RollnSmoke Literary Cafe

RollnSmoke Reviews: WHITE MUGHALS by William Dalrymple

2011-08-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-02-28T09:22:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T06:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

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).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas

2010-12-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-26T19:09:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T18:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-21T11:18:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-26T10:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-18T13:21:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

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).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN

2009-12-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann (Random House, 2010)

Winner of the National Book Award, this novel is Colum McCann’s emotional response to the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. He achieves resolve, hope and rebuilding by harkening back to New York City as it was in 1974 when Viet Nam was raging, art was flourishing, liberation theology was emerging and technology was quickly developing. The novel reads like a thick braid of short stories that each describes different lives of average New Yorkers – hookers in The Bronx, a soul-searching man at odds with his vows to The Order, drug-addicted artists from The Village, a therapy group of grieving war mothers, an 18-year old computer hack prodigy, a grandmother in jail, a judge, a lover. This intricate maze of people – whose ordinary days are charged with life by the hand of an awesomely skilled writer -- are joined together the day Phillipe Petit walks a tightrope wire between the iconic World Trade Center Towers on August 7, 1974. A stunning, broad portrait of New York City, McCann’s seventh novel, rooted in belief and grief, love and healing, is a smashing, impossible-to-put-down read (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE LAZARUS PROJECT

2009-12-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead Books, 2008)

Author Aleksandar Hemon, born in Sarajevo and now living in Chicago, creates a strangely intertwined narrative that centers on a struggling writer named Brik (also a Bosnian native who lives in Chicago post-9/11) who is inspired by the story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant who was shot to death in Chicago in 1908 amidst an ugly American obsession with anarchism. In his quest to write this immigrant story, Brik secures a grant, and with a thuggish childhood friend, travels to Ukraine, Moldova and ultimately to Sarejevo to realize the full story. During this strange, bleak journey, much is revealed about Brik, particularly about the nature of his strained marriage to an accomplished American neurosurgeon. But also, there are flashbacks to the surviving sister of the said unjustly murdered immigrant who is left alone to cope with abusive, crooked Chicago cops. Hemon is a skilled writer and manages to inject odd humor into weird predicaments, but ultimately details about pogroms and massacres, whore-houses and hateful murders, death and despair dominate this cinematic and complex narrative whose central mysteries are never fully resolved (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: AT HOME IN THE WORLD

2009-11-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard (Picador, 1999)

The daughter of brilliant, academic and dysfunctional parents and herself a precocious and driven achiever, Joyce Maynard was one of the first handful of girls to attend Phillips Exeter Academy and published her first book at 18. Also at 18, Maynard dropped out of Yale to move in with her 53-year-old lover, J.D. Salinger, “America’s Most Private Citizen.”

In this riveting, clearly-written and often epistolary memoir, Ms. Maynard explores her life-long battle with eating disorders, her father’s alcoholism and her desperate fixation to please her parents as well as her oddly reclusive older lover. When Salinger suddenly dumps her after a year, she is able to collect herself, gets back on her feet, gets married and has a family, using all her various life experiences as fodder for her writing. It is the process of writing this very memoir that precipitates her return to Salinger, all these years later, to ask the intriguing question: “What was my purpose in your life?” In then end, Maynard seizes upon the right to tell her own story and what a compelling story it is (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: A SPORT AND A PASTIME

2009-11-21T14:09:00.000-08:00

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967)

In one of the most erotic books I’ve ever read, James Salter, a trailblazer in erotic realism, describes explicit sex in a literary way. He develops a subtle though poignant mind-play between two lovers; Phillip Dean, a recent Yale drop-out and a plain, working girl named Anne-Marie who is from the French countryside and who Phillip picks up during a trust-funded romp through the French countryside.

Thrown into this sultry mix is the un-named, compulsively vicarious narrator who clearly admits “none of this is true” and so may possibly be dreaming the entire carnal tryst between his friend and the girl. While a bit redundant in its Sun Also Rises-like indulgent cycles of gluttony and sexual appetite, Salter is enviably skilled as writer, exacting evocative imagery with a spare, succinct use of words. By the end of the short novel, Phillip is consumed by a wicked boredom that contrasts dramatically with the novel’s tragic ending (8.5/10)

RollnSmoke Reviews: Ms. Hempel Chronicles

2009-10-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (Mariner Book, 2009)

Impressively, Ms. Bynum was a National Book Award finalist for her debut novel called Madeleine is Sleeping. This quick and light read, her sophomore effort, features a single woman in her late-20’s who works as a (mediocre) middle school English teacher. The chapters are vignettes (“chronicles”) that capture the life of this rather plain woman – rooted in nostalgic flashbacks to her childhood with her younger brother, Calvin, and her now-deceased father, memories of her fiancée to whom she is no longer engaged and of her teaching career – that work together not as an arching narrative but more as a string of playful and provincial stories. A great deal of the novel focuses on Ms. Hempel’s young students – ever “on the verge of something, brimming” -- who supplant her life. While the effect is charming and often amusing and the diction is admirable, the novel falls short of delivering any sort of meaningful message as Ms. Hempel herself admits that she is “aware of her own oblivion and innocence” (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: BICYCLE DIARIES

2009-10-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne (Penguin, 2009).

Since the early-1980’s Talking Heads front-man and visual artist David Byrne has been riding a bicycle as his primary means of transportation in New York City. His seventh book ( -- Renaissance Man! -- ) is a travelogue that goes back at least a dozen years and loosely chronicles his experience biking in various cities across the globe including Berlin, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Manila, Sydney, London, San Francisco and New York. From the vantage point of a bicycle, Byrne “catch[es] glimpses of the mind of [his] fellow man, as expressed in cities … [that] are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs.” While his writing is clear and engaging, the subjects he covers are impersonal, random and often lack segues. In fact, the theme of bike-riding serves mainly as vessel for a jumbo-load of Byrne’s thoughts on politics, art, architecture, history, fashion, urban planning, cultural stereotypes, and, of course, music (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: UNACCUSTOMED EARTH by Jhumpa Lahiri

2009-10-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Vintage Contemporaries, 2009)

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri offers a magnificent collection of eight stories that was voted Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The LA Times (among numerous other publications). Most of the stories take place in and around (often academic) Boston, Massachusetts, but maintain cherished family connections and traditions from (Bengali) India. The stories explore poignant moments among intimates – family members, long-time friends, lovers -- that present essential life questions: What does it mean to be loyal? To be family? To be home? To be alive? Lahiri deftly probes the mysteries and complexities that fuel meaningful human relationships, eliciting surprising empathy and interest from the reader (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: How Fiction Works

2009-10-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

How Fiction Works by James Woods (Picador, 2008)

James woods, a prominent critic and staff writer at The New Yorker and visiting professor at Harvard, presents a highly-acclaimed short book packed with smart insights and judgments about the craft of fiction. His aim is to pose theoretical questions about novel-writing and to answer them practically. In addressing the importance of style, consciousness and characterization and the use of detail and metaphor, Woods draws exhaustively from the literary masters, which requires of his reader a near- encyclopedic knowledge of the history of literature. While no doubt intelligent, Woods’ brief but pedantic study of the novel verges on overbearing and without the benefit of his live instruction becomes boring (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: SAG HARBOR

2009-09-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Sag Harbor (Doubleday, 2009) by Colson Whitehead

Sag Harbor is a Hampton vacation enclave for mostly black New York City families, many of whom have had homes on the shore for generations. Benji and his brother head out to Sag early each May to wile away their summer hours, mostly unsupervised, living lazy days that hinge on a “paradox of black boys with beach houses.” The novel focuses on the summer of 1985, when Benji is 15 and gets his first job at Joni Waffle, has BB gun fights and GoKart races with his long-time Sag friends, drinks beer and gets his braces off. A coming-of-age novel veined with amusing anecdotes and 80’s iconography, nothing important actually happens in the novel – it’s like a Seinfeld episode – funny, but lacking point and drama (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: A GATE AT THE STAIRS

2009-09-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (Knopf, 2009)

Lorrie Moore’s much-anticipated third novel features Tassie, a geeky, disconnected 20-year old from rural Wisconsin who, enrolled at a nearby college, lands a job as a nanny for a white family who is trying to adopt a black child, and a new world of “wordless racial experiences” thereby unfolds. The ensuing plot rides a strong undercurrent of local as well as national issues, tethered to a post-9/11 America wedged-in between wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While Moore’s writing is still playful, some of her humor loses its subtlety, and the narrative isn’t jump-started until the last 1/3 of the book when a truckload of vicious backstory is finally unleashed, and a string of life traumas draws the story to a dreadful close. In the end the novel is not as spectacular as I hoped and ends hopeless, depressing and gray (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE FOREVER WAR

2009-08-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins (Vintage, June, 2009).

Dexter Filkins, a singular and brave foreign correspondent for The New York Times, offers an informed, insider’s glimpse to the chaotic war fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fascinating study of contemporary war, Filkins achieves raw and riveting witness in his written portrayal of people, images, events and interviews. In Afghanistan he covers the strife and brutality of Talibani executions, wandering orphans in Kabul, landmines, competing war lords, hellish checkpoints overrun with rape and plunder. And in Iraq – which is the centerpiece of the book – he reports from the battlefront, embedded with American soldiers who are themselves children, waging war in a chaotic tribal culture where Sunnis and Shiites and hundreds of insurgent groups are entangled in a brutal battle of revenge. By becoming “part of the place, part of the despair, part of the death,” Filkins offers a plainly intelligent, non-political, non-preachy, horrifying portrait of war (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LOVING FRANK

2009-08-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine Books, 2008).

Mamah Bothwick Cheney is an educated but unfulfilled mother and housewife living in early-20th century Oak Park, Illinois, when she meets and begins a romantic affair with the brilliant and legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. At the expense of their marriages and families, they run off to Europe together and return to The States to commence a bucolic life, co-habitating “in sin” among the isolated fields of Wisconsin where Frank designs an idyllic farming homestead just for them called Taliesin. While this historical novel provides insights into the eccentric characters of both protagonists – they are “alive. Together” -- it is difficult for the reader to summon sympathy for their much-maligned and exposed romance because they’re unbearably narcissistic and comfortably privileged as each constantly indulges his and her artistic and intellectual whims, so that there is no preparation for the final, climaxing tragedy of the story (7/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: LE DIVORCE

2009-07-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Le Divorce by Diane Johnson (Plume, 1998). An amusing, quick summer read features Isabel Walker, a young American from Santa Barbara, who has recently dropped out of USC Film School to head to Paris to live with her step-sister, Roxy, who is pregnant and separated from her French husband who has run off with a Czech sociologist named Magda. Because Isabel is young and fun and seemingly “indifferent to her future,” the reader experiences the high culture and sumptuous food and worldly sights of Paris from an unpretentious, newcomer’s point of view. It’s not long before Isabel begins a secret affair with one of Roxy’s in-laws, a seasoned and accomplished 70-year old French political figure. A string of somewhat far-fetched tragedies, including a suicide attempt, a kidnapping and a homicide, jars the frivolous vibe of the first half of the book, and Isabel’s response to these events reveals her to be deeply flawed, narcissistic and greedy (8/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE SONG IS YOU

2009-07-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

THE SONG IS YOU by Arthur Phillips (Random House, 2009).

Called a “dark comedy about obsession and loss,” this newest novel by acclaimed author Arthur Phillips is his least cohesive and absorbing. For recently-divorced and grieving protagonist Julian Donahue, longing and music go hand-in-hand. Living in New York and working as an advertising director, he fixates on an emerging club rocker Cait O’Dwyer, who is half his age, as a conduit out of deep despair. In the course of pursuit, his musical taste is revealed as dated (“the rock of aging”), his sexuality emerges as defeated and his stalking is creepy. The strategy of slowly revealing truths – about a dead son, a manic ex-wife -- doesn’t work here mainly because the present tense non-romance between this narrator and the young girl-rocker fails to compel. (6.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul

2009-07-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (Patrick French, Knopf, 2008). When I chose this fat book from the shelf, I had a vague idea of who V.S. Naipaul is – I’d read A Bend in the River – and knew that he’d won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, but I had no idea I would find his life story so irresistibly – I couldn’t put this book down!

Naipaul was born to a poor East Indian Brahmin family in colonial Trinidad in 1932 and rose to become a great writer, at once outrageous, funny and offensive. Vividly written to reveal the truth of an imperfect life, biographer Patrick French shows how Naipaul struggles in constant exile – neither Indian nor British nor islander – a writer of the world without a homeland – to achieve a writing style that is a combination of travel, fiction, history, politics, literary criticism and autobiography.

What is most interesting about Naipaul’s life, however, is his fascinating relationships with women: His mother, always poor and at home in Trinidad, whom he refuses to see towards the end of her life; his tragic, literary spouse, Pat, whom he relentlessly taps for deep and comforting loyalty; his own claim to once “being a great prostitute man”; his lover, Margaret, an Anglo-Argentine, with whom he has a torrid and twisted affair for 24 years; his sister, Kamla, to whom he is devoted during his lifetime; and his second wife, Nadira, a divorced journalist from Kenya and Pakistan, whom he marries directly after Pat’s death from cancer. Indeed it is his relationships with these women that bring his full writing character to the fore: “His scope, irascibility, outsider status, rudeness, Pat’s silent presence.” (9.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE ENTHUSIAST

2009-06-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

THE ENTHUSIAST (Charlie Haas, Harper Collins, 2009).

Loaded with Americana, this debut novel is a coming-of-age story about a young, unattached Californian named Henry who “associate edits” his way across the country. Working for many and various “enthusiast” magazines, Henry visits obscure towns and encounters strange people in his work. The entire novel is undershot with a humorist sensibility, but the reader only gains empathy for Henry in Part II of the novel when he finally commits himself to marriage and is also forced to provide emotional support for his much idealized, geek-genius brother, a stem cell researcher, who endures a debilitating head injury (7.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: STERN MEN

2009-06-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

STERN MEN by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin, 2009).

Before there was EAT, PRAY, LOVE, there was STERN MEN, Elizabeth's Gilbert's debut novel, originally published in 2000, about lobster fishermen living and working on the isolated islands off The Maine Coast. (Over-) loaded with fishing lore and history, the story centers on a young girl, Ruth Thomas, who grows up during the 1970’s and 80’s as an only child, living with her lobster-fishing father and without her mysterious and estranged mother. While Gilbert’s writing is lively and compelling, the story’s timeline is choppy with oddly placed backstory and burdened with distracting details, especially regarding the Courne-Haven-Fort Niles Lobster Wars. Gilbert does a much better job crafting female-female relationships (i.e. Ruth’s connection with her generous and loving neighbor, Mrs. Pommeroy) than she does with the male-female relationships (i.e. her relationship with her father which is unnatural). Even so, Gilbert keeps the reader onboard until Ruth Thomas finally exacts restitution of her family’s honor (6.5/10).

RollnSmoke Reviews: THE BOSTONIANS

2009-06-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

THE BOSTONIANS by Henry James (MacMillan, 1886).

Written during James’ “Middle Period,” this story centers on an unlikely love triangle between Olive Chancellor – a spinster Bostonian “nihilist radical” -- who befriends young and charming Verena Tarrant who sports a “mystic faculty” to speak on behalf of the cause of Women’s Emancipation. Along comes Basil Ransom, a Post-Civil War Mississippian without means, who moves to NYC and interferes with Olive’s plan to keep Verena “in the single sisterhood; to keep her, above all, for herself.” Told from a vague first person omniscient narrator, the story is dated, the language often drawn-out (“farinaceous,” “lucubrations,” “pusillanimous”) and the drama somewhat redundant. Ultimately, given Verena’s independent nature and Basil’s chauvinism, the pairing is improbable (6.5/10).

RollnSmoke Recommends: Best New Non-Fiction

2009-06-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

DREAMS FROM MY FATHER (Barack Obama, Three Rivers, 2004). Not at all new -- but at-the-moment essential for a momentous present. Obama’s memoir was originally published in 1995 -- before Obama was a father, a senator or the 44th President of the United States and was written in “the belief that the story of [his] family, and [his] efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience.” (9.5/10 – See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com).

THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Jeffrey Toobin, Anchor Books, 2008). A fascinating and educational primer about the longest-seated Supreme Court in American history. 9/10.

THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD (Fareed Zakaria, Norton, 2008) A direct and clear rendering of the forthcoming Post American World whereby the glorious sheen that U.S. has enjoyed for hundreds of years gives way to “the rise of the rest.” 8.5/10.

SERVICE INCLUDED: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter (Phoebe Damrosch, Harper, 2008). An entertaining (debut) account of an 18 month stint as a waiter at a newly-opened, ultra-swanky Manhattan restaurant. (9/10 – See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com).

OUTLIERS: The Story of Success (Malcom Gladwell, Little Brown, 2008). This nifty study of why geniuses who are successful become successful (right time, right place, right conditions and practice, practice, practice!) reads like a long, engaging magazine feature. 8/10.

BEAUTIFUL BOY (David Sheff, Houghton Mifflin, 2008) along with TWEAK (Nic Sheff, Atheneum, 2007) An interesting side-by-side analysis of a father-son relationship where the father looks back and sees his part in the evolution of his son’s full-fledged addiction and where the son navigates his spiral. 9/10.

RollnSmoke Recommends: Best New Fiction

2009-06-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE (Andrew Sean Greer, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008). “We think we know the ones we love” is how this story of a marriage, set in 1953 San Francisco, kicks-out. Pearlie marries Holland Cooke, a loyal, decent soldier whose truths are revealed when, one day, a stranger appears at her doorstep, a conscientious objector whom Holland knows from days spent in wartime “mental deferral.” (8/10 – See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com).

THE MAYTREES (Annie Dillard, Harper Perennial, 2008). This portrait of an abiding marriage lived in P-Town, Cape Cod – a varying patchwork of glimpses into a long-lived relationship -- is old school, its words poetic and often formal. (8/10 – See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com).

THE WHITE TIGER (Aravind Adiga, Free Press, 2008). A provocative debut novel short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, this is the sardonic, epistolary narrative of a “1/2-baked”who resists his ingrained sense of servitude and refuses to live his life in the Great Indian Rooster Coop and ultimately moves from hunted criminal to pillar of Bangalore Society, treading a fine line between loyalty and betrayal. ( 9/10 – See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com).

A GOLDEN AGE (Tahmima Anam, Harper Perennial, 2009). This brilliant debut novel explores the exotic landscape and gritty realities of the war for Bangladeshi Independence from (West) Pakistan in 1971 and the strained divisions across generations and disintegrating family. (9/10 -- See full review at RollnSmokeRecords.blogspot.com). 9/10.

NETHERLAND (Joseph O’Neill, Pantheon, 2008). In the uncertain wake of 9/11 and during the subsequent separation between the protagonist, a big Dutchman named Hans, and his British wife, Hans develops an unusual love for the game of cricket and carves an unlikely social niche for himself among West Indians in New York. 8.5/10.

BRIGHT SHINY MORNING (James Frey, Harper Collins, 2008) At once a history of Los Angeles and a cat’s cradle weaving of its varied personifications, (controversial author) Frey draws his readers into a narrative web that satisfies. 8.5/10.

THE CONDITION (Jennifer Haigh, 2008) Centering the reader in the midst of a dysfunctional family, Haigh astutely explores the natural truths of challenged family relationships. 8.5/10.

THE TEN YEAR NAP (Meg Wolitzer, Riverhead, 2008) In her witty and insightful way, Wolitzer hits a rings-true funny bone in her portrayal of smart and educated women who leave the work force to forge family-centered lives but want to return at age 40. 8/10.