• Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  History,  Humor

    Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon *** (of 4)

    Athenian soldiers attacked ancient Syracuse (Sicily) in 414 BCE, expecting a quick victory. They lost. Athenian soldiers were captured and held in a quarry on starvation rations. Two wine-swilling, Irish-slanged friends and gabbers since childhood decide they are going to use Athenian prisoners to stage two of Euripides plays. Gelon and the irreverent and irrepressible Lampo smuggle food into the quarry and offer morsels in exchange for any prisoners that can recall Euripides’ lines. An epic quest ensues, both hilarious and painful, to hold auditions, practice scenes, acquire costumes, learn dances and songs, and enlist an audience. Gelon and Lampo, who now consider themselves Directors. The Athenians lucky enough to recall Euripides’ plays try not to starve to death.

    Ferdia Lennon’s decision to trade-in stilted ancient look-alike language for the cheeky gab of an Irish bar is brilliant. The two friends decide to stage the two plays back to back–The Trojan Women begins immediately after Madea. Similarly, Lennon’s book has two unrelated components: the twin performances and a mad escape with smuggled prisoners across Sicily. The book cannot quite decide whether it is a comedy or tragedy, and Lennon ‘s indecisiveness puts a gentle damper on the outcome. I suppose Lennon might be saying that life, like great theater, is both tragedy and comedy. Glorious Exploits is a first novel. A good one, but not quite a great one.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  History,  NON FICTION,  Suspense,  Uncategorized

    The Wager by David Grann *** (of 4)

    The Wager is the name of a ship launched by the British Navy in 1742. It was part of a small fleet sent to the southern seas to chase down a Spanish galleon loaded with plundered riches. Aside: it is difficult to know for whom to root in a situation where two colonial powers pillage indigenous populations and then attack one another’s ships in a game of never-ending one-upmanship (one-upmanships?).

    The Wager was poorly built, led by inexperienced captains, and crewed by criminals and sailors who could not escape press-gangs. Scurvy destroyed many and the weather was horrible. Rounding the dangerous seas south of Cape Horn, the ship foundered. What was left of the crew washed up on an isolated island off the coast of Chile. For weeks and then months, surviving crewmen starved, froze and and turned upon one another, weapons drawn.

    Remarkably, a small handful of survivors cobbled together a boat and floated to safety 1,500 miles up the Atlantic coast of South America. An opposing set of survivors floated up the west coast of South America. Enough documents of the captain and crew were carried back to England that a court martial was engaged to determine whether the captain had failed his crew or the crew had committed the most heinous of crimes: mutiny. A decent adventure, but missing some of the edge since we learn about the outcome in the opening pages.

  • America,  Book Reviews,  Europe,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Memoir/Biography,  NON FICTION,  Polar

    The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides **** (of 4)

    In 1776, Great Britain’s King George sent his Navy to put down a rebellion fomented by British colonists on the eastern shore of North America. Simultaneously, he sponsored Captain James Cook to explore the unknown west coast of North America. Great Britain was especially interested in the northern reaches of the continent, hoping Cook could locate the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. For 300 years explorers had looked from the east. Why they thought a poke from the west would emerge in the Atlantic when no one had located an opening is one of those flaws in logic that comes with a 300-year quest.

    Cook was one of the most famous explorers of his era. He had already completed two global expeditions. His crewmen knew of his fame and kept detailed journals. His own notes were published. For more than two centuries, journalists and authors have chronicled Captain Cook’s life. Hampton Sides does the remarkable. He has read all the accounts and then written this book as if it were being reported in the newspapers. As readers, we live each day’s storms, make first contact with Polynesians, suffer the trials of monotonous food and freezing arctic temperatures, and the relief (if you’re a sailor) of landing on a tropical isle with luscious fruits and curvaceous females. Each event appears to happen in real time

    All the while, Sides overlays a 21st century perspective on the hazards and racism of colonization with the 18th century toughness needed to spend years at sea away from land, family, and home, instead living in tight quarters with the same handful of unwashed crewmen.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  Suspense

    Agent Running in the Field by John LeCarre **** (of 4)

    Nat, a middle-aged British spy, is called home from his duties running agents on the continent of Europe. Reunited with his wife Prue and about to be put out to pasture by the agency, Nat is at loose ends when he is befriended by Ed Shanahan. Ed is young, idealistic, and seeks out Nat at his club in order to challenge Nat, the club’s reigning badminton champ.

    Adding to Nat’s malaise and reinforced by Ed’s tirades, Britain is careening toward Brexit and America is reeling under Trump’s anti-Europeanism. Nat and Ed, serving as spokesmen for LeCarre, the aged Europeanist,let loose on the state of affairs. Britain’s foreign secretary is described as a “fucking Etonian narcissistic elitist without a decent conviction in his body bar his own advancement”. Trump is “Putin’s shithouse cleaner.”

    In vintage LeCarre, agents cross, double cross, and triple cross one another. Ascribing veracity is a agent runner’s most difficult task. The agencies that run spies (German, Russian, British) are all bureaucratic hell-holes. Can Nat sort out one more case of covert actions that threaten to undermine Europe’s post Cold War alliances? If you have a chance to listen, LeCarre is an expert reader of his own audiobooks. Published when LeCarre was 88-years-old, this was his last book.

  • America,  Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  World War II

    Goodnight Irene, by Luis Alberto Urrea **** (of 4)

    Based on accounts from the author’s mother, Luis Alberto Urrea has created a fictional account of two young women who volunteer for the Red Cross in WW II. They are assigned to trucks outfitted to make donuts and sent off to the war. The two women serve GIs a taste of home: fresh donuts, hot coffee, and some healthy flirting with young female servers. As one commander says about his soldiers fighting Nazis from the beaches of Normandy toward Germany, “My soldiers know who they are fighting against, but the Donut Dollies (“STOP calling me, Dolly!” is recurring refrain) is reminder of what they are fighting for.”

    The idea of serving fresh donuts to raise the morale of troops, in hindsight, feels as quaint as a Bob Hope variety show. Urrea has set himself a difficult task of justifying another book about World War II, this one about donuts. He succeeds marvelously by painting a rich picture of Irene Woodward, a scion of New York socialites, and Dorothy Dunford, a strapping midwestern farm girl, as they descend into the dangers of wartime duties. Irene and Dorothy ask themselves repeatedly, “Is serving donuts really helping to win the war? What are we doing here?” It all matters. Keeping up morale is as important as supplying ammunition or shipping the right number of warm socks in the right sizes to soldiers on the front lines.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  History,  Middle Ages

    Essex Dogs by Dan Jones **** (of 4)

    In July of 1346, King Edward crossed the English Channel to reclaim territory taken by his independently-minded cousin, King Phillipe. Thousands of troops land on the beaches of Normandy, but we follow 10 peasants who fight together and call themselves the Essex Dogs. They have made their livings as soldiers-for-hire during summer fighting season and have gotten good at their craft. They are a Band of Brothers.

    The ten men are real people. The de facto leader of the Dogs, Loveday FitzTalbot, is questioning whether he still has the drive to kill and pillage indiscriminately. After many seasons in the field, his belly is bigger than it is used to be, running uphill winds him, and he recognizes the villagers he is terrorizing as being not unlike himself. It is hard to swing an axe effectively when your mind is questioning your motives. Their youngest recruit, Romford, overcomes hazing because what he has left behind is worse than becoming a warrior. He also has an appetite for drugs and during the heat of battle disappears to ransack apothecaries. There are a pair of expert archers from Wales who speak no English, but can shoot an arrow through the peak of your hat from a galloping horse, and a former priest, called Father, who has become a bloodthirsty madman.

    Then there are the film-clear descriptions of life on the march. Soldiers wait in long lines in the French sun while engineers repair river crossings destroyed by retreating Frenchmen. Insects swarm them. They have not washed in weeks. The food is wretched. Their leather shoes have holes. Water is often unpalatable. They get the runs. Small cuts get infected. They have been promised pay only if they complete the campaign. And they can all see that not only are knights and lords sleeping on soft beds in tents attended to by servants and squires, but that other soldiers appear to be receiving special treatment. There is a lot of well-earned grumbling.

    If you have a chance, listen to the audiobook. Not only does the reader keep all the accents straight, but he sings the abusive curses of captains handing out orders with alacrity and minces the words of King Edward’s teenage brat of a son with comedic perfection.

  • America,  Book Reviews,  Europe,  History

    The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto *** (of 4)

    Shorto’s hypothesis is concise and convincing. His book is long and detailed. As the ages of Enlightenment and Exploration dawned on Europe, Holland was the most wide open and accepting of all the European powers in the 1500s. It was home to the most progressive artists, scientists, and philosophers. It welcomed traders from around the globe and in sharp contrast to its European competitors–Spain and Great Britain–it opened its doors to foreigners. Spain tossed out Jews and Muslims, many of whom found safety in the Netherlands. England was fighting wars over religion leaving even fundamentalist Christians who felt England was not religious enough to find sanctuary in Leiden, Holland.

    As the oceanic powers sent “explorers” to conquer territories around the world, Holland settled New Amsterdam. Its central holdings were in Manhattan and up the Hudson River to present day Albany. Henry Hudson, a Britisher, who also claimed Hudson’s Bay and surrounding territory in Canada, was actually hired by the Dutch to be their explorer.

    Those religious fundamentalists from Great Britain left Leiden because they found Holland to be too liberal for their tastes. They became the Puritan settlers of New England. To this day, suggests Shorto, New York City, formerly New Amsterdam, has maintained its Dutch character: accepting, entrepreneurial, and a haven for all immigrants and faiths.

    Among the fine points raised by Shorto’s research is his careful assessment of relations between Dutch settlers and Native Americans. By his accounting the Indians were genetically speaking, 99.99% identical to their European counterparts. Which is to say they were smart, pleasant, calculating, jealous, envious, devious, intellectual, mechanical, curious, political, and so on. The story of the Dutch selling Manhattan to Indians for $24 proves not only laughably false, but also a fabrication contrived by English historians, who as victors in the New World, got to write the continent’s history.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  Humor,  Suspense

    The Secret Hours by Mick Herron *** (of 4)

    This is Herron’s prequel to his successful Slow Horses series, which is one of those rare compilations that is better on screen (Apple +) than it is to read. The spies in this book (a couple of whom will appear in previous books for which this is the recently published prequel) are working in Berlin just after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. Espionage is in chaos as old countries disintegrate, new ones are formed, and spies no longer protected by an Iron Curtain seek to settle old scores.

    MI5’s lead operative is laying a Berlin trap for a former Stasi agent who killed one of his best East German sources. Details of his operation emerge in front of a present day tribunal ordered by Great Britain’s PM. The Prime Minister has established a task force to search for historical illegalities perpetrated by MI5. It’s a publicity stunt that is accurately and hysterically recounted. Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, lifelong bureaucrats, trudge through the tedium of hearings everyone knows are never going to amount to anthill of dirt.

    The spycraft is slow, and the hearings slower, but the office dialogue and repartee among spies who feel like they are punching a clock, and occasionally punching one another, is priceless.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  Fantasy,  FICTION,  Suspense

    Red Queen by Juan Gomez-Jurado ** (of 4)

    Antonia Scott is a genius at penetrating the minds of dastardly criminals. She is also a morbid recluse with no sense of smell (is this important for us to know?), gorgeous, and without social skills. John Guiterrez is assigned to be her partner by an unseen handler called MENTOR. John is overweight, or just strong, gay, a good guy, without a partner, and disgraced by the police department for a dubious infraction. And the criminals they pursue are unspeakably heinous.

    Which is to say the book (apparently well-loved around the world) is tolerable if it is read as a comic book without pictures. Antonia Scott is the smartest person in all of Europe. Mentor works for a shadowy European consortium of crime-fighters who operate outside of and above the law. Criminals slink through shadowy underground tunnels. Confrontations appear in word-panels that burst with gore and the equivalent of starburst “POWS” and “OOFS.” For the full (not so pleasant experience) listen to the audiobook. The reader has only two distinct voices: angry and angrier.

  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  History,  Middle Ages,  Prize Winner

    Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell *** (of 4)

    The story’s most famous character, William Shakespeare, is never mentioned by name. History tells us that Hamnet, the son of William and Agnes (Anne Hatheway) Shakespeare, died at age 11, but little more is known. O’Farrell brings to life, and death, the 1500s in rural England. The plague comes and goes. Neighbors squabble. Relatives promote themselves and (some of) their brethren, while petty jealousies fester. For the sheer strength of O’Farrell’s characterizations, her book is Shakespearean.

    But the added benefit is the authority with which she describes muddy lanes between thatched roof homes, household gardens, glove-making shops, apothecaries, market stalls, and, on the edge of town, cow fields. When illness befalls Hamnet, medical wisdom of the era recognized the symptoms and likely deadliness of Bubonic plague, but knew little of its transmission or treatments. Hamnet’s mother is broken by her son’s illness and ensuing death. William Shakespeare, speculates O’Farrell, was, too. His play, Hamlet, is a tribute to his lost son.