Book Review of Winds From Further West by Andrew McCall Smith

 

The Winds from Further West

I have just finished Alexander McCall Smith’s latest standalone novel.  It’s called The Winds from Further West. Neil, the main character, is a medical researcher, a doctor, and a professor. His job is placed in jeopardy when he is accused of a politically incorrect statement by a student. His good friend James, a gay man, pushes him to stand up and fight, but Neil resists making a scene and ultimately resigns his position and moves west from Edinburgh to the isolated Scottish island of Mull. There, among people who live off the sea and the land, he begins to ponder a new life.  

 I cannot stop thinking that the title pushes us further west than the Hebrides. Those winds may be coming from all the way across the ocean. Neil’s predicament mirrors any number of experienced professionals who have been caught up in Trump’s meatgrinder. Down with diversity, equity, and inclusion and up with moving the disagreeables to holding pens before deportation.

Neil learns quickly from his superiors that the new world of schooling says, “We are not here to educate young people. We are here to participate in the process of discovery that the students themselves will initiate and control.” Neil wants neither to be baited into a phony apology for his non-existent sin, nor to mount a spirited personal defense. He senses that this kind of egalitarianism might work with morality or aesthetics, but for the basic laws of science, reasonable certainty ought to win the field. With no room left for tolerance of those who refuse to buckle under, he heads for a slower-paced contemplative tune-up.     

Our hero is thoughtful and likable, while Henrietta, his administrative boss, is mealy-mouthed and vile. But never fear. As we start to sort things out, our author Smith returns to his time-tested philosophy. You can get lost things back with a little love. You can accept that people can be flawed, but not necessarily wicked.  You can be confident that ruthless academic administrators and business tycoons are not the total wave of the future? Ultimately, extremes are short-lived and “temporary” in the vast scheme of things. Life, as always, is riddled with compromises that may need courage to address. if you can just commit yourself to doing “small acts of kindness” now and again, everything will be easier for you and others.

McCall Smith writes with such humor, love of nature, and gentle insight that you can easily forget that his work is underpinned by an impressive depth. I still find his African books his best, but this contemporary foray is well worth picking up.  

4.5 out of 5

 

Theatre Review--PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES

 

 

 What can you say when a theatre production melds with the audience perfectly? This afternoon’s viewing of PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES at the Amana Colony’s Fine Arts Center reminded me of how much I love live theatre and how much I admire a director and a group of actors who can captivate a full house of appreciative viewers on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

If you look at the set picture above, you can see what we saw upon entering the house. The show is unabashedly down-home country and the scene design is full of memory-jogging properties from a time now gone. There are no apologies offered for singing songs about  grease monkeys and waitresses who inhabit the Double Cup diner. As a matter of fact, a good share of the audience may have had a cup of coffee at a similar business in their own hometown this morning.

Repartee from the audience was encouraged and responded to by the supple cast members.  From the leads to the drummer, they all came through as the kind of good, hard-working, fun-loving, droll, and sassy men and women who served the nation’s highways before small towns were bypassed by the interstates. All of this went a long way toward building a fully satisfying texture for this actor and audience-centered production.

I also admired the choice to hew to the first off-Broadway performance and use standing and handheld mikes rather than individual glued-in-place lavaliers. This helped set the period as well as keeping the lyrics crystal clear and the instrumentation under good control. There was not need to add glitzy modern pulsating high-colored lighting effects. The ungelled instruments kept the production palette as subdued and real as the set, props, and costumes.  

Superior vocals were provided by Layton White and Deb Kennedy while Jeff Roush’s folksy patter and multiple guitar changes held everything together.  Tim Fees’ voice didn’t have the range of some others, but when he showed his skill with the harmonica and accordion as well as the keyboard, I was sold on his understated personality as the somewhat shy and unassuming guy who must always have been a part of the workers at any truck stop. it seemed to reinforce the sense that you didn’t need two tons of computer equipment, flashy tech effects, and gaudy costumes to set the perfect intimate tone for this show.

The topper came when the cast, in true community theatre tradition, trooped out to the lobby after the curtain call to mingle with the audience.  This was theatre as it was meant to be—full of heart, appealing to all ages, expertly designed, and performed with gusto. I will be in the audience for the group's next performance of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple in late September.   

                                                          Y’all Come Now!!

Short review of Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

 

 Silva, Daniel Portrait of a Spy

This is an early Silva from 2001. It’s a paperback and can be found in the 3^rd floor Grand Living library. Gabriel Allon, master Israeli spy, is trying to concentrate on his art restoration skills when bombings in major European cities threaten the Western alliances and the Arab world. After a close call in London’s Covent Garden, he comes up with a master plan that unites the intelligence services of the Brits, Israelis, and Americans. It involves recruiting a Middle Eastern woman whose father was assassinated by Allon when the woman was a young girl, but who may be able to approach the evil mastermind behind the bombs. There are several levels of deception in several different countries. It is fast moving and gripping right up to the violent ending.  

Book review Cristina Dodd THUS WITH A KISS I DIE

 

Romeo and Juliet do not die in the tomb. Friar Lawrence wakes them up and they live a lovely life in “Fair Verona” where they spawn a passel of kids. The oldest one, named Rosilind or Rosie, has a love affair going with a handsome young swain named Lysander. On Midsummer’s Eve,of course, Rosie’s affair with Lysander is truncated by Prince Escalus, who has taken advantage of the darkness to impersonate Lysander.  Rosie must now marry him as her virginity has been compromised. At a celebratory dinner in the Prince’s palace, she starts hearing voices. She escapes to the top of a tower, where she runs into, of all things, the Prince’s father’s ghost. The ghost tells her he will get her Lysander back, but only if she can find out who murdered him. We are now dealing with way too much Ham; let for me. The genre is dreadful corn and it deserves to be left on the shelf while waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to arrive.    

.5 out of 5 

Review Dark Tide Rising by Anne Perry

 Review of Anne Perry’s Dark Tide Rising

Anne Perry wrote over 100 novels, most of which are in the Crime Fiction genre. She died in 2023. Dark Tide Rising, featuring Thames River Police detective William Monk and his wife Hester, was the last of 18 Monk novels, all of which are set in Victorian London.    

In this one, a wealthy Englishman asks Monk to protect him as he delivers a ransom payment to the kidnappers of his wife. The handover goes south in the treacherous mud tidal flats of the Thames River, and the kidnapped wife is viciously killed. Since Monk’s wife had been involved in a kidnapping in an earlier book, this murder becomes even more personal to the detective.  Did someone under his command betray the plans to deliver the ransom?  Will the revealing of old secrets destroy valued friendships?  Additional deaths tie the plot into more complicated knots.     

Perry writes with practiced authority about 19th-century London. Along with the dark and sinister atmosphere of the Thames River at night, she includes a thematic undercurrent of commentary on the position of women in the era. It is the inclusion of these elements that gives the book a deeper texture than the average detective novel.

I can easily give it a good solid 4 out of 5

Book Review of Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley

 

Having enjoyed Ms Keasley’s recent historical romance titled The King’s Messenger, I found a 2001 title at the Marion Library titled Season of Storms. It is based on some cues from the life of the 19th-century poet, Gabriel D’Annunzio, but is turned into a full-fledged gothic novel.  The heroine is a young English actress named Celia Sands and the London theatre background was what attracted me over the other older titles available.     

Celia has little confidence in herself or her talent, but is young and ready to both make her professional mark and to find a relationship. The kicker is she has the same name as an early 20th-century woman named Celia Sands who vanished on the night of the premiere of a play written in her honor by her lover, an Italian poet and nobleman named Galazzo D’Ascanio. The play that night was never performed, and now, two generations later, the show is to be done in an outdoor theatre on the grounds of the D’Ascanio estate. The modern Ms. Sands has some trepidations, but finally accepts the lead role. Although there is no particular reason to do it, the play’s company is required to travel to the Italian estate to rehearse. This puts all the actors in the old manor house on the grounds. It has a faded splendor along with lots of dark, twisting, and creepy corridors.    

Their host is Alessandro D’Ascanio, the original poet’s grandson.  He is young and mysterious.   Even though he has a love interest living in another building on the estate, Celia finds herself attracted to him. Several other romantic entanglements in the company plus a lot of rain, add to into the rocky rehearsal schedule.

To top it off, paranormal occurrences seem to be taking place. Celia is the most affected since a friend back in London had already given her a scary Tarot Card reading before she left for Italy.  Now, she finds herself billeted in the bedroom of the original Celia, whose portrait hangs ominously “with newly haunted eyes,” right over her bed. Needless to say, she gets a lot of bad dreams. If that is not enough, a decision is made to delve further into the psychological background of the original situation by scheduling a séance to reach the soul of the first Celia. That goes amuck, and ends with a not-so “Blithe Spirit” claiming that Celia did not vanish just before the opening night of her play, but was murdered.

Having directed over 100 plays in my life, I must admit that this is a new research tool for theatre companies. Kearsley’s lush descriptive style matches well with the gothic ambiance she is trying to create and true love is ultimately found. Unfortunately, the girdle of coincidence was stretched far beyond its snapping point and believability in the theatrical details as well as the general plot just plain disappeared.      

I give it a 2.5  out of 5.

 

Brief Review of CENTRAL PARK WEST by James Comey

 

James Comey writes with authority about the FBI, legal procedures, the Justice Department, and the Manhattan location of this novel. The courtroom scenes are rock solid, but overall, the tale seems pretty standard.  A star witness with mob connections puts the defense of a wife accused of the murder of her husband (a former governor) in jeopardy.  A young lawyer with a passion and an old hand who can think and operate just barely inside of the law, ultimately untangle the mess in a cat-and-mouse game of secret assassins and disguises.

One problem might be that young, crusading, truth-seeking,  lawyers seem to be antiques out of the past right now. They have been replaced by morally reprehensible political lackeys. I guess one should be happy to find someone writing about the good old days, but I’m afraid they are not going to return anytime soon. I keep wishing for Perry Mason and Paul Drake, and all I get is Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.  

I give it a 3 out of 5