The Nobodies Album, by Carolyn Parkhurst

I found The Nobodies Album on the Mystery shelf at the library, but that classification doesn't really capture what is most interesting about this book. Yes, there is a mystery--narrator Octavia Frost, a bestselling author, sees her son's name on the news crawl in Times Square as she sits in a cab on her way to deliver her latest manuscript to her editor. Milo, a rock star, has been arrested for the murder of his live-in girlfriend. Despite a four-year estrangement from her son, Octavia decides to fly to California to see if she can help. But the mystery is not very interesting (I knew as soon as Octavia met the person who would ultimately prove to be guilty that that person was the culprit--and I'm not especially good at ferreting out "whodunit"), and it's not Parkhurst's main focus.

The mystery and the opportunity to reconcile with Milo are essentially context for Octavia's reflections on her life and on writing. When Milo was nine, his father and sister died in an accident for which Octavia blamed him (at least in part). How she dealt with their deaths, how she mothered Milo in the aftermath of their deaths, and how her emotions and experiences were and were not reflected in her writing are the real subject matter of the book. The manuscript Octavia was about to deliver when she saw the news about her son was a collection of new endings to her seven previously published books, a concept she felt was "nothing short of revolutionary." The new and old endings of several of the books are included in The Nobodies Album, and how Parkhurst uses them to give us insight and raise questions about Octavia and about writing fiction is interesting.

Like the mystery plot, the ending of the book feels contrived. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both the unusual way in which Parkhurst put this novel together and her exploration of ideas about writing and living.

Favorite passages:

For all the energy I've spent in my writing life considering the taxonomy of human pain, for all the times I've told students that the key to creating a sympathetic and three-dimensional character is compassion, I turned out to be spectacularly unsympathetic when it actually mattered. My grief was proprietary. I wanted it all to myself.

Of the many gifts parents receive from their children, this is one of the best: the way they give us a new way of seeing, even after they've lost the thread of it themselves.

The Kid, by Sapphire

The Kid is a sequel to Sapphire's 1996 novel Push, which became the movie Precious. If you have read that book or seen the movie, you probably can guess that this account of what happens to Precious's son Abdul after her death is not a pretty story. In fact, it is, at times, so dark that it is extremely difficult to get through.

As the book opens, nine-year-old son Abdul is staying with his mom's friend Rita and preparing for her funeral. The nine-year-old Abdul is delightful--Precious has obviously done a good job caring for him, exposing him to books, art, museums, and more. He doesn't completely understand the finality of what has happened; nor does he understand the things being said at her funeral--his mother had AIDS? she didn't learn to read until she was 16? These things are news to Abdul.

But these shocks are minor compared to those to come. The day after the funeral, a social worker delivers him to a foster home, where another child beats him so severely on his very first day that he has to be hospitalized with a concussion. Yet he is returned to the home, where he spends several months being sexually and physically abused before another hospital stint ends up with his transfer to a Catholic orphanage/boys school.

Sapphire then jumps ahead four years; Abdul is 13, has been sexually abused by the priests who run the school, and has become an abuser himself, sneaking through the dormitory at night molesting younger or weaker boys. Yet he is getting a good education and, by stumbling into an African dance class at the rec center, has discovered a love for dance. When he is accused of rape by a younger boy, he is kicked out of school and sent to live with his great-grandmother, whom he refers to as "Slavery Days." He spends only long enough there to be subjected to her deeply disturbing life story. He runs away--despite being very bright, he will never return to school. Instead, he moves in with dance teacher Roman, trading sex for a place to live and dance lessons.

Again, we jump ahead four years. Abdul has left Roman and is part of an avant garde dance troupe. While he is doing well in some ways, he is still full of rage--a rage that we learn has been expressed in various violent ways. He is struggling to learn how to relate to women; the first woman with whom he is involved, a fellow dancer who calls herself My Lai, has a story of abuse that is, in its own way, as harrowing as his own.

From his days at the orphanage on, Abdul has difficulty distinguishing between dreams and reality. And Sapphire never gives the reader any extra clues that will help us determine what is real and what is not. We are thoroughly inside Abdul's head--and it's a profoundly disturbing place to be. When, in the book's final section, Abdul is institutionalized, drugged, and subjected to electroshock therapy, neither he nor we understand what has happened.

Sapphire once again reveals how we, as a society, fail children and what the devastating consequences are: a child full of promise and hope transmutes into a deeply troubled, scarred (metaphorically and physically), and angry young man who has damaged himself and others. it's a tragic and deeply disturbing story.

Favorite passage:

All kinda people in here today dressed in bright-colored tights, leotards, and sweats, some got on African clothes. On one side of the room like trees growing up from the floor are four shiny drums sitting in front of four empty chairs. A big guy, taller than me, in a long white African robe, sits down behind the biggest drum. Then three more dudes sit down behind the other drums. They go BAP! BAP! Tee dee dee BAP BAP! Another guy picks up a flute and starts to blow. It's so beautiful it hurts, feels like someone just kicked me in the balls! . . . Something stops screaming in my head. In one fucking second I know my life, it's this sound.

Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, by Nikki Giovanni

I feel unqualified to comment on poetry--perhaps because I can still remember the moment in tenth-grade English when Mrs. Stotmeister opened the poetry unit by saying, "You either love poetry or you're an idiot. Miss Richards, do you love poetry, or are you an idiot?" I was smart enough to realize lying about my love of poetry would be a mistake, but proud enough to be unwilling to say I was an idiot. . . I think I stuttered out an "I don't know."

At any rate, though unqualified, I have just finished a collection from the first 25 years of Nikki Giovanni's work as a poet (1968-1993 or thereabouts). The earliest of the poems reflect the anger and pain of the time in which they were written (titles include "The Detroit Conference of Unity and Art," "Black Separatism," and "The Great Pax Whitie"). Giovanni also published a moving poem about Angela Davis as a broadside. But the ripped post-it notes marking poems that I liked don't really start littering the book until we reach the work from her fourth collection, My House, where the poems become more accessible (at least for an older white woman with pitiful poetry-reading skills). Giovanni is still political (a wonderful poem entitled "We" says "we were seeing the revolution screeeeeeeeeeeing/to a halt/trying to find a clever way/to be empty), but she also writes about love, home, and gender relations. I was especially moved by a poem "The Life I Led," in which she reflects on flabby upper arms, varicose veins, menopause, and sagging breasts but concludes: "i hope i die/warmed/by the life that i tried/to live". In another poem, titled "Crutches," she talks about the many crutches that people use to hide their fears and weaknesses, again ending the poem with a wonderful stanza: "emotional falls always are/the wrost/and there are no crutches/to swing back on". While she focuses particularly on the lives and relationships of black women, her words resonate beyond racial boundaries.

In the works from a collection that she published in 1983, Those Who Ride the Night Winds, Giovanni adopts a style that I do not even have the vocabulary to describe. Here are a few lines from a poem entitled "Lorraine Hansbery: An Emotional View," just to give you a sense of the work she was doing in the early 80s:

It's intriguing to me that "bookmaker" is a gambling . . . an

underworld . . . term somehow associated with that which is

both illegal . . . and dirty . . . Bookmakers . . .who . . . and those who

play with them . . . are dreams . . . are betting on a break . . .

These are not my favorite poems, but it is interesting to consider why a poet who has been practicing her art with great success for more than a decade would choose to work with a new form.

I'm not sure there can be a poetry collection in which you would love every poem (unless you selected the poems yourself), but The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni rewards the reader with many provocative ideas and lovely images.

Favorite passages:

i would not reject

my strength

though its source

is not choice

but responsibility

(From "Boxes")

the sweet soft essence

of possibility

never quite maturing

(From "Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day")

a poem is pure energy

horizontally contained

between the mind

of the poet and the era of the reader

(From "Poetry")

"Housecleaning"

i always liked house cleaning

even as a child

i dug straightening

the cabinets

posting new paper on

the shelves

washing the refrigerator

inside out

and unfortunately this habit

has carried over and i find

i must remove you

from my life

Gun Games, by Faye Kellerman

This latest entry in Faye Kellerman's Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker long-running mystery series takes a turn for the weird. A major focus is a romance between Rina and Peter's 15-year-old foster son Gabe and a 13-year-old Jewish Persian girl. Not only does Kellerman spend many pages on this relationship, including reproducing long text exchanges between the two, she also details the sexual side of their romance (and I do mean details). For a series centered on two deeply religious people, which has never had a strong sexual theme, this seemed bizarre and, given the age of the couple, somewhat creepy.

The mystery that Peter and his colleagues investigate involves two suicides at an expensive private school and is not compelling. And, for the second time recently, Kellerman makes an error related to the law/Constitution. This time, she refers to the First Amendment protecting students from having their lockers searched at school--please! Somebody needs to catch this stuff.

Not recommended.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

The narrator of The Art of Racing in the Rain is the philosophical Enzo, a mixed breed dog who lives with race car driver Denny. Based on a TV documentary about Mongolia, Enzo believes he will come back as a human in his next life, so he prepares during his current incarnation by observing Denny and the other humans he encounters--and watching lots of television.

Enzo is there when Denny falls in love with Eve and the two get married and have a daughter, Zoe. Denny's attempts to build a racing career cause some stress in the marriage, as does Eve's refusal to see a doctor for the fierce headaches she experiences. Eventually, a crisis takes her to the emergency room, and she learns she has a brain tumor. It is clear that only bad things will come from this diagnosis--and many do, providing a series of horrendous challenges for Denny and Enzo to overcome.

The Art of Racing in the Rain was the One Book One Denver selection last year, so I had some hope that it might be a good read, despite the fact that my friend Suzy had disliked it so much she hadn't finished it. Alas, I found this book ridiculous. I could not suspend my disbelief and accept the voice of Enzo the dog (even if you can allow yourself to believe in a philosophical, television-watching dog, some parts of the portrayal do not make sense; for example, Enzo might have watched a lot of shows in the Law and Order franchise, but without being able to read [and he's admitted he can't read], how would he know that Trial by Jury was "much maligned"? There's no indication that Denny discusses television criticism. I know I'm nitpicking, but if you want us to believe an unbelievable narrator, you have to construct that narrator carefully).

Even worse, however, are the third-rate philosophical musings built around the lore of driving/racing (e.g., "That which you manifest is before you.") They're on a par with the kind of smarmy life lessons conveyed in the novels of Mitch Albom or in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Yes, I know millions of people love Albom, Coehlo, and Stein--but I am not one of them.

Favorite passage: None

Friends Like Us, by Lauren Fox

Reading Friends Like Us shortly after The Fallback Plan has made it abundantly clear to me that I should stop reading books about the crises of 20-somethings. I'm just too old to empathize.

Willa, the book's narrator, and her best friend from college, Jane, are a few years out of college, living together in Milwaukee and seriously underemployed. Then Willa runs into her best friend from high school, Ben, who reveals that he was in love with her in high school. Yet, within moments it seems, he is falling in love with Jane. This turn of events proves difficult for Willa, as she sees herself losing both best friends--and to each other. Will Willa make a bad decision? We know she will because Fox told us so in a prologue. The story is predictable, the outcome expected.

If I were 30 or 40 years younger, I might find this an interesting exploration of friendship, how friendships evolve as our lives change, and how our experiences in our families influence our friendships (Willa's parents were less than exemplary and her brother is a mess). Fox is a skilled writer and Willa is a well-developed, pleasantly snarky character, although Jane and Ben are less fully realized. If you like puns, you will enjoy the punning conversations in which Willa, Jane, and Ben engage. And many readers will probably find the book entertaining. Unfortunately, I simply did not care what happened to these characters or what--if anything--they learned about friendship and themselves.

Favorite passages:

I felt I could see inside his heart, and it was a clean, spare place, a room filled entirely with inexpensive Scandinavian furniture.

My brother could break my heart a thousand times a day. . . . He was a superhero of scorn.

And so. Here we are, resting together in the graveyard of my dignity.

Life, on the Line, by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas

Subtitled A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat, this book begins as the memoir of an ambitious young chef. Raised by parents who owned a diner, Achatz cooked virtually all his life. After attending culinary school, Achatz worked briefly at Charlie Trotter's acclaimed Chicago restaurant and then moved on to Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Napa. While Achatz found Keller's restaurant much more to his liking than Trotter's, he nonetheless chafed at the slow pace of his advancement. While making the perfect food at FL was rewarding and he learned a tremendous amount from Keller, what Achatz yearned for was a chance to cook "his own food."

That chance came at Trio, a restaurant in Evanston, Illinois, whose owner gave Achatz a tremendous amount of autonomy considering that he was still in his 20s and had never run a kitchen before. Nonetheless, the restaurant was highly successful. While Achatz describes some of his creations at Trio, it is still difficult for the average reader/eater to understand these avant garde dishes.

Then, on page 166 of the book, we suddenly get another narrator--Nick Kokonas, who, after eating at Trio, approached Achatz about starting a restaurant of his own. The second voice is actually welcome at this point in the book, when Achatz's relentless ambition has become a bit tiresome. And Kokonas's description of the food he and his wife ate at Trio better conveys what Achatz's food is like than Achatz's own writing. Kokonas and Achatz begin planning what will become Alinea, one of the preeminent restaurants in North America, and the story of creating the restaurant from the business and creative sides is very interesting. They include the reports they sent to investors, which, we learn, they also posted online. Indeed, based on his own reportage, Achatz was ahead of the field in capitalizing on food blogs and forums to build a following for Alinea.

Alinea was, of course, a huge success almost immediately (I know only one person who has eaten there, but she raves). Then, in the midst of that success, Achatz was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the tongue. The recommended treatment would have robbed Achatz of his ability to taste and to speak with any clarity--and the chances of survival were still only around 50 percent. Luckily for him, Kokonas sought out a clinical trial that did not involve radical surgery, and Achatz embarked on a grueling regimen of chemo and radiation--a protocol that restored his health with only a temporary loss of the sense of taste. As the book ends, Achatz and Kokonas are planning their next restaurant, named Next, which has now been up and running in Chicago for a couple of years.

Achatz portrays himself as too ambitious and too emotionally unavailable to those closest to him to be very sympathetic (his description of his brief marriage to the mother of his two sons really made me despise him), though it is clear he inspired devotion among many who knew and/or worked with him. On the other hand, his battle against cancer was inspirational, and his culinary success certainly indicates that his culinary skills are beyond compare. Still, I don't truly understand his cuisine even after reading the book (undoubtedly as much my problem as anything), but I have to give him a two out of three on the claims of the subtitle--while he's achieved greatness and beaten death, if he has redefined the way "we" eat, the "we" is a highly select group.

Favorite passage:

The plate was beautiful. The balloon of cheese was absurdly large, and the heirloom tomatoes--red, yellow, green zebra, brandywine--had been cut into geometric shapes that temporarily obscured their identity as tomatoes. There were green streaks of basil puree, and a pile of sea salt, itself composed of tiny pyramid-shaped crystals, sat in a far corner of the plate. I gingerly cut into the bottom half of the mozzarella balloon, surprised to find not a huge hunk of cheese, but rather a thin balloon-like shell. The tomato water poured out and the mozzarella deflated slowly. the tomatoes were exceptionally well chilled, the basil and olive oil perfectly combined, the tomato water sweet and salty.