"Turning Angel" by Greg Iles ****

●  Audiobook
●  German author
●  Mystery/Suspense
●  #2 in Penn Cage series
●  Originally published in 2006

●  Review:  Once again, Greg Iles and his protagonist, Penn Cage, have reeled me in to become engrossed in a taut thriller.  The author is able to create moral dilemmas within apparently black and white issues of right and wrong.  The characters are engaging and memorable as well.  I am looking forward to the next Penn Cage installment.

Agostino" by Alberto Moravia. *****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Italian author
• Originally published in 1944
• Quotes:
• p.4...."The two of them would dry themselves languorously in the sun, which became more ardent with the approach of midday."....ardent sun?  cool image
• p.8..."And in both case, it had been his fate to fall from the summit of an illusion and crash to the ground, aching and bruised."
• p.15..."With the same sharp sense of discovery as a man who has found a treasure and sneaks away to hide it and gaze upon it at his leisure, he ran to be alone with her slap, so new to him as to seem unbelievable."
• p.22..."Most of all he was bewildered and troubled by this ruthlessness, a new behavior so monstrous it was almost attractive."
• p.59..."Everything was obscure both in and around him, as if rather than the sunlit beach, sky, and sea, there were only shadows, fog, and vague menacing shapes."
• p.63..."He was feeling a vague, desperate desire to cross the river and disappear down the shore, leaving behind the boys,, Saro, his mother, and his whole former life."...rebirth imagery
• p.67..."The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end."
• p.69..."...he had replaced his former reverence with cruelty and his affection with sensuality."
• p.70..."What was the use of seeing things clearly if the onk thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness?"
• Review:  This novella, translated from the original Italian,  is a primal, deeply psychological tale of one young man's loss of innocence.  While staying at the beach with his beloved mother, Agostino ' s eyes are opened to the world of sensuality and violence, of deep male drives. As a woman, I felt like I had been gifted a glimpse of the painful male passage from childhood to adulthood, and it seemed so authentic that I almost felt I was trespassing. 

"My First Summer in the Sierra" by John Muir. ***

• Audiobook
• Non-fiction
• Autobiography
• US author
• Originally published 1911
• Review:  This was a very nice account of a summer in the Sierras.  Full of detailed recordings of the flora, fauna, and natural beauty,  Muir takes the reader on the journey with him.

"The Death Factory" by Greg Iles ***

• Audiobook
• German author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Originally published 2014
• Review:  This Penn Cage novella is a fine example of the bittersweet and tenuous nature of life. Iles is able to somehow fit themes of corruption, loss, determination, and survival into a very short literary space.  It isn't my favorite by this author, primarily because the length left me disappointed, wanting the depth and complexity he usually brings to his writing.  It was meaty, nonetheless.

"English Creek" by Ivan Doig *****

• US author
• Originally published in 1984
• Audiobook
• Review:  I've read quite a few coming of age tales, yet "English Creek" genuinely stands out. Jick is a memorable boy who is a thinker living in the land of doing, Montana.  I guess I identify with the Scottish heritage and the fact that my mother spent her summers on a ranch in Montana.  However, I think even without those common denominators a reader would become completely engaged with this young man and his queries about his family past and present. The passionate love of the land and dedication to its care, the intense family bonds and bonds of friendship.  What would any coming of age tale be without some loss of innocence thrown in as well, not to mention some facing of truths and a pinch of heroism.  This story was marvelous!

"At The Water's Edge" by Sara Gruen. **

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author
• Publication....2015
• Review: I am sorry to say that I could not engage with this story.  The plot seemed contrived.  The language did not fit the time period.  Very disappointed

"When We Leave Each Other" by Henrik Nordbrandt ****

• Summer Sub Club
• Open Letter Series
• Poetry
• Danish poet
• Originally published 2013
• Quotes:
• Translator's Introduction:  "But of course, the great wonder of poetry is the possibility it holds for true communication, across years and continents and tongues:  the possibility that someday someone, in some distant place, might find Nordbrandt's once-scribbled lines, and breathe them to life again, and understand."
• p.5..."When we leave each other, we leave at the same time every place we've ever been together...."
• p.51..."You struck a match, and the flame was so blinding you couldn't find what you were looking for in the dark before the matchstick burned down to your fingers and the pain made you forget what you'd lost."
• p.6..."If you think of the steps you'll never have the strength to get to the top.  If you climb them with a child in your arms and take in the view you won't even notice the steps, and soon won't give a damn for the view."
• p.81...."...I opened a drawer filled with regret."
• p.123..."It's so bright it's like summer, and so bright it's like always."
• p.137..."...make nothing needless..."
• p.139...."Point".....fantastic
• p.145..."Joy is like an hourglass we keep turning and turning to make it last.  And sorrow's what runs down."
• p.151..."Last of December"...poignant
• Review:  This is a lovely collection of poetry by a Danish poet whom I was unfamiliar with, unrhymed, and very moving.  I enjoyed his imagery quite a bit.

"Telex From Cuba" by Rachel Kushner ****

• Rochester Arts  & Lectures author, 2015
• Originally published in 2009
• US author
• Debut novel
• Epigraph:  "All is order there, and elegance, pleasure, peace, and opulence."  - Invitation to the Night
• Vocabulary:
• jetsam: things cast overboard deliberately to lighten the load of a ship
• jalousies:  a window made of glass slats or louvers of a similar nature
• zazou:  french resistance youthful bohemians
• Quotes:
• p.37..." Batista had telephoned from Miami, offering to buy all the officers new uniforms.  In return they gave undying loyalty and surrounded the palace with tanks."
• p.38..."She believed that people are born every minute of their lives, and what they are in each of those minutes is what they are completely."
• p.42..."If her parents ever did get rich, their old selves would hate their new selves, though maybe it wouldn't matter because they would have forgotten their old selves, erased by their new selves, since self was self and there couldn't be more than one in a single body."
• p.43....."Try to shape a moment into a memory you could save and look at later, or have the moment as it was happening, but you couldn't have both."
• p.60..."He liked the diaphanous allure of fishnets.  They were an enticement in the guise of a barrier, like a beaded curtain over a doorway says "come in" not "get out", its beads telegraphing that everything that is inside is enchanted and special."
• p.60..."Her stockings were as material as the sun shadow of a chain link fence on a prison wall."
• p.145..."He'd come and gone without warning,  never explaining what he was up to, not because information was sensitive, but for other reasons, for style and aesthetics, because honesty was so clunky and irrelevant, like a cumbersome piece of furniture."
• p.177..."That's the strange thing about love.  Unless it's returned, it's invisible."
• Notes: 
• Some of the author's 13 year old boy perspectives didn't quite seem authentic
• Review:  This debut novel presented a bit of a conundrum for me.  Set in Cuba during the Prio, then Batista regimes, right up to the revolution led by the Castros, the novel chronicles the politics, the corruption, the class struggle and racism of the era in which the Americans and their sugar plantation culture dominated the island.  Through the reminiscences of a man who was present throughout as a child, the reader becomes acquainted with the inequities, and one might say, the repetitive absurdity of the era.  Overall, the topic, the era, and the story were engrossing.  The primary problem in this novel for me was the use of non-chronological format.  I do not mind the format in some novels, but in this one I found it to be a significant distraction.  I would like to read more by this author to see if her style solidifies.

"As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust" by Alan Bradley ****

• Audiobook
• #7 in the Flavia de Luce series
• Canadian author
• Originally published in 2015
• Review:  What can I say?  Flavia has done it again, captivating me as a reader as she moves into adolescence.  The big question in this 7th installment of the series is what it means to fail to flourish because of being a rule breaker.  I won't tell you, but it is worth finding out. 

"Two or Three Years Later: Forty-Nine Digressions" by Ror Wolf ****

• Summer Sub Club read with Beth
• Short Stories
• German author, translation
• Open Letter Series
• Originally published in 2013
• Review:  This is the anti-collection of anti-short stories, in which nothing happens, no one goes anywhere, and no one sees what doesn't happen. I laughed, I shook my head, I got frustrated, and then I laughed again.  Theater of the absurd meets short story genre.  Do not look for plot or character...just give yourself over to the experience  and then think about  what we as readers take for granted about what makes a story.  Fascinating!

"The Quiet Game" by Greg Iles ****

• Audiobook
• German author
• 1st Penn Cage novel
• Originally published in 1999
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review:  An excellent novel, set in Natchez, Mississippi.  The past event is resurrected in the form of an unsolved murder.  Resurrected along with the investigation are memories of Civil Rights crimes, racism, old boy networks, and secrets kept for decades.  The action in this story is fast-paced, gripping, intense and the characters are memorable. Just a darn good read!

"A Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel DeFoe ***

• Summer Sub Club read with Beth
• English author
• Originally published in 1722
• Vocabulary:
• Quotes:
• p.13..."London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black nor made a dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the street."
• p.91..."I have heard also....one in particular who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirit  that by degrees his head sank into his body, so between his shoulders that that the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of his shoulders...."
• p.109..."If you shut up all bowels of compassion, and not relieve us at all..."...odd expression
• Notes:
• Signs from God:  comet seen in sky several months ahead of plague onset
• Belief in prophecies, prophesiers made money off dire predictions and fear
• A time of breaches between sects of the Church of England
• Parliament passed, "An Ac for the Charitable Relief and Ordering of Persons infected with the plague"
• the system of having watchmen at infected homes and the efforts to outwit the watchmen was intense
• group grave pits, people throwing themselves into them
• the need to shop for provisions became a real downfall, as people could not self isolate indefinitely
• rules of social conduct and law fell by the wayside (i.e., people in narrator's brother's warehouse pillaging
• clever system of ships sitting off the shore to self quarantine
• fear of immediate death "took away all bowels of love" for other
• story of the three brothers
• Review:  Daniel Defoe is a fascinating writer.  He can write a marvelous melodrama and then create a novel that reads as if it is non-fiction.  This fictional documentation of the great plague of 1665 in England is quite remarkable.  Apparently some historians think it is better than actual documentation in its ability to convey the progression and social repercussions of this horrifying black death.  He carefully lays out the slow unraveling of the societal fabric.  He seems to say that fear and suffering result in chaos and irrational behavior.  The desire to survive drives people to behave in ways they would not otherwise even consider or believe themselves capable of.  I have to say that the power of this book seems, unfortunately, as relevant now as ever.  With an Aids epidemic, Ebola epidemic, and threats of biological warfare in our lives,  it is a pretty scary insight into the likely chain of events should some form of massive biological threat present itself.  This was not a fun read, but very thought provoking.

"Elephant Compay: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II" by Vicki Constantine Croke *****

• Non-Fiction
• Originally published in 2014
• US author
• Quotes:
• p.70..."There are ways of knowing things quite certainly but not by reason,.....and in the East both the wise and the simple accept this."
• p.257..."The more I saw of men....the better I liked my elephants."....James Howard "Billy" Williams
• Story of James Howard "Billy" Williams, employed by the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation in 1920 to be an elephant trainer for harvesting of teak
• Review:   Absolutely fascinating piece of history!  The book reads like fiction, but it is true.  Anyone who likes history and/or animals will love this story of a man and elephants, and their shared values of loyalty and courage.

"Get In Trouble: Stories" by Kelly Link ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Short Stories
• Originally published January 2015
• Epigraph:  "Year after year, On the monkey's face, A monkey's face." -- Basho
• Vocabulary:
• cerclage:   The placement of a nonabsorbable suture around the uterine cervix to treat premature dilation of the cervix during pregnancy.
• Quotes:
• "I'm the human equivalent of one of those baby birds that fall out of a nest and then some nice person picks the  baby bird up and puts it back.  Except that now the baby bird smells all wrong.  I think I smell wrong."
• "A sense of humor is a weakness.  I know you're supposed to be able to laugh at yourself, but that's pretty sucky advice when everyone is always laughing at you already."
• "What you deserve and what you can stand aren't necessarily the same thing."
• "So are you in town for the shindig? Shindig.  What kind of word is that?  Archeological excavation of the shin.  Knee surgery?"
• Review:   It is difficult for me to describe this particular collection of short stories.  Phrases which come to mind are stylistically inventive, charming, magical, inconsistent,disparate.  Some of the stories were absolutely wonderful, "Summer People" definitely my favorite.  Some seemed to ramble on too long and I lost interest.  The most striking traits were the creativity in terms of style and the moments in which the magical charm was immeasurable. The most common theme amongst the stories were coming of age conundrums faced by most, if not all, adolescents, such as the tensions of breaking away from family and lifelong expectations to become an individual.  This collection is worth the read, yet be prepared for something of a roller coaster ride.

"The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder *****

•  US author
• Pulitzer Prize winner
• Originally published in 1927
• This edition published in 2003
• Foreword by Russell Banks
• "...as close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature."
• "The underlying assumption of the novel is that any one of us could have been on that bridge when it collapsed and threw five people into the abyss."
• "There is something about the antique tone and atmosphere of these works that allows one to achieve almost immediate liftoff from one's mundane, day-to-day life and travel to a world of long ago and far away, where one can more easily consider ultimate matters.  It's perhaps a necessary element of fable."
• "It is interesting, therefore, and possibly useful to consider this novel in the long and (at the time of this writing) still darkening shadow of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001."
• Vocabulary:
• censor:  incense diffuser, used to clean out bad spirits and scents......also a source for use of the word censor in terms of written documents being censored?
• The Victims:
• Marquesa de Montemajor and her companion, Pepita
• Esteban, one of twin brothers
• Uncle Pio and Jaime, the son of the Perichole
• Quotes:
• p.7..."Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan."
• p.7..."But this collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey was a sheer Act of God.  It afforded a perfect laboratory.  Here at last one could surprise His intentions in a pure state."...Brother Juniper, witness to the collapse
• p.45..."Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other."
• p.50..."And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess."....Hmmmm
• p.70...."...he was sent out by the government to inspirit some half-hearted rebellions in the same mountains, so that the government could presently arrive and whole-heartedly crush them."
• p.83..."He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living."
• p.99..."The discrepancy between faith and the facts is greater than is generally assumed."
• p.107...."There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."....closing line of the book
• Notes:
• Uncle Pio's 6 attributes of an adventurer:
• a memory for names and faces
• the gift of tongues
• inexhaustible invention
• secrecy
• the talent for falling into conversation with strangers
• freedom from conscience
• Uncle Pio's 3 life aims:
• the desire to be "varied, secret, and omniscient"
• to be near beautiful women and be their worshiper
• to be near those who loved Spanish literature, especially dramas
• Review:  I am certainly not the first, nor will I be the last, to recognize the brilliance of this novella.  This is my first Thornton Wilder read.....how I could have made it this far in life without reading his work is beyond me.  Somehow he manages to create vivid and memorable characters who share the experience of dying when a bridge collapses.  From that event he proceeds to ask profound and essentially unanswerable questions, of the sort we all try to address or avoid throughout our life.  Is there intention?  Is there meaning?  When is it the right time for as person to die?  Is there such a thing or is it all happenstance?  The introduction for this 75th anniversary edition of the novel by Russell Banks is excellent.  He draws a parallel between the experience of those surviving the bridge collapse to those surviving the 9/11 attacks.  The same eternal questions apply.  Lovely, powerful prose makes this so very readable and timeless!

"Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart", by Carol Wall. ***

• Stewart Place Book Club selection
• Non-Fiction, Memoir
• Originally published in 2014
• Quotes:
• p.43...."My minister told me that you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest there."...fears, etc
• p.47..."A therapist once told me that I was like a person who got shot and tried to wipe up my own blood before the photographers arrived." ...caretaker, people pleaser
• p.148..."The fertile front yard reflected the family's happy public face and the barren area out back expressed the unhappiness they hid from view."...the Owitas' yard
• Review: This was a very nice memoir about a very close friendship which brought meaning, joy, renewal and comfort to the author and Mister Owita.  A moving story of loss, fear, and isolation ameliorated via true friendship.

"The Intuitionist" by Colson Whitehead *****

• Arts & Lecture Series 2014-15 author
• US author
• Originally published 1999
• Vocabulary:
• longevous:   long-lived, living to a great age
• Quotes:
• p.16..."But who can resist the seductions of elevators these days, those stepping stones to Heaven, which make relentless verticality so alluring?"
• p.23..."...this is the true result of gathering integration: the replacement of sure violence with deferred sure violence."
• p.32..."Given obscenity's remarkable gallop into conversational speech, colorful epithets are to be expected in Lila Mae's address to the two strangers lurking about her apartment."
• p.37..."If we were to take a barbarian and place him, loincloth and all, before one of our magnificent cities, what would he feel?  He would feel fear, doubly; the fear of his powerlessness before our architectural excess and our fear, the thing that drives our architectural excess."
• p.43..."Weatherlessness is much more amenable to those in search of succor for bodily complaint, evoking timelessness and immortality, and soon the rich neurasthenic women from the Northeast's larger cities boarded planes to be free of the seasons and the proximity of their braying families, the cause of their disrepair."
• p.44..."A black gown is remarkably effective in conferring prestige on even the most rough-hewn of men."
• p.54..."Intuitionism, expounded on the gloom of the shaft ad how it does not merely echo the gloom inside every living creature, but duplicates it perfectly."
• p.65..."So complete is Number Eleven's ruin that there's nothing left but the sound of the crash,m rising in the shaft, a fall in opposite; a soul."
• p.77.."A slow hour passed, distracted by intermittent drops of moisture from above, as if the sky were conducting a feasibility study on the implications of rain."
• p.106..."This need to rise is biological, transcending the vague physics of department store architecture."
• p.151..."...horizontal thinking in a vertical world is the race's curse...".
• p.198..."She hadn't considered all the implications of the second elevation.  They will have to destroy this city once we deliver the black box.  The current bones will not accommodate the marrow of the device."...second coming?
• p.228..."Total freefall.  What happens when too many impossible events occur, when multiple redundancy is not enough."
• p.231..."What Intuitionism does not account for:  the catastrophic accident the elevator encounters at that unexpected moment on that quite ordinary ascent, the one who will reveal the device for what it truly is."  ......any deception
• p.255..."If it is the right time, she will give them the perfect elevator.  If it is not time she will send out more of Fulton's words to let the citizens know it is coming.  To let them prepare themselves for the second elevation."
• Review:   This debut novel is absolutely brilliant!  Whitehead's writing reminds me of Ayn Rand, of Millhauser and Auster.  Under the guise of a political battle amongst factions of the guild of elevator repairmen, Whitehouse is able to at one and the same time tell a gripping, suspenseful story and also offer up scathing commentary on racism, on human striving and lack thereof, of man's fear of lack of control, and the ups and downs, so to speak, of the human imagination.  At once witty, yet raging, at once absurd and profound.  I will definitely read more of this author's work!

"Mateo Falcone et autres nouvelles" by Prosper Merimee ***

• En Francais
• Originally published in 1850
• Prosper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.
• Short Stories
• "Mateo Falcone":
• "Tamango":
• "La Partie du Trictrac":
• "Le Vase Etrusque":
• Review:  Frankly, the first and fourth stories of this collection very very good, while the middle two were so-so.  The underlying theme of the collection seemed to me to be honor and trust, and the benefits and pitfalls of both.  The title tale, "Mateo Falcone" was a short and horrifying tribute to family honor.  I enjoyed the collection, but do not see it as one to hold up very well over time.

"The Recognition of Sakuntala" by Kalidasa *****

• Drama
• Indian author
• Originally published in 400 A.D.
• 7 Acts
• Excellent introduction by Rabindranath Tagore
• Lovely stanza of poetry by Geothe, summarizing the nature of Sakuntala
• Review:   Written in 400 A.D., this drama is an absolutely lovely combination of prose and poetry, humans and gods, and spirituality and sensuality.  It really is all about love, is it not?  Such a pleasure!