The Boat of a Million Years, by Poul Anderson (1989)
This book could more accurately be titled The BOOK of a Million Years, since that's about how long it took me to get through it. It just went on and on and ON. It begins in 310 B.C. and ends way way WAY beyond current time. From the Phoenicians to the space aliens is a broad scope for a single book.
The person who recommended the book to me tells me that the author has an obsessive interest in history, and that certainly comes through. For someone like me, who has an almost nonexistent interest in history, this meant a fair amount of skimming. The premise is that a very small number of human beings are born, grow normally to early adulthood--and then stay that way forever. These immortals find that they have to change identities and locations every couple of generations in order to avoid arousing suspicion. The first 352 pages follow the eight immortals from identity to identity and from place to place. (Note: In the back of the book is a handy chronology that will tell you in which year each chapter begins.) The remaining 114 pages cover what happens when the entire human race becomes immortal and the original eight immortals are unable to cope with the change. They deal with their boredom by getting into a spaceship and going out to find space aliens. Which they do, and then they spend awhile cultivating the space alien's planet, and...well, that's pretty much where it ends.
I think the author would have been better off to wrap it up on page 353 and leave us to wonder a little. He did much better when he was using his historical knowledge than when he was making things up from scratch. Also, he has a terrible tic: he frequently has a character say to another character, "Tell me the whole thing from the beginning, even if you have to repeat things you've told me before." He doesn't seem to realize that, as the author, he can just tell us things without having to make up an excuse for telling them.
Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
It's too bad there isn't room for another book about how only the crazy people are truly sane, because we're going to have to kick out some other old favorite to make room for this one. We'll also going to need to find room for another book about how life is for the living and how every moment must be lived/breathed/loved to its fullest. The ideas are tired but the book is terrific.
Veronika is in her mid-20s, pretty, lots of boyfriends, good job at the library, loving family. She decides to commit suicide when she realizes that her life is the same every day and will only follow a pre-set pattern of marriage, fading love, children, the first unfaithfulness, etc. Her attempt both fails and succeeds: she wakes up in an insane asylum and the doctors tell her that the medicine she took to kill herself has damaged her heart so badly that she won't live more than a week.
She gets to know a few other inmates, who turn out to be emotionally healthy people using the insane asylum as a retreat from a world that won't let them express their artistic/altruistic/compassionate selves. Veronika feels right at home since she too has had dreams of being someone famous and talented.
She tries to suppress her returning will to live now that she's going to die anyway, but she can't quite do it: every day becomes a small miracle, and she begins to talk/think like an inspirational self-help book: "I want to feel the rain on my face, to smile at any man I feel attracted to . . . I want to kiss my mother, tell her I love her, weep in her lap, unashamed of showing my feelings, because they were always there even though I hid them." And so on, page after page and discussion after discussion.
The book's message can be summed up in one of the thoughts an inmate has while considering the effect Veronika's impending youthful death has on the rest of the inmates: "What if that happened to me? I do have a chance to live. Am I making good use of it?" The psychiatrist is meanwhile having similar thoughts of his own: he's breaking heavy psychological ground with his theories that people become insane when they suppress their emotions and desires, particularly sexual ones.
You'd think I would just hate this book, but instead I liked it a lot and I think you'll like it too. I wouldn't say there are any fresh concepts in it (even the ending is predictable), but somehow the author has rearranged them attractively. Another thing to take into consideration is that the English translation was wonderful: I didn't have that "VCR instructions translated from the Japanese" feeling I often do while reading foreign books.
Welcome to My Planet, by Shannon Olson (2000)
This book is similar to the Bridget Jones books (see reviews: Diary and Edge of Reason), in that the narrator is a woman in her 30s struggling with career, boyfriends, friends, and family. However, in the Bridget Jones books the observations/situations inspire empathy/amusement; in this book they inspire scorn/exasperation. The narrator reminds me a little of some of my friends who are in their late 20s and early 30s and are constantly whining because their lives aren't special enough: they work normal jobs, they have normal cars and normal amounts of spare money, they date men who turn out to be normal and have normal sets of flaws. Far from pitying their situation, I end up wanting to slap them silly for expecting life to hand them a fabulous glamorous career, loads of dough, and Prince Charming on a platter--and for rejecting anything that doesn't measure up and then going to therapy to deal with their chronic belief that they've been treated unfairly.
This book left me bored, unamused, and tired of a whole class of human beings. Still, after the first half of the book I was interested in reading the second half. Part of the draw was the blatant autobiographical aspect: the main character's name is Shannon Olson.
Shadow Baby, by Alison McGhee (2000)
The interesting thing about the cover of this book is that until I'd finished the book and was gazing contemplatively at the cover, I was sure that the picture on the front was of a pregnant woman holding her tummy. I'd even wondered idly what kind of odd knitted fabric (chenille, maybe?) her dress was made of. Then, suddenly, I realized the fabric was very like tree bark. And that the woman's body was very like a tree. And that the hands were coming from around the other side of the tree. And that it wasn't a pregnant woman at all, but a little girl hugging a tree. Actually, I'm only assuming it's a little girl, and that's because the book is about a little girl, age 11, whom no reviewer will be able to resist calling "precocious." Her language and behavior are so extremely precocious I recommend reading the book in one sitting or one day if you can pull it off: that way you'll fall under the spell of the story and won't keep thinking, "Wait a minute--she's ELEVEN?!?"
Clara is determined to find the answers to several questions: who is her father? where is her grandfather? why did her twin sister die? Clara's mother, Tamar, is unforthcoming on these topics. Tamar says she doesn't know who Clara's father is, or, alternately, that Clara doesn't have a father. Tamar doesn't want to discuss Clara's grandfather. Tamar says that Clara didn't have a sister, since Clara's sister died before taking a breath; Tamar says that Clara's sister never had a name because she was never a person. Clara is doggedly determined to learn more, and her imaginative nature invents story after story about the missing people.
Clara meanwhile befriends an old man who is even less forthcoming than Tamar, and he too becomes the subject of many of Clara's stories. It can be frustrating to read a story about someone and then have Clara say that actually it never happened. It gave me the feeling of getting a grasp on something and then losing it again. Which is probably how Clara feels as she thinks she's on the right track and then discovers she was wrong. In the end she does find out the answers, and also her mother's reasons for keeping them from her ("There is nothing I could tell you that would help. Nothing would help, and everything would hurt."). This was a mostly satisfying story with several pleasantly heartbreaking moments.
What a miserable story! A married man and his girlfriend wait years and years for him to divorce his wife and marry the girlfriend, and when it finally happens they're both unhappy. The clear message of this story is that the grass isn't greener, that love fades over time, and that contentment is more valuable than love.
A Walk to Remember, by Nicholas Sparks (1999)
Weep City. Even though the entire story with all its so-called "surprises" stretches out in total clarity by practically the first page, and even though the high sentiment makes this more a book for broody teenagers than for grown adults, and even though the narrative is in a folksy conversational style I find jarring--nevertheless, I confess to a nearly constant state of wet-eyeness. It's ridiculous but there it is.
It's difficult to describe the plot without giving away crucial twists; basically it's a story of Young Ill-Fated Love. A cool teenaged boy falls in love unexpectedly with the pastor's goody-two-shoes, Lord's-Plan, Bible-carrying, bun-and-cardigan daughter. (Yes, of course it happens the first time she lets down her hair and puts on some decent clothes.) The narrator, a 57-year-old version of that cool teenaged boy, begins his story by saying, "First you will smile, and then you will cry--don't say you haven't been warned." Yes, all right, so it's true--but I was embarrassed by the crying because the story was so extremely schmaltzy.
The Doctor, by Patricia Duncker (1999)
The frustrating thing about biographical novels is that when you're done you don't know how much you've actually learned. Patricia Duncker writes her version of the life of James Miranda Barry, born a girl and disguised as a boy from age 10 onwards, a decision made by her family so that she could attend medical school and have a better life than what was available for a woman in those times (1800s). James Barry lives her whole life as a man and a distinguished respected doctor, and only after her death does it come out that she's a woman. Her whole life she is in love with Alice Jones, a kitchen maid turned actress; the relationship is fiercely loving but never consummated.
Then, in the afterward, the author says that we don't actually know if James Barry was a woman, and that Alice Jones is a complete invention. Considering that those two elements of the story are perhaps the most important, this left me feeling irritable with the author. The author has filed her book as fiction so in one sense she makes no claims to truth; but on the other hand, if you were interested in George Washington and read a fictional account of his life that included a male lover, armed robbery, and an illegitimate child--well, you'd have reason to think those were based on fact even if fictionalized. Fictional accounts of historical events/people are excellent "spoonful of sugar" ways to learn new things, but James Miranda Barry in love with a woman is a different person than James Miranda Barry in love with a man, and James Miranda Barry a man mistaken for a disguised woman is a different person than James Miranda Barry a woman disguised as a man. I realize that with a lack of hard evidence the author had to invent a thing or two; nevertheless, I was left feeling frustrated and deceived.
A is for Alibi, by Sue Grafton (1982)
At first I didn't think I was going to like this series. It's about a tough, twice-divorced woman, private investigator, living on her own terms, not taking s**t from anyone, drinking in filthy dives, etc. The tough-cop talk alone was enough to nearly make me give it up. I persevered only because the series titles appeal to me: each one starts with a letter of the alphabet, and since they go in order it's easy to tell which book to read first. And, as it turns out, I enjoyed the book and plan to read "B" is for Burglar as soon as I've finished writing this review.
The tough P.I. is Kinsey Millhone, age 32, and in "A" is for Alibi she's on the case of an 8-years-past murder for which someone has already served time. The victims in this case are Laurence Fife, the murdered man, and Nikki Fife, the ex-wife of Laurence who was wrongly convicted and has hired Kinsey Millhone to find out what really happened. Kinsey finds a lover, several more dead bodies, and a threat to her own life before she's done with the case, and in the end she adds one more dead body to the pile herself.
The mystery was right on my level: I was able to figure out a piece of it, which made me feel clever and P.I.-ish, but the rest of it was suitably difficult to figure out--I wouldn't want it to be easy.
B is for Burglar, by Sue Grafton (1985)
I thought "B" is for Burglar was a big improvement over "A" is for Alibi (see review, above), possibly because I was accustomed to Kinsey Millhone or possibly because the author's writing actually improved between books. In "B" is for Burglar, Kinsey Millhone is tracking a missing woman, 43-year-old Elaine Boldt, who left for Florida but didn't arrive. As in "A" is for Alibi, there's a second case that seems like it might be connected to the first but the connection isn't clear: a woman living next door to Elaine has been killed and then set on fire, right around the time Elaine disappeared. The plot kept my heart racing, and it was gratifying to read that Kinsey Millhone wasn't a cool James Bond type either.
The one thing missing in these books is the summing up at the end: I like everything to be solved and then have an omniscient detective go through the whole thing minute by minute, telling the significance of each clue, and when the detective first began to suspect, and what happened to prove each suspicion, and what everyone's motivations were. I like to read a few pages of "It all started when..." and "Here's how it worked: at 9:05 a.m. the murderer...," just to calm my heart and tie up the loose ends. When there's no summary, I have to sit there on the couch for ten minutes, eyes glazed and heart pounding, thinking, "Yeah, but what about...?" Last night I spent an extra half-hour wondering whether it was Beverly Danzinger or her husband (or both) who was half-cracked. Loved the book, though, and plan to go on to "C" is for Corpse, though probably I won't keep reviewing all of them one after another.
The Drowning People, by Richard Mason (1999)
The Drowning People is 90% bark, 10% bite: extended anticipation leading up to a short revelation and then back to the anticipation. Written in the confession/memoir style, the book allows an old man to wallow melodramatically in the admittedly melodramatic happenings of his youth, with the goal of explaining why, just now, he has shot his wife of 45 years and made it look like a suicide.
This gimmick of dropping some shocking news and then taking forever to explain it in a long, meandering, self-pitying anecdote is repeated again and again throughout the book. When you realize that the author of the book is a 20-year-old student at Oxford, you might start to wonder if this book began as a writing exercise in foreshadowing. Nothing can be said outright; no, everything begins with "I would never have guessed, that sunny day in June, that within three months my friend would be the victim of my selfishness and naivete," and then goes on a 175-page account of what led to this tragedy, punctuated frequently by "But I digress" and further reflections about the narrator's lack of premonition about other sub-tragedies, particularly if he can compare his youthful self with his current mature understanding of the way the world works; e.g., "I wish I could tell that young man what I know now..." and the like.
The suspense is artfully done, though, in that I read the whole book with great interest and near-complete suspension of disbelief. The author also does an exemplary job of capturing the idealism, smugness, and optimism of youth, not to mention the foolish conversations. Despite my 90% bark, the book is well worth the 10% bite; I look forward to reading the next book by this astonishingly young author.
I Heard it Through the Playground, by Joel Fram, Carol Boswell, and Margaret Maas, M.D. (1993)
This collection of parenting tips is sorted by subject (e.g., "Teething," "Babyproofing," "Out to Eat," etc.), and contains a mix of the obvious, the hazardous, and the marvelous. Many ideas are of the "Parenting 101" variety, for people who have never been around children; e.g., "To make a warm bottle of formula, put the powder in and then add warm water" and "Don't forget to get a diaper pail for the nursery." A few are of the "Are you sure you want to take responsibility for this tip?" variety; e.g., "Put a ceiling fan in the nursery" and "Put springs on the legs of the crib." And a few are of the "I have to tell everyone I know!" variety; these will vary depending on what you've already heard, but two of my favorites were "Cut a slit in a muffin cup and slide the popsicle stick through it to catch drips" and "Make non-skid socks using dots of puff-paint." Worth reading through to glean tips, and even worth owning a copy so you can look up the subject you need right at the moment.
The Binding Chair, by Kathryn Harrison (2000)
There are some books that seem to have been written for the sole purpose of wallowing in the worst the world has to offer, and The Binding Chair is one of those books. A young Chinese girl has her feet slowly broken so that they can be bound. One middle-aged woman begs another to take her virginity with one of several implements not typically used for that purpose. One woman lures another to a murder-suicide. A man ties his wife to a bed and then rapes the maid on the floor nearby. A woman bites a child repeatedly, to the point where infection sets in and part of the child's body must be amputated. A girl is killed by having her intestines wound slowly out of her body. A man puts a bound foot into his...no, I don't even want to tell you. Don't read this book; it will add nothing to your life except a yucky feeling.
The Kiss, by Kathryn Harrison (1997)
Let me cut right to the chase and say that the first kiss referred to by the title is a french kiss given by a 40-ish father to his 20-ish daughter, and it's a kiss that begins a love affair. Let me go on to say that this book is non-fiction and you'll find it in the biography section. If you don't feel you can go on past this point, you're not the only one. This is the sort of book you don't so much read as survive. How can anyone help but cry for the drugged, stunned voice of the author as she steadily recounts the details of an affair that changed everything? The author's photograph seems exceptionally well-chosen: the overexposure draws attention to her white skin, her haunted eyes, the straight line of her mouth. She looks shell-shocked, a look that matches her narrative style. The subject matter is difficult at best, recommended only to those who feel strong enough to handle it.
Illegal Alien, by Robert J. Sawyer (1997)
It took me ten chapters to think this book was worth reading, and from there on in I was hooked. Half alien/spaceship fantasy, half courtroom drama, Illegal Alien lost me with the long descriptions of how many eyes the aliens had and what their ship was like, but caught me completely with what happens in the courtroom when an alien is put on trial for murder of a human being.
Angel Falls, by Kristin Hannah (2000)
I love a good coma story. In this one, a woman falls from a horse (I'm sorry to say it happens in front of her young son) and goes into a coma she's not expected to come out of. While she's under, her husband discovers evidence of her first marriage to a famous movie star; the mementos she's kept reveal to him for the first time that she's never stopped loving her first husband. During one of his one-sided conversations to her, he mentions that he's found out about her first marriage, and at the sound of her first husband's name she blinks. Desperate to do anything to bring her out of the coma, her husband contacts the first husband, even knowing that it's possible that what brings his wife out of a coma might take her away from him forever. This book has all the stuff I love about coma plots, plus some good long sappy sections for all you romantic fools.