Book-Book (Read It)

Book Review: Still Life by Louise Penny

I never read series.  I find series annoying.  I've read two books in this series and found them, as mysteries, mildly annoying, in that the endings were not tidy and the central mysteries not fairly clued.  However, the setting and the characters are so compelling that I can't keep away. Armand Gamache is an enormously appealing detective in the practically-perfect-in-every-way tradition of Lord Peter Wimsey. The quaint French Canadian village of Three Pines is filled with quirky, artsy, intelligent characters.  I love their little world, in spite of all the murders. This book, the first in the series (and smart people will read them in order, as I have not), is all about amateur artists and bow-hunting. I figured out the murderer halfway through the book - I guess I'll have to reconcile myself to the fact that Whodunit is not the point of this series.  On to book two.

Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Ah, the King of Horror! Who would have thought that one of his best books would turn out to be a cross between alternative history and time-travel romance? Actually, there isn't much history per se in this tale of a man who goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, but plenty of authentic period detail, and a rip-roaring good story. Like vintage King, it's very inventive, and fast-paced without being James Pattersonian.  The love story between the time-traveling English teacher and the heroic librarian feels real, and sweet, and gives the book the warmth of King's 2006 novel, Lisey's Story. Has the King gone mushy?  It's fine with me.

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

In the 2011 Booker Prize winner, elderly Tony Webster, divorced and a more or less peaceful failure, finds his life strategy of passive evasion challenged when he receives a bequest from the mother of a former lover. Smaller and less plotty than Arthur and George, this is beautifully, gracefully written, even though the narrative voice is fumbling and conversational. Is Tony an unreliable narrator? Can you be deemed unreliable if you are warning the reader throughout the book that your memory is untrustworthy? I'm still wondering. Although it ends with a dramatic - maybe melodramatic - revelation, overall the book is a realistic rumination on how all of us construct, and lose, the stories of our lives.

Book Review: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

This is an odd but compelling little book about an eccentric old man, Mr. Watts, who reads Great Expectations to a group of Pacific Island children whose lives have been shattered by civil war.  The book is narrated by a young teen-aged girl, Matilda, who is so entranced by the character of Pip that it makes her mother jealous. When combatants (we are never told precisely who these fighters are; the two sides are called simply “redskins” and “rambos”) arrive on the island,  they demand to meet this mysterious Mister Pip and do not believe that the villagers cannot produce him.

 Jones’s prose is simple and beautiful.  The voice of Matilda is lyrical, but not precious.  Her mother, Dolores, is a marvelous character.  My only reservation is that the violence late in the book creates a tone that contrast so starkly with the book’s overall tone that it did not work for me.  Doubtless Jones intended to shock his reader out of their dreams, but to me it seemed over the top.

Book Review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

I dipped into this popular mystery series set in 1930s England “because it was there,” and found it enjoyable. Maisie Dobbs is a psychologist-detective and a former World War I nurse. This book, smack in the middle of the series, is set during the hops picking season in rural Kent. Maisie is investigating a series of mysterious thefts and fires and senses that the villagers, always happy to blame the incidents on Gypsies, know more than they let on. Maisie is an interesting character, the mystery here is neat and tidy, but the real appeal for me was the rich setting, and especially the chance to learn more about the customs and beliefs of English Gypsies.