Bernardsville Reviews: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Welcome to Bernardsville Reviews! Read what the staff and patrons of Bernardsville Public Library have written about the books, movies, and music they've enjoyed. 

Anne Post, Assistant Youth Services Manager, writes:

Recently I read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, listed as book 8 of the Harry Potter series. Beginning where the Rowling book 7 ends, it is actually a play written by Jack Thorne and is currently being produced on the London stage.

I chose this book in the first place because I was tasked with reading a play for a book review group I belong to. I decided to choose something for kids, as I can always add to my book excitement here in Youth Services!

I was very pleasantly surprised by how easily it could be followed in both story line and play action. The sideline comments were not intrusive, and the characters' dialogue followed along in a manner similar to reading a story alone. At times I had to recap to focus on who was speaking, but that's a small imposition. I would recommend this book to kids and parents who want to continue on in the Harry Potter story. It's also a great discussion starter. Enjoy!

The Briny Deep

Neither sailors nor readers want to find themselves "in the doldrums" - languishing in a torpid state, going nowhere - yet August is a time of year when readership can be affected by the weather.  We're halfway through a sweltering summer and exhausted by it.  We need a bit of sea spray and a cool, off-shore breeze to revive us.  We need to read some nautical tales!  


To find the right book for you, try Bookmarks Magazine's reading list, 101 Crackerjack Sea Books, which includes book jacket illustrations along with good annotations.  You'll find all the classic sea stories among its many recommendations, but as this list was complied in 2006, please keep in mind subsequent notable books such as Simon Winchester's Atlantic or Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea.  Still, it's a good start. And starting is what it's all about when getting out of the doldrums.

Not To Be Overlooked

Here are two noteworthy pieces of fiction that you may have missed.  Both books present wonderful reading experiences and deserve your notice. 

Kevin Holohan's caustic and witty book, The Brothers' Lot, delivers a swift kick to the crumbling moral decay of Irish Catholic brotherhoods and church schools in this debut novel.  Holohan's story will leave you angered, but also bemused that there could be anything laughable about the corrupted world of the "Brothers of Godly Coercion for Boys of Meager Means."  Wielding his plot line like a terrible swift sword, Holohan insures that there will be retribution served against the Brothers for their many examples of child abuse.  In fact, the walls of their miserable school  do indeed come crashing down around their heads in a great scene of authorial wish fulfillment by this very promising Irish writer. 

American author and poet Denis Johnson's beautiful novella, Train Dreams, is an exceptional work capturing the sweep and depth of change in early 1900's America.  Writer Anthony Doerr's review notes that "Johnson is as skilled as ever at balancing menace against ecstasy, civilization against wilderness. His prose tiptoes a tightrope between peace and calamity, and beneath all of the novella’s best moments, Johnson runs twin strains of tenderness and the threat of violence." Denis Johnson's masterful writing condenses what could have been an epic story into a poetic, magical piece of short fiction.  This is literary fiction of a high caliber.

~Evelyn Fischel~

Rafa's Rock

Here's a very enjoyable new sports memoir entitled Rafa about the tennis champion Rafael Nadal. Co-authored with John Carlin who works for El Pais, the Spanish language newspaper, this is a well written book which clearly distinguishes Nadal's voice from Carlin's as chapters alternate between the two.  Nadal's opening chapter introduces us to the tennis player's state of mind, always a battleground against his own thoughts, as Nadal prepares to face off against Roger Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final.  Nadal writes, "The feeling suits me; the cathedral hush of the Centre Court is good for my game.  Because what I battle hardest to do in a tennis match is to quiet the voices in my head, to shut everything out of my mind but the contest itself and concentrate every atom of my being on the point I am playing.  If I made a mistake on a previous point, forget it; should a thought of victory suggest itself, crush it."  

The epic battle, marked by rain delay, gathering darkness and five hours of play, resulted in Nadal's Wimbledon victory at the age of 22, fulfilling this young player's earliest ambition. Of course, Nadal has since attained many more championships and Grand Slams, and he discusses some of these matches as well.  The book is not merely a technical analysis of his play, but rather an interesting portrait of the determination and endurance required of any champion.  As we follow Rafa's story, we learn some of the physical and personal challenges he has had to face even as he has maintained a sterling reputation in the sports' world.  John Carlin's chapters fill us in on Nadal's family life and upbringing on Mallorca.  His strong family bond and the Mallorcan culture have clearly formed the bedrock that has kept Nadal so stable and focused, never allowing him to be self-centered. This champion always returns home to his family and to the island of Mallorca, where his victories are never celebrated because that is not their way.

~Evelyn Fischel~

Staff Picks to Pick Up

Stumped for a book to read and no time to browse?  Stop by the lobby display of Bernardsville Library Staff Picks loaded with items for all kinds of readers, including children.  There are many biographies, cookbooks, movies, music cds, audiobooks, fiction, nonfiction, and picture books from which to chose.  See what the staff recommends and share your suggestions, too.  It's one-stop shopping, library style!

Elephants and Crocs, as Seen by the Doc

Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson brings the reader up close and quite personal with the kinds of wild animals that tourists dream about but may never see on safari.  Each of the 19 stories chronicles an interesting medical case handled by this highly-skilled South African veterinarian.  Some of the cases
seemed hopeless at the time; others appeared almost impossible to treat.  How do you track and treat in the wild a lionness with entropion of the eyelid, a condition which could eventually blind her?   How safe is it to anesthetize a 2-ton rhinoceros? Can an elephant survive a plundered meal of 220 pounds of canned pickles and jars of jam, glass and all?  Who wouldn't want to know the answer to that one!

The intriguing medical crises of large and small wild animals are explained in this book with humility, good humor, and a loving dedication to the author's patients.  Yes, even a deadly Cape cobra which has killed a small pet dog (the dog went into the bushes after the snake and broke the snake's spine) is treated by the doctor with the same earnest hope of saving its life.  Although this story ended sadly for both animals, Dr. Aronson made the effort to find the wild snake, restrain it, perform an examination on it, mercifully euthanize it, and then safely desposit the snake's body out in the countryside.  He did this out of respect for life and nature's ways.

Each of these medical cases has broadened the author's knowledge of the animal kingdom and its precarious standing in a world ever encroached upon by man.  In turn, this African veterinarian has educated many game wardens, animal handlers, and the public about the unique and serious conditions that can affect these animals.  The issues of Apartheid, poaching, and the introduction of human disease into wildlife species are discussed in an  informative way that puts mankind on alert without harsh scolding. I thoroughly enjoyed these true and amazing stories demonstrating one very beneficial and vital way man can connect with the wildest of lifeforms.
~Evelyn Fischel~

Rework Your Business Thinking

Thomas Alva Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."  Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's new book, supplies 271 pages of sheer inspiration to get you motivated about work and your career dreams. And the good news is that this is a very quick and easy book to read.  Rework is filled with bold illustrations and short, punchy topics of one or two pages each, such as "Long Lists Don't Get Done" and "Start at the Epicenter." After reading it, you might just feel the "can do" spirit to lift yourself out of your work or business rut. The last page does admonish you, however, that "Inspiration is Perishable."  As the authors note, "Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator, But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work."

Life At A Snail's Pace

Elisabeth Tova Bailey's 2010 book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, describes life truly lived at a snail's pace. Victim of a virulent virus which attacked her autonomic nervous system and caused mitochondrial disease, Elisabeth Tova Bailey faced a depressing prognosis of extreme fatigue and the inability to maintain adequate blood pressure in an upright position.  In short, she would have to live life reclining because her body was unable to function in an upright manner. Although she had periods of improvement, serious health reversals repeatedly sent her back to bed.  Dependent on caregivers and friends for her needs, she found that she had all the time in the world, but no capability to use it in the ways she would like.

Enter the snail.

One day a visiting friend brought her a small snail she had found in the woods, simply because it struck her fancy.  This friend deposited the snail in a pot of field violets which she placed on Bailey's bedside table.  The author quickly found herself mesmerized by the seeming poise and adaptability of this wild creature suddenly placed in an alien environment.  As she observed the snail's tentative exploration of its pot, Bailey fancifully noted, "Pondering its circumstances with a regal air, as if from the turret of a castle, it waved its tentacles this way and then that, as though responding to a distant melody."  So began the author's enchantment with the snail and her identification with its slow, but purposeful progress through each day.  She enjoyed its nocturnal activity, glad to have the presence of another living thing close by on sleepless nights.

On one such night she first heard the sound of the tiny snail eating a flower petal. With this, the snail captured both Elisabeth Tova Bailey and me. I couldn't wait to learn more about how the snail and the author might fare. In this short and endearing book, I learned much of fascinating interest about snails, their life cycles and languorous "love lives," their unique and paradoxical physical aspects. Interspersed throughout the story are wonderful excerpts from poets and scientists who have long appreciated this miniscule, but marvelous organism. Bailey aptly quotes the haiku of Kobayashi Issa here, "Climb Mount Fuji/ O Snail/ but slowly, slowly."  What insights the author gleaned from her coexistence with this fellow slow-mover enabled her to examine and accept her own state of being.  The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating tells her story and that of the snail with beautiful prose and fluid style.

~Evelyn Fischel~

Tom Rob Smith

London-born writer Tom Rob Smith just may be the go-to author for people who are ready to move on from Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. Smith's first book, Child 44, bears all the hallmarks of a great crime thriller - enduring suspense, characters who grow with the well-plotted storyline, and a relevant setting of historical authenticity, in this case, post-Stalinist Russia. His subsequent novel, The Secret Speech, and an upcoming publication, Agent 6, carry forward the story of Leo Stepanovich Demidov, former member of the MGB, as he and his family adapt to his new position in the Soviet State security system.

At the heart of Child 44 is the mystery behind a seemingly inexplicable and horrible series of child murders occurring across a wide area of the Soviet Union. A secretive, paranoid regime is unable to acknowledge that such crimes are possible, let alone that they may be connected. Innocent victims face torture, character assassination, gulags and misery, all so that the myth of a perfect political state might be perpetuated. Meanwhile the vicious child slaughters continue unabated.

One man, Leo Demidov, develops the conscience and courage to investigate these murders as crimes of a serial killer. As the author notes on his Web site, "How a crime is investigated is a very useful litmus test for larger forces within a society, the priorities and prejudices of that world. I guess with CHILD 44 I wanted to combine both those elements, the puzzle and the period in which this puzzle is unraveling." Although the novel's child murders are based on the true crimes of Ukrainian serial killer Andre Chikatilo, Tom Rob Smith fits them into his own web of cause and effect, and once again it is Leo Demidov who is at the center of it all.

Smith shares that he was always a reader, loved adventure stories and took them in whatever form they came - mythology, history, science fiction, television, drama or film. Perhaps the author's work as a storyliner for various British television shows following his graduation from Cambridge helped shape Child 44 into a story that would translate well cinematographically. Apparently Ridley Scott, director of "Alien" and "Blade Runner," thinks so too, as he has bought the rights to the book for a future film production.

~Evelyn Fischel~

The library book group Saturday Samplers will discuss Child 44 on April 2nd at 3:30 p.m. in the small meeting room.

Staff Pick: Unbearable Lightness

Library staff member Linda Sexton has written the following review of actress Portia De Rossi's new book, which is available at Bernardsville Public Library.

"I just finished the memoir Unbearable Lightness by Portia De Rossi. I wasn't sure what to expect since she is a celebrity, but the book was written with honesty and courage. The book is about her long battle with anorexia and subsequent binging and purging.  Portia De Rossi also discusses the underlying fear she had that her homosexuality would be exposed to the public.  It is nearly impossible to understand what it is like for someone to struggle with an eating disorder, but she lets us inside her mind and we can see what an unbearable burden it is. Her ultimate goal is to give hope to those who need it and to show that recovery is not easy, but possible. Once again I remember not to judge those whose lives look perfect on the outside."

Staff Pick: Anthony Doerr's Short Stories

If you are looking for highly inventive, finely executed writing,  give Anthony Doerr's books a try.  Doerr's first publication was a set of short stories, The Shell Collector, which came out to positive reviews in 2002.  Subsequent to that, he published the nonfiction work, Four Seasons in Rome, and a novel, About Grace. He continues to write for such magazines as McSweeney's, Orion, and Zoetrope: All-Story. and has just published a second collection of short fiction entitled Memory Wall: stories.  His writing has received numerous awards including the O. Henry Prize, the Rome Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.

Both The Shell Collector and Memory Wall: stories contain imaginative stories with characters whose foibles, talents, and travails are brought to life in unusual, but convincing ways.  For instance, "The Hunter's Wife, " in The Shell Collector, describes a marriage falling apart as a wife discovers her very special ability to feel the blissful life experiences of those recently deceased.  She does this with animals and later with several people. This diviner of the dead forces her husband to touch her hand as she holds the leg of a doe he has just killed, creating a connection to the doe's receding life force. "Already the doe's vision was surging through her (wife's) body - fifty deer wading a sparkling brook, their bellies in the current, craning their necks to pull leaves from overhanging alders, light pouring around their bodies, a buck raising its antlered head like a king. A silver bead of water hung from its muzzle, caught the sun, and fell."

In Memory Wall: stories characters contend with their memories and what it means to lose memory or self-identification.  This theme is symbolized in the story, "Village 113," by the Chinese town whose inhabitants are forced to give up their homes, community, and way of life so that the area can be submerged for a dam.  The first story in the collection, "Memory Wall," uses science fiction to tell the wonderful human interest story of a young South African boy, Luvo, whose brain has been adapted to "read" the memories of an elderly woman with dementia. Luvo is as much a victim of memory loss as the woman.  "Luvo believes he is somewhere around fifteen years old.  He has very few memories of his own: none of his parents, no sense of who might have installed four ports in his skull and set him adrift among the ten thousand orphans of Cape Town. No memories of how or why."  But Luvo still has intelligence and free will, and what he chooses to do with them makes for a powerful and beautiful story.

Review by Evelyn Fischel

This Bo*k is a Ho*t

Prim readers are given fair warning to duck and cover!

The title of Justin Halpern's new book, Sh*t My Dad Says, well, it says it all.  Justin's dad says it over and over again, along with the F bomb in all its verb tenses,  so you get the idea of this short, pungent and funny memoir.

The book categorizes a lifetime of Sam Halpern's comments into brief chapters illustrating how he handled episodes in his son's life.  Chapters like Justin's cheating on a school science experiment, not wanting to share a bedroom with Grampa, and asking endless, stupid questions are all covered with a story and a series of pithy vulgarisms by dad.  For example, on the topic of young Justin asking dumb hypothetical questions, his dad responded, "No. There's no scenario where I'd eat a human being, so you can stop making them up and asking me, understood?  Jesus, is this how you spend your day, just coming up with this (expletive?)"  You might not expect that dad is actually a doctor of nuclear medicine, but Sam Halpern tells it like he sees it to his son, and it is often painfully funny and blunt.

It is interesting to note that what started out as Justin Halpern's daily Twitter feed about his father evolved into this, his first book.  In a similar fashion, books like Waiter Rant and A Homemade Life developed out of their authors' blogs.  This demonstrates to me that social media (blogging and tweeting) do not necessarily take readers away from books.   Rather, they seem to be providing publishers with a whole new treasure trove of material.

Review by Evelyn Fischel

Staff Recommendation: Read One, Then The Other

I recently read two fascinating books which delve into the mysterious history of the Cape Ann settlement of Dogtown, now a part of Gloucester, Massachusetts.  The books are Dogtown: death and enchantment in a New England ghost town by Elyssa East and The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.  Anita Diamant's  fictional account of the decline of this  impoverished settlement in the early 1800's uses historical characters in an imaginative and compelling way.  Elyssa East approaches the history of the same forlorn region from a modern departure point - the shocking murder there of a local woman in 1984.

East's 2009 narrative nonfiction book combines an investigation of this murder with parallel storylines involving art history detection and local intrigue.  The author initially intended to find the sources of inspiration for some of American artist Marsden Hartley's 1930's watercolors which featured the unusual topography of Dogtown, known for its boulders and strange rocky formations.  Thinking she might be able to see the actual locations which Hartley painted, she travelled to Gloucester, bought a map of Dogtown, and promptly got lost in its disorienting woods.  The area had long ago acquired a reputation for eerie happenings, a reputation  which was further  tarnished  by the savage and pointless murder of a young woman in these very woods.  Dogtown: death and enchantment in a New England ghost town will keep you engaged throughout, but it is regrettable that the author did not provide any prints of Hartley's Dogtown landscapes or any photos of the area.

Diamant's 2005 historical fiction book, The Last Days of Dogtown, fleshes together an interesting tale about the last survivors of the isolated and failing Dogtown Settlement at the beginning of the nineteenth century.   Only fragmentary records and oral histories remain of Dogtown's demise and of the people who inhabited this remote area of Cape Ann.  Many of  Dogtown's  inhabitants were shunned by Gloucester folk because they  clung to old ways and refused to move into town.  Some were suspected of  practicing witchcraft and prostitution.  Diamant expands the few historical vignettes about these people into a satisfying story of marginalized individuals living a desperate existence in a dying settlement. Some of these individuals are briefly mentioned in Elyssa East's book as well, but I was glad that Anita Diamant had given them fuller, though fictional  lives.  I do recommend both of these books.

 Review by Evelyn Fischel

More Staff Picks

Susan really liked Sarah's Key by Tatiana deRosnay. She states that the book "chronicles the 1942 Jewish roundup in Paris, a tragedy revisted by an American journalist married to a Frenchman whose family is in complete denial and wants to leave the entire matter in the past...well worth the read."

Felicia loves Amy Bloom's books, including her most recent, Where the God of Love Hangs Out.  Felicia said these short stories did not disappoint her and that the characters were memorable.

Gerry read Still Alice by Lisa Genova and found it to be a powerful, important book.  A fictional account of the day-to-day life of a renowned neuroscientist who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, Still Alice kept Gerry turning the page. She couldn't put it down.

Evelyn greatly enjoyed Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster.  It's a highly imaginative, wild ride through the history of 20th century America featuring a young country boy trained to do a mind-boggling feat by Mr. Vertigo himself.  

Staff Picks

Here are some reading and listening ideas from a few of our staff members.  Look for another posting soon with suggestions from other staff members at Bernardsville Library.  Don't hesitate to ask us about these books.

Margaret enjoyed reading Dean Koontz's, A Big Little Life, a book about the author's first dog.  A dog owner herself, Margaret can recommend other good books about good pets.







Karen V. listened to an audiobook recording of The Piano Teacher by Janice Yee.  She just loved it and thought that it was a great World War II-era story set in Hong Kong.






Rosalie recommends the audiobook recording of Kathryn Stockett's blockbuster debut book, The Help.  She says she couldn't stop listening to it and thought it was a riveting story.








Linda enjoyed Anita Brookner's Strangers, saying that she really got to know the characters and what their day to day lives were like.  Brookner is one of Linda's favorite authors.

50 Book Challenge to the Rescue

What do you do when adversity "takes you down" - at least for a while? In the case of this blogger with a nicely broken wrist, there's not much else to do but read, and so I have plunged single-handedly into Bernardsville Public Library's 50 Book Challenge for 2010.

As luck would have it, someone recommended a good book to me the very night before my accident, so when I returned from the E.R., I took up Immaculee Ilibagiza's memoir, Left To Tell, a tale of her great faith and survival during the Rwandan genocide. There's nothing like reading about harrowing and unimaginable suffering to put one's own whimperings into perspective.

Finding that misery really does love company, I rushed on to disaster stories next. How exciting was The Lost City Of Z, by David Grann, about a failed expedition to the Amazon which sought to locate a mythical archaeological site in the early part of the 20th century!

Why not read about a shipwreck next?! Being lost at sea had to be worse than nursing a broken bone, and, yes, it certainly was in Nathaniel Philbrick's, In the Heart of the Sea. This nonfiction book is based on accounts of two survivors of the whale ship Essex which was stove by a whale - yes, I learned a new word, too, (stove) -  in 1820.  Herman Melville also thought the original accounts of this shipwreck made for a good yarn since he used the Essex story as a framework for Moby Dick. One thing leads to another, it seems, so I, in turn, reread the atmospheric parts of Melville's Moby Dick.

By now it was time for some heartwarming animal stories. I recommend Making Rounds With Oscar by David Dosa for those who love cats and for those who are caregivers or relatives of Alzheimers patients. The physician author gives gentle, good advice that could help families to accept the slippery slope of this disease. He also recounts the story of the hospice cat, Oscar, who unfailingly appears at the bedsides of those patients about to die. For a lighter but equally touching animal story, I tried The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery. Who couldn't love a dear little runt of the litter, but who would guess the piglet would grow into a 750 pound hog with a gift for companionship? This was a very sweet tale within a curly tail.

It was then that I picked up Life of Pi by Yann Martel. How circular my reading had now become!  My earlier books about faith and suffering, shipwrecks, storytelling, and animals all came together in this one curious piece of fiction. 

I think those of you who participate in a dedicated reading routine such as the 50 Book Challenge will also find patterns emerging in your book choices and in the notions expressed by your authors. You, too, will delight in seeing how ideas and themes can be written and rewritten in so many wondrous and diverse ways.

~Evelyn  Fischel

Methland - A Sobering Look at "Heartland" America and Methamphetamine Addiction

As the subtitle states, Nick Reding's new book Methland chronicles "The Death and Life of an American Small Town." The town in question is Olewein, Iowa, where rural, small town life has been ravaged by methamphetamine addiction and the criminality that comes with it. Representative of many economically depressed Midwestern towns, Olewein found itself nearly destroyed by a combination of factors which contributed to a sudden tremendous surge in meth use. The author states that in the early 1990’s, local meatpacking plants were being acquired by giant corporations such as Gillette and Tyson. These corporations, in turn, ousted the union, slashed wages drastically, and eliminated workers’ compensation and medical coverage, leading to a flight of workers and to a decrease in the population. While methamphetamine abuse had been present in Olewein before, it suddenly became economically attractive to manufacture “crank” and deal it.

Residents found that they could make more money through meth production than they could hope to earn legally. Home meth labs sprang up all over Olewein, creating toxic hazards to residents, particularly children. Crimes related to meth use, not typically seen before, caused further erosion in the quality of town life, and more drug addicts and criminals moved in, attracted by the depressed housing prices and the apparent lack of police control over the situation. The town was on a death spiral, but as the title indicates,  life has come back to Olewein. How this transpired makes for a very compelling, but harrowing true story.

Review by Evelyn Fischel

Book Review: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Read Zeitoun by Dave Eggers for a truly engrossing and enraging narrative of one man's experiences during and following the 2005 flooding of New Orleans. What Hurricane Katrina (together with poor civil preparedness and bad levee engineering) did to the victims of this storm was horrifying enough. We all know that. But Zeitoun is an intensely gripping personal account of one victim who found himself innocently caught in the aftermath of the government's nightmarish disaster response.


You may be aghast to learn what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun - a Syrian-American, married father of four children, highly successful contractor, and well-liked and respected citizen of New Orleans - when he stayed behind to protect his home and business interests.  The merciful actions he took in saving people and pets were not met in kind by U.S. authorities.  Author Dave Eggers has written a remarkably tempered accounting of Mr. Zeitoun's ordeal in this highly readable narrative nonfiction book.

Review by Evelyn Fischel

Review: New Short Stories By Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, noted author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, recently released a selection of short stories entitled Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. Nocturnes are evocative and light instrumental pieces often performed in the evening. In this new publication, nocturnes do seem to reflect the true nature of Ishiguro’s stories which are evocative yet also somewhat insubstantial. They linger awhile in your mind, but do not deeply resonate. Perhaps that is the author’s intention.

For the most part, these stories are relayed in a casual manner, almost as if the narrator of each were telling us a light bedtime story or recollecting past histories over a glass of wine. Many of the stories make good use of humor and irony, particularly Nocturne and Crooner, and Come Rain or Come Shine is playfully farcical. That is not to say that they don’t have a moodiness or a message to them. The characters, all involved with music in some way, are often self-deluded and self-centered (maybe the two go together) but Ishiguro never asks the reader to dwell too deeply on their travails. These are, afterall, literary nocturnes.

Review by Evelyn Fischel

A Perfect Place To Disappear

Lake of the Woods, the 950,400 acre lake which straddles the border between Minnesota and Canada, is not a locale where you want to get lost, but it is THE perfect place in which to disappear. With over 14,000 islands and extensive forests, this remote area could easily swallow up a lost person. It is also a great place to stage one's disappearance if so desired. In addition, the massive lake affords a wonderful opportunity to dispose of a body without detection. What if someone suddenly vanished here? Who would know which possible scenario had really happened? That's the premise of Tim O'Brien's excellent book, In the Lake of the Woods.


The lake proves to be the ideal setting for O'Brien to examine the idea of inexplicable loss with all its myriad, painful angles. In this 1994 book the author creates a fascinating human drama centered on a troubled couple seeking solace and/or escape on a remote section of the lakefront. The husband is trying to blot out the disappointment and disgrace of his political downfall, and it is clear that he has become figuratively lost. His wife's story, on the other hand, is revealed mostly through her husband's reflections and the must-read footnotes. For early in the plot, it is the wife who becomes physically lost, vanishing suddenly in the night. From this point on, the story expands into both a mesmerizing mystery story and a somber reflection on self-knowledge. In fact, the idea of being lost to oneself becomes paramount as the story unfolds.

In true Tim O'Brien style, a traumatic episode from the Vietnam War plays a significant role as do the recalled experiences from the man's youth. There are a minimum of characters, but they are well drawn, and additional character input comes from the truly engrossing footnotes. While there are no comforting resolutions or easy answers, In the Lake of the Woods is a fabulous book right to the ending.
Book review by Evelyn Fischel