Burning Bright is a collection of short stories by Ron Rash. The stories range from Civil War-era, to Great Depression-era, to the present day, but all are set in the deep coves and hollows of the Western Carolina mountains. By grounding the stories this way, Rash creates an unmistakable sense of place, and of the hardscrabble existence scratched out by so many in that place.
For the most part, these are proud people, living by their wits, occasionally (in the present day stories), their wits dulled by the omnipotent scourge of meth that has taken hold in that part of the country. Many of the stories have an undercurrent of violence, which feels appropriate, rather than gratuitous. A few of the stories situate Rash's pocket of Appalachia within the larger American South (I thought repeatedly of After Appomattox as I read Dead Confederates), but more often Rash's story serve to remind the reader just how isolated - culturally, emotionally, and geographically - these hills are.
In sum, Burning Bright is an excellent collection of short stories told with a unique perspective and voice. They are a reminder, too, of the many and varied landscapes that crisscross this country.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Murder of the Century The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars
Paul Collins's Murder of the Century offers readers a glimpse into big city crime when fingerprints were considered unreliable, DNA testing did not exist, cops and coroners were in somebody's pocket, and journalists were as likely to solve a murder as law enforcement.
So what is the so-called murder of the century? Amid a broiling mid-summer heat wave in 1897, body parts begin turning up across New York City - a torso in the East River, limbs in Harlem, that kind of thing. But whose are they? And where is the head? And, most importantly, who is responsible? While one cop works doggedly to answer these questions, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer use the crime as an opportunity to turn up the heat in their tabloid war with one another.
The Murder of the Century is as much a tale of yellow journalism as it is of murder. In many ways, I was reminded of the murder which captivated London just a few years later, that committed by Hawley Harvey Crippen and detailed by Erik Larson in Thunderstruck. Collins does a good job with both the journalism and the murder, but I couldn't help feeling that there just wasn't quite enough material here for a full book. As a result, the book alternates between being highly readable and completely bogged down in details that feel extraneous to the story he's telling.
Two-point-five stars.
So what is the so-called murder of the century? Amid a broiling mid-summer heat wave in 1897, body parts begin turning up across New York City - a torso in the East River, limbs in Harlem, that kind of thing. But whose are they? And where is the head? And, most importantly, who is responsible? While one cop works doggedly to answer these questions, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer use the crime as an opportunity to turn up the heat in their tabloid war with one another.
The Murder of the Century is as much a tale of yellow journalism as it is of murder. In many ways, I was reminded of the murder which captivated London just a few years later, that committed by Hawley Harvey Crippen and detailed by Erik Larson in Thunderstruck. Collins does a good job with both the journalism and the murder, but I couldn't help feeling that there just wasn't quite enough material here for a full book. As a result, the book alternates between being highly readable and completely bogged down in details that feel extraneous to the story he's telling.
Two-point-five stars.
Friday, July 24, 2015
A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London's Flower Sellers
Tilly Harper leaves her home in Northern England to become an assistant housemother at a home for blind and crippled girls in London. The "girls" are not just any girls, though: they are Mr. Shaw's flower girls. Some of them are twice as old as 20-year-old Tilly, some a few years younger. All of them work at the adjacent factory crafting silk flowers, which are famous enough for even Queen Alexandra to notice.
Settling into her room, Tilly discovers a small box of trinkets that belonged to the previous occupant, the now-deceased Flora Flynn. Inside the box is also a journal, in which Flora describes her heartbreak at losing her her younger sister when they were penniless flower girls on the streets of London. Still reeling from her own losses, Tilly determines to find out what happened to the younger sister (and this 100 years before The Google).
Hazel Gaynor's A Memory of Violets has potential. Gaynor writes well and her characters have plenty of depth and personality. She simply tries to do too much. There are too many narratives happening here: Flora's story, Tilly's current story, Tilly's past history, and then later, Rosie's stories. Either Flora or Tilly could have stood on her own, and combining them felt forced and unnecessary. (I had a similar to reaction to The Girl Who Came Home, so I will say that Gaynor is nothing if not consistent.)
My biggest complaint, though, is that Gaynor relies on way too many coincidences for the story to be believable. All of the book's characters simply could not have been connected. I understand that without the connections, the lives of Flora and Tilly simply run parallel to one another, and never the twain shall meet. No, it's simply too tall of an order to believe it all could have happened as Gaynor wrote here.
The final verdict: this isn't a bad book. It's just not a great one, and there are too many of those for me to recommend this one wholeheartedly.
Settling into her room, Tilly discovers a small box of trinkets that belonged to the previous occupant, the now-deceased Flora Flynn. Inside the box is also a journal, in which Flora describes her heartbreak at losing her her younger sister when they were penniless flower girls on the streets of London. Still reeling from her own losses, Tilly determines to find out what happened to the younger sister (and this 100 years before The Google).
Hazel Gaynor's A Memory of Violets has potential. Gaynor writes well and her characters have plenty of depth and personality. She simply tries to do too much. There are too many narratives happening here: Flora's story, Tilly's current story, Tilly's past history, and then later, Rosie's stories. Either Flora or Tilly could have stood on her own, and combining them felt forced and unnecessary. (I had a similar to reaction to The Girl Who Came Home, so I will say that Gaynor is nothing if not consistent.)
My biggest complaint, though, is that Gaynor relies on way too many coincidences for the story to be believable. All of the book's characters simply could not have been connected. I understand that without the connections, the lives of Flora and Tilly simply run parallel to one another, and never the twain shall meet. No, it's simply too tall of an order to believe it all could have happened as Gaynor wrote here.
The final verdict: this isn't a bad book. It's just not a great one, and there are too many of those for me to recommend this one wholeheartedly.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
The Art Forger
Claire Roth has been blacklisted by the entire art world. Rather than producing original art which no gallery, museum, or dealer will ever touch, she spends most of her time recreating other people's art for Reproductions.com.Want Vincent Van Gogh's starry night? It - or a virtually undetectable copy - can be yours thanks to Claire's ability to mimic other artists' style and technique. (In fact, this skill is what got her blacklisted from the art world.) Her real test comes when a dealer approaches her about copying one of the stolen Degas paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In accepting this assignment, though, Claire finds herself delving into both the underworld and a spiraling mystery. This master forger's ability to save herself depends on her ability to prove that the lost masterpiece is, itself, just a finely crafted forgery.
I wasn't familiar with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, or the theft of art from this museum, until I read B. A. Shapiro's The Art Forger. Not only did I learn a great deal about this museum and its artwork (both stolen and not), but I also learned a tremendous amount about painting techniques and how, specifically, one goes about creating forgeries. (Anyone who has ever seen my stick figures knows this will not be my next career move.)
Shapiro writes well and has created an engaging and credible mystery around the facts in the case. Claire's back story is woven in carefully, as is Isabella Stewart Gardner's "correspondence," although the latter is a bit of a crutch to resolve the mystery in a realistic way. My only criticism is of Claire, whose "struggling artist" persona can be a bit grating at times. Even this, though, feels genuine and credible, as though Shapiro wants Claire to antagonize the reader just a bit. Well done.
I wasn't familiar with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, or the theft of art from this museum, until I read B. A. Shapiro's The Art Forger. Not only did I learn a great deal about this museum and its artwork (both stolen and not), but I also learned a tremendous amount about painting techniques and how, specifically, one goes about creating forgeries. (Anyone who has ever seen my stick figures knows this will not be my next career move.)
Shapiro writes well and has created an engaging and credible mystery around the facts in the case. Claire's back story is woven in carefully, as is Isabella Stewart Gardner's "correspondence," although the latter is a bit of a crutch to resolve the mystery in a realistic way. My only criticism is of Claire, whose "struggling artist" persona can be a bit grating at times. Even this, though, feels genuine and credible, as though Shapiro wants Claire to antagonize the reader just a bit. Well done.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust
Several weeks ago, I read The Last Jews in Berlin, about Jews who managed to hide for the duration of the Holocaust under Hitler's nose. Edith Hahn is not included in Leonard Gross's book (perhaps for reasons of geography, perhaps he did not know her story, or perhaps he was interested in telling the stories of those who were not included to publish their own memoirs), but she certainly could have been.
Edith Hahn had a fairly unremarkable childhood has a Vienna Jew, save for one important difference: she was highly educated, a rarity for women in her circumstances in those days. With a brilliant, inquiring mind, she studied all the way through to a doctorate of law - and then her timing failed her. She was to sit for her final examination just as Austria fell to Hitler and the Jewish laws precluded her from becoming a fully qualified, practicing lawyer.
Edith was remarkable in another way, as well. Unlike so many European Jews, she felt acutely the danger posed by Hitler and his National Socialists. More than once she pleaded with her boyfriend, Pepi, that they should escape while they could, but he could not bring himself to leave his mother, and she could not bring himself to leave him.
Ultimately, the Nazis decided the issue for her: she was ordered to report to forced labor camps in northern Germany, first on an asparagus farm and then at a paper factory, where for 14 months she performed hard labor on starvation rations. Allowed to return to Vienna only upon her mother's deportation to "the east," she pulled off a daring escape and began her transformation into Aryan womanhood, culminating in her marriage to a Nazi officer.
The Nazi Officer's Wife is a fascinating memoir by a woman who, in the words of her daughter, "experienced the Holocaust both as a victim of the Nazi system in the forced labor camps, and as a dutiful German housewife existing withing the system." Her experiences in the immediate post-war years also provide a glimpse into Soviet East Germany, Stasi and all. (Remarkably - or not, given what she had already been through - Edith manages to escape the ever-tightening Soviet noose and emigrates to England.)
Sunday, July 12, 2015
In the Unlikely Event
When I think of Judy Blume, I think of long, lazy childhood afternoons filled with Fudge and her Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and a bit later, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret? I didn't include Judy Blume on my somewhat recent list of books that matter, but I probably should have. She, Roald Dahl, and Ann M. Martin (Babysitter's Club, anyone?) were probably the only authors I could really name when I was 10 years old. But I digress.
In the Unlikely Event is the adult version of Judy Blume at her finest. The novel is set in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the winter of 1951-52 when three commercial airplanes crashed in town on their way in or out of Newark airport. The thought of this is so horrifying that I thought Blume created these circumstances to test her characters, but it turns out that this part is not fiction. (And Elizabeth, New Jersey, is Blume's home town and Blume was 13-going-on-14 that winter, so it's fair to wonder how much of an autobiographical element In the Unlikely Event contains.)
The story is about how individuals are affected by the crash, people whose lives might never have intersected, and some that would have intersected differently. It's about how humans cope with crisis, but more than that, it's about how messy life can be, and how so often, it takes only one quick pull of a thread for everything to unravel. In this way, it reminds me very much of When the World Was Young, Elizabeth Gaffney's fine novel of innocence lost set, perhaps not coincidentally, in the same heady, post-war years that Blume mines here.
These are Blume's people. In Miri Ammerman, I felt the presence of Margaret Simon, she of Are You There God fame. What Blume does so well is to create the story. Each chapter is told in the voice of a different character - I'd hazard to guess close to 20 in all - and for the first third of the book, it's a guessing game for the reader how these lives fit together. Blume creates dramatic plot twists in places the reader least expects, and she does all of it with an authentic voice, or in this case, voices.
Ultimately, this is a book to make the reader think. About family. About love. About choices and happiness and random luck, both good and bad. About the influence of strangers and strange events on our lives. If you read nothing else this summer, read this.
In the Unlikely Event is the adult version of Judy Blume at her finest. The novel is set in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the winter of 1951-52 when three commercial airplanes crashed in town on their way in or out of Newark airport. The thought of this is so horrifying that I thought Blume created these circumstances to test her characters, but it turns out that this part is not fiction. (And Elizabeth, New Jersey, is Blume's home town and Blume was 13-going-on-14 that winter, so it's fair to wonder how much of an autobiographical element In the Unlikely Event contains.)
The story is about how individuals are affected by the crash, people whose lives might never have intersected, and some that would have intersected differently. It's about how humans cope with crisis, but more than that, it's about how messy life can be, and how so often, it takes only one quick pull of a thread for everything to unravel. In this way, it reminds me very much of When the World Was Young, Elizabeth Gaffney's fine novel of innocence lost set, perhaps not coincidentally, in the same heady, post-war years that Blume mines here.
These are Blume's people. In Miri Ammerman, I felt the presence of Margaret Simon, she of Are You There God fame. What Blume does so well is to create the story. Each chapter is told in the voice of a different character - I'd hazard to guess close to 20 in all - and for the first third of the book, it's a guessing game for the reader how these lives fit together. Blume creates dramatic plot twists in places the reader least expects, and she does all of it with an authentic voice, or in this case, voices.
Ultimately, this is a book to make the reader think. About family. About love. About choices and happiness and random luck, both good and bad. About the influence of strangers and strange events on our lives. If you read nothing else this summer, read this.
Friday, July 10, 2015
All Things Bright and Beautiful
All Things Bright and Beautiful is James Herriot's memoir of his years a country vet in 1930s Yorkshire. His style reminds me very much of both the Gilbreths and Edmund Love, so regular readers of this blog will know that I loved it.
Herriot leads his readers on a gentle stroll through the hills and dales, jovially recalling his more memorable patients and not a few of their two-legged owners. He creates a sense of time and place, so that the reader is quite certain that Herriot's adventures could only have happened when and where they did. Many are sweet, some are laugh-out-loud funny, and all are tinged with a heavy dose of nostalgia.
In addition to giving readers a glimpse of the country vets' daily life, Herriot also deftly educates the reader about veterinary medicine, and in particular how far the field had advanced, even at the time of his writing (early 1970s). His explanations of various ailments are thorough, without being overly technical. I learned more about brucellosis, for example, than I ever thought to knew, but didn't realize until I finished reading the book how much Herriot had actually taught me about animal husbandry. He is clearly awed by his work, not in the self-important sense, but in the sense that man has the ability, through science, to alleviate (or prevent) the suffering of so many animals.
All Things Bright and Beautiful is actually the second book in a trilogy. I've gone about it all wrong, reading the middle first, but I am very much looking forward to cracking the cover on All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Wise and Wonderful.
Four stars.
Herriot leads his readers on a gentle stroll through the hills and dales, jovially recalling his more memorable patients and not a few of their two-legged owners. He creates a sense of time and place, so that the reader is quite certain that Herriot's adventures could only have happened when and where they did. Many are sweet, some are laugh-out-loud funny, and all are tinged with a heavy dose of nostalgia.
In addition to giving readers a glimpse of the country vets' daily life, Herriot also deftly educates the reader about veterinary medicine, and in particular how far the field had advanced, even at the time of his writing (early 1970s). His explanations of various ailments are thorough, without being overly technical. I learned more about brucellosis, for example, than I ever thought to knew, but didn't realize until I finished reading the book how much Herriot had actually taught me about animal husbandry. He is clearly awed by his work, not in the self-important sense, but in the sense that man has the ability, through science, to alleviate (or prevent) the suffering of so many animals.
All Things Bright and Beautiful is actually the second book in a trilogy. I've gone about it all wrong, reading the middle first, but I am very much looking forward to cracking the cover on All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Wise and Wonderful.
Four stars.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Oh Say Can You Fudge
I shouldn't read the Fudge mysteries. I know this. I've said this before. And yet, when I saw the fireworks-filled cover on the library shelf, I couldn't help myself. The Fourth of July. Mackinac Island. Fudge. I have no one to blame but myself.
Allie McMurphy, in her infinite wisdom, has joined the Star Spangled Fourth committee. She has insisted on hiring a new company to put on the island's three fireworks shows - and then she discovers him dead in the fireworks warehouse, just before the entire warehouse explodes.
There are so many things wrong with this book. Regarding the writing, I'll just say it can't possibly be a mistake that the day I read this book is also the day I learned an Ohio appeals court ruled in favor of proper punctuation. Even looking beyond the punctuation, the writing itself is pretty terrible. Every person Allie encounters is described in minute and simultaneously meaning details from the hair (most women wear it in a bun, it seems), to the clothes, to the height (Allie is a master of knowing exactly how tall everyone she meets is). Also I've decided I really don't like Allie.
Although I wasn't a huge fan of either of the other books in this series, the plot in each was a compelling whodunit. This one is different. The entire mystery left me with a rather meh feeling, which wasn't helped by the way in which one of the characters (Henry) disappears completely from the plot and pages, his role in any of the "mysteries" completely unresolved (or forgotten). It was as if Nancy Coco got bored of her own characters and creation and abandoned them all, come what may.
The final verdict: skip this book.
Allie McMurphy, in her infinite wisdom, has joined the Star Spangled Fourth committee. She has insisted on hiring a new company to put on the island's three fireworks shows - and then she discovers him dead in the fireworks warehouse, just before the entire warehouse explodes.
There are so many things wrong with this book. Regarding the writing, I'll just say it can't possibly be a mistake that the day I read this book is also the day I learned an Ohio appeals court ruled in favor of proper punctuation. Even looking beyond the punctuation, the writing itself is pretty terrible. Every person Allie encounters is described in minute and simultaneously meaning details from the hair (most women wear it in a bun, it seems), to the clothes, to the height (Allie is a master of knowing exactly how tall everyone she meets is). Also I've decided I really don't like Allie.
Although I wasn't a huge fan of either of the other books in this series, the plot in each was a compelling whodunit. This one is different. The entire mystery left me with a rather meh feeling, which wasn't helped by the way in which one of the characters (Henry) disappears completely from the plot and pages, his role in any of the "mysteries" completely unresolved (or forgotten). It was as if Nancy Coco got bored of her own characters and creation and abandoned them all, come what may.
The final verdict: skip this book.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
The Wright Brothers
As one might expect, The Wright Brothers, is a biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright, those crazy kids from Dayton, Ohio, who invented a flying machine.
As his his custom, David McCullough (The Path Between the Seas and The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris) writes crisply, telling the story without becoming bogged down in the details. He writes objectively, but not without admiration for what Wilbur and Orville accomplished or for the perseverance necessary to accomplish it. If anything, I was surprised at how quickly I read this book, particularly as compared to James Tobin's To Conquer the Air, which mines much of the same material but in a less lively fashion.
McCullough is careful to consider the contributions of others, and particularly of the Wrights' right-hand man, Charlie Taylor. Relegated to the dustbin of history, so to speak, it is Charlie who built much of the Wrights' machines, making their conceptualizations a reality. Or at least speeding them a long. (As a side note, I could not figure out where I had previously read about Charlie Taylor, Octave Chanute, Samuel Langley, and Louis Blériot. My first reason for starting a blog was a good one: with a few keystrokes, I realized I had read of their exploits - and those of the Wrights - in Tobin's work, as well as in Jim Rasenberger's delightful America, 1908.)
The final verdict: if what you remember about the Wilbur and Orville is limited to their invention of human flight, McCullough's book is an excellent refresher on their early beginnings, entrepreneurial spirit, and mechanical genius. The Wright Brothers is concise, but complete.
As his his custom, David McCullough (The Path Between the Seas and The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris) writes crisply, telling the story without becoming bogged down in the details. He writes objectively, but not without admiration for what Wilbur and Orville accomplished or for the perseverance necessary to accomplish it. If anything, I was surprised at how quickly I read this book, particularly as compared to James Tobin's To Conquer the Air, which mines much of the same material but in a less lively fashion.
McCullough is careful to consider the contributions of others, and particularly of the Wrights' right-hand man, Charlie Taylor. Relegated to the dustbin of history, so to speak, it is Charlie who built much of the Wrights' machines, making their conceptualizations a reality. Or at least speeding them a long. (As a side note, I could not figure out where I had previously read about Charlie Taylor, Octave Chanute, Samuel Langley, and Louis Blériot. My first reason for starting a blog was a good one: with a few keystrokes, I realized I had read of their exploits - and those of the Wrights - in Tobin's work, as well as in Jim Rasenberger's delightful America, 1908.)
The final verdict: if what you remember about the Wilbur and Orville is limited to their invention of human flight, McCullough's book is an excellent refresher on their early beginnings, entrepreneurial spirit, and mechanical genius. The Wright Brothers is concise, but complete.
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