The Map of True Places, by Brunonia Barry

Zee (short for Hepzibah) Finch is a successful psychotherapist in Boston, preparing to marry a very eligible bachelor she was fixed up with by her mentor, Dr. Liz Mattei. But then a patient commits suicide, shaking Zee badly (the similarities with her mother's suicide many years earlier contribute to her debilitating sense of responsibility for the suicide). She attends the funeral, rationalizing that going to Lynn will also allow her to stop in Salem and check in on her father, who has Parkinson's.

When she arrives in Salem, she finds things a mess. Her father has slipped into a delusion that he is Nathaniel Hawthorne and is selling his former life partner's belongings out the window of his home (which he believes is a "cent-shop"). Zee feels compelled to stay, first until she can convince the erstwhile partner Melville to return and then, when that doesn't work out, until she can make a workable plan for her father. The bulk of the book is the story of her summer in Salem, with a rapidly deteriorating father, sad memories of her mother, a stalker who is the dead patient's former lover, and a variety of other complications.

It is sometimes hard to believe that Zee is a therapist--her insight into her self and others does not appear to be keen. However, late in the story, she recognizes that her mother and patient's greatest similarity was that they lied to her and that "The lies or stories that Maureen and Lilly told were not lies they were telling Zee, they were the mythology they were creating for themselves. When they were no longer able to believe their own fairy tales, they lost all hope." This insight helps her find some peace--but Barry is not going to let her off that easily. There will be a violent climax.

At heart, Barry is a romantic, and she tacks on a prologue that wraps up Zee's story with happy ribbons. For me, it wasn't very believable--perhaps an ending that had Zee more fully unraveling her own mythology might have been just as happy and not so saccharine. Still, the book is an enjoyable weekend read.

Favorite passage:

Zee hated tunnels--the darkness, the damp, the dripping from overhead, where she imagined he weight of water already pushing through the cracks, finding any weak spot and working its way through.

(Exactly how I feel about tunnels!)

As Husbands Go, by Susan Isaacs

In her work, Susan Isaacs has frequently combined humor with mystery. She creates quirky characters, throws in a murder, and puts the quirky characters through a variety of humorous situations en route to solving the murder. Sometimes, the formula works. In As Husbands Go, it doesn't.

Oh, the quirky characters, the murder, and the humorous situations are all there. The main character is Susie B. Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten (even her name is quirky), a Long Island floral designer with four-year-old triplets and a plastic surgeon husband "true by nature." Then husband Jonah is found dead in the apartment of prostitute Dorinda Dillon, and Susie is forced to consider whether she knew her husband at all.

When Dorinda is arrested, Susie is not convinced of her guilt and she sets about investigating the case with the assistance of her grandmother, who has recently become a presence in her life for the first time. (The grandmother is another character with quirks to the max--as is Susie's mother, although mom's quirks are much less interesting that grandma's.) As an example of an event intended to be amusing, Susie assumes her grandmother's identity to interview Dorinda.

For me, the quirks and humorous events didn't mix well with Susie's grief and the challenges she and her children face (the children are remarkably unpresent except when convenient--evidently the twin au pairs do a good job of keeping the kids out of mom's hair) . Perhaps if the murder victim were not so close to the protagonist (if he were, for example, the neighborhood periodontist), the humor would be more effective. As is, however, it feels misplaced. Furthermore, when Susie does figure out the real story behind her husband's murder, the book just fizzles out, with neither humor nor any resolution of the emotional issues she is facing.

Favorite passage:

Life goes on, toots, whether you like the way it goes or not. The best a girl can do is mind her ethics--and eat a nice lunch.

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger is the story of class and conflict in India, told in a long letter from Balram Halwai, a former driver who we learn early on has become an entrepreneur by murdering his former boss, to the Premier of China Wen Jiabao, who is visiting India as Balram is writing. Author Adiga creates a unique voice for Balram, a combination of innocence, wry insight, and anger, and gives him an interesting story to tell.

Balram's story begins in the village of Laxmangarh, where he grows up as the son of a rickshaw-puller and starts his own working career in a tea shop. Through good luck and craftiness, Balram becomes a servant in the home of one of the three wealthy men in the village. Eventually, he works his way "up" to become a driver and moves with one of the sons of the family to Delhi. The son, Ashok, seems to be living in Delhi for the sole purpose of handling the family's bribes to government officials.

Meanwhile, Balram and the other drivers live lives of servitude, squalor, and boredom. On one particularly terrible night, Ashok's drunken wife of puts Balram out of the car and drives off, leaving him stranded. She doubles back to pick him up, but then hits a child in the road. Ashok's family insists that Balram take responsibility for the accident. It is not difficult to see why Balram starts to consider how he might escape from the servant's life.

The book provides one perspective on India--and, despite the book's comic moments, it's a dark vision of a corrupt society marred by class distinctions. The character of Balram is engaging--but every other character is either laughable or despicable or both. Still, I found myself very interested in Balram's tale until about the last 75 pages, when the story seemed to break down.

Would I have given the book the Man Booker Prize for 2008 (which it won)? No. But would I recommend the book to others? Yes, it's worth reading for its take on India, its dark humor, and its winning central character, even if I found the last quarter of the book disappointing.

Favorite passage:

The road was dead--then two cars went by, one behind the other, their headlights making a continuous ripple on the leaves, like you see on the branches of trees that grow by a lake. How many thousands of such beautiful things there must be to see in Delhi. If you were just free to go wherever you wanted, and do whatever you wanted.

At night I lay in my mosquito net, the lightbulb on in my room, and watched the dark roaches crawling on top of the net, their antennae quivering and trembling, like bits of my own nerves: and I lay in bed, too agitated even to reach out and crush them.

Body Work, by Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky has written 14 V. I. Warshawski mysteries, but she doesn't crank them out on an annual basis like some creators of series mysteries. The 14 books have been spread out over 28 years--and there was once a five-year gap between Warshawski episodes. Perhaps that helps explain why V.I. remains an interesting character and the mysteries featuring the intrepid Chicago private detective are still entertaining.

In Body Work, the parents of a young veteran who has returned from four tours in Iraq with some major psychological problems hire Vic to prove that their son did not shoot a young woman in the alley behind a club. The woman, Nadia Gauman, regularly came to the club to participate in the performance of the "Body Artist" who sits on a stool, nude, and allows customers in the bar to paint on her as she talks about her art. The unfolding story involves the Ukrainian mob, a civilian contractor with thousands of employees in Iraq, a Latino family in denial about their dead daughter's sexuality, and a host of other characters, including Mr. Contreras, Sal the bartender, Vic's cousin Petra, and the loyal pooches Mitch and Peppy. The mystery is complex and, while perhaps not entirely believable, well-put-together. While Paretsky does have to do a bit of "explaining" at the end, as mystery writers often do, at least it is done in an unusual setting!

Favorite passage:

I was so tired that the bones in my skull felt as though they were separating . . .

Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving

I finished reading Last Night in Twisted River while traveling and, not wanting to lug it home, I took it downstairs the next morning to see if anyone else in my group wanted it. "What's it like?" one woman asked. "Very John Irving-ish," I answered--and immediately got two replies: "No thanks, I find him irritating" and "I'll take it--I love him."

While I doubt that Michiko Kakutani probably wouldn't use a phrase like "John Irving-ish," it is descriptive. Last Night in Twisted River has New England settings, a central father-son relationship, oddball characters and plot twists that strain credulity, vaguely incestuous sex, tragic and tragicomic events, multiple bears, wrestling, etc. etc.

The central characters are cook Dominic Baciagulpo and his son Daniel, who will become a famous writer with many career experiences paralleling those of John Irving. The plot is involved (and related in nonlinear fashion) but suffice it to say that the two go on the lam after Daniel accidentally kills a woman who is having sex with his father. As years pass, and the dynamic switches from the father protecting the son to the son protecting the father, Irving explores a number of themes, perhaps most notably how people make a life in a "world of accidents" and how a writer's life experiences inform his work. The latter is especially interesting, since Daniel is irritated by the degree to which people believe his work is autobiographical--yet on the surface (and Irving, after all, provides that surface), the works do appear to be highly autobiographical. And, indeed, a central trope is that Daniel is writing this book as his ninth novel, and the first to appear under his real name.

I enjoyed reading the book and found Dominic, Daniel, and their friend, the wildman Ketchum, to be well-drawn characters. However, the women were less well-realized, and many aspects of the plot were bizarre enough to approach the surreal. I'm sure the latter is part of Irving's exploration of his themes, but for a literalist like me, it detracts from the meaning I can draw from the book. Worth reading if you like a dose of "John Irving-ishness" every so often--but if you haven't already done so, read The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year first.

Favorite passage:

Since I gave the book away, I can't go back and find passages I liked--sorry!

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver writes political novels; in The Lacuna, she takes up the question of the relationship between politics and art and how two neighboring countries--the United States and Mexico--see the relationship differently. She addresses that issue by looking at one character with ties to both countries at a critical time in history.

The main character of The Lacuna is Harrison Shepherd, who is 12 years old as the book opens in 1929. His Mexican mother has recently left his American civil servant father to follow a Mexican oil man back to her native country. They are living in an area so isolated that no school is available for Harrison and he writes in a journal and practices holding his breath to pass the time. The latter skill comes in handy when he discovers a "lacuna" in the wall that he can swim through at high tide to a lovely jungle grotto. This lacuna becomes the first of several empty spaces or gaps that attract Harrison's attention throughout his life.

After his mother leaves the oil man (to follow another man to Mexico City), Harrison has an unfortunate school experience and is eventually shipped back to his father in Washington, DC. Though it is hard to believe anyone could be a worse parent than Harrison's mother, his father tries, immediately delivering him to a military academy. Harrison makes only one friend (who is also his first real romantic interest) at the academy, and the two boys have various adventures around Washington, including being gassed during the government quashing of the Bonus Army protests.

Soon, Harrison is back in Mexico, expelled from the academy and working first as a plaster mixer and then as a cook for leftist artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. When Lev Trotsky is looking for somewhere to hide from Stalin, the Riveras offer him safe harbor, and Harrison also works for Trotsky, first as a cook and then as a secretary. Despite the best efforts to protect Trotsky, he is first attacked and then murdered--both crimes that Harrison observes and is greatly affected by.

As World War II opens, Kahlo tells Harrison it will be safer for him to return to the United States, and she arranges for him to be in charge of transporting a collection of her paintings to New York for an exhibition. This leads to wartime work protecting American art treasures (he is ineligible for military service because of his homosexuality). He settles in Asheville, North Carolina, where he eventually becomes the best-selling author of two novels set in ancient Mexico. With his history, however, it is inevitable that he will come to the attention of HUAC. The latter part of the book is devoted to the investigation and its effects on Harrison and his devoted secretary Violet Brown. While the outcome seems inevitable, Kingsolver does a good job of detailing how these "investigations" worked.

Kingsolver tells the story through Shepherd's journals, his letters, news articles (real and fake), and archivist notes from Violet Brown, who we learn edited Harrison's journals for publication. Gay Davidson Zielski, a friend of mine who teaches college English, was just remarking on Facebook that contemporary authors seem to have abandoned "straight narration from one point of view" for "narrative tricks." While I agree with her, in this case, the "tricks" mostly work--though fewer news articles and Violet Brown insertions might have pared a few of the book's many pages without sacrificing insight.

For me, the length of the book, the inevitability of the outcome with HUAC, and the unsurprising surprise ending resulted in the last sections fizzling out. But the book's flaws do not negate Kingsolver's accomplishment in exploring the nexus between art, politics, and the artist's life.

Of interest:

A feature in the paperback edition of the book is a brief Kingsolver essay about how important titling books is to her--the title for her is "the key that allows entry into every part of the house." The fact that Harrison's editor always insists on retitling his books is a nice inside joke.

Favorite passages:

Delight appears to be his natural state. Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?

We sat on the ledge looking down on the tourists in the plaza, pitying those little ants because they were not up here, and if they ever meant to be, they would have to pay the price. And there is the full sum of it, senseless ambition reduced to its rudiments. Civilizations are built on that, and a water hole.

Where I Live, by Maxine Kumin

Where I Live is a collection of poems written between 1990-2010, and many of the poems are indeed about Kumin's farm in New Hampshire. But others are about political issues, from the U.S. government's approach to fighting terror, to animal abuse and environmental problems. Still others focus on poets, from Wordsworth and Coleridge to Marianne Moore and Stanley Kunitz. Age and death also emerge as themes.

Whatever she is writing about, Kumin makes the poems accessible to the ordinary reader, a fact I (the average reader) appreciate greatly. Her poems reflect her humor, her love of nature and animals, her connections to people, her grief over her husband's death, and her passion about the world and how we, as people, live in it. The emotions reflected in the poems are wide-ranging. A poem like "The Taste of Apple," about the death of one of Kumin's horses, is terribly sad while "Which One" is one of numerous angry works--in this case Kumin excoriates people who throw away animals.

If you don't normally read poetry, but you love nature and/or animals, this book would be a great place to start the poetic journey!

Favorite passages:

From "Winter's Tale"

. . . life was bleak and sweet and you

made marmalade.

From "Extraordinary Rendition"

. . .

Extraordinary how the sun comes up

with its rendition of daybreak,

staining the sky with indifference.

From "Death, Etc."

. . . We try to live gracefully

and at peace with our imagined deaths but in truth we go for-

ward

stumbling, afraid of the dark,

of the cold, and of the great overwhelming

loneliness of being last.