Book Review | Book Chatter

The Odds
By Stewart O’Nan
(Viking Adult, Hardcover, 9780670023165, January 19, 2012, 192pp.)

The Short of It:

A brutally honest look at a marriage in crisis.

The Rest of It:

In all my years as a reader, I’ve never read an O’Nan novel. Boy, have I been missing out.

Art and Marion Fowler ditch their soon-to-be foreclosed home for Niagara Falls, hoping to recoup enough money to save their home and their marriage. The odds are against them, in more ways than one but as they rent the “bridal” suite for one last Valentine’s hurrah, one remains hopeful where the other has totally and utterly given up hope.

From the very first page, it’s clear that Marion is going along with Art’s plan as a way to humor him, or perhaps…she feels obligated to give it one last shot just so she can say that she tried everything in her power to make it work. Regardless, what she is is a broken woman at the end of her rope, hoping to close this chapter so she can move on to the next stage of her life. She’s not entirely convinced that gambling can save them, but she gives it a go for Art’s sake.

Art however, is the opposite. Inside, he knows that the marriage is coming to a close but he’s not ready to throw in the towel. Not quite yet. He’s optimistic to a fault but somehow, you can’t hold that against him. Jobless and wanting nothing more than to provide for his family, he sees this trip as a solution to their problems. Additionally, he has decided to ask Marion to marry him all over again. To start fresh, even if they can never go back to the life they knew so well.

Since the odds of recouping what they need to save the house are slim to none, they continue to squander money by way of their maxed-out credit card, living it up until they are basically told that they no longer can. Fine dinners, champagne and visiting all of the tourist traps that looked much more appealing the first time around. It’s heartbreaking, really.

But as sad and heartbreaking as so much of it was, I adored it. This story is all about second chances and when O’Nan goes into the heads of these characters, he must come out exhausted because these characters are complex characters with real worries and pressures. Ink on paper one second, living and breathing creatures the next. Amazing.

I can’t compare this book to his others since this was my first experience with O’Nan, but if the character development in his other books is anything like it was here, then I will be reading more of his books in the near future.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher via Net Galley.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Lost City of Z
By David Grann
(Vintage, Paperback, 9781400078455, January 2010, 448pp.)

The Short of It:

A well-researched treat for the armchair traveler.

The Rest of It:

In 1925, Percival Harrison Fawcett and his eldest son, disappeared on an expedition to find the lost city of “Z”, his name for an uncharted city in the dense jungles of the Amazon. The trip was well-documented by Fawcett himself, but the facts leading up to his disappearance were sketchy enough for explorers everywhere to take a stab at what actually happened. Here, David Grann, a journalist, attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s disappearance while interspersing his own stories and experiences of visiting the Amazon.

Before reading this book, I had no idea who Fawcett was. So I was quite surprised at how many explorers have gone out into the Amazon looking for him, only to fail or be killed while trying. Grann, who is definitely not an explorer, but a journalist, gives us a well-researched, methodical account of Fawcett’s trip. Using Fawcett’s journals and accounts from other explorers, he pieces together that fateful trip. The only problem, and something nearly everyone in my book club noticed, is that Fawcett could have written anything he wanted. Just how accurate were those papers?

The pacing of this book was a tad slow at times and often repetitive since many of the occurrences (parasitic attacks, malaria, etc.) repeat themselves throughout the telling. Overall, I felt as if I were part of the adventure and I do believe that is what Grann intended when he wrote the book. Some of the book club members felt that it could have been edited down a bit. I felt that way as well, but by the end of the book, I understood that Grann was attacking it from all sides and addressing different viewpoints so the extra bit of detail he included, didn’t keep me from enjoying the book.

I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough to discuss but I worried for nothing. Here are some little known facts about Fawcett as noted from Wikipedia:

Arthur Conan Doyle based his Professor Challenger character partly on Fawcett, and stories of the “Lost City of Z” became the basis for his novel The Lost World.^[15]
Fawcett has been proposed as a possible inspiration for Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist/adventurer.^[16]^[17] A fictionalised version of Fawcett aids Jones in the novel Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils.^[18])
According to an article in Comics Scene #45, Fawcett was the inspiration of Kent Allard, an alter ego of the Shadow.^[9]
Aloysius Pendergast, a fictional FBI special agent from the novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, is a Fawcett’s great-great nephew.

There were rumblings of a movie in the works with Brad Pitt backing it, but that rumor seems to have petered out.

Readers who enjoy adventure will appreciate this book, as will anyone who appreciates thorough research and tales of obsession.

Note from Ti: The ‘ick” factor in this one is probably a 5 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being extremely icky. There are maggots and open, oozing sores and casual mentions of cannibalism involving babies but these parts are not overly graphic. Just mentions.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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