RollnSmoke Reviews: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Penguin, 2010)

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, this novel presents a riveting premise: A man slaps a young boy who is not his own at a friend’s barbecue. The ensuing eight chapters are written from the points of view of eight characters who witness The Slap. The incident goes largely unresolved and serves instead to reveal the lives of the mean-spirited and self-righteous cast of characters who are motivated by drugs, sex and self-gratification in the Australian melting pot of Melbourne. Ultimately, truth doesn’t matter in this world, and the characters fail to evolve and are never redeemed (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: CHRONIC CITY by Jonathan Lethem

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethen (Vintage, 2010)

This New York Times “Best Book of the Year” features Chase Insteadman, a former child television star living off royalties and among socialites in Manhattan, who befriends an eccentric stoner named Perkus Tooth with whom he shares a strange and narcissistic gestalt. Even though he is engaged to Janus, an astronaut trapped in orbit, Chase takes a lover, Oonah, an aloof ghost writer, who is instrumental in his struggle to understand what is real and true. Loaded with pop cultural references and charged with an often absurd existential quest steeped in the improbable, the narrative smacks of "The Truman Story" but which has a grim ending (8/10).

COMPLICATIONS by Atul Gawande

Complications by Atul Gawande (Picador, 2002)

This fast-reading collection of nonfiction articles are true, gripping stories that reveal the uncertainty and imperfections of medical science and were written at the end of the Boston-based author’s eight year surgical residency. The Fallibility of Doctors addresses the importance of practice, the reality of human error and burnout and when good doctors go bad and the culture of medicine, especially the unspoken moral burden of practicing on people. The Mysteries of Medicine addresses the nature of pain and nausea, palliative medicine, blushing and hunger & obesity while the Analysis of Certainty Itself addresses autopsies, SIDS and the obligation to share medical knowledge to inform a contemporary patient base. The book is well-paced, and the information is offered in magazine-like bite-sized portions, ideal for the interested layperson (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: STILL ALICE by Lisa Genova

Still Alice by Lisa Genova (Pocket Books, 2009)

This poignant debut novel by a neuroscientist from Harvard features a 50-year-old psychiatry professor who is ensnared in the early-onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. At first she (and her family) dismiss her forgetfulness as stress and over-programming, but as her symptoms flood her life, there is no way anyone can deny her awful spiral into dementia. In the course of the novel, Alice is forced to relinquish a highly esteemed career, her independence and her very sanity so that she comes to feel “bored, ignored and alienated.” While the writing itself is less than extraordinary, the simple and sad story of Alice’s genetic and devastating disease – she is, after all, more than she can remember – is told honestly and with enormous respect for its victims. “I can’t stand the thought of looking at you one day,” Alice says to her beloved husband early on. “This face I love, and not knowing who you are.” (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: OUR MAN IN HAVANA by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene (Penguin, 2007; originally pub. 1958)

Greene’s most widely-read novel was written before the rise of Fidel Castro, and his characters were developed before the advent of 007. His main character, James Wormold, is a single man, living in Havana, Cuba, selling vacuum cleaners and raising a devoutly Catholic, 17-year old daughter. When he is randomly pinned to serve as a secret service agent, he jumps at the opportunity and develops fictional local agents and draws fake weapon plans out of vacuum sketches in order to collect a sorely needed income. The novel is written in a disjointed manner, loaded with characters from all over the world who gather in a depraved Havanna that writhes with drugs and murderers and prostitutes, all in an effort to establish larger, less appealing farce (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE CORPSE WALKER by Liao Yiwu

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up
by Liao Yiwu (Anchor Book, 2009)

Yiwu stitches together a series of 28 interviews with common, hard-working, down-trodden Chinese citizens that reveals a full and often sad portrait of Contemporary China. All of the interviews share common threads: Mostly elderly, male citizens work at the bottom of society – as The Human Trafficker, The Public Restroom Manager, The Abbot, The Former Red Guard, The Migrant Worker -- and usually suffer under a (failing) Communist system. In the course of telling these stories, Chinese customs and superstitions come to light and history unfolds, from Mao’s takeover, to the Great Famine of 1960, to the Great Leap Forward, to the present shift in political power. The stories are sometimes so similarly ghastly that the reader has a hard time believing they can possibly be true; alas, they are (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: By NIghtfall by Michael Cunningham

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Unlike his heady, popular novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s sixth book offers his readers the chance to eavesdrop on contemporary urbanites entrenched in the daily grind of New York City living. Chelsea Gallery owner and art dealer, Peter Harris, is married, with an uneasy, “diminishing” and grown child living in Boston, and is caught in the throes of angsty middle life. When his much younger, drug addicted brother-in-law – who somehow comes to embody beauty itself – moves in with him and his wife in their Soho loft, Peter’s life is suddenly charged with a deep homo-eroticism that threatens to unfurl the professional and marital life he has so carefully wrought. While the reader may not be convinced of this sudden change in his sexuality, Peter is, and ultimately he feels “stupid and sad and pathetic” for being seduced by a shameless, beautiful boy (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: Tinkers by Paul Harding

Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009)

The 2009 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Literature and Harding’s debut novel features an old man, George – a collector of old clocks -- who is dying at home, among his family, slipping in and out of consciousness. In the final eight days of his life, his hallucinations fix on memories of his early childhood, especially on his “mad father whom he loved and pitied and adored” who tinkers about New England in a wagon loaded with household goods, who suffers from grand mal epileptic seizures and who disappears one day when George is still a boy. Finally, George’s memories – a respite from his dying -- somehow meld with his father’s memories of his own mentally ill father, and family truths are revealed in the final moments of George’s life. The diction is precise and poetic and the New England landscape is itself a character, the writing like Robert Frost in novel form. The pace is quiet and plodding, requiring a reader’s patience and keen attention (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: FINDING THE CENTER by V.S. Naipaul

Finding the Center: Two Narratives by V.S. Naipaul (Knopf, 1984)

In these two contemplative narratives, Naipual reveals the process of writing as personal exploration. The first and more interesting narrative is an account of his literary beginnings, filled as they were with anxiety and ambition, as the son of a journalist growing up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. The second narrative – regarding a visit to Ivory Coast motivated by its being an “African Success” and influenced by the French -- forwards the notion of Naipaul’s wanderlust as a means of discovering “other states of mind” to further his knowledge of people and the world (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME by Gail Caldwell

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell (Random House, 2010)

Gail Caldwell, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, has written a near-worshipful memoir of her friendship with Caroline Knapp that begins “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.” In a short amount of time, these two well-matched women, each single writers and recovered alcoholics – “the merry recluse and the cheery depressive”-- who live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and love to swim and row on The Charles River and walk their dogs together, develop a deep and trusting bond of need. While contemplative in tone and simple in diction, Caldwell’s narrative at times verges on self-help and ultimately, she doesn’t bring anything truly new to the “old, old story” of loss and grief where, in the wake of Caroline’s tragic death from lung cancer, Caldwell emerges “sober, heartsore and still alive” (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LIT by Mary Karr

Lit by Mary Karr (Harper, 2009)

The third memoir in a fascinating autobiographical trifecta and voted one of last year’s 10 Best Books by the NYT, Lit connects the dots among Mary Karr’s dysfunctional childhood, her struggle with alcoholism and a feral depression, her eventual divorce and her path to prayer and survival. Karr firmly establishes her genius at the genre of memoir by presenting real and self-effacing anecdotes wherein the reader is privy to her reliance on various academic and spiritual mentors, to the essential relationships she builds through therapy and group sessions and to how she copes with the devastating deaths of her eccentric her parents. While the ending is a bit fractured, through self-nurture Karr finally learns to sustain a sober life through prayer. Inspired by her young son, Dev, she finally stops intellectualizing God and jumps into life without self-deceit and with faith entire (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Knopf, 2009)

This absorbing first novel by a brilliant Stanford medical professor is a coming-of-age story about twin brothers who grow up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and is told in retrospect from the point of view of the elder brother and main character, Marion Stone. When the boys’ Indian mother dies in childbirth and their British father flees, the children are raised by two very loving doctors at the local Missing Hospital, among a tightly–knit hospital community. The novel is quick-reading, rooted in exotic landscapes and utilizes modern Ethiopian politics and culture as vital background. Verghese’s writing is clear and profound in its singular and edifying approach to covering wide topics in (particularly surgical) medicine. But the soul of the book is the message that enduring family relationships can sustain the most divergent paths and can heal the deepest rifts (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: Freedome: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom: Novel by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

“There had always been something not quite right about The Berglunds,” explains the omniscient narrator of Franzen’s latest psychological drama. The narrative is broken into chapters that represent the points of view of Walter, the “fatuously earnest” husband/father; the best friend Richard, who becomes a famous rock star; and the son Joey, who is in constant pursuit of sex in WomanLand. Primarily though, the narrative centers on Patty, the self-pitying wife/mother, who, through her confessional “autobiographical” segments, relives her years as an NCAA star basketball star at the University of Minnesota where she meets geeky Walter with whom she raises two children, moves around the country and hits mid-life crises. While the novel is quick-reading and compelling in its fascinating web of human dynamics, it is sidetracked by descriptions of superfluous neighbors and by Franzen’s own fascination with birdlife and world causes. The simple title of the novel – FREEDOM – is its core theme: You have the freedom to pick your lover, your mate and your friends, but you don’t pick your family. You have the freedom to make choices in your life, but all choices return consequences. That said, the novel, in the end, is a love story between two people who meet and marry young, grow up together and slowly learn the thresholds of wanting to be together vs. not wanting to lose each other (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation by Patrick Kinross

Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation by Patrick Kinross (1964).

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, considered “Father of the Turks,” rose to power as a devoted and determined military officer. Raised as a plebian by a widowed mother, it was when Kemal was stationed in Sofia (Bulgaria) that he was first exposed to Western civilization. Heavy on battle and war tactics, the text documents Kemal’s rise in the ranks of the military through WWI, where he fought bravely – the only Turkish officer who went undefeated -- and strategized accurately. Seizing upon a nationalist spirit that swept Turkey after WWI, Kemal proved himself as a politician and statesman in the Anatolia heartland by insisting upon the rights of his nation according to the will of its people so that Turkey became the “first Oriental country to make a stand against Western Imperialism.” Within five years of rising to power, Kemal abolishes both the sultanate and caliphate to establish the New Turkish Republic as a secular state where the Islamic relics – the face veil and fez -- are outlawed and women are emancipated. A British journalist and intelligence officer, Kinross tackles this big, dense biography with a very high regard for his subject (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE LAST CHILD by John Hart

THE LAST CHILD by John Hart (St. Martin’s, 2009)

This New York Times Bestseller is a gripping summer read set in North Carolina and loaded with drugs, insanity, creepy pedophiles, rotten cops and mysterious, grisly murders that need untangling. The very first line of the who-done-it reveals the nature of the young protagonist: “Johnny learned early that childhood was illusion,” who exists to comfort his damaged and addicted mother. Through the course of the novel, Johnny works to unearth the truth behind the abduction of his twin sister, and he struggles with the disappearance of his father. Meanwhile, the lead detective on the case, Clyde Hunt, struggles to keep his work professional and not personal while pinning down unlikely heroes and astonishing villains who scramble in sync towards the final crescendo (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE COMEDIANS by Graham Greene

THE COMEDIANS by Graham Greene (Penguin, 1967)

Graham Greene first traveled to Haiti in 1954 and immediately took to calling it “the nightmare republic” not just because of its terrible poverty and unforgiving landscape but because of the brain drain tyranny of Francois Duvalier – better known as “Pap Doc” – and his terrifying bogey man called the Totons Macoute who ruled from 1957-1971. It is against this ugly political backdrop that Greene places his central ex-pat characters who voyage together on the same incoming ship to the voodoo tropics. There’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the saintly and naive American idealists; Mr. Jones, an opportunistic British rogue with a shady background; and the central character, Mr. Brown, a solitary, faithless drifter who looks for love and clings to a dream for success as a hotelier. It is easy to get onboard Greene’s bedeviled adventure as the writing is easy and the plot is well-paced, if now a bit old-fashioned, with a compelling crescendo (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: EVERYTHING LOVELY, EFFORTLESS, SAFE by Jenny Hollowell

EVERYTHING LOVELY, EFFORTLESS, SAFE by Jenny Hollowell (Holt, 2010)

It’s the writing that shimmers in this quick-reading debut novel by Jenny Hollowell – spare, poignant and eerily abstracted – the words get to the truth of the matter. But as the central character, Birdie, sees it, "nobody ever wants the truth." As a survivor, Birdie runs away from her depressed mother, absent-missionary father and young, devout husband and escapes to L.A. with nothing but a sense of destiny in her pocket that involves bright lights and massive success as an actress. Teetering between being “pretty” vs. “beautiful” and armed with a devoted agent, Birdie jumps headfirst into the quintessential L.A. lifestyle which drips with narcissism and tingles with sexual exploits and sinks in a sad sense of selling out. While Birdie “drinks too much and loves to little,” she is without hope, without fear and is therefore able to survive (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

While on assignment in Haiti, Pulitzer-prize-winning author, Tracy Kidder, meets Doctor Paul Farmer in 1994 and follows closely his career in the years that follow. Farmer, a Harvard-educated specialist in infectious diseases, chooses Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, as his base of operations. Known there as Dokte Paul, he devotes his life to treating the poor primarily for Tuberculosis and AIDS (his thesis subject) by way of an anthropological approach to medicine. A scholar and a writer, intelligent and unafraid to bear witness, Farmer’s goal is transformation which he achieves in great part through his work with Boston-based Partners in Health, a leader in world-wide public health, which spearheads TB control projects in Peru and Russia. Ultimately, it is the inspired medical base he creates – called Zansi Lasante, located in the central plateau of Haiti – which epitomizes his dream to end medical disparity (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE LAY OF THE LAND

THE LAY OF THE LAND by Richard Ford (Vintage 2007)

Hailed as “Best Book of the Year” by The New York Times, this novel features New Jersey real estate agent-husband and father, Frank Bascombe, the same main character in Ford’s two previous novels who, post-prostate procedure, feels out of synch as he meets mid-life or what he calls his “Permanent Period.” Observant, masculine and often funny, Ford reveals Frank’s predicament as he anxiously anticipates a Thanksgiving dinner spent with his bi-sexual daughter and estranged and quirky son and without his second wife who has suddenly taken off with her first husband who she thought was dead. While Frank is easy to like -- he describes predicaments with folksy detail and with a wry sense of humor -- his stories are sometimes over-loaded with digression so that the overall narrative is lean on action. The final pages unravel in a violent and bizarre way with all the narrative parts coming together in an unlikely and tidy manner (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LITTLE BEE

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

In his second novel Cleave intersects the lives of his two main characters on a beach in Nigeria. First there is Sarah, a posh young mother and magazine editor from London, and then there is Little Bee, a wise, teenage African refugee. From there, the proceeding unlikely story unravels by way of alternating points of view with distinct and plausible idioms. As the author himself explains, “the magic is how the story unfolds.” From the terror and violence of the Nigerian oil fields, to suicide and betrayal, characters are time and again tested against a wide moral compass. While the circumstances are intriguing and often surprising, the plot occasionally dips into melodrama and the ending is a bit tidy (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: CRESCENT & STAR

Crescent & Star by Stephen Kinzer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)

Kinzer, the Istanbul chief for The New York Times from 1996 – 2000, presents a fascinating and clearly written explanation of Turkey’s modern history since Ataturk’s sweeping secular reformation in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He begins with a concise discussion of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and covers interesting facets of Turkish culture like nargile (water pipe) salons, camel fighting and the sinister underworld of gangsters, traffikers and assassins. He effectively disseminates the debate surrounding the head-scarf and describes how the Turkish government has insisted on revising history in regards to the Armenian and Kurdish Crises and has punished those who have tried to speak the truth like Pulitzer Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk. Most central to Kinzer’s discussion, however, is the Ataturk faith of the ruling elite – called Kemalism -- where nation, secularism and democracy rule, which is at odds with Turkey’s current ruler, Erdogan, who is a devoted Muslim and brings with his administration a rising enthno-nationalism. As Turkey tries to erase its image as the dark scourge of civilization and Christian enemy and climbs towards Islamic democracy in its hopes to gain entry to The European Union, it has the potential to emerge as a powerful model for the rest of the world (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: PRIVATE LIFE

Private Life by Jane Smiley (Knopf, 2010)

This novel in five parts spans the onset of the 20th century, covering the years from 1883 – 1942, and features the main character, Margaret, who endures tragedy without complaint but is awkward and on the verge of spinsterhood in post-civil war St. Louis when she meets the strange though eligible physicist, Captain Andrew Early. Margaret and Andrew marry and move to a naval base in distant California. Smiley writes with a smart, keen eye, stringing her narrative like holiday lights among historical American icons – The St. Louis World’s Fair, the Great San Francisco Earthquake, two World Wars and the U.S. encampment of Japanese – while at the same time slowly revealing the sad and intimate details of an unraveling marriage. Smiley’s characters are intelligent, adventurous and full of “life force,” and the couple’s private drama is articulated through scenes that are so well-crafted and convincing that the reader shares Margaret’s suspicions about her husband’s increasingly bizarre and sometimes paranoid behavior. Along with Margaret, the reader ultimately questions Andrew’s very sanity, and together we teeter between what is true and what is the dangerous figment of an overly-intelligent mind (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: ISTANBUL

Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, 2004).

Nobel Prize in Literature winner and famous native Instabullu, Orhan Pamuk, creates a portrait of his beloved city through written vignettes and sometimes bleak sketches from his childhood and through assembled historic photographs that is akin to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist in that Pamuk focuses on the beauty in the landscape that resides in its deeply seeded melancholy or “huzun.” Istanbul, once the great center of both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, has, in the past century, fallen far off its high pedestal, and in its secularity must define what it means to be Turkish. Because there is no overarching narrative and most chapters are bite-sized and lack action, the reading requires patience. Several chapters stand out like “Exploring the Bosphorus” and “Hazun,” while the final two chapters, about the author’s first true love and about his devoted affection for his mother, close the book on a distinctively personal note (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: SHADOW TAG

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich (Harper Collins, 2010)

A quick-reading narrative cocktail of omniscience, epistolary dairy-entry and manipulated first & third person, this 14th novel by prolific Minnesota author Louise Erdrich features a family of five on the ugly verge of emotional breakdown. Gil and Irene have a long-disturbed, mean-spirited marriage based in game-playing, illusion and deception and fueled by alcohol and addiction. Theirs is an artistic and narcissistic union where “all the rules are broken,” which creates a tumultuous family life where the children are ever-anxious and angry. With all the child abuse, endless analysis of instinct, vicious fighting, failure and dependence, the inevitable result is a very depressing crash and burn (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: TOO MUCH HAPPINESS

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2009)

Once again, Alice Munro presents a collection of short stories that captures common people who manage to transform and transcend their regular lives. All of the stories take place in Munro’s native and contemporary Canada except for the final title story, a historical fiction piece, which features a female mathematician and novelist who journeys through 19th century Europe and Russia. A true master of the craft of writing short stories, Munro plots in such a way that the reader cannot help but read on, often compelled by a shocking bombshell or an unexpected and fascinating hook which reveals the subtleties of the characters’ lives and invests them with meaning. In spite of suicide, mental illness, death and murder, as they confront physical illness and pain, addiction, philandering and homelessness -- all varieties of personal anguish – Munro's characters push forward, driven, most often, towards the heart of humanity: The desire to love and be loved. 9/10

RollnSmoke Reviews: ZEITOUN

ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s Books, 2009)

Young, trailblazing writer and publisher Dave Eggers tackles this nonfiction story about a Syrian-born U.S. citizen who waits out Hurricane Katrina to terrible effect. Zeitoun is a hard-working contract painter, landlord and devout Muslim who lives with his wife and children in New Orleans. His wife, Kathy, who converts to Islam when she marries Zeitoun, leaves the city as the hurricane approaches while Zeitoun stays behind to look after their properties. After the storm Zeitoun is seized by an sense of “urgency and purpose” and takes to the flooded streets in his metal canoe to assist the stranded and suffering but, to his deep dismay, what he encounters is “apocalyptic and surreal” as the entire city devolves into “an animalistic state.” Clearly written and well-paced, Eggers recreates the harrowing and shocking post-Katrina turns in the life of this innocent immigrant in the Land of the Free (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: MAN GONE DOWN

MAN GONE DONE by Michael Thomas (Grove Atlantic, 2007)

In this debut novel a broke, educated black writer crashes at a wealthy friend’s house in NYC, while his white wife and bi-racial children stay with his wealthy mother-in-law outside of Boston. Ever conscious of race, gentrification and his own poverty, the narrator laments not teaching, not writing and his inability to land a job to pay the rent and tuition. Depressed, often bitter and in a funk, he ends up working temporary construction while resisting the temptations of drink and sexual seduction. Via a series of flashbacks to his broken, bi-racial childhood in Boston, he wonders if he is “too damaged” to achieve happiness and success. He is cynical and hostile, edgy and self-conscious – not terribly likeable. Brimming with introspection and moments of intensely rendered detail – New York City especially comes to life – in the end, this story lacks real, compelling action (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: HURRY DOWN SUNSHINE

HURRY DOWN SUNSHINE by Michael Greenberg (Vintage, 2008)

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad …” so opens the quick-reading, honest and compelling memoir written by the helpless father of a precocious fifteen-year-old girl who suffers her first manic episode one hot summer day in Greenwich Village. Her “crack-up” eats Sally alive and sends her to the emergency room and on to a psychiatric hospital where she is assigned the diagnosis of Bipolar 1. In the course of trying to understand his daughter’s madness, Greenberg cites James Joyce’s struggles with his own mentally ill daughter and moves through various stages of self-blame. In the midst of managing this crisis, Greenberg must also address his brother’s long-affliction with mental illness – “he’s 48 and chronically rattled” -- and can only wonder if his daughter’s condition is genetic. In the end, through counseling and a rainbow of strong medications, the family circles the wagons, and Greenberg, his wife, his ex-wife and their son, must all confront the uneasy issue of how to help Sally defeat this terrible mental disease without defeating herself. They must bravely forge towards hope that Sally can somehow be restored so that she can trust her mind again and resume a meaningful life (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE HELP

THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam, 2009)

What a debut novel! Set in the early-1960’s against a busy historical backdrop that includes an emerging conflict in Vietnam, the assassination of President Kennedy and MLK’s March on Washington, this novel takes place in a still racially-divided Jackson, Mississippi. A brave, independent and privileged white woman, Skeeter, dreams of becoming a writer and manages to win the support of various local black maids whom she persuades to tell about their “experiences waiting on white families” in The Deep South. The process of stealthily telling, collecting, writing and submitting these stories is told from three alternating points of view – from Skeeter’s, as well as from two of the domestics themselves, sweet and patient Aibileen and feisty, mouthy Minny. There is much at stake in sharing these truths but the reward of blurring the lines among what defines family vs. help vs. race is worth the risk, and these three heroes know that they “done something brave and good here.” This will be a hard act for Stockett to follow (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: COMMITTED

COMMITTED by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin, 2010)

As a fan of Gilbert’s mega-jumbo-hit memoir EAT, PRAY, LOVE (by all accounts a tough act to follow) I was ready to adore her latest non-fiction piece about marriage. As casualties of ugly failed first marriages, Gilbert and her (new) lover swear that they will never marry again, until they are forced to marry in order to accommodate Felipe’s entry visa to the United States. The book is a drawn out justification of how Gilbert overcomes this major philosophical hurdle where, page after sometimes tedious page, she overthinks and overcooks marriage to its very skeletal core. While Gilbert is a gifted and witty writer, she tries to create drama and intrigue where there is none. Instead, the reader is left to mull over the obvious, reading pedantic passages on the history and anthropology of marriage. In the end, the book feels forced and lacks the instinct and genuine exuberance that characterized EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Alas, you can’t win them all (6/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: OLIVE KITTERIDGE

OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout (Vintage, 2008)

Worthy Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in literature, this episodic third novel features the flawed, brusque and evolving Olive Kitteridge as revealed via various satellite characters in 13 skillfully linked short stories that take place over the years in a small coastal town in Maine. Strout’s lyrical diction is indeed “distinguished” in its rare ability to capture perceptive detail in ordinary “American Life” that achieves a marvelous and riveting picture of humanity – in all its various foibles and vulnerabilities – through childhood memories, thoughts of suicide, heartbreaks, divorce, depression, mental illness, adultery, life and death. And Olive Kitteridge herself, the central feast at the table of this rich story, is subtly rendered as moody and unapologetic, but also as enduring, hopeful and capable of enormous tenderness. (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF

NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF by Julian Barnes (Vintage International, October 2009)

Named one of The New York Times Book Review’s Best Book of the Year, this is a memoir-like rumination on the meaning of death that draws from history, philosophy and, most enjoyably, from Barnes’ own experience, particularly regarding the separate deaths of his own parents. A young atheist with no religious upbringing, Barnes has become, over the years, an agnostic (now that he has become “more aware of ignorance”) and grapples honestly here with the question of whether or not God exists. He addresses the universal fear of human mortality and discusses the relationship between death and consciousness. At one point he wonders, “Why do we need God to help us marvel at things?” While there are spots of smart humor, there are even longer, often tedious spells involving historical (often French) thinkers (Montaigne, Flaubert Stendahl, Volataire). In the end Barnes’ meditations do not lead to a position or a climax – there is no resolve; indeed no real direction – and no new ideas are truly uncovered (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson (Vintage, 2009)

A national bestseller loaded with the signature aspects of a suspenseful crime novel including sexual exploits, dark family secrets, slowly revealed mysteries, ghastly torture and grisly murder. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the novel is that the Swedish author died in 2004 under suspicious circumstances, and his work is only now being published posthumously. In this first installment of Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy crime series, a Swedish-Casanova-investigative-journalist is charged with uncovering a family’s torrid past amidst his own libelous scandal involving a corrupt, billionaire, international financier. Eventually he pairs up with a young-tattooed-goth-hacker and together they untangle a 40-year old island murder mystery. While the language (albeit in translation from Swedish) is often artless and the hero-less story is undercut with a relentless and ugly thread of misogyny, the book is still a page-turner that keeps the reader hooked until all shocking and bloody truths are revealed (8/10).