Exuberant prose and a big story
933899
Roscoe Conway, a fixture of the Albany political machine for 26 years, from post-World War I through the Depression and Prohibition and World War II, wants out. As the country celebrates V-J Day and the end of the war, Roscoe finds himself weary of wheeling and dealing. Unmarried and still pining after his first love, who married his best friend, Elisha Fitzgibbon, Roscoe questions the meaning of it all.
"I have to change my life, do something that engages my soul before I die," Roscoe tells Elisha, who observes that Roscoe has kept his discontent  hidden. Roscoe explains, "I have no choice. I have no choice in most things. All the repetitions, the goddamn investigations that never end, another election coming and now Patsy wants a third candidate to dilute the Republican vote. We'll humiliate the Governor. On top of that, Cutie LaRue told me this afternoon George Scully has increased his surveillance on me. They're probably doubling their watch on you, too. You'd make a handsome trophy."
This statement establishes William Kennedy's mid-century Albany in the seventh book of his Albany cycle - a city run by a small, closed circle whose primary function is to maintain power, constantly besieged by similar cabals whose goal is to grab that power for themselves. The weapon of choice is the scandal, of which there are plenty to go around, real or manufactured. And the best defense is a ferocious boomerang of a spin, at which Roscoe excels. The reasons he wants to retire are the same reasons why he can't. Roscoe's life is inextricably entwined with the Democratic Albany machine and both Roscoe and his city are ailing.
Albany is run by a triumvirate of boyhood friends - Roscoe, Elisha Fitzgibbon and Patsy McCall, none of whom hold office. Hours after Roscoe announces his intent to retire, his friend Elisha commits suicide. Puzzled and shocked, Roscoe's political antenna tells him Elisha had a good reason, probably to do with protecting his family. He postpones his retirement to help Veronica stave off a nasty family scandal, his youthful hopes of romance rekindled.
As the Republicans position themselves for attack, and Roscoe plies his skills, Kennedy splices the teeming past into the melodramatic events of the present, history repeating itself with infinite variation. Roscoe's World War I experiences (and his first foray into "spin"), the numerous internecine battles among New York state's and Albany's democrats, the roles of big politicians like Al Smith and FDR and the big criminals like Legs Diamond, the opportunities of Prohibition and the ever-present dangers from muckrakers and power grabbers from outside the machine and feuds and jealousies within among the cops, judges, civil servants and vice purveyors who keep things volatile, all of it feeds the machine. The cast of characters is big and the novel's scope is vast but Kennedy engages the reader with his own fascination for history and ambitious, unscrupulous men.
Kennedy, an Albany native and winner of the Pulitzer for "Ironweed," gives us a portrait of a man and a city, mirror images, both full of heart and wit and delight in clever scheming. Roscoe is Albany, his fate rooted deeply in the city's. His father before him was a cog in the machine and Roscoe's first steps were orchestrated by (and a tribute to) his father's ambitions. When Roscoe says he never had a choice, it's the truth. He can no more escape the clutches and drive of Albany than Albany can shed the machine that makes it run. As the reader recognizes this, Roscoe is driven to greater feats of political brilliance and sleight-of-hand. But no man can control the passions of others or the quirks of fate.
Kennedy's prose is as big and ebullient as his sprawling story. In Kennedy's hands Albany history has a legendary, mythic feel. Though the cast of characters and dizzying panorama of events sometimes taxes concentration, Kennedy's black humor, sharp irony and the perverse likability of rascally Roscoe continually enthralls, right up to the final irony of the perfect ending.
3127325
"Great House" may not be a great book because it lacked the vital quality of depth and a searing prose that cuts into the reader's psyche, but it is an enthralling book connecting the lives of the protaganists in four separate stories, and narrated as a form of confession, whose only common focal object was a writing desk with nineteen drawers, one of which was kept locked with its key misplaced. The first story was a wounded confession of a successful writer with a failed life ("In her work the writer is free of laws. But in her life, Your Honor, she is not free.") The second concerned the daughter of the mysterious Chilean poet and rebel, Daniel Varsky who gave her the writing desk. The third revolved around the anguish of a failed father-son relationship; and the fourth, a widower who felt compelled to investigate the mysterious side of his wife who had died with Alzheimer's disease. Nicole Krauss wrote with such delicate skill in portraying the voices of the male and female protagonists alternately that the reader might be forgiven in forgetting that they were all the voice of Strauss. Although the ultimate revelation and the epiphany of the big picture was mildly anticlimatic, in my view, it was still a story I enjoyed from start to end. Not a very long book - 289 pages - and written in a lucid style and at an unhurried pace.

The theme that is likely to linger in the reader's mind is that of human freedom. How free are we, really, when seemingly disparate events occurring elsewhere and at other times roll inexorably to the intersection where they all meet. We too are caught in our lives by such events. My job interview, for example, might be no different in truth from the act of Daniel Varsky leaving his desk with Nadia. Somewhere else, something might be happening to someone else which were to lead that person inexorably to meeting me and the common factor might have been the person who interviewed me. It is a fascinating idea (free will and determinism) that philosophers had been grasping with for a long time , but which fiction writers have now found to be a fertile and attractive method of telling a story. We might tire after a while - but not yet, and not with Strauss. There may be an underlying reference to "God"  that connects the threads in the novel, but that is an aspect of the novel to be appreciated by those who see God.
3678858
Calvin Trillin has an eye for the small details that make a book more than just assembled words that tell a story. If it isn't thigh slapping funny, you'll never be less than on the edge of laughter. His characters, and his approach to them are droll, eccentric and quite different from the cardboard characters that populate most novels. One might find this as a repressed memoir but perhaps not. Just because Mr. Trillin worked at both Time and The New Yorker is no reason to infer this casual look at the backstage of a weekly news magazine. It's his characters and the oddball plot that keep you reading. Or, in my case, slowed my reading as I really didn't want it to end. Thirty years after publication it's just as fresh and relevant as it was then. The same goofiness of story and people and the same pursuit of love, romance and a story. But it's about one man and how he sees things. We are lucky indeed to have Mr. Trillin to interpret what they are seeing, doing and thinking.
618234
When I read the forward and preface to this book I admit I was concerned that I was about to read the earnest, heartfelt, and completely uninteresting prose/blog of a bright, sincere teenager. Boy, am I a dope, or what?

This book is, in fact, earnest, heartfelt, sincere and bright. It is also searingly funny, completely engaging, bawdy, rowdy, and brutally honest. This is not a lost-to-drugs-and-back story, or a tale of redemption after hitting bottom, or a melodrama fancied up with some new age or self-help wisdom.

It is an honest, rueful, deadpan story about growing up, spiced with exaggeration for effect, naughty bits, some cutting self examination, a few romantic touches, and lots of cheerfully lacerating observations about life, families, society, and the music business.

This only works, or at least it will only hold book length attention, if the reader can connect with some fundamentally sound aspect of the narrator. I'm not doing 300 pages of train wreck. I might do 300 hundred pages of funny train wreck. I absolutely won't go near 300 pages of poor-victim-me train wreck. Well, this author, (or, actually the character she created), can come over to my house, drink too much wine, and tell stories all night, and that will be fine by me. (Actually, the actual author can come too, since she's probably alright as well.) (By the way, the heroine's name is "Johanna Morrigan". "Morrigan" is a figure from Irish mythology and is considered the goddess of 'battle, strife, and sovereignty'. Could there possibly be a better name for this character? No. For that touch alone you should read this book.)

But this is not just an extended stand-up comedy act or a string of clever zingers hung together to look like a novel. Our heroine follows an unconventional but dramatic path to some reasonable form of enlightenment and self-invention. You know that old chestnut that all fiction is either "a stranger rides into town or a man goes on a trip"? Well, here, Johanna Morrigan definitely goes on a trip, and it may be long, strange and wild, but we all eventually end up in an unexpected and satisfying place. What a nice find.

Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.
3436564
I thought the prose was often quite remarkable, particularly the effective use of similes and metaphors.  The comic conversation between the the Brasso sisters in the chapter "Making Other Arrangements" was priceless.
There are many topics which should make for interesting discussion at a book review, i.e., the dog fight mentality, the remarkable recovery of Olivia, the epiphany of Winnie, the effect of characters upon each other.
610403
This is the kind of great novel that, without any pretensions of intellectualism (but an enormous display of intelligence), is both immense in scope, bold in vision, and lightheartedly cool and funny.  No review could convey the range of issues, both mundane and enormous, that are covered in this book.  More than that, no review could convince a reader how enjoyable and laugh out loud hilarious it is in more places than I can count.  I really liked the fact that I could get lost in the novel for a while, put it down for a few weeks, then be absorbed again, and again and again.  One complaint that some have put down here is that it sometimes gets bogged down in details.  That is true; Stephenson has a tendency to digress.  But most of the digressions are fascinating; they sometimes do allow you to lose track of the story, such that when the digression is over you no longer feel the irresistable urge to know what comes next, but I liked that about my experience of reading this novel.  I found that it can't be read in one or two or three sittings.  There's just too much there.  I probably read it in thirty or fourty sittings over the course of about a month; when I'd had enough, I could set it down and do something else, and come back to something new and surprisingly intriguing the next day or week.  Most novels that took that long would lose their grip on me.  Some books that don't lose their grip on me have me staying up all night for a few days.  Somehow with this book the digressions and the interruptions in the story as he moves between the points of view of four or five main characters from different time periods allowed me to walk away and come back comfortably.  I will say that by the last few hundred pages I couldn't put it down, and kept going until it was over.
4813053
A sleeper!  This is one of the most delightful books I've read recently. It will become a holiday gift for friends and clients.  I've decorated this book with food stains since it stole my attention, accompanying me to every possible solo meal for a week.
It's as if Kurt Vonnegut was writing for and editing People Magazine. Perlich can write. His style is more compelling than one expects to find in such a slim volume (don't ask me why), and hardly a sentence goes by without a fresh turn of phrase.
From the first page I felt pulled by the current through some interesting canyons, those being both of the call and response of interviewing and then also of the pantheon of musical and social icons he has interviewed over the decades. Having done some interviews myself lately, I was very interested in the interview process, but I found it was his interview stories that just take off. Many are lifetime "keepers," like the one with Jerry Lee Lewis, where Perlich raises a question that goes directly to one of  Lewis' shall we say, less well considered life decisions, even though it takes up less than a page.
The range of personalities is not only wide but the list has gravitas and covers about 40 years of interviews. Normally wide range could be expected and gravitas is a plus, but this is 141 pages! There are some great chuckles and genuinely intimate `revealings' of such a wide ranging characters as Leonard Bernstein and (the aforementioned)  Jerry Lee Lewis, Isaac Stern and Oscar Brown Jr., Ron Kovic to Bill Evans. I mean, them's some heavy and very interesting folk, and nothing as dopey as a Hillary Clinton.
That having been said, what I found most interesting were his philosophical insights in the instructional "how to" elements; how to communicate by the dual `humilities' of preparing and of listening.  In this respect, the book is really about mediating the two complementary "energies" in any endeavor, each of which could be characterized by the two foundational Chinese philosophies, as I understand them; Confucianism ("structure") versus Taoism  ("formlessness"). The Confucian "duty" is a worship of "role"; to be the best "interviewer" you can be. Paradoxically, Perlich demonstrates how that comes about only by observing its opposite,  the "Tao", (I guess that's why they have two!) the embodiment of  being aware of the emptiness of the moment needing to be filled or seized, such as challenging a star like Frank Zappa with a question that might end the interview but instead yields an insight.
Perlich gives a professional bow to the marquee stars like Larry King or Charlie Rose for their preparation and abilities, although I feel betrayed by them as they invariably "soft ball" the very people we need to be made accountable. Here I think Perlich belongs to the higher school of the profession, more akin to Oriana Fallaci or Marc Cooper (however odious as a pseudo-left operative) who obviously have the depth of knowledge AND "cajones" that  allow them to break new ground and ask the question the audience really wanted answered, even if the audience didn't know it. In other words, they have elevated their craft to an art.
If The Art of the Interview achieves `Mozartian' lift, it is because it reads effortlessly but makes strong statements delicately executed, sweet or bitter. (He even admits abject failure in one interview with Peter Serkin). But he pursues The Question. That way the interviewer is fulfilling the sacred core of his role by delivering the real goods to the audience. Would that the corporate hired mega-bucksters would read this book and take it to heart.
So by all means, read all about it, but look out for the marinara sauce on the last chapter.
1441156
Mr. Galsworthy serves up the Forsyte Saga as a sumptuous meal of rich descriptions and savory characters in delightful, bite-size pieces.  It is a long read, however, because of such rich character development, these people and their personalities become a subliminal attachment to the reader's circle of friends and acquaintances.  Its okay if one is unable to read continuously, because one knows their secrets and stories will keep, and every bit of gossip and story will be saved for the next installment.  Galsworthy's story literally leaves the reader hungering for the rest of the story.

Why?  Galsworthy brillantly reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each of the primary players.  While he exposes Soames arrogance and pride, he also reveals Soames confusion, denial, and disbelief, thereby humanising the otherwise 'man of property.'  When Irene suggests to Soames the option of dissolving their marriage before they have married, that is, if she is unhappy, one is prompted to read on, carefully, for the clues that explain and support how this might occur.
Indeed, this is an oldie... but like a fabulous dessert, it is worth the wait.
3145918
Beautiful writing, page after page, that gets to the heart of the American experience. What impressed me was the range of material.  The author starts with Martha Graham and ends with Edward Abbey, and weaves in famous and should-be famous persons from music, the Cherokee, the pioneers, turn-of-the century icons, to the 1960s. Jeff Biggers is an old fashioned renaissance story-teller.  He can go from one theme to the next with real ease.  I think this book is going to surprise a lot of people.  It surprised me.
2153180
I read this book over one glorious weekend wherein I was transported by the author's transcendent prose into the very place and time that is the setting of this remarkable story. If you don't read this book, you will have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.
351053
Anne McAneny is that rara avis of a writer who creates a solidly entertaining story with as many unique aspects as the inside of a Faberge egg and then tells it with language that is equally as intoxicating as is the story she is weaving. There are many pages of both SKEWED and RAVELED, brilliantly novel mystery stories that pleads to be read repeatedly (or memorized) because the words are so magically strung together. From her bio we know that McAneny is a screenwriter of note (and that explains why this novel seems to plead to be adapted as a movie) but not all screenwriters can narrate strictly on the page without storyboards in head - simply dependent on the gift of writing well. Anne McAneny can.

To say Annes books are addictive would be an understatement. Each new release indicates yet more polish not only in her elegant prose but also in her outward spinning sense of intrigue that magnetically attaches to our attention span and will simply not release until books end.

The plot summary is well described: A fire ignites a whirlwind of action and accusation in a swamp town that hasn't seen excitement since the big lottery win twelve years ago. Little does reporter Chloe Keyes know that when she sniffs around for clues, shell end up facing her own demons while unsettling the very foundation of her hometown. Chloe starts her day by pulling a gun on two intrudersand things only go downhill from there. Driving to Boyds General for her daily caffeine fix, she finds the place ablaze. When the flames die down, she uncovers evidence that points to a dire fate for her missing childhood friend, Hoop. He disappeared twelve years ago, on the same day his girlfriend was struck and killed by a car. The events have left a dark mark on Chloe. Over the next two days, strange occurrences pile up: Chloes neighbor is found floating and bloated in Black Swamp; the head of a cosmetics conglomerate is arrested by federal agents; phone records point to a dead girl making calls; and a handsome stranger mystifies everyone he encounters. Through it all, the promise of a spectacular magic show captivates the local residents. Close calls with gators, crossbows, and armed felons lead to a startling conclusion, complete with illusion, chicanery, and the most divisive trick of all: cold, hard truth. Will Chloes murky existence finally be clarified, or will she succumb to the demons that haunt her?

Closing the last page of this book it is obvious that Anne McAneny is one of the more gifted writers of the day. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 15
2442911
Within a page of starting Home Economics for Girls I had slowed down to approximately the reading speed I use for people like Kant and A.J. Ayer. Not that it's hard to follow, at all - but there is a level of enjoyment above which one just has to prolong the experience, and I didn't want to miss a syllable of this wonderful book.

Tabitha Tickham is a wonderful character, with something of the quality of a catherine wheel that's not been adequately nailed to the fence. You do not know where or how she will explode next. Despite this larger-than-life quality, she is eminently believable, as is her older sister, the serious and faintly pompous Violet. There's no false sentiment here - they are depicted with ruthless honesty and a deep understanding of what childhood is really like.

Violet may or may not be fat and smelly. We do not really know whether her little sister's gibes are fair comment, or merely the taunting of a pre-pubescent sibling. Similarly, we do not really know what Marcus looks like, and yet he is unmistakably there, a massive, sighing, philosophical houndish presence.

This was one of the things I particularly appreciated about Wright's work; very seldom is anything really described in any detail, yet the entire book has a richly visual quality. The reader is allowed to supply. To do this, and do it well, requires a sureness, a lightness of touch and a mastery of language that is rare in any case, but extremely rare in a first novel.

There's a madness to the sequence of events, a dreamlike inevitability that tells us that of course a cake left on the window sill to cool will be knocked out of window; what else?

Wright has demonstrated, not only a fertile brain and the ability to produce a richly satisfying story, but a command of his craft that makes every sentence a joy. I cannot wait for more.
1309617
Because of the rich prose used, this is not a book which can be read quickly. It has to be savoured, and probably re-read.
The characters are sketched in an abstract way, as in an Impressionist painting, and bits of the canvas are left blank for the reader to fill in. With the huge number of original and amazing adjectives used, this becomes easier as progress is made through the book. I was so happy to have finally had the chance to read the book. I am already wanting to read it again after only one week!
4187593
A. G. Macdonell's seminal opus is the exception to a rather substandard writing career. However, his deliberate effort and enthusiasm shines through with this extraordinary tale of high adventure. Told with a contagiously dashing prose, witty observations, and unapologetic humor, Macdonell brings the tensions of the times to life through his articulately sketched characters. And what characters they were! If Napoleon had generals with similar skill levels of those of either Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, there's no telling how far his successes would have reached, nor how long they could have been sustained. But that's the point that Macdonell almost uniquely makes throughout his narrative thread: that an army that inherently relied on standouts from the Enlightenment for its glory was also undone by the same tenacity of spirit that engenders all rebels, pirates, and smugglers to return to their roots as individual crusaders led by their own motives.
2219059
Coulter's novel attempt at storytelling defies expectations; Terin's journey was exhilarating, alluring, and begged to be read. This is something between befuddling and engrossing, and I've bought 18 copies to give to friends, relatives, and prospective friends and relatives.
1416976
This hefty volume is a real page-turner--I was glued to it for about 4 days--as well as being an extraordinary tour de force. The plot is an intricate and far-flung labyrinth with unexpected twists at every turn. If you like to savor puzzles, this is a great one. It's patterned on a Victorian novel, and its scrupulously accurate descriptions of the wretched underside of Victorian society are extraordinarily vivid. Like a Dickens novel, it's populated with striking characters from all walks of life, especially the underclass. And the writing is very good.
But there was one aspect that put a damper on my enjoyment and stood out as a striking anachronism for a book aspiring to Victorian novelhood. The chapters have the kind of bouncy, chirpy period titles like those I remember from the cheerful books of my youth like Little Women and they led me to expect a certain Victorian-style heartiness in the tone of the story. However, except for the first section, the rest of the novel is a story of sheer unrelieved misery, evil, and hopelessness. The author seems to have bent over backwards to systematically demolish every prospect of help or escape and eradicate any possibility of lasting happiness or hope, no matter how small.
Even Dickens' grimmest novels offer comic relief, and they usually offer a ray of hope or a chance of happiness at the end for some decent character or other as well. Victorian writers lived in an optimistic era, and in the books I'm familiar with, glimmers of that optimism are generally evident in their work. (Villette is a striking exception, for those who like gloom.)
It's not that I prefer saccharin endings, but in my view, the relentless blackness of the Quincunx's worldview reflects more of the sardonic mindset of a'90's novelist than it does a Victorian one.  Whether this is supposed to make it more "realistic" to match the taste of contemporary readers, I don't know, but I don't think that's necessarily achieved by taking the opposite extreme in an effort to flee conventional happy endings.
In any event, the novel's inexorable woefulness wore me down after a while. In the end, it left me feeling unusually depressed and also  a little like I'd been had. I thought I was  reading a novel that was supposed to be faithful to the spirit as well as the form of a 19th century novel, but at the end I discovered that it was actually a bit of turn-of-the-millenium nihilism tricked out in elaborate Victorian duds.
966893
Alan Cheuse is an extremely talented writer.  I'm surprised that I never heard of him before selecting this book.

The novel is told through conversations between Minnie Bloch and her companion.  The conversation between the two bubbes--grandmothers--is hilarious.  It made me feel as if I was sitting in a delicatessen listening to two ladies gossip with each other.  Cheuse has rare talent.  I loved how the grandmothers spoke through rhetorical questions.  In fact, the questions of the women moved the story along in a way that no other grammatical form could.  And they added a dimension to the story that conventional writing can't.

The story itself gave me a lot to think about.  In fact, I re-read parts of the book even while reading it for the first time just to make sure that I didn't miss the books hidden and apparent messages.  Manny, Minnie's son, begins as a legendary rabbi.  He leaves his congregation to make more money.  His life, however, spirals out of control.

If the story had been told by anyone other than Minnie, I wouldn't have bothered finishing the book.  However, her ability to lighten grim situations made the characters' misfortune easy to read.  So Cheuse was able to tell a story that few others could tell.