Review: Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw

Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw by Charles Leerhsen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like biographies, I like westerns (although I'm not fond of horses - go figure), and who doesn't like Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch and Sundance?

This book was an eye opener.  I hadn't ever thought about what living in the west was really like - the Gunsmoke and Bonanza episodes I watched while growing up made it seem adventurous and exciting - not dirty and hard. Thanks to Hollywood I had no clue!  

I also came away with an appreciation for how hard it is to find accurate information about "folk heroes" like Cassidy - especially since people who didn't want to be found could just move to another state and carry on with a new name. A large portion of the population were illiterate and spellings of names could be quite creative.  Of course the popularity of dime store novels that glorified bank robbers, cattle rustlers, and gunfighters didn't help. 

Throughout this book I wondered why Butch turned to crime.  He was smart, well spoken, well liked, and literate.  Initially it seemed that poverty drove him into crime, but he would go for long stretches as a hard working, trusted ranch hand and then rob a bank or a train and need to leave, only to start over in a new location.  

My biggest complaint about the book was that the author inserted himself too much into the book - especially when it came to his opinion of other researchers.  It's clear he did extensive research and provides ample documentation for his assertions, but he would come off as pompous when referring to his fellow researchers.

After finishing this book I rewatched the Newman/Redford movie.  Sadly after reading this book, I didn't like the movie as much as I did when I first watched it.  Even though it was true to the spirits of Butch and Sundance, the movie didn't age as well as I remembered it.

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Review: A Good Marriage

A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good solid mystery book with lots of twists, turns, and suspects. Both books deal with the idea that you know people, only to find out you don't know them at all.  I loved Reconstructing Amelia by the author and maybe my expectations were too high for this book. 

It was hard to find likable characters in this story, and I felt a bit like some of them were solely created to be perfectly set up to be red as herrings. The rich families behave with little or no integrity, EVERYONE has secrets, an annual sex party (oh boy!!) and money or lack of it drive this story.

That said, I did finish this book in two days so it kept me going. I just wish it had the same depth and heart that Reconstructing Amelia did.

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Review: Deacon King Kong

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an interesting story with interesting people. 

This book takes place in a housing project in NYC. There are all the expected characters - drug dealers, gangsters, drunks, the homeless, deacons, strong women. It goes beyond the stereotype and gives us the humanity of those people...the drunk who moved there as a young man with his future ahead of him, the drug dealer who was a baseball phenom as a child, the preacher's wife who lifts up the whole community. Lives are entangled and lessons are learned. I loved the connectedness of the characters in the story.

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Review: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a great book for folks who are just dipping their toes into the horror genre to read - like me!  I wouldn't normally select a horror book to read, but I kept seeing this book on so many lists I thought I'd see if I could sink my teeth into it. 😉 

We have a group of privileged southern women in the 80s, who as a book club are reading true crime novels - gotta love that premise alone!!  I always suspected there was a bit of menace behind that sweet as sugar, "Bless your soul" from many a southern belle.

We learn about the women's lives, which mostly revolve around husbands, children, and maintaining the perfect home. Not so different from what one would expect in the 80s.  While the book club members are very stereotypic, hidden within are all of the social issues of the time - racism, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, repression of women. 

Throughout the book there are references to the serial killers and crime novels the women have read.  I did love that they took what they learned from these books and put it to good use.  There are also references to vampires in legend and in literature. I wish I was more conversant with vampire lore since I'm sure I missed several references. There is plenty of blood and gore (this is after all a horror novel!), but there are also deeper messages that apply to our 2020's sensibilities.

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Review: The Pull of the Stars

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful pandemic read. Can there really be such a thing?  Things are bad for us, but image living through something like this 100 years ago!

Set in Ireland during the Spanish flu, this book takes place in a hospital's laying in/fever ward - maternity/flu ward. The caregivers and patients are the main focus.  As we see the women being tended to, the author broaches important social issues of the time - shell shock, "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, poverty, the Catholic Church.  

It reminded me a bit of an Irish version of Call the Midwife.

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Review: A Good Neighborhood

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am a retired librarian and I love books - usually ALL books, but not this one.  I so rarely give a negative review that I fear this may be more of a rant than a review.

I took issue with so much about this book. The characters were very one dimensional. For a book about race and to an extent manhood, there were hardly any black men in the book. The one good white man  was dead and the remaining white men were racists and/or pedophiles. We have the strong, ethical single woman raising a son, the money grubbing slut looking for a man to save her, a trailer park trash momma, and a teenager who is "saved" at age 11 and signs a creepy as hell 'purity pledge'.  ALL the women have been sexually abused.

Everything AND the kitchen sink seemed to be the theme of this book - or maybe the author thought she could preach against all evils and maybe one would hit home. Too much skimming off the top of important issues, not any diving deep into them. The book would have been better if it had examined one issue - race, maybe - in a thoughtful and nuanced way.  I knew how this book would end almost before finishing the first chapter. 

The Greek chorus narration seemed interesting at first, but became very annoying, very quickly. There was way too much heavy handed foreshadowing - as though the author didn't trust the reader to pick up the hints through the plot.  As the book progressed and the repercussions for the characters became more dire, the flip tone of the narration didn't seem to match the gravity of the situation. 

The first half of the book was very slow, and then everything happened in the second half of the book - every bad thing that could happen, did happen.  It felt too rushed almost as though the author reached a required number of pages or had a due date looming and needed to finish the book.  

I read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by the same author and didn't dislike that (I gave it 3 stars). I wonder if having real people and events helped the author with her character development, plot, and pacing - All of which were lacking in this book.  There are so many other better books that deal with race and privilege - off the top of my head I can think of Little Fires Everywhere, The Vanishing Half, and The Hate U Give.

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Review: Unspeakable Things

Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was really interesting to me for several reasons. I like thrillers, I'm drawn to spunky teen protagonists, and the actual events this book is based upon happened in a small Minnesota town my family used to visit each summer. 

The story is based on the Jacob Wetterling case, a child abduction that received national attention and has been recently solved - 27 years after the murder occurred.  There are many parallels, but the author also draws from her childhood and takes some creative license.  

I liked the way author lead the reader to draw conclusions without having to spell them out. She gave the reader just enough to be able to fill in the blanks  - which can be quite disturbing. The book ended with a door closing and the reader is left to decide the final ramifications for Cassie (our spunky protagonist)...UNLESS one visits the author's website and reads the epilogue she removed from the book. I liked the book with the ending as written, but I was satisfied with the book after I read the epilogue.

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