Catching up on book reviews

I've been busy reading and listening to booktapes. Here are a few quick reviews.

True Grit by Charles Portis - I listened to this as an audio book last week. I had never read it, or even heard of it except as the title for the movie. This novel is a masterpiece. It's told from the point of view of an old spinster who hired Rooster Cogburn to help track down her father's killer back when she was 14 years old and then accompanied him on the hunt. It's a bit over the top, but then a good adventure story should be a bit over the top. If you liked Huckleberry Finn or Kim or Tom Sawyer or Red Badge of Courage you should pick this book up. It's short (6.5 hours on 6 CDs) and gripping. I think is it would be as good reading as listening.

Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks - I also listened to this as an audio book last week. It's also short (7.5 hours on 6 CDs) and it's gripping in a different way than True Grit. It's the story of a pregnant black teenager in the 1960's South as she and various relatives set out to dig up her mother's body both to move it from where a shopping center is going to be built and also to retrieve a treasure of jewelry that they think her mother was buried with. I'll write more about this later in another post because as an audio book it's unique in my experience in that it includes professionally performed blues songs as the voice of the mother, so it's more of a multi-media presentation such as might be put on by an old timey storyteller. Probably a good read as well, but that depends on how well you can tolerate reading colloquial dialogue.

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman - I read this in the large print edition that all the book racks seem to have on them now as us old geezers start to predominate in the reading population. A typical Jonathan Kellerman production - well written, interesting plot, characters who are old friends if you've read his other books. It's not literature, but if you must waste time reading popular novels it's an excellent one.

The Burnt House - by Faye Kellerman - I picked this up at the same time as I picked up her husband's book (above) but, oddly enough, it is a regular sized paperback. Pretty much ditto with what I said about the book above; but if I were forced to choose between them I would say Faye writes the better novel, at least for me. She gets a bit more into the actual lives and thinking of her characters, or maybe I'm a smidgen more interested in her characters than I am in Jonathan's. Well worth reading - no, more than that - excellent.

Book of the Dead - by Patricia Cornwell - It's a sad thing to see a writer you've enjoyed in the past go over the edge and take her characters with her into utterly preposterous psychological waters. There is a phrase, "jumped the shark," which is applied to TV shows that have gone over the top and into the realm of the ridiculous. That phrase aptly describes what Cornwell did in this book, and what she has been threatening to do in a couple of previous books. The name brand critics apparently loved it; but then the name brand critics inhabit a world where it's reasonable to believe that one of a pair of very close twenty year friends and business associates suddenly tries to rape the other. Non-geniuses like Cornwell are well advised to leave repressed desire themes to geniuses. Also, the underlying plot is preposterously complex and unlikely even by pulp novel standard; and the main character's niece has now accumulated so many diverse skill sets that she puts James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Jason Bourne to shame. The niece is now Wonder Woman with Marie Curie's brain; but still encumbered by a healthy dollop of downright Victorian emotional stupidity. I managed to finish it; but I won't pick up her next book.

A very satisfying read

I just finished Faye Kellerman's newest novel The Burnt House. It's been a very satifying read over the past couple of days. I can report that Lieutenant Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus are well, and Lt. Decker as usual solved the case. Two cases, actually; because while searching for the body of victim one among plane crash wreckage they instead found the body of victim two who had been murdured and buried in the basement of the apartment house long before the plane crashed into it. Victim one had never been on the plane. Very improbable, just like real life; and thus very satisfying. Faye Kellerman has a gift for this sort of plot. And she has a gift for describing and portraying ethnic characters and religious traditions. In this case she incredibly manages to put a somewhat shamanistic Catholic Hispanic/Indian couple, grateful parents of victim two, together at a Shabbat dinner with Rina Decker's orthodox Jewish family.

Go figure where she gets the guts to do that. And go figure where she gets the skill to carry it off.

I know, I know; I'm supposed to be finishing Robert Lacey's book Little Man which Sam lent to me when I was avoiding finishing V.S. Naipaul's book The Enigma of Arrival. And I'm also supposed to be finishing the various magazines that I have half finished around here.

But there you have it. The evidence of my disorderly life. I found the Faye Kellerman book on the rack at the supermarket and picked it up. Then I picked it up off the coffee table where it was supposed to wait quietly until I finished at least one of the other books in process. I have no excuse except that it called to me at a weak moment; and it was a great excuse to avoid the other two books.

I should also confess at this point that when I picked up the book by Faye, I also picked up Jonathan Kellerman's new book and Patricia Cornwell's latest book. But I'm determined to return to Little Man before I open either of those two.

However, as I mentioned above, life is an improbable twist of random happenings. And I am an abject slave to my whims rather than a faithful servant of my rational desires and plans. I'm also old enough to realize that resistance really is futile. So, if I should succumb to the very strong desire to see what Milo Sturgis and Alex Delaware are up to, or if I should be unable to resist the siren call of a look into the lives of Kay Scarpetta and Pete Marino, it should surprise no one.

Little Man is a biography of Meyer Lansky. It's a true story, insofar as any book can be a true story of such a deeply private and devious subject who spent his life in such a dangerous business. It's full of interesting twists and turns, and it bears on a lot of subjects that I find deeply interesting. But it is a true story, after all, so it's not nearly as realistic as fiction.

The Enigma of Arrival, well, what can I say? It's by a great author, an author some of whose other books I have enjoyed a great deal; but it's, it's, so self absorbed. V.S. Naipaul was burrowed so far into contemplation of his own navel when he wrote it that it's almost beyond belief.

How can anyone be so self absorbed? I wonder about that from time to time.