Ties that Bind: A Review of "The Believers" by Zoe Heller

One of the unanticipated joys of viewing a harrowing movie filled with bizarre behavior and dysfunctional characters is the clean wave of normalcy that descends upon the moviegoer as he/she trudges up the murky walkway toward the sweet light of day. "I may have my moments," the viewer muses, "but that woman was CRAZY."

I experienced a similar feeling when I completed the last page of Zoe Heller's "The Believers." I approached the rest of the day with light-footed elation, deliciously free of the self-imposed angst borne by each member of Heller's beleaguered NYC family, the Litvinoffs.

The patriarch of Heller's fictional family is Joel Litvinoff, a self-described radical leftist attorney and civil rights worker who attained his national celebrity through tireless work on numerous high-profile legal defense cases. Heller reveals the least about Joel, who suffers a major stroke in the first pages of the book and remains in a coma thereafter, but that is probably to his advantage, since the more you know about this Manhattan family, the less you like them.

Joel's battles against the establishment may have originally been fueled by altruistic ardor, but Heller hints that Joel has become enamored with his own celebrity in recent years. He needs constant public attention to energize his leftwing passions and enhance his cult-like status, a status that in turn facilitates his favorite hobby: he's a womanizer. One would like to feel sorry for his wife, Audrey, but she has quite a few flaws of her own. It's highly probable that she married Joel to escape the dismal fate endured by her English parents, who live in a tatty Chertsey apartment that smells of boiled cabbage and cat pee. No longer the attractive and saucy feminista of her youth, Audrey has become abrasive, foul-mouthed, and bitter in middle age. Her sole friend, Jean, endures verbal attacks from Audrey that would incite bitch-slaps from anyone less saintly.

The Litvinoff children are no sweethearts, either. The oldest child, Karla, is an overweight social worker who is maddeningly weak-spined and complacent in the face of outrageous verbal abuse from Audrey and rude inattention from her husband. She may as well print "Kick Me" on her behind. Karla's sister, Rosa, is a stiff, self-righteous do-gooder who has turned to helping urban girls in Harlem after becoming disenchanted with Castro's Cuba, where she lived for a time. As Rosa's job at "Girlpower" slowly sours (in truth, she doesn't like the girls, not even one), she begins to flirt with Orthodox Judaism, a move that is sure to inflame Audrey, a militant atheist. The youngest Litvinoff, an adoptee named Lenny, is a drug-using lay-about who somehow manages to wheedle money and favors from Audrey in inverse relation to his bad behavior; the more outrageous his transgressions, the more Audrey gives him, a fact that rankles his sisters and consigns him to the status of permanent manchild.

"The Believers" can be read as a scathing social satire, but Heller's underlying themes are nothing to smirk at. Each character is trapped inside a forced persona that he or she can't seem to shed. Joel has become so dependent upon national notoriety that he is determined to chase it to the point of exhaustion (and stroke). Audrey has played the role of adoring wife and quirky iconoclast for so long that she is totally at a loss as to how to define herself when Joel's transgressions come to light. Karla is boxed into a social work job and a miserable marriage because Joel and Audrey convinced her at an early age that she was "the nurturer" in the family. Rosa has modeled her adult life after her father, only to discover that his ideology has left her adrift and longing for something more. Lenny has allowed himself to sink into a destructive co-dependency with his mother that threatens to kill him unless he cuts and runs altogether.

Each family member seeks an external anchor, a belief system that will reveal his or her raison d'etre once it is adopted and internalized. Heller subtly explores whether such a quest is an effective strategy or a harmful barrier to true self realization. Each Litvinoff resolves his or her existential crisis differently, and in refusing to reveal her bias one way or another, Heller forces her readers to address the issue for themselves. "The Believers" is a tragicomic and thought-provoking book that will leave you feeling relieved that you're not headed to the Litvinoff household for dinner any time soon.

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:" A Literary Trifecta

In "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," Junot Diaz artfully weaves three distinct narrative threads into a prize-winning novel that offers three books for the price of one.

The novel's main character, a massively overweight, nerdy Dominican American whose romantic passion for women is simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, is one of the most original characters to appear in fiction in recent years. The reader first meets Oscar at the tender (and relatively thin) age of seven. Oscar's prepubescent love life is blossoming; he's romancing two girls at once, and his reputation as a schoolyard Romeo has spread throughout the Dominican barrio of his New Jersey town. His bliss is cut short, however, when the girls refuse to share his affection and force him to choose between them. The victor promptly dumps him for another suitor, and Oscar's love life begins a downward spiral that will persist into a dateless and despondent adulthood.

Depression prompts Oscar to overeat and lose himself in comic books, fantasy novels, and marathon rounds of Dungeons and Dragons. Despite the repeated efforts of his sister Lola and his best friend Yunior to educate Oscar about the proper way to seduce the opposite sex, he stubbornly persists with obsessive personal habits and un-hip hobbies that guarantee his lovelorn isolation. College finds Oscar holed up in his dorm room, chubbier than ever, writing what he hopes will be the next "Lord of the Rings" and fantasizing about his latest crush. Readers will find themselves fuming at Oscar's hapless inertia while also hoping that something wonderful will finally fall his way. What can life offer a bounteously romantic soul wrapped in an unappealing body? What should it offer? What do we owe to ourselves and others regarding such issues? These deep questions, together with Diaz's skillful and original development of Oscar's character, could carry the book without the aid of any additional material.

Nevertheless, "Oscar Wao" offers the reader a second story line that is equally engaging. Many readers may find Diaz's exposition of the complex relationship between Oscar's mother, Beli, and his sister, Lola, to be the most gripping element of the book. Beli's violent verbal and physical attacks on her own daughter are maddeningly inexplicable until Diaz gradually informs the reader about Beli's past life in Dominica, a tragic tale that could fill a book of its own. Beli and her daughter are oil and water in some respects (Beli's romantic entanglements have bordered on the fatally obsessive, while Lola's approach to "love" is about as cool and calculating as it gets), but it is their wild tenacity of spirit that locks them into combat; each despises the other for a stubborn ferocity that she refuses to recognize in herself. Diaz explores this mother/daughter relationship expertly, guiding the reader through Beli and Lola's tangled web of love, fear, resentment, and hope with a story that could stand alone on its own merits.

That being said, Diaz offers the reader yet a third narrative lens through which to enjoy the book. "Oscar Wao" offers an expansive, multi-generational history of the Dominican Republic in general and an account of the diabolical 30-year reign of President/dictator Rafael Trujillo Molina in particular. From the time Trujillo rose to power in 1930 until he was assassinated in 1961, he ruled the country with a ruthless cruelty that was feared throughout the Caribbean. Oscar and his family are fictional characters, but Trujillo was real, and Diaz doesn't pull any punches as he depicts the ruinous effects of Trujillo's rule upon the Dominican people. Trujillo's tentacles reach out to adversely affect every member of Oscar's family, touching everyone from Oscar's scholarly Grandfather Abelard to Oscar himself, who finds himself in a deadly confrontation with Trujillo's legacy long after the man himself is dead.

This book, a well-deserving winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is an excellent choice for your to-read list in 2009, whether you're interested in exploring Dominican history, mother/daughter relationships, or the imaginative, love-addled brain of a Star Wars fan named Oscar.

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.

Summer Reading: "Mistress of the Art of Death," by Ariana Franklin

Some novels engage their readers with a single element -- plot, character development, etc. -- that carries the book from cover to cover. Other novels succeed on multiple levels that invite the reader to dig into the narrative like a rich layer cake. If you prefer the latter type of book, "Mistress of the Art of Death" should be added to your summer reading (or listening -- more about that later) list.

On its face, "Mistress of the Art of Death" is a straightforward historical mystery set in 12th century England. As the story begins, the reader finds King Henry II juggling several political hot potatoes. He must dampen hot tempers that continue to flare up in the aftermath of Archbishop Thomas a Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral, and cool his countrymen's growing resentment towards his decision to offer refuge to European Jews who have been banished from the Kingdom of France. To top it all off, someone is murdering the children of Cambridge. One by one, their young bodies are discovered, bearing evidence of unspeakable atrocities; atrocities which, according to the parochial mentality of the local populace, could only be committed by those "others," the unholy Jews.

Two Jews have already been brutally executed, and Henry faces a dilemma. His decision to offer refuge to European Jewry was not entirely motivated by humanitarian reasons. Church law in England forbids the loaning of money -- usury -- and Henry is well aware that the extension of credit drives the national economy and fills the crown's tax coffers. Ethnic tensions are so high that all lending activity by the Jews (whose religion permits such activity) has ground to a stop in Cambridge, and if the senseless violence spreads, a medieval recession looms. Luckily, Henry's cousin, the King of Sicily, has access to the best modern medical experts in the world, courtesy of the medical school in Salerno, which employs scientific advances achieved by the Islamic world. The King of Sicily commissions Adelia Aguilar, the school's top student of "causes of death" (a medieval CSI agent of sorts) to help Henry uncover the true perpetrator of the serial murders. Adelia, accompanied by the King's best "fixer," Simon of Naples, and a towering Muslim bodyguard named Mansur, sets off for England, and the adventure begins.

Now, for the layer cake: Ms. Franklin has created a literary tale that includes superb character development, an intricate plot with several eye-popping surprises, sensory descriptions that encompass the reader with the sights, sounds, and smells of 12th century England, fascinating historical details, and an understated commentary on ethnic conflict, science and superstition, Christianity and Islam, Jewish persecution, women's rights, and the rule of law. She even weaves a few romantic threads into her story with a touch of wry humor that is refreshing.

Her characters will remain with you after you read the book: Simon, whose love for his wife of many years burns with a fervor that only increases with age; Mansur, whose chronic fear of excess fat (the frequent fate of a eunuch) conflicts with his budding crush on a middle-aged cook whose food is a slice of heaven; Ulf, a scrappy urchin straight out of Dickens; the local prior, who suffers from a personal medical issue that only Adelia can remedy; rotund Sir Rowley Picot, the much-reviled local tax collector who proves to be more than he appears; and, of course, Adelia herself, whose humanity, clear-headed logic, and stubborn doggedness in the face of ignorance make her an ideal and complex heroine.

I listened to the unabridged recorded version of the book, and I highly recommend it. The reader, Rosalyn Landor, has a rich, well-modulated voice that brings the book's dialog alive for the listener. She varies her voice and accent for each character, and gives the recorded book the aura of a well-acted play that you don't want to end. Luckily, this novel is the first of a series that should be well worth following. An excellent discussion of the book, complete with timeline, author's notes, etc. can be found at www.mistressoftheartofdeath.com.

A Page Too Far

There are four movies that I'd love to see next weekend -- The Reader, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- but I can only spare the time to see one of them. Obviously, a bit of cinematic triage is in order. I favor The Wrestler over The Reader by a tad, but The Reader was released first, and my inner stickler enjoys viewing things in their proper order. Revolutionary Road sounds riveting, but I'm vaguely leery of a movie pairing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio (sorry, Titanic fans). The obvious choice is probably Benjamin Button -- it received thirteen Academy Award nominations -- but I'm embarrassed to say that the length of the movie - almost three hours -- gives me pause. Benjamin Button may age backwards during the course of the movie, but I'm pretty sure my rear end will be aging forward in a fashion that will render it numb by the time the closing credits roll, and I'm not sure I'm ready to make that kind of commitment.

What does any of this have to do with books (other than the "curious" fact that Benjamin Button was ostensibly inspired by one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories)? I've known many people who routinely avoid movies exceeding two hours in length, even when the movies at issue are, by all accounts, well worth the time. No amount of cajoling will force them into a movie theater for longer than the standard 120 minutes, period. Although I tend to reproach this absolutist attitude by time-skimping moviegoers, it's possible I'm their literary counterpart when it comes to reading "big books."

You know the kind of books I'm talking about. In my world, books with four hundred to five hundred pages should be approached with caution, books with more than six hundred pages fall squarely into a personal red zone, and if minuscule print is part of the mix, an alarm begins to go off in my head. I may not realize it at the time, but there's no way I'm reading that book. That's not to say, however, that I don't try. Take, for example, my earnest attempt to read The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, last year. The Name of the Wind, the first volume in a projected three-volume fantasy series entitled The Kingkiller Chronicles, received astounding reviews in the year of its release (2007). Orson Scott Card and Ursula LeGuin fawned over it, fantasy sites immediately pegged it as THE fantasy debut of the year, some reviewers dared to make favorable comparisons with Lord of the Rings, and others crowned Rothfuss as Robert Jordan's heir. If I was going to dive into a fantasy novel (not my usual fare), this was the book to read, despite the fact that it weighed in at 897 pages.

Initially, things went swimmingly. The first page of the book swept me in with a cadenced lyricism and poetic weight that took my breath away. As I continued reading the book for the next few days, I continued to marvel at the author's ability to create vivid images and complex characters in a world that was totally alien, and yet strangely similar, to my own. The plot was engaging, the writing was wonderful, and then, about two weeks into the book, I caught myself performing an act that presaged doom. I paused my reading, turned the book on end, and measured my progress on an "inches" basis. I estimated that I was about one quarter of the way through the book. Not content to make do with a rough estimate, I took note of the page I was on and performed a bit of arithmetic. Not good. As I continued reading the book, I gradually began concentrating more on my "progress" than on the story. I returned the book, unfinished, within the week.*

David Foster Wallace's untimely death in September of 2008 catapulted his mammoth novel, The Infinite Jest, (1996) back into the literary limelight. Despite its gargantuan proportions (the paperback edition is 1088 pages), I decided to give it a try. I returned it to the library after two days. The first sentence of a Publisher's Weekly review of the book says it all: "With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel . . . will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis." (I can't say I wasn't warned.) I found myself wondering whether the novel's title was not so much a title as a description of Wallace's joke on the hapless reader. Infinite jest, indeed.

Never one to place much value on past experience, I recently checked out all 912 pages of Robert Bolano's "2666", published posthumously in November of 2008. Once again, I was taken in by glowing reviews; how can you resist descriptors like "astonishing . . . a world-encompassing masterpiece . . . the finest novel of this century . . . "? Even those reviewers who felt morally compelled to warn prospective readers of the novel's deadly length were positive in their assessment. Publisher's Weekly dubbed it a "brilliant behemoth" and Barnes and Noble called it a 900-page cinderblock of a book, but in a good way. For me, it was mostly in a bad way. I gave the book to another reader after a week of earnest attempts to wade into the water and swim the distance. (In all fairness to Bolano, he initially intended for the book to be published in five separate parts over just as many years. In all fairness to me, I don't think I should feel guilty about returning a book that Mr. Bolano thought I would need five years to read.)

I tend to be skeptical about people who say they've read and enjoyed books of mind-numbing length, and apparently I'm not the only one. I remember reading an article (Books section of the Sunday New York Times??) about The Crimson Petal and the White, a 960-page historical novel by Michel Faber. The book enjoyed effusive reviews when it came out in 2003, and apparently it was talked up as "the intelligent person's historical novel" in every NYC cocktail party worth attending. The article's author contended that upon close investigation, it could be determined that none of the book's devotees had actually read the book. They were simply choristers in a literary echo chamber; some had begun reading the book, others had read the reviews and intended to read the book, and so forth. I don't doubt the writer's experience in the least. I am particularly suspicious of people who tout lengthy books that are known for being intellectually brilliant and/or a vanguard of innovative literary expression. I may believe that you enjoyed (and completed) Gone With the Wind, (hardback, 1048 pages), but I'm going to have to take your same statement about Ulysses (paperback, 816 pages) with a grain of salt. I don't see how a book like that can be anything else but excruciating. Add around 500 more pages to it, and I think you've come up with a diabolical alternative to Gitmo.

That being said, I welcome your suggestions about any "big books" you have read that were well worth the time. Ever the optimist, I'm currently on the waiting list to borrow Anathem (Neal Stephenson's latest fantasy novel, purported to be brilliant by professional reviewers and, more importantly, my own daughter) from my local library. Page count: 960. Here we go again.
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*Most science fiction/fantasy readers have an ability to deal with lengthy books, and if you are fantasy fan, I recommend that you check Rothfuss's novel out tomorrow. (My daughter, an avid fan of Neal Stephenson, has patiently explained to me why many science fiction/fantasy works are so long. When an author creates an entirely new and unique universe, he/she can no longer call upon the reader to "fill in the blanks." The author is obliged to fill in every detail of the unprecedented mental canvas he/she is creating, and that takes more descriptive space than usual).