Randy Minnich, 2005
84 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Do you know why cats don't get presents on their birthday? 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

Dusty was a septuagenarian-in cat years-when we moved into her neighborhood. She was the matriarch. Even in her waning years, she was a mighty hunter and dispenser of justice. Cats and dogs feared her; humans adored her. She already owned several houses on the block and was negotiating for ours.

In the 45 short poems that follow, Minnich ponders the inexplicable ties we have with our cats, how they continually intrigue, entertain, and confound us-and how (not why) we allow them to entwine their tails around our lives. Any owner of a cat reading this book will laugh and nod knowingly-at our mutual silliness, cats and owners alike.

Minnich never loses sight of the inherent wildness of cats-"genes hammered out on dark jungle nights." For him it's part and parcel of their mystery and beauty.

A disclaimer: the poet is a friend of mine, and the book is published through Lulu an online press. By ordering in bulk, you can save considerably on mailing charges. Also, a percentage of the purchase goes to Animal Friends.

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

By Molly Lundquist
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 creativity 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.

At 16 Una Spencer disguises herself as a boy, like many a great Shakespeare heroine, and takes to sea on a whaler. After much adventure and misadventure, Una meets and marries Captain Ahab: she a young girl, and he a middle-aged, wizened captain. Melville paints Ahab larger-than-life, a tragic hero, driven, reckless, and implacable. Naslund domesticates him, reducing him in size. Here we find a kinder-gentler version. Yes, and a great lover, to boot.

Overall, Naslund gives us a wide slice of 19th-century life, the great political, religious and philosophical conflicts of the time: abolition, women's suffrage, and religion versus reason. Una (a name symbolic of oneness with Ahab; Una is Ahab) has a 21st-century feminist sensibility, refusing to be tied down to the standard mores of her era...or this era, for that matter. Fulfillment is her pursuit, and she hunts it down with the single-mindedness of Ahab.

The problem is that Una careens from one high adventure to another, which feels contrived, at times silly. Her character is so relentlessly self-sufficient that she reminds me (talk about silly) of my childhood infatuation with Nancy Drew, her blue roadster and all her adventures. I finally grew sick of Nancy's perfection and chronic state of happiness, and I came to feel much the same about Una. I wish Naslund had restrained her a bit, made her more fallible and believable.

Still, devotees of literature will have fun with Ahab's Wife, picking out the literary references sprinkled throughout. There's Moby Dick (see our fun review ), as well as Hawthorne, Emerson, Shakespeare, the English Romantic poets, the Brothers Grimm, even Homer. There are also Una's friendships with real-life people: Transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller, and the astronomer Maria Mitchell, as well as a meeting with Frederick Douglass. In this, the book resembles E. L. Doctorow, a post-modernist mingling of fictional and historical characters.

Be sure to see our Reading Guide for Ahab's Wife.

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The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford, 1915
288 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Here's a book to make your head spin and 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 husband completely in the dark.

Americans John and Florence Dowell first meet Britons Edward and Leonora Ashburnham at a German health spa in 1904. Years later, John Dowell recounts the story of the couples' nine-year friendship and of his obliviousness to the betrayal going on under his nose.

We're drawn in, fascinated, not only because of what happens (which is a lot), but also because of how Dowell interprets events. As he tells his story, the lovers reveal their passion through subtle gestures and remarks. We know what's going on, but Dowell almost willfully ignores or misinterprets all. He's a poster child for Unreliable Narrator (equaled only by Stevens in The Remains of the Day).

Ford paints rich, ironic portraits of his characters. There is Edward, the "good soldier," whose outward grace covers up his moral failings, which in turn cover up a basic decency and longing. Edward's wife, Leonora, appears cold and controlling, yet these qualities, too, mask a deeper despair. Florence, Dowell's wife, is stunningly, wonderfully treacherous. Then, of course, there is Dowell, the narrator.

The novel's distinctive structure, its disjointed plot and chronology, was innovative for its time. Soldier is considered both Ford's masterpiece and a forerunner of literary modernism (think James Joyce and Virginia Woolf).

Thematically, The Good Soldier serves up a delicious critique of Edwardian British social codes, especially the snobby adherence to propriety as proof of moral worth. No one, it turns out, is what he or she seems.

While this sounds like the stuff of melodrama, Soldier is a penetrating study of character, morals, and perspective versus reality. It has layers of complexity and is a wonderful read.



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