Review 400: Transplanted Man

Transplanted Man by Sanjay Nigam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is centered around a hospital in New York’s “Little India” with the doctors, patients, and other workers as the characters. There are several themes in this book, primarily seems to be about sleep disturbances and relationship problems, but that is not all. Yet there is a lot of humor in the book as well, perhaps as taking life to an extreme, such as one of the first couples in the E.R. we meet is where the man took a severe bite on his wife’s buttocks. This bite, of course, does lead to problems in the marriage.

Sonny is a resident doctor, who sleepwalks, and has a healing touch. One of the main patients is a politician from India with so many transplanted organs he is known as the Transplant Man. Thus, we get the title of the book, but it is a double meaning, as most of the people are transplants from India.

We follow Sonny with a relationship with an English Indophile nurse, Gwen, who loves literature but found her calling with helping people instead. She has her own unknown illness which caused relationship issues before.

There are many characters in the book, seemingly follow them all, but it doesn’t become confusing as they are distinct enough and introduced slowly. The book doesn’t seem to have much of a plot itself, we just follow these characters and see what happens, much like a year in the life of type story. Everyone does have some transformations of sorts, so it is not static in any way. An entertaining book.

Review 115: Red Letter Days

Red Letter Days by Sarah-Jane Stratford
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

This book finds us in the mid-twentieth century, shortly after WWII when women went back to the home after building airplanes. In New York we find our main character Phoebe Adler, a self-confident woman making her way was a writer, supporting herself and her sister Mona with health problems that has Mona living in a sanatorium. The red scare is the dominant thrust of the story, and Phoebe finds herself targeted even though she is not political at all. Upon the advice of friends she quickly flees New York after being subpoenaed, and lands in London.

The story also follows another with Hanna Wolfson, also an American in London, although married with two young kids. Her husband has money and helps Hannah set up a studio that soon develops a hit television series. Hannah purposefully hires blacklisted writers, using pseudonyms, and with her new series hopes to subvert the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Phoebe was advised to seek out Hanna, who hires her temporarily as a script reader on set until she can get established.

While the book is mainly focused on Phoebe we do get some of Hanna’s life. Although she’s a mother of two, she makes juggling her work with her kids and still remain happily married. Slowly we are to realize that Hannah’s husband isn’t feeling the same with remarks about women being a wife and mother, not out in the workplace. This becomes a major undertone in the book, women taking on working roles. We see both women attacked for being in the workforce, more so with Phoebe since she is unmarried.

Even with living in England the Americans are still under threat. Phoebe finds herself being followed. A reporter comes for an unexpected visit to the studio set hoping to catch a known red director. The action keeps everyone on their toes, especially the reader.

Despite all the excitement that keeps going, I found the beginning of the book somewhat on a light breezy tone. I found that odd since the subject matter was anything but. Somehow it didn’t seem serious. As the book progressed that changed. Perhaps it was the main character, Phoebe who liked to make jokes, sort of the smart aleck type, the brainy type that often annoyed. I’m not entirely sure.

Overall I found the book to be well written and engaging. There were times when I had to put the book down, but was quite reluctant to do so.

I particularly enjoyed the author’s note at the end where she detailed what was taken from real life and the bits she made up to make this an interesting read.


Almost made it a five star read, close but have to downgrade slightly.

Thanks to Berkley Publishing/Penguin Random House and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 41: A Death in the Rainforest

A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was captivated by this book, and still am. To be honest, before I started reading it I thought it might be a tad boring. Boy was I wrong. This book I could honestly say is non-fiction that reads like fiction.

There was a very small portion early in the book that went over some language nerdy stuff, but it was brief and didn’t drag down the book at all. Kulick stated this book was written for the layperson, not an academic endeavor like his first book. Here he wanted to give to the world an insight on what life is like for the villagers in a small, very remote village, deep in the rainforest in Papua New Guinea. And Kulick wanted to tell the story of why their native language is dying, as it speaks to a larger issue of the world today, and of the past.

The village is Gapun and Tayap is the dying language Kulick studied. The villagers are now speaking Tok Pisin (a form of Pidgin English) instead. Papua New Guinea has more diverse languages than any other country; nearly every village has its own language. And they aren’t variants or dialects either, completely different language, and most spoken by about 500 people or less. It is their way of differing themselves where they came from.

Kulick tells a good story here. He intersperses action with explanations. He strings the reader along, and you don’t mind. There are some moments where you laugh, and some you cringe, and there are moments of disbelief.

Kulick states somewhat near the end of the book that there are no undiscovered tribes left. First contact can never be again, as that is now all in the past. It reminds me of Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature, which the premise is that all nature has been affected by humans, and this goes as well for “wild” humans as well.

I could keep going, but this review is already getting long. I hope this book will be read, it’s well written, entertaining and informative. And to learn about this dying culture is important. It is the least we can do.


Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 36: The Crofter and the Laird

The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an enjoyable small book. McPhee is descended from Scotland, specifically a small island in the Hebrides, 25 miles off the west coast off the Scottish mainland called Colonsay. McPhee took his family to live there for a while, renting a house from a guy called Donald Gibbie.

This is an autobiographical book by most means, it consists mostly of essays that aren't necessarily connected. They are all about Colonsay, what it was like and is now like, well now being at the time of when McPhee lived there, around the late 1960s. Early on we find out that a croft is a small farm, with less than 49 tillable acres. A Crofter then being a farmer, although he does not own the land, nor his house, the whole island belongs to a Laird. It is part of the Crofter Holdings Act of 1886. Thus the people are now dependent on the Laird of the island for their livelihood, for the most part. Some like Donald Gibbie work very hard and hold multiple jobs to make the ends meet.

McPhee has an excellent way of telling stories. He is funny in a dry witty way that makes the reading even more enjoyable. I was thoroughly enamored with this book. I did wonder how the island fares today. At that time there was a "new" Laird who inherited from his father, the "old" Laird. The new Laird was attempting to change the ways, saying that basically he owns the island and is a landlord, while his father took a different view. The old Laird spent way more money into the island than it made for him, thus supporting all of the inhabitants by his own wealth. I'm feel near certain that today things are run differently, but honestly, I do not know. Is it still owned by one family? Are there many people "islanders" living there?

Okay, a quick internet search finds this: yes, about the same number of people still live on the island. They still have the primary schools but for advanced, high school age, you must go to the mainland. The Isle of Colonsay website answers most of my questions, except the ownership.

I don't know all those answers just yet, but what I do know is that I will read another McPhee book. This is my second, and I can't wait to read another.



Previously Read John McPhee books:

Assembling California (4 stars) - April.2018

Review 34: Lands of Lost Borders

Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road by Kate Harris
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

The book has some flaws, is it an autobiography or is it a travelogue? Is it about an adventure and how that changes you or is it about the rigors of biking the Silk Road for nine months?

It starts as an autobiography, first when Harris was young and honored for her essay about Mars. There is a few chapters about her college years in Oxford, her boyfriend (why was he in here?) and a little about her next degree. Oxford was a time of fooling around to get a degree in something she really didn't care about. Her main purpose was to get into NASA so she can be a Mars explorer. Then suddenly she is diverted, maybe because biking was around for her and she went on several long haul biking trips already, now there is this trip to take a good part of a year to bike the Silk Road with her friend Mel (Melissa), to finish what they started years earlier. Maybe it was too much research in the lab. Maybe she just wanted to explore.

The bulk of the book is about this nine month journey. but it falters here. She talks about some interesting ideas, but doesn't dive very deep into any of them. She tries desperately, especially near the end, to tie back into NASA and space exploration. Harris wants to be an explorer and she tries to justify her trip as exploration, going into the wilderness and finding something new, but of course it isn't new. She knows this as Marco Polo was someone she looked up to, until she realized he explored for mercantile reasons. And how is it wilderness? She is traveling in "old" countries.

The more the book goes on the worse her descriptions of the local people and places. It becomes horrid at times, appalling. She's supposed to be perceptive, intelligent? Definitely not humble. And she just butchers Buddhism, says nothing about other religions that are expressed in the areas she travels.

Oddly, I had almost no sense of her biking partner Mel, someone who was her constant companion for more than half a year. About the only real description of her personality consisted of how Harris was jealous of her in high school being popular, more pretty. She also seemed to charm the men more on the trip. Even more oddly, I learned more about the boyfriend in Oxford, which I'm not sure why there was so much written about him, to what ends?

It's an uneven book. Clearly Harris can write well when she puts in the effort, as there are some very lovely sentences. This book needed more time in the writing process. There are some good sentences, good writing, but also many false starts into ideas that aren't fully realized. Sadly the thing I came away mostly was the privilege of Kate Harris.

Book rating: 2.5 stars

Review 21: Lights All Night Long

Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An amazing book, quite enjoyable and surprising. I didn't think this was going to be a mystery but there was a bit of that in this book. It was mainly about this smart Russian kid Ilya and his older brother Vladimir. They grow up in a small oil refinery village in Russia, a place where no one goes. Ilya, the smart one, learned English easily, and with some luck was able to go to the United States through an exchange program with the oil refinery company in Russia and one in Louisiana.

The book is split between Ilya's time in the U.S. and his time in Russia, mostly of the last year or so. Ilya loves and looks up to his brother immensely and when the book starts Vladimir is in jail in Russia. Ilya knows that the crime, three murders, were not done by his brother despite the fact that Vladimir confessed. Ilya become obsessed with trying to solve the murders even while in the U.S.

A new drug called krokodil appears in Russia and seems to explain much of Vladimir's behaviors, but there is more to it. The book reveals more and more as you read. My only complaint is that the book kept going after the reveal of who did kill the women. Sometimes it's a good thing to give a little more, an epilogue or coda, but actually I think it would have been left at a shorter point than it did.

Overall an good book. And while it is about teenagers I would not call this a YA book. Then again, I'm not of that age anymore.



Thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 13: Beautiful Bad

Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I entered this book with very little information on what it was about, except I knew it would be a "thriller". At first I was surprised by the two girls, Maddie and her best friend Joanna, living abroad in out of the way countries: Bulgaria and Macedonia. Soon Maddie meets her future British husband at a fund raiser. I started to think we'd have Eastern European travel type story, no the reality of the book was quite different.

The book starts in "present time" where there was a domestic disturbance, a 911 call. When the police arrive there is blood, lots of blood.

Then we go to ten weeks before and start counting down towards the present, interspersed with the story line of back when Ian and Maddie first meet. Ian was in the British Army at the time there was instant attraction. In the countdown to present time we learn early on Ian has a hard time with what he's seen being a soldier, and Maddie seems to have anxiety about many things, which started after he head being smashed. The story of how that happened is part of the mystery, the other part is what happened that made that 911 call necessary.

There is a lot of shifting, between time lines, and we have Ian's perspective a few times, although not many, it is mainly Maddie's. Her friend Joanna plays and important role as well, since she was a good friend when Ian comes into their lives, yet not in the present time living in Kansas. I wished to hear from Joanna.

I had several problems with the book. The shift in time lines wasn't a problem per se, but it was distracting at times. There was a continuity error, later in the book. Hopefully this has been fixed (I read an advance review copy). Seemed like there was some repetition, and yes the book was longer than it needed. It felt that cutting out some of the material would have been a tighter, better book. Another problem for me was Joanna. Her story was important but we get so little of what was going on, it was frustrating. And then there was Maddie herself. It felt so off her behavior while younger, then even when she goes back home to New York.

Finally was the ending, which I will not reveal anything. I will just say that it seriously downgraded the book for me. The telling wasn't necessary, and then added more strangeness really. In the end we may find out who these characters are, or not. It felt actually unresolved. Perhaps the characters weren't fully developed on the page. I just left unsatisfied in so many ways.

This is being billed as the "2019 Thriller of the year", but I think it missed the mark by a long shot. Certainly there will be some people who enjoy this book, just not me.



Thanks to Park Row Books/Harlequin and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.