Warning: Those who take this Road may fall asleep at the wheel. The latest novel from bestselling author Jaffe (The Best of Everything, Five Women) is a numbing tour of the culture, social movements and medical advances of the 20th century as witnessed by schoolteacher Rose Smith, born Jan. 1, 1900.
Rose weathers seemingly endless crises as family and friends are struck down in turn by influenza, breast cancer and AIDS or crippled by polio, Alzheimer's and alcoholism. In the days before penicillin, for example, her stepbrother dies after a rose-thorn scratch becomes infected. She also frets a lot over society's ever-changing moral standards. Jaffe, too, seems to wear a deepening frown as she motors through the decades, and her flappers, beatniks, hippies and yuppies meet life's challenges with often depressing results. For those willing to stay with it, Jaffe's tale offers an occasionally engaging picture of how far science has advanced. Others, though, may want to choose a road less traveled by. (Dutton, $24.95)
Bottom Line: 100 years of lassitude
by Ben Sherwood
"This is the story of the greatest love, ever," declares J.J. Smith, the jaded hero of this offbeat novel. As a judge for a Guinness-esque book of records, Smith should know. He's seen it all, though nothing to compare with the tale of Wally Chubb, a Nebraska man who decides to prove his love for a local woman by grinding up and devouring a crashed 747 piece by piece. On location to record this surreal drama, Smith, a proud New Yorker obsessed with stats, finds himself disarmed by the simple pleasures of small-town life—and falling deeply in love with the object of Wally's obsessive affections.
Though set in the present, characters in 747 often behave with a geewhiz earnestness straight out of Leave It to Beaver. (In Sherwood's world, children hop around on pogo sticks, desperate to make it into Smith's book; in the real world, wouldn't they rather set high scores on their Game Boys?) Still, Sherwood, a network news producer, renders his tale in a disarmingly folksy style. He even manages to add a bit of suspense to the story: Will the publicity Smith brings corrode the town's innocence? In the end, the book's charm and inherent sweetness win the day. (Bantam, $19.95)
Bottom Line: Goes down easy
by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant
Best friends for 24 years and cowriters of two books, DeBerry and Grant clearly get along better than the two squabbling sisters depicted in the team's uneven second novel. After their father's death, Ronnie Frazier and Celeste English discover that they've inherited a house down in fictional Prosper, N.C., the town where their parents grew up. Against the wishes of their surly mother, Delia, they head south and into the past. Each too is running away from something: actress Ronnie from her hand-to-mouth existence in Manhattan and the social-climbing Celeste from her crumbling marriage in Buffalo. When Ronnie falls ill in Prosper, Della has no choice but to return and face the secrets she had left behind.
DeBerry and Grant's collaboration produces some lively banter and evocative descriptions of the rural South. But the book's three heroines start out so churlish that it's hard to swallow the ending, in which each is transformed and tidily resettled in her life. Far From the Tree falls far short of reality. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Lands with a thump
by Barbara Hall
For the author, who is executive producer and head writer for the hit CBS courtroom series Judging Amy, New Orleans was once her "favorite city on earth"—that is, until she was raped there three years ago.
Elements of that ordeal have wound up in this well-written novel. The protagonist is not rape victim Simone Gray but rather Nora Braxton, an old friend beckoned to N'Awlins to lend Simone moral support during the rapist's trial. The courthouse scenes make for absorbing reading, but it's Nora's inner turmoil that fascinates. With plenty of time to loll around her hotel while the trial is not in session, she stews over her failed marriage to a philandering husband, her disaffected teenage son, her crazy mother, whether to have a one-night stand in the Big Easy and even whether she believes Simone's claim of rape. This could be tedious, but how Nora sorts it all out is as suspenseful as waiting for the verdict. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
Bottom Line: Summons well served
The True Confessions of a Waitress
by Debra Ginsberg
Forget the guy who learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten. Debra Ginsberg got her education in restaurants, and she doles it out just right in this entertaining account. In 20 years of taking orders for everything from popovers to pifia coladas, she gathered a trove of stories she justly terms "passionate, absurd and intimately human."
Between shifts Ginsberg provides us with endearing glimpses of her large and colorful family—as a waiter, her dad supported his wife and five kids on tips alone. There are also sporadic helpings of her checkered love life. But Ginsberg recalls her romantic failures with nary a hint of bitterness, including the one with the ex-waiter who fathered her son. Best of all is the inside look at staff romances and the truth about whether a server or cook pushed too far by a customer will spit—or worse—in your soup. (Don't ask.) (HarperCollins, $22)
Bottom Line: The real dish on restaurant life
by Les Roberts
Page-turner of the week
Cleveland private eye Milan Jacovich, an ex-college football player and divorced dad, steps into two cases involving threats to children in Roberts's latest hard-boiled mystery. A sort of paunchy, laid-back Bogart, Milan has the tough guy's code of ethics, but "with a mid-forties waistline and a Slovenian hairline fast heading north," he admits, "I'm hardly the matinee-idol type." In this outing, Milan runs surveillance on a toy-company employee who may be selling industrial secrets. He also volunteers information to the cops about a recently slain Native American man, which winds up jeopardizing his relationship with longtime gal pal Connie, who feels she pays too high a price for Milan's Good Samaritan instincts.
When the veteran gumshoe begins prying into the murder, he runs afoul of Florence McHargue, the hard-nosed, sharp-tongued African-American lieutenant in charge of the police investigation. Eventually, of course, he earns an ounce of her grudging respect. These familiar elements work like narrative comfort food, and Roberts garnishes with some choice Slavic tidbits (klobasa is what you call kielbasa in Ljubljana). As in 1997's The Cleveland Local, though, he holds back some major surprises until the clock has nearly run out. (Thomas Dunne, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Nifty spin on a classic P.I. formula
- Contributors:
- Erica Sanders,
- Dan Jewel,
- Julie K.L Dam,
- David Cobb Craig,
- Amy Waldman,
- Edward Karam.
VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
Heartbreak & Hope
After Jaycee Dugard's rescue, a look at the cases of six young people who went missing in 2009
