catfish court boullion (“coo-boo-yan”) and other dishes and getting a hold of one of those ten-pound redfish sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon, but the heroes are too pure, the villains too starkly evil (even though they are also inept) to maintain anything but a slight distance from them all so the stains that won’t wash out can be avoided. Wells has, as his expressed purpose, a point to make about the dangerous procedures being used to rape the bayous and swamps of a critical area of our natural habitat. What isn’t being drilled for more oil is being exploited as waste dump for dangerous chemicals that kill fish and trees and endanger mankind. He makes that point, but I wished for a bit more meat on the bones of his characters. Almost every woman under 40 is dangerously beautiful and only the good guys are handsome and witty. The deck is stacked and, unlike a good Creole meal, one is left wanting more.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Crawfish Mountain
, by Ken Wells
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
Pop quiz: some of the characters in a novel are named Julie Galjour, Grace and Justin Pitre, Minna Cancienne, Buddy Dupere and ‘Ti-Ray Lajaune. Where is the novel set? If you didn’t say Louisiana, you just haven’t been reading widely enough or have a tin ear. Ken Wells does NOT have a tin ear and the characters are as euphonious as their speech: “He got banged as hard as a Mardi Gras drum” is typical. Unfortunately for this reader, so was the situation in “Crawfish Mountain. While I certainly have sympathy for the environmentalists and not much for the oil companies who are destroying the bayou country of Louisiana without about as much regret as they have demonstrated over destroying other areas of the globe in order to exploit resources at all costs, this story of a semi-corrupt Louisiana governor, Joe T. Evangeline (yeah, Longfellow is grinding his molars), his lovely and smart-as-a-whip colleague Julie Galjour and the pure-as-the-court-boullion Pitres has been told before and the plot moves in a predictable straight line from corruption to comeuppance. One does hanker for some of the shrimp, catfish court boullion (“coo-boo-yan”) and other dishes and getting a hold of one of those ten-pound redfish sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon, but the heroes are too pure, the villains too starkly evil (even though they are also inept) to maintain anything but a slight distance from them all so the stains that won’t wash out can be avoided. Wells has, as his expressed purpose, a point to make about the dangerous procedures being used to rape the bayous and swamps of a critical area of our natural habitat. What isn’t being drilled for more oil is being exploited as waste dump for dangerous chemicals that kill fish and trees and endanger mankind. He makes that point, but I wished for a bit more meat on the bones of his characters. Almost every woman under 40 is dangerously beautiful and only the good guys are handsome and witty. The deck is stacked and, unlike a good Creole meal, one is left wanting more.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Getting Rid of Matthew
, by Jane Fallon
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
Getting Rid of Matthew
Chick-lit books are generally despised by the literati and I must admit I have little patience with them myself. Somehow, however, when it’s British chick-lit, it seems less grubby than the American versions. Such is the case with a very tricky new novel by Jane Fallon. Fallon is, by trade, a TV producer in England where she lives with Ricky Gervais of “Extras” and the original “The Office.” In fact, her novel contains a bit of both atmospheres, set as it is in a PR office in London that handles wacko TV stars and wannabes, most of them definitely on the “D List,” such as Sandra, who can’t keep her bra or her panties on in public and wonders she is not taken seriously. But Sandra is very much a peripheral character in this Feydaux-farcical novel. The plot turns around Helen, nearing forty and working as a personal assistant to Matthew, one of the honchos of the firm. They have been having an illicit relationship for over four years when, out of the blue, Matthew appears on Helen’s doorstep, suitcases in hand, to move in. He’s left his wife, Sophie, and their two daughters, and is to start a new life with Helen. There’s only one problem: Helen has been thinking of breaking it off and Matthew’s arrival sets in motion a series of near-collisions and double identity confusions that Helen barely keeps straight in her head, all in an attempt to settle the situation happily for everybody. Perversely, but naturally, Helen meets, then befriends Sophie. To Sophie Helen is “Eleanor” who has a boyfriend named Carlo and who works in PR. The first element of potential farce is introduced when Sophie asks Helen to do some PR work for her steps-son, Leo, who is opening a new restaurant. There is an instant attraction there that cools for Helen when she realizes she has kissed her lover’s son. The perceptive reader is left wondering for most of the book 1) how are Helen and Leo going to get together and 2) how is Helen going to be unmasked? In the meantime, Matthew wallows in his own perfidy and inability to tell the truth about himself to any of the women in his life and is generally portrayed as a total dickhead, a facet of chick-lit that seems to be inviolable. Leo is terrific, but we seldom get to see him once Helen determines that she can have nothing to do with him. The office where they both work is thrown into an uproar by the whole situation and even Sandra, the exhibitionist, figures in the action as catalyst for the final confrontation that you knew all along had to take place. Fallon is facile and the novel zips along. It is definitely not a heavy read and those of you who like your chick-lit with Pinot Grigio and a crumpet or two will love it.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Last Night at the Lobster
, by Stewart O'Nan
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
When people say: “The novel is dead,” they often overlook what the best novels have always done: they use the condensed space of a finite number of pages to tell a story that illuminates the life of the careful reader. “War and Peace” says a lot in a lot of pages about humanity, history and love. Other recent novels spend only slightly fewer pages, not always as successfully, to tell their stories. Then there’s Stewart O’Nan’s jewel of a novel, “Last Night at the Lobster.” It is ostensibly the story of a Red Lobster in a New England mall that has been, in a sense, “decommissioned.” Shortly before Christmas, it has been ordered closed by the corporation. The entire novel, only 146 pages, takes place during the last night of the restaurant’s operation. O’Nan researched the running of a Red Lobster in considerable detail: from the setting of the tables to the order of cooking, to the presentation, to the processes necessary to both open and close the place. They don’t get in the way, but rather serve as devices by which O’Nan shows us the routine, non-creative nature of what the staff does and how their lives are prescribed, in large part, by what they do. It becomes much more than a story of the last night of a restaurant.
Manny, the fat manager, has a pregnant girlfriend, Deena, but he has also recently concluded an affair with Jacquie, a waitress at the Lobster. Manny has regrets about both relationships and, while he plans on marrying Deena at last, it is with a pending sense of resignation rather then joy. Manny is a good man and a decent manager. He willingly pitches in at all necessary jobs when some of the staff, working their last day, bail out early. He is considerate of them and of his women and most warm toward the memory of his “abuelita,” or “little grandmother,” who was clearly close to him and remains so even though she is gone. We come to care about Manny and thus to care about his staff. I began to wonder, as I reluctantly reached the end of “Last Night at the Lobster,” how many restaurant managers in his position would have remained open to the end during a snowstorm? How many would insist that everything be made ready for a dinner traffic that was simply not going to materialize “just in case?” How many would struggle to start a snow blower to clear the walkways for non-existent patrons? How many would handle the disasters that visit the Lobster in its last night with such resigned aplomb and professionalism? “Last Night at the Lobster” is a gem of a novel. Its characters are real, the setting impeccably drawn and we care about everybody who populates its small space. It’s almost good enough to make you want to work for Manny in his next job at the Olive Garden. I don’t think there is a novel written yet that’s good enough to make me want to do that.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Marrying the Mistress
, by Joanna Trollope
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
I had read only one Trollope before this one, “The Choir” and was leery going into this as the previous experience had been a little on the dull side for much of the read. But I must admit that this one, while not a thriller in any sense, established a clear set of characters in various dilemmas, all of which had to be solved some way.
The basic situation, which is made clear from the start, is that Judge Guy Stockdale, in his sixties, is divorcing his wife, Laura, to marry his long-time (seven years) mistress, Merrion Palmer. This does not sit well with his sons, Simon, a lawyer, and Alan, his gay younger brother. The only one of the cast of characters who seems to understand the whole deal is Carrie, Simon’s wife. She understands and supports Guy, but is understandably dismayed when Simon takes up his mother’s cause and begins to represent her in the divorce case. The reasons for her support of Guy become clear as the character of Laura emerges bit by bit. She is a control freak who refuses to admit that her marriage was long over and, when she can’t will it to stay together, she turns into a hoyden, harassing Simon and his whole family.
In the meantime, the theme of the novel being love in many dimensions, Jack, the 16-year old son of Carrie and Simon, has his first love affair and it goes less than well. The consternation over Laura’s behavior, Guy’s facing up to reality and the mild depression of Jack is spun out over a couple of hundred pages and is done excellently. The denouement of the novel is not surprising, though it might disappoint some. In fact, thinking it through, the ending was inevitable from the start if Trollope was attempting to write anything but a romance novel (which she was not) or a soap opera episode (clearly not her intention either.)
For handling of characters, creation of suspense through emotions rather than actions and a British sensibility with a wry detachment, this is terrific writing and worth the few hours you will spend with it.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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People of the Book
, by Geraldine Brooks
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
Another book, like “The Journal of Dora Damage,” that goes into history with a female book person as guide. This time it’s the rough-on-the-edges Australian Hanna Heath, a book conservator, who’s given the job of working on the famed Sarajavo Haggadah. The fact that the haggadah is an actual book and that author Brooks watched it being worked on in 2001 only adds to the versimilitude of the novel. Some critics, who apparently like the nitty gritty only, have criticized Brooks for having too much bibliographical detail in the book. I found the mix very satisfactory with the conservation practices only adding to the fascination with the stories of the people who contributed various things to the book itself.
Heath, you see, has several clues as to the provenance of the volume that she finds in the volume itself. Among them are a wine stain that proves to be more than wine, a white hair, a piece of salt and something that is not there: a set of clasps that at one time held the parchment pages closed. The stories that evolve from the clues might be a bit far-fetched at times but this is fiction and all surround the same theme: the brutality of men and women when religion rules their lives rather than compassion and humanity. There is no one group at fault here and several of the representatives of each religion do good things, but the consistent high odds they face from religious figures and zealots only complicates rather than soothes their lives. Much of the action takes place around the time of the Inquisition and that may be enough of an indication as to how irrational it gets, but it is all fascinating, fast-paced and good fiction.
The fact that Brooks is herself an Australian adds to the often funny aspects of the book. Particulary funny is her description of women in the arts in Britain: “...women named Annabelle Something-hyphen-Something who dress in black leggings and burnt orange cashmeres and smell faintly of wet Labrador. I always find myself lapsing into Paleolithic Strine when I’m around them, using words I’d never dream of using in real life, like ‘cobber’ and ‘bonza.’”
For anybody who loves books and dreams of tracking down exotic provenances, this is a great read. For those of you not into those things, it’s still a fascinating take on an obviously age-old question: What is it about religion that makes its practitioners spend so much time and energy not on improving their own lives but on ruining others’?
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Person of Interest
, by Theresa Schwegel
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
I have been heavily into literary novels lately so this was a refreshing break and a tense one. “Person of Interest” is an interesting variation on the police procedural since it involves what you might call a “police family procedural” approach. Craig McHugh is a Chicago detective, undercover, to discover the identity of a Chinese gang that is infesting the city with a particularly virulent form of drug that is taking lives. It’s called “China White.” While McHugh labors undercover, his wife, Leslie, is convinced he’s having an affair, an assumption that allows her to feel free to indulge herself in fantasies and inappropriate behavior with a young Greek jazz pianist named Niko who just happens to be the current boyfriend of Leslie’s nubile and hormone-racked daughter, Ivy. The plotline consists of McHugh’s attempts to close the case without getting killed, Leslie’s conquering her mid-life housewife sexual frustration and Ivy belonging to the family in any reasonable way.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Rhett Butler's People
, by Donald McCaig
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
“Scarlett” was awful but made gazillions. “Rhett Butler’s People” may test the market to see if it is finally saturated with “Gone With The Wind” sequels or spin-offs and it thus might not make gazillions. Donald McCaig, authorized by the Mitchell Estate, for what that’s worth, has taken his own informed shot at the soap opera novel of Mitchell and, except for some odd and sporadic condensation of events and dialogue, it works well enough. The characters have a different emphasis: much more becomes known about Belle Watling and her bastard son, Tazewell, than in the original. Rhett becomes even more of a cipher at times, operating in the shadows and making money in mysterious but consistent ways to ride in at the last moment to save whoever needs saving.
There are new villains as Belle Watling’s father and brother become involved in a vendetta against Butler and O’Hara, along with another Ku Kluxer and there is the evil Andrew Ravenal who meets his just deserts at the right time and the right place. There is still the confusion over Rosemary Butler, Rhett’s sister, who seems destined to marry any man around who can breathe and who has not been left by another woman by death or design. Scarlett’s passion for Ashley still feels and sounds wrong, but that may because most readers of the original know that Scarlett and Rhett belong together and that’s the whole point of the story. Tara takes its customary beating and Scarlett fights to preserve her pretty dresses and ribbons and keeps trilling “fiddle-de-dee” at odd moments. In short, there’s enough familiar there to keep the ball rolling. McCaig honored the somewhat overblown style of Margaret Mitchell by adopting it himself. I felt, without re-reading the original, that the portrait of Reconstruction in the South is much more accurate here: out-of-control KKK members, overthrow of elected governments and terrorism, but it is still perhaps underplayed in order to emphasize the noble mythology that sustained the South until the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. “Rhett Butler’s People” also takes us past the events of the original and wraps up more story lines, careful to make sure that Ashley Wilkes does not have to struggle to survive alone. I didn’t feel embarrassed reading McCaig’s work but I know that there were and are other books on my waiting list that might be more rewarding. That is, unless you are a Mitchell nut, in which case, indulge, indulge.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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Symphony
, by Jude Morgan
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
Romantic fiction is different from romance fiction, of course. If you want to see how different, may I recommend “Symphony” by Jude Morgan? It is a frustrating, moving and accurate portrait of the romance between Irish actress Harriet Smithson and the quixotic genius, Hector Berlioz. It is also the stuff of which Jane Austen made so much but on far higher level.
Berlioz’s family figures in the plot. His mother denounces him when he switches from medicine to music and his father is not pleased either. One can only imagine their feelings when Hector, besotted to the point of distraction, falls in love with rage of Paris, Miss Smithson, who knocks French audiences out with, first, her Ophelia and next her Juliet. The legendary characters of actors Kean and Kembel play a role in her life, but most of all, it is controlled by the fickle finger of fate. The finger writes “Revolution” and Shakespeare loses his panache, leaving Harriet to form her own company and struggle to regain audiences with a second rate troupe of actors. Enter Hector Berlioz, stage right. Berlioz did not find much favor in Paris early in his career and he struggled to make ends meet by writing reviews of others’ concerts while he wrote his own music. Even winning the Prix de Rome, a contest he hated for its academic boundaries and cloistered environment, did not jump-start his career. His first major work as the “Symphonie fantastique,” dedicated to and inspired by Harriet. She is duped into going to its first performance and, like most of the rest of the audience, is shocked and dismayed by its raw energy and doleful finale in which “you can hear the head hit the basket.” She soon yields to his constant attention and they marry and have a son, Louis, to whom Berlioz is devoted. Harriet, plumping up and no longer thinking of acting, begins to tilt the brandy bottle and it is not spoiling the story to mention that she goes mad as well. The novel opens with scenes of Harriet in Monsieur Blanche’s Asylum for Lunatics in Montmartre. The story of her life with Berlioz is spun out in the atmosphere of post-Waterloo France and it is, in a way, the story of most fine artists who are not recognized in their lifetimes. Berlioz eventually yields to Harriet’s growing insanity, somewhat perfunctorily takes a mistress and gets on with his life, finding some success in England and Germany, but never the rewards he deserved. The only quibble I find in the novel is the lack of the interesting and significant fact that he never learned to play piano (mentioned) but was a guitar virtuoso and, it is said, used the guitar to find harmonies while other composers used the piano. That is such a quirky turn that it deserved mention but we learn only that Berlioz did not play the piano and thus could not, like Chopin, make money by teaching the daughters of the rich. Reading this novel is frustrating. If you have a musical collection at all, you will want to run to the CD player and load it up with Berlioz, Chopin, Schubert, Liszt and other composers mentioned in its pages. Most of all, however, you will mourn for an epic romance that sours and wonder what might have been had everyone been able to get along. A moving read.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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The Journal of Dora Damage
, by Belinda Starling
review by mikecuth
Co-host of THE BOOK GUYS and aspiri
This remarkable first, and last, novel starts out being a Dickensian picture of London’s underbelly and rapidly turns into a bibliophilic delight, morphing eventually into a romantic thriller. Dora Damage is a bookbinder’s wife, separated from the business by the strictures of the time that limited women’s role in all business. Dora, however, is as clever with her hands as she is observant and, when Peter, her husband, is struck by severe rheumatoid arthritis, she takes over for him, fulfilling contracts for bindings of books from the library of Sir Jocelyn Knightley, supervised by the dastardly Charles Diprose, Knightley’s toady. Her work expands as books from the library of an elite club, the Noble Savages, begin to appear for binding. Dora discovers, much to her initial dismay but eventual great profit, that all the books have one thing in common: they are all classics of pornography.
Jack, Dora’s apprentice, is eventually taken by police for homosexuality, his place is taken by Din Nelson, a mysterious American slave who has escaped to England and is part of a secret band bent on kidnapping Jefferson Davis, Pansy, a girl off the streets who has also a bit of binding experience, and Sylvia, Knightley’s pregnant wife who he tosses out for reasons I will not divulge. Quite the mob is assembled at the bindery and, when Dora receives s commission for a book to be bound secretly on mysterious leather, things begin to unravel quickly. All but Dora and Din are not quite what they seem to be and as the evil and the good clash, the action speeds to a rapid conclusion that finds not all happy but at least appropriately dealt with.
This is author Belinda Starling’s first and last novel because, four days after completing it, she went in for removal of a cyst on her bile duct, became infected after an aneurysm and succumbed several weeks later at the age of 34. The historical material is dense but necessary because of the nature of Dora’s work, and the plot quick and satisfying, while somewhat quirky. Not as dense as Melville’s passages on the techniques of whaling in “Moby Dick,” Starling’s passages on bookbinding may even be educational for the reader who always wondered how books were constructed and bound. Starling goes into such detail about Dora’s various creations that I wished there had been illustrations!
A recommended read.
Ratings (100 pt scale)
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