CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson

Having run out of mysteries by Donna Leon and Michael Connelly and C.J. Sansom and P.D. James and Peter Lovesey, I am deeply grateful to whichever of my bibliophilic friends recommended Case Histories (2004). As Stephen King gushes in his front-cover blurb, "Not just the best novel I read this year, but the best mystery of the decade."

From the start, the story sounded eerily familiar: a child gone missing over 30 years before; three feuding sisters; a weird cat lady next door. About halfway through the book, I finally Googled Jackson Brodie, the private eye who was working this case along with several others.

Oh right - a year or two ago, my husband had recommended a Masterpiece Mystery episode because it starred Jason Isaacs, known to Harry Potter fans as Lucius Malfoy. David thought I would want to see how he looked with dark brown hair. (Stunning!)

It was a good show, and I plan to watch more episodes now that I've read the book. I also plan to read the next three Jackson Brodie books, and no doubt some of Kate Atkinson's other novels as well. The woman can write!

Jackson is a typically depressed private detective -  divorced, bitterly at odds with his ex, absent-mindedly devoted to their eight-year-old daughter, trying (but not too hard) to give up smoking, taking on jobs that are "either irksome or dull" because he needs the money. Originally from the north of England, he now works in Cambridge, where for 12 years he was on the police force. He's attractive (and attracted) to women, but there's no love in his life.

He was currently seeing more of his dentist than he had of his wife in the last year of their marriage. His dentist was called Sharon and was what his father used to refer to as "stacked." She was thirty-six and drove a BMW Z3, which was a bit of a hairdresser's car in Jackson's opinion, but nonetheless he found her very attractive. Unfortunately, there was no possibility of having a relationship with someone who had to put on a mask, protective glasses, and gloves to touch you.

He wishes he could throw it all over and escape to France.

Jackson doesn't show up until page 45, however. Up to that point we learn about three case histories - the missing child (1970), a murdered 18-year-old girl (1994), a young mother who goes berserk and - does what? (1979) - with which he will eventually be involved. We suspect the stories are somehow intertwined.

When it comes to detective stories, I have a couple of pet peeves. One is overcomplexity: I like to be able to follow a story without taking extensive notes (I eventually quit reading Elizabeth George, who is a fine novelist, for just that reason). My other pet peeve is shifting viewpoints. Very few novelists are able to switch from the mind of God to that of the detective to that of the criminal without sounding like poorly edited amateurs.

Kate Atkinson managed a complex plot and over half a dozen viewpoints without ever causing my pet-peeve alarm to buzz.

Because so many viewpoints are represented, Case Histories is not a procedural, though a certain amount of detective work is involved. Neither is it a thriller, though it includes a few fights and one big explosion. It would be misleading to call it a psychological novel: though it's literary, it's by no means a navel-gazer. There are many puzzles in the multiple stories, but the emphasis isn't on whodunit. I guess I'd just call it a brilliant detective story and resist adding subclassifications.

Atkinson's characters, like most people we know, are simultaneously tragic and comic. I suspect that she, like Jackson, believes that her job is "to help people be good rather than punishing them for being bad."

And maybe that's why - apart from the author's obvious skills in plotting, characterization, and literary style - I really liked this book. Despite all the human frailty and downright evil portrayed in it, the underlying tone is optimistic. Sometimes it's even laugh-out-loud funny.
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Warning: There's enough sex in this book - most of it pretty amusing - that you might not want to read it aloud to intergenerational family groups.

DOWNTON ABBEY, SEASON 4: What's next?

The long wait begins: Americans will not see Downton Abbey Season 4 until next January, though Britons will see it in September (however, they began waiting Christmas Eve). So what's going to happen?

I of course went on a Google search and learned that Lady Mary is going to be important in Season 4, and that she's going to get a new love interest, though possibly not a new husband. A nanny will be added: Julian Fellowes says there will be "a lovely nursery story." The Dowager Countess "logically must be about a hundred and something now," as Maggie Smith told 60 Minutes in a rare and delightful interview broadcast yesterday, but we can all breathe a sigh of relief--she's not leaving the show, and Fellowes has no intention of killing her off.

So what else might happen in Season 4?

Well, something interesting will surely happen with Tom Branson. With Matthew gone, he's the estate manager now: will Lord Grantham's gratitude to his first son-in-law for saving the farm extend to son-in-law number two? And Tom's a good looking man with a baby: surely another romance is in the offing (this is soap opera, after all). Trouble is, he can't really marry a chambermaid--Mrs Hughes gently made that clear last night. And he isn't invited to the best parties, so a titled wife seems unlikely. Unless she's rebellious, of course, like Lady Sybil. Which makes me think that Tom and Lady Rose MacClare are going to get along just fine. Lady Grantham and Rose's mother, after all, were commiserating about the difficulty of having headstrong daughters. And Rose is coming to live at Downton Abbey. And it is 1921, after all, when traditional matings seem so stuffy. I mean, look how Rose's parents turned out.

And dear Lady Edith. She's 27 now and still a spinster, poor dear. Will she go to live in sin with her married editor, Michael Gregson?  Matthew is no longer an obstacle, but Lord Grantham might have a heart attack--oh, right, Fellowes has said Season 4 won't be as lethal as Season 3. Or maybe Fellowes will remember Jane Eyre and have the asylum, with Mrs Gregson in it, burn to the ground, thus freeing Mr Gregson for Lady Edith. It would be a nice twist if she then refused him, bought the newspaper, and became a media mogul, wouldn't it. I doubt if that will happen, but at least she's going to glam up.

And that's just upstairs. What will happen downstairs? The cook, Mrs Patmore, narrowly escaped a bad marriage (cf Upstairs Downstairs: "The Sudden Storm," in which the cook, Mrs Bridges, has an almost identical misadventure). I'm guessing Patmore won't get another proposal, but will something develop between Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes? Will O'Brien wangle a job as lady's maid to Lady Rose's mother and get to travel to India? Has Thomas turned into a decent human being after all? Anna Bates is getting a new hairstyle--will she also have a baby?

What are your guesses?

LES MISÉRABLES

Les Misérables - the film - opened yesterday, and David and I were in back row center (my favorite seats) for the six o'clock showing. This was not because we are big fans of Les Miz. David had neither read it nor seen it, and though I saw the stage musical twice in London (the second time because my boss, with whom I was traveling, insisted), I wasn't crazy about it. But hey, it was Christmas Day, we needed to do something while digesting dinner, and it would have been too ironic to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace by going to see Jack Reacher.

Our teenaged granddaughters wanted to know what we thought of Les Miz. Though we made a game attempt, a 2-hour-and-37-minute film is hard to review in text messages, so here are my extended observations.

The story. Quite faithful to Victor Hugo's sprawling novel (1779 pages in one French edition, and no, I haven't read it), this is a set-up, if not for the Oscars, at least for Christianity Today's annual list of most redeeming films. It won't be a spoiler for you to know that the hero, Jean Valjean, is a repentant thief who spends his life selflessly helping people. This is a story that reeks of moral uplift. And that's good: in an age that celebrates ruthless individualism, it is both shocking and inspiring to watch this reminder of the power of forgiveness and self-sacrifice.

The problem with the story. Despite his repeated willingness - if inability - to die for others, Valjean (like his creator, Hugo) supports an armed band of young insurrectionists who hope to overthrow the government. If you believe that peace is created by angry men who shoot the people with whom they disagree, you will find no inconsistency in this aspect of the story.

The historical background. Do read at least a couple of Wikipedia articles before going to see the movie. The one on the June Rebellion is a good place to start. Later you might want to read Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, if you haven't already, or watch Oliver, the musical that reportedly inspired the French librettist of Les Miz. Oliver Twist was published 24 years before Les Misérables (it takes awhile to write 1779 pages), but the two books deal with the same general time period, and the lives of the poor were just as miserable in England as in France. It helps to realize that there's not much exaggeration in Les Miz, except of course that the poor were unlikely to be as gorgeous as Anne Hathaway.

The opera. Be aware that Les Miz is not just a musical. It's grand opera: "a genre of 19th-century opera ... characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events." The characters are much more likely to sing than to speak. There are recitatives and arias, rousing choruses, and even a sextet where the conflicting characters lay out their differences in counterpoint and set the audience up for the dénouement.

So what did I think of Les Miz? I liked the lavish spectacle. I thoroughly enjoyed the rowdy song "Master of the House" featuring Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. In fact, I enjoyed every scene featuring the evil duo. The sextet and chorus, "One Day More," is quite glorious. David, old romantic that he is, liked "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."

The other 2 hours and 20 minutes, however, often left me thinking, in the oft repeated words of archvillain Javert, "Shoot me now."

At one point I whispered to David, "There are only two things I don't like about this opera: the words and the music." Apart from a few stellar numbers, the music ranges from insipid to tedious. One or two leitmotifs are endlessly repeated. Worse, a lot of the recitatives are simply drawn-out scales. If you can't come up with actual music, I wanted to scream, just let the characters talk, for Pete's sake.

The words are even worse. When I was a teenager, a particularly bad amateur poet came often to our church and read his supposedly inspirational poetry at us. I kept awake by playing a game: after he declaimed one line, I tried to guess the word he would use to make the next line rhyme. It was amazingly easy. I recommend, dear granddaughters, that you play this game while watching Les Miz. 

The librettist dips into his large sack of easy masculine rhymes (be/me, done/run, know/go, chill/kill) and scatters them prodigally about. He is particularly taken with the near-rhyme Jean Valjean with "on" and "gone." Never does he play with words like Alan Jay Lerner in, say,  Camelot ("You'll never find a virtue / Unstatussing my quo / Or making my Beelzebubble burst ...") or Stephen Sondheim in West Side Story ("I like the isle of Manhattan, / Smoke on your pipe and put that in!") Except for the bawdy tavern song, all the songs in Les Miz are so earnest, so sentimental, so predictable.

Still, as of this writing, 63% of the top critics (surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes) liked the movie, as did 72% of critics in general and 86% of the audience. That's not shabby. You may like it too, and I won't think less of you for it. Just don't put yourself through it three times. Nobody needs to be that misérable.

END GAMES by Michael Dibdin and DRESSED FOR DEATH by Donna Leon

I usually have at least two books going at once: one on my iPod to listen to while working in the kitchen, and one to carry around the house and carelessly leave wherever I happen to have been last. Last week I confused myself. My audiobook was Donna Leon's third Guido Brunetti detective story, Dressed for Death, while my tote-around-the-house book was Michael Dibdin's eleventh Aurelio Zen detective story, End Games.

Guido Brunetti is a Venetian police commissario who, in Dressed for Death, has been asked to supervise a case in nearby Mestre because two of Mestre's ranking police officers are on vacation, one is on maternity leave, and one is laid up with a broken leg. It is August, and it is unbearably hot.

Aurelio Zen is a Venetian-born police detective (now living in Lucca) who, in End Games, has been asked to supervise a case in distant Calabria because the local police chief has shot himself in the foot. It is August, and it is unbearably hot.

For some reason I kept conflating the two stories.

Both books are tightly plotted with just the right amount of local color. Both are by English-speaking authors who know Italy well. Leon was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and has lived in Venice, Italy, for the last 30 years. Dibdin, who died in 2007, was born in Wolverhampton, England, and spent four years teaching English in Perugia, Italy.

Some of Dibdin's books are translated into Italian. Leon's books are translated into many languages, but Italian is not one of them. "They’re not translated into Italian and they won’t be," she told an interviewer. "That’s my choice because I do not want to live where I am famous." In some Italian circles, she might be infamous: her books, like Dibdin's, portray not only the Italy of opera, fine art, and la bella cucina, but also the Italy where organized crime's tentacles reach deep into government, church, and business.

So, Italophiles, which will it be--the Leon novel about transvestites, male prostitution, corruption, and hypocrisy; or the Dibdin novel about kidnappers, treasure hunters, a computer gamer, a movie producer, and a longstanding feud?

You won't go wrong with either author, though if you're like me, it may take a few tries before you become a fan. I read Dibdin's fifth and seventh Aurelio Zen books back in 1999 and 2000 before picking up book eleven last month; I read Leon's first Guido Brunetti book more than two years before checking out books two and three. Now I'm eager to read more, or perhaps to listen or watch: three of the Zen books have been adapted by PBS Masterpiece Mystery.

Based on my small sample--three books out of eleven, three out of twenty--I'm guessing that if you like getting to know your detective's home, family, friends, and associates, you'll prefer Leon, while if you prefer fast-paced action, technology, and complex plotting, you'll go for Dibdin. Dressed for Death rocked along slowly like a gondola in a Venetian canal as Brunetti gathered information and came up with strategies. End Games kept me reading long past my bedtime--once I figured out who all the characters were and how they fit into the story, which was challenging at first.

But hey, you don't have to choose. Read both. Just not at the same time.

INSIDE JOB (DVD)

“For decades, the American financial system was stable and safe. But then something changed. The financial industry turned its back on society, corrupted our political system, and plunged the world economy into crisis. At enormous cost, we’ve avoided disaster and are recovering.


"But the men and institutions that caused the crisis are still in power, and that needs to change. They will tell us that we need them, and that what they do is too complicated for us to understand. They will tell us it won’t happen again. They will spend billions fighting reform. It won’t be easy, but some things are worth fighting for.”

Those are narrator Matt Damon's closing words in Sony Classics' Academy Award winning Inside Job, a 2010 film about the worldwide financial meltdown that began in 2008.

Economics may be the dismal science, but this is not a gloomy movie. Infuriating, yes. Scary, for sure. But the fast-paced narration, ironically funny sound track, montage of damning interviews, and frequently interspersed factoids will keep your adrenaline flowing for all 108 minutes of it.

Inside Job is politically charged but not partisan. In the slice of history it covers, there are no heroic presidents or pure parties. The administrations of Reagan, Bush the father, Clinton, Bush the son, and Obama all contributed to the train wreck - by a combination of philosophy, inaction, lack of oversight, unwise appointments, and bad policy decisions.

Widespread corruption has infected Democrats and Republicans, hedge fund managers and academics, CEOs and regulators, lawmakers and lobbyists. The result - massive job loss worldwide; an enormous widening of the gap between rich and poor, especially in the United States; a housing slump that seems to have no end; decimated pension funds - and eye-popping bonuses and government jobs for the financial geniuses whose insatiable greed brought us the catastrophe in the first place.

Here's a sobering thought for those of us who tend to think that Republican policies lead to financial doom: perhaps they do, but some of the major villains in this film are currently in high positions in the Obama administration. We now have a government not of men, not of laws, not even of political parties, but of Wall Street.

PATHS OF GLORY (DVD)

CNN reports that Claude Choules, 110, has died in Perth, Australia. Mr Choules was "the last known survivor of the 70 million combatants from World War I, a British sailor who witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in 1918."

That was the war known at the time as "the war to end all wars. As we know all too well, it didn't. Approximately 16 million people died in that war, and then 21 years later war broke out again. Estimates of World War II deaths range from 50 to 78 million.

Choules's son, Adrian, told reporters that

his father refused to glorify war.... In later life Choules refused to be interviewed about the wars in which he served. "He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," Adrian said. "He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old pollies were off fighting, then there would never be any wars."

I read about Choules's death right after watching Stanley Kubrick's 1957 film, Paths of Glory, about French officers, troops, and an impossible assignment in 1916. If ever a film illustrated Claude Choules's words, this is it. Self-deception, pride, cynicism, arrogance, injustice, hypocrisy, mendacity - Kubrick explores all these themes in a mere 88 minutes in a film that will incite you to shake your fist and roar at your TV screen.

There are plenty of decent human beings in the film, and some of them are officers. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), for example, who defends the three hapless scapegoats, is appealingly earnest. The villains range from the oily Général  Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) to the miserable Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris), all managing to be despicable without turning into caricatures. Best performance in my book was Ralph Meeker's portrayal of Corporal Philippe Paris, a dutiful soldier who suffers for other men's sins. Nobody won any Academy Awards, however, and the film was so controversial that it was banned in France and Switzerland for nearly 20 years.

OK, it's probably not a date night film, but it's gripping, provocative, and brilliant - will that do? Preview it here, or read this excellent review and summary, or read the book it was based on ("a chilling portrait of injustice, this novel offers insight into the tragedies of war in any age"), or ask Netflix to send you the DVD.

In case you're wondering about the title: It comes from Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," line 36:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

MADE IN DAGENHAM (DVD)

In 1968, 179 east London machinists walked off the job and changed history. The machinists weren't complaining about having to work long days in an airless room that quickly became unbearably hot. They objected to being classified as unskilled workers when  their work - making seat covers for Fords - required a great deal of skill. They also objected to being paid considerably less than fellow workers who were less skilled than they were. And they objected to, year after year, being patronized, lied to, and eventually ignored by union officials. The 179 machinists, of course, were women.


Made in Dagenham is funny, sassy, infuriating, and occasionally moving. Watch it for an evening's entertainment, or watch it to remember - or to learn - what life was like only 43 years ago. 1968 was the year when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It was the year of the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Student protests, especially in France, were huge. The Beatles sang about Lady Madonna ("wonder how she manages to feed the rest?"). They might well wonder - women earned less than 60% of what men earned, and it didn't look like things were going to get better anytime soon.

Of course women should have equal pay, some of the more enlightened men-in-charge told us. But these things take time. You can't expect things to happen overnight. Making demands will get you nowhere. That's what the same enlightened men-in charge-had been saying about civil rights for people of color just a few years earlier. And that's what the weaselly union and business leaders told the women machinists in east London.

Fortunately, the women machinists didn't agree.

In 1968 I taught history and French at a small private high school. The pay scale had three levels: married men earned approximately $7000 a year; single men earned about $6000, and women earned about $5000. The English teacher, the German teacher, and I thought this was not quite fair. All the married men had working wives. We, however, though women, were all married to students and were the sole support of our families. Why shouldn't we earn as much as the married men?

We wrote a polite letter of inquiry to the people responsible for our paychecks. We made no threats; we merely asked for an explanation. Immediately our principal got a terrified phone call from his board chairman. "What's this I hear about a teacher's strike?" the man wanted to know.

Unlike Rita O'Grady, the spunky heroine of Made in Dagenham, we didn't strike. We didn't do anything, in fact: we were nice girls. Those were the days, my friend. I'm glad they finally ended.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER, the movie

A short note for my fellow Michael Connelly fans - The Lincoln Lawyer is worth watching. Opening last weekend, it ranked in fourth place. Ninety-five percent of its viewers were over 25, which means the theaters were relatively quiet and unsticky (check here for other stats). Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it in the 80% range, which isn't shabby.

But you don't care about the figures, most likely. You've read the book, and you want to know how the movie measures up. You won't love it as much as you loved the original, of course. No bibliophile ever does. Still, it's an entertaining story.

Matthew McConaughey is a good Mickey Haller, shameless but likeable. William H. Macy is a fine investigator. Don't listen to critics who complain that Ryan Phillippe is just too sweet to be Louis Roulet - isn't that the point? On the other hand, Marisa Tomei smiles too much. She is not a credible Maggie McFierce.

The action follows the book's plot as closely as a 2-hour film can follow a 432-page book - which is to say, perhaps too closely. A lot of quick comments and short scenes set up the plot and move it along. Some take the place of adequate plot development. Some events seem to happen too quickly or out of the blue, especially if you, say, sneezed just as the explanatory sentence was uttered.

The central problem with this movie, though, is that it follows the wrong thread.
The beauty of Michael Connelly's books is that they're not all about plot. His major characters, and many of his minor ones, are well developed. Big questions are never far from the surface. Mickey Haller is dealing with a legal conflict, to be sure, but his larger conflict is in his soul. After years of being the best public defender in L.A., can he tell the difference between innocence and guilt? Has he lost his own innocence? When terrible events start to unroll, is he in any way culpable?

The movie Haller recapitulates the actions of the book Haller, but he shows no character development whatsoever. Yes, he asks one or two of the big questions in some of those speedy scenes, but he is not possessed by them. By the end, he has solved his legal problem and is still alive (which is not always a certain outcome), but he is still who he was at the beginning.

The director could have made The Lincoln Lawyer a psychological thriller. The movie could have been dark and deep and terrifying. Instead, it is witty, fast-paced, scary in places, but far from profound. It's good entertainment, but - even though Connelly was one of the screenwriters - it doesn't begin to do what his books do.

And that's just another reason why we still need books. Connelly's next, The Fifth Witness, is due April 5.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART ONE (opened 11/19/10)

This is not a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part one. There are plenty of reviews already out there, from A.O. Scott's in the New York Times to Todd Hertz's in Christianity Today. No need to add another one, especially since I'm much more a book person than a movie person.

Indeed I have read the seven Harry Potter books about three times each, and I've listened to the Jim Dale audiotapes once or twice each, and I've watched the first six movies at least twice each - and I still feel like an amateur whenever I'm with people who really know Harry Potter backward and forward.

I'm guessing you too have read the books and/or seen the movies, and that's why you're here. So for you I have just a few observations about the new film. I don't think there are any spoilers here, but then I'm assuming you know the plot.

• The movie takes us more or less to page 477 of 759 (U.S. edition).
• I liked the slower pace made possible by splitting book seven into two parts. This movie felt richer, more complete, than the previous movies, which had to struggle to fit far too much story into far too little time. Since part two will cover only 282 pages, it should be richer still. Which is appropriate, because it contains some of the best scenes in the entire series.
• Still, if you want the total Harry experience, read the book or listen to the tape. The movie alluded to much of the content of book 7, but the book develops it in a way no film could do.For example, the film shows the Dursleys departing, but it completely ignores Dudley's amazing about-face. Harry attends Bill and Fleur's wedding as Harry, not as a Weasley cousin. Harry never reads the letter from his mother to Sirius Black. Harry never changes his attitude toward Kreacher. And so forth. I am by no means saying that the film should have included these scenes. It couldn't possibly have done so. I'm just saying the book is even more satisfying, at least for a wordperson like me.
• When I say the film is slower paced than previous films, I don't mean it drags. There are lots of action scenes, chases, explosions. Harry leaves Privet Drive pursued by Death Eaters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave the Burrow and encounter more Death Eaters. The three of them cause chaos at the Ministry of Magic. Harry fights Nagini in Godric's Hollow. Death Eaters attack again at the Lovegood house. The trio is captured by snatchers and taken to Malfoy Manor for torture. You know all this: you've read the book. It's still gripping to see it onscreen.
• The film also dramatizes some of the characters' interior struggles. It alludes to Harry's reluctance to continue on a path that may bring harm to his friends. It explores Ron's feelings of jealousy and inadequacy. Unfortunately, it completely skips Lupin's ambivalence about impending fatherhood, and the wonderful dressing-down Harry gives him when he tries to join the trio. That surprised me, since it seems necessary to some of what will happen in part two.
• This is not a free-standing movie. It ends in the middle. The quest will be more difficult in the final installment: Harry and his friends have not finished their tasks, but Lord Voldemort has found the weapon he covets. When the credits started to roll, a man in the row ahead of me yelled, "Oh, no!" There's no way anyone who likes part one will be able to skip part two.
• This is a very sophisticated film. I don't have the necessary film buff's vocabulary to tell you exactly why, but there's a stylized, contemporary feel to the artfully composed scenes. And despite its darkness, it has humorous moments: the dialogue is often witty.
• Though I saw the film on an Imax screen, Imax may be overkill. Mercifully, there was no 3-D to contend with (the snake attack was still terrifying). Since there are no flights on dragonback or in specially rigged Ford Anglias, the tall screen is less necessary than in some of the previous movies. Sometimes, in fact, the characters were just too large. I wanted to back up and give them a bit more room.

OK, that's enough for tonight. I hope you enjoy the movie. I look forward to seeing it again at least once before part two is released next July. And maybe I'll reread the book. Maybe I'll even reread all seven of them.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (DVD)

Terrorism and torture - they're all over this week's (and most week's) headlines: "Germany tightens airport security over attacks threat." "Palestinian forces arrest Hamas cell in West Bank planning to attack Israelis." "Britain to pay ex-detainees in torture case."

Saturated with such stories since the bombings of 2001, we may think that terrorism and torture are 21st-century inventions, or at least that their incidence has greatly increased during the last decade. We need correctives like Patrick Smith's article in Slate last week: "News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11." Indeed it did - Smith lists example after example from the late 1980s. And torture, a typical response to terrorist attacks, is as old as recorded history.

Here is another corrective - a film you need to see, though not for date night. Little kids shouldn't watch it either. The Battle of Algiers is a fictionalized account of urban guerilla warfare during Algeria's bloody war of independence from France (1954-62). Winning a heap of prizes shortly after its release in 1966, it was immediately banned in France and essentially went underground for 37 years.

And then in 2003 the U.S. Pentagon showed the film to about 40 officers and civilian experts. From the flier announcing the screening:

How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.

The Pentagon showing led to renewed interest in the film, which was restored and then released in the U.K., the U.S., and France in late 2003 and 2004. The DVD version followed in October 2004. You can rent it from Blockbuster online or from Netflix.

Why should you see this film? Partly because it's so very well done. From Ali La Pointe, a disaffected Arab teenager who becomes a leader in the National Liberation Front, to Colonel Mathieu, an unbending French military man who plays by the rules, each character first draws you in and then appalls you as terrorism and torture alternate in a deadly dance. In a mesmerizing sequence, a trio of Arab women don Western garb and charm their way past French guards into the European quarter - with disastrous results. Should you laugh? Cheer? Weep? You may find yourself doing all three. The one thing you won't be able to do is look away from the screen.

Another reason to see the film is to stimulate thinking and provoke discussion about current conflicts. In The Battle of Algiers,as in the news, terrorists kill civilians. Counter-terrorists move in and do the same. Torture is used to gain information. Tortured terrorists become martyrs and incite renewed terrorist activity. Violence explodes on all sides. It sounds so very contemporary.

And yet, whatever your opinions about Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantánamo, it's hard to take sides when the film takes you into the Casbah or the European quarter or the military headquarters. You find yourself sympathizing with the Arab child who grabs the officer's microphone and tells his people to resist, with the frightened women who hide insurgents in a well or behind a false wall, with the terrified man who talks rather than face another round of torture, and perhaps even with the teenager who has lost so much and now just wants to shoot somebody.

At the same time, you cringe when European teenagers are blown to bits when all they are doing is flirting and dancing to salsa music, or when tired businessmen grabbing a quick drink after work lose their lives because they neglect to see a basket left under a bar stool. You understand the colonel's perplexity when he says to reporters:

We aren't madmen or sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us Fascists today forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis don't know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers, and our only duty is to win

But what about torture? a reporter persists. Colonel Mathieu gives the only answer he knows:

Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.

Terrorism and torture have a long and sordid history, and this film does not glorify either one. Yes, the terrorists eventually win and the French are expelled from Algeria. Yes, The Battle of Algiers has been accused of inspiring violence - though it has also been used as evidence that torture does not work. It's an ethically complex film that may haunt you for days. It might even turn you into a pacifist.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson

First, let's get the amazing statistics out of the way. As of a month ago, over 40 million copies of the late Stieg Larsson's trilogy had sold worldwide in over 40 languages. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first book ever to sell over a million copies in the Kindle edition. Subtitled Swedish-language films of the first two books have been playing in the United States this year, and the third installment is scheduled for release in about six weeks. At the end of 2011 Columbia Pictures plans to release a U.S. version of Dragon, with the others to follow.

I finally succumbed to massive cultural pressure and the urging of my friends: I put The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on hold at the library (I was number 68 in line). While I was checking it out last week, the woman who scanned my card advised me, "Read 100 pages before forming any judgment about the book. It has a slow start."

Yesterday afternoon I finished all 590 pages, and I can now say that she was right. What she didn't tell me was that it has a slow ending too. For the last 100 pages or so I kept thinking of the time I flew into Boston at night under heavy fog. The plane had descended for several minutes when suddenly  it leaped upward. We flew for a while longer, descended again, leaped upward again. The pilot took the microphone and said, "I could have sworn there was a runway down there."

In the middle of the book, though, there was plenty of suspense, violence, sex, international money laundering, gadgets, psychopaths, computer hacking, organized crime, sadism, and Swedish scenery.

If you are one of the three people in the world who has not yet read any books by Larsson, and if you think that maybe you don't want to bother, Janet Potter's kick-ass September 10 review, Stieg Larsson: Swedish Narcissus, will give you plenty of reasons to avoid them. Her comments on Larsson's writing style are perceptive, though I'm willing to allow a writer of thrillers a lot of editorial leeway. At the end of her review, however, she raises an objection that troubled me more and more the further I got into the book: Michael is not as nice to female characters as he thinks he is.

On the one hand, Mikael is a kind man who sees women as equal human beings and treats them with dignity. At least that's what Stieg Larsson tells us, and the description seems important to him. After all, the name of the book's Swedish edition is Men Who Hate Women, and every section of the book features a statistical epigraph on the topic ("Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man"). I don't think it's a spoiler to say that revenge against women-haters is the book's major theme.

On the other hand Mikael, though he apparently is never physically violent with women, is known as a womanizer. His wife divorced him because of a long-standing affair he was carrying on while married to her, so he rarely sees his daughter, now a teenager (he admits he's a lousy father). The marriage-breaking affair is with a married woman whose husband does not seem to object, though the woman can get a bit huffy when she walks in on Mikael in bed with yet another woman. While engaged in investigative journalism / detection, Mikael beds a lonely woman who is part of the group he's investigating, and their short affair seems to leave her shaken and bereft. He also beds the young woman who works for him, while admitting he's old enough to be her father. She gives him her heart, and he apparently breaks it.

Is this how a defender of the female gender behaves?

Unless I am suddenly faced with a very long airplane trip, I don't think I'll read the other two books. I'd like to know what happens to the spunky revenge princess Liz Salander, but I've had about enough of Mikael.

Books about dogs

The United States has more pet dogs and more dogs per family than any other country in the world. According to the Humane Society, 39% of our households include at least one dog, and nearly 80 million dogs live within our borders. Two of those dogs belong to us. We are desperately in love with them.

So I suppose we are the intended market for the flood of dog books that followed John Grogan's phenomenal publishing success, Marley and Me. When it sold 5 million copies and was made into a major motion picture, lots of publishers sat up and wagged. Whole litters of dog memoirs followed, most with appealing pups on their covers. Most were quickly remaindered, for good reason. Copy-cat books, even if they're about dogs, seldom appeal.

Let me recommend instead some excellent dog books that were published before Marley and are still available. All of these authors have written other good books too.

• Jon Katz: The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family (2003)

Time was, dogs earned their keep by herding, hunting, maiming intruders, or even fighting other animals. Some dogs still do - but most have quite a different job description nowadays. "The new work of dogs," says Katz, "is attending to the emotional lives of Americans, many of whom feel increasingly disconnected from one another." This insightful book highlights the dog-human relationship through stories about new dogs and their people.

• Patricia B. McConnell, The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs (2002)

McConnell, who is an adjunct associate professor in zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an animal behaviorist, and a dog trainer, helps us understand how our dogs think and helps us communicate so that our dogs will understand us. Who knew, for example, that you can get a dog to stop pestering you by gently patting it on the head? Unlike the ever-popular but controversial Cesar Milan, McConnell favors benevolence over dominance.

• Caroline Knapp, Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs (1998)

This is memoir as it should be written: a delicate interplay between the author's emotions and the world beyond herself. Knapp adopted Lucille, a German shepherd mix, when she was recovering from 20 years of alcoholism, the death of both her parents, and a failed relationship. Using her relationship with the dog as a springboard, she explores many facets of the human-animal bond.

• Peter Mayle: A Dog's Life (1995)

Pick up this book if you love Mayle's Provence books, or if you simply want to spend a delightful evening or two curled up with a laugh-out-loud story. Boy, a large French dog of uncertain ancestry, is the narrator. After a brutal childhood and adolescence ("a lesser dog might have despaired"), he is rescued from the side of the road by Madame. "The other half" grudgingly agrees that the dog may stay, and a series of hilarious adventures follow. Illustrated throughout by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren, this book would make a great gift for all the francophilic book lovers on your list. Me, for example.

•  Elizabeth Marshall Thomas: The Hidden Life of Dogs (1993)

Thomas had a rich career as an anthropologist and novelist before turning her observant eye on dogs. The result is a fascinating study of how dogs think, what they want, and why they act the way they do. Warning: dog lovers and dog trainers protested her hands-off approach to dog care, and scholars hated her anthropomorphizing (which she cheerfully admits and defends). Nevertheless, the book became a bestseller because - hey - it's really interesting!

• J.R. Ackerley: My Dog Tulip (1956) 

Ackerley spent his life looking for what he called an "Ideal Friend," finally finding it in an Alsatian bitch (U.S. translation: German shepherd female). This is his paean to a dog that was probably worse than Marley - so bad, in fact, that most of Ackerley's human acquaintances stopped visiting. He didn't care. In their absence he got a lot of writing done - and anyway, he had the dog. Now a minor motion picture starring the voices of Christopher Plummer, the late Lynn Redgrave, and Isabella Rossellini, My Dog Tulip is unlikely ever to play at a theater near me. It's touring a few cities between now and November, though, so click on the link to see if one of them is near you. Or buy the book, which Truman Capote called "one of the greatest books ever written by anybody in the world."

EAT PRAY LOVE, the movie

No, the Eat Pray Love DVD isn't out yet, but if attendance this afternoon at Cinemark Seven Bridges is any indication, it won't be in theaters too much longer.

Not that it's an unpleasant movie. I believe the nine of us middle-aged ladies in theater 7 all had a fine time. Some of us even talked back to the screen. Nobody snored, even though there was not a single chase scene.

It's just that there's nothing in the movie to warrant the adulation that has kept the book of almost the same name (commas extra) on the New York Times best-seller list for 184 weeks. Not even Julia Roberts, who at 42 is about 10 years too old to play Liz - though if you need a reason to see the movie, girls, Javier Bardem could provide it. My friend and I had been making mmmm, mmmm noises during the preview of the upcoming George Clooney film, but as soon as we saw Javier, we completely forgot about George.

Still, Bardem, 41, is about 7 years too young to play Felipe, the Brazilian to whom Liz eventually succumbs. This is delightful, actually, since so many movies pair nubile young things with actors past their prime and expect female viewers to suspend disbelief. It is not at all hard to believe that Roberts could fall for Bardem.

But their romance is only part of the movie, and not the longest part. Before we ever meet sexy Felipe, we have to get through Liz's marriage, her subsequent boyfriend, her trip to Italy, her trip to India, and the first part of her trip to Bali. In an NPR review titled "The 'Eat Pray Love' Problem: How Movie Liz Ruined the Story of Book Liz," Linda Holmes writes:

Two hours and 20 minutes is simply far too long for this story. By the time Elizabeth Gilbert — or, rather, the person I will call "Movie Liz," to distinguish her from both Book Liz and actual Elizabeth Gilbert in real life — finishes up in Italy, the thought that there are two entire countries left for her to visit is like realizing at the close of a one-hour doctor's appointment that the doctor has only looked in one ear.

Too many shots of pasta, Holmes suggests. Besides, I would add, the food was poorly chosen. Italy has a marvelously varied cuisine, but from this movie you might think it was one long chain of Pizza Huts.

The whole Italy portion, in fact, is a rapid succession of clichés : primitive living conditions, lecherous young men, Neapolitan clotheslines, rude gestures. The Asian portions are equally stereotypical. In India we see squalid cities and a Bollywood wedding, while in Bali we meet expats and native healers.

Of course Liz, not the countries or the other characters, is the center of attention. Befriending people everywhere she goes - natives and other tourists - she shows that she's not really a narcissist (even though the conversations are all about her). She come uncomfortably close to looking like a colonialist, though, when she gives one grateful woman a house.

In the end, Liz thinks she has learned something, but I had a hard time telling what it was. I will grant, however, that her third man is better looking, sexier, and much, much richer than the first two.

When Eat, Pray, Love was published four years ago, readers either loved it or hated it. The ones who hated it aren't going to go to this movie anyway. Unfortunately, many of the ones who loved it are likely to walk out of the theater saying, "I'm going to have to go back and reread that book. I thought there was a lot more to it than that."

If that's what you plan to do, I'd recommend taking a look at Gilbert's next book too. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage got neither the rave reviews nor the astronomical sales of the first book, but it updates Liz's story and leaves her in a better place. My review of it is here.