The Harder They Come, by T. C. Boyle

The first part of this book takes place in Central America. Sten Stensen, a recently retired high-school principal and Vietnam veteran, and his wife Carolee, are on vacation in Costa Rica. They go with a group on what is to be a nature walk in the jungle, but a tragedy ensues during which Stensen kills a man with his bare hands.

I had a strong feeling that I had read this first part of the book before. It may have, for example, been printed in Harper's as a stand-alone story, or perhaps in their "Readings" section. It works as a short story, in my opinion.

The next parts are placed in Northern California, in an area that is much like Humboldt County, but I think somewhat fictionalized. Sten and Carolee return home, where their son Adam is progressively demonstrating that he is dangerously mentally ill. Adam's actions and how they affect his family and a young woman who befriends him are the framework for the rest of the book.

Violence is the overall theme of this novel. Adam sees himself as a sort of survivalist commando resisting forces that will imprison or limit him, and he is armed to the teeth. His delusions lead him to murder, and during most of the last part of the book he is eluding an increasingly larger manhunt.

Mental illness, apparently schizophrenia, is another important element in the plot. Adam is seriously deluded and certainly fulfills the "danger to himself and others" requirement, but as will happen, society has completely failed to diagnose, treat, or protect him -- or to protect others from him. The frustration of being the parent of a person in this situation is well illustrated in this book.


New York Times Review

The Good Daughters, by Joyce Maynard

Two girls are born on the same day in a small town in New Hampshire. This book follows their lives, and their families, as they grow up to be adults. Dana Dickerson's family consists of her brother, Ray; her father, George; and her mother, Valerie. George goes from one get-rich-quick scheme to another over the course of years. Valerie is distant from her family, an artist of some talent (she is a painter), who has little time for her children. George is always leaving for the next big thing.

Ruth Plank's family is quite different. She has four sisters. Her father, Edwin, is a farmer. They live on the farm that has been in his family for many generations. Her mother, Connie, is a hard-working farmer's wife with a strong religious faith.

The story is told in chapters labeled either "Ruth" or "Dana." Most of the time these simply alternate back and forth, in first-person narrative from each point of view.

This is another excellent and completely engrossing novel by Joyce Maynard. As the story of these two women unfolds, a great mystery is revealed, and not fully solved until nearly the last page.

Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard

An escaped convict appeals for, and receives, help from a mentally-ill mother and her young son. A terrifically captivating read, very well done, very entertaining. Told from the point of view of the son.

Maynard is famous for having been the 19-year-old love interest of a much older J.D. Salinger.

With Intent to Kill, by Nancy Kopp

Why I finished this book I can't really explain. At one point, early on, I decided that it wasn't very good, but since it is a mystery I wanted to see how it comes out. That is my excuse, I suppose, but in the end, the resolution is so contrived and weak that my persistence was not justified.

In this novel an assistant DA works with a sheriff's detective in suburban Wisconsin to discover and prosecute the murderer of a four-year-old boy.

I have now wasted sufficient words to describe a waste of words.

A brief review from Publisher's Weekly.

Two Lives, by William Trevor

Two Lives is a volume of two novels. The first is Reading Turgenev, the second My House in Umbria.

After Rain NY Times review 

NPR review of Trevor's Selected Stories 

Paris Review interview with Trevor 

Reading Turgenev is the life of Mary Louise Quarry. My House in Umbria is the life of Emily Delahunty.

NY Times Review of Two Lives 

From the NYT review linked above:

"...Mary Louise...has spent the last 31 years in an asylum for the mentally impaired.... Emily Delahunty...has been on her own since her teens... has finally fetched up in the Italian countryside, presiding over a handsome villa...These two women are presented to us in the summer of 1987, when unexpected events will jolt each one, at least temporarily, out of her familiar patterns of behavior..."

The Jezebel Remedy, by Martin Clark

Joe and Lisa Stone are lawyers, married twenty years, and in practice together. They have an extremely eccentric client, Lettie VanSandt, who dies in a fire at her home in very strange circumstances.

As this legal mystery unfolds, we learn that there is a lot more to Lettie and her world than anyone expected.

The characters in this book are pretty good. Joe Stone may be just a little bit too manly and perfect to be believed, and Lisa smokes so much that reading this book I found myself having psychosomatic bronchitis.

The setting is rural Virginia, and there are a lot of pleasant home-town characters that support Lisa and Joe when things get rough. There is also an evil pharmaceutical corporation with an amoral leader who is very easy to despise. I never mind seeing that industry put in a bad light.

There are plot elements included that might have been done without. I don't want to spoil the enjoyment of the book for anyone by being specific here, but perhaps a more aggressive editor would be good for Mr. Clark.

The mystery itself is functional. I do think the resolution was just a little bit too facile, but I didn't mind. I enjoyed this book and read it in about a day.

Martin Clark is a Virginia circuit-court judge, according to the book jacket. This is interesting, as there is a very likable judge character in this book, named Klein. He has other books, one is Legal Limit, which I may look for.

Bark, by Lorrie Moore

This is an audio book, a collection of short stories.

I'm almost done listening to it, and my conclusion is that I'm going to have to get the book in print, as I think these stories are too good for commuting. That is, they require more complete attention. 

NY Times review

The Other, by David Guterson

An audio book.

The narrator is an English teacher named Neil Countryman, who had a friend from high-school age named John William Barry. John William came from a very wealthy, if dysfunctional family.

Countryman and Barry shared a love for back country hiking. At one point, Barry arranges, with Countryman's help, to disappear into the Ho Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula.

According to the blurb on the CD case, there is a "revelation" near the end of the story, but I'm damned if I know what they mean. Perhaps this clip from the NYT review linked below covers it:

There’s a deus ex machina at the end of this new one that, a little disappointingly, plants guilt for John William’s struggles at the feet of a certain suspect. But the voice of Neil Countryman is that of a good, thoughtful man coming into middle-class, middle-aged fullness, and his recollections of life in Seattle have a wonderful richness and texture.

Set in Western Washington, as are other Guterson works, there is a lot of poetry in this book, but it does go on. And on.


New York Times review

Elsewhere, by Richard Russo

This is a memoir, and Russo mentions early on that it will be mostly about his mother, and that is quite true. Nevertheless, being an Upstate New York expatriate myself, I found reading about Gloversville and Russo's relationship with the area and its people irresistible.

In fourth grade or thereabouts, we learned some basic area history, and we were taught about the "glove cities" of Fonda, Johnstown, and Gloversville. I don't believe that we were taught quite everything that Russo relates in his book: the horrible working conditions, the disregard for the employees' safety, the environmental destruction, and the overseas flight that the corporations took to avoid the inconvenience of providing a living wage and complying with legal requirements to destroy neither their employees' health nor the quality of the Mohawk River's water.

Russo's account of his life with his mother comprises most of this book. She was a profoundly disturbed individual, but at the same time committed to her son, and determined that he should be a success. His love for her is quite obvious in these pages.

Here's a much better review than I will write.

The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger

An audio book, and all.

I've read this book before, at least twice, but it's surprising (to me) how much of it I've forgotten. After seeing a documentary about Salinger on TV recently, in which the amazing success of this novel was reported, (Wikipedia says that 65 million copies have been sold) I acquired this recording and listened to the novel over the past few weeks.

Much has been said and written about Catcher, and I doubt that I can add much to the discussion, from the standpoint of literary criticism. What I will say is how strongly I am convinced that Salinger, whether wittingly or not, was describing a young person suffering from something that would today be diagnosed as some variety of mental illness. I am not saying that today's interpretation of Holden's behavior would be beneficial, but that the difference in how such behavior is perceived today is noteworthy.

Imagine a person under the age of 18 wandering freely in New York City, drinking in bars, staying in a hotel where he is offered the services of a prostitute, entering his own home in the middle of the night to visit his little sister, then leaving to seek refuge with a former teacher who seems very likely to be a pedophile.

In 2014, this would be a very different story, I think.

The Praises and Criticisms of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye author J. D. Salinger Dies (CBC)

July 16, 1951 review of Catcher in the New York Times

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig

I first read this book about 35 years ago. I had forgotten great rafts of it, and much of what I remembered was inaccurate.

There are many paragraphs devoted to discussion of philosophy--of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle--that are very dense and not easy to get through. Perhaps they didn't sink in the first time, or perhaps they were skipped over; the reader has been guilty of that type of behavior before.

What sticks with me now is Pirsig's description of the state of mind, the "right attitudes" one needs in order to carry out the task, motorcycle maintenance, which is of course both object and subject, both metaphor and literality. May we all enjoy such attitudes.

If you click on the title of this entry it will take you to a 2006 interview of Pirsig by Tim Adams of The Observer.

I read this book online, this time. There was no "online" the first time.