By Simon Winchester
CRITIC'S CHOICE
The bestselling author of Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman turns his formidable story-telling talents to the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco on April 18, 1906. Exploring the disaster both from a dispassionate, scientific point of view and through first-person accounts from survivors (legendary tenor Enrico Caruso was particularly traumatized), Winchester doesn't limit himself to the quake: The book is a travelogue of the author's recent trip across the North American plate—the gigantic shelf of rock that supports the continental U.S., Canada and Alaska. As he moves from Iceland (the plate's eastern edge) to the San Andreas fault, Winchester explores tantalizing bits of current geological thought, including the shape of the continents pre-Pangaea, how Yellow-stone National Park is actually the caldera of an enormous supervolcano, and when California should expect the Big One (some time before 2032). He doesn't lose track of the human toll caused by natural disasters along the way. "Though cities may on occasion lose their heart," he writes, "they seldom lose their soul; and San Francisco was no exception. All that its shattered, wearied, and suddenly impoverished citizens needed was leadership, someone to...show them the possibilities of remaking the place that they had called their home." Given recent events in the Gulf of Mexico, Winchester's book serves both as a warning and an inspiring tale of human perseverance.
NOVEL
By Laila Lalami
Moroccan-born Laila Lalami, creator of the hip literary blog Moorishgirl.com, is a captivating story-teller who drops us onto an inflatable boat ferrying illegal immigrants from Morocco to Spain. Lalami skillfully limns the dark recesses of the Muslim world and creates true-to-life characters, including Murad, a tout who hustles tourists; Halima, a battered wife fleeing her alcoholic husband and the slums of Casablanca; and Faten, a student and religious radical. With subtlety and grace the author explores the emotional complexities of the culture they're trying to escape—one that bears more resemblance to ours than we may imagine.
NOVEL
By David Maine
The Bible offers great plots, but character development can be spotty. Here Maine crawls inside the heads of the original dysfunctional family—Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. In this gently humorous take on their foibles (shepherd Abel can't do math, for example), Maine moves backward, beginning with Cain as an old man. Details, such as the rashes that Eve and Adam incurred by covering themselves with poorly chosen plant matter, make one of the oldest stories fresh. Maine works a minor miracle by affecting a tone that is as respectful as it is insightful.
MYSTERY
By Walter Mosley
REVIEWED BY SUE CORBETT
MYSTERY
Easy Rawlins's daughter Feather has a rare disease only treatment at a Swiss clinic can cure. Hard up for cash, Easy considers an armored-car heist with pal Mouse but opts for a lucrative missing-persons case: Lawyer's aide Cinnamon Cargill, it seems, has vanished into an enclave he knows inside out--South-Central L.A. The armored-car job might have been less trouble. Lined with corpses, the trail takes Easy up to San Francisco during its Summer of Love, and he becomes the next target. Snappy dialogue and brisk pacing mark this terrifically entertaining 10th installment, but it's Easy's introspection--about race in America, about his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, even about the way women like Cinnamon use sex as a tool--that elevates this from crime fiction to high art.
Fiction
THE MARCH by E. L. Doctorow
General William Tecumseh Sherman comes to vivid life in this kaleidoscopic tale about his legendary "scorched earth" sweep through the South.
FRIENDS, LOVERS, CHOCOLATE by Alexander McCall Smith
Second in "The Sunday Philosophy Club" series, starring Isabel Dalhousie, an editor with a reputation for "discreetly looking into things," this mystery's a charmer.
THE MYTH OF YOU AND ME by Leah Stewart
A smart, exceedingly well-written story about the mysteries at the heart of even the most intimate friendships between women. You'll be reading into the wee hours.
FAN-TAN by Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell
After languishing in the vault for years, this lurid tale of a dissolute adventurer and a lady gangster matching wits on the high seas turns out to be a peach. It's a smashing movie in book form.
DANCING IN THE DARK by Caryl Phillips
A wrenching tale set in the early 1900s and inspired by the life of Bert Williams, who struggled with his sense of self after becoming the first black star of the Ziegfeld Follies.
(Way) Down Under: With the success of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, books about the devil and his environs seem of the moment.
What would Satan Do? by Pat Byrnes
Clever cartoons "about right, wrong and very, very wrong," per the subtitle, from The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Go to Hell by Chuck Crisafulli and Kyra Thompson
A funny and even scholarly look at the origins of the ultimate hot spot for sinners.
Paul McCartney
Think it's all about the music for Sir Paul? Au contraire. His latest creation is a children's adventure story entitled High in the Clouds (written with Philip Ardagh, illustrated by Geoff Dunbar).
WHY A KIDS' BOOK? The short answer: I've got children. That kind of thing is part of my world.
AND THE LONG ANSWER? I've always loved Disney. I retained that sense of wonder into my non-kidhood. This was going to be a mock-up for a film until an editor at Faber & Faber said it should be a book.
AND SINCE OTHER CELEBS ARE DOING KIDS' BOOKS... That's the last thing in the world that occurs to me! I don't kind of think of myself as a celebrity—not foremost. I'm just someone putting a project together.
SO YOU'RE NOT TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH MADONNA? Someone said, "Is your book better than Madonna's?" I said, "Yeah." Then I thought, Uh-oh, I haven't read hers.
YOU DON'T LIKE TO SPEAK PUBLICLY ABOUT YOUR DAUGHTER BEATRICE (WHO'S ALMOST 2)—BUT CAN YOU SAY WHAT BOOKS SHE LIKE? High in the Clouds. It's all I let her read. But, seriously, she does like the characters. She also likes Winnie the Pooh.
HAVE YOU ALWAYS READ TO YOUR KIDS? Yeah. Things like the Narnia books. One lesson I learned: bite-size chapters. The worst is, you're in the middle of a chapter and you say, "Time for bed." Then you hear, "Noooo!"
- Contributors:
- Jonathan Durbin,
- Asra Nomani,
- Natalie Danford,
- Sue Corbett.
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!
