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).
Monday, July 26, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
RollnSmoke Reviews: EVERYTHING LOVELY, EFFORTLESS, SAFE by Jenny Hollowell
EVERYTHING LOVELY, EFFORTLESS, SAFE by Jenny Hollowell (Holt, 2010)
It’s the writing that shimmers in this quick-reading debut novel by Jenny Hollowell – spare, poignant and eerily abstracted – the words get to the truth of the matter. But as the central character, Birdie, sees it, "nobody ever wants the truth." As a survivor, Birdie runs away from her depressed mother, absent-missionary father and young, devout husband and escapes to L.A. with nothing but a sense of destiny in her pocket that involves bright lights and massive success as an actress. Teetering between being “pretty” vs. “beautiful” and armed with a devoted agent, Birdie jumps headfirst into the quintessential L.A. lifestyle which drips with narcissism and tingles with sexual exploits and sinks in a sad sense of selling out. While Birdie “drinks too much and loves to little,” she is without hope, without fear and is therefore able to survive (8.5/10).
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).
Saturday, July 17, 2010
RollnSmoke Reviews: MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
While on assignment in Haiti, Pulitzer-prize-winning author, Tracy Kidder, meets Doctor Paul Farmer in 1994 and follows closely his career in the years that follow. Farmer, a Harvard-educated specialist in infectious diseases, chooses Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, as his base of operations. Known there as Dokte Paul, he devotes his life to treating the poor primarily for Tuberculosis and AIDS (his thesis subject) by way of an anthropological approach to medicine. A scholar and a writer, intelligent and unafraid to bear witness, Farmer’s goal is transformation which he achieves in great part through his work with Boston-based Partners in Health, a leader in world-wide public health, which spearheads TB control projects in Peru and Russia. Ultimately, it is the inspired medical base he creates – called Zansi Lasante, located in the central plateau of Haiti – which epitomizes his dream to end medical disparity (9/10).
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).
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
RollnSmoke Reviews: THE LAY OF THE LAND
THE LAY OF THE LAND by Richard Ford (Vintage 2007)
Hailed as “Best Book of the Year” by The New York Times, this novel features New Jersey real estate agent-husband and father, Frank Bascombe, the same main character in Ford’s two previous novels who, post-prostate procedure, feels out of synch as he meets mid-life or what he calls his “Permanent Period.” Observant, masculine and often funny, Ford reveals Frank’s predicament as he anxiously anticipates a Thanksgiving dinner spent with his bi-sexual daughter and estranged and quirky son and without his second wife who has suddenly taken off with her first husband who she thought was dead. While Frank is easy to like -- he describes predicaments with folksy detail and with a wry sense of humor -- his stories are sometimes over-loaded with digression so that the overall narrative is lean on action. The final pages unravel in a violent and bizarre way with all the narrative parts coming together in an unlikely and tidy manner (8/10).
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).