Diamonds and Raspberries

Down and dirty reviews of 'New York Times bestsellers'

by Melanie Jennings

Melanie Jennings is the Book Reviews Editor at Writers Monthly. She is also the principal of Lighthouse Communications, a technical and marketing writing business in San Diego. She has an MFA in fiction from Mills College and a doctorate in American Literature from UCSD.

Melanie has taught creative writing and published poetry and fiction in such publications as In the Grove, spelunker flophouse, Crab Creek Review, and Redwood Coast Review. She has been awarded writing residencies at the Espy Literary Foundation and the Jentel Foundation.

Dark Star Safari, by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House, Lilian Jackson Braun (Putnam)
The Tail of the Tip-Off, Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown (Bantam)
What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson (Random House)
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (Harcourt)
Baudolino, Umberto Eco (Harcourt)
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster)
Visions of Sugar Plums, Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s)
Four Blind Mice, James Patterson (Little, Brown)
My Losing Season, Pat Conroy (Talese/Doubleday)

Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin)

Theroux’s work is that rare thing you savor, his books those gems you hardly want to finish because you would miss too much the vivid worlds of Theroux’s creation. So complete are his places you smell the body odor of the man jammed in next to you in one of the many crowded taxis of Theroux’s dark star safari, his overland journey from Cairo to Capetown. He takes this journey to get away from it all:

Out of touch in Africa was where I wanted to be. The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party’s extension, being kept waiting all your working life—the homebound writer’s irritants. Being kept waiting is the human condition. I thought, Let other people explain where I am. I imagined the dialogue:
"When will Paul be back?"
"We don’t know."
"Where is he?"
"We’re not sure."
"Can we get in touch with him?"
"No."

What he finds, to his dismay, is that the continent in which he taught as a Peace Corps volunteer in his early twenties almost forty years ago, is largely gone. He and the old friends he looks up again as he makes his journey lament the passing of respect and the measure of pride and self-sufficiency people had a generation earlier. Most of the new people he befriends—taxi drivers, shopkeepers, prostitutes, and villagers—say the same things. For Theroux, despots, corrupt governments, foreign aid, and missionaries top the list of what has gone wrong (of the foreign aid workers he says "I seldom saw relief workers who did not in some way remind me of people herding animals and throwing food to them, much as rangers did to the animals in drought-stricken game parks").

When he finally reaches the school at which he used to teach, he finds it in severe disrepair and neglect. What he had hoped would be a homecoming in which he could reflect on his youthful dreams and perhaps even teach again, turns into a depressing encounter with a new reality: "I looked around the dismal school and thought how I had longed to return here. I had planned to spend a week helping, perhaps teaching, reliving my days as a volunteer. This was my Africa. You’re planting a seed! some people had said. But the seed had not sprouted, and now it was decayed and probably moribund." Finding a sympathetic ear in one of the new teachers at his old school, he relates to her what he thinks has happened:

I sketched out my theory that some governments in Africa depended on underdevelopment to survive—bad schools, poor communications, a feeble press, and ragged people. The leaders needed poverty to obtain foreign aid, needed an uneducated and passive populace to keep themselves in office for decades. A great education system in an open society would produce rivals, competitors, and an effective opposition to people who wanted only to cling to power.

With his historical explanations combined with insights of the ordinary Africans he meets, it’s hard to disagree with Theroux’s sentiments.

One of the most engaging chapters is one in which he visits Zimbabwe and attempts to learn for himself just what and how the farm invasions have occurred under President Mugabe. He finds a squatter who has taken over a small patch of land on a white farmer’s ranch. Theroux challenges the squatter with a hypothetical situation: what would happen if another squatter, Squatter B, came and squatted on his, Squatter A’s, land? Squatter A, predictably, becomes incensed at the mere suggestion that someone would squat on his land. It is a comical and yet troubling portrait of a squatter. Many such scenes dot the landscape of Theroux’s journey.

For a writer, there are few better teachers than Theroux for his cadences, his visceral details, and his flawless storytelling. I found myself trying to figure out just how he constructed a travel narrative that contained so much history of each place paired with his own day-to-day experiences. Theroux’s observations could have easily become preachy or fatally self-reflective given how much suffering he finds among most Africans. (Yet he firmly believes that Africans must help themselves and that foreign aid is one of their biggest problems). He balances the details of his journey—by ferry, train, canoe, and killer minibus—with historical context of each area, the customs of its people, and the ways in which their daily lives are affected by tyrannical rulers, AIDS, poverty, and a lack of education. At every turn you are there with him talking to helpful strangers, unfurling a sleeping bag on a sandy dune, and paddling through hyacinths on a wide brown river with trusted companions. Look to Theroux to learn how to write what every devoted reader loves: the vicarious experience of being in a specific time and place, smelling its smells and wiping its grit from the corners of your eyes.

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The Cat Who Brought Down the House, Lilian Jackson Braun (Putnam)

The Tail of the Tip-Off, Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown (Bantam)

I affectionately referred to these novels as "The Cat Capers," as I read them this past month. The "genre" of cat-caper fiction produced by Braun and Brown has consistently appeared on the bestseller lists. Plus, June is National Adopt-a-Shelter-Cat Month. So, I figured it was time for me to investigate just what is so appealing about The Cat Capers.

I don’t have an answer. While I love cats, I, myself, am allergic to them and felt a similar aversion each time I sat down to read both Lilian Jackson Braun’s, The Cat Who Brought Down the House, and Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown’s [Rita Mae’s cat, of course], The Tail of the Tip-Off. It’s not that they’re bad, or poorly written (wellÊmore on that later). It’s just that they’re so cute, so schmaltzy, that by the time you’re finished, you feel as if you might cough up a hairball you’re so stuffed with kitty references, kitty ingenuity, and kitty conversations. So what makes them so popular?

Let’s talk about gender, shall we? Let’s talk about how I walked into the Portland airport recently and scanned the paperbacks at the traveler’s kiosk. Literally, the paperbacks were separated by what I’m going to call "masculine" and "feminine" color schemes and fonts. How can a font be feminine? Well, look at the covers of the paperback bestsellers some time and you’ll see what I mean. Anything by Danielle Steele is sure to feature some frilly or elegant fonts, and likely, a pastel color. Books by Grisham, Koontz, Crichton, Patterson, et al: bold fonts, hard edges and lines, deep, strong colors. At the Portland airport it was as if I were standing in a toy store and on one side of me were the Barbies and on the other the G.I. Joe’s. You grow up and you find yourself knowing exactly which books are written for whom simply by scanning the covers. So my theory is that The Cat Capers appeal to women (okay, it’s not rocket science). Here’s the demographic of my imagination: female, any age, likes cats, doesn’t need much in the way of characterization (or plot in the case of Braun), likes books in which animals talk or are significantly featured (think Charlotte’s Web).

You can buy these books and tune out. I’m all for that. I love trash. I love a good read in which I’m turning pages waiting to see what’s going to happen next. Lay on me some good thriller or romance novel and I’m all ears. But these Cat CapersÊno.

Braun’s main character, Qwilleran ("Quill"), an independently wealthy newspaper columnist living in a small community somewhere near Canada, is plain boring. I’m not sure why he is so loved by the masses. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything there. Except perhaps his cat, Koko, who likes to toss books from the bookshelves in an attempt to tip-off Qwill to clues. Here’s the plot: mysterious elderly woman returns to her small-town roots from a glamorous career in Hollywood only to be hoodwinked by her good-for-nothing nephew. There’s never a question as to who-dunnit. But nearly everyone in town has a cat, and everyone asks each other how his/her cat is doing every time they run into one other. That’s it. That’s the whole book. Here’s one of the more exciting moments:

ÊQwilleran was asleep in his suite on the first balcony, and the Siamese were supposed to be asleep on the third balcony. He always left their door open (for a number of reasons) and always closed his own. Rudely he was awakened by a bloodcurdling howl outside his door! He knew it well; it was Koko’s death howl! The cat had an uncanny way of knowing the moment of a wrongful death. The clock on the night table said it was 3:15 A.M. Immediately it brought to mind the "something terrible" that had happened on Pleasant Street following the party.

But what could he do? Call the police and say that his cat was howling?

Koko had done what he considered his duty and had returned to his balcony.

I’m finding it hard to even describe my feelings about this book. Bland. Every synonym for bland. I think that sums it up. Oh, and extreme overuse of the precious exclamation point!

Rita Mae Brown’s is better. Definitely better, but still not to be recommended. There are just way better tune-outs on the market for you. Maybe they don’t involve cats. And maybe people read these solely because of the cats. Brown at least gives you the satisfaction of really wondering just who-dunnit and why. However, her cats talk. They scheme. They poke fun at their humans. They try to save people’s lives. They try to kill. You know, the usual.

Tucker [the dog] followed after and savaged Fred’s [one of the bad guys] ankle.

The unidentified blocker swept past Fred, knocking him flat, then raced down the hall toward the stairwell door. Tucker glimpsed him from the rear, a man, but Tucker had bigger fish to fry. She jumped on Fred’s chest and while Tucker was not a big dog Fred was unprepared for this new assault. The corgi bared her fangs, lunging straight for his throat.

He threw his forearm up, instinctively, to protect his jugular.

"Die!" Tucker savagely growledÊ

Without replying, BoomBoom [a woman] sprinted beside Harry [the heroine] out of the equipment room and into the hall. The cats bit into Matthew extra hard for good measure, then tore after the two women.

"We should have taken out his eyes!" Mrs. Murphy [a cat] fretted as they ran for the stairwell door which seemed so very far away.

"Not enough time," Pewter [another cat] repliedÊ

Tucker, hurrying after her friends, glanced over her shoulder. "Gun!"

"Run!" Murphy flew down the corridor with its curving smooth walls, no right angles giving them a place to hide. Their only hope was to run for their lives andÊpray Murphy’s bite had hurt [the assailant’s] gun hand.

Clearly Brown’s audience eats up this kind of thing like it’s catnip on a stick. Go figure. If you like Charlotte’s Web for adults, and hey, maybe once a year when the kids are at your sister’s for the weekend and you’re blissfully alone, curling up with a Cat Caper might be just the thing.

But as a writer do you want to be the kind who writes about cats? I’m not judging, really. There’s a place for cats in fiction. In fact, I dare you right now to write a great short story involving a cat. If it is in fact great, however, it probably won’t make it onto today’s bestseller lists. Can you live with that?

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What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson (Random House)

It’s hard to talk about anything but the content of this book. The "characters" (real people) of Po Bronson’s What Should I Do with My Life? are so engaging, and its subject matter so perfectly timed, you simply don’t pay attention to the writing. I read this in two days. I came away feeling pretty damn good about my recent decision to quit my job, start my own business, and focus more on my fiction writing. If you’re at a crossroads, this book won’t tell you which way to go, but it will certainly keep you company. It may help to define how you might go about being a writer or whatever it is you want to be or already are.

So remember the days following the terrorist attacks? Remember how you’d go to work and sit staring at the cash register, the computer screen, or whatever huge, hulking, metal money-making machine you work on, and thinking to yourself, Just what the hell am I doing? Sure I’m supporting myself, my kids, others who depend on me, paying my student loans, my car, whatever, but if I keep this up much longer I’m going to die on this machine. Sally over there is going to clock in one day and find my body tragically tangled in this demon like seaweed in a driftwood storm. At least that’s how I felt. A year later I resigned. After reading What Should I Do with My Life? all my post-resignation fear and anxiety of the last several months suddenly made sense in the context of these other poor suckers’ searches for their life path. Quitting and starting over was just the first step? Whew! You mean this is normal? Hallelujah!

When I said the book is perfectly timed, I meant post 9-11 like I said above, but I also meant that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seems pretty incredible that humans in some lucky parts of the globe even have the idea that they get to choose something to do with their life, and that it’s the ultimate question. As if! Aside from being genuinely intrigued by the question his title asks, at least one of Bronson’s motivations is explained here:

"Americans take this country for granted," Ana [a Cuban immigrant] said, when we were out having dinner with her friends. "Too many neglect the opportunity they are given. This is the land of dreams."

What is freedom for, if not to live where nobody can tell you who to be, and who not to be? What is freedom for, if not the chance to define for yourself who you are?

Indeed. Sure, you could point a dismissive finger and say, What a self-help-y do-gooder! But Bronson’s passion is contagious and persuasive. I found myself truly admiring some of these folks for their stick-with-it-ness and gumption, for their sacrifices and wild ideas.

At times Bronson gets a bit preachy, a bit bossy. He tells Mike, a college guidance counselor toying with Zen Buddhism and who doesn’t believe in interfering with a student’s career/life/academic path beyond the basic graduation requirements, how to do his job:

I let it rip for a moment. I was mad. It seemed like Mike was using every justification to neglect these kids. This wasn’t intentional, just misguided. "Tell them that thinking about what they should do with their life isn’t pedestrian. Tell them that if they ignore it, reality will bite them in the ass like it did you. Tell them it’s modern philosophy for people who have to feed their wife and kids. Tell them it’s okay not to have an answer, but it’s not okay to stop looking for one."

Bronson also focuses so intensely on Generation X and Yers that I felt there wasn’t much inspiration here for someone like my mom who never went to college but sometimes says she’d like to now that she’s retired (can we not ask this question at age 65?) On that note, aside from a few tokens, there aren’t many non-college-educated people/workers portrayed here. Sometimes "What Should I Do with My Life?" feels like a question for the privileged. But alas, Bronson himself is a Generation Xer, a college-educated man. So it goes.

People do want to answer this question for themselves. That’s why this book was the number one bestseller the week I bought it. It reminds me that writing in which this question drives the narrative is compelling: what will this interesting character do with her/his life? We read What Should I Do with My Life? and books like it to find out.

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Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (Harcourt)

This book has made me realize just how limiting the diamonds and raspberries concept is. There should probably be one other category, like say, the jackfruit. Some people love them, some people hate them, and I find that I’m one of the rare folks who can take ‘em or leave ‘em. I find jackfruit neither offensive nor especially appealing. So it is with the prestigious Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Most people simply adore it.

Here’s the problem with being a book reviewer: I’m a writer. I don’t pick up a book and say to myself, "Oh, what a genius this gal/guy is. It's so amazing that anyone can write a book. How do they do that?" The result is that I often like the ideas of a book but am less than thrilled by their execution. Also, the whole purpose of the "Diamonds & Raspberries" column is to point you in the direction of good, solid diamond-esque writing (subjective as my tastes are) and to let you know what is currently appealing to the masses and why. Enter Life of Pi. An interesting story. A good story. Often poorly executed writing. I’m not here to slam Martel, I promise. But I have to tell you that a few things about this book seriously bothered me, things it seems many, many other reviewers either turned a blind eye to or simply didn’t notice. Forgive me; I’m a writer. Perhaps this is a case of petty, idiotic, immature writer’s jealousy (Why is his work getting published? Why is my genius not getting recognized? Do I really suck that bad?) Unfortunately, I’m not yet above all that.

So, yes, great idea. A teenaged boy with a religious bent gets stranded on a lifeboat after his family goes down with a cargo ship that sinks while en route to their new life in Canada. The catch being that the zookeeper had brought many animals with him, one of which, a Bengal tiger, is now aboard the lifeboat with the teenaged boy. Prior to this, we’re thoroughly introduced to said teenager, Pi Patel. His life as the son of a Pondicherry, India, zookeeper is punctuated by scenes in which he explores Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity (the latter of which he funnily summarizes as a "religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days.") After a hundred or so pages in which Pi tells of his childhood experiences, most having to do with zoo animals and some of religion, the ship sinks and the lion enters. Here’s the text as it happens:

The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw something in the water.

I cried, "Richard Parker [the Bengal tiger], is that you? It’s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop! Richard Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!"

Do you believe it? I didn’t. I couldn’t hear everything screaming. And did he really cry out like that? Martel gets away with this kind of writing throughout by the fact that Pi is actually telling his story to an annoying "writer" character who speaks in italicized chapters throughout the first hundred pages in which Pi describes his childhood. Thankfully, once the ship sinks, we don’t hear from that character again until the end of the book.

Thus begin countless days in which Pi is subjected to the elements, starvation, and the psychological terror of being on a small lifeboat with a tiger. Martel falls into a relentless this happened, then this happened, then this, then this, and then this style that strained my nerves as I read, and not in the I-am-empathizing-with-this-character sort of way. We don’t get a lot of philosophizing from Pi on the lifeboat, but I suppose we could read several things into his experiences there—Darwinism in action, political theories, or wherever your natural inclination to allegories might take you. We’re told he prays every day but not told about what. All this ensures it will be a cult classic for years to come.

Finally, Pi reaches an island. This is around page 250. Here, the novel really picks up and totally runs with an out-of-control magical realism that is simply enchanting. Loved it! I entered into that "continuous dream" that John Gardner spoke so persuasively about in On Becoming a Novelist. I was there on that island with Pi. I could see, I could feel, touch, taste this character’s every move. I still didn’t feel that much for or about him, but at least I was there with him. That’s why I read fiction.

That said, I’m happy for Martel. Although he may be sued by the Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar for stealing his idea, Martel has certainly become a literary star. That’s always good to see (really, it is). This book, like Eco’s Baudolino, confirms that people like a little magic in their fiction, a little creative flair (with big ideas if you care to see them). I like that they like that. I’m happy to see this on the bestseller list. But I’m sticking to my jackfruit designation for Life of Pi; I can take it or leave it.

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Baudolino, Umberto Eco (Harcourt)

What can I say? It’s just not my thing. Kill me for slaughtering a sacred cow, but I couldn’t even finish it. The book now gathers dust as it sits wrapped in green cellophane beneath our Christmas stockings (which are pinned to the wall since we have no chimney). I’m giving Baudolino to a friend who loved In the Name of the Rose. I confessed to her that I just didn’t find the character or the plot very compelling. And it’s not that I don’t admire the ideas or Eco’s skill as a writer. Those, in fact, are fascinating. I just didn’t care about Baudolino and what happened to him. This sample paragraph sums up my feelings about the book:

Niketas had some trouble following Baudolino’s story, year by year. Not only did it seem to him that his narrator was a bit confused about what had happened before and what had happened after, but he also found that Frederick’s exploits were repeated, always the same, and he could no longer understand when the Milanese had taken up arms again, when they had again threatened Lodi, or when the emperor had again come down into Italy. "If this were a chronicle," he said to himself, "it would suffice to take any page at random and you would find there the same deeds. It’s like one of those dreams where the same story keeps recurring, and you long to wake up".

Exactly. Amen!

Ok, here are the details. Baudolino is a bawdy (get it?) character who spins truth and lies about his life as he mingles with the high and low brow of a European-ish society in a vaguely Middle Ages period. Some things are familiar enough to ground you and others are totally made up, often to provoke a snicker or chuckle from the reader. Each titled chapter features an episode from Baudolino’s adventurous life, explaining how he influenced history or just had a good time: "Baudolino goes to Paris," "Baudolino finds the Magi and canonizes Charlemagne," "Baudolino saves Alessandria with his father’s cow," "Baudolino at the battle of Legnano." If you like that kind of picaresque, adventure story, you’ll like this book. If you like sharing a private joke and watching Eco play with themes of truth, history, and the making (up) and recording of history, then you’ll also like this book. I didn’t. So it goes.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest… …

What I do like about Baudolino is that it’s even on the bestseller list at all. I know it’s partly a testament to Eco’s reputation, the marketing mavens at Harcourt, and, from where I stand, the huge, mysterious machine of big-time American publishing, but there is a part of me, call it the little girl who’s still hoping Santa will visit even though we don’t have a chimney, that wants to believe the American reading public is digging the fantasy, the pseudo-history, and the raucous jaunt, and in translation for Crissakes. Baudolino brings something fun to the playpen of what often feels like plot-driven fear set to words (see Grisham, Crichton, Koontz, et al); it suggests that market value and lasting literary value are actually compatible. For that, I’m grateful.

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The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)

Comparisons will be made to The Virgin Suicides, The Ice Storm, and others of that dysfunctional ilk, and they’re fair. And, hey, who’d complain about being compared to Jeffrey Eugenides and Rick Moody? But The Lovely Bones has an eeriness and ingenuity all its own. When I read the blurb beneath the NYT bestseller listing, "A 14-year-old girl looks down from heaven as she describes what happens in the aftermath of her kidnapping and murder," I admit I was skeptical. Add to that the novel’s unbelievable skyrocket to the towering heights of the fiction bestseller list and the book’s total ubiquity in all things book-related at the moment and you further understand my hesitation. I can only hope Alice Sebold lasts longer than the average boy band.

What Sebold does differently she does well and she does with a twist. Essentially, this is a murder story (not to be confused with a murder mystery, by the way). Here’s the opener: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Catchy? Damn straight. From there you are lured like Alice down the rabbit hole until all of the details of Susie Salmon’s life, death, and afterlife are revealed.

Also different is the fact that we get a murder story told from the point of view of the murdered. So? It’s been done before, you’re saying. True, but not often in "literary" fiction (don’t ask me to define thatÇjust look in the dictionary under "quagmire" and we’ll call it even).

My favorite of Sebold’s twists is, sickeningly, the most horrific scene of the book. I hate to spoil the party for you, but Susie Salmon is raped and murdered. Unlike most literary writers who pull the camera lens out, pan aside, or fast forward, Sebold describes in detail how Susie follows her murderer though a cornfield, is raped by him, and finally killed. I admire this because so often rape in our culture is sensationalized, glamorized, and sexualized (remember that horrible stint in the early 90sÇI’m thinking of Leaving Las Vegas). Sebold describes this fourteen-year-old girl’s rape and murder with the details not often shown in the literary genre and without diminishing its power with the aforementioned gratuitous techniques. It’s sickening, not sexy. It’s horrific. Sebold assigns words to the unspeakable, then gives a voice to the voiceless in the ghost of Susie Salmon.

Which brings me to my next point, the afterlife. Here, again, Sebold does it a little differently. Susie narrates the story from her personal version of heaven:

We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams. There were no teachers in the school. We never had to go inside except for art class for me and jazz band for Holly. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue.

Characters speaking and telling a story from heaven is one thing, but characters actually living there and describing what that’s like while simultaneously narrating an on-Earth story is plain interesting. It tells me, along with Baudolino, that America likes a little fantasy. Maybe as a culture we’re not pumping out Allendes, Garcia Marquezs, or Castanedas, but fantasy is definitely striking a chord with the reading public at the moment and I hope it’s more than just the "I Believe in Angels" variety.

Aside from that, if there’s one lesson we as writers can learn from Sebold it’s this: the horror of a murdered girl does not a lovely town make. With the exception of Susie’s mother, everyone who ever knew Susie and whom she spends much of her heavenly time doting on and observing, is a saint without a bad bone in his/her body (pardon the pun). The absolute devotion of the father to his daughter’s memory is heartbreaking; same goes for Susie’s sister and Susie’s almost-boyfriend. But what about anger? What about guilt? What happens when you remember what a shithead your sister could be in real life? What happens when you forget all about the beloved until after you pass by her favorite store, trailhead, diner? What about the time she betrayed you, wasn’t perfect, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? In writer’s workshops you might hear this called "Writers who love their characters too much syndrome," or some variation thereof. Characters have flaws, pimples, ugly spots around the eyes and especially the heart.

I know I will be reserved a special seat in hell for giving an author advice after the fact, but I think this could have been accomplished with further exploration of the mother’s characterÇa woman who grows farther apart from her family after Susie’s murder. There is token explanation of her motives (she had given up Sartre, Moliere, and basically thinking to become a suburban wife and mother), but ultimately I found her character out of Sebold’s control. She presents a world instead in which the characters honor Susie’s memory almost to the point of sentimentality. I haven’t read any of the reviews of The Lovely Bones yet, but I’d bet money that this is the biggest complaint lodged against it: the goodness of the characters seems to distill into sentimentality in the novel’s second half.

Aside from this, I praise this book. There’s lots to learn here for writers (see above) and, with the book’s popularity, lots of reason for hope in the mass of American readers (also see above). This brings me to the points you need to come away from this review with as a writer. Considering the murder scene and the book’s concentrated focus throughout on violence against women and girls (Ruth, one of Susie’s acquaintances from middle school, actually develops a psychic ability to know when, where, and how women and girls have been murdered), I am stunned this book is doing so well. I am amazed because I’m guessing many women will have found this book under the Christmas tree. To my mind, it’s not exactly uplifting material with which to start the New Year ala Miracle on 34th Street. It’s very, very real. Indeed. Ironically, it gives me hope. It shows there’s a market for good writing that isn’t afraid to face life’s horrors without resorting to six o’clock news tactics that only serve to de-sensitize us.

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My Losing Season, Pat Conroy (Talese/Doubleday)

Amen for Pat Conroy, an accomplished American writer who sells lots of books. He can make something I donªt much care for, basketball, infinitely readable. My Losing Season details Conroyªs senior year on his college basketball team, one in which his college, the Citadel, won eight and lost seventeen, "losers by any measure." Conroy chose to write about a season in which his team, dogged by a tyrannical coach and hampered by the Citadelªs unrelenting plebe system, did not go recorded in the college basketball halls of fame or even the Citadelªs because:

Winning shapes the soul of bad movies and novels and lives. It is the subject of thousands of insufferably bad books and is often a sworn enemy of art.

 Loss is a fiercer, more uncompromising teacher, coldhearted but clear-eyed in its understanding that life is more dilemma than game, and more trial than free pass. My acquaintance with loss has sustained me during the stormy passages of my life‹Though I learned some things from the games we won that year, I learned much, much more from loss.

Thus begins the bookªs long dance with the meaning of a losing season to a budding young man who would later become one of Americaªs most beloved novelists.

But My Losing Season is not so much a meditation on loss as it is a chronicle of how a young man survived the brutality of his father, his coach, and his college, through a game he desperately loved. Whatªs more, he was a "mediocre" player, a member of the Green Weenies, the moniker of the teamªs second-string players. This is a story about overcoming lifeªs obstacles, redeeming everything that was wrong about how you grew up, the enormous inadequacies of the people who raised you, the unfair systems of the adult world, and the ultimate fairness of athletic talent separating those who can turn pro after college and those who canªt.

Some of the strongest writing of My Losing Season is about time and the finality of leaving behind a sport in which youth and talent go hand in hand. Writing about the last game in which he would ever play college basketball, Conroy explains the meaning of time and the word "final":

Because I was a basketball player, time itself has a solid substructure to it. I have felt it passing through me with terrifying insistence with each sunrise, every beat of my heart. In all my books, there is a beginning, a middle, and an ending‹.I am time-steeped and time-cured and time-infused and time-beaten. I know how it works in life and in the pages of fiction. It moves, claw-footed and famished, toward the end of my days, as it always has. It moves the way it did before the Davidson game when I was shocked to realize that I was playing my final regular-season game in my Citadel career. Take the word "final," roll it around on your tongue, gum it well, cut your tongue on its edges, taste its metallic finish, spit it to the ground in scorn and distaste. It will still mean the same thing.

Given the national mood of the past year and of course Conroyªs incredible storytelling ability, itªs not too surprising that even a book entitled My Losing Season is a bestseller. In its final pages, as you come to realize that this story is about transforming loss into triumph, you begin to understand the miracle of pearls, how a life of difficulty, alienation, and randomness can slowly distill into something beautiful. This is the gift Conroy bestows upon his readers in each of his books; My Losing Season is no exception.

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Four Blind Mice, James Patterson (Little, Brown)

Some things are meant for the screen. And thatªs where they should start, not end up. James Pattersonªs Four Blind Mice irked me with its idiotic plot, cardboard characters, unbelievable and, certainly by now, stereotypical good-guys-gone-bad killers, uncontrolled and shifting points of view, and most annoying of all, unnecessary and uninteresting subplots (itªs a thrillerÈdonªt torture me with grandmaªs failing health if youªre not going to do something with it where the plotªs concerned). This is the kind of book that made me think twice before I pitched the "Diamonds and Raspberries" column to Writers Monthly. I did not want to have to read too many of this particular brand of raspberry.

But writers, take note. If your goal is to end up on every supermarket bookshelf in America, youªd do well to read Four Blind Mice and every other collection of Pattersonªs words that somehow pass for novels. Currently, this is the kind of thing that American readers most want, as the bestseller list is perfectly crammed with this kind of stuff (albeit sometimes better written). Personally, I am irritated and disappointed that itªs books like Four Blind Mice that consistently make the bestseller lists.

I submit to you the following examples.

This passage appears in a chapter following several in which weªve heard from Detective Alex Cross in first-person:

They were just entering town when they saw a couple of hookers loitering on a dark street corner. In the bad old days Hays Street in town had block after block of rough bars and strip joints. It used to be known as Fayette-nam. No more, though. The locals were trying to gentrify the downtown area. A billboard put up by the chamber of commerce read METRO LIVING AT A SOUTHERN PACE. Made you want to throw up.

Makes who want to throw up? Whoªs narrating this chapter? One of the killers? All of them? This is one of many unidentifiable and shifting points of view in the chapters that tail the three killers.

 Another thing Patterson should have learned in Fiction 101 is to vary his verbs. "Was" just grates with repetition:

Time slowed for him; every detail was precise and every movement was controlled. He was moving fast, comfortable and supremely confident in dark woods. There was just enough moonlight for him to see.

 Add to this that I would swear here and now Patterson gets paid for all his corporate endorsements. Iªve never read a book in which so many products or stores are mentioned. Itªs product placement of the caliber you see in major Hollywood movies and it frankly drove me nuts.

I will say that what Patterson does mildly well is pace his plot. If it werenªt for those annoying subplots, the story would clip right along with clues revealed at just the right moment; the action to reflection ratio is right on target.

I never wanted to be a book critic. I didnªt want to have to write bad reviews of the work of fellow writers. I want writers to make millions from their work, even if itªs not what I like. Somehow I am consoled by the fact that my little raspberry wonªt make a dent in Pattersonªs profits even while it wasted my time.

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Visions of Sugar Plums, Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s)

I succumbed to the hubbub surrounding Evanovich and decided to check her out for myself. What a fabulously guilty pleasure Visions of Sugar Plums is. Okay, I’ll admit it’s not something I would have chosen had I not had this column to write. But given that the week I bought Visions, the testosterone on the best—selling fiction list could have killed a family of elephants, I thought Evanovich would be a great antidote. And she was.

Evanovich has a winner in Stephanie Plum. She’s the current American Everywoman‰smart, sassy, and surrounded by a dysfunctional (but happy) family. We can all see at least a little of ourselves in Stephanie Plum. Her most unique feature is the fact that she’s got a hamster named Rex. That’s it. Everything else is normal, normal, normal. Yet somehow in the hands of Evanovich, Plum is not banal but incredibly likeable. It’s Evanovich’s attention to detail that makes Plum, particularly in scenes with her family, very real. And we are also perhaps drawn to Plum because she has adventures‰and who among us doesn’t like to think we’re a bit adventurous at times?

As a story, Visions of Sugar Plums is pretty cutesy. The plot’s not that engaging. It’s a Santa Claus whodunit timed to appeal to the gift—in—the—stocking—for—mom/grandma crowd. Plum wakes up in her apartment one morning to find a handsome man her new best friend:

My name is Stephanie Plum and I’ve got a strange man in my kitchen. He appeared out of nowhere. One minute I was sipping coffee, mentally planning out my day. And then the next minute†poof, there he was.

Diesel, it turns out, is from a vague netherworld, we’ll call it the fourth dimension (as Diesel explains it, "You know how people get beamed down on Star Trek? It’s sort of like that.") He’s been sent to keep an eye on another fourth-dimensioner, an old guy whose powers aren’t what they used to be and who has a vendetta against Sandy Claws, a cute little toymaker, also from, you guessed it, the fourth dimension. Plum is the earthbound sleuth who tries to figure it all out before Sandy Claws can’t make his annual global journey. Along the way a few subplots intervene, which are deftly handled and reconnect beautifully with the central plot at the end of the story (how all subplots should be handled‰take note, James Patterson in Four Blind Mice).

Evanovich has a real gift for dialogue. As a writer, this is one of the most instructive elements you can take away from a reading of Visions. Just by what each character says and how s/he delivers it, you get a great sense of what makes that character tick. Take this example of Stephanie’s grandmother as they make Christmas cookies:

"You’re gonna have to pick the pace up here," Grandma said. "We still got to put the frosting on these cookies. And we got the filled balls to make yet. And the cream cheese snowballs. I can’t be doing this all day because I gotta go to a viewing tonight. Lenny Jelinek is laid out. He was a member of the Moose lodge, and you know what that means."

My mother and I looked at Grandma. We were clueless.

"I give up," my mother said. "What does that mean?"

"There’s always a crowd when there’s a Moose laid out. Lots of men. Easy pickins, if you’re in the market for a studmuffin."

Or take this scene in which Plum and her friend Lula drive away from the mall where they’ve been Christmas shopping:

"Okay," Lula said, stopping for a light. "We got Christmas knocked. We’re on our way to Christmas." The light turned and the guy in front of us hesitated. Lula leaned on the horn and gave him the finger. "Move it," she yelled. "You think we got all day? It’s Christmas, for chrissake. We got things to do." She reached the highway and took off, ripping into "Jingle Bells" at the top of her lungs. "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the wa—a—a—ay," she sang.

I put my finger to my eye.

"Hey, you got that eye twitch again?" she asked. "You should do something about that eye twitch. You should see a doctor."

As a writer, study Evanovich’s details, dialogue, and plot construction. She does it all very well. You won’t find dreamy reflections, introspective moments, drawn—out musings, metaphors, or other more literary devices here (you can study The Lovely Bones for that). Most of Plum’s interior monologue is limited to sentence fragments. But if you’re looking for straightforward, entertaining writing, Evanovich delivers in Visions of Sugar Plums.

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To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster)

The House of Ambrose would have done well to heed the subtitle of this book, Personal Reflections of an Historian. Unfortunately, we don’t actually get much personal reflection until after one hundred and fifty pages of fairly straightforward history. Not exactly what I was expecting or hoping for, given the subtitle.

In chapter eleven, "Writing in and about America," Ambrose explains how he became an historian and the special relationship he shared with his mentor, William B. Hesseltine:

I learned fairness from Hesseltine. He pounded into us, Do Not Write Editorials. Leave the editorials to the newspaper editors. An editorial is meant to persuade. In its way it is like a political speech. History is not.

This is an interesting observation given that the previous ten chapters open with Ambrose’s summary of the accepted understanding and teaching of a particular subject (the building of the transcontinental railroad, Reconstruction, the war in the Pacific, the American war in Vietnam, etc.), and his arguments, which try to persuade the reader, about why those points of view are incorrect. While I disagree with much of what he has to say, methinks Ambrose is writing editorials. Methinks that’s fine since I’m not interested in reading a heavily-footnoted academic article on each of these topics, but I point this out because it draws attention to the major flaw of this book, its inchoate form. It’s as if Simon & Schuster saw a cash cow in the perfect mix of Ambrose’s recent death, his celebrity historian status, and To America’s ode to our post—9-11 reality. (And I’m hoping the so-called "reflections" format was not a way for Ambrose’s publisher to answer to the recent plagiarism debacle surrounding his work‰look, no plagiarizing here!)

Again, the first one hundred and fifty pages are fairly brief surveys of various critical moments of American history, while the last one hundred pages strive to explain in a more meditative tone the author’s relationship to twentieth century moments (Nixon, civil rights, feminism, immigration, nation building, let’s hear it for the U.S.A., rah—rah!) As a writer I think Ambrose is more comfortable with the first kind of writing‰he has a straightforward style that clips right along. But the final one hundred pages and the subtitle suggest that he or his editors wanted more "personal" nonfiction to justify the subtitle. Frankly, the latter holds more interest for me because I do want to know what it was like to be an historian of Ambrose’s caliber and what he felt his relationship to his subjects were as he reflected on his career. But the writing is just not very strong. Take for example Ambrose’s sweeping summary of his life after grad school:

[Emory Upton, one of Ambrose’s research topics] committed suicide at forty—two years of age. Two years after my biography [of Upton] appeared in print, my wife, the former Judy Dorlester, whom I had met and married in Madison, committed suicide. She left me with two children, Stephenie and Barry, ages seven and five. By then I was working at Johns Hopkins University in the History Department and as associate editor of the Eisenhower Papers. Shortly after Judy’s death, I met Moira Buckley. She lived down the street and had three children, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh. Andy was four years old, Grace two, and Hugh an infant. Her husband had just left her.

We took one look and fell in love. Moira got a divorce and we married. I adopted her kids, she adopted mine. For thirty-five years we have lived happily together, raised our kids, enjoyed each other, our family, and life.

This information seems to come out of nowhere, and the poor, former Judy Dorlester is left in the dust with little explanation. I’m still not sure why I needed to know any of the above and I should. In the hands of a more talented writer I think I would.

There’s a rushed quality about these bestsellers, especially those of the America-rah-rah variety. For me, I would have liked personal reflections that were more textured, slow, and complex. Perhaps this was Ambrose’s intent but he passed away before he could properly complete the manuscript. Even so, that would have taken at least twice as long and would likely have necessitated the help of a careful and dedicated editor. It seems time and care are mutually exclusive from making money in publishing.

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