The Big Short by Michael Lewis, 2010, * * * *

When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine, and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread.  That area belongs to the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling book Liar's Poker. Who got it right? He asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? What qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives them, most memorably, what they deserve.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, 2004, * * *

In this fourth novel from Whitbread winner Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum), private detective Jackson Brodie — ex-cop, ex-husband and weekend dad — takes on three cases involving past crimes that occurred in and around London. The first case introduces two middle-aged sisters who, after the death of their vile, distant father, look again into the disappearance of their beloved sister Olivia, last seen at three years old.  A retired lawyer,  who lives only on the fumes of possible justice,  next enlists Jackson's aid in solving the brutal killing of his grown daughter 10 years earlier. In the third "cold" case, the sibling of an infamous ax-bludgeoner seeks a reunion with her niece, who as a baby was a witness to murder.  Jackson's reluctant persistence heats up these cold cases and by happenstance leads him to reassess his own painful history.  The cases are all quite dark, and Atkinson does a good job of conveying the sense of sorrow and loss that surrounds each.  Jackson pursues them without a lot of hope but with due diligence and as in so many procedurals, discovers threads to each that went unexplored. The chapters hopscotch between the different storylines, and the plot unravels in the manner of a good airplane or beach read but it's pretty easy to pick up the clues Atkinson drops, and thus, figure out the conclusion well before the ending and the conclusion to the book wasn't as satisfying as it could have been.  It was good but not great.

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks, 2009, * * *

In London, three weeks before Christmas 2007, the lives of several characters intersect and intercut each other. With savage accuracy, the story skewers the banking industry and the subprime mortgage crisis while also touching on the evils of Islamic fundamentalism, the British school system, reality TV, role-playing computer games, and critics who delight in giving bad book reviews. The financial explanations are well researched and accurate,  but they slow down the plot.   The main characters are a hedge fund manager trying to pull off the biggest trade of his career and a Scottish-born student led astray by Islamist theory but the other characters, among them a Tube driver, a soccer player, a  book reviewer and a barrister get short shrifted in the novel. I found this book to be unfailingly depressing where all of the characters are either unpleasant or totally obnoxious and it represents a sad commentary on the author's apparent opinion of the greedy, shallow, and class conscious inhabitants of today's United Kingdom. All of this might have been good anti-bourgeois fun, along the lines of recent novels by Jonathan Dee (The Privileges) and Adam Haslett (Union Atlantic) that also feature criminal financiers, if Faulks hadn’t confused the moral calculus by introducing terrorism into the story   In the end, most of the characters and story lines felt like they were added to fatten the book as if a student was trying to satisfy a teacher’s requirement for a 10-page term paper and ultimately the book ends with a thud.  Perhaps, however, there is something to be said for not giving a formulaic ending  - everything continues "as is" despite upheavals in the world and with the characters.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them by Amy Dickinson, 2009, * * *

I am one of Amy Dickinson;s biggest fans – having become familiar with her from reading her nationally syndicated advice column "Ask Amy" and from hearing her wit and wisdom as a featured guest on NPR's weekly news quiz “Wait.Wait…Don’t Tell Me.” Her motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to" and in The Mighty Queens of Freeville Amy Dickinson shares those mistakes and her remarkable story. Dickinson traces her own personal history, as well as the history of her mother's family whose members make up the 'Mighty Queens' of Freeville, N.Y., the small town where Dickinson was raised, and where she raised her own daughter, following stints in New York, London, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. After she found herself a reluctant single parent,  her mother, aunts and sisters helped her to pick up the pieces when her life fell apart,  and to reassemble them into something new. It is a story of frequent failures and surprising successes, as Amy starts and loses careers, bumbles through blind dates, teaches Sunday school, and moves across the country with her daughter and their giant tabby cat. A tale of promise postponed and scrappy survival, Amy Dickinson's glorious triumphs are like rabbits pulled out of a hat, one after another after another. Full of hope and humor and big simple truths, it is a story told with grace and without a trace of cynicism. This is a book you will love and one you will be truly sad to finish. 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by R.Skloot, 2010, * * * * *

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the tale of a 31-year old black mother of five in Baltimore, who died of cervical cancer in 1951.  Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue sample from her cervix to research and they spawned the first viable, indeed immortal, cell lines ever grown in a laboratory. These cell lines have since spawned a multibillion dollar industry - yet her descendents have received no financial compensation and cannot even afford health care. Until Rebecca Skloot, a science reporter,  began her 10-year quest to learn about the woman whose cell line had saved millions of lives, the woman behind the HeLa cells was virtually unknown.  HeLa cells (named for the first two initials of Henrietta Lacks's first and last names)  have been responsible for unlocking the secrets of cancer and various viruses and have been essential to the development of in vitro fertilization, the polio vaccine, cloning and gene mapping.   The interactions between Skloot, a white woman, and the initially wary Lacks family contribute to this fascinating story and what emerges is a sweeping account of race, gender, ethics, class, economics, science and medical treatment and how they intersect in an unequal health care system.  In her summary Ms. Skloot discusses Myriad Genetics, a company that holds patents on several genes, including two genetic markers for breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2.  In a wide reaching ruling by a federal judge delivered on March 29, 2010, those patents were struck down in an argument stating that genes are products of nature and thus occur naturally. This book could not be more relevant.

Life in the Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson's Disease and Dementia by Thomas Graboys, 2008, * * * *

At the top of his professional game at 49, as a renowned Boston cardiologist on both the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the staff of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Thomas Graboys began having unusual physical and mental symptoms. As he was at a personal nadir, following the death of his wife, he at first ignored the signs.  However, despite his best efforts to control the situation, first through denial, then by reducing his private-practice patient load, the symptoms doggedly progressed. In the meantime, he remarried. When he passed out on his wedding day, he knew his problems were more serious than he wanted to admit. Before long, he was diagnosed with the double whammy of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, an associated degenerative disease. In this stirring and chilling memoir, he takes an unblinking look at himself as his mind and body suffer unrelenting hits from those progressive illnesses. This is an unflinching memoir of a devastating illness as only a consummate physician could write it including reflections by Graboys’ daughters, sons-in-law, and other members of the families blended by his marriage. In his joint roles as physician and patient, Dr. Graboys finds a way to convey hope, optimism and an appreciation of what it means to be truly alive. A remarkable book.

So Much For That by Lionel Shriver, 2010, * * * *

In So Much for That, Lionel Shriver tackles large subjects — marriage, illness, and the failure of the American healthcare system — and dissects them with her astute and critical insights.  Since selling his handyman home repair business and netting over $700,000, Shep Knacker has fantasized about what he calls “The Afterlife”  - taking his family off to a faraway, third world country, where his savings will last them forever and they can lead the good life. This dream is shattered when his wife is diagnosed with cancer.   Lionel Shriver recounts the intertwined stories of several characters suffering from serious medical conditions  and, in the process, creates a harrowing picture of the fallout that the current health care and insurance system can have on middle-class people struggling to care for their families. There is one farcical plot development that is poorly woven into the emotional fabric of the story, but Ms. Shriver's understanding of her characters is so intimate and unsentimental that it lofts the novel over such bumpy passages.   She turns her schematic outline into a visceral and deeply affecting story, a story about how illness affects people’s relationships, and how their efforts to grapple with mortality reshapes the arcs of their lives.