After reading Martha Barnette's amusing new book, listening to a waiter's recitation of the day's specials will never be the same. Baked pasta loses some of its appeal once we know that "lasagna" derives from the Greek word for "chamber pot," just as "lobster" is related to the Latin for "locust." Care for some vermicelli? No thanks, not after we learn the word means "little worms."
Barnette's compilation of "the unforgettable pictures and surprising tales tucked into the words that we put into our mouths every day" begins with foods named for their appearance, like the humble burrito with its donkey-like humped back. Then there are the dishes with religious roots: cappuccino from the drab gray or brown robes worn by Capuchin friars. A section about foods that commemorate individuals reveals that Napoleon bears a culinary connection not only to the flaky pastries that carry his name but also to beef Wellington, which honors the British duke who defeated him.
Barnette makes us realize how much of history and world culture is concentrated in the delicacies that appear on our plate. Ladyfingers will be savored by anyone with a fondness for food and a passion for language. (Times, $20)
by Donald E. Westlake
My name is Burke Devore.... I got the résumés of many other people who are unemployed, as I am, in my field of expertise. I then determined to kill those people who I feared were better qualified than I was.... I wish to confess now to four murders." Devore burns this confession after he has drafted it; more will die before he is done.
The Ax is told in the aggrieved voice of a man downsized after 20 years with a New England paper company—a loving husband and father chillingly unaware that he has gone mad. Here indeed is a challenge for a writer. Can even Donald E. Westlake, a four-time winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, make such a story entertain?
Yes, he can. The precise detailing of the murders, intercut with Burke's presentation of himself as an everyday family man, is eerily gripping. But who could root for a protagonist like this? The Ax will hold you; you can't forgo finding out how it ends. But you may wish Westlake had never introduced you to Burke Devore. (Mysterious Press, $23)
by Jimmy Bowen and Jim Jerome
For a music-industry boss, picking a hit record "is no science," writes Bowen, who learned that lesson well during 40 hard-living years in the business. "Best you can do is hope you're right more than wrong."
After all, Bowen insisted that Dean Martin record "Everybody Loves Somebody," handed Frank Sinatra the music to "Strangers in the Night" and urged Reba McEntire to return to her traditional country roots.
Bowen's ego rivals his knack for choosing a hit, but his story remains a coherent—and deliciously gossipy—musical revue, from the rock-and-roll '50s to the Nashville '80s. (Simon and Schuster, $23)
by Johnny Deep, illustrated by Bruce Tinsley
Ever since the Official Preppy Handbook appeared in 1980, humorists have applied the field-guide metaphor to a variety of social subspecies. This year's target is computer geeks—those goofy types who live for Web surfing and X-Files trivia. Author Johnny Deep (a self-described nerd and creator of the-geek.com Web site) has assembled this inane collection of quizzes, cartoons and faux e-mail in a misguided effort to define—and elevate—the geek beast.
The Complete Geek's questionnaires are designed to establish a reader's GQ (geek quotient). If you identify with the Dilbert comic strip, dig the Internet and believe firmly in the existence of aliens, you're already a member of this burgeoning new subculture. For those who prefer celebrity geekdom, Deep also profiles big-name geeks, from Al Gore to Gillian Anderson, with special attention to the Geek King himself, Bill Gates.
Alas, Deep's nonsatirical treatment is too bland and cuddly. To make matters worse, the only chapter that demonstrates any real wit—a lexicon of Geek-speak—is unoriginal. Any true geek will tell you that the wired world's flashiest monthly magazine has run a genuinely amusing jargon column for years. (Broadway, $10)
by Arundhati Roy
Rahel, a young Indian woman divorced from her American husband, returns to her home in the south Indian state of Kerala to visit her twin brother, from whom she was separated as a child, and to confront the mysterious tragedy that tore their family apart. So begins Roy's lushly romantic first novel, a book that keeps surprising us with its embrace of the contradictions of Rahel's world. This is a society in which ancient caste prejudices clash with communist politics; an abused, submissive wife founds a successful pickle empire; and an unmarried great-aunt, the guardian of family tradition, watches Hulk Hogan on satellite TV.
As the novel moves toward a series of revelations about the night a little girl drowned and an innocent man was murdered, the tone turns feverish and the plot reveals shaky underpinnings. Roy, whose book is being compared to the early work of Salman Rushdie, shares Rushdie's over-the-top intoxication with language and his wondrous imagination. Despite minor flaws, The God of Small Things suggests that Roy has the resources—and the material—for an auspicious career. (Random House, $23)
by Chris Offutt
In Offutt's powerful first novel, the sound of regional voices—flat and spare in the Rockies, baroque in the Appalachians—makes the idea of community as real to readers as it does to Virgil Caudill. A mild, modest man, Virgil has lived his 32 years within the hollows of a dying Kentucky coal town. But when his brother is murdered, Virgil must exact vengeance—and get out—or be killed in turn. Offutt's measured prose makes Virgil's moving story vivid. On grieving for his brother: "Sometimes deep inside was the instinct to shut it off, not so much like turning a faucet but more like doubling a hose to choke his sorrow." This too rings true. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
by Thomas Baum
Beach Book of the Week
DENTON HAKE IS FACING THE DEATH penalty for a murder he didn't commit—at least not that he can remember. But over the years there have been a disturbing number of things the young Tacoma man can't recall, starting with his father's suicide. And now what he doesn't know just might kill him.
Is Hake simply experiencing dissociative breaks, his mind refusing to recognize the brutality he inflicts? Or does something much eerier explain his increasingly vivid sensation of traveling outside his body? The answers make for a chilling, twilight-zone thriller, one subtle enough to seduce even those who normally shun the paranormal. (St. Martin's, $22.95)
>Jacquelin Gorman
ASK JACQUELIN GORMAN WHAT SHE found hardest about being blind—as she was for 11 weeks in 1991—and her response is immediate: "Not being able to see my daughter's face." Gorman, 42, a lawyer and freelance writer living in Manhattan Beach, Calif., tells the story of her dark sojourn in a new memoir, The Seeing Glass (Riverhead, $22.95). Her sight left her suddenly: She woke up one morning with blood in her right eye, was blind in that eye by nightfall and nine days later could not see at all. Doctors told her the condition might be a symptom of multiple sclerosis "and said they thought my vision would come back," she says.
The experience wasn't all agony. With "nowhere to look but backwards," as she puts it, Gorman came to a new understanding of her autistic brother Robin—who had been killed by a car in 1980 at age 31—and decided to interweave his story with hers in Seeing Glass. "Like Robin, I was living in this whole other world," she says. Gorman's blindness could recur at any time, but instead of fretting, she spends her time writing, enjoying daughter Kelsey, 10, son Benjamin, 3, and husband Kenny, 43—and just looking. "I'm entranced with colors now," she says. "I tried to end the book with a tone of enormous gratitude, because that's how I feel."
- Contributors:
- Francine Prose,
- Jeff Brown,
- Curtis Rist,
- Stephen Fowler,
- Adam Begley,
- Pam Lambert,
- Kim Hubbard.
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!
