Thanksgiving Reading: Two Quick Books (3 cents)

I am not exactly sure why I chose either of these to read this weekend, but...

I first sat down with "a novel of suspense" called "The Floating Girl" by Sujata Massey, published in 2000. It is the third of a series of books set in Japan and starring a young journalist/antique expert, who has a pension for getting herselves involved in murder mysteries. The author is American, of German/Indian parentage (see Vikram Seth's "Two Lives"), who lives in Baltimore and writes about Japan, where she has apparently spent a fair amount of time. The victim is an American living in Tokyo involved with the production of pirated manga books (Japanese serial comic books); it all has to due with Japanese gangsters horning in on the sparse profits of this enterprise. You learn a little about some aspects of contemporary Japanese life, but the story is a little weak and far fetched. Not sure why I kept reading, but the fact that I did must say something. But it does not say enough for me to search out the others in the series.

The second book is, I guess, part of my "catch up" reading. It was Kitty Dukakis' "Now You Know". Daughter of BSO first violinist and Pops conductor Harry Ellis Dickson (I learned that Dickson was changed at Ellis Island or thereabouts, and that Harry Ellis Dickson's first cousin was Eddie Duchin.), and wife of Massachusetts governor and presidential wannabe Michael Dukakis, Kitty D. was a golden girl, who (like her golden mother) was apparently always an insecure mess underneath. This book is about her psychological battles, with alcohol, diet pills and depression, and her several hospitalizations. And that is all it is about. Not that that it not a lot, but she obviously was a very accomplished person, moving amongst accomplished people, but this all gets lost in the dust. For periods of time, Kitty seems able to keep her demons in check, and then something happens (like her husband losing the election) and all hell breaks loose. A sad story. You feel not only for her but for her husband, her father, and her children. Perhaps the book was cathartic; I do not know what has happened in the fifteen years since she wrote it. But it is certainly not a book that I, had I been her, would have wanted to write.