State of Wonder and Before I Go To Sleep

The best thrillers sometimes turn out to be the ones that aren't even billed as such. To be able, at the end of a book, gasp with surprise, is a rare pleasure. That gasp was the difference between Ann Patchett's State of Wonder and Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson.
The blurbs on Watson's book referred to it as "Memento on meth" and it was reminiscent of Memento. Christine wakes up every morning with no memory and has to quickly learn who to trust. A daily phone call from her doctor tells her where to find her journal, where she writes down what she pieces together (and what she also has to read every day) about her life. It is a fast paced if generally unbelievable book. It didn't take me long to figure out the real story, although in the end there were a lot of unanswered questions. Still, it was entertaining!
State of Wonder reminded me of Bel Canto-- many unrelated characters thrown together, forced to interact and with the outcome a surprise. Marina Singh is sent to the Amazon by the pharmaceutical company she works for to get an update from her med school mentor, Dr. Swenson, on the latter's research and to find out more about the mysterious death of her colleague. Marina becomes enthralled with the Amazon tribe she lives with, Dr. Swenson's research, and Dr. Swenson's "adopted" son Easter. The final Amazon scene is exciting as any Indiana Jones movie and my jaw dropped.
3 stars for the Watson book and 5 stars for the Patchett.

Great House

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was not my favorite so I was pleasantly surprised by how moving her third novel, Great House, was.  In Great House, a large desk is the centerpiece both of the houses it occupies and the lives it touches. As an adult, I haven't had any furniture I care about-- I could get rid of it all and wouldn't miss it. But this desk represented a nostalgia for all who posessed it: nostalgia for a pre-Holocaust home in Budpest, nostalgia for a poet disappeared under Pinochet, the hope of another book written at it. Krauss weaves together disparate lives in different parts of the world, giving the book a kind of mystery as I kept reading to see how they would all connect together.

As in The History of Love, Krauss uses a bit of dialogue tic (which is what I disliked) but it is minor and I think her overall writing is improved. I look forward to her next books.

5 out of 5 netflix stars

Little Bee

There are more than 16 million refugees worldwide, and about 8 million of those have had books written about them.  Okay, that's a callous exageration but when Little Bee by Chris Cleave was picked for my book club, I wasn't sure I could read another book about an elite white person helping a disenfranchised black person. Certainly there is hope in books like Strength in What Remains and What Is The What; the protagonists end up with a better quality life thanks to helpful strangers.  But I found these stories to be the exception, not the rule. When so many middle class Americans are struggling, I just found these one in a million (or, one in 16 million) cases of illegal immigrants getting college educations, etc. unbelievable.

So imagine my surprise when Little Bee turned out to exactly what I needed to wipe the cynical smirk off my face. First and foremost, it's the most compelling book I've read in a long while.  A real page turner. Cleave can craft a sentence that is humorous while maintaining humility. Second, his characters are flawed, which makes them overall more believable. Little Bee has serious flaws as do her white patrons, Andrew and Sarah.

This book is enough worth reading that I don't want to spoil it with many plot details.

5/5 netflix stars

Unaccustomed Earth

My first job out of college I worked with a woman named Alo. Originally from India, she and her family had lived in Newton for nearly 20 years. She worked so that her children would have access to her employee discount of education. Once her youngest was through school, she would retire. Despite her years in the US, she always wore a sari and beautiful jewelry to work. Even in winter she would wear colorful, sheer and silky saris, covered with a thick cardigan. Alo had a vast network of fellow Indians and when she learned that I had loved Jhumpa Lahiri's book Interpreter of Maladies, she divulged that she was friendly with her family and thereafter took every opportunity to share with me stories about Ms. Lahiri. "Baby", she would say, "Jhumpa wore the most gorgeous sari to a wedding shower." She would tell details of her clothes and how she styled her hair, telling me how beautiful she was. But I couldn't imagine her clothes being half as beautiful as her stories.

Unaccustomed Earth takes advantage of Ms. Lahiri's distinguished writing style. In a sense, it picks up where Interpreter of Maladies leaves off; a book of longer short stories which can be read individually, but when combined tell a larger story. Her stories explore the relationships between generations of immigrant familes, and their relationships with people outside their immediate circle of friends and family. But far from playing the race card, Ms. Lahiri's stories commentt on the universal feeling of otherness. How losing a parent or spouse can be the most lonely feeling in the world. Or the feeling when you are untethered with no permanent home. And by the regret that comes with age, over decisions and actions made when younger. She writes capably of love and loss, but also resentment and fear.

Ms. Lahiri's stories are beautiful, but less like a brightly colored chiffon sari, and more like Alo's sweater-- old and dependable, meant to comfort and warm, holding the knowlege of its owner's years.

Netflix stars: 5/5

Netherland

How much does public tragedy drive our private lives? Can we redirect our personal trajectories after public events steer us off course? How will our lives be perceived in the space of our generation; or in the space of two, three or four generations? What does it mean to be an American (Ich bin ein American?)? How do we chose our friendships? These are some of the questions Joseph O'Neill asks in his beautifully and thoughtfully written Netherland.

Hans, a Dutch native, his English wife and their young son relocate to New York for work prior to 9/11. They live downtown and are moved to the Chelsea Hotel after their building is contaminated. Rachel becomes more and more agitated and anxious after the attacks, and decides to move with their son back to London. Faced with the unexpected, Hans flounders. He lives in a bohemian hotel with transient to non-existent friends, a job in which he's successful and makes a good living, but without friends and family doesn't translate into happiness. But as friendships often happen, he randomly meets Chuck Ramkissoon and soon strikes up a friendship of convenience with him, and others who meet to play cricket throughout the outer boroughs.

For Hans, cricket is a transport back in time to his childhood in the Hague. Throughout the book Hans enjoys the anonymity his ragtag group of immigrant friends provide. He doesn't question their motives and they don't question his. Maybe for all of them it is a way to connect in vast America, and they do. To connect with his son, Hans frequently logs into Google Earth and swoops from lower Manhattan to London, getting down close enough to see his wife's car and son's bike in the lawn. We are, and as Hans intimately knows, in a very small world, but also one that is still so immense.

O'Neill deftly navigates the reader through real events in the years following 9/11 (ie, the blackout of '93) and challenges us to wonder whether public events really do affect our current and future relationships. He writes about the mundane and the profound in the same tone, giving us a guide, Hans, who is equally confused and assured about his own decisions.

Netherland isn't a page turner, but it is captivating. I give it 5/5 netflix stars.

Half Moon Street

Sometimes I think I've traveled to more places than I actually have. I watch a lot of foreign films; French New Wave is among my favorite genres. I read books set in European, Asian and South American countries. Fortunately, Paul Theroux travels to all the places I haven't and is a prolific writer to boot. Last summer I read Dark Star Safari, his narrative about traveling in a mostly traditional manner from Alexandria to Cape Town. His Africa isn't glamorous-- it's more Peace Corps than Safari and he purposely takes the trail less taken (at least by the white man). Theroux is one of my favorite writers; he has a caustic wit and isn't afraid to express an unpopular opinion. He writes mostly non-fiction, but I find his fiction equally captivating. He sets his stories in foreign locales but mixes the ordinary with irony and sarcasm.
Half Moon Street is an older volume of two novellas. I picked it up hoping to escape from wintry Boston. I got as far as London. The first of the two stories is set in London in the 1980s. Dr. Slaughter is a young woman with a fellowship in international relations. She's headstrong and gutsy, but calculating. She doesn't have the financial means to live the life she wants, but lives frugally, eating vegetarian, turning down alcohol and exercising religiously. When presented with an opportunity to become an "escort" she sees it as a means to meet people who can further her career while also making money and providing a social life on the side. This story is one that makes you cringe, but also one that has you keep reading, like watching a wreck. Ms. Slaughter's name alone suggests a terrible end, but it isn't until the novella's final paragraph that even the reader realizes how close she's come.
The second novella takes place in Boston and it's suburbs and the Cape. We learn of two brothers, twins, who, far from being close, are nothing but. As children they would trick parents. teachers and friends, one playing the other. The impersonations were mostly self preservation for each-- passing history, passing a driver's test. After the Vietnam War one brother goes missing, and the remaining brother is mostly satisfied by his disappearance as he can live his own life. One day the missing brother shows up, sick, at his brother's door. After being told he can stay a week, no more, his twin goes to the family vacation home on the Cape. Upon his return, the "missing" brother is dead. The surviving brother disposes of the body (after all, it wasn't his fault) and then goes on an unintended mission to find out who his brother was. It turns out he was a doctor in Kenmore Square and the brother turns to his old ruse of impersonation to find out why his brother was killed. The end is as chilling an end as the first novella. Both stories are unrelated save the theme of impersonation and its unintended consequences. Netflix rating of 3/5 stars.