CHILDWOLD by Joyce Carol Oates

 Su 6/25/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks and there is no entry as to when I bought the novel.

I gave up on this novel at page 135. I just couldn't get into the 'multiple points of view'. 

In broad strokes it is the story of a middle aged man who has a sexual obsession with a fourteen year old girl. The writing was good, but it was just too much trouble trying to figure out whose 'voice' was advancing the storyline. There are various back stories from the young girl's family and each person has a 'voice'. 

I would read something else by Joyce Carol Oates and this was not one of her better novels. 

CONFEDERATES by Thomas Keneally

 Finished Fr 6/16/23

This is an ancient paperback that I bought at The Old Book Barn on Fr 11/25/94 and I first finished on We 1/4/95 and I recently finished on Fr 6/16/23.

This was the best novel of the American Civil War that I've ever read. It's like taking a trip back to the middle of the 19th century. 

Thomas Keneally wrote 'SCHINDLER'S ARK' which was the basis for the film, 'SCHINDLER'S LIST'. 

Reviewer comments at Goodreads:

"Another book that was shortlisted for a historic Booker prize, and my last of Keneally's listed novels (he is very prolific, so I am very unlikely to complete his entire oeuvre). This one is a historical novel set in the middle period of the American Civil War, and most of its characters are on the Confederate side, though not all of them are real, as the cast includes footsoldiers and their families as well as generals.

It follows "Stonewall" Jackson's audacious plan to outflank the Republicans by marching north and eventually crossing the Potomac further west than most of the defences, and its events build towards the bloody battle that ended this offensive.

The personal part of the story concerns Usaph Bumpass, a newly married Virginia farmer whose wife Ephie is sent to live with his aunt when the war encroaches on the farm. She meets and falls for Decatur Cate, an itinerant portrait painter from Pennsylvania, who is conscripted into the Confederate army and ends up in the same unit of Jackson's army as Bumpass.

I found this book very impressive, and its account of war is brutally frank and unsentimental. As always Keneally's command of his historic subject matter is very impressive."

From KIRKUS:

"Keneally's best novel yet, ripest fruit of an imagination that has been grinding for years in an effort to energize history within its fiction--sometimes head-on. sometimes obliquely, but never with quite full success. Success has come. The book is about the American Civil War, about a few soldiers--Usaph, Gus, Cates, Colonel Lafcadio Wheat--belonging to the Shenandoah Volunteers that make up a section of the ""Stonewall"" troops under the command of General Tom Jackson. Jackson here is a nearly empyrean figure who brilliantly, woefully outclasses his Union counterpart McClellan; and by using Jackson as a near deity-figure, Keneally is able, very deftly, to give an overall shape (the shape of military tactics) to the senseless death of mere boys. Small scenes, then, can be concentrated on--and they range from the heartbreakingly idyllic (two Union soldiers, two Shenandoah Volunteers sitting down for a rest together in a glade) to the gruesome (limb-flinging carnage among the morning lupins at Antietam). But Keneally keeps his eye on the masterful Jackson, and the dartings of strategy--loops and salients--make an almost beautiful and plastic frame around the awfullest of particulars. A sub-plot involving a Union-spy pair--a British journalist, a Confederate nurse--is of less import; and Keneally occasionally overuses Americanisms. Yet these are minor objections in a book that keeps the reading heart astir simply by its resonant, plain eloquence, Tolstoyan at its best: ""They were certainly proud but had never fought before today. This evening it seemed that God had been saving this hour specially for them. For if they looked at the sunset one minute, there was nothing but a proper golden radiance above a black line of forest. And the next there were batteries galloping out into the open to get an uninterrupted line of fire on them, and there were long lines of men, who didn't seem any better dressed or any more rushed than laborers, moving out of the woods there on that ridge."" A grave and breathtaking book, a model historical novel by a writer growing ever better."

ACT OF TREASON by Vince Flynn

Finished Mo 6/5/23

This is a trade paperback that I bought at the Rochester book sale on Su 4/23/23.

The wife of a presidential candidate is killed in a terrorist attack. Her limo was bombed on a DC street and Mitch Rapp is tasked to find the perp. He does and now they must uncover who paid for the attack. 

An interesting story and on par with David Baldacci or Tom Clancy.   

From the book's page at Publishers Weekly:

"Tom Clancy fans who have not yet discovered bestseller Flynn (Consent to Kill ) and his maverick, do-whatever-it-takes hero, CIA operative Mitch Rapp, will find this page-turner right up their alley. When an al-Qaeda–style bomb attack on the motorcade of the Democratic presidential candidate, Georgia governor Josh Alexander, in Washington, D.C., a month before the November election kills the candidate's wife and several Secret Service agents, Rapp uses all the tools at his disposal to investigate the claim of the now discredited head of the protective detail that a mysterious figure in a red baseball cap set off the fatal bomb. Rapp soon finds that the motive for the outrage may be personal rather than political. While the underlying plot elements require a great deal of suspended disbelief, Flynn will pull most readers along with his taut writing and plausible vision of the real work of the intelligence community. Author tour."

MANHATTAN IS MY BEAT by Jeffery Deaver

 Finished Th 6/1/23

This is one of the books that I bought at the Rochester Book Sale on Su 4/23/23.

This was Deaver's first novel and I picked this book because I read his book about Internet hacking called 'THE BLUE NOWHERE'. This was more of a curiosity because it dealt with the '1999 Internet'. 

A young woman, Rune, works in a video store in lower Manhattan and she is friends with an old man who rents the same movie all the time. It's the title of the novel and concerns a robbery that happened in NYC and the million dollars was never recovered.

Rune tries to find out where the money is located, but mayhem ensues. 

A review from a reader at Amazon:

" He has created one of the most enjoyable lead characters here in Rune, a somewhat kooky, plucky 20-year-old with a vivid imagination and romantic ideals. She meets up with even more interesting characters in Mr. Kelly, Tony (her boss), Stephanie, Raoul Elliott, Sandra, Haart, Zane, Richard, etc. This is a classic in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time story as Rune accidentally interrupts the murderer of her friend, Mr. Kelly. Throw in some assumptions about the killing, some crime-solving techniques Rune has learned from movies, cops, bad guys and lusty roommates, and you have a formula for a light, fun mystery. And with most Deaver novels, you never really know who anyone actually is until the end.

I truly enjoyed reading this novel. As an earlier Deaver work, it's not as polished as some we've seen more recently. However, I liked that this one seems to be all about the joy of writing a good story rather than the chore of writing for the masses. I recommend this one; it's quick and it's fun. I, for one, vote for a series starring the very loveable Rune."

I felt the writing was on par with something by Baldacci or Coben, but nowhere near Connelly or Rankin. I liked the book, but almost like a YA novel.