Wahoo!! I'm done!!

I met my goal of reading 12 notable books this year. Because I joined in June or July I set the bar low and I chose several "lighter" fiction books to finish off the last part of the year. My reviews (and other posts) are here.

I'll see a lot of you on the other blog. I also expect to be reading more of the 2006 notable books in between the 2007 books (and my usual airplane fare) because many of these reviews have interested me. It's great to be part of a group that reads good books.

One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson

One Good Turn is wonderful! From the very first sentence I was entranced by Atkinson's use of words and her terrific low-key sense of humor. I was surprised to find that the book is actually a mystery, but there is nothing genre-like about it, no standard investigation or even single investigator. I was further surprised to find that it makes use of characters first developed in another of Atkinson's books, again a genre technique. It doesn't matter as we learn what we need to know from this book alone.

The story begins with a "road rage" incident in Edinburgh involving a suspicious name-changing character and a beefy guy who wields a baseball bat. The incident draws together an interesting group of characters, but the story reads rather like strings spreading further and further apart, or perhaps more like a web built by a spider. Each chapter develops the story for one or two of the characters, and only near the end do the paths intersect, in a crazy, hilarious episode, rather like the punchline in a shaggy dog story.

The writing is superb. The insights into character are well-informed. The humor is delicious.

Digging to America, by Anne Tyler

Two families wait at the gate in the Baltimore airport for the same flight, which is carrying their newly-adopted Korean babies. One family, fully American, has made an event of it. Everyone is wearing labels ("Mom", "Grandpa") and the family is filling the waiting area, almost forcing out others, making a party of it. The other family is transplanted Iranian and has made no fanfare of the arrival of their new baby.

Bitsy, the American mom, eventually invites Ziba, Iranian mom, to join an invented "arrival" celebration of the two infants, and the two families are thus joined. The differences in the families pricks at the edges of each encounter, with members of both families trying - or not trying - to understand the other. Throughout the book the individuals seem unable to keep from generalizing, the Iranians finding the Americans laughable, crude, at times overbearing, the Americans finding the Iranians stiff, sometimes unresponsive, perhaps "too good" for them.

Ziba's mother-in-law, Maryam, is perhaps the most reluctant Iranian. She was at peace with her widowed existence, her proper life, and she has no need for the sometimes overwhelming assault of well-meaning friends. She is proper and polite, often seeming cold because of her reserve, so she does join the parties because it would be rude to refuse.

Although we get into the minds of almost all of the many characters, ultimately it is Maryam who takes center stage. Through her thoughts and actions we begin to understand how difficult it must be to live in such a foreign culture, unable to join it. She admits to herself, though, that she had differences in Iran as well, and we begin to grasp that it may not be so much the differences in cultures that affects these clans so much as the differences in individuals.

The book is so easy to read that it is easy to miss its complexity, its quiet effects on our thinking. I felt at times that there was too much generalizing but those who read carefully will see that the generalizing came from individuals rather than from Tyler herself.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

Black Swan Green is a funny, insightful book about a 13-year-old boy, told in the language of a 13-year-old in England in 1982. The book spans one year of Jason's life, through the Falklands war and within the Reagan-Thatcher years, into a dip into the pond of "girls" and the unintended viewing of a coupling in the countryside, in the village of Black Swan Green (a village where there are no swans, black or otherwise).

Jason is addicted to contractions the like of which, the extent of which, I have not seen before. We go way beyond "could've" into "...our marines'll..." and "...with any luck, my strategy'd clear some spaces..." and "..the talk'd shifted..." and so much more. The contractions alone had me laughing right from the first page.

Jason, like so many adolescent boys (and girls), struggles most of all to fit in. He hides his propensity for writing poetry, turning in poems to a local magazine under a pseudonym, which later leads to his making strange and secret visits to an elderly woman living in the vicar's quarters, who offers advice about life - and poetry - that ultimately Jason takes to heart. Jason gets sorted this way and that from his mates, from bullies, from teachers and his parents, as he tries to find his place, and somehow emerges a little wiser and ready to be fourteen.

At first I found the book simply funny, and that was enough. Over time, though, I was won over by the compassion and sense of realness Mitchell gives to his hero. It's a lovely slice of England. And of adolescence.

After This, by Alice McDermott

After This is a beautifully written book. It begins and ends in a church, and takes us from the marriage of Mary, a 30-year-old woman, through the birth and growth to adulthood of the four children she has with her husband John. The working-class family lives on Long Island during the middle-to-late decades of the twentieth century, riding out the storms of change in the culture, their lives, and in their church.

Although religion is a big part of their lives, I wouldn't call this a "religious" book. Rather, McDermott shows how the church and the family's beliefs affect - or do not affect - how they live. Mary in particular takes her church's teachings to heart, lighting candles during the two wars she experiences, attending mass regularly, insisting that the children attend Catholic school. We watch, too, as John lies in bed with a slipped disk, thinking of how his life might end, how it might not be as he had imagined, in bed, tended by a priest, but may be as unexpected as falling down dead in the street.

We see segments of each family member's life in vivid color, with light sketches in between phases. Thus we are treated to details of a dinner conversation or a night with a lover and then we may not hear much of that person until he or she is much older. Yet it works. I didn't feel cheated. Many of the moments are deeply moving by themselves, the more so because the moment is not over-labored.

I couldn't help comparing this book to a couple I read recently by Anne Tyler, both of which covered much of the same era in our history. Tyler's books seem, to me, more mocking, more like throwing a veil between the writer and the subjects, while After This is more intimate and touching.

And what is "after this"? From early on I suspected it was "after life". What then? After all that Mary and her family has done and gone through, what then?

Eight down, four to go

More to keep myself straight than for any other reason, I am reporting that I have read eight of the twelve I committed to reading. I am well into the ninth and partly into the tenth (I always read more than one book at a time) so I believe I will reach my goal!

I think this challenge has been excellent because the books are not just anything you happen to like. These are all good books and worth our time.

The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

This book is Amy Hempel’s life work. Of course there is the odd story here and there that did not get in here but essentially this is it. In 404 pages she tells her own story in the form of short fiction, 49 stories in all. Most are shorter than most short fiction, one consisting of just one sentence and another just one page.

In this way, and in the language itself, these stories are much like poetry. All of them distill moments and thoughts economically, making much out of few words. Character is sketched in a phrase, and that’s all that is needed. Because of this depth it may take longer to read these seemingly simple stories than you might expect.

The elements also repeat themselves in a way similar to the film “32 short films about Glenn Gould”. We read about the lover of an artist, an artist who perhaps has many lovers. We hear about time in an institution. We read about dogs and cemeteries. Not once but many times, slid in between lines or used as the whole, layers or whole pies. I am sure that these elements come from Hempel’s real life, although the incidents probably did not happen to her exactly as written. In their way, skewed or direct, they tell us about this writer and the way she sees. It’s a beautifully-written book, full of images and feelings.

**Note to members of this group: If you would like to have this book contact me (judith at judithlautner dot net). I have registered it with bookcrossing.com so all I ask is that you make a journal entry there when you receive it (and preferably when you've read it, too). I'll be happy to ship it to the first person who asks, for free (outside the U.S. I'd want to split the postage).

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

An extraordinary book about the dust storms on the High Plains in the 1930s. This book takes us into the lives of several people who made up the "nesters" - farmers, along with cowboys, ranchers, doctors, teachers, and newspapermen. We follow the history of the plains from the early twenties, when land was free or cheap and hopes were high, when government policy fed the ambitions of the settlers, on into the 1930s and the worst of the storms.

It is clear from our present perspective that the horrors of the "dust bowl" were man-made. It took a few years and some gutsy thinking people to get that message out during the worst of it and to start the process that would lead to some recovery. Not that these plains have ever fully recovered.

Of particular interest are the extraordinary details. What the storms did to people, animals, buildings, and what happened on the rare occasions when it actually rained. While in the air (which was most of the time) the dust created such static electricity that people were afraid to touch each other. The touch could knock them across a room. The electricity shorted out engines and started fires. The dust destroyed just about everything it touched, killing the natural animal and plant population while bringing in insects that thrived on what was left. Millions of acres of land were left sterile, while the swarms of dust moved into the cities, over other parts of the country, and into the ocean. The storms even reached New York City and Washington, D.C. on occasion.

How the government responded is another fascinating tale, featuring a president who couldn't think of anything to do - Hoover - followed by one who did everything possible - Roosevelt. It's possible that the biggest hero of the time was the person who took on a new governmental position under Roosevelt, Hugh Bennett, and came up with ways to hold the soil down. He didn't stop there, of course. He took his mission to the loners who made up the plains settlers and convinced them that they had to work together to fight this thing.

The story is devastating and often heart-breaking. And so very readable.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin

The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a rare, beautifully-written book that explores a fundamental theme: where the choices we make in our lives take us.

Sukhanov, a 56-year-old art critic in Moscow in the mid-1980s, who long ago "sold out" to have a financially comfortable life in a country that does not respect true art, finds that his walled-off past is starting to invade the present. Little by little, triggered by incidents in the present day, he faces the choices he has made over the years. The wall does not come tumbling down neatly, brick by brick, but rather like it has sprung occasional leaks. Sukhanov races to repair the damage again and again, reasserting his stuffy, arrogant self each time.

The attacks from his past come in the form of dreams, both while he sleeps and when he is awake, and without warning. The drifting into dreams become more frequent, and eventually we begin to enter Sukhanov's mind ourselves, as the third-person narrative increasingly slides into the first.

While the dreams threaten to take over, the present does not stop trotting along, plunging Sukhanov into a world he had for so long tried to avoid. Assailed from the present as well as the past, Sukhanov eventually finds escape.

In addition to exploring Sukhanov's personal demons, Grushin brings us into the world of art, particularly surrealist and impressionist art. As other reviewers have noted, the writing itself is often impressionistic and nearly surreal. Just as the great impressionist painters were able to bring their visions to a diverse audience, so is Grushin able to paint so that we understand, and at the same time we sometimes gasp with wonder.

The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson

After reading The Great Influenza I became newly interested in the way diseases are spread. That book details not only the lives of the many persons involved in research and public health responses to the influenza of 1918, but also details the lives of the virus itself. I was interested in another outbreak, this time of cholera, in London in 1854. Specifically, I was interested in The Ghost Map. [links are to my amazon store]

The cholera outbreak lasted just about a week, the worst of it anyway, but it was horrifying in its proportions. It also was hardly the first or last time the disease devastated a city. This time, according to Steven Johnson's uncomplicated telling, science ultimately got the better of it.

The two principals responsible for discovering and alerting the health boards and the population to how the disease is transmitted were John Snow, physician, and Henry Whitehead, cleric. Both were young at the time and both observant and given to a questioning state of mind. They ultimately clashed with the popular theory at the time that diseases such as cholera are spread by "miasma" - smells in the air. The worse the smell, the more saturated is the air with disease. Snow suspected, instead, that water carried the disease, even though at the time there was no germ theory and he had no idea what form it took. Whitehead used his social skills and observant mind to bring together the closest to absolute proof that Snow was right.

The story doesn't end with this discovery. All do not live happily ever after.

The public health response was less than ideal, and it was several years before Snow's theory was accepted and acted upon. The response was remarkable, though. A major sanitary sewer project was undertaken that is still in use today. When it was complete the citizens were no longer drinking each other's bodily waste. And cholera could no longer get a foothold.

The real thesis of The Ghost Map is not the telling of this story. It is the implications for urban life today and in the future. Before Snow burst on the scene cities were reaching such proportions that residents lived in daily fear for their lives. It was commonly assumed that large cities would reach some critical mass when the numbers could no longer sustain themselves, spelling the death of the metropolis. Dealing with the daily waste of large numbers of persons appeared an impossible task that would ultimately limit the viability of the city itself. Snow's discovery and the construction of a workable sewer system changed all that. Which is why Johnson's position is that science can conquer almost everything.

It is only in the epilogue that Johnson's short, readable book that this thesis comes to life, rather like an indomitable puppy dog, expecting only the best. He expounds briefly on how viruses and bacteria mutate rapidly (within a day a virus can go through thousands of variations) and then blithely states that our masses of scientists, with our modern technology, can surely keep ahead of this curve.

Even if it were true that scientists are even now creating every possible variation on a virus and finding a vaccine for each, he ignores another significant element: the public health response. We have seen in this book that public health officials held the old-line views on miasma and hindered rather than helped the response in 1854. Similarly during the Katrina hurricane response we found that although the science was there it was not in use.

I can't buy Johnson's cheery prognosis. He ignores the far more complicated science of these disease elements that is described in great detail in that other book, The Great Influenza. He largely ignores the ignorance of the public at large and its alarming attachment to the supernatural. Most importantly, he ignores the political animal that determines how a health crisis will be met.

This book is an engaging story of one outbreak. It is well-written and informative and it includes genuine heroes. Read it for that story. For any theory of the future it would be better to read a more thorough discourse on public health issues, including The Great Influenza.

Catching up

I was on the road for over a month (long story, not sensible to tell it here) and I didn't bring my notable books with me. I read junk instead. So now I am catching up, and realizing I have forgotten which books I chose to read! So I am listing here those I have read and those I am about to read or am starting already.

I committed to twelve books for this year. So far I have read:

A Strange Piece of Paradise
The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Amateur Marriage
The Most Famous Man in America

I am currently reading The Ghost Map.

I have started The Worst Hard Time. And I have obtained The Dream Life of Sukhanov.

So that's six. I don't remember if I already chose the other six. No matter. I will.

Just writing this helps me stay on track and makes me feel better!

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

It all comes down to a meal.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes four specific meals but they collapse into one: what you are eating tonight.

Pollan asks the question, where does my food come from? In this amazing book that defies easy cataloging, he does his best to discover the origins of four different meals, progressing from the "industrial" to the foraged (hunted and gathered).

He discovers that "industrial meals", including fast food, come from corn. The many uses to which corn is put is flabbergasting by itself. Following its trip from a farm in Kansas to a McDonald's in Berkeley, though, is disturbing.

He follows the corn to the beef cow that first spends an idyllic six months, more or less, living on grassy hillsides, but then is introduced to the corn mixtures at a factory farm, in an environment that words cannot adequately describe. Cows are not meant to eat corn, so the grain is sliced into wafers to make it more digestible and the cows are bred to tolerate it. The small saving grace here is that the life of this animal isn't long.

Pollan looks at the other parts of the meal as well, but not so intensely. In fact, it is the meat part of the meal that seems to interest him most throughout this book. Which is not to say that vegetarians need not read this book. It has a great deal to say to all of us.

After eating a McDonald's meal on the road, Pollan moves to Big Organic, and shows us how organically-raised animals differ little in their experience of life from their industrial counterparts. Similarly organic crops are raised in a manner similar to large non-organic produce. The benefits are still there for humans, however. These fields don't contaminate water or air with toxic chemicals and our bodies get more nourishing food (Really. Several studies have now shown that organically-grown food has greater quantities of antioxidants and other nutrients that ward off disease). The down side is that "Big Organic" is not sustainable organic. Small Organic can be. And the animals are not treated as we'd like them to be treated. "Free range eggs?" If you get a chance to see one of these operations you'll laugh at the term.

The third meal comes from a "Beyond Organic" farm where cattle, chickens, turkeys, and other animals are raised in such a sustainable manner that their existence actually enhances the quality of the land. This remarkable farm is run by Joel Salatin, a third-generation beyond-organic farmer. The farm doesn't run itself. The workers spend long days moving animals, cutting hay, processing chickens, doing whatever needs to be done, and something always needs to be done. But the result speaks for itself: a farm run on almost nothing beyond human labor and some power for some equipment. What is especially notable is that the farm's products are so desirable that people drive many miles to get them (Salatin refuses to ship anything because he doesn't want to add the cost of pollution to his bill). Polyface (the name of the farm) also supplies many top restaurants in the area and is sold at farmers' markets.

An ideal farm if it could be replicated all over this country. However, such farms must be run by knowledgable "grass farmers", which is antithetical to the common model for large farms. Factory farms rely on cheap, ignorant labor. Polyface relies on committed, intelligent management. Could be done, though. Salatin feels that when enough people "opt out" of the current mode then factory farms really could become extinct.

The fourth meal is one that Pollan prepares from food he hunted or gathered himself, with a few exceptions. All local, regardless. He spends months learning how to forage and to hunt and finally pulls it all together in a meal he serves to special friends who helped him along the way. This one he dubs "the perfect meal". Not because it tastes better than all the others but because he feels it expresses his gratitude for every item in it. In eating this meal it appears that Pollan reached back into pre-history and felt at home.

I had some quibbles with a segment on vegetarianism and animal rights, because, contrary to how generously he treats others with differing points of view, Pollan actually ridicules animal rights people. Because I am one myself, I was offended not just because of his attitude but because he failed to realize that we are not all the same. Some of the arguments he made against vegetarianism can easily be refuted, but I won't go into that diversion here. Enough to say that he doesn't get much of it right, although he gets more right than many others I know.

This one quibble, which looms rather large in my mind, still did not affect my overall impression of the book. I believe that anyone reading this book will have the tools to make intelligent decisions about how they eat. More, I believe that there are some simple changes that can be made to the law to discourage the production of cheap corn and its trail of toxicity. Knowledge is power.
4.5 out of 5 stars

The Most Famous Man in America, by Debbie Applegate

The Most Famous Man in America: the biography of Henry Ward Beecher [link takes you to my amazon store], is a comprehensive, exhaustive story of Beecher's life, written almost like a novel. The book introduces us to a vaguely familiar figure in American history and brings him to sparkling life, complete with a look at his famous family and the scandal that later almost destroyed him.

Henry Ward Beecher was one of Lyman Beecher's children, and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lyman became well-known as a preacher in his time, as a strict Calvinist, a believer in the old testament way of seeing God: vengeful, punishing. He was known for following his own strict code of ethics, but at home he was a loving, forgiving father. Unlike many evangelical Christians today, he also believed strongly in education and questioning, encouraging all of his children to learn all they could.

Lyman wanted all of his sons to follow him into the ministry. Eventually, hesitantly, Henry did just that.

From childhood, though, Henry did not resemble his father. He was easy-going, optimistic, playful. He made others laugh. He developed a vague sense that Lyman's view of God didn't mesh with Lyman's own actions, and he puzzled over the twisted logic needed to follow Calvinist tenets.

Over time, as much for self-acceptance as for any other reason, he strayed from the Calvinist and developed a view focused more on Jesus and on love. At first he took little steps away from his childhood teachings but eventually just threw the whole thing away, embracing not only love and forgiveness but even finding a way to meld the Bible's teachings with the early concepts of evolution.

Henry was a terrific orator. He discovered this talent early in school and eventually this is what made him most famous. What really drew them in, though, was his warmth. Over the years, as crisis followed scandal, he tended to emerge with his head above water mostly because of this capacity. People liked him.

Henry's unique brand of religion was more palatable than the old-style version. People liked to hear that there was hope for them, that when they sinned they were just human. Above all, Henry believed and taught that it is "more important to do good than to be good."

It's clear from his life in this book that much of what he preached is what he wanted to hear himself. He was far from a saint. He overspent, went into debt constantly, enjoyed riches and good clothes, loved being with women. Later in life he even took up drinking (he did continue the church's teachings against drink, gambling,and prostitution throughout his life). Eventually his relationships with a few women led to a major scandal, bringing all of the pundits of the day well out in the open, destroying friendships, and sobering his effervescent personality.

Overshadowed by his large presence was his sharp, questioning intellect. Beecher became friends with several of the so-called transcendentalists, and in fact brought much of that high-minded philosophy down to earth, where he himself practiced it. He was passionately interested in science and in the origin of man as a biological being.

It was his radical approach to religion that earns him his place in history, however. Most modern churches follow his practice, so much so that we forget Christianity has not always preached love and forgiveness.

This biography is a sympathetic yet not sycophantic telling of the story. It's clear that Applegate likes what she knows of Beecher (and she knows a lot: she started this book as a thesis at Amherst, where Beecher went to college, and the librarians there led her to thousands of treasures about and by Beecher) but she does not let it cloud her vision. She tells it as it is, careful to specify what is known absolutely and what is not.

As a bonus,the story encompasses a wade swath of early American history. A significant portion of the book tells the tale of slavery and abolition. It is easy, sometimes, from the distance of time, to imagine that it was a simple situation: slavery is bad and therefore must go. But of course it was not simple. Lincoln himself famously said that he was for the union and if that meant slavery had to stay then it would; if that meant slavery had to go it would. In other words, political expediency outflanked moral obligations then as well as now.

What made Henry's sister Harriet's book (Uncle Tom's Cabin) so famous is that she made slaves human. This had not been done before. Critics now can easily rail against her sentimental writing and characters but those critics weren't there then. She wasn't a great writer but she said what others did not.

Henry, too, leaned toward abolition. But he wavered again and again, primarily for his own political reasons. He was no sturdy oak of principle. He would sacrifice principles and people to protect himself. Yet still people loved him. Perhaps because they saw much of themselves in him.

There was more to this extreme man than can possibly meet the eye today. This book helps us realize that and gives us an excellent picture of the times.

The Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler

The Amateur Marriage follows two people with very different personalities who are flung together in wartime and decide to make a marriage of it.

Pauline is an energetic, attractive, talkative young woman, who likes to enjoy herself. Michael is quiet and reserved and likes to stay home.

Michael rather impetuously proposes to Pauline, remembering how she looked, how she ran toward him to say goodby when he was leaving for the war, her red coat flying behind her. At various times in his later life he remembers that moment and reaffirms his love for her.

The marriage has a rocky beginning. Pauline is expected to move into a tiny apartment above Michael's mother's store, and to live with Michael's mother. She manages to adjust to it but has her eye on a more suburban type life, which she ultimately obtains.

The two don't understand each other and it appears that neither knows quite what to do about it. The rocky beginning extends into the middle and further out into Pauline and Michael's time as grandparents. Through all these years the two struggle against each other's different ways of seeing the world but they never seem to make a real effort to bridge the gap. The marriage never gets past amateur status.

I felt that the descriptions of Pauline in particular are almost mocking, almost parody. Little episodes from their lives as it spans decades are drawn lightly and similarly with almost a smirk, mocking the age and the sensibilities of the time, and the nature of this woman. She isn't particularly likeable.

Michael is drawn with a little more affection, yet his stiffness is always apparent and often irritating. I found myself drawn more, at times, to the children.

Tyler seems to like looking back at the fifties and sixties in particular, and she has an ear for how it sounded, how people talked and thought then. Even though I felt the sets were accurate, I would have preferred more inside work, more of Pauline and Michael inside than out. It may be, of course, that the superficial way she does invade their consciousness does mimic how many in this generation did feel and think.

In general, I like Anne Tyler's work but feel that it touches me lightly rather than deeply. It makes me think a little but does not linger.

A Strange Piece of Paradise by Terry Jentz

I wrote a review of this book in my book review blog, so I am copying it here [the link to the book is to my amazon store]:

This large nonfiction book details a woman’s exploration, many years after the event, of a night when a man wielding an axe attacked her and her friend. The two were seven days into a bicycle trip across the country, and camping in the Cline Falls Park in central Oregon.

The attack took place in June 1977. Jentz started to become obsessed with it in 1992, after many years of almost-flippant references to it, a kind of denial of her feelings that lasted 15 years.

She began her investigation by traveling to the scene of the crime and the surrounding area, gathering police reports and interviewing people. The trip left her unsatisfied and she returned two years later to continue the search, even though at the time she wasn’t at all sure what she was searching for. From then on she returned frequently, making dashes at various lines of inquiry, tracking down leads and involving the different law enforcement agencies in the area.

In the course of this long, involved investigation, Jentz discovers that nobody was ever charged with the crime and there were few suspects. The police seemed unable to pursue what leads they had. It appears that the collection, storage, and use of the evidence was far from thorough as well. Eventually her search narrows into a search for the attacker. The statute of limitations on the crime ran out three years after the attack, so she knows the perp will not have to face the justice system, but she desperately wants to find out who he is and, if possible, find a way to keep him from hurting others. She also has a vague idea that when she knows who he is she can start to heal herself.

The story is, as many reviewers have written, gripping and absorbing, and hard to put down. Other reviewers have complained that there is too much “navel-gazing”, too much time spent on introspection. Overall, I find it a book well worth reading. But not perfect.

Jentz is given to a writing style that seems unnecessarily “literary”, yet also incorporates a type of jargon popular in “victims rights” and “women’s rights” articles. It gives in to the passive voice frequently and awkwardly. There is a kind of unevenness to it, as it veers from one style to another, sometimes using words inappropriately. For example,

How could I access the rage?

The use of “access” as a verb seems to have its roots in the women’s rights and group therapy movements.

…I’d never wrapped my mind around what the experience might have been for her;…

I fight in vain for the removal of the term “wrapped my mind around” from the language.

Meticulous cowboy

This is the term Jentz uses for her attacker. He was carefully dressed, with his shirt fastidiously tucked in so there were no creases. He wore western clothing. I find the adjective “meticulous” not really right for this case. Most often it refers to a way of acting, of doing, not a way of appearing. This young man was fastidious, was dressed immaculately, but it’s hard to call his actions - driving over a curb, knocking over a tent, and slashing out at his victims with an axe – “meticulous”. Each time Jentz referred to him this way it jumped out at me. And she uses it constantly, like a drumbeat. Probably her intention.

Almost as often she refers to her attacker as a “headless torso” or “headless cowboy torso”, bringing to mind just the trunk of a man, with no arms. In fact, that’s what the definition of “torso” says. Given that he used his arms to wield an axe, I suspect – I know from her book – she saw the arms, too.

These are picky points and I can’t explain why they bothered me, except that they were repeated so often.

I fully believed that he was guilty of the attack against Shayna and me. But I couldn’t connect the dots between this man and the fingerprints he had left in my psyche. His presence had not triggered a seismic reaction in me.. . .

Some part of me at the edges of consciousness had lost trust in the order of things. The facts of the world broke faith with me. I was no longer deceived that life was following a script in which certain things would never happen.

Passive, passive, passive. “I was no longer deceived”? This type writing suggests that something other than Terri herself was taking control of her life. It’s an interesting perception, given that the book is also saturated with references, both direct and indirect, of fate somehow leading Terri here and there and forcing her to find the meaning in the attack or to make sense of random incidents and comments. She frequently runs into names of places that include “axe” in them and seems to think there is a personal reason for this. The reason is actually simpler than that they were put there for her alone. Oregon in the 1970s and before was a place where axes were far from uncommon.

Well into the book, Terri meets up with a couple who fight for victims’ rights and who do a great deal of investigating for other victims (their daughter was murdered in 1980), to help solve cases or otherwise right wrongs. This couple fills Terri in on their theory of crime and punishment in Oregon: they believe that a misguided “liberal” public favored the view that criminals are not responsible for their actions; “society” is.

I have met a few people who more or less subscribe to this theory, to some extent, in my life. Very few, even though I consort with so-called liberals (and am one). I believe that this couple, and Terri herself, misread the justice system, as do many victims’ rights advocates. They feel that the accused perps are given more attention and more help than are the victims, and that this comes from that perception that it isn’t really their fault.

It’s true that our justice system leans over backwards to protect the rights of the accused. The reason, however, is that it is “better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be convicted”. The laws that protect the accused protect all of us. Terri and her friends forget this. Terri makes it clear again and again that she would never want to see anyone wrongly convicted, yet she rails against a system that tries to prevent wrongful convictions.

Jentz also joins her investigating friends in the view that “permissive parents” are more likely to raise criminals than those who abuse their children. One chapter begins with a quotation from the book Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore, brother of Gary (murderer of two who was eventually executed). The quotation is from a legal system that incarcerated Gary at one point, and it says that Gary’s parents would do anything for him, were overly permissive. If Terri actually read that book (which I did) she would realize that his father repeatedly beat Gary while his mother just watched. Is this a type of permissiveness? The quotation clearly did not represent the truth in that particular case.

I do not lack compassion for the victims. I believe that both the accused and the victims deserve special treatment, and to accord such treatment to one doesn’t automatically exclude it from the other.

This is Terri’s book and these are her thoughts and she has every right to them. Nevertheless, I feel a need to offer my own counter-thoughts to some of her conclusions.

One theme that screams loudly in here, and that needs to be heard, is that the law enforcement agencies did not do a good job investigating this crime. There appear to be many reasons for this lack of attention, which Jentz offers and which make sense:

· The term “serial killer” had not even been coined; what were called “stranger murders” were perceived as near-impossible to solve. The investigators apparently felt helpless without a motive or witness. There was plenty of physical evidence (tire tracks, a footprint, probably more if the forensics team had been really diligent) but the investigators seemed to believe they could do nothing with it.

· The attack did not result in murder. Attempted murder takes a huge backseat to actual murder.

· There were two women involved. Some people believe there was a sense in the community that women should not be bicycling alone, that they somehow brought this on themselves.

· The law enforcement agencies were overworked. They had to set priorities.

· The head of the state police department that investigated this crime was not expert in criminal investigation and tended to block real investigation, certainly did not aid it.

· Although a great many people in the community immediately “knew” who did it (and many had stories to tell that more than backed up this charge) only one or two actually made an attempt to tell the police what they knew. A part of the reason for this strange neglect seems to be the “individualism” so prevalent in Oregon – a preference for staying out of the way rather than accusing someone who may not be guilty. What struck me was that the law enforcement officials did not follow the leads and find these persons themselves.

Jentz also considers a theory that some of the investigation was simply covered up. Records disappeared. To protect the community from its own? There doesn’t seem to be an answer.

Whatever caused this “miscarriage of justice” certainly needs to be evaluated and if there haven’t been changes to address it (current members of law enforcement say major changes have been made – and ultimately these agencies were more than helpful) there should be. I was constantly reminded of how criminal investigations are most often presented in television fiction, and how that representation is more the ideal than the real. Books like this do us a service by letting us see how horrific crimes can be left unsolved, in spite of adequate forensic and witness evidence. More, it gives us insight into how many lives are affected by a single incident, and for how long.

My goal and a question

I read A Strange Piece of Paradise in January of this year. I wrote a review of it on January 13. I think that I started it in January, not December, but I can't find confirmation. So is it fair to include this book on my list of books I've read for 2007??

I am setting what seems to be a reasonable goal at this point: 12 books.