Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories ** 1/2

Similar to my experience with Barry Hannah's story collection, I read The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis with high expectations that almost guaranteed some level of disappointment.

Because her stories tend to be very short and to focus on a feeling rather than a narrative, I felt almost like I was reading a book of poetry, even though her prose style is not notably "poetic." I expected her to experiment with the form more than she does. Most of the stories were fundamentally traditional in nature, albeit with the compression of poetry.

Andrew Mango, Atatürk *** 1/2

Although advertised as a biography of Atatürk, founding father of the Turkish Republic, the book works best as "the best account...of the decline of the Ottoman Empire." The author does not attempt a psychological biography of the man, but rather describes Atatürk through his actions on the public stage. The result reads more like a history book than a biography. Mango does a good job of describing the large-scale political context for the action -- most notably the rise of nationalism in Europe and the complications it caused in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. I didn't have the patience to keep track of the nitty-gritty details or the large cast of characters, but I feel like I understand how the Republic came about and why.

The book covers Atatürk's rise more thoroughly than his years as (basically) a dictator. I would like to know more about how he managed to leave behind a functioning democracy where most others would have left a failed state. The secret, I suspect, may be his relationship with İsmet İnönü, another war hero and prime minister to Ataturk's president. I'd be interested in reading a biography of İsmet, whose tenure in Turkish politics extends beyond Ataturk's into the early 1970s.


I bought this book in Istanbul, from a bookstore on Divan Yolu.

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.

Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence ****

In advance of our upcoming vacation in Turkey, I read the latest novel from the Nobel Prize-winner. The story takes place in Istanbul during (mostly) the 1970s, and the sense of the place is one of its finest features. The narrator Kemal has an obsessive love for his distant cousin, and over the years he collects countless mundane objects that relate to his beloved, such as the salt shaker she uses at dinner one evening.

I really enjoyed the first 150 pages, during which Kemal meets Füsun and begins his affair with her. Pamuk tells the tale with a great deal of specificity but also manages to make it a commentary about Turkey's conflicting desires for tradition and European modernity. After Kemal and his fiance Sibel's engagement party, though, Kemal's obsession kicks in and the book becomes far too repetitive. I am usually a fan of obsessive narrators —cf. Remainder, Theroux's An Adultery, Gombrowicz's Cosmos — but Kemal repeated the same thoughts rather than exploring his situation from all angles. Nonetheless, I remained engaged by the little details of the milieu like the outdoor cinemas where people eat pumpkin seeds while they watch Turkish melodramas. (The fact that I'd recently been pouring over Istanbul guidebooks surely factored into my enjoyment.) The plot resumes in earnest in the last 100 pages, and the book comes to a strong finish.

As I said in my review of his earlier book Snow, something about Pamuk's writing style reminds me of Paul Auster. The Museum of Innocence is a more traditional book than Snow, with rounded characters and less obvious parables, but the Auster-ity of it was underlined by the car accident that happens near the end. I couldn't help but think of The Music of Chance.

Otto Penzler (editor), Agents of Treachery ***

I am a fan of spy fiction. Many of its virtues -- compelling settings, ambiguous characters, complex conspiracies -- would seem to demand book-length narratives. This book, however, is a collection of short spy stories from a range of contemporary writers. Although they lack the depth of novels, most of the stories are entertaining.

My favorite writer was Stephen Hunter, whose story "Casey at the Bat" takes place during the late stages of World War II. I enjoyed his work both for its insights into the political climate (with the Russians, knowing that the Allies would win the war, supporting intra-group rivalries within the French Resistance to favor the socialist ones) and for its action sequence descriptions. Andrew Kalvin's story "Sleeping with My Assassin" had the best literary qualities. The weakest story was James Grady's "Destiny City." The ham-handed prose made me wonder what I'd find if I went back and re-read Six Days of the Condor. 

If you are a fan of spy fiction, Agents of Treachery is a nice beach read.