The Other Susan

March is the beginning of the publishers’ spring season; the trickle of new books begins to swell into the tidal (title?) wave that crests in May and June. This March brings two new novels set in the South and an account of a scientific experiment that reads like fiction. Read on!

As the Bare Naked Ladies ask in one of their songs, “Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?” Primates, with their eerie similarities to humans, have always fascinated us. Capitalizing on that interest, Elizabeth Hess’s new book recounts the tale of a bold experiment designed to push the boundaries of human/chimpanzee relationships. Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human is an animal story that will appeal even to non-animal lovers. According to linguist Noam Chomsky, language is what separates humans from animals. In the early seventies, a Columbia professor named Herbert Terrace designed an experiment intended to dispute that claim. Project Nim would attempt to prove that a chimp raised from infancy as a human child in a human family and taught American Sign Language would not only imitate the signs, but develop the ability to put them together differently to express original thoughts. Nim Chimpsky, the subject of this ambitious undertaking, arrived at his new home in Manhattan when he was only ten days old. He was part of the family for several years until a divorce fractured his happy home. From there, he was moved to an estate owned by Columbia University, which was just north of Manhattan. In this facility, Nim was surrounded by grad students and research assistants whose purpose was to care for him and teach him ASL. Throughout these years, he thrived. Not only did he acquire language, he became a local celebrity, even appearing on the David Suskind show. For the first four years of his life, Nim always had a strong bond with a female caretaker. (One of my favorite lines from the book: “Young male chimps, not unlike some human males, require an alpha female to organize their lives.”) Over the years, the project generated scads of data that needed to be sorted and analyzed. Unfortunately, at that juncture, Nim himself became extraneous and he needed to be relocated.  What do you do with a chimpanzee who was raised to identify with humans when his research money has run out? What do we owe research animals who have outlived their scientific purpose? The rest of the book explores such questions as Nim is moved back to the primate research facility in Oklahoma in which he was born.  Nim Chimpsky  was quite a character, and the ethical questions raised by the author will provoke much debate.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan is a stunning debut novel that will deservedly draw comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird. Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, told in the first person by various narrators, this is a powerful story that makes its point more clearly than a sermon ever could. When Laura’s husband moves their family to a desolate farm in rural Mississippi, she is appalled at the poverty and misery surrounding them. When two soldiers return from the war, the situation gets even worse. Jamie, Laura’s brother-in-law, is haunted by his combat experiences and tries to drown his terror in alcohol. Ronsel is the oldest son of the family of black sharecroppers that work the farm; he returns to the Jim Crow South after having been treated as an equal by white Europeans during the war. To the dismay of both families, the two veterans fall into a friendship that, given the world they inhabit and the ignorance of the people who surround them, can only end in tragedy. This novel is riveting and thought-provoking; I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Joshilyn Jackson’s first two novels Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia were both terrific, so I looked forward to reading her third, and I was not disappointed. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is another winner, full of family secrets, bonds, and ghosts. Laurel, mother of twelve year old Shelby, is visited by a ghost in the dream house she’s shared with her family for thirteen years. When she wakes up, she realizes it is the ghost of the girl who has just drowned in her swimming pool, Shelby’s friend Molly. Although the death is ruled accidental, Shelby and her friend Bet (who was spending the night) are both acting peculiar, so Laurel decides to investigate. To find out the truth, she must ask Thalia, her estranged sister, for assistance; she must also head back to DeLop, the poverty stricken town from which her mother escaped through marriage and in which various relatives, including Bet, are still trapped. Going back to DeLop brings back childhood memories of the hunting trip in which their Uncle Marty was killed many years ago; the reappearance of his ghost leads Laurel to think that the current tragedy might be linked to her family’s history. As fragments of the past resurface and Shelby’s life is threatened, Laurel draws on all her resources to keep her daughter and her family safe. This enormously satisfying novel should introduce many new fans to Joshilyn Jackson’s work.

For the first time since I’ve started writing this column, there are no newly published books that excite me enough to review them, so I am going to briefly review three series that might catch your interest.  Regularly scheduled reviews of brand new hardcovers will resume in April.

For readers who enjoy historical fiction, there are two lengthy series, both in paperback, that will keep you busy for quite some time.  Back in 1970, Patrick O’Brian published his first Aubrey/Maturin novel, Master & Commander. In it, we meet Jack Aubrey, a captain in the Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, a doctor and intelligence agent, whose friendship spans the Napoleonic wars.  Jack is a hearty fellow; not particularly perspicacious on land, but a master sailor and strategist on the sea. (His naval nickname is Lucky Jack.) Stephen is an Irish and Catalan patriot, passionately devoted to independence, but most of all committed to defeating Napoleon, the biggest oppressor in the world.  As a team, they sail the world, capturing prizes, adding to their wealth, and  exposing French spies whenever they can. In the twenty book series, both men fall in love, marry, lose and regain fortunes, are shipwrecked, and land in prison. For most readers, the sailing terms will be so much gibberish, but they add a fine salty tang to the story, even if you don’t have a clue what they mean. O’Brian’s sly humor is displayed more in the later books of the series, and the Royal Navy vernacular is delightful, if sometimes obscure. It is likely more men read this series than women, but women are depriving themselves of a real pleasure—this is a series that transcends gender. Perfect seaside reading!

Dorothy Dunnett, my favorite historical fiction writer ever, published the first of her Lymond Chronicles, The Game of Kings, in 1961. The six book series starts in Scotland, in 1547, with the words, “Lymond is back.” Back from where, and why he left in the first place, are slowly revealed in this intricately detailed masterpiece that moves from Scotland to England to France, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Malta. From clearing his name of charges of treason, protecting the infant Mary, Queen of Scots from her enemies, and entertaining the French court with music and acrobatics, Lymond is a man of many talents, and his own worst enemy. Each book in the series reveals more of his essential personality and almost boundless humanity, but the face he presents to the world is forbidding and unapproachable.  This series requires concentration and some knowledge of European history if you want to understand the political machinations, but it is well worth the effort it takes.  The Game of Kings and the five subsequent books opened my world in a way no other historical fiction ever has; for the reader looking to be swept into another world, this does the job.

His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik, is the first book in the Temeraire series. It is a cross between fantasy and historical fiction in which dragons are used as an aerial corps during the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Lawrence, our protagonist, is a captain in the Royal Navy when his ship captures a rare dragon’s egg, which hatches on board. Unfortunately for Lawrence, the baby dragon chooses him as its master, which effectively ends his employment in the prestigious navy and sends him into the aerial corps as a socially ostracized dragon captain. He submits to his new orders with a heavy heart, but his growing attachment to Temeraire, his dragon, reconciles him to his diminished status.

Then the story really begins—Lawrence is plunged into dragon training, corps politics, and a world that is less hidebound than the British navy. Temeraire and Lawrence’s bond is deep and loyal; through Temeraire’s fight for dragons’ rights and Lawrence’s trial for treason, they have each others’ backs. This series (five titles and growing) is perfect for juvenile readers who have read the Eragon series and are looking for more on dragons. Lots of fun!

Happy Valentine’s Day! February is also winter break month, the perfect time to read a new book. Perhaps one of the following would appeal.

Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb is a suspenseful novel narrated by Nick Framingham, a man whose life has fallen apart since the by suicide of his childhood best friend six months ago. Rob Castor, a brilliant writer known for his critically acclaimed book of short stories, didn’t just kill himself—he also murdered his estranged author girlfriend, whose recent work had started to eclipse Rob’s own. Rob’s death shakes the foundations of Nick’s life, and his ten year marriage to Lucy is crumbling under the weight of Nick’s obsession with finding out what drove his friend to such extremes. His search for the truth about the end of Rob’s life leads him back to his childhood haunts; he visits Rob’s mother, an alcoholic who taunts him with a secret about Nick that she refuses to reveal, and resumes his high school/post-college affair with Belinda, Rob’s sister, when she comes back to town to clear out some of Rob’s belongings. He visits his parents in their retirement home in Arizona to explore some recently surfaced childhood memories. Lucy’s attempts to bring Nick back from the brink of disaster are fruitless; nagging, fighting, and marriage counseling are useless against his desire to know how he and Rob ended up where they did. As Nick gets closer and closer to the deeply buried secrets of his past, the mood becomes darker and more suspenseful. Lucy finally has enough and throws Nicks out; the shocking revelations about his past and the truth about Rob’s death that are finally revealed will have readers reeling at the train wreck Nick’s life has become.  If you enjoy literary thrillers, you’ll enjoy this book.

Lauren Groff’s debut novel The Monsters of Templeton is set in a town modeled on Cooperstown, where Groff grew up. In it, Wilhelmina (Willie) Upton has just returned to town from an archeological dig where she was pursuing both her doctorate and her married professor. When the professor’s wife shows up, Willie realizes that her affair will have no happy ending, and she returns to her hometown to lick her wounds and to decide how to deal with her unintended pregnancy. Willie herself never knew who her father was; her mother’s free-spirited hippie days resulted in Willie’s birth, and Vi’s reaction to her daughter’s return and pregnancy is disappointment that her daughter should have followed in her footsteps. And then, the bombshell—Vi does know who Willie’s father is,   and he is a prominent citizen of Templeton who is also descended from Marmaduke Temple, the town founder (Willie’s grandparents were both descendants of his), thus making Willie even more related to the town’s founding family. Furious at Vi for keeping her in the dark for so long, Willie turns her prodigious research skills towards finding out who her father is by going to the local library and examining their genealogical records. As her research progesses, we hear from her various ancestors the stories of their lives and how their actions affected the town of Templeton. Actual photographs from Cooperstown are interspersed in the novel, making the characters seem real. Also intertwined in the novel is the legend of Glimmey, the counterpart of the Loch Ness monster that resides in Lake Glimmerglass. When a dead creature, presumably Glimmey, is dragged from the lake, the town is infested with reporters and scientists eager to investigate its origins, while the Templeton natives would prefer to mourn Glimmey in peace. Lauren Groff does a masterful job of keeping the many strands of the story woven together. Anyone with an interest in Cooperstown will enjoy the local flavor of this novel, and book groups will enjoy discussing the literary devices Groff uses liberally throughout.

Last year I reviewed  Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, describing it as “a twelfth century CSI.” The author has written another mystery featuring Adelia Aguilar, who is called out of retirement to investigate the death of Rosamund Clifford, Henry II’s mistress, who was poisoned by a person or persons unknown. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry’s estranged queen, is the prime suspect. Once again, Adelia must put her forensic skills to work in service to the English king. Franklin has written another thrilling page-turner. If you haven’t yet read the first in the series, it will be out in paperback this month. 

Whether or not you belong to a book club, you will enjoy Kathy L. Patrick’s new book, The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life. Patrick worked happily as a publishers’ sales rep, traveling to independent bookstores and selling them books, until 1999, when chain store depredations decimated the ranks of locally owned stores; her position was eliminated and she was out of a job. When she emerged from her post-layoff funk, she had to find other employment. In a brilliant, if quixotic, move, she decided to combine her two passions and opened Beauty and the Book, a combination beauty salon and bookstore. Shortly afterwards, she started the Pulpwood Queens book club, which grew into a nationwide phenomenon and made Kathy Patrick a well-known champion for literacy. Her new book tells the story of how she managed to find her purpose, create her dream job, and help her empower other women to do the same thing. Her book is filled with stories of her childhood, her love of books, her wonderful girlfriends, her supportive family, and it is seasoned with quotes from her favorite authors and Pulpwood Queens from all over America. Every chapter ends with a list of recommended reading, slanted heavily towards Southern authors, since Patrick lives in Texas and supports her regional authors whole-heartedly. Despite its religious overtones, this is a fun, quick read, likely to inspire both book clubs and general readers. Take a chance and move beyond Oprah books!

Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery, is a terrific biography! Everyone knows about Alice’s needlepoint pillow emblazoned with “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me” and her father, Teddy Roosevelt’s, resigned comment, “I can be President of the United States—or—I can attend to Alice, I cannot possibly do both!” These well-known stories are merely the tip of the iceberg of the fascinating life of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Her birth in 1884 to Teddy’s much-loved first wife was followed by her mother’s and grandmother’s (TR’s mother) deaths two days later. By the time her father became president following McKinley’s assassination, Alice had a step-mother and a crew of half-siblings competing for her father’s time; when she became First Daughter and “Princess Alice” in the newspapers, she managed to get the attention she’d wanted all her life. In addition to her taboo-breaking behavior (smoking cigarettes, speeding in her little red roadster, spending extravagantly on clothes), Alice became a helpful, non-official goodwill ambassador for her father, who appreciated her political acumen.  She married Nicholas Longworth, a congressman from Ohio who later became Speaker of the House, and continued to put her political abilities to good use. She and her husband entertained many prominent politicians; Alice’s salon was the place to see and be seen in Washington, DC.   Cordery drew on recently unearthed letters and diaries to research this biography; the intimate details of Alice’s love affairs and the paternity of her daughter are confirmed for the first time. The political divide between the Republican Roosevelts and the Democratic Franklin Roosevelts are also explored at length; Alice backed Republican candidates all her life, although she managed to be good friends with the Kennedys despite their political differences. Cordery does an admirable job of bringing Alice to life; her writing is crisp, slear and compelling. Like Katherine Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, this is a well-written tale of a DC insider that will interest readers who are not DC insiders. Thoroughly enjoyable!

Continuing the political theme, we have Sue Miller’s newest novel, The Senator’s Wife. It really has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with marriages and how they are conducted between two people, no matter what their friends’ and family’s opinions are.  Meri is a newly married woman, just moved with her husband to a town house in a staid New England village. Their new next door neighbors are Delia Naughton and her husband, the famous senator Tom Naughton. There is something odd about the marriage next door, though—Tom doesn’t appear to live there. When Delia leaves town for her annual sojourn in Paris, Meri keeps an eye on the house, does a little snooping, and finds out a secret about Delia and Tom’s relationship. How that secret and her illicit knowledge of it almost breaks up both marriages is at the core of this compelling novel. Sue Miller does a great job of exploring the nuances of marriages, both old and new. This novel is likely to be a bog book club choice when it comes out in paperback.

Season’s greetings! Welcome to the holiday book review column. Instead of reviewing several books this month, I’ve provided an overview of gift books perfect for the hard-to-buy-for person on your list. Perhaps you’ll find one or two titles to add to your own wish list, too—happy reading.

Humor books abound this time of year; there are books for every age and taste. Bob Newhart fans will be delighted to receive his new book, “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny.” Newhart’s deadpan, self-deprecating style shines in this very funny memoir, which covers his career from his stand-up days until today and includes anecdotes about his memorable friends, such as Don Rickles, Dean Martin, and Jack Benny.  With this book, Newhart proves that sometimes, nice guys do finish first. For younger humor fans, there is “I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America’s Top Comics.” “Top” comics might be a little bit of a stretch , but this collection of tales of hecklers, bad gigs, touring woes and other assorted disasters will convince all but the truly committed never to try standup comedy. 

Ritch Shydner and Mark Schiff, both standup comedians and sit-com writers, compiled these stories, and Jerry Seinfeld wrote the introduction.  Warning: This is definitely an R-rated comedy collection—not for the faint-hearted.

My guess is 99% of New Yorker readers peruse the cartoons before they read the rest of the magazine. Two new cartoon collections will delight these readers—“The Rejection Collection,” edited by Matthew Diffie, and “Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, Health-Inspected Cartoons by Roz Chast, 1978-2006.”  Matthew Diffie asked 30 regular New Yorker cartoonists to choose their favorites from their rejected pile, and he culled his favorites from that stack. The result is a quirkier, goofier, more risqué collection of cartoons submitted to but never published in the New Yorker.  Judging from the hilarity content, space was the main reason these cartoons didn’t make the cut in the magazine. Roz Chast’s new cartoon collection, the follow-up to “The Party, After You Left”, is a selection of  her cartoons spanning the last 28 years. She is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, so some of the cartoons may be familiar, but it is convenient to have all your favorites in one book. 

Adult pop-up book are a big item this season. As children’s pop-up books become more sophisticated and collectible (think Robert Sabuda), savvy publishers are expanding their audience by moving into the adult market. My favorite is “Graceland: An Interactive Pop-Up Tour,” by Chuck Murphy with a foreward by Priscilla Presley. Eventually I will visit Graceland in Memphis, but until then I will be satisfied with this paper-engineered tour. It’s all there—the jungle room, the meditation garden, the television room, and more. The kitchen spread not only displays the kitchen, it includes a refrigerator and cabinets you can open to see what the King’s shelves were stocked with. Sidebars on each page give further details about the estate and Elvis’s life. Published to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Graceland’s status as a national historic landmark, this will please Elvis fans everywhere.

Film lovers will enjoy “Alfred Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense.” It  features seven of Hitchcock’s films, one per pop-up. Best of all, each spread has a lift-the-flap sidebar that shows the scene on which Hitchcock has his usual walk-on role. 

Two more pop-up books deserve brief mention—“The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns” by Bruce Foster and “The Pop-Up Book of Sex” by Balvis  Rubess and Kees Moerbeck. The first features Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Paris Hilton and their escapades. The second is self-explanatory. Both are perfect for pop-culture mavens, but be warned—they are both R-rated.

Parties are a huge part of the holidays, and there are many books on entertaining in case you need new ideas for your gathering this year. The most elegant is “A Passion for Parties,” by Carolyne Roehm. Gorgeous photographs of well-manicured landscapes, artfully arranged place settings and beautiful people abound in this spectacular volume.

Recipes and party planning tips are at the end of the book, but this is the kind of entertaining one dream of; in the real world, you are more likely to reach for “Barefoot Contessa at Home” if you need helpful hints for your next soiree. Ina Garten’s newest book features simple recipes with simple ingredients, beautifully presented; her advice

to the hostess is keep it simple and make sure your guests are comfortable. Anyone who gives dinner parties would enjoy this book.  On the more plebeian end of the spectrum is Amy Sedaris’s new book, “I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.” The intended audience for this book is young, hip, and financially challenged; the recipes are simple and don’t require exotic ingredients. While some of her musings should be taken with a grain of salt, this is a fun, hipster take on how to entertain.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next month with reviews of new fiction for the new year.

Happy holidays!   

In November we give thanks for the earth’s harvest, and this November, we can also give thanks for a generous harvest of books. Pour yourself a cup of mulled cider or a hot chocolate on a cool fall night, curl up with one of these and enjoy the bounty.

A family reunion for Thanksgiving is the setting for Suzanne Berne’s newest novel, “The Ghost at the Table.” Frances, the middle sister, has called for a family gathering at her New England home. Cynthia, her younger sister, reluctantly heads east from California, not knowing that her sister has arranged for their long-estranged father to join them for the holiday weekend. Family history, cherished resentments and long-held misconceptions are aired over the weekend, making it much more eventful than Frances had intended. Our narrator is Cynthia, the least functional member of the Fiske tribe. She is currently writing a biography of Mark Twain’s daughters, whose lives were marred by their overbearing and temperamental father. Berne’s comparison of the Fiske family and the Twain family works well to reinforce the idea that an outsider, and sometimes even the insiders, don’t really know what lies at the heart of dysfunctional families. Frances wants to make the weekend perfect for everyone, Cynthia continues to hold on to her childish version of her childhood story, and their father, incapacitated by a stroke, struggles to communicate with everyone.  “The Ghost at the Table” will make you appreciate your family even more this Thanksgiving.

Katherine Min, who grew up in the Capital District, is the proud author of her first novel, “Secondhand World.” Isa, the main character, is the American-born daughter of Korean immigrants who have been scarred by the Korean War. Isa’s younger brother, Stephen, was killed when he was four years old; her traditional parents have never gotten over his loss, and Isa knows she is the less valued survivor. Left to her own devices by her grieving parents, Isa develops a secret life about which her parents know nothing. Her teenage rebellion distances her still further from her parents’ strict Korean values, and her adolescent self-absorption keeps her from noticing that her parents are falling apart. When Isa realizes that her parents’ marriage is threatened, her betrayal of  them has consequences she could never have foreseen. This novel is an excellent book group selection; the themes, imagery, and spare, beautiful writing are worth exploring. Min has produced a haunting and vivid novel of immigrant alienation, teenage rebellion, and isolation within the tight-knit confines of family.

Stephen King’s new book, “Lisey’s Story”, is being billed as his most personal work to date. Which it may well be; it is the story of an unusually close twenty-five-year marriage of a best-selling, award-winning author and his devoted wife. Certainly, reading this novel raises speculation about his long-term marriage to author Tabitha King. However, given the topics Stephen King has chosen to write about in the past, I would be hard pressed to see any of them as being even remotely personal, unless his life has been filled with girls with telekinetic powers, cars with malevolent wills of their own, and sundry other fantastic characters. In any case, “Lisey’s Story” starts two years after Scott Landon’s death, when his widow, Lisey, finally decides to start cleaning out his office and sorting through his papers, which draws her into Scott’s inner world of darkness, creativity, and the edge of madness. If you are a Stephen King fan, you should read this book. It will give you insight into his creative process and give you a healthy sense of admiration for his wife, who has supported him and nurtured his creativity from the beginning. If this is based on their life together, Tabitha King deserves accolades for  managing to stay married to him for all these years; it couldn’t have been easy. But if it produces a heartfelt tribute like this one, it was all worth it.

“Blind Submission” is the first novel by Debra Ginsberg. Her previous non-fiction works include “Waiting”, “Raising Blaze”, and “About My Sisters”, all of which I enjoyed tremendously; her novel is just as good.  Angel Robinson, a new assistant at a cutthroat literary agency in California, receives a submission from an anonymous author that turns out to be very good. As she works to help the author get the manuscript into publishable shape, she is also struggling to survive her “Devil Wears Prada”-type boss, whose incessant demands and turn-on-a-dime mood swings make the workplace volatile, to say the least. Soon, Angel is drawn into a web of deception and danger in which no one—her boyfriend, her boss, her co-workers, her anonymous author—is what they seem to be. This is a great fun read.

Susan Taylor has been in the book business, in one aspect or another, since 1982. She recently returned to the Capital District after 14 years in the Boston area (which included stints at the Harvard Bookstore and the Wellesley Booksmith), and she is happily re-employed at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza. Stop by the store if you are looking for a good book—she’s read a lot more than she can talk about here!

October brings us rock and roll, spirituality and a wonderful new novel from a local boy whose novels have won the Pulitzer Prize and been made into movies. With the obvious exception of Harry Potter, publishers produce their biggest titles in the fall, and choosing what to review was a pleasant challenge. I hope you find something appealing!

Rock and roll is in the air this season—David Cassidy has an autobiography out, Pattie Boyd’s Wonderful Tonight about her life as a super-model and wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton is climbing the bestseller list as I write, and Pamela Des Barres has a new book out. Her name might not be familiar, but if you’ve seen Cameron Crowe’s movie Almost Famous, you’ve seen a character based on her and others like her—Penny Lane, the super-groupie played by Kate Hudson. Miss Pamela’s glory days are chronicled in her first book, I’m With the Band, which was first published twenty years ago. She was obsessed with music from childhood, swooning over Elvis records and Dion until she became a Beatlemaniac and tried desperately to meet them in LA in 1964. Although she was unsuccessful, she’d been bitten by the rock bug and was determined to have a place in that world. From flower child to rock wife, Pamela encounters Gram Parsons, Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, Don Johnson and many others, both famous and infamous. Her writing style is chatty and intimate, and the book contains many excerpts from her journal, only adding to the “you are there” vibe. The original book ends when she and her husband-to-be, Michael Des Barres, begin their lives together; the new edition has a last chapter that updates her life up until 2005. Let’s Spend the Night Together, her most recent book, isn’t a memoir. Instead, she traveled the country visiting groupies and collecting their reminisces of Elvis Presley, Iggy Pop, Van Halen, Mick Jagger and countless other rock icons. Covering sex, drugs and rock and roll, this alternately impressive and appalling narrative is never boring! Beginning with Tura Satana, the exotic dancer who taught Elvis how to dance, kiss and more, and ending with Static Beth, a woman whose website features rock stars nether regions, the compilation mirrors the history of rock itself, from the innocence of the 50’s and 60’s through the decadence of the 70’s and 80’s and into the “anything goes” philosophy of the 90’s and today. The first two thirds of the book contains the   groupie stories that everyone will be interested in—the really famous rockers like Elvis, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Jackson Browne, Steven Tyler and Mick Jagger. After that the girls get younger and wilder and the bands are lesser known. The epilogue is an interview with Cameron Crowe, who expounds on Almost Famous, his definition of groupie, and his first meeting with Miss Pamela in 1973 while he was interviewing Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin; it neatly encapsulates the author’s view that groupies were and are an integral part of the rock scene. If you love VH1 Behind the scenes, you should read this book.

Breakfast with Buddha is a novel with spiritual overtones by Roland Merullo. Otto Ringling, the protagonist, is an upper middle class publishing executive living the good life with his wife and children in a wealthy New York suburb. Any niggling thoughts he might have about the true meaning of life are buried under the minutiae of everyday matters, but when his parents are killed in a car accident, those questions bubble to the surface. In order to settle his parents’ estate, he decides to drive to North Dakota and see to matters in person; his new age, mystic sister who intended to accompany him changes her mind and sends her guru along in his place. Here the adventure begins. How can a conventional, successful, practical man spend a week on the road with a holy man he suspects is out to defraud his sister of her inheritance? And yet, as the trip progresses and Otto starts to see his world through the guru’s eyes, he begins to grasp that there might be more to life than he ever dreamed of. Through bowling, miniature golf, yoga and meditation he learns what is important. This is a wonderful book on spirituality for those who prefer their lessons coated in fiction and an uplifting read for those looking for a good story. It could be the Jonathan Livingston Seagull for the new century.

In Richard Russo’s new book, Bridge of Sighs, he returns to New York state to the economically depressed towns made famous in his earliest novels. In it, he traces the entwined destinies of a small town homebody, an expatriate painter living in Venice, and the woman who loves them both.  Moving from the present back through childhood, and shifting through several narrative voices, Bridge of Sighs is a wonderful story, certain to be Russo’s next bestseller. If you loved Nobody’s Fool and Empire Falls, you have a treat in store. 

There’s nothing like reading a good mystery to remind yourself how addictive reading a good story can be. On the Ropes by local author Tom Schreck, has a gripping plot and reads like a combination of Janet Evanovich and Dennis Lehane. Our protagonist is Duffy Dombrowski, a paperwork challenged social worker and part-time boxer who sometimes goes beyond the bounds of his job to, in his words, “help people who no one else wants to help.” When one of Duffy’s clients is arrested on an outstanding warrant, she begs him to find her step-daughter and to take care of her dog, a Muslim Bassett Hound. He takes the dog and makes a mental note to check on her step-daughter, although he suspects she is with her father’s family. When Walanda, his client, calls from jail claiming that someone is trying to kill her, Duffy dismisses her worries as exaggerated. After all, she is a schizophrenic crack-addict suffering from crack withdrawal without her anti-psychotic drugs—delusions and paranoia are predictable side effects. But before he can get back to her, she is dead, murdered in jail. While kicking himself for not helping Walanda, he begins searching for her step-daughter and investigating the murder. Meanwhile, his boss Claudia has put him on notice for failure to submit his paperwork in a timely and orderly fashion and Duffy has a month to bring it up to snuff. What’s a poor social worker to do? If you are Duffy Dombrowski, you keep helping the downtrodden, and when the going gets tough, you enlist your friends from the corner bar to see that justice is served. This is a rollicking ride of a mystery with as much humor as suspense. Tom Schreck has a 4 book contract, and I am looking forward to the next Duffy Dombrowski installment!

The celebrity novel is becoming ubiquitous these days; not content with being famous for their dramatic talents, many actors are turning to writing to expand their creative outlets. Steve Martin, Ethan Hawke, and Nicole Richie have all published novels with varying degrees of success.  This month brings the newest entry in the celebrity novel sweepstakes—Courtney Thorne-Smith, sit-com star extraordinaire, has penned Outside In, an entertaining novel of Hollywood behind the scenes.  Kate Keyes-Morgan is an actress who seems to have it all—a starring role on a hit television series, a svelte body, and a husband who manages her career. Despite her successes, she is convinced that it is all a fluke that could disappear at any moment; her lack of self-esteem is her most annoying character trait in the beginning of the book.  When her husband (a control freak who monitors Kate’s diet and continually undermines her non-existent self-confidence by questioning her beauty and talent) falls in love with her co-star, Sapphire Rose, Kate is devastated. When she is fired from the sitcom due to Sapphire Rose’s discomfort with having to work with her new boyfriend’s soon-to-be ex-wife, she  begins to take stock of her life and realizes that being thin, beautiful, and obedient to what her parents, husband, and directors wanted from her hasn’t gotten her any closer to the perfect future she dreamed about. Finally she begins to take control of her life and decide what is good for her on her own terms rather than listening to people who want to selfishly benefit from her talent.  Because this is a Hollywood novel, there is the requisite happy ending; it is a fun novel, especially if you try to figure out who the characters might be based on. The author has been working steadily as an actress since 1986; I would guess she has met an awful lot of these characters in her travels. While  Courtney Thorne-Smith did a creditable job of writing, I wouldn’t suggest she quit her day job.  However, if she wrote a second novel, I would certainly read it. If you are a fan, give this one a try.

I am guessing many people who read this column have also read Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. In that book, which chronicles Augusten’s extremely dysfunctional childhood, he mentions his much older brother, who left the parental insanity at a young age and went on the road as a guitar builder for the band KISS. At one point in the book, a young Augusten actually gets to sit backstage at a KISS concert. Perhaps you wanted to know more about that brother? Then you should read “Look Me in the Eye” by John Elder Robison, Augusten Burroughs’s sibling. It is a wonderfully written autobiography, not only because he has lived a fascinating life, but because he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at the ripe old age of 40. Despite (or, as he would argue, perhaps because of) his different abilities, he became a guitar builder, a game designer, a computer geek, and a successful businessman. After this book, he will be able to add “best-selling author” to his resume.  Trust me on this one—be the first in your book group to read and recommend it; your friends will thank you! 

August is vacation month, the perfect time to read a non-demanding, fluffy novel or two. Here are a few new titles well-suited to a langorous afternoon on the beach or in the hammock.

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be the girl to whom a hit song was dedicated? For instance, being the Sharona from the Knack’s My Sharona? Or Roxanne from the Police song of the same name? Maybe Sugar Magnolia if you’re a Deadhead? What would it be like if not only one song, but a best-selling artist’s entire roster of hits was about your first love, which ended when he stood you up the night of the senior prom and whom you haven’t seen since? Dedication by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss (the writing team that brought us The Nanny Diaries) begins with this premise. Kate, now a high-powered consultant living in Charleston, gets a call from her hometown best friend, telling her that Jake, the no-show ex-boyfriend, is back in town for a visit. Kate immediately flies back to Vermont to have the long-awaited showdown she has been fantasizing about for thirteen years. So what happens when she falls back under his spell? Flashbacks interspersed with the present day plot reveal Kate and Jake’s relationship from sixth grade through twelfth grade; the authors’ take on the rollercoaster of young romantic love is spot on. Pop culture references, both past and present, lend this novel much of its charm.  The depiction of today’s celebrity obsessed society is also hilarious and Jake’s star antics add to the fun. My only quibble is the sub-plot concerning Kate’s parents’ marriage problems—it brings a depressing note of real life into an otherwise light and frothy novel. Despite that, if you are a fan of behind the scenes retrospectives, you’ll enjoy this story.

The Manny by Holly Peterson is set in the Manhattan of the rich and privileged. Jamie Whitfield, a news producer for a major television station, is not a native wealthy Mahattanite, but she married into the tribe ten years ago and has grown somewhat accustomed to its ways. Phillip, her attorney husband, is an absentee father whose quest for ever more money keeps him working  longer and longer hours. Dylan,  their oldest son, is having problems that Jamie is convinced would be solved if only he had a strong male role model. Her solution? To hire a manny, a “nanny of the male persuasion”, according to the book’s jacket. Enter Peter Bailey, a man in his late twenties who is working on an educational software package for elementary school children; he has a way with kids and could use a paying gig until his project gets the funding he needs to launch it properly. Since this is a light summer read, I am sure you can guess how the story goes—throw in a high-profile interview Jamie is trying to score, a splashy benefit she attends to help her daughter get into the best possible kindergarten, her husband’s possibly illegal activities at work, and Peter’s insistence on being a prince of a fellow, and you have a morality tale par excellence. This Manhattan comedy of manners is more Wendy Wasserstein than Edith Wharton; Edith would be rolling in her grave if she new what today’s wealthy New Yorkers were up to.The rest of us, however, will relish the skewering of their pretensions and the triumph of good, old-fashioned virtue.

Armistead Maupin is best known as the author of the Tales of the City series of books, which started as a newspaper serialization in 1974 and continued in the San Francisco Chronicle for years afterwards. His most recent novel is Michael Tolliver Lives, which is not a continuation of the Tales of the City story, but more of a coda to the characters’ lives twenty years later.  Michael Tolliver is a gay man in his fifties, living in San Francisco, still missing his friends who died of AIDS, but living his life as an HIV positive man with hope and love. He has his own home, he runs his own business, and early in the novel he meets and falls in love with Ben, a man twenty years younger. As Michael negotiates aging—his own, his dying mother’s and his friends’—he begins to make his peace with his past and with his families, both biological and “logical.”  Above all, this is a love story, both romantic and bawdy. If you moved beyond the young and beautiful boy meets girl story, this is a mature novel you will appreciate for its tenderness and honesty.

If you are a cultural snob who only spells literature with a capital “L” and who only reads works of high literary merit, the following book is not for you. If, however, you have a passing familiarity with current popular fiction and enjoy a good laugh, I highly recommend Who’s Killing the Great Writers of America? by Robert Kaplow. The plot, in a nutshell: bestselling American authors are dying, one after another, in mysterious circumstances. Tom Clancy calls Stephen King to say he thinks someone is trying to kill him, and then he disappears. Stephen King, who has been living as a recluse since the car accident that almost killed him, becomes rightfully paranoid. Despite his paralyzing fear of the outside world, he manages to get himself out of his mansion to investigate the murders before he becomes the next victim.  As you can see, the storyline isn’t really the point; Kaplow has a lot to say about the cult of celebrity, the elitism of book critics, the difference between highbrow and lowbrow culture, and a multitude of other issues. Ordinarily, I hate books in which the plot is secondary, but the scenes skewering the soon-to-be-disappeared authors are screamingly funny, and the guest appearances (Gerard Depardieu, Steve Martin, and Ann Coulter, to name a few) add to the madness. You can read this for fun or read this as a scathing commentary on our celebrity obsessed society, but either way you’ll enjoy it. And who knows, you might be introduced to authors whose books you’d like to try. Robert Kaplow will be at Market Block Books on Troy Night Out, Friday, July 27, if you’d like to meet him.

Lovers of Erik Larsen’s The Devil in the White City and those who can’t get enough of Chicago will be fascinated by Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul by Karen Abbott. Minna and Ada Everleigh were sisters, both madams, from Omaha, Nebraska. Tiring of the limitations of their small city, they moved to Chicago in 1899 to start the most exclusive, high-class brothel in town. Long before the Mayflower Madam and Heidi Fleiss, the Everleigh sisters knew what it took to sell prostitution to the wealthy and respectable. Their house was beautifully appointed, with different theme rooms and even a gold piano in the Gold Room. The girls were held to strict standards of behavior; drinking and drugs (at least for the girls) were not tolerated, and instruction was given to the uneducated on how to converse intelligently with a gentleman. Soon the Everleigh Club was a popular destination for wealthy visitors to Chicago, and in 1902, Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany, visited the house. While the high profile of the house was a boon to business, it also made it a target. Such infamy couldn’t be allowed to exist unchallenged, and the good citizens of Chicago began to grumble about the blatant vice being tolerated in the red light district (the Everleigh Club wasn’t the only bordello in town; it was just the most famous one.) Soon, the ministers and politicians began to fight back. The struggle between virtue and vice provides the framework for the narrative, and it was a fierce battle. Progressive movements were burgeoning all over America, striving to eradicate alcohol, prostitution, and gambling. In Chicago, the Everleigh Club was the symbol of the rewards of sin, and as such, its elimination was the first goal of the reformers, This is an amazing story, all the more so because it is true. Read this and be amazed at the Everleigh’s daring!

Diana Abu-Jaber is the acclaimed author of Crescent, a novel, and The Language of Baklaza, a memoir. This month brings us her newest novel, Origin, which differs from her previous works in its lack of ethnicity. Lena, the novel’s protagonist, was orphaned as a child and adopted when she was very young. She has vivid memories of living in a jungle, swinging through the trees with her ape mother, that she can’t explain. When her job as a forensic fingerprint examiner brings her the challenge of a series of seemingly unrelated crib deaths to investigate, her past comes back to haunt her as she realizes there is a killer who knew her as an infant who has come back to conclude unfinished business. This literary thriller is beautifully written, and its Syracuse setting will appeal to those who love in upstate New York. Diana will be at the Book House on Thursday, July 26, if you’d like to meet her and have her sign your copy of her book.