Recommended Fiction

I didn't read THE BEACH, by Alex Garland (reviewed 2/20/99), because they're making a movie of it with Leonardo DiCaprio; I read it because of a Salon Magazine article about a backpacker trying to crash the set of the movie. Also because it was in a box of books my father gave me. Anyway, it's one of the best, most gripping books I've read in a while. Like the Washington Post review excerpt on the back cover says, it's a blend of Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and various Vietnam War movies. Excellent book -- I stayed up last night till I finished it because, as the cliche goes, I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.

BEE SEASON, by Myla Goldberg (reviewed 8/7/00). A charming, wonderfully written book about Eliza, an average child in an over-achieving family, who emerges as a spelling-bee whiz, which inadvertently touches off much more dramatic changes in her family. Relatively simple writing, but so clever and elegant that it's a pleasure to read (although I picked this up right after struggling through a horridly written book, so my judgment might be skewed). Starts out funny, ends up touching and sad. Bonus: set in the Philadelphia suburbs.

CHARMING BILLY, by Alice McDermott (reviewed 10/17/99). I'm not all the way through this one yet, but I really like it. It starts with the title character's funeral and weaves its way through his life, dipping from the present into the past smoothly, telling in the process the stories of Billy's extended Irish-American family. It's a bit like Angela's Ashes in subject matter, although it deals with a longer time frame and is set in New York. The writing is elegantly straightforward and the story is engaging. I highly recommend it.

A CONSPIRACY OF TALL MEN, by Noah Hawley (reviewed 10/28/98), is like a more literate "X-Files." Hawley's an excellent writer, though sometimes he gets too cute with his similes, but the story is awfully convoluted and confusing. The wife of professor of "alternative American history" (e.g. conspiracy theories) Linus Owen dies in a plane crash, and in trying to find out why she was on the flight and who planted the bomb that brought down the plane, Owen stumbles on a vast conspiracy involving the government (of course) and pharmaceutical companies trying to... well, I'll let you try to figure it out. If you like "X-Files," you'll love this book. I'm not a fan, but I still found this a compelling read.

DIVINING ROD, by Michael Knight (reviewed 10/28/98). Excellent writing and a story that draws you in immediately and makes you feel like an observer to the drama that plays out as a love triangle heads toward its inevitable tragic conclusion. Knight makes the mundane world of suburbia come alive, as one of the blurbs on the back cover says, "hazy with summer, tinged with grief and the held breath of tragedy." A definite thumbs up.

ENGLISH PASSENGERS, by Matthew Kneale (reviewed 10/22/00). An overly ambitious story, told by several different characters in turn, about an expedition to Tasmania in the mid 1800s -- the preacher who leads it, convinced that he'll find the Garden of Eden in Tasmania; skeptics on his expedition; the Manx captain of the ship he charters; an Aborigine; and others. Too many others, actually, and the story goes on far too long and is poorly paced. The whole point of the story seems to be this expedition to find the Garden of Eden, but it takes so damn long to get there and then glosses over the exploration in a fraction of the time it spent on what seemed to be less important preliminaries. Still, it's very interesting, story-wise, even if some of the narrators are either dull or intensely disagreeable. Recommended if you don't mind long books and are into early Australian history.

EUCALYPTUS, by Murray Bail (reviewed 10/28/98), is an interesting but unfocused fable about a man who has planted hundreds of types of eucalyptus trees on his farm and offers his daughter in marriage to the man who can correctly name all the trees. Interspersed with the main plot are little vignettes, fairy tales, flashbacks. It's certainly unlike anything else I've read, but in the end the lack of focus and momentum did me in, and I never finished it. Some of you might be more tolerant of this kind of literary rambling, though, in which case you should definitely give this a try. It's sort of storytelling for storytelling's sake; very elegant writing and evocative descriptions of the Australian landscape.

FLEUR DE LEIGH'S LIFE OF CRIME, by Diane Leslie, (reviewed 5/29/00). Very entertaining, bittersweet, and funny story of a precocious girl growing up in 1950s Hollywood, remarkably resilient despite her self-absorbed parents and a parade of varyingly competent nannies.

GARNETHILL, by Denise Mina (reviewed 8/2/99). A murder mystery set in Scotland, about a young woman recently out of a mental hospital who tries to find her lover's murderer. Mysteries generally seem pretty rote to me, but this one is fresh and intriguing, and though it's not written phonetically (and unintelligibly) like Trainspotting, you still get a good Scottish flavor. Definite recommendation.

GOODNIGHT, NEBRASKA, by Tom McNeal (reviewed 1/5/00). Excellent, absorbing story of the residents of a small town in Nebraska. You don't realize your attachment to the characters building until near the end. Good, evocative writing.

THE HANDYMAN, by Carolyn See (reviewed 5/23/99), is an absorbing yet light read about Bob, who performs odd jobs around Los Angeles and becomes sort of a savior to most of the families he works for. Very well-written, funny, and worth a look.

HEADLONG, by Michael Frayn (reviewed 10/17/99), is a funny and somewhat touching narration of a tweedy professor who thinks he's discovered a missing Brueghel in his neighbor's mouldering manor and wants to get his hands on it without alerting its owner to its true value. Frayn does a nice job of keeping the narrator sympathetic (more or less) without denying that he's a self-centered flake. Entertaining and undemanding read, plus you'll learn some fascinating things about iconology and iconography, painting, Dutch history, and religious persecution.

THE HEARTSONG OF CHARGING ELK, by James Welch (reviewed 10/22/00). Oddly, this takes place during the same time as English Passengers, and I was reading them at the same time (Passengers at home, Heartsong on the metro and at lunch). I really like Welch, so I had high hopes for this book. It's the story of a young Indian who joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and is left behind in a hospital in Marseilles when he gets sick. He must figure out how to survive in a foreign land where he knows no one, doesn't speak the language (nor does he speak English), and doesn't even exist, according to the French bureaucracy. He gets along more successfully than you would think, but I got frustrated at what Welch was putting the enormously sympathetic Charging Elk through. That's my main complaint about this book: I liked the writing, but I liked Charging Elk so much that I resented the hardships Welch subjected him to, many of which seemed unnecessary.

THE HOUSE OF SLEEP, by Jonathan Coe (reviewed 10/17/99), is an odd book that kept my interest nearly all the way through, but ran out of steam at the end. Its chapters alternate between the 1960s and the '90s, trailing the threads of a handful of characters who went to school together in the '60s and are linked again 30 years later through the sleep clinic that's now housed in their old dorm. It's worth a read.

IN THE FAMILY WAY, by Tommy Hays (reviewed 10/22/00). Elegantly simple and well-written story about a young boy growing up in South Carolina in the early 1960s. All sorts of deep dark family secrets, yet it's never heavy or depressing -- in fact, it's often quite funny. Highly recommended.

LIVING TO TELL, by Antonya Nelson (reviewed 9/6/00). A beautifully written, engaging story of a Midwestern family. The writing is straightforward, yet elegant, and the characters are complex and sympathetic. Often very funny, too. Definitely recommended.

A MAN IN FULL, by Tom Wolfe (reviewed 10/18/98). If you don't like Wolfe, you won't like this. I do, and I did. It's wicked long (some 800 pages), the characters are caricatures, but it's engrossing and vivid. And, as Wolfe is fond of pointing out, no one writes novels like this -- sprawling, "plot-driven epics" -- anymore. Whether you think that's a good or bad thing will determine whether or not you should read this book.

MISS WYOMING, by Douglas Coupland (reviewed 8/7/00). My first Coupland book -- makes me want to go read his others. Easy, fun read, pretty engaging. He's clever without being snarky about it. He does a nice job of interweaving different time periods, unobtrusively building toward a revelation of why the exact scene with which he starts the book is so pivotal.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE WAYS, by Mako Yoshikawa (reviewed 8/28/99). It's about a young Asian-American woman who is literally haunted by a dead boyfriend while mulling the marriage proposal of her current beau. Interwoven with her story are those of her grandmother, who was a geisha, and her mother, who defied her family to marry for love and come to America. It took me a while to get into -- at first it seemed too precious and self-conscious -- but suddenly I was caught up in it. It becomes more elegant and poetic as it goes along, and the emotional stakes build subtly. Certainly worth a read.

A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, by Ronald Wright (reviewed 5/9/00), grabbed me from the beginning and kept me up one night till 2 a.m. because I couldn't make myself stop reading. It's an inventive and sometimes funny, sometimes sobering tale of love, loss, and time travel, weaving in hot-button issues like mad cow disease, climate change, even a dash of genetic engineering (a topic near and dear to me these days). The narrator, David Lambert, discovers evidence of a time machine built by H.G. Wells' mistress; shortly thereafter, he finds out that the woman he and his best friend loved has died, probably from mad cow disease, and he may soon share her fate. These twin crises prompt him to see if the time machine actually works. I won't go into any more plot than that, so as not to spoil it. I was expecting, from the title, something dry, maybe obnoxiously surreal, or one of those annoyingly coy novels where they try to draw parallels between love and particle physics or something. But it isn't like that at all; it really reads more like an adventure novel, albeit one with brains. Wright's descriptive powers are superb and enough to suspend your disbelief. You feel like you're right there with David. Ironically, the story flags only when David is among other people -- somehow, Wright makes the physical surroundings and David's inner life more alive than other characters. Definite recommendation on this one.

A STAR CALLED HENRY, by Roddy Doyle (reviewed 1/5/00). Terrific yarn of Henry Smart, IRA foot soldier and legendary womanizer. I always like Doyle's writing, and he's at the top of his form here.

SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, by John Rolfe Gardiner (reviewed 9/6/00). Odd yet intriguing story of a family whose patriarch is overseas fighting in WWI and, the wife fears, falling in love with a French nurse, while at home, his children, wife, and mother squabble. It goes on a little long, but it's an interesting story and fairly well written. Feels somewhat remote, though.

WICKED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST, by Gregory Maguire (reviewed 10/17/99), is a clever re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz story from the point of view of the Witch. Here she's a lonely misfit who eventually becomes a freedom fighter, trying to free Oz from the despotic rule of the Wizard (Dorothy is his unwitting pawn). For those of us who never particularly liked apple-cheeked, dim-witted Dorothy to begin with (and her yappy little dog, too), this is a much more interesting story. On occasion it veers a little too much into the fantasy genre, which I've never cared for, but overall it's good.

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