Previous reviews

Friday, August 24, 2001

Weeping Susannah

By Alona Kimhi (The Harvill Press, 391 pages, $24).

Author’s background: Kimhi was born in the Ukraine in 1966 and emigrated to Israel at the age of six. She has worked as an actress, journalist, playwright and theater director.

Plot in a nutshell: Translated from the original Hebrew, Weeping Susannah tells the story of 33-year-old Susannah Rabin ("no relation to," as Susannah constantly tells people wondering about her last name). Obsessive, hypersensitive and paralyzed by a fear that makes her repel human contact, Susannah lives a half-life with her mother in a Tel Aviv apartment until her handsome American second cousin Neo comes for a visit. Neo, whom Susannah refers to as "the guest," helps Susannah out of her shell, but has problems of his own. Meanwhile, the conflict in Israel rages, serving as an underscore for Susannah’s and Neo’s struggles.

Sample of prose: "Naturally the wretched Susannah Rabin wanted to take part in these attractive activities, especially since there was someone compassionate enough to invite her to join him in spite of her inappropriate behavior."

Author reminds me of: Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, in her ability to tie a culture to mental illness and in her self-deprecating humor; Susanna Kaysen, author of Girl, Interrupted, for her clear-eyed description of a young woman’s severe emotional problems.

Best reason to read: The fully developed characters coupled with the Israeli backdrop make this novel more than a typical woman’s struggle to express herself. Susannah and her plight are alternately pitiful, annoying, compassionate, courageous and ridiculous. She, the other characters and the Israeli setting stay with the reader long after the book is finished. - Vicky Uhland

ELLA MINNOW PEA

By Mark Dunn (MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 205 pages, $22).

Author's background: Dunn has written more than 25 plays, including Belles and Five Tellers Dancing in the Rain, and is the recipient of several national playwriting awards. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Judy Garland Slept Here, which is scheduled to be released this year. He's currently playwright-in-residence at the New Jersey Repertory Company and the Community League in Williamsport, Pa.

Plot in a nutshell: Ella Minnow Pea is a novel written in the epistolary, or letter, format. It's set on the island nation of Nollop, named after Nevin Nollop, inventor of the pangram "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Nollopians worship all things literary, and a national crisis occurs as letters begin falling off the statue honoring Nollop and his pangram. As each letter falls, island leaders, convinced the plummeting letters are a sign from Nollop, ban the letter's use in speech and writing. Islanders, who face deportation or death for use of the fallen letters, can save themselves only by coming up with a 32-character sentence that uses each letter of the alphabet.

Sample of prose: "Hensephorth, sitisens may-in graphy only-espress themselphs when warrant, threw yoose oph proxy letters, yet only as hear-twins. Any attempt to employ hear-twin graphemes in orality will warrant the most sepheerest penalties yonter the law. Is this what Mr. Nollop woot want? On this, we are not sertin. Howepher, ewe may write to one another in this manner, ontil we rool otherwise."

Author reminds me of: Dunn is truly an original, but his writing style harks back to the great epistolary novels of previous centuries.

Best reason to read: This is a brilliant book that can be appreciated for its originality, humor and sociopolitical commentary and the fun of watching Dunn try to compose words from an increasingly shrinking alphabet. -- Vicky Uhland

THE EYRE AFFAIR

By Jasper Fforde (Viking, 374 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Jasper Fforde, a resident of Wales, is a camera technician who has worked on a number of films, including Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro, Entrapment and The Saint.

Plot in a nutshell: Thursday Next is a British special agent. The daughter of a time traveler, she lives in England in 1985, has a cloned dodo as a pet and is a veteran of England's centurylong war in the Crimea. Thursday specializes in literary crimes, which are taken very seriously in book-mad England, where clashes between militant Baconians and Shakespeareans are commonplace.

After an original Dickens manuscript is stolen, Thursday goes after the thief, Acheron Hades, an evil human with magical powers. Hades' plan to is to venture into the manuscript through a time-machine Prose Portal and alter characters' actions, thus changing the plot and dialogue of a beloved classic.

After he's thwarted, Hades retaliates by stealing the manuscript for Jane Eyre. Thursday, helped by Jane's Edward Rochester, is forced to battle Hades and other amusingly named baddies, including Jack Schitt and Braxton Hicks, in a highly inventive, frequently hilarious and occasionally poignant tale.

Sample of prose: "From our position in the lounge of the Penderyn Hotel we could see Thursday's good work. The narrative continued rapidly; weeks passed in the space of a few lines. As the words wrote themselves back across the page they were read aloud by Mycroft or myself. We were all waiting for the phrase sweet madness to appear in the text, but it didn't. We prepared ourselves to assume the worst; that Hades was not caught and might never be. That Thursday might stay in the book as some sort of permanent caretaker."

Author reminds me of: Douglas Adams

Best reason to read: Where else can you find a blend of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. No and Jane Eyre in one novel? -- Vicky Uhland

A FALSE SENSE OF WELL BEING

By Jeanne Braselton (Ballantine, 320 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Born and raised in Georgia, Braselton earned a number of awards during her days as a journalist with the Rome News Tribune.

Plot in a nutshell: Jessie is a woman dealing with a troubled marriage. She's not helped at all by her best friend, who's involved in a torrid extramarital affair. Meanwhile, Jessie's work offers no comfort either. She's a therapist, and her professional relationship with one of her clients -- a woman who killed her husband in what appeared to be self-defense -- has become complicated, given the state of Jessie's own marriage.

Sample of prose: "I was married eleven years before I started imagining how different life could be if my husband were dead. Beginning that year, ... images of random damage, of events more simple and unpredictable than murder, invaded my dreams, both sleeping and awake.

"The more I tried not to think about it, to purge these worrisome ideas out of my head, the louder my unconcious mind wailed. When I awoke in the sheet-twisted dark and found myself pasted to the body of my very real husband, his whimpering snore as high-pitched as a cat's, it was a bitter comfort. The familiar smell of him on the pillows, a pungent mix of his daily dousings of cologne and hair tonics, seeped into my pores with all the nauseating effects of a virus. I spent my nights, and an embarrassing number of days, picturing how I would react, what plans I would make, when misfortune cast me in a new role: that of grieving widow."

Author reminds me of: Dorothy Parker

Best reason to read: for Jessie's brilliant first-person observations and insights. -- Ed Halloran

A FINE PLACE

By Nicholas Montemarano (Context Books, 226 pages, $21.95).

Author's background: Nicholas Montemarano holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts and has been published widely in magazines. His first short-story collection, Season of Descent, is forthcoming from Context.

Plot in a nutshell: Based on an actual case, the book involves a racially motivated beating and murder of a black teen-ager in Brooklyn that sends Tony to jail. The story shifts perspectives and jumps from year to year and back again, examining the inner lives of those closely affected by the murder. When Tony comes home, tensions are reactivated within the family, primarily with his grandparents and grandmother's sister, who idealizes him. The actual crime is described in the first and last chapter, but more important, throughout the book readers gain perspective on the racial disharmony that fed Tony as he grew up and led him to hate someone different from himself.

Sample of prose: This is the kind of snapshot-sequencing style in which the book is written:

"Sal smoked a cigarette in the back of the store. It was after three o'clock. Carmine was getting ready to close the shop. He cleaned the slicer and his wife wiped the counter. (A quiet moment on the stoop, thought Sal, and our fingers will smell like smoke.) ... Faces leaned over Vera and came down closer to her and asked how she was feeling. She needed a cup of water and someone brought it right away."

Author reminds me of: Jon Hassler, in his ability to get inside his characters' heads.

Best reason to read: for its thought-provoking subject, which illuminates just how easy racial prejudice is passed on.

FREE BIRD

By Greg Garrett (Kensington Books, 256 pages, $23).

Author's background: Garrett teaches fiction writing at Baylor University. He is also a musician and past winner of the William Faulkner Prize for Fiction.

Plot in a nutshell: Clay Forester is a grown man who moves back to his mother's house in South Carolina after his wife and children are killed in an accident that he survived. He's lead singer in a rock band, playing at clubs where beer bottles fly whenever the patrons are unhappy. Forester, once a fast-rising attorney with a powerful firm in Washington, D.C., drifts through life, hating himself and his long-absent father, whom he once saw "starring" in a less-than-grade-B sci-fi movie that was mocked, though unnamed, on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. He receives the news that his father has just died in Santa Fe and sets out on a road trip to attend the funeral and find himself.

Sample of prose: "Here is how I woke on that Monday morning, the way in fact I always woke up in those days: by nine a.m., never later, someone started banging on the old upright piano downstairs in the parlor. ... On that morning, it was Aunt Sister playing, and the song was The Old Rugged Cross. I knew it was Aunt Sister by the rolling boogie-woogie left hand. She had not knowingly played boogie-woogie in fifty years, it being one of the bygone pleasures of her sinful youth, but nonetheless it got into her blood and still sneaked out where you might least expect it. Consequently, I liked her playing better than the more formal chording of my mother and Aunt Ellen, although gospel piano is no humane way to wake up a man no matter who is doing it."

Author reminds me of: John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)

Best reason to read: for its cast of downright memorable characters, its fast pace and its thought-provoking message -- Ed Halloran

THE JUSTUS GIRLZ

By Slim Lambright (HarperCollins, 352 pages, $24).

Author's background: Slim Lambright, fiftysomething, lives in Philadelphia and notes, "I've been among other things, a waitress, a bartender, a go-go dancer, and a numbers runner, and now I'm employed free-lance , but the less said about that the better." The author bio adds that she found herself unemployed and about to lose her home to foreclosure in 1999. Then a notice for a $20 writing class literally fell at her feet. She enrolled and proceeded to produce a superb book.

Plot in a nutshell: The story is based in part on the author's part in founding an all-girls drill team, the Justus Girls, in the '60s. Four decades later, three of the founders, Jan, Mustang Sally and Roach, reunite after a fourth member of their group, Peaches, is murdered. The women attempt to solve the crime and, along the way, learn to deal with the often-grim realities of their own lives.

Prose sample: "They became a tight, disciplined unit of girls who moved as one in lock-step precision. If someone had asked them why the team was so important to them, they probably wouldn't have been able to answer. These were not the children of privilege, not the children of the onward and upward burgeoning Black middle class that one always reads about. These were the daughters of the blue-collar workers: the sanitation men, the porters, the truck and cab drivers, the maids, the cooks, the seamstresses and the factory workers. The people who took the early bus."

Author reminds me of: Malcolm X and Alex Haley in The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Best reason to read: Lambright has created an army of memorable and frequently very funny characters, as diverse as pimps and executives -- and each word, including the profuse profanity, rings true. The four main characters in particular are women whose stories and voices will stay with you for a long time. One warning: This book is not for the squeamish or easily offended. It meets no one's definition of politically correct. -- Ed Halloran

QUEENMAKER

By India Edghill (St. Martin's Press, 384 pages, $24.95).

Author's background: Edghill lives in upstate New York.

Plot in a nutshell: Queen Michael, daughter of King Saul, was the first wife of the biblical King David. This intriguing novel is her story, told by her, of the intrigues, violence, insecurities and powerful appetites that dominated David and his court. Her star rises as David's diminishes during her forced 40-year tenure in the court.

Sample of prose: "David's voice was water flowing in the desert, honey dripping from the comb, wind sighing through spring grass. I was lost forever; stones and butterflies filled me and I cound not move, or think or speak."

Author reminds me of: Anita Diamant in her evocation of a biblical story and Marion Zimmer Bradley in her creation of a strong female central character from history

Best reason to read: Readers interested in biblical themes will enjoy this title, but it will also appeal to fans of historical fiction in general, with multidimensional characters, strong sense of place, a rapid-fire plot and a narrator's voice that never falters or slips out of character. Think The Red Tent, only much better. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

THE SPEED OF LIGHT

By Elizabeth Rosner (Random House, 241 pages, $23.95).



Author's background: Elizabeth Rosner is a prize-winning poet and short-fiction writer who lives in Berkeley, Calif.

Plot in a nutshell: This extraordinary first novel about the power of secrets and silence to assume a life of their own centers around a brother and sister who react individually to the imagined traumas of their silent father's past. Julian cocoons himself in his apartment, where he's surrounded by 11 television sets and the scientific dictionary he's assembling. Paula, a gifted singer, embraces the world and constantly seeks new horizons. Sola, a Central American refugee with a past filled with its own horrors, provides the catalyst for Julian and Paula to accept their heritage.

Sample of prose: "Paula had filled the silence with her own voice, and I had filled it with the voice of science, and what we really needed was the voice of our father telling us his story, giving us at least that much of himself, the life he'd nearly lost. But he couldn't speak. Inside the silence the knives were sharp, the horror was bigger than anything he could name with words, and we were left to find out for ourselves what had been burned into his skin forever."

Author reminds me of: Louise Erdrich in her method of character development and her poetic control of language

Best reason to read: Rosner's exquisite command of language, use of the telling detail and pacing are indicative of her poetic discipline. The gradual unfolding of the characters and their stories in a near-minimalist style renders the impact of this tender novel all the more powerful. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

WHEN THE ELEPHANTS DANCE

By Tess Uriza Holthe (Crown Publishers, 400 pages, $24.95).

Author's background: Tess Uriza Holthe, a controller in Marin County, Calif., is the only one of her four siblings (in a Filipino-American family) who grew up in the United States.

Plot in a nutshell: It's the last week of World War II in the Philippines. Bombs are falling and people who have managed to survive until now are being tortured and killed by the Japanese. In a basement on the island of Luzon, a group of people cope by listening to stories based on Filipino legends.

Sample of prose: "If I am to tell the story of the church that sank into the ground, we must first begin with the village of Blanca Negros, west of the Chico River Valley, Mountain Province. There were secrets in that town, so much anger building underneath the perfect exteriors, the perfect faces, like streams of water crisscrossing in the ground beneath smooth polished floors, and sowing discord in the houses above. So much restlessness hidden by the white virgin beaches, the rich soil and rows of sugar cane. We lived in the most beautiful place on Earth, yet it was just a facade. The people were not happy. This was the town I grew up in."

Author reminds me of: While Holthe's publicist likens her writing style to Amy Tan's, the author reminds me of Dr. Jose Rizal, a physician, novelist, patriot and poet who was executed in Manila by the Spaniards during the 19th century. Holthe, like Rizal, speaks for the Philippines, exquisitely capturing the sounds, smells and voices of the islands.

Best reason to read: This marvelous book provides a truly transcendent experience. -- Ed Halloran

YEARS OF WONDER

By Geraldine Brooks (Viking, 304 pages, $24.95).

Author's background: Geraldine Brooks is a former Middle Eastern correspondent for The Wall Street Journal who recharged her batteries, which were low after witnessing the horrors of war, by visiting the English countryside.

Plot in a nutshell: This is the story of how one small English village coped with the terrors of the bubonic plague during the mid-17th century. Narrated by a young widow who loses her two children to the disease, the story details the many ways individuals attempt to vanquish this invisible foe. Tragedy brings out the best and the worst in people, and Anna, who helps the vicar's wife minister to the suffering and dying, learns far more of the village secrets than she wants.

Sample of prose: "They brought apples yesterday, a cartload for the rectory cellar. Late pickings, of course: I saw brown spots on more than a few. I had words with the carter over it, but he told me we were lucky to get as good as we got, and I suppose it's true enough. There are so few people to do the picking. So few people to do anything. And those of us who are left walk around as if we're half-asleep. We are all so tired."

Author reminds me of: Naomi Baltuck and Joanna Trollope, in her ability to probe the human psyche for goodness while also using the telling detail to establish character and mood in a well-paced plot

Best reason to read: Anna's strong voice never falters, and the gradual unfolding of the plot remains consistent in tone and detail with what an ordinary villager might see. Brooks skillfully blends her historical and botanical research with moments of philosophical musings in this gripping tale of courage and love in the face of tragedy. This novel can definitely be a fable for our time. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

DROP

By Mat Johnson (St. Martin's Press, 288 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Johnson has an MFA from Columbia University, and lives in Harlem.

Plot in a nutshell: Chris Jones is a 31-year-old black man living in the Philadelphia ghetto. He spends his days imagining himself anywhere but where he is, being anyone but himself. It's a talent that serves him well in his chosen profession: advertising. He parlays his skills into a job in London, where he finally lives the life he always envisioned: posh apartment, beautiful girlfriend, piles of cash. But Chris's dream is not to last, and he ends up back in Philadelphia, where his only option is to move back to the ghetto and take a subsistence-level job. With the help of his childhood friend, who is comfortable with who and where she is, Chris learns how to not only accept, but love himself and his home.

Sample of prose: "The shot: wild woman hanging out by the curb, leather dress on, red t-shirt stretched so much that her left shoulder hung out the top. Little blue supermarket sneakers at the end of charcoal legs. You couldn't even tell that her shoes didn't have laces, that she had no stockings on, or how bad her ashy skin thirsted for lotion. It was across the street, it was dark, but most important it was real. The face that stared back at you, that hunger, desperation, the sex and danger, that was real too. And that was all you cared about."

Author reminds me of: Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.

Best reason to read: This is a notch above the typical coming-of-age story, but what really sets the book apart is its beautiful prose. Read it for an example of writing at its best. -- Vicky Uhland

GABRIEL'S STORY

By David Anthony Durham (Doubleday, 304 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Durham, who has lived in both the U.S. and Trinidad, has a MFA from the University of Maryland and won the Zor Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Fiction Award in 1992.

Plot in a nutshell: Gabriel's Story is the tale about a black boy seeking his place in the white American West in the 1870's. When Gabriel's mother and stepfather move with Gabriel and his younger brother from their comfortable Baltimore home to a primitive Kansas sod hut, Gabriel quickly forsakes the drudgery of farm life for the imagined glamour of cowboying. Life turns harrowing, however, when the youth discovers that his new gang consists horse thieves, rapists and sadistic murderers. After surviving a perilous escape and grueling challenges, a mature, prodigal Gabriel ultimately reaches the sanctuary of his family.

Sample of prose: "The San Juans rose like a great receding barricade conceived by the gods and built of the earth itself. He felt miniscule before the mountains, like a tiny thief crawling over the toes of giants . . . and he rode with hushed respect, as if he feared to wake the mountains."

Author reminds me of: Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses) and also Faulkner in his depiction of the many faces of racism, shifting value systems and Biblical allusions.

Best reason to read: For it's multi-layered, unromanticized portrayal of the 19th century American West. Language both spare and vividly poetic propels the action and illuminates Gabriel's internal growth. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

KIT'S LAW

By Donna Morrissey (Mariner Books, 400 pages, $13).

Author's background: Morrissey has previously written two award-winning screenplays. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Plot in a nutshell: With the same haunting "Newfoundlanding" feel as Shipping News by Annie Proulx, Kit's Law is a tale set in the 1950s narrated by teenage Kit Pitman, who lives in a gully shack with her grandmother and her mentally challenged mother Josie, known to all as "the gully tramp."

A mean-spirited reverend with a vengeance against Kit and Josie constantly haunts the tale as he tries to drive them away, while a kindly old doctor often comes to Kit's rescue. When Kit's grandmother suddenly dies, the doctor must fight harder to keep Kit from being taken away from the community that she loves.

Meanwhile, the reverend's teenage son, Sid is sent to spy on Kit and Josie to procure evidence for sending them away. Instead, he becomes Kit's first true love and champion. But theirs is a doomed relationship as Kit grows into womanhood. At the same time, a homicidal drunk is terrorizing the community and soon his evil ways will collide with Kit, Sid and Josie.

Sample of prose: "I made it to my rock in the back of the schoolyard without attracting any further attention and leaned back against the school, looking up over the dense, green woods. The wind sounded a dull rush, kneading through the trees, thickly padded with heavy, wet snow. I snuggled more comfortably inside my coat and was pulling a piece of jam bread out of my lunch bag when Sid popped around the corner, his breath fanning out in front of him, and his ears a bright red."

Author reminds me of: Christina Schwartz, author of Drowning Ruth.

Best reason to read: Morrissey is skillful at rendering realistic viewpoints and creates wonderful sense of place. -- Justin Matott

THE LANGUAGE OF GOOD-BYE

By Maribeth Fischer (Dutton, 352 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Fischer is an English-as-a-second-language teacher and has won the Pushcart Prize and Smartt Family Prize.

Plot in a nutshell: How does one say good-bye to a country, a relationship, loved ones? As Annie teaches English to her students of diverse cultures and backgrounds, she discovers that some welcome a new language to express old pain, but others, such as Korean-born Sungae, have buried the past so successfully that learning English simply is a new way to articulate painful old memories better left silent. Like her students, Annie and her husband also must learn to articulate the quality of their relationship and determine whether there is more to pain in remaining together or in separating.

Sample of prose: "All these years I've been teaching, I never understood . . . that every language is a language of good-bye, because words really are stories and the only way to tell them is to let them go."

Author reminds me of: Gail Godwin in her ability to create multi-dimensional characters leading real lives.

Best reason to read: For Fischer's lyrical writing, her ability to create rich emotional landscapes and her insight into both the power of language and the human need to tell our stories. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

LICK CREEK

By Brad Kessler (Scribner, 304 pages, $24).

Author's background: Kessler has written several children's books, including The Firebird, Brer Rabbit and Boss Lion and John Henry. He is a former editor of Interview magazine and his work has appeared in magazines and journals. He lives in Vermont and New York City.

Plot in a nutshell: Set in 1920's West Virginia, the story revolves around Emily Jenkins, a late-teen tomboy who experiences great personal loss when her father and brother are killed in a coal mine. She and her mother are then forced to fend for themselves. The power company evokes "right of way" through their land, and after being raped by a power company supervisor, Emily vows revenge on anything to do with the electric company. But when a Jewish, Russian electric worker falls from the tower and comes to stay in Emily's house, her world is turned upside down by his mysterious and foreign nature. Soon a murder sends the two of them on a journey, taking the reader along.

Sample of prose: "She heard a loud beating of wings and dropped to the ground, her heart racing, swung the gun, but lost whatever it was. A grouse, probably, she thought, and went on. The afternoon was growing warm; the fog burned off overhead. She found a place where three trees grew in a small triangle and for half an hour she snapped young branches from pignuts and shellbarks and Shumard oaks and built three walls of a blind, using each trunk as a brace and weaving brush between them. She tore the bark off a rotting hickory and leaned the moist planking against holes in the blind, then scattered handfuls of leaves over the entire thing. Shen she was done she climbed gingerly into the blind, crossed her legs, and sat."

Author reminds me of: Annie Proulx, in her understanding of her characters, combined with Jane Hamilton's introspective storytelling.

Best reason to read: For it's fully fleshed characters and imaginative, past-paced story. -- Justin Matott

MANGOES AND QUINCE

By Carol Field (St. Martin's Press, 250 pages, $24.95).

Author's background: San Francisco resident Carol Fields has written three best-selling cookbooks: In Nonna's Kitchen: Recipes and Traditions from Italy's Grandmothers, The Italian Baker and Celebrating Italy.

Plot in a nutshell: Anton Peeters, sailor and scion of a wealthy Dutch family, travels to Indonesia, where he meets and marries the teenage Miranda. For 10 years, Anton, Miranda and their daughter Diana live an idyllic South Seas life. But Anton insists the family return to Amsterdam, where he deposits Miranda and Diana with his disapproving mother and then disappears. Miranda is left with a mansion and little money. But the passionate Miranda is an excellent cook and turns the mansion into a boarding house and restaurant celebrating the spices and flavors of the Pacific islands. Along the way, she weathers conflicts with her reserved mother-in-law and shy daughter, and must eventually come to terms with Anton's disappearance.

Sample of prose: "Mamma, Diana thought to herself, I know your fire. It has singed me many times. I am your opposite, not fire but air. Air has no color, no form, no substance. It is the space in which I move, barely visible to you, but it sustains me in its stillness. I come here every day so that my cool air can soothe you, wrap you, shelter you."

Author reminds me of: Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea; Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate, and Isabel Allende.

Best reason to read: Mangoes and Quince is more than a book about food, it is a literary feast packed with sensual details ranging from curry powders and ripe quince to rolling waves and humid jungles. Read it when you need to add lushness to your life. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

THE MUSE ASYLUM

By David Czuchlewski (Putnam, 240 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Czuchlewski graduated from Princeton in 1998 and is a third-year student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Plot in a nutshell: Andrew Wallace, a brilliant Princeton graduate, is in and out of the Muse Asylum, a private institution which treats gifted people who are mentally ill. Wallace is convinced that Horace Jacob Little, a novelist whose lifestyle makes the late Howard Hughes look like a politician on the campaign trail, is controlling virtually every aspect of contemporary life. Meanwhile, reporter Jake Burnett, a former classmate of Wallace's, is attempting to track down the author for a circulation-boosting exclusive. The book rapidly turns into a fascinating mystery story.

Sample of prose: "At night alone, I found it impossible to sleep. I was scared that I wouldn't wake up. I was scared that I would sleepwalk and slit my wrists in the dirty bathtub. I thought of roaches scurrying across my senseless body, poking into my ears, my mouth, my nose. As I sat awake, other fears tormented me. I feared that things would not fall when I dropped them. I feared that when I picked up books or shoes I would find them too heavy to move. I feared that I would fall through the old floorboards and find a dead body covered in maggots. I feared that I would begin laughing and find myself unable to stop. I feared that I would begin thinking and find myself unable to stop. I feared that I would find the objects in my apartment unrecognizable. Most of all, I feared that I would look in the mirror and find someone other than myself."

Author reminds me of: Peter Handke (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Short Letter, Long Farewell).

Best reason to read: Simply put, this is a brilliant book, one of the best I've read in many years. -- Ed Halloran

STAIRCASE OF A THOUSAND STEPS

By Masha Hamilton (Putnam BlueHen Books, 288 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Hamilton was an Associated Press foreign correspondent in the Middle East and also reported for NBC/Mutal Radio.

Plot in a nutshell: In the insular Middle Eastern Village of Ein Fadr, dark secrets swirl under the facade of controlled order and peace. Eleven-year-old Jammana posseses a gift of seeing the past, including actions kept secret from others for years. Some of these secrets involve her beloved grandfather Harif; the unmarried, extraordinary midwife Faridah, and Jammana's own mother Rafa. When Rafa flees her husband and returns to her father's village, Jammana begs to acommpany her so that she can ask her grandfather about the meaning of her visions. Unwittingly, the child ignites a chain of events that will harm the very people she loves.

Sample of prose: "Ein Fadr . . . is to me what the open desert is to you. But I know it also as a place of suspiciion. Old grudges linger here. They lie dormant so you nearly forget. Then they rise suddenly. They move like as slow burn across the field where men are working. They cling to the laundry women spread on roofs to dry. In this way they enter every home."

Author reminds me of: Naguib Mahfouz, in her ability to capture the dichotomy between the mystical and superstitious with the hard, practical realism of desert life.

Best reason to read: The rich diversity of characters and the poetic use of language add freshness to an ageless tale of human betrayal and small town pettiness. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

TENNANT'S ROCK

By Steve McGiffen (St. Martin's Press, 224 pages, $22.95).

Author's background: McGiffen has a Ph.D. in American history and has published in the New England Quarterly. He works as European Parliamentary advisor to the Socialist Party of the Netherlands.

Plot in a nutshell: Set in late 19th century California, this is a tale of women who learn to depend on their own wiles. The story revolves around Sissy, who, at 13, is raped by an intruder who stays, using Sissy and her homestead. Sissy's brother Nate is in prison for killing their father, and she fantasizes about him coming to the rescue, but when Nate returns, things don't work out as Sissy imagined. Finally, she is forced to confront that which she fears the most.

Sample of prose: "I had put on my best dress, not the one Ma was making me for the wedding, that was still not finished, but one I'd bought ready sewn from Mrs. Packer on the trading boat, that she said come from a fine lady in Sacramento who decided she didn't have no more use for it. It was gray with white trims, warm and respectable without making me look too much the farm girl I was."

Author reminds me of: Jane Hamilton, in her character detail and sense of conflict. Wally Lamb, in his ability to write well from a woman's perspective.

Best reason to read: For its history, suspense and satisfying conclusion.

THREE APPLES FELL FROM HEAVEN

By Miceline Aharonian Marcom (Riverhead Books, 270 pages, $23.95).

Author's background: Marcom was born in Saudi Arabia, graduated from UC Berkeley and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Mills College. This novel is based on experiences of her family.

Plot in a nutshell: This story of the Turkish genocide of 1915, when nearly one million Turks were driven into exile and slaughtered, is powerfully told through multiple voices: a young girl befriended by neighbors and disguised under Muslim veils; a girl driven through the desert, raped, beaten and forced to witness her mother's death; a poet hidden in his mother's attic, and an infant born during the death march and speaking from the grave. As the voices thread through the novel, the unspeakable horror mounts and is heightened by the dispassionate factual reports written by an American consul to his superiors.

Sample of prose: "We watched how the gendarmes dumped the Professor in chains in a heap at his doorstep. He was one of two men released from the group of detained intellectuals and prominent businessmen arrested in March. The others had passed beneath our windows each night in an old wooden cart; their corpses were dumped at the edge of town in a large and unmarked hole."

Author reminds me of: James Joyce, in her use of imagery and her almost stream-of-consciousness style which provides a looking glass at the culture of the time.

Best reason to read: This novel re-creates lost pages of history that deserve to be remembered. The skillful interweaving of inner voices moves the plot forward and establishes the horror affecting individuals rather than nameless groups. Marcom's beautiful prose raises the book to the level of literary art and prevents it from being a mere diatribe. -- Joan Hinkemeyer

Ed Halloran, Joan Hinkemeyer, Justin Matott and Vicky Uhland are freelance writers living in the Denver metro area.