What is Left the Daughter By Howard Norman

264 pages

Weird, sad stuff. I felt as though I should have liked this book – it was certainly stirring and shocking and well-written. It is also overflowing with tragedy - the main character’s parents’ deaths are the town scandal, the story is set during WWII and another tragedy occurs involving a U-boat off the coast of their hometown in Nova Scotia, a murder is at the center of the plotline. It has all the makings of a touching book, but I felt left out, held at a distance from the story. Perhaps I supposed to feel that way – the book is structured to be an apology letter the protagonist writes to his estranged daughter. I understood that deep fracturing of a family was supposed to be the heart of this novel – but I didn’t feel as though the story had a heartbeat.

Pandora's star, by Peter F. Hamilton

This is a broad sci-fi epic, with many characters, plots, and a mysterious entity called the Starflyer.
One aspect of this novel is a story of alien contact. We observe a sign of intelligence, we investigate, and that action comes back to haunt us. The aliens have now seen us, and are intent on taking the worlds we control and eliminating the human competition. There is much more to this novel and it's impossible to summarize in a few lines, but Hamilton brought these new worlds and their societies to life for me. Now I'll just need to find a copy of the sequel, Judas Unchained, to find out how it all ends, and I look forward to reading further works by Hamilton.
print: 758 pages

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Intriguing look at a post-revolution future America, where an authoritarian Capital dominates all the remaining 13 'states', keeping them poor, impoverished, and subservient. The extreme dominance requires each state to supply 2 teen subjects for the 'Hunger Games', where they must fight each other to the death, with the last survivor richly awarded. Much of course is reminiscent of gladiator fights, but with slick media production elements thrown in to spice it up. All citizens are required to watch each night, as a reminder of the power of the Capital. Collins has given a rich description to the pageantry of the event, and cast an appealing girl as the heroine. Good plot twists with a few surprises, but also some melodrama. First in a series. 374 pg.

All About Eva by Deidre Berry

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

Eva is a party girl from Chicago who goes to New York, has close friends and a job. Her life turns upside down with man and financial trouble that sends her home to family where she finds the answers to her life’s problems.

Print:  280 pages.

Audio:  6 hrs. 50 min.

The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton

(Posted for Ann Roberts)

Interspersed with quotes from The Good Book, The Bible Salesman is classic Clyde Edgerton, a story full of quirky North Carolina characters, drifting gently through the landscape.  Henry Dampier is a young man selling Bibles intended for free distribution, in 1950s rural North Carolina.  Henry’s moral dilemmas are many.  He asks for free Bibles to distribute to the needy and sells them for a profit, he finds numerous inconsistencies in the very book that he purports to love and believe in as he is making his sales pitch, and his raging hormones compel him to lust after the young proprietress of a fruit stand that he meets during his travels.  As a gullible and simple country boy, Henry ends up being duped into participating in a car theft ring, under the illusion that he is working for the FBI, when he’s not selling Bibles or thinking of Marleen Green, of the fruit stand.  As a Bible selling, auxiliary FBI agent, Henry is called upon to drive the stolen cars to a drop off location for repainting, is asked to bury a moccasin bitten cat twice for a weeping older customer, and takes a ride with a 91-year-old lady with failing eyesight who hasn’t driven since she had her stroke awhile back.  Edgerton writes a lovely, gentle story, where love and truth triumph over deceit and confusion in the end.

Hardback, 238 pages

Big Trouble by Dave Barry

(Posted for Ann Roberts)

I can’t believe I read this.  I’ve always like Dave Barry’s cartoons, and while this book certainly had its ridiculously funny moments and characters, there were things in the telling of this tale that I just couldn’t get past.  For example, amidst the ridiculous plot line, reminiscent of a Carl Hiaasen story, a young mother is forced to expose her breasts at gun point in front of her family by the criminals.  Is this supposed to be funny?  The episode was included in a scene in which a brawny cop and the woman’s husband are handcuffed to a large entertainment center which they end up dragging out into the street-funny stuff-but the treatment of the wife and daughter in this scene is disturbing and questionable.  

Filled with truly inept criminals and an insanely ridiculous plot line, the book has its moments, but not nearly enough. 

Hardback, 255 pages

Kings Row by Henry Bellamann

(Posted for Ann Roberts)

To continue my foray into Missouri authors, and because it landed on my desk, I decided to read Kings Row. Even though the author was a native of Fulton, MO, he like the main character in the book, Parris Mitchell, was educated locally and abroad.  He held positions at both Vassar and Julliard, wrote poetry and novels, and died in New York.  Kings Row was made into a movie in 1942, and starred Ronald Reagan, as Drake McHugh, Parris’s lifelong friend.

Although the book is quite lengthy, 674 pages, it is a truly engaging tale that keeps the reader engrossed. The book is populated with characters that we might not (but probably should) expect to find in a small town; people with extraordinary musical ability, a prostitute, a misunderstood gay kid, a doctor that is both sadist and sexual predator, and men and women of every description in between, including the kind, gracious and noble, and truly corrupt.

Set in late 19^th, early 20^th century small town mid-west, there are many surprises in this tale, much of which centers around the lives of best friends, Parris and Drake.  Their young lives are filled with crushes on girls and for Drake in particular, many sexual escapades, at a time in history that we usually fancy the men to have been chivalrous and the women virginal. Parris leaves Kings Row to study psychology in Germany, and returns home to aid his good friend, Drake, who has been injured in a train accident and mutilated by the local sadistic doctor, presumably to keep him away from his daughter. Parris takes up practice at the state mental hospital in his home town and works alongside Drake’s faithful wife, Randy, to rehabilitate him in body and spirit.

In addition to affording a great tale, Kings Row is beautifully written, and only once did I get bogged down in the writing, which at times, reminded me of Proust, and mentally said, “Okay. I get it. The guy’s in emotional pain.”  Whether Henry Bellamann is considered a Missouri author or not, Missouri should claim him, as he is a writer of some significance. Because the novel is so lengthy and involves so many characters, it is probably worth a second read and I recommend it to all who love a good story.

Paperback, 674 pages

Summer of Fire by Linda Jacobs

This historical novel is set in Yellowstone National Park in 1988, when the Greater Yellowstone Area was consumed by a fire encompassing 1,600,000 acres. Enter Clare Chance, a firefighter fleeing dark memories in Houston, TX, to help with trainees at the Park; seasoned Vietnam helicopter pilot Chris Deering who is not afraid to take risks much to his wife's dismay; and Park Ranger Dr. Steve Haywood who has turned to the bottle to blot out the pain of losing his wife and child in an airplane accident four years earlier. As their lives intertwine, each must face personal and physical challenges in order to survive. 483 pages.

Digging for the truth, by Josh Bernstein

Bernstein covers his early and formative years with admirable brevity, then dives right in to his adventures filming episodes of his show on the History Channel. He recounts not only the challenges and dangers he faced in filming the episodes, but also relates a little of the significance of each of the sites and mysteries he was investigating. Despite exhaustion, a demanding itinerary, and some inopportune parasitic infections, he seems ready to hit the road to investigate the next site.
audio: 7.5 hours
print: 198 pages