Book review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

The 35th book I read in 2017 is the fifth book in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, An Incomplete Revenge.  In it, the ever-war-haunted investigator looks into recurring acts of arson in a small town that was bombed by a Zeppelin during World War I.

Winspear still subscribes to what I term the Victoria's Secret Catalog school of writing, in which the clothing of main female characters is painstakingly described at a level of detail which completely pulls me out of the story and makes me want to skip to the end of the paragraph to see the price and where I can order each piece of the outfit.  And Maisie's constant interior monologue about her relative social standing vis-à-vis the other characters is still tedious, to the point that I finally realized which other literary character she reminds me of: Drizzt Do'Urden, with his obsessive introspection and hobby of amateur philosophizing between chapters.  Add to that a villain who could not be more obvious and two-dimensional if he literally twirled his moustache and a rather hard-to-swallow nod to Martin Guerre, in which  a broad-brimmed hat plays the role of Clark Kent's beleaguered glasses, and the prospect is unpromising.

I must admit, however, that this was my favorite of the Maisie Dobbs books to date.  Maisie is, actually, less self-involved than usual, in that the facts of the case don't allow her quite as long a leash to draw parallels to her own experiences.  And the absence of any attempts at romance with the departure of the other two corners of the ham-handed triangle set up in the first book is refreshing.

Winspear, in fact, appears to be attempting to jettison quite a bit of the baggage she saddled Maisie with in the beginning.  Apart from the explicit break with Dr. Dene and the complete failure even to mention the existence of the London policeman that was her other possible suitor, the author kills off Simon, the war-wounded first love that was an anchor around Maisie's neck, and seems to be setting up the departure from the series of Billy Beale, Maisie's assistant.  (As Billy is one of the few characters I actually like, I'm not sure how to feel about that one.)  Lady Rowan, Maisie's ex-patroness, doesn't even make an appearance, and her mentor, Maurice Blanche, is shown to be aging.  In addition, Winspear tamps down most of the annoying occultism of the earlier books, in which Maisie's insight is depicted as explicitly supernatural; in An Incomplete Revenge, Maisie's success is dependent mostly on good, old-fashioned shoe-leather and intelligence.

A few notes: the plot turns heavily on a band of Roma, to whom Winspear applies a more common term which I am assured is now considered an ethnic slur, and whose relationship to the protagonist is almost certainly an act of cultural appropriation.  Also, as I have become sensitive to the term since reading John Swinton's book, the brain-damaged Simon is repeatedly referred to as an "empty shell."

Book review: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

The thirty-fourth book I read in 2017 was The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston.  Preston (with his frequent collaborator Lincoln Child) writes fictional thrillers; unfortunately, this book is, as the subtitle proclaims, a true story, which means that most of the author's talent at building excitement and suspense ultimately falls flat. 

Preston was invited along as a journalist on a team of scientists searching for the legendary White City in Honduras, a rumored lost city of treasures in the Honduran jungle.  Like all the best lost cities, this one has a curse: that anyone who finds it will never return, or, depending on which version of the legend you hear, that anyone who enters impiously will fall ill and die.  Various explorers had searched for it over the years since the Spanish conquistadors arrived in central America; one American even claimed to have found it, to great publicity and acclaim, although it turned out to be a hoax.

Despite the long failure to uncover the city, Preston's group hoped to use new technology to locate the ruin.  The dangers they faced in doing so were straight out of one of Preston's books: deadly snakes, wild animals, and inhospitable terrain.  Yet, unlike any good thriller, the team doesn't die one by one.  And, unlike Howard Carter's expedition, the curse can't even be said to claim any of them.  Many of them do come down with an infectious disease from insect bites, but modern medicine is a match for it.

The book suffers from false advertising.  The marketing is full of danger and curses, but this is, in the end, not a thriller.  It is, perhaps, a demythologization of a thriller: explaining signs and symptoms that, in the past, would have been interpreted as a terrible curse but which modern science merely shrugs at.  If Preston had approached the story in a less hyperbolic manner, it could have been an interesting read about the discovery of a long-lost pre-Columbian city, but set up so breathlessly as a thriller, it necessarily falls flat.

Book review: The Inheritance by Niki Kapsambelis

The thirty-third book I read in 2017 was The Inheritance: A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease by Niki Kapsambelis.  The family in question is the DeMoe family of North Dakota, and the inheritance is the genetic mutation that causes early-onset Alzheimer's disease.  Alzheimer's in cruel enough in old age, but the type the DeMoe family carries the gene for strikes in the early forties, stealing away what ought to be the prime years of an individual's life.

Even worse, the DeMoes and their children and grandchildren are faced with the choice to be tested and know with certainty if they carry the gene or to live in ignorance of what could be a ticking time bomb.  The scenes in which those who choose to be tested discover their results to either sobs of relief or freezing dread are almost as moving as Kampsabelis's methodical depiction of the decline of those stricken with the disease. 

What you will remember from this book is the DeMoes' story, but interspersed with it is the story of the doctors, scientists, and researchers with whom the DeMoes work, donating their blood, cells, and precious time in the hope that a breakthrough will be made to counter the disease, if not in time for them, then for their descendants.  What is heartbreaking is that, even by the time I read this book, a few of the drugs and therapies the DeMoes contributed to had already been announced to have failed.

Book review: My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary

The thirty-first book I read in 2017 was My Own Two Feet: A Memoir by Beverly Cleary.  This is the second installment of her autobiography, which picks up where the first, A Girl from Yamhill, leaves off.

I enjoyed this volume of Cleary's memoirs more than the first, which I read years ago.  For one thing, her relationship with her mother was extremely difficult, and it was hard to read about a child like Beezus meeting such rejection and judgment from her own family.  Cleary's character Ramona always had a special relationship with her father, as Beezus did with Aunt Beatrice, but Beezus and Ramona's mother was far more warm and loving than Cleary's own mother, in her telling.  In this book, Cleary is off to college and away from home, delivered from the daily indignities of dealing with her mother, whose main unpleasant intrusion in this installment is to object strenuously to Cleary's eventual husband, due to his Catholicism. 

The book was also enjoyable as many of the incidents that would turn up in Cleary's YA novels found their inspiration in this period of her life, in particular, the events of The Luckiest Girl, in which a teenager from Oregon spends a school year living with her mother's college roommate in Orange County.  The orange juice stands, the transom window ... I recognized them all in Cleary's experience as a college student living with her mother's cousin in Southern California.

It's also a fascinating look into college life in the 1930s.  Cleary's experiences were vastly different than my own, sixty years later.  The book follows her through college, library school, a first position as a children's librarian, World War II, marriage, and, finally, the publication of her first book, Henry Huggins.  None of her educational or professional experiences could be taken for granted, as a woman looking to take what might be seen as a man's job during the Depression, and over it all looms the unbearable thought of her having to return to her parents' home and live under their protection with her mother's disapproval.

Book review: Dementia by John Swinton

The twenty-seventh book I read in 2017 was Dementia: Living in the Memories of God by John Swinton.  Swinton approaches the experience of dementia from a Christian theological point of view.  So much of our practical theology focuses on the autonomous choices of the self: what does it mean when the self forgets itself? 

Swinton's answer to the problem is explicated in the book's subtitle: even if an individual has forgotten himself, he is still remembered by God.  We don't worry about the eternal destination of a Christian who dies in his sleep or after being in a coma, both states of self-forgetfulness; most Christian tradition similarly doesn't worry about the death of an infant; yet the changes associated with dementia for some reason leave us worried about what happens when a saint seems to have "forgotten" God.  "If we are faithless, he remains faithful -- for he cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

Reading this book I was struck by how much our society fears dementia.  Those who are affected by it today suffer a fate not much worse than lepers did in past societies: put out of sight and out of society, denied contact with family and friends because "he wouldn't remember we were there anyway."  We celebrate cancer patients as heroes whether they fight to the end or choose "death with dignity," but Alzheimer's patients don't have any visible place in our culture. 

Even worse is the language we use to describe them, the most common of which is "empty shells."  Just imagine if we so casually referred to terminal cancer patients as "walking dead" or "disease-ridden corpses-to-be."  If nothing else, this book has challenged me to treat the mentally-disabled with greater respect.

Several years ago, I read a letter to Dear Abby from a woman who had a friend with Alzheimer's.  After her diagnosis but before her decline, she had asked her friend to promise her that she would not let anyone they knew see her "that way."  The friend gave the promise, but as the woman declined, she continued to find great joy in attending church services, particularly the music.  Her friend, despite her promise, kept taking the patient to church, as it was the only time she showed enthusiasm.  I was shocked and horrified that Dear Abby chastised the friend for breaking her promise: when her friend was "in her right mind," she had not wanted to be seen in a vulnerable state; now that she was impervious to the opinion of others, she ought to be locked away from the world in accordance with her earlier wishes.

I recall an interview with Christopher Reeve several years after the accident which left him a quadriplegic. He was asked if he had had a living will, would he have directed the doctors to "pull the plug."  He responded that, if he had been asked when he was able-bodied if he would want to live out his life as a quadriplegic, he would have insisted that he would rather be dead; during the time since his accident, however, he had discovered that he still valued his life, despite the significant difficulties and indignities he suffered on a daily basis.  What if we allowed able-bodied Christopher Reeve to make decisions on behalf of quadriplegic Christopher Reeve, over his objections?  What if we took The Who at their word ("I hope I die before I get old") and approached them with a lethal injection a decade or so ago?  Why do we privilege one season of life over another, with the idea that one of them represents "the real me" which gets to make decisions for all of them and the rest of them mere shadows?