"The Pearl Diver" by Jeff Talarigo

How do we tell a story of human isolation? Jeff Talarigo’s The Pearl Diver provides a precise and balanced and beautiful example. Mr. Talarigo collapses long decades of a woman’s life spent in a Japanese leprosarium into a spare, moving tale. Its light, almost delicate, touch with major human issues provides a gratifying payoff.

At the outset of the novel, our nineteen-year-old unnamed heroine belongs to an exclusive group: she is one of a handful of pearl divers, women of all ages who plumb the depths of Japan’s Seto Inland Sea and bring up lobster, clams, other mussels, and on lucky days, pearls.  She is still young and naïve when she’s forced to leave her beloved vocation. She’s found to have the dreaded curse-like plague of leprosy. In an instant she falls from her exalted, insular position to the level of the lowest outcast of Japanese society. She’s shunned, sent away to an island prison of the leprosarium, and even forced to change her name.

It turns out she has a non-infectious form of the disease, and treatments are developed during her early years in care keep her own case from progressing very far. She becomes a helper to the staff, giving massages, transporting those worse-off in wheelchairs, pulling nurse duty. She retains a certain independence in the patient community, earning its affection and respect, while making the facility’s officials suspicious.

Events unfold with an understated force: our heroine adopts the name Miss Fuji, and we learn of the climb of the famous mountain with her uncle when a little girl. She sneaks off the isolation of the island to her hometown, but is caught and sent to solitary confinement, and then forced to help with the grisly eugenic work done at the clinic. She visits Kyoto and sees various sights there to honor a man who has passed away. When at length, after struggles against the superstitious authorities, and more than forty years in the isolation of quarantine, Miss Fuji takes a flat in normal society. Maybe she’s planning her own death. She finds, however, an alien world, where pearl diving is turned into a tourist attraction, featuring nubile, bikini-clad girls who have never been more than ankle-deep.

In the end, though, she makes a surprising decision about the end of her days. Her life has been one of service to those even less fortunate than herself. At various times during her life, she knows others value and love her, and in their limited ways, return the charity she herself has shown. This is a tale of quiet heartbreak, but also of fulfilling forays into relations with other human beings, united in their isolation. Mr. Talarigo has written a restrained, graceful examination of how afflicted souls support each other, and how the superstitious so easily and brutally shun them. A beautiful, balanced book, and recommended very highly.

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"Death in a Wine Dark Sea" by Lisa King

Welcome, Lisa King! Welcome, Jean Applequist! The shark-infested waters of mystery writing can never be too crowded, and certainly not for newcomers like you. New author Ms. King introduces us to new sleuth Ms. Applequist in this hectic, rewarding, and vivid mystery. Its excellences include a larger-than-usual pool of suspects, all men, by the way, in less or more minatory mien, the heroine-sleuth’s unabashed libido, her geeky partner in detection, called Zeppo, and the cadre of support and protection she attracts around her.

Right off the bat, I want to make clear what an appealing creature is this Jean Applequist. Part Nancy Drew (I bet Ms. King is going to get sick of hearing that!) and part Xena, warrior princess, she’s way too sexy to be plucky, and way too resourceful to be a taken lightly. Jean sticks with it, despite broken bones, being accosted at gunpoint, being run off the road while bicycling, and the opprobrium of dogged cops who hold a threat of their own. Her character is Ms. King’s top achievement here, but she also succeeds at what I consider the mystery writer’s tallest order: we’re surprised at the intrepid detective’s insight when she pulls the rabbit out of her hat.

This story of detection bubbles over with guilt and the guilty. A ruthless businessman and blackmailer is murdered – twice – because he holds secrets and acts cruelly towards – well, everyone. So many people stood to gain by his death that the suspects keep popping up, one after the other, for our consideration. And one by one the suspects try their best to silence the pesky Jean and Zeppo. One thing I observe and offer: the miscreants and men-with-pasts began to run together for me. I think Ms. King would do well to give the rogues in her gallery a little more distinction, other than describing how he looked in his brand-name slacks and silk crewneck. I was lucky in that I have seen San Francisco up close and personal, so that the descriptions of places and drives and weather conditions came through for me vividly.

If you like strong, character-driven, suspenseful mysteries, this book is for you. If you know (and possibly pine for) the San Francisco Bay Area, this book is for you. If you stand up and cheer when the courageous underdog on the side of right finds the gun just in time, this book is for you. The fairly vivid sexy parts are just a bonus.

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"Between Heaven and Earth" by Sue Kerman

Sue Kerman’s research into Jerusalem in the 19^th Century has resulted in a fine, albeit slight, fictionalization of an intriguing character’s career in Palestine of the time. It contains a loose-fitting framework of a contemporary story bracketing a purported history of a Jewish widow who decides she will go to Jerusalem, since she doesn’t have anything too compelling to keep her in New York.

Ms. Kerman tells the story through entries in the protagonist’s journal, and travel articles for the New York Times.  The author intends a portrait of Jerusalem at a time when it was in the control of Muslims, but had significant Jewish and Christian populations, which were socially inferior at the time. At this task, she succeeds pretty well: we get insight into the issues that seem unfortunately to plague Jerusalem almost to this day – fanaticism, tension, intolerance. We get a balanced account of how families and foreigners try to cope and make ends meet, but overall, the story is slight and shallow. Jerusalem is the real center of attention here, but Ms. Kerman does add a twist at the end that partway lays the foundation for the light, oblique touch that precedes it.

If you’re interested in Jerusalem at the middle of the 19^th Century, this book will provide an effective glimpse into it. Also, it’s a light, fairly entertaining read, that will divert you with its construct and inform you with its details.

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"Ten Thousand Saints" by Eleanor Henderson

Ah, parenthood. Nothing challenges or rewards a person like raising children. For some it comes easily, or at least a little more naturally. Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson contains a story of parenthood gone bad, or pursued with less than the necessary commitment. Although it focuses on the lives of a few teens during the punk rock movement of the 1980s, this truly is a story of one generation’s attempt to set right its fumbled of responsibilities to the next.

At story’s outset, protagonist Jude turns 16, it’s New Year’s Eve, and he and his close friend Teddy have soaked a stolen pair of silk panties in turpentine so they can inhale the fumes and get a faint, short-lived high. This is the desperate pass they have come to, since they don’t have any money for their preferred drug, pot. Harriet, Jude’s adoptive mother, manages a weak and hopeless rearing of Jude, which features by turns wheedling and subservience. Teddy’s mother has simply picked up and left her 15-year-old high school sophomore. Eliza is a kind of a cousin to Jude, and she arrives for New Year’s, and the three wait around before heading to a party. The events of the party, tragic and life-altering, set the direction for the book.

The trials of these luckless teens as they face very adult issues of drug overdose, pregnancy, and surviving society’s prejudices against a teen culture out of control, form the meat of this book. Teddy’s older brother Johnny (he’s all of 18 and making it in New York as a tattoo artist and musician) guides Jude into the Straight Edge subculture of the punk rock scene, where drugs and sex are forbidden. Johnny’s motives with Jude and Eliza are pure, but there is more than meets the eye with Johnny. 

This strong story features gritty, realistic details, and hearkens us back to the mid-80s punk scene, and the random violence perpetrated by and against its adherents. There are coming-of-age elements for Jude, and hope for our principals as they mature, but the real caution is for those among us who would have and raise children: neglect your duties and peril will descend upon all. It contains elements as well of an 80s pastiche: neglectful, drug-distracted hippy parents, punk violence, Hare Krishna adherents. Its style mirrors that of punk music, too: straight-on, honest, sometimes brutal. This book aims to shed light on sweeping movements of the mid-80s in music and society, by showing their effects on a small number of young people. It succeeds at these aims admirably. The straight ahead, gruff language belies the human warmth and compassion that shows through in the sympathetic portrayals of its characters.

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"The House of Silk," a Sherlock Holmes novel, by Anthony Horowitz

I’ll confess at the outset that I’m no expert or devoté to the Sherlock Holmes canon. I read a couple of shorter Doyle pieces as a lad, and think nobody will ever equal Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of the master detective on screen (although I am enamored of the latest from the BBC, “Sherlock,” particularly of the Dr. Watson character). But that’s the extent of my consciousness as far as the world-famous consulting detective goes. That, and the relatively recent and brief Michael Chabon piece.

So I approached “The House of Silk” as a relative novice. Curiosity led me to a search of the non-Doyle Holmes stories, and the Mayfield, Mass., library has a convenient list of at least 70 (http://www.wakefieldlibrary.org/book-discussion-groups/sherlock-holmes-by-doyle-and-others/). Proving my novice status, I had no idea there were that many.

Anthony Horowitz, the prolific and best-selling British author, has produced a satisfying addition to this crowded room. Holmes’s intellectual powers impress, even as he’s arrested and held for murder. Dr. Watson’s loyalty and resourcefulness are never in doubt, and he never wavers, even though in this entry he’s married and his wife’s health is failing. Mr. Horowitz concedes a few points to make his story more authentic. Watson, as he writes, is in his final years, and Holmes hasdied. Watson puts pen to paper to record the events of the case of the House of Silk, and exacts promises from his heirs and executors not to publish the manuscript for 100 years. He does this because some of the really depraved villains are prominent in society, and a good distance in time seems like a good idea.

This book is very strong and focused.  We keep Dr. Watson’s point of view firmly throughout. The crimes that drive Holmes and us, are heinous indeed, and resonate as clearly today as ever. Mr. Horowitz inserts a few small touches which put us in mind of the series by Conan Doyle: Watson states he should have had more depth concerning Mrs. Hudson, the ever-present housekeeper. And he hopes Inspector Lestrade knows that Holmes and Watson did actually appreciate his work, even as the good inspector made great advances at Scotland Yard piggy-backing on work Holmes did.

If you’re a Holmes follower, this book will please you with Holmes’s bag of tricks and the close scrapes he gets into. If you don’t care that much about the great detective, this novel is worth your while for its atmospheric treatment of Victorian London, and the convolutions of its crime mystery plot.

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"Crow" by Barbara Wright

Twelve-year-old Moses Jackson is pushed hurriedly onto the porch of his Wilmington, North Carolina, home by his stooped old grandmother. It’s 1898, she grew up a slave and has clear insight into the omens and augurs of the spirit world, and sure doesn’t want the shadow of a crow to cross her grandson. As she feared, she doesn’t handle the job quite in time, and bad things happen to Moses and to the other black citizens of Wilmington.

In a little-known and little-appreciated chapter in American history, the duly-elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina, was overthrown by the white minority in the fall of 1898, at considerable loss of life. Democrats had just won county and statewide elections that reinforced white supremacy that November, but in the city election wasn’t to take place until the following spring. Some white citizens of Wilmington, angered by an editorial in the Record, the only black-owned newspaper in the South, took matters into their own hands.

Barbara Wright’s “Crow,” a fictionalized account of these unfortunate events, comes to us from the point of view of Moses, whose father is a reporter for the Record and an elected alderman. The point of view seems to have made the publisher Random House consider this young adult fiction, but certainly it resonates with any adult fortunate enough to take it up. The point of view also gives us a little distance from the deadly menace and hatred that find vent here, but Moses can’t stay a child for this whole story. In fact, the language, the opinions, and concerns of this boy ring so very true, and Ms. Wright’s handling of them is resounding, flawless. It’s one of the reasons to pick up this fine book. 

Another reason: the fictional subtleties have to be presented by a narrator who cannot be aware of them. As the shadow of a crow passes over the Jacksons’ back yard, pointing to trouble, so does the shadow of Jim Crow stretch its pernicious darkness in the wake of the riot. Two boys from opposite sides of the racial divide, explore together in the pitch black of a tunnel after their lantern breaks. Color is invisible, trust is necessary, and friendship is possible. As with any fiction worthy of the name, the human element is here, even if its violent outlet is too ugly and threatening to countenance.

For me this book a remarkably serendipitous find. Its background events a matter of public record, Ms. Wright gives us a perfectly clear and convincing glimpse into its human cost. Don’t be fooled by the publisher’s arbitrary categorization; its readership should be wide and encompass all ages. An important story in our history, told clearly, and with a commendable and subtle intelligence.

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"Death of Kings" by Bernard Cornwell

The sixth entry in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles series, “Death of Kings” marks a transition: in it, one main, focal character, King Alfred the Great, dies, and his son Edward succeeds him. Alfred has struggled all his life to unite the Anglo Saxons of the British Island under him, but although he approached it, he did not quite achieve it in his lifetime.

The Saxon Chronicles is a favorite of mine, illuminating in a series of novels a remote moment in time, centrally important to all Anglophones: the unification of Anglo Saxon England and the expulsion from Britain of the Danes, or at least the assimilation of the Danes under English law. They’re told from the point of view of Uhtred, a Saxon warlord who is sworn in service to the Saxon throne. He isn’t always happy in that service, but who can say that they are, in every particular of their service?

“Death of Kings” marks not only Alfred’s passing, but also that of a handful of other kings and pretenders, all Danish, or allied to the Danish side.  We know how the story goes, if we want to, but Mr. Cornwell’s grand success is the vivid telling, and the filling-in of fuzzy (or missing) historical detail with well-imagined and logical characters and events. I like this series because it features an extremely tough and clever general, who gets scared on the eve of battle, fierce as it rages, and never compromises with what he considers as the overweening influence of the Church. He remains pagan – he was brought up in the Danish culture – and this leads to tension throughout the story. Royal advisers don’t trust him, but at least Alfred, and maybe his son Edward, know better.

These novels have everything I could want in a historical series: they portray an epochal time, in which great stakes hang in the balance, their pacing keeps us furiously turning pages, and it transports me to an exotic time with larger-than-life events. It’s hard to imagine better escapist fare, and hard to imagine anyone handling it better than Mr. Cornwell.

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"The Sisters" by Nancy Jensen

“The Sisters” makes us think at the outset we will encounter the tale of Mabel and Bertie, two sisters who become estranged through a tragic misunderstanding in hardscrabble 1920s Kentucky. However, author Nancy Jensen’s narrative grows organically, and it turns out Mabel and Bertie only represent the prototype of all the sets of sisters-at-odds portrayed here. These girls and women seem each to have their own secret which they feel protects their loved ones, but in the end these secrets and entrenched positions do far more harm than good.

Mabel and Bertie inaugurate matters with a story of sisterly devotion gone wrong; Mabel suffers at the hands of her stepfather, and determines to protect her little sister Bertie. But Bertie never learns of the plan Mabel has hatched with the boy who loves Bertie, for escape and deliverance, and becomes embittered. Bertie’s bitterness colors the rest of the novel. She has two daughters in her turn, Rainey and Alma, two very different women whose own estrangement is based on two very different strategies for getting away from Bertie and her husband Hans. Alma, climbing socially, marries a horrid man who is a doctor. Rainey, hopelessly naïve, finds herself in far-too-early motherhood because of her basic lack of understanding of the birds and the bees, which is Bertie’s fault entirely. The real payoff in this novel comes to us when the younger generations mature and find their way. 

I had a hard time setting aside my impatience with the universal intransigence on display. Bertie sets the tone, with her lifelong refusal to even get to the bottom of what happened that fateful day in 1926. Her daughter Rainey inherits the stubborn streak, excoriating her daughter Lynn’s father, her ex-husband, and preventing any contact between him and his daughter. Rainey’s other daughter, Grace, is the one fairly hopeful offspring of all this, and perhaps it’s because of her father (who remains unknown to her), who is an elegant, scholarly, kindly man who has no idea he’s fathered a daughter. That’s because, once again, Rainey kept it secret from him because, I don’t know, perverse stubbornness afflicts everyone in this book.

However all that is, I want to praise the author for the progress of her characters. All these secrets and all this conflict between sisters distills itself into the metal-working craft which the appropriately-named Grace learns and pursues: she makes suits of armor. This is the finest fictional effect in the novel, and maybe the only trope worth the name. And the youngest two characters, the lovely-sounding Taylor, getting set to head off to college, and her sparkling second cousin Sarah, getting ready to enter high school, wrap up this book on a high note, and represent potential redemption for Grace and her sister Lynn.

I liked the clarity of character, although I found the entrenched positions and animosity quite fatiguing. I deeply admired how the story grew, like a living organism, to encompass eighty years of family history and such a variety of women and girls. Although Ms. Jensen goes to considerable lengths to lay the foundation for Bertie’s life of denial and anger, for me it only partly succeeds.

I do like reading debut novels, and Nancy Jensen sustains an energy throughout this multi-generational saga that must be recognized. I applaud the spirit with which the younger generations, beginning with Grace, struggle against the overwhelming energy directed at maintaining ancient resentments.

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