Recommendable Reads: The Secret History

Staff Pick: The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll

The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright by Jean Nathan

Dare Wright was a photographer and author of a series of highly successful children’s picture books chronicling the life of a doll named Edith and her teddy bear companions. In her Lonely Doll series, which made its debut in 1957 and was a staple in the early reading life of millions of baby boomers, Wright pioneered the use of photography in books published for children.

Jean Nathan’s biography, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright, unearths Wright’s personal story. Separated from her brother and father at an early age, Wright formed an unusually close relationship with her mother, a Cleveland portrait painter. Nathan investigates Wright’s frequent retreats into imaginary childhood worlds, as well as her adult attempts to distinguish her own personality from that of her mother. Wright’s subconscious struggle revealed itself in her popular children’s books, for which she staged and photographed elaborate scenes of a doll who shares her mother’s name, looks eerily like Wright herself, and regains a lost brother and father in the form of two teddy bear companions.

This book would be a fascinating read for anyone who grew up with the Lonely Doll books, but fans of gothic fiction, Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological explorations, or movies in the vein of Grey Gardens will also find it equally gripping. The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll can also be read as the story of how one artist’s unresolved issues repeatedly emerged in her work, only to resonate with a generation of children who knew nothing of Wright’s problematic relationships with her family. Nathan frames her biography by sharing with readers her own youthful love of the Lonely Doll books, as well as her journey to meet Wright, whom she tracked down in obscurity near the end of life, and later came to know via a trove of personal photographs, manuscripts, and letters. Nathan’s research, and Wright’s life, were also the subject of a segment on NPR’s “This American Life” in 2000.

Dan - Collection Development

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Staff Review: The Athena Project

The Athena Project by Brad Thor

The Athena Project is the latest novel by Brad Thor (author of Foreign Influence, Blowback, and The Lions of Lucerne.) Thor is known for creating a series of novels with the main character of Scot Harvath, an ex-Navy SEAL turned government secret agent. This book treads similar territory and loyal readers will be excited to know that there is a brief appearance by Harvath in The Athena Project. But Harvath is only a side character in this book. The main story centers around four women who compose an all-female Delta Forces team codenamed the Athena Project. The book follows Athena Project members Casey, Ericsson, Rhodes, and Cooper as they travel around the world carrying out risky counter-terrorism missions.

The detailed and factual exposition in The Athena Project will appeal to readers who like intricate descriptions of small unit tactics, conspiracy theories, and lesser-known 20th century military trivia. The author includes an epigraph at the beginning of the novel stating, “All of the science in this novel is based on reality.”

Aside from the exposition mentioned above, this book is almost entirely made up of action scenes. The reader gets to hear very little of what is going on inside the characters’ minds but there is plenty of clever back-and-forth dialogue. The scenery is painted with broad strokes leaving most of the details of the setting to be filled in by the reader’s imagination. At its best moments, reading this book is like watching an action movie in your head. The Athena Project maintains a fast pace by keeping character descriptions short and simple. The downside of this streamlined approach to characterization is that it puts the onus on the reader to keep track of who is who across multiple storylines and locations.

Finally, it should be noted that this book is kind of campy. Like a good action movie, it is at times over the top. For example, there is a scene where two characters must parachute onto the roof of a building then sneak inside to seduce and drug a powerful underworld businessman in order to extract information about how to stop a Nazi teleportation device. This whole book is like that, completely ridiculous and yet totally enjoyable at the same time. Overall a fun read, but if you can’t suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride, you might wind up groaning and rolling your eyes once or twice before The Athena Project is over.

Muriel - Circulation

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Staff Review: 365 Thank Yous

365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik

Every now and then a book will serve to remind you of something you’ve known since childhood, and 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik is a simple, beautiful way to relearn one important lesson.

When was the last time you wrote – or received – a hand-written thank you note? For the person to have gone to such lengths means a lot to the receiver, but who takes the time anymore? During a difficult time in his life, Kralik realized that he needed to be grateful for everyday things – good friends being helpful all over again, a Starbucks employee calling him by his name, a homemade gift from his daughter – to lift himself out of his depression. He had forgotten this until he heard a voice say just that while he was lost hiking in the mountains. He decided to write a thank you note every day for the next year to cement it in his memory.

After his first few notes, Kralik received surprised replies by phone, e-mail and more written notes. Everyone so appreciated that he took the time to say thanks in such a concrete way that it began to change his thinking. Little by little he spent less time concentrating on the negatives in his life because his mind was filled with positive thoughts, which brought on more positives in his life. He includes examples of his notes throughout the book (not all 365 though), and a few words on how to write thank you notes yourself (Appendix I). Even his “Acknowledgments” are earnest and reiterate that what he really wa+nted to be when he was a kid was a writer.

Camille - Technical Services

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Staff Review: Moonlight Mile

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Let me start by saying that this is a tough review for me to write. Moonlight Mile is the long awaited and possibly final entry in one of my all-time favorite crime fiction series. I opened this book with great anticipation, eager to spend a few hundred pages with familiar characters I had missed for some time. I closed it with rather mixed feelings about my old friends – it was great seeing them again, it brought to mind some good memories, but our best days together are in the past.

Dennis Lehane burst onto the “mainstream” fiction scene in 2001 with Mystic River, a book that saw great success in both bookstores and movie theaters. But before the success of that and his subsequent book, Shutter Island, Lehane had won a legion of followers in the crime fiction world for his series featuring private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Starting with A Drink Before The War, Lehane introduced Kenzie, a wise-cracking, tough-talking Boston P.I., and his partner Gennaro, an equally tough character and his oldest friend. In this and the next five books in the series, Lehane treated readers to some of the best contemporary American crime fiction, with fully-realized, delightfully flawed characters, authentic portrayals of the gritty streets of South Boston, and page-turning plots that reveal the human costs of criminal actions.

Moonlight Mile opens several years after the end of Gone, Baby, Gone (which was also made into a movie), the crimes and characters of which were some of the most heart-wrenching Patrick and Angie had ever encountered. The pair have since settled down into a quieter, domestic life when Amanda McCready, the little girl who was kidnapped and then found by Patrick in Gone, Baby, Gone, disappears once again. She is now a teenager and Patrick’s role in her early childhood has forever bound him to her, so he feels compelled to take on the case and find her once again. The case unfolds with many of the hallmarks of Lehane’s writing – emotionally compelling characters, morally ambiguous situations, and an insider’s tour of working-class Boston.

So what’s my complaint? Compared to earlier entries in the series, Moonlight Mile seemed a little “thin” to me – the characters were closer to caricatures, the dialogue, usually raw and acerbic, came off as a bit forced, and the overall tone of the book seemed somewhat rushed, as if Mr. Lehane just wanted to get it over with. Fans of the series have been asking him for more than a decade to write another one, so he may have simply gotten tired of being asked about it on every single book tour for his other, stand alone novels.

After reading Moonlight Mile, I still consider Dennis Lehane to be one of the best authors writing today, regardless of genre. I still consider the Kenzie-Gennaro series to be one of the best contemporary crime fiction series. Even though the final book does not come highly recommended by me, the series as a whole certainly does. If you’re interested, here’s the series order:

• A Drink Before The War
• Darkness, Take My Hand
• Sacred
• Gone, Baby, Gone
• Prayers for Rain
• Moonlight Mile

Susan - Adult Services

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