Book reports

One of the nice things about traveling is those long airport terminal waits and in-flight time give me a chance to do recreational reading. Here are comments on three books of recent contemporary fiction I read during my August travels. All three books are good and I recommend them to you.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the more unique stories I've read in a long time. English novelist Mark Haddon writes his tale from the first-person perspective of Christopher, an autistic English teenager (with an eidetic memory and mathematical savant skills) who has decided to write his own book detailing his efforts to play detective to solve the "murder" of a neighborhood pet dog. It is Christopher's book, so we end up experiencing a number of autistic eccentricities, such as the chapters being numbered with sequential prime numbers (numbers divisible only by one and itself) and the occasional mathematical formula to help describe the logic behind a particular clue analysis. Autistics tend to be very visual, so Christopher also has included a number of drawings of diagrams, flowcharts, and illustrations to demonstrate what he's pondering. He is very thorough. Along the way, however, the reader can feel the pain and challenges of Christopher's single-parent father and teachers as they try to communicate and relate to an autistic child who often totally shuts down in times of stress, especially when faced with unknown people and locations. The story becomes particularly poignant as Christopher's dog investigation proceeds and he begins to uncover clues about his mother.

The book is a quick, enjoyable read. Haddon has masterfully captured both the thought processes and the traits of autistic children. I know some people with autistic qualities and behaviors, and he really nails it. Haddon also weaves a compelling double mystery, and somehow manages to merge the mysteries with Christopher's voice in a way that does not seem contrived. Several of the scenes made me ache for the boy, and yet, with autistics, we don't really know if they experience emotional pain the same way non-autistics do. I was also touched by the plight of Christopher's father, who strongly loved his son, but just didn't know how to handle an autistic child approaching adulthood.

What with all the hype about The DaVinci Code with its internationally best-selling novel and upcoming movie, this is the perfect environment for The Rule of Four. What is particularly interesting about The Rule of Four, though, is that it was the senior thesis project of Princeton student Ian Caldwell, then reworked into the published novel form by Caldwell and his lifelong friend, Dustin Thomason. They have created a mystery novel around a group of Ivy League students fighting academic politics and crime while in their quest to resolve one of the great academic mysteries of all time, the meaning of the early Renaissance book, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or The Strife of Love in a Dream (a contrived title built with Greek word roots), is believed to have been written by a Dominican monk Francesco Colonna in the late 15th century. The book, while written essentially in Italian, is an odd hodge-podge of languages, incorporating Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and even Arabic from time to time, and it includes a now-famous acrostic built with the first letter of each chapter, spelling out the phrase "Poliam Frater Francisvs Colvmna Peramavit (“Brother Francis Colonna deeply loved Polia”). Scholars have been trying to decipher the novel and find hidden messages and clues in the text ever since its original publication. Some scholars believe that the book may have been a political statement about Girolamo Savonarola, a devout but misguided religious zealot in Florence at the time who was responsible for the burning and destruction of countless artworks and literary masterpieces because they were not suitably "Christian"—and perhaps this is a good historical record for us to heed in 21st century America. It is into this academic tradition that Caldwell and Thomason have set their protagonists in The Rule of Four.

I found The Rule of Four to be quite interesting, although what interests me might be a little too esoteric for the non-academic reader. I can see a movie version of The DaVinci Code, because the general public has heard about the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but I don't know how the filmmakers will educate the public about the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and adapt The Rule of Four to the big screen. The pacing of the novel was good, but then in the concluding chapters, too much happened too quickly. I guess the publishers wanted to keep the novel from exceeding 500 pages. The book provides a cynical glimpse into the cut-throat politics of high level university professors and scholars (no, things are not as staid and dignified as most people believe) and also displays the academic environment of the nation's top universities (a level not reached by the vast majority of colleges and universities) and the commitment of the students, even on the undergraduate level. Of course, this novel also provides some encouragement to certain friends of mine who also wrote novels for their senior thesis requirements to consider polishing and publishing their works! (hint, hint)

One of my friends was kind enough to bring me back from one of his New York trips an advance reading copy of A Long Stay in a Distant Land by Chieh Chieng. The novel should be published and released by Bloomsbury Publishing later this year, if it hasn't been released already (the advance copy is dated April 2005). A Long Stay in a Distant Land should do well on the bookseller charts. It's an interesting narrative about the Lums, a Hong Kong Chinese family that immigrated to the United States prior to World War II and is now living in Orange County, California. While set in the present day, it has chapters which bounce around throughout the family's history to explain the events of a previous year, giving us perspective on the current motivations of the characters. We experience a lot of Chinese-American culture as well as the angst of being immigrants (albeit second and third generation) in a country that does not fully assimilate non-Europeans. We also see the multi-generational tensions of a close, extended family where matriarchal influences are still strong.

This appears to be author Chieh Chieng's first novel, and I'm assuming he's a young writer, since his credits mention the writing program at the University of California at Irvine?? It's a good start. There are a couple of things I'd like him to have strengthened. First of all, I found myself having to refer to the genealogical chart in the front of the book often, just to keep the characters straight. It's a big, confusing family. It also took me a long time to figure out that the grandson Louis Lum ultimately was the central character of the book. The historical chapters interspersed throughout the book may have contributed to my disorientation, since they happened so early and so frequently. They were also not chronological flashbacks, but jumped around in no particular order. They were useful, though, because it's always good to be able to understand why family members react and are motivated the way they are. I also loved the family meals and the vivid descriptions of the food (which inspired me to take a special trip to Chinatown to order some of these foods). A Long Stay in a Distant Land is a fascinating look into the mechanics of the modern family.