#105: Tumbleweeds

Tumbleweeds, by Leila Meacham

(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012)

Summary:
"Recently orphaned, eleven-year-old Cathy Benson feels she has been dropped into a cultural and intellectual wasteland when she is forced to move from her academically privileged life in California to the small town of Kersey in the Texas Panhandle where the sport of football reigns supreme. She is quickly taken under the unlikely wings of up-and-coming gridiron stars and classmates John Caldwell and Trey Don Hall, orphans like herself, with whom she forms a friendship and eventual love triangle that will determine the course of the rest of their lives. Taking the three friends through their growing up years until their high school graduations when several tragic events uproot and break them apart, the novel expands to follow their careers and futures until they reunite in Kersey at forty years of age. Told with all of Meacham's signature drama, unforgettable characters, and plot twists, readers will be turning the pages, desperate to learn how it all plays out."

Opening Line:
"The call he'd been expecting for twenty-two years came at midnight when he was working late at his desk."

My Take:
Silly, entertaining, but forgettable fluff. We all have our guilty pleasures; this one wasn't the best of its kind I've read, but it wasn't the worst, either. That's all.

#78: Spring Fever

Spring Fever, by Mary Kay Andrews

(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2012)

Summary:
"The New York Times bestselling author of Summer Rental delivers her delicious new escapist novel about small towns, old flames, and deep secrets.

"Annajane Hudgens truly believes she is over her ex-husband, Mason Bayless. They’ve been divorced for four years, she’s engaged to a new, terrific guy, and she’s ready to leave the small town where she and Mason had so much history. She is so over Mason that she has absolutely no problem attending his wedding to the beautiful, intelligent, delightful Celia. But when fate intervenes and the wedding is called to a halt as the bride is literally walking down the aisle, Annajane begins to realize that maybe she’s been given a second chance. Maybe everything happens for a reason. And maybe, just maybe, she wants Mason back. But there are secrets afoot in this small southern town. On the peaceful surface of Hideaway Lake, Annajane discovers that the past is never really gone. Even if there are people determined to keep Annajane from getting what she wants, happiness might be hers for the taking, and the life she once had with Mason in this sleepy lake town might be in her future."

Opening Line:
"From her seat in the sanctuary of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Annajane Hudgens wondered if there had ever been a more flawless day for a wedding."

My Take:
I seem to be saying or at least implying this a lot lately, but meh. I expected fluffy chick lit, sure, but it wasn't particularly original or exciting at that. It's pretty obvious from the very beginning that Celia will turn out to be evil and Annajane and Mason will get back together, and sure enough, they do. The means by which they get there aren't especially novel or entertaining. In short, Summer Rental was much more fun. I came away from this one mostly feeling like I'd read variations of this story many times before.

#45: All Other Nights

All Other Nights, by Dara Horn (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009)

Summary:

"'How is tonight different from all other nights?' For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it is a question his commanders have already answered for him -- on Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his assignment isn’t to murder the spy, but to marry her. Their marriage, with its riveting and horrifying consequences, reveals the deep divisions that still haunt American life today.

"Based on real personalities like Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Jewish Secretary of State and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African-American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a gripping and suspenseful story of men and women driven to the extreme limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a brilliant parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.

"In this eagerly-awaited third novel, award-winning author Dara Horn brings us page-turning storytelling at its best. Layered with meaning, All Other Nights presents the most American of subjects with originality and insight -- and the possibility of reconciliation that might yet await us."

Opening Line:

"Inside a barrel in the bottom of a boat, with a canteen of water wedged between his legs and a packet of poison concealed in his pocket, Jacob Rappaport felt a knot tightening in his stomach -- not because he was about to do something dangerous, but because he was about to do something wrong." 

My Take:

Here's one I wish I'd reviewed for real shortly after I finished it, because I remember really liking it but can't remember enough details to offer a useful review. If the jacket blurb above intrigues you and you're a fan of Civil War fiction that's not the same old thing, check out Wendy Smith's Washington Post review, or just check out the darned book.   

#42: Marley & Me

Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog, by John Grogan (New York:  HarperCollins, 2008)

Summary:
"John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. They were young and in love, with a perfect little house and not a care in the world. Then they brought home Marley, a wriggly yellow furball of a puppy. Life would never be the same.

"Marley quickly grew into a barrelling, ninety-seven-pound steamroller of a Labrador retriever, a dog like no other. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, flung drool on guests, and ate nearly everything he could get his mouth around, including couches and fine jewelry. Obedience school did no good -- Marley was expelled. Neither did the tranquilizers the vet prescribed for him with the admonishment, 'Don't hesitate to use these.'"


"And yet Marley's heart was pure. Just as he joyfully refused any limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley shared the couple's joy at their first pregnancy and their heartbreak over the miscarriage. He was there when babies finally arrived and when the screams of a seventeen-year-old stabbing victim pierced the night. Throughout it all he remained steadfast, a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.


"Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a bigger-than-life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans."


Opening Lines:
"We were young. We were in love. We were rollicking in sublime early days of marriage when life seems about as good as life can get. We could not leave well enough alone."


My Take:
Expected to like it, but not quite the way I did. Expected a cathartic, glurgey, emotionally manipulative tearjerker in which at least one pet and/or child died before its time. Spoiler alert:  This didn't happen. Marley's a feel-good book, sure, and the ending is sad, but in a very natural, bittersweet way. A wise man I used to know (Filbert's late uncle) once told me that to love animals is to set yourself up for a lifetime of heartbreak; we don't usually dwell on it, but we know deep down that we're going to outlive all our pets except the last one or two. But we also know that every chewed wire, every gross waste management chore, every midnight veterinary emergency, and even that first wave of raw grief that stuns you with its intensity Every Damned Time, is worth it; in the immortal words of Garth Brooks, "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance."

Tangent aside, this is an unexpectedly gentle and non-saccharine story of what it means to build a life and a family that includes a pet, and all the richness (joy, destruction, laughter, and sadness) our animal companions bring us.

#35: My Name Is Memory

My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010)


Summary:
"Lucy Broward is an ordinary girl growing up in the Virginia suburbs, soon to head off to college. As she prepares for her last high school dance, she allows herself to hope that this might be the night her elusive crush, Daniel Grey, finally notices her. As the events of the night unfold, though, Lucy discovers that Daniel is much more complicated than she imagined, and perceives that there's something going on here that she really doesn't understand. Why does he call her Sophia? And why does it make her feel so strange?


"Daniel Grey is no ordinary young man. Daniel has 'the memory,' the ability to recall past lives and recognize the souls of those he's previously known. And he has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Lucy (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together -- and he remembers it all. It is both a gift and a curse. For all the many times they have come together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart. A love always too short.


"As we watch Daniel and Lucy's relationship unfold during the present day, interwoven are glimpses of their history together. From 552 Asia Minor to 1918 England and 1972 Virginia, the two souls share a long and sometimes torturous path of seeking each other time and again. But just when Lucy begins to awaken to the secret of her past, to understand her relationship to Sophia, and to understand the true reason for the strength of her attraction to Daniel, the mysterious force that has torn them apart in the past reappears. Ultimately, they must confront not just their complicated history, but a persistent adversary as well, if they are ever to spend a lifetime together."

Opening Lines:
"I have lived more than a thousand years. I have died countless times."

My Take:
Brashares is still a writer of young adult novels at heart, but this one was stronger and more grown-up than, say, Sisterhood Everlasting, or than The Last Summer (of You & Me), which I remember reading and being disappointed by, though it must have been before I started the book blog.

Here, as the jacket suggests, Daniel is an old soul -- he's been around since at least the 6th century, in a sequence of different bodies and locations. What's uncommon about this is the fact that he remembers many of his past lives; most people, we're given to understand, have been around a few times before but are blissfully unaware of the fact. Daniel, on the other hand, has spent more than a millenium finding, falling in love with, and ultimately losing the same woman, always trying to make up for burning her house and village in a misdirected military raid in Asia Minor some time around 550 A.D. As you might guess, that girl/ woman is living in 21st-century Virginia as Lucy, a college-bound high school graduate who's had a crush on this mysterious Daniel guy all through senior year, and whose own sense of loss and isolation seems at first to stem (understandably) from the death of her older sister Dana from a drug overdose some years before the novel begins.

The novel's central questions are pretty much what you'd expect: Will Lucy ever remember knowing and loving Daniel in a past life? Will the two of them finally get it together on this go-round? And will Daniel's one-time older brother, Joaquin, a sinister dude who's been looking for revenge on Daniel and Sophia/ Lucy ever since Daniel stole his wife (guess who?) a couple of lifetimes ago, track them down and spoil everything?

Where the book falls short is in making the past-life romance between Sophia and Daniel seem believable. We're convinced by Daniel's recollections of the past that the two knew each other, and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that a basically decent guy could still be carrying around guilt over having massacred the young Sophia's entire family ... but other than that, we don't really see anything in their past that helps us understand how or why they fell in love. I'm not convinced that proximity itself is enough; if it were, those folks I seem to see in the grocery store or library every week might just as well be my own soul mates. However, for someone who likes a little other-worldly mystery with their romance, and even a few interesting observations on life and death and love, you could do worse.

#30: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, by Joshilyn Jackson New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012)

Summary:

"Every fifteen years, trouble comes after the three Slocumb women. Now, as the youngest turns fifteen, she's desperate to know who used their yard as a makeshift cemetery, and why. The unlikely matriarch, forty-five-year-old Ginny, doesn't know the truth -- she only knows she must do everything in her power to keep it hidden. Between them is Liza, silenced by a stroke, haunted by the choices she made as a teenager, with the answers trapped inside her. To survive Liza's secrets and Mosey's insistent adventures, Ginny must learn to trust the love that braids the strands of their past -- and stop at nothing to defend their future.

"With riveting plot twists and off-kilter characters, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty introduces three generations of Slocumbs: a child on the cusp of womanhood searching for her true family; a woman whose fight to protect her daughter will toss her headlong into a second chance at first love; and a lost soul rediscovering her voice. New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson takes us on a wild ride from desperate mystery to a place of firm hope, providing once more that 'she knows how to grab a reader -- and not let go' (USA Today)."

Opening Line:

"My daughter, Liza, put her heart in a silver box and buried it under the willow tree in our backyard."

My Take:

Two chapters in, and weirdness aplenty has been established. Thirty years earlier, Ginny got pregnant at fourteen by a popular high school athlete who plied her with zombie punch, and used the hush money from his family to get away from the shameful gazes in her parents' small town and raise her daughter, Liza, on her own. Fifteen years later, Liza repeats her mother's mistake, disappears a few weeks after her still-unnamed daughter's birth, and returns two years later with a skinny toddler named Mosey who looks oddly unlike her mother and grandmother. Since Mosey's own fourteenth year, both Ginny and Liza have been a wreck, although Ginny desperately hopes that Liza's stroke will be all the bad luck the family's due for another fifteen years.

Then Ginny hires a local yokel to cut down Liza's beloved willow tree so she can put in a swimming pool, in hopes that this will aid Liza's recovery. He finds a silver box containing what Ginny can't help but recognize as the infant Mosey's clothing and toys, along with a tiny infant jawbone. The discovery sends Liza into an anguished rage, screaming words only Ginny and Mosey can decipher: "Umbay! Umbay! Geem, gee!" My baby! My baby! Give me, give!

I, for one, am intrigued.

(Next day) Well, I wasn't disappointed, and can't wait to track down some of Jackson's other novels if this one is any indication. It's not too much of a spoiler to say that both Mosey and Ginny (a/k/a Big) realize early on that the baby beneath the willow is probably Liza's child, in which case ... who the heck is Mosey? Neither knows that the other knows, and Mosey is by turns angry and terrified that Big won't want a thing to do with her once she learns she's not a blood relation. Did Liza steal someone else's baby? If so, does anyone know, and will they come to take Mosey back? And just who was the carney who allegedly fathered Liza's baby, anyway? a different kind of mystery than I'm used to -- less legal and police procedural, more family and relationship stuff -- but plenty of twists and intrigue to keep things interesting.

#14: The Lost Saints of Tennessee

The Lost Saints of Tennessee, by Amy Franklin-Willis (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2012)

Summary:
"With enormous heart and dazzling agility, debut novelist Amy Franklin-Willis expertly mines the fault lines in one Southern working-class family. Driven by the soulful and intrepid voices of forty-two-year-old Ezekiel Cooper and his mother, Lillian, The Lost Souls of Tennessee journeys from the 1940s to the 1980s as it follows Zeke's evolution from anointed son to honorable sibling to unhinged middle-aged man.

"After Zeke loses his twin brother in a mysterious drowning and his wife to divorce, only ghosts remain in his hometown of Clayton, Tennessee. Zeke makes the decision to leave Clayton in a final attempt to escape his pain, puts his two treasured possessions -- a childhood copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tucker, his dead brother's ancient dog -- into his truck, and heads east. He leaves behind two adolescent daughters and his estranged mother, who reveals her own conflicting view of the Cooper family story in a vulnerable but spirited voice stricken by guilt over old sins as she clings to the hope that her family isn't beyond repair.

"When Zeke finds refuge with his sympathetic cousins in Virginia horse country, divine acts in the form of severe weather, illness, and a new romance collide, leading Zeke to a crossroads where he must decide the fate of his family -- either by clinging to the way life was or moving toward what life might be."

Opening Line:
"The late August air lies still, its weight pressing down on me in a way it didn't when I was a boy."

My Take:
Not high literature for the ages, possibly not even book club material (I wish I knew, but never have stumbled on a book club that was looking for new members) -- but a lovely, gentle story about a man confronting that all-too-familiar midlife question, "Is this really all there is?" Long story short (really, for once), I enjoyed it.

#2: Chang and Eng

Chang and Eng, by Darin Strauss (New York: Dutton, 2000)

Summary:
"In this stunning debut novel, Darin Strauss combines fiction with astonishing facts to tell the story of history's most famous twins. Born in Siam in 1811 -- on a squalid houseboat in the Mekong River -- Chang and Eng Bunker were international celebrities before the age of twenty. Touring the world's stages as a circus act, they settled in the American South just prior to the Civil War. They eventually married two sisters from North Carolina, fathering twenty-one children between them, and lived for more than six decades never more than seven inches apart, attached at the chest by a small band of skin and cartilage. Woven from the fabric of fact, myth, and imagination, Strauss's narrative gives poignant, articulate voice to these legendary brothers and humanizes the freakish legend that grew up around them. Sweeping from the Far East and the court of the king of Siam to the shared intimacy of their lives in America, Chang and Eng rescues one of the nineteenth century's most fabled human oddities from the sideshow of history, drawing from their extraordinary lives a novel of exceptional power and beauty."

Opening Lines:
"'Chang-Eng,' the children chanted. 'Mutant, mutant.'"

My Take:
This one was an excellent read -- novel setting (pardon the pun) with characters familiar yet new. Wish we'd heard from the perspective of both twins and not just from Eng, but still really enjoyed the book.

#110: Summer Rental

Summer Rental, by Mary Kay Andrews (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011)

Summary:
"Ellis, Julia, and Dorie. Best friends since Catholic grade school, they now find themselves in their mid-thirties, at the crossroads of life and love. Ellis, recently fired from a job she gave everything to, is beginning to question the choices she's made over the past decade of her life. Julia -- whose caustic wit covers up her wounds -- has a man who loves her and is offering her the world, but she can't hide how deeply insecure she feels about her looks, her brains, and her life. And Dorie has just been shockingly betrayed by the man she loved and trusted most in the world ... though this is just the tip of the iceberg of her problems and secrets. A month in North Carolina's Outer Banks is just what each of them needs.

"Ty Bazemore is their landlord, though he's hanging on to the rambling old beach house by a thin thread. After an inauspicious first meeting with Ellis, the two find themselves disturbingly attracted to each other, even as Ty is about to lose everything he's ever cared about.

"Maryn Shackleford is a stranger, and a woman on the run. Maryn just needs a few things in life: no questions, a good hiding place, and a new identity. Ellis, Julia, and Dorie can provide what Maryn wants, but can they also provide what she needs?

"Five people questioning everything they ever thought they knew about life. Five people on a journey that will uncover their secrets and point them on the path to forgiveness. Five people who need a sea change, and one month in a summer rental that might just give it to them."

Opening Line:
"It was not an auspicious beginning for a vacation, let alone for a new life."

My Take:
Halfway entertaining, but forgettable.

#106: Call Me Irresistible

Call Me Irresistible, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (New York: William Morrow, 2011)

Summary:
"Lucy Jorik is the daughter of a former president of the United States.

"Meg Koranda is the offspring of legends.

"One of them is about to marry Mr. Irresistible -- Ted Beaudine -- the favorite son of Wynette, Texas. The other is not happy about it and is determined to save her friend from a mess of heartache.

"But even though Meg knows that breaking up her best friend's wedding is the right thing to do, no one else seems to agree. Faster than Lucy can say "I don't," Meg becomes the most hated woman in town -- a town she's stuck in with a dead car, an empty wallet, and a very angry bridegroom. Broke, stranded, and without her famous parents at her back, Meg is sure she can survive on her own wits. What's the worst that can happen? Lose her heart to the one and only Mr. Irresistible? Not likely. Not likely at all.

"Call Me Irresistible is the book Susan Elizabeth Phillips's readers have long awaited. Ted, better known as 'little Teddy,' the nine-year-old heartbreak kid from Phillips's first bestseller, Fancy Pants, and as 'young Teddy,' the hunky new college graduate in Lady Be Good, is all grown up now -- along with Lucy from First Lady and Meg from What I Did for Love. They're ready to take center stage in a saucy, funny, and highly addictive tale fans will love."

Opening Line:
"More than a few residents of Wynette, Texas, thought Ted Beaudine was marrying beneath himself."

My Take:
Maybe long-time faithful fans of the author would love and anticipate this book, but I'm not among them. My cardinal rule of sequels, or any books set in a universe the author's previously established, is that they need to work just as well as stand-alones for those who haven't read the others in the series. This one fails. Lots of stock, two-dimensional cardboard characters and ridiculous plot contrivances. Perhaps I've just read one chick lit book too many of late, but I feel a little like I just ate a full not-quite-half-gallon carton of ice cream by myself. The kind with rich but heavy little mix-ins in it.

#105: Wife-in-Law

Wife-in-Law, by Haywood Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011)

Summary:
"Neighbors Betsy Callison and Kat Ellis were oil and water when they met thirty-five years ago. Betsy was a prim, neat-freak, Republican wife, and Kat was a wild, irreverent hippie liberal. But they soon discovered common ground that created a bond that has lasted for decades. Until Betsy's husband, Greg, leaves her for his secretary, then comes back sniffing around two years later and convinces newly widowed Kat to marry him!

"Not that Betsy wants him back, but it's hard to move on when the newlyweds are flaunting their love right across the street. But there's trouble brewing in paradise, and no one knows philandering Greg better than his ex-wife, Betsy. Can Betsy get involved in her best friend's marriage -- even if it means helping her wife-in-law figure out the same man she shared a bed with for thirty years?"

Opening Line:
"Somebody once asked me how I pick my friends, and I just laughed, because God usually does the picking for me, and believe me, He has a wicked sense of humor."

My Take:
Fluffy, corn-battered and Southern-fried fun, if not especially literary or memorable.

#55: Scarlet Nights

Scarlet Nights, by Jude Deveraux (New York: Atria Books, 2010).

Summary:
"Engaged to the charming and seductive Greg Anders, Sara Shaw is happily anticipating her wedding in Edilean, Virginia. The date has been set, the flowers ordered, even her heirloom dress is ready. But just three weeks before the wedding, Greg gets a telephone call during the night and leaves without explanation. Two days later, a man climbs up through a trapdoor in the floor of Sara's apartment, claiming that he is the brother of her best friend and that he's moving in.

"While Mike Newland is indeed telling the truth about his identity, his reason for being there reaches far deeper. He's an undercover detective, and his assignment is to use Sara to track down a woman who is one of the most notorious criminals in the United States -- and also happens to be the mother of the man Sara plans to marry.

"Mike thinks the job will be easy -- if he can figure out how to make a 'good' girl like Sara trust him, that is. But Mike has no idea what this mission has in store for him. He's worked hard to keep private his connections to Edilean, which date back to his grandmother's time there in 1941. But as Mike and Sara get to know each other, he can't help but share secrets about himself that he's told no one else. And in return, Sara opens up to Mike about things she could never reveal to Greg. As the pair work together to solve two mysteries, their growing love begins to heal each of them in ways they never could have imagined."

Opening Line:
"'I think we've found her,' Captain Erickson said.

My Take:
Yes, this is shaping up to be as lightweight and silly as it sounds -- perfect for a holiday weekend beach read, which is when and why I checked it out.

Well, it was about what I expected. Long on action and purple prose, short on believability and character depth. I've passed less enjoyable afternoons but this certainly isn't a particularly interesting or memorable book. Next.

#52: The Uncoupling

The Uncoupling, by Meg Wolitzer (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011).

Summary:
"When the elliptical new drama teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High school in Stellar Plains, New Jersey chooses as the school play Lysistrata -- the Aristophanes comedy in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war -- a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women.

"One by one, throughout the high school community, women and teenaged girls suddenly turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. Dory Lang, a happily married forty-something English teacher, is mystified when she abruptly loses the desire to have sex with Robby, her cherished spouse of nearly twenty years. One after another, her friends admit to having the same perplexing and disturbing experience. They include Bev, a fiftyish overweight guidance counselor married to an anxious hedge fund manager; Leanne, a young psychologist of South Asian background with three boyfriends and no wish to be monogamous; and Ruth, a formerly lesbian gym teacher now married to a male sculptor, with whom she has twin boys and a new baby. And not long after Dory's daughter, Willa, has fallen under a very different spell -- one of teenaged infatuation and sexual discovery -- the sixteen-year-old suddenly feels the need to put an end to her new romantic relationship.

"As all these women worry over their loss of passion, and as the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and confused, both sides are forced to look at their partners, their shared history, and their sexual selves in an entirely new light."

Opening Line:
"People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness."

My Take:
Now that's what I'm talking about! I honestly don't recall liking The Ten Year Nap all that much -- back when I read it, it seemed unoriginal and tedious -- but maybe I just caught it on a bad day; after The Uncoupling, I may just be willing to go dig up another copy and give it another try. This book is brilliant -- high literature, no, but at once very funny, packed with trenchant, witty observations about upper middle class suburban culture (I'm still chuckling at the teenaged characters spending hours online in a Second Life-esque cyberworld called Farrest, and the two-person Snuggy ripoff one of the deprived husband orders called -- get this -- the Cumfy) ... and at other times, surprisingly poignant and sad. OK, I did knock it off in a day and managed to get some other things done besides, but it was a very good read nonetheless, and precisely what the doctor ordered right about now.

#14 - Jim the Boy

My 14th book of the year was Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley (Boston, 2000).

Summary: "Tony Earley made his debut with Here We Are in Paradise, a superbly understated collection of (mostly) small-town vignettes. He returns to the same terrain in his first novel, Jim the Boy, setting this coming-of-age story in a remote North Carolina hamlet. The year is 1934, and like the rest of the country, Aliceville is feeling the pinch of the Great Depression. Yet neither Jim nor his mother nor his three uncles -- who have split the paternal role neatly among themselves since the death of Jim's father a decade earlier -- are feeling much in the way of economic pain. Indeed, if you stuck a satellite dish on the front lawn, the story might be taking place in the New South rather than the older, bucolic one.This isn't to suggest that Earley is deaf to social detail. Indeed, there are all sorts of wonderful touches, like the decor in Jim's classroom,with its 'large, colorful maps of the United States, the Confederacy, and the Holy Land during the time of Jesus.' But Jim the Boy is very much the tale of a 10-year-old's expanding consciousness, which at first barely extends beyond the family property. Earley has a real gift for conveying childhood epiphanies, like Jim's sudden apprehension of the wider world during a trip in Uncle Al's truck: 'Two thoughts came to Jim at once, joined by a thread of amazement: he thought, People live here, and he thought, They don't know who I am. At that moment the world opened up around Jim like hands that, until that moment, had been cupped around him; he felt very small, almost invisible, in the open air of their center, but knew that the hands would not let him go. It was almost like flying.' The simple lyricism and anti-ironic sweetness work mostly to the book's advantage. There are times, it's true, when Earley sands his prose down to an unnatural smoothness, and we seem to be edging toward the sentimental precincts of a young-adult novel. But on the whole, Jim the Boy is a lovely, meticulous work--a song of innocence and (eventually) experience, delivered with just a hint of a North Carolina accent."

My reaction, in a nutshell: Appreciated it on a literary level, in that it was well-written with (cough) luminous prose and what have you, and much of the description, both of landscape and emotional states, was understated and lovely. Not enough of a plot for me to really love it, though.

Catching up, again

It's been 6 weeks now, and I just may be smoothly back in the 9-to-5 groove again. The job's pretty good, the commute is unbeatable ... but after 6 months of being able to smell the roses, even if I couldn't afford to buy them, it takes time to change the routine. In other words, I've still been reading quite a bit these last few weeks, but not blogging about it.

In what's more or less the correct order, the books I've read since you saw me last have been ...
#13 - Roots: The Saga of an American Family (30th anniversary ed.), by Alex Haley (New York, 2007).

Summary (from my favorite public library's web site, as I returned the book weeks ago): "One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book sold over 1,000,000 copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130,000,000 people. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America's past. Roots also fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970's and how America had fared since the days of slavery. Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition will remind the generation that originally read it (and watched the miniseries) that there are issues that still need to be discussed, and to introduce to a new and younger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for the first time, the drama and reality of what took place during the time period."

My reaction: I liked it. Yes, I'm aware of the controversy about how much of the story was true and how much was (ahem) "inspired by actual events," and tagged it as nonfiction with some qualms. Frankly, though, the book works well even as just a novel, and its impact on public sentiment and popular culture are undeniable.

Just in case there's anyone out there who's even tardier than I am about reading the book, and isn't familiar with the story, it begins in the late 1700s in the Gambia with the birth of a "man-child" called Kunta Kinte. Proportionally, Kunta's boyhood and coming of age get a tremendous amount of air time here, compared to how quickly entire generations seem to pass later in the story, but I think I understand this. If you'll forgive the analogy, it reminds me of what Margaret Mitchell did at the beginning of Gone With the Wind: thorough, painstaking description of a way of life that, once the events of the story get underway, can't possibly be the same again. In Kunta Kinte's case, this transition comes when, while a teenaged man-boy, he is kidnapped by toubob slave traders and, after a horrific trans-Atlantic voyage that kills almost half the human cargo, sold to a Virginia plantation owner.

Some years later, Kunta comes to respect and eventually marry Bell, the cook on "his" plantation. The couple have a daughter, who Kunta names Kizzy (which means "stay put" in his native tongue) in hopes that she'll grow up with them and not be sold away. Heartbreakingly, when their otherwise as-good-as-they-get master discovers that a) Kizzy, now 15, can read and write; and b) more importantly, she's used this knowledge to help another young slave escape, these hopes are thwarted. Kizzy is sold south to a far-away plantation in the Carolinas, where she learns in brutal fashion just what her new owner, Tom Lea, bought her for. The product of her rape is a son, George, who, in time, rises to a favored position in his own master's household as an unparalleled breeder and trainer of fighting cocks (hence, his nickname, "Chicken George.")

George is rather a ladies' man, and (of course) ultimately falls for and marries the one woman he can't get any other way: the devout, beautiful Matilda. Together, the two raise a large family of their own (or rather, Matilda raises them, as George seems to be either traveling to cock fights or preoccupied with who knows what else more often than not), including one son, Tom, whose training and skill as a plantation blacksmith serves him well in the uncertain post-Emancipation South. Tom, his wife Irene, their 8 children, Chicken George, and a handful of neighbors strike out for new territory, opting to try their luck at real freedom, rather than simply hiring on as sharecroppers somewhere. According to Haley, it's Tom and Irene's granddaughter, Bertha -- daughter of their youngest child, Cynthia -- who ultimately marries Simon Alexander Haley, and becomes his mother.

The book's almost 900 pages long as is, but I guess my only real complaint is that later generations of Kinte's descendants and Haley's forbears, after Kizzy and George, seem to get short shrift. George and Matilda, and then Tom and Irene, both have such large families that, with decades passing by in only a page or 2, it's hard to keep track of who's who. I would have liked to know more about Tom and Irene, Cynthia, and even Bertha, and how their lives were affected by the lessons and stories Kunta had passed on to Kizzy and then (presumably, through George and Tom) down to them.

When resolutions go south

It's always around this time in January that New Year's resolutions start to crumble, at least for me. And yes, I know it's only been two weeks. But they've been two VERY cold weeks, and ... well, enough with the excuses. Point is, despite all my lofty intentions of reading Good Literature this year (weellll, I never said I was going to be exclusive), what do I pick up? South of Broad, by Pat Conroy (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2009).

Jacket blurb: Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a respected Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of ten, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X -- and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades, from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for."

End result? Conroy's another decent author I've enjoyed in the past (The Lords of Discipline, loosely based on the author's own years at The Citadel, is a favorite re-read of mine), this is his first new novel in more than a decade ... and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I was disappointed, I also wasn't overly impressed. The novel tells the story of a young Charleston boy/ man, from the start of his senior year in high school in 1969 up through Hurricane Hugo and its aftermath in 1989 (albeit not in linear fashion). Our narrator is named after the protagonist in James Joyce's Ulysses by his formidable mother, high school principal Lindsay King. We learn two things almost immediately: first, Leo (and quite probably Pat Conroy) is absolutely besotted with Charleston. OK, I've never been, so perhaps this is normal, but it seemed a bit over the top (though admittedly, after Lords of Discipline, not completely unfamiliar).

Second, and more significant to the novel's plot, is that Leo and his family have been, as the jacket indicates, utterly shattered by his brother's suicide. And understandably so; Steve (Stephen Dedalus King, of course) was a golden boy, a perfect brother and son, and only ten years old ... and it was Leo who found him, dead in the bathtub after somehow slitting his wrists and his throat. The "why" doesn't come out till the very end, though astute readers may have a good suspicion early on. When the story opens, it's been 9 years, and Leo's just now rebuilding some sort of life for himself, after several years in a mental hospital, followed by an arrest and probation (a star football player planted cocaine on him at a party, and Leo refused to name the guy). His principal-mother makes it abundantly clear he'll never make up for his crimes, though this may really just mean he'll never be Stephen. Nonetheless, she instructs him to take several newcomers to school under his wing: the aforementioned Poe twins, ethereal, non-Charlestonian creatures who've just moved in across the street; the Whiteheads, carted in each day from their orphanage; Chad and Molly, who transfer to Peninsula High after being kicked out of a ritzy private school for cocaine; and (curiously unmentioned on the dust jacket) Ike Jefferson, son of Peninsula's first black football coach and Leo's co-captain on the team.

With the jacket blurb and the above lead-in, it's not too surprising that this motley crew of (mostly) outsiders become fast friends, and remain so twenty years later. Not surprising, but also not especially believable -- and too overly dramatic. I've been putting off finishing this review for a while, so without further delay: worth a read on a slow day, but not especially memorable.

128 - The Help

Let the mighty trumpets sound. My grand total of books read in 2009 was ... 128.

I capped off the year with Kathryn Stockett's The Help (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009). For those who've missed the hype, this debut novel set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s tackles the complicated, often contradictory relationships between upper middle class white women and their black maids. Explains the dust jacket:

"Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. ...

"Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

"Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

"Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

"Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed."

The clandestine project, Skeeter's brainchild, is a book of interviews with black women, reflecting on their experiences as white women's maids in their own words. Sure, it sounds like a great way to establish herself as a writer, and it certainly has more "punch" than the "flat, passionless subjects [such] as drunk driving and illiteracy" she initially considers. The trouble is, this is Mississippi in 1962, and her proposed subjects aren't exactly lining up at the door to be interviewed. As New York editor and one-time Atlantan Elaine Stein advises Skeeter,

"'It's certainly ... original, but it won't work. What maid in her right mind would ever tell you the truth? ... [T]his Negro actually agreed to talk to you candidly? About working for a white family? Because that seems like a hell of a risk in a place like Jackson, Mississippi. ... I watched them try to integrate your bus station on the news,' Missus Stein continued. 'They jammed fifty-three Negroes in a jail cell built for four. ... [Y]ou reall think other maids will talk to you? What if the employers find out? ... A little dangerous?' She laughed. 'The marches in Birmingham, Martin Luther King. Dogs attacking colored children. Darling, it's the hottest topic in the nation. But, I'm sorry, this will never work.'"

Naturally, Skeeter decides to give it a go anyway. After all, the only other vaguely journalistic gig she can get is ghost-writing Miss Myrna's Hints from Heloise-like column in her local newspaper. (The irony isn't lost on Skeeter's mother, who despairs of Skeeter ever finding a husband and home of her own, or on Skeeter herself, who's never cleaned house and has to not-so-secretly ask her friend Elizabeth's maid Aibileen to help her with most of the questions.) Not surprisingly, especially if you've read the dust jacket, Aibileen and, ultimately, Minny, eventually throw caution to the winds and get on board.

The book is narrated alternately by these three women, and frankly, Skeeter's story struck me as the least compelling of the lot. The first chapter is Aibileen's, and she establishes herself from the start as both a wise, verging-on-stereotypical, old family retainer and someone who's got far more going on beneath the surface than she lets on:

"Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

"But I ain't never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottle like it's a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. 'What am I doing wrong? Why can't I stop it?'

"It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.

"So I took that pink, screaming baby in my arms. Bounced her on my hip to get the gas moving and it didn't take two minutes fore Baby Girl stopped her crying, got to smiling up at me like she do. But Miss Leefolt, she don't pick up her own baby for the rest a the day. I seen plenty a womens get the baby blues after they done birthing. I reckon I thought that's what it was."

Just what's beneath the surface comes out gradually, in this and subsequent chapters. As the dust jacket indicates, her only child, Treelore, was killed in a work accident -- and it's suggested, though never stated outright, that if he'd been white, he might have received better care and lived. Aibileen also writes, rather than speaks, her prayers every night, and has somewhat of a reputation for prayers that work. As Minny tells it,

"'Rumor is you got some kind a power prayer, gets better results than just the regular variety. ... Eudora Green, when she broke her hip, went on your list, up walking in a week. Isaiah fell off the cotton truck, on your prayer list that night, back to work the next day. ... Lolly Jackson -- heck, Lolly go on your list and two days later she pop up from her wheelchair like she touched Jesus. Everybody in Hinds County know about that one. ... Bertrina, she good friends with Cocoa. She know your prayer works. ... They just think you got a better connection than most. We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear.'"

And then there's Minny, who, as the book begins, gets fired yet again by her employer's daughter (and one of Skeeter's best friends), Hilly. OK, technically, she's "let go" because Hilly is moving her mother into a nursing home, with only a week's notice ... but after a farewell incident involving a "Terrible Awful Thing" and a pie (we don't get the details till the very end, but my initial suspicions were confirmed), Hilly tells everyone in town that Minny is a thief (she isn't), and -- surprise, surprise -- no one will hire her. No one, that is, except Miss Celia Rae Foote, fresh off the turnip truck from Sugar Ditch (which Minny describes as "as low as you can go in Mississippi, maybe the whole United States"), married to Hilly's one-time boyfriend Johnny, and now shunned by everyone in the Jackson Ladies' League. Celia's never hired a maid before, and doesn't quite know How It's Done. She insists on paying twice Missus Walter's wages, has to be prompted to set Minny's hours ... and oddest of all, doesn't want to tell Johnny that she's hired a maid. Minny takes the job anyway, but she can't help wondering just what's up with her new employer:

"Every day, Miss Celia looks like she just can't believe I've come back to work. I'm the only thing that interrupts all that quiet around her. ... Miss Celia never does any entertaining, so we just fix whatever she and Mister Johnny are having for supper ... When the lesson's over, she rushes back to laying down. In fact, the only time Miss Celia walks ten feet is to come in the kitchen for her lesson or to sneak upstairs every two or three days, up in the creepy rooms.

"I don't know what she does for five minutes on the second floor. I don't like it up there though. Those bedrooms should be stacked full of kids laughing and hollering and pooping up the place. But it's none of my business what Miss Celia does with her day, and ask me, I'm glad she's staying out of my way. I've followed ladies around with a broom in one hand and a trash can in the other trying to keep up with their mess. As long as she stays in that bed, then I've got a job. Even though she has zero kids and nothing to do all day, she is the laziest woman I've ever seen. ...

"And it's not just the bed. Miss Celia won't leave the house except to get her hair frosted and her ends trimmed. So far, that's only happened once in the three weeks I've been working. Thirty-six years old and I can still hear my mama telling me, It ain't nobody's business. But I want to know what that lady's so scared of outside this place."

Against this backdrop, Hilly (who, frankly, is Evil ... if a better mother than the hapless, easily suggestible Elizabeth) puts forth her Home Help Sanitation Initiative, a proposed law to require every white home to have a separate bathroom for it's domestic employees. A member of Aibileen and Minny's church is badly beaten for mistakenly using the white folks' restroom. Yes, this is a world where white people think nothing of letting black maids raise their children, but wouldn't dream of sharing their bathrooms. Explains Hilly, "'It's just plain dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do.'"

Most of the plot lines are ones you'd see coming quite a ways off: Will Skeeter's book be a success? What will become of her romance with Stuart Whitworth, cousin to Hilly's husband, and son of a pro-segregation senator? Why on earth is she still keeping company with Hilly and Elizabeth, anyway? Will Minny (or anyone else) ever find out what Celia's deep, dark secret is? And what sort of disaster waits if the secret book project ever leaks out? All in all, though, it's an entertaining (if somewhat predictable) vacation read.

67 - Wet, Wet, Wet

My 67th book of the year was Matt Bondurant's The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story (Scribner, 2008). In short, I enjoyed it -- even if the pacing was a bit slow initially, and the book couldn't seem to decide whether it wanted to be, as the title suggests, more of "a novel" or "based on a true story." What made it worth reading anyhow was Bondurant's stellar writing. He sets a scene like nobody's business, transplanting you to the Franklin County, Virginia of the 1920s and '30s in a manner reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy (of the Border Trilogy and No Country for Old Men era, not the boring and overrated The Road), depicting both the natural and manmade in a way that's stark and beautiful and harsh all at once. The title is a paraphrase of Sherwood Anderson's writings in Liberty magazine in 1935, as quoted at the beginning of Part I:

"What is the wettest section in the U.S.A., the place where during prohibition and since, the most illicit liquor has been made? The extreme wet spot, per number of people, isn't New York or Chicago ... the spot that fairly dripped illicit liquor, and kept right on dripping it after prohibition ended ... is Franklin County, Virginia."

The same chapter heading quotes the Official Records of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement 1935 as estimating that 99 out of 100 people in Franklin County at that time "[were] making, or [had] some connection with, illicit liquor." The Wettest County is the story of 3 of them -- namely, the infamous "blockading" Bondurant brothers, Forrest, Howard, and Jack. Bereft of their mother and 2 sisters by the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919, the brothers see no path to survival save making and running illicit liquor; their father's general store barely stays afloat during the Depression, and small-scale tobacco farming is a marginal enterprise -- described by the book's quasi-narrator as "the most awful, thankless, and debilitating agricultural work he ever witnessed" -- even at the best of times (which clearly, this ain't).

Contrary to local folklore, which imagines the Bondurants as birds of a feather, all cut from the same bad boy cloth, the brothers are very different men. Forrest, the eldest, is somewhat of a legend, revered and feared in equal parts after a liquor sale gone bad reveals his seemingly inhuman strength. When asked why everyone is afraid to talk about the Bondurants, neighbor Tom Cundiff explains,

"Tell you what ... Man got his head cut off with a razor. Left for dead, not a spoonful of blood left in 'im, you unnerstan'? And what if I told you this man got up, walked ten miles through a blizzard? What would you say to that? ... Would you believe it?" When the inquirer says he wouldn't, "Well, then, Cundiff said, you got nothin' to be scared of, do you?"

Howard, a giant of a man who even his brothers dismiss as "some kind of machine or animal, reacting to the world in an instinctual manner," is haunted by memories of the Great War, and finds solace only in the exhausting physicality of farm labor.

"Sometimes while in the barn moving hay or in his father's tobacco field he would stop listening to the world and just work, concentrating on the basic repetition of movements, the strain and crack of his muscles. Every so often the perfect cycle of motion and strength was found and it was better than effortless, and the sweetness of the moment rang in delicious ripples through his body."

Sadly, this alone isn't enough to provide for his frail wife, Lucy, and their sickly infant daughter, and he's drawn repeatedly back into the far more lucrative business of making moonshine. And then there's baby brother Jack, probably the most well-developed character, who fervently, desperately hopes blockading will be his ticket out of Franklin County and its hardscrabble existence (well, except for maybe that alluring, Dunkard-churchgoing, banjo player, Bertha Minnix). Older and wiser, Forrest has his doubts, asking Jack, "What makes you think ... that after it gets going you will want it to end?"

What ties the brothers together is family loyalty, of course, and a willingness to fight tooth and nail for what they believe, even when it gets very ugly indeed. As Howard explains to Jack,

"Never does turn out like you think, Howard said. When the first swing happens everything is new an' nothin' is the way you thought. ... I'll tell you what, Howard said, you only need to know one thing. Something ol' Forrest knows. That's you gotta hit first, hit with everythin' you got, and then keep hittin' until the man is down, and then you hit him some more. ... Many men, Howard said, like the idea of fightin' but very few likes to get hit. You can make a man wanna quit real quick with that first shot. A good straight left into the nose bone and most will let it be. A man who likes to get hit is the one to watch out for."

This philosophy is put to the test as Prohibition ends, and local law enforcement officials take the opportunity to put some house rules of their own in play: sure, the liquor trade can continue, but they want a piece of the action, too. Eventually, the Bondurants and Cundiff remain the only holdouts against the "granny fees," and their occupational hazards devolve from the occasional still bust-up to ever more brutal violence. With this angle, the story is less a grown-up Dukes of Hazzard rip-off than a meditation on the loss of the working man's individuality and dignity as the south industrialized, and I definitely found myself rooting for the decidedly non-pastoral Bondurants over the greedy good ole boys in charge.

As I noted above, I think the book's weakest point is Bondurant's (the author's, not the characters' -- and no, this isn't a coincidence, though you don't learn the specifics till the very end) seeming indecision as to whether he's writing historical fiction, or a slightly-dramatized retelling of historical events, a la In Cold Blood. Specifically, the presence of real-life author Sherwood Anderson, who comes to Franklin County to cover a major bootlegging trial, and develops an almost-Capote-like fascination with the illicit liquor trade in general and the Bondurants in particular, muddies up the story. In his struggle to understand the truth of Franklin County, rather than the cliches, he functions almost like a Greek chorus:

"Nights at the boardinghouse Anderson sat scribbling at a battered old sideboard table, trying to think of all the things he had seen that day, trying to remember the hands of the men in the fields, the boys in the curing shed, the grim farmwives in the cookhouse, the lines of their faces, the cut of their work shirts, the seams of their shoes. But in all these things he saw very little. It was as if the character of these people encouraged a sort of blank anonymity ... [T]he strange confines of Franklin, its long skylines, rolling hills, left him with a feeling of enclosure and confinement, as if something dangerous was contained there and the minds of the citizens having to focus on not letting it out."

As such, he offers some interesting observations -- but all in all, I found his chapters distracting and slow, and think his role could have been much smaller while still offering the same sense of perspective.

#54 - The Lucky One

Dingdangity, I will be back on track to read 10 books a month by the end of June, even if it is quantity at the expense of quality. So there!

Every now and then, there's an author who seems to emerge from obscurity overnight, and is suddenly everyplace. Nicholas Sparks is one of them. A year ago, I don't think I'd heard of him; now, he seems to be all over the bookstores and best-seller lists, Nights in Rodanthe was made into a movie, and it seems there's no escaping the juggernaut. Rather than resist the inevitable, I succumbed on my last trip to the library, and this morning over breakfast, I finished The Lucky One (Grand Central, 2008). With a dust jacket blurb that proclaims the author "one of America's most beloved storytellers" or some such rot, I didn't expect high literature; I frankly don't know exactly what I was expecting. If nothing else, I figure there's some value in reading the occasional mass-market best-seller, just to see what the silent majority is reading. Living in Tiny Town, the mecca for everything alternative, where having a mere master's degree makes you undereducated, it's easy to forget that, um, many recreational readers do so Just For Fun.

All right, enough with the rationalizing. The Lucky One wasn't great literature and was pretty darned predictable, but it was still an amusing summer read. It begins by introducing a Bad Guy and Good Guy who are so obvious they may as well have black and white hats on: Keith Clayton, a deputy sheriff whose family owns the better part of Hampton County and who secretly uses the police department's camera to take pictures of pretty young things skinny-dipping; and Logan Thibault ("Thigh-bolt" to Clayton), a long-haired ex-Marine who's walked from Colorado to North Carolina with his dog, Zeus, to track down a mysterious young woman whose photo he found in the Kuwaiti desert. We learn that in the 5 years Thibault's carried the photo, he's had an inexplicable run of good luck, winning big bucks in poker games, and surviving one attack or explosion after another even when most of his buddies were killed. Victor, his one surviving Marine pal, is convinced that the photo is what saved Thibault, and urges him to find the woman. After Victor himself is killed, Thibault takes his advice, and begins his trek across the country.

Not surprisingly, the mysterious E. in the picture is none other than Beth, Clayton's ex-wife. You can guess within about 50 pages where this will go: Thibault is drawn to Beth, and gets on smashingly with her son Ben; Clayton is most displeased; and everything builds toward a dramatic, Hollywood-style climax as we wait to find out if and when Thibault will 'fess up about the photo, and what Clayton will do to keep Beth and Thibault apart.

To make a long story short, this was a slightly glorified romance novel. It grated on my feminist nerves in a few points: Beth's declining to help Thibault and Ben build a kite because it's "guy stuff" and she'd rather bring the lemonade; her asking Thibault out on a date, but insisting he drive and pick up the check; the denigration of Thibault's college girlfriend, who took Women's Studies classes, wore peasant skirts with sandals, and protested for socialist causes on campus. Given the time, I could probably do some extended, cynical musing about the target audience for this book, and about exactly what the author's trying to sell and what strings he's trying to pull ... but I won't. It's an entertaining afternoon, but forgettable overall.

Off Season is off its game

Once upon a time, I really enjoyed Anne Rivers Siddons' books. They were never great literature; even in terms of contemporary, mass-market Southern fiction, Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides are far stronger. But Siddons' Outer Banks and Colony were decent beach reads, and Peachtree Road was even somewhat memorable.

And then somehow, something changed. Maybe I reached my Siddons saturation point; maybe the author ran out of new ideas; maybe it was a little of both. Regardless of the whys, the bloom is definitely off the rose. I checked out #21 - Off Season for much the same reasons I'd read her last few books: I stumbled across it in the library, figured it'd be a light snack to tide me over between weightier books, and hoped somehow it'd be a guilty but entertaining pleasure a la Outer Banks et al. Well, it wasn't, really. While I've decided to give up on the numerical ratings, this book wouldn't have scored very highly. At best, it's a passable if somewhat silly weekend read; at worst, if you've read Siddons' other books, this is the literary equivalent of cleaning out the leftovers in the fridge.

Off Season is the story of Lilly, a 60 year old sculptor who, as the novel begins, is driving from her Washington, D.C. home to her long-time summer place on the coast of Maine to scatter the ashes of her late husband Cam. We then flash back to the year Lilly was 11, when what begins as another timeless, unchanging summer at the Edgewater colony is quickly shaken up by the arrival of 2 newcomers: the lovely but insufferable Peaches Davenport, who shamelessly uses a tragic loss in her past to get attention, and golden boy Jon Lowell, who has a tragic loss in his own past and becomes Lilly's first love. All is idyllic, or close, until Peaches stumbles upon Jon and Lilly's first kiss, and reveals a heretofore-unknown secret from Jon's family's past. Tragedy ensues.

Fast-forward 7 years. Lilly now has 2 tragic losses of her own under her belt, and is on the brink of starting college. She and Cam meet, fall in love at first sight, and are married within a few months. Apparently, they have a perfect marriage, though we see little between the courtship and Cam's death save the moment when they learn each other's deep, dark, tragic secrets.

If it seems like I'm hyping the tragic losses and deep, dark secrets a bit much, well ... them's just the facts. Throw in the timeless-magic-of-the-summer-place setting, a vicious coastal storm, a pinch of the crazy or supernatural, and one femme fatale whose wicked vengefulness knows no bounds, and stir. The result is a book that's been done, and done quite a bit better, before. Lilly's whimsical, just-this-side-of-crazy delusions are silly, overdramatic, and frankly, boring. While any one of the tragic losses on the story's scoreboard would certainly be devastating, the way in which they're revealed -- particularly in the cases of Cam and Jon's father -- is so overblown that you're left not reeling in shock, but shaking your head wondering what the big deal is. Likewise, while I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for some of the book's romantic moments (i.e., rose-colored memories of a first love), others Just Don't Make Sense -- namely, enduring love at first sight between an 18- and 24-year old. Lastly, the conclusion seems muddy and confusing -- as if Siddons either ran out of time to go back and revise her first draft, or just thought that we'd all have read her earlier books, and could figure out what she was getting at on our own.

Yawn. Fluff is fluff, but this enough to make me gorge on Cormac McCarthy for a few weeks.