Bookart #2

Sometimes a cover is enough to close the deal. This intriguing Grove Press dustjacket from 1966 did the trick.

My Paper Chase

Harold Evans, a prominent British newspaper editor, would have done well to prune this 580-page memoir. There's much here to enjoy, especially for journalists interested in inside accounts of major events like the Irish Troubles. But in other areas, like his early life, this renowned editor needed an editor.

Zebra and Other Stories

The turning points of childhood often have a purity that, with adults, is missing. For adults, in literature at least, major events tend to be bitter traumas; there is little room left to learn. These stories by Chaim Potok, which feature children, are elegant accounts of adversity and growth.

Being Dead

Ten years ago I read, and hated, Jim Crace's novel Genesis, so it was with reluctance that I picked up his Being Dead from a 3-for-$12 shelf at the antiquarian book fair. I already had two books and, with nothing more that I wanted, it would have to do. A lucky stroke, as it turns out, because Being Dead is a thoughtful, intense, sharply written novel. Two middle-aged zoologists are murdered at the seashore; their bodies begin to decay; their daughter searches for them; the police find them. That's it in a nutshell, but within those borders Crace explores the biology, theology, and poetry of death. For the daughter, the deaths are sad but also liberating. Death is universal and inescapable, so it is regrettable that modern society has turned it into an unmentionable. Crace remedies that.