Reads this week

Because I way down on the list to read The Ruins, by Scott Smith, I read his first novel, A Simple Plan, from 1993. It was made into a movie in 1998. What a tough act to follow, no wonder there were 13 years between books. You will stay up late to finish it, so save it for the weekend. It's a compelling mixture: the overwhelming greed of ordinary people as they're thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and the weirdness of family dynamics as they're mixed with alcohol and money. I hope the movie did justice to the book--the author draws vivid pictures of the cold, bleak mid-Western landscapes where much of the action takes place. One review of The Ruins promises "an episode of Friends on psilocybin mushrooms". Yippee!

Just finished The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: a True Story, by Ken Dornstein, a good example of truth being stranger than fiction. The boy in the title is his older brother, David, who died in 1988 on PanAm flight #103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. David was 25, handsome, extroverted, neurotic, smart, and, sorry to say, sounded like one of the obnoxious self-proclaimed geniuses who are thick on the ground during one's college years. There's almost too much for a book here: a tragic childhood, complete with a mentally ill mother, divorce, and molestation; the attack on the plane, and subsequent trial of the terrorists; and then the strangely incestuous relationship between Ken and David's college girlfriend--there's stuff in here to make anyone uncomfortable. There is a sister in the family who remains a shadow figure, maybe she didn't want to be in the book, which makes you wonder what more there is you could possibly not know...