Absolute Convictions by Eyal Press

Absolute Convictions is sort of the story of Buffalo, New York and the death of a doctor who performed abortions, Barnett Slepian. It is also more generally a report on abortion and abortion law and abortion politics in America. It is a mini-history of Buffalo, New York, and it is a mini-history of Israeli-born Jews who emigrated to America (as did Slepian, and the author's father, Shalom Press).

Eyal Press is the son of the "other" abortion doctor in Buffalo, New York. In many ways, Eyal Press is uniquely situated to tell this story. He's a journalist, he grew up in Buffalo, and his father was friendly with Slepian. In some ways, Press is too close to the story--not in that his book is so slanted as to be unfair, but in that Press is so interested in every aspect that he sometimes includes more information than most readers will be interested to learn. And, I did learn some interesting things reading the book; I learned some history of the abortion legalization movement that answered questions I'd had. For instance, I wondered why abortions take place in abortion clinics, rather than hospitals or doctor's offices, and Press answers that question. I learned some things about the history of Israel that I'd wondered about. I can't say I really wondered about the history of Buffalo, but I learned some things about that, too.

Overall, there is an interesting story here and a flood of information, but it's a bit of a slog. The book would be an excellent resource for someone researching abortion law in the U.S. and the history of the pro-choice and pro-life movements.

You're Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen

Deborah Tannen has written several books on interpersonal communication--this one is about communication between mothers and their daughters. Mostly, Tannen says that communication problems between mothers and daughters arise from their extremely close relationships, but there are other problems she identifies:

Mothers feel a special privilege to talk about things that are not well received by their daughters (e.g. weight, hair, clothing), because they feel responsible for them and because they are looking out for them.

Daughters are frequently reacting to the "meta" communication, rather than to what is actually said.

Some mothers are really awful.

Many mothers want their daughters to be the same as them.

I didn't find a lot of bolt from the blue insights here, but some ideas Tannen points out are worth considering, particularly if you are a mother or a daughter who is experiencing difficulties in your relationship with your daughter or your mother.

End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

End in Tears is an Inspector Wexford mystery. If you've been reading Ruth Rendell's mysteries, you'll likely remember Inspector Wexford from previous outings. Wexford is a thoughtful detective and family man. His ruminations often drift back and forth between his concerns for the case at hand and concerns about his family.

In this outing, Wexford and crew are looking for the murderer of an 18 year old girl/woman. Amber (the victim) was returning home from nightclubbing when she was bludgeoned within a block from her home. Amber's death left a desolated father, an indifferent step-mother, and a year-old-child, Brand. Before too long, the murder squad discovers that Amber was the probable intended victim of a previous murder attempt, when someone chucked a cement block over the side of an overpass, striking the car in front of Amber's car--a car of the same make and only slightly different color.

The case is complicated by several parallel plots. One involves some sort of baby scam, and the murder squad is uncertain as to whether the two crimes are linked. In another plotline, two of the squad members, Hannah and Bal are testing the waters of a possible romance. Yet another plotline involves Wexford's daughter Sylvia, who is pregnant, separated/divorced from her husband (and the father of the child), and planning on giving the child to her ex to raise with his new girlfriend/future-wife Naomi. Naomi is infertile and Sylvia is feeling guilty for having left her husband without much of a reason. Sylvia's situation occupies Wexford's thoughts and causes something of a rift between him and his wife.

This is not one of my favorite Ruth Rendell or Wexford mysteries, although I've never liked her Wexford mysteries as well as her standalone mysteries and Barbara Vine books. Nevertheless, the writing is excellent, as always, and the story is involving, even if I did begin to think the detectives would never catch on the fairly obvious (to me anyway) scam. The means by which Wexford was finally illuminated was the only really clumsy bit in the book.

If you haven't read a Wexford mystery before, don't start with this one. It isn't necessary to read them exactly in order, although it couldn't hurt, but it would help to start earlier in the series.

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

Stamp collecting hit-man John Keller is back and this time he's trying to save up a million dollars, so he can retire. As in previous books, Keller does most of his talking to Dot, the woman who arranges the hits for him. This time around, the verbal sparring is more central to the book than in previous outings, with a nice chemistry between the characters. At one point, Dot calls Keller a psychopath, and he spends some time thinking about whether he is, in fact, a psychopath.

Not the most important book of the year, but a pleasant enough diversion, and a quick read.

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

The Minotaur is a murder mystery of sorts, but more than that it is a character study of a dysfunctional family and the people with whom they interact. The story is told by Kirsten Kvist, a young, Swedish nurse, hired to serve as a nurse to John Cosway, the mentally ill son of the family. Besides John, the family includes his elderly mother and four sisters. The people who interact with the family include an old family doctor (who is also revealed to be the elderly mother's lover), the local vicar ( who is engaged to one of the sisters), and a painter who has taken a local cottage as his home and studio, and who is engaged in love affairs with at least 2 village women. The house the Cosway's live in is also a kind of character in the novel, as is the maze, from which the title is drawn.

Kirsten (pronounced Shashten) tells the story as a memoir, aided by the diary she kept during the year she spent with the Cosways. Throughout her story, Kirsten throws out hints as to what has happened in the intervening years--often mentioning that everything in the book happened 35 years earlier, and that things would be much different if they were happening today.

Barbara Vine is a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell; she uses it to write psychological novels, some of which are very dark. In recent years, the books written under the name Barbara Vine have become much more similar to the ones written under the name Ruth Rendell than was originally the case. Still, it is a kind of "heads up" for the reader, to see the name Barbara Vine on the cover, rather than Ruth Rendell.

This particular Barbara Vine novel is among the more intriguing of the ones I've read. The voice of the narrator, Kirsten, is particularly interesting--the more so because of the use of the diary as a prompt for her memory. Not only does the reader see the Cosway family through Kirsten's eyes, we see Kirsten herself change during the time spent with them. Kirsten is also interesting as a narrator, because she reports as a foreigner, who sees the English countryside from a kind of anthropologic viewpoint.

Well worth reading.

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

When I first heard about Christopher Moore's latest book, I thought, "shades of Terry Pratchett's DEATH books", but there is only a passing resemblance here. Both writers are humorous, but Moore's book has its own cosmology and, of course, doesn't take place on Discworld.

A Dirty Job is the story of a man (Charlie Asher), who loses his beloved wife when she dies giving birth to daughter Sophie. Charlie sees a death merchant (whom we later come to know as Minty Fresh--a 6'7" black man who always dresses in mint green suits) collecting Rachel's soul, which signals that he is about to become a death merchant. (There is a passing resemblence in the plot to the Showtime series, "Dead Like Me". ) At first, Charlie resists his new role, but he learns to accept it, after he finds out what happens when he doesn't collect souls.

In any case, a battle ensues (over the course of several years) between the various death merchants of San Francisco and the demons of the underworld. A quirky cast of characters makes the journey pleasurable, as does Moore's witty writing.

Recommended.

Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed

Kit Reed writes books that straddle the line between science fiction and straight-ahead literature. In Thinner Than Thou, Reed posits a world in which the desire for a perfect body leads to the creation of a religious cult, the "disappearing" of the elderly, and underground "strip" clubs where people go to see "jumbo jigglers".

The concept is amusing, but the book wasn't, for me.

Marley & Me by John Grogan

I really resisted reading Marley & Me; who needs another book about somebody's beloved pet? Then my daughter said I really should read it, because it's funny and not about a good dog, but about a really bad dog. As the sometimes adoptive parent to a passel of bad dogs, I decided to go ahead and try it.

Marley & Me is about a truly troublesome dog. Marley eats furniture, tears up drywall, and swallows anything that will hold still. He is prone to ear infections and terrified of storms. But Marley & Me is also a memoir hiding behind a dog book. In the 13 years that Marley lived with John Grogan and his wife Jenny, they had 3 children, moved from one house in Florida to another, and then moved to Pennsylvania. So, while reading about Marley--you end up reading the story of a marriage and a family.

I still don't really understand why Marley & Me still perches atop the bestseller list after 41 weeks, but it is easily engaging, and Grogan's years as a newspaper columnist show to good effect in the writing.