LitPicks Book Reviews—December 2006

Pavlov's Cats
Randy Minnich, 2005
84 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December 2006
Know why cats don't get presents on their birthday? Answer—they already own everything.

Any cat owner gets the joke because it's really about us—our powerlessness in the face of a nine-pound creature. Randy Minnich explores that helplessness. His book is a delightful read for any human addicted to Felis silvestris catus.

Ahab's Wife
Sena Jeter Naslund, 1999
668 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December 2006
Some people devour this book; others have told me they couldn't get through it. Certainly, it's an ambitious underaking: the retelling of Moby-Dick, America's great epic, from a woman's vantage point.

Much of the book I love—though not all of it. Mostly, I admire the intelligence and courage of a writer to attempt such a work, especially a writer with a such a powerful sense of myth and elegant prose style.

The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford, 1915
288 pp.

Book Review by Molly Lundquist
December 2006
This is a tale to make your head spin—and to keep you turning pages while wondering how the narrator could be such a dupe.

Yet that's the pleasure. The Good Soldier is a story of two couples: the wife of one having an affair with the husband of the other, and a narrator—the cuckholded husband—completely in the dark.