Apr 12 2007

In the Mail – Fiction Edition

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross

Publishers Weekly

Having coauthored five bestsellers with James Patterson (Lifeguard, etc.), Gross makes a solo debut superior to his collaborative efforts, if short of the first thriller rank. His engaging heroine, Kate Raab, a medical researcher in the Bronx, is shocked when the Feds arrest her beloved gold trader father, Benjamin, and charge him with laundering money for a Colombian drug cartel. A hit team’s attempt to kill the entire Raab family prompts all of them, except Kate, to start their lives anew in the witness protection program. Kate’s choice, predictably, places her in continuing danger, even as she begins to suspect that her father’s involvement with the narco traffickers was more deliberate and extensive than he’s willing to admit. The secret revelations at the heart of the plot may strike some as a little far-fetched, and the details about the witness protection program fail to convince, but Gross shows sufficient talent for readers to want to see more from his pen alone.

- The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid

Publishers Weekly

An intriguing, 200-year-old mystery propels this multilayered stand-alone from British author McDermid set in England’s Lake District. Scholar Jane Gresham pursues her theory that HMS Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian returned secretly from exile to his homeland in the late 18th century. A shriveled body found in a bog seems to bear resemblance to this dashing hero, right down to the South Sea tattoos that blacken his buttocks. Jane searches relentlessly for a lost manuscript by the poet Wordsworth that relates Christian’s tale in tantalizing excerpts between chapters. Various subplots complicate her quest, including a fraught friendship with precocious 13-year-old Tenille, a lonely, mixed-race girl who also loves Romantic poetry. With a feminist, socially conscious spin, McDermid (The Distant Echo) vividly contrasts marginal subsistence in London’s dismal Marshpool neighborhood with the Lake District’s bucolic lifestyle. Boasting blurbs from such notable authors as Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritsen and Joseph Finder, this could be McDermid’s break-out book.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0

Apr 10 2007

In the Mail – Non Fiction Edition

It has been quite a while since I have posted one of these “In the Mail” features. For those of you unfamiliar with the format, basically I just post a link and a blurb to books that I have received from publishers. This provides notice of books readers might not be aware of, rewards the publishers for sending me said books, and is a handy way for me to keep track of the books I get and what critics are saying about them.

- Freud’s Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis by Brenda Maddox

Publishers Weekly

In writing the life of the man who established psychoanalysis in Britain, veteran biographer Maddox (Nora: The Real Molly Bloom) gives an equally fascinating (if more familiar) picture of the early world of psychoanalysis, with its conflicting egos and theoretical battles, particularly between strict Freudians and the followers of Melanie Klein, which fiercely divided the English psychoanalytic society founded and ruled over by Ernest Jones. Maddox frames Jones’s life as the story of a man whose enormous gifts finally allowed him to triumph over early disgrace. A Welshman who’d shown brilliance as a medical student, Jones (1879–1958) had to leave England in 1908 after accusations of sexual impropriety while examining several youngsters; Maddox finds the evidence in one case “damning.” But Jones returned two years later to practice psychoanalysis and advocate tirelessly for it, soon becoming a member of Freud’s inner circle.

While one wishes for a bit more insight, Maddox wisely refrains from psychoanalyzing Jones, who took full advantage of his ability to mesmerize women before finally settling into a happy marriage, and his alternately affectionate and irritable relationship with his mentor (Jones at one point accused Freud’s daughter, Anna, of being “insufficiently analyzed”; Freud in turn called Jones a lying Welshman). Perhaps Jones’s greatest moment was in saving Freud and many other Jewish psychoanalysts from the Nazis. Maddox adds an important chapter to the history of psychoanalysis in this balanced and skillful biography.

- Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman’s War Against the Nazis by Karolina Lanckoronska

Booklist

Countess Lanckoronska’s memoir of struggle and survival in Poland during World War II chronicles two tragedies: the Holocaust and the war of occupation and conquest against the Poles by the Russians and the Germans. In 1939, at the outbreak of the war, she lived in Lvov, where she held the post of professor of Renaissance Italian art. Lanckoronska (1898-2002) became active in the resistance movement. She describes her work in the underground in Soviet-occupied Lvov, her escape into Nazi-occupied Polish territories, and her imprisonment in Nazi jails and in the concentration camp of Ravensbruck. There she refused the so-called “privileged” treatment of a special solitary cell, choosing instead to share the fate of her fellow inmates, whom she tried to help. She worked in the sick bay and also gave lectures on art and European history to women facing death. First published in Poland in 2001 and containing eight pages of black-and-white photographs, the book offers a rare insight into this aspect of the Holocaust and of the courage of those who resisted the mass murderers.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0