Third Day Book Report: "A Changing Light"

This month's Third Day Book Report is on A Changing Light, by Nora Gallagher, which is set in Los Alamos, NM during the mid-1940s when scientists there were inventing the atomic bomb. By coincidence, at the same time I was reading Changing Light, I was listening in the car to Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which deals with the early 1940s, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. I really liked both books, but they're completely different, except for their time periods and the subject of World War II.

Changing Light looks at the little picture, the relationship between a New York artist, a Georgia O'Keefe type of painter, who has moved to New Mexico because of the perfect light for her art and to get away from her domineering husband who envies her success, and a Hungarian Jew who took to Einstein his idea for an atomic bomb and is having second thoughts about what he is doing, as the bomb nears completion. There is a love story, told delicately, but passionately, like an O'Keefe painting of a pistel and stamen.

Roth's novel imagines a big picture that could have, but didn't happen. He writes about what could have happened if Charles Lindbergh, an admirer of Hitler, had run for the presidency in 1940 and defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although written from the point of view of a boy,The Plot Against America is more about the country and the latent anti-semitism that runs rampant with some encouragement from the political powers that be.

Changing Light is Gallagher's first novel, but she is an experienced writer and this book is written with a deft hand, almost a painterly touch. Roth is not subtle, and although he writes passionately, it is not a love passion but a political passion, at least in this book. I have really gotten to enjoy Roth the last few years, particularly Sabbath's Theater and Everyman. The plot of The Plot Against America gets a little farfetched at times, while Changing Light also has some improbabilities. I really enjoyed both books and gave them my highest ratings of five stars each.

Third Day Book Report: "The Dead Fathers Club" by Matt Haig

I started out reading Matt Haig's The Dead Father's Club a little grumpily and skeptically. The back cover blurb advertised the book as one that will "appeal to fans of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time," the mystery told from the perspective of an autistic 15-year-old English boy. A book has to go some to bear comparison to The Curious Incident, a truly remarkable book, and I thought Dead Father's tried too hard to mimic in writing how an 11-year-old, not doing well in English composition, might write. I thought the elimination of apostrophes was gimmicky and didn't do much to advance the idea that this was being written from the perspective of an 11-year-old.

But the book grew on me as I got into it and by the end, while not quite ready to compare it with the incomparable Curious Incident, I was impressed. The book is based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and part of the fun is spotting the parallels, but it would be a good read even for someone who has never opened or heard of Hamlet.

The story is told from the perspective of Philip, a young boy in the English town of Newark, whose father was recently killed in an automobile accident. He is visited repeatedly by his father's ghost who tells him that the "accident" was set up by the father's brother, the boy's uncle Alan, a mechanic who cut the brake lines on the car, causing the father to lose control of it on a bridge. The father's ghost tells Philip that he has to kill Alan before the father's next birthday or his spirit would never be able to rest and he would always suffer the "Terrors."

Philip is Hamlet-like in his indecision about what to do, promising the ghost repeatedly that he will kill Alan, but then having second thoughts at the last minute. The ghost seems to have some powers of foretelling the future to Philip, but the powers, if they exist, are imperfect, at best, and some of what the ghost tells Philip is simply wrong. After getting Philip into one failed venture after another, the ghost finally gets Philip to make an assassination attempt with disastrous results. By the end, it is not clear at all that the ghost is the "good guy" (or is a spirit a "guy?") and Uncle Alan a bad guy.

Even though the reader may be very familiar with Hamlet, the ending is not predictable, either from Shakespeare's telling of the story or the structure of Haig's retelling of it. Previous readers of my book reports know that a frequent complaint of mine is that the ending does not hold up with the rest of the book. In this book, I'm happy to report, I found the ending was at least equal to, if not exceeded, the rest of the book.

I recommend this book, giving it four stars.

Third Day Book Report: Secret Smile

I was singularly unimpressed with the first several chapters of Secret Smile, thinking that Helen Fielding did a more amusing job of telling about the love lives of young English women in Bridget Jones's Diary. But the book grew on me as I persisted and by the end I thought it was a "good read."

The book is written by committee, a husband/wife team using the pseudonymn, Nicci French, which comes from their real names, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, two British journalists and authors. I do not know how they divide up their authorial tasks, but the book reads as if different parts of it could have been written by two people. The beginning, which is banal, and the end, which is implausible, collectively seem to me to be the weakest parts of the book. Some of the British vernacular is unfamiliar to American readers, but the context usually provides the interpretation.

The plot, summarized, is that a brief boyfriend, Brandon, comes back into the life of the heroine, Miranda, through her sister, Kerry, whom he woos and wins a few weeks after Miranda dumped him. Brandon quickly wins over not only Kerry but the rest of Miranda's family and then manipulates her into allowing him to ruin her life. In the end Miranda thwarts Brandon but the way she does it seems highly unlikely.

Actually, if we're talking about versimilitude, the whole story seems highly unlikely. Miranda is a strong young woman, working as a home remodeler and decorator, hardly a shrinking violet, yet allows Brandon to bully her, through her family, into giving up her apartment, her new boyfriend, her best friend and peace of mind. The reader keeps waiting for Miranda to put her foot down and say, "No," When she finally does, through the aid of an accomplice, not enough of the back story of the accomplice is given to make it plausible that the accomplice would actually help Miranda when no one else, her family, the police, her friends, would do so.

Despite my criticisms, the book was well enough written to be a pleasant way to divert a few hours. It is a psychological thriller, and the authors do a good job of building suspense. You know, as Miranda appears to be taking charge of her life again, that the next move in Brandon's crazy game is about to happen. The authors do not telegraph what is to come and so, like in real life, the next blow comes out of the blue. And Brandon always wins and gives her that "secret smile." Well, almost always. I thought the book was above average, and so gave it four out of five stars.