The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

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by Carson McCullers, originally published in 1940, read by Cherry Jones, 2004, HarperAudio

This book was one of my worst experiences.  The novel plodded along giving the reader the minutest details about each of the character’s daily existence.  For instance, I wasn’t much interested in a party where the boys and girls just hung around and looked at each other, especially when this non-activity went on and on.  There are similar passages throughout the book that just lead to nowhere.

I got this audio book thinking it was one of the great novels of the South and I would be enlightened.  Instead, I was extremely disappointed.  The characters all seemed like stick figures to me.  I couldn’t get close enough to them to really care about their lives.  One of the characters is a black doctor who, when he isn’t treating his destitute patients, sits around reading Karl Marx and Spinoza and laments that he can’t seem to connect with his children.  Duh!

Compounding the problem with the novel is Cherry Jones’ less than stellar performance.  When emotion is called for, she cranks up the volume as she substitutes her shouting for real intensity.  At other times she seems to over-phrase the lines so that the listener anticipates hearing something that should be significant, but it usually isn’t.

Why did I ever get through all twelve disks?  I don’t know.  I had a three-day drive from Rhode Island to Florida and many times I thought I should abandon it.  I didn’t and suffered all three days.

Maybe this novel was a sensation when it was first published back in 1940 because no white writer had attempted to capture the essence of black poverty in the South.  Having read some Sinclair Lewis and John Steinbeck that focuses on the same subject, I would have to say that this attempt pales in comparison. 1 star

The Gift of Rain

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by Tan Twan Eng, 2008, Weinstein Books, New York

This novel is about the experiences of Phillip Hutton, a half-Chinese, half-English person in Malaya before, during, and after World War II.  Prior to the war, he meets a Japanese man who has come to Malaya and develops a strong personal relationship with him.  He does not realize that the man has come to scout Malaya to aid in the invasion by the Japanese.  The young man, in order to protect his family, eventually becomes a collaborator for the Japanese during their occupation.

The story is beautifully written and captures the conflicting emotions of the main character of the young man and the times.  The book, however, did not provide me with a lot of empathy for Hutton as he continuallly seems to be blind to the treachery of his Japanese friend.  Even when he finds out that the man has betrayed him and commits heinous acts against the local population and his family, he continues to be drawn to him.

Despite my dislike of Hutton’s behavoir and my dislike of his Japanese friend, I enjoyed the book a great deal. four stars

A Rope and a Prayer, A Kidnapping from Two Sides

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by David Rhode and Kristen Mulvihill, 2010, The Penguin Group, New York

I was introduced to this book at a Brown Alumni Club event in Naples, FL,  last spring when David and Kristen presented their book.  Naturally, I bought a copy but it sat on my shelf until I finished some other books.

The book was extremely interesting and the subject, a kidnapping by the Taliban, is something that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.  I think I learned a lot about what is going on over in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan by reading the book.

While reading some of Kristin’s sections, I was struck with how much effort she had to devote to her job at Cosmopolitan working on projects which were made to seem so trite and trivial compared to the ordeal she was facing with her husband.

I also feel, however, that there was something missing in the book and I can’t quite put my finger on it.  David’s recounting of his escape seemed a bit ho-hum.  He just went to the bathroom one night, grabbed a rope and he and his driver went over a wall and walked to the nearest Pakistani military base.  But even more of a letdown was the epilogue.  David’s part of this section is an analysis of what needs to done in Afghanistan to get it back on track.  There are some hints as to how the experience has changed him as an individual and his relationship with Kristin.  I felt that I never really got to know him as a breathing individual.  Kristin lets her hair down a bit more by delving into her spirituality, but only a little.

From someone who has gone through such a harrowing experience, I somehow expected a little more insight as what the short and long term impacts on him might be.

Note that while I was reading this book on the beach in Rhode Island, a seagull came over and dropped his load right on the book as I was reading it.  I had the fleeting thought that, because the subject of the material was about various atrocities committed by the Taliban in the name of their religion, the seagull, himself, may have been a reincarnated Taliban suicide bomber who had at last found his paradise in heaven (Narragansett Beach). 3 stars

The Coldest Winter

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by David Halberstam, 2007, Hyperion, New York

Excellent book, although a bit tedious at times.  I didn’t know much about the Korean War.  A friend of ours read this book and thought it was worthwhile so my wife gave it to me for Christmas.  Well, it is July now and I finally got through it!

Halberstam gives a scathing account of Douglas MacArthur and his actions (and non-actions) in Korea (I had read a book previously that gave the same opinion of MacArthur in the Philippines).  I now rate MacArthur about zero: minus 10 for his defense of the Philippines, plus 10 for his island hopping strategy in the Pacific leading up to the fall of Japan, minus 10 for his actions in Korea, plus 10 for the Inchon landing (he was lucky), and plus 10 for his administration of Japan post-war, and minus 10 for his insubordination to the President.  When he did things well, he did them very well; when he did things badly, they led to disasters.

The other thing I took away from the book was how nasty the right-wing Republicans were in those days, putting their ideology and world view above the good of the country.  (I guess not much has changed as we approach our debt-ceiling crisis in August of 2011, some sixty years later.)  I am also amazed at how we managed to get ourselves into the mess in Vietnam after we should have learned from the lessons of Korea.  This book gave me the urge to read Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest which tells that story.

At times I felt that Halberstam beat a good horse to death with the amount of detail he used to back up his argument and it, at times, felt repetitive.  On the other hand, it was easy to read and follow.  It is sad that the author was killed in an automobile accident only a few weeks after he finished this, his last book. 4 1/2 stars

Evening Class

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by Maeve Binchy, 1999, audio book read by Kate Binchy, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio

The book is a nice story, is pretty well written and the reader (who I presume is the author’s daughter) did a nice job of reading.  Other than that, there is not much to it.  The characters are all individuals who have had issues in their lives, and all of them are uplifted and their lives are straightened out simply by attending a woman’s Italian classes in the evening.  I presume that some individuals can have this effect on others, but this seems to be a bit of a stretch.

The author attempts to introduce a bit of mystery and suspense at the end of the book , but a murder mystery this is not and even this situation seems to turn out well.

Enjoyable but quite a lot of fluff! 2 1/2 stars

 

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

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by Jeannette Walls, 2006, Scribner, New York

This book is a bit hard to fathom.  There are elements that ring true and then there are things that seem to be a bit of a stretch.

Walls’ parents seemed to be extremely intelligent and loving, but also suffered from an extreme inability to cope with society and modern day life.  While some would call it mental illness, the fact is that there are many individuals in our society who seem to have some form of this, although not to this extreme.  It manisfests itself in a distrust of all forms of authority and a total disdain for the “normal” ways of life.  The usual result is that these individuals end up being much less successful in terms of their standard of living and other achievements.  The book does a good job of describing just how poorly decisions are made and the corresponding poor results.  In the case of the author’s family, the result is that they live in poverty and squalor, despite their considerable talents and opportunities.

Walls does a good job of bringing out her parents’ characters.  Despite their obvious shortcomings as parents, she continues to love each of them and recounts numerous situations where she connects with them.  Her father and mother each have their good points, love their children, and are not abusive to them in any way.  They are, however, complete failures in their ability to properly provide for their offspring.

I found that I could understand the author’s love of her parents while she recounts their defects.  I could not, however, understand her acceptance of their behavior.  She seems, for the most part, to “go along for the ride” and accept whatever they do, no matter how ridiculous their actions are.  She strikes out on her own to make herself successful, but she never seems to stand up to her parents and put her foot down, rather just accepting that this is the way they are.  One example of this is that she continued to give her father money for booze when the rest of the family was starving.  Maybe this illustrates how much the power her love of her father had over her, but I thought that, just for once, she could have and should have told him no.

Anyway, I thought the book was fairly well written and told a story of a situation that is probably more common than most would think possible.  At the same time, I felt that, for some reason, it didn’t all ring true.  I finished the book thinking that maybe in the author’s mind, this was the way it was, but time has a tendency to make one look at the past a bit differently from what actually transpired.  I think this may be the case in this memoir.3 stars

Outliers, The Story of Success

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by Malcolm Gladwell, 2008, audio book narrated by the author, Hatchett Audio, New York

The author’s premise is that success comes not only from one’s native abilities, but also from circumstances and opportunities that are present that are not available to others.  To support this premise, Gladwell examines certain extremely successful  individuals’ lives to uncover the circumstances that were present in their formative stages.  He also examines one individual with an extremely high IQ who did have have access to those favorable circumstances to prove that the absence of such circumstances leads to failure to capitalize on inborn talents.   This particular individual has an IQ of almost 200 but has never developed the social skills necessary to utilize his amazing mind effectively.

The book is very well researched and the author uses his data effectively to prove his premise.  I found myself wondering, however, if there are “outliers” who have achieved extraordinary results without some of the advantages that Gladwell illustrates.  He mentions Einstein once in the book but does not examine his life as one of his examples.  Not having enough knowledge of Einstien’s life myself, I was wondering if Einstein’s life might prove an exception to his theory; maybe Einstein achieved what he did in spite of a lack of opportunity.  Ditto for the life of Abraham Lincoln.

While a case can be made that circumstances are always present that add to an extraordinary achivement (Einstein would not have developed the theory of relativity if he had been born in the thirteenth century and Abraham Lincoln would not have saved the union and freed the slaves if he had not been born when he was), a good example of an exception would pretty much destroy Gladwell’s theory.  I think I will check out some other highly successful individuals’ lives to see if I can find the kind of circumstances that Gladwell cites in each and every case.  If not, then maybe the theory has some holes in it.

In any event, the book has some thought-provoking ideas.  It certainly does call into question the American ideal that one only needs to work hard and apply the gifts we were born with to achieve success. 3 1/2 stars

Cleopatra: A Life

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by Stacy Schiff, 2010

I was very disappointed by this book, the primary reason being the author’s very choppy style.  I found the style made it extremely hard to read with no flow to the narrative.  Her style used strange placements of the basic sentence elements (I much prefer subject, verb, object order), a plethora of semi-colons and dashes, odd adverbs (use of “as well” and “too” when “also” would have been more appropriate), and multiple short sentences following each other when proper connectors would have greatly improved the flow.  There were instances where her usage could have been much simpler and, in some situations,  I found there were unnecessary added commas.  Basically, her writing drove me nuts!

I also thought that the author frequently introduced new events or characters without the appropriate amount of background information.  Perhaps a listing of the primary characters at the beginning of the book would have helped here; I noticed that War and Peace provided such a list.  The bottom line is that I didn’t think she did a good job of putting together and telling the story.

As to the content of the book, it appeared that the author had done a good job of researching her subject and the times.  Having studied Latin for four years in high schook, I felt that the content of this book put a lot of the times and persons in context.  If this had not been the case, I would have rated the book even lower.

Lastly, I think the author could have done a better job of providing some relevance to our current world.  Other than making sure we understood how amazing a person Cleopatra was, I’m not sure she gave me a lot that I took away from reading this book.2 stars