Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Saturday December 18, 2010
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BEST CHILDREN'S BOOKS
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CHILDREN
"ART & MAX," by David Wiesner (Clarion, $17.99). Leaping lizards! In this reptilian romp, diminutive Max aspires to become a painter but manages to create mostly havoc. -- Kristi Jemtegaard
"CITY DOG, COUNTRY FROG," by Mo Willems, illustrated by Jon J. Muth (Hyperion, $17.99). Set to the rhythm of the seasons, this tale about an unlikely friendship is both wistful and realistic on the unbidden changes life brings to us all. -- K.J.
"SHARK VS. TRAIN," by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Little Brown, $16.99). Two boys, two toys. Who will win? Tom Lichtenheld's drawings of a smirking, toothy shark and a maniacal, smoke-spouting train evoke the playground antics and one-upmanship of life in basements and backyards everywhere. -- K.J.
"A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE," by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead (Roaring Brook, $16.99). When Amos comes down with "the sniffles and the sneezes," his zoo-animal friends catch the crosstown bus to care for him. -- K.J.
"UBIQUITOUS," by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beckie Prange (Houghton Mifflin, $17). In this appealing intermingling of art and science, species that have successfully survived and spread -- such as bacteria, mollusks and crows -- are celebrated with facts, illustrations and poems. -- Abby McGanney Nolan
PRETEENS
"BALLET FOR MARTHA: Making Appalachian Spring," by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Brian Floca (Roaring Brook, $17.99). This picture book about the making of "Appalachian Spring" reveals the contributions of the three innovators behind it: Martha Graham, Aaron Copland and Isamu Noguchi. -- A.M.N.
"COSMIC," by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Walden Pond, $16.99). A theme-park rocket, a Chinese mogul and a former astronaut figure in this hilariously inventive novel in which a boy ends up in deep space -- and deep trouble -- when he assumes his father's identity.
-- Mary Quattlebaum
"THE EXTRAORDINARY MARK TWAIN (ACCORDING TO SUSY)", by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham (Scholastic, $17.99). Playful yet informative, this inspired picture book is about the biography that Mark Twain's 13-year-old daughter secretly began to write about her famous father. -- A.M.N.
"MIRROR MIRROR: A Book of Reversible Verse," by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josee Masse (Dutton, $16.99). Read it from the top down and Hansel is admonished, "Fatten up. / Don't / keep her waiting." Read it again from the bottom up and see how the warning changes. "Keep her waiting. / Don't / fatten up." Lustrous mirror-image illustrations accompany these clever reversible poems based on well-known fairy tales. -- K.J.
"ONE CRAZY SUMMER," by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad, $15.99). In this vibrant novel of the revolutionary '60s, Delphine, 11, and her two younger sisters learn surprising truths in a summer camp run by the Black Panthers. -- M.Q.
"TEENS THE DREAMER," by Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Peter Sis (Scholastic, $17.99). Punctuated by short poems and pointillist art, this luminous novel imagines the Chilean childhood of Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. -- M.Q.
"INCARCERON," by Catherine Fisher (Dial, $17.99). Nothing is as it seems in this eerie, intricately plotted fantasy, including the three main characters: an incarcerated teen named Finn, the warden's privileged daughter and the strangely alive, malevolent prison that binds them. -- M.Q.
"MOCKINGJAY," by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $17.99). Gripping and complex, this final book in the dystopic series "The Hunger Games" finds teen warrior Katniss Everdeen trying to hang on to what's right and real as she battles a brutal government-and her own allies and conscience. -- M.Q.
"SHIP BREAKER," by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little Brown, $17.99). A teenaged ship scavenger and the wealthy girl he rescues struggle to survive on the post-apocalyptic Gulf Coast. A gritty, tautly paced thriller. -- M.Q.
"THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group," by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Houghton Mifflin, $19). This sobering history includes essential background information, memorable testimony from KKK members and victims alike, and plenty of illuminating period illustrations. -- A.M.N.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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BEST COOKBOOKS
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Reviewed by Bonnie Benwick
"NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine," by Ren Redzepi. Phaidon. $49.95. The young Danish chef of what has been deemed the best restaurant in the world, Noma, in Copenhagen, produces the most innovative and beautiful cookbook of the year. You can appreciate the way he puts food on the plate and his ingredient combinations even if you aren't inclined to try them yourself.
"AROUND MY FRENCH TABLE: More than 300 Recipes From My Home to Yours," by Dorie Greenspan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $40. All the judges hold up 10s for this collection. Greenspan woos her readers with an engaging voice and a deep roster of accessible recipes. She loves many things that are French, yet a dish produced from this book may seem downright down-home to anybody.
"HEART OF THE ARTICHOKE: And Other Kitchen Journeys," by David Tanis. Artisan. $35 The author describes himself as "a restaurant chef who has always preferred to cook at home," which is why his latest collection of recipes has practical appeal. He advocates for the best of seasonal ingredients, offers his thinking behind menus and cooks with a purity. He is also wise enough to title a chapter "Hooray for Ziploc Bags."
Bonnie Benwick can be reached at benwickb(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE WRITING LIFE
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Reviewed by Dave Eggers
I've been avoiding writing about "The Writing Life" ever since I first heard those words about 10 years ago. When I hear them, I hear the voices of high school and college friends, of my uncles and my cousin Mark, who would have rolled their eyes and maybe punched me, gently, in the face, for even trying to weigh in on the subject.
They would say the phrase seems pretentious; it's pretentious to ponder the writing life, even more pretentious to write about it in a newspaper such as this one (The Washington Post), with its history of doing the serious work of preserving our democracy.
By comparison, the writing life, at least as it concerns me, is not so interesting. I just re-watched "All the President's Men," which I do every year or so, and, every time, I marvel at how interesting Woodward and Bernstein's lives were at The Post, and how well the film explains the reporting process, its doggedness and randomness, and how great an excuse it is to get out in the world and ask every seemingly obvious question you can think of (What books did the man check out?), because you never know, you might bring down a government that has it coming.
When I watch that movie, I also think about how mundane my own "writing life" can be. For example, I'm putting together this essay, not in a bustling metropolitan newsroom, but in a shed in my backyard. I have a sheet draped over the shed's window because without it the morning sun would blast through and blind me. So I'm looking at a gray sheet, which is nailed to the wall in two places and sags in the middle like a big, gray smile. And the sheet is filthy. And the shed is filthy. If I left this place unoccupied for a week, it would become home to woodland animals. They probably would clean it up first.
And here is where I spend seven or eight hours at a stretch. Seven or eight hours each time I try to write. Most of that time is spent stalling, which means that for every seven or eight hours I spend pretending to write -- sitting in the writing position, looking at a screen -- I get, on average, one hour of actual work done. It's a terrible, unconscionable ratio.
This kind of life is at odds with the romantic notions I once had, and most people have, of the writing life. We imagine more movement, somehow. We imagine it on horseback. Camelback? We imagine convertibles, windswept cliffs, lighthouses. We don't imagine -- or I didn't imagine -- quite so much sitting. I know it makes me sound pretty naive, that I would expect to be writing while, say, skiing. But still. The utterly sedentary nature of this task gets to me every day. It's getting to me right now.
And so I have to get out of the shed sometimes.
One thing I do to get out is teach a class on Tuesday nights. Back in 2002, I co-founded a place in San Francisco called 826 Valencia, which does everything from after-school tutoring to field trips, publishing projects and advanced writing classes for kids from age 6 to 18. For the last eight years I've taught a class, made up of about 20 high school students from all over the Bay Area, and together we read stories, essays and journalism from contemporary periodicals -- from the Kenyon Review to Bidoun to Wired. From all this reading we choose our favorite stuff, and that becomes a yearly anthology called "The Best American Nonrequired Reading."
Sometimes we read things that are OK. Sometimes we read things that we find important in some way -- that we learn from, but that don't particularly get us all riled up. And sometimes we read something that just astounds and grabs and makes its way into the bones of everyone in the class. A couple Tuesdays ago someone on the teaching committee picked up a journal called Gulf Coast, published out of the University of Houston, and he found a story called "Pleiades," by Anjali Sachdeva.
None of us had read this author before, so we read her story without any expectations. But one page into it, I thought, Man, this is a great writer. This is something different. This shows great command, wonderful pacing. The story -- about septuplet sisters conceived via genetic manipulation -- could have been told in a thousand terrible ways, but she's managing to make it sing. In the story, after the initial triumph of conception, the sisters begin to die, one by one, leaving Del, the narrator, alone and forced to choose between awaiting her fate or taking control of her destiny. The story seemed to me some kind of small masterpiece, and I hoped the class felt the same. But I knew to temper my hopes; often I love something and the kids think I'm nuts. This time, though, I didn't have to wait long to know I wasn't alone.
Gabby, who takes an hour-long subway ride from East Oakland every week to come to this class, was leaning forward, waiting to speak, practically holding her copy to her heart. Describing what she loved about it, she made an impassioned speech about connectivity, about the limits of science, about Del's search for a more human, even humble, path, and what this means to her, to us all.
Nick, who had brought his own little sister to class, was floored by the ending -- how, in the final act, the protagonist reclaimed a life both made possible and doomed by science. At the end of the class, when we voted Yes, No or Maybe, all the hands said Yes and I went home feeling electric about the possibility of the written word. I don't need to be reminded of it all that often -- I'd just read Philip Roth's "The Humbling," and holy hell, that guy, even at 76, can still write something so ferocious, kinky, horribly depressing and yet full of the manic mess of life! -- but truthfully, any reminder helps. When you spend eight hours in a shed to get a few hundred words down, you need every bit of inspiration you can get. And the best place to find inspiration, for me at least, is to see the effect of great writing on the young. Their reactions can be hard to predict, and they're always brutally honest, but when they love something, their enthusiasm is completely without guile, utterly without cynicism.
And I thought, OK, the writing life -- damn that phrase -- it doesn't have to be romantic. It can be workmanlike, it can be a grind, and it can take years to make anything of any value. But if, at the end of it all, there's a Gabby who holds the words to her heart and rides the subway through the night, back to Oakland, thinking of what those words on a page did to her, then the work is worth doing.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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BEST FICTION
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"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FIDEL CASTRO," by Norberto Fuentes (Norton, $27.95). The fake memoirs of the Cuban leader. Fidel couldn't have written it better. -- Tom Miller
"BROKEN," by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25). The protagonist of this haunting psychological suspense novel doesn't just rattle around inside the Norwegian author's head; he shows up at her doorstep and pleads with her to treat him sensitively. -- Richard Lipez
"THE CONFESSION," by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95). This suspense story demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible, but it's also a superb work of social criticism about the death penalty and its casualties. --Maureen Corrigan
"DAY FOR NIGHT," by Frederick Reiken (Reagan Arthur, $24.99). Using a different first-person point of view in every section, Reiken creates an emotionally acute, complex story about a woman whose father may have died in the Holocaust. -- Julie Orringer
"DEEP CREEK," by Dana Hand (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25). Chinese miners are brutally massacred on the Idaho border, and a disaffected lawman with more than enough troubles of his own finds himself hunting down the killers. -- Carolyn See
"DRIVING ON THE RIM," by Thomas McGuane (Knopf, $26.95). Berl Pickett, feckless doctor and accused murderer, is a splendid addition to the gallery of semi-cracked eccentrics who populate the literature of the American West. -- Michael Lindgren
"FATHER OF THE RAIN," by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly, $24). A devoted daughter struggles for years to save her emotionally controlling father from alcohol. --Ron Charles
"A FIERCE RADIANCE," by Lauren Belfer (Harper, $25.99). Sex, spies, murder, big money, doomed romance and exotic travel are smoothly braided into this story about the wartime race to make large quantities of penicillin. -- M.C.
"A GEOGRAPHY OF SECRETS," by Frederick Reuss (Unbridled, $25.95). The interlocking stories of a defense analyst and a mapmaker examine the collateral damage of a lifetime of keeping secrets, raising provocative questions about Washington's culture of deception. -- Daniel Stashower
"THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY," by Heidi W. Durrow (Algonquin, $22.95). When several family members fall off the roof of a Chicago apartment building, the sole survivor is biracial Rachel, who goes to live with her grandmother in an African-American neighborhood. -- Lisa Page
"THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST," by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95). The conclusion to the Millennium Trilogy is an ambitious panorama that encompasses the worlds of journalism, corporations, medicine, organized crime and government. -- Patrick Anderson
"THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET," by Ali Shaw (Henry Holt, $24). Returning from a strange, shadow-haunted island, a young tourist finds herself turning into crystal. --Elizabeth Hand
"GO, MUTANTS!" by Larry Doyle (Ecco, $23.99). Not even interstellar intervention can change the cruel social dynamics of high school, not when the resident fat boy is the Blob, your sex-ed teacher is the Deadly Mantis, and the star of the football team is an 800-pound gorilla. -- E.H.
"HOUSE RULES," by Jodi Picoult (Atria, $28). Jacob has Asperger's syndrome, and when his tutor is found dead, the police suspect that his obsession with crime scenes may have led him to stage one of his own. -- M.C.
"HUMAN CHAIN," by Seamus Heaney (Farrar Straus Giroux, $24). The Nobel laureate's new collection of poetry is pervaded by an awareness of mortality and encroaching darkness, and yet it is a joy on every level. -- Troy Jollimore
"I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE," by Laura Lippman (Morrow, $25.99). This mystery transcends the thriller genre, thanks to Lippman's ability to take us into the lives and hearts of women who have been wronged and of the families that suffer with them. -- P.A.
"I HOTEL," by Karen Tei Yamashita (Coffee House; paperback, $19.95). Ten linked novellas about Asian American activists and workers living in the same hotel in San Francisco. National Book Award finalist. -- Marcela Valdes
"THE IMPERFECTIONISTS," by Tom Rachman (Dial, $25). Every individual, from the cuckolded news editor to the frozen-in-amber baroness, is treated with discretion and humanity in this witty portrait of a dying Italian newspaper. -- Louis Bayard
"THE INFINITIES," by John Banville (Knopf, $25.95). The real subject of this unforgettable, beautifully written book is nothing less than the enigma of mortal existence. And who better than a cast of lusty, bemused and mischievous immortals to cast a new light on that? --Troy Jollimore
"THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE," by Julie Orringer (Knopf, $26.95). This account of the way Hungary's Jewish population was decimated by the Holocaust makes brilliant use of deliberately old-fashioned realism to define individual fates engulfed by history's deadly onrush. -- Donna Rifkind
"KINGS OF THE EARTH," by Jon Clinch (Random House, $26). Based on the true tale of the death of one of four reclusive brothers, this novel explores the complex and yearning American character. -- Robert Goolrick
"THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED," by Sue Miller (Knopf, 25.95). In this emotionally intricate novel, a playwright struggles to express her grief -- or relief -- after losing a lover in the 9/11 attacks. -- R.C.
"THE LONELY POLYGAMIST," by Brady Udall (Norton, $26.95). In this audacious novel, the polygamous Mormon patriarch is just a poor, henpecked schmo. -- Wendy Smith
"THE LONG SONG," by Andrea Levy (Farrar Straus Giroux, $26). Set in Jamaica during the 19th-century revolt, this is a book for those who understand that a slave woman's history is History. -- Tayari Jones
"LORD OF MISRULE," by Jaimy Gordon (McPherson, $25). This novel abounds with observations about horses, money and luck. Gordon has completely mastered the language of the racetrack and formed it into an evocative and idiosyncratic style. Winner of the National Book Award. -- Jane Smiley
"MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND," by Helen Simonson (Random House, $25). A smart romantic comedy about a refined British gentleman finding love and diversity late in life. -- R.C.
"MAN IN THE WOODS," by Scott Spencer (Ecco, $24.99). An agonizing question hovers over this thriller: Will two decent people have their happiness destroyed because of a senseless encounter with an unbalanced man? -- P.A.
"MATTERHORN," by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly, $24.95). This Vietnam War novel reads like adventure, and yet it makes even the toughest war stories seem a little pale by comparison. -- David Masiel
"THE OTHER FAMILY," by Joanna Trollope (Touchstone; paperback, $15). The story of two families firmly divided yet irrevocably connected by the man who was the biological father in both households. -- Reeve Lindbergh
"OUR KIND OF TRAITOR," by John le Carr (Viking, $27.95). A Russian moneylender presses a young British couple to help him retire from his dangerous profession. If a better thriller has been published this year, I'd like to see it. -- Dennis Drabelle
"THE PASSAGE," by Justin Cronin (Ballantine, $27). This spectacular vampire saga -- first in a planned trilogy -- stitches together scraps of classic horror and science fiction, techno thrillers and apocalyptic terror. -- R.C.
"PHANTOM NOISE," by Brian Turner (Alice James, $16.95). Turner's poetry shows us soldiers who are invincible and wounded, a nation noble and culpable, and a war by turns necessary and abominable. -- Courtney Cook
"PRIVATE LIFE," by Jane Smiley (Knopf, $26.95). In the course of this brilliantly imagined, carefully chiseled story, Smiley introduces a rich cast of characters, a virtual rush of Californian diversity. A quantum leap for this author. -- Marie Arana
"SAVAGE LANDS," by Clare Clark (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25). The struggling French colony of Louisiana provides a richly atmospheric backdrop for the intertwined lives of three settlers who are newcomers to this unwelcoming terrain. -- Sybil Steinberg
"SELECTED STORIES," by William Trevor (Viking, $35). Wry, wistful, slice-of-life stories that have been likened to those of Anton Chekhov because of their acute observations, limpid prose, and subtlety of presentation. -- Ron Hansen
"SHADOW TAG," by Louise Erdrich (Harper, $25.99) A tense little masterpiece of marital strife that recalls the novelist's tragic relationship with the late writer Michael Dorris. -- R.C.
"SKIPPY DIES," by Paul Murray (Faber & Faber, $28). A hilarious, moving and wise epic crafted around a pack of 14-year-old boys at a Dublin high school whose social dynamics make "Lord of the Flies" seem like "Gilligan's Island." -- Jess Walter
"THE SLAP," by Christos Tsiolkas (Penguin; paperback, $15). At a neighborhood barbecue in Melbourne, Australia, a 4-year-old throws a tantrum, kicks a bad-tempered man in the shins and is slapped. A feud among friends ensues, leaving us exhausted but gasping with admiration. -- Brigitte Weeks
"SNAKEWOMAN OF LITTLE EGYPT," by Robert Hellenga (Bloomsbury, $25). A darling anthropologist meets a lady convict who shot her snake-handling husband. -- C.S.
"SO MUCH FOR THAT," by Lionel Shriver (Harper, $25.99). In this brutal novel about the cruelty of the American healthcare system, a businessman would like to retire early, but his wife needs his insurance. Finalist for the National Book Award. -- R.C.
"TAKE ONE CANDLE LIGHT A ROOM," by Susan Straight (Pantheon, $25.95). Layering the rich particulars of African-American life into a classic tale of individual desires straining against collective constraints, Straight adds another compassionate achievement to her distinguished body of work. -- Wendy Smith
"THE THIEVES OF MANHATTAN," by Adam Langer (Spiegel & Grau; paperback, $15). An aspiring writer reworks a mysterious man's novel as a memoir to get revenge on the successful writer who stole his girlfriend and on the whole corrupt publishing world. -- Frances Stead Sellers
"36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD," by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (Pantheon, $27.95). A divinely witty novel about the world's best-selling atheist, who argues that the sense of spirituality persists even if God doesn't. -- R.C.
"THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET," by David Mitchell (Random House, $26). Set in feudal Japan, a rich historical romance about sacrificial love, clashing civilizations and enemies who won't rest until whole family lines have been snuffed out. -- R.C.
"TRESPASS," by Rose Tremain (Norton, $24.95). A Gothic novel, dark and eerie, set in the South of France. Tremain's happy ending is a realistic one for older characters -- a correcting of accounts, a modicum of mercy. -- Jane Smiley
"UNDER HEAVEN," by Guy Gavriel Kay (Roc, $26.95). Not quite historical fiction, not quite fantasy, this novel depicts the unimaginable consequences of a single generous gift during a slightly reimagined Tang dynasty. -- Michael Dirda
"UNFINISHED DESIRES," by Gail Godwin (Random House, $26). Godwin renders a fictional order of Catholic nuns in a Southern girls' school with authority and ease, making their spiritual and corporeal concerns convincing, funny, moving. -- Valerie Sayers
"UNION ATLANTIC," by Adam Haslett (Doubleday, $26). This strange, elegant story about a successful investment banker illuminates the financial and moral calamity of the young 21st century. -- R.C.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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