Alistair Maclean, Ice Station Zebra *** 1/2

I went through an Alistair Maclean phase in high school, or possibly junior high school, and I remember Ice Station Zebra being my favorite. So I picked up a copy to read again to see whether it holds up after all these years. And it mostly does.

It shares a lot of the vices of popular action fiction: two-dimensional characters who are always the best in the world, embarrassing "clever" dialogue between them, and an Agatha Christie-style climax with the detective explaining the solution in the drawing room (in this case, the wardroom of a nuclear submarine). However, the action itself really engaged me, especially in the first half of the book.

The story involves a nuclear submarine traveling under the polar ice pack, trying to locate and rescue the meteorological research station Drift Ice Station Zebra. The logistics of the submarine, the navigational challenges, and the polar environment interested me enough that I forgave the expository dialogue. The tension felt well earned. The second half of the book, after they (spoiler alert!) locate the ice station, is still well executed but becomes more like a typical murder mystery. I enjoyed this section the most when it shifted its attention away from the mystery and back to a complication on the submarine.

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie ***

A Booker Prize finalist apparently, but to me Jamrach's Menagerie was a workman-like nineteenth-century adventure story. Well-written, entertaining enough, but nothing too original. The early part of the book, before our narrator hero Jaffy Brown heads to sea, felt like a static painting of colorful life on the London docks. The most compelling part of the story was the capture and transport of the Komodo dragon -- the dragon himself was the best character. 

Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator ** 1/2

I am very interested in the subject of The Natural Navigator. which is how to find your way using clues from the world around you. I even appreciate that Gooley promotes natural navigation as a way of looking at the world and enriching our experience rather than as a mere collection of survival tips. Nonetheless, I was disappointed with the book.

The main problem is with the level of detail. Too many of the sections essentially say, "With practice, you can train yourself to see which way the prevailing wind blows the sand, just like the Taureg do." Gooley tosses in an interesting technique every once in a while, but most of the text describes general principles that, frankly, I'm already familiar with.

I found the book to be more of an advertisement for a seminar than a standalone reference.

Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind *** 1/2

A murder mystery in which the narrator and prime suspect is a woman suffering from dementia. She is a former orthopedic surgeon; the victim was her best friend and was found with her fingers surgically removed. Did you kill her friend? If so, why? And will she remember?

Frankly, the mystery is a gimmick. I didn't really care about it. The strength of the book is the voice of the narrator. She comes through as a fascinating character, and LaPlante is able to capture a convincing descent into dementia -- until the last few pages, when she has to wrap up the mystery with the typical exposition.

Pierre Berton, War of 1812 **** 1/2

"Being a compendium of the bestselling The Invasion of Canada and Flames Across the Border," this book describes the War of 1812 from a Canadian point of view. (Pierre Berton is a popular Canadian author and historian.) We invaded Canada, don't you know?

Berton is an excellent storyteller who can interleave the big-picture strategy with vivid narrative detail. He uses only primary sources in his quest to "tell not only what happened but also what it was like;... to picture the war from the viewpoints of private soldiers and civilians as well as from those of generals and politicians."   The book includes plenty of excellent maps too. The battles start to seem repetitive in the later stages of the war, as the combatants took and retook the same ground. As Berton says, "In all this [fighting at Fort Erie] there is a weary sense of deja vu."

The fact that I knew next to nothing about the war helped maintain the suspense about the outcome of battles. The occasional reference to the war Britain was fighting in Europe at the time reminded me that the action here was happening at the same time as the action in War and Peace; and one of the incidents sparking the war happened on a ship (Leopard) formerly commanded by the fictional Jack Aubrey. These cross-references were fun to notice.

Entertaining and informative. A perfect choice from browsing in Toronto bookstores.

Richard Ford, Canada ***

The new novel from Richard Ford is quite different from the Bascombe trilogy, one of my all-time favorites. It's far more plot driven (as opposed to character driven), and takes place in the West rather than the suburban Northeast. The main theme of the book is how remarkable, life-changing events happen right in among the mundane events of everyday living, and can themselves be rather mundane.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, Part I, during which the narrator's mismatched but ordinary-seeming parents -- a former Army officer and a somewhat bohemian Jew -- get arrested for robbing a bank. The details of life for a 15-year-old boy in Great Falls, Montana in 1960 are vivid, and his confusion about how to square the parents he knew with the fact that they robbed a bank seems genuine. He remains a bit of a cipher as a character, but his observations are interesting.

The second half of the book was less successful. Our narrator is taken to a small town in Saskatchewan and put under the care of a mysterious hotel owner. The descriptions of the place remain solid, but I found the narrative and characters less interesting than in the first half.

Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites ** 1/2

This book, whose subtitle is America After Meritocracy, purports to show that our current crisis of public confidence results from the failure of meritocracy. Meritocratic thinking is fundamental to the American creed, but the disasters of the past decade -- the financial crisis, the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and so on -- demonstrate the bankruptcy of the approach.

That's what the author says the book is about, but he doesn't question the fundamental correctness of a meritocracy. He points out how difficult it is to assess merit in real life situations and illustrates the problems that come from the single-minded pursuit of limited goals, but his suggested solutions are the traditional liberal ones: progressive taxation, class solidarity, and government regulation.

Hayes' prose gets a bit overheated when he describes the crises, so that it's easy to lose track of his point. Ultimately, he attributes our lack of trust in social institutions to two factors: the unprecedented inequality in modern America and the inherently different interests of the elite and the rest of us. The role of meritocracy in  his analysis is that its individualistic bias sanctions the inequality and that people welcomed into the elite naturally take on the interests of the elite class. It seems to me that these issues arise regardless of the method used to choose the governing class, so that it's not a strike against meritocracy.