Fiction Reviews

Protect and Defend  by Vince Flynn  Atria Books 2007  Rating  - 7
"Matt Rapp ran his hand along her smooth, naked thigh, up her waist, then down, along her flat stomach. . . "  So begins this thriller from the pen of Vince Flynn, but don't be fooled, that's all the sex you're going to get in this here novel.  The rest is all blood, sweat, murder and mayhem.  Matt Rapp is somewhere in this book described as "the Creator's most efficient predator", and his predatory practices begin as soon as he leaves that bedroom on a Caribbean island.  This is a guy whose Father died when he was young, whose high school sweetheart had perished in the Pan Am Lockerbie tragedy, and whose wife had recently been murdered.  This is a guy who is left with an instinctive distrust of people and one who functions better alone.  That is why he works for the CIA.  When the business down in the islands was finished, he received word from his boss the Director CIA, that the President wanted to see him, his Gulfstream was diverted to Atlanta Hartsfield airport, where he met up with Air Force One.  On board, the President revealed to him the intel that the Iranian Nuclear facility at Isfahan had been blown up.  The Iranians pointed the finger at the Israelis and Americans and pledged violent repercussions.  Rapp was soon on his way to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the closest place he could get to Iran and a place where he knew he could find the help he needed for the job he had to do.  What then follows is a fast paced telling of a story of deception and lies, violence and international intrigue on the volatile stage of the Middle East.  It’s a high class thriller, a great weekend read for a cold winter weekend, and that’s exactly what I did.  Vince Flynn is clearly in line to assume from Tom Clancy the mantle for the storyteller of  global military/political confrontations.
Reviewed by Dennis  November 2010

The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald  Scribner  1925
I have now read this book three times.  I think it is the only book I've ever read three times, and each time it gives me greater insight into the characters and the times they lived in.  I have not given this book a rating because I think it's in a class by itself and because I think that anyone like me, who has the gall to write criticisms of other people's writing, should read this story every so often just to recalibrate and remind oneself what a real masterpiece is.   In THE GREAT GATSBY, Fitzgerald looks deeply into himself and the world in which he lived, to create the story of James Gatz, a self-educated nobody from North Dakota who had amassed a fortune and then invented and adopted the name and persona of Jay Gatsby, an Oxford-educated, military hero and successful businessman.  Gatsby now enjoyed the good life with weekend parties for the hedonistic crowds of the twenties in his palatial long island mansion.  It so happened that his house was directly across the sound from the home of the woman he loved in his younger, poorer days.  In the evening he could see the light on her dock, it was the light which illuminated for him the hope of winning her again. Daisy is now married to Tom Buchanan--a brutal, ignorant racist who embodies the corruption that can come with massive wealth. As Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom, and the narrator, Daisy's cousin Nick Carroway, who serves as the author's spokesman--play out the drama in a small Long Island town (the East Hampton of its day), Fitzgerald makes it increasingly clear that life is meaningless when it is based on money and glamour at the expense of the solid American values of self-reliance and hard work, a message which become increasingly clear in the tragic ending.
Reviewed by Dennis November 2010

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  by Mary Ann Shaffer  The Dial Press 2008  Rating - 8
It's1946, and England is emerging from the dark horror of the second world war.  Juliet Ashton, a writer living in London, has been successful with her books based on "Izzy Biggerstaff goes to War" a series of books which sought to bring some light humor to the English reading public during the war years, but she was now looking for a new vehicle on which to continue her writing success.  This book begins with the correspondence on that subject between Juliet and her publisher/friend Sidney Stark, with the London publishing firm of  Stephens and Stark Ltd.  Out of the blue, Juliet received a letter from Dawsey Adams, a man living on the island of Guernsey in the British Channel Islands.  Dawsey has come upon a book once owned by Juliet by a writer he much admired and wanted to know if Juliet could supply him with the name and address of a book shop in London where he might find other books by that author.  Juliet replied, sending Dawsey another small book by the same author and referring him to a London bookseller.  So began a series of letters between Juliet and Dawsey Adams, and subsequently with many of Dawsey's friends on the island who, during the war and German occupation of the island, had joined together and quite suddenly one night had formed the "Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" as an excuse for violating the German curfew.  This book is then entirely comprised of those letters between Juliet, her friend Sidney and the many people on the island of Guernsey, all book lovers and all of whom had joined the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  The letters then tell the story of Juliet's developing friendship with the Islanders and their stories of life under German occupation for the duration of the war.  This book was recommended to me by a dear friend.  I can unreservedly recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis November 2010

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo  by Stieg Larsson  Alfred a Knopf 2008  Rating - 10
It was ten o'clock on a Friday morning, five days before Christmas, and Mikael Blomkvist, Journalist with the Swedish publication "Millenium", stood silently as the Judge in a Stockholm courthouse sentenced him to 3 months in jail and a 150,000 Kroner fine.  The court had found him guilty of having "libeled and defamed" the financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom.  Blomkvist did not plan to appeal.  He knew that what he had published in Millenium, a monthly publication in which he was a part owner, was true, but he had not been able to show the evidence to prove it in court.  He had a few weeks of freedom before he had to report to jail in which to reconcile to the fact that his journalistic reputation was in tatters, and to consider his options.  His partner in Millennium, and occasional lover, Erika Berger agreed with his decision that in order to protect the magazine, he should formally resign and separate himself from the management for a while.  Then, out of the blue, he received a request to meet with Henrik Varger, retired CEO of the once powerful Varger group of companies headquartered in northern Sweden, to discuss an assignment.  Varger, who had personal knowledge of Wennerstrom, had paid close attention to the trial and admired Blomkvists' investigative skills, and he had hired a Stockholm security agency to check him out before he approached him.  At first Blomqvist was reticent, but on reflection he thought that it presented an opportunity to get out of the spotlight in Stockholm for a while, and after all, he had no other job to go to.  So he agreed to meet with Varger in his home town of Hedestad a small coastal town about 3 hours by train north of Stockholm.  He arrived in the middle of winter, it was like entering another world, the mercury registered zero degrees and he regretted agreeing to go there as soon as he stepped down from the train.  Henrik Varger, now in his eighties, was retired from active participation in the business which was now run by his nephew, Martin.  Henrik had been obsessed for years with a mystery involving a member of his family, which had plagued him since it happened over 30 years before.  He offered Blomqvist an enormous fee if he'd agree to spend a year in Hedestad to investigate the mystery and hopefully solve it.  Blomqvist, somewhat intrigued by the story which Varger unfolded before him, agreed.  As his investigation proceeds he is joined by the young woman whom Varger had previously hired to investigate him.  Lizbeth Salander was a skinny, tattooed 25 year old who looked like a rebel teenager with miscellaneous body piercings.   Her attitude was anti-social in the extreme.  However she was also the most astute and ingenious investigator Blomqvist had ever met.  Their two lives became intimately entwined as they worked together to unravel the mystery of what happened in the Varger family 30 years before.  This novel is without doubt one of the best mystery stories I have ever read.  I was only half way through the book when I decided to immediately order the other two stories in this Millennium trilogy, and I'm a reader who normally reads far more non-fiction.  This story captivated me, and I read the entire book in a weekend.  Sadly the author, Steig Larsson, died shortly after completing the third book.
Reviewed by Dennis August 2010

Wolf Hall  by Hillary Mantel  Henry Holt & Co 2009  Rating - 8
This book is a work of historical fiction and as the author herself says, it is a "daunting read".  However, if you have even a little understanding of the history of 16th C. Tudor England and Henry the 8th, and if you can accommodate the author's rather strange writing style, then it is also a most rewarding read.   The novel focuses on the life of Thomas Cromwell, not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell, who was a descendent of Thomas' sister, and who lived a hundred years later.  Thomas Cromwell was a "commoner", born the son of a blacksmith who regularly abused him to the point where he eventually ran away.  He traveled widely abroad in European capitals and eventually returned to England, studied law and became a Member of Parliament.  With the passage of time, he rose to become one of the most powerful people in the land in the heady atmosphere of the Royal court of Henry VIII.  His fall from grace came in 1540 and he was beheaded.   Thomas Cromwell's wife and both of their daughters all died of the plague in 1527.  The novel follows Cromwell's life and rise to prominence firstly as a aide to Cardinal Wolsey, and after Wolsey's fall from power, as a close advisor to King Henry VIII during the years when Henry was seeking to throw off the yoke of the Catholic church and the influence of the Pope in order to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.  The book is clearly a result of considerable research and the author's understanding of life in the early part of the 16th century is conveyed in it almost to the point of tedium.  I enjoyed the book, and will await the promised sequel, however I would have rated it higher had it not been for Ms. Mantel's confusing writing style.
Reviewed by Dennis June 2010

Water For Elephants  by Sara Gruen  Algonquin Books 2006  Rating  -  8
Jacob Jankowski is 90 years old and living in a nursing home,  he is alone.  His beloved wife of 61 years has passed and his son, already over 70 sometimes forgets to come to see him.  As Jacob says "Being the survivor stinks".  He is fed up with the bingo games and endless sing-alongs, and has no patience with the "ancient dusty people parked in hallways . . .".  So he invited the ghosts of his past life to have their way in his mind and reminisces on a long and eventful life.  Jacob was destined to be, like his father, a veterinarian, until fate intervened and he never completed his final examination.  It was the early years of the great depression and the whole country was locked in the misery of bread lines, unemployment and hopelessness.  He runs from the tragedy that was his home, and hops a passing train only to learn in the morning that he has become a member of the circus, Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. What then follows is a tale of circus life, not of the glitz and glamour of the big top, but of the grunt work, the cruelty, the segregation of the workers from the performers and their harsh living conditions in a circus which is not making it in the depressed economy of the 1930's.  Jacob soon learns the language of the kinkers, the roustabouts, the rubes and the performers, and because of his training in veterinary school is given charge of animal care.  He forms bonds with some of the workers who are treated worse than the animals, develops a love for the animals who are routinely beaten by the ringmaster, falls in love with the beautiful wife of the ringmaster and the stage is set for a showdown.  What eventually occurs is much worse.  Sara Gruen has done a wonderful job of researching circus life as it was in those days.  She seamlessly ushers the reader from the circus to the nursing home and back, weaving a most readable tale.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, cover to cover in three days and I don't often do that.
Reviewed by Dennis August 2009

The Spies of Warsaw  by Alan Furst  Random House 2008   Rating - 8
It was 1937 in Warsaw and the city's restaurants and clubs were over run with German, French, Polish, Czech and Russian diplomats all operating under the cover of their diplomatic passports to spy on each other.  Everyone knew that a massive war machine was being built in Hitler's Germany.  It was their task to find out exactly what, when and how the leader of Nazi Germany planned to use it.  In the French embassy, posing as a military attaché, Colonel Jean-François Mercier, a hero from the first world war and an eligible bachelor. made the social round, rubbed shoulders with the right people and quietly spied on the activities of the German military as they made their plans to invade France.   Meanwhile the German "Diplomats" in town, aided by thugs from the SS, were kept busy trying to plug the leaks as disaffected Germans fled the country armed with state secrets which could be exchanged for a new identity and a ticket out of Europe.  Alan Furst is well practiced in the writing of this type of intrigue, his novel is very carefully set with a background of the historical events leading up to WWII.  The novel is garnished with a couple of Russian spies, who discover they are about to fall foul of the endless Stalinist purges, a German officer of the Sicherheitsdienst - SS who has a personal bone to pick with Mercier after the Frenchman spoiled one of his actions, and the lovely Anna a French lawyer of Polish ancestry working for the League of Nations in Warsaw.  All-in-all not a great novel but an honest novel, very well written, enjoyable and who knows . . . maybe close to the truth.
Reviewed by Dennis  August 2008

The Reluctant Fundamentalist  by Mohsin Hamid  Harcourt Inc.  2007  Rating 7
A young bearded Pakistani meets an American man in Lahore Pakistan and strikes up a conversation with him.  The Pakistani, who's name is Changez, proceeds to relate the story of the past four and a half years of his life which were spent in America.  He graduated top of his class at Princeton University and was one a a select group of graduates hired by a prestigious New York Company.  The year is 2001, he loved New York and its fast paced life, he loved his job, the sense of accomplishment it offered and the relatively comfortable lifestyle it afforded him, and he loved Erica, a Princeton graduate he had met who had recently lost her childhood sweetheart to cancer.  His cautious, tender approach to her seemed to be winning her injured heart.  Then came the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11.  New York and all its apartments, offices and vehicles were suddenly bedecked with American flags.  Suddenly, he realized that not only was he not an American, but he was one of those who was regarded warily on the street and selected for special attention every time he went to the airport and even at work, his boss suggests he consider shaving off his beard.  His world was changing around him, New York was not his town any more, Pakistani cab drivers were being beaten up, mosques were being raided by the FBI.  Back home, Pakistan's long lasting feud with India was heating up, armies were massed on the border and it was clear that America was not on the Pakistan side.  To make it all worse, his love life was not progressing as he had dreamed it would.  He begins to find he objects to America's stance on affairs international, objects to its incursions into Korea, Vietnam and now Afghanistan, neighbor to his homeland and he objects to the way he is being treated at airports.  Slowly he comes to realize that there are things which are more important to him than the fancy job and New York lifestyle.  It was a realization which would change his life.  The story of this chapter in Changez' life is related to the stranger during one evening while they drank tea and ate dinner.  It is a very readable story, and like the one reviewed here below, beautifully written in English by a man whose first language is not English.  The dialogue seemed to me at times to be somewhat unreal, and at the end I was left wondering to what extent the changes in his life were prompted by his cultural disconnect as opposed to his unrequited love for Erica.  However it is a good read and I can recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2008

A Thousand Splendid Suns  by Khaled Hosseini  Riverhead Books 2007  Rating 10
Another wonderful novel by Afghan-born Khaled Hosseini.  It is the story of Mariam the illegitimate daughter of the wealthy merchant Jalil and his servant Nana, and of Laila the daughter of Fariba and Hakim, and of Laila's childhood sweetheart, Tariq. The story is set against the background of the last 40 tumultuous years in Afghanistan from the days in the 1960's before the Soviet invasion, through the years of the warlords, the Taliban and eventually the US invasion to route the Taliban following the attack on the Twin Towers.  Mariam and her mother live a life of poverty in a small hovel outside of the town of Herat.  Although her father loves the child, and comes regularly to visit her, he elects not to publicly recognize her or permit her and her mother to live in the big house in Herat.  From her village on a hill side, she is able to look down on the town of Herat and wonders about the life of relative luxury which is enjoyed by her half brothers and sisters in the big house.  Laila lived a relatively happy life with her parents in Kabul until after the Soviets left and the warlords fought to establish control, raining rockets down on the town making life miserable for the inhabitants. Hakim and his wife finally decide to leave and move their family to Peshewar in Pakistan until the fighting is over.  As they are packing their belongings to leave, cruel fate intervenes and their lives are forever changed.  Khaled Hosseini has told this tale beautifully, and endowed it with the rich culture of Afghan life.  It is a story which is at once beautiful and terrible, a story of selfless undying love and of hatred and unbelievable cruelty, and all the time you know that this was the way it really was. This book tells one of the most absorbing and interesting stories I have ever read and I shall read it again after a while.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2008

Suite Française  by Irène Némirovsky  Alfred A. Knopf  2006  Rating  9
This novel bridges the divide between fact and fiction and as such is just my cup of tea.  Irène Némirovsky, a successful Russian born novelist, was living in Paris at the start of the second world war - 1939.  Although of Jewish parentage, she was in fact a Catholic, married and with two small children.  By 1940 it was clear that France would be overthrown and Paris would be occupied by the Nazis.  The Parisienne, and particularly the Jewish citizens of Paris, on hearing the guns of war outside their city, then proceeded by the thousands to flee, and make for the rural communities of France hoping to avoid the wrath of the Nazis. In the case of the Jews, to save their lives.  Némirovsky and her family fled to a small town in central France and she began to write the first of what she planned to be a series of four or five stories about the French experience during the war.  She had completed her drafts of the first two of these, when she was discovered by the German SS and sent immediately to a concentration camp.  Within a month, at the age of 39, she was executed.  After a relatively short time her husband suffered the same fate.  The children were taken by a friend and hidden from the Nazis for the duration of the war, and survived.  They took their Mother's manuscript into hiding with them and some 60 years later, it was taken by Némirovsky's daughter, Denise Epstein to a publisher.  It was published first in France, where it has already been very successful, and with a fine translation by Sandra Smith, now in English.  The first of the two stories, "Storm in June" tells of the mass, panic exodus at the eleventh hour from Paris, where families, some of them used to a life of luxury, and most used to a degree of comfort and pleasure, were thrown into a situation in which they had no control over their circumstances, and where real friends were distinguished from the fair-weather kind.  Some of them found tolerable accommodation, some eventually returned to Paris, and some died under the guns of German fighter planes.  The second story, is titled "Dolce" and it continues from the first in telling of life for the evacuees in a small rural village, occupied by German soldiers. Some of the French accommodated themselves to the soldiers and adapted a lifestyle in spite of them, some never accepted their presence, some resisted, some collaborated and some died.  These are not great stories, but they are told with a sensitivity which could only come from the pen of a very good writer.  Unfortunately, she never had the opportunity to review and polish them and the translator has faithfully translated leaving what errors there may be in place.  There are two appendices in the book, the first containing the author's notes, the second contains her correspondence at the time.  They add a considerable measure of poignancy to the stories, and in fact, I recommend that you read them first.  It is a wonderful story, hailed in Europe as a French "Anne Frank".  I heartily recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis September 2006

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes  Alfred A. Knopf 2006  Rating 10
The publisher calls it a novel, but there's as much fact as there is fiction in this story about Arthur and George. Which means that its right up my alley.  The story spans the last quarter century of the Victorian era and the first thirty years of the twentieth century.  Arthur is Arthur Conan Doyle, famous English gentleman, Physician, Knight of the Realm and author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories.  George is George Edalji, son of a vicar living quietly in the English midlands his mother from a long line of Scottish ancestors, his father a Pashteen from India.  Arthur grew up in Edinburgh, the genteel capital of Scotland, went to university and became a Physician.  He studied in Vienna and Paris and eventually opened his own office in Devonshire Place in :London.  He had an examining room and a waiting room, but he observed that in fact both rooms were waiting rooms as he waited for the patients who did not come.  So he occupied his idle time writing and soon it was writing which became his life's work.  His initial fictional character, Sheridan Hope, became the renown detective Sherlock Holmes and although this was not the type of writing to which Doyle originally aspired, it made him rich and famous, the friend of queens and ministers, writers and sportsmen all over the world.  It was a lifestyle which fit perfectly to his outgoing personality.  George Edalji was a quiet unassuming fellow, even shy.  Bright but not brilliant.  George lived a sheltered life in the vicarage, avoided social contact and was given to taking long walks alone.  He wanted nothing more than a modest life as a solicitor, living quietly and riding the train each morning to his office in Birmingham.  Then fate entered George's life, a series of unimaginable happenings which at once frightened and bewildered him.  It was those events and their consequences which brought these two very different lives together, and they remained linked for the rest of their lives.  It was a massive mis-carriage of English justice which put George's face on the front page of newspapers all over the world and caused Arthur to leave his writing desk, put on the hat and the cloak, and assume the role of Sherlock Holmes himself.  The story is basically true, no doubt colored and embellished by Julian Barnes' incredible skill as an writer. Barnes comes from the Midlands, being born just a stone's throw from where I grew up.  He has been richly praised for his work and is one of the few English writers to have been recognized with an award of the French Order of letters. Arthur & George is one of the most absorbing books I have ever read, it is well recommended.
reviewed by Dennis February 2006

The Lincoln lawyer  by Michael Connelly  Little, Brown & Company  Rating  -  8
Mickey Haller is a street-wise criminal defense attorney working the courts in Los Angeles and serving a motley bunch of clients from con artists and bikers to drunk drivers and drug dealers.  He just assumes they are all guilty and his skill is the art of negotiation.  His goal is to get them the best deal he can and collect his fee.  His office is the back seat of a Lincoln Towncar and the main tool of his trade is the cell phone.   His great fear is that one day he'll find himself defending an innocent client.  He thought that day had arrived when he was retained by a rich Beverley Hills playboy to defend him on a charge of attempted murder.  The case seemed to him like a slam dunk, and the fee was the type defense attorneys dream about. Before it was over, he was wishing he was a cab driver.  Then it got worse.  Michael Connelly is a skilled writer, a former journalist.  He has written several best selling detective novels and assembled an impressive collection of awards.  This story is very well constructed by a writer who clearly knows his way around the court system.  Its a great read for a winter weekend and it will hold you until the last pages.
Reviewed by Dennis  February 2006

One Hundred Years of Solitude  by Gabriel García Márquez  Harper & Row 1970  Rating  -  10
If they had asked me, before I was born, which gift I would prefer, to act like Olivier, to dance like Astaire or to sing like Sinatra, I would have answered, to write like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  If you go to Amazon dot com, there are 422 reviews of this book, even Gone with The Wind has only 590.  This is surely one of the great books of the 20th Century and so far as books by South American authors are concerned, its in a class by itself.  A story of several generations of the Buendia family in  Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by his descendants, all having variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo.  It is at once a tragedy and a romance, it is magical and deeply philosophical.  This is not a novel you will breeze through on a summer afternoon, it is not an easy read and in fact it warrants more than one read.  I first read this novel over 20 years ago and lost the book (or maybe I gave it away).  My daughter bought this copy for me from the recent Library book sale in Waynesville and I have just completed reading it again.  It was time well spent, and I will not lose it again.
Reviewed by Dennis  August 2005

War Trash  by Ha Jin  Pantheon Books 2004  Rating  -  8
This is my kind of book, an historical novel.  However aside from that, its quite unique among the books on my library shelves.  Its about the Korean War, I don't have a single book, fiction or non-fiction about that war.   Furthermore its written from the viewpoint of the other side.  Its the story of Yu Yuan a young Chinese army officer, one of many sent by Chairman Mao Zedong to support the North Koreans fighting the Americans who came to the aid of the South Koreans in the early 50's . . . and having said all that, its not really about the war at all its about life  in a POW camp.  By page 40, Yu Yuan finds himself a POW sitting in an American Jeep.  So the remaining 310 pages are all about his time in captivity in American POW camps.  From that perspective and through the person of Yu Yuan, the author proceeds to tell the story of Chinese soldiers, held captive by Americans on Korean soil and he tells it very well.  He says that while this is a work of fiction and all of the main characters are fictional, most of the events and their details are factual.  It is a story of the interaction between prisoner and prisoner and between prisoner and captor, and tells a lot about the Chinese mentality.  Although the subject matter is rather tame, it is extremely well written.  Why is it titled "War Trash"? well, you'll have to read the book to find that out.   This is another book, written by someone who's mother tongue is not English, yet someone who demonstrates an unusual skill with our language.. In this instance, it should not be a surprise, the Author is Professor of English at Boston University.
Reviewed by Dennis  January 2005

The Reader  by Bernhard Schlink  Pantheon Books 1997  Rating  -  9
Michael Berg was just 15 years old when he met Hanna Lynch, a woman more than twice his age, she thought he was seventeen.  She helped him when he became ill outside her apartment.  He later went back with flowers to thank her, and found himself intensely attracted to her.  She seduced him and so began a strange sexual relationship between the two.  It was in post-war Berlin and the living was hard.  Michael was totally infatuated with the woman, however as much as she encouraged and desired the relationship, she seemed to remain somewhat aloof, maintaining control of their relationship.  Except for telling him that she had been in the Army during the war, she discussed little or nothing about her personal life.  Their relationship continued from the Spring into the Summer of that year when she took the unusual step of visiting him at his school.  That visit resulted in a misunderstanding and she fled without a word.  The next day she had disappeared, quit her job and left her apartment.  It was years before Michael saw her again, and then it was in a courtroom..  He had completed law school and as a part of his final year of study was required to participate in a seminar concerning Nazi law and to attend a court case involving Nazi war crimes.  Hanna Lynch was a defendant in that case.  So began the second phase of their relationship, it was to last for many years and reveal more about Hanna than what was disclosed in the courtroom.  This is an excellent novel, beautifully constructed.  It was a run-away success in Europe with little or no publicity years before it was published in America.  As well as relating the story of this unusual relationship, it also deals with Germany's conscience and the relationship between the parents who supported the Nazi regime and their children who suffered its consequences.  The author was born in Germany in 1944, he is a Professor of Law at Berlin University and has written several successful crime novels.  This book is a little hard to find, I found my copy at ABEbooks.com, if you can find one I can heartily recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis December 2004

The News From Paraguay by Lily Tuck  Harper Collins 2004  Rating  -  9
Emma Lynch was a young and beautiful Irish woman, living the high life in Paris in 1854, when she caught the eye and captured the heart of Francisco Solano Lopez, then the son of the dictator of Paraguay, soon to become his successor.  He romanced Emma, bought for her the horse she wanted so much and became her lover.  She followed him back to Paraguay and was established in Asuncion as his mistress.  In that city and in a land at once both primitive and lusciously verdant, Tuck weaves a wonderful tapestry of the people and lifestyle of that South American land where European and American adventurers mingle with the old Spanish aristocracy and the indigenous Guarani native people at a time of turmoil and uncertainty.  "Franco," now the undisputed Dictator of Paraguay, with grandiose schemes to take control of all of South America, drags his unwilling country into a war which will bleed the wealth and the lifeblood from the country and leave it in ruin.  Emma, with their children, stands squarely behind him, even following him to the battlefields.  This story is beautifully told, with a wealth of imagination and detail about the culture and custom of Paraguay and its people.  It is populated with a host of Diplomats, Generals, Family members, Friends, Physicians, Housekeepers and Wet Nurses all of them given richly developed characters.  Lily Tuck has written a superb novel.  She writes in the Author's Notes that when wondering what is fact and what is fiction, "whatever seems most improbable is probably true", however she also admonishes the reader that "nouns always trump adjectives" and when considering a work of historical fiction it is important to remember which word is which.  I understand that the book has recently been awarded The National Book Award for Fiction.
Reviewed by Dennis December 2004.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown  Atria Books 2000   Rating  8
Another great read from Dan Brown.  Actually, he wrote this one before he wrote The Da Vinci Code.  This one is not quite as good as Da Vinci code, but nevertheless a very readable book which scores high on the CPID (can't put it down) scale.  Harvard Professor Robert Langdon is stunned and bewildered by an image of a dead body, sent to him on his fax machine, and agrees to go immediately to the person who sent it at the famed CERN research laboratory in Switzerland.  Langdon is an expert in ancient symbology, and the image he received contained a symbol which belonged to ancient secret organization he thought was long dead.  The organization was the ancient brotherhood know as The Illuminati, the sworn enemy of the Catholic Church.  The dead man was a famed scientist of strong Christian beliefs who had been working at CERN.  Langdon quickly learns that a massive time bomb has been hidden somewhere in the Vatican, and so begins his hectic race to try to prevent the murder of more prominent Christians and locate the bomb before the Vatican and all of its art and treasure are reduced to rubble.  If you have read The Da Vinci Code, you will quickly recognize Brown's style of quick moving action and constant suspense.  If you have ever been to Rome and visited the Vatican, you'll find it very hard to put down, I think I read the book in three days.  I did not rate this book as high as The Da Vinci Code, which I think is a more scholarly work, and because I was somewhat disappointed in the ending, but I can't say more than that.
Reviewed by Dennis  August 2004

Bel Canto  by Ann Patchett  Harper Collins 2001  Rating  10
In the Vice President's mansion of a South American country, diplomatic guests from several countries are assembled for a birthday party for Katsumi Hosokawa.  Hosokawa is the chief of a major Japanese company and the party was arranged in the hope that his company would establish a plant in the South American country bringing jobs to its sad economy.  Hosokawa, however, had no such plans and would not have gone near the party had it not been for the fact that the hosts had arranged for the world's greatest soprano, Roxane Coss, to sing there in his honor.  Hosokawa had been an opera lover since his youth and Roxane Coss was, in his mind, an opera diva to be worshipped.  So he went, with his multi-lingual translator, Gen Wantanabe.  No sooner had the Diva sang, than the mansion was invaded and taken over by a large group of heavily armed terrorists intent on capturing the country's President.  Mr. Hosokawa, Roxane Coss and all of the hundreds of guests were made to lie flat on their backs and remain silent while the terrorists took control of the building.  The terrorist act did not go as planned, and what resulted was a stalemate which lasted much longer than was expected.  In the course of the long wait, the behavior of both terrorists and the hostages changed.  Relationships developed between hostages and between hostages and terrorists, and for some of them, what began as terror, developed into bliss.  Ann Patchett, who was showered with awards for this work of fiction, has indeed written a wonderful novel.  I have waited a long time for a story matching the scope and beauty of de Bernieres Captain Corelli's Mandolin to come along.  This book has well justified that wait, its a wonderful story, beautifully told by a young woman who lives not far from here in Tennessee.  I plan to read it again sometime.
Reviewed by Dennis  May 2004

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency  by Alexander McCall Smith  Anchor Books 2002  Rating  7
Mma (Preecious) Ramotswe is a private detective, in fact the only female private detective in Botswana in Africa.  She has an office with a secretary, two desks, two chairs, a phone a typewriter, a teapot with three cups and an old white van to get around in.  "What else does a Detective Agency really need?"  Her father had worked hard and at the time of his death was the proud owner of 180 cattle.  That summer the rains had been good and the cattle well fed, they looked good and she sold them for a good price.  With the money from the sale she set up the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency.  She had read the book on how to be a Private Detective, hired a secretary, hung up a sign and waited for the first client to arrive.  After a slow beginning, Mma Ramotswe did very well as Botswana's first and only female Private Detective, she adopted some unusual but usually very effective ways to solving her clients' problems.  This is a wonderful little book about the life and loves of Precious Ramotswe as told by Alexander McCall Smith, Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University.  The author was born in Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana.  He has written over 50 books on a wide variety of subjects including children's' books and one entitled "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" a collection of short stories.  Its a delightful, easy to read book, ideal for a rainy weekend.  The book was voted one of the International Books of the Year by the (UK) Times Literary Supplement.
Reviewed by Dennis   May 2004

The Birth Of Venus  by Sarah Dunant  Random House 2004  Rating  -  9
This book, as the Brits say, is "right up my alley".  An historical novel about a fascinating time in the history of the world, and beautifully told.  Alessandra Cecchi is the teenage daughter of a prosperous merchant and prominent family in Florence in the late 15th century - a child of the Renaissance, schooled in classical literature and languages and deeply interested in art.  Florence had bloomed under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici.  Painting, sculpture and poetry had flourished under his generosity.  It was the time of Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri and Alessandro Botticelli, and the Cecchi family's business in expensive cloth flourished.  Lorenzo de' Medici died in 1492, and so ended the private governance which the Medici's had long exercised over Florence.  In his stead came Girolamo Savonarola, Prior of San Marcos monastery, who claimed to speak with God, hated all things decorative, regarded Medici's artists and sculptors as "pagans' and called for the "bonfire of the vanities", in which all things artistic and decorative were to be turned over to his band of followers and brought to the town square to be burned in a huge bonfire which lasted several days. It was at the time of Lorenzo's death that Alessandra's father, Poalo Cecchi brought to the house a young artist he had discovered in the north, to paint the frescos for the family's chapel.  Alessandra became deeply interested in the young painter, but conventions of the time forbade her having any direct unchaperoned contact with him.  Life in Florence changed rapidly under the increasingly repressive rule of Savonarola and his followers, and in the face of an expected invasion by the King of France and his army, Alessandra's parents insist that like all other young virgins, she either enter a convent for the protection of her virtue, or she marry the older man whom they have selected for her who could also give her that protection.  In this deeply flawed marriage and against the backdrop of the turbulence in Florence, Alessandra was able to more easily make contact with the young painter.  This is a wonderful tale by this new English novelist, flawed only by a couple of surprising appearances of occasional 20th century American vernacular into the otherwise Florentine dialogue.  If they are edited out in subsequent printings, it will only serve to make my first edition more rare.  It is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend.
Reviewed by Dennis  April 2004

Paranoia by Joseph Finder   2004 St. Martin's Press   Rating -  5
Adam Cassidy is a low level, lack-luster underachiever in a high tech company.  His forté seems to be that of a scam artist and accomplished liar.  He hated his job in the California company and moved there from Manhattan only in order to take care of his Father who is suffering with end-stage emphysema.  A Father incidentally who hates everyone, complains about everything and treats Adam, his only child, like dirt.  Out of the blue, it seems, Adam decides to indulge in a little cyber crime by way of invading the company's computer system to get access to spending accounts to do what?  Why . . .  to throw a high energy and expensive going-away party, paid for by the company, for an old loading dock worker.  Needless to say, he got caught, tried to lie his way out, nearly succeeded and so impressed his bosses by his braggadocio that they decide to gussie him up to appear to be a hot-shot Product Manager type and get him planted as a mole into the upper echelon of their number one competitor, from whence he could then feed back strategic information.  So begins then this tale which proceeds into the rarified upper atmosphere of the high-tech corporate lifestyle embellished with Beluga caviar. Georgio Armani suits, Porsches and penthouse apartments, and by page 50 Adam is in his new job as corporate spy.  Its not a serious book, I can't think of a single quotable line, but Hey! they can't all be literary masterpieces and besides, there is no gang violence, no murder, no rape, incest or other mind-bending wierdo bazooko.  One thing I can't figure is why is it titled "Paranoia"?   So if you have a couple of days off with nothing to do, your taxes are filed, its too early for spring cleaning and you don't need a new intellectual challenge right now, then give it a shot.  Otherwise if you're busy, wait a couple of months, by Summertime they'll be selling the book at five bucks apiece on ABE Books.
Reviewed by Dennis February, 2004

The da Vinci Code  by Dan Brown  2003 Doubleday  Rating  -  10
This is really a wonderful book.  I have thoroughly enjoyed a three day read of this novel which I really could hardly put down.  Not only did I have to consciously stop myself from peeking at the end of the book (which is really never a problem for me), but I dare not even look at the next page (and that's hard).  The elderly Jacques Sauniére, curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris is shot down by an assassin in the Grand gallery of the world's most famous art museum, Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University is in Paris at the time as the result of a request from Sauniére to meet with him that day.   French Police Captain Bezu Fache, who is referred to by his own subordinates as le Toureau ( the Bull) takes charge of the case and "carries himself like an angry ox".  To his dismay, Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist, who is not only an attractive young female, but also one trained in England, arrives at the scene of the crime to help unravel the many cryptic messages left by Sauniére as he was dying.  So begins this wonderful mystery and the reader is taken on a 48 hours roller coaster ride through Paris, London, Rome and Scotland. It is a wonderfully constructed tale, full of wonderfully constructed religious symbology, some of which you have probably heard before however, but don't allow that to scare you off. I found it absolutely fascinating.   If you have been to the Louvre since the glass pyramid was added, or to Westminster Cathedral, this book will be even more fascinating for you.  I had to go to the attic to bring down our print copy of da Vinci's Last Supper to see if I could see the same thing that Brown said was there, and I can't wait to go back to Westminster Cathedral.  Its a great read.  So why did I not give it my top score of 10, after all, its been on the New York Times best seller list for 44 weeks?  Well, I think a really great book, in addition to all of the other qualifications, is one that you can read again and again, and enjoy it every time.  This book does not quite meet that test.  I can maybe read it once more, but not with the same suspense or excitement.
Well I have now read it a second time, and found it again a very good read.  In fact its more than that.  After 106 weeks on the NY Times best sellers list, its really one of the great books of the decade.  I have upgraded my rating to a 10.
Reviewed by Dennis January, 2004

Our Lady Of The Forest  by David Guterson  2003 Alfred A. Knopf  Rating  -  7
I have read David Guterson's two previous novels, Snow Falling On Cedars and East Of The Mountains and found the first excellent and the second very good.  I found this one only "fair".  Obviously a very skilled writer, Guterson does his usual fine job of developing his characters, giving them not only flesh, but also personas, personalities - "Hey! I know somebody like that" . . . and he does that well.  However, the story, for me, lacked some credibility from the outset.  Unless a tale is clearly a fantasy, and them I don't read anyway, it has to be somewhat credible, and this one came up short for me.  The idea that Ann, a sickly, homeless, child-like teenager who had had two abortions by the time she was sixteen, and Carolyn, an older pot-smoking mushroom picker living in a van, could capture the attention of the young Parish Priest and cause thousands of "the faithful" to believe their dubious story, was for me, too much to swallow.  However, I hung in there, David Guterson is a good writer.  He stuck with his characters, and developed others.  The book is really quite readable, Guterson has a skilful way of establishing relationships between his characters and making that work for the story, and as the tale went along my skepticism mellowed.  Usually, if a novel hasn't "got" me after a hundred or so pages, I put it down and never pick it up again.  This book, I decided to go with and see what would happen.  Well, I never write about the end of a book, and I won't now, except to say that it came right out of left field, was certainly not one of the possible endings I had wondered about.  The ending of Snow falling On Cedars also came out of left field and took me by surprise, but in that case it was cleverly constructed and entirely believable.  This ending was not so well constructed, left me somewhat puzzled, not about the story, but about the writer . . . why did he decide to end it that way when there were so many other better possibilities?  What I hope is that he just needed to get this book off his chest in order to write the book he really wants to write, because he's a very good writer and I will buy his next book no matter what its about.
Reviewed by Dennis December 2003

The Kite Runner  by Khaled Hosseini  2003 Riverhead Books    Rating  -  10
This is a truly magnificent book!  Without a doubt one of the very best stories I have ever read, not just because it is so beautifully written, but also because it is an important story.  It takes place during the last thirty years of turbulent history in Afghanistan, and deals with a family and their love for each other and for their country.  Author Khalid Hosseini no doubt has drawn heavily on his own life experiences to bring us this story.  He was born to a wealthy family in Kabul Afghanistan and came to America as a political refugee in 1980.  In The Kite Runner Amir is the son of a prominent Pashtun family, his best friend, Hassan is the son of their servant man and a Hazara, a much hated ethnic minority.  Despite their ethnic differences, Amir and Hassan are close friends throughout their childhood, both of them always mindful of Hassan's servant status.  The two boys grow and learn, one of them privileged, the other deprived, both of them secure in the bosom of a prominent Pashtun family, both loved by the patriarch of that family, while the winds of change blew ceaselessly over the Afghan landscape.  This story traces the lives of Amir and Baba his proud Father, and of Hassan and Ali his Father and faithful servant to Baba.  In July of 1973, the people of Afghanistan woke to learn that while their King Zahir Shah was away in Italy, the Afghan monarchy had been ended in a bloodless coup led by the King's cousin Daoud Kahn.  For a while there was peace in their lives but it was not to last.  Before the end of that decade came first the Russians with soldiers, tanks and helicopter gun ships, and when they left, came the years of wanton destruction by the countless tribal war lords.  This was to be ended, they thought, mercifully, by the arrival of the Taliban, who at first brought order to the chaos, but later proved to be the most ruthless of killers.  Amir and his Father left Afghanistan when the Russians arrived and came to America to settle in an Afghan community in San Francisco.  However, the ties to their homeland and to the family they had left behind were to haunt them for years.  One day, Amir received a telephone call from a friend in Pakistan and decided he must return. What he found there was a revelation of the awful changes which had been brought to his homeland and his people since his childhood.   Don't buy this book because it is about that part of the world which changed our lives, don't buy it because it is a story about Muslims, don't even buy it because it is in a way a modern "Gone With The Wind" a story of a strong family in turbulent times.  Buy it because it is a wonderful meaningful story, beautifully, sensitively written, by a man whose first language was not even our language, but who has mastered it as few of us have, and who has shown an unusual understanding of the workings of the human mind in times of great mental and physical stress.
Reviewed by Dennis  August 2003

Atonement  by Ian McEwan   2002 Nan A. Talese, Doubleday   Rating  -  9
Ian McEwan was  born in England in 1948, he lives in Oxford.  He has written several novels, one of them Amsterdam was awarded the Booker Prize in 1998.   This novel, his latest, is set in rural England, the "Home Counties" outside of London, it is 4 years before the outbreak of WWII..  It is an England of class divisions, accentuated by the horrors of war soon to come.  The Tallis family lives in relative luxury in a country estate which they inherited from Jack Tallis' father.  Jack works in the Government in London and seems to spend a lot of nights away from home.  Emily, the mother is a sickly woman, given to frequent debilitating migraine headaches. On the hottest day of summer 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister, Cecilia, strip off her clothes and step into the fountain in the garden of their country home. She is watched by Robbie Turner, childhood friend and ward of Cecilia’s father and who, like Cecilia, has recently returned from Cambridge University. By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever.  What follows is a story of lies and deception, of war and misery, of shame and guilt, of anger, atonement and the difficulties of forgiveness.  It is a story of quite exceptional depth, exploring the very foundations of human emotions.   McEwan is a master storyteller and weaves a tale which is at once eloquent and very readable.  In 2001 this novel was short-listed for the Booker prize.
Reviewed by Dennis  May 2003

The Corrections    by Jonathan Franzen   2001 Farrar, Straus and Giroux    Rating  -  8
This is the book all the fuss was about a couple of years ago.  It won (I think) a Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2001, and Oprah Winfrey selected it that year as an "Oprah Book Club Book" or whatever she called them.  Franzen reportedly regarded that as a dubious honor, shunned Winfrey and declined to attend her party to honor him.  Well, its a good book, but not a great book, at times less than credible and at times, brilliant.  It deals with a Midwest Family from the nineteen fifties, three children now, in the nineteen nineties, all grown and each dealing poorly with their individual calamities, Mother vainly trying to hold on to the Family traditions of their childhood, Father steadily decaying from the effects of Parkinson's disease.  On this canvas, Franzen paints the individual portraits of Gary once a successful stockbroker, now suffering severe depression and trying to convince even his own Wife that he is not.  Chip, who dipped his pen in the company inkwell while he was a professor, lost his position, and proceeded to flounder like a fish out of water; and Denise, who's marriage has broken, is apparently very good at the restaurant business, but can't make up her mind if she's straight or lesbian and gets fired from her job for the most unusual reason. All the while, Mother Enid is trying to get them all together for a family Christmas "like we used to have".  While I was reading it, I couldn't help relating Enid to Hyacinth - Mrs Bucket on the English TV comedy "Keeping Up Appearances".  It is a good novel, in fact I will read it again, and I do recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis  April 2003 

The Secret Life of Bees  by Sue Monk Kidd   2002 Viking   Rating  -  8
This, Sue Monk Kidd's debut novel, is a splendid telling of a teenaged girl's tormented life.  Dominated by an abusive Father and haunted by uncertain memories of a tragic childhood, Lily Owens is raised by Rosaleen a black field worker whom her Father plucked out of his peach orchard to cook and care for the child after her Mother died.  One day in 1964, having heard about the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen decides to take Lily and head into town to register to vote.  On the way she runs afoul of the law and both of them end up in jail.  Lily's Father bails her out and takes her home for punishment, leaving Rosaleen in jail and at the mercy of white roughnecks. At this, Lily finally throws off the shackles, departs her South Carolina home, springs Rosaleen from jail and takes to the open road headed for Tiburon South Carolina, a name written on the back of the only photograph she had of her Mother.   They wind up in the home of a trio of black beekeeping sisters.  What follows is a wonderful telling of Lily's gradual healing in the bosom of this loving family while she tends the hives and learns of the importance of replacing a dead queen bee.
reviewed by Dennis  February 2003

Red Rabbit  by Tom Clancy    2002 G.P. Putnam & Sons    Rating - 5
This latest from the pen of Tom Clancy is likely to wind up under many Christmas Trees next week.  I hope the Clancy fans won't be too disappointed.  I have read several previous Clancy novels and enjoyed them all, but this one does not measure up to his usual level of action and excitement.  The story covers an earlier period in the life of Clancy's character, Jack Ryan.  Its 1980, long before Clancy crashed a jet plane into the US Capitol building, blew up Denver stadium , captured a Russian submarine and eventually made Jack Ryan President of the United States.  Ryan is working as a CIA Analyst in London.  On his first day at work, he comes across a communication which he finds very disturbing.  In Moscow, the KGB, the great enemy of that time, find the same document and reacts as he expected.  So the stage is set for the battle of the "spooks", as Clancy calls the American, English and Russian spies.  However, it takes Clancy 350 of the 600 plus pages of this book, to get the story moving.  I had the impression that Mr. Clancy had to deliver 600 pages to his publisher, and the result is that this novel has, for him, a high percentage of inert ingredients in order to make the goal.  It does eventually become a real Clancy thriller and does for a while, reach the "I can't put this book down right now" level, but the first half of the book was frankly boring with far too much emphasis on worn out clichés about the English way of life (most of which, by the way, are no longer true).
Reviewed by Dennis  December 2002

The Lovely Bones  by Alice Sebold   2002 Little, Brown & Co.  Rating - 8
This book begins "My name is Salmon, like the fish, first name Susie.  I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."  It is indeed the story of Susie Salmon a ninth grader, about to attend Fairfax High in rural Pennsylvania, but brutally murdered on December 6, 1973.  It is the story of her murder and of the days and years that followed and indeed it is written by Susie herself from her vantage point in heaven.  When I first heard of the story of this book, I bought it because the story is so unusual, and because it had been 10 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.   After I'd read the first chapter, which, by the way, is not gruesome, I really wondered if I would finish this book.  However, after a while, this story reaches out to grab you and by the time I was half way through, I couldn't put it down.  From her place in "her" heaven, Susie is able not only to watch her Family and friends as well as her murderer, but also to know their thoughts.  She watches her Father's dogged determination to find her killer, and her Mother's despair.  She marvels at the strength and courage of her Sister Lindsey and the undying love of her friends Ruth and Ray.  Alice Sebold skillfully introduces you to her characters one by one, and slowly weaves her tale of their disbelief, sorrow, recovery and finally, triumph.  Its a very readable book, I don't plan to put it on my top shelf, but I did spend a couple of very pleasant afternoons with it, and for that I thank Ms. Sebold.
Reviewed by Dennis September 2002

A Thousand Acres  by Jane Smiley   1991 Alfred A. Knopf   Rating  -  6
This book had been suggested to me for reading by at least three people, furthermore, it won all kinds of prizes including Pulitzer when it was published ten years ago. So how could I ignore it?   Its a good, readable story about the aging patriarch Larry and his three daughters, Ginny, Rose and Caroline who live and farm in Iowa.  Its a dysfunctional family to begin with and when Larry decides to divide his property between the daughters and Caroline the youngest won't go along with it, it gets much worse.  It peaks with a monstrous storm after which Larry descends into madness. . . . Sound familiar? . . . How about Lear, and his daughters Goneril, Regan and the unconforming Cordelia, along with storms, madness and division of property, a famous story told by one William Shakespeare?  Jane Smiley made no secret of the fact that she had written a modern version of King Lear.  She even alluded to it in the dust jacket notes.  She threw in child molestation, attempted murder and suicide to spice it up.  I repeat, its a good, readable story, I enjoyed reading it, but Pulitzer prize worthy it is not, not by a long shot.  At times, its frankly boring, lets face it, how excited can you get about a struggling Iowa farm.  So there is ample opportunity for the author to develop and define the characters, and she does.  However all of the main players in the tale then turn around and do things completely out of line with the characters developed for them and one wonders "Whoa, wait a  minute, why did she do that, did I miss something? "  Predictably they all fell apart at the end, not with a crash, but a whimper, and I put the book down with a certain measure of disbelief.
Reviewed by Dennis   August 2002

A Confederacy of Dunces  by John Kennedy Toole  1980 Louisiana State University Press  Rating  -  9
In this wonderful book, John Kennedy Toole has created some of the most memorable characters I have ever encountered all in one book, and placed them in the back streets of New Orleans.  There's Gus Levy the owner of Levy Pants and a henpecked husband, there's Mrs. Reilly, a single Mum and doting mother and Santa Battaglia who's always trying to get her fixed up.  There's Patrolman Mancuso of the New Orleans Police Dept. who can't get it right, Gonzales and Trixie the most unlikely employees of Levy Pants.  There's Lana Lee the shady proprietress of a sleazy bar, who's got something going on the side, Darlene who pushes drinks there for her but really wants to be a stripper and there's Jones, a masterful character whom Toole has created and endowed with immense wit.  Finally there's Ignatius Reilly, Toole's piéce de résistance.  An obese, perverse, intelligent, devious, lazy slob, given to gargantuan episodes of gastro-intestinal problems.    Toole then places these characters into situations which defy imagination, but makes it believable.  Its a novel which is at once a comedy,  . . .several times I almost collapsed with laughter while reading it . . . and a tragedy.  Its greatest tragedy is that the Author committed suicide in 1969 at the age of thirty two, thus depriving us of more of this quite brilliant work.  It was his Mother who persisted for ten years and finally got this wonderful story published, and in 1981 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
reviewed by Dennis August 2002

The Testament  by John Grisham  1999 Doubleday   Rating  -  5
An aging multi-billionaire with a penchant for pretty women, is facing his ultimate demise.  Wheel-chair bound, and surrounded by his motley crew of descendents by various mothers, he contemplates the last of his many "Last will and Testaments".  His children and their children are a bunch of losers, who have all squandered their coming-of-age endowments.  The Lawyer who will eventually take center stage is a three-time loser, an alcoholic, divorced, misguided individual who is under investigation by the IRS.  I'm telling you, this book has everything, alligators, deadly snakes, airplane crashes and a whole bunch of crooked lawyers.  Its only Grisham's ability to write that saves it.  However, if you're taking a couple of days off, its a holiday read.  I spent a couple of really lazy days on the porch with it.  Its a diversion, does not require you to think, and doesn't offend the senses.  Don't spend much money on it, my copy was given to me by a good friend.
Reviewed by Dennis   August 2002

The Blind Assassin  by Margaret Atwood   2000 Nan A. Talese  Rating  -  8
The tale begins with a death in 1945 and 571 pages later it ends the same way. In the pages between them, Margaret Atwood tells the story of Iris Chase and her sister Laura, daughters of a well-to-do, self made, Canadian industrialist. It covers the period from the 1930's through the 1990's, but its no ordinary tale, and Atwood is no ordinary storyteller.  One soon realizes that there's a story within this story, a very creative, fascinating story, which draws from the characters in the main event.  Margaret Atwood is indeed a wonderful storyteller, her characters are fully developed and richly detailed.  The story alternates between the present and the past, and cleverly between the main event and the sub story, but one is regularly brought back to the narrator in present time, as she ages and struggles to relate the story which she needs to tell. This is a book which needs to be read twice, and when winter arrives, I'll dig it out again.
Reviewed by Dennis  July 2002

The Human Stain  by Philip Roth    2000  Houghton Mifflin    Rating - 9
This is the latest from one of America's master storytellers.  He tells the story about Coleman Silk, retired College Professor and Dean of Faculty at Athena College.  It is the year 1998 and the country is occupied with impeachment of the President and the sleazy details of his encounters with Monica.  In a small New England College town, 71 year-old Professor Silk had quit in anger after 20 plus years teaching Classics at the University level.  Anger at the accusation made against him by his colleagues, which had sullied his reputation at the end of an otherwise stellar career, and which, he said, brought about the death of his wife.  Maybe it was defiance which caused him to embark on a secret affair with a thirty-five year old woman, an illiterate janitor at his former College.  However, that was not the main secret in Coleman Silk's life.  He had another one,  a doosie! A secret he'd even kept from his late wife and their four children throughout their lives.  Author Roth even kept the secret from the reader for 100 pages.  Roth is able to paint a very detailed and descriptive portrait of his characters, and after 100 pages I thought I knew this Professor so well that when the secret was revealed to me, I had to go back and re-read the first pages to be sure I hadn't missed something.  The story is beautifully written and quite captivating.  I did not rate it a ten only because the story itself, not the telling of it, does not quite rise to the level set by Louis de Berniéres Corelli's Mandolin.  In Roth's novel I could remain a passive observer, whereas in de Berniéres story, I really felt anger, fear, joy and sorrow.   It is, nevertheless, a splendid novel and I can heartily recommend it.
Reviewed by Dennis   February, 2002

Close Range, Wyoming Stories  by Annie Proulx    1999 Scribner    Rating  -  8
Annie Proulx hales from Wyoming, and these eleven short stories are about people in and of her home state.  Ranchers, Truckers, Bull riders and Bronco busters, Cowboys and Fools old and not old.  They are all people living pretty close to the ground, in stories of desperation, loneliness, hopelessness, occasional irrational violence and several instances of unwholesome love.  These are hard and sometimes very raw stories, played out in the rugged magnificence that is Wyoming.  It's clear that Annie Proulx loves her home state, only that way could she know these people and their ways so well.  As a writer she has few peers, and these stories, in spite of the down and out characters painted in them, are made fascinating because of her brilliance.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2002

In The Fall  by Jeffery Lent     2000 Atlantic Monthly Press    Rating  -   7
Like "Cold Mountain", this books begins with a soldier, wounded at the end of the Civil War, walking back home.  This time it's a Union soldier who walks back to Vermont.  Like the other book it's also a first novel for its author.   Perhaps the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, which also published Cold Mountain, thought they had another run-away best seller on their hands because the first print run was much larger than the other book. However, while this is a very readable book, it's not of the same caliber as Cold Mountain.  It covers a time frame of great significance in American history beginning at the end of the Civil War, and covering the years of prohibition, the turn of the Century, the emergence of the automobile and the early days of the Great Depression.  It relates the life stories of Norman Pelham, his son Jamie and Grandson Foster.  Norman's war wound is tended by a runaway black slave, whom he falls in love with, marries and takes back to Vermont to run the family farm.  After many years and having raised a family, she makes a trip back to her former North Carolina home to seek and face the "demons from which she fled" many years before.   It's a journey which changes both her life and that of her Family.  Grandson Foster eventually makes the same trip, to find what happened in Sweetboro North Carolina many years before, that his Grandmother would not speak about.  The book is an interesting tale, however given occasionally to lengthy passages of irrelevance.  Author Lent fails to adequately develop the characters of some of the key people around the central characters, to the point where the reader is occasionally puzzled by their behavior.   When a character is well developed, their words and actions are understood, perhaps even expected, when not so well developed however, then the authors needs to explain why certain things occur.  When neither is done, the reader is occasionally left somewhat puzzled.  Not a major shortcoming, but something which differentiates a great book from a good book.
Reviewed by Dennis  December 2001 

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx    1993 Charles Scribner    Rating   -  9
Quoyle, who's other name we never learn, was "born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns".  He was pretty much of a disaster in everything he tried to do, and he knew it. After a seemingly endless series of personal and professional failures, he finally agrees to join his Aunt, and together with his daughter, travels back to Newfoundland, the old Family seat.  She told him "you can be anything you want with a fresh start"  He goes back into the newspaper trade there, the only trade he knows, however this time, instead of minding the presses, he's writing the "Shipping news" column for the local newspaper.  Annie Proulx' unique writing style takes us rapidly through the ensuing years of Quoyles' life in the harsh environment of coastal Newfoundland.  In the process, she develops a rich collection of wonderful characters.  This book is beautifully written, and for it, Proulx was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 1994. It will soon be released as a major motion picture.
Reviewed by Dennis    November 2001

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver    2000 HarperCollins    Rating - 7
This is another fine Kingsolver novel, in fact, three stories in one, all taking place on one mountainside in Southern Appalachia.  Central to each of the stories is the theme of preservation of the wilderness, a theme richly served by Kingsolver who has an advanced degree in Biology.  High on the mountain, Deanna, a Biologist, lives alone in a rustic cabin, striving to protect the wildlife and particularly the Coyotes which, to the consternation of local farmers, are returning to the wild. Close to the base of the mountain, Lusa, newly widowed, struggles to create a new life as a farmer among her husband's surviving family members, while preserving her independence.  Nearby two elderly farmers, Nannie Rawley and Garnett Walker live in a state of rural armistice as she strives to maintain an organic environment in spite of by the pesticides and insecticides on the farm next door.  Inevitably, these three stories merge, but the final chapter, while cleverly conceived, was not completely satisfying.
Reviewed by Dennis    November 2001

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Berniéres      1994 Pantheon Books     Rating - 10
This is really one of the best books I have ever read, I really hope that they have done it justice with the movie.  So many people remember a story not because of the book, but because of the movie, and this story deserves to be remembered.  I have read the book twice, and enjoyed it more the second time.  So I'll read it again sometime .  Its the story of Doctor Iannis, his daughter Pelagia, their friends, and neighbors on the Greek island of Cephallonia, and Captain Antonio Corelli of the occupying Italian army.  It begins in the late 1930's and ends fifty years later.  Thus it encompasses the occupation of the island during the second world war, first by the Italians, who were kind and fun-loving, poor soldiers but good people, and later by the Nazis, who on the Island of Cephallonia, were barbaric murderers.  In writing this story, the author says he has tried to be as faithful as possible to the real history of the Island. Its a story of love, a story of war, a story of a Family, of bravery and cruelty, of pride and of pathos.  It is beautifully written, at once humorous and heartbreaking.  I hope you will sometime have the opportunity to read this book
Reviewed by Dennis      September 2001

The Stone Diaries  by  Carol Shields     1993 Viking Penguin     Rating - 9
The first chapter of this wonderful novel is entitled "Birth", the last, "Death".  In the 350 pages between them, Carol Shields weaves a magnificent tapestry of the life of Daisy Stone Goodwin.  Born in Manitoba, Canada in 1905, Daisy's story is told like an autobiography, complete with photographs.   Through marriage, childbirth, motherhood and eventually, old age in a nursing home in Florida.   This story is beautifully told with inspired imagination and one even gets a sense of the author's gentle concern for the main character when she reflects upon her inner feelings.
Reviewed by Dennis.  July 2001

Eye of The Needle  by  Ken Follett        1978   Harper Collins          Rating - 6
The action in this spy thriller takes place in England between 1939 and 1944, during the second world war.  British Military Intelligence had largely neutralized the German spy network in England except for the master spy known as Die Nadel, (the needle) who was also a ruthless killer.  If Die Nadel is able to uncover the great deception being planned by Winston Churchill, and communicate back to Germany the real military plans for the invasion of Normandy, the entire Allied operation known as "Overlord" will be jeopardized.  Its a fast moving action tale, however, not without weaknesses in the plot.  Its an easy 380 page read for a long weekend, it does not aspire to be a great literary work, and isn't.
Reviewed by Dennis, July 2001

Larry's Party  by  Carol Shields     1997   Viking Penguin      Rating - 5
Carol Shield's incredibly elegant descriptive writing is evident in this story about the life, loves, marriages and divorces of Larry Weller a floral designer from Winnipeg Canada..  However, Larry is not a very interesting chap to start off with and my interest in him diminished as the story went along.  It chronicles  a 20 year period starting in 1977, covering his marriages, firstly to Dorrie, a used car saleswoman, and secondly to Beth, who is preparing her doctoral dissertation on Women saints, during which time, Larry becomes an authority on Mazes!  Frank Sinatra once made a bet that he could make a hit out of any song written, and someone said "How about Old McDonald had a Farm", well you know the outcome of that.  I think Carol Shields is about the same, she couldn't write a bad book, but she could have picked a better tale.
Reviewed by Dennis.    June 2001

Cold Mountain  by  Charles Frazier     1997   Atlantic Monthly Press   Rating - 10
The Confederate soldier, Inman, had been wounded at the battle of Petersburg, and ended up in a hospital where he was left to essentially take care of his own wound or die.  It was there that he realized he'd had enough and decided to desert and walk back to his boyhood home on Cold Mountain, close to Waynesville in Western North Carolina.  On Cold Mountain, his sweetheart, Ada, who had led a sheltered life before the war, was trying to scratch out a living from the small farm left to her when her Father died.  So this story, a literary triumph for Frazier, chronicles Inman's journey homeward, staying off the beaten track to avoid the bounty hunters; and Ada's struggle to stay alive.  Charles Frazier's beautiful prose reveals his love for and knowledge of the forest and mountain life, and is also evidence of his unique insight into Man's relationship with nature and the beauty of solitude.
Reviewed by Dennis.  March 2001

The Poisonwood Bible  by   Barbara Kingsolver     1998   Harper Collins      Rating - 9
In 1959, Nathan Price, an Evangelical Baptist Preacher, leaves his rural Georgia home and with wife and 4 daughters, goes to the Belgian Congo to take over a Baptist Mission there.  Their arrival coincides with the Congo's struggle to free itself from centuries of Belgian Colonialism, and the resulting internal struggles for leadership.  Uniquely, the tale is narrated alternately by Price's Wife Orleanna and each of the four children, who, having grown up in the segregated South, were not without prejudice.  The fact that Barbara Kingsolver had lived in Africa, and the fact that she was trained as a Biologist, coupled with her masterful ability as a story teller, contribute in no small way to this wonderful novel, covering 30 years of triumph and tragedy in the lives of the five women.
Reviewed by Dennis.   March 2001

The House of Spirits  by   Isabel Allende     1985  Alfred A. Knopf      Rating - 7
Its the story of the Trueba family, through several generations, beginning in a South American Country at the turn of the century. Clara de Valle, who will become the matriarch of the family is endowed with unusual abilities, among them, the ability to read fortunes, predict the future and will inanimate objects to move.  She marries Esteban Trueba, a well to do but stern man, who builds for her a magnificent mansion, into which she invites her unusual friends.  The waning of the twentieth century brings with it significant changes in South America, and the Truebas become tragic victims of sweeping social change.   A very good novel.
Reviewed by Dennis.  February 2001

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas   by  James Patterson     2001  Little, Brown & Co.     Rating - 3
This book has been at the top of the NYT best seller list, however, I guess its not my cup of tea. I didn't even get through the first chapter of "Message in a Bottle" but I did get through this book even though I did skip from time to time when it became too sugary for me.  Its about a 30 something single professional woman in New York who falls in love with the man of her dreams and thinks she has landed in heaven on earth and won the love lottery.  Then he walks out, leaving her a diary to read, which of course breaks her heart.  A very light-weight story with little or no character development, a blatant attempt at a tear-jerker which fails to jerk.   Mr. Patterson should go back to his shoot-em-up detective novels, or whatever he previously was making his living at.
Reviewed by Dennis.  August 2001

Ragtime  by  E.L. Doctorow      1974  Random House     Rating 10
Back in 1974, when this novel was first published, I had just taken a job as European R&D Director for a large American Multi-National company, and didn't have a lot of time for reading novels.  So I just read this book a few weeks ago, what a wonderful novel.  I felt as though I'd discovered a great literary treasure and then realized that everyone else has known about for years.  Have you ever had that feeling?.  Its an historical novel, my favorite reading, dealing with the first 15 years of the 20th Century in America.  Woven into this tale are some of the most famous names of the time, Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Sigmund Freud and others.  With these characters, the Author, with his enormous talent, wove the historical events of the time into a magnificent tale which for me, was really hard to put down.
Reviewed by Dennis July 2001