Books

Make Time to Read

Three Authors Deliver the Goods

    What do you do for an encore if you’re one of America’s best young writers and you win the Pulitzer Prize? If you’re Michael Chabon, you bide your time for six years in Berkeley and then deliver The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. After that, readers everywhere will celebrate, agreeing that the wait was worthwhile.
    The only awkward thing about Chabon’s novel is its premise—that Israel did not become the homeland for the Jews after World War II; Alaska holds that distinction. But trust me on this: Chabon takes this concept and delivers a novel that’s equal parts homage to American noir and fascinating character study.
    It’s in the characters, as always, where Chabon shows his master’s hand: Detective Meyer Landsman, who starts things off by investigating a murder that occurs in the flophouse he calls home; his partner Berko, half Jewish, half Tlingit, unsuccessfully trying to keep Landsman out of trouble; and his ex-wife, Bina, who also happens to be his boss. They all populate an Alaska you’ve never envisioned until you visit, courtesy of a writer at the top of his imaginative form.
    The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (Harper Collins, 2007, 411 pp. $26.95)


    And while it’s wonderful to read an author you already know, there’s something special about discovering a new voice, like Oakland’s Erika Mailman. Mailman jumps effortlessly from writing a column on local history in the Montclarion to writing a novel set in San Francisco during the gold rush.
    Nora Simms, a woman of ill fame, is new to the city, using what she has to get what she needs. Things become complicated when Nora’s clothes are stolen, and then other working girls are found, murdered, wearing her clothing. While that mystery is enough to keep the pages turning, readers are kept marveling by the period detail, like the sign above Nora’s bed—the sign that all the girls have—‘Nora,’ painted in cursive, bordered by butterflies and flowers. Just a beautiful little detail, the type that Mailman renders again and again.
    And finally, Nora herself, a character we grow to respect as she makes her way in this bawdy new San Francisco that the reader discovers right along with her.
    Woman of Ill Fame by Erika Mailman (Heyday Books, 2007, 255 pp. $13.95).


    If the shorter days of fall are taking their toll, consider digging into one of those books that you finish like coming to the end of a rollercoaster—out of breath, exhilarated and looking for more.
    Grab Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble. If you haven’t yet encountered Child’s hero, Jack Reacher, this is as good a place to start as any. The joy of the books is that you can jump into any one of them, quickly glean Reacher’s backstory (ex-military policeman, now a drifter, going where he wants when he wants) and then buckle yourself in for a thrill-ride.
    In this installment, one of Reacher’s old friends from his military days is thrown out of a helicopter. Reacher is contacted by a woman who worked with both men. Her request? To get Reacher to put his old unit back together again to discover what happened. Reacher’s response is succinct. “They’re dead men walking,” he says. “You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.”
    And if that doesn’t get you to reading, maybe Jane Austen is more to your liking. I’d recommend Persuasion. Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child (Delacorte Press, 2007, 377 pp. $26).