Book Review: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

 

This gets my vote for "sleeper of the year" just past. It seems to have  grown to a lovable best seller month by month over time.  

An old man named Theo (no last name provided) turns up in a bucolic, picture-perfect southern river town named Golden. He goes to a local coffee shop called “The Chalice.” Think about that for starters. On the walls of the shop are pencil portraits of customers drawn by a local artist and a notice that they are for sale. Since sales of the pictures seem moribund, Theo decides to buy the pictures one at a time, search out the sitters, and then arrange a meeting with them on a bench by a fountain in a local park, where he gives them the portrait and chats with them about their lives. It is a clever structural gambit that gives the entire novel a beautiful narrative push. Right from the beginning, the past becomes something that the main character is artfully hiding.  

Theo last lived in New York City and the fountain in the book reminds him of the Bethesda Fountain in New York’s Central Park. It had particular resonance for me because it reminded me of the symbolic importance of cleansing waters in a major play of the 1990’s titled Angels in America. Both feature an angel with spreading wings looking over those seated or walking by. Take note—What do angels do?

The giving of the gift of each portrait becomes a blessing, a small act of kindness with no strings attached that begins to reveal the life and inner soul of each recipient.  They are a varied lot. Among them are Mr. Whitaker, the custodian with a crippled daughter, Basil the street musician, Simone the cello student, and most moving of all, a woman on the spectrum who sleeps under bridges or at the local mission and carries all her possessions with her on an old bicycle.    

Some of the sitter’s stories are happy, some lightly touched with humor, some full of yearning, and some carry a full measure of sorrow and pain. Each little bio adds to the texture of the town of Golden. And each new revelation from one of the town’s residents brings with it a reminder of Theo’s mysterious concealment of his own history. It is literally what keeps you reading. Why did this man begin this unusual project, and what was he hiding from those he befriended as well as from the reader?  What was the cross Theo was carrying?  

Theo loves the natural world and especially birds. At one point, he describes a sunset that reveals a cloud of thousands of starlings and red wings each flying “with synchronized precision, a dancing funnel, undulating in perfect union.”  This spectacle he recalls has a name. It is called a “murmuration.” The same word was used just last week in David Brooks’ NYT essay on the strange way the brain works. This swirling image of the complicated yet unifying nature of life was a new word for me and it neatly encapsulates the whole book right up to its shocking and violent conclusion.  It leaves a reminder to Theo that beauty and goodness can exist right alongside his own and others’ grief. A carried cross can be lightened by the long view that the town of Golden, in spite of the presence of evil, can still have a “prevailing goodness.”  

A definite 5 and I don’t give “A’s” out lightly.

 

 

Book Review Baker Street Jurors by Michael Robertson

 

Michael Robertson’s 2016 novel, The Baker Street Jurors, is a bit silly at times, but it has a clever premise and enough character development and wry humor to make a quick and pleasant read. A solicitor who, now happens to work at the world famous London address of 221 B Baker Street, finds himself on a murder case jury. The group is barely empaneled before some of its members begin having accidents. As the pool grows smaller, the judge and jury take a trip to the island home of the defendant, and the accidents begin to turn even more deadly. The twists now would surely have confounded even the Holmesian aphorism of “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, must be the truth, however improbable.” Some of the goings on do stretch credibility, but it’s all in good fun when Sherlock has a hand in it. There are few more titles listed on the slip cover and I think I will check for their availability at our local library.

I give it a good  3.5 out of 5

 

In the Time of Five Pumpkins

 

McCall Smith’s Latest

I have loved McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series for many years, so I am rather sadly reporting that he may be running out of interesting plot lines.  In the Time of Five Pumpkins, all the old characters are there and Mma Makutsi’s shoes are still talking to her, but somehow the coming of the rains and the growth of pumpkins aren’t enough to keep me reading with vigor.

 Mma Ramotswe takes on a knotty ethical problem by agreeing to separately represent each person in a couple, both of whom accuse the other of “stepping out”. Neither client is honest or interesting.  In a second plot, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni appears to have found a new friend in an important car salesman. Mma Ramotswe fears the man may be trying to curry some kind of favor from her husband and that does turn out to be true. The best scene in the book describes a harrowing fishing trip in which the car mogul falls into the water during a fishing trip and is almost eaten by a crocodile before he is saved by Mr. Matekoni.

Along the way, the book contains the expected little strokes of McCall-Smith wisdom and, as usual, manages to resolve everything just as the symbolic spring rains arrive bringing with them the promise of renewed growth and a rich harvest. The book is likable, funny at times, and a quick read.  There is some comfort in that, but not enough to give it more than a pleasantly respectable 3 out of 5.    

Anthony Horowitz With A Mind

 

Anthony Horowitz is the well-honored author and creator of the Magpie Murders, Midsommer Murders, Foyle’s War,  and the Alex Rider series for young adults, which have sold more than 19 million copies over the years.

 With a Mind to Kill is his third James Bond 007 knockoff novel. All have been authorized by the Ian Flemming Estate and the publishers of the original Bond books.

As we begin the book, James Bond is recovering from a long siege of brainwashing driven by a Russian scientist. He returns from Jamaica to play a part in a huge ruse that calls for him to be the faux assassin of M and then be spirited away by the Russians to be re-programmed for another killing. He meets and conquers another intriguing young Bond woman as the story works its way to a bloody end.

It is not as droll as the originals, but it is compellingly plotted and makes for a quick, easy read.

I give it a 3.5 out of 5

 

 

ReView of Another Dead Author by Katarina Bivald

 

Another Dead Author by Katarina Bivald

 Location, location, location, the old real estate truism is certainly true for this second or third book by Katarina Bivald.  You collect a group of young English authors, editors, and agents and tell them that they will spend three weeks in a lovely French chateau doing nothing but talking about or doing writing and you clearly have a nest of vipers. This is particularly true when the keynote speaker is a famous author who is poisoned by a glass of wine laced with hemlock just after he has delivered his speech.

Two French detectives are assigned to the case, but one of the other guest contributors is a published author who has recently helped solve a murder case back In England. This Miss Marple clone does what generally is done by an amateur sleuth—make things harder for the professionals, but in the end solves the mystery ahead of the constabulary.   

Since pretty much all of the participants seem to have some kind of motive for eliminating the famous author, the winnowing process is full of twists and turns. This is a good but not great mystery. Someone who has been involved with the writing process and its cutthroat commerciality might find it more interesting than the average reader. The French country background is handled nicely and is a slight change from the more usual English country house setting.

I give it a 3 out of 5.

Book Review of Bad Lands by Preston and Child

 

I had never read any of Preston and Child’s books, but when the blurb noted that it took place in the southwest around Chaco Canyon and had to do with the ancient inhabitants, my long-standing interests in archeology were piqued.  

The story begins with Nora Kelly, a young FBI agent, who finds herself out in the desert trying to figure out why a healthy woman threw off all her clothes and died of heatstroke in a remote area of New Mexico. Another death occurs, and further investigation reveals another death in the past and the potential of a cult being built by a professor at the state university.

Professor Oskarbi had been an acolyte of a Mexican mystic and then wrote a financially lucrative book about him. It also allowed him to build a coterie of young female grad students who had plenty of time in between studies to play house with their idol. Over the years, the coterie intensified into a cult that carried out summer research into the ancient residents of mysterious and remote Galina Canyon. The scientific digs apparently also featured the practice of ancient rituals, drug taking, and lots of overnight tent hopping.  

To prepare you for the tilt into fantasy, the authors tell you that FBI research has found that bizarre cults can be formed by intelligent people, like PhD grad students in anthropology, as well as by religious nuts. The professorial cult demands suicide, blood sacrifices, and violent torture. It is fueled by a real evil order behind reality that rises out of ritual fire and smoke. Detection disappears and the bloody climax, can’t even be mentioned in the final FBI report because nobody will believe it. I think I’ll stick with Tony or Anne Hillerman for my Navajo-oriented fiction.

I give it a 2 out of 5

Review of The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson

 

Constance Haverhill is a wonderful main character—intelligent, loving, giving, perceptive, ambitious, gracious, and funny in turn. She has spent the First World War running her family’s farm in the absence of her brother. Out of a job when he comes home safely, she has taken a temporary position as a companion to an elderly family friend who is convalescing at an English seaside hotel after a bout with the Spanish flu. Her future seems to be as a governess or a bookkeeper—both bleak and not prime avenues to marriage. 

 Then she meets Poppy, a woman from the monied class, who had carried dispatches on a motorcycle during the war. She has marshalled a group of local single women who were also riders and formed a taxi service to carry people around the town in the sidecars of their cycles. Poppy’s brother, a fighter pilot, has returned from the front without a leg and is having major PTSD issues.

There you have it. A historical event populated by young marriageable women of all classes who have done work in formerly male occupations during a war and are now seeing their hard-won freedoms being ripped away.  Poppy launches another plan for her incapacitated brother to teach women to fly, and there you have the full and catchy title.  

Various characters are there to display the disparity between the British upper and lower classes. The contrast is eloquently covered. The women, whether spunky or pompous, are hard to see as motorcycle demons and potential pilots but they carry the story through multiple twists, and romances. Everything builds to an exciting climax in the air and on the matrimony field. The whole ambiance seems spot on. The richness and endearing qualities of her characters and the luscious beauty of her descriptions of the seaside and the countryside will capture you, I’m sure. 

I will close with a few of the sentences I marked to illustrate Simonson’s prose chops.  

An image--“Percival turned an alarming shade of purple, strangled somewhere between his scorn and his public politeness.”

A smell-- “Ah, next to fresh-baked bread, there’s nothing better than the smell of petrol in the morning.”

A view on marriage before and after the war--“One had to dance with a lot of frogs to find the rare prince. But now the tide has really gone out.”

A view on life in general as noted by our heroine--“To live for today, one must be reasonably financially assured of tomorrow.”

I give this book a fine 4.5 out of 5. Truly enjoyable read.