Atlantic Monthly Books

The Women's Decameron takes Boccaccio's idea of storytelling in a time of plague, and shifts it to the Soviet Union. Ten women share their experiences. The quality of their stories is uneven, but the composite picture is fascinating. Some of the tales are rude and raunchy: Albina (3.4), working as a call-girl, returns with an American businessman before her KGB minders have had time to vacate his hotel room, and the spies' experience gives a painful new meaning to the phrase "Reds under the bed". These women have to struggle to get by, but their actions sometimes rise to a level of everyday heroism. A few examples: a woman goes back to her drunken, violent husband when he gets cancer, leaving the much nicer man with whom she had hoped to set up house (9.1). A mother dies in prison camp for killing her violent husband with an axe - although in fact it was her son who struck the blow (9.2). A prison camp guard risks his career to let a woman prisoner have one hour's freedom in the countryside (9.6). Well worth reading, this book testifies to the power of Boccaccio's original storytelling formula in his Decameron (set in 1348). The Women's Decameron takes its place beside other modern versions such as Christopher White's The Gay Decameron (1998), and the forthcoming Jane Smiley novel, Ten Days in the Hills (announced for February 2007).

A modern feminine version of Boccaccio's Work.
The author is a very brave challenger.
Her version is a bunch of highly imaginative and very witty tales of 10 women in a hospital.
The tales cover through the clever choice of very diferent characters (engineer, secretary, stewardess, tramp...) all spectra of the woman psyche and of the man/woman relations : first love, assault and rape, seduction and abandonment, unfaithfulness and jealousy, revenge, happiness, generosity, sex encounters ...

They are brilliantly written with a wide range of moods and styles: sensual, vulgar, loving, cruel, sentimental, rude, affectionate, cynical, ironical ..
Every tale is a little pearl by itself and had enough substance to be developed into a novel or a short story.
The jokes are marvellous. To give a few:
How is a woman well clad? When she gets dressed on credit, and undresses for cash.
Don't push that much or are you perhaps a communist?
Communism is the power of the Soviet and the alcoholisation of the country.

The advantage of this book is that you don't have to read it in one go.
It is a tour-de-force. Not to be missed.

This novel is, in fact, as advertised: a modern-day women's Decameron, using this format to make a number of pointed comments about the state of Soviet society as it went into decline. The structure makes the book easy to pick up and put down. There is a deeper continuity within the work as well, as the stories the women tell from day to day, and their reactions to one another, provide nuance to each individual character.

How to categorize this book? Should Voznesenskaya be considered a Soviet writer, or a Russian one? She left what was then the Soviet Union in 1980, and this volume was published in 1985. The author therefore falls into that odd category of writers who are in exile, and further and further from the wellspring of her inspiration. The status of the author doesn't make her work less legitimate, simply harder to place in context.

Verdict: worth reading, but problematic.

This book explores the lives of ten women in the Soviet Union as they share their stories with each other. The stories are at once universal and very specific to that time in history. Each women's personality is beautifully developed as she tells her story.

I read this book in translation from the Russian a few years ago and have been trying to get a hold of my own copy ever since. It is based on the classical Italian "Decameron" but a modern-day Soviet version. In this book, which is fictional, but nonetheless blatantly based on real stories, ten Russian women go into hospital to give birth. Complications arise when a contagious disease begins to spread in the hospital, and so the women are isolated for ten days. During these ten days, in order to while away the boredom of complete quarrantine, they take it in turns to tell stories: a new subject every day. Every day, for ten days, each of the mothers-to-be in the ward tells a short story about something she has experienced. The subjects range from money, to sex, to rape, to secrets, and are a shocking testament to how women were treated in Soviet Russia, and the conditions they had to deal with. You will laugh and you will cry bitterly for them. I just wish this book was back in print - if you are listening, Boston Atlantic Monthly Press, please do something about this!!!!

I just finished "The Wreck of the Medusa," yet I am stuck on a pretty basic question: What is this book about?

"Duh!," you might say. "Look at the cover: It's about the wreck of the sailing ship Medusa in 1816."

Well, yes, it's partly about the wreck, but the book skitters across several other subjects, too. Author Jonathan Miles spends as much time on French politics of the period as he does on the shipwreck. He also includes a biography of the painter Theodore Gericault (who painted "The Raft of the Medusa"). And he spends one section looking at the slave trade, which had nothing to do with the Medusa.

Miles is clearly a thorough researcher, having dug through diaries, old books and newspapers, and other records to put together this book. He carefully describes how the incompetence of the Medusa captain led to its wreck off the African coast, and he details the horrific ordeals - including cannibalism - of those who had to abandon ship.

But by the middle of the book, the wreck and the survivors' ordeals are over, and the book seems adrift for the rest. There's too many characters that come and go briefly, and too many shifts in direction. "The Wreck of the Medusa" needs some focus.

After reading this book, the Stern Librarian found it necessary to amend her Amazon List of "books to keep you on the sea after finishing Patrick O'Brian." Overlapping in time with the Aubrey-Maturin series, but telling a French story, this book is a fascinating tale of what results when a Navy rewards political favoritism over skill. The story of the wreck of the Medusa off the coast of Senegal is artfully related, and the author alternates between details of the tragedy and the creation of Gericault's painting of its desperate survivors, which today hangs in the Louvre. Although there is horror to spare in the details of the shipwreck, I was most moved by the story of Gericault's love affair with his uncle's wife and of the unhappy fate of their abandoned child. The Stern Librarian (I am the daughter of a daughter of a sailor).

One of the many masterpieces within the Louvre is a huge and grim painting of a group of men abandoned on a raft in the middle of the sea, each in a pose of despair, or of the sliver of hope that a ship, seen as a tiny smudge on the ocean's horizon, might notice them. The famous painting, _The Raft of the Medusa_, is an 1819 version of what moviegoers now know as a disaster picture. It is the most famous artifact inspired by a real incident that had occurred three years before, the result of a shipwreck that had caught the imagination of the people of France and was a scandal that affected the restoration government of the time. The stories of the sailors, raft, and survivors have been told before, but Jonathan Miles in _The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century_ (Atlantic Monthly Press) has incorporated them into a larger tale of politics, painting, and propaganda. The disaster at sea is inherently fascinating, but it is finished in the first half of the book, the many strands of which Miles has made just as interesting and vital, if not so macabre.

The ship _Medusa_ was a French frigate in a convoy bound for the French colony Senegal, carrying Governor Schmaltz, the new leader for the colony and captained by Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, was an old Royalist who was given his commission by the new king Louis XVIII, who with Napoleon in exile was trying to produce a unifying government. De Chaumareys was an incompetent seaman, and the _Medusa_ ran aground on bank west of the Sahara. To handle those fleeing the wreck who could not fit into the boats, the crew made a huge raft, lashing together spars and planks, and giving it a mast and sail. 147 people crowded on board the raft, which was tied to the ship's boats and was supposed to be towed by them as the whole conglomeration made for land. The raft was waterlogged and it held the boats back, so the governor gave the order that the tow rope be cut. For two appalling weeks, the diminishing crew experienced murders, suicides, delirium, hallucinations, mutiny, and cannibalism. The raft was eventually found by another ship in the _Medusa_'s convoy, with only fifteen men barely alive. One of the survivors was Alexandre Corréard, an engineer who went on to co-write the outstanding account of the disaster, along with political blaming for it. One of those susceptible to the romantic horror and the political barbs of the book was Théodore Géricault, who was inspired by the horrors of Corréard's story to depict the lamentable raft and its final crew. To help with research for the painting, he gathered body parts from the nearby morgue, and kept them within his studio. Corréard would come to the study and be unfazed by the stench and the gore, as it was a commemoration of an episode he had actually lived. Géricault painted his new friend into a key role in the painting, and among his other (living) models was also his friend Eugene Delacroix, who could not endure the body parts in the studio with Corréard's detachment.

Géricault produced a romantic, horrifying painting which was not a journalistic depiction of the actual events but an artistic exaggeration of them in many ways. Miles points out that the bodies are of classic musculature, not wasted away. There are too many of them in the picture, and the raft is too small. There are three black Africans in the painting, one given pride of place at a pinnacle as he tries to wave down the distant ship. Actually, only one black man was aboard; Miles examines the French attitude toward slavery at the time, and Géricault's use of these figures to make a statement upon it. The painting, completed in 1819 made Géricault's name, although not immediately. Critics objected, among other things, to its almost monochromatic use of sickly browns and greens. When it was viewed in London it caused a sensation, but it failed to sell. It was rolled up for storage, and the disappointed Géricault lived on only three more years, dying at age 32. He was emaciated and crippled by tuberculosis, and by debt and disappointment. His morbid fascination with his subject and his macabre way of producing his masterwork could almost be said to have made him yet another victim of the shipwreck. Miles's retelling of the story of the wreck and the abandoned raft is full of grisly thrills, but his account of its effects on Géricault and his art is of heart-wrenching humanity.

Anyone who has studied art history is probably already familiar with Gericault's famous painting of the Medusa. I was first introduced to the painting in high school and while I remembered that it was inspired by a true and politically important incident, I didn't really know much beyond that. This book explains the event in great detail, but in a way that is very readable and not at all tedious. It also provides an overview of Gericault's life, his experience of creating the painting and public reactions to it. So really, you get a lot out of this book: naval history, 19th century French political history, art history and it has enough depictions of humanity at its worst that one might even classify it as having "true crime" elements. Highly recommended.

I had the impression to step into the very fabric in the canvas of Gericault's celebrated masterpiece, knowing personally each of the painting's characters. Mile's storytelling is so vivid, down to the last historical detail, that I soon forgot Medusa is not a novel. Compelling, hypnotic, fascinating.

While I enjoyed reading this book, I was continually confused by it. I am one of a few Americans who lived in Burma for several years during the same time period. I found many of the author's descriptions compelling, yet rather sensationalistic. Was she telling a fictional story or a factual one about the tribes and political causes of Burma? Unfortunately, I came away disappointed by this confusion. However, for a reader who has has spent little or no time in Burma, the book would definitely be an exciting read.

Edith Mirante's travel goals are pretty much similar to mine - see and report honestly, ignore travel hype, live as the locals, learn about political constraints, try to be sensitive to my gigantic country's effect on people in places where there are few American eyes. Are the people I meet in danger? Are they happy? Are they above the level of survival? Are they threatened by officials? For the reader who routinely asks such questions, Edith Mirante is the ideal travel guide. She rewrites the definition of "intrepid." She goes where no Americans are allowed, walking for days on blisters to visit Karen tribespeople, traveling clandestinely in hill country for the chance to meet a famous druglord and understand how the "Myanmar" army thugs have forced hill tribes to grow opium in place of crops. She braves Thai jail in order to push the envelope, sensing the most profound truths may lie just beyond those travel restrictions. They often do. Everywhere she manages to go, she tells us whom she sees, and what she hears. Everything Edith does stems from relationships. Edith brings gifts to her hosts. She is polite. She is properly outraged when she discovers mistreatment of the people she visits. And most of all, she goes the extra distance to return and hold her own American government responsible for mishandling the regional situation to the point of destruction. Most of us will never be able to travel to the places Edith takes us. If we did, there would be still fewer of us who could understand what we found when we got there. Since I read this book a year ago I have been surprised by how often I hear news items about Burma. What I hear often echoes the book. There are the accounts of farmers enslaved by the Burmese government to dig a pipeline for an American oil company - the farmers are now suing the oil company for enslavement in American court. Two young Karen brothers have had their pictures on the cover of a large-circulation American magazine for their desperate attempts to win back their lands and safety from the "Myanmar" army, which demands the complete destruction of all hill tribes. A much-beloved Burmese leader remains under house arrest. And, of course, American citizens are regularly requested to boycott American firms doing business with the brutal Burmese government. Burma may be half a world from the West. But it is no longer sufficient for westerners to rely on ignorance. It may be argued that increased worldwide communication allows us to be compassionate in new ways. We cannot all go to Burma to find out what is happening there. That is why a book like this is so valuable. Edith Mirante has already been there. She has done some of the preliminary footwork for the rest of us.

It took we a while to warm up to Ms. Mirante. As the story unfolds, one has cause to suspect a liberal, bleeding-heart hand wringer. But, this isn't any emotive flutterer afraid to mar her pedicure. This is a jungle-tramping, malaria-be-damned, human rights activist commando.

In the late '80's, Mirante traveled to Thailand to enhance her art career. She soon became aware of the human rights abuses perpertrated in Burma at the hands of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese government army under the control of socialist despot, Ne Win. Putting her art aside, she quickly adopts the cause of the Burmese hill tribes subject to brutal repression and in fear of cultural obliteration. Mirante courageously risks life and limb as she illegally moves among the Burmese tribes recording their stories for disbursal to the outside world. Undaunted, intrepid, unfailingly committed, Mirante catalogs the abuses of Ne Win, offers hope and assistance to the refugees, and battles valiantly to make their story known.

Though she casts some political aspersions stateside that she fails to adequately defend, Mirante manages to write this story without recourse to the shrill and idle finger pointing one might typically uncover in such a book. In fact, any doubts of this woman's admirable pragmatism are shattered when she admits to loathing the song, "We are the World". One is left thinking that she finds the song a piece of overwrought theater blissfully (and, perhaps, all too conveniently) ignorant of life in the human rights trenches.

Edith T. Mirante is a remarkable woman deserving the esteem of every lover of liberty. She writes a good book and fights a good fight and, for that, I say more power to her.

I read Burmese Looking Glass about one year ago, after I had visited the Thai-Burmese border refugeee camps. I wish I had read it beforehand! This is an immensely informative narrative covering many aspects of the complicated and tragic situation in Burma, from underground pro-Democracy activists to drug lords to jungle warfare and women warriors. Its somewhere between political intrugue, war journalism, and travelogue. Much of what she reports is consistent with what I have learned from Burmese students in exile and pro-democray activists in the US and Thailand. I admire her chutzpah and honesty in painting this portrait of a horrendous and confusing situation as well as of herself. I found it totally readable, exciting, and inspiring.

Edith Mirante's travel goals are pretty much similar to mine - see and report honestly, ignore travel hype, live as the locals, learn about political constraints, try to be sensitive to my gigantic country's effect on people in places where there are few American eyes. Are the people I meet in danger? Are they happy? Are they above the level of survival? Are they threatened by officials? For the reader who routinely asks such questions, Edith Mirante is the ideal travel guide. She rewrites the definition of "intrepid." She goes where no Americans are allowed, walking for days on blisters to visit Karen tribespeople, traveling clandestinely in hill country for the chance to meet a famous druglord and understand how the "Myanmar" army thugs have forced hill tribes to grow opium in place of crops. She braves Thai jail in order to push the envelope, sensing the most profound truths may lie just beyond those travel restrictions. They often do. Everywhere she manages to go, she tells us whom she sees, and what she hears. Everything Edith does stems from relationships. Edith brings gifts to her hosts. She is polite. She is properly outraged when she discovers mistreatment of the people she visits. And most of all, she goes the extra distance to return and hold her own American government responsible for mishandling the regional situation to the point of destruction. Most of us will never be able to travel to the places Edith takes us. If we did, there would be still fewer of us who could understand what we found when we got there. Since I read this book a year ago I have been surprised by how often I hear news items about Burma. What I hear often echoes the book. There are the accounts of farmers enslaved by the Burmese government to dig a pipeline for an American oil company - the farmers are now suing the oil company for enslavement in American court. Two young Karen brothers have had their pictures on the cover of a large-circulation American magazine for their desperate attempts to win back their lands and safety from the "Myanmar" army, which demands the complete destruction of all hill tribes. A much-beloved Burmese leader remains under house arrest. And, of course, American citizens are regularly requested to boycott American firms doing business with the brutal Burmese government. Burma may be half a world from the West. But it is no longer sufficient for westerners to rely on ignorance. It may be argued that increased worldwide communication allows us to be compassionate in new ways. We cannot all go to Burma to find out what is happening there. That is why a book like this is so valuable. Edith Mirante has already been there. She has done some of the preliminary footwork for the rest of us.

brand new book for a great price

a most excellent book
my husband is enjoying

"The Everlasting Stream" is a tale about male relationships, about self discovery and about hunting that does justice to all three subjects. While many books use one story as a vessel to carry another, this develops all three stories simultaneously and completely.

Author Walt Harrington portrays himself as a snobby Washington Post reporter who finds himself tramping around Kentucky fields, shooting rabbits with his father-in-law's hunting buddies to prove he is not above them.

Through the Thanksgiving hunts, Harrington comes to respect the men. He comes to understand himself and to wonder how he so misplaced himself. He grows up with his son and reconsiders his relationship with his late father. Through it all, he thinks deeply about the experience of hunting, turning inside out his initial revulsion to it. In the end, the hunts lead him to make a profound change in his life.

Harrington finds answers, real-life answers, and not the clear-cut, no-regrets answers of cardboard stories.

As Harrington re-evaluates his life, male friendships and hunting, you will, too. It's a journey worth taking, and Harrington is an engaging guide.

The Everlasting Stream, by Walt Harrington, is a hunting book that isn't a book about hunting. I had read a brief review about this book being a good addition to the pro-hunting literature. Well, it was, in a sense. Harrington is a fine writer, and most pro-hunting books tend to focus on the charismatic megafauna like deer and elk. Harrington's focus is on the common and ordinary, the prolific cottontail. No trophy hunting here; this is all about hunting for meat.

What does Harrington say in defense of hunting?

"Animals bleed. Live with it" (p. 146).

"It doesn't matter to a rabbit what kills him - fever, flukes, worms, weather, hawks, or me. The rabbit is dead" (p. 184).

"Killing an animal doesn't deaden the human conscience; it enlivens it" (p. 184).

"Hunting isn't golf or tennis, which demand only technical mastery. Hunting isn't merely an exercise in male bonding, as so many believe. Hunting has moral gravitas" (p. 185).

"It is people who enjoy the fruits of the kill without feeling the ominous responsibility of the killing who are morally delinquent" (p. 186).

"I'm not supposed to hunt without guilt. I'm supposed to hunt despite the guilt" (p. 187).

"Long ago, a woman at my table said to me, 'I can't believe you killed those little bunnies.' I now know what I should have said in response. 'I can't believe you ate those little bunnies without killing one'" (p. 189).


Harrington isn't perfect. He confesses a time when "I fire, and the rabbit tumbles, heels over head. When I reach down, the rabbit suddenly kicks his hind legs violently and drubs my hand twice before I can pull away... I use the butt of my gun like a deadfall and club the rabbit's head. After I do, his left eye dangles from its socket. I take out my knife that I will give to Matt at Christmas, slice the eye free, and put the rabbit in my bag" (p. 214).

I certainly hope he removed the shells from his shotgun before using it as a club. And although Harrington did not appear to be apologetic for his act, there is a line between killing an animal and torturing it. It is this line that society scrutinizes. He hints at its existence with his "It doesn't matter to a rabbit what kills him..." comment; however, it does matter to society, and I would say it should matter to the hunter as well.

With this said, this book is much, much more than a book about hunting. Harrington explores issues of manhood (and boyhood), parenting, memories, and livelihoods. He discusses race relations (Harrington's hunting buddies are black while he is white), politics, friends, and folklore. He reflects on his passions, and eventually makes some drastic, life-altering decisions.

All in 217 pages. The subtitle says it all: The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family.

Harrington's father repeatedly said to him, "Everything's beautiful if you look at it right." I'd say this IS the theme of the book.

If you are not a hunter, keep reading through the hunting scenes. Harrington keeps springing new topics and ideas upon the reader.

There is something here for everyone.

A thoughtful, beautifully written, almost poetic meditation on hunting, tradition, friendship, nature and human nature. It is ostensibly about rabbit hunting, but that is not where this book's meaning lies nor where the heart of its story is. Its story and meaning lie with the people, and Harrington writes in a voice so personal that you feel you know him and his family and friends. This is not a book for the PETA crowd, or for those who call rabbits "bunnies." If you've ever hunted, or if you understand the true nature of Nature, you'll enjoy The Everlasting Stream. (Note: This review has been written by a woman who, although she does not hunt, has shot the occasional rabbit when its depredations in her garden have become intolerable and the Hav-a-Hart trap proved ineffectual.)

Having married an African-American woman, journalist Walt Harrington found himself expected to maintain the family traditions by going rabbit hunting with his father-in-law, and his friends, every Thanksgiving. At first, Walt looked down on these course, back-country men as throwbacks to an earlier, more primitive way of life. With time, though, he came to realize that these men shared a different, stronger bond than he had ever known. Unconsciously, they showed him what being a man could be all about, and he learned many lessons as he (and later him and his son) hunted rabbits in the hills of Kentucky.

This book came as quite a surprise to me. I tripped across it by accident, and am quite glad that I did. It's written in a stream-of-consciousness style, which allows the author to skip forward and backward through time, showing his development throughout. Indeed, if you are interested in men's books (such as those by Robert Bly), then I highly recommend that you get this one. It is a fascinating look at life and being a man.

valdene's style is just right for the hunter and outdorsman in me. i enjoyed valdene's down-to-earth approach to hunting and his expressions of the feelings of a hunte

Hemingway proved that few subjects are better topics then hunting and the outdoors.

Guy De La Valdene does a wonderful job writing about the types of things that make life worthwhile and fullfilling: birds and dogs.

Additionally, he makes the point that much of our wildlife and habitat would not exist if not for the devotion of true outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen.

Brett

I belive that Guy de la Valdene book was written very well. In his book he wrote numerous facts on the Bob White Quial and the management of the species. He wrote on the quial,s habitat, feeding, and average of how many quail would reach maturity. I found that in his book he didn't have harsh feelings against the birds predators. Also that he felt that killing the predators wasn't the answer to the conservation of the Bob White Quail. Although he is a hunter, I belive that he is more of a conservationist. His book would help anyone with the understanding of the Bob White Quail.

I have not read much hunting literature, but was quite impressed with this book. I found that De La Valdene made a good case for hunting, and I found his conservation-minded views to be very enlightening. The book covers as many aspects of the sport as possible, including De La Valdene's love for dogs and even a certain love for other predators of quail. The writing is not the best that I have read, but his passion for the sport is such that it transcends any writing difficulties. A beautiful book.

This is a remarkable book. Admittedly my vice is quail hunting, but this book is that and much, much more. It demonstrates an insight into the minds of people. Its language can be a bit rough but only in the way people speak. To anybody who has a love for the outdoors, nay, civilization, this is highly recommended. Its near literature.

I loved this book, I am originally from Detroit, and I found this to be a very, well written book, the author obviously loves Detroit and does a credible job of describing Detorit in the 1970's.

This is my first exposure to Jon Jackson's Sergeant Mulheisen mysteries, so the reader will have to forgive me if I have missed any of the continuity. I was attracted to the book because I am a long time Detroit area resident, and I wanted to see what a Jackson had done with familiar turf. I anticipated the hard-boiled nature of the story, but was surprise (pleasantly) by Jackson's penchant for characters that at tough, but have some extra bit of intelligence or skill. They don't always shoot at each other; sometimes they do a jazz solo instead.

'Man with an Axe' is, on one level, the ultimate Jimmy Hoffa story. Hoffa's rise to power and his complete and mysterious disappearance are the quintessential Detroit story. The stuff of which urban legends are made. Jackson does a creditable job or creating the legend anew, told from the view point of Mulheisen's old partner, Grootka. The story is in layers, first the tale of Hoffa, then the tale of Grootka himself, and finally Mulheisen's own story in present day Detroit. Each tale contains its share of things larger than life; and all seem orchestrated posthumously by Grootka's ghost.

The story spans many of Detroit's subcultures, from Mafia to up-scale black. There is a persistent jazz theme that runs through it, and, in many cases, the rhythms of improvisation unfold in the text. It is tempting for a reviewer to overuse the jazz metaphor, for it is inescapable. Mulheisen's task at hand is to discover why there has been a sudden increase in curiosity about Hoffa's death. To do that he must discover what really happened in the first place. Hoffa's story starts out with a chance meeting with a talented saxophone player and ends in a cabin up north. But, Grootka realized that it wouldn't end there and laid out a plan that will bring it to closure years later. If Fang Mulheisen can get far enough into Grootka's head to figure it out without getting shot himself.

I found the characters interesting and whimsical, from gangsters to jazzmen. To be honest, the story has many echoes of Detroit as it is and was, but Mulheisen's town is still a city of the imagination rather than reality. I don't think that is a flaw, for this Detroit is far more interesting than the one in which I work. Jackson gives it a spooky glamour that is hard to pin down. In evidence is the skill of a sharp storyteller who deserves far more critical notice than he has gotten. My feeling is that I would have benefited from reading a few stories from earlier in the series, simply for more familiarity with the characters. Otherwise, it stands quite well on its own.

"Max With An Axe" is Mr. Jackson's 7th "Fang" Mulheisen's novel. The story is soaked with music and is pure Detroit. As a first-time reader of Mr. Jackson with no knowledge of Detroit and not near as much jazz intelligence as I thought I had; I felt very much the latecomer to the party. This series is one that definitely should be read in order. However, this may require some perseverance because many of the earlier books are out of print. The endeavor would be worthwhile because Mr. Jackson is a writer with a difference. He has a smoky, almost opaque flavor that is very addictive.

The story has a good hook, i.e., "what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa?" The tale is very plausible; one that getting there is half the fun. The characters are indelible, not a hero in the bunch. "Fang" so-called because of his wolverine smile (?) is an edgy cop, always faintly dissatisfied with himself. He'd like to be totally stone (he loves his nickname), yet be seen as a cultured man. He tries to quickly and subtly convince an educated acquaintance of his equal intellectuality. Unfortunately, subtlety is not Fang's long suit. You need to acquaint yourself quickly with many of the characters, because a goodly number are not going to be around very long. Mr. Jackson doesn't telegraph his punches, and you are as surprised as the victims at their sudden demise. The author has a knack for women characters; he is one of the few who lets them first develop as people, then gradually develops their feminine aspect, first and foremost how it affects themselves and secondly its effect on others. I consider this unusual.

This is an enjoyable multi-layered novel. It requires some thought and insight by the reader and engenders empathy with some fairly low-life types. Recommended.

Think of how much fun that would be. I started reading Jackson when he first started and would catch back up to him every four or five years. So I am catching back up. It was great to see Grootka resurrected and so in character. This novel is a lot of fun with all the Jackson trademarks of character, Detroit life, music, etc. The only other writer in this genre who I think is as good as Jackson in similar ways (DC life and popular culture) is George Pelacanos. If you are new to this author don't start here. It pays to start at the beginning simply because it is more fun that way.

Maybe it's something in the water. Detroit (and its suburbs) has produced some terrific writers in this genre. Elmore Leonard, of course, and the criminally (sorry!) undervalued Loren Estleman and Jon Jackson. I think Jackson's smart, tough, Fang Mulheiser series are great. Man With An Axe (no, he's not referring to a hatchet - read it and you'll understand why) is a worthy addition to the oeuvre, but slightly different in that it is based on factual events - the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Jackson's 'explanation' for Hoffa's disappearance is completely plausible, and Jackson's wonderful writing, grasp of the Detroitness of his locale, and clear knowledge of modern jazz make this a great book. Please don't let this lead you to believe that the book is all atmospherics and phony noirishness. It's a good story, too. And Fang is one of my all-time favorite characters-Jackson makes him so real, true and alive, I expect to see him when I drive down East Jefferson and pass the fifth precinct police station. Do yourself a favor. Get this book. And all the other Mulheisen novels you can find.

The author's use of pop culture references and turns of phrase made getting through (most of) this book a pleasure. I'm highly recommending it with one caveat (hence the missing ratings star).

I listened to it as an unabridged audio book. It starts off slowly, but moves along well once he and Iris hit Thailand. There are two sections near the beginning (one in Hong Kong and one in Bangkok) told in third-person narratives. These have absolutely nothing to do with (advancing) the plot of the story at all; I found myself wishing I were reading the print version so I could skip them.

My favorite line came near the end: "We were trick-or-treaters dressed up as ourselves."

I agree with Steve. I must have recommended this book to 50 friends over the years. I have been to several of these places and the book is more fun. The writing is wry and humorous with a vein of sadness. It ranks right up there with Pico Iyer's "The Lady and the Monk" another great travel book about a year in Kyoto.

Music in every room starts with the simple premise. Can two people, involved in a rocky relationship, make things better by escaping into the bigger world together? Like reading Moby DIck, even guessing at the endgame of this saga is foretold.

The getting there, like all travel stories is what makes this book wonderful. Traveling to all the well know dreamy eyed escapes that Westerners love, each provides a series of dreadful reality checks for the author. Can a couple make things better when they are all stressed? Could removing your jockstrap on a Nepalese trail be worse than the groin injury that caused you to wear a jock in the first place?

Why do dyspeptic people write the funniest stories? The darkness and occasional self lacerating wit makes this a great read. Although I gave it three stars, it is really worth reading.

This book came out just after I had come home from an extended trip to Southeast Asia, doing cheap backpack travel with a boyfriend I wasn't too sure about. I needed this book. It made me laugh about things I didn't know were funny. This is therapy, plus entertainment, plus travel guide. My hope is that a person considering travel will read this, and go anyway.

"Music in Every Room" was on the brochure for a place we stayed in Yogyakarta, Java, where there was a horrible transistor radio up on a flagpole in the middle of the courtyard, and no matter which room you were in, you could not get away from the noise it made.

The tone of gritty realism with just a touch of bitterness, counterpointed by the girlfriend's relentless good cheer, is just funny. It so well mirrored the two of us.

I read this book years ago and was so impressed with it that I gave copies to several friends. This is a travel book with a very personal twist. The author and his girl friend take off around the world with different goals and with a shakey relationship. The author is not at all confident that they will make it, and several times it seems he may be right. But, they do make it back, together, although that is short-lived.

I'm not at all sure why I liked this book so much. It reflects my own view of travel in a lot of ways. Much of what you get in a long trip to foreign lands is relative to what you expect. The title, for example, is an ironic reflection on this often seen advertisment for rooms. In this case it is a portable radio left on full volume all night in the court yard of a very cheap hotel.

I am now planning my own trip around the world with a shakey relationship and I want to re-read this book. It is funny and sad, philosophical and helpful. Highly recommended!

After the page-turning "Birdman" and "The Treatment", I was hugely disappointed in "Ritual". It almost seemed it was written by a different author, in fact. I had hoped this one would have taken up more where the story of Jack, his brother, and relationship with Rebecca seemed to drop off a cliff at the end of "The Treatment", but it just left a huge gap. I found "Ritual" so uninteresting, I was actually nodding off at times. And this is a Mo Hayder book!

This book was gripping - very hard to put down. The characters were interesting and complex. The story moved along quickly without the overly-heavy dread/foreshadowing used in "Pig Island". A very enjoyable read.

Police diver Phobe "Flea" Marley is more at home under water, no matter how murky, than she is on dry land. Her parents were lost in a cave dive in Bushman's Hole in South Africa, they went down and never returned, so perhaps she feels closer to them when she's diving, or maybe she feels guilty, because she didn't go down with her folks that day.

Someone has reported a severed hand in Bristol's floating harbor and Flea goes down looking for it and the rest of the body. There is no body and the hand is fresh. Could the victim still be alive? Not long after the second hand is found, still no body though, so DI Jack Caffrey is put in charge of the case and, like Flea, he's got problems from his past that plague him. When he was younger his brother had been taken, probable molested and murdered.

Meanwhile young, drug taking, male prostitute Mossy has been captured by some very bad people. They take some of his blood to be used in an African ritual and it seems they're going to take his hands next for use in still another.

Ms. Hayder effortlessly flows from not only point of view, but from point of time as well. One minute keeping us in the present with Flea and Caffrey and taking us back a couple days in the following chapter with poor Mossy, bringing us forward again, then back again, a technique that kept me riveted. I knew what was going to happen to Mossy, gruesome as it was, but was held spellbound waiting for it.

Ms. Hayder's characters are as believable as any out there. She puts you in their heads, makes you feel for them. Both Flea and Caffrey are damaged goods and we care about them. That is the mark of a good storyteller, making her people real.

The novel builds toward a climax that I didn't see coming and I was well fooled as to who the bad guy was. I was so sure I was onto it, so sure I had the ending pegged, then the book took a twist I didn't see coming. A first rate police thriller this is. A real edge of your seat nail-biter. A pulse-racing thriller of the first order. I can't praise this book highly enough.

Two characters are critical to the accelerating tempo of this compelling thriller: Sergeant "Flea" Marley of Bristol's Underwater Search Unit and DI Jack Caffrey, newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit, a man who has seen his share of agony and human depravity in his work, recently transferred from London to Bristol. This is an unlikely pair, the jaded, world-weary Caffrey and a twenty-six year old diver still angst-riddled from her parents' accidental diving death in a treacherous pool in the Kalahari Desert. Long enamored of diving, as were her parents, Flea is more at home in the water, even the murky Avon, its penetrating silence one of the few places she feels close to her mother and father. Used to recovering floaters and suicides, Flea is a bit discomfited to discover a hand- no body- just a hand and that neatly severed at the wrist. Surgically removed. When the other half of this pair is unearthed soon after, the search centers around the missing body that matches the hands.

Essentially, Flea's part of the investigation is finished, but she remains fascinated by the implications of this strange discovery, her curiosity exacerbated when she learns of a possible link to the arcane practice of muti, an African method of healing through medical witchcraft using harvested body parts. Such a practice, though outrageous, is not beyond the pale in Bristol's crime and drug-infested underworld, a growing immigrant community and the drug-addicted disenfranchised that wander decaying slums blighted by opportunistic crime. When Caffrey connects the crimes to Mossy, a missing heroin addict, the detective's personal demons are awakened, delivering Jack to the shadowed places in his mind he has so far failed to escape, geographic or no. Coming together in like purpose, Flea and Jack stand on the cusp of a scenario neither of them could have imagined: "You're looking for death".

Not since Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort have I enjoyed such a compelling catalog of depraved human behavior, the evil perpetrated on the addled brains and desperate needs of society's unfortunates. Not content with the nightmarish jungle they enter in search of the missing addict, Hayden incorporates the painful internal dramas both Flea and Caffrey navigate daily, she since her parents' untimely death, he since a family tragedy in his youth. Literally two lost souls, the protagonists are drawn together in a tale that colludes with their own emotional journeys, yet promises respite from their burdens at the end of a traveling circus of horrors. Deeply creepy, Hayden inhabits this genre, the underground warrens of dissolute human behavior the perfect canvas for extraordinary depravity and exploitation. Never having read Mo Hayen until now, this novel exceeded my expectations, a tale littered with the detritus of an indifferent society bled dry by greed. There is ugliness and violence, but it is never gratuitous. Be prepared: the only way out is through nature's grotesquerie. Such a walk on the wild side should always be accompanied by involuntary shudders, if only to remind us that our capacity for outrage remains intact. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

Still grieving the loss of her parents in an accidental drowning two years ago in Boesmansgat (Bushman's Hole) in Africa, police diver Sergeant Phoebe "Flea" Marley recovers from Bristol Harbor, a detached hand; no other body part is found. The hand's fingerprints identify the limb belonged to heroin addict Ian "Mossy" Mallows.

The obvious drug connection is explored by Detective Inspector Jack Caffery; Flea investigates a seemingly loose thread tied to the African witchcraft of muti that she knows from her parents deaths in the Kalahari Desert. It uses body parts as part of the rituals. The two cops soon change their minds about finding a corpse as evidnce begins to point towards the victim being alive. They also conclude that the muti ritual is a sleight of the hand (no pun intended) ploy to cover up even more nefarious plans.

This gritty urban English police procedural hooks the audience from the opening dive until the final confrontation as the two cops uncover a case tied to illegal drug usage and the torture side of muti before realizing there is much more to the investigation. The story line is fast-paced as the readers wonders along side of Caffery and Marley what is going on especially when they feel strongly the victim is breathing. Fans will appreciate this strong investigative thriller (see THE TREATMENT and BIRDMAN; neither read by me) as Mo Hayder provides an enjoyable whodunit that focuses on learning what was done.

Harriet Klausner

A wonderful book- Maddy Blais is a riot. She is a professor at my university, and though I never had the opportunity to take any classes with her, I did get to sit down and talk with her about "Uphill Walkers." She's as funny and insightful in person, and even brought pictures of her family for us to connect faces to the personalities we came to know so well in the book. I grew up in the same little corner of the world, so it's a real treat to read a narrative that incorporates familiar local landmarks. And it's a wonderful, sweet, poignant story about a loving family, with flaws like the rest of us. When I finished, I bought copies for my Mom, Granny, and all of my aunts that have moved away from the area. Must've struck a chord- my Mom just moved back! :)

I commend Madeleine Blais for her effort to record her childhood experiences. She recalls her reaction to her father's untimely death and draws nicely described vignettes of her five siblings and their not-quite-able-to-cope mother. The scenes are linked with mentions of songs, current events and other minutiae of the 50s. Unfortunately these sound like they were gleaned from an almanac to serve as fillers.
She has some pleasant moments in the book, and I was reading it just for that "growing up in the 50s" ambience.
There's nothing much wrong with the biography, but it just seems lacking somehow. The account lacks the elegance of language of Trevanian's The Crazyladies of Pearl Street while their middle class life lacks the drama quotient of The Glass Castle. Maybe if I hadn't read those first, I'd find Uphill Walkers more compelling.
The final part of the book recounts the adult years of the Blais brothers and sisters and it was interesting to read the sad degeneration of her brother into mental illness and the inadequate treatments. Still the saga of his life and hers seemed distant like the events happened to other people and she was just passing the story along.

Madeline Blais,who amazed us with "In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle," a book which is on nearly all high school summer reading lists, does it again with "Uphill Walkers." She turns her reporter's eye inward to examine her family and its vicissitudes. The family's uphill struggle following the death of her father is at the core of this book. Blais does not gloss over the rough spots. Her brother's emotional problems, her mother's struggles to keep the family going following the death of her husband, the constraints of growing up in a small, rural 1950's town are all laid bare. But there is a warmth and charm to the telling of the tale. Blais and her three sisters and two brothers move forward propelled by their ability to see the joy in the details of quotidian life and their ability to lean on each other when the going gets tough (as it does when Raymond, the eldest child, falls prey to his inner deamons). This book also captures the spirit of the family matriarch. Proud to the point of denying anything is wrong with Raymond (when Raymond is discharged from the Navy due to aural hallucinations she tells the other children to tell outsiders Ray got a medical discharge because there was something wrong with his hearing!) yet fiesty enough to make do and raise her brood in an era when "single parents" were unheard of, Blais's mother Maureen comes across as the heroine of this work. Blais again demonstates her considerable writing skills. There are some terrific lines in this book, such as her description of her mother's ability to to take a grain of indignity and massage it into a "pearl of pique." Since a family memoir never truly ends, Blais has included a "where are they now" chapter and an epilogue which describes each sibling's take on how the author has told the story -- what she got right, what she is remembering through her personal filter that differs from their own. These chapters are like the "Bonus Tracks" so popular on movie DVDs; a little extra that helps put the whole into perspective. At a time when memoirs, especially Irish-American memoirs, seem to be flooding the market, "Uphill Walkers" is worth your time and money.

Not a word is wasted in this quietly powerful memoir. I found myself underlining passages I wanted to save and savor. This is a book about the ties that bind us to family -- a refreshing look at normal small town life in the 60's -- about nuns -- mental illness -- powdered milk -- hope and despair. By the time you finish reading, you know this family and are glad you met them. I chanced upon this book quite by accident -- may other readers be so lucky.

I raced through this book, caught up in the momentum of the evocation of a large 50s family...(I too come from a New England family of 6 children, one prematurely dead after a nervous breakdown), and I am only a couple of years younger than the author.)

The book seems to highlight little "spots of time" beautifully. (I wondered if the author had seen that chillingly scary yet rapturously dazzlingly wonderful episode of "Queen for a Day" when a woman wanted a wooden leg, for example).

Look at all the parentheses in this review! That shows, I believe, how taken in a very personal way I was with this book. I wanted more. More details about how the children REALLY thought about their mother. Are any in therapy? More more more about the two youngest daughters....but is that because I have more difficulties understanding my own two youngest siblings?

I usually read novels and poetry and very little non-fiction, so I am not uncomfortable with things omitted although I so often crave more. Oddly (and it was perhaps my mood) I wanted to hear less about Raymond. Yet had he been a "fictional construct" he would have fascinated me more.

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who is in the process of trying to come to terms with an odd childhood, or to anyone who is curious about all of those huge families who grew up in the 1950s. Young adults of today might learn something about the life of their parents from this book: the enforced sharing, the lack of certain kinds of entitlement that we had growing up in the 1950s when the self-esteem movement had not yet commenced.

Blais has some startlingly original and memorable metaphors and figures of speech which made her book aesthetically pleasurable as well.

I would love to read a sequal in which she fills in more details on what it's like to have four sisters who almost feel like quadruplets. She gives us the "facts" on that, but I would love to hear more about the emotional give and take and take and give.

I grew up with James Thurber on the shelf, his cartoons peopled my imagination from my earliest years and as reading skill grew, his stories (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Life and Hard Times, etc.) comprised some of my first grown-up literature. Much later I discovered The New Yorker magazine, the acme of commercial journalism and cartoon art in which this author had once played such a central role. By the time I bumped into the magazine it was well into middle age, James Thurber was gone -- he died in 1961 -- and blindness had ended his drawing career ten years earlier. Prodded by a friend who is a great fan of this author, I have looked him up again in recent years and rediscovered the fresh wit and off-kilter humor of one of our best "casual" writers. (As he would label himself.) THE YEARS WITH ROSS is a biography of Harold W. Ross, the eccentric fanatic who founded and edited The New Yorker for twenty-six years (1925-51). Here is the story of how one dogged genius drew together the best editorial talent of an era and lured many of the best writers of the century to fashion his dream. Ross was capable of utter precision and befuddled oversight. His payment schedule for writers was not only the most niggardly in the magazine business, it was an arcane system of word count, add-ons, deductions, bonuses and penalties which left authors baffled. Meanwhile, Ross' personal secretary siphoned off seventy-one thousand dollars in the late 1930s without his notice. He could agonize for weeks over placement of a comma, dueling with an exalted staff which included the authority himself, E.B. White. Though I found this gem as a second-hand paperback which fell to pieces as I turned each page, I see that it and dozens of Thurber titles are in the local library system, and happily commend it to other New Yorker fans. For a taste of the best of casual writing, check out The Thurber Carnival and other collections from this prince of whimsy. (See also my review of Thurber's ALARMS AND DIVERSIONS, Harper & Brothers, 1957)

This biography (which I am very pleased to see has become a classic!) is wonderful - a fine personal memoir of the New Yorker founder and editor, Harold Ross. It talks about his life at work and otherwise, from the point of view of one of the pillars of that magazine's early life, James Thurber. The writing is funny (of course), vivid and immediate. Together with Letters From the Editor and Genius in Disguise, it will bring you as close as it is possible to get to Ross, who was, in my humble opinion, one hell of a guy. A must-read for all editors, would-be or otherwise.

Thurber got into trouble with his friend and co-New Yorker stalwart E.B. White for writing this portrait of their boss and benefactor. Between them the three wrote most of "The New Yorker" in its crucial first decades. These chapters, first written as a series of articles for "The Atlantic", are a model of the rich, primary source biography. Thurber pulls no punches. His Ross is not "a monument" as he puts it, but a man, worth looking at in all his strange glory. I would rate this book alongside Herndon's Life of Lincoln as one of the best accounts of a man by his contemporary, without the veneer of legend and without an undercurrent of envy. Thurber shared an office with Ross for who knows how many years, learned a lot about writing from him (some examples of his razor fine editing are here to learn from), and did a great deal of his best writing in the man's employ. One of Thurber's best books, and that makes it one of the best books there is. You could do worse than read this book before trying to write a life of anyone who's still living. You could do worse than reading this book before trying to write even one article about the life of somebody alive and real.

From 1927 to 1951, James Thurber, the humorist and cartoonist, worked under Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker. Both men became internationally famous in those years. The New Yorker was a magazine for the sophisticated.

How Ross created this aura is elusive. Thurber tells us about Ross's devotion to the magazine-he was married "for keeps" to his magazine-and about his hairsplitting attention to detail. These good points seem to be heavily outweighed by his bad points. He quit school early. He wasn't much of a reader: his favorite magazine was True Detective and most of the American writers who are now studied (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner) rarely or never appeared in his magazine. He didn't pay much attention to politics. He was a prude. And, as Thurber shows us, he was a poor administrator. He does not seem to be anything out of the ordinary. In fact, Ross often seems like a movie version of a harried editor with the gruff personality and tendency to "bark" orders, but with the heart of gold behind the exterior. He was the unsophisticated editor for the sophisticated.

The secret of his success was the way he could inspire devotion, as exhibited by Thurber writing this book in the first place. The two men's live were bound together for over 20 years. We learn how Thurber met E.B. White five minutes before a meeting with Ross; how White helped Thurber publish his cartoons despite Ross's skepticism; how Ross helped keep Thurber going despite his growing blindness. And, despite the fact that Thurber often makes Ross look foolish, it's a loving portrait. Ross shown at his worst is still endearing.

Because of this, it's probably not the best way to find the whole story about the magazine. In a way, it's just as much about Thurber as it is about Ross. That's not so bad, though.

Thurber tells us a lot about the production of magazine and the writers and cartoonists who appeared there. As mentioned before, Ross didn't publish the big names of the time and because of that, most of the New Yorker contributors of his day are now forgotten. Anecdotes about them and a chapter about Ross's system of payment are the low points of the book.

High points include a chapter about Ross and H.L. Mencken, Wolcott Gibb's guidelines for New Yorker style, and the chapter about Ross's friendship/feud with Alexander Woollcott. The story of Thurber's development as a cartoonist is interesting as well.

The Years With Ross is similar to Mencken's memoir,
Newspaper Days, in that it also is about the production of a periodical and about the lives of literary figures who aren't remembered today. However, where Mencken's style ranged from slightly acidic to vitriolic, Thurber's is gentle, even when he is poking fun. Here he describes Katherine White's visit to Alexander Woollcott: "He met her at the door clad as usual in pajama bottoms and dressing gown, and every now and then during his monologue that day his great bare belly would coyly appear and disappear, like a romping sea lion. "

Thurber has a nice style and is an amusing writer. He is the sort of writer who more often provokes a chuckle in the back of a reader's throat than he does convulsive laughter.

This isn't an indispensable American classic, but certain people will like it. Thurber's light humor can still amuse. And people who still believe in the magazine will want to read this book. Ross said that the New Yorker wanted "superior prose, funny drawings, and sound journalism, without propaganda." Recently a book review in the Nation complained that a journalist's collection of articles taken from the New Yorker was handicapped by the "the flat-footed New Yorker style." It was different in Ross's day.

James Thurber was in his 60s when he wrote THE YEARS WITH ROSS. Harold Ross was the first editor of The New Yorker. He was a homely man, awkward in manner and speech. Ross couldn't write, but he was a fine editor. He lacked a good education and was sadly unaware of most social graces so he was often uncouth, but he created one of the USA's outstanding magazines. The New Yorker is a stalwart of literary sophistication.

Thurber's study is not only an intriguing look at a real character of an editor but the story of how a magnificent magazine grew under the guidance of one of the truly talented editors of all time.