Saturday, July 29, 2017

The Photographer's Wife

The Photographer's Wife is the Suzanne Joinson's second novel. It is about a British woman, Prudence Ashton Miller, who spent  part of her childhood in Jerusalem where her father was working. Prudence, however, is not a photographer's wife. Eleanora Rasul is the photographer's wife.  Although she is central to the story, she is not the protagonist. The title of this book is baffling.

The story begins in Jerusalem in the 1920s where an 11 year old Prudence Ashton has recently moved into the Hotel Fast in order to be with her father Charles Ashton. Her mother was confined to an institution in England. There she meets her father's friends and business associates William Cunningham, an aviator, the beautiful Eleanora who has just married the Arab photographer Khaled Rasul, her father's mistress Frau Baum and Khaled Rasul's friend Ihsan, who is teaching Prudence the Arabic language.

The story alternates between the 1920s and the late 1930s/early 1940s when the English are trying to erase from history their time collaborating with Germany in Jerusalem. War between England and Germany is about to begin and there are things that need to be covered up. The British government wants Prudence, now separated from her husband and with a son, to give them photographic evidence of this past that could incriminate them in working with the Nazis. This brings back memories that Prudence thought had left her mind.

At first I thought that this was a historical fiction novel. It is not written with the historical fiction template and I was not sure if it was written poorly or another type of novel. I soon realized that it is another type of novel and is written in prose. While I felt the story moved a little slowly, it was only because my expectations were wrong. I am not used to reading this type of novel.

The plot was interesting and the reader does not know until the end of the book that the reason for telling the story is that the British government wants to erase this part of their history. I think the book may have been more exciting if there were clues throughout the story of this intent.

This was a great read and I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars.


Sunday, July 23, 2017

Weapons of Mass Diplomacy

French author and diplomat Antonin Baudry, writing under the pen name of Abel Lanzac, has written a fictionalized account of his time working for the French Foreign Ministry during the time period leading up to the U. S. invasion of Iraq. It is a graphic novel.

The story begins with Arthur Vlaminck getting hired as a speechwriter for Foreign Minister Alexandre Taillard de Vorms.  De Vorms has a nasty temper and loves to quote poets and philosophers. He is never happy with what Vlamink writes. Never. Vlamink gets to travel with the Minister on diplomatic trips abroad and to the United Nations (U.N.) where he sees the American president (George W. Bush) and Jeffrey Cole (Colin Powell) address the U.N. concerning Resolution 1441 which provided for inspections on the nation Khemed's (Iraq) weapons of mass destruction in order to avoid war.

While this is a serious topic, the author has written a wonderful satire of this part of our recent history. He has shown the difference of opinions between France and the U. S. on the subject all while showing the reader how diplomacy works.

I do not understand why the author does not use his real name, the name of his boss, Bush, Powell or Iraq. I am certain there is a professional reason for this but I do not know what it is.

This book was pretty amusing.  I highly recommend it.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Use of Force

Use of Force is Brad Thor's 12th Scot Harvath spy thriller. I have read every book that he has written and loved them all.

In this installment of the series main character Scot Harvath is able to prevent most parts of a terrorist attack in the U. S. He is then sent to Libya to pick up an ISIS operative. While he is trying to get to the terrorist, ISIS mounts escalating terrorist attacks in Europe, killing many.

One thing I love about Brad Thor's writing is that the mystery to be solved begins early in the book. This gives me the entire book to soak up the changing action and try to figure out clues to the denouement.

That said, I feel that Use of Force falls a little short.  While it is still a good novel, the writing is not up to par with Thor's earlier works. Thor admits that he changed his approach to writing with Use of Force. I am not sure what the change is but this novel was not as fast paced as all of his others. It does have the usual non-stop action though.

While I feel that Thor's writing falls short with this novel, because he was at the top of the thriller game, his writing is still heads above other thriller writers' abilities and I would still recommend the book to everyone. However, instead of giving a usual rating of 5 out of 5, Use of Force is 3.5 out of 5 because I was disappointed.

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

Sarah Glidden is a comic book author and illustrator who primarily writes nonfiction and reportage comics. Her artwork is usually done in watercolors and is usually drawn in traditional comic panels. I reviewed her second book, Rolling Blackouts, in May.  How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less is her first book which was originally published in 2010. It covers a Birthright Israel trip that she took to Israel with a friend in 2007.

The back cover blurb states: "Sarah Glidden is a progressive Jewish American twentysomething who is vocal about her criticism of Israeli politics in the Holy Land. When a debate with her mother prods her to sign up for a Birthright Israel trip, Glidden expects to find objective facts to support her strong opinions. What she gets, however, is a regimented schedule meant to showcase the best of Israel: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Masada, Kinneret and the Dead Sea, and other landmarks. Worries she may be falling prey to an agenda, Glidden seizes various opportunities to discuss the fraught complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But with self
-effacing humor and reflection, Glidden realizes that the opinion she is most surprised by may very well be her own."

I love the author's reportage comic sub-genre. This memoir of her birthright trip is part travelogue and part memoir. The arguments that she presented concerning the Israeli-Palestini issue were well thought out and show both sides of the issue. She is a non-observant Jew with Palestinian sympathies when she begins her trip but returns home confused about the issue. While the subject matter is serious, the book is an easy and relaxing read.

This is one of my favorite graphic novels of all time and everyone needs to take a look at this one.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

A Game For Swallows

A Game For Swallows had a huge impact on me, challenging my American notions of what life is like in war torn countries. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially true in this graphic novel with its stark black and white drawings of the author's former Christian neighborhood in Beirut.  She shows how much of her community is safe by drawing a small circle on a page of paper. She also shows how barricades are set up to make it safer for people to walk outside without getting hit by a sniper. This tells me so much more than what I hear in tv and newspaper news reports.

The story begins with the author as a child being holed up in the foyer of her family's apartment, the only safe place in the apartment. Neighbors come by during bombings to join the family in the foyer for safety reasons. There is much hospitality present as coffee and alcohol are always being offered to everyone. Worry is present also as the family worries about other family members who got stuck in other parts of town when the guns and bombs began to go off. The neighbors create a homey atmosphere for the author and her brother by sharing cooking lessons, games and gossip.

The title of the book comes from a quote by Florian "to die  to leave  to return  it's a game for swallows." I am sure it was chosen to represent the fact that people have to constantly move to new places when they are living in a war zone in order not to get killed.

I thought it was interesting that the author placed a dot inside the letter "o" every time it was used in a word. It is a bullseye and let's the reader know just how much the country's residents feel they are being attacked by the warring parties. The font used for the dialogue was a plain style font that contributed to the seriousness of the story. The author, Zeina Abirached, used her artwork to the fullest extent in telling her story. It made the story much more compelling than if she had used a different style.

I was blown away by this book and cannot recommend it more highly.

Monday, July 17, 2017

The Prisoner


The Prisoner is Alex Berenson's 12th novel and 11th John Wells spy thriller.  It is the first book of his that I have ever read.

The front cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:  "An Islamic State prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison has been overheard hinting that a senior CIA officer may be passing information to the Islamic State. The agency's top officials, and even the President, say the possibility is unthinkable. But John Wells and Ellis Shafer, his former boss at the agency, have reason to believe it. To prove their fears, Wells will have to reassume his former identity as a hardened jihadi, then get  captured and sent to the same prison as the source..."

I enjoyed this book somewhat but was disappointed that the main story did not commence until halfway through the book.  It took me over a week to read it which for me is a long time.  I usually finish a book in 1 or 2 days.

The pace was slow which made it a boring book. I know that this is a minority opinion as I have read many glowing reviews of the book. It just did not do much for me.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart The Campaign to Understand my WWII Veteran Father is a wonderful graphic memoir by Carol Tyler. Tyler shows how her father's war experiences traumatically affected him and, in turn, affected his relationships with his children as they were growing up, including how they obtained their own emotional baggage from their upbringing. The book joins the author's angst over her present life, a failed marriage and mentally ill daughter, with the memories her father has from his war experience. The trauma has now affected three generations. At the time the book was published in 2015, he was still alive and was 95 years old.

Carol Tyler wants to be closer to her parents but is unable to penetrate the hard exteriors they developed from the trauma of the war experience. Like most members of the greatest generation, they did not talk about the past. One day Charles Tyler calls his daughter on the phone and talks for 2 hours about the war. His daughter, the author, then begins 2 projects. She begins a scrapbook of her father's war years and also begins to research his war experiences by going through government archives and interviewing her father. What she puts together is a magnificent history of how WWII affected the generation that fought it and how their battle scars affected their abilities to raise their future families. Having been raised myself by this generation I can truthfully say that every family I grew up with has the same baggage that Tyler family has. It is part of our American history.

The reason for the title "Soldier's Heart" is simple. This was the term used after the Civil War to describe the PTSD that soldier's suffered from. The artwork changes throughout the book from comic panels to full page drawings done in both pen and watercolors. The colors vary by page from saturated colors to desaturated colors.

A Soldier's Heart is a fabulous history lesson on WWII. If you did not live through it I highly recommend that you read it. For those of us that lived with the aftermath of the war, it may explain why your family life turned out the way it did.

Simply magnificent!!!!!