Jungle Sci-Fi

Ann Patchett’s latest novel, "State of Wonder" opens in a small town in Minnesota in the dead of winter. But it quickly takes the reader to the depths of the Amazon jungle. Marina Singh is a pharmacologist working for a major drug company. Marina learns that her lab partner and dear friend, Anders Eckman, has died of a sudden fever in the Amazon Jungle. Anders was sent by their employer, Vogel Pharmaceutical Company, to Brazil to bring back information about the progress another employee, Dr. Annick Swenson, was making on a miracle fertility drug.

Marina’s boss and lover, “Mr. Fox”, convinces Marina she has to go to Brazil to find Dr. Swenson and bring the miracle drug to Vogel. Ander’s wife believes Marina can find out what happened to her husband.

So begins Marina’s journey to the depths of the jungle where she confronts her past and finds answers she never imagined. She becomes part of Dr. Swenson’s world among the wonderful Lakashi Tribe. She sees and learns things that her scientific mind cannot grasp and she learns to trust the jungle and its inhabitants, strange as they are. But ultimately Ann Patchett is presenting the question of medical and moral ethics that surround the need to preserve natural resources and the habitats of the native people who live and thrive on these resources, which can be and (more often than not) are, more important than scientific discovery.

Ann Patchett has written a scientific thriller with an ending that is as unexpected as it is touching and sad.

An American Dream

Jonathan Frazen has become a very well known writer. His first novel “Corrections” was published just prior to Sept. 11th, 2001 and has become the beacon of authentic “American Humanism”. His next novel took nine years to write and was highly anticipated. That novel,“Freedom”, is a story that speaks to personal liberty and how we (the American public) can find our own paths to “freedom”. Jonathan Franzen tell us that since most of us begin life as part of a “family”, it is there that we will hone our skills for finding freedom.

Jonathan Frazen's novel “Freedom” is about a Midwestern family, the Berglunds. The story begins in the up and coming (or newly gentrified) St. Paul neighborhood, called Ramsey Hill. Patty Berglund is our story’s protagonist. She was a college basketball star and now is married to the very “worthy”, do good lawyer, Walter and they have two "great" kids. How Patty and Walter got together should have been the red flag. This marriage was in for trouble from the get go. We follow Patty and Walter through their travails and those of their children, especially their strangely precocious son, Joey. Patty and Walter (but mostly Patty) continually clash with neighbors, college roommates, friends and family members. Frazen's characters are very well developed. You may not like these characters but you get to know them very well.

What these characters are all seeking is their personal freedom and the way Jonathan Franzan takes them to freedom is through everyday realism. This can be tricky for a reader. Jonathan Frazen is a very good writer, that is to say he knows his craft. But for me, the tedium of living through 562 pages of Walter and Patty Berglund’s life unraveling so they could find freedom was too much!

However, I know that this novel was very well received and acclaimed. For many “Freedom” epitomized middle class America struggling in the aftermath of 9/11 searching for a path to “freedom”. The novel explores life and a family in all its messiness, its emotions, its conflicts and its ability to forgive. He is making a broad statement on the status of the well being of this country. Some people think he has written the great American novel for this century.

This was not an easy book for me to read. Jonathan Frazen escapes me. I think he is too wordy. He put every cliché and nuance of this decade into this story. Too much was attempted. (Where was his editor??) But I am glad I read it. It may (or may not) prove to be the one of the important novels of the century.

Sitting Shiva

Jonathan Tropper’s 2009 novel “This Is Where I Leave You” is described as “A magnificently funny family saga…”, and “often side splitting”. It is the story of the Foxman family. Judd Foxman, our narrator, is one of four children, the third born and the second son, in a basically dysfunctional Jewish family. The Foxman children, now adults, have been summoned to their childhood home to sit Shiva for their father, Mort Foxman. Shiva is the weeklong ritual of sitting in your home and welcoming the friends and family who want to pay respects to the person who has died. The kids find the idea somewhat strange because as far as they knew their father was an atheist. What is making it even harder is that the rabbi, who is directing the Shiva, is a childhood friend of the Foxmans who had a few strange behaviors as a boy and who they nicknamed Boner.

The Foxman clan is an interesting group. Judd, the morose narrator, has recently walked in on his wife and his obnoxious boss having sex in his bed. Paul, Judd’s older brother by sixteen months, and his wife are trying desperately to have a baby. One afternoon the family gets to listen to them having sex over the baby monitor which their sister, Wendy, had accidentally left turned on in the baby’s room. Wendy has three children and a husband who spends the entire week on his cell phone
orchestrating million dollar deals. The youngest Foxman brother, Phillip, is a lovable fellow, who is a mystery to his family, which is fine with them because he just lies whenever anyone questions him. He appears with his “life coach” who is also his girlfriend and fifteen years older than he is. But the best character is Mrs. Foxman, the outspoken celebrity author of, “Cradle and All: A Mother’s Guide To Enlightened Parenting”. She has silicone breasts, which she loves to display, and wears miniskirts and stiletto heels. Her children cannot understand why she just can’t dress appropriately for a 63 year old woman who has just lost her husband.

A week of sitting Shiva is more than this family can take as old wounds and grudges
resurface and irreverent wisecracks and put me downs are relentlessly thrown back and forth. But in spite of themselves and their wacky relationships with each other, they learn more about their father (and their mother) in this week than all the years growing up in that house on Knob’s End.

Jonathan Tropper’s characters are funny and endearing. His one liners can be hilarious and the story and the intricate family history make for a very good novel that seems to be heading toward a movie. I definitely agree that this is a book that will make you smile if not laugh out loud!

The Joy of Flying

Jonathon Miles’ first novel “Dear American Airlines” began as an enraged letter of complaint to American Airlines for stranding him in O’Hare airport. Jonathan Miles was a free lance writer flying on American Airlines from Memphis to New York City. Due to “bad weather” the plane landed in Peoria, Illinois and the passengers were all bused to Chicago's O’Hare Airport. As Mr. Miles attempted to sleep on the floor of the airport he began a letter of complaint to American Airlines for the discomfort, inconvenience, interruptions, etc. etc. As he wrote the letter it changed in his mind from a letter about himself to a letter from someone who really could have significant, immediate issues with American Airlines.

Jonathan Miles’ protagonist becomes Benjamin “Bennie” Ford, a translator of Polish fiction who is on his way to his daughter’s wedding/commitment ceremony. The letter becomes Bennie’s lament of his life but not until he has demanded his money back in no uncertain or polite terms. But as Bennie settles into the duration of his stay at O’Hare airport he begins to relate how he got to O’Hare airport on this day. Bennie is living in New York with his mother, a stroke victim who communicates via “Post-its“. And yes there is a great deal of humor and pathos involved in Bennie’s lament. Bennie’s father was a Polish seminarian who ended up in a concentration camp. He came to America, changed his name from Henryk Gniech to Henry Ford, and became an exterminator. He met Bennie’s mom as he was exterminating a possum from her family’s attic. Bennie grows up and becomes a poet, a bartender and an alcoholic. Then he meets Stella a published poet and they try to fall in love. On the way, beautifully retold by Bennie, they beget young Stella whose wedding Bennie in on the way to when he gets derailed by American Airlines. The fact that Bennie has not seen young Stella since she was an infant adds to the humor and sadness of Bennie’s story. The fact that he might miss his chance to finally connect with young Stella adds a tremendous amount of fuel to Bennie’s lament.

Along with this very involved life story Bennie is telling, is the added dimension of the novel that Bennie is translating from Polish to English. Jonathan Miles is drawing a comparison between the protagonist in the story he is translating and Bennie’s life story. It is very interesting how the author is able to compare the two men and lead the reader to a satisfactory conclusion for both men, but not without many digressions. These digressions make for a wonderful, amusing, insightful story.

Jonathan Miles has written a short novel (180 pages) that is entertaining, poignant and well written. It is a story that gives the reader many issues to contemplate and maybe by chance will give readers a chance to “enjoy” an unanticipated layover in a random airport.

Hiding to Survive

Whenever I find a book by Anna Quindlen, whether in the library or at a bookstore, I start reading an excerpt and the next thing I know I am checking it out or buying it. Her writing draws me in because it is often presented like a mystery but it isn’t a mystery in the true sense. My latest find, “Black and Blue”, was published in 1998. It is a story of domestic abuse and violence, and the people in this country who are finding ways to escape it. Anna Quindlen was a columnist and this story reads like non fiction mainly because it is written in the first person.

Frances Flynn, the protagonist and heroine, met Bobby Benedetto in a bar in Brooklyn when she was nineteen years old. She was a student nurse and Bobby was a New York City policeman. The first episode of abuse happened before they were married. But they did marry, they had a son, Robert, the abuse continued and became more and more violent. The novel opens with Fran relating how she and Robert were running away from Bobby Benedetto, as far and as fast as they could.

Fran Benedetto found someone who would help her escape. A woman came to the hospital where Fran worked to talk about domestic abuse. Patty Bancroft gave Fran what she needed to get away from her husband------a new identity and a place to hide and start a new life.

Fran, now Beth Crenshaw, and Robert began their new life in a nondescript town in Florida. Beth was constantly comparing all that she left behind with her new life, one without fear. But Fran/Beth was ever watchful, trying to keep herself and her son from doing anything that would give her husband a chance to find them. And when there were slip ups Fran refused to give in and relocate again, a mistake she would soon regret. This story is a page turner. Anna Quindlen has an important, heartfelt message for the reader which she portrays with strong, descriptive language. The way it is written Fran Benedetto seems like a real person, someone you might know. Anna Quindlen said, “ I have a soft spot for every character I’ve created, but perhaps none has lived inside me so completely, and so happily, as the nurse from Brooklyn who had the guts to take her son and run from her policeman husband. I still miss being with her, all these years after I first lived inside her skin.”

“Black and Blue” is an engrossing story with a heroine you will not easily forget.

A Misguided Parent

“A Friend of the Family” is Lauren Grodstein’s second novel. Ms. Grodstein grew up in New Jersey’s Bergen County, and has set this novel in the fictitious upscale town of Round Hill. The story opens as the narrator, Dr. Pete Dizinoff, tells us that he is living in the studio apartment that he and his wife built for their only son after he dropped out of Hampshire College.

Pete is waiting for the result of a malpractice lawsuit that will determine whether or not he will be allowed to practice medicine. But that is not the reason Pete is sleeping in the studio, banished from the comfortable home he and his wife have lived in for twenty five years. As the story evolves Pete tells us how he ended up estranged from his wife and son, not on speaking terms with his oldest and dearest friend and no longer the owner of a lucrative medical practice.

With interesting flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, we learn Pete's history and the culture of Round Hill. This is a suburban town inhabited by families striving to give their kids "everything we didn't have”. Pete’s son, Alec, had the audacity to fail out of a college that “doesn’t even give grades". And what did Pete and his wife do? They built him an art studio over the garage.

Pete is just waiting for Alec to return to school. But Alec just cannot accommodate his father. When the daughter of Pete’s best friend returns to Round Hill, after a banishment ten years ago, the trouble begins. Everyone, except Pete, seems ready to forgive and forget what happened ten years ago. When his son becomes interested in this woman, Pete goes crazy.

The last fifty pages of this novel are gripping. The novel moved in a plodding way as Pete, carefully and humorously, explained what happened. But then we realize that Pete is a totally unreliable narrator. The climax is shocking and sad as we come to understand that Pete is a delusional parent whose self-deception has led him dangerously astray.

This is a very good story about people who are driven by what they deem is status and are unable to remember who they are or where they came from. Lauren Grodstein knows her material well and has captured a place and time with amazing clarity and perception.

Stairway to Heaven

Critics and writers all seem to be very aware of the author Lorrie Moore. I think one of the best things about blogging books is the many writers I am encountering that I have never read or have not been aware of. Lorrie Moore’s “A Gate At The Stairs” is her first novel in fifteen years. It has appeared on many "Best-of-2009" lists. So I was intrigued when I received it as a Christmas gift.

The story takes place over a year in the life of twenty year old Tassie Keltjin, who is a college student at a small, liberal, Midwestern college in the city of Troy. Tassie grew up on a small farm where her father raised organic potatoes which he sold to upscale restaurants. College life has opened up a new and fascinating world to Tassie. Between semesters Tassie looks for a part time job as a baby sitter. She is finally hired by the eccentric Sarah Brink, who owns a French restaurant and her husband Edward, a cancer researcher. But strangely, Sarah and Edward do not have any children. They are in the process of adopting a child and they want Tassie to accompany them as they interview mothers who are giving up their babies. When Sarah and Edward adopt a biracial toddler, who they name Mary-Emma, Tassie begins a strange journey.

The plot meanders in a slow and plodding way. Tassie’s family dynamics enter into the picture as she learns that her younger brother wants to join the service and her father decides on a new venture. The story takes place just after 9/11, and Tassie falls in love with a fellow student who tells her he is from Brazil but is really from the Middle East. Moore has a wonderful way with words and her descriptions of nature and the weather, although beautiful, seem to go on forever. There is also amazing commentary about race in America as Sarah has meetings in her home for “transracial, biracial, multiracial families”. Sarah is determined to change the world. Lorrie Moore has a special voice that shows how ridiculous and humorous well meaning people can be. The title refers initially to the gate which is broken at the entrance to Sarah’s house, but it appears more than once as a metaphor for the stairway to heaven and as lyrics in songs that Tassie writes.

A reader who stays engaged for the first 200 pages will be greatly rewarded. The last quarter of this novel is startling in its revelations. It is a story of overwhelming loss and grief, and how people need to pay attention or life will blindside you. In the end this is a haunting novel where the narrator grows and changes and the reader is rooting for her all the way. After reading this novel I am looking forward to reading Lorrie Moore’s critically acclaimed short story collection, “Birds of America”.

Grief-Stricken

Authors often use children at different ages to narrate a novel. It is sometimes easily apparent that the child narrator is not that reliable, for different reasons. In “Mathilda Savitch”, Victor Ladato, a well known poet and playwright, uses the voice of thirteen year old Mathilda Savitch as the narrator. Victor Ladato’s first novel is a gripping story about a family’s overwhelming grief surrounding the death of Mathilda’s older sister, Helene. Mathilda is a child who is totally lost. She adored her older sister but fought with her the last morning she saw her. Mathilda’s mother is in a fog of grief and guilt, drinking her way to oblivion. Mathilda’s father is trying to keep it all together. Mathilda thinks “if she is bad, really bad they will notice her”. When that doesn’t work Mathilda decides she will find out for herself how and why her sister died.

Here the author skillfully lets the reader know that Mathilda is an unreliable narrator. Everyone else seems to know how and why Helene died, but Mathilda is in denial. In the hands of Victor Ladato, Mathilda’s cluelessness can be laugh out loud funny. When Mathilda slips into a church she meets a nun who suggests that Mathilda could say the words of a prayer to comfort her. Mathilda thinks to herself, “She was a lunatic, I decided. You almost have to be in her profession.”

The story moves quickly as Mathilda follows Helene’s footsteps and emails to retrace her last day. The writing is very good. Using Mathilda’s skewed view of the world, after Helene’s death, and beautiful imagery, Ladato brings the reader to a point of total empathy with Mathilda. There are subplots involving friends, school, boys and terrorists but they all add up to an adolescent girl’s sad life, one that she is trying desperately to make sane.

I enjoyed Mathilda Savitch, the novel and the voice. I think it is definitely a feat when a man can make a young girl’s life, her angst, and her heartbreak so real to a reader.

A Makeshift Family

Anna Quindlen was a Newsweek columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize for her column “Public & Private” for the NY Times. She left the Times to write books. She has written four books, both fiction and non fiction, since she left her life as a columnist. Her novel “Blessings” was published in 2002.

“Blessings” takes place in the small town of Mount Mason, just outside of New York City. Blessings is the name of the estate owned by Lydia Blessing and her family for over sixty years. The story begins as a teenage couple quietly drive up the long driveway to the main house at Blessings. The boy gets out of the car and puts a box on the steps. But he is in such a hurry he leaves the box on the steps of the garage apartment and not the main house.

The next morning Skip Cuddy, who has recently begun to work for Lydia Blessings, finds a baby, wrapped in a flannel shirt in a cardboard box, as he leaves his apartment. For reasons unknown to him Skip decides to keep the baby. But he can’t let anyone know.

The readers are pulled into a story about a young man, without parents, who found himself in prison for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and a old woman who has led a privileged but lonely life. The story goes from the present, as Skip struggles with his life as the father of a newborn, to the past, as Lydia Blessing is haunted by the secrets she and her family have lived with over the last sixty years.

Lydia Blessing decides to help Skip to care for this child but a betrayal occurs and things drastically change. Anna Quindlen is a master at creating characters that you really care about. Her writing is so clear and descriptive that the reader can’t help but be moved to tears of empathy as this young man struggles to be a good father to this baby he found on his doorstep. And Lydia Blessing finds a part of herself that she thought was gone forever. But Anna Quindlen is never maudlin. She has that innate skill that makes a reader feel that the characters are real and what they do makes a difference.

This is a story about self discovery and family, whatever that family looks like in the end.

Bittersweet Vacations

Richard Russo’s latest novel “That Old Cape Magic” is different from his past novels that have garnered so much praise and an almost cult following. This novel does not take place in upstate New York, where Russo was born, nor does it deal with the blue collared workers who he is so famous for bringing to life.

“That Old Cape Magic” takes place at two weddings, a year apart, that are set in Cape Cod and Maine. The “hero” of Russo’s latest story is Jack Griffin, known as Griffin. Griffin is a 55 year old college professor at a liberal arts college in Connecticut. And Griffin is having a mid-life crisis. Griffin’s father has died and he is carrying his father’s ashes to disburse at Cape Cod, where Griffin and his parents spent every summer. It is here that Richard Russo unleashes his skills as a comedy writer. The dilemma of where exactly to throw these ashes gets ridiculous.

Griffin’s parents were Ivy League educated academics that ended up at a boring college in, as they will only refer to it, “the mid fucking west”. But every summer they spent a month on Cape Cod. It was their dream to live there some day and as they drove over the Sagamore Bridge to Cape Cod, Griffin’s parents would sing “That Old Black Magic” substituting Cape for Black. But Griffin’s parents were miserable where ever they were.

The story progresses as Griffin relives his childhood thinking about what horrible parents they were but unable to let them go, or to forgive them. What he does do is alienate his wife of thirty some years and try to recapture the glory of his days as a screenwriter in Los Angeles.


Russo has written a novel about family, nostalgia, and discontent. Griffin realizes that he cannot escape his parents, shut out their voices in his head, or return to the fantasy of his youth. Richard Russo has added some hilarious scenes and witty dialogue to his repertoire. This may be a new direction for Mr. Russo and it’s fun to read. A mid-life crisis with some hilarity mixed in with introspection makes for a great story.

A Wrinkle in Time

Audrey Niffenegeger’s debut novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is now a number one best seller and a movie based on the book will come out this week. I usually will try to read the book before I see the movie but I was somewhat dubious when I purchased this rather large book. After reading this 537 page book in a very short time I am happy to say that this is a wonderful first novel by a skillful and innovative writer.

The "Time Traveler’s Wife" is a story about a man who is an involuntary Time Traveler. This is a complicated phenomenon which the author has carefully structured so that the reader can follow and understand, for the most part, what it can mean to travel in time. The main characters are Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. They first meet in 1977 in the meadow behind Clare’s house when she is six and Henry is thirty eight. Henry continues to visit Clare in the meadow as she is growing up and he is time traveling. She is fascinated by Henry and feels that she is completely connected to him. But they don’t meet in real time until 1991 when Clare is twenty and Henry is twenty eight. Henry doesn’t recognize Clare because he was thirty eight when he first met her in the meadow. Confusing? Not really, because the author skillfully begins each chapter with the exact date and the corresponding ages of Henry and Clare to orient the reader. Each chapter is written in the first person narrative using both Henry and Clare’s perspectives.

Time Travel is a very interesting concept and it makes for an exciting, suspense filled story. As Clare and Henry fall in love and attempt to have a “normal life” Henry’s travels can be both amusing and frightening. He will disappear without warning, leaving his clothes behind. Then he will arrive in a past or future time naked and not sure where he is, which can be funny but also troublesome and dangerous. But the author never lets the plot get too convoluted.

In an attempt to make their lives more normal Henry goes to a doctor to cure him of his chrono-displacement. There is an very interesting medical component but this is ultimately a love story based on unconditional love and trust that spans a lifetime. Audrey Niffenegger has written an imaginative, poignant story that I did not want to put down or to end. The characters are real, passionate and believable. This is a book I highly recommend and I hope will translate to a great movie.