Rabbit Hunting & Adams' Watership Down

It's not often that I side with gun-toting psychopaths, but I'll make an exception for Mr. Rodney Wold of Kentucky. Here is yesterday's Daily Mail article about him, "Man threatens his neighbor with an AK-47 in a dispute over rabbits:"

A 64-year-old man brandishing an AK47 assault rifle allegedly threatened his neighbor after spotting him trying to scare rabbits away from his garden.

Rodney Wold, from Louisville, shouted from his porch: "If you want to hunt something, hunt men," according to police.

The dispute on Thursday started when Wold's neighbor was using an air rifle to scare rabbits away from his back garden. When Wold saw the neighbor, he allegedly fetched the AK47 from his house and appeared on his porch moments later, brandishing it.

"He loaded the magazine with, I believe it was, 19 rounds and went back outside and pointed it at his neighbor," police spokesman Carey Klain said.

Sounds like excellent material for the next Steven Seagal movie! Anyway, for a novel that will help you see the world from rabbits' perspective (and maybe even see Mr. Wold as a hero), try Richard Adams' Watership Down:

Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic...follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos.

Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese).  As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates...

Cosmetic Surgery & James' The Private Patient

From last week's Daily Mail article "Hundreds of women with faulty breast implants jeer French businessman as he goes on trial for making millions 'selling leaky PIP silicone':"

A French businessman who made millions by selling faulty breast implants was booed by his victims as he appeared in court today charged with fraud.

Jean-Claude Mas, 74, who founded and ran implant-maker Poly Implant Prothese, is among those on trial in Marseille. The now-defunct company had claimed its factory in France exported to more than 60 countries and was one of the world's leading implant makers.

The implants, which officials say are prone to rupture and leaking, were not sold in the United States, but more than 125,000 women worldwide received them until sales ended in March 2010. Of those, more than 5,000 are joining the trial as victims, saying the executives misled them into believing the implants were safe.

For a novel set in a cosmetic surgery clinic, try P.D. James' mystery novel The Private Patient:

In James's stellar 14th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (after 2006's The Lighthouse), the charismatic police commander knows the case of Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47-year-old journalist murdered soon after undergoing the removal of an old disfiguring scar at a private plastic surgery clinic in Dorset, may be his last; James's readers will fervently hope it isn't.

Dalgliesh probes the convoluted tangle of motives and hidden desires that swirl around the clinic, Cheverell Manor, and its grimly fascinating suspects in the death of Gradwyn, herself a stalker of minds driven by her lifelong passion for rooting out the truth people would prefer left unknown and then selling it for money. Beyond the book's central moral concern, James meditates on universal problems like aging (the amorphous flattening of self)...

Thatcher, Apartheid South Africa, & Brink's A Dry White Season

From yesterday's BBC article "Thatcher's role 'in saving Nelson Mandela':"

Did Margaret Thatcher play a role in helping to save Nelson Mandela's life? That is the remarkable claim made by one of the former South African president's closest friends, Ahmed Kathrada.

"Her word did count - I'm sure of it," Mr Kathrada told me, on hearing of the death of Baroness Thatcher. Between 1963 and 1964, Nelson Mandela was a defendant at the Rivonia trial, accused of trying to overthrow the apartheid government. Mr Kathrada was one of nine other men in the dock with him. The death penalty was initially sought by prosecutors, but was later changed to life imprisonment. Mr Mandela eventually spent 27 years in prison. Mr Kathrada was released a few months earlier in October 1989.

After the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, Mr Kathrada sometimes took visiting delegations and VIPs on guided tours of the notorious Robben Island jail where he and Mr Mandela had been incarcerated. "I had the opportunity to accompany [Margaret Thatcher] a few years ago," said Mr Kathrada. "She assured me that she had played a positive role during our trial."

"We were expecting a death sentence. We were well aware that there was all sorts of pressure from South Africa and abroad - pressure from people not necessarily agreeing with" the ANC's policies, he said.

The most popular comments on the article vehemently disagree that Thatcher saved Mandela. Here's of the highest rated comments:

This is historical revisionism. [...] The Thatcher Government resisted international pressure to impose economic sanctions on the apartheid country and she regarded the ANC as a 'typical terrorist organization' as late as 1987.

For a novel set in apartheid South Africa, try A Dry White Season by André P. Brink:

Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies--until the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair--a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

Town Council Politics & Rowling's The Casual Vacancy

I've previously posted about corruption in India.  How about some shady dealings a little closer to home?

From today's San Francisco Chronicle article "Ex-officials convicted in Calif. corruption case:"

Five former city councilors in a small, blue-collar Los Angeles suburb that became a symbol of political greed were convicted Wednesday of stealing taxpayer money by creating a panel that helped boost their part-time pay to nearly $100,000 a year... The trial was the first such proceeding following revelations that Bell's leadership had bilked the hardscrabble city of $5.5 million, using the money to pay huge salaries to the city manager, police chief, City Council members and others... At the heart of the case is whether the six officials broke the law by paying themselves annual salaries of up to $100,000 to govern only part-time in the city of 36,000 people where one in four residents live below the poverty line.

What's a novel about local council scheming? The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling:

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils... Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

UPDATE:  There's a good review of The Casual Vacancy on Novelicious (and also on Pagelady).

Women's Boxing & Toole's Million Dollar Baby

We've been a little light on sports news/books here at Newsworthy Novels:  we had our Iditarod post earlier this month and then our Rwandan track star post in February.  That's about it.  But thankfully, a couple of weeks ago the Guardian ran a story about female boxers in Afghanistan and the UK, giving us the perfect excuse for another sports read.

Here are some of the article highlights:

Sadaf Rahimi, Fahima Mohammad and Shabnam Rahman have overcome a host of cultural and financial barriers to pursue their sport in Kabul... Rahimi, Mohammad and Rahman are due to train and attend a charity auction in London to raise money for their gym in Kabul, then travel to Bristol to be coached by Britain's first officially licensed female boxer, Jane Couch MBE. Couch is no stranger to struggles with authorities – in 1998 she persuaded an industrial tribunal to overturn a British Boxing Board of Control ruling that had denied her a licence. The BBBC had argued that premenstrual syndrome made women too unstable to box. After years of lobbying from British women fighters, women's boxing was officially recognised as an Olympic sport on 14 August 2009. At London 2012 there were women boxers from Kazakhstan, North Korea and Turkey, while British boxer Nicola Adams became the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold.

What's a great book about boxers? Try the heartbreaking novella Million Dollar Baby by the late boxing manager F. X. Toole:

A boxing cut man uses swabs, pressure, ice, and home-mixed salve to stop his fighter's bleeding between rounds. Toole, 70, whose experience as a cut man inspired this hard-boiled debut...writes with blunt authority about this world. His strongest tales feature old trainers or cut men like himself, wisely noble holdovers from boxing's Hibernian age...  His coldly plotted novella "Million $$$ Baby" begins like the most familiar old pulp story of the grumpy veteran trainer and the eager would-be student; then Toole freshens the clich by making the boxer an innocent young woman from the Ozarks.

Smallpox & Carrell's The Speckled Monster

From today's front page New York Times article "Wary of Attack With Smallpox, U.S. Buys Up a Costly Drug:"

The United States government is buying enough of a new smallpox medicine to treat two million people in the event of a bioterrorism attack, and took delivery of the first shipment of it last week. But the purchase has set off a debate about the lucrative contract, with some experts saying the government is buying too much of the drug at too high a price... Smallpox was eradicated by 1980, and the only known remaining virus is in government laboratories in the United States and Russia. But there have long been rumors of renegade stocks that could be sprayed in airports or sports stadiums. Experts say the virus could also be re-engineered into existence in a sophisticated genetics lab.

I don't know about you, but I don't have much idea of what smallpox is like. It appears we are in luck, however, because Jennifer Lee Carrell's semi-novel The Speckled Monster puts us right in the middle of an outbreak:

The Speckled Monster tells the dramatic story of two parents who dared to fight back against smallpox. After barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, they flouted eighteenth-century medicine by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. From their heroic struggles stems the modern science of immunology as well as the vaccinations that remain our only hope should the disease ever be unleashed again. Jennifer Lee Carrell transports readers back to the early eighteenth century to tell the tales of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, two iconoclastic figures who helped save London and Boston from the deadliest disease mankind has known.

Retirement Homes & Amis' Ending Up

 
Retirement homes don't feature frequently in the news. When they do, it tends to be over an issue of controversy. For example, there is last week's NPR story "Retirement Home Defends Nurse's Refusal To Administer CPR:"

The head of a California retirement home where a nurse last week refused to administer CPR to an elderly woman says his staff followed policy in handling the emergency. In a written statement, Jeffrey Toomer, the executive director of Glenwood Gardens in Bakersfield, Calif., says it is the facility's practice "to immediately call emergency medical personnel for assistance and to wait with the individual needing attention until such personnel arrives. ... That is the protocol we followed." In the audio from the 911 call that was aired by several media outlets Sunday, dispatcher Tracy Halvorson determines that an 87-year-old woman who collapsed in the facility's dining room is not breathing properly. Halvorson pleads with the nurse to begin efforts to resuscitate her. "We need to get CPR started," she says. "Yeah, we can't do CPR at this facility," the nurse responds.

To get the other side of the story, I turn to the article's most popular comment:

As a nurse, I have worked in several facilities where everybody is a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate); so it is routine protocol to not administer CPR for the patients. They have already signed DNRs along with their doctors, and they have met the qualifications for the DNR... CPR has about a 97% chance of NOT working in this population. If someone is dying from a combination of old age and chronic health conditions that have caused the person's health to deteriorate over time, success with CPR is very unlikely.

What a difficult decision for the patient, the family, the retirement home, and the nurse. Can you imagine being in the nurse's position: being required by policy not to resuscitate the patient and having to watch her die?

Anyway, regardless of how grim and controversial the article is, it is a rare instance of retirement homes being featured in the news. Which means it's time to feature a few novels about retirement homes.  I recommend Ending Up by Kingsley Amis:

At Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs. The mismatched quintet keep their spirits alive by bickering and waiting for grandchildren to visit at Christmas. But the festive season does not herald goodwill to all at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage. Disaster and chaos, it seems, are just around the corner …

Runners-Up

• Probably the most popular recent novel about retirement homes is Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things, now known as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel after the film adaptation: When Ravi Kapoor, an over-worked London doctor, is driven beyond endurance by his obnoxious father-in-law, he asks his wife: 'Can't we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.' His prayer seems to have been answered when his entrepreneurial cousin, Sonny, sets up a retirement home, recreating a lost corner of England in a converted guesthouse in Bangalore. Travel and set-up are inexpensive, staff willing and plentiful - and the British pensioners can enjoy the hot weather and take mango juice with their gin.  

• The "Not a good match for this article, but sounds hilarious" prize goes to Retirement Homes Are Murder by Mike Befeler: Ornery and robust octogenarian Paul, who suffers from short term memory loss, wakes up in a place he doesn't recognize and struggles to figure out where he is. He learns he's living in a retirement home in Hawaii. Still trying to get oriented, he finds a dining hall where he meets, for what he thinks is the first time, table mates Meyer, a retired judge, and Henry. His frustration builds when he's informed that he ate meals with them the day before. In his growing confusion, he returns to his room, finds a bag of bottles in his kitchenette and decides to discard them in the building's trash chute. When the bag gets stuck, Paul is shocked to discover a body wedged in the trash chute. Things go downhill from there for Paul as he becomes a suspect and then is threatened himself by the murderer.  

• And in the "not my cup of tea, but you might like it" category is Recessional by James A. Michener. I find Michener's writing painfully stilted, but millions of readers can't be wrong, can they? Yes, they can. Anyway, here's the description: As the new, young director of the Palms, Andy Zorn suffers no shortage of loving support and wise advice from his "elders," a group of five passionate, outspoken residents who refuse to accept the passive roles that both society and family have handed them. Yet past scandal has driven Zorn to despondency, until he meets an extraordinary young woman in the rehab wing, who has been forced to rebuild her life in the face of crippling injuries. Now Zorn finds himself falling in love--and with the help and gentle jabs from his more mature friends, he discovers a wonderful new purpose in life....

UPDATE:  a good review of Ending Up is available at the Reading the Bookers blog.

UK Multiculturalism/White Flight & Smith's White Teeth

 From yesterday's BBC story "Why have the white British left London?:"

Something quite remarkable happened in London in the first decade of the new millennium. The number of white British people in the capital fell by 620,000 - equivalent to the entire population of Glasgow moving out. The consequence, as revealed by the latest census, is that white Brits are now in a minority in London, making up just 45% of its residents.

(Check out the comments on the story: I find them especially interesting.)


What's a novel about multiculturalism in London? Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which Time magazine listed as one of its 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005:

Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families—one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad —devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"— weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.

Homelessness & Swindells' Stone Cold

From today's Washington Post editorial "600 homeless children in D.C., and no one seems to care:"

The District has set a dubious new record for the number of homeless kids crammed inside a scary, abandoned hospital that serves as the city’s makeshift family homeless shelter. There are about 600, according to a nightly census done by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness... This, of course, is happening in the same city now rolling in a $417 million budget surplus and on track for a $240 million surplus in the coming year.

A good book about homelessness is Robert Swindells' young adult novel Stone Cold. Most of the book is narrated by a newly-homeless teenager, although we get occasional interludes from the perspective of a crazed man who kills homeless people. The serial-killer storyline seems a little unnecessary, but it does add suspense. Plus, if I'm going to read/watch something about serial-killers, at least this book also gives some insight into societal ills (unlike, say, Dexter).

If you prefer classics, I've heard George Orwell's semi-autobiographical novel Down and Out in Paris and London is, like most things Orwell, excellent.  If you'd prefer a book written by someone who spent much of their life homeless, I've heard John Healy's autobiography The Grass Arena is good.

British Horsemeat Scandal & Sinclair's The Jungle

From today's CNBC article "First Burgers, Now Lasagna: Horsemeat Scandal Widens:"

Testing has confirmed that beef lasagna produced by food manufacturer Findus contained horsemeat, Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) said on Thursday... Investigations into suppliers have been launched in recent weeks after revelations that beef products sold at major British supermarkets including Tesco and fast food chain Burger King contained horsemeat.

Perfect book for this issue? Upton Sinclair's meat-packing classic, The Jungle:

1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.

(This description is from the book's page on Amazon.)


The book's final three chapters are politically preachy and can safely be skipped. Since the book was published in 1906, it is available free online.