New Books

The Devil’s LardeR by Jim Crace

Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux,165 pp.; $20

Being Dead, British author Jim Crace’s most recent novel and winner of the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award, was a quiet and daring story about love that began with the couple’s murder. The paradoxical and grammatically awkward title was highly appropriate for its unassuming but innovative take on death. That novel’s precise, almost sensuous sensibility also comes across in Crace’s newest work, The Devil’s Larder, a collection of 64 short pieces about food that also turn out to be about death, sex, starvation and desire.

Food and all the human rituals and passions associated with its consumption make for compelling and surreal tales that are about much more than what’s for dinner. In a series of vignettes, Crace tells of a mixture that, when consumed, makes one laugh without cause; a condemned man’s last meal as described by a narrator watching the prison guard collect the food requested, which includes drug-laced baked goods; a spontaneous game of “strip fondue” with friends from the office; a mother testing whether she can taste pasta in another person’s mouth—her daughter’s. The Devil’s Larder is a series of creative exercises, a chance for Crace to illuminate these strange but deeply felt moments bit by bit, in simple prose that contrasts starkly with the richness of the world he portrays.

Because these pieces are so brief, The Devil’s Larder lacks the narrative intricacy that made Being Dead so appealing, and some readers might not fully appreciate Crace’s brevity, or the neatness necessary in such short pieces. Taken collectively, the 64 sketches make a convincing argument about food’s surprising significance in human social life, but Crace’s skill is such that this becomes apparent even in the smallest of portions.

–By P. Patty Li

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks

Published by Knopf, 320 pp.; $20

In Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Oliver Sacks writes:

As a child I thought that light had form and size, the flower-like shapes of candleflames, like unopened magnolias, the luminous polygons in my uncle’s tungsten bulbs. It was only when Uncle Abe showed me his spinthariscope and I saw the individual sparkles in this that I started to realize that light, all light, came from atoms or molecules which had first been excited and then, returning to their ground state, relinquished their excess energy as visible radiation.

For most of us, experience with physical chemistry is relegated to a few painful memories of high school science—the rest is a mystery and we’re happy to keep it that way. During Sacks’ youth, chemistry was a welcome respite from a less-than-ideal childhood.

Sacks grew up in an affluent Jewish household in London during the World War II—a story in itself—but was sent away to a country boarding school during the peak of the war to avoid the dangers of wartime. Psychologically abused by his headmaster, far from the comforts of home and the love of a fascinating, scientifically-inclined extended family that included doctors, mathematicians, chemists and mining consultants, Sacks sought a sense of security the only way he could—through scientific experimentation.

Through his re-creation of ground-breaking experiments by famous scientists, Sacks experienced first-hand the joy of scientific discovery. Through the author’s lucid prose, the reader also experiences the individual sparkles of a young excited mind.

Sacks interweaves tales of early scientists, familial anecdotes and chemistry lessons with his narrative. Thus Uncle Tungsten is far more than a book of memoirs. It presents the reader with a different view of the world where every detail—every candle-flame, light-bulb and breath of air—is a mystery waiting to be solved.

–By Thalia S. Field

THE WAR AGAINST CLICHé by Martin Amis

Published by Talk/Miramax, 506 pp.; $35

“Everyone has become a literary critic,” novelist and member of London’s literary intelligentsia Martin Amis proclaims in the foreword to The War Against Cliché, and not without a touch of bitterness. Accused by his father, the equally, if not more famous novelist Kingsley Amis, of a “terrible compulsive vividness in his style,” Amis the younger has never been one to pander to the masses. At his best, he is a witty purveyor of critical and cultural insight; at his worst, he is an arrogant misogynist. Like many of his novels, The War Against Cliché is a tad too long and a tad too self-indulgent. The book’s saving grace is that it packages Amis into short, self-contained morsels, resulting in a surprisingly delectable and thoroughly readable collection of essays and reviews, written over the span of 30 years. Taken from (among others) the London Review of Books, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, the pieces in The War Against Cliché tackle everyone from Milton and Austen to Nabokov and Updike, with bits on Elvis’ mental health and Margaret Thatcher’s sex appeal thrown in for good measure.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book is the glimpse it gives into the development of Amis’ intellectual sophistication and distinctive style. Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, Amis counsels the reader to keep an eye on dates throughout the book. Even without looking, it is usually obvious which reviews were written in the 1970s by the editorial assistant Amis (wearing shoulder-length hair, a flower shirt and knee-high tricolored boots), and which reviews are the product of the mellower, graying at the temples, established author of the 1990s. The evolution alone is worth the read.

–By Stacy A. Porter

The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963 by Laurence Leamer Published by William Morrow, 743 pp.; $35

There’s just something about those Kennedys that fascinates like no other American dynasty. Neither the Adamses nor even the Osmonds come close. Beyond the fleeting titillation of elections and scandals, several scholars have made careers of the study of the Kennedys and what makes them so damn special. Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Women, makes another contribution to the growing scholarship on the family with The Kennedy Men, 1901-1963. Conceived as the first of a planned two-volume look at the lives, loves and often tragedies of the family’s political lions, The Kennedy Men, 1901-1963 stops at the assassination of John F. Kennedy ’40. Along the way it mines much of the same territory as Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 1987 The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Stick with Goodwin for the goods on patriarch Joseph Kennedy, Sr.; Leamer’s treatment here is so glowing that it veers into cliché. Leamer does provide a deeper look at what made Robert and Ted Kennedy tick, going beyond the overemphasis on John Kennedy that is all too frequent in Kennedy family histories. Thanks to access to new information, including papers secretly stored by President Kennedy’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln, Leamer is refreshingly honest about the family’s failures as well as their successes. Looking forward to Volume Two.

–By Frankie J. Petrosino