Z/Web

Author: Richard North Patterson

The topic of this book did not interest me at all: I don’t remember how I ended up with it but I wouldn’t have chosen it if I’d known. It’s all about Israel-Arab conflict and that stuff is so confusing and depressing and overdone I can’t stand listening to any of it. It’s like listening to kids squabbling over who sits where in the back seat of the car on a five thousand year drive. Makes you want to leap out the window or crash the car. This book certainly made me feel that way at times, for it is excruciately detailed and proceeds at a snail’s pace. However, I endured it, and the payoff was decent. I learned a lot of fascinating things about the Israel-Arab conflict I didn’t know, some of it helpful in understanding the conflict. The story is intricate: an American of Jewish descent has everything: an Ivy league law degree, a successful San Francisco career, is about to be married to a weathly Jewish family, and will soon be a candidate for senator. But then the Israeli prime minister is blown up in San Francisco and the key suspect is Palastinian Anna Ariff, the lawyer’s former lover at Harvard. Prosecutors think she leaked the prime minister’s route to the bombers, but she claims it’s a frame-up. The lawyer still loves her and takes on her defense even though it costs him his engagement and his political career, for everyone wants to see the terrorists pay for their crimes and he’s defending an obviously guilty Arab. The defense takes months as the lawyer visits Israel and uncovers bits of information, but all the pieces of the plot aren’t put together until the very end. Unfortunately, I saw this ending on about page 100, so having to sit through the rest of the book for something so obvious was tedious and frustrating. The payoff is good, but overall I see this book as more educational than entertaining. I wish I’d gotten the abridged version.

I love Chekov but I was slightly disapointed by this play at Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival. Nothing much happens in it. It’s about a rich Russian woman who’s squandered all her money and the family must sell their beloved (but neglected) cherry orchard to save the estate but she refuses to see it. It’s about how people react (or refuse to react) to change. There are a few side romance storylines and some good humor and the performances were good, but I wasn’t wowed.

Now this Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival play really overwhelmed me. It was amazing. It’s a somber topic: a couple coping with the loss of their son eight months earlier, but done in such a way that there is tons of humor and entertainment. The drama sneaks up on you occasionally through the humor and it’s powerful. What impressed me the most was the realistic modern dialog which was flawless and natural, with every character hitting just the right notes. The play is about how we each cope with grief differently and the phenomenal acting conveyed that perfectly. We meet the younger free-spirited sister who is pregnant and unmarried and we see how that tortures the wife who lost her child. We see the father and husband who wants to move on but can’t because his wife won’t: she’s at a different grief point than him. Then there’s the wife’s mother who lost a child of her own twelve years earlier, but as her daughter tells her, “It’s not the same thing” because her son was only five years old when the car hit him. Most powerful of all is the teenage boy who ran over their son — purely an accident but tormenting none-the-less. All this sounds dreary and somber but it’s not: the play is funny and clever and hilarious, but at the core is the horrible thing always lurking that no one wants to talk about. Just brilliant. Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. I had a terrific front-row seat and was a hand-stretch from touching the actors at times. Chilling and amazing.