Sunday at Borders - 17 Sept 2006

New and reviewed this week:

Historical Fiction
The Translation of Dr. Appelles, by David Treuer, reviewed by Brian Hall in the Washington Post. Treuer's novel covers a pair of parallel love stories: a modern one about a forlorn translator and a college librarian and an early 19th-century one about a pair of foundlings rescued by an unnamed (in the review) Indian tribe. The focus on the translator sounds interesting -- if only Hall weren't so convinced the majority of us great unwashed won't like the book as much as he did.

The Fall of Troy, by Peter Ackroyd, reviewed by Sue Gaisford in the Independent. A "lurid and generally entertaining drama" that's "packed full to bursting with extreme and supernatural occurences." Oh yeah, it's about a fictionalized version of Heinrich Schliemann, the man who supposedly discovered Troy.

The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox, reviewed by Christian House in the Independent. House thinks this "600-page Victorian murder mystery pastiche" is "an unadulterated pleasure." My guess is that people who like this sort of thing will like this particular version of this sort of thing.

Zoli, by Colum McCann, reviewed by Ed Wood in the Independent. A novel about "the rise and decline of a Romani singer and poet" in Iron-Curtain Poland. Wood thinks it's ambitious, but doesn't quite hit.


History
Five Germanies I Have Known, by Fritz Stern, reviewed by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post. The renowned German Historian (Blood and Iron) tells a more personal history of Germany. Unlike Grass's controversial new memoir, there are no surprise revelations about the Waffen SS, but that doesn't mean there are no surprises.

LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, by Randall Woods, reviewed by Nick Kotz in the Washington Post. I've reviewed this one before, but Kotz seems to like it. He cites its balance and "nuanced sense of Southern politics" as its greatest strengths, and a series of "minor errors" as its biggest weakness.

Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France, by Carmen Callil, reviewed by Christopher Caldwell in the New York Times. Louis Darquier, one of the architects of the Vichy government in France, sounds like a twisted, real-life version of Casablanbca's Captain Renault. But the real story here is apparently why Callil decided to write the book in the first place: when her psychiatrist committed suicide, she turned out to be Darquier's abandoned daughter.

The Lost Men, by Kelly Tyler-Lewis, reviewed by Magnus Mills in the Independent. Another book about Shackleton, who explored Antarctica. This one, though, focuses more on the Ross Sea party, left behind while Shackleton ventured out on the continent.

The Long Exile, by Melanie McGrath, reviewed by Edward Marriott in the Guardian. In the 1950s, Canada convinced a number of Inuit to resettle from the Hudson Bay to Ellesmere Island in the Polar Arctic -- when they found out they'd been lured to a dark, barren land under falser pretenses, the Inuit asked to return, and were refused. I'll be seeking this one out.