Swept Away

Written by Mary Connealy who authored the Kincaid Brides Trilogy which I also enjoyed. Book One of Trouble in Texas is offered free once more to hook the reader on buying the other two. The author writes Cowboy Romances heavier on action-adventure than on Romance. The books are well edited and engage the reader from page one. Mind you it's a cliché that the men must be handsome, tall and strong, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted; the women diminutive and pretty. This series is set in Palo Duro on the Texas Panhandle in a time before law arrived so gun-play is an essential part of the scene. As it happens Luke Stone's sister happens to be one of the Kincaid Brides in Colorado. Cowboys ride horses and fight range wars. They also have raging hormones but their amours are handled tastefully.

The Brothers

What led a pair of brothers to bomb the Boston Marathon in 2013? The author did exhaustive on the ground research in Chechnya, Dagestan, Stalin's Gulag, and the Boston area in writing a forensic account of the family's background. The book is well edited and presented but reads like a detective's field notes giving us the facts of the case with no sense of empathy for the objects of her investigation. One senses that the many people who were interviewed must have been left with a sense of having being used.

This was a family who fled Russia because they were victimized there due to their ethnicity, religion, and culture only to arrive in America at a time when the War on Terror made all things Muslim suspect. When we grant refugees asylum they are often confronted with a language in which they cannot communicate, a bureaucracy they don't know how to navigate, customs and morays foreign to them, and a system seemingly designed to act as a barrier to their success. All too often the American Dream becomes a nightmare and children of such immigrants fail to flourish in an environment that seems fashioned to put them down and keep them there.

The story has played out in the lives of Vietnamese refugees supported with limited success by religious groups in the US and Canada. In the life of Omar Kadhr. Having extended the hand of friendship we feel betrayed. Stories such as this present the details of frustrated hopes and dreams and hint at the temptation to exact revenge and descend into lives of crime and drugs. What they fail to suggest is the motivation that led to such bad decisions or the changes that should be made to make the asylum process more humane and workable for those forced to go through it. Explaining what led to the crime in no way exonerates the perpetrators nor does it lead to solutions for preventing its recurrence.

Individual rights to freedom, security and privacy seem to be the first victims of the War on Terror. The fact that the acts of two individuals could lead to an entire city being under lock-down speaks for itself. Could it be that the reactions of security forces are far worse than those of the terrorists who provoked them. Is this akin to burning a house down because there is a mosquito inside. If you provoke your suspects into a shoot-out they spare you the bother of proving them guilty in court and the protracted appeal process that follows a capital sentence.

After reading this book the only thing I'm certain about is that bombs went off in Boston. The recipe for the creation of a pressure cooker bomb was available by direct link in a magazine posted in Wikipedia. That's hardly a spoiler. I'm not so certain as to who set them or why. I do know that police tactics and the court of public opinion probably played a big role in motivating whoever did. Executing a young man over a decade from now may create a martyr but will do nothing to make things better and may even worsen them.

Texas Jack

Like so many books I've been reading lately this one jumps around in time and place mid various generations of the same family. We see Jack as a 10-year-old, as a teenage jock, and as a parent with a son of his own. No one would accuse this of being great literature but the book is well-edited and although at times pedestrian has a certain familial appeal. It gives one an insiders view of a family's life. At times the shifting point of view leaves one wondering who's doing the narrating. The book confronts issues of alcoholism and child neglect. The book has a ready for Hollywood ending.

Saint John: Facts and Folklore

The 190-page book is a series of vignettes and brief articles often a single sentence rather than a history. Goss needs to fire his editor as the book is littered with spelling mistakes and contains boners such as the plague marking the Trafalgar Stairs and a suburb performance. The resulting gaffs have a comedic effect that may not be the intended approach. Many of the allusions are probably of more interest to native Saint Johners than to outsiders such as this reader.

An American Outlaw

Army Vets from Lafayette, Louisiana. Terlinga Texas, been there no reason to return. Alpine--jumping off point for Big Bend. Flashbacks to service in Iraq. The story told from the point of view of former soldiers on the lam after robberies and that of law enforcement tracking them. Bad grammar intentional dialect and poor editing. Despite poor choice of changes to first person the story holds the reader’s attention. Shifts from the Vets to Law enforcement and the past in Iraq can be confusing. What comes through to this reader most clearly is the futility and waste that war represents and the lasting damage it does to the individuals who wage it.

The Raven Boys

Made it fifty pages into this book before I bogged down. The writing style is reminiscent of a newspaper report and the author seems to lack any sense of tense for the verbs she uses making for reading discomfort. The subject matter is fantasy and ESP but the writing style serves to destroy the reader’s suspension of disbelief and therefore fails to draw one in .

I aver this book was severely edited and reissued since I last tried reading it.

How to describe The Raven Boys. The boys of the title attend a swank private school for boys. The book combines elements of teen romance, paranormal, murder mystery, fortunetelling, and even a ghost who seems almost live. Somehow the author pulls it all off and makes it seem plausible.

Little Brother

This review does not contain spoilers.

First off I should thank the author, Cory Doctorow for offering this book for free download. The book is meant to be disturbing. It is a cautionary tale of Security Forces run amuck. Media coverage of terrorist events have bred a sense of apprehension in the populace which is empowering repressive security agencies to infringe on individual rights and freedoms such as privacy, presumed innocence, freedom from search without just cause. The electronic devices which have come to make our lives so much more convenient also leave us vulnerable to government surveillance.

It has been known for years that checking certain books out from the library will trigger a report to the FBI or similar agencies. Police are supposed to get a court order before they wiretap your phone or obtain a phone log. However we are learning that our online activities and E-mail seem to be fair game for any domestic spy agency with a desire to track us. The transponders that allow us to cross bridges and use toll roads leave a record of our travels. Credit card records tell another tale and store loyalty cards add a wealth of information on our preferences. Electronic health and pharmacy records add more details. Transit passes reveal our every move. Red light cameras track who crosses an intersection and security cameras are everywhere--smile for the camera. Cameras in space can determine the denomination of a coin dropped on Red Square. The computer in your car can reveal the speed at which you’ve been driving and how often you’ve used your brakes in panic mode.

It is little comfort to be told that you’ve nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong. Tell that to black teens in any major American City. Bill C51 is presently before the Canadian Senate and would grant authorities sweeping powers to surveil electronic communications. Who is reading your E-mail? What happens if some functionary decides you fit a dangerous profile?

Post 911 $635,000,000,000 has been spent on security in the US. Cross any border and learn the sweeping powers of border agents. Board any plane and feel treated like a criminal. Know that most of this so-called security is mainly for show and does little to make us safer. In Canada we are still dealing with the fallout from head taxes for Chinese immigrants, WW#1&2 internment camps for Japanese and German citizens, residential schools for Native Canadians, disputes over expropriation. Do we really trust the government to protect our rights given that track record?

Reading this book is meant to leave you feeling uncomfortable and looking over your shoulder. What percentage of eligible voters exercise their franchise? Can we afford to be complacent?

I’m assuming that most of the grammatical errors were intentional to represent youth speak. I think it’s great the author acknowledges great bookstores though putting the descriptions at the head of each chapter somehow distracts from the flow of the narrative. Including Chapters/Indigo and Amazon among the independent bricks and mortar stores whose demise they are causing some may find disconcerting. Amazon has no base from which to stage a face to face book signing.  

[Spoilers Follow]

This is a book aimed at a younger audience. In explaining computer and internet technology in some detail it may leave those of us of an age scratching our heads. I’ll leave defining that age to others. The biggest surprise comes when the ending that seems inevitably foreshadowed is abandoned in favour of a typical “Hollywood” happy ending. This was the one sour note in an otherwise well constructed plot. Forgive the irony here.

Historic Saint John Streets

My first surprise was the fact that the authors supplied no maps to locate the streets they were talking about. The book is useless for anyone intent on taking a walking tour because the entries are in alphabetical order meaning that there is no logical order for locating the streets on the ground by neighbourhood. Unless you already have a fairly good working knowledge of the city the book leaves you lost. In spite of this with a map of the city in hand the book gives you a sense of the history of the city and its constituent parts. Street names occur up to three times around the various former communities and no attempt by common council has been made to harmonize this confusion.

Collected Poems of WH Auden

This is not a deluxe edition of the poems though at nearly 1000 pages one that gave each poem its unique page would create a wrist sprainer or require two volumes. Nevertheless there are times when the poems feel crammed. Any time one starts reading a new poet understanding his/her handling of the language, their allusions and metaphors is a challenge. Any writer is a child of their own era. Auden is a master of poetic language, his lines read so naturally one can forget they are actually rhyming but the ideas expressed go far beyond prose expression. Since my reading is not for academic purposes but rather for pleasure I don’t feel obligated to comprehend every allusion. After reading Ginsberg the expression of romance and love here is not lascivious or crass and the points made far less brash and strident.  Unlike a similar volume of WB Yeats I’ve assayed this one lacks any annotations so none of the allusions and dedications are explained. In the later poems he starts to use arcane and made-up words that have the reader reaching for a dictionary or going online to research the derivation of words no longer in common useage.

Roses are Difficult Here

W. O. Mitchell is the writer of Jake and the Kid. He writes about small town and rural prairie life but his modest settings belie a social analysis as sophisticated as that of the sociologist that in this novel is studying the people of Shelby, Alberta. The book is filled with the kind of characters that thrive in small towns and also the claustrophobia that such a closed environment can lead to. But there is also comfort in small town life.

Hate List

The story of a high school mass-murder suicide told from the point of view of the perpetrator’s girlfriend in its aftermath. Two things stand out as I read this book. The need to fight bullying and name-calling in our society and in our schools in particular. And the heavy price America pays for making guns readily available.  As one who was bullied and called names in school I can understand the wish to strike back. Not everyone is able to slough it off with the knowledge that they are better than the miserable cowards who feel they have to engage in such behaviour because of their own feelings of inferiority and lack of self-worth. I don’t condone murder but I can sympathize the feelings that motivated it. Did those kids who engaged in ridicule and bullying get what they deserved? Was revenge worth losing one’s life or wrecking it? Should we think twice before we marginalize and ostracize others?

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

Wallace Stegner’s book becomes quite readable after one works one’s way through the first few pages. The family moves to the Saskatchewan Prairies. WW#1, wheat farming, weather, the influenza epidemic, prohibition all figure in the storyline. Since Bo is ever restless and always looking for the main chance no matter what side of the law it may take him the family is always moving. He operates best in places the law hasn’t yet reached. In Salt Lake City they change houses 8 times in 4 years. Should we be surprised that when it comes to his son Chet the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree?

"Big Rock Candy Mountain", first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, is a folk music song about a hobo's idea of paradise,....

 One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
....
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

[Fortunately Anon cannot sue for copyright infringement.]

The Orenda

The Life Force in Wendat. Religion is tied to a people’s world view and forms part of their cultural experience. It is expressed in the language of the people who live it. In bringing a theology born of a foreign culture to aboriginal peoples I question whether missionaries did them any favours. It served to make them uneasy and out of step with their way of life. By living among them the Crows or Black Robes brought European disease to Native Peoples that decimated their numbers and caused further break down of tribal life as it attacked the strongest in their prime of life.

The book is written from the point of view of one of the Crows Father Christophe, Bird--a tribal warrior, and  Snow Falls--a girl he captures on a raiding party. The setting appears to be a thinly disguised St Marie Among the Hurons.

As mentioned in other discussions these people lived a brutal lifestyle in which the torture of one’s enemies formed an integral part. Death was by exsanguination, starvation, or blunt force. The body’s intinct for self-preservation betraying the desire for release from pain. The authour uses his tribe’s own words for people and place names.

The Purchase

The players

Daniel--the father
Rebecca--his wife who died in childbirth

Ruth Boyd--the orphan housekeeper taken as Daniel’s wife at 13 or 14
Mary--eldest daughter and surrogate mother to:
Isaac--9 years old
Benjamin--4 years old
Jemima--2 years old
Joseph--the baby

Miss Patch--a chestnut mare
Mulberry--a lesser lame mare

Tick--the cow

Onesimus--the slave, an inadvertent purchase at auction 13?


Ostracised by his Quaker community when a housekeeper remains under his roof after the death of his wife Daniel takes his family into Western Virginia by wagon.

Owning a slave presents problems for a Quaker not least of which are the moral issues. Simus breaks his leg needing the aid of a native healer from an adjoining farm. Then the girl gets pregnant those parts of the lad seemingly working just fine.

The book demonstrates the cruelty and injustice of slavery poisoning the lives of both owned and owner. It also points the finger at Christianity that observes the letter of the law but shows not love.

The Boundless

The Boundless is another fine product of Kenneth Oppel’s fertile imagination. Cornelius Van Horne, Donald Smith, and Sam Steele are historical figures and Smith’s flubbing of the Last Spike on the CPR line through the Rockies at Craigellachie were real events. Sasquatches remain mythical creatures and it is doubtful a single-engine train the length described ever made it through the inclines of the Rockies. Oppel is probably too young to have known that first class cars were normally placed at the rear of a train away from the noise, smoke and dirt of the engine and tender cars and the freight cars up front, the reverse of his description. The tension between a son’s dreams and a father’s expectations is a universal story.

All the Light We Cannot See

Begins in Jacques Cartier’s home of Saint-Malo, Brittany, France as the island fortress is about to bombed into oblivion. Having begun near the ending the book retraces its steps to document the lives of people resident on the island at the time. There are two principal characters, blind Marie-Laure, daughter of a museum curator in Paris; and Werner who with his sister Jutta is a German orphan. It seems to be out of fashion to tell a story from beginning to end these days. This one jumps regularly from childhood memories to adulthood and points in between and from place to place. Somehow it is easier to follow than most I’ve read lately. What is most poignantly evident here is the utter futility of war and the unspeakable things people will do to survive. Living or dying is random. The story is well told, the content can be rather harrowing.

Wild

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Setting out on a strenuous 1100-mile wilderness trek as a means of finding oneself seems a rather capricious thing to do. If nothing else one will find out things about oneself. Muscles you didn’t know you had, blisters and calluses, and aches that shouldn’t appear until decades hence. As one who walked for a living it amazes me that people who have never walked any distance on flat ground or camped in other than an organized park set out on these challenging treks. Little wonder emergency staff frequently have to rescue these less than intrepid hikers.

The book begins by introducing us to the writer’s family and spends the first chapter describing her Mother’s death from Cancer. A 22-year-old doesn’t expect to be burying her 44-year-old mother. The next four years it would seem disappeared in a haze before jumping off in the Mojave Desert. Five hundred miles on and 70 pages from the end of the book the lass is at a rest area along the trail tarted up and looking for casual sex.

The author rages at her mother for dying, for the mistakes she made in life, all the while making many of the same. These passages are not the strongest sections of the book. She looks at a handsome male and can’t seem to resist fantasizing sex with him. The fact that men find her attractive seems to re-enforce her sense of self-worth. Or to put it another way her self-esteem is at a low ebb.

The 323-page book is well-edited and for the most part eminently readable. Once the reader gets started the text seems to flow. Your personal feelings about casual sex will colour your opinions about the book, I expect my own are obvious.

The Book Thief

--Spoiler Alert--

Takes a while to warm up to this book but then the reader has 433 pages to do so. Takes even longer to figure out exactly what is happening, who is doing the acting, and to whom it is happening. The narrator would appear to be the Grim Reaper who continues the story throughout. Just what part the book thief plays in all this is not immediately apparent. Transpires we are transported to a small working class enclave in a suburb of Munich at the outset of WW#2. Hitler’s treatment of the Jews plays a large part in the story. Interesting to learn the experience of ordinary German citizens during the Allied carpet bombing of Germany. The writing style and formatting would probably be best appreciated in hard copy rather than as I read it in e-Book format.

The Burning of Brenham by Sharon Brass

Essentially a boosterish history of 19th Century Brenham, Texas, the great fire of 1866 being a significant milestone. Texas was not the site of fighting during the Civil War but having fought on the Confederate side it came under Federal Reconstruction, The Freedman’s Bureau, and Federal Troop occupation. To this day Texans do their best to ignore the existence of a Federal Government and the imposition of Sheridan’s Black troops was not well received.

The success of any community depends on existence of men who can make things happen and rally others behind them. In Brenham the name Giddings stands out. The Railway they helped build gave local products access to a world market. The system of cisterns and fire-fighting was ahead of its time and a model that has yet to catch on in the rest of Texas. The local newspaper man is a model for many a frontier movie opus.

It is obvious that the writer had access to and permission to use well-preserved archives. This 70-page booklet stands out among so many examples of its genre in having been printed in colour. The quality of the reproductions is exemplary.

When Everything Feels Like the Movies

Cross-dressing Jude/Judy’s Mother is an exotic dancer with enhanced bosom. His step-father doesn’t get Jude and favours Ray the son he fathered. When Jude isn’t spaced out on alcohol and drugs he lives in an imaginary world in which he is a film star. He shares his basement bedroom with a pet cat name Stoned Hairspray. The book is written from his point of view and makes extensive use of movie references and hip language that will probably date quickly. It fantasizes sexual encounters and has other adult situations and some violence. 

Boy Toy

The book begins with 13-year-old Josh Mendel playing spin the bottle in a basement closet, the girl bolts when Josh gets aroused. Five years later cut to Josh decking his baseball coach. The background is of a boy molested by his middle-school teacher. Josh, a senior of above average intelligence, narrates the story.

In the arrogant, self-centred, naïveté of childhood the victims of sexual abuse often hold themselves responsible for their sufferings just as the children of divorce often blame themselves for their parent’s breakups. Every boy should have a best friend as understanding and loyal as Zik and a girl friend willing to wait 5 years for their beau to get over himself. The book tackles a delicate subject with deep if rather mature understanding. It is rather full of baseball statistics for anyone lacking the interest but otherwise it is well-written. It seems to be current style to write stories in a non-linear fashion but given Josh’s costant flashbacks it seems only appropriate and here it is easy to follow.

The Day of Battle

Atkinson spices up what could be a dry military history with biographical information on the principal players, historical background on the lands they invade, and notes from diaries, letters, and memoirs that draw on the experience of the people back home. Ike’s chief challenge was running interference between Monty and Patton, FDR and Churchill. To quote one of his generals: Running a war seems to consist in making plans and then ensuring that those destined to carry them out don't quarrel with each other instead of the enemy. Reading this account one comes to understand that ‘military intelligence’ become a term of derision. In so many ways this became a war of attrition in which men’s lives were thrown away in battle plans that had little chance of success. The terrible human cost of war both to the soldiers who fought and the civilians whose homes were the battleground is made plain. Even in WW#2 the financial costs of war are staggering. When an artillery captain reported that one million dollars worth of ordinance had been thrown at the enemy he was reportedly told to throw a million more. Those were 1944 dollars, today a single jet costs $20 million. Interesting to read that racism made black soldiers a rarity whereas today poor blacks complain that war is a black man’s trade as white boys evade service and draft boards. Everything old is new, Allied troops killed by their own mine fields and by friendly fire.

We know the outcome of the battles described here but even so the author manages to generate suspense in describing them. The overall impression the reader receives is one of the futility and terrible human cost of this campaign. Hundreds of thousands of lives were thrown away in a war of attrition in an effort to divert German troops from the Eastern Russian Front and the eventual D-Day invasion of Western Fortress Europe. The Generals who oversaw this campaign learned on the job at the cost of the lives of the men they led. Those who had fought in North Africa were unprepared for the mountainous terrain that was the Italian Boot where uneven ground made the use of tanks ineffective and the shock and awe bombing campaign used later by a general named Schwartzkopf less devastating. I would not presume to claim that reading the 677 pages that constitute the account equates with the emotional impact on the men who suffered disease, hunger, bombardment, injury, emotional stress, and death but no caring individual can read this account and not feel its effect. Those who ignore history are fated to repeat it.

Tobacco Road

Little doubt in my mind as to why a twelve-year-old would balk at sharing a bed with her new adult husband. Especially knowing of her mother’s 17 pregnancies. Her father, Jeeter Lester and his wife Ada specialize in avoiding work, chewing “snuff”, stealing, and making babies. Their children, once old enough, leave home without ever looking back and move far enough away to avoid visits from Pa to put the touch on them. The action takes place on Tobacco Road in a part of Georgia on the Savannah River Marshes where tobacco and cotton once grew on soil now too depleted to grow anything without liberal applications of “guano” that washes out of the sandy soil when it rains.

I have always asserted that poverty is a state of mind. In this novel lack of education, malnutrition, ill-health, unemployment breed poverty, ignorance, racism, and crime. Erskine Caldwell does for the Low Country of the East Coast what John Steinbeck does for the migrant workers of the Salinas Valley in California or Ivan Doig for settlers in Montana. Published in the depression years of the “Dirty Thirties” this novel documents a time and place but could hardly be termed uplifting.

Lone Survivor

The writing style here is not unlike that of his buddy Chris Kyle who referenced this work in his own autobiography. Did they use the same ghost writer? Luttrell does spend more time describing his fellow Seals, the fact that all are dead allowing him to mention them by name in effect memorialising them. He also gives better historical background.

When a four-man Navy Seal Team calls for backup the situation is truly desperate, so bad indeed the 16-man backup team died when their helo crashed into a mountain.

Lutrell survived because he was blown into a crevasse from which he eventually crawled badly wounded 7 miles to seek aid. His physical wounds may have healed but the mental ones are not as easy to assuage. He suffers from the dislocation from civil society common to most returning vets with the added stress of his terrible loss and not a little survivor’s guilt. It is sad that a society that finds it necessary to train men to be such warriors feels uncomfortable about having them around. They are both lionized and feared.

The movie version of this action is in wide release as of January 10, 2015. Both the movie and the book are macho and jingoistic. Lutrell decries politicians and desk jockeys who set rules of engagement that endanger the lives of men in the field and make their task more difficult. Much has been made of the ‘fact’ that similar rules of engagement made the war in Vietnam unwinnable. Lutrell goes as far as to blame the rules of engagement for the loss of his team. In Afghanistan War Lords have held power and fought civil wars for millennia. The locals are loyal to whatever power is seen to be in control at the time. In that sense there are no non-combatants. In that sense the troops are being asked to fight a war that cannot be won and have their hands tied in the process.

The reader can understand that this writer is bitter about Rules of Engagement he sees as being directly responsible for the loss of his team. Beating his readers over the head with it repeatedly does not strengthen his argument. What I really hear him saying is that an elite fighting squad should not have been deployed in a war zone if you didn’t want dead bodies. Unfortunately soldiers do not get to pick their wars and rear-echelon desk jockeys don’t have to face battlefield conditions. This reader still wonders if deploying any troops in Afghanistan was a wise move. Luttrell’s own historical background argues against it.

Unbroken

Laura Hillenbrand is an engaging writer. The 487-page book reads quickly supplying the reader with more than a few laughs. It tells the life-story of Louie Zamperini who in today’s parlance would be termed hyper-active or suffering attention deficit disorder. His deliverance came in the form of running. His Olympic Medal hopes dashed when the 1940 Olympics were cancelled due to WW#2.

A bombardier on a dubious plane they are ordered up in spirals into the Pacific. What follows is an epic tale of survival and the indomitable human spirit that survives despite all odds. A pair of buddies survive ditching in the ocean; 2000-miles adrift surrounded by sharks in an ill-equipped leaking raft; solitary confinement and torture by sadistic, ignorant Japanese captors; and finally release at the end of the war. What follows is the trauma of return and the adulation of a public where everyone wants a piece of you. The nightmares and the panic attacks continue even while you put up the brave front everyone expects.

There are nearly 100 pages of footnotes at the end of the book; pictures are interspersed in the text. Although the book follows the life of Zamperini it includes the stories of many of his comrades and those of his captors. It also adds facts and figures along with not a little historical background.

Going After Cacciato

Written by Tim O’Brien the author of The Things They Carried. The war in Vietnam, for those who served was a trip to insanity. Not a big leap for a squad to go marching across Asia and Europe after a deserter named Cacciatio the route to Paris, France plotted on his Atlas. The book documents  their journey interspersed with descriptions of the soldiers, their missions, their dreams and snippets of days on leave, calls home, nights spent on watch, boredom, and the sheer terror of checking tunnels. So what is fact and what is fantasy. Dropping the grenade in the tunnel a despised Lieutenant entered after all his men refused a direct command?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The book is a series of letters to a friend written by a 15-year-old boy. Were this a girl they’d have been Dear Diary entries. Since the friend to whom all this soul-baring information is addressed is never identified one can only assume it is we the readers.

One wonders how many of the parents agitating for the censorship of this book have actually read it. The book does begin by talking about a student’s suicide. It mentions teenage sex and masturbation in discrete terms. The quarterback football jock is a gay bottom. The kid sees a psychiatrist, takes prescribed and other drugs, smokes, and drinks.

A stream of consciousness novel reveals the intimate details of a teen’s angst, mood swings, fantasies, depression, and exuberance. The ideal childhood doesn’t exist. Parents raise children with no clue what they’re doing and sooner or later every child finds them out and becomes disenchanted and rebellious. Through it all knowing they are loved seems of paramount importance.

The Maze Runner

This book reads like the script for a reality TV programme. Or a riff on Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Teenaged Boys lacking any knowledge of their past lives save a first name arrive disoriented in the glade which is surrounded by a maze with 50-ft rock walls not unlike a lab rat’s maze. We learn of this organized society through the eye’s of its latest arrival Thomas. Takes a while to warm to this book but it grows on one as the read progresses. As usual best to read the book before seeing the related flick.

The maze has its own jargon but the substitutes for profanity such as klunk for ‘shit’ in a book aimed at young adults tends to get tiresome quickly. This  book is volume one of a series. Book one is enough for me.

American Sniper

The Author Chris Kyle died in his 39th year proving once more the strains of returning from the field of battle can be more stressful than the fight itself if not for this individual then for the fellow soldier he tried to help. Here we have a lover of guns who literally wrote the manual on Navy Seal Sniper Fire plus a History of the US in 10 guns for good measure. A good old boy from Dallas Texas who shoots best with a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek; his friends were military and law enforcement. Lets be up front, this reviewer is a pacifist whom the NRA would term an ardent enemy. There are those who would not feel safe without a handgun in their night stand, having one in my home would make me feel uneasy.

The author has the ego and arrogance of the true believer but he can also laugh at himself and invites the reader to laugh with him. He is good about translating the military jargon into plain English or his editors and advisers have prompted him to.

An Army at Dawn

“An army at dawn” appears on page 64 as the expeditionary force leaves Hampton Roads. “Young men,... ....would remember this hour, when an army at dawn made for open sea....” What stands out as in every military history I’ve ever read is the utter incompetence and chaos that surrounded this action. Attention to detail in loading the ships is totally lacking helped little by the need for secrecy. Makes it appear that the winning side did so because their planners made fewer errors than the enemy. The other salient point involves leaders more interested in promoting their own careers than in advancing the cause, who would do nothing to correct a situation if it could be used to make their competition look bad. Or, as a friend puts it, “Wars are lost not won.” The French in North Africa regarded the British with equal antipathy as the Germans, the British looked down their noses at their American Cousins.

Wars may be lost rather than won but as a props person in theatre I would say they are lost on supply lines and logistics. Without food, water, proper clothing, fuel, ammunition, and weapons soldiers cannot fight. Why should reality interfere with policy. High Command demanded that Rommel hold onto the African Front but failure to supply replacement troops and materiel told another story. The ineptitude and lack of communication on the Allied Side threw away thousands of soldier’s lives to no good purpose. Hindsight may be 20-20 but these military planners ignored good tactical advice when they were given it. Obviously they’d never played chess. At 830 densely packed pages this is a major undertaking. The last 230 pages contain footnotes and captioned photos. For War Buffs a good read.

The Horse Boy

Science understands little of how our minds work. Autism is a malfunction of the mental system about which there is no clear knowledge of cause, treatment, or outcome. There are no experts in the field and most evidence is anecdotal. Among those who have studied the syndrome there are conflicting opinions on all counts leaving the parents of children so affected to fend for themselves leading to a pragmatic, if it works lets keep doing it, approach. Dealing with a growing energetic six-year-old who refuses to be toilet trained, throws screaming, flailing tantrums for hours, and cannot communicate his/her needs, fears, desires is beyond exhausting. It obviously takes over one’s life. Little wonder 80% of parents’ marriages end in divorce.

One facet of the syndrome is an affinity for animals which is mutual in this case a bond being forged between boy and a particular horse. We’ve read of horse whisperers but here we have a boy who communicates with animals on a non-verbal level. His parents travel to the ends of the Earth to ride horses and find Shaman whose own people have largely ignored whose prayers and rituals work an uncanny healing. There is no cure for this condition but anything that can ameliorate the stress and help parents and child cope is welcome. Reading the book will take you along for the ride.

The Giver

Jonas’ is a controlled and regimented society. Birth mothers produce children raised by Nurturers. The babies turn One in December and are assigned to a couple--one boy and one girl each--50 per year. At Eight a child’s comfort toy is taken from them. At Nine they are assigned a bicycle and at Twelve their life’s assignment. Anyone not conforming to societal norms is released. Although I realize this is a fictitious world the children seem severely genetically altered to mature in a rather accelerated manner--walking and talking in their first year of life, being selected for careers at 12. The horror of a world devoid of choice, of love and emotion where positive eugenics is the norm and euthanasia is given euphemistic innocuous terminology. As the receiver of memories Jonas becomes the vehicle by which we learn the menace that underlies this ordered society.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair

The title refers to the farmer’s market in the narrator Angus McCaskill’s home town in Scotland. This is book 2 of Doig’s Two Medicine Trilogy. We have jumped back several generations to the first McCaskill to immigrate from Scotland to Montana with a friend. The story begins in the hold of an steamship amid single males in the forward steerage compartment of the ship where they are packed in little better than cattle. We follow the pair across America by train, stage coach, and freighter wagon. What follows is the story of how two 19-year-olds who emigrated from Scotland homesteaded in Northern Montana and helped found a nation. Had I known this book should have come first. It will take longer to read than the book’s 373 pages would first suggest as a lot happens in these pages as they tell the decades of a community’s life. Ivan Doig’s turns of phrase will give you pause to stop and think, “What did he just say?”.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

This book 2 in the series is narrated and tells the story of Jick’s, of books 1 & 3, grandfather. It explains how the man Angus, fell in love with a woman who became the mother of Jick’s father’s wife by another man. Why that grandmother returned to Scotland when her husband died. Marrying your best friend’s sister leads to complications when that relationship and business partnership sours. All three books examine the often inharmonious relationships between fathers and sons.

A dissertation on farming.

My reading brings to mind the precarious nature of farm life. There is Davie, the young lad who gets thrown from his horse and dragged by a boot caught in the stirrups under the animal’s heels and survives to be maimed for life. Or Barclay who drowns with Angus’ old horse for similar reasons. The National Forest that gets imposed on the region restricting the sheep-herder’s grazing rights. [Think Brokeback Mountain and Annie Proulx.] The plus side being employment for Varick and a stop to the herds of cattle the local conglomerate was sneaking onto those grasslands. The hundreds of thousands of (home)steaders who settled on marginal land and were starved out when the drought years came. Read Steinbeck. The hot dry summers when grazing land was sparse and the following long cold deep winter when feed was scarce for sheep and cattle alike that died of starvation and exposure. The crash of prices when the War ended and the later depression years.

The Raven Boys

Made it fifty pages into this book before I bogged down. The writing style is reminiscent of a newspaper report and the author seems to lack any sense of tense for the verbs she uses making for reading discomfort. The subject matter is fantasy and ESP but the writing style serves to destroy the reader’s suspension of disbelief and therefore fails to draw one in .

Ride with me Mariah Montana

In book 3 of the Two Medicine Trilogy fifty years have passed. Jick has been married, divorced and Marcella, his second wife has died of cancer. Their farm is being run by a younger couple and Jick in his Winnebago is setting out on travels with his middle-aged newspaper photographer daughter and the reporter husband she divorced. We learn the details by means of Jick’s memory flashbacks. This is a good read but not as engaging as book one in the series.

Stranger at Sunset

This is a requested review of a freebie described as  a psychological mystery/thriller, not my normal genre. The book is well-edited often the bane of e-books that were OCR-scanned and/or self-published. From the elaborate descriptions of both men’s and women’s bodies and the mentions of sex the author’s usual concentration on writing erotica is apparent. The prologue has a voyeur see what appears to be a body drop from  a balcony into the sea but the voyeur with his binos is more interested in the fact that the woman on the balcony is naked. As the story unfolds the mystery seems to be who gets killed and who is walking around sans attire thinking her suite is private. Later the question becomes will she get away with it. There are a few awkward turns of phrase in this book but it is better written than most I’ve read lately. If you like the genre you should enjoy this read.

The Moon is Down

We’ve crossed the Atlantic and the action of this piece takes place in Europe in an unnamed country invaded by a superior opposing force. The novella is totally out of touch with the other short novels set among paisanos in Southern California. What it shows is the means a conquered people use to resist their captors. The culminating scene in which sticks of dynamite dropped bundled with bars of chocolate blow up rail lines and other key points while the town leaders are lined up to be shot figures in a famous movie.

The Red Pony

Steinbeck’s is no fairy tale world. His stories report the harsh realities of life where happily ever after rarely exists in the lives of his characters. Farm boys see hogs slaughtered, animals give birth, get sick and die. Discipline is harsh and obedience expected without question. There’s an episodic feel to this novel, the common theme of the vignettes being 10-year-old Jody’s discovery that adults are not perfect infallible beings. One is left wishing Steinbeck had written more.

The Pearl

A Steinbeck novella set among simple Mexican divers who seek for pearls while diving for oysters. A pearl is the oyster’s reaction to the discomfort caused by a grain of sand inside their shell. The peasant fishers react in similar fashion to the vicissitudes of their lives. When the young pearl fisher discovers a magnificent pearl all the powers that be seem poised to cheat and rob him of the rewards of his discovery. His greatest success becomes his greatest tragedy, one of Shakespearian proportions.

Tortilla Flat

The title seems a play on words a tortilla being Spanish flat bread the flats in question being the two houses Danny inherits from his grandfather. Danny is a paisano, a mongrel Spanish peasant of dubious parentage. There are no good guys here, ever it is a matter of the level of larceny. Money, should any of these characters acquire it burns a hole until it can be spent on alcohol, wine being the poison of choice. Anything not nailed down is fair game. Only the rich can afford a conscience. Steinbeck seems to have a unique sympathy for the mentality of the people about whom he writes. I would not call these people downtrodden for aside from their addictions they have chosen the lifestyle they lead and wouldn’t be happy living any other way.

English Creek by Ivan Doig

Ivan Doig writes in a homespun style that solidly places this work in time and space. Jick McCaskill lives in Montana of the Great Depression that there began in 1919 when the end of the war dropped the bottom out of farm and cattle markets. His father’s Forest Services job remains un-Hoovered but its wages cut. Jick marks the progress of time by the cinches he lets out a notch at a time on the stirrups as he grows tall in the saddle at 14. Or his his brother Alec affecting a neck hanky to mark himself as a cowboy--is your Adams apple cold his father asks. It’s turns of phrase such as these that endear one to this story telling.

Life is no fairy tale and the people we love best are often the most difficult to fathom. One of the most prickly being the relationship between fathers and sons. The story is narrated by and told from the point of view of young Jick who turned 15 in September of 1939. From my point of view the best book I’ve read this year.

Sweet Thursday

This book is truly a continuation of Cannery Row beginning twenty years after its predecessor which should be read first. Things have changed of course. Characters have died, matured, moved on but the essential institutions remain the same. The biggest impact on the neighbourhood is the store’s new owner. If you liked Cannery Row you’ll enjoy its sequel. The making of these books is Steinbeck’s cast of characters. From the storekeeper Joseph and Mary to whom a game in which it is impossible to cheat is an inconceivable idea, to Doc who is honest in all things, to the town constable who knows all and whose very presence helps keep the peace.

Sweet Thursday of the title refers to a particular Thursday in the storyline when matters come to a positive convergence. However actions planned with incomplete knowledge of the facts can and do lead to unpredictable results.

Tripwire Lee Child

A detective thriller. The bad guys a confidence man preying on the relatives of men Missing in Action and a loan shark who disappeared in a helicopter crash in Vietnam and was determine to stay disappeared. Periods of tedium interspersed with extreme violence. Supplies a great deal of  military and security detail. Reads well.

The Prince and the Pilgrim

Alexander is the orphaned nephew of the King of Cornwall who murdered his father. Alice’s Mother died in childbirth and her warrior father goes on pilgrimages for the sake of a severe war wound. Hence the prince and the pilgrim. So how do the two meet up and how does the son avenge his father. This is a side-plot to the story of Arthur and Merlin but a decent read for all that.

Cannery Row

Don’t know how I’ve missed reading this book all these years. It appears to be a series of vignettes of the characters in this coastal fishing and canning village. So far it has covered the local general store, a flop house, a brothel, and a biological station. The protection racket that has a group of homeless men ‘renting’ space from the Chinese Store owner speaks to the nature of the neighbourhood. For a lad who grew up in the farming country of the Salinas Valley the author seems to know a great deal about aquatic life. And so the book is not about fishing or fish processing but a collection of characters who live and work around a particular street corner on Cannery Row. The spiritual home of the area is of course the Palace Flophouse where the only important matter before most of the group is where the next drink is coming from. Work is only the means of attaining it and to be shunned otherwise.

Helmet for My Pillow

Just as David Kenyon Webster’s unpublished work formed the basis for his father’s Band of Brothers this memoir is the backbone of Hugh Ambrose’s The Pacific. Both became the mini-series produced by Spielberg and Hanks. Both writers were newspapermen in civilian life. Without any prologue the book begins with a description of the dehumanizing process of basic training which seems common to all such memoirs. Leckie’s style is so engaging it almost makes basic sound like fun, it contains little of the rancour that often populates such tomes. His background as a reporter shows in a spare fact-based approach devoid of excessive editorial comment that still manages to get his point across. He writes about doing time in the brig as if it were a point of honour. His descriptions of jungle surveillance are terrifying in their simplicity. All in all a great read.

The Son

Meyer’s style is off-hand, sarcastic, even dismissive. The scene is set in Texas where early settlers risked Indian Raids and Mexican Armies because the land was free and the soil rich. That the aborigines resisted the immigrant incursion into their lands should be no mystery, the way in which White Settlers treated their Mexican Neighbours sadly reflects the fact that little has changed over the centuries. As always there seems to be one law for the rich and powerful, but little justice for ordinary men. In a land where it takes many acres to support a single critter ranches are the size of small European Countries and cattle graze range that took centuries to grow. Oil is king and cattle are a losing proposition. The cowboy is a dying breed as horses on the range are replaced by gasoline engines on city streets. The open range is patrolled by aircraft. Horses become showpieces and entertainment rather than working animals. When Middle East Wells start producing up to 100,000 barrels of oil/day to 500 from a Texas well even oil falls into eclipse.

The passing of the Indian led inevitably to the passing of the cowboy way and the open range as the land became safe for a veritable flood of settlers who populated the land and civilized it forever. A land where a buckaroo slept under the stars by his fire with the howls of wolves in his ears was replaced by citified dandies who slept in subdivisions. Reading this book takes some attention to detail as it jumps from generation to generation in at least 5 time periods and family story arcs but it provides an excellent background history to modern day Texas.

The Wicked Day

As the book begins we have jumped back at least 10 years to the Orkney Islands and the small-holding where Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate incestuous son is being raised in secret. As reward for their care the couple have the 10-year-old ripped from their home and they murdered that same night. The witch Queen Morgause had repaired to this remote Orkney stronghold after the death of her husband Lot--interesting symbolism there--with her three sons with number four still in her womb. Life in this palace is languid and unstructured but the restraints are definitely there. For Mordred integrating himself into this filial hierarchy is no mean feat. This tale is narrated by a third party.

Book 3 of the trilogy is the better of the lot but book 4 is by far the easiest read. About a quarter of the way through Book 4 the summons to Camelot which comes near the end of Book 3 catches up with the storyline here. Morgause’ sons remain intemperate and undisciplined to their doom. Mordred’s fate haunts both he and Arthur. If the results were not so deadly one could term these plot twists a comedy of errors.

The Last Enchantment Merlin "Trilogy"

As billed this continues to be the Merlin Trilogy told from the point of view of Merlin and most often in the first person. Arthurian Legend this may be but this series is about Merlin. Whether or not one believes in magic these books take its existence for granted. This is more fantasy than historical fiction or legend.

The Hollow Hills

Book two of the original trilogy follows directly upon the action in book one making it truly part 2 of a continuing storyline. Save that the setting is Wales and involves a character named Merlin Emrys and a King named Uther this historical romance bears little resemblance to any other Arthurian Legend I’ve ever read. The broad strokes are there but this series seems a prehistory as regards Arthur and attempts to elaborate on the particulars concerning Arthur’s conception and birth, a topic in the past shrouded in mystery in any book or movie I’ve encountered. It also attempts to explain the details of Merlin’s birth and childhood to a greater degree than I’ve seen before even in the recent 5-season TV Series Merlin.

As The Hollow Hills begins Merlin is wounded, exhausted, servantless, and ostracized. At least he gets to keep his head and the cave he has retired to in the past. The book ends with Arthur triumphantly declared king but even on the night of his triumph the seeds of his demise are planted by deceit.

The Crystal Cave

Historical Fiction can play loose with the facts even when the record is reasonably clear but in dealing with the stuff of myth such as Arthurian Legend, the scope for interpretation seems to be limitless. Many including the present writer prefer to treat on Merlin and his Druidic background. Merlin and even Uther seem to considered better fodder for fiction than the self-righteous Arthur and his idealistic utopian but ultimately flawed and failing Camelot.  Whether or not he possessed magical abilities the man was better educated than the majority of men of his age including his noble lords and mystical character is often assigned to that which is not understood. This author seems to see his prophesy as an epileptic aura.

The Alchemist

The shepherd boy at the centre of this tale is impossibly naive but possesses the flexibility of youth. The book is an easy read filled with liberal doses of New Age Philosophy.

Saints of the Shadow Bible

Book nineteen of the Rebus series of mysteries sees John back at work full time though now junior in rank to his former apprentice. Personally I retired permanently the first day I was entitled even though it was the middle of a pay period and caused the bean counters grief--I cried crocodile tears for them. In Canada the Bill of Rights makes it a crime to discriminate due to age so compulsory retirement is a no no unless incompetence can be shown. Rebus retired at the mandatory age of 60 but hired back on when that age was raised. Not much has changed in his life though in this book ancient skeletons long hidden in closets seem to be rattling their bones. Internal affairs are investigating a 30-year-old case. The storyline weaves the usual tangled web, the difference being that retired ex-cops are in the radar. Rebus obviously has no life outside work save for booze and his records. At home he plays vinyl. The Scottish vote for Devolution figures in the plot so the book is quite current.

Standing in Another Man's Grave

Ian Rankin, as popular crime fiction writers before him, failed to make Rebus’ retirement stick so he’s come out of retirement to work cold cases. As Rebus novels go this one is rather long. Rebus remains a chain-smoking alcoholic who prefers to work alone and keep his own counsel. In other words he doesn’t play well with others. The book is very readable being up to Rankin’s usual high standards. It is unrepentantly set in Scotland and uses Scottish place names, dialect, and customs along with the usual police jargon. This being Great Britain the head of police is the Chief Constable for example. Bacon and eggs is a fry-up. Many colloquialisms will leave readers on our side of the pond scratching our heads.

The Grass is Singing

I suppose it’s my own fault for not starting one book and sticking with it. This books starts with a rambling report of a murder on the veld then jumps to the story of a young lady and her rise to independence as an office worker. Until it dawned on me I was reading about the murder victim I was wondering, was I reading the same book. So, the book begins at the end and then backtracks to show us how we got there. Many of the books I’ve read lately jump from the present to the recent past, and then to the distant past passing back and forth in a stream of consciousness that often leaves the casual reader guessing where he is and when. Forgive me for wishing for a book that finds a starting point and works its way to a conclusion in consecutive order.

A successful office manager who enjoys social life and culture marries a failed farmer who is the butt of his neighbour’s jokes. Never having had to manage black workers she fails to grasp the relationship between she as employer and her native houseboys. Her parsimonious nature makes her a mean-spirited employer and her houseboys sullen stand-offish employees. She cannot keep a houseboy more than a month at a time. Her two-room home with attached kitchen has corrugated steel roof, white-washed walls, and animal-skin-covered hand-poured brick floors and lacks a ceiling. Located in a natural bowl it bakes hot and dusty in the dry veld. The husband whom she married after only meeting him twice cannot provide her with the luxuries to which she’s been accustomed and she proves to be a frigid sexual partner. The scene is set for dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

This is a couple headed for tragedy. The husband is wedded to his land and will do whatever is necessary to protect his farm. A successful year would give him the opportunity to make improvements to his home and the land. The wife dreams only of making good so they can get off the land she has come to despise. The fact that she is a better manager than her husband is no consolation but her relations with their black workers in the field and at home go only from bad to worse. The adjoining landowner is cynically awaiting his neighbour’s inevitable failure so he can use his land to pasture his cattle. Since the entire plot is given away in the initial chapter these can hardly be termed spoilers. The book is about the tragic descent of this couple into madness. It also documents a dark time in British Colonial History in the land then called Rhodesia.

Black laborers work only when their white boss is present to direct them and see that they are on the job. Otherwise they remain in their compound and get drunk on local brew. When the husband gets ill the farm is neglected. His wife has become so detached she allowed her chickens to die of lack of food and water. Mary’s failure to properly handle her black workers constitutes a threat to the order of things. It was considered dangerous to give ‘the Blacks’ ideas, that Blacks were in any sense equal to whites.

Farmer Boy

Being Wilder’s story of the childhood of her husband. Two things strike me in reading the opening chapters. The idea of the husky older farmboys beating up on the city-soft schoolmaster. And a renewed appreciation for the time-saving modern conveniences we take for granted today. For example, to have clothing one first raised the sheep and sheared them in spring after washing the wool on their backs. The wool was dyed  with locally obtained mordants after being carded into skeins which were then spun into yarn. The yarn was woven on a loom into cloth. A pattern of the appropriate style and size was laid on the cloth and it was cut and finally sewn into the appropriate clothing. Imagine a mother’s consternation at the speed at which a growing boy outgrew her hard work. Mittens, socks, scarves, sweaters, and such were hand knitted by lamplight in front of winter fires. Even hard-hewn lumbermen knit and darned their own socks. This was done by lamplight with no radio or TV to act as diversion. My grandmothers would have so laboured. This family is obviously extremely successful with resources probably not the norm, for example, in Laura Ingalls’ household.

No qualms here about child labour. If there is important work to be done on the farm there is no question about a child of nine staying home from school to work in the fields. So it was in my own Father’s day. Children were expected to earn their keep by doing chores morning and evening. Sunday might be a day of rest but the animals still had to be fed, cleaned out, and the cows milked twice a day every day without fail. And twenty-first century children accustomed to today’s permissive norms take note, a child was expected to be seen and not heard at all times including the dinner table, even fidgeting was forbidden. And discipline was iron.

The book is written from the point of view of the youngest child in a family of six. He chafes at being told he’s too young as do most babies of the family but he also idealizes his older brother and father and his boasts that theirs is the best anywhere get rather tiresome. This is not a Hardy Boys Adventure but as an artifact of its time it is priceless. In Canadian Literature Susannah Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill covered much the same territory but as spoiled upper class immigrants they did so in a most disparaging manner.

The Yellow Birds

“We hardly noticed a change when September came. But I know now that everything that will ever matter in my life began then.”

The military establishment has little care for the kind of men it puts through its meat grinder. Some are men of action who learn to do by doing and seek results with little thought for the implications of their deeds; others need to conceive of an activity before they can put it in motion and examine the motivations and the consequences of their actions. This is not a judgment call involving rights and wrongs, just a statement of fact. The present author is obviously one of the latter. The extremis of war has moved sensitive, thinking individuals to write poetry and prose about their war experiences for centuries. The elegiac prose this writer uses is in obscene contrast to the experiences he describes. America may have the largest, mightiest military machine the world has ever seen but its young men are paying a terrible price for that ascendancy.

Every person has to find his/her own means of dealing with Post Dramatic Stress. Some become addicted to the hyper-sensitivity of the environment and re-up finding themselves dead inside and unfeeling without it. Some go into denial and their demons manifest in often violent unpredictable ways. And some find release by writing about it as a means of working through their nightmarish inner tensions as a growing mountain of books will attest. That a war experience should provide the defining moment of a person’s life....?

A yellow bird
witha yellow bill
sat up upon
my windowsill
i lured him in
with a piece of bread
and then i smashed
his yellow head

I believe this version has been cleaned up for public consumption.

The sensation of combat is described as that feeling you get when you know you’re about to be in a car accident but you haven’t hit yet, only it lasts for hours and days at a time. Returning home is quite another matter. Dreaming of lost buddies. Waking and reaching for your weapon that isn’t there. Hyper vigilance, always scoping your surroundings looking for ambush and assessing where to find cover. Startling at every little noise.

The lassitude and depression settles in. How do you define insanity in a world insane? This is not a book for the squeamish and will not leave you feeling better for having read it as the author retires to his isolated cabin in the Blue Ridge at age 34.

The Smoke Jumper

Of interest because I’ve read at least two other books about smoke jumpers and in the wake of the deaths of the  elite squad of 19 in Arizona in 2013. Nicholas Evans is a British writer famous for The Horse Whisperer. Not as husky as the American Nicholas Sparks who churns out similar tomes. It’s a relief to read a romance novel that doesn’t have the picture of a scantily clad male model splattered across its cover and to have to read about how narrow his hips and waist or how broad his shoulders. These typical idealized male images are about as realistic as the proportions of a Barbie Doll. Male authors tend to have a more realistic approach to the male physique and tend on average to spend less time writing detailed descriptions. Not that anyone is going to mistake this for great literature, just a decent mindless summer’s read.

It takes 560 pages for the star-crossed lovers at the centre of this tale to attain sexual congress even though his donated seed had previously fathered her only child. If you possess a similar fortitude then this should be a worthwhile read. The story is about the journey, not the happily ever after and for once it’s a relief not to read page upon page of bedroom gymnastics. Fire-fighting is only a small segment of the entire tale.

The Bridges of Madison County

Never a good idea to read the book after you’ve seen the movie, they’re too different media and script writers alter books to bring the story to the big screen. This is a work of fiction, no photographer named Robert Kincaid ever worked for National Geographic. Why did the author feel the story’s fundamental conceit need be predicated on a falsehood? The bridges and the countryside are very real, I’ve seen them personally. The home used in the movie was deliberately burned as was the bridge where the two met. Movies show, books tell so here we follow Kincaid on his drive from Bellingham, Washington and learn about the man who shows up at an Iowa farmhouse.

The problem with having seen the movie version means it’s almost impossible to think of these characters without picturing Eastwood/Streep. Due to product placement we don’t get to see a Levis label tightly clinging to a male butt on screen. The book contains extras that didn’t make it to screen including the text of Kincaid’s letter to Francesca. As I’ve said it’s hard to think of the characters without picturing the movie version. Interesting that the author gave him his name Robert. This was an eternal love affair that couldn’t be.

Not a great read but one for the romantic in most of us.

The Clearing, Dan Newman

I may sound like a broken record but I wish writers edited their texts or had someone who knows what they’re doing do so. This story jumps from the narrator’s past as a child on the Caribbean Island of St Lucia to his adult self’s recent past in the US to the present in which he has returned to his ghosts on the Island. The story begins with 3 boys looking at the body of a fourth lying by a body of water. It jumps to the death of the narrator’s own son and then has him return to the island to rehash ghosts of the past. The story jumps in nightmare fashion from the past to the present seeming to grudgingly give up its details. The story draws on the influence of rich island families, local voodoo, and superstition. The author keeps the reader in the dark as to the exact details of the murder at the centre of this story until the very end.

Life of Pi

I bought a copy of Yann Martel's Life of Pi when it came out in 2001 and Self 1996 but will confess I got around to reading neither. Suppose I like to support Canadian writers. It took, it seems the production of this movie to garner the author enough attention to gain him a Booker Prize in 2012. Funny, I just finished reading about Lachlan MacQuarry, Viceroy to Australia who earlier served in Pondicherry, India. As the movie says, an Indian from the French part of India living in an Indian section of Montreal, Quebec.

Before I watch this DVD a second time I should read the book. There’s a lot happening here and since only one of the principal characters has the power of speech a great deal of the dialogue is stream of consciousness in Pi’s mind. The overall effect is somewhat overwhelming however the book is excellent reading.

The book begins with two joint themes: the origin of Pi’s name and the philosophy of zoo keeping. Children can be cruel and parents do their children a disservice when they saddle them with odd-sounding names. Pi was named for his Uncle's favourite public pool in Paris a word that phonetically sounds like "Pissing". There are countries that now refuse to register controversial or unusual children's names, but our subject had no such luck. We tend to anthropomorphize animals and romanticize their desire to be free. Animals can be treated cruelly but arguments over whether captivity in a well-run zoo is inhumane continue to this day. Would the animal, given its ability to choose, rather live in the wild or in captivity and is their return to their cages a conditioned response? Certainly most animals live much longer in captivity than they would in the wild due to the care of zoo vets, lack of parasites, and regular proper nutrition.

The book moves on to describe his inquiries into religion. Pi sees no conflict in being actively involved in at least 4 distinct religious observances simultaneously. As his brother says, (Hindu) Temple on Thursday, Mosque on Friday, Synagogue on Saturday, Church on Sunday; three more and you could be on vacation the rest of your life. He requests baptism and a prayer rug. Whereas Hinduism has millions of God’s, the others believe in One God so Pi reasons in going to different holy places he is worshipping the same God. The altercation that occurs when three of his mentors meet Pi and his family in Chapter 24 is hilarious.

As an aside billions of people give no second thought to the fact that they keep a former wolf in their home, the domesticated dog. The dog retains its canine habits adopting its human family as its pack and their home as its territory. We do object to its flagging its indoor territory with scent markers but every dog walker can testify to the fact that they mark it out of doors. I would argue that keeping a large dog in a small city apartment, with little opportunity to run free, is inhumane and many dogs suffer stress because of it. On the other hand the animals in a zoo may become sensitized to the presence of humans in close proximity but remain savage, undomesticated creatures of the wild. Whether a cat is ever truly domesticated is open for debate.

Part 2 jumps over the sinking of Pi’s ship to his life drifting in a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean. From the Malay Peninsula to Mexico the Pacific is 11,000 miles wide. A drifting lifeboat should make it in just over 2 years, we know that Bligh and his men did make it after the Bounty Mutiny near Figi.

The second half of the book became tedious for me so I put it down for months. Read the last 100 pages in two sittings. Pi’s conversations with the two Japanese investigators make a sick and recovering boy sound acutely intelligent and just a little flippant. One can believe they had trouble buying his story. Interesting interpretation of his second story. And there the book ends.

February

Lisa More’s February follows the life of one of the families who lost husbands, fathers, and sons in the sinking of the Ocean Ranger on February 15, 1982 on Hibernia Oil Fields of the Grand Banks amid winds of 120 mph in nearly 500 ft of water. At the time the largest semi-submersible Oil Drilling Platform afloat it went down due to weather, design deficiencies, and lack of crew training. Rescue drills are boring and companies prefer to train employees on the job rather than send them to class so they can get productive work out of them while they learn. When the loss of an unbreakable window resulted in the flooding of a ballast control room its control panel was shorted and the fact that no one knew how to operate the system manually resulted in a list that caused the vessel’s rapid sinking. With 65-ft waves rescue vessels lacked equipment to pick up survivors in the water or in life rafts. In Mid-February the men rapidly succumbed to hypothermia and drowning. For the record Valentines Day was a Sunday that year. To this day helicopter service to these platforms remains an issue and a recent story reported that rafts designed to hold 60 men defined a man as 160 pounds. What six foot two inch man is that kind of bone rack? So why do men work on these rigs? The pay.

Work on these rigs was and is a young man’s game. Twenty-five-year-olds still feel themselves immortal. They work their shifts, they come ashore, they carouse, they plant their seed, and they return to the rig. Disasters resulting in loss of many lives are nothing new in Newfoundland. On Canada Day, July 1st Flags hang at half mast marking the destruction of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont Hammel in 1916. Numerous sealing disasters on the ice and ships sunk in the stormy shallow waters of the Grand Banks without a trace have resulted in multiple losses of life. Arrow Air Flight 1285 that claimed the lives of 285 American Soldiers at Gander in December 1985 after a refueling stop-over.

But can you imagine getting your husband’s Valentines Card the day you go to claim his body. Or giving birth to his child after his death. Waiting the indeterminable time without financial support for a settlement from his employer and then dealing with that lump sum payment. The nightmares and juvenile delinquency his fatherless children suffer. Waking daily to the growing awareness that this time he will never return. Dealing with all the quotidian minutia of life without a husband’s support. Getting on with your life despite your grief.

If you missed all the hoopla surrounding the book’s Canada Reads 2013 win it explores the events as they affected a single family at the time; in memory the courtship, marriage, and life together of husband and wife; and the lives of his parents, the wife, and their children in the decades following. Once you start reading this book it is almost impossible to put down. As a non-smoker I had a laugh when a water sprinkler comes on when Lillian tries to sneak a smoke in the washroom on the bus.

Paper Moon

The title is derived from a WW#2 Song that crops up frequently in the story. Similar in theme to the Boy I Loved but not specifically a sequel introducing new characters. Bobby is impossibly handsome and knows it, guys and girls mooning over him, a photographer paying him to play model and fans snapping up his photos. What happens when he is hideously disfigured in a plane crash and can’t bear to look at his own reflection in a mirror or bear the stares of those around him. With the best of intentions we hurt the people we love most. Once more I wish someone had done some closer editing but it’s an okay read.

The Fall of the Year

Howard Frank Mosher’s The Fall of the Year is more a series of vignettes than a conventional novel but it captures a snapshot of tiny Kingdom Common amid the Green Mountains of Northern Vermont near the Quebec Border of Canada. The narrator Frank has come home to spend the summer with his uncle and adopted Father, George the parish priest who coaches the local baseball team, hunts and fishes. Little Quebec and Irishtown in cruder hands would seem caricatures. Filled with the odd characters that inhabit any backwoods community, they are lovingly portrayed as accepted members of society. There’s even room for a riff on Romeo and Juliette. The book even gave me opportunity for a rip roaring belly laugh. I’ve owned this book for 15 years, how is it I’ve waited so long to read it!

Bring Up the Bodies

As the blacksmith's son rises to power he is constantly reminded that though he may presently enjoy the King's favour he is not noble borne and those that are though they may submit to his judgments while that favour lasts, petty jealousies have them sharpening their knives for the day it ceases. Those who fall out of the King's favour do not usually live to write their memoirs and foreshadowings of that end show up in this volume. As book 2 draws to its close wife number 2 heads to The Tower and number 3 comes to prominence.

In this second novel of the series Mantel is more precise in indicating who is talking. Court as depicted feels like a snake-pit of conflicting interests, petty jealousies, and gossip. One is left to wonder, is this any way to run a country? Given the constant crowd of hangers-on surrounding Henry the lack of privacy and a desire to get away from it all would drive an ordinary mortal to distraction. Does a courtier literally wipe his ass? Through it all Cromwell is a constant of efficiency and order. However Harry may have valued his abilities lesser men envied his position and felt slighted that a man of such low birth enjoyed such power.

The King is depicted as willful, self-indulgent, prideful, and moody. One is left with the nagging suspicion that the man who went through 6 wives in search of a male heir may have been impotent. Did his wives commit adultery as a means of conceiving? No spoilers here as the historical facts are not in question. The book comes off as a work of fiction because the detail it provides is conjecture, Samuel Pepys was not around to record the minutia of these people's lives. There are times this reads like a Russian Novel characters referred to severally by their given names, their noble titles, their nick names, their offices, their church positions, their landed seats.

The final hundred pages read like an inquisition and as the author has Cromwell relate to a minion the process is not about finding truth, justice, or guilt; but finding appropriate guilty parties and settling old scores.

Take Me With You

Once in a blue moon one encounters a book that just demands to be read and for me this was such a book. The storyline involves Alcoholism, coming of age, grieving the death of a child, and camping in an RV. The description of scenes from Joshua Tree, Zion, Arches, Canyonlands brought back memories and the other parks a desire to see new lands. With all the grammar and spell-checking software available today I’m mystified as to why so many errors still evade publishers and authors but this volume is better than most. Highly recommended. Kudos to Goodreads for directing me to this book.

Jet (I)

Maya was an orphan neglected and serially abused. Possessed of a great mind and gifted with stunning genetic beauty and athleticism she was recruited by Mossad during her 2-year compulsory service in the Israeli military. In a secret service she is recruited to an elite force so secret it has no name. These agents have no identity, no family outside the service, no moral compass, no life. This begs the question, what distinguishes them from the terrorists they supposedly fight. You fight your way into this service through hard work, no one leaves it alive. Hyper-vigilance, trusting no one, and the need to constantly hone one’s skills and be on one’s guard will follow one for the rest of one’s life, or it will be a short life.

The book begins with a bang as Maya is attacked by three men one with a garrot, another with a custom-made silencer, and a third who failed to make it through the door. She doesn’t wait around to find if there are more but there are. The story is filled with brutal violence involving a woman. Think Ziva on NCIS. It reads like one of those ultra-violent video games. A hard-luck case from early childhood her fortunes do not improve, terminating with extreme prejudice seems to be the only thing she’s really good at.

Well edited and readable with a storyline with enough action to carry you along if you don’t mind the violence a decent read.