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.”
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
The last couple of weeks spectators in Taiwan and abroad have been treated to a remarkable display of infighting in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the supplementary defense budget. The party has split into two camps, one supporting an NT$800 billion special defense budget and one supporting an NT$380 billion budget with additional funding contingent on receiving letters of acceptance (LOA) from the US. Recent media reports have said that the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is leaning toward the latter position. President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed NT$1.25 trillion for purchases of US arms and for development of domestic weapons
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
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