“But think. Aren’t I just as cut off by what happened as he is? Nobody who knew about it would want me around. All I can do is remind people of what nobody can stand to be reminded of.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (NOV 19, 2009)

It is an honor to review Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, who I consider the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language. Ms. Munro is Canadian and lives in Clinton, Ontario. During her writing career she has garnered many awards including the Lannan Literary Award, the United States National Book Critics Circle Award, and the most recent 2009 Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Atlantic Monthly, as well as many other literary publications. I consider her an icon.

With each book of hers that I have read (and I have read them all!) I think that she has reached her zenith. Yet, with each new publication, I find her newest work better than her previous publications. Her work is glorious. At the rate she’s going now, her zenith may be light years away.

I find the metaphor of looking into a tide pool an apt one for describing the stories of Ms. Munro. A tide pool is a microcosm of the ocean, yet it has a certain stasis and life of its own. It is a living organism, relating to the macrocosm of life in many ways. The tide pool contains living species of fish, reptiles and crustaceans, all delineated by their own life cycle which can change with the tides or with the events of weather. Ms. Munro’s stories are like this. She will take a small microcosm of life and show how it has enduring and lifelong effects – effects which may be immediately observable or which may not be obvious for decades.

Too Much Happiness is a collection of ten short stories, each wonderful in their own right and each as rich and nuanced as a novel. Many of them deal with similar themes – paradox, movement through time, repercussions of impulse, regret, acts of horror and relationships.

“Dimensions,” the first story in the collection is about a damaged woman. She goes through life feeling empty through she talks to a social worker regularly. She is driven to visit and re-visit her ex-husband in psychiatric facility. At one point he writes her a diatribe about his revelations that their children are now in another dimension. On her way to visit him one evening on the bus, she witnesses a car accident and attempts CPR on the victim. Through the CPR, she can feel life return to the young man who is near death’s door.

By the third story in this collection, “Wenlock Edge,” specific themes begin to emerge – Who are we? Do we change in relationships? Of what are we capable under certain situations? Do these situations have particular reasons or are they random events related to our current environments.

The story begins with a a young woman who has regular visits from her aunt and bachelor uncle when she is a child. Her aunt dies. The young woman continues school in the city and has a weekly ritual dinner with her uncle. She also has a small circle of acquaintances. Solely by chance, she ends up with a part-time roommate with a “history.” This roommate is always getting herself into situations that don’t work out and that compromise her virtue. She is also a prolific liar and likes to be in one-up situations with others. Both young women find themselves “on their way to deeds they didn’t know they had in them.”

“Deep-Hole”s begins with a family outing to celebrate the father’s publication of a paper on geology. During the course of the picnic, one of the sons, Kent, falls into a crater and breaks both of his legs. He has to remain out of school for six months. During that time, Kent and his mother share stories about distant isles and lands that are remote or unknown to mankind. One of the children becomes an attorney, the other a physician. Kent drops out of college and is heard from rarely and erratically. He lives on the fringes of society and the question arises, “What is society?” The story reminded me of a novel by Carol Shields, a Canadian author, now deceased. I wondered if this story might be an homage to Ms. Shield’s novel.

“The Face” is a wonderful story about a boy born with a port wine stain on half of his face. His father abhors him for his looks and calls him “liver face.” The father is rude, crude, awful. The mother is sanctimonious, martyr-like and loving her son in a standoffish way. The father avoids the son in every manner possible – he doesn’t eat with him, talk to him or spend time with him. Ms. Munro brings up a lot of questions about this boy’s life and the metaphor of paradox is paramount. “You think that would have changed things? The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.”

“Child’s Play” is a story that is idyllic on the surface and horrific in the interior. Two young girls attend a summer camp and during the course of this camp they do something that is never spoken about again until decades later. Even then the extent of what happened when they were children is not fully absorbed.

Each of these stories is masterful and wonderful in the telling. I’ve read the book twice and appreciate it more with each reading. There is no one living to compare Ms. Munro with. The only writer I can think of whose short stories I love as much as hers is Eudora Welty. What a group of two!!

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (November 17, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Too Much Happiness
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Alice Munro
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	I’m ashamed to say that this is our first Alice Munro book we’ve reviewed. However… here are some more great short story collections: The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahair Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Bibliography:

• Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)
• Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
• Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974)
• The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (1978) (a.k.a Who Do You Think You Are?)
• The Moons of Jupiter (1982)
• The Progress of Love (1986)
• Friend of My Youth (1990)
• Open Secrets (1994)
• Selected Stories (1996)
• The Love of a Good Woman (1998)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)
• Vintage Munro (2004)
• Runaway (2004)
• The View from Castle Rock (2006)
• Too Much Happiness (November 2009)

Related:

• Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up With Alice Munro by Sheila Munro (2002)

“Every farm, like every everything, has flaws, is subject to accidents, sometimes doesn’t work as it should. Life overflows with imperfections, but some imperfections matter more than others. How imperfect must animal farming and slaughter be before they are too imperfect.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (NOV 18, 2009)

Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian. It’s not a label I really think much about because it was never a conscious choice. I was brought up in a Hindu vegetarian home and eating meat was totally out of the question. Over the years it has become a matter of habit and taste.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s path to veganism started when he became a new father. He wanted to research the foods he would soon be feeding his infant son and in no time came upon the juggernaut—the factory farm. “My personal quest didn’t stay that way for long. Through my efforts as a parent, I came face-to-face with realities that as a citizen I couldn’t ignore, and as a writer I couldn’t keep to myself,” he says as the impetus for writing his first work of non-fiction, Eating Animals.

During his research and reporting, Foer confirms what others have chronicled: The totally out-of-control factory farms that handle animal husbandry today have lead to multiple astounding problems—animals mistreated on a massive scale, people’s health endangered and the environment trashed to its breaking point.

In chapter after horrific chapter, Foer systematically outlines the problems with every kind of animal we raise and slaughter in the country: chickens, pork, beef and even fish. He directly equates the “modern landscape of disease” with the way animal husbandry is carried about these days.

Veteran writers in the field like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have argued persuasively about the very same topics. The absolutely searing documentary “Food Inc.” also visits these very same points. So in a sense what Foer describes has been said before. Nevertheless the style of writing is uniquely his. Eating Animals also includes a whole chorus of voices from the industry who paint a complete picture of a monster run amuck.

While Foer doesn’t dwell much on the environmental impact of factory farming, he does visit some basic statistics. “According to the UN, the livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, around 40 percent more than the entire transport sector—cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships—combined,” he writes. On a side note, although the scale is a lot smaller, vegetable farming is not entirely blameless either. Readers interested in learning more about the environmental and societal impact of growing all our food (including the veggies) could take a look at Raj Patel’s brilliant Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System.

Despite all the reporting, Eating Animals will probably be remembered and talked about because of Foer’s moral arguments that underlie one’s eating choices. Even though Foer says the book is not a case for vegetarianism—he says it is possible to be a conscientious omnivore—his arguments sure point toward only one way out.

When faced with the egregious practices of factory farms, Foer argues, you cannot (or ought not) to turn a blind eye. One could seek out farmers who choose not to go this route. But, Foer points out, such farmers are so few in number that really, the consumer doesn’t have a choice for now—he should consider converting to vegetarianism. Incidentally, in one good section, Foer presents research that debunks the popular myth that one needs to eat meat to get enough protein. “Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have a more optimal protein consumption than omnivores,” Foer writes.

Foer’s recommendations to skip the meat altogether sound defeatist and sadly, his moral arguments can sound like an upstart proselytizing for the sake of a grander cause. Which is too bad. Because Eating Animals makes a great case against the factory farming of animals and is worth reading for this reason alone.

Conscientious eating will need a shift in resources, attitude and cost. Its primary driver will be education—toward that end, books like Eating Animals help enormously. It’s a worthy addition to the literature that already exists in the field.

In the end, Foer seems to take the safe way out (probably because the subject is so polarizing) and says that his book is “an argument for vegetarianism, but it’s also an argument for another, wiser animal agriculture and more honorable omnivory.”

It’s probably the safest stance. After all, ours is the society where the term “veggie hamburger” still assumes that the hamburger is the prize—the one whose taste must be reproduced. What Foer leaves unsaid is that the kind of cultural shift he really wants to stoke requires consumers not just to rethink their meat but, equally important, how they view their vegetables. But, for now, he’ll take what positive change he can get—even if it comes in small portions.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 33 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (November 2, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AMAZON PAGE:	Eating Animals
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jonathan Safran Foer
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt LA Times interview on Eating Animals
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated And more on this subject: Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres

Bibliography:

• Everything is Illuminated (April 2002)
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (April 2005)

Other:

• A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell (2001)

Co-Edited:

• The Future Dictionary of America (August 2004)
• Joe (July 2006)

Nonfiction:

• Eating Animals (November 2009)

Movies from books:

• Everything is Illuminated (2005)

“I felt chastened and embarrassed. I realized that I had nearly disastrously misinterpreted the Pairahas’ perception of my role among them. I had thought that they saw me, the missionary, as a protector and authority figure.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (NOV 17, 2009)

The Pirahã are the “Show me!” tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. They don’t bother with fiction or tall tales or even oral history. They have little art. They don’t have a creation myth and don’t want one. If they can’t see it, hear it, touch it or taste it, they don’t believe in it.

Missionaries have been preaching to the Pirahãs for 200 years and have converted not one. Everett did not know this when he first visited them in 1977 at age 26. A missionary and a linguist, he was sent to learn their language, translate the Bible for them, and ultimately bring them to Christ.

Instead, they brought him to atheism. “The Pirahãs have shown me that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile.”

Not that they have escaped religion entirely. Spirits live everywhere and may even caution or lecture them at times. But these spirits are visible to the Pirahãs, if not to Everett and his family, who spent 30 years, on and off, living with the tribe.

But they don’t have marriage or funeral ceremonies. Cohabitation suffices as the wedding announcement and divorce is accomplished just as simply, though there may be more noise involved. Sexual mores are governed by common sense rather than stricture, which means that single people have sex at will while married people are more circumspect.

People are sometimes buried with their possessions, which are few, and larger people are often buried sitting “because this requires less digging.” But there is no ritual for each family to follow.

“Perhaps the activity closest to ritual among the Pirahãs is their dancing. Dances bring the village together. They are often marked by promiscuity, fun, laughing, and merriment by the entire village. There are no musical instruments involved, only singing, clapping, and stomping of feet.”

Everett’s language studies began without benefit of dictionary or primer. None of the Pirahãs spoke any English or more than the most rudimentary Portuguese (Among their many eccentricities is their total lack of interest in any facet of any other culture including tools or language – not that they won’t use tools, like canoes, they just won’t make them or absorb them into their culture).

Amazingly, “Pirahã is not known to be related to any other living human language.”

At first it seems rather deprived. There are only 11 phonemes (speech sounds). There are no numbers, no words for colors. No words for please, thank you or sorry. There are, however, tones, whistles and clicks. And the language comes in three forms – regular plus Humming speech and Yelling speech.

Over the years Everett comes to the conclusion that the Pirahã language reflects and arises from their culture in its directness, immediacy and simplicity. Ultimately he defies Noam Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar (Pirahã lacks a basic requirement) and starts a firestorm in the linguistics field. Everett alludes mildly to this in the book, but a little Internet browsing will leave readers shocked – shocked! – at the way linguists talk to one another.

There are plenty of anecdotes involving the reader in Everett’s adventures, hardships, terrors, epiphanies and the pure strangeness of daily life with a people who live in the immediate present and whose most common “good-night” is “Don’t sleep, there are snakes.” (sound sleep is dangerous and, besides, toughening themselves is a strong cultural value – foodless days are also common).

Fascinating as both anthropological memoir and linguistic study, Everett’s book will appeal to those interested in very not-North American cultures and in the ways people shape language and it shapes us.

It’s a book that rouses a sense of wonder and gives rise to even more questions than it answers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 26 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage (November 3, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AMAZON PAGE:	Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Daniel L. Everett
EXTRAS:	Excerpt A New Yorker article of interest
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Somewhat related book: First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaira by Eve Brown-Waite Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo

Bibliography:

• Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (November 2008)
• Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool

“But for one beautiful summer, it’s linden trees and vodka made from fermented plums and stars and mountains and raspberries . . . Drink in the gorgeous scenery, the Carpathians, Bucharest, the dark forests. Suspend all cynicism and believe in the possibility of this love story.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (NOV 16, 2009)

Domnica Radulescu’ semi-autobiographical debut novel, Train to Trieste, is a fascinating page turner, full of contrasts. She describes, with nostalgia and much love, her homeland, Romania, with its physical beauty, it’s mountains, plains, rivers, forests, and extraordinary seaside resorts and homes on the Black Sea. She writes of “one beautiful summer,” with its “linden trees and vodka made from fermented plums and stars and mountains and raspberries….” The scenery is “gorgeous,” the Carpathian Mountains are dark and mysterious – a perfect place for our protagonist, seventeen year-old Mona Manoliu, to fall in love. It is the summer of 1977.

His name is Mihai, “a green eyed, charismatic, mountain boy” grieving for the loss of his first love who died in a tragic accident. Mona meets him when summering with her family in the foothills of the Carpathians. She is immediately drawn to him and her compassion and love comforts Mihai. Soon the young couple are inseparable. Their sensuality and passion are palpable. They become lovers. At summers end Mona returns to the family home in Bucharest and makes plans to see Mihai the following summer.

Contrasting with this beauty and romance, is the brutal government of Nicolae Andruta Ceausescu, President of Romania from 1974 to 1979. Against the exquisite backdrop of his country, Ceausescu, with his narcissistic cult of personality, actually carries a sceptre in public. Opposition is ruthlessly suppressed by the hated secret police, the Securitate. Intellectuals and artists are cautioned not to overstep the mark of “permissible” free expression. But freedom of speech is severely limited and the media is controlled. It is even illegal to own a typewriter without an official license. Mona lives in fear that her intellectual father’s typewriter will be discovered. He is a poetry professor, a dissident, and is watched by the Securitate, as is she.

At the beginning of the 1980s Ceausescu introduced an austerity program in order to pay off Romania’s foreign debt, causing hunger, deprivation, long food lines where, when one reaches the end, there is nothing more to buy. The standard of living plunges and while most Romanians are starving, cold and living without electricity, Ceau?escu and his family continue to be surrounded by comfort and privilege. It is estimated that at least 15,000 Romanians died per year as a result of the austerity program and tens of thousands of lives were ruined during Ceausescu’s reign. There is much paranoia amongst the people. After all, one’s best friend could turn out to be a spy.

After an old woman whispers ugly rumors in Mona’s ear, she fears that her love, Mihai, might be a spy, especially when she sees him in a black leather jacket. The secret police wear black leather jackets. Friends and relatives disappear and/or die under suspicious circumstances.

When her father is directly threatened and her own life is in danger, Mona’s parents encourage her to flee the country, and leave Mihai, her family and homeland behind. Alone and terrified, Mona chooses the “Train to Trieste,” one of the well known escape routes. The train, on its way to Rome, stops briefly in Trieste, where Mona reflects on her past and her unknown future. She finally reaches the US and goes to Chicago, where she begins a new life. But she cannot forget her passion for Romania and Mihai, and her love for her parents. Her story spins out over the years, and ends with a surprising conclusion.

Author Domnica Radulescu, like the heroine of her novel, escaped from Romania in the early 1980s, studied literature at the University of Chicago, and is an extremely talented writer. She vividly expresses the horrors of life under the Ceausescus, and contrasts the repressive regime against the backdrop of the landscape’s physical beauty, and the happy times that Mona, her family, and her lover spend together. She writes of Mona’s fear, her intensely sensual feelings of love, as well as her conflicting emotions about Mihai. Should she love him, fear him, or both? Pleasure is contrasted with melancholy and pain.

I enjoyed Train to Trieste. It is not often that one gets to read a book set in Ceausescus’s Romania. Refreshingly, there is not a word written about Transylvania and Dracula! However, Ceausescus’ is an apt substitute.

Unfortunately, there are portions of the narrative which are slow and almost boring. The author is unable to sustain the tension and excitement of the storyline about the misery of the Romanian people and an intense but brief love affair. Instances of Mona’s life in Chicago are interesting and, at times, quite humorous. But there are repetitive passages which affect the novel’s pace. Otherwise, I would have rated it with 5 stars. I do recommend Train to Trieste, however. Although it may not be a novel for everyone, overall it is makes for a well written and unusual read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 15 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage; 1 edition (August 11, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AMAZON PAGE:	Train to Trieste
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Domnica Radulescu
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More love stories … .Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour The History of Love by Nicole Krauss Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji

Bibliography:

• Train to Trieste (August 2008)

Nonfiction:

• Andre Malraux: The “Farfelu” As Expression of the Feminine and the Erotic (1994)
• Sisters of Medea: The Tragic Heroine Across Cultures (2002)

“What binds us together across our differences in religion or politics or economic theory is that when each one of us is cut, our blood flows red. Mine does and yours does too. Those who would try to appropriate God or family or country for their own narrow ends…forget the width of God’s embrace, the healing power of a family’s arms, and the generosity of this country’s vision. God, family, and nation belong to us all.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (NOV 15, 2009)

Early in 2009, I read the account of Edward M. Kennedy’s life entitled Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. A synthesis of reports by Boston Globe reporters, it succeeded in presenting a balanced and quite thorough review of Senator Kennedy’s life up to the point where he was diagnosed with brain cancer. With that instructively under my belt, I was eager to study the senator’s own account, True Compass: A Memoir. How, I wondered, had he approached the delicate or controversial events of his life? Had he, for example, gone into as much detail about the Chappaquiddick tragedy as Last Lion had? How much had he wished to revisit concerning the assassinations of his famous political brothers? Had he gone into as many specifics about his major Senate battles as the reporters? What less well known facets of himself had he chosen to reveal? Were his reminisces more personal or more professional in nature?

Well, True Compass, which was published a few weeks after the senator’s death on August 25, 2009, occupies a different niche in the pantheon of Kennedy books than Last Lion. The late Ted Kennedy left behind distinctly personal recollections that are gentle, dignified, discreet, usually displaying no enmity, and focused more on people than on event particulars. He remembered stories about family, friends, and colleagues more frequently than a host of facts, dates, and figures.

He recollected being the youngest child of the Kennedy brood, fondly recalling early morning rides on Cape Cod with his father: “The plaid-shirted figure on horseback in front of me on those morning rides was not — and never would be to me — primarily an American diplomat, or financial titan, or motion picture producer, or source of exotic legend. He was my father.” So, for instance, if one wants to know what Edward Kennedy thought about Joseph P. Kennedy’s service as ambassador to Britain, he only commented that as a child he knew little about it and later there were things he would have liked to have asked his dad but did not.

As a boy, Teddy had other things on his mind besides the adult world. He mentioned his affinity for practical jokes, telling about putting dirty shoes on the piano and driving his mother crazy. When he began boarding at school he had a bad experience with a cruel, abusive dorm master, and before that he was temporarily parked in a class with boys four years older which led to loneliness and a sad episode with a turtle. A great student he wasn’t — perhaps partially due to changing boarding schools often. But, as he noted, in those days it was the norm for the well-to-do to send their children away to get educated, and he said he bore no grudge against his parents for following this tradition.

Gaining entrance to Harvard despite his less-than-stellar history as a student, Kennedy cheated on a Spanish exam, hoping if someone better versed in the language took his test for him he would get a grade ensuring that he could play football. Instead, the school sent him (and the young man who sat for the test) away for a year. He did military service before being allowed to return and graduate. He confided, ” ‘I felt terrible. I knew I’d screwed up.’ ”

After studying law and passing the bar in 1959, he helped his brother, Jack, campaign for the presidency by barnstorming (he’d earned his pilot’s license) in the western states. Once that victory was assured, Ted worked briefly as an assistant district attorney and then turned his attention to the senate seat in Massachusetts vacated by John Kennedy. But he had to wait to run until 1962 when he turned thirty. On November 7, 1962, he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator, and he remained in that body until his death. One of the stories he told concerned a senior member of the Senate, James O. Eastland, from whom freshman Kennedy was to receive his first committee assignments. After telling the young man to think about which committees he would like, Eastland asked him back and began plying him with liquor. Three times he poured outsize amounts into Ted’s glass and each time said, ” ‘You drink that drink there,’ ” and you’ll be on — as it turned out – the immigration committee, the civil rights committee, and the Constitution subcommittee. Even though the freshman managed to douse a nearby potted plant with some of his Scotch, he weaved a bit and reeked of alcohol afterward.

Ted Kennedy was not in Dallas on the fateful day in November, 1963. He was in the Senate chamber. He read the news on the AP printer and in the book recalled, “My first overwhelming sense was disbelief. How could it be true? And then horror, as I stood there listening to tick, tick, tick of the teletype machine. I couldn’t hear anything or anyone else.” Likewise, he was not in Los Angeles in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was shot and killed. About that loss he said, “Life and politics, went on, but not in the same way. Not for me. I was shaken to my core.” The title of this autobiography refers to the compass of a sailor. Elsewhere in the book, Kennedy asserted, “…keep a true compass and you’ll get there.” His recurring theme throughout the memoir was his love of the sea, his love of sailing. And after Bobby’s death he tried to find solace there: “I surrendered myself to the sea and the wind and the sun and the stars on these voyages. I let my mind drift, when it would, from my sorrows to a semblance of the momentous joy I have always felt at the way a sailboat moves through the water.”

Much later in True Compass, while poignantly marking the deaths of Jackie Kennedy, his mother, Rose, his nephew, Michael (in a skiing accident), and another nephew, John (along with his wife and her sister) in the 1990’s, the senator quoted a letter his father wrote a grieving friend in 1958, ” ‘ There are no words to dispel your feelings at this time, and there is no time that will ever dispel them…Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself a part of it again, trying to accomplish something — something that he did not have time enough to do. And, perhaps, that is the reason for it all. I hope so.’ ” The senator follows that up with, “I wish life were simpler. I wish loved ones didn’t have to die too young. I wish that tragedy never haunted a single soul. But to wish all that is to ask for an end to our humanity. God, family, and country sustain us all.”

Although this review has now in a sense come full circle, there is so much more that hasn’t been covered. Kennedy did address Chappaquiddick, but his purpose was to put on the record again that he regretted it and to state unequivocally that Mary Jo Kopechne was not sexually involved with him. He didn’t offer a punctilious timeline — for that refer to Last Lion.

He also told of his relationships with the presidents, and if there was one who earned the ire of Senator Kennedy it was, surprisingly, Jimmy Carter. He thought that Carter looked upon him with suspicion as a potential spoiler long before there was reason. The senator, in 1978, thought Carter was stonewalling on legislation for mandatory and universal health care, writing, “I felt that the president was squandering a real opportunity to get something done.” Also, frustrated, by cuts in spending that affected the disadvantaged, the senator decided Carter was “pandering to the presumed selfishness of the middle class.” Kennedy also criticized the Carter tendency to prefer facts and figures to people, reminding readers that Franklin D. Roosevelt “didn’t know every name, every place, but he knew what was worth knowing: the key people, and what motivated them, and why they were doing what they were doing.” Something else that alarmed Kennedy was Carter’s famous “malaise” speech. The senator thought it was “a speech born of panic” and added, “I watched the televised talk with mounting incredulousness and outrage. The message was contrary to — it was in conflict with — all the ideals of the Democratic Party that I cherished. It was in conflict with what the country was about.” Clearly, Carter’s intellectual approach clashed with Kennedy’s more social/networking one. Ultimately, Kennedy did challenge Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980. In True Compass, he denies he weakened Carter so much that he lost, believing that Carter’s own conduct in office sealed his fate.

Until now, this review hasn’t really concentrated on a vital part of Edward Kennedy — namely, his politics. Presumably every knowledgeable person knows the senator championed liberal causes. To name just a few of his positions, he was an early advocate of civil rights, he crusaded against candidates to the U.S. Supreme Court whom he thought were wrongheaded ideologically, he supported access to abortion, he was a stalwart for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, he worked for the enactment of universal health care throughout his career, he campaigned for gay rights, he agreed with the court-ordered busing begun in Boston in 1976, he turned against the Vietnam War and later called the Iraq War a “fraud.” True Compass discusses all of these to one degree or another.

Interestingly, one doesn’t have to be in Kennedy’s political tent to take pleasure in his autobiography. Oh, there will be times when opponents of his policies will probably talk back to the page (as when he wrote: “While I haven’t mastered the art of talking conservative, experience has convinced me that genuine, principled leadership can persuade our people that their enlightened self-interest lies to the left.”), but no on can argue with him about at least one thing: we do all bleed red. And in True Compass, we see a a famous man being vulnerable (but not too confessional) and striving for honesty with beneficence. We see a real, thoughtful human being. He told of his first marriage with the restraint of time and a new love at his side. And his description of the courtship between himself and Vicki Reggie before he proposed and they married in 1992 is sweet and uplifting. His namesake son’s bone cancer story and the senator’s determination to do everything possible to help Edward Jr. beat the disease also engenders a feeling of uncompromising solidarity because everyone wants to do the same for their children. There are plenty of places to find the gossip and scandal on Senator Kennedy — he needn’t (and didn’t) tell it on himself, informing the reader that in his family they just didn’t talk about such things even amongst themselves, so (the unspoken thought can be completed) why would he have talked about it to us?

Repeatedly, Kennedy mentioned that he was basically an optimistic person. His book resounds with that virtue. He lived a life that forced him to bear many losses, and he did. He lived decades longer than his three older brothers and some of his sisters. He ended up as the surrogate father to many children and by all accounts he did himself proud fulfilling that role. He exuded energy and resilience. He built a nearly-fifty-year career in the Senate instead of becoming President of the United States, and kept the faith with his own political philosophy even when it wasn’t popular. For these things, I think anyone can say, “Well done, Senator Kennedy.”

In May 2008 Kennedy found out in the hospital that he had a malignant glioma that was judged inoperable. He and Vicki refused to accept that and opted for aggressive treatment. Instead of just a few months, he lived more than a year. As a man with wealth and prominence, he could access the best medical minds and treatments (just as he had done for Edward Jr.; in fact when covering that family crisis, the senator wrote, “However, unwittingly, I began to form the template for future counterattacks against the disease in my family, including my own test thirty-five years on.” ) to prolong his life and fight the cancer. He, as mentioned, was a career-long proponent of universal health care. One wonders what kind of care he would have been able to procure if he had been covered under a mandatory universal health care system. Some would insist that he would have gotten all the care needed; others would suggest that the system couldn’t afford to perform expensive surgery on someone who was going to die from the tumor sooner or later. That grim scenario aside, in his prologue, “The Torch,” he wrote about his determination to exhaust every resource and take every measure available to stay alive. He then became contemplative. “As I grappled with the dire implications of my illness, I realized that my own life has always been inseparable from my family. When I sit at the front porch of our Cape house, in the sunshine and sea-freshened air, I think of them often: my parents and my brothers and sisters, all departed now save for Jean and myself. And each alive and vibrant in my memory.”

In his Acknowledgements, Kennedy gave credit to Ron Powers, calling him his “collaborator on this project.” The senator praised “Ron’s gifts as a prose stylist” and added, “Over the past two years, he has infused my stories with his gift for language, his humor, his intelligence, and his compassion.” How much Powers crafted the final text is difficult to judge, but the book is beautifully written. The senator’s touchstones and sometime refuges — the sea and sailing — recur as restorative waves, touching the heart: “Sailing is still my favorite pastime. Being on the ocean has thrilled me and comforted me and protected me all my life, and I love that time now, perhaps more than ever.”

Everyone who writes their own story gets to choose what to include and exclude. Edward Kennedy, I think, was true to himself: he related mainly the human side of his experience because that was what motivated and animated him. True Compass doesn’t tell us everything we might want to know, but these are graceful, almost poetic annals (accompanied by a generous collection of photos) of a practically irrepressible man who just recently had to trade our world for history.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 177 readers
PUBLISHER:	Twelve; First Edition (September 14, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AMAZON PAGE:	True Compass: A Memoir
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Edward M. Kennedy
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s Page on True Compass with Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other “Kennedy” books: Four Days in November by Vincent Bugliosi The Secret Memoirs of Jackie Onassis Kennedy: A Novel by Ruth Francsisco

Bibliography:

• My Senator and Me: A Dog’s Eye View of Washington, D.C. (May 2006)
• True Compass: A Memoir (September 2009)

Other recent books on Edward M. Kennedy:

• Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy by Peter S. Canellos (February 2009)
• Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died by Edward Klein (May 2009)

“I should have told you that a long time ago.” Her mother rests her back against the pillows. “I should have told you how beautiful you are,” she says softly.

When Anna was fifteen, the brother of one of her friends from school held her hand and said, “You are the prettiest of my sister’s friends.” She felt a surge of irrational happiness then. This is the feeling Anna finally recognizes in the confusion of emotions that swirl through her. Will they talk now? Will they have closure?

But the timbre of her mother’s voice changes, the softness that was there evaporates. “I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you that,” she says. No emotion, a chastisement even.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes ( NOV 14, 2009)

SPECIAL:  MF Author Interview

Anna In-Between is a novel about an unmarried, Caribbean woman in her late thirties, Anna Sinclair, who begins to understand herself as she comes to understand her parents. The novel explores issues of caste, race and culture in a moving, deeply poignant tale of mother and daughter. Anna goes back to the island of her birth as she does every year, but this time she stays for a month to spend more time with her aging parents. Her mother, Beatrice, reveals to Anna that she has a lump on her breast – one for which she has not sought treatment. Beatrice has not even mentioned it to her own husband, though she knows he sees it. And he doesn’t say a word about it, either. He respects her privacy. The whole “elephant in the living room” thing is hard for a modern American to comprehend, especially when we’re talking – or not talking about – a life-threatening disease.

Anna grew up in an upper-class neighborhood among Englishmen who didn’t accept her because of her black skin. In New York, she doesn’t quite belong either, being from a very different culture and lineage than most Afro-Americans, with her Amerindian, European, African, Indian and Chinese blood. And the influences of the New York culture over time make her feel even more alien when she goes home to the Caribbean to visit.

Beatrice fights against social mores and long-held Victorian tradition in order to accept help for her cancer. Still, she can’t bring herself to travel to the States to better medical facilities and doctors because  blacks are still second class citizens there.

Anna’s insecurities come through as she analyzes her mother’s every word and gesture for hidden meaning. And hidden meanings abound, but are not outnumbered by her mother’s overt manipulations and judgments. Anna’s extremely convincing inner dialog felt like something beyond truth, more raw and intimate.

Nunez draws on her recollections and experiences from growing up in Trinidad to weave a sensual sense of place throughout the novel. When I read Daphne DuMaurier, I wanted to go to Cornwall, when I read Eugenia Price’s St. Simons Trilogy I wanted to visit St. Simons, Georgia. Now Nunez has infused me with longing to see the Caribbean and get to know its people that have such a rich and tumultuous history.

I highly recommend Anna In-Between, especially to women, because Nunez captures the mother-daughter dynamic so well. And to anyone who struggles with finding where they belong.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Akashic Books (September 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AMAZON PAGE:	Anna In-Between
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Allbc page on Elizabeth Nunez Akashic Books page on Anna In-Between
EXTRAS:	MostlyFiction.com interview with Elizabeth Nunez
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Caribbean authors:Edwidge Danticat Nalo Hopkinson Donna Hemans Jamaica Kincaid

Bibliography:

• Beyond the Limbo Silence 1998)
• Bruised Hisbiscus (2000)
• Discretion (2002)
• Grace (2003)
• Prospero’s Daughter (2006)
• Anna In-Between (September 2009)

Other:

• Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad (2005)

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“Though he’d since tried to notice as little as possible that could lead to arrests, paperwork or acclaim, it was no use. He saw more than ever. He intercepted buds on Halverstick, then caught a smuggler on Judson Lake and yet another in downtown Sumas. And the increased patrols didn’t seem to discourage the illegals he kept finding in fields and forests or sardined into muffler-dragging vans [. . . ] Two Iranians lectured him in broken English about the Bill of Rights, followed by an indignant Sri Lankan couple who scolded him for ruining their honeymoon. Brandon stepped into the woods to pee later that night and nine Venezuelans surrendered.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (NOV 13, 2009)

In Jim Lynch’s critically-acclaimed first novel, The Highest Tide, Miles, a thirteen-year old boy with a knack for being in the right place at the right time, discovers a giant squid on the shores of Puget Sound as it gasps its last breath. What follows is a miracle of nature as oceanic oddities and coincidences seem drawn to the teenage boy. Now, with his second novel, Border Songs, also set in the Pacific Northwest but inland, Lynch has created another story concerned as much with unexplained coincidences and natural beauty as it is with its quirky characters.  Like Miles, central character Brandon becomes the unwitting magnet for publicity, used by those in power for their own agenda. As a newly trained border agent, Brandon stumbles onto one illegal activity after another, making huge arrests that suggest to others that a broader conspiracy must be at work. Brandon knows otherwise. He uncovers these border crimes by serendipity since his real attention has been directed toward counting the number of bird species or constructing a sculpture of natural materials – twigs, leaves, stones, whatever is at hand.

The son of a failing dairyman and a woman struggling with early Alzheimer’s disease, Brandon is strange even by the standards of his off-beat neighbors living in the sparsely populated and barely defined border between the United States and Canada. He is a hulking, towering, bumbling man who suffers from severe dyslexia, both visually and orally, and when excited, he becomes physically ill. He harbors a boyish innocence and awkwardness that makes him endearing, although his acquaintances rarely see him that way:

“People talked about Brandon the way they discussed earthquakes, eclipses and other phenomena. His size, his ‘art,’ and the bizarre things he said and did always generated chatter about Super Freak or Big Bird or whatever they were calling him at the time.”

But the locals themselves are hardly mainstream. Madeline, with whom Brandon is infatuated, is haunted by the freak accident death of her mother, the type-A condescension of her sister, and a marijuana and drinking habit that leaves her vulnerable. Her father Wayne, a former professor suffering from multiple sclerosis (and using marijuana for medicinal reasons, legal on his Canadian side of the border) tries to duplicate inventions such as Edison’s light bulb and Franklin’s kite flying discovery of electricity from scratch. Brandon’s father Norm seems to know nothing about keeping a healthy herd of dairy cows and would rather be in his barn working on his gleaming, half-finished boat. Fellow border agent and single mother Dionne is desperate for sex. And Sophie, the mysterious masseuse and supposed author, snaps photographs of them all, seemingly everywhere. These characters are ordinary compared to the intensely intuitive Brandon, a man who rarely understands the implication of his discoveries until after his fellow agents arrive. If Brandon had his way, he would be alone with nature, the bird song as his music and plant debris as his visual art.

The two roads that run parallel to each other, one American (Boundary Road) and one Canadian (Zero Avenue), flank the ditch, “one of the few landmarks along the nearly invisible boundary that cleared the Cascades and fell west through lush hills that blurred the line no matter how aggressively it was chainsawed and weed-whacked.” This ditch divides not only countries but also neighbors and politics. The surrounding farmland and woods harbor unusual birds: eagles “fixed to limbs and stoic as gargoyles,” “the murderous screen of a barn owl,” Caspian terns “held together by sound and faith,” and barn swallows with voices “lost in a mad, simultaneous flutter of wings.” All this conjures up a setting that is flush with wildlife but desolate for humans. The characters seems as isolated as pioneers, forgotten on the frontier by their more urban counterparts until the media gets whiff of a possible frontline for the war on terrorism and drugs. Only then are they deemed worthy of attention. Brandon, once the area’s pariah, has become a hero.

Lynch’s stunning prose creates the “border song” of the novel’s geography, an operatic ode to the land and its inhabitants. Although a quiet story of intuition and odd heroics, the emotions in it resonate powerfully, creating a scrapbook for the reader that perhaps is not all that different from what Sophie creates as she documents Brandon’s genius.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 46 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf; First Edition edition (June 16, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AMAZON PAGE:	Border Songs
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jm Lynch
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of The Highest Tide

Bibliography:

• The Highest Tide (September 2005)
• Border Songs (June 2009)

“Drug dramas. And manic-depression. Hard to know which roller coaster you’re riding.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (NOV 11, 2009)

Ginnah Howard’s Night Navigation is a powerful and unflinching novel about drug addiction and mental illness. It is beautifully written in a terse and spare style that is both rich and evocative. The narrative reminded me of the music of Erik Satie or the pizzicato violin in the andante movement of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. The writing is that beautiful and melodic. It made me rise out of myself into the world that Ms. Howard has created.

The story takes place in a one year time period in upstate New York. Del is a retired high school teacher and artist. She is the mother of 37 year-old Mark who has been diagnosed as a MICA, a dually diagnosed “mentally ill chemical abuser.” Mark is manic depressive and a heroin addict. He has been in and out of rehab and various psychiatric hospitals. As the book begins, Mark is once again wanting to go to detox and then rehab in a therapeutic community. Like a fugue, the chapters switch back and forth between Del and Mark, sharing their thoughts, feelings and actions. They are superimposed yet also separate.

Mark is on a lot of psychotropic medications including Zyprexa (an antipsychotic), neurontin (a mood stabilizer), and an antidepressant. He talks about the various side effects of the medications: weight gain, fuzzy tongue, tardive dyskinesia, an incipient manic episode. He has a history of stealing in order to get money for drugs. He once took Del’s car, worth $8,000 and sold it for $700. He has drug dealers after him trying to get the money that he owes them. When the novel begins, Mark is living with Del, a living situation that is not working out for her. She is terrified every time the phone rings – that it will be one of Mark’s dealers, that someone will be calling to tell her about a crisis, or that she will be notified that Mark is dead. Del is an enabler and is working hard to let go of Mark, to not buy into his life issues. “When the phone rings, think marsupial: once he gets too big for the pouch, out you go.” She is torn between being “Mama Marsupial” and being “Mama Bear.” What makes it so difficult for Del to let go of Mark is that her husband, Lee, committed suicide when her sons were boys. Mark’s brother, Aaron, also committed suicide seven years ago. Del is terrified that she will lose Mark, too.

There is a lot about twelve-step programs in this book and the author is very familiar with them. She writes about AA, NA and Al-Anon with a knowledge that is authentic and wise. When Del is thinking about the family program at Mark’s rehab center, in which family “are integrated into the clinical process as thoroughly as possible on an encouraged voluntary basis,” her response is “As thoroughly as possible . . .on an encouraged voluntary basis. Between these carefully edited phrases, this chorus: Night after night we expected to find out this person was dead. Hundreds of promises have been broken. You want us to open up, on an encouraged voluntary basis, to hope again, as thoroughly as possible to feel that pain once more.” For Del, every day is a challenge. She tries to avoid the telephone, she has to walk past the cabin where Aaron was living when he took his life. “What happens in her gut when the phone rings and whether she can look up this hill or not are the two barometers of how she’s really feeling.”

Del’s life is paved with crisis after crisis. Mark wants everything done right away, yesterday if possible. Del jumps to accommodate Mark’s requests and demands. This makes her relationship with her long-time partner, Richard, rocky. He wants her to have clearer boundaries and limits with Mark. He doesn’t really get the pressure and fear that Del is living under. Ms. Howard is carefully non-judgmental about Del and Mark, presenting their situations and outcomes in a compassionate and straight-forward way. Even when Del repeats the same errors in judgment that allow her to be used by Mark, there is no condescension or sense of “I told you so” in the story. Concomitantly, Mark is not judged when he relapses or acts in a profoundly wrong manner. These are two people who love each other, trying to get through their days, one day at a time – - difficult days that Ms. Howard knows no one but them can truly understand.

It is poignant when Del is sitting in her living room and “She sees she’s pulled the cushion over to rest on her knees. The pillow to shield against a head-on.” For this is the stuff of her life – - head-on collisions with no seat belt. The author understands addicts and addictive thinking, the way that an addict manipulates, is self-centered and loses sight of right and wrong in the desire to get the next fix. She realizes how difficult it is for Mark to try one more stint in rehab, this time in what he calls a “junkie boot camp. Going to tear you down; then build you back up. Mortification and absolution.” Of course Mark isn’t able to cut the mustard in this type of environment but this is not held against him. He is an addict and addicts do what they have to do to get their way, always. As the saying goes in Alcoholics Anonymous, “Fake it till you make it.” It’s all faking, all the time, until real recovery sets in. For Mark, he’s a fledgling at all this and has never had any real time being clean and sober. He’s never made it to true recovery.

Anger is a huge issue for both Del and Mark. They have difficulty discussing Lee or Aaron’s suicide with one another and their anger comes out sideways at one another or turned inward against themselves. One day, while in rehab, Mark is looking in a mirror, “He is the only one left in the bathroom. The face is a death mask. Shifting into Aaron’s face. All his teeth ache. Stuff surging up in front of him that he’s pretty sure isn’t there. Dad in the pole barn, blood all over. Aaron, drifting down. And always the low hum.” The ghosts of Aaron and Lee are always in the background of Mark and Del’s lives. They live in despair, fear, if only’s, what ifs, and quiet desperation. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to be the only two members left of a nuclear family, the only half of that family that has not succumbed to suicide.

Ms. Howard knows mental illness well. She describes the incessant smoking that most manic depressives and schizophrenics need in order to balance their minds. Mark says to himself at one point, “The trembles are back to moderate and transmissions from outer space reduced to occasional.” And this is a fairly good day for him. On bad days he hears click-clacking, humming, and feels like his head might explode. His mouth is like mush and it’s hard to speak. Del hates to see Mark like this and she sees herself as a rescuer even if she can’t be a savior. It is the only action she can live with – - for what would happen to her if Mark took the same route as his brother and father.

One might think this is a depressing book and in some ways it certainly is. However, it is a book about hope and resiliency, about love and coping, and about acceptance and second chances. As Roethke, the poet said, “What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.” With Mark and Del, we have two noble souls struggling to survive. Thriving is still a long way down the road. But neither of them give up. They keep at it, one day at a time. This is a remarkable book in its reality and starkness, in its ability to light the way for two tormented souls. It is a book that kept me up all night reading because I could not put it down.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 34 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (April 14, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Night Navigation
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ginnah Howard
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	A Cure For Night by Justin Peacock Blame by Michelle Huneven Somethings that Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohr

Bibliography:

• Night Navigation (April 2009)

“She nodded and laughed again and squeezed his hand. He’d told her everything and she hadn’t heard a word. He took a breath and tried to start from the beginning but he didn’t know where the beginning was. He couldn’t think of it. Violet was the beginning but Violet didn’t matter to him now. Neither did Dr. Fleisig. Neither did the school. He tried his best to have a single thought. He closed his mouth and pushed his teeth together. The beginning had actually happened just that morning. Nothing else had any consequence or weight. On November 11 he had run to catch a train.

Book Review:

Reviewed by Bonnie Brody (NOV 11, 2009)

This is a brilliant book, a masterpiece. Because Lowboy has the ability to bring about such intense emotional reactions and is so riveting, writing an adequate review of it is very difficult. It is like trying to describe why I get goose bumps when I listen to my favorite symphony played by the greatest orchestra or trying to describe why I felt the way I did when I first saw Botticelli’s paintings at the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy.

This book is about a schizophrenic adolescent named Lowboy. Lowboy likes to ride the subways of New York. He has recently been released from a psychiatric facility where he was detained for eighteen months after pushing his girlfriend onto the subway tracks. Today he has run away from his escorts, whom he calls, “Skull and Bones, his state-appointed enemies.” His mother and the police are searching for him. The chapters alternate between ones that are in Lowboy’s voice and others that are from the vantage point of the detective, Ali Lateef, and Lowboy’s mother, Yda, who are searching for Lowboy.

In the chapters that are in Lowboy’s voice, we are taken into the world of a schizophrenic. As a clinical social worker who has worked extensively with the seriously and chronically mentally ill, I have never read a book that catches so lyrically, poetically, and tragically the true sense of what it is to be a paranoid schizophrenic. John Wray gets it. He paints a picture with his words, creating a sensibility and truth about this disease.

As Lowboy says, “The order of the world is not my order.” He says this while trying to buy some cupcakes and does not know how to convey the number of cupcakes he wants, what kind he wants, or how to navigate the issue of cost. The situation ends up with Lowboy being asked to leave the store.

I found the following passage the most moving description of Lowboy’s Illness from his own perceptions. It is a passage from a letter to his mother.

“I was sitting in the Smoking Room reading the Wall Street Journal when I saw the Schoolmaster aka Dr. Fleisig sliding sideways down the hall. Fleisig is a friendly Mediterranean man he looks a little bit like Jacques Cousteau. But this time I jumped up and dropped my cigarette and ran to the door. Because I knew by then it wasn’t really Fleisig. He was changing his haircut every 6 or 7 steps & playing temperature games inside his body. & at night he used my hands to eat with.”

The chapters from the detective’s and Lowboy’s mother’s perspectives help give the reader additional information about Lowboys childhood, his first psychotic break, and the nature of his symptoms. His mother’s grief and fear for his well-being are palpable. The detective is kindly and, over time, appears to be smitten with Lowboy’s mother.

The story line is riveting. Lowboy is seeking his girlfriend who he is not supposed to see. He is also very worried about global warming. As he rides the subway lines we are privy to his inner thoughts, hallucinations and delusions. Mr. Wray has done his research about schizophrenia very thoroughly. Nothing seems artificial or postured.

This is a remarkable book, one that I believe has staying power over time and will be read for decades to come. It is rare that I read a book that thrills me. This one has. I applaud Mr. Wray and am grateful that I had the opportunity to read this
book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 32 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 3, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Lowboy
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on John Wray
EXTRAS:	FSG page on Lowboy Gothamist interview with John Wray
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Also see Poornima Apte’s review of Lowboy and Mary Whipple’s review

Bibliography:

• The Right Hand of Sleep (2001)
• Canaan’s Tongue (2005)
• Lowboy (March 2009)

“In retrospect, what mattered most to [Sullenberger’s] ultimate success was not what he did, but what he chose not to do, his shedding of distractions, the concentration that he brought to the crisis.”

Book Review:

Review by Mary Whipple (NOV 10, 2009)

William Langewiesche’s analysis of all the factors which contributed to the “Miracle on the Hudson” is a story that matches the events themselves in terms of excitement. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of the Airbus A320 which hit a flock of geese, lost both engines, and landed in the Hudson River with no loss of life on January 15, 2009, has rightly been lauded for his performance and has become a popular hero. But he was not alone in the making of this miracle. The plane itself contributed mightily to the successful outcome and the saving of the lives of all one hundred fifty passengers and European-made Airbus is controlled by computerized systems which can not be over-ridden by pilots as they make split second moves during emergencies. And when two or more emergency moves have to be made simultaneously by a pilot who has only two hands and one head, the plane’s computer makes those moves for him. “This marriage between electrical control circuits and digital computer [has become known] as fly-by-wire.”

Langewiesche, an award-winning journalist and pilot who has written for both Vanity Fair and The Atlantic (which published his three-part series on the bombing of the World Trade Center, which was later released in book form as American Ground), is at home with his subject, and he has interviewed virtually everyone who could give input into this story, creating a vibrant, lively, and thoughtful analysis of all the individual elements–including luck–which contributed to this happy ending. At the same time, he also analyzes some of the elements which may have led to the accident, including the issue of bird strikes throughout aviation history and why they happen. The section on the bioengineering mistake in which Giant Canada geese (significantly larger than common Canada geese, weighing twelve pounds, instead of eight pounds) were deliberately introduced into the marshlands along the East Coast as a boon for hunting, is a shocking account. The Canada goose population of 200,000 in 1970 has now reached over four million in 2009, and they are protected by the Migratory Bird Protection Act.

In his attempt to give the complete picture, he also considers the financial problems of the airlines, especially US Airways, the power of the pilots’ unions (which resent having their power to make decisions in the cockpit curtailed in favor of the computers on this superplane), the comfortable relationship between the NTSB , the airlines, and the unions, and the competition between Airbus and Boeing. Airbus now has taken about half the global commercial airplane market away from US companies. As he introduces and develops his subject, he includes a number of case studies of accidents, most of which will be familiar to readers, and one of which is the disappearance into the Atlantic of the Air France flight from Brazil to Paris in June, 2009, about which people are still asking whether this could have been the first example of a crash BECAUSE the pilots could not override the computer. Without the black boxes, this question may never be answered.

As Langewiesche describes the flight from takeoff to landing in the Hudson a mere five minutes later, he really hits his stride, creating a fast-paced narrative, full of tension and human drama. Co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, who was flying with Sullenberger for the fourth day in a row, receives praise from the author for his performance. A young air traffic controller, Patrick Harten, working fifteen miles from LaGuardia, on Long Island, is also singled out for his complete unflappability and for all the landing options he was able to suggest and discuss with the pilots, at the same time that he was keeping other air traffic from the area and trying not to intrude unnecessarily. The flight attendants, who kept the passengers under control and in position for the water landing are also recognized.

Ultimately, Langewiesche grants enormous credit to Sullenberger for his decisions, including the decision to head for the Hudson when many thought he might have made it to an airport. “Sullenberger made the right decision. No matter what,” Langewiesche says. Sullenberger also made a few moves based on his feel for the plane and his intense concentration during the emergency, despite the fact that these have never been included in any operations manual. One of these decisions helped keep the power going when its loss might have been catastrophic. A serious study which nevertheless has moments of humor, Fly by Wire is a thoroughly absorbing account of a great moment in aviation history and the people and the plane which made this moment a “miracle.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 10, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AMAZON PAGE:	Fly By Wire: The Geese, The Glide, and the Miracle on the Hudson
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on William Langewiesche
EXTRAS:	Vanity Fair interview
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other heroes… Defiance by Nechama Tec Zeitoun by David Eggers Saving Sammy by Beth Alison Maloney

Bibliography:

• Cutting for Sign (1994)
• Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight (1998)
• American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center (2002)
• The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (2004)
• The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor (May 2007)
• Fly By Wire: The Geese, The Glide, and the Miracle on the Hudson (November 2009)