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Copyright 2003 The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
- - - - SECTION: THE CRITICS; Briefly Noted; Pg. 107
LENGTH: 619 words
BODY:
Madam Secretary, by Madeleine Albright and Bill Woodward (Miramax; $27.95).
This memoir by America's first female Secretary of State is a deeply
conventional book, full of long accounts of negotiations and reflections on the
proper uses of American power. Albright is not out to settle scores (her
criticisms of colleagues are mild at worst) and seems, on balance, pleased with
the foreign-policy record of the Clinton Administration. This might have made a
dull book, were it not for Albright's appealing character-personally ingenuous
but professionally sophisticated, earnest but hard-nosed. Her eye for
details-clothing, food, travel conditions-helps bring the diplomat's world to
life, and her portraits of foreign leaders are lively and evocative. The result
is a book that creates a sense of policy made by real people, not by
world-bestriding titans.
Chasing the Sea, by Tom Bissell (Pantheon; $24.95). The title of this erratic
but enthralling travelogue refers to the attempts of fishermen in Central Asia
to pursue the receding waters of the Aral Sea, which has shrunk, since 1960, to
less than a third of its original size. In 2001, the author, a self-described
"adventure journalist" and failed Peace Corps volunteer, arrives in Uzbekistan
to investigate this ecological disaster. Bissell doesn't so much chase the sea
as meander toward it, and nine-tenths of the book concerns his detours-to
Samarkand, Bukhara, and the guerrilla-infested mountains of Kyrgyzstan-and his
run-ins with suspicious local police forces. Bissell shines as a raconteur, if
not as an analyst, and his ebullient narrative harks back to the travel classics
of the nineteenth century, when the journey was an end in itself.
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (MacAdam/Cage; $25). Young
lovers often believe themselves crossed by fate or by time, but those in
Niffenegger's spirited first novel have more reason than most. Henry suffers
from Chrono-Impairment-a quasi-medical condition that catapults him,
unwillingly, from one random point in time to another. Clare first meets him in
1977, when she is six and he materializes near her parents' garden as a
thirty-six-year-old from 2000; he returns regularly throughout her childhood
from different times in their shared future. At last, when Clare is twenty and
Henry twenty-eight, they meet in his present, and the relationship begins in
earnest. But romance proves even trickier than usual when one person keeps
vanishing to distant, and occasionally dangerous, times. Niffenegger plays
ingeniously in her temporal hall of mirrors, but fails to make the connection
between the lovers as compelling as their odd predicament.
Timoleon Vieta Come Home, by Dan Rhodes (Canongate; $23). Carthusians
Cockroft, a washed-up composer of British TV jingles, lives in a disintegrating
farmhouse in Umbria, his solitude relieved only by a faithful dog, Timoleon
Vieta, and a procession of exceptionally fickle boyfriends. Petty and stupid,
full of drink and self-pity, Cockroft is a wonderful creation. (He indulges in
ludicrously aestheticized fantasies of suicide, such as throwing himself from
the top of the Colosseum and "quietly and nakedly falling at the dead of night.
") Rhodes never quite succeeds in making this character into a novel. A young
hunk, obviously a nasty piece of work, shows up and forces Cockroft to abandon
the dog in Rome. The second half of the book, in ironic homage to "Lassie
Come-Home," narrates the dog's return by sketching the life stories of those he
encounters. Rhodes demonstrates his ability to spin an engaging tale time and
again, but to less and less effect with each iteration.
LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2003
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