Keeping the Feast

Read this book! It is a book about family and depression, food and friendship that is touching and searing and often just very moving. I've known Paula Butturini and her husband, John Tagliabue, for nearly 20 years, but Paula's account of John's depression and how they coped with it is so intimate and direct that these lovely personalities will come across to anyone who reads this book.

Paula, as her friends know, has a warmth and strength of character that is evident on every page of this book. She draws on memories of meals and family from her Italian-American childhood in Connecticut to show, not tell, how the culture instilled in each of us as children forms the foundation of the adults we become. For Paula, food is the cultural icon that links her to that emotional foundation.

She and John share that Italian-American background and love of food. That and the spirit of adventure turned them both into journalists and expatriates (after many years in Rome, Warsaw and Berlin, they now live in Paris). They also share a family predisposition to depression. Paula's mother suffered severely from depression -- something she has a child was only vaguely aware of -- and committed suicide at the age of 73, when Paula was living in Berlin. John had a previous bout of depression when he embarked as a young man on a life as a Trappist monk, which turned out to be not well-suited to his temperament.

The main narrative of the story concerns John's later depression after he was shot covering the 1989 Romanian revolution for the New York Times. That experience, life-threatening as it was, set the scene for a delayed post-traumatic stress syndrome that pushed John into severe depression two years later. Paula herself was badly beaten covering the so-called Velvet Revolution in Prague, and these two battered souls returned to Italy and Rome, where they had met and married, to deal with this crisis.

Paula opens her account with her daily trips to the market at Campo del Fiori, which supplied the ingredients for the three daily meals that knitted their shattered psyches back together. Or helped, at least, because it was a long healing process that involved time, therapy, the support of family and friends -- and John's employer, the Times -- and, as Paula shows, grace.

All of this is told in the simple, direct language that only a practiced writer can command. The slim volume benefits from an engaged editor who helped Paula ruthlessly strip the narrative to its essentials. But it is not bare bones. It is a rich, enveloping story of love and love of life that will inspire anyone who has feelings.

Paula describes the support of friends throughout the book, particularly some special friends who hosted them at their country home outside Rome. Others go unnamed or are only glimpsed -- such as John and Paula's good friend Lou, whose own sad fate would require another book.

But friendship is a two-way street and these friends not only provided support but benefited as well from the warmth, the grace, the humor, the intelligence, and, in the good times, the plain good fun of these two lovely people. All those qualities come across in this wonderful memoir, to reward all those who pick up this book and read it.

Over Tumbled Graves

Jess Walter's first novel is a literary police procedural based apparently on a true story in his hometown of Spokane. The powerful prose, the delicious irony that characterizes his later work are present in this debut.

When detective Caroline Mabry, the protagonist, talks about her unsuccessful attempts at dating: "On their first date, they talked about leaving Spokane; she was waiting to hear from law school, he from an Alaskan fishing boat. That conversation had taken place on almost every date Caroline had in Spokane. Everyone was either in the process of leaving or apologizing for not leaving yet. Caroline found herself hoping it was the same in other mid-sized cities, that there were some places that could only be left, cities just barely boldfaced on road maps -- Dayton, Des Moines, and Decatur; Springfield, Stockton, and any city with 'Fort' in its name -- places that spark none of that romantic quality that young people believe will keep them from growing old."

When another detective, Alan Dupree, Caroline's mentor and would-be lover goes to a neighborhood on a call: "Dupree got off at the second exit and wound his way into a familiar neighborhood; they were all familiar if you'd been on the job anytime at all. He'd imagined starting a guided tour with retired cops, with starred maps of murder, theft, and perversion. His own map was no different from any other cop's: a rape in that house, a two-car fatal accident in front of that convenience store, a house where a biker had fenced stolen auto parts."

Mabry and Dupree are tracking a serial killer and the case, the conflict it brings, shatters both their careers. There are plot twists and surprises, but much more texture, more depth than you usually get in a procedural. Rich, literary characterization that makes you sympathize with the character's flaws more than their virtues.

Plus, Walter has his fun mocking FBI profiling and profilers, with the killer himself joining in the fun. But Walter also asks some serious and probing questions about murderers and tracking them down.

I like mysteries and and I really like Jess Walter, so this was a good book for me.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

This is a transformative book. I long ago stopped buying meat at Safeway or Giant and now I know why. So much of what Michael Pollan has chronicled in this book has filtered down into the general consciousness. This book and his subsequent works have been bestsellers and his ideas were a big part of the documentary Food Inc.

It's not just that Pollan does some great reporting -- visiting the cattle feed lots and corn fields of modern industrial agriculture, reading a massive amount of literature on food production, and doing a George Plimpton by going to Joel Salatin's Polyface farm and hunting wild pig with a Sicilian emigre -- but he relentlessly analyzes, reasons, reflects. And he does so in a lucid, intelligent prose that is laced with rich humor.

In the key chapter that explains the title of the book, Pollan describes how eating many kinds of food as do omnivores like rats and human increases brain capacity because of the choices that must be made. He contrasts that with animals like the koala bear who eat only one thing, such as eucalyptus leaves. "Eating might be simpler as a thimble-brained monophage, but it's also a lot more precarious, which partly explains why there are so many more rats and humans in the world than koalas. Should a disease or drought strike the eucalyptus trees in your neck of the woods, that's it for you. But the rat and human can live just about anywhere on earth, and when their familiar foods are in short supply, there's always another they can try."

Fungi are apparently neither animal nor vegetable and this whole chapter is hilarious. Pollan describes why people find mushrooms mysterious and somewhat off-putting. "That the fungi are so steeped in death might account for much of their mystery and our mycophobia. They stand on the threshold between the living and the dead, breaking the dead down into food for the living, a process on which no one likes to dwell."

But of course the real meat of the book, so to speak, is Pollan's vivid and damning description of where the meat at McDonald's or Safeway comes from. His patient tracing of industrial food from subsidized corn through the CAFO to the terrible process that produces ground beef. E. coli, obesity, and a host of ills are traced back to bad food.

What struck me is how relatively recent the really bad stuff is. The misguided agricultural subsidies started under Earl Butz, Nixon's Agriculture secretary. I grew up in a different world and much of this pernicious development took place while I was in Europe. European agriculture has been industrialized as well, of course, but never to the same extent and the backlash started much earlier than here. England is a good 10 years ahead of us in food awareness, I know from my friend Sheila Dillon at the BBC Food Programme.

But the awareness is growing here. The Joel Salatin chapters are such an eye opener, as Pollan meticulously describes the genuinely organic loop at Polyface Farm, where it all starts with grass. Polyface is only a couple hours' drive from here, so it's easy to relate to. Not sure to what extent I'll jump on the locavore bandwagon, though I'm already on it to a much greater extent than I was a year ago. We'll see.

My Name Is Asher Lev

Where to start with this moving book about the creative impulse and the conflict between individuality and community. Chaim Potok's layered novel about a young Hasidic boy with an artistic gift, so redolent with Jewish arcana, is as universal as the parent-child relationship. The fictional Ladover community, with its Rebbe both menacing and wise, is more defined than most, but Asher Lev's conflict with its strictures would be much the same in a middle class Midwestern community.

How this conflict tears at Asher Lev's soul and how his response to it tears at his parents and his community provides enough dramatic tension for several novels. How Potok brings this to a point in the climax of the book, foreshadowed from the beginning but still so unexpected, makes this a masterpiece.

From an early age, Asher Lev drew things. I did, too, when I was little, though not as compulsively as Asher. "A million people can draw," his uncle told him, so I suppose I was one of those million. It quickly became clear that Asher's drawing was beyond the ordinary and that he truly possessed a gift. The question for his father and the Hasidic community was whether the gift came from the Lord or from the "other side." When young Asher evinced a passion for drawing the crucifixion of "that man" as well as nudes, the question was settled, at least for Asher's father.

In simple family scenes, Potok shows how hostility grew between father and son and how Asher's mother was caught in between, and what it cost them all. Asher refused to go to Vienna when the Rebbe dispatched his father to establish Ladover yeshivas throughout Europe because he needed his familiar neighborhood to nurture his gift. So the father went alone. The Rebbe in his wisdom apprenticed Asher to a Jewish artist, the fabulous Jacob Kahn, in the hopes his pursuit of art, which clearly could not be denied, would not lead him away from Judaism.

If there's anyone who can read how Jacob Kahn schooled Asher Lev in art without being moved, they should not be reading fiction. The summers together in Provincetown, painting and walking on the beach and talking, are as close to idyllic as real life can get.

Asher grows older, but we are so well acquainted with him by this time that we never lose sight of that wondering young boy. Nor does Potok let us get distracted. The action is totally focused on Asher's development as an artist. By the time the artist Asher Lev is ready for his climactic one-man show at a Madison Avenue gallery, your heart is in your throat as you see what inevitably must come to pass. The powerful forces Potok has unleashed -- creativity and religion, filial devotion and artistic integrity, individual and community -- come crashing together in a climax that almost literally takes your breath away.

The Emperor of Ocean Park

I'm abandoning this book at p. 149. It's going very slowly. I find it way too wordy, and in general a bit self-indulgent and ultimately sloppy as a work of fiction. There are digressions, almost riffs, that seem to have little to do with anything -- just too much detail. In the guise of character development, the author imposes on us his candidate for the best DVD ever made and preaches to us about the importance of community service.

Most of all, though, the characters are simply not sympathetic. The narrator, in many ways an alter ego of the author, tells us so often that he is not really a nice man that you begin to believe it. One of his least endearing qualities is his devotion to a calculating, selfish and blatantly unfaithful wife. Other characters are cardboard.

The book is hyped as a window on the world of upper middle class African Americans, which, not too surprisingly, is remarkably similar to the world of upper middle class white Americans, except for occasional flashes of what the author/narrator must think is attitude. Ho-hum.

Stephen Carter has a lawyer's facility with words, but the prose in the end is pedestrian. There are occasional witty remarks and some nice turns of phrase. If I was spending a lazy week at the beach, I might have the patience for this, but I need something more substantive to sustain me in the workaday world.

I rarely decide to abandon a book. It usually just happens that I put it down one day and don't pick it up again, and then find myself starting something else. Occasionally, I'll come back to a book I abandoned and for some reason find it more appealing. Might happen here, but I doubt it.

In memoriam: Kirkus Reviews

The news last week that Kirkus Reviews would fold after 75-some years was greeted largely with a ho-hum or, in some quarters, outright glee. Kirkus was famous for being negative and one agent was quoted as saying "Good riddance."

The point of the pre-publication reviews -- Library Journal and Booklist are two other standard reviewers -- is to help librarians decide what to order. When newspapers did book reviews, they also helped editors decide which books to review, so they were influential beyond the tiny circle of actual readers. And of course they provide jacket blurbs if your book doesn't get a lot of reviews in other media.

My first book, Debt Shock, happily displayed a blurb from Kirkus Reviews on the paperback edition: "Unequaled in its astringency and vigor...With one terse, wry, inarguable statement after another, Delamaide...lays bare the crisis that made headlines." Because Kirkus had such a reputation for negative reviews you felt doubly good if you got a good one, and didn't take it personally if you got a bad one.

The review for Gold was somewht more tepid, though not out-and-out negative. "A modestly effective end-of-the-financial-world thriller involving skulduggery on and off the commodities exchange....Tidy plotting, solid background, and brisk pace make an appealing debut until the story, along with the gold market, collapses near the end." Oh well.

Finally, Kirkus had some kind words for Superregions: "An engaging look at Europe's economic prospects, forcefully demonstrating that the continent's future will depend on furthering regional alliances that transcend outmoded and restrictive national boundaries. ...Superregions is full of good ideas, and a fine guide for researchers, businesspeople and others interested in Europe's -- and everyone's -- future."

Sadly, my hiatus in publishing has outlived Kirkus Reviews. They were by and large kind to me, so I don't mind standing up at the memorial service and murmuring some praise. I always had the feeling that those librarians and editors, if not the blurb writers, appreciated having a more skeptical point of view in looking at new books. After all, you can't buy or review all of them.

The Hungry Tide

It doesn't get more exotic than Amitav Ghosh's novel of the tide country in the Bay of Bengal. Tigers, crocodiles and river dolphins teem in this parallel narrative of a present-day marine mammal researcher and the story of a little-known massacre a generation earlier.

Along with Ghosh's beautiful, literate prose, there are stories with human emotions -- in all their resplendent ambivalence -- that are at once so firmly embedded in their Indian and Indian-American characters and yet so universal that the reader is carried along in a tide of the author's making.

Piya, the Indian-American researcher; Kanai, the New Delhi yuppie; and Fokir, the unlettered fisherman form an unusual love triangle -- in fact with Moyna, Fokir's wife, two intersecting triangles -- and this drama is quite moving when it reaches its climax.

The parallel story of Nirma and Kumus, with Kanai, Nilima and Horen bridging the time gap adds a whole dimension to the main narrative and the two stories build slowly to their crescendos in virtual lockstep. Nirma, the wannabe revolutionary who becomes a rural headmaster and failed writer, is the dreamer out of step with reality. His wife, Nilima, is more practical, realistic, focused on the moment. And yet in the end, it is Nilima who is left with a some bitterness, conceding that one practical idea Nirmal had amidst his dreaming was responsible for saving numerous lives. Horen, who ferries people around in both narratives, turns out to be not such a minor character.

Ghosh's prose is at time lyrical and the reader is willing to hear the most beautiful speeches from the most unlikely characters. Horen, taciturn through the book, erupts near the end with a soliloquy that Shakespeare would have been proud of, and Moyna is able to articulate the hidden undercurrents of emotion. When she asks Kanai to remind Fokir, her husband, that Piya is only here for a short time, Kanai wants to know why he should be the one to talk to him and not her.

"Only a stranger can put such things into words," Moyna says. "Because words are just air...When the wind blows on the water, you see ripples and waves, but the real river lies beneath, unseen and unheard. You can't blow on the water's surface from below...Only someone who's outside can do that, someone like you."

One small bonus from reading this book is an appreciation for Rilke's Duino Elegies, which Nirmal quotes often, referring only to the Poet. But there are many rich bonuses -- an excursion into cetology, a branch of the study of marine mammals; a tour of the Sundarbans archipelago extending from Calcutta into the Bay of Bengal and sheltering the city from cyclones; a view of the mixed Hindu-Islamic culture along the border between India and Bangladesh; a history lesson about the massacre at Morichjhapi. Ghosh is not afraid to stand things on their heads -- by showing, for instance, the potential damage the West's obsession with saving tigers can have on the poor in those regions.

But The Hungry Tide is above all a novel, with romance, adventure and stories that enrich our understanding of how people think and feel.