Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

In honor of Veterans Day this past weekend, I would like to recommend "Matterhorn" by Marine Corps veteran Karl Marlantes. "Matterhorn" is based on Marlantes' experiences as a young platoon leader in Vietnam. 30 years in the making, Marlantes' intense story of a young man's abrupt transformation from innocent, All-American boy to battle-hardened and tortured veteran not only brilliantly describes the hardships his rifle platoon had to endure in the jungle and the brotherhood that forms between men in the absurdity of combat, but also brings up the incompetence and ruthlessness of a handful of high-ranking officers who will gladly sacrifice their men to further their own goals. In its senselessness, the battle for (fictitious) fire support base Matterhorn reminds of Hamburger Hill and Korea's Pork Chop Hill, putting in question the meaning of war, of leadership, and, ultimately, of life and death. While there are many novels about the Vietnam War, Marlantes' account is especially haunting: its authenticity and intensity will draw your heart and mind into the jungle to vicariously experience the fear and exhilaration of combat, to suffer through the heat, the diseases, deprivations, and the loss of lives and, thus, will give you a glimpse of what it really is that we have been asking our young men and women to endure since times eternal.

~ Andrea Galbusieri

Sibling Rivalry takes Center Stage in Book about Lincoln Assassin

Having read, seemingly not too long ago, Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis by James Swanson, I have to admit I was a little bit reluctant to pick up another book with significant focus on John Wilkes Booth, who has to be the most well-known of the American Presidential assassins. While I'm fascinated with the Lincoln Presidency, there's something unseemly to me about spending too much time paying attention to the man who took his life.

But there was something compelling about the cover of My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy by Nora Titone that led me to pick it up. Almost anyone with a passing history knows that Lincoln's assassin was an actor whose sympathies lied with the Confederate cause. What many may not realize is that Booth came from a long line of distinguished actors, of which his brother Edwin was his greatest rival. This hook drew me into yet another book where John Wilkes takes center stage.

Titone's narrative doesn't focus on the assassination; she attempts to spell out John Wilkes Booth's motives, but the story is more about about the legacy of renowned actor Junius Brutus Booth, whose offspring dominated the American stage in the mid-19th Century. John Wilkes is portrayed as being in the shadow of his brother Edwin, whose talent led him to dominate the stage throughout the country. That domination led Edwin to parse out parts of the country which his siblings could ply their trade. John Wilkes, readers won't be surprised to find out, spent considerable time in the South.

Rather than focus on a tried and true historical narrative, Titone's decision to frame the story of the eventual assassin through the frame of sibling rivalry is clever. Along the way, readers learn considerable about theatre in the mid-1800s, and about the other actors and actresses whose paths cross the famous Booth siblings. The book is littered with fascinating figures, patrons of the arts and performers. The role of Our American Cousin producer Laura Keene - the comedy that Lincoln attended that April night at Ford's Theatre - is particularly interesting.

If you're looking for a slightly different approach to the Lincoln assassination, you might find this a good read. The Booth family is a compelling bunch, making this more than one more familiar account of the assassin's story.

-Michael

You May Be "Destined" to Love Millard's "Destiny of the Republic"

I didn’t know how lucky I was to get my hands on an advance reader’s copy of Candice Millard’s The Destiny of the Republic at the American Library Association annual conference until I found myself traveling again a few weeks later.

Always a sucker for a well-written narrative about American history, I carried along the proof copy in my carry-on bag during my next trip.   The book, which hits shelves in September 2011, features a truly intriguing subject: James A. Garfield, an American president who did not seek the office, only to find himself shot by a patronage seeking, wannabe political appointee only weeks after assuming the highest office in the land.  Once I opened the book, I found myself turning page after page, drawn into her rich, flowing narrative.

I knew little about Garfield, less about his assassin, and little about the era in which the story was told - less than 20 years following the end of the Civil War.   In an era rife with patronage appointments to government jobs, raw politics and bitter post-war feelings, the story of the self-made Garfield is remarkable.   Rising from poverty to prominence as Civil War major general, he was then elected to the House of Representatives and then the Senate in 1880.   Then,  when the political frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination – John Sherman, James G. Blaine and the third term seeking Ulysses S. Grant – failed to attract enough support to become the candidate, he was named – in spite of his reluctance – the party’s compromise candidate.  Besting the Democrat Winfield Scott, Garfield would be in office less than 3 months in 1881 before crossing paths with the man whose actions would eventually take his life.

Millard’s narrative and back story for Garfield is far more compelling than my recount.   It’s her ability to take meticulous research and interweave it with the story of assassin Charles J. Guiteau, who thought the country would celebrate his act, which makes this a compulsive, page-turning event.   Just when I didn’t think it could get any better, she infuses the narrative with the next group of historical figures to drive the story – the doctors who cared for the wounded president in the months following the assassination, details  of modern, 19^th Century medicine that could have saved Garfield’s life, and a desperate attempt by inventor Alexander Graham Bell to use a recent breakthrough to help treat the dying president.  Throughout Destiny, there’s the compelling portrait of the long-suffering Garfield, who would live months following Guiteau’s attempt to kill him.

I haven’t read Millard’s River of Doubt, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s journey down the Amazon, but I’ll have to after reading this.  Evocative and reminiscent of Erik Larson’s remarkable The Devil in the White City, lovers of history are destined to enjoy every minute of her Republic.

-Michael

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai tells the story of Lucy Hull, a librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, who “kidnaps” Ian Drake and takes him on an adventure along the East Coast.  Ian is a precocious 10 year old who spends as much time as possible at the library.  His parents (mother, in particular) monitor his reading and so it is up to Lucy to slip him books on the sly.  One day, Lucy comes into the Library and discovers Ian hiding out, prepared to run away.  Although conflicted about what she should do, she decides to help him rather than take him home or call the police.

Lucy truly believes she is saving Ian from overbearing, homophobic parents who are willing to subdue their son’s nature out of fear that he might be a homosexual.  But what she finds is that not everything is what it seems…not in her life and not in Ian’s.  This book is far from perfect.  Lucy and Ian both annoyed me constantly and I couldn’t shake the feeling that a 26 year old woman traipsing around throughout the East Coast with a 10 year old boy who wasn’t her son was extremely creepy. 

The book’s saving grace comes from the many references to beloved books.  Pretty much every chapter begins with a reference or an allusion to a novel or picture book.  Some of my favorites include:

“If you give a librarian a closet, she will probably fill it with junk.

If she fills it with junk, some of the junk will be books in need of repair.

If some of the junk is books, and the closet is off of a back room anyway, she will hide more books there, books that she thinks are crap like the Stormy Sisters series, but which her boss thinks the library should keep.”  p. 56

It goes on for a few more paragraphs, but you get the gist.  Another great one was the “Choose Your Own Fiasco” chapter on page 157.  I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child and thoroughly enjoyed reminiscing throughout the novel.

~ Linette

Deaver gives Bond “Carte Blanche” on his new mission

Novelist Jeffrey Deaver takes a crack at an iconic character with his newest novel, dusting off the James Bond character that Ian Fleming created over 60 years ago.

While it’s hard for modern audiences to divorce the Bond novels from the films that they inspired, thriller and crime novelist Deaver plants the British Secret Service agent clearly in the 20^th Century all the while respecting Fleming’s source material, in the process creating an exciting page turner of a novel.

It’s hard for me, as someone who was introduced to Bond through the films, to entirely divorce filtering a 007 novel through that mental process.  It’s not difficult to imagine Daniel Craig, the current actor playing the role in the film series, going through the paces of Deaver’s plot, but it’s nice to see the author, while determined to write a modern novel, plant images that hark back to the Fleming novels.    All the requisite elements are here, but some are throwbacks to the Fleming era.  Thus, his “M,” the crusty superior to the occasionally unorthodox agent, is male and in the mold, again, as portrayed by Bernard Lee, who played the role ably in most of the Sean Connery and Roger Moore film adventures.   But there’s plenty of references to the original novels too that show Deaver did his homework – women with unlikely names, a state-of-the-art automobile, references to Bond’s schooling, his parents’s death, the colorful villain and henchman, and the able CIA sidekick Felix Leiter, Miss Moneypenny, Bill Tanner, and Mary Goodnight, all show Deaver is comfortable working within the Fleming universe without slavish references to it.

While Deaver pays the appropriate nods to continuity, he also moves Bond into the 21^st Century.  The “Bond girls” are tough and as mentally adept as 007; Bond, a veteran of the Afghan war, has given up smoking and drinks – but not to excess; Bond’s opponent, Severan Hydt, is a well-drawn villain, modern character – a recycling industry magnate – with a fascination for death and decay.   That character’s plot, not one of world domination, but one of more limited, but nefarious intent, is believable, crafty, and suitably wicked.   Bond uses his fists and his wits – with a helpful assist from a few, not at all over-the-top gadgets from the “Q” branch – to take on both Hydt and his ever efficient henchman, all the while considering a mystery involving his long dead parents.

The results are a globe hopping thrill ride, and one hopes, at the end of the book, while it’s not unlikely that James Bond will return, it’s certainly this reader’s desire to see Jeffrey Deaver plotting that next adventure.

- Michael

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

I’ve always enjoyed Lisa Scottoline’s books.  There’s nothing I like more than a return to Rosato & Associates to see what scrapes the spunky lady lawyers are trying to escape.  What I’ve realized in reading Scottoline’s stand alone, Save Me, is that what I like about her works are the characters.  I can suspend disbelief with some of the plots in her series because I genuinely enjoy the characters and feel like I know them.  The lack of character development in Rose McKenna made it a difficult and unbelievable book to get through.

Rose McKenna is helping out at her daughter’s school as the “lunch mom” when an explosion rocks the lunch room and she suddenly has to decide whether to try to save her daughter (who’s locked herself in the bathroom) or save a few of her daughter’s classmates (whose teasing is the reason the daughter, Melly, is in the bathroom).  Although she ends up helping the classmates to the hallway and THEN rescuing Melly, she gets vilified by the parents and media when one of the students ends up seriously injured and in a coma.  Make sense?

Oh, there’s much more.  How about a conspiracy to blow up the lunchroom?  An accidental death that occurred years ago?  A corrupt senator?  Lisa Scottoline throws so much at the reader that what starts out as an interesting moral dilemma swiftly turns into a hodgepodge of overused plots.  And really, all that I could’ve endured if I had even a shred of empathy for Rose.  But it was hard to root for her when she constantly second guessed herself and her decisions.  Instead of questioning if she made the right decision during the lunchroom explosion she should have been questioning why she’d leave her daughter, who’d just suffered a severe trauma, overnight in the hospital.  She goes from being “supermom” in the first half of the book to being “amateur sleuth” in the second – a complete stretch of the imagination – even for me.

~ Linette

You Know When The Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

Siobhan Fallon uses a series of linked stories to paint a picture of what families, both spouses and soldiers, endure during a deployment.  As an Army wife, these stories seemed all too familiar to me.  And in that respect, I enjoyed them very much.  The familiarity was rather comforting.  Having either gone through similar experiences or known someone who had, it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone. 

However, as much as I liked the stories for their engaging plots, my only complaint lies with the stories’ characters.  They were either stereotypical or exaggerated. From the “perfectly lipsticked” battalion commander’s wife to the paranoid, neurotic soldier who goes through some pretty extreme measures to check on his wife’s fidelity, none of them seemed fully developed. 

I can overlook that, though, and recommend this to Army spouses and civilians alike because from the first page, Fallon captures almost perfectly that sense of emptiness on a military post when a unit deploys and the men are gone:

“Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.”

And she had me there.  Life goes on during a deployment, if a little slower than usual.

~ Linette