Award-winning author Joseph Kanon is internationally recognized, having published bestsellers, including The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. With much acclaim, I picked up his latest spy thriller with great expectation. I was disappointed.
Leaving Berlin takes place in 1949 Berlin; the city divided by the Allies into Soviet, French, British and American sectors. In the East, the Soviets rule with an iron fist, grabbing people off the streets for small suspected infractions, friends turn into informants, and war-time concentration camps are turned into prisons for party dissenters. At the center of the drama is Alex Meier, a Jewish German writer who was able to leave a concentration camp during the war after a payoff. 15 years later, after exile in America, he returns at the invitation of the new Soviet-backed German party to help form a cultural revival.
Read moreDisclaimer: If you don’t like lawyers or graphic sex, you should skip this book. Post script: Read it anyway.
I Take You is set in Key West during the week leading up to Lily and Will’s whirlwind wedding. Lily, a New York lawyer, is having some serious doubts about the upcoming nuptials as evidenced by the fact she can’t stop sleeping with other men. Will, on the other hand, the nerdy anthropologist, appears steadfast and only more committed to Lily as the big day draws near.
The story heats up as the secondary characters, which really give the book its texture, begin arriving. There are Lily’s “moms”, her real mom, her two ex step moms and her fierce grandmother, who band together to try to talk Lily out of the wedding. Lily’s dad, from whom she obviously inherited her wandering eye, shows up with very few helpful contributions other than to play the role of the old guy Lothario. And then there is Will’s acerbic politico mom, who has zero love for Lily and is determined to wreck the wedding. And finally, Freddy, Lily’s sexually confused loyal best friend, who will do anything to get Lily through the week, wedding or not.
Read moreMany of us take a meandering path through life, unsure of the next step or even the goal. Author Philip Connors has honestly exposed with us his own life’s twisty trail. In his memoir All The Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found, Connors has chronicled a series of experiences focusing on pivotal stages in his life. Though each chapter centers upon a different aspect, the common thread throughout is his brother’s death, and the burden of culpability he must finally address.
Connors worked in journalism, first as an intern for The Nation, then the copy desk of the Wall Street Journal. He relays his story through that journalistic lens - with writing that is eloquent, thoughtful, direct and emotional, yet matter-of-fact. So we read of the tumult and anxiety he experiences, but don’t become entrenched in the sentiment. It’s a work of sensitive, authentic and articulate writing that resonated with me. In describing his move to the Gila wilderness in New Mexico late in the book he writes, “The place tore me down and remade me; its indifference to my cares and sorrows was magisterial and, in unexpected ways, comforting. I had believed that the streets of New York were the pinnacle of indifference to the individual human life and I had been mistaken.”
Read moreReminiscent of the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the majority of One Plus One chronicles a mismatched group taking a three-day car trek from England to Scotland for a math Olympiad. The main characters, who each narrate chapters from their perspectives, are: Ed, a recently divorced financial guy facing insider trading charges; Jess, a single mom struggling to makes ends meet for her daughter and “sort of” son, Nicky, an angsty male teen who wears eyeliner, is the subject of intense bullying, and disappears into violent video games to escape; and Tanzie, a whip-smart grade school girl who wears thick glasses and way too many sequins to ever be cool. Finally, there is Norman, though he does no story telling, the family’s enormous loving mutt who spends most of his time drooling and farting.
Read moreSet in the 1930s in New Guinea off the coast of Australia, King’s novel, Euphoria, follows three anthropologists doing immersive research of small tribal groups living along the region’s waterways. Fen and Nell, tumultuously married Australians, cross paths with Bankson, a lone Brit, at a government post where all three are regrouping. Fresh off a thwarted suicide attempt, Bankson is enamored with the Aussies and makes it his mission to spend more time with them, particularly the lovely and fragile Nell.
Euphoria revolves around the love triangle that emerges among the three main characters and the differences in their anthropological studies. While seemingly on the same page as the trio feverishly comes up with “the Grid” (a novel breakdown of races by their cultural traits into North, South, East and West), tensions strain as Fen’s increasing self interest and competitive nature butt up against Nell and Bankson’s compassion as well as their burgeoning relationship.
Read moreI hear a lot of people say they don’t care for short stories. I never quite understood this. Short stories can be as beautifully written as a novel, with the added benefit of feeling accomplished - getting through a story in a short period of time. It’s perfect for those with short attention spans or who read multiple things at once. But that’s just me.
Young Skins is a collection of short stories and one novella. It’s the debut book from Irish writer Colin Barrett, and it’s completely absorbing. Barrett combines edgy and prosaic prose with lyrical descriptions of the stories’ backdrop, placing the reader in clear view. The title, Young Skins, refers to the 20- and 30-something year old lads as the protagonist of each tale. Most of these young men live in the small Irish town of Glanbeigh, rarely hold traditional jobs, and find themselves in and out of conflict - with the law, business dealings, friends, relationships and alcohol. They are gas station attendants, bouncers, fathers and criminals. There is a melancholy tone, and you can feel the gray clouds of Ireland hovering just overhead. Barrett ends each of his stories rather anticlimactically; and none with a fairly tale ending.
Read moreMany young adult novels these days are heavy on plot and light on character development. This is not the case in The Darkest Minds, the first in a series by Alexandra Bracken. This series takes place in a futuristic Virginia where, out of nowhere, kids between the ages of eight and fourteen begin to die suddenly from a mysterious illness. The kids who miraculously survive this illness are not loved, but feared. This is because their survival identifies them as having dangerous mental abilities ranging from photographic memories, to telekinesis, to being able to read and control the minds of others.
Read more
