From PEOPLE Magazine
Click to enlarge
Sixteen-year-old Roberta Rohbeson calls her dark life "cruddy," and it's a wrenching understatement. In this first novel from Barry, creator of the comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, Roberta had been found by police at age 11 wandering the Nevada desert alone and blood-smeared and in shock. Now, in a chilling suicide note from the "cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road," she details the road trip with her psychotic father that left her so emotionally scarred. Loathed by a mother who threatens to kill her and haunted by memories of a father who tried to do just that, Roberta decides to end it all after getting busted for dropping acid. This would all be too depressing except that Barry's hold-the-violins style keeps the suspense rolling all the way to Cruddy's gripping climax. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
Bottom Line: Killer read
The Natural & Cultural History of Tears
by Tom Lutz
Back in 1972, when Edmund Muskie was running for President, a show of tears was enough to sabotage his campaign. Yet by 1996, manly emotional displays had become so commonplace that even Bob Dole—who had once said Muskie "lacked stability" for higher office—had taken to weeping routinely on the stump.
To understand the shift, Tom Lutz leads a dry-eyed romp through 3,000 years of human history—from Aristotle to Tammy Faye Bakker—in pursuit of the meaning of crying. More than just a spontaneous expression of sorrow, he reveals, tears and our responses to them are sometimes governed by changing fashion. In 1963, for instance, Jackie Kennedy moved the world by her stoic refusal to cry at her husband's funeral; in 1996, when Michael Jordan fell to the floor sobbing after the Chicago Bulls won their fourth NBA title, that too was moving.
While searching for a theory to explain all of this, Lutz piles on stories worthy of Ripley's Believe It or Not! (Crocodile tears, for instance, derive their name from the droplets that squeeze from the eyes of the giant reptiles while they're chomping down on prey.) Written with intelligence and wit, this is one book you can read without having to weep. (Norton, $25.95)
Bottom Line: Not just another sob story
by Chang-rae Lee
To most people, Franklin Hata appears to lead an enviable existence. He lives in a showplace Tudor home, the kind that has real estate agents perennially angling for a listing. Within fictional Bedley Run—the tony bedroom community north of New York City where the Japanese immigrant operated a medical supply store for decades—he is honorifically known as "Doc" Hata, a kind of venerable village elder. And yet, as Chang-rae Lee quickly establishes in his quietly powerful second novel, beneath the placid surface of Hata's life lies a murky depth of secrets, self-doubts and sadness.
Through vivid flashbacks, Lee's spare, supple prose pulls readers into these uncharted waters, including Hata's turbulent relationship with his adopted daughter, shame over his Korean lineage and the surreal nightmare of his World War II service as a medic with the Japanese army. Gradually we come to see the attraction of the impeccably proper, eminently respectable facade Hata has so painstakingly crafted for himself—and also how it may ultimately have become his prison.
Spinning his tale with the kind of deceptive ease often aspired to but seldom achieved, Lee, a Korean-American recently hailed by The New Yorker as one of its 20 Writers for the 21st Century, demonstrates that, for a change, the literary tomtoms weren't just hype. As unique as the pungent, peppery scent of kimchi and yet universal in its vision, A Gesture Life is an achievement to savor. (Riverhead, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Luminous novel of love, loss and longing
by Eric Idle
How ironic! While this science-fiction novel was written by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle (the "nudge-nudge, wink-wink, know-what-I-mean?" guy), and he spends dozens of pages theorizing about comedy, the book itself is only sporadically witty and never funny. He also misspells Sid Caesar's name.
Idle's plot revolves around a serviceable sci-fi standby: the exploding space station that spews refugees throughout the galaxy. But there is more digression than plot. The novel's only clever touch is a fatuous, self-important diva, Brenda Woolley, who suggests a cross between Jerry Lewis and Liz Taylor. But Idle's language is lazy and coarse. "What am I doing describing the shagging for you, anyway?" he writes, descending to Austin Powers-like slang in the midst of a ludicrous sex scene, and he pointlessly spells "been" as "bin."
In a series of random quotes on comedy, Idle cites Erma Bombeck: "Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide." He should have listened to her. (Pantheon, $24)
Bottom Line: Where is John Cleese when you need him?
by James Lee Burke
Page-turner of the week
Trouble should be Billy Bob Holland's middle name. It's bad enough that the Texas Ranger turned criminal defense lawyer seems to attract every hard-luck loser between Austin and San Antonio. But in Heartwood, the latest from mystery master James Lee Burke (Cimarron Rose, Sunset Limited), Billy Bob gets in deeper than usual when his client, rodeo washout Wilbur Pickett, is accused of stealing an antique watch and $300,000 in bonds. The case puts him on the wrong side of local kingpin Earl Deitrich, who just happens to be the husband of Peggy Jean Murphy, Billy Bob's still smoldering first love. Factor in the bad blood between his illegitimate teenage son and Deitrich's boy, a corrupt town sheriff and his dirty deputies and, for good measure, a brassy bunch of Chicano gang-bangers, and you've got some idea of the passions roiling in this gritty but graceful Larry McMurtry-meets-Elmore Leonard novel.
Like a seasoned cowhand, Burke skillfully controls this unruly herd of characters: He is as at home on the range as he was in the bayou backwaters of his bestselling Dave Robicheaux series. Burke does have a tendency to lean too heavily on dreams and visions to advance the action, but this tale of people who know their history yet are still doomed to repeat it is one you won't easily put down—or forget. (Doubleday, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Stellar Lone Star saga
THE EDGE Catherine Coulter: In this fast-paced thriller from the author of The Cove, an FBI agent traces the disappearance of his sister, who is researching a new sexual-enhancement drug. (Putnam, $22.95)
EMPIRES OF SAND David Ball: Set in 19th-century Paris and the Sahara, this sweeping historical novel pits two cousins—one a nobleman, the other a soldier—against each other during an expedition in the desert.(Bantam, $23.95)
PATTI SMITH Victor Bockris and Roberta Bayley: A detail-laden bio of the '70s punk-rocker, by writers who were on the scene, probes Smith's provocative persona and her romances with writers Sam Shepard and Jim Carroll. (Simon & Schuster, $25)
- Contributors:
- Anne-Marie O'Neill,
- Curtis Rist,
- Pam Lambert,
- Ralph Novak.
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!
