2000: The Brethren by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 29 novels, five children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.


The Book:

Length: 366 pages

Subject/Genre: conspiracy/legal thriller

The Brethren is hands-down my favorite Grisham novel so far, and suffers mostly from  Grisham's determination to keep much of the novel serious instead of treating it as an all out farce.  The basic premise is this:  Three corrupt judges in their late middle-age, called the brethren, are inmates at a minimum security federal prison.  In addition to operating their own court within the prison, they run a mail scam with the help of an alcoholic attorney on the outside.  They take out ads in gay magazines with the intent of blackmailing closeted respondents.  I know, this isn't very funny.  But then there's the other major plot of the novel.  Russia is stepping up its game, and the CIA is worried about a new cold war.  They decide they need a president they can count on to give them practically unlimited funding, so they choose an inoffensive unknown congressman from Arizona named Aaron Lake.  Now put two and two together, and you end up with the CIA in a battle of wits with some crooked judges, letters get forged, intercepted, and redirected, and the entire weight of United States intelligence gets thrown at finding three people already in custody.      

The blackmail and underlying social issues are serious, of course, and I understand Grisham's decision to treat it seriously, but he realizes the comedy in much of the story, and treats it as such, leading to what is often a bumpy transition between humor and drama which rarely works.  Maybe I'm just a bit burned out on the rest of Grisham's novels, so one that is sufficiently different from the rest may have an undue luster of originality.  If nothing else, it was nice to see a Grisham novel where everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, instead of one guy with a master plan that unravels slowly (slowly, not because the plan requires time, but because he has to hit 400 pages somehow).  

I don't know if I'd offer an unsolicited recommendation for The Brethren, but it is certainly one of Grisham's better works.

Bestsellers of 2000:

1. The Brethren by John Grisham

2. The Mark by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

3. The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy

4. The Indwelling by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

5. The Last Precinct by Patricia Cornwell

6. Journey by Danielle Steel

7. The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks

8. Roses Are Red by James Patterson

9. Cradle and All by James Patterson

10. The House on Hope Street by Danielle Steel

Also Published in 2000:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

1999: The Testament by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 29 novels, five children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.  

The Book:

Length: 435 pages

Subject/Genre: Last Wills and Testaments/Legal Thriller

The Testament is the most boring of the Grisham novels so far.  The story begins in the first person, with elderly billionaire Troy Phelan preparing his last will and testament.  The details are mildly interesting, but suffice it to say that he convinces his relatives (who he hates) that they'll be getting everything.  He arranges the situation so he'll be declared sane by some of the best expert witnesses around, before jumping from the top floor of his skyscraper.  Phelan's family and lawyer are surprised to discover that he has left everything to Rachel Lane, an illegitimate daughter no one knew about.  To make matters worse, Rachel is a missionary living with a remote tribe somewhere in the Pantanal, a massive wetland region in South America.  Phelan's lawyer tasks his recovering alcoholic colleague, Nate O'Riley, with finding the heiress.  Also, this all takes place around Christmas, and Nate is repeatedly clear about his intense dislike of the holiday spirit.

Pictured: the real war on Christmas

Despite appearances, Grisham doesn't seem to own any tourism ventures in the Pantanal.  Half the story focuses on how much O'Riley hates Christmas, loves alcohol, and just wants to make it out of the Pantanal alive.  The other half focuses on just how scummy and vulturish Phelan's kids and grandkids are.  This part would be more interesting if Phelan hadn't explained how his plan to make sure they got nothing worked, and this is a John Grisham novel: the bad guys never win, or at least not completely.  So, half the time we're stuck with a pretty unsympathetic screw-up as he tries not to get eaten by alligators in a pseudo-adventure story, and the other half of the time we just hear about a clan of unsympathetic screw-ups as they try to carve off a piece of the estate of an unsympathetic billionaire.  The people you're clearly supposed to be rooting for are annoying, the people you're supposed to hate are just exasperating, and it really just drifts aimlessly.  By the time O'Riley finds Rachel you're as sick of the journey as he is, and then there's just another level of frustration when you find out [SPOILER]--- she doesn't want the goddamn money!     

This is an aimless, boring, and all around pointless novel.  

Bestsellers of 1999:

1. The Testament by John Grisham

2. Hannibal by Thomas Harris

3. Assassins by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

4. Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks

5. Timeline by Michael Crichton

6. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

7. Apollyon by Jerry B. Jenkins and Time LaHaye

8. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

9. Irresistible Forces by Danielle Steel

10. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

Also Published in 1999:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

1997: The Partner by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 28 novels, four children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.

The Book:

first edition cover

Length: 366 pages

Subject/Genre: crime/legal thriller

The Partner begins in a small town in Brazil, when an American living under an assumed name is kidnapped and tortured for information.  His girlfriend/accomplice, a Brazilian lawyer, quickly hides the $90 million that the bad guys are looking for, and alerts the FBI of the man's whereabouts.  The FBI takes custody of the man, and brings him back to Biloxi for trial.  The crime?  After faking his own death, Patrick Lanigan stole the aforementioned $90 million from his law firm.  There are now only two questions: "Where's the money" and "whose body is buried in Lanigan's grave?"  

The Partner is very similar to The Runaway Jury.  Lanigan, like Easter, is running an elaborate plan, all the details of which are known only by him and his girlfriend on the outside.  There's the amoral thugs-for-hire agency, and the crooked corporations bankrolling them.  Most of the novel is just Lanigan slowly revealing how he committed his crimes while his master plan unravels.  He hires an old lawyer friend to represent him.  For no good reason, Lanigan withholds information from the lawyer.  Or rather, there is a reason, but the reason is Grisham's, not Lanigan's.  The only reason to keep reading The Partner is to find out what the plan was, which requires Lanigan to keep secrets he has no reason to keep.  Character is sacrificed to plot.  A little common sense and critical thinking and most of the plan will become pretty obvious, making this the most boring of the Grishams I've read so far.

As opposed to the earlier Grisham novels I reviewed, this one doesn't take a stance on a moral issue like The Chamber, or reflect the social/legal issues of exploitative insurance companies or cigarette manufacturers, as in The Rainmaker or The Runaway Jury.  While there is corruption, it's mostly limited to a high level scam that would seem more at home in a Ludlum or Clancy novel.  The Partner is pretty much a paint-by-numbers legal thriller.

Unless you're a Grisham completist or you're engaged in a project like mine, don't bother with The Partner.  Even if you're a legal thriller devotee, pick another Grisham.

Bestsellers of 1997:

1. The Partner by John Grisham

2. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

3. The Ghost by Danielle Steel

4. The Ranch by Danielle Steel

5. Special Delivery by Danielle Steel

6. Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell 

7. The Best Laid Plans by Sidney Sheldon

8. Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark

9. Cat and Mouse by James Patterson

10. Hornet's Nest by Patricia Cornwell

Also Published in 1997:

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Underworld by Don DeLillo

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling

1987: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

The Author:

Stephen King (1947-    ) was born in Portland, Maine.   His father abandoned the family when King was two, leaving his mother to raise King and his older brother.  King attended the University of Maine, earning a B.A. in English in 1970.  King and Tabitha Spruce had their first child in 1970, and married in 1971.  Their second child, Joseph Hillstrom King, was born in 1972.  (He, like his mother and father, is a writer.  He writes under the name Joe Hill.)  King taught high school and supplemented his wages by selling short stories to magazines. 

In 1973, he published his first novel, Carrie.  The first of his novels to make the annual top ten bestsellers list was The Dead Zone (1979).  Between 1980 and 2012, King appeared on the annual top ten list 34 times, in one case having three books on the same year's list. He has since written multiple non-fiction works, as well as serving as a columnist for entertainment weekly.  At current count, King has published twelve short story collections, two comic series, six books of non-fiction, fifty-six novels, seven novellas, ten screenplays, and a musical libretto.

The Book:

Length: 747 pages
Subject/Genre:  Alien invasion/sci-fi-horror

The Tommyknockers is one of the few books on the list that I'd already read.  Widely regarded as one of King's worst, The Tommykockers takes place in Haven, Maine, where Western novelist Bobbi Anderson discovers an alien spacecraft buried in the woods.  As she begins to excavate the wreck, the people in the town start changing, becoming more and more like the alien species that visited long ago.  They develop an amazing technical ingenuity, but don't necessarily understand the concepts behind their inventions.  As Bobbi says "As I say, we've never been very good understanders. We're not a race of super-Einsteins.  Thomas Edison in space would be closer, I think."  However, the townspeople become increasingly psychotic and dangerous.  Bobbi's friend, poet James Gardener (Gard), is immune to the the effects of the change because of a metal plate in his head, and it's up to him to stop the people of Haven, and the alien technology, from wreaking havoc on the Earth.

While complaining about a Stephen King book being long is like complaining about it being set in Maine, The Tommyknockers has the major problem of spending hundreds of pages shifting around minor characters, which gets very repetitive, very fast.  King's tendency to take common-place items and recontextualize them as terrifying consistently fails here.  For example:

"The Coke machine banked back.  It hung in the air for a moment, its front turning back and forth in small arcs that reminded Leandro of the sweeps of a radar dish.  The sun flashed off its glass door.  Leandro could see bottles of Coke and Fanta inside.

Suddenly it pointed at him -- and accelerated toward him.

Found me, Christ---

He got up and tried to hop to the car on his left foot.  The soda machine bore down on him, coin return hooting dismally."  

'coin return hooting dismally' is probably the least scary description I've ever read in a horror novel. The success of The Tommyknockers is a bit surprising considering it competed against two other King books, including Misery.

King's cocaine addiction and alcoholism throughout the 1980s is frequently brought up in discussions of The Tommyknockers.  King himself admits to barely remembering having written Cujo.  There is much to be said for The Tommyknockers as an allegory for King's addiction (this article from The Guardian is worth a look), but that doesn't make up for the overall shortcomings of the novel.   Nevertheless, The Tommyknockers was adapted into a truly awful two part miniseries starring Jimmy Smits (The West Wing, NYPD Blue) and Marg Helgenberger (CSI):

It's pretty much just three hours of all the worst aspects of a made-for-tv sci-fi B-movie.   

I can't really recommend this book for anybody.  If you're a Stephen King fan or looking to get into his books, this is not a good choice.  It's one of his longest and worst books.  

Bestsellers of 1987:

1. The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

2. Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

3. Kaleidoscope by Danielle Steel

4. Misery by Stephen King

5. Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor

6. Windmills of the Gods by Sidney Sheldon

7. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

8. Fine Things by Danielle Steel

9. Heaven and Hell by John Jakes

10. The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Also Published in 1987:

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Sources:

King, Stephen. The Tommyknockers. 1987. New York: Signet, 1988. Print.

1985: The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel

The Author:

Jean Auel (1936-    ) was born Jean Untinen and was born in Chicago.  In 1954, she married Ray Auel (pronounced 'owl'), with whom she had five children.  She attended the Portland State University (Oregon), and in 1976 received her M.B.A. from the University of Portland.  From the sixties through the seventies, she worked as a clerk in a tech company and later as a technical writer, before publishing her first novel, The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), the first book of the six part Earth's Children series and a commercial success.  The second book of the series, The Valley of Horses (1982) sold well, ending up sixth on that year's annual bestseller list, and the third and fourth books take the #1 spot in their respective years.  The fifth book in the series, The Shelters of Stone (2002), appeared seventh on the annual bestseller list, and the series was finished in 2011 with the publication of The Land of Painted Caves.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover

Length: 645 pages
Subject/Genre: Prehistoric Society/Historical Fiction

The Mammoth Hunters is the third novel in the Earth's Children series, so you're dutifully warned of spoilers for the first two books.  The story takes place in prehistoric Europe, during the last ice age.  In the first book, Ayla, a young cro-magnon child, is orphaned and later adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals who refer to themselves as the clan.  Ayla deals with fundamental differences between herself and the Neanderthals.  The Neanderthals cannot communicate vocally and have access to racial memory, that is to say, the collective memory of the Neanderthal peoples.  Ayla is trained as a medicine woman but, due to the actions of a Neanderthal man who hates her, is exiled from the tribe.   In the second novel, Ayla sets up home in a cave, where she befriends and trains a cave lion cub and a horse.  Meanwhile, an eighteen year-old cro-magnon man, Jondalar, and his brother set out from their camp for a years-long journey.  The two men visit numerous societies.  Ayla's cave lion, when grown, leaves her and later ends up attacking Jondalar and his brother, injuring the former and killing the latter.  Ayla saves Jondalar and nurses him back to health, and for the first time is introduced to Cro-Magnon society. The two fall in love.    

In The Mammoth Hunters, Ayla, Jondalar, and Ayla's horse and it's foal, start the trek back to Jondalar's tribe.  Jondalar has explained to Ayla that there is a prevalent belief among the cro-magnons that the Neanderthals are no more than animals, incapable of complex thought, ritual, etc.  Dealing with anti-Neanderthal sentiment is common occurrence throughout the novel.   The two come across a camp of the Mamutoi, a jovial tribe of hunters.  Over the course of the novel, Ayla learns about Cro-Magnon society, continues to develop animal domestication and tools, and has her relationship with Jondalar put to the test.  This book largely focuses on Ayla's growing independence and understanding.  

That said, there are a couple things that really bother me, the first is the Forrest Gump approach to history, where one unassuming individual is responsible for multiple major innovations.  Ayla develops animal domestication, the sling, the harness, the travois, among other technologies and techniques.  All this is made more problematic by certain incongruities.  Contrary to the beliefs of everyone she meets, Ayla believes that sex leads to childbirth.  Yet, when she refers to the heart as a 'thing that pumps blood,' everyone knows what she means, despite the fact that even the early Greek physicians didn't know that.  Auel's desire to explore and explain early societies often supercedes what would make sense for her characters to do.    

The Mammoth Hunters seems to be equal parts domestic drama and infotainment.  

I like to look at the goodreads reviews to get contradictory opinions and to see if any impressions I get are common among those who read the book, and why the book is so popular.  Among the most positive reviews, the historical backing is what gets mentioned the most, and the steamy love triangle comes second. A common criticism that I wholeheartedly concur with is that Auel repeats herself far too much.  

In regards to the steamy love triangle mentioned in the above paragraph:  Auel's novels have been noted for their very frank and erotic sex scenes.  However, it comes across as something I'd expect to find in a harlequin romance novel as opposed to something like an Aimee Bender story. (And no, I'm not complaining that it's not written like a sex scene by Aimee Bender (or Toni Morrison, or Bret Easton Ellis, or Zora Neale Hurston, etc.), but rather trying to illustrate by comparison that a sex scene in a novel shouldn't suddenly change tone and be written in a gushy, wish-fulfillment, candlelight-and-mood-music kind of way.)    

Unless you're a huge fan of historical fiction and are interested in prehistoric societies, you probably shouldn't take on the Earth's Children series.

Bestsellers of 1985:

1. The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel

2. Texas by James Michener

3. Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

4. If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon

5. Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

6. Secrets by Danielle Steel

7. Contact by Carl Sagan

8. Lucky by Jackie Collins

9. Family Album by Danielle Steel

10. The Class by Erich Segal

Also Published in 1985:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a  Hat by Oliver Sacks

Gálapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Sources:

Auel, Jane. The Mammoth Hunters. New York: Crown Publishers, 1985. Print.

"Jean M. Auel." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web. 

1980: The Covenant by James Michener

The Author:

James Michener (1907-1997) was adopted by a Quaker from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  He attended Swarthmore college for English and psychology, graduating with honors in 1929.  After a couple years spent abroad, Michener returned to Pennsylvania to teach high school English.  In 1935, he married his first wife, Patti Koon, then earned his Masters and taught briefly at Harvard before becoming an editor for Macmillan Publishers.   

Michener served in the South Pacific during WWII.  His experiences there provided the basis for his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), which won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1948 and was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the stage, under the title South Pacific.  In 1948, Michener divorced Koon and married Vange Nord.  Michener appeared in the top 10 annual bestsellers list twice in the 1950s, and fifteen times over the course of his life, taking the top spot four times.  In 1955, he divorced Nord and married Mari Sabusawa.  In 1977, Michener recieved the Presidential Medal of Freedom.   He died of kidney failure in 1997.     

The Book:    

Length: 1238 Pages

Subject/Genre: South Africa/Historical Fiction

The Covenant is the last Michener book on my list, and I honestly don't plan to read any others.  I went into more detail on my problems with Michener's approach to history in my review of Centennial, and it holds true to The Covenant as well.  The Covenant focuses on the history of South Africa, as usual focusing on a few ethnically/religiously/politically different dynasties, each meant to illustrate a particular point of view in an ongoing struggle, in this case the English imperialists, the Dutch/Huguenot immigrants, and the native Africans.  The novel focuses primarily on the late 15th century up to 1979.    

Part of the problem with Michener's style (from my perspective), is that he never seems to know which details are important and which aren't, leading to constant info dumps of relatively little, if any, use.  As a contemporary NY Times review notes: "His personal covenant is not with God, but with the encyclopedia. If, 15,000 years ago, in the African bush, the San used poison arrows, he will describe those arrows and name the source of the poison."  Michener gives us broad strokes for the people and the thought processes of the times, while going into great detail on what type of plates they ate off or how exactly they wore particular items of clothing.  This devotion to minutiae would be better served when constructing characters.  While the broad strokes are fine for providing a layman's history to an audience new to the subject matter, the sheer volume of the books (in terms of word count and epochs described) makes me question the necessity of the reduction.     

While Centennial was the only one of the four Michener novels I read that got a television adaptation, The Covenant has a legacy of its own.  It is the center of what may be very legitimate plagiarism claims by Michener's researcher, Errol Uys.  Michener's biographer, Stephen May (Michener: A Writer's Journey) takes Uys's side.  It seems that Uys wrote numerous pages-long sections of The Covenant, but was refused any credit for it.

Controversy aside, The Covenant is pretty standard Michener fare.  It is structurally and stylistically similar to his other novels, just about South Africa this time.  

Bestselling novels of 1980:

1. The Covenant by James Michener

2. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

3. Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon

4. Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz

5. Firestarter by Stephen King

6. The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett

7. Random Winds by Belva Plain   

8. The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth

9. The Fifth Horseman by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

10. The Spike by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss

Also Published in 1980:     

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Sources:

Leonard, John. "The Covenant." The New York Times 30 June 1981.

Michener, James. The Covenant.1980. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1984. Print.

1978: Chesapeake by James Michener

The Author: 

This is the third book by James Michener (1907-1997) to appear on my list.  He has four different books on the list, a total matched only by Stephen King and surpassed only by John Grisham.  As such, I hope you'll forgive me for copy/pasting most of the author bio from my review of The Source and Centennial.

James Michener (1907-1997) was adopted by a Quaker from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  He attended Swarthmore college for English and psychology, graduating with honors in 1929.  After a couple years spent abroad, Michener returned to Pennsylvania to teach high school English.  In 1935, he married his first wife, Patti Koon, then earned his Masters and taught briefly at Harvard before becoming an editor for Macmillan Publishers.   

Michener served in the South Pacific during WWII.  His experiences there provided the basis for his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), which won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1948 and was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the stage, under the title South Pacific.  In 1948, Michener divorced Koon and married Vange Nord.  Michener appeared in the top 10 annual bestsellers list twice in the 1950s, and fifteen times over the course of his life, taking the top spot four times.  In 1955, he divorced Nord and married Mari Sabusawa.  In 1977, Michener recieved the Presidential Medal of Freedom.   He died of kidney failure in 1997.     

The Book:

Length: 865 Pages

Subject/Genre: Chesapeake Bay Region/Historical Fiction

Chesapeake is, as the name suggests, a history of the Chesapeake Bay region.  The novel begins in 1583, focused on Native American inter-tribal relationships and history, followed by the arrival of Europeans and the foundation of Jamestown and the Chesapeake Bay Colony, the slave trade, the Civil War and Reconstruction, up through to the 1970s.       

As opposed to Michener's other works, Chesapeake is very focused.  Where as The Source covered several thousands of years of history and Centennial  spent a hundred pages explaining early earth geology and detailing the lives of prehistoric river mammals, Chesapeake's focus wavers less, leading to a whole that is more cohesive than the others I've previously reviewed.  Chesapeake's focuses on the usual suspects of American historical fiction, religion, race, class, and discrimination, e.g. the Quaker, pro-abolition family set at odds with the wealthy slave-owning family.

Michener's modus operandi seems to be a wide-scope of an area's history, leading up to current social or political situations.  The Source leads to violence in the Middle East, Centennial to the modern Midwest, Chesapeake to the the modern South and Civil Rights movements, and The Covenant to apartheid era South Africa.  Michener attempts to draw a step by step diagram of how things got the way they are.  Such a diagram is going to be, at best, oversimplified. While his aim is admirable, compressing four hundred years of history into a single novel (even a long one) is going to require things to be painted in very broad strokes. Michener realizes this (as demonstrated by the notes at the chapter ends in Centennial), but the novel form is not greatly suited for this type of endeavor.  Michener tries to explain history from the perspective of those living it, and not just the heads of state or generals, but from the perspective of the average man.  However, the men and women in his novels are by no means average.  They must embody some particular archetype: the slave owner or the abolitionist.  Too much, the social forces of the time are embodied too literally, and everything seems teleological, as if it had to happen this way, a view that is true only in retrospect.  

I don't mean to imply that Michener is factually incorrect, or that he plays fast and loose with the facts.  Michener's novels are, if nothing else, well-researched.  Rather, it's his approach to history as a series of inevitabilities, a habit of viewing past events and decisions through the lens of their long-term results.  

That said, if you like long historical fiction, Chesapeake is for you.

Bestselling Novels of 1978:

1. Chesapeake by James Michener

2. War and Remembrance  by Herman Wouk

3. Fools Die by Mario Puzo

4. Bloodline by Sidney Sheldon

5. Scruples by Judith Krantz

6. Evergreen by Belva Plain

7. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach

8. The Holcroft Covenant by Robert Ludlum

9. Second Generation by Howard Fast

10. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

Also Published in 1978:

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

The World According to Garp by John Irving

The Stand by Stephen King

Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr. 

1977: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Author:

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was born in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State (later a province of South Africa) where his father worked as a banker. At the age of three John Ronald Reuel Tolkein, his mother Mabel and his younger brother Hilary moved to England.  His father died of rheumatic fever in South Africa, leaving his family destitute. The Tolkiens lived by the aid of Mabel's family.  However, Mabel's family cut off financial support after she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900.  In 1904, Mabel died of diabetes.  Guardianship of the twelve year old Tolkien and his brother was given to Father Francis Xavier Morgan of Birmingham.

In 1911, Tolkien began attending Oxford college, graduating with honors in English Language and Literature in 1915. In 1913, after a five year, interrupted courtship, Tolkien and Edith Bratt became engaged.  The two married in March 1916, a few months before Tolkien shipped out for service in World War One.  He was sent back to England in October of that year after contracting trench fever.  While recovering in England, Tolkien began work on The Book of Lost Tales.  After the war, Tolkien worked compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, then was a professor at the University of Leeds where he worked on translations as well as teaching.  In 1925, he began teaching at Oxford University, where he taught until his retirement in 1959.  In 1936, Tolkien published The Hobbit, which sold well enough for his publishers to request a sequel.  This wish was fulfilled by The Lord of the Rings, the three volumes published in 1954 and 1955.  The books ended up becoming popular enough to allow Tolkien and his wife to retire in comfort.

In 1972, the queen appointed Tolkien a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was given an honorary doctorate from Oxford.


The Book:

1st edition cover

Length: 458 pages
Subject/Genre: Middle Earth/Fantasy

The Silmarillion was the first of Tolkien's works about Middle Earth to be published since The Lord of the Rings.  Published after his death, The Silmarillion was edited by J.R.R.'s son, Christopher.  The Silmarillion is a history of Middle Earth, comprised of legend, folklore, and 'official' histories.  It starts with the creation of the Earth (one that is very Judeo-Christian inspired), and the creation of the elves, dwarves, men, and other great and terrible creatures that roamed Middle Earth.  

Before I speak more about the content of The Silmarillion, I should point out the oddity of it being the single bestselling novel of the year.  The Silmarillion is a very dense, frequently dry book that I can only see as being of interest to those who are already fans of The Lord of the Rings.  While some sci-fi and horror are on the list in the coming decades, this is the only fantasy novel that made it, and it's not a very accessible novel at that.  Add to that that it was published more than two decades after the books that made it popular, The Silmarillion would seem to have a lot going against it.  However, in the sixties and seventies, Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings received massive popularity within the U.S. counter culture.  Between the publication of TLOR and The Silmarillion, bands like Led Zeppelin, Rush, and Genesis, wrote songs explicitly and allusively about Middle Earth, and that's ignoring the bands that have since faded into obscurity, or details like T. Rex's drummer changing his name to Stephen Peregrin Took and whatever the hell this thing Leonard Nimoy made is:

All this is a way of saying that Middle Earth had gone from cult status to cultural trend, leading to bestseller status of this week's subject.   While those who have read The Lord of the Rings know that it's full of names, dates, geography, history, and myth, in terms of density it falls far short of The Silmarillion.  Of the novels 458 pages, over 15% comprise glossaries, family trees, and indices.  In fact, the Index of Names alone takes up 54 pages.  The fact is, Tolkien wrote a history book; Its main function is to deliver information, fictional though it may be.   And so we get the thousands of years of the history of Middle Earth preceding the events of The Hobbit, which tells of the evil Melkor, the creation of the elvish kingdoms, the rise of Suaron and the arrival of men in Middle Earth. If you haven't read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I can't recommend The Silmarillion.  If you have, and have a strong desire to know more about the world it takes place in, then this is a great place to start. Bestselling novels of 1977: 1. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien 2. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough 3. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach 4. The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré 5. Oliver's Story by Erich Segal 6. Dreams Die First by Harold Robbins 7. Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw 8. How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong 9. Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin 10. Daniel Martin by John Fowles Also Published in 1977: The Public Burning by Robert Coover A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick The Shining by Stephen King Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Sources: Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. 1977. New York: Ballantine, 1984. Print.

 

1976: Trinity by Leon Uris

The Author:

Leon Uris (1924-2003) appears one other time on the annual best-seller list, for 1959's Exodus.    Leon Uris (1924-2003) was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  His parents were Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe.  Uris never finished high school, opting to drop out and enlist in the Marine Corps during his senior year.  He served in combat in Guadalcanal.  After the war, Uris moved to San Francisco with his wife, also a former Marine.  While there, he worked for a local newspaper.  In 1953, his first novel, Battle Cry, was published to huge popular success.  From there he was given a job in the story department of Warner Brothers Studios.

      In 1955, he released his second novel, The Angry Hills and, in 1956, penned the screenplay for Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  In 1958, he published Exodus, which became a runaway success, becoming the first of two annual bestsellers on this list and earning him a considerable fan following. In 1961, Uris released Mila 18.  Trinity was published in 1976, and was inspired by a trip Uris and his third wife took to photograph modern Ireland.  Uris kept writing until his death in 2003.  He was married three times over the course of his life and had five children.  He died of renal failure.

The Book:

1st edition cover

Length: 817 pages

Subject/Genre: Irish history/historical fiction

Trinity primarily follows Conor Larkin, a poor Irish Catholic living in mid-to-late 19th century Ireland.  Much of the beginning of the novel is spent detailing the wretched conditions the Irish were forced to live in at the hands of the British, the local culture of small town Irishmen, and the history of attempted rebellion against the British.  Conor's story is the typical hero's journey of the historical fiction of an oppressed people.  Through personal strength and courage, Conor rises to fight the British rule as a leader of men.    

Published in 1976, and detailing a time period over a hundred years past, Trinity was still topical when it was written.  The period between the late 1960s and 1998 in Northern Ireland is referred to as The Troubles.  Violent attacks and acts of retribution were frequent between Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter groups and British occupation forces, and between different splinter groups as well. The basis of the groups' attacks was the continued occupation of Northern Ireland by the British and a desire for Irish self-rule.  The conflict was a major subject in the news for decades.  The violence hit it's height in the 1970s, around the time Trinity was written and published.  

The novel puts the modern conflict in its historical context, as part of the Irish's centuries long attempt at overthrowing their colonizers.  When researching Uris, claims that he was merely a propagandist pop up frequently, mainly pointing to the one-sided good vs. evil, freedom vs. tyranny approach to the stories.  While I agree that Trinity is certainly one-sided, I don't think it would be propaganda inasmuch as it is an attempt to merely demonstrate the opposite side's view.  Trinity is also a product of the time it was written in, and functions as an attempt to explain and understand the perspective and history of the bad guys (i.e. IRA sects).

As far as the book itself goes, I feel Uris, like Michener and Hailey, gets too bogged down in detail.  Uris tries to function almost as a documentarian of 19th century Ireland, and the balance between providing mountains of information and storytelling is difficult to maintain for extended periods of time, leading to a narrative that moves in spurts.     

That said, if you are the type of person who likes your historical fiction long, winding, and full of detail, you'll probably like Trinity.  If you like Trinity, Uris wrote a sequel to it 1995, titled Redemption.

Bestsellers of 1976:

1. Trinity by Leon Uris

2. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie

3. Dolores by Jacqueline Susann

4. Storm Warning by Jack Higgins

5. The Deep by Peter Benchley

6. 1876 by Gore Vidal

7. Slapstick or Lonesome No More! by Kurt Vonnegut

8. The Lovely Lady by Harold Robbins

9. Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart

10. A Stranger in the Mirror by Sidney Sheldon

Also published in 1976:

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley

Sources:

"Leon Uris." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. 
     Web.

Uris, Leon. Trinity. 1976. New York: Bantam, 1977. Print.

1974: Centennial by James Michener

The Author:

James Michener (1907-1997) has already appeared on this blog for 1965's The Source.  Michere was adopted by a Quaker from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  He later attended Swarthmore college, studying English and Psychology, graduating with honors in 1929.  After spending a couple abroad, Michener returned to Pennsylvania to teach high school English.  In 1935, he married his first wife, Patti Koon, then earned his Masters and taught briefly at Harvard before becoming an editor for Macmillan Publishers.   

Michener served in the South Pacific during WWII.  His experiences there provided the basis for his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), which won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1948 and was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the stage, under the title South Pacific.  In 1948, Michener divorced Koon and married Vange Nord.  Michener appeared in the top 10 annual bestsellers list fifteen times between 1951 and 1992, taking the top spot four times.  In 1955, he divorced Nord and married Mari Sabusawa.  In 1977, Michener received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.   He died of kidney failure in 1997. 

The Book:

Length: 1086 pages

Genre/Subject: Historical Fiction/The American Midwest

Centennial is about the eponymous fictional small town in Colorado.  The first part tells us the framing device: a major magazine is doing a piece on the typical American small town, and they've asked a historian to do his own investigation for the purposes of fact checking.  As such, each chapter ends with a note to the editors, clearing up any possibly incorrect or speculative historical elements of the preceding chapter.  In true Michener fashion, this story of a small town doesn't start with the town's naming in 1876, or the history of the Native Americans living in the area before that, or even with the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago.  Michener starts the story of Centennial, Colorado with the formation of the Earth's crust.     

This is one of my issues with Michener, and it's largely a matter of personal taste.  After a brief introduction to the concept of the book, he spends over a hundred pages on geology and evolutionary biology.  Do we really need what is essentially a short story depicting the life of a particular buffalo living hundreds of thousands of years before its species had contact with humans?  On the one hand, horses, buffalo, beavers (and, yes, even the giant Diplodocus), and the unique landscape of the area are of great importance to the history of the area and the story itself, but is this too much? I'm a big fan of going on tangents, but you have the tangent before you have the thing it's tangential to.   

In my review of Hailey's Wheels, I compared Hailey, Michener, and Uris. During my research for that post, I came across a review from The New Republic which I think holds true to Michener as well.

     [His] most devoted readers, one senses, are the sort who don't read novels except those 

     certified as “informative” and “educational”; whose highest praise for the novels they really 

     cherish is that they are “very educational.”

While today we tend to think of historical fiction as factually dubious at best (thanks, Dan Brown), people like Michener treated the genre as a means to popularize history.  Being informative was at least as important as being entertaining, and the goal was to give you as complete an understanding of the subject as possible. Personally, I've always been of the opinion that if I want to read a book about history, I'd pick up a history book.  This isn't to say that novels can't be informative or have a significant non-fiction component (cf. In Cold Blood).  The problem is that an attempt to tell us everything can weigh the work down.  But once again, the historical meandering just isn't the kind of thing I like, and there's no accounting for taste.

Due to it's popularity, NBC made Centennial into a twelve-part miniseries in 1979, starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Carrera, as well as Andy Griffith and pre-James Bond Timothy Dalton. 

Like I've said, Michener goes to great lengths to be as historically accurate as possible.  If you like historical fiction and very long books, Michener would be a good fit.

Bestselling Novels of 1974:

1. Centennial by James Michener

2. Watership Down by Richard Adams

3. Jaws by Peter Benchley

4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

5. Something Happened by Joseph Heller

6. The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth

7. The Pirate by Harold Robbins

8. I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven

9. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

10. The Fan Club by Irving Wallace

Also Published in 1974:

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll

Enderby's End by Anthony Burgess

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Sources:

Maloff, Saul. "Troubadour of Free Enterprise." The New Republic 165.17 (23 Oct. 1971): 21-22. 

     Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web.

Michener, James. Centennial. 1974. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1989.