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Another, more favorable review of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones has been written by Samuel Moyn for The Nation. It was this morning's Review-of-the-Day from Powell's Bookstore and you can read it
here.
Moyn points out that the title of the book is a reference to the Erinyes, the Furies, which become, in Aeschylus' Oresteia, the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones.
This chilly mystery, Critique of Criminal Reason by Michael Gregario (2006), takes place in December of 1804 on the Baltic coast of East Prussia with a frigid wind blowing in fog, sleet, snow, and extreme cold throughout the few days it takes the protagonist, Hanno Stiffeniis, a regional magistrate, to solve the crimes.
And chilly crimes they are too. Three or four people have been found dead, kneeling, looking up, with an astonished look on their faces. There is no apparent cause of death. The Konigsberg magistrate has made no progress in investigating the crimes. And then he, too, becomes a victim.
The king sends to Hano Stiffeniis to take over the investigation. This puzzles Stiffeniis, who is a virtually unknown rural magistrate. But one doesn't deny the king and so he is off in the dark and cold and snow to the city.
Stiffeniis is an acquaintance of Immanuel Kant, who lives in Konigsberg, and who is very interested in the crimes. He lends his assitance to Stiffeniis but the situation is complex and difficult to understand, no matter how much reason is applied.
We meet half a dozen characters, some of whom are suspects, and the solution to the mystery unwinds slowly and logically.
In its starred review, Publisher's Weekly had this to say: Admirers of quality intellectual fiction should embrace this book, with its pitch-perfect period detail and psychologically complex protagonist.
Never rains but it pours when it comes to library books. I put in requests for books, one or two a day, for weeks, and then suddenly they all show up at the same time.
Today I returned the Isabel Dalhousie book because I found my own copy. And I returned The Women of Pemberley because I want to read the series in order and that was number 2.
The other book that went back is called Critique of Criminal Reason (2008), a peculiarly icy mystery by Michael Gregorio (a pseudonym) that takes place in Konigsberg in 1804. (Yeah, you and and I know what's coming but the Konigsbergers of 1804 don't and that bit of history hanging over their heads makes for an interesting red herring.)
So here's what I came home with:
Emma Thompson's The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film (1995). Somewhere I read that this was entertaining so I figured you can't read too much about Jane Austen, her novels, the movies and TV series made from her novels (or her life), or the pastiches written in imitation of her novels. I'll let you know what I think about this when I've had a chance to browse in it. I don't expect I'll read it all.
The Wilderness (2009) by Samantha Harvey is one of the books on the Orange Prize longlist.
The Deal by Peter Lefcourt (1991) appears to be a novel about a Hollywood producer who comes into possession of a screenplay about Disraeli and Gladstone. Not very promising you say? "He changes the title to Lev Disraeli: Freedom Fighter and sells it to a superstar black actor who's recently converted to Judaism. . . . a $30 million deal, for a script no one's read, by an author no one's heard of, for a European production on a location no one can find." Sounds like your typical Hollywood movie to me.
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music (2008.) "When Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' Skid Row, he finds it impossible to walk away." When will this trend for three-part descriptive subtitles come to an end and leave us with puzzling one-word titles again?
The Shortest Journey (1992) by Hazel Holt is apparently an English village cozy starring amateur sleuth Sheila Mallory.
I haven't a clue why I requested the last three books except that they sound interesting or amusing. I really should keep records of these things.
Finally, I have two Georges Simenon mysteries, Maigret's Rival (1944) and Maigret Bides His Time (1965) which I picked off the shelves today because Jan in my online Trollope group speaks very highly of his work. Since Jan and I have a tendency to gravitate towards the same kinds of books I figured I'd give these a go.
When I'm going to find the time to read all these books when I'm so busy hustling back and forth to the library I know not.
Some books that I had reserved were ready for me so I went to the library yesterday to get them. Wilhelm came along to read Barron's and Forbes so I had extra time. I used it to browse in the new books and picked up a couple. I returned the Chernow biography of Hamilton and Bury the Chains after browsing heavily in them. Both are fine books but one can't read everything.
Today's fortunate finds are The Women of Pemberley by Rebecca Ann Collins 2008), which was on the new fiction shelf. I seem to recall reading a favorable review of this in one of the book blogs that I read regularly so I borrowed it. I also spotted the recent Louis Auchincloss novel, The Last of the Old Guard (2008.) I've read most of Auchincloss so I borrowed that, too.
I also picked up The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. I tried reading this a while back and didn't get far, but I'm willing to try again. Everybody else seems to love his books.
The most enticing of the new books is The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft (2008), by Ulrich Boser. When I got home I picked it off the pile and started reading it and it was hard indeed to force myself to put it down. I may sweep the decks and read that right away.
My physical therapist, Stephanie, suggested a book called The Wednesday Letters by Jason F Wright (2004.) She said it's easy reading so I'll have it in case I get overexcited by the books in the Orange Prize longlist.
One of which is Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo (2009), an alternative history in which the Africans enslave Europeans and take them off to their colonies in the new world. It's described on the cover as dazzling and Swiftian.
Also on the Orange longlist is Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman (2008) about the Scottsboro Trial in 1930s Alabama. That should be grim.
And finally, I read a comment in the weekend newspaper that said Barry Popkin's new book is great. It's called The World Is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race (2009) and so I decided to look at it. So far I love the Krispy Kreme doughnut on the cover, though I suspect i'm supposed to recoil in horror from it.
The review was in my inbox this morning as Powell's Bookstore's Review-a-Day. It's not complimentary and it's very thorough. I think it will help you make up your mind, or, as in my case, justify having decided not to read the book. For those of us who have been anxiously deciding whether to read this book or not there comes an excellent review from the Los Angeles Times by 9780061353451. (I have no idea what that's all about. The reviewer's name may be Laila Lalami.)
To read it go here.
Oops. These are the books I've just brought back from the library and that is Miss Darcy checking to see what I brought home and marking them all. But you don't need to see the titles clearly. Here's some info about them.
Forty Signs of Rain (2004) by Kim Stanley Robinson. This was recommended by Jill at My Individual Take (On the Subject.) As I was entering the title in my database I realized I have read another title by Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt. I keep saying I don't read Sci Fi, but that was Sci Fi and I liked it a lot. There is hope for Forty Signs of Rain.
The Likeness (2008) by Tana French. Les at Lesley's Book Nook recommended this. I read the first book in the series, Into the Woods and loved it. The author has the vulnerable look of the very young Mia Farrow, but she writes robust prose.
The Missing (2009) by Tim Gautreaux. This is a book about life on a steamboat on the Mississippi in the years just after the First World War. The review I read said it will make you think of Mark Twain and I always like thinking about Mark Twain.
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (2005) by Adam Hochschild. I read a review of this book recently, though I can't remember where and the book is four years old. It looked good so I requested it.
Alexander Hamilton (2004) by Ron Chernow. The review of Bury the Chains said to read this book for a good history of the situation in America at the time, so I borrowed this one too.
How many times have I said I wasn't going to get suckered into reading longlists - or shortlists - for book prizes? Well, here it is Orange Prize time again and here I am undertaking to read at least a few of the books. I have read three of them, which gives me a start, so here are three more:
Intuition (2006) by Allegra Goodman.
The Invention of Everything Else (2008) by Samantha Hunt.
The Flying Troutmans (2008) by Miriam Toews.
The Orange Prize is for a full-length novel by a woman published in Britain in the past year, which accounts for the differing publication dates.
There's a lot of interest in the French best-seller, The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. Controversy has been swirling about the book with its first person narrator, a Nazi who murders and witnesses murder and ends up after the war as a seemingly modest family man who runs a lace factory in France.
He argues that we are all guilty, and therefore, he intimates, we are none of us guilty. The railroad employee who switched the tracks for cars going to Auschwitz is just as guilty of genocide as the men who planned The Final Solution. This did not go down well in France, apparently. But the book was still extremely popular.
I have two problems with the book so far. Like Les' husband, who isn't sure he will continue reading, I'm not sure I can take 800 pages of the arrogant narrator and the horrors he is soon to relate. I wanted to give the book a chance because the review in Publisher's Weekly was so scathing that I rebelled. Could it really be as bad as all that?
Les' husband and I may never find out. If the Kindle price were $9.99, like Karen, I might buy it and keep plugging away at it. But it has to go back to the library soon and I won't pay more than $10 for a Kindle book and I really don't want to put myself through reading this tome anyhow.
However, like Les, I'm charmed with The Help by Kathryn Sackkett. PW calls it "optimistic, uplifting." Just the thing to remedy my spirits after an hour or two with The Kindly Ones. And don't you love the cover?
What with bouncing back and forth between these two books I haven't had a chance to look at Ubiquity, by I will, Milady. I look forward to some meatier documentation and another take on the research that Malcolm Gladwell uses in his books, including The Tipping Point.
As for the weather, well, I'm sorry you had to deal with the left-overs from our storm the other day, Fay. With your elevation in Montana you must have had it much worse. Like Les in Nebraska, we in Spokane have segued into rainy and cold, which is so much better than snowy and frigid.
I went walking in the rain today. I'm not one of those romantic pina collada types and what are warm dry houses for after all, but it was lovely to have Manito Park all to myself and to check out the perennial garden and see all sorts of mystery plans poking their noses out of the ground. There isn't a thing in bloom over there but I do recognize the leaves of the crocus and there's hope for a little purple and white soon.