Whiteout

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by Ken Follett, 2004, Signet Publishing

This is a typical Ken Follett suspense novel: exciting and suspenseful with good characterizations.  It has, however, not much in the way of lasting impressions or value.  Also, there are times when I, as a reader, had to really try hard to suspend belief when some of the plot unfolded.  I guess that’s what makes it fiction.

I started this novel before our vacation to Australia and New Zealand and finished it on the plane en route to New Zealand.  One of the Air New Zealand flight attendants expressed an interest in what I was reading so he was the lucky recipient of the book when I finished it.  With no disposal issues, that made it almost as good as an electronic version.  How we have changed our attitudes towards printed books over time! 2 1/2 stars

Caleb’s Crossing

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by Geraldine Brooks, 2011, Audible Audio Edition, narrated by Jennifer Ehle

This audiobook is written well and is interesting as it depicts the life of early settlers on what is now called Martha’s Vineyard.  It also depicts some of the early times of Harvard University.  I felt, however, that the author was a bit harsh in her assessment of the virtues of some of the English settlers versus those of the natives.

The main character, Bethia, who tells the tale of her long life and her relationship with the Indians, maintains her strong Christian faith while, at the same time, experiencing its destructive impact on the native culture and religion.  She also glosses over the brutality that the Indians inflicted on the white settlers during the King Phillips War.  Her totally worthless brother at the early stages of the book becomes a very worthy individual by the end of the book.  Indian boys become top scholars at Harvard and individuals, both white and native, pick up not only each other’s languages with ease, but also Latin and Greek.

I have no doubt that many individuals who lived in this era were extraordinary persons but I feel challenged to believe that the deeds and events that the author depicts could be close to reality.  Perhaps she took some of the characters from historical records but because of their extraordinary feats, I tend to think that they are either imaginary or embellished to a great degree.

The narrator, Jennifer Ehle, uses a stilted style to emulate a New England woman settler in the early 1600’s.  The style incorporates a succinct and slow enunciation of each syllable of each word.  The style is in keeping with the story and probably adds to the overall listening experience, but it tends to wear a bit over the length of ten CD’s.

Overall, the book is certainly better than average and enjoyable, but it did, at times, stretch my belief. 3 1/2 stars

 

An Innocent Man, Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

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by John Grisham, 2006, Audible Audio Edition, narrated by Craig Wasson, 2006

I listened to this book on CD driving down to Florida from Rhode Island this year.  I didn’t pay much attention to it when I checked it out from the Narragansett Library, so when I put it on, I thought it was fiction.  I went through the first one or two CDs before I finally figured out that Grisham had written this non-fiction account of a trial in Oklahoma. Until that time I was thinking that the book had way too much detail to be an enjoyable.

The book was interesting, but Grisham seems a bit too emotionally involved to give an unbiased account of what happened.  The individual who was falsely convicted had some deep character flaws which made it somewhat difficult  for me to totally sympathize with him.  Grisham does, however, show how the justice system can miscarry to convict an innocent individual, especially in a case where some law enforcement officers are corrupted with drug dealings.  I wish that Grisham had delved into the police corruption angle a bit more as he only touched on that aspect. The focus of the book seemed to be more on the impact of the wrong conviction on the individual rather than the underlying causes of it and this made the narrative a bit repetitive.2 1/2 stars

Armies of the Night

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by Norman Mailer, 1968, The New American Library

I picked this book up and decided to try it again as I had tried to read it back in 1968 in college when I belonged to a book club.  I found a bookmark at page 42 so I assume that was as far as I got.

I think now that I understand why I didn’t get any further.  Although Mailer seems to have a pretty good grasp on the issues and emotions of the time, his writing is pretty disjointed.  The premise of the book is that he is writing a novel about what a character (Mailer, himself) went through during the march on the Pentagon in 1967 while a portion of the book is devoted to the history of the march and, as such, is detached from any specific character.  Mailer is in the unusual position of being a conservative radical when it came to his views on the war which gives him the enviable position of being able to observe both the crucial elements of the times as well as its absurdities.

The main problem with the book is Mailer’s writing.  He can spin a pretty good narrative for a while and then he gets all tied up in a sentence that goes on and on without any specific direction.  He definitely has a mind of an intellectual and it’s almost as if he wants to prove it every so often.  He is at times profound and at other times his message gets all mushed up in the verbiage.

At any rate, I found it interesting to go back and revisit the times which were some of the most trying this nation has ever endured.  Unfortunately, having observed the recent Iraq war and its results, it appears that a lot of the lessons we should have learned from the Vietnam War were lost.

 

11/22/63

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by Stephen King, 2011, Scribner, New York

My first comment on this book is that it is long … very long.  While the book was interesting and the concept is thought-provoking, it did bog down a bit at times.

Stephen King is a very talented writer.  This is a book, he says, he started to write a few years after the Kennedy assassination but decided to put it down.  He picked up the project again and published this 850-page novel in 2011.

I think that King went off the deep end a bit when depicting the what the world would have looked like had Kennedy survived the assassination attempt.  No doubt there would have been unforeseen consequences, but I had a hard time with the scenario that King cooks up.

Did I mention the book was a bit long?  I’m not sure I would recommend tackling this one as I am on the fence as to whether or not it was worth it.  It certainly has its merits, though. 3 stars

World Without End

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by Ken Follett, 2008, New American Library, Penguin Books Ltd., London

I am a bit conflicted on this book.  Follett is a very good writer who can keep the pace going in his novels, at least to some extent.  This particular book, however, I would call “Novel Without End” as it is over 1,000 pages and keeps going on and on.  The setting is interesting as are the characters, but the theme is very repetitive.  The bad characters and the good characters clash, the bad ones seem to be the victors, some time elapses and the good characters figure out a way to overcome the bad ones.  The good characters live for a while reaping the benefits of their new situation and then the bad characters try a new scheme and the plot repeats itself.

Follett employs sixth grade prose to keep the book moving forward.  This technique seems to be a bit more appropriate for the suspense novels he has written versus a supposedly serious novel depicting the life and times of medieval England.

All in all, the novel seems to be a bit of a downgrade from Pillars of the Earth, the prequel of this novel.  While it was interesting, it didn’t seem to be as enjoyable as the first one.3 stars

A Secret Kept

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by Tatiana de Rosnay, Read by Simon Vance, 2010, Macmillan Audio

I was really looking forward to this novel as I really enjoyed Sarah’s Key. Also, I have really liked everything that Simon Vance has done previously. Oh, how I was disappointed!

Both Sarah’s Key and A Secret Kept have themes associated with a family secret that younger generations have been sheltered from. But, Sarah’s Key had an overarching theme which was the horror and guilt associated with a act that was taken to protect a sibling from being taken to a concentration camp. This is pretty heavy stuff. A Secret Kept, however, deals with a family secret associated with a parent having a same-sex affair that had been hidden and the shock and bewilderment that her children experience on discovering the details some thirty years after her death. The latter circumstances seem very pale and shallow compared to the implications of the former. The novel suffers a lot from a “who cares?” feeling, at least on my part.

The second issue is for me, unfortunately, the narrator. Simon Vance does a very good job narrating this story, but I am accustomed to having him bite his teeth into much meatier fare. The first-person character he portrays in this novel is a middle-aged man immersed in his family situation: divorce, messed-up kids, ex-wife’s infidelity, mother’s death, father unapproachable, difficult relationship with step-mother, father ill with cancer, mother’s affair with another woman, circumstances of his mother’s death, his sister’s accident, death of his daughter’s best friend, boredom with his job, incompetence of his secretary, unlikeable clients, torrid affair with attractive young woman, etc., etc. Good Grief! I am used to Simon portraying an individual in such novels as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo where he is involved in murder and suspense or portraying interesting characters in the classics of Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Because his voice is so familiar to me, I kept imagining his character as Mikael Blomkvist in the Girl with Dragon Tattoo. While his voice is compelling, the circumstances he deals with in this novel are pathetic.

de Rosnay’s first novel, Sarah’s Key, had the effect of propelling her to the front line of new authors. This one sends her to the back of the class.1 1/2 stars

In the Garden of Beasts, Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

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by Erik Larson, 2011, Broadway Paperbacks, New York

This is a fascinating book, well-written and extremely well-researched.  I was amazed at how well the author could reconstruct events that occurred so many years ago.  I couldn’t help compare his work to The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan which I had recently read.  In that book the author apparently had the opportunity to interview many of the participants in that particular piece of history and did a poor job of bringing those insights to his book.  In the case of Larson’s book, he did not have an opportunity to interview many of the persons involved in his book because almost all of them are deceased.  Nevertheless, he did a much better job of relating the events that occurred.

Another aspect of the book that I appreciated was that the author didn’t attempt to over-embellish the narrative.  He just describes the events and lets the reader react.  All too many times an author seems to try to pound home his or her particular views (e.g., Stacy Schiff in Cleopatra and Doris Kearns Goodwin in Team of Rivals.  I much prefer Larson’s style where he leaves it up to the reader to react and form opinions.

It is chilling to read about this period of time in history when almost an entire population of a so-called civilized county was highjacked by a ill-educated megalomaniac and his henchmen.  In current times where there are very real dangers in our own country that require extra vigilance (i.e., surveillance) by our government of individuals’ actions, it behooves us to ensure that adequate processes and protections are in place to ensure that a similar result never occurs.
four stars

Heart of Darkness,

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by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1903, 2005, Blackstone Audio, read by Frederick Davidson

This is an incredibly good book given that it doesn’t have much of a plot and it was written by a Polish person whose English was a third language for him.  The beauty of this book is definitely in the use of the English language.  His sentences are terse, the words are sparing, but each additional word he uses is perfect in its cont

As I mentioned, the plot isn’t great.  It’s about a sailor, Marlow, who is hired by a company to go into the Congo and find out what’s going on with its agent, Kurtz.  Marlow accepts the job, goes in and gets Kurtz, listens to him tell his life story on the way out before he dies, and then returns home.  That’s basically it.

The beauty in the story is that Marlow is spinning his yarn to his fellow shipmates as the ship sits on the Thames.  The storytelling is absolutely spellbinding.  The reader in this production. Frederick Davidson, also does an outstanding job of portraying the storyteller.  I felt as if I were sitting there myself listening to Marlow telling his tale and that he was looking right at me while he was talking.

I attended a book lecture this winter in Naples by Elaine Newton where she compared Anne Pachette’s book, State of Wonder to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, implying that some of the same themes were employed in both books.  That may be true, but what she missed, I’m afraid, is that Heart of Darkness is a true work of art;  State of Wonder is only a pale imitation. four stars

 

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan – A History of the End of the Cold War

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by James Mann, 2010, Penguin Books

This book was very disappointing, primarily because it was so repetitious.  There were over sixty pages devoted to objections by various individuals to Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech.  Many of the objections were repeated numerous times in the book.  Our book club selected the book for the month of May, but many participants said they didn’t bother to finish the book.

I was further disappointed when I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book.  The author interviewed numerous individuals who were involved in the events depicted in the book.  He also spent a number of months in Berlin studying.  The disappointment is that he brought so little from those interviews and studies to the book.

Did I say that there was a lot of repetition?  In case you missed that part, I have to mention that the author repeated a lot of information, much of it over and over and over again. 2.0 Stars