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Arthur Puskis has devoted his life to the Vaults, the repository of all the official records of The City at the height of its rough-and-tumble, pre-war days. The orderliness, the routine, the proven veracity of his work provides all his existence requires. Until the day he discovers a file has been duplicated.
Ethan Poole is a tough guy trying to redeem himself after a crooked career in the ring. Now a PI, he blackmails corrupt city leaders and loves a fiery union organizer.
Top newspaper reporter Francis Frings, paramour of nightclub singer extraordinaire Nora Aspen, hears from a top city leader who has had enough and is ready to sing.
This is the setup for Toby Ball's fabulous debut novel. The Vaults traces, in these three narratives, events set in motion by that duplicate file, a blackmail case and a corrupt official's decision to come clean. Combine them with a headstrong, flawed crook of a mayor and his efforts to get a group of Polish businessmen to sign a business contract, and the ensuing crosses, counter crosses, last-minute decisions and long-range plans result in an engrossing story that the original Warner Brothers should have had the chance to film in glorious black and white.
Ball keeps everything rolling in what could have been a tangled mess. Instead, the three storylines sometimes intersect, sometimes complement each other, to propel the action along. There are poignant moments and acts of great heroism, as well as sorrow and regret. To say more about actual plot points would give too much away, and each one is well worth discovering.
But suffice to say that Ball has not only a talented way with plot, but also with characterizations both starring and walk-on. The Vaults is a throwback to a time when snappy dialogue and personal stories combined to tell rich tales of winners and losers. The novel may remind readers at times of Jonathan Lethem and Loren Estleman, especially their Motherless Brooklyn, Chronic City and Gas City.
This is a rich story that has room for orphans, stone-cold killers with Achilles heels, loyal union strikers and unlikely farmers. It has the rich and the poor, the eccentric and salt of the earth. The Vaults also has the ability to turn philosophical and ask questions that go to the very heart of what each of the three protagonists holds most dear.
The only problem with finishing The Vaults is that I wish I hadn't even started it yet, so I could have the pleasure of discovering it all over again. It's that good.
Men have been many things over the years -- ignorant, greedy, forgetful, inconstant, loyal, intelligent, hard-working and inspired. To the fortunate, their companions have been animals. When that happens, animal companions represent the best of these qualities that mankind wishes or believes it displays.
Such is the case with the quiet, stolid Indian elephant Solomon in Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's last novel, The Elephant's Journey. Saramago, who died this summer, took the true tale of an elephant that was regifted from King João III of Portugal to Archduke Maximilian as a wedding present in 1551, and turned it into a rambling fable of small acts and, when least expected, large emotions.
Solomon has been left, forgotten and dirtier by the day, in Lisbon after he and his mahout Subhro became the king of Portugal's property. The king suddenly remembers Solomon and decides he would make a boffo wedding gift to the archduke, whose good side he wants to stay on. Like Dorothy and her friends getting spiffed up before meeting the wizard, Solomon and Subhro are cleaned up and sent on their way with a large entourage.
While making slow progress across the Portugese countryside, Subhro and the military leader in charge of the contingent go from uneasy working partners to genuine friends. In the low-key, half sardonic, half old wise grandfatherly way that Saramago tells the story, the friendship has been formed without overt signs pointing to it. But when it's mentioned as they part, it makes complete sense.
Not much seemingly happens until that point but Saramago lays the foundation for what will be in the first half of his story. Then the Portugese army contigent and military hotshot Austrian horse guard nearly battle over who will have the honor of escorting Solomon on the rest of his journey. This is when Saramago's asides and ramblings that shape the narrative show their worth, because what happens may not matter to the reader as much as what the events bring to the narrator's mind.
And then Solomon bids goodbye to those who will not accompany him farther along his way. Simple, touching and utterly enchanting. Because Saramago has written the novel in a rambling fable style overlaid with the sweetest hint of fairy tale magic, this is where many readers will fall completely in love with this elephant and his story.
When the archduke meets his gift, the first thing this bossy royal does is change the names of the elephant and his mahout. Subhro's musing on this turn of events conveys more about the nature of wealth and power that many large volumes. The commentary on power continues when Subhro is tricked into granting the request of a village priest met along the way, and how Solomon plays his role. It's all to do with trying to score a public relations victory over that irksome Martin Luther for the church, and all to do with how a servant knows his place.
The name change and priest's request are part of a whole, considering the archduke changes the elephant's name from Solomon, wise king of the Old Testament, to Suleiman, the magnificent sultan of the Ottoman Empire. To have the sultan bowing before the church, and for it to not be a triumph, is all Saramago needs to say about worth of those who command, rather than earn, fealty.
Combine the priest's request with Solomon's earlier farewell, and then the understated story of his entry into Vienna and a little girl is all the sweeter.
When the contigent meets the Italian Alps, the journey truly becomes epic. This involves great heart and courage. It makes the ending all the more poignant.
The Elephant's Journey is not told in a straight-forward style. Its events and characters are described by a know-it-all, rambling storyteller who wasn't even there. Don't expect traditional punctuation. Saramago doesn't even worry about capitalization on occasion. The result is a read that propels itself forward, taking note of what the story's voice relates rather than the conventions of storytelling, and with it a willingness to let one's own mind wander and wonder about what's really important. What comes through is the power of friendship and the strength of loyalty.
Solomon's story is both a trifle and a parable, a fable and a legend. It's a lovely way for Saramago to say goodbye.
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(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
Among those hit hardest by the current recession are not the ones suffering the most economically. Sure, some have lost their jobs but their spouse remains employed and has health insurance. They are pursuing freelance opportunities. And even though some, such as magazine writer Suzan Colon, acknowledge that they don't have it as bad as some other Americans who are in genuine dire straits, this recession has just about blown their young yuppie minds.
Gracious. While still working at her former magazine job, Colon had to economize. No more buying lunch when she could make do with leftovers and sandwiches. After she loses her job and writes from home, she has to choose between a cooler room where the modem is located or going upstairs to the warmth and broadband. That these choices are treated as revelations of character shows how much people forget within the space of time that still exists in the memory of some living folks. (Just ask anyone older than, say 70, about the Great Depression. Or read The Grapes of Wrath. Or for more contemporary times, download Christmas in Appalachia)
Still, these forced economies send Colon to her late grandmother's recipe file and readers benefit from the stories about that remarkable lady. Cherries in Winter refers to how important it is to feed one's spirit by occasionally buying a treat. There was a time when fresh fruit, such as cherries, out of season were prohibitively expensive for all but the very rich. But a time when the author's mother bought them remains an episode that nourishes Colon's soul to this day. An earlier ancestor spent a week's worth of grocery money on a pair of vases that the author's mother still has.
Although the author's family is filled with women who put this kind of nourishment above constant penny-pinching, it is her grandmother Matilda who best embodies the spirit of feeding the soul. A can-do woman regardless of the circumstances life throws as her, Matilda never grumbles and always keeps on the sunny side. At one point her husband decides to uproot them from New York City to become farmers. Matilda befriends the ladies of the Grange by promising that, if they teach her how to cook, she'll do their hair and makeup. It's a happy arrangement and many of the recipes Colon finds in Nana's file are from those ladies.
Cherries in Winter is slim, even with stories from her family's past and recipes. But this is Colon's magazine background showing as much as anything. Instead of going on in greater detail, Colon keeps things as breezy as her grandmother's standard reply of "Fabulous, never better" to the question, "How are you?" Colon's volume is the kitchen equivalent of spending the afternoon at the day spa or a coffeehouse with girlfriends. Cherries in Winter is a frothy entertainment that demonstrates there are worse things that not having money. There are other kinds of poor, and money isn't the solution.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
Irene doesn't want to move when her husband, Nate, gets a new law enforcement job out West. Moving from farm country, Illinois, where both their families had lived for generations, to go to the high desert country of Oregon, well, the calendar may say 1983 but it might as well be 1883 to Irene.
Still, they and their two children pack up their things and hit the road. Life in Blaine is just what Irene expected -- hard on them. Hardest hit of all is her beloved teenage son Shep, a dreamy young man who loves music. The day Nate finds Shep mortally injured in their home is the day Irene wishes she had died instead.
Even as Irene struggles to survive, and her husband and daughter Bliss struggle to be considered as well, a suspect is arrested and sentenced to death. More than 20 years later, Daniel Robbin has faced the end of his time on Death Row. Penintentiary Superintendent Tab Mason gets the orders for Robbin's execution.
In the decades between these two events, many of the characters involved go through misery to emerge stronger, calmer and more compassionate toward other human beings. Without giving away the plot, Irene shows an enormous capacity to become far more than the housebound housewife who didn't want to leave family. Her story is a remarkable one that is told with believability and sensitivity. Bliss takes her opportunity to shine and runs with it later in the story, as do Tab and even Robbin. Nate's journey is one that breaks the heart.
And although some of the things that happen in the novel strain the suspension of disbelief, the sincerity of the emotions and the willingness on author Naseem Rakha's part to address the issues make The Crying Tree a story well worth reading. Rakha, rather than preaching, shows in her first novel how flawed but decent human beings confront the unthinkable when it strikes and how they live with and through pain.
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(5 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
A lonely boy grows up loving words, becomes a writer, loses his heart and soul -- one to a woman, the other, perhaps, to a fallen angel. Include melodramatic coincidences and inevitabilities, the best used bookstore ever imagined and the fearsome Cemetery of Lost Books, and this couldn't be anything except the work of Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Ever since The Shadow of the Wind swept across the world with its story of love and loss, set against the backdrop of war-weary Barcelona and the threat of totalitarianism, readers have been clamoring for another visit to the cemetery.
The Barcelona of The Angel's Game, Barcelona exists years before the first novel. David Martin, an aspiring young journalist, is given the chance of a lifetime when there is no one else to fill empty newspaper columns. His dashing stories of derring-do, with titles such as City of the Damned, soon make him popular and bring him to the notice of a mysterious publisher. But he also has a worldly mentor in Pedro Vidal, who has closer ties to David than he realizes.
Both David and Vidal love Christina, daughter to Vidal's driver. But is she the one for David, or will the eventual winner of his heart be the plucky Isabella, daughter to a neighborhood grocer who grew up idolizing him and determined to be a writer just like him?
David eventually overdoes it writing the equivalent of penny dreadfuls and, while seriously ill, makes a dangerous bargain with the mysterious publisher, one Andrea Corelli. Good thing David has his dear friends, Senor Sempere and his son, at that used bookstore. And an eventual introduction to that most marvelous of places that should exist, the Cemetery of Lost Books. Because it's not exactly coincidence that Corelli wears a pin that looks like an angel, and that his Paris office does not exist. So when he demands David make good on his end of the bargain, young Martin risks more than a publishing contract.
Although the plot climaxes in cinematic excess as OTT as anything in David Martin's own penny dreadfuls, the love that Zafon has for love, art and literature shines in every heartfelt exclamation of his earnest characters. Some readers will not appreciate David's exploits as much as they did the earlier novel, but with the fullness of time both stories feel like different parts of a continued story. A story that may possibly continue to be told today.
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(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
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Vaults by Toby Ball
LynneP, January 1, 2011
Arthur Puskis has devoted his life to the Vaults, the repository of all the official records of The City at the height of its rough-and-tumble, pre-war days. The orderliness, the routine, the proven veracity of his work provides all his existence requires. Until the day he discovers a file has been duplicated.Ethan Poole is a tough guy trying to redeem himself after a crooked career in the ring. Now a PI, he blackmails corrupt city leaders and loves a fiery union organizer.
Top newspaper reporter Francis Frings, paramour of nightclub singer extraordinaire Nora Aspen, hears from a top city leader who has had enough and is ready to sing.
This is the setup for Toby Ball's fabulous debut novel. The Vaults traces, in these three narratives, events set in motion by that duplicate file, a blackmail case and a corrupt official's decision to come clean. Combine them with a headstrong, flawed crook of a mayor and his efforts to get a group of Polish businessmen to sign a business contract, and the ensuing crosses, counter crosses, last-minute decisions and long-range plans result in an engrossing story that the original Warner Brothers should have had the chance to film in glorious black and white.
Ball keeps everything rolling in what could have been a tangled mess. Instead, the three storylines sometimes intersect, sometimes complement each other, to propel the action along. There are poignant moments and acts of great heroism, as well as sorrow and regret. To say more about actual plot points would give too much away, and each one is well worth discovering.
But suffice to say that Ball has not only a talented way with plot, but also with characterizations both starring and walk-on. The Vaults is a throwback to a time when snappy dialogue and personal stories combined to tell rich tales of winners and losers. The novel may remind readers at times of Jonathan Lethem and Loren Estleman, especially their Motherless Brooklyn, Chronic City and Gas City.
This is a rich story that has room for orphans, stone-cold killers with Achilles heels, loyal union strikers and unlikely farmers. It has the rich and the poor, the eccentric and salt of the earth. The Vaults also has the ability to turn philosophical and ask questions that go to the very heart of what each of the three protagonists holds most dear.
The only problem with finishing The Vaults is that I wish I hadn't even started it yet, so I could have the pleasure of discovering it all over again. It's that good.
The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago
LynneP, September 14, 2010
Men have been many things over the years -- ignorant, greedy, forgetful, inconstant, loyal, intelligent, hard-working and inspired. To the fortunate, their companions have been animals. When that happens, animal companions represent the best of these qualities that mankind wishes or believes it displays.Such is the case with the quiet, stolid Indian elephant Solomon in Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's last novel, The Elephant's Journey. Saramago, who died this summer, took the true tale of an elephant that was regifted from King João III of Portugal to Archduke Maximilian as a wedding present in 1551, and turned it into a rambling fable of small acts and, when least expected, large emotions.
Solomon has been left, forgotten and dirtier by the day, in Lisbon after he and his mahout Subhro became the king of Portugal's property. The king suddenly remembers Solomon and decides he would make a boffo wedding gift to the archduke, whose good side he wants to stay on. Like Dorothy and her friends getting spiffed up before meeting the wizard, Solomon and Subhro are cleaned up and sent on their way with a large entourage.
While making slow progress across the Portugese countryside, Subhro and the military leader in charge of the contingent go from uneasy working partners to genuine friends. In the low-key, half sardonic, half old wise grandfatherly way that Saramago tells the story, the friendship has been formed without overt signs pointing to it. But when it's mentioned as they part, it makes complete sense.
Not much seemingly happens until that point but Saramago lays the foundation for what will be in the first half of his story. Then the Portugese army contigent and military hotshot Austrian horse guard nearly battle over who will have the honor of escorting Solomon on the rest of his journey. This is when Saramago's asides and ramblings that shape the narrative show their worth, because what happens may not matter to the reader as much as what the events bring to the narrator's mind.
And then Solomon bids goodbye to those who will not accompany him farther along his way. Simple, touching and utterly enchanting. Because Saramago has written the novel in a rambling fable style overlaid with the sweetest hint of fairy tale magic, this is where many readers will fall completely in love with this elephant and his story.
When the archduke meets his gift, the first thing this bossy royal does is change the names of the elephant and his mahout. Subhro's musing on this turn of events conveys more about the nature of wealth and power that many large volumes. The commentary on power continues when Subhro is tricked into granting the request of a village priest met along the way, and how Solomon plays his role. It's all to do with trying to score a public relations victory over that irksome Martin Luther for the church, and all to do with how a servant knows his place.
The name change and priest's request are part of a whole, considering the archduke changes the elephant's name from Solomon, wise king of the Old Testament, to Suleiman, the magnificent sultan of the Ottoman Empire. To have the sultan bowing before the church, and for it to not be a triumph, is all Saramago needs to say about worth of those who command, rather than earn, fealty.
Combine the priest's request with Solomon's earlier farewell, and then the understated story of his entry into Vienna and a little girl is all the sweeter.
When the contigent meets the Italian Alps, the journey truly becomes epic. This involves great heart and courage. It makes the ending all the more poignant.
The Elephant's Journey is not told in a straight-forward style. Its events and characters are described by a know-it-all, rambling storyteller who wasn't even there. Don't expect traditional punctuation. Saramago doesn't even worry about capitalization on occasion. The result is a read that propels itself forward, taking note of what the story's voice relates rather than the conventions of storytelling, and with it a willingness to let one's own mind wander and wonder about what's really important. What comes through is the power of friendship and the strength of loyalty.
Solomon's story is both a trifle and a parable, a fable and a legend. It's a lovely way for Saramago to say goodbye.
(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times by Suzan Colon
LynneP, December 12, 2009
Among those hit hardest by the current recession are not the ones suffering the most economically. Sure, some have lost their jobs but their spouse remains employed and has health insurance. They are pursuing freelance opportunities. And even though some, such as magazine writer Suzan Colon, acknowledge that they don't have it as bad as some other Americans who are in genuine dire straits, this recession has just about blown their young yuppie minds.Gracious. While still working at her former magazine job, Colon had to economize. No more buying lunch when she could make do with leftovers and sandwiches. After she loses her job and writes from home, she has to choose between a cooler room where the modem is located or going upstairs to the warmth and broadband. That these choices are treated as revelations of character shows how much people forget within the space of time that still exists in the memory of some living folks. (Just ask anyone older than, say 70, about the Great Depression. Or read The Grapes of Wrath. Or for more contemporary times, download Christmas in Appalachia)
Still, these forced economies send Colon to her late grandmother's recipe file and readers benefit from the stories about that remarkable lady. Cherries in Winter refers to how important it is to feed one's spirit by occasionally buying a treat. There was a time when fresh fruit, such as cherries, out of season were prohibitively expensive for all but the very rich. But a time when the author's mother bought them remains an episode that nourishes Colon's soul to this day. An earlier ancestor spent a week's worth of grocery money on a pair of vases that the author's mother still has.
Although the author's family is filled with women who put this kind of nourishment above constant penny-pinching, it is her grandmother Matilda who best embodies the spirit of feeding the soul. A can-do woman regardless of the circumstances life throws as her, Matilda never grumbles and always keeps on the sunny side. At one point her husband decides to uproot them from New York City to become farmers. Matilda befriends the ladies of the Grange by promising that, if they teach her how to cook, she'll do their hair and makeup. It's a happy arrangement and many of the recipes Colon finds in Nana's file are from those ladies.
Cherries in Winter is slim, even with stories from her family's past and recipes. But this is Colon's magazine background showing as much as anything. Instead of going on in greater detail, Colon keeps things as breezy as her grandmother's standard reply of "Fabulous, never better" to the question, "How are you?" Colon's volume is the kitchen equivalent of spending the afternoon at the day spa or a coffeehouse with girlfriends. Cherries in Winter is a frothy entertainment that demonstrates there are worse things that not having money. There are other kinds of poor, and money isn't the solution.
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha
LynneP, December 12, 2009
Irene doesn't want to move when her husband, Nate, gets a new law enforcement job out West. Moving from farm country, Illinois, where both their families had lived for generations, to go to the high desert country of Oregon, well, the calendar may say 1983 but it might as well be 1883 to Irene.Still, they and their two children pack up their things and hit the road. Life in Blaine is just what Irene expected -- hard on them. Hardest hit of all is her beloved teenage son Shep, a dreamy young man who loves music. The day Nate finds Shep mortally injured in their home is the day Irene wishes she had died instead.
Even as Irene struggles to survive, and her husband and daughter Bliss struggle to be considered as well, a suspect is arrested and sentenced to death. More than 20 years later, Daniel Robbin has faced the end of his time on Death Row. Penintentiary Superintendent Tab Mason gets the orders for Robbin's execution.
In the decades between these two events, many of the characters involved go through misery to emerge stronger, calmer and more compassionate toward other human beings. Without giving away the plot, Irene shows an enormous capacity to become far more than the housebound housewife who didn't want to leave family. Her story is a remarkable one that is told with believability and sensitivity. Bliss takes her opportunity to shine and runs with it later in the story, as do Tab and even Robbin. Nate's journey is one that breaks the heart.
And although some of the things that happen in the novel strain the suspension of disbelief, the sincerity of the emotions and the willingness on author Naseem Rakha's part to address the issues make The Crying Tree a story well worth reading. Rakha, rather than preaching, shows in her first novel how flawed but decent human beings confront the unthinkable when it strikes and how they live with and through pain.
(5 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
LynneP, November 29, 2009
A lonely boy grows up loving words, becomes a writer, loses his heart and soul -- one to a woman, the other, perhaps, to a fallen angel. Include melodramatic coincidences and inevitabilities, the best used bookstore ever imagined and the fearsome Cemetery of Lost Books, and this couldn't be anything except the work of Carlos Ruiz Zafon.Ever since The Shadow of the Wind swept across the world with its story of love and loss, set against the backdrop of war-weary Barcelona and the threat of totalitarianism, readers have been clamoring for another visit to the cemetery.
The Barcelona of The Angel's Game, Barcelona exists years before the first novel. David Martin, an aspiring young journalist, is given the chance of a lifetime when there is no one else to fill empty newspaper columns. His dashing stories of derring-do, with titles such as City of the Damned, soon make him popular and bring him to the notice of a mysterious publisher. But he also has a worldly mentor in Pedro Vidal, who has closer ties to David than he realizes.
Both David and Vidal love Christina, daughter to Vidal's driver. But is she the one for David, or will the eventual winner of his heart be the plucky Isabella, daughter to a neighborhood grocer who grew up idolizing him and determined to be a writer just like him?
David eventually overdoes it writing the equivalent of penny dreadfuls and, while seriously ill, makes a dangerous bargain with the mysterious publisher, one Andrea Corelli. Good thing David has his dear friends, Senor Sempere and his son, at that used bookstore. And an eventual introduction to that most marvelous of places that should exist, the Cemetery of Lost Books. Because it's not exactly coincidence that Corelli wears a pin that looks like an angel, and that his Paris office does not exist. So when he demands David make good on his end of the bargain, young Martin risks more than a publishing contract.
Although the plot climaxes in cinematic excess as OTT as anything in David Martin's own penny dreadfuls, the love that Zafon has for love, art and literature shines in every heartfelt exclamation of his earnest characters. Some readers will not appreciate David's exploits as much as they did the earlier novel, but with the fullness of time both stories feel like different parts of a continued story. A story that may possibly continue to be told today.
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)