Her Fearful Symmetry / Audrey Niffenegger
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It's hard to know what to make of Audrey Niffenegger's much-anticipated follow-up to 2003's huge publishing blockbuster The Time Traveller's Wife. Julia and Valentina are 21-year-old suburban Chicago twins who inherit a flat in London's Highgate Village from an aunt they never met. Her will stipulates that they must live there a year before it can be sold. The flat overlooks the Victorian Cemetery Highgate, which figures largely in the plot and emphasizes the theme of death and life beyond death.
The book really takes the reader for a spin at the end with a surprising revelation of switched identity, spirits, reincarnation, and bodyswitching. What starts out as a nice character novel quickly turns into Patrick Swayze inhabiting Whoopi Goldberg's body in the movie Ghost... well not that bad, but close.
Be that as it may, this novel is ideal for London enthusiasts-- Niffenegger obviously has great affection for London, knows her way around, and plays close attention to details (grabbing sandwiches at Pret, swiping her Oyster card on the tube, ducking into Stanfords map shop).
It is a worthy read, but the plot is stretched a bit too thin, and is a somewhat disappointing successor to her first book. One wonders if Audrey Niffenegger is having a bad year-- The Time Traveller's Wife translated poorly to the silver screen, and her sophomore book release has had a tepid reception. Better luck next time. ©Ken Vesey
Click here to check for availability in AFPLS
It's hard to know what to make of Audrey Niffenegger's much-anticipated follow-up to 2003's huge publishing blockbuster The Time Traveller's Wife. Julia and Valentina are 21-year-old suburban Chicago twins who inherit a flat in London's Highgate Village from an aunt they never met. Her will stipulates that they must live there a year before it can be sold. The flat overlooks the Victorian Cemetery Highgate, which figures largely in the plot and emphasizes the theme of death and life beyond death.
The book really takes the reader for a spin at the end with a surprising revelation of switched identity, spirits, reincarnation, and bodyswitching. What starts out as a nice character novel quickly turns into Patrick Swayze inhabiting Whoopi Goldberg's body in the movie Ghost... well not that bad, but close.
Be that as it may, this novel is ideal for London enthusiasts-- Niffenegger obviously has great affection for London, knows her way around, and plays close attention to details (grabbing sandwiches at Pret, swiping her Oyster card on the tube, ducking into Stanfords map shop).
It is a worthy read, but the plot is stretched a bit too thin, and is a somewhat disappointing successor to her first book. One wonders if Audrey Niffenegger is having a bad year-- The Time Traveller's Wife translated poorly to the silver screen, and her sophomore book release has had a tepid reception. Better luck next time. ©Ken Vesey
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
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Victorian London in the 1850s was a city nearly collapsing under the weight of its human inhabitants. Sanitation and water supply were not well regulated with the result that the Thames was a heaving sewer and residences and neighborhoods were overcome by overflowing cesspools with the attendant smells and unpleasantness. When a neighborhood surrounding Golden Square in Soho is stricken by a devastating cholera outbreak, a doctor and a cleric try to tease out the reasons for the waterborne epidemic at a time when the prevailing wisdom indicated that disease was caused by airborne “miasmas”. When the point of infection is traced to a water pump, there are still skeptics until the link is proven unequivocally. Largely because of this discovery, great Victorian engineering works were undertaken, leaving a sanitary infrastructure that still serves London and its inhabitants to this day. This is an intriguing story that almost reads like a mystery. Aficionados of nonfiction writers like Mark Kurlansky, Erik Larson, and Simon Winchester will enjoy this book. ©Ken Vesey
Click here to check for availability in AFPLS
Victorian London in the 1850s was a city nearly collapsing under the weight of its human inhabitants. Sanitation and water supply were not well regulated with the result that the Thames was a heaving sewer and residences and neighborhoods were overcome by overflowing cesspools with the attendant smells and unpleasantness. When a neighborhood surrounding Golden Square in Soho is stricken by a devastating cholera outbreak, a doctor and a cleric try to tease out the reasons for the waterborne epidemic at a time when the prevailing wisdom indicated that disease was caused by airborne “miasmas”. When the point of infection is traced to a water pump, there are still skeptics until the link is proven unequivocally. Largely because of this discovery, great Victorian engineering works were undertaken, leaving a sanitary infrastructure that still serves London and its inhabitants to this day. This is an intriguing story that almost reads like a mystery. Aficionados of nonfiction writers like Mark Kurlansky, Erik Larson, and Simon Winchester will enjoy this book. ©Ken Vesey
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
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Dan Brown's latest book about Washington DC and Freemasonry starts slow, picks up towards the middle, and becomes a terrific page-turner-- complete with the kind of breathless chase that made Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons so compelling. But then the story ends on page 400, which is unfortunate for the reader since the book continues on for about a hundred more pages. The villain is a crazy fiend, like the man-monster in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, complete with a diabolical basement lair. Without giving too much away, I’m still wondering how Peter Solomon was able to regard his amputation as, in the words of Monty Python, “a mere flesh wound”. And though I was fascinated by Langdon’s suspended animation, I wondered how he sprang back so quickly and wasn’t worried about pneumonia. The book, like other Dan Brown novels before it, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but that isn’t to say that it isn’t a darn good read. I just wish I could get the face of Tom Hanks out of my head when Robert Langdon crosses the page. ©Ken Vesey
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Dan Brown's latest book about Washington DC and Freemasonry starts slow, picks up towards the middle, and becomes a terrific page-turner-- complete with the kind of breathless chase that made Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons so compelling. But then the story ends on page 400, which is unfortunate for the reader since the book continues on for about a hundred more pages. The villain is a crazy fiend, like the man-monster in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, complete with a diabolical basement lair. Without giving too much away, I’m still wondering how Peter Solomon was able to regard his amputation as, in the words of Monty Python, “a mere flesh wound”. And though I was fascinated by Langdon’s suspended animation, I wondered how he sprang back so quickly and wasn’t worried about pneumonia. The book, like other Dan Brown novels before it, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but that isn’t to say that it isn’t a darn good read. I just wish I could get the face of Tom Hanks out of my head when Robert Langdon crosses the page. ©Ken Vesey
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