Territory

Territory broke new ground for me.  I have long been a fan of realistic western fiction, the grittier the better, but have never much enjoyed fantasy writing of the type filled with magicians, superheroes, or magic kingdoms.  Fortunately, this time my love for both factual and fictional accounts of the Earp brothers, and their association with Doc Holliday, overrode my reluctance to spend reading time on the fantasy genre.  That is because Emma Bull has pulled off what I would have considered impossible before reading Territory: a near perfect blending of a realistic western with a healthy dose of magic thrown into the mix. 

That Bull’s use of magic is key to the development of her novel’s plot and characters but still not overdone, makes for an enjoyably off-center look at some real-life characters already very familiar to fans of Old West novels.  The action all takes place in and around Tombstone, Arizona, just a few months before the infamous (and still mysterious) “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” as all the usual suspects gather there to feed on the hatred they feel for each other. 

On the one side are Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and the equally famous dentist who calls himself Doc Holliday.  On the other side are gunslinger Johnny Ringo and the Clanton and McClaury brothers, a bunch of part-time cowboys and rustlers. What makes this portrayal of the historical events of the day so different is that several of the key players have more than simple charisma working in their favor; they are secret magicians with the power to influence events as much with their minds as with their pistols. 

Into this mix, Bull blends several fictional characters that get caught up in the events of the day.  Jesse Fox, making his way to Mexico where he hopes to make a living breaking wild horses, stops in Tombstone to see his old friend from San Francisco, Chow Lung.  Fox knows deep-down that his Chinese friend has unusual powers but is reluctant to admit it even to himself.  Little does he know that Chow Lung has called him to Tombstone using some of that same magic so that the two can investigate the evil that has entered the town. Mildred, recently widowed, works in one of Tombstone’s daily newspapers as a typesetter but is the glue that holds the little paper together.  When Jesse Fox comes into the office one day, they inadvertently begin a partnership that will change both their lives forever.

Bull takes the time to build a realistic setting within which she develops her characters and their motivations.  Atmospherically, everything will seem so familiar to fans of the western genre that, when fantasy replaces realism, they will hardly notice the jolt.  Fantasy and magic are well used in order to explore a world on the edge, one in which physical strength and domination are key elements in local politics and in the everyday lives of all of Tombstone’s citizens.

This one is fun, and it would be a shame if those who loathe either western fiction or fantasy fiction were to miss it.  Give it a shot.

Rated at: 4.0

North River

For a book that includes so much actual, not to mention potential violence, Pete Hamill’s North River is at its heart a very gentle novel. 

 Dr. James Delaney, a WWI medic who was himself wounded in the war, is having a tough time of it in 1934 Greenwich Village.  Delaney’s neighborhood patients are suffering the effects of the Depression and cash money to pay for Delaney’s services is hard to come by.  Despite the fact that his wife, Molly, who suffers from depression, has walked out of his life and has not been heard from since, Delaney keeps her room as she left it in hopes that she will walk back into his world one day.

His day-to-day routine, bleak as it is, is rocked one day when Delaney returns home to find that his daughter Grace has abandoned her two-year-old son at his doorstep.  At first, Delaney is filled with anger that Grace would do such a thing.  Later, he will realize that little Carlito and Rose, the woman he hired to help him care for the little boy, are two of the best things that ever happened to him.

Delaney’s life grows complicated when he is called upon to save the life of Eddie Corso, a local mobster who has been gunned down by a rival gang.  Delaney and Corso have a history going back to the first time Delaney saved Corso’s life – when Delaney risked German snipers to get to the severely wounded Corso one horrible day during the war.  The bond the two men formed that day is as strong as ever.  Unfortunately for Delaney and his grandson, rival gangster Frankie Botts is convinced that Delaney knows where the recuperating Corso is hiding, and Botts is willing to do anything to get that information, even if it involves the boy.

But now comes the gentle (and best) part of the story.  North River is really a very well written love story that encompasses the love of a man for his lost wife, his estranged daughter, his grandson, and soon enough for Rose, the Italian illegal emigrant who has moved so seamlessly into his life.  Before long, little Carlito, who spent his first two years living in Mexico, is speaking Spanish, English, and even a good bit of Italian as he charms everyone in the Delaney household.  Carlito’s world is one of constant discovery, and before long the adults around him cannot but help see the world through his new eyes, too.

North River gives the reader a remarkable feel for life in one New York City neighborhood during the Depression.  Hamill’s sense of what everyday life was like for those who lived within a few blocks of the Village during the thirties is a key element of his story.  This is a combination of superb historical fiction, crime fiction and romance and, as such, it will certainly appeal to a variety of readers.  Don’t miss this one.

Rated at: 5.0

The Broken Shore

I have long believed that quality crime fiction, the kind built around a sense of place and well developed characters, can give the armchair traveler a better feel for a country and its culture than all but the best written travel books.  Books like Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore always remind me how true that is.

Big city Australian cop Joe Cashin has been exiled to the little police station responsible for the security of the small South Australian coastal town he grew up in – not that the citizens there have much crime to worry about.  He has ostensibly been sent to the area to recover from a serious physical injury, but Cashin is the kind of cop whose superiors sometimes need a break from him, and no one seems in a hurry to call him back.  Perhaps that is because he is not much into political correctness or going out of his way to make his fellow policemen look good when they do not deserve it.

When local millionaire Charles Bourgoyne is discovered in his mansion with his head bashed in, Cashin soon finds himself at odds with others in the department who are determined to pin the crime on a group of aboriginal teens caught trying to sell the man’s watch.  After the case is officially closed, Cashin, ever the introspective loner, decides to investigate the crime on his own.  His investigation, made more difficult by the town’s instinctive racism toward its aboriginal population, will lead him deep into a part of the community’s past tainted by child pornography and sexual abuse. 

Joe Cashin is not a perfect cop.  In fact, he sometimes tends to make the kind of careless or lazy mistake that can place him, his fellow cops, or the success of an investigation in danger.  The older he gets, the more Cashin questions what he has done with his life.  He is close to no one, including his mother and only brother, but despite not being happy about the situation, he does little to remedy it.  But the man has a good heart, and a very big one, at that.  He is a staunch defender of the underdog and he believes in second chances, two qualities that mark him as a misfit among his fellow policemen.

The Broken Shore is filled with memorable little moments, unforgettable characters, and complicated personal relationships.  It is about much more than the murder of one old man with a past of his own to protect.  Peter Temple uses dialogue to develop his characters much in the way that Elmore Leonard has become so celebrated for doing.  It works well for Temple, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting into the revealing conversational rhythms of his characters.  Readers will be well advised, however, to familiarize themselves with the Australian slang terms in the book’s glossary before beginning the novel (a fun, standalone read, that is) in order to keep the conversation flowing at the pace at which it is meant to be read.

This, my first Peter Temple novel, is actually the author’s ninth, and I look forward to reading the others.

Rated at: 4.0

Silence of the Grave

Arnaldur Indirdason’s second mystery, Silence of the Grave, is certain to please a broad range of mystery fans.   That the novel is an intricately structured police procedural focusing on a very cold case going all the way back to World War II is already enough to appeal to most readers; that its abundant backstory makes the main characters come to life, and that the novel is set in Iceland, adds icing to the cake.

Reykjavik, like large cities all over the world, seems to be always expanding, and what was remote countryside just a few decades earlier now offers suburban housing and shopping for city workers that can afford to move outside the city.  When one construction project exposes a skeleton that seems to have been buried for at least 50 years, Inspector Erlendur Sveinnson and his crew are brought in to sort things out.  Erlendur, unlike some assigned to the case, is determined to identify the murder victim despite the fact that the murderer, and anyone that might remember the victim, are themselves probably dead.

As a team of archaeologists methodically works to unearth the skeletal remains of the victim, Erlendur directs an investigation that progresses almost as slowly as the diggers.  In the tradition of the best police procedurals, it is one logical step at a time, sometimes even taking two steps forward before taking one step back.  But the luxury of time and patience eventually will pay off for both teams.

Sensitive readers should be warned that Indridason does not let his readers blink or turn their heads when it comes to detailing the horrible physical and mental abuse one man dishes out to his wife and children.  He tells it like it happens in the real world – often in enough detail to make one flinch while merely reading of the brutality.  These sections, however, are not there for shock value; they are at the heart of the mystery.

Almost as painful to read, is Erlendur’s backstory.  The man might be a good cop, but he is a flop as a father, having walked away from his marriage not long after the birth of his second child.  Now, he has to deal with his drug addict daughter, Eva Lind, who is in a coma after having lost the baby she insisted on delivering despite her inability to clean herself up.  Some of the book’s best moments come when Erlendur, having been advised to talk to his daughter despite her coma, but not knowing what to say, begins to tell her about his cold case – and about a heartrending incident from his own childhood that still haunts him.

Silence of the Grave is my second Erlendur novel, but it will most certainly not be my last.  I particularly enjoy mysteries that keep me speculating all the way to the end but still come to a logical conclusion.  I do not like trick endings or rabbits otherwise pulled from hats.  Solid police procedurals with the added depth of a revealing backstory are what I enjoy most in a mystery; this one did not disappoint.

Rated at: 4.5

Nashville Chrome

The Browns (Maxine, Jim Ed and Bonnie) were already a successful country music trio when I began listening to recorded music as a boy.  For that reason, it seems that their music has always been part of my life.  And even though the siblings broke up the trio decades ago, I continue to listen to Jim Ed perform on, and host, the Grand Ol’ Opry radio broadcasts on Nashville radio station WSM.  So I thought I knew a little about the Browns.  But when I started to read the new Rick Bass novel about the Brown family, Nashville Chrome, I realized just how little I knew about their personal lives or how the three eldest children became, for a time, so famous.

Nashville Chrome tells the Browns’ story largely through the eyes of the oldest Brown sibling, Maxine.  Rick Bass did the research, including visits and interviews with members of the Brown family, and it shows in the story he tells; there is plenty about the family’s early days and their relatively brief career as one of the most popular singing groups in the country.  

But fiction being what it is, it is hard to know just how accurately Bass portrays Maxine’s reaction to the breakup of the group and the rather sad efforts she made during the next several decades to make a personal comeback on her own.  Is his portrayal of Maxine factually accurate?  Was she humiliated by the young employees of her old record label?  Would she actually consider making a documentary film directed by a 12-year-old boy with a handheld video camera and a vision of his own?

Bass reminds readers just how big the Browns were at their  peak.  They successfully competed on the charts with a young Elvis Presley and, in fact, topped him for a long time.  Their admirers included people like Johnny Cash and the Beatles.  They had it all; and they lost it all so quickly that most people today have never heard of them.  

Country music and pop music fans will appreciate Nashville Chrome for the way that Bass recreates a long gone era, a time when new music stars could still come from nowhere, and often did, catching the imagination of the country in a way that just doesn’t happen very often today.  

What they might not appreciate nearly as much is the way Bass presents his story.  Nashville Chrome is a novel, but it reads more like a series of magazine articles.  The Browns, as individuals, never come to life, and it is never easy to sympathize with any of them - or with anyone else in the novel with the exception, perhaps, of the Brown matriarch.  The feeling that the novel was pasted together from previously published works is even stronger because of the repetitiveness of what Bass has to say about the unusual sound developed by the Browns as children.  According to Bass, it was simply fated to be this way; fame was the trio’s destiny and they could not have avoided it, for better or worse, no matter what they might have done.  This might be a great theory - but the reader is beat over the head with it so many times that his eyes begin to glaze over.

Bottom line is that the story of the Browns is an intriguing one and Nashville Chrome is worth reading for that reason, alone.  That the novel is written in such an un-novel-like style is unfortunate.

I am with Maxine.  The Browns deserve a movie version of their own.

Rated at: 3.0


I love this YouTube clip of the Browns doing their best known song, "Little Jimmy Brown," in 1999.  They still had the perfect harmony that made them so famous.

Two of the Deadliest

Two of the Deadliest is a collection of 23 short stories specifically centered on “two of the deadliest” of the seven deadly sins: lust and greed.  Of the stories, 18 are written by women already established in the genre and 5 by female newcomers.  As in most short story collections, there are hits and misses in this volume, but the newcomers do score with what is perhaps the best story of them all, Z. Kelley’s “Anything Helps.”  And, surprisingly, one of the weaker stories in the collection comes from the book’s editor, Elizabeth George.

Many of the stories are set in contemporary, big city America, but there are also side trips to France (in the 1920s), rural California (in 1916), rural Texas (in the 1930s) and contemporary Ireland.  The narrators of Two of the Deadliest’s audio version were well chosen and, with an exception or two, were nicely matched to the stories they read.  I did, however, find both the tone  of the story titled “Enough to Stay the Winter” (by Gillian Linscott) and that of its reader to be particularly dull.  I still cannot decide whether I should blame that more on the story or the reader.

Of the book’s 23 stories, I most enjoyed “Everything Helps” by one of the newcomers, Z. Kelley.  Despite its violence, this is a rather endearing story about a single mother so desperate for the money she needs to pay for her son’s urgent surgery that she takes a cashier job in a Las Vegas storefront that combines slot machines and sales of pornographic material from a back room.  The woman befriends a homeless man who panhandles on the street outside the storefront and surprises herself by how much she looks forward to seeing him each day.  This story is solid all the way through, and its ending is a memorable one. Kelley is a good storyteller and she has filled her story with remarkable characters: the two Arab brothers who run the little casino, the cashier’s mother and son, her co-worker, and the homeless man who gives her the courage to go on with life.  

I also particularly enjoyed Wendy Hornsby’s alternate history version of Jack London’s death, “The Violinist.”  This one, set in 1916 during London’s last days, speculates about the people who surrounded London at the end of his life and whether or not one of them might have had a personal reason for wanting to see him dead.  Was it suicide or murder?  Hornsby builds a good case for the latter while introducing the reader to some of the people and problems London was dealing with at the end of his life.

The beauty of a large collection of stories like this one is the likelihood that there will be stories in it to please any reader.  Whether or not different readers will agree about which are the best stories is a whole other question, and that is another part of the fun.  Frankly, I could take or leave most of the stories in the book because they struck me as pretty average.  Of the 23, I would say that about half a dozen are outstanding, ten are average, and the rest are not very good.  I will leave it up to future readers to decide for themselves which are which.

I do have one final thought, however, concerning Elizabeth George’s contribution to the book, “Lusting for Jenny.”  The story is passable all the way up to the ending George chose for it.  As the story progressed (no spoilers here), I could see the possibility of a clichéd ending ahead, but I hoped that it would not be chosen by George.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what she used - and it is that ill chosen ending that will first come to mind any time I think about Two of the Deadliest.

Rated at: 3.0

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Steve Martin’s style of standup comedy has always been somewhat of an acquired taste. One eventually got it, or one did not, and I admit that I was one of those who did not. I figured out quickly enough what Martin was trying to do; that was not the issue. It was simply that his style of standup silliness more bored than entertained me. His stage act had a limited shelf life for most people, meaning that its popularity would peak and begin to decline relatively quickly - something that Martin, in fact, addresses directly in Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life.

Hearing Martin explain in great detail how he came up with his material, and how difficult it was for him to write enough of it to fill even a twenty-minute performance, did not make the gags any funnier to me. Born Standing Up did, however, make me better appreciate Martin’s comic vision and how hard he worked to find his eventual success. Steve Martin beat the odds to become one of the funniest men in Hollywood and this memoir, beginning with his childhood and ending at the point he gave up standup for good for a movie career, tells exactly how he did that.

Steve Martin was born in Texas but moved to California when his aspiring-actor father moved the family there. Just a few years later, Disneyland would open within two miles of the Martin home and ten-year-old Steve would become one of Mr. Disney’s earliest employees. He would spend several years working in the theme park, most importantly in the magic shop where he developed his love for magic and the magic act he would eventually use to break into “show business.”

In Born Standing Up, Steve Martin takes a serious look at how he became the Hollywood star he is today. He details the dysfunctional relationship he had with his father, his days as a semi-professional magician, his experiences as a young television comedy writer, his move to standup, his relationship with Saturday Night Live, and finally, his transition into movies. Along the way, he reminisces about old friends, including high school buddies who founded the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and some of the women he was involved with during those years – including his chaste and short-lived pursuit of Linda Ronstadt.

Martin reads the audio version of Born Standing Up himself, but his reading is surprisingly dispassionate and dry at times. He also provides several short banjo interludes as breaks between distinct sections of the book. This one will appeal especially to Steve Martin fans and “nuts and bolts” comedy fans interested in how Martin’s material developed over the years.

Rated at: 3.0

S Is for Silence

The lifeblood of any small company is the new business brought in by referrals from friends and former customers. Kinsey Millhone runs a one-woman detective agency and, although she is doing well enough with it, she is always hesitant to reject any potential clients that come her way. Still, after a friend asks her to meet with Daisy, a young woman whose mother disappeared 34 years earlier (in 1953), Kinsey only reluctantly agrees to take on a case gone so cold that it is unlikely ever to be solved.

That Violet Sullivan was Serena Station’s town slut is no secret. The stunningly beautiful redhead may have been married, with a seven-year-old daughter, but she still moved steadily from one affair to the next despite the grief it caused her husband. Men found Violet hard to resist; their wives despised her. And then one evening, she blew her daughter a kiss, waved goodbye to the babysitter, and disappeared in the flashiest car in Serena Station, a brand new 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air. She would never be seen again.

Kinsey does not expect her investigation to get far but, when one morning she finds all four tires on her VW Beetle slashed, she knows that she is making someone very nervous. Violet’s disappearance is complicated by the rumor that she left town with $50,000 in cash, and the fact that every man Kinsey interviews seems to have had a reason to want her dead. Kinsey will find that having an abundance of suspects is not a good thing.

S Is for Silence focuses almost entirely on the cold case Kinsey Millhone has been hired to investigate, even to such an extent that the book’s lack of attention to Kinsey’s personal life might disappoint some longtime fans of the series. Grafton alternates chapters flashing back to 1953 with chapters showing Kinsey stirring up things with the same characters in present day 1987, giving readers the opportunity to observe both eras in real time (in typical “cold case” fashion).

Despite being atypical of Grafton’s alphabet series, S Is for Silence is cleverly constructed up to the moment its disappointingly farfetched ending is exposed. The book’s climactic scene is so dependent on coincidence that much of its tension is lost because the reader is unlikely to be able to take the scene completely seriously. This, added to the way that so many of the investigation’s turning points are entirely dependent on Kinsey’s sudden intuition, and not on what she actually discovers about Violet’s disappearance, results in a less than satisfying mystery.

As usual, reader Judy Kaye does a magnificent job in presenting the words of Sue Grafton in the audio version of the book. Hers is the perfect Kinsey Millhone voice.

Rated at: 3.0

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen is some kind of crazy cross between biography and author memoir. I call it crazy because, in theory, it should not work - but the craziest thing about it is how well it does work once the reader clicks to the book’s obvious slant. Author Jimmy McDonough idolizes Tammy Wynette and he is none too thrilled with those who so often made her life a living hell. While he recounts Wynette’s life in detail, McDonough is quick to offer his personal opinion about those details. He never hesitates to ridicule individual songs, hair styles, clothing, or album covers, for instance. McDonough wisely does not even attempt to portray himself as the impersonal biographer. Otherwise, the four or five personal “letters” to Wynette he places throughout the book would be even stranger than they already are.

Virginia Wynette Pugh was born in Mississippi in 1942 but grew up in nearby Red Bay, Alabama. Hardcore country music fans know most of the basic facts of her life, although some of what passes for common knowledge is largely exaggerated, often by Wynette herself (such as her supposedly poverty stricken girlhood or the kidnapping that never was). Tragic Country Queen aims to set the record straight. It covers all five of Wynette’s marriages, including the most famous one to George Jones and the final and most tragic of them all, to George Richey. It explores Wynette’s volatile relationship with her daughters, the serious health issues she suffered, the resulting addiction to painkillers, her musical success and failures, and everything between.

McDonough also devotes a significant number of pages to the country music producer Billy Sherrill, the man with whose help Wynette found early success and blossomed into “The First Lady of Country Music.” The chapters on Sherrill are an informative mini-biography that will be of great interest to music fans curious about the Nashville music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. The author does the same for Wynette husband number three, George Jones, providing a short Jones biography before getting into the details of their toxic marriage – and what seems to be a permanent love affair both found it difficult to get over.

The marriage to Jones was bad enough, but the real tragedy of Tammy Wynette’s life would come later. Husband number four would last only 44 days before Wynette would pay him to go away, clearing the way for her marriage to the villain of the Tammy Wynette story, George Richey. As McDonough sees the relationship, Richey was in it for the money and fame, certainly not because of his great love for Wynette. Wynette suffered debilitating intestinal problems by this point in her career, having already had much of her stomach removed, and Richey made sure that she had the painkillers she needed to keep herself on the road – and the money flowing. That George Richey controlled all the money coming in and going out, seems certain. That he made sure that Wynette’s daughters would get nothing when she died (and that the Richey family would do quite well, thank you) seems almost as certain.

It is unlikely that anyone will ever know the exact circumstances of Tammy Wynette’s death but McDonough offers an interesting theory or two as to what might have happened in her home the night she died there. Most bizarre of all, is what happened during the several hours her body was allowed to remain on the couch upon which she died while a house full of Richey’s guests drank and smoked around it.

Tammy Wynette wanted to be a country music legend and she got her wish. Sadly, this is most certainly not what she had in mind.

Rated at: 5.0

Identical Strangers

That Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein had been adopted as infants was a given.  Both were thankful to have been raised by loving adoptive parents and, at age 35, each had carved out a nice life of her own.  Paula, a freelance writer, lived with her husband and young daughter in New York City, and Elyse, a film director, considered Paris to be her home.  What neither woman knew was that they are identical twins who had been adopted out, when they were just a few months old, to separate families.

All that would change on the day Elyse contacted adoption agency Louise Wise Services to request information about her birth mother.  In addition to the minimal details about her mother’s background the agency was willing to share with her, Elyse was told that she had an identical twin sister.  And the search for her twin sister, which turned out to be surprisingly easy, was on.  Sooner than Elyse dared imagine, the two were sitting across from each in a New York restaurant on what, for both women, had the feel of a “first date.”  

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited focuses on the women’s sometimes reluctant search for their birth mother, whom they learn was an exceptionally bright young Jewish woman who suffered severe schizophrenia at the time of their birth.  They also learn that locating their birth father will be impossible because when they were born their mother was unable to name him.  But despite being fearful of what they might learn about their mother’s mental illness, both sisters already having suffered varying degrees of depression, they are determined to identify her.

Identical Strangers, however, is about much more than the search for a birth mother – that particular book has been written often enough already.  Elyse and Paula, in alternating first-person chapters, instead offer a frank account of what it is like for each of them to suddenly face the identical twin neither ever suspected of existing.  One sister is enthusiastic about their reunion and future together but the other sometimes finds herself wishing she could have her old life back, the one into which she did not suddenly have to figure out how to squeeze in a new sister.  The two will exchange frank and blunt comments, and often have their feelings hurt, as they struggle to come to terms with their new relationship. Ultimately binding the sisters together, however, is their shared determination to learn why they were separated by the adoption agency instead of being offered to a family able to keep them together.  Only after many months of determined effort, do they finally learn the shocking truth about Louise Wise Services and the decision that forever changed their lives - along with the lives of the other twins (and one set of triplets) separated by the agency for the same reason.

Along the way, one learns much about the scientific differences between identical twins, fraternal twins and other siblings as the age old question of “nature vs. nurture” is explored.  Also included are numerous stories about the often amazing similarities shared by other twins and triplets who only found each other as adults.  Identical Strangers is another of those instances that remind us that real life can be as fascinating as the best fiction.

Rated at: 4.0

Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero

It was not particularly easy for a kid to be a baseball fan in small town Texas during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  For the most part, all we had to work with were the statistics and player pictures on our baseball cards and the abbreviated box scores our local newspaper deigned to print (the more space the editor needed to fill, the more box scores we got).   Best of all, though, were the nationally televised weekend games, match-ups that so often featured the New York Yankees I had become a rabid Yankee fan by the beginning of the 1960 season – just as Roger Maris joined the team from Kansas City.

As exciting as that season was, no one would have dared predict that Maris might break Babe Ruth’s single season home run record in 1961 or that Mantle would keep almost the same home run pace right down to the last several weeks of the season.  Even small town newspapers were caught up in the excitement of the chase and, for a change, they printed some of the same articles big city fans were reading in their own papers.  But there must have been one subtle difference in what we read and what big city fans read because I was only vaguely aware, in Texas, that New Yorkers were rooting for only Mantle to break the record; if not Mantle, certainly not Maris, was the overwhelming sentiment there.

Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero is the complete Roger Maris biography.  And, because Maris was a private person who shared very few personal details with writers of the day, the book holds surprises even for those who witnessed the pressure-packed 1961 season and believe they already know the Roger Maris story.   Few, for instance, are likely to know that Maris was not born in North Dakota as he claimed or that “Maris” is not the original spelling of his surname – or about the dysfunctional family dynamic that caused the spelling to be changed.  

The biography, however, rightfully focuses on the way New York sportswriters and broadcasters conspired to ruin a good man’s reputation and to make him miserable during what could have been the best year of his life.  Old-school writers, in particular, hated to see Babe Ruth’s home run record fall and, if it had to be broken at all, the last thing they wanted to see was someone like Roger Maris do the breaking.  Because they did not consider Roger Maris to be a “true Yankee,” this unethical group of writers trashed his reputation on a daily basis.  They portrayed him as surly and unappreciative, a man who refused to play through his injuries the way Mantle played through his own.  They even covered for Mantle’s drinking problems and resulting lack of hustle while attacking Maris for not going full out even when ordered to play at a slower pace (to protect an injury) by his manager.  And it worked – fans in every American League city hated Maris and never failed to boo or jeer him, even in his home ballpark.

That was bad enough.  But just as bad was the unethical way  Commissioner Ford Frick decided to protect the home run record of Babe Ruth, a friend of his, by hanging the infamous “asterisk” on Maris, insisting that Ruth was still the single season champion for a 154-game schedule and that Maris was only the champion for a less impressive 162-game schedule (even though Ruth had three more overall at-bats than Maris).  But it gets still worse because, later in his Yankee career, the full extent of a hand injury was kept from Maris by the Yankee front office and his manager, Ralph Houk, a decision that all but ensured he would never fully regain the grip in that hand or be able to pull a ball like he did when it was healthy.  This is the same front office that failed to protect Maris from the rabid press in 1961 or even to promote his continuing chase to catch Ruth after the 154^th game of the season, the same people who would send him off to St. Louis without ever recognizing what a great Yankee player he actually had been.

Understandably, Roger Maris hated the Yankee organization and Yankee fans by the time he was traded to St. Louis in an underhanded deal that turned out to be the biggest blessing of his career.  That he would be able to reconcile with the Yankee organization, thanks to the efforts of George Steinbrenner, and that he would learn to love baseball again because of his experiences with the St. Louis Cardinals, is the best part of the Roger Maris story.  When he died at age 51, still in the prime of life, baseball lost one of its all time greats, a man that, in my opinion, deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame despite the successful efforts of a group of despicable writers to keep him out of it.

Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero is not just a book for baseball fans because Roger Maris is a true American hero, a man whose story will be an inspiration to anyone who reads this revealing biography. 

Rated at: 4.5

Beatrice and Virgil

The first thing you need to know about Beatrice and Virgil is that it is not for everyone. Many will find it to be moving and unforgettable; probably an equal number will be bored with it, even to the point of not finishing it. It is that kind of novel. The second thing you need to know is that it is a difficult novel to review without lessening its potential impact on the reader. Reviewers need to be particularly careful with this one because, the less readers know about the book’s details going in, the more they are likely to feel its emotional wallop.

Beatrice and Virgil is about, Henry, a novelist that has had a huge amount of unexpected success with his first novel, so much success, in fact, that he is not inclined to start writing a second book. Instead, he moves to an unnamed large city with his wife, where the couple lives comfortably off the proceeds of his bestseller. Henry takes music lessons, performs in amateur plays, and takes a clerking job in a small chocolate store. All is well until the day he receives a package containing a copy of a strange short story of Flaubert’s and a few pages from an unknown play.

Curious about the unknown writer, and the man’s bold request for his help, Henry locates him and his amazing taxidermy shop. Over several visits to the shop, the taxidermist (also named Henry) reads scenes from his play aloud while (our) Henry becomes more and more caught up in the story of Beatrice the donkey and Virgil the monkey. He is so intrigued by the characters, and the way the taxidermist has captured their fictional personalities in the donkey and monkey posed on the shop floor, that he finds himself looking forward to visiting the preserved animals - and he misses them when he leaves the shop. The two Henrys form a relationship of sorts, as Henry (the author) helps Henry (the taxidermist) complete or re-write several scenes of the play.

Much as in Martel’s Life of Pi, there is more to Beatrice and Virgil than first meets the eye. The reader will be charmed by the relationship between the donkey and her monkey friend but, at times, will perhaps be bored by other parts of the story. I doubt that Martel purposely set out to bore any of his readers but, as one who was thus affected, I can honestly say that those moments of boredom would ultimately help to maximize the impact of what was yet to come.

Most likely, one will either love or hate Beatrice and Virgil. I come down on the side of those who loved it.

Rated at: 5.0

The Peep Diaries

 Hal Niedzviecki’s The Peep Diaries explores how and why popular culture has evolved into one in which so many people suffer from the TMI (Too Much Information) syndrome.  Not only are millions of exhibitionists willing to share the most intimate details of their lives with perfect strangers, they work hard to make sure as many people as possible view those details.  As Niedzviecki notes on the first page of his book, Webster’s New World Dictionary added a new verb to its 2008 edition to describe this very phenomenon: overshare - to divulge excessive personal information, as in a blog or broadcast interview, prompting reactions ranging from alarmed discomfort to approval.

But let us be honest.  There would be far fewer exhibitionists if the rest of us did not relish watching them make fools of themselves.  Not only are we a culture of exhibitionists; we are a culture of voyeurs.

Niedzviecki believes that Peep Culture emerged because people find it more difficult today than ever before to develop close, long-lasting relationships.  We might live in larger and larger cities, surrounded by more people than ever, but the pace at which we live our lives makes it near impossible to connect with like-minded people or to maintain such relationships over the long term.  So what could be more tempting, or addicting, than how easy it is to find hundreds of new “friends” on websites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube – especially when we can choose people who think and believe exactly as we do?

In order to test his theory, Niedzviecki became a direct participant in Peep Culture.  Among other things, he blogged and he tweeted; he participated in what is humorously called “reality TV;” he met with a group of people who post nude photos of themselves on soft-porn websites; he researched the latest tech gadgets that allow us to spy upon one another; he made over 700 new friends on Facebook; and he filled out online surveys in which he exposed his personal details to companies that profit by selling his information to others.  In other words, he did the very things so many of us have been doing for a number of years (well, maybe with the exception of posing in the nude for web photos). 

Niedzviecki thoroughly explores the downside of Peep Culture, a downside that is particularly dangerous to young people on the cusp of maturing into the adults they will be for the rest of their lives.  He notes that college administrators, hiring managers, credit managers, insurance investigators and others, are as aware of sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube as anyone else – and that they often pre-screen applicants based on what they see on those sites.  Not surprisingly, what makes a high school or college student popular among his peers (primarily an ability to party with the best of them), is the very thing that could cost him admittance to the college of his choice, a high-paying job after college, or reasonably priced car or health insurance.  

Niedzviecki spends surprisingly little time exploring the more positive aspects of Peep Culture.  How, for  instance, those finding it most difficult to make face-to-face friends often eliminate depression and raise self-esteem in the process of making dozens of new friends on-line – even to the point of using their new found confidence to make friends locally.  Or how easy it is for like-minded people to find each other and share a passion about some obscure subject so few others seem to care about.  But regardless of whether or not there is a Peep Culture “pro” to match every Peep Culture “con,” there is no going back to the way we were even two decades ago.  The world has never been smaller, and never before have people been so interconnected for so many hours of the day.  

The repetitiveness of Niedzviecki’s arguments does, at times, make for dry reading, but The Peep Diaries is a nice snapshot of where Peep Culture is today, if not necessarily where it will be this time tomorrow.

Rated at: 3.0

The White Garden

Everyone knows that, one day in 1941, famed British author Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets with heavy rocks before stepping into the cold waters of the river Ouse. Perhaps because of the extra weight she carried into the water with her, Woolf’s body would not be found until three weeks later. Woolf’s family and friends, aware that she was often in a suicidal frame-of-mind, were not surprised by her end, so the official verdict of suicide was never challenged. Now, in an intriguing piece of alternate history, The White Garden, Stephanie Barron examines the possibilities of what may have happened during the three weeks between Woolf’s disappearance and the recovery of her body in the Ouse.

American Jo Bellamy has come to Kent’s Sissinghurst Castle to copy the layout of its famous White Garden for a wealthy client who wants to replicate it on the grounds of his Long Island home. Imogen Cantwell, the castle’s head gardener, has grudgingly agreed to allow Jo full access to the White Garden so that she can gather all the measurements and photos she will need to create a perfect copy of the grounds for her client. But, for Jo, this is not just a way to generate revenue for her business; it is an opportunity to visit the part of England in which her beloved grandfather, who killed himself just three weeks earlier, lived for the first two decades of his life.

After Jo discovers that her grandfather spent several months as an apprentice gardener at Sissinghurst (the home of Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West), her search for garden records from that period leads her to the discovery of what appears to be a partial diary written in the hand of Virginia Woolf herself. Oddly, however, the journal is bound with a note indicating that, when it was boxed for storage, it actually belonged to Jo’s grandfather. Even odder, the first entry in Woolf’s handwriting is dated the day after her supposed drowning in the river Ouse.

Already puzzled by her grandfather’s so out-of-character suicide, Jo now starts to wonder if her trip to Sissinghurst might have everything to do with the timing of his death. Her quest to have the first half of the journal authenticated, and to find its missing pages, draws the attention of others wanting to exploit the astounding journal for their own purposes. For Jo, it is all about understanding why her grandfather felt it necessary to end his life; others want a piece of the fame, and profit, which will result from proximity to a journal that might literally rewrite a significant portion of literary history.

The White Garden works because of the way Barron mixes her intriguing plot of alternate history with a large cast of interesting characters. Admittedly, some of the characters are a little too close to stereotypes to be completely effective but, in the context of the story, even those characters contribute to the fun. Fans of Virginia Woolf, and Anglophiles of all stripes, are likely to enjoy this one a great deal. I certainly did.

Rated at: 5.0