REVIEWED BY BETHANNE PATRICK
CRITIC'S CHOICE
ESSAYS
Turns out, I like to leap," Lanpher confesses in "Flying Lessons," an essay about trapeze instruction that opens this spirited collection. Lanpher, a freelance journalist, seems almost breezy about her own bravery. Her wry pieces are inspired by her '04 move to Manhattan on, yes, a Leap Day, when she leaves her native Minnesota to join Al Franken as cohost on Air America Network. Behind her are a successful career at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, an unsuccessful marriage and a younger woman's belief in endless possibilities. "When the offer came ... I took it. I wasn't sure how many more chances would come my way," writes Lanpher, then 44. What the midlife adventurer brings with her are warm memories of her childhood in St. Paul (which she shares in several essays), a love for people and a reporter's eye for the theater of public life. "I think of the city as this instrument I can play simply by walking down its sidewalks," she writes, "setting off a trip wire that prompts the street scene, the encounter, the overheard conversation."
Lanpher quickly grasps the art-versus-reality question that is endemic to Manhattan. She thinks Law and Order is shooting on her street the day she sees medics wheeling a body from a house around the corner. Then she asks a bystander, "What happened?" "Murder," says her informant.
With its quirky observations and self-deprecating humor, Lanpher's inspiring story is about an eagerness to immerse herself in other cultures—a newsroom, a new city—and emerge intact and enriched. High flying, indeed.
by Michael Lewis
REVIEWED BY ANDREW ABRAHAMS
NONFICTION
Now a left tackle for the University of Mississippi, Michael Oher has taken more bruising hits off the football field than on the gridiron. Sometimes homeless, he attended 11 schools in the Memphis ghetto as a child. But as Lewis, author of Moneyball, deftly demonstrates, his early deprivation leads to a break: Placed in a Christian school at age 16, Oher, now 20, finds his future in Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy—adoptive parents who recognize that, at 6′5″ and 300 lbs., blessed with exceptional physical abilities, he is a ripe football prospect. His new family gives him the nurturing and direction he needs, and Oher emerges as a star. Readers will root for Lewis's protagonist—and for those who love him—as he proves his heart and desire match his massive body.
by William J. Mann
REVIEWED BY NATALIE DANFORD
BIOGRAPHY
In this ambitious work, Mann addresses persistent questions about the sexuality of actress Katharine Hepburn—the iconoclast who made tomboyishness seem sexy. Mann convincingly argues that Hepburn (who died in '03) had long, possibly sexual relationships with women. When Hepburn met wealthy Laura Harding, whom Mann calls "the most equal partner in [her] life," while performing summer stock in 1930, the two began living together. Decades later, Harding protested to an interviewer, "I hope you aren't planning on making me a lesbian," but they appear to have been lovers. Mann also reports that Hepburn's affair with actor Spencer Tracy was mostly hands-off: The two inhabited separate bungalows at their hideaway on director George Cukor's L.A. estate primarily because "sex ... was not a defining characteristic of their relationship," he writes. Mann handily connects it all not so much to Hepburn's desire to conceal her sexuality but to "carve her legend into stone" by shaping the Tracy and Hepburn myth—a notion that satisfied the public's craving for grand-scale romance.
>Paperbacks
The Places In Between by Rory Stewart Stewart, a Scot, zippily chronicles his '02 trek across Afghanistan communing with Taliban thugs and teenage camel drivers. Q: Is he mad? Discuss.
Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald The gang will be transported by the surreal tale of deformed Jack Plum, who lives with an abusive mom but takes refuge with beloved swine. Tragedy looms; stock tissues.
Alligator by Lisa Moore For readers who savor indelible characters: From the widowed mom of an ecoterrorist to an alligator wrestler named Loyola, Moore conjures up a host of oddballs.
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill Baby, 12, lives with her druggie dad in the hipster center of Montreal. O'Neill's debut is a vibrant portrait of life on skid row.
Old Filth by Jane Gardam This darkly witty tale about a "Raj orphan" born in Malaya, schooled in Wales and unloved for most of his years is a gem.
>The debate never ends: Was J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire better onscreen? Did Peter Jackson do justice to J.R.R. Tolkien? Here, new films versus the books that inspired them.
THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy The '87 book by neo-noir star Ellroy is better. Plot twists that work on the page seem oblique onscreen and Josh Hartnett, playing a gumshoe, is like a little boy who borrowed Dad's fedora.
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren The 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Louisiana politician is the way to go. Bloated with self-importance, the film is as torpid as its setting.
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints by Dito Montiel Author Montiel directs a superior film version of his memoir about a gritty Queens childhood. Where the book meanders, the film keeps pumping. Channing Tatum is mesmerizing as the misunderstood tough guy.
Little Children by Tom Perrotta Hollywood translated this lyrical tale of suburban desperation into an equally poetic film. (It helps that author Perrotta cowrote the screenplay.) Kate Winslet deserves an Oscar for showing her stretch marks.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
