California Literary Review

Web Site:

http://www.squamcreativeservices.com/

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Chasing Moonlight: The True Story of Field of Dreams’ Doc Graham by Brett Friedlander and Robert Reising
  Posted on 28 Apr 2009 in Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports
  

  There’s a scene in Field of Dreams where the camera lingers on a baby-faced baseball player wearing a New York Giants uniform. He has just seen a girl fall from the bleachers and he comes running towards her, hesitating for a fraction of a second on the edge of the grass. Then he drops his glove, takes a step and metamorphoses into the incomparable Burt Lancaster in one of his last starring roles. In an instant, Moonlight Graham has become Doc Graham, and he can never go back to the game he loved.

• All the Living by C.E. Morgan
  Posted on 07 Apr 2009 in Agriculture, Fiction Reviews
  

  For All the Living is an excellent debut for Morgan, a bold book of small incidents and large emotions. It is the work of an author unafraid to wrestle with language and if, at times, language wins out, well then, it’s merely shaping her muscles for the next round.

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  Posted on 08 Feb 2009 in African American, Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction
  

  Yet when an author treads into specific territories, the ground becomes awfully muddy. We’re happy to let writers play around with being a Roman slave of the first century or a prostitute of the eighteenth, but when it comes to depicting a person who has lived through the Holocaust or the Civil Rights era, ah, then I think we hesitate. Does an author, even in the services of fiction, have a right to appropriate these stories?

• The Irish Americans: A History by Jay P. Dolan
  Posted on 25 Jan 2009 in History, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  America’s love affair with all things Irish – with J.F.K. and seedy bars in “The Departed,” with pure toned women in glaring-green dresses and fire-engine curls, with tales of New York firemen, Boston policemen and roguish politicians (Joe Biden is the first of four in an Irish Catholic family, though I know not if he is roguish) – is the culmination of three hundred years of complicated, contradictory and sometimes bitter, history.

• Frederick Burr Opper’s Happy Hooligan
  Posted on 22 Jan 2009 in Humor, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Viewed in retrospect, post-Depression, however, he acquires a special poignancy. Here was a man who was only ever trying to help, never asking for favors, loved by children, and here was a society intent on beating him down. The line between comedy and tragedy is a fine one, and Hooligan’s lines were pretty fine.

• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
  Posted on 16 Dec 2008 in African American, Fiction Reviews
  

  That’s it. Truly. That’s the plot. But to say that is all there is to it is like saying the Vietnam Memorial is just a black wall. There are an infinite number of stories in this book, with each new character’s narrative throwing light onto unexpected sides of the people we thought we knew. When Morrison takes us into a world, we do not visit it; we inhabit it.

• Baby Jesus Pawn Shop by Lucia Orth
  Posted on 10 Dec 2008 in Fiction Reviews, Southeast Asia
  

  So let me begin by saying Orth is a very talented writer. She has an eye for detail and a knack for imagery. In her tale of a Filipino and a Westerner coming to grips with the dictatorial landscape of a Marcos-era Philippines, she saturates our minds with sights and senses.

• Casanova by Ian Kelly
  Posted on 03 Dec 2008 in Biography, Italy, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sex, Theatre
  

  Ah, Casanova. Men want to be him, and women want to be with him. Or is it the other way around? He’s Romeo with cojones, Bond without the Beretta, a man more sinned with than sinning. In the annals of sexual conquest, there has seldom been a more entertaining and knowing chronicler. Casanova, according to Casanova, was a legend.

• Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America by Meredith Mason Brown
  Posted on 16 Nov 2008 in Biography, History, Military, Native American, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  It was brutal stuff. Massacres, scalpings, crops burned, winters with only salted meat to eat – and this on both sides. Again Boone survived this melee, but it took a great deal of guile to do it. When his daughter Jemima was kidnapped by a Cherokee and Shawnee war party, for instance, he needed his backwoods know-how to track them down quickly and shoot the offenders.

• Résistance by Agnès Humbert
  Posted on 28 Oct 2008 in France, History, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  The early resistors soon discover that the Nazis don’t view their activities with similar lightheartedness. Oblivious to the reason why a German car might be parked outside the hospital her mother is in, Humbert walks straight into hell. A member of the Gestapo has infiltrated and betrayed their group, and she and her friends are rounded up for a show trial. It is only April 1941. What follows is an account that tests our 21st century belief in rationalism.