Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout
Random House
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

In a voice more powerful and compassionate than ever before, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout binds together thirteen rich, luminous narratives into a book with the heft of a novel, through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge.

At the edge of the continent, Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through this brilliant writer’s eyes, it’s in essence the whole world, and the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama–desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love.

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance: a former student who has lost the will to live: Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

My Review

This is a collection of stories about a group of ordinary people living in a small town in Maine, their joys, sorrows, tragedies and grief, all centered around the main character, Olive Kitteridge. Normally, this is the kind of fiction I stay away from. I was afraid it would be an overwrought melodrama about provincial people living in a boring town. Yet, I was so absorbed by the lives of these people and had a difficult time putting the book down.

The characters were very well developed, the town vividly described, and the emotions raw. Olive Kitteridge left me feeling very unsettled. I admire her quiet strength, her forthrightness, her realistic views of life, and the fact that she controls her emotions. I hate her brusqueness, her self-centeredness, and her difficulty with accepting changes. She was a complex character, definitely not your stereotypical cranky old lady. Each story is presented from different viewpoints and shows Olive’s many sides as she interacts with family, neighbors and friends, as she experiences age, loneliness, grief and love. The characters are realistically drawn with such an emotional depth that I found I could easily identify with them and even see similarities to people I know. Olive Kitteridge makes me hate those qualities in myself that are like hers and makes me look at others with more patience and a less judgmental eye.

LET ME BE FRANK WITH YOU BY RICHARD FORD

Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”At some point you just need to leave the theater so the next crowd can see the movie.”

Frank Bascombe can no longer fool himself that he is even a mature middle age. He is, frankly, fully qualified now to claim his twilight years. There is a consistent pain emanating from his prostate, a reminder of a recent bout of cancer. His footing on a sandy beach or on an icy sidewalk is now something potentially treacherous. He is decommissioning words that he finds to be unnecessary or imprecise in expressing himself. He has decided that five friends is plenty and one of those five is himself.

He is trying to keep his life simple.

His ex-wife Ann has moved back to Haddam. All the gin joints in all the world and she decided to walk back into Frank’s. She is living in a high end assisted living facility. It seems one of her ex-husbands provided her with a substantial portfolio. Frank, out of some form of obligation that makes no sense even to himself, goes to see her once a month, muses about her fruit pictures that make him uncomfortable with visions of vaginas, and waits to see how many expertly thrust daggers she manages to squeeze between his ribs. She never goes for the kill, but like a cat wounds him enough that it is impossible for him to escape.

”What I’ve attempted in my visits, and will try once again tonight, is to offer Ann what I consider my ‘Default Self’; this, in the effort to give her what I believe she most wants from me---bedrock truth. I do this by portraying for her the self I’d like others to understand me to be, and at heart believe I am: a man who doesn’t lie (or rarely), who presumes nothing from the past, who takes the high, optimistic road (when available), who doesn’t envision the future, who streamlines his utterances (no embellishments), and in all instances acts nice. In my view, this self plausibly represents one-half of the charmed-union-of-good-souls every marriage promises to convene but mostly fails to---as was true of ours long ago.”

Frank is still counselling his old client base about the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy. He used to sell real estate and now most of those high dollar beach homes that gave him a comfortable retirement, including one he owned, are now piles of expensive kindling. Real estate agents are being shot, as if they could anticipate a hurricane of the magnitude of Sandy devastating the coast, so a vengeful ex-client is one more thing for Frank to be worried about.

His wife Sally is counselling victims of the hurricane and finds her own state of mind is spiraling downward with the daily barrage of stories of loss. She isn’t sure that Frank is dealing with the devastation properly. It is always hard to know now, with TV dictating the proper responses to any social situation, whether one is being stoic enough or too stoic or too emotional or too cold to any given circumstance. Like everything else even our responses to tragedy have become homogenized. Frank has tried several different levels of response, but hasn’t been a good enough actor to convince Sally of any of them. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It has more to do with living long enough to understand that unfortunate things...well...happen.

”History’s just somebody else’s War and Peace".

Sally thinks he needs to write a book, but he has been down that road before. Novelists are ”(the last outpost of a certain species of doomed optimist.) Frank doesn’t really want to do anything with his last remaining days on this planet, but he does want to enjoy them as best he can. He weighs the results of even spending time with his grown children. Can he afford the time? They are relatively self-sufficient after all. He wants to elude pain and suffering as best he can. He wants to avoid further time killing entanglements with the past or the future. He is firmly trying to stay planted in the present, but is beset on all sides with the pull of responsibility.

There are four Frank Bascombe books. The first is The Sportswriter, the second is Independence Day, the third is The Lay of the Land, and of course this book makes up the fourth. I hope this is not the last time I spend with Frank Bascombe. I would not suggest parachuting in and reading this one without reading the other books first. The books are the progression of a life. I don’t think a reader can fully appreciate the twilight years of Frank Bascombe without seeing the younger Frank who is still battling, losing, winning, and dreaming. We all wear different skins for different parts of our lives and to know Frank in one stage without knowing him for the others is like eating the core of an apple without the juicy benefits of tasting the fruit.

I must go back and read them all again because I read each of them while still decades younger than Frank. I enjoyed them none the less, but I have a feeling I will achieve a higher affinity with them by rereading them again. This series has been compared favorably to the John Updike Rabbit books, but the Rabbit books are my least favorite Updike books while the Frank Bascombe books routinely end up on my favorite books list. If you haven’t read Richard Ford give The Sportswriter a try. Please give Frank my regards and tell him I’ll stop by and visit with him again real soon.


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Charm City

Charm City by Laura Lippman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When someone at the Beacon-Light leaks an unfavorable story about the millionaire planning on bringing an NBA team to Baltimore, Tess Monaghan is hired to figure how who spilled the beans. At the same time, she's trying to figure out who put her uncle in the hospital and if it has anything to do with the greyhound in her possession.

Laura Lippman comes highly recommended but two books into her Tess Monaghan series, I'm just not feeling it.

First off, astute readers will notice my teaser differs from the official teaser on the back cover of the book. That's because the back cover gives away the first 30% of the book. Secondly, while the overall plot engaged me, the love triangle subplot annoyed me to no end. It seemed like a step back after the first book in the series where Tess showed no signs of thinking with her genitalia.

All that aside, I did like the book for the most part. Tess ran down leads like a champ and didn't do anything really stupid to advance the plot. The supporting cast was pretty well done and I didn't see the twist at the end coming. I liked Laura Lippman's depiction of Baltimore but it's not up to the level of George Pelecanos' DC or Lawrence Block's New York.

I'm trying to reveal less than the back cover on my edition so this is turning out to be a short review. I did find the revelations into Wink, the millionaire,'s background very interesting and much cleverer than I originally thought. Wink's wife and ex both seemed realistic despite their short time in the forefront.

While I liked Charm City overall, I didn't like it enough to rush out and get the next book in the series and I'm not sure Lippman and I will have a third outing. Three stars.


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A Taut New Thriller from Rachel Howzell Hall

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars


Twenty-five years ago, Elouise Norton's older sister, Tori, was caught stealing candy from a neighborhood store owned by a man named Napoleon Crase. In a panic, Elouise ran from the store and never saw her sister again. The police conducted a perfunctory investigation but never discovered what might have happened to Tori.

Perhaps the investigation was so slipshod because the cops were lazy or perhaps because they were overburdened. Perhaps it was because the victim, Tori, was a black teenager who did not have a sterling reputation to begin with. But whatever the case, a quarter of a century later, Elouise remains haunted by the loss of her sister and has become a homicide detective herself, having promised her mother that she would yet bring Tori home.

Elouise (Lou) and her newbie white male partner are called to the scene of a condominium construction site, where a seventeen-year-old girl named Monique Dawson has been found hanging in a closet. Lou's new partner, Colin Taggert, jumps to the conclusion that the dead girl was a suicide, but Lou quickly disabuses him of that notion and insists, correctly, that Monique is the victim of a homicide.

Interestingly, the condo development project is owned by Napoleon Crase who, in the years since Tori's disappearance, has pulled himself up by the bootstraps to become a millionaire developer, and the site of the project is very near the site of the store where Tori disappeared.

Inevitably, these coincidences will weigh on Lou, but will they compromise her ability to conduct a full and fair investigation into the death of Monique Dawson? And as if she doesn't have enough on her mind to begin with, Lou's husband, a game developer, is in Japan. He's calling Lou infrequently and is generally staying out of touch. Lou wonders if he's cheating; if so, it wouldn't be the first time. The last time Lou caught him, he "apologized" by buying her a $90,000 Porsche SUV, but that may not be enough if he's straying again.

Lou pursues the case, which takes a variety of twists and turns and involves some pretty sleazy characters. But she's a detective driven by the need to know the truth and she pursues it with a grim determination. She's a new and original character, and Rachel Howzell Hall introduces her in a very compelling story. Hall also creates a very convincing and intriguing setting in an area of south L.A. that's undergoing a black gentrification, and the end result is a book that will appeal to large numbers of crime fiction readers. I'm looking forward eagerly to Lou's next case.  

Go To England, Visit St. Albans, Thank Me Later

The St. Albans Mapguide by Michael Middleditch
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am in love with these guidebooks and no one's going to stop me marrying them!

Michael Middleditch produced only a few of these very informative Mapguides and they were mostly of major destinations: London, NY, Paris, and Amsterdam; all except for this one. St. Albans.




Where the F is St. Albans?! You'll find it just north of London, about a 30 minute train ride, and thus it makes for a very manageable and delightful day trip out of London.

Why delightful? Well, for tourists it packs in, pound for pound per square mile, the most sights of interest you're likely to see outside of London. It's great for walking about in circular routes that will take you by the famed cathedral and historical pubs like...

Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (tee-hee!), one among a handful which are vying for the "oldest pub in England" title.

(I love that one of the top googled pics of this historic pub includes my brother [seated, center] and my mom [rightside, in blue top, facing away])

...as well as the not-to-be-missed Roman ruins (like a very mini Colosseum and better than anything I saw in London!) and their accompanying museum (informative for adults and kid friendly too).



If you go, try to include a walk along Fishpool Street with its dangerous-if-you're-drunk sidewalk, something to be wary of for visitors of excellent pubs like the Red Lion.

St. Albans is a marvelous little place that is more than just a postcardy photo-op. It's a living, working town that combines a bit of fun for vacationers who also want to see - maybe not the work-a-day world of Bedford, Bethnal Green or Slough - but something closer to a slice of England's reality beyond the holiday set. Middleditch's booklet does a bang up job of encapsulating the town's sense of community, what it has to offer and just overall illuminating this little patch of England.




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Garden Spells

Sarah Addison Allen
Bantam Books
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.

For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways.

As the sisters reconnect and learn to support one another, each finds romance where she least expects it, while Sydney's child, Bay, discovers both the safe home she has longed for and her own surprising gifts. With the help of their elderly cousin Evanelle, endowed with her own uncanny skills, the Waverley women redeem the past, embrace the present, and take a joyful leap into the future.

My Review

For generations, the Waverly family has made their home in Bascom, North Carolina. Each of the Waverly women possesses a unique magic which has made them a curiosity in the town, but their oddness also keeps others at a distance. Claire is a caterer who uses the enchanted herbs and flowers in her garden to prepare exquisite dishes that affect the eater's feelings. Claire’s aunt, Evanelle, gives odd and random gifts that she knows the recipient will need in the future. Her younger sister, Sydney, has a knack for creating just the right hairstyles for her clients. Even Sydney’s daughter, Bay, has a special talent for knowing just where something (or someone) belongs.

The fun starts when Sydney flees with her daughter from an abusive man and returns to the home she abandoned. Claire’s quiet life is suddenly thrown in turmoil, and both sisters are forced to deal with their past. Claire gradually succumbs to the charms of the man next door, and Sydney finds love with a childhood friend.

Garden Spells was a light, pleasant, and enchanting romance that was just a little too sweet, sentimental, and predictable for me. The men are too good to be true, the villains are stereotypes, and there’s very little conflict.

I loved the big and cantankerous apple tree with a mind of its own that throws apples at unsuspecting victims.

Not my cup of tea, but should please those readers who like magic, love, and happy endings.

THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH BY DOUGLAS KENNEDY

The Woman in the Fifth by Douglas Kennedy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”I wanted to get it all down on paper; a record of what happened----just in case something did happen to me---- and to try and convince myself that I was not living in a state of permanent delusion. But why should you accept this story as given? It’s just a story----my story. And like all stories, it isn’t, in the pure sense of the word, true. It’s just my version of the truth. Which means it is----and isn’t----true at all.”


Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas, two actors I enjoyed watching interact in the movie.

This all started, as do many things, with just a happenstance. I was home over lunch and was just skimming through the channels for something to watch while I munched down on the salad I’d so industriously chopped, when Kristin Scott Thomas filled the screen of the TV. She had just opened her door to let Ethan Hawke walk into her apartment and he was trying to kiss her. She leaned her face away from him, but we hear her unzip his trousers. We can only see their faces as she proceeds to give him a helping hand. (view spoiler)[(The demise of the handjob has obviously been greatly exaggerated.) (hide spoiler)]. She never lets him touch her until he...uhh...well you know. I watched about twenty minutes of the movie before I had to return to work. I caught other slices of the movie at different times as it was rotating on HBO, SHOWTIME, or STARZ so I was starting to piece together the plot.

Instead of watching the movie as it was intended to be watched, from start to finish, I decided to read the book first.

Ok, so I knew the twist of the plot from my almost sacrilegious piece meal viewing of the movie. My apologies to the director. He deserved better from me, but if I hadn’t used a part of his movie as a mere diversion, as I masticated my salad, who knows when I would have finally gotten around to reading Douglas Kennedy.

Harry Ricks is a college professor at a small university in Ohio. He teaches film studies and what makes a teacher really good is when they are absolutely crazy about what they teach. He loves films and he uses that love to connect with his students. He soon achieves tenure just as his wife’s career starts to circle the drain. She is not happy with herself and she is certainly not happy with her husband.

Harry has jumped through all the hoops. He got married, had a kid, and had landed a reasonably high paying job. Just as he is reaching the reward part of his life, everything starts to unravel. We all contribute to our own demise and Harry is no exception.

He may have pulled the trigger, but others wired up the bomb.

In the aftermath, Harry finds himself the subject of a media witch hunt and the recipient of the full, scathing, condemnation of his colleagues. What hurts most of all is his own daughter telling him she doesn’t want to ever see him again. It isn’t a difficult decision to leave the smoldering, crumbling remains of his life behind and catch a plane to Paris.


Harry falls into a Yves Klein blue painting seeing the layers beyond blue paint.

A lifelong dream, reached under the wrong circumstances. He does not take enough money with him and soon he is on the verge of destitution. He is truly Down and Out in Paris. He is living in the part of town where only the most recent, most desperate immigrants live. He doesn’t have a work permit so his only avenue for sustaining himself is to take a night job watching a warehouse. It would allow him all the time in the world to work on his novel.

Five hundred words a day.

He knows he is working for criminals, but can justify it to himself by remaining ignorant about what actually goes on in the warehouse. Who are these people he buzzes into the building late at night? He puzzles on it, but does not let curiosity kill the cat.

Oh, and his neighbor Omar, the man who can’t go to the bathroom without leaving essence of Omar on every surface, is blackmailing him over…”And her smoky, raki-coated mouth tasted...well, smoky and raki-coated.”

**Sigh**, it is always hard to distinguish properly between what are self-destructive decisions and what are opportunities for illicit pleasure.

And then he meets Margit. ”The moonlight brought her into focus. She was a woman who had some years ago traversed that threshold marked middle age, but was still bien conservee. Of medium height with thick chestnut-brown hair that was well-cut and just touched her shoulders. She was slender to her waist, with just a hint of heft around her thighs. As the light crossed her face, I could see a long-healed scar across her throat.”

She lives in the Fifth arrondissement. She is strikingly handsome rather than beautiful with a sexuality that burns a man down to the essentials. She challenges the moral, uniquely American, complexities of his guilt. She provides a lifeboat in what is quickly becoming a cesspool of grasping hands trying to pull him under.

With this muse, this intellectually challenging muse, he begins to write a thousand words a day. He starts to feel like a man again. His creativity blossoms.

She limits how often he can see her. As each day passes between meetings, his anticipation becomes a thinner wire vibrating at a higher and higher frequency. The only way to release this tension is to touch her, to hear her voice, to for a few hours possess her.

People who threaten Harry, and there are way, way too many of those, start to have...well...unusual mishaps.


The movie Contempt starring the always lovely Brigitte Bardot and the always menacing Jack Palance was one of the movies that Harry went to see in Paris.

This is my first Douglas Kennedy, but it will most certainly not be my last. One of the interesting differences between the film and the book is that the movie does not convey the humor that is prevalent throughout the book. I actually snorted a few times while reading the book which happens whenever I’m surprised by unexpected humor. Kennedy also does a wonderful job of exploring and sharing Paris with us. He has written a few travel books and the talent for describing a place in a tantalizing fashion was most assuredly on display. Harry might be down and out, but the beauty of Paris certainly lessened each new catastrophe.

This book basically hit on all cylinders for me. I identified with the character and his circumstances. I’ve never had my career actually become a house burning to the foundation situation, but I’ve had some brushes with potential disaster. He makes bad decisions, but so do most people. Harry is simply colossally unlucky. His unwise decisions have the worst possible outcomes. He loves French films, an endearing trait, and spends every moment possible escaping from his life to the flickering screen of a movie theater. If I had been a tad more unlucky I could have found myself in Paris watching French cinema, rubbing shoulders with Turkish gangsters, and making love with a sexually explosive, alluring, Hungarian intellectual.

Wait...did I say unlucky?

Well, you’ll have to read the book to see just how unfortunate a windfall such as that can be. The twist is marvelous.




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Revenge of the Spellmans

Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Izzy Spellman is looking to get back into the detective game when a man hires her to see what his wife is up to. Meanwhile, what is with her brother David? Who is blackmailing Izzy? Why is her car never where she left it? And did Rae really cheat on the PSATs? All these questions and more will be answered in Revenge of the Spellmans!

Revenge of the Spellmans is the third book in the Spellman series and Lisa Lutz shows no signs of slowing down. Not only that, she's not afraid to shake things up. At the beginning of the book, Izzy is working for Milo as a bartender when she gets a chance to get back into the game. As with the previous two outings, Izzy's case is secondary to the infernal machinations of her family.

The overall plot moves forward quite a bit in this book. Izzy's dad wants her to take over the business when the Unit retire. David's up to something again. Rae's trying to drive a wedge between Henry and his new girlfriend. Morty and Milo are also facing tribulations of their own. Oh, and Izzy has to go to therapy, which is good for some laughs.

As with the previous two books, Revenge of the Spellmans is fun without overstaying its welcome. There were a few tender moments in between all the one-liners and casual familial surveillance. I'm glad Izzy got arrested a few less times in this book, though I was a little disappointed the way things (didn't) develop between her and Henry. I just want them to get together and make detective babies. Is that too much to ask?

I like that Lisa Lutz isn't keeping the Spellmans at static ages. Rae's sixteen and a half at the end of this book, for instance. I'm not looking forward to her going away to college in a book or two.

Once again, Lisa Lutz has navigated her quirky detective family through a minefield of deceit and distrust in the most hilarious way possible. Four out of five stars.

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A Fun Ride on the Low End to Nowhere

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars


This is a very entertaining, hard-boiled novel featuring a skip tracer/bounty hunter who goes by the name of Streeter. He's a former football player, bouncer and accountant with four ex-wives. He now lives and works out of a room in a former church in Denver and tries to maintain as low a profile as possible while working principally for a bail bondsman named Frank Dazzler who also has his home and office in the church.

As the book opens, Streeter is in pursuit of a very sexy woman named Story Moffatt. She's the hard-charging owner of an advertising agency, and she's claiming debilitating injuries suffered in an accident. She's hoping to cash in on a big insurance settlement, but her plans go down the tubes when Streeter snaps pictures of her playing a mean game of squash with no apparent difficulty at all.

Story is disappointed, of course, but she's also a realist. And she could use a man like Streeter. Her boyfriend, a realtor and drug dealer, has recently died in a car crash. His will left everything to Story and she knows that he had a huge stash of cash concealed somewhere. She's been unable to find it but figures that someone as resourceful as Streeter might be able to get the job done. She offers him a third of whatever he can find.

Streeter agrees. The problem is that he and Story are not the only ones looking for the missing loot. Also on the hunt are an impossibly sleazy lawyer, his scheming and sexy receptionist/girlfriend, the lawyer's thuggish "investigators," and a seriously bent cop.

It's a great cast of characters and Stone really puts them through their paces. The story moves along swiftly and there's plenty of action along with a fair bit of wry humor. This book should appeal to readers who enjoy authors like Elmore Leonard and Tom Kakonis--all in all, a very pleasant way to spend a long evening.

Removing the Veil Reveals a Beautiful Story

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Maugham handles language beautifully, telling the nice, compact story of a vacuous socialite who doesn't take life serious enough and finds herself in a very serious situation.

His economy of word fails his purpose only once, but it is an important failure and mars The Painted Veil in a way that diminishes it enough to keep it from attaining the echelon of "masterpiece" status. Our heroine Kitty's transformation (view spoiler)[her admission of her own worthlessness, willingness to admit it to an "enemy," and attempts to change (hide spoiler)] happens way too fast to be believable. Waugham painted himself into a corner by forcing nature (view spoiler)[Kitty's pregnancy (hide spoiler)] into the story. It made him speed up the timeline to get it all in under the gun.

Still, this is a well-told, highly enjoyable tale revolving around some good, bad and ambivalent people - most of which are all three of those at once - and as a water-tester for whether or not I wanted to throw myself into Maugham's much deeper work, Of Human Bondage, The Painted Veil was a success. A worthy good read indeed!