Author: Andres Kabel

Classy nonfiction writer Susan Orleans was raised in Cleveland. “I grew up in libraries…,” she writes in “The Library Book.” She drifted away from library usage but after a chance visit to the Los Angeles Public Library eight years ago, “the spell libraries cast on me was renewed,” and then she grew fascinated with the 1986 fire that burned or damaged more than a million books. Who caused it and why? The fire’s history proved fascinating, with a local actor-wannabe accused of arson, and “The Library Book” see Orleans digging into it all. But the fire, which provides the book’s narrative spine, is just the launching pad for a generous, contemplative paean to the world of public libraries. As a lifelong library tragic myself, I basked in the artfully constructed mix of reconstructed history and insightful reflection. The writing is elegant, the innards of the Library are vividly described, and one comes away with a renewed sense of how important the world’s libraries are.

The hero whose thoughts we inhabit for the length of “Milkman,” the third novel by British author Anna Burns, is Middle Daughter, a disaffected eighteen-year old enmeshed in the Northern Ireland “Troubles.” From the outset the reader is plunged into a claustrophobic tale of gossip, murder, stalking (a paramilitary type called Milkman), family, love, lust, and friends. The author’s style is as claustrophobic as the plot, a discursive style that can expand a paragraph for pages, a style that warps every conversation into a formal debate, a style that sashays like twenty conversations going on in a crowd. “Milkman” is experimental in a long line of such novels, and normally I relish such challenges, but here I floundered. I could admire some of unpicking of issues, I could enjoy sentences, I could appreciate technical skill, but the unusual style sapped the characters, especially Middle Daughter, of any life off the page. Not much happens and when it does, it is not mined for narrative impact. Reading a Booker winner is always a treat, and this novel was a test worth undertaking, but as a novel it is barely readable.

Lee Kofman is a brave and iconoclastic memoirist with a lyrical and barbed pen. Her second book, “Imperfect: How Our Bodies Shape the People We Become,” tackles a vexed subject I never knew I should be fascinated about, namely how our bodily faults impact our lives, our psyches, and our souls. Kofman frames the book around her lifelong efforts to understand and come to grips with her own imperfect “body surface,” as she puts it, but she then ventures out in an astonishing array of directions through her own reading, through sympathetic interviews, and through reflective thought. The writing sparkles, the ideas are never weak-kneed, and the book’s flow is superb. Very much in the seemingly fresh modern tradition of discursive, lucid memoirs, “Imperfect” is a wonderment.

What a beguiling, touching character Eleanor Oliphant is! Traumatised by a mysterious past, odd to the point of weird, yet luminously human, Eleanor romps through this comedy of manners or existential drama or love story or … you get the picture. One can situate the novel in the stream containing “A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” or “The Rosie Project,” a stream that’s notoriously difficult to nail stylistically, but Gail Honeyman (this is her debut!) immerses us so completely, we’re under her spell. The plot is simple – Eleanor’s regimented solo life is disrupted by falling in love with a distant pop star and a random act of compassion on her part – but swirls in unexpected directions and the climax offers not only twists but also completely solid logic. “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” is a treat and a triumph.

It’s 1963 at the Louvre and a mysteriously lovely jewelry expert is asked to appraise some ornate piece that sparks her teaming up with a Mossad agent to track down a heinous Nazi in hiding, with a crusty lawyer thrown into the plot. Such an immensely appealing setup but “The Pearl Thief” disappointed. Undoubtedly this reflects a genre bias, and if you’re a fan of Fiona McIntosh’s many novels, read no further. During my reading, I admired many of the set scenes, amidst glorious (or hideous) surrounds, I almost warmed to the characters, and I exhibited interest in this quintessential quest for two-decades-delayed justice, yet the florid mawkishness of the otherwise solid writing, plus enormous slabs of expository dialogue, curdled my enjoyment.

I bet you’re like me, a ball of confusion about what to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between. Or maybe you’ve seized on what you think is the right way to eat but have doubts. Or you lament the modern world of food and diets. Well, food writer Bee Wilson has written a brilliant overview of that world. “The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change” surveys the globe’s food and eating practices and cultures, ranging over every question you’ve ever asked.

The author describes “the rise of meat and oil and the fall of bread.” The story of food is one of triumph, with once-common starvation still omnipresent but far less prevalent, but also one of impending doom, with obesity and food-caused illnesses hounding the modern world. We eat far too much, and far too much sugar, saturated fat, and salt. A hundred species of banana exist but the deliberately bred tasteless Cavendish banana is now nearly half of all those grown. In a startlingly short period of time, all our past habits and cultures of eating have been replaced by supermarket crap, takeaways but also deliveries, and diet fads and fancies. I was fascinated to read that “snacking now accounts for half of all eating occasions in the United States. “Why is it called a protein bar,” Wilson writes, ” and not a sugar bar?” She laments that “we need new ways of thinking about food to help us to adjust to the abundance that now surrounds us and to start to build a better way of eating.” An epilogue provides personal tips for just such better ways. If the task seems Sisyphean, she remains hopeful: “Here is the consolation of eating in these strange times: the best of it is better than anything that came before and the worst of it won’t stay the same for ever.” Cogently structured and elegantly written, “The Way We Eat Now” is essential reading for anyone interested in this vital topics.

The John Rain thriller series, starring a hit man with independent notions, is notable for kinetic actions scenes and quality writing. I read maybe the first half dozen of the series, then dropped out; it’s hard to sustain a reader’s interest in a hit man, methinks. But something drew me back to the tenth, just released, “The Killer Collective.” And I’m glad I did for it reminds me of those very same qualities. This thriller is bursting at the seams with action and intrigue and should only take a reader an evening to power through. It has to be said that Eisler’s plot premise – John Rain is offered, and declines to accept, a hit contract on Livia Lone (Eisler has written three thrillers starring her), a sex crimes detective dangerously close to catching high-powered individuals – seems to be for fans only. For not only do Rain and Lone team up here, they also rope in five other hero-warriors, all of whom have appeared in earlier series books (and one of whom, Ben Leven, has two of his own books), so that by the end of the book, the plot seesaws between too many characters to really care about. A slick, intelligent read, if a little tired.