book reviews of literary, mainstream and genre fiction and nonfiction http://www.curledup.com/index.htm It’s the winter of 1969 in Gordita Beach, a mythical beach town near the Palos Verdes peninsula. The Summer of Love, never really alive in Southern California, is still a “great collective dream that everybody was being encouraged to stay tripping around in. Only now and then would you get an unplanned glimpse at the other side.” Pot smoke and nearby Long Beach petroleum refineries thicken the air. The Manson Family arrests and trial burn broadcast bandwidth. Larry “Doc” Sportello is on the trail of... Something. Something big. Maybe. If only he could quit smoking long enough to remember how to answer the phone. It’s something completely different and it’s Thomas Pynchon’s best novel ever. Inherent Vice is Pynchon’s second novel to feature cannabis as a more or less primary character (the earlier being Vineland, which locale, being a mythical Humbolt County, more or less, gets a passing mention here). In Inherent Vice a joint (pinners, fatties, “that new Thai stick,” Humbolt sinsemilla, PCP-laced boiler makers) gets lit at least once in every chapter. (If memory serves. Which it may not. Who really knows these things?)... http://www.curledup.com/tpinvic2.htm Think about those dramatic movie scenes where the members of a large family gather around an oversized dinner table, vent their frustrations, reveal their secrets, push back from table to return to their lives, and leave viewers wishing that the meal had more courses. Jonathan Tropper’s newest book, This Is Where I Leave You, is exactly this, though the meal over which the information is exchanged is the seven-day period of mourning (the sitting of shiva) during which the entire extended family gathers to honor the memory of their deceased father/husband. Each member of the family as a character is more engaging than the next. The mother figure is a childhood psychologist who struggles to convince everyone that she is still a sexual being, and much comic relief comes from the fact that she penned a famous book about childrearing - specifically, the way she counsels her children to handle life challenges and the way she interacts with her children in their time of grief is the basis of the comedic value of labeling her a childrearing expert... http://www.curledup.com/ileaveu2.htm After hearing that it was set in my beloved Los Angeles suburb of Silver Lake, I was absolutely delighted to read Peter Gadol’s latest novel. Against a backdrop of the Silver Lake Reservoir, the water always “an unforgiving blue,” Robbie Voight and Carlo Stein live a quiet and reclusive life, unaware that a surreptitious young stranger will soon expose their deepest wounds. Over the years, Robbie and Carlo have assimilated the lessons of love and of marriage. Both are architects who own their own firm and specialize in transforming the local neighborhood houses around the Lake - their own glass house looks out over the picaresque Silver Lake Reservoir. There has, however, been a dark anxiety of late, related to work, income and debt, along with a restlessness that neither man can seem to shake. This anxiety escalates into a powerful force when Tom Field, a mercurial twenty-something drifter, enters their lives. A map enthusiast with a gift for portraiture, this man with wanderlust in his heart has recently moved to Los Angeles to seek both escape and rescue... http://www.curledup.com/silvlake.htm Edward Falco frames his ambitious novel around the lives of the Walker family, allowing us to follow them throughout their various marital and personal dramas in Salem, Virginia, and later in Brooklyn and Manhattan. As Falco brings to life their various fears, confusions and frustrations, a web of personal connections is set in motion when one night Avery Walker hooks up with enigmatic drifter Grant Danko, in Virginia to spend a couple of weeks with a friend. Grant is a muscular, almost brutal guy who takes an immediate liking to Avery. He’s also handsome but in an interesting way, his warrior-like harshness suggesting “other possibilities.” After spending a moonlit night together, the couple spiritually and emotionally connect, the confused and angry sex inspiring Avery to elope with Grant to Brooklyn... http://www.curledup.com/stjohn5b.htm "Madam X," a mummy found in the basement of the Crispin Museum, has gone to the hospital for a CT scan to determine what she may have looked like. The discovery of a modern-day bullet during the scan reveals that the mummy is actually a murder victim. But who? And how did she come to be at the museum? Then two other victims are found. All three of them are preserved in different ancient ways that would most likely be known only by other archeologists. What kind of scientist could be this depraved? Dr. Isles and Boston police detective Rizzoli must figure it out before another body is added to the killer's historical CV. In this well-structured plot, Gerritsen doles out information in short bursts to keep the reader entranced, mixing it with excellent character work that blends seamlessly into the story. Gerritsen has done a lot of research into archeology and various ancient death rituals, and it shows. Occasionally, she comes a bit close to the line of having a character lecture about one of these research topics, but she skirts it for the most part. It's worth for the fine details it all brings to the plot. While I saw a couple of plot points coming before they were revealed, it was never far before the characters themselves came to the same conclusion. That's always a good thing in a mystery... http://www.curledup.com/tgkeepsa.htm Among the meadows and the crabapple orchards, the drooping fox-gloves that gently sway in the breeze, it's almost the end of summer. As the dust gathers in in the streets of Rathmoye, author William Trevor lyrically portrays the slow simmer of an unlikely love affair in a haunting rural Irish landscape. Undoubtedly a stranger in Rathmoye, twenty-something Florian Kilderry arrives in town surreptitiously photographing the funeral of old Mrs. Connulty. With hints of stylishness in his in a pale tweed suit, Florian is an eccentric artistic drifter who lives alone in a vast ramshackle country house that looks down on its own wide lake. Orphaned at an early age, Ellie has been sent to housekeep for Dillahan, a kindly redheaded farmer. Bullish, burly, and much older than Ellie, Dillahan is a decent man, respected and sober, who has offered a measure of security to Ellie through marriage and the routines of farm life... http://www.curledup.com/lovesumm.htm When Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla joins Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Division under Chief Detective Inspector David Brock, she is initiated into the rigors of the department by a brutal murder that leaves a young woman all but unrecognizable. This is the big league, investigations parceled out to various team members to effectively solve such crimes before the public reacts with panic. Following a potential lead, Kathy finds that this one murder leads to another, a series of murders that have gone unsolved but now seem to have finally been connected by evidence, slim though it be. As in Maitland’s other DS Kolla and DCI Brock thrillers, Kolla steps in as a lead character, an intuitive detective with a talent for uncovering the obscure but important details of a case. Maitland builds an interesting series of clues around a theater troupe, a number of young women linked by suspicious death and an eccentric named Mr. Gentle who watches all from the sidelines, easily concealed camera in hand... http://www.curledup.com/allmyene.htm Kingsley Ibe is a 419-er. He is skilled in the modern-day art of writing emails that persuade targets to advance sums of money in the hope of eventually obtaining millions of dollars. He is undaunted by the many who ignore his pleas for help, buoyed by the one or two mugus who are trusting - or foolish - enough to reply to these email scams. He is a master at the cock-and-bull story, but Kingsley did not start out in life meaning to be a conman. I DO NOT COME TO YOU BY CHANCE begins by tracing the path that Kingsley, or “Kings,” as everyone calls him, takes toward his life of crime. His parents, both holders of Master’s degrees from overseas universities, have long drummed into their children the necessity and the power of education. But his father's illness means a schedule of expensive medicines and diet, and his mother's dress shop is barely able to support their family of six. Kings, the opera or eldest son, tries to use his degree in chemical engineering to obtain a job at an oil company in order to support his family and to pay the bride price for his girlfriend, Ola. In a country where jobs are scarce and 'long-leg' or the right connections are needed, Kingsley's job search goes unfulfilled... http://www.curledup.com/notcome2.htm One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die. In the searing yet redemptive graphic memoir STITCHES, the award-winning children’s illustrator and author re-creates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka... http://www.curledup.com/win.htm If your kids are anything like mine, they love Pixar films. Of all of the films that get seen over and over in my house, the Pixar films hold up the best. Repeated viewings offer deeper insights into the story behind the film, the technology of the film, the animation techniques, and cleverly hidden Easter eggs. My son often borrows the neighbors' Toy Story extra features disc, though the copy we have contains much of the same information. He's just gotta see it from every angle. It is for the likes of him that the Pixarpedia was created. As you'd expect, Pixarpedia is about all of Pixar's major films and most of the shorts they created. It starts out with a history of Pixar, of its beginnings as George Lucas' Graphics Group before being purchased by Apple's Steve Jobs and turned into the animation powerhouse it is today. Each film gets its own chapter with a brief rundown on what happens in the film and an extensive profile on each character - not just the major stars, but other little off-hand characters you might not have noticed before as well. Background toys from Andy's room in Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Daria's first gift fish (Chuckles) from P. Sherman's fish tank in Finding Nemo, all the extra Supers from The Incredibles that you may not know about... http://www.curledup.com/pixarped.htm Once long ago, the tip of the African continent was an idyllic paradise of nature’s bounty populated by a few disparate tribes of pastoral and hunter-gathering peoples. It was “discovered” by Dutch traders in the 17th century, to be used for a supply base for ships rounding the Cape from Europe to the spice-rich shores of India. But the religious Dutchmen discovered something else: diamonds, and soon after gold, and the conquest and battle for dominance began. Fierce contenders were the self-styled “Afrikaners” or Boers of the Netherlands, who made a commitment to live forever in the region no matter what the cost; the organized and war-ready colonial British; and local tribes like the Xhosas and Zulus. These often warlike natives attempted to coexist with the encroaching bands of whites and, when that failed, to drive them out. But, lacking modern weaponry, they were forced to compromise and ultimately to surrender. Their identities were destroyed first by the grinding necessities of the cash economy and then by a form of government that utterly excluded them from the processes of government and civil life... http://www.curledup.com/rainnite.htm Michael Streissguth worked on two books about her father (Johnny Cash: The Biography and Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison). While writing those books, he got to know Johnny’s daughter Rosanne, and this new biography of the only singing Cash offspring is the result. Streissguth says he was a Rosanne fan before he owned an album by her legendary dad. Roseanne struck out, early on, to be an innovator, not an imitator. Inheriting her father’s penchant for composition, she became a well-known singer-songwriter with some hits, if not astronomical, to her credit, a little off to the side. Johnny tried to draw her in. He would ask her to perform a number onstage with him, and she wouldn’t. When she occasionally did, it forced her to acknowledge his power as a performer, his dominance of the stage. Still she shied away from his limelight, seeing the flaws that his adoring fans did not. Then he gave her The List, 100 songs about which he said, “These you need to know.” This became the basis for Rosanne’s first “cover album,” and the subject, more or less, of this book. Focusing on her production of the songs on The List and following her as she tours, Always Been There is a face-time journey with Cash, her friends and family... http://www.curledup.com/alwaysbe.htm Contributing editor Michael Leonard spoke recently with author Justin Cartwright about his latest novel, TO HEAVEN BY WATER, and the mysterious institution of family, the inescapability of love, and the greatest human quality: empathy... http://www.curledup.com/intjcartwright.htm Tweeting curledup.com, curledupkids.com and curledupdvd.com recommendations... http://twitter.com/curledup