Andrea Liberti Liberti itibaren Villa San Giovanni RC, Italy itibaren Villa San Giovanni RC, Italy

I'm in the middle of this book. It's like a car wreck, horrible but you can't look away. It is almost so disgusting that it's not funny. Almost. Spoilers follow: Drinking beer out of slug catchers in random backyards. Joining Sexaholics Anonymous to pick up chicks. What else can I say?

Years before I read Straight Man, I had picked up Richard Russo’s earlier novel Nobody's Fool on a whim (read: movie was coming out) and had encountered something I hadn't before. Up until the point, I had been mostly a genre reader. Nobody's Fool, though, was something different: no one was murdered, no creatures running afoul, and nothing hidden in the shadows. It was just a book about a man who had thoroughly screwed up his life and, now that his son was heading in the same direction, decides to set himself and his son straight. It was moving, touching, challenging in parts, and all around wonderful. It was contemporary fiction. And now I was a contemp lit fan. Flash forward years later, I picked up Straight Man thinking I was in for a similar experience. Instead, I found a book that was so damn funny there were times that I was clutching my side because I was laughing so hard! Straight Man touches some of the same themes of Nobody’s Fool in father/son relationships, marriage, fidelity, but moves into a new area: writing. Straight Man is about a an older man, a writer/former writer, looking back at his life and feeling regret over loosing that brash young writer that he once was. Sometimes reading about writing, about authors, even when fiction, can be angering (when they get it all wrong), or strange and surreal. And sometimes, like in the case of Straight Man, it can give insight: seize the pen while the coals are hot (sorry to horribly mix metaphors). Straight Man is a man looking back on time wasted not seizing. As writers, we can procrastinate. Put off what we have to do. Much like I am doing with this review. Straight Man says don’t. Because you might just blink and fifty years have passed.

gertrude stein and alice b. toklas take the backseat in the novel of a vietnamese chef surviving in stein's household in france. the novel is poetic and is commendable for its portrayal of literary movers like stein. but it is the struggle of the immigrant other that will capture your heart. the flowery language can be stifling but it's still a great read.

Louise Penny is a most engaging writer and this is the most complex of her books, to date. It is also significantly darker than anything else she has done. I did like it, as well as the tidying up it did on her prior novel, The Brutal Telling. And now I am eager for her next book. The setting for this book moves from Three Pines to Quebec, and throws in more history than we have had in the past. Inspired some questioning about a lot of history that I have forgotten and certainly made me want to visit the city.