I’ve been perusing seed catalogs for our four little vegetable beds. Despite our summer fog, our little garden gives us fresh lettuce, peas, greens and herbs most of the year. Once we get our first taste of our own garden salad made from heirloom lettuces and organic herbs, we decide it’s all worth it. Be damned the slugs, the mold from the fog, the time, effort and mostly the cost.
So, with visions of fresh peas and lettuce dancing in my head, I picked up this slim little book, sitting on my shelf for years now. The $64 Tomato is for gardeners and wannabe gardeners alike — and the subtitle says it all:
How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
This is a unvarnished, honest look at what it means to maintain a garden when everything seems against you, and your dreams and plans vastly outrun the available time. But, like all hopeful gardeners, Mr. Alexander gamely plows ahead. (pun intended, couldn’t resist — I’m here all week, tip your waitress)
I laughed my way through this quirky memoir, reading about Mr. Alexander’s 2,000 sq. foot Hudson Valley vegetable garden, a fruit tree orchard and even his attempts to recreate a Swiss-style wildflower meadow on the property.
There’s a spooky handyman who bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Walken, a crew of exasperating contractors, and a menagerie of groundhogs, deer, Japanese beetles and crop destroying worms. These pests, both insect and mammal, defy Mr. Alexander at every turn. They come, they see his garden, and they conquer. His efforts to eradicate those pests (and yes, eradicate means exactly what you think) involve a mean 6,000-volt electric fence (really?) and harken back to that male-favorite film Caddyshack.
But throughout, we do see that Mr. Alexander does actually recognize the joy from his efforts:
Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience.
You gotta feel for this guy, there are the vacations that had to be planned around the harvest, the near electrocution of the tree man, the limitations of his middle-aged body, and the judgment of his wife and kids.
Mr. Alexander’s cost-benefit analysis included every cost — from seed ordered by the pound, to the live animal traps and then amortizing it over the entire life of his garden — results in a staggering $64* to grow each of his prized Brandywine tomatoes. (They sound wonderful, nothing like a homegrown tomato – but yes $64 seems extraordinary.)
But as any gardener will tell you, the pleasure of growing fresh food for friends and family — well that’s priceless.
*Another reviewer (obviously an economics major) pointed out that Mr. Alexander puts the entire costs of his garden on the poor tomato. This reviewer suggested he should have evaluated all crops at market value, taken that number and subtracted it from total expenditures, and then use the difference as a percentage of total expenditures to be applied as a markup percentage to the market value of the Brandywines equally with other crops.
In other words — don’t blame the tomato.
Mr. Alexander has also written several other books…all revealing his obsessive tendencies. I plan on reading both of these next:
52 Loaves in which our hero attempts to recreate a perfect loaf of bread from scratch: growing, harvesting, winnowing, threshing, and milling his own wheat, and
Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Mr. Alexander’s struggle to master a foreign language after age 50.
I like this guy, he’s my sort of geek, obsessive yet funny — outlandish, yet self depreciating. I would love to chat an afternoon away with him – preferably in the garden.
So, Mr. Alexander, if you’re reading this, you have an open invitation to stop by for a cup of coffee — or perhaps a salad — you can bring the tomatoes.
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You’ll want to plan a stop at your local independent bookstore on your way home, because Garden of Lamentations, Deborah Crombie’s latest mystery novel, is out today. Trust me on this one, have I ever steered you wrong?
As you know from THIS POST, I am a big fan of Ms. Crombie’s work. However, we have grown despondent here at Book Barmy, it’s been practically three years since the last installment of Ms. Crombie’s mystery novels set in London.
A very long (endless really) time to wait*.
Despite this time apart, upon opening Garden of Lamentations it was like meeting old friends and picking up where you left off. Duncan and Gemma are still in their cozy home with their chaotic, blended family. There are still pets underfoot and their delightful, busy life as parents is once again superimposed with murder and crime.
While things have never been easy for this high-powered police couple, their strong relationship always balances their career stresses. In this 17th installment however, we detect early on there’s an unusual tension between Detective Chief Inspector Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James.
Duncan is secretive and distant as he investigates a series of presumably unrelated cases, involving a long ago undercover group of police, a racial hate killing and continues to try and understand why he was transferred . His investigation uncovers a former commander’s secrets and underlying corruption at highest levels of the Met.
Ms. Crombie’s setting is in Gemma’s and Duncan’s own London neighborhood of Notting Hill. A young nanny is found dead under a bower** and Gemma is called in to investigate this murder in a private locked garden for a block of homes off Kensington Park Road.
If you are not familiar with locked gardens of London, they are open only to the residents backing up and surrounding the garden. These gardens are enjoyed and often maintained by the residents. (Many a time I’ve longingly peeked through the gates of these wonderful London oasis’s.)
Through multiple viewpoints we follow Gemma and Duncan through their individual cases, but especially with Duncan’s private investigations, I struggled to recall certain events from the previous two novels. But, as I read on, Ms. Crombie excels at weaving her plots together and most of my questions were answered.
It may have helped to revisit Ms. Crombie’s previous two – Sound of Broken Glass (#15) and To Dwell in Darkness (#16).
Once again, the flyleaf displays a hand drawn map of the book’s setting. I found myself examining the map to locate the pub where Duncan meets an old colleague or the spot where the local children have dance lessons.
This is one of the best in the series. There’s an engaging cast of Notting Hill neighbors, a locked garden mystery, and residents’ lies and secrets. We see the dark side of undercover police work and the repercussions of blurred lines between civilian and police life. Confessions and duplicity are revealed and some of the past can be put to rest. There is even a hint of a life change for Duncan and Gemma in upcoming installments.
As always, Ms. Crombie gives her readers absorbing mysteries combined with believable characters and fascinating London settings.
Garden of Lamentations was worth the wait.
Many thanks to Harper Collins/William Morrow for the opportunity to enjoy an advanced readers copy.
* I understand during this time there was a new grandchild for Ms. Crombie, which may have cut into her writing time.
** I had to look it up – a bower is a pleasant shady place under trees or climbing plants in a garden or wood.
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I’m busily sorting through my stack of advanced readers copies, which, I’m ashamed to say, have been piling up, unread, some for more than a year. Bad Book Barmy, very bad.
One of my January goals (beyond the annual diet and fitness ones) is to figure out which from the pile I will read and review for you, my loyal readers.
This one, with its lovely cover, ended up coming to bed with me the other night. My little book-reading light (because Husband insists on sleeping) stayed on well past midnight.
At first blush, The Fortress may seem like one of those typical memoirs recounting a romantic adventure of a couple finding, buying and fixing up a rundown French villa ~~ but no, it is so much more. More complicated, deep, and especially, more real.
From the back cover:
From their first meeting, writer Danielle Trussoni is spellbound by a brilliant, mysterious novelist from Bulgaria. The two share a love of music and books and travel, passions that intensify their whirlwind romance. Within months, they are married and embark upon an adventurous life together.
Eight years later, their marriage in trouble, Trussoni and her husband move to the South of France, hoping to save their relationship. They discover Aubais (pronounced obey, as in love, honor and . . . Aubais), a picturesque medieval village in the Languedoc, where they buy a thirteenth-century stone fortress. Aubais is a Mediterranean paradise of sun, sea, and vineyards, but they soon learn the fortress’s secret history of subterranean chambers, Knights Templar, hidden treasure, Nazis, and ghosts. During her years in Aubais, Trussoni’s marriage unravels with terrifying consequences, and she comes to understand that love is never the way we imagine it to be.
In The Fortress, Ms. Trussoni lays bare the consequences of her impulsive life. Her whirlwind romance in Bulgaria and then purchasing a run-down French villa called La Commanderie. Her husband confounds her with lies and he manipulates Ms. Trussoni into doubting her own sanity. But she hangs on to her rose-colored perception of their love. She refuses to give up, continuing to try and help the often cruel and increasingly psychotic Nikolai — trying to fix what is, in reality, a collapsing marriage.
The writing is starkly beautiful and Ms. Trussoni strikes a wonderful balance between both the dark and the beautiful sides of their love, their messy and often glamorous life, and what was versus what is.
We were both extraordinary and wrecked, naive and experienced, brilliant and stupid, our exceptional parts snapping together as seamlessly as the damaged ones.
And this heartbreaking passage when Ms. Trussoni’s mother unearths her hope chest and explains, this was what most young girls born in the 40’s or 50’s did to prepare and dream about their future marriage.
It wasn’t until later that I understood that I did in fact have a hope chest of my own. Not of wood, not locked up and hidden under a stack of quilts, but a hope chest nonetheless, one filled with dreams about my life. I believed in romance and destiny. I believed in love at first sight. I believed that when I found the right person, time would stop and we would be suspended in a state of endless passion. There was no place in my hope chest for disappointment or failure. There was no place for imperfection or broken promises or compromise. And while my hope chest ideas might have had all the trappings of a good romance, they didn’t have the capacity to hold real love.
I gobbled this book, reading it in great gulps — perhaps everything could work out, maybe some sort of redemption for them both. But The Fortress is a stingily true tale of life — real, messy and rough around the edges. Finally, there are legal battles, children’s welfare at stake, anger, tears and a resolution (of sorts).
Rest assured, despite everything, Ms. Trussoni makes it through. And in the end, this is a love story. You’ll have to read The Fortress yourself to discover the happy ending.
An advanced readers copy was provided by Dey Street Books, an imprint of William Morrow.
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Excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mr. Webb Johnson returned a San Francisco library book 100 years late. There was no fine.
“Whew,” Johnson said.
The book, a collection of short stories published in 1909, had been checked out by his great-grandmother Phoebe Webb in 1917 from the old San Francisco Fillmore branch which, like his great-grandmother, is no longer around.
Head San Francisco Librarian Luis Herrera welcomed the book back and said the library was very glad to get it, finally. At the 2017 rate of 10 cents a day, the overdue fine would have come to $3,650. Fortunately for Johnson, fines on overdue books are now capped at $5. And under the library’s current amnesty program for overdue books, there’s no fine at all.
The amnesty program has gotten 2,000 overdue books back onto library shelves since it began Jan. 3. About 1,400 delinquent borrowers have had their library privileges restored. An additional 54,000 patrons with accumulated fines of $10 or more are still walking around with suspended library cards. Under the amnesty program, they have until Feb. 14 to turn in their books with no penalty.
Amnesty programs — which San Francisco also offered in 2009, 2004 and 1998 — are somewhat controversial in the generally noncontroversial world of libraries. Some say that when libraries are known to forgive and forget every few years, it offers little incentive to return overdue books at other times. But Herrera said it was all about getting books back in the library where they belong, not about collecting a dime or two or 36,500.
Johnson said a check of family history showed that his great-grandma had died one week before the book was due. The timing suggests that Webb may have had more pressing business to attend to at the time than returning the book, he said. 
The amnesty came in handy because Johnson said he had discovered the overdue book in 1996 and had hung onto it ever since. That means “Forty Minutes Late” has been unintentionally late for 79 years and deliberately late for 21 years.
“We figured it was ours now,” Johnson said. “I’m guilty. I know it. Guilty, guilty, guilty.”
The book is by F. Hopkinson Smith, an author, artist and engineer who designed the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The first story in Smith’s collection is about a cranky man who nearly misses a speaking engagement because of a late train. The author, in the story, suggests there are worst sins than being late, such as being cranky — a notion that Johnson says he fully endorses.
Conscience, along with the amnesty program, persuaded him to bring the book back. Another reason he brought it back is his cousin Judy Wells wanted to check it out.
She showed up at the Park Branch Library along with Johnson. After Johnson handed the overdue book back to the library, Wells stepped up to the circulation desk and applied for a library card. She figured she could go right home with “Forty Minutes Late” again, for three weeks or 100 years, whichever comes first.
But Herrera, perhaps reluctant to entrust the volume to the extended Webb-Wells-Johnson family for another century, said “Forty Minutes Late” would be temporarily unavailable until it could be properly re-cataloged and evaluated by library historians.
“I can wait,” Wells said.
Written by Steve Rubenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle.
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It’s every travelers nightmare ~~ jet lagged, tired, disorientated, and at your most vulnerable ~~ you’re robbed. This is exactly what happens to a nameless American woman in the unconventional novel, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty.
While checking into her disappointing hotel in Casablanca, her backpack, holding her wallet, passport, computer, and all her money, is stolen while her back is turned.
(Let me stop here to say I heard Vendela Vida –don’t you love her name?–interviewed on Fresh Air — the author got the idea for this novel after her own experience of being robbed in a foreign country.)
The police investigating the theft are blatantly incompetent, perhaps in on the theft, and in the end return a backpack, but it’s not hers. It contains another woman’s wallet, money, passport, and (still working) credit cards.
While she is understandably panicked by the crime, she realizes she is also strangely free to become anyone she wants to be. Our nameless narrator takes the backpack and assumes the new identity.
Little by little, during this slim little novel, we are given her backstory An ugly divorce and a betrayal by her twin, allows us to understand why she escaped to Morocco and her need to create new personas.
The novel is written in second person singular (i.e.: you)
“You know who you are; other people do not need to.”
This voice is actually more intimate than the first person singular, as if we are co-inhabiting each new identity. She is recruited to play a famous actress’s stand-in for a film being filmed in Casablanca, she substitutes for the actress on a dreaded date with an older gentlemen, and even meets Patti Smith.
Ms. Vida describes the details of our narrator’s experiences through all the senses — we feel the heat, smell the traffic exhaust, but most impressive are the scene descriptions — almost as if they were stage sets:
“…(you) enter an enormous lobby. Its sofas are mocha colored and deep and plush. The kind of sofas that are easy to relax into, and difficult to rise from. White orchids are staged artfully throughout the lobby and Lauryn Hill must pulses softly through the speakers. Everyone is dressed as though going to a business meeting in London or an upscale lunch in New York. No one is dressed as though they are in Morocco…”
Smart and witty, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, explores the possibility of freeing ourselves from the shackles of our identity. How easily appearances, and identities, can be changed. What happens when we choose to become a creation of our own making? When we are able to fully escape our past history?
This is not a travel novel, but rather a reflection on reinvention, lying, and an endless world of possibilities. Shedding her painful past, our narrator restyles herself through several new personas, and finds a surrealistic new freedom on her journey.
The title, by the way, is from a Rumi poem, of the same name which ends,
“Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins that are lute strings that make ocean music, not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.”
Similarly, Ms. Vida leaves the ending open to the endless possibilities of having “no shore” ~~ as our character assumes yet another identity, but this time, with a hint of future happiness.
An appropriate ending for such a wonderfully unconventional and affecting story.
Vendela Vida, a San Francisco resident, is the co-founder of the literary magazine The Believer. Her husband, Dave Eggers, founded the literary journal McSweeney’s and the wonderful San Francisco literacy project 826 Valencia.
An advanced readers copy was provided by Harper Collins Publishers back in 2015.
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