I’ve been quite the busy beaver this week. I finished reading two novels, one good, one really good.

The good one is Jennifer Egan’s highly praised A Visit from the Goon Squad. When it came out in hardcover, people exclaimed what a wonderful, astute, and remarkable collection of connected stories Egan had written. Or was it a novel? Or both? Accolades came as did the prizes. I’m not going to write a lengthy review here. I’ll just say that I thought it was good. It didn’t grab me the way it has other people I know who have read it, but I still liked it. I think it was me,  not the book and I’ll stop there.

The really good book I read is a debut novel coming from Ecco Press called Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson. It’s about two boys in Vermont: Jude who was adopted by two hippies at birth, and Teddy, the son of an alcoholic  mother and vanished father. They’re young punks in a small town who spend most of the time getting fucked up on anything they get their hands on. When Teddy overdoses one night, Jude moves to New York City to live with his pot-selling father where he becomes involved in the straight edge scene there. Jude becomes close to Johnny, Teddy’s older brother, a leading figure in the scene. With their new friend Eliza, Jude tried to amend the past with militant clean living, but problems arise of course. While the plot becomes more complex, the finely drawn characters keep you plugged into the book. She recreates not only a time-period but a smallish movement within it with such skill. I could quibble about the very last chapter of the book, but it didn’t detract enough for me to really care. This is a strong debut from a writer I’m going to keep my eye on.

P.S. Eleanor Henderson will be appearing at my store on June 21st. Yay!

Aaron, aka Mr. Bookdwarf wrote some notes on things he read on our vacation to Costa Rica and asked me to share them.

Siberian Education by Nicolin Lilin: This was the disappointment of the bunch. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely didn’t stand up as well compared to the others. Perhaps it was the translation – it’s written by a Siberian-Ossetian living in Italy, working as a tattoo artist. It’s definitely got some amazing details about what it’s like to grow up in a society that’s somewhere between a cult and a crime family. But the author is digressive, and lacks insight into anything other than his own specific experience. We see little of the neighboring crime families, all of whom apparently have different traditions, and there’s little to no understanding of the role women play in the organization. Still, I expect this book will interest anyone who has paged through the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, or wanted a little more detail about the racketeering shown in movies like Eastern Promises.

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson: Absolutely fantastic. If you ever thought your parents were weird, and I know you have, then you need to read this book. Annie and Buster are the adult children of two performance artists, a key part of their work. After something of a failure to launch, the two return home, looking for solace, only to find themselves roped into yet another eccentric performance. The Family Fang is a compelling story of growing up and distinguishing yourself from your parents, and finding your own voice as an artist. It’s also wildly hilarious. Everyone knows love makes you dumb, but when Annie gets a mash note in the form of a sestina with key words like “locomotive,” we feel acutely both the foolishness we go to for love, and the awkwardness of being loved without loving in return. Everyone can say someone doesn’t get much play, but “can count the number of times… on one hand, and still have fingers left over for elaborate shadow puppets” is prize-winning. Four of us read this book, and read enough of it out loud to each other that the fifth has a good feel for it as well.

I traveled with four people to Costa Rica last month. We all read a variety of books. I’m trying to gather reviews at the moment. Here’s what Aaron said of Clare Dewitt & the City of the Dead by Sara Gran:

Sarah Gran could have given us a sequel to “Dope,” her noirish tale of murder, scandal, and heroin in 1950s New York City. And I would have been happy with that.Instead she gives us “Clare DeWitt and the City of the Dead,” an entirely new, entirely amazing story of an eccentric private eye, good people who do bad things and bad people who do good things. It’s set in post-Katrina New Orleans amid violence, racism, post-traumatic stress, and a rather surprising amount of marijuana cut with PCP. As with “Dope,” the drug-laced underworld isn’t just a titillating addendum, but a key part of the story.

I brought this book on vacation with my friends last month — four of the five of us read it, and all four loved it.

Our friend Grace commented, looking at the author picture on the back cover of the galley, “It’s not fair that she’s also pretty. I think I hate her.”

I too loved the book. I had a chance to meet her a few weeks ago and found her extremely charming. If we lived in the same town, we would be good friends I like to think. Now I have to settle for being Facebook friends.

Some books I’ve read recently but have yet to mention:

• A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear: The next chapter in the Maisie Dobbs series finds Maisie on an undercover assignment for the British Secret Service. They ask her to pose as a professor at a Cambridge college to keep track on possible anti-government activities. Add to the mix a murder and the beginnings of the Nazi party and you’ve got an great addition to the series.
• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown: This isn’t the first novel to have grown children return to the parental home after a setback in love or work, but it’s still a good read. In this case, the father is a Shakespeare scholar and the daughters are all named after characters from his plays, and the whole enterprise of reflecting on their successes, failures, and familial relationships is tinged with history and allusion. Read this if you liked The Three Weismanns of Westport.
• The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly: During tough financial times, Mickey Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, has started taking on foreclosure defense. When one of his clients is accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to taking her home, he finds himself once again in the middle of a high profile murder trial. As in his other books, Connelly does a good job of exploring the complicated nature of the law, and drawing a protagonist who’s well rounded, and not always likeable.

At my request, Public Affairs sent me an early galley of a book by Abhiji Banerjee and Esther Duflo from the Poverty Action Lab over at MIT. It’s titled Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, and I’ve been reading it for about a week now.

The authors bring analytical rigor to global charity by running controlled evaluations to determine whether individual programs actually work. For example, they’re running an experiment to find the best way to fight malaria with mosquito nets. Should they be given away so more people can have them? Should they be sold at full price so that people understand their value? Would a discount help? Once they’re distributed, do people use them? If not, why not?

Billions of dollars from governments and NGOs are donated every year for antipoverty projects, but it’s amazing just how little we know about how effectively it’s used. An important point the authors make is that there are two major schools of thought about foreign aid. Jeffrey Sachs and his allies argue for more aid, saying that without help, poor countries are likely to remain poor. Others, including William Easterly and Dambisa Moyo, argue that foreign aid has failed for decades, that Western do-good missions in poor countries are ineffective at best, and motivated not by a desire to help but by misplaced guilt.

The authors of Poor Economics outline that debate, then move past it. They have a compelling argument that antipoverty programs can be effective if properly designed, and illustrate ways to test them to make sure they actually work. The writing style is accessible and engaging, but it’s not dumbed down or over-simplified. The complexity of the subject means that this book is taking me longer to read than other books, but I’ve found the effort genuinely rewarding.

It’s a terrible day weather-wise here in Cambridge–slush almost a foot deep in some places. I wiped out on a sidewalk earlier which did not help me feel any better. A small sinus thing snuck up on me earlier this week. All of this is to say that now I am at home and I just finished reading Wrecker by Summer Wood, a book I heard about from a sales rep in D.C. a few weeks ago.

It’s about a boy named Wrecker, named so by his mother because of his destructive tendencies, who goes to live with his uncle Len on a farm north of San Francisco at the age of 3. His mother was sent to jail and as his only relative, Len reluctantly agrees to care for him. His own wife Meg has recently suffered an accident that left her brain damaged. Luckily the neighboring commune houses three women, whose lives Wrecker upturns, both literally and figuratively: Willow, Ruthie, and Melody. The novel traces how the boy affects each of these family over the years. I found it a touching and readable story.

8 year old Raj, the middle of three boys, lives with his family on a sugar plantation in Mauritius during WWII as the novel opens. Life is hard, but young Raj knows only his immediate surroundings, getting water with his brother at the nearby river, his mother’s wisdom with healing plants, his father’s harsh lashes as he arrives home drunk most nights. School opens his eyes to another world and he feels shame for the first time. Then a flash flood washes away his beloved siblings and his family moves to avoid the heartache of their loss.

In their new home, Raj’s father works as a prison guard. Although his father tells him that the inmates are all criminals and dangerous men, Raj soon discovers his father is the greatest danger. After a savage beating lands Raj into the prison hospital, he discovers that the inmates are in fact Jewish refugees exiled from British controlled Palestine. One young orphan, David, visits Raj and the two become fast friends.

Appanah wonderfully captures the innocent voice of a boy who loses much and finds even more in his new friend. His young voice grabs your attention and holds it long after the novel ends.