ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611060105
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
BOOKMARKS
Mystery for the horse set Reviewed by JILL BOWEN
CHESTNUT MARE, BEWARE. By Jody Jaffe. Ballantine. $21.
In her second novel, "Chestnut Mare, Beware," Jody Jaffe again features Natalie Gold, a hard-boiled newspaper journalist who is an avid horsewoman. The story is set in Middleburg, Va., that hub of the rich "horsy" set.
Natalie and a journalist colleague are investigating a series of accidents that have happened to a variety of people in Northern Virginia, who, apart from being featured on a list sent to the newspaper, appear to have nothing in common. One accident involves the death of a beauty queen who died following a fall from her horse. How this all gets sorted out is both entertaining, satisfying and surprising.
This book will appeal particularly to those readers who are horse enthusiasts and especially those who are interested in the show horse circuit. They, in fact, may even know some of the characters because authentic names occur quite often throughout the story.
I enjoyed this book because of its subject and setting. Jaffe is not Dick Francis, but she has written a highly readable mystery.
Jill Bowen is an English veterinarian living in Blacksburg. Suspense slows to a trot Reviewed by MARY ANN JOHNSON
TO THE HILT. Dick Francis. Putnam. $24.95.
Over the years Dick Francis has been one of my favorite mystery writers, but in recent books he seems to be cantering along on momentum rather than energy. In "To the Hilt" the pace slows to a trot.
Horses are only tangential to this story. Alexander Kinloch is an artist who prefers painting at his mountain aeire in Scotland to life amongst his family. When his mother and stepfather call for help to save the sinking brewery business and aristocratic uncles entrust family treasures to his safekeeping, he enters the fray of greedy men. Sounds promising, but the action moves about as fast as the oils dry on Alexander's canvases.
The self-deprecation of the hero, a Francis trademark, has evolved from being effective to being tiresome; it is overdone and too obvious a ploy. Stoicism is obliquely established through "Hmm"s and "Umm"s, a technique that has grown ingratiating.
Francis still handles some hurdles with grace and flair. Passages describing mountain scenes and paintings are as good as anything he has written, and he once again proves an ability to create violent events that are original, horrible and memorable.
This one makes it around the course, but the running wins it no King Alfred's Cup.
Mary Ann Johnson is book page editor. Books in Brief
Animals are our best friends
WOMAN'S BEST FRIEND.
By Barbara Cohen and Louise Taylor. Little, Brown and Co. $15.95.
This pleasant book of dog pictures with minimalist prose by their owners about how the dogs have changed their lives frustrates me. The authors have published another wedge between people. Why must dog ownership be Balkanized among interest groups? Other collaborations between these authors are "Dogs and Their Women," "Cats and Their Women" and "Horses and Their Women." It must be a profitable formula.
Animals know nothing about politics. Why should books about them use politics to ensure distribution? - LARRY SHIELD
IF DOGS HAD WINGS.
By Larry Dane Brimner. Illustrated by Chris L. Demarest. Boyds Mills Press. $14.95.
"If Dogs Had Wings" is absolute fantasy - dogs soar to the moon and chase falling stars. The colors are bright and splashy. There's plenty of action, but it's a bit confusing. A child may need help to identify who's who and what's what and why. This is a book to borrow rather than buy. Most children (and adults) will find more pleasure and excitement in reading the ever favorite "Go, Dog, Go!" - MARY SUTTON SKUTT
Larry Shield trains horses and dogs in Franklin County.
Mary Sutton Skutt is a grandmother and a children's writer living in Rockbridge County.
Book events
As part of the festivities surrounding the inauguration of Janet Rasmussen as Hollins College's ninth president, Karen Osborn, Hollins graduate and novelist, will read from her latest novel, "Between Earth and Sky," on Thursday at 8:15 p.m. in the Green Drawing Room of Main Building.
Ronald Segal, author of "The Black Diaspora," last year's critically acclaimed study of the overseas migration of Africans, will speak in Antrim Chapel of Roanoke College at 7:30 p.m. on Monday as part of the Fowler Public Lecture Series. - Mary Ann Johnson book page editor Irish animosities make `Drink' an explosive tale Reviewed by PAUL E. FITZGERALD
DRINK WITH THE DEVIL. By Jack Higgins. Putnam. $24.95.
Ancient Irish animosities (if that isn't too much of a redundancy), a stumbling peace process, plots and counterplots rolled together by both the Unionists and the IRA, coupled with a sunken treasure in gold bullion and an unexpected Mafia involvement, make Jack Higgins' latest novel as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines.
Higgins, who lived in Belfast until he was 12, became acquainted with bombs and gunfire at an early age. He knows the ideologies of the area and their idiom, and he rolls them together in a tale that is packed as tightly as a pipe bomb and has more twists than the road over Macgillycuddy's Reeks.
Most of the action occurs in the here and now, but the scene is set in 1985 with the hijacking of a British gold shipment, worth 100 million pounds (about $150 million at today's rate of exchange), by Irish Protestant paramilitaries. A sudden storm sinks the seagoing barge that is being used to move the loot to the Ulster coast in County Down, leaving only two survivors - the mastermind behind the Orange scheme and a mysterious, ruthless professional.
Fast forward to today, and a new, intense concern for the missing golden hoard, with its potential for financing renewed political terrorism by whichever side finds it, the coldly apolitical interest of an American crime leader, and the direct involvement of both the United States president and the British prime minister.
Regular followers of Higgins will not be surprised that the prime minister calls on his own personal action unit headed by Brigadier Charles Ferguson. Ferguson is assisted by the notorious Sean Dillon, a master of deceit and disguise who once was the IRA's most feared enforcer. Dillon's odd allegiance as a British hired gun came about in 1992 when he was snatched from death before a Yugoslav firing squad through Ferguson's intervention (in Higgins's "Thunder Point," 1993).
An effective ingredient is added to the mix by Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein, on loan to Brigadier Ferguson from Special Branch at Scotland Yard.
"Drink With the Devil" moves at a relentless pace, tangling the puzzle with progressive twists and no pause for breath. Higgins is on familiar ground and dealing with characters, circumstances and terrain whose every nuance he knows and shapes to his purpose. This is a proper yarn of intrigue and suspense, "as ever was," as Dillon might say. It made an initial blip on the radar screen of the New York Times Best Seller List and then disappeared. It deserves better.
Paul E. Fitzgerald is a recovering journalist who lives on a farm overlooking Fincastle.
Part 3 of Henry Roth's 6-volume novel sequence will appeal to long-time fans Reviewed by CHIP BARNETT
MERCY OF A RUDE STREAM: Vol. III, From Bondage. By Henry Roth. St. Martin's Press. $25.95.
Henry Roth published his first novel, "Call It Sleep," in 1934 to generally favorable reviews and few sales. He didn't even attempt to publish another novel until 60 years had passed, but in the interim his reputation grew enormously. In 1994 the first novel in the six-volume sequence, "Mercy of a Rude Stream," appeared. Roth completed the sequence before dying last fall, and the third volume has just been published.
Though avowedly not autobiography, the books are strongly autobiographical, taking Ira Stigman from Roth's poor Jewish immigrant childhood on New York's Lower East Side into adulthood. "From Bondage" covers Ira's CCNY college years, focusing on his not-yet-fulfilled love for a decade-older female professor who happens to be the lover of Larry, his best friend.
While lusting after Edith, Ira continues to use his 16-year-old cousin for sexual release, just as he had earlier used his younger sister. He is acutely (oppressively) self-aware, with sexual tension twisted around his growing urge to be a writer and his desperation to escape the bonds of his upbringing.
There is much to be admired here: the seamlessly gradual maturation of Ira and the fading of his friendship with Larry; Roth's gritty evocation of life in the 1920s; the stylistic contrast with the 1990s; Ira's reflections on the intervening years and on the process of writing itself.
Yet was it worth a 60-year wait? Ira's perpetual mental hand-wringing wears thin. The dialogue is far more readable than in "Call It Sleep," but still often clunky and overwrought. Roth's obsessive honesty verges on being merely self-indulgent.
A masterpiece nonetheless? Well, no, but then I couldn't understand Joyce's "Ulysses," of which Ira is a devoted and pointed admirer. If you want to judge for yourself, you'd be wise to start with the first volume (``A Star Shine over Mt. Morris Park''), although volume three can be read by itself.
Chip Barnett is a Rockbridge County librarian.
Essays are Louis Rubin's best mode of expression Reviewed by BOB FISHBURN
BABE RUTH'S GHOST: And Other Historical and Literary Speculations. Louis Rubin. University of Washington Press. $30.
My first glimpse of Louis Rubin came in the early '60s when he was professor of English and creative writing at Hollins College and I was a dew-spangled reporter for this newspaper where he edited the book page. Some unwary newsroom staffer said to him that if there was any problem with his weekly copy, he would contact the professor. "Contact me?" Rubin bellowed; "You may call me or get in touch with me, but you most assuredly will not 'contact' me!"
"Contact" as a verb has long since wormed its way into our increasingly permissive speech, but at that time a few brave souls were still trying to defend this outpost of the besieged language. Louis Rubin, who was instrumental in establishing Hollins' distinguished writing program, is still roaming the few remaining battered posts, tossing straight, sharp sentences.
"Babe Ruth's Ghosts" is a good introduction to the style of this teacher, novelist, publisher and critic now residing in Chapel Hill. The 13 essays, ranging from thoughts on the dubious craft of ghostwriting to poignant profiles of several major writers he counted among his friends, are anything but dusty academic ramblings. All have been published before, mostly in the Sewanee and Virginia Quarterly reviews.
For me, the essay is Rubin's best mode of expression, combining the clarity and simplicity that comes from his journalistic experience with a sweeping knowledge of literature from his academic years. The result is sane, balanced assessment blessedly free of acrobatic theorizing.
Louis Rubin has always had a great deal to say and has invariably said it well. We should all be thankful: Some writers are prolific; others, as some wag has said, are merely incontinent.
Bob Fishburn is former editor of this newspaper's commentary page.
LENGTH: Long : 214 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: book cover for Drink with the Devilby CNB