Brief Reviews
We do our very best to provide high-quality, in-depth reviews of current books covering a variety of topics that will interest fans of both nonfiction and fiction. While we can’t review everything, here are some current releases that the editors think are worth mentioning. We welcome recommendations from readers. If you’d like to send one to us, please click here.
NONFICTION
HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29
The Story of the Most Famous Football Game Ever Played in the Ivy League...as Told by the Players
By Kevin Rafferty
175 pp. The Overlook Press $35
The Iron Duke’s apocryphal words—”The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”—apparently could be turned upside down and stretched to cover what happened at Harvard Stadium, November 23rd, 1968.
The story is this: Yale is an undefeated football powerhouse. Harvard is having a decent year, but odds are they fall. And so it seems, score 29-13 in favor of Yale with 42 seconds left, whereupon Harvard back-up quarterback Frank Champi engineers a two-touchdown recovery to tie the unbeaten Yalies.
Many post-Viet Nam movers-and-shakers were connected to those elite Ivy League schools that day, including a future president and a vice-president (George W. Bush and Albert Gore), a chunk of the legal and financial establishment-to-be, the cartoonist who would go on to create Doonesbury, and even an Oscar-winner (Tommie Lee Jones was an All-League lineman for Harvard) and an Oscar-winner-by-proxy (Meryl Streep was dating Yale fullback Bob Levin).
All that’s not really relevant to Rafferty’s story, except for the inclusion of Trudeau’s cartoons satirizing the god-like status of Yale star Brian Dowling. Truth told, this isn’t a book so much as a nicely bound story-board for Rafferty’s documentary film that preceded the literary effort. Rafferty was a Harvard student in 1968, much to the dismay of his Yale alum father, and “ ... in 2006, I was casting about for the idea of a new film ... suddenly, there it was ... an idea.”
The book is interesting in the way that personalities shine through, but I suspect it would best serve as a companion to the film.
For example, Tommie Lee Jones comes across as blasé and taciturn, qualities that might be less enigmatic on film. And a Yale linebacker—”My intent was to inflict so much damage on him that he wouldn’t be able to play the game anymore.”—might not seem so thuggish if we were to hear his voice and watch his mannerisms. But again, he’s now “involved in the investment world,” and, well ... (Reviewed by Gary Presley)
MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS
By Rhoda Janzen
241 pp. Henry Holt $22
I wasn’t as crazy about this book as I thought I’d be. The synopsis inside the paper jacket led me on: A hilarious and moving memoir about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress has its moments. The author is educated, quick-witted, talented, and intelligent. She goes home to her Mennonite family after a run of exceptionally bad luck. Her abusive, bi-polar, bi-sexual husband leaves her after fifteen years for a man; she has a hysterectomy before she’s had children; and finally a car wreck leaves her scarred—enough to send any woman running home to Mama.
She pokes fun at her painful problems, trying to follow in the footsteps of her perennially cheerful mother, whom she calls her hero. She also reads self-help books, wisecracking about their methodology as she goes along. She razzes her parents and the Mennonites so much that it’s obvious the jibes are disguising some genuine dislike and disrespect. Then there’s the profanity that litters her writing like tiny bits of toxin. It screamed, “See how far I’ve come from my straight-laced, dorky Mennonite past?” I was put in mind of a Phyllis Dillered version of Thoroughly Modern Millie.
There were some beautiful insights, too, and fine turns of phrase, but the self-and- most-everyone-else-deprecating humor led me to believe that she should have waited a few more years before writing this memoir. She’s not out of the woods yet. (Reviewed by Sue Ellis)
WATERCOOLER:
Behind the Scenes and Off the Record, the Untold Stories from Broadcasters
By Elizabeth Sanchez
124 pp. AuthorHouse $16.98
Watercooler is a collection of 16 essays which, taken together, carry the message that news casting requires paying dues—long hours spent reporting horrific stories. The contributors’ reflections demonstrate why they do this difficult and often low-paying work. David Whisenant’s crankiness at having to work on Thanksgiving is dissipated when he learns how his story helped a family in need; the simple wisdom of a seven-year old Katrina victim to “be brave” resonates with reporter Jennifer Miller.
Drew Levinson’s contribution seems incongruous in light of these stories. Levinson tells about the ill-advised travel arrangements he made in Pakistan in an attempt to get as many frequent-flier miles as possible. The essay is a denigration of his drivers, whom he insultingly calls “Dumb and Dumber.” He ends up painting a worse picture of himself than he does of them. His remark that “...his [driver’s] English sucked too” was particularly offensive, and made this language instructor wonder why he didn’t just speak to the drivers in their native language.
In several places a bit more editing would have lent clarity to this book. For instance, Stacy Case surely did not mean to indicate that she and her husband “maintained two apartments in each city” of their commuter marriage, but rather had two apartments, one in each city. This collection provides some insight and food for thought, particularly for aspiring broadcasters. (Reviewed by Pamela Hayes-Bohanan)
FICTION
THE JOURNAL OF ANTONIO MONTOYA
By Rick Collignon
272 pp. Unbridled Books $12.95
Beginning in 1974 with The Milagro Beanfield Wars, John Nichols wrote three dazzling regional novels now known as the New Mexico Trilogy. Ever since, hundreds of authors such as Rick Collignon in The Journal of Antonio Montoya have tried to imitate the simple elegance of Nichol’s work. In the process they have created a writing style that is formulaic and predictable.
In case you are thinking about trying it yourself, here are some tips:
- Write in the stilted and inverted style of bad Hemingway. “On this day, the snows returned to the village.”
- Have really wacky characters be courteously stupid.
- Sprinkle a few Spanish words and phrases like mi hija and abuelito throughout the book, and never translate them. That’s all part of the mystery, verdad?
- Have old people speak like children and children speak like adults.
- Have talking dead people, lots of them. Make them wise about the future, but vague and confused about the past, including how they died.
- Keep it slow. Remember you’re writing existential mysticism here, not X-Men: Wolverine. Set a pace that makes Waiting for Godot seem an action thriller.
Rick Collignon’s predictable novella isn’t bad; it’s just not very good. Unbridled Books has a well-earned reputation for successful publishing, but in re-issuing this trifle, maybe they’ve been listening to the snow, mi hija. (Reviewed by Jack Shakely)
THE CHILD THIEF
By Brom
496 pp. Eos $26.99
Artist and writer Brom has long been fascinated with the story of Peter Pan and his Neverland. Curious to go to the original, Brom read J.M. Barrie’s novel and his view of the adventure story was changed. What he’d once considered to be a story of an “endearing, puckish prankster” was in fact a very dark and menacing tale. The Child Thief is Brom’s reimagining of the timeless classic, written in the spirit of the original. A dark, sinister story of a young boy—Peter—whom Brom calls a “charismatic sociopath” who lures lost boys—victims of violence, drugs, physical abuse—into his gang.
I didn’t love the book, though I admire Brom for his skill as a writer. I admit that my fondness for the Disneyfied Peter Pan (As a child I often imagined myself as Tinkerbell) made it difficult for me to encounter Brom’s Peter, who seemed at times creepy and soulless. The book was so violent and profanity-laced that it made me uncomfortable—and I am far from being a prude. The section of this lengthy novel that most resonated with me was Brom’s insight into Peter’s upbringing. How Peter comes to be alone in Avalon (Neverland) is illuminating. Though I wasn’t crazy about The Child Thief, I did love the cover art and sketches throughout the book, all done by Brom himself. (Reviewed by Julie McGuire)
ABBEVILLE
By Jack Fuller
272 pp. Unbridled $14.95
What goes around, comes around. In Abbeville, Fuller’s sixth novel, based loosely on his grandfather’s life, it’s a depressed economy that cycles back.
When the dot com bubble bursts, and George Bailey’s considerable assets deflate, he’s left depressed, struggling to support his wife and troubled son. In an attempt to regain equilibrium, Bailey travels back to his childhood roots in Abbeville, Illinois, and the dilapidated farmhouse where his grandfather Karl Shumpeter lived happily until his death, despite having suffered significant loss during the Depression.
Bailey leads us into the book and walks us out at the end, but it is his grandfather’s story that provides the solid substance of the book.
Ironically, Shumpeter himself is the stereotypical George Bailey character straight from It’s a Wonderful Life. Even as he takes risks to advance his own career and build a multitude of assets, he acts with utmost honesty. He selflessly gives to friends, family, and community, gains wealth and power, creating nary an enemy, but one—his wife’s former fiancé—a lawyer, who adds to Shumpeter’s troubles by uncovering something that sends him to jail for two years.
It is the life Shumpeter steps into after his release that provides the insight and healing Bailey is after, a life Bailey pieces together by speaking to people who knew his grandfather, reading letters he finds in the farmhouse, and by allowing memories of his grandfather to surface.
Yes, there is life after wealth if you have stored up treasures other than gold—the love and respect of family and friends by “doing unto others.” Despite hardships, Shumpeter “prospered” in poverty just as happily, maybe more so, as he had in wealth, providing his young grandson an example that Bailey returns to years later to better understand. The simplicity of the story captivates, in spite of the somewhat flat characters. Fuller is not pretentious or preachy; he lets Shumpeter’s life make his point. (Reviewed by Ruth Douillette)
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