THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM by Marie Benedict

Kudos to Marie Benedict for bringing to light the accomplishments of such women as Hedy Lamarr.  Now if only her writing had a little more sparkle.  Anyway, back to Hedy.  With WWII approaching, she marries a powerful Austrian arms dealer in the hope that he can protect her and her Jewish parents from the purge that is coming.  Inevitably, her husband joins forces with Hitler and Mussolini, and Hedy escapes to California to resume her acting career.  Guilt continues to haunt her over the fact that she had access to information about Nazi weaponry that she failed to pass on to the Allies.  To help the war effort, she and George Antheil, a composer, develop a system of torpedo guidance, which they present to the U.S. Navy.  Naturally, the Navy refuses to believe that their system has merit, supposedly because Hedy and George lack credibility as scientists.  In addition to the lackluster writing style of this novel, another shortcoming for me was the abrupt ending to the book.  Most of all, though, I felt that the author took a major shortcut in not giving the reader a little more information as to how Hedy and George became well-versed in wireless technology.  They patented their idea, which was inspired by player piano ribbons, but did they get all of their education from books?  One of the Navy’s initial objections was that their invention was too heavy.  Hedy claims in the novel, however, that their system would fit inside a watch.  Wow, I know nothing about this type of technology, but the transistor radios of the 1960s—two decades later—were a lot bigger than a watch.

THE HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth

Coleman Silk is a classics professor at a small college.  When he innocently refers to some students that have never shown up for class as spooks, his remark is interpreted by some as racist, as the students are black.  Although he had no previous knowledge of the students’ ethnicity, he eventually resigns from his post, further cementing the appearance of guilt.  The irony of his plight is that Coleman is black himself, although he has managed to conceal this fact from his wife, children, colleagues, and friends for decades.  Near the end of the novel, his sister contrasts his behavior, in which he has divorced himself totally from his mother and siblings, with that of his brother, who has fought for civil rights.  Perhaps Coleman has taken the easy way out, in order to receive treatment equal to whites, but his whiteness is ultimately his downfall.  This aspect of the storyline captivated me, but another aspect did not.  Coleman enters into a sexual relationship with Faunia, a woman half his age, who is a member of the janitorial staff at the college.  Her ex-husband is a PTSD victim and is stalking her, putting Coleman in harm’s way as well.   I just didn’t understand what Faunia’s real purpose was in the novel, except to give Coleman something to live for after the demise of his career.  The novel is set against the backdrop of Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings, and Coleman’s affair seems to mirror Clinton’s escapades--sort of.  Overall, though, the storyline is unsettling, making it a decent read, especially with Roth’s fabulous prose, except when the author does get a little carried away with ruminations, slowing the pace down to a crawl.

I MARRIED A COMMUNIST by Philip Roth

This novel takes place during the McCarthy era, and Ira Ringold is a communist.  He is also a radio star married to an even bigger star.  His marriage is hampered by his wife’s adult daughter who rules the roost.  Still, he hangs in there, partly because he fears that if he bails out of the marriage he will be blacklisted.  His older brother Murray is a high school teacher, and his student, Nathan Zuckerman, is the narrator.  Nathan becomes sort of a protégé to both men, and he becomes caught up in Ira’s vision for the common man.  This is really Ira’s story, though, and his personal situation with all the trappings of fame contrasts sharply with his political leanings.  Nathan, on the other hand, has to choose between Ira’s influence and that of a college professor who admonishes Nathan for mixing politics with art in his writing.  The issue that struck me the most was Ira’s complaint that communists in this country were being persecuted for what they thought, while no one was being punished for the lynchings taking place in the South.  I found this book to be highly applicable to today’s political divide, and Roth’s prose is always superb.  At one point he describes a dilapidated punching bag with supreme eloquence and humor.  That paragraph alone makes this book worth reading, and it has nothing to do with communism or politics.  All in all, I liked this book better than American Pastoral.

VOX by Christina Dalcher

Imagine that our country’s leaders have decided in the past year that women should not speak more than 100 words per day.  In this novel they enforce this limit by requiring all women to wear a metal wrist counter that delivers a nasty shock if the wearer exceeds her maximum word count.  Women no longer study anything in school except rudimentary arithmetic and home ec.  Jean, our first-person narrator, is a neurolinguist who was researching a cure for a brain disorder that causes language dysfunction.  However, women can no longer hold jobs, and Jean just did not see this dystopian development coming.  Then she is suddenly called back into service to finish her work, alongside her two colleagues--Lorenzo, who also happens to be her lover and the father of her unborn child, and Lin, whom Jean has not seen since their work was discontinued.  Jean fears that her unborn child will be a girl whose language skills will be stifled just as her 6-year-old daughter’s are now.  Jean also has three sons who are starting to drink the Kool-Aid of the misogynists, and her husband, the president’s science advisor, is on her side but not necessarily willing to make waves.  Soon she and her teammates discover the true nefarious purpose of their research, complicating matters even further.  This book is stunning in many ways and points up all sorts of sticky issues, including Jean’s growing resentment and distrust of the men in her family, as she and Lorenzo hatch a possible plot to get out of the country before the baby is born.  Although we know from the first sentence that Jean will succeed in overthrowing the government in a week, the book is still suspenseful and a bit madcap, as we learn that she has more sympathizers to her cause than she realizes.

THE RIVER by Peter Heller

Peter Heller knows how to tell a suspenseful adventure story.  This novel is as turbulent as its title waterway, in which two college students, Wynn and Jack, take a Canadian wilderness canoe trip.  Things start to get dicey when they spot a raging wildfire that forces them to re-evaluate their plan.  However, the fire is not the only life-threatening obstacle.  The two men add a seriously injured woman, Maia, to their party and find themselves in the crosshairs of her possibly psychopathic husband, Pierre.  Soon their leisurely paddle trip becomes a quest for survival, and their absolute trust in one another starts to erode.  Wynn, the eternal optimist, has a tough time grasping that Pierre could be lying in wait planning an ambush.  Jack, on the other hand, has a sixth sense that warns him when something is amiss, and he takes a more pragmatic approach:  Get them before they get you.  Regardless, these are two guys that you would trust with your life, and Maia has to do just that.  They manage to feed her and stitch her up, even after most of their provisions have been lost.  Their Deliverance-like nightmare had me in its clutches right up until the end, at which point the narration becomes very confusing.  Fortunately, the epilogue clarifies everything.  I think I understand why the author wrapped things up in this fashion, since a heartbreaking event basically renders everything that happens afterward relatively unimportant.  I’ve read all of Heller’s novels, and this one is second only to The Dog Stars.

IN THE WOODS by Tana French

Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are partners in the Dublin Murder Squad, and they have just received a case involving the murder of a 12-year-old girl, Katy Devlin, in Knocknaree.  Unbeknownst to their boss, Rob grew up in that area, and two of his friends disappeared from there when they were kids two decades ago.  He was with them that day but remembers nothing about what happened.  That’s my first problem with this novel.  Rob has apparently declined hypnosis and/or psychotherapy as a means of unlocking his memory.  Really?  Plus, I found it implausible that more characters didn’t guess Ryan’s involvement in the old case.  Anyway, the big question is whether or not the two cases are related.  Investigating Katy’s murder causes Rob to become increasingly more unhinged and less objective about the suspects in the case, and his previously superb relationship with Cassie suffers.  As a result, Rob, the first-person narrator throughout, becomes less appealing as a character, while Cassie’s star rises.  All of the main characters are well-developed, including Katy’s dysfunctional family members.  Also front and center is an archaeological excavation, where Katy’s body was discovered, that is taking place in advance of a controversial roadway development.  A corrupt political figure who stands to gain major financial benefit from the roadway appears to be the only person with a motive.  All in all, this is a better-than-average thriller, with solid writing and dialog, but the ending was disappointing.