RollnSmoke Reviews: WHITE MUGHALS by William Dalrymple

WHITE MUGHALS by William Daltymple (Penguin, 2004)

This long, dense and massively notated historical narrative is set primarily in Hyderabad, India, at the turn of the 19th century, when the British commanded and colonized a strong Indo-Islamic civilization. An infamous, philandering commander, dubbed “The Handsome Colonel,” begets various children, among them two notable British military sons, both strong linguists. One, James Kirkpatrick, falls in love with a local princess, who becomes pregnant and amidst much family scandal and ugly gossip, marries her white, British lover who, himself, converts to Islam. The focus here is vast, wide-ranging and sometimes hard to follow, punctuated as it is with many letters and long descriptions of India and its alluring cultures (6/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST by Adam Hochschild

KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST by Adam Hochschild (Mariner Books, 1999)

Even as the slave trade began in the 15th century, the interior of The Congo remained largely unexplored until the mid-19th century when Leopold II, imperialist and greedy King of Belgium, set his sights on exploiting the region’s rich natural resources – pillaging the land and its people to extract ivory and rubber – and tapping its abundance of free slave labor for his own personal profit at the expense of at least 10 million Congolese lives. Dense but fascinating in scope, gruesome detail and arching explanation and peppered with heroes of moral cause, this is a triumph in historical narrative (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: PORTRAIT OF AN ADDICT AS A YOUNG MAN by Bill Clegg

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg (Little Brown, 2010).

This debut memoir by an emerging New York literary agent recounts a la punchy, sometimes disjointed vignettes his slow and paranoid spiral into crack addiction. The gritty present tense, of a professional literary agent on the run from a second intervention and at the ugly bottom of his [final] crack binge, alternates with flashback of a strange boyhood toilet panic, college partying antics and a slow evolution of his sexual identity. The writing is strong, the frenetic pace makes for a quick read and the details of descent are compelling, though little is offered in the way of new information about addiction (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: ROOM by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, 2010)

Written from the point of view of a five-year-old boy, this highly acclaimed novel tells the story of a woman held captive for seven years by a kidnapper who gets her pregnant with her beloved son, Jack. Jack’s perspective on the world is skewed as he only knows the 11 x 11 “room” in which they are imprisoned, leaving him with the limited scope of what he understands to be “real,” what’s on TV and what’s “outside.” In order to orchestrate their escape, little Jack is “scave” – scared and brave together – but this strength is the means by which they survive and are able to emerge into the world again (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner (Twelve, 2008)

Described as “one grump’s search for the happiest places in the world,” foreign correspondent Eric Weiner here describes how he travels the world in search of unheralded happy places. He explores The Netherlands, where he discovers the World Database of Happiness and moves from Switzerland to Bhutan, where the government has a policy for Gross National Happiness, to Qatar where money abides but culture is elusive, to Iceland, which is often rated #1 in the world for happiness, to Moldova where pervasive envy kills happiness, to permissive Thailand to utilitarian Great Britain to India, where he learns that love is more important than happiness, and finally home to America. Peppered with intelligent quips, this an amusing pastiche of philosophical insight and intriguing travelogue (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER by Amy Chua

BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER by Amy Chua (Penguin, 2011)

An ambitious Professor of Law at Yale University, daughter of Chinese immigrant parents and mother of two, Amy Chua builds a defense for results and skills-oriented Chinese parenting – ruthless, where parents have “higher dreams and higher regard” for their children -- over Western parenting – which she presents as indulgent, choice-offering and overly-nurturing of self-esteem. With astonishing energy, an eye fixated on achievement and relentless drive, Chua cannot and will not let up on her two daughters who emerge as accomplished musicians and straight-A students. Ever “jacking up the pressure” on her children, Chua clearly and shamelessly lays out her parenting approach which her own daughter describes as “compulsively cruel” (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE TENNIS PARTNER by Abraham Verghese

THE TENNIS PARTNER by Abraham Verghese (HarperCollins, 1998)

A professor of medicine at Stanford University and most recently the acclaimed author of Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese, tells the true story of his friendship with a medical intern, David Smith, an Australian, former tennis pro and cocaine addict. Stories of treating patients in a busy urban teaching hospital in El Paso blend with fun-spirited tennis which mixes with Verghese’s own divorce and Smith’s inevitable break ups which all blend into a sad and tragic spiral into addiction. Altogether this is a moving elegy to an intense and genuine friendship between two doctors, two athletes, two smart men (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett

STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2011)

Patchett’s sixth novel is a fast and fun summer read situated in the steamy Amazonian tropics of Brazil where a doctor named Marina is sent by her employer, the head of a drug company that is funding research for an emerging fertility drug, to uncover the circumstances of a dear colleague who recently disappeared there. In spite of Marina’s poor sense of men and an overabundance of flashbacks and Larium dreams that serve to carry (unnecessary) backstory, the pace of the story is strong, loaded with attacking anacondas, pregnant old women, and poisoned arrows. Patchett’s writing remains strong and evocative, and the narrative ends with a winning and redemptive crescendo (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: PILL HEAD by Joshua Lyon

PILL HEAD by Joshua Lyon (Hyperion, 2009)

As a budding, gay journalist living in New York, Joshua Lyon discovers Vicodin, his “perfect drug,” while undertaking research for a magazine assignment and here reveals his ensuing addiction to pills. He discusses the related science and trends behind painkillers, including the onset of online pharmacies, the practice of doctor shopping, the ineffectiveness of anti-drug programs and the prospect of an addiction vaccine. While he includes fascinating case stories of pill addiction, it his own private battle that is most engrossing as he writes the bulk of this debut memoir while still addicted. A quick, satisfying and informative read (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Penguin, 2008)

Australian-born, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Geraldine Brooks, brings us the story of the Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, which originated in Seville in 1492 and ends up in worn-torn Sarejevo by way of Venice in 1609 and Vienna in 1894. Its story includes tentacles of various lives and wars and clandestine smuggling but centers on one contemporary book conservator, Hannah, whose personal life is revealed particularly through a love affair she has with a curator in Sarajevo. The tone throughout is serious, its subject is, at times, boring, and the ending is a bit too tidy (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: FAMILY ALBUM by Penelope Lively

FAMILY ALBUM by Penelope Lively (Penguin, 2009).

This masterful fiction writer from London has turned out another compelling psychological drama that centers around Allersmead, the run-down, sprawling family home that is the same scene of varying points of view on a family’s life. Alison strives to be the perfect archetype of motherhood, whose goal is to provide her six children with a blissful childhood, though that’s not how any of her children remember life at Allersmead, as they each recall, as grown adults and by way of brilliant omniscient narration, birthdays, Christmases and family summer vacations. Each recalls how the eldest son, Paul, falls into addiction, and they remember their father’s impassive stolidity and their quiet and plodding au pair, Ingrid, who remains at the house 40 years later. Lively’s exquisite writing is original and smart, her insights are profound, and her storytelling involves intriguing family secrets, revealed. At the heart of this magical narrative is Alison’s indissoluble conviction: “… This is a family. This shall always be a family.” (9.5/10)

RollnSmoke Reviews: SWEEPING UP GLASS

SWEEPING UP GLASS by Carolyn Wall (Random House, 2009)

This debut novel is set in Kentucky at the turn of the 20th century and is narrated by Olivia, who, like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, is raised by a single and serious father. Olivia’s life is fraught with strife as she endures a mean-spirited and crazy mother and a no-good runaway daughter who leaves her son for Olivia to raise and love. Wall is a strong story-teller, loading her story with Southern Lore replete with Jim Crow Laws, river baptisms, fried chicken and the ever-menacing KKK and their notorious lynching. While characters are effectively revealed and mysteries unfold, in the end, this is a light fluff of a read with overly dramatic turns of plot (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE ORIENTALIST by Tom Reiss

THE ORIENTALIST by Tom Reiss (Random House, 2006)

This young, enterprising author, Tom Reiss, sets out to solve the mystery behind the author of Azerbaijan’s greatest literary achievement called Ali and Nino. What unfolds is the fascinating life of Lev Nussimbum, born to a Jewish oil tycoon in Baku in 1912. Caught between the Russian and German Revolutions during the first half of the twentieth century, father and son flee Azerbaijan to Persia to Istanbul to Paris to Berlin to New York to Vienna. Lev becomes a world-famous “Orientalist” writer with a fascinating “protean identity” where he becomes Muslim and changes his name as a means of survival. While the long stretches of historical context – particularly about anti-Semitism and Zionism -- can be dense, much information can be gleaned from the life of this fascinating historical character (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey

BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey (Little Stanger, 2011)

While not much of a TV-watcher, I heard a favorable review of Tina Fey’s new memoir-like book on NPR and bought it. There’s no doubt that this lady is smart, talented, ambitious and funny. In addition to learning that she wrote “Mean Girls,” we learn about her rise from the ranks of Chicago’s Second City Improvisational Comedy Troupe, to her being a lead comedy writer for Saturday Night Live and appearing regularly on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, to her creating and producing the NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” to her memorable comedic impersonations of Sarah Palin. We also learn about the origins of her significant facial scar and are offered tidbits about her being a working mother. While amusing, in the end the piece lacks real insight and ends up an unremarkable read (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE UNCOUPLING by Meg Wolitzer

THE UNCOUPLING by Meg Wolitzer (Riverhead Books, 2011)

The plot of Meg Wolitzer’s eighth book hinges on a difficult-to-accept spell that seizes the female characters in the novel and makes them frigid. All the characters in the book converge at a suburban New Jersey high school – teachers, students, lovers, all – and the centerpiece that forwards the plot is the school community’s putting on the ancient Greek play Lysistrada, wherein the female cast members stage a sex strike in an effort to protest male warring. While there’s plenty of strong writing combined with Wolitzer’s trademark wit throughout the piece, ultimately the said chilling “spell” fails as a compelling, workable premise, especially at the goofy, melodramatic end (6.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE IMPERFECTIONISTS by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (Random House, 2010)

This engaging, fast-reading, debut novel centers on an English-speaking newspaper opened in Rome by American Cyrus Ott in 1954 and reveals the characters – primarily the editors and writers – who work there. These distinctive characters are skillfully interconnected, and their many foibles overlap and affect one another. The compelling and original structure of the novel strings together this collection of textured character profiles, unveiling each character’s “motives, resentments and disappointments” while also charting the de-evolution of the newspaper itself in such a way that the reader is fully invested in novel’s conclusive fate. Tom Rachman is certainly an emerging writer to watch! (9/10)

RollnSmoke Reviews: A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan (Random House, 2010)

Jennifer Egan’s fourth novel features an intricate web of characters mired in drugs, sex and the music business. Many of the characters are difficult to like, gritty and headed towards fierce self-destruction. While the writing, as ever, is strong and engaging, the reader has to work hard to keep track of the changing points of views and the shifting focus in cast. Chapters seem unconnected and often read like separate short stories so that the reader cannot always recall how each character is connected and therefore cannot discover an affecting central narrative in this novel (6.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: JUST KIDS by Patti Smith

JUST KIDS by Patti Smith (Harper Collins, 2010)

Winner of the National Book Award (“The Best of American Literature”), Patti Smith celebrates in memoir her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe that began one summer in New York City in 1968. In spare thoughtfully collected diction, Smith recounts how she and Mapplethorpe lived a gritty, Bohemian life devoted totally to the pursuit of art -- sometimes homeless, sometimes living at The Hotel Chelsea, for a long time living together -- each cultivating funky creativity amidst evolving androgyny. As an expression of their unique love, they vow never to “leave the other;” but they do love others, and as Robert lives into his homosexuality, they drift apart and evolve separate, ever-artistic lives, vow unbroken (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway

A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway (1964)

Ernest Hemingway’s only memoir, published posthumously several years after his suicide, covers the years 1921-1926 when he was young and married to his first wife, Hadley, living poor but happy with their young son, Bumby, in Paris. Hemingway was a struggling, oft- tippling, ever-hungry writer back then who juggled deep indulgence in life with inspired discipline at work. Here is a literary pastiche of keenly written scenes and snippets of dialogue with iconic luminaries like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald. What rises in retrospect as most poignant and wise is Hemingway’s lasting love for Hadley. “I wished I had died,” he writes in the end, “before I ever loved anyone but her.”

RollnSmoke Reviews: THREE STAGES OF AMAZEMENT by Carol Edgarian

Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian (Scribner, 2011)

As the central character, Lena Pepper, puts it, in modern marriage there are two “states” – “plateau and precipice” -- and in her second novel, Carol Edgarian explores these two states against the backdrop of urban family living in “the gorgeous sugar cake” of San Francisco, amidst the hope of a new Obama administration, a failing economy and the ugly strains of a Bernie Madoffesque society. Lena’s husband, Charlie, a doctor by training who feverishly peddles a newly patented robotic surgical device, is strung between “two irreconcilables” – his desire to succeed and his desire to be good to his wife and family -- while Lena longs to be a mighty career “star” as well as a good mother, all while searching to achieve an elusive grace. The domesticity covered here, while hip and contemporary, can verge on dull and is tinged with melodrama, but the writing is superb and leads the reader willingly via various bad decisions and regrets through the titular three stages of Silence, Disbelief and Talk (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Ballantine, 2011)

In her second novel poet-novelist Paula McLain re-tells the legendary tales of Ernest Hemingway’s earliest days as a struggling and married writer living in Paris in the early 1920’s primarily from the point of view of his first, and perhaps most beloved wife, Hadley Richardson. The rowdy escapades included here among expatriates like Pound, Anderson, Stein and Fitzgerald are mesmerizing, though McLain herself adds neither an original writing approach nor illuminating new information to what is already literary lore. She simply connects the dots of an intriguing life. Perhaps it is because Hadley and Ernest “drink too much and want too much” that their marriage is doomed, with a somewhat meek Hadley left as The Paris Wife, Ernest Hemingway’s first of four (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LIFE by Keith Richards

Life by Keith Richards with James Fox (Little Brown, 2010)

The infamous guitar player for The Rolling Stones offers up an account of his own, spirited and adventurous life, very much in his own words – unliterary and British raw -- so that it feels like you’re sitting with him, as friends, discussing his escapades in person over a cup or two of tea. An only child born at the end of World War II, young Keith was bullied as a kid, which may explain his “lovely and lasting rage against authority” which, throughout his life, keeps him ever and only one step ahead of the law. We learn about his stint in art school, his decade-long heroin addiction, his long friendship and personal war with childhood friend Mick Jagger, the death of his infant son, his first, turbulent marriage and second, still-lasting one, all laid against the backdrop of a rock star’s life loaded with drugs, sex and touring his Chicago-blues rooted music. True to its title, this is indeed, quite a Life (8.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE END OF THE AFFAIR

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (Penguin, 2004)

Originally published in London in 1951, Greene’s provocative story about an affair that fails to disintegrate is considered one of his greatest “catholic novels” in its wide consideration of faith. The short and quick-reading novella is primarily written from the frank, first person point of view of Bendricks, a rising writer in London during and after World War II, who carries on an affair with Sarah, a woman married to a conventional and easily duped civil servant. What emerges in the wake of this passionate and illicit relationship – this “ordinary, corrupt human love” -- is a shared struggle with hatred, love, jealousy and ultimately, belief, which Sarah catches “like a disease” (9/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Random House, 2010)

Epic in scope and ambitious in setting, this novel is set in 1799 in Nagasaki Harbor, Japan, at the farthest outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company and features a devout Dutch clerk – a “shogun’s hostage” -- who falls in love with a native midwife who is kidnapped and taken to a secret shrine and forced to serve as a sex slave. The story that unravels over the next 20 years is sometimes difficult to follow as it is disjointed and overloaded with exotic and conflicting characters engaged in fractured and off-shooting storylines (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, 2010)

Washington D.C.-based journalist tackles World War II in her sophomore effort (she also created the compelling narrative behind Seabiscuit). Once again Laura Hillenbrand crafts a fascinating, non-fiction story that reads just like flowing fiction and features a track Olympian, Louie Zamperini, who survives a wrenching Pacific bomber crash to float for weeks on a rubber raft until he is captured by the Japanese and held as a POW for years, bouncing from one horrific prisoner camp to another. Bewildered in the aftermath of his war service, Louie ultimately faces his demons and finds renewal in forgiveness (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HANRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, 2010)

This debut book by a young, accomplished science writer tells the story of the infamous HeLa cell, which came from the ovarian cancer mass of a poor, young black woman who accessed John Hopkins University Hospital for medical care in the early 1950’s. Stunning the world of science, Henrietta Lacks’ cells not only continued to live after her death, but they reproduced billions upon billions of times to create a backbone to science (particularly disease) research. While offering Henrietta’s life story, this book also tells the story of her family – especially of her devoted daughter, Deborah -- who never knew about their mother’s magnificent cells; therein the author touches upon the wider issues involving race, science, ethics and class (9/10).