Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh, C.J. Cherryh

Cherryh is a ... comprehensive... writer, and that's true of these short stories as much as it is in Cyteen or Tripoint. Cherryh is never content to set up a situation or a problem and then solve it. No, her stories require inventions of worlds, including social, legal, economic and political systems. These are among the densest short stories you will ever read; on page 466 I found a 125-word sentence describing light hitting books and floor in a hallway. The shortest story in this collection (page 586) takes microbes from reproduction to space travel in the space of a paragraph. For the dedicated fan and hardcore science fiction lover.

I Am Madame X, Gioia Diliberto

I was seduced by the cover of this book, and the concept -- a biography of Madame X, subject of John Singer Sargent's infamous portrait. Diliberto uses this novel to reconstruct the life of this society darling. It's a neat idea, but it's only a so-so book. Diliberto tries to give us an idea of what Paris was like at the time, but succeeds only in putting together a lukewarm bodice-ripper. The book isn't bad, but it isn't interesting either.

Switch Bitch, Roald Dahl

In his usual inimitable style, Roald Dahl spins yarns in Switch Bitch. The book is a collection of short stories, two about the bachelor playboy Uncle Oswald, whose incendiary diaries can only be published in carefully chosen segments. "The Great Switcheroo" is the story of wife-swapping that goes horribly wrong, and "The Last Act" is positively Cheever-esque until the last moment. "Switch Bitch" is tightly written and lovely; if you enjoy Roald Dahl, this will be enjoyable though sadly quick to read. One note - it's adults only in this case; who knew the same mind that produced "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" could be quite this dirty?

Kindred, Octavia E. Butler

"Kindred" is a strange book, but that might be expected from a science fiction novel written in the '70s by a black woman. Our heroine is Dana Franklin, a black woman writer, whose life is hard in all the usual ways, but which suddenly takes a turn for the worse when she is yanked into the past to save a little boy. Hour later, it happens again. It turns out she's going to the aid of an ancestor, which isn't all that odd a science fiction plot, but the ancestor happens to be a white plantation owner's son destined to inherit the plantation and the slaves that go with it. Dana not only doesn't fit in, she's assumed to be a slave, and a very unsatisfactory one at that. Horror ensues over time, and Dana's relationship with her white husband begins to warp as they are both changed by the past. A solid and compelling book of the kind that Oprah will undoubtedly get around to honoring and then force all America to read.

Legends II: New Short Novels By the Masters of Modern Fantasy, Edited by Robert Silverberg

If you like fantasy, you can't go wrong with this book. If fantasy isn't your thing, skip this entry entirely - "Legends II" is all about magic, maidens and swords. Authors included in this anthology are Terry Brooks, Neil Gaiman, Tad Williams and Orson Scott Card, among others. Silverberg has arranged the book so that the strongest material is at the front, which was something of a letdown if you read the book cover to cover. The best inclusion was "The Sworn Sword" in which the hero gets neither the girl nor the glory, but keeps his integrity intact nonetheless. Anne McCaffrey's "Beyond Between" was very weak, and probably doesn't make sense to those unfamiliar with her books about Pern. A good read, overall.

The Book of Salt, Monique Truong

Truong's "The Book of Salt" is the first-person story of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas' live-in cook, a homosexual Vietnamese man with ghosts in his past and his head. Binh, though we never learn what his real name is, grows up poor, the child of a loving mother and tyrannical father. His older brother apprentices him in the kitchen of the Governor-General's house, a place where no one has value unless he is French, or speaks some. These early lessons resonate through his life, as he travels as a ship's cook and struggles to survive in Paris. His reflections on language and love are strange, the effect of the book troubling. Though we can hear Binh's voice, somehow we can never really see him; he is in hiding, lost.

The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt

Ludo is four when we meet him. He has all the usual foibles of someone that age - when he wants something, he wants it NOW. He has no volume control, and he's stubbornly insistent on bringing along favorite objects when he leaves the house. What Ludo wants to bring along in the stroller is a massive Homeric dictionary, so that he can look things up while he reads the Odyssey. He's reading the Odyssey because his mother Sibylla has said that she won't teach him Japanese until he's finished it. Sometimes Sibylla tells the story, sometimes Ludo, as the two negotiate raising a genius on the minimal wage Sibylla earns from typing in old issues of magazines. As he grows older, Ludo's learning outstrips his mother's not inconsiderable mental skills, and he turns his mind to solving the puzzle of who his father is, influenced heavily by the strategic skills he learns from The Seven Samurai, a movie his mother watches incessantly. This book is a joy to read, absorbing, fascinating and unpredictable. Its characters, even the peripheral ones, are intricately sketched in and DeWitt's writing throughout pushes you onward to a finish that is satisfying in every way, except that the book is then over.

Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh

It's odd to have read this so soon after reading American Psycho, because barring the serial murders, the books are very similar. Both are social critiques, even parodies, of a particular class of monied young people. In Waugh's book, the action centers on Adam Symes, alternately penniless and wealthy over the course of the book, and his equally alternate fiancee Nina Blount. A writer, Symes accepts with frightening aplomb the confiscation and destruction of his latest manuscript by customs officials, and the consequently back-breaking book deal his editors make him sign. Hopes destroyed, he can no longer marry, and becomes a gossip columnist. The similarities to American Psycho are striking -- both Symes and Bateman are relentlessly social animals, yet unable to remember who people are. Both have a fine eye for appearances (Bateman for clothes, Symes for hypocrisy). Waugh does with humor what Ellis did with horror.

Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief, Bill Mason with Lee Gruenfeld

If you're interested in reading a self-congratulatory exercise in ego, combined with self-serving justifications for criminal activity, this book is for you. The title (and the cover photography) promises stories of daring heists by a thief who mingles, tuxedo-clad, among the bejeweled and glittering. Actual anecdotes of jewel thieving are few and far between. We learn a great deal more than is interesting about his legal problems (and what exactly makes him a master if he's been caught?), his relationships with women, his involvement with Mob figures and drug deals... all told with great attention to the number of times Mason can climb up a rope using only his amazing upper-arm strength. In the last seven of 358 pages, Mason takes the time to admit that perhaps his chosen profession was less than acceptable and to say that - at this late date - that perhaps he had inflicted more than financial damage when he stole, and gee, he's kinda sorry about that. Borrow this one from the library if you must read it; the man doesn't deserve a cent in royalties.