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by Suzanne Buchert
“Everyone in Venice is Acting”, Count Girolamo Marcello told me. “Everyone plays a role, and the role changes.” From “The City of Falling Angels” by John Berend. “The idea for this book began with a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder.” From “Saving Fish From Drowning” by Amy Tan. “Fleur took the small roads, the rutted paths through the woods traversing slough edge and heavy underbrush, trackless, unmapped, unknown and always bearing east.” From “Four Souls” by Louise Erdrich.
Some of the books I read turn out to be clinkers, some just so-so and some are really great. “The City of Falling Angels” by John Berend is a clinker. It proved my theory that best sellers are a very transitory lot, most of them passing into oblivion sooner rather than later. “Saving Fish From Drowning” is so-so. I want to like Amy Tan’s books, but the thought of them is always better than the reading. Erdrich is a native American whose books always have a connection to her people, the Objiwe of Northern Minnesota. I like that concept, but find myself enduring rather than enjoying some of her books. That said, why waste my time and yours with reviews of these books? The first two are best sellers. They are ballyhooed so fiercely, recommended by seemingly erudite reviewers who make you believe that you will be missing a great experience if you don’t just run out and buy this book. You can’t be well read if you don’t read this book! Rubbish! I am taking this opportunity to refute these claims with my own take on the best sellers they are touting. While reading “The City of Falling Angels” I kept wondering how someone could write a book about Venice and make it soooo boring. I once spent a couple of days in Venice. My husband and I took a trip with the parents of the first foreign student we hosted. Her name was Nathalie and she was from Belgium. We loved her like a daughter, were bereft when she left after a year in our home, and visited her in her home the next year. After several years, and several transcontinental trips back and forth, (them coming here and us going there), we set out, with Nathalie’s parents, on a trip through Germany and Austria, into Italy and back to Belgium through France. Germany and Austria were a blur with only one overnight stop to see King Ludwig’s castles. On the third day we were to reach Venice. Of course I had seen the beautiful pictures of Venice, seen it in the movies, James Bond on the canals in “From Russia With Love”, and such. And I had heard stories from people who said beware of pickpockets and the canals stink. I was so afraid it wouldn’t measure up. As we drove southeast from Northern Italy we reached a broad lake with a causeway, much like approaching New Orleans from the North. There, shimmering in the distance was Venice. It brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful. Throughout our all too short stay, it continued to be a wonderment. However, at the hands, or pen of Berend, it is a book of irrelevancies; name dropping of people never heard of, a sort of upper crust snobby excursion into the lives of the rich and not so famous. Skip it. It is a waste of time. If you must read Berend, go back to his earlier book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” a sendup of Savannah society with all its warts and charms. As for “Saving Fish From Drowning”, I keep thinking I will like Tan’s books and then find them a disappointment. The premise is interesting. The narrator is a Chinese woman who tells the story of a group trip she had organized. She begins her story just after her sudden death. It sounds quirky, but once again the characters are a rather unlikable group of well to do people. After a few chapters, I couldn’t have cared less about any of them. I was most interested in the fate of a five week old Shih Tzu puppy smuggled into the group by a young girl taking the trip with her mother. If you haven’t done so, read Tan’s book “The Joy Luck Club”. It is a delightful book with characters who are complicated and dimensional. They are sometimes cranky and sometimes warm and cuddly. Sort of reminds me of my coffee group! Another author I keep coming back to, sometimes with disappointing results, is Louise Erdrich. I loved “The Last Report of the Miracle at Little No Horse” and really liked “The Master Butcher’s Singing Club”. Those were books set in an earlier time and I found the characters quirky and engaging. Most of her more contemporary novels have characters who are certainly quirky, but mostly without the endearing qualities found in those books. “Four Souls” is such a book. It continues the story of Fleur Pillager, a prominent character in a number of Erdrich’s previous books. In “Four Souls” Fleur is bent on revenge against the man who cheated her people out of their land. She has an understandable purpose. Her life and circumstances have made her unrelenting and almost grim, but she is such a prickly person it’s difficult to care what befalls her and I am left unmoved by the events she encounters throughout the book. I think I will put Berend on my “don’t bother” list, may give Tan another go in the future. I currently have Erdrich’s latest, “The Painted Drum” on my shelf. I keep hoping for another great book; I know she has it in her. To sum up, you win some, you loose some, not just in wagers, but also in books. As an English major, I spent so much time through my college years reading books because I was told to read them. I seldom started one and quit before finishing. That was a luxury I could not afford. Now, I find the habit hard to break. In spite, I keep reading…….
Suzanne Buchert and her husband, Keith, own several restaurants.
sbuchert@hotmail.com
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