Secretly pleased

Tatiana de Rosnay's name appeared on my to-read list. I don't know how, but it was probably because somebody recommended her best seller, Sarah's Key. When we stopped at the Amery (WI) library on the way to Sidetrack, I didn't find Sarah's Key, but I did find de Rosnay's newer book, A Secret Kept.

I really liked reading this book.

de Rosnay grew up in the US and the UK (her degree from the University of East Anglia was in English literature) and lives in Paris. There's no translator listed in the book, so I assume that de Rosnay translated her French book, Boomerang, herself. The language is very American and very descriptive. In fact, her descriptions -- of people, emotions, clothing, rooms, houses, and Parisian neighborhoods are very suggestive. They often brought realistic images to my mind. In fact, de Rosnay's adeptness in describing relationships is part of what makes this novel work:

I see Pauline appear over her [his daughter's] shoulder. Her best friend since they were small. Except that Pauline now looks like a twenty-year-old. A minute ago she was a scraggy little thing. Now it is impossible not to notice her full bosom and womanly hips. I don't hug her they way I used to when she was a kid. In fact, I don't even kiss her on the cheek. We sort of wave at each other from a polite distance.

The story in the book is about family and family secrets. The narrator is a forty-something son of an old, rich Parisian family. His sister is important as are his children and some of their friends. But the story is really about a huge family secret involving the narrator's mother, who died 30 years before the setting of the story, and about the hard work required for a group of people to be family.

de Rosnay theatrically weaves the stories of past and present, of generations and places, of habits and family "rules" into a book I didn't want to put down and didn't want to end. Every character in the stories is respected by de Rosnay, even the ones I didn't think deserved it. Neither suffering nor happiness was denied characters. In the end, that made the book better. So did the fact that not every loose end was tied up and not every story was complete when the book ended. If this were a television soap opera, there would be many story lines to follow in the future.

The book jacket says that de Rosnay has written ten novels. Only two have been published in the USA. There are probably more novels to come to America. I will look for Sarah's Key and for future books with Tatiana de Rosnay's name on the covers.

Have you read A Secret Kept? Tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it by sending us a note.

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• The author's web site
• The author's Facebook page
• Kate Ayers review at Book Reporter
• Jocelyn McClurg's review at USA Today

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Dale Stahl wrote

Since basketball season is done and the rush to Advanced Placement exams is just beginning, Dale had time to drop a note to this little bit of the world.

Jo Nesbø is really good. His main character is a Nowegian detective, flawed but liekable, Harry Hole, alcoholic and a guy you just like despite it. Series of books starting with The Bat, which I have never found, including The Redbreast and The Devil's Star and The Snowman. Loved those three and highly recommend them.

I like this guy (Hole) better than Mankel’s Wallander (at least the later versions; Mankel getting a bit pedantic in his old age!)

The latest book by Nesbø is The Headhunters. My wife is currently enjoying it and I am eager to grab it when she is done! Not Harry Hole but intriguing suspense.

Read a great book by Fred Vargas featuring Commisarie Adamsburg, French Detective. Liked him, liked his team, liked the story of a monstrous old superstitious belief fueling a modern killer, and am going to read some of the older books in this series. French cops, like in Louise Penny’s novels in Montreal area, are always eating and drinking something delectable; makes one want to sip a drink and have a snack while reading!

Finally, if no one has done this, I highly highly recommend reading all of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet’s works. The Thin Man, outstanding period piece. Great dialogue, great mystery great picture of America in 1932 or so. Chandler is the definitive hard boiled mystery writer. Philip Marlowe is my hero. I love every one of those books. The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely. Dialogue amazing, stories intriguing, must reads for any mystery fan!

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Bird Loomis and I wrote about The Snowman and Jo Nesbø, and we both liked it. So did most critics.

Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, aka Fred Vargas

 

I'll have to add Fred Vargas to my "to read" list. When I saw her photo, she wasn't the Fred I expected to see. She's also an archaeologist.

As for the classics, I remember well going back and reading The Thin Man books. I think it was in the days of actually-printed-on-paper-and-mailed newsletter, Reading. It was a treat as are the old movies. And the old movies of the Chandler books are also wonderful. I second the recommendations.

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Macro- and micro-novels

Many years ago I worked my way through a macro-novel called Centennial by James Michener. It was the kind of marcro-novel that Michener became famous for. It was one of a number of macro-novels I plowed through long ago. [The last one was probably Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. Or maybe Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (okay, it wasn't a novel, but it read like one).]

By macro-novel, I mean a novel (or history) that takes a wide view of "life, the universe, and everything." (See Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything. Michener begins his historical novel about Colorado with geology and lots of anthropology. Follett writes about the generations who built a cathedral. Tuchman writes about the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, religious politics, peasant uprisings, aristocratic politics, and the Little Ice Age. They are huge books that include enough ideas, characters, and stories to hold my interest for a long time.

I thought of Centennial twice recently. The first time was when I had a bad cold and cough. I went looking for tea and the local grocery store didn't carry lapsong souchong. I had fond memories of lapsong souchong from the time I read Centennial. Michener described how French fur traders in 18th century Colorado carried bricks of lapsong souchong. So I had to try it. I found it easily, but I was living in the big city then. Now, I'm shopping in a small town grocery store. Oh well, I found a soothing tea that worked to relieve my throat.

The second time I thought of Centennial was when I began reading Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party. The reason I thought of Michener's tome was that Vreeland's book is a micro-novel as opposed to Michener's macro-novel. Almost everything in the first half of the book took place in the head of Auguste Renoir. Vreeland paints some images of late 19th century Paris and illustrates some characteristics of Renoir, but there isn't much in the way of stories.

By the time I got to the middle of the book, I was tired of reading about Renoir's struggles to gather his models, get them to sit still, manage his love life, worry about the light... I would much rather have read a treatise about Renoir's painting or an analysis of Luncheon of the Boating Party. I would have much preferred to go to Washington, D.C. to see the painting and some of its contemporaries.

I quit reading the book and put it on the pile to be returned to the library.

Jeanette Hohman is a 92-year old acquanintance and reader of this blog (when I send her print outs). She asked not long ago why I read so few things besides mysteries. I replied that I was lazy and that mysteries are usually easy (Kate Atkinson, perhaps an exception). I should have added that I read a lot of serious stuff about government and politics -- including lots of news from six selected countries (you're probably fortunate that I write about that on a separate blog). And, I should have added that experiences like trying to read micro-novels like Vreeland's, Connie Willis' science fiction, Per Petterson's micro-novel, and even James Gleick's The Information, send me back to mysteries.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick up the Charles Todd mystery I got at the library. But, thinking about the macro-novels that I still have fond memories of, maybe I should devote a couple months to reading to something like Follett's World Without End (I've heard it's good). I've also heard good things about Edward Rutherford's London (a sequel to Sarum, another macro-novel which was based on an exhibit I saw at the City of London Museum).

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• Susan Vreeland's web site
• Donna Bird's review at Greenman Review
• Kathy Jones' review at Blog Critics
• Kristin Merrihew's review at Mostly Fiction

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The return of the philosophical rodent

About two and a half years ago, Dan Conrad wrote on Facebook, that The Elegance of the Hedgehog was the best book he'd read in 2008. He didn't write to tell us why, but I picked up his comment here and quoted a review from The Washington Post.


I don't recall that Dan ever explained his preference, but did mention the book by Muriel Barbery a time or two in conversations since.

So, I was heading off for a visit to a granddaughter. That meant 10-11 hours on the road. As usual when facing a road trip, I visited the Northfield library. When I saw the CD version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I checked it out. I listened to half of it on the way to Jim, Ange, and Jaime's. I listened to some of the rest on the way home.

I know why Dan liked this book. The author is a professor of philosophy. The book is full of philosophy. Ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and metaphysics. There's very little plot. In fact, one English marketer noted that the book wouldn't do well in the UK because people there want plot more than anything else.

I'm a plot fan too. So I had trouble with the book. I don't think I could have read it. For me the philosophical processes of analyzing alternatives and meaning are tedious. I do understand why and how such cogitation can be appealing. It's just not appealing to me. While driving down the road, I could let the philosophical verbiage go in one ear and out the other. When I listened to the last two CDs at home, I kept falling asleep.

BUT, did you notice that I finished listening to the whole book? When I awoke and found that I'd slept through a track, I went back and listened to what I'd missed. Why? None of the tedious philosophizing was imperious or pompous. None of it was trivial. In fact, it was all tied to the "reality" Barbery created in the book. There were far too many big issues raised for me to keep track of. I think I could have spent a month with this book if I was of a mind to think through all the ideas she raised. But, I'm a plot fan.

AND, the three main characters are just amazing. There's a middle-aged Parisian concierge in an upscale condo building. She acts like the dumb country bumpkin the residents expect her to be. But in her back room she's reading Kant and Tolstoy, listening to Purcell and Mahler, and studying 17th century Dutch still life paintings. In her spare time, she's seen all the arty films of Yasujiro Ozu.

There's a friendless 11-year-old resident of the building, who is equally bright and forced to keep that quality under cover to satisfy her bourgeoise family. (She gets to narrate a third of the book through her journals.)

And then there's the new guy in the building. He's a rich Japanese businessman who, while being a successful importer, is also a secret intellectual, whose tastes in art and philosophy match those of his new concierge.

And then there's the ending. Eleven year old Paloma says, "I learned 'never.' It's awful!"

Have you read The Elegance of the Hedgehog? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or, if you read it, don't forget to tell us about your experience.

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• Caryn James' review in The New York Times
• Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post
• Why The Elegance of the Hedgehog Is For Grownups by Delia Lloyd in Huffpost Living
• Viv Groskop's review in The Guardian

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Your choices are the book, the recording, the Kindle version, or the French film on DVD.

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