Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Scribner May, 2009

A review copy was provided free by the Amazon Vine program.

I have not read Colm Toibin's other books––Blackwater Lightship or The Master––both of which were apparently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but going by the reviews on Amazon, those who did read his other books, and enjoyed them, found Brooklyn to be a disappointment. I thought it a pleasant enough story, more akin to something your immigrant mother or grandmother might tell you, with the caveat that it all turned out for the best. Only, like a story Grandma might tell, the story of Eilis Lacey, who leaves her small town in post-WWII Ireland to find work in Brooklyn, lacked the depth and tension to hold my attention through 262 pages.

Having not read his other books, I can only speculate that part of Toibin's problem might have been taking on a female POV, though other male writers have done this quite well. Here Toibin seems to only skim the surface. He tells us what happened, but brings to it no depth of emotion. We meet a wide range of characters, especially in the bording house where Eilis lives, but we don't get to know any of them well, including Eilis herself. Threads are begun, then dropped, as when Eilis screws up the courage to approach her Jewish law professor, who turns out to be a Holocaust survivor. From the conversation I thought he might become a rival of Eilis's Italian boyfriend, but the man and the thread simply disappear. Same with when Eilis's boyfriend Tony reacts sadly to the story. I expected there would be something about Tony's war experiences, but, for all we know, neither Tony nor his older brother were in the war.

Which brings me to my second major criticism––much of this simply did not ring true. It is unlikely that Tony's Italian family, particularly his mother, would be so welcoming to his Irish girlfriend even if she did take the time to learn to twirl her spaghetti (I'm Italian, born in 1953, I know these things). It is even more unlikely that, in the 50s, a young Irish Catholic woman who gave into a night of passion with her boyfriend, would so easily have her guilt assuaged by one confession with an unusually open-minded priest and the fact that she wasn't pregnant.

All the tension comes in the last 30 pages or so, and I will say, at that point I kept reading to find out what Eilis would do. It made an interesting choice.

I certainly wouldn't say I disliked this book, but I can't say I liked it either––at least not enough to highly recommend it. However, if you like a simple, fairly happy tale––beach season is on it's way––this could definitely be read in one sitting.

Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie

Free review copy provided by the publisher.

In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Graces is a moving tale told through the unfiltered thoughts of a young girl. Unfortunately, Virginia Kate Carey and her siblings have no Atticus Finch to usher them through the ups and downs of childhood. As the adult Virginia Kate struggles to reconcile painfully conflicted feelings about her dead "Momma," the young Virginia Kate, "Seestor" as her brothers call her, tells the story of the confused, at times tormented, adults in her life, who often reverse rolls with their children. The only fairly steady figure is stepmother Rebekha, and even she is riddled with self-doubt and requires bolstering from VK at times.

Telling a story mostly from a child's point of view can be a challenge, but Magendie, deftly, never steps out of voice to engage in "author speak." From the cool mountains of her "holler" in West Virginia to hot, steamy Louisiana, she takes us with her wherever she goes, with sensory details that bring the story to life without weighing it down, and the ending, while I won't give it way, is just what the story calls for.

I don't know about blood, but I certainly know the sweat and tears that Kathryn Magendie put into her first novel and efforts to bring it to life for others to read. From this point on, I hope others will follow in short order.

Dreams from the Monster Factory by Sunny Schwartz with David Boodell

Free review copy provided by the Amazon Vine Program

The description of this book on the flyleaf is a little misleading. It would have you believe that it is all about the RSVP (Resolve to Stop Violence Program) and ideas for reforming our abominable criminal justice system. (That last bit about the "abominable system" are my words and not part of the description.) It becomes that, eventually, but not until about 70+ pages of a 200-page book. Until then it is a memoir--haven't we had enough of those yet--told in the typical memoir style of infusing an otherwise fairly normal childhood with painful Freudian significance and centering on the memoirist as though Sunny Schwartz, alone, could see the failings of the criminal justice system she worked in. Even more irritating for me was the snarky style that nearly caused me to toss it in the trash more than a few times.

I'm glad I didn't, because it eventually became the story of the development, implementation, and relative success rate of RSVP, which represents a holistic approach to violent crime that includes bringing perps and victims together and getting violent criminals to accept responsibility for their actions. The second half of the book--over which I am guessing Sunny Schwartz had more control than her co-author--is totally different, told in a calmer, more mature voice and giving credit where credit is due, to all he people who helped develop the program, get it off the ground and keep it running. Still some of the most important points are lost, such as that the program is only running in two places in the country, funding is a constant struggle, and it isn't getting nearly the recognition it deserves.

I have enough writer friends trying to get books published that I won't blame Ms. Schwartz for these problems. I can just imagine her agent/editor telling her how no one wants a book about prison reform, but memoirs are selling like hot cakes, and then assigning a co-author to turn the book into this unfortunate hybrid. In fact, I can think of lots of people interested in a book about the RSVP program such as the 100 or so people with whom I volunteer teaching decision-making skills to inmates, as well as judges, lawyers, law enforcement and corrections officers, and anyone else connected with the criminal justice system. However, not only is it asking a lot of busy people to weed through all the extraneous preliminaries, it would be awkward for a professional to suggest this to staff when it includes far more about things like the author's love life than most readers would need or want to know.

Still, if you have a professional or human interest in our criminal justice system; if you, like me, feel it is failing and badly in need of innovative ideas; and if you are willing to pay full price for what amounts to half a book (or, better yet can get it from your library), then you will benefit from Dreams from the Monster Factory.

Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise

Provided free from Amazon Vine.

This book is apparently the third in a series. The first two, Covenant with Black America and The Covenant in Action were aimed at the African-American community (of which I am not a member). This third--and final?--in the series is aimed at a larger audience, I'm assuming because we now have an African-American president who is accountable to all of us. The book tells real-life stories in areas of concern like health care, education, the economy, etc.; sets out various possible solutions; then provides a checklist for how each player--including we individuals--can be held accountable.

I chose this book because I have enjoyed Tavis Smiley's work on NPR, I do believe in citizen involvement and have my own ideas how each of these situations needs to be handled, and because I had my doubts as to whether candidate Obama's rhetoric on change would translate to President Obama's action plan.

I was disappointed, but to be fair, it had a lot to do with the timing of my reading. First, in the midst of this severe economic downturn, tragic tales like people losing their medical insurance elicited not my usual empathy, but a panicking fear about my own situation. Second, I didn't see any of the authors' solutions being particularly workable. Third, I wasn't sure I saw the point in listing the ways that, say, insurance companies should be held accountable when I'm betting their CEOs aren't even reading the book, and fourth, the list of things individuals could do were pretty much the same as they've always been--call your Congressman, vote, get involved. Nice when you are talking about saving the park down the street from development, but paltry in light of the issues we face today. Also, as of now I'm pretty pleased with Obama's action plan and his no BS style of putting it forward. The man's feet haven't been removed from the fire once since election day, and I think it's time to stop questioning his every move.


As recently as last year, with more hope in the economy and less hope in our elected officials than I now have, I might have found this book motivating and uplifting. Reading it now, I actually found it somewhat depressing.

Three Books on American Indians, Land Loss, and the IRA

In its February 24, 2009 decision on Carcieri v Salazar the Supreme Court decided that the word "now" in the Indian Reorganization Act means the year 1934 when the Act was passed.

The term "Indian" as used in this Act shall include all persons of Indian
descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under Federal
jurisdiction, and all person who are descendants of such members who were, on
June 1, 1934...

In light of this ruling I thought it might be appropriate mention some good books on the subject of how American Indian land was lost in the first place and how the IRA worked to reverse the tide.

In 1887 the Dawes Act divided Indian Reservations into individual allotments with the purpose of ending the very unAmerican custom of holding land in common and turning Indians into farmers. Another convenient consequence was to open un-allotted land to sale outside the tribe. The allotments were to be held in trust by the Federal Government for a specified period, after which they would become fee lands that could be sold by the individual owners. One purpose of the Indian Reorganization Act (part of FDR's New Deal) was to end the hemorrhaging of Indian land being sold for subsistence or, especially during the Depression, lost for taxes.

An excellent book on the history and effects of the IRA is The Nations Within, the Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. Under the IRA, provisions were made for the Secretary of the Interior or Congress to take land into trust for American Indian tribes. Since 1934, according to the NCAI website Interior has taken about 9 million acres into trust, accounting for only about 10% of the total lands lost between the Dawes Act and the IRA. Now the Supreme Court has ruled that the Secretary's ability to take land into trust applies only to tribes federally recognized as of 1934.

But as any school kid knows, most Indian land was already lost before The Dawes Act. Some Eastern tribes have been on reservations for over 300 years. Others like the Lenape who started in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, were constantly pushed west until they ended in Oklahoma, which, for a time, was supposed to remain Indian Country until it too was opened to settlement. So how did the Indians come to lose all that land?

A common misconception is that Indian land was lost through conquest, but that isn't really accurate. Conquest by Law tells the history of Johnson v M'Intosh, the land tenure case that was the first of the Supreme Court decisions known as the Marshall Trilogy that formed the basis for American Indian Law. How the Indians Lost Their Land tells how, "between the early seventeenth century and the early twentieth century almost all the land in the present-day United States was transferred from American Indians to non-Indians."

Some of what you read here may be surprising.

Ablutions, Notes for a Novel

Publication Date: February 18, 2009

Provided free from Amazon Vine

Given the major cutbacks among the big publishing houses and the tendency over the past decade or so to go with the promise of commercial success, I am very surprised that Ablutions by Patrick deWitt found a publisher outside the small presses. That isn't a criticism. It's just that the style is somewhat experimental and the author's prior publishing credits––three in all––were not exactly in top-tier literary journals.

"Notes for a Novel" is an accurate description of what is mostly vignettes centered around the life of an alcoholic and substance abusing bartender working at a well-known but now seedy Hollywood bar. That format along with the second person point of view (you), which I can enjoy in short pieces but often find tedious in a novel, had me convinced I'd hate this. Instead it pulled me in, so much so that I felt so creepy-crawly and grimy I wanted to take a shower, but I couldn't put it down. Scary to think––but no doubt true––that so many people drive our highways with that much booze and narcotics in their systems. And not to give anything away, but I hope the first thing this guy did with his money was visit a good dentist.

I can imagine the author struggling to shape all these notes into a compelling novel, then giving up and deciding to just work at threading them together. The result is something masterful that would have come off rather prosaic had he stuck to a standard form. Ablutions has the potential to become one of those breakout word-of-mouth novels like A Confederacy of Dunces, only happily the author is still with us to enjoy the praise.

At 163 pages, Ablutions is a one-nighter if you can handle the intensity, but however long you take, it's well worth your time.

Valeria's Last Stand

Provided free from Amazon Vine

Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitton is the lighthearted tale of a Hungarian town reluctantly moving into the 21st century before even catching up with the 20th. The term lighthearted, here, should not be confused with insignificant or throw-away. It is light in the style of Italo Calvino who uses humor to point out the foibles of society.

Zivatar is the town history ignored–no bombings during WWII, no tanks rolling through during the 1956 Revolution. The current older population looks back wistfully on Communism, not as dogma, but as a convenience that would have provided security in their old age. Now the mayor––once a loyal party member, now an ardent capitalisit––is determined to drag his small town into the future, building a train station and constantly courting foreign investors with the promise of new factories and jobs. In a town where everyone is still either a farmer, a shopkeeper, or a craftsman, where everyone travels on foot or on bicycles, the mayor takes his Mercedes to travel just down the block.

Valeria is an old spinster, once jilted, who afterward never enjoyed life and became the town hag, until love presents itself in the form of the town's Potter. The Potter, a widow, has had a short fling with the pub-owner, Ibolya, herself somewhat disillusioned with life and love. None of these characters is young any longer, yet, like the town, they teeter on the brink of change, at times lured by its promise; at times recoiling in fear.

Marc Fenton is Editor of the Chattahoochee Review, and anyone who has read the short fiction that appears there may, as I was, be somewhat surprised at his writing style. However, it is definitely a pleasant surprise and one I would highly recommend.