Nearly twenty-five years ago, my dear friend and neighbor Larry Kennedy invited me to join a book review club that he was organizing with his friends. Little did I realize that this, in reality, was an Irish-Catholic Mafia cell populated by folks with names like Gallagher, O’Hanlon, McDermott, and Kernan, and that I was the proverbial “lonely little petunia in an onion patch”. In those days I was the sole Conservative in an enclave of progressive liberals. In the intervening years the ethnic/religious makeup of the club has changed dramatically, but not its social/political outlook. They have influenced me enough that I have morphed into a moderate. Currently the club consists of seven active members; Larry’s recent health issues have limited his participation.
A review of the books we have read recently is interesting. Eight of the last fifteen selections have been works of fiction; the remainder, non-fiction. Also interesting is the balance between contemporary novels and classics. In the early years of the club we emphasized reading the outstanding works of the past; this group includes a few that we have previously missed. It includes John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row”, a magnificent counterpoint to the more serious novels that gave him his reputation; Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses, the first novel in his acclaimed “Border Trilogy” and one non-fiction classic, Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi. The lone play in this group, William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, must also be considered a classic. It is really constructive to read at least one Shakespeare play each year; it is easy to see why “Lear” is considered one of his greatest masterpieces.
The current members of the club are eclectic in their interests and are always interested in highly publicized contemporary best-sellers. This is especially beneficial for me, as it introduces me to books that I would never have read otherwise. The second biggest advantage of the book club (the fellowship and camaraderie of the group ranking first) is the opportunity it provides for exposure to works that appeal to other readers’ tastes. I pay little attention to best-seller lists and would otherwise never have read several novels that I liked very much. “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese is an unusual story of a pair of Anglo/Indian twins who become physicians in Ethiopia and enter into remarkable careers in Africa and in the United States. The skill of the author, himself a successful physician trained in Ethiopia, opened my eyes to new vistas in the history of that part of Africa and to the career of medicine. Equally appealing to me, though dramatically different, was “The Curse of Pietro Houdini”, expertly crafted by Derek B. Miller. Roughly based on an actual incident, it is the captivating story of the efforts of a self-proclaimed Master Artist and a teen-aged orphan to protect three Titian masterpieces from being appropriated from the Benedictine Monastery on Montecassino during World War II. The novel is a gripping combination of an art heist adventure, a coming-of-age tale, and a horror of war story that has prompted me to investigate other works by this author. I am grateful to the other members of the club for introducing me to these two memorable novels.
I wasn’t as impressed with several other contemporary novels that we read, despite the fact that the rest of the club members liked them. Now that I am the oldest current member of the club, I have inherited the role of contrarian. “Station Eleven”, by Edna St. John Millay, is a widely praised post-apocalyptic story of a society struggling to survive following a deadly pandemic that left only three or four people of each one thousand alive. Dystopia is not my favorite genre, and I felt this particular epic was poorly constructed. HBO MAX didn’t agree with me; they produced a ten-episode mini-series based on the novel. I was also “odd-man-out” regarding Dennis Lahane’s “Simple Mercies”, a tale of racial unrest in Boston at the height of school integration. I am the Club’s Resident Prude and am turned off by crude language. This work dropped enough “f-bombs” to flatten a metropolis. Perhaps this bias prevented me from appreciating other values of the work. My reaction to Percival Everett’s highly acclaimed “James” was mixed. The author attempted to re-tell “Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of Huck’s fellow traveler, runaway slave Jim. I like the premise and wish the author had persisted in telling the same story as Mark Twain did.
“American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin was also highly acclaimed and deemed suitable as the source for a major film. Personally, I found it much too long and much too detailed to retain my interest. I felt the same way about Erik Larson’s latest opus, “Demon of Dissent”, the saga of events leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter. In contrast, I enjoyed “Hero of Two Worlds: Lafayette” by Mike Duncan, despite its length and excessive detail. Perhaps this is warranted by Lafayette’s remarkable participation in two drastically different revolutions.
Three uniquely different non-fiction works complete our list. “The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder” by David Grann is the story of an ill-fated English expedition aimed at intercepting a Spanish galleon filled with treasure exploited from the New World. Michael Pollan’s “This is Your Mind on Plants” is a thought provoking compilation of essays dealing with the effect of three plant based drugs – opium, caffeine, and mescaline – on the human system. Finally, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “An Unfinished Love Affair” is a subjective retelling of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as experienced by her husband, Richard Goodwin.
This is indeed an impressive list. I am fortunate that Larry originally recruited me and that all the succeeding versions of the Club have tolerated having at least one “out-of-step” member.