The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1972)

A woman robs a bank and a man dies in a locked room; the two events couldn't be connected ... .

Mystery Review: The Locked Room is the eighth Martin Beck mystery, replete with all we've come to expect: intense social commentary, a dissection of the Swedish police, human beings barely escaping depression. A classic locked room mystery is not what we've come to expect from Sjöwall and Wahlöö, but they do it well and this is as good as any book in the series. The authors hit a high point a few books back and have managed to stay there consistently. The mystery, the interplay of familiar personalities, the description of police procedures (and the occasional humorous bumbling) are only half the story. The other half is the social critique of Swedish society, the police force, what's happening to Stockholm. They all seem to be going in the wrong direction. There seems to be an intense frustration behind The Locked Room. The authors even give us some ethical conundrums to chew on (can one chew a conundrum? perhaps only in a mixed metaphor). Beck himself has a limited role here as he's recovering from the gunshot wound received in the previous installment, but he's still the straw that stirs the drink. As much as I enjoy gradually getting to know the recurring characters as they unravel mysteries, it's the chance to get a glimpse of Sweden at a certain time that I appreciate almost as much. The Locked Room is another success.  [5★]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922)

What if ... we aged backwards.

Story Review: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is one of Fitzgerald's fantasy pieces, a sharp turn from the popular flapper stories in which he chronicled the mercurial emotions of the Roaring Twenties (our current Twenties aren't off to quite the same start). Originally published in Collier's magazine and collected in Fitzgerald's hodgepodge of a second story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922); many years later it was made into a 2008 film with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Perhaps it's an early look at magical realism. The story almost seems a finger exercise in which the author set himself a puzzle: he took a premise and extended it into a full story that explored the possibilities of how it all might play out. After reading, one notes "youth is wasted on the young" and wonders why a lifetime of experience and learning coincides with a weakening body and approaching death. Cited as a satire on aging, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is an even more pointed satire of societal requirements that we conform to expectations, as Mr. Button certainly does not. His march to the beat of a different drummer sends everyone into hysterics. He faces intolerance every step of the way. I felt the story had a surprising emotional resonance the first time I read it, and it's one that I've never forgotten. Haunting as well. Even just as an oddity, an imaginative detour for those with creative minds, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" sticks with the reader and is a necessary read.  [4★]

The Basil and Josephine Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1973)

A collection of the 14 stories that Fitzgerald wrote about his teenage avatars.

Book Review: The Basil and Josephine Stories is part of the endless repackaging of Fitzgerald's treasure trove. He released only four short fiction collections in his lifetime, consisting of 46 stories in all, each released after one of his novels. Since then there've been two significant collections of his selected stories (by Malcolm Cowley (1951) and Matthew Bruccoli (1989)), and many other smaller selections in various groupings. For the devout Fitzgerald aficionado there is now much more than the four novels and story collections he published. The Basil and Josephine Stories fits a particularly esoteric niche. These are YA stories (teen and pre-teen) of the first decade of the Twentieth Century. Tales of adolescence, of love an popularity, told by the brash and insecure Basil (nine episodes) and the impulsive but seductive Josephine (five stories). Though he describes both well and convincingly, the differing presentations, attitudes, and outlooks between his female and male personas is telling and would make a good thesis subject, which perhaps could be extended to an examination of the male and female characters in his novels. At times the biographical component is as intriguing as the fictional. For these are stories that Fitzgerald took from life: how he saw himself coming of age and portraits of the girls and women to whom he was attracted. Generally it seems that the more popular a girl the more desirable she was, a recipe born of insecurity and heading for (teenage) disaster. Although few would call these his most meaningful short fiction (the invaluable Introduction, however, makes a strong case for possible levels of analysis), they are compelling and enjoyable for the cataclysmic intensity of their emotional onslaught. At least for those willing to expend time revisiting early youth, as at that age every passion is novel and undoubtedly incapable of repetition, meaning that any given moment may be the end of the world and life as we know it. The Basil and Josephine Stories is for Fitzgerald completists, those exploring his biography, and that small band of intrepid souls willing to relive those first early moments of passion and loss.  [3½★]

The Davidian Report by Dorothy B. Hughes (1952)

Everyone searches for the mysterious report that will prevent a nightmare future.

Mystery Review: The Davidian Report (also known as The Body on the Bench) was the penultimate novel by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993), the queen of hard-boiled noir. It's more of a Cold War spy thriller, but still reads like a tough-guy detective story. Not as good as her very best, but a quality read with a gem on every page. She writes with a poet's eye and creates scenes seen only by a slumming street corner cynic: "the lobby smoldered in its customary shadow," "a worn leather armchair, eternally holding the sag of a large man," "what once had been the refuge of old men and pigeons," "the touch of her slippers on the staircase blurred back to his ears," "early twilight sifted down." An airplane in the fog is a "machine creeping through gray fur." From a car one sees "the shops growing more shabby in neighborhoods left behind as the crocodile metropolis crawled westward." Her descriptions are so carefully carved that the reader begins to take them for granted. In The Davidian Report Hughes is always intelligent, precise, aware. The suspense builds quietly till it hums just below the consciousness like summer cicadas. Given this was published in 1952, there's a daub of ardent Americanism, but mostly it's buried with the desperation of characters living in a world without sincerity or honesty. Nobody trusts no one. Having read over half her novels (I'm on a mission), Dorothy Hughes has never disappointed, and The Davidian Report is no exception.  [4★]

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett (1955)

After the apocalypse, teenage cousins search for the past that's become the future.

SciFi Review: The Long Tomorrow presents a post-apocalyptic world that fears and forbids science and technology, elements of which we can see even today. In A Canticle for Leibowitz the priests tried to preserve past knowledge, but here the religious majority is doing all it can to prevent progress. Elements of which we can see today; some readers may see the future civilization described by Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) as an evangelical utopia. Since it was published in 1955 when America still retained some faith in the capacity of science, The Long Tomorrow gently but reluctantly pushes science as the hope for the future. The story concerns the adventures of two teenagers chafing under the intellectual restrictions of their pastoral community. Stories with children as lead characters can be unconvincing as the protagonists are often either unrealistically precocious or impossibly naïve. Here there's a little of both, but overall Brackett seems to get it right. In the last third, realistically, they become obnoxious. This was an easy and quick read, with touches of both Huckleberry Finn and a spy thriller. The writing was average, but the concept was intriguing and persuasive: excellent in intent, mediocre in execution. While worth the read, especially as an example of one of the early nuclear holocaust novels, even the cover blurb damns it with faint praise: "Close to being a great work of science fiction." Agreed. As an aside, The Long Tomorrow was disappointing in that there are no significant female characters and in Brackett's future women have no decision-making roles, even among the scientists. Then again, it was published in 1955. An interesting artifact, a pleasant read, in some ways a model for much science fiction written since.  [3½★]

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)

A desert monastery tries to preserve civilization after the end of the world as we know it.

SciFi Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the classic, post-apocalyptic one-hit wonders from the 1950's such as I Am Legend (1954), On the Beach (1957), or Alas, Babylon (1959), and the one with the best sense of humor about the situation. As the full realization of a world with the Bomb sank in, many in the Fifties were scared spitless. Although occasionally written with tongue in cheek, this is an adult novel, capable of containing two opposing thoughts simultaneously. An ability all too rare in fiction. A Canticle for Leibowitz is also unafraid of pushing religious argument to a point that may infuriate the reader. A by-product of which is that there is more Latin in this book than any I've read within memory. Written in three sections, each projecting farther into our shared imaginary future, there is thematic unity and continual growth in thought and scrutiny throughout. Such that at the beginning the reader is far ahead of the characters, amused at their befuddlement, but by the end the reader knows not what's coming next, and can only be piqued by the parallels to current events from a novel published six decades ago. A Canticle for Leibovitz is for those who want their science fiction both clever and contemplative.  [5★]

Olivia by Dorothy Strachey (1949)

Many years later, a woman reflects on her life at sixteen during a year in a French girls' school.

Book Review: Olivia is too slender a reed to bear the political freight that has been heaped upon it. Called "a lesbian classic" and a "masterpiece of modern homoerotic fiction," it is much simpler, sweeter, and more meaningful than those hastily flung labels. Posed as a memoir, it's not that either. For readers looking for a novel to carry the weight of a pioneering lesbian novel consider Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) or Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes. Dorothy Bussy (née Strachey, 1865-1960), published her only novel when she was 84 under the pseudonym "Olivia." Originally written in French, it followed in theme Colette's Claudine at School (1900) and preceded Thérèse et Isabelle (1954) by Violette Leduc. Connected to the Bloomsbury Group, Strachey dedicated the book to the memory of Virginia Woolf. The plot follows the academic rivalries of a girls' school, in which Olivia ardently chooses sides, concluding with a dramatic incident. The amours in Olivia are tame, chaste, and free of overt acts of pedophilia. In the passionate haze that envelops the novel there is little to tell whether this is a school-girl crush, an infatuation, or a first love. But Strachey expertly captures teenage fevers and the claustrophobic incubation of boarding school. Olivia is undeniably emotive, obsessive, fervent, expressive and a vital read.  [4★]

The Custard Heart by Dorothy Parker (2018)

Three stories by the Algonquin wit, part of Penguin's Modern Classics series.

Book Review: The Custard Heart collects three stories by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967): "The Custard Heart" (1939), "Big Blonde" (1929), and "You Were Perfectly Fine" (1929). All three examine women of the times, each from a different segment of society. Reminiscent of her contemporary F. Scott Fitzgerald, each of the stories contain a moral, a lesson learned from contemporary mores. In "The Custard Heart" a wealthy and calculatedly "wistful" woman is wrapped up in herself, addicted to the attention that she receives. So much so that she lives in a world of invisible people, as she can't see that anyone else exists or has a life, even her closest friend. A study of someone who lives for herself alone. "Big Blonde" is the inverse of "The Custard Heart," a story of one of the invisible people.  A story of depression, alcoholism, and the boxes women get locked into when they're not seen as people. The third story, "You Were Perfectly Fine," is a short, humorous sketch of trendy, shiny young things, but locates the dark lining in the hazy cloud emanating from the wreckage swirling in the undercurrent of the never-ending-party that was the Roaring Twenties. All three stories amply display an intelligence and razor-wit that will make the reader want more of Dorothy Parker.  [3½★]

Neighbor Rosicky by Willa Cather (1930)

In the twilight of his years an immigrant looks back on life, while keeping an eye on the present.

Story Review: "Neighbor Rosicky," first published in 1930, is taken from the story collection Obscure Destinies (1932) by Willa Cather (1873-1947). Many Americans think there is nothing of interest between Chicago and Denver, and anyone who has driven through Nebraska or Kansas would be inclined to agree. This neglected part of the country is the region Cather chose to write about in novels such as O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918). Despite the poor marketing choice, she wrote powerful and affecting books from this setting. "Neighbor Rosicky" shows us the immigrant experience without exaggeration, and argues that despite harsh conditions quality of life is more important than material success. It is touching and heartwarming, but even in these ironic times there must be a place for the poignant (when this side of cloying). Cather succeeds in keeping the story realistic, showing the importance of family, support, and generosity to immigrant success. My takeaway was one of those archaic instructions for life: "Be a little nicer than you have to be." "Neighbor Rosicky" isn't a triumph of multi-levular significance or sub-textural imagery; it's a slice of life, a peek at the human condition. And that's okay.  [4★]

Four Novels by Muriel Spark (2004)

A collection of four novels by Muriel Spark published by Everyman's Library.

Book Review: This collection comprises three of the best novels by Muriel Spark (1918-2006), and one other. The first thing to note is that not only did Muriel Spark not suffer fools gladly, but she also didn't waste anyone's time. The four novels contained herein fill only 460 pages, so an average of a mere 115 pages each. Such efficiency. And as brevity is the soul of wit, then so much wit. The four novels here are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), her best; it's successor, The Girls of Slender Means (1963); and The Driver's Seat (1970). These are her three most popular works and arguably her best among a career of 21 novels. The fourth book included is The Only Problem (1984), one of her least popular and more difficult books, parsing the Book of Job. It's less focused and precise than the other three (although with Spark I'm always ready to concede that any of her works may have flown high over my head and I missed the flying elephant entirely). Accordingly, The Only Problem is  less available than her other books, so perhaps the publishers lured us with the three excellent books to ensure that everyone has a chance to read the other one. Perhaps readers who (somehow) fail to enjoy the three popular novels may actually prefer the more esoteric choice. And these books cover a wide range of subjects: an iconoclastic teacher and her students at a girls' school, life at a boarding house for young women during the war years, a woman alone seeking something on a European holiday, a wealthy young man writing a treatise on the Book of Job as his estranged wife has apparently become a terrorist on the lam (though a horse would've been more efficient). Ms. Spark doesn't repeat herself. This collection gives readers new to the inimitable author a wonderful introduction, three of her best combined with one to show just how inimitable she can be. All short and all enjoyably entertaining. This lovely ribbon-bookmark edition published by the always tasteful Everyman's Library (Knopf), provides the "crème de la crème" of Muriel Spark's oeuvre, and would make a marvelous addition to anyone's personal library, or a lovely gift for any sophisticated, intelligent, and discerning reader of your acquaintance. Such as yourself.  [5★]

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951)

A young man invites his older cousin's widow to visit, with unforeseen and tragic consequences.

Book Review: My Cousin Rachel confirms that Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) is an irresistible storyteller with a Gothic sense of menace, maintaining a constant level of tension and suspense throughout the novel. She constructs a plot with an architectural level of complexity built of ambiguity and obscurity combined with a damaged and unreliable narrator. She toys with the reader, inserting twists and turns and introducing new evidence that changes perceptions between pages. Du Maurier actually gives enough clues to reach a single, consistent resolution of the several questions posed by the story, but leaves enough red herrings to support and contort any individual conclusions. She makes My Cousin Rachel a sort of Rorschach test for readers, based in large part on their preconceptions about relations between the sexes (a central theme), astonishingly still relevant today. Du Maurier makes the character of Rachel believably charming and attractive, complex, well-rounded, and understandable. The character of Philip is occasionally too obtuse to be credible, but is perhaps explicable by his odd childhood. For those who've read du Maurier's most famous work, this is that novel written inside out, though wordier and slower. My Cousin Rachel reaches a disturbing conclusion, creating yet more moral ambiguities to ponder.  [4★]

Taps at Reveille by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1935)

The fourth and final short story collection published by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) during his lifetime, released shortly after Tender is the Night (1934).

Book Review: Taps at Reveille is an uneven collection, as were Fitzgerald's short stories. Often he wrote simply to pay the bills, so although his writing is of consistently high quality, some stories have more to say than others. Accordingly, Fitzgerald's four original short story collections (especially All the Sad Young Men and this one) are rarer than repackaged "best of" editions. Additionally, numerous posthumous, rearranged collections have been issued: The Pat Hobby Stories, The Basil and Josephine Stories, I'd Die for You (and other lost stories), and comprehensive volumes edited by Malcolm Cowley (1951 - 28 stories) or Matthew Bruccoli (1989 - 43 stories). The 18 pieces in Taps at Reveille explore his themes of disappointment and regret, sorrow and failure, of having to pay for the good times, of longing for an unobtainable perfect love. The collection begins with a selection of eight YA stories exploring Fitzgerald's adolescence through separate alter egos Basil Lee and Josephine Perry (who never meet). Fitzgerald relates to women as well as any male author. The remaining stories are diverse, including ghost stories, historical visions, the bizarre, and his more typical romantic efforts. "The Last of the Belles" and "Babylon Revisited" standout in  this collection. The unusual title refers to military bugle calls: Reveille is played at sunrise to wake the troops, Taps is played at lights out. The somber melody of Taps played at the beginning of the day seems a foreboding of what's to come. The cover of my 1971 Scribners edition must be one of the least attractive covers ever printed. Fitzgerald's final collection isn't as good as his second, Tales of the Jazz Age, but is still significant, the last book he saw published.  [3½★]

Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes (1946)

A young gangster comes to Santa Fe, New Mexico in pursuit of his future, trailed by his past.

Mystery Review: Ride the Pink Horse fits as a mystery, a noir, or even a hard-boiled detective story, but with a distinct difference. Dorothy B. Hughes doesn't focus on plot, action, or suspense. Instead she spends much of the novel recreating the setting, the ambiance and feel of the Fiestas de Santa Fe. She also describes the growth and evolution of a young, bigoted, and damaged criminal. He's a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, and he's reluctantly absorbed into the people, history, and landscape of the region. Hughes slowly establishes the complex interplay of the four main characters and is even slower to build suspense or tension. She's working with myths and archetypes. The story is much different than readers have come to expect from Hughes in novels such as Dread Journey (1945), In a Lonely Place (1947), or The Expendable Man (1963). Those novels were written with a subtle awareness of race and class in America, but that awareness is given center stage in Ride the Pink Horse and compassion is the main player. "It's good, for us to see how other people live. We get awfully narrow in our own little lives. We get thinking we're so all-fired important that nobody else counts. We forget that everyone counts, that everybody on this earth counts just as much as we do." Not what was on offer in Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. In Ride the Pink Horse thoughts and emotions, human interactions, are as important as guns and fists. There is a reasonable amount of drink, however. A well-written but surprising and thoughtful ride.  [4★]

Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2011)

Three Fitzgerald short stories, part of the Penguin (mini) Modern Classics series.

Book Review: Babylon Revisited collects three stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) from various points in his career. The earliest piece is "The Cut-Glass Bowl," which appeared in his first set of short stories, the appropriately named Flappers and Philosophers (1920). Next is the title piece, which was collected in the final assemblage of stories published during his lifetime, Taps at Reveille (1935). The third story is the rarely collected "The Lost Decade," more an experimental, sensory sketch published in December 1939, a year before his death. Fitzgerald's usual themes of loss, disappointment, regret, and punishment run through all three works. One feels the sense of paradise lost, though for Fitzgerald Paradise was usually fleeting, a mere moment, and perhaps not even appreciated at the time. For Fitzgerald's female characters the stakes were even more precipitous. In "The Cut Glass Bowl," a former beau gives a woman "a present that's as hard as you are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through." By the final page she has confronted "the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire." "Babylon Revisited," the best piece here, looks back looks back at the glory days of ex-pat Americans on the Left Bank of Paris after the crash and through the cold light of responsibility, cost, and retribution. Catholic guilt drips from the pages. The story was filmed in 1954 as an elaborate technicolor melodrama titled The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson. Different from the story but solid entertainment. "The Lost Decade," just three or four pages long, also looks back at one man's punishing past, but with a stronger resolve, a sterner gaze. As is typical with Penguin's mini Modern Classics, Babylon Revisited gives a good overview of Fitzgerald's short stories (his novels are a different animal), providing both an enjoyable appetizer and a reliable test whether his stories are for the individual reader.  [4★]

In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (1912)

Two stories by Franz Kafka, part of the Penguin (mini) Modern Classics Series.

Classics Review: In the Penal Colony is a sampler, containing the stories "The Judgment" (1912) and "In the Penal Colony" (1914). In both stories Franz Kafka (1883-1924) offers the world as an unpredictable and dangerous place. Rather than present this as an actual story collection (of which there are many), this Penguin series gives the reader a mere hint of Kafka so as to quickly decide if his writing is up your street.

In "The Judgment" the routine and quotidian life of a father and son, business partners, spins into something wildly different. It's tempting to interpret the story in many ways: psychologically, religiously, or autobiographically spring to mind. My choice, as a non-academic, is to read it more literally, letting the emotions created (if any) resonate with those themes, as a form of expressionism. There's no need to delve too deep. This is how the world seems to Kafka, people are not what they seem, tension and conflict are inevitable. 

"In the Penal Colony," the other story, presents an explorer in a foreign country who watches the demonstration of a unique torture device. The story reflects the times and Kafka's own existence. It vaguely presages Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and may even look forward to the rise of terror, the horrors of the First World War, and European fascism, while unexpectedly looking back at the Spanish Inquisition. For those so inclined it can be easily read as an extended and intricate religious allegory.

In the Penal Colony contains two of Kafka's strongest stories and ones that he felt mattered, which was unusual as he was hypercritical of his work and wanted it all destroyed at his death. This selection is representative and gives an accurate sense of Kafka's writing. Readers who relish these pieces will most likely enjoy his other work. Those who dislike these may want to read no further.  [5★]

Till September Petronella by Jean Rhys (2018)

A sampler of four short works by Jean Rhys (1890-1979), part of the Penguin Modern Classics series.

Book Review: Till September Petronella is not intended to be a serious, short story collection. Instead the pieces were selected for variety, just providing a small taste to see if Jean Rhys is your cup of tea. Progressing through time and the ages of life, the four stories presented here are: 

"The Day They Burned the Books" - set in the Caribbean, about a twelve year old girl and her friend encountering the harsh realities of the adult world. Reminiscent of Wide Sargasso Sea and just a bit of Jamaica Kincaid.

"Till September Petronella" - a pretty, London party girl accidentally bumps through life on the very eve of the First World War. A character very much like that in Rhys' four novels written in the Twenties and Thirties (culminating in Good Morning, Midnight (1939)). A character without skin, almost too sensitive to live, barely able to engage in the world around her. Even when she can't emerge from her interior monologue and hurt, her looks make her attractive to men and her vulnerability makes friends of women. When September arrives the world will be changed.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel" - Unusually, a story focusing on someone other than the perhaps now middle-aged, first-person narrator, set in a London convalescent home. About something mysterious or about unthinking cruelty. How we all have something we cherish that may be important only to us, but it is important.

"I Used to Live Here Once" - the only one of the four written in the third person, a brief encounter, just a moment, an epiphany, a realization, again set in the West Indies, maybe a ghost story, maybe something else.

Till September Petronella is a varied and well-chosen selection of stories, covering much of Rhys' unique style and temperament.  [4★]

The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler (1950)

A collection of Raymond Chandler's non-Marlowe detective mysteries.

Mystery Review: The Simple Art of Murder is highlighted by an introductory essay that sounds like a fussy uncle trying to justify hard-boiled detective fiction by decrying how contrived and lacking in personality are some traditional mysteries. He makes some valid points, but without landing a punch on the cozy mystery. Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) wrote 25 short stories, which fall into three groups. First, there are the Philip Marlowe stories, four of which are currently collected in Trouble is My Business and one that isn't. Then there are the eight stories he "cannibalized" for his novels, which he chose not to republish (being first collected in Killer In the Rain (1964)). Finally, there are the rest of the stories, twelve in all. Four consist of two "odd" mysteries, a Gothic Romance, and his first published story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933), which seemingly should have been included in this collection. The eight other stories, all hard-boiled mysteries, are collected in The Simple Art of Murder. In these eight pieces Chandler seemed to be trying out various ideas for a series detective, though he was probably just trying to sell stories. Oddly, only one is written in the first-person narration that Chandler later adopted for his best known creation. He creates a Latino police detective who gets suspended; a hotel detective with a brother in the mob; a fired hotel detective; a wealthy dilettante known to "talk the way Jane Austen writes"; a gambling undercover man; John Dalmas, a private detective who appeared in another story was later renamed Philip Marlowe; Ted Carmady who also popped up in another story and was later renamed Marlowe, but in this one is a well-connected man about town; and a gambler involved with the wrong crowd. All are tough guys who can take a punch, dish it out, down a drink or six, and try to do the right thing. None of the detectives are quite as noble as Marlowe, however. And none of the stories have the witty banter of the best of the Marlowe novels. All the stories are interesting, twisty, and have enough action for Hollywood. A couple stories are too clever for their own good, getting more convoluted than necessary without a road map. Chandler was known to disdain plot for character, and succeeded most of the time as he does in The Simple Art of Murder.  [4★]

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)

A capricious young woman disturbs the lives of those around her.

Classics Review: Far From the Madding Crowd is written in a convoluted 19th Century style in which the subject of a sentence may prove elusive at times. I had to be less sleepy than I sometimes am when I read, and a cup of tea or coffee might be a valuable assistant. An annotated edition will help. But once I became used to the style I was happily deep within the story and the very human, faceted characters. None are simple. Among the geometric love story there's the obsessive Boldwood, the predatory Troy, the steadfast and aptly named Gabriel Oak, the dangerous beauty Bathsheba Everdene, the center of the storm. They can seem like archetypes, at times even stereotypes, perhaps Biblical or mythological characters, but always with some human element that reminds the reader of someone from life. Only Oak seems a little too good to be true, much like Boxer from Animal Farm (though he comes to a better end). Hardy uses humor and sarcasm well and subtly in Far From the Madding Crowd, especially in his chorus of rural characters, a sort of rustic mechanicals. "His fist [was] rather smaller in size than a common loaf," "Bathsheba did not look quite so alarmed as if a cannon had been discharged by her ear." But he can also employ pathos as with the story of the inimitably named Fanny Robin, who deserves her own book. Hardy himself seems wise and all knowing, from how to save a sheep, fight a fire, harvest wheat, make music, or reference all of the Bible, poetry, art, and literature. "The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no kindness at all." Far From the Madding Crowd was Hardy's first Wessex novel and a wonderful introduction to his work.  [5★]

My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

The immigrant experience among the pioneers on America's Great Plains.

Classics Review: My Ántonia at first simply seems to be Willa Cather (1873-1947) telling a random collection of stories about the backbreaking task of settling the Nebraska prairie. Characters come and go, the titular Ántonia doesn't appear for chapters at a time. The chilling wolf story comes from Russia. "I suppose it hasn't any form," a character says. The more the reader mulls over the book, however, the more layers there are to peel back. Our narrator, the native-born Jim Burden, does everything right, goes off to college, becomes a lawyer, and ends up miserably alone in a loveless marriage. His childhood friend Ántonia, a Czech immigrant, goes her own passionate way, lives on her own terms wrong decisions and all, arrives at fulfillment and happiness that Jim can only try to join. The immigrants are poor and struggling, but their families and culture are richer and stronger than the American-born. My Ántonia is owned by tough, independent women: "I like to be like a man," Ántonia says, showing off muscles work-hardened by the farm. The narrator's love interest (another immigrant woman) states, "I don't want a husband ... men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers ... I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody." Although he wishes it was, the relationship between Jim, he's four years younger, and Ántonia isn't romantic. Instead there's a lifelong friendship, a deeper love. The center of the story is the hard labor of common people, the constant worry of farm work. A subject that, perhaps because it sounds deadly dull (sorry Nebraska), is all too rare in literature. Cather makes it work. The attitudes toward the immigrants are telling. They're placed in a separate train car, a character notes "you were likely to get diseases from foreigners," town boys lust after the immigrant girls but aren't allowed to date them. There are also many moments of living history, life on the plains, how things were done. Eugene O'Neill's famous actor father even comes in for a mention. My first book by Willa Cather, My Ántonia was a happy surprise, deceptively simple and powerful.  [4½★]

Fear of Dancing: The Red Moon Anthology 2013 ed. by Jim Kacian (2014)

The annual collection of the best in haiku-related writing.

Poetry Review: Fear of Dancing is the 18th edition of this annual compilation. Poets as varied as Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez have written books of haiku. Poets such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams have written poems influenced by haiku. I try to "sell" haiku and its relatives as an adult art form (for some of us it's how we learned to count syllables in elementary school). It's a way to briefly express one's creativity, the talent required dependent more on one's powers of observation than on sitzfleisch. For those who enjoy reading or writing haiku it may increase mindfulness, awareness, and closeness to nature or the world around us. A perfect form for walkers and those who may "feel" more than philosophize. One can employ the 5/7/5 syllabic form but there's no requirement. It's a very democratic art form. I often think of how Emily Dickinson could find the universe in her minute observations. But enough of my mild evangelism. Fear of Dancing is much like the previous collections, always of high quality and excellently produced. There are 154 poems here from various publications around the world throughout the year, varied as can be. From the gently humorous title piece: "writing cursive/my unspoken fear/of dancing", to the more poignant: "but stop/the old man/never gets on". Other favorites were "unpicked apples/we promise/to keep in touch" and "thistledown scatters the visible breeze". There are also five essays that can be a bit overly serious, but also highly informative and validating (other people are thoughtful about haiku!). They cover subjects from English versus Latin roots in English-language haiku, an interview with scholar Makoto Ueda (who notes that ten million Japanese write haiku, which are published in over 800 "little magazines"), synesthesia, and modern or avant-garde forms. For anyone interested or curious about the various forms of haiku Fear of Dancing, or any of the annual editions (all are in print), is an invaluable resource and treasury.  [5★]

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford (1960)

A memoir of growing up Mitford.

Nonfiction Review: Hons and Rebels begins as a series of reminiscences of a quirky childhood in rural England between the wars. All told with much humor as seen through the eyes of a member of an aristocratic family (her father was a baron) of six sisters and a brother, notably writer sister Nancy, a couple sisters who espoused fascism, the "little sister" who became a duchess, and poor Pamela who barely rates a mention and simply lived her own life. Fellow "pink" Nancy comes in for the sharpest digs and the brother comes off best. What is little explored is what kind of parenting created this menagerie. Or the raft of sublimated emotions, as discussing intimate family matters just wasn't done at the time. And maybe it is all in there with the blustering, somewhat racist father and the vague, somewhat hands-off mother. "This silly germ theory is something quite new," their mother asserted, "doctors don't have any idea what really causes illnesses, they're always inventing some new theory." The second half of Hons and Rebels presents Mitford absconding with her first husband as two fervent communists set on saving the world. The couple ends up in America living a kind of hand-to-mouth existence that always comes right in the end. The memoir ends as her husband volunteers to fly for Canada in the war while the author prepares to give birth. She later became involved in the U.S. civil rights movement (as did her daughter) and wrote books that mattered, most notably The American Way of Death (1963). If I'd first read Hons and Rebels in my romantic teens I might've seen it as a sort of blueprint for life (without the aristocratic trappings, of course). It presents a picture of England in a certain time and place, which to an American eye is reminiscent of the (seemingly exaggerated) British movies of the time. This was my first foray into the Mitford cult, which led me to read sister Nancy's (semi-autobiographical and similar) novel The Pursuit of Love, while the family biography, The Sisters, (2001) by Mary S. Lovell, sits on my shelf.  [3½★]

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (1976)

After the Green Death civilization has fallen apart, and maybe that's a good thing.

Book Review: Slapstick has a negligible plot, the structure haphazard, as a novel it seems an amateur attempt. The story-line shifts wildly, the action veers and twists, the thread becomes tangled. Everything is a frolic and a detour. But in Slapstick Vonnegut wasn't trying to write a novel. Affected by the deaths of his sister (years before) and an uncle, he was trying to engage in a (rather one-sided) conversation with the reader. He employs his own style of writing, a voice that's purely idiosyncratic, that of a cynical old man with a dark sense of humor and a need to speak more bluntly than polite society would encourage and to share his thoughts which may verge on philosophy though sometimes they just sound like advice. The minimal plot here is merely the framework which he upholsters with his ideas, feelings, and as he says "the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography." Most notably the half-idiot monster twins Eliza and Wilbur stand in for Vonnegut and his sister. He writes: "It is about what life feels like to me." I wonder why he put in the plot at all, the miniature Chinese, the King of Michigan, the Turkey Farm. But that's what readers expect from Vonnegut, that he spin some sort of odd sci-fi imagining. Maybe he felt he couldn't sustain his meandering conversation for a whole book. Perhaps emotions are better revealed through stories than bullet points. Sometimes he needs to be absurdist. I know Slapstick isn't for everybody. Not everyone wants to listen to the crazy guy on the bus, smelling of cigarettes, whose words only half make sense. But fortunately for me, all Vonnegut's words make sense. His unique voice speaks directly to me. And what he's speaking of is humanity, that everyone be a little kinder than they need to be, that we all need some connection with others if we can only find it. He's an old cynic, but he's caring, comforting, and above all honest. He fights the horrible existential aloneness of our time (Slapstick is alternately titled "Lonesome No More!" The villain of the piece is an Ayn Rand-like expert in psychological testing who believes that in America "nobody has a right to rely on anybody else." Her rule for life is "Paddle your own canoe." Depending how you feel about that will tell you whether Vonnegut is your cup of tea. He works in some big ideas here, and I'll mention just one more. Many of us have been hurt by love at some point, and many have hurt others in the selfishness and the cruelty of love. I'm not even talking about all the murders, suicides, and other grotesque violences of people who say they love each other. Vonnegut says, "Please--a little less love, and a little more common decency." There's a certain maturity in realizing that genuine love, romantic, familial, or otherwise, requires common decency. Enough. Slapstick may not be his best, but for the right readers it's a happy conjunction of humor and humanity.  [4★]

Red Wind by Raymond Chandler (1946)

An early collection of Raymond Chandler short stories.

Mystery Review: Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories is a seemingly random selection of five of Raymond Chandler's short detective stories. None feature Philip Marlowe. The two best stories, "Goldfish" (1936) and "Red Wind" (1938), later reappeared in Trouble is My Business with their protagonists (Ted Carmady and John Dalmas, respectively) magically transformed into Philip Marlowe. They're also the only two written in the first person, as were all the Marlowe stories. Two others, "Guns at Cyrano's" (1936) and "I'll Be Waiting" (1939) were subsequently collected in The Simple Art of Murder. The fifth story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933) can be found in Collected Stories. The elegiac "I'll Be Waiting" is the only piece in Red Wind that has the feel and tone of a short story, and appropriately it was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. The other four originally appeared in Black Mask or Dime Detective and read more like short novels. The reader can easily envision Chandler adding subplots, red herrings, and encounters with colorful characters to make them full length books. "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" was Chandler's first published work, which took him six months to write. The plot is is somewhat chaotic as the author focuses on mean streets verisimilitude and creating a rounded and compelling main character. Tellingly, it features a detective named "Mallory," who is tougher than tough and oft-surrounded by bullet-riddled bodies. It also has some of the Chandler verve: after being shot Mallory's "right leg felt like the plagues of Egypt." I don't know if this collection can still be found (my copy is from 1946), but Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories contains five entertaining tales as well as a bit of history.  [4★]