MARTIN AMIS hates nuclear weapons, and he doesn't care who knows it. In fact, he wants everyone to know it. At mid-career, he has virtually ceased to be a writer of fiction-from 1974 to 1984, he published five comic novels, including the hugely successful Money-and has metamorphosed instead into a kind of anti-nuclear polemicist. Einstein's Monsters, his most recent work, is a collection of stories based on the theme of nuclear holocaust. Lest anyone think this is a chance engagement, Amis has followed up Einstein's Monsters with an article in the October Esquire railing against the insanity of American nuclear planning. The article, a rehash of the Introduction to the present volume, is most notable not for its politics but for the warning it includes to those of us waiting for the return of a depoliticized Martin Amis: "When nuclear weapons become real to you,' he tells us, "hardly an hour passes without some throb or flash, some heavy pulse of imagined super-catastrophe.' The hydrogen bomb has claimed its first English target, and it is the career of Martin Amis. In his new role, Amis runs around like the sheriff in Jaws, as if he's the only person who knows there's a shark in town and everyone else is trying to keep the beaches open. The Esquire article gives a good sense of the fundamental cheesiness of his political thinking. The members of the Washington nuclear establishment, he says, don't mind talking about "X-ray lasers and hard-kill capabilities,' but they "go green' when the author tries to light up a cigarette. When the author interviews an attache from the Soviet embassy, on the other hand, things go differently; the two "drink a lot of coffee and smoke up a storm.' "Sergi and I got along fine,' Amis tells us. "He didn't want to kill me. I didn't want to kill him.' Amis has invented the Marlboro Peace Plan. Einstein's Monsters is only a touch more subtle. It consists of five stories, along with both an "Author's Note' and an Introduction. In his Note, Amis vacillates upon the question of whether the stories are polemical. "If they arouse political feelings,' he tells us, "that is all to to the good,' but really, they "were written with the usual purpose in mind: that is to say, with no purpose at all-except, I suppose, to give pleasure, various kinds of complicated pleasure.' If there is any confusion in the reader's mind, however, it is cleared up by the first story, "Bujak and the Strong Force.' Reading it, one is reminded of the experience of sitting in a college fiction workshop, the excited author right there next to you, enthusiastically explaining the intricacies of his story's symbolic order. Bujak, the title character, is a hugely powerful Eastern European living in a bad neighborhood in London. A survivor of the Nazi occupation of Poland, he spends a great deal of time arguing with the (American) narrator over the value of revenge. The narrator is anti, Bujak is pro. Bujak polices his block, rounds up petty criminals, makes the streets safe for young ladies at night. "He was our deterrent,' the narrator says. At the end of the story, when Bujak returns to his home to find his mother, daughter, and granddaughter brutally rape-murdered, the drunken perpetrators lying asleep on the floor, we expect him to exact some terrible revenge. But he doesn't. "Why?' the narrator asks. "No court on earth would have sent you down.' (Is this how Americans speak, by the way?) "When I had their heads in my hands,' Bujak replies, "I thought how incredibly easy to grind their faces together. But no… I had no wish to add to what I found.' It's… unilateral disarmament! Throughout Einstein's Monsters Amis the author is at war with Amis the nuclear theoretician. "Insight at Flame Lake,' for example, would have been a fine schizophrenic-breakdown story, except that Amis the theoretician felt compelled to tack on an anti-nuclear subtext. "Thinkability,' the long introduction to Einstein's Monsters, has its flashes of brilliant writing (the generations of unborn babies who would be aborted by a nuclear war are described as "queueing up in spectral relays until the end of time'), but it is marred by the same sort of simplistic reasoning that plagues the Esquire piece. Amis wants to pin all our problems on the existence of nuclear weapons. In the face of these missiles, no merely personal atrocity matters: "What vulgar outrage or moronic barbarity can compare with the black dream of nuclear exchange?' It's like asking a meter maid, "How dare you give me a ticket when there are Russian tanks illegally parked on the streets of Kabul?' But Amis the satirist knows that it takes a lot more than nuclear weaponry to explain the spiritual malaise of our century, just as Amis the writer knows (or ought to know) that there is always more than one explanation for any human phenomenon. One suspects, in fact, that Amis's opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative is derived not from the fear of a perilous escalation in the arms race, but from a (perhaps unconscious) perception that, with nuclear weapons gone, the novelist would have to face the fact of unexcused human weakness again. Views: 13
An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes - PennDutch Mysteries #1 Readers will delight in this laugh-out-loud cozy mystery debut - and relish the country cooking recipes included. This debut mystery introduces Magdalena Yoder, prim, proper, and persnickety proprietor of the PennDutch Inn, where guests luxuriate in the true “Amish experience,” (read: doing Magdalena's chores and paying top dollar for the opportunity!). When one of her more reclusive guests takes a tumble down the PennDutch's picturesquely steep staircase and breaks his neck, the timing couldn't be worse. It's the start of hunting season - and her inn is packed to capacity! What at first seems to be a horrible accident (and insurance nightmare for Magdalena!) could turn out to be a much more sinister event; and when another mishap occurs, Magdalena is certain there is a killer in her group - and it's up to her to sniff out the culprit…before the world's most incompetent town sheriff throws her in jail! “Bubbling over with mirth and mystery.” -Dorothy Cannell “A delicious treat!” -Carolyn G. HartFrom Publishers WeeklyThis debut mystery introduces Magdalena Yoder, a mean-spirited Mennonite innkeeper who offers service with a sneer to the "well-heeled, highfalutin customers" patronizing her PennDutch Inn in southern Pennsylvania. When not badmouthing her sinful, slothful, divorced sister and her "bizarre excuse for a dog," Magdalena attends to an unfortunate combination of guests: a congressman, his wife and aide, who are in the area for the first weekend of deer-hunting season; a quartet of anti-hunting activists; and Heather Brown, who calls herself a "photo-hunter." Ironically, one of the hunting foes bags the first big game when, in the middle of the night, he finds Heather sprawled dead on the inn stairs. Police chief Jeff Myers initiates an investigation of the suspicious death, but leaves soon for a vacation with his wife Tammy, who is, Magdalena's observes, "dingier than a mailbox on a gravel road." With the case in the hands of a dim deputy, Magdalena undertakes some sleuthing and learns that her patrons are secretly linked in their pasts. Another guest bites the dust as this carping narrator fails to display the high IQ she brags of: matters become clear to her only when the villain is overcome by a desire to confess. Occasional recipes, rich in butter and sugar, don't make up for the story's sour tone. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalMuch of this first mystery novel occurs as a lengthy flashback interrupting the present moment. Narrator Magdalena Yoder, of Hernia, Pennsylvania, exploits her Mennonite heritage, in-your-face attitude, and razor wit by running a prosperous, elitist inn. Murder threatens her success when two of her customers are dispatched on the premises. Suspects include a secretive congressman, his socialite wife, a gay aide, and several animal rights activists. More than a little hokey and simplistic but still a mildly amusing possibility for larger collections.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 13
Paige Vallis claimed that she gave in to Tripping's sexual demands because he had threatened to harm his son if she didn't. Alexandra Cooper, prosecuting the ex-CIA man, knew she had her work cut out to convince the jury, but before Paige could complete her testimony on the stand she is found dead – strangled in her own apartment building, just hours after she'd confessed to Alex that she had had a relationship with another ex-CIA operative. While the accusation of rape against Tripping is dropped, he has other charges to face, not least abusing his own child. As Tripping's defence team go into overdrive to keep their client out of jail, Alex, Chapman and Mercer set out to discover who so conveniently killed the woman who could have put him behind bars. As they peel back the layers of Paige's life, they discover a decades-old viper's nest of robbery and double-dealing and discover that truth of the adage of money being at the root of all evil – however old and 'respectable' it might be. Views: 13
The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. To observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not... Views: 13
A shocking double-murder scene greets Detective Inspector Philip Brennan when he is called to a flat in Colchester. Two women are viciously cut open and laying spreadeagled, one tied to the bed, one on the floor. The woman on the bed has had her stomach cut into and her unborn child is missing. But this is the third time Phil and his team have seen such an atrocity. Two other pregnant women have been killed in this way and their babies taken from them. No-one can imagine what sort of person would want to commit such evil acts. When psychologist Marina Esposito is brought in, Phil has to put aside his feelings about their shared past and get on with the job. But can they find the killer before another woman is targeted? Views: 13
This is the story of two flawed eccentrics. Everything they do subverts their firm intention of keeping up appearances. They meet just after the war in liberated Paris but they cannot quite free themselves from the many strings attached to them – the old aunts, the sisters, the cousins, the nuns and the ominous concierges who dog their footsteps.Alexandre is a banker and a Resistant and lives in a world of numbers and Roman emperors. Poum resides in the Odyssey and in her bed, hiding from the mysterious disapproval of their relatives, for they both seem to persist in some irreparable faux pas which has them wading through a lifetime pickle. Their daughter, Catherine, would like to help but she seems to be part of the problem. Views: 13
Palmyra, a small city on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, woke up that morning in full surprise. Inspector Joaquim Dornellas noticed a different motion of people on his way to work. A little crowd by the Church of Santa Teresa, downtown, stared at a corpse stuck in the dry mud of the channel. No wounds, no signs of violence, only a small band-aid on the right arm. Views: 12
