Books I'm Currently Reading
The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2003):
From Publishers Weekly
Lively likes historians. Her most famous novel on this side of the Atlantic, the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, told the story of a popular historian; her latest narrates the quest of a "landscape historian" in search of what Proust called "lost time": the living past of his dead wife. Glyn Peters, a famous British archeologist, discovers a compromising photograph of his wife, Katherine Targett, sealed in an envelope in a closet at home. Peters specializes in excavating the long defunct gardens, buried fields and covered-over roads of the British landscape. Reverting to professional habits, he treats Kath's infidelity as a sort of archeological dig. The photo depicts Kath and Nick Hammond, the husband of Kath's sister, Elaine, surreptitiously holding hands on some outing, with Elaine and Mary Packard, Kath's best friend, in the background. Glyn decides to interview this cloud of witnesses, beginning with Elaine. Elaine is a successful, and somewhat cold, landscaper; Nick, her polar opposite, is a man one degree away from being a Wodehouse dilettante. Lively, who is never shy of letting us know her opinion of her characters (like Trollope), makes her disapprobation of Nick plain. Elaine, after learning of the affair, kicks Nick out. He takes refuge with Polly, their daughter, in London, and goes rapidly downhill. Glyn, meanwhile, has searched out Nick's ex-business partner, Oliver Watson, who took the photograph, and Mary Packard. Lively is always a discerning, keenly intelligent writer. This, for instance, is how she describes, in three irrevocable words, Elaine's pregnancy: "She is pregnant: heavy, hampered, irritable." Unfortunately, Kath, a demon-haunted beauty with little depth, remains unconjurable. Her insubstantiality and the much-foreshadowed nature of her death, not revealed until late in the novel, drains this story of its full emotional impact.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
Scrounging around in a cupboard stuffed with three decades' worth of papers and academic debris, Glyn Peters, a recently widowed landscape historian, discovers an envelope marked "Don't Open-Destroy" in his late wife's handwriting. Is there anyone on earth who would obey such an injunction? Certainly not Glyn, who opens the envelope to find a photograph of his beautiful, feckless wife hand in hand with her sister's husband. Determined to understand his wife's affair, he delves into her past with a historian's tenacity and a good deal more interest in her than he managed to muster while she was alive. This search branches out to encompass a small circle of friends, all of whom have a share in the narration. But Lively doesn't stop there, and her characters' questions about the dead woman provoke questions about themselves and the roles they played in her life.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
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The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (2001):
Amazon.com Review
How do Americans, long innocent of such things, comprehend large-scale acts of domestic terrorism? How do they commemorate the victims of such deeds? In this unfortunately timely book, historian Edward T. Linenthal examines these questions as they were addressed by the people of Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
In that attack, 168 men, women, and children died. Each left behind stunned, grieving relatives and loved ones; each left behind a personal history suddenly become part of the cultural and psychic property of the nation, as in the instance of Baylee Almon, whose corpse, cradled in the arms of a fireman, became an iconic image. As Linenthal writes in this careful work of cultural history, it fell on Oklahomans to process their grief in the wake of "violent mass death," no easy task, and to design and construct an appropriate memorial--which, after painful arguments over every detail, they did, and to stunning effect. Linenthal's thoughtful account summarizes some of the many lessons to be drawn from the Oklahoma City attack, lessons that, sadly, the world has had to learn anew. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Americans wrestled with three incomprehensible facts: that it happened in the heartland, that its victims included small children and that it was perpetrated by fellow Americans. The media, government officials and individuals wondered if Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols represented the lunatic fringe or if they were symptoms of our historically violent society. Linenthal (Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields), professor of religion and American culture at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and an expert on American memorializing, brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing, based on interviews with more than 150 direct participants, including mental health professionals, educators and clergy, and on exclusive access to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Archive. Critical of "the medicalization of grief," whereby grief is considered symptomatic of illness and therefore finite, he also faults public figures, including former President Clinton, for casting the 168 victims of the senseless tragedy as patriots who sacrificed their lives for America. Particularly moving is Linenthal's account of the construction and dedication of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which prompts many visitors to leave something personal (poems, flowers, crucifixes) at the site. Linenthal places the site at the pinnacle of "memorial hierarchy" because, by reminding us and imparting a lesson, it suggests that "all is not lost." Itself a kind of tribute, his study astutely explores the phenomena of memorializing, grieving and healing. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)Forecast: No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of a still-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title
From Publishers Weekly
Lively likes historians. Her most famous novel on this side of the Atlantic, the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, told the story of a popular historian; her latest narrates the quest of a "landscape historian" in search of what Proust called "lost time": the living past of his dead wife. Glyn Peters, a famous British archeologist, discovers a compromising photograph of his wife, Katherine Targett, sealed in an envelope in a closet at home. Peters specializes in excavating the long defunct gardens, buried fields and covered-over roads of the British landscape. Reverting to professional habits, he treats Kath's infidelity as a sort of archeological dig. The photo depicts Kath and Nick Hammond, the husband of Kath's sister, Elaine, surreptitiously holding hands on some outing, with Elaine and Mary Packard, Kath's best friend, in the background. Glyn decides to interview this cloud of witnesses, beginning with Elaine. Elaine is a successful, and somewhat cold, landscaper; Nick, her polar opposite, is a man one degree away from being a Wodehouse dilettante. Lively, who is never shy of letting us know her opinion of her characters (like Trollope), makes her disapprobation of Nick plain. Elaine, after learning of the affair, kicks Nick out. He takes refuge with Polly, their daughter, in London, and goes rapidly downhill. Glyn, meanwhile, has searched out Nick's ex-business partner, Oliver Watson, who took the photograph, and Mary Packard. Lively is always a discerning, keenly intelligent writer. This, for instance, is how she describes, in three irrevocable words, Elaine's pregnancy: "She is pregnant: heavy, hampered, irritable." Unfortunately, Kath, a demon-haunted beauty with little depth, remains unconjurable. Her insubstantiality and the much-foreshadowed nature of her death, not revealed until late in the novel, drains this story of its full emotional impact.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
Scrounging around in a cupboard stuffed with three decades' worth of papers and academic debris, Glyn Peters, a recently widowed landscape historian, discovers an envelope marked "Don't Open-Destroy" in his late wife's handwriting. Is there anyone on earth who would obey such an injunction? Certainly not Glyn, who opens the envelope to find a photograph of his beautiful, feckless wife hand in hand with her sister's husband. Determined to understand his wife's affair, he delves into her past with a historian's tenacity and a good deal more interest in her than he managed to muster while she was alive. This search branches out to encompass a small circle of friends, all of whom have a share in the narration. But Lively doesn't stop there, and her characters' questions about the dead woman provoke questions about themselves and the roles they played in her life.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
******************************************
The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (2001):
Amazon.com Review
How do Americans, long innocent of such things, comprehend large-scale acts of domestic terrorism? How do they commemorate the victims of such deeds? In this unfortunately timely book, historian Edward T. Linenthal examines these questions as they were addressed by the people of Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
In that attack, 168 men, women, and children died. Each left behind stunned, grieving relatives and loved ones; each left behind a personal history suddenly become part of the cultural and psychic property of the nation, as in the instance of Baylee Almon, whose corpse, cradled in the arms of a fireman, became an iconic image. As Linenthal writes in this careful work of cultural history, it fell on Oklahomans to process their grief in the wake of "violent mass death," no easy task, and to design and construct an appropriate memorial--which, after painful arguments over every detail, they did, and to stunning effect. Linenthal's thoughtful account summarizes some of the many lessons to be drawn from the Oklahoma City attack, lessons that, sadly, the world has had to learn anew. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Americans wrestled with three incomprehensible facts: that it happened in the heartland, that its victims included small children and that it was perpetrated by fellow Americans. The media, government officials and individuals wondered if Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols represented the lunatic fringe or if they were symptoms of our historically violent society. Linenthal (Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields), professor of religion and American culture at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and an expert on American memorializing, brings tremendous sensitivity to his examination of the psychic consequences of the bombing, based on interviews with more than 150 direct participants, including mental health professionals, educators and clergy, and on exclusive access to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Archive. Critical of "the medicalization of grief," whereby grief is considered symptomatic of illness and therefore finite, he also faults public figures, including former President Clinton, for casting the 168 victims of the senseless tragedy as patriots who sacrificed their lives for America. Particularly moving is Linenthal's account of the construction and dedication of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which prompts many visitors to leave something personal (poems, flowers, crucifixes) at the site. Linenthal places the site at the pinnacle of "memorial hierarchy" because, by reminding us and imparting a lesson, it suggests that "all is not lost." Itself a kind of tribute, his study astutely explores the phenomena of memorializing, grieving and healing. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)Forecast: No book concerning the bombing has so comprehensively addressed the national psyche. This combination of psychological insight and cultural criticism, along with the hopeful assessment of a still-fresh tragedy, will attract a wide audience.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title