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At home and abroad
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD Traveling with Bill Bryson, as anyone who took A Walk in the Woods with him knows, is a unique experience. His droll brand of humor and his deft descriptions of the places and people he visits are distinctly his own. As he relates in I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away, Bryson first went to Europe as a college student, then he went back and didn't come home for over 20 years. In a fit of misplaced nostalgia, he retraced some of his youthful steps. The result is a right-on, laugh-out-loud tour of Northern Europe (a disaster except for the Danish damsels who doff their tops in the City parks at lunch time) and a swing through Italy and some of the less-visited Eastern European countries now in harm's way. Bryson always appreciates where he is, the folks he runs into, the sights he sees, and he can reduce a quirk of national character to a wonderfully witty phrase. If you've been to these places, you'll see them anew; if you're traveling in an armchair, you'll have the delight without the flight.
Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away By Bill Bryson BDD Audio, abridged, $25 ISBN 055352626X
Frances Mayes, the Peter Mayle of Italy, has done a difficult thing. Bella Tuscany, her second book is even better than her best-selling first. After seven summers of restoration, Mayes's beloved villa, "Bramasole," needs only a few finishing touches and she can spend more time pondering "The Sweet Life in Italy." Mayes looks at the world with an artist's eye and writes with a poet's lyricism; you see the verdant spring green that so enchants her, smell the lush roses, taste the fava beans fresh from the garden. As before, Mayes reads, and her Georgia-accented voice, now familiar, is a pleasure to hear again. If this doesn't make you yearn for an Italian idyll, nothing will.
By Frances Mayes BDD Audio, $25 6 hours ISBN 0553525662
At Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx's latest collection of short stories (the eight included are unabridged) is an out-and-out stunner. Proulx, as at home in the harsh Wyoming landscape as she was in the rugged Northeast, has gotten into the gritty souls of her rough characters who live raw lives shadowed with expectations of disaster. The women are as hard as the men and often just as foul-mouthed. Love and compassion seem in short supply, and the operating philosophy is variations on "if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it." Wind, mountains, bleached sky, horses, cattle, and sheep define this world of troubles for most of these troubled people. Some swap whopping lies to ease the rigor and bleakness; others drink, ride bulls, or do something more detrimental to their health. Yet, all are memorable, rendered sharply in Proulx's intense, extraordinary prose, the kind of language that sounds even better when read aloud. After six hours, I only wanted to hear more from Annie Proulx and from the three excellent actors who read her words.
Wyoming Stories By Annie Proulx Simon & Schuster Audio, $25 6 hours ISBN 0671044494
An L.A.-style Western In her novel/memoir Cowboy, Sara Davidson asks the question, Can a well-educated, sophisticated, professional writer and single mother of two savvy suburban kids find everlasting happiness with an uneducated, quasi-literate man who lives in a trailer in the desert, works with horses, and braids rawhide? Davidson met Zack, the "cowboy" of Cowboy (names are changed to protect privacy but, we have to assume, not the intimate details of their fights and their flights of passion) while she was writing a popular Western TV series. They had a fling and then a little more, the sex got better, the relationship deepened and everything began to get complicated. Davidson doesn't answer the question she poses; this affair is, after all, a work in progress. It could be, as a friend suggests, that all that stands in the way of enduring love is "spell check." Or, it could be that their fundamental differences will eventually prove stronger than their sexual bliss. Only time and Ms. Davidson will tell -- we await the sequel.
By Sara Davidson HarperAudio, $18 3 hours ISBN 0694521353
If dreams of heroism have ever flickered through your mind, you may rethink them after listening to Peter Blauner's new novel, Man of the Hour. David Fitzgerald, an appealing, dedicated high school English teacher in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, has dabbled in those dreams. Then it happens; he saves a student from a burning bus. First he's championed by the media and praised by the President. Then overnight he becomes a suspect and the center of the media's ceaseless vilification. Richard Jewell, the security guard who was congratulated and then condemned by the police and media after the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympic games, would surely understand what's happening here. This is no whodunnit. We know that Nasser, a young Palestinian -- edgy, confused, disparately unhappy in America -- planted the bomb. And we know that he was a student of David's and that their paths are bound to cross again. Blauner has created vivid, believable characters, in a vivid, believable situation, with a New York background that blares like the sound of honking horns. The pace is strong and so is the reading by Joe Mantegna.
By Peter Blauner Time Warner AudioBooks, $24.98 6 hours ISBN 1570426821
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.
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Under the Tuscan sun again
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