Liars and Saints

  At times, with the special needs counselor, my spouse and I just want to rend garments and gnash our teeth. Yes, we *know* there are steps to take to limit a child's physical aggression. But we don't always need to hear the steps. Sometimes, it's useful just to shout to the heavens. "If you tell a child to stop, that's provocative. The end result is that the child will continue to do the obnoxious thing, and will just *amplify* the intensity of the obnoxious thing." No shit. But here's a question. Sometimes, physical proximity is not a reasonable choice. Let's say you're at a hotel, and your children have raced away--so that there are several football fields between the kids and the adults. You see your kids, but they are just little stick figures against a sea of beige carpeting. One child puts an arm in the air--violence is on the agenda. If you were Mary Poppins, you might hurl yourself down the length of the hallway; you might intercede. You ...

 In a way, "Dear Mr. Henshaw" is a companion novel to the Ramona Quimby series. Leigh Botts doesn't meet Ramona, but Leigh's issues remind me of Ramona's issues. When Ramona's father loses his job, he struggles with depression and begins smoking. When Leigh's father has his own existential crisis, there is a related string of bad decisions. Beverly Cleary doesn't mince words. Adults make errors all the time. Children have to cope with the messy behavior of loved ones. Bill Botts is so lost--so inadequate--that Leigh Botts needs to invent his own surrogate parents. He is like the bear in a Henshaw novel--when the bear's mother dies, the bear begins eating only sugar, so much sugar that he cannot hibernate properly. It's a friendly ranger who intervenes and teaches the orphaned bear to feed himself properly. One of Leigh's surrogate dads is Mr. Fridley, the observant janitor, who drums up tasks for Leigh and sings the praises of a well-develo...

 Anthony Horowitz speaks about the construction of "the twist" in a mystery novel. A good writer has to play fair--all the clues need to be available to the reader just as they are to the detective. In a well-done mystery, the clues seem to lead you down one particular path--but another path is just as plausible. In the new Horowitz novel, an actor playing Daniel Hawthorne is murdered. We first think that the actor was the intended victim. But what if the killer was going after the real-life figure the actor was playing--the killer saw the name "Daniel Hawthorne" on a trailer and became confused--? The killer then killed the actor, thinking that the actor was Daniel Hawthorne. We accept this conjecture. But the question is this: *Should* we accept the conjecture? I was raised on Agatha Christie. In college, I discovered PD James, who is like the upgraded iPhone version of Agatha Christie. Depending on the day, I might tell you that PD James is my all-time favorite w...

 I struggled with "Is God Is." We know we aren't in the realm of realism--because the two protagonists refer to their mother as "God," and they're being sincere. I've thought a fair amount about the off-putting title, and I assume it's a reference to the idea of twins. The two starring roles are for twins. They are daughters of God. One on each side of God. We're in the world of the ancient Greeks. God's husband throws God in a bathtub--then sets Her on fire. Many years later, God is out for revenge. She is too damaged to fight. So she sends her daughters to kill their father. This story evokes thoughts of Medea, Oedipus, the House of Atreus. God's nurses are like the Furies. We might also wonder if God is telling the whole truth--for example, why isn't there a clear explanation of how the two daughters ended up *next to* their mother in the bathtub? The movie's success depends on the actor playing Man--and, here, the director was...

  My husband and I left early from a party; we wanted to watch "SVU."  It didn't matter that the episode seemed to have been written by AI. (Big plot holes troubled me. Parents are upset that Olivia has allowed a child-torturer to walk free; in the next scene, the same parents have cheerfully loaned their own tween to Olivia for an improvised game of baseball. Also, cops talk about the "intelligence" of a particular predator--but the predator drives around with a gun on display, even as a victim is shouting in the trunk.) At the party in question, Marc and I were pleased to find another SVU fan. Neither my spouse nor I have any idea what we should be discussing at parties--to be gay in a sea of straight people is to be mostly puzzled (hour after hour). I generally find myself summarizing the plots of recent films for an uninterested listener. But meeting another SVU addict--that's a game changer. This particular addict had "intel": If you skip the ...

  The song "New York" does double duty: It sets the scene and functions as an "I Want" solo. (In this way, it's a bit like "Skid Row" from "Little Shop of Horrors.") Like many other moments in "Two Strangers," "New York" is a case of inadequate writing--the lyricist wants you to laugh at the European tourist's minimal knowledge, but by reaching for cheap jokes, the lyricist sacrifices a sense of realism. In a way, that doesn't matter--because of Sam Tutty's immense charm, and because of the bond linking Tutty and Christiani Pitts. I especially like Pitts in this song; she has to be extremely dry while also conveying a sense that there is chemistry between the two main characters. Pitts is given terse sentences that contrast with Tutty's rambling--she puts a surprising amount of topspin on just two words. ("It's not.") No one thinks that either one of these actors has a shot on Tony night--but ...