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Debra Hamel is the author of a number of books about ancient Greece. She writes and blogs from her subterranean lair in North Haven, CT. Read more.

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Book notices: Your Inner Hedgehog by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith, Your Inner Hedgehog

  Amazon  

Your Inner Hedgehog is the fifth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s delightful series focusing on Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, renowned author of the masterwork Portuguese Irregular Verbs and senior scholar at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany. As usual, the story focuses on the small irritations and points of pride that motivate von Igelfeld and his colleagues. McCall Smith helpfully begins the book with a breakdown of the characters who populate the Institute. Among them is a relative newcomer, Dr. Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, deputy librarian under the tedious head librarian, Herr Huber. The first sign of trouble is when Dr. Schreiber-Ziegler fails to recognize the accepted protocols surrounding access to the Institute’s Senior Coffee Room—the rarefied air of which place is not for the likes of mere deputy librarians. The resulting clash sees von Igelfeld and his compatriots fighting against progressives who would throw open the coffee room doors, et alia, and generally disrupt the Institute’s “current way of doing things.”

This installment in the series was published in 2021, a full ten years after book four (Unusual Uses for Olive Oil) appeared. (The first three installments were originally all published in 2003.) This fifth novel differs from the others in that it tells a single story, while the previous books are collections of related stories. It's a shame there aren't more von Igelfeld books, but I suppose McCall Smith has his hands full with the numerous other series he keeps updated. These are favorites, though. 

Book Notices | The Armor of Light by Ken Follett

Ken Follett, The Armor of Light

  Amazon  

The Armor of Light is the fifth novel in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, which started with the publication of Pillars of the Earth in 1989. The book spans about thirty years in the history of Kingsbridge, from 1792 to 1824, and focuses on the city's cloth trade—its millworkers and clothiers and the issues of the day that impacted their lives: the adoption of labor-saving machines, the rise of Luddism, anti-union policies, a corrupt justice system, press gangs, and the Napoleonic wars. As usual with Follett's novels, the cast of characters includes strong female leads and men who abuse their powerful positions, and good people are abused but ultimately find true love. Also par for the course is that the book is—for the most part—extremely readable. But there's a big chunk in the last 20% of the novel that could have been edited down. Follett describes the war against Napoleon in excessive detail, using his characters' participation in events as an excuse to write history rather than allowing the history to form the backdrop of the characters' lives. It also struck me as implausible that so many of the book's main characters would find themselves overseas and involved in the major events of the day while also by chance often finding one another amidst the chaos of military actions. So a good read, but with that caveat.

Book Notices | In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

  Amazon  

I'm late to the party reading Truman Capote's true crime classic In Cold Blood. Most people are probably familiar with the basics of the story, either from the book itself or from the film that was made of it (which I've not yet seen): In 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas, a crime that initially baffled investigators. Capote traveled to Holcomb (with his friend Harper Lee) to interview the townspeople and investigators and write about the case. His book, which was published in 1966, covers the events that preceded the murders, the crime itself, the investigation and trial, and the imprisonment and execution of the culprits. It ends with a lovely and surprisingly moving epilogue, which made me realize that the author had succeeded in depicting the Clutters as real people whose deaths can still feel tragic 65 years later. Capote's prose is at times beautiful, particularly at the beginning of the book when he is describing the remote Kansas landscape that forms the backdrop of the story. But elsewhere too, I was struck by the quality of the prose. Reading his account, I got a sense of Capote being on the scene in the aftermath of the murders, talking to people and soaking in the feel of the place, and yet he never explicitly inserts himself into the narrative. (After finishing the book, I was curious about the circumstances of its composition and so read this 1966 interview of Capote by George Plimpton. It's an interesting read, and it's very clear from it that Capote was a very intelligent and thoughtful writer.)

I've seen In Cold Blood described as frightening. I may just be numb—and I do think I lack imagination when I'm reading, so that the film version of this story might have a different effect on me—but I didn't think it frightening in the least. Sad, tragic, unnecessary, all that: I can certainly regret the evil or lack of humanity or wretchedness of the human condition that propelled the two killers toward Kansas and the utterly unnecessary, unprovoked murders they committed there. But no, I wouldn't classify the book as a scary read.

Book Notices | Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

  Amazon  

I've lived most of my life in or around New Haven, Connecticut, which means that the names Dixwell, Whalley, and Goffe are etched in my brain (alongside the locations of the best pizza places). They're the names of three main thoroughfares linking downtown New Haven with its suburbs. I've always been aware that the streets were named after the three regicides who fled here from England and hung out for a time in Judges Cave on West Rock. But that's about all I knew. Robert Harris's fictionalized account of the regicides—mostly Whalley and Goffe, with a smattering of Dixwell—follows their years on the run in New England and the efforts made to catch them. Now, a lot of Harris's story is made up. There's only so much that is known about what the regicides were up to, and the author had to fill in some blanks. So you can't allow the novelized account to settle as fact in your brain (which may be easier said than done). After finishing the book I read the following summary of events to help in that regard: https://www.ctexplored.org/the-legend-of-dixwell-whalley-goffe/. Although one has to be careful not to accept the whole story as gospel, I found Act of Oblivion a really interesting read, although honestly somewhat depressing: So many years passed in hiding—away from family, staring at attic ceilings—seems pretty dismal. But perhaps the reality wasn't as miserable as portrayed here. I'm happy to have read this one!

Book Notices | Calico by Lee Goldberg

Lee Goldberg, Calico

  Amazon  

I don't particularly like police procedurals, and I don't particularly like westerns, but it turns out that I really like police procedural-westerns that are blended with a dash of science fiction—at least this one. Lee Goldberg's stand-alone Calico is named after a town in the Mojave Desert. In the 1880s, it was a squalid mining town. Nowadays—in real life and in the book—it's a restored ghost town with attractions like gunfights and gold panning and a trading post. The area surrounding Calico (at least as Goldberg describes it) is the kind of place people drive through to get somewhere else—unless they get trapped there for some reason. Beth McDade is one of the trapped. An unhappy transplant from Los Angeles, she's a detective in nearby Barstow who's investigating a series of strange events that turn out to be related—a disappearance, a skeleton dug up at a construction site, a vagrant hit and killed by a motor home. Her investigation also winds up being connected with events in the same area in the 1880s, and Goldberg deftly alternates between the two timelines, both of which are equally compelling. I don't want to give anything away. Suffice it to say that this is the most page-turny book I've read in a while. With a six-shooter to my head, I'd complain that the pace of the book slows quite a lot at the end and that during the big reveal, there are a handful of names thrown at us that I had trouble keeping straight. But it would be a quibble. Loved this book.

Book Notices | Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz, Bad Weather Friend

  Amazon  

Benny, as we keep being told, is a really nice guy, and this despite having experienced a string of awful situations during his childhood and adolescence. But at 23, he's got money and a fiancée and a nice house and a good job—until one day, a lot of that inexplicably disappears. Enter a weird, casket-like box sent by a mysterious distant relative, and suddenly Benny's on a road trip with some new friends to figure out why his life has imploded. The story is told in two threads: Benny's present and past play out in alternating chapters and eventually end up at the same point. It's a fun enough story, engaging enough to read, but you have to suspend disbelief quite a bit—and I'm not talking about the insect-human hybrids and other non-human characters. It's more that the story is based on this bizarre conceit that nefarious forces are bent on methodically doing away with niceness in the world by targeting guys like Benny. Eh. It's a fun enough light read.

Book Notices | The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

  Amazon  

On June 25, 2003 (less than a month after my first blog post here), I ordered three books from Amazon. I read and reviewed two of them pretty quickly, Greg Iles' 24 Hours and Paul Hoffman's Wings of Madness. The third book was Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, which I was interested in because it's one of the first detective novels ever published. But my interest in its subject didn't lead to action on my part, and the book sat on my shelves for twenty years. I measure the enormity of that time mostly by the yardstick of my children's ages—the then 7-year-old is finishing up her MSW, and the 1-year-old is graduating from college in the spring—although God knows a lot else has changed besides.

Anyway, clearly, I've finally gotten around to reading Wilkie Collins' book! It's been a while since I've dived into a sprawling 19th-century novel. I'd almost forgotten the pleasure of it. The mystery here has to do with the disappearance of a priceless diamond, the titular Moonstone, which was bequeathed to Rachel Verinder by an unsavory uncle and delivered to her on her 18th birthday. That very night, it goes missing from the Verinders' country estate. A police investigation follows, and thereafter investigations by private actors. The story is told as a series of accounts contributed by various concerned parties, all part of a project undertaken some two years after the stone's disappearance to record what happened as a matter of historical interest. My main impressions upon leaving the book are simply, first, that the mystery held my interest, such that I was quite riveted when approaching the resolution of it; and second, that with the luxury afforded by a high word count, Collins has created a handful of very well-realized characters. For me, the most memorable of them among the much larger cast are Gabriel Betteridge, the Verinders' long-time steward and resolute fan of Robinson Crusoe; the sanctimonious, religious-tract-thumping Miss Clack; and the tragic outcast-cum-physician's assistant Ezra Jennings. I'm happy to have finally read this one. (And holy cow! [That's an apt interjection given this book, as it happens]. There's a comic book version of The Moonstone coming soon!)

Book Notices | Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Gillian McAllister, Wrong Place Wrong Time

  Amazon  

Jen Brotherhood sees her teenage son kill someone and is immediately plunged into a nightmare. There's the expected one—police lights and handcuffs and shock. She has no idea what could possibly have led to this. But she wakes up the next morning in a second nightmare: She's started to live her life backwards, by days, weeks, years. Every morning brings a new date in the past. Obviously, that's a fascinating prospect in some ways: the phones get bigger; her son gets shorter; she gets to see old living spaces and old coworkers, old waistlines; old people grow younger, and the dead return to life. Cool idea. But meanwhile, she's trying to figure out what led to her son becoming a killer so she can prevent it from happening again. It's an interesting concept, and the book was a fun read.

I found it a bit difficult to keep track of the timeline, although the author does do a good job in the narrative of locating us in the "present" with each time jump. One thing I really hated is an ostensibly small thing, but it had a big impact on my enjoyment of the book. The titles of most of the chapters refer to the date Jen has jumped to relative to day zero, for example, "Day Minus One Thousand Six Hundred Seventy-Two, 21:25." As you can see, the numbers get pretty big. And as you can see, they are written in words. I found it surprisingly difficult to mentally process them this way. Imagine how annoying and, to a degree, difficult it would be to read the time on a clock as, say, "eleven forty-seven" rather than 11:47. That's the trouble I had with it. This probably contributed to my having to refer back to the previous chapter's title each time to see how much time had passed in the jump. The information in written form simply hadn't stuck. (And then there was the added difficulty of having to convert something like "one thousand six hundred seventy-two days" into the more meaningful units of years and months.) I would suggest that these title dates be changed to digits if it all possible in subsequent editions of the book.

Book Notices | Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch, Upgrade

  Amazon  

Logan Ramsay lives with the guilt of having been involved in his brilliant mother's accidental destruction of the world as we know it. Now, in a post-apocalyptic world in which lower Manhattan is under water and dark gene labs are producing exotic new species to sell to Russian oligarchs, Logan—who only ever wanted to follow in his mother's scientific footsteps—is doing his penance as a federal officer tracking down rogue geneticists. At least until he's attacked at a cellular level and transforms into a kind of superman. And then he needs to save the world, more or less. Logan's metamorphosis is pretty far out there, of course, but it's so well described that it all seems very believable. There's a lot of science-y explanations throughout the book that lend the story credibility (but at the same time feel a little skippable). The dramatic battle at the end was a little hard to follow and felt rushed, but the story was capped off with a sweet epilogue that left me more contented than I would have been without it.

Book Notices | Mermaids on the Golf course by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith, Mermaids on the Golf Course

  Amazon  

I enjoyed this batch of eleven short stories by Patricia Highsmith more than I did the last collection of hers that I read (The Black House), though I can't offhand say exactly why. These stories, not surprisingly, feature mostly unhappy—or soon to be unhappy—people. They are driven to murder or suicide, or they realize that their ostensibly happy relationships were a mirage. They seek an escape from loneliness in imaginary dates, imaginary (?) friends, and nearly imaginary penpals. "Life was nothing but trying for something," Highsmith writes toward the end of "The Cruelest Month," "followed by disappointment, and people kept on moving, doing what they had to do, serving—what? And whom?" That about sums up the hopelessness a lot of the characters experience in these pages. So, the book isn't a lot of laughs, and the stories aren't really suspenseful, as much of Highsmith's writing is, but I did enjoy reading them.

Book Notices | The Black House by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith, The Black House

  Amazon  

The Black House is a collection of eleven short stories by Patricia Highsmith. The stories are all a little dark, which is hardly surprising given the author's tendency to dwell on the uglier side of human nature. In these pages, unpleasant people do unpleasant things, or they make questionable decisions in the face of unusual circumstances. (In the book's first story, for example, a friendly Scrabble game is interrupted when the cat drags in part of a human hand, which is truly a great start for a story.) I love the author's novels and have read all or most of them. But while these stories are fine, worth reading if you're a Highsmith fan, ultimately I doubt I'll remember them. 

Book Notices | Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

  Amazon  

Lori Gottlieb is a therapist and columnist, and I guess a podcaster too, though I haven't listened to her podcast yet. She has a background in writing, which may go some way toward explaining why this memoir is so very good. In it, she weaves together stories about her therapy clients (disguised versions thereof) with an account of her own struggles, principally the breakup that led her to seek therapy herself. So it's a book about a therapist giving and getting therapy and about the process of therapy itself, and it's fascinating and well written and heartwarming and heartbreaking and informative. It's a cliché to say that one didn't want a book to end, but I found myself thinking as I was reading that if this one somehow had an infinite number of pages, I would happily keep reading indefinitely.

Book Notices | Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

  Amazon  

In Travels with Herodotus, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński writes about some of his experiences traveling the world as a foreign correspondent, beginning with his first ever trip abroad, to India, in the 1950s. On the day his editor gave him that assignment, she also handed him a copy of Herodotus's History, a far-ranging account of the clash between the Persians and Greeks in the 5th century B.C. and the antecedents to that conflict. Herodotus is the so-called Father of History because he invented the genre, but he was also really the father of journalism—a roving reporter, like Kapuściński, who traveled the world and interviewed locals and compiled a narrative to preserve information and try to explain events. Kapuściński felt a kinship with him across the millennia. He describes himself as regularly carrying his copy of Herodotus with him and dipping into it at intervals. He alternates in this book between his own reports and those of Herodotus. The Herodotus sections include translated snippets of the History and speculative paragraphs in which he imagines what his predecessor's experiences may have been. So the result is a kind of hybrid, a travelogue through space (in his reports) and time (the Herodotus bits). While each of these parts made for interesting enough reading, they don't really mesh together all that well. Sometimes his shoehorning Herodotus into the narrative felt a little jarring. (Case in point: the author's odd and arguably pointless insertion of Herodotus's account of the Amazons and Scythians in his book's last chapter.) Still, it's an interesting enough read, and I was happy to re-immerse myself in Herodotus' world for a bit.

Book Notices | Time Frame by Douglas E. Richards

Douglas E. Richards, Time Frame

  Amazon  

Not too long ago, I accidentally reread a book I'd read and reviewed already in 2016, Douglas E. Richards' time travel novel Split Second. It wasn't until I was halfway through that things started to seem familiar, and I finished the book again anyway because I couldn't remember what happened. I had a similar reaction to the book as I did the first time through. (My consistency was heartening.) And this time, too, I said to myself, yeah, I'd read another book by this author. Turns out, the sequel to Split Second was published in 2018. I figured if I didn't read it now, I never would. So I did.

Time Frame follows the characters from the first book as they attempt to use time travel for good (to assassinate North Korea's Kim Jong Un) and prevent nefarious forces from using it for world domination. I'm not going to give away the cool time travel twist that informs much of the plot of both books, so I can't say a lot. But Time Frame, like its predecessor, is a fun read with characters I was happy to spend time with.

Book Notices | The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

Yishai Sarid, The Memory Monster

  Amazon  

This short book is written in the first person and purports to be a letter written by the unnamed narrator to his boss, the chairman of the board of Yad Vashem, explaining "what happened there." We don't find out what event he's alluding to until the very end of the book. In seeking to explain it, the narrator provides an account of pretty much his whole adult working life, and in quite a lot of detail. He is trained as a historian and wrote the book, literally, on the Nazis' methods of execution in the Polish camps. He also regularly leads tours of the camps for students and other groups. Initially detached from the subject, he becomes increasingly unhinged by the emotional toll his career takes on him, and he is plagued by the question of what sort of Jew he would have been had he lived through the Shoah. I'm not sure that I really understand the book's ending, but my guess is that "what happened there" is a sort of answer to that question for him.