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SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. Quirk Books. 344 pages. $12.95

Reviewed by Kelly Short

Kelly Short is a freelance writer and editor, and student.

If you enjoyed the “Naked Gun” movies, you’ll love “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.”
In “Sea Monsters,” Jane Austen supplies the highbrow, upper-lip angst, and Ben H. Winters keeps the gags and hilarity flowing.

As in the Austen original, this new book follows the stories and love lives of sisters Marianne and Elinor Dashwood. However, in “Sea Monsters,” the Dashwoods live in a different world, a world in which creatures of the sea attack and devour humans mercilessly and endlessly.
Sounds grim, right? Wrong. It’s funny.  The book’s magic stems from the absurd juxtapositions of English gentility and giant octopi.

Forget Marianne and Elinor Dashwood for a moment. Two characters, Lady Middleton and her mother, Mrs. Jennings, steal the show. These two alone make the book worth reading. They are natives of a far-flung atoll and were kidnapped by adventurers. How they deal with it is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

Take this paragraph: “Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance and extravagance of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements; she loved to surprise her English visitors with displays of hospitality native to her homeland, such as flavoring her soups with monkey urine and not telling anyone she had done so until the bowl had been drained.”

And as for Mrs. Jennings: “Mrs. Jennings was a widow, her husband and male children having been ruthlessly slaughtered in the same raid during which she and her daughters were carried off in a sack by Sir John and his men. She had now, therefore, nothing to do but marry all the rest of the world.”
Go on. Read the book. Just make sure you don’t read in a place where you’re supposed to be quiet.

Given the recent minor uproar over this book, I felt as our Books editor I should give it a read and make comment on it. The day the story printed I tried to get a copy at several local bookstores and found they were sold out. (As columnist Dan Casey did as well, among, I'm sure, many others.) I finally found the last copy at Books-a-million and while there I mentioned that they should probably order more given that when you tell a person not to do something it only makes them want to do it more, and I knew we were running more print on the subject, putting it out there in the public eye. People will be curious. Upon further exploration of the book’s availability in the area I found through one of our editors that the local public libraries reported copies missing or lost. I spoke with Franklin County libraries who told me that their one copy in circulation was long overdue and likely will be listed as lost as well. My copy is now making the rounds through several of my friends and co-workers who want to know what the fuss is all about. (The book can be read for free online, and as a parent, teacher, principal, librarian, or curious citizen, I hope everyone who intends to talk about it will actually read it. ) Personally, I don’t see much to make a fuss over. As you can read in my review below, the topics in the book are reality. As the mother of two teenagers, I wouldn’t forbid them from reading it. There is nothing in the book that cannot be seen in real life, on television, on the internet, or in our own neighborhoods. I found it amazingly ironic that throughout the book, the main character's English teacher, Bill, gives him copies of extra-curricular reading material, most of which has been at one time or another on the ALA’s collected list of banned or challenged books. (Such as The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.) Go Bill! Should we all have a teacher like you to encourage reading outside of our comfort levels.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
MTV Publishing
224 pages
$14.
Published February 1, 1999

Reviewed by Heather Brush Froeschl

Charlie is the main character of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", a 15-year-old boy, writing letters to someone, describing his life in 1991-92. It’s his first year of high school and he’s scared. His friend had killed himself in the previous spring, and Charlie reacted. The new school year is beginning now; he has anxiety attacks of a kind, and tries to stop them but can’t always do it. He makes friends with some older kids and from this safety net he observes life and starts to find out who he is. And in bits and pieces, through the letters, the reader finds out too. But does Charlie experience living or is he more like a shadow on the wall?

While growing up in the suburbs of a city, Charlie doesn’t lead a sheltered life. He is witness to explicit sex, implied sexual acts, domestic abuse, drugs and alcohol. He is also witness to emotional pain, heartbreak, confusion, deception, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He is a giving, loving friend who is agreeable and selfless, to a fault. But is he on the receiving end of being those things? He doesn’t stand up for himself; he stands up for others. He is a teenager in a time when children grow up too quickly, just five years younger than I was during that year, I can attest to that. What Charlie witnessed was an unfortunate reality, a culture that was harsher and more in-your-face than what his own parents grew up in. His letters though, explain happenings like they were sock hops and drive-in movies. He accepts his reality and shares it through his words. It is his world and he is on it, not knowing any better, like it or not.

Charlie’s brother goes away to college on a football scholarship and is the family’s hero; Charlie’s sister takes it when her boyfriend hits her, and Charlie takes it all in. His father works hard and is a good man, while his mother cooks favorite meals and packs lunches. He has one teacher, Bill, who really seems to care. Bill gives Charlie extra books to read and write essays on. For the most part the books have young protagonists who learn lessons about life; Charlie can relate. His writing improves, his analytical thinking improves, his letter writing continues, and sometimes he hides in his reading, away from the world, away from his own problems. There are tragic moments and with his reactions to them, Charlie pulls into himself so much that he needs professional help. He is hospitalized and starts seeing a psychiatrist who keeps asking Charlie about his earliest memories. There must be a reason why.

The voice of Charlie is precisely right as that of a 15 -16 year old. The letters don’t offer flowery details but let the reader see Charlie’s world as this young man would. Some letters are written in scattered, drug or alcohol influenced language, others in stone cold sober sadness. Given that his is the only perspective in the book, the reader isn’t fully aware of what his friends and family members see or understand about him and this not knowing is like Charlie’s own. His truth is revealed to the reader and himself at the same time. Chbosky is a talented writer who has taken teen angst and emotion, inner conflict and outer emotional attack and ripped the proverbial towel away to bare it all. He presents a coming of age tale with a depth of raw emotion. Adult readers will look back at their own teen years while readers Charlie’s age see themselves too. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" depicts the moment in life when we learn to be proactive rather than reactive, passionate rather than reflexive, and how someone who’d gone through trauma can still do that. And if Charlie can, we all can. This book is a gem… an uncut, unset priceless precious stone. That teacher Bill? He said it best, though he was talking about the book "The Stranger" when he said it's, "very easy to read, but very hard to read well."

"Kill For Me" by Karen Rose, is the third in a series of thrillers. Our reviewer found it lacking; his review follows. For another take on the same book, click here.  

"Kill for Me"
by Karen Rose
Grand Central Publishing
432 pages, $16.99

Reviewed by Charles Shea LeMone

The sheer number of flashbacks that take place in the beginning of this novel is mind boggling without the aide of an extensive glossary as a reference source. Long before the main characters, Susannah and Luke, completely take center stage, the author informs us of a group of prominent gentlemen who, while in their teens, were guilty of secretly raping a number of young girls from the area. Now as adults, this private club, including a doctor and a judge, are involved in the business of kidnapping young girls--lured from their homes via the Internet. The victims are then rented to high paying customers and subjected to sessions of severe physical abuse until they are worthless sacks of skin and bone and have to be replaced with fresh meat.

While building on this lurid premise, there is also a funeral for one of the ringleaders and a shoot-out in which several new bodies, good guys and bad, turn up dead or bullet ridden. One of the injured federal agents is Susannah’s brother who is also Luke’s partner and a crucial memory link to a dark secret Susannah decides to make public. All of this and more--enough to fill a sizable prequel--compete with the present action; five kidnapped girls held as sex slaves are rushed to a new location, two of them manage to escape; a couple of prime witnesses must be silenced; and a host of agents, lawyers, crime scene experts, etc., begin the task of putting all the pieces together in the name of justice.

In the intervening time, the author gives few physical details about the ever-present parade of new characters that stream across the pages. Consequently, as the novel progresses, rather than experience a sense of heightening drama or intrigue, I felt continually challenged to assimilate all the facts as the action played hopscotch from one new crisis to the next. As an outline this novel may have offered the promise of being a real thriller. However, without skilled craftsmanship, and proper plot building, the author failed to deliver a compelling story. Instead, it’s more like a dish into which a chef tosses everything in the kitchen, holding nothing back, stirs it all up in a huge pot and serves it as a main course without realizing sometimes less is more.

REUNION. By Therese Fowler. Ballantine Books. 336 pages. $22

Reviewed by Courtney Cutright

A love triangle involving a father, son and a syndicated talk show host is at the center of Therese Fowler’s novel “Reunion.”
Fortunately for the reader, there is a span of two decades between the arms of the father-son angles.
While filming on location in Key West, Blue Reynolds is reunited with Mitch Forrester, whom she fell in love with 20 years ago. The two haven’t seen each other since Mitch dumped her, back when she was the furthest thing from a daytime TV icon.
Upon reuniting Blue falls fast for the idea of reconnecting with Mitch and his family. Right away she mixes business with pleasure by lending her camera equipment to Mitch so he and his son Julian can film a documentary.
Julian, who is nine years younger than Blue, knows little about his father’s long-ago romance. But as Julian grows closer to Blue he begins to feel guilty about trotting on his father’s turf. A near-death experience is enough for Julian to spill the beans, professing his attraction to Blue.
With enough conflict to keep it interesting there is almost too much complexity as Blue simultaneously is searching for a child she gave up at birth while trying to figure out whether she should pursue Mitch or Julian.
The plot peaks when Blue is exposed for trying to bribe someone for the midwife’s records on the closed adoption. The scandal tarnishes her TV image, and it is the last straw for her. She quits the show, succumbing to the notion she has it all when she realizes how much her life is missing. She realizes material success has left a gaping hole in her personal life.
She is ready to move on, but you will have to read the book to find out if she picks the father or the son.

ADMISSION By Jean Hanff Korelitz. Grand Central Publishing. 464 pages. $24.95

Reviewed by Amy Hanek, a freelance writer from Franklin County.

Portia Nathan’s heart breaks repeatedly. Who could blame her? Essays filled with hopes, dreams and despair pass through her hands daily, via bright orange folders. And then there are those most heartbreaking stories. 
Seemingly ordinary teenagers are faced with the worst possible situations, proving how extraordinary they really are.
Fighting childhood cancer. Living in poverty. Losing a father in the war. These are just the tip of the iceberg for Nathan. She’s most likely seen it all. And each is meticulously laid out in an 8 ½ x 11 admissions application.
That’s Nathan’s job. She’s a Princeton University admissions officer. Reading thousands of lengthy applications each year is demanding. But what’s inside is the toughest part. Each carefully written essay pulls at Nathan’s heart, and she becomes a little overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t?
The key to this book is the title, “Admission.” The author, Jean Hanff Korelitz, inventively works both meanings of the word into the plot. Nathan admits, or denies, prospective students.
Then, she begins to admit to a 17-year-old secret. Her life starts unraveling and so does the past.
Nathan realizes she’s been lying to everyone around her, most importantly, herself.
Korelitz weaves a huge chunk of truth into her fifth novel. Bearing witness to the inner workings of the great and almighty Princeton is exciting.
Korelitz not only lives in Princeton, N.J., but is married to Paul Muldoon, a poet and Princeton professor. If this didn’t garner Korelitz enough information for this book, she likely drew on her experience as a part-time reader in the university’s admissions department.
This heartwarming tale is enough to keep the pages turning. The first half reveals the world behind that ivy-covered wall of Princeton. This leaves much of the shock and awe particularly low. But the story line picks up quite a bit in the second half.
And what begins as a somewhat predictable story transcends into something surprising.

NO SUCH CREATURE. By Giles Blunt. Henry Holt and Company. 304 pages. $25.00.

Reviewed by Barbara Dickinson

“No Such Creature,” is by a Canadian author, Giles Blunt, and his two books have garnered much buzz in the publishing world.

“No Such Creature” deals with a once promising Shakespearean actor, Magnus “Max” Maxwell and his adopted nephew, 18-year-old Owen Maxwell.

Little did Owen suspect when Uncle Max plucked him from his foster home in England that his relative had major plans for his future: Owen would become a gentleman thief.

Max’s tutoring is superb and the pair pulls off dazzling feats of derring-do among the rich and unsuspecting famous. 

They succeed swimmingly until the arrival of the Subtractors, a gang of vicious thieves who prey on other thieves.

Not to worry, Blunt does not let the curious pair of Maxwell and Maxwell succumb.

Kirkus Reviews had this to say about this intriguing book:  “Blunt pulls off a remarkable feat: he makes a story drenched in sadness almost unbearably exciting.  The most beautifully written deeply felt page-turner of the year.”

Although I wouldn’t go that far in agreeing with Kirkus, it does make a good read.

Random Acts of Heroic Love
by Danny Scheinmann
Thomas Dunne Books
400 pages, $24.95
 
Reviewed by Tom Jones

Well received in the U.K. when first published in 2007, Danny Scheinmann’s emotionally charged debut novel arrived in U.S. book stores in late January. It contains two seemingly disparate stories, each featuring a young man whose obsession with the love of his life controls his every thought and deed. Through them Scheinmann skillfully explores the issues of love and survival, grief and bereavement, and ultimately, hope and redemption.

Leo Deakin is inconsolable when he awakens in an Ecuadorian hospital in 1992 and is told that Eleni, his Greek girlfriend had died in an accident that he survived. She had been his soul mate, the center of his universe. Paralyzed by guilt, remorse and grief, Leo attempts to return to his PhD studies in Biology in London, but to no avail. Though he is only 25, he experiences the deep sense of bereavement of one who had lost a wife and lover of many years. His friends are extremely supportive and sympathetic, but become weary of the never-ending intensity of the level of his grief, and eventually are driven away.

The second story is about the sustaining strength of love and the magnitude of its influence. In 1914 Austrian teen-ager Mortiz Daniecki shares a single kiss with Lotte before going off to fight the Russians. Soon he is engulfed in all of the horrors of WWI, and it is only the memory of that kiss that spurs him on. Death and destruction are everywhere; all of his childhood friends have been killed. When captured by the Russians and sent to a Siberian prison camp he can only think of escaping the unbearable conditions and returning to Lotte who is now over 4 thousand miles away. Thus begins the epic tale of Mortiz’s two year walk across Russia and his turbulent arrival in Vienna within days of Lotte’s marriage to another.

In an effort to break through Leo’s grief, his father who heretofore had been a quiet unassuming and unemotional cipher reveals the secret of his lineage and background. His Jewish parents, Mortiz and Lotte, had sent him to England in 1938 to escape the Nazis. The story of Mortiz’s love for his grandmother, and his arduous journey to return to her becomes the key to Leo’s redemption. 
The two narratives are effectively interspersed, beautifully written and heart wrenching. As if compelled to create the quintessential story about the power of love, Scheinmann spent six years writing this book, and he got it right.
 
Tom Jones is President of the Southwest Virginia branch of the English Speaking Union.

Among the Mad, (A Maisie Dobbs Novel)
By Jacqueline Winspear
Henry Holt & Co.
320 Pages, $25.00

Reviewed by Jill Bowen

It is Christmas Eve 1931. Psychological investigator Maisie Dobbs and her assistant Billie Beale are hurrying through the crowded London streets to deliver a report to a client before the holiday. As Maisie approaches a severely disabled World War One veteran sitting on the pavement he commits suicide with a homemade bomb. Luckily Maisie is only slightly concussed and Billie unharmed. The next day the Prime Minister receives a threatening letter with a number of demands for war veterans, which also makes mention of Maisie by name. Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, is called in to investigate this terrorist threat. Initially Maisie is considered a suspect, but after she has been cleared of any wrongdoing, Detective Chief Inspector MacFarlane of the Yard’s Special Branch, presses her into service as a profiler. Further letters are received by the Prime Minister threatening massive loss of life unless the demands for adequate pensions and care for all WW I veterans are met. During this time Billie is involved in his own tragedy. His wife is committed to an old fashioned and barbaric psychiatric hospital suffering from a nervous breakdown, due to the death of their small daughter a year earlier, leaving Billie to care for his two young sons.

Racing against time, Maisie and the police struggle to find and disarm the terrorist, who has shown by a number of disturbing events, that he has both the knowledge and the will to carry out his threats to kill hundreds of innocent people. Following a number of clues and some hunches, Maisie finds herself once more visiting a number of institutions where shell-shocked veterans are housed. Having been a nurse during the war, Maisie is only too familiar with the post traumatic syndrome that these men are suffering. It is through her contacts at these institutions that she is able to get Billie’s wife transferred to a more humane hospital where she will receive modern treatment for her problem. Rest assured everything pans out, as it should in the end, and once again Maisie turns up trumps by being instrumental in aiding MacFarlane to apprehend this mentally unstable terrorist.

Although this is the sixth novel featuring Maisie Dobbs, there is enough background included so that new readers are not at a disadvantage, while fans of Maisie will be delighted with this new offering. Winspear was originally from Great Britain, but now lives in California. All her novels have been received with critical acclaim winning several awards including the Agatha, Alex and Macavity Awards.

Radford University English professor Tim Poland will present a public reading from his newest book "The Safety of Deeper Water" on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. at the Virginia Tech Volume Two Bookstore. For more information, call 540-231-9674.

The Safety of Deeper Waters
By Tim Poland
Vandalia Press
263 pages
$16.50

Reviewed by Heather Froeschl heather.froeschl@roanoke.com

I’ve read Tim Poland’s book, “The Safety of Deeper Waters,” and was happily surprised. I’m not a fly fisher; I’ve never held a fly rod. I was worried I’d be out of my element in this book. No need for that. Poland takes the hand of the novice, the fly fishing ignorant, and guides a mental casting for the prize.

Sandy Holston is a nurse, somewhat emotionally restrained, but with good reason. She’s survived marriage to Vernon, violent, controlling, condemning, now incarcerated Vernon, only to be told she will be part of his escape plan. She is to wait at the river for him, where he will meet her one day soon, guards chasing him, so they can become fugitives together. While waiting, Sandy toys with Vernon’s cast off fly rod. While waiting, day after day, she teaches herself to fish. While waiting, she finally comes to know herself, find peace in the world, and decides she will not do what he says any longer.

Divorcing Vernon was the easy part. Sandy rents a new home in a new rural area, finds a new nursing job, and creates a new life. All the while she is making time for her new passion, donning old waders. All the while, she ignores the letters Vernon sends in which he threatens her in every way possible. A mystery on the river infiltrates her mind as the stocked trout are found murdered in their nursery tanks. An intriguing man seeps into her thoughts as she sees him fishing au natural one day and floating face down under a snorkel the next. And then Vernon’s time is up, and Sandy fears he will find her in her new life as he promised. Will her peace and joy, her life, be taken away?

Poland has executed a glimpse into the world just under the rushing waters, the quieter deeper waters where the larger, wiser fish lurk. “The Safety of Deeper Waters” is a well written short novel that tells the tale of the deep change people are capable of and the beauty found in the sport of fly fishing.

I don't judge a book by it's cover, but the artwork on this particular title drew me in. I've since discovered the artist, a talented nature photographer, at www.StillwaterStudio.us.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
by C.J. Box
Minotaur Books
352 pages. $24.95

Reviewed by Cathy Benson
cathy.benson@roanoke.com

C.J. Box returns with his second novel in his latest series, “Three Weeks to Say Goodbye.” A book full of thrills, it is like none other that Box has penned.

The story unfolds in Denver in November. A husband and wife who have suffered through years of infertility have finally adopted a beautiful baby girl named Angelina.

The narrator, Jack McGuane, is ‘Joe Regular Guy’ with a low sperm count working for the city’s travel department. Jack is very much in love with his wife, Melissa. One theme that appears in all of Box’s books is the main character’s devotion to his love interest.

It’s never bad to read about a man who appreciates his wife, even if it is fiction.

The plot sketches the fears on every adoptive parent’s magic drawing board. The adoption paperwork has been botched, the biological father wants custody, and he turns out to be a psychopathic society boy and would-be gang member with an equally evil father who just happens to be a powerful federal judge.

The couple must relinquish custody of their daughter in three weeks. The nightmare begins.
Told from the viewpoint of a loving father trying to fight the odds with the aid of his childhood friends, there is a murmur of unrestrained anger at the unfairness of life in the low-key storytelling. How far will Jack and Melissa go to keep Angelina? The pages of the book practically turn themselves by the time the crisis resolves itself — after plenty of creepy moments — Old West cowboy-style justice seems to work well even in modern times.

I found the ending a bit weak after the stampede of the story, but perhaps with a wild ride it’s better to get out of the saddle gingerly.