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Brief Reviews
We do our very best to provide high-quality, in-depth reviews of current books covering a variety of topics that will interest fans of both nonfiction and fiction. While we can’t review everything, here are some current releases that the editors think are worth mentioning. We welcome recommendations from readers. If you’d like to send one to us, please click here.
NONFICTION
NESTED ECOLOGY:
The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy
By Edward T. Wimberly
264 pp. Johns Hopkins University Press $60
Earth is in trouble. The damage sweeps from pole to pole and around the equator. Global warming, neglect and misuse of resources are wrecking the place—and who’s to blame? Humans, of course! Those pesky creatures are recklessly chewing up the materials needed for their sustenance with little regard for whether their habits are sustainable or wise. That’s the argument in this book.
Edward T. Wimberly, professor of ecological studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, defines the situation in terms of a set of hierarchical “nests” in which individuals reside, each nest sitting inside its nurturing upper level. Every level has its impact on the global ecology. Thus, on an individual level personal ecology is nested in a local social ecology, which in turn is nested in broader governmental ecology continuing up to the final level of cosmic concerns. It’s Wimberley’s way of expressing a concept of universal codependency, an interrelatedness in nature that has strained many a scientific mind.
The most interesting chapters are the first and last. He defines his concept of nested ecology in the first and articulates it a readable way. The epilogue lays out his personal thoughts on a pragmatic approach to solving the ecological problems. He’s intent on creating a dialogue of collaboration among diverse groups, regardless of their cultural background, that can work together to identify and find solutions for their common ecological concerns. I found these two chapters interesting, but could easily have put the rest of the book aside. (Reviewed by Tom Fitzgibbon)
BOTTOM OF THE NINTH:
Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself
By Michael Shapiro
320 pp. Times Books $26
Bottom of the Ninth is ostensibly about the proposed Continental League, an eight-team league Branch Rickey tried to develop between 1958-1960 in an attempt to break Major League Baseball’s stranglehold (MLB is a sanctioned monopoly) on the professional baseball market. The Continental League sold itself as a way to bring baseball to cities without franchises in order not to appear as an outlaw league. Once it was up and running, it was supposed to become part of Major League Baseball—or so went the claim. In itself the Continental League is a footnote to baseball history, and an obscure one at that. Some topics are worth writing about; some aren’t. I can’t say directly that the author felt this way, but since so much of the book is about something else—the 1960 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates, which the author takes as a watershed moment in baseball history, anecdotes about Casey Stengel, a side trip to the Federal League of 1915, the start of the AFL—the thought must have crossed his mind.
Most of this book is padding. And I do mean padding (think Michelin Man). What might have worked as an eight-page magazine article on the devious ways white plutocrats got baseball to expand from sixteen to thirty teams gets blown up into this almost pointless dirigible, since the thesis of the book, that the Continental League was a serious attempt to start a third baseball league, gets confounded and explained away in the Epilogue as “the biggest bluff in the history of professional sports.” Which is it?
My sense is even sports junkies will be hard-pressed to love this yarn. But I could be wrong. Some of the filler here is mighty interesting. (Reviewed by George O’Har)
A POCKETFUL OF HISTORY:
Four Hundred Years of America—One State Quarter at a Time
By Jim Noles
400 pp. Da Capo Press Paperback (updated) $16
Fifty states, fifty quarters—but there’s more! The U.S. Mint this year has added quarters from the District of Columbia and five other U.S. possessions as well. Jim Noles has told stories based on the design of each of the fifty-six coins in the series to produce a book that will entertain anybody. Coin collectors of any age will have to have it.
Noles handled this cleverly. It would be difficult to cram a full history of the U.S. into 200 pages, so he has taken a bit of history—not two bits—from each quarter and told something about whatever makes up the design.
From Delaware, the “First State,” we hear about Caesar Rodney’s Ride. Rodney got up from his sick bed in July 1776 to ride his horse to Philadelphia just in time to make the vote for American independence unanimous. The Kansas quarter design includes a buffalo—so Noles tells us the tale of the “Buffalo Soldiers,” two regiments of Afro-American soldiers raised to help fight the Indians in 1866. The one from the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, which most people probably don’t even know we control, describes the local population’s navigation of the Pacific long before the Europeans discovered America.
Noles, an attorney and a prolific writer, tells his stories well. Every one is moving, and each might be enough to lead a reader to delve further into history of a state, the nation, and perhaps from there to that of the world. (Reviewed by Carter Jefferson)
IF IT AIN’T TRUE, IT OUGHTA BE AND OTHER LESSONS FROM LIFE
By William Shewmake
168 pp. James A. Rock & Co. $12.95
So, it took me a while to decide whether to include this in the nonfiction or fiction section. These are stories based on Shewmake’s life. But reading them, I have to believe that he does exaggerate them, just ever so slightly. Shewmake is a consummate storyteller. He had me under his hypnotic spell. I imagine the only thing better than reading the stories would be listening to him tell them himself, with arms gesturing wildly, eyebrows arching, pacing around the room. The stories may be slightly exaggerated, but they ring true, like the very best family stories.
My favorite is the one that Shewmake tells about his father one Christmas in Williamsburg during the depression. His father “Boots” asked for a new bike for Christmas. On Christmas morning, a shiny “used” bike appeared under the tree. Boots was disappointed. Until a neighbor proudly showed him the brand new pencil he received as his gift. Realizing his selfishness, Boots runs back and hugs his mom.
Shewmake illuminates the memorable moments in life; those that get repeated through the generations. He does so with humor and grace, and a writer’s sense of timing. This is a quick, fun read. You’ll recognize your own family in these stories. (Recommended by Julie McGuire)
FICTION
THE PEN/O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES, 2009
By Laura Furman (editor)
464 pp. Anchor Books $15
It’s been 90 years since members of the Twilight Club met at the Biltmore to honor the memory and craft of their talented, roguish friend. But inclusion in the O. Henry Prize collection is still a prestigious tribute—what one of this year’s writers calls a “gladdening”. Culled from literary magazines large and small, the 2009 winners bring pen to bear on places as geographically diverse as Beijing and Wyoming, as experientially varied as being a Korean orphan and a Maine radiologist. There are tales from post-war Vietnam, one about a Russian mail-order bride who finds herself in Finland, and stories of the many varieties of family and forgiveness. Well-known names such as Paul Theroux and Nadine Gordimer share the pages with breakthrough writers, but the most compelling piece, cited as favorite by prize jurors A.S. Byatt and Tim O’Brien, is “An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen.” O’Brien calls it “a superb ghost story ... a survival story ... a miracle story”, while Byatt likens its “economy of incident” and “accuracy of the words” to short story master Rudyard Kipling. In both topic and tone it is a worthy companion to O’Brien’s own war stories. This 2009 prize collection is one both touching and raw by turns—if only we could hear what William Sydney Porter himself would think.(Recommended by Denise Yagel)
ANGELS OF DESTRUCTION:
A Novel
By Keith Donohue
368 pp. Crown Publishing $24
My book club devoured Donohue’s first novel, The Stolen Child, and we waited with bated breath for a second novel. With Angels of Destruction, Donohue delivers—mostly.
Margaret Quinn has been mourning the loss of her daughter, Erica, for a dozen years. Erica ran off into the night with her high school sweetheart to join a radical group—Angels of Destruction. Margaret has not seen her since. She’s all but given up hope for anything more than sitting out the rest of her days with an empty heart. But a 9-year-old girl, Norah, has other plans. Posing as an orphan, Norah shows up at the Quinn home on a winter evening and charms her way into Margaret’s home and heart. As Norah and Margaret integrate their lives—Norah is passed off as her long-lost grandchild—Donohue reveals Norah’s connection to Erica, and leaves the reader believing in angels and miracles.
With first-rate storytelling, and a supernatural gift for plausibility, Donohue explores human potential for sorrow and heartache, hope and redemption. So why do I say “mostly?” Do you remember your first kiss? The second one wasn’t quite as sweet, was it? I loved The Stolen Child so completely that Angels of Destruction is that second kiss. Still wonderful, just not quite as magical. (Recommended by Julie McGuire)
PYGMY
By Chuck Palahniuk
256 pp. Doubleday $24.95
The exchange student your family just welcomed into its home, with his wide third world eyes and broken English, is actually a trained killer about to unleash a massive terrorist plot on unsuspecting Americans: Operation Havoc. So begins Palahniuk’s tenth novel, Pygmy.
Pygmy is in fact a covert operative reared by the government of an unnamed totalitarian nation, which feels closest to the Cold War Soviet Union, but is somehow far more sinister. As a young child, Pygmy is culled from the masses for his superior intellect.
Over the next decade, Pygmy and his co-operatives are taught martial arts, weapons, and espionage. As teens, they are planted in homes in middle-class suburban America. Again, we aren’t told exactly where, but it feels Midwestern.
Uniquely, the entire novel is written as a series of dispatches in very broken English, which is hard to read, but nevertheless rings true as Pygmy deconstructs Western culture. To my ear, Pygmy spoke with the voice of Borat; I could practically hear Pygmy’s accent as in this description of Pygmy’s first encounter with Wal-Mart:
For official record, squirrel maze of retail distribution center puzzle of competition warring objects, all improved, all package within fire colors. Area divided into walls constructed from objects, all tinted color so grab eye. All object printed: Love me. Look me. Million speaking objects, begging. Crown American consumer with power of king, to rescue choose and give home or abandon here for expire.
Difficult to read, at times ridiculous and nearly always disturbing, this is not Palahniuk’s best novel, but it is certainly one of his most inventive. (Reviewed by Dawn Kingsbury Attean)
SEA CHANGES
By Gail Graham
412 pp. Jade Phoenix Publishing $15.95
Sarah’s husband has just dropped dead of a massive heart attack, leaving her unmoored. Her adult children offer no comfort. One works on an oil rig in the North Sea. The other is bitter, self-centered, and emotionally unavailable. Sarah sells her marital home and moves to a shabby beachfront rental cottage on the outskirts of Sydney. When her weekly appointments with a milquetoast therapist yield little result, Sarah decides to take her own life.
Sarah attempts to drown herself by swimming far out into the ocean until she tires. Instead she is “rescued” by a beautiful long-haired young woman—no, not a mermaid—and taken to an undersea world where everyone communicates telepathically and emotions are seen as colors. Sarah is told she is a vestigant—presumably from “vestigial”—one who can breathe both air and water—even though the undersea inhabitants thought there were no more left alive. This oceanic tribe evolved as a separate branch of the early human race, when man’s ancestors were still amphibious.
Sarah returns to the surface after what feels like an hour below to learn that several days have passed. Time passes more quickly at the bottom of the sea. Thinking she has dreamed the whole thing—or perhaps is just going insane—Sarah soon returns to the nautical netherworld, bringing the long-haired woman back to the surface with her.
Sarah soon becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of a young heiress who is presumed dead, and who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sarah’s houseguest. Much in the fashion of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the surprise ending serves up two distinct alternatives which left this reader pondering the nature of perception and illusion long after the last page. (Recommended by Dawn Kingsbury Attean)
MY LIFE AT FIRST TRY:
A Novel
By Mark Budman
240 pp. Counterpoint $24
This novel, by a fellow member of the Internet Writing Workshop, is a loosely autobiographical debut novel told in stories. My Life At First Try chronicles Mark Budman’s childhood in Siberia in the 1950s and follows him to the present as an adult with a wife and daughter in upstate New York. From his exploration of life in a communist society to his newfound freedom—sexual and otherwise—in America, Budman takes the reader on an intimate interior and exterior journey of awakening. Budman isn’t afraid to ask painful questions, both of his adopted country and of himself.
Budman is a terrific writer. He publishes the Vestal Review, a print magazine with a web presence dedicated to flash fiction (short-short stories), a style rapidly gaining popularity. His novel is similar in style, so it should be no surprise that the prose is elegant and spare. No word is wasted, and the reader gets an intimate look at the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, experience of being a stranger in a strange land. A moving reminder that with a very few exceptions, we’re all immigrants of this great land. (Recommended by Julie McGuire)
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