Bobby Gold hates his day job. As an enforcer for a low-level Manhattan mobster, he gets paid to break people's arms, a task he performs with precision if not enthusiasm. Such is the bleak absurdity of this novel that after Bobby artfully shatters his uncle's arm, Bobby offers, "Let me get you a cab" to the hospital.
This is Bourdain's third novel but the first since his breakthrough work of nonfiction, 2000's Kitchen Confidential. That book was an unvarnished look at Bourdain's life as a chef. This time Bourdain trains his eye for seamy detail on a New York City nightclub, where Bobby moonlights as a security manager. He meets Nikki, a beautiful but lonely chef; when she whips him up some white truffle risotto, it's love at first bite.
Nikki sleeps around, drinks until she vomits and, apropos of nothing, announces, "I want to steal a lot of money and then retire to the beach." What follows is the climax of a slim volume, although it's not clear why we should care about this dysfunctional couple. Bourdain is a great observer, and his profane dialogue should come with a warning: This plate is hot. But the story is like a soufflé that fails to rise. (Bloomsbury, $19.95)
BOTTOM LINE: More sizzle than steak
by Allison Glock
Critic's Choice
STARS "1"
Behold Aneita Jean Blair, born 1920 in West Virginia, where "hurt was everywhere." This redheaded spitfire, who died in 2002, was "built like Miss America," harbored ambitions beyond the factory floor and made way too many men weak in the knees. Jeannie knew that "beauty meant nothing less than freedom," so she cultivated her own.
In this affectionate time capsule of a tale, her granddaughter Allison Glock chronicles Jeannie's history, in part by digging through old scrap-books and photos. Glock's writing is smart and swift, making Jeannie's vibrancy leap off the page. Desirability was Jeannie's defining trait—she invested so little emotion in her endless suitors that she wore one man's gift, a rhinestone pin, on a date with another. She ended up marrying the man who loved her the most and learned that "decisions can be like car accidents, sudden and full of consequence." Glock, in her first book, proves a wise and effortless storyteller. (Knopf, $20)
BOTTOM LINE: A beautiful find
by Larry McMurtry
Marooned on the western frontier in 1833, the Berrybender clan prove ill suited for their fate. A motley group of Old World royals and attendees, they are hampered by their can't-do spirit. The family struggles for survival, often against themselves. "I only supposed it to be a deer of some kind," a young Berrybender whines after shooting his father's horse.
In this second installment of a planned four-part epic, amusing episodes don't add up to a story. McMurtry certainly has the talent to write a captivating tale of the early wild, wild West. This isn't it. (Simon & Schuster, $26)
BOTTOM LINE: Wandering in no particular direction
by Bill Bryson
Bryson has made a career writing hilarious travelogues, and in many ways his latest is more of the same, except that this time Bryson hikes through the world of science. Here are answers to the stupid questions you were afraid to ask in school, such as what would happen if you stared at the sun for several minutes (Isaac Newton tried it, and went blind for a few days). He peppers the book with wit and great details: Marie Curie's cookbooks are still so radioactive you have to wear a protective suit if you peruse them. But Short History is a nice way of saying long summary, and that catchall quality keeps the book from being quite as entertaining as his others. (Broadway, $27.50)
BOTTOM LINE: Science with a smile
by Tony Hillerman
Don't let his age fool you: At 77, southwestern mystery man Hillerman isn't afraid to go a few rounds with bigger foes. His latest whodunit takes wicked aim at the U.S. Department of the Interior, which the author says has mishandled "billions" in royalties to Native Americans for oil and other natural resources. Navajo cops Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn follow the murder of a CIA agent in New Mexico all the way to D.C., relying on their "traditional Navajo habit of just waiting for the speaker to speak."
Don't fret, fans: Hillerman is too much of an entertainer to bog down his speed-read style with wonky policy talk. His minimal description and dialogue keep the pace breakneck. This is a beach book with attitude, and give Hillerman credit for making his message of injustice as riveting as the final twist. (HarperCollins, $25.95)
BOTTOM LINE: This Pig flies
by Lorna Landvik
What stay-at-home mom wouldn't want to live in a subdivision where the neighbors are her best friends, always ready to lend a sympathetic ear or show up with a gun to threaten an abusive husband? That's life for Landvik's gang of Minnesota women, who meet for a nighttime snowball fight in the 1960s and forge a lifetime bond. The five wives are pretty one-dimensional, but what keeps the story aloft are Landvik's breezy dialogue and indelible sense of place. Less convincing are the gals' book group and the melodramatic letters one wife writes to her late mother; both of these setups are clumsy attempts to further a story as stale and predictable as a humid Midwestern summer. (Ballantine, $23.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Tasty, but empty calories
MICHAEL CHABON The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavaiier and Clay and editor of the new anthology McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales recalls some classic genre short stories:
Edith Wharton, "Afterward." This poignant, lyrical ghost story about a deluded and self-deluding wife whose husband has disappeared is one of Wharton's best short works.
H. P. Lovecraft, "At the Mountains of Madness." With its epic sweep and controlled tone of cosmic hysteria, this was among the inspirations for my Antarctic sequence in Kavaiier & Clay.
Ray Bradbury, "The Rocket Man." The narrative of the young son of a rocket pilot, when I first encountered it at the age of 10 or 11, determined me to be a writer. I still hold up everything I write to the impossible standard of producing the same wondrous shudder of sorrow in a reader that its ending produced in me.
Raymond Chandler, "Red Wind." This is his best story—taut, dark fun.
Cordwainer Smith, "Scanners Live in Vain." The scanners are men who have sacrificed their humanity, in a manner whose depiction is creepily convincing, to enable human beings to navigate the stars.
- Contributors:
- Max Alexander,
- Joyce Cohen,
- Joe Heim,
- Jeremy Jackson,
- Sean Daly.
CELINE’S INFERTILITY STRUGGLE: MY PRIVATE HEARTBREAK
Daily injections, painful tests and four failed IVF attempts: The singer, 41, reveal her dreams for a second baby. ‘I’ll try until it works’
