Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Thursday July 29, 2010
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97 ORCHARD: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
Jane Ziegelman
Smithsonian/Harper
ISBN 978-0061288500
253 pages
$25.99
Reviewed by Timothy R. Smith
Modern American cuisine was born in 19th-century New York when immigrants forked over their varied gastronomic habits. So says Jane Ziegelman in her delightful book "97 Orchard." The subtitle, however, is a bit misleading. Ziegelman does check in with five immigrant families in one Lower East Side apartment house, but they are only bit players in a broader exploration of New York's culinary evolution.
Throughout we see the rudiments of modern American cuisine. Here's the sphere of ground beef that will one day become hamburger, and over there a vendor selling 15-cent pails of cabbage and corned beef -- early takeout. Immigrants also contributed wursts, matzoh balls and spaghetti, among other staples. As Ziegelman writes, "Native-born Americans, wary of foreigners and their strange eating habits, pushed aside their culinary (and other) prejudices to sample these novel foods and eventually to claim them as their own."
Timothy R. Smith can be reached at smitht(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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KINGS OF THE EARTH
Jon Clinch
Random House
ISBN 978 1 4000 6901 9
393 pages
$26
Reviewed by Robert Goolrick, whose most recent novel is "The Reliable Wife"
In the acknowledgments at the end of his fine new novel, "Kings of the Earth," Jon Clinch says, "In literature as in life, we have a duty to see that nothing important should ever be lost." This is the kind of fiction we should be reading. "Kings of the Earth" is eloquent and moving, written with precision and clarity to stave off loss -- the loss of history, of art, of humanity. True feeling seems to be out of fashion in contemporary fiction, and fiction is the poorer for it. Disaffection and irony may be the tenor of the times, but too much of it can leave you feeling estranged and lonely. Then along comes Clinch, and we feel that we are once again safe at home, in the hands of a master.
As he did in his wildly acclaimed first novel, "Finn," a reinvention of Huck's story from the point of view of his bigoted, drunken father, Clinch here takes on a familiar story -- in this case, a real one. But he turns it inside out and gives it new life and meaning.
In 1990, outside a small town in Upstate New York, William Ward, one of four reclusive brothers who lived an antiquarian life on a rundown farm, died in the bed he shared with his brothers in their filthy one-room farmhouse. His brother Delbert was eventually accused of strangling him in his sleep and put on trial for murder. The case pitted big-city lawyers and high-tech criminal pathology against small-town pride and privacy in a riveting way. Delbert was eventually acquitted because his confession had been coerced after hours of intense interrogation without the presence of a lawyer.
The case became the subject of an award-winning 1992 documentary, "Brother's Keeper," which showed how squalid life can become and still miraculously be sustainable. Clinch tells this tale from the shifting viewpoints of all the major characters. These are honest, unsophisticated, uniquely American voices, from the three Proctor brothers -- innocent, feral and shy -- to their neighbors, the arresting officer and the brothers' drug-dealing nephew. Their speech is not lyrical, but it has an honesty that becomes poetic, even Whitmanesque:
"The work Audie loves best, come to life. The clouds clear and he switches off the flashlight and keeps going. The creaking grows louder the nearer he gets. A half a hundred voices raised in the night and crying out. The earth turns and the sun shines somewhere and the temperatures shift and the wind comes up and these things -- these creatures, for what else are they but created -- these creatures cry out in their half a hundred voices."
But it is in the slow accumulation of details that the novel dazzles. Nothing goes unnoticed; nothing is lost. From the whirligig carvings of an illiterate man to a string of frozen fish flopping back to life on a farmhouse floor, to the unexpectedly literate ramblings of a mother dying of cancer, to the glow of a cigarette smoked at night in a hayloft, or the sly observation that part of the price to be paid for being a successful drug dealer is that you always have to drive one mile per hour below the speed limit, Clinch catches it all. Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness, Baudelaire said, and few writers have paid attention the way Clinch does.
In using the real-life story of these brothers, Clinch is not appropriating; he is using the skeletal structure of the known to build the body of the complex and yearning American character. It is a lonely character, formed by bleak surroundings and poverty and loss and drunkenness. But it is also filled with a kind of decency that is almost holy in its simplicity, its striving to keep what is from ever being lost. In Clinch country, no grave goes unattended, no honor to the living or dead is ever abandoned.
To say that this novel brings others to mind is not to denigrate it. It recalls the finest work of John Gardner, and Bruce Chatwin's "On the Black Hill," another exploration of the bonds between brothers that go unspoken but never unexamined. "Kings of the Earth" becomes a story that is not told but lived, a cry from the heart of the heart of the country, in William Gass' phrase, unsentimental but deeply felt, unschooled but never less than lucid. Never mawkish, Clinch's voice never fails to elucidate and, finally, to forgive, even as it mourns.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE REBELLION OF JANE CLARKE
Sally Gunning
Morrow
ISBN 978 0 06 178214 5
273 pages
$24.99
Reviewed by Clare Clark, the author, most recently, of "Savage Lands"
Like her previous two novels, Sally Gunning's third book, "The Rebellion of Jane Clarke," is inspired in part by the history of Gunning's own family, who have lived for generations in Massachusetts. The book begins in the whaling village of Satucket, but the story soon moves to Boston, a town of rising tensions on the eve of the Revolutionary War.
Jane Clarke is a thoughtful country girl, the oldest of many siblings who, as assistant to the local midwife, is accustomed to taking care of others. Her life in Satucket is peaceful, troubled only by the bad blood between her father and his neighbor over the rights to the local mill stream, a long-running feud in which Jane is unwilling to involve herself. However, when she refuses to marry the man chosen for her, her hot-tempered father dispatches her in disgrace to Boston to care for an infirm spinster aunt.
In Boston, Jane finds it more difficult to remain aloof from the hostilities that burgeon around her. From her first day, the tension between the townspeople and the British soldiers stationed there is all too evident. Jane's aunt lives close to the barracks, and the old woman's fear of the soldiers causes her to jump in terror at the slightest noise. Meanwhile, Jane's brother, clerking in town for the notorious lawyer John Adams, is a fervent rebel, determined to throw off the shackles of British rule.
Jane has more ambivalent feelings about the occupation, although she soon makes friends with the bookseller Henry Knox, himself an affirmed rebel. All the same, she cannot help but observe how the British soldiers are taunted and harassed by the townspeople. Soon after she accidentally falls and is assisted to her feet by a British sentry, she is shocked to see the rebel newspapers report the incident as a brutish attack on an innocent woman. As the political situation deteriorates, her uneasiness is exacerbated by the strange comings and goings of the slaves in her aunt's household. And when she finds herself caught on the fringes of the Boston Massacre, she realizes that she can no longer play the bystander but must bear witness to what she has seen.
Gunning has chosen a turbulent and fascinating period in American history as the background to her story, and one that suggests interesting philosophical arguments. The British occupation of Boston was frequently heavy-handed, and British taxes were severe and unpopular. Anyone expressing opposition to the Crown was threatened with charges of treason, to be tried in England where a verdict was more likely to be favorable to the British interest. On the other hand, the Boston rebels employed every trick in their armory to implicate the soldiers in illegal acts of brutality. The subject raises profound questions, particularly given America's current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. In a state of war, do the ends justify the means, and, if they do, what happens then to truth and justice? "The Rebellion of Jane Clarke" sets out to explore how bonds of love and loyalty pull against those principles, and how difficult it is in such times, not only to do the right thing but to know what the right thing is. In Jane Clarke, we have a sensitive heroine, insightful enough to tussle with these difficulties.
However, casting Jane as narrator undermines the novel's effectiveness. By telling her story from the perspective of a woman in a male-dominated conflict, Gunning is obliged to relate much of the central drama at secondhand. The opening, for instance, sets the tone for what will follow: Going to the port of Satucket for letters, Jane hears of a horrific attack on their neighbor's horse. Its ears have been cut off, and her father is accused of having committed the offense. This grisly crime presages the central themes of the novel: the bloody violence in Boston and the peripheral role that, for the most part, Jane will play in those events. There is a frustrating sense that while Jane attends play-readings or tends to her aunt, the real story is unfolding offstage and out of sight.
Until Jane is finally caught up in the action in the latter part of the book, her own narrative is thin. She is constrained by her aunt's ill health, lukewarm in her affections to her suitor and often confused by the events taking place around her. The result is a novel that, while interesting, lacks heat and vigor.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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THRILLERS: 100 Must-Reads
David Morrell and Hank Wagner
Oceanview
ISBN 978 1 933515 56 4
378 pages
$27.95
Reviewed by Michael Dirda. Visit Dirda's online book discussion at washingtonpost.com/readingroom.
With his very first novel, David Morrell created an iconic character, now as famous as Tarzan or James Bond: "His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing there by the pump of a gas station on the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky." So begins Morrell's electrifying and morally unsettling "First Blood." Some of his other books include the horror classic "The Totem" and one of the most exciting Ludlumesque thrillers I've ever read, "The Brotherhood of the Rose."
Hank Wagner may not write novels, but he certainly knows modern horror, fantasy, mystery and science fiction. He's the co-author of "The Complete Stephen King Universe" and of "Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman." His articles have appeared in publications ranging from Cemetery Dance to Mystery Scene to the New York Review of Science Fiction.
Both novelist and critic are members of the six-year-old International Thriller Writers organization. Its goals "include educating readers about thrillers and encouraging ITW members to explore the creative possibilities of the form." To this end, the group decided to compile this annotated guide to essential thrillers. Enjoyable in itself, the book also offers 100 possible answers to that perennial summertime conundrum: What book shall I pack for the beach?
"Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads" opens with the Greek legend of Theseus and the Minotaur and, by fudging the supposed cutoff date of 2000, closes with Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Each of the chosen titles -- one book per author -- is accompanied by a brief biographical note, followed by a two- or three-page essay of reminiscence, analysis and appreciation by a member of ITW. Among the essayists are Lee Child, Sandra Brown, James Grady, R.L. Stine, David Baldacci, Katherine Neville and F. Paul Wilson.
No one could seriously argue with the recommendations up to the mid-1970s. Here are Wilkie Collins'"The Woman in White" (1860), Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1901), John Buchan's "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (1915), Eric Ambler's "A Coffin for Dimitrios" (1939), and even what is, arguably, the single most famous adventure short story of all time, Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924). Moreover, the editors' definition of the thriller is a capacious one that embraces horror (Bram Stoker's "Dracula," 1897), science fiction (H.G. Wells'"The War of the Worlds," 1898) and romantic suspense (Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca," 1938).
At their best, the accompanying essays illuminate a book's distinctive artistry or magic. Many are highly personal, almost love letters. Because he reveres P.G. Wodehouse's comic fiction, Stine works hard to demonstrate how much the roller-coaster plot of "Summer Lightning" (1929) resembles that of a crime thriller. Of Evelyn Anthony's books, the fannishly enthusiastic Sandra Brown notes: "I've reread them for pleasure and for study." In a charming bit of autobiography, Morrell himself underscores how much "First Blood" was influenced by Geoffrey Household's "Rogue Male" (1939), the great masterpiece of hunter and hunted.
Many of the essayists comment on craftsmanship. Writing about Brian Garfield's "Death Wish" (1972), John Lescroart quotes the novel's brilliant first sentence -- "Later he worked out where he had been at the time of the attack on Esther and Carol" -- and then details how Garfield immediately shifts to describing scenes from Paul Benjamin's ordinary working day. But "because of the pulled-pin character" of that opening sentence, "these scenes become excruciatingly, almost unbearably, suspenseful." What precisely has happened to Esther and Carol? How and when will Paul learn about them? What will he do?
Editor Hank Wagner's infectious enthusiasm for William Goldman's "Marathon Man" (1974) made me want to read the novel (as well as re-see the movie), an astonishing mix of Nazi-hunting, espionage and brotherly love. "Literally nothing is wasted," he writes of its plotting. "Seemingly disparate pieces of information ultimately tie together, just waiting for the right piece of exposition, or revelation, to explain it all coherently." To define this kind of artistic elegance, Wagner cites the fantasy and science fiction giant Gene Wolfe: Literature, Wolfe reminds us, "is that which can be read with pleasure by an educated reader and reread with increased pleasure."
Certainly, many of these books are either literature or close to it. Of the more modern titles, I was pleased to see some personal favorites: Richard Stark's lean, cold novel of revenge, "The Hunter" (1962), and its younger cousin Thomas Perry's "The Butcher's Boy" (1982), Ross Thomas' urbane "Chinaman's Chance" (1978), and Charles McCarry's masterpiece about the Kennedy assassination, "The Tears of Autumn" (1974). Each is perfectly controlled.
That said, I felt that the later pages of "Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads" came to seem disturbingly incestuous. Fourteen of the ITW essayists have their own books listed here. While they are doubtless excellent pieces of work, Justin Scott's "The Shipkiller" (1979), Gayle Lynd's "Masquerade" (1996) and Lee Child's "Killing Floor" (1997) are too recent to be in the same company as Graham Greene's "The Third Man" (1950) and Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train" (1950). Indeed, this might be said of all too many of the later titles, such as Nelson DeMille's "The Charm School" (1988) and Dean Koontz's "Watchers" (1988). Only time will tell.
Three final observations: First, the accompanying essays sometimes contain spoilers revealing key plot turns and outcomes: Be warned. Second, in looking through the biographical notes about the contributing essayists, I realized that these writers -- many of whom were new to me -- have already won important awards, produced bestsellers, been translated into multiple languages. In this respect, Morrell and Wagner's guide can lead the thriller fan to many more than just the 100 main selections. And third: How could the editors have left out George MacDonald Fraser, creator of Flashman, and Ruth Rendell and Dick Francis and ...
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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