Jubilee devotes successive Fridays to the arts
March 5, 2012
Flanagan’s delights with memorable flavors
March 6, 2012
THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
By Julian Barnes
Knopf, $23.95
Tony Webster and Adrian Finn are great friends until Adrian begins an affair with Tony’s ex-girlfriend, Veronica. This so infuriates Tony that he writes a blistering letter to Adrian warning him of the certain consequences of this relationship. Only, the actual consequence turns out to be far worse than he predicts and changes, what is up to now, his enjoyable passage into post-middle age.
That letter, or a portion of it, comes back to haunt him, causing him to re-examine his life with old friends he no longer saw, except for his cordial relationship with his former wife.
This slim novel, at barely 150 pages long, packs a powerful punch.
ROGER WILLIAMS and THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN Soul
By John M. Barry
Viking, $35
Barry spent nearly eight years writing this colorful history of our country’s creation, “defining “the relationship between church and state and between the individual and the state.” His prodigious research centers primarily on Roger Williams, the “first man to describe individual liberty in modern terms,” who promoted separation of church and state and who befriended Native Americans who, in turn, once saved his life.
Other notables include John Winthrop and Edward Coke, considered the “greatest jurist in English history,” the man credited with the expression, “The house of every man is as his castle.”
American history has never been more fascinating.
THE ART OF FIELDING
By Chad Harbach
Little, Brown, $25.99
Henry Skrimshander, fantastic shortstop at Westish College on the shore of Lake Michigan, is one game away from breaking the record for most games without an error, when, incredibly, his first errant throw nearly kills his roommate. Now, with the record out of reach, Henry finds it impossible to restart and loses his taste for baseball and, for that matter, his zest for living.
Not only that, but his miscue precipitates an unhappy chain of events, affecting not only his roommate, Owen, but the lives of the school’s president and his daughter, Pella, and especially, his mentor and best friend, Mike Schwartz, the team’s captain.
RAYLAN
By Elmore Leonard
William Morrow, $26.99
If you’ve only met U.S. Marshall, Raylan Givens on Fox TV’s, “Justified,” you’ll relish meeting the original in this newest Leonard thriller.
The coalmines of Harlan, Ky., have shut down, opening the way for a new industry: the sale of human body parts. Raylan, hot on the trail of the thieves, wakes up naked in a bathtub of ice with nurse Layla about to remove his kidneys. She is the first of the three notorious women, who are the “bad guys” in this droll tale of murder and mayhem where “shoot to kill” is the operative command.
In typical Leonard style, dialogue drives the plots of these loosely connected stories.
LOOK AWAY DIXIELAND
By James B. Twitchell
LSU Press $23.50
As a boy, James Twitchell grew up hearing stories about his great-grandfather, Marshall Harvey Twitchell, a carpetbagger from Vermont who settled in Louisiana.
Fascinated, Twitchell and his wife leave Florida and head to Coushatta, sticking to U.S. Highway 84 all the way, a route not considered scenic by most chambers of commerce. Twitchell learns a lot about his kinfolk and the “Don’t-Stop-the-Car-Here South,” and finds that prejudices were not so different from up North. As one Georgian put it, “Y’all are rude and we’re stupid.”
Too bad they passed up Acadiana, where they could have “passed a good time.”
1001 MOVIES You Must See Before You Die
Edited by Steven Jay Schneider with preface by Jason Solomons
Barron’s Books $35
Whether this book moves you to theaters or keeps you home watching DVDs, you’ve got to get busy to see them all. I’ve seen many of them, but not “The Louisiana Story,” a documentary of the arrival of oil companies to our bayous.
There’s little dialogue (in native dialect) but the musical score was the first to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book is filled with gems like this and is fun just to read for cast, directors and other facts.
– Raymond “Ray” Saadi, is a longtime local radio station owner/operator who’s moved from broadcasting to books. Now retired, he has been writing book reviews for more than 12 years.
Englishman Julian Barnes shows why he won the 2011 Man Booker Prize with “The Sense of an Ending.”
