Category: Books

The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celedon Books, 333 pages)

Alex Michaelides’ first book, The Silent Patient, was a runaway best seller. That’s a situation that an author both loves and fears. Loves because, well, best seller! Fears because now that he’s hit the highest spot how does he maintain that kind of momentum?

The Maidens is an OK book. It is definitely not a great or even a compelling book. I’ve tried to not compare the writing to The Silent Patient, but it is near impossible. Essentially, the author’s fears came true. Readers like me are comparing it to his first book and are finding that this one comes up short.

In this suspense novel, Mariana is a grieving fairly recent widow and group therapist who gets contacted by her niece Zoe from Cambridge University. A murder of one of Zoe’s friends has prompted her to reach out to have Mariana come to Cambridge and assist if possible in finding the perpetrator. The story then follows the traditional cat and mouse game that seems to be played in all murder mysteries.

Except that this storyline has an intelligent woman who suspects a professor of committing a murder and yet she agrees to meet privately with him several times. Not such an intelligent thing to do. Apparently this guy has put her under the same spell that he casts on his female students (and which causes a devoted entourage of women to wear long white dresses as they flock around him at a funeral).

It’s difficult to get behind both Mariana and Zoe as protagonists. They simply make too many illogical decisions. History of both of them having mental illness including depression is mentioned often and (I think) the reason for that is to cast doubt on both women’s actions and deductions.

Sigh. Can men in particular please write away from that tired trope? Mental illness especially in women does not mean that you throw all caution aside. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you throw all sensibility to the wind.

There is also an attempt to make the story something more than it is by invoking the aura of Greek mythology and secret societies. None of it ever seems to click. It never really makes any sense.

I love good pacing and I have to say that the pacing in The Maidens is off. Lots of time spent describing something of no importance and not enough time explaining why someone would take a particular action. And don’t get me started on the dialogue and situation descriptions — clunky and contrived to get a point across.

Professor Fosca suggested they have coffee and dessert in the sitting room, and Mariana reluctantly followed him into the next room. He gestured at the large dark sofa by the fireplace. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Mariana felt unwilling to sit next to him and be that close to him — it made her feel unsafe, somehow. And a thought occurred to her — if she felt uneasy being alone with him, how might an eighteen-year-old girl feel?

She shook her head. “I’m tired. I think I’ll skip dessert.”

“Don’t go, not yet. Let me make some coffee.”

Before she could object, Fosca left the room, disappearing into the kitchen.

Spoiler alert, even though Mariana feels uncomfortable, even though she’s a therapist who works with dangerous people, and even though she suspects Fosca of murder, she stays for dessert with him, alone.

Michaelides tries so valiantly to make Mariana come across as strong and intuitive and it doesn’t work. We are left shaking our heads and wondering where her common sense is.

Look, I hate giving a book a bad grade. I know it takes guts and pure determination to write a book. It takes even more to write a second book after you’ve hit the jackpot with your first, but this book is just meh. Not inventive, no real character development and situations that feel forced. It feels rushed (“The numbers are great on your first book, let’s take advantage of that and pump out another while your name is still fresh”).

Should you read it? If you’re on vacation and it’s the only book available, sure, you should read it, but (and I’m going to be brutally honest here) there are so many other really good books out there to read before you pick this one up.

By all means read The Silent Patient, which is a fantastic book and worthy of all its praise, but this one? I’m just not putting it on my “books you must read” list. If you’re interested in following how writers write over the course of different books, then go ahead and read it, but if you’re looking for an exciting page-turner then move along, there’s nothing to see here.

C

— Wendy E. N. Thomas

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Book Notes

Serious question: Do we care what Bill Gates reads anymore?

Because, ugly divorce and apology tour aside, he still thinks we do, sending out his usual reading suggestions even though the whole books-with-Bill-by-the-fireside thing has lost its appeal in light of Gates’ association with Jeffrey Epstein, now earnestly regretted on CNN.

In his blog this month, Gates reveals that Vaclav Smil, a Canadian economic policy analyst, is his favorite author, although he suggests Smil is too brilliant for most of us with average IQs. (His writing is “too detailed or obscure for a general audience,” Gates says.)

But Smil’s latest book, now out in paperback, is apparently more understandable and Gates recommends it for “anyone who loves learning.” Numbers Don’t Lie (Penguin, 368 pages) is billed as “71 stories to help us understand the modern world” and it’s composed of short takes on eclectic topics, such as what happens when we have fewer children, why chicken rules and how sweating improved hunting. (Don’t ask; I haven’t read it yet.)

As to whether we care what Gates reads anymore, the answer, apparently, is yes. The Kindle version of the book is No. 1 in public policy as of this writing.

Meanwhile, if you’d rather read a book about a billionaire rather than one recommended by one, check out Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Bloomberg editor Brad Stone (Simon & Schuster, 496 pages).

Of much more interest to the average American reader, however, there’s a new book out by Stephen King. Billy Summers (Scribner, 528 pages) is about an American war veteran turned killer-for-hire, but like all good antiheroes, he only kills bad guys. It’s being called his best book in years, which could be a compliment, or not.

— Jennifer Graham

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Books

Author events

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• MICHAEL “SY” SISEMORE Author presents In the Real World I Hike: Transformation of Purpose and Self in 5 Million Easy Steps. Sat., Aug. 14, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• PETER FRIEDRICHS Author presents And the Stars Kept Watch. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Aug. 17, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JEFF SHARLET Author and journalist will present his books, as part of the Tory Hill Author Series, including his newest, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sat., Aug. 21, 7 p.m., to be held virtually via Zoom. Tickets are $5. Visit toryhillauthorseries.com/jeff-sharlet.

• AMY MAKECHNIE Author presents her second middle-grade novel Ten Thousand Tries. Sat., Aug. 21, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• SHARON RASK HUNTINGTON Author presents Mirabelle’s Metamorphosis. Joint event with MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the Pillsbury Free Library. Thurs., Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m. Jim Mitchell Community Park, East Main Street, Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• L.R. BERGER New Hampshire poet to hold release party of latest book Indebted to Wind. Sat., Aug. 28, 4 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

Poetry

• POETRY IN THE MEADOW Featuring readings with poets Chad deNiord, Kylie Gellatly and Samantha DeFlitch. Sun., Aug. 22, 4:30 p.m. The Word Barn Meadow, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter. $5 suggested donation. Visit thewordbarn.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

Featured photo: The Maidens.

Wayward, by Dana Spiotta (Knopf, 270 pages)

In 2013, New Hampshire author Howard Mansfield published a gorgeous ode to the physical structure that, if we are lucky, we come to see as a home, not a house. Dwelling in Possibility examined what Mansfield called “the soul of shelter,” the nourishment that we get from a pile of lumber, concrete, steel and stone.

Dana Spiotta does this, too, in her new novel Wayward, which is about a woman who, traumatized by the 2016 election, impulsively buys a run-down house and walks out of her marriage.

There were, of course, other catalysts for the decision that are revealed over time. But in setting up a wholly unexpected type of unfaithfulness — a woman falling in love with an illicit house — Spiotta taps into a rarely explored subject: the emotional connection that many people have to their homes, even when, to the world, it may seem irrational. “The house was falling apart. The house was beautiful,” Sam thinks to herself as she falls for a century-old cottage after being the only person to show up for the open house. (Apparently, bored women go to open houses as a form of recreation — who knew?)

She was seduced by its tile-lined fireplace, custom-built storage benches and old wood, which made her own house, with its gas fireplace and perpetually distracted husband, look hopelessly bourgeois.

Sam makes an offer on the house and decides to leave her husband without thinking much about the consequences, only vaguely aware that “saying yes to this version of her life would mean saying no to another version of her life.”

When she tells Matt, he is standing at the blender, making a post-workout smoothie, and doesn’t stop what he is doing, suggesting that Sam is making a bold and empowering decision that will radically improve her life. In fact, life is never that simple.

The decision fractures an already tense relationship with Sam’s 16-year-old daughter, who has just begun a secretive relationship with a much older man. And the complexities of leaving the suburbs and navigating a new life in the city, with a couple of amusingly woke friends, complicates Sam’s life as she attempts to ignore the worsening condition of her own mother, Lily, who has pancreatic cancer.

Meanwhile, her husband seems determined to love her back into the family home, writing Sam checks to cover her expenses, including the full cost of the house (“It’s your money, too,” he tells her) and sending her flowers on the first day she sleeps there. “Dusty peach-colored peonies, her favorite. Her leaving had made him attend her, but he didn’t understand that wasn’t her intention at all. Sam just wanted to be alone in her house.”

Matt’s graciousness thrusts Sam into a place of “phony poverty, fake independence” as her part-time job as a tour guide at the Clara Loomis House couldn’t have paid even her small bills.

The family tensions ramp up to a satisfying crescendo, but the real pleasure in Wayward is Spiotta’s grasp of the mundane, as in her treatment of Sam’s of chronic insomnia (which will be utterly relatable to anyone who has ever bolted awake at 3 a.m. and not been able to get back to sleep) and necessary but painful tensions that both physically and emotionally tear apart older teens and their parents. She also has a shrewd wit that leavens the novel’s serious themes.

“You do seem deranged,” Matt says to Sam as they discuss the election of someone they loathed (a person never mentioned by name, but the novel starts in 2017). She is deranged, but in the way that we all are these days: overwhelmed, underfunded, desperately trying to do right by other people while doing right by ourselves, to stay asleep the whole night, take care of our children, take care of our parents, take care of the planet. This is a thoroughly contemporary novel, with its Facebook groups of outraged women (WWW: Women Won’t Wilt, and Central New York Crones) and soliloquies on higher education and other contemporary frustrations. (Sam sees the college admissions process as a sort of Hunger Games.)

It is also a solidly regional novel; you will learn more than you want to about Syracuse, New York, to include its architecture and history. And apparently Clara Loomis, the namesake of the historical house at which Sam works, is an invention of the author, which is a bit confusing given that she is linked to real people, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. At the end, the novel shape-shifts with letters and journal entries from Loomis, which complicates the work in ways that are not all positive. There is also no obvious resolution to many of the family’s struggles; people who like an ending neatly tied with a ribbon may grumble at the conclusion.

Wayward is not chick lit; it’s too smart a book for that. But it’s definitely a novel for women, and women of a certain age. For that demographic, it’s a slam dunk, especially if the women lean Democrat. A-

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Book Notes

The announcement of book award nominees in the summer is the equivalent of pumpkin-spice products emerging in August. It’s way too early. We still haven’t finished our beach reads.

But the long list for the Booker Prize came out this week, and if nothing else, it’s confirmation of the Hippo’s good taste. Three books on the list were reviewed here and given A’s: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf, 321 pages), No One is Talking About Thisby Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead, 224 pages) and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf, 608 pages).

The award, given each November, is for the best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The inclusion of American authors is a perennial source of friction in the U.K., although interestingly the British novelist Ishiguro has been supportive of the change, made in 2014. (In addition to his current nomination, Ishiguro won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.)

Besides Lockwood and Shipstead, two other Americans are on the long list this year: Nathan Harris and Richard Powers; Harris for The Sweetness of Water (Little, Brown and Co., 368 pages) and Powers for Bewilderment(W.W. Norton, 288 pages), which hasn’t even been released yet. Its release date is Sept. 21.

Meanwhile, props to the U.K. publication The Guardian, which each year runs a “Not the Booker Prize” contest, because, in its words, “the judges of Britain’s most prestigious literary award pick the wrong book too often.” The readers of The Guardian’s book blog vote on their favorites. Last year’s winner was Hello Friend We Missed You, by Richard Owain Roberts, which was published in the U.S. in paperback this year (Parthian, 200 pages) and is described on Amazon as “bleakly comic.”

Alas, the author only won a Guardian coffee mug. The Booker Prize winner this year, to be announced Nov. 3, will collect $69,000.

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Books

Author events

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents her new novel Count the Ways. Phenix Hall, 38 N. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 5, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• SADIE & CORBIN RAYMOND Authors present 121 Days: The Corbin Raymond Story of Fighting for Life and Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Aug. 10, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• PETER FRIEDRICHS Author presents And the Stars Kept Watch. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Aug. 17, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Wayward.

The Lost Boys of Montauk, by Amanda M. Fairbanks (Gallery Books, 295 pages)

The Lost Boys of Montauk is not exactly a feel-good book. It is the true account of a 1984 fishing trip where all four crewmembers were lost in a horrific storm off the shores of Long Island. The easiest way to describe this is to say that it is another version of The Perfect Storm. However, while the outcomes are similar, the differences in the stories lie in the details and decisions that got each crew to a specific point where tragedy happens.

In the first chapter we are told that all souls on board the Wind Blown from Montauk were lost at sea. Of course this makes reading the rest of the book a little difficult as we then learn about each of the sailors on board, their roles in the community, and their plans for the future. We try to keep ourselves from becoming attached because we know what the future holds for them.

However, it’s tough to stop turning the pages. Fairbanks does an amazing job of essentially reconstructing the “crime” scene and soon you realize that, as in the story The Perfect Storm, it took a series of seemingly unconnected events coming perfectly together to cause this tragedy.

Much research and many interviews went into this book; it reads more as a detailed journalistic article than it does a thrilling story. One is absolutely amazed at the level of information the author was able to unearth.

Montauk is an old fishing community whose residents live and die by the sea and their craft. The old hands talk about boats the same way more affluent people talk about their beloved cars. Boats are given names and personalities; they are respected and coddled, for without them there is no income and no livelihood.

Young men (and occasionally women) who are born into the fishing village and others who show up for the summer acknowledge the hard work that is required on a commercial fishing trip. This book takes a look at the relationships between the “old-timers” and the “elites” who coexist on the island. Sometimes they work well together, sometimes they don’t. But it turns out they all respect a sea that can turn on you at any moment.

There are four on the ship. Mike, the captain and father of three young boys, is the leader of the pack, which includes Dave, a young son of money who would rather work on a boat than in a wealthy profession. Another crew member, Michael, not quite 20, is the son of a fisherman and had planned to work his way up to his own crew someday. Then there’s Scott; raised by a single mom, he’s the youngest of the crew but he always carried his full weight of work.

They are all so darn likeable.

In her research Fairbanks uncovers discussions that sting when read in hindsight, like this one Mike and his wife Mary had when making the decision to buy the Wind Blown:

“‘I’m going to die on that boat,’ Mike repeatedly said to Mary. ‘I need my own boat.’ Mary didn’t disagree. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her husband to own his own boat. It was the next logical step. But Mary, who is a deeply intuitive person (several people described her to me as “witchy”), had a bad feeling about the Wind Blown from the very start. She felt a heavy, sinking feeling, a knowing in the pit of her stomach.”

Through Fairbanks’ interviews we get to know the families of these crew members. We hear their struggles with loss, grief and a certain amount of acceptance that “the boys died doing the job they so loved.”

The story is filled with so many “if they had only gone down another path or made another decision, then the ending would have been different” moments. One crew member who was not able to be on the boat due to a travel delay was replaced with another at the last moment. What if travel had not been delayed? What if Mary had been able to talk Mike out of buying that particular boat?

We will never know what might have happened and that’s part of what makes this a compelling read. Again, this is not a feel-good, inspirational story, but it is a fascinating look at the age-old brotherhood of fishermen, the dynamics at play, and the families who literally live and die within the sight of water. A

— Wendy E. N. Thomas

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Books

Author events

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• SHAWNA-LEE PERRIN Author presents Radio Waves. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Sun., Aug. 1, 2 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents her new novel Count the Ways. Phenix Hall, 38 N. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 5, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• SADIE & CORBIN RAYMOND Authors present 121 Days: The Corbin Raymond Story of Fighting for Life and Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Aug. 10, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Featured photo: The Lost Boys of Montauk.

Noise, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein (Little, Brown Spark, 398 pages)

Five years ago, writing in Harvard Business Review, the esteemed psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman joined with a few other enviably smart people to discuss the concept of noise: not the kind your neighbors make while you’re trying to sleep, but the kind that clouds judgments, sometimes to devastating effect.

This kind of noise, as Kahneman describes it, is the wide variance in outcomes that we might think should be similar but instead are all over the map. One of the most obvious examples of this is in criminal justice, where one person might get a 20-year sentence for a crime, while another gets five years and community service. That makes the criminal justice system particularly noisy, in Kahneman terms.

But even if you don’t plan on going to jail, noise in human judgment probably affects you, as people such as doctors and loan officers also have wide discretion in their decisions. It’s not just unusual — it’s unnervingly common— for physicians to offer different diagnoses a few weeks apart when researchers present them with the exact same case.

And completely unrelated things such as whether people have eaten recently and whether their sports team won over the weekend can affect the decisions they make.

It’s an important subject and one worthy of consideration, more so if you’re in a noisy profession or at the mercy of one. And so fans of Kahneman, whose 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow was universally lauded, might be excited to delve into his latest, Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. Unfortunately, most of us would be better off just reading the Harvard Business Review article from 2016, which lays out the principles of noise without causing the reader unnecessary pain.

Noise is a scholarly book written for a scholarly audience that is at the forefront of the literary conversation only because Thinking, Fast and Slow was so well-received. Had this manuscript fallen into the hands of a publisher who knew nothing of the authors or their past credits, it would have been cut in half or, equally likely, still languish in the slush pile.

To their credit, the authors did try to simplify their subject for a mass audience. Or at least one of them did. You never know, with three authors, who is writing at any given point, and Noise is erratic in its understandability. You might say the book itself is noisy.

Some chapters read like AP psychology, others like an Ivy League dissertation. (Example: “You may have noticed that the decomposition of system noise into level noise and pattern noise follows the same logic as the error equation in the previous chapter, which decomposed error into bias and noise.”) Not that they didn’t give us warning. In the opening to the book, the authors suggest some readers might want to skip the first four parts of the book (there are six) and go straight to Part 5, essentially skipping half the book.

But people who do that will miss some of the book’s interesting content, including how the free-throw averages of NBA players have the wide variability of noise despite the hoop always being 10 feet away and the ball always weighing 22 ounces. That’s because the players are susceptible to the same lottery-like forces that we are in our daily lives. We are not the same people that we were 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago, because of variables such as mood, stress and fatigue. So decisions in ordinary life can be noisy as well, although they can rarely be documented as such.

So what to do about this problem? Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein have some solutions. One is to adopt the social-science concept known as the “wisdom of crowds.” Researchers have shown that while individuals may not be great at guessing things, whether the number of gumballs in a glass bowl or the number of airports in the U.S., as a group we come close, when researchers combine individual guesses into an average or mean. Taking the average of four independent judgments can reduce noise by half, the authors write.

Outside a social-science lab, the best way to leverage this finding in our daily life is to get other people’s opinions (independent ones, not people with the proverbial dog in the fight) and make a decision that best represents the mean. If you don’t have time or inclination to consult others, social science has another solution: create an “inner crowd” by coming up with your own best guess, and then basically challenging your own decision: Assume your first decision is wrong and consider why. Then make a different decision, based on these reasons. Often, the best decision will lie in the space between your first and second choices.

That’s one strategy in creating a personal form of “decision hygiene,” which the authors suggest. But they write about a nebulous topic and concede that it’s nearly impossible to know how good decision hygiene helps. “Correcting a well-identified bias may at least give you a tangible sense of achieving something. But the procedures that reduce noise will not. They will, statistically, prevent many errors. Yet you will never know which errors. Noise is an invisible enemy, and preventing the assault of an invisible enemy can yield only an invisible victory.”

Like Kahneman’s previous work, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 2002, the theories put forth in Noise will be considered groundbreaking and this book will likely win awards that have nothing to do with its readability. Outside the academy, it’s a hard row to hoe, but there’s value in skimming. C

Book Notes

The 2020 Olympic Games, postponed because of the pandemic, kick off this weekend, but don’t feel too sorry for the athletes competing a year late and without spectators.

Things could be worse, and in fact have been, as you will learn in Total Olympics by Jeremy Fuchs (Workman, 336 pages), who promises to reveal “every obscure, hilarious, dramatic and inspiring tale worth knowing.”

The worst in recent memory has to be the 1972 Olympics, the year of the Munich massacre. But in terms of sheer hassle and inconvenience for the athletes, consider 1948, when London finally got around to holding the 1944 games (canceled because of the war). The city was so spent and countries were so broke that this was dubbed the “Austerity Games” with athletes making their own uniforms and bringing their own food. But they pulled it off and let it be known that a Dutch mother of two won four gold medals in track and field and became known internationally as “the Flying Housewife.” It looks to be an entertaining read between commercials.

For a narrower look, specific to track-and-field athletes, check out The Fastest Men on Earth by Neil Duncanson (Welbeck, 384 pages). It’s a new paperback that tells the stories of 25 Olympic sprinters, including superstar Usain Bolt.

Also worth a look: Olympic Pride, American Prejudice by Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher (Atria, 400 pages), billed as “the untold story of 18 African Americans who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” The hardcover edition came out last year; a paperback will be issued in September.

And for those of you with zero interest in the Olympics, celebrated science writer Sam Kean has a new book out this month. The Icepick Surgeon (Little, Brown and Co., 369 pages) is an entertaining, if deeply disturbing, look at rogue scientists throughout the ages. An introductory quote by Dr. Thomas Rivers sets it up nicely: “All I can say is, it’s against the law to do many things, but the law winks when a reputable man wants to do a scientific experiment.”

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Books

Author events

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents Count the Ways. Toadstool Bookstore, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Sat., July 24, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 924-3543.

• GIGI GEORGES Author presents Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Toadstool Bookstore, Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Route 101A, Nashua. Sat., July 24, 2 to 4 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JESS KIMBALL Author presents My Pseudo-College Experience. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., July 27, 6 to 7 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

Featured photo: Noise.

The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celedon Books, 320 pages)

Writers, for the most part, live boring lives. We sit at our desks and imagine a world that may or may not exist. The last time we read about a writer having an “adventure” was in Misery by Stephen King.

And we all know how that one turned out — ouch.

Still, writers are my people, they are my tribe and if a fictional suspense thriller comes out where the main protagonist is a writer? I’m in. Such is the case with The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

The plot of The Plot is a bit convoluted, but that’s what makes it so interesting. A one-hit wonder novel writer named Jacob (Jake) Bonner stalls on writing his next book for years. He admits that for a writer, his best days may be behind, which sends him into a depressive spiral. To make money and barely survive he “teaches” (read shows up) at an MFA program for writers.

Part of what Jake teaches about writing fiction is plot. Writers all know that there are only so many plot lines out there. The quest, the voyage and return, coming of age, overcoming the monster, etc. All plots fall within those boundaries and we are taught that no other plot lines exist.

One of his students, a brash, rather uneducated brute, tells Jake his idea for a book. The plot, he insists, is one that has never been written before and is so good that it won’t matter if the writing is not proficient — the book will sell.

Hmm, that must be one heck of a plot.

The student tells Jake his story’s plot and Jake has to agree: It’s a plot line that has never been identified. It’s really good. The student is right to be cocky; he’s going to make a lot of money from the book. Even if it’s poorly written.

After the program, the student moves on and Jake continues to sink into a depression.

Years later, Jake wonders why there has never been any talk about his student’s book with the unique plot. After doing a little research he discovers that his former student had died a few months after the writer’s program. The book was never written.

So Jake writes his student’s story. It’s important to note that he doesn’t plagiarize the words of his student, but he does use the idea of his plot, in much the same way that The Lion King uses the plot of Hamlet. Just like the cocky student predicted, the plot of the story is so good that, especially when done by an accomplished writer, the book zooms to the top of every best seller list. Jake is in hot demand, he’s on TV, a movie by an A-list director is optioned. Everything is wonderful! Jake even finds a supportive fan girlfriend who seems to fill in all the holes in his world. Life is definitely good.

Until Jake gets a mysterious email with the message: “I know what you’ve done, you stole someone else’s story.” This is where the real action starts. We get to watch a writer devolve from guilt (the absolute worst thing you can accuse a writer of is plagiarism, even if technically it’s not true).

The messages keep coming. Jake begins to investigate. If the original student with the plot idea is dead then who is sending the messages? What follows are twists and turns and unexpected happenings that will keep you flipping those pages.

And yes, The Plot is a twist in itself. As it is told, it appears to contain what could be a new plot structure (or at the very least plot device) because at the very end, the one thing that is never supposed to happen in a hero’s tale happens. I literally gasped because we are all taught you just can’t do that.

While you don’t need to be a writer to enjoy this book, having some literary background on plot construction makes it that much more enjoyable.

Short chapters that switch between the current story and the book that Jake wrote work together to weave a series of events that you don’t necessarily know are connected until the very end. While I did suspect something was “wrong” I did not figure out what was going on until it was explained, making this a truly suspenseful read.

I love page-turners and this book was one for me. Started it one evening, finished it the next.

Intelligent, entertaining, swiftly moving — I wouldn’t be surprised if life imitates written art and a movie is made out of this thought-provoking one. A

– Reviewed by Wendy E. N. Thomas

Book Notes

Here’s a tip: If you want to know how a book is really selling, pay no mind to the rating that crops up at the top of the page on Amazon: the one that says a book is No. 1 in a specific category such as “pillow manufacturers for Donald Trump.”

It’s the rating under “Product Details” that tells you how a book is performing, and sometimes this is even more reliable than what the New York Times bestseller list says, a publisher told me this week. No. 1, of course, is best, but anything up to 1,000, give or take a few hundred, is decent.

That said, books that suddenly show up in the top 10, such as last week’s debut of How I Saved The Worldby Jesse Waters (Broadside, 320 pages), can leave some people scratching their heads. If you’re a Fox News viewer, you know Waters as a co-host of The Five; if not, you’ve likely never heard of him.

Similarly, people who vaguely know Bill O’Reilly as someone who was supposed to be disgraced may be surprised to see him holding forth on The New York Times’ bestseller list for the past month with Killing the Mob (co-written with Martin Dugard, St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages).

Fox News did fire O’Reilly in 2017 after charges of sexual harassment, but he now has a podcast and evidently a loyal following for his series of “Killing” books, which include Killing Kennedy, Killing Patton, Killing Jesus, Killing Reagan, Killing Crazy Horse and so forth. The most recent sales show there’s plenty of life left in this series.

Other interesting fare out this month includes a provocative new book by Michael Pollan: This is Your Mind on Plants (Penguin, 288 pages), which is not, as it seems, about a plant-based diet, but about the mind-altering properties of caffeine, opium and mescaline. His latest interest in hallucinogens is a sharp turn from his early, more mainstream books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin, 464 pages) and In Defense of Food (Penguin, 256 pages).

And a novel based on the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, written by director Quentin Tarantino, is out in paperback (Harper Perennial, 400 pages). It’s Tarantino’s first week of fiction and is described by the publisher as “hilarious, delicious and brutal” — just like his films.

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Books

Author events

• MEGAN MIRANDA Author presents Such a Quiet Place. Hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., July 20, 7 p.m. Virtual. Tickets cost $5. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents Count the Ways. Toadstool Bookstore, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Sat., July 24, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 924-3543.

• GIGI GEORGES Author presents Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Toadstool Bookstore, Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Route 101A, Nashua. Sat., July 24, 2 to 4 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JESS KIMBALL Author presents My Pseudo-College Experience. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., July 27, 6 to 7 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Crying in H Mart.