I bought this book because I was interested in the story of the
Fitzgeralds, particularly Zelda. I ended up feeling I'd been sold a bill
of goods. Call Me Zelda is primarily the story of the entirely
fictional Anna Howard, Zelda's personal psychiatric nurse-cum-friend.
Anna has an complex history and she's not an uninteresting character,
but she is most definitely the protagonist of a book that purported to
tell the story of Zelda Fitzgerald's last, and saddest, decade, as
she spun further from reality in one institution after the other. Or so I
thought.
I expected something along the lines of The Paris Wife
or even The Aviator's Wife. Instead, I found myself tucked into a work
of (almost pure) fiction. Happily, the setting for most of the book is
Baltimore, and neighborhoods I know - or at least remember - well,
appear throughout, from Mount Vernon, to the streets around the Johns
Hopkins hospital, to the still very rural Towson. Erika Robuck also did a nice
job depicting the relationship between
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (although I cannot say how accurate Robuck's description is - maybe entirely, or maybe colored largely by what she hoped it might have been). In any case, it is fascinating to read about and the way they simultaneously needed and
destroyed one another.
Aside from the fact that the book wasn't
what I expected, my fault and mine alone, I had one other real quibble.
Call Me Zelda is divided into acts; I really enjoyed the first, and
longest, and couldn't help but wish that Robuck had ended the story
there; not only was the second act often cloying, but the conclusion of the first act really felt like the natural end of both Anna's story and
Zelda's.
Overall, Call Me Zelda is a mixed bag. The story feels somewhat contrived, and is (most likely) not nearly as close to the real story as I would have liked, but as a work of fiction, the plot and characters are interesting, particularly in Act One.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Somerset
Several years ago, I carted Leila Meicham's Roses to Brazil with me. Hard-backed. It was a foolish thing to do for two reasons: 1) At 600+ pages, the tome probably weighed five pounds. 2) I could barely put it down long enough to work. I spent every free minute reading furiously (and if I'm completely honest, crying), hardly even noticing the scenery. So I was just a teensy bit excited to score an advance copy of Somerset over the summer.
Somerset is the prequel to Roses and tells the meandering story of the preceding generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of everything that follows. All of Meicham's characters, though, inhabit the pages so fully that one wants to reach into the pages and shake them - or hug them, as the case may be. There are lessons here, as well, in the prices to be paid, both personal and societal, to settle untamed lands...or to resettle them for the white man, at least.
If I cannot claim to have liked Somerset quite as much as Roses, that is merely a testament to the captivating story that books tells, rather than a knock on Somerset. The prequel feels less dramatic, (and therefore less heart-wrenching), perhaps because the reader already has a sense of what comes next - and that something does, in fact come next. In this way, it shares much in common with Rhett Butler's People (the fact that Margaret Mitchell was long in her grave before this prequel was written, aside), another antebellum-postbellum rendering of the South.
Somerset is the prequel to Roses and tells the meandering story of the preceding generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of everything that follows. All of Meicham's characters, though, inhabit the pages so fully that one wants to reach into the pages and shake them - or hug them, as the case may be. There are lessons here, as well, in the prices to be paid, both personal and societal, to settle untamed lands...or to resettle them for the white man, at least.
If I cannot claim to have liked Somerset quite as much as Roses, that is merely a testament to the captivating story that books tells, rather than a knock on Somerset. The prequel feels less dramatic, (and therefore less heart-wrenching), perhaps because the reader already has a sense of what comes next - and that something does, in fact come next. In this way, it shares much in common with Rhett Butler's People (the fact that Margaret Mitchell was long in her grave before this prequel was written, aside), another antebellum-postbellum rendering of the South.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Letters from Hillside Farm
Letters from Hillside Farm is another of the books I picked up at the conference this past summer. The book, written by Jerry Apps, is the story of the fictional Struckmeyer family who moves from Cleveland to a Wisconsin farm during the heart of the Great Depression. Their story is told through the letters 12-year-old George writes to his grandmother back in Cleveland - and her responses to him. To be sure, this is no Worst Hard Time. In fact, and I admit this rather sheepishly, I got about 20 pages into the book (which is only 150 pages) before I realized that this is primarily a children's book - probably aimed at the 12-year-old set.
Nevertheless, I continued for two reasons: 1) Apps does a nice job of bringing farm living, and small town Americana in general, during the 1930s to life. It was fun to read about traveling circuses and one-room schoolhouses regardless of the fact that I've done so many times in the past. 2) This book reminded me why I first loved to read, and why that love has continued through the years. In that sense, it was escapist reading more than even something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer - another book best enjoyed by the middle school set.
Would I read Letters from Hillside Farm again? No. But, I don't regret finishing it the first time.
Nevertheless, I continued for two reasons: 1) Apps does a nice job of bringing farm living, and small town Americana in general, during the 1930s to life. It was fun to read about traveling circuses and one-room schoolhouses regardless of the fact that I've done so many times in the past. 2) This book reminded me why I first loved to read, and why that love has continued through the years. In that sense, it was escapist reading more than even something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer - another book best enjoyed by the middle school set.
Would I read Letters from Hillside Farm again? No. But, I don't regret finishing it the first time.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
The Summer of Beer and Whiskey
The Summer of Beer and Whiskey (whose full title includes How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game) is the history of the 1883 St. Louis Browns. The team, which played in the old American Association, which was itself created by the Browns' German immigrant founder, Chris von der Ahe. Von der Ahe was a saloon keeper first and foremost and he founded the team - and insisted they play on Sundays - for one reason: to see more beer. The league that he then created for them to play in was derisively known as the Beer and Whiskey League, for upstanding citizens of the 1880s did not attend ball games on the Lord's Day - Sunday ball did not come to Philadelphia until 1934.
As for von der Ahe's team, well, with the possible exception of Arlie Latham and Charlie Comiskey (yes, the same Comiskey whose Chicago White Sox would create baseball's biggest scandal), the Browns were a ragtag group of men who won many a game by grit, determination and sometimes knavery, if not skill. They were also plenty happy to be imbibing great quantities of said liquor. Yet, in a story full of colorful characters, the one with the darkest story stands out most: Cap Anson who perhaps singlehandedly forced baseball into decades of segregation.
Edward Achorn does a fine job rendering the atmosphere of 1883 into text. He has painstakingly researched virtually every detail of the 1883 season - too thoroughly in some places. While the characters spring from the pages, reading a pitch-by-pitch retelling of a game that was played 130 years ago was simply too much. I loved the broad strokes by skimmed the minutiae. The final verdict? The Summer of Beer and Whiskey is probably best served to only the most ardent of baseball fans.
As for von der Ahe's team, well, with the possible exception of Arlie Latham and Charlie Comiskey (yes, the same Comiskey whose Chicago White Sox would create baseball's biggest scandal), the Browns were a ragtag group of men who won many a game by grit, determination and sometimes knavery, if not skill. They were also plenty happy to be imbibing great quantities of said liquor. Yet, in a story full of colorful characters, the one with the darkest story stands out most: Cap Anson who perhaps singlehandedly forced baseball into decades of segregation.
Edward Achorn does a fine job rendering the atmosphere of 1883 into text. He has painstakingly researched virtually every detail of the 1883 season - too thoroughly in some places. While the characters spring from the pages, reading a pitch-by-pitch retelling of a game that was played 130 years ago was simply too much. I loved the broad strokes by skimmed the minutiae. The final verdict? The Summer of Beer and Whiskey is probably best served to only the most ardent of baseball fans.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping
I found The Sixteenth Rail in my pile of unread books recently and decided to read it now primarily because I just read The Aviator's Wife, about the Lindberghs, a couple of weeks ago. The Sixteenth Rail is the story of the Lindbergh trial, or specifically of the evidence at the trial regarding the ladder used to commit the crime. The evidence was gathered and presented by one of the country's early forensic scientists, Arthur Koehler, a xylotomist. (What, you ask, is a xylotomist? One who studies wood, particularly the microscopic properties of wood.) Koehler would use his xylotomy skills to trace several of the rails and rungs in the handmade ladder found at the Lindbergh property to the man who was eventually arrested, tried, and executed for the crime, Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's absolutely fascinating to consider the detective work that went into tracing the ladder components, particularly considering this was at the height of the Great Depression. Author Adam J. Schrager has clearly research every bit of minutiae pertaining to Koehler's quest and that, in and of itself, is no small feat. However, I often got bogged down in the very minutiae that gave the book substance. Paragraph after paragraph detailing the rpms and knife formations of different planers was too technical for my taste; likewise, the pages detailing testimony at the trial feel as if they are merely the official court transcripts rendered into chapter form. The most colorful bits were those that revolved about any number of characters, in the truest sense of the word, who were pulled into the orbit of the crime. At the end of the day, there was simply too much wood for me to recommend this book to most readers. Only the most dedicated crime readers or Lindbergh fanatics would fully appreciate Sixteenth Rail (being neither myself, I am sure I could not fully appreciate it either).
Fun side note: Both the author, Adam Schrager, and the scientist, Arthur Koehler, have undergraduate degrees from the University of Michigan. Go Blue!
I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's absolutely fascinating to consider the detective work that went into tracing the ladder components, particularly considering this was at the height of the Great Depression. Author Adam J. Schrager has clearly research every bit of minutiae pertaining to Koehler's quest and that, in and of itself, is no small feat. However, I often got bogged down in the very minutiae that gave the book substance. Paragraph after paragraph detailing the rpms and knife formations of different planers was too technical for my taste; likewise, the pages detailing testimony at the trial feel as if they are merely the official court transcripts rendered into chapter form. The most colorful bits were those that revolved about any number of characters, in the truest sense of the word, who were pulled into the orbit of the crime. At the end of the day, there was simply too much wood for me to recommend this book to most readers. Only the most dedicated crime readers or Lindbergh fanatics would fully appreciate Sixteenth Rail (being neither myself, I am sure I could not fully appreciate it either).
Fun side note: Both the author, Adam Schrager, and the scientist, Arthur Koehler, have undergraduate degrees from the University of Michigan. Go Blue!
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
I know what I want to be when I grow up. David Quammen. Okay, fine, you heard me moon over his The Boilerplate Rhino earlier this summer, but really, each time I read one of his books I appreciate what he does all the more...and can only wish that I might be a globe-trotting, tome-writing, scientist-cum-author. So, what's the story with Spillover?
In his latest book, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of zoonoses (diseases that transfer from animals to people). He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones most readers have probably never heard of: Nipah, anyone? Hendra? Marburg virus? Typhoid Mary makes an appearance, as does Henrietta Lacks (a great, great read, but before I started the blog). To cover such ground, literally and figuratively, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose.
The opening pages provide an entirely-too-vivid description of Hendra, a virus that spills from bats to horses to humans with terrible consequences for equines and people alike. I skimmed them, to be honest, and fervently prayed that such imagery would not be a regular occurrence. It wasn't, although many of the descriptions did give me flashbacks to my days working for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, when I first became aware of the myriad, bizarre ways a person might suffer and, not rarely, die.
This is a long book, over 500 pages, broken into nine sections each containing roughly a dozen mini-chapters. Occasionally, by necessity, the language gets a bit technical (which Quammen acknowledges readily, cheekily adding that if his reader has followed, say, the evolutionary stages of a virus, that reader has a promising future in biology). Still, the writing is engaging and the adventures are certainly never dull (searching out primate dung in the far reaches of Africa and capturing bats - flying foxes, specifically - in Southeast Asia, for example, to say nothing of the logistics that are often involved...on second thought, I want to be David Quammen, but with flush toilets and room service).
My only real complaint is that the last 30 or so pages seem to drag in comparison to the rest of the book. The hypothetical story of the Cut Hunter and Voyager, for example, are completely superfluous given the painstaking work in the preceding hundreds of pages. All the same, though, for anyone with an interest in science, off-the-beaten-path travel, and good writing, you won't find a better book this year. Just be sure to skim (or skip) those first few bloody pages.
In his latest book, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of zoonoses (diseases that transfer from animals to people). He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones most readers have probably never heard of: Nipah, anyone? Hendra? Marburg virus? Typhoid Mary makes an appearance, as does Henrietta Lacks (a great, great read, but before I started the blog). To cover such ground, literally and figuratively, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose.
The opening pages provide an entirely-too-vivid description of Hendra, a virus that spills from bats to horses to humans with terrible consequences for equines and people alike. I skimmed them, to be honest, and fervently prayed that such imagery would not be a regular occurrence. It wasn't, although many of the descriptions did give me flashbacks to my days working for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, when I first became aware of the myriad, bizarre ways a person might suffer and, not rarely, die.
This is a long book, over 500 pages, broken into nine sections each containing roughly a dozen mini-chapters. Occasionally, by necessity, the language gets a bit technical (which Quammen acknowledges readily, cheekily adding that if his reader has followed, say, the evolutionary stages of a virus, that reader has a promising future in biology). Still, the writing is engaging and the adventures are certainly never dull (searching out primate dung in the far reaches of Africa and capturing bats - flying foxes, specifically - in Southeast Asia, for example, to say nothing of the logistics that are often involved...on second thought, I want to be David Quammen, but with flush toilets and room service).
My only real complaint is that the last 30 or so pages seem to drag in comparison to the rest of the book. The hypothetical story of the Cut Hunter and Voyager, for example, are completely superfluous given the painstaking work in the preceding hundreds of pages. All the same, though, for anyone with an interest in science, off-the-beaten-path travel, and good writing, you won't find a better book this year. Just be sure to skim (or skip) those first few bloody pages.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
The Aviator's Wife
Having enjoyed Melanie Benjamin's previous books (Alice I Have Been and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, which seems never to have made it into the blog, but which I remember liking), I have been looking forward to reading her most recent novel, The Aviator's Wife. Benjamin's third book is in the same vein as her previous two - historical figures reimagined and revisited. In this case, the character is Anne Lindbergh, aka Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, himself known by any number of nicknames, not least "Lucky Lindy" after his successful solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927.
Character voice - the extent to which Benjamin is able to embody Anne Lindbergh and make the reader forget that The Aviator's Wife is a fictional account - is the real strength of this book. The weakness is the characters themselves. Anne and Charles both become, very quickly, people it is hard to like (although the reader can at least feel sorry for Anne who is so hunted by the early paparazzi that one cannot help but compare her to Princess Di - or Kate Middleton). Both Anne and Charles are complex characters, but Charles is portrayed here, accurately or not, as a domineering bully, pompous and bombastic on the best of days; cruel and sneering on the worst. Also he seems to have been an anti-Semitic Nazi-sympathizer, which doesn't really help him much. As for Anne, although I was frequently irritated by Anne's seeming indecision and weakness, I also recognize that it is difficult (at best) to judge a woman who lived in such a different era, when opportunities and expectations were so very different from today.
As with The Paris Wife (the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, and still the best of the historical fiction character embodiment novels that I've read), it's hard to know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Benjamin includes a few pages of notes at the end where she sites specific incidents that are true - such as the kidnapping of their firstborn - for example, as well as incidents she created for the purposes of her story. Still, I was left scratching my head over her decision that Anne would never reveal Charles's womanizing to their children; this information is clearly in the public domain today, so it's not clear if the real Anne ever felt this way or if Benjamin made that decision for her own reasons.
Character voice - the extent to which Benjamin is able to embody Anne Lindbergh and make the reader forget that The Aviator's Wife is a fictional account - is the real strength of this book. The weakness is the characters themselves. Anne and Charles both become, very quickly, people it is hard to like (although the reader can at least feel sorry for Anne who is so hunted by the early paparazzi that one cannot help but compare her to Princess Di - or Kate Middleton). Both Anne and Charles are complex characters, but Charles is portrayed here, accurately or not, as a domineering bully, pompous and bombastic on the best of days; cruel and sneering on the worst. Also he seems to have been an anti-Semitic Nazi-sympathizer, which doesn't really help him much. As for Anne, although I was frequently irritated by Anne's seeming indecision and weakness, I also recognize that it is difficult (at best) to judge a woman who lived in such a different era, when opportunities and expectations were so very different from today.
As with The Paris Wife (the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, and still the best of the historical fiction character embodiment novels that I've read), it's hard to know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Benjamin includes a few pages of notes at the end where she sites specific incidents that are true - such as the kidnapping of their firstborn - for example, as well as incidents she created for the purposes of her story. Still, I was left scratching my head over her decision that Anne would never reveal Charles's womanizing to their children; this information is clearly in the public domain today, so it's not clear if the real Anne ever felt this way or if Benjamin made that decision for her own reasons.
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