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IMHO--forget about holding back.

I had an interesting experience with Jeff Talarigo's The Pearl Diver. Mellow had recommended it and usually I like what Mellow likes, often a whole lot. But with The Pearl Diver I was having trouble. I did my fifty pages and then did fifty more because of the recommendation. Still boring. On page 101 I was trying to think of some way to soften a bad review, I turned to page 102, and the book grabbed me. For about thirty pages I couldn't put it down. After those pages its intensity slacked off and it concluded appropriately, if indeed sadly. But those thirty pages! Wow! That's the section I'll focus on.

The narrator is caught taking part in a rebellion and punished by a new work assignment. I won't describe it in case anyone wants to experience the exquisite pain of reading about it, but I will ask a question. Did any of you know that pregnant women in leper colonies were forced to have abortions? The knowledge horrified me. Now this particular leprosarium was in Japan in the 1940s, and the regulation was reasonable when viewed through the unsympathetic eyes of the doctors who ran the place. They couldn't let these less-than-human creatures reproduce—or have any sort of life a healthy human being could expect. Medical advances are made during the time the book covers, but we all know how long it takes for scientific facts to catch up with what people believe. The writing, as well as the thought, in this section is terrific.

1) "Mrs. Morikawa is in that group of patients that is religious, and that is fine, she has always thought, but it is when they push religion on her that she has trouble with it." (page 102) OMG! I guess, like the poor, they will always be with us.

2) A little levity, even in the bleakest moments, is always appreciated. The narrator has made soap sculptures for two children she sees on the mainland. She finishes them and swims them from the island to the mainland to leave for the children. "To keep the water off the pieces of soap, she wraps them in pieces of plastic and laughs at the irony—keeping soap out of water." (page 104) I smiled. But keep in mind a smile in this book equates to hysterical laughter in many others.

3) About fellow residents: "Not that they don't all have their bad days, but Mr. Nogami seems to have a lifetime of them. He (another resident) tries as much as possible to avoid people like Mr. Nogami because he doesn’t believe he could survive this place were he to allow bitterness to seek shelter within him." (page 107) I think this passage jumped out at me because last Friday I blew up at Barry, my friend who suffers from chronic depression. His position in a discussion was that no one could achieve big-time success in this country unless he was born with money or connections or was willing to be a completely amoral, ruthless son-of-a-bitch. I snapped and responded that I could see why he didn't have many friends, that his outlook was sometimes too bleak to endure. Granted, my response fell into the way-too-blunt category, but—hey—we all have problems. He told me his view was because of his depression. I got angrier; the conversation became more unpleasant. Finally I acknowledged the problem was mine. Since I'm able to ignore my physical limitations and get on with life, I was incapable of understanding how anyone could not control his thinking. He was mollified. His negativity was beyond his control because he suffers with depression. Then I read "… were he to allow bitterness to seek shelter within him," and I'm angry all over again. So I appeal to any philosophers or psychologists out there: if you know anything I could read to help me understand my friend, please let me know what it is.

4) A resident speaks: "We were brought to this damn place because we are sick, but here we are not being helped, just working day in and day out to keep this place alive while we die." (page 108) I remember reading Quo Vadis for some class in high school. The only part that interested me was when some character wound up in a leper colony. I decided then I'd read more about leper colonies and leprosy. Okay. So sometimes it takes me a while to get around to doing things. After The Pearl Driver, I now know the treatment of lepers was as cruel as the scene in Quo Vadis suggested it was.

5) Applause: "A couple claps come from the crowd and then a few more, until what must be half the patients in the room are doing so." (page 109) Extremely effective to show appreciation here—and onstage—much more so than a group of people all starting to applaud at once.

6) Throughout the book urns, used to store the ashes of the dead, are described. The hardest section of the book to read dealt with "A white blank urn" (page 114) and takes place in the room where the abortions are performed.

7) And then on page 119 an eighth-month abortion is performed on a woman the narrator knows. This book is powerful.

8) The narrator sees the little boy and girl on the mainland and they wave back and forth to her. A woman runs up, grabs the children, points at the narrator and is yelling "Words she will never know. Words that she craves and that horrify her." (page 122) An example, IMHO, of how powerful the unspoken can be.

9) There is also IMHO an amazing statement of inhumanity: After time passes the narrator can no longer force herself to show up for work at the clinic. Another resident reports "that she has injured her ankle and can't stand. A feeble excuse, but even more feeble is the response: none. So long as someone can work for her." (page 126)

One touch at the end of The Pearl Driver, the identity of a character, in and of itself makes the book worth reading. I won't tell you more, but it's perfectly prepared for and totally surprising.

Enjoyed James lee Burke's Crusader's Cross. It's another Detective Dave Robicheaux novel with the usual cast of gothic Southern characters. You know, if someone based his knowledge of southerners totally on the characters in William Faulkner and James Lee burke novels, he'd think there wasn’t a sane human being south of Baltimore. Then again, maybe there isn't.

Two overall comments before I tackle specifics in Crusader's Cross:

1) Comparisons happen, and I'm not sure the one I'm about to describe says either of the writers involved is a "better" writer. As most of you know, the Dave Robicheaux series is the second "detective" series I've set out to read my way through. (Actually it's the third—no, fourth—fifth?—but we'll get to those in the next point.) The first was Ed McBain's 57th precinct novels. Now one thing I admired appreciated in the McBain novels was the author's absolute brutality. I'd get to know and like some character, then—bam!—forty pages later he'd be dead. I thought Burke was going to do something similar in Crusader's Cross. Robicheaux falls in love and gets married—oddly enough to sort of a Catholic nun lite. She's

I'm glad you stuck with it. Talarigo, I think, is my new favorite author. This one is indeed powerful; painfully so; I will re-read The Ginseng Hunter first, though, I think.

Now, at least, you know why I struggled with describing them!

For some reason my whole Burke didn't post. I'm trying again.

Enjoyed James lee Burke's Crusader's Cross. It's another Detective Dave Robicheaux novel with the usual cast of gothic Southern characters. You know, if someone based his knowledge of southerners totally on the characters in William Faulkner and James Lee burke novels, he'd think there wasn’t a sane human being south of Baltimore. Then again, maybe there isn't.

Two overall comments before I tackle specifics in Crusader's Cross:

1) Comparisons happen, and I'm not sure the one I'm about to describe says either of the writers involved is a "better" writer. As most of you know, the Dave Robicheaux series is the second "detective" series I've set out to read my way through. (Actually it's the third—no, fourth—fifth?—but we'll get to those in the next point.) The first was Ed McBain's 57th precinct novels. Now one thing I admired appreciated in the McBain novels was the author's absolute brutality. I'd get to know and like some character, then—bam!—forty pages later he'd be dead. I thought Burke was going to do something similar in Crusader's Cross. Robicheaux falls in love and gets married—oddly enough to sort of a Catholic nun lite. She's on the bad guy's hit list and I really thought Burke was going to pull a McBain and kill her off. (That, incidentally, would have put being Robicheaux's wife on the endangered species list.) But Burke didn't. At the last second Robicheaux swoops onto a torture scene and, in essence, unties his wife from the railroad tracks. Good choice? Bad choice? I have really mixed feelings. It might be because IMHO Robicheaux's wives are far from Burke's most interesting characters. In fact, I find them—gasp!—almost normal.

2) The other thread of commonality I noticed was in detective-series books was that detectives are frequently recovering alcoholics and consistently have at least one incident of falling of the wagon. Dave does so in Crusader's Cross, and I immediately flashed back to Laurence Block's Matthew Scudder series—another one I now read as each is published. Then I wondered if such an event was common to all detective series. I quickly assured myself it was not. Kinsey Millhone has a picking-the-wrong-man problem, but I don’t remember booze ever being an issue. And no detective in the 57th precinct had an alcohol problem. Nor did Nancy, Bess, George or Ned.

Specifics:

1) Dave ends a conversation with his half-brother, thinking "that Jimmie, like all brave people, would continue to believe in the world, regardless of what it did to him." (page 122) I identify with that description. I also wish the words didn't sound so damning.

2) Odd wording, IMHO. "'Go have lunch with me,' I said." (page 195) It's a command? Not an invitation I'd be keen to accept.

3) "New Orleans' tradition of vice and outlawry goes back almost two hundred when the French used southern Louisiana as a dumping ground for both criminals and prostitutes." (page 209) I didn't know that. France's Australia?

4) The about-to-be Mrs. Robicheaux is talking about her father. "He had simple admonitions. 'Feed your animals before you feed yourself. … Take care of your tools and they'll take care of you. … Put your shotgun through the fence, then crawl after it.' My favorite was 'Never trust a white person black people don't like." (page 223) I was teaching at Alabama A&M when I met Mr. mar. One of my students worked at the men's store where he bought his clothes. Oops. Should have read that admonition a lot of years earlier.

5) "An evil man once told me that hell was a place that had no boundaries, a place that you carry with you wherever you go." (page 230) I'm pretty sure I agree with that, so why was Dave hearing it from an "evil man"? Because it was something he didn't want to hear?

6) "At that time in New Iberia there were black people still alive who remembered Emancipation, what they came to call 'Juneteenth,' …" (page 299) Gee, Mellow starts a thread, and now the word shows up everywhere. You sure can learn a lot on Reader Rant.

7) "Those who live with insomnia and who consider sleep both an enemy and a gift will understand the following. Some of us cannot comprehend how anyone except the very good or those with no conscience at all can sleep from dusk to dawn without dreaming or waking." (page 351) Take it from one who knows: sleeping pills can help.

8) "My experience with age is that it instills a degree of patience in some, leaves the virtuous spiritually unchanged, feeds the character defects in others and brings little wisdom to any of us." (page 389) Is that sentence as depressing as it sounds?

9) My vocabulary now includes rictal (page 140), the adjective form of rictus, "the expanse of an open mouth, a bird's beak, or similar structure." (Hey. Word doesn't like either form.)

And that's the latest chapter in the Dave Robicheaux saga. Sigh. Only two fish left to go.

"Nor did Nancy, Bess, George or Ned."

Oh, really? Don't I remember Bess having a bit more roundness ("plump" is the word that comes to mind) than Nancy? And at that age (Bess's age, of course, and the age she lived in) didn't that often arise from a fondness of something?

I'd suspect gin.

Oh my, I just finished reading The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Excellent read about a girl in WWII Germany, books, family and friends. Excellent

That's one Mellow recommended. One of the best books I've ever read.

Eric Flint's 1824: The Arkansas War is my foray into the alternate-history genre. For some time the idea of messing around with history, the imagination required for what would have happened if, say, the Confederacy had won the Civil War, has fascinated me. Then someone, probably here, mentioned 1824 and, my friend Barry had just finished reading 1824, and he had a copy of it in his car. The stage was set.

My reactions are mixed. First of all, I'm not sure I'm smart enough or well read enough (at least in history) to understand the genre. Oh, I can handle the biggies—I know the North won the Civil War and the Allies won World War II—but 1824 got into US politicians prior to the Civil War, and there were spots in the book where I got downright confused as to what was alternate and what was real. I'd be real interested in how someone else with a standard American history education would respond. I could ask my friend Barry to explain, but he's one of those people who win at Trivia and holds in contempt those who don’t. (He's a real fan of Jay Leno heading out on the street and making people look stupid. I think the routine is sad and cruel.)

Anyway, I'm left with looking at the book itself and ignoring its category. So, when the story dealt with political machinations or the issues of slavery and prejudice, I loved it. When it involved war—strategy or battles—I was bored to tears.

Will I try Flint's 1632? It's iffy. Will I try another alternate-history novel? A blurb on the back cover of 1824 says it's "hard to think of a more powerful alternate-history novel since Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South." Maybe I'll give that one a try.

Oh, I did have a few quotes to discuss from 1824, but since I'd already spilled water on Barry's book and crinkled up the last two hundred pages,* I didn't want to dog-ear others. I told myself I'd remember page numbers, but …. Let's just say that was a bad idea.

*Although I like crinkly pages, I did show Barry what I'd done and offer to buy him a new copy. He said no.

Martha, I've only read one of those alternative histories; I picked it up and liked it, although it's quite long (so long I gave up on it near the end, I think, but there was so much good story along the way that I didn't care, and I intend to read it again.)

The book is Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt." It begins in the 14th century, with the Black Death, only instead of killing a third of Europe's population, it kills 99%. It then describes the next 700 years with the world dominated, not by Westerners and Christianity, but by the East and Middle East, Buddhism and Islam. (America is discovered by the Chinese.)

Sometime when you feel like killing 700 pages or so...

Oh, a device the author uses to link all the ages: the Tibetan concept of reincarnation and the bardo. In this book, the bardo is like a waiting room between lives, and beings travel through the ages in a small, unchanging group. So in 1400, I might be a mother of 7 and you might be my youngest son, while in 1650 I might be a streetsweeper and you a wealthy woman who lives at the end of the street I clean. Part of the fun of the book is following these changing/unchanging lives.