notanotherbookreview

The Age of Madness by David Maine, Red Hen Press I first thought Regina, the darkly ironic central character in David Maine's The Age of Madness, was a chick-lit standard, the successful professional woman, who knows something's missing from her life. Almost a caricature of the type, Regina's a runner obsessed with her performance, a fervent health food consumer, a home-owner fixated on light white spaces,classical music, peace and quiet. But this Regina is a psychiatrist,  a hard-headed rationalist, a non-believer, who doesn't suffer fools easily and yet suspects she is one. Maine cracks open her facade to reveal a woman shell shocked by the simultaneous deaths of her husband and son. "Facing the facts," Regina wonders if she's the cause--the evil feminist, who forced her husband to abandon literature and become a househusband.  Was this the reason for his suicide or homicide-suicide?  She's obsessed with the question of what happened. And so are...

American Boy by Larry Watson, August 2012, Milkweed Editions Matthew Garth, the 17 year old narrator of AMERICAN BOY, is a hard-scrabble not quite hard-boiled boy in the early 1960’s in Willow Creek, an isolated town in Minnesota. Families here have known each other for generations and newcomers, like the charismatic Dr. Dunbar, are both admired and viewed with suspicion. Raised by a struggling widow, Matt’s from the “wrong side of the tracks,” grateful for his status, as an unofficial member of the Dunbar family. And like a Dreiser hero, he knows it’s strangely provisional. His friendship with Johnny Dunbar gives him access to the luxurious Victorian house, holiday parties, but most of all to the charismatic Dr. Dunbar. When Matt’s father died, the pain of that event was muted by Dunbar, who credited him with enough intelligence to be able to understand the medical causes. Flattered that Dr. Dunbar encourages him, as a future physician, Matt considers his comfortable pl...

In my opinion GATES OF EDEN by Charles Degelman (August Harvard Square Editions) can well be compared to Gone with The Wind, in describing huge cultural and political upheaval. In GATES it's the 1960's--Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, the historical ending of the war by the most massive anti war movement in American history and its aftermath. Degelman's novel describes the war in Vietnam and the war at home, through the passionate drives and idealistic committments of a cross-section of very real characters. This ambitious novel begins with a nuclear blast seen by the boy Roger in Bronco, Texas. In Chicago, young Louis wants to go to the funeral of a black boy killed in the South. Middle class Connie, college bound, worries about her boyfriend, Eddie, a smart but poor kid bound for nowhere--or as she later learns, Vietnam. David and Madeline are New York sophisticates, privileged kids who want to make a mark, where it matters. D...

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a clever novel. My book group chose it and oddly enough, we all had similar reactions. We admired how the book draws you in, using alternating letters between the husband and wife. And how you keep reading, wanting to know what did happen to the wife, who’s disappeared. Still about half through we got annoyed. All the detail of the wife’s letters become tedious. And most of us had inklings of what happened too early so it wasn’t so shocking. I found myself thinking of great noir—James Cain’s The Postman Rings Twice or  Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. This book might be a homage to those, but it lacks the riveting directness, the punch and irrefutable endings. Postman creates a sense of horrified inevitability as you see two passionate people cross the criminal line toward insanity. In Mr. Ripley, the  chilling narrator is already there. Gone Girl seems to flirt with ...

WE ARE WHAT WE PRETEND TO BE: The first and Last Works w/special commentary from Nanette Vonnegut has never before been in print. Vanguard, a member of the Perseus Book Group, will be publishing it this Fall. The book is a treat for any Vonnegut fan and useful for aspiring writers. I love Kurt Vonnegut for his strong heart, whether breaking with irony or crackling with humor. His wit was beyond rapier, even off-center going after unexpected targets and he improvised like a clairvoyant. He's full of spontaneous feeling and more accurate than not. I was once waiting for a plane in the Iowa City airport, as he was getting off one. He caught my eye and pointed to the book I was reading, Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-up.” He made a “thumbs up” gesture and touched his heart. He mimed a finger across his neck about it being suicidal. Vonnegut loved the book, Fitzgerald, and, though I was across the room...