• Book Reviews
  • Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell (reviewed by Jean Murphy)

  • The Last Time I Saw Mother by Arlene J. Chai (reviewed by Rosella Thomas)

  • Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts (reviewed by Stephanie Midkiff)

  • A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (reviewed by Lonni Sexton)

  • East of the Mountains by David Guterson (reviewed by Lara Nesselroad)

  • Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (reviewed by Rosella Thomas)
  • The Brothers K by David James Duncan (reviewed by Lara Nesselroad)

• Film and video reviews
  • Analyze This, reviewed by Mary Grenci

  • The Wizard of Oz, reviewed by Colleen Bell

  • Toy Story 2, reviewed by Lara Nesselroad

  • Chicken Run, reveiwed by Lara Nesselroad (who does see grown-up movies too from time to time, incidentally...)

  • Saving Grace, reviewed by Lara Nesselroad (what do you know, there's one of those grown-up movies now!)

  • Shrek, reviewed by Lara Nesselroad (back to the animated movie theme...)

Keys to the Street

I picked up Keys to the Street with trepidation. I've read other suspense novels by Ruth Rendell and they have been grim going: there are way too many bad guys, horrifying and pathetic or both, and the air of urban hopelessness and squalor is too much. But this one's different. The main characters, Mary and Roman, are lovable & admirable; there's a cute dog; there are twists and turns of plot that keep you guessing and offer surprises too; the bad guys -- and there are several! -- embody various degrees of evil, and a couple of them are actually funny.

The setting, Regent's Park and the area of London that surrounds it, is lovingly portrayed, with lots of historical background, which I finally skimmed through because I wasn't much interested, and also because I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

I won't be giving anything away if I assure you, as I wish I had been assured, that this book has a happy ending: our heroine does not end up dead in a ditch. Normally I wouldn't expect that, but with Ruth Rendell, you never know -- sometimes she reminds me of Graham Greene and HIS tragic "thrillers."

The Last Time I Saw Mother is the portrait of a family of Filipina women: Caridad, whose mother Thelma has written a letter asking her to return home to Manila because she needs to talk to her; Thelma, who feels the time as come for her to reveal a long-kept family secret that has been weighing heavily on her conscience for years; Emma, sister of Thelma, who is also a participant in the scenario that has kept this deep, dark secret hidden within the family; and Ligaya, Caridad's cousin, who has kept the secret hidden under a heavy layer of her own anger and guilt. Once the secret is revealed, each character struggles to come to terms with the revised history of their family and the legacy that the truth has revealed.

What I liked about this book is its frank representation of a family with painful secrets, set against the sweeping history of the Philippines during the WWII occupation of the Japanese up to present day Manila and the dense intermingling of Spanish, Chinese and Filipino cultures. A liberal sprinkling of words from the native vernacular gives you an added feel for the Filipino culture, but was confusing for those of us who do not speak the language and although I wanted to know what each word meant I couldn't slow my reading long enough to look each word up in a dictionary.

I picked this book for my book discussion group because I was really interested in reading a work of fiction by a Filipina author and admit that I had practically no prior knowledge about the history or culture of the Philippines other than the fall of the Marcos regime and Imelda's gigantic shoe inventory.

I do agree that most families have their own secrets but I finished the book wondering if this secret was really necessary and why it took so long for the participants to reveal the truth. I have purposely left that secret out of this review because I hope you will want to read this book and find out for yourself!

When I recently started reading Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, it took me only a few pages to get hooked. In a style reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver, Letts imbues her characters with a quirkiness and endearingness that fascinates and quickly draws the reader into the plot. Her characters are likable and evoke a sympathetic view of stereotypical rural America.

In this first novel by Letts, Novalee Nation is a naive 17-year-old traveling from Tellico Plains, Tennessee to Bakersfield, California with her boyfriend, Willy Jack, in a junker car bought with Novalee's money. On the rusted-out floorboard, she can see pavement racing by around the edges of the TV tray where she rests her feet. She is 7-months pregnant and dreams of living in California in a house with quilts and family photos right out of her collection of magazine pictures.

Of course, the reader can tell early on that Willy Jack has no interest in the baby Novalee is carrying or in taking responsibility for himself or anyone else. He's heard from a cousin who managed to get a settlement of $65,000 from the railroad when he lost a thumb in a work accident. Willy Jack plots to get a job with the railroad so he can be awarded the same princely sum; in fact, he's contemplating which finger to sacrifice as Novalee presses his hand against her belly to feel the baby's heart beat.

After Novalee's shoes, which she has removed because of the swelling in her feet, get sucked out of the car when the TV tray shifts, she persuades Willy Jack to stop at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, so she can buy a pair of flip-flops and relieve her aching bladder. When she returns to the parking lot, she finds Willy Jack and the car gone. She tries to persuade herself and some kind customers and employees of Wal-Mart that he's merely gone to get gas and will be back any moment, but in her heart of hearts, she knows she's been ditched.

She has less than $8 in her pocket and has nowhere to go for help, and when she finds herself locked in the Wal-Mart after she's passed out in the bathroom, she spends the night there. Because she feels she has no options, she ends up making the store her home, carefully putting back the sleeping pad and alarm clock each morning which she's borrowed from the inventory. Slipping out the back when the first employees open up in the morning, she spends her days at the town library and the city park, only to return to Wal-Mart at night and hide in a closet until closing time, when she reclaims her "home".

The trust and naivete which has gotten Novalee into trouble also enables her to open up to kind people like Moses Whitecotton, the elderly black photographer who takes baby pictures in Wal-mart; Sister Thelma Husband, a self-styled evangelist who matter-of-factly prays God's forgiveness for the fornication that she and Jack Sprock have committed again; Benny Goodluck, who unwittingly becomes the subject of her first photography award; and Forney Hull, who serves as de facto librarian when his aging, alcoholic sister can no longer perform those duties. They all have something to give of themselves to Novalee, and she in turn enriches their lives with her warmth, trust and friendship.

Throughout the book, the reader watches Novalee develop into a mature, self-assured, self-reliant individual who is a better judge of character than the 17 year-old Novalee Nation dumped in a Wal-Mart parking lot. And she accomplishes all this without losing her original faith in the goodness of people. She also learns that well-placed faith in others and giving of oneself can form bonds that turn friends into family.

The author grew up a single child in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, in an uneducated, hardworking family. Her school librarian encouraged her to become an avid reader, and she soon learned that writing came with its own power--power to grab peoplešs attention. As an adult, she worked as a roller-skating carhop, a dance instructor, a window washer, among other occupations, before embarking on a career in education. When Letts was nearing retirement from teaching, she again turned her sights on becoming a writer, and produced Where the Heart Is from a series of short stories after a literary agent encouraged her to make the transition. She is working on a screenplay of the book. Her second novel is The Honk and Holler Opening Soon.

A Patchwork Planet

I was yelled at the other day for spoiling this book for Barbara Jenkins and Christy Carmichael.

"Oh, it's one of those typical Anne Tyler books" I was saying, "you know: the main character, a man with a unusual job, has an strained relationship with his rather strange family, meets a nice, somewhat conventional woman, and has a friendship with another, less conventional woman that eventually leads to ... "

"Stop! Don't tell us the rest!" screamed Chris and Barbara, clapping their hands over their ears.

"And I just bought the Books on Tape edition!" added Barbara, miffed.

Well, I still don't consider what I said to be a complete spoiler for A Patchwork Planet, although it certainly reveals a good deal of the plot. Hopefully, you're not reading Tyler's books for the intricate storylines, anyway. It is Tyler's tender affection for the details of every day life which makes her writing so enjoyable.

You don't have to be a master spy, or an assassin, or a vampire, or a movie mogul, or anything fancy at all, to be a character in an Ann Tyler novel. Great events, earthquakes, coups d'etat, and the end of the world as we know it, are not likely ever to find their way into her writing. She focuses on her characters, perhaps on one tiny gem of an eccentricity, and gleans a book from it. In A Patchwork Planet, her protagonist was a thief in his youth. Barnaby didn't steal typical items of value, however, and his peculiar burglaries are the foundation of the novel.

Barnaby is the divorced, underachieving ne'er-do-well in a family that is an uncomfortable blend of high-society and working class, with a socially-climbing mother bridging the gap. Barnaby works for a small company, Rent-A-Back, whose business is to provide muscle power for people who cannot do heavy lifting or run errands on their own. Most of the clientele are elderly, although one or two characters are simply eccentric, like the young agoraphobic woman who hasn't left her house in years. (Tyler fails to develop this character, which is a pity. ) The events of the novel center on Barnaby's patient, responsible and caring relationship with his clientele, juxtaposed with the events of his adolescence, and contrasted with his uneasy relationship with his family.

Did I mention that angels figure into all of this? One of the two women in Barnaby's life might be one.

If all of literature is a great feast, then A Patchwork Planet is a tasty little snack. If you think $12.95 is a lot to spend on an hors d'oeuvre, consider borrowing a copy from a friend or from your nearest library.

I recently read East of the Mountains by David Guterson. I had read his earlier book, Snow Falling on Cedars a couple of years ago and very much enjoyed it, so as soon as I saw this one, I ordered it through Orbis. Guterson lives in the Puget Sound area, and Snow was set there, but this book, as you might think from the title, was set on the East Side, where I grew up.

The plot starts here: a man, Ben Givens, retirement age in his seventies, is terminally ill and plans to end his own life in a carefully arranged hunting accident. He lives in Seattle, but grew up and now hunts on the East Side, so he packs up his shotgun and his dogs, and heads across the pass. He doesn't tell his family that he is ill. Almost immediately the plan is derailed by an actual accident, so the story is about his efforts to return to his plan, interspersed with flashbacks from the youth that led to him being the man that he is. As you expect by now, the theme of this book is "death with dignity," a topic about which I have my own opinion which I won't discuss here. The thing is, I had a pretty good idea where Guterson was going with it (not that there are lots of possible outcomes for a suicide plan), but I found myself very interested in following the path to get there, and I'm not sure I was all the way right (you'll notice I've finished the book, and I'm still not sure).

Guterson was much acclaimed for Snow, but also widely criticized, both for being too wordy (a fault I share, and a problem I didn't have with that book) and for writing in a style which some readers found to be I think too studied. I suspect those readers would have the same problem with this book; it is clear that words are chosen carefully. I found the images, which for me are familiar ones of orchards and sagebrush-covered hills, to be compelling and accurate. I know people who farm those orchards, and people who hunt those hills for those same chukars. Guterson does spend a lot of time on details, but I thought they were engaging ones and relevant to the story. I also think a lot of people all over the country are familiar, more or less, with the terrain and climate of Seattle, and have no idea what kind of change there is, both in Washington and in Oregon, when you cross the Cascades--there is nearly nothing that is the same, from climate to terrain to culture to clothing--and this book does a marvelous job of using that difference both as a metaphor for Ben's state of being and as a backdrop for a plot line that can't happen in an urban setting.

This is not a novel packed with action. The primary character is isolated, both by habit and by circumstance. He is introspective as he prepares to come to the end of his life. If you are looking for space battles or superheroes, this book isn't for you. If you are looking for imagery, detail, and contemplation, give this book a try.

OK, first of all, you all probably know all about this book; I see on our web site that Knight Library Press did a broadside by this author last fall, which I suppose may possibly be why his name sounded vaguely familiar to me. I am, however, going to review it anyway, because completely independent of knowing about the broadside (which, at least with the part of my brain that is on active duty, I didn't), I found it a few weeks ago.

This book is no lightweight. Those of you who have seen me read know that I read a different book pretty much each day. Occasionally a book will take two bedtimes and a lunch hour, or two lunch hours and a bedtime; however, usually it's more like one and one, and rarely (generally when I'm reading something less light than a lot of the fluff I read out of a need to satisfy both the read-drive and the wallet) is it two and two. This book took me nine days (NINE DAYS!) to read, which all alone tells me that it required my attention pretty heavily, and that it's long (600+ pages in the paperback, which is trade-paper size). I think the last time it took me nine days to read something that I was in fact reading at every chance, it was Middlemarch.

On to the review. This book is in turns funny and sad and both. It is the 30 or so year history of a family, narrated by the fourth of six children, the youngest of four boys. I should say, narrated primarily by him, because the point of view shifts, as we read a whole lot of letters and essays by the other members of the family. The book begins in the middle of the story, at the crucial juncture where the father, a man who works in a mill to support his minor-league baseball-pitching habit, suffers a (baseball) career ending injury at the mill. We go back and forth then, in time, semi-linearly but often not, through his early baseball days and marriage, the births of the kids (I adored the device that allowed a story narrated by kid #4 to effectively detail these early days without breaking up the illusion of the narrator; plus, this segment was where I started spontaneously reading aloud to other people in the room, with the problem that it was gasp-and-snort funny, making the physical act of reading aloud somewhat difficult), and on through the decline of the father as he goes on "living" working at the mill, but without any joy, and then on out the other side as he begins pitching again, at first only in the back yard to stop being half-dead, and later in an honest-to-goodness baseball situation. I have to say that I completely understood the point of view of a character to who works full time to support his other low-paying full-time love/job; my grandfather worked his whole life for Kaiser Aluminum to support his farming habit, and I expect the day he stops farming will be, for all intents and purposes, the day he dies. He is 81 and still on the job (the farming one. He retired from Kaiser eons ago). A whole lot of things about this book rang true for me, from this to the conversation about whether there will or will not be beer allowed in the house.

Baseball, then, and the importance of doing something you love even if just for yourself, is one thread of the eventual story. However, there is also a running discussion of the family's religion: belief, disbelief, reasons for either, corruption, redemption, how it works to be a family of strong feelings in which religious fervor is not a standard holding, but is present in some members. This all plays in, starting midway through the book, into the third story line, which is that of what happens as each boy, all four of them, reaches draft age during the Vietnam era. Considered at length are educational deferments, draft-dodging, conscientious objection, eligibility to serve, and service. Each boy does something different, as it turns out, although this isn't always planned.

I thought this was one of the best books I've read in years.

Two-bit movie reviews for good measure:

• Spy Game: a little choppy, a little predictable, but good visual images, I thought. I always like watching a good guy put in a stupid spot by an annoying boss and then putting something over on him. Pretty darn violent.
• Ocean's Eleven: I loved this movie. I knew where they were going, but I was only instants ahead of them and sometimes behind them figuring out how. I also thought, to my surprise, that I have no idea what engendered the PG-13 rating, as there was essentially very little violence, no noteworthy alarming language, and no people of minimal clothing. The best I could come up with is the notion that Ocean's ex-wife has moved in with the bad guy, but compared to other PG/PG-13 movies, I have no idea. Go figure.
• Vanilla Sky: Very mind-bending. If you see this movie, listen carefully to the voice on the tape that first says "open your eyes" before you ever see any character. After that, if you know what happened, you tell me. My husband asked whether Tom Cruise really jumps off a tall building as seen in the ad. My best answer was "Yes, he either does or doesn't."
• Fellowship of the Ring: If the reason you like Tolkien is the poems, the lyricism, the comradeship between battles, you won't probably like this telling. If the reason you like Tolkien is the whole epic quest nature of the work, you will probably like it. I fall in the latter camp. I had been warned by several people of the horrible gruesomeness and violence, so I went alone to pre-view the movie before considering taking kids. There are a few startling moments, and a few that are gross visually, but the battle scenes (of which there are many) are basically battle-like, and certainly less hard to watch than, say, "Saving Private Ryan" or other war movies intended to show the harsh realities of war. I did spend a fair amount of time trying to discern how they make the hobbits seem to be half the height of the men without making them seem skinny or insubstantial or stumpy or otherwise distorted. Quite a trick; it's like the whole set is some kind of giant Ames room.

For so many of us, the phrases “Follow the yellow brick road” and “There's no place like home” bring to mind vivid images of a cowardly lion, a rusted tin man, an unsteady scarecrow, and, of course, Dorothy and Toto.

When I was growing up, there were two movies that we always viewed together as a family: the first was “The Sound of Music” (how do you solve a problem like Maria?); the second was “The Wizard of Oz.”

L. Frank Baum first published his beloved children's story in 1900. At the time of his death in 1919 he had written 40 books about Dorothy's adventures in Oz. Nearly a century after its publication, his fanciful story of a young girl swept up by a tornado and deposited in a land ruled by witches, wizards, and Munchkins still has a tremendous appeal for audiences both young and “Young in Heart,” as Baum refers to his readers.

I recently saw “The Wizard of Oz” on the big screen for the first time. I love it when old movies are re-released on the big screen; they seem to retain an air of innocence from times past, a simpler way of viewing the world that still has significance in modern times. “The Wizard of Oz” was originally released in 1939, yet nearly 60 years later and almost a century after the story was originally published its message is still relevant.

The special effects in this movie still seem genuine and ingenuous, quite unlike the slick, computer-enhanced effects of the “Star Trek” movies or “Twister.” The special effects in “The Wizard of Oz” are so skillfully done that even though I've seen this movie dozens of times, I don't really notice it's in black and white until Dorothy and Toto land among the Munchkins and suddenly everything is portrayed in vivid color.

I found Margaret Hamilton's portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West just as convincing as the first time I saw this movie; she does, indeed, portray the “beautiful wickedness” she speaks of as she melts into a puddle.

If you haven't seen this movie on the big screen, I urge you to do so. Take your kids, take your partner, take a friend, and recapture some of the innocence of the past. Then go home a call someone important to you, just to say hi. There is, after all, no place like home.

Analyze This

Maybe it comes from growing up as an Italian in rural western Pennsylvania, in towns that seemed to have never seen Italians before. Well okay, I'm only half-Italian and I'm told by many I look German instead (yes, I'm German too, as well as a bunch of other things you'd never guess).

Be that as it may, my family was very 'Italian-oriented'. How can you not be with a name like ours? My brother and I had "Proud to be Italian" and "Italians make better lovers" bumper stickers on our school notebooks. We had "I'm half-Italian" mugs for our cocoa and (yes, at an early age) coffee. We also had a fascination for the Italian mafia. Nothing morbid. We didn't want to go around blasting people or even stealing from them. But the whole idea of a huge, powerful, Italian Mafia "family" held some kind of weird appeal to us as kids in very un-Italian rural Pennsylvania. We read books about it, watched those TV shows and movies our parents would allow (or didn't know about), played some interesting cops and robbers games.

What is all of this digression leading up to? The movie "Analyze This", starring Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal.

I've seen this movie twice already and will probably buy it as a "keeper". Why? It's got everything an upstanding, law-abiding, Italian-oriented American could want. It's got the big, friendly, all-powerful Italian "family" headed by a humorous, kind, and witty "godfather". It's got the traditional "Italian family values". You know: keep the business in the family, don't sell out the family, don't do drugs or sell drugs to the family. As if that weren't enough (and it probably would be) it's got the mandatory 90's shoot-em-up scenes, but done in the nice, friendly, "Italian" way. No hard feelings intended, you know? Finally, it has the best thing of all: psychological humor that shows the ultra-tough (but always nice and friendly) Italian godfather seeking help for a series of panic attacks brought about by a "stressful job" (hey, we can all relate to that, right?)

I highly recommend this film, even for you non-Italians out there. DeNiro and Crystal are both excellent, as is the entire supporting cast. It's a "feel-good" movie where the good guys come out on top. One word of caution, though. There are reasons it's rated 'R'. It's probably better to leave the kiddies at home unless you don't mind them picking up some colorful language.

But hey, isn't time the adults of your household had an evening (or afternoon) to themselves? If the answer is yes, spend that time seeing "Analyze This".