Assassination Vacation

I think I want to be Sarah Vowell. Yes, she has the weird voice (see: Violet in Pixar's The Incredibles) and she bears more than a (self-admitted) passing resemblence to Wednesday Addams, but here is a funny, smart woman who seems to get obsessed with an interesting topic, research it like crazy, and then write and publish funny, smart books on said topic. What's not to envy?

In the case of Assassination Vacation, Vowell delves into the circumstances and persons surrounding three presidential assassinations: Lincoln (of course), Garfield (who?) and McKinley (the George W. Bush of his time--Vowell makes a case). The main thread holding these three men together--aside from death while holding office--is...the presence of Robert Todd Lincoln at each of their assassinations. Put that in your conspiracy theorist pipe and smoke it!

Yes, the son of Abraham Lincoln not only lost his father to assassination, but was standing with President Garfield in the railroad station when a disappointed ambassadorship-seeker shot him (It is perhaps important that Charles Guitau--a real nutter--claimed during his trial that he only shot the president: It was the doctors and their grubby probing for the bullet that killed him). Later, Robert Todd Lincoln was just disembarking in Buffalo, NY when anarchist Czolgosz shot McKinley in a receiving line. I must say, the younger Lincoln does not come off as a very nice man in this book (for one, he bungled the Lady Franklin expedition to the North Pole, but that's another topic) and that's even without his "second career as presidential angel of death."

This book was great. Once I got past my vague distaste and discomfort at reading about presidential assassinations, I discovered that I was learning a ton of information in easily digestible bites. Vowell knows and loves her stuff. Before I had kids, I could have joined her in her fascination with the weird and macabre. Now, I have to filter some of the ugliness from my life--too sad, too depressing, but Vowell still revels in it and it is fun. She visits The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which is a place I could have gotten lost in years ago. It's full of weird medical curiosities (she's there to view the thorax of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln assassin). She buys recipes from the Mudd family farm, she seeks out the sad little marker (next to a garage) in the sad seaside town in which Garfield took two months to die; she hikes up and down the NY mountain which Teddy Roosevelt had to rush down in pitch blackness in order to become president at McKinley's death. If it's connected, however tenuously, Vowell visits.

I got a much fuller appreciation of the impact of Lincoln's death than I had before and really got to read and ponder some of his speeches. I learned more about one of the forgotten presidents, Garfield, whose diary entries Vowell claims, could be summed up with "I'd rather be reading." How refreshing is that? And McKinley? Well, his death gave us Teddy Roosevelt, a man's man, the ultimate outdoorsman (in spite of his, er, somewhat ample physique). Vowell imagines his theme song as an arrangement of the Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everyone Else" butchered by a high school marching band. I don't even know the song (I don't think), but that seems a great way to usher in the 20th Century.

Vowell takes friends and family along for her touristy ride, mainly because she does not drive and needs rides, but how could anyone resist? I guess this book is for the rest of us.

A Rule Against Murder

Well, basically I'm blogging this to make fun of it, though perhaps I should make fun of myself for actually finishing this murder mystery by Louise Penny. Yes, this is the kind of mystery in which the word "murder' and "murderous" is thrown about casually by the characters before any such act takes place. No, I don't mean people are casually discussing murder. I mean the author has them say things like (and I kid you not) "Tomorrow, the weather will be murderous." and "the maitre d' stopped dead." Ah yes, the mystery that doesn't realize it's making a mockery of the whole concept.
And really? The Butler did it? Are you sure that's where you want to go with this, Ms. Penny?
I read the first one in this so-called "Three Pines" series because it got great reviews. I found the second one unreadable and dropped it after, oh maybe 2 pages. I picked this one up out of curiosity and a bit of desperation for something frothy. Apparently I've missed another book along the way but it shall probably remain missed. Or unmissed, really.
I do like that the mysteries take place in the Quebec countryside and I like the tension between the Anglos and the Quebecois, the smattering of French, all the talk of cafe au lait and hot croissants. The main character, the head of homicide for all of Quebec is a good, respectable murder mystery character. He's the sort of man who quietly commands respect, who quietly solves mysteries by thinking about them, who loves his wife, and still manages to have a sense of humor in spite of his job.
The author does go on a bit about a statue as if it were alive which became kind of amusing after awhile and yes, there's a LOT of talk about the statue because it's the murder weapon!
There's a whole boring bit at the end where they all have to sit around and hash out who did what, when, and why, and there are lots of unlikeable characters and weirdos that I regret having met, but I did have a bit of fun reading it for all its silliness.
Here's a great line which is only great taken out of context, as it will be here:
"Teeth?...He'd heard many motives for murder, but never teeth."

A little addendum on the title, A Rule Against Murder. I never notice the titles to mysteries because they tend to be lame and not really important to the plot. This one does stand out for its blatant awfulness. Thanks to husband Ben for making fun of it so that I noticed. And, yes, the location of the murder does, indeed have a "rule" against murder.

Songs for the Missing

I love Stewart O'Nan's writing. My two favorite books of his are A Prayer for the Dying and The Good Wife. A Prayer for the Dying, about a plague sweeping the midwest is almost beautiful. Because it is written in the second person, it brings home the shocking ending and I was ready to read it again. I love when authors try something a little unusual (and it works). But that was years ago. Now, I've just finished Songs for the Missing. 17 year old Kim disappears on her way to work one afternoon, early in the book, and the rest of the story is about her family and friends. This was a distant book, lacking the immediacy of A Prayer for the Dying, which was a little disconcerting given the subject matter--parents searching desperately for their missing child.

Some of this disconnect came from O'Nan's choice to have important pieces of the narrative (and the investigation) occur off-page. I kind of like that we never know the complete story between Kim and Wooze (creepy character/suspect/friend) so we're often left to imagine the worst. Her friends drift and life carries on. Her younger sister grows up and out of her shadow and still her parents search for her. O'Nan writes: ...they'd picked up the awkward yardstick used by new parents--sixteen months, seventeen. They counted backwards, snagged on that last day, which grew less and less present as the week by working week the rest of the world surged ahead.

I'd quibble with the word 'awkward" because what does that mean? But I agree with the metaphor. Like new parents, The Larsens are in their own world, and like any person who's experienced tragedy--true tragedy--they can hardly bear that the rest of life keeps moving.

When I'd started the book, I was afraid there would be no resolution at the end and I wasn't sure I could deal with that. I mean, it's not written as a thriller. It's more a kind of slow-moving look at suburban life in Ohio which happens to have this missing person at the center of it. The bookflap makes it sound like all sorts of secrets come out, but all you really see are a middle-aged couple trying to figure out their marriage, kids going off to college who are trying to figure out who they are, and a teenager who grows into a young lady. Life, I guess.

I do have a complaint about the cover picture, though. I'd picked it up, thinking it looked a lot like the waterholes I swam in, growing up in Vermont and New Hampshire, so I was a little surprised to find the book takes place in Ohio. I checked with my sister-in-law (expert on many things Ohio) to see if a scene like that were even possible in such a flat-seeming state. Without even seeing the picture, she was skeptical. Flat, flat, flat, she said. Oh well, I won't really blame O'Nan for that one. He lives in New England, too (Um, well, if Connecticut really counts as New England), and I suppose he has little to do with the covers of his books.

Exit Music

This happens every time I read a John Rebus mystery by Ian Rankin: I am vaguely bored by it, but then when it's over, I keep thinking about it. I think this goes back to my low tolerance for mysteries. I think the writing is great here, but I can kind of see parts of it coming a mile away. The other parts in this particular one felt like just so many red herrings. I guess I feel too aware of the craft of writing a mystery. Still, Exit Music is notable because it is John Rebus' last week as a Detective Inspector in Edinburgh. The "old" guy is leaving and wants to tidy up loose ends. Rankin does a decent job of slowly unveiling the passing of the guard to Rebus' younger partner without making the veteran completely irrelevant to the investigation. At one point, Rebus finds himself lighting a cigarette just to get noticed by the fire marshalls at the crime scene (who are righteously annoyed by this act), but at other times, he is digging deep into the complexities of an uncomplicated case. As swan songs go, it's gentle enough.

I have a secondary interest in Rankin's novels because of their location. I spent a short time in Edinburgh and I like hearing the street names and trying to picture the settings. I like his description of one of the University towers: [It] had been voted the building most people in Edinburgh wanted to see condemned. The tower, perhaps sensing the hostility, had begun to self-destruct, great chunks of cladding falling from it at regular intervals.

I feel like the mystery itself is secondary to the comfort of reading an easy, literate book. I think they all sort of blend together, but isn't that the purpose? At one point, we meet again a character that I swore had been killed in another book, but I couldn't be bothered to track it down. I wouldn't even know where to look. It didn't make any difference to my enjoyment. I just know I'll miss Rebus' further adventures and I kind of want to know what his day will be like when he wakes up, no longer part of Gayfield Square station.

Lost on a Mountain in Maine / Touching the Void

I've been knee-deep in home renovations and kids' books (sick child) so my own reading has been neglected. When I was in third/fourth grade, twelve-year old Donn Fendler's true account of being lost on Mt Katahdin for 9 days was read outloud to me. The primary memory I had from that reading was that you should never eat berries you aren't sure of and you shouldn't drink water that is still and scummy, no matter how hungry and thirsty you might be. This seems a pretty weak memory considering the amazing adventure of survival this story really examines.

This time around, I was reading the book to my third grade son and found myself getting choked up over what this Boy Scout went through all alone in the vast wilderness that still exists today up near Katahdin but that must have been even more wild in 1939. The other thing that I found so touching was how much Fendler relied on his faith in God. That is not something that would have stood out to me as a child, but reading and discussing this with my son who has declared himself a staunch non-believer (no scientific proof) was very interesting. I was practically ready to find a church right then and there, but my son insisted Donn was getting himself out of these horrific situations on his own.

This got me thinking of another survival tale (written for adults): Touching the Void. I saw the excellent movie and then read the book by Joe Simpson. Simpson and his climbing partner are on the snowy face of a mountain in South America when Joe slides down the side of a cliff, breaking his leg in the most horrific way imagineable (seriously, skip this part in the book and plug your ears during the movie). It gets worse, though. His partner thinks he's dead and has to make the agonizing decision to cut the rope and save himself or perish waiting for Joe to pull himself up. Long, amazing story short: partner cuts rope, Simpson rolls his way down the mountain over the course of 10 days and survives to tell his tale. What struck me most about that story, was that Simpson insists that he never turned to God during his ordeal, as most people in dreadful circumstances might. His motivation was to ensure that he would never again spend a night alone in a crevasse, waiting to die.

Donn Fendler, of course, is a twelve year old boy scout from another time and his faith is strong. He believes in Guardian Angels, even. But I will say, his amazing ability to get himself out of the woods of rural maine, off the highest mountain west of the Rockies, ALONE, rivals Joe Simpson's survival.

I wonder what my son will hold with him from this story, but I have already used Donn's mantra. During the night, my son could not catch his breath due to a respiratory infection. I could see the panic in his eyes as he gasped and gasped and I knew I had to calm him down. I simply quoted back to him what we had read that day. Donn says, I learned it in Scouting and it did me a lot of good-maybe even saved my life. Keep your head and you'll come out all right--just keep your head!"

Not a bad mantra in general. I just hope I'm never face to face with a bear on a mountain in Maine, by myself, or rolling my way through snowy caverns with a mangled leg when I'd really have to test the power of positive thought.

I'm three quarters of the way through Ian Rankin's last John Rebus mystery and I may even finish it soon.