Archive for August, 2012
I Review “The Scent of Scandal”
Pittman portrays Kovach, the Adventurer, Selby’s staff and others as backstabbers who out of greed, jealousy, fear or egotism take sides and turn against each other. Two of the principals even planned to do reality TV shows about orchids. There’s also courtroom drama and a mysterious death that may have been suicide, accident or murder. What more could you ask for?
Click the image below to read my review of The Scent of Scandal in the August 26 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
You can buy The Scent of Scandal at Barnes & Noble.
Nicholson Baker’s “The Way the World Works”
The essays in “Life” are mini-meditations on Baker’s life. In the allegorical “String,” Baker recalls the joy and challenge of flying a kite as a child and always wanting more from the kite, for it to fly higher. Baker plugs his phone-sex novel “Vox,” (1992) in a tiny and droll reminiscence on his fascination for the telephone; in another piece he makes treasure hunting at the dump sound thrilling.
Click the image below to read my review of Baker’s The Way the World Works in the August 19 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
You can buy Nicholson Baker’s The Way the World Works at Barnes & Noble.
I Review “A Case For Solomon”
Authors Tal McThenia and Margaret Dunbar Cutright piece together their tale from sometimes-dubious newspaper stories, reporters’ and stenographers’ notes, family letters, and other surviving official documents. And they succeed in pulling together a fascinating narrative about an ostensible kidnapping and a 90-year case of mistaken identity, fully steeped in the flavor of the era. Theirs is a narrative about the fierceness of parental love, the flaws of the legal system, and ultimately about how we derive our own sense of who we are.
Click the image below to read my review of A Case for Solomon in the August 8, 2012, edition of the Boston Globe.
You can buy A Case For Solomon at Barnes & Noble
