Camino Island

Camino Island – by John Grisham

Whenever I read a story (real or fictitious) about a famous piece of art being stolen, I can’t help but ask myself: How does one achieve ransom for such a heist? If the piece of art is THAT well known, wouldn’t everyone be looking for it? Wouldn’t the thief be very easy to trace?  To me it seems about as pointless as making off with a suitcase full of cash when you knew ahead of time that all of the bills were marked.

Anyway, this book is a bit of a departure for John Grisham as it doesn’t fall into the category of a ‘legal’ thriller. Grisham has strayed away from the topic that made him famous with mixed results.  Some, such as “A Painted House” were great. Others, such as “Skipping Christmas” bring a new meaning to the term “awful”. Still, Grisham is a great writer, so I’m of the opinion that he can write about whatever he chooses. Unfortunately, that’s not to say that he’s always successful.  Camino Island is a book that seems to have several half-baked ideas yet never seems to really get to its final destination with any sort of excitement or flair.  This book, overall, was not a very good story.  It’s a good thing John Grisham wrote it, though, as he can take a mediocre story and at least keep the reader turning the pages.

A well-planned heist succeeds and a group of five criminals manage to lift all of the original manuscripts of the novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At the conclusion of the heist at the end of the first chapter, Grisham roughly slams on the breaks and takes his story in a different direction. Instead of reading much more about the criminals, the story instead focuses on the potential whereabouts for the ill-gotten booty; a bookstore on a place called Camino Island.

Investigators find a young, struggling author (Mercer Mann) who has just lost a job at a university where she was employed as an adjunct professor. It seems as though she has a personal history with Camino Island, so she’s recruited to go live there by the investigators, work on an unfinished novel, assimilate herself into the community, and spy on the bookstore and the bookstore’s owner.

There’s a lot of potential here, and this novel could go in many different directions, but it sadly never does.  There’s nothing really here that we read that is particularly interesting nor surprising. In fact, once she arrives on the island, things seem to be a bit unrealistic.  Do bookstores on remote islands in the middle of nowhere really command the notoriety that we read about here?  Are there really THAT many published authors that all happen to live in such close proximity to each other?  Remember, we’re talking about a remote island here, not Midtown Manhattan.

It’s been noted by other readers that John Grisham is probably doing a bit of disservice to his reputation by cranking out at least one book every year.  Maybe he has a deal with his publisher to do just that. Of course, if I was the publisher and I had a hot commodity like John Grisham, I’d probably want him to churn out books at an unrealistic level as well.  This book just seemed rushed and unfocused. Had Grisham had another year or two to work on this thing, I believe it could have been much better as it definitely had potential.  The direction it ended up going in, however, seemed too safe, too easy, and it felt like the author was just checking off a box.  It’s somewhat ironic that the main protagonist in this story is also an author who ‘can’t seem to come up with any ideas for the book she’s working on’.

Although I was disappointed in the story, I would still recommend the book for light reading.  Had any other author been tasked to write this same story, it would have ended up quite awful.  Finishing this book was like eating a meal at a restaurant that you didn’t find particularly tasty.  The food was merely adequate, and you felt full after eating, but you probably won’t be going back to the restaurant any time soon.

I firmly believe that if Grisham would cut down on his output, he might only write about half as many books, but they would probably be twice as enjoyable as a lot of his latter-day work.

Transcription

Transcription – by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is probably my favorite author, and no other author gets me as excited when I find out they have penned and released a new novel.  Overall, I felt this release was good, but I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t rival some of her better works. This one seemed to falter a bit.

If you’re a fan of Atkinson, you tend to notice trends with her characters and settings.  She mainly focuses on female leads, all take place in England, and there seems to be a lot of action that takes place during the second world war.  Her characters are a rather sad lot as well.  A lot of people plodding through a miserable life with one mishap after another slapping them regularly in the face.

A lot of those traits are here, but our protagonist Juliet Armstrong seems to be a bit happier with her lot in life that what we’re used to inside an Atkinson book. 

Although an 18-year old orphan, Juliet snags a job as a low-level spy in 1940 when Britain found themselves, once again, at war with neighboring Germany.  What many people don’t know is that the early years of the second global conflict actually had a lot of German sympathizers in merry old England.  No one really wanted another war with Germany, and Hitler didn’t seem quite as bad as history would one day show us.   Sadly, anti-Semitism was (and still is) a global problem, so many of the fascist Brits were quite o.k. with Hitler’s solution to the “Jewish” problem.

So Armstrong’s main job is to hide out in an apartment adjacent to another apartment where ‘secret’ meetings are being held by enemy sympathisers. The meetings are clandestinely recorded, and Juliet’s job is to transcribe the recordings. As the story progresses, we see Juliet move onto other things, and the story actually zig-zags a bit between the 1940s and 1050s.

I won’t really go into what Juliet does in the 1950s, since ‘plots’ have never really been Kate Atkinson’s forte.  What makes Atkinson’s stories so appealing are the characters, the dialogue, and her descriptions of the situations and the surroundings. This is also why many don’t enjoy Kate Atkinson. These people prefer a real STORY, so when the actual story isn’t as important to Kate Atkinson, one can see and excuse the fact that many just don’t find this author their particular cup of tea.

If you’ve never read a Kate Atkinson, I would advise you to start with one of her other works.  Some of my particular favorites were “Human Croquet”, “Behind the Scenes at a Museum”, and the wonderful “Life After Life” (easily one my all-time favorites; again though, many don’t like it). I also enjoyed her Jackson Brodie mysteries a bit more than this one as well.

A bit of a slump for Atkinson. Well written and entertaining, but a far cry from her best.

President Reagan – The Triumph of Imagination

President Reagan – The Triumph of Imagination by Richard Reeves

I almost passed on this one.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed this author’s similar works on John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, there were many reviewers that claimed this book had a heavy liberal bias and was unfair towards Ronald Reagan. That fact shouldn’t surprise anyone when you consider the author is a liberal journalist and Reagan was a staunch conservative.  Since biased books aren’t my thing, I was tempted to turn the other way.  Fortunately, I chose to ignore my inner ear and read this book. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, I also thought it was the best of the Richard Reeves’ Presidents “trilogy”.  Yes, the author points out many of Reagan’s faults, but he does acknowledge the good things as well, and sells his audience that Reagan was, indeed, a great communicator.

With a subtitle “The Triumph of Imagination”, one should carefully realize that this moniker can mean more than one thing.  When one thinks of “imagination” they might use the word in a highly positive context. Before one can accomplish great things, one must imagine great things.  When their imagination becomes a reality, it’s a win-win for all that are involved when results are achieved.  However, the word “imagination” can also infer things less kind. Imagination is also a substitute for reality, and when one spends too much time imagining and not enough time doing, there can be consequences.  We look at such individuals as living in an alternate reality kin to a fantasy land.  Whether or not it was the author’s intentions, he seemed to attribute both of these definitions to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan could be an incredible visionary that made many feel great and he reinstalled a state of patriotism throughout the country, but he also seemed more like an actor in a movie reading made-up lines trying to convince a skeptical audience that his fictitious ideas were real.

Like the Kennedy and Nixon books by this author, the style and layout of the narrative focuses on Reagan’s tenure in office as president.  We get snippets of life before 1980, but the bulk of this book focuses on all of the major events during his two terms.  The great strength of this (and the other two) book(s) by Reeves is that he is a compelling storyteller.  He knows how go through the major events of these eight years without boring his readers.  We read the good's and the bad's as well as read about the key members of Reagan’s administration. The book seemed to be a perfect length; about 500 pages.   Had it been twice as long it would have only been half as good.

We see that Ronald Reagan is brilliant when handling a crowd and talking to reporters during press conferences.  I was surprised to read that, early in his administration, he wrote many of his own speeches. In many ways, a leader’s job should be to do just that; lead.  The president doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the room nor know the intricacies of the many aspects of government. This is why a president has a Cabinet.  It’s impossible to not make comparisons against Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter.  When Carter would be asked a tough question during a press conference, he would often look like a cat that just swallowed a stale mouse and plod his way through an unpleasant, unintelligible answer. Reagan, on the other hand, would shrug his shoulders, tell a funny-one liner, smile, say something along the lines of “aw shucks….” and manage go up five points in the polls overnight.

Of course, there needs to be some substance to go along with that style, and Reeves is clear to point out the bad decisions Reagan made, and the bad advice (whether coming from an insider or an astrologer) Reagan chose to heed. So in addition to a soaring economy, Grenada, and escalating the end of the cold war with Russia, we also read about massive deficits, Beirut, and a heckuva lot of Iran-Contra.  

We must then remember that once Reagan became president, he was already and old man. 70 when he entered office, 78 when he left.  Although 70 sounds old, 78 sounds a lot older. A lot older. We see the effects of this quite often during the latter years of his administration.  We see Reagan confused and frequently falling asleep during cabinet meetings. He didn’t even know where he was at times (‘You’re in the Oval Office, Mr. President…’)  It might surprise readers, but this isn’t quite as rare as one might think. Woodrow Wilson was an invalid due to a stroke his last 18 months in office, and FDR was basically at death’s door before his fourth term even began.  It’s just that we didn’t have a thing called “television” back then, so these things could be veiled.  Although the author doesn’t explicitly state this, it seems Reagan starts falling apart mentally after John Hinkley emptied a gun into him.  It’s quite scary to read how serious Reagan’s wounds were, and it seemed touch and go for a while.  Since this event happened a mere two months after Reagan takes office, we don’t really have enough information to do a “before and after” comparison. Still, though, judging from what we read, Reagan definitely had much more vitality before the attempted assassination.

Another thing I found interesting while reading this book is how much more cooperative the congress seemed to be then in recent history. Although Reagan was dealing with Democratic majorities, he was able to pass a lot of legislation and there seemed to be a much better spirit of cooperation.  Of course, we read about Reagan diligently making phone calls to members of congress whenever there was an important vote, and I would guess the Gipper regularly turned on the charm.  Again, this is something that Jimmy Carter could not (nor would not) do.  I also found it a bit of an eyebrow raiser to find that many well-known Republicans turned against him after successful negotiations on nuclear disarmament and a reduction in weapons production in 1988 with the USSR.  One scathing conservative accused the president’s accomplishments of nothing more than “Liberal Detente”.

So the majority loved the man, the far left hated him, and the author does a brilliant job throughout his book telling us why.  I’ll say it again, I didn’t think this book was biased in the least. I thought it was a very fair treatment.  In fact, had the author been a strong conservative instead of a strong liberal, I could feasibly see the exact same finished product.

For me, this is a trait of an excellent book.