The Mother Hunt by Rex Stout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read my first Nero Wolfe mystery, "Murder by the Book", in translation into my native language, about 1970 or so. I liked it a lot, so when I came to the U.S. I was eager to read other books by Rex Stout. I believe I managed to read all 46 of them between the early Eighties and the mid-Nineties. At that time I was still able to read mystery series. Now I dislike series, but I decided to reread two or three novels in the Nero Wolfe series, just to see whether and how my reception of Mr. Stout's work has changed over time. The first book to reread, randomly selected, is "The Mother Hunt" (1963).

The wife of a successful novelist, recently deceased, finds in her vestibule a healthy baby with a note implying that her husband was the father. She hires Nero Wolfe to find out who the mother is. Archie Goodwin investigates, while Mr. Wolfe lazes around in his old brownhouse on West 35th Street, New York, attends his orchids, drinks beer, reads books, and thinks about the case during breaks between these activities.

A murder occurs, clearly connected to Archie's (sorry, Wolfe's) investigation. The plot is captivating, but rapidly deteriorates when Mr. Stout begins to use, several times, his trademark literary device - gathering in Wolfe's office several characters connected to the investigation and discussing the facts of the case with them. Too theatrical and implausible.

My feeling of being too familiar with the characters is strong; they are cut and pasted from book to book, never ever changing, perhaps except for Archie, who has always been the most (perhaps the only) interesting character. Yet the first half of the novel is enthralling and Mr. Stout's writing is good. I will try one or two more rereads and then come back to my favorite "one-off" books.

Three stars.


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Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find it very hard to review non-fiction books because it requires carefully distinguishing between the impact of the real-life events they describe and the quality of the description itself. Joe Simpson's "Touching the Void" (originally 1988, but I have read the 2004 edition) presents an absolutely amazing story of a mountain climber's survival. Yet, despite the tremendous impact of the events shown, the book is not outstanding.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates are climbing the yet unconquered West Face of Siula Grande in Cordillera Huayhuash (Peruvian Andes) in May and June of 1985. They succeed, reach the summit, but on the descent a tragedy occurs, and Joe breaks his knee in a horrible way (his lower leg is driven through the knee joint). Simon tries to help him, lowering him several times on a 300-foot rope, but then Joe falls into a crevasse. Simon cuts the rope to be able to survive, knowing that Joe is dead. However, Joe does not die, and with painfully broken knee (one leg is six inches shorter than the other) crawls and hops through crevasses, glaciers, snowfields, and moraines, many, many miles, without any water and food for three days and three nights, at the elevation of above 18,000 feet. It is the utter triumph of human spirit that he makes it.

The book is a bit overwrought, even maybe hysterical in some passages, and the three different postscripts, especially the Hollywood part, make it weaker than the original story. A non-climbing reader definitely needs the glossary to understand what the author is writing about: abseiling, fluting, cornice, belay, crampon, etc. It is just a good book about a fantastic story.

Three and a quarter stars.


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Snow White and Russian Red by Dorota Masłowska
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I just wanted to write a little in my native language this one time, just to see whether I still am able to. The English version of the review - a different one - is below the Polish version.

Miesiac temu przeczytalem "Snow White and Russian Red" Doroty Maslowskiej - angielskie tlumaczenie powiesci "Wojna polsko-ruska pod flaga bialo-czerwona" i zachwycony jej wspaniala proza ocenilem ksiazke na cztery i trzy czwarte gwiazdki. Teraz, przeczytawszy ksiazke po polsku, musze zmienic zdanie. Jest to absolutnie fantastyczna ksiazka. Wiem, ze to zabrzmi jak swietokradztwo a moze obrazoburstwo, ale powiesc Maslowskiej jest dla mnie porownywalna z "Lalka" Prusa, "Przedwiosniem" Zeromskiego, czy "Ferdydurke" Gombrowicza. Teraz calkiem sie wychyle, ale porownam te powiesc tez do "Pana Tadeusza". Podobna sila przekazu i podobnej skali talent pisarski.

"Wojna polsko-ruska" portretuje rzeczywistosc Polski 2002 roku, nowo-wolnej Polski, sytuacje ludzi kompletnie otumanionych przez telewizje i reklamy, ludzi szamoczacych sie w tej nowo-nabytej wolnosci. Dorota Maslowska ma absolutny sluch pisarski, jej wyczucie jezyka jest fenomenalne. Jezyk powiesci jest prawdziwy, dosadny, bardzo wulgarny, bo przeciez tak, kurwa, wielu Polakow mowi. A do tego jest to histerycznie smieszna ksiazka. Zasmiewalem sie nad prawie kazda stronica. Wezmy chociazby zdanie "A w miedzyczasie osraly ja wazki". Czy tez "Wiesz, mnie od urodzenia bolalo w piersiach, czulem niepokoj. Wreszcie jednego dnia zajrzalem sobie do gardla, a tam podwojne dno". Ze wszystkich ksiazek, ktore czytalem w zyciu - a bylo ich wiele - chyba tylko "Wstep do imagineskopii" Sledzia Otrembusa Podgrobelskiego wywolal u mnie wiecej smiechu.

Zamieszczam ponizej moja angielsko-jezyczna recenzje z angielskiego tlumaczenia, a tutaj jeden z moich ulubionych fragmentow oryginalnej wersji polskiej: "Cale me zycie staje mi przed oczami takie, jakie bylo. Przedszkole, gdzie dwiedzialem sie, ze wszystkim nam chodzi o pokoj na swiecie, o biale golebie z bristolu 3000 zlotych za blok, a potem raptem 3500 zlotych, mus tak zwanego lezakowania, siku w majtki, epidemia prochnicy, klub wiewiorki, brutalna fluoryzacja uzebienia. Potem przypominam sobie podstawowke, zla wychowawczynia, zle nauczycielki w kozakach kurwiszonach, szatnie, obuwie zamienne i izbe pamieci, pokoj, pokoj, golebie pokoju z bristolu frunace na nitce bawelnopodobnej przez hol, pierwsze kontakty homo w szatni wuef." Ja tez przez to wszystko przeszedlem, mimo ze pani Maslowska jest mlodsza od mojej corki.

Poza tym odszczekuje krytyke zakonczenia z "Masloska" z mojej angielskiej recenzji. Jest ono swietne; w pewnym sensie przypomina mi najlepsze utwory Stanislawa Lema. A wiec albo moj angielski nie jest wystaczajacy, albo tlumaczenie nie jest tak znowu wspaniale jak uwazalem.

Dlugopis z napisem "Zdzislaw Sztorm" przypomina mi symbol Trystero z wspanialej noweli Thomasa Pynchona, "The Crying of Lot 49". Co za klasa!

Szesc gwiazdek za genialny warsztat literacki, cztery za tresc Czyli piec gwiazdek.

For years my wife has been telling me about this young (born in 1983) Polish writer, Dorota Maslowska, and about her book "Snow White and Russian Red" (2002) (the original Polish title sounds much better: "Wojna polsko-ruska pod flaga bialo-czerwona", which roughly means "A Polish-Russian war, under the white and red flag"). I have been reluctant to read it; after all what can one expect from a nineteen year old author? While it is obvious that at nineteen one can be a great mathematician, poet, chess player, and the like, it seems impossible to write a great novel at that age. At nineteen one can have the knowledge of structures, but not the structure of knowledge, which takes years and years of living to emerge. For example, I myself at nineteen was a total idiot (like almost all of my friends and acquaintances, boys much more than girls, sorry for the sexist stereotyping); of course I knew about music, games, sports, films, TV, etc., but I knew nothing about the matters that count, I knew nothing about life.

Now that I have read the book (in English translation, because someone has borrowed the Polish original from us and never bothered to return it), I am totally blown away by it. There is much depth in the novel, and the writing is utterly magnificent. The entire ending is a literary tour de force; it is poetic, hypnotic, brilliant. Like, wow, man.

The novel, which some critics rightly compare to "Catcher in the Rye", "Trainspotting", "Naked Lunch", is about gray, depressing, small-town life of young people, the author's contemporaries, in the times of systemic change in Poland, from the so-called Communism to free-market economy. The narrator is a young man, called Nails (Silny, in the Polish original), who has just been dumped by his girlfriend. Nails and everybody else in the novel are constantly on speed. They live from day to day, without any aim, in a country where, as they say, there is no future. They look up to the West and down on the "Russkies".

When I was 19, life was so much easier. We knew who the bad guys were: the government, the press, radio, and TV. They were always lying to us, the good Polish people. In 2002 Poland things are not so easy; it is hard to know who the bad people are. Nails claims to be a leftist-anarchist, but he really does not know what it means and is mainly interested in satisfying the needs of this one special part of his body.

"Snow White and Russian Red" is a biting satire on xenophobia and fake patriotism: "Either you are a Pole or you're not a Pole. Either you are Polish or you're Russki. And to put it more bluntly, either you're a person or you're a prick." Patriotism is measured by respect of the flag.

It is a very funny novel as well. I burst out laughing about every other page. The translation by Benjamin Paloff is totally wonderful. I will soon read the original and amend this review, if need be, but I cannot believe the original Polish version could be any better. The quarter of a star that I am taking off is for the author's failed device (in my opinion) of putting herself, "Dorota Masloska", in the final parts of the book.

Here's a passage that reminds me of some of the great works in world literature; it could have been written by William Faulkner or James Joyce, but it was written by 19-year-old Dorota Maslowska, barely out of high school in Wejherowo, Poland:

"Indeed, we're girls talking about death, swinging a leg, eating nuts, though there's no talk of those who are absent. They're scarcely bruises and scratches that we did to ourselves, riding on a bike, but they look like floodwaters on our legs, like purple seas, and we're talking fiercely about death. And we imagine our funeral, at which we're present, we stand there with flowers, eavesdrop on the conversations, and cry more than everybody, we keep our moms at hand, we throw earth at the empty casket, because that way death doesn't really concern us, we are different, we'll die some other day or won't die at all. We're dead serious, we smoke cigarettes, taking drags in such a way that an echo resounds in the whole house, and we flick the ash into an empty watercolor box."

Four and three quarter stars (five stars for the translation).


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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916) as an adolescent, almost 50 years ago. The novel made a huge impression on me then. The sublime beauty of Joyce's prose made it clear to me that I better become an engineer or a mathematician because I obviously had no talent for writing, even if I had dearly wanted to be a writer. I have just reread the book, and I still think it is one of the greatest works of world literature. Each of the five chapters of the book contains more wisdom and beauty than the entire Internet. The conversation between Stephen and Lynch in the fifth chapter carries way more meaning than all posts on Facebook combined.

"A Portrait" is a fictionalized autobiography of James Joyce's youth; in the novel he appears as Stephen Dedalus. Thousands of reviews by much better writers than myself are available so I will just offer some loose thoughts. J.M. Coetzee's "Boyhood" ( which I review here) deals with similar issues. It is also similar in its greatness. Coetzee's manufacturing of childhood memories is on the same level as the literary, political, and religious awakenings of Stephen Dedalus. I do not know which book I like better. They are both magnificent. Coetzee's book is politically sharper, but Joyce's is psychologically deeper. And it shows how little people changed in about one hundred years, despite all the technology.

The first chapter, about Stephen's childhood, is to me the most striking. The broken sentence patterns convey the fragmentary nature of childhood memories. In the third chapter we witness Stephen's struggles with emerging sexuality ("The sootcoated packet of pictures which he had hidden in the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose shameless or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sinning in thought and deed."). The chapter also contains monumental Jesuit sermons on the horrors of hell and the nature of sin. The fifth chapter showcases Stephen's growing fascination with language. The famous conversation between Stephen and Lynch about arts and beauty is the focus of that chapter. As is the later conversation between Stephen and Cranly.

Here's a passage from the fifth chapter: "A soft liquid joy flowed through the words where soft long vowels hurtled noiselessly and fell away, lapping and flowing back and ever shaking the white bells of their waves in mute chime and mute peal and soft low swooning cry; and he felt that the augury he had sought in the wheeling darting birds and in the pale space of sky above him had come forth from his heart like a bird from a turret quietly and swiftly." Utterly magnificent. J.M. Coetzee writes equally beautifully, but his strength - because of his education - is the mathematical precision of the language rather than Joyce's lyricism.

Five stars.


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The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find Philip Roth's "The Anatomy Lesson" (1983), the third novel in the Zuckerman trilogy, rather unfocused and uneven. The book contains spellbinding passages but also some unbearably boring ones. I loved "Portnoy's Complaint", which I read over 40 years ago, and I quite disliked Mr. Roth's "The Breast" ( reviewed here). This novel would place somewhere in between in my ranking.

Nathan Zuckerman is a 40-year-old author of four well-received novels. He is suffering from extreme pain in his arms, neck, and shoulders, and no medical treatment seems to be working. He has a number of women helping him with his everyday life and also ensuring that his sex life is thriving. Gloria, Jenny, Diana, Jaga (Yaga, really, as she is from Warsaw, Poland), and Ricky serve Zuckerman like the 1970s groupies did for famous rock band members.

It seems that for Mr. Roth the thread about Zuckerman's struggle with Milton Appel, his most vocal literary critic and archenemy, is crucial to the novel. Yet to me, it is way overdone, excessive, and just plain boring. On the other hand, Zuckerman's love for his deceased mother is truly felt, and that thread is deeply touching. The mother is a quiet hero: "Redressing historical grievances, righting intolerable wrongs, changing the tragic course of the Jewish history - all this she gladly left for her husband to accomplish during dinner. He made the noise and had the opinions, she contended herself with preparing their meal and feeding the children and enjoying, while it lasted, the harmonious family life."

Then there is the hilarious thread about the pornography business that Zuckerman is ostensibly in, and his conversations with Ricky about that business are priceless. "The Anatomy Lesson" contains so many stunning passages that I would need to write a four-page review to provide more samples. Just one example: "With Roget's Thesaurus under his head and Gloria sitting on his face, Zuckerman understood just how little one can depend upon human suffering to produce ennobling effects."

The spirit of early 1970s is portrayed well, with the sexual revolution and the Watergate affair in the background,. Can you imagine that people smoked joints on airplanes? Those were the days. Mr. Roth's prose conveys the feel of the city of Chicago well. Also, I like the title, which evokes the many doctors over Nicolaes Tulp's body in the magnificent Rembrandt's painting. Yet, while I love the individual scenes, I am unable to love the whole novel. It is way too disjoint, too self-referential, and too custom-made.

Three stars.


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The Suspect by Laurali R. Wright
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

L.R. Wright's "The Suspect" won the prestigious Edgar Award for "The Best Novel" of 1986. It is quite a good book, with a captivating plot, thus the latter part of this review explains why my rating is much less than stellar.

78-year-old George Wilcox kills 85-year-old Carlyle Burke, whom he has known for many, many years. The killing is described on the first few pages. The rest of the novel reaches deep into the past to reveal the reasons for the killing. "The Suspect" is a very good police procedural, or rather a "Royal Canadian Mounted Police procedural", as the events take place on Canada's Sunshine Coast. We learn how Staff Sergeant Alberg and his officers gradually get closer and closer to the solution of the case. The denouement is logical and mercifully lacks silly plot twists.

The novel is extremely readable; the term unputdownable fits really well. Thanks to my insomnia, I have been able to read it in one sitting. Yet "The Suspect" is all about the plot, while I love to read books for the writing. When I read "serious" books by, say, Coetzee, Pynchon, Joyce, etc., I read them for the magical "Wow!" sentences and passages that reveal deep wisdom or the beauty of the art of writing. But even in the "mystery genre" works by great authors such as Nicolas Freeling, Denise Mina, Hakan Nesser, Karin Fossum, and many others have depth and incredibly skilled writing in addition to the engrossing plot. I prefer books that I have to read slowly, books in which I enjoy rereading sentences and passages many times to appreciate the author's literary talent or wisdom. Reading books fast because they are interesting is not exactly my thing.

Moreover, there are too many coincidences and connections between people in "The Suspect", too many goings-on in a soap opera style. The romantic thread is well written, but a bit too sweet for my taste. Another complaint: how can a good writer - which Ms. Wright undoubtedly is - concoct the following monstrosity of a sentence: "His body had become a horrified, garrulous commentator on calamity", and - to make things worse - put it in the very first page of the novel? To me, it is a worthy contestant for the Worst Sentence of the Year Award.

Obviously I am very far from qualified to be an Edgar Award judge, but I checked their database and out of the 61 books awarded the best novel distinction since 1954 I read 13 and I would rate six of them with five stars. Definitely not this one, though.

Three and a quarter stars.


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Death And The Chaste Apprentice by Robert Barnard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Having read several "serious" books in a row I think I have earned the right to some light entertainment. Here's yet another novel by Robert Barnard, "Death and the Chaste Apprentice" (1989), my eleventh work of his.

An annual music and theatre festival is held in Ketterick, a London suburb. The plot begins when the rehearsals for an Elizabethan play "The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe" and for subsequent opera performances begin at the Ketterick Arts Festival. The first 40 pages are really difficult to get through as there are too many characters, which makes the text hard to focus on. I almost never quit books before I finish them, but I have been tempted in this case. About one-third into the novel, there is a murder. The local superintendent Iain Dundy, helped by Charlie Peace from the Metropolitan CID, are on the case.

To me, the best parts of the novel are fascinating insights into the world of opera and Elizabethan theatre. Alas, one can find precious little of Mr. Barnard's trademark snide writing style, and there are very few sarcastic passages that have impressed me so much in several of his other novels. I burst out laughing only in three or four places. While the plot is serviceable, there is one twist too many at the end. No, it is not a bad book; it is just below the average for Mr. Barnard.

Two stars.


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The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What it Means for Americans by Martin Garbus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everybody who cares about the future of the United States of America should read Martin Garbus' book "The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and what it means for Americans" (2007). My chances of being around in 2032 are not good, but I am worrying about my daughter and granddaughter. While the actions of the President of the United States and of the Congress have only short-term effects, the Supreme Court decisions have a long-lasting impact; they affect generations. The Supreme Court decisions define our country.

Mr. Garbus is a famous First Amendment lawyer and a pre-eminent legal historian. His book is unabashedly and virulently anti-conservative. Thus a disclaimer is needed: I am much more of a liberal than a conservative, even if I always attempt to look at issues from various points of view, so my review may be biased by my beliefs.

The book was published in 2007. Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens were still on the court while Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were yet to be seated. In the book Mr. Garbus makes a convincing case for several theses of which I, as a complete layman, select the following five that have captured my interest the most:
(1) The Rehnquist Court followed by the Roberts Court have been engaged in massive rewriting of the US law established in the 1937-1980 period.
(2) The Court (Rehnquist's and Roberts'), with its conservative majority, has allowed a major increase of the executive branch's power at the expense of the legislative branch, the Congress. Mr. Garbus writes "the Court is now determined to impose its own political preferences over that of elected federal officials."
(3) The Court has allowed the United States to be "defined only by the vision of the majorities". Mr. Garbus rightly says that "majority rule and democracy are not the same thing".
(4) "The five votes today [...] are based more on political power and less on legal reasoning", which - to me - violates the separation of powers principle.
(5) The notion of Justice Kennedy and ex-Justice O'Connor being "swing votes" is a myth; both have always been solidly conservative votes.

Mr. Garbus' book is rich in brilliant observations. I have written down more than twenty "deep thoughts", but for sake of brevity will quote just one here: "As one federal court said 'Of the three fundamental principles which underlie government: [...] the protection of life, liberty, and property, the chief of these is property'"

This is a really scary book. For once, I agree with one of the blurbs on the cover that warns us about "how the [...] bench may imperil our way of life and endanger the liberties you may have thought were our inalienable rights."

The most famous preamble might now as well say "We the rich people..." The poor need not apply for constitutional protection.

Four and a half stars.



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No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is one of my most favorite books. His "No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories" is certainly not of the same caliber, although - to me - one of the stories is a gem that redeems the whole collection.

The plot of the title novella takes place during troubled times in Colombia - the 1950's La Violencia that claimed lives of more than 100,000 people. The novella presents a grim and extremely sad story about an elderly couple: the colonel has been waiting for over 15 years for the pension that is due to him because of his participation in the Thousand Days' War almost 60 years ago (1899 - 1902). The colonel and his asthmatic wife have no means of support except for a very promising rooster that they plan to sell when the cockfighting time arrives. Colombia is under martial law and curfews. The bells in the tower ring out the censor's movie moral classification and most movies are "unfit for everyone". It is a captivating story, yet I find the ending cheap and trivializing.

There are several other stories in the collection, and the last one, "Big Mama's Funeral", is totally charming - one of the best short stories that I have ever read. Subtle wit, humor, generous doses of magical realism transcend the skillful storytelling and raise the story to a high level of literary art. "At dusk the resonant pealing of St. Peter's Basilica mingled with the cracked tinklings of Macondo. Inside his stifling tent across the tangled reeds and the silent bogs which marked the boundary between the Roman Empire and the ranches of Big Mama, the Supreme Pontiff heard the uproar of the monkeys agitated all night long by the passing of the crowds."

Three and three quarter stars.


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