Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993 TAG: 9301310225
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BOOKS IN BRIEF
The General's Daughter.\ By Nelson DeMille. Warner. $21.95."The General's Daughter" is a curious best-seller. Despite the seeming sensationalism of its premise, it's not glitzy or glamorous. Just the opposite is true. It's about life on an Army base in rural Georgia. The characters are realistic, well-drawn soldiers, mostly officers - men and women who have chosen a particular way of life. The novel is also a mystery that begins when the title character, Capt. Ann Campbell, is found staked out on a rifle range, naked and asphyxiated.
It doesn't take investigators Paul Brenner and Cynthia Sunhill long to determine that this is not an "ordinary" sex crime. The solution lies in the victim's past and it appears that the highest levels of command would like to keep that past a secret.
As a mystery, the novel is at best partially successful. The pace is slow and the revelations tend to come without surprise. But DeMille succeeds in creating a complex portrait of the Army as an institution. It's an organization deeply rooted in tradition but facing enormous, fundamental changes about its role in American society and its basic composition. That side is fascinating and I suspect that it explains the novel's popularity. Even if the details are less than enthralling, the Army itself and the individual characters are so believable that "The General's Daughter" is good popular fiction.
- MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
Degree of Guilt.\ By Richard North Patterson. Knopf. $23.
Generally, blurbs are self-serving exaggerations used to help push a book. But one blurb for "Degree of Guilt" calls it "a stunning courtroom thriller" and it is! A female TV personality has killed a famous author. Is it self defense or first-degree murder (hence the title)? She asks the father of her child to represent her. He doesn't want to but factors force the issue. He and his female associate take a novel approach to the representation which comes off rather well in fiction but probably would fail in the real world.
Nonetheless, the defense offered is that she was being sexually attacked by the deceased, a mother-dominated male who could get gratification only through dominance, fear and violence. Is this a valid allegation or a ploy? Patterson delves rather well into the crime of rape and its trauma, the difficulty of proof and the stigma that usually attaches to the victim. He notes that many rapes are not brought to the attention of the police, nor are they prosecuted because the victim becomes a victim a second time, and because of the fear, shame and/or embarrassment. All the while he treats his subject intelligently, ethically and entertainingly. He fills out his characters with various personalities; takers, givers, users and the like. "Degree of Guilt" is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, and as one who has been involved on both sides of the fence, I feel Patterson has done a fine job in detailing the vagaries of a rape charge.
- JOSEPH WILLIAMS
Second Fiddle.
By Mary Wesley. Viking. $18.95.
New books are published at such a rate that it is impossible to keep up with all writers and works, and many treasures are undoubtedly missed. Luckily, some of them are eventually discovered through friends or circumstance. A few nights ago, a friend recommended a writer to me. Her name, he said, was Mary Wesley. In the distance of my memory there was something familiar about the name. When I returned home I checked the bookshelves and found "Second Fiddle" and immediately read it.
Mary Wesley began writing at the age of 71. This book, her sixth, was published in 1989, and in it, as apparently in all her books, she draws both eccentric and ordinary characters from the British middle class and imbues them with life and unforgettable style. She can be, and probably has been, compared to Barbara Pym, but Wesley's writing has more sparkle and spice. She weaves themes, irony, character and plot together with insight and grace.
She has become a best-selling author in Britain. Her eighth novel, "A Dubious Legacy," was published in November. "Harnessing Peacocks" has been made into a film; two other novels have been sold to movie producers. Thanks, friend, for the tip.
- MARY ANN JOHNSON
Doctor Criminale.
By Malcolm Bradbury. Viking. $22.
Malcolm Bradbury resembles a post-modernist Henry James, cosmopolitan and well-read, someone upon whom no experience is lost. In "Doctor Criminale," the British novelist and professor of American Studies features a Jamesian center of consciousness rather than a typical protagonist, a person more acted upon than acting, a recorder of events rather than a perpetrator.
Journalist Francis Jay takes a television assignment, a human interest story on the famous Hungarian philosopher Bazlo Criminale. Jay's quest takes him to Vienna, Budapest, Lake Cano, Lausanne, Buenos Aires, Brussels and Schlossburg. As the story progresses, however, what happens is not a gradual unfolding of character and significance, a la James, but a deconstruction of same. Dr. Criminale is continually pumped up and deflated along with events and international conditions with which he is associated, so that by the end readers learn mainly that they must be satisfied with less of everything than they had hoped to find.
So, what is it like, the world through the eyes of a Jamesian post-modernist? Unfortunately, not very interesting. The characters and their relationships are shallow, and uninspired dialogue replaces action as the primary means of plot development. The fictional world of "Doctor Criminale" resembles that of "Brave New World," with cynicism and international conferences replacing soma as the mainstays against boredom. For the characters, that is. Readers get only cynicism and occasional stretches of finely crafted cultural insight, such as the chapter on Gustave Eiffel's achievements. The question that reading the novel does not entirely resolve is whether these are deficiencies of writing, of world view, or of the world itself.
- PETER CROW
Joseph Williams is associated with the justice system.\ Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.\ Peter Crow teaches at Ferrum College.