One of the differences between a book in hardback and in paperback is that the paperback contains snippets from the favourable reviews of the hardbacks published to a year earlier. This puts the critics of the paperbacks who didn't read the book in hardbacks in an unenviable position, at least those who found the praise exaggerated.
FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen 706 pp, Picador paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 350 baht.
A case in point is Freedom by US author Jonathan Franzen. Among its praises in US and UK newspapers are that "it's the novel of the year and the century", "on a level with The Great Gatsby and Gone with the Wind, "the Great American novel", etc.
Be assured that I am not saying this to draw attention to myself ... I've been at this for decades that awarding him the laurels are unwarranted. I'll allow that he's a fine stylist, but this virtue wears thin when Franzen devotes over 700 pages to the story of an American family.
Walter and Paty Berglund have two offspring, Joseph and Jessica. Add parents, uncles, aunts, in-laws, neighbours, friends, enemies, lovers, grandchildren. Walter, like his father, is a lawyer while Paty was a co-ed basketball star. She still resents that her mother never watched her play.
They move around the States somewhat, Minnesota the main venue. While people living in apartment buildings barely acknowledge each other's existence, the author makes clear that neighbours owning their own homes in communities have closer, even intimate relationships. More than a few, unfriendly.
Joey and Connie become intimate in their early teens. Rather than sneak around, they have little difficulty persuading her mum to take him in. Walter and Paty are apoplectic, but the next door neighbour shrugs it off. Set in the present time, Victorian morality no longer applies.
Walter and Paty, well into middle age, take lovers. They separate for six years, his new love dying. Walter lives near the woods, becomes a bird lover. The neighbours have pets, natural predators of his beloved birds. He captures a cat on the prowl and he becomes the object of hate.
Having had the freedom they sought, they respectively conclude that it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Jessica never tired getting them back together. Joey will only reconcile with Mum if she accepts Connie as his wife. And in years to come, grandpa's will 'll make all concerned wealthy.
A good read but not too long by half.
Be wary of doctors
DEATH BENEFIT by Robin Cook 418 pp, 2012 Macmillan paperback, Available at Asia bookshops, 650 baht.
While we know virtually nothing about giving medical first aid, if that we enjoy books and TV serials about surgery and autopsies, which either cure illness or determine cause of death. The authors and scriptwriters are both doctors and laymen doing research.
Did the author not have an MD after his or her name, likelier than not we wouldn't correctly guess was a doctor, as both writers fill their stories with medical jargonese. But the covers and credits do tell us who is and who isn't. And there's a doctor who is so well known that he omits listing MD.
Robin Cook is a case in point, with dozens of novels to his credit, several adapted to the big screen. His plots are of kind patients in hospitals with minor ailments who develop major ones and/or die when body parts are removed without authorisation and sold for large sums of money.
This atrocious practice is uncovered by an underling, whole life is threatened by the culprits before managing to expose them in the penultimate chapter. In Death Benefit, Cook's 30th medical thriller, the theme is employed yet again, with a variation. The body organs are artificial.
The setting is the Columbia University Medical Centre in Manhattan. Molecular geneticist Dr Rothman heads the team, medical student Pia Grazdani a young brilliant member. Not only will it revolutionise health care when completed, but will bring them fame and fortune.
But when those outside the laboratory get wind of it, they have different reactions to it _ those unwilling to give up their lucrative incomes harvesting and selling body parts, and businessman wanting a share of the certain fortune. When Dr Rothman and a colleague die, the cause is thought to be salmonella.
Pia's investigation proves they were murdered by radiation poisoning. The author throws in the Albanian mafia before justice is done. Artificial organs are still in the offing. To hear Robin Cook, Michael Palmer and Tess Gerritsen tell it _ all MDs _ doctors aren't the best people to entrust your life, too.
