AMERICAN RUST by Philipp Meyer

American Rust
Philipp Meyer
343 pages
Spiegel & Grau (ARC)
2009




Two young men from a dying Pennsylvania steel mill town are involved in a murder and its aftermath.....their desire to leave a hometown that offers no future...the ties of friendship and family that both strengthen and strangle..guilt and innocence, both in a legal and social sense...intensely dramatic...at times, the characters’ interior monologues seem to go on forever but there is a method to the madness.

i find the comparisons to Steinbeck a bit premature, but i see a lot of potential in Mr. Meyer’s debut novel...shades of Pete Dexter (PARIS TROUT) and Russell Banks (RULE OF THE BONE) are strong

this was not an easy read for me since i live not far from Western Pennsylvania...and if you swap Coal Mines for Steel Mills you do have the area where i live..in the late 70s-80s when the coal mines started to close. the characters in this book could be my neighbors and their grandsons..the voices in this book rang true for me, albeit painfully. i enjoyed this book and look forward to Mr Meyer’s next effort


this is a review of an ARC....

I Return...bearing a Review

THREE MINUTES ON LOVE
Roccie Hill
274 pages
2008
The Permanent Press


this is a review of an ARC:

I tend to avoid books set in the 60s-70s like the Plague. I lived through the Era and bear no Sentimentality toward it

This book is different. Granted, it's the story of Rosie Kettle and David Wilderspin-a Photographer and Musician, respectively-set against the backdrop of wretched excess that was the Southern California music scene in the 70s...but the backdrop stays that way. This is the story of two talented people trying to "make it" and make a life against the odds...of their own temperaments and the "business' of Art.

From the giddy, erotic beginnings of Love..to the Growing pains of Marriage...to the loss of a child....the story unfolds, crumbles, but does not die. the music scene is still full of excess and greed but money is tighter..Artists still battle their demons daily. Rosie Kettle's voice rings true here...from a whisper to a scream.

I liked this book..it gave me much food for thought...Roccie Hill knows her stuff..but more than that, she knows her heart. i still avoid books set in the 60s & 70s, though.

Dead

Dead is Dead.....and will be...for a while, here

Sorry/Sari

J

Lost in the Amazon

THE LOST CITY OF Z: A TALE OF DEADLY OBSESSION IN THE AMAZON
David Grann
Doubleday
2008
372 pages*

“Surprise!!! i liked this book...mostly for the conversational style, so non-pedantic. i read the ARC* so did not have benefit of the Maps and footnotes of the Hardcover.. a ripsnorting tale of obsession and the drive to go Beyond one's comfortable niche in life..Percy Fawcett was a Man's Man in his day...drove himself, and others, to the limit in his explorations of the Amazon..in search of the fabled city of El Dorado..his Lost City of Z...needless to say he disappeared during that last trek in 1925....his whereabouts begat a whole new school of explorers...those who went in search of Lost Predecessors.....can you imagine a time when there were still empty spaces on World Maps?”

Daphne Du Maurier-Storyteller

MY COUSIN RACHEL
Daphne Du Maurier
Dell Publishing 1985
348 pages

DID SHE OR DIDN'T SHE: THE AMBIGUOUS ASHLEYS

Ambiguous being the operative word here...this odd love story never ceases to amaze me. Du Maurier builds the tale slowly, sometimes too much so...Young Philip Ashley was raised by his bachelor Uncle Ambrose who, in his later years was bidden to Winter in the Southern Climes for his health..On one jaunt to Italy Ambrose met a Cousin...Rachel...then came marriage...then came Death for Ambrose..then came a maelstrom of emotions for young Philip. Rage, Jealousy, Curiosity.....Rachel appears in England, all demure with cast down eyes and folded hands...Phliip is soon smitten as only a young man, unused to the company of women, can be....Tension mounts from here on...Ambrose left Rachel penniless on his death..Philip sets out to Make Things Right...suffering a Brain Fever in the process...much loving care and copious amounts of the herbal Tisane ensue...Laburnum seeds (highly toxic to men and horses) appear...Philip resolves to have done with the hussy and her spendthrift ways, if he can only prove her guilty of Ambrose's ....MURDER.....A hush falls over the crowd...No proof is found...rather Rachel has vowed to return her ill-gotten inheritance and hie back to italy...too late, she wandered down the wrong garden path...fell to her death...Phlip is awash in guilt......the curtain falls....ah, Drama.

Did she, or didn't she???

Technology Abounds!

Not that anyone cares..but i just ordered a KINDLE from Amazon....too many eBooks out there that interest me. Anyone have opinions-good or bad-i am all, uh Ears!!!!

TWO MURDERS.....COUNT 'EM.....TWO

WHOSE BODY?
Dorothy L Sayers
Harper & Brothers
1923

THERESE RAQUIN
Emile Zola
Oxford University Press
1998

Two murders, and Murder from two different perspectives, literary-wise...one title a jolly spot of entertainment (with minimun grue) the other...well let's just say it's dark...

Whose Body?-

A Corpse-in-the-Bathtub mystery..to be sure...but also the introduction to the Whimsey of Lord Peter (without the "h"?), a person of Title with a penchant for Detecting. In attendance be his Mum the Stalwart yet dotty Duchess...a typically ineffective copper...a scholarly Police..a truly vicious yet pathetic psychopathic villain...and the intrepid manservant Bunter, who could run the entire show by himself...but it would not be his Place to do so.

Interspersed with the witticism and drollery is Dorothy Sayers' not inconsiderable knowledge of Detection and Forensics...but one must pay attention...clues be buried in the quips and a red herring shows up...or not....i forget.

Sayers & Lord Peter began a distinguished partnership with this title...it's not the best of the lot but serves as an introduction not to be sneezed at...Carry on they did”

Therese Raquin

“a deliciously morbid Anatomy of a Murder....and the Murderers themselves.....lust, its gratification and what came after.......suspicion, hatred, and ultimately the madness of guilt in it various guises.....19th century Paris..the "lower classes". atmospheric to the point that the reader can feel these walls closing in on herself as well..i can't say it was an easy read but i won't soon forget it.”

i don't think i'll attempt to review such disparate books in the near future...trying to come up with reviews that worked, and worked together..was a pain....