Peachy Reads

An art history whodunit?    Hard to imagine, but this book often reads like a thriller.   The Ghent altarpiece is one of the most stunning artworks ever created.   Its unparalleled beauty and intricate symbolism also made it one of the most prestigious spoils of war throughout the centuries.   Noah Charney describes the genesis of this wonderful work of art and then charts its precarious survival in spite of iconoclasts, unscrupulous caretakers, inept burglars, and foreign invaders.   The last part of the book documents Hitler’s effort to create a mega art museum in Linz with all the stolen booty from the Nazi plundering of Europe.   In the final days of World War II, this priceless depository of art, including the Ghent altarpiece, was nearly destroyed in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps.   Stealing the Mystic Lamb is a bit of fascinating art history with a little Monuments Men thrown in.   Click here for an online link that shows the wo...

This is the first Bernie Gunther novel  I have read that was completely set   after the fall of the Third Reich.  It takes place in 1947 with a Berlin in ruins, its inhabitants trying to survive under very difficult circumstances with the Russians exerting an enormous influence, and the fragile peace struck between the allied victors fraying at the seams.  Partly due to the struggle for everyday existence in the former German capital, Bernie takes on a job in Vienna, another city that is split between the Amis, Brits, French, and the Russkies. He very quickly finds himself caught in a complex web of intrigue involving the Russians and Americans, and a shady association of ex-Nazis who are creating a network of influence in postwar Europe.  This novel  is extremely suspenseful up until the last pages, and is an enjoyable foray into the history of Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II and its earliest efforts at reconstruction. 

A chance encounter at a christening party radically redirects the destiny of two families for decades to come.  The dilemmas and issues that confront the two families are largely commonplace, but there is one defining event, the secret of which is painfully revealed in a very public way, that has repercussions that no one expected. The parts of this book, divided by the passage of time, serve almost as stand-alone short stories—the characters and situations are drawn so vividly and so expertly that it almost feels as if the reader has stepped into the scene and has become an active observer.   In Commonwealth Ann Patchett describes life as we know it, and yet, in her hands, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Ove is the self-appointed neighborhood overseer, making sure that residents and visitors follow the home owners association rules to the letter.  His daily routine includes checking to see that the recyclables have been sorted correctly, seeing that motor vehicles do not enter the residential area, and that bikes are properly stored in the bike shed.  He takes this role seriously, and it immediately becomes obvious that Ove is an insufferable curmudgeon.   After the recent death of his wife, he contemplates joining her by plotting to take his own life.  In a comedy of errors his attempts to do himself in are always foiled by a last-minute interruption that pulls him in closer to the circle of the living.  Bit by bit the neighborhood community embraces him, and he is no longer a loner, though he is just as grumpy.   The reader learns of Ove’s upbringing and his marriage via flashbacks, and these vignettes provide important glimpse...

The ever-increasing horrors of slavery embolden Cora to flee the Georgia cotton plantation on which she grew up.  She is spirited away on the underground railroad.  In Whitehead’s novel the underground railroad is more than a metaphor for an escape route to freedom, it is an actual subterranean conveyance that transports runaways away from enslavement to an alternative life further north.  The tunnels travel through both space and time, and we find Cora living in different versions of the African American experience post-slavery.  I was motivated to learn more about the different “stations” where Cora disembarked – the settings that may have represented various realities for African Americans after emancipation.  Unfortunately, in the end I found it to be a bit of a slog and I wished for more character development.   I found myself forgetting where some of the characters had been introduced and all of them seemed a bit one-dimensional.  A wo...

Two recent graduates of Brown embark on an around-the-world tour, starting in China.  Things  go  downhill rather quickly when the rough standards of a backpacker’s life grate on them, and they are challenged  by the realities of traveling in a communist country in the 1980s where there is virtually no tourist infrastructure and nothing is in English.  Their bumbling attempts to cope are laughable, but become rather tragic as their relationship begins to fray, and one of the pair begins to suffer with psychological episodes.  It all goes rather wrong at the end with an unexpected and rather abrupt return to New York City. I like the nostalgia of this.    The two go abroad in the eighties and listen to the music I remember from college. It was an era before the internet and cell phones, so travelling required a bit more organization and forethought, which may be the reason their trip is doomed from the start.  ...

This family saga involves two brothers who grow up in Calcutta.  One is killed by state forces after his clandestine involvement in an anti-government group, the Naxilites, a Maoist force that was active in India starting in the late 1960s.  His brother, who was studying in the United States at the time of his death, marries his brother’s widow and so the uncle serves as father to his unborn child.  The book mainly charts the history of Subhash and Gauri’s strained relationship, and the often difficult growing up of Gauri’s daughter, Bela.   Gauri eventually abandons Subhash and her daughter, and the secret of Bela's real father remains unrevealed for far too long.  Gauri has her own secret, which the reader only finds out at the end of the novel, a secret that might reveal her motivation to flee any vestige of her past and link to her life in India. Once again Jhumpa Lahiri crafts a tale that successfully and beautifully spa...