Category Archives: social class

Tonight in Jungleland, by Peter Ames Carlin*****

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“And then the door flew open, and the wolf of doubt came slinking in.”

Springsteen fans, get your plastic out. Peter Ames Carlin has crafted a riveting Springsteen biography about the making of the iconic album, “Born to Run.” Having read it, I have gained even greater appreciation for the Boss’s rock and roll genius. My thanks go to NetGalley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

“Born to Run” is Springsteen’s third album; the first and second albums received rave reviews from industry publications, but they sold poorly, and Columbia Records had Bruce on their kill list. He was contracted for three albums, but since they had already decided he wasn’t going anywhere, it was difficult to get them to finance the third album’s production or even listen to it once it was done. Take a brilliant, charismatic singer/songwriter, a talented, loyal band, and a couple of industry influencers that would all but starve themselves in order to see this album succeed, and it was nevertheless a nail-biter.

Mike Appel was Bruce’s manager, and he believed in his client so passionately that he was ready to bend a few rules and take a blow torch to a few others. When expenses exceeded the support from Columbia, when everyone’s charge cards were maxed and there was still a record to finish, he dumped his children’s college funds into the general kitty so that the album could see daylight. Columbia Records had told him they’d review his client’s work if he could make a hit single, so “Born to Run” became the song on which the album’s success was hinged. Then Jon Landau, a much-revered industry journalist, heard Bruce’s music and wrote, “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Landau became his producer, and it is due to this holy musical trinity that Springsteen and the E Street Band became world renowned. In fact, they went so far as to send bootleg copies to friendly deejays, since the record company was doing absolutely no promotion, and it worked!

I have never been a sufficiently rabid fan to go into the weeds on this band or any other. I didn’t know who else was in his band, apart from his wife. I also had no idea what was required of anyone attempting to get an album financed and promoted by a major house—particularly during the pre-digital days of the late 1900s. Two things have always drawn me to Springsteen’s music: tunes so impossibly resonant that I am unable to sit still when I listen to them, and the lyrics that speak to the industrial working class. These are not the songs of a pretender. Bruce grew up lean and hungry, and because of that, and his rare talent for communication, the songs ring true.

Springsteen was, and I suspect still is, a perfectionist. The following quote is lengthy, but that seems appropriate, given the amount of time, toil and sweat they put into this album:

Ensconced in 914 in the wee hours, Appel and Bruce seemed to try every idea that occurred to them. A string section. An ascending guitar riff repeating through the verse. A chorus of women chiming in on the chorus. An even bigger chorus of women oooh-ing behind the third verse. Still more strings on the bridge and on the last verse, doing those disco-style swoops, like sciroccos whipping up from the dance floor. They’d work out a part, hire whatever musicians or singers were needed to get it on tape, then mix it all together to see what they had. Sometimes it would stick, sometimes they’d just laugh, shake their heads, and slice it out… Work on the instrumental track went on and on, but it still didn’t rival Bruce’s laboring over the lyrics. He had always put energy into his narratives but the pressure he felt to get “Born to Run” just exactly right pushed him to a whole other level of perfectionism, determined to get every word, every nuance, every syllable, something like flawless. No, exactly flawless. Sometimes he’d be in the midst of a take, sing a few lines of a verse, shake it off, then take his notebook to a folding a chair. He’d find a pen, open the book, look at the page, and just …think. He’d be there for a while. An hour, two hours, maybe more. Meanwhile in the control room Appel would be at his place at the board, Louis Lahav in his. This happened a lot. How long would it be this time? They’d peer through the glass, chat a bit. Fiddle with paperwork, try to see what Bruce was up to. Still staring into space? Reading back through his pages? Writing? Impatience was not an option. Appel was paying the bills but as far as he was concerned Bruce could have all the time he needed. Eventually he’d look up, reach for his headphones, and say he was ready to record. Lahav would roll the tape and they’d begin again.

When I read a musical memoir or biography, I take frequent breaks to stream the music in question. Ames’s narrative has made me appreciate the musician and his band more deeply. I also have to say—as a person that once aspired to become a musician also—that I am dumbfounded by anyone that can write and then play their music without knowing how to read music, or assembling a score to help them recall it later. The same is true for band members that can hear a song and create their own accompaniment without benefit of a written score. As a youngster, I thought such an approach was stupid. Now I stand in awe of it.

If you’ve made it all the way through this review, the book will be a snap. If possible, read it in a time and place where you’ll be free of distraction. It’s worth it. Highly recommended.

Clete, by James Lee Burke*****

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Mortality is mortality. It comes to you when it’s ready. We don’t set the clock.

The Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke is one of the finest ever written. As the faithful know, Clete Purcel is Dave’s partner in whatever he does. Once they were cops that called themselves “The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.” (You probably need to be a boomer to get the reference.) Now they are on their own, but they are still like family to one another. This is the 24th in the series, and it’s the first to be told from Clete’s point of view. It’s a brilliant idea for two reasons: first, because Clete is a well written and wildly popular character, and also because it gives us a chance to see Dave through someone else’s eyes, someone that loves him, but isn’t him.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the invitation to read and review, along with my profound apology for being so very late. This book is for sale now.

In this installment, a new drug ring has come to Louisiana, and it’s creating still more violence, more death, and more crime in general. Clete, who is now a private detective, is hired by a woman named Clara Bow. (If the name rings bells, it’s because the real Clara Bow was a famous movie star from the silent film era.) The Clara that hires Clete wants him to look into the activities of her skeevy ex-husband. Once he begins, we hardly have enough time to breathe. Clete hits the ground running, and there are no slow passages till the book concludes.

My favorite passages are the ones in which a woman named Chen, whom Clete rescues, then falls for, tells him how he appears to her. Here’s one: “You always gentleman, Mr. Clete. Your cats sleep on your face and you no mind. The world kill men like you because you brave and you kind.”

Later, Chen promises him that she won’t go back to taking drugs. “That because I go to a meeting every day with the Work the Steps or Die Motherfucker group. The Motherfuckers are very nice.” He advises her not to use that term in public. Don’t you love it?

Like every book in the series, this one moves seamlessly from scenes with quirky characters and dark humor, to glorious literary passages that I have to read more than once just to admire the writing, to passages that are gritty and violent and occasionally terrifying. Let me put it this way: you will never be bored.

Can you dive in mid-series? I did; then I became so enamored that I went back and read all the rest of them.

Highly recommended.

Heartbreaker, by Mike Campbell and Ari Surdoval*****

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Mike Campbell is a musician and songwriter who served as Tom Petty’s lead guitarist and songwriting partner from the band’s inception until Petty’s death in 2017. I’m a sucker for a strong musical memoir when I can find it; although the galley for this book was available, I chose not to request it, instead using an audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons. I didn’t want the pressure of a deadline. I wanted to be able to lose myself in Campbell’s story, to take unlimited side trips to stream songs that he refers to, either because I haven’t heard of the song and want to listen to it, or because he’s identified a song that I have loved for a long time and want to hear again.

Although I listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the late ‘80s onward, I was never one to follow the news about individual band members. In fact, before I read Warren Zanes’ biography of Petty, I didn’t even know who was in the band. I just knew that when I was in the car and I heard Petty’s voice on the radio, it was time to turn up the volume. And so I come to this memoir without any preconceived ideas, and also without a lot of prior knowledge. Sometimes when a luminary dies, people that have only known them peripherally come out of the woodwork with their stories, looking to make some quick money by inflating their own importance in that person’s life. Once I begin listening to Campbell—who narrates his own audiobook—I can see that this is definitely not that.

It’s also not a Tom-and-me kind of memoir. Petty appears in it of course, but this story is about Campbell, not about Petty, and once it gets rolling, I can tell that Campbell has plenty of interesting experiences worth hearing about independent of anyone else.

The audio takes me a little while to get used to. As it begins, I note the delivery that is nearly a monotone, and a less than fluid reading style. In a strange way, it reminds me of being in an elementary school classroom that’s doing round robin reading aloud. We have come to the student that doesn’t want to read aloud because he knows he won’t sound good. And just as I am thinking that surely for a book that has the kind of reach I expect it to have, they could have found a more engaging narrator, the penny drops, and I realize—oooh, this guy is reading his own book! That being the case, I resolve to stop being so picky and accept the author’s narrative style. Eventually I grow accustomed to it, and it’s a good thing, because I find Campbell’s experiences fascinating! What a lot these musicians endured in order to be heard. Hunger, homelessness, and the derision of their elders; broken down cars, unfriendly cops, and shifty bar owners that want the music, but don’t really want to pay for it. And I am so glad they persevered, because the world of rock and roll would have been so much poorer without them.

I strongly recommend this memoir to those that enjoy listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

My Friends, by Fredrik Backman***-****

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“Being human is to grieve, constantly.”

Well now. Fredrik Backman’s many fans ought to brace themselves for his latest novel. The feel-good stories he’s written, and written brilliantly, in years gone by are nowhere in evidence here; those of us that look to this author to bolster our sense of optimism and to remember that human beings are innately good are not going to find it. This book is far darker than anything he’s written to date, and I have no idea what is behind this sorrow and misery sandwich, but I am sorry it’s come to this.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Our premise is that a homeless teen artist, grieving the death of her best friend, befriends an older, dying street artist who turns out to be someone famous and revered in the art world. The artist senses in her a kindred spirit, and so his last act is to have his friend and business agent sell everything that the artist owns in order to purchase back one of his most iconic paintings and give it to her after he dies, because “She’s one of us.”

Okay. It’s a stretch, but it’s fiction, and after all, Backman generally delivers, so I’ll suspend disbelief and roll with it.

Nearly the entire remainder of the book consists of the friend, whose name is Ted, spilling his and the artist’s past to the girl, whose name is Louisa. He’s traveling by train, and so he takes her with him. We hear all about their childhoods together, along with the two other friends that made up their tightly knit friend group. At one point she runs off, and at another, they lose the painting and the artist’s ashes, but these constitute minor breaks in the otherwise unending conversation, which is nearly a monologue.

It didn’t take me long to be heartily sorry I had ever taken the galley; I finally bonded with the narrative at about the 60% mark, and from that point until just past the 80% mark, I was reading because I wanted to know what would happen next, or be said next, rather than from a sense of duty. For most of the final 20%, I was watching the page numbers and wondering if this thing was going to end, ever.

It’s hard to rate a book like this, because so much of my disappointment stems from my earlier admiration of Backman’s works. If this was written by someone with whom I was unfamiliar, would I rate it a little higher? But then, if the author wasn’t known to me, I likely wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. The stark shift in the author’s world view is shocking, and I am still not entirely over it. I can only recommend this book to you if you need a grief book, because anyone in need of a good ugly-cry will surely find it here.

Fever Beach, by Carl Hiaasen**-***

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What happened? I used to absolutely love novels by Carl Hiaasen. In his most recent release, Fever Beach, we see a conflict between good—in the person of our main character, Viva Morales—and evil, played by a variety of Proud Boys wannabees and other undesirables. The good person is always good; the bad guys have no redeeming qualities. Only Viva’s ex-husband is a dynamic character.

Still, my thanks go to Doubleday and NetGalley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

As I read, I keep reminding myself that this is not a book I’m supposed to take too seriously, to lighten up and just roll with it. I certainly used to do so when reading Hiaasen’s work. But perhaps because of the stereotyping and complete lack of nuance, what might otherwise have seemed droll and satirical, instead comes across like a whole lot of cheap shots fired off the bow.

Mind you, I am certainly not a fan of ultraright organizations, and the rising tide of bigotry, fascist ideology and anti-Semitism concerns me greatly. But in an already highly polarized nation and world, all I can think as I read is that this story isn’t helping. It is the snobbery and elitism of the highly educated that has driven a large number of folks into the arms of extreme right; some intelligently reject the elitism and cancel culture consciously, but they aren’t in this book. In real life, those that are poorly educated and/or intellectually handicapped, as the bad guys in this book are, would in most cases give their right arms to wake up “clever” like Viva.  It strikes me as counterproductive to write a book that makes fun of right-wing intolerance, while practicing intolerance from a different angle.

Back in the day, before anyone judged anyone else by the color of their hat, I used to roar with laughter at this author’s work. Did it change, or did I? I would like to think it is the former.

I rated this book 2.5 stars and have rounded it upward, more from a fondness of his early novels than anything else. I do recall reading another of his more recent books—not for review, but just because I felt like it—and saw some of the same problems, so I will tell you that this book will probably work for you if you enjoyed his last one. Apart from that, I cannot recommend it.

Overkill, by J.A. Jance*****

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Overkill is the 18th book in the Ali Reynolds series. Ali and her husband, B. Simpson, run a cybersecurity firm. This mystery features two parallel problems. The first is when B’s first wife, Clarice, is accused of a murder that she didn’t commit. B. wants nothing to do with the problem—or Clarice—but Ali is convinced that she should look into it. The second problem is that Cami, the young woman that works for Ali and B., is being stalked while on a business trip. Both problems create a tremendous amount of suspense for the reader, and Jance is an expert at juggling many threads and details without dropping anything, while making the story clear enough that the reader can keep track. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and it’s for sale now.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the review copy.

One of the things I love most about reading a J.A. Jance mystery is the feminist mojo she brings to every book. It’s subtle and built into the plot, rather than reading like a manifesto, but her sympathies toward working women, both professionals like Ali, and humble housekeepers such as the woman accused here, is manifest. It’s not an unusual mindset to encounter in a novel these days, but Jance has been doing it since long before it was common. In addition, her pacing never flags, and I don’t get confused by her plot lines, even when there are a good number of characters to track.

This is the first time I’ve used an audio version to read any of Jance’s books; I had fallen behind a bit, so I checked out the audio to keep me company on a road trip. Karen Ziemba does a fine job with the narration. I highly recommend this book to those that love the genre; you can read it as a stand alone if desired.

Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall*****

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I am late to the party, but it would be a crime not to review Broken Country, the stirring love story by Clare Leslie Hall that can make even the hardest cynic weepy-eyed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The story is set in a small village in Britain during the mid-1900s. The setting bounces back and forth between the present day and the past; it’s easy to keep track of, partly because the author takes care to delineate which chapter is which, and partly because there are few characters to keep track of. Our protagonist is Beth, and she and her husband, Frank, are farmers, have lived in the same community for their whole lives. A farm accident claimed the life of their only child, Bobby, a few years before, but they are both still fragile, ragged in their grief.

Then, oh my my, who comes back to town but Beth’s old flame, Gabriel, a man that came from money and went on to make a name for himself as a novelist. Gabriel has inherited the family house and land, and in the wake of his divorce, has brought his son Leo to live here. Here. Right next door to Beth and Frank.  And to complicate old feelings all the more, his son Leo is about the same age as Bobby was when he died.

Is it possible to be in love with two men at the same time? Beth would tell you that it is. Frank can see what is unfolding, and he tries to reason with Beth, but she assures him that everyone is grown up now, the past is the past, and there’s no reason that they and their new old neighbor cannot be friends.

Well.

I seldom reach for novels like this one, wary as I am of schmalz and schlock, but reader, I see none of either one in this story. The writing is disciplined and restrained, yet oh, so intimate. When a formula or trope comes into view, Hall goes the other way instead. And though I may have thought I knew where we would all end up, I was mistaken; the ending is beautifully planned and executed.

Because I had fallen a bit behind, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons; reader Hattie Morahan does a stellar job with the narration.

Highly recommended.

Everybody Says It’s Everything, by Xhenet Aliu**-***

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2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

The Family Recipe, by Carolyn Huynh*****

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“We all need to feel needed. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”

Carolyn Huynh made her authorial debut in 2022 with The Fortunes of Jaded Women. It was one of my favorite novels not only of that year, but of all the thousand-plus galleys I have read since I began reviewing. She’s back again with The Family Recipe, and it’s every bit as good as the first. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review, but make no mistake: I would have hunted this thing down and bought it with my Social Security check if it came down to it. I wouldn’t have been sorry, either.

This book is available to the public now.

Once again, our protagonists are Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans, mostly women, and once again, they are siblings and other family members that must come together; it isn’t a voluntary reunion. And that’s where the similarities between the first book and this one end.

Duc Tran, the patriarch, has laid out the terms by which his children may inherit his fortune. Once upon a time, he was the Vietnamese sandwich king, and in order to become his heir, each of his four daughters must relocate to a city she doesn’t want to live in, and revive a down-at-the-heels restaurant in a now undesirable end of town. It’s a contest; that is, unless Duc’s one son, Jude, succeeds in getting married within the one year’s time limit of the contest. If he can do that, he wins. (His sisters aren’t worried; who would marry Jude?)

The story is told from several points of view; these include the siblings, their uncle—a shady lawyer, and Duc’s best friend; their mother, who abandoned them when they were small, when her mental health collapsed, and never went back; Duc’s second wife; and briefly, Duc himself, who mostly serves as a mysterious figure that doesn’t even return to the States to lay out his children’s requirements, sending their uncle as his proxy.  As the story unfolds, we learn more about each sibling, and about the traumas they have experienced, as well as their successes.

The thing that makes it work so well is Huynh’s unerring sense of timing. It’s a dramatic tale, but it’s shot full of humor, as we see at the outset, when we learn the sisters’ names. Their father was a huge fan of the Beatles, and so the girls are named Jane, Paulina, Georgia, and (wait for it…) Bingo!

There are plenty of twists and turns, and the dialogue crackles. The internal monologues are mesmerizing. This book would make a fantastic movie.

Since I was reading this galley digitally, I highlighted quotes that I thought I’d like to use in this review, but there are 28 of them. Obviously, I cannot share them all here, but let that inform you, if nothing else here has, how much I love this book.

Highly recommended to anyone that has a beating heart, at least a passing interest in Vietnamese-American culture and/or family stories, and can use a few good laughs.

The Doorman, by Chris Pavone*****

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“It’s up to everyone to draw a line, and hold it.”

Chris Pavone writes white-knuckle thrillers, and he’s one of the best in the business. His new novel, The Doorman, is one you won’t want to miss. My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroud for the review copies; this book will be available to the public May 20, 2025.

Our story rotates around three main characters, providing the point of view of each in turn; the setting is The Bohemia, an exclusive apartment building in New York City. Julian Sonnenberg, a middle aged art gallerist whose marriage is dying, lives there, as does Emily Longsworth, wife of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-hated Whit Longworth, racist war profiteer; and Chicky Diaz is the doorman, who sees all and hears all. They don’t know it yet, but their fates will soon be linked.

I’ve been reading Pavone’s novels for a long time, and each time he surpasses himself. The common thread that I treasure most, however, is his deep affinity for the working class, and his respect for women. In fact, I don’t know of any male novelist that is better than Pavone when it comes to developing female characters, and that is even more impressive when I consider his genre, because in most true thrillers, the pace is so fast and furious that there’s no time to develop any characters at all. Yet somehow, Pavone does it, and he does it without sacrificing the heart pounding, screaming pace that accelerates until the almost unbearable climax, which in turn is very close to the conclusion.

I was lucky enough to have access to both the digital and audio versions of this story; Edoardo Ballerini does a fine job narrating the latter. You can’t go wrong in either direction.

Highly recommended to those that love the genre and lean to the left.