Independent Publishing - The Independent Book Reviews

AGENT BISHOP.

Mike McPheters. 2009. Cedar Fort. Trade Paperback. 272 pages. $17.99.

The LDS use of lay leadership leads to some interesting combinations – Sunday School teacher and U.S. Senator (Orrin Hatch), FBI special agent and Bishop, Mike McPheters.

Mike McPheters spent thirty years as a special agent for the FBI, with assignments that took him from coast to coast – San Diego to Miami to Oregon to Utah and finally, Riverside, Calif. Those years had some exciting and interesting experiences, including being among the first SWAT teams in the country, helping to solve a murder in the US Virgin Islands, being involved with the Jimmy Hoffa investigation, and helping to solve the murders of two Mormon missionaries in Bolivia.

During half that time, he was also a Mormon Bishop, in four different wards. McPheters says he "fought crime and Satan with pistol in one hand and scriptures in the other."

What McPheters has given us is a collection of stories culled from his time with the Bureau, including a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, the founder. Even he admits that he had a more action-filled career that the majority of agents.

The book’s title, jacket blurbs, and marketing campaign give the impression of a book about juggling two disparate responsibilities – dealing with the dregs of society while at the same time being responsible for the physical and spiritual well-being of the members of his ward. How did one affect the other? How did it feel the first time he had to take a life in self-defense, or to save the life of someone else? Unfortunately there is very little of that. The ratio here is 90 percent FBI agent, 10 percent LDS Bishop. The best examples of the two worlds colliding come from the prologue, but the promise is never fully delivered.

There is some humor, such as the time when he needed to find a hiding place for a pistol on a job. But not nearly as much as is promised.

Also, too often, the information readers would like to know is omitted, such as prison sentences for a slimy telemarketer targeting senior citizens. How many people were ultimately arrested in the murders of the missionaries?

This is a decent book that missed the chance to be a great book.

JULIET, NAKED.

Nick Hornby. 2009. Riverhead Books. Hardcover. 406 pages. $25.95.

"They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet." (Page 1) With that simple, eye-catching statement, Nick Hornby begins what is his best work of fiction since About a Boy.

The basics are this: Annie has been living with Duncan in the dead-end seaside English town of Gooleness for 15 years. Duncan is a professor of pop culture – well, apparently, because Hornby never fully clarifies that – at a local community college, and Annie is the director of the town’s museum. There is a third member of their family – Tucker Crowe. Crowe is an American singer/songwriter who released three or four albums in the 1980s, then twenty years ago, called an end to the tour supporting his biggest selling album to date, Juliet, right in the middle of the tour. And then fell off the planet. Duncan is obsessed with all things Crowe. "She’d been with Duncan for nearly fifteen years, and Tucker Crowe had always been part of the package, like a disability." (Page 9) Crowe is the reason they’re looking at a toilet in Minneapolis, and why they’ve trekked all over the U.S.

Then out of the blue, twenty years after releasing his biggest selling album, Crowe releases a stripped down version of Juliet: Juliet, Naked, the acoustic versions he used to create the final album. Duncan loves it, and Annie hates it. She posts her review of the album on a Crowe web site. And Annie gets an email from Tucker Crowe.

Soon Annie and Tucker are trading emails and a relationship of sorts begins. Annie and Duncan split.

Hornby returns to the themes which have served him best in his past writings – obsessive fandom (Fever Pitch and High Fidelity), and music (High Fidelity and Songbook), and generally broken, lonely people trying to make sense of the world they have created for themselves, and how to survive it.

The characters here are richly flawed. No one is ever perfect, and Hornby is a master at creating damaged people who are looking for some kind of meaning. For Duncan, it’s in the music of a relatively obscure musician who disappeared before he could really establish himself. For Annie, it’s trying to reclaim a life she feels she has wasted, and for Tucker, it’s trying to make sense of all the wreckage he’s left behind over the years – five children with four different women, and a squandered talent.

Hornby writes at a fast clip, and once he gets going, this book is hard to put down. Annie is the most sympathetic one here, and even she does a couple really stupid things.

During the first half of the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find Hornby’s characteristic rough language MIA, and then, all of a sudden, it shows up without warning, liberally laced throughout the entire second half of the book. And having a six-year-old boy use the F-word repeatedly stops being funny halfway through the first time it happens.

When it comes to readability and connecting with characters, this is Hornby’s best piece in years. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see it surface as a movie. This is a definite keeper.

THE NEW YORK REGIONAL MORMON SINGLES HALLOWEEN DANCE.

Elna Baker. 2009. Dutton. Hardcover. 272 pages. $25.95

This book had me hooked from the beginning. In fact, this and Juliet, Naked, are the first two new books I’ve read over the last few months that had me chomping at the bit to get back. I hated putting either one of them down.

Elna Baker, the author, chooses attending college at NYU over BYU, and it scares the daylights out of her mother. In fact, her mother is convinced that, living in New York City, Elna will begin to swear (she did, but I think she was already swearing), start to drink , then onto drugs, and finally become lesbian. Perhaps a lesbian stripper. (Her first roommate at NYU was a lesbian, in fact.) This stuff is too weird and fall-down-laughing funny to be made up.

The daughter of a Boeing executive, Baker was born in Seattle, Wash., and grew up all over the world – Seattle, Madrid, London.

Baker’s memoir chronicles her life in New York, (which, surprisingly, touches very little on her time at NYU), her struggles to lose weight – and ultimate success – her never-ending search for the man of her dreams, and her own questions and doubts about her faith. And she does it with an amazing amount of honesty, and always humor.

"Let’s not forget tonight’s DJ, Brother Mo, who’s wearing a polyester suit and tie with no trace of irony. He occupies the stage at the far end of the gym. To his left there’s long plastic table for refreshments: lemonade and cookies, as if we’re a little league soccer team." (Page 2)

On the plus side, this book isn’t one of those naive-Mormon-girl-goes-to-big-city-and-finds-happiness-by-leaving-her-childhood-faith. Been done. This is a better, more intelligent and more real book than that. But this book is never going to get her invited to speak at General Conference or even on the LDS fireside circuit. And that’s a not necessarily a bad thing. (Anne Perry is never going to be invited to speak at General Conference, either.)

Baker is a strong, funny writer who is willing to expose herself completely to her readers: She’s willing to show herself as often being an annoying drama queen, demanding the attention and sympathy of everyone around, as a woman who has genuine faith but also has questions and doubts, as someone who may be too desperate for love or to be viewed as beautiful (people who have struggled with weight often fight that battle), as someone who lets herself give in to temptation just because she was afraid to say "no." (I know I’ve done that. We all have our weaknesses.) She pulls the reader along and you care about what’s happening to her. Her account of demonstrating toys at FAO Schwartz pleasantly echoes David Sedaris’ "Santaland Diaries."

But there are some problems as well. Baker says the book is a compilation of essays which, when put together, create the memoir. Sometimes this creates disconnects where interesting questions are raised and then never readdressed. The other problem is the book’s schizophrenic nature. The first half is fall-down laughing funny, almost nonstop. However, once she loses the weight and discovers she’s beautiful, her desire for a boyfriend and love become an obsession that swallows much of the humor, burying her funny side under overwhelming neuroses. This leads to some things popping up almost out of nowhere. And the language in the second half is decidedly saltier.

There are many who say that her humor is too much based on making fun of the LDS church. They couldn’t be more wrong. There are a couple occasions where she tries to give her non-LDS audience a context about certain things. Some of those attempts are more successful than others. She does poke fun LDS culture – singles dances, our courting rituals, etc. – but never once does she disparage or mock the doctrine. And there is a universe of difference between doctrine and revelation and culture.

This is an excellent book, definitely thought-provoking (but not always necessarily as thoughtful as it could be) from a writer with amazing potential. I’m looking forward to more from her.

Rich welcomes questions and comments from readers. You may contact him through this paper, or by email at 62rich@gmail.com.