Reviews Fri Oct 23 2009
The Onion AV Club gives Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Superfreakonomics a luke warm review, saying that "there's an artfulness missing this time around in their circuitous paths toward obvious conclusions like 'technology isn't always better' and 'men and women are different.' When they don't openly recycle material...it still feels stale..." Meanwhile, another AV Clubber takes issue with the duo's pondering on why more women don't opt to enter the glamorous and profitable career of high-end hooking:"What a stupid f***ing question, writers of Freakanomics. Do you ever consider humans when you're considering economics?...Hmm, maybe most woman don't become prostitutes because there are literally thousands upon thousands of other, less dangerous, more enjoyable, less degrading, more-long-term, less illegal careers they could be doing. Careers where they didn't have to shower 7-8 times a day." I haven't read the book and I can understand why someone would take issue such a question, but I can't help but read that as a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment. These are University of Chicago professors writing this book, after all, and at the U of C, the mind trumps reality any and every day.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Thu Sep 24 2009
For those of you getting a leg up on our reading schedule, the Chicago Examiner has a review of Travel Writing, our November selection (thanks for the mention!), and an interview with the author, Peter Ferry. Says Ferry on who he was writing for and how he's playing with the basic ideas of fiction:
Yes, my audience was my students. (I taught English at Lake Forest High School for twenty-seven years, and other than my children, that is my proudest contribution to this world.) My premise is that all fiction is based in fact or in real life experience, and that all the stories we tell about our real life experiences are partly fiction. This assumes that all stories of any kind are attempts to discover truth which may or may not have anything to do with the factual. To test this, think about the stories you tell when you are with friends or having a couple beers or both; if you've told them repeatedly or over several years or enough beers, you've no doubt enhanced some parts, left out others, worked and massaged and perfected them until they have their own lives and may not have a lot to do with what actually happened a long time ago. That does not mean, however, that they do not have to do with truth.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Thu Sep 24 2009
The New Yorker gets a hold of Rod Blagojevich's memoir, The Governor, and gives it some nice, snarky, back-handed compliments:
The American political memoir comes in many forms--the magisterial catalogue of heroic achievement, the backward glance at modest beginnings--but none of these sub-genres have thrived with more repetition and variation than the cri de coeur of the indicted-but-not-yet-convicted office-holding grandee. For febrile self-defensiveness and look-over-there deflections and deceptions, Rod Blagojevich's new book, "The Governor: Finally, the Truth Behind the Political Scandal That Continues to Rock the Nation," is surely unsurpassed.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Sep 23 2009
Ballads of Suburbia
by Stephanie Kuehnert
(MTV Books, 2009)
Kara McNaughton is in her sophomore year of high school when her parents get divorced. Having moved from Chicago to the suburb of Oak Park the summer before she entered second grade, Kara's family little resembles the idyllic white-picket-fence, carefree life that the notion of the suburbs often evokes. It is here that the McNaughton family falls apart, here that Kara finds destructive ways to cope with disappointment and stress of a life thrown off its course, here that she carelessly leads her younger brother Liam into that destruction, and here that she loses herself in drugs. If life in the suburbs is being sold under the guise of beauty, tranquility and safety, Kara McNaughton, and author Stephanie Kuehnert, are here in Ballads of Suburbia to tell you that all of that is a lie.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Thu Sep 17 2009
The Reader has an interesting critique of Rod Blagojevich's The Governor, comparing the Gov-turned-author not with the Shakepearean heroes he has identified with, but with the classical Greek writers Socrates and Plato:
But the suggestion that Blagojevich has an elusive grasp of the facts or that he lacks the literary chops to write a great memoir is really beside the point. Of course the book isn't good by any conventional standard--what do you expect from an impeached politico desperate for cash while awaiting his corruption trial? But that doesn't mean it's not interesting. I'd even go so far as to call it important.
Part of The Governor's problem is that it's been miscast. It's not a memoir so much as it is an apology--an apology not in the sense of a statement of remorse but in the classical sense of a statement of defense against accusers. Arguably the finest example of an apologia is the one presented by Socrates, and written down by Plato, when Socrates was on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens with his irreverence and refusal to worship the state-sanctioned gods.
The review does well to judge the book both within its literary parameters and for its ability to convincingly portray Blagojevich's case. It's really quite a well-written review.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Sep 16 2009
Her Fearful Symmetry
by Audrey Niffenegger
(Scribner, 2009)
A woman dies. This is how Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry begins - not with a beginning, but with an end. The woman in question is Elspeth Noblin, lover of Robert Farnsworth, identical twin sister to Edie Poole and aunt to identical twin nieces Julia and Valentina. Elspeth, who, at the age of forty-four, has met an early death at the hands of leukemia, has stipulated only a few items in her will: Her London flat will go to her nieces upon their turning twenty-one years of age on the condition that they live in it for a year and their parents never set foot in it, and all of her diaries and other personal papers will go to Robert. They are seemingly easy requests and the twins, with some anxiety, prepare to leave their Lake Forest home where they've lived with their parents all twenty years of their lives, wishing that they had been able to know their aunt. Robert manages to clear out the flat, though he can't yet bring himself to read Elspeth's papers and wants nothing more than to have her back. Unbeknownst to either party, Elspeth will return and haunt them both.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Sep 09 2009
Granta 108: "Chicago"
In 1999, the literary magazine Granta published their first issue devoted solely to the authors of one specific city. For the publication that was founded by a group of Cambridge University students in 1889, London was an appropriate choice for this foray. Ten years later, the magazine is doing it again and it's no surprise to us that the choice for their second city would be our Second City: Chicago. Granta 108: "Chicago" collects poetry, fiction, essays and photography by Chicago authors and artists, illustrating their experiences living in the city and depicting what it means to experience the life of the city itself. To this end, they've brought together some of our brightest and most recognized literary stars, studded with some lesser known names, and mixed them with others extolling the merits of the city's subjects. The result is a variegated portrait that, if, as some of these writers will show, we cannot or should not always be proud of Chicago, we have every right to proudly champion as the product of Chicago's rich literary tradition.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Tue Sep 08 2009
The Booker Prize shortlist was announced today and J.M. Coetzee's Summertime was, as expected, included. A flood of reviews have popped up, so, although you can't get hands on a copy until December in the States, you can get a good idea of what the book is about. Read about it:
•At the Telegraph: "The new book deploys the device of introducing a biographer to research the life of the late South African novelist John Coetzee, "who did not love anybody, he was not built for love". It takes a tough man to be this rotten about himself, but even as Coetzee rises to the challenge, we are left with the question of how he got this way. "
•At the Guardian: "Summertime plays with the question, which Coetzee seems to find genuinely baffling as well as wryly amusing, of why people should be at all interested in him as a human being."
•At the Complete Review: "The overlay of fact and fiction remains uncomfortable, but then this is meant to be a very uncomfortable book (as the descriptions of his love-interests alone would assure). Yet it's hard also not to see it as a vanity project."
•At The Independent: "What Summertime offers is a subtle, allusive meditation: an intriguing map of a weak character's constricted heart struggling against the undertow of suspicion within South Africa's claustrophobic, unpoetic, overtly macho society.
•And, finally, an excerpt.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Tue Sep 08 2009
As reported on the main page, Eric Zorn is reading Rod Blagojevich's book The Governor and blogging about it chapter by chapter, to hilarious commenting ends. Elsewhere, the New York Times and the Seattle Times give some back story to those less familiar with the Blago saga, neither of them saying the book is ridiculous, crazy or horrible, as I'm just guessing it may be, but neither saying it's a worthwhile read, either. It'll be interesting to see how forthcoming reviews shape up.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Fri Sep 04 2009
In a review of the new illustrated Fahrenheit 451, Tribune critic Julia Keller talks about graphic novels, her growing love for the form and the responses she's received after reviewing them:
[The reader's] contempt arose in response to a column I wrote praising certain graphic novels. And she was not alone in her seething censure. I heard from several other readers as well, wondering why I had allowed myself to be seduced by the easy enchantments of comic books. Frankly, they expected better of me -- given my doctoral degree in English literature and my well-known and oft-alluded-to affinity for dense, difficult, high-minded novels by the likes of Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad.
How had I allowed myself to be plucked from the stately, dignified ivory tower and lured down into the publishing world's damp basement, a place of shag carpet, flea-market furniture and flea-bitten ideas, X-Men posters on the wall, empty pop cans underfoot and stacks upon stacks of comic books? Just what did I have to say for myself?
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Sep 02 2009
Doubleback
by Libby Fischer Hellmann
(Bleak House Books, 2009)
Recently, Barbara D'Amato wrote a post in the Outfit blog describing two types of readers: those who read for plot and those who read for content. Those who read for plot are story-driven, "They want to know what happens next. Think pacing-pacing-pacing!" she writes. At the opposing end are those readers who are content-driven, who read for "history, technical detail, humor...for the beauty of the language." To the plot reader, content-oriented books "don't seem to go anywhere," whereas to the content reader, "story-oriented books seem skimpy and flat." I found this description fitting, particularly since I am, without a doubt, a content reader. With the exception of the occasional book and a belatedly discovered, yet rapidly flourishing love for Sherlock Holmes, I tend to shy away from mysteries and crime novels because I do find them "skimpy and flat." I write this not to disparage the genre - I don't believe these types of stories are necessarily bad, just not for me - but so that when I say that I very much enjoyed reading Libby Fischer Hellmann's Doubleback, you'll know that the book was up against a tough audience.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Jul 29 2009
Miles from Nowhere
by Nami Mun
(Riverhead Books, 2009)
Few of us truly know the hardships and struggles that come with running away from home. Joon, the narrator of Nami Mun's Miles from Nowhere, is not one of us. Having left home by the age of thirteen to search for her father who had abandoned their family, Joon soon realizes that it is freedom she wants and, after failing in her search, doesn't so much as return home to say goodbye to her mother before she begins her new life on the streets. The experiences and the people Joon encounters from that point on serve to educate, confuse, lift up and tear down, but, fortunately, never break her.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Jul 22 2009
An Off Year
by Claire Zulkey
(Dutton Books, 2009)
The progression from high school to college is purported to be a natural one in our culture. The junior and senior years fill mail boxes with evocative brochures displaying young adults studying with books under fully bloomed trees and laughing in ethnically diverse groups; the years fly by with visits to campuses and interviews with students and faculty; they are some of the most trying times - filling out applications, taking SATs - and yet some of the most relaxing - that wonderful knowledge that high school will soon be over. For most of us, that next step into college is a certain one, but what about those for whom it is not? That's the question Claire Zulkey explores in An Off Year, a young adult novel about a girl on the brink of entering that first hallowed year of undergraduate life, only to turn around and say "no."
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Tue Jun 23 2009
Love and Obstacles
by Aleksandar Hemon
(Riverhead Books, 2009)
I will be the first to admit that when we read Aleksandar Hemon's debut novel, Nowhere Man, during our first year of Book Club meetings, I was not the author's biggest fan. I generally like my novels and stories to be imbued with a certain element of concreteness and plausibility; I like to feel a sense of roundedness; I like to believe that if we start out in one place we will eventually get back to that place in one way or another. These are qualities that Nowhere Man does not possess. I do not mean this as a criticism of this book - my literary likes simply did not match up with what Hemon had to offer and I was content for us to go our separate ways. Rare is the author who can execute both styles of writing and execute them well. How wonderful and surprising it was to then find out that in his newly published collection of short stories, Love and Obstacles, Hemon shows that he is indeed that author.
Continue reading this entry »
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Apr 29 2009
The Great Perhaps
by Joe Meno
(W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009)
Jonathan Casper is a coward. In fact, he heralds from a long line of men in whom cowardice is the one defining hereditary trait. For Jonathan, this cowardice manifests itself openly in his fear of clouds, the sight of which will throw him into an epileptic-like seizure, the fear having only been controlled through the use of neurological medications. Less immediate, however, this cowardice wreaks its havoc through Jonathan's life, threatening to ruin his marriage, estrange his children and jeopardize his long-standing career and his search for the prehistoric giant squid Tusotheuthis longa. It is a cowardice in father and grandfather that runs far past the English colonization of India, through the Franco-Prussian War and all the way back to a 1630 Arctic expedition. Make no mistake: this is a story about a coward.
But, to say that The Great Perhaps is just about a coward is, admittedly, a bit reductive. It is also the sweeping story of a family - both unique in its makeup and ordinary in its dysfunction - in crisis, trying desperately to remember what it means to depend on each other, move through life together and just be a cohesive unit. Set in 2004 in the midst of the Iraq War and the electoral race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, the Casper family is the perfect image of the liberal American family, with Jonathan conducting his research at the Field Museum and teaching at the University of Chicago where his wife Madeline conducts her own research on the social hierarchies of pigeons. Their daughters, Amelia and Thisbe, attend the university's private high school and could not be more different from each other. The elder Amelia is a neo-Marxist who wanders the school's halls bedecked with a black beret and writes inflamed social critiques in their newspaper, the Midway. Thisbe, much to the family's chagrin, has found God and, in between her chorus practices where her lack of vocal talent has relegated her to the role of piano accompanist, spends her time praying for her salvation and attempting to baptize the neighborhood animals.
Joe Meno's particular brand of eloquent, lucid, at times visceral, writing that we have come to know and love through his previous work is delightfully present here, but where he soars in this novel is in his ability to create a broad landscape through time, weaving in between the generations of the Casper family, in and out of its members' points of view, to help us understand this complex family in way that we, otherwise, could not. A significant portion of the novel is spent with Henry Casper, Jonathan's father, who, in his declining years, tries desperately to escape the confines of the nursing facility where he's been brought, counts his words carefully so that everyday he will use one less until he speaks no more and mails himself letters to be opened by his son once he's passed. Learning of Henry's history - his father's and uncle's involvement in World War II, his own inadvertent involvement in the dropping of the atomic bomb - works to create a rich, multi-layered canvas on which to paint the story of Jonathan's own fears and failings.
The story, though, is not without some hope. We end with the possibility that Jonathan and Madeline's marriage will survive, that Amelia will learn to refine her voice and express her social critiques in a productive way, that Thisbe will reconcile her desires with her belief in God, that Henry has finally escaped the guilt of his cowardly past. It is an upward movement that is neither overly emotional nor melodramatic, but simply the only way that a family trying to survive the crisis that is itself can move if it is to avoid destruction. It is a struggle common to our time that Meno details with the grace and skill of someone who has ardently captured the fight-or-flight nature of the human spirit. It is this perfect evocation of the American family that makes The Great Perhaps, to borrow the novel's closing words, both astonishing and quite ordinary.
* * *
Joe Meno is on the faculty of Columbia College Chicago where he teaches creative writing. His novel Hairstyles of the Damned was the inaugural GB Book Club selection.
— Veronica Bond /
Gapers Block politics editor Ramsin Canon brings us his review of Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob by Jeff Coen:
If you're not versed in the history of the post-Capone Chicago mob, known as the Outfit, you may easily have missed the fact that the Martin Scorcese classic Casino was about our city's organized crime syndicate and their control over gambling in Las Vegas in the second half of the twentieth century. The word "Chicago" is never spoken or named in any way during the movie—in fact, at one point, when Joe Pesci's Nick Santoro character is narrating a flashback he says, "Even back home, years ago," and on the screen flashes the title, "Back Home Years Ago" instead of "Chicago, 1973". Only once, when he almost slyly refers to "Remo Gaggi" (a blend of Joseph Aiuppa and Tony Accardo) as "the Outfit's top boss," is there any real indication that the gangsters hail from Chicago. (There's another scene where Pesci's character says, "Hey Ace, tell him the line on the Bear game.") There were briefly local rumors about why; that the producers were afraid to antagonize a criminal organization that, at the time, may still have had influence in some of Hollywood's powerful craft unions. More likely the movie plays so fast and loose with the facts that they didn't want to draw too direct a parallel.
Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Coen's episodic telling of the federal government's prosecution of Chicago mobsters and their associates plays like a similar biopic, telling the history of the top tier of an immensely powerful, violent criminal organization through the lens of a personal, familial tragedy. The terrible difference of course is that Coen's book tells stories that are absolutely real, and recent enough to have living, breathing victims—both direct and indirect. The so-called "Family Secrets" investigation led to the conviction of Joseph Lombardo, James Marcello, Frank Calabrese Sr., and Paul Schiro for murder and Anthony Doyle for providing sensitive information to the convicted felons.
Books on the modern Outfit are scarce; the most recent contribution to the literature was investigative reporter Gus Russo's book The Outfit, an at-times sensationalized book that tried to portray the Outfit as a legitimate underworld counterpart to overworld (normal world?) corruption and exploitation. Like much of the literature on organized crime, it falls closer into the category of a "mob watcher's" book—similar to the work of former FBI agent Bill Roemer, whose book on the Chicago mob's Vegas influence—The Enforcer; Spilotro: The Chicago Mob's Man Over Las Vegas—borders on the voyeuristic. Coen's book is not a "mob watchers" book; it is a useful and lucid history of a gigantic investigation and prosecution and a sobering look at organized crime. If only more books on "the mob" read more like studies of organized crime than true crime dramas.
The contribution Coen's book makes to the literature of organized crime is that it completely and utterly demystifies the professional criminal class. The Chicago criminal underworld described by Nick Calabrese, the Outfit killer whose testimony was the cornerstone of the federal case, is one filled with cold cruelty, mistrust, betrayal, paranoia, and ceaseless hustling, dealing with society's most down-on-their-luck. There is no glamour or the type of vicarious thrills that come with being able to exact revenge at will: according to Calabrese's testimony, murders were done for petty reasons or out of a primal paranoia. The mystique of the gangster who never spends a day in prison is shattered; since the events that transpired in the movie Casino, a series of prosecutions chased the Outfit out of Vegas and imprisoned much of its leadership, and Family Secrets is a story of people in prison or killing to avoid prison.
Continue reading this entry »
— Alice Maggio /
Reviews Wed Apr 01 2009
When the White House Was Ours
by Porter Shreve
(Mariner Books, 2008)
It's 1976, our country's bicentennial, and Daniel Truitt and his family are on their way to Washington , D.C. to make a new start on their lives. For Pete, Daniel's father, it is the chance to show he can make something of himself after several failures in his career as an academic. For Valerie, Daniel's mother, it is the last chance she will give her husband to prove that he has what it takes to provide for their family. And for Daniel and his sister Molly, it's just one more move in a succession of displacements in their constantly uprooted lives. But this time, things will be different for the Truitt family as they find themselves much more invested in their own potential achievements than they ever have been before.
When the White House Was Ours is Porter Shreve's loosely autobiographical account of his own family's embarkation into alternative education. The idea that Pete Truitt alights upon - starting his own school where the students direct the teachers and create their own curriculum - is not far off from the school that Shreve's own father started in Philadelphia in 1973. They even have the same name: "Our House," from the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song. But though Daniel's life mirrors Shreve's at the outset, the story in When the White House Was Ours is Daniel's own. It is here that Daniel will learn much more than art, English, math and science: here he will learn what happens when the money starts to run out and you have to figure out how to survive on the cheap, he will learn about the devastation and disappointment secrets can wreak on a family, he will learn about the inklings of love and the truth that there is really no such thing as true free love.
Although the title may evoke images of current events, Shreve never makes the mistake of letting his fiction serve as a mouthpiece for his own political beliefs. It is his ability to emotionally involve the reader into the story that serves as the foundation of the novel - although it becomes clear that the school will fail, Shreve has you hoping that somehow the Truitts can pull everything together: "This period when we lived in Washington, in a white house nor far from the real White house, will always live in my memory as the pivotal moment for my family, but it also marked my dawning awareness that our lives were converging with something larger than ourselves, a whole country at a crossroads." This is the older Daniel narrating his twelve-year-old thoughts, realizing now just how much this school, regardless of its lack of success, changed all of their lives.
But it's the characters that really draw you in. Shreve paints vivid images of all those involved in this school so that their dreams and disappointments ring true. Daniel says of his mother, "Later I'd learn that she'd wanted to get a Ph.D. in political science but my father had persuaded her to go into his own field. I still don't know why he was so insistent that they both pursue teaching degrees. He hoped one day to open a school and perhaps he only wanted her to be his partner in this. Then again, maybe he worried about what might happen if his wife's career overshadowed his own." With such honest portrayals and a story that holds together even as the events therein fall slowly apart, When the White House Was Ours serves as a tribute to a time in everyone's history when things seemed so much simpler: childhood.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Dec 17 2008
The Order of Odd-Fish
by James Kennedy
(Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 2008)
Though there are many books of which I am fond, there are few instances in which, upon finishing a book, I find myself thinking, with some sadness, of how much I would have missed out on had not some happy accident brought said book into my life. This is the thought I had from nearly the first page of James Kennedy's The Order of Odd-Fish. This book will likely receive complimentary comparisons to such literary greats as Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl, along with contemporary favorites like Lemony Snicket and the perhaps less widely celebrated but no less loved Norton Juster, and while such comparisons rarely set the reader up for anything more than disappointment, they are entirely justified here. Even if Kennedy never again sets pen to paper, he will always be remembered lovingly for the one great contribution he has made to young adult literature today.
The Order of Odd-Fish is at once a coming of age story and a fantastical journey into a middle world where gigantic cockroaches are butlers, knights spend their lives engaged in fruitless endeavors and a legend threatens to destroy an entire community. Jo Larouche is thirteen when her life is uprooted and she finds herself vomited out of a giant fish into the strange world of Eldritch City and an order of knights known as Odd-Fish. Along with her is her eccentric Aunt Lily, who cannot remember anything before Jo's birth, a boisterous Russian named Colonel Korsakov, who literally puts all his faith in his gut and bases his decisions on his digestive sensations, and Sefino, Korsakov's uppity and self-absorbed cockroach butler. It is here that Jo must learn the truth about her birth and how she is inexplicably linked with the Ichthala, the true legend that predicts the return of a goddess known as the All-Devouring Mother and the end of Eldritch City.
Lest Jo's story appear to be more of an inner journey, Kennedy pits her against a couple of formidable and highly comical villains. First up is Ken Kiang, a bored Chinese millionaire whose goal is to be "thoroughly, intentionally EVIL." Here is a man who proudly boasts that he has drunk kitten blood, who concocts a plan for a man to sell his soul in exchange for consuming delicious pies, who "[makes] a mental note to practice his diabolical laughter for fifteen minutes a day," for he knows that the devil is in the details. Acting in opposition to both Kiang and Jo is the Belgian Prankster, known for his ability to pull off world-class pranks like covering New York with orange carpet and standing the Eiffel Tower on its point. To say more about the Belgian Prankster would be to reveal too much, but suffice it to say that he will stand as one of the more memorable and satisfyingly disgusting villains in literature.
If the story in The Order of Odd-Fish is at all great, which it is, it is because Kennedy's writing is so extraordinary. He has a knack for creating outrageous characters and vivid scenes where the subtlest turn of phrase can make the most hilarious impact. Kennedy's remarkable use of alliteration alone is worth noting: "Infamous Insect Indignantly Irked in Insipid Imbroglio" and "Magnanimous Mayor Makes Merciful Motion Mandating Murder Matter Mended" read the headlines of the "Eldritch Snitch," the city's newspaper. It is not often that we are reminded that language can be so much more than an instrument of necessity, the fork by which we feed ourselves words and ideas. There are few writers who remind us, instead, that language can be an instrument of pleasure, the precise curve of a neck, the density of a wood, the delicacy with which a bow is drawn against a set of strings to produce a melodious harmony. Kennedy reminds us that writing, especially young adult writing, does not have to be simple or tedious or at all reductive, that it can be dense and multi-layered and exquisitely complex. These are the words of a man who knows his instrument well and plays it with the joy of someone who has clearly had the luck of discovering a true love.
If I sound overly laudatory, it is because while there are many good books that I like, there are few great books that I love. Indeed, I loved The Order of Odd-Fish. My only consternation is that I have come across this book at the age that I am. How I envy those who will discover it when they are young.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Thu Dec 11 2008
Powell's presents a long, thought-out review of the newly published Norman Maclean Reader, a posthumous collection of the University of Chicago professor's works. The review gives a good idea of what's contained in the collection, which is nice as we're looking forward to reading Maclean's classic A River Runs Through It in February. But be wary if you haven't read the book yet or seen the movie (like me): there's a HUGE plot spoiler smack dab in the middle of the review. (Thanks a lot, Mr. Reviewer...not all of us are in love with Brad Pitt, so don't assume we all know what happens at the end!)
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Nov 12 2008
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
by Ben Tanzer
(Orange Alert Press, 2008)
Another novel about sex. Another novel about failed relationships. Another novel whose characters are too self-aware, too consumed with pop culture, and too involved with themselves to ever be involved with someone else. You might say this about Ben Tanzer's Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, but you'd be committing an unfair reduction and missing what is actually a funny and interesting story. Set in New York, You Go Your Way revolves around two groups of friends. Geoff and Paul meet Jen and Rhonda at a party and it's not long between the two pair off, with Paul and Rhonda heading off to her apartment where Paul will eventually leave Rhonda lying on her own bathroom floor, and Geoff and Jen staying to discuss their parents and their mutual aversions to marriage. Neither seems like a great start to a great relationship, but this isn't a story about great relationships. It's a story about real ones.
Written as a series of vignettes with exposition sparse between long bouts of dialogue, You Go Your Way reads almost as a play. The scenes are short and self-contained and any one of them could be read on their own as a very short story, similar to hearing a snippet of conversation from two people passing by. The effect is that we are propelled through the story, moving very quickly from Geoff and Jen's meeting to their eventual courtship and the problems they face therein. Much more affecting than any external factors they come up against are their own internal hesitations. After sleeping together for the first time, we are privy to their thoughts: "He will be a...jerk...manipulator, user, control freak that doesn't care about her or anyone else. And Jen will be right, he will be all of this, or none of this, Geoff thinks, but he will let her down. He will be himself, that will suck and she will not want to be with him anymore." This is not a romanticized relationship, but one between two very flawed people who, while aware of their flaws, flounder when it comes to learning how to get past them.
The novel is rife with pop culture references. Paul often answers Geoff's musings about his relationship in the manner of Yoda and with Rhonda and Jen the quartet can easily go from The Breakfast Club to Milton Berle to J. Edgar Hoover back to Jon Cryer. Though these references may seem a bit recycled at times - the discussion on when a guy should call a girl after the first date is easily recognizable as influenced by Swingers - the truth is that this is the way that many of us actually speak. The appeal of the story is not that it's so different from what most of us have experienced, but that it's so familiar. Geoff will pull away and Jen will let him go way too easily; it's no one's fault and it's the fault of them both: "Jen agrees that there is something sad about the end of the relationship. Still, while there has been something good between them, and while they might have fought harder for it, it is done, and while this may contradict how she felt on the way to meet Geoff, when something is done you have to move on. Right?" Whether these two move on and how well they do so is left up to the reader to judge, but it is a judgment no reader can make without first finding something of him- or herself in these so very real characters.
* * *
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is Ben Tanzer's second novel. Find out more about this local author
here.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Mar 19 2008
The Kept Man
by Jami Attenberg
(Riverhead Books, 2008)
It is perhaps one of literature’s most romantic notions, the idea that a woman would patiently wait forever for the man she loves. Through centuries of writings and even through the past several decades of this motif infiltrating our culture and minds, we might expect it to be a bit overdone and stale in the twenty-first century. And yet, this is surprisingly not the case with Jami Attenberg’s The Kept Man. Perhaps it is because a good love story will never grow old or because somehow we still believe in the most futile of romantic notions, but whatever the reason, this age-old story is born fresh and anew in this compelling read.
The Kept Man is the story of Jarvis Miller, thirty-something New Yorker, reformed punk rebel party girl and half-widow of acclaimed artist Martin Miller. Owing to a brain aneurysm and a fall from a ladder, Martin has been in a coma for the past six years and Jarvis has become something of a recluse, restricting her environment to her apartment and his medical care room, and her interactions to his nurses and Missy, the cab driver who takes her there every week. Since the accident, the value of Martin’s art has increased steadily and Jarvis sustains herself financially by selling off his work as it becomes necessary. Finding little solace in her remaining friends – Alice, a gallery owner, and Davis, one of Martin’s best friends – it is only through the accidental laundromat meeting of three married men that Jarvis begins to contemplate life beyond Martin.
This story could be simple. We might expect there to be romantic interest between Jarvis and the three men, members of what they call the Kept Man Club owing to the fact they are all financially supported by their wives. We might expect Jarvis’s bouts of longing and confusion as she starts to separate herself from a present that is becoming her past. We might even expect that Jarvis will come to learn that her marriage and her friends were never as true to her as she believed them to be. What keeps this story from falling prey to predictability is Attenberg’s lovely ability to create something new out of our expectations. “It’s an indulgence, I know, depression,” Jarvis thinks of her inevitable depression after her weekly visit with Martin. “A safe harbor for those of us who can’t put up a fight, cannot raise our hands in firm fists and say, I am going to try and handle all of this bullshit.” This writing of Jarvis as so self-deprecating and so harsh on herself lends a feeling of strength and authenticity to this woman who may be waiting for her man, but knows she is destroying herself in doing so.
Though the conclusion of the novel may feel a bit too convenient to be true, it is this depth of character that keeps The Kept Man from being just another wanton love story. Jarvis, Martin and the people in their lives are wonderfully flawed and regardless of whether we believe in the virtue of their decisions, we can believe in the reality of these decisions being made. In Attenberg’s hands, Jarvis’s love for Martin is honest – it is intense, sometimes destructive, and completely out of her control. “It is out of love, not anger. Love for myself, love for him. And out of necessity. If I am ever going to be a whole person again, I am going to have to stop being the half-widow,” Jarvis thinks when contemplating the prospect of regaining her life. This brutal look at one woman’s resistance to change, fear of loneliness and ultimate belief in the necessity of moving forward takes The Kept Man from the realm of the sentimental love story to something refreshing, truthful and wholly worthy of the read.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Mon Feb 25 2008
This week's New Yorker includes a critique of two new books on behavioral economics, a field of study examing, among other things, how outside factors influence decision making. One of the books - Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness - comes from University of Chicago professors Richard H. Thaler of the Graduate School of Busniess and Cass R. Sunstein of the Law School. The "nudge" is the idea that people should be offered fool-proof choices that work with, rather than against, their tendency to make unreasonable decisions. A prime example is making organ donation a default option, requiring only those who do not want to donate their organs go through the trouble of explicitly expressing their wishes. The article finds that the book raises some interesting questions, mainly "if people can't be trusted to make the right choices for themselves how they possibly be trusted to make the right decisions for the rest of us?"
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Sun Feb 24 2008
The New York Times has not only a review of the recently published posthumous novel by Richard Wright, but it also has an except of the first chapter for you to read. Wright was working on A Father's Law when he died in 1960 and the book has finally come to publication at the hands of Wright's daughter Julia, also his literary executor. Ultimately praising, the review does express mixed feelings about the work, saying it "is not simply an unfinished novel; it is an unfinished novel in abject need of revisions...without having first read his thunderous classics, one might plausibly dismiss this author as a tendentious, technically naive amateur and disdain the works that made him indispensable in Amerian letters."
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Fri Feb 22 2008
Pop Matters gives Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library no. 18 a rather idolatrous review: "As usual, these penitent recollections are told through Ware’s epic, blueprint-like diagrams. With the minute, technical craft of his art, Ware is able to scientifically poeticize the flow of thought with an almost-Proustian sensibility and, at his best, is able to capture the most sentimentally sloppy of moments and emotions with the most precise, categorical of means."
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Wed Feb 20 2008
At the City's Edge
by Marcus Sakey
(St. Martin's Minotaur, 2008)
Things may have been looking up for twenty-seven year-old Jason Palmer. After returning to Chicago from a stint in Iraq, Jason has no greater plans for his summer than girls, booze and spending time with his brother Michael and nephew Billy. All too quickly, these languid plans are changed when Jason’s daily run along the lakefront brings him face to face with a man he calls “Soul Patch” and the gun he finds shoved in his face. Jason’s quick wit and Army training save his life in that moment, but he’s afforded little time for comfort when he’s faced with identifying Michael’s murdered body, pulled from the burned down rubbles of his bar later that day. With his young nephew to care for and justice on his mind, Jason takes the case into his own hands and joins forces with a disparaged police officer to uncover a network of crime running far deeper below the city than he could have ever imagined.
At the City’s Edge, Marcus Sakey’s second novel, is a fast-paced and engrossing read. We learn early on that Michael was part of a group of people who informed the police on gang activity in the neighborhood. The first hint that the murder is the product of something more than random violence is born in the mind of police officer Elena Cruz, who recalls Michael saying that “there were things going on in the neighborhood that were worse than anybody guessed, that the gangs were the tip of the iceberg. Saying that he would have proof soon.” Having been taken off the streets to work behind a desk after her affair with the police chief became public knowledge, Cruz is eager to get her hands back in the game and prove her worth to her male colleagues. Together, she and Jason risk their lives to find out the truth about Michael’s death, a truth that shakes the core of what these two strong-willed characters think they know.
Sakey’s knowledge of the inner-workings of gangs shines brightly here and his skilled research is a refreshing touch to what might otherwise be an unconvincing tale. Evidence of this can be found in the Acknowledgements, in which Sakey thanks several members of the Chicago Police Department, but it can also be found in such details as Cruz’s involvement in the Gang Intelligence Unit, statistics about high school drop out rates and gang recruitment, and the presence of the Lantern Bearers, a sort of halfway house for gang member rehabilitation. Sakey states that the book is not a sociological study, but his effort to incorporate his learned knowledge about gang activity gives the story a hardened edge that make you wonder just how far the author would go to tell this story.
At the City’s Edge takes place in the fictional Crenwood, a South side neighborhood rife with poverty and violence. Though the neighborhood’s imaginary name might immediately stand out to the erudite Chicagoan, Sakey makes sure to impart the rest of the story with a very real sense of the city. Jason lives in a Chicago where he can witness the impoverished meeting the upper class from the window of his apartment at Clark and Division, where he’s sure that while everyone is familiar with Upper Wacker “he doubted many had taken the ramps down one more level, to the bowels of the city, a bleak lost place where service trucks moved between exhaust-stained roll doors under the timeless haze of yellow sodium light.” He lives in a Chicago where the Sox play in Comiskey Park and the El rumbles over everyone’s heads. The digs at the gentrified Lincoln Park do grow stale after the third or fourth iteration, however it cannot be denied that Sakey knows and loves his city well.
Though the characters are a bit too emotive for my tastes – Sakey’s attempts to illustrate Jason’s sensitive side only serve to caricaturize him and the eventual romantic liaison with Cruz is as obvious as it is unnecessary – At the City’s Edge proves to be a well-crafted crime thriller whose story is as much about very real social ills as it is about keeping the reader guessing. The truth about Michael’s murder may come as no shock to anyone familiar with Chicago history, but the similarities between this fiction and those facts provide all the shock-value needed. But on another level, this is a story about one man and the lengths he would go to defend what meager life he has left. “Pick up the gun and you live forever in its shadow,” Jason reminds himself in the midst of the story’s climax. The line serves as a fitting adage for all who are touched by this reality.
* * *
Learn more about Marcus Sakey at his website www.marcussakey.com and at The Outfit, where he joins literary forces with six other local crime and mystery authors.
— Veronica Bond /
Review by Cinnamon Cooper
Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind
by Paula Kamen
(Da Capo Press, 2007)
I've been a fan of Paula Kamen's for several years, and fortunate to call her a friend for a few years. I've seen her writing develop subtleties, her theses grow more sophisticated, and I've seen her personality shine through her writing. I've also seen her struggle with health issues, support her friends, fall in love and enjoy life. And I consider myself blessed and fortunate to get to know Paula the person, after developing such an amazing writer-crush on Paula the author.
Shortly after I moved to Chicago 10 years ago, I picked up her book Feminist Fatale: Voices from the "twentysomething" Generation Explore the Future of the Women's Movement at a local library. I'd recently graduated from college, felt alienated from the feminist community, and I missed reading and discussing feminism with my peers. Sitting alone in my apartment with a borrowed copy of Paula's book made me feel less alone. She seemed to get what it was like to be a young feminist and feel alienated from a movement. After I finished the book, I read her short bio and realized Paula was just a few years older than I was and she lived in Chicago. My appreciation of her work deepened and my writer-crush began.
A mutual friend introduced me to Paula a few years ago, and when she found out that we have a shared interest in feminism, Chicago and supporting some of the same organizations she became supportive of me without missing a beat. She didn't hesitate to encourage me, congratulate me and introduce me to her friends. And all the while she was doing this I kept finding myself wishing I had her writing skills, her book deals, her voice. I found myself in awe of her as much as I found myself appreciating her.
I mention this explanation of my introduction to Paula because it seems to mirror her relationship with her friend and fellow journalist Iris Chang. Paula's most recent book Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind follows a complex path through their friendship, the relationships that Iris had with others, her death and Paula's need to understand why she killed herself.
This book isn't only about Iris's life, work and the loss of an amazing and sensitive investigative writer, it's about Paula's friendship with and professional admiration of Iris. In fact, Paula touches on so many things in this book, it's amazing Paula is able to keep a common thread tying them all together. Their relationship was full of amazing contradictions and Paula lays them all out so the reader can see Iris as the complex person she knew. Paula doesn't make this book her opportunity to wax lyrically about the joys of their relationship. She examines her own weaknesses while comparing them with Iris's to create a more complete and honest understanding of what it was like to be friends with someone who seemed to get everything you wanted and whose energy was taxing and remarkably hard to bear.
Amidst Paula's revelations about their friendship and the quality of life Iris enjoyed, she is able to share some of Iris's writing advice, comments from many of her friends, medical information about bipolar disorder and suicide, as well as describe signs that only a fully-informed professional would have been able to see in Iris. But because Paula has so much experience writing about feminist issues, she critiques medical treatments and misdiagnoses, or under-diagnoses, of mental illness in women and particularly Chinese women, without overshadowing Iris herself. But there isn't the sense that Paula is objectifying Iris's death. Even though Paula calls out for journalists to understand that writing about heavy emotional subject matter affects them, she doesn't seem to be taking advantage of her friendship with Iris to push her own agenda. Yet she doesn't remain cold and unbiased the way journalists are supposed to be toward their subject matter.
After reading Paula's book on Iris, I realized I had to read Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking before I could write this review. I knew only vaguely about the incidents Iris wrote about in her book. Reading Iris's book was traumatizing and made it impossible to read anything long for quite some time afterward. I was appalled and disgusted and angered and found myself dwelling on the images in the book, both the photographs and the visual imagery Iris created. Reading Iris's book gave me a better understanding of Paula's writing and a better understanding of how affected Iris must have been by the subject matter after her book was published and the negative feedback and threats began to roll in.
Reading The Rape of Nanking also made the tangents in Paula's book seem less like tangents. After reading about the rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of Chinese people at the hands of Japanese soldiers, I felt like I could use a good therapy session. It made me wonder how Iris could have spoken with the dozens of people she tenaciously interviewed without having had one herself. I have to agree with Paula's thoughts that journalists need support in finding ways to not be affected in a toxic way as they cover devastation and dark topics. I also found myself wishing I'd gotten to know Iris, as I continue to hope this book may prevent future Irises from following in her devastating footsteps.
Iris's writing encouraged countless young Asian women to follow their dreams of writing. Paula interviews a few in this book, and I was lucky to meet one on the train. I was reading Paula's book and taking notes in my notebook when a young woman sitting across from me gained my attention and asked breathlessly, "Is that a book about Iris Chang the writer?" I nodded and handed her the book. She skimmed the inside jacket text and handed it back to me. She seemed visibly shaken, and I wasn't sure how to respond to her. "She's the only reason I got my parents to agree to let me become a writer. They wanted me to go to law school. But I showed them her books in high school and told them I wanted to make life better for people through words, not law. When they found out Iris killed herself they pulled me out of school for a quarter and made me come home because they were worried I would do the same thing. They then told me about aunts, and uncles and older relatives who had all killed themselves and made me go to a psychologist." I was stunned by her telling a complete stranger this and asked if she was now back in school. "Oh, yeah. The shrink gave me a clean bill of health, and we wrote up a mental health plan to make my parents feel more comfortable, and now I feel more interested than ever in following in her footsteps. I've switched to being a history major, too. I should probably read this about her." I agreed. She thanked me for listening and ended with, "It's not like my people, you know. To open up about ourselves. We have to be perfect, we Chinese. We have to prove ourselves through continuous action, not emotion. But that's not good."
I think Paula would agree with her. Paula's book came about because of a eulogy she wrote for Salon.com. She describes how inspiring Iris was and how she found herself using Iris as the example she gave during a speech to writing students. After exhorting that they just "Iris Chang it", she would tell them they had nothing to lose by thinking big. It's advice and a view I've seen Paula describe to others, as well. As a fan of her writing, and someone who has benefited from Paula's encouragement, I'm excited to see how she "Iris Changs" her next book. But I think I'll read this one once more, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
— Alice Maggio /
Reviews Tue Oct 30 2007
The Chicago Tribune recently featured two reviews of works by local writers. Donna Seaman, the editor of Booklist, reviewed Hiding Out by Jonathan Messinger. And, Dick Adler reviewed the Chicago Blues anthology edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann.
But wait, our own Veronica Bond reviewed both books for the GB Book Club blog right here. Re-read her reviews of Hiding Out and Chicago Blues.
— Alice Maggio /
Reviews Thu Oct 04 2007
Chicago Blues
edited by Libby Fischer Hellman
(Bleak House Books 2007)
The Blues – they mean a lot to Chicago. Far more than the style of music that shares its name, the Blues in Chicago is the feeling of walking along a desolate street in a highly populated city, the sound of deals being made and hearts being broken in bars, and the cold of the wind that cuts through every living thing off the shores of Lake Michigan. You’d be hard-pressed to find just one definition of the Blues here, but they’re ability to hold something so different for each individual is what makes them great. A taste of that individuality can be found in the latest local anthology, aptly titled Chicago Blues, that gathers together the best of the city’s upcoming and established mystery, noir and crime fiction writers for ruminations on what the Blues in Chicago can mean. These aren’t your regular detective stories, but something more desperate and lost and as evocative as the music that inspires its name.
The stories collected in Chicago Blues are as varied as can be imagined. Stuart M. Kaminsky’s “Blue Note” opens the book, following a young man who dons his best poker face to beat a group of gamblers and ensure his mother’s safety by paying her debt. Despite his adeptness at reading his card players’ faces, there’s only so much of his own anxiety that he can keep out of the cards before he learns whether or he not he’ll be allowed to collect his mother’s monetary salvation. The suffocation of the night is palpable; you can almost smell the cigarette smoke as it wisps around their heads, mixing with the scent of bitter Scotch and the sweat of a man who may be in over his head. This is what we typically envision when we think of the Blues, but the anthology offers the authors a chance to play around with that word. Like “Blue Note,” Mary V. Welk’s “Code Blue” offers a scene from a life many of us will never see, but not in a damp, debauched poker house. An ER nurse, Frankie gets the opportunity to treat a notorious felon and rapist and administer a form of justice not sanctioned by the courts. “I don’t want you to die,” Frankie says, as we imagine her whispering fiercely into the prone man’s ear. “I want you to exist in a world where you can’t speak or move or defend yourself against the ugliness of others. I want you to be just like her, brain damaged but alive.”
This inability to speak or move – a feeling of entrapment – manifests itself not just in the villains of the city, but in the very lives these characters inhabit. “I’m running in the concrete catacombs beneath downtown Chicago, a murky netherworld that hides from the light of day,” says Brian Pinkerton’s protagonist in “Lower Wacker Blues.” Below the tourists and business people, he engages in a grownup game of hide-and-seek, called “Escape,” with a longtime friend who teaches him not just what it means to escape among the steel pillars of this hidden area of the city, but what it means to have escaped from life. Similarly, Michael Allen Dymmoch’s “A Shade of Blue” is, at its simplest, a haunting tale of a man who witnesses a crime that may or may not have occurred in the present day. In a desolate bar on Irving Park, Peter Quinn is the sole witness to a Blues singer’s murder; the only problem is that the police can’t find the body or the mysterious bar: “No murders. No missing women fitting anywhere near her description. No new Jane Does in the morgue or the hospitals. Don’t know what your witness is up to, but it sounds like he outta be writin’ for Hollywood.” Peter Quinn may not know what he’s up to either, but he serves as a warning of what can happen when you’re forced to escape your life and the events that ultimately shape it.
Chicago Blues is not all darkness and secrecy – there are several stories that take the opportunity to inject a bit of humor into an otherwise bleak landscape. In Michael A. Black’s “Chasing the Blues,” he speaks of “blue movies,” an outdated term for pornographic movies and a term his characters use to describe their job of staking out prostitutes in the city. The gruff, older cop takes this time to recount Celine DuBois, a woman who helped him out on several busts, but a woman who also may be more of a man than he ever was. Kevin Guilfoile’s “O Death Where Is Thy Sting?” garners some laughs as well, telling the story of two record collectors coveting a rare, eerie recording from Blues singer Jimmie Kane Baldwin. Legend has it that Baldwin killed his girlfriend mercilessly and her screams can be heard, from beyond the dead, on the original record. When the record is found in an old woman’s house, the two seemingly level-headed men put everything on the line to be the one to take it home, even if means that thirty-five years later they’re chasing each other across the country to snatch it from her son.
Editor Libby Fischer Hellman’s own work is featured here in “Your Sweet Man,” a story about a passionate, murderous love and the son who has grown up living with the consequences. It is as vivid and distinctive as any of the twenty-one stories in the collection and it further proves that everyone hears and feels the Blues in their own special kind of way. For readers who love mystery and crime fiction, or for those who may just want a taste of it, Chicago Blues offers haunting characters and scheming plots that keep the pages turning, even if it’s just a scant few of them before you know who the killer is, who died and how. Local readers will, after all, recognize the short story as the perfect literary form to fill the minutes of their daily commutes aboard city buses and El trains. Somewhere in the country, non-Chicagoans may pick up this book after recognizing a few of the names listed on the back cover; they may leaf through some of the pages and decide to read the stories within. Though they’re not from Chicago, they won’t be disappointed because the stories are too well crafted to fall apart simply because familiarity with the setting is taken away. But it will only be us – those of us who breathe this air, walk these streets, feel the heaviness of our city’s night – who will truly know how it feels to have the Chicago Blues.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Thu Sep 27 2007
Hiding Out
by Jonathan Messinger
(featherproof Books 2007)
There comes a time for every reader when some figure in the literary scene whose efforts you’ve come to like and respect produces their own first work of literature. Because you like this figure, you are excited for this publication, you feel compelled to read it and you are positive that you will like it. But there are times when you are let down, when that effort is not particularly inspired or original and, instead, skates on the success of those previous efforts. You may be disappointed with the work, but you will defend it and make excuses and say that it was a decent first attempt while secretly wishing you could have liked it better. This does, on occasion, happen, but I’m am happy and relieved to say that when it comes to Jonathan Messinger’s Hiding Out, this couldn’t be further from the case.
Having graduated from editor of THISisGRAND.org to editor of the Books section of Time Out Chicago and with his work with The Dollar Store literary/comedy series, which he founded, and featherproof books, an independent local publisher, Jonathan Messinger has his hands more than full when it comes to participation in Chicago literature. For those familiar with his work, Hiding Out, Messinger’s first published collection of fictional short stories, comes with great anticipation. Small in size, but not lacking in originality or feeling, Hiding Out is filled to the brim, almost bursting out of its bound pages with stories of loneliness, of unrequited love, of the fear of aging, of curiosities and of mistakes in action, but above all these are stories full of those things that have felt true to all of us at some point in our lives.
It’s difficult to know exactly what the book’s title refers to. In the story for which it was named, Eamon Peterson is a lonely man who emails himself fake spam throughout the workday. When he enjoys a simple conversation with the female coworker in whom he maintains a shy interest, he makes up his mind to do something about it. Encouraged by email messages that he doesn’t quite remember writing himself, Eamon’s desires are quashed when he learns of the boyfriend that she, of course, already has. After learning that his boss, who attempts to prove his youth by jumping off his roof every birthday and claiming no injuries, was the one who sent the emails, Eamon agrees to exchange some company files with a client who desires to have his record cleaned. For the client, the transaction is nothing, but for Eamon, who has lived so for so long unnoticed on the sidelines, it is his chance to do something dangerous, out of the ordinary and just a little bit thrilling.
The phrase “hiding out” could easily refer to Eamon’s oft-ignored existence, but it could also refer to the protagonist of “True Hero,” a man who creates an elaborate costume to go to Halloween party where his ex-girlfriend will be, only to find that she’s moved on with a man who wears the male half of the costume they once created together. It could be the man in “You Never Forget,” a father who feels torn in chastising his son and his girlfriend for transgressions he felt justified to make in his own youth. It could be the teenager in “One Valve Opens,” who excels at school and is the star of his Poetry Slam Club, but who does not necessarily want his defining characteristic to be that that he is a black student living in the suburbs. It could be the unfortunate casual soccer player in “Bicycle Kick” whose life could either be altered completely or remain entirely the same with the discovery of inoperable twin aneurysms. All of these characters are hiding from something, if only from themselves, but it is their inability to do so that makes them so real.
At times funny yet wrenching, simple yet perfectly detailed, the stories in Hiding Out make us think about what it means when we try to be something we’re not and, conversely, when others perceive us to be something other than who we are. The illustrations that start each chapter (provided by Rob Funderburk) are a flawless complement to Messinger’s stories. They are amusing asides, but possess an almost desperate air to them – what, or who, are these figures trying to hide? The stories in Hiding Out may not provide answers to these questions, but they ask them with heart and with humor and with a sense of urgency, a feeling that these stories must be told. From the very first story, tucked neatly on the publisher’s page, to the last, secreted away underneath the book’s final description, the entirety of Hiding Out is an absorbing read. For a first-time author who could conceivably coast on his past merits, Messinger does not take the easy way out. He does not disappoint.
— Veronica Bond /
Reviews Mon Aug 13 2007
While I've had really good luck with judging my last two books by their covers, it is often easier to read reviews. One of my favorite sources for finding out about new books has finally come to Chicago's airwaves via wbez: To The Best Of Our Knowledge. It airs on Sunday at 8pm, and you can listen online too. While the stories tend to focus on non-fiction titles, there is a broad collection; some Chicago-centric programs include a program with Chris Ware and Moto.
— Brian Sobolak /
Big City, Bad Blood
by Sean Chercover
(William Morrow, 2007; 294 p.)
Ray Dudgeon is a former journalist working as a private investigator in Chicago, hoping he can bring about more real change as a detective than he could as a reporter. Bob Loniski is a Hollywood locations manager, renting a warehouse on the South Side to film a new movie titled Final Revenge. But when Bob sees too much, he becomes un witting witness in a case against Frank DiMarco, a crook with significant ties to the Outfit. Now the Outfit wants Bob dead, and Ray is the only one standing in their way.
Ray takes the case to protect Bob, but he is beset by obstacles, and meanwhile, the other witnesses are turning up dead. Ray's investigation eventually leads him deep into Outfit politics, the Chicago sex trade, blackmail and corrupt public officials. Ray might be able to unravel the mystery, but will it be soon enough to save his client?
Big City, Bad Blood is a fast-paced crime novel filled with twists and turns, yet leading to a satisfying conclusion — but not too satisfying, because this book has all the makings of being the first in a series.
This is a story without clear cut good guys and bad guys. The characters have complex allegiances and motivations, which gives Big City, Bad Blood a ring of truth. Ray Dudgeon is far from faultless, and he may enjoy the more violent aspects of his work a little too much. Yet the story is told from his point of view, so readers also know he cares deeply for the people in his life, and he inspires great loyalty and friendship in others. It makes Ray just sympathetic enough to keep the reader firmly on his side.
Author Sean Chercover grew up in Toronto, but he earned his BA at Columbia College Chicago and currently splits his time between the two cities. Big City, Bad Blood is his first novel, although he has extensive experience writing for print, television and film. Chercover is also a former private investigator. He worked as a PI in both Chicago and New Orleans. This comes as little surprise given the level of realism he achieves in the book.
Big City, Bad Blood is a sharply written debut novel, with a tough protagonist and gritty crime drama that captures the essence of Chicago. It is highly recommended.
— Alice Maggio
Reviews Tue Jan 23 2007
The Christian Science Monitor reviews House of Meetings, the new novel by Martin Amis, and declares that "the story ends with a muted fizzle." Amis will be in town this Saturday at the Lookingglass Theatre to talk to Victoria Lautman of WFMT as part of the Writers on the Record series. See Slowdown for the details.
— Alice Maggio
Reviews Wed Nov 29 2006
Thomas Pynchon's new book, Against the Day, is set in 1893 right in the heart of the Chicago World's Fair. Both Newcity and PopMatters have reviews of the celebrated writer's newest work, with Newcity calling the effort rewarding, though "one can spend twenty, thirty hours of a weekend reading it and barely make a dent...like dropping a penny into an open manhole" and PopMatters summing it up by saying, "Thomas Pynchon requires commitment." If you've read it, what's your take?
— Veronica Bond
Reviews Wed Nov 08 2006
Usually you have to wait until an author puts out a collection of their short stories or some sort of anthology series collects what they deem the best of the brightest of whatever theme or time period on which they've chosen to focus. What happens if you don't have time to read the New Yorker, but still want a short story treat every now and then? Featherproof Books has your answer.
While the local small press publishes full-length novels, they also offer smaller bites of literature to "[whet] your drying palate with cool milky prose." Their Light Reading Series features short stories from both local and out of town authors, some of whose names may already be recognizable, and others whose names you'll surely enjoy getting to know. The mini-books are all downloadable PDF files that are formatted to be printed on regular 8 ½" x 11" paper. Featherproof's website includes directions on how to match the printed page numbers to produce the quarter-sheet sized books—"Crease it like you mean it," they instruct, and, "Don't forget: color is pretty." Color is pretty, but don't fret if you're stuck with a printer that works only in monochrome. The printing process is fairly low maintenance and, with a couple of staples, in just a few minutes you've got your own little book to tote around.
Featherproof has navigated such diverse topics as failed love, competitive familial golf games and vampires in graveyards. After the end of a serious relationship, a young woman questions whether it will ever be possible to fall in love again in Andrea Claire Johnson's "This Is." "The questions now is: This love, this intimacy, this longing—can it find a home, a place with someone else?" Johnson asks, only to leave the question as unanswered for us as it is for her narrator. Zach Stage's brief, one page "The Nightman" describes a scene that is familiar to anyone who's ever been on a bad date. The story is simple and amusing and it works because even if we haven't been in that specific circumstance, we will certainly sympathize with the wish to be pulled away by a mysterious call in the midst of a trying situation. Jeb Gleason-Allured and Todd Dills are notable for their editorial efforts on the literary broadsheet The2ndHand and here the two contribute their unique brand of eccentric and unpredictable prose. Gleason-Allured's "Shooting Music" recounts a romantic night with Annie Oakley, while Dills's "Grandpa's Brag Book" describes a highly competitive game of golf in which a Bugs Bunny head cover, "meant to go on a particular day's winner's driver," brings out bitterness and resentment in this group of brothers, fathers and grandfathers.
Two of the most intriguing stories are Pete Coco's "The Feast of Saint Eichatadt" and Elizabeth Crane's "Donovan's Closet." "The vampires were back," Coco's story begins. "It used to be they would only come into the cemetery at night. They'd smoke their dope and leave a mess of plastic snack bags and Styrofoam coffee cups for Gravey and me to clean up in the morning." The opening is completely unexpected and unlike any of the other stories in the Light Reading Series. Nineteen years old and married to the former cheerleader who is pregnant with his baby, Gabe is in danger of losing his job at St. Vitus's cemetery due to financial cutbacks. Although he's not completely enamored of his job, Gabe has grown used to seeing vampires lurking about the grounds and takes an interest in the little girl who has started showing up there. That the vampires turn out to be far more innocuous that you'd ever think makes for an amusing end to this suspenseful and wonderfully weird story.
"Donovan's Closet" inhabits a completely different realm—that of the woman, hesitant and scared to fully allow herself to be in a new relationship. Usually attracted to what she describes as the "Cute Bitter Hipster," Elizabeth Crane's narrator falls hard for the chemistry student/drummer who tells her that she reminds him of his favorite story. Unbeknownst to Donovan, she falls in love with his lemon-scented closet and uses the key to his apartment to spend time there while he's out. After an awakening in a Barney's dressing room she finds she needs the closet less and, perhaps, Donovan more. There's no explanation for this girl's closet-bound activities, but like the narrator's reliance on her Magic 8 Ball, behaviors in relationships often defy reason.
You've got to admit it: the mini-book is an ingenious idea. Small enough to stuff in a bag or back pocket, light so it doesn't weight you down, and short enough to finish on a bus or El ride, Featherproof has found an excellent way to bring the writing to the people. Completely free (although you can make a donation via PayPal if you're able), Featherproof's Light Reading Series is indeed the perfect little drink to quench a parched literary throat.
~*~
Visit Featherproof Books at www.featherproof.com to download the mini-books, check out their latest releases and find out where they'll make their next appearance.
— Veronica Bond
Reviews Wed Oct 25 2006
When I was a kid I loved ghost stories, even though they did give me nightmares. Although I read lots of scary stories, my favorite supernatural tales were about local Chicago hauntings. The legend of Resurrection Mary was a favorite, but it wasn't the scariest. Oh, no. I still vividly remember the first time I heard the terrifying story of what happened at St. Rita's Church at 63rd and Fairfield that one fateful All Soul's Day in 1961. I was in fifth grade, and one of my teachers told us the tale around this time of year. I didn't sleep for a week. And if you don't know the story of St. Rita's, then you need to check out these books.
Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City Rev. ed.
by Ursula Bielski
(Lake Claremont Press, 1998)
More Chicago Haunts: Scenes from Myth and Memory
by Ursula Bielski
(Lake Claremont Press, 2000)
These two collections by local historian and self-described ghosthunter Ursula Bielski are good places to start. The storytelling style is engaging without being sensationalist. Both books are well-researched and include source citations and bibliographies. Even if you are immune to the allure of scary stories, Chicago Haunts and More Chicago Haunts provide a unique perspective of the city's history. Chicago Haunts includes retellings of many of the most well-known Chicago ghost stories, such as the devil at Hull House, the St. Valentine's Day massacre, the tragic fire at Our Lady of the Angels and, yes, the incident at St. Rita's Church. More Chicago Haunts includes many lesser-known but no less compelling stories, from Maxwell Street apparitions to hauntings in Lincoln Square.
Chicago's Street Guide to the Supernatural: A Guide to Haunted and Legendary Places In and Near the Windy City
by Richard T. Crowe, with Carol Mercado
(Carolando Press, 2000)
As the founder of Chicago Supernatural Tours, Richard Crowe has been conducting ghost tours around the city for more than 30 years. This book is like holding a month's worth of tours in your hands. More than 70 sites are covered in this Street Guide to the Supernatural, which should keep even the most dedicated amateur ghosthunter busy for some time. The accounts of the apparitions and spooky occurrences that make each place notable are clearly written and sometimes include personal anecdotes from his tour experiences. Each site in the book is also accompanied by an address, photo and status of the haunting, such as "dormant," "ongoing," or "sporadic but active."
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
by Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski
(Lake Claremont Press, 1999)
Although not a ghost book exactly, any lover of ghost stories knows cemeteries are favorites sites for hauntings. Graveyards of Chicago introduces readers to more than 60 cemeteries and burial sites in and around Chicago. Each entry includes the address and phone number of the location, photos and brief descriptions with historical information about the cemetery. Celebrities, historical figures and other persons of interest buried at the cemetery are also noted.
Windy City Ghosts Rev. ed.
by Dale Kaczmarek
(Ghost Research Society, 2006)
Windy City Ghosts II Rev. ed.
by Dale Kaczmarek
(Ghost Research Society, 2006)
Author Dale Kazmarek, founder of the locally-based Ghost Research Society, is also well-known in Chicago's ghostlore community. These two collections are the result of Kazmarek's own research and experience exploring the area's haunted sites. The stories include supernatural occurrences at Lake Forest College, the George Stickney mansion and the LaGrange Public Library. There are also accounts of the I-57 murders, the crash of Flight 191 and the "ghostly boy of St. Charles Road," among many others.
Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets
by Troy Taylor, Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman
(Barnes & Noble, 2005)
Weird Illinois is not exclusively a ghost book, but it does include several chapters dedicated to "unexplained phenomena," ghost stories and cemeteries. It is also one of the best-looking books of the bunch, with appealing graphics and generously illustrated with full-color photos. Entries are brief and the tone is light-hearted, but Weird Illinois is undeniably fun to read. Plus, because the book covers the entire state, there are many anecdotes and sites in Weird Illinois that are not found in the other books listed here.
— Alice Maggio
Reviews Wed Oct 18 2006
Throughout the country and the world there are people gathered together in secret. What they do is unknown to many and what they celebrate is never so cherished as by these few. These are the members Sherlockian societies, bound by their inimitable love of the great detective Sherlock Holmes. For their annual colloquium, the Newberry Library recently delved into the world of Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for "Re-Collections," a look at some of Doyle's original writings and published works.
"For some of you, this may be a once in a lifetime chance to see these books," Daniel Posnansky intoned excitedly, referring to the Conan Doyle pieces from his personal collection, lent to the library for special display. "You may have heard of the well-known bookish writer, one Nicholas Basbanes's recent tome Among the Gently Mad. Should you take a moment to peruse it, you will find that Dan Posnansky, that's me, is just such one of these gently mad book collectors," he began, standing amidst the propped up posters of the honored Victorian author. A member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley with members including such famous names as Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and Sir Isaac Asimov as well as all the Newberry's colloquium speakers, Posnansky's talk focused on Doyle's views of the United States. Indeed, many of Holmes's adventures featured visitors from the United States – from the vengeful Jefferson Hope fleeing Utah in A Study in Scarlet to the New Jersey born Irene Adler in Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to the North Carolina murders in The Hound of the Baskervilles – and one can conclude that Doyle himself had a certain affection for the land. Posnansky confirmed this by reading from an original letter, penned by Doyle himself, expressing his belief in a powerful partnership between America and his English home.
Dr. C. Paul Martin explored another side of Arthur Conan Doyle – that of his life as a doctor. One of Martin's first slides was the contents page of the University of Minnesota Medical Bulletin where the first listed article was "Arthur Conan Doyle: Detective and Doctor." Martin went on to show an issue of the New England Journal of Medicine with an article on medical detectives that featured Doyle's work and the Medical Casebook of Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, a special find from Martin's own collection. He described Doyle as something of a Renaissance man who could claim titles as diverse as military correspondent, law reformer and spiritualist in addition to doctor and writer. In fact, Sherlock Holmes's namesake remains as famous as his creator: a physician at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes is best known for his poetry, but is also believed to have conducted the first forensic investigation in the United States.
Picking up where Posnansky left off, the colloquium's final speaker, Glen Miranker, may also be considered among the "gently mad." "What is it that makes a book a Book?" he asks, positing that, "Many books have a tale to tell beyond what is printed." Miranker followed three of the Holmes books as they made their way into the public. Doyle is quoted as saying that he "only meant to write one little book, A Study in Scarlet." That little book was first published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1897, and it was Doyle's response to detective fiction, in which its protagonists arrive magically at their conclusions with little logical or analytical thought. However, it was Doyle's second Holmes adventure, The Sign of Four, that fully immersed the character in the public consciousness. Although the pirated reprints of the book meant Doyle earned little profit, they did help turn Doyle into a public figure in the United States. These cheap reprints brought literature to the lower classes, and Miranker showed thirty-nine different pirated versions of the book he has incorporated into his own collection. It's easy to wonder if the world would be a different place without these pirated books and whether such items as an as yet unobtainable jacketed 1892 British first edition of Adventures of Sherlock Holmes would hold such wonder for Miranker or whether these tales would have created such inspiration in each of the day's speakers.
The Newberry Library currently has several items of Doyleana on public display, including that first edition of Beeton's Christmas Annual and pages inscribed with Doyle's own handwriting, items that indeed may be seen only once in a lifetime for even the most ardent Holmes fanatics. From medical articles citing Holmes's logical approach to clothing ads employing the image of the impeccable detective to long sought after rare editions of Doyle's work selling for thousands of dollars, no one would be able to deny the impact this character has had on general society, but perhaps the impact is greatest for those who devote their time to these secret Holmes societies. Moderator Donald J. Terras of Chicago's own Hounds of the Baskerville ended the colloquium with "Sonnet 221B," a poem that is accepted as a ritual goodbye for many Sherlockian societies. "Here, though the world explode, these two survive, and it is always eighteen ninety-five," the sonnet ends, a nearly perfect statement of Doyle's continuing influence. Even more perfect, though, is the answer to Dr. Martin's opening question: "Does everyone believe that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson existed?" The resounding "Yes!" that filled the room says everything.
~*~
Check out the Newberry Library’s website for more information about their collections, upcoming events and programs.
— Veronica Bond
Reviews Wed Oct 04 2006
Living in the city, one misses out on autumn. Trees can be scarce, so it is difficult to watch the leaves turn. Or, if they are like the trees on my street, they always look a bit pale and have a number of dead, bare branches year-round. So, how does one tell when it's autumn? To experience the full glory of the fall season, one must venture beyond the brick and concrete grid of Chicago.
Trees in Illinois will be reaching their peak colors through the next few weeks, so this is a great time to head outdoors. And, whether you want to plan an afternoon adventure or a weekend getaway, the following books may help you get started.
60 Hikes within 60 Miles, Chicago: Including Aurora, Elgin and Joliet
by Ted Villaire
(Menasha Ridge Press, 2005)
If your boots were made for walking, this may be the book for you. 60 Hikes within 60 Miles, Chicago profiles 60 trails around Chicago area, examining each trail from the point-of-view of the hiker. Busse Woods, the Fox River Trail, the Little Red Schoolhouse, a hike near Fermilab and an Oak Park history walk are just some of the places featured in the book. The guide provides detailed trail descriptions, including degree of difficulty, length of the trail, estimated hiking time, elevation profiles and GPS-based trail maps. Routes are also noted for other qualities, so you can find the best hikes for bird watching, for walking with kids or hiking with your dog.
Biking Illinois: 60 Great Road Trips and Trail Rides
by David Johnsen
(Trails Books, 2006)
If you would rather hit the trails on a bicycle, check out Biking Illinois. Sixty is the magic number again, but Biking Illinois covers trails and routes throughout the state, providing useful information just for cyclists. Plan a ride through the Shawnee National Forest in far southern Illinois, or take a trip closer to home along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Each site includes a trail description, detailed map, and tips about local history, attractions, finding food or where to get bicycle repairs should you have a mishap along the way. Visit the companion website for Biking Illinois to read about Johnsen's personal experiences on some of the trails, and to find corrections and updates to information in the book.
Quick Escapes Chicago: 26 Weekend Getaways In and Around the Windy City, 5th ed.
by Bonnie Miller Rubin, Marcy Mason
(Globe Pequot Press, 2003)
Want to get away for a few days? Pick up this book to start planning a Columbus Day weekend holiday. Quick Escapes Chicago features 26 easy weekend trips around the Midwest, all within a few hours' drive of the city. Go hiking in Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Ill., or see the fall colors in beautiful Brown County, Indiana. Drive up to Traverse City, Mich., or do the bed and breakfast thing in historic Galena, Ill. Quick Escapes Chicago includes tips on lodging, restaurants, attractions and more for each of the sites featured.
Off the Beaten Path, Illinois, 8th ed.
by Bob Puhala
(Globe Pequot Press, 2005)
The most recent edition of Illinois Off the Beaten Path may offer the best of both worlds. It contains suggestions for trips that can be accomplished in a day, plus places to visit for longer stays. Visit the Garden of the Gods near Harrisburg, or travel to Illinois Amish country near Arcola. Or, if you want a trip closer to home, plan a day at Chain O'Lakes State Park in north suburban Lake County. Destinations are divided by areas of the state, so finding a place nearby — or farther away — is easy. Illinois Off the Beaten Path claims to help travelers "go beyond the usual tourist attractions," but Illinois natives will have at least a passing familiarity with most of the places in the book. That doesn't mean natives have been there or done that, however, so Illinois Off the Beaten Path may remind you of some of those places you've always meant to visit but haven't gotten around to yet. Maybe this autumn is the time to get there at last.
— Alice Maggio
Wed Sep 27 2006
The eleventh selection for the Chicago Public Library's One Book, One Chicago program is Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Although the stories' characters are of Indian nationality and their names and the lands from which they hail may be unrecognizable in the American consciousness, Lahiri focuses on themes that are universal to the human experience. As a result, her writing has a richly colored feeling and her musings on family, love and the feeling of foreignness never seem distant from the heart and the mind.
"Mr. Kapasi had never thought of his job in such complimentary terms. To him it was a thankless occupation. He found nothing noble in interpreting people's maladies, assiduously translating the symptoms of so many swollen bones, countless cramps of bellies and bowels, spots on people's palms that changed color, shape, or size." So writes Lahiri in the titular story, describing Mr. Kapasi, a man giving a tour to the Das family and whose occupation is, literally, to interpret patients' ailments in a hospital where little Gujarati is spoken. Although the family on the tour is Indian, they came from New Jersey and "dressed as foreigners did," rendering them tourists in their own land. It's obvious that the marriage is failing and Mrs. Das's interest in Mr. Kapasi's work conjures up his own romantic fantasies, at least until she confides that one of their sons is not her husband's child and asks Mr. Kapasi for his help with this malady, her secret. He concedes that he is, however, only an interpreter of languages, not guilt or transgressions.
The first story in the book, "A Temporary Matter," follows another failing marriage and the husband's attempts to rebuild what he once had with his wife before they became parents of a stillborn child. When the couple's electricity is temporarily cut off each evening, Shukumar uses this opportunity to get closer to his wife –- with no lights they must eat dinner together, by candlelight, instead of taking their plates to their separate places in the house. "He remembered their first meals there, when they were so thrilled to be married, to be living together in the same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more eager to make love than to eat." The perils of pregnancy also makes an appearance in "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar," a story about a girl whose illness remains unexplainable to doctors, therapists, priests and anyone else who might try to diagnose her. She envies the girls who get married and questions if it is so wrong for her to want a husband and a child. When Bibi's outrages confine her to a storage room, she's found months later to be pregnant, refusing to reveal who the father might be. And it seems that once the child is born, all of Bibi's ailments have disappeared.
Each story in Interpreter of Maladies feels complete. There's a beginning, middle and end for each one and, in a short space, Lahiri manages to give her characters enough definition to carry the stories she creates for them. There's a real sense of history, emotion and motivation behind these names, which is something that can be rightfully expected from a novel, but which is often left by the wayside in stories of only fifteen or twenty pages. There isn't one of the book's nine stories that doesn't feel whole or, alternately, feels longer than necessary. Short stories are, by definition, not an opportunity to churn out what is really a wayward attempt at a half-novel, and Lahiri minds the limitations she puts on herself by writing in this form. These stories may be inspired by the author's Indian background, but they're never so specific as to alienate any of her readers. They're about the difficulties of marriage, the listlessness of unfulfilled lives and the idiosyncrasies of individual personalities. While these may be frequently visited topics, Lahiri's perfectly chosen words and phrases keep them from being mundane. More importantly, she doesn't employ odd tenses or a halting exposition or graphic sex scenes to generate interest in her writing; she simply writes well. That, more than anything, makes for a worthwhile read.
~*~
For more information on the One Book, One Chicago program, please visit the Chicago Public Library's website. You can also find a schedule of special events and a CPL book club near you where you can join in the citywide discussion. Ms. Lahiri will be at the Harold Washington Library on October 9 to talk about her acclaimed book with Mary A. Dempsey, Commissioner of the CPL.
— Veronica Bond
Reviews Wed Sep 20 2006
Although the summer of 2006 is drawing to a close, it is not too late to travel back in time to a rural Indiana resort and relive the summer of 1926. Hudson Lake is the most recent novel by local author Laura Mazzuca Toops and it captures all the frenzy of the era of speakeasies, jazz music and bootleg gin.
The story centers around the musicians and visitors at the Blue Lantern dance hall on Hudson Lake in LaPorte County, Indiana. There we meet Joy, a free-spirit running from a troubled past. We are told that Joy is "an assumed name and an assumed attitude, because joy wasn't something she always felt, or at least something she hadn't felt in years." But as her past catches up with her, Joy finds it harder and harder to keep up the facade.
Opposite Joy and her "brassy bobbed red hair" and "wide rouged mouth" is Harriet Braun, a straight-laced pre-med student at Indiana University who is spending her summer working at the Hudson Hotel. Harriet is dating Rudy, a fellow Indiana U. student studying architecture and a man Harriet describes as a "typical alpha male." Although Rudy is a steady guy, Harriet's heart will be sorely tested when she meets a certain jazz musician playing at the Blue Lantern.
Bix Beiderbecke is the talented cornet player who unwittingly comes between Joy and Harriet. At the beginning of the story Joy is sleeping with Bix, but she can't admit to herself that she loves him until it's too late. Bix becomes attracted to the intelligent Harriet, but she is torn between her feelings for the charming musician and her loyalty to Rudy. But Bix may not be able to love anyone or anything more than his insatiable need for alcohol.
Add a Chicago gangster working for Al Capone who wants a piece of the bootlegging business in LaPorte County, plus a group of Ku Klux Klan members who want to rid their town of the fast-living denizens of the Blue Lantern, and Hudson Lake will never be the same again.
In Hudson Lake Laura Mazzuca Toops weaves a fictional story from many real historical people and places. Bix Beiderbecke is the primary example. Although the love-triangle between Bix and Joy and Harriet may never have happened, Bix Beiderbecke was a celebrated jazz musician in the 1920s, and the facts revealed about his life in the novel are based on Toops's research.
The end of Hudson Lake feels a bit rushed as Toops ties up the loose ends of her narrative. The story rapidly jumps forward from 1926 to 1929, 1931 and finally up to 1939 as we learn the often tragic fates of the characters. But, by carrying the story to its ultimate conclusion, Toops strengthens the feeling of the whole book — that the seemingly carefree Jazz Age also had a terrible dark side.
Toops has an obvious affection for her subject, which is hard to resist, and a deep knowledge of the time period. She skillfully brings the 1920s to life with the right historical touches without overburdening the reader with too many extraneous facts. That's a difficult balancing act for many historical fiction writers, but Toops pulls it off.
Hudson Lake is a fun, sexy Jazz Age story about a summer that changes the lives of everyone at Hudson Lake, and it just might be a great book to help keep you warm on these increasingly chilly days.
~*~
Visit the official website of author Laura Mazzuca Toops at www.lauratoops.com to find out more about Hudson Lake, including information about the real-life locations featured in the novel. Hudson Lake is available from the publisher, Twilight Times Books, and local bookstores. Plus, see Twilight Times Books to read an excerpt from Hudson Lake.
— Alice Maggio
Reviews Wed Sep 06 2006
This is a story about fathers and sons. This is a story about the past and the present, about wrongs done and rights attempted. This is a story about having no regrets and waiting for the end. This is Billy Jones's story.
Billy Jones, a young man living in Chicago, is at the center of this story focusing on his South Carolina family. Told in three parts and in several voices, Todd Dills's Sons of the Rapture offers a bevy of characters that are as loud and brash as they are desperate and downtrodden. In the first chapter alone we're introduced to five different points of view. Billy starts us out on the journey, but soon we meet Artichoke Heart (A.H.), a sometime hit man, and sometime frontman who performs at neighborhood festivals. Billy and A.H. meet at the Taste of Kedzie where he also meets Elsa, a French girl who enters and departs from Billy's life, eventually reentering as a sort of personal savior. Although we're told the tiara-wearing musician was born William Harmony Jones – no relation to Billy – A.H. never reveals why he's adopted his stage moniker for everyday life, but we never really have reason to question the choice. A character that daily sports pageantry headwear and claims to have carried out the will of a Brazilian gangster needs little explanation for his choice in names. Albert Ledbetter is the longtime friend of Johnny Jones, Billy's father, and acts as caretaker to Bobby Jones, Billy's younger brother, who is spending his days in prison for the murder of their mother years ago. Rounding out this first section is Clarence Hickman, a man in a yellow pickup truck, driving towards the Rapture.
All of these characters are ones you're never quite sure are telling the absolute truth. Billy and his father, Johnny, have a special flair for dressing up a story to suit their needs, and so great are their powers of persuasion that they have no trouble convincing others of these false truths. While Billy tells Elsa a disturbing, invented story about a friend who lost his genitalia in the war, he sneaks in the truth about his mentally handicapped brother who killed their mother, making it impossible to know when his stories are real and when they're elaborate fiction. Johnny, too, skews the truth in favor of his needs. When he learns of his mother's affair with Thorpe Storm, a bigoted senator who continues to use racially charged epithets well into Billy's day, he construes the facts to date the affair as occurring before his birth, thus furthering the hatred of the man he's taken upon himself to label as his father. Says Albert of Johnny's stubbornness in spite of all the traits he shares with Jeremiah Jones, his true father: "Two blues won't make a brown, but logic be damned: the young man Johnny determined he'd prove the falsity to the world in ways counter to pointing out the laws of trait inheritance, or so he'd said, and I was pulled along by the force of his adamant nature, a persuasion inherent in his insanity quite impossible for my naïve mind to resist."
The second section of the novel belongs entirely to the persuasive, present-day Johnny. Rich from his father's inheritance and having started monthly payments to Albert for checking in on his jailed son, this is Johnny's life with his cowboy-like friends, drinking, doing drugs, and hooking up with a feisty woman who bears a disturbing resemblance to his dead wife. It seems as though Johnny's only wish is to while away the rest of his life, but it's not until we reach the third chapter that we learn where he's going. Back in Billy's point of view, the third section finds our narrator drunk and out of a job when Albert visits him to deliver the message that his father is coming to see him, a proclamation that Billy doesn't quite believe and deems a "prophetic event." The event does occur and with it comes all the chaos and the glory that follows the Jones' lives, with Johnny leading a herd of cattle down the Dan Ryan Expressway, a literal interpretation of the city's "Cows on Parade." The question, then, is whether this is the Rapture Billy and Johnny have been waiting for.
Although the structure of the novel may leave some a bit confused – there's no apparent reason why the first part is told in so many points of view while the second and third parts are singular in thought – the story is, thankfully, interesting enough and Dills's writing is engaging enough to keep us wanting to know more. The transfer of viewpoints in the first chapter works because Dills gives us enough time to get to know each character before switching to another. He doesn't just give us snapshots, but portraits of his characters, including the city of Chicago among them. As much as the reader can picture Billy in his confederate gray topcoat, walking with his hands shoved in the pockets, shoulders hunched up around his ears, worn down jeans and shoes, portraying himself as someone who either has little money or wants to appear that way, the city is given as much personalization. "The sterile angles of the Chicago grid," Dills writes, "the little blocks of neighborhoods, the right angles, the 45-degree angles of diagonal flow streets that connected them all, the fine curve of the expressway gray and desolate and jammed on its way downtown." This is a story about that desolation, that connection, those little blocks that bring all of these vivid characters together, all awaiting the Rapture and what it will bring to them.
Todd Dills is the editor and publisher of The2ndHand, a quarterly broadsheet offering the latest in local writing. Featherproof Books will celebrate the publication of Sons of the Rapture with a release party on September 14 at the Hideout.
— Veronica Bond
Reviews Sat Jun 24 2006
Time Out Chicago reviews Black Writing from Chicago, a recently published anthology of local African-American authors from the past and present, and calls it a "heady mix of old-school agitprop and literary wonderment, a testimony not only to the multitude of great black writers who were born or passed through here, but to the myriad forms literature may take." Read the full review online. You can also find out more about the book from the Southern Illinois University Press.
— Alice Maggio
Reviews Thu Jun 15 2006
The Boston Globe gives the thumbs up to the new history of the Haymarket riot by James Green titled Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America. The reviewer writes, "Fast-growing, self-confident to the point of brashness, already the city of big shoulders, Chicago was rapidly becoming a world-class city, the capital, in a sense, of the American heartland. But it was a city of conflict and division. Green does a wonderful job of delineating the cross currents of labor, capital, politics, and terrorism."
— Alice Maggio
In this debut novel, high school English teacher Peter Ferry witnesses a fatal car accident and becomes obsessed with learning about the life of the victim, Lisa Kim.
