California Literary Review

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

Jem Bloomfeld — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:36:12 +0000

The violent and crude final pages of the book force us to scrutinise our feelings over the last three hundred pages – did we will this? Are we guilty of this ending, if only by five percent? The brutal inanity of the dialogue is a warning that in Le Carré’s world, we don’t get to argue over the proportions and scale of what we set in motion.

The Drawings of Alfred Kubin

Paul Comstock — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:29:53 +0000

Kubin had something quite different in mind: with his hallucinatory incantations he was seeking to disturb the viewer; he felt driven to solve the riddle of humankind and creation in a spellbinding act.

Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America by Meredith Mason Brown

Elinor Teele — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:36:49 +0000

It was brutal stuff. Massacres, scalpings, crops burned, winters with only salted meat to eat – and this on both sides. Again Boone survived this melee, but it took a great deal of guile to do it. When his daughter Jemima was kidnapped by a Cherokee and Shawnee war party, for instance, he needed his backwoods know-how to track them down quickly and shoot the offenders.

Love Junkie by Rachel Resnick

Kelly Hartog — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:06:00 +0000

It takes an enormous amount of courage for Resnick to put her life story on the page. Her writing is as stripped, raw and intense as her emotions, and at times you don’t want to read further. But you do, anyway, with a kind of abject horror. The two main men that parade through her life, who ultimately woo, use and abuse her are truly the type of guys your mother would warn you to stay far away from.

Driftless by David Rhodes

John Holt — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:10:41 +0000

In his first book in more than thirty years Rhodes proves with ease why when he stopped writing after a paralyzing motorcycle crash in 1977 he was considered one of this country’s finest writers.

What’s Killing the Honeybees?

Paul Comstock — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:57:26 +0000

"So the bigger conclusion is that we have soaked our landscape in toxic chemicals, many of which can interact to form even more toxic compounds, and there is absolutely no regulation or testing of this mixing. Most beekeepers and researchers I’ve spoken with believe pesticides are one factor, working in conjunction with introduced parasites, viruses, bacteria, and fungi, and quite possibly with deteriorating living conditions for bees. Bees could handle one or two of these stressors, but not all of them."

Events Leading to America’s Involvement in Vietnam

Rufus Phillips — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:49:49 +0000

Given the political vacuum in the South, a Communist takeover of all of Vietnam within two years, or even less, seemed unavoidable. Beyond vague ideas of somehow rallying the Vietnamese in the South and contingency plans for creating stay-behind agents to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Vietminh, the U.S. had little idea of how to prevent a complete Communist take-over.

Résistance by Agnès Humbert

Elinor Teele — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:38:49 +0000

The early resistors soon discover that the Nazis don’t view their activities with similar lightheartedness. Oblivious to the reason why a German car might be parked outside the hospital her mother is in, Humbert walks straight into hell. A member of the Gestapo has infiltrated and betrayed their group, and she and her friends are rounded up for a show trial. It is only April 1941. What follows is an account that tests our 21st century belief in rationalism.

School Rampage Killers: A Psychological Portrait

Paul Comstock — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:00:10 +0000

The shooter had convinced himself that killing was gutsy and masculine. Based on his misreadings of Nietzsche and from repeated viewings of the Oliver Stone film, Natural Born Killers, he had convinced himself that the killer was a kind of superior being, and that killing constituted a form of “Natural Selection.”

The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River in the Atlantic by Stan Ulanski

John Holt — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:53:00 +0000

Aside from providing an easily assimilated scientific and historical overview, The Gulf Stream describes and mammoth natural system that helps drive the living organism that is earth. In these regards Ulanski has done his job as a writer.

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx

Elinor Teele — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:47:03 +0000

Things are never fine just they way they are in Annie Proulx’s new collection of Wyoming stories. Women imperil themselves on mountains, animals go tits-up in ditches, young and old end up blighted or dead. Even the Devil can’t quite seem to make things work. Life is tough, Proulx says, and I ain’t peddling corn syrup.

Dr. Shashi Tharoor: Understanding India

Paul Comstock — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:33:50 +0000

"India is a status-quo power: it wants nothing that Pakistan has. Pakistan’s rulers, however, are obsessed with Kashmir, which they have repeatedly tried and failed to wrest from India through war and militancy, and with a desire to “cut India down to size” by bleeding it through terrorism. What needs to happen is for a new political culture to prevail in Pakistan, one that privileges peace, dialogue, co-operation, tourism and trade instead of resentment, bigotry, militarism, intolerance and violence."

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge

Jascha Kessler — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:32:17 +0000

Reflecting on DEAF SENTENCE, the reader can hear the echoes of awful laughter — that silent cacchination encountered everywhere in Beckett’s writing — which characterizes our present lot, with its extended, often forcibly prolonged, old age. Lodge’s transparent prose plays out in a sophisticated informal, everyday voice; his is artful writing that succeeds in that most difficult literary genre, Comedy.

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišic

Elinor Teele — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:24:48 +0000

Yet it is no accident that Aleksandar begins with an account of death, nor is it an accident that he wishes himself a magician, able to wave a wand and make things okay again. For tucked in the lines of his narrative we hear ominous rumblings, like shellfire in the distance. Communism is discredited, nationalist sentiment is on the rise.

Christine MacDonald on the Corruption of the Environmental Movement

Paul Comstock — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:42:28 +0000

"But after watching environmentalists blatantly engage in greenwashing for their corporate sponsors, I can tell you that once a group takes money from a corporation and comes to rely on the continued flow of those dollars to run programs and pay salaries, it loses its ability to be a critic and a watchdog. One high-ranking environmentalist once told me he shies away from seeking corporate funds because corporate executives 'tend to want to buy you up first and talk about conservation later.' I think that is largely the norm."

David Harris on Bill Walsh, the Brilliant Coach of the San Francisco 49ers

Paul Comstock — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:32:56 +0000

"Once, as an assistant coach at Cal, he knocked a guy out who flipped him the bird when out driving with his family. Bill got in his last known public fist fight at the age of 65. 'Genius' or not, he was not someone to be trifled with."