book reviews of literary, mainstream and genre fiction and nonfiction http://www.curledup.com/index.htm Five-year-old Haim is baffled by many things, especially by his new neighbors in Jerusalem. Haim and his family have moved there from Egypt, where “we were all used to open homes, neighbors coming and going without asking permission, windows wide open… the voices of children joyfully playing all around.” His new neighbors, who arrived from Europe, are closed in behind locked doors and shuttered windows, their rooms as dark as the history that young Haim has yet to discover. These are not the only contrasts between the world that Haim has known and the one he has entered. The boy tries to navigate this new culture on his own, doing his best to decipher the words and traditions so foreign to him. He doesn’t understand why people speak of other lives any more than he understands why children dress as cowboys and Indians during Purim. “At the time, I didn’t ask any questions, but everything entered my heart and made an impression upon it,” he writes. The Holocaust that pervades daily life is not part of Haim’s young world, yet it defines his new society, drawing boundaries that will limit and challenge the boy despite his innocence... http://www.curledup.com/fourwind.htm POINT OMEGA is a quiet jewel of a book, a short novel that is really two short stories (the beginning and end of one bookending the second story in the middle) that read like a play. Nothing much happens in Point Omega: the premise of the novel is conversation, at our attempts to communicate with the intention of moving another person - the kind of suasion that enrolls a collaborator in an arty film project or another yet disappear into the desert. As if by touched by fate or brushing up against coincidence, the novel’s bookends (the outer story) communicates only barely with the story in the middle. The inside story is woven by three characters who spend their time talking. The younger man wants to make a film featuring Richard Elster, the older man, who was an advisor to warmongers. The younger man wants to get him up against a wall and hear what that was like. Ester tells him that they wanted “an individual of his interdisciplinary range, a man of reputation who might freshen the dialogue, broaden the viewpoint.” Someone who could bring new insight to the stumbling war on that adjective, terror, to “the blat and stammer of Iraq.” Someone who could deepen and make rigorous the banality of evil... http://www.curledup.com/pntomega.htm The unnamed narrator of Jennie Walker’s short novel has made a good life for herself, her husband, Alan, and her stepson, Selwyn, yet she continues to be haunted by the possibilities of love and love’s betrayal. In simple but powerful images in which the game of cricket proves to be a symbolic force, this woman must finally come to terms with her betrayals and heartaches. There's a moment of doubt, the thud of the pulse, the quick image of what is to come when she falls into an affair with her lover of only three months and one week, an insurance salesman known only as the “loss adjuster.” While she meets for clandestine trysts in his fourth-floor mansion flat, every part of her inside and outside alive, Alan sits at home and watches the current test match between England and India... http://www.curledup.com/ruleplay.htm Teenagers Linno and Anju Vallara are sisters living in Kumarakom in Kerala, India. A childhood accident has left the elder Linno with only one hand. She finds her solace in artwork and is a talented painter, becoming more and more recognized around the city for her designs. Anju, on the other hand, is devoted to school and ranks at the top of her class. A slot in a top New York City high school opens up as part of an exchange program, and Anju is desperate for the chance to go to an American high school. However, during the interview, she makes an impulsive decision that, while securing her the position, will haunt her. Atlas of Unknowns is a beautifully written story about two sisters living a world apart. Anju is unsure of herself, despite the fact that she has proven herself academically. Her insecurity makes her selfish, a believable teenager trying to find her place in the world. She isn’t sure where she fits and is unable to figure out how to carve herself a niche in a world she doesn’t understand... http://www.curledup.com/atlasunk.htm CEZANNE'S QUARRY, Barbara Corrado Pope’s debut novel, is an historical murder mystery centered on nineteenth-century painter Paul Cezanne. When the body of Solange Vernet is found in a quarry outside Aix-en-Provence, the officials on the case immediately name two suspects. Was it her lover, Darwinian scholar Charles Westerbury, who strangled her in a fit of jealous rage? Or did Paul Cezanne, the eccentric and troubled painter, kill her when she spurned his advances? The clues - Solange’s stained gloves, a scrap of painted canvas at the murder scene, and Cezanne’s paintings depicting shocking violence against a woman who resembles Solange – implicate the painter. But Westerbury’s sketchy past and volatile behavior cast doubt on Cezanne’s guilt... http://www.curledup.com/cezannes.htm The reality of physics today is far stranger than anything Hollywood writers could create, yet the mind-blowing discoveries are taken for granted by the general public. Dark matter and dark energy make up more than 95% of our universe, yet no one knows what that is. Alternate realities are thoughtfully considered by respectable minds, and ‘scientists attempt to recreate the Big Bang’ is a news story that ranks a few notches below the latest celebrity divorce. While the advances in this field still amaze a few of us, pragmatists find that there’s a much more baffling question: how did scientists figure it out? We’ve come a long way in the past century or so, but we still can’t cruise our starships over to the next galaxy to check out a spatial anomaly. Instead, those rational left-brainers have to haul out their creativity and find answers to astronomical questions in some of the most isolated and improbable places right here on Earth... http://www.curledup.com/edgephys.htm LIFE IN THE WILD takes away the usual distance that separates people from wildlife. The raven and the gray wolf and the polar bear look so close you can see the snowflakes on their faces. You can count over fifty sharp teeth in the open mouth of the reef lizardfish and see the shadow illuminating bits of skin that hang from a leaf-tailed gecko’s lower jaw. The color photographs that appear in this book remind us that there is something to admire in all types of wildlife. There is the multipurpose bill of the shoebill bird, which can be used to take on a young crocodile or transport water to overheating shoebill chicks. The tokay gecko from Asia can walk across ceilings because of the hairs that cover its feet, and the flying gurnard can use its fins to swim or its pelvic rays to “walk.”... http://www.curledup.com/lifewild.htm There is a little story behind every object surrounding us. Some objects came to be by accident, while others needed lots of hard work to exist. With his sister’s future love life in mind, a chemist by the name of T.L. Williams mixed coal dust and Vaseline to make mascara. Isaac Newton’s new kitty door idea allowed him to work in his lab under suitable light conditions and with fewer interruptions than usual. When the jigsaw was invented during the 1760s, it originally helped children improve their knowledge of geography. Divided into thirteen different sections, the 204 entries in this book include objects found both in and around the home and workplace. Some are used for entertainment; some for study. This book will take readers back to the beginning stages of an invention and follow through with its changes and outcomes. While some inventions such as the wheel and the fork have a long history, others such as GPS (Global Positioning System) and Gummi Bears have fewer facts and more trivia related to this century... http://www.curledup.com/bubbhoop.htm In this difficult yet enriching read, Gail Straub returns to her mother’s house. Her part memoir, part self-help book lets us all see the Wisdom of the Feminine. Although my own mother did not die at a young age, and Straub’s mother did, the book resonated with me in considering my own mother’s struggle to maintain her feminine wisdom and spirituality. Never has it been truer than it is today, when many of us, whether driven by financial or inner demons, have gone into the workplace with the masculine ideals of workaholicism and achievement-driven angst. As the forward by Christiane Northrup says, “There isn’t a woman alive who won’t be able to relate to this lyrical, poignant and beautifully written story.” The journey Straub takes us on is one of depth, passion and introspection - analyzing our own relationships with our mothers, defining our relationships as mothers, and reaching inwardly to find grounds for a happy, fulfilled adulthood... http://www.curledup.com/mothouse.htm WATCHLIST: A SERIAL THRILLER is a literary jam session that brings together 22 of the biggest names in the mystery/thriller genre weaving not one, but two suspenseful tales. In The Chopin Manuscript, former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frédéric Chopin, unaware that locked within its handwritten notes lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. http://www.curledup.com/win.htm Tweeting curledup.com, curledupkids.com and curledupdvd.com recommendations... http://twitter.com/curledup