THE STUFF I'VE BEEN READING

This piece first appeared in the Record Review in 2006 as one in an ongoing series of "My Reading Life" columns by Elinore Standard.

Works mentioned: "Liberation Road" by David Robbins, "The Namesake" and "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri, "A Handful of Kings" by Mark Jacobs, "Swimming in the Volcano" by Tom Bissell, "Desert Burial" by Brian Littlefair, "The House in Paris" and "The Death of the Heart" by Elizabeth Bowen, "The Jade Palace Vendetta" by Dale Furutani, "Prince of Fire" by Daniel Silva, "Saturday" by Ian McEwan.

THE STUFF I'VE BEEN READING

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I enjoy lists of books. I like to see other people’s lists and I like to keep my own. I love it when somebody tells me what to read. A while ago, I discovered a monthly column titled “The Stuff I’ve Been Reading” by Nick Hornby, novelist, screenwriter, and major soccer fan, in “The Believer” magazine. “The Believer” is not exactly your everyday “People” or “Time” so you may not have come across it in the dentist’s waiting room.

“The Believer” is a gorgeously-designed literary monthly published by McSweeney’s of San Francisco and edited by about five different people. I don’t know whose money makes it go because it has no, that is zero, advertising. It is not the “New York Review of Books” or “The London Review of Books”, nor is it like another other literary review I can think of. The initial appeal for me was Nick Hornby and he is the reason I subscribed. More on him in this space some other time.

Hornby is a good maker of reading lists and the magazine, for that matter, provides a list of all the books mentioned in each issue, so imagine my glee as I flip through a periodical that seems designed for somebody like me. Hornby’s column begins with a list of books he bought and books he read during the preceding month, and they are not always the same. So, taking the idea from Hornby, here is what I have bought or borrowed recently and what I have read:

“Liberation Road: A novel of WWII and The Red Ball Express” by David L. Robbins (Bantam, 2005). I chose this on impulse from the Bedford Free Library’s shelf of new and interesting fiction. Every once in a while you get lucky and happen upon an author whose work is completely new to you. This fact-based novel is the story of 6,000 trucks and 23,000 drivers – most of them African-American – who forged a lifeline of supplies in the Allied battle to liberate France. The solid writing and research in this book offer fine description of the post-D-Day Omaha and Utah beachheads and the insane fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy that ensued. As the Allied armies pressed on into France, the heroic drivers kept the troops supplied and suffered great losses themselves. This is a touching, moving, wonderful book and I’ve discovered a new author.

“The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri (Houghton, 2003). For whatever the reason, I had avoided this well-reviewed novel until I recently took it out from the library. Although I liked Lahiri’s “The Interpreter of Maladies” I somehow hadn’t been ready for this one. It is a novel about Indian-American professionals making their way in a different culture, far away from family and tradition. It is about courage and duty and obedience and the tangled ties between generations. The book’s sly humor cannot mask the underlying sadness of the story. A friend told me she cried when she finished it and I also didn’t want it to end. A gem, a prize!

“A Handful of Kings” by Mark Jacobs (Simon & Schuster, 2004). Described as a “literary thriller” in a piece by author Tom Bissell in the March, 2005 “Believer” magazine, I ordered it through the local Library System on Bissell’s recommendation. I ploughed along through a tale of U.S. diplomats, usually at odds with each other, uniting briefly to foil a terrorist plot and a kidnapping. I kept having to stop and re-read and finally closed book and gave up.

“Swimming in the Volcano” was also recommended as a literary thriller by Tom Bissell and I also ordered it through WLS on his say-so. The first page of this 500-plus-page doorstop had dialogue written in a kind of Caribbean dialect and I stopped right there. The novel may very well be wonderful but it is not for me.

“Desert Burial” by Brian Littlefair, (Holt, 2002) another mentioned in the “Believer” piece, also came via WLS. When I realized the action is set in the near-future I didn’t open it. I try to avoid future anything.

The novelist A.S. Byatt was quoted in a recent New York Times Book Review as saying “The House in Paris” (1935) is Elizabeth Bowen’s best novel. I had always thought Bowen’s “The Death of the Heart” was perhaps the finest novel I had ever read, and so I ordered “The House in Paris” through the library system and it slowly made its way to me. In Bowen’s novels, the neglected child, the isolated or orphaned young person, is a recurring character. “The House in Paris” gives us two such children, one an unwanted boy and the other a slightly older girl who gets fobbed off on relatives. Byatt says this novel is “one of those books that grow in the mind, in time,” and I find this it true. Although I read it nearly a month ago, “The House in Paris” is still very much with me.

“The Jade Palace Vendetta” by Dale Furutani (Morrow, 1999) is the second in his Samurai trilogy. Set in early 1600s feudal Japan, it is written by this Japanese-American author in an easy, literate style. It may add to your enjoyment if you have some knowledge of Japanese history and customs, but Furutani doesn’t try to go over anybody’s head. The characters and atmosphere are believable and the main plot, about the search for a stolen child, I found intriguing enough so I want to read the other two in the trilogy. I picked this one off the mystery display shelf as a try-book.

“Prince of Fire” by Daniel Silva (Putnam’s, 2005) I got new at Costco for ten bucks off the list price. I’ve been a fan of Silva’s Gabriel Allon thrillers and had been waiting for this new one to appear which is why I paid money for it. Compared to the previous novels featuring Allon, the art restorer/Israeli intelligence agent/killer, I found this one disappointing (maybe because I paid for it) and I thought the main character barely held up. The detailed history and background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict makes the book worthwhile.

“Saturday” by Ian McEwan (Doubleday, 2005). Also bought at Costco. This current bestseller takes place entirely during a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon. It is also the day of the big London anti-Iraq war march in February, 2003. McEwan’s handling of time has always been an interesting feature of his work, and in this novel it is especially so. It brings to mind other one-day novels such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Perowne, the surgeon, is encouraged by his poet grown daughter to read novels so that he might develop the literary side of “a man who attempts to ease the miseries of failing minds by repairing brains.” She sets him lists that have “so far persuaded him that fiction is too humanly flawed, too sprawling, and hit-or-miss to inspire wonder at the magnificence of human ingenuity, of the impossible dazzlingly achieved.” Of course, this is not all that happens during the surgeon’s day -- there are dark gatherings and unexpected crises. It is as if this novel is a piece of metafiction and McEwan has stepped into “Saturday” himself and that he has, indeed, dazzlingly achieved the impossible. An astounding work.


Elinore Standard is the co-editor of "Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading" (Carroll & Graf 1997)