A Book, a Movie, a Game and a Fish [5 cents]

The book is "My Dream of You" by Nuala O'Foalain. It was my second Labor Day Weekend Book. This one you can skip. I was disappointed, as I started with high hopes (not sure why). O'Foalain is an Irish journalist who has now written a couple of books; this was her first. It is 500 pages long, and I read 415 before I stopped. That is because I kept hoping that it would get better.

It is not because O'Foalain cannot write. She writes very well. Her descriptions of places are very evocative, presumably because she is using her talents as a journalist. Her problem is that, in this book, she is not a very good story teller.

The protagonist is a 50 year old Irish woman about to retire after 20 or 30 years as a travel writer for an English travel magazine. Three stories are interwoven. One is the protagonist's present. It is not very interesting. The second is the protagonist's past. It has its interesting moments, but they were few and long ago. The third is a Lady Chatterly like story, which took place in Ireland in the early 1850's , right after the Famine's end. It is really not interesting, and I wonder if this started out as two separate books, which she decided to put together. That is how it reads.

The Movie is "The Constant Gardener", with Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, which opened this week. Based on a John Le Carre novel, it tells the story of a British AIDS mission in Africa, and the young, outspoken wife of one of the mission officers, who discovers, along with a Kenyan doctor, a plot to falsify the test results of a new TB drug to the detriment of the African test participants and eventually the world, by disguising side effects of the drug. The plot is a bit convoluted and artificial, but the acting is very good, and the cinematography (the story takes place in Kenya, Sudan, London and Berlin) is top quality. You should go see it the evening that you were planning on reading "My Dream of You."

The game was yesterday's 5-2 Nationals' victory of the Marlin's, where a good time was had by all. The Nats have now won 3 in a row, probably their longest streak since July 4. Three cheers for Livan Hernandez and Marlon Byrd.

The fish was a flounder my wife cooked Sunday night with a Thai basil garlic sauce. The fish and the sauce had to fight it out for top honors.