Careless People

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (2014) by Sarah Churchwell. This book revolves around the year 1922. It was an eventful year. For Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, it was full of drinking and partying and quarreling at a frantic pace, all against the backdrop of financial crises, literary milestones, car crashes and media scandals in the Jazz Age metropolis of New York. It was also the year of a brutal double murder in nearby New Jersey, a crime that grabbed the nation's attention and was proclaimed the "crime of the decade." Churchwell tries to draw parallels between this bizarre crime and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a novel that he began planning in 1922 and that he ultimately set within that fateful year. Whether she is successful, I am not qualified to judge. But her attempt certainly makes for an interesting book. A very good literary read. Grade: B+

The Wives of Los Alamos

The Wives of Los Alamos (2014) by Tarashea Nesbit. This is a short but extraordinarily evocative novel about the Manhattan Project, as seen through the eyes of the families of the men who built the Bomb. It starts in 1943, when the Director goes around recruiting talent, and the wives of the scientists start being kept in the dark. At first, they can't be told where they will be moving, only that it will be "in the desert" or "in the Southwest." Then they learn that their husbands can't tell them anything about the nature of the work they will be doing. Only through deduction do the wives figure out that it must have something to do with the War. And in the end, it is only when the Bomb is dropped on Japan that the women learn that that is what their husbands have been working on all along. Told in the first-person plural ("we"), the book is occasionally irritating in its switchbacks and self-contradictions, but for the most part is propulsively fascinating as, of course, the reader knows all along what the men are working on. I read it compulsively and quickly, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Grade: A-

Double Down

Double Down: Game Change 2012 (2014) by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Halperin and Heilemann cover the 2012 presidential race, in which President Obama beat Mitt Romney, but which was definitely not pre-ordained. The authors delve in rich detail into the Republican scrum over the nomination, and it's fascinating to read how one candidate after another self-destructed, until only Romney was left standing. Then, they explore the main election, in which Obama seemed to be drifting and lost the first debate badly. Somehow he turned it around, and of course won the election. But if the Republicans had been more competent, they could have won, and this book shows what went wrong for the GOP. If you like politics at all, this book is a rich read. Grade: A  

The Affairs of Others

The Affairs of Others (2013) by Amy Grace Loyd. Celia, a young widow who lives alone in an apartment building she owns, strives to keep her life separate from those of her tenants. Then George, the tenant upstairs, asks her to allow him to sublet his apartment to Hope, a beautiful friend of his who has just separated from her husband. Celia finds herself gradually enmeshed in the lives of all her tenants, of which there are four. Hope brings Celia out of her shell, and they become physically involved with each other. Meanwhile, elderly Mr. Coughlan, who lives on the top (fourth) floor, goes missing, and the Braunsteins, a married couple, separate from each other. Using her landlady's prerogative, Celia enters everyone's apartment while they're gone, and gets drawn into their lives -- which, ultimately, proves to be a good thing. Grade: B+

A Story Lately Told

A Story Lately Told (2014) by Anjelica Huston. Huston, daughter of actor and director John Huston, and granddaughter of actor Walter Huston, has the distinction of being in the third generation to win an Oscar. Unfortunately, though she may be a good actress, she is not much of a writer. She tells her story in a scattershot, name-dropping style that makes it difficult to follow, and not all that interesting. Given what she had to work with, it is hard to imagine how she was able to make it less than fascinating, but that she has done. I managed to plow through this book, but I didn't enjoy it much, and I won't be making the effort to read the second half of her biography, due out later this year. Grade: C 

Dear Cary

Dear Cary (My Life with Cary Grant) (2011) by Dyan Cannon. Grant gets portrayed in an unflattering light in this memoir from Cannon, who had a brief relationship and marriage with him back in the '60s. At the time they met, in 1961, Cannon was in her early twenties and Grant was 58. But he was a movie icon, and she was certainly bowled over by him. As their relationship progressed, however, he became increasingly verbally abusive and, in an unbelievable act of betrayal, gave away Cannon's pet dog while she was in the hospital giving birth to their daughter, Jennifer. Cannon, in her own self-description, is no prize. Some of her behavior is outrageous -- it would certainly have made me furious. She is no great shakes as a writer, either. Although the subject matter was interesting, there were times when she barely held my interest. Overall, an acceptable book but nothing to write home about. Grade: C+

This Time Together

This Time Together (2010) by Carol Burnett. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, this slender volume is Burnett's selective memoir of her decades  spent in show business. It's mostly a happy book, telling of her many successes and serendipitous events that helped her advance in her career. One gets the sense that she is basically a happy person, and that comes through in her many showbiz stories. The serious part comes towards the end, when she tells of her daughter Carrie's unsuccessful battle with cancer. Carrie died at age 38, and obviously this was a great tragedy in Burnett's life. But she gets past it and manages to soldier on. One could be forgiven for feeling envy towards Carol Burnett. Grade: B 

Out of the Woods

Out of the Woods (2014) by Lynn Darling. This book is subtitled A Memoir of Wayfinding. It's all about Darling's search for a meaningful life after her husband dies and her daughter leaves home to go to college. To complicate things, she is diagnosed with breast cancer and has to go through chemotherapy and radiation. I found this book only fitfully interesting; Darling's long discussions of how she learned to find her way in the woods just didn't light my fire. At some points I found the memoir depressing. It was just too sad, everything she went through. Overall, I was disappointed in this book. Grade: B

Little Failure

Little Failure (2014) by Gary Shteyngart. "Little Failure" was one of the nicknames that Shteyngart's parents hung on him when he was growing up in Russia. In this memoir, he shares his American immigrant experience; born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious,  diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning -- for food, for acceptance, for words -- desires that would follow him into adulthood. His parents hoped that he would become a lawyer or a Wall Street trader, but what Shteyngart always wanted to be was a writer. In this book he tells of his struggles against his upbringing and against himself, and against his lack of acceptance in American society, ending with his eventual triumph of finding a calling and a wife and a group of friends. He tells it with humor and insight and honesty, and it's a very good read. Grade: B+