The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the third of a trilogy of books written by Mr. Larsson and in my opinion the best of the trio. It is a continuation of the first two books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. You will best appreciate it if you have read the others and be familiar with the main characters and the ongoing storyline.  However, this last book is the one to read if you only reading one, as there is an attempt to summarize some of the previous plots but this will not capture all the intrigue of the earlier books. In the third book there are some new nefarious villains and lots of police types, some good and some not so good. There is a complicated plot, several murders and a great courtroom scene. The reader learns about Sapo, a secret law enforcement agency and an ultra secret component of that agency, as well as a special government agency mandated to prosecute threats to the Swedish constitution. It all seems unfamiliar but ultimately understandable as the plot unfolds. It might be the same if a non-American reader were reading a novel with a convoluted plot, which involved the FBI, secret components within the CIA and actions by the Attorney General of the United States. We would understand the organizations, might believe that they could do secret horrific things depicted in the book but yet also realize that we are most probably dealing with the imagination of the author.

One of the main characters is Mikael Blomkvist a crusading journalist who was an editor and one of the founders of the magazine Millennium with whom the author perhaps identified. An Internet search about real life author Stieg Larsson reveals that he was a journalist who founded the Swedish magazine Expo and was a life time opponent of fascists, neo Nazis and the extreme right wing in Sweden. He gave lectures about right wing extremists at Scotland Yard and lived under constant threat from right wing violence. When neo-Nazis murdered a labor-union leader in his home in 1999 in Sweden, the police discovered photos of and information about Larsson and his lifetime companion Eva Garbrielson in the murderer’s apartment. It was reported that the reason Larsson and Garbrielson never married or registered as a domestic couple was because they would have to officially report their address and might be endangered by doing so Larsson also wrote a book for the Swedish Union of Journalists of instructions on how journalists should respond to threats. It is easy to see that many of the experiences Mikael Blomkvist in Larsson’s novel could have come from the author’s experience or concern’s about what could really happen to a crusading journalist.  Another reason I suspect Larsson identified with his character of Blomkvist and might have wanted to be like him, because he is depicted as a very smart cool guy with the highest journalist ethics. Also, quite a few of the women characters in this book and the previous two were very attracted to him and ended up in bed with him.

While not the  main focus of the book, there are clear themes of sexual freedom  and feminism  which reflect the more openness in Sweden in dealing with all  aspects of these issues. Berger an important woman editor in the book is very comfortable having a sexual relationship with Blomkvist although she is happily married with a very good sexual relationship with her husband who accepts her attraction and frequent beddings with her fellow journalist. A “muscular” but very attractive policewoman is an important lover of Blomkvist. There are descriptions of people comfortably in lesbian, gay and threesome relationships, which come up as side issues although not driving the story. Trafficking in young girls was an important part of the plot of the second book and derivatives of this situation continue into the final book of the trilogy. The “Girl” is Lisabeth, is a thin small boned young women, who has been sexually abused, is bisexual but yet constantly overcomes powerful men by her brain and her physical prowess. This is a young woman triumphing over her own abuse, which is a victory for herself, all women and obviously for a better society.

Whether it is the characters themselves, the enormity of the plot or the complicated mysteries that need to be solved by the police and the journalists, Stieg Larsson has captured the imagination of more than 20 million readers in 41 countries. In 2008 he was the second best selling author in the world. His untimely death by a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50, before any of his novels were published, robbed the world of a talented author. Although he may further live on through his work, as I understand that there were some unpublished, unfinished manuscripts in his computer when he died, which might have the making of at least one novel and maybe more.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson 

This is the second of three mystery novels written by Stieg Larsson who presented them to his publisher  shortly before he died in 2004. It’s success in sales is no doubt at least in part due to the ride on the coattails of the first published novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo although in my opinion it is not as crisp and gripping as the first novel. Since it was originally written in  the author’s native language  many names of characters and places are in Swedish which requires some concentration to keep track and is a distraction. It also seems to be a little more slow moving than the earlier story. The author takes time to describe details of things which ultimately don’t seem to make a difference to the plot or the movement of the story such as the exact layout of a street or a room of a house. However there is also a great deal of page turning suspense.

The story continues where the first novel left off with a main focus on the two main characters Mikael Bloomkvist a journalist and “the girl” Lisapeth Salander. The journalist is involved in a plan to publish an expose, which came his way about a sexual trafficking in young girls, which involved politicians and police among others. There are multiple murders and “ the girl” becomes centrally involved in this situation.. The plot and the developing murder mysteries that develop are quite original and involve Mikael and Lisapeth as well as a new group of police and bad guys. More than a few times the plot is moved along by a coincidence such as one character who happened to be visiting someone  when he heard one side of a phone call which was led to important developments. There was another instance when one character on an unexplained impulse picked up another character’s cell phone that was on the desk when he stepped out of the room and detected a phone call that he had made at a particular time which provided key information. These literary devices would seem to be short cuts that indicate some weaker writing than the first novels. Some of the imagery in the book effectively conjures up some well  known scenes in popular movies of men who are in humanly strong  and one scene where a character arises after almost certain death and burial.

In the end it is Lisapeth Salander who is the main focus of the story. She is a fascinating character who is not quite a lesbian although she comfortably has sex with women, not quite autistic or mentally ill  although she grew up with few friends, rarely cracks a smile and was put away in school for disturbed children as a youngster, not at all solidly built with a very thin child like build although she physically beat up several powerful men. She  is one of the world’s best computer hackers with a photographic memory who will never forget a detail that she reads and will never forget any one who mistreats her or people that she actually cares about.

I look forward to reading about her in the third and final novel. I also will be very interested to see how she is depicted and who will play her  in the series of movies based on these novels which are out now.

Buy now on Amazon: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson, the author, died in 2004 shortly after delivering to his publisher the manuscripts for this book (originally in Swedish of course) and two novels he subsequently wrote which I have not yet read. I also have not yet seen the Swedish movie of this story. I also understand there is an English movie soon to be released. The plot is basically a mystery that needs to be solved. One of the main protagonists of the novel is Mikael Bloomkvist, Swedish financial journalist, who as we meet him has just been convicted of libel for trying to expose a wealthy industrialist for his shady corrupt dealings. He thought that he had the evidence to expose him but he couldn’t produce it. His notoriety leads him to the Vanger family and sets him on his quest to solve a mystery, which involves a kidnapping, and much more. As the story develops there are lots of members of this family of whom initially it is a little hard to keep track. Many of the names and places and even small locations are Swedish names, which also threw me for a small loop. However, it really doesn’t distract from the story and Bloomkvist’s curiosity about this mystery. There are surprises with twists and turns, which are expected and appreciated in this genre. It is also interesting to reflect on the sexual mores of the country where the story takes place in that heterosexual casual sex among good friends without a romantic relationship is easily accepted. The story also encounters some perverted crimes that are spelled out in great detail. The author obviously either had a very vivid imagination or sadly enough he could have just taken these descriptions from the periodic reports of such crimes that are reported in the media. By far the most interesting character in the book is the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, who as a youth is shown to have had significant mental problems somewhere between being the product of a deprived childhood with sexual abuse and someone being on the autism spectrum. Now as a young woman she clearly has residual personality issues but is able to use her photographic memory and computer skills to play an important role in the solving of the mystery. She also is presented as an intriguing woman to some of the men in the story as well as to the readers. I understand that both she and the journalist will appear in the subsequent novels.  Larsson who himself was magazine editor with particular politically leanings did seem to have a good feel for the subject of his novel and wrote in an authentic manner. This was a very good read and I look forward to his subsequent books.

Reluctantly, I began this novel, believing I wouldn’t particularly be interested in these women’s lives or the historical time in which it was set. I was immediately sucked into the story line and the lives of these two        “beautiful” girls living in what they thought was an upper-class life style. The place was Shanghai, China and the time was 1937. Knowing that the world was about to change and that the characters would probably be impacted and swept up by these impending changes, riveted my attention to these people, their life style and culture. Just as we begin to know them and feel comfortable with the characters there is a crescendo of events, which we come to appreciative through the eyes of these girls. Arranged marriages, invasion by the Japanese, dissolution of family, fleeing home and country, rape, murder and the desire to survive captivates the reader as a great movie might also do (and this is sure to be made into one).

As engrossing and enlightening that the first half of the book may have been, it is the second half, which I found the most stimulating and thought provoking. The Shanghai girls come to the United States through Angel Island (the Ellis Island of the West) and struggle with their new family to survive in the ghettoized Chinatown in Los Angeles. The discrimination, which they and their family experience, and the treatment as second-class citizens is eye opening. The history books, which I studied, somehow never quite conveyed this story. I knew the U.S. interred Japanese after Pearl Harbor but I never appreciated how harshly we treated the Chinese who hated the Japanese as much as Americans did. Similarly, whatever you have understood about how badly McCarthyism  may have unfairly treated suspected “Communist sympathizers”, it was nothing compared to how Chinese in America were treated during the time that the Communists had just taken over China and were perceived as our enemy.

As I got into this book it was clear to me that the story could have been “ripped from today’s headlines”. You easily could substitute “ Latino” for “Chinese” and be describing the plight of “undocumented” Latinos who are being discriminated in our country today  and even persecuted under the new Arizona legislation. The family members in the book who were trying to eek out a living could be my gardener, the car washer and so many Latinos that we encounter everyday in Los Angeles.

In between periods of reading the book, I found myself thinking about what I knew about the refugees from Poland, Germany and Russia who were my family. I know best the story of my wife’s mother and grandparents who after being bourgeoisie in Russia were confronted and severely maltreated by the Cossacks and then by the Communists causing them to flee their homeland. By hook or by crook they made it to the United States. Initially they lived together in less than ideal accommodations and faced discrimination and hardships. It is easy to forget how so many of us are living the dreams of our ancestor immigrants. We may never fully know the hardships which they faced but are reminded of what they may have been when we read a book such as this one.

Lisa See, the author of Shanghai Girls has indicated in some notes at the conclusion of the book that she has researched the history and based much of the characters and plots on interviews and oral histories, which clearly gives this book an authentic ring. I thank her for work and also our book club for choosing his book for me to experience.

The following is a book review that I wrote which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry. It is followed by a brief Q & A with the author.

UNHINGED  Daniel J. Carlat, M.D. Free Press 255 pages 2010

Dan Carlat, in addition to practicing psychiatry, writing his popular newsletter and blog, editing a series of psychiatry books for Lippincott/Klowers (one of which I co-authored) and writing monthly blogs for Psychiatric Times periodically (as do I)   has written expose pieces about psychiatry for the N.Y Times and other widely circulated publications. He has spoken out about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the practice of psychiatry and particularly the large amount of money earned by psychiatrists from the drug companies  often without disclosures. This latter point has been considered to have  ethical and legal ramifications. Knowing this background, I eagerly approached the opportunity to review his new book Unhinged  published by Free Press    (2010) and given a subtitle of  “The Trouble with Psychiatry-A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis.”

Early in the book, Dr. Carlat shared his own experience as a practicing psychiatrist where he specialized in prescribing medications and referred patients in need of talk therapy to a “psychotherapist.” He expressed his view “that most people are under the misconception that an appointment with a psychiatrist will involve counseling, probing questions and digging into the psychological meaning of one’s distress.” He goes on to site data which shows that 1 out of 10 psychiatrists offer therapy to all their patients. (I am not sure if this is a valid point since some patients clearly don’t need or want psychotherapy.) He then talks about the well known income differential which favors providing psychopharmacology treatment over psychotherapy. He provides a case history where he did not tell a patient that psychotherapy might work just as well as medication. He said that he decided upon medication because he received little training in  psychotherapy during his three years of psychiatry residency (Mass General) and that he “ doesn’t do psychotherapy  because “I can’t do psychotherapy.” One of the themes of this book is Carlat’s odyssey to ultimately deciding to learn more about psychotherapy and follow a mode of his father who is a psychiatrist and develop a practice which combines psychopharmacology and psychotherapy even if he doesn’t make quite as much income as he did in the past. He shares the interactions with colleagues, teachers and mentors as well as patient vignettes, which lead him to this decision.

This book also examines other controversial issues. For example, Dr. Carlat discusses DSM which he calls “ The Bible of Psychiatry.” He believes that the tradition of psychological curiosity has been dying a gradual death and that DSM is in part the cause and the consequence of this transformation of our profession. He argues that as a result psychiatrists are less interested in “why” and more interested in “what”. (I thought that psychiatrists could chew gum and do other things at the same time. If we continue to use and refine it, DSM allows us to communicate better, do research and get paid.) Carlat interviewed both Bob Spitzer and Alan Francis, the leaders of DSM III and IV respectively who are  both quite critical of the emerging DSMV.

Not surprising, knowing of the previous writings of the author, a good part of the book dealt with the relationship between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry starting off with a chapter on “How Medication Became the New Therapy.” There is a  description of the evolution of various drugs used  in psychiatric  practice including the story of Prozac as well as examples of how and why new drugs are introduced as patents on old ones expire. While most of these stories are fairly well known to psychiatrists, it may be surprising to see the behind the scenes descriptions of how side effects such as sexual dysfunction and suicidality were initially minimized and ultimately handled.

The chapter on “How Companies Sell Psychiatrists on their Drugs” reflects some of the writing that Carlat has made in the popular media. He personalizes this important topic by describing his own  previous  relationship with various pharmaceutical representatives. He also reveals the fact that drug representatives have access to each doctors’ prescribing pattern before they visit him or her. He discusses how friendliness and  bringing little gifts such as books or one’s favorite Starbucks coffee have played a subtle but distinct influence on doctors and their prescribing habits. (There have been recent restrictions on these practices.)

Dr. Carlat also outlines his own experience of being a “hired gun” where he gave paid talks to primary care doctors and psychiatrists earning as much as $30,000 in one year. He told how he and his wife were flown to NY and stayed at luxurious hotels and ate in fine restaurants paid for by the pharmaceutical firm for which he was a speaker. He eventually decided that this was morally wrong and stopped this practice. He did go on to write about other psychiatrists whom he reports have made millions of dollars and in some cases were also receiving research grants.  He told  how they were not reporting to their universities, the income that they were receiving which was required. He details Iowa Senator Grassley’s investigations into very well known psychiatrists. He raises ethical questions about doctors taking pharmaceutical money while promoting off label use of various medications for treatment of ADHD and bipolar disorders in children.

There is a discussion of what Carlat calls “the seduction of technology”, specifically referring to the promotion of Vagal Nerve Stimulation and Trans Magnetic Stimulation.    (I observed how the latter technique was actively being promoted at the recent APA Meeting in New Orleans).  Interestingly, Carlat concludes this chapter with a statement that “psychiatrists  need to reacquaint themselves with the missing skill of psychotherapy.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting and controversial thesis of this book is the author’s conclusion that “medical school is the wrong place to train psychiatrists.” He believes that there should be programs that integrate psychopharmacology and psychological technique from the beginning of the training of psychologists . He goes on to say that  psychologists should ultimately prescribe medication as well as do psychotherapy. He describes one experimental model that was briefly used in the 1970s  at  a teaching institution in California but failed to be accepted as a model for licensed care. .

Whether or not you  agree with the arguments, analysis or conclusions of Dr. Carlat, there is no doubt that he has written a very thought provoking book that is based on his own experience with a reasonable attempt at documenting many of his statements. (There are 16 pages of notes and references).  His discovery of psychotherapy as a valid form of treatment will not surprise many of the readers of the journal where this review is appearing. His idea that that psychiatry at this time is troubled and in crisis is probably best judged by a longer historical view. However I suspect that this book will be used by historians to reflect some of thinking of the time as will be  another book written by the psychiatrist Peter Kramer  which came out  17 years ago titled Listening to Prozac . In the meantime Dr. Carlat’s views are out there for discussion and debate.

Take Five With the Author

Following are the answers to five questions I recently asked Dr. Carlat for this blog:

Dr B: Can you describe the reaction of your colleagues to this book?

Dr. C: The reaction from colleagues has been mixed. Most have agreed with the central idea, which is that psychiatry has moved too far into psychopharmacology and has largely abandoned therapy. Many have disagreed with my fairly radical proposals, such as creating an entirely new training system that would be an alternative to medical school and residency. And of course, some have become positively apoplectic at the idea that psychologists can prescribe from a limited formulary safely. So I’ve had my share of fan mail and hate mail.

Dr. B: Do you believe that at present there is enough transparency about possible conflicts of interest in national presentations at meetings and in journal articles?

Dr. C: No, all we get is the name of the company. We don’t get the amount of money, nor the name of the product that the presenter has promoted. These pieces of information are critical for the audience to judge the likelihood that money is affecting the accuracy of a presentation.

Dr. B: Do you have any ideas how the new healthcare legislation (Obamacare) will impact on the practice of psychiatry ?

Dr. C:It will increase the demand for psychiatrists, simply because we will be adding about 30 million people to the health insurance rolls. Some have argued that the emphasis on gate-keepers and accountable care organizations will take business away from psychiatrists, but I can’t imagine PCPs have either the time, interest, or expertise to deal with our patients.

Dr.B: Do you see psychotherapy by psychiatrists being viable in over the next 5- 10 years.?

Dr.C: Not unless psychiatrists are willing to take a drastic pay cut. There’s way of prettying this one up. Insurance companies are never going to pay nearly as much for an hour of therapy as for 3 or 4 psychopharm visits. So the more therapy you choose to do, the less money you will make in direct proportion. That’s assuming, of course, that you are taking insurance. As many as a third of psychiatrists have opted out of insurance and charge their regular fees for therapy, much higher than what they get reimbursed by insurance. Personally, I don’t think that’s a viable option from the standpoint of ethics and health care policy. And it’s demeaning to us. We’re saying, essentially, “our skills are not valuable enough for your health insurance to pay what we think we’re worth, so we don’t take insurance.” I’m not one of those who villainizes insurance companies, partly because many of my trusted psychiatrist colleagues work for insurance companies, and I know what they are up against. They make a serious attempt to come up with a fair market price for therapy, and they have found no compelling empirical evidence to suggest that a psychiatrists’ therapy session is worth double a social workers’.

Dr. B: Can you tell us about any new books or projects with which you are involved?

Dr. C: I am just extremely busy managing my publishing business right now. I wish I had time to write another book, but I have nothing in the wings.

Edward Bibring Photographs the Psychoanalysts of His Time

Edited by Sanford Gifford, Daniel Jacobs & Vivian Goldman

Pub. by The Analytic Press, Psychosozial-Verlag ( 2005), 206 pp.

People who are interested in psychoanalytic theory are usually quite fascinated with the period of time in which these ideas emerged and the people who developed them. Therefore a book of photographs of these people taken by one of them should be a valued treasure. This must have been part of the impetus that led the editors to put together this book which is suppose to be the first of a series of publications by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute based on material from their archives.

The photographs span the time period between 1932 and 1938. These are photographs taken by Edward Birbring at the 12^th IPA Congress in Wiesbaden in 1932, the 13^th IPA Congress in Lucerne in 1934, the 14^th IPA Congress in Mariendbad in 1936, the Vierlandertagung (which was a meeting of analysts from the four Central European countries) in Budapest in 1937 and the 15^th IPA Congress in Paris in 1938 as well as some miscellaneous photographs. Biebring used a Rolleiflex, which is a small camera that allowed candid pictures. It produced a nearly square format and the pictures in the book are all 4 x 4 ½ inches, in black and white of course.

Individual portraits were not the main theme of the book but there were some excellent head shots of Ernest Jones, Max Eitingon, Abraham A. Brill, Sandor Ferenczi and Sandor Rado at the beginning of the book. There also is a self portrait of Edward Bibring which appears on the cover of the book. It would be quite easy to obtain very good individual pictures of other subjects by editing the pictures where there was more than one person in the photograph.

Most of the photographs are groupings of people. While there are some in which all are smiling at the camera or eating food together, most show the subjects engaged in conversation with each other. Perhaps it is my imagination but it appears that they are intensely involved with their discussions. I wish I could know what Anna Freud and Melanie Klein were talking about (perhaps they were discussing their disagreements about psychoanalytic theory).

There were many excellent photographs of various people with Anna Freud and one of her brother Martin Freud, the eldest son, standing by himself. There were no pictures of Sigmund Freud and I can only assume that he did not attend these meetings although I do not know for sure.

Although I did not do a count, some people were in many more pictures than others. Max Eitingon, President of the 12^th IPA Congress, and Ernest Jones, President of the 13^th and 14^th IPA, were in various photographs with many different people. Marie Bonaparte seemed to get around and was in many pictures. Understandably, Grete Bibring, wife of the photographer and also an analyst was amply represented. There were many other well known names and some of their spouses. They were all dressed in the fashion of the times with many of the men wearing vests and hats and the women in long dresses. There was a particularly endearing picture of Helene Deutsch sipping a tall drink with a straw while Heinz Hartmann sits next to her with his arm draped around her chair, smiling at her with a cigar in his hand.

The last 30 pages of the book were short biographical sketches of many of the subjects in the book. This gave the reader not only a thumbnail view of the individuals but reflected the professional interactions of the times. It was very interesting to also see how the spread of the Nazi regime impacted on the people involved in the psychoanalytic movement.

There were many photographs of a woman named Vilma Kovacs about whom I knew nothing and was not included in the biographical sketches. A good book will often stimulate further thinking and I became curious about the role she may have played. I could not find any reference to her in the Ernest Jones or the Peter Gray biography of Freud where just about everyone else in the analytic movement seems to be listed in the index. I did track down information about her with an Internet search that I will summarize below to give an example of the lives and contributions of the extraordinary people who were photographed in this book.

Vilma Kovács-Prosznitz, the Hungarian psychoanalyst, was born at Szeged in Hungary on October 13, 1883 and died in Budapest in May 1940. She was the third daughter of a provincial bourgeois family and her father died while she was still very young, less than six years old. The family found itself destitute, and Vilma was married at the age of fifteen and against her will to a cousin, Zsigmond Székely, who was 20 years older than she. By the age of 19 she was the mother of three children. Alice, the eldest, later married Michael Balint. Vilma contracted tuberculosis and had to spend prolonged periods in a sanatorium. It was there that she met Frédéric Kovács, an architect, whom she married after a difficult divorce that separated her from her children for several years. A serious case of agoraphobia led Vilma into analysis with Sándor Ferenczi. He was quick to spot his patient’s talents and during the 1920s he trained her as a psychoanalyst, making her one of his closest collaborators.

In 1925, Vilma Kovács became head of the training committee. A highly reputed training analyst, she organized the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association’s clinical seminars and along with Sándor Ferenczi she elaborated the Hungarian training method: the candidate’s analyst supervises the candidate’s first case on the couch. Vilma Kovács’s work related almost totally to training. Practically every Hungarian analyst of her time frequented her clinical seminars at one time or another. More specifically, she analyzed Imre Hermann and Géza Róheim. She published only five articles, but one of them, Training Analysis and Control Analysis (1935), is a classic of psychoanalytic literature and has been translated into several languages. In another article, Examples of the Active Technique, dating from 1928, she provides a remarkably clear presentation of this technique that her mentor, Sándor Ferenczi, had just introduced, illustrating it with several examples. Through her clear-mindedness, her remarkable clinical sense, and her organizational skills, Vilma Kovács left a profound mark on the Hungarian school of psychoanalysis. – Summarized from the Psychoanalysis Dictionary

I have two suggestions for any future editions of this book or similar types of publications of historical photographs. It would be useful to have an index so that particular people of interest could be easily located. Also it would be helpful to have an accompanying DVD of digitalized photographs so that when we write about these people in the future we can to pull up these wonderful photographs and continue to share these images with future generations.

Buy now on Amazon: Let the Great World Spin

There are novels, which have a great plot, or story, which grabs the reader and takes them to a new place with new ideas. Then there are books which present fictional segments of life which may or may not flow together but give the reader a worthwhile journey . This work falls in the latter category and I haven’t yet made up my mind how glad I am that I took.this trip.  Mr. Mc Cann certainly provided a very insightful look at the meaning of the famous high wire walk between two world trade center towers which took place more than 30 years ago. The hundreds or perhaps thousands of New Yorkers who looked up in the sky that morning were united for a period of time just as New Yorkers would be united on 9/11 many years later. This time however people seemed to share a single focus on this distant figure on a wire  in their ultimate appreciation of one person’s determination to achieve something  which very few people on earth would even dream could be done. In contrast to this amazing feat we are exposed to the lives a series of people who had very little control over the defining moments of their lives. We meet a group of disparate women who are drawn together because their sons were killed in combat. A young man who was a kind of a Priest but really just wanted to help people but never got a chance to realize love once he found it. We follow the sad lives of New York City street hookers whose lives lead nowhere . Even the daughter of one who finds a way out of poverty which would have led her to the streets,  escapes it only  by a quirk of fate. If we needed to be reminded, we see how New York City is a melting pot of an untold number of untold stories. I recall riding the subway many years ago  in this enormous city and wondering how many of these anonymous people might somehow be connected by some degrees of separation. There is no special meaning to the causal connection which some of the characters in the book have to each other . There is no real reason why most of the people should be in the same book. The world spins and the author clipped a few people who were living in New York and told us about part of their lives. He did a good job but it might have been a great book  if there had been a well thought out story ( but that would have been a different book).

Buy now on Amazon: Olive Kitteridge

No doubt Elizabeth Strout is a talented insightful author who is able to use her main character, as well as well as those that are part of her  life or cross paths with her, to mine a potpourri of human emotions more often on the bitter side. In each of her 13 chapters she deals mostly with a retired school teacher’s trials and tribulations whether it be with Henry her husband and long time pharmacist of their small town in Maine, Christopher her only son who doesn’t deliver her expectations as far their mother-child adult relationships or others whom she has encountered. Each story dealt with an original slice of life with unflinchingly honest depiction of the inner thoughts of Olive and the other characters. However, I have to admit, I had no problem putting down ( or shutting off my Kindle ) and never was in a rush to fire it up. I must be in the minority here as this is a Pulitzer winning book. Perhaps I am looking for a more refreshing uplifting or challenging reading experience that offers a new twist on the usual conflicts of life. I could easily understand why her son while dutiful was not anxious to be steeped in his mother’s needy wish for payback. This even made me reflect of how I hope that I would not put that expectation on my own kids (although I suppose I could), which allowed me to give some credit and value to this reading assignment. The concluding experience of Olive in her older age which allowed her to appreciate her need to love and be loved was another well done literary accomplishment of this book. However when I weigh all, I still have to give a thumbs down to this book