Edmund Love

A couple of years ago, the UM Alumni Association profiled UM alum and acclaimed author Edmund G. Love. Admittedly, I'd never heard of the man. But, the profile was interesting, as was the description of one of his books that they highlighted: Hanging On, Or How to Get Through a Depression and Enjoy Life. This book is a case-in-point for why one should "never judge a book by its cover." Despite all appearances, this book is nothing at all to do with psychology; it is, rather, a memoir of Love's time as a Wolverine during the Great Depression. I loved this book. I loved it to the point that I set out in search of other books Love had written and struck gold with The Situation in Flushing. This latter book is another memoir, this one focused on his childhood in the small town of Flushing, Michigan. In Situation, Love brings alive the little Flushing of his youth, telling tale after tale of adventure and occasionally. His prose is such that you feel you are not reading a book, but that he is speaking to you; I was reminded of the stories my great-grandfather used to tell of his own adventures in another small Michigan town during the same period (1910s and early 20s). Although Love was best known for Subways are for Sleeping, I prefer Hanging On... and Situation, both of which are humorous, nostalgic and, frankly, quite lovely.

The Best of 2011

The following 8 books constitute my “best of” for 2011. I've read 54 books this year and chose 8 "best," that is, the top 15%. I won’t write more here about those I’ve written about previously, but for those I have not commented on, I’ve added a paragraph or two about the book and why I liked it so much. 

1.   In the Garden of Beasts
   (I reviewed this book on November 17.)
2. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia
   I became interested in Lawrence of Arabia after reading a bit about him in the sixth book on this list, The Great Silence… This biography, which is a veritable tome, is not only an excellently researched and written look at the life (and legend) of T.E. Lawrence, but does a phenomenal job of outlining the conflicting loyalties in the greater Middle East and, in the process, provides the reader with an in-depth tutorial on why peace in the Middle East has been so elusive. Michael Korda does a commendable job with the World War I history, in particular, from the military history and shifting alliances, to the lasting impact of both the guerilla warfare Lawrence practiced to the Treaty of Versailles, which left him bitter, on the Middle East. We are still reaping what others sowed nearly 100 years ago. 
3. Operation Mincement
   (I reviewed this book on December 9.)
4. Doc
   (I reviewed this book on December 2.)
5. The Paris Wife
   Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, was The Paris Wife, with whom he lived in Jazz Age Paris, while establishing himself as one of the pre-eminent writers of the 20^th century. Paula McLain draws the reader into the heart of a city still grappling with the privations of war, and into the circle of expat writers and artists seeking to make it their own.  Likewise, Ernest and Hadley’s travels to an as-yet-undeveloped Riviera, the battlefields of Italy, and bullfights of Spain are eloquently rendered so that it is hard to believe this is work of historical fiction, and not non-fiction. The ending for Ernest and Hadley is not happy (remember, she was his first wife – it follows and that there were others), but her personal ending is much happier than his. (An interesting aside: their baby makes an appearance in The Irregulars, going on a bender upon learning, falsely, that his father was killed in a World War II car accident. Like father, like son.)
6. The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age
   I read this book in January, and it directly shaped much of my reading list for the first half of the year, from piquing my curiosity about Lawrence of Arabia to introducing me to Eric Horne, Butler, whose memoirs were reprinted this past April after being out-of-print for decades, to my desire to read other related books by Juliet Nicolson. In many ways, it is a singularly depressing book: Britain has been decimated by World War I, the populace is weary, and tremendous hardship abounds. While Nicolson certainly captures the deprivation and desperation, she also captures the hopefulness that begins to emerge as the War Years give way to the Jazz Age.
7. Last Call: Rise and Fall of Prohibition in America
   Daniel Okrent’s work on Prohibition is colorful, entertaining, and informative. He sets the stage with a history of drinking in American (in early America, “Americans drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn”, page 8) and carefully examines the causes as well as the effects of the 18^th amendment. On a personal note, my husband and I were bemused to read a reference to a Chicago drugstore owned by grandmother’s uncle (p. 196). I contacted Mr. Okrent, who was kind enough to share with me his original source for the anecdote; the documents  confirmed Uncle Harry was the owner (and possibly a small-scale bootlegger, in the same fashion as many Prohibition-era druggists).
   
   
8. Rich Boy
   Rich Boy is the only fiction that made my Best of 2011 list, in part because my reading list was dominated this year by non-fiction. Sharon Pomerantz’s work embodies the best of good fiction writing: an interesting story, carefully built page-by-page; rich – if not entirely sympathetic – characters (no pun intended); and a sense of time and place.

The Irregulars

Although I truly intended my next read to focus on just about anything except World War II, I was enticed to read The Irregulars by its subtitle: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. Really? The man who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory spied on American during World War II? This sounded too good to pass up.

Jennet Conant has clearly researched her topic thoroughly and I learned a great deal about the establishment of intelligence operations in this country (and Britain’s initial influence over those operations) as well as learning more about Roald Dahl himself. (I was previously ignorant of the facts that he was Norwegian, suffered a lifetime of pain as the result of a crash during his short-lived career as a pilot in the RAF, and was a notorious carouser, womanizer, and friend of Hemingway.) The book also provides a behind-the-scenes look at the wheel-and-deal politics, if not government, of the era (and probably any era). Churchill’s decline, Truman’s rise, and Roosevelt’s demise are all chronicled here, in both American and British perspectives. 

That said, I found the book to be quite dry, almost academic in nature, particularly in comparison to the similarly-focused Operation Mincemeat or In the Garden of Beasts. Ultimately, I felt The Irregulars would have been stronger had it been shorter. Many passages simply run too long, with long passages from personal correspondence and far too many details for all but the most avid historian. I was also distracted by the tremendous number of typographical errors, most of which had been kindly annotated by a previous reader of the library’s copy. I do assume these errors have been corrected in subsequent editions.

Unless you’re intent on reading everything ever written about World War II or clandestine operations (as in Operation Mincemeat, Ian Fleming features prominently), an interest in Roald Dahl and his life before children’s literature is a pre-requisite to adding this book to your list.

Operation Mincemeat

I'm not done with World War II yet! This book, which my friend Elizabeth recommended, finally made its way off my reading list and into my hands, where it drew me in such that I believe I read the entire story in 48 hours. And what a story it is.

The operation itself, a high stakes British deception of the Nazis at the height of the war, would be too improbable to believe it it weren't actually true. It goes a little something like this: procure a dead body, kit it out in a British officer's uniform, chain a briefcase full of "top secret" correspondence to the body, cart it by submarine to the Straits of Gibraltar, set it adrift, and pray like hell that the documents make their way into German hands by way of Spanish collaborators and spies. So much could have and probably should have gone wrong with this operation, that I find it remarkable that not only did Churchill and Eisenhower both personally sign off on it, but the Germans bought it hook, line, and sinker (possibly owing to their own secretly anti-Nazi intelligence chief).

While Operation Mincemeat is a fascinating undertaking, Operation Mincemeat is highly readable because of the humor with which it's disbelieving author, Ben MacIntyre, relays so many of the anecdotes that comprised the operation. From options for procuring a body to hurtling through the night from London to Scotland to deliver the corpse-officer to the submarine (sans headlights, owing to blackout restrictions) to the submarine crew's struggle to sink the tube that transported the body, I often found myself laughing aloud. To say nothing of the story of Garcia Juan Pujol, the Spanish "spy" determined to do his part to confuse and delude the Germans.

This book also provides an excellent study in the ways of a spymaster (if the Spy Museum doesn't sell this book in their gift shop, they really should). While the creation of non-existent battalions of spies, the planting of documents, and other techniques are interesting, I was partial to the history of the haversack ruse. The success of this ruse, made famous by the British against the Turks in World War I, is difficult to judge, as MacIntyre notes that it was accompanied by the dropping of opium-laced cigarettes behind enemy lines, potentially rendering much of the Turkish fighting force stoned, whether or not they had been "had."

Doc

Many of the books I've read this year have been set in either Europe or the Middle East (or, in many cases, both); only one book has been set in the wild, wild West of late 19th century America. That book is Doc, an outstandingly true-to-life historical fiction about the life and times of John Henry "Doc" Holliday, about whom I must admit, I knew virtually nothing before reading this book. Following Doc from his childhood in Georgia through the West and his death from tuberculosis at the age of 36, Mary Doria Russell creates a portrait of the hard living ways of Doc, his prostitute girlfriend Big Nose Kate, and the Earp brothers.

While the characters are fascinating (I've ordered Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait from the library to learn more about this rabble-rouser), I most appreciated the passages about Doc's dentistry education and practice and tuberculosis. The research on these areas alone was clearly considerable and, as a reader, I appreciated the painstaking descriptions of practices and diseases that are no longer commonplace. I had no idea, for example, that tuberculosis effectively eats away at the lung, leaving each lobe spongelike as it progresses. Dodge, Kansas, also springs to life from Russell's pages: the thunder of horses pounding into town, ridden hard by cowboys; the rustle of vibrant-hued and silky dresses sported by Big Nose Kate and her competitors; the fanning and flipping of cards at gaming tables. Russell does justice to not only a life, but a place and time.

Maman's Homesick Pie

Part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook, Maman's Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan, gracefully weaves the story of a Persian childhood together and European and American exile, education, and adult life into the story of the foods that define our memories. I especially loved the imagery of mid-20th century Iran, although the author fairly acknowledges that as she and her sisters were clamoring for shorter skirts and bigger tastes of the Wests, their less fortunate contemporaries were turning more and more to radical Islam. The chapters set in Paris  are equally engaging; the reminiscences of Donia's time at Le Cordon Bleu parallel Julia Child's own descriptions of learning to cook there decades earlier. (My Life in France is among the best travelogue-memoir combos I have read, and certainly one of the best for capturing the essence of post-World War II Europe, especially France.)

My only complaint is, toward the end, it feels as though the author has become impatient with her own story. Relatives and friends try repeatedly to set her up, she is dating no one, then suddenly, without any previous mention of a boyfriend, she is engaged to be married. Likewise, her time running her own restaurant is quickly covered. I personally would have preferred either the same treatment of these later years as the earlier years, or a cleaner break so that the last chapters felt as leisurely as the first. On the whole, however, this is a thoroughly enjoyable book and offers a timely look at the Iran of yesteryear.