ORIGIN

Harvard Professor Robert Langdon is back and better than ever. Is the storyline different? No, but for some reason this episode seemed more exciting than his last two efforts. Origin is comparable to the Dan Brown bestsellers, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Inferno (see my review of 8/29/2013) and The Lost Symbol were okay but lacked something (I’m not sure what). The plot is always the same. Langdon is either invited or summoned to an event by some haut monde type person who is summarily murdered. Langdon then jets around the world during a twenty-four hour period with a beautiful girl ultimately solving the murder by interpreting religious clues and symbols. You must remember his beguiling ladies; Sophie in The Da Vinci Code, Vittoria in Angels and Demons and Sienna in Inferno. Well get ready to meet the fiance of Prince Julian of Spain, Ambra Vidal. I’m not criticizing Dan Brown’s modus operandi. Didn’t Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot always assemble all the suspects at the novel’s end to expose the murderer? Didn’t William Powell in The Thin Man movies do the same thing? Didn’t Charlie Chan always use his Chinese wisdom (insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain) to solve crimes? Didn’t one of his bungling sons always get in his way? Anyway, you get the message. So what’s this 461 page novel about?

World renowned scientist and atheist Edmond Kirsch arrives in Catalonia, Spain for a meeting with three world religious leaders in a massive stone monastery. Present are Bishop Valdespino (Catholic leader of Spain), Rabbi Yehuda Koves (prominent Jewish philosopher) and Syed al-Fadl (Islamic scholar). In the famed library of Montserrat Monastery, Edmond tells the religious leaders that they are going to preview a video that the whole world will see in a month. He needs a vow of secrecy...they agree. “I am here today,” Kirsch began, “because I have made a scientific discovery I believe you will find startling. It is something I have pursued for many years, hoping to provide answers to two of the most fundamental questions of our human experience (where do we come from?/ where are we going?). Now that I have succeeded, I have come to you specifically because I believe this information will affect the world’s faithful in a profound way, quite possibly causing a shift that can only be described as, shall we say-disruptive. At the moment, I am the only person on earth who has the information I am about to reveal to you...Kirsch glanced around the ancient repository of sacred texts. It will not shake your foundations. It will shatter them.” The three religious leaders are stunned by the video. Kirsch didn’t tell them, but he planned to show this video to the world in three days, not in a month. By the way, all of the above happened just in the prologue. Does it sound exciting?

Since Kirsch was a student of Langdon’s at Harvard, the professor was invited to the event held at a museum of modern art in northern Spain. Kirsch sent invitations to many famous people without telling them what the event was about. People flocked in from around the world. The invitation said, “Saturday night. Be there. Trust me.” The security getting in was very inflexible, yet a retired Spanish Admiral, Luis Avila, was able to get his name added to the guest list at the last moment. How? Apparently somebody called from the palace and asked Ambra Vidal (the Prince’s fiance), who was also the Museum’s director, to do a last minute favor. She was under a lot of pressure (at this late hour) to get the show starting on time...so she okayed the additional name to the list. Did the palace really call? Who is this admiral and whose orders does he follow? Are the three religious leaders trying to silence Kirsch? Each guest is given a individual headset to tour the museum. Professor Langdon’s headset is controlled by someone named Winston (is he human?). After a brief tour, Winston leads Langdon off the beaten path to a secret room where he meets Edmond Kirsch. Meanwhile, the Rabbi and the Muslim have disappeared. In the secret room, Kirsch tells Langdon, “I need your advice...I fear my life may depend on it.” Langdon says, “Edmond? What’s going on? Are you okay?...Edmond, relax. Focus on your presentation. You’re not in any danger from religious clerics.” Kirsch didn’t look convinced. “You may feel differently, Robert, when you hear what I’m about to say.”

What happens on stage during Kirsch’s presentation sets the tone for the rest of this super exciting novel. As usual, every chapter ended in a cliffhanger, leading the reader into the next chapter. I thought the unique subject matter added to the drama of this novel. I kept saying to myself, what’s the answer to Kirsch’s questions to Robert Langdon on page 53. “These two mysteries lie at the heart of the human experience. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Human creation and human destiny. They are the universal mysteries. Robert, the discovery I’ve made...it very clearly answers both of these questions.” Wow, this was one of the best novels I’ve read this year! And I read a lot of books. Did I say read or read...I love irregular verbs almost as much as I like using that that back to back.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Generally, when you read a novel with Professor Robert Langdon as the main character, you learn something historically, or you are reminded of something you forgot. Reading this novel...I was reminded of something I forgot. I’m not a proponent of the idiots in this country who want to destroy any statue that leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Even statues of Christopher Colombus are under siege in NYC. You can’t erase history.

The great Spanish author and philosopher, Jorge (or George if you like) Santayana (12/16/1863 to 9/26/1952) once said something that is so true...especially in today’s world. He said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Enough said?   

Summa Metaphysica Book 2

The author sent me a copy of his book to read and review:

I’m not Jewish. And even if I was, I probably would not understand what I just read. If you have a large brain like the scholarly author David Birnbaum must have...you have a 25% chance of understanding his second book in the Summa Metaphysica series. For an average Joe like me, it was inevitable that I would not comprehend this book. I did my best to try to unravel what he was trying to tell the reader. Okay, so I broke down some of his words in order for me to fathom his complex thoughts. I figure that summa means summarizing a subject. All right, then cosmos must mean the universe as an orderly system. The hardest thing to grasp was potentialism. I assumed that that (I love using that back to back) word meant: a new way of understanding and interpreting the world we live in. The author states that the temperature of the universe is a constant 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. And what does that have to do with the cosmic womb of potential (his words, not mine)? On page 82, the author ask some questions that I thought I would learn the answers to...not. “Where did it all come from?”, “What are the origins of the cosmos?”, “What triggered the Big Bang?”, “If there is a classic God, why is there gross evil?”, and the big question is: “What is the purpose of man?” If he answered these questions in this book, they went way over my head. Look, maybe it’s me, but if so, why did Mr. Birnbaum have D. N. Khalil, a teacher of Jewish Philosophy at Long Island University, translate his complex mumbo jumbo (as it seemed to me) throughout the book? Mr. Khalil says, “Birnbaum employs a linguistic ensemble that at times resembles the water-tight, nitty-gritty reasoning of God and Evil, while at other times feels like terse jolts to the psyche.” What? Sometimes I couldn’t even understand the interpreter.

To prove my point, on page 84, Mr. Birnbaum says, “Don’t get stuck on any one sentence or paragraph or page. If stuck on a sentence, re-read it once, perhaps, then roll forward regardless. No one sentence or paragraph makes-or-breaks book #2. The concepts are all attaching to the core ‘spinal column’ of POTENTIAL...Extraordinariation (his word, not mine). Your subconscious will connect-the-various dots. Matters will crystallize further.” Mr. Khalil says on page 90, “Birnbaum is positing throughout Summa Metaphysica that the original ‘leveraged buyout’ concept was cosmic. The cosmos was created, he hypothesizes, out of the cosmos’ own potential. Birnbaum’s paradigm, on the other hand, is ‘bootstrap’, i.e. the potential of A ignites A retroactively. The Torah itself has a one-phrase all-encompassing treatise on Jewish philosophy: Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh. This is Potential within Potential, which Birnbaum seizes upon as the crux of Summa Metaphysica.” My contention is that this book (and the rest of the series) should be studied at Yeshiva University if you are going for your doctorate. It’s not for the hoi polloi. Later in the book, the author says, “We do not know what existed pre-Big Bang. Let us call it ‘0’. We can make assumptions about ‘voids’ of various flavors, but we certainly do not know (of course we don’t!!). Best to just call it ’0’. Now moving forward...at CREATION, ‘0’ is presumably divided in multiple ways, many beyond our capability of even beginning to fathom at this point...counter-balancing Negatives and Positives...0 divides into +1,-1……+2, -2 etc., Positives and Negatives; Polar and anti-Polar, Male and Female; (see book #1).”  Are you getting this are am I a tad stunod?

So as I struggled to page 103, I splashed water on my face and said to myself, I can make sense of this. But the page starts off with, “To our readers - By now you ‘have-the-drift’ regarding the core concept of Quest for Potential (but I didn’t have the drift), but ‘having-the-drift’ is not sufficient for a major metaphysics presentation,-so we will proceed forward in more formal fashion...Quest for Potential is an overarching and all-encompassing Near-Infinite Entity/Dynamis transcending TIME and SPACE seeking to evolve fully into Infinite Divine Extraordinariation.” “Viruach Elohim mirachefet al p’nei hamayim*, Everything-past, present and future-is integral to this ONE entity/dynamic, of which we are an organic part.” *Khalil tries to explain the above Jewish phrase by saying, “Torah use A: There are two ways to quote a biblical passage. One might either reference a detail from the Torah and use it merely to introduce a concept that is otherwise unrelated to biblical principles. Or, one might take a hold of-and embrace-central biblical principles, and use them as a foundation for developing a thought.” Thanks, Khalil, but I still don’t understand anything that I’ve read. I must say that this was one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. There is no question that Mr. Birnbaum is a bigtime intellectual, but he must learn to write using mostly elementary terminology. I eagerly wanted the answers to the questions in paragraph one, but I didn’t get them. I do recommend this book but, mainly to Mensa society members (just kidding).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: At the end of the book, Birnbaum has a discussion with Professor Stephen Hawking of Great Britain. Hawking: “For millions of years, mankind lived like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. Mankind learned to talk and we learned to listen.” Birnbaum: “To reach its potential, mankind was thrust into a greater level of complexity/sophistication than the animals around him. The form of that advanced complexity included higher-level reason, language, emotion, and consciousness. Per Potentialism Theory, the notion that ‘advancement’ would happen was a given; it was only a question of when, where and what form it would take.”

Hawking: “I don’t believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can’t predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!” Birnbaum: “Right again, Professor Hawking. Exactly.” (the possible ‘ultimate theory’ is Birnbaum’s Potentialism Theory).

I still don’t understand and will soon put this book to rest for forever. 

the FATNESS

The author sent me an autographed copy of his novel to read and review:

Mark A. Rayner wrote this spoof about socialized medicine in Canada with the intention of providing comic relief. I, for one, found far too little haha’s. It was a fair to middling story, bereft of any real comedy. I saw that some reviewers compared this novel to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, (see my review of 2/17/2013). Are you kidding? Did you really read Catch-22, or are you shooting from the hip? Mr. Raynor even attempted one or two pregnant pauses...please leave those to Jack Benny and George Burns. I do agree that socialized medicine is a joke, since doctor’s offices in Canada are filled with people suffering from Munchausen syndrome, since their visit to a doctor’s office is perceived to be free. If someone has to pay for a doctor’s appointment (with real money), chances are that that someone is really sick. (I love being able to use that that). I’m not saying that the author’s novel is extraneous...it’s just not that funny. So what’s the story about?

The idea that Canada would send people to a kinda prison for being overweight is one thing that did make me laugh. If your BMI (body mass index) was over 30, you went to what the inmates called The Fatness (the overweight prison). You didn’t have to go if you were willing to get your own health insurance...not many chose that option. Your job was protected for two years while you tried to get under 30 BMIs, if you failed...say so long to your job. Since the fat prison was expensive to run, the law only applied to ages between 18 and 45. Our protagonist in prison, Keelan Cavanaugh, who is a web designer for Hellmuth University, briefly thought about having his leg cut off to save 23 pounds, but changed his mind. Keelan’s two buddies in the Fatness are Greg and Max. “There were many many nicknames for the Calorie Reduction Centres: The Girth Gulag, Chubby Choky. Plump Prison. The Fatness. They all gave the impression, but not the facts: the CRCs were concentration camps for the generous of flesh. Sure, cushy, non-death-dealing camps with running water, full free Wi-Fi, and on-staff exercise coaches, but the facilities were designed to keep an unwanted population sequestered and out of sight of polite company.”

Keelan meets Jacinda Williams, an activist Lawyer, who works as an advisor for the Subcommittee on Obesity. They appear to fall in love. Keelan’s new calorie supervisor (his third), Brittany, thinks Jacinda’s butt might be a tad too large (needs some treadmill work). How can Keelan lose the weight to get out of prison and take Jacinda on a real date? Brittany gives Keelan a ridiculous two week diet: “For the first four days, all you eat is apples, then one day of cheese, followed by four days of chicken, and you finish off with a nice celery cleanse.” Keelan did the math. “So I’m going to eat nothing but celery for five days?” Brittany says, “Isn’t it wonderful?” Meanwhile, inmates can cheat on their diets thanks to the illegal activities of prisoner Colin Taggart and his Heavy Hitters. He has the approval of the prison doctor and seems to have the tacit consent of the prison director for importing drugs, alcohol, sex toys and more importantly...Big Macs, French fries, ice cream, chocolate bars, and soda pop! There seems to be a lot of sidebar stories going on in this novel (at the same time) with no firm direction of the plot. It reminds me of a TV weatherman showing the viewer all the possible spaghetti noodle paths a hurricane can take. I do recommend this novel, largely for it’s unusual topic and the author’s adequate prose.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Other than Mark A. Rayner, the only Canadian writer that I’m aware of is Alistair MacLeod (7/20/1936-4/20/2014). His 1999 novel, No Great Mischief is considered by many to be Canada’s greatest book of all time. What did Amazon say about Alistair’s novel?

“Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it. Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto’s skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.”

That sounds like a novel that I should read in the near future.

THE LYING GAME

I struggled with the first half of this story and I shouldn’t have because it was a worthy third novel by Ruth Ware, best selling author of The Woman in Cabin 10 (see my review of 9/7/2016)...but struggle I did. And I know why. The author was very stingy in giving the reader any idea of what was going on. Every chapter gave me the pipe dream of putting two and two together, but it didn’t occur until page 177 when I finally had a good idea of what was happening. I mean if a person texts a message to her three former schoolmates saying, “I need you” on the first page, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that she will tell them why she needs them before 175 pages have elapsed? And why did it take so long for the reader to find out why the four girls (they were 15 years old at the time) were kicked out of school seventeen years ago? I got the first clue on page 165 when our protagonist, Isa Wilde, was attending a class reunion (alumnae ball) and bumped into Miss Weatherby, her former Housemistress. I did notice this style of writing in Ruth Ware’s second novel, but it wasn’t as flagrant. In a good whodunit or mystery, I like having little clues dropped all throughout the novel...it challenges me to solve the puzzle. I don’t want to wait until half the novel goes by before I have a lightbulb moment. Okay, did I think Ruth Ware had a quality third novel? Absolutely, but I wish she would adopt a style similar to Agatha Christie’s. Agatha would drop hints and clues leading up to the conclusion so the readers could attempt to solve the mystery for themselves. So what did Ruth Ware do in the second half of the novel? She took the opposite approach of the first half and bombarded the reader with leads, clues, tips and information that almost made my head spin. With my pet peeve aired, I still recognize the author as a superior storyteller.

Isa and Fatima became best friends with Thea and Kate en route to a second rate boarding school in Salten, England. Thea and Kate have been playing a game they call The Lying Game. Isa and Fatima quickly made it a foursome of liars. Seventeen years pass since they were forced out of the school (see my comment in the first paragraph) and suddenly Isa, Thea and Fatima get a text message of three words from Kate (who still lives in Salten)...I need You. The three text back to Kate...I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming. All three now have responsible jobs. Isa has a newborn baby that she is breastfeeding but decides to take the baby with her on the train ride to Salten. On the way to Salten, Isa reminisces The Lying Game, “It comes back to me now as sharp and vivid as the smell of the sea, and the scream of gulls over the Reach, and I can’t believe that I almost forgotten it-forgotten the tally sheet Kate kept above her bed, covered with cryptic marks for her elaborate scoring system. This much for a new victim. That much for complete belief. The extras awarded for elaborate detail, or managing to rehook someone who almost called your bluff. I haven’t thought of it for so many years, but in a way, I’ve been playing it all this time.” Isa and baby Freya are picked up at the Salten train station by Kate in Rick’s Taxi (not mine). Kate owns and lives in the Tide Mill on the Reach. “It’s not a building so much as a collection of driftwood thrown together by the winds.” Kate tells Isa, “The whole place is sinking. I had a surveyor come and look at it, he said there’s no proper foundations, and that if I were applying for a mortgage today I’d never get one.” Kate will not tell Isa why she needed them until the others get there.

Fatima and Thea arrive. Fatima is now a doctor and a practicing Muslim wearing a hijab. Thea arrives...still the wild rebel. When they are all together, they go to the Reach to swim, smoke, and drink...til two am. When they get back in the mill, Kate says, “I...then she stops. She drops her eyes. Oh, God, almost to herself. I didn’t know it would be this difficult.” “Spit it out”, Thea says, her voice hard. “Say it Kate. We’ve skirted round it long enough; it’s time to tell us why.” “Why what? Kate could retort. But she doesn’t need to ask. We all know. Why are we here? What did that text mean, those three little words: I need you?” As I told you in paragraph one, you will not put two and two together until you reach page 177, but on page 66 (this is as far as I will go with my recap), “Kate draws a long breath, and she looks up, her face shadowed in the lamplight. But to my surprise, she doesn’t speak. Instead, she gets up and goes to the pile of newspapers in the scuttle by the stove, left there for lighting the logs. There is one on the top, the Salten Observer, and she holds it out, wordless, her face showing all the fear she has been hiding this long. It is dated yesterday, and the headline on the front page is very simple: Human Bone Found in Reach.” Instantly, the girls know who that bone belongs to and what that discovery means to them, but the reader will not know until (you guessed it)...page 177. Did I whet your whistle? I thought so. Now get your own copy and try to solve this mystery (it will not be easy).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Even though I gave this novel a excellent rating, there was one other issue that somewhat irked me besides the lack of clues in the first half of the novel. What was it? Breastfeeding. That’s right, breastfeeding. Throughout this tense story, the author made sure the baby was being fed and fed and fed (why would you even bring this baby into constant danger?). I don’t think a chapter went by without Isa offering her breast to baby Freya. Even during a tense moment when Isa is discussing Kate’s father’s supposed suicide note on page 332...out comes the tit:

“I’ve read the note again and again, more times than Fatima has, more times than I could count, watching the way the words trail away into illegibility, following the progress of the drug in Ambrose’s straggling letters. I read it on the train up from Salten, and during the long wait at Hampton’s Lee. I read it while my own daughter lolled against my breast, her rosebud mouth open, her halting breath cobweb-soft against my skin, and I can only see it one way.”

The lack of first half clues and the constant prattling about breastfeeding led to my giving this novel four stars instead of five.

the Labyrinth Wall

The author and her public relations representative sent my fourteen year old grandson, Kai O, an autographed copy of her novel to read and review:

Emilyann Girdner has been awarded numerous honors for her fiction and deserves them all. The Labyrinth Wall is set in a near inhospitable world. In this setting, the Mahk (people made by the Creator) have to choose between searching through acid rivers for Obsidian to pay for food or be left to die. The protagonist, Araina, is one of the Mahk.

The story starts to become interesting after Araina finds a hidden underwater passageway to a lush enclave, a sharp contrast to the barren wastelands she calls home. All of this is surprising and new to Araina...but this is only the beginning. Soon after, Darith, another Mahk, emerges into the enclave. Araina knows Darith as someone who isn’t afraid to attack other Mahks in order to steal a meal. Darith followed Araina to do just that. After fighting for a bit, Darith manages to cut Araina’s leg. But just as it seems Araina may lose, a hole opens up in the wall and a mysterious Man in White comes through being pursued by two Creator guards.

The Man in White runs over to Araina and puts his hand on her wound and somehow the wound begins to heal. Soon after he closes the wound, the Creator guards catch up to him and drag him back to the hole where they came through...and it closes behind them. Who is the Man in White? Why were the Creator guards chasing him? How did the Man in White heal Araina’s wounds?

Emilyann Girdner’s novel is a unique story compared to other novels that I’ve read. The story was interesting; the characters felt like they could be real and everything that happened seemed important. However, some parts of the novel’s beginning were a bit confusing. I would definitely recommend this novel to readers between 12 to 18 years old.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: My grandson, Kai O, continues to be my main YA novel reviewer. This week he starts his freshman year in high school with a better understanding of English Literature because of the work he has done on Book Reviews and Comments by Rick O.  

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

Betty Smith’s entertaining 1943 novel is reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ novels of the mid 1800s. Both wrote poignant stories about the poor and the downtrodden, but their characters managed to rise above their difficult environments and find ways to appreciate life despite the dire circumstances. Of course a character in a Dickens’ novel faced more troublesome situations, especially in Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Betty Smith’s protagonist, Francie Nolan, almost seems okay with being poor, finding new ways nearly everyday to earn a penny or two. Some of the pennies found their way into her mom’s tin can bank that was nailed to the floor of their apartment closet...some were spent on candy or a pickle. A pickle could be a joy for eleven year old Francie, “She’d take a penny and go down to a store on Moore Street that had nothing in it but fat Jew pickles floating around in heavy spiced brine.” She said, “Gimme a penny sheeny pickle.” The Hebrew looked at the Irish child with his fierce red-rimmed eyes, small, tortured and fiery. “Goyem! Goyem!” he spat at her, hating the word sheeny...the pickle lasted all day. Francie sucked and nibbled on it. She didn’t exactly eat it. She just had it. That reminded me of when Charles Dickens’ character, Oliver Twist, said, “Please, Sir, I want some more” to the cruel master of the workhouse at supper time. Anyway, both writers wrote about the poor, although Smith’s characters weren’t treated as badly as Dickens’ were. In the foreword by Anna Quindlen, she said, “The best anyone can say is that it is a story about what it means to be human.” That’s almost as spontaneous as George Costanza (Seinfeld show, episode 43) coming up with the idea of a show about nothing. So be it! Nonetheless, the novel and the show were praiseworthy.

The novel is divided into five books encompassing the years 1902 through 1919 in the impoverished section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. It tells the story of the Nolan family and the Ailanthus tree (Tree of Heaven) growing out of the cement sidewalk. Katie Nolan is the janitress for three tenement houses (they live in one) and mother to Francie (11) and Neely (10) and the wife of Johnny, a singing waiter and drunk. They were poor, but seemed to tolerate life regardless of their status. On Saturdays, Francie and her brother, Neely, collected rags, paper, metal and rubber from the dumbwaiter shelves in the cellar of the tenements their mom cleaned. They dragged all their junk in a burlap bag to Carney’s for pennies profit. If Francie let Carney pinch her cheek, she got a extra penny. One half of the pennies earned went into the tin-can bank in their apartment closet. Francie loved the old shabby library in her neighborhood, “Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world. She was reading a book a day in alphabetical order and not skipping the dry ones.” Francie and her family lived on stale bread all week. “She and Mama planned what meals they’d make from the stale bread in the weeks to come. The Nolans practically lived on that stale bread and what amazing things Katie could make from it! She’d take a loaf of stale bread (don’t you think that Betty Smith uses the word stale too often?), pour boiling water over it, work it up into a paste, flavor it with salt, pepper, thyme, minced onion and an egg (if eggs were cheap), and bake it in the oven...what was left over, was sliced thin the next day and fried in hot bacon fat.” Now, if you are wondering when this story (493 pages) is going to get exciting...it doesn’t. Remember in the first paragraph I implied that this might be a novel about nothing. That hasn’t stopped the novel from becoming an American classic.
   
One of my favorite sidebar characters was Katie’s older sister, Sissy Rommely. She was illiterate because she never went to school, but she had street smarts. She was a beautiful woman who had many lovers and marriages. Even though Sissy had ten stillborn children, she always kept her chin up. She had a crush on Katie’s husband Johnny and had a habit of calling all her lovers and husbands “John.” My other favorite secondary character was Mary Rommely, who emigrated from Austria with her very disagreeable husband, Thomas. Mary is the mother of Sissy and Katie. When Francie was born, Mary had many guidelines for bringing up baby Francie. She told Katie, “The secret lies in the reading and writing (by the way Mary can’t read). Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child.” Katie asked, “What is a good book?” “There are two great books. Shakespeare is a great book.” Katie inquired, “And what is the other great book?” “It is the Bible that the Protestant people read.” Don’t even ask me why she picked these books. Do you want to hear the other rules for bringing up Francie? Okay, “And you must tell the child the legends I told you - as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. And the child must believe in the Lord God and Jesus, His Only Son. Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six. The child must be made to believe in heaven.” Katie asks, “And then, what else?” Mary says, “Before you die, you must own a bit of land - maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit.” Now you know the reason for the tin-can bank in the closet that I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Anyway, let’s get back to the exciting Nolans. The last thing that I’m going to tell you about is the search for weekend meat (then you will have to read the final 446 pages on your own). On page forty six, Neeley came home and he and Francie were sent out for the weekend meat. This was an important ritual and called for detailed instructions by Mama... “Get a five-cent soup bone off of Hassler’s. But don’t get the chopped meat there. Go to Werner’s for that. Get round steak chopped, ten cents’ worth, and don’t let him give it to you off the plate. Take an onion with you, too.” So off they go, Francie and Neely on their important mission: Francie and her brother stood at the counter a long time before the butcher noticed them. “What’s yours?” he asked finally. Francie started the negotiations. “Ten cents’ of round steak.” “Ground?” “No.” “Lady was just in. Bought a quarter’s worth of round steak ground. Only I ground too much and here’s the rest on the plate. Just ten cents’ worth. Honestly. I only just ground it.” This was the caveat emptor Francie had been told to watch out for: Don’t buy it off the plate no matter what the butcher says. “No. My mother said ten cents’ worth of round steak.” Furiously the butcher hacked off a bit of meat and slammed it down on the paper after weighing it. He was just about to wrap it up when Francie said in a trembling voice, “Oh, I forgot. My mother wants it ground.” “God-damm it to hell!” He hacked up the meat and shoved it into the chopper. “And mama said to chop up this onion in it.” “Jesus!” the butcher said explosively..."And-a-piece-of-suet-to-fry-it-with.” “Son-of-a-bitchin’ bastard,” Whispered the butcher bitterly. This was only Francie’s first stop on her meat mission...on to the next store! I thought these pages were funny and reflective of the times (early 1900s) in the slum section of Brooklyn.

With the penny almost obsolete in today’s world, I was surprised how much could be bought for a penny, nickel or a dime in the early 1900s. Wow, imagine if you had a five dollar bill! I obtained so much knowledge of what it was like to live in the slums of Brooklyn between the years 1902 through 1919 that it was well worth the price of admission. What were some trivial things that I learned? How about, “Most Brooklyn Germans had a habit of calling everyone who annoyed them a Jew.” The girls played Jacks and the boys played Potsy. You want to hear a good line? When Katie tells Sissy that “Johnny’s a drunk”, Sissy says, “Well, everybody’s something.” I remember a similar response on the Ed Sullivan Show when Myron Cohen (a very funny man) was telling a joke about a husband who unexpectedly comes home and finds his wife lying naked on their bed. He opens the door to their bedroom closet and finds a naked man standing there...and the naked man says to the husband (but first a pregnant pause a' la Jack Benny)...Well, everybody’s got to be someplace. Too funny. Betty Smith writes a lot of lines about the neighborhood stores. “Francie liked the pawnshop the best - not for the treasures prodigiously thrown into its barred windows...but for the three large golden balls that hung high above the shop and gleamed in the sun. There was the bakery store on one side of it which sold beautiful Charlotte russes with red candied cherries on their whipped cream tops. On the other side was Gollender’s Paint Shop. The most interesting store was housed in a little shanty which had been there when the Indians prowled through Williamsburg.” It was a old fashion cigar store (four for a nickel). “He had a wooden Indian outside his store which stood in a threatening stance on a wooden block. One of Francie’s favorite stores was the one which sold nothing but tea, coffee and spices. The mystery of mysteries to Francie was the Chinaman’s one-windowed store. The Chinaman wore his pigtail wound around his head. That was so he could go back to China if he wanted to, Mama said (haha). All he knew was tickee and shirtee. Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie...to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn.” Can Betty Smith write or what? I highly recommend this piece of Americana.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Sometimes I get carried away writing a review...this was one of those times. It really was just a story, but it was also a history lesson. It’s like when I read Mark Twain - I learn so much about the south and its intricacies during the mid to late 1800s. The tree of heaven (hardly mentioned), which grows in the cement outside the tenement houses, is a sturdy tree of China origin. To me, the tree is really a metaphor symbolizing the hardiness of the Nolan family (and just maybe the perseverance of the neighborhood’s various ethnicities as a whole). At least that’s what I got out of it.

Betty Smith was a simple and unpretentious lady. Just read the following two quotes from Betty Smith, the first from her and the second quote from her protagonist, Francie. “I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.” Is that an endorsement for the average Joe, or what? “People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “Something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

If you think the part about a man having a cigarette for contentment is chauvinistic, remember that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was written in 1943.

WE ARE HOLDING THE PRESIDENT HOSTAGE

The author and his editorial manager sent me a copy of his novel to review:

He did it again! Another innovative novel by Warren Adler, the creative storyteller. This is the third Adler’s novel that I’ve read and reviewed this year (see my review of Mother Nile (1/5/2017) and my review of Heart of Gold (5/12/2017). In my opinion, this novel is his best yet. It has a great plot with lots of action, plenty of surprises, and many cliffhanger chapter endings that keep you reading through the night. Did Adler remain a descriptive writer? Do Indian chiefs wear feathered warbonnets? Here is a sample of his descriptive writing: The Mafia Don, Sal Padronelli, aka the Padre, shows his mafioso crew into a room, “He waited as they filed in, filling the small room. With the exception of Benjy, they were an aging, gray, bulky-looking group. In this atmosphere, pushed close together on the couch and chairs, they looked like overripe fruit that had rolled out of its sack and rearranged itself helter-skelter in the room.” We all know that Ernest Hemingway and his 1920’s expatriates killed off descriptive writing, but it seems that Warren Adler is from the old school of writing...to my liking. It’s hard to believe that this novel (originally published in 1986) was never turned into a movie. I can visualize Marlon Brando  playing the part of The Padre. Why not? Marlon was only 62 when Adler’s novel was published in 1986 (the Padre was 69 in the novel) and it was 14 years after The Godfather movie. Anyway, what’s We are Holding the President Hostage about? Well, let me tell you...

A terrorist kidnapping goes dreadfully wrong in Egypt. Ahmed, a Lebanese trained terrorist, wanted to kidnap the United States assistant Secretary of State. Instead he grabs a woman and her child. The woman turns out to be Maria, the daughter of NYC Mafia Don Salvatore Padronelli, and the boy, Joey, is his grandson. Ahmed initially doesn’t know the value of the prize he has acquired. As the getaway car disappeared around the corner, he says, “An American is an American.” The woman looked at him coldly. She had, he noted, recovered her arrogance. “You won’t get away with this,” the woman hissed as her arm shot out. Her fist glanced off the side of his head. Calmly, he directed the pistol toward the boy’s crotch. “He’d be such a pretty little soprano,” Ahmed said, watching the woman as the blood drained from her face. After a moment, she expelled a word. It sounded very much like “Daddy”. “Daddy,” he said with a chuckle. “No Daddy can help you now.” I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Ahmed.

Meanwhile, back in NYC, “Salvatore Padronelli, the Padre as he was called, planted his black Thom McAn shoes beneath the table of the private back room of Luigi’s Trattoria on Mulberry Street. It was located one block from his modest two-story house in which he had resided for forty years...On it was the usual basketed bottle of Chianti, a container of standing breadsticks, and a half dozen small tumblers.” This is where mafia business was conducted. He was surrounded by his crew. I loved the names of his crew, such as Angelo Petinno, “the Pencil”; Vinnie Barboza, “the Prune”; Carmine Giancana, “the Canary”; Rocco Mondavano, “the Talker”; and Benjy Mustoni, “the Kid”. It doesn’t get better than that. The Padre listens to some problems until the pay phone in the room rings. The Pencil picks up the phone...it’s Robert, Maria’s husband, in Egypt. He gives the bad news to the Padre that Maria and Joey have been kidnapped. This is also bad news for the kidnappers since everyone knows that immediate family is sacrosanct to mafia families.

Kidnappings for ransom or for prisoner exchanges were going on throughout the Middle East. Currently, twenty four Americans were being held. The Padre doesn’t think the government will do anything about it. Several days later, President Paul Bernard receives word that three of the hostages have been executed. He holds a news conference…”assuring them that the government was doing everything it could, appealing for their patience, implying that negotiations were going on at this very moment.” The Padre watching the President’s speech on TV with his son-in-law Robert knows that’s a line of malarkey. Robert asks the Padre what he would you do? “I would use my power”, the Padre said, hoping that all the suggested implications of his comment would suffice. “How?” “Power is no good unless it is used,” the Padre said. “I would go against all who made this action possible.” “With this President we will never get them back...only if we put his cojones in here.” He moved his fingers together and slowly brought them together. What? A Vise?

Will the Padre and his crew take the President hostage and make him use mafia strategy to get Maria and Joey released? Will it work? Who and how many will die? This novel was 339 pages of delightful tension. If you want to read a thriller...this is your novel. I highly recommend this novel and, by the way, anything else that the talented Warren Adler has written.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I love mafia movies. It sounds Un-American, but I root for the bad guys. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 The Godfather is my all time favorite mafia movie, but there are two other movies that if I’m surfing through the TV channels and one of these pop up...I’m watching.

Martin Scorsese’s 1990 movie, Goodfellas is an adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s 1986 bestseller, Wiseguy. The book and the movie tell the true story of Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) rise and fall. Is there any movie character more terrifying than Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci)? Or his partner in crime, Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro)? And how good was Paul Sorvino, who played mafia boss, Paulie Cicero? I love this movie.

The second movie is Robert De Niro’s 1993 directorial debut, A Bronx Tale. I loved this movie. A young Italian-American boy is torn between his hardworking bus driving father (Robert De Niro) and local mafia boss Sonny LoSpecchio (Chazz Palminteri), who gives the boy a job in his bar. I thought the sidebar plot involving the boy falling in love with a African American girl was brilliant.

DRAGON TEETH

Knowing that the literary world is full of ghost writers, it’s almost unfathomable to believe that another new Michael Crichton novel has been published...nine years after his death. I read his Pirate Latitudes in 2009, one year after he died. But there was always talk about him writing a novel about pirates, and since they found the completed manuscript on one of his computers...I had to reckon that it was genuine. Then another novel, Micro, was published in 2011. This novel was said to be one-third done and finished by author Richard Preston. Okay that seems plausible. Now, Dragon Teeth is published in 2017. Are there more novels to be discovered? Or is this the last one? His fifth and last wife, Sherri Crichton, says in the afterword (page 292), “Honoring Michael’s legacy has been my mission ever since he passed away. Through the creation of his archives, I quickly realized that it was possible to trace the birth of Dragon Teeth to a 1974 letter to the curator of vertebrate paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History. After reading the manuscript, I could only describe Dragon Teeth as 'pure Crichton.' It has Michael’s voice, and his love of history, research, and science all dynamically woven into this epic tale.” Well, I wouldn’t call this novel epic, although I wouldn’t completely disagree with Sherri Crichton that he wrote it either, but I reserve my almost tongue-in-cheek thoughts. There are traces of the author’s genius throughout the novel and, as we all know, he is the author of Jurassic Park. I guess my major problem is trusting that the novel is 100% Crichton since nine years have passed since Michael died. Why did it take so long to publish this novel?

The novel, itself, is historical fiction delineating an episode (fictional) during the actual Bone Wars (1877-1892) between leading American paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. History will tell you that when the war was over...they were both broke and out of funds. Anyway, our protagonist (fictional) is a eighteen year old Yale college student, William Johnson. His father, Silas, is a rich Philadelphia shipbuilder. William always seems to be in trouble in school, usually because he and his arch-rival, Harold Hannibal Marlin (another rich boy), “competed in every arena - in the classroom, on the playing-field, in the undergraduate pranks of the night.” They argued incessantly, always taking the opposing view from the other. One day, William lies to Harold that he is going to go west with Professor Marsh. “I am going with Professor Marsh. He takes a group of students with him each summer.” Harold says,”What? Fat old Marsh? The bone professor?”, William says,“That’s right.” Harold says, "You’ve never laid eyes on Professor Marsh, and you’ll never go with him.” The boys bet a thousand dollars on whether he will go or will not go. Now the pressure is on William to get on the professor’s team. When William goes to see the professor, he is stunned when Marsh says, “Sorry. Too late. Positions all filled.” The professor says to William, “If you wanted to come you should have answered the advertisement last week. Everyone else did. Now we have selected everyone except - You’re not, by any chance, a photographer?” William fibs, “Yes, sir, I am! I am indeed.” The story is off and running, as William hires a local photographer to give him twenty lessons “for the outrageous sum of fifty dollars.”  

The story dragged a bit at times (not typical of a Crichton novel) and had some useless paragraphs, such as, when William meets Robert Louis Stevenson on the train heading west. Stevenson tells William that he is going to California to meet the woman he loves. Historically, this is correct, but the wrong year. And why would Wyatt and Morgan Earp be active characters in this novel? And what was the brief appearance of Brigham Young all about? Even though Young has nothing to do with this novel, we find that he is a “gracious man, gentle and calculating. For forty years, the Mormons were hounded and persecuted in every state of the Union; now they make their own state, and persecute the Gentiles in turn.” Calamity Jane also makes a very brief appearance in not such a good light, “Calamity Jane was so masculine she often wore a soldier’s uniform and traveled undetected with the boys in blue, giving them service in the field (as a harlot); she had gone with Custer’s 7th Cavalry on more than one occasion.” I’m only bringing up these lowlights, because I don’t remember Crichton using these diversion tactics before. I do recommend reading this novel even though it’s not his best (if it is his...ouch).

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Suspicion has surrounded many authors after their deaths. Harper Lee (passed away in 2016) had that albatross around her neck all her life. First, she was accused of not writing her bestseller, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Many people say her friend Truman Capote wrote Mockingbird. Then 55 years later, a second novel was found and published (Go Set A Watchman, see my review of 2/23/2016). It was deemed poorly written compared to Mockingbird, giving credence to the Truman Capote theory. But since her death (shortly after the publication of Go Set A Watchman), most literary people believe that it was a first draft of Mockingbird.

And how about the great German writer, Franz Kafka? None of his novels were published until after death. While he was alive, he did have some of his work published in magazines, but no novels. His literary executor, Max Brod, was supposed to burn his manuscripts upon Franz’s death. He did not. He published all his works, including his famous The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle. Could a ghost writer have slipped a phony into the mix? Possibly, but not likely.

Finally, getting back to Michael Crichton’s novel, I found it interesting that it took so long for people to believe that dinosaurs existed. “This was certainly still so in 1876. Much earlier in the century, Thomas Jefferson had carefully concealed his own view that fossils represented extinct creatures. In Jefferson’s day, public espousal of belief in extinction was considered heresy. Attitudes had since changed in many places, but not everywhere. It was still controversial to espouse evolution in certain parts of the United States.”