Killers of the Flower Moon - The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Rating: 4 Stars

History books don’t cover all that we ought to know. So thank god for nonfiction literature and for investigative journalists like David Grann. In his stellar hit, Killers of the Flower Moon, he reconstructs an almost forgotten story of criminal conspiracy and racial injustice that should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the United States.

In 1921, an Osage woman is reported missing and is soon found dead. She isn’t the only one. Within the space of a couple of years, 24 people, mostly Osage, are murdered; some with brutal violence while others were suspected to have died of slow poisoning. Frustrated with their local law enforcement, the terrorized Native American community demands federal intervention. Enter the fledgling Bureau of Investigation, later known as the FBI. What is uncovered is a ruthless plot where the high and low of society are involved in the criminal exploitation of the Osage. If discovering the perpetrators was a Herculean endeavor, obtaining justice for the dead proves to be an even more challenging task.

KotFM is mesmerizing narrative nonfiction that has the pulse and pace of the best crime fiction. I would have liked a little more suspense, but the author telegraphs the key suspects from the onset. Perhaps that’s because this is historical and was widely reported in its day.

Grann covers the story from three main perspectives. One is of the FBI. Blasé as we have now become with the wonders of modern forensic science, this period recalls an age where crime scene investigation was still in its nascency. Adding to that, the wild, wild, west was a place that was fundamentally hostile to federal law enforcement. But the Osage Reign of Terror highlights the nation’s desperate need for agents of the law who were unswayed by local political interests.

This is also the case that brought J. Edgar Hoover to the limelight. While we certainly learn quite a bit about the man who became synonymous with the Agency he directed for several decades, it is an agent called Tom White who represents the human face of the Bureau in its investigation into the Osage murders. In a story of mind-boggling greed and malevolence, White’s integrity and decency shows that the flawed America of that day (and this day) is a multi-faceted place where good and evil exist side by side.

Ultimately, however, it is the story of the Osage that holds center-stage. A people who have been hounded and persecuted for centuries face yet another round of callousness and depraved indifference at the hands of their tormentors. Though the crime might have been solved, justice is not served; not really. When one group of people habitually preyed on another, and habitually faced little to no consequence, there can be no legal redress. We can only hope that somewhere along the way we are learning something from history, as our species wearily inches its way forward.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Rating: 4 Stars

2017 Booker Prize

When I first heard of this book it vaguely struck me as something unsavory, and I felt a stab of indignation on behalf of the 16^th President. Hadn’t the poor man done enough; hadn’t he suffered enough? I calmed down after realizing my brain-fumble – not Lincoln in the Bordello; it was ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’. Duh.

In Tibetan Buddhism, bardo is the intermediate stage between life and death. The author conceived the idea for this novel when he learned that President Lincoln had paid several visits to a crypt in Georgetown, to hold the body of his recently deceased son. The story revolves around the untimely demise of twelve year old Willy Lincoln and the transitional phase of the boy’s bewildered spirit – uncertain as to whether he should stay behind with his father or move on to whatever realm of being awaits him.

The book is a quirky amalgam of actual historical documents, ingenious creative elements, and, word-crafting. While some of his literary experiments seem a little labored, others work very successfully. The writer deals gently with the grieving president in anguish over the loss of his child. The Lincoln we see here is the Lincoln vindicated by history and immortalized in popular culture – a very human man under extraordinary circumstances, shouldering an immense burden to the best of his abilities.

Considering that the subject is both moving and macabre, there is a surprising amount of humor here. The levity comes from the host of wraiths who are malingering in the cemetery, believing that this denial of the obvious shows their strength of character. These shades are a boisterous, bawdy, and, talkative bunch. They have a lot to get off their chest, and they think they have many reasons to hang tough. Three in particular befriend the little Lincoln and try to help him migrate to the next plane of existence because the bardo is a dangerous place for the young ones.

“…to be a child and to love one’s life enough to desire to stay here is, in this place, a terrible sin, worthy of the most severe punishment.”

The reasons for this are never made clear. Actually, the author does not give much detail, depth, or, clarity to the Great Beyond. He shies away from anything approaching actual religion, spirituality, mysticism, or, the occult. That doesn’t affect the book negatively, because oddly enough this story is more about life than death.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D.Vance

Stars: 4 Stars

I did not grow up in the U.S.A. So, my first introduction to Hillbillies was through those lovable fictional transplants to California. I refer to the TV show – The Beverly Hillbillies. I never thought about hillbillies after that, till coming to America. Then it slowly began to sink in, that for whatever reason, hillbillies were not held in fond esteem by the rest of the country, and I couldn’t see why. One of the things about being an immigrant is that there are some cultural nuances that we just won’t get. For example, when it is generally agreed that stereotyping is harmful, why then is it not considered offensive to label some poor people as ‘white trash’. I have heard that term casually tossed around in pop-culture, while another word is delicately expressed as the ‘n-word’. There seems to be a double standard there that I don’t understand.

In his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance explores the complexity of his family roots; and in the process, gives us an insider’s scoop into the hillbilly culture – the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of it.

“Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology, and community and culture and faith.”

Though Vance proudly identifies as a hillbilly, in his case, it is more an identity of culture and ethos. His hillbilly grandparents had eloped as teenagers from the hills of eastern Kentucky to start their life together in a suburb of Ohio. His beloved grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, briefly enjoyed their share of the American dream, reaping the windfall of the industrial boom of the Fifties. However, they and their kin also exemplify self-destructive behaviors and attitudes that blight their chances of happiness and prosperity. As we see in Vance’s book, some of his family grow in awareness; and make conscious decisions to exercise better judgment, make better choices; simply, to live better. Because they’ve seen first-hand the alternative to that – living as their own worst enemy; no outsider can do to them what they do to themselves.

Despite his interest in sociology and his research, Vance does not write like an academic. I say that as a point in his favor. The statistics he cites, and the writers he references serve to anchor his personal narrative more securely. Because ultimately, it is his story that held my interest – the family lore; the grandparents who try to amend the mistakes of their youth by being the rock of their grandchildren’s life; the poignancy of a childhood held hostage by an unstable parent; and most importantly, the resolution that neither the odds stacked against him nor any possible inherited genetic traits would doom his destiny. I found that self-assertive optimism made this a remarkably ‘American’ book in every sense.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Rating: 4 Stars

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” – Sal Paradise from ‘On the Road’

And yet Kerouac decided to go ahead anyway and write an entire novel regurgitating that state of mind.

If one has never tried recreational drugs, it’s not particularly pleasant being sucked into someone else’s psychedelic ravings. But hey, once there, why not make the most of the vicarious experience?

This work is considered the definitive work of the Beat Generation, and Jack Kerouac, its spokesman. In historical perspective, the counterculture movement that was the Beat Generation may scarcely register a blip on the radar. But no matter; this droll dubbing of each and every generation seems to be a particularly American trait, one that seeps and permeates its literature. Hence we have the ‘Lost Generation’, ‘the Beats’, ‘the Hippies’, ‘the Yuppies’; all the way up to ‘the Millennials’ - as if labeling a thing enables us to understand it any better.

In Kerouac’s estimate, the Beats were those who were tired of the superficialities of life. In a fairly obvious metaphor, the road is life. Life is to be experienced on a deeper level – “our one and noble function of the time, move.”

And move is what they do. The book traces the restless, fevered traversing of the United States by the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend, Dean Moriarty, between the years 1947 and 1950. Paradise is a stand-in for Kerouac and Dean Moriarty refers to his fellow Beatnik, Neal Cassady. Many of the multitudes of eccentric characters who make an appearance in this novel refer to Kerouac’s real-life acquaintances.

Paradise, who lives in New York with his aunt, meets Dean Moriarty a charismatic ex-con who initially latches onto Paradise for food and boarding; and over a period of two years the two, together, and sometimes with the company of others, crisscross the United States in a haze of motion, till Paradise finally wakes up to the sting of Moriarty’s exploitative nature.

The narrative has a staccato rhythm that effectively captures the manic pace of the Beat existence. The life Kerouac describes is one of fast cars, fast women, hot jazz and easy drugs. He does not waste too many words delving into character and motive. On the surface, there seems to be very little introspection. Yet the characters are strikingly outlined – Moriarty, erratic and incoherent even at the beginning of the novel, grows increasingly unstable towards the end; hurt, resentful women nevertheless make themselves easily available to men who have scant respect for them; men who aspire to beatific understanding mainly seem to spout meaningless drivel, all the more meaningless because more often than not, they are stoned out of their minds and all their elevated talk is in direct contrast to their treatment of others – in their careless mishandling of others’ property and feelings.

The Sal Paradise we see at the novel’s end is perhaps no less wearied of Beat existential philosophy; but he has grown disillusioned with Dean Moriarty.

To readers who may have never fallen under the spell of Moriarty, Paradise’s disenchantment may seem long overdue. There is no single path to achieving Grace. But it seems counter intuitive to believe that a life of common sense, common decency, and kindness to one another, is in any way less than the rapturous epiphanies of a febrile, drug-fueled mysticism.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

2012 National Book Award Winner

Erdrich’s powerful coming of age novel is set on a Native American reservation in North Dakota. The narrator, Joe Coutts, tells the reader of his thirteenth summer when his mother is brutally attacked and nearly killed. Joe watches as his hitherto safe family life disintegrates before his eyes when she slips away into a depression that seems irrevocable.

There are striking parallels between ‘The Round House’ and that all-time American classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. The book however has been infused with the author’s own themes.  Chief among them is Joe’s shattered innocence. Erdrich’s account of the complex emotional lives of teenaged boys is compelling…and unsettling. Joe and his three friends, Cappy, Angus, and Zack - free of over-protective parents - smoke, drink, and engage in behavior that spans the spectrum from thoughtless to bone-chillingly dangerous. Yet they are a likable bunch of kids - fiercely loyal to one another, funny, protective of the ones they care about, angry at a world that is toothless in the face of evil, and genuine in their love or lust. They do not so much grow up, as have their childhood wrenched away from them in a series of excruciating incidents.

More tender is the intimate picture of family life drawn with intuitive sensitivity. Having grown up the center his parents’ lives, Joe is left bereft and confused when his mother retreats from her husband and son, seemingly beyond reach in her isolation. Joe’s father carefully tries to rebuild their broken world while trying to elicit the truth of the attack from her.

Erdrich opens a window into a world where blood quantum is used to determine a person’s status as Indian, where people are both in the mainstream as well as immersed in their heritage, and the old wounds of racial injustice and exploitation still strike a raw nerve. It’s interesting that the author, who is herself, like her characters, Native American, does not use that term when speaking of her people. The preferred word is Indian, and her descriptions of life on the Reservation evoke a culture that is American, minus the stereotypes.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rating: 3 Stars

Early in ‘The Great Gatsby’, the narrator, Nick Carraway, hints that we should reserve judgment. That’s a good thing to remember while reading about the people who populate this story, “…people [who] played polo and were rich together.”

Carraway, who comes from a privileged background, meets his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, when he moves to New York. Buchanan is a man of animal physicality, who for a change of pace is trying on ill-founded intellectual opinions for size. Daisy is an apparently fragile woman of extreme affectations, whose appeal is rather baffling. Nevertheless, Nick finds her charming; and her rich neighbor, Jay Gatsby is completely under her spell.

‘The Great Gatsby’, published in 1925, is considered a twentieth-century American masterpiece. It coud be argued that the importance of the book is due less to its literary merit, and more to how effectively it captures the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age. It's a chronicle of an era when the Prohibition made millionaires out of bootleggers, the cinema ushered in a new age of glamor, and America shrugged aside its Puritanical history to openly experience the giddy rush of sexual license.

Despite the book's succinct social observations, it merely depicts behavior without sounding the complexities of human nature. This lack of depth is disappointing.  The portrayal of the fornications of the idle rich may be fodder for a society gossip magazine, but shorn of psychological context, it hardly makes a gripping subject for a novel.



Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan



Rating: 3 Stars

‘Pulphead’, the second book from John Jeremiah Sullivan, is a collection of essays that range from philosophical musings to whimsical vignettes of Americana.

Sullivan has been a contributing writer to many major American magazines, and I’m guessing his beat was the music scene, since nearly half the essays have to do with music in one form or another – Christian Rock, MTV reality shows, or bios of well-known artistes. When talking about music, he invests his subjects with both passion and erudition. His article on Bunny Livingstone stoked my curiosity and led me on a virtual scavenger hunt for those names and events in history that have hitherto left my interest untouched. In his bio on the late Michael Jackson, he explores both his phenomenal talent and the troubling rumors of his later life. Personally, that piece confirmed what I’ve long secretly suspected – M.J. was a god of music.

In his essays on the chaos following Hurricane Katrina, or the tea-party movement, he combines clear-eyed observations with a wry humor. I was especially entertained by an enlightening glimpse into Benjamin Franklin’s views on universal health care. The only piece that struck an odd note was the catchily titled ‘Violence of the Lambs’, which is a little too amusing to be taken seriously. He stops a tad short of predicting a ‘planet of the apes’ situation as a possible future scenario.

With his eclectic choice of themes, Sullivan throws light on many obscure topics, and renders them fascinating to the extent that one wonders how they could have been obscure for so long.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach



Rating: 3 Stars

fielding: (in cricket/baseball) – to catch or pick up the ball in play

I’m very unfamiliar with the world of sports, and am generally bemused by anything to do with it. It brings many questions to my mind – about the fervor of fans who proclaim their loyalty by plonking cheese-like wedges on their heads and donning body-paint; about the intriguing nexus between sports and beer ads; about big, strong athletes who rough up women; about rich football players who opt to make even more money with dog-fights; about coaches who turn a blind eye when children are being egregiously harmed before them; and, most recently, about the college students who riot like berserkers on campus objecting to the firing of said coaches. It’s at those times that I realize no matter how whole-heartedly I embrace this country, in some ways, I’ll always be a stranger in a strange(r) land.

However, there are many others who enthusiastically follow sports around the year, and not just when the latest scandal explodes across the headlines. Chad Harbach’s novel, ‘The Art of Fielding’ is set in a fictional Wisconsin, liberal-arts college – Westish. The Westish baseball team, the Harpooners, receives a shot in the arm with the enrollment of Henry Skrimshander, a phenomenally gifted shortstop, who seems to field with unerring instinct. Skrimshander is discovered by Mike Schwartz, the Captain of the Harpooners. Schwartz abilities lie in honing raw talent, and Skrimshander obediently submits himself to his friend’s mentoring.

Henry’s prospects of turning pro seem like a sure thing, but in his junior year, he makes a jarring error on the field which erodes his confidence, and seemingly, unravels his very sense of self.

Harbach’s writing is fresh, and will appeal to readers inclined towards either literature or athletics. One of the book’s little idiosyncrasies is the frequent allusion to a fictional work, called ‘The Art of Fielding’ by a fictional baseball player, Aparicio Rodriguez, which is replete with Zen-like aphorisms that Henry commits to memory. Whether readers will be similarly inspired or merely irritated by the ersatz profundity is arguable.

Though the book is well-written and intelligently crafted, certain parts of it did come off sounding like an assignment from a creative writing class. The characterization is a little uneven – some like Mike Schwartz and Henry’s room-mate, Owen Dunne, are penned with an unhesitant hand. In other instances, the author fails to be wholly convincing. When one of the main characters finds himself, for the first time in his life, in the grips of a surprising passion, a sceptical critic might call it implausible, unlikely, or inexplicable. But I’ll try to absorb the relationship in the spirit of the romantic that I’m not, and confess that in its tenderness, eroticism, and yearning, it seems to be the genuine article.

However, it did leave me with one final question – is it possible to go through life being unaware of certain vital truths about oneself? Or to put it another way, how likely is it that a player would go through nine innings before he realizes that he’s been batting for the wrong team? That would be a sad waste of play time.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua



Rating: 3 Stars

There’s a funny story about the Asian Family’s grading system:

A – average

B – bad

C – crap

D – Don’t bother coming home

At this point, no doubt I’ve ruffled some feathers. Let me explain. This ‘joke’ was told to my sons with great relish and complete seriousness by their Chinese American class-mates.

In her book, ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’, Amy Chua, American-born offspring of Chinese immigrants, Yale Law school professor, and the mother of two daughters elaborates on the principles of Chinese parenting that frequently results in high-achieving child prodigies. Chua does have some first-hand insights into the situation. Her daughters, Sophia and Lulu (Louisa), are both academically bright and musically gifted – in piano and violin respectively.

There is aptitude, and then there is inborn talent. Even among the talented, there are degrees of innate ability. Those of you who have read ‘Outliers’ will be familiar with one theory as to why some succeed, while others fail to reach their full potential. Those of you who have not read that book will probably have less sympathy for Chua, and her style of extreme parenting. There will likely be many tsks of disapproval at some of her Gestapo techniques, if not shocked outrage. Is Chua’s child-rearing brutal, myopic and regressive, or is it dedicated, single-minded and selfless? I will reserve my opinion on the matter and leave you to form yours. But one has to admit, it takes a brave/thick-skinned mother who will lay bare her parenting methodology to the cynosure of the world.

As can be expected, the book has generated a lot of talk, with Chua being excoriated by some and applauded by others. I would say that she was courting controversy with the subtext to the title which includes the phrase ‘why Chinese parents are better at raising kids’. For those predisposed to dislike her views, the author offers herself as a walking target, not only in the unrepentant tongue-lashings and psychological abuse she heaps on her children, but in her many pungent opinions: denouncing astrology in one sentence but then proudly identifying herself and her daughters with the Chinese zodiac for the full run of the book; her scathing indictment of some white men’s overwhelming preference for Asian women, while importantly adding that her good self was the one and only Chinese woman her white Jewish husband ever dated. You could be offended, or you could choose to be amused by the unintentional humor.

Personally, I found this a highly engaging book, but not one to be taken too seriously. Its interest to the reading public lies not in any parenting solutions that she offers, but in the many legitimate questions that are brought up about what it takes to raise a successful, happy child. Chua’s signal error is in identifying certain core virtues, such as hard work, respect, commitment as ‘Chinese’; then imposing them mercilessly on her daughters. My quibble would be that while she assails her children with these notions, she herself fails to follow certain other virtues that are also traditionally ‘eastern’ – wisdom, patience and restraint.

There’s a vapid generalization about tiger mothers vs. mother bears. While there’s a part of me that would like to chime in and say that it takes a human being to raise another human being, honesty compels me to admit that on several issues, I’m on the side of the tiger; albeit its mild side, not its wild side.

Related Reading:

‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell; Nonfiction

This is my favorite of all Gladwell’s books. Here, he expands the equation between success and hard work more persuasively and less offensively than Chua.

‘My Father’s Paradise’ by Ariel Sabar; Nonfiction

This book appealed to me with its sweet spirit and warm humor. That, and the fact that, despite geographical boundaries, and the differences in language and religion, the values of immigrants from the old world are astonishingly similar.

My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

There is a point of origin for all immigrant stories; it could be language, culture, or faith. It doesn’t really matter which. Anyone could serve as a lynchpin for the others. Ask immigrant families why they drag their children willy-nilly to classes in their native language, arts, and religion. The answer in a nutshell would be: it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we don’t forget who we are.

In Ariel Sabar’s memoir, ‘My Father’s Paradise’, the author’s father, Yona Sabar is an immigrant twice over. At the age of twelve, he left his native village of Zakho in Kurdish Iraq for the newly founded state of Israel. It was to prove a mass exodus for the entire Jewish community of Zakho, with disillusionment following in its wake.

To Yona and his family, the Land of Israel doesn’t quite deliver on its Promise. The Kurds were by and large of unsophisticated peasant stock, and find themselves disparaged and sidelined in their new homeland, where the affluent and well-educated Ashkenazi Jews predominate. Yona finds deliverance where he least expects it; in the study and research of Aramaic, the ancient Semitic language that features in parts of the Bible, and is reputed to be the mother tongue of Christ. Today, there are estimated to be about 500,000 speakers of Aramaic, including the Kurds of Zakho.

Yona leaves Israel to pursue his doctorate in the United States. His scholarship and humility earn him the esteem and affection of colleagues and students alike; but this quiet man seems to be eternally longing for the simple village he left behind. He feels at home neither in the social hierarchy of Israel, nor the spiritual wasteland of America. The author, as an adolescent found himself growing increasingly estranged from a father who seemed an embarrassing oddity. It is only on reaching adulthood, and in looking into the eyes of his infant son, that he sees staring back at him the potential perils of turning one’s back on the past.

Aramaic has a strong oral tradition, one that was kept alive by its village story-tellers. Sabar stays true to those Kurdish credentials. One of the arresting features of this book is its intensity. The other is the warm humor. The narrative draws us in early and doesn’t ease its hold. The author travelled widely to research his story, interviewing witnesses and scouring family archives. He candidly admits to reimagining certain scenes where no reliable first hand testimony was available.

Zakho in present-day Iraq is very different from the one of Yona’s childhood. Though under American aegis it is re-emerging as a Kurdish stronghold, the Jews have gone, remaining only in the memories of those old enough to remember. Those who remember, mourn their loss. For well over two millennia, the Jews of Zakho  had lived in brotherhood with their other Kurdish neighbors – Muslims and Christians alike, unmolested by the waves of inquisitions, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing that decimated the Jewish population in Europe. True civilization, apparently, can be found in the most surprising places.

Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

Rating: 3 Stars

In some ways, Chabon’s essays are the antithesis of the qualities lauded in Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated poem on manhood – ‘If’. Man, not as a compendium of noble ideals, but rather as an occasional loser, screw-up, and jerk. It should probably be added that Chabon's mostly talking of himself rather than anyone else.

At his best, as in ‘Getting Out’, his writing is lucid, sensitive and subtle. In others, he simply misses the mark, rambling aimlessly, taking the reader on a trip that has us whining, ‘Are we there yet?’ One or two come off as rants, as in ‘The Splendors of Crap’. Sure, the entertainment peddled to our kids is often inane, treacly, or deplorable. But here’s the thing - the kids lap up this sludge. If parents want to influence their children's tastes, that’s best achieved by getting involved and staying actively engaged in their recreational pursuits.

Chabon also riffs with varying degrees of persuasion on other time-honored ‘manly’ isues – carpentry involving power tools, brotherly bonds, baseball, comics, and science fiction T.V. shows. There are a couple where he self-consciously sets himself apart from the rest of his tribe, as in his stated indifference to public opinion when it comes to carrying a 'man-purse', his protest at gender-assigned colors, and his pride in his cooking abilities. Here again, America is a step behind the rest of the world. As I see it, men the world over do not feel their masculinity challenged merely by wearing pink or violet, having a handy tote, or at feeling at home in the kitchen.

Having weathered a difficult and fractured childhood, Chabon seems to bear commendably little hostility towards his own parents. He doesn’t seem to hold it against them that they divorced; split siblings apart; either faded away from his life; or, busied themselves in pursuing the lifestyles of the Groovy 60’s and Swinging 70’s.

Books are meant to be critiqued; courtesy and self-doubt should restrain us from doing the same to the parenting techniques of other adults. Except of course, in those cases, where said parents hang placards with concentric red circles around their necks and invite us to try our marksmanship, as in perhaps, writing a book about their child-management. One interesting example was the conversation that Chabon has with his four children, ranging in ages from 13 to 4, about drug use. He seems to have spent more time agonizing over the decision to circumcise his sons. 

Having chosen earlier with his wife to be completely honest and transparent about their own pharmaceutical experiments, he then proceeds to inform the kids about the enticements of getting high on marijuana, and concludes by informing them that that’s not something they’re ‘ready to do.’ How much honesty can children handle? Are their needs served better by a full confessional, or do we hold back on the whole troubling truth, respecting their innocence and (sometimes wholly unfounded) trust in the better judgment of their parents? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

It seems that whenever Jonathan Franzen publishes a book, there is a host of literati on stand-by as a hallelujah chorus, ready to burst forth into rhapsodic reviews. Well, since this was the first book of his that I was reading, I was quite curious. Having read it, I would say that ‘Freedom’ has all the potential for a great American satire; if only the tone had been more ironic and less self-serious.

The author has a fine elliptical style, nice dead-pan humor, and a method of characterization that peels away layer after layer of personality. When we see Patty Berglund for the first time, it is through the eyes of her neighbors – the Very Nice Woman who suddenly became the local wack-job. Later on, we see Patty from the inside out, and realize that her melt-down was far from sudden; it was a long time coming.

A word to the wise – if you opt to write a story investing your literary ability mainly in the delineation of character, it behooves the said characters to be, at the very least, interesting. Roughly a quarter of the book is devoted to the painstaking deconstruction of Patty Berglund’s child-woman neuroses. At the end of this process, we’re forced to concur with her poor estimation of herself. There are parts of this novel that have all the somnolent charms of a NPR reading. We can be forgiven if our interest lags.

The conservation of the cerulean warbler, an American songbird, forms a minor sub-plot, in as much as it gives us an insight into the preoccupations of Walter Berglund, Patty’s decent, long-suffering husband. The bonus for the author, probably, is that he gets to riff on the on the impending ecological disaster looming over our planet. Though I have no quibble with his views, I don’t read fiction to receive a harangue.

Others in the Berglund household include their daughter Jessica, quite exasperated and embarrassed by her family. There’s their son, Joey, who despite his shaky judgment still, rather amazingly, manages to keep his life afloat. In disturbingly close orbit to Joey is his girl-friend, Connie, whose single-minded and self-effacing devotion to him would be touching in a golden retriever, but is creepily off-putting in a woman.

The Berglunds seem to have it all – born in a wonderful land of liberty, having a shot at a decent education, opportunities to pursue careers of their choice, comfortable homes in leafy suburbs, and, a family that’s flawed without being too dreadful. Well then, faced with all this bounty, what could be more natural and understandable than that they should go into a tailspin of depression and bad behavior, and come perilously close to self-immolation, before they can earn a hard-won redemption?

Please pardon my lack of indulgence for the self-pitying narcissism that’s such a peculiarly American trait. I’m still recovering from reading Peter Godwin’s horrendous account of life in Zimbabwe where true freedom remains a distant dream. Whereas in the world of the Berglunds, ‘Freedom’ seems to refer to one’s inalienable right to 'f… up one’s life'.

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

2010 National Book Award Winner

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Jaimy Gordon’s book. The racing world has never piqued my interest. But reading ‘Lord of Misrule’ is like biting into some rare, exotic fruit – a lush, sensual experience that leaves you craving more.

The story is set in Indian Mound Downs near Wheeling, West Virginia, and covers four races over the span of a year. The races at Indian Mounds are claiming races where any horse can be bought at a predetermined price. As much a part of the cast as the human characters, are the whimsically named horses – the Mahdi, Pelter, Little Spinoza, Lord of Misrule. More than anything, they exemplify the valor and tragedy of ‘the Sport of Kings’. The horses in these races are not thoroughbred stars; they are aging, injured beasts that still, somehow, summon the moxie to give a run for their money.

Pinning their desperate hopes on them are a motley assortment of hustlers and dreamers – Tommy Hansel who believes that his horse is going to be the one to beat all odds; Maggie Koderer, seduced by the glib Tommy has fallen into a life she knows nothing about; Medicine Ed, the elderly trainer, who is looking for the windfall that will purchase him a home; Two-Tie, the race financier whose family values might well be the ruin of him; and Joe Dale Bigg, a race track Mafiosi. With characters named Two-Tie, Biggy and Gyp, you know you ain’t in suburbia anymore.

Ultimately though, this book beguiles with its startlingly original language that in one fell, gorgeous swoop transports us into the seedy, raunchy, sinister glamor of the horse-racing world. The picturesque language catches the rhythms of each character’s personality. We see them from the inside out, each in their own fragile little world of improbable chimeras. Gordon has managed to evoke a world so potent that it lingers in the memory long after the last page has been turned.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

It seems like there’s not a lot of good news coming out of Africa recently. It’s normal to get fatigued when then there’s nothing but a spate of misery gushing from the second largest continent in the world;  normal to shrug hopelessly about conditions that we cannot change; normal to turn our attention to more pressing concerns where we can make a difference. Is it ever normal to stop caring? That’s neither normal nor possible when we read Tracy Kidder’s, ‘Strength in What Remains’.

This is both a book about a man, Deogratias, and his country, Burundi.  Burundi is a tiny country just south of the equator, lying adjacent to Rwanda. Of course, most of us have heard of Rwanda, but the recent history of the two countries has been inextricably connected. Both countries have a mixed population of Hutu and Tutsi people, whose ethnic identities are so convoluted and obscure that they defy simple explanation. In Burundi, the minority Tutsi held the reins of power; in Rwanda it was the Hutu. In 1993, after Burundi’s newly elected Hutu President, Ndadaye, was assassinated, the country erupted into Civil War. Six months later, Rwanda started a government- sponsored genocide.

In 1994, Deogratias, who is identified here only by his first name, landed in New York, from Bujumbura in Burundi. Till very recently, he had been a top-ranking medical student, who dreamed of one day building a clinic for the people of his rural settlement – Butanza. That was before the Civil War sent him into a spiral of terror, when he spent months on the run, avoiding all human contact. To see other people meant probable death, or images of impossible, inhuman cruelty.

Deogratias spoke no English, only French and his native Kirundi; and had a meager amount of dollars when he landed in New York. This intelligent and idealistic young man was soon reduced to minimum wage, and virtual homelessness. Yet about twelve years later, not only was he again enrolled in medical school, he was an ardent volunteer for Partners in Health, an international organization committed to better health in the developing world, and in the process of continuing his interrupted dream for his people. His short term goal was to build a medical clinic in Kigutu, and for the long term - improved public health for the whole country.

“health in his country was dreadful…an average life expectancy of thirty-nine years; one in five deaths caused by waterborne diseases or lack of sanitation; severe malnutrition for 54 percent of children under five; for women, one-in-nine lifetime risk of dying during childbirth; and fewer than three hundred doctors to serve a population of about seven million. And most of these doctors practiced in the capital…”

Deo survived the holocaust that overtook his country; he survived under the grimmest conditions in Harlem, which appears no less a Third World than much of Africa; he resumed his dream of medical school. Yet none of this is extraordinary in itself. Survival and success are both mysterious gifts of an inscrutable Providence. What is remarkable is what he is doing with those gifts. 

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

'Sakhi' Book Club Feb. 2011 Pick

Toibin’s ‘Brooklyn’ was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and earned rave reviews for the author. It tells the story of Eilis Lacey, who leaves her native Enniscorthy in Ireland to do what so many others do – gamble on the chance of finding brighter prospects in America. But even as she finds success and happiness in her new country, the call of home is too powerful for Eilis to resist.  

There is no literary fanfare to the story-telling; instead there is a quietness that allows the narrative to unfold at its own pace. This is in step with Eilis’ own nature, which is deeply serious, introverted and thoughtful. The relationships between Eilis, and her family and friends, are depicted with a fine delicacy, and the author lets the subtle undercurrents reveal themselves over the course of the story.

Many stories seem to reach out from the pages, and pull you into their vortex. This was not one that engulfed me in a similar way. A polite and proper distance was always maintained, but that is not a demerit in itself. Some books are meant to be ravenously devoured, some others to be more decorously appreciated. ‘Brooklyn’ belongs to the latter variety.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

            For better or worse, certain things have come to define America – its foreign policy, Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Hollywood Movies, and of course, Music. Few things are more quintessentially American than Elvis, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Blues, Rap…the list goes on.

            Most of the main characters in Jennifer Egan’s captivating novel have connections to the music industry. The other thing they have in common is connection to one another. The world depicted in ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ is a small one, despite occasionally zigzagging across different continents, and careening boldly over diverse time-periods of the protagonists’ lives. Chance encounters and random characters traipse through the story, creating ripple effects where one person is separated from another only by a few degrees of difference.

            The two main connecting links are introduced early in the novel. There’s a friable quality to the troubled Sasha who leaves an indelible imprint at the first meeting. She has worked for twelve years for Bennie Salazar, ex punk-rocker and more recently, record executive for ‘Sow’s Ear Records’. Unlike the intriguing Sasha, Bennie makes a far less favorable impression. He is wallowing in a warm bath of shameful memories and private humiliations, and the unsuspecting reader is deluged by wave after wave of squirm-inducing recollections. Sasha and Bennie, each in their own way, are seeking deliverance, mostly from themselves. On them, as on everyone else in this novel, Time works its mysterious, ineluctable alchemy.

            Egan’s nimble, innovative story-telling effortlessly spears our attention from the get-go. Her vivid vignettes anchor the ensemble of characters, so that each feels like a crucial piece of a jigsaw puzzle, rather than a mere cameo appearance. As their individual lives converge, diverge, and overlap onto each other’s, together, they form a richly colorful montage of different experiences and perspectives.

Into the Wild

 

‘Sakhi’ Book Club Jan. 2011 Pick

            Jon Krakauer’s books reveal his interest in people who live on the edge, pushing their frail physical resources to the extreme. “Into the Wild” is no exception. Krakauer candidly admits his fascination with the life and death of Christopher Johnson McCandless.

            McCandless is an absorbing subject. Coming from a privileged background, and apparently gifted in many areas, he tosses it all aside after graduating from college to embark on the life of a vagabond, calling himself ‘Alex Supertramp’. When his anguished family hears about him again two years later, it is only to learn of his death from starvation in the wilderness of Alaska. This was a tragically ironic end to an idealistic young man. Before abandoning the life he knew, McCandless had magnanimously donated the remaining $24,000 in his college fund to OXFAM, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger.

            The media exhaustively covered McCandless’s story. Jon Krakauer himself wrote about it for ‘Outside’ magazine. The feedback on that article was mostly excoriating, especially from native Alaskans, who deplored this attention given to a misguided, probably even mentally disturbed young man.

            Krakauer’s journalistic instinct, however suggested that there was more to this story than met the eye. His meticulous research turns up evidence of a multi-faceted youth, who though eccentric, was certainly sane. Alex/Chris defies easy pigeonholing; he was a charismatic loner who easily made a favorable impression on people he met. Apparently living a hippie life, he nevertheless adhered to the highest ethical values – personal dignity, no drugs, no rock and roll, no sex. What was his attraction to the wilderness? Was it the possibility of living a life unencumbered by society’s rules and expectations; was it part of an intense quest for spiritual fulfillment; or was it just a pie-in-the-sky delusion of an ill-prepared boy who thought he could take on the desolate wastes of Alaska?

            Jon Krakauer brings his usual intensity and thoroughness to this book as he does elsewhere. As to how Alex/Chris met his death, the author’s reasoning is quite convincing. He suggests many possibilities for McCandless's vanishing act into the Wild. However, by the end of the book Christopher Johnson McCandless is as intriguingly enigmatic as he was at the beginning, perhaps even more so.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

 

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

  HOG Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them…

“Chicago” by Carl Sandburg

Those who have ever wondered how Chicago acquired that particular sobriquet – Hog Butcher – have the answer etched into their memory in Erik Larson’s highly engaging history of Chicago’s Gilded Age.

As the Nineteenth Century drew to a close, America planned to commemorate the 400^th. Anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America with the ‘World’s Columbian Exposition’ that was to be held during the summer of 1893. At least in part, the motivation was to outdo France’s 1889’s ‘Exposition Universelle’ where Gustave Eiffel had unveiled his Eiffel Tower, and where the United States had embarrassed itself with a particularly poor showing.

But that humiliating memory was to be erased, and many U.S. cities were vying for the honor to host the event. New York, even then the cosmopolitan and artistic capital of America was thought to be the front-runner. But Chicago was a fierce competitor, and to the surprise of many, won the rights to stage the Columbian Exposition.

Erik Larson includes minute details about the mind-boggling logistics that went into the planning and construction of the fair, where Americans were wonder-struck and entertained by such new fangled inventions as electric boats, Instant Pancake Mix, ‘Juicy Fruit’ gum, zippers, America’s first large-scale experiment with night-time illumination, and, George Washington Gale Ferris’s triumph of engineering – the Ferris Wheel.

Many men lent their creative genius and energy to make the Exposition’s success a reality. It could accurately be described as a harnessing of opposing egos, and conflicting artistic visions. The man put in charge of this daunting project was Daniel Hudson Burnham. The Fair came at a fascinating point in Chicago’s history, not long after the Great Fire, but before the infamy earned by Al Capone, who did his share to sear Chicago into our collective conscious. The Columbian Fair, nicknamed “The White City” encapsulated the city Chicago yearned to become – clean, dazzling, every bit the equal of it’s snooty Eastern neighbor, New York.

That Chicago had its ugly side is personified by the presence of H.H. Holmes whose presence pervades the book, and whose crimes shocked a city that was hardened even then. Holmes was America’s first celebrity serial killer, who exerted a vampire-like allure to his victims, who are still unnumbered. The fair brought other tragedies in its wake – many accidental deaths, a deadly fire, and a political murder. At its heart, the book is a story about the contrasting forces that propel some to build and create, and others to ruin and destroy.

The book is rich in detail and anecdotes. Larson recreates Chicago in our imagination as a gas-light illumined city fighting its smog, poverty, and vice; striving to become the White City of its dreams.