Book Review--Violin--Anne Rice

Violin is one of those books where the author has obviously put so much effort into the language that you keep reading, hoping that at some point there will be a plot, or some strong characterization, or something else that has received as much attention as the poetic words. Then you realize you've read a hundred pages, then a hundred and fifty, and nothing has really happened.

There's really nothing to Violin. Even the poetic language falters, often overwrought, and repeating the same themes to tiresome effect. The motivations of Stefan, the ghostly owner of the titular violin, are never fully explained, and Triana, the heroine, receives similarly short shrift.

Although I've read numerous Anne Rice books that I loved, this book did little for me, and if I hadn't been on a plane reading the book straight through, I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it.

Faith & Fitness
Diet and Exercise for a Better World
by Tom P. Hafer

I found the title and cover of this book to be fairly misleading, or maybe I just developed incorrect expectations. The book has little to do with a particular fitness program or dietary approach, or keeping motivated while trying to achieve fitness, or anything else that the title would seem to imply. Instead it’s more about how your faith should inform your relationship with the world, leading you to eat better because it’s good for your fellow man and will help preserve the environment and reduce poverty throughout the world.

If I sound cynical or skeptical with that description, it’s not so much because the book doesn’t have good things to say. It’s more due to the tone of the book. One post-chapter reflection question involves what you have to think about to make you feel guilty about your abundance. This doesn’t strike me as a very positive way to approach the topic at hand.

The main points of the book include:

• Our current eating habits are detrimental not only to our health but to the state of the worldwide environment (decimation of the rain forests to support cattle ranching, for example)
• Eating locally grown, in-season produce reduces the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and reduces the need for foreign-grown produce
• Fair trade coffee and other goods helps support workers in underdeveloped countries, reducing poverty
• Our sedentary lifestyle runs counter to how our bodies were intended to function, and thus leads to long-term health issues

All of these are, of course, valid points. And the author’s point that we should approach life with the idea of giving to others is well-taken. But something about his overall presentation set me on edge from the very beginning, making much of what he had to say harder to swallow than it should have been.

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler's Wife tells the love story of Clare and Henry, whose romance and eventual life together is marred by the fact that Henry time travels randomly. Like Sam Beckett, he travels only within his own lifetime, but he also stays fairly close to home during his temporal adventures. The romance between Clare and Henry is muddled by their braided timestreams, but manages to work itself out, anyway.

While this book dragged me in and held my attention thoroughly for the most part, in the end I had mixed feelings about it.

From a technical standpoint, the book is a tour de force, leaping from time frame to time frame, incident to incident, forward and backward in time in an alternating first person narrative between hero and heroine, without ever leaving the reader behind. But from a character and plot standpoint, I was left not entirely satisfied.

Clare is a seemingly strong, well-developed character through the first two-thirds or so of the novel, until the birth of Clare and Henry's daughter. From this point on, she seems almost like a accessory to the story, as Henry's condition worsens. After his eventual death, the rest of Clare's life is glossed over. There's no indication that she moved on or found another relationship after Henry--as far as we can tell, she simply pined away for the rest of her life, waiting for their final reunion when he time travels far into her future. I would have liked to have seen at least a brief recap and some closure for Clare, rather than have her become just an appendage for the wrap-up of Henry's story.

Henry's story, too, didn't quite work for me. Many hints were dropped that his death would come about due to a complication of his temporal displacement condition, but with one large foreshadowing event indicating it would be otherwise, this was never to develop. Having him die at the mercy of his "illness" would have been much more satisfying to me. As it was, his death was, in my opinion, too mundane.

I didn't dislike the book by any means, and would recommend it, as it's a good read that lingers long after you've reached the end. But it seemed to me to miss the mark--though just barely--that would have made it a classic.