While I Was Gone by Sue Miller

You know those books that sit on your shelf for years, for various reasons left unchosen each time you pick out your next read, until the by-now overly familiar spine makes all the potential magic inside seem almost too tired to even bother with?

That's one of my favorite things about books... how you never really know what's inside until you actually start reading. Take Sue Miller's late-1990s novel about an inexplicably (even to herself) restless middle-aged woman, While I Was Gone. I bought this, used, at a school fair probably six years ago, and only picked it up earlier this month. Now, this is definitely not a masterpiece or anything—the central plot conceit is asking too much of us, I think (and, frankly, lets our heroine off the hook at little too neatly); and for all the time Miller spends on the daughters, they remained vague and largely irrelevant through to the end—but I must say I've made my way through dozens of books I enjoyed far less during the time this has sat there on my shelf, patiently waiting.

Our narrator here is Jo Becker: early 50s, fun, fit and pretty; successful veterinarian; nice house in rural Massachusetts; three basically happy grown-up daughters; a good-looking, decent, loving husband. And yet.... when an old roommate re-enters her life—a man who knew her back in the late 1960s, a time when she learned so much about herself, and probably felt the most free—Jo finds herself obsessing about the events of that nearly-forgotten time, both the very good and the staggeringly ugly. How she deals with this unexpected plunge into the past is sad, liberating, funny, heartbreaking, necessary.

I had never read Sue Miller before—she has a relatively new book out in hardover now, The Senator's Wife—and greatly admired her smart, often subtle observations about relationships, the nature of love, family, identity, freedom, and fantasy, as well as her deft sense of timing and brisk pacing. If you, too, have While I Was Gone waiting unread in your home, you might want to consider it among your next-up options.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

The central, and essential, emotional moment of Nick Flynn's memoir: Nick is working the "cage" in a men's homeless shelter in Boston, and in staggers his long-estranged father—alcoholic, bank robber, ladies-man, self-proclaimed "brilliant" poet and writer—needing a bed. Everything that leads up to that night, and all that follows, for both son and father (for this is as much about Jonathan Flynn's life as it is about Nick) makes for a wrenching, funny, raucous, brisk, occasionally even inspiring read from a terrifically creative writer. Although I did want to hear more about Nick's life than he was willing to reveal, and the final act goes on a bit long, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is an original, utterly devourable addition to the by-now groaning shelf of modern memoirs well worth reading.

The Best of 2007: Books

I got through a completely unimpressive 21 books this year. (The goal for 2008? At least 30.) And while I'm pretty sure none of the following were actually published in aught-seven, that's when I read them, and they're all readily available in paperback.

So.






My five favorite reads this year:
1. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
2. What Is the What by Dave Eggers
3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Warburgs by Ron Chernow
5. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers





Plus, three more that, if you think you might like, you definitely will...
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson



Suggestions for 2008 are welcome, please.

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld

The short review is this: however you felt about Curtis Sittenfeld's first book, Prep—liked it, loved it, hated it—is probably exactly how you're going to feel about her second book, The Man of My Dreams. Me? I liked alot, and so I liked a lot.

Not that this is a sequel in any way, but our star Hannah Gavener is pretty much the same sort of excruciatingly self-conscious, hyper-aware, deeply uncomfortable AND condescending person as Prep's protagonist Lee Fiora. The biggest difference in The Man of My Dreams is the scope—Hannah takes us through her life from her early teens to her late twenties—and the author's focus, which is not so much on the friendships and the social pitfalls that befuddled and befell Prep's Lee, but rather on Hannah's often painful, always overly self-complicated search for love, through flings and crushes and romances.

Among Hannah's men: office buddy Ted, with whom she almost loses her virginity after a drunken afternoon... until she tells him of her sexual status; Oliver the anti-monogamist, who toys with her for years while openly screwing every woman in sight, including, quite possibly, Hannah's free-spirited cousin Fig; Henry, Fig's decent, much-suffering boyfriend and with whom Hannah is obsessed; Mike, who treats her like a queen, even as she breaks his heart; and the boy she meets in the park when she's 14, who asks to see her "bathing suit" and shows her his eagle tattoo... an image she'll call to mind years later during sex with Mike in order to achieve orgasm.

I think Sittenfeld is a terrific writer, as much for her broad strokes and the way she nails intense, complex emotions as for her small, sharp observations of the meaning behind the most mundane details of everyday life. Here's an excerpt:

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She wishes she had sunglasses, but otherwise it's so nice to be headed down the highway on a perfect late-April afternoon, so nice to just be going somewhere. She hasn't ridden in a car since she was home for spring break over a month ago. And she was prepared for Henry to listen to some terrible kind of male music—heavy metal or maybe pretentious white-man rappers—but the CD that's playing is Bruce Springsteen. Quite possibly, this is the happiest Hannah has ever been in her entire life.

Henry does have sunglasses, with a faded purple strap, a sporty strap, around the back. He keeps an atlas in the car, already folded open to a two-page spread, also faded, of Massachusetts. "You're navigating," he said when they got in the car, and when Hannah saw how far away Hyannis was, a flash of excitement went off inside her.

They don't talk at first, except Hannah saying, "Do you need to take Ninety-three to get on Three?" and Henry shaking his head. Almost half an hour has passed by the time he turns down the volume on the car stereo.

"So she called out of the blue and said 'Come get me'?" he asks.

"More or less."

"You're a good cousin, Hannah."

"Fig can be pretty persuasive."

"That's one way to put it," Henry says. Hannah does not point out that he, too, is in the car.

They don't speak—"I got laid off down at the lumberyard," sings Bruce Springsteen—and then Hannah says, "I think I got frustrated with her more when we were younger. In the beginning of high school, especially, because that's when Fig would get invited to parties by juniors and seniors. Or I'd hear people talking about something that had happened, like she'd be doing Jell-O shots in the parking lot at the basketball game, and I'd think, wait, my cousin Fig? That Fig?" The fact that Henry seems vaguely annoyed, and that fact that he's Fig's—even if he and Fig are broken up, he's still Fig's, and off-limits to Hannah—are both liberating, and Hannah feels uncharacteristically chatty. It's not like she's trying to appear attractive to him, or to impress him; she can just relax. "Of course, I'm not sure I even wanted to be invited to go to junior and senior parties," she continues. "Probably I wanted to be invited more than I wanted to go. I'm kind of a dork, though."

"Or maybe Jell-O shots aren't your thing," Henry says.

"I've never actually tried one." She wonders if this seems like a confession. If so—ha! Given that she still hasn't even kissed anyone, Jell-O shots are the least of what she's never tried. "But my main point about Fig is that you don't expect her to meet you fifty-fifty," Hannah says. "You sort of appreciate her good qualities and don't take it too personally when she blows you off."

Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen

There's a great, lively, extremely Brooklyn family memoir to be found in Rich Cohen's Sweet and Low... but you have to be willing to slog through stretches when the people fade to the background for unnecessary, unenlightening social history (America's 1960s obsession with dieting) as well as a fairly tedious investigation of a routine (albeit brazen) corporate crime.

The good stuff: Cohen's family, filled with often off-the-wall, sometimes horribly mean-spirited, almost always entertaining characters. In the book's first (and, I think, much better) half, we meet:

• Grandpa Ben, who nearly went broke running a cafeteria near the Brooklyn shipyards, then got into the teabag-stuffing business (Tetley and Lipton were unworried), then parlayed a true moment of inspiration—instead of using those messy, frequently clogged dispensers, restaurants should serve sugar in little packets—into the beginnings of the family fortune.

• Uncle Marvelous, an insecure mechanical genius who took over the company and really got the money rolling in by inventing and distributing Sweet 'n Low... but whose naivety almost sank the company when he put a bunch of "connected" guys on the payroll, and seemingly turned a blind eye—or was he a confederate?—as they systematically robbed the place.

• Grandma Betty, who sealed Rich's fate by disinheriting his side of the family on her deathbed. "To my daughter Ellen and her issue," she declared, "I leave nothing!"

• Aunt Gladys, whose psoriasis (among other things) kept her from leaving her (freezing-cold) room for more than 30 years, but whose deft manipulation of family politics and the telephone made her a force to be reckoned with.

• Uncle Ira, a genuine eccentric with an Upper East Side townhouse lousy with cats, a fondness for purses, a improbable bushy red beard, and a knack for the discomforting, such as this exchange with Rich at the urinals during a relative's wedding:
"What's the last thing you want your crazy uncle to say to you in the bathroom?"
"What?"
"Nice dick."

Unfortunately, I thought Cohen got bogged down in his explication of what really happened at the factory during the "organized crime" years, as well as his exploration as to why Sweet 'n Low was such a runaway hit (basically: right product, right time). But like I said, the family stuff is great. Here's a brief excerpt:

"Grandma Betty was careful about what she said and to whom. Grandma Esther said everything to everyone. She was the loudmouth immigrant who suddenly becomes a member of your family. She took an afternoon to tell a story that could be told in five minutes, then wound it up by saying, 'That's it in a nutshell.' I once heard her ask a woman in her condo complex, 'Why do you hate me, fatso?' I once heard her say to a Holocaust survivor, "You are one Hitler should not have let get away.' When she took me and my sister to see Yentl, she asked for three tickets, one senior, two children. My sister was thirty, I was twenty-two. The three of us saw Yentl for four dollars. She was, according to my father, the nation's foremost expert in cryogenics. She used the word schvartze. Cubans made her nervous. She believed there was a book in Jerusalem in which her name was inscribed in gold. She was old, but then she got really old. When I was driving her home, she demanded to see my license, studied it, then gave it back like a skeptical cop. She said the angel of death had lost her address. 'He must have been distracted at a party and forgotten.'"

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

First, a little backstory. Before writing this amazing novel, What Is the What, Dave Eggers spent years hanging out with and listening to Valentino Achak Deng, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," those thousands of refugees who were sponsored by both private and federal organizations to come live in America after a lifetime spent in near-starvation, terror and hopelessness, first fleeing their war-ravaged country, then trying to forge a life in the grim camps of Ethiopia and Kenya.

Transportation, three months rent in what was undoubtedly some shabby apartment, and the promise of a minimum wage job, that's what Deng and others were given when they arrived here. Not much… but it felt like astounding luxury compared to what these now-men were used to. Anyway, the point is that though this is technically a novel, the stories herein are all not-loosely based on actual events. Two and a half million people have died in Sudan's civil war. We are extremely fortunate that Deng was not one of them.

Told in the first person—and brilliantly so... there's not a false note or dishonest emotion to be found in these 475 pages—the story jumps back and forth between Deng's present-day life in Atlanta to his remembrances of Africa. There are scenes of great horror and cruelty that are almost too much to bear. There is laughter, here, too, and loyalty and deep love. There's gripping tension, and deep despair, and stunning resiliency. And always there is Deng/Eggers, his extraordinary tale told without melodrama or heroics, his voice immensely appealing, steady and true.

Here's a brief excerpt, as Deng tells of life early on in his first refugee camp...

No one wanted to enter the forest, for in the forest, boys disappeared. The first two who died were well-known for having been devoured by lions, and thus hunting in the forest for building materials became the job everyone chose to avoid. When our number was called for forest duty, some boys went mad. They hid in trees. They ran away. Many ran to Bonga, to train as soldiers, anything to avoid having to enter the forest of disappearing boys. The situation became worse as the months wore on. The forest's bounty was depleted daily, so boys searching for grass or poles or firewood had to venture further every day, closer to the unknown. More boys failed to come back, but the work continued, the construction spread wider and wider.

The winds came one day and blew down the roofs of dozens of the elders' homes. Six of us were assigned the task of reconstructing the roofs, and Isaac and I were busy with this assignment when Commander Secret found us.

—Into the forest with you two. We have no kindling,

I tried to be as formal and polite as I could be when I said:

—No sir, I cannot be eaten by a lion there.

Commander Secret stood, outraged. —Then you'll be beaten!

I had never heard such delicious words. I would take any beating over the risk of being devoured. Commander Secret took me to the barracks and beat me on the legs and backside with a cane, with force but without great malice. I suppressed a smile when it was over; I felt victorious and ran off, unable to hold off a song I sung to myself and to the night air.

The Books of Summer

I always wish I spent more of my day reading, but at least in the summer it feels like bonus book time just comes naturally, especially during those days at the beach (and train rides out to the beach) and family vacations. Anyway, I managed to get through an entirely unimpressive 6.5 books during June, July and August, and here they are...

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
There are several interesting and entertaining ideas in Taleb's study: that most world-altering events (from, say, war in the Middle East to the rise of Google) have been completely unpredictable... what he calls Black Swans; that, after the fact, we tend to pull together circumstances to make said event seem less random (and, hence, reassuringly controllable in the future); that, it follows further, "experts" are really charlatans, since even the most knowledgeable person will be unable to foresee the thing that will cause an organization/company/nation the most harm or good, as the case may be. Unfortunately, Taleb has an off-putting, affected, righteous, cranky style that makes getting through these (often repetitious) 300 or so pages much more of a chore than any book should be, no matter how smart or provocative the ideas therein.


Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Honestly, I can't remember the last time I read fully half of a book and then gave up, but that's what happened here. It's not that Pessl's novel is bad; obviously, I wouldn't have sat through 250+ pages if it was. In fact, this is a sharply observed, well-paced, well-written story about a girl named Blue with an unusual, itinerant upbringing who gets taken in by the elite clique at her new, exclusive prep school, and about the strange tragedies that start to befall them all. It all sounds right up my alley... but these people are SO negative toward each other and the world around them, and it just seems like Pessl hates them all, and so never passes up an opportunity for someone to say or think something nasty. It became too mean-spirited for my tastes, and it was getting me depressed, so reluctantly I had to move on.

The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story by Ken Dornstein
Although it starts out a little slow and scattered (and, perhaps, clichéd), this memoir of sorts is ultimately an extraordinarily revealing and often quite moving portrait of two brothers: David, exceptionally handsome, an obsessive journal writer, a tormented oddball, killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 explosion over Lockerbie in 1988 at the age of 25; and author Ken, who spent years trying to understand his feelings—for his brother, for his own life and future (does he dare fall in love with brother's ex-girlfriend?), and for what happened in the skies above Scotland. Call it a detective story of emotions. I really enjoyed this book a lot.

The Emporer's Children by Claire Messud
I didn't really get all the excitement generated by Claire Messud's novel about New York City's privileged and hyper-articulate class. Sure, it's smart, filled with ideas, well-observed, and a reasonably propulsive read. But after a while—say, about half-way through the nearly 500 pages—I started caring less and less about what would happen to these inconsiderate, dishonest, self-absorbed people, until the book's ending felt less like a revelation and more like a relief to have them out of my life.


The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart is totally insane. How else can you explain why this Scottish journalist insisted upon walking across Afghanistan in 2002, mere months after the Taliban had been driven from power, in order to complete his even bigger, even more insane adventure of walking across all of Asia?? Anyway, The Places in Between is Stewart's colorful and lively account of the Afghan leg of his journey (too often slowed down, I must say, with the complex tribal/ethnic history of the region): the by turns jovial, irritating, menacing, frustrating, remarkably benevolent people he met along the way; the loyalty he found from his adopted companion Babur, a giant mastiff that caused a sensation in every village; the bleak yet beautiful landscape that almost killed them more than once. Not nearly the "masterpiece" proclaimed on the cover by the New York Times, but definitely a good read, with plenty of memorable moments.

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
Initially compelling and slightly creepy but ultimately obvious and surprisingly dated (it's very of-the-2001-moment), Jennifer Egan's novel tells of supermodel Charlotte, getting "old" and on the downswing when a car crash leaves her face shattered... and her rebuilt visage strangely unrecognizable. We also meet a sullen teenage girl with a dangerous secret; her uncle, professor Moose, who checked out from acceptable society years ago after an incident with a bomb in his classroom; and a charismatic, alcoholic private investigator on the trail of a mysterious chameleon named Z. How are they all connected? I wish I could say in ways that are as interesting as the set-up...

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
There have been no more enjoyable, more intensely satisfying stories in any book I've read this year than Michael Lewis's patient and insightful portrait of Michael Oher, who went from a teenager unable to function in the world—basically illiterate, no fixed home, no identification, didn't know his real name or birthdate—but whose willingness to work, extraordinary physical talents and, most unexpectedly, the love and care of a wealthy, Evangelical, white, conservative family, the Tuohys, transformed him into the most sought-after college football prospect in the country. This is a wonderfully human story: funny, frustrating, touching, inspiring. Excellent stuff. Lewis also puts the story into the larger context of how, in the NFL, the left tackle—Oher's position—has gone from being just another anonymous lineman to one of the league's highest-paid athletes, prized for their massive size, speed, agility and ability to protect their quarterback's blind side.

Harry Potter Place on Mercer Street

Obviously there were launch parties for The Deathly Hallows all over Manhattan (and the country... and the world...), but Co and I decided to hit Harry Potter ground zero: Scholastic headquarters in Soho, at which J.K. Rowling's U.S. publisher shut down Mercer Street and fans by the thousands flocked to be a part of what most were calling, in all sincerity, an historic event. Including us.

Co and I arrived at Harry Potter Place at 7:30, and inadvertantly snuck in through the back way on Spring Street, thereby avoiding a block-long line just to get in to the festivities. After goofing around for a bit with the Whomping Willow and the Muggle Board and such, we were still plenty early enough to got a beautiful spot on the actual book-buying line, just around the corner of Spring on Broadway, right in front of Lucky Jeans and its wide windowsill/bench (see below). This was around 8:30, three-and-a-half hours to go. Thank god for that bench.

Honestly, though, time flew by, with gelato breaks and Boggle competitions and happy chit chat with my line mates and Co and her friends being interviewed by the Times. At 11:30 I did a line check: all the way up Broadway to Houston, around the corner and over again to Mercer. Two short blocks-, two long blocks-long. And then it happened. The final chapter of the ten-year Harry Potter story became a 759-page reality, and the explosive giddiness, the shrieks of joy, the huge smiles (much of all this from adults, mind you) made for a truly memorable moment. Here are some more pictures of our night...

The Whomping Willow really whomped!


Dobby was on line!


The Pensieve: signed first editions of all seven volumes.


The face painting—"Aparecium!"—was ridiculously popular, with six artists working eight hours covering a new face every three minutes or so. And, really, they did an amazing job: there were some freaky-looking folks walking around.


Co putting her message up on the Muggle Board...

...and what it looked like in the end. No one, it seemed, could pass up the chance to say "I [heart] Harry!" or somesuch.


The Knight Bus, used as a video studio for fan messages earlier in the day, returned to the party after dark.


The final countdown...


...to total bedlam!

Savoring the sweet reward. Maybe the cutest part of the night was the subway ride home, because at every stop people got on clutching their prize, looked around the car, smiled to see so many other Potter-ites, and then began reading.


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows will be available everywhere forever.

Blaze by Richard Bachman

A couple of months ago I read an advance copy of Richard Bachman's—aka, of course, Stephen King's—Blaze for a quick freelance gig. Here was my report. The book is due to be released on Tuesday, June 12th.

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What you want to know about Stephen King's self-described "trunk novel"—first written in 1973, recently discovered and slightly revised for 2007—is this: Yes, Blaze reads and sounds like a (short) King book, and is a worthy addition to the bottom half of his oeuvre. Although the main story is thin to say the least, and only one character—the titular Blaze, a low-IQ giant with a horrific childhood who turned to crime—is really fleshed out, and there are narrative-driven inconsistencies which threaten credibility at times, the backstory is engaging in a "my God what a terrible life" kind of way, and there are enough moments of genuine suspense and honestly-earned emotion here to keep you turning pages.

As I said, Blaze, nee Clayton Blaisdell, Junior, is King's borderline-retarded protagonist, whom we first meet stealing a car in a snowstorm, and talking to his dead partner George. George "appears" throughout the book, but King seems to not really know what to do with this voice in Blaze's head, and it often feels more like an excuse to inject some dialogue into the proceedings than a necessary (or interesting) device.

Anyway, Blaze steals the car as the beginning of his (unlikely) master plan which forms the book's main narrative: to kidnap a six-month old heir to a local Maine shipping fortune. About half the novel is given over to this story: Blaze's insecure and inept planning; the actual crime itself, which involves a murder, lest Blaze become TOO sympathetic a character (again, much of this strains credulity, but is lively enough that we forgive); the inevitable love and bonding Blaze feels for his lifetime meal ticket, Joe Gerard III; the hunt and chase (through a blizzard) by cardboard cops, and so on to the obvious, rushed-feeling end.

Better than the main arc is Blaze's backstory, told in alternating chapters. Here we see the bleak childhood with the drunken Dad, who throws his child down the stairs several times, causing Blaze's brain damage and forcing the authorities to ship him off to one of those grim orphanages in which everyone's a sadist: fellow orphans, administrators, and especially the teachers, who whip these kids at the slightest provocation. Once Blaze blossoms into a 6' 7" 300-lb dim-bulbed giant, however, things change. Two of the best sections of the book are the happy ones: when Blaze and this smart kid he protects find a wallet in a movie theater and run away to Boston for a two-night vacation; and when Blaze joins a dozen or so other orphans to pick blueberries one summer, an earns the respect of the farmer, and the affections of a young woman. King can definitely do sweet, even when he's writing as Bachman.

This is a small, quick book that, however uneven, is not likely to disappoint anyone with an inclination to read it. In other words, if you think you'll enjoy a newly discovered, 1973 novel by Richard Bachman, then you will enjoy this.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Maybe I'm a little dim, but I had trouble following The History of Love, Nicole Krauss's ambitious, heartfelt but ultimately frustrating novel about three generations of lovesick loners who must, you assume, somehow all be related to each other. And they are. I think.

The two principle protagonists here are Leo Gursky, an aged, ailing Polish immigrant living in Brooklyn who had his heart broken as a young man and never recovered; and 14-year-old Alma Singer, whose father died when she was seven and who now spends much of her energy trying to save her despairing mother and crazy brother, nicknamed Bird because of his penchant for jumping out of windows. Then there's the whole story of Zvi Litivinoff, who grew up in a small village in Poland, and who wrote a book called The History of Love, whose heroine is a woman named Alma....

Krauss tells these potentially intertwined stories in alternating chapters—not an uncommon strategy, to be sure, but in this case I found the technique to be disengaging, and a momentum killer. And, like I said, I had difficulty making the connections between these people's lives. Don't get me wrong: there are many lovely moments here, as when Leo, making sure he's still a part of the planet, calls attention to himself by pretending to be confused when ordering Starbucks; or when Alma makes up stories about her dad to tell to Bird; or when she and her Russian "boyfriend" build a snow cave in the park, and hold hands for the first time; or when Leo, after overhearing a mother tell her son, "the plural of elf is elves", has an epiphany that, yes, in fact, it is an amazing, wonderful thing to be alive. But small moments, as funny or as touching or as well-crafted as they may be, are not enough to carry the narrative responsibility of the novel. But I do look forward to reading whatever Krauss comes up with next.

Here's a short excerpt, of Leo after one of his last dreams has died, looking for a manuscript he wrote years ago, taking stock of his situation:

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Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end.

Darkness fell. Rain fell.

I never asked: What question?

And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of the chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came.
Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fitzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?

My book was nowhere to be found. Aside from myself, there was no sign of me.

Heat by Bill Buford

I'm tempted to say that Heat would have made a terrific long magazine article, except that I tend not to read long magazine articles, so I'm glad that it was a book, because I do read books, even if this book seemed a tad padded, like it might have made a better long magazine article.

Be that as it may, the basic premise here is, to me, instantly appealing: Buford, a New Yorker editor and amateur chef, finagles his way into working as a line cook at Mario Batalli's red-hot, three-star Babbo for a year. The subsequent scenes inside the kitchen—the tension, the craziness, the triumphs, the egos, the nastiness, the screw-ups, the camaraderie—are all totally engaging, filled with funny, technically interesting, well-told stories from a world we appreciative diners out front would rather not know too much about (it's not quite like putting the slaughterhouse out of mind when you're cooking a steak at home, but it's similar). This forms the core of the Buford's adventure, and I loved every minute of it.

Unfortunately, Buford also decides to go to Italy, to learn what Battali learned, from the people who taught him. With the exception of the hugely entertaining portrait of Dario Cecchini, the most famous butcher in all of Tuscany who also happens to be completely insane, Buford's quest, occasionally slipping into an almost mythic tone, feels simply self-indulgent. I don't intrinsically care when people—Italians? Spaniards?—first began using eggs to make pasta, and nothing in the 20 or so pages that Buford devotes to the topic changed my mind. At least half of the book takes us away from Battali and Babbo, and my interest never failed to flag when it did.

Even so, Heat is a quick read, with more than enough memorable moments to make it worth your while. Here's an excerpt, from Buford's time at the Babbo pasta station.

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This is an emulsion: an agreement between two unlike elements (butter and water), achieved by heat and motion. If you get it slightly wrong—as when the sauce starts to dry out, destroying the balance between the fat and the liquid—the unlike elements pull apart and break up. Sometimes, during slow moments, I deliberately let my sauce get ugly, so I could witness its snapping back into condition with a small flick of water, like an animated chemistry lesson. Once, I was caught in mid-reverie.

I was making a mushroom sauce that illustrated two things that were characteristic of the station: how to use heat and how to stop it. Like most sauces, this one was prepared in two stages and used only a few ingredients: mushrooms (yellowfeet, although any wild mushroom works), some fresh thyme leaves, a finely chopped shallot, a little butter. To begin, you needed lots of heat. You put your pan on the flattop until it got really hot, until it darkened, until it seemed as though it might start melting, and then you splashed it with olive oil—the pan went smoky very quickly—followed by the mushrooms. Then: nothing. You didn't move the pan until you detected the sweet wood smoke smell of the mushrooms caramelizing. The mushrooms now had a crunchy, sugary crust, not burned but on the verge of burning. You sprinkled the pan with the shallots and thyme, held it until they reacted to the high heat, and then shoveled in enough pasta water to stop the cooking: the pan hissed, steamed, and went quiet. That was Stage One: from high heat to no heat. Stage Two was when the order was fired. You retrieved the pan and made an emulsion: the butter, the swirling-swirling routine, until the mushroom water became a sauce sticky enough to adhere to a pasta.

The reverie occurred at the end of Stage One, when I lifted the pan off the flattop and sprinkled it with the thyme. What can I say? I loved this moment. For a few seconds, nothing happened. The leaves were on the hot metal of the pan, taking in the heat. Then, one by one, they swelled, barely perceptibly, and exploded, a string of tiny explosions, like minuscule pieces of herby popcorn. And with each pop there was an aromatic eruption of thyme. I closed me eyes and put my face into the pan, breathing in the exploding herb leaves. I don't know how long I stood there.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

I opened my eyes. It was Frankie.

"What the fuck are you doing?" He was standing inches from my face. The others were staring at me.

"I like the smell of the popping thyme," I said weakly. I was expecting scorn or a string of profanities, mockery at the very least. Instead, Frankie seemed surprised and didn't know quite what to say. He face became soft and puppy-dog-like.

"Oh, well, then," he said, finally. "That's all right." I think he was embarrassed.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

It's been hyped as a masterpiece, and I think they're right. I ripped through The Road in about a day and a half recently, enthralled and horrified by Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a man (Papa) and his son (the boy) traveling through a post-apocalypse world seeking to find salvation—or, at least, a measure of safety—by reaching the seacoast. The writing is bleak and beautiful, the pace is brisk, the setting completely immersive, the ending brought a lump to my throat.

There are many specific moments here that I know will stay with me for a long, long time. Like when Papa and the boy discover what's behind the locked cellar door—the mattress, the screams, the man with the burned-off legs—in the mansion/military camp. Or the train they find in the wrecked forest. Or when they encounter the man who had been struck by lightning, and are forced to leave him charred and shivering on the side of the road. Or the whole part with the boat. Or when they stumble upon the miracle cache, underground, undisturbed. Or what they see roasting on a spit at a hastily-abandoned campsite.

But really, for me the overwhelming power of The Road comes from McCarthy's spare, relentless depiction of Papa and the boy's merciless, miserable world: day after day of the horrible cold, the rain and snow, the filth, the ash, the dreariness, the hunger, the cauterized landscape, the constant fight against fear and despair. How can they not just give up? How do they remain "the good guys", when what little is left of the world has seemingly all gone bad? Why bother living, when everything around you is dead? The answer, of course, is to experience just one more minute of being with someone you love... and then one more minute after that... and then one more minute after that.

This is an excellent novel, one of the best I've read in years. Here's a brief excerpt:

On the outskirts of the city they came to a supermarket. A few old cars in the trashstrewn parking lot. They left the cart in the lot and walked the littered aisles. In the produce section in the bottom of the bins they found a few ancient runner beans and what looked to have once been apricots, long dried to wrinkled effigies of themselves. The boy followed behind. They pushed out through the rear door. In the alleyway behind the store a few shopping carts, all badly rusted. They went back through the store again looking for another cart but there were none. By the door were two soft drink machines that had been tilted over into the floor and opened with a prybar. Coins everywhere in the ash. He sat and ran his hand around in the works of the gutted machines and in the second one it closed over a cold metal cylinder. He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.
What is it, Papa?
It's a treat. For you.
What is it?
Here. Sit down.
He slipped the boy's knapsack straps loose and set the pack on the floor behind him and he put his thumbnail under the aluminum clip on the top of the can and opened it. He leaned his nose to the slight fizz coming from the can and then handed it to the boy. Go ahead, he said.
The boy took the can. It's bubbly, he said.
Go ahead.
He looked at his father and then tilted the can and drank. He sat there thinking about it. It's really good, he said.
Yes. It is.
You have some, Papa.
I want you to drink it.
You have some.
He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let's just sit here.
It's because I wont ever get to drink another one, isn't it?
Ever's a long time.
Okay, said the boy.

Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey

I recently tore through Sean Wilsey's energetic, engaging, often funny (though at times definitely unfocused) memoir, Oh the Glory of It All, about his life as the messed-up son and stepson of some seriously sick San Francisco socialites.

Much has been made of Wilsey's portrait of his (step)parents, and rightly so. His father and mother—mega-millionaire Alfred Wilsey and flighty, flakey, Nobel Peace-Prize nominated Pat Montandon—are two of the most narcissistic, pathetic, emotionally manipulative (yet admittedly also charismatic) people you'll ever meet (shown below with Sean, age 3). His stepmother, Dede Wilsey, comes off even worse: a cruel, greedy homewrecker who was best friends with Pat before stealing her husband away. Once she married Al, Dede ruthlessly set about making young Sean feel horrible about himself. This is all well presented by Wilsey, with only a minimum amount of bitterness.

But my favorite part of the book by far was the big fat middle section in which insecure skate-punk stoner teenage Wilsey is shipped off to (and kicked out of) a string of boarding schools. Maybe it was because his first two destinations—preppy, elitist St. Marks; hippie, party-school Woodhull—are like extreme versions of my two boarding schools, Concord Academy and Solebury... or maybe it was because, now away from his confusing family, Wilsey drops the more pastiche-y approach of the book's first part, and the narrative really kicks in. Either way, I couldn't get enough of his high school memories: the time he turned on his only friend at St. Marks—a geeky Russian kid—in order to save himself from a brutal bout of teasing; or his affectionate description of a Woodhull roommate, who looked—and, so, acted—exactly like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club; or when he got over on his Dad by running away from the Nolls program before it even started (he even got them to mail him the refund); or when he finally found some inner peace and a measure of confidence at a short-lived alternate school/rehab for troubled teens in Italy.

Anyway, despite a few missteps (too much time on his ancestors during the aught-six quake, for example, and his mom's Children for Peace trips got a bit tedious, as well), Oh the Glory of It All remains entertaining and likable pretty much throughout. Here's an excerpt, a scene typical of Wilsey's desperate attempts to fit in with—and, even more important, be loved by—his new family once his dad marries Dede (seen below in a picture from 1975). Trevor and Todd are Dede's older sons from her previous marriage to John Traina (who went on to marry author Danielle Steele, who herself was a former lover of Al Wilsey).

---

In January of eighth grade, following another Christmas peace trip with Mom (Japan, China, India, Russia, France), Dad, Dede, Todd, Trevor, and I went skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho. At dinner in a dim restaurant, looking for a good conversation starter (nobody asked me about the trip), I remarked on the colors of a sweater Dede'd given me for Christmas. They were always talking about the color and pattern of draperies, or the rare hues and qualities of rugs—I thought I'd give it a shot. The sweater was dark green with three horizontal bars across the chest. Putting it on that evening I'd noticed that the center stripe was white and the other two were pale yellow: This seemed like conversation.

I said, "Hey, one of these stripes on my sweater is actually white, not pale yellow, like the other two are. They all look the same, but the center stripe's white!"

Dede said, "They're all yellow, Sean."

This was exciting. Dede considered herself an authority on color. Here I'd noticed something she hadn't noticed.

I said, "I think it's an optical illusion. Because it's between the other two it looks yellow, too."

Dede said, "No. They're all the same, Sean."

I said. "It's hard to distinguish between white and pale yellow in here. But I looked in the sunlight. That's how I noticed the difference. And you've probably only seen it in store light, when you bought it, and now, in candlelight." I was getting nervous.

Dede paused for a moment, the replied, "I bought that sweater for Trevor four years ago. All three stripes are identical. You're color-blind, Sean."

I said, "My left eye won't turn all the way to the left—but I'm not color blind!"

"Sean—enough!" Dad said.

I thought, Am I color-blind?

The waiter came. He took all their drink orders. When he got to me I said, "Can you tell me what color the stripes on this sweater are?"

He said, "White?"

I said, "Look closely."

"Oh, is one different?"

Dede said, "Do not look at his sweater! Do not talk to him about his sweater! He will have water to drink."

I said, "No Coke?"

Dede said, "You will not talk about this anymore with anyone. Not with the waiter. Not with Trevor. Not with Todd. Not with your father. And you will not have any dessert. You are hyper on sugar."

I was still convinced that the truth mattered. That the truth was the truth and it would come out eventually. But that was just one of my many mistakes.

Back in San Francisco I tried to get Dad to look at the sweater when we were alone in the garage. He growled, "Enough about the sweater, Sean."

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Though not nearly as tour-de-force-y as his remarkable debut, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother is nonetheless a reasonably brilliant and mostly engaging observational novel that takes us deep into the at-times seriously deranged psyches of the Hall family. Set in what seems to be the suburbs of present-day London, here is the story of:

• George Hall, deeply uncomfortable with the world, the patriarchal retiree who'd sooner putter alone in his garden than interact with people (including—especially?—his family), and who falls into a slow but quite complete mental breakdown (all very politely, of course) after discovering what he believes to be a cancerous legion on his leg.

• Jean Hall, George's slightly clueless (though usually well-meaning) wife who can't help but say the wrong thing... and who's in the midst of an utterly surprising affair with one of her husband's former colleagues.

• Jamie Hall, their amiable, somewhat befuddled gay son (George and Jean have NO idea how to deal with that) who, fearing love, throws away his boyfriend Tony, only to realize (too late?) that he just blew the best part of his life.

• Katie Hall, the caustic daughter with young son Jacob, whose impending, on-again-off-again wedding to the dull but capable and loving Ray provides much of the book's narrative structure.

Haddon is an entertaining, confident, intelligent writer who knows how to paint a character or a scene with just a few quick strokes. And though I felt like the book's middle got a bit saggy, there are so many juicy little observations AND big, heart-wrenching moments that I know that these very human Halls, with all of their flaws and good intentions, will stay with me for some time to come.

Here's a sample of Haddon's voice, chosen almost randomly:

"He decided not to mention [his public panic attack] to Jean. She would only want to talk about it and that was not an appealing proposition.

Talking was, in George's opinion, overrated. You could not turn the television on these days without someone discussing their adoption or explaining why they stabbed their husband. Not that he was averse to talking. Talking was one of life's pleasures. And everyone needed to sound off now and then over a pint of Ruddles about colleagues who did not shower frequently enough, or teenage sons who had returned home drunk in the small hours and thrown up in the dog's basket. But it did not change anything.

The secrecy of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely. How anyone could work in the same office for ten years or bring up children without putting certain thoughts permanently to the back of their mind was beyond him. And as for that last grim lap when you had a catheter and no teeth, memory loss seemed like a godsend."

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Humans, like rats, are omnivores, having evolved so that we can eat pretty much anything—meat, vegetables, Au Bon Pain, fish, fruit, fungi, Taco Bell. A notable exception: grass. Humans can't eat grass (or, more properly stated, we can't digest grass, and so turn it into energy), because we lack rumens. Cows and other ruminants have rumens, so they can turn grass into energy, but humans mostly don't feed cows grass anymore, they feed cows corn. Which sucks for the cows because it means their whole life is spent with a horrible stomach ache. Which is one of the reasons why they need to be pumped with antibiotics all the time. Chickens, too, pretty much exclusively eat corn these days. Pigs as well. And farmed salmon. In fact, pretty much every animal we eat, eats corn. And pretty much everything else we eat and drink that you buy at Gristedes or D'Agostino or McDonalds is mostly made out of corn. Seriously. Soda? 100% corn. Chicken McNuggets, 56% corn. And what does corn eat? Artificial fertilizer made from petroleum. So rather than converting the sun's energy into food, we're converting fossil fuel into food.

Mmmmmmm.... Fossil fuel.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Which is easy to do whenever I think about Michael Pollen's meandering, eye-opening, vastly entertaining The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. In addition to a McDonald's meal that sparks a hundred-page riff on how corn came to rule America, the author explores the world of "Big Organic" (the cows that provide Horizon milk, for example, are most definitely NOT prancing around a pasture, as the illustration on the carton would like you to believe); he spends an incredible week at an enormously impressive sustainable farm in Virginia; he muses on the ethics of meat-eating vs. vegetarianism (will humans one day look back at this period in history and be astonished and appalled at the way we treated animals?); he hunts and kills a wild boar, he forages for morels in the ashes after a forest fire... basically, Pollan tells a hundred great stories filled with a thousand interesting facts and ideas about what we eat and why. I loved this book: it's smart, dynamic, serious, fast-paced, fascinating.

Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel

Debut coming-of-age novels can be a risky undertaking for the unwary reader... for every young author who totally nails the excruciating self-awareness, the blinding excitement, the innocence/ignorance lost, the survival-mode selfishness (I loved Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, for example), there are hundreds of others whose books can be a truly painful experience to get through. I usually steer clear, except upon recommendation from people/publications I respect.
That said, Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision seemed to have the goods: raves galore from reputable sources, a New York Times Notable Book seal of approval, a cute cover. And for the book's first 50 or so pages I was with Kunkel all the way, as he introduces us to Dwight B. Wilmerding: 28 years old, living on Chambers Street with three roommates, about to be outsourced from his crappy support-tech job at Pfizer, occasionally getting laid (without much effort or passion), totally lost in life. I liked Kunkel's sharp eye and clever sentences, and thought Dwight's relationship with his sister Alice was especially sweet. "Poor mom!" runs a typical passage, "I always wanted her to have some other, better kid. But I wasn't willing to become that kid myself or capable of convincing Alice that she should do it. Alice was an excellent student who didn't, however, get very high marks in the attitude department, whereas my geniality, while genial enough in itself, was also pretty transparently an attempt to ingratiate myself with my parents who would otherwise punish me for the underexploitation of my alleged mental resources."

Nothing brilliant, certainly, but diverting and likable enough.

For a little while.

Then Dwight, on the slimmest of contrivances, goes to Ecuador, and the novel never really recovers. Dwight becomes more jerky (the hammock masturbation scene is a low point), his benign bobbing-through-life bit more frustrating. A romance with a Belgian women has zero chemistry. Lengthy, back-to-back tripping-on-drugs scenes are as boring as... well, as boring as watching someone trip for 35 pages. A flashback to 9/11 attempts to inject some pathos that is totally unearned. A native Ecuadorian Indian jungle guide enters and disappears at the author's convenience. And the surprise ending is ludicrous. I did finish Indecision, which is something, but I admit I skimmed through the last bits, eager to done with Dwight. Kunkel definitely has talent, and his next book is worth watching out for, but maybe he'd do better with light non-fiction.