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Chapter & Verse
Book reviews
by Deborah
Legend:
* = if you must. ** = it’ll pass the time. *** = a good little page-turner. **** = I absolutely forbid you not to read this!
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The hellish daily commute that is the London Underground at least allows you to indulge in a spot of leisure reading now and again, and I’ve got my hands on some brilliant (and not-so-brilliant) stuff in the last couple of years.
I splashed out recently on three novels. One is
Mr. X
by Peter Straub, which I now have finished.
And the other two are
Ink
by John Preston, about a jaded Fleet Street hack who gets embroiled in a
series of disappearances; and After
You’d Gone, a critically
acclaimed, family secrets-type novel from Maggie O’Farrell. Reviews
on the latter two novels to come.
Mr. X** is
a supernatural thriller branded
“horrifying” by no less a man than Stephen
King.
When
he gets word his mother is dying, computer programmer Ned Dunstan returns
to the small town in which he grew up to be near her and the rest of his
relatives. But he soon realizes that, in the process, he has acquired some
rather unsettling supernatural powers, and he spends the remainder of the
novel trying to unravel the dark and dangerous family secrets that gave rise
to this new development.
In essence, this is an “evil
twin” yarn, and you’ve heard it all before.
I got fed up with it and eventually stopped caring for the characters, so
I had to force myself to push through to the end. For all the twists and
turns, you’d have expected the author’s revelation to be head-spinning,
but
it wasn’t. I’m not into supernatural tales, but thought I’d
give this one a go. It took a while to wade through it.... It’s a pretty
hefty tome. It was certainly okay, but not quite as spell-binding as I think
it could have been. The plot wasn’t very clear, and the only thing
horrifying about this book was its rather formidable size, but to be fair,
Straub’s narrative style is superb.
I had to wave a white flag at Brit grade-school classic Heavy Weather** by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s one of those dusty old classics that you feel you ought to read, just to say you’ve read it, but it just didn’t grab me; I’ll knock it out some other time, out of a sense of duty, if nothing else.
I also made an aborted stab at Philippe
Djian’s Betty
Blue**, a
con
Sap Rising**** by British restaurant critic A. A. Gill is political incorrectness at its best. It centers around the lives of a group of neighbors living in a contemporary London square. A bizarre series of events sees their lives become increasingly entangled and intertwined. Gill’s character development is second to none; you can really visualize his crazy cast, even if you’d rather not. If you’re the type who can take a joke, this is a real knee-slapper. And rude as you like.
If you’re of more delicate sensibilities, may I instead
suggest lit-lite Snap
Happy***, a nice, light, summer romance
from British novelist Fiona Walker. A 30-something, single London girl finds
her roommate has let his half of the flat to an American photographer named
Jay. The two are instantly attracted to one another, but they just can’t
seem to get it together properly. They’re both awkward and insecure,
so continually misconstrue the other’s messages and
intentions.
True it’s girly, but it’s genuinely delightful and funny. And hair-pullingly frustrating as you fight the urge to bang their heads together. And having just emerged from the heavy psychological weight of American Psycho, I needed something a bit frothy to cheer me up. I confess to having privately swooned for Jay.
We gorehounds get money’s worth from such masterpieces of the macabre as Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho****, as well as Harold Schechter’s Deranged*** (chronicling the ’20s capture of notorious child killer Albert Fish) and Depraved***. American Psycho is an unapologetically gratuitous mass of violence, blood, guts and gooey eyeballs. Splendid. Best read with a dish of fava beans and a nice chianti...
And by noted American criminologist Harold Schechter I read two novels, Deranged and Depraved (also wrote Deviant). Depraved introduces us to America’s (supposedly) first home-spun serial killer. At the same time Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the working girls of London’s East End in the late 19th-century, New Hampshire-born Herman Mudgett, posing as a kindly pharmacist, was carrying out his own torture and murder spree in the Midwest. His story starts in a bogus pharmacy in a Gothic, labyrinthine, multi-story building in Chicago’s city center that later became known as the Castle of Horrors (since torn down). With the help of an accomplice, a drunkard named Benjamin Pitezel, whom he also eventually murdered, Mudgett (alias H.H. Holmes, among others) embarked on a string of financial scams and frauds that ignited the ire of his associates and raised the suspicions of authorities. His victims included several of his wives (some of whom he wed bigamously), who were heir to considerable inheritances or whose lives were heavily insured, as well as three of Pitezel’s children.
Other unfortunates were various men, women and children who happened to cross his path (his “castle” doubled as a lodging house during the Chicago World’s Fair), so the true number of his victims remains unknown. But Holmes failed in his bid to murder Pitezel’s wife and remaining two children, and she became the key witness for the prosecution in a trial that finally lay bare the staggering extent of his lies, deception and murderous tendencies. He was hanged in May 1896.
Meanwhile, an honest and insightful exploration of
the science of death awaited in the pages of a little gold nugget I stumbled
across in the local library.
This
gem is entitled Dead Men Do Tell Tales:
The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic
Anthropologist****
by Michael Browning and William R. Maples (pub. 1995). If you
share my penchant for unsolved murder cases and you’re not faint of
heart, then you won’t be able to put this one down. Fascinating from
beginning to end.
It took some doing, but I finally polished off slow-burner Four Corners of Night** by Craig Holden, which picked up in the second half. Centered around a couple of cops who’d been friends since childhood, the story carries you through a dead-end missing persons case that draws out some unsavory truths about their lives.
Perhaps one of the most poignant and memorable
books
I’ve read thus far is
Angela’s
Ashes**** by Frank McCourt. Certainly
by now many of you will be familiar with it and probably seen the movie.
Unsurprisingly, the movie couldn’t stand up the book. It’s an
autobiography chronicling the hardships of growing up poverty-stricken -
and Catholic - in pre-WWII Ireland. Amazingly, McCourt manages to pull this
off without a note of self-pity, and in fact his self-deprecating style and
wry humor render this otherwise depressing account almost
enjoyable.
I’ve made valiant efforts to trudge through Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud* by Shaun Considine; the subject matter promised to be a hoot, but it reads like a trek through two and a half feet of packed snow. I feel compelled to finish it at some point, nonetheless.
Disappointingly, neither the much-anticipated
The Peculiar Memories of Thomas
Penman* by Bruce Robinson or
An Intimate History of
Humanity* by Theodore Zeldin have been
any more readable. And Paul Theroux’s
The Kingdom
by the Sea*
proved a more effective sleep aid than
an African elephant’s tranquilizer dart.
The sheer, utter misery of Su Tong’s protagonist in Rice**** made for delicious reading, and The Missing**** by Scots scribe Andrew O’Fagan is a haunting, autobiographical journey to discover the stories of people who have disappeared in the U.K. this century. This one ranks in my personal Top 5 list.
Falling
Leaves**** by Adeline Yen Mah was excellent, as was
Beloved***
and The Bluest
Eye*** both by Toni Morrison. Patricia
Cornwell’s
Post-Mortem***,
though formula, was a good, all-around nail-biter.
Memoirs of a Geisha****
(Arthur Golden) is a must-read, and
Wild
Swans*** by Jung Chang too was
brilliant, if you can wade through the marsh of historical facts
and figures in the first half.
Also enjoyed Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting**** (a word to my fellow colonials: if you can decipher the phonetically spelled Scottish dialogue, you will, I promise, be well-rewarded; as ever, it helps to read the book before seeing the movie), Asylum*** by Patrick McGrath, Notes From a Small Island**** and Mother Tongue**** (both Bill Bryson), The Kommandant’s Mistress*** by Sherri Szeman and The Kitchen God’s Wife**** (Amy Tan).
More Gore: Thomas Harris’
Hannibal Lecter trilogy: The Red
Dragon**** (on which the
little-known ’80s film
“Manhunter,” starring William Petersen,
was skillfully based), The Silence of
the Lambs**** and
Hannibal****,
best read in that order.
To my fellow twisted souls, may I suggest two other fab reads: Footsucker**** by Geoff Nicholson and Secret Life (an Autobiography)*** by Michael Ryan. The titles are self-explanatory; they’re adult humor with tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing deliveries. Just all-around good chuckles.
If, like me, you entertain a morbid curiosity in sexual
aberrations and grotesque, gnarled, genetic mishaps (due
to generations of inbreeding) locked away in castle towers,
then you’ll enjoy Royal Babylon***
by Karl Shaw. It’s a sort of disjointed
trawl through the garbage cans of royal history, an expose of the dysfunctional
families that have reigned over Europe for the last 300 years.
It’s better taken as an overall good gossip than historical fact, though, as it’s clear that Shaw has taken some license in interpreting his research. Nevermind, though, nothing satisfies like the heady feeling of superiority.
Share your favorite reads, or suggest titles at
umpelby@aol.com,
YankyGirl32@aol.com or
FlagwavinYank@aol.com. Deborah’s office is
dmiller@businesstraveller.com.