Annie Dillard, The Living ****

The Living paints an astonishingly clear and poetic picture of life on Bellingham Bay in Washington during the second half of the nineteenth century. Every page has at least one beautiful image; the edition I read even has a great photo on the cover. It's one of those books that gives such a sense of (time and) place that the plot barely matters to me. Which is a good thing, because The Living barely has a plot, and the story it does tell peters out almost 100 pages from the end of the book.

Susan Kandel, Dial H for Hitchcock **

None of the characters in this mystery novel act like real people would act, least of all our heroine Cece Caruso. I recognized the various Hitchcock movie references, and I was surprised by the surprise twist, but I couldn't get past the contrived decisions that Cece makes or the dialog that has working cops and gardeners arguing with a stranger about whether the secret to the tortilla soup at the Bel Air Hotel is the tomato base or the masa flour.

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks *** 1/2

I read nothing but raves about this scientific bestseller, which recounts the story of the poor black tobacco farmer whose cells established the first line of human cells used widely in research.

Skloot interweaves the stories of Henrietta, the cell line that bears her initials, and her family. All of these stories have fascinating elements, but it is the present day story of Henrietta's children that stands out. Skloot is remarkable in her ability to capture the texture of their lives and their speech. The scientific portions of the book were less detailed, leaving me with a lot of questions, and the ethical questions raised by Henrietta's story are relegated to an afterward. But the very specific story of the Lacks family kept me interested throughout.