IT'S
SUMMER READING TIME !!!
Yes, it is . . . So pass right by those seductive CDs and DVDs, those cassettes and videos and pick up a book. Here are some suggestions.
Fiction
It's tempting to assume that every reader turns to the acclaimed, prize-winning books, so they need to be recommended. Then along comes Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which has won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics’ Circle prize, and one wants to stop strangers and say, “Hey, read this!” Cold Mountain a few years ago was a similar experience. Robinson has taught since 1989 at the renowned Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa; she revels in living in a small town where she attends the Congregational Church, has no car, and is 61 years old. Her first novel was Housekeeping, published in 1960, the story of a young girl growing up in a small western town on a large lake, so large that a long bridge is needed for the train to cross. This bridge figures in two deaths in the main character's family. Much attention is paid to eccentricity, to the power of memory, and to the details and rituals involved in carrying on an ordinary life. Well worth reading.
Twenty-four years went by before Robinson wrote a second novel, Gilead, having written two nonfiction books in the interim. The novel is written as a long letter that John Ames is leaving for his young son, born of a late marriage to a young wife. Ames is 77, a small town preacher and well aware that he will not be around long to instruct his beloved only child. He tells him of all his preacher ancestors and also that his own maternal grandfather was involved with John Brown and the anti-slavery zealots in Kansas. Yet Ames’ own father was a pacifist. He figures out for his son that the handwritten pages of sermons up in the attic would amount to 67,500 pages, all by Ames, which puts him “right up there with Augustine and Calvin.” Through this book a secret looms, and it is finally revealed to this pure and prayerful man. Do not miss reading Gilead.
Susan Isaacs comes up with exemplary books for summer reading: funny, interesting, a main character you can care about, and, of course, a satisfying ending. Her latest is Any Place I Hang My Hat, and it deals with a reporter for a prestigious magazine in NYC. Amy Lincoln has a colorful past, including a mother who left her when she was ten months old, while her father was in prison. There were good turns in Amy’s life too: a scholarship to a boarding school and on to Harvard and Columbia. While covering a presidential candidate, she meets a young student who claims to be his son. This galvanizes our heroine to find her mother. There is romance as well, and it's all handled deftly.
It's time once more to praise a young writer named Haven Kimmel. Her memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, about growing up in Indiana, first put her on the literary map. Another memoir, Something Rising (Light and Clear) received more good reviews. Now we have Kimmel’s actual first novel, The Solace of Leaving Early. Langston Braverman dropped out of her Ph.D. path the day of her oral exams (we eventually discover why) and came home to Haddington, Indiana, pop. 3062. Langston was a “head-dweller,” “who trusted reason the way one trusts one’s own skin.” Now she has to adjust to a new landscape which includes a young minister. (Kimmel, our author, attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion.) Yes, the ending you may be surmising does occur, after a harrowing murder and a lot of quirky, compassionate and sometimes very funny goings-on.
Nonfiction
Now for some exceptional nonfiction. Tracy Kidder has won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award. His latest book is Mountains Beyond Mountains. Kidder gets his title from a Haitian proverb: Beyond mountains there are mountains. This proverb aptly sets the scene for a crusade against poverty and illness in our hemisphere's poorest nation. The subtitle of this book is: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, Man who Would Cure the World. Kidder first met Farmer in 1993 in a small town of Haiti's central plateau. He learned that Farmer had been born in Massachusetts in 1959, had grown up with five siblings in Alabama, living on a boat or occasionally in a bus, that he had graduated with top honors from Duke and gone on to get a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an M.D. from Harvard.
Farmer’s interest in Haiti began when he worked as a volunteer in migrant labor camps near Duke; it was continually fueled by curiosity and indignation. Upon finishing his specialty training in Infectious Diseases, Farmer began a career split into four months at the Brigham Hospital in Boston and eight months in the village of Cange in Haiti. He works without pay and has built a hospital, a lab, and a blood bank, all under the auspices of Partners in Health, an organization he founded. When Farmer got a MacArthur “genius award,” his check was immediately signed over to PIH. Farmer’s principal medical battles have been against TB and AIDS and have led him to Peru and Russian prisons, but his ultimate goal is to conquer poverty. You finish this book feeling that you have met a real hero, and you want to know more about his inspiring, quirky, brilliant, decent, man.
The Geese of Beaver Bog is the latest book by naturalist Bernd Heinrich, who has the rare knack of combining scientific objectivity with deep affection for his subjects and a hungry yearning to think as they do. The book deals with his observations over several years of Canada geese, often called honkers. Heinrich lives on a northern Vermont acreage blessed with two beaver ponds nearby, which are in turn blessed with beaver lodges, muskrat mounds and sedge hummocks, all inviting geese pairs to stop and nest. Our author first met Peep, a large and graceful goose, when she was a gosling being raised by a neighboring farmer.
Heinrich’s young son adopts her. In the fall Peep flies South with
the other geese. Two years later she is back on the bog with her mate,
and Peep clearly remembers her human friends. We learn that Canada geese,
if not nesting, head for the safe tundra in Ontario to molt for a month,
during which time they cannot fly. Our author comes up with fascinating
and arcane details about bullfrogs and other bird species and fireflies
— did you know that in the tropics there are large fireflies who like to
flash in unison? Creates quite a light. Read this and marvel, and then
pass it on to an aspiring naturalist. Heinrich appears to be such a happy
man.
Mysteries
Time for mysteries, mostly from abroad. John Dunning is an expert on collecting and selling books. He has three Bookman novels in print and now a fourth, The Sign of the Book. Bookseller Cliff Janeway, an ex-cop from Denver, stars in all of these. Here he is investigating the murder of a man whose wife was once the best friend of Janeway’s girlfriend. Janeway finds the dead man’s house is crammed with books, really quite ordinary books. Our hero figures it all out, and you find you have learned a bit about book collecting.
Ruth Rendell continues to write topnotch crime fiction. The Rotweiler is set in London, centering on an antique store. Young women are being killed; we learn early on who the killer is, as items taken from the victims show up in the antique store. Rendell’s skill is in making ordinary people so believable and then inserting a shaft of horror.
Young women are endangered also in Peter Robinson’s latest book, The First Cut. Inspector Alan Banks of the Yorkshire police is usually Robinson’s protagonist, but not here. Female students have been victimized. The descriptions of the Yorkshire towns and pubs and countryside are memorable.
For a good police procedural with an interesting Scottish flavor, try Fleshmarket Alley by Ian Rankin. Rankin lives in Edinburgh, where his mysteries featuring Inspector John Rebus are set; he won an Edgar award last year for best mystery novel. Here Rebus deals with immigrants, mostly illegal, and those who profit from their desperation. Warning: if you thrive on the whiskey we colonials call Scotch, you may get thirsty.
For a more exotic mystery from abroad, try one by Batya Gur; she is the literary critic for Israel’s prestigious newspaper, Ha’aretz. Gur has five mysteries featuring Chief Supt. Michael Ohayon. Bethlehem Road Murder is the latest. It is set in a neighborhood of Jerusalem whose citizens come from many parts of the world; some harbor secrets that they would kill to keep private. At first, the many strands of the plot seem hard to follow, even though you begin to sense that this neighborhood is a microcosm of Israeli society today — complicated, tension-filled, but also marked by courage and a love of life. Also good is Gur’s Literary Murder, especially if you value serious attention to poetry. Two professors are killed and Ohayon figures out why.
May you have a fine summer, with lots of lovely hours for reading.
-- Alice Racher