Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (2004)

Book #1 of the Jackson Brodie Mysteries series

This book, by award-winning novelist Kate Atkinson, is one of the most unusual murder mystery stories I have ever read.  In it, Jackson Brodie, a former cop turned private investigator in Cambridge, England is tasked with solving three unsolved — and unconnected — cold cases: a thirty-four year old missing child case; the ten-year old unsolved murder of a teenager; and a twenty-five year old case (which only brushes Jackson Brodie’s life and which we the reader learn much more about than he does) involving a woman who murdered her husband.

From its expansive opening presentation of the crimes to its bizarre final chapters, the book seems to defy its genre entirely although it is most definitely a murder mystery novel. The most immediately notable difference from other mysteries is the fact that each of the crimes is described for the reader in its own stand-alone chapter at the beginning of the book. These “case histories” are not cold police files but rather touching and very human stories about the victims and the circumstances surrounding the crimes. A second notable deviation from the standard are the multiple narrators — both of large and small involvement in the main story — and a narrative style that at times feels almost stream-of-consciousness, even dream-like.

Wonderfully well-written and composed with a circular, atemporal style (slightly similar to the style that made her best selling novel Life After Life so compelling), the story lopes around and around itself and its characters in an almost languid way. This is at odds with the breakneck pace and methodical order of most other murder mysteries; it is almost as if Brodie is not so much solving these mysteries as he is simply excavating them from where they have been hiding, often in plain sight. In fact, Brodie himself is a passive character who — without any real evidence of work — has clues revealed to him, which he follows up on without any real sense of urgency. Yet somehow, the story moves along and the unsolved cases begin to have light shone upon them, and amazingly, all three cases are resolved almost as if by complete accident.

For lovers of the genre, I strongly suggest this novel. I found that I could not put it down once I began and finished in one, gloriously lazy Saturday afternoon. Such an utterly satisfying way to spend a winter day.

A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter (2004)

Grant County Thrillers Series, Book #3 (2004)

In this third installment of the Grant County Thrillers, Slaughter has given readers yet another really well-crafted murder mystery. A full introduction to the series was posted on this blog last week, that review can be found here http://wp.me/p6N6mT-bU .

This time around, our main characters coroner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, stumble upon a dead student on the local college campus. What appears at first to be a tragic suicide, quickly unravels into a murder investigation that will encompass two more students and a campus employee before the pieces of the puzzle come together.

Helping Sara and Jeffrey out is former police officer-cum-campus security guard Lena Adams. Complicating things is the fact that Lena was not asked to help nor is she authorized to do so. Instead, she finds that she cannot let go of her investigative training and soon is following up on leads without informing the police. Working with Lena is a college student named Ethan who comes to Lena with a series of leads that he will only share if he can be part of the reconnaissance.

In the hands of a more straightforward novelist, the security guard would gather some evidence, the coroner some, and the police some and together their shared information would solve the case. Not for Slaughter, however. The messy personal lives, poor choices and traumatizing events — past and present — affect all of the characters leading evidence to be missed and false accusations to be cast. Despite being well-qualified and intelligent, these experts make blunders and tell lies that move them further away from the truth rather than toward it.

The messy emotional lives of the characters do not detract from the story but make the story feel stronger and more competent. For a writer to present characters as robots — ones who look an data, interpret it, and come to conclusions — the book would feel wooden and unrealistic. Slaughter gives us cops who make hasty arrests based on grudges, doctors who make mistakes because of exhaustion, and civilians who hide truths to cover up their own secrets. And yet, they still get the bad guy. That makes for a better read and a “happier” ending.

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan (2001)

“Life can’t be sustained under the pressure of so many eyes. Even as we try to reveal the mystery of ourselves, to catch it unawares, expose its pulse and flinch and peristalsis, the truth has slipped away, burrowed further inside a dark coiled privacy that replenishes itself like blood. It cannot be seen, much as one might wish to show it. It dies the instant it is touched by light.”

Written by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, Jennifer Egan, the novel Look at Me is an intense, often thrill-ride-esque story about image, identity, reality, and truth…among many, many other things. It is a story that pokes holes in many of our deeply-held beliefs — that we are in complete control of the image we present to the world; that we can hide from others the things about ourselves that we most revile; and that we can find authenticity through superficial experiences and connections. Egan writes with a prose that manages to be businesslike and direct at times, and at others startlingly eloquent and beautifully grandiose. Her characters, who while not always likable (at times not likable at all) but who nonetheless deliver powerful messages to us all the same.

The main character of the story is Charlotte Swenson, an aging model on her way out of the business but who has managed to carve out a cardboard life for herself in New York City. She exists with only quasi-relationships, and her days are filled with an endless stream of hollow experiences, “being discovered rather than discovering anything.” She has locked herself behind a wall, living in fear of showing weakness to the world. Her world is one constructed almost entirely of lies, so many that even her memories have become untrustworthy. “I lied a lot. I guarded what truths I possessed because information was not a thing — it was colorless, odorless, shapeless, and therefore indestructible.There was no way to retrieve or void it, no way to halt its proliferation. Telling someone a secret was like storing plutonium inside a sandwich bag. The information would eventually outlive the friendship or love or trust in which you had placed it. And then you would have given it all away.”

This Charlotte is our primary narrator, taking us through the events before, during, and after a horrific car crash that changes her life beyond recognition. The accident forces her to convalesce in her Midwestern hometown of Rockford  (which she abhors) and to rely on neighbors and friends (who she desperately resents for witnessing her lowest point) for care.“Once they’ve seen you weak, dull, uneven, hesitant, cringing for love, they will never forget. Long after you’ve gained your vitality, after you have forgotten these exhibitions of weakness, they will look at you and still see them.”

Upon returning to New York, she is unrecognizable to everyone who knew her. Her looks, once her only social currency, have vanished, and she has nothing left. She finds herself drawn into a series of strange semi-friendships as she struggles to simultaneously keep her distance from and work together with others. Eventually she agrees to a reality-TV/online expose work project that, while promising to deliver the “real” Charlotte to the world, serves to sever her further and further from reality.

Although Charlotte Swenson is the primary character, alternating third-person narrators also tell us their stories throughout the novel. All are struggling with their own versions of image distortion and identity crisis. Large sections of Look at Me take place back in that dreaded hometown of Rockford. Here we meet the other Charlotte, Charlotte Hauser, a sixteen year old girl who longs to be seen, to be loved, and to experience the world but who must cast about wildly and at times unsuccessfully to gain those experiences.

We also meet Hauser’s brother, mother, father, and her brilliant but mentally unstable Uncle Moose. Moose is a startling character, offering readers wild, rambling musings that touch on very deep truths about the world. Moose lives with a sense of fragility, as if he is a lone human in a world becoming increasingly mechanized. “He was a different man than those who thrived in the new world, the sociopath who made himself anew each afternoon, for whom lying was merely persuasion. More and more those men ruled the world, those quicksilver creatures, assembled from prototypes, who bore the same relationship to humans that machine-made clothing did to something hand-stitched.”

Oddly tying the novel’s character together is Michael West, an immigrant whose rage at America and all it stands for — greed, consumption, laziness, lack of intellect — has begun to lose its fiery edge as he too softens under the relentlessly anesthetizing effects of fast food, television, booze, and women. His commentaries serve to highlight the fact that the rest of the characters — relatively wealthy, comfortable, white people — while interested in reality and authenticity, have really no idea what that is.

This is truly an amazing book, one that is as entertaining at it is thought-provoking. This entire cast of characters provide us varying degrees of insight into the very human struggle we all face: to be ourselves, even when it is terrifying and difficult.

“We are what we see. Once a person had witnessed a vision that person’s life will be razed like a twig shack by its annihilating force, the truth of it a juggernaut, like a whale rearing up beneath a tiny raft and hurling its inhabitant to the far corners of the earth.”

Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter (2002)

The Grant County Thrillers, Book #1

Karin Slaughter, aptly named as she writes rather gruesome murder mystery novels, was unknow to me before I picked up her book Pretty Girls at the airport in November. (That book is reviewed on my blog here http://wp.me/p6N6mT-21) Pretty Girls was a very intense novel and its subject matter as dark as I have ever read, but her writing was really spectacular and her pacing break-neck, leading me to finish her book in a matter of hours.

When I was trolling around on the library website this past weekend, desperate for a good, can’t-put-it-down book, I was excited to find that she had written a murder mystery series, begun in the early 2000’s, that I had not read before and (even better) the first three books of the series were available for immediate checkout. That is how I found myself reading the first three books in the Grant County Thrillers in a matter of four days.

I love murder mystery novels and I love book series, largely because I am a very fast reader and series (especially ones that are several years old and have acquired a number of novels in them) give me a stack of books to plow through without having to wait for sequels, but also because reading novels with repeat characters appeals to my love of ongoing story lines.

The Grant County Thrillers take place in a fictional rural Georgia town of Heartsdale and focuses on the divorced couple Jeffrey Tolliver, the town’s police chief, and Sara Linton, the town’s pediatrician and coroner. Despite a less-than-civil divorce, the two occasionally work together to solve suspicious deaths that occur in Grant County. Satelliting around the pair are Sara’s parents and sister; the other officers on the Heartsdale police force; and several other members of their small town. Jeffrey is a thorough, focused police officer who is still unsure why he deliberately tanked his marriage to Sara, allowing himself to be caught in an affair with another local woman. Sara is a fiercely independent woman, an outstanding doctor, and a calm and largely unflappable coroner who refuses to take back a cheating husband.

In this first book of the series, Blindsighted, Sara and Jeffrey are forced to work on two gruesome sexual assault-homicide cases that take place in their small — usually crime-free — town. Complicating the cases are a suspicious lack of evidence or witnesses; a close relationship between the victims and one of Jeffrey’s detectives Lena Adams; and the similarity in the cases to a sexual assault that Sara personally experienced more than a decade previous.  Both Sara and Jeffrey must work quickly while trying to hold their own emotions at a distance, something that is harder to do than both had initially figured. Two more victims are discovered before the pair can find and stop the murderer.

Murder mysteries, in my opinion, need to move at just the right pace to be completely enjoyable: readers need the plot to go slow enough in certain places in order to provide adequate background information so we can decide which characters to trust and which ones might be hiding something. Readers also need clues to keep presenting themselves and witness to keep turning up so that we feel that the main characters are going to catch the killer before we lose interest. No one wants to stay up all night reading only to hear about coroner’s reports or footprints at the scene of the crime….we want forward momentum to be ever-present, we want to be told those footprints mean something. Also delicate to balance in books such as this are the moments of gore and graphic descriptions of violence which — if allowed to become too much the focus on the book — make it too weighty for the reader to want to continue. Those moments must be buoyed by lighter ones: ones where the characters have a heartfelt conversation or someone commits a generous act of human kindness.

Moving at just the right fast-but-not-too-fast pace, Slaughter does a wonderful job of keeping us breathless in anticipation, but not forgetting to let us in on the procedural details that will ultimately allow Sara and Jeffrey to solve the case. Also well done is the method the author uses to tell the story with three-pronged point of view technique. From Jeffrey we see the police procedural side of the investigation including witness interviews, crime lab reports, and law enforcement protocol (which at times hampers the investigation. From Sara, we see how critical the physical evidence she collects from the bodies during the autopsy is to finding the killers and assuring that he can be tied to the crime in court. Finally, we see bits and pieces of the story from the point of view of the victims (or soon-to-be-victims) and witnesses, allowing us to see some of the thousands of decisions each one made, some that can help (reporting suspicious activities) or hinder (lying about seeing victim the night of the crime) the case.

All in all this book was a great read, meeting all of my personal requirements for a page-turning thriller and I not only wanted to race to finish, but that I was in an equal hurry to start the second installment.

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro (2012)

In The Art Forger, B.A. Shapiro writes a mystery novel that focuses on the art world and the art-meets-science discipline of art forgery. The book follows a young, beautiful artist named Claire who has spent the three years prior to the story’s current action trying to distance herself from a scandal her former lover embroiled her in and one which ultimately had her largely cut off from the art world.

Now, Claire is a very poor, struggling artist whose work no galleries are willing to show and who has resorted to making art reproductions for a website specializes in high-end look-alikes of the world’s most famous paintings. As we first get to know Claire, we meet a very immature and self-pitying woman who has allowed her previous bad luck to stall both her creativity and her emotional development. These attributes are greatly enhanced by the author’s decision to write the novel in first person, present tense — a writing style I greatly associate with Young Adult fiction.

Claire’s lack of self-confidence and her naivety allow her to become part of a scheme to create a high-end replica of a Degas painting — one she believes to be a copy, but many others see as a forgery. Despite some early reluctance, Claire finds that she is thrilled and challenged by the effort to make a copy good enough to fool art experts. The more she studies the art of forgery the more she finds that her own work has come to life. Soon, she is creating a series of paintings that will comprise a real chance to establish herself as an up and coming artist. Furthermore, the more she works, the more and more confident and adult she becomes; her study of both Degas and his work begins to define her as a true scholar of his work and her study and perfection of the replicating techniques make her a scholar of art forgery as well.

Before Claire has a chance for her own one-woman art show, two men who were part of the “copying” scheme are arrested and her role in the deception is very likely to become widely known and possibly lead to her arrest as well. Her newfound confidence in her painting technique, her knowledge of Degas, and in herself means that, rather than allowing others to take advantage of her, she instead works to get herself and her compatriots out of trouble.

Although I cannot say that the author is an outstanding writer — her style is a bit amateurish and unimaginative — but her topic is clearly well-researched and she does present some very interesting views on both the creation of art and the real source of its value.

Transforming Infomania into Infomagical

Transforming Infomania into Infomagical: A new campaign by WNYC to “reestablish sanity in a technologically crazed world”

Winding through a few podcasts that I have been meaning to catch up on this week (I love listening to podcasts while I take walks), I stumbled upon an interview with Manoush Zomorodi, the host and editor of “Note to Self,” a podcast I had never listened to. In her interview, Zomorodi introduced the audience to the WNYC social science study the staff of “Note to Self,” along with several academic partners, had launched in January  2016.

(The full link to the site and the study can be found here: http://project.wnyc.org/infomagical/)

The experiment, which bills itself as a “digital literacy campaign on steroids,” was created as an attempt to demonstrate to tech-obsessed individuals that they can stem the tide of information streaming towards them from millions of websites, apps, social media platforms, TV shows and (yes) even podcasts. Developed in response to the panicky, distracted sensation that so many Americans feel at the end of a day spent “connected” through their various tech devices, the experiment tasks listeners to practice single-mindedness, quiet reflection, and task-orientated use of technology.

“Note to Self” asked listeners to sign up and pick a goal, and then they were issued five daily challenges — “each task designed to cut through the information overload and help you think more clearly.” The five challenges include things like spending a day only single-tasking, web-surfing only with intention, and spending a day connecting in-person with people around them.

The two podcasts that bookend the week-long study are very well-crafted, well-researched, and really fun to listen to, with various experts weighing in on the effects of digital overload and making the case for working to do less with our brains. I will not attempt to summarize; rather if you are interested in the specifics of project, I recommend that you spend one hour listening to them yourself. (You can even break the golden rule and multitask, like I did, and take a long walk while you listen.)

The first episode can be found at this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/note-to-self/id561470997?mt=2&i=361289565  and the last episode at this link:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/note-to-self/id561470997?mt=2&i=362580738

However, I will say this about the brilliant experiment: I find it shocking and disturbing how much of themselves so many of the people around me have ceded to their online lives. I certainly feel less connected to these frantic souls who can never seem to keep up with the demands their phone makes on them and I can only imagine how they feel themselves. Calling attention to the downsides of all this connectedness is important and laudable.

Caveat: I have to admit that I have a very, very limited online presence. Other than this blog and my email account I have no other online “selves.” I am on no social media sites and I only follow a handful of blogs (many on WordPress who also follow me, so thanks!). This is all a conscious decision, not a “I can’t figure that website out” sort of decision. For the most part, I do not want to be more connected, more current, or more up-to-date. In a life that is already busy with the physical demands of work, home, children, spouse, and self, I am loathe to add any more mental demands to my life, especially the false ones crafted by social media or the entertainment industry.

What I really want more of in my life is to do less; to sit and reflect; to contemplate and discuss deep things with my husband; or to hike through the woods with my children. Of course, as this blog will attest, I also want to spend a large amount of my free time reading books. I have made a decision that empty demands on my time — web-surfing, watching too much TV, scrolling through social media sites — come at too high a cost: namely, the elimination of time and energy for the things I really love. As a result, I may seem extremely unhip (my tech-savvy sister who lives in San Francisco — upon learning I still check out DVDs from the library — called me, lovingly, “a dinosaur”) and I may miss out on a few important events in the lives of my friends who are on FB, but I have so much more control of my head space than I would otherwise. Quite honestly, those consequences are not game changing.

All that aside, I find the podcast “Note to Self” to be a real gem and the project they have created to be not only entertaining but important. Every one of us can benefit from focusing more, doing less, and striving towards that things us happy. Being alone, knowing ourselves, and nourishing our minds with joyful activities whenever possible: I strongly feel that those are noble goals we all should reach toward, and I resoundingly congratulate anyone who uses their platform to champion those values.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

Lev Grossman’s book The Magicians is the first fantasy novel I have read in many years. With the exception of a few young adult fantasy series — namely Harry Potter, which I have been obsessed with for fifteen years — I have learned that fantasy is not a genre that I particularly enjoy. When talking with my son (a devoted fantasy fan, as most teenage boys seem to be) I was forced to come up with a reason for why I shy away from fantasy novels. After some reflection I determined that fantasy novels are often too much about place and the novel’s character development, plot pacing, and coherency all suffer for it.

However, when I read that Grossman’s series was considered “Harry Potter for adults” I knew I had to set aside my biases and give it a try. I really, really wanted to like this book. I wanted to to discover a series of books that I could dive into and anxiously await the next installment. Sadly that did not happen with The Magicians.

While I did not love the book, I did like the book. Grossman is a wonderful writer who really does have a wonderful idea — what would a group of disaffected, millennial teenagers who learn that they are capable of magic do? how would they be handle their power? what would they make of their newly enchanted lives?

The Magicians centers around a group of students who are selected to attend a prestigious college for the study of magic. The characters, who are all seventeen at the start of the novel’s action, are all living in a post-Harry Potter world (and a post Chronicles of Narnia, and post-Lord of the Rings). Their understanding of magic is profoundly affected by their familiarity with these books. Indeed, Grossman does not shy away from mentioning these books at all, rather he embraces that they now have established a canon of fantasy novels for young adults and weaves elements of all of those stories into his book (he even comes right out and references Quidditch, Middle-Earth, Hermione Granger, and the Narnia fauns, among others.) Somehow familiarity with these stories seem to have hardened the main characters slightly against the wonder of their new circumstances. Indeed, the story itself never seems to move out from under its influences and always feels like it exists in their shadow.

Grossman does create a really enjoyable parallel world from the students to live in and crafts a very beautiful version of magic for them. Rather than being something the the teens simply start doing, magic in this novel is a hard-earned, much-studied discipline that only the very elite are capable of. “Magic was like a language…treated as an orderly system but in reality it was complex, chaotic, and organic. There were as many special cases, one time variations as there were rules; filled with exceptions, asterisks, and footnotes.”  Much of the first half of the book focuses on their very challenging education, their learning of the magical languages of the world.

It is after graduation that the students seem to develop a malaise that is not unlike their non-magical peers: too much drinking, entering into self-destructive relationships, and devoting too much of their time searching for ways to be entertained. Together too much they press the boundaries of their friendship, “Fighting was like using magic. You said the words and they altered the universe. Merely by speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better but make your life worse.” It is here that the book really started to lose me. I felt consistently irritated that despite being able to do magic and being very, very rich as a result of that, the characters can find nothing worthwhile to do with themselves. For a long while, the story seems to  be more about the post-college, adolescent struggles of this group rather than a fantasy story about wizards. In my opinion, if you cannot find a way to make your life entertaining and fulfilling when you are a extremely wealthy wizard, you really cannot be trying very hard.

Looking for a bit of fun and a way out of the depression they all seem to be sinking under, the group undertakes a risky time and dimension traveling adventure that turns out to be all too real. The story moves in fits and starts at this point in the novel: at times very exciting and other times a bit marred down in the he-said, she-said theatrics that dominated their time in college. A long journey is begun and a battle for their lives ensues. In the end only some of the characters survive and the rest are left to journey back home or remain on their own in this parallel world.

While his story-line in the final chapters does start to pick up pace and really embrace its fantasy novel roots — magical beasts, epic battles, daring quests — the novel’s ending feels as if it was changed several times by the author. Just when you think the first novel is ending, Grossman dashes off a few half-hearted lines that leap months into the future and introduce bizarrely complicated plot twists that really might have been better for the start of the second book.

While the book is readable and even entertaining it is not a modern classic, at least not standing on its own. It is possible that the series, when complete, will really be something amazing (which does happen with long series’ from time to time: the first book bobbles a bit but the rest of the books buoy it back up).

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear (2014)

“In war, truth is the first casualty.” Aeschylus

My dear friend and neighbor Sophia is a fellow book-lover and we have made it our habit not only to recommend books to one another but also to share the books themselves, walking them to one another, back and forth, across the street which runs between our houses. Sophia lent me this book because she knows I am a fan of Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs books (which I have mentioned here http://wp.me/p6N6mT-5n) and I am very thankful for the lend. I found the book to be really enjoyable, filled with thought-provoking information about life during World War I for those on the front lines and the home front. Winspear’s research into the years just before and during WWI is extraordinarily meticulous and it fills the book with substance and sense of reality that a less researched novel could not have managed.

The story in The Care and Management of Lies focuses mainly on Kezia, Thea and Tom Brissenden and their neighbor Edward Hawkes. Opening just months before the start of World War 1, the characters lives appear to be laid out before them in a very ordinary manner: Kezia and Tom have just married and will embark on life running the Brissenden farm in Kent. Tom’s sister Thea has a teaching position in London and is enjoying living life on her own away from the demands of farming. Edward is busy running an estate for his recently deceased father. Almost overnight, England declares war on Germany and the nation’s men and women rush to sign up to serve, including Tom and Edward — as a solider and officer respectively — and Thea as an ambulance driver. Kezia, a new bride and “town lass,” who now must manage and work the farm on her own.

The lies told by the characters in this book are not the sordid lies of many twenty-first century novels. There are no extramarital affairs, no murders, no one driven into financial ruin by an enemy. Rather the lies being told by Kezia, Tom, and the others are omissions — words not said and events left unmentioned — done not to deceive but to spare their loved ones pain and worry. Kezia fails to tell her husband that his beloved farm has been plowed under by the government, its livestock taken; Tom fails to tell Kezia of the misery of the trenches, the horror of watching men and boys die day and night; Thea’s joking tone employed to hide the grim reality of caring for injured soldiers; Edward writes to a mother of her son’s heroic death, even if he was shot for desertion. “Just another little white lie” each thinks as they labor over their letters, painstakingly considering what to leave out and what to put in.

In proper British fashion the characters shoulder of the new responsibilities brought on by the war with little complaint, steadfast in their work ethic. Occasionally their anger at the injustice and indignity of war rears up, “Why wasn’t this terrible war being brought to an end? Why weren’t the politicians locked in a room not allowed to come out until they had brought to a halt this boulder of death rolling down hill unchecked, crushing everyone caught in its path?”

The enormity of how much the war has changed their country, their homes, and their lives weighs on all the characters, large and small, in the book. Not one corner of their existence remains unchanged. England, and in fact the entire world, is forced to redefine what is proper and allowable in the face of so much devastation and death.  Most notably in the book is the extremely rapid transformation of the lives of women who had to change in order for the country to move forward: rules about where they could live, what jobs they could hold, even how they dressed and who the spent time with, all had to adapt because there were no men to do the work and so, so much work to be done.

Overall the book was a wonderful read and offered great, if at times breathtakingly sad, insight into the lives of men and women in early twentieth century.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (2008)

The research conducted by Dan Ariely was first brought to my attention by (my personal Happiness Guru) author Gretchen Rubin, who mentions Arielly in both of her books and on her podcast, “Happier.” Ariely, a Behavioral Economist at MIT, sets out to demonstrate that humans do not make decisions — economic or otherwise — purely based on rational reasoning, but rather we make our choices using a complicated mix of practicality, emotion, and mental short cuts.

While this seems like an obvious statement to make, and too simple a premise to support an entire book, but it turns out that most people believe that other people make decisions based on emotion, that other people can be manipulated by marketing or merchandising efforts, but we are all certain it we are not susceptible to those forces. Of course, we are all fooling ourselves. Ariely sets out several research-based examples to show us the invisible forces at work helping to shape our decisions.

The book argues that we make a majority of our decisions based on short cuts that our brain employs when faced with choices, both large and small. Ask anyone and they will assure you that their decisions are made by painstaking research and purposeful reasoning. Ariely argues that many, many decisions are made for us — without us even realizing it — by the manufacturers and marketers whose products we use, and even the bureaucratic processes we take part in. Instead of the deep-thought analysis we may think we employ, Ariely’s research suggests that we are far more likely to decide based on ease, familiarity, repetition, popularity and split-second comparisons.

Of course, the book is not setting out steps for us to eliminate our reliance on these mental shortcuts as that would be impossible; we simply make too many decisions every day in order to pause to complete a cost/benefit, supply/demand analyses. Airely simply is drawing our attention to the forces at work to shape our choices so that next time we are asked to start paying $1 more per cup coffee we might stop to reflect on our commitment to that coffee.

As far as non-fiction goes, it is not the most compelling book I have read of late but it does present some interesting arguments. Some of the points of the book are laid out nicely in the TED Talks Dan Ariely has given in the past several years. If you prefer to skip the book but would still like the cliff-notes version check out these talks (the first link is directly related to the research from Predictably Irrational):

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_how_equal_do_we_want_the_world_to_be_you_d_be_surprised

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)

When it was listed as an upcoming book in a co-ed book club that my husband and I sometimes frequent, I checked out a copy of Rebecca from the library. The book jacket made great promises about the romantic, thrilling, and shocking nature of the story but, sadly, after spending the better part of last weekend reading the novel I have to say that the book lived up to none of these promises. Perhaps my disappointment stems from the fact that modern novels have taken the level of thrill, and for that matter romance, to such extremes that this 1938 book failed to impress. However, I do not think that accounts entirely for my lack of interest in the story. Unfortunately the story is wanders too much to allow for the building of any real suspense and the main character’s incessantly whiny, self-centered narration makes it hard to sympathize with her. Overall the book felt overrated, with other books handling the genre with much more skill, most outstandingly British Gothic gem, Jane Eyre.

In the story, we meet Maxim a handsome, wealthy widow who suddenly marries a poor woman half his age, whisking her back to his mansion on the Cornwall coast. His new bride (never named throughout the novel, presumably to highlight her second class status) finds it hard to live up to the very high standards his first wife set for the estate Manderley and the marriage. Rebecca, the first Mrs. De Winter, was rumored to be gorgeous, talented, and beloved by all. Max’s new wife is weakened by living in her predecessor’s constant shadow and quickly begins to doubt not only her place in the house, but her entire marriage.

The estate of Manderley from the film Rebecca (1940) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

However, rather than face her fears directly — dismissing insubordinate servants, talking to her husband about his past, insisting on truthfulness regarding the estate — the narrator chooses to suffer in silence. Her story is more or less a constant stream of complaints and perceived transgressions, none of which she is willing to rectify. She simultaneously wants more responsibility around house and more honesty from her new family and demands that they shelter her from both work and the truth. An enormous amount of the trouble she finds herself in could have been avoided with honest discussions and a bit of nerve. Now I realize that I am reading the book and judging its characters through the lens of 21st century feminism, but I still cannot help but blame the character for causing much of her difficulty.

When it becomes clear that Rebecca was less honest, chaste, or kind than she has been presented since her sudden death (or at least it becomes obvious to readers if not our narrator,) it seems that finally we can expect some backbone from her; at the very least a demand for answers from her husband. Again, we are disappointed. She naively misses all the signs that her husband’s first marriage was a sham and spends her time wallowing in pity, weeping over her inability to live up to Rebecca; to the point that she is all but ready give up entirely on her marriage or possibly to end her life. While it could not be easy to have moved from a life of servitude to a life as lady of the manor, surely she could have made an attempt. It is maddening how little she is willing to fight for her place in this new world.

It takes her learning that her husband did not love her first wife to release her from her feelings of inadequacy. After that, she is able to weather a series of shocking — or at least shocking by 1930’s standards — revelations about Rebecca that wake up our narrator and have her finally, although not at all forcefully, stepping into her place as her husband’s partner. Together they must weather a police investigation into Rebecca’s death, often wondering if they will avoid jail, in order to finally have some peace in their marriage.

Reading the book it occurred to me that I had a higher expectations for the main character: when she is presented with a chance for a wonderful life on a gorgeous estate in the country, married to a caring husband she is willing to risk it all rather than stand up for herself and demand honesty and partnership from her husband; she chooses to hide away from life until it is almost too late for them both. For that, I find, I cannot forgive her, even though she partially redeems herself in the end.