TITLES U - V - W

Under The Lake
Stuart Woods
Suspense
Fiction
Rating 4
Simon & Schuster
1987



A change of pace for this author, the story is a sort of Gothic horror tale set in a sleepy Southern town. John Howell is a blocked writer in a dull marriage who gets a chance to ghost-write the biography of an embarrassingly famous self-made man. He moves to a cabin in the woods so he can work without interruptions. Bizarre things begin happening at once. He gets involved with a newspaperwoman undercover in the town doing an expose on the sheriff. Everything revolves around the valley families who were flooded out with the new dam. The supernatural ending is surprising and satisfying.


Unnatural Causes
P.D. James
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Charles Scribners Sons
1967



The body of writer Maurice Seton washes ashore on the Suffolk coast, where he lived in a cottage in a small community. Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is in the area on vacation visiting with his aunt. The local Supt. Reckless investigates, dragging Dalgliesh along in his wake. Next, the deceased’s half-brother and heir turns up murdered. It turns out to be an elaborate plot by Seton’s crippled and bitter typist and Gal Friday, Sylvia Kedge, and his half-brother to get at his inheritance before he had a chance to change his will. Sylvia killed her accomplice to get all of the money for herself, and then she was killed mostly by accident during a roof-top rescue attempt in a bad storm. A bit pedantic for this genre, but meticulously written with sharp characterizations, and interesting throughout.


Up In Years (And Off My Rocker)
Clara Cassidy
Essay
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Self-Published by Clara McGrew Cassidy
1974



This is a tiny (40 pages) but delightful gem of a book, a perfect example of the saying “good things come in small packages.” The writer, in her 70s, retired from her job and puttered around the house for a few years. Then she began writing a weekly column called “Up In Years” for the local newspaper and her retirement took on a whole new character. This book is made up of short and peppy essays on a wide range of topics such as “Balanced Lives,” “A Rainy Day List,” “Put Your Timer To Work” and “Chase Away That Blue Mood.” All of the essays are clever and insightful, full of warmth, humor and good common sense. The writing is upbeat without being sappy, and offers practical advice in a kindly way that is easy to take. You feel this is a close friend or trusted advisor, someone you can turn to with questions or problems. She doesn’t sugar-coat the problems with aging, but she views them objectively and without bitterness or self-pity. A very uplifting and entertaining little treasure, and the author is to be commended for her keen observations, sprightly humor and positive outlook. Leaves you begging for more.



Valediction
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Delacorte Press
1984



Another in a series of books by this author featuring hard-boiled Private Investigator Spenser from Boston, this is a very strange story for a Spenser book and reminiscent of “Early Autumn” which was more a relationship book than crime drama. The first thing that happens in this story is that his girlfriend Susan Silverman gets her doctorate from Harvard and promptly leaves town to accept a job in San Francisco. (The book after this that continues Susan’s California adventures is “A Catskill Eagle.”) This throws Spenser into a spin that lasts the whole book. Susan sends Paul Giacomin to stay with Spenser and watch over him – everyone he knows (Hawk, Martin Quirk, Joe Broz, Vinnie Morris, Henry Cimoli, etc, etc.) asks him how he’s doing since Susan left. The manager of the dance group that Paul belongs to asks Spenser to find his girlfriend Sherry who has been kidnaped by a religious cult. Spenser goes to their headquarters and roughs them up and they produce Sherry, but she doesn’t want to leave. He has nothing else to do, so he looks a little deeper into the church’s finances and finds ties to a crooked construction company. It appears that the church is laundering money for the crooks. The church’s leader admits to the ruse and is set to testify against them. Then the construction boss is murdered and things begin to look a little different. It turns out that Sherry and the church leader were selling drugs through their various branches and using the construction company as a smokescreen. In a weird, disjointed denouement, the dance manager and church leader kill each other and Sherry shoots Spenser before she is killed. Hawk brings Spenser to the hospital with bullet wounds in the chest and requires 15 hours of surgery before he is out of the woods. A real departure for Spenser books – murky, depressing and uncharacteristically aimless. Even more depressing reading, because you already know that Susan doesn’t come back at the end.


Violets For Mr. B
Margaret Jensen
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Here’s Life Books
1988



By the author of “First We Have Coffee,” and other similar works, this book relates the early years of the author’s nursing studies and internship in area hospitals. Told in an easy conversational style, the vignettes are alternately funny, sad, poignant or surprising. The author’s strong faith and sense of family make her books more like visiting with a favorite friend.


Vivid Notions
Emma Jensen
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine Books
1996



American heiress Vivian Redmond is sent to visit relatives in England to enjoy a season in London. She finds that there is circulating at that time a series of poems of unknown origin (but presumably Byron) describing the almost indescribably perfect ideal of a woman – and it seems to describe Vivian exactly. This sets London its ear and gives Vivian no end of unwanted attention by curiosity seekers. Another distant relative who keeps after her is Noel, the noted playboy, Lord St. Helier, who is smitten with her spiritedness. She of course finds him odious in the extreme. There follows a lot of activity, outings and dances and costume balls and whatnot, plus trying to uncover the identity of the unknown poet (it turns out to be Byron’s niece or something in a totally incomprehensible sub-plot) and of course, it ends happily. Well-written in a jaunty, informal style.


Wake Me When It’s Funny
Garry Marshall
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Adams Media
1995


Writer, TV producer and movie director Garry Marshall has written a lively and funny book about his life. From humble beginnings in the Bronx, through early days writing for stand-up comics, then on to his successful TV career and hit movies, his story is consistently interesting and engaging. Loaded with anecdotes, advice and laughs, a very satisfying and extremely entertaining book.


Who Moved My Cheese?
Spencer Johnson, M.D.
Self-Help
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam’s Sons / Penguin Putnam
1998



Dr. Johnson is a famous motivational speaker and author of other books, such as “The One Minute Manager” (with Kenneth Blanchard), “The Precious Present,” “Yes or No,” plus a series of books for young people that highlight a particular virtue using a biography of a historical figure. This short book (under 100 pages) is nothing but a fleshed-out anecdote from a motivational seminar about dealing with change. It’s a very entertaining story about four characters (Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw) who travel around in a maze looking for cheese. (Here, the cheese is a metaphor for anything in your business or personal life that makes you happy.) They find a wonderful large stash of cheese and settle in to enjoy it. After a while, they become accustomed to having this cheese in this spot, and feel it should always be there and they are entitled to it. So when one day, they arrive and discover the cheese is all gone, it comes as a very unpleasant surprise. Sniff and Scurry go charging off, back into the maze to find more cheese. But Hem and Haw instead become angry, depressed and incapable of making any adjustments. They keep staying in the same place and doing the same things and just expect the cheese to return because they want it to. They have become immobilized by their fears – fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of trying something new. Finally, Haw realizes he has no other alternatives, so he goes back out into the maze looking for new cheese. It’s not easy, and he feels frightened, discouraged and inept. But after a while, he gains confidence as he draws on reserves of strength he didn’t know he had, and begins to embrace the concept of change, and it give him a sense of mastery over circumstances, and puts him in charge of his own destiny. He writes sayings on the walls (like “Old beliefs do no lead you to new cheese” and “When you move beyond your fear, you feel free”) to help anyone who follows him. The books makes a lot of valid points in an entertaining and painless way. It suffers from having the cheese story surrounded by an opening and closing section of a group of young people discussing their lives and careers, and how change affects them. This kind of literary conceit almost always falls flat, since the characters are ciphers, and the dialogue is awkward, forced and totally unbelievable. This book has a lot to recommend it, and professional people rave about it. But it’s amazing to me that they can charge $20 for a book that is basically a shaggy-dog story and not much else.


The Widening Gyre
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Delacorte Press
1983



Senatorial candidate Meade Alexander has gotten some death threats during his campaign, so he hires Boston Private Investigator Spenser to provide security. The candidate, who is a fundamentalist Christian, discovers that his enemies have a compromising videotape of his wife, who also has a drinking problem. The opposition candidate is in the pocket of local gangsters Joe Broz and Vinnie Morris from previous books. It turns out that Joe’s son Gerry is running organized orgies among college students and bored housewives, making videotapes as a kind of insurance. After Joe Broz loses two hit-men trying to kill Spenser, he makes a deal with him instead that protects the candidate’s reputation. Also showing up in this book are Paul Giacomin and Detective Martin Quirk. These books are always well-written and consistent within the entire series.


The Windsor Knot
Sharyn McCrumb
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine / Random House
1990


Forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson is working on her doctoral thesis in Virginia, when her fiancé Cameron Dawson in Scotland is invited to the annual Garden Party with the Queen (along with thousands of others.) When Elizabeth finds out that she can’t go because they are not married, she insists on assembling a lavish wedding before the party. While she is running around pulling this all together, a local widow gets the startling news that her husband has died in California – five years after she was originally notified of his death. This begins a merry chase through other mysterious disappearances and shady circumstances. These books are always jolly and entertaining, unhindered by dense plots.


Winter in Thrush Green
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Houghton Mifflin
1962



Another in this series by this author concerning life in a small English village. Charming and idyllic without being sappy, the characters are drawn in a kindly light, warts and all notwithstanding. When retired businessman Harold Shoosmith buys a vacant cottage on the Green, the village is set on its ear, and he finds himself drawn into the myriad committees, drives and doings of a small town. It is in this book that Albert Piggott (the Sexton) and Nelly Tilling get married; also the widowed Vicar Charles Henstock and spinster Dimity Dean decide to take the plunge. Dr. and Mrs. Lovell have a baby girl, and the shady Sam Curdle (of the Curdle May Day Fair) is arrested for burglary. A large part of the book is taken up with efforts to erect a memorial to Nathaniel Patten – a Thrush Green native famous for his missionary work in Africa – on the centennial of his birth. In the end, they commission a nice bronze statue of him to be installed on the Green, and everyone seems happy with it, especially Harold Shoosmith, who particularly revered him. Typically enjoyable, as all these books are, and told in a lively, informal style. The characters are genuine and engaging, and the descriptive passages are uniformly interesting. A wonderfully entertaining and sentimental look at village life that charms like a bright and cheerful fire on a cold night.


Winter Wonderland
Elizabeth Mansfield
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Jove Books / Berkley Publishing
1993



At his very first ball, young Barnaby Traherne makes the mistake of getting out of his depth with Miranda Pardew, who is the Incomparable of the season. She neatly puts him in his place, humiliating him in front of everyone. He escapes into the military. She marries Lord Velacott, who mistreats her, makes her miserable, and then is killed, leaving her penniless. When she is thrown out of the family house by her brother-in-law, she accepts a position as governess to a family with young boys. Also staying there over the holidays is Barnaby, the boys’ uncle. The family attempts to match him up with the bland Olivia, but he has eyes only for Miranda. There is all manner of running about, ups and downs, even highwaymen and Olivia’s unsuspected boyfriend show up. But it all works out in the end. Well-written in a pleasant conversational style.


Witches’ Brew
Terry Brooks
Fantasy
Fiction
Rating 4
Del Rey / Ballantine Books
1995



This is the 5th in the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, where Ben Holiday has become Landover’s King. In the 4th book (The Tangle Box), he and his wife Willow had a daughter, Mistaya. She is kidnaped by Nightshade, the witch, who is using her and her latent magic as a weapon to destroy the King. When Mistaya was kidnaped, Questor Thews and Abernathy from the castle were inadvertently transported to Earth, back to Elizabeth in Seattle from book #3. (Abernathy is also temporarily returned to being a human instead of a dog.) Fortunately, Questor uses the right magic to return them to Landover, just in time to protect the King from Mistaya giving him Nightshade’s poison. It’s a very entertaining read, as they all are, but an unsatisfying ending, as they kill off Kallendbor of Rhyndweir and send Nightshade to Earth as a crow. (Back to Seattle, which is turning into a kind of a weird place to visit.) Well-written and interesting throughout.


Wizard At Large
Terry Brooks
Fantasy
Fiction
Rating 4
Ballantine Books / Random House
1988



This is the 3rd in the Magic Kingdom of Landover series. Court Wizard Questor Thews promises that he can reverse the spell that turned Abernathy into a dog. Unfortunately, the spell went wrong and Abernathy the dog was sent to Earth, in exchange for a bottle with an evil Wizard. When Ben Holiday and Willow set out to find Abernathy in America, the evil Wizard escapes and creates havoc in Landover. This story is a real page-turner with action and suspense galore. When the Landover contingent is hauled into court (pretending to be dressed up for Halloween) and rescued from there by the dragon Strabo in a hail of magical pyrotechnics, it is a fantasy masterpiece.


The World According To Garp
John Irving
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster
1976



This seems to be not so much a novel as a random series of anecdotes meandering back and forth in time, tied to a very slender narrative. It is well-written and very entertaining, but in a very stream-of-consciousness style. If it were less entertaining, it would be irritatingly verbose, because it takes dozens of pages for the story to go anywhere. It begins with Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, who was an independent thinker in a dull, socially prominent family in Boston. She becomes a nurse and lives alone – when she decides she would like to have a child, she uses a terminal patient in ICU to become pregnant. That man was Technical Sergeant Garp, whose fighter plan was shot down in France. When her son is born, she names him T.S. Garp. She takes a job as school nurse at the Steering School, an exclusive prep academy for boys. Because she is an employee there, her son can attend the school at no charge, so he does. He’s a fair student, and even becomes an accomplished wrestler, under the tutelage of Coach Holm. He also develops a “tendre” for the coach’s pretty daughter, Helen. When Garp graduates, his mother decides they should live as expatriates in Vienna – so they move into rented rooms and settle down to write. Jenny writes her autobiography, which is prominently mentioned throughout the story. Garp writes a short story, but it is not well received. They return to Boston to have Jenny’s book published. To everyone’s surprise, it becomes a runaway best-seller, and Jenny is lionized by the fledgling women’s movement. Garp marries Helen Holm, and they settle down with their two boys – she teaches English in school and Garp writes. His first book is popular, but his second is considered a disappointment. The middle of the novel bogs down seriously in the soap-opera-ish routine of the Garp’s married life – their infidelities, his writing problems, odd encounters with various losers, lunatics, and friends of their children. Then there is a car accident, and their younger son Walt is killed – the other three of them are so badly injured that they move into Jenny’s big house on the sea, and she cares for them during the year or so it takes them to recuperate. They have another child, a daughter named Jenny, and Garp writes another book. Written in the wake of personal tragedy, the book is raw and melodramatic – it is widely loved, and hated, for its shock value. At a political rally, there is a confrontation between feminists and right-wingers, and Jenny Fields is killed. Shortly after that, Helen’s father dies of a heart attack, so all of them move back to the campus of the Steering Academy where Garp coaches wrestling, since he has been unable to write. One day while he is out jogging, an unbalanced woman tries to rum him over with her car. After this brush with death, he becomes re-energized and re-focused on his writing for the first time in years. Then the youngest member of the prominent Steering family, whom Garp barely knew as a child, kills him in the wrestling room, in front of Helen and the entire wrestling team. She had somehow convinced herself that he, or perhaps all men, were responsible for her sister’s death in childbirth. After years under psychiatric care, she was released, even though she killed someone in front of numerous witnesses. This only reinforces the theme of the book about the futility of life. The epilogue of the book describes the unhappy lives and macabre deaths of the other characters in the story. Though never boring, the book is ultimately unsatisfying, pointless and nihilistic. Reminiscent in a lot of strange ways of “A Confederacy of Dunces” in terms of being odd, unlikable characters in a vaguely depressing story that goes nowhere and ends badly. Another possibility is that this is satire, which is always lost on me. Inconceivably, it was also made into a movie with Robin Williams.


Wunnerful, Wunnerful!
The Autobiography of Lawrence Welk
Lawrence Welk & Bernice McGeehan
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Prentice-Hall
1971



It seemed that Lawrence Welk sprang full-blown into the world with his musical variety TV show in the 1950's. But actually, he had been performing since the 1920's, in a variety of incarnations. He was born on my birthday, March 11 in 1903. Both of his parents were from Alsace-Lorraine, and emigrated to North Dakota in the late 1800's – although they spoke only German, they were very devout Catholics, rather than Protestants. They had a large family and lived on a farm, working hard to survive. Although his parents wanted all of the boys to be farmers, Lawrence inherited his father’s love of music, and wanted to be a musician. His father bought him a $400 accordion, and Lawrence re-paid him by working on the farm until he would be 21, and turning over all the money he would make playing for parties and weddings in the nearby towns. At 21, he said goodbye to the farm and set out on his own. He went to Bismarck, the nearest big city, and played for parties and weddings, but didn’t make all that much money. He also did odd jobs in stores to make extra money. After a while, he hooked up with a drummer, and they began to travel around as a duo. Pretty soon, he has a small band playing small venues all over the Midwest. To say that they have their ups and downs is a wild understatement, as they enjoy times of amazing success, and suffer through periods of deep desperation. Along the way, Lawrence and his band (or rather, series of bands) hooked up with some keen operators, and he was able to learn a lot from their expertise. But many times, it was slow going, and he was tempted to give it all up. In 1931, he married Fern Renner, who was studying to be a doctor. She was always very supportive and followed him wherever the band played, even uprooting their three children when necessary. In the 1940's, when the Big Band era was at its peak, they landed a steady job as the house band at a ritzy hotel in Chicago, and stayed there 10 years. They got even more exposure by doing radio broadcasts from the hotel. Finally, they moved on to another long-standing job at a dance hall in California, where they were covered by the local TV station. They became an “overnight” sensation on TV, and soon they had their own national TV program sponsored by Dodge. The show runs for many years on network TV, and then in syndication. This book is uniformly interesting, and is well-written with a folksy charm and positive philosophy that makes you feel good all over. He writes as a person who feels truly blessed, never dwells on negative things, and always believes the best of people. The only unfortunate thing about the book is that he spends so very much time on his early life and budding career – including minute details of the towns, the shows, what the band was wearing – that the later period is given short shrift. When they relocate to California and begin appearing on local TV, through all the years of his successful network show, until he basically retires and “supervises” the program rather than doing everything himself, all of that is crammed into the last 20 pages of the book. After the whole long and involved description of events up to then, it really seems to fall off a table. The book ends just at that point when most people became aware of Lawrence Welk, and what’s missing are the same kinds of reminiscences and anecdotes from the TV show that there were from the earlier period. But it’s still a lively and very enjoyable book.