Book Review-Between The World and Me -By Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is a famous book, a book that made the NYT best seller’s list. It is a book that I am supposed to like because reading it should show the world that I am racially sensitive and I am a good little liberal. Having read this book has become a badge of honor for all left leaning intellectuals in the United States.

When you have expectations like that, you tend to approach the book with a jaundiced eye. You feel a bit defensive about liking the book. You feel like you are obligated to read this book because it adds to your credentials.

Fact is, I loved this book. For many reasons and at different levels and the book touched me in different ways.

On a very basic level, I love the flow of the book; it is actually an extended essay, stretching over 152 pages. It is no wonder that the author is such a celebrated writer. The man can write. More importantly, he has a very blunt voice, one that is backed up with writing skills and an ability to think critically and an original thought process and a unique point of view. This serves to make his voice salient and outstanding.

The essay is a letter to his teenage son. It is at once a personal essay, an oral history of his own experience as a black young man in a white America. It is a warning and a detailed instruction book about how America expects its black young men to react and how these expectations will act on the mind of the black young men in America. But to call it as just a warning is also to de-mean its importance to our society.

This is the author’s extended conversation with all of us, his black compatriots; the white society which has shaped his life, intellect, and emotions; and not the least of which, his son. He goes into a long discourse on what it is to be a black man in America. He accomplishes his goal by putting his own experience out there for all to examine, he exposes his deepest feelings and thoughts to the readers, an act of true courage. He make his points, he defends his points, he weaves a story of the hard earned knowledge he learned at his father’s feet, as well as on the streets of Baltimore. He lays out the lessons he learned while growing up as a young black man, going from child to a grown man with a family and working as a journalist.

The narrative is raw, personal, and hard to hear. I have had to stop reading at certain points of the narrative because it is too emotionally draining and intellectually challenging. I have had to stop and think about what is said. When I mentioned this to a friend, she, a black woman, said:” I have internalized it.”, i.e. the emotional upheavals and feelings dredged up by the author are part and parcel the American experience for my friend. And that revelation is yet another point of pause for me.

As I approached the end of the narrative, I was both happy that the emotional roller coaster was coming to an end, but at the same time I was sad to have to cease reading the words of a craftsman and a thoughtful, deeply intelligent philosopher.

This book takes a lot of thought and reflection. This is a serious and important history of the American experience, it elicits ideas and reflections that aren’t usually on the surface, and that is a good thing.

I believe this book is as important as the mass media reports, It is in fact, much more important.

Book Review-Magpie Murders By Anthony Horowitz

A book review on the NYT Book Review page had me intrigued. Two stories told in an interwoven fashion could be looked upon as a writing gimmick, but I liked that device; especially if the author is someone who is very good at relating disparate details and pulling them together.

Anthony Horowitz is fantastic at this device. There are so many Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays that I will admit to missing some of them early on in my reading.

Contrary to what I had envisioned, the authors decided to use two large chunks of the book to tell the two stories, I had expected a constant back and forth between the two stories and was a little annoyed that I had to wait for the second story to commence. As it turned out he had a very good reason for doing it this way, and much more sensible.

The first story is that of a murder mystery, a la Agatha Christie. Set in the lovely Somerset countryside and populated by the usual suspects that would feel at home in a Hercule Poirot novel. The main detective is Atticus Pünd, a crime solver who is cut from the same clothes as so many others in crime fiction. He is a loner, a man of deep and complex thought, a man who is quite nonlinear, a survivor of Auschwitz, and very keen. The story takes off when a housekeeper in service to landed gentry is killed in what is seemingly a simple household accident. This is where all the pertinent characters begin to appear in the story. In very traditional fashion, the back stories of each of the suspects are explained and told by the omniscient narrator. The author methodically advances the story as he builds the suspense. Soon a second murder occurs, and this time there is no doubt as to whether it is an accident or not.

So far so good. It is what we expect and we are giddy with anticipation of what will come next. The story crescendos and then, the author abruptly switch gear quite suddenly as the denouement for the first story is postponed indefinitely until the second story is started. For a time there I was quite annoyed with this change of events, and naturally angry with Mr. Horowitz.

As it turns out, and this is where the genius of Mr. Horowitz rears its head, the coupling and inter connectedness of the fiction within the fiction comes to the fore. The second story revolves around the editor of a publisher, Cloverleaf Books, the publisher of the Atticus Pünd series of murder mysteries. The author of the series, the cash cow of Cloverleaf Books, Alan Conway had just died, apparently of a suicide, right after he’d delivered his latest book in the series to the publisher, except he delivered it without an ending. The main protagonist of the modern day story, Susan Ryeland, is the editor for the publisher, it is through her eyes that we observe the complex interactions of crime solving once again, except now, instead of look at it through the familiar styles of the great British mystery writers, it is through the eyes of an editor, someone who is not omniscient and decidedly not a practiced crime solver.

As the second story unfold, we are treated to a second trip through the investigation and fact finding process of fictional crime solving. The brilliance of this book is that it is telling two stories in two different ways, two different styles, and in two different epochs. Even more impressively, the aforementioned Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays really make their presence known as Susan Ryeland unravels the writing style and tricks that Alan Conway employs to tell his story. Just like in the first half of the book, Mr. Horowitz advances his plot patiently and builds up the suspense in a masterful manner. For the second time in the same book, he drew me into the swirl of intrigue methodically until I was completely trapped in Magpie Murders.

The beauty of the plotting of this book is that the denouement of the Susan Ryeland/Alan Conway part of the book is completely dependent on the denouement of the Atticus Pünd mystery. And Mr. Horowitz does not disappoint, all the pieces are brought together and there is a large amount of: “Why didn’t I see this!” as I wound down my reading experience, which is always a large part of the satisfaction of reading a good mystery.

In short, this was a brilliant book, by its complex plotting and development of the characters, it accomplished the main thing: it entertained me.

I must admit that I had no idea who Anthony Horowitz is prior to reading this particular book but now I will keep that name in the back of my head for future reading enjoyments.