The White Lioness

I just finished Henning Mankell's The White Lioness, a Kurt Wallendar. Back in 2010 after reading his Firewall I had decided to dedicate my life to reading all his work until I picked up Faceless Killers and the grisly murder scene description in the first chapter made me dedicate my life to other things. But I had to try again and I took up The White Lioness somewhat gingerly but thinking I could maybe tough it out. It was fantastic. It has to do with a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and somehow it involves Kurt Wallender in Sweden. There are quite a few people killed but since we are dealing with assassins they shoot everyone cleanly through the head for the most part. Even though you kind of suspect they are not going to end up shooting Mandela (spoiler alert!) you are on the edge of your seat until the last page. Wallender is his usual depressive morose self, drinking too much, shuffling around with too little sleep, eating bad food and drunk-dialing old girlfriends.

Henning Mankel just wrote a piece for the NYT about listening and storytelling focusing particularly on African storytelling. As my friend Rico would say "that man can write." and as I say: you should read it:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/in-africa-the-art-of-listening.html?_r=3

 

Is the Chain Broken?

Sadly the Chain Reader has fallen into a bit of a rut. I am reading, but nothing blog-worthy. Nothing seems to fit (including my pre-vacation and holiday clothing!)

I did read a newer book called The Wilder Life which was a very benign book on the author's immersion into the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House books. She and her boyfriend trudge around the country in the path of the Ingalls family, visiting the sod house on the banks of Plum Creek, the "Little House in the Big Woods", the other houses along the way. She discovers that the journey and 'true stories' described in the books were really sanitized versions of the real stories. At one point the real Pa and Ma and the kids worked and lived in a hotel and ran up so much debt that Pa took the family and fled town in the middle of the night. I know! PA!!!!???? Who could believe that of him? Anyway it is a very dull and sad little book and I put it down realizing that the Little House stories have been co-opted by home-schooling Christians, written by Laura's daughter maybe and that maybe none of it was really true. 

But in the end---who cares? The Little House books don't need to be true to be good, just as we know all that stuff didn't really happen to David Sedaris. They are stories and they are good storytellers. Just like I don't want to watch the Extras on How the Movie Was Made on a DVD of a favorite movie, or read the Type A musings in a lead up to a Cooks Illustrated recipe on how to make the perfect macaroni and cheese---I don't want to know how it works,  I don't want to know why they put two cups of cheese rather than 1 3/4's---I just want to watch the movie, eat the best macaroni and cheese and read a better book. The author might have made a better book if she had focused on the story and less on the boring truth that her Wilder Life wasn't so very Wild.