Harper Collins

The Last Pretence

payal — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In the South Indian town of Machilipatnam, Mallika gives birth to twins, Tara and Siva. Emotionally and psychologically damaged when her daughter dies during childbirth, Mallika finds herself unable to love Siva who is a constant reminder of Tara’s death. Pretending that Siva is Tara, both Mallika and Siva embark on a downward spiral of self-destruction that ends in tragedy. Sarayu Srivatsa’s The Last Pretence tells Mallika and Siva’s stories, their learning and unlearning of love and loss, and attempts to question, through stories of childhood, marriage, and motherhood, how identities and experiences of gender are shaped.

Its book jacket advertises The Last Pretence as a "novel that takes nothing for granted", and that "grapples with notions of love, gender and sexuality", a description that probably attracted readers who were intrigued by the idea that modern Indian-English writing was taking on gender stereotypes, particularly in the specific context of South India, where this theme has been relatively under-explored in contemporary Indian fiction. Alas, The Last Pretence falls far short of being revolutionary, both in craft and in plot.

Unimpressed by the writing, I asked myself if the author’s intentions had any merit. The principal character upon whom Srivatsa’s gender-play is enacted is Siva, who struggles with his gender identity because of his mother’s desperate inability to cope with her daughter’s death. But in what sense are we supposed to find Mallika’s behavior towards Siva troubling? Clearly, some combination of her delusion that her son is her daughter, but also that she sees her son as a girl, and that she treats him as such. Mallika’s ‘disturbing’ behavior includes dressing Siva up in girls' clothes; piercing his ears, and breast-feeding him for longer than necessary, which we are led to believe confuses his self-identity and his notions of what it would mean to be a girl (to be loved by his mother). Ultimately this leads him away from home, fuels his exploration of his own sexuality through his quick and sometimes brutal sexual encounters, and finally leads to his inability to negotiate his personal peace in Srivatsa’s fictionalized world.

In dabbling with issues of gender and sexuality Srivatsa appears like a young child with a stick—gently prodding some fascinating multi-legged creature under a rock. Curious, not intentionally cruel, but ultimately uncomprehending, she speaks as an outsider to the experiences of her characters, making them less believable and more allegorical in order to make broader didactic (but again, superficial) points about gender, culture and the nature of patriarchy.

Perhaps Srivatsa’s biggest failing is the superficiality with which she writes; for example, the historical context of Machilipatnam, a town "where the British first landed to trade in dyes" on the Coromandel coast of southern India – is more or less absent from the book, with limited interweaving of even its fictionalized history through the cursory mythology of George Gibbs and his incestuous relationship with his sister. It also includes a peek into the eunuch sub-culture in India (the stock shining symbols of gender subversion) where half-yawning, half horrified, the reader is dragged into a short (but seemingly necessary) scene of castration involving a sharp knife, hot oil and a grinding stone, cheaply highlighting the cruel repercussions of gender deviance in a straight world.

Marred by poor characterization, predictability, and unproductive diversions (inexplicable inter-religious riots seem to randomly pepper this slim novel) from an otherwise heavy-handed plot driven by unnecessary brutality and an unconvincing lack of detail, I found the long-listing of The Last Pretence for the Man Asian Literary prize undeserving. Lacking in originality and failing to deliver but the most prosaic of prose, The Last Pretence most damningly shrivels before a feminist gaze where it is slowly sucked into the quicksand of the hetero-normative aphorism that any deviations to established gender norms will be ruthlessly punished by society, and ultimately (spoiler alert!) cannot survive.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, February 4th 2011

Laughed 'Til He Died: A Death On Demand Mystery

barbara — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carolyn Hart

Harper Collins

I do like a good mystery, though I normally tend to go for either an author I know, a series I know, or a “world” I know. Since the author and locale of Laughed ‘Til He Died were both completely new to me, the fact that this book held my interest, and had me doing some late-night page-turning to see how it all turned out, speaks well for it.

A South Carolinian island is the location for this latest installment in the Death Walked In series. It’s a sleepy town where everyone knows everyone else. Unlike Cabot Cove, Jessica Fletcher’s TV domain, however, the mystery writer who pops up to help out now and again in this book has a minor role, playing fourth or fifth fiddle to a likable amateur crime-solving couple and the town police. In Laughed ‘Til He Died, the plot focuses on a community center, a philandering bigwig, and half a book’s worth of potential suspects. Characters were slow to stick in my head, and were introduced more quickly than I normally like, but by the end of the book they were well fleshed out and memorable, all of them making consistent, believable choices.

A couple of characters jumped in and out of the story a bit haphazardly for me, but I could tell they’d been established in previous books in the series, though Hart neatly avoids that tired old identical exposition chapter at the start of nearly every other book series.

Slightly jarring choice: there were titles of other mysteries name-dropped throughout the book. I know this series is set in a mystery bookshop, but I felt like... the only way I can describe it is that I felt like the author was evangelizing. It didn’t sit well with me, and I’m a devout Agatha Christie fan.

Otherwise, though, this is a well-crafted addition to the genre.

Written by: Chella Quint, October 10th 2010

Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:45:00 +0000

By Santosh Desai

Harper Collins

The great Indian middle class is that layer of society that no one bothered about until couple of decades ago. People in this layer did not fall into the category of "have nots," and hence did not attract any sympathy. At the same time they did not have the luxury of "haves," so it did not make any economic sense for the others to target them. They lived in their own world where they had enough for their basic needs, but nothing for their desires. Then came the famous economic reforms of early '90s, which changed the Indian middle class forever.

People in the upper echelons of Indian society probably always had everything, and for the people in the lower rung things have still not have changed much (except they probably have a mobile phone in the hand). But the middle class suddenly had more resources than they were used to. They could afford to buy houses at a much younger age, cars almost at the beginning of their work lives, and clothing without waiting for a wedding to happen in the family. Psychologically, for people who grew up in '70s and early '80s, the change was tremendous. While their growing up was in an era of scarcity, they landed in an era of abundance without really making a proportionate effort. They embraced the change, but also had to deal with their cultural roots that lie in another age. They also became the focus segment for many product and service offerings, which they were not used to, and had to learn to deal with this sudden attention.

In Mother Pious Lady, Santosh Desai makes sometimes nostalgic, random observations about the Indian middle class, about the things that we cherished while growing up that have either been lost or are on the verge of being lost, like postcards, a phone connection, or a black and white television set. He looks at the making of this class and their obsessive need for value often leading to the reuse of stuff for multiple purposes. He slowly looks at how we encountered change, and how the change has changed us. Desai talks about our identity evolving from being family-based to being profession-based, and from being local or regional to global. If you belong to Indian middle class, you will relate to everything the author talks about, like someone is narrating your very own dilemmas and situations. Desai covers personal life, family events, socioeconomic change, professional environment, and just about everything that touches our day-to-day lives.

Mother Pious Lady is a collection of small articles that Desai wrote for the Times of India. I have been an avid reader of his articles, and enjoy his simple insights that most people overlook. However, when it comes in a 380-page book, I expected a bit more depth. The articles become predictive, and as soon as you get thinking on a topic, its over. I would have expected more analysis of the observations he has gathered; while the topics have been categorized, they are too broad. At the very least there could have been a pre- or post-summarization of the topic categories and insights thereof.

One would probably enjoy this book more by not reading it cover-to-cover, but keeping it by your bedside table and randomly picking it up when you have a spare ten minutes.

Written by: Anuradha Goyal, August 13th 2010

Bitch is the New Black

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Helena Andrews

Harper Collins

I don’t believe bitch is the new Black any more than I believe that thirty is the new twenty. As our most recent racial shenanigans have reminded us, Black is still its same ol’ Black self. And anybody who engages in the same shamtastic behaviors at thirty as she did at twenty is just plain trifling. That said, I think y’all should check out Helena Andrews recently published memoir Bitch Is the New Black.

We know good and well that it ain’t easy out here on single Black women. And the Tyler Perryization of Black women’s lives has made it possible for the likes of Steve Harvey and every other jackleg Black relationship expert to capitalize on our story but us. Since Black women are always represented as loud, sassy, and inappropriate, our silence has been deafening. It’s high time that we get bell hooks with it, and start talking back. Helena Andrews has done that masterfully.

Hers is a delicious Black girl story, one that hits so many familiar notes that you are transported episodically to different moments of your own life to recall how you handled a similar situation—family conflicts between your mom, your grandmother and your aunties; your first cheating lover; a pregnancy scare; a ridiculously stressful and uninteresting first job; your first encounter with the domestic abuse of a loved one; your love affair with The Cosby Show. And yet, Helena Andrew’s story is also all her own—unique, self-contained, and filled with the kinds of idiosyncrasies that remind us we are not the same, no matter how many two-dimensional portraits of ourselves we encounter daily.

Here we learn what it is like to be a Black girl reared by a lesbian mother, in a family that associates same-sex love with pedophilia. We encounter a bohemian Black girlhood, one associated with movement, not because of poverty or military life, but because of her mother’s need for new surroundings. For the adult Helena, this translates to a life of literally walking the walk. She doesn’t drive and has no interest in learning, even after two muggings. And when she isn’t walking it out, homegirl Helena is talking it out, in classic Black woman fashion, with an endless string of refreshingly familiar girlfriends and colorful female characters.

The text is, of course, not without its hiccups. But then, neither is the path of a professional Black woman approaching thirty. There are moments when the transition from e-chat speak to text are choppy and disorienting. That’s a technical issue. There is, however, also the sense that while Andrews grew up with a lesbian mother, she wants us to be very clear that she’s as straight as they come, whatever that means. There are, thus, endless recourses to referring to the most mundane of things as being “so gay,” or as in a chapter called "Trannygate," referring to a transchick as “the she-man... name unnecessary.” Uh, not cool.

Andrews certainly didn’t need to get didactic with it, but her own childhood put her in a unique position to represent queer folk humanely and heterosexual dating in ways that might have avoided such strident heterosexism. That said, I know now in a very real way how much courage it takes to let others into your life—particularly among sisters who can sometimes be the worst critics among us—and so I refuse to be overly critical of this book. I don’t promise that you’ll like everything in it. You might even dislike the author, given her self-professed bitch tendencies. But what she has proved is that our stories matter—and if you don’t like hers, write your own.

This is a book for every Black woman who’s ever needed to read, hear, feel, breathe another sista’s story, a book for every girl who’s ever dealt with inappropriate sexual conversations from a mother who’s trying to be hip, an ex-dude with stalker tendencies, or a dead end relationship that kept you pinned down because the sex made your toes curl. And while Andrews has her admittedly bitch moments in this book, she does not shy away from admitting the vulnerability that informs those moments, or from brutal, gut-wrenching honesty in general, even when it means discussing the suicide of a close Black girlfriend in a culture where strongblackwomen just don’t do that.

When I heard about this book last Fall, its title caused me to approach it with the same skepticism with which I approach Tyler Perry movies. I didn’t need to have anyone else calling me a bitch just because I’m educated, especially not a sista. Unlike TP, however, this text does not disappoint. When you read Bitch Is the New Black, you will know that there’s another Black chick out there, who’s slogging through it, who’s working it out, perhaps very differently from you, but who ultimately gets it.

Written by: Crunk Feminist Collective, August 10th 2010

Bloodborn

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Kathryn Fox

Harper Collins

Bloodborn is captivating from start to finish, keeping me reading from cover to cover. Not only was the plot intriguing, Kathyrn Fox kept you wrapped in the victims lives as if you were really there. You felt her emotions with every word you read. Without a dull moment in the story, this book has the mystery and suspense that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Work driven, Dr. Anya Crichton has a lucrative career as a forensic pathologist. Specializing in sexual attacks, she is highly sought after to investigate the brutal sex crimes committed all over the country. However, one case has tugged at her hearts stings and leads to multiple cases in the whirlwind novel that keeps you guessing. Crichton struggles to maintain a relationship with her young son while determined to solve these crimes that all lead back to the elusive Harbourn family.

The Harbourn family leads a life of crime. From drug running to rape and torture, the Harbourn family seems to be above the law as each family members covers for another to provide alibis for vicious and brutal crimes. The Monarch of the family, Noelene, is believed to have stabbed her husband to death. However, each member of the Harbourn family had touched the murder weapon, making it impossible to prove which one really did it.

Crichton strives to get justice for two sisters, Rachel and Sophia. They were brutally raped, tortured, and left for dead. The crime was believed to have been carried out by the Harbourn brothers. Only the younger sister, Sophia, survived. After the death of a Prosecutor in the case against the Harbourn brothers, Anya believes her life is in danger. As expected the Harbourn’s are suspected in the brutal slaying of the Prosecutor, but are they really guilty?

Fox keeps you wrapped up in the devastating crimes that unfold within Bloodborn. Unable to see past the implied guilt of the Harbourn family, it is impossible to suspect anyone else in this captivating novel.

Written by: Ryanick Paige, December 14th 2009

A Duty to the Dead: A Bess Crawford Mystery

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Charles Todd

Harper Collins

It’s funny how everyone gets something different from a story. I like it best when a book is categorized in a genre that, after reading it, is slightly off from my own understanding. It makes it even more fun to read when my expectations are so astonishingly surpassed.

A Duty to the Dead starts off with a bang. Before the end of chapter one, a gigantic wartime hospital ship, the infamous Brittanic, is at the bottom of the sea. Many healers of the injured are themselves dead, pulled gruesomely into the screws of the behemoth as they frantically row to escape the pull of the massive propellers. Our heroine, Bess, does not fall victim and makes her escape, injured but alive, on another life boat.

I had to read that chapter twice because it was so grippingly described and captivating. I loved Bess before I’d finished it the first time and wanted to meet her for tea by the end of the second pass. After a beginning like that, I was leery of other characters, afraid they would not be nearly as wonderful, memorable, or real. Charles Todd, happily, did not disappoint.

The storyline is at odds with itself by being complicated, simple, and sweet: Army nurse meets and falls a little bit in love with a wonderful, but doomed, man. On his death bed, he begs her to take a message to his brother, to right a wrong that should have been settled a long time ago. She promises, but proceeds to hold off on her mission. It isn’t until her father reminds her of its importance while she recovers from her own injuries that she makes her travel plans. B

ess feels remorse that she could have perished at the hands of an enemy torpedo without fulfilling the promise she made. She travels to meet with the family of her patient, to share this important message with his brother. She has no idea of the secrets this family holds close to the vest.

There is mystery to her visit. A brother, long ago placed in a locked ward, guilty of murdering a nanny as a preteen in a fit of passion. He has spent his life in an institution, and his surviving brothers all work hard to ignore his very existence. Deaths, however, seem to occur in this small hamlet more frequently and more unusually than they should. They all seem to be accidents, until Bess starts to dig to the bottom of the secret she knows her patient held.

The mystery is soundly contrived, shocking, and brilliantly comes together in the end. Every person met along the way is a new entry into stellar character building. My only disappointing moment was the last sentence, slightly sticky in its sweetness—but, alas, forgivable. After all, some girls like that kind of stuff.

A Duty to the Dead will forever be in one of my top ten. I will cherish its addition to my sparse but well-loved library.

Written by: Rachel Petzold, December 10th 2009

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:56:00 +0000

By Rebecca Wells

Harper Collins

_"This world is made up of stories—every person's story, those that are hidden, and those that are outright and clear. This is the story of one named for a flower." _

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder is the story of a young girl's experience growing up in 1950s Louisiana. Rebecca Wells, author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, creates a powerful new heroine in Calla Lily Ponder. From an early age, Calla Lily realizes she has inherited her mother's unique gift of healing through beauty and she resolves to continue the tradition by opening her own hair salon. Calla Lily possesses the ability to transform a woman through her hair, or as her mother calls it her "crowning glory."

Throughout the course of her journey, Calla Lily copes with first love, her mother's battle with cancer, and life in New Orleans. Nurtured by her small town upbringing, Calla Lily faces every obstacle with fierce strength and unwielding determination. She culls her strength from various sources, most notably her beloved mother "M'Dear," the ethereal Moon Lady, and Louisiana herself. This strength not only drives Calla Lily towards accomplishing her goal but also carries her through periods of heartbreak and crippling grief.

Rebecca Wells allows the reader to travel to Louisiana through Calla Lily, and by the end of the novel, you feel you have shared an intimate conversation with each of her characters. Never having been to Louisiana myself, this book made me want to buy a plane ticket and escape to Calla Lily's magical community, La Luna. My only criticism of the novel is that the story line at times feels somewhat familiar and predictable. Regardless, The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder is a great summer read, and I hope Rebecca Wells brings us more from this impressive heroine and her circle of friends.

Written by: Samara Sousa, August 24th 2009

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:06:00 +0000

By William Lobdell

Harper Collins

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.- Frederick Nietzsche

William Lobdell was a twenty-something flake. He blew one marriage and was on his way to blowing a second when a friend dragged him to a gathering of evangelical Christians. Lobdell was born again, and he started attending Sunday services. His wife, a lapsed Catholic, appreciated his newfound Christianity and joined with him in a subsequent odyssey through various Christian denominations. Lobdell was a born again with one difference: he was a journalist. By perseverance and prayer Lobdell convinced his bosses at the Los Angeles Times to put him on the religion beat. For eight years he reported on matters of faith. He interviewed Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in Riverside, California and author of The Purpose Driven Life who spoke at Obama’s Presidential Inauguration. Lobdell was skeptical of Warren at first, but discovered him to be a plain guy who inspires other people—and is apparently never alone in a room with a woman unless she is his wife. Lobdell was as convinced of Warren as he was of the Lubavitchers, a Jewish sect that has been quite successful the last thirty years in motivating Jews to return to their religion.

Lobdell tried several Protestant congregations, but eventually decided Catholicism was the true Christianity. While a Christian, Lobdell prayed constantly. Once he prayed for $50,000, and how he got the money makes for an improbable—but true—anecdote. By and large, Lobdell was happy with his job and religion. When he was attending a year-long curriculum for Catholic converts, the news broke of the widespread molestation of children by priests and the attendant cover-up by church hierarchy. As the LA Times religious reporter, he covered the scandal. He saw in the church’s documents and at trials of priests the heinous criminal behaviour committed by supposed men of God. He faced the moral turpitude of the episcopacies sweeping the issue under the rug and—when this infamy wouldn’t disappear, but worsened—blaming the victims. He witnessed firsthand his soon-to-be fellow Catholics anger not at priests and the administration that had furthered the rape of children by transferring culpable priests from parish to parish, but at the victims who wouldn’t back down and demanded legal and financial redress for years of suffering.

The scandal shook Lobdell’s theodicy. He had allayed by means of the usual answer the contradiction of evil’s presence in a world that—according to faith—is closely supervised by a benevolent deity (i.e., we mere humans cannot possibly understand God’s plan). Now he saw evil close up, an evil perpetrated by men claiming to be God’s earthly representatives.

Lobdell dropped out of his Catholic convert program. Despite the ministration of Christian friends, he acknowledged to himself that bad things happen in the world, and there is no explaining this by appealing to a God with plans for us that we can never know. In short, Lobdell lost his faith and lost the idea of that God by which Christianity, Islam, and other faiths beguile, comfort, and frighten humans into religious belief.

There is something peculiarly, provincially American about Lobdell’s journey that speaks to the country’s obsession with religion, and its immaturity in spiritual matters. The question of a divine providence at work in human reality is a question much of Europe struggled with during the Enlightenment. The First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust seem prima facie confirmation for at the very least a divinity disinterested in acting directly in human affairs. That America has never torn itself apart in the sort of insane cataclysm that Europe did may be the reason why Americans still find religion to be a subject of such heated argument.

It is also of interest in the context of this book to consider alcoholism, Twelve-Step Programs, and the American obsession with religion. When Lobdell has doubts about God, he drinks. For Americans, it seems when they lose their religion they turn to booze. When alcohol ruins their lives, they turn to the Twelve Steps, which returns them to God. Lobdell never joins a Twelve-Step Program. When he loses his faith for good, he is comfortable with it and does not start drinking again. That itself is a worthy triumph and makes for a happy ending. Losing My Religion began life as a 3,800-word piece that Lobdell wrote for the Los Angeles Times. It was the last article he wrote as the newspaper’s religion writer. The article is concise while the book-length treatment contains many fleshed-out anecdotes, extra facts and stories, and lengthy portraits. The additional material is mostly helpful, but in sum Lobdell’s narrative seems a little padded because of it. The book version could profit from being more succinct by about twenty pages.

Special thanks to David Watson for his invaluable help in clarifying the meaning of Twelve-Step Programs in the American religious context.

Written by: Neil Flowers, August 11th 2009

My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

admin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:10:00 +0000

By Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Collins

My Sister, My Love is Joyce Carol Oates’ thirty-fifth novel in forty-five years. Ambitious and sweeping, the nearly 600-page tome explores a plethora of themes: the tabloid press’ obsession with celebrity; marital discord and fidelity; the pressure placed on children by achievement-worshipping parents; forgiving transgressions; the medicalization of normal human development; and the hypocrisy underlying Christian-inspired capitalism, among them.

The story is narrated by Skylar Rampike, a depressed nineteen-year-old whose six-year-old sister, Bliss, was brutally murdered ten years earlier. Bliss, a child-prodigy figure skater, was found in the family’s Fair Lawn, New Jersey home, hanging in the basement boiler room during the Christmas season of 1994. If it sounds familiar, it should. Like a Law and Order episode spun from a lurid news story, My Sister, My Love is a send up of JonBenet Ramsey and her family.

And what a family it is. Betsey is a hover mother of the highest order, hell-bent on making little Bliss a star. It starts serendipitously, when Bliss exhibits an uncanny dexterity that sends her mom into a what-if frenzy. First comes the name change; Bliss’ original name was Edna Louise, after her paternal grandmother, but she was re-christened "Bliss" after Betsey envisioned god instructing her to make the switch. This is followed by hormone injections into Bliss’ child-sized body, regular beauty makeovers to enhance the child’s appearance, and forced practice sessions, even when Bliss is in obvious pain from one or another injury.

While Betsey is over-involved and continually scheming for a place in the spotlight, the family patriarch is the opposite. Named Bix, he is an anti-Semitic womanizer, a politically conservative glad-hander who reveres money and status and is more than happy to keep his family at arm’s length. For his part, Skylar is everything his parents despise, a bookish, non-athletic kid with few friends.

It’s a recipe for trouble and the novel delivers it, in spades. Unfortunately, while there are moments in which the book is affecting, most of the time it falls flat. Among the problems is tone. At times, Skylar is extremely sympathetic—clearly grieving for his sister, tormented by survivor guilt, and filled with fury toward parents who push him out of sight because they are embarrassed by his anti-social mien. At other times, however, the narrator’s snarky voice is distracting. Oates may be trying to replicate the moods of a sullen teen, but like time in the company of a snotty boy-child, one wants to escape him rather than stay in his orbit. What’s more, the many tangents—including hundreds of footnotes meant to elucidate Skylar’s thought processes and intellectual pursuits for the reader—are annoying digressions that make the book longer and more detailed than it needs to be.

Oates is clearly making fun of upper class pretensions and the faux Christian piety and family values endemic to suburban Republicans. It’s a rich playing field, but sadly, My Sister, My Love_ reads like a bloated lecture delivered by a pompous windbag. It’s too bad because real life dramas can be wonderful jumping off points for imagined scenarios. What we get instead is as nauseating as the incessant coverage of celebrity shenanigans we’re continually fed, and we close My Sister, My Love_ feeling no more insight than we had when we picked up the novel for the very first time. It’s a huge disappointment from so gifted a scribe.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, July 26th 2009

Running from the Devil

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:37:00 +0000

By Jamie Freveletti

Harper Collins

Jamie Freveletti’s authorial debut, Running from the Devil, begins with the story of Emma Caldridge, a chemist and ultra-marathon runner who boards a plane for Bogota and ends up in a plane crash in the Colombian jungle. She is thrown from the wreckage during the crash, and thus spared from being taken hostage by a group of Colombian guerillas. What initially appears to be a fairly standard kidnapping-ransom situation soon reveals itself to be much more as the stories of the other passengers, the hostage takers, and the rescue teams come to light. Emma Caldridge finds herself in the middle of this terrifying and dangerous situation and, due to a recent research discovery that she has carried to Colombia with her, hidden in the form of a lipstick, she soon realizes she is the catalyst of the situation as well.

_Running from the Devil _is a very entertaining novel, and an impressive debut from this new author. She intertwines the storylines in a way that is easy to follow without losing any of the suspense that builds throughout the chapters during the transitions. The characters are fairly stereotypical and easily categorized as hero, heroine, or villain, but Freveletti does give the story’s primary heroine, Emma Caldridge, some unconventional qualities, such as her athletic prowess and her scientific knowledge. I found the attribution of good looks to the characters with the most cunning to be cliché, and the mentioning of Emma Caldridge’s “cat-shaped and vibrant green” eyes to be a bit excessive, but at the same time, the weapon hidden in the lipstick seems to suggest that strength and power can be found under the most seemingly superficial of appearances.

I would like to infer that the jungle in _Running from the Devil _is actually a metaphor for the working world, in today’s developed countries. In this setting, traditionally masculine traits, such as athleticism and a scientific mind can prove advantageous to women who excel in these areas, but at other times these are traits that make some men feel threatened. By the same token, some women embrace traits such as their sexuality and appearance in a way that helps them to be more successful and feel more empowered in the workplace. This allows women to use what is uniquely feminine about them—those qualities that set them apart from their male competition—to their advantage. But, as the lethal weapon hidden in a lipstick container in Freveletti’s novel shows us, sometimes a woman’s excessive focus on the superficial aspects of her person can pose the greatest threat.

Written by: Rebecca McBride, July 13th 2009

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:53:00 +0000

By Catherine Clinton

Harper Collins

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, is a fascinating account of this very complicated and very misunderstood woman. I knew little about Mary Todd prior to reading this book and what I did know was mostly based on my own mythical ideas about Honest Abe and his wife Mary. Catherine Clinton’s work had me shaking my head many times; it was quite astonishing to see what this woman endured as the wife of the man who was probably our most beloved president.

The book opens dramatically with Abraham Lincoln lying on his deathbed, while close by, his wife sobs uncontrollably. She is eventually taken from the room, never to be summoned again before Lincoln passes away. And from this you are forewarned of the difficult life of Mary Todd because she lost both her husband and the position of first lady.

Both Mary and Abraham were born and raised in Kentucky, but their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different. Lincoln is famous for his poor, humble beginnings in a log cabin, whereas Mary Todd grew up in a family that was well-connected both politically and socially. As a result of these familial associations, she received a good education. Mary Todd craved recognition and prestige; she was also headstrong, and these traits would often have extremely negative effects during her stay in the White House.

The one thing that surprised me was that even in 1860, politics were politics and the public press was ruthless in their reporting of the first couple. These “Westerners” were not well received and not well liked among the Washington high society and political community. Mrs. Lincoln was shunned by many women in the prominent social circles, which was a severe blow. She craved the respect that should have gone along with being the first lady.

Because of the Lincolns' position in favor of abolition, the president received death threats during the Civil War, creating severe stress for Mary. She also experienced the loss of many close relatives during her time at the White House, which contributed to the incredible obstacles that she faced on a daily basis.

However, in presenting these facts, Clinton is not trying to garner sympathy for Mary. She shows the reader a complicated woman who gives her political advice to Lincoln’s cabinet. She could be unpleasant in public situations, but she also had the compassion to visit wounded soldiers in the local hospitals, and fought for abolition.

The friendships that Mary developed with other women were an essential part of how she coped with her day to day living. They were an integral part of her life until her later years. There is still controversy over the mental state of Mary Todd. In 1863, on her way back to the White House, she was thrown from a carriage causing her to hit her head on a rock which might have contributed to her mental state. She was also prone to depression, and Lincoln scholars continue to debate on her mental health.

When the last page of Clinton’s Mrs. Lincoln: A Life is read and the book is closed, the reader cannot help but sympathize with this underappreciated woman.

Written by: Su Lin Mangan, April 29th 2009

Never Tell a Lie

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:26:00 +0000

By Hallie Ephron

Harper Collins

In a suburban area in Massachusetts, David and Ivy Rose host a yard sale as a way of getting rid of items left in the attic by previous owners of their recently purchased Victorian home. During the sale, a woman named Melinda, whom they both knew in high school, informs David and Ivy that as a child she played in the house they now own and would like to see the inside again. When David offers to take Melinda inside for a tour, he leaves her alone for a brief moment and unbeknownst to him, this is the last time he or anyone else will see Melinda.

When Melinda disappears and her car is found nearby with the newspaper ad for the Rose’s yard sale circled, Detective Blanchard traces her last known steps to the yard sale. No one, including David, remembers seeing her leave, yet detective Blanchard discovers her bloody clothes among the leftover items of the sale. The police take the Roses in for questioning, and Ivy discovers that David hasn't been entirely truthful.

As the evidence mounts and clues are uncovered, David is charged with murder and placed under arrest, which leaves Ivy to find the truth. In Ivy’s search to find out what really happened to Melinda, she discovers some unexpected secrets leading back to their high school years.

Never Tell a Lie is a very quick and easy read. A surprise toward the end provides the perfect twist to this tale of suspense. Hallie Ephron introduces the perfect suburban couple, and then turns their lives into deception, danger and unraveling the truth. This mystery is a page turner and you will not be able to put it down until the very last sentence is read.

Written by: LaToya Rogers, March 9th 2009

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:23:00 +0000

By Michael Kimmel

Harper Collins

Guyland is less of a place than an attitude, a realm of existence. Occupied by young, single, white men, its main demographic is middle class kids who are college-bound, college co-eds, or recent graduates in the United States. They live in communal housing with fraternity brothers or other recent grads. They work entry-level jobs but act aimless. They have plenty of time to party like they did in college and subsist on pizza, beer, and a visual diet of cartoons, sports, and porn. They hook up with women, but rarely form meaningful relationships. Sociologist Michael Kimmel might sound like he’s stereotyping, but years of research confirm what many of us already know: Guyland, as described in the book of the same name, is a world occupied by a specific type of privileged, entitled, young, white male, one who probably watches _The Man Show _on SpikeTV and listens to gangsta rap with no hint of irony.

Kimmel has written extensively about this culture with no name, a culture that appears so ubiquitous on large, public U.S. university campuses, it can seem redundant to label it at all. Yet in Guyland, Kimmel deconstructs the many problems associated with this lifestyle, and perhaps most importantly, how it can stunt the growth of young men (and women) with true potential.

The critique of Guyland includes a laundry list of offensive behaviors and attitudes. Crude male bonding encourages a specific type of homosocial behavior that dictates strict masculinity, which makes gay baiting a common practice. Women who reject Guyland lads are suspected lesbians, and female friends are treated as accessories or potential “friends with benefits,” assuming they don the required baseball cap and oversized sweatshirt so as not to unnecessarily tempt their male buddies. This gender policing also exists in athletics, where even when cross-racial bonding occurs, you still prove yourself “guy or gay.” The “jockocracy” ends up extending into many facets of young men’s lives, making violent athletic culture norms everyday experiences, cultivating competition, silence, and fear.

Men in Guyland watch pornography in large groups, not to get off, but to discuss humiliating the women to whom they feel entitled. Binge drinking and partying all weekend are common behaviors, both in college and beyond. No one acts particularly interested in committed relationships, though many men interviewed assume they will one day marry and have children. The contradictions continue throughout the entire book, as entitled young men voice to Kimmel their desires without introspection about how to reach them.

While thorough, the main problem with Kimmel’s assessment is that in trying to be fair, he ends up excusing behavior. While individuals and their actions are clearly different from the harmful whole of Guyland’s influence, continuously explaining that most young men are good and harmless reinforces the privilege associated with men who defend the actions of other men. There may not be any efficient way to draw a line between violent offenders and naïve college guys who get caught up in a culture of complicit silence, but defending them is demeaning and deeply offensive to those who are hurt by their actions.

Kimmel also spends much time explaining that the men he writes about are generally middle class and white, yet never once is the phrase “white privilege” used. Perhaps I’m taking issue where some see none, but in order to fully address a problem, it must be named. To constantly skirt around the issue, to name race without defining the system that holds its power in place, does a disservice to the problem at hand, as well as the author’s otherwise insightful analysis. This truth may be difficult for the population at large to swallow, but in omitting key elements from his text, Kimmel failed the groups his book could otherwise benefit: women, people of color, and people who identify as LGBTQI.

Guyland should come with a warning for those who have lived – personally or indirectly – through the trauma that can go hand in hand with a violent male culture: those who have survived assault, those who have done permanent damage from binge drinking, and those who have lost their identities trying to keep up with the expectations of men. The statistics and stories recounted in Guyland are often terrorizing, and despite helpful suggestions for turning things around, this isn’t always a narrative of hopeful rehabilitation.

Despite its flaws, Guyland is highly informative, especially for those who haven’t been living in the midst of young white guy culture for the last decade. It picks up where books like Stiffed and Female Chauvinist Pigs left off, exploring the nuances of male bonding, sports culture, and hazing. It credits feminism for helping men bounce back from their time in a pornified wasteland and offers hope that, as a culture, we can begin turning things around for young men, beginning as early as middle school. It isn’t light reading to pair with a Glamor magazine, but it does take a necessary look at an increasingly pervasive part of our culture and names ways we can all begin to change the status quo.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, December 11th 2008

Bright Shiny Morning

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:51:00 +0000

By James Frey

Harper Collins

I have no beef with James Frey. I think he’s a talented writer; a zeitgeist of a generation; a younger and less punctuationally-correct Don DeLillo, of a sort; and I believe Oprah is a mean and deceitful ratings leech. I think memoir is a complicated genre at best, and I tend to believe most (if not all) of the story as told in this recent Vanity Fair article. I have a soft spot for the downtrodden that come out stronger after the fight, and I happen to think straight men with lisps who say “fuck” every third word are wildly underappreciated.

Enter Bright Shiny Morning, Frey’s third book and first in the wake of his much publicized fall from literary grace (also known as being “outed” for writing a memoir with a—gasp!—fictional flare in 2003’s A Million Little Pieces). A rather widely praised follow-up, Frey seemed to have rebounded with relative ease, considering the slander he has endured. I had the good fortune and required five dollars to see Frey in Boston last month, and his in-person readings are much like he writes—mostly stream-of-consciousness and unpretentious—particularly entertaining, even if you weren’t previously a fan or haven’t read anything he’s written. A man not bothered or interested in anyone’s perception of him or his work except his readers, I was excited about the book before I had my own copy, just because I like his no-nonsense attitude about the literati and run-on sentences.

Frey himself has called the novel, a fast moving 500 pages, a “love letter” to Los Angeles, and it certainly is in many ways. It also portrays a series of troubled characters in all their complicated glory and, for me, created mental images of deserted mini-golf courses and seedy motels that I still haven’t been able to shake. The novel haunted me for the week after I speedily read it while stuck in uncomfortable transit zones, like airplanes and airports, and in fact, I suspect I consumed it too fast. Processing a wide range of emotions so quickly made me feel like I’d just gone through all the stages of a serious relationship and breakup in less than seventy-two hours.

Vignettes coupled with four main storylines created a perfect blend of the static and constant, reflecting life as I understand it. These, interspersed with random “facts” and histories of Los Angeles, kept me turning the pages frantically, wondering when my favorite story lines would return, loving the pages that held a single sentence, wondering often what was a true detail about L.A. (despite the publisher’s insistence that not one word of the novel should be taken as fact).

Without giving too much away, Bright Shiny Morning is a novel for postmodern, hopeful cynics, who believe in universal truths and the beauty of sadness. It has my highest recommendation.

Photo credit: Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 10th 2008

The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage

admin — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:50:00 +0000

By Laura Schlessinger

Harper Collins

Dr. Laura is not a popular personality in many circles, to say the least. She’s anti-choice, anti-feminist and anti-gay. So imagine my surprise when I picked up her latest book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage, and discovered that I actually found some useful advice in it.

First of all, a disclaimer: I am not endorsing her political beliefs. And I admit she makes it difficult to get past her gratuitous rants about feminism. (Sample: “Chivalry is largely dead, and feminism is the murderer.”) But please bear with me, because the fact is, Dr. Laura is not as crazily sexist as she first appears.

Her basic gist is that you should put your husband first, make him feel loved and be the kind of person that your husband would want to come home to at night. Those tips can be useful reminders, especially if you’re the kind of person who plans so many extra-curricular activities that you hardly see your partner unless you schedule a rendezvous.

A newlywed myself, I tried following her advice for a week, and found that I did actually quite enjoy it. So did my husband. I took care of him more, made sure to “snuggle” at night and even cooked dinner. (I had my limits, though -- we still shared cleaning and shopping duties.) Dr. Laura even gets a little, well, dirty, which won’t be a surprise to those who have read about her pre-fame nude photos. She advocates buying sex toys, naughty lingerie and even a Brazilian wax. Does that sound like conservative family values to you?

If you can flip past her snide comments, the book can be quite useful -- but you may want to look for a used copy to avoid funding her soapbox.

Written by: Kimberly Palmer, June 24th 2007