The Last Policeman

The Last Policeman by Ben Winters

It has been a long time since a book sucked me in like this. Like since I first picked up John Grisham in

middle school and read a book in a day. I didn't quite achieve that level of gobbling, but I did devour this one in two days, no small feat with little kids running around. I'm beginning to think I'm more of a fan of mysteries than I thought.

So here's the premise: As we learn in the first few chapters of the book, an asteroid is going to hit earth in 6 months, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill at least half of humanity on the planet and leave the other half in pretty dire straits. Civilization will be gone. 

Given this future, many people are committing suicide. It's become so common that police aren't even investigating deaths that even suggest that the person took their own life. Except for one. Newly minted detective Henry Palace stumbles upon a so-called hanger in the bathroom of a Concord, NH, McDonald's one day and something about it seems off. Like it might just be a murder. It causes an itch that he just has to scratch, and so he, alone among his colleagues, sets off on the case.

All this leaves the reader wondering not just who killed the victim, Peter Zell, but whether he was a victim at all. Could it be that Palace just needs this case to keep his mind off the impending doom? Where some on planet earth have reacted to the asteroid by checking out and checking off so-called bucket lists, others have descended into drug-induced oblivious, still others by doubling down on religious faith, and more by ending it all, Henry's philosophy is to just keep on keeping on. There is no exotic vacation for him, no philosophizing on what is about to come. There is only daily routine, as he makes clear to a colleague who can't stop obsessing over the news:   

With a quick flat chop I knock over the cup of coffee on Andreas's desk, and the cold brown liquid gushes out, rushing over the pamphlet, flooding his ashtray, his paperwork and computer keyboard.

Hey," he says dumbly, pushing back from the desk, turning all the way around. "Hey."

 "You what I'm doing right now?" I say, watching the muddy liquid rush toward the edge of the table. "I'm thinking: Oh no! The coffee's going to spill onto the floor! I'm so worried! Let's keep talking about it!"

And then the coffee waterfalls over the side of the desk, splashing on Andreas's shoes and pooling on the ground beneath the desk.

"Oh, look at that," I say. "It happened anyway." (174)

And so the book becomes not just a murder-mystery, but a rumination on how to live life when we know that life is short. Sure, we don't have a sure date when it will all end, but we do know where we're all going to end up, asteroid or not. So what do we do with this time? I like Henry's outlook, but it is hard to achieve sometimes.

Winters sure knows how to write suspense. He reveals the story little by little, but he knows when and what information to withhold so it doesn't feel cliche or obnoxious. And I must say that I found all of the Concord references pretty fun. Winters goes out of his way to name-drop local landmarks -- Penuche's, The Barley House, Eagle Square, Rollins Park. Good fun. 

The book ends with five more months to go before the asteroid hits. Apparently it is part of a trilogy. I look forward to the next installment. 

The Anthropocene Reviewed

 The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Greene

Ever wanted to give a Yelp review to some of the strange facets of modern life? John Greene did. And

because he's John Greene and has sold millions of copies of books, he got to do so in a book. Must be nice. 

Then again, it's pretty nice for readers too. In a collection of short essays, Greene tackles topics as diverse as Diet Dr. Pepper (4 stars) to Plague (1 star) to the weather phenomenon Wintry Mix (4 stars). But the book isn't really a review of life in the Anthropocene. Tucked into each essay, which is supposedly about the common human experience, are revealing tidbits about John Greene's personal journey through the Anthropocene. It's not about our lives -- it's about his life. Which is fine. Because I came away liking John Greene even more than I already did. Like the characters in his novels, Greene is quite vulnerable here. He talks about his social awkwardness, his bouts of depression, his family, his quirks. It is easy to look at a guy like Greene and feel nothing but envy. He's wealthy, beloved, celebrated. But he makes clear here that he's just a weirdo human trying to make sense of it all just like the rest of us. 

Bottom line -- this was a great read. There was some banality, sure, but also some very interesting stuff. I particularly liked the last essay, which was about a famous (but not to me) photo called Three Young Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, taken in pre-WW I Germany. In the essay, Greene riffs on the meaning of historical artifacts in our lives, and how they aren't so much a reminder of the past as a mirror of the present. 

There are some annoyances. He quotes people a lot. A LOT. We get it John: You are well read and there are people who put your ideas more eloquently than you can. And you are well read. But it's a minor annoyance. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four-and-a-half stars.

Spindle City

 Spindle City by Jotham Burello

Joseph Bartlett never really wanted to be a mill owner. His rise to the position was accidental, the result of a

fire started when a paid spy dropped a kerosene lamp while attempting to steal a set of crooked books kept by his ne'er-do-well brother-in-law. It's an event that could be looked at two ways. On the one hand, perhaps it suggests that ownership was Bartlett's fate. On another, it is indicative of the skeletons that every mill owner had in their closet, skeletons invisible to all but the workers they exploited and the rare labor activists trying to help them. 

Joseph Bartlett seems to think it is the latter, which is why he, alone among Fall River, MA, owners, cozies up to labor activists trying to procure better working conditions for mill workers. But Joseph never can quite atone for his role in the fire. In the opening pages of the book, his wife dies. And then his eldest son is caught sexually abusing a mill worker. The family, it is clear, is in decline -- just like the New England textile industry itself.

This event also follows its perpetrator, Hollister, who is sent away to a New Hampshire military academy and who seems like he will at least make good in the army -- only to fall victim to a mustard gas attack that, at the end of the book, leaves him a shell of a man. 

In the end, all of the characters in the book -- including Fall River itself -- seem to fall victim to forces well beyond their control, be in the machinations of war, economics, or class. Maybe that's the real story of the book, the struggle for individuals to define their own lives in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles.  

Set in Fall River, MA, in the early part of the 20th century, this novel tells the story of the waning days of the New England textile industry -- and the families who grew fabulously wealthy from it. The former is the result of cheaper labor, and closer proximity to cotton, in the south. The latter is a bit more complicated.

The meta-saga is told through the lens of the Bartlett family and its patriarch, Joseph. 

The 25th Hour

 The 25th Hour by David Benioff

Set on the day before he is to report to a federal prison in Otisville, NY, this book tells the story of Monty,

his friends, and family as they prepare for his upcoming 7-year absence after a conviction on a drug charge. There is Slattery, a wall-street wunderkind who not-so-secretly thinks Monty has it coming. Jakob, a pre-school English teacher who can't seem to think past his own woes. Naturelle, Monty's girlfriend who is awaiting the relief that will come when the hour finally arrives. And Doyle, a faithful pit bull blissfully unaware of it all.  The trio of friends met at the prep school where Jakob now teaches; it was there that Monty discovered the power of the "sway" earned by supplying rich kids with drugs. 

The novel is structured around each hour until Monty is report to jail. The chapters alternate between narrators. As the numbers rise, there seems to be a hint that Monty will do something dramatic to get out of his situation: Run? Rat out his superiors? Commit suicide? Or nothing at all?

This is certainly an angsty book, a bit hard to read given the impending end of summer and beginning of the work year. But it certainly was compelling. Each chapter is a little vignette that pulls you in. I will say that it all seemed a bit cliche. There is no great truth here, just some diversion and entertainment. 

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

 The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

By Nova Jacobs

The first book of the summer! I was looking for something plot heavy -- something I could get lost in. So I

turned to a mystery, and a nerdy one at that.

The book opens with the death -- Murder? Suicide? -- of a Cal Tech mathematician named Isaac Severy. Whatever the label, turns out that his death was in some way fated. It was predicted by an equation that consumed the latter half of Severy's, an algorithm designed to predict the death (by their own hand or others because, as the book points out, how different are the two?) of people in the Los Angeles area. 

Should such an equation work it would be, of course, quite valuable. And dangerous, if it fell into the wrong hands. To prevent this eventuality, Isaac sends a note, delivered posthumously, to his adopted daughter/granddaughter Hazel instructing her how to find the equation and who to entrust it with so that it does not contribute to more evil in the world. 

Hazel's quest to fulfill this request is where the plot comes in. Given that she is adopted, she is not as mathematically minded as her brothers and sisters. Or is she? It's a question that allows the author to, rather shallowly, delve into ideas about nature versus nurture and the extent to which we are actually in control of our own destinies. 

The reviews call this a remarkable debut. It certainly was a fun book. A great jumping off point to the summer.

Kill 'Em and Leave

 Kill 'Em and Leave

By James McBride

Book three in my little foray into McBride. This one is a kind of hybrid of The Good Lord Bird and The

Color of Water: part memoir, part biography. This time the subject is James Brown. Or rather, the subject is how elusive the "real" James Brown is. Or rather, the subject is James McBride's encounter with James Brown's elusiveness. Over and over again, McBride hears from Brown's associates that he didn't want to be known.

So: How to tell the story of someone who doesn't want their story told -- and, given that he had been dead for a decade when the book came out, couldn't tell it if they wanted to? First: Make it about yourself. McBride is as central a figure in this book as James Brown. He sets the stage for this from the very beginning, relating his own brush with Brown when the singer lived in the Bronx. Or, rather, it was his sister's brush, as she was the one brash enough to knock on the Godfather's door and received an admonishment to "Stay in school Dott-ay!" But my favorite is this: "I came down here on a bum steer. No need to lie or toss that in later. No need to slip that in with the old excuse, 'I'm a musician too and I love the music," or The public needs a guy like me who can really tell it,' or whatever music critics say so the corporate-music taste makers can pump up the latest fifteen-year-old cuss artist while ignoring some real talent who's not good-looking or young enough. I needed the dough, plain and simple. The ex-wife dropped the hammer." It's honest and funny. It has personality. It's indicative of the writing throughout the book. This personal brush with the legal system, and the lawyers who navigate it, perhaps explains McBride's fixation on Brown's will, which, as of the writing of the book, had yet to be fulfilled according to the wishes of its author. Brown apparently wanted to leave the bulk of his millions to poor children in need of education. His own children, it seems, had other ideas.

Next: Portray Brown from as many angles as possible. For me, the book was most enlightening when McBride tears down the Hollywood depiction of Brown as a crazed troublemaker, exaggerating his low points so as to make him look like an addled buffoon. When, of course, the truth is much, much more complicated. But also of great interest are the many interviews that McBride conducts and relates with all sorts of Brown's associates, including ex-wives, former managers, and members of the band that made him famous. 

My own issue with the book was what I saw as distracting repetition. The same details and anecdotes popped up in two, three, or four chapters. For example, we hear the origins and meaning of the book's title, Brown's theory for how to keep his audience wanting more, over and over again. It feels at times, then, that this is a rambling tale told at a bar rather than a book. But, hey, I'd love to share a drink with a storyteller like McBride any day. 

The Color of Water

 The Color of Water

By James McBride

Inspired by Deacon King Kong, I'm thinking about going down a James McBride rabbit hole. This one was much different than the two previous books I'd read (Kong and The Good Lord Bird). It's a memoir -- autobiography? -- in which he seeks his mother's story and, in so doing, helps frame his own.

See, it always appeared that McBride's mother, or Mommy as he calls her, was "different" than the twelve children she managed to raise in New York in the 1950s and 60s. They were black. She was white. The contrast elicited stares and comments and, more importantly for this book, sowed discord within McBride about his identity. What does it mean to be white? To be black? To be "mixed"? It didn't help that McBride's mother was tight-lipped about her past, about why, at a time when it was both (or either) formally and informally illegal for people with different skin tones to marry, Ruth McBride not once but twice married a black man, choosing a path that, from the outside, meant additional hardship in an already harsh world.

When she finally opens up about who she is, though, it is clear that the difference between Ruth and her children really were only skin deep. Ruth, it turns out, was a Polish immigrant, born into a troubled family who fled Europe amidst pogroms that broke out just before World War II. They eventually settled in Suffolk, Va., where they were outsiders that locals placed just above people of color in the social pecking order. It was a lonely place to grow up as an Orthodox Jew. It was made even lonelier by a father, Tateh, who was not only unloving but sexually abusive and vehemently prejudice against the black population he exploited at the store he ran, and a mother, Mameh, whose inability to speak English and debilitating bout of polio left her almost completely dependent upon Ruth. And so, when she could, Ruth fled. And when she arrived in her new home and fell in love with a black man, she was declared dead by the family, who sat shiva for her. Eventually, it became mutual. Ruth buried her past just as her past buried her.

All of this information, of course, helps McBride see his mother in a new light. Hers is a story of extraordinary determination and adaptation. It helps explain how she could shepherd twelve -- 12! -- kids through a child of economic poverty, but emotional wealth, and into college and the professional class. As McBride writes, "I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle and, as I did so, my own life was rebuilt."

McBride's family history is fascinating. But equally interesting are the question the book seems to raise about stories and the responsibility we have to share them. McBride's mother is clearly pained by her past; she doesn't want to sit for his interviews to revisit this part of her life. It is so emotional that McBride never shares with her a recorded greeting from an old neighbor in Suffolk because it might put her over the edge. I found this an interesting choice. McBride clearly benefited from knowing who his mother really was. In the end, he seems to argue that telling stories, especially painful ones, set us and those around us free. And yet he withholds this part of the story from his mother. It's a small moment, but I think the one that will stick out to me. He is in a sense taking on the parental role. His mother had decided her children didn't need to know her past and so censored it; here, he is the censor. 

The book is also, of course, a contemplation of the role that race plays in our nation. It points out the progress that has been made and the many miles of road that need to be traveled. By touching on these timeless themes, of identity and stories and obligations and race, it seems like this book will be relevant for some time.