Westport Public Library BOOK blog

“No other part of New York has had such a melodramatic, mood-ring sensitivity to the changes in the city’s history, with an image for every decade.” That’s Adam Gopnik writing in a 2004 New Yorker about Times Square.

Whether in New York or Paris, the place and our relation to it become the touchstones for identity in Gopnik’s observations. Born in Canada and famously French for many years, Gopnik has lived in New York for twenty years and has written the article on American culture for the last two editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Gopnik writes about his daily experiences with family, neighborhood, art, restaurants, transportation and at the conclusion, it occurs to you that you have just learned something new about contemporary life and culture from a careful and astute observer.

The range of his essays is remarkable and each is a gem...or a performance. Gopnik compares essayists to performers who “…like to do the thing and feel that the people are reacting.” He cites Calvin Trillin, James Thurber and Montaigne as influences for their personal comic essays. And he connects essay to journalism as a social art form. He brings a journalist’s eye to contemporary culture and serves it up in meticulous and graceful prose. His columns and book reviews have appeared in the New Yorker since 1986 starting with a piece connecting baseball, childhood and Renaissance art. He has written for four editors at the magazine.

On June 7th the Library will present Adam Gopnik with the 11th Annual Booked for the Evening Award. This annual gala fund raising event awards an honoree whose work reflects the purpose of the Westport Public Library.

Reserve books by Adam Gopnik or pick up a recent copy of the New Yorker to enjoy his excellent writing.

Author Jeri Westerson has penned a medieval noir. In Veil of Lies, disgraced knight Crispin Guest, stripped of his rank and honor for plotting against Richard II, uses his wits to eke out a living in fourteenth-century London. He is hired to determine who killed a wealthy merchant rumored to be in possession of the Mandyllon, a cloth bearing the face of Jesus and possessing magical powers.

A starred review in Library Journal called it “A brilliant tale of survival in a hostile environment, where anything can lead to death.”

The Boston Globe dubbed Guest “A medieval Sam Spade.”

In a Mystery News interview in the December/January 2009 issue, when asked who or what inspired her creation of Crispin Guest, Westerson answered “Most definitely Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, with a bit of Errol Flynn thrown in.” She adds “Writing a tortured, conflicted hero is the best kind of fun!”

So much fun, it appears, that there will be a second book, Serpent in the Thorns, coming in the fall. Guest finds that he is the prime suspect in a murder with grave diplomatic implications. Visit the author’s website to read an excerpt.

Veil of Lies has been nominated for the 2009 Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery, along with Kelli Stanley’s Nox Dormienda, which is also an “historical noir,” this time set even further back in history in first-century Londinium.

The title, Stanley says, is taken from a line of verse by the Roman poet Catullus, and means “a long night for sleeping. A night you don’t wake up from. In other words, The Big Sleep.”

In an interview on her website, Stanley acknowledges that her major inspiration came – no surprises here – from Chandler … and from Catullus.

There is a second book, Maledictus, in the works. Until then, ave atque vale!

A prolific profiler of middle-class American life, A.R. Gurney has garnered many awards with his popular plays. The Westport Country Playhouse is presenting Gurney’s play Children, which takes place on one day of a Fourth of July weekend. Two adult children replay family dramas as they find out that their mother is going to remarry and that they are about to inherit the house. Their younger brother is a strong off stage presence. Rituals of the upper middle class – divorce, search for self-esteem, family secrets, social graces & gaffes- are their concerns.

Children opens May 26 at Westport Country Playhouse and runs through June 13.

Children is based on a short story by John Cheever. In Goodbye My Brother, Cheever provides a metaphorical struggle between two brothers played out mostly in the ruminations of one brother whose ideas go from lyrical celebration to gloomy dissection of his family’s life. In his usual fashion, Cheever chips away at the certainties of what the character knows, examining the modern, shifting, disrespectful world and then returning to the reassuring stability of the “right way.”

John Cheever never graduated from high school. After failing out of school, he attended Thayer Academy until spring of his junior year when he was expelled. His response was to write a story about the experience. He mailed Expelled to the New Republic; it was accepted and his literary career was launched. Short story fans have a seemingly endless supply of Cheever to read. Critic Dan Schneider says “To not read or not understand these tales is to be as void of the American character as ignoring Dickens is to the English character or Chekhov is to the Russian…”

A new biography Cheever: a life by Blake Bailey is a comprehensive telling of Cheever’s complicated life and serves as a fascinating re-introduction to the man and his works.

According to the The St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, "A typical Demarkian murder investigation includes a murder in a fully realized setting that allows the author to explore a community and satirize one or more of the foibles of modern America."

Papazoglou is noted for threading political arguments and social commentary throughout her novels and it has been said that one of her greatest strengths is her skill as a social observer. She is also recognized as an author who, despite a twenty-something-title run of her series, has not gone stale or become reduced to predictability.

The author has said “The best thing about a series is that it provides you with a continuing frame–you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you write a book. The biggest drawback is that there is no way for your continuing characters to have consistently exciting lives without the whole thing beginning to sound like a soap opera.”

Her technique, she says, comes down to putting “more emphasis on the suspects, who change from book to book.”

Her protagonist, Demarkian, is the retired founder and head of the FBI Department of Behavioral Science and his services are often in demand by friends or by the police to solve particularly difficult and perplexing murder cases.

Although he has been dubbed the “Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” Demarkian is not at all like the mustachioed Belgian with his many idiosyncrasies.

The latest book in the series, Living Witness, received a starred review in Booklist which notes that the series shows no signs of slowing down and adds “How the author consistently manages to use the traditional mystery format to tackle some of contemporary society’s most volatile issues is itself something of a mystery, but it’s undeniably true that Haddam does what so many other writers fail to do: tell a story that challenges its readers to consider subjects of great social, political, and ethical importance.”

Evolution vs. creationism is the issue in Living Witness. A 91-year-old woman who is part of a group of small-town citizens who are suing the school board for adding creationism to the school curriculum is beaten nearly to death. The local police chief is one of the school board members and the first to admit he’s one of the prime suspects. He doesn’t trust the state police and turns to Demarkian for help.

The town is split into two camps, the evolutionists – the liberal, college educated “newbies” – and the creationists – the conservative, blue-collar “old-timers.” But the more Demarkian learns about the town's movements and prejudices, the more certain he becomes that the solution lies elsewhere. Meanwhile, the media are circling like hungry sharks, dubbing this a Scopes trial “replay.”

Kirkus also raved “Haddam, who usually has more on her mind than mere murder, defeats the anti-scientists with fact as well as tact. If another 'monkey trial' comes up, the evolutionists should ask her to write their brief.”

A few days ago a news article reminded me about a story that I have always found very haunting. It is a true story that happened thirty years ago – the disappearance of Etan Patz. Etan Patz was a six year old boy on his way to the school bus stop in New York City when he disappeared. It was the first time his mother had let him walk alone. He has never been found, and his disappearance led to a change in our social consciousness, completely revising the way missing children cases are handled, and the day of his disappearance is now National Missing Children’s Day.

At the time Etan disappeared I was a new mother myself and the thought of losing my child in such a way was almost too much to bear. I have always wondered how his parents could go on. A few years after Etan vanished, Beth Gutcheon wrote a novel, Still Missing, based on his disappearance. In her book, which later became the movie Without a Trace, Ms. Gutcheon captures the mania that surrounds such an event, yet also poignantly conveys the relationship of the parents as they dealt with this unimaginable tragedy. While dealing with the loss of her child every day, the mother, amazingly to me, still manages to maintain the hope and faith that someday he will be found alive.

The novel, The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond also deals with the mysterious disappearance of a child. Abby Mason, a photographer, is walking on the beach with her fiancé’s daughter. As she stops to take a picture the little girl lets go of her hand and within a few seconds vanishes. Ms. Richmond explores the different ways that Abby and her fiancé Jake deal with this tragedy. Jake focuses on the practical details involved in finding his daughter while Abby explores the tricks the mind can play and the nature of time. This beautifully written book is both suspenseful and haunting. A good choice for book clubs.

Stewart O’Nan, one of my favorite authors, has also written a novel about a missing child, Songs for the Missing. Kim Larsen is 18 years old and set to leave for college when she suddenly disappears. O’Nan’s story is less about Kim and more about what happens to the rest of the family when a loved one vanishes. Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different member of the Larsen family. The day to day reality of how such an event can affect the lives of the family and close friends is convincingly portrayed. Mr. O’Nan has created a story and characters that you won’t forget.

In each of these novels about the loss of a child the author has shown how life can change in an instant. Each author has chosen to portray this tragedy in a different way but to me the central question remains the same: how do you move forward and live with the unknown? Book clubs will find lots to discuss with any of these selections. Let me know if you would like to reserve one of these titles.

New faces are always welcome. To reserve a copy of the book, call 291-4821.

The St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers explains the enduring popularity of Gilman‘s detective Mrs. Pollifax so perfectly: “Emily Pollifax is more than the wish-fulfillment persona of aging women; she is a character with traits that anyone might emulate: she is courageous, clever, intuitive, open to new experiences, and, above all, to new friends of any age, of any race or creed.”

We meet this sweet, sixty-something widow from New Brunswick, New Jersey who has tired of a monotonous routine of volunteer work, garden club and women's associations in The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, the first of 14 titles in the series, which was published in 1966 and became an instant hit with young and old alike.

Remembering a childhood dream of becoming a spy, Mrs. P. takes a bus to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and applies for a job.

Many of her adventures take place in the Cold War era and are set in Iron Curtain countries. The first book takes place in Albania, where the detective ends up in prison after her first assignment, a “meet” with a bookstore owner/secret agent in Mexico City, does not go as planned.

As the St. James Guide tells us, “By a series of coincidences that would seem merely absurd were it not for the author's charming and delightful way of telling a tale, Emily Pollifax is taken on as a courier for a single mission. She is hired because she looks and acts so completely unlike an agent, and becomes a part-timer whose brilliant improvisations and stunning successes are nothing short of fantastic.”

Another of the versatile Gilman’s series put her in the vanguard of the “woo-woo” or supernatural mystery genre. Madame Karitska, a clairvoyant who solves crimes for the police, made her debut in 1987 in The Clairvoyant Countess.

Remember Debby Applegate’s excellent biography of Henry Ward Beecher? In that book, The Most Famous Man in America, Henry David Thoreau had a few cameos. He is the main subject of The Thoreau You Don’t Know : What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan. (You might remember Sullivan’s recent book on Rats.)

Listen to Applegate's talk at the Library.

Sullivan posits a different personality from the solitary & idealistic naturalist we usually think of as Thoreau. He finds an activist, an organizer, an adventurer and a guy who set the woods afire while camping with his friends. Sullivan finds similarities between Thoreau’s time and ours and believes Thoreau was looking to improve society, not escape it.

Incidentally, about that fire that Thoreau started, we have on order a new novel (starred review) Woodsburner by John Pipkin. It’s about “An inglorious episode in the life of 19th-century author and environmental saint Henry David Thoreau….” It follows three different characters affected by the conflagration which destroyed 300 acres of forest and farmland. Kirkus Reviews calls Pipkin's book "Pulitzer Prize material."

The Empty Mirror by J. Sydney Jones takes place in fin-de-sicle 1892 Vienna, a city terrorized by a serial killer whom the press calls “Vienna’s Jack the Ripper.” Four badly mutilated bodies have been found.

When the painter Gustav Klimt’s female model becomes the fifth victim, the police arrest the artist for the murders. Klimt’s lawyer, Karl Werthen, has an ace up his sleeve. Dr. Hans Gross, the real-life criminology pioneer, has agreed to assist him in investigating the bizarre crimes. Together, they must not only clear Klimt’s name but also follow the trail of a killer that leads them in the most surprising of directions.

Other historical personages appear as well, including psychiatrist Richard von-Krafft-Ebing, Mark Twain, Zionist founder Theodor Herzl, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Publishers Weekly starred review says “Jones's absorbing whodunit succeeds both as a mystery and as a fascinating portrait of a traditional society in ferment.”

In The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron, rumors are flying that Jack the Ripper has returned when the mutilated body of a teenaged prostitute is found in London’s East End.

It is now 1900, and London is a sprawling, chaotic city, the perfect place for a man like Denton, an American with a violent past, to obtain some much desired anonymity. But his earlier notoriety as the author of several dark novels and an earlier career as a Western gunslinger sometimes prompt unwanted parties to seek him out.

When a terrified man shows up one evening and says that he is being pursued by the Ripper, Denton dismisses him as yet another lunatic. But then, disgusted by the lack of police concern after the girl’s body is found, Denton decides to find the murderer.

In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews says “Denton is a hero whose unheroic side only makes his character more appealing."