‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ weaves history, myth into ‘paean to books’

Five characters living in three different centuries and four different places are all saved by a story. A story that allows them to “slip the trap” of their fear or misery. Anthony Doerr tells their stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ a book that he calls a “paean to books.”

The ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ in the novel is a 1^st century tale written by Diogenes that tells the story of Aethon, a foolish shepherd who leaves home in search of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a fictional place where there is no pain and turtles walk around carrying honeycakes on their backs. On his journey he is turned into a donkey, a fish, and a crow.

Although there is no actual ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ there was a 1^st century writer named Antonius Diogenes. Moreover, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of works that we know of but have been lost, some of them comedies about men being transformed into donkeys. Doerr uses this imagined tale to tie his characters together, even though they are separated by geography and time.

Konstance, 14 years old, lives aboard The Argos, a spacecraft launched 65 years earlier headed to a distant planet that is to be man's new home. Zeno is 80 years old and leading a group of fifth-graders in a production of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ at the public library. Seymour is a young man who is intent on placing a bomb in that library. Anna is a young girl that works in an embroidery shop with her sister in 15^th century Constantinople. Omeir is a Bulgarian boy who is drafted by Sultan's army in their attack on Constantinople.

Each character is abandoned or outcast and each is saved by a story. Konstance is the last human left alive aboard the Argos. Zeno is a gay man in rural Idaho in the mid-20^th century; Seymour is autistic; Anna is an orphan; Omeir is born with a cleft lip.

Anna discovers a codex of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ in an abandoned priory. She and Omeir escape Constantinople as it falls to the Ottomans. They view the book as a talisman that gives them luck in their escape and even heals one of their sons when he has a fever.

Zeno has spent years teaching himself ancient Greek and translating ancient works when a lost story, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is discovered in the Vatican library. Zeno finds joy in the ancient tales and is elated by the discovery. Seymour, regretful of his crimes, assembles Zeno’s work on Aethon’s tale into a book, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land.’ In doing so, he finds some redemption.

Konstance, alone on the Argos, recalls the stories of the foolish shepherd that her father told her and searches the ship’s library for the stories. In doing so, she discovers a secret that leads to her escape.

What links all these characters is a story. A story that was once lost and has been found. A story that saves each of their lives. A story that allows them to “slip the trap” of their heartbreak or existential misery. A story that allows them to live inside of it for a few precious moments and be content, entertained, and remember the loved ones they have lost.

The alternating chronologies and main characters make this book compelling. And although it’s over 600 pages, you will find yourself finishing it in just a few days. The characters are endearing, especially Zeno and Anna.

Anna, who is so young and so fierce, who trades stolen wine for reading lessons, is willing to brave any challenge to keep herself and her sister alive. Zeno, the sweet orphaned boy who is both foreign and a “sissy,” volunteers for the army to honor his father, who died in WWII, returns from a POW camp to dutifully cares for his dying guardian, a selfish woman who offers him only shelter, never love.

Even six weeks after finishing the novel, I find myself still thinking about these characters and their moving stories.

This love-letter to stories and books is beautiful and enthralling, a masterpiece, and has been predicted to be in the running for next year's Pulitzer. If you love books, you will love this book.

 

Types of flour and fat determine flakiness of pie crust

Finally getting my dream kitchen followed by a year of lockdown and almost another year of anxiety about going out has made me a competent home cook. I rarely cooked while I was teaching, as my job demanded about 60 hours a week. After I retired, I cooked a bit more, but I was very frustrated by the poor design of my kitchen. In February of 2020, we began a kitchen remodel. Everyone knows what happened in March.

So for the last 20 months I have spent plenty of time in the kitchen. And this is the time of year I bake pies. Lots of pies. My grandmother, Mam-ma, always made pie crusts from scratch. My go-to was refrigerated pre-made pie crust. However, I wanted to eschew the preservatives and plastic packaging, but mainly I wanted to make a pie crust as good as Mam-ma’s.

So as I began to making pie crusts using Flaky Pastry I from ‘Good Housekeeping Cookbook,’ 1955 ed. (which I inherited from Mam-ma and mom). It calls for all-purpose flour and then a choice of fat, either shortening, butter, margarine, or salad oil.

I don’t use shortening because it is so unhealthy (too much trans-fat), and I don’t use margarine because it doesn’t hold together in baked goods, so I used lard. Lard has 20% less saturated fat than butter, and is higher in mono-saturated fat and oleic acid, which are both good for the heart.

My pie crusts baked with lard always earned me praise at the big family dinners. However, we do have a few vegetarians and quasi-vegetarians in the family who will not eat lard. So I switched to butter and the result was a delicious pie crust and equal amounts of praise for my cooking.

And then I ate a prepared quiche from the local grocery store. The crust was so tender—much tenderer than mine. I did some research and learned that pastry flour, which has less protein than all-purpose flour, makes a tenderer crust. Pastry flour is hard to find except in gourmet stores. However, you can make your own from equal parts all-purpose flour and cake flour (which you can find locally). Cake flour is even lower in protein than pastry flour.

So I set out to discover which flour and which type of fat makes the most delicious pie crust. I made a batch of each: all-purpose flour and butter, pastry flour and butter, pastry flour and vegetable oil, cake flour and butter, and all-purpose flour and lard.

I abandoned the batch made with vegetable oil. It was impossible to work with—very sticky and fragile. It was difficult to roll, and it fell apart when I tried to lift it into the pie pan. The combination of all-purpose flour and lard was definitely the easiest to work with. It made a silky smooth dough that rolled and lifted easily.

First I rolled and baked a cookie-sized disk from each batch so I could evaluate them on their own merits. Then I blind baked (i.e. without a filling) crusts for cream pies, and finally I baked a two-crust fruit pie from each batch.

Among the disks, the all-purpose flour/butter combination puffed beautifully and was the flakiest of the four. The pastry flour and butter disk was not as flaky, but it was crisper. The disk made with the cake flour and butter was the second flakiest, but it did not brown as nicely as the others. The taste among these three was indistinguishable.

The disk made from all-purpose flour and lard was not flaky at all and too crumbly. Moreover, it smelled a bit “piggy,” especially before baking, but afterward also.

The cream pie made with all-purpose flour and butter was by far the prettiest. There was no breaking when cut, and it was the flakiest. This was also true of the fruit pie made with this combination of flour and fat. However, the crust of the fruit pie was a bit too toothsome, perhaps because of the sugar and cornstarch in the filling, which sticks to the crust and may make it a bit tough. Both of these pie crusts browned beautifully.

The pies made with pastry flour and butter were good, but not as flaky as the one with the all-purpose flour. However, they were much tenderer. There was very little difference between these and the ones made with cake flour.

The pie crusts made with lard were problematic. They fell apart when cut, and the top crust of the fruit pie even cracked during baking. The crusts made with lard were definitely the tenderest, and they were quite tasty. The “piggy” smell, I guess, was drowned out by the delicious pie-filling smell. In fact, they were so tender and delicate, they were a bit powdery.

So, if you’re looking for a pie crust that is light, flaky, and holds up well to baking and cutting, definitely use all-purpose flour and butter, especially for a cream pie. However, if you are baking a more substantial pie, like pecan or fruit, you might want to substitute cake flour for some of the all-purpose flour for a tenderer crust.  

Characters cross boundaries in new collection of short stories

Of course, as a retired English teacher, I could go on for pages about what characteristics make a piece of writing good: nuanced and realistic characters, a believable and suspenseful plot, imagery, natural-sounding dialogue, and on and on. However, two elements that I’m a particular sucker for are a non-linear plot and lyrical descriptions. Both are present in “The Boundaries of their Dwelling,” by Blake Sanz, the winner of this year’s Iowa Short Fiction Award.

In Sanz’s book, which was released Oct. 15, characters cross boundaries of culture, language, nationality, society, and morality. The stories are set in Texas, Louisiana, Miami, and Mexico, so they especially resonate with natives to this region.

The first story in “Part I – Lives of the Saints” is “¡Hablamos!” about two 17-year-old girls from Mexico City who travel to Miami to appear on a Spanish-language talk show similar to “The Jerry Springer Show.” They are given aliases and asked to “play” two sisters who will first argue heatedly and then shock and outrage the audience, who want to be shocked and outraged. The girls see it as a lark, but the show doesn’t go as planned.

In “After the Incident, Mary Vasquez Teaches Burlesque,” the title character delivers a monologue to her students, revealing her transformation from ballet to burlesque, from Maria to Marina Valentina, and suggesting it was prompted by the crossing of a moral boundary. The monologue is filled with delightful alliterative phrases and epithets, like “titillating traitor and translator” (61) and “Magdalenean Madams of the Metroplex” (54) and “fellow floozies” (59). Despite the clever and amusing language, the story is no comedy, but rather a loud triumph over trauma.

The last story in Part I, “Godfather,” introduces us to Manuel and Tommy and prepares the reader for “Part II – Manuel and Tommy.” Each of the stories in this part is about one or both characters and their failures at their father/son relationship. The stories are out of chronological order, but work together to produce a coherent narrative, which make this part more novella than a collection of short fiction.

In fact, there is an additional story in Part I that includes a character that we see later in Part II. After I finished the book, I found myself returning to the early stories to find more connections. I also find this book still in my head long after finishing it.

“Hurricane Gothic,” from Part I, is another non-linear story about a Louisiana man who repeatedly rebuilds his house after a succession of hurricanes. He also has to deal with his drug-addicted son, whom he tries to reform after his release from prison, and his own depression.

The stories in Sanz’s collection are so moving and evocative that I would like to describe each one. However, it would be better for you to read the entire collection. In fact, I suggested this title to my book club, hoping to discuss it with them later. Although this is Sanz’s first collection of stories to be published, I hope to see much more work by him, in both short and long form.

 

Historical fiction personalizes stories

I have come to really admire writers of historical fiction. Not only do these writers require imagination and skill in writing, they also must devote hours or months or, in some cases, years to researching their subjects.

“The Personal Librarian” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray presents a fictional account of Belle da Costa Greene, the personal librarian to financier JP Morgan and the driving force that turned Morgan’s personal library into an internationally acclaimed collection of rare books, manuscripts, drawings, and Renaissance art.

Greene was described as the most accomplished business woman of the time (early 20^th century) and the foremost expert on art and incunabula during her career. She moved in the most elite social circles in New York and London. But what was most remarkable about Greene is that she was born Belle Marion Greener to Black (or colored, as Belle and her family referred to themselves) parents.

Greene’s mother represented the family as white to a census taker, changed their name, and invented a Portuguese grandmother to explain their olive skin.

The novel focuses on Greene’s inner struggle with her authentic identity verses her ambition. She knew that if her race were revealed it would end her career, and perhaps her life, as well as tarnish the reputation of the Pierpont Morgan Library, which she loved as much or more than Morgan himself did.

Greene narrates the novel in the present tense, but her tone is objective and formal, almost aloof, as one might expect of someone who had to worry every moment of every day that her true self would be revealed. She holds the reader at arm’s length just as she must do with her colleagues, friends, and lovers, lest they learn her secret.

However, we are drawn to and sympathize with Belle as she sacrifices her extended family, marriage, motherhood, and even her father to maintain the life she built as a white woman.

“Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen” by Sarah Bird is another fictional account of an actual woman, Cathy Williams/William Cathay, who disguised herself as a man so that she could join the US Army after the Civil War.

Williams was a freed slave, or “captive” as she calls herself. In 1866 she joins a cavalry unit of the Buffalo Soldiers. She maintained her secret for two years of her three year hitch. However, her deception was discovered when she was hospitalized with a fever. She was discharged from the army.

This novel is also a personal account of Williams’s inner struggle to hide her “true nature,” as well as the logistical struggle to hide her sex from the men that she spends 24 hours a day with.

In stark contrast to Belle’s voice, Cathy makes the reader her confidante, drawing in the audience until we feel like we are right next to Cathy as she kills her owner by dropping a brown recluse in his pocket, falls in love with a dying soldier, and kills a rattlesnake and puts it in her enemy’s bed roll.

Both Belle and Cathy fight and sacrifice for their freedom and independence during times when their color and sex were considered inferior, and suitable jobs for them were washerwoman, cook, or worse. They defied society’s norms, proved their skill and worth, and bested many of those who would relegate them to the lowest rungs of society.

There are biographies and other non-fiction works that recount the lives of the actual women who inspired these novels. However, the documentation about them is scant, since the army placed little value on retaining the records of the Buffalo Soldiers and Belle Greene destroyed all her personal papers and correspondence shortly before her death.

Bird, Benedict, and Murray, however, fill the gaps left by the limited source material on these two remarkable women of color. They use not only research, but also logical extrapolations and story-telling skills. They bring to life the personal stories of two women that fought racism and sexism, and readers are richer for it.

Illustrated biography is more than a 'comic book'

When my children were school-age, the whole family would make a trip to Austin about once a month to eat in one of our favorite restaurants and afterwards visit Half Price Books. As soon as we arrived at Half Price, the four of us would split up, heading off to our own favorite section of books.

I would start in the literature or mystery section, the roommate in the history section, our son liked the children’s series books, and our daughter would pretty much plant herself in the manga section. When it was time to head home, I knew where to find everyone and herd them towards the door.

On one occasion, we were in a HP Books that I wasn’t entirely familiar with. I had trouble locating our daughter, so I went to the desk and asked, “Where are your graphic novels?”

The young man behind the counter answered, “We keep the erotica back here.”

I blinked a couple of times trying to figure out just how I had failed to communicate.

“Um, where is your comic book section?” I asked. He then directed me to the right area.

However, manga, graphic novels, and illustrated non-fiction are a great deal more than comic books. A good example is Joe Lee’s upcoming illustrated biography of Eva Kor, “Forgiveness,” which launches Oct. 5.

Eva Mozes was 10 years old and lived with her family in Romania when they were removed from their home in Operation Margarethe and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eva’s parents and two older sisters were immediately murdered by the Nazis. Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, were spared to become victims of Mengele’s heinous twin “experiments.”

Eva and Miriam both survived the Holocaust. They migrated to the new state of Israel where Eva met and married another Holocaust survivor, an America, who was visiting his brother in Israel.

But Eva was not to live “happily ever after” as her experiences at the hands of the Nazis haunted her. She finally came to realize that she had to forgive in order to move past the trauma.

For her own sake, she did forgive her torturers and went on to educate others about the Holocaust and especially about the twin experiments as well as lead groups from America to the remains of Auschwitz.

The brutal honesty of the story makes it compelling for adult audiences. After Eva was liberated, she and Miriam experienced PTSD. The Nazis were said to have used the fat from murdered Jews in the manufacture of soap, and “Eva would sometimes suffer auditory hallucinations when she imagined hearing Mama and Papa’s voices crying from the bar” (p 80).

However, the book is also appropriate for young adult readers. The straight-forward and simple retelling of the events that led up to the war and the Nazi crimes will appeal to middle school audiences. Even reluctant readers will be drawn to the moving illustrations.

The art is detailed and conveys the terror, grief, and fear of the Nazis’ victims as well as the depravity of the Nazis themselves. The simple black and white drawings suggest an old movie or a nightmare. Most of the illustrations in the first part of the book are very dark, some with large areas of solid black, especially the illustration of Hitler. This is contrasted by the illustrations in the last part of the book, which have more white space, and many more curves as opposed the sharp lines and angles of the first section.

Readers who enjoyed Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” and more recently George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy” or Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis,” will also appreciate this book.

'No Diving Allowed' a melancholy reflection of life

Many lovers of literature contend that poetry is the highest form. Poetry is certainly the most economical, condensed genre of literature. The poet creates sounds and images from just words, and in a few lines evokes memories, emotions, and insights.

Writers of short fiction have a similar task. Where a novelist has hundreds of pages to convince the reader to connect with the characters and events in his work, the short story writer has just a few pages.

In “No Diving Allowed” by Louise Marburg, due out Oct. 6, the author presents us with 14 stories of people struggling with disappointment, divorce, death, and heartbreak. Marburg’s clear, spare style allows her to engage the reader with complex, human, sympathetic characters in just 10 pages each.

As the title suggests, each story includes a swimming pool as central or incidental to the story. This thread throughout the book prompts the reader to consider how the pool functions in each story.

In some stories, the swimming pool is sparkling clear water that cools and refreshes. In another, the pool is as broken and empty as the lives of the characters.

Several of these short works present siblings, some who cannot overcome childhood conflicts and rivalries, and others who seem to be the only reliable emotional support for each other in a difficult world.

In the title story, Gareth visits his sister, Marion, whose husband cheated. Gareth and Marion spend the afternoon at the country club pool, where some sneering boys ask Gareth, who is obese, to do a cannonball. Marion is furious, but Gareth obliges and makes a huge splash. To the boys’ delight, he does it again. Marion and Gareth are run out of the club, and Marion will soon be run out of the home she loves, but the pair return home and sit “in an easy silence.”

Although all of the stories are about ordinary people navigating an ordinary but sometimes painful life, Marburg does offer the reader some hopeful stories. In “Attractive Nuisance,” the curmudgeonly narrator reluctantly befriends a neighbor boy who is lonely and teased by his classmates. 

Marburg’s stories are engaging, even if bittersweet, and give readers much to think about. Her style is similar to Vonnegut’s, and her subjects remind me of those in “The House on Mango Street.” There is a lot of life in just 145 pages of “No Diving Allowed.”

Book club turns ‘vodka snobs’

Usually when I think of cocktails made with vodka, I think of the screwdriver, which I’ve sworn off of after a bad experience when I was…..well, younger. I do, however, enjoy an occasional vodka tonic or vodka martini. And that was the sum total of my knowledge of vodka.

However, “How to be a Vodka Snob” by Brittany Jacques has made me appreciate how versatile and delicious vodka and vodka cocktails can be, even when they contain orange juice.

Jacques is the pen name for a husband and wife team of foodies and drinkies. (Is that what you call cocktail connoisseurs?) The book combines the basics, such as types of vodka and distilling methods; history, how cocktails originated; and recipes for drinks and even appetizers and punches.

The photography in the book is stunning, and the voice is conversational and entertaining. The title notwithstanding, there’s nothing at all snobby in this book. My only disappointment is that the authors did not include an index to the recipes, which are scattered throughout the book, so I have to constantly flip pages looking for particular drinks.

“Vodka Snob” includes recipes for the standards, like the gimlet, Russians (both black and white), and the Moscow mule. A section on Hollywood includes Bond’s vesper martini, Dwight Shrute’s beets over the rocks, and the orange whip, a favorite of Jake and Elwood Blues.

I invited my book club over for some tastings. We started with a flight of different types of vodka. We all liked the wheat vodka, which was light and smooth. The second was a vodka made from corn. It was not as smooth and had a stronger, quicker bite. The last was a potato vodka. Jacques describes potato vodka as tasting like “a big, delicious bite of creamy mashed potatoes” (p 7). I might not go that far, but it was creamy and smooth, and everyone’s favorite.

We were split on whether we preferred our martinis shaken or stirred. The shaken martini better dissolves the vermouth and tastes less oily, according to Jacques. However, shaking can bruise the vodka and make it bitter.

Of the cocktails, the club’s overall favorite was the gimlet (vodka and sweetened lime juice). It will be especially appealing to those who like margaritas. The club also loved the Russians, both black and white (vodka and coffee liquor, plus a splash of cream for the white version), declaring them “yummy.”

I think my overall favorite was the classic bay breeze cocktail (vodka, cranberry juice, and pineapple juice). It’s just a bit sweet without being desserty, with the pineapple flavor really coming through.

Not that there’s anything wrong with desserty cocktails. The blueberry muffin chata (blueberry vodka and RumChata) really does taste like a blueberry muffin. And the book club absolutely loved the mudslide (vodka, Irish cream, Kahlua, crème de cacao, and ice cream). Who wouldn’t?

“How to be a Vodka Snob” arrives just in time for summer and long-delayed get-togethers. I and my book club give it five stars. Next, we’re going to try out “How to be a Bourbon Badass” by Linda Ruffenach.

Fan Fiction offers more of beloved characters

Good fan fiction can be some of the most rewarding reading. Most people have read something that can be called fanfic, whether it’s Virgil’s “Aeneid,” based on Homer, or “Paradise Lost,” based on the Bible, or a more modern title, such as John Gardner’s “Grendel” or “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Since their books have been wildly popular and critically acclaimed for nearly two hundred years, and since they left such a small body of work, the Brontës’ novels often inspire fan fiction, some of it great literature in its own right.

Probably the best and most famous is “The Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys. Rhys was an established author when she wrote this prequel to “Jane Eyre,” and it has been called Rhys’s best novel. It tells Bertha’s story, from girlhood to her regretful marriage to Edward Rochester. In this post-colonial novel, both main characters serve as narrators and the book provides fascinating insights on its inspiration as well as confirmation of some of the feminist themes in “Jane Eyre.”

“Mr Rochester,” a parallel to “Jane Eyre,” is Edward’s story, from his second-class upbringing as a second son, to the betrayal and scapegoating by his father and brother. “Sargasso” may make you loathe Edward, but this novel casts him in a more sympathetic light. Author Sarah Shoemaker is a retired librarian, and this—her only novel—is compelling, absolutely true to the source, and beautifully written.

The title character in “The Madwoman Upstairs” may not be who you first expect. Catherine Lowell’s first novel presents a young woman in her first year at Old College, Oxford, studying literature. A descendent of Patrick Brontë’s sibling, Samantha Whipple is the last of the famous family and spends most of her time downplaying the legacy of her celebrated ancestors.

When she arrives at Oxford, she discovers that her dorm room is really “the tower,” a windowless room on the fifth floor that is on “the tour” for some reason. Just days later, mysterious packages begin appearing in her room.

The book is part mystery, part coming-of-age, part literary criticism. Samantha learns to deal with her grief over her father’s death at the same time she debates critical theories from authorial intent to reader response. She also develops and discards some unusual theories about Charlotte, Anne, and Emily.

The story is a powerful one about a woman discovering herself, resolving her grief, and finally appreciating the works of her most famous relatives. The prose is beautiful, and the narrator is sassy and an expert at turning a phrase. She describes her tutor’s office as “the sort of library you’d marry a man over” (p 25). She also claims that “Reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ had always made me wonder whether Emily Brontë had done drugs” (p 147).

YA writer Rachel Hawkins latest book and her first adult novel is “The Wife Upstairs.” It is something of a modern retelling of “Jane Eyre.” Protagonist Jane Bell, an orphan muddling through life as a barista and dog-walker, meets the handsome and rich Eddie Rochester. Eddie’s wife, Bertha, and her best friend, Blanche Ingraham, disappeared six months earlier and were presumed dead. Eddie falls for Jane, and soon Jane moves into his house in Thornfield Estates. Jane’s old roommate, John Rivers, knows something about Jane’s past and blackmails her.

While alone in Eddie’s house, Jane hears mysterious noises from above. Eddie claims it is just the house settling. But then Jane finds a strange book in the pocket of Eddie’s jacket and is compelled to find out what is hidden behind a closet on the second floor.

“The Wife Upstairs” presents a fun story with several twists which are, unfortunately, quite predictable. The prose is a bit pedestrian, as are the only discernable themes: some people are really bad; and don’t marry someone you hardly know. Even with its flaws, this novel is a great beach read.

Although some fan fiction is mediocre and forgettable, some titles are great literature, rewarding reads, and a treat for readers that can’t get enough of their favorite stories and characters.

Get ready for some thrilling summer titles

 As much as I love curling up with a book on a cold, grey day, I much prefer reading outdoors on a spring like afternoon such as we’ve had lately. Of course, my favorite reading venue is a sunny, breezy beach with salt in my hair and sand under my feet.

Great summer reads are those that keep you up late or miss mealtimes because you want to read “just one more chapter.” My routine was disturbed by a couple of titles recently.

Clare Whitfield’s “People of Abandoned Character,” due out May 1, opens in 1885 with Susannah at her grandmother’s funeral. An orphan, she is now completely alone in the world. Terrified that she will end up as destitute as her mother was, she returns to the filthy slum of Whitechapel where she was born, to train as a nurse at the London Hospital.

Susannah resigns herself to the modest but secure life of a nurse until she meets the handsome Dr. Thomas Lancaster. Unsure why he is so in love with such a plain woman as herself, she agrees to marry him after numerous proposals.

Soon after they return from their honeymoon in Brighton, Thomas changes. He becomes angry and abusive, and he disappears on several nights to return home first with scratches and later covered in blood.

At the same time, Susannah is reading about the horrific murders and mutilations of women in Whitechapel. Many of the murders happen on the same nights that her husband disappears.

Susannah is determined to find out if her husband is the Jack the Ripper. She ends up finding out much more.

In addition to being a thrilling page-turner, Whitfield’s book explores several questions: what makes a person good or bad? Can we overcome our origins? Or is our fate determined before we’re born? Moreover, the book is rife with dangerous secrets—Thomas’s, Susannah’s, and those of the people closest to them.

Another engaging thriller is “In My Dreams I Hold a Knife” by Ashley Winstead, which hits bookstores August 3. Jessica returns to her alma mater for a 10^th reunion and to flaunt her improved looks and income to her old friends, the East House 7, and all the other classmates that made her feel unimportant.

Not at the reunion are her best friend Heather, who was brutally murdered their senior year, and Jack, Heather’s boyfriend, who was suspected of the murder, but never tried for lack of evidence.

However, Heather’s brother is determined to use the reunion to out the murderer and bring his sister justice. What they all discover is that the East House 7 is hiding more secrets than just who killed Heather.

Although some of Winstead’s minor characters are flat and stereotypical (mean-girl sorority sister, homophobic frat boys), her book gives the reader plenty of action and suspense, with a heavy dose of romance also. A perfect read for a late summer beach trip.

Another great read, which launched Feb. 1, is “West With Giraffes” by Austin writer Lynda Rutledge. Woody Nickel, a 105 year old veteran, tells the story of driving two young giraffes from New York to San Diego in 1938. Based on historical fact, the novel tells the story of a thrilling, dangerous, and near-deadly trip across a country with no interstate highways.

Woody, a Dust Bowl orphan, is left alone, jobless, and friendless by the 1938 hurricane that also left one of the giraffes injured. He and zookeeper Riley Jones race across country over treacherous mountains, under low bridges, and through dark, narrow tunnels. They also have to keep their cargo of “towering creatures of God’s pure Eden” safe from murderous thieves.

Along the way, Woody deals with the trauma and guilt of losing his entire family and leaves behind his lying and stealing. A flawless novel, “West With Giraffes” is exciting, and the end will leave you in tears of sadness and joy.

Hinging on two man-made disasters—the near extinction of giraffes and the Dust Bowl—the novel expertly depicts the importance of the natural world as well as the importance of sharing stories. The planet is not ours, but “God’s own pure Eden,” just as stories are not ours alone and should be shared with all who will listen.

'Gory Details' delights with weird and icky

Science writer Erika Engelhaupt’s upcoming book, “Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science,” (March 2) is a delightful travelogue through the morbid, creepy, taboo, icky and weird facts about ourselves and our world.

Engelhaupt’s background is in both science and journalism. She completed two graduate degrees in science and has worked as an editor, writer, blogger and storyteller (on NPR and on stage).

“Gory Details” grew out of her online column by the same name for National Geographic magazine.

Engelhaupt’s style is much like science writer Mary Roach’s, combining fascinating fact, compelling descriptions and humor. She includes self-deprecating anecdotes, such as the time she inadvertently caused a plague of flies in her own home.

The book covers the disturbing, such as death and the microbiology of decay; the taboo, such as female anatomy and necrophilia; the icky, including maggot farms and body fluids; and the weird, including miniature crime scenes and brain differences found in psychopaths and those with misophonia.

Despite her formal education, Engelhaupt’s book is not a dry science tome. With a journalist’s natural curiosity, she investigates topics that many people wonder about but are not part of our common knowledge or addressed in public education.

However, she does know how to find the top experts to answer her (and our) questions. She travels to a body farm to learn about how the human body decomposes; she goes to a maggot farm to find out where the world is turning to feed livestock; and she finds a lab where she can extract and see the mites that live on her (and everyone’s) face.

Engelhaupt also addresses common urban legends and misconceptions. With her, we learn that our loyal dog is much more likely to dine on our dead body than our aloof cat is. Also, doggo’s mouth is not cleaner than our own. In fact, canine mouths contain about 500 species of bacteria, most of which do not live in the human microbiome, so we have no immunity to them. In rare cases, Fluffy’s kiss can result in a coma or death for the object of his devotion.

I am not particularly squeamish about violence and gore in books. My favorite genres include murder mysteries and true crime. However, when I saw that the first part of the book includes chapters with descriptions like “Morbid curiosity and the morgue” and “When microbes turn the tables on us,” I was worried I might have an existential crisis before I was finished reading it.

However, Engelhaupt’s voice is so casual and readable and her tone is so informal, I found that the topics, well not fascinating, but they were interesting and entertaining. No panic attacks or trips to the psych ER.

Above all, Engelhaupt is a storyteller, and “Gory Details” is a fun, informative read. Whether you read it straight through in just a few sittings, or read a few chapters between other books that you’re into, I recommend you don’t read it at mealtime. 

Irony dominates 'The Bad Muslim Discount'

One of life’s ironies is that even when we do what’s right and what’s expected of us, our actions can still unintentionally result in tragedy. In his debut novel for adult audiences “The Bad Muslim Discount,” due out Feb. 2, author Syed Masood tells an irony-rich story through two powerful voices, Anvar and Azza.

Anvar, a Pakistani teen, migrates to California with his family when his father becomes fed up with the growing religious fundamentalism in 1995 Karachi. Something of the family’s bad apple, Anvar is smart, sassy, and somewhat lazy. His brother Aamir is the sober, adult-pleasing “good Muslim” of the family, if only while someone is looking so he can get credit for it.

The story’s other narrator, Azza, is a Bagdad teen whose mother dies of cancer and father is disappeared and tortured by the Americans. Eventually, her father returns, with the physical and psychological scars of his ordeal. Azza makes a secret deal with neighbor Qais—and pays a price for it—who obtains forged passports for the three of them and they migrate to California.

Now adults, Anvar and Azza cross paths. A disillusioned lawyer, and still a bad Muslim, Anvar tries to help Azza, who endures physical abuse and the threat of sexual abuse.

The action in the novel is fast paced, from the war-torn Middle East where the characters’ lives are threatened, to post-9/11 San Francisco, where the characters face racism and Islamophobia. The characters are realistic and endearing. Even Aamir, the goody-goody, has the reader’s sympathy when he becomes engaged to a woman whom he doesn’t know is his brother’s ex-lover.

The story is full of entertaining secondary characters like Anvar’s grandmother, who teaches him about checkers and about life; Anvar’s pious and dictatorial mother; his father, who loves music and punishes Anvar’s misdeeds my making him eat bubble gum ice cream, his least favorite flavor; and Hafeez Bhatti, his paan-chewing landlord, who gives Anvar the good Muslim discount on a shabby apartment.

The prose is compelling and lyrical at times, such as the description of Anvar’s hometown:

Karachi, the city that spat me out into this world, is perpetually under siege by its own climate. The Indian Ocean does not sit placidly at the edge of the massive metropolitan port. It invades. It pours in through the air. It conspires with the dense smog of modern life and collective breath of fifteen million souls to oppress you. Under the gaze of an indifferent sun you sweat and the world sweats with you (page 5).

The author’s insight about religion and geopolitical issues is both spot on and witty. To prepare the reader for a rather disturbing description of the sacrifice of a goat to celebrate Eid, Masood says, “Yes, Islam has a marketing problem” (page 3). And later, Anvar observes, “That radical Islamists and ‘America First’ nationalists had essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony was simply divine” (pages 181-182).

It’s the irony that dominates this novel. Aamir, the good Muslim, who attends mosque, prays five times a day, doesn’t drink or smoke, and becomes engaged to the woman his parents choose for him, inadvertently causes a man’s death, even though he only did what a good Muslim would. Anvar, the bad Muslim, does what he wants, drinks, smokes, sleeps with women, and never prays. When he finally does follow an ethical code—for attorneys, not for Muslims—the result is more pain for his friends.

I enjoyed the novel and found it a rewarding read that reminded me of other excellent recent works, such as Fatima Farheen Mirza’s “A Place for Us” and “The House of Broken Angels” by Luis Alberto Urrea.

The characters are complex and sympathetic. The story includes tense moments and the serious portrayal of the violence the characters endure, but also humorous passages about human flaws and the small tensions that occur in families.

The book’s one flaw is that the author’s theme statements are a bit ham-fisted and seem more appropriate for a Young Adult novel. However, this blemish does not diminish the reader’s enjoyment of this rich and complex story.