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True Stories Book Lovers' Cornucopia by Lois Wadsworth ItŠs no exaggeration to say that some days my life-long love of books overwhelms me. My office bookcase groans with the attempt to hold the volumes that crowd its shelves and spill over to the floor, defying gravity and every attempt to bring order to their numbers. Some days 10 or more books arrive. Yet nearly every day, at least one new book comes in that compels me to pick it up, read the first 10 pages and think †I want to read thisÿ or question †Who is perfect for this book?ÿ I donŠt always get it right, but I am getting closer to figuring out who among the steady contributors to EWŠs twice-a-year reading issues will want to read a particular book. Sounds simple, but if youŠve ever given or received a book you know how tricky it is. Sometimes itŠs as if the book comes with the unconscious imperative: READ THIS! Hard sells are not a good idea with either readers or writers. Too often it assures that a good book drops straight to the bottom of the to-read-someday, maybe, list. On the other hand, a steady stream of new books from publishers requires readers, reviewers and editors to be selective. I canŠt remember exactly when I realized that I would not be able to read every book in the library, maybe my first year in college. Today I accept limits to my voracious appetite for books by letting other peopleŠs recommendations in part steer my interest. For this reading issue, EW reviewers went crazy for biography and memoir, which together make up more than 40 percent of all the books reviewed. True stories enliven the reading experience. Some reviewers here are old friends. David Johnson and Josephine Bridges have written about books for EW for many years. They spent this school year in Russia, where Josephine taught English as a second language, and Dave wrote poems and studied Russian. Johnson reviews a book on Zen koans and a biographical portrait of the man who invented standard time. While Alice Tallmadge now reports for The Oregonian, she still reviews books for EW. For this issue, she writes about Diane McWhorterŠs Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Civil Rights movement as well as Judith BarringtonŠs stirring memoir. WeŠre glad that EW editor Ted Taylor finds time in his busy schedule to read outdoor adventures for us. This summer he takes a look at extreme sports and tells us about an amazing rescue at sea. Brett Campbell, EW music critic and assistant editor at Oregon Quarterly, reviews Barbara EhrenreichŠs book on the working poor in America and David HajduŠs evaluation of the 1960s influential icons Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez FariÀa and Richard FariÀa. EW customer service manager Geneva Miller reviews a memoir by Marcola resident John Anderson. And EW reporters Orna Izakson and Bobbie Willis give us the skinny on Advanced Sex Tips for Girls (Izakson) and The Last American Man (Willis).   Three reviewers new to our pages include Holly Knight, who found two nonfiction books for herselfÉ an HIV-infected motherŠs memoir and an ecologistŠs approach to birth É at the Eugene Public Library, where she takes her young daughter for picture books. In the last few months, Mara Thygeson finished grad school and stepped into a full-time job, but she found a minute to share with us her reflections on a tantalizing biography of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Rob Weiss works by day as an EW classified account executive, but at night he reads good fiction, such as the National Book Award finalist he reviews here. WeissŠs reviews of Alan LightmanŠs The Diagnosis and Thom McGuaneŠs new novel help Josephine Bridges and me fill out the fiction section. Bridges falls in love with the short stories of Kevin Canty and Marisa Silver. I review Debra Magpie EarlingŠs fabulous debut novel, Perma Red; Portland writer Nicole MonesŠs lovely second novel, A Cup of Light; and Andrew MillerŠs Oxygen, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Unable to resist the pull, I also review Sebastian FaulksŠs peerless biographies of three English men worth remembering and Judy BluntŠs indelible memoir about growing up on a ranch and then leaving it, Breaking Clean. In the spirit of friendly endorsement, here are 22 books weŠve read and found worthy of your time. ItŠs an eclectic sampling, as always, but we hope it inspires you to take books to read in the cabin, at the beach or in the tent this summer. ItŠs another fine way to relax and enjoy a beautiful Oregon summer. Maybe Vinny (above) will share his picture book with you. General Nonfiction How the Other Half Works By Brett Campbell Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Henry Holt, 2002. Paperback, $13. We usually hear about poverty in the abstract: wage levels, unemployment rates, housing prices. The insightful writer Barbara Ehrenreich decided to explore the reality. For a year she journeyed though AmericaŠs working class, living in trailer parks and scary hotels, working as a maid in Maine, a waitress in Florida, a nursing home aide then a Walmart clerk in Minnesota, trying É and failing É to live solely off her paychecks. She returned with a bleak but vitally important portrait of what it means to be a working poor person in America, even during the so-called boom years that preceded the recession. The near-impossibility of making a living on todayŠs penurious wage levels, even working two jobs, will appall most of her middle-class readers. The majority of American workers earn less than a living wage É that is, with necessities, health insurance and child care, but without restaurant meals, internet access and so on. EhrenreichŠs other disturbing discovery is the creeping authoritarianism of todayŠs repressive, demeaning low-wage workplace, superficially softened by a balm of buzzwords (calling wage slaves †associatesÿ for example). Indignities include drug tests now required in 80 percent of such jobs, brainwashing personality tests and the dictatorial behavior of those whoŠve crossed over into management, now rewarded for their petty, harsh, controlling behavior. The system quashes the self-esteem of non-unionized workers, making them feel less deserving of the decent wages and better working conditions they clearly merit and that their employers (such as multibillionaire Walmart Sam Walton) can afford. Her approach could easily degenerate into condescension, mere editorializing or self-righteousness. But unlike middle-classers who cling to the self-serving illusion that they deserve their privileges because they worked so hard for them, Ehrenreich acknowledges her advantages É health club workouts, high protein diets, credit worthiness, education, insurance É that lie beyond the reach of her co-workers. She shows that those at the bottom of the ladder work at least as hard as those at the top but reap only a fraction of the return. Her honesty, emotional commitment and detailed reporting make Ehrenreich an ideal spy in the house of low-wage labor. And her naturally brisk journalistic style keeps this chronicle of drudgery moving. ItŠs further enlivened by her tart, wry and often bleak humor, as when her cleaning crew searches a mansion for an †appropriately humble entrance.ÿ And it profits from her keen observation that her coworkersŠ half-smoked cigarettes find their way back into the pack and her repellent but essential disquisition on the varieties of shit a maid encounters when cleaning a toilet bowl. The working poor are increasingly ignored by media-tainment conglomerates interested in presenting a rosy fantasy to keep them from questioning a system that condemns them to the tedious, exhausting labor Ehrenreich adeptly chronicles. I hope this brave book encourages more writers to raise their gazes from their navels and apply their skills to telling stories that matter.   Hate at Home in the U.S. by Alice Tallmadge Carry Me Home, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter. Simon & Schuster, 2001. Paperback, $17. Pulitzer Prize 2001. After the Sept. 11 attack on New York City, a question oft-repeated around the country was, †Why do they hate us so much?ÿ One need only read a chapter of Diane McWhorterŠs 2001 Pulitzer-prize winning Carry Me Home to understand that hate is not the province of Arab terrorists, Nazis, Communist dictators or power-mad tyrants who rule in far-away, chaotic countries. As the history of the civil rights movement indisputably shows, hate É as swaggering and self-righteous as any terrorist quoted in the past eight or nine months É has ruled in the U.S. as well. Home grown hate was sanctioned by local business leaders, state officials, police, media, the FBI and even the U.S. government. Throughout the post-World War II South, it was no secret that members of the Ku Klux Klan É often members of local police forces É beat up and terrorized blacks and bombed their homes. Invariably the crimes went unseen and unpunished. Segregation was as deeply rooted as the class system. Strom Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, assured the crowd who made him a presidential nominee in 1948 that †thereŠs not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools.ÿ But Thurmond is nowhere near the most vile of the racist characters McWhorter exposes to scrutiny. Sadly, there are hordes of them, each a despicable image of what can happen to men fed and beset by hate. Among them are Ace Carter, an anti-Semitic Klansman; former Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace; and Bull Conner, BirminghamŠs notorious Public Safety Commissioner, whose defiant racism was immortalized in photographs that showed him using fire hoses and vicious German shepherd dogs to control marching children. And there is Robert Edward Chambliss, a racist bootlegger with a penchant for explosives and the nickname of †Dynamite Bob.ÿ ChamblissŠs first big bang was bombing the home of a black union miner in 1947. Sixteen years later, in September 1963, Chambliss along with some still un-convicted cohorts, bombed BirminghamŠs 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls. The first six months of that tumultuous year in Birmingham had already seen the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr. and his subsequent †Letter from Birmingham Jail.ÿ It had seen the movement falter, then re-ignite by bringing hundreds of the cityŠs black children into the fold as marching martyrs. It had felt the brunt of midnight bombings meant to destroy movement leadership, and the first race riot of the modern civil rights era. By the time 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, McWhorter writes, segregation was in its †death throes.ÿ The murder of the four girls helped hasten its legal demise. It took 14 years, but in 1977 Chambliss was convicted of murder in the bombing. He died in prison in 1985. In May 2000, two other suspects were charged with murder in the incident. This past May, one of them, Bobby Frank Cherry, 71 was found guilty by a Birmingham jury. He faces automatic life inprisonment. Fortunately, the movement had leaders whose convictions ran deeper than the forces marshaled against them. Among them were Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, Jim Bevel, Wyatt Walker, Andy Young, Charles Billups, Carter Gaston and King himself. Their common goals didnŠt protect them from disagreements over strategies and power struggles. These men were courageous and visionary, but also human. In this complex, incredibly well-researched book, McWhorter shows how the civil rights movement not only had to face down individuals such as these but also deal with a deeply rooted institutional acceptance of racist brutality at all levels of government, law enforcement and the general public. It is dense, gripping reading. And every word is evidence that hate has infected our own history. We know how it works and how its spreads. Hopefully we are learning how to heal it.   Elemental Madness by Ted Taylor Coming Back Alive by Spike Walker. St. Martins Press, 2001. Hardcover, $24.95. Spike Walker was a commercial fisherman in Alaska for 20 years and got his fill of grueling labor, extreme weather, risky business, catastrophe and heroism. Now heŠs trying his hand at writing, and this is his third book. What he lacks in finesse and art he more than makes up for in authenticity and dramatic subject matter. This latest book describes the U.S. Coast GuardŠs attempts to rescue the crew of the fishing boat La Conte in 100-mph winds and 90-foot seas off the coast of Alaska in January 1998. WalkerŠs account is based on taped interviews of the survivors of what has been described by some as †the greatest rescue of the century.ÿ He sets the tone in the first chapter with a description of an earlier helicopter rescue that ended in a disaster at sea: †Spinning within precise tolerances at blinding speeds, the tail rotor blades exploded upon impact with the sea water, instantly shearing off the four-inch-thick, 15-foot-long steel tail-rudder shaft. The initial impact with the water bent the tail section up. A microsecond later, the chopperŠs main rotor blades severed it from its own body ... when the main rotor blades plowed into the sea itself, they disintegrated upon impact, shattering like icicles fragmenting. ... In the panic of the moment, as the jolting black ice water roared into the inverted space of the helicopterŠs cabin, the four gasping Coast Guardsmen fought to free themselves and get out. Those who gained the surface faced what must have been a kind of elemental madness.ÿ All the characters in this book É from the dedicated Coast Guard helicopter pilots above to the fishermen fighting for life below É are larger than life. The author may be exaggerating for dramatic effect, or perhaps the kind of people who inhabit this cold, dark and deadly seascape are indeed exceptional in strength of character.   Bearing Witness by Holly Knight Having Faith: An EcologistŠs Journey to Motherhood by Sandra Steingraber. A Merloyd Lawrence Book, Perseus Publishing, 2001. Hardcover, $26. Near her daughterŠs first birthday, ecologist Sandra Steingraber speaks to the United Nations in Geneva about breast-milk contamination. †I know I want to speak as a nursing mother,ÿ she says. †I know also that I want to speak dispassionately about the evidence. But how to strike the right balance between the intimate and the empirical?ÿ SteingraberŠs answer is as straightforward as it is daring. Before she discusses the way pollutants magnify as they ascend the human food chain, before she points out that breast-fed human infants are the last link in a heavily polluted chain, she passes around a jar of her own breast milk to the roomful of startled delegates. Striking the right balance remains a theme for her book, which is a far cry from a dreary discourse on the health effects of environmental contamination. Equal parts love letter, scientific treatise and a call to action, SteingraberŠs work is interwoven stories of the often hilarious and lyrical experiences of pregnancy, along with lucid discussions of organ formation and chilling inquiries into the amount of fetal toxicants released into our air and water. Some might consider it morbid that Steingraber reads about birth defects and lead poisoning while pregnant, but the hard reality is that somebody has to do it. Somebody has to tell the tale, and who better than a poet, public interest scientist, cancer survivor and expectant mother? Her version is as unflinching as it gets, but itŠs never hopeless. This is nowhere more evident than in her nuanced discussion of breast-milk contamination. Steingraber rejects the head-in-the-sand argument that mothers should breast feed merely because the many benefits outweigh any risks. Steingraber nursed her own daughter for two years, but she says we must ban persistent organic pollutants and demand non-toxic alternatives to chemicals like flame retardants, whose levels are still rising in breast milk. That certain contaminants have declined dramatically, she asserts, is the direct result of worldwide movements to stop toxic pollution at its source. †The way we repay this debt É and continue the process of detoxification É is to continue the struggle,ÿ she writes.   Relationship Survival by Orna Izakson Advanced Sex Tips for Girls by Cynthia Hiemel. Simon & Schuster, 2002. Hardcover, $22. The main thing I remember about Cynthia HiemelŠs original Sex Tips for Girls is her icebreaker suggestion: Ask guys about point spreads. Point spreads? TheyŠve got something to do with sports, and she swore all men had theories theyŠd happily expound on for hours. Her uproariously funny update, Advanced Sex Tips for Girls, is less of a how-to manual and more survival primer for a smart woman with reasonable expectations of functional relationships. Hiemel gets into the history of female/male relationships during key decades of the last century, boundary issues, bitchiness as survival mechanism and attractant, and tells women who not to date. The book is laugh-out-loud funny, catty, opinionated, savvy and simply right. Her chapter †What are boundary issues?ÿ is remarkably deft, making the notion clear even to someone in major denial, while simultaneously showing how counterproductive boundarylessness is. For example: †Having boundary issues severely hampers oneŠs ability to have healthy relationships, but they are excellent for causing gargantuan panic attacks.ÿ In †Dater Beware,ÿ Hiemel reminds you away from the obvious and the not-so obvious. The former category includes, married men, serial killers, †men who are out of their fucking minds,ÿ and addicts. (†Your basic addict is not a bad person but is, in fact, too fucking charming.ÿ) The not-so-obvious list includes The †/ÿ Guys (as in carpenter/musician, housepainter/ sculptor É sound familiar?) who are †swoonyÿ in youth but never grow up into real partner material. She forbids readers to even talk with a Renaissance Man, who will always be condescending and poor É while blaming The System for not recognizing his greatness. †You may think your Renaissance man is not like this,ÿ she warns. †But they are all like this. The underlying theme of the Renaissance man is that his entitlement expectations are off the chart.ÿ Hiemel does lapse into assumptions that all women become interested in shoes, handbags and excessive amounts of ice cream. And most of the content aims at women who date men, although some of the recommendations apply to any relationship. If you can get past these annoyances, the book is a great light read, feminist in a lipstick sense, and it can even help mend a broken heart.   End of the Rope by Ted Taylor Dangerous Games by Andrew Todhunter. Anchor Books, 2001. Paperback, $12. This collection of short essays profiles some exceptional men and women obsessed with outdoor adventures that go way beyond what we normally consider †extremeÿ sports. Andrew Todhunter takes us along with him as he follows scuba divers under ice, scales frozen waterfalls in Scotland and explores treacherous California caverns É describing in detail the technical equipment and how itŠs used. Some of the adventures Todhunter describes are beyond his modest daring. Most notable is his tale of the late Steve Sinclair, a burley Californian famous for sea kayaking in the worst gales of winter É charging head-on into 20-foot waves. Todhunter also writes of the exploits of alpinist Dan Osmon, who discovered that falling from cliffs and structures is more exhilarating than climbing them. Osmon will tumble more than 600 feet using standard climbing equipment instead of bungee cords. The author writes for National Geographic, The Atlantic Monthly and other national magazines and has developed a meticulous, introspective and very readable style of adventure writing. This little book is sure to become one of the classics of the genre.   Biography / Memoir The Artist, the Pilot and the Spy by Lois Wadsworth The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives by Sebastian Faulks. Vintage Books original, 2002. Paperback $14. Originally published in U.K by Hutchinson, 1996. Novelist Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Charlotte Gray) brings his fiction writing facility to his first work of nonfiction, The Fatal Englishman, three short biographies of British men who lived interesting lives and died young. The painter Christopher Wood killed himself dramatically at age 29. Battle of Britain fighter pilot and writer Richard Hillary died at age 23 when the plane he was flying on a night mission crashed. Brilliant scholar, language specialist, journalist and probable Cold War spy Jeremy Wolfenden died of alcohol poisoning at age 31. They were vividly remembered by the men and women of their generations as outstanding personalities. Faulks writes in a compelling, straightforward style, using both a novelistŠs ability to create the mood and tone of a moment with the skill of a reporter for the telling detail. He offers a fair, thoughtful analysis of each manŠs contributions and failings. Perhaps Faulks chose an artist, a pilot and a spy not only because these individuals were worthy of a place in history, but also because they lived colorful lives in times and places long romanticized through novels and movies É Paris in the 1920s, Britain in the early days of WWII and Moscow in the paranoid 1960s. Faulks finds some similarities between the men. Kit Wood and Richard Hillary were both close to their mothers all their lives but alienated from their fathers. Wolfenden had a famous father but was a loner in a household of children. WoodŠs formal education was interrupted by a serious illness in adolescence, but both Hillary and Wolfenden attended boarding school from an early age. Although from middle-class families, as adults they all lived exciting if dissolute lifestyles, unique for their period. Wood was bisexual, Hillary was a ladiesŠ man and Wolfenden was a reckless homosexual, yet all were charismatic and loved by both men and women. None created wealth; all lived by their wit and talent.. Wood took his art seriously, eventually finding his own painting style, but an opium addiction contributed to mental instability. His paintings, however, continue to increase in value, Faulks writes. An RAF hero, Hillary burned his face and hands terribly in a crash and underwent numerous surgeries. Nevertheless, before his death he wrote and published a memoir, The Last Enemy, that Faulks argues is influential even today. Wolfenden, once known as the cleverest boy in Britain, was drawn to espionage, Faulks observes, because as a gay man, he had been playing a false role in society all his life. A fascinating, good read, The Fatal Englishman deserves a spot on the table next to your bed.   Sixties Icons By Brett Campbell Positively Fourth Street: The Life and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez FariÀa and Richard FariÀa by David Hajdu. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001 Hardcover, $25. North Point Press, 2002. Paperback, $14. Two of my favorite 1960s artifacts are Bob DylanŠs magnificent Highway 61 Revisited and Richard FariÀaŠs equally glorious novel, Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me. Two immensely talented yet then-relatively unknown artists crossed paths for a few manic months in the early Ô60s. Sharing a taste for poetry, pot and rhythmic music, they caroused, sang, recorded, imbibed, inhaled and exchanged visionary ideas in Paris, London and New York. Dylan and FariÀa had a lot in common É both were ambitious, self-invented characters, who fabricated colorful life stories to compensate for relatively conventional backgrounds. Both rode successful female folk singers to fame. Both loved women named Baez. And in 1966, both were involved in serious motorcycle accidents at the peak of their achievements. Only one survived. David HajduŠs compelling chronicle of these flawed geniuses and the talented musician sisters who loved them É Joan and Mimi Baez É cinematically evokes the storied early-Š60s Greenwich Village folk scene. As he did in his biography of Billy Strayhorn, Hajdu brings them all to life via strong reporting, deployment of detail and clear judgments about his characters. You can feel the 1950s becoming the 1960s as folkie earnestness gives way to manic rocker irony and poetic imagery. Joan Baez is portrayed as sincere but almost as egomaniacally ambitious (if not as opportunistic) as Dylan, before redeeming herself by generously advancing the careers of two up-and-comers whom she first detested, then admired É †that little toadÿ Dylan, whom she repeatedly forced on her reluctant audiences, and FariÀa. Joan was simultaneously jealous and protective of her little sister, Mimi. But Mimi used FariÀaŠs attentions to escape JoanŠs shadow and her familyŠs control. Like FarinaŠs first wife, famed folk singer Carolyn Hester, Mimi found it difficult to abide his mercurial passions, his ambition, and his paternalistic if romantic behavior. And Dylan? He hooked up with Joan at least partly to attain wider popularity, on the advice of FariÀa, who had done the same with Hester. Then Dylan embarked on series of betrayals or rejections of friends, including FariÀa and most of the admittedly narrow-minded folkie zealots. He also shed lovers, including Joan, and left music, becoming a vindictive, out-of-control speed freak before his motorcycle crackup. (What a movie it would make, with Johnny Depp as Dylan.) The real payoff is HajduŠs vivid portrait of the rakish FariÀa, one of the most fascinating figures of the era, who wrote one of the most promising debut novels ever, and who anticipated DylanŠs marriage of rock and poetry. Then É in true, romantic, James Dean style É FariÀa flamed out at age 29 in a motorcycle crash on the California coast, hours after parties celebrated his novelŠs publication and MimiŠs 21st birthday. He was a sexy, charming raconteur, a middling singer and musician, but a powerful writer of songs and stories. (The best man at Mimi and RichardŠs wedding was Thomas Pynchon, a source for HajduŠs book.) FariÀa emerges here as a Dean Moriarty figure with the creativity to back up the charisma. The magnitude of his loss is incalculable. HajduŠs marvelous book gives a tantalizing taste of what might have been, as well as what was. I hope it turns others on to two neglected but essential items of the 1960s: FariÀaŠs novel, and the funny, fierce, beautiful music he made with Mimi, the best of which was recently reissued as Pack Up Your Sorrows: The Best of the Vanguard Years.   A Time for Greatness By David Johnson Timelord by Clark Blaise. Pantheon Books, 2000. Hardback, $24. Sir Sanford Fleming was a 19th century Canadian who spearheaded the struggle to standardize world time. This biography of Fleming includes the authorŠs thoughtful treatise on the baffling re-occurrence that keeps on ticking. Born in Scotland in 1827, Fleming was apprenticed to a surveyor for six years and then sailed to Canada as an ambitious 18 year old. Other Scots who crossed the pond were Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell and shipping mogul Andrew Cunard. It was a heady time for these industrial revolutionaries. FlemingŠs vigorous rise to fame encapsulates an era of bountiful opportunities for the inventive and intrepid. He designed a street map of Toronto, took the first soundings of Toronto harbor, built railroads across the new nation and a laid a cable across the Pacific. HeŠs also known for engraving the first Canadian postage stamp and founding the Royal Society of Canada where he delivered his papers on standard time. The thunderous advent of the steam locomotive had brought faster and easier travel along with soot, smoke and the hassle of coordinating time schedules based on sun dials and local whim. FlemingŠs response was to champion 24 standard time zones around the globe. In 1884, after seven geopolitically contentious years, delegates attending the Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., agreed that the beginning and end of the day would be the Greenwich Longitude. Although Fleming had wanted the prime dateline set in the Pacific, he had essentially won the major battle of a remarkable life.   Iconic Mountain Dude by Bobbie Willis The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. Viking Penguin, 2002. Hardcover, $24.95. Last monthŠs OPB broadcast of †Frontier Familyÿ showed how quickly the modern American withers in rough-hewn wilderness. That series was a painful if not mortifying reminder of how much weŠve forgotten in the name of modernity and progress. The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert is a similar kind of reminder. Eustace Conway, the subject and manifestation of the last American man himself, reminds us how much regression there is in so-called †progress.ÿ Conway, a child of the 1960s and Š70s, decides early in his life to let go of the modern comforts of his upper-middle-class upbringing in Gastonia, North Carolina. He trades comfort for some remnant of the frontier spirit, some coattail of a life down-to-earth. †By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree. By the time he was ten, he could hit a running squirrel at fifty feet with a bow and arrow. When he turned twelve, he went out into the woods, alone and empty-handed, built himself a shelter, and survived off the land for a week. When he turned seventeen, he moved out of his familyŠs home altogether ...ÿ Gilbert notes that the year Conway moved out was 1977, †the same year the film Star Wars was released.ÿ A living, breathing anachronism and a legend in his own time, Conway not only strives to make this natural way his life, but he also dreams of spreading the good word, of making it everyoneŠs way of life. He is part beautiful, idyllic mountain man; part cagey survivalist; part ruthless perfectionist; part evangelical preacher. It takes a lot of ego to keep all these parts running, and Conway has that kind of ego. He has troubled relationships with friends and with his family, especially with his verbally abusive father, who seems perpetually irritated and disappointed in him. Actually, Conway has a difficult time maintaining any relationships at all. It does, I think, keep coming back to that darned ego. Gilbert meets Conway in 1993, then spends years getting to know ConwayŠs life, not just his present life as iconic mountain dude, but his whole life. She writes ConwayŠs story with grace and exquisitely timed humor. She sets his story in a bigger-picture mode, pulling together classical and historical definitions of †real menÿ and making connections between a general male malaise and the confusion resulting from the Industrial RevolutionŠs move away from nature. Gilbert leans a bit too heavily toward armchair psychology here, while also distancing the book from its subject, Conway. Gilbert looks at ConwayŠs love life É a sad/sweet pattern of enthusiastic starts and heartbreaking stops. He has not figured out how to find a partner, and she suggests he may be incapable of compromising his life in order to make room for anyone else. The qualities Conway finds desirable in a woman (and he does actually keep a list) include: †Very healthy. Beautiful. Multilingual. Likes to work at tasks, i.e., farm/land/garden management.ÿ When Gilbert reads ConwayŠs list, she tells him, †IŠm really sorry, Eustace, but this isnŠt how love works.ÿ We want to cheer out loud. Gilbert balances ConwayŠs abrasive qualities with this tender, idyllic search for the modern frontier woman. We come away with a sense of Conway as a passionate, driven and truly, deeply flawed person, like us all. The story is not just about the last American man. ItŠs also the story of every American man É how he progresses and regresses, how he carves out a place in this world and survives.   Brazen Hussy by Mara Thygeson Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford. Random House, 2001. Hardcover, $29.95. Scintillating, charismatic and flamboyant Edna St. Vincent Millay seduced men and women, casting spells with her poetry. Savage Beauty is a juicy, fastidious history of the flame-haired Millay, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Born in 1892 and dead by 1950, she streaked through life like a comet in a dazzle of sonnets and sex. The eldest of two sisters, Millay grew up poor in Maine. Deserted by an alcoholic father, she was raised by her quirky mother, Cora, who once said, †I was a slut myself, so why shouldnŠt my girls be?ÿ Millay broke new ground in poetry but trampled on peopleŠs emotions in a cascade of discarded lovers. A femme fatale and the mother of free love, she titillated the masses with coy poems like: †I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die or move awayÿ Slender and petite, Millay wore purple silk gowns and crimson capes. Her voice was legendary for its mesmerizing effect on the large audiences across the country who flocked to her readings and made her the most famous poet in America. EdnaŠs husband, Eugen Boissevain, was an extraordinary man who not only tolerated EdnaŠs bisexual affairs but also encouraged them. Eugen made Edna his raison dŠetre. He guarded her daily writing domain and wrote most of her personal correspondences himself. A cheerful, charming host, he cooked the meals at their nude pool parties, organized every detail of their Paris, New York and country house lives and kept them swimming in alcohol. Eugen was so consumed by EdnaŠs increasing bouts of sickness, her hospitalizations and mental breakdowns, her alcoholism and morphine addictions that he neglected his own health. He died soon after a diagnosis of lung cancer, which we might see as love cancer. His death left Edna precariously balanced. A year after he died, Millay fell to her death down a flight of stairs, leaving behind a legacy of poems that inspired thousands of people to write poetry.   An Original, New Voice by Lois Wadsworth Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Hardcover, $24. Judy Blunt describes growing up on a ranch in Montana so remote the nearest town, Malta, was †an hour or more north over gumbo roads.ÿ She understood that she grew to meet the demands of that fierce country as naturally as the animals they raised and the plants that fed them all. The possibility of a different life was not present. A ranching life was all she wanted. She watched the women in her family and learned. She did what they did. But she observed the men as well. †I could rope and ride and jockey a John Deer as well as my brothers,ÿ Blunt writes, †but being female, I also learned to bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinion when the men were talking.ÿ Blunt valued family stories, jokes and tall tales, because they were the way people remembered what was important. Her first story came the summer she was four. She brought a big round cocklebur into the kitchen when company was present. †ÔA cactus just calved,Š she says, and holds up the baby to show it off, ÔI saw the whole thing.Šÿ After eighth grade, Blunt boarded in Malta to attend high school. During the summers before she graduated, she returned to the ranch but no longer felt she had a place there. As she had become a woman, reluctantly it must be noted, she had lost the opportunities to do the things she liked best and was relegated to womenŠs work, with all the denigration that the role carried. She was very angry that her brothers got to fight a wildfire that threatened the ranch, while she made sandwiches in the kitchen. When I read this part of BluntŠs story, memories of my own girlhood brought me close to tears. BluntŠs tale is not incredible because her father agreed to her engagement to a respected rancher who was 27 when she was just 15, nor that she married him and raised three children, but that she took her children and left ranching and her husband behind. Because leaving broke with three generations of family tradition and with ranching culture itself, the decision was difficult. But her creative life depended on it. Through these powerfully written, emotionally nuanced, uncompromising and non-judgmental stories, Blunt marks her place among new American writers you must read.   Emotional Truth by Alice Tallmadge Lifesaving: A Memoir by Judith Barrington. The Eighth Mountain Press, 2000. Paperback, $13.95. In her early 20s, Portland poet Judith Barrington spent three sun-drenched summers in Spain acting as a winery guide, living in a small town hotel, exploring a confused sexuality and kicking up dust on country roads while zooming around in her topless, sage-green sports car. But this idyllic-seeming life was a sham. Barrington, who grew up in England, was living as fast as she could in order to dodge the reality of her parentsŠ sudden death at sea when she was 19 and far from ready to let go of either of them. Barrington paints a portrait of that lovely, haunting time in her memoir. She lets us know up front about her parentsŠ untimely death, which occurred in 1963 when their cruise ship, Lakonia, caught fire during a Christmas voyage. While 905 of the travelers aboard were saved, her boat-loving father and sea-phobic mother were among those who didnŠt survive the frigid, inky black waters. We donŠt get the full story right away, because Barrington didnŠt let herself take it in for years. Instead we go with her to the country that for many years was her parentsŠ home and the one place where she could still feel close to them. The return to their graves, the reconstruction of what must have happened that disastrous night, the deeply buried grief all come much later. Instead, we glimpse what she allowed herself to experience in those days É portraits of townspeople who accepted a tall, pale English woman without prying; late-night gropings with men she cared little about; her blossoming yearning for women for whom she cared a great deal; the alcohol she used to block her feelings of loss and abandonment; and the brief oases of peace she found in the sea and surrounding hills. Barrington is the author of Writing Memoir, a guide she created from what she learned during the 10 years it took her to write Lifesaving. The helpful guide tells, but Lifesaving shows why memoir can be a noble, myth-strewn quest that takes readers to a core of truth that resonates beyond the individual story.   You CanŠt Keep a Good Man Down By Geneva Miller Some Dusty Trails: Travels with Lefty by John Anderson. Many Rivers Ranch, 2001. 30475 Mohawk Loop, Marcola, OR 97454. Paperback. Imagine this: You are a strong, healthy young person, in love, newly married and ready to take on the world, headed toward success in whatever you endeavor. One evening on your way home from a movie, your vehicle is struck head-on by a drunk driver. Your spouse survives without serious injury, but you receive head injuries and are left paralyzed on your left side. Author John Anderson, currently of Marcola, suffered just such an injury. Some Dusty Trails is AndersonŠs reflection on his life since the night of the accident, almost 20 years ago. How Anderson has come to terms with his physical condition É he calls himself a †hemiplegicÿ É and his adventures since then make intense reading. Anderson talks about his efforts to make a life for himself and his family after his body no longer works as he wishes it to. He manages to find humor in the most difficult times, but the thing that shines through brightly is his ability to keep on going. He describes the way he needs to adapt in order to become what he always dreamed of being É a cowboy. He means not just riding a horse, but making an occupation of horse riding and the wilderness trekking he so loves. The writing is disjointed at times, but maybe thatŠs what a head injury does to one. And again, maybe thatŠs just the way Anderson is. ItŠs amazing what Anderson accomplishes trying to rehabilitate himself. Complete rehab seems impossible, and may very well be, but you canŠt help but be in awe of what he is willing to attempt despite limited physical control. Some Dusty Trails is an inspirational insight into one manŠs struggle to live his life to the fullest, no matter the hand he is dealt. Sure made me quit whining for a few days!   Emergency Autobiography by Holly Knight Penitent, with Roses: An HIV+ Mother Reflects by Paula Peterson. Middlebury College Press, University Press of New England, 2001. Hardcover, $24.95. Imagine you are a thirtysomething, Jewish, middle-class wife and mother. Imagine, too, that you consider yourself healthy and fit, but you have been plagued by mysterious illnesses on and off for over 10 years, some as benign as rashes, others as malicious as shingles. Now imagine that, near your sonŠs first birthday, you are tormented by rib-cage rattling coughs, afflicted by skull-piercing headaches, and two nights in a row, rip yourself out of sleep to find your pajamas soaking with sweat. Then, the mystery is solved. You are diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. ItŠs hard to imagine, if not impossible. For you, though, itŠs only a nightmare, one you can shake off. For Paula Peterson, itŠs her new life story. †There used to be many stories to tell,ÿ she says, †but now I have only one. The drama of illness is always central, relegating everything else to the status of subplot, or so it seems.ÿ The drama of PetersonŠs illness makes for gripping and inspiring reading. Soon after diagnosis, she calls all of her lovers from the past 10 years. (All of them as well as her husband and son test negative.) She volunteers for the San Francisco AIDS FoundationŠs HIV/AIDS hotline, where she develops an explicit and impressive sexual lexicon. She finds kinship at a retreat sponsored by Women Organized to Respond to Life Threatening Diseases, and she travels to Washington, DC to lobby Congress and vividly contradict the stereotype of a person with AIDS. Peterson stumbles only slightly when she tries to tell the other half of her story, that of her life before she was diagnosed. In a series of vignettes framed as a letter to her son, she describes college love affairs and early childhood experiences that shaped her as a writer. The contrast between the two stories is too stark, however. The portrait of the artist as a young woman canŠt hold a candle to the gritty memoir of the truth-telling AIDS activist. Winner of the non-fiction prize sponsored by the Bread Loaf WriterŠs Conference, PetersonŠs emergency autobiography is a must-read.   Poetry Encounter Dialogues By David Johnson Opening a Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters by Steven Heine. Oxford University Press, 2001. Paperback, $25. For those intrigued with koans, the enigmatic teachings of Zen Buddhism (what is the sound of one hand clapping?), this text offers translations and critiques of 60 of these always lively, often maddening anecdotes. Steven Heine, a professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University, focuses on koans from the classical period of Zen writings: Sung China (960-1279) and Kamakura, Japan (1185-1333). These †encounter dialoguesÿ between Masters, disciples and rebellious hermits impart the concepts of Zen as well as symbolically chronicle the history of early Zen Buddhist monasteries. The founding of a new monastery was called †Opening a Mountain,ÿ a reference to the elevation and isolation of many of these religious sites as well as a contest between a master and supernatural forces believed to abound in higher regions. According to Heine, entities resisting new monasteries included wizards, shape-shifters, magical animals and dangerous women. The author explains that successful struggles with mystic rivals allowed fresh paths to the summit of spiritual awakening. Heine offers a poem by Wang-wei (699-759) that captures the antagonistic animism found in many of these anecdotal koans: I didnŠt know where the temple was, Pushing mile upon mile among cloudy peaks; Old trees, Unpopulated paths, Deep mountains, somewhere a bell. Brook voices choke over craggy boulders, Sunrays turn cold in the green pines. At dusk by the bend of a deserted pond, A monk in meditation, taming poisonous dragons. Heine also presents commentaries that convey background information and reflections on each koan. Well worth the time for those who love the form.   Fiction This Is Not Home by Josephine Bridges Honeymoon and Other Stories by Kevin Canty. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2001. Hardcover, $21. Honeymoon is an unnerving collection, crafted from simple language staggeringly compressed, with not one word out of place. Kevin Canty is a deft and graceful prose stylist who writes about people itŠs hard to like but easy to empathize with. In †Scarecrow,ÿ Dan and Rhonda are driving across Texas in sweltering weather. †The argument they are not quite having rests in the air between them.ÿ When Dan spots †a black bundle of ragsÿ beside the highway, the couple must make that surprisingly difficult decision: whether to get involved. Turning the truck and trailer around isnŠt easy, and the desert seems more and more hostile with every mile, but they make the admirable choice, only to discover that they have narrowly missed becoming victims of a sinister ploy. †This is not home,ÿ thinks Dan. †This is not going to be.ÿ CantyŠs young people are believable É complicated and articulate, with just an edge of innocence. At a summer camp for fat children, when the protagonist of †Flipperÿ and his fellow campers †have swimming practice, like giant cabbages tumbled into the water, their noses fill and bleed with green lake.ÿ In †Red Dress,ÿ a boy whose name we never learn discovers his motherŠs affair and then dresses in her clothes. †She was still my mother, I was still her son. But everything after that was in code, ambiguous.ÿ In †Carolina Beach,ÿ Vincent courts Laurie at a summer resort in wintertime. Against the backdrop of damp, salty chill and boarded-up businesses, Vincent, bewildered by LaurieŠs grave illness and self-conscious about his own shortcomings, †doesnŠt know if he has the nerve to go through with this but he must act as if he knows.ÿ The story ends as the determined Vincent waits for Laurie to join him in bed. †He never once É give him this É he never wishes that he had not come.ÿ Put Honeymoon on your summer reading list, and be prepared to shiver. Wild Roses by Lois Wadsworth Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling. BlueHen Books, Penguin Putnam, 2002. Hardcover, $24.95. At least twice a year I find a book to review that is so good I want to shout its name to the rooftops. Perma Red, the first novel of gifted storyteller and accomplished writer Debra Magpie Earling, is such a book. SheŠs a member of the confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana and teaches at the University of Montana. Earling earns in every sentence the trust implicit in writer Louise ErdrichŠs succinct note: †It is my pleasure to welcome Debra Magpie EarlingŠs boldly drawn and passionate novel, Perma Red.ÿ Set on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, the convoluted tracks of Louise White ElkŠs story begin with memories of a nosebleed suffered as a 9-year-old girl in the Ursuline school she and other Indian children attend. Louise lies on the floor, trying to stop the bleeding that started when Baptiste Yellow Knife blew a fine white powder in her face and told her she would disappear. Now heŠs holding her head, whispering stories. †His voice was in her ear. She felt Sister Bernard pull Baptiste away from her. The back of her head danced with silver stars and Louise fell back into dreaming, a snagged fish released again to water.ÿ Hundreds of subtle patterns link Louise and Baptiste É human desire; community ties; the dry land, the woods, the river and the creatures who live there; tribal myths; personal dreams; family stories. Baptiste has always been different; some say heŠs got the sight of one of the †old ones.ÿ As Louise grows into a stunning looking, wild woman-child, BaptisteŠs possessiveness intensifies. †He became an Indian who was not afraid of being Indian, the worst kind, the kind nobody liked, neither the Indians nor the whites, the kind of Indian who didnŠt care if he was liked. ...And even though he seemed coarse to Louise and she wanted to avoid him she could not stop the desire she had to stand close enough to him to feel the heat of his chest.ÿ Many people are drawn into the vortex of their passion play. Mr. Bradlock, the Bureau of Indian Affairs social worker, tries to keep Louise in school. Charlie Kicking Woman, a married deputy who loves the beautiful young girl, brings her back to her Grandma each time she runs away. Jules Bart, a local white cowboy, doesnŠt even see Louise as a woman, only as an Indian. Harvey Stoner, a rich, unprincipled but influential white man, preys on LouiseŠs needs. Baptiste drinks too much and earns a reputation for fighting, and trouble follows Louise, even as she looks for what to do to make her life better. Like the slow dance on the reservation itself between the old ways and the new, Louise White Elk and Baptiste Yellow Knife must struggle until they find a way to be together peacefully. Debra Magpie Earling represents a new voice out of the rich earth of Native American life. Like Louise Erdrich, Sherm Alexie, James Welch, Leslie Silko and others, Earling tells stories we need to hear, creating pictures so compelling we must let them touch our hearts.   Loss by Rob Weiss The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman. Vintage, 2000. Paperback, $14. A National Book Award finalist. A man sets off to work one day, like any other day, but loses everything. While riding the subway in Boston, jammed in like sardines during the sweat of summer, the commuter temporarily loses his mind. Bill Chalmers also loses his briefcase with his wallet and cell phone. He forgets his name, where to get off, even where he had intended to go. After 24 hours wandering through the bowels of Beantown, mixing with muggers and bingo patrons, his memory inexplicably returns. He †could feel the long nothingness of death, and beside it this tingle of awareness as if he had been born at this moment.ÿ Chalmers recovers his mind but realizes he is not the same. The drive to excel and move up in his profession is gone. Work no longer stands at the center of his existence. Numbness develops in his hands, then spreads up his arms, leaving him unable to type and send email, so vital to the deals he brokers. An intolerable byproduct to those higher up the corporate ladder, his work suffers as the ailment progresses. He becomes lost inside the cutthroat corporate structure in which he can no longer compete. HeŠs also lost within the medical establishment. When a myriad of physicians canŠt find the cause of his illness, he becomes a guinea pig for their extensive, never-ending testing. Soon he is paralyzed from the neck down. He thinks of himself as no more than a brain stem thatŠs acutely aware of its situation. He is angry at all who fail him É his employers, unsympathetic despite nine years of faithful, excellent service; his physician, who wonŠt even take a stab at a diagnosis; his wife, who thinks of his illness only as it affects her own life. Mostly he is angry at himself, as if he had brought it on himself, a penance for not paying attention to the really meaningful things in life. Perfect for summer reading, Alan LightmanŠs novel is efficient and well-crafted. It grabs you in the first few pages, the story of this anyman caught up in something over which he has no control. Chalmers is strangely detached from his emotions as his physical self fails, and the markers of his identity fade. Knowing that he canŠt change his fate, he holds onto what he has, not what he has lost.   Treasure Hunt by Lois Wadsworth A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones. Delacorte Press, 2002. Hardcover, $24.95. Once again Portland writer Nicole Mones creates a small, contemporary world in China and brings it to life with crisp details, a lyrical understanding of the power of ancient objects, a heroine we can believe in and a love story that feels real but not ordinary. Her first novel, Lost in Translation (1998), was about an American woman in Beijing, an interpreter attached to an archeological quest for the long-lost bones of Peking Man. In A Cup of Light, an American woman, an art appraiser fluent in Chinese and deeply schooled in Chinese porcelain, lives in Beijing while examining 800 rare works of porcelain reputed to have been moved from the Forbidden City in 1931 and lost since. Lia Frank is not like Alice, who has many anonymous lovers before she falls in love with the Chinese archeologist, Lin Shiyang. Lia is more reserved, less eager to draw attention to herself, more contemplative. Her project demands all of her attention. She meets an American, Michael Doyle, who tests Beijing children for lead poisoning. Lia and Michael are attracted to each other, but each puts on the brakes and slows down the relationship until almost the last delicious moment. Lia is not just good at her work, but she also enjoys amazing feats of memory. Deaf since birth, she has turned an aptitude for remembering every piece of ceramics sheŠs ever seen or read about into a memory function that allows her to recreate entire scenes from history. It is not a supernatural skill, simply the story-making propensity of memory itself that comes to her aid as she puts together the stories behind the amazing artifacts she must determine to be fake or real. Once again Mones has created a story full of mysteries yet revelatory in its treatment of human nature. She introduces us to the underworld of art forgers and smugglers as well as to the more sunlit world that art dealers, buyers, sellers and appraisers move in. Characters such as Bai, an ah chan whose skills involve transporting undocumented pots from China into Hong Kong, are wondrously flawed. And MonesŠs descriptions of these exquisite cups, vases, jars, goblets, flasks, dishes and bowls make me want the tactile and spiritual experience of holding them, looking at how they hold the light and devouring each perfect brush stroke, glaze and color. Hoi moon!   Astonished and Resigned by Josephine Bridges Babe in Paradise by Marisa Silver. Norton, 2001. Hardcover, $23.95. An acerbic young woman named Babe explains in the title story in this collection that her birth certificate reads †Baby Girl Ellisÿ because her †mother couldnŠt think of anything better.ÿ She can choose her own name whenever she wants, she adds. Babe says her mother has spent her life †waiting for the next deliverance of bad luck. When it arrived, she met it with equal degrees of astonishment and resignation.ÿ In †Thief,ÿ Babe defends the boyfriend who abandoned her during a robbery attempt in which she was injured. She explains that heŠs †trying to get off the stuff. People fuck up all the time. ItŠs the history of the world.ÿ Babe returns to narrate the closing story, †The Passenger.ÿ When a couple abandons a suitcase in her airport limo, the contents bring her into less than enthusiastic contact with the police. In the detention room where Babe waits to be questioned, she notices †a copy of a fitness magazine on the table, as if you might want to tone up on your way to prison.ÿ There isnŠt a slouch among the other six stories. In †What I Saw from Where I Stood,ÿ a man whose marriage has been strained by his wifeŠs miscarriage stumbles into a kind of enlightenment as he looks out over a garbage heap. †For some reason, the garbage didnŠt bother meà Maybe the trash, the dirt, the plants, bugs, condoms É maybe they were all just fighting for a little space.ÿ In †Falling Bodiesÿ a broken tread on a basement staircase looms like a gathering typhoon over Will and Beth, whose baby may or not be WillŠs grandchild. In †The Missingÿ a holocaust survivor tells her daughter, †I put these numbers on my arm to cheat on a math test.ÿ I spent a weekend with Marisa SilverŠs characters, and I got used to having them around. I miss them. ThatŠs the highest praise anyone gets from me.   Death of the Old West by Rob Weiss The Cadence of Grass by Thomas McGuane. Knopf, 2002. Hardcover, $24. A Western set in Montana, Thomas McGuaneŠs new novel has all the elements that make up the genre: horses, cattle, mountains, weather, the open range, family dysfunction, deceit and declining values. ItŠs the story of the Whitelaws, a family whose lives will be tested when their controlling patriarch dies. The novel opens at the funeral of Sunny Jim Whitelaw, a local bottling plant magnate. We meet his two daughters, his wife, his scheming son-in-law, and Bill Champion, who may be the last true cowboy in the country. Sunny Jim had ruled with an iron will and blunt action, with little use for discussion. In death, heŠs placed a condition in his will: only if his daughter, Evelyn, and her estranged husband, Paul, reconcile can the family can get at his estate. Paul wears the black hat here. HeŠs out of place among ranchers and businessmen, but he can charm folks into doing things they might not do ordinarily. A scheming opportunist, he curried Sunny JimŠs favor by taking the rap for a drunken driving accident in which a man was killed. Paul was driving all along, but the older man was too drunk to remember. When Sunny Jim dies, Paul gets the reigns of the business as payment for his prison time. EvelynŠs marriage to Paul is over, but she recognizes her duty and reconciles with Paul for her mother and for her sister, not for herself. Her refuge is the ranch Bill Champion still works in the tradition of cattlemen. We slowly learn that Champion is more to the family than the ranch foreman, and less. Evelyn clings to the ideal he represents, even though she knows the truth about the ranch and its means of support. The novel flows well as one long stream of story-line without chapters and a plot that often turns on a dime. We see the family come to terms with the consequences of choices made throughout their lives. True to the genre, the villain gets his dues in The Cadence of Grass, but along the way we also see everyoneŠs flaws. Often funny and horrific at the same time, the novel is a testament to a lost way of life.   Hope by Lois Wadsworth Oxygen by Andrew Miller. Harcourt, 2002. Hardcover, $24. Booker Prize Finalist. This intimate look at the lives of two English brothers and their dying mother is interwoven with the ruminations of an Hungarian exile playwright living in Paris. At some time or another, each contemplates death, examines guilt and remorse, and accepts personal flaws and failings. The novel is not depressing. Rather, its characters look squarely at life, express what is true and grow into a new kind of love. Alice Valentine has always been a proud woman, and the helplessness she experiences as her cancer spreads is new and altogether hateful. She wants to die at home, with her two sons, daughter-in-law and granddaughter present. As soon as her youngest son, Alec, arrives in the West Country where he grew up, he realizes that he will not be able to meet the emotional demands of his motherŠs death. Period. Alec is eager for his motherŠs golden boy, Larry, to arrive and take over. But flying over from California with his difficult child, Ella, Larry wonders how he will keep from his wife, mother, daughter and brother the sleazy, downward trajectory of his professional life: †He was tired again, physically sluggish, but agitated by what seemed like a great backlog of thinking. He could not decide whether there were a great many decisions to be made, or none at all; whether his situation warranted some explosion of energy, some drama of action, or if he should simply wait and see...and, as he fell, not into sleep but into some parallel condition unique to the long-haul passenger, he began to imagine, and even to believe, despite the fact that in such a dearth of good air one could not entirely trust such ideas, that the last good road left open to him was failure itself. And this he decided to call hope.ÿ On a mission in Budapest, Lözlã Lözör finally admits to himself that the humiliating memories of his failure of will as a young freedom fighter during the 1948 Hungarian uprising have made him unhappy all his life. Lözör is the author of the play, Oxygen, which Alec is translating. Just as an oxygen tank is AliceŠs link to life, Oxygen is the tentative thread that connects Lözör with the Valentines, but the connection is metaphoric, no more. Award-winning writer Andrew Miller (Ingenious Pain, Casanova in Love) is a great find É a terrific storyteller, a stylish writer and a thoughtful, compassionate creator. He cherishes these flawed, human characters, which helps us see how like them we are É with our secret shames, hidden attitudes and overblown fears. He never preaches, but as a writer of elegant prose his gift is to illumine those ordinary moments, when tested, that we learn with surprise that we do have the strength and courage to go on.   Back to top Table of Contents | News | Views | Arts & Entertainment Classifieds | Personals | EW Archive