C4


R BOOK WORLD Sense and sensibility book world from C1 There’s a classic sitcom incom-


patibility between these siblings (Versace vs. vegan), and I suspect there’s an autobiographical ele- ment to this tension, too: While Goodman earned a PhD in Eng- lish literature, her sister became an oncologist, and there must have been times when scanning lines of poetry seemed flighty next to saving people’s lives. In any case, the affection that tran- scends Jess and Emily’s frustra- tion with each other remains the heart of “The Cookbook Collec- tor” as the book’s multiplex plot spins out beyond them. Far beyond them. As an author,


Goodman is the courteous host who can never say no to the arriv- al of one more guest. I wasn’t al- ways persuaded that her book had room for all these people, but even when Goodman just lightly sketches in side characters, they somehow get right up off the page and start pulling on our affec- tions. While Emily wrestles with the challenges of her nascent company and its staff of program- mers and administrators, her superman boyfriend, Jonathan, has his own Internet start-up in Massachusetts called ISIS, and sometimes the two sisters fade in the background as we switch coasts and watch Jonathan and his colleagues and their friends and family.


All these sympathetic charac- ters lure us into the card-table boardrooms and 24-hour com- puter labs back when the World Wide Web was as open and poten- tially lucrative as the Wild Wild West. It’s a thrilling, fully realized domain — was it just 10 years ago? —when the laws of physics and fi- nance were suspended and kids dropped out of college to issue bil- lions of dollars of stock in compa- nies that made no profit, often made nothing at all. (Checked your Pets.com shares recently?) In this novel explicitly con- cerned with the morality of busi- ness, Goodman has staffed the two Internet start-ups — Veritech and ISIS — with young people who want to realize their liberal idealism, like that new silly- sounding search engine that in- sists, “Don’t be evil.” But as she suggested in “Intuition,” it’s funny how confusing a few hundred million dollars can be. “What a strange effect money or the idea of money had on people,” she


ships. He’s “too selfish to marry anyone” anyhow, and he’s con- stantly complaining about Jess and her granola ideals. Their prickly banter is a give-


away, but long after we’ve started rooting for them, Jess is still pro- testing, “We don’t agree on any- thing.” Can love bloom between a judgmental, uptight bachelor and a dreamy tree-hugger who won’t eat honey from “indentured bees”? Can these opposites finally overcome their pride and preju- dice?


Admittedly, too much is going on in this novel. Although a liber- al rabbi assures Jess that “There are no coincidences,” that gets harder and harder to believe as they pile up in these pages. And a final revelation of a long-lost fam- ily would make Gilbert and Sulli- van blush. The larger problem, though, is


ALAMY


writes in this lithe critique of wealth and corporate culture. Looking at “The Cookbook Col-


lector” alongside Adam Haslett’s “Union Atlantic,” Jess Walter’s “The Financial Lives of the Poets” and Eric Puchner’s “Model Home,” I’m convinced that Amer- ican novelists are slowly creating as vibrant and incisive a record of the decade’s economic chaos as our great nonfiction writers, such as Michael Lewis, Gillian Tett and Andrew Ross Sorkin. This rich body of art and reporting may be


These sympathetic characters lure us into the card-table boardrooms and 24-hour computer labs back when the World Wide Web was as open and potentially lucrative as the Wild Wild West.


‘N


ew novel explores intraracial intolerance


and sexual harassment among blacks. A Personal Agenda by Winsome Ives Packer offers a unique look at political relationships and aims to show that racial, cultural and sexual harassment know no color. Ives Packer tells the story of murder, power, racism and love in the political world. A Personal Agenda is available at amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble bookstores.”


WHAT THE LADYBUG HEARD By Julia Donaldson Illustrated by Lydia Monks Henry Holt, $16.99; ages 4-6


Parades of animals stream through these two


titles — one silly, the other sweet. Start the day with Julia Donaldson’s bouncy ode to life on a noisy farm and to one special inhabitant who, unlike the other critters, “never said a word.” Never, that is, until “two men in a big black van, / With a map and a key and a cunning plan” arrive to steal the “fine prize cow.” That’s when the smallest of all goes into action: “ ‘Help!’ was the ladybug’s very first word, / And ‘Gather around’ were the second and third.” Flamboyant colors, zany perspectives and a neatly circular tale lead, with satisfying inevita- bility, to a happy outcome for all but the thieves. End the day with A Sick Day for Amos


McGee (Roaring Brook, $16.99; ages 3-5), by Philip C. Stead and illustrated by Erin E. Stead. A zookeeper by profession and an animal lover by nature, gentle, fastidious Amos McGee tends to much more than just his charges’ health. He plays chess with the elephant (“who thought and thought before making a move”), runs races with the tortoise (“who never ever lost”), and spends quiet time with the penguin (“who was very shy”). In a tribute to the ineffable bond be- tween keeper and kept, it is impossible to tell if the animals’ expressions are a perfect mirror of Amos’s or the other way around. And that is the crux of the story, for when Amos gets sick, it is the animals who take on the business of caring for their favorite human. Thick, creamy paper and a muted palette add to the gentle reso- nance of a story that ends with everyone tucked in at last for a sweet night’s sleep. — Kristi Jemtegaard


ELVIS & OLIVE


Super Detectives By Stephanie Watson Scholastic, $15.99; ages 9-12


Can’t get enough of gal-pal adventures?


Those zipping through the popular “Ivy and Bean” and “Clementine” chapter-book series may now be ready for the wit and mischief of Natalie Wallis, 10, and Annie Beckett, 9. In the first novel, “Elvis & Olive” (2008), the two be- came fast friends, adopted code names — Elvis for Annie, Olive for Natalie — and spent a sum- mer spying on neighbors, with results disas- trous, hilarious and sometimes helpful. This second tale in the series finds the girls harbor- ing secret wishes as they begin fifth grade. Shy Natalie wants to win a spot on the student council; scrappy Annie yearns to find the moth- er who abandoned her 18 months ago. Using childhood’s cockeyed logic, they decide to fur- ther their aims by opening a detective agency to help others, especially the now-wary spyees of the first book. Stephanie Watson brings new resonance to familiar kid-lit motifs — secret clubs, young sleuths — by charting the tender as well as the funny moments of this unlikely friendship. She also eschews today’s ubiqui- tous first-person point of view for third-person’s broader, less self-conscious perspective. Sub- plots involving a stray dog, banned comic books and Annie’s condemned home resolve in unpredictable ways, and descriptive phrases surprise and delight. With a few just-right words, Watson vividly conveys a mood or ex- perience, from Natalie happily “giving the soft September air a high five” to the girls imagin- ing all the “mysteries moving around inside the neighbors.”


— Mary Quattlebaum


PROJECT SEAHORSE By Pamela S. Turner


Photographs by Scott Tuason


Houghton Mifflin, $18; ages 10 and up They look like a miniature combination of


kangaroo, horse, crocodile and monkey, but they are actually fish. The male is the one who gets pregnant, giving birth to between five and 2,000 babies at a time. About 20 million of them are caught every year, with most going to China for use in traditional medicine. And yet the wonderfully odd seahorse wasn’t studied in the wild until a young American named Amanda Vincent came along. Vincent has de- voted much of her career to studying the crea- ture in its habitats around the world. A mother of two young children who started Project Sea- horse with a colleague in 1996 to help protect the coral reefs around the Philippines, she’s another great role model presented by the “Scientists in the Field” series. Author Pamela Turner nimbly alternates between the wonders of the seahorse (photographed in a variety of shapes and sizes and in ultra-vivid close-up by Scott Tuason) and Project Seahorse’s efforts to prevent over-fishing and blast fishing (using a bomb to kill fish that then float to the sur- face). She also captures the sounds, sights and issues involved in this marine-based sci- ence, including the undeniable needs of Filipi- no families who rely on the seahorse trade. This book makes abundantly clear that healthy coral reefs are in everyone’s best in- terest.


— Abby McGanney Nolan


the only lasting restitution we get for the havoc wreaked by Lehman Brothers, et al. But cheer up — “The Cookbook


Collector” is a romantic comedy, regardless of its serious dot-com, ticker-tape subplot. That en-


chanting aspect comes from the adventures of Emily’s sister, Jess, the whimsical philosophy stu- dent, who eventually reasserts herself as our heroine. Yorick’s, the used-book store where she works, is owned by a single man


in possession of a good fortune, so you should have a pretty clear idea of the universal truth we’re pursuing here. George is a retired Microsoft millionaire, a good- looking, 36-year-old curmudgeon who has given up on relation-


FOR YOUNG READERS


that all this busyness pushes the spiritual component to the mar- gins. Like Dara Horn and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Goodman has produced superb works about Jewish mysticism, particularly “Kaaterskill Falls,” her National Book Award finalist, and “Para- dise Park,” her comic survey of American spirituality. But in “The Cookbook Collector,” the rabbi drops in now and then, an extra matzo ball we could take or leave. His hearty faith is only one more quirky ingredient of a story that can seem too lightly mixed. Still, God knows plenty of deli- cacies are simmering in “The Cookbook Collector,” including some hilarious descriptions of food from an antique cookbook collection that excites Jess’s boss (and, of course, introduces more characters). Goodman is a fantas- tically fluid writer, and yet for all her skill, she’s a humble, transpar- ent one who stays out of the way, never drawing attention to her style or cleverness. Even if you’re coldhearted enough to resist Jess’s sunny appeal, you’re likely to fall for her creator. charlesr@washpost.com


Charles is the fiction editor of The Post. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter/roncharles.


KLMNO


WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2010


LITERARY CALENDAR 7.8 | Brad Herzog, discusses and signs his new book, “Turn Left at the Trojan Horse: A Would-Be Hero’s American Odyssey,” at Barnes & Noble-Bethesda, 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, Md., 301-986-1761, at 7 p.m.


LYDIA MONKS


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