The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

New York Times review

This is a very good novel about the life and times of a New York City police detective. Sgt. Billy Graves runs the Night Watch, and the Night Watch runs him.

Someday, Someday Maybe, by Lauren Graham

This was an entertaining, engaging, well done novel. Lauren Graham is a well-known actress, but obviously has other talent.

The novel is a first-person account of a young woman in New York City trying to find work as an actress. It's written with humor as well as down-to-earth realism, but is not sentimental or overly cute. Characters were well-drawn and believable. I read this book quickly and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Here's a review from the Washington Post.

Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald

From the PC Library. MacDonald is a Canadian author. This is her first novel.

I must be on an unintentional first-novel gothic kick.

Another fabulous, escapist page-turner, also with a twin theme (I know!). I thoroughly enjoyed this very entertaining book.

Publisher's Weekly review.

The story just goes on and on. If it wasn't obvious by the number of pages remaining, a reader would think the novel had ended several times long before the end. This was not a bad thing, as I was happy to read more of MacDonald's terrific writing.

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon

Copyright 2013, by Thomas Pynchon.

It took me until about page 77 before I decided that I could read this book. I almost gave it up. It's a mess of hip conversations, and it's set in 2001. But once I began to recognize the character Maxine as someone that I could actually care about, I wanted to keep reading, and find out what's going on. So I almost feel as if I skipped the first 77 pages.

This is from page 140:

"Madoff Securities. Hmm, maybe some industry scuttlebutt. Bernie Madoff, a legend on the street. Said to do quite well, I recall."
"One to two percent a month."
"Nice average return, so what's the problem?"
"Not average. Same every month."
"Uh-oh." She flips pages, has a look at the graph. "What the fuck. It's a perfect straight line, slanting up forever?'
"Seem a little abnormal to you?"
"...it's got to be a Ponzi scheme..."

And this from 143:

"Future of film, if you want to know--someday, more bandwidth, more video files up on the Internet, everybody'll be shootin everything, way too much to look at, nothin will mean shit. Think of me as the prophet of that."

From page 432:

"Look at it, every day more lusers than users, keyboards and screens turning into nothin but portals to web sites for what the Management wants everybody addicted to, shopping, gaming, jerking off, streaming endless garbage -- ... [this ellipsis is mine, as is the next. The ones in the following passage are from the text]
"...hashslingrz and them are all screaming louder and louder about 'Internet freedom,' while they go on handing more of it over to the bad guys ... They get us, all right, we're all lonely, needy, disrespected, desperate to believe in any sorry imitation of belonging they want to sell us... We're being played, Maxi, and the game is fixed, and it won't end till the Internet--the real one, the dream, the promise--is destroyed."

Bone Rattler, by Eliot Pattison

A Mystery of Colonial America. Counterpoint. 2008. 460 pages. ISBN-10: 1593761856 ISBN-13: 978-1593761851

When we heard that the author of the many Inspector Shan mysteries had written a new novel set in the American Colonies in 1758, we were eager to find out what that would be like, and were not disappointed.

Duncan McCallum is a prisoner aboard a convict ship bound for the New World. He is a Scot, unfriendly to the British king, whose life and family have been destroyed for his treason to the Empire. During the voyage, there are some strange and actually surreal events that set the stage for what transpires when he lands in New York, indentured to Lord Ramsey as a teacher for his children.

Ramsey's children include an elder daughter named Sarah, who seems afflicted with some great sadness from a past about which no one will speak. As events unfold in the New York wilderness, her story and character are revealed to be quite fascinating.

Native American lore and culture play an important role in the plot of this complex mystery. As we move deeper into the fabric of the story, the Iroquois characters increase in number, depth, and function. It is hard to read this without thinking of Pattison's obvious love and respect for the ancient culture of Tibet reflected in the Inspector Shan series. The parallels between China's invasion and destruction of Tibet and that of the British and French invasion of America and destruction of its native culture and people are unavoidable.

Pattison explores the spirituality of the natives of America in the face of the European invasion, and lays upon that the tapestry of England's exploitation and domination of Scotland and its culture and people. Scots allied with Indians against the English oppressors in this story make the point clear if not obvious. The history of our world is one of domination, disrespect for indigenous culture, and the trampling of religion and tradition in the name of whatever power has the upper hand.

With all this history and moralization included in the text, one might think this would be a dull read, but Pattison's masterful writing and plot delivery keeps us involved in this excellent mystery and more or less painlessly feeds us a great deal of factual information about the Colonial period and the deeds of those who founded what became the United States of America.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

198 pages. Published by Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Co. New York 1999.

In keeping with my habit of seldom reading "new" stuff, here's a book from the free table at work that's eight or nine years old, and I only regret that I didn't find this writer sooner. These stories are all excellent, perfect, what can I say? Find a copy and read it.

Each one of these stories deals with people living or visiting somewhere other than their home. Many are Indian or Pakistani living in the United States of America, others are moved from their home by the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

"A Temporary Matter" is the story of Shoba and Shukumar, a Bengali couple living in Boston. They are notified that their electric power will be interrupted for an hour on the next five evenings at eight PM. These interruptions provide an unlikely respite from ordinary life, an opportunity for them to take stock. The result is bittersweet, complicated.

"When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is told from the perspective of a young Indian girl living in the USA with her parents in 1971. Mr Pirzada is a neighbor who has left his wife and seven daughters in Dacca, Pakistan, where civil war is raging.

"Interpreter of Maladies" finds a family of first generation Indian-Americans and their children, returning to India on vacation.

"A Real Durwan" is about Boori Ma, a woman displaced to Calcutta by Partition.

"Sexy" tells about an affair between Miranda, an American, and Dev, a Bengali, in New York. This is set against a story told to her by her Indian friend Laxmi, whose cousin's husband has deserted her for a Canadian woman. As a favor to her friend, Miranda watches the cousin's seven-year-old son for a day, which puts her relationship with Dev in a new perspective.

"Mrs. Sen's" is where another young boy, Eliot, goes during the day while his parents work. Mrs. Sen's husband is a mathematics professor. She is adrift in America, unable to drive a car, used to having a "driver" at "home."

"This Blessed House," the Connecticut home of newlywed Hindus is packed full of Christian knicknacks, courtesy of the former residents. Raking leaves, they uncover a large shrine to the Virgin Mary in the yard.

"The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." Bibi Haldar has a disease that sounds like epilepsy, but is not understood. She lives at the mercy of relatives, who tolerate her but before long find her to be too much to handle. Many treatments have been attempted for Bibi, but in the end, she finds her own remedy.

"The Third and Final Continent" is North America. The young man has lived in India, and England, and now Cambridge, Massachusetts. For six weeks he awaits the arrival of his wife, Mala, from Calcutta. During this time he rents a room from a remarkable old lady who opines that the planting of an American flag on the moon is "splendid!"

I have not done justice to these wonderful stories in my brief descriptions. Please don't be put off by my vain attempt to summarize them, but dive in and read them all. The worst thing about this book is the temptation to simply read it all at once, without stopping. It is a feast of reading, and worth savoring.

I look forward very much to my next opportunity to read Jhumpa Lahiri.

A Google search for "Jhumpa Lahiri" is rewarding.

The Four Million, by O. Henry

I suppose I have talked too much about Project Gutenberg of late, so I'll try to keep to the topic here, which is yet another great find at the Project: The Four Million, by O. Henry.

This is the second book of stories from William Sydney Porter, who wrote mostly under the name "O. Henry." There are various stories about the significance of that name; my favorite says that he was friendly with a cat named Henry, who would come when Porter called "Oh, Henry!"

Porter was born in North Carolina, and lived in Austin, Texas, and New York City. The "Four Million" refers to the population of New York at the time -- Porter wrote about ordinary people, he had an eye and ear for the stories in the people's lives all around him. New York was a rich source of material.

Most people know that O. Henry is famous for ending his stories with a twist, or a trick ending. I enjoy this technique as much as anyone, and I admire his use of this difficult form. It didn't seem to restrict his ability to portray human lives and events with a realism and texture that make every one of his short stories a delight to read and re-read.

Another hallmark of this master's writing was the use of unusual polysyllabic words. O. Henry was a lexophile, a lover of words, and obviously loved to put great discoveries from the English language to work in his stories. Here is a sentence from "The Cop and the Anthem:"

"There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life."

"Eleemosynary." I first encountered that word in this story, but I've never forgotten it. I think it's a treasure.

My greatest admiration is reserved, however, for the obvious love with which O. Henry drew each of his characters. The street-grifter, the starving stenographer, the young bride, even the "hop-head" who shares his marijuana-induced dream with a young man pining for his lover's forgiveness (and, in delaying him when he has about given up waiting for her, saves the affair) -- all these unlikely people and more are made real and alive with a few masterful sentences from his pen.

I think this is ageless writing, and I hope that many readers young and old will discover and re-discover it. We are very fortunate to have the dedicated people of Project Gutenberg who are willing to make this wonderful art available to anyone with access to the Internet. And, we are very lucky to be English readers who can appreciate the work of O. Henry.

I'll leave you with this, some paragraphs from the opening of Gift of the Magi, which may be O. Henry's best known story. If you haven't read this, go immediately to it and read it all. If you know it, go anyway.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Wikipedia Entry for O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

Biography and Stories at the Literature Network