Cluster Critiques 4-25-22
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb The Violin Conspiracy is a better than average mystery about a celebrated concert musician, Ray McMillian, whose violin is stolen. What makes this book interesting is how the author uses the violin and the other characters (yes, the violin is a character in this book) to make what could be a simple “who-done-it” into a pretty entertaining story.
Ray always wanted to be a professional musician, but that didn’t fit well within his family-culture, and that story, and the story of the violin, where it came from, and how the violin’s history is interwoven into Ray’s family's history, is enjoyable. I won’t divulge more about that because I don’t want to ruin the mystery.
One complaint - Slocumb relentlessly portrays Ray’s mother and one other character in the book as horrible people with not a single redeeming feature. Authors, please stop giving us one-note characters!! People are not all bad or all good, they are complicated damn it!
OK, got that off my chest. The Violin Conspiracy isn’t a literary triumph or award winner, but it tells an interesting story, is an unusual mystery, and has a better than average ending. Read it.
The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron Howard and Clint Howard
Who isn’t intrigued with Ron Howard’s history - a little red-haired boy growing up in idyllic Mayberry, USA. Oh wait, that’s Opie, the character played by Ron Howard on The Andy Griffith Show, which aired between 1960 and 1968.
Oh, you weren’t born until after 1968? Well then, maybe you remember Ron as Richie Cunningham in Happy Days (1974-1984).
No? How about these movies, Cocoon (2 academy awards), Parenthood, Apollo 13 (2 academy awards), A Beautiful Mind (4 academy awards), The Da Vinci Code, Rush, In the Heart of the Sea, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and many more blockbusters, all of which he directed, and some of which he produced and/or wrote.
Ron Howard has led an illustrious career, starting when he was five years old, and is still going strong. But this book isn’t so much about his career as it is about his astonishingly “normal” family and home life (mom and dad were not very successful actors) and how that all functioned around his constant work-schedule. It is also about his very close relationship with his less-famous, yet surprisingly interesting younger brother Clint, who although never directed or produced movies or won any awards, played characters in 126 movies and 75 TV shows. Clint’s most prominent roles were in 1967-1969 in the very popular TV series Gentle Ben, and the made for TV The Red Pony, in which he starred with Henry Fonda and Mareen O’Hara.
This book was entertaining to me because I could relate to Ron Howard’s TV and movie history, and because it gave a glimpse into his family and professional life, from both his and his brother’s perspective. If you are not big on bio’s skip this one, but if you admire Ron Howard and like to read bio's, you’ll enjoy The Boys.
When the Moon Is Low: A Novel by Nadia Hashimi All during, and for weeks after I finished reading this book I grew teary-eyed every time I saw the American flag, and said to myself probably once a day, “Thank God all of my family members live in America.”
So horrifying is this story of one family’s escape from a newly Taliban-captured Kabul, Afghanistan it was painful to read. The mom, Fereiba, and her arranged-marriage husband Mahmoud, have a happy, modest but comfortable life in Kabul as educators. Then everything changes. Targeted by the Taliban, the dad is taken into captivity and an unknown fate, and Fereiba and her three children set out on an almost unbelievable and dangerous journey to join family in London. Preyed upon by human-traffickers, the family becomes separated and are faced with bottomless challenges and despair. Fereiba and her young teenage son, Saleem, end up separated and alone in different countries, trying to survive - neither having any idea if their loved ones are alive, or even where they are. I couldn’t help but relate this to families torn apart by immigration to our own country.
The contrast between the author’s incredibly exquisite narrative, and the horrific story she tells, was one of the most unforgettable things about this lovely and agonizing book. The other was the indelible family love it portrays, and which resonated so clearly for me.
Treat yourself to this beautiful book, but go into it knowing it is a scary, painful story about a very different culture trying to survive in what feels like a very different world.
Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar by Wanda Garner Cash
Laredo, TX was an especially prosperous, bustling community during most of the 1900’s and the Cadillac Bar just across the border in Nuevo Laredo, a very popular “see and be seen” Texas destination. Or so says Wanda Garner Cash, author of Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar, and based on her book, and much I’ve learned and heard since reading her book, it was. Actually, although I wasn’t in Laredo or the Cadillac Bar during the height of their popularity, I’m happy to say I did enjoy several fun weekends during the late 1990’s at the beautiful La Pasada hotel in Laredo, cocktails and dinners at the Cadillac Bar, and hours of shopping at Marti’s, and Russell Deutsch Jewelry in Nuevo Laredo.
The story starts in 1924 when Garner Cash’s grandfather, “Mayo” Bessan and his very young new bride came to Laredo and brought with them the ambiance, food and drink recipes from famed New Orleans eating and drinking establishments, many of which had recently become shuttered by Prohibition. Over the years, the Cadillac Bar became a favored meetup for “jet-setting” movie and sports stars as well as bus-loads of Austin Junior Leaguers. People flocked there from all over the US. One of the attractions of the restaurant, other than the famous Ramos Gin Fizz, was Pancho Villa’s Saddle, which now resides in Wanda Garner Cash’s living room!
A crushing 1954 flood nearly destroyed the Cadillac Bar, but the author’s father rebuilt it to its previous glory, eventually turning it over to the long-time employees to run in 1979. Then in the 2000’s when drug cartel violence broke out in the area, tourists all but stopped traveling to Laredo and the Cadillac Bar limped along until it closed in 2010.
There are so many great stories in this little book, and recipes in the back, so I recommend you add it to your collection or check it out of your fav library. I might not have read this book had it not been a book club selection - and I’m so glad it was, and I did.
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, by Mary RoachI always look forward to Mary Roach’s next whacky book. She’s written about what happens to bodies post-death, Stiff, little known facts about the military, Grunt, what life in space might be like, Packing for Mars, sex and science, Bonk, and my personal favorite, Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal. Hey, it’s not just me, she has 423,451 rating on goodreads.com!
So now with Fuzz, we learn about law-breaking animals and killer-nature, and how us Homo Sapiens-types are challenged to deal with them. From the >1,900 moose killed on highways and train tracks to the thousands of bear home invasions, and hundreds of people killed all over the world by wild tigers, elephants, snakes etc. Did you know more than 100 people are killed by falling trees each year? Fuzz is about the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology, and there are an astonishing number of people out there trying to get a handle on it all - “animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and ‘danger tree’ faller blasters.”
The best part is that Roach (despite her unfortunate last name) is a super fun and funny writer. Sort of the Bill Bryson of kooky topics. Read it if you love learning about new weird things.
The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
I wanted so desperately to love this new book by Amor Towles. How could I not? His Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility are two of my all-time favorite books. I just kept trying, but found my mind wandering each time I tried, and I’m sort of freaking out about it.
Emmett is an 18-year-old boy recently released from prison for accidentally killing a bully in a fistfight. His dad has just died and his mom ran away from home years ago. So, with a trail of postcards from his mom, from along the Lincoln Highway (the first trans-American highway from NYC to Lincoln Park in San Francisco), Emmett decides he and his 8-year-old brother Billy should head out west to find her. However, the trip gets sidetracked by a colorful (and to me annoying) cast of characters I just couldn’t seem to care about. I wanted Emmett and Billy to find their mother, and was angry with all the other characters slowing them down. Then Emmett and Billy finally got back on the road for San Francisco, and the book ended without them finding their mom. So, I was disappointed.
Everyone and their dogs seem to love this book so you may too! Maybe I’ll try it again later.
The Light Years, by Chris Rush This book was exhausting and depressing. It was also a beautifully written kaleidoscope of a story. I loved it. I hated it.
Raised in a well-to-do family on the east coast by one of those self-loathing fathers who can only tolerate their nothingness by bringing everyone down with them, and a mother who has completely cast out her feelings because that is the only way she can get up and face the world each day, it’s no wonder Chris Rush and his siblings end up being a bunch of druggies pin-balling from one disaster to another.
I was so angry at everyone in this book, I wanted to scream at them, “Stop rationalizing your stupidity and get your shit together.” But I guess when you have no role model for having shit together, at least you have an excuse. Druggies posing as profits though, that burned my butter.
Chris Rush goes from what seems like the bottom to an even unimagined deeper bottom in each new chapter of the book. Doing acid at the age of 12, to getting thrown own of school for selling drugs at 14, to living on drugs on the side of a mountain at 18, to selling more drugs and getting beat to hell by hardened criminals, and on and on.
I alternately wanted to beat Rush over the head with his book, and to cradle him in my arms and thank him for his beautiful life’s narrative. Mostly, I’m just glad he survived.
Read it, but know it’s harsh, hard, ugly, and lovely.
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