This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

I joined a book club and this was our first selection. I don’t have a good track record with book clubs. I am too picky to make the necessary compromises about book selection. Sometimes my bluntly worded criticisms put other members off. And I am certainly not interested in going to meetings where people haven’t really read the book and just want to drink chardonnay and talk about their children. I have, in fact, said previously that the only way I would be in a book club was if I could pick every book and run every meeting. Well that works, if the only club member is me. Hence, this blog, perfect for my egocentric tendencies.

But this book group came together with serendipitous solutions to most of my objections. It has a leader, Elana, who keeps us on track and whose MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop gives her all the cred I need. It has a theme (contemporary Jewish fiction) so the book choices are limited in a manageable yet interesting way. Its members are a diverse group of men and women (a librarian, a rabbi, a lawyer, a retired professor, some graduate students, some stay-at-home moms, a couple of writer/editors) who don’t know one another well enough get sidetracked into personal conversations. Let’s just say that I am cautiously optimistic.

And I liked this book (though Elana and several others did not)! Tropper uses the construct of shiva, the week-long traditional Jewish mourning period to bring together a highly dysfunctional family, their neighbors, friends, lovers, ex-spouses, and offspring for a week of fireworks and breakdowns. It’s a very funny, sad story of a modern family who are just off-beat enough to make good copy but who aren’t so out there that you don’t believe in them.

Some club members commented that Tropper is too hard on his characters. His physical descriptions can be merciless, bordering on cruel (the overweight matron who breaks her chair, for example, and the creepy neighbor with the wandering hands). But he’s an equal opportunity misanthrope and it all just seemed so real. I thought it was a really good read – intelligent and entertaining, with original characters who stick around in your head for a while.

(Book 51, 2010)

Real Justice for Fictional Characters

A few weeks ago I complained in this blog post about one of the protagonists of The Privileges, and about how he was never called to account for his Wall Street shenanigans. It soured me on the story. The plot of The Privileges, by Jonathan Dee, includes a complicated insider trading scheme that sounds a lot like the one currently being investigated by the United States federal authorities. So when I read more details about that investigation today, I reflexively thought "Whoa, finally, they are going to get that guy!"

Well except not. Because he's not real. He's just a guy in a book I read. Okay, whatever.

Hellhound on his Trail by Hampton Sides

My blogging friend Linda, of Each Little World, recommended this book. She reads a lot more nonfiction than I do, and she makes it all sound so interesting! And this was! It’s about James Earl Ray and the assassination of Martin Luther King, and it reads like a thriller. The book follows Ray from his escape from prison in 1967, through the assassination and its aftermath, to Ray’s capture in London in 1968.

I was shocked, as I read this, to discover how little I knew about this event. I think it’s because I am caught in an age-related limbo state. I was in elementary school when King was shot; too young to have been reading newspapers and following the unfolding drama on television. In contrast, my children have studied all this school. I think they know more about it than I did.

As you would expect, Ray is not a sympathetic character. Neither are supporting characters such as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated King, but was obliged to investigate his death. The author’s portrait of King is nuanced and engrossing, and is well balanced. Sides doesn’t give much credence to the various conspiracy theories surrounding King’s assassination. Likewise, he doesn’t spend a lot of time contemplating Ray’s motives, though he makes clear that Ray was a racist and an admirer of George Wallace and Rhodesian leader Ian Smith. This is a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of storytelling and it works very well.

(Book 50, 2010)

A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

Doesn’t this sound like it’s a mystery novel? Look at the cover: scary! But no, bait and switch. It’s really about a washed up travel writer who becomes obsessed with a mysterious American woman living in Calcutta. On and on he goes about how beautiful she is, how fascinating, how unique. He can’t get enough of her. When she asks him to look into a teeny problem she is having, of course he agrees; how could he not? Sucker.

He does eventually catch on to her nefarious business, but not until long after we have figured it out. Meanwhile, he’s developed a bad case of writer’s block (he has a “dead hand”) and we have to listen to him go on and on about that, too.

The weird thing is that Paul Theroux is himself kind of a crabby old travel writer (though I wouldn’t describe him as “washed up”). What was Theroux trying to accomplish with this book? The mystery is dull and the characters are sketchy. The descriptions of India are good, though. Was Theroux really just writing another travel book with a half-baked mystery plastered on top for marketing purposes?

(Book 49, 2010)