Literary fiction

Review: Loser Takes All

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Cover image of "loser Takes All" by Graham Greene.

Loser Takes All, Graham Greene. Penguin Classics (ISBN: 9780140185423) 1993 (first published in 1955).

Summary: On a honeymoon in Monte Carlo, Bertram’s gambling successes force a choice between love and money.

Mr. Bertram is getting married. Neither he nor Cary are affluent. He’s a low level accountant in a business firm, with few aspirations for advancement. But they are excited to share a frugal life with each other, beginning with a modest honeymoon in Bournemouth.

All that changes one day when he is called on to resolve some accounting problems for the firm’s director, Mr. Dreuther. He does so in short order. Bertram mentions his wedding plans and Dreuther insists on what is an enticing alternative. He invites him to go to Monte Carlo to get married, and then join him on his yacht for a sailing honeymoon. How can he and Cary say no to that!

They arrive in Monte Carlo. But there is no Mr. Dreuther. Bertram and Cary marry and enjoy their honeymoon suite. But they had not planned to stay. Bertram visits the casino in hopes of winning enough to afford it. They are living on snacks. At one point, the hotel even fronts him a loan as a member of Dreuther’s firm. He keeps losing until his “system” starts working and he wins enough to pay back the loan. He keeps winning, and at one point gains the balance of controlling shares in his firm from another firm director who has been losing at the tables.

But as he spends all his waking hours gambling or thinking about it, he loses something else. He loses Cary, who loved the hungry and poor Bertram, not this rich stranger. It all comes to a head when Bertram discovers Cary has moved out of their suite to be with a hungry young man she has met during all those days Bertram left her alone.

Then Dreuther shows up, pleading a breakdown to excuse his delay. He finds Bertram alone and hears the sad tale. Instead of counselling him to accept a failed marriage, Dreuther suggests a plan to win Cary back, a plan suggested by the book’s title.

The story is a kind of parable on the saying, “One cannot serve two masters.” In this case, Bertram must choose between love and money, and he chose poorly. Fortunately, we do not have to wait long in this short novel to discover whether Dreuther’s plan will allow him to redeem his poor choice.

___________

Thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: Cutting for Stone

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Cover image of "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese.

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese. Vintage Books (ISBN: 9780375714368) 2010.

Summary: Twins Marion and Shiva were born amidst tragedy involving their mother’s death and father’s flight.

Marion Stone, the narrative voice of this work, and his twin brother Shiva were born amidst a tragedy. Their mother was Sister Mary Joseph Praise. Gifted surgeon Thomas Stone is their father. Both the Sister and Stone had arrived in Ethiopia seven years earlier, meeting on a boat from India. They worked together at “Missing” (actually Mission) Hospital in Addis Ababa. They were as one in the surgery theatre. She helped illustrate a textbook on surgery. And, mysteriously, they had become lovers (we only learn the circumstances at the close of the novel).

When the time of delivery was at hand, the babies can’t make it through the birth canal. The obstetrics doctor, Hema was away. Stone first attempts a botched abortion procedure. He freezes and can’t perform the needed Caesarian. Hema arrives in time to deliver the babies, who were attached at the head. Miraculously, they both live. But the mother dies and the father flees. Marion does not hear from him until he is an adult in America. However, Hema decides to raise the boys. And the one remaining staff doctor. Ghosh, takes over surgery in addition to general care. He also marries Hema and joins her in raising the boys. Clearly, they are better off than they would have been with Stone.

Ghosh mentors Marion in surgery. And Hema mentors Shiva in obstetrics and gynecology. He eventually develops an innovative procedure to treat women with fistulas. The boys are close, having been connected at birth. Yet their lives take unique courses. Eventually Shiva betrays Marion. Marion loved the daughter of the housekeeper and hoped to marry Genet. But Shiva slept with her. Betrayed by both, he is deeply depressed.

All this occurs against the backdrop of a turbulent period in Ethiopian history, first a failed coup attempt, and later, the Eritrean revolt, in which Genet plays a prominent role. Because of her tie with Marion, Marion flees Ethiopia to train as a trauma surgeon in a poor, New York hospital. It is here that he reconnects with Thomas Stone, a liver transplant specialist in Boston. Marion’s hospital is a source of many of those livers. The climax of the novel brings Marion together with the three people who had betrayed him. But will they find the reconciliation Ghosh, his step-father hoped for before he died?

Behind this theme lies another that I suspect is dear to Verghese–the calling of a doctor, and particularly a surgeon. The title, “cutting for stone” comes from the Hippocratic Oath as well as playing on Marion’s father’s name. Physicians swear not to operate for kidney stones, unless a specialist. Too many died at the hands of “lithologists” whose unsterile practices often killed their patients. In a scene during a conference, Thomas Stone asks,  “What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?” Marion, not yet known to him answers correctly, “Words of comfort.” Marion and Shiva’s step parents imparted this care for patients to the twins even as they emulated their father’s skill.

Last year, I read Verghese’s The Covenant of Water. His voice and storytelling capacity enthralled me. And so I sought out his earlier work. The same qualities are evident here. Verghese spins a compelling story. At the same time, he offers us layers of meaning and insight into the human experience. I look forward to his next work, which I suspect will be at least several years coming given the careful writing and length of his stories.

Review: Corridors of Power

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Cover image of "Corridors of Power" by C. P. Snow

Corridors of Power (Strangers and Brothers, 9), C. P. Snow. Open Road Media (ASIN: B0DCPBFBZT) 2024 (first published in 1964).

Summary: An ambitious member of Parliament challenges Britain’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

The phrase “corridors of power” has come into common political parlance. And it is C.P. Snow we have to thank for this. However, its use in the title of this novel was not its first. Rather, it occurs in an earlier novel Homecomings published in 1956. Both this and the earlier novel are part of Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, written between 1940 and 1970. The novels narrate the education and career of civil servant, Lewis Eliot. This mirrors C. P. Snows own career, first as a physical chemist, turned civil servant, and later as a director of several science and technology organizations.

Eliot is serving an elderly cabinet minister at the opening of the novel, who is displaced, ostensibly due to ill health, by rising star Roger Quaife. Eliot continues to serve under him and is drawn into his ambitious, yet coldly realistic policy goals for the U.K. During this time, the country has come through the Suez Crisis, an episode revealing their declining power. Rather than to attempt to keep up pretenses, Quaife wants the U.K. to end its participation in the nuclear arms race, leaving it to the two rival superpowers. Much of the novel develops the efforts to politically sell this policy. Eliot’s role is to chair a committee of scientists to make recommendations about the policy. Quaife wants their endorsement, and all but a dissenting scientist get the message.

Eliot has another role to play as well. Quaife has the perfect political marriage, with a glamorous and influential wife (who is a good friend of Eliot’s wife). We follow them in the rounds of parties with rich and influential friends. But Quaife also is involved in an affair on the side. Eliot becomes involved when Quaife’s lover begins receiving letters threatening to expose the affair if Quaife doesn’t end it.

The novel builds toward twin crises as Quaife faces a political vote of confidence amid growing dissent over his proposed policy and his wife’s ultimatum to Quaife to end the affair. He has dazzled with his consummate political skills. But will that be enough to carry him through these crises?

The novel serves as a commentary on the U.K.’s relative waning power, yet is far ahead of the times. As of 2025, the U.K. is still a nuclear power and significant NATO partner. Whether it was Snow’s intent, it also seemed a commentary on the vacuity of political power. Indeed, I wondered whether Quaife’s affair was the one thing of meaning, of real humanity in a life taken up with ambition and power.

I think I only knew of Snow through his book The Two Cultures describing the breakdown of communication between the sciences and humanities. I came across this work as a deal in e-book format, not realizing it was part of a series. Even though it was the ninth in the series, it reads well as a standalone. I just might try a few more!

Review: The Spectator Bird

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Cover image of "The Spectator Bird" by Wallace Stegner.

The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner. Vintage (ISBN: 9780525431879) 2017 (first published in 1976).

Summary: A postcard from a Countess leads a retired literary agent and his wife to revisit the time they’d spent with her.

A postcard interrupts the routines of Joe Alston, a retired New York literary agent, living in California, near Stanford. Mostly, he spends his days caring for his home with his wife, Ruth, attending cultural events, and comparing maladies with other seniors his age. The postcard, from Astrid upsets all that. Astrid was an impoverished countess the two of them had stayed with in Denmark back in 1954.

In 1954, their son had recently drowned in the ocean, whether by accident or on purpose was unclear. Joe and he had constantly fought. The loss reminded Joe of other losses. His father, a railroader, died in his infancy. His mother had emigrated from Denmark, and he hoped understanding something of her background would help root his rootless life.

Joe had kept a collection of journals of that trip that he dug out. When Ruth finds him with them, she asks about why he has pulled these out, and asks if he would read them. So, in the evenings, he would read portions. And as the visit unfolded, the countess revealed the peculiar secret of her family and its own attempts to achieve a kind of genealogical purity. It is a story, that as it turns out, is connected with Joe’s mother’s emigration.

The account is broken up with present day events. A celebrity visits amid a storm and power outage, regaling Joe with his adventures and urging Joe to return to life. Then, clearing the aftermath of the storm, Joe feels his age, suffering several maladies, comforted by Ruth’s care. A neighbor delivers a woodchipper Joe has had occasion to borrow. It is a gift, with the unspoken message being that the neighbor, dying of cancer, will not need it.

Several themes come together in this finely crafted story. Firstly, it is a story about aging. It is not only about the physical indignities of age but also the assessing of what one’s life has meant. Secondly, it is about revisiting the unexamined ambiguities of one’s past. The journal revealed Joe’s fascination with the countess, one both he and Ruth had been aware of. Although he had not acted upon it, it was one of the ambiguities of the couple’s life together.

Finally, we come to Joe’s whole approach to life, that of the “spectator bird,” the observer rather than the participant. He was the literary agent, working for the success of his clients. His journal in Denmark is another exercise in observation. Did he feel an observer with his son, unable to prevent his self-destruction? He describes himself as “just killing time until time gets around to killing me.”

I found myself identifying with Joe. We are the same age and at similar stages in life. There are the indignities of a body that doesn’t always do what you want and imposes its own limits. Then, having laid down one’s career, one wonders what it has meant. And there is the complex companionship of a long marriage, both the deep and comforting bond and the awareness of what an imperfect work of art it has been and one’s own part in those imperfections. One is aware of being loved far beyond what one deserves.

As Joe and Ruth read and process the journals and revisit the past, we await to see whether this will help them make sense of their lives. Will they find the sense and meaning that will enable them to navigate their remaining years with some quality of equanimity? Will we?

Review: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

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Cover image of "The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry" by Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin. Algonquin Books (ISBN: 9781616204518) 2014.

Summary: A widowed bookseller’s life changes when a rare book disappears and an orphaned child is left in his care.

Amelia Loman didn’t deserve this. She’s on her first sales calls, representing Knightly Press. She’s taken the ferry to Alice Island, where she has an appointment to meet the owner of Island Books, A. J. Fikry. He’s terribly rude and doesn’t appear to be interested in anything in her winter catalog. She even manages to knock over a pile of Advanced Reader Copies stacked in the hallway to his office. But all she can do is leave a book she has really liked in his office along with the winter catalog.

A. J. Fikry is not yet forty and a widower. His wife, Nic, with whom he started the bookstore on a resort island, had been killed in an auto accident. Since then, he’s been drinking and the store’s sales are slumping. His sister-in-law Ismay, married to a fading, once best-selling author, tries to help. She even took him to an estate sale where he found a rare copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane. He buys it for $5 but figures it is worth $400,000. It’s kind of an insurance policy.

The night of Amelia’s visit, he pulls out Tamerlane as he drinks himself into oblivion. When he wakes the next morning, the book has disappeared. But, in a strange turn, the officer, Lambiase, who takes the police report, becomes a regular visitor to the bookstore. Then he starts a popular book group for those who read detective fiction. Meanwhile, A.J. helps him broaden his reading interests.

While Lambiase was taking the police report, A. J. had a seizure, something that had occurred throughout his life. When a trip to the hospital reveals nothing wrong, except for his depression, the only recommendation is that he get exercise. One day, on returning from a run, he finds the door to his store, which he leaves unlocked, ajar. On investigating, he discovers a baby in the children’s section. With her, he finds a note introducing the baby as Maya and that the mother, who can’t care for her wants her to grow up in a place with books. With Ismay’s help, he figures out how to care for her, The next day, Maya’s mother’s body washes ashore.

Lambiase explains the realities of the foster system, and against all his instinct’s A.J. decides to fulfill the mother’s last wish. The town is abuzz. Then he adopts her, and gives her the middle name Tamerlane. She has become the most valuable thing in his life, an unexpected replacement for the missing book. And A.J.’s heart begins to open up as Maya blossoms into an amazing daughter.

Remember Amelia? She keeps calling and A. J. discovers he likes discussing books with her. He looks forward to her visits. And the wonder of it is that Amelia, who has had her own disappointments with men, finds herself drawn to this one. And she finds herself marrying the guy who had treated her so rudely on her first sales call.

Gabrielle Zevin writes a story of how tenderness, friendship, and love arise out of tragedy. And for booklovers, it all happens in a bookstore! Another bookish device are the “shelftalkers” that open each chapter, written as we later learn, for his daughter Maya, who loves books and writing beyond her mother’s hopes. This is the second Zevin novel I have read this year, and she is one of my “author finds” of the year.

Review: Martyr!

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Cover image of "Martyr" by Kaveh Akbar

Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar. Vintage Books (ISBN: 9780593685778) 2024.

Summary: A young immigrant poet in recovery struggles to find meaning in a life after his mother’s plane was shot down and his father died.

When Cyrus was an infant in Iran, his mother’s plane was shot down by mistake by a U.S. ship. His father moved to Indiana, seeing a job recruitment notice. He spent the rest of his life cleaning up after chickens and collecting their eggs. And died when Cyrus was in college. Meanwhile his uncle Arash stayed back in Iran, suffering PTSD from the war. He had a gruesome assignment, to ride a black horse through battlefields at night after battle, robed as the Angel of Death. The idea was to comfort the dying. But he would live ever after with what he saw and did.

Cyrus was basically a good boy until his father died. In college, he experimented with all the things many students did, becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol. One day, he awoke and considered suicide, praying for a sign that he should go on living. A “sort of” sign was good enough to get him into recovery.

Cyrus was a poet and writer–or at least aspired to be. Talking with friends, he shared his idea to write a book about martyrs–people who died for something greater than themselves. And in this, we come to a central idea of the book–can one’s life–and death–mean something? He learns from a friend that an Iranian artist in New York named Orkideh is holding a unique exhibition. The exhibit is called Death-Speak. She is the exhibit, a woman dying of metastatic breast cancer willing to talk with any who come about death or whatever they want to talk about.

Cyrus and his lover, Zee, decide to make the trip. And for three consecutive days, he has conversations with Orkideh. At the beginning, she mocks his aspiration to write a book on martyrdom –“another death-obsessed Iranian man?” But by the end, there is a bond as he shares he wants to write about her. By the third conversation, they have become close. Orkideh seems gladdened to see Cyrus. He trusts her with his struggle and comes to his central question, “the trick to being at peace at the end.” They talk a bit further and embrace. He will never see her again. But those conversations and what he learns after them will change him forever…

While the book centers around Cyrus, each of the significant characters narrates at different points, sometimes filling in backstory. The narrative moves from the present back as far as Cyrus’ childhood. We hear from Cyrus father Ali, mother Roya, uncle Arash, Orkideh, and even Orkideh’s gallerist and former lover. There is even a strange, dreamlike segment with Orkideh and “President Invective.” There are also short segments with quote’s from Cyrus’ book on martyrs.

These shifts allow the reader to catch one’s breath, or redirect one’s eye in the story Akbar is painting. The story is one of discovery, one in which Cyrus gains knowledge of himself and the meaning of creating and loving. Akbar offers us an exploration of the human condition in all of its heartbreaks, ambiguities, and noble aspirations. Life can be both messy and glorious and our task is learning to live with both.