Book-Book (Read It)

Book Review: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

Obreht's debut novel is set in a Balkan country during "the war" - take your pick as to which war.  The narrator, Natalie, while on a humanitarian mission to inoculate children, finds out that her beloved grandfather has died and wants to discover the circumstances.  She recalls the stories he told her about his childhood, interlaced with village folklore and seemingly endless civil strife.  There are two  stories at the heart of the book. One is about a tiger who escapes a zoo during World War II and is befriended by a deaf-mute who is viciously abused by her husband. The other is about the Deathless Man, a friend, if you can call him that, of the grandfather, who cannot die himself but can predict the death of others.

This is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in ages, with achingly gorgeous language and a piercingly vivid sense of place, although the reader is (quite deliberately?) never told precisely where we are.  The different stories are riveting in themselves, but I had trouble making them cohere.  The author seems to have made a conscious choice not to explain to the reader.  That is fine, because I dislike explanation, but this kind of nonlinear narrative structure makes it hard for my aging brain to remember stuff, so at times of the novel where there was a factual revelation, it wasn't always for me revelatory.  I think this novel needs a re-read, and it can easily stand up to one, because it is beautiful, and full of story.

Book Review: The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian is the author I recommend to people ready to graduate from Jodi Picoult.  He tends to throw in an "issue" and build a page-turning story with good characters and good prose (much better than Picoult on both counts).  If he were a breakfast cereal, he would be both good for you and delicious.

This latest is a departure, and is quite delicious indeed: a nail-biting supernatural suspense tale that's something of a mashup of The Shining, Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man.  Chip Linton is a pilot who lost 39 passengers when he tried and failed to effect a Sullenberger-style emergency landing on Lake Champlain. He suffers from PTSD, understandably enough, and he and his wife decide that a move to a new state would be therapeutic for all.  They buy an old Victorian with a back staircase, a mysterious door in the cellar, and ghosts.  Not to worry, they and their twin girls are well looked after by the nice lady "herbalists" of the town.  No, wait - worry.

This was a lot of fun to read, probably bad for my blood pressure, and sometimes genuinely creepy/scary, a dark pleasure I seldom get from books nowadays.

Book Review: Bent Road by Lori Roy

Is there a genre called American Gothic? That's what I'd call this story of a family that moves back to the father's childhood home in Kansas and confronts long-buried family secrets. It takes place in the sixties, and Arthur Scott moves his family from Detroit because of his fears of racial unrest. His wife Celia doesn't quite fit in with the farming community. Daughter Evie is fascinated with her late aunt Eve, whom she doesn't know is "late" for a long time, since this family is button-lipped to the point of crippling neurosis. Son Daniel has few friends, and, unsure of his status in the new family dynamics, is anxious to "become a man." The town is in turmoil over a missing girl, and the Scotts are in turmoil over Arthur's sister Ruth's marriage to a drunken brute.

The book is nicely written with well-rounded characters, and less lurid than the plot summary would make it seem. To me, it was most compelling when told from the children's point of view. I have to say, though, that the book never really took for me. I certainly did not dislike it, but I doubt I'll remember it in a month.