The Overlook – Michael Connelly

Although appreciably shorter than previous installments, Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch novel makes for the usual compelling reading. Originally published as a sixteen-part serial for the New York Times Magazine, and then expanded for publication, The Overlook begins routinely enough, with the murder of Dr. Stanley Kent, a medical physicist with access to cesium, used in both cancer treatment and as a key radioactive component of the so-called “dirty bomb.” Followup investigation finds Kent’s wife, Alicia, naked and hog-tied on the matrimonial bed, and what she ultimately reveals about her captivity sends the FBI’s Homeland Security Unit into immediate action, thereby bringing about Harry’s reunion with his old love interest, Rachel Walling.

The plot contains the twists and turns one expects from Michael Connelly, with a resolution that quite frankly, I did not anticipate, despite some cleverly planted clues. But as always, the real pleasure for me is the characterization of Harry Bosch. Although he is getting older (in this novel he is 56), his instincts continue to serve him well. It is these instincts that bring him into a seemingly perennial opposition to his superiors, but this time out his rebellion takes a slightly less conspicuous form; perhaps he has learned that outright defiance has costs he is no longer willing to bear. Another interesting development is the fact that he has a new, much younger partner, Ignacio Ferras, who, as the novel progresses, becomes increasing nervous about his prospects for career longevity owing to Harry’s unorthodox practices, and at one point declares that their partnership is not working. Needless to say, he changes his opinion by the end of the novel.

The Overlook works effectively on the fears of terrorism that began with the 9/11 attacks, but interestingly enough, while all other law enforcement figures are busy trying to track down the missing cesium, Harry remains true to his calling and to his vision of what it means to be a homicide detective. His credo is a simple one: the investigator has to speak for those who no longer can, and this pursuit of justice in apprehending those responsible for Stanley Kent’s murder never becomes secondary to concerns about terrorist attacks.

Fans of Michael Connelly will not be disappointed in this latest episode in Harry’s life, although they may well lament the fact that their reading pleasure is limited to only 225 pages this time out.

Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

Several years ago, my neighbor lent me a copy of a book called Angela’s Ashes. At the time, had someone asked me if I was interested in reading an Irish memoir about growing up in dire poverty, I probably would have said no. Yet that book turned out to be a richly rewarding reading experience.

Something similar happened to me recently when my brother-in-law recommended a novel called Water for Elephants. Without giving any details, he said it was one of the best books he had read in a long time. When it arrived after a lengthy hold period at the library, I was frankly disappointed to learn that it is a story revolving around circus life during the Depression. Neither the subject matter nor the era exercises any particular fascination for me. However, my disappointment soon turned into enthusiasm after just a few minutes of reading.

The story is told from the perspective of Jacob Jankowski, a 90 or 93 year-old (he isn’t sure which) living out his days in a nursing home. Despite an extended family which includes children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, each of whom take turns visiting him on a weekly basis, Jacob feels alone in the world, especially since the death of his wife. He therefore spends much of his time reminiscing about the past, especially the period during which he worked with the circus.

After a personal tragedy sees him leaving university before completing the final exam for his veterinary degree, the young Jacob suddenly finds himself in the employ of a circus billing itself as “BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH.” Here he works as both a veterinary and general helper.

As the story progresses, we learn that lurking beneath the public merriment of ‘the big top,’ some dark secrets abide. There is the ringmaster August, a man convivial and generous one moment, a cruel animal the next. There is his hapless wife Marlena who, at the age of 17, wed the ‘good ‘August four years earlier after a very short courtship, only to discover his other side almost immediately after the wedding. Disowned by her family, she sees no way out of her situation. Exercising great power over everyone’s life is the proprietor of Benzini Brothers, Uncle Al, whose avuncular mien hides some shocking truths. And then there is Jacob, whose growing attraction to Marlena threatens the stability of the façade under which the circus operates

Through the practice of scavenging failed circuses, Benzini Bros secures something it has long coveted, something all of the great circuses have: an elephant. Almost human in her presentation, this pachyderm named Rosie emerges not as a dumb, untrainable creature her handlers initially conclude after acquisition, but rather a very intelligent soul that understands Polish, a language Jacob is quite conversant with. Due to the relationship that develops between Rosie and August, Marlena, and Jacob, the former acts as a foil for the reader to see both the best and the worst of human nature through these characters.

Another aspect of interest is the novel’s depiction of the social hierarchy of circus life. For example, performers and ‘workers’ never eat together. When pay is in short supply, the performers are paid, but not the workers. The true expendability of the latter is reflected in the horrifying secret practice of ‘redlighting’ troublesome employees.

Water for Elephants is a richly textured novel, vividly recreating a time and place most of us have little knowledge of. And despite its improbable ending, this trip to the circus is well worth the price of admission.

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

For many of us, Afghanistan is a far off land whose exact location we would be hard-pressed to readily locate on a map. What do we think we know about the people? Are they primitive cave-dwellers, warlords, and religious extremists? Is their country a lost cause?

Author Khaled Hosseini does much to dispel many news-fuelled stereotypes in his first novel, The Kite Runner. An engrossing and moving story of betrayal, guilt, and redemption, the novel offers us a very human portrayal of people caught in the paradoxes of human existence – the desire to do good undercut by moral weakness, jealousy, and hypocrisy. The story is written from the perspective of Amir, the son of a wealthy Kabul merchant who, for reasons that become clear only late in the novel, treats his servants, Ali and Hazzan, members of the despised Hazaras, as family. Amir and Hazzan, about the same age, grow up together as friends. That friendship, however, is secretly betrayed when Amir fails to come to the aid of Hassan during a brutal assault. Although no one, including the ever-faithful Hasaan knows the truth, Amir is haunted by what he considers his cowardice. Every time he sees his friend he is reminded of what he failed to do and so he compounds his guilt by engineering the ouster of Hassan and his father Ali, never to see them again.

The second part of the novel, set in the United States after Amir and his father have fled the war-torn country of their birth, sees the pair establishing a new, but greatly humbled life, in Northern California. Eventually, Amir marries into a family of Afghan expatriates, and life seems good as he becomes a successful novelist. Then a call he receives one day from an old friend of his father, with the message, “There is a way to be good again,” sends him to Pakistan and then back to Afghanistan, where he risks his life to redeem himself.

The Kite Runner is a powerful narrative that leaves the reader feeling uplifted upon completion. Although in my view there is perhaps one pivotal aspect of the plot that relies too much on coincidence, it is a book that gives us access into the lives of people most of us have little knowledge of, and helps us appreciate the universality of the human condition. It merits the acclaim it has received.

Jesus Out to Sea – James Lee Burke

Even those not especially fond of the short story genre will find much to savor in this collection of short stories by well-known author James Lee Burke. Many will be familiar with the dark themes that emerge in his novels, especially the Dave Robicheaux series, and they are certainly much in evidence in these stories, almost all set in the past of over 50 years ago, except for the last one, entitled Jesus Out to Sea.

Each of the stories, like so much of Burke’s other writing, carries with them the duality of human nature. We sense that sudden and brutal violence is never far from the surface of our souls, yet at the same time, we are reminded that the possibility of redemption is there as well. This duality is especially powerful in A Season of Regret, which begins with a retired professor simply trying to protect his property rights, progresses through an act of defending a seemingly defenseless woman, and ends in a violent outcome not likely to be anticipated by the reader; this outcome , though not directly involving the protagonist, is one he must take ultimate responsibility for.

Even in the short but brutal The Village, told from the perspective of an American operative, probably a CIA agent, there is just the slightest suggestion of redemptive
possibilities. Throughout most of this four page tale, the unnamed protagonist engages in a litany of excuses for the shedding of innocent blood. It is only at the end, while engaged in a brutal act to dispatch a troublesome Mennonite that he seems to acknowledge wrongdoing, by repeating her final words, You must change your way. If the reporting of these five words marks the beginning of that change, all may not be lost for the operative.

Probably the most moving, and certainly the most recent in terms of setting, is the last story, Jesus Out to Sea. Set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, through the eyewitness descriptions of the protagonist, the odor of failure permeates the narrative – not only the failure of government in its reaction to the disaster, but also the failure of the city of New Orleans, in its transition form a city of hope, camaraderie, and music to a repository of drugs, crime, and desperation. A story offering little of the hope evident in many of the previous tales, its central image of the remnant of a destroyed church, Jesus on a cross, floating away in the floodwaters, is an apt symbol in this chronicle of disillusionment.

For the reader who is not uncomfortable confronting the more unpleasant aspects of life, this collection, eleven in total, has much to offer.

Terrorist – John Updike

John Updike’s latest novel, Terrorist, offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of Islamic fundamentalism, but it is a story not without flaws. The novel’s protagonist, eighteen- year- old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, is the son of an Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who deserted the family many years before. A young man of high intelligence, he eschews further education after high school, despite the belated exhortations of Jack Levy, a Jewish high school guidance counselor who goes on to conduct a surreptitious relationship with Ahmad’s mother, Terry. At the urging of his imam, Ahmad takes a job delivering furniture for a Lebanese family. This marks the beginning of his being drawn into an explosive terrorist plot, the outcome of which may or may not be credible to the reader.

There is much to commend in this novel, particularly Updikes’s ability to portray a fundamentalist Muslim perspective on the world. In that portrayal whereby, for example, Ahmad expresses his disdain for the glue of the Western world, rampant consumerism, Updike is able to offer some trenchant truths to the reader about the kinds of lives we lead. Consider this masterful section of the book, when Ahmad remembers childhood shopping trips with his mother:

“He would go with his mother … into the vast spaces of hastily slapped up hangers in the ‘big box’ style, where packaged goods were stacked up to the exposed girders. On those trips, narrowly aimed at replacing a certain irreparable home appliance or some boys’ clothing his relentless growing demanded or, before Islam rendered him immune, a long-coveted electronic game obsolete within a season, the mother and son were besieged on all sides by attractive, ingenious things and could not afford… Devils, these many gaudy packages seemed to be, these towering racks of today’s flimsy fashion, these shelves of chip-power expressed in murderous cartoons prodding the masses to buy, to consume while the world still had resources to consume, to gorge at the trough before death closed greedy mouths forever. In all of this wooing of the needy into debt, death was the bottom line, the counter where the diminishing dollars clattered. Hurry, buy now, since the afterlife’s pure and plain joys are an empty fable.”

What a remarkable passage. In just a few words, Updike is able to offer a penetrating analysis and commentary on our consumer-obsessed mentality and the spiritual emptiness underlying it. At the same time, he allows us some understanding of Ahmad’s view of the society he has grown up in, providing some foundation for the choices he subsequently makes.

But it is the latter that also presents some problems. Ahmad’s perspective and choices are, for me, the source of the book’s flaws. Quite frankly, I found it very difficult to accept the credibility of his character. The portrayal of someone raised in American society, embracing Islam at the age of eleven, and consequently being the almost perfect ascetic did not ring true. Granted, Ahmad is a young man reared without a father by an ill-disciplined mother and is undoubtedly seeking both discipline and a father figure in Allah and the Yemeni imam, Shaikh Rashid, who represents him; yet that is not sufficient in my mind to warrant the depiction of a young man so disengaged from the world around him that he will so willingly dispense with it when presented with an opportunity for jihad. It is one thing to try to understand the mind of fundamentalists from a war-torn part of the world, raised in bitterness and penury and hatred of the West’s involvement in their affairs, willing to surrender their lives for what they believe to be a holy cause. It is quite another to imagine this same willingness in Updike’s Ahmad. As well, the plot’s resolution, for me, was also unconvincing for reasons I won’t articulate, so as not to reveal too much.

These caveats aside, I do recommend this book. The prose is elegant yet restrained, and Updike certainly intends the novel, not as a screed against the Muslim world, but rather as a window to our own.

Holding the Bully’s Coat – Linda McQuaig

Whether holding forth on the global economy, the excesses of capitalism, government deficits or the U.S. invasion of Iraq, author Linda McQuaig never disappoints. Her willingness to challenge conventional wisdom, especially that which is promulgated in the mainstream media, is always guaranteed to provide the reader with new insights and rich material to allow him or her to critically examine previously-held beliefs. Whether or not one agrees with the things she asserts, this is her greatest strength as a writer.

Her latest book, Holding the Bully’s Coat, reflects this strength as she examines in both an historical and contemporary context, Canada’s relationship with the United States. She argues that by aligning the country too closely with the policies of the United States, our political, military, and economic elites are sacrificing Canada’s international reputation (one she acknowledges as being exaggerated) and our role as a middle power, as well as jeopardizing our independence as a nation.

McQuaig deals with a number of issues that will have occurred to thinking Canadians over the years, including how our reputation for peacekeeping and compromise is being unjustly denigrated by the right wing; how the United States’ penchant for exceptionalism has essentially made it a law unto itself as it chooses to flout international law, the United Nations, the World Court, the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on torture, and any other potential restriction on its dominance; the destabilizing effect of the U.S. opposition to nuclear disarmament; and its military’s refusal to abandon Cold War thinking, having simply substituted Islamic extremism for “the Red Menace.”

While the above description may make this book sound like an anti-American rant, it is not. Rather, McQuaig shows, through copious examples and careful analysis, how the citizens of both Canada and the United States are being ill-served by those in power who are quite willing to mislead and manipulate their respective peoples. Indeed, some of her harshest criticism is reserved for the Canadian government, both the current Conservative one and the previous Liberal one, and its often uncritical deference to American policies of very questionable merit.

The book will be offensive to those who think the motives and policies of the United States (and Canada, for that matter) should never be questioned. It will, however, be appreciated by those who want to go beyond media rhetoric and think deeply about issues of importance. It will also appeal to those humble enough never to have subscribed to the jingoistic notion, “My country, right or wrong,” a very dangerous mantra for the people of any free society to adopt.

Killing Johnny Fry- by Walter Mosley

While I admire the range of Walter Mosley’s imagination, given his forays not only into the mystery/detective genre via the Easy Rawlins series, but also his efforts in science fiction and explorations of the nature of good and evil (The Man in My Basement) I cannot say that I enjoyed his latest work which can’t be labeled anything other than pornographic. While I am no prude, I really didn’t think the novel’s graphic nature was justified by what I took to be its theme.

The novel revolves around Cordell Carmel, a middle-aged black New Yorker who one day discovers his long-time girlfriend having torrid sex in her apartment with a white man, Johnny Fry. Unseen, Cordell leaves, but the impact of this experience is life-changing. Not only does the formerly mild Cordell want to kill Johnny, but the realization of his own ignorance and inadequacies leads him into a series of sexual escapade with numerous women, to what ultimate end I really don’t know.

Perhaps this novel is meant to serve as some kind of allegory, because neither Cordell’s remarkable, but heretofore unknown sexual abilities, nor the conflict’s resolution were even remotely credible. After completing the book, one is left with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, not unlike the way Cordell seems to feel despite his many conquests.

This disappointing experience notwithstanding, I will continue to look forward to anything written by Mr. Mosley. I admire his refusal to be defined by one genre; his willingness to take chances suggests someone who is still growing as a writer, someone who will probably continue to explore for the rest of his career. Could a reader ask for anything more?