July 2008
Book News
Missy
by Chris Hannan; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
Dol McQueen works as a prostitute during the wild mid-nineteenth century years in the American West. Severely addicted to “Missy”—slang for opium—Dol gives an account of the sordid and mundane realities of a rough Wild West frontier town. When she saves a man from suicide, he thanks Dol by beating her up, and leaving her in charge of a crate of opium worth a small fortune. In this debut novel, acclaimed Scottish playwright Chris Hannan presents an entertaining Wild West tale of prostitutes, Indians, wagon trains, guns and silver mines, without shying away from the depiction of the worst aspects of human behavior: violence, sexual exploitation or addiction.
Missy is a historical page-turner, but Dol’s energetic and exuberant voice also weaves a modern coming-of-age story featuring a woman struggling with the cruel realities that made “manifest destiny” possible.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
by Simon Winchester; Harper Collins, 2008
Fueled not just by the Olympic torch, interest in China’s new political and economic power has increased tremendously in recent years. Long before the country became the center of atten-
tion, however, the great British scientist and self-taught Sinologist Joseph Needham (1900–1995) predicted a grand future for China based on its past successes. For over five decades, Needham studied China’s scientific and cultural history, ultimately formulating the famous “Needham question:” Why did the country fail to industrialize when Europe did, despite its prior millennial achievements? In
The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester presents the results of Needham’s exhaustive studies, and illuminates how the love of a Chinese woman triggered his crusade to become one of the most passionate and foresighted Sinologists of the 20th century. The book is a detailed introduction into the complexity of Chinese history, and a pleasurable portrait of an eccentric intellectual and indefatigable researcher.
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Personal Days
by Ed Park; Random House, 2008
A novel about the deconstruction of the 21st-century workplace may not be your idea of beach reading. In this case, however,
Personal Days is a hilarious and adroit reading experience suitable for any summer setting. In his first novel, Ed Park—former editor of the
Village Voice—presents a collective of employees at a nameless company. Their days are filled with the performance of brainless tasks for malevolent supervisors and a paranoid claustrophobic climate evolves as loyalties shift and erotic tensions arise. Fans of the TV-series
The Office and readers interested in the legacy of Vonnegut and Beckett will certainly enjoy this well-crafted novel on the peculiarities of human existence and the thin line between humor and pain. <<<
