Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Recommended for my book group and long on my reading list, this book was quite enjoyable even though it had a few elements of those insufferably twee British novels that are over-stuffed with eccentrics behaving cutely. Yes, there were eccentrics behaving cutely. But I sensed a moderating hand — thanks, moderating hand! — and in the end, the book was more what I’d call “easily accessible historical fiction” than anything else. I guess that means it’s also a beach book. Well, it’s out in paperback now and it’s beach season, so have at it! In other words, yes, I’m recommending this book.

“Guernsey” is told through a series of letters to or from writer Juliet Ashton, a young woman seeking purpose in post-WWII London. And many of Juliet’s correspondents are from Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. The Nazis captured and occupied the Channel Islands, but not until after many of the children were sent to other parts of England. What followed were complex interactions among the locals and the Nazis, struggles to survive in the face of blockades by both sides of the war, and the ethical dilemmas that resulted. This is where the twee dies in the face of the poignant. Before Churchill relented and allowed Red Cross ships to provide crucial supplies, the islands were denuded of trees in order to provide fuel, the residents and occupiers nearly starved, and most of the pets were euthanized (and farm animals killed for meat) in order to preserve resources that the people needed. The authors give a strong sense of courage in a desperate situation, but the book stays about as light as is possible given the circumstances. And in the end, twee rises to live again and everyone who’s still around goes on to live happily ever after, or something like that. Please don’t be put off by my cynical tone — I loved this book, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I give it my highest recommendation. I just thought the occasional twee moments were kind of odd.

As for animals, I already mentioned that most of the pets had to be put down in order to keep them from eating food the already-starving people needed to survive. Each family was allowed to keep one, but no more. Exceptions existed for egg-laying poultry and, in the book, birds were better off than other species. For example, intrepid parrot Zenobia captures a villain.

But the mass euthanasia breaks my heart. It would be a terrible situation for a pet owner, and yet from a logical standpoint, it had to be done. War is violent, and animals do not receive a special dispensation even though they are innocent bystanders. There is also a sad moment where the “pig whisperer” kills the last one after having scratched its back in a friendly way. Feral cats and dogs fared no better. And there are a couple of other mentions of harm coming to specific animals.

After much thought, I am going to declare this book MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers. The actions against animals are much more told than described, and you’ll know from reading this review if the mass euthanasia would be too much for you. It’s important to remember the consequences of war, I think, and this was one of them. Otherwise, the book is a delight, and most people will enjoy it.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Lucia, by Andrea De Robilant

I think it would be fun to discover a scandalous — or even interesting — ancestor and then write a book about that person. Andrea di Robilant has done just that by telling the story of Lucia Mocenigo, his great-great-great-great-grandmother. By virtue of being married to Alvise Mocenigo, of a powerful Venetian family, Lucia traveled across Europe and witnessed such events as Napoleon’s conquest of Venice, as well as his defeat in 1814.

Lucia herself had some compelling traits: she was determined at her core, her devotion to her sister and her son drove many of her actions, and she certainly didn’t lack opinions. She was also insecure and a bit of a nag in my opinion, which didn’t help her marriage to the perpetually philandering Alvise. It was clearly a marriage of convenience, but that was a message she seemed to have missed. Still, she showed elements of being a strong, independent woman when not fretting about her family. For example, after Alvise ordered her to take charge of one of his rural properties, Lucia raised pigs and sheep, which I found remarkable for a woman who had previously spent her entire life in the city. In fact, she and Alvise quarreled when she decided to raise cattle as well. Later, while hovering over her adult son and his disturbingly controlling tutor in Paris, she took up the study of biology, chemistry, and other sciences at de Jardin des Plantes, working with esteemed professors to achieve a certificate in botany. Lucia had an intense affair with Austrian military officer, rented much of her home to Lord Byron in a tempestuous landlord/tenant relationship, and generally showed a knack for being wherever history was made. Despite her missteps with Alvise, I found her shoulder a lively perch from which to view the fall of Venice and other Napoleonic era events. If you read history books at all, I recommend this one.

As for the treatment of animals in the book, I will toss out my usual caveat that as times change, so do attitudes towards animals — and we treat them better than our predecessors, as a rule. Horses, being a mode of transportation first and foremost, were viewed as somewhat expendable, for example. They also died on the battlefield along with the men who rode them. However, these situations are merely mentioned, not portrayed, so I am going to declare this book SAFE for animal lovers.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Hamilton Case, by Michelle de Kretser – and a Discourse on Blogging

This book made me confront what I’m dealing with in writing this blog. Specifically, my “hook” is that I do book reviews for animal lovers. Most people end up here for other reasons, but I try to be consistent. There are about 84 billion blogs out there — I always wanted mine to have a theme, it does, and I’m sticking with it.

So what do I really mean by “book reviews for animal lovers”? I try to review books on two levels: is it good, and would it upset someone who doesn’t like to read about violence to animals or upsetting story arcs involving animals? Now, one of the reasons I chose that theme is because I don’t like those books myself. And I read a lot, at least one book a week, often two, so I’m a good person to screen those books out for others.

But — and this is really important in my review of The Hamilton Case — I have to repeat: I am disturbed by violence to animals and upsetting story arcs involving animals. Usually, I can mentally sift through disturbing treatment of animals in a book and address the book’s overall quality. In this case, I cannot.

Yes, I recognize that most people would like this book for the writing, the setting, the character development, the twists, etc., etc. There are even some beautiful passages incorporating appreciation of animals. And I agree with the critics who consider the book realistic.

But I didn’t like it. In fact, I intensely disliked it. Not only is it COMPLETELY UNSAFE for animal lovers, but there are also a couple of upsetting images that I can’t get out of my head and would love to. I couldn’t get past that and read the book on another level. So it probably is a good book, but I can’t recommend it.

As is often the case with such books, the people don’t fare so well, either. But, as I noted, the point of this blog is the treatment of animals in the book. And The Hamilton Case fails that test severely.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Gumbo Tales, by Sara Roahen

I have never been to Louisiana (as well as Oklahoma, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Alaska, and Hawaii). But I love food writing, I love spicy food, and some of my more interesting ancestors lived in Louisiana back in the 1700’s and 1800’s. So, after Gumbo Tales received rave reviews, I put it on my list to read once it was a paperback.

Having read it now, my feelings are mixed. Roahen, formerly a reporter for a New Orleans weekly newspaper, sometimes writes with a strong sense of place. Her chapters focus on particular dishes, their origins and evolution, the different ways they’re served and, ultimately, her favorite restaurants. The timeframe for the book includes the year just after New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. As she notes the changes in the community and expresses concern and relief about various neighbhors, Roahen frets over whether her favorite eateries will return and rejoices when she sees signs of life inside their walls.

However … sometimes she rubbed me the wrong way. This didn’t happen often, but I will confess that when she was preparing her first crawfish boil, I was rooting for the crawfish. She also violated my rule of allowing food animals that escape to stay free. Still, her focus on particular food and drink, from sno-balls to po-boys, from pho to red beans and rice, gave the book a nice structure and is a model I’d like to see more food writers adopt. This framework gave Roahen an opportunity to weave in stories about the communities that make up New Orleans, including long-established Italian families and relatively recent Vietnamese enclaves. If you enjoy food writing, read this book.

This blog exists primarily to review books for readers with animals, and with that in mind, I will call the book SAFE despite the fact that Roahen retrieved the escaped crawfish.  She tells of parrots in trees, there’s a brief mention of chickens and turkeys prepared for slaughter, a half sentence about a hermit crab that died in her childhood, and those crawfish, but nothing extensive.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan

I saw this book in Borders as a remaindered hard back. I remember when Amy Tan’s books flew off the shelves and occupied the best seller lists for months on end, but she seemed to lose her touch for a while, she shifted to children’s books, she became sick, and she sort of drifted off, or so it appeared. I bought the book for $5.99 and invested no expectations in it. And now that I’ve read it, I wonder why it didn’t sell.

Let me be clear: I can be a fan of a writer and still pick them to pieces while loving their work. I can certainly do that with Amy Tan. For example, she always has more characters than she needs and should consolidate some of them but doesn’t. She works at one level of realism for a while, shifts away from it, and shifts back, which is disconcerting to a reader. And for this book in particular, she seems to think people are pretty stupid. I have days when I’d agree with her, but not enough days in a row to write an entire book on that assumption. However… I loved this book.

The story is that of 13 tourists (should have been 9 at most, eliminating Wendy and Wyatt at the very least) organized for a private tour of China and Burma. (The jury is out on whether the sanctions against Burma have any impact, and we won’t go into that here.) But when Bibi Chen, the tour organizer and beyond-the-grave narrator, mysteriously dies, they decide to continue. Bibi had everything planned exquisitely, and once the group breaks from her plan, they immediately encounter trouble. Bits of trouble occur here and there, but then the big trouble happens: 11 of the 12 remaining tourists mysteriously disappear after an encounter with some boatmen from the Karen tribe.

What follows is sad and, at times, heartbreaking. But Tan can be very funny. For example, the 1 tourist who is left behind, Harry Bailley, is a Dog Whisperer sort with his own TV show. And he behaves and thinks like a dog. He’s easily led, he wants to please, he keep encountering women who want to “train” him, and he’s perpetually optimistic. This can be quite amusing – and exasperating. But while there are bits of humor, Tan makes it clear that the Burmest junta is brutal and destructive.

Anyway, I recommend this book. It’s not Tan’s best, but it certainly had no business on the remainder shelves.

As for animals, there are a few animal characters, the most prominent being Pup-pup, an abnormally quiet Shih Tzu puppy. Pup-pup ends up coming out of the experience in a way that should not upset anyone, so there’s no need to spend the book worrying that he’ll be eaten or carried off by a wild animal or anything like that. Harry inherits Bibi’s Yorkie, Poochini, who ends up well. Other dogs include a couple of “sniffer” dogs brought in to search for the lost tourists. Alongside, there is a water buffalo that’s worked too hard, a pig slaughtered for dinner, a kitten lost in one character’s back story, and the fish of the title. So I am going to declare this book SAFE for animal lovers. If you see it at the bookstore, remaindered or not, pick it up!

Dance, Dance, Dance! (And Update from the Groundcover Wars)

I missed my Wednesday posting because of work, I have a stack of books ready to be reviewed, and I want to write about dance. For this, I blame/credit  my friend Dana. But more on that below.

First, last spring I wrote about  planting several groundcovers in hopes they would overtake the useless grass, which I hate mowing. Well, folks, we have a winner: Creeping Jenny. In my back yard, it’s more like Galloping Jenny. A tiny plant in a 2-inch by 2-inch pot took over a space that is roughly 8 square feet. I love it! It can be invasive, which is fine. I’ll kill it where I want to plant other plants, and keep it everywhere else. I have the Golden variety, which is less invasive and, to my mind, more interesting. I’ve planted four of these in my tiny front yard, hoping that by next summer, my grass can be handled with mere weed-whacking.

Now, on to dancing! It’s a cold, cruel world, filled with wars and the military troops we use to fight those wars. The best soldiers are trained in a variety of skills. For example, from Pundit Kitchen:

Okay, so that’s pretty silly. But is it sillier than dancing scientists? As I mentioned, in another context, my friend Dana linked to the AAAS annual “Dance Your PhD Thesis” competition. This was the best, or so I thought. I especially like the guy who’s supposed to be the free cell or random particle or whatever:

Finally, from my friend Terri, we have Frosty, a dancing bird. There are several Frosty videos, but I chose this one because he seems happiest and most spontaneous here:

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Billionaire’s Vinegar, by Benjamin Wallace

This is a story about wishful thinking, and people who have more money than sense – it’s the story of how people who wanted bragging rights for having the “most special” bottle of wine were conned by the Bernie Madoff of wine purveyors, a German by the name of Hardy Rodenstock.

Hardy fooled almost everyone, because those who could afford to spend $150,000 and up on a single bottle of wine wanted to believe that 200 years after the fact, he’d discovered a “secret stash” of perfectly kept wines that had been in Thomas Jefferson’s Paris collection. And like most con artists, Hardy wasn’t satisfied with the first big fraud. He kept “finding” things, and selling them to eager collectors who would then take their over-priced treasures to wine tastings where the point wasn’t so much to find good wines as to show off.

I know something about wine. I’ve had a few well-aged Ports and Sauternes. And it’s a pleasure. But these people turned it into a competition. Not that I’m criticizing, but it became clear from Wallace’s well-crafted story that, for most of these wine buyers, the price tags on the bottles mattered as much as the taste of the contents. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Billionaire’s Vinegar doesn’t so much chase down Hardy Rodenstock as it explores the world of obsessed wine collectors. A bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeau sets the story in motion, and gives Wallace an opportunity to discern the why and how of the rare-wine collecting subculture. The fact that Hardy Rodenstock was elusive and hard to pin down in his fraudulent activities just adds more depth to the story. This was a riveting story, and I highly recommend the book.

As for animal lovers, there’s nothing to worry about here. I do not recall a single animal making an appearance in this book, which means it is 100% SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy — preferably with a glass of “the bargain of the week” from your favorite wine merchant.