This is  a first:  4 incredible books in a row; I’m on a literary roll.  Here’s a brief summary of each:

·         When Will There Be Good News?  By Kate Atkinson.  You may recall several years ago I called her book, Case Histories, one of the best books I had read in some time; it still remains one of the top 5 of the last 5 years.    Jackson Brodie and Det. Louise Mason are back, on a case that began 30 years ago with the slaughter of an entire family…..except one, the daughter, who is now missing.  Atkinson makes me laugh out loud with her descriptions:  Gil from CSI:  Las Vegas—“he walks like a bear wearing a nappy.”  Taking place in Scotland, it takes you all over the place—where the heart lies, where humor tempers, and where fear and mystery ride side saddle.

·         The Black Tower by Louis Bayard.  An incredible historical fiction writer, Bayard wrote one of the finest examples of this genre with The  Pale Blue Eye, about Edgar Alan Poe while he was at West Point– a gripping mystery. Taking place in Paris in the mid-19^th century, it “stars” the real-life first modern detective:  Vidocq.  The essential question is:  what really happened to the son, a mere boy,  of Marie Antoinette, Louis-Charles?  Did he die in the Black Tower, or did he escape through the efforts of his doctor and a mystery “helper”?  Was the 10 year old smuggles out and has Vidocq and a young medical student found him, 20 years later, and who does not want him found…if indeed it is he?  If you have ever been to Paris, you will love the descriptions of its streets, parks, life.  You must read through to the very last page.  Gripping to the end.

·         The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti:  I love Dickens, so if you do, too, dive in.  12-year-old Ren is missing his left hand, which leaves him “unplace-able” at St. Anthony’s Orphanage, but a stranger/con man arrives and snaps him up, and together they go on a perfect PBS journey through the New England of the mid-19^th century.  Shakespearian in his characters—scan artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves—it is a delightful romp.  This is an author to watch; I learned about the book in The New Yorker.

·         Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell:  Along P.D. James, Ruth Rendell is one of the grande dames literary mystery writers, and this is a race of a read.  CI Wexford is back, a party girl is missing, there is a bloody room but no body….and off she goes.  She is psychic in the way she reads her characters’ minds and gives us psychological insights into human motivation.  She is always the perfect “airplane” book to read.  You will be riding the wave mystery till the very end.

Since we were in Philly visiting family, my husband and I decided to take a day trip to NYC to see the Tony-award wining play, ‘August: Osage County,” which also won the Pulitzer for Best Play 2008.  Because the setting was in Oklahoma, I was particularly intrigued by this highly acclaimed drama of the year.

Centered around a sickeningly dysfunctional family in NE Oklahoma, it is at points shocking and outrageously funny.  Hailed as “the best drama in decades,” I attended with my expectations set on  number 11 on a scale of 1-10.

I am glad I attended but am very surprised it has won the Pulitzer and believe Eugene O’Neill would be loudly cursing and shaking his fist at the comparison of this play to ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ and that Tennesse Williams has been done a great disservice when critics–including the The New York Times drama critic–call ’Osage County the new “Glass Menagerie.”

I must confess, ‘The Glass Menagerie” is my favorite 20thcentury American play-one I taught for many years–, and it, too, centers around a dysfunctional family, long before the word ‘dysfunctional’ was spoken.  But it is a gentle and quiet narrative of people caught by circumstance and the past, with characters who are damaged but likable and tenderly vulnerable.

“Osage County” uses vociferous screaming and dropping the f-bomb at every opportunity to loudly display its dysfuntion, anger, bitterness, disillusionment, and LOUD desperation.

And from an Oklahoma’slanguage point of view, contrary to the playwright’s perception, Oklahomans do not speak with a Mississippi drawl.  I kept wanting to stand up and yell:  “Dialect coach!  Dialect coach!  Anyone need a dialect coach??!!  I would be glad to serve as one!  Right here and now.”

There were some uproarious surprises and some startling discoveries during the course of the play, but much was overplayed, and few were likable characters.  The playwright could not decide if he were doing Carol Burnett’s ‘Mama’s Family” or a serious look at the microscopic family as representative of a world lost at sea, because of addiction, hopelessness, and pure and simple “meanness.”

I’m glad I saw it.  It was very long:  3.5 hours but not tedious.  Act II was the most compelling.  It is worth the two for one tickets we bought, but please do not compare it to Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams, for their sake and mine!

I have just finished a book by the author of one of the most impressive books I have read in the last 5 years:  The House of Sand and Fog.  Andre Dubus III has just published ‘The Garden of Last Days,’ an incredibly complex interweaving of potent characters in one of the most compelling ‘environments’ of any fiction I have read:  the two days preceding the Sept. 11 attack on The Twin Towers.

Taking place in Florida, the narrative follows a stripper at the strip club one of the future terrorists has become addicted to, the caretaker of the stripper’s little girl, Franny; the kind hearted bouncer, an achingly lonely man who is injured when he is thrown out of the club…….even the smallest role in the book is handled with care and vibrancy.

BUT this is a depressing read.  It is an agonizing story of loneliness, bad judgment, delusional choices, and an urgent desire to connect with someone, anyone.  The San Antonio Express News had an excellent review of this book last Sunday.  The reviewer said, quite accurately, “You constantly want to shout out to the characters:  ‘No!  Don’t do it!’”

Like The House of Sand and Fog—and the excellent movie adaptation—The Garden of Last Days (yes, full of religious symbolism)—is chiefly about cultural misunderstanding and how being “blind” can lead to desperate and devastating outcomes.  (The final scene with Ben Kingsley in The House of Sand and Fog haunts me to this day.)

It is a page turner, but it is also a ‘workout’ because your muscles will be tight and tense as you read.  It never let me go; it is long—555 pp.—but it is worth it and it flies by.  I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, but I didn’t want to look at the next page, as well.  The conflict between ‘read on’ and ‘don’t read on’ is palpable.

Wonderful book, if you can handle it.   If you handled The House of Sand and Fog, you can do it!