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12.30.2001 00:31
Critics' choice: Favorites for 2001
Every year at this time we ask our reviewers to pick up to five of their favorite books of the year. It usually takes two weeks to get through all of them, and this year is no exception. Here, in no particular order, is the first batch.
-- Doug Riggs, books editor
Luther Spoehr
John Adams,
by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster). Last summer, when reading and then reviewing this luminous look at America's second president, I tried to think of when I'd read a better biography. I'm still trying.
At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century,
by Ronald Spector (Viking). From the Japanese and Russians at the 1905 Battle of Tsushima through the World Wars to the Gulf War, Spector paints vivid pictures of the relationship of military men to their technology, and argues convincingly that no matter how sophisticated the latter, leadership matters. A well-written, wonderfully effective combination of traditional and new approaches to military history.
A Pitcher's Story: Innings With David Cone,
by Roger Angell (Warner Books). In top form, Roger Angell is the best baseball writer going. He's not at his best here -- the book is too chronologically hyperkinetic -- but it's still an intelligent inside look at contemporary baseball, focusing on one of its most intense, articulate players during his difficult 2000 season. Cone was 4-14 with the evil Yankees that year, but Angell flashes back to his many successful years, too, casting considerable light on Cone as baseball celebrity, citizen, and thinking man's pitcher. (Alas, nothing about his fine comeback with the dysfunctional Red Sox last year.)
In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture,
by Alister McGrath (Doubleday). "Without the King James Bible," says Alister McGrath, "there would have been no
Paradise Lost,
no
Pilgrim's Progress,
no Handel's
Messiah,
no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address." This accessible book wears its learning lightly while providing intriguing insights into the processes and politics of 17th-century translation and how the most poetic Bible of them all came to be.
Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation,
by Joe Queenan (Henry Holt). "Baby boomers who never saw Hendrix, did drugs, locked or loaded an AK-47 in country or bedded down with a girl named Radiance now all pretend they did. It's like those Civil War reenactment buffs who have drunk so much Wild Turkey they actually think they were at Chicamauga." That pretty much captures the flavor of Joe Queenan's cranky, funny rant about my generation. Give a copy to that Special Sixties Someone -- or, better, to someone who has to put up with that Special Sixties Someone.
Luther Spoehr is a lecturer in history and education at Brown University.
Sam Coale
The Feast of the Goat,
by Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The sweep, the cast, the political terror, and the perceptive depths of this magnificent novel of the last days of the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic is stunning in its impact and vision. Vargas Llosa has created a moving triptych of narrators, juxtaposing Trujillo's assassins with the old ogre himself, impotent, incontinent, and outraged. The third is a young woman whom he has destroyed. The result is devastating and reveals the lethal compromises people make to stay in power and survive in such a bloody dictatorship.
The Body Artist,
by Don DeLillo (Scribner). This short, cryptic novel, following DeLillo's masterpiece,
Underworld,
crawls under your skin like the best ghost story. It
is
a ghost story (I think) about Lauren Hartke, a body artist, whose husband dies and who comes upon a stranger in her remote house. The terse, enigmatic, eerie prose keeps you wondering about the nature of time, the spirit, immortality, and the strange recesses of the artist's vision. Do we inhabit the world? Or does it inhabit us?
Half a Life,
by V.S. Naipaul (Knopf). This year's winner of the Nobel Prize deserved it eons ago, but he's still at the top of his form in his ability to unspool yarns, deepen a character's soul, and write in a crisp, meticulous, lyrical prose. Willie Chandran's is a life of exile from India to the literary bohemian life of England in the 1950s to East Africa with the compassionate Ana. Race riots, colonial unrest, and literary feuds pepper this disconnected life that strikes you as a twentieth-century journey into isolation and survival.
My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson,
by Albert Habegger (Random House). Ah, for such sumptuous, scrupulous biographies as this, rich in supposition and facts, not focused on the genitalian revels that fill so many psycho-biographies of late. Dickinson comes to life, full-bodied, intelligent, perceptive, shy and astoundingly acute in her poetry. Habegger must have read everything, but his style is lively and forthright, never academic, and it's a book you can sink into and surrender to.
Chasing the Red, White, and Blue: A Journey in Tocqueville's Footsteps Through Contemporary America,
by David Cohen (Picador). This meticulously compelling trek by a British journalist, who follows Alexis de Tocqueville's journey in the 1830s, exposes the sharp divisions in American society, particularly between rich and poor. For all the talk of compassionate conservatism and faith-based initiatives, 20 percent of all children under 6 continue to live in poverty. Cohen reports the horrors and delights that he comes upon from casinos in Mississippi to prison guards and the real estate agent in her Rolls-Royce Silver Spur II in Manhattan with the license plate, "SOLD 1."
Sam Coale is an English professor at Wheaton.
Tom Chandler
Sailing Alone Around The Room,
by Billy Collins (Random House). This is a collection of poems, both selected and new, from the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Billy Collins is published proof that poems need not be as much about their language as about a unique perspective and careful eye. Using words as plain as a tabletop, Collins manages to evoke mystery, beauty, and humor from the mundane. He is a zenmaster of the adjective, and his selection as our national laureate is the best thing to happen to poetry in too many years.
A New Selected Poems, by Galway Kinnell (Mariner Books). Galway Kinnell is Rhode Island's most significant literary offering, even if he does live somewhere else. In this book the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pawtucket native has gathered work from eight previous collections. The result is a harvest of poems spanning the past five decades of an extraordinary career.
Miracles & Mortifications,
by Peter Johnson (White Pine Press). This is a fine sampling of prose poems from one of the country's leading practitioners. Johnson is unfettered by the conventions of line and verse, and therefore can let his imagination be his chief guide to discovery. The conscious and unconscious dance close together here in quirky pieces that will forever change the way you think a poem could be. This book is the winner of the 2001 James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets. Peter Johnson teaches at Providence College.
elegy for the southern drawl,
by Rodney Jones (Mariner Books). These are largely narrative poems with distinct regional flavorings. Jones hails from Alabama and teaches in southern Illinois. Along with contemporaries like Andrew Hudgins, he follows in the steps of James Dickey, writing poems that could not be spoken aloud without an accent deep enough to sprout roots. Jones' subjects are widely various, each shot through with wit and a fresh sensibility, all of it deep fried and delicious.
John Adams,
by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster). As he did with Harry Truman, David McCullough manages to make our second president a living man, with the sweat, wit, hunger, love, mistakes and conviction we don't associate with people wearing powdered wigs. In light of Sept. 11, Adams's proud fervor, love of freedom, and absolute honesty reminds us all that we are descended from good blood, worthy stock.
Tom Chandler is Rhode Island Poet Laureate.
Gloria-Jean Masciarotte
Ava's Man,
by Rick Bragg (Knopf). Bragg's unconventional memoir of his maternal granddaddy, Charlie Bundrum, delighted me with its country singer's rough and tumble storytelling. The dirt-level perspective on Charlie's overalls-and-moonshine life takes in the dogged, everyday heroics of the South's working-class poor, delightfully at odds with the jut-jawed, muscled capitalist Horatio Algers by which we measure men, even presidential candidates, today.
Babe In Paradise,
by Marisa Silver (Norton). Silver's collection of short stories reads like dire postcard messages from the those lost in a bad neighborhood of paradise. Working well in the regionalist style, her stories give ordinary Los Angeles such a sharp specificity that they pierce the skin of all our great expectations. Her remarkably lyric language echoes dissonantly off hauntingly prosaic plots, unsettling even the smallest of dreams.
Babe
lures you into a very sunny heart of darkness.
City of Light,
by Lauren Belfer (Dial).
City
offers smart fun, telling a story of Buffalo, U.S.A., at the turn of the 20th century when it harnessed the waters of Niagara for electricity and defined the future of the Americas in its Pan-American Exposition. Belfer embodies Buffalo's history in the first-person romance of a strong, but mysteriously broken-hearted Louisa Barrett, the bluestockinged bohemian headmistress of Buffalo's exclusive all-girls prep school. Louisa juggles heart, mind and body making urgent choices about love, politics and social justice and symbolizing a nation's standing on the precipice of its future power, struggling with abandon and restraint.
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay,
by Nancy Milford (Random House). Milford rediscovers the outlandish New Woman life of Millay almost entirely in her own words. Milford's superbly narrative handling of the poet's letters, journal entries and works provides both story and analysis. This book captured Millay's "little girl awful" presence, which translated the lyric form into a modern voice. Grateful to examine Millay in such detail, I was equally thrilled to eavesdrop on a truly bohemian woman who had more dangerous fun and did more radical work than most men then and now.
The Music of the Spheres,
by Elizabeth Redfern (Putnam). This masterful historical fiction explores the varieties of human evil in Britain between the American and French Revolutions.
Music
illustrates the violent fallout of philosophical ideas at war with institutional power, endangering citizens from all walks of life. The novel's seductive language and intricate plot fills the reader with the anxious intelligence of its characters who are self-destructively both spies and spied upon.
Gloria-Jean Masciarotte is a freelance reviewer in Providence.
Jon Land
Pale Horse Coming,
by Stephen Hunter (Simon & Schuster). Hunter, who never disappoints, continues the saga of Earl Swagger, father of his better known series character, Bob Lee Swagger. In this typically fast and furious outing, Earl joins forces with fair-minded attorney Sam Vincent to clean up racial corruption in the heart of the old South. Hunter remains one of the best writers going in any genre, raising his heroes to near mythic stature as he continues to perfect the thriller form.
Orange Crush,
by Tim Dorsey (Morrow). A hilarious romp every bit as good as, if not better than, the work of Carl Hiaasen in evoking the zany sunburned world of Florida politics. Here, gubernatorial candidate Marlon Conrad discovers his conscience and takes to the campaign road in a Winnebago dispensing an almost unheard of commodity: the truth. A laugh-out-loud tale and a brilliant parable in the wake of last year's election debacle.
Echo Burning,
by Lee Child (Putnam). Child's nomadic hero Jack Reacher returns to battle his own demons as he defends a young woman against the evils of the powerful Texas family she has married into in this twist-filled tale that defines impossible-to-put-down. The action scenes are brilliant, the plot strong, and Reacher remains a morally unambiguous hero attempting to impose his own code of honor on a society that clearly rejects it.
Secret Sanction,
by Brian Haig (Warner Books). No list would be complete without at least one legal thriller and this year that slot belongs to the first effort by the son of the former secretary of state. Recent events have made this tale of a lawyer investigating an alleged massacre in Bosnia by Special Forces troops even more timely, appropriate, and painfully realistic. Very well written, packed with surprises, and easily the best military legal thriller since Nelson DeMille's
Word of Honor
.
Bitterroot,
by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster). The annual offering from one of America's preeminent novelists features ex-Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland who, while not the equal of Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux, remains a tortured and fascinating character. This tale uproots Billy Bob from his native Texas and sends him to Montana where he helps an old army buddy bring down a right-wing militia. As always, Burke's dialogue crackles with authenticity and his characters, who are as quick with their tongues as they are with their guns, are startlingly real.
Jon Land of Providence has written a score of suspense thrillers.
Jeanne Nicholson
The Singing Hat,
written and illustrated by Tohby Riddle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). My favorites are all intergenerational books to be shared, appealing to the young and young at heart. This one is a brilliant picture book whose hero, Colin Jenkins, is an ordinary person leading an ordinary life in a big city with little time for rest and relaxation. Suddenly life becomes a lot less ordinary the day he wakens from a nap in the park to discover a bird has built a nest on his head. The book is rich with allusion and the birds are showstoppers providing a hilarious visual sub-plot throughout.
Fly, Eagle, Fly!,
by Christopher Gregorowski, illustrated by Niki Daly (McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster). "We are not bound to this earth and a humdrum existence but are made for something truly glorious. We are made for freedom and laughter and goodness and love and eternity, despite all appearances to the contrary. We should be straining to become what we have it in us to become . . . ." The truth and wisdom of these introductory words and the powerful parable within the story are not easily forgotten.
Reach For The Moon, Poems and Stories,
by Samantha Abeel, illustrated by Charles R. Murphy (Pfeifer-Hamilton/Scholastic). This is an award-winning book of moving poetry, powerful prose and beautiful art -- the work of a talented young writer who has provided an example of what can happen when parents listen to their children, schools listen to parents and they all work together as a team. The story behind the poetry and lavish illustrations is about 13-year-old Samantha's inspired testimony to the fact that "LD (learning disability) doesn't mean lazy and dumb." The message is clear. Never give up.
My Friend Gorilla,
written and illustrated by Atsuko Morozumi (Sunburst Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). A poignant story with magnificent illustrations about a zookeeper, a family and a furry visitor who becomes a child's friend. The larger concept within the tale explores the fragile gift of friendship and those who remain a part of our lives in spite of individual destinies.
Elisabeth,
written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). A true story of destiny, mystery and the impossible -- when life in Europe was filled with dark threatening undercurrents and a little girl in Nazi Germany was forced to part with her cherished doll, Elisabeth. Striking double-page spreads convey the magic and illusive innocence of childhood in contrast to the impending evil. The child grew up in America, married and had a family of her own. Miraculously, Elisabeth returned to her family's life. This is a profound story for every age to ponder.
Jeanne Nicholson of Newport is a freelance and syndicated reviewer specializing in children's literature.
Mark Dunkelman
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,
by David W. Blight (Harvard). In the first half-century after the Civil War, racial justice was sacrificed on the altar of reconciliation between North and South. Blight charts interpretation of the war as it drifts from sectional bitterness and emancipation to a romanticized notion of the Old South, mutual admiration for Union and Confederate military prowess, and a condemnation of the evils of Reconstruction, specifically civil rights for blacks. This brilliant and passionate book is one of the most important Civil War studies of recent years.
The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film,
by Bruce Chadwick (Knopf). More than 700 Civil War movies form the largest group of films about any American historical event. Chadwick examines how Hollywood has confirmed Blight's thesis -- presenting belittled blacks, knightly cavaliers, and saintly belles in the gossamer glow of the antebellum plantation, from
The Birth of a Nation
to
Gone With the Wind
and beyond. Celluloid "history" has been instrumental in perpetuating historical myth to a wide audience.
The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South 1861-1865,
by Alice Fahs (University of North Carolina Press). This groundbreaking study examines the poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and humorous works of the war -- the everyday, widely read material Edmund Wilson left out of his high-toned
Patriotic Gore.
Fahs's absorbing book ably demonstrates that ripe harvests can yet be made in the well-picked-over field of Civil War history.
Sherman: A Soldier's Life,
by Lee Kennett (HarperCollins). A southern historian offers a vivid portrait of the region's bete noire. Mercurial, irascible, provocative, and contradictory, Sherman was perhaps the most brilliant man to be lifted from obscurity to fame in the war. Kennett's book is one of the best of several recent biographies of the American Attila.
Gettysburg: The First Day,
by Harry W. Pfanz (University of North Carolina Press). The acknowledged master of Gettysburg tactical military history offers an authoritative, blow-by-blow account of the battle of July 1, 1863. This volume, a companion to Pfanz's two earlier books on the second day's fighting on the southern portion of the field and the struggles for Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, is nicely augmented by Jeffrey Wert's new book,
Gettysburg: Day Three
(Simon & Schuster).
Mark Dunkelman of Providence is a Civil War historian.
Laura Meade-Kirk
Patterson, Patterson, Patterson. I can't get enough of James Patterson, and this year he thrilled his fans by issuing three new books -- each published by Little, Brown but otherwise decidedly different from the others.
First came First to Die,
in which he introduces us to the Women's Murder Club -- a cop, a coroner, a district attorney and a reporter -- who team to track down a serial killer who targets newlyweds. This is the first in what Patterson promises will be a series, and it's great to see a thriller featuring a whole group of women join together to outsmart the bad guys.
Meanwhile, ace detective Alex Cross is on the hunt again in Violets are Blue,
Patterson's most recent release, chasing down a serial killer who's hanging with the vampire crowd, while his nemesis the Mastermind is chasing him. This is vintage Patterson, ranking among his best thrillers, and will delight all fans of the series with the nursery rhyme titles.
Totally out of character for Patterson was his midsummer release of Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas,
an offbeat love story that even Patterson calls "something different" for him. It's a little schmaltzy, but perfect if you're looking for a little light reading -- with a few tears at the end -- while cuddling next to the fireplace on a cold winter's night.
Close to You,
by Mary Jane Clark (St. Martin's) is great just because it's one of those books you can identify with -- as though it's ripped from the evening news. In fact it's the story of a network news anchor who's being stalked, and there are so many entirely plausible suspects it keeps you guessing right 'til the end.
Skipping Christmas,
by John Grisham (Doubleday). If you didn't get to read
Skipping Christmas
this year, put it on your to-do list for next December -- and every year after that. This is a delightful tale about a modern-day Scrooge who convinces his wife that they should forego all the trappings of the holidays -- everything from sending cards and trimming a tree to their annual Christmas Eve bash -- and go on a cruise instead. What's great about this book is that it allows us to fantasize about what it would be like to skip the stress and expense of Christmas, while providing a sentimental surprise ending that defines the holidays.
Laura Meade-Kirk is a Journal reporter.
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