Coffee Talk . . . . .

It's four o'clock in the afternoon, you're desperate for a break from work, and you've got coffee on your mind. Do you order up a whipped mocha or something short, black, and bitter? I experienced a bit of both options last week when I read Elinor Lipman's "The Family Man" (iced vanilla frappe) and Denis Johnson's "Nobody Move" (thick and black in a paper cup) in rapid succession.

The books read like night and day, but they both depend upon the same literary element -- dialogue -- for their success. I love a book that lets me eavesdrop on private conversations, particularly when they are unusually artful (Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton -- why don't people craft their social exchanges like that any more?), witty, or eye-opening (check out "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid).

Elinor Lipman's "The Family Man," set in contemporary Manhattan, consists almost entirely of dialogue. Wordy characters abound in this fast-paced domestic farce: Henry Archer, a successful, recently retired gay attorney; Denise, his histrionic ex-wife from the distant past; Todd, a middle aged sales clerk with his eye on Henry; Thalia, an aspiring actress who seeks to reunite with her stepfather Henry after twenty years of estrangement -- all of these characters are bubbling over with something to say, and the result is a light yet gratifying verbal soufflé reminiscent of Grant/Hepburn screwball comedies of the 30's and 40's (for those of you under 35, think Hugh Grant/Renee Zellweiger in "Bridget Jones' Diary).

Denise's Xanax-induced "eulogy" of her deceased husband (third one and counting) is almost as entertaining as her verbal overtures to her new soul mate, Albert Einstein, a greyhound rescued from the racing circuit and formerly named "Kill Bill." Todd's "coming out" interchange with his house-coated Brooklynese mother left me rolling on the floor. The story is drenched with New York references both real (Zabar's, the Number 7 Line, a haute restaurant named "Per Se") and imagined that reinforce the urbane nature of the wordplay. Lipman's novel may fall on the light side of the literary scale, but a literary carmel macchiato can go down deliciously on a long summer afternoon, especially when it is intelligently crafted.

Denis Johnson's "Nobody Move," set in the depressed burgs of Northern California, also relies upon clever dialogue for its success, but the mood of the book is a polar departure from Lipman's light hearted romp. All of Johnson's characters are losers of one sort or another: Jimmy Luntz, a middle-aged nobody with a serious gambling debt; Juarez, Jimmy's creditor, a small-time crook who has assumed a false name and accent to conceal the fact that he is actually from the Middle East; Gambol, Juarez's lumbering "enforcer" who is sent to collect Jimmy's debt; and no less than two femme fatales: Anita Desilvera, a petite brunette with a drinking problem who joins Jimmy's fugitive run with a few plans of her own, and Mary, a "hefty blonde" who applies her nursing skills (and more) to an injured and morose Gambol in hopes of gaining some personal dividends in the bargain.

The book is an abrupt departure from Johnson's previous prize-winning book, "Tree of Smoke," and one gets the feeling that he is having fun with it. If Lipman's novel reads like "Bringing Up Baby," Johnson's book evokes the mood of "Double Indemnity." It's an homage to Chandler, Spillane, and James M. Cain. The dialogue is terse, cynical, and darkly humorous: "You're drunk." "Not yet, but I like how you think." The light banter that ricochets between characters in a volley of poker-faced one-liners is eerily at odds with the extremely violent chain of events, but Johnson works this internal contradiction to the book's advantage, a la "Pulp Fiction." Much of Johnson's dialogue echoes that of Richard Price ("Lush Life," "Clockers"), the current king of gritty urban dialogue, who also happens to be a script writer ("The Wire."). No wonder "Nobody Move" almost begs to be made into a movie.

Some readers who loved "Tree of Smoke" might consider "Nobody Move" to be a turn in the wrong direction for Denis Johnson, but if you enjoy noir fiction packed with one-liners that prompt a guilty smile, this book is for you (to be read with a strong cup of warmed over coffee in hand, of course.)

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

When is the last time that you willingly spent an entire week with someone you didn't like, even though you were free to escape at any moment without the slightest penalty? Never? Neither had I, until I picked up Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer prize winning book, "Olive Kitteridge," last month, and discovered that the longer I lingered with the book's abrasive main character, the less I wanted to leave her house.

Caustic, judgmental, and "honest" to a fault, Olive Kitteridge resembles the scary aunt that children run away from at family reunions -- the one who informs you that your legs are too fat to wear shorts and that you have Grandpa's nose. Even her body is a force of nature. Olive is unusually tall, and not in a willowy way. She slices through the small Maine town of Crosby like a sturdy ship of state, leaving battered feelings in her wake like so much hurricane flotsam.

Olive Kitteridge is a woman to be reckoned with, a fact that is not lost on her long suffering husband, Henry. He's a bespectacled, tentative man who loves his job as a pharmacist and awakens each morning with the belief that the world is a good place filled with good people. His workplace is a refuge where he can satisfy his hunger to make everyone happy. No one can make Olive happy, however, and the hairs on the back of Henry's neck tingle each evening as he drives home in anticipation of Olive's inevitable irritation with him or with Christopher, their only child.

Olive may be easy to dislike, but she's also fascinating. She delivers one-liners that are rude and yet strangely satisfying to read; they're the kind of remarks that we've all secretly wished we could say at some time. Olive: "How I hate a grown woman who says 'the little girls' room.' Is she drunk?" Further example: When Christopher leaves Olive alone with his recent (and many-times divorced) bride, Olive looks about and casually asks, "Where is your newest husband?" Her thoughts aren't something to be proud of, but we've all had them ("More gratifying, however, was the fact that . . . the story of Bill and Bunny's offspring was worse than their own.")

Olive isn't all bad, however, and the author is brilliant in her ability to elicit compassion from the reader as the complexity of Olive's personality is gradually developed. Olive's years with her son are filled with impatience and discord, but she is devastated and profoundly lonely when he chooses to move to California; "Pain, like a pinecone unfolding, seemed to blossom beneath her breastbone." She observes her future daughter-in-law gently stroke the hair of a young flower girl at Christopher's wedding, and acknowledges to herself that something is deeply wrong with her own inability to express physical affection. She is mortified when, after an evening dinner, she realizes that Christopher and Ann never informed her that she had food on her blouse, a "courtesy" extended to an aging old woman. Olive's former students (she was a junior high math teacher) remember her with respect and admiration. "Don't be scared of your hunger," she told one of them, "If you're scared of your hunger, you'll just be one more ninny like everyone else." These moments help the reader to empathize with, if not admire, Olive. In doing so, the reader expands his/her ability to realize that the complex mystery of others is never fully knowable.

This book is technically a series of short stories that are all connected in some way to Olive, but it reads more like a novel. In addition to being a character-driven tour de force, it is also a wise commentary on domestic relations, the ways of small towns, and the human condition in general. Take a trip to Crosby, Maine and spend the week with Olive. I think you'll be glad you did.

Paradise Lost

After struggling through the first five pages of Toni Morrison's newest book, "A Mercy," I was faced with a decision: Should I continue to slog forward in the hope that it would all eventually make sense, or cut my losses and immediately toss the book into the return bin at my local library (there was, after all, a waiting list)? I have been burned by Ms. Morrison before. An octogenarian friend of mine presented me with a copy of "Beloved" several years ago. He plopped the recently purchased book into my lap and said, "I'm damned if I know what this woman is talking about. See if you can decode it, and call me later." I attributed his confusion to the effects of advancing age and attacked the book with confidence, only to find it as exhaustingly opaque as he had. I gave up after about one hundred pages.

"A Mercy" is a short book - about 170 compact pages, and I decided to stay the course. I'm glad I did. Ms. Morrison's language shifts from an elliptical stream-of-consciousness exercise in the first chapter to an intelligible and poetic narrative that sweeps the reader into the beauty and tragedy of 17th century America before it was America. Her ensuing prose combines a mystical, dreamlike quality with a razor sharp conveyance of nature's immediacy. Morrison leads her reader into a world that is at once mythic and yet acutely real, a literary version of Bierstadt's wilderness paintings.

The quest for belonging, the desire to forge a circle of interconnection between human and human, is a central theme of the book. Almost everyone is an orphan of some sort. Jacob Vaark has scraped his fortune together in the New World by employing the energy and wiles that enabled him to survive as a solitary street urchin in Europe. His wife, Rebekka, was shipped across the ocean to Jacob, sight unseen, by her father, who was only too glad to reduce his familial burden by one hungry 16-year old. Lina, Rebekka's Native American housemaid and farmworker, has lost her entire village to smallpox. Sorrow, an African orphan, has been taken in by Vaark after her rescue, half drowned, from a nearby river estuary. Florens, the main character of the story, has found her way into Vaark's household by default, having been accepted by Vaarck as "payment" for a Virginia slave trader's debt, but only after Floren's mother (the originally intended "payment") begged him to do so.

The motherless, disconnected state of Morrison's characters is made more poignant by the boundless wilderness that they inhabit. Breathtaking, seemingly endless, impersonal in its beauty and in its cruelty, the New World itself is a character in the book. Awe inspiring and yet merciless, nature has a leveling effect on social stratification when survival is at stake. Smallpox, malnutrition, an unfortunate fall that breaks a leg -- such misfortunes are no respecter of class or legal status. People live or die as a group, and the women on Vaark's failing farm form a friendship of sorts as they realize that coordinated effort from dawn until dusk is necessary in order to prevent nature from reclaiming their fragile foothold on the land.

Lina, Sorrow, and Florens, however, are fully aware that their cobbled-together coexistence is no substitute for social equality and the right to seek and maintain the bonds of family, a goal that each of them hungers for in her own way. The story has twists and turns that I won't reveal here, but it is safe to say that slavery's devastating effects on the human psyche run through the book and Vaarck's wilderness like a tainted river. The hopelessness and humiliation that accompany Floren's loss of control over her own body and destiny are tragedies that are compounded by her unconscious internalization of slavery itself. A free black ironworker rebuffs Florens' advances with a stinging rebuke: he wants her to go because she is a slave. When Florens responds, as if slapped, "What is your meaning? I am a slave because Sir trades for me," he replies: "No. You have become one. . . Your head is empty and your body is wild . . . Own yourself, woman, and leave us be."

Each side of the ornate iron gate that Jacob has commissioned the black journeyman to fashion for Jacob's newly completed mansion is topped by the image of a writhing serpent. When closed, the two serpent heads merge to form a flower blossom. Is nature the serpent that must be tamed in Vaarck's garden, or is man the serpent in the New World's Eden? Morrison invites you ponder this and other questions as you immerse yourself in this satisfying 2-night read.