Pure Joy: The Dogs We Love by Danielle Steel

Worn out from holiday cooking and shopping? Love dogs? Here is a charming, short memoir from prolific Danielle Steel. In it, she talks about herself and her children (all nine) and the dogs that were beloved companions to them all. Central to her book is Minnie (Mouse), the teacup Chihuahua with whom she fell in love.

Pure Joy is a charming book with many photos of her adoring and adorable canines. If you are a fan of Danielle Steel, or just a dog lover, you are sure to enjoy this quick read.

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Mary Coin by Marisa Silver

This book has steadily gained in popularity at our library, and I’ve just ordered more copies to keep up with demand. A great read, and I suspect catching on with book discussion groups.

It is a beautifully written piece of fiction, based on a true story. Real life photographer Dorothea Lange was commissioned by the U.S. government to take photographs of migrant workers during The Great Depression. The photos and their captions were used to educate the public and legislators about the real conditions people suffered through during The Great Depression, in the hope of bringing awareness and much needed funding to better the living conditions of the poor.

Lange’s iconic photo of Florence Owen Thompson, a destitute migrant worker with two of her seven children, brought Lange her greatest acclaim. Thompson, seeing her image in newspapers and magazines, contacted Lange and asked that she be recompensed.

Author Marisa Silver does an outstanding job of telling the story of the photographer, renamed Vera Dare in this book, as she struggles with the challenges of her own life, while working to earn a living under difficult circumstances. Silver’s portrayal of Mary Coin (based on Florence Thompson) brings to life the poverty and stark conditions of the migrant worker. The story of Mary and her family, and her determination is remarkable.

Marisa Silver’s writing is descriptive, immediate, and evocative, reminding me of some of my favorite books: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, My Antonia by Willa Cather and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.

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Local Souls by Allan Gurganus

Richard Ford, in his 2004 introduction to Barry Hannah's short story collection Airships, noted that literary greatness is achieved when a writer can combine "a fresh sentence-level flair and a rigorous focus on the story at hand." Yet he names only a few writers who have achieved it: William Faulkner, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah. ("Talk of the Townies" by Jamie Quatro, The New York Times Book Review, October 11, 2013).

To Quatro, there are serious omissions on that list - not least of which is the name Allan Gurganus. Gurganus is best known for his tome, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, published in 1989 at 700+ pages. It was a New York Times bestseller for eight months and was made into a two-part mini series. This book was followed by another novel, Plays Well With Others, a short story collection White People; and a collection of four novellas, The Practical Heart. (The New York Times Book Review, op. cit.)

Local Souls, Gurganus' fifth book, rivals some of the best work of Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty. Like these fine writers of Southern Gothic, Local Souls explores the loneliness inherent in social isolation and employs shocking situations such as death by beheading, incest, and sex with a grieving minor. And this is only in the first novella! Yet what is unique about Gurganus' writing is the synchronicity of  humor and pain as well as what Jamie Quatro calls the "sentence-level pyrotechnics and capacious inventions of plot."

In the first novella, "Fear Not," the narrator is suspiciously similar to Gurganus himself.  After having spent seven years writing and researching his Civil War novel, the narrator is "between books.". While attending his teenage godson's performance in Sweeney Todd, he observes the ambiance of his surroundings. "This toasty auditorium smells of industrial floor wax. Student adolescence keeps walls infused with a sebaceous sweetness akin to curry." (p. 15)

Although the crowd is comprised of "the same dutiful adults" who appear year after year, the narrator is struck by a glamorous couple who take their seats next to him. His best friend, Jenna, now seated, writes him a telling note: NOTICE PAIR. SAVE HUNCHES. STORY AFTER. GOOD.

What follows is a story that is as heartfelt as it is shocking - a story that pushes all boundaries, and yet, never loses compassion for the characters involved.

The next novella, "Saints Have Mothers," has the reader questioning just who is the "saint." In it, we are introduced to our first-person narrator, Jean Mulray - a woman who has forsaken becoming a poet to fully devoting her energies to her family. The result: her husband leaves her for another woman and her "saintly" daughter becomes increasingly insufferable. Gurganus paints a portrait of Caitlin Mulray as a self-righteous philanthopist more concerned with children in Africa than the well-being of her mother. Ultimately, there is a shocking turn of events that this reviewer does not wish to reveal.

But the piece de resistance is the final novella, "Decoy."  Like the other novellas in the collection, the story takes place in Falls, North Carolina. Marion Roper has been designated "Doc" since his boyhood. He has always been the shining star, the person most likely to succeed.  After medical school, he returns to Falls to care for its denizens.  Among them is Bill Mabry. Suffering from a disorder that affects his heart, Dr. Roper promises to keep Mabry alive for as long as he can.  Mabry has a first appointment with Doc every Monday - an appointment that cements his love and admiration for the doctor.  But the love is one-sided; Marion Roper is a god in the town, and gods are unknowable.

When Roper retires at age 70, he creates another career for himself--that of an artist.  He becomes renown as a carver of duck decoys and his creations become collectors' items. Bill longs to own one of these decoys, and in an act of hubris and callousness, Doc refuses to sell to his longtime patient.

But what happens in Gurganus' world when objects take on more value than humans? When latent homosexual yearnings go unrecognized and feared?  What happens to the Falls residents, including  Marion Roper, when a flood of biblical proportions levels the town and destroys his prize possessions? As Mabry observes:

You reach an age when you open your morning newspapers not to Sports, the Funnies, but Obits. At our age, Jan and I knew dozens who had "preceded us," as morticians must say.  Such acquaintances become your own silent majority of friends. But it wasn't that. That in itself is strangely not so tough on people of our given vintage. It's not the lost; it the lingerers that slay you. You don't usually have to see the deceased up and out walking. (p. 323)

"Decoy" is a spell-binding novella that explores the limits of friendship and the loneliness engendered by being "different." It looks at class, male friendship, loss, and ultimately, the indignities and isolation of old age.

Taken as a whole, Local Souls is a tour de force that is impossible to put down.

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Difficult Men, by Brett Martin

Difficult Men is not a handbook about how to deal with unreliable boyfriends, horrible bosses, or Anthony Wiener. Instead, journalist Brett Martin's book is a smart, immensely entertaining study of the difficult male characters that inhabit the worlds of many of the best television dramas of the last two decades, and the difficult men who created those programs. The former group includes the Jersey mobsters of The Sopranos; the drug dealers and compromised police of The Wire; the meth producers and sellers of Breaking Bad; the corrupt cops of The Shield; the lying, cheating (but oh so good lookin') ad executives of Mad Men; and the serial killer known as Dexter. Among the later group are The Sopranos' David Chase; The Wire's David Simon; and Matthew Weiner, who wrote for The Sopranos before creating Don Draper and company.

You do not have to have seen any of these shows to enjoy this book (but it helps). Stories about the prickly personalities and how they often clashed with their staff and network honchos in the service of these groundbreaking shows make Difficult Men such an easy read. Take the relationship between David Chase and young writer and Harvard graduate Todd Kessler. Kessler threw himself into The Sopranos, bonding with Chase and often going to dinner with him and his family. He and Chase even co-wrote the episode "Funhouse" in which Tony Soprano’s long fever dream results in his subconscious revealing that one of his deputies is a traitor. “Funhouse” won the pair an Emmy nomination. Martin writes that after the nomination was announced, "Kessler spent the next ten minutes fielding congratulatory phone calls. Then came a call from Chase's assistant, saying that Chase wanted to see him in the office. When Kessler arrived, still buzzing from the news, Chase closed the door and sat down. 'I guess the timing isn't great,' he said, 'but I think I need to end this relationship. . . I think you've lost the voice of the show.'" Kessler went on to write the pilot for a new series of his own called Damages that "revolved around a terrible boss--brilliant but manipulative, vain, imperious, unpredictable."

Want more? How did Matthew Weiner, who could "be funny and charming, colleagues said, but also childishly underhanded (and) at times . . . a classic bully" survive working for Chase and then go on to create Mad Men? First of all, he was a brilliant writer, but he was also thick-skinned and thrived on the competitive atmosphere of the writers' room. Martin quotes Weiner as saying, "I think that part of my success climbing the hierarchy of the writers' room was that I knew that when the boss came in, no matter what mood he was in, I was not going to take it personally. I'd be like, ‘You don't like that? Okay. Well, I've got something else. No? I've got something else. Did you actually say F you to me? Okay. Well you don't mean it.’" Weiner had no problems dealing with the boss, nor, when the time came, to being the boss on Mad Men. Once told that when working with writers, ego suppression could be an unhealthy, Weiner replied, “Well, I’m very healthy.”

David Simon, too, battled famously with his writers, perhaps especially with Ed Burns, his co-showrunner on The Wire. However, Martin writes, the arguments were what Simon, "the lifelong believer in the positive powers of argument, wanted.” In the book, Simon is quoted as saying, “I never liked fighting with Ed because it was tiring and slowed the process down, but I never had a fight with him that, in the end, didn't make the show better."

Along with providing a history of HBO shows and other cable successes, Difficult Men is a sort of text book on how to get along in Hollywood. It also provides plenty of back stories on individual episodes of shows, as well as on how key actors were hired and how they interacted with other actors and with writers. For example, actor Michael Chiklis really wanted the lead role in The Shield. However all the writers could think was, “The fat guy from The Commish is NOT our (lead) guy,” said FX programming head Peter Liguori. But Chiklis was persistent, and an audition was arranged. Martin writes, “On his way in (to the audition room), Liguori passed a bald, buff guy in a skintight black T-shirt.” ‘Where’s Chiklis?’ he asked the room. ‘You just passed him,’ was the answer. The actor came in, gnawing on a mouthful of Nicorette, and proceeded to blow the room away.”

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Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty

Joseph Barkeley is from Chicago, brought here as a child after being orphaned in Romania. He deals in rare books and manuscripts and does some authentication work on the side.  He receives a call from Arthur Ardelean who asks Joseph to authenticate and purchase the original draft, including notes, of Bram Stokers's novel Dracula. The work is arranged through an intermediary as the purchaser wants total anonymity.

But just who is really employing him? With an offer of money too good to turn down, Barkeley travels to Romania. The buyer is to donate the manuscript and notes to the museum in Dracula's castle in Romania. Before leaving, Barkeley is given a "special gift" from the buyer so the buyer will recognize him. The gift? An ornate silver cross with a red gemstone. Before leaving, Barkely contacts Mara Sadov, another book collector. She is an expert on vampires and tell Barkeley that to do this is to invite the undead into his life.  She then tells him what he will need to know in order to survive. Joseph's brother, Bernhardt, a catholic priest tells Joseph not to go.

Barkeley examines the documents, authenticates them and completes the purchase. The book was published in 1897, The notes date from 1890 and indicate the current published book was not the first edition. The first one had an epilogue and had a different ending. All the first printings were destroyed in a warehouse fire shortly after being printed. In Romania Barkeley is met by Lucian Blaga. Lucian is to help Joseph deal with the  "master", the man who actually bought the documents. Strange things happen to Joseph while there: he gets attacked by what he is sure is a dog until it runs away on 2 feet, people have red eyes and someone is talking to him telepathically.

The master tells Joseph that in order to complete the transaction he needs to find a grave that is mentioned in the original manuscript. When Joseph leads him to the wrong site, he tells Joseph that both he and his brother "owe him." Joseph then realizes why his father murdered his mother and burned her body before killing himself.

Joseph's financial deal now turns into a deal to save his life. His remaining time in Romania is spent just trying to placate the master and live long enough to get home.

The author, Royce Prouty, is a first time author and he did well with this book. Fast paced, the book moves through the dawning awareness of his past and precarious future that Joseph now realizes is his reality.

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Bobcat and Other Stories

The stories in Bobcat, by Rebecca Lee, are ones in which happy endings are rare if at all. At best, compromises are made and people carry on. Take for example, "Slatland."  We first meet its narrator, Margit, when she is a child suffering from depression. Her parents (dad is a geology professor) take her to a "therapist" - a professor of child psychology at the university where her father teaches. In what seems to be a humorous take on therapy, Professor Pine suggests she rise above her situation, literally, allowing her mind to separate from the world around her. "For every situation there is a proper distance. Growing up is just a matter of gaining perspective. Sometimes you just need to jump up for a moment, a foot above the earth. And sometimes you need to jump very far. It is as if there are thin slats, footholds, from here to the sun...Slatland, flatland, mapland."

When Margit asks him when she should return for her next session, Professor Pine says that follow-ups are not necessary; his therapy works the first time. And it does work for her, "as if it were a medication that worked whether you understood it or not."

Twenty years later, as a soil consultant, darkness sometimes descends upon Margit. She uses the Slatland Technique to "step up" and separate herself from the situation. Unfortunately, this technique renders her incapable of seeing her fiance for whom he is - a Romanian liar. Instead, she is attracted to his "otherness," which also includes his narcissism, his tirades against North America and Americans, and his blatant insincerity. Ultimately, though, her ability to see the larger picture, to empathize with the secret wife and children back in Ceausescu's Romania, allows her to make the moral choice.

Infidelity and marital discord play a part in other stories as well.  Both the title story, "Bobcat," as well as the final story, "Settlers," highlights life's subtle and not so subtle disappointments. "Settlers" is the most moving of two. The story is told by an unreliable narrator who has idealized the marriage of her best friends, Lesley and Andy.  On the surface, the couple leads an idyllic life; they are accomplished professionals, own a beautiful house in a perfect neighborhood, and have three sweet little girls. Like Lesley, the narrator is thirty-five. She has a friendship with another mutual friend, David Booth, and is often paired with him when couples gather. The other friend, Berber, is dating a married man she met at a yoga retreat.  Both are now wearing turbans. Once more, Lee uses humor to dispel impending tragedy. "The turban made her look a number of conflicting things--pure and spiritual for sure, but also completely cracked in the head, like she'd had an actual surgical procedure, or maybe an imaginary one."

Although the narrator continues to see David for a number of years, hoping that he will want what Leslie and Andy have, nothing comes of their relationship. In time, she marries someone else - an old friend named Mark. She describes him as 10 years her senior, settled, director of a Raptor Centor - someone "you could trust (to) never have an affair or even leave the house too much." Indeed, as the story ends, she is again visiting Leslie and Andy with David as her imaginary escort. But now, she is in the middle of a protracted miscarriage, her baby slowly dying. As they watch images of Katrina on a muted television, she (and the author) reflect poignantly on life.

Life isn't that good always.  I wished I could let the baby know that.  There's a lot that's lousy. It's true there are large turning structures - Ferris wheels - that will carry people high into the air above the ocean, that is true, and then around the next corner there are funhouses, those are great, and then there are just ordinary playgrounds on every corner...So there is a lot, admittedly.

But then you grow up and you get a wonderful man and he cheats on you, or you get sombody like Bryan, who at your wedding says this as his vow - "I will be your teacher and you will be my team." Or you get David Booth, in which case you marry somebody else.

It's okay (she concludes) to just pass along, (I will miss you!), just keep going.

Rebecca Lee's writing is reminiscent of that of Lorrie Moore and Karen Russell. All three writers explore male-female relationships in all their complexity. Lee's unique use of language makes the writing jump off the page but never detracts from the basic humanity of her characters.

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Wedding Night, by Sophie Kinsella

If you are a Kinsella fan, then you don't need a review of her latest book to entice you into reading it. But if you aren't familiar with the work of British author Madeleine Sophie Wickham, writing under the pen name Sophie Kinsella, and you need a chick-lit laugh, give Wedding Night a try.

At age 33, Kinsella's heroine Lottie's modus operandi has always been to meet a guy, have great sex, and hope it leads to a wedding. But a proposal has consistently eluded her, so when an old flame named Ben reappears after 15 years and impulsively suggests that they get married, Lottie says "yes" if he agrees to wait to have sex until the wedding night. Continually left not at the altar but before there is even a mention of one, she figures it's well worth changing her game plan from "great sex with a hope of marriage" to "marriage with a hope of great sex."

Ben's proposal comes on the heels of Lottie's break-up with Richard, her beau of three years. She had thought he was ready to propose when he took her out to a restaurant to discuss "something." She told her sister Fliss, as well as a variety of friends and even a few strangers she met in a ladies room, that her boyfriend's popping of the question was imminent. Alas, she turned out to be wrong, heartbroken, and totally embarrassed when she discovered he only wanted to talk about the use of his free air miles.

Lottie's sister Fliss, who takes turns with Lottie as the narrator, has her own troubles. Involved in a messy divorce and struggling to keep her young son happy, her job under control, and her sanity intact, she is nevertheless horrified when she hears of Lottie's engagement to an almost total stranger. Although she agrees to stand up at the wedding, she tracks down Ben's friend and business associate Lorcan, who she hopes also will want to stop the nuptials. Fliss, however, didn't plan on Lorcan being so charming, and she certainly never thought she would end up jetting off to Greece with him to stop her sister from making what she thinks is a huge mistake.

Most, if not all, of what happens in this book is incredulous, but if you've been spending time with meaty historical fiction or beautifully written, but very sad, novels, you might be ready for a little silly fun. And what Lottie doesn't provide, Fliss will.

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