Harm Done was my first book by Ruth Rendell. I liked it, and definitely wanted to finish it, but it didn't make me jump up and down. The characters were interesting, but the language was nothing magical. This was a nice detective novel that took on some important themes: domestic violence, family relationships, mob psychology and its dangers. I won't race out to get another Ruth Rendell novel, but if need a book and a Ruth Rendell is handy I would probably pick it up.
In The Hours, Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the reader travels between single days in the lives of three women. The first is Virginia Woolf herself, convalescing at a country estate to rest from the stresses of London and beginning to craft Mrs. Dalloway. The second is Clarissa Vaughn, humorously called Mrs. Dalloway by her best friend and former lover Richard who is now dying of AIDS and for whom she is planning a party that evening. The third is Laura Brown, a housewife and mother in the suburban LA of the 1950s. Cunningham explores the wonder that each woman feels at some moments of her day, but also the emptiness and desperation that can, with equal or greater power, eclipse other moments, leaving her feeling profoundly insecure and disconnected from the living of her own life. The least prone to the experiences of emptiness and insecurity is Clarissa, who is now in an 18-year lesbian partnership and mother of a grown daughter. This is not coincidental, both Virginia and Laura are enlivened by a same-sex kiss, the implications of which can not be as easily and fully explored in the social environments of their times as they can be by Clarissa. Clarissa's freedom to explore her world more fully, to love deeply both the men and women in her life in ways that are honest, seems to be a piece that Cunningham sees as crucial to feeling at home in the world.
Reading Mrs. Dalloway prior to reading this novel is crucial to truly appreciating what Cunningham achieves here. Without it, the book is a meditation on identity, life, and love, with a skillful interweaving of multiple plotlines. Knowing Mrs. Dalloway, a reader is able to savor the echoes of Woolf's style and the small details of plot which are captured and reworked by Cunningham, particularly in the thread which follows Clarissa's day.
This novel is also one of a small group of works that expertly captures a particular moment in time at the end of the 1990s in the American gay community. Clarissa's reflections on the effect of the early AIDS epidemic, and the subsequent changes wrought by the discovery of protease inhibitors, on the lives and relationships within the gay community at that time are exactly on target. This makes up a relatively small part of the novel, and yet the particular questions about life, sanity, and the nature of relationships that the changes in the epidemic cast in stark relief in those days are exactly the questions that form the center of the novel.
This is a complex and skillfully crafted work. Read Mrs. Dalloway first, so that you can truly appreciate it. 4.5 stars.
A few chapters into this book, I was scrambling for Google. What I discovered is that this novel's protagonist, Professor Martens, was a real historical figure, an international law expert in the Russian court of the early 20th Century. He was an important figure in numerous important international treaty negotiations. This novel, set late in his life, takes us with him on a train trip from his small village toward a rendezvous with his wife and official meetings with other diplomats in St. Petersburg. As he travels, we listen to his internal dialogue, anticipating a planned conversation with his wife in which he plans to begin an era of total candor. He reviews his personal and professional past, examining successes and failures and imagines that this new honesty will be insurance against his own death. During the journey, he also temporarily shares his compartment with a young professional journalist with socialist sympathies who knows a bit about him through her professional connections. At times Martens also tells the reader about another Martens, who lived a century earlier, another international law expert, but for Germany. It is a rare novel that gives insight into what it must feel like to be in contention for, but not win, a Nobel Peace prize, or to be left unsure whether your absence from an official list of participants in a major treaty negotiation was a typist's error or a sly political maneuver by a competitive colleague.
Through Martens' self-exploration, Jaan Kross explores the moral challenges faced by highly placed civil servants in autocracies, as well as the complexities of Estonian identity. Martens regrets, as well as some professional compromises, ethical failures in his personal life: infidelity, a lack of generosity to those who sought his support, despite his own success after early humble origins. Martens is a wonderful character, drawn with subtlety and skill. Those with an interest in political history and moral self-reflection will find this book a fascinating trip.
On the surface it is an international spy story set in Jerusalem (mostly). In fact it ponders identity, dissimulation, Zionism, Anti-Semitism, what it is to be a good Jew. Lots of fun, but lots to think about as well. I wrote more about it (before I finished it, but still) on my blog at http://bethslistlove.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/and-theyre-off/
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
Not quite as much fun as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, but still a good glimpse into Feynman's thinking and antics.
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Entertaining mystery but not as suspenseful as some and not as impressive a read as most of what I've been reading lately. Has a great bad guy, though.
The premise is that dieting causes our problems with appropriate self-regulation when it comes to eating. Book advocates a different approach to food, with acceptance of current size and focus on recalibrating natural ability to sense satiety.
I liked this more than I expected to. It kept me reading at a good clip. Would not, however, count it among my favorites.
I wasn't sure if I would like this book. It moves slowly, and has a lot of Protestant religious searching to it, which is not something, at this point in my life, that I necessarily am inclined to steep myself in. But in the end, it seemed a story of family and love and redemption, and I did like it very much.
What an inspiring story. It is amazing what one person can do if they really act on what they believe.
It was fascinating, and I survived the multiple generations with the same names, but I think I expected to love it a little more than I did. I really liked it, but isn't making my top 10 list.
