The end of 2008

I've been wanting to properly review all of these, but it's not going to happen - but they're all worth a real mention, so here are the last few crumbles from 2008.

1. Gertrude and Claudius - John Updike, 1991

I've occasionally been known to ironically summarize the works of John Updike - all of those I've read, at least - with the single sentence, Everybody spends all their free time committing adultery. The title characters of this novel being the King and Queen of Denmark - yes, of the Prince Hamlet tale - so I suppose it doesn't really break with the theme. Updike tells Gertrude's story from the time of her girlhood betrothal to King Hamlet up to the point where Shakespeare's version picks up. The book is written in three parts: in the first, Updike uses the character names as they appeared in an early account of Danish myth; in the second, as they appeared in a later later adaptation; and in the final section, as Shakespeare presented them. Accordingly, the telling of the story moves starts out with an atmosphere of dark, Nordic, barely post-pagan savagery, and gradually adopts the Renaissance sensibilities that color Shakespeare's telling.

2. Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Pastor's Daughter - Elizabeth Emerson Hancock, 2008.

I had to pick this up the moment I saw it in the library, because it belongs to a genre I've long believed to be under-populated: the preacher's kid memoir. (I don't know if that sentiment is because I'd like to write my own, or because I want help defining the situation.) Hancock gets to the heart of the matter of being Raised Right in a first family, and, given the time, place and circumstances, her parents were amazingly awesome. It's a hoot, all rolled up in a familiar blanket.

3. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon, 2007.

This is...strange. Takes place in a parallel universe in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and the United States offered amnesty to the Jews on an island off the Alaska panhandle (something of the sort was in fact proposed, briefly, in the real world). 60+ years later, the territory is set to revert back to the control of the now State of Alaska, and the Sitka Jews are scrambling to relocate to New York, Mexico, Madagascar. Meanwhile, a hard-drinking cop and his half-Tlingit partner try to solve the murder of the messiahesque, chess pro, junkie son of the local Rebbe/mob boss. Oh, and did I mention the Filipinos? Basically, it's a Raymond Chandler novel in a very odd setting.