en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 22:13:00 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7511564531 Tue, 29 Apr 2025 22:13:00 -0700 /review/show/7511564531 Murray gave 5 stars to A Death in the Family (Paperback) by James Agee
James Agee's debut novel is considered a classic for good reason. I was reminded of Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than Scout, we get a similarly aged boy, Rufus, Rufus who is transformed by tragedy when his life is confronted by death. Like Lee, Faulkner and Tenessee Williams, the poor and unschooled are bathed in lyrical, poetic language that gives their hard fought lives a deserved dignity and import. There are moments where my perception of things are reshaped and never to be forgotten. ]]> ReadStatus9337057846 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:55:28 -0700 /review/show/7508095380 Murray is currently reading How to Heal Toxic Thoughts: Simple Tools for Personal Transformation by Sandra Ingerman
]]> Review7508086970 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:53:13 -0700 /review/show/7508086970 Murray gave 4 stars to Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, #3) by L.M. Montgomery
Anne (with an E). I'm unabashedly in love with her. I read the first volume decades ago and found the Netflix series a great solace during the COVID shutdown when I was struggling to stay afloat through a divorce. I should have read the second volume prior to this, Anne of Avonlea, but when this was offered on discount, I took the plunge. I ahould note, lest you think this is the type of novel I am regularly drawn, it's clearly not. In fact, this throwback to a type and time that depicts characters who strive for a wholeheartedness and decency that borders on fantasy is an anomaly. I started studying existential literature when I was fourteen. Wnen in college, Charles Bukowski was more my style than Lucy Maud Montgomery. What my 68 year old jaded mind needs now, though, isn't the proponderance of despair. I need relief. I relished every second of this and was absolutely sobbing at its finish. What a joy. What a healing succor to the dark, self-inflicted lesions to my heart. God bless you Anne. ]]> Review7479189595 Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:48:55 -0700 /review/show/7479189595 Murray gave 3 stars to Northanger Abbey (Paperback) by Jane Austen
Jane Austen began this as her first novel but it was not finished until many years after her best known and beloved novels were published. It was, in fact, published posthumously. It certainly reads like a representation of juvenalia. The perfection she later mastered of representing the intricacies of British high society in and around Bath in the late 18th century is here rendered as shallow and silly. More focused on an apreciation and satire of the gothic novels she'd been enjoying and were currently popular, our young "heroine," Catherine Moreland, spends time in her head conjuring up perverse pssibilities of horror and morbidity, except when lost in the sort of novelistic love a seventeen year old might fixate. All in all, I was disappointed. It's been many decades since I read my last Austen and cherished her at the time. Either I have become more discerning in my mature years of this earliest work of hers is just lacking. I'm trusting more in the later. To its benefit and mine, it's a short carriage ride from start to finish. ]]> Review7458086695 Thu, 10 Apr 2025 18:53:08 -0700 /review/show/7458086695 Murray gave 4 stars to The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children, #1) by Jean M. Auel
Here it is in 2025 and I'm finally getting around to a book that I saw in many readers hands back in the 1970s. It was something of a phenomenon at that time. I was already a reader but leaned towards slimmer tomes. Now in the audio book era, the longer, the better. I'm a bit stuck on the star rating, equvocating between three and four out of five. It's a deceptively simple book as it's narration straddles the concept of description communicated by a primitive early descendant of modern man and telling a rich story of ideas and characters. The clan with the exception of one, the main character who is of "the others," a more modern evolution, communicate exclusively through sign language. Only Aela and her son, Dirk, use verbal language. If Jean had chosen to translate the primitive sign language, the narration would have been so basic, story and ideas would have been nearly impossible to convey. Instead, she had to give the reader a notion of the limitations and then widen it to make the novel of interest to a modern man. That's where the fourth star seems more than attibutal to the difficult task. Without delving into too many spoilers, an earthquake separates a five year old girl from her parents and clan. After a week of near starvation and an attack by a lion where she is clawed but is able to eacape death in a crevice, she is found in a stream by the a clan of the cave bear and nursed back to life. Her survival by incorporation into the clan becomes the story. Her differences and ingenuity make her both feared and revered. One shoud know going in that this became a series of novels. You will be left at a point where the next novel will begin. That can be frustrating if one decides to stop rather than continue. The pre-writing scholarly research that went into the creation of this work is impressive. There is a lot one learns about our ancestors. I for one, wouldn't last a week with the daily hardships. I'm writing this short report while sitting in an easy chair in a dry, heated home with food in the fridge and electric light illuminating my surroundings. Jean's ability to take one outside their comfort zone and experience, if only a little bit, the struggles of early man, is remarkable. ]]> Review7429050600 Wed, 02 Apr 2025 19:19:02 -0700 /review/show/7429050600 Murray gave 3 stars to The Tudor Vendetta (The Spymaster Chronicles, #3) by C.W. Gortner
Although listed as an historical novel, no one in study of such times should rely on it for a source of information. It does delve into historical figures as characters, Elizabeth 1 no less, but it's pure fiction. As for a detective, adventure story, it has definite attraction. C.W. Gortner will never be mistaken as a writer of literary value, but he does have a good sense of creating physical spaces. Whether palace, ale house, forest or manor, one is fully present in the ambiance and deacriptive detail. The human figures are fully formed but of less believability as C. W. exagerates them to dramatize to a fault. Still, I was reminded of classic Hollywood depictions from Saturday matinees. Fun. Entertaining. I'm certain to find myself at some point longing for more of the same middle-brow, intrigue and will investigate if another such entertainment is available. ]]> Review7395322758 Wed, 19 Mar 2025 19:34:09 -0700 /review/show/7395322758 Murray gave 3 stars to The Professor (Hardcover) by Charlotte Brontë
This novel by Charlotte Bronte was her first though rejected and published posthumously by her widower. Knowing how great Charlotte's literary skills will prove in later accomplishments, it allows not more than three stars when placed in comparison. That doesn't mean it isn't good. What's also notable, Charlotte, frustrated by its rejection, later changed the lead protagonist to a woman and refashioned the bones of the novel into the more celebrated Violette. What I find its weakness, however, is more its concentration on characters who are determined to be unexceptional both in appearance, fortune and mind. Frances, the lace-mender, later proves this initial description as quite wrong but that isn't brought to the reader's understanding until the near end. One character, a gentleman named Hunsden Yorke Hunsden, is the flair that could have livened up many more pages if his Oscar Wildean witt had been more present. Where's the novel telling the complete story of this fellow. As it stands, one should probably read this Charlotte Bronte novel last if given the opportunity and time to be a completist. Don't streer away from it, however, as it has merits to make it much worth your while. ]]> Review7392359964 Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:48:55 -0700 /review/show/7392359964 Murray gave 3 stars to Saigon (Kindle Edition) by Anthony Grey
If you were to ask most Americans for a history of what entangled the US in Vietnam, the answer would be to halt the expanse of communism. If challenged for details, few could elaborate, though an estimated 280,000 US military were killed in action.
Anthony Grey's 800 page novel aims to change that negligence. Smartly, he knows a good, pulpy romance will invite more readers than a dry history. Spanning 1925 to 1975, he intertwines three families--American, Vietnamese and French as a framework. He even tossed in a Brit. That the characters all end up as major figures in the conflict informs you of the intent. It's absurd but highly entertaining.
I've never read Gone With the Wind, but I imagine many learned much about the civil war while investing themselves in the romantic and economic trvails of a few families.
Entertainment and history don't have to be at odds. I've read a number of Vietnam based novels to get at what happened and why. This may not be the best written on a literary level or the best at understanding the average experience of a soldier, but it did present a complicated colonial history that I knew much too little about, previously.
And that has value.
Also, this would make a great mini-series. Iremember the popularity if North and South about the American civil war. The pulpy, character driven nature of this work would be perfect for mass viewing appreciation. ]]> Review7224232093 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:59:53 -0800 /review/show/7224232093 Murray gave 4 stars to The Day of the Locust (Mass Market Paperback) by Nathanael West
I first read this novel in my English Literature university studies. I had a peofessor, Gerald Locklin, who championed the novel. Cynical and bleak, it's portrait of humanity was a perfect representation of the nightmarish reality we embraced as truth. This was the same era I discovered Savid Lynch and Charles Bukowski. The horror. The horror.
At 68, as much as my world view is unaltered, I have found a place of some peace I inhabit, tenuously fortified as it is, and no longer have the stomach to dwell on hell.
Homer Simpson--yes, the original Homer--moves from the mid-west into the land of hope and dreams, Hollywood. There, he gets drawn ito the darkness by a slew of characters, especially one enticing waif struggling for stardom, at any cost. As Homer is simple and instictively kind, to a degree the other characters are not, he is easily taken advantage. He is the world ambling along unawares of the menacing darkness at its heels.
Then there is Todd who is attempting to paint the Hollywood he sees, the horrific nightmare we are discovering in the novel, figuratively disappearing into flames.
It's a little like reading Steinbeck on LSD. The characters are well drawn and approachable, even as you wish, at times, they'd go away where you wouldn't have to witness their pathetic failures and compromises.
One might be able to board a train, plane or bus ro return to where they came but can they escape? Once stained, it doesn't come out.
I have learned to live with the nightmare by way of faith and controlled environment, but I can still smell the smoke on certain winds.
]]> Review7187509668 Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:54:32 -0800 /review/show/7187509668 Murray gave 3 stars to At the Bottom of the River (Paperback) by Jamaica Kincaid
These interconnecting pieces are described as stories although I heard them as elongated poetry.
Neing transported into a Carribean childhood to adulthood through lyrical remembrances was a means to float away on a sort of vacation.
Nothing stayed with me but that's okay. If I desire, I have a forever return ticket to make another visit. ]]>