Reviews

Books

Audition: A Memoir

By Barbara Walters (Alfred A. Knopf)

Audition tells of a life lived on, in and never far from TV. This bulky memoir weighs in at more than 600 pages, falling midway, bulkwise, between Oblomov and Ulysses. Unlike Marion (Molly) Bloom and Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, however, Barbara Jill Walters has never been content to lie around in bed all day. She's a woman of action who doesn't let anyone push her around - not Harry Reasoner, not Omar Torrijos, not Rosie O'Donnell (well, maybe Rosie). Audition could just as easily have been called Ambition or, if the title hadn't already been taken, My Struggle. Life has not been kind to Barbara Walters. Wait a second - is that true? Hasn't it been generous to a fault? You be the decider. Before we reach Page 400, Walters announces: "I think that is enough about my personal life." Already? Fortunately, there are many more fascinating people to come, including Qaddafi ("absolutely stunning"), Cher (a "delight to talk to" - who knew?) and Bill Clinton: "I never experienced his renowned sex appeal. He never sparkled with me." She also once rubbed noses with the Dalai Lama, but doesn't say whether he sparkled.

The Other

By David Guterson (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Other is a novel about a man who goes off the rails and ends up living as a hermit in a remote forest in Washington State. The author is David Guterson, of Snow Falling on Cedars fame. The recluse is John William Barry, sole heir to a banking and timber fortune. He is a smart, troubled rich kid who loathes phonies and sellouts, beginning with his own "weaseling, demonic forefathers". He's the kind of guy who drops acid and chants, "No escape from the unhappiness machine". He tries to escape the machine by taking the hermit's path, holing up in the woods for seven long, cold, lonely years, and his story is told in retrospect by his best friend, an English teacher who emerges as the book's most interesting character. The Other is a moving portrait of male friendship, the kind that forms on the cusp of adulthood and refuses to die, no matter how maddening the other guy turns out to be. It's also a finely observed rumination on the necessary imperfection of life - on how hypocrisy, compromise and acceptance creep into our lives and turn strident idealists into kind, loving, fully human adults.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Mohammed Hanif (Alfred A. Knopf)

Assassination has long been an appealing subject for male novelists. Mohammed Hanif's exuberant first novel extends this tradition of assassination fiction and shifts it east to Pakistan. The death at its center is that of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. Zia's fate is one of Pakistan's two great political mysteries, the other being the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Like Catch-22, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is best understood as a satire of militarism, regulation and piety. There are shocking scenes in Hanif's novel, and the shock they deliver is greater because they occur as interludes to the comedy. Hanif has written a historical novel with an eerie timeliness: It arrives as NATO troops battle the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan; as General Musharraf fights Islamic extremism within his own country; as Pakistan assimilates yet another unsolved assassination; and as the menace of al-Qaida persists worldwide.

New York Time Syndicate

(China Daily 06/12/2008 page20)