Stepping Stone

I've been enjoying the holiday revelry so didn't post last week's review. It's not much of a review anyway. Just Forever Odd by Dean Koontz. It's a sequel to his delightful 2003 novel Odd Thomas, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

Forever Odd features the same main character, Odd Thomas, a young man who "sees dead people" and tells about his adventures in a light, sardonic way, voiced in both audiobooks by David Aaron Baker. In this second installment of what appears to be a series in the making, Odd is coping with a tragedy dealt him at the end of the first novel. He wakes up in the middle of the night to see the ghost of a friend's father. He investigates and finds his friend has been kidnapped. Odd uses his talent for "psychic magnetism" to track down the friend and encounters more than he bargained for in the kidnappers.

Unlike most of Koontz's books, the first of our adventures with Odd was tender and pure. Very little heavy-handed horror. Just the story of an ordinary young man who is not, after all, ordinary.

I imagine it's hard to capture the magic of such a character twice, but Koontz manages it, with the help of David Aaron Baker. Forever Odd is a nice visit with Odd again, but the plot is overblown at times, boring at others. This book, unlike the first, can't stand alone. It feels like the stepping stone it is.

Hey Girl, Let’s Research!

I finished listening to The Rule of Four this morning. Usually, after I finish an audiobook, I like to give myself a little breathing room. I turn on the radio for the rest of the ride home or else ride in silence, thinking about the book. The amount of time I need for post-listening contemplation directly correlates to the amount I liked the book.

After The Rule of Four, I immediately tore into the plastic wrapping of another book.

It’s not that I hated The Rule of Four. It had some interesting elements and a lovely turn of phrase here and there.

In it, two seniors at Princeton are on the verge of solving the mysteries contained in a massive and complicated 500-year-old book called the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. But the closer they get, the more people want to beat them to the punch and steal the thunder for themselves. Murder and mayhem ensues.

My issue with The Rule of Four is that, like its main characters, the light comes on in its eyes only when it’s discussing the Hypnerotomachia. These are simultaneously the best parts and the worst – fascinating and energetic on one hand, dense and complicated on the other. Listening to the information about the Hypnerotomachia is sort of like trying to watch an intriguing History Channel documentary while fighting sleep.

Then there’s the rest of the book. The murder, arson and romance that the authors use to turn this into a novel rather than a fictional research paper feels secondary and, frankly, half-assed.

The murder mystery is clunky and predictable. Did I care who murdered Bill Stein? Not really. Did I care who murdered the next guy? Eh. Did I guess who did both? Of course.

So when the main characters finally figure it out, I rolled my eyes. These are guys that can solve complex riddles and codes no other scholars before them in 500 years could decipher, and yet they can’t determine who the murderer is? Come on.

The two authors, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, are young Ivy League graduates who’ve been friends since elementary school. This fact is totally unsurprising to me because the book feels like something two buddies got together to write.

Reminds me of that time during a snow storm in 9th grade when my best friend and I holed up in her bedroom and wrote a passionate story of going on a Caribbean cruise with our fantasy boyfriends and wearing clothes chosen from Teen magazine.

The Rule of Four, like our tale of teenage debauchery, is a fairy story. The only difference is that instead of daydreaming about wearing thigh highs and making out with boys, Caldwell and Thomason daydreamed about making a magnificent academic discovery.

Okay, there’s one more difference – their writing isn’t putrid teenage drivel.

Poor, Unfortunate Souls

Somehow it’s harder to write a review of a book I love. It’s difficult to explain why, exactly, The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant thrills me so. And difficult to say, “Everyone should read this book,” when I don’t believe everyone – or even most people – would love it as much as I do.

So I recommend this book for a certain person, someone who …

1.Loves the history of everyday life. Not the battles or the politics but the ways people cooked and slept and washed and loved. The professional critics say Diamant transplants characters with modern sensibilities into a faux-historic setting. Maybe that’s so, but at least it makes you feel you’re experiencing what it must’ve been to live in the early 1800s.

2.Enjoys a character-driven story. Dogtown is light on plot and tends to be episodic. But it travels into the minds of a whole cast of characters, each one of whom is interesting enough to warrant the journey. There’s even a brief chapter exquisitely told from the point of view of the dog Greyling, who lives on the outskirts of the dog pack and sleeps at the feet of Judy Rhines, the story’s chief heroine.

Dogtown is a story of the poor and unfortunate inhabitants of a fading settlement in the hills outside Gloucester, Mass. It is a miserable place in almost all respects, and like it, the book offers few bright spots. Yet somehow Diamant keeps it from being a miserable book. Her language is clean and straightforward – mostly devoid of sentiment. It is like the attitudes of her characters – hardy and not deluded about their own meager prospects. Each character is a jewel, even the drunk/pimp John Stanwood, who thinks he sees an angel in a tree and tries to reform.

Then there’s the narrator, Kate Nelligan. She is a wonder. A revelation. So good I want to rush out and listen to all the books she’s narrated and rent all her movies, even the ones on Lifetime.

Okay, I change my mind. I DO recommend this book to everyone. Especially the people who love the history of the everyday and character-driven novels, but also everyone who likes a good yarn. Everyone who lives in a small, gossipy town (or even a big one). Everyone who has been down and out. Everyone who has never been poor and trapped but wants to know what it’s like. Just everyone.

And maybe, as the delightful Kate Nelligan reads the last words of the book, you will shed a tear or two. Not because the words are sad but because Dogtown, the book and the town you love, have come to an end.

I'm in Love and I've Never Even Met You

The natural first impulse when reviewing John Berendt’s second book The City of Falling Angels is to compare it with his first blockbuster bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. That’s the first thing people ask, too – is it as good as Midnight? Did Berendt fall victim to the sophomore jinx?

I read Midnight long after the initial buzz about both book and movie had faded. Hubby and I spent a night in Savannah, Ga., on our honeymoon (the rest we spent in Charleston, S.C.), so I read Midnight the week after we returned. As usual, I prefer the book to the movie.

The City of Falling Angels follows a similar pattern. Berendt lives for a while in a city, interviewing its inhabitants and documenting the unique patterns of life there, all the while slowly reeling out a true mystery.

The mystery in Midnight was a murder in Savannah. The mystery in Angels is the burning of the last centuries-old opera house in Venice.

I’ve been fascinated with Venice since reading Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House several months ago. Berendt portrays a similar view of Venice – deceitful and charming, vibrant and mysterious, ancient and beautiful. After reading Angels, I’m even more desperate to visit the city with no cars and more art and history than one tourist can digest.

Angels is a pleasant, easygoing book, in some ways more poignant and insightful than Midnight, particularly the parts about the master glassblower who documents the fire in art glass.

But I don’t always need a book that’s packed full of excitement. Berendt narrated the abridged version himself (and an interview with him is included at the end), and that made me feel I was there, sitting in on the conversations with him.

In Midnight Berendt described Savannah through the people he introduced. The same is true of Venice but to a lesser degree. In Angels, the interviews at times seemed more about telling a story – a sometimes uninteresting story – than telling about a person.

But maybe this is the fate of all abridged books – to be edited down to bare story, no frivolous extra things like character development.

And in the case of Angels, the main story and all the subplots are weak. Because I love reading about Venice, I enjoyed most of the book. But if it had been set in a city less fascinating in its own right, Angels might’ve been downright dull. Even the investigation and trial over the opera house’s possible arson lacked suspense.

I recommend reading it but not for the mystery. Read it for the city.

Oh, High School

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld is the first book I’ve read both in hardcover and on unabridged audio CD. In the hardcover version, I sped through it in one long night, eager to find out what all these critics were talking about. Sittenfeld was getting compared to J.D. Salinger, her character to the beloved Holden Caulfield.

I didn’t see it – not exactly. I wrote an Amazon review at the time titled, “Fine writing but not the finest ever.” Sittenfeld’s tale of a lonely middle class teen at a preppy boarding school struck me as true at times, tedious at others. After this second reading, I still feel that way.

Like the main character, Lee Fiora, I was shy in high school. Hyper-aware of everyone around me. Observant and terrified of misstepping.

But even I grew impatient with Lee as I listened to her story on CD. I wanted to shake her and say, “Get over yourself!” (I’ve been reading all the Amazon reviews and noticed several other people had this impulse.) While I was at it, I’d shake the narrator and tell her to stop using that whiny voice!

During the first few CDs, the audiobook couldn’t hold my attention. I started thinking I’d made a mistake buying it. But somewhere along the way, it drew me in. I admit I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories, especially ones that capture so beautifully that heart-tugging regret you can feel for unrequited loves, even now that you’re a happy adult. I always wonder, what if? Even when I don’t want a different end result. The adult Lee looking back seems to feel this way, too, and I identified with that more than anything in the book.

Sittenfeld portrays that emotion, and so many others, perfectly. Perfect is a strong word, but I think I’m safe here. Lee experiences a few moments in the book when she is amazed to realize someone “gets” her. That’s the way I felt reading about Lee – Sittenfeld gets teenage girls, gets me.

This is the reason I like Prep. It outweighs the things I don’t like – the slowness, the skipping back and forth in time within a scene, the anticlimactic ending – and leaves me with a good feeling about the book. It is the reason I’m keeping this book instead of sending it back into the eBay mill. I just might want to read it again one day.