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I think I’m in love. I just finished reading a crime thriller called Heartsick by Chelsea Cain and I just couldn’t wait to share. First a quick disclaimer for those who may not know my diverse taste: I do not lump Great Thrillers into the same catagory as Great Literature, any more than I would Great Symphonies and Great Country Music. But I like it all, and judge each on the relevant merits. That said, read on, share my giddy pleasure!

First, I love the cop, Archie Sheridan. If I had to draw a comparison to another great character, he reminds me of Harry Bosch from the stellar Michael Connelly series. Archie was the leader of a task force assembled to apprehend the Beauty Killer, a process that took ten years and ended in Archie being kidnapped and nearly killed himself. He now has a strange and compulsive relationship with the killer, Gretchen Lowell, physically imprisoned, but still torturing Archie by offering up the bodies of girls still considered missing inexchange for weekly visits from him.

Susan Ward is a reporter with the local paper chosen to write a feature series on Archie when he’s called back to work a new series of serial murders, dubbed The After School Strangler. Her mother wears platinum dreadlocks and dark red lipstick, refuses to own a car, and protests for environmental causes. Susan lost her father as a teenager and developed an unhealthy need for the attention and affection of older, unavailable men. This affects her backstory in a number of ways, including her swanky loft, sublet from a college professor she refers to as The Great Writer. It also affects the current story in such a way that I was surprised, but pleased and intrigued to note, that she appears in Cain’s next book (I peeked).

Next, the action takes place in Portland, Oregon, a city I visited for the first time not too long ago. I loved my time in Portland. In this book, Susan loves the rain, and waits for the sunshine to pass, which it quickly does. This reminded me that I probably don’t want to live in Portland, but it was fun to experience the atmosphere of a different town. I read a lot of crime, and most of it takes place in southern California, New York, Chicago (a lot of it takes place in Miami, but I have an unexplainable aversion to stories that take place in Miami and therefore avoid those). Portland is a really different vibe.

Last, of course, I really liked Chelsea Cain’s style, her voice, otherwise the rest of it wouldn’t have kept me involved past the first few chapters, certainly wouldn’t have stolen my heart. It’s always exciting to catch a great debut and be able to ride that wave into a new series. Today I start an advance of Sweetheart, the next in the series, on sale September 2nd.

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives. ‘I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,’ she said in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place I could not dream of or imagine. I wanted to grab her and bring her back, but there was no turning back.” 

So, I’m bi-polar, but I’m sooooo happy that I’m not Michael Greenberg’s daughter, Sally’s, bi-polar, which is to say, bouncing between psychotic and manic most of the time. In fact, the term “bi-polar” is only mentioned briefly, so maybe that’s not really what the dignosis ended up being, but my heart was in shreds–shreds–for these people, this girl, only 15 when she experienced a psychotic break. The experience is the subject of a new, possibly not-yet-released memoir called Hurry Down Sunshine by Greenberg, a freelance writer and columnist for the Times Literary Supplement (London). Where the novel I wrote about in my previous post seemed unfocused, this account stays the course, told from the father’s perspective. At the time, he was married to his second wife, the first living out of state in Vermont. He was barely making ends meet, had no health insurance, lived in a crappy, rotting apartment, and was totally unprepared for the sudden sharp turn in his daughter’s demeanor–not that anyone is prepared for that sort of thing. At first the assumption was drugs—bad drugs, too many drugs–but that would have been the easy answer, as it turned out. Sally would be hospitalized many times, medicated in many ways, and, sadly never really very effectively. We hear a lot about people who “go off their meds” or “refuse to take their meds” but there are a lot of people for whom the ”right” meds simply can’t be found, maybe don’t exist, or, for some unknown reason, stop working after a time. This is how I imagine hell on earth.

 The book shows in brief the sometimes entertaining array of patients and professionals that passed through the writer’s life, the different perspectives of family and friends, and is, at its best, a simple look at a simple family coping as best it can with the completely unknown.

In last weeks first selection about bi-polar teen-aged girls (there go those eeeeeerie patterns again…), star high school swimmer, Angie Voorster, nosedives into mental illness one day at a swim meet–or at least that’s how it seems at the time–and the family is never the same. In truth, there had been signs of mania prior to the day that Angie had gracefully slid to the bottom of the pool during her off-event, and, when dragged kicking and scratching from the water, confided that her secret to underwater swimming was that she “didn’t need to breathe.” But the symptoms had been ascribed to creativity, genius, actually. After the breakdown, however, there was no denying it, and, as in so many cases, treatment was a crapshoot. Some of it worked, some of the time, but none of it worked all of the time. So Angie was sent to live at a boarding ranch and her parents and brother adjusted to the new dynamic of family. This is the novel, Halfway House, by Katharine Noel.

Although I, too, suffer from bi-polar disorder, and read a lot, I haven’t read a lot about people who suffer from bi-polar disorder. Maybe there isn’t a lot out there. Maybe I’ve missed it. But when I came across this novel, I was naturally intrigued to see how this character and family would be portrayed. Some of it I could relate to, some of it I couldn’t, as my symptoms were generally not that extreme, but I have known people in similar states, so that was interesting. As a novel, I was a little disappointed. I felt the story lacked focus. It began as if it would closely follow the experiences of Angie, veered off into the individual and private lives of her family members, but never really felt cohesive in its weaving together of these various elements. Mom over here, dad over here, brother over here, and Angie popping in and out in various stages of stability, at various points in time. It seemed to go a long way to get nowhere. The writing was eloquent and the characters were true, but I wanted more density or something more raw from these circumstances, circumstances so opposite from what these people expected to find themselves in just months–or even hours–before the story began. I just wasn’t feeling it. Noel teaches at Stanford. This was her debut novel, and I imagine, if she continues topublish, there will be yet greater things to come. www.katharinenoel.com

Many readers I know won’t even watch a movie based on a book because the results are so often disappointing. I wouldn’t try to dissuade anyone from that position, because it’s a pretty safe one. Most often, though, it’s the “blockbuster” films that butcher the books best, because big bucks are the motivation, not great art or true translation (some scary alliteration, there, no?) Some recent conversations have brought to mind good books that also became good independent films, one, in fact–horror of horrors, and most will probably disagree with me–that I liked better than the book.

What finally spurred me to write this post was watching Bee Season yesterday. The film stars Richard Gere and Juliet Binoche in roles not typical of the ones they are usually cast in. Gere is a nondescript, detached father, Binoche a quiet, unobtrusively disturbed mother. Their young daughter becomes a contender for the national spelling bee prize and the family begins to unravel. The book of the same title by Myla Goldberg came out around 2000, I think.

I loved White Oleander the first time I read it. I have worked with teens who have survived abuse and addiction and homelessness, and I thought Janet Fitch did an amazing job nailing the rollercoaster of emotions that go along with that life, especially never losing the hope Mom or Dad will change, that the system will be fair, that this foster family will be different. Never losing hope, even though every ounce of common sense tells you that things will continue to suck, because otherwise they’d all become thugs or suicides, and why not? The movie based on the book came out much later. At the time, I was reviewing films for our NPR affiliate, and I briefly considered rereading the book before seeing the film, before recognizing the folly in that. Whew! Dodged that bullet! With only foggy memories of the plotline, I really liked the film. The casting choices were a little off, even through the mist, but the movie held its own. Afterward–which is always when you should read the book, of course, to embellish an experience that you already enjoyed–when I reread the novel, it wasn’t the canny understanding of emotions that struck me first, but the poetic writing. I also love the magical suitcases that Astrid creates. I always have so many new books yet to be read, that I forget what can be gained from a second reading. A quick, related note: Janet Fitch has published only one book since then, Paint It Black. It’s horrible. I had a friend who refused to waste her time finishing it, and I was determined to complete it and prove her wrong. She wasn’t. It was as if these two books were written pre- and post-lobotomy. Seriously.

The last two I have in mind are from author John Irving, no stranger to film. I read most of his early books when I was in high school, and, for the most part, lost my taste for them later on, which means nothing here nor there. One of those older books was The Cider House Rules. When the theatrical version of The Cider House Rules was released I was, again, reviewing for radio, and what was really interesting to me at the time was an interview with Irving, who wrote the screenplay himself, and edited his own book down to what he considered a the essential story. Hunh. That can’t be easy, ’cause that was not a short book. I liked the movie a lot. The cast was good, it was a fun story, and the production was solid. A few weeks (months?) later I went back and read the book. Wow. First, hated the book. Just went on and on and on and on. Over here, over there, I don’t care, I don’t care. However, that said, John Irving? That man can self-edit! Who knows, maybe he secretly felt the same way about the story that I did, and finally had the chance to be given a re-do. Or not. So, yes, the first film in memory that I actually liked more than the book.

Last in this series of book/movie thought was The Door in the Floor, a film starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, based on the novel A Widow for One Year, by John Irving. Widow was the first of Irving’s books I’d read in years. Initially, it probably got my attention because I’m a sucker for books about writers. The film didn’t get much attention, but it did get good reviews. Jeff Bridges plays the writer who invites a young (male) student to come stay at the beach house with his family for the summer and act as his assistant. The unsuspecting young man gets pulled into the already dysfunctional crumbling marriage before he has a chance to see it coming. This also fits into my Films I Love About Writers catagory that will no doubt make an appearance at some later date.

Coming up next: Bi-polar disorder, real and imagined

I love British mystery series, but they are so damned prolific that it’s like being adrift in a sea of character development if you aren’t lucky enough to stumble upon the authors early in their careers. Identifying the first in a series can be daunting enough, but figuring out second, third, and so forth in a series of, say, twenty, is crazy-making. Used to be you could just check the copyright, but no brick and mortar bookseller is going to have all twenty of those books and with reprints and paperbacks and pocket books and trade editions–whatever. Very frustrating. Amazon could hire a person to do nothing but chronologize (and if that’s not a word, it would be) book series’ for a special section. This person would be very popular. This section would get hits, believe you me! I’d be especially interested in the Inspector Lynley series (Elizabeth George), Inspector Morse (back to Morse in a minute), and a few others I’ve just never been able to get a handle on. (It’s moments like these that I really appreciate the Sue Grafton’s and others who make it so simple!) If you like a great British mystery, I highly recommend Anne Perry’s Inspector Pitt. I actually kept up with those until recently. Pitt is a police Inspector (duh) during the Victorian era, who investigates socially sensitive crime among the wealthy, which pretty much always involves sex. Perry, herself, was involved in a real-life murder case and exiled from Britain in her youth, which was the basis for the indie film, Heavenly Creatures. Hard to get much factual information because she was a minor, but she probably knows of what she writes. She has a second series, and some other books, but Pitt is my favorite. 

With the advent of Netflix, it is now so easy to supplement the sub-standard TV fare and catch up on all of those British PBS Mystery programs you missed or didn’t have the time or patience to watch commercial-free. For me, Jeremy Brett is the quintessential Sherlock Holmes. The rest of the production is cheesy as hell, but I loved watching that guy. My second favorite was John Thaw as Inspector Morse (based on the novels of Colin Dexter), who shares my temperament, but drinks much more and likes opera. Imagine my joy to find that a new series had been created based on Morse’s sidekick, Robbie Lewis! Actually watched them a few weeks ago on PBS (Alan Cumming now hosts, a bit more interesting than Diana Rigg, I must say), but they are also on DVD, having taken their time coming to America. Wire In the Blood and Touching Evil are also good, and have made me a fan of the actor Robson Green. Robbie Coltrane rocked as Cracker. I could go on…Not all of these come from great books, of course, but might be a diversion from what bores you. Always better to see it on screen first, and then check out the books, and not the other way around. I’ve got Lynley and Havens in my Netflix queue.

From the fine folks at Amazon Vine, I received an advance copy of Takeover, by Lisa Black. Black is a forensic scientist, as is Theresa MacLean, the protagonist of Black’s debut novel. It isn’t a bad effort, but not a lot of meat there. The majority of the action–and I use that term loosely–takes place during a hostage situation. Rather than the expected suspense-building give and take, this just goes slowly downhill. Foolish choices are made. Mistakes are made. Though, all the while, apparently, our CSI is solving the case in her head. In fairness, the clues are there for the grasping, but the delicious tension of a first-rate thriller is not.

As a side note, my 12-year-old son is taking a summer school class in forensics. When I was a sixth grader, we made little snakes out of clay and coiled them into tiny, useless pots to present to our parents. So far he’s learned how to analyze blood spatter and hair and fiber evidence–how cool is that? Years from now he may not want to make a career of forensic science, but I know we’ll never watch an episode of CSI the same way again!

I just finished The Shack by William P. Young. It didn’t change my life, although, if the jacket blurb is to be believed, it blew the door wide open to Wynonna Judd’s soul. For me, it was nothing more than a folksy blip on my literary radar. These are the books I wonder about. The books that make it to the top of the best seller lists, are written about everywhere, suck me right in–and read like the lesser of community college level fiction. It’s a spiritual tale, the story of a man whose daughter is abducted, and who, through whatever circumstance the reader cares to attribute it, basically spends the weekend with the Holy Trinity. It is, as you might imagine, a life-changing experience for him. (Stop here and race out to buy a copy if you are struck by the innovative plot line). God is a large African-American woman. Jesus is a small Middle Eastern handyman. The Spirit is an Asian woman, a gardener. Later there will be a female Hispanic judge. At one point Jesus says to the skeptical Mack, “Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian.” Nothing subtle about the attempts at at multi-cultural inclusion here, my dear consumers! Cynicism aside (albeit grudgingly), it struck me as I was reading as a story to tell around the campfire at Bible camp or at bedtime to a certain age of children. The only way I can imagine it sold that well that fast, was through great publicity (to suckers like me) or to spiritual and religious groups who bought in bulk. Not fair.

Now I’m really glad I’m a dork, because I have a copy of Someone Not Really Her Mother, by Harriet Scott Chessman, to keep, and had a copy to leave in Berkeley with my friend, Dianne. It’s a brief, beautiful, and, for me, immediately engaging little book about family. Hannah is elderly and forgetful of things current, but memories mix and swirl like smoke in her head, causing joy, confusion, and much melancholy in her already complicated days. Her daughter and granddaughters also float around her, unsure of how to watch her slip away, but unable to keep hold. The writing is poetic and simple. I was even able to make use of my high school French, which always makes me feel a little pleased with myself, given that I can’t remember stuff from last week.

Also recently, Digging to America, by Anne Tyler, a very different book about family and mother-daughter relationships. This is the story of two families, two couples and their various familial appendages, who meet at the airport where both are awaiting the arrival of baby girls being adopted from Korea. Their lifestyles, backgrounds, and parenting philosophies are very different, but they become friends, celebrating at annual “arrival parties” each year the day the girls first entered their lives. Very charming.

Waaaay off in another mother-daughter direction (there are patterns here, trends, that I find unexpected and certainly unplanned…hmmm) is Shiver, by Lisa Jackson. Pocket thriller. Mom fell from the balcony of her room in a creepy old mental institution on her birthday–also her daughter’s birthday–and now 20 years later people with vague relationships to the place are dying in weird staged circumstances, and daughter’s ex- is one of the first to go. I bought this at a used book store and, apparently there are books that proceed and follow it that link the characters, which I will be looking for. If you take this book to the beach, bring lots of sunscreen, pack a lunch…maybe a flashlight!

So, I’m getting ready to go to Berkeley to visit a friend overnight and pretending it’s a writer’s retreat. Unlike people who pack too many clothes, I pack two books about writing, my current marginal paperback, six legal pads, fourteen pens, War and Peace–you get the idea. While I’m scanning the shelves trying to find my beloved copy of Bird By Bird, I notice a book called Someone Not Really Her Mother. Looks interesting. Make a mental note to come back to it later. It is late at night, the light in my living room is stingy, and I cannot, cannot find this book that I know is there. I see a book on writing by Elizabeth Berg that I don’t remember, so I pull that, thinking it can’t hurt to have back-up, and, again, I see Someone Not Reallt Her Mother. Hunh. The search continues. Finally, I locate my required Anne Lamott–heavy sigh–and, as my eye pans back, what do I see, but Someone Not Really Her Mother! Something is amiss here. It’s like that old game show Concentration, or the memory games that network Web sites like to feature: I had seen that book in two places, yes I had! Not the first time. On at least three other occasions I can think of, I’ve purchased the same book–in hardcover–twice without realizing it. Which goes along with the times I’ve purchased books, only to realize I’ve already read them–but still can’t remember how the story ends. In this case, I had received a (free!) review paperback and then bought a hardcover copy–so that’s where my retirement fund went! I’m really hoping I haven’t read my newly (re) discovered book(s). But now you know the real reason I blog about books–so I can remember what I’ve read!

I went from 0 to 70 on Chelsea Handler a couple of weeks ago. Her latest book, Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea? kept popping up everywhere on my book radar. Apparently she’s written a few, but this was the first I’d heard of her. It’s comedy, and I don’t generally waste, um, spend money on comedy. But I finally figured, what the hell (the first step is admitting you’re powerless…) and ordered it–along with something else to get the free shipping, of course. Before the book had even arrived, I was flipping channels late one night–I don’t admit it might be time to sleep unless there is absolutely nothing I can fathom watching and I’m too tired to read, and yes, there are other little idiosyncracies–and stopped on this comedy round table that was actually pretty funny. A gay man or two, a little person, a sort of East Coast Barbie, a club girl…but witty stuff. I punch the guide button, it’s a show called Chelsea Lately, Chelsea Handler, I eventually figure out, being the East Coast Barbie. It’s on E!, for those of you who want to check it out. I’ve come across it one more time since then–still funny–but I’m just not big on comedy for some reason. Yesterday I read the book, though. It’s funny. What I was constantly reminded of, though, is how prudish I feel in the face of comedic writing. I mean, seriously. I have been known to swear like a sailor, have Kid Rock and Eminem in my car, work with addicts and addicts in recovery. I wear black nail polish. For someone on the sort of far side of thirty, I am not a wuss. But some of this stuff makes me uncomfortable. Thinking about it, I guess a lot of it seems bigoted and racist to me and that makes me uncomfortable. But it’s funny. So, whatever.