Selected Reviews

This review appeared in the October 24, 2008 issue of the Oregonian.

John Addiego, Unbridled Books, 241 pages

At the dawn of the 1900s, in Naples, precocious 11-year-old Rosari is sweet-talked into writing a ransom note for an illiterate gangster. That small moment sets in motion a chain of events that alters the course of her life. Forced to flee Italy, her family ends up in San Francisco, where Rosari meets Giuseppe Verbicaro, a ferociously determined laborer who will eventually become her husband.

Their story, and the stories of their children and grandchildren make up Corvallis writer John Addiego's sprawling first novel, "The Islands of Divine Music."

Unfolding across the panorama of 20th-century America, the novel has the intimate feel of a short-story collection. Each chapter zeroes in on a family member, usually one who has arrived at a crossroad in life.

These poignantly drawn character studies reveal the essence of each son or daughter. There's sharp-dressed Narciso, Guiseppe and Rosari's first son, who loves cars and women -- all of whom are so besotted by him they rarely notice he's slow-witted. Nicknamed "Lucky Pants," he's the embodiment of the fool who is smiled on by God. There's Maria, a young Latina hooker who Giuseppe takes as a second wife (without bothering to divorce his first one) and her son Jesus, who end up living a tragic and hardscrabble lives as migrant farmworkers and who resurface in the lives of the Verbicaro family in surprising ways.

And there's Paulie, whose dreams of baseball glory grow dim when he becomes nearsighted. Adrift, he ends up as a soldier in Vietnam and comes back as one of the many lost souls who seemingly left an essential part of themselves behind in that country.

They're all searching for clues to their identity, and while the family members may wander in and out of each other's stories, in the end, each character faces his or her own fate and future alone.

An Italian American family novel like this could feature characters straight out of central casting, but Addiego's lyrical prose and eye for detail bring Rosari's family to life in a way that feels rich and multidimensional. Reflecting the significant events and social movements of the past century through the lives of the Verbicaros adds yet another layer to this satisfying saga. -- Miriam Wolf

This review of one of my favorite novels appeared in the January 28, 2007 issue of the Oregonian.

SACRED GAMES

Vikram Chadra, Harper Collins, 928 pages.

Once in a while you find a book that sucks you so thoroughly into the world it creates that each time you slip your bookmark between the pages and close the cover, you come up blinking, surprised to find yourself in your own skin again.

Vikram Chandra's intricate "Sacred Games" is just such a novel.

Set in Mumbai, India, the book opens as famous gangland leader Ganesh Gaitonde commits suicide inside an impenetrable bunker. Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh has been mysteriously summoned to the bunker and bears witness to Gaitonde's last words.

Instead of closing a chapter in Mumbai crime, Gaitonde's suicide sets in motion an increasingly desperate hunt for answers: Why would an extremely successful (not to mention handsome and respected) man take his own life? Who was the woman found dead in the bunker with him? How does Gaitonde's guru fit into the puzzle. In alternating chapters, Singh and Gaitonde tell their stories.

Through them, Chandra weaves a dense tale, filled with intersecting characters. Singh is a moral man who must immerse himself in the bribery and corruption that fuel the police department to get anything done. Like any noir hero worth his salt, he's world weary: "Time had visited him with its depredations, and worn him down, but he liked the feeling of being dilapidated. It was restful."

But unlike Philip Marlowe, Singh's crime-fighting tools include a form of meditation:

"He began to breathe deeply, in a rhythm he had developed in a thousand stakeouts. If he could get it just right, heat and sweat would recede, and time would turn inward on itself until it whirlpooled into stillness, and he was relieved of the world while he was still in it."

Gaitonde, meanwhile, is the very picture of an international criminal, consorting with movie stars and amassing fortunes, even when he's commanding his gang from inside prison. But a powerful spiritual guru comes into his life, asking nothing from Gaitonde but his devotion -- and some light gun-running duties.

With mounting horror, both characters begin to discover the true dimensions of the guru's plans: Singh discovers that the bunker in which Gaitonde ended his life is a bomb shelter, while men who Gaitonde send on a secret smuggling errand for his guru begin to die of radiation poisoning.

"Sacred Games" can be read and enjoyed as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. It has plenty of action, violence and blood -- and if you can't curse fluently in Hindi when you're done with it, then you weren't paying attention. But Chandra's sure-handed writing injects the novel with layers of depth and meaning; he captures history, politics, current events race, class and religion. He clearly loves Mumbai and evokes it in dazzling detail: You can smell the streets, taste the foods and hear the cacophony of the big, chaotic city on every page. And through his evocation of the Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians who interact with each other in this crowded nation, we see how old wounds and new hurts can spark into sudden violence.

In the 928 pages of "Sacred Games," Chandra has a lot of space to stretch out. He uses it to show how the strands of people bound together through family, loyalty or simple geography weave a web that is as interconnected as it is inescapable. -- Miriam Wolf