Few debut novels are as polished and engaging as The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips. Set in the 1930s in Depression-ravaged Alabama, the book is the story of the hard-working Moore family. Their home is the center of attention after daughter Tess sees a woman throw a baby in their well.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

Portland Noir is a collection of original short stories that is all over the map — if the map is of the Rose City. The stories are set in different neighborhoods that collectively make up the seedy underbelly of Portland.

The anthology, edited by Kevin Sampsell, is part of the Akashic Books Noir series — ‘a groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.’

The Portland stories take readers to many a gritty, greasy corner of Portland, where junkies break into the wrong houses, lesbians fantasize about strangling the men in their beds, and love gets strange. The stories come in many shades of dark, from creepy (“Baby, I’m Here”) to clever (“Shanghaied”); violent (“The Wrong House”) to sadly sweet (“Alzheimer’s Noir”).

If there is anything generally missing, it is . . .

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays is bleak, spare, and cold. The characters – even the heroine Maria – are not given to introspection. The scenes in the book feel like movie shots, with the emotion coming from what is seen and heard, not what is going on inside anyone’s head.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

Steven F. Hayward calls Ronald Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech “a perfect microcosm” of Reagan’s political career, highlighting two important things about Reagan. The first is Reagan’s insight and imagination—the way he thought about issues on a large scale. The second is the extent to which Reagan had to battle against “the conventional reflexes of much of his own party and staff” as well as the Democrats and adversarial media.

Hayward examines both aspects of Reagan’s statecraft, focusing on the second, in the long-awaited second volume of his definitive Reagan biography. While it stands alone as a history of Reagan’s presidency, The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 – 1989 takes up where Volume I, The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, leaves off—Reagan’s first Presidential election.

Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, so it is no surprise that he approaches his subject from the right. Reagan fans will no doubt enjoy it more than Reagan detractors. But Hayward’s work is definitely biography, not hagiography. The Age of Reagan deserves a spot on any serious historian’s book shelf.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

The Italian Lover is a literary mash-up with a Hollywood spin – the heroine from Robert Hellenga’s debut novel, The Sixteen Pleasures, falls in love with the hero from his second novel, The Fall of a Sparrow, while her book is being made into a movie. For fans of the earlier books, this has the immediate appeal of visiting old friends. Unfortunately, the appeal wears off pretty fast.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

How to Save Your Own Life is the sequel to Erica Jong’s debut novel, Fear of Flying. This one finds heroine – and Jong’s literary alter ego – Isabelle Wing back in New York, deciding whether or not to leave her “awful wedded husband” Bennett.

This novel is frank, funny, and surprisingly contemporary for being over 30 years old. It is as full of insight and spot-on commentary about the human condition as the best of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, John Updike, or any of the other male authors Jong set out to emulate from a female perspective.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

Jon Meacham packs a lot into his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson. Focusing on Jackson’s time in the White House, Meacham rushes through Jackson’s childhood and early years, including the 1814 Battle of New Orleans that ended the War of 1812 against the British and propelled Jackson to national fame.

But he takes his time with Jackson’s years as America’s seventh President, describing in readable but thorough detail the major issues and controversies of Jackson’s two terms in office.

Meacham also puts Jackson and his battles into personal and national context by examining the political and philosophical condition of the adolescent United States as well as how personal feelings, events, and tragedy affected Jackson’s judgment.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

This book was hailed as a break-out gay novel. But George’s grief and emotional upheaval are universal. The book is warm-hearted, optimistic, and funny. At least, it is optimistic up through the conclusion of the story. The surprise twist at the very end feels tacked-on and unnecessarily morose. And it is only funny if read on paper – the audio version leached the humor out of the words and turned it into a self-conscious melodrama.

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – creates a story to explain the sighs, attitudes, and distance she perceived between her parents.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources. As Maud described her marriage:

There was a slight additional loneliness in her increasing isolation from everyone but her husband, but her own calm good sense was there to remind her that she was not at home, that she had never expected to be at home, and that those who did not rely on their inner resources, as she had been obliged to do, were forever condemned to weep in other women’s drawing rooms . . . .

Like Maud’s life, this is a quiet book worthy of reflection.

Also posted on Rose City Reader.

Good for the Jews is a spirited, engaging novel set in the high school academic world of Madison, Wisconsin. When the charming – sometimes floundering – heroine, Ellen Hirschorn, becomes romantically involved with a much older man, she uses her new connections to help her guardian figure out whether he is the target of anti-Semitism.

Spark presents an alluring cast of characters, each complete with enough quirks and foibles to make them absolutely realistic, if not entirely lovable. Spark does not shy away from showing the mixed-up muddle of people — their thinking, their actions, or their politics.

Lines such as “The anti-Semitism of the left. If you’re going to see it anywhere, I guess it would be here in Madison” demonstrate Spark’s sharp eye for ironic contradictions. Nothing is black and white and none of her characters are totally sympathetic or unsympathetic.

The ending is a little rushed, which is all the more disappointing because the rest of the book is so enjoyable. But Good for the Jews is still a great story with a lot more going on than in a typical novel of modern day manners.

Also posted on Rose City Reader.