Book review: "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway

Some books are so bad they can be called a "trainwreck." That's not good, obviously, but sometimes a book can be such a mess, such a disaster, that you can love to hate it. You know: "So bad it's good."

"The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway's 1926 book, is definitely not a trainwreck, but you may end up wishing it was.

This book is more of a slow-moving trolley that carries a group of friends placidly around town as they drink, eat and engage in insipid small talk. The trolley doesn't hit anything and nothing hits it. It just goes around the same loop, going over the same ground again and again. 

To be fair, "The Sun Also Rises" is fairly easy to read. The disalogue is crisp and Hemingway is able to nicely describes a scene without excess flowery language. 

But remarkably little happens. Hemingway faithfully records every time a character bathes, gets a haircut or shaves. He notes when they get bored at one cafe, and go to another. He describes a fishing trip where they do little more than dig up worms for bait, talk and drink wine.

"The Sun Also Rises" portrays the lives of five alcoholic friends living in Paris in the 1920s. They flirt a little, dance a little, but mostly they drink. 

The characters drink wine, beer, whiskey, martinis, cognac, brandy, absinthe and a liqueur called Izzarra. They drink in the morning, afternoon and night. There is so much drinking in "The Sun Also Rises" that you might wake up with a second-hand hangover just from turning the pages.

Unlike a tranwreck, where the flaws are obvious, this "trolley" kind of book lulls you into thinking that something good is just around the bend. But it almost never is.

Here's a typical passage: 

"I unpacked my bags and stacked my books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry. Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch."

You might think that there is some reason, to be revealed later, that Hemingway has mentioned the stacking of the books, the hanging of the clothes and the other details. But you'd be wrong.

It is remarkable that an author like Hemingway has created such a basket of uninteresting and unlikeable characters. The narrator, Jake, and a couple other characters are so featureless as to be bland. The main female character, Brett, is self-absorbed and tiresome. Another one, Mike, becomes a jerk when he drinks (which is most of the time). 

It wouldn't be fair to say that nothing happens. In the second half of the book, the characters go to Pamplona, Spain, for the running of the bulls and bullfighting. Hemingway vividly describes these events, touching on the culture, subtle artistry, and brutality of bullfighting. This part is worth reading, but it's only about 8 percent of the book.

After the bullfighting, the characters leave Pamplona, most heading back to Paris. The book should have ended there, but for some reason Hemingway tacks on a pointless extra chapter where Jake talks to some bicyclists and goes for a relaxing swim in the ocean. Oh, and he drinks. 

A head's up for readers: "The Sun Also Rises" has at least nine uses of the N-word and multiple anti-Jewish insults, including the word "kike." 

Book review: "A Marriage at Sea" by Sophie Elmhirst

I don't want to brag, but when it comes to getting lost at sea, I know a few things.

I've read at least 13 books about real people who must survive on the open ocean after their boat sinks or its engine dies. This includes "Adrift," Steven Callahan's amazing tale of floating across the Atlantic for 76 days. There's "In the Heart of the Sea," the story of 20 men desperately trying to stay alive after losing their whaleship. Equally impressive is "438 Days," the tale of a Mexican fisherman who survived over a year floating across the Pacific. 

All of those are great books and each offered lessons about what to do, and what not to do, if you're ever unfortunate enough to be in that situtation. 

The latest addition to my survival-at-sea bookshelf is Sophie Elmhirst's 2024 book, "A Marriage at Sea." This book describes the ordeal of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, an English couple who were attempting to sail their 31-foot boat from England to New Zealand in 1973 when the vessel sank after a collision with a whale. For 118 days, the Baileys drifted across the Pacific in a rubber life raft and inflatable dinghy, the two vessels tethered by a rope. 

It is a compelling story and is well-told by Elmhirst.

The survival story isn't the only interesting part of the book. Elmhirst details how the Baileys planned and prepared for their long-distance boat trip, then takes us along, as vicarious participants, as they sail from port to port, from Europe to the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, and then through the Panama Canal. I was struck by the social network of this subculture; the Baileys often met up with the same travelers doing similar voyages in far-flung places.

The sinking upends their carefully made plans. Like other such books, "A Marriage at Sea" makes it clear that survival in this situation is a lot more than luck — it takes discipline, focus and innovation. 

They conserve their food tins as long as they can, then turn to the sea for sustenance. Maralyn turns a safety pin into a fish hook. They catch turtles and carve out the meat with small knives. 

What makes this story unique in this genre is that the main characters are a married couple, inherently adding a layer to their personal dynamics. At one point, well into their ordeal, Maralyn ask Maurice how she looks (they had no mirror). He is reluctant to tell her how much her bones are visible through her rapidly withering skin. Later, as Maurice fell into depression and considers suicide, it is Maralyn who holds him steady.

After their rescue, Elmhirst outlines a bewildering period when the Baileys achieve worldwide fame, appearing on TV shows, become honored guests at events. It's a jarring contrast to their days of isolation on the sea.

That is all interesting, but Elmhirst stretches the story too far, detailing the Baileys' lives until death. Maralyn died in 2002, while Maurice lived 16 years more. I don't mean to be harsh, but we don't need six chapters showing the morose Maurice shuffling sadly through his last years, lost without Maralyn, each week wandering into his favorite teahouse to describe his suicidal feelings. 

I have a couple other quibbles with the book. First, I wish Elmhirst had been more forthright in explaining her sourcing. She rarely cites a source, leaving the reader to wonder where the information came from. At the very back of the book, she explains that she used the Baileys' own books, Maralyn's diary and interviews with some friends and acquaintances. I just wish she had stated all that at the top. 

My second complaint is about the lack of pictures. There's only one photo in the book. This seems particularly striking because Elmhirst describes specific photos of the Baileys during and after their rescue. Why not just include the photos? 

But these are minor complaints. "A Marriage at Sea." is largely an engaing story and I'm glad I read it.

I can't leave this review without including my list of survival-at-sea books. While all these books have at least some merit, I'll list them in order from best to avegage.

 "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex"

"438 Days"

"Adrift"

"Unbroken"

"Last Man Off"

"Fatal Forecast"

"A Storm to Soon"

"Overboard!"

"Deadliest Sea" 

"All Brave Sailors"

"So Close to Home"

"Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do"

 

Book review: "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain

As a young cook at a New York restaurant, Anthony Bourdain was tormented in the kitchen by a more senior, and often drunk, chef named Luis.

"Luis considered frequent explorations of my young ass with his dirty paws to be a perk of his exalted position; at every opportunity, he'd take a running swat between my cheeks, driving his fingers as far up my ass as my checked pants would allow," Bourdain writes in his 2000 book, "Kitchen Confidential. "I endured this in the spirit of good fun for a while — until I'd had enough."

One day in the kitchen, Bourdain spotted Luis approaching out of the corner of his eye. He casually grabbed a big meat fork and, when Luis's fast-moving hand approached his butt cheeks, Bourdain drove the fork's tines deep into his assailant's hand.

"Luis screamed like a burning wolverine and fell to his knees, two wide holes — one on each side of his middle knuckle — already welling up with blood. He managed to get up, the whole kitchen crew screaming and hooting with laughter, his hand blowing up to the size of a catcher's mitt and taking on an interesting black-and- blue and red color."

Not only did this end the assaults, it improved Bourdain's work status. "The other cooks began addressing me as an equal. Nobody grabbed my ass anymore. People smiled and patted me on the back when I came to work in the morning. I had made my bones."

This is one of many terrific stories Bourdain tells in "Kitchen Confidential." The book covers some 27 years of Bourdain's culinary career, starting as a dishwaher at a seafood place in Massachusetts, then moving on to chef roles at literally dozens of other restaurants, mostly in New York.

Bourdain shows us what really goes on in a restaurant's kitchen, and it's often not a pretty picture. He describes a snarl of barely organized chaos filled with cooks and staff shouting, cursing, trading insults in multiple languages, arguing, complaining about customers, stealing, and, at any spare moment, having sex with the wait staff, getting drunk, or doing drugs. 

It may be unruly, but it's also part of an intricate dance that puts your meal on your plate. Long before you arrive at a restaurant, Bourdain explains, chefs are busy ordering food, sharpening knives, planning the menu, roasting bones for stock, making sauces, dividing meat into portions, and managing deliveries.

Bourdain laments that he rarely had time to check the quality of the food at delivery, but notes, "My purveyors know me as a dangerously unstable and profane rat-bastard, so if I don't like what I receive, they know I'll be on the phone later, screaming at them to come and 'Pick this shit up!'"

It's hard, all-consuming work — Bourdain describes frequently working 12- to 16-hour days, pushing out hundreds of meals a day. After 27 years, his hands and arms are scarred from burns and knife cuts. There's an emotional toll, too, as Bourdain has to manage changing demands from the owner and compete with rivals in the kitchen. 

But all in all he loved it. He loved it because he loved great food and loved to prepare it.

"I enjoy the look on the face of my boss when I do a potau-feu special — the look of sheer delight as he takes the massive bowl of braised hooves, shoulders and tails in, the simple boiled turnips, potatoes and carrots looking just right, just the way it should be," he says, describing just one of his favorite dishes.

Bourdain is a strong writer, as well as an opinionated one. He calls vegetarians "the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

Weekend diners, he says, "are universally viewed with suspicion, even contempt, by both cooks and waiters alike; they're the slackjaws, the rubes, the out-of-towners, the well-done-eating, undertipping, bridge-and-tunnel pre-theater hordes, in to see Cats or Les Miz and never to return."

For all its great stories, "KItchen Confidential" is unevenly cooked. There are chapters that don't fit, like one in which gives his advice on kitchen tools and garnishes, and another where he profiles other chefs. Those belong in other books. 

Worse, Bourdain overstays at his table. His brash opinions and cocky attitude are entertaining for much of the book, but eventually become repetitive and tiresome. There's just a little too much Anthony Bourdain in Anthony Bourdain's book. (It's telling that when I was 90% done with this book, I actually put it aside and read another book in its entirety. I eventually came back and finished "Kitchen Confidential," but not because I was eager to read more; I just wanted to finish it.)

So read the good stuff, but prepared to say when you've had enough. 

 

Book review: "438 Days" by Jonathan Franklin

In the pantheon of epic survival stories, a handful of names stand out. There's Ernest Shackleton, the  Antarctic explorer. There's Louis Zamperini, the protagonist of the book and movie "Unbroken." There's Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. 

To that list, you might want to add the name José Salvador Alvarenga.

In his excellent 2015 book "438 Days," author Jonathan Franklin tells the incredible story of  how Alvarenga got caught in a raging storm while fishing off Mexico's West Coast, was pushed far out to sea, and managed to survive for more than 14 months in the Pacific Ocean on a small boat with a dead motor and few supplies.

Alvarenga "completed one of the most incredible voyages in the storied history of seafaring," writes Franklin. "He didn't navigate, sail, row or paddle — he drifted."

Franklin shows how the 37-year-old Alvarenga, who was poor and had little formal education, used his wits and experience to survive. He created a fish hook from an engine part. He drank turtle blood. He sewed mocassins from shark skin. He used floating trash, making fish traps from old bleach bottles and using old beverage containers to collect rainwater. He used his urine, as his mother had taught him, to treat an ear infection (don't laugh — the ear got better). 

For the first part of the ordeal, Alvarenga was accompanied by 24-year-old Ezequiel Córdoba, who Alvarenga had hired at the last minute to help him on his fishing trip. Córdoba survived on little food and water for four months — pretty impressive in itself — before dying. 

With no one to talk to from then on, Alvarenga's survival involved mental games. He befriended a whale shark that swam by his boat for several days, talking out loud to it. He played "soccer" with the birds he had trapped live on his boat, using a puffer fish as the ball. He drifted in and out of fantasy worlds, imagining himself brewing coffee or cooking special meals. At night, he would pretend to reach up and turn off the light.

In writing the book, Franklin faced a notable limitation: He really only had one source, Alvarenga himself. 

Franklin notes in the afterword that he interviewed Alvarenga many times over a year, fleshing out his story and, importantly, checking for inconsistencies. Franklin also talked to Alvarenga's friends and fellow fishermen to understand his back story..

Franklin smartly supplements the story with interviews with experts on survival, oceanography, marine weather patterns, climates, and fishing, bringing valuable perspective to the story (did you know that fish eyeballs can be an important source of vitamin C, helping prevent scurvy?). 

In the end, Alvarenga's story holds together, partly because he's so open about how traumatic it was. He recalls spending evenings talking to the ocean: 

"When, oh when, are you going to get me out of here?" he would ask. "I must be a bother. Toss me ashore."

Alvarenga is eventually tossed ashore in the Marshall Islands after a voyage of about 6,000 miles.  Franklin recounts how the severely weakened Alvarenga ate voraciously after reaching land. Alvarenga despised the press that pestered him for his story and the doctors who wanted to poke and prod him.

Wrote Franklin: "Alvarenga believed he didn't need a doctor to diagnose what was wrong. He was suffering from a yearlong tortilla drought. Nearly every day of his journey to sea he had imagined toasted tortillas. During his two weeks in the Marshall Islands he begged for corn tortillas but was told to wait, that no one ate tortillas in the middle of the Pacific."

When Franklin asked Alvarenga why he was cooperating with him on writing the book, he said he wanted to help others.

"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it, they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success."

Book review: "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

 (Warning: This review has spoilers. But, c'mon, you've had 139 years to read "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," so if you haven't finished it yet, that's on you.)

I was surprised by how short "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is. This famous 1886 novella, by Robert Louis Stevenson, was only 149 screen-pages on my phone (by comparison, "Moby Dick" was 1,299). I read it in less than a day.

It seemed like it was over too soon, especially considering the fame of the story. We've all heard countless references to "Jekyll and Hyde," right? We know, even if you haven't read the novella, that the names are shorthand for two opposite personalities — one good, one evil.

Stevenson presents the story as a mystery. A Mr. Edward Hyde has been seen doing terrible things around town, even murder, but no one realizes that he is actually the well-respected Dr. Henry Jekyll. 

This wasn't a mystery to me, or probably most readers, I'm sure. But that did not prevent it from being a compelling story. The plot moves sharply along and quickly becomes a page-turner. Stevenson's writing, though somewhat antiquated in language, is detailed and evocative. Consider this passage, when Mr. Hyde confronts a elderly man on a darkened street:

The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. 

Yikes.

In the final chapter of the book, Dr. Jekyll reveals in a lengthy letter (much like a monologue) that he created Mr. Hyde while experiementing with drugs to separate his "evil" side from the rest of him.

"Man is not truly one, but truly two," says Dr. Jekyll, showing his philosophical side.

Dr. Jekyll believed that separating out the evil side would allow his "upright" side to thrive.

If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

Not surprisingly, things don't go as planned. The unleashed evil Mr. Hyde thrives and threatens to completely take over Dr. Jekyll. 

My virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion ... I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse. 

While this last chapter is essential for telling the story, it is also too one-dimensional, too long and too repetitive. The chapter consumes fully the last quarter of the book and it is entirely Dr. Jekyll's monologue. Though it has merits, this section sucks much of the energy from a book filled with a stirring plot and character interplay.

That said, there's no doubt that "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" makes you think  I was tempted at first to view this simply as a story about schizophrenia, but I soon realized it goes deeper. Stevenson raises important questions about the human mind and how we manage our views of right and wrong.

"All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil," says Dr. Jekyll, "and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil."

Book review: "Mud Season" by Jeff Kramer

 If you're intending to read Jeff Kramer's 2025 debut novel "Mud Season," I have advice: Once you start, read it as fast as possible.

That's because "Mud Season" has a lot of characters — and importantly, it has many similar characters. Reading the book swiftly will help you keep the characters straight. This isn't a big ask, really, because the book is so enjoyable you'll probably want to keep going.

The character similarity is by design. "Mud Season" tells the story of an angst-ridden writer whose new novel features characters that seem a lot like people he knows, prompting readers to rush to troubling conclusions and alarming his in-laws, who feel the book is demonizing them.

For every major character in the main story there is a similar character in the book within the book. Protagonist Woody Hackworth is an embittered journalist and so is the lead character in his book, Cus Stanston (though Woody conveniently makes his doppelganger taller and more handsome). 

Woody has a flirtatious relationship with a woman named Celeste;  Cus has an extramarital affair with a woman named Aurora. 

Most importantly, Woody makes the chief villain of his novel Cus's father-in-law, the head of a concrete company, causing readers to assume he's referring to his own father-in-law, the head of an excavation and demoliton company.

Even the book titles are similar: The book within "Mud Season" is called "Fear as Mud."

Yes, it's a tangled web, but it's also a fun one — a clever, witty, entertaining ride filled with humor and unexpected twists. This is defintely not a cookie-cutter plot. 

(It's worth noting that the book has not just two levels, but three. Author Jeff Kramer, like Woody and Cus, is a journalist. Like his characters, Kramer lives in upstate New York. And Kramer's father-in-law was the owner of a roofing company).

In Woody Hackworth, Kramer has an unusual protagonist. Woody is a sad sack filled with an anxieties and an inferiority complex, so compelled to prove himself by writing a successful book that he seems ready to torpedo his marriage, fracture his relationship with his daughter and make enemies of his in-laws. He's not really likeable, but in his confused selfishness he is, somehow, lovable. 

One of the most unique elements of "Mud Season" is the way it gives readers a glimpse into a writer's mind. Kramer smartly has Woody releasing his novel as a serial, publishing one chapter at a time online while he's still writing the rest. 

This means that the writing — and rewriting —  of "Fear as Mud" is intertwined with the plot. Kramer shows how a writer considers word and phrase choices, character arcs and story logic. Woody ponders whether "fruition" is the right word to use in a sex scene, how evil to make the wife in his story, and how much "ethnic" background to add to his characters when he realizes the story is filled with white people. 

All writers experience this sort of mental gymnastics, but it's often hard to show it. Kramer makes it tangible, and you can imagine the parallel with his own internal debates as he wrote "Mud Season". 

The book is dotted with humor and snark, some of it delivered off-hand and quickly while the plot moves on. At one point, Woody bungles the title of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" as "The Mason Jar." In another scene, listening to a doctor describe a character's brain tumor, Woody's mind drifts away, imaging an auto mechanic. "He might as well be saying Joe's brake pads are down to 20% and there's a recall on his electronic ignition shift."

A small warning: This is something of a "guy's book." That doesn't mean women might not enjoy it, but understand that it does come from the perspective of a man, with multiple references to the sexual attractiveness of women and some hard drinking. 

Kramer is careful to make the book within the book — the novel by Woody Hackworth — slightly clumsily written. It opens with, "It wasn't a particularly stormy night, but it was definitely dark, dark as the ink drying on the latest scoop of the best all-around reporter at the Tiberius Daily Informer."

Later, when Cus and Aurora are having sex, the book describes "great rockets of passion and liftoff became imminent." In a different scene, the fawning Aurora wonders about Cus, "Was there nothing her dashing defender of Earth and sky didn't know?"

Like I said, this is a fun read. 

Book review: "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury

Note: This review has spoilers. But c'mon, this book has been around for 75 years, so if you haven't read it, that's pretty much on you.

I may be the final human to read "The Martian Chronicles." In this 1950 book, author Ray Bradbury predicted that the last human life on Earth will be extinguished in 2026. As I write this, that's less than three months away. I may have read this just in time.

"The Martian Chronicles" is a collection of science fiction short stories, some quirky and funny, most dark and melancholy. Each chapter is a separate story, almost always with new characters, but they all are arranged chronologically around the theme of humans colonizing Mars starting in 1999.  

While "The Martian Chronicles" is easy-to-read and thought-provoking, it is not really compelling, probably because each chapter mostly stands on its own. While one chapter may be enjoyable it really doesn't move you on to the next one. 

Some chapters are almost cartoonish. When some of the first humans arrive on their planet early in the book, they knock on the door of a house and find Martians who are unimpressed and uninterested in talking to them. "I haven't the time," says one. "I've a lot of cooking today and there's cleaning and sewing and all." 

The astronauts eventually get the boisterous welcome they wanted, but only because they have been unknowingly locked up in a Martian insane asylum. It is there that a Martian psychologist kills the humans, convinced that the commander is crazy and the others nothing more than hallucinations. When Martians find the earthmen's spaceship they have no idea what it is, and sell it for scrap. 

In another chapter, the last man and woman on Mars (apparently) find each other, but he doesn't like her, gets in his car, and drives for three days to the other side of the planet. 

Most of the stories are more creepy than funny, some like episodes from Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone." In one, the Martians lure humans in with an illusion of reuniting with long-dead family members, then kill them. 

Bradbury paints a very simple image of life on Mars — humans simply get off their space ships and start walking around (there is a brief mention of the air being "thin" but no one dwells on it). Humans build earth-like communities with houses and highways, cars and boats. I know this was published in 1950, but certainly Bradbury must have known how silly this was, right? 

Bradbury uses the book as forum for an assortment of messages, and he's not subtle about it. 

One of Bradbury's characters laments that human development will ruin Mars. "We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things," says "The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large comercial purpose ...But here, this whole thing is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up." 

(In a later chapter, a human sets up a hot-dog stand on Mars.)

One character observes that Martians — unlike Earthlings — perfected an ideal civilization blending art, science and the love of nature. "They never let science crush the aestehtic and the beautiful."

In one chapter, a character angered that humans have turned their back on literature gets his revenge by luring his enemies into a deadly House of Usher (it doesn't have much to do with Mars). If you're getting the idea that there is a lot of deaht in "The Martian Chronicles," you're right, but most of it is thinly cartoonish.

At other times, the author warns of the dangers of authoritarianism and censorship. While he envisions not-yet-invented devices like the answering machine and Roomba vaccum, he also cautions about an obsession with technology. 

"Life on Earth nevers settled down to doing anything very good," says a character. "Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth."