The Ruins
By Scott Smith
Knopf
“This place no good,” the Mexican taxi driver says to the six young tourists as he drops them at a jungle trailhead. “No good you go this place.” And yet they don’t listen. A German, a Greek and four Americans just out of college are vacationing in Cancun when they decide to follow a hand-drawn map into the jungle in search of an archaeological dig. Instead, they find a hill covered with red flowers and a village full of Mayans with bows and arrows. Sounds dicey, but this is a horror novel, and the twist that turns an innocent day-trip into an extended nightmare is not the Mayans (although they are part of the problem) but a far more surreal and insidious villain. We won’t spoil your fun by telling you what it is, but we will say that it’s so strange that it often becomes laughable, which is good because you’ll want something to take the edge off the dreadful surprises these kids endure. The book is a bit long, but only because Smith juxtaposes, very effectively, the horror of the advancing threat and horrors the traumatized tourists visit upon each other and upon themselves. It’s a good summer read.
The Messenger
By Daniel Silva
Putnam
Silva’s ninth novel begins with a bomb and missile attack on a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square, which leaves more than 700 dead and the Basilica in flames. The US government secretly asks Israeli intelligence experts, including Silva’s hero, Gabriel Allon, to find and kill the terrorist behind it. Allon’s plan: Using a lost painting by Vincent van Gogh as bait (it’s a great subplot), he’ll plant a spy in the entourage of the terrorist’s patron, a Saudi billionaire, and wait for the target to show himself. This setup is bold and provocative as Silva’s smart but world-weary characters discuss the politics of violence and Saudi Arabia’s ties to global terrorism and to the US. The second half of the book seems rushed, and isn’t so easy to swallow. The spy (a beautiful art curator with no experience in espionage) is trained too easily, the terrorist appears too quickly and surveillance by Allon’s agents is so sloppy that the bad guys know what they’re doing almost as soon as we do.
Cross Country
By Robert Sullivan
Bloomsbury
Having lived in Pennsylvania for many years, we know, and indeed have set foot in, the town of Bellefonte, not Bellafonte or Bellafante, as Sullivan alternately calls it here. We’d hold this little glitch against him if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve taken a few road trips ourselves, and know how loopy he must have been when he crossed the town line. He had driven Interstate 80 across Pennsylvania, and before that on the Ohio turnpike, and before that on other highways over several days all the way from Oregon, with his wife beside him clutching a TripTik, his kids sagging in the back seat and his so-tired-of-driving heart full of gratitude just because they were all still alive. This is the book to read if you’re mourning the road trip you can’t afford this summer. Sullivan (“Rats”) is funny and congenial, and he writes his travelogue in short sections that make your snack breaks and pit stops easy to plan. A veteran of many cross-country road trips (with varying combinations of children and possessions in tow), he’s a great guide to the scenery outside the car and the melodrama within. Enjoy.
A Sudden Country
By Karen Fisher
Random House
New in paperback is Fisher’s stirring novel about a family’s journey on the Oregon Trail in 1847. Lucy and Israel Mitchell set out from Iowa with five children, two wagons and a marriage that is civil but without passion or accord: Lucy does not want to go west, but Israel insists on it. They join with other families and take on guides, one of whom is James MacLaren, a former fur trader whose Indian wife abandoned him just before his children died of smallpox. The love affair that ensues between Lucy and the sorrowful MacLaren is unlikely and overwrought, but Fisher’s novel is sensuous in so many other, better ways as it follows the wagons through a wild and beautiful country that is destined to change forever. This novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won several other honors. Critics loved it. One called it “an instant classic,” another said it was “a grand, mesmerizing novel,” and others compared it to Charles Frazier’s bestselling novel Cold Mountain. New & Notable said the book was “history brought to life.”
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not