Coal River, by Ellen Marie Wiseman***

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coalriverCoal River is a work of historical fiction set in Coal River, Pennsylvania. A region by that name exists, and was the location of pitched battles between the United Mine Workers of America and local cops, strikebreakers, and company goons. Wiseman does a creditable job in her rendering of the setting in which it all unfolded. Thank you to Kensington Publications and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received in exchange for this honest review. It is now available for purchase.

Emma Malloy has been orphaned; a fire killed her mother and father. Her only surviving family owns the local coal mine, and she is taken to live with them. Uncle Otis is a tyrannical big boss, and spirited Emma tangles with him almost immediately when she sees the way coal miners, and in particular the breaker boys, small children that worked in the mines prior to the creation of child labor laws, are treated. She is forced to work in the company store, where she sees miners’ wives lining up to purchase overpriced goods. Once they are sufficiently behind in their accounts, they are turned away, their children hungry and undernourished, unless and until the account can be brought current. It’s a wrenching thing, and Emma refuses to be complicit.

The strength in this work is that it informs readers that may be unaware of the industry’s past as to the conditions that existed. Wiseman brings in the Mollie Maguires, a group of Irish-American anarchists, as well as famed photographer Lewis Hine, whose work is credited with speeding the creation of labor laws that protected small children from adult work in mines and other dangerous industries. Those that haven’t explored this aspect of the US’s past could do a lot worse than to learn it through this novel, which renders the setting palpable and vivid. It’s a time many people aren’t aware of, before the New Deal brought food stamps, health care initiatives, and other lifesaving aid to the unemployed and underemployed. Before that time, any who didn’t work, and whose family could not keep them, starved.
A particularly moving scene is the one in which the Black Maria comes to deliver a dead miner to the door of his widow, and everyone waits breathlessly to see at which home it will arrive.

Your reviewer had a much loved grandfather that died from Black Lung, the form of emphysema contracted by coal miners, particularly those who worked in the mines from an early age as he did. If anyone ought to see this as a five-star book just from sympathy with the material, I would be the one. This is why I requested the DRC. I wish I could rate it higher, but there are a couple of issues that I can’t ignore.

The weaknesses here are twofold. The first is in character development. Emma is not a dynamic character, and indeed, the bad guys are oh so very bad, and the brave young protagonist starts out spunky and but for a few moments toward the climax, remains that way. There is a brief scene in the climax in which Hazard Flint shows a fluctuation in character, but for the most part, our characters are on the very brink of becoming caricatures.

The second problem, which could be overlooked for rating purposes but which troubles me nevertheless, is that although small children no longer work the mines, those places are as dangerous as they ever were. The story carries with it the tacit message that all of these miscarriages of justice took place in a dark past that has no relationship to the present day. If Wiseman cares for the well being of miners and their families, she would have done well to add a post-script acknowledging that miners still get Black Lung; mines still cave in and trap scores of miners every year, and many don’t make it out alive; that union busting is alive and well in the good old US of A. By ending the story as she does, she infers incorrectly that all may rest easy. It just isn’t true.

In short, this is a great story for those new to the history of child labor in America and of those that fought to end it, but as a great literary work, or as a tangible plea for social justice in the present, it is left wanting.

Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security, by Robert Guffey****

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ChameleoastrangeChameleo is a twisted but true story of an addict who unwittingly becomes an experimental subject in a classified government research program, and the bizarre events that took place then and in the aftermath. My thanks go to the author, who provided me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dion Fuller (not the person’s actual name) had been released from a psychiatric hospital in Southern California. He had procured some heroine and nodded off, permitting various equally marginal characters access to his home. Sometimes he was out of it and had no idea what was happening. It was likely during this time that the guy with the stolen classified documents and a couple dozen pairs of night-vision goggles belonging to the US government made his way into Dion’s apartment. The ensuing chaos proves once and for all that just because a person is crazy does not mean nobody is out to get them. Just ask Dion!

Guffey, the author, is a Cal State creative writing teacher who found himself involved in Dion’s situation. He had a free term at the same time that Dion, an old childhood friend, called for help. With a certain amount of necessary remove, he did his best to advise his friend while taking copious notes. Soon he became convinced that his old friend was not hallucinating.

“Imagine a ridiculous college fraternity with the resources of the entire black budget of the United States of America deciding to play one long prank on some faceless guy in San Diego. And imagine that the faceless guy is you.”

The author’s description of a malicious antic known as “Street Theater” in government circles reminded me of the dirty tricks that the Democratic Party played on the Nixon camp during the early 1960’s—cruising into town in advance, for example, and moving street signs around so that the Republicans would get lost and be late to a speaking engagement—which were later used in turn by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972. Dion hoped that leaving his home, which was located very near a Naval installation, would make it all stop, and it did. He left California and headed cross country, but every time he got close to a US military installation, a whole train of personnel would follow him once more, like a trail of ducklings after their mother, right out there in the middle of the freaking desert.

Guffey’s story, which includes the Masons, the Illuminati (note the cover), and assorted other conspiratorial ingredients that would ordinarily cause me to stay completely fucking clear of this whacked out tale, follows Dion as far north as Minnesota, then oh dear God, to Seattle where Guffey was staying. But just as it seems it can’t get any more strange and stressful, the whole thing becomes hilarious! Your humble reviewer sat and laughed out loud about two-thirds of the way into the story, and the lighter tone that marks the book until near the end is what prevents the whole thing from degenerating into a bottomless abyss.
My only quibble with this story—and it’s a small one—is that if we must read entire transcribed passages of conversations, then the persons involved in the conversation in question should all be named, with no pseudonyms involved, so that the reader can use that transcript as a primary document if they want or need to. If that can’t happen, then some of these conversations ought to be summarized or paraphrased, at least in places. But this shouldn’t keep you from getting a copy of this memoir and reading it.

In fact, those that question authority and wonder just how far the US government has strayed from its stated ideals will welcome this strange little book, which is just well documented enough to convince me that it’s entirely true.

It’s available for purchase now.

Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry*****

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lonesomedoveSince when do I read westerns? Since never…until a Goodreads friend recommended this title. He knew I liked history and historical fiction, and I couldn’t dismiss the recommendation, not only because this person has never steered me wrong, but because this book won the Pulitzer. That doesn’t guarantee I will like it either, of course, but it certainly enhances the likelihood. So on one of my increasingly-rare ventures to my favorite local used bookstore, I searched out the title. There it was, 857 pages bound in a beautiful hard cover, foliated-paged tome, for less than ten bucks. Sold!

It took me a long time to read, not because of its length—psssh, my readers know me better than that—but because of its physical size. A very lengthy book in an electronic reader is light weight no matter how many pages it has, but this gorgeous, old school novel was hell on a frozen shoulder. So for a long time I read it in little chunks, propping it on top of pillows on top of my lap. It took awhile, but it was worth it.

McMurtry earned his laurels, that much is certain. I was mesmerized by the way he took us to a place that no longer exists, immense swaths of nothing across the Midwestern USA and Northern Rockies. The idea that a person could travel long and hard for days and still not even be out of Texas just blew me away, and then there was still most of the journey yet to come. There are no roads; the protagonists have a kind-of, sort-of map; a list of rivers to sustain themselves, replenish their drinking water; water their mounts, with water being the equivalent of gassing up; and also water their herd.

I realized that one reason I never chose to read westerns is because I grew up during a time when cowboys were considered the enemy of the American Indian. I didn’t want to be allied with the white guys on the horses. And of course, that was one stereotype I later realized I should not have bought into, because not all cowboys were white guys; most were, for sure, but some were of Mexican heritage, some were Black, and once in a rare while there would be an American Indian riding with the cowboys. And cowboys did not always fight Indians; sometimes they were just moving cattle.

Apart from the almost tangible settings the author creates, we also have some complex relationships. I confess that some of the more peripheral characters among the cowboy crew were hard for me to keep straight. Which one is Dish, and which is Pea Eye? But it didn’t matter that much in terms of ability to enjoy the novel, because the main characters were so well developed, and there wasn’t a stereotype in the pack. Gus is the chief protagonist, and in my mind he was somewhere between Ralph Waite and Tom Hanks. Call, his very quiet, solitary partner, was a tow-headed version of Robert Redford. Lorena, the complicated woman that fell in love with Gus, eventually formed herself in my own mind to resemble country singer Miranda Lambert. Sometimes you just need a face to go with your main characters. Jake turned up as Dan Ackroyd without the sense of humor. Blue Duck is one of the most terrifying villains in literature!

Why go north? There was never any really good reason apart from Call’s wanderlust, and Gus’s unwillingness to be separated from his partner, with whom he had worked since their days as Texas Rangers. Gus also wanted to look up a woman from his past who had settled in Nebraska, and I loved how that played out.

And when all was said and done, I realized that this is one of those haunting stories that will forever remain in my mind. That’s saying a lot; I usually read 8-10 books per month, and often by the time I am invited to host a book giveaway or blog tour by the publisher, I have forgotten the name of the main character and all but the broadest contours of the story being promoted. They approach me 3 months after I wrote the review, and there are 30 books in between that story and the present. But that won’t happen here. In fact, because this wasn’t a galley, I waited to review it until I had the time and felt the urge. I still remember so much, and there have been several books gone by in the interim.

If you have the stamina to read a book of this length—and I have to tell you, though it’s a western it is not all actionactionaction, but rather deeply insightful in many places—and if you enjoy historical fiction, you ought to give this book consideration. It isn’t hard to find it used, and given its exalted status in literature, your local library probably also has a copy. But even if you have to pony up the cover price—pun intended—you could do much worse for your reading dollar.

An outstanding novel.

Thirty-Eight Witnesses: the Kitty Genovese Case, by AM Ronsenthal***

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38witnessesAM Rosenthal was a journalist, but in the 1960’s he was moved to write this relatively brief book—if fictional it would be considered a novella—about the failure of neighboring New Yorkers to come to the aid of Kitty Genovese, a woman that was murdered in 1964. I received this DRC free of charge from Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media in exchange for an honest review.

The crime, one that occurred before drive-by shootings and mass killings in schools and other public places became an all-too-frequent occurrence in the USA, horrified New York and all that heard about it. The killer attacked 28 year old Kitty Genovese as she returned home from work. She lived in a middle class neighborhood, and when police later investigated, they would learn that 38 witnesses heard her scream for help. Nobody called the police until it was too late to save her. This is especially horrifying given that the killer left her bleeding after stabbing her several times, and she had the time, while he moved the car, to approach an apartment building and make her way inside its doors. But before she was able to go further, her murderer parked the car and returned to finish the job. She screamed a number of times, and one man opened his window and yelled at whoever was down there to leave her alone. Later the coroner would testify that had any of the witnesses phoned the police sooner, Kitty could have been saved. Instead she bled to death.

Largely Ronsenthal uses this opportunity to wax philosophical, both about the callous nature of people in general, and of New Yorkers. One New York newspaper managed to infer that it was her own fault by referring to her as a “barmaid” and mentioning that she was not living with her husband; the takeaway from this appearing to be that had she stayed with the mister and been home raising kids, she would not have been in danger. In this instance I think we can surmise that half a century later, any journalist who got that kind of misogynistic garbage past his editor would have heard from readers.

I found this little nugget hard to review. Part of it was due to a stereotype I wasn’t aware I carried; I assumed this attack was somehow related to the mafia (note the Italian last name). Whoopsie! Yes, I know that not everyone that bears an Italian name has a mobster in the family. So it goes.

But also, it’s an unusual piece of writing in that it isn’t really a memoir, isn’t really philosophy, isn’t really sociology. But the overall thesis appears to be that human beings don’t take good enough care of each other. He also uses the occasion to speak in defense of New York cops, who performed their jobs as well as they could in this circumstance. But what timing, given the behavior of NYPD of late! The piece hasn’t really aged all that well.

The writer speaks of a time in India when he himself failed to help others, a time when he regularly strolled past beggars that were ragged, often badly disabled or diseased, and he didn’t help them. He brought this item back time and again to where it felt a little like breast-beating and gnashing of teeth. I wasn’t interested in providing the author with the catharsis he seemed to be reaching for. For that, get a therapist already!

In all, I think his narrative is probably geared more toward native New Yorkers, and since the event is long gone and doesn’t really have a modern parallel, the niche that may be interested has shrunk to New Yorkers of Social Security age.

The writing was fluent, as one might expect of a seasoned journalist, but its prime period has come and gone. I was happy to read it free, but would not have wished to pay for the privilege.

Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds, by Saloma Miller Furlong*****

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bonnetstringsA few years ago I read and reviewed this author’s first memoir, Why I Left the Amish. Her reasons were compelling, some of them inherent in the Amish tradition, others probably atypical of most Amish families, but all together they provided a powerful impetus, that little voice inside all but the dullest that cries out, “Man the life boats! Save yourself!” I understood, having read it, why Furlong would choose to bail, but I was left with other questions, mostly regarding a gap between the end of the book and the author’s biographical blurb. Happily, I heard from her a couple of months ago; she had written a sequel, and this is it. She volunteered kindly to send it in my direction for a chance to read and review, and it is just as riveting as the first.

The first volume dealt with the horrifying domestic abuse within her family, and the failure of the church to deal with it. Furlong wondered whether she might have remained Amish had she not dreaded her home life, or at least many aspects of it, so tremendously.

It also dealt with her independent nature and intellectual curiosity (my own terms, not hers). Why would the Amish so persistently seek to stamp out the desire of some of its own members to seek higher education, I had to wonder. Would they not want Amish nurses, professors, plumbers, electricians?

The e-mail I received from the author mentioned a PBS miniseries in which she was featured, The Amish followed by The Amish: Shunned. Once I finished reading Bonnet Strings, I decided to hold my review until I could view these productions, some four hours all told. Between what she tells us in this second memoir and what is said in the miniseries, I understand. Not that I know what it is like to be Amish; far from it. But I see now why they set such strict parameters in order to preserve their culture.

The metaphor the Amish use for the individual is that of a grain of wheat. The church is a loaf of bread, and one person can’t be in that loaf without crushing out their individual needs and desires. I have heard of other cultures abroad that take this approach—the Chinese come to mind—but for a quarter million such people to be here in the USA with its John Wayne culture of independence is remarkable indeed, and it is clear to me now that to permit its members to put even one toe into the world of freedom, independence, and yes, greater risk, is to invite its youth to leave and not return. But ninety percent of Amish children grow up to be Amish. They stay Amish. And I really think the twin practices of shunning those—even one’s own children or yikes, parents!—when they leave, combined with the standing offer of reconciliation upon return, is the powerful engine that sucks many of those that have departed back into the fold.

Furlong has been independent and living in Burlington, Vermont, has built new friendships and has a serious boyfriend, but she goes back to the Amish when they come for her. She recounts how it is almost as if a mental switch has been thrown, and she suddenly no longer feels she has a choice. Until I watched the documentaries to accompany the poignant and visceral material in her memoir, I thought this was crazy. But the combination of religion, family, and the fact that there is another language, that old German dialect spoken only by the Amish, weaves a powerful spell. It is as if a voice says, “We know you in a way no one else can.” Saloma goes back to live in her old home town once. Others go back multiple times before they are able to tear away. Actually, our author made a pretty good job of it compared to others that tear themselves away, and in the end is happier that she has returned once in order to put to rest her own doubts, her own questions about whether, once out of her father’s home, she could become a successful Amish woman.

Her memoir is punctuated with memories scribed by her husband, David Furlong, who was a part of her journey out into the world. He provides a different perspective, perhaps closer to what the reader might have seen.

In reading the memoir, it occurred to me that the practice of shunning creates selective breeding. If those that become independent are allowed to return to the community at will and be welcomed, allowed to mix and mingle, then before you know it, they would intermarry. And though science has still not teased apart the mystery of which qualities in us are inbred, and which are the result of how we are raised, the stunning level of passivity among those that remain in the community is remarkable. And it is those truly passive folk that have babies, babies, and more babies. I suspect that this is how they have managed to not only not die out, as those of us on the outside would have anticipated, but thrive and grow.

With a thoughtful memoir such as Bonnet Strings, I like to read the foreword and introduction, read the book, then go back and reread both of them again. The producer of the documentaries wrote the foreword, and she mentioned that Saloma has taken the time—some thirty years–to let her experiences gel. The memoir, therefore, is not written for a therapeutic purpose, but rather to provide an account, both of the strengths and tenacity within the Amish culture, and of the resilience required of those that simply cannot find a place within it.

Because there is no middle ground. There probably never will be.

This articulate, engaging memoir is available for purchase right now. This is a great way to spend your own holiday weekend, and it would also make a terrific gift. Fascinating!

Chasing Ghosts: the Policing of Terrorism, by John Mueller and Mark Stewart***

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chasingghostsI suspect just about everyone in the USA, or who frequently has to travel to the USA, is heartily sick of the extreme security measures that raise our taxes through the roof and cause so many delays, inconveniences, and even the confiscation of ordinary products that cost us a fair amount of money, on those occasions that we foolishly forget not to take them with us on the plane. The racial profiling makes it even worse. And so I requested this DRC from Net Galley and Oxford University Press with the expectation that I would agree with it wholeheartedly and immediately form the virtual simpatico with its writers that readers form with their favorite authors. Alas, not so much.

It’s not a terrible book, but it’s also not a great one. The writing style comes across as strangely antagonistic, odd given that I was ready to agree with them when I began the book. They make a lot of good points, particularly in comparing the expenditures of the Federal government to the amount that was spent on the Cold War and the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950’s. But whenever I read scholarly nonfiction, I am inclined to check out the end notes early on, and I was struck by the large number of times Mueller and Stewart quoted themselves (or sometimes one or the other of themselves separately). Their other sources were more likely to be newspapers and magazines rather than primary documents, which were used sparingly.

My sense is that if you’re going to challenge the status quo, you have to roll up your sleeves and do it right. In this case, a worthy thesis, at least to some extent, is less credible than it might have been with more diligent research and more legitimate scholarship.

My gut was inclined to rate this book two stars rather than three, but then I realized that my gut was responding to the ISIS mass killings in France. For the writers, it’s just pure dumb bad luck that the real terrorists created such tremendous outrage and heartfelt sympathy throughout the Western world, and in doing so underscored the reason such stringent security measures are in place, just as their book was nearing publication.

The most compelling argument against the Patriot Act and all of its associated agencies and agents is that when someone is willing to die in order to commit a mass killing, nobody and nothing can really stop them. The security measures being utilized are effective against people that want to enter an establishment or a vehicle and kill as many people in it as possible, then walk away and live to kill more people another day. This wasn’t the primary argument Mueller and Stewart rolled out. Their main argument, that the Bill of Rights is being trampled by the very government that was invented to uphold the Constitution, is a good one and I think would have been easier to get behind had events not unfolded as they did, and of course, had the source material been more impressive; yet the safety of all of us will always preclude individual liberties. So in a sense, ISIS gives the conservative, locked-down wing of the ruling class a red-carpet invitation to clamp down on civil liberty; but that would not have made a book that would sell, and perhaps that is why the authors didn’t make this their focus.

If this is an area of interest to you, you can get a copy November 30. I wouldn’t pay hard cover price for it unless you have tremendous interest and very deep pockets, though.

Breaker: A Windy City Dark Mystery, by Richard Thomas*****

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breakerawindycityRichard Thomas is a monstrously great writer. In Breaker, a Windy City Dark mystery, he presents us with Ray, a man of unusual and intimidating appearance; a sinister stranger in a white van who victimizes Chicago’s working class school girls; and Natalie, the girl that lives next door to Ray. Though this is the first Windy City Dark mystery I read, I fell in, only extricating myself close to bedtime, because this is not the kind of thing you want entering your dreams. This smashing thriller came to me free of charge from Net Galley and Random House Alibi.

The first thing I usually look for in fiction is strong character development. In excellent fiction, sometimes the setting drives the character; sometimes the setting and character drive the plot; sometimes the plot is driven by character. Breaker definitely falls into the last of these categories. Told primarily in Ray’s first person and counterpointed by Natalie’s, along with a narrative that pops in and out surrounding the white van, the suspense is almost unbearable. The character is so palpable that I impulsively reached into my Goodreads account and checked the “literary fiction” box among my own library categories. The story is dark and haunting; fans of Stephen King, a writer Thomas lists among those that have influenced him, won’t want to miss out on this story. Though it is not driven by the supernatural, the tone and level of nightmarish suspense are quite similar.

Part of the hook is the affinity the reader must feel for Ray after just a short time. He lives alone; others are often afraid of him on sight because of his enormous size and ghastly pallor. His mother is dead, and we learn more about this eerie aspect of Ray’s past as the story progresses. He lives in the city’s gritty underbelly, spends almost nothing of what money he makes as a cage fighter—a sport so much more horrible than boxing—on himself, and he is constantly alone.

Meanwhile, Natalie, the 15-year-old next door, is being stalked by the white van. Because Natalie is kind to him and does not fear him, Ray reaches out to her in an uncharacteristic way and teaches her the self-defense tips none of her high school teachers will ever be able to provide. Their friendship is platonic but the bond is tight.

Meanwhile, the white van has Chicago even more on edge than it usually is; girls are disappearing, and no one knows who is taking them. Every white van begins to look sinister. I found myself gripping my electronic reader, and though I had been resting the arm that held it on a pillow, I found myself holding it up in the air because my hand had nearly tightened into a fist.

It’s that creepy.

I marked a number of really stellar passages—this guy is fantastic with gripping figurative language—but at the end of the day, I am not supposed to reveal any quotes till the book is on the shelves, and I want you to know about this one right now.

It’s up for sale January 5, 2016, and it will help you forget all about your post-holiday blues. Get this book!

Concussion, by Jeanne Marie Laskas*****

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concussionYou don’t have to enjoy football to appreciate Concussion, the riveting new biography of Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian neurological pathologist that discovered CTE, a type of permanent brain damage caused by repetitive concussions, such as that experienced by football players. Not only the content, but the engaging voice with which it is told, make it worth everyone’s while. I was fortunate enough to read it free, courtesy of Net Galley and Random House, but when it comes out Tuesday, November 24, I recommend you get a copy for yourself. It’s information everyone really ought to have, especially those that play American football, or have family members that do.

As for me, several years ago the middle school where I taught was rocked by the news that a young man we had taught had been killed on the football field while playing for the high school next door to us. DeShawn had died in a way the Seattle Times assured its readers was unheard of, a terrible tragedy with little explanation other than that of the coroner, who said he died of a traumatic brain injury. Our in-house football coach, whose frustrated students were stuck playing the “dumb”, safe version known as flag football, opined that maybe DeShawn hadn’t burped his helmet. One of DeShawn’s team members, a friend of my son’s and a frequent guest at our home, considered that DeShawn hadn’t “kept his head down like Coach said”. But the fact is, he was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Dead at 16.

So I was interested indeed to read about the discovery made by Omalu, the pathologist that by coincidence was in charge of the autopsy of Iron Mike Webster, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. But I was equally interested in Omalu’s own story, a man of great enthusiasm and character, a faithful Catholic who used “Gee!” and “Gosh!” with youthful vigor as he uncovered one discovery after another, certain, so very certain that the NFL would want his discovery announced right away so that they could modify the game and make it safer. That poor man.

Omalu left Nigeria, which some Boomers will remember as having once been Biafra, home of genocide and terrible corruption, and he could not wait to live the American dream. The USA was free and open; there were no checkpoints at any of the highways; it was the home of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. Oh yes, he could shake the dust of Africa off the soles of his shoes and never look back. He had a full scholarship to the University of Washington, so although he had no idea where Seattle was, he had a ticket through the gates, and he would never live anywhere else.

Laskas uses Omalu’s own narrative in places, a wonderful thing given his buoyancy and eloquence:

Having seen this game [football] played on satellite TV on a few occasions in Africa, all I knew was the players ran into one another a whole lot and banged their heads repeatedly like guinea pigs running around…What an odd and inelegant game…If it hurts so much that you have to bubble-wrap your body, maybe you should play something different.”

But until he examined the brain of Iron Mike, the local hero who had lost his sanity following retirement, tasering himself in the hope he would be able to sleep, trying to fix his rotting teeth back into his own mouth with crazy glue, this was a side issue. His interest was in pathology, in the stories the dead had to tell.

But to Bennet, it seemed obvious enough, when the topic arose, because

“Anybody who knew anything about the anatomy of the head knew…It was a simple matter of physics. The brain floats, is suspended in a kind of thick jelly inside the skull. If you hit the head hard enough, that brain is going to move, no matter what kind of protection you put around the skull. A helmet protects the skull. A helmet can’t keep the brain from sloshing around in that skull. If you hit your head hard enough, the brain goes bashing against the walls of the skull.”

The helmet, it turns out, is more a weapon than protection for the brain.

Huh. No wonder Europe didn’t rush to join us in playing this sport.

Omalu’s story, from beginning to old age, is vividly told, and he is such a fascinating individual that you won’t want to put this story down once you’re into it. I could tell you more, but why ruin it? You really just have to read it. Order it now, or go out next week and buy a copy. You won’t be sorry!

The Lake House, by Kate Morton *****

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thelakehouseAs a rule, I am not fond of British fiction; I prefer working class protagonists to the silver-spoon variety; and I like urban settings more than pastoral ones. But The Lake House is written by the author that produced The Forgotten Garden, and so when I had the chance to grab the galley, I went for it. And once more, experience proves that a brilliant writer can sell any story, in the setting of her choice, with the protagonists of her choice, and she can make it flow smooth as warm butter.

This deep, luminous story came to me from Net Galley and Atria Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. Thank you once, twice, and a third time too, because Morton has done it again. The book is a must-read for all that love mysteries and literary fiction.

Sadie Sparrow works for the Metropolitan Police, but her job hangs by a thread because she has become over-involved in the case of a missing woman. A toddler was found abandoned in her home, and Sparrow is haunted by the insistence of the child’s grandmother that her daughter would never, ever leave the child intentionally. Sparrow has been told to take some time off and stay away from the case; she retreats to her grandfather’s home in Cornwall, and becomes transfixed by an older, colder case, that of the mysterious disappearance of a child that lived in the beautiful old home nearby, Loeanneth, where a baby boy vanished many years earlier. Sadie sublimates her urge to follow up on her current, forbidden case by poking into the old mystery in Cornwall.

Morton takes us deftly from one setting, both time and place, to another so seamlessly that we cannot help being spellbound; this is literary fiction at its best. We meet the various members of the family that once summered in the once-lovely, now neglected Cornwall estate, and we watch across the years over three generations of the Edevane family that lived there, both in the years before World War II up to the present, with its elderly descendants that remain living.

Rather than a gripping page-turner, this is a well-crafted tale to be sunk into, like a feather bed or one’s favorite chair, with the phone turned off and a steaming cup of coffee (or tea, if you must) to go with it. Those without the stamina for a complex, well-developed story of the necessary length will find themselves frustrated; this one is for true literature lovers, so be prepared to give it the time it deserves.

The characters are developed so expertly that they feel like people we have known a long time. My favorite was Eleanor, who in my own mental movie appeared as a young Vanessa Redgrave; readers of a later generation than mine will choose some other face to match Morton’s description. Every possible stereotype one might create having to do with women of that time and social station has been cleverly sidestepped in a fully credible manner. Even the haughtiest among them is presented with dignity and a certain grace.

Some will find the ending a little too perfectly resolved perhaps; I find it congenial.

For those that like visuals to go with their fiction, here’s a clip of grand homes in Cornwall:

Liar, by Rob Roberge*

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liarApologies, dear reader; I hate having to pan a book. I only request galleys that I believe will be either good or great, but when I inadvertently find myself with a terrible book, I have to call it as I see it. I have another review about ready to post that will occupy this space soon.

I received this DRC free of charge from Crown Books and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. To be honest, it is the second-worst galley I have ever read. (The very worst lacked punctuation and was unreadable.) I wondered how a book like this wound up with such a reputable publisher; an internet search tells me that he has written other books that were well received. But I can’t find any redeeming value here. I actually came out of it feeling as if I’d been played, and I read it free.

This memoir is billed as a testament of sorts to the writer’s mental illness. I have a relative who struggles with bipolar disorder, and I like the idea of educating the public and of advocating for greater support and funding for those struggling with mental illness and also addiction issues, which are another key part of this book (If it can be said to have parts at all). The two often go hand-in-hand, the mentally ill using alcohol and/or street drugs to self-medicate. So I was on board when I began reading. But soon, I found excuses to read other DRC’s instead. Today, I made myself finish this thing so I could write the review and move on.

Liar isn’t even really a memoir. Let’s start with the title; some of what is in the book is true, some of it is invented, and we don’t get to know which is which. As if that weren’t bad enough, random dark matters (the death of the last passenger pigeon is one) are dropped into the text in no particular order. In fact, the text itself is not linear. This is clearly intentional, with things that happened (or didn’t happen) from 1977 dropped in between what happened (or not) in 1995, or 1982, etc. to let us see how confused is the mind of the mentally ill individual. The whole book is a mishmash of horrors that may or may not have transpired, just as the stricken person’s mind may not always be able to discern the real from the imagined. But for that, we hardly need a whole book; one short chapter would do the trick. I wanted to believe it would prove to be an artistic and if hard to read, avante garde approach to bipolar disorder; by the end, my head hurt and I was pissed.

How can anyone charge money for this?

Part of the reason I wanted to read Roberge’s galley is because it is billed as “blackly comic and brutally frank”, but it isn’t comic, and it isn’t frank. I found two (very, very darkly) humorous moments roughly between the 15% and 20% mark and thought maybe this was where the story would get rolling. Not so much. Nothing else—and I mean nothing else—was amusing. If it had been billed more accurately as merely dark and brutal, I would not have gone anywhere near it, nor do I recommend it to you. If it were at least entirely truthful, however disorienting and disjointed its telling, I could say it shines a light on the mental health crisis in the U.S., but since some of it is just tossed in for the hell of it and didn’t occur, I can’t even, in good conscience, recommend it to those researching bipolar disorder. How could a researcher cite this book in an academic publication?

The only positive thing I can say about this shipwreck of a book, apart from its accurate punctuation, is that no matter how bad your own life looks right now, it probably looks better than this.