Ready for a round-up of books that came out last year or a few months ago? No…well, too bad…
Bringing Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel…This book came out last year and pretty much everyone who was going to read it already has, but I thought I would weigh in briefly on this (slightly) overrated book. It’s the middle book in Mantell’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy (the infamous King Henry’s commoner-turned-chief advisor) and is less successful than its predecessor, Wolf Hall. Mostly because the entire book follows the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and we already know that story backwards and forwards. I can’t say that Mantel’s considerable skills are really being put to use by recounting such a well-known story and barely deviating it from The Tudors, The Other Boleyn Girl, countless historical fiction, etc. Still, her prose is excellent (though occasionally confusing) and nobody else can quite make historical fiction come this alive while still staying true to the facts. Grade: B
12 Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis…Another book that came out last year, but well-worth a read. It follows an African-American woman named Hattie, her children, and one of her grandchildren over the decades as they travel from the South to the North (her character’s descriptions of an integrated Philadelphia are astounding), and some of them go back to the South. It’s really a novel in short stories, but it does something few novels that want to capture “the African-American experience” pull off: it makes the personal feel epic, and the epic feel personal. Grade: A-
The Dinner by Herman Koch…A novel set in an Amsterdam restaurant during one particularly tense meal. It follows an unreliable narrator as he eats with his wife, his brother, and sister-in-law. What starts out as a tediously pleasant meal soon devolves once it’s revealed the two couples need to talk about an accident their kids were involved in. What the book lacks in plot, it more than makes up for in nasty atmosphere. You won’t necessarily like any of these characters, but with prose this cutting and dialogue this dangerous, you won’t need to. Grade: B+
Ghost Man by Roger Hobbs…A fun, fast ride that I read in a single day. In fact, if you take away bathroom and meal breaks, I finished it in nearly one sitting. It follows an Atlantic City casino robbery gone wrong, but the cash (a federal payload that is rigged to explode within days) is missing. Who’s got it? Who robbed it? Do they know that they’re literally running out of time before the feds locate the tracking beacon? That’s what the “jugmarker” (a professional who organizes heists) wants to know, and he calls in the “Ghost Man,” a master thief who can get out of situations, change his appearance, and barely remembers his real name because he’s assumed so many false ones. While the “Ghost Man” tracks down the cash and tries to keep it out of the hands of FBI agents and a crystal meth boss called “The Wolf,” the book sprinkles in flashback chapters showing how his last big heist went wrong. That last big heist: a currency exchange bank in Malaysia that was 35 stories in the air. I loved learning all the details of his trade, the break-neck pacing, and the plan for that doomed Kalau Lumpur heist is just clever enough to be the centerpiece of a major action movie. If this book is the start of a series, I’ll be reading the next installment. Grade: A-