May 2001

Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg with Melinda Blau (2001)

Tracy Hogg is known as "the Baby Whisperer" (a title she claims she didn't give to herself), and this book shares her methods. Listen, luv, there's a lot of British stuff to deal with in this book. Aside from "ducky," "luv," "mummy," "codswallop," and the like, there are more references than necessary to "you Americans" and "in England, we...." It's as if the publishers said, "Hey, let's play up the British Nanny thing for all it's worth." The writing style is colloquial and bossy, and it's likely to appeal and annoy in equal measures. She doesn't tiptoe around the Big Issues such as pacifiers and co-sleeping; her views on such things may bother some readers. Some of her declarations about other issues (breastfeeding, colic, etc.) may or may not be accurate: I've heard/read viewpoints by more qualified professionals that would flatly contradict hers.

I could review the writing all day long, but what you really want to know with a book such as this is: "Do the methods WORK?" To that end I found a Test Mummy willing to read the book and try the methods with her 1-month-old infant. The Test Mummy's comments:

• The bossy style was sometimes comforting (brisk efficient British nanny stuff), but sometimes irritating (know-it-all, patronizing, not necessarily true).
• These methods are hardly new; I've seen versions in many other parenting books/magazines.
• Nevertheless, the methods are packaged in a slightly different way that made them seem worth reconsidering.
• The methods did seem to work, or at least gave me some ideas of things to try.
• Although, once I'd tried them, the book said I had to blame myself if the methods failed.
• So then whenever my baby was crying I felt like a much worse mother than ever before: now it wasn't that "babies cry sometimes" or "sometimes it's best to let them cry it out"--instead, I was failing to understand my baby's basic communication.

As with all parenting books, perhaps the best thing is to read the book with a mind towards taking what you can use and discarding the rest.

Tailchaser's Song, by Tad Williams (1985)

If the author hadn't been highly recommended to me by a reader, I'm not sure I would have tried the book. I don't know how to characterize this sort of fiction, but I think you'll know what I mean if I offer a quote: "In the days of Prince Cleanwhisker, in the reign of Queen Morningstripe, Lord Tangaloor came to the assistance of the Ruhuë, the owl-folk." Those are the names of cats, members of The Folk, a species created by Meerclar Allmother and descended from Harar Goldeneye and Fela Skydancer, and I think by now you've grasped the idea and I can go on.

Normally I can hardly stand to read this sort of fiction: I'm so hyper-aware of the author making it all up. Keep in mind that I feel this way even about Tolkien, world-famous and much-beloved author, so it's not a quality issue, it's a mere taste/preference issue. And in this case, even as I read the first few pages and realized I'd be turning around and taking the book right back to the library, I found myself drawn in in spite of myself. And I read the whole thing. And I did enjoy it, though I'm not about to change my mind about owl-folk/Cleanwhisker literature in general.

The plot is scary-adventure-quest style. Fritti Tailchaser, our hero, starts off as a young cat to find his friend Hushpad, who has mysteriously disappeared. Hushpad is not the only mysterious disappearance of late, and there have been stories of brutal deaths. Tailchaser's search for a single cat brings him to the source of the disappearances and deaths, and with the help of several other animals met along the way, he battles a great evil.

You should start with the Author's Notes in the back; they belong in the front. Also in the back there's a glossary and a list of characters I would have found helpful if I'd known they were there: I have limited patience for puzzling out the meanings of made-up vocabulary words such as cun're and cef'az and mela'an, and limited interest in keeping straight which cat is Snaremouse and which one is Squeakerbane.

Here Be Dragons, by Sharon Kay Penman (1985)

It took me the better part of the month to read this 700+ page doorstop of a book, and I'm going to give it a review far different than the one I was mentally composing when I checked it out of the library. I only checked it out because it was recommended by a reader, and the silly title combined with the silly cover art (swooning maiden with flowing locks, curly-haired knight with white steed, dragon soaring overhead) had me rolling my eyes and thinking of sarcastic critical comments about the fantasy genre.

Then I began reading and found it wasn't fantasy: "During the reigns of the Norman Conqueror, William the Bastard, and his sons, the English crown continued to gain influence in Wales; Norman castles rose up on Welsh soil, and Norman towns began to take root in the valleys of South Wales." I would be hard-pressed to say which I dislike more, fantasy fiction (unicorns/knights) or historical fiction (wars/kings), but my usual rule, especially with reader recommendations, is that I give it 50 pages before I hurl it across the room in crabby disgust. By page 50 I had long since forgotten my plans for disgusted book-flinging and was completely engrossed. I read all the way through, skimming only occasionally when the text slipped into passages like the one quoted above. It was this sort of book: when I had a few minutes of free time, or when I woke up in the morning, or when I couldn't sleep at night, I would find myself thinking, "Oooh, I can go read that book!" I hesitate to give you a plot summary because if, like me, you dislike historical fiction, you're going to hate the sound of it and you certainly won't read the book. So for all of you who think historical fiction is icky and boring, stop reading right here and go get the book and give it a try to see if you agree with me that this book is good anyway, to the point of changing your mind about whether or not you like historical fiction. For those of you who like historical fiction, here's the plot summary:

The book is set in the late 1100s and early 1200s, focusing on the conflict between England and Wales. King Henry and his heir/son Richard have both died, so Richard's brother John is ruling. John discovers he has an illegitimate daughter Joanna, age 5, and he takes her in when her mother dies. She becomes his favorite child; when she is 14 he marries her to his Welsh Price rival Llewelyn. Then it's war, war, war, war, and political intrique for the rest of the book as everyone tries to take power away from everyone else, and poor Joanna is always torn between family and husband. The hardest part for me was keeping straight who was who, because everyone on the English side was William or John or or Richard, and everyone on the Welsh side was Gwynwynwynffdd ab Wynwynllian.

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)

This is the sort of book that will make the empathetic reader uncomfortable all the way through: exhausted or crazy or delirious in turn as the main character suffers through every negative state and no positive ones. And heaven help you if you have trouble keeping Russian names straight.

Raskolnikov is a poverty-stricken former student who in his delirium/exhaustion/psychosis concocts a plan to murder a pawnbroker and take her money. During the planning stages he has inner monologues bordering on stream of consciousness, all of the "Will I do it? Surely not. But perhaps I will" nature, finding himself making plans despite his revulsion at doing so. Then he does it, and it is horrible. Then he goes into a fever and does rash, foolish things such as fainting or blurting out comments if the murder is discussed in front of him--or worse yet, going to sleep when he should be hiding evidence. Sometimes he's so manic he can hardly keep himself from confessing the whole thing to everyone he knows; other times he's so tired he wants to lie down and go to sleep in the street. Other characters aren't much better, never just saying something in a regular way but always crying out wrathfully or perplexedly or irritably or with some other unpleasant emotion, or talking with ellipses between every phrase.

Reading the book made me feel awful and I gave it up after 150 pages. A good character study, undoubtedly, but I don't want to study the "descending into madness" character again.

Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis (1997)

In order for a book with a silly concept such as anthropomorphized animals to work, the writing has to be of an even higher quality than usual. It cannot stoop to, for example, cats thinking of their owners as "my humans," or wondering why humans don't appreciate gifts of dead rodents. The disappointing thing for me is that this book appears to have attained the necessary level of quality--but I'll never know because I'm too wussy to handle animal-torture scenes. I hit the first one on page 33, but swallowed bravely and persevered--I can usually handle ONE such scene if I have to. When I hit the onslaught on page 35, I was out of the ring. All day I've been feeling unhappy that I couldn't continue with the book, because it showed such promise; if you can handle animal scenes better than I can, I recommend you give it a try. The basic plot seemed to be that a group of super-intelligent dogs were developed, dogs who had been given hands and voice boxes. They're extremely rich and also, it seems, dying of some odd disease. That's around the point where I left off, so that's all I know--except that the dogs' inventor was a sicko freak.