Critics' choices for Christmas From the "Book of Nonsense" to the "Vegetarian Planet," the joys of "Hardboiled America" to "The Bridge on the Drina," our critics urge you to stuff your stockings with good books this Christmas
Freeman, Mary Lee
Mary Lee Freeman Mary Lee Freeman is a nurse and graduate student at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, and a former Commonweal intern. R.C. Hutchinson's A Child Possessed (London...
...Nevertheless, the sheer originality of the Duncan style makes the reader more than willing to do some occasional (and invigorating...
...Originally delivered in a church in the heart of a crumbled, postwar Munich, the sermons are at times achingly poignant...
...about the river teeth in this collection and scattered plentifully in Duncan's novels, one can say, "You sense the artistry when you heft one...
...This is a book of so many memorable and finely wrought scenes and moments that you will while away many hours swapping favorite passages with fellow readers: the Roger Maris reflections, the Psalm Wars, Irwin confronting his father after the sports banquet, "Papa Toe's" pitch that goes clear over the backstop and out of the park...
...of mystical terror...
...is a 1995 collection of stories and writings that will ease the post-Brothers K withdrawal symptoms...
...Hutchinson's A Child Possessed (London Bridge Trade, $11.95,351 pp...
...originally published in 1964 to great acclaim but long since out of print, became newly available this past spring thanks to public demand following its reading on the BBC's "Book at Bed...
...A hilarious, sobering, raucous, and powerful book, it chronicles the lives of the eight-member Chance family from 1956 to 1980...
...Years ago, a rather hardy and discriminating friend of mine confessed to being physically and mentally spent at the end of the book, and asked that I buy up any and all copies I could find in Boston and Cambridge bookstores...
...upstream paddling in this award-winning first novel...
...The Times called it "a novel which achieves nobility" and a reading of it reminds one how utterly rare is that achievement...
...moments of violence, uncaught dishonesty, tomfoolery...
...Those of you who can't remember the last time a book made you laugh so hard you had to take a break to compose yourself before continuing simply must go out and purchase the egregiously un-dercelebrated David James Duncan novel, The Brothers K (Doubleday, $12.95, 645 pp...
...About conifer river teeth Duncan says, "You sense antiquity when you heft one...
...beautifully captures the passion and eloquence of this theological and spiritual master...
...Having been converted into a rabid Duncan fan, I bought his 1983 The River Why (Doubleday, $11.95,291 pp...
...preposterous love...
...Become aware that he has been expecting you for quite some time in the deepest dungeon of your rubbled-over heart...
...Interbreed the Karamazov clan and Salinger's Glass family, transplant them to Oregon, add doses of Seventh Day Adventism and minor-league baseball and Vietnam, throw in your own family for good measure and you'll have some idea of the Chances...
...Buy multiple copies to hand out at Christmas...
...This chef at "the hippest eatery in Boston" (Boston Globe) is too exuberant to be sanctimonious...
...lust...
...Bruce W. Gillette's new translation (Liturgical Press, $9.95, 101 pp...
...more often they're self-contained moments of shock or of inordinate empathy...
...a very different and altogether quirky novel...
...You will become aware that in truth you are not at all rubbled-over, that your jail is closed only to empty finiteness, that its deadly emptiness is only the false appearance of God, that his silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by him who is above all names, by him who is everything in everything...
...Rahner asks at the start of an extended reflection on opening one's "rubbled-over heart" through prayer...
...In this age of spirituality-lite, unfettered by theology, Crossroad and Egan have done a tremendous service in presenting this "sapiential theologian" who "compresses all Christianity into three mysteries Trinity, Incarnation, and grace [and] also unfolds these mysteries into every dimension of human life, even into a 'theology of everyday things' a theology of work, of seeing, of laughing, of eating and sleeping...
...With the reissue, such treasure hunts are no longer necessary...
...Set in Provence and Marseilles, it is the story of a Russian-born lorry driver and his severely mentally handicapped teenage daughter, recently released at his request from the institution where she had been living since toddlerhood, unbeknownst to him...
...Do you remember the nights in the cellar, the nights of deadly loneliness amidst the harrowing crush of people...
...The title is Duncan's childhood name for the centuries-old pieces of wood knots lying in riverbeds the sole, stubborn remnants of decomposed riverbank conifers...
...For starving students and food lovers on your Christmas list, you can do no better than Didi Emmons's Vegetarian Planet cookbook (Harvard Common, $14.95,564 pp...
...Anyone who can make a carnivore salivate over a meatless "Big Chili and Hot Stews" chapter, who admits in the soup chapter, "Frankly, I'm not a stock person," and who shares a recipe for the humble yet delightful tomato sandwich (white bread, mayo...
...Most of these whorls are not stories, exactly...
...preposterous joy....The emotional impact of such experiences is often huge....Some river tooth experiences, whether shared or not, possess the solidity of a geographer's bearing mark and help us find our way...
...River Teeth (Doubleday, $10.95, 259 pp...
...And his silence tells you that he is there...
...There comes a river, whose current is time, that does a similar sculpting in the mind....There are hard, cross-grained whorls of memory that remain inexplicably in us long after the straight-grained narrative material that housed them washed away...
...is someone I like having around in my kitchen...
...A second classic making a 1997 reappearance is a collection of Karl Rahner's 1946 Lenten sermons, titled The Need and Blessing of Prayer...
...It is not surprising that "Preacher" and "Teacher of Prayer" are two of the most compelling chapters in Harvey D. Egan's Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life, a forthcoming volume in the Crossroad "Spiritual Legacy" series...
Vol. 124 • December 1997 • No. 21
