Category: What I’m Reading

My Amazon review of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (Rated 2): Can a Great Writer Make a Boring Character Interesting? – Philip Roth is one of my favorite authors, yet I’d never read this winner of the 1995 National Book Award for fiction. Alas, I shouldn’t have done so now. Even Roth cannot make the sex-drenched misanthropic puppeteer Mickey Sabbath come to life. He means his title character to be transgressive; he is merely unimaginatively obsessive. Save the brilliant section where Sabbath visits the Jersey shore of his childhood, and the family memories scattered throughout, there is little to redeem the novel’s self-indulgent writing. Was I shocked? No, merely bored.

My Amazon review of The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck (Rated 5): A testament to enduring friendship – Jessica Shattuck tells a moving story of moral certainty clouded by ambiguity and survival in defiance of trauma. Above all, the book is a testament to the enduring friendships formed by shared experiences and memory.

Apropos of my BLOG post (09/06/17) and REFLECTIONS about “The Five Percent Rule,” referencing the need to be selective when deciding how much historical information to include in a creative work, read these remarks from an interview with Ken Burns by Ian Parker in The New Yorker (September 04, 2017, p. 53): “In the early years of production on a documentary, Burns [is] likely to be reading relevant historical accounts. … But he does not strive for expertise. ‘I can’t be in the weeds,’ of scholarship, he said. He has too little time and, besides, ‘It’s important to have someone saying, ‘Who the fuck cares?’” I count on myself, and my critique group, to tell me “WTFC.”

My Amazon review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rated 5). A story of disregard and dignity – Rebecca Skloot tells a riveting story of the disregard for human life, her own determination to root out the convoluted truth, and the Lacks family’s relentless pursuit of recognition and justice.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (Rated 5): A Lumpily “Blended” Family – Ann Patchett writes a multi-layered story about a lumpily “blended” family, who inspire a book and movie about them, both with the same title as the author’s ingenious and complex tale. Moving effortlessly through time and seamlessly across characters, the book honestly portrays the frequent challenges and rarer benefits for the six children of two disrupted marriages. Patchett displays strong narrative skills, finding the humor in tragedy and vice versa.

My Amazon review of A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass (Rated 4): A Hidden Public Life – Julia Glass dives beneath the surface of a public figure — a well known author of illustrated children’s books who has died — to unearth the man’s formative influences. The story is told from three perspectives, a device that works well, although some narrators are more satisfying than others. In the end, Glass does not penetrate the life of the artist, which is perhaps her message, although as a reader (and writer and artist), I wished for more. At times, the long digressions into back story overwhelmed the present narrative. However, Glass makes us care about her three living protagonists, all of whom, rather than being left in the late artist’s wake, are ready to create their own futures.

My Amazon review of Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout (Rated 5): A thorny woman who will prick your heart – Elizabeth Strout laces together stories in a rough weave with great tensile strength. Told direct and slant, the interlocked tales introduce readers to Olive, her family and friends, and people she barely knows but whose lives she has touched for better or worse. What emerges is a large, difficult woman determined to live her small life, filled with passions and regrets, until the very end. (See my REFLECTIONS on excerpts from interviews with Elizabeth Stroud published in The New Yorker (posted 05/08/17) and The Writer Magazine (posted 08/14/17).

My Amazon review of A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline (Rated 5): Christina’s world painted in words – As surely as Andrew Wyeth captured Christina’s world in paint, Christina Baker Kline captures her world in words. From the small details of daily existence in rural Maine, to the bigger question of how we fashion a life with what we’re given, the book strikes a fine balance between bitterness and beauty. A painterly novel.

My Amazon review of Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (Rated 5): Flaws and foibles, love and loyalty – J. D. Vance teaches us to love and admire the people he loves and admires, with their flaws, determination, and above all, their loyalty to one another. He gives credit to them for saving his life. Humility and gratitude aside, he also deserves to take credit himself for breaking with tradition while at the same time honoring, and maintaining, it.

My Amazon review of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Rated 5): Making the implausible “plausible” – Colson Whitehead makes the implausible, plausible, i.e., that the Underground Railroad was in fact a real, subterranean network of tunnels, tracks, and assorted railroad cars built by those “who built everything else in this country.” Even more accomplished is how Whitehead brings to life the heroic, and often tragic, existence of the slaves who dared to travel and lead others along its byways. Alas, their stories are too plausible and while the sum total is heartbreaking, readers will come away with admiration and the hope that their courage and determination persist today.