Finished Th 12/26/19
This is a hardback that I ordered from Amazon and received on Mo 6/24/19. When I finished this novel, I immediately ordered the next book in the series.
TWO STORIES:
1) A pharmacist and his son are murdered in their neighborhood drug story. At first Harry believes that the son was involved in a gang and this was the reason for the killings, but later he learns that this is just the tip of a huge Russian mafia run 'pill operation'.
The gang gathers homeless addicts and takes them to crooked drug stores where they collect pills on phony prescriptions. The addicts are then flown to an abandoned encampment near the Salton Sea. They are never allowed to leave and are really slaves.
Harry goes undercover to bust the gang. He's perfect because he's an 'old guy'.
2) A convicted murderer that Harry put behind bars has a new lawyer and a new angle. He has learned that another murderer's DNA has been found on an article of clothing at his murder. However, the evidence locker has been compromised.
The two lawyers (husband and wife) and a police officer in the evidence locker conspired to free the real killer and then sue the city for millions.
If this stands, then all of Harry's closed cases are in question and he might even lose his job with the San Fernando Police Department.
Harry cracks the case and proves that the evidence box had been tampered with. The crooked police officer was using old seals that he was using. He was also raiding the locker and pawning expensive jewelry and items in cases that he thought would never be reopened.
A link to Michael Connelly's page:
https://www.michaelconnelly.com/writing/two-kinds-truth/two-kinds-of-truth-reviews/
I loved the book and all things 'Harry Bosch'. I've even changed my mind about the actor, Titus Welliver. Now he's 'Harry in my mind'.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
PRINCE OF THE CITY by Robert Daley
I read about half of this during the month of December, 2019. I watched the over four hour film on Netflix discs on Saturday and Sunday, 12-21-22/19.
The author was once a real deputy police commissioner.
WHAT IT WAS:
One of the various commissions of NYC comes to a Special Investigation Unit to investigate police corruption. The SIU were 'the princes of NYC'. They were given free reign to handle their own cases, and even determine their own hours.
During the mid to late 1970's they took money and drugs on cases, but were always true to themselves; "Your partners are your only friends".
The SIU agent was more concerned about corruption in the DA's office, but he agreed to become a whistle blower. "A rat is someone who gives information to save himself, but a whistle blower gives information because he believes that he is being forced to do things that are immoral or illegal. That's how he justified himself. He wanted to get back to how he felt when he was at the police academy. To believe that he 'was doing the right thing'.
FAVORITE CASE:
Cops are staking out a local pharmacy that is involved in the drug trade. The phones are bugged and during the surveillance the pharmacist receives a call from some 'mobbed up guys'. They tell the pharmacist must store three hundred stolen TV sets. This is a very small store and it would be impossible to take these in without it being obvious about what is going on.
The cops decide to bust the pharmacist for 'stolen goods'. They call in to the station that this store is harboring stolen goods, and that officers should be sent over to shut it down. As the cops are waiting outside of the pharmacy, dozens of cars arrive driven by off duty cops. They were tipped off by fellow officers that they could go to the pharmacy and get free TV sets.
When higher ups became aware of this obvious corruption, they demanded that the cops return the sets to the store. Not all of them were returned.
All of the names of the cops in the book were changed, but what happened is almost exactly like it was in the book. I wonder why this was done?
The protagonist becomes a police instructor at the police academy.
I liked the book, but the movie worked just as well, and even better.
The film was nominated for best adaptation of a novel.
Sidney Lumet directed, but I wonder what the film would have been like if done by Marin Scorsese of Francis Coppola. And, I thought that Treat Williams was almost too boyish for the role as the SIU investigator that 'turns'. But, maybe he really was that immature looking.
Lumet is known for '12 ANGRY MEN, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, NETWORK, and THE VERDICT. He's also famous as 'A New York' film maker.
Fashion was very well done in the film; men in turtle necked sweaters, black leather trench coats, wide lapels, women's beige colored top coats with fur collars, Cuban heels and platform shoes.
And, the real streets of NYC. So much of the city looked as if it were a war zone, which was absolutely how it really was.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
HOW TO BEHAVE IN A CROWD by Camille Bordas
Finished Sa 12/14/19 The December, 2019 selection for the Contemporary Book Club.
The book is somewhere between 'charming' and 'annoying'. I could go either way.
Reminded me of J.D. Salinger's 'The Glass Family'; NINE STORIES, RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, FRANNY AND ZOOEY, CARPENTERS AND SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION.
The novel is set in France, but it could have been set in Ohio or anywhere. None of the characters or the feel of the novel didn't evoke anything that was particularly French.
Isidore Mazal- the protagonist, 11 years old. The youngest of all the children.
***Bernice- the oldest and a PHD candidate. Gets a French one, and goes to Chicago for another. Was slated to be a teacher, but hides out in Paris and doesn't tell anyone what she's done.
***Aurore- also a PHD candidate. Gets pregnant.
***Jerome- composer and cello player. Certain musical passages make him laugh.
***Leonard- Writing a thesis about Loss and Family. It turns into an expose of The Mazal's.
***Simone- closest in age to Izzie (Dorry) and wants him to write her biography.
Mother- is devastated by the loss of 'The Father', Leaves his clothes in the closet with the door open. Wants Dorry to read to her. She isn't interested in content, but only his speaking voice.
'The Father'- this is the way he is always referred to. Knocked his teeth out falling down at work. Wears a suit to work and travels a lot. Had a painless heart attack and died suddenly.
Rose- Simone's pen pal, yet she ignores Rose and bonds with Dorry. Bad spelling, but speaks her heart.
"With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost. A witty, heartfelt novel that brilliantly evokes the confusions of adolescence and marks the arrival of an extraordinary young talent".
From the book's page on Amazon:
"Isidore Mazal is eleven years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Berenice, Aurore, and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age twenty-four. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist—she's already put Isidore to work on her biography. The only time they leave their rooms is to gather on the old, stained couch and dissect prime-time television dramas in light of Aristotle's Poetics.
Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them—if he doesn't run away from home first.
Isidore’s unstinting empathy, combined with his simmering anger, makes for a complex character study, in which the elegiac and comedic build toward a heartbreaking conclusion. With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost".
Some questions to the author at Amazon:
"A Conversation with Camille Bordas, Author of 'How To Behave In A Crowd'
Q. Tell us about your inspiration for 'How To Behave In A Crowd.'
How to Behave in a Crowd doesn’t exactly rely on a big idea or concept, but more on its characters. I never have big ideas come to me out of nowhere. Or if I have one, it’s usually a bad sign—I get a little crushed by it and give up fast. For me, the writing of a novel often starts with a little voice I like and want to keep playing with. As far as the notion of 'inspiration' goes, I’m a firm subscriber to Picasso’s idea that inspiration is not really something you can count on, or that eventually will come to you from above or wherever, but that it is something that finds you at work. When I write, I never know in advance what’s going to happen, and you could say that what 'inspires' a sentence is nothing other than the one (or the few) that just preceded it. Sentence after sentence, narrative possibilities are either opening or closing, and part of my job is to be open to and keep track of them so that I can write the best possible version of my book. The problem with saying that the only things that inspire a new sentence are the ones I wrote before, though, is that you’re going to ask me, “Sure, but what about the very first sentence of the book, then? If all the others just stemmed from it, where did the first one come from?” and now I’m cornered. I don’t have a clever answer. It so happens that the very first page I wrote of this book ended up being the first of the finished novel as well, so I guess, in retrospect, that the day I wrote it ended up being pretty defining, but I don’t remember much about it. At the time, that first page was just a little thing I scribbled, an observation about suede that I decided for some reason to write down in the voice of a child. This first page describes something apparently trivial (there’s a stain on the family couch, but nobody knows who’s responsible for it, what it is a stain from, or when exactly it was made) and yet it is extremely important to the narrator, Isidore. It’s a page that introduces six core characters, Isidore and his five older siblings, by showing that the five eldest in question can’t even agree on something as small and meaningless as the author of a stain. It also presents Isidore—who is the only one to not have an idea about it because he was too young at the time the stain was made to remember—as dependent on his siblings for all kinds of information, big and small. The rest of the book covers about three years in Isidore’s life and goes in all sorts of directions, but it came out of Isidore’s character in that particular moment. I liked his obsession with this small thing that nobody around him seemed to care about.
Q. This is your first novel written in English. How did you come to the decision to write in English, and was the process different from writing in your native French?
I moved to the United States a few years ago and have barely spoken French to anyone since then. I speak French when I go back to France once a year, or on the phone with my mother, but other than that, English pretty much took over my life. In the end, writing in English wasn’t a big decision I made. It happened quite naturally. Weirdly, I didn’t find the process of writing a novel in English that much different than writing a novel in French. That’s probably because I see the process of writing a novel pretty much exactly as Doctorow describes it, as being similar to driving at night in the fog: you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. It makes the process seem both vertiginous and not at the same time. You never know where you are or where exactly you’re headed, but the way to get there is one sentence at a time, so that’s a manageable unit—and that’s how I wrote this novel, same as I would’ve written it in French, one sentence at a time. Obviously, having not grown up speaking English but having learned it in my late teens, there will always be words or phrases that I won’t only not know, but also not know that I don’t know, so that can be a little paralyzing if I think about it too much. Having a smaller vocabulary and fewer references at my disposal can also be a good thing, I think. I guess it can all be either extremely freeing or frustrating, depending on the kind of day I’m having. I have fewer tools than a native speaker, for sure, but I make do with what I’ve got. I know you don’t necessarily need gigantic means to reach big emotional effects. To riff on the Doctorow image, I feel that not being a native English speaker only means that my headlights are maybe a little dimmer than those of an American writer, but in a way that might be advantageous: it forces me to be even more focused and precise.
Q. The protagonist of 'How To Behave In A Crowd', Isidore Mazal, is eleven years old. How did writing the adults in the story differ from writing the children? Was one easier than the other?
Not really. I’m an adult now, so you might think it would require extra effort to put myself in the shoes of a preteen, but I actually remember being Isidore’s age quite vividly. I have learned a lot of things since then of course, but I actually don’t feel that much smarter than I was then.
Q. What do you hope readers will take away from 'How To Behave In A Crowd?'
I hope they take away a good memory of reading it, and a desire to maybe read it again down the line. I write books because I love books, and I don’t think the books that I love try to send me a message. I don’t really learn or expect to learn lessons from a novel. A good novel to me is time out from the world. It’s pretty precious.
Q. You recently published a short story in The New Yorker. How is your process different when writing a short story versus writing a novel?
I don’t know that I can really talk about it much because I have only written that one story. But what I can say is that, in writing it, there was more of a sense of urgency than in writing my novels. When I write novels, I tend to let myself explore and go to the (sometimes dead-) end of things. I’m always telling myself, We’ll see when the first draft is done whether this stays or not. But with the story, I was watching myself more. If I started writing a description of a room, for instance, I would ask myself right away, Well, does it matter to the story, the colors of the wall? and decide right then and there if it did or didn’t. A story is obviously easier to edit as you go. You can read the whole of it many times in a day of work, keep it in your head... You’re convinced that you could finish it any day, also, which is not the case with a novel. Writing that story was pretty intense, because it felt kind of like the last few weeks of writing a novel. You know you’re close to finishing, so that’s very exciting, but you also try to not get carried away, because any sentence could be the last, so you have to be extra careful.
Q. Who are some of the writers, or what are some of the books, that have most influenced you?
I never really understand what people mean by 'influence.' There are many, many, books that I love, but I’ve never necessarily felt that I was writing in the lineage of any of them in particular. That might be because I always read novels for pleasure and not for school or work. I never studied literature or writing; I never thought of dissecting a book I loved to see what made it work; I never deliberately riffed on or copied a writer I loved as an exercise, as I hear some American writers do in the course of their education. It just never crossed my mind. But surely I must have been influenced by writers I love, right? I don’t know which ones, though. I mean, one of my favorite books of all time is Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, but I challenge anyone to see its influence on my work... Same goes for Nabokov’s Ada or Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. Patrick deWitt and George Saunders make me laugh out loud, but I don’t feel at all like I’m in their lineage. I love Harry Crews’s Gypsy’s Curse, but unfortunately I could never come up with such a book. There are authors whose worldview I feel close to, though, like José Emilio Pacheco, Akhil Sharma, J. D. Salinger, Joan Didion, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lydia Davis, Édouard Levé, or Emmanuel Carrère (all of them very different from one another, by the way, but I guess every reader makes his or her own connections between writers, and I can sort of link them all somehow). I also read a lot of sociology, and I tend to believe that every writer (or maybe everyone, actually) should read Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life".
Link to The National Book Review of the novel:
https://www.thenationalbookreview.com/features/2017/11/8/review-a-young-french-boy-trapped-in-a-large-and-precocious-family
Link to NPR review of the book:
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/16/542469075/an-oddball-family-that-cant-connect-in-how-to-behave-in-a-crowd
Numerious links to reviews of the book:
https://www.google.com/search?q=camille+bordas+how+to+behave+in+a+crowd+a+novel&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS851US851&oq=how+to+behave+in+a+crowd+novel&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.6992j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Link to the book's page at GoodReads:
***I posted a question about the fight between Izzie and Porfi. Why did Victor join in on Izzie's side?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31951323-how-to-behave-in-a-crowd?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LV40CHe0ob&rank=1
The book is somewhere between 'charming' and 'annoying'. I could go either way.
Reminded me of J.D. Salinger's 'The Glass Family'; NINE STORIES, RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, FRANNY AND ZOOEY, CARPENTERS AND SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION.
The novel is set in France, but it could have been set in Ohio or anywhere. None of the characters or the feel of the novel didn't evoke anything that was particularly French.
Isidore Mazal- the protagonist, 11 years old. The youngest of all the children.
***Bernice- the oldest and a PHD candidate. Gets a French one, and goes to Chicago for another. Was slated to be a teacher, but hides out in Paris and doesn't tell anyone what she's done.
***Aurore- also a PHD candidate. Gets pregnant.
***Jerome- composer and cello player. Certain musical passages make him laugh.
***Leonard- Writing a thesis about Loss and Family. It turns into an expose of The Mazal's.
***Simone- closest in age to Izzie (Dorry) and wants him to write her biography.
Mother- is devastated by the loss of 'The Father', Leaves his clothes in the closet with the door open. Wants Dorry to read to her. She isn't interested in content, but only his speaking voice.
'The Father'- this is the way he is always referred to. Knocked his teeth out falling down at work. Wears a suit to work and travels a lot. Had a painless heart attack and died suddenly.
Rose- Simone's pen pal, yet she ignores Rose and bonds with Dorry. Bad spelling, but speaks her heart.
"With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost. A witty, heartfelt novel that brilliantly evokes the confusions of adolescence and marks the arrival of an extraordinary young talent".
From the book's page on Amazon:
"Isidore Mazal is eleven years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Berenice, Aurore, and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age twenty-four. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by eighteen months, expects a great career as a novelist—she's already put Isidore to work on her biography. The only time they leave their rooms is to gather on the old, stained couch and dissect prime-time television dramas in light of Aristotle's Poetics.
Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them—if he doesn't run away from home first.
Isidore’s unstinting empathy, combined with his simmering anger, makes for a complex character study, in which the elegiac and comedic build toward a heartbreaking conclusion. With How to Behave in a Crowd, Camille Bordas immerses readers in the interior life of a boy puzzled by adulthood and beginning to realize that the adults around him are just as lost".
Some questions to the author at Amazon:
"A Conversation with Camille Bordas, Author of 'How To Behave In A Crowd'
Q. Tell us about your inspiration for 'How To Behave In A Crowd.'
How to Behave in a Crowd doesn’t exactly rely on a big idea or concept, but more on its characters. I never have big ideas come to me out of nowhere. Or if I have one, it’s usually a bad sign—I get a little crushed by it and give up fast. For me, the writing of a novel often starts with a little voice I like and want to keep playing with. As far as the notion of 'inspiration' goes, I’m a firm subscriber to Picasso’s idea that inspiration is not really something you can count on, or that eventually will come to you from above or wherever, but that it is something that finds you at work. When I write, I never know in advance what’s going to happen, and you could say that what 'inspires' a sentence is nothing other than the one (or the few) that just preceded it. Sentence after sentence, narrative possibilities are either opening or closing, and part of my job is to be open to and keep track of them so that I can write the best possible version of my book. The problem with saying that the only things that inspire a new sentence are the ones I wrote before, though, is that you’re going to ask me, “Sure, but what about the very first sentence of the book, then? If all the others just stemmed from it, where did the first one come from?” and now I’m cornered. I don’t have a clever answer. It so happens that the very first page I wrote of this book ended up being the first of the finished novel as well, so I guess, in retrospect, that the day I wrote it ended up being pretty defining, but I don’t remember much about it. At the time, that first page was just a little thing I scribbled, an observation about suede that I decided for some reason to write down in the voice of a child. This first page describes something apparently trivial (there’s a stain on the family couch, but nobody knows who’s responsible for it, what it is a stain from, or when exactly it was made) and yet it is extremely important to the narrator, Isidore. It’s a page that introduces six core characters, Isidore and his five older siblings, by showing that the five eldest in question can’t even agree on something as small and meaningless as the author of a stain. It also presents Isidore—who is the only one to not have an idea about it because he was too young at the time the stain was made to remember—as dependent on his siblings for all kinds of information, big and small. The rest of the book covers about three years in Isidore’s life and goes in all sorts of directions, but it came out of Isidore’s character in that particular moment. I liked his obsession with this small thing that nobody around him seemed to care about.
Q. This is your first novel written in English. How did you come to the decision to write in English, and was the process different from writing in your native French?
I moved to the United States a few years ago and have barely spoken French to anyone since then. I speak French when I go back to France once a year, or on the phone with my mother, but other than that, English pretty much took over my life. In the end, writing in English wasn’t a big decision I made. It happened quite naturally. Weirdly, I didn’t find the process of writing a novel in English that much different than writing a novel in French. That’s probably because I see the process of writing a novel pretty much exactly as Doctorow describes it, as being similar to driving at night in the fog: you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. It makes the process seem both vertiginous and not at the same time. You never know where you are or where exactly you’re headed, but the way to get there is one sentence at a time, so that’s a manageable unit—and that’s how I wrote this novel, same as I would’ve written it in French, one sentence at a time. Obviously, having not grown up speaking English but having learned it in my late teens, there will always be words or phrases that I won’t only not know, but also not know that I don’t know, so that can be a little paralyzing if I think about it too much. Having a smaller vocabulary and fewer references at my disposal can also be a good thing, I think. I guess it can all be either extremely freeing or frustrating, depending on the kind of day I’m having. I have fewer tools than a native speaker, for sure, but I make do with what I’ve got. I know you don’t necessarily need gigantic means to reach big emotional effects. To riff on the Doctorow image, I feel that not being a native English speaker only means that my headlights are maybe a little dimmer than those of an American writer, but in a way that might be advantageous: it forces me to be even more focused and precise.
Q. The protagonist of 'How To Behave In A Crowd', Isidore Mazal, is eleven years old. How did writing the adults in the story differ from writing the children? Was one easier than the other?
Not really. I’m an adult now, so you might think it would require extra effort to put myself in the shoes of a preteen, but I actually remember being Isidore’s age quite vividly. I have learned a lot of things since then of course, but I actually don’t feel that much smarter than I was then.
Q. What do you hope readers will take away from 'How To Behave In A Crowd?'
I hope they take away a good memory of reading it, and a desire to maybe read it again down the line. I write books because I love books, and I don’t think the books that I love try to send me a message. I don’t really learn or expect to learn lessons from a novel. A good novel to me is time out from the world. It’s pretty precious.
Q. You recently published a short story in The New Yorker. How is your process different when writing a short story versus writing a novel?
I don’t know that I can really talk about it much because I have only written that one story. But what I can say is that, in writing it, there was more of a sense of urgency than in writing my novels. When I write novels, I tend to let myself explore and go to the (sometimes dead-) end of things. I’m always telling myself, We’ll see when the first draft is done whether this stays or not. But with the story, I was watching myself more. If I started writing a description of a room, for instance, I would ask myself right away, Well, does it matter to the story, the colors of the wall? and decide right then and there if it did or didn’t. A story is obviously easier to edit as you go. You can read the whole of it many times in a day of work, keep it in your head... You’re convinced that you could finish it any day, also, which is not the case with a novel. Writing that story was pretty intense, because it felt kind of like the last few weeks of writing a novel. You know you’re close to finishing, so that’s very exciting, but you also try to not get carried away, because any sentence could be the last, so you have to be extra careful.
Q. Who are some of the writers, or what are some of the books, that have most influenced you?
I never really understand what people mean by 'influence.' There are many, many, books that I love, but I’ve never necessarily felt that I was writing in the lineage of any of them in particular. That might be because I always read novels for pleasure and not for school or work. I never studied literature or writing; I never thought of dissecting a book I loved to see what made it work; I never deliberately riffed on or copied a writer I loved as an exercise, as I hear some American writers do in the course of their education. It just never crossed my mind. But surely I must have been influenced by writers I love, right? I don’t know which ones, though. I mean, one of my favorite books of all time is Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, but I challenge anyone to see its influence on my work... Same goes for Nabokov’s Ada or Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. Patrick deWitt and George Saunders make me laugh out loud, but I don’t feel at all like I’m in their lineage. I love Harry Crews’s Gypsy’s Curse, but unfortunately I could never come up with such a book. There are authors whose worldview I feel close to, though, like José Emilio Pacheco, Akhil Sharma, J. D. Salinger, Joan Didion, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lydia Davis, Édouard Levé, or Emmanuel Carrère (all of them very different from one another, by the way, but I guess every reader makes his or her own connections between writers, and I can sort of link them all somehow). I also read a lot of sociology, and I tend to believe that every writer (or maybe everyone, actually) should read Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life".
Link to The National Book Review of the novel:
https://www.thenationalbookreview.com/features/2017/11/8/review-a-young-french-boy-trapped-in-a-large-and-precocious-family
Link to NPR review of the book:
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/16/542469075/an-oddball-family-that-cant-connect-in-how-to-behave-in-a-crowd
Numerious links to reviews of the book:
https://www.google.com/search?q=camille+bordas+how+to+behave+in+a+crowd+a+novel&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS851US851&oq=how+to+behave+in+a+crowd+novel&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.6992j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Link to the book's page at GoodReads:
***I posted a question about the fight between Izzie and Porfi. Why did Victor join in on Izzie's side?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31951323-how-to-behave-in-a-crowd?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LV40CHe0ob&rank=1
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
SOMEONE by Alice McDermott
Finished Mo 12/9/19
This is a hardback that I ordered from Amazon on Mo 8/27/19. I got it because I really enjoyed her book , 'THE NINTH HOUR' which was a selection by the Contemporary Book Club.
This book was a "slow burning tour de force".
A strange story-line, but the character development was almost magical.
Basically the story of Marie, an Irish Catholic woman who lives in Brooklyn, NY during the early to late 20th century.
They live in a brownstone next to The Chehab's. A couple from Syria. Their daughter Pegeen who falls down the stairs and dies. This is how the novel begins. Marie's mother thinks that the couple, woman from Ireland and father from Syria, is very romantic.
Bill Corrigan is a veteran of WWII who lost most of his sight during the war. He is always dressed in a business suit and sits out on the sidewalk and is the umpire for the kids stick-ball games.
Gabe is Marie's older brother. He is studying for the priesthood. At the last moment, he decides it is not his vocation. He is probably a closeted gay man.
Dora Ryan is a woman who marries another woman. She thought that she was a man. This occurs when Marie is still a young girl and it leaves a lasting impression.
Gerty is Marie's closest childhood friend.
The link to the book's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someone_(McDermott_novel)
The Kirkus review online:
"McDermott’s brief seventh novel (Child of My Heart, 2002, etc.) follows seven decades of a Brooklyn woman’s modest life to create one of the author’s most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish-American family.
Sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, 7-year-old Marie watches her 1920s Brooklyn neighborhood through the thick glasses she already wears—her ability to see or missee those around her is one of the novel’s overriding metaphors. She revels in the stories of her neighbors, from the tragedy of Billy Corrigan, blinded in the war, to the great romance of the Chebabs’ Syrian-Irish marriage. Affectionately nicknamed the “little pagan” in contrast to her studious, spiritual older brother Gabe, Marie feels secure and loved within her own family despite her occasional battles of will against her mother. Cozy in their narrow apartment, her parents are proud that Marie’s father has a white-collar job as a clerk, and they have great hopes for Gabe, who is soon off to seminary to study for the priesthood. Marie’s Edenic childhood shatters when her adored father dies. In fact, death is never far from the surface of these lives, particularly since Maries works as a young woman with the local undertaker, a job that affords many more glimpses into her neighbors and more storytelling. By then, Gabe has left the priesthood, claiming it didn’t suit him and that his widowed mother needs him at home. Is he a failure or a quiet saint? After her heart is broken by a local boy who dumps her for a richer girl, Marie marries one of Gabe’s former parishioners, has children and eventually moves away from the neighborhood. Gabe remains. Marie’s straightforward narration is interrupted with occasional jumps back and forward in time that create both a sense of foreboding and continuity as well as a meditation on the nature of sorrow.
There is no high drama here, but Marie and Gabe are compelling in their basic goodness, as is McDermott’s elegy to a vanished world".
The fact that Marie finds a job at a local funeral parlor keeps death always in the focus of the novel.
Her boss at the funeral home is Mr. Fagin and he is a fan of Charles Dickens.
Marie is asked to marry a man that she barely knows, Walter Hartnett. The scene were he sucks on one of her breasts is an odd and strange high-point in the novel. He drops her almost without warning and merely for a woman who has more money and is better looking. He lays this out as if Marie would immediately agree.
Much later, Walter comes to the funeral home to pay respects to one of their friends and he is alcoholic and not very happy. But, obviously these two had no future.
Marie meets a friend of Gabe's and marries him. Tom didn't realize that Gabe was no longer a priest. Tom works at a brewery....beer and bier...
I loved the book and although the plot is really not as important as the rich character development.
The write up in GoodReads:
"An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived, a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.
An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections - of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age - come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice.
Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.
Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn - McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today".
The title comes at the end of Book One: After Walter Hartnett drops Marie...."Who's going to love me?...Someone".
This is a hardback that I ordered from Amazon on Mo 8/27/19. I got it because I really enjoyed her book , 'THE NINTH HOUR' which was a selection by the Contemporary Book Club.
This book was a "slow burning tour de force".
A strange story-line, but the character development was almost magical.
Basically the story of Marie, an Irish Catholic woman who lives in Brooklyn, NY during the early to late 20th century.
They live in a brownstone next to The Chehab's. A couple from Syria. Their daughter Pegeen who falls down the stairs and dies. This is how the novel begins. Marie's mother thinks that the couple, woman from Ireland and father from Syria, is very romantic.
Bill Corrigan is a veteran of WWII who lost most of his sight during the war. He is always dressed in a business suit and sits out on the sidewalk and is the umpire for the kids stick-ball games.
Gabe is Marie's older brother. He is studying for the priesthood. At the last moment, he decides it is not his vocation. He is probably a closeted gay man.
Dora Ryan is a woman who marries another woman. She thought that she was a man. This occurs when Marie is still a young girl and it leaves a lasting impression.
Gerty is Marie's closest childhood friend.
The link to the book's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Someone_(McDermott_novel)
The Kirkus review online:
"McDermott’s brief seventh novel (Child of My Heart, 2002, etc.) follows seven decades of a Brooklyn woman’s modest life to create one of the author’s most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish-American family.
Sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, 7-year-old Marie watches her 1920s Brooklyn neighborhood through the thick glasses she already wears—her ability to see or missee those around her is one of the novel’s overriding metaphors. She revels in the stories of her neighbors, from the tragedy of Billy Corrigan, blinded in the war, to the great romance of the Chebabs’ Syrian-Irish marriage. Affectionately nicknamed the “little pagan” in contrast to her studious, spiritual older brother Gabe, Marie feels secure and loved within her own family despite her occasional battles of will against her mother. Cozy in their narrow apartment, her parents are proud that Marie’s father has a white-collar job as a clerk, and they have great hopes for Gabe, who is soon off to seminary to study for the priesthood. Marie’s Edenic childhood shatters when her adored father dies. In fact, death is never far from the surface of these lives, particularly since Maries works as a young woman with the local undertaker, a job that affords many more glimpses into her neighbors and more storytelling. By then, Gabe has left the priesthood, claiming it didn’t suit him and that his widowed mother needs him at home. Is he a failure or a quiet saint? After her heart is broken by a local boy who dumps her for a richer girl, Marie marries one of Gabe’s former parishioners, has children and eventually moves away from the neighborhood. Gabe remains. Marie’s straightforward narration is interrupted with occasional jumps back and forward in time that create both a sense of foreboding and continuity as well as a meditation on the nature of sorrow.
There is no high drama here, but Marie and Gabe are compelling in their basic goodness, as is McDermott’s elegy to a vanished world".
The fact that Marie finds a job at a local funeral parlor keeps death always in the focus of the novel.
Her boss at the funeral home is Mr. Fagin and he is a fan of Charles Dickens.
Marie is asked to marry a man that she barely knows, Walter Hartnett. The scene were he sucks on one of her breasts is an odd and strange high-point in the novel. He drops her almost without warning and merely for a woman who has more money and is better looking. He lays this out as if Marie would immediately agree.
Much later, Walter comes to the funeral home to pay respects to one of their friends and he is alcoholic and not very happy. But, obviously these two had no future.
Marie meets a friend of Gabe's and marries him. Tom didn't realize that Gabe was no longer a priest. Tom works at a brewery....beer and bier...
I loved the book and although the plot is really not as important as the rich character development.
The write up in GoodReads:
"An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived, a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.
An ordinary life - its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion - lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections - of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age - come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice.
Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.
Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn - McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today".
The title comes at the end of Book One: After Walter Hartnett drops Marie...."Who's going to love me?...Someone".
Saturday, December 7, 2019
THE HUNGER by Whitley Strieber
Finished Fr 12/6/19
This is one of my ancient paperbacks and although there is no notation that I'd read it, I'm sure that I have. I also remember the fantastic movie, directed by Tony Scott, starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and David Bowie.
From an internet article about the 1983 film:
"John (David Bowie) is the lover of the gorgeous immortal vampire Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), and he's been led to believe that he'll live forever, too. Unfortunately, he quickly deteriorates into a horrible living death, and Miriam seeks a new companion. She soon sets her sights on Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a lovely young scientist, who quickly falls under Miriam's spell. However, Sarah doesn't warm up to the concept of vampirism easily, leading to conflict with Miriam".
Miriam is a vampire that is a 'mirror species' to humankind. She was born somewhat before the Egyptian empire. She has 'infected' numerous human to become her companions over the ages and keeps their remains in sealed contains. She vows to 'love them until the end of time'.
John is her latest companion and he was 'chosen' about three hundred years ago. He is physically deteriorating and he needs to feed on human blood far to frequently to continue to remain hidden among humankind.
The vampires to not have elongated canine teeth, but Miriam uses a scalpel and needles to transfer the blood.
Miriam contacts Sarah who is a biologist specializing in Gerontology. Miriam will reveal scientific evidence about her non-human condition in hopes of learning a possible cure for John.
This doesn't come to pass, but Miriam finds that Sarah would become an excellent selection as her next companion 'through the ages'.
From the book's page at Amazon:
"Eternal youth is a wonderful thing for the few who have it, but for Miriam Blaylock, it is a curse -- an existence marred by death and sorrow. Because for the everlasting Miriam, everyone she loves withers and dies. Now, haunted by signs of her adoring husband's imminent demise, Miriam sets out in search of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and withstand the test of time. She finds it in the beautiful Sarah Roberts, a brilliant young scientist who may hold the secret to immortality. But one thing stands between the intoxicating Miriam Blaylock and the object of her desire: Dr. Tom Haver...and he's about to realize that love and death to hand in hand".
I remember reading the book the first time and I was taken by a kind of soap that Miriam uses. It is a very flowery scent and was used in mortuaries to prevent guests from smelling the corpses when they were laid out for public viewing: BREHMER AND CROSS (to the trades).
I really loved the novel and it is strikingly different from the usual depiction of vampires. I liked the 'scientific' aspect of the vampires as a natural phenomenon. Vampires are just a different evolutionary path from human's simian ancestors.
Whitley Strieber is a controversial author and this is a link to his page on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber
This is one of my ancient paperbacks and although there is no notation that I'd read it, I'm sure that I have. I also remember the fantastic movie, directed by Tony Scott, starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and David Bowie.
From an internet article about the 1983 film:
"John (David Bowie) is the lover of the gorgeous immortal vampire Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), and he's been led to believe that he'll live forever, too. Unfortunately, he quickly deteriorates into a horrible living death, and Miriam seeks a new companion. She soon sets her sights on Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a lovely young scientist, who quickly falls under Miriam's spell. However, Sarah doesn't warm up to the concept of vampirism easily, leading to conflict with Miriam".
Miriam is a vampire that is a 'mirror species' to humankind. She was born somewhat before the Egyptian empire. She has 'infected' numerous human to become her companions over the ages and keeps their remains in sealed contains. She vows to 'love them until the end of time'.
John is her latest companion and he was 'chosen' about three hundred years ago. He is physically deteriorating and he needs to feed on human blood far to frequently to continue to remain hidden among humankind.
The vampires to not have elongated canine teeth, but Miriam uses a scalpel and needles to transfer the blood.
Miriam contacts Sarah who is a biologist specializing in Gerontology. Miriam will reveal scientific evidence about her non-human condition in hopes of learning a possible cure for John.
This doesn't come to pass, but Miriam finds that Sarah would become an excellent selection as her next companion 'through the ages'.
From the book's page at Amazon:
"Eternal youth is a wonderful thing for the few who have it, but for Miriam Blaylock, it is a curse -- an existence marred by death and sorrow. Because for the everlasting Miriam, everyone she loves withers and dies. Now, haunted by signs of her adoring husband's imminent demise, Miriam sets out in search of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and withstand the test of time. She finds it in the beautiful Sarah Roberts, a brilliant young scientist who may hold the secret to immortality. But one thing stands between the intoxicating Miriam Blaylock and the object of her desire: Dr. Tom Haver...and he's about to realize that love and death to hand in hand".
I remember reading the book the first time and I was taken by a kind of soap that Miriam uses. It is a very flowery scent and was used in mortuaries to prevent guests from smelling the corpses when they were laid out for public viewing: BREHMER AND CROSS (to the trades).
I really loved the novel and it is strikingly different from the usual depiction of vampires. I liked the 'scientific' aspect of the vampires as a natural phenomenon. Vampires are just a different evolutionary path from human's simian ancestors.
Whitley Strieber is a controversial author and this is a link to his page on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber
Monday, December 2, 2019
THE GRIFTERS by Jim Thompson
Refinished Su 12/1/19
This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first completed on Sa 1/27/01, and I bought the book at the library book sale on Sa 1/13/01. And, according to the flyleaf , I finished the book after I saw 'THE PLEDGE' at the Showplace. I tried to get this film at Netflix, but it is no longer available. It was a film directed by Sean Penn and starred Jack Nicholson.
The novel opens with a scene where Roy Dillon gets punched in the stomach with a bat after trying to run a 'short con'. He tried to pay for his drink at a soda counter with a twenty because he told the clerk he didn't have any change. The clerk gives him the change, and then Roy said, "Oh, I've got the change", and then tries to keep the change for the twenty and the twenty dollar bill.
Roy lives alone in a apartment in Los Angeles. He has a straight job and does the cons on the side.
Moira Langley is his girlfriend. She runs the 'long con' and this is revealed later in the novel. Moira wants a relationship with Roy- both professional and romantic, but Roy doesn't want to commit.
Lilly Dillon is Roy's mother. She had Roy when she was very young and liked to refer to Roy as her younger brother. She was abusive to the boy when he was younger. When he would get punched in the arm she'd say, "Oh Roy, ya only got one arm".
She re-enters Roy's life after after Roy was clubbed in the stomach. Lilly calls a doctor and they learn that unless he is hospitalized, Roy could die.
When he's let go from the hospital, Lilly hires Carol to be a nurse for Roy. Lilly picks this nurse because she hopes that Roy will become romantically involved.
Carol is a holocaust survivor of Dachau. Roy falls hard for Carol, but they break up. He treats her like a prostitute and Carol is offended. She says that their night together should be worth a bout thirty dollars which 'is the going rate'.
Roy uses his love of Carol as a possible path back to a normal life.
Lilly collects money for a Baltimore base mobster, Bobo. She places bets at the local racetrack. She skims from Bobo and he catches her and burns the back of her hand very badly with a cigarette.
Moira tracks Lilly to Tuscon and murders Lilly and makes it appear to be a suicide. Roy is contacted by the police and flies to Tuscon and puts together that it's not his mother because she doesn't have the burn on the back of her hand.
Lilly returns to LA and stole Roy's stash of money that he had hidden behind four clown paintings on the wall of his apartment.
Roy comes into the apartment as Lilly is stuffing a bag with the money. As they talk Lilly swings the bag, it breaks open and showers the apartment with money, and a glass table is broken and one of the shards slices Roy in the neck and he is bleeding to death as Lilly leaves with the money.
A well written novel and all of the characters are terribly flawed.
Jim Thompson's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_(writer)
The novel's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grifters_(novel)
In 1990 the film was made into a movie with Stephen Frears as the director. I've got it on top of my queue at Netflix and should get it by the end of the week.
This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first completed on Sa 1/27/01, and I bought the book at the library book sale on Sa 1/13/01. And, according to the flyleaf , I finished the book after I saw 'THE PLEDGE' at the Showplace. I tried to get this film at Netflix, but it is no longer available. It was a film directed by Sean Penn and starred Jack Nicholson.
The novel opens with a scene where Roy Dillon gets punched in the stomach with a bat after trying to run a 'short con'. He tried to pay for his drink at a soda counter with a twenty because he told the clerk he didn't have any change. The clerk gives him the change, and then Roy said, "Oh, I've got the change", and then tries to keep the change for the twenty and the twenty dollar bill.
Roy lives alone in a apartment in Los Angeles. He has a straight job and does the cons on the side.
Moira Langley is his girlfriend. She runs the 'long con' and this is revealed later in the novel. Moira wants a relationship with Roy- both professional and romantic, but Roy doesn't want to commit.
Lilly Dillon is Roy's mother. She had Roy when she was very young and liked to refer to Roy as her younger brother. She was abusive to the boy when he was younger. When he would get punched in the arm she'd say, "Oh Roy, ya only got one arm".
She re-enters Roy's life after after Roy was clubbed in the stomach. Lilly calls a doctor and they learn that unless he is hospitalized, Roy could die.
When he's let go from the hospital, Lilly hires Carol to be a nurse for Roy. Lilly picks this nurse because she hopes that Roy will become romantically involved.
Carol is a holocaust survivor of Dachau. Roy falls hard for Carol, but they break up. He treats her like a prostitute and Carol is offended. She says that their night together should be worth a bout thirty dollars which 'is the going rate'.
Roy uses his love of Carol as a possible path back to a normal life.
Lilly collects money for a Baltimore base mobster, Bobo. She places bets at the local racetrack. She skims from Bobo and he catches her and burns the back of her hand very badly with a cigarette.
Moira tracks Lilly to Tuscon and murders Lilly and makes it appear to be a suicide. Roy is contacted by the police and flies to Tuscon and puts together that it's not his mother because she doesn't have the burn on the back of her hand.
Lilly returns to LA and stole Roy's stash of money that he had hidden behind four clown paintings on the wall of his apartment.
Roy comes into the apartment as Lilly is stuffing a bag with the money. As they talk Lilly swings the bag, it breaks open and showers the apartment with money, and a glass table is broken and one of the shards slices Roy in the neck and he is bleeding to death as Lilly leaves with the money.
A well written novel and all of the characters are terribly flawed.
Jim Thompson's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_(writer)
The novel's page at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grifters_(novel)
In 1990 the film was made into a movie with Stephen Frears as the director. I've got it on top of my queue at Netflix and should get it by the end of the week.
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