The BookReport

Charline is Reading: After Annie

On Sunday March 25th at 2pm the wonderful actor Michael Tucker will join us at BookHampton to celebrate the publication of his new novel, After Annie (Overlook Press).

Known and beloved to literally millions as a film and television actor (his role on LA Law brought him many Emmy and Golden Globe nominations) Michael Tucker is also an exceptional writer. Most enchanting perhaps is his earlier book, Living in a Foreign Language, which chronicled his life with his wife, actress Jill Eikenberry, in the Italian countryside.

Charline is Reading: Elizabeth the Queen

The idea of a strong woman, one who can hold her own in the world, has been idealized ever since Cleopatra. The role of the monarch, whether beneficent or despotic, has hardly had to evolve; to be as one wishes seemed to be one of the many perks of majeste. It is wonderfully surprising to discover that Elizabeth, Queen of England, who is about to celebrate her 60th Anniversary on the throne, is perhaps the very model of a 21st century sovereign.  

Sally Bedell Smith's compelling new biography Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Random House) offers us a  brilliant look at the evolution of Elizabeth's public and private persona.

Charline's Choice: A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Random House, 25.95) is an absolutely stellar novel. Egan's observations are as fearless as her choices; she tells us about the promises that were the future and the sorrows that surprised, and with that the power of her story eclipses all others.

The novel is populated by a bunch of 'goons': quasi-adults whose music-scene adolescence is still seen in surface traces, like the pit marks of acne  gone but waiting to curse future generations. The novel  is built in stories, and each story could easily stand alone, however it is the visceral impact of the whole that makes Egan's work both startling and compelling.

Charline's Choice: Education of an American dreamer

 

 

 I am an unabashed Studs Terkel addict. I love ‘real life stories’, (not tv – literature!) about men and women whose decency and grit helped them pull forward into the American Dream.

George Petropoulos arrived in America at age 17, worked for the railroad, laying track or washing dishes. He opened a 24-hour diner near the railroad tracks of Kearney, Nebraska the veritable center-of-America. He changed the family name from Petropoulos (son of Peter) to Peterson. 

His son, Peter grew up to be Peter G. Peterson, CEO of Lehman Brothers in the ‘70s, Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon Administration, and before that CEO of Lehman Brothers,  and ultimately  the Founder of the mega-hedge-fund Blackstone Group;  and Mr.Petropoulos’s son Peter, born of immigrant parents right smack in the middle of the USA, became a billionaire.

He also became a wonderful writer. His motivation, so he says, is that his kids and all kids should be taught to watch  where  the money goes (and perhaps who taking it there.)

Education of an American Dreamer, Peterson’s memoir, is written in a forthright voice, the kind that hallmarks some of the greats: Stegner, Steinbeck, and Fanté (if you don’t know the writing of John Fanté that’s easily corrected: ”Full of Life” is a masterpiece.)

Mr. Peterson’s very first chapter  opens the door for an outstanding autobiography. He is at his very best when he is telling us his ‘story.’ If he gives up his day job, he’s got a great future ahead…

-- Charline Spektor

The Believers by Zoe Heller

Zoe Heller’s The Believers (Harper Collins) is a glorious surprise!

Book serendipity can occur, even among well-worn booksellers. Last year I picked up Richard Price's Lush Life and I couldn't put it down.  For at least forty pages I kept thinking "what is this...?", and then I was hooked. Well, Heller's book didn't even give me the chance to ask (or wonder) -- I felt myself pulled by a rip-tide of development; and by the time I came up for air. Actually, I never came up; I read it straight through. 

The story really isn't done justice in the re-telling: In the early 1960's, a young couple find each other at a party. They are by turns very “modern” and oddly interdependent. Almost on a whim, they find themselves married. He becomes a lawyer, she becomes his wife. Several pages later, 40 years have gone by and he is a famed criminal defense lawyer and she is his unfettered, outspokenly liberal, inexcusably aggressive wife. You don't like him (but you know him); you don't like her (but you've known her). Without knowing what hit you, you are swept into the depth, the moral base, of their family life.

Heller, whose earlier book was Notes on a Scandal, is perhaps the most fascinating writer to come up in a long, long time. When asked the inevitable "who is she like?" I have to say she's a seamless combination of Philip Roth and George Eliot. And that's a conversation stopper.

-- Charline Spektor