Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Monday April 11, 2011
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Crashing Into a New Family
Nora Krug
NA
ISBN NA
NA pages
$NA
Reviewed by Nora Krug
The heroine of Marina Endicott's novel "Good to a Fault" (Harper, $14.99) is a familiar sort in women's fiction. A 40-something childless divorcee "drifting for some time in a state of mild despair," Clara Purdy is stuck in a dull job, living in her dead parents' house, minding her own business: "She had all the money she needed, no burdens -- she was nothing, a comfortable speck in the universe." Clara is a character, in other words, waiting for something (finally) to happen to her. That something does happen -- on the very first page -- but in this lyrical and inventive novel, its consequences are entirely unexpected.
"Good to a Fault" is Endicott's second novel and her American debut. She's a former actress and director who once lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the book is set. The cold, dreary backdrop reinforces the barrenness of Clara's ordinary life, which literally comes to a screeching halt one afternoon when she crashes into a car carrying a family of six. No one is seriously hurt, but since the family was living in the car, they are now homeless. Not only that, it turns out that the mother in the car, Lorraine, has cancer. Perhaps unbelievably (even to her), Clara takes in the ragtag crew -- three young children and their criminally inclined father and grandmother -- and becomes an emotional support for Lorraine, who spends most of the novel in the hospital, where "narrow drip-lines draped her in a spider's web." Clara dives into motherhood -- buying beds and diapers, cooking macaroni and cheese, removing lice from hair -- an arrangement that may or may not become permanent. It is both what she has longed for and dreaded.
But never mind the soap-operatic quality of the plot. The beauty of this book is in the quiet, interior moments of its raft of characters, as when Clara cares for Lorraine's sick baby: "When she picked him up to take him back to the crib he put his arm around her neck in a tender way, a partner in this. Not only a baby but a person, too, already." As its heavy-handed title suggests, "Good to a Fault" is an exploration of kindness -- its motives and limits -- but it is also an appreciation of parenthood, loosely defined and always changing.
From our previous reviews:
Norris Church Mailer was Norman Mailer's sixth (and final) wife, but her memoir, "A Ticket to the Circus" (Random House, $15) "isn't the story of Norman Mailer," Carolyn See noted. Norris Mailer, who died last fall, was a novelist in her own right, and here she tells "the story of a girl on her own who took a big chance and assumed one of those iconic roles." The book, See wrote, will leave you "both edified and amused."
Fueled by "firecracker prose," Sam Lipsyte's novel "The Ask" (Picador, $15), an exploration of failure in its many forms, is darkly funny, even "brilliant," Michael Dirda wrote. "Here rants become arias, and vulgarity sheer poetry."
Set in a 1970s West Virginia racetrack, Jaimy Gordon's "beautifully written" novel "Lord of Misrule"  (Vintage, $15), which won the 2010 National Book Award for fiction, offers an "evocative" portrait of horse racing's underside, according to Jane Smiley.
"This Book Is Overdue!"  (Harper, $14.99), an anecdotal study of the librarian in the modern age, highlights the superhero qualities of this quiet trade. Evelyn Small called its author, Marilyn Johnson, "a welcome advocate for an undervalued profession."
Roger Rosenblatt's "Making Toast" (Ecco, $12.99), a memoir about the death of his daughter, a local pediatrician, deals with issues like "coping with grief, caring for children and creating an ad hoc family for as long as this particular configuration is required, but mostly it's a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing and how to be a class act," according to Carolyn See.
"The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior" (Bantam, $18), by Paul Strathern, "a compact triple biography" of Cesare Borgia, Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci, "focuses on the intersection of these three extraordinary men in late 1502," according to Steven Levingston. The result is "a flesh-and-blood portrait for each that defies historical stereotype."
In "You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up" (Three Rivers, $14) husband-and-wife comic writers Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn take a sardonic look at marriage in a memoir that "at times reads like a mix of couples therapy and 'Real World' confessionals for grown-ups," wrote Lisa Bonos.
David Laskin's "The Long Way Home"  (Harper, $15.99) tells the story of 12 American doughboys who returned to their native Europe to fight in World War I. Steven V. Roberts called the book a "compelling" take on the immigrant experience.
Joseph Sebarenzi, a Tutsi who survived the genocide in Rwanda, "presents a thoughtful critique" of the regime of Paul Kagame, in "God Sleeps in Rwanda" (Atria, $15), wrote Stephen Kinzer. "His tale is a provocative warning to the many outsiders who are ready to canonize Kagame."
Nora Krug writes The Washington Post's monthly paperback column. She can be reached at krugn(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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CAMPY: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella
Neil Lanctot
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 978-1416547044
516 pages
$28
Reviewed by Steve Roberts
Campinelli. Campanello. Camponella. Confenello. Those are just a few of the ways that sportswriters mangled Roy Campanella's name during his decade in the Negro leagues. But after he became the catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues, baseball fans knew him simply as Campy, the title of Neil Lanctot's engaging biography.
The subtitle is also instructive: "The Two Lives of Roy Campanella." During his Hall of Fame career, everything he did was defined by race. That life ended on Jan. 28, 1958, when his car skidded on a rain-slick street in suburban Long Island and hit a utility pole. During his second life, 34 years as a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic, Campy transcended race and became a champion for all disabled Americans.
Campy's father, John, was Italian (the surname means "little bell"), and his mother, Ida, was African-American. Today, one of seven American marriages is interracial, but in Philadelphia in the 1920s, the boy was taunted as a "half-breed" and never felt fully comfortable in either culture. Society chose for him. He was a baseball player, and organized baseball was segregated, so he had only one option: be, and play, black. Lanctot, who has written two other books on the Negro leagues, sketches a detailed portrait of Campy's early pro career that started with a $25 check when he was only 15. In one decrepit Mexican stadium, a train ran through the outfield every afternoon, interrupting the game.
When he finally got to the big leagues, Campy naturally looked to Robinson for guidance, and the two bought houses in the same Queens neighborhood, carpooled to Ebbets Field and exchanged social visits. But soon tensions surfaced. Robinson had a college education (although no degree), and as he became more "confident, outspoken and aggressive," he seized the role of civil rights pioneer. Campy, who dropped out in the ninth grade, did not feel the same commitment to racial causes.
"Roy," writes Lanctot, "never quite shook the fear that a wrong move or an unpopular statement might jeopardize" his popularity and prosperity. Carl Erskine, a great Dodger pitcher of that era, put it well: "Jackie was never satisfied that just playing big league baseball was much of an accomplishment, with all that had to be done. Campanella says, 'Man, look what I got to do. I got to be a big league player. How big is that in my life?'" One example: Robinson was determined to integrate the hotels where the team stayed. After a long battle, the Chase in St. Louis agreed to house black ballplayers during the 1954 season if they stayed out of the pool and dining room. Robinson accepted the offer and during a "lively exchange" in the Dodger clubhouse urged the team's other blacks to come along. But Campy refused, telling a sportswriter, "I'm no crusader."
There were other issues as well. The two went on a postseason barnstorming tour, and Campy was furious when he found out that Robinson, who organized the junket, was taking most of the profits. Jackie was an infielder, but Campy was a catcher, the team's field general, and he worried about offending white teammates, particularly the pitchers. "A catcher," he once explained "has to make people like him no matter what. ... I had to make everyone on the team work with me."
But the core of their conflict was simple: Only one of them could be first. Many black players felt that Robinson arrogantly asserted his stature; they called him "The Black Prince" and worse behind his back. In Robinson's view, Campy was consumed with jealousy, once telling a reporter: "He's always been envious of me, that I was the first Negro in baseball."
But fate knows no color. All wheelchairs are equal. And while Campy sometimes felt like a "sad freak" after his accident and could be bitter and angry in private, he also "recognized the importance of his continued visibility." He went to baseball games, wrote a book, even appeared on the TV show "Lassie" as a Little League coach. "Wheelchair embarrasses a man," he said. "His natural instinct is to stay home and hide. If I get around, maybe I'll encourage others to do the same, and this would be doin' some real good."
Even for a lifelong baseball fan like me, this book is too long, with too many accounts of too many games played in stadiums that were demolished long ago. But Lanctot has chosen his subject well. Campy did plenty of "real good" in his life. He might not have been a crusader, but his bat and his glove spoke for him. So did his wheelchair. He helped diminish two profound prejudices, against nonwhites and nonwalkers.
Steve Roberts teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University. His latest book is "Our Haggadah," written with his wife, Cokie Roberts.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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