Why I liked The Likeness

When I was a teenager, I loved Mary Stewart's novels of "romantic suspense." One of my favorites was The Ivy Tree, whose plot turned upon plain Mary Grey's impersonation of the long-missing heiress Annabel Winslow and her attraction to the current heir to the fortune, Connor Winslow. Because I like books about Ireland and I like suspense novels, and the title (and cover!) of her first book, Into the Woods, I recently picked up Tana French's second novel, The Likeness. So I was utterly delighted, as I became engrossed in The Likeness, to be reminded of The Ivy Tree as both stories so cleverly use the question of identity to confuse not only the reader, but the heroine as well.

When we meet Cassie Maddox, of The Likeness, we quickly learn that she is a young Dublin Police detective who has recently undergone trauma and tumult in her career, and has been reassigned from the undercover division to the vice squad. Cassie had worked undercover under the created identity of Lexie Madison, University College Dublin college student from Canada. Now three years later, a young Trinity College graduate student using the identity of Lexie Madison has been found stabbed in a remote cottage outside of Dublin. The police withhold the news of the victim's death so Cassie, once again, can assume the identity of Lexie Madison. Cassie must attempt to find the real identity of the victim and investigate Lexie's four housemates, who are the prime suspects in the crime. Lexie and her housemates have been living at Whitethorn Hall, a once-splendid neo-baronial mansion, and the ancestral home of housemate Daniel. Daniel, Lexie, and the three others -- Abby, Justin, and Rafe-- had met and bonded as graduate students of literature at Trinity. Isolating themselves at remote Whitethorn Hall, the five housemates have attempted to recreate the bygone rituals and formalities of the Hall's long-gone glory days. Now Cassie must insert herself into the closed and rarified world of these unconventional students and and almost parallel universe they have created for themselves at Whitethorn Hall. As Cassie turns herself into Lexie, she becomes increasingly attracted to this alternate reality, and she struggles to maintain her personal safety and preserve her own identity.

The Likeness is a riveting hybrid of police procedural and gothic novel. Tana French has created compelling characters and back stories for Cassie, her police colleagues, Lexie, and the four housemates. Whitethorn Hall in all of its shabby grandeur and the hothouse rites and relationships of its five inhabitants creates a hypnotic spell -- not only upon Cassie -- but also upon the reader. I am looking forward to reading Ms. French's other books.

Let's celebrate our right to read

The week of September 25 to October 2, 2010 is this year's annual Banned Books Week. Sponsored by the American Library Association and associations of booksellers, journalists, and publishers, Banned Books Week reminds us that we have the freedom to read, to explore ideas, and to think for ourselves. But this basic American First Amendment right is often contested and cannot be taken for granted. Looking over the ALA's list of frequently challenged books, I note that one of my favorite novels, To Kill a Mockingbird, offended someone and that other books (The Grapes of Wrath and the Harry Potter series) and authors (Kurt Vonnegut) beloved by me have been prohibited. I understand that frightening and offensive words and ideas can elicit strong antipathy. There are certainly books and films whose content and ideas I personally find repulsive and/or dangerous. But our American tradition of free speech protects others from me as well as me from others -- and, perhaps most importantly, me from myself! My First Amendment Rights to free thought and association always make me proud and grateful to be an American.

Is good Help hard to find?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

I picked up this first novel with some misgivings despite its great popularity and the personal raves given to me by several colleagues and friends. I was curious but hesitant, suspicious whether a white, Southern woman could write about black people and the relations between white and black people -- especially of that place and era -- without sentimentality or falling into the common pitfall of writing about black people as noble martyrs, i.e. Mark Twain's Jim in Huck Finn, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Margaret Mitchell's Hattie in Gone with the Wind, Stephen King's John Coffey in The Green Mile. Unfortunately Stockett does not rise above this trap, but The Help does have its pleasures.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi from 1962-1964, The Help is, in many ways a conventional women's novel, exploring women's roles and relationships through a nexus of vivid female chararcters. Aibileen -- who is the heart and soul of the novel -- is the maid to Elizabeth Leefelt and "mammy" to her baby daughter. Elizabeth is, at best, an absentee mother, and Aibileen is a loving and conscientious surrogate parent. "Miss Leefolt's" two best friends are Hilly Holbrook, the president of Jackson's Junior League and a self-appointed community leader; and Skeeter, tall and awkward, literary, with dreams of a life outside Jackson. Aibileen's best friend Minny is the maid to Hilly's mother. An outstanding cook and baker, Minny is opinionated and outspoken -- dangerous behaviors for a black woman in Mississippi.

When Skeeter decides to interview "the help" in her circle of white homes for a book, the growing turmoil of the civil rights movement roiling the South -- which has barely impacted the lives of these women, black or white -- comes directly to Jackson and changes their lives.

Author Kathryn Stockett tells these stories through the voices of her main characters -- Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter -- in alternating chapters. To Stockett's credit, each voice is distinctive and brings these characters alive. Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter are lovingly drawn characters and give the novel its authenticity. But the other characters are types (the "white trash" woman, the "good old boy," the silver-haired, whiskey-drinking Southern Senator, etc). Hilly, particularly is a caricature of a villainess; not only is she mean, controlling and bigoted, but she is also fat and a bad daughter.

The Help is a book whose authority rests upon the details of its characters' lives. Stockett does well when describing the routines, the chores, the summer heat, the place. But Stockett gets important details of the '60s wrong; no one heard The Beatles "Love Me Do" in 1962-1963. Worst is putting the horrific Birmingham church bombing which killed four young girls on September 15, 1963, before the August 28, 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his "I have a Dream" speech before an estimated 100,00 marchers.


The Help works best as a traditional women's novel. Stockett's intricate plot will keep most readers turning pages. I only wish that Stockett had managed to go beyond the tired American literary tradition -- so that Skeeter's freedom wasn't purchased at Aibileen's expense. A mixed verdict on this one.

Shivering in the suburbs

Unemployment and a volatile stock market, terror in New York and environmental disaster in the Gulf. And if that's not enough -- what about drugs at the high school and will my child be able to go to college and find a job afterwards? No doubt, there's a lot we can worry about. Perhaps that's why we like roller coasters and horror movies where we can be scared in comfort. I'm sure that's why I enjoy thrillers like Harlen Coben's lastest suspense novel, Caught, which enthralled me from the comfort of my armchair. Coben is a master of using the commonplace minutae of suburban life as a boomerang. Cell phones and Facebook pages, college applications and support groups, local news and minivans can be agents of destruction as well as status and convenience. All are used here with devilish effect here by Coben. The story goes like this: Social worker Dan Mercer goes to help a young client in trouble and finds himself entrapped in a sex abuse sting operation by ambitious TV newswoman Wendy Tynes. Then Dan is linked to the recent disappearance of a high school senior, honors student Haley McWaid. As the case against Dan grows, Wendy begins to have doubts about his guilt. Her investigative curiosity prompts Wendy to probe Dan's long-ago college days at Princeton and why Dan's other roommates have also been targeted by recent misfortunes and scandals. Coben is true to form in Caught, a suspenseful thriller that cleverly touches on the underside of suburban life. While I enjoyed Caught, my favorite Coben novel thus far remains Just One Look, where one odd photograph in a package of newly-developed-and-processed photos (doesn't that now seem quaint in this brave new digital age) immediately upends the life of Coben's housewife heroine. Read, enjoy, and don't forget to lock up before you go to bed!

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a wonderful debut novel of star-crossed teenage romance during World War II. Growing up in Seattle, twelve-year-old Chinese-American Henry Lee and Japanese-American Keiko Okabe are the only Asian-American students at their school, subjected to the pervasive racism of the day. After Pearl Harbor, Keiko, her family, and other local Japanese-Americans are harassed, rounded up, and then interned in government concentration camps. Henry desperately tries to help Keiko and her family even as he struggles with his father's own anti-Japanese bigotry. At times the novel goes a bit Nicholas Sparks, but I found Jamie Ford's depiction of Chinese-American culture and the description of Seattle in the early 1940s at the outbreak of the war to be powerful and convincing. This is a lovely and moving novel and a stern corrective to those who romanticize the "good old days" of what this country was like for non-"whites."

Poetry -- my new ritual

Many years ago, I heard advice that its healthy to start your day with a glass of water, before eating or drinking anything else. This has long been an established ritual with me. I now have a new ritual, which began several months ago and also began by chance. I now start my morning with the reading of a poem (at least one but not more than three) from a collection of poetry I picked up by chance at a used book store. It is Garrison Keillor's Good Poems and it contains a wide range of poets and poetic sensibilities. After many years of ignoring poetry, I find myself increasingly drawn to poetry as an art form. I find its precision of language refreshing in a culture that too frequently uses words to obscure and confuse; I appreciate that poetry can be expressive without being inflammatory. I am finding poets whose works I plan to explore in the future. I would recommend finding a collection or reconnecting with an old favorite (Yeats? Sexton? Tennyson?) and getting started . . .

Take a look at Whatever It Takes!

I am a fan of This American Life on public radio and heard a wonderful program last fall about New York Times journalist, Paul Tough, and his reporting on the remarkable leader and educator, Geoffrey Canada and the "Children's Zone" that he has created in Harlem. So I was very excited about the publication of Tough's book, Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America.
Whatever it Takes follows Geoffrey Canada -- educator, activist, and entrepreneur -- as he creates the "Children's Zone", a ninety-seven block section of Harlem dedicated to lifting a community out of poverty and joblessness through a relentless and (theoretically) seamless focus on childhood and family education. Author Paul Tough describes in detail: "Baby College," where expectant and young parents learn about child development and techniques of parental discipline; "Harlem Gems," the preschool program; and the middle school, the "Promise Academy." The ups and downs of these programs and the details of the lives they impact read as emotionally and suspensefully as any novel. And through Canada's Harlem "Children's Zone," Tough broadens his scope and provides comprehensive accounts of current research on child development, cognitive neuroscience, and educational theory. Tough is an accomplished writer, Canada and his programs are compelling subjects, and Whatever it Takes is a marvelous read. It is also one of the best books I have read about race, class, and poverty in American life.

My favorite “reads” of 2009

Here are my favorite books of 2009; most of them were published before 2009 but these were the books I read and treasured last year. Choosing my list makes me realize that I particularly value reading about certain themes (family, politics, power), certain genre (history, mystery, suspense), and certain styles or moods (noir, urban, ironic). With my proclivities declared, these are my personal “bests” of last year.

Two thrillers which were published in 2009 explore the scourge of racism and how it stunts individuals and warps societies. Black Water Rising by Attica Locke is set in 1980s Houston where Jay Porter is a struggling lawyer, expectant father, a former sixties radical scarred by his run-ins with the law, and a black man living precariously in a racist society. An evening out with his wife propels Jay to a chance rescue and a reluctant involvement in a lethal mystery involving Houston’s most powerful people. Malia Nunn’s A Beautiful Place to Die takes place several decades and half-a-world away, in South Africa in 1952 as apartheid is being legislated into official law. Police detective Emanuel Cooper, a man with a mysterious past, is called to investigate the murder of a police chief with godlike powers in the remote South African countryside. Strong plots, menacing atmospherics, and compelling characters make these strong debut novels. I hope to hear (actually read) from these accomplished writers again soon.

Perhaps because my father is a veteran, I find myself increasingly drawn to books about World War II in Europe. William I Hitchcock, currently a professor of history at Temple University, has written The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe. Bitter Road is a readable and comprehensive history of the war as seen through the sufferings of the civilian populations in France, Belgium, Holland, Eastern Europe, and Germany caught by Nazi occupation and battleground Europe, beginning with D-Day and through liberation and the Displaced Persons camps set up by the Allies in the aftermath of the carnage. If you’ve ever wondered why post-war Europe has evolved into the European Union, tilts toward social democracies, and has opposed American wars in Vietnam and Iraq, Hitchcock’s tragic and moving history will be illuminating.

The Bernie Gunther novels of British thriller writer Philip Kerr follow Berlin policeman Bernie Gunther, a no-nonsense detective in the American tradition of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, through the rise of the Nazis, the debacle of the Third Reich, and the post-war occupation of Germany. I first read Kerr’s 2009 A Quiet Flame which finds Gunther arriving in Juan Peron’s Argentina in 1950 along with other wanted SS officers, including Adolf Eichmann. Soon Gunther’s background as a former homicide detective embroils him in a case involving the murder of one young girl and the disappearance of another. These cases thrust Gunther into the cross-hairs of Peron’s dictatorship even as they bear a disturbing similarity to unsolved murders from Berlin in 1932; murders that took place as the Nazis were taking power in Germany. A Quiet Flame is the fifth novel in Kerr’s series. I quickly found and read the previous four: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem, and The One from the Other. I have found them all compelling as solid mysteries set against the horrific spectacle of a society’s descent into collective madness and mass murder.

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean draws us back to the horrors of the Eastern front juxtaposed to the glories of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage (art) museum. The novel’s heroine Marina survived the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) while serving the Hermitage’s treasures, first as docent, then packer, guard, and caretaker as the Germans encircled and attacked the city. After the war, Marina and husband Dmitri reunited and emigrated to the U.S. Now elderly and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Marina’s current life in San Francisco has slipped away and she is back in the Hermitage, caring for the paintings, surviving cold, hunger and shelling. Only her love of the paintings that hung on the walls before the war, fervently memorized and still recalled with precision and passion, seem to now keep her alive. Madonnas is a poignant story and a testament to the power of art.

The aftermath of World War II sets the somber tone of austerity and decline in the Sarah Waters novel, The Little Stranger. England is still recovering from the war when the local village doctor is called out to the remote Hundreds Hall to attend to a sick servant. So begins Dr. Farraday’s immersion into the lives of the aristocratic Ayres family: widowed Mrs. Ayres; son Rodney, crippled when his RAF plane crashed; and older sister Caroline, destined by demographics and fate to be a spinster. Then there is Hundred Hall itself – once a splendid manor house, now decaying from neglect and lack of funds. Baffling and inexplicable events soon target Hundreds Hall and its inhabitants as Farraday marshals the forces of science and reason to fight an invisible foe. Author Sarah Waters has concocted a chilling and disturbing atmosphere of claustrophobia and dread. By novel’s end, she has pulled the rug of your assumptions as a reader out from under you. I look forward to reading her again.

Two other veteran novelists have also written stories about families and relationships that I especially enjoyed. Alice Hoffman writes books about families, especially the bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters. The Story Sisters is certainly about these ties. Elv, May, and Claire are young sisters who are inseparable until “the summer of the gypsy moths when everything changed.” The trauma of those days will strain the Story family for years but the bonds will remain. Alice Hoffman has a gift for blending the prosaic and the mystical into dramatic stories that explore the most profound issues: love, death, evil and redemption.
Eleanor Lipman has a gift for creating smart urbane stories about New Yorkers as if Jane Austen and Carrie Bradshaw were co-writing novels together. When Henry Archer pens a note of condolence to his ex-wife who has now been widowed, he unleashes a series of events that will transform his life. Best yet, Henry’s ex-wife and newly re-found daughter will benefit from Henry’s generosity in this witty comedy of manners. The Family Man features the sweet-tempered Henry and New York at its most glamorous; it is frothy, fun, and charming.

Another smart and sophisticated woman, Alice Steinbach, left her career as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun and lived in Europe for a year, open to people, places and adventures. Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman is part memoir with some literary references and a beautifully written and sometimes reflective travel tale. Steinbach’s stay in Paris and travels in Italy are filled with engaging adventures and people and a joy to read.

I look forward to many more memorable “reads” in 2010 . . .