"The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe opens a detective agency in Botswana, has a series of cases, friendships, and relationships, and succeeds in more ways than one. This s a wise little book, in its discerning observations about people and human nature. The main case involves a kidnapping, which our heroine solves and of which she rescues the victim. The lead-up to and the execution of the rescue are both very satisfying. This is a pleasant, funny, compassionate, light and easy read. Recommend...

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"Peace Like a River" by Leif Enger

With many books, you can proceed with the sensation that the plot is interesting, or the theme a worthy one, or there is a new slant on something, but often with wonderful thoughts like these, we get workmanlike prose, or something basic and serviceable. But in "Peace Like a River" not only is the plot interesting and clearly unfolding, the words along the way hold such enchantment and fun that it has an effect, where one wants to keep turning the pages and finding the next delight.This piece is...

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"Adios Muchachos" by Daniel Chavarria

"Adios Muchachos" is nothing more or less than a caper. A bicycle hooker in Havana is recruited to perform for a pair of male peeping toms - one is gay and one is bisexual. The sex is steamy and the greed is palpable. Alicia is the highly mercenary sex worker and the scheme that she and Victor (the "bi" peeping tom) cook up on the accidental death of Victor's millionaire boss goes at length awry - an inside man makes off with the $4 million ransom. All ends in the clover when our two scurrilous...

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"House Made of Dawn" by N. Scott Momaday

A bleak depiction of a Native American man struggling to adapt to life in America in the '40s and '50s. The diction here is such that we can apply the words "stark" and "lyrical." The story is told in multiple viewpoints, and for me sometimes it was hard to keep clear who was doing the telling. However, the pain and recovery of Abel, the main character, are the meanest, grittiest, and clearest aspects of the plot. There is an interesting character here who styles himself a sun priest; he's a preacher...

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"Wedding of the Waters: the Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation" by Peter L. Bernstein

A superb, comprehensive, well-detailed history of the planning and building of the Erie Canal. Begun at a time (1817) when there was not one professional civil engineer in the U.S., the canal's proponents overcame Washington's indifference, immense physical challenges, and roiling New York State politics to build their water highway. By cutting nine tenths of the time and expense of moving goods from the Midwest to Atlantic seaports, the Canal made the economic development of the Ohio and Mississippi...

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"The Final Solution: A Story of Detection" by Michael Chabon

In "The Final Solution," Michael Chabon gives us the story of the world-famous detective cracking the case of the interrogated parrot. It turns out someone did the parrot's owner in, and was questioning the parrot. It turns out the parrot knew and could recite rail car numbers of Jews being transported in the camps in the Final Solution. The "world famous detective" is not identified in the book, but no doubt is left before you finish. Conan Doyle's hero cannot be mistaken.This is a haunting little...

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"Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates

Frank and April Wheeler live in the New York suburbs in 1955, which they somehow cannot explain ... the one thing they agree upon is that moving to Paris might save them from the bourgeois existence they find themselves in. This novel is strongly tinged with social satire - the Wheelers and their friends have all the advantages of modern life, but think all of it is somehow reprehensible. Enter John Givings, a paranoid schizophrenic, who alone among the characters, sees and appreciates the efficacy...

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"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

"The Life of Pi' struck me as a book-length parable - what does the stranded mariner do to save his life when he shares a flimsy vessel with a Bengal tiger? The reader and the Japanese authorities are given the choice of buying into the parabolic parable version or the more orthodox version. Pi is a believer in each major religion, each of which has within it the seeds of its destruction, or at least the grand antagonist which lends each faith the sense of urgency. The fanciful version of Pi's...

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"The Egyptologist" by Arthur Phillips

In "The Egyptologist" Arthur Phillips gives us a murder mystery that features an Australian con man named Caldwell, who poses as Trilipush, another character who is a foppish Brit who "read the Pharoahs" at Oxford, and a dim Aussie detective who'd like to sell his idea of this story to Hollywood. All this is set in the exciting backdrop of Egypt in the '20s, while the world is agog with the King Tut discoveries.Principal among Caldwell/Trilipush's ambitions is the hand of Margaret Finneran, daughter...

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"The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon" by Richard Zimler

"The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon" deals with the horrific 1506 pogrom in that city, and it deals with it at some length. The detail and the lengthy, lengthy recounting of it wore me down. The narrative follows Master Abraham, who is murdered, and his nephew Berekiah, who works assiduously at finding his uncle's killer. Amid all the death, furtiveness, and horror, who can tell where to look?Unfortunately, I also had trouble keeping the suspects straight. The book contains some philosophical musings...

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"The Monsters of Templeton" by Lauren Groff

Congratulations to Lauren Groff on publishing such a full and thought-provoking novel. Templeton's first and foremost monster dies in the lake by the little village - goes belly-up and, being the size of a bus, is winched up on the dock and sheltered from the sun by a canopy. Of course, the title has a plural noun, but I didn't find anyone else in the book particularly monstrous, at least in the present.Groff unfolds a historic backdrop for Templeton's current cast - complete with a long story...

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"An Unpardonable Crime" by Andrew Taylor

This is a long and interesting mystery set in late Regency London and Gloucester. Our schoolmaster protaganist stumbles into a labyrinth of murder, embezzlement, bankruptcy, and deathbed treachery. He uses his considerable wits to solve the various mysteries and help a beautiful and charismatic widow in need. All this occurs with a large and diverting cast of characters. We have old Carswall, the story's chief villain; there's the lovely and bereft Sophie Frant, desired by both Carswall and our...

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"The Other" by David Guterson

While I was reading it and afterward, I could not escape the notion that "The Other" by David Guterson deals with a shadow character, a rumored extension of the first-person narrator, a superego. Neil Countryman, our narrator, makes the acquaintance of John William Barry, the eponymous Other, during a half-mile race in high school. They become close friends, and Barry's character becomes clearer over time, and over time it becomes more and more intolerant. Barry is a young man of considerable...

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"A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" by Marina Lewycka

A bit of mildly amusing fluff, "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" brings us the adventures of a naturalized British citizen, who gives up feuding with her older sister to work toward getting a Ukrainian woman divorced from their 84 year-old father. This is a comic effort, mostly of the word-play kind; the sisters wind up sisters again, and interact happily ever after, presumably. There is some charm here, and no harm, but also no compelling reason to pick it ...

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"The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter

Three interweaved narratives populate Charles Baxter's "The Feast of Love." One involves Bradley Smith, something of a putz whose two unfortunate marriages (so far) ended badly: one wife leaves him for a woman, and the second leaves him for her long-time sex partner. That relationship ends badly for the self-absorbed cheating wife. My favorite plot has to do with Chloe (pronounced clo-WAY). Chloe has outrageous sex with, and then marries, Oscar. A couple of months later the poor thing is widowed....

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"The Storyteller" by Mario Vargas Llosa

Saul Zuratas, the son of a merchant in Lima, has a highly distinctive birthmark which divides his face in two. He leaves Lima during the course of "The Storyteller" for the Amazonian jungle and the Machiguenga tribe. He retells and preserves the oral tradition of this people, and stands in opposition to its acculturation.The adversarial force against the Hablador (storyteller) features American missionaries working assiduously to translate and transcribe the tribal tradition. Our young man-with-both-faces...

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"Evidence of Things Unseen" by Marianne Wiggins

"Evidence of Things Unseen" is the remarkably-told story of Ray Foster ("Fos") and his wife, Opal. Their story spans World War I, in which Ray is a combatant, and continues, portraying his interest in the science of flashing, of bright things, taking us through World War II, and some years beyond. He meets Opal (after the Great War, I believe) in the coastal plains of North Carolina, and the half-dozen pages describing this encounter, so alive with the force of attraction and possibility, are worth...

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"Train" by Pete Dexter

Packard, a war hero returning from the Pacific Theater, joins the police force in Southern California. It seems, though, he has returned in a kind of personal fog, or limbo. Outward signs are that he's only interested in sensations, wants to test various things to see if he can feel an emotion. He golfs with some lowlifes, but meets a black caddy named Lionel - called "Train" - who, it turns out, is also a brilliant golfer. This is a book about racial prejudice and segregation in Southern California...

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"The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud

Set in New York in 2001, this novel chronicles the yearnings and failings of three friends, Danielle (perhaps our main protaganist), her best friend Marina, and their gay friend, Julius. Along the way, Claire Messud instructs us very skillfully about love and loss, about idealism and disillusion, honesty and hypocrisy. An innocent would-be disciple moves to New York and secures a position with his hero. He finds himself disillusioned in due course (where a more worldly apprentice might not),...

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"Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I don't really know how to rate this book. As most political novels are, this was widely hailed on publication. I found its perspective on the famine forced upon the Biafran population by the Nigerian government different and interesting, because it is personal and somewhat oblique. Otherwise we have capable storytelling of one small group's participation in the horror of the Biafran war for independence. I guess I don't approach fiction with much of a political mindset. If the praise, by contrast,...

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"The Pale Blue Eye" by Louis Bayard

I was very much looking forward to this book: a murder mystery featuring Edgar Allan Poe as a character, set in the early years of the 19th century at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point - what's not to love? Well, this book is pretty much not to love. I don't usually let a pervasive emotion put me off a book, but this hits me as a very sad book indeed. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment of this novel, but there is NO ONE in the book who should be above suspicion. Some of the descriptions...

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"Coastliners" by Joanne Harris

One might assume all of Ms. Harris's fiction deals with French women and rich men (see "Chocolat"). One would by the same token assume all her fiction deals with an open and truthful heart about life's important issues: family, love, life, death, greed, hauteur. "Coastliners" tells the story of Madeliene - "Mado" - and her mute father on an island off the Vendee coast of France. We have a land grab, a con game, partisanship, religion, and superstition, and life lived stubbornly on an island which...

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"Popular Music From Vittula" by Mikael Niemi

What a very unusual piece of work! We're here in the far north of Sweden, getting a very close acquaintance with Matti, a young teenage boy whose exposure to Western pop culture must come from a Finnish radio station. This book is partly a series of tall tales, part gothic horror, and all coming-of-age story. I thoroughly enjoyed the unfamiliar setting married to the universal themes of exploration and discovery when coming of age. Additionally, this work has some exotic features which add spice,...

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"Rameau's Niece" by Cathleen Schine

"Rameau's Niece" by Cathleen Schine is a funny piece about a young woman who becomes confused, or flustered, and seeks out a sex partner outside her marriage. There is erudition on display here, but to what end? Its one posessor, protaganist Margaret, is a darn fool. The humor comes from her internal decision-making process, and from her imbecilic intellectualism. Her search for knowledge is really a search for carnal knowledge. The whole thing was annoying, is spite of the acknowledged hum...

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"The Pieces from Berlin" by Michael Pye

In "The Pieces from Berlin" Michael Pye gives us a very spare consideration of guilt over past sins. The sin? Stealing or hoarding artwork in the face of Nazi confiscation from Jews. The miscreant in this case is a now-elderly woman who took custody of a considerable number of pieces, who while purportedly doing a service to her Jewish clients, nevertheless becomes wealthy and prominent as the holder of the valuables.I stuck with this lean, almost skeletal, story, but it fell short for me on multiple...

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