Suicide Books

After the first incredibly well-situated, well-drawn Paddy Meehan mystery, this one seems a bit contrived. What happened to Paddy's lover, the star reporter? Why is she drawn to the loser detective? No matter -- all is resolved in the third installment. It's worth reading this well-done, engaging mystery to get to the last, but the book does seem a little contrived. Fortunately, Mina's writing is so incredible that even contrived is good.

Paddy grows as a journalist, and she develops a support system beyond her family. That's great. As a whole, though, I got the feeling that the story was more a requirement from the publisher than the author's intent.

Whatever - read it; it's excellent in itself, not necessarily as part of the series.

This is an unusual detective novel filled with strengths that may first appear as weaknesses, or challenges to the reader. Let's start with the title. THE DEAD HOUR is the graveyard shift at the Glasgow newspaper where the heroine, Paddy Meehan, works as a very junior reporter following police calls. An apparent domestic dispute in the suburb of Bearsden (pronounced as though two words, "bear's den") becomes a murder by the next morning, and there will be plenty of death to follow. Denise Mina spares the reader little of the gritty grayness of a city at night, and few of the characters in this novel lead happy or prosperous lives. But Glasgow has always been a working-class city, and it was badly hit by the economic policies of the early Thatcher years; Paddy, for example, is the only wage-earner in her lower-class family. By setting the action in 1984, Mina writes a book that is as much a social realist novel as a whodunnit, and the stronger for it.

Readers should also be warned that the author uses a device of interlacing short sections featuring different characters who quickly take on a life of their own, but whose connection to one another emerges only slowly. A large part of Mina's mystery technique consists of simply holding back basic signpost information, for example that so-and-so is someone's brother, someone's lover, someone's boss. But in this way, the reader's dawning comprehension parallels Paddy's own, as she doggedly pursues the truth in hope of expiating her mistake of walking away from the first crime.

One of the great strengths of the book is the Glasgow setting, not in the least romantic, but totally real. This was a special attraction to me as a former resident of the city (who has also done his share in night-time news rooms), and I can recognize it almost down to the city block. But Mina does nothing to translate the slang or the references for non-Glasgow readers; this is as far removed from a tourist book as you could imagine. The detail is in no sense local color, but the grit and stone of which the city is made. Readers may find this a strange and alien place, but they will also know instinctively that it is totally authentic.

But ultimately what takes this book out of the dead hour and brings it to radiant life is the central character herself, Paddy Meehan. Insecure, overweight, barely holding onto her job, she seems an unlikely heroine -- but she is real, she is warm, and she grows on you by the minute. She is actually much better at her job than she thinks. She has a real ability to connect with people, cutting through patronage and evasion with a feisty tongue that throws prudence to the winds but makes people take notice of her. She has a healthy interest in sex when she can get it, though her judgment in this area is not the best. She is much better at making friends and being loyal to them. Denise Mina's readers will surely make friends with Paddy in turn, and will respond with loyalty of their own.

Paddy and Billy were working the night shift. They were driving around, listening to the police radio. In Bearsden, an affluent neighborhood, they observed Officer Dan McGregor as he spoke with the home owner. He and his partner, Tam Gourlay, were called on a complaint of loud noise. Obviously, it was a matter of domestic dispute. The battered woman, attorney Vhari Burnett refused to press charges.
Paddy approached the house while the two men are talking. As Dan walks off Paddy begins to question the man in the doorway, stating she was a journalist with the "Scottish Daily News." She saw Vhari inside with blood streaming from her mouth. There was blood on the man's hand and neck. He quickly thrust money in Paddy's hand and slammed the door. The next day Paddy found out Vhari was tortured and left to die. Mark Thillingly committed suicide. Could the two deaths be connected? Paddy has only a short time to learn the truth.
Denise Mina continues her Paddy Meehan series with The Dead Hour. This novel is dark and violent but sheds much needed light on domestic abuse. Paddy Meehan is a strong character with human flaws. Kate is a fascinating supporting character, Denise Mina's books are rarely light reads; the plot is intricate, filled with twists and turns that hold the reader's interest. Mina is an extremely talented writer capable of adding a touch of humor at just the right moment. Fans of mystery will not want to miss The Dead Hour.
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com

To be fair, I don't usually read crime novels but i was looking for a suspenseful fun read and this book actually had a quote saying "If you don't read crime novels, Denise Mina is your reason to change...A Rembrandt in a genre filled with snapshots". A Rembrandt? Really? This from an author who actually uses the term "mouth-watering figure"? Gag. When I read that line I had a bad feeling, and that was without knowledge that I would be forced to read phrases about "mouth watering men" several more times. Does Paddy want to sleep with the men or eat them? Despite the cosmopolitan magazine level of writing I still had hope, after all another quotation on the cover claimed it is "arguably the most gripping, surprising, and satisfying thriller in many a season". With a strong plot and fun thrills I could overlook the poor writing. Unfortunately this book had neither. There was no suspense because since the story is told from multiple perspectives the reader pretty much knows from the get-go who is doing what and why. It is a series so I also didn't have to worry about the main character dying. Was I supposed to worry about Kate the drug addict who got her sister killed and is so high on cocaine all the time she bumbles around and acts like an idiot? I can cheer for an addict but the author needs to make them at least interesting, if not likeable. With no suspense or surprises this story dragged on consisting of multiple descriptions of dreary rain, poverty, Paddy worrying about being fat, and nasty yet boring people. I finished the book because once i begin books i like to complete them but when Paddy finally tracked down the killer (though we know all along who it is) it was a relief. I was irritated that there was no resolution for anything else in the story. As another reviewer mentioned, nothing is said about if a certain character lives or not and I thought the Burns romance was going to at least have a purpose of going somewhere or being included in the book but it appears its only purpose was to allow the author to write a couple more cosmo mag scenes into the story. The final surprise was simply irritating to me as even that was no surprise and I am certainly not going to read another book by Mina to see what comes of it. The one small salvageable aspect of this book was that Paddy's character is not the typical beautiful slim and long legged sleuth of many crime novels and that there is a decidedly feminist flair to the story with Paddy being braver, more competent and ornery than most of the men around her. However, somehow she still was not engaging enough to make me really interested in her, let alone this dull story.

What a richly textured novel this proved to be. By setting this thriller in 1984, Mina has shown through the working ethic of a young Glasgow woman what it meant to live in Britain during the Thatcher era. Facing possible layoffs after her entire family is dependent on her paycheck, Paddy Mechan does what she can to keep her job, solve a crime, and effect payback for a wrong she perceives herself responsible for. The scenes with her Catholic, lower class Glassgow household are so naturalistic, they call to mind the early BBC work of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. A gripping, thoughtful mature tour-de-force.

Included is the harrowing story of a person hopelessly addicted to cocaine and the fallout therefrom.

I cannot wait to read her other books.

I was very excited to read "Inside Out" based on Terry Trueman's two other books. I very much enjoyed this one as much as the other two, "Cruise Control" and "Stuck In Neutral."

"Inside Out" is the tale of two teenagers, Alan (Frosty) and Joey (Stormy) who attempt to rob the coffee shop where Zach, a sixteen-year-old scizhophrenic is waiting for his mom. The two robbers, who have robbed the store to help their cancerous mother who has very pricey medication, find themselves in trouble when the police arrive before they can escape.

The characters were very well developed, even those who had a miniscule three to four lines, such as the fat suit, a heavier man of the nine hostages. I also enjoyed the dialogue. Silly as some of the things said might have been, it was very enjoyable.

I especially liked the part where Zach, out of his own control, almost accidentally blurts out something to his doctor, who was called to the scene of the hostage situation by Zach, with the policemen possibly able to hear. It was very suspenseful.

Also, when Zach and the robbers are about to make their escape, and the two characters, Dirtbag and Rat are haunting Zach, the description Terry Trueman gives is very eerie and disturbing. Afterwards, it's very, very suspenseful.

"Inside Out" is a very quick read (I finished it today, started it today), but it is a very riveting and very suspensefully humurous tale. It is a definite must-read for those of you who enjoyed Terry Trueman's first books.

My son thought this book was great. He especially enjoyed all the swearing.

Terry Trueman's 117-page YA novel, INSIDE OUT, is a good idea in that it seeks to show young readers what the inside of a teenaged schizophrenic's mind might feel like; the bad idea is the vehicle he chooses to show it with -- an unrealistic hold-up of a coffee shop by 17 and 14-year-old brothers who just want to help their cancer-stricken mother with money.

In the fiction business, the term "suspension of disbelief" has to do with the reader's willingness to go along with the situation provided by the author, to give the fiction writer the benefit of the doubt if he pushes it a bit in the realism department. Trueman probably goes too far here, as the two kids seem too young and too nice to hold up a coffee joint (of all places) to "do good" for their dying mother.

Getting past that, the book is entertaining and interesting for its dialogue and insight into the brain of people tortured by the voices of such mental illnesses as schizophrenia. Zach seems nonplussed by all the gun brandishing of brothers Alan (a.k.a. "Frosty") and Joey (a.k.a. "Stormy). He just doesn't get it. And his steady stream of non sequiturs comes across as funny, only they're (of course) not.

Throughout the hostage situation we get to know the "criminals" a bit. Older brother Alan is a sympathetic sort who shows genuine compassion for Zach. Younger brother Joey is more of a hot-headed type -- the sort of kid who frequently refers to Zach as a "retard" (a term Zach is very familiar with from school).

The novella has its share of profanity, but it only lends a realistic touch to the dialogue in such a situation. High marks go to INSIDE OUT for shedding some light on a medical condition few young readers know about. Like Mark Haddon's more ambitious THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, Trueman's book provides a point of view seldom seen and thus much in need. It's too bad some readers will be put off by the "This could never happen with THESE characters in REAL life..." aspect of the plot.

Trueman does an excellent job showing the world through the eyes of a boy with schizophrenia while simultaneously allowing the reader to see how his illness affects his thinking process and, in turn, his actions. Trueman takes his readers to a place they have never, and hopefully will never, be. It gives the reader a greater sensitivity to mental illness and its effects.

I didn't so much, "enjoy," this book as I truly appreciated it. I wouldn't say it was a fun read, - the tone was to serious for, "fun," - but it is absolutely a good read.

Very good.

It's a quick read, only about a hour. It's fast paced so reluctant teen readers will probably finish it. I think the author did a good job making Zach likable and someone to have sympathy for having this horrible mental illness. I found myself just as interested or more so in Alan, the kindly older thief. I didn't want him tried as an adult since what he really wanted to do is help his mother buy medicine she needed. I wonder if Alan taken away the attention from the main character since Alan in some ways more interesting than Zach.

I purchased this book when it was released and toted it through many moves cross country until I finally read it and realized in it I possessed a hidden treasure.

Goldberry Long captures and distills a vivid heart rending human drama that oozes with the most impeccable sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feels of northern New Mexico. It is an odyssey for the emotions and the senses. It is a human tale of family, identity, longing, and the struggle to make peace with the past and allow it to bless one's present.

Even in the novel's prodigious length I found myself yearning for more of the rest of the story and always felt Goldberry Long was not sharing all she knew. Reading another review I was relieved to learn the published novel is but only part of Long's original manuscript.

Odd as it seems, for this lover of New Mexico, Juniper Tree Burning has become enmeshed in part of who I am. I have internalized her and she lives and breathes within my imagination, emotions and longings as does only a treasured friend.

This is a great story, with a wonderful play with words. It is truely magical reading, and I highly recommend it to any one that loves a good story!

As I began writing my next novel, Goldberry Long inspired me to discover a clear voice for my main character. She cleverly wrote a novel that felt like a fabulous and poignant poem. The flow was rhythmic and soothing. The pain is passionate and gut wrenching, and you want so badly to help Jennie overcome her fears. I fell in love with Sunny and had hoped against all hope that Jennie's own wish of his survival were true. I ached for the resolution of their relationship. Jennie is tough as nails and not easily likeable as a person. But you find yourself being dragged along in her pity party and self destruction. Although this book is heavy and dark, it is one of the best books I've read.

I'm currently reading this novel and finding it very loooong. This is possibly because the main character is so angry and so obnoxious that it's very hard to sympathize or even care what happens to her. In fact, I don't really like any of the characters at this point. I understand what the author is trying to do, and I think she writes really well, but I have read other novels that do this a lot better and more lovingly or at least objectively. I'm considering whether or not to finish the novel.

I saw the main characters personality split in two, love the good side ("Jennie") but hate the cold hearted adult ("Juniper"); she is unlikable but its the typical "love to hate the bad guy" At the same time I could relate to the child "Juniper" feeling very sorry for her and understanding why she turned out to be a cold hearted adult. However she was not the only focus, all the other characters, small and large, were also great mix, complementing her and making her a great villain.
As time goes on you will understand that just like "Juniper" we all have our personality flaws and we must try to correct them to become a better person. "Juniper" does things with out really thinking about how/who it will hurt and not looking at the future consequences they may have, but don't we all? I highly recommend this book if you read a chapter or so a day. At times it is tedious and long. I might have refused to finish it, which would have been a shame. If you take your time with this book, you will laugh and cry. Sticking till the end (even if it is reading it an hour a day) will leave you pleasantly surprised.

The beginning of this book is excellent explaining why the societies of reason will loose in this battle with tribalism. I understand a lot more now. The middle of the book was way too bogged down for me with a history lesson about the Frence Revolution etc etc. I thought it was very boring. The last of the book was interesting but frankly he states we have lost in Iraq which may have been true when the book was written but if indeed the surge keeps working, it seems to undermine many of his main 'assertions'.
An interesting read at least at the beginning.

A real bore. This guy quotes so many people from the beginning of time to the present, that you wonder if he's at all original. In fact, if you took away all his quotable quotes, this book would only be half as long a bore as it is.

The usual drivel about Islamic fanaticism vs. Western thought and the [our] "way of life." This hack takes us back for a history lesson and calls us "actors;" in which will soon grate on your nerves when he does that one too many times. Of course we "Westerners" are just a bunch of ignorant, materialistic "actors" who will never understand what makes the fanatic tick. Like he's the only "enlightened one." Run-of-the-mill "know-it-all" that may put you to sleep just by reading the Preface. I did....fall asleep, that is. Don't waste your time or money on this one.

An important book changes your view of your world. Harris' "The Suicide of Reason" succeeds in doing this and points out serious threats to the survival of Western Civilization from the inside and the outside. Harris shows that the most important message that America's leaders have failed to grasp is that not everybody sees the world the same way. Harris' "rational actors" act to change their culture out of enlightened self interest whereas his "tribal actors" act to preserve their culture. Nominally the conflict is presented as fanatical Islam's tribal actors versus the West's rational actors, but his paradigm applies to groups within the West as well. As you read this book you will recognize "tribal" views in many rabid Democratic Party supporters, Chicago Bear's fans and Intelligent Design advocates, among others. These people have ceased listening to any counter-positions.

The "tribal mind" dominated Earth until The Enlightenment. How did this revolutionary change come to occur? Harris invokes Hobbes, Spinoza, Condorset, Locke, Marx, Huxley, Voltaire and others to show how it took root in the time of the French Revolution and came to fruition in America.

Is it inevitable that the rational actors' democratic ideal will come to dominate the world? It looks like it will be unlikely to survive without a prompt change of direction by the West. Recent western generations have ceased acting in ways to protect their hard won culture. They are now dissipating this monumental asset in the name of political correctness. "Right thinking has replaced real thinking."

Harris' rephrased titular question, "Does reason commit suicide when it blinds itself to the reality and the power of the irrational?", presents the West's primary problem: its leaders live under the delusion that everybody looks at the world the same way. They must consider that different groups have very different perceptions of the world. All problems can't be resolved by win-win positive thinking; inevitably testosterone will enter into the equation. The most rational among us must accept that in the world of the blind the one-eyed man isn't king by divine right.

This is an exceptionally insightful book that deserves to be read by serious people seriously concerned about the survival of their political and cultural traditions into the next generation.

I like this book. This is the kind of practical, popular, political philosophy that once constituted the foundation of our 'republic of letters.' The author wields the editorial flair of an autodidact and a generalist, the kind that is despised by academic philosophy. He flits from Hamas to Hegel, from Churchill to Condorcet, with directness and grace. The reader will be hard-pressed not to learn something interesting along the way.

But this is not the sort of book that will be around in 5, let alone 50 years. The overheated and fearful tone will appeal to paleoconservatives, the readers of Front Page Magazine and "Seth J. Frantzman." More sober audiences may be a bit skeptical of Harris's thesis: that Civilization is in mortal danger because it lacks the will to defend itself.

Harris is nominally in favor of Reason, the Enlightenment and Civilization, but he thinks they are kind of effeminate and ineffectual. Instead, we should look to the law of the jungle and biology. At root, Harris is a postmodernist in the mold of Carl Schmitt. For him, Reason is not a idea with any substance, it is an empty viral meme. And this meme is rapidly losing its habitat in competition with another highly contagious meme - Islam. We owe loyalty to Reason because it is 'our' meme. We owe enmity to Islam because it is 'theirs.' It is tempting to characterize this as a sort of fascism - founded on memetic, rather than genetic, community.

Harris thinks the West needs to sober up and start landing some punches because the barbarians are now at the gates. This means returning to a 'visceral code' (Harris's term) of "us-and-them," and dispensing with all the high-falutin' universalism. Harris thinks people like Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz are essentially fellow-travellers in the foolhardy attempt to engage the rest of the world as human subjects. Instead, liberals and conservatives alike must get hip to the intractable realities of global tribalism.

And here lies the contradiction: to defend liberal rationalism Harris would retreat to Nietzschean nihilism - to him this is a position of strength. I disagree. Reason is not such a withering violet. It gave us political correctness, but it also dropped the atom bomb. By contrast, 'Islam' has lost every territorial battle it has fought in the past 400 years. The 'Suicide of Reason' may make a nice headline, but it's nothing for reasonable people to lose sleep over.

The author offers --very briefly-- a fairy-tale version of Orthodox Judaism, whitewashed by Martin Buber and explained away as totally assimilationist in America. He dares not speak the words "rabbinic fanaticism." He's never heard of the Shas party rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who demands the annihilation of the Palestinian "Amalek" on Talmudic grounds, or of the settlers in the occupied territories motivated by religious fanaticism and hatred. He doesn't want to go there because his audience of neo-cons, who are not really interested in stemming the tide of fundamentalism and advancing reason, would drop out of his cheering section if he did. As Evelyn Kaye ("The Hole in the Sheet") and Israel Shahak ("Jewish History, Jewish Religion") have testified, the world's most ironclad dictatorship over the human mind is the rabbinic dictatorship. There is nothing reasonable about supremacist Talmudic religion, but the author will not countenance these facts. During the Enlightenment era, Judaism was classed with Islam as a black hole of tyranny. The "West" of this book is a sanitized version in which the Orthodox rabbis and Voltaire are united in defense of reason. Preposterous!

The writing is unfocused, the author's definitions are problematically loose (she often refers to suicide terror, non-suicide terror, insurgency, and guerrilla warfare interchangeably - they are not the same), her logic is often flawed, many of her assertions are unsupported by data, and she mercilessly desecrates the English language with her poor punctuation and grammar and innumerable sentence fragments. The editor responsible for this at Columbia University Press should resign in shame.

This is one of the major studies of suicide terrorism. Anyone interested in the subject should read this book, as well as other major sources (such as Robert Pape's work and Ami Pedahzur's edited volume). She begins by providing a brief history of suicide terrorism--which has roots going back quite a distance historically (the Zealots of Judea to the Kamikaze during World War II).

She emphasizes that, contrary to what some people say about terrorism being irrational, this is a political tactic that can make sense under certain circumstances. Early on, she notes that (page 1):

Terrorist groups appear to use suicide bombings under two
conditions: when other terrorist or military tactics fail,
and when they are in competition with other terrorist
groups for popular or financial support.

In addition, she contends that suicide bombings can only be effective when a population is supportive of this tactic. Also, she observes that history shows that harsh punitive counterterrorist tactics actually exacerbate the situation. Ham-fisted antiterrorist actions leads to more people who are "dying to kill." A kind of contagion effect has been manifest over time. Bloom says that (page 126) "As suicide terror has proven relatively successful in the Middle East or places like Sri Lanka, there has been an upsurge in the number of regions, countries, and non-state actors that utilize it as a tactic in their nationalist struggles against (real or perceived) foreign occupations."

She concludes by noting that the United States has a potential "lose-lose" in Iraq. On the one hand, if the United States stays in Iraq over time, it will be perceived as an occupying power and be subject to greater suicide terrorist tactics against it. On the other hand, if the United States pulls out prematurely, that would embolden terrorist strikes, as the U. S. appears to be a "paper tiger." This becomes another side effect of the United States' invasion of Iraq. If she is correct, another legacy of the war may be implications for future terrorist actions against the United States.

I had to read this book for a class and really enjoyed it. Unlike so many other books on the subject or in political science generally, this was an easy read with tons of additional information at the back for additional research. The main points were that suicide bombing happens under specific conditions and, if you can "shift the preferences of the people" they say they represent, you can make terrorism less "alluring" than more peaceful methods. I thought it made good sense. Bloom shows how targeted assassination may open up a Pandora's box and differentiates between long term and short term strategies. The chapter on women was my favorite by far. So before all these women started participating in attacks she has predicted this in the book by showing how several of the muslim fundamentalist leaders had started to allow women to be bombers and that Al Qaeda would eventually follow suit. She also explained how more than one group can use bombings to influence an audience, something no one else discusses to show how groups compete using violence as a "litmus test"... The book is sooo interesting, written well, presented clearly and if you want to understand how complicated suicide bombing and terrorism is, this is definitely the book for you. No simple answers, but simply put. It was my favorite book last semester.

This was the best book on the subject I have read in a very long time. The books presents interviews with failed bombers and the group leaders that send them. Amazing... the book gives you a glimpse inside the groups and also the mentality of the people who are drawn into this cult of martyrdom. I had no idea that there were more bombings in Sri Lanka than anywhere else but certainly, the recent growth of Islamic bombers seems to show that secular groups are not the most dangerous post 9/11. My instinct is to agree. The terrorists in Sri Lanka are not ramming planes into buildings here in this country and many people do not even consider them terrorists.
Methodologically the book appears to be a most dissimilar case comparison in which the author shows the linkages among groups and individual motivations. Instead of presenting the groups that suicide bomb as either religious or secular, the author presents a spectum along which most groups fall.
Super interesting especially the author's discussion of women bombers and how they are motivated.
I enjoyed this book immensely. I am sure you will too.

Read the book after seeing the author on TV talking about women suicide bombers. Some of the people who have read the book completely misunderstood what she was saying (I read the reviews and wondered whether we had read the same book?). She is not blaming victims but analyzing what kinds of counter terrorism tactics work best. She also has an interesting counter point to this book by Robert A. Pape that suicide bombing is a response to foreign occupation. Oh by the way, who is occupying Bangladesh which has been in the news this week with attacks? So I found Dying to Kill more nuanced and based on real world information including interviews with real life terrorists to be heads and tails above some of the so called experts. She is also on point about Iraq, even rightly predicting that there is no way to impose democracy from above and identified that most of the bombers are foreigners like Saudis. This book will definitely not disappoint.

This book is a great reference for those interested in suicide notes. Etkind, however, has too many unqualified comments and some of the notes could be found on the internet anyway.

I uncovered my copy of "...or not to be" beneath some shirts on my floor and leafed through it again. What struck me the first time I read this years ago and again today was the sad fact that this fascinating subject landed in the hands of such a terrible author. How he got this published, I'll never know.

While the notes in this book are interesting by their nature, Marc Etkind's commentary displays the depth of his ignorance of suicide as well as his disdain for it. In no way does this book touch upon the psychological, philosophical complexity of suicide. His interpretations, at best, are amateurish and void of meaning. At its worst, they are condescending and cruel. Here is the last sentence of the introduction to the book, written by Etkind -

"The following collection will allow the reader to decide just how good a correspondent the suicide note-writer really is."

Um, Mr. Etkind? This isn't a book about correspondence or letter writing 101. How far off base can this guy get? In the small biography about Etkind at the end of the book, it reads, "Marc Etkind has probably read more suicide notes than anyone else. This he does for enjoyment." (Then it talks about what he does for a living) If that doesn't tell you how cavalier his approach is to suicide, I don't know what will.

Clearly, the value of this book is the notes themselves. I regret this book wasn't written by someone who actually has an interest in suicide and suicide notes rather than childish enjoyment. It could have been very informative; to get a unique view into the minds of those who left by their own hand. Even if it had been purely for entertainment, lacking serious overtones, that could have worked too.

Marc Etkind is neither serious nor entertaining. He didn't bother to mask his contempt, bias or lack of understanding about suicide and it shows. Two stars. Both for the rare and interesting subject matter. As for Marc Etkind? His enjoyment in collecting these notes is anything but enjoyable for the reader. Read the notes and the backstories, they are compelling. Skip the rest.

If you are interested in a book of suicide notes, you obviously have your reasons. And this is one of the few books that deals with such a controversial subject in such a blunt manner. But don't let the title fool you; this is not merely a collection of suicide notes. It's heavily peppered with Mr. Etkind's opinionated, self-righteous preaching.

This wears on the reader's nerves quickly. At times Etkind ridicules suicide notes for being inadequate or incoherent. I quote (from page 1): "If someone could think clearly enough to leave a cogent note, that person would probably be able to recognize that suicide was a bad idea."

I'm sure we would all love to be spared the sophomoric, non-scientific statements and instead be allowed to form our own opinions based on what the book advertises: "a collection of suicide notes" (not "Etkind's beliefs on suicide"). Perhaps this book is ideal for someone who is desperately trying to escape the guilt of a loved one's suicide. It paints all suicidal people as confused, selfish souls who are 100% to blame for their tragic ends. How convenient that philosophy is for those left living.

My technical criticism of the book is this: the book is fragmented and insufficient. Full names are rarely given, thus preventing the reader from researching matters further. The suicide notes are frequently abbreviated or condensed. In the "Acknowledgements" section, we learn that Etkind merely snipped and pasted from other books. So what we have here is the Cliff's Notes version, interesting if you have an hour to kill on the subway or in a doctor's office but little more than that. Whatever you do, don't pay $53 for this 114-page paperback book. I found it for $10, and even that is a stretch.

I expected better. A very thin book with very little space devoted to actual suicide notes. The introduction was written by someone who doesn't really seem to understand the suicidal mindset. There were a couple pretty interesting chapters, such as the golden gate bridge jumpers, but I'm glad I interlibrary loaned the book rather than buying it. Many of the notes are very old, like 1900-1920. One intresting quote which I will paraphrase here says that mentally healthy comfortable people don't want to write and that to want to write is a sign of mental problems. It really says something about me. I get excited just seeing a fresh notebook.

Etkind's collection of suicide notes is a cautious creature, timid to delve too deeply into the situations or mindsets surrounding the tragic losses it records. It strikes me as being far too concerned with moralizing and less involved in analyzing-- I am far more interested in why, psychologically, the notes have been written at all, and far less in why the author feels the writer is wrong to have acted out suicidal impulses.

I'm no proponent of suicide, but by merely skirting the difficult issues involved, and only stating the flaws in the writers' reasoning, Etkind fails to create an image of the minds at work behind them. This is what makes the book 'pornagraphy,' as the forward glibly states. It would not be so if it treated its subjects with more introspection. The question of 'why'-- the question of how these people thought and felt, is a far more interesting subject than merely the text of the notes themselves, and at the same time is the very thing Etkind seems unwilling to explore. There is an unreasoned trepidation here, that by exploring those thoughts he may somehow condone them.

Though I have much liked other William Lashner books, I didn't much like this book. It took me a long time to get through it - and only then by skimming over goodly bits of it.

For me, the main problem was that there were simply too many characters to keep track of. Maybe it is a guy-thing, but I can't follow relationships among people and families over multiple generations. That's what this book is largely about - for nearly 600 pages.

Fathers, grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, brothers, half-brothers, half-sisters, unknown brothers, newly found brothers, murdered sisters, murdered fathers, blah, blah.

Then lots of sidebars where we read old letters and diary entries and whatever else recording the events of yesteryear which held the clues as to the murders happening today. On those pages, it seems like every 400th line holds a clue - who's got patience for that? - so I skipped most of it and went for the recap at the end.

Then as if I wasn't completely confused already, he adds time juxtapositions. From time to time, we are in the actual present with the lead character. Most of the time, we are in the recent past recounting the events leading to the present. And then for other big chunks of time, we are varyingly a few years earlier, many years earlier, and a hundred years earlier.

Basically, I couldn't follow most of it and more or less lost interest.

Very upset to learn this is same book previously published under title of Veritas. Don't think author's should change titles to increase book sales of same book. Watch out!

I read a lot of hard-boiled detective fiction and legal thrillers and am always looking for new authors. When a friend recommended the Victor Carl series I immediately ordered 3 from Amazon with great anticipation. I found them OK, but not great. They are solidly in the tradition of the flawed hero/detective going down the mean streets, and getting involved in Ross MacDonald-like cases in which the past haunts the present. All that makes them pretty interesting.

However, the books are WAY too long. Lashner's editor needs to cut about 200-300 pages from each one. There's way too much of Carl's interior musings - he's just not than interesting, and interferes seriously with the plot development. To anyone familiar with the genre the actual mystery is very slowly developed and the plot holds few surprises. Some of the characters and subplots are interesting, but by the time you get to the end, the resolution has been so obvious for so long, that I find I have been skimming for about the last third of the book.

Fun to pass some time with when you're out of Crais, Connelly, Child, etc.

reviewers need to recognize this retitling of an older work

William Lashner has written a pretty good series of books featuring Victor Carl, a Philadelphia lawyer whose desire to be utterly mercenary is often impeded by a weak but definitely present set of ethics. Bitter Truth is the second book in the series, and even if not Lashner at his best, it is still a quite enjoyable book.

As this novel starts, Victor is subsisting primarily on his fees as a reluctant mob lawyer. While a nice source of income, this role also interferes with his natural sense of self-preservation. He is retained by Caroline Shaw, heir to the Reddman Pickle Empire which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Caroline wants Victor to look into the death of her sister; although ruled a suicide, Caroline suspects mob involvement, hence her hiring of Victor. Although she is paying him a nice $10,000 fee, Victor smells much greater money, the sort that can allow him to quit lawyering and retire to some South Seas island.

Of course, such great wealth would not be easy to come by, and Victor soon finds himself in a boatload of trouble. He becomes involved with a strange little cult which is not above violence to stop Victor's investigation; more seriously, he also gets entangled in a mob war. But the key problems come from the Reddman/Shaw family itself, a clan with a closet full of skeletons. Although fabulously wealthy, the family seems to exist under a curse of death and insanity. The mansion that they are centered around is a practically Gothic haunted house; despite their vast funds, the house is in disrepair and even the food that is served is unpleasant. To earn his money, Victor will need to sort out the family secrets and unearth crimes that date back a century.

As mentioned previously, this is not Lashner's best book, but it is good. There is some intangible quality that seems to be missing from this one that prevents me from giving it a full five stars. As someone who has read the four Victor Carl books completely out of order (3, 1, 4, 2), I can confidently say that they don't need to be read in sequence and each stands alone, so if you want to start reading Lashner, this may be as good a place as any.

I have loved this engrossing novel ever since reading the book one year ago (hurrah for Pat Barker). The audiobook format offers new possibilities of enjoying it when hands are busy but brains are not. And, of course James Wilby's voice adds a lot of pleasure. I was going to give it 5 stars, but the only thing spoiling the picture is the audiocassette format - a CD would have been easier to use.

I will admit that I listened to this Audio Book on drive to and from Las Angeles to Los Vegas. I thought it a good chance to be introduced to Pat Barker who seems to get such rave reviews. This is basically a two person character study in the guise of a psychological thriller that is not all that thrilling. I found the store interesting enough and the writing crisp, but the
secondary plot of Tom Seymour and his wife seems lost as she walks out of his life just when he is consumed with this former child patient who returns to extract his revenge. Or does he? I will give this a marginal thumbs up because the two main characters are well written and vivid, with Danny Miller the tormented child murderer an excellent character. But in the end I did not find this very satisfying to listen to and doubt I would have finished it if I had picked it up as a book.

Pat Barker has won many awards for her fiction & here it's easy to see why. It's the story of a psychiatrist who accidentally meets a young man he once evaluated...evaluated to say whether he could stand trial. The patient has grown up and wants to talk about his childhood. Meanwhile, the therapist's personal life is falling to pieces. American bestsellers in the genre of your choice are fun reads. Reading a book by an excellent storyteller and writer like Barker points up just how flimsy, vapid, and bland many of those NYT bestsellers are. She has an amazing facillity with language and story construction. Her World War 2 "Regeneration" trilogy won all the awards and got press (mostly in Britain) but try this page turner or "Blow Your House Down." I had to read the latter in one sitting!

The only other Pat Barker novels I've read were those of the Regeneration trilogy, and it's easy to recognize her style in "Border Crossing", once again the reader is taken into the intimate relationship between a psychologist and his patient. This one does not have the same scope as the trilogy, really just a novella or extra long short story with only 216 pages, a page turning psychological thriller that's easy to read in a night..

One day while walking by a river Tom witnesses an accident and rescues a man from drowning. Coincidentally this man turns out to be Danny, a child murderer now released who once was evaluated by Tom to judge if he was fit to stand trial in an adult court. Tom decides to begin therapy sessions with Danny to help him understand his past, and more questions are raised than answered. Readers that like nice clear cut endings might be disappointed with this, what is good and what is evil are very ambiguous in this story; and certainly will give pause for thought about child criminals, especially children who kill.

I gave this a 4 star rating because of the plot line involving his wife - while interesting this was somewhat disconnected from the story. The ending has been left wide open for a sequel and I wouldn't mind hearing what becomes of Danny Miller.

When child psychologist Tom Seymour pulls a would-be suicide from a river, he recognises the young man as Danny Miller, the child whom Tom's assessment had helped imprison for the brutal murder of an old woman thirteen years ago. Now out of prison and supposedly starting a new life, Danny has hunted Tom down in the hope that he might be able to help him understand the killing. With his own life troubled and his marriage collapsing, Tom succumbs to the temptation to travel into Danny's past.

The problem is that what he finds there is not particularly riveting, and certainly not unusual enough to account for an act which society regards with horror as completely beyond the boundaries of "normality". Unlike, say, Peter Shaffer's "Equus", when Danny finally remembers the murder there is little depth, no sense of climax, no sense of a mystery unravelled, not even much horror. The novel sets up the idea of a journey into the mind of an outcast, the child who kills, but never lives up to what it promises.

The second problem is the characterisation. Danny Miller is a pale reworking of Billy Prior, Barker's brilliant creation in "Regeneration", complete with Prior's unpleasant father, manipulative charm and "wintry smile", but nowhere near as interesting (especially once you recognise him as Prior). Tom isn't even a shadow of "Regeneration"'s Dr Rivers, and there is even less substance to the supporting cast, his wife, his colleagues, and the people whose lives Danny has passed through. Although there are hints that there will be trouble between Tom and Danny, since Danny seems to blame Tom for his imprisonment and is renowned for getting people who deal with him to "cross the invisible line", the relationship barely develops, again being a lack-lustre echo of the intense but still professional relationship between Rivers and Prior.

Barker is capable of extraordinary writing, as evidenced in her superb "Regeneration" trilogy, a remarkable exploration of people who kill and what it does to their psyches. It's a pity that she seems to have been rewriting it ever since.

I think it was interesting how Styron dedicated the final 10 pages of a 400-page book to a baptism of the minor characters. But in doing so, he draws a contrast between the impotence of Carey Carr and the spiritual bankruptcy of Helen Loftis and the power of Daddy Faith to inspire Ella and a faith community. Carr's ministrations fail to save Helen from her own guilt and self-loathing, which ultimately destroy her marriage and her daughter. On the other hand, Ella supports the Loftis family throughout the book, even if it is in a servile role, and at the end safeguards a stranger, Doris, who has strayed from her mother during the baptism. I couldn't help but think that the tragedy that befalls Peyton would not have occurred had she been Ella's daughter. A larger theme could be that the spiritual community in which Ella belonged is an antidote to the nihilism that pervaded the Loftis' world.

This long, wending, fatiguing, frustrating novel is one of those rare books that are so suffused with suffering and tragedy that the reader, if s/he is the sort of "deep" reader, as I imagine most prospective readers of this book are, will not emerge from reading it without suffering and trauma themselves. In particular, the character of Helen Loftis, whom Styron seems to have drug up from the depths of Hell, has such depraved and hateful intricacies in her soul, which Styron never ceases to plumb to their core, that this reader at least, breathed a long sigh of relief upon finishing the book and knowing that I wouldn't have to read about her anymore. She makes Lady Macbeth seem an ideal candidate for sainthood. All of this invites the question of whether a book that causes the reader to suffer is worth the read. To this, I don't have a pat answer.

Yes, the poetic prose is beautiful and haunting. But so is that of Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe and Proust and Lowry and, more recently, John Banville. I'm not sure I would recommend this book before these, or even with these. A book which causes the reader to suffer is a unique experience in my long acquaintance with literature.

I've not much else to say here, save to let the novel speak for itself, to let the prospective reader know what s/he is in for:

"...a song of measureless innocence that echoed among lost ruined temples of peace and brought to their dreams an impossible vision: of a love that outlasted time and dwelt even in the night, beyond the reach of death and all the immemorial, descending dusks. Then evening came. Arms and legs asprawl, they stirred and turned. Twilight fell over their bodies. They were painted with fire, like those fallen children who live and breathe and soundlessly scream, and whose souls blaze forever." Last paragraph of Chapter 5, pg. 225, in my edition.

Pretty love scene...No? One comes away from this book feeling that one is emerging from a Hell of Styron's own devising full of characters whose souls blaze forever in its bowels.

William Styron's first novel is often overlooked because "Sophie's Choice" is, without doubt, his flagship; however, his style in "Lie Down in Darkness" is as melancholy and forceful as it was in each of his subsequent novels. No reader can leave these pages unmoved by the depth of suffering, both self-imposed and due to other forces, of its principal characters. The family unit is rife with undercurrents and has no opportunity to become functional because the parents are so deeply enthralled with their own problems. I disliked Helen the most. Her passive aggressive martyrdom fueled her husband's neuroses and alcoholism until their relationship became Faulknerian in its dysfunction. Styron's well-known bouts of depression obviously inspired much of the insights into mental illness. The pain of these characters is palpable throughout the book, and I find myself thinking about this family more than I would like.

Before I read the novel Lie Down in Darkess, I read commentary which said that Merle Miller, a noted critic of the time, could not finish the last eighty pages because of beautiful and doomed tragedy of it all. The day I finished Styron's Lie Down in Darkess, it occurred to me that I should stop writing because none of my prose would ever be this amazingly poetic.

Lie Down in Darkess is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Milton Loftis, the main character, is not a protagonist because he is not our hero, although we certainly spend time hoping that he might find a middle ground between his shrewish wife, his alcoholic excesses and the heartbreak of his feelings for his oldest daughter Peyton. Milton Loftis is a man trapped in a Greek tragedy who blunders on every day, balancing his illusions and hoping for the best, although he, and we, the readers, see the foreboding clouds which spell certain doom from the beginning of the book.

Helen, the bitter, hypocritical wife, clothes herself in the self righteous delusions of religiosity and spends most of her energy with the mentally incapacitated daughter Maudie. She pretends that Milton is a profligate sinner and adulterer who has made it his life's work to torture her, ignoring that her icy civility and the obvious hatred of her own daughter has been the prod to his loveless and licentious life style. Milton Loftis finds some modicum of hope in his sad affair with Dolly Bonner, but that and whisky are only ways to escape an insufferable existence he cannot escape and cannot understand. He is not weak enough to die, and he is not strong enough to flee.

Admittedly, I am a stylist of the Faulknerian, Reynolds Price persuasion, so I found the haunting beauty of this novel enough to recommend it to other readers. I understand that is my bias, but I stand by that verdict. The more people who read this great book, the more awareness of life's inexorable twists, and, hopefully, the more aware we become of the pain of others, and the more committed we become to tolerance and forgiveness.

made me grateful about those long, boring afternoons spent in learning English!I just read all the reviews: Some were written by real experts. But some of them depict this novel as "too long" (I WISHED IT WOULD HAVE BEEN LONGER!")"boring" (This lady is far of understanding any book:
This book is a living proof of the geniality of Styron : He is capable of describing the most shining and also the most heinous feelings of a character. Styron strips the characters and drive us to watch them as they really are.
This is one of the most soul tearing book ever...and the argument is unique, BRUTAL, TERRIFYNG and BEATIFUL1

In Philip Galanes' Father's Day, Matthew Vaber, the narrator, takes us through the year following his father's suicide. Along the way he throws in many experiences from to his earlier years including his unsatisfactory relationship with his father. Matthew is in his thirties, living by himself in New York, he successfully manages a photography gallery, and he is lonely and gay. To help cope with the loss of his father, (he blames himself for his death), he is seeing a psychotherapist, and he also regularly travels home to see his mother, whom he perhaps loves too much.
He spends a lot of time calling the Pump Line, "New York's only phone line for men who are serious about their bodes!", which is a contact line for gay men; in fact he is almost addicted to the line. He has met a few of the men he has spoken to with varying degrees of success or failure, mostly the latter, that is until he meets Henry. He maintains a relationship with Henry, but while Henry is keen Matthew seems indifferent, and he continues to uses the Pump Line and visit the Downtown Club, an anonymous sex contact club.
Matthew is not a simple straightforward character, he's a bit mixed-up, shallow at times but also capable of great insight, he is casual about some things, obsessive over others, and he can be frustrating: doesn't he appreciate what he has found in Henry? As he looks back at his past he is honest, even to the point that he recognises his perception of events could be wrong, as he struggles to come to terms with his troubled life.
The real pleasure of the book though is in the writing, Matthew's asides or comments to events are a delight, funny and perceptive, I found they especially made the book worthwhile.

Some friends of mine said I would like this book, yet one who knows me better predicted I would despise it. He was going by the cover, not one of Chip Kidd's masterstrokes, and maybe by the author's photo, not one of Marion Ettlinger's best either. In fact he looks a little frightening, as though he had lived through something horrid like the Rwanda massacre.

But anyway as it turns out the book is an insightful one, and for all its complicated time structure of multiple flashbacks and its weighted load of interior monologues, it's refreshingly straightforward. Matthew is all caught up in trying to figure out if his father's suicide is the result of his mother's long ago Lesbian affair. Indeed the plot is rather like that of Hamlet, turned sideways. In the meantime, and during his therapy wich isn't that interesting, he is now addicted to $.15 a minute phone sex lines, and occasionally to a bathhouse called the Downtown Club. The scenes of Matthew addicted to anonymous sex aren't as arousing as one would hope.

Maybe Knopf asked Galanes to tone them down because they just kind of lie there, flatly, like jellyfish. When he meets Henry he complains that Henry is too perfect for him and that the "rockets red glare" isn't happening between them. Towards the end of the book when he has his catharsis about his mother, Henry starts to look better and better and somehow he realizes that maybe he isn't such a sexual person after all.

All of this is balanced pretty nicely. It's not a book which takes in a whole lot of the world, and all the characters have lovely clothes and go to nice restaurants, and no one is poor, and Matthew has some kind of gallery job that is almost a cliche of the disaffected consumerist art queen--but these are minor defects in a novel which isn't trying to be a Zadie Smith or David Wojnarowicz, it's about money, class and privilege and in the long run, the novel is a bourgeois structure isn't it, this book just reinscribes that status with some chuckles thrown in, and a lot of introspection into the human heart.

I enjoyed it and would recommend it to friends.

Without a doubt, this book is one of the lamest things I have read all year! It is a total bore. Matthew, the "hero" of this novel, transports the reader to a world of total self-pity and self-importance. The story line deals with his father's suicide, Matthew's reaction to same, his Oedipal relationship with his mother, his searching for sex on a call-line, his mother's supposed lesbian relationships, his dealings with his psychiatrist, and his visits to the local bathhouse, as well as a rather tenuous relationship with Henry. Henry is a man Matthew meets via his gay phone line after he, Matthew, has been beaten-up by one of his phone-line tricks. THROUGHOUT the novel, Matthew simply whines about his lot in life, where he is going, what he wants from life, etc. His life is miserable, and at points I was hoping he would follow his father's actions and commit suicide himself, thereby sparing me the ordeal of having to continue to read this drivel. Save your money, save your time, ...pass this one by.

This is the story of Matthew Vaber, whose father has committed suicide. He deeply loves his mother, who is rather unattached to everything, it seems, and they both blame themselves for the death. Matthew also finds facts about his mother's past that make him suspicious of her ability to tell the truth.

Matthew has an addiction to a phone sex line to meet anonymous lovers. Later he meets a nice guy, Henry, and almost sabotages it with his distrust. I had to pull myself through the book. The emotions seem a bit muted, the characters somewhat colorless (though not entirely), and there is certainly no uniqueness to the plot or environment. Also, Matthew's references to name-brand this and that is a very tired gay novel cliche.

I dislike being negative about a first-time fiction author, but this falls short of the mark for me. A book can be "quiet" and still be great (witness "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier) and gay novels don't all have to be a wild sex romp or have a crazy plot. But this book was neither.

Surprising here are the remarks that it's a "great beach read" or "light, easy reading." It's not. Nor is it a highly literary read: often the dialogue falls into the trite. The author needs to focus on which scenes need to be condensed and how to drive a sharper plot, even in a book primarily about quiet emotions.

Father's Day is a competently written, but strangely un-involving story of family dysfunction and urban loneliness. The story opens with the main protagonist, Matthew Vaber, describing how his father shot himself in the head. He then launches into an attack on his bitter, disaffected, and self-absorbed mother who, it is gradually discovered, has had a secretive lesbian past with a childhood friend. While, living in New York working as an artists' representative, Matthew occasionally visits his psychiatrist, and seeks solace from his fear of intimacy by connecting to 555-PUMP, a phone sex service, and periodically haunting the corridors of The Downtown Club for casual, anonymous sex.

From the outset, it is obvious that Matthew has problems, not only relating to men but he also has unresolved issues with his Mother. Matthew's take on men is a mixture of the virulent with the yearning - he seems to be stuck in a repressed, withdrawn state of emotional retardation, but he also seems blurrily obsessed with finding a steady love interest. He admits that he's cornered the market on sweet and clever and funny, with more than a little handsome thrown in too, but nothing has ever worked for him. Pump Line is like "the new kid on the block," where Matthew can stalk the boundaries of his little cage in a continuous loop, around and around circling endlessly. When, however, he is brutally assaulted by an encounter gone wrong, he travels to Darien, Connecticut to visit his uncle. In a fit of indulgence, and using his uncle's phone, he again dials the Pump Line and connects with Henry, whom he hopes is a nice suburban boy.

Of course, Matthew can't keep the façade of true love up for long; he feels like a guy in chains, and soon enough he's back to his old, promiscuous ways. By effectively using flashbacks from Matthew's childhood, Galanes attempts to explain how Matthew came to be the way he is today, and he paints a picture of a family life mired in the dysfunctional, and the disparate. Father's Day is often subtle and poetic and its lively humor combined with its warm understanding of human nature, will probably appeal to many readers. Galanes does a good job of accurately capturing Matthew's youthful, bumbling viewpoint, and there is no doubt that the writing is rock-solid throughout, but for some reason, this reader rapidly lost interest in the proceedings. I read this novel over several days, but a novel of this length (only just over 210 pages) is probably better read in one sitting. Mike Leonard October 04.