The One from the Other - Philip Kerr

The One from the Other was a little all over the place. I still like Bernie Gunther and his wit. In this installment it's no different. 

The story begins with Bernie travelling to Palestine with a young Adolph Eichmann. Bernie is there to set up a bank account and property for a Jewish business owner emigrating with the assistance/urging of the SD. Eichmann is there to see if he can make a few alliances that will help Germany strategically. Then we fast forward to after the war and Bernie is living in Dauchau at his father-in-law's hotel while his wife, Kiersten is in a mental hospital following a break down. 

Following Kiersten's death, Bernie travels to Munich to set up shop as a private investigator again. However, the clients who keep coming in are looking to help former SS war criminals awaiting German amnesty. Bernie doesn't' have a lot of enthusiasm for the work, but when a good looking woman shows up trying to find her missing husband, he doesn't ask many questions to figure out his motives. This leads to some further violence and well... the plot gets really twisty and turn-y after that. 

I still enjoyed reading/listening to this book, but at times I felt the history lessons were turning into filler. 

3/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Winter 2017-2018

It's Ploughshares Time! Do you subscribe yet? There are a lot of good stories in this Winter 2017-2018 Edition. So here are some of my favorites:

Fiction:
The War Ghosts Bureau by Eric Fair was achingly delicious and dark. I loved so much about this story. Its subtle moments and its over the top moments. It deftly explores the theme of collective guilt and the dirty secret of the paltry percentage of Americans who serve in the modern all-volunteer armed forces. In order to avoid the burden of collective guilt, former military personnel are required to carry their ghosts around with them until they achieve understanding and forgiveness. If they start to lift the burden on themselves and forget their deeds in war, the War Ghosts Bureau is there to keep them in check. It's brilliant. 

Almost by Carol Dines explores a complicated sister relationship wherein one sister seems to make herself the patron saint of lost causes (despite Jude already having that job) and the other sister tries to keep her distance so as not to entangle herself in the drama. I love stories that explore siblinghood. I think it's one of the most important relationships you can have in your life. And this story's exploration of siblinghood into adulthood was excellent and nuanced. 

Minnows by Nathan Go is the story of five sailors living on a beached ship claiming territory for the Philippines, or rather, keeping the Chinese from claiming the territory. It's a lonely duty and frankly a situation I had just never thought of before. I love that Ploughshares can take me to far away lands and worlds and existences of which I know nothing about.

Il Piccolo Tesoro by Valerie Miner was a lovely story of strangers who live in a pensione in Italy and come to be a family under the watch of the Scottish proprietor. It was a cute diverting story that took me back to my twenties and days spent in a cafe in Italy and not quite grasping the novelty and luck that had brought me there. 

Nonfiction: 
Eulogy by Patricia Foster is a great story in which a wife uncovers the past of her mother in law. Her husband's painful childhood is brought into clearer focus as the wife comes to terms with the woman her mother-in-law had been. It has that muddy clarity of grace we can offer people as we get older.

Poetry:
It's so hard to describe what it poems are about or what makes them my favorites in Ploughshares. Some I like because of the lyrical quality. Others I like because of the meter, or I'm struck by 
a single line, a single word. So without further explanation, here are the poems that struck me, stuck with me, inspired me, comforted me, or merely amused me:

Theodicy by J. Estanislao Lopez
Glimpse by Amy Gerstler
The Woman Who Had the Job by Jenny Irish
Pavlov was the Son of a Priest by Paige Lewis
Mementomori.com by Owen McLeod
Epistle from the Hospital for Cheaters by Jenny Molberg
Fine Despite by Dzvinia Orlowsky

4/5 Stars. 

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

The Siege of Sarajevo lasted from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 during with time the Army of Republika Srpska encircled Sarajevo in its surrounding hills and bombarded the city with artillery and sniper fire. A total of 13,952 people were killed during the siege, including 5,434 civilians. During the siege cellist Vedran Smailovic played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor in ruined buildings around the city.

These are the events that inspired this book. Vedran Smailovic is not named in the book and in fact, when he found out about the book he was deeply upset and felt that his story and likeness were stolen from him and asked for remuneration from Steven Galloway. This little wrinkle left a bit of a sour taste for me after finishing what I thought was otherwise a brilliant book. 

The Cellist of Sarajevo begins with the cellist's decision to play at the site of a bombed-out market place for 22 days to honor the 22 people killed there. The story then breaks off from the unnamed cellist and follows three characters - Arrow, a sniper; Kenan, a father going to fetch water; and Dragan, a brother going to get bread. 

Arrow is a city defender and her story spans a couple weeks in the time it takes to detail Kenan and Dragan's single day. I found this an interesting editorial choice, but decided I ultimately liked it. For the civilians, Kenan and Dragan, even the mundane tasks take a very long time and only Arrow, who can take action and move through the city with more confidence with a weapon at her side, time is under her control. 

The book really captures the banality of evil and of war - situations where killing is random and undignified. Kenan's arduous task of gathering water from one of the only sources left, across the river at the brewery, becomes an odyssey through which he is forced to confront the very heart of his humanity. The same goes for Dragan, who is heading to the bakery where he works on his day off in order to secure the one loaf of bread he provides to his sister and her family every day. As he waits to cross an intersection he discovers it has become targeted by a sniper and he is forced to a deeper understanding of his own cowardice and the extent to which he will allow the war to change him. 

Arrow operates on her own terms with a loose affiliation with the army. As a sniper, she is given the task of protecting the cellist. She can sense her priorities shifting and her values disintegrating and has to make a decision about what to do. 

In the end, the book seems a little contrived as all three characters come to more or less the same conviction about whether or not they will allow the war to change their true character. In that respect the book reveals itself as written by an idealistic outsider rather than someone intimately familiar with the stark realities and necessities of war.

4/5 Stars. 

The Last Black Unicorn - Tiffany Haddish

Well this was a fast and funny read. I wish the audio version of The Last Black Unicorn had been available first because listening to this book in Tiffany Haddish's unique delivery would have been even funnier. I may even listen to it when it finally comes through the waitlist from the library. 

I was first made aware of Tiffany Haddish through a friend who had seen her on SNL and suggested we have a girls evening of watching Girls Trip. This was a great idea as the movie was hilariously raunchy and Tiffany Haddish did really steal the show. 

Tiffany and I are around the same age, but the similarities pretty much stop there. She grew up in terrible circumstances, abandoned at 3 by her father, raised by a constantly fighting mother and step father among half-siblings who were favored by the adults. Then her stepfather attempted to murder her mother (maybe) and all the kids by cutting the brake lines to the car. Instead of dying, her mother was terribly injured and schizophrenia was triggered. She was then put into foster care where she lived in multiple group homes and suffered terrible beatings until she was eventually placed with her grandmother.

After reaching the age of 18 and graduating high school, her grandmother put her out of the house on her own. Tiffany lived out of her car while pursuing a comedy career. She then married an abusive husband and left and remarried and left him again. There are some bright spots in all this but the mere fact that Tiffany can still find humor and light in the world is the brightest of spots. 

She's great. And hilarious. The book isn't the most polished, but neither is Tiffany, and that feels right. 

4/5 Stars. 

When the English Fall - David Williams

I really liked the premise of this novel, When the English Fall. A solar storm has wiped out electricity and mechanical tools and society is struggling to cope and overcome, but none of that really matters at first because the protagonist, Jacob, is an Amish man living near Lancaster, PA. He doesn't rely much on mechanical tools, even on his small farm where he lives with his wife, Hannah, his son, Jacob, and his daughter, Sadie.

Their small farm and Jacob's carpentry business provides them with all the food and materials they need to survive. What they can't really control is what the rest of the world, the world of the "English" is going to do. And since we as humans can be a-holes in times of hardship (you've seen The Walking Dead?), the Amish are vulnerable to people with guns who don't care what they have to do to get scarce resources. 

It's an interesting outsider look at post-apocalypse fiction. I felt mildly dissatisfied with the ending, which left a lot unsaid, and with the lackluster opening, which I had to go back and listen to in order to make sure I hadn't missed anything. But it turns out the author was also not completely thrilled with the opening picked by the publisher in this one. Silly publishers. 

Anyway, this was a great start at a debut novel. Inventive and the writing was solid if just a bit stilted due to the attempt to capture the cadence and language of an Amish speaker. 

3.5/5 Stars

The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe

I spent 33 hours listening to The Bonfire of the Vanities and three days thinking about it and I'm still not really sure what I want to say. What a big book. What an indictment on the 80s culture. What an examination of selfish agendas. And everyone in this book has an agenda. 

Sherman McCoy is a Wall Street bond trader - a self proclaimed "Master of the Universe" who is so filled with conceit and superiority that he flagrantly carries on an affair with a young woman, Maria Ruskin, married to a septuagenarian of dubious income. The two liaise in a rent controlled apartment mere blocks from the home Sherman shares with his wife and child. 

After picking Maria up from the airport one evening, Sherman distractedly drives past the exit for Manhattan and ends up deep in the Bronx where he promptly gets lost, freaks out about all the people of color around, and in attempting to make a hasty escape, is involved in a hit and run accident where a young man is injured. 

Maria is more than happy to forget the incident ever happened, but it dogs Sherman. And rightfully so it turns out because a drunk newspaper has been is forced to write a story about the injured young man, stretching the facts to make the young man look like a high school valedictorian saint, and well a media circus and a district attorney up for reelection later....

Few of the characters in the book have redeeming qualities in the least and there is much to dislike about many of them and their motives, whether for filling their own pockets at the expense of the mob, or attempting to hold on to money power or influence - Wolf has a mastery of the minutiae which really tells you what you what you need to know about a character. Wolf's writing has a flow and a style all it's own which made this book a joy to read, even if it did get a little long in the tooth in sections. 

It's too bad the movie is so universally panned, because I would have enjoyed watching it at this point.

4/5 Stars.