The Matchmaker of Périgord - Did Not Finish

According to Amazon, "For every reader who adored Chocolat, Julia Stuart's The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delectable, utterly enchanting, and sinfully satisfying delight." I tend to disagree.

The premise of Julia Stuart's novel is this: Guillaume Ladoucette is a barber of long-standing whose customer base has aged, lost some hairs, and generally found themselves to have far less need of his services than in years past. Looking around his little town (Amour-sur-Belle, population: 33), Guillaume decides to convert his little barber shop into a matchmaker's office. The results are about what you would expect, or so it seemed when I finally gave it up...

For some reason, I expected The Matchmaker of Périgord to be something like Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (read just before this blog, unfortunately, so the Amazon page will have to suffice). It was not. Neither did it put me in the mind of Chocolat either, despite the lush French countryside Stuart depicts and the somewhat timeless nature of the story. (I thought it was historical fiction when I began, and continually had to revise my guess as to when this was set as more recent dates and events appeared.)

Instead, in light of the innumerable individual quirks, I was reminded of the Confederacy of Dunces, still one of my most-loathed books ever. And, yes, I'm aware that the latter has been described as a masterpiece. To each his own. Call me crazy, but I just don't find two elderly women who have an on-going feud which has been regularly stoked by overripe tomatoes, entertaining. And I was frankly revolted by the idea of an "ancient cassoulet" which has been tended for decades first by Madame Ladoucette and now by her son the barber-turned-matchmaker. On the whole, I found all of the characters very weird, and I just couldn't move beyond that.

I have only myself to blame, as I did not care for Stuart's previous novel, The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise for many of the same reasons. Alas, c'est la vie.

The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World

When I read The Art Forger, one of my hang-ups was that the entire plot - a struggling artist forging great works by the masters - seemed to far-fetched to me that I had a hard time coming around to it. It turns out the only thing at all far-fetched was that the artist was a woman: virtually all of the renowned forgers in history are men. (Or maybe it's only the men who get caught.)

In any case, Anthony M. Amore has compiled an authoritative volume on individuals who have made their livelihoods peddling in fraud, whether created by their own hand or the hand of someone in their pay - Chinese immigrants, for example. Amore also looks at art scams more generally, from stolen art that was then hidden away for decades to unscrupulous artist associates who create additional copies beyond what the artist authorized. I found virtually all of the scams - as well as those who perpetrated them - fascinating.

The Art of the Con is a relatively quick and short read, with each chapter focusing on a different forgery, fraud, scam, or outright theft. Amore tells each story succinctly, and his style is fairly colorful and punchy, which contributes to making this a quick read. I could not help comparing it to The Rescue Artist, and between the two I did prefer the latter, if only because Charley Hill is such an outsize character. That said, for a reader looking for a broader understanding of the underbelly of the art world, as opposed to one man's role in it, The Art of the Con is certainly the stronger of the two titles.

Ultimately, this book is a reminder of that if a deal looks too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

The Boys of Summer

As the cover states, The Boys of Summer is "the classical narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Dodgers in the Jackie Robinson years...and what's happened to everyone since." While not false, I would say that the emphasis is strongly on the "covering the Dodgers" and "what's happened," with less focus on the growing up in Brooklyn bit. In other words, this is more Mike Royko meets The Summer of Beer and Whiskey than it is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, in the shadow of Ebbets Field, the son of a man who loved the Dodgers almost more than he loved his family. Roger never had a chance of being anything other than a Dodgers fan. Through luck, happenstance, and hard work, he became the Dodgers beat reporter at the tender age of 24, at which point he hopscotched the country with the likes of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese in 1952 and 1953. Traveling with an integrated ball club through the Jim Crow South, he learned more than he expected before leaving the assignment after two seasons. These experience comprise the first half of the book.

The second half is the "what's happened" bit, where Kahn criss-crosses the country again, this time by himself, as he visits the former players who have scattered from Connecticut to LA to Middle America. Their stories are fascinating for what they show us about how former athletes used to retire versus how they retire today. Carl Furillo has a job installing elevators in the World Trade Center. Billy Cox is tending bar at an American Legion. A few have gone into business, but none seems to have achieved over-the-top success. Only Gil Hodges is still in baseball. The modesty with which they are living out their lives - and for the most part these are still relatively young men - speaks volumes about how the country and professional sports have changed.

I liked this book. At times Kahn was a little too technical (or, honestly long-winded) in describing specific plays or games, but on the whole this is a book that a layman can read without getting bogged down. I especially enjoyed the passages that focused on journalism in the 1950s - the nuts and bolts of the newsroom and the culture, in particular.

In 1997, Kahn added an afterward where he writes about how the book was originally received in 1972. "Yardley complained, not entirely pleasantly, that I had written two books, not one." When I read that, I thought, "bingo!" The two haves are well-written, certainly, and each is interesting in its own way, but they really do feel like two different books. Unlike Yardley, I'm not convinced this is a complaint, but it was unexpected.

Final verdict: Baseball fans will undoubtedly relish Kahn's work. Non-fans may want to consider what other titles comprise their current reading list and prioritize accordingly.

Lucky Us

At it's most basic level, Lucky Us is the story of two half sisters, Iris and Eva, who meet as adolescents in the midst of rather awkward circumstances. Iris's mother has just died and Eva's has left her abruptly with her father, Edgar. With World War II as a backdrop, Iris and Eva hightail it out of Ohio and away from Edgar and to Hollywood where Iris's fate is heartbreak and disillusionment.

This is a book that starts a bit slowly, and is told through letters - both sent and unsent -  memories, and multiple perspectives. For that reason, the story itself sometimes feels a bit disjointed, sometimes flowing smoothly and sometimes moving in fits and starts. Even so, it is a beautifully written story. Amy Bloom has created an entire cast of memorable characters, each with their own personalities, quirks, and, perhaps most importantly, flaws. And she has done this using some of the most beautiful prose I have read in a long time.

"The wicked people of the world are not supposed to be calm and composed," Eva muses at one point, and with that one sentence I am transported into my own musings on wickedness and human nature. When Clara tries to help Eva understand her aversion to religion, Bloom writes, "she absolutely did not believe that a white man was going to come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her hand or be her friend." These are words that reach into the reader's mind, create strong imagery, and pull the story - and the reader - along.

None of the characters is who they seem initially and all make questionable decisions. I was reminded more than once of When the World Was Young (another mid-century historical fiction which sees a young girl settle into life without her mother). And while Lucky Us is a coming of a age story, I would argue that it is really about decisions and consequences, the shades of gray surrounding "truth," the meaning of family - those we are born to and those we choose, and not least what it means to forgive - or not.

Paper: Paging Through History

In some ways, Paper is exactly what it purports to be: a history of paper. That said, I would argue that it is a history of a specific type of paper and, more generally, a specific use for that paper. Which is to say that Paper is as much a history of the written word as the product itself. Much like The Silk Roads, it begins by tracing the history of early writing from east to west, for it was the Chinese and then the Mesopotanians who developed the earliest writing systems and turned natural products (barks and animal skins, chiefly) into materials for holding the recorded word. In this way, it is the history of writing, of words on paper, than the product itself.

Mark Kurlansky has reconstructed an incredibly precise history, from those barks and skins through the advent of printing, onto the production process of paper itself and then forays briefly, ever so briefly, into other uses for paper. This last is where my chief complaint lies. When thinking of all the uses for paper, writing paper – whether newsprint, book pages, or high end stationary – is but one product that comes to mind. I love books and newspapers, but where would we be without toilet paper?? (Or, let's be honest, ladies, certain feminine hygiene products that rely on paper or paper derivatives as crucial components.) All told, and among their myriad uses, paper products are used for packaging, for hygiene, for eating on the go, for entertainment (or they were, in the heyday of paper dolls), and for cleaning sticky fingers.

Kurlansky glosses over each of these, failing to mention some altogether, and devoting the most time to paper clothes and paper money. Even these do not receive the amount of attention I would have liked. I would have been interested in a broader history of paper as it transitioned from a single use product (or maybe it never was that) to having multiple uses across different societies. 

I recognize that I may be asking too much here – obviously this history of paper and writing and printing is its own volume, as Kurlansky has proven, and I have no reason to doubt that these other things, properly researched, would be their own volumes as well.  In fairness to Kurlansky, I should note that my disappointment no doubt stems in part from the incredibly high bar he set with The Food of a Younger Land, which is simply perfection.  In the end, though, I couldn’t help but feel that Paper either 1) didn’t live up to its potential or 2) should have had a different title. It is the history of paper, but specific paper for a specific use.

Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

Harry Fukuhara was born in Washington and grew up in the idyllic little town of Auburn, the son of Japanese immigrants on the make. Life was perhaps a bit complicated – an older brother and sister were sent to live in Japan with extended family and never did quite settle back into the rhythm of American life upon their abrupt reentry, for example – but generally good. This changed dramatically when Harry’s father died in the midst of the Great Depression and his mother had to sell everything and move the family to Japan. To Hiroshima, I should add.

Harry hated Japan, longed for America, and finally returned in 1938. The America he encountered was a bit different from the one he’s left, particularly in regards to the treatment of anyone with a Japanese name, and particularly on the West Coast. Yet, as terrible as Harry’s timing may seem, it could have been worse, at least for a Japanese-American who longest for this country: shortly after Harry returned to the U.S., it became much, much more difficult to do so.

And so Harry settled into a somewhat tenuous existence, which he led right up until he was interred – along with his older sister and niece and thousands of other law-abiding Japanese whose crime, of course, was their ethnicity. Here Harry’s story becomes particularly interesting, for despite his anger and bitterness toward his current treatment, he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army as a translator. Sometimes he interrogated prisoners. Sometimes he deciphered reeking, blood-splattered documents. Sometimes he waded ashore under enemy fire. And in the most improbable way, he encountered an enemy he knew in another life.

This story alone would be book-worthy enough, but while Harry slogged his way through the South Pacific, three brothers found themselves cogs of war in Imperial Japan. To say nothing of the whole atomic bomb bit. And the fact that, after the war, he rose to become one of the highest ranking military officials in Japan, and certainly the highest counterintelligence official. 

All of which makes Midnight in Broad Daylight a fascinating – and chilling – read. Pamela Rotner Sakamoto has captured the essence of two cultures, as well as the inexorable march of time and conflict and the political process. She sprinkles a liberal helping of Japanese terminology throughout the book so that the reader, too, is constantly pulled between Japan and America, Japanese and English. Most critically, Sakamoto appears to write without judgment. She presents the issues from multiple vantage points, letting readers feel the individual and collective dilemmas of the time. In that way, this book is similar to Flyboys, in which James Bradley succeeds in creating a wholly objective portrait of the war in the Pacific. There’s no question, though, that Sakamoto’s portrait is more personal, and perhaps more searing. (It is certainly less grisly, which is my only complaint about Bradley’s work.)

Above all, Midnight in Broad Daylight is a book to make the reader think. About the lives each of us has lived, from the stranger on the bus to the neighbor three doors down. About loyalty and resiliency. About how life is so seldom black-and-white, right-and-wrong. About the human lives impacted by government decree, and about how capricious it all is.