The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"When I was thirteen, I discovered a tube of contraceptive jelly in the bathroom cabinet. [...] the small print, flaked of a few letters, told me what I didn't want to know. My parents still did it. Worse, when they did it, there was a chance that my mum might get pregnant. This was, well, inconceivable."

Imagine the horror of an adolescent boy who learns that his parents - these sad antiques, relics of the past - still do it. The entire consciousness of an adolescent boy is focused on "it," wanting "it," dreaming about "it," imagining "it," and all the while these ridiculous old folks do it. It offends common sense. This is viciously funny, not even to mention the brilliant pun at the end of the quote. Yet the entire story, The Fruit Cage is way more serious; it is a story about discovering one's parents' secrets.

The Fruit Cage is the 10th of the 11 short stories that compose Julian Barnes' collection The Lemon Table (2004). As usual, I find it impossible to review a set of short stories in a meaningfully holistic way; I am only able to focus on these stories that struck me as highlights of the collection. The only common aspect that I can see is the evident mastery of Mr. Barnes' prose: the writing is wonderful.

From my choice of epigraph it may seem that the stories in The Fruit Cage are funny. Certainly not! In fact two of the stories - for me the best in the collection - are extremely and painfully sad. The beautifully written The Story of Mats Israelson is a tale of mutually unrequited love, stifled by rigid cultural norms in the late 19th century Sweden. The terse prose, devoid of any dramatics and histrionics, underscores the human tragedies of hopes dashed and lives wasted. The reader who likes the illusion of happy endings will be disappointed. Mr. Barnes writes about real life rather than about Disney's fake reality.

Hygiene is even more desperately sad. Wonderful prose emphasizes the tragedy of old age, of human insignificance and transience, of hidden tears shed by geezers when they are alone, of terminal loneliness and hopelessness. The "golden years" are exposed as what they really are - a sham: it's just waiting for merciful death to end the suffering.

The Real Journey, based on events from the life of Ivan Turgenev, is a meditation on love. A passage from that story struck me as one on the more bitterly cynical definitions of love:

"If love, as some assert, is a purely self-referring business, if the object of love is finally unimportant because what lovers value are their own emotions, then what more appropriate circularity than for a dramatist to fall in love with his own creation?"

Cynical or not, there certainly is a grain of truth in the observation that lovers may love their emotions more than the lovee.

I also remember that I quite liked Knowing French the story composed of a set of letters of a highly educated, intellectual woman in her 80s, residing in an old people home, written to a certain Julian Barnes. Yet the overall problem I have with this collection is that I liked the stories much more when I was reading them. Now, several weeks from the time I finished, I can't recall much about six or seven of them and I am hesitant to rate the collection highly even if the writing is outstanding and the sadness that the stories provide is true to life.

Three stars.

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The Burglar on the Prowl by Lawrence Block
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"I could have been there in ten minutes on the train, but I'd worked too hard stealing the money I was carrying to risk letting some common thief take it away from me."

Unfortunately, The Burglar on the Prowl (2004) confirms my fears expressed in the review of my previous book by Lawrence Block in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, The Burglar in the Library . The newer installments of the series are noticeably weaker that the older ones. Gone is the charm of the novels that opened the series (like The Burglar in the Closet and only the conceptual continuity and the comforting thus boring familiarity of characters are left.

Bernie is preparing to burglarize the apartment of certain Crandall Rountree Mapes at the instigation of his friend, Marty. Mr. Mapes has stolen Marty's young girlfriend and the burglary would serve as revenge and punishment. Unfortunately for Bernie, he is unable to resist his addiction: instead of focusing on preparations for the planned Mapes caper he goes on the prowl. He finds a random brownstone, decides it makes a nice target and picks the locks to enter an apartment. Naturally, things don't go as planned and Bernie soon finds himself in a pickle. Not only does he face serious legal trouble but his apartment is burglarized and important stuff is missing. Even worse, there happens a murder and Bernie is involved in the case.

The plot contains such strange components as Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and ethnic Latvians. Gentle fun is made of John Sandford, the purported author of a bestseller Lettuce Pray. There are some trademark funny passages by Mr. Block, such as

"I told her not to worry her pretty little head, and she gave me a suggestion which, on the face of it, struck me as physically impossible."

I am not quoting the funniest passage so as not to deprave any under-18 readers. But coincidences in the plot begin piling up mile-high. Even the author himself makes fun of this when he writes "the long arm of coincidence." Neat term but a lame excuse for incoherent plot. And - to sum up - a lame installment in a series that began so promisingly with Burglars Can't be Choosers.

One-and-a-half stars.

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

"What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark."

"The past beats inside me like a second heart."

John Banville's The Sea (2005) offered me one of the most remarkable literary experiences of my life. After just a few pages I knew I was reading a magnificent novel. By mid-book I was absolutely certain this was one of the very best books I had ever read. And I kept reading, very slowly, savoring the masterful prose. And then... Then the ending came, the last few pages where the author suddenly decided to explain things, and some of the extraordinary charm of the novel instantaneously dissipated. Real life turned into a story; human truth turned into a plot. What a disappointing moment!

The Sea is a masterpiece fully deserving its Man Booker Prize; I will naturally round the rating up to five stars, but - to me - it is no longer a novel unique in its greatness, which it had been until the ending. In this inept but heartfelt review I am trying to convey my early feelings about the novel before the very ending broke the spell.

There is no linearity in life; life is not a story. Things in life occur for no reason and for no reason they do not occur either. Life is a jumbled collage of events that had once happened. The present is the accumulation of the past, but they also exist concurrently and one flows through the cracks of the other:

"[...] it all has begun to run together, past and possible future and impossible present."

Max Morden, a retired art historian, is an 11-year-old boy, playing on the beach with the Grace family, his wife Anna is dead, the boy falls in love with Mrs. Grace while Anna is dying "leaning sideways from the hospital bed, vomiting on to the floor," and the boy falls out of love with Mrs. Grace during an erotic experience at the beach, Anna is getting the death sentence from the doctor and the magical moment with Mrs. Grace - the culmination of the boy's love - begins to happen

"[...] in that Edenic moment at what was suddenly the centre of the world [...] and blonde Mrs. Grace offering me an apple [...]"

But the magic of the moment is broken by a hurricane of events. And it all begins and ends with the sea, the great infinity that created us and then absorbs us.

So deeply human the novel is that - although nothing even remotely similar ever happened to me - I feel all these events belong to me as they belong to all people. I feel that my past and everybody else's past merge with Max Morden's past in the universal human past. The truth of the elderly art historian, a grieving widower who is the 11-year-old boy in love with a mature woman is my truth and the truth of all people.

There is so much more in the novel: there is Claire, Max's "ungainly, unpretty daughter," and there are unforgettable Miss Vavasour and the Colonel. The boy's disgust at the mingling of God and sex, and a fragment seemingly taken straight out of another of my favorite authors, Cees Nooteboom:

"We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while [...]"

There also is the absolutely stunning passage about Max becoming aware of the dichotomy between himself and that what is not-himself:

"In her I had my first experience of the absolute otherness of other people. [...] the world was first manifest for me as an objective entity.

Luminous, breathtaking prose.

Four-and-three-quarter stars.

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The Burglar in the Library by Lawrence Block
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] there was always a chance that Carolyn's wandering hand would fasten on a part of me not entirely consistent with the fabric of her dream, and that might give new meaning to the term 'rude awakening.'"

I read two first installments in Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series ( The Burglar in the Closet and Burglars Can't Be Choosers) and liked them quite a lot. However, when I fast-forwarded about 20 years in the series and read The Burglar in the Library (1997), I found it quite disappointing. While it is always interesting to see how the author handles the passage of time in the series the newer installments in a long-running series tend to exude that "made-to-readers'-order", customized, musty sense of familiarity.

Bernie is now the owner of Barnegat Books, a used book store. His friend, Carolyn, visits him to talk about their planned stay in Cuttleford House, a genuine English country house in the Berkshires. The reader learns that the travel has something to do with Raymond Chandler. Then there is a flashback in narration to ten days earlier and we learn about what happened between Bernie and his most recent girlfriend, Lettice.

After that we are in the parody territory, immersed in an imitation of a classical English country-house mystery:

"Perfectly nice people, some of them slightly wacky, but all of them well-bred and well-spoken. Some of them may not be what they seem, and a couple of them have a dark secret in their past, and they're isolated somewhere, and somebody gets killed. And then somebody says, 'Oh, it must have been some passing tramp who did it, because otherwise it would have to have been one of us [...]'"

I found the whole parody concept silly and lacking any charm. The book became the dreaded "page-turner", when one turns page after page without really reading the text, in hopes that the silliness will soon end.

Three redeeming qualities save the novel from the bottom, one-star rating. First is the tastefully written and amusing thread of Bernie's erotic adventures. The only good thing about the mystery plot is the "three chairs conundrum." Finally, the whole Raymond Chandler business is a little intriguing, way more interesting than the plot itself.

I will try another newer installment of the series and if it is as weak as this one, I will return to the old Bernie, when the author still had creative ideas.

One-and-three-quarter stars.

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Genialni. Lwowska szkoła matematyczna by Mariusz Urbanek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'Mathematics mediates between spirit and matter'"
The inscription on Hugo Steinhaus' gravestone (My own translation of the Polish sentence 'Między duchem a materią pośredniczy matematyka.')

Mariusz Urbanek's Genialni (2014) (in my lame translation the English equivalent would be The Geniuses) chronicles life stories, achievements, and careers of a group of extraordinary and world-famous Polish mathematicians who were jointly known as the Lwów School of Mathematics and who offered momentous contribution to various branches of mathematics. As far as I know, the book has not been yet translated into English; in fact, four years ago I resolved to attempt the task, but quickly decided that a person who can write in English well would do a better job.

I have a strong personal connection with one of the remarkable mathematicians whose life and work are depicted in the book. Hugo Steinhaus was the PhD advisor of Jan Oderfeld who was my PhD advisor. Thus, in the sense of mathematical genealogy, I am a grandson of Steinhaus. What's more, Steinhaus, in addition to greatly contributing to such branches of mathematics as functional analysis, geometry, and logic, was one of the founders of probability theory which is my favorite branch of mathematics, and which I often teach at my university.

The narration begins on July 17, 1935, as the members of the Lwów School gather for their regular mathematical discussions in the traditional meeting place, "Scottish Cafe" in Lwów. Following the author's lead I will focus here only on three members of this illustrious group: Steinhaus, Stefan Banach, and Stanisław Ulam. Banach, the founder of functional analysis in its modern shape is "generally considered one of the world's most important and influential 20th-century mathematicians" (Wikipedia). John von Neumann, an American mathematical genius, traveled to Lwów several times in the 1930, trying to get Banach to move to the US. Mr. Urbanek quotes a facetious statement that Steinhaus' greatest contribution to mathematics was "discovering" Banach. Seriously though, Steinhaus was Banach's informal PhD advisor.

Of the three mathematicians Stanisław Ulam is probably most famous in the U.S. because of his contributions to the development of nuclear weapons. He began his American career in the famous Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. Later came his participation in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos - development of the atomic bomb - where he was one of the two leading mathematicians. Still later Ulam was the second of command, after Edward Teller, in the team that developed the hydrogen bomb. In fact, many scientists consider his contributions more significant than Teller's, as he solved the ignition problem. Ulam is also considered the father of the so-called Monte Carlo methods in mathematics, which is my most favorite field in math and in which I often dabble.

The author's style is very readable, perhaps even too "gossipy" and unfocused in several places. Numerous anecdotes about the mathematicians enliven the book. However, the reader should be aware that a substantial portion of the book is very serious and tragic. After Germany attacked Poland from the west on September 1, 1939, thus starting World War II, the Soviets invaded the eastern part of Poland, the part that included Lwów. Persecution began, with frequent arrests and deportations. Then the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the mathematicians suffered the same horrors as all other Polish people: planned or random executions (25 Polish professors were executed in Lwów on July 4th, 1941), deportations to labor or concentration camps, or - if they were lucky - escape from their home and emigration. After the horrors of German occupation came the terror, almost equally severe, imposed by the Soviet-controlled Polish "Communist" government. Banach and Steinhaus had to wait until the mid-to-late 1950s for some semblance of normality return to life in Poland.

An interesting and readable book, but perhaps one that will be of interest mostly for people connected with mathematics in some way.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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Death of a Doxy by Rex Stout
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'[...] Because your sister was a doxy, and you --'
'My sister was a what?'
'D, O, X, Y, doxy. I happen to like that better than concubine or paramour or mistress. [...]'"

Yeah, I hadn't known exactly what the word 'doxy' meant until I read the first 40 pages of Rex Stout's novel. Death of a Doxy (1966) is the 42nd installment in the famous Nero Wolfe series, albeit one of the weakest ones along with Gambit that I have recently reviewed.

We meet the intrepid and debonair Archie Goodwin, Mr. Wolfe's right hand, as he is leaving an apartment, taking a last look at the body of a murdered woman, and making sure he has not left his fingerprints on the scene. Orrie Cather, one of the detectives whose services Mr. Wolfe frequently uses, is arrested for murder. The case may involve a client of Wolfe, so he is obliged to undertake the investigation. The whole thing is additionally complicated by the fact that Mr. Cather's fiancée, Jill, knew the victim.

Archie has to use all his manly charms to get Jill and the victim's sister to talk. Obviously he succeeds. Uncharacteristically for Wolfe novels the cast of characters includes a gregarious and loose-lipped cabaret singer. Archie and the three women help the obese genius of detection solve the case and he earns quite a substantial amount of money.

I like the characterizations of the three women, they almost feel like real people. Being a mathematician I like the passage

"He discovered the theorem that the sides of equiangular triangles are proportional. He discovered that when two straight lines intersect the vertically opposite angles are equal, and that the circle is bisected by its diameter."

I am also amused by the fact that in mere 52 years since the novel was written English changed so much that I have no idea what the word 'hipped' meant in 1966. The author writes 'she was hipped,' 'I got hipped,' and none of the current meanings of the verb - I have even extensively checked the Urban Dictionary - fits the context in which these phrases were uttered. Well, stumped by 'hipped,' how's that for a pun?

This installment is markedly weaker than most other Nero Wolfe novels. Would it be possible that Mr. Stout hired someone to ghost-write it? Or maybe he wrote it in just a few days?

Two stars.

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The Cure. Poletko Pana Boba by Jerzy Rzewuski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Jupiter Crash is another song by The Cure borne of fascination with the immensity of the sea. One could refer here to onomatopoeic perfection - the wave effect obtained through multi-track recording of guitar sound and the multivoiced vocal track emphasize the narrator's painful melancholy."
(My own translation from Polish)

Yet another English-language review of a book in Polish. A very good book which serves as an antidote after major disappointments of the two other music biographies I have recently read ( Pearl , a sensationalist biography of Janis Joplin and the atrocious Stairway To Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored). Jerzy Rzewuski's The Cure. Poletko Pana Boba (1997) is a great example of how to write about rock/pop bands without focusing on the dirt, drugs, and sex-filled lives of the rich and famous musicians.

The title, which translated to English would be Bob's Little Acre, is a cool pun on the title of Erskine Caldwell's famous novel. Robert Smith ("Bob") has always been the moving spirit, the heart, soul, and face of The Cure and the band has always been his little acre. Most of success and fame that the band has achieved is due to Mr. Smith.

Although the band had been formed in 1976 as The Easy Cure, the book traces the history of The Cure since September 1977, when Robert Smith, with his distinctive, rather high pitched voice, decided to take on the role of a vocalist of the band. We read about their first brush with wider audiences and fame in 1977 and their first breakthrough, when they signed with Chris Parry's label Fiction. The author provides a lot of meticulously researched details of The Cure's early years and constant personnel changes.

The 1982 album Pornography established The Cure's image as a gothic rock band. Robert Smith wouldn't tolerate being categorized so The Cure soon changed the genre of their music and produced some wonderful pop hits like The Caterpillar, The Walk, or The Love Cats (it may sound as an oxymoron but these are the prime examples of ambitious pop music). After that came the hit-filled albums The Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Then came another complete change of style. The album Disintegration, both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, introduced The Cure's new style: multilayered orchestral, almost symphonic sound.

The book ends in 1997, at the time of The Cure's 20th anniversary. The band, now 42-year old, is still around and going strong, giving great live concerts (my daughter and I attended their concert in San Diego in 2000 and loved it).

Wonderful biography that focuses on the band's music and lyrics rather than on their alcoholic and other excesses. If I were to criticize the author, Mr. Rzewuski, for anything it would be too much emphasis of trying to analyze the lyrics. The passages about the loss of childhood and coming of age as central motifs in Robert Smith's texts or about similarity of themes to Ingmar Bergmann's great movie Wild Strawberries provide fascinating read yet they can probably be attributed more to Mr. Rzewuski's rich interpretation than to Mr. Smith's intentions.

A highly recommended book and I hope some fan of The Cure who can write in English better than this reviewer will translate it.

Four and a quarter stars.

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