By John Grisham
Grisham has ventured beyond his trademark legal fare before (think A Painted House, his lawyer-free novel about 1950s Arkansas farm life), but this time he heads toward Clancy territory, tackling hot-button topics like homeland security and intelligence blunders with mixed results. At the urging of the CIA, Joel Backman, a 52-year-old Washington power broker serving 20 years for treason (he tried to sell control of the world's best surveillance satellites to another country), is suddenly pardoned by the outgoing President. The CIA flies Joel to Italy and gives him a new life—but then secretly leaks his location to his foreign foes who want retribution for the plan going awry.
Like a meticulous magician debuting a fancy trick, Grisham takes great care creating his setup and makes sure the first few plot turns amaze. He paints a mesmerizing picture of Washington power circles and cutthroat political revenge, but eventually the story loses its charm. An unbelievable love connection and a dry exploration of Italian language and culture seem out of place and slow suspense to a crawl. By the time the plot starts running again, readers may be uninterested in keeping up. Even when outside his comfort zone, Grisham is better than most thriller writers. But this book may leave fans wishing he'd head back to court.
NOVEL
By Haruki Murakami
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Murakami, author of eight novels including The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, possesses an imagination so bright that you shouldn't look too closely—just bask in it. Inspired by François Truffaut's runaway-teen film The 400 Blows, the Oedipus myth and the Brothers Grimm, this otherworldly tale alternates between the converging quests of a teenager who calls himself Kafka and Nakata, an old man. Each leaves Tokyo and hits the road to face a spooky gauntlet of symbols: Kafka believes he is destined to kill his father, who indeed turns up dead, and sleep with his lost mother, possibly the librarian he meets who wrote a hit song called "Kafka on the Shore." Meanwhile Nakata, a simpleton who communicates with cats, discovers he can also make it rain leeches. Then things get weird.
Murakami conjures a dreamscape that can be interpreted many ways, and the ending doesn't wrap everything up. For each reader who quits the book with a brain ache, though, there will be another who devours it five times. The list of cult classics is about to get a new entry.
FICTION
Women in Second Adulthood
By Suzanne Braun Levine
A you-go-girl manual for the menopause crowd, Levine's book will be welcomed by women who want to make the most of their lives from age 50 on. One of her revelations: Our brains experience a post-50 growth spurt that may make us better at judgment calls. She encourages readers to let go of "shoulda-coulda-woulda thinking" and, if they're contemplating career changes, to decide whether they actually like working with people or only think so because that's how they've been socialized.
True, it's not all breaking news, and coining terms like the "F—-You Fifties" is likely to turn off conservative readers. Too bad, because Levine's perspective is welcome and her anecdotes inspiring. Take the one about the widow who tells her daughter that she's joining the workforce: "The thing I like doing most is being a mother...so I'm going to be a nanny!"
NONFICTION
By Peter Fenton
In this story about his journey from shill to grifter, Fenton explains how his high school friend Jackie Barron, whose family owned a carnival, was responsible for his descent into petty crime. Describing Barron's mid-'60s demimonde, Fenton introduces characters like the Ghost and Double-O and terms like "Georgia Gig Shot" (a euphemism for separating a sucker from his wallet). As Fenton develops from math nerd into full-time carny, he forgets his football aspirations and begins to dress as a sleaze, replete with faux-alligator loafers. In depicting his eccentric family, the author's wit crackles: "Mom often smiled at odd times, as if she was guessing when it was appropriate...The same seemed true of her other displays of emotion." But though it's an engrossing read, the loss of the author's innocence lends the memoir a dirty feel, and readers won't be able to stroll through a carnival again without a shudder.
MEMOIR
By Susan Coll
Jane Kramer is in a midlife rut in the road—and that road is Rockville Pike, the suburban D.C. address of the not-so-fine furniture store she runs with her husband, Leon. Coping with an unruly teenager, misguided flirtations and "a hankering for sheet cakes" that have settled around Leon's middle, this desperate housewife feels adrift. Her refuge is the grave site of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is buried off the Pike in a Rockville, Md., cemetery. There, she says, it's "possible to hear the drone of traffic as the churning of a sea." Coll's wacky-dreary vision has a fun-house-mirror effect: familiar, yet stretched beyond recognition. During one graveyard visit, Kramer quotes Fitzgerald's epitaph, which happens to be a line from The Great Gatsby. In that novel, a green light looms large. On Rockville Pike the lights blink mostly yellow and red. You're looking ahead for fun and insight, but instead you idle, feeling more weird than warm toward the characters stuck with you there.
NOVEL
By Ron McLarty
Smithy Ide, the narrator of this first novel, is an obese, chain-smoking middle-aged alcoholic who works in a Rhode Island factory that manufactures action figures. In the novel's early chapters, a series of disasters claims his few resources; when he receives a letter informing him that his psychotic sister has died in California, he hops onto his bicycle and sets off on a cross-country pilgrimage. There's nothing startling about McLarty's voice or vision, but his hero's loopy, self-deprecating appeal may enable him to pedal his way into readers' hearts.
SOUNDS OFF Malcolm Gladwell
The author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking explains the potency—and the pitfalls—of the instant judgments we all make.
ARE SNAP DECISIONS UNDERRATED? We assume the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it. But there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of analysis.
WHAT KIND OF JUDGMENTS ARE BEST MADE FAST? In matters of taste, people lose something by taking a long time. With romantic choices, for example, you know whom you're attracted to in the first two seconds. When you try to rationalize it, you do a much worse job.
SO OVERTHINKING IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE? Often. In emergency rooms, doctors act in the moment. And we know cops make fewer errors when they're alone than with a partner. With decision making, there's real value in having a smaller information flow.
DO SOME PEOPLE MAKE BETTER SNAP DECISIONS THAN OTHERS? If you have experience with something, you can trust your gut feelings more. A mom may look at her child and know instantly if something's wrong. That's called women's intuition, but it's based on experience.
WHEN SHOULD WE SECOND-GUESS OUR GUT REACTIONS?
People's appearances can trigger unwarranted conclusions—that a tall handsome man will have courage and integrity, say. We should value rapid cognition but also be aware of when it leads us astray.
- Contributors:
- Beth Perry,
- Kyle Smith,
- Debby Waldman,
- Jonathan Durbin,
- Moira Bailey,
- Francine Prose.
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!
