Finished: Buried Child (Shepard) Funny, I never thought about reading any of Sam Shepard's works until he passed away. I don't think I even knew he was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I just always really enjoyed his acting. :-) Anyway, I read this play, his Pulitzer winning one, and it was very, very intense, but very vibrant. I could actually hear each of the characters speaking, and imagine their actions. It was really just a portrait of this broken down family who had a secret from the past. Not a long play, but it packed a punch! Dodge and Halie are a married couple in their 60's and 70's. Dodge appears to be very ill, pretty much an invalid, plus an alcoholic. He's ornery, but has some of the best dialogue. The play isn't funny at all, but the bickering and conversations and nagging and interruptions and non-listening to each other between Dodge and Halie can definitely make you smile and see real life in the process. Halie professes to be the good church-going woman, but she's more about going to see the "good" Father Dewis at the church than actually being church-going. Their 40-something son, Tilden, has moved back home to live with them...not to take care of them, but to basically be taken care of. He's emotionally stunted...has been in trouble in New Mexico and moved back home. He was a high school All American in football, but his life went off the rails. Younger son, 30-something Bradley, lives nearby and accidentally cut his leg off below the knee years before with a chainsaw. He's bossy and bullying to his parents and his big brother, but also a whining, sniveling mess. It's a very dysfunctional family! One day, when Halie goes off in her nice dress to go to church, a couple of visitors come to the door. Tilden's son, 22 year old Vince, who the family hasn't seen in six  years and his girlfriend, Shelly, come in. Neither Dodge or Tilden recognize Vince...to the point that Shelly wonders if Vince has made a mistake about this being his family. Tilden goes out to wander around in the farm out back, which hasn't been farmed to grow anything in over thirty years. He keeps coming back in with corn and carrots. Dodge accuses him of stealing the food from other farmers. Dodge doesn't know or care who Vince is. He just berates him and begs him to go and buy him some liquor. Vince leaves Shelly there to go buy liquor, much to her dismay, but she handles Dodge and Tilden just fine until Bradley comes in and starts berating HER. He also berates Dodge and Tilden. Soon Dodge starts spouting off about the big family secret, and it comes pouring out. Years before, an age isn't given, but Tilden and Bradley were at least teenagers, Halie (their mother) got pregnant again and had a baby son. Dodge knew it wasn't his son because he hadn't "had relations" with her in six years. Dodge, unwilling to have the baby around, had drown it and buried it out back on the farm. The creepy part is that the baby was the product of Halie having sex with her own son, Tilden. This rather explains Tilden's emotional instability. Halie and Father Dewis come back to the house after a night on the town in quite a flirtatious mood, but as they walk in to the confession of Dodge, things get dark. Father Dewis hightails it out, but not before Dodge announces that when he dies, which he expects to be soon, he wants Father Dewis to witness that he leaves the house and all his belongings to his grandson, Vince. Halie goes moaning and groaning upstairs. The belligerent Bradley has become the whimpering whiner because he had taken his wooden leg off to take a nap, and Shelly was now holding it and threatening to leave with it if these crazy people didn't let her go. Vince has never returned with the alcohol. Tilden has gone out back to wander the farm again. Finally, Shelly tosses Bradley's leg and heads for the porch just as Vince is coming back in, clearly drunk. She tells him they need to go, and instead he goes in and lays down on the couch. He had heard Dodge's last will and testament, and it turns out to truly be that, because Dodge has died on the floor without anyone noticing. Vince plops down on the couch and declares that he thinks he'll stay. Shelly says adios. Bradley crawls off stage to get his tossed leg. And, then Tilden walks back in cradling the tiny covered bones of a small child in his arms and walks upstairs with it. Honestly....you can truly taste each character. It's very well written, but oh so dark and tragic.

Finished: Giant (Ferber) A very good book about a Texas cattle rancher who falls in love with an educated girl from Virginia, marries her, and brings her back to the vast, ranching world of 1920's Texas. The book was the inspiration for the movie Giant with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, which I haven't seen in many years. I can't be sure how true to the book the movie stayed, but I know for a fact that the way Jett Rink, the crass, chip-on-his-shoulder cowhand, from the book was certainly not as swoon-worthy as James Dean. :-) Anyway, the cattle rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict owns the 2.5 million acre ranch, Reata, and it is his life. He's the third Jordan Benedict and was born and raised riding horses and raising livestock. His parents died when he was young, and he was practically raised by his older, no-nonsense, "old maid", very opinionated sister, Luz. When Bick brings his equally opinionated, but beautiful, smart, compassionate bride, Leslie Lynnton, back to the ranch, Luz is immediately threatened by their closeness and doesn't do anything to make Leslie welcome. The entire book tackles Texas politics, cattle breeding, the plight of the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who barely scraped by working on the ranch, the rich versus the poor, the weather, the heat, the oil boom (that Bick wants no part of on his ranch), and the ongoing, underlying tension between Bick and his fired ranch hand, Jett. It's a grand book, with flawed characters...but characters who do stick together through thick and thin. I like that Leslie and Bick remain married, always love one another, even though they disagree on so many basic tenets, and that Leslie comes to think of Texas as her home. Leslie and Bick have two children of their own, who are grown by the end of the book, Jordan the 4th, called Jordy and daughter, Claire, who Bick insists on calling Luz, even though that's nothing like her name, lol. Of course, Bick expects Jordy to follow in the footsteps of him, his father and his grandfather, but Jordy wants nothing to do with ranching. He wants to be a doctor. Luz is the one who takes to the ranch and has Bick wishing that his son and his daughter had switched personalities. Bick never really lets up on Jordy about this, showing how set in his ways he can be. The only disconcerting thing is that the book starts in the 1950's when Bick, Leslie, friends and children are all headed to the huge opening of the Jett Rink airport and hotel. Yes, Jett did go on to strike oil on his tiny piece of land, and he ended up buying up all the oil rights on most of the land around him, and now he's a billionaire...still a crass, unlikable, drunkard of a man, though. The Benedicts and all the other powerful guests are up on the dais for a special dinner as Jett enters with his bodyguards. Just then, Jordy hops up on the dais and punches Jett in the face!! It seems that Jordy's wife, who is Mexican, was not allowed in the hotel beauty shop to get her nails done that morning because she was Mexican. Of course, Jett lays into Jordy and injures him pretty badly. With that opening, we flash back to Leslie and Bick meeting and marrying and going home to Texas to live on Reata. We meet Jett, and all of Bick's friends and family. We watch Leslie grow accustomed to Texas, and make friends. We go through Luz (the sister's) death. We enjoy a visit by Leslie's family out to this foreign "country" of Texas. All this, and at the end of the book, we get right up to the week before they're all going to go to the big Jett Rink airport opening, and the book ends. It's just rather abrupt, and never goes back to the event that opened the book. I think that's my only problem with the book. :-) A lot of really nice prose describing both Texas and the different cities they visit in Texas and the politics and mindset of the time.

Finished: The Goldfinch (Tartt) I knew from one of the first passages I read of this Pulitzer Prize winner that this would be a very moving, very intricate book, this story about a boy who loses his mother and how that deeply affects the rest of his life, and it was all that, plus a pretty wild ride. It was such a good, good book...a book that makes you feel really deeply. If this is a book you are seriously considering reading, then I wouldn't read this recap, because there are spoilers that may ruin the reading for you! Theo Decker is thirteen years old, and his mother has taken the day off from work to go to a meeting with the school principal. It seems that Theo was seen smoking by the principal, and he fears he will be suspended. Theo knows his mom can't afford to take off work, since she's been raising him on his own, with no financial aid from his dad since his dad, a mood-swinging alcoholic, walked out on them over a year before. As they walk to the meeting, the skies open up and pour down raining. Since they are early, they dash into the Metropolitan Museum of Art where there is a visiting art show exhibiting, The Goldfinch, the famous painting by Dutch painter, and student of Rembrandt's, Carel Fabritius. It is one of the few remaining pieces of art created by Fabritius before he died, and Theo's mother has loved the painting nearly all her life. To see it in person, is a great joy to her, and she wants to show Theo. As they look at the painting, Theo sees a red-headed girl about his age who is also looking at the painting with what looks like her grandfather. He falls instantly in love with her, even though he's never seen her before. As his mother and he make their way to the gift shop, Theo's mom says she's going to go and have one more glimpse of the painting. Theo sees her off and then heads towards the gift shop, where he sees the red-headed girl and her escort. Just then, a horrific blast occurs. There is a bombing at the museum! Theo is thrown unconscious amid tumbling concrete, wires, etc. When he awakens, the only person he sees is the older man, laying, grievously wounded. The red-headed girl is no where in sight, and his mother isn't either. The man, who's name is Welty Blackwell, takes off his family heirloom ring and gives Theo instructions on where to take it. He knows he's dying. He then points to the smokey painting of the goldfinch, which has miraculously survived, and begs Theo to take that too. As a matter of fact, he won't calm down until Theo puts it in his backpack....which he does...because he's in a daze, he's in shock, he doesn't know what to do. He thinks his mother must surely still be alive, and so after Welty dies, Theo makes his way out through the rubble and, despite the blood on him and his pounding headache, makes it back to their apartment to wait for his mom. Of course, his mom never shows up because she was killed in the blast. From this point on, Theo is in a state of shock and then in the hands of child protective services. He is very confused and knows only to bring his backpack with him when he is taken to the wealthy home of his best friend from elementary school, Andy Barbour. He and Andy are no longer close, but the Barbours take Theo in, no questions asked, and make him feel as much a part of the family as they can. They will take care of Theo until arrangements can be made with his grandparents if his father never comes forward. His ne'er do well, selfish grandparents, the ones who raised his ne'er do well, selfish father, don't want anything to do with him. So, Theo settles in at the Barbours and is there for several months. He struggles with nightmares and PTSD since the bombing, and he misses his mother terribly. :-( He also has no idea what to do with the painting now that months have gone by and his head has cleared. He wants to turn it into the museum, but is afraid he will be arrested or kicked out of the Barbour's house. One day, Theo makes the trip down to the Village and finds the address that Welty had given him when he asked him to deliver his ring. A giant of a man answers the door. His name is James Hobart "Hobie" and he is the kindest man Theo has ever met. He's overwhelmed that Theo brought his business partner's ring back, and he embraces Theo. Hobie is an antique restorer and Welty had been the purchasing partner. With Welty gone, Hobie has been at a loss and has not reopened the shop, but keeps up with the bills by repairing antiques for people. Hobie listens to Theo and feeds him and tells him if there's anything he can ever do, to let him know. Theo asks about the red-headed girl, assuming she died in the bombing, and Hobie tells him that Pippa survived the bombing, but is still in pretty bad shape from her head injury and doesn't like visitors. Theo is happily stunned. He learns that Pippa was Welty's niece who he had raised since she was a toddler. She was a talented flutist who was also suffering her own PTSD after the bombing, and especially traumatized by the death of Welty and by her loss of musical ability. Theo begs to see her, so Hobie takes him to Pippa's room and she instantly wants to see him too. She remembers him from the museum and they form an instant bond. She can't handle too long of a visit, and unfortunately her aunt is taking her to recuperate in Texas the very next day....but they have this brief moment of connection. Theo says his goodbyes, but then continues to make his way down to Hobie's once a week or so for the genuine kindness of the man. Hobie begins to teach Theo about restoring antiques, and knowing an antique when he sees one. Theo wonders if he should tell Hobie about the painting, but again, he's too afraid that he'll lose Hobie if he does, so he does nothing.

Just when the new school year is about to start, and Mrs. Barbour has indicated to Theo that he will most likely becoming a permanent fixture of their family, Theo's miscreant father turns up with his cheap girlfriend, and they whisk him off to live with them in Vegas. Theo doesn't want to go at all, but he must.  He panics about the painting, but wraps it up in some clothes and puts it in his suitcase and brings it along! He runs to see Hobie before he goes and they have a heartfelt goodbye. Hobie tells him to call him if he needs anything at all after he gets there, and promises to write (which he does).

From here on out, Theo's life goes even further downhill. I might as well type 600 pages to go into everything in detail. Suffice it to say, Theo's dad and Xandra are terrible parents. They leave Theo to his own devices, alone in a near empty street, in an unfinished neighborhood in the desert near Vegas. They give him a little attention, but mostly focus on themselves. Theo becomes even more lonely. After meeting another motherless, absentee-father boy at school, Ukrainian immigrant, Boris, Theo falls into skipping school, marijuana, shoplifting (for food mostly), alcohol, and then harder drugs. He and Boris become like brothers, but are terrible influences for each other. Theo's dad gets used to having him around, and has a couple of good moments here and there, but basically, he's a gambler...so his good and bad moods are determined by his wins at the casinos any given day. One day when he's in a generous mood, he gives Theo some cash, and then asks him for his social security number so he can open a savings account for Theo. Of course, it comes to light that he really just wanted to use that social security number to try and access the bit of money that Theo's mother left him in a trust for schooling. It's so sad when Theo realizes that. Also, Theo is still chronically worried about the painting and being arrested. He takes the painting out to look at it, and he loves it like his mother did, but then he wraps it in a pillowcase and keeps it taped behind his bed, always fearful that someone will find it. When it becomes clear that Theo's dad is now on a losing streak after a man comes to the house to collect money, and after his dad actually punches Theo in the face to make him get on the phone to the lawyer to try and access his school money, Theo sinks even lower. He and Boris dip further into their drug dependency, and their dependency on each other. Everything changes again when Theo's father is killed in an auto accident. Theo panics and tells Boris he must leave that very night and go back to New York. He will go to the Barbour's. Theo has now been living in Vegas for two years but Boris can't convince Theo to stay for even one more day. Theo does not want to be put back in social services, and he's again panicked about the painting! Theo gets the wrapped painting and a few clothes, and heads for a bus to New York. When he arrives, he heads towards the Barbour's, but as he approaches the house, he sees the formerly friendly Mr. Barbour, who doesn't recognize him and yells at him to leave him alone. It is clear that Mr. Barbour is off his depression medication, and Theo has never seen him like this. Despondent, Theo goes to the only place he knows to go....he knocks on Hobie's door. When Hobie sees him, he embraces him, and Theo breaks down in tears (and so did I) at the first indication of human warmth and kindness he's had in his life, basically since his mother died. Hobie puts the very sick Theo to bed and he and Pippa nurse him back to health. Pippa, however, doesn't stay for long because she's in a school for "crazy girls" in Switzerland. Theo and Pippa do have a little bit more bonding, but clearly he's head over heals in love with her, and she's more just trying to forget the past and move on. When Theo is well again, Hobie takes him to see his lawyer, and the lawyer agrees that Theo is old enough (almost 16 now) to decide where to live, so he sets him up with a small allowance from  his mother's money and agrees that he can stay with Hobie. Theo goes to pre-college (he's very smart) and does marginally well, but what he really likes is helping with the antique restorations!

Flash forward eight years and that's exactly what Theo has done. He's still living with Hobie and now has become his partner! For all those years, Hobie still concentrated on the furniture restoration and repair and left the financial part to Theo. Theo inherited a shop in debt, and in order to get them out from under the debt and to keep Hobie from losing his shop, Theo sells several of Hobie's own creations, which are not antiques, but bits and scraps of different pieces that he puts together, as true antiques to some pretty serious collectors. Hobie has no idea that Theo is taking the pieces from the store room, where he puts them after he's done, and so is completely oblivious to how Theo has re-engergized the shop. In the meantime, Theo, who has never even taken the painting out of the pillow case to look at it again, has paid for his own temperature controlled store room and stored the painting there for years! He goes through a very frantic few months when it is in the news that some of the paintings that were stolen from the museum on the bombing day have been found with an illegal art dealer in Miami and those people are sentenced to prison. He still has no idea what to do, and considers trying to turn the painting in some how, but then he always gets busy and goes back into avoiding the subject. Pippa has moved to London, and it's clear they won't be together, so even though he's deep down still in love with her, Theo becomes engaged to Kitsey Barbour, Andy's little sister. He hooks back up with that family when he runs into Andy's big brother, Platt, on the street one day and Platt tells him that both Mr. Barbour and Andy were drowned in a boating accident earlier in the year. :-( Theo feels terribly guilty because he came back to New York, and after running into Mr. Barbour and being yelled at, he has never resumed communication with any of the Barbours. He can't believe that Andy, one of the only people who had really been a friend when he was younger, is now dead. When he goes over to visit Mrs. Barbour, who has now gone from being a huge socialite to pretty much a recluse, that's when he gets back in touch with the now college-aged Kitsey and they have a whirlwind romance and get engaged! Mrs. Barbour is thrilled and it brings some life back into the family. However, even that can't be just a simple happiness. It turns out, Kitsey is really in love with one of Theo's old middle school friends, Tom Cable. As a matter of fact, Tom Cable is the "friend" who has left Theo holding the cigarette way back when they were seen by the principal, and is indirectly responsible for Theo's mother having to take off work the day of her death. This is the way Theo sees it, anyway, as Theo continues to blame himself for his mother's death, thinking if only he hadn't screwed up at school and forced his mother to have to miss work for the meeting. Anyway, Kitsey loves Tom, and Tom supposedly loves Kitsey, but her family can't stand him and they love Theo, so Kitsey and Theo actually agree to stay together for the sake of Mrs. Barbour for the time being. A few days later at their engagement party, Theo is still reeling a bit, but he's putting on the smiling face. Who should show up but Boris!!! Boris, who Theo hasn't heard from in years. Boris, who for the first few months after Theo left Vegas, would text him every once in awhile, but had basically fallen off the face of the earth! Boris barely gives the shocked Theo time to embrace him when he tells Theo that he must come with him immediately for a few days. Theo, being a bit ticked at Kitsey anyway, tells Hobie he's off for a few days, and leaves with Boris. Boris, who by the way, still looks like he's up to no good!!

Boris talks a mile a minute trying to explain something or other to Theo as Theo throws clothes into a suitcase. Boris says they're going to Amsterdam. He keeps apologizing to Theo and begging his forgiveness, but tells him that he's finally tracked it down and they're going to get it back together. Theo has no idea what Boris is talking about and Boris finally realizes that. It turns out, that years ago in Vegas, Boris had taken The Goldfinch from behind Theo's bed and replaced it with a book, re- wrapped it in the pillow case and re-taped it to the back of the bed!! All these panicky years that Theo thought he had an illegal painting he was keeping safe in a store room, he had not. Theo is furious with Boris. Boris explains that he just did it for kicks and was going to give it back to him, and if Theo remembered correctly, Boris had tried to talk him into staying just one more night when his father died, and then he was going to slip the painting back in, but Theo insisted on leaving right then. As Boris had become further and further entrenched in drugs, then dealing, then petty crime, he had began using the painting and it was actually one of the paintings involved in the Miami art debacle! However, someone Boris knew had made it out with the painting, but then THAT guy had started loaning the painting out as a way to take collateral money from people (or something like that). Anyway, Boris now had an exact location of the painting and he needed Theo to go with him and pose as the rich guy to get it back! Flabbergasted, Theo told Boris that when they DID see exactly where it was and who had it, that he was going to call the police and turn that person in and have them retrieve the painting, finally, after all these years. It would be tough for Theo not to have it in his possession, since it was what he saw as a final connection to his mother, but it would finally be over. Boris was incredulous....no way would they turn it in!! He wanted Theo to have it back. It was very valuable. The retrieval of the painting ends up being fraught with danger as fake money and guns (much to Theo's horror) are involved. Theo, Boris and his men end up getting the painting after Boris pistol whips the man who had stolen it. Theo and Boris unwrap the painting and Theo has a brief moment of absolute delight and wonder in seeing it's beauty when two other men come up with guns and take the painting back. Not only that, they are going to kill Theo and Boris. Boris makes a move and takes one guy down, and Theo grabs a gun and kills the other guy, and then basically goes into shock. Even worse, a third guy has grabbed the painting and fled. Boris knows who the guy is, but they can't catch him. Boris is shot in the arm, but he insists that Theo go back to the hotel and clean up and wait for him there. Theo is distraught from killing the man who was about to kill him, and in a daze, but goes back to the hotel where he waits for days and days. He can't even leave town if he wants to because Boris has his passport in his car. He has no way to get in touch with Boris because his cell phone dies, and then he fries it when he tries to charge it without a converter. Theo falls into fear and despair and seriously contemplates suicide. He's at his lowest low when he sees the one and only vision of his mother that he ever sees. It's clear and he knows it's her there trying to comfort him. She opens her mouth to speak to him, and he wakes up and she's not there. Just that bit of feeling his mother makes him snap out of the suicidal thoughts. He, instead, decides he will turn himself in at the American consulate for murder. Just as he's given up on Boris, thinking maybe even he is dead, Theo cleans up and orders breakfast for a last meal, and is about to eat when Boris turns up at his hotel room! Boris is fine and in a great mood. He's been gone for so many days because he tracked down the guy who took the painting, and then using Theo's "brilliant idea", he had one of his men act as an eyewitness and go to the police and say he thought he knew where The Goldfinch painting was because....the painting had a $2,000,0000 reward on it!! All this time, says Boris, if he'd only used his head, he could have turned the painting in long ago and made them all the money. Theo is at once sad about the painting, but glad at the same time, that's it's finally back in safe hands. Boris insists that he take a huge chunk of the money, and won't take no for an answer. They spend a couple of days together, and then Theo flies back to New York where he is immediately faced with a very troubled and sad Hobie, who has been worried sick about Theo. It turns out, an unscrupulous antique dealer who had tired to blackmail Theo before, when he found out he'd been sold a fake, has gone to Hobie and told him about ALL the pieces that Theo has faked. On top of that, Hobie has now heard in the news about the recovery of The Goldfinch in Amsterdam and wonders if Theo has somehow been involved with that. Theo begs Hobie to let him explain, and says he's got the money to pay back anyone who he sold a fake antique to, and then he goes about the long explanation about the painting. After hearing everything from the moment of the bombing til now, Theo assumes Hobie will want him to leave, but he instead embraces him and tells him that The Goldfinch had been one of two paintings that Welty had loved from childhood on. Since it is now back where it belongs, there's no reason to do anything about that.

So, at the end of the book, Theo is traveling around making amends for all the "mistaken" fake antiques. He's paying all the people back their money, and he's still engaged to Kitsey, though they aren't really doing anything about getting married. Just having Theo around and part of the Barbour family makes Mrs. Barbour happy, and that's all Theo and Kitsey really want. Theo reminiscences and comes to terms with the fact that he and Pippa will never be together when she tells him that she has always loved him too, but that they could never be together because they both have too much of a propensity to fall apart at any moment due to their shared tragic experience, and that they both need people in their lives who will be their rock instead. Theo has grown up and realized his own morals by the end of the book, but I think, still has a long way to go to actually loving and forgiving himself. It ends there, but I found myself really hoping that Theo went on to find real happiness!

Finished: Since We Fell (Lehane) Well, this was quite a page-turner! I've never read a Dennis Lehane book, but I might have to read another. I'm just too tired to do an actual recap, so I will be lazy and put below what other sites have said about the book. Besides, there were so many twists and turns and tangents, that it would take me forever to write! I kind of wouldn't mind seeing a sequel with the two main characters, Rachel and Brian, but doubt that's in the works. ok, so here's Amazon's write up:

Since We Fell follows Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel’s marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths. By turns heart- breaking, suspenseful, romantic, and sophisticated, Since We Fell is a novel of profound psychological insight and tension. It is Dennis Lehane at his very best.

Oooo this New York Times recap goes into good detail. It IS kind of weird how the first part of the book is about Rachel's despair and search for her father, and then the second part of the book kicks into high gear with all the shenanigans. I do agree with the last sentence...after all she goes through with her search for her father, dealing with her childhood with her impossible mother, facing her agoraphobia, a failed first marriage, an earth-shattering experience reporting in post-earthquake Haiti, and the "interesting" relationship with her second husband, and love of her life, Rachel DOES finally learn to depend on herself!

New York Times: “Since We Fell” is the first Dennis Lehane novel written from a woman’s point of view. She’s a tough character, but it’s a miracle that she can get out of bed in the morning. Rachel Childs was raised by Elizabeth Childs, Ph.D., a single mother, a self-help celebrity author who damaged her daughter in every way she could think of — and a woman with a fertile imagination. Elizabeth made a sadistic, narcissistic game out of not letting Rachel know the identity of her father.

Rachel grew up thinking of life as “a series of detachments,” which is a way of describing Lehane’s atypical “Since We Fell,” too. The novel begins with a string of joltingly different episodes from an author whose usual style is much more propulsively linear. The sequences are all parts of Rachel’s life, but that doesn’t initially glue them together; she is struggling to figure out who she is, and so are we. Only over time does the larger trajectory of “Since We Fell” become clear. 

It all makes much more sense in retrospect than it does as the book’s first chapters unfold. Here are some of its early developments: Rachel devotes herself to solving the mystery of her father. It’s complicated, and it leads the book into such unlikely areas as Luminism, the 19th-century style of American landscape painting. Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone, Baby, Gone”) has said that he can’t connect with white male working-class crime stories any more. Even so, this is a long way from home.The father question is answered, and not in ways likely to improve Rachel’s mental state. She’s the daughter of a man whose smile “wasn’t an invitation, it was a moat,” who brings to mind “the profligate poet, the drug-addled painter-genius, the musician who’d die in a car crash the day after he signed the big record contract.” So she fits right in with other tormented Lehane characters, who have two strikes against them before they even set foot on the field.

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Strong and smart as she is, Rachel needs a man in her life. She marries a producer named Sebastian, who works at the Boston TV station where she is a rising star. He’s irritable when Rachel endangers her career, since he cares mostly about her status. She goes to cover the Haitian earthquake and can’t be chirpy enough to satisfy her bosses. “Our viewers need hope,” they tell her. “Haitians need water,” she replies. One on-air meltdown later, Rachel has been fired and is a public pariah.

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Already subject to panic attacks, which are exacerbated by the horrors she saw in Haiti, Rachel stays in her apartment for 18 months. Sebastian drops out of her life. And it leads to Rachel becoming reacquainted with Mr. Right, Brian Delacroix, who she’d known casually and now looks at with new interest. He is tall, dark and handsome, and he is the first lover who really wanted to help her. Rachel falls gratefully into his arms, and they are married.

Their marriage ushers in a string of wall-to-wall spoiler alerts. Suffice it to say that this second part of “Since We Fell” is sharply different from the first. Instead, it’s packed with signs that Lehane sold this story to the movies, which he did, in 2015, and that he loves the Hitchcock classics that prey on mistrust. Suddenly, he begins delivering nonstop suspense only loosely rooted in Rachel’s story and its foundations.

Like so many mystery authors who have been drawn into screenwriting, Lehane writes best when he’s thinking solely about a book. “World Gone By,” the elegiac 2015 novel that preceded this one, had a tragic grandeur that is never approached by this less credible, more action-oriented thriller. But “World Gone By” had none of the tricks, shocks, visual effects, mad coincidences and disguises that propel “Since We Fell.” And Lehane is no slouch at those, either. He remains one of the great, diabolical thriller kings who seems intimately acquainted with darkness and can make it seep from the page or screen. A line of dialogue like “Oh, ho, ho, my man, let’s not push me tonight,” delivered with brittle levity, carries more menace than any outright threat could.

Rachel works extremely well as the focus of the book. Lehane has always written wrenching female characters into his stories, and he has no trouble giving center stage to one. The question is never whether she will escape her past. We know she’s got the moxie to do it, but where is she headed? Her options narrow as the book becomes more crime-centric and throws her into life-or-death situations rather than contemplative ones. But she’s as much of a pragmatist as anyone Lehane ever dreamed up. She comes a long way through the twists and turns of “Since We Fell,” which takes its title from a love song about desperate dependency. By the end of it, she’s learned how to depend on herself.

Finished: The Silent Corner (Koontz) Not as big of a page-turner as other Dean Koontz books I've read, but still good, and it comes with a sequel. It's the story of Jane Hawk, a grieving FBI agent whose husband has uncharacteristically committed suicide. Jane refuses to believe that Nick would have killed himself, but when she starts exploring they "whys", her life is threatened by very powerful people, as well as the life of her precious five year old son, Travis. Jane quickly sells her house, quits the FBI, stashes her son, not with known family, but with obscure friends, and goes about investigating further what caused not only her own husband to take his life, but several other people as well. Jane Hawk is tough, smart, wary and ruthless when it comes to finding her answers, and makes some unlikely allies along the way who are instrumental in helping her. She uncovers a corrupt group comprised of rich men, many high level, some even in her own department, who are using a super secret prostitute compound where the beautiful women have actually had something inserted into their brains to make them forget about their past, and be completely docile and compliant. Even the security guards have been treated as well, and don't ever "see" the members as they come and go. They are programmed only to respond to what names they hear called out by the computer announcing members. It goes even deeper as Jane discovers the creator of the implant is a scientist who also designed an algorithm on a computer to identify people who are a possible danger to their program, and to mark them for elimination by receiving the implants programmed to commit suicide. It's a bit of a convoluted plot, and just not quite as compelling as other Koontz books I've read. I was not tempted to sit there and read until I was finished while on vacation, or even when I got home. The book ends with Jane and her main ally breaking into the compound of the scientist and forcing him to give them all of his data AND his serums he has already created. Meanwhile, Jane's old FBI boss and mentor, who she was very close to in the past, is implanted and instructed to find Jane and kill her!! Sadly, Jane is forced to kill him first, recognizing he's been injected and knowing there is no cure for his deteriorating condition. So, at the end of the book, Jane has defeated the scientist, but has just scraped the surface of going after all the rich and powerful men in the group. She manages a quick visit to her son while he's sleeping, so he doesn't get his hopes up that she's home for good, and the book ends. I believe Jane Hawk's story continues in the sequel The Whispering Room.

Finished: Small Great Things (Picoult) A very good book that tackles the social inequity of an African American labor and delivery nurse, with over twenty years of experience, who is accused of letting a Caucasian newborn die because she has been instructed by her supervisor not to touch the baby, per the request of the white supremacist parents. Whew, that's a mouthful, and the book is an eyeful. Ruth Jefferson, a single mother to a very intelligent teenage boy, has worked hard to provide for her son since the death of his father who served our county. Ruth is determined that her son, Edison, will have all the educational advantages of his white peers. Ruth has been a practicing labor and delivery nurse at New Haven's Mercy West hospital for over twenty years..the small hospital's only African American labor and delivery nurse. She has held her tongue as a much younger and less experienced nurse was given the job as supervisor; she has turned the other cheek when people have raised their eyebrows to see that she lives in an upper class, white neighborhood; and she's kept her cool when followed through stores by salespeople who want to "keep an eye on her". When Ruth begins her shift one morning, taking over for the nurse who was with a couple when their baby was born, her life changes in ways she never expected. As Ruth goes in to assess the newborn baby boy, his parents, Turk and Brittany, cringe and are very reluctant to let her touch him. Ruth writes it off as new parent nervousness, but soon finds out differently. Within an hour, a request has been made by the parents that Ruth be reassigned and never allowed to touch their infant again! Ruth is incredulous when she reads the post it note that her supervisor pins in the chart "Infant Not To Be Touched By Any African American Nurses". Of course, since she's the only one of those, Ruth is terribly offended. She let's her disdain for the unfair treatment be known, and then she goes home for the day. Upon working a double shift the next day, Ruth is in the nursery caring for another infant when Turk and Brittany's baby, Davis, is brought in after his circumcision. Sleeping soundly due to his sedation, the new nurse asks if Ruth will look after him because she is suddenly called to the operating room for an emergency C-section. The new nurse says she'll be back in twenty minutes if Ruth will just keep an eye out on little Davis. Of course, Ruth looks over at Davis when she is alone with him and notices that he's not breathing and turning blue. She has a momentary moment of hesitation as she wonders if she SHOULD touch him to help him, and then she does just that. She jiggles his feet, a common tactic to get newborns to start breathing again, and she rubs his chest. Just then she hears her supervisor coming in from the same emergency C-section and she swaddles Davis just in time for it to appear to the supervisor that Ruth has done nothing at all to help the baby. Code blue is called and all kinds of doctors and nurses rush in. Ruth begins infant CPR on orders from the pediatrician, and after several horrific minutes of trying to resuscitate the baby, he is pronounced dead. Unknowingly to all the medical personnel, the parents have been standing in the doorway and witness the horror. Too many details in the book to recap it all, but the bottom line is that the parents accuse the n-word of having it out for them and purposely killing their son. :-( Ruth is arrested and goes to trial. Her lawyer, Kennedy McQuarrie, is one who is appointed since Ruth can't afford an attorney. Kennedy is a young, white, smart-as-a-whip attorney, who is also a young mother, who has never been allowed to take a murder case for the public defender's office yet. After meeting Ruth, she begs to be given the case, and her boss agrees. Kennedy considers herself completely unprejudiced, but after spending a day with Ruth once she's out on bail, Ruth manages to make the point that even though she's worked hard to put herself and her son in a better environment, she is still treated like a lesser being. Kennedy and Ruth develop quite the friendship, though with its ups and downs, as the pre-trial and then the trial gets going. Ruth also struggles with Edison as he suddenly begins skipping school and putting his potential college career in jeopardy. We also read the view point of Turk, as we learn the history of how he became a white supremacist, how he met the "leader" of his group's daughter, Brittany, and married her with her father's blessing. Brittany is one little bad-ass white supremacist herself, and has no problem with the idea of just running over a black person if need be. They are truly awful people. We follow them all as the trial proceeds and we wonder whether Kennedy will really be able to get Ruth acquitted, especially after Ruth insists on taking the stand and explaining to the jury how it feels to be a black woman in a white person's world...something Kennedy is vehemently against her doing. Anyway, in the end, the jury is hung, but the judge, who Kennedy has had two losses with, who really doesn't like Kennedy, rather than declaring a mistrial and putting everyone through the whole ordeal again, he acquits Ruth. He states that he was able to sees clearly that she was not at fault. Basically the big defense argument was that the baby had a metabolic condition that was life-threatening, but that, because he was born near the weekend, was not relayed to the doctors by the lab after his little routine heel stick, until it was too late. If they'd been notified sooner, they would never have had him fast before the circumcision due to his condition, and would have had an intravenous sugar solution flowing through his little body. In other words, there wasn't much that could have been done to save little Davis. The judge apparently has the right to make the decision whether or not to interpret the testimony himself and acquit or call for a re-trial. He thankfully acquits!  The kicker at the end of the book is this....when Kennedy is putting away her notes on the case, she takes a last look at Davis' lab results and realizes there's something else written on the back that none of them even looked at. They all stopped when they got to his metabolic condition and went with that. It turns out that Davis was a sickle cell carrier, which is very rare in Caucasian babies, but very prevalent in African American babies. Kennedy does a little digging and finds out that Brittany's father, who has raised her by himself, always saying that her mother cheated on him and left, had in reality had Brittany with a black woman!!! When confronted with the facts, the father, this supreme being of the white supremacy movement, doesn't deny it and Brittany and Turk both go into a tailspin. Brittany is half black!! Brittany, unable to handle the thought of one drop of black blood in her body, kills herself. Turk, realizing how much he loves Brittany no matter what, begins to question everything he's been taught his whole life. He realizes that if his baby were alive he would be part black, and that would be ok with him as long as his baby was alive. Turk completely turns his life around, remarries a couple of years later, and has a little girl. He spends his time going on the lecture circuit to talk against white supremacy and racism...the very ideals he was brought up with that began the entire ordeal with Ruth. Edison goes on the graduate from Yale, and Ruth furthers her degree, becomes a nurse practitioner and opens her own clinic with money that she most likely won from the hospital when Kennedy filed a wrongful termination suit against them. A very good book that really does make you step back and see that still in this day and age, we have so very far to go in terms of us all becoming truly color blind.

Finished: The Essential Neruda Selected Poems (Neruda, edited by Mark Eisner) "Yo no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero. Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido" A book full of lovely, introspective poems about love and loss, written by Pablo Neruda in his native Spanish, and then translated on each facing page by Mark Eisner and his team. Of course, I guess interpretation is open for discussion, because in all the years I had of Spanish growing up, quiero meant want and not love, but the above sentence is translated as "I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, and forgetting is so long." So, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. All I know is that I really love that line "Love is so short, and forgetting is so long." How true is that when dealing with the loss of love or the loss of a loved one?  I read Neruda's poem The Morning Is Full online and really liked it, and it made me want to read much more, so this book seemed like a nice collection of his works to explore. :-) As the editor explains, the poems look and roll of the tongue so much more fluently in their native Spanish, but I just read all the English versions, occasionally glancing at some of the words of the Spanish poems. A few of my favorites were...The Great Ocean, The United Fruit Co., Poet's Obligation, Ode to the Book (II) and the one below from his book of Twenty Love Poems:

From Twenty Love Poems
#20 I can write the saddest verses

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example, "The night is full of stars,
  twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms,
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is full of stars, and she is not with me.

That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her. 

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her,
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses. 
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these last verses I write for her. 

Pablo Neruda

Finished: And Quiet Flows the Don (Sholokhov) The epic tale by Sholokhov that most say was instrumental in him winning the Noble Prize in Literature, And Quiet Flows the Don is the story of several Cossack families who live near the Don River in Russia, and how they face the trials of World War I, and then the revolution and civil uprising in their own country. Often compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace, I don't think it was nearly on that level, but it was still a good book. It was difficult to get attached to the main characters, and I think that is mostly due to this particular translation, which seemed jerky at times, and much of the time presented the characters more robotically than passionately. We follow a few Cossack families, and a couple of upper class families, through four main sections in the book: Peace, War, Revolution, and Civil War. In Peace, we get to know the families and their relationships, their thoughts, their hardships of making their living on the land, etc. When War starts, many of the Cossack sons are sent off to the front lines to fight against the Germans. Being Cossacks, they take pride in their military ability and their bravery. However, as the war drags on and on, and they are constantly sent to the front lines to fight for mother Russia, some begin to wonder if they are being used to fight a battle they don't even believe in. Eventually, the Bolsheviks, the party backed by Lenin who wanted to overthrow the czarist rule in Russia, began the Russian Revolution and turned many of the Cossacks into believers of their cause. So, once the war with Germany came to an end, the Cossacks were thrown into the Russian revolution, which then led to Civil War within their own country. Much of the book was so political, that I had to consult my handy Russian history expert son for explanations, and I'm still not sure I understand it all! Anyway, the story followed the main characters throughout each of the four defined periods of their history. Some survived, many did not; some questioned their beliefs; some fell in love; some lost their loves; and some just wanted to not be a part of any of the major changes in their way of life. The book ended rather abruptly without wrapping up the story for each one of the major characters, but with enough of an ending to leave me wishing the translation had been just a bit more coherent.

Finished: The Sympathizer (Nguyen) Perhaps the first book I've ever read where not a single word of prose was wasted, at least not to me, The Sympathizer is a Pulitzer Prize winning book which tells the story of a communist double agent in 1975 South Vietnam. The narrator, a captain in the South Vietnamese military, working directly for a general and his family, tells his story in a 300+ page confession to his North Vietnamese commandant after he is captured by his own people during one of his double agent non-assignments gone wrong. I think I may have learned more about, or at least related more to, the war in Vietnam than I did when I was in my teens and living with it on our television news broadcasts every night. The story begins in April of 1975 with the fall of Saigon as the captain scrambles to get the general, his family, a select few of his officers, and his own best friend, Bon, with wife and child, out of the country. Their narrow escape by the last plane taking off from the airport as the enemy closes in with bombs and gunfire is harrowing and heartbreaking. All of the major players that move forward in the story make it out safely, except for his best friend's wife and baby son. :-( :-( It is just so horrific. And thus we see the first sign of the captain's grand dilemma. He's grown to care about the general and his family, but he loves with all his heart his best friend Bon. Yet, his complete allegiance lies with his communist cause. The captain, who is never named, and Bon and another Vietnamese man, named Man, all met as young teens at school, and then attended university in the United States. Man and Bon had jumped into a fight where the captain was being beat up by bullies, much larger than all three of them, and though they were all battered and bruised, they went that night together and sliced their hands and became blood brothers for life. From that moment on, they had each other's backs no matter what. What Bon didn't realize was that once Man and the captain got done with university, they had both bought into the Communist Manifesto and had turned against their country and his own ideals. Working in South Vietnam, but directly against Bon's own cause for a non-communist country, Man and the captain remained the best of friends with Bon, but never told him of their allegiance. So...after the captain, Bon, the general, his family, and the other few officers escaped from Saigon to the United States, they first suffered through the tragic funerals and burials of Bon's wife and child, and then through two different "refugee camps", before landing in California where they scraped by on menial jobs. The captain kept in touch with Man through super secret letters, reporting back to him all the details of how the general was planning to get his men back together to once again go and retake South Vietnam. Of course, it was a pie in the sky idea, but the general was determined, and so he actually got secret funding from one powerful congressman. So many details and a few notable side stories will not be in this recap, but as I said earlier, the prose was just riveting, heartbreaking, page-turning at times, introspective, and sometimes required me to read pages two or three times to make sure I understood exactly what was being said. The captain stayed loyal to his communist cause throughout the entire book, but it was definitely clear the he sympathized with the plight of his South Vietnamese countrymen and fellow refugees. In the last hurrah, when the general felt he had enough backing, he decided to send a delegation of his men back to Vietnam to penetrate into the North Vietnamese territory and go on a scouting mission to see if his idea was viable. Bon volunteered to go right away, on this mission that was basically a suicide mission. Bon had nothing more to live for but to die for his country after losing his wife and child. When Bon volunteered, then the captain volunteered immediately as well. Reluctantly, the general gave him the go ahead to be a part of the group. Man, however, in a secret-coded letter back to the captain told him his orders were to "stay there, do not come". The captain was determined, though, to go and in being there, figure out a way to save Bon's life, so he disobeyed orders for the first time in his life. Once there, having spent several grueling days in the heat penetrating all the way into Laos, the group was attacked by the enemy and taken to a prison camp. This camp is where the captain was kept in isolation for a year, writing his "confession" to his North Vietnamese superiors. That's all I'm going to say about this, because there are a couple more surprises towards the end. The book itself was just very, very good. It also forced me to look up things about the Vietnam War that I never knew, even though it was a prominent feature of my teen years. I'm so glad to have read this book and it will definitely be finding a place in my Top 100!

Finished: The Double (Dostoevsky) Very weird and rather sad book by Dostoevsky...not one of his most popular, about a man, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, who is socially awkward and just an average Joe, who one night sees his exact double...a man who worms his way into Yakov's life, job, and mind, sending him spiraling in his sanity. It turns out, which you figure out pretty quickly, that Yakov is really just going insane and the double he is seeing, which he thinks everyone else is seeing and interacting with, is all in his mind! A bit of a disturbing read, but Dostoevsky is such a great writer! I confess, I got this book for Josh, my Russian studying son, and I read it before I'm giving it to him, lol. Anyway, I'm just going to cheat and put the Wikipedia recap below:

The Double centers on a government clerk who goes mad. It deals with the internal psychological struggle of its main character, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, who repeatedly encounters someone who is his exact double in appearance but confident, aggressive, and extroverted, characteristics that are the polar opposites to those of the toadying "pushover" protagonist. The motif of the novella is a doppelgänger (dvoynik).

Golyadkin is a titular councillor. This is rank 9 in the Table of Ranks established by Peter the Great. As rank eight led to hereditary nobility,^[3] being a titular councillor is symbolic of a low-level bureaucrat still struggling to succeed. Golyadkin has a formative discussion with his Doctor Rutenspitz, who fears for his sanity and tells him that his behavior is dangerously antisocial. He prescribes "cheerful company" as the remedy. Golyadkin resolves to try this, and leaves the office. He proceeds to a birthday party for Klara Olsufyevna, the daughter of his office manager. He was uninvited, and a series of faux pas lead to his expulsion from the party. On his way home through a snowstorm, he encounters his double, who looks exactly like him. The following two thirds of the novel then deals with their evolving relationship.

At first, Golyadkin Sr. (the original main character) and Golyadkin Jr. (his double) are friends, but Golyadkin Jr. proceeds to attempt to take over Sr.'s life, and they become bitter enemies. Because Golyadkin Jr. has all the charm, unctuousness and social skills that Golyadkin Sr. lacks, he is very well-liked among the office colleagues. At the story's conclusion, Golyadkin Sr. begins to see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz.