Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category

A raging fire in the sugarcane fields of eastern Cuba opens Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner (Scribner $25.00). The time is 1958, shortly before the Americans were driven out by Castro’s revolution. Tropical Cuba in the 50′s seems to be an idyllic setting for young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites who are coming of age in the gated American enclave in the company town of Preston. Far away in Havana a cabaret dancer’s work life is intertwined with Presidents Prio and Batista and a French agitator called La Maziere. She is sympathetic to Castro and he is running guns to the rebels in the hills and forming an attachment to the dancer. Growing up in eastern Washington, I was unclear about Cuba’s actual distance from US mainland and why it was so important to us. Although this story takes place before the Bay of Pigs, it helps to explain what led up to that fiasco. Told in deceptively low key prose this gripping tale reveals the secrets and prejudices of the Americans contrasted with the incredible poverty and brutal working conditions of the cane cutters and the Cuban people in general. I was fascinated with this story of Cuba. ~ Gretchen Echols

Lehane’s large-canvas historical yarn steers a twisted and intriguing course through a post-World War I America that’s preoccupied with racism, sports and fear of communist incursions, beset by disease and divided by class. In these pages, he tells of Luther Laurence, a young black man who falls in with the wrong crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and flees both murder charges and a pregnant wife, landing in Boston and the employ of the Coughlin family. The Coughlins aren’t long off the boat from Ireland, but they’ve established themselves within the local police ranks. In addition to Laurence, Lehane focuses here on idealistic cop Danny Coughlin, the rising son of an influential police captain, who supplies the principal window through which we witness the misnamed “Spanish flu pandemic” of 1918; the Wilson administration’s campaign against radicals; and the notorious 1919 Boston Police Strike. There’s so much story in The Given Day, that the reader may have trouble keeping a handle on it all. But Lehane does an exceptional job of moving his plot along, whether with the romance between Danny Coughlin and a young Irish woman holding too many secrets; or the low-boil confrontation between Laurence and a powerful, conniving cop; or the rivalry between Boston’s mayor and Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, who would eventually ride his much-inflated role in ending the police strike directly to the White House. And the author’s portrayal of baseball star Babe Ruth, who winds through this yarn like a lazy river, popping up periodically for comic relief or to assist in illuminating the era’s culture, is marvelous. – Jeff Pierce

In The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee (Viking $25.95) two women love the same man in exotic Hong Kong before, during and ten years after WWII. The story relates difficult choices and their consequences as a result of loves, intrigues and betrayals. The setting gives some hints at the complex relationships between clashing cultures and ancient histories. This beguiling story is quietly related amidst the hot steamy backdrop of south-east Asia. I was mesmerized. ~Gretchen Echols

The lives of Edward S. Curtis a photographer of western landscapes and American Indians, and the fictional character Marianne Wiggins, are intertwined in Wiggins’ newest novel The Shadow Catcher (Simon and Schuster $15.00). It begins with an intriguing scene: Wiggins is “pitching” her book on Edward Curtis to some Hollywood producers. They see a rugged, inventive American who was devoted to photographing his subjects. But Wiggins reveals that his photos were “set-ups” and he routinely endangered the welfare of his family in pursuit of his career. After the meeting Wiggins receives a call that her father is dying in a hospital in Las Vegas. The catch is that her father has been dead for years. Her search for the dying man’s identity reveals even more fascinating and contradictory details of Curtis’ life. There are times when the two stories don’t seem to mesh but the author deftly pulls them together for a very satisfying ending. I couldn’t put this one down. ~ Carol Santoro

Hannah West in Deep Water by Linda Johns
(Puffin $5.99)
Hannah is an intelligent, observant and independent 12 year old. Her mother is a professional house sitter. Care taking a Portage Bay houseboat and resident dog has fabulous possibilities, including a part in a film shot on the dock. However, something funny is going on with the water, and Hannah is determined to find out what. The Seattle setting of this fun series adds to the interest

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix
(Aladdin $6.99)
Luke Garner is an illegal third child in a world where only two are allowed per family. Threat of exposure means a life lived in an attic room, his only view of the world through a narrow crack in the wall. Bored, restless and alone, one day he sees another third child in a neighbors house. He risks everything to make contact. His life is changed forever. Well written, exciting and thought provoking.
~Marla Vandewater

It seems that Russian investigating magistrate Porfiry Petrovich pursued other lawbreakers, following the deranged-student case described so well by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment (1866). In The Gentle Axe, (Penguin $14.00) British author R.N. Morris sends Porfiry out to untangle the apparent murder-suicide of a burly groundskeeper and a dwarf translator, found in a St. Petersburg park by a rather light-fingered former prostitute. It doesn’t take long for the Columbo-ish sleuth to link these horrors to a dreary whorehouse, a pornography ring, and a starving lawyer-wannabe–and incite resistance from his superiors. Morris’ delving into the squalid corners of tsarist Russia, as much as his quirky players, makes this an absorbing read. ~ Jeff Pierce

I just finished All About Lulu (Soft Skull Press $14.95) and can’t stop grinning. Jonathan Evison’s quirky cast of characters will quickly charm you. The protagonist, William MIller, is a vegetarian nerd in a family of failed bodybuilders (where meat eating reigns supreme). He’s searching for his place in the world when his new stepsister Lulu appears and life turns inside out. Dealing with his obsession leads him to discover the entrepreneurial challenges of selling hot dogs and his talent as a late night radio DJ. Complete with offbeat humor, philosophy and above all, heart, this book has a high place on my recommended reading list. ~Carol Santoro

Many of the stories in Ben Fountain’s Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (HarperCollins $13.95) are set in the world’s most impoverished and crime-ridden countries: Haiti, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Myanmar. The protagonists face moral challenges–sometimes with disastrous, but often with humorous results. In “Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera,” a graduate student studying birds in Colombia is taken hostage by revolutionaries. He is sympathetic to their cause, but when their goals are corrupted by big business his objections lead to an ironic and darkly amusing conclusion. My favorite story, “Bouki and the Cocaine,” reveals the creative efforts of some Haitian fishermen to sabotage a drug-smuggling operation. The stories in Fountain’s first collection are so substantial and satisfying, they often seem more like novellas. ~ Carol Santoro