Three Fires by Denise Mina
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Denise Mina is one of my most favorite authors of crime novels. I highly rated several of her books, two of them even with five stars. Three Fires is not a mystery novel; it is a novella that recounts the story of Girolamo Savonarola's life. Savonarola, a 15th-century monk, preacher, and prophet, was one of the most influential people in northern Italy and—in the 1490s—the de facto leader of Florence (at that time Italy was not one country but a loose collection of independent city-states and other entities, governed by dukes or the Pope). The novella is bracketed by the accounts of Savonarola's conviction and his execution.

It seems to me—from what I can read in outlines of Italian history—that the degree of fictionalization of Savonarola's life is not significant. Denise Mina uses very modern language in telling this over 500-year-old story, which may cause an interesting literary cognitive discordance when reading. While I find the novella moderately absorbing, the penultimate paragraph sends a powerful and timely message to the contemporary reader:

"The oratorial tricks and ticks Savonarola learned during his years in the wilderness are monkied by populists to this day: opposing scientific evidence with faith, strong leaders offering intoxicating absolutes who will not be questioned, who deflect dissent with grim warnings of enemies within and without. Followers will again reject the evidence of their eyes to enjoy the luxury of belonging, ignore the despotism they support in the name of decency and national pride [...]"

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My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ostensibly a sweet, charming fairy tale about the importance of fairy tales, the novel focuses on the conflict between an ideal world of a child and the ugly, real world of adults, with all their sins of the past. A precocious, know-it-all, almost-eight-year-old Elsa is mainly raised by her unconventional Granny; both are very different from their peers. Only people different than others can make a difference, the author seems to be saying.
I was enchanted with the whimsical sweetness of the novel for about 150 pages, then—alas—it overstayed its welcome. A delightful fairy tale turned into a second-rate mystery. The tedious uncovering of past secrets of the grown-ups eventually irritated me to the extent that I wanted to toss the book.
To end on a positive note, a nice passage from the novel:
"It's snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You'd quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story."

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The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An extraordinary novel about the dynamics of a two-generational American family in the waning years of the 20th century. Thoroughly realistic, it shows an incisive portrayal of American society. The depth of character analysis and insightful depiction of social mechanisms remind me of Tolstoy's or Flaubert's best writing.

This long, sad, yet very funny novel offers so much! From the detailed analysis of marital crises and rituals of hostility between long-term couples, through investigation of Lithuanian society's transition from a directive-driven to a market economy, an unforgettable hallucinatory scene of a fight against feces, quotes from Schopenhauer and Aristotle, explorations of stock market bubble and bust mechanisms, highly metaphorical love scenes, the effects of Parkinson's disease on the human brain, haute cuisine preparation and presentation, a stinging caricature of the business side of the medical and pharmaceutical industry, to mathematical analysis of popular music. But most importantly, the novel is full of completely believable people, people who I could swear are real and whom I know well.

I love Mr. Franzen's writing style: metaphor-rich, intricate yet elegant, and incredibly erudite in each subject matter. How not to love the author's fun with using the word 'corrections' so many times in the novel, each time in a different context?

I realize that while many of us are interested in literature as, primarily, the advancement of a plot, as a story it tells, I am mainly interested in the writing, the prose, and the use of language itself. Thus, probably not everybody will be in utter awe — as I am — of the following passage:
"Alfred, by the phone, was studying the clock above the sink. The time was that malignant fiveishness to which the flu sufferer awakens after late afternoon fever dreams. A time shortly after five which was a mockery of five. To the face of clocks the relief of order - two hands pointing squarely at whole numbers - came only once an hour. As every other moment failed to square, so every moment held the potential of fluish misery."

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Tenth of December by George Saunders
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I apologize for my apparent lack of literary sophistication, but I have not been able to much enjoy George Saunders' acclaimed collection of short stories "Tenth of December." I just don't like the author's writing style; his use of language does not resonate with my sense of what constitutes good prose. While reading Ishiguro, Banville, Coetzee is a deep aesthetic experience for me, reading this collection by Saunders was a hard job, quite irritating at times.

The eponymous last story is the only one I really like. I actually enjoyed the prose, devoid of strange affectations present in other stories. More importantly, the story tells us something about real human beings, about our motives, fears, and weaknesses.

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Hilbert by Constance Bowman Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

David Hilbert (1862-1943) was one of the most important mathematicians in history. He significantly contributed to an incredibly wide range of research fields in mathematics, most notably to the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic. Perhaps his most spectacular achievement was to formulate, in 1900, a list of 23 mathematical research problems, which inspired and influenced thousands of 20th-century mathematicians.

The author, Constance Reid, a non-mathematician, does a very good job writing about mathematics. The biography also provides a great account of Hilbert’s life, his human side, and his friendships, particularly with Hermann Minkowski. The reader will also learn how David Hilbert had made the mathematics department of the University of Gottingen the world center of the mathematical thought, before Hitler came to power and destroyed everything.

(I have the faintest personal connection to Hilbert: he had been the doctoral advisor of Hugo Steinhaus, who had been the advisor of Jan Oderfeld, who was my advisor.)

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Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kingsley Amis' 1954 novel is a humorous take on the professional and romantic plight of a history lecturer in a probationary position at a provincial university in England. Several scenes are side-splittingly funny: the incident with the destruction of bedding in a senior professor's guest bedroom made me laugh hysterically for several minutes. In addition, we get sharp satire of university life and human foibles in general.

(It is totally my fault - not the author's - that I dislike his writing style with its abundance of dialogues and overflow of words. Maybe I should have waited a few weeks after reading the brilliant prose of Ishiguro, Coetzee, and Banville.)

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The Untouchable by John Banville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another near masterpiece, which does not leave me a choice about the rating. Mr. Banville presents the life story of Victor Maskell (Anthony Blunt in real life), one of the "Cambridge Five", a ring of spies working in Great Britain for the Soviet Union in 1930s to 1950s.

To me, the central question the novel is why men of the highest privilege embraced the Soviet-flavored Marxist ideology. Why was an upper-class, Cambridge-educated intellectual, an eminent art historian, and a relative of the royal family eager to pass information to the Soviets?

There is so much more: nearly clinical observations of human psychology, questions on the nature of one's identity, even a glimpse into the closeted gay world of the times. But first and foremost, there is the brilliant prose. I kept re-reading many, many passages to savor the stunningly gorgeous English.

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