For the Record--Three More Books...

 1. Ricard Russo--Trajectory
Great writer, winner of many awards, and this was a book I just happened to spot in the library. Four quite long stories, each with a protagonist for whom the current situation is strongly influenced by events in the past.

     In the first of the stories, "Horseman," Janet is a lecturer in English at a university and her husband is a stay-at-home father who looks after their retarded three-year-old son. Her life is haunted by the Robert Louis Stephenson poem about the horseman in the night that keeps riding by--and this is associated with the adverse comments of a star professor who taught her some years ago.
    The second story, "Voice," is about two brothers who go on a organized cultural tour in Venice. The relationship of the two brothers on the tour is the present aspect of the story, and the past is revisited to show how that relationship has developed from tragic childhood experiences, to which each brother reacted differently, and--for Nate, the protagonist--from his disastrous handling of the problem of a young girl student with severe Aspergers Syndrome, which has weighed heavily on his mind over recent years.
    In "Intervention," the third story, Ray is a real estate agent facing the need for a cancer operation and dealing with the difficult problem of selling a house full of the owner's accumulated clutter.
He looks back to his upbringing, his relationships with his father, his brother, and his uncle.
    The final story is "Milton and Marcus," in which a writer is suddenly contacted about a book he wrote many years ago. He is asked to come out to Jackson Hole to discuss a possible screenplay. The original effort to create a screenplay has been found in the effects of a dead actor and has resurrected the idea of a new film. So the trip to Jackson Hole and the discussions there are interspersed with backward looks at the events at the time when the
first possibility of a screenplay was explored.

In all these stories, the writing and the psychological insights are very well done. Definitely a book I enjoyed reading.

2. "The Neighborhood," by Mario Vargas Lhosa

    Well, what can one say? This is the first book I have read by this Nobel prize winner. It is excellent from a variety of points of view. It focusses on two married couples in the very upper reaches of Lima society: one of the four--a mining magnate--is the subject of a lurid story in a muck-raking magazine. And there are two other characters who are explored in detail--one a small woman--"Shorty"--who is a reporter for the magazine, and the other an old, poverty stricken man who once was a clown on a popular TV show and whose career was ruined by the muck-raking magazine. The two married couples have somewhat complicated sex lives.
Just a thoroughly good story, interesting characters, and very well constructed and written, with highlights on the corrupt rule of the Fujimori regime in Peru.

3. "Personal," by Lee Child.

    Another Jack Reacher...
     I do not recommend this book to any serious reader--maybe an aeroplane or a beach read. For me it is a treadmill read, on my I-pad as I march up a 10 percent grade at 3.5m.p.h. It passes the time, relieves the boredom, and I can skip easily if I do not want to read about the inevitable fight when Jack Reacher takes on four or five assailants, kills a couple with his trademark elbow to their throats or huge punches to their kidneys. And the descriptions of firearms tend to bore me--skip them. I am not interested in the details of the logo on the Glock...or the the way the safety catch works on the Uzi.
However, part of the Lee Child technique, is to end each chapter with the strong need to start the next one. And incidentally, he never uses a semi-colon.
The plot of "Personal" is far too complicated to attempt a brief description and in the end I am not sure I understood it. But I did move from chapter to chapter.
And it is my rule--only on the treadmill.