The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin

All of us have them; a certain mystery writer that you’ve been following for years.  You’ve read every one of his books and the detective hero feels like he’s part of your family.  Ian Rankin is one of those authors for me.

Every time I need to be entertained rather than enlightened or just need the comfort of a mystery I go to him.  His mysteries are interesting and complex enough to hold my interest, while not being too academic to feel like an assignment.  I’ve read all of Rankin’s newer books and have never been disappointed. 

Rankin’s series are both set in Edinburgh.  His first, a wonderful series about an old curmudgeon detective John Rebus, has entertained me for years.  The Impossible Dead, Rankin’s newest, is the second in his new Matthew Fox series.  Fox is an officer in “The Complaints”, the Scottish version of our Internal Affairs Bureau; the cops who investigate cops.  In this installment he is investigating some shady cops in a neighboring precinct and stumbles upon a 30 year old murder of a Scottish political revolutionary.  He is asked to investigate the murder by the widow’s new admirer and his line of inquiry leads him up the ranks to investigate prominent Scottish politicians.  

What I like about Rankin is that his stories are always good and, as the reader, you solve the mystery with him as he uncovers clues and interviews suspects.  I am always somewhat confused in the beginning of the mystery, just as I suspect Fox is, but as the story grows, everything comes to light.  I love the Scottish slang and the interesting places that Rankin takes us on the journey. 

Key to a good mystery series is the hero detective that we follow.  Both Rebus and Matthew Fox are great heroes, sort of grumpy single guys, late in their careers. Rebus has retired, but spent his career in the “murder squad”. Rebus has been married several times, but is good with dogs and deals with an estranged daughter who he would like to have a relationship with.  Fox is balancing his investigations with caring for his aging father who is beginning to suffer with dementia.  He struggles with alcoholism, something I suspect Rankin has had some experience with.  We follow his internal conflict that comes with working in The Complaints and wonder along with him how he’ll do once he’s done his tour of duty there. 

This particular installment of the series is a little hard to follow, as I’m not up on my Scottish politics, but interesting all the same.  I like the guys Fox works with and enjoyed learning about the Scottish conflicts in the 1980s.  Rankin’s characters jump off the page and he does a good job of illustrating the internal politics and departmental posturing that plague any police department in the world. 

There is something truly comforting about finding an author whose series you like.  I hope you’ll try Rankin.  Any of his books from either series are good.  Hopefully some of you will find him and add him to your list.  In the mean time, I’ll keep going back to him every time he graces us with another book. 

Liebster Blog Award

I am so happy and humbled to have received the Liebster Blog award from Meg of meaningofstrife . Thank you so much!

The Liebster Blog Award is given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers and is a great way to bring attention to other worthwhile blogs and bloggers.  This is a pay-it-forward award and the rules are:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to his or her blog

2. Copy and paste the “Liebster Blog Award” icon into your post

3. Pass the award on to your fellow bloggers and let them know you did so

[Liebster, by the way, is German (n.) and means: sweetheart, beloved person, darling.]

Here is the blog I am passing the award to:

raisingnanapap - Nancy writes a funny, uplifting and insightful account of her life with her beloved mom suffering with Alzheimers. 

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

I think Jeffery Eugenides should have titled this book differently.  The Marriage Plot kind of sounds off-putting – another book about the disintegration of a marriage.  And in fact, that’s one of the reasons I shied away from it initially.  I have found that books about dysfunctional marriages or sad interpersonal relationships are not what I’d like to read for fun.  Maybe it’s my stage in life or my personality that doesn’t find it entertaining – it just makes my stomach hurt.  Finally, I decided that I should give The Marriage Plot a try.  I had been waiting a long time for Jeffery Eugenides new novel.  His last one, Middlesex was a wonderful story – one of my favorites the year it came out.   I finally decided that if Eugenides wrote it, it had to be better than I thought.   So I took the leap.  I was right.

The Marriage Plot is a story about three college kids at Brown University.  It takes place in the early 1980’s as they are about to graduate.  Madeline is an English major writing her senior thesis on the Victorians and their use of “the marriage plot” in literature.  Think Jane Austen, Henry James etc.  Leonard, her charismatic and rather unstable Biology major boyfriend is destined for a fellowship at the Pilgrim Lab, a fancy research facility on Cape Cod, where he’ll work under prominent scientists to solve questions about yeast cells.  Mitchell, her smart, creative Religious Studies major friend who is madly in love with Madeline, decides to take time after school to travel in Europe and India with a friend and explore religions while the recession rights itself. 

Well, you can see where this is going.  Mitchell loves Madeline, Madeline loves Leonard, Leonard is jealous of Mitchell, maybe Madeline loves Mitchell – it goes back and forth.   As in most Victorian novels, the toxic love triangle is set and the players have to find their way to resolution.  During that time, all of the members in the plot have to learn how to negotiate this intense triad and decide what they want and how they will position themselves as they enter the real world. 

Eugenides is a gifted storyteller.  His character development is not to be surpassed.  You find yourself totally engrossed with the characters who you can relate to and who you grow to love.  I was particularly blown away with his rendering of Madeline whom I could especially relate to.  Her voice was so much like my own at that age.  All of us remember kids like Mitchell and Leonard from our college days.  They are the same archetype that we see in plenty of John Houston films from the same time period, In fact, Pretty in Pink is plotted with the same love triangle.  That’s why we like those films, they are based on the same Victorian plot structure that Madeline is studying and that lives in literature again and again.  The big difference is that Leonard is not quite the cool popular guy portrayed in other novels.  During the course of the book, we learn he is diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and struggles with his medications and abilities to cope with life.  (don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away).  This wrench in the story creates a tension not usually found in a novel of this type, but renders him with the requisite air of unattainability all the same. 

What really struck me in this book was the research that Eugenides did to make these characters come alive.  He must have a herd of research assistants to help him ferret out all the smallest details of each character’s point of view.  Each of the three are brilliant in their field – each very diverse from each other.  Eugenides speaks with a knowledge base of one that has his own graduate degree in each of those areas.  He explains each character’s work in detail, giving more insight into each and helping us understand how these kids can make the decisions they do about the future of their lives. 

In the end, this is a coming-of-age book as much as it is a book about a love triangle.  It’s about deciding how to enter the world after college and how to negotiate the end of that safe place and the beginning of a new life chapter.  About deciding which ties to cut and which to bind as you start your life.  Eugenides does a great job of taking that tender time around graduation and exploring the emotion around entering the adult world that many of us remember.  An intense love triangle provides the fuel that propels these characters into their lives, whatever they may hold. 

I’m glad The Marriage Plot wasn’t what I thought it would be.  Don’t shy away from this book because of its title, embrace it because of its rich content and the craftsmanship of a gifted writer.   

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

I’m always a sucker for an adventure book – one that takes you somewhere else, where you can sit in your reading chair and climb mountains or live in a foreign land.  I love those.  When I read the jacket synopses of Once Upon a River, I thought that was what I was in store for.  In fact, what I got was a strange coming of age story about tragedy, revenge, and recovery.

Margo Crane is a 16 year old who lives with her dad and all of her extended family on the Stark River of Michigan.  On a fateful Thanksgiving, she endures a terrible family tragedy which leaves her guilty and on the run.  With sharpshooter Annie Oakley as her hero, Margo spends the next several years traveling the river, shooting and hunting for her food, looking for her absent mother and shacking up with men along the way.  Margo ends up on the Kalamazoo River with her only friend, an old man in the last days of life, his dog and his best friend Fishbone.  Here she tries to figure out how to live the life she wants to live in a way that she can understand. 

Margo is an interesting character.  She is bold and smart and resourceful.  She is likened to a River Nymph and has the otherworldly qualities you might expect from such a creature.  However, she’s still a kid (something the author forgets on occasion) and we sometimes see her making choices that help us remember.  Her journey from innocence to adulthood is filled with dastardly men and an unhealthy relationship with her shotgun.  We learn a lot about skinning game and living off the land.  What we don’t learn is a lot about the river she lives on. While Margo certainly knows how to survive in nature, I didn’t get a clear picture of the landscape in which she is to survive.  Truly I had a hard time placing her at all.  With the redneck cousins, the shacks on the river and the trapping and hunting, I kept envisioning the bayous of the American south, not the cold rivers of Michigan. 

Margo herself is placed in a lot of gritty adult situations.  At the beginning, like any teenager, she sees herself as the victim of her circumstances – everyone does things to her.  Slowly she begins to understand that her actions have consequences and that she can design her life as she wants to and in a way she understands.  I think these lessons are some that many adults don’t ever learn.  While the author tries to teach us, I’m not sure Margo is old enough to have learned the lessons so well at such a young age.  Her tenacity and her resourcefulness give us a heroine with nerves of steel and an ability to find herself in situations well over her head.  We see her puzzle out the value of revenge, the burden of guilt and the grace of recovery. 

A friend recommended this book to me with the caveat “I couldn’t think of anyone else to recommend this to, you like weird books, so I thought you might like this one.” Bonnie Jo Campbell writes a well plotted book with an interesting cast of characters, and a sharp and strong female lead but somehow we’re left sitting in our reading chair, not entirely sure what we just read. 

The Great Gatsby

Once a year, our book group reads a classic novel.  We’ve read books like “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Little Women” and “My Antonia” among others.  I always sort of grit my teeth when its time for a classic.  I read many of them in high school or college and always remember why I didn’t like them the first time.  Often the language was too dense, or the Victorian obsession with class and manners bored me to death.  Sometimes the teacher was not able to make the book come alive for me.  The end result has always been a private cringe the moment someone says, “Let’s read a classic!” 

Many of the members of my book group are retired teachers or librarians, so they laugh at my reaction and try to find classics that are readable so I don’t revolt.  I mean, who can find fault with “To Kill a Mockingbird”?  Personally, I count that book as one of my Top 5 all time favorites. 

When one of our members said “Ooh, how about the Great Gatsby!” I felt my face form into the scrunched up expression of a teenager who has been asked to make their bed.  I approached the book as one would when asked to take yucky medicine – I held my nose and swallowed. 

Surprisingly, the medicine was really quite good.  Gatsby is such a small book (only 189 pages) but is filled with beautiful writing and a whole lot of action.  There is much more to it than I remembered.  The fact that all I really remembered about the book was a night time party scene at a big house is telling.  The book is really more about so much more.  I had no recollection of the fatal car accident and final murder, no recollection of the shady characters from the Jewish mob that are lurking in the background and no recollection of the bigoted Tom Buchanan that beats his wife.  I had no understanding of how well Fitzgerald wrote and how sparingly he was able to tell so much story. 

Our book group leader for the month did a wonderful job of providing insight into Fitzgerald’s life and his writing process.  She made connections between Gatsby’s world and that of Sean P. Diddy Comb’s parties that take place on The Hamptons today.  We discussed how Fitzgerald provided the picture we associate with The Jazz Age and how he actually coined the phrase.  Really interesting stuff.  I wonder if high school kids who are asked to read “The Great Gatsby” are able to understand all the subtleties of the book at their tender age.  I wonder if college kids have the world view and life experience to get the irony of Fitzgerald’s words. 

This happens sometimes with book group.  I am exposed to a book that I never would have read and learn how much I was missing.  Yucky medicine becomes a lovely dessert with raspberries and chocolate.  I love Book Group.