Reviews in the News: Bedlam and Vanishing Acts

by Judi Baxter, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 2/23/2005

Reviews in the News: Bedlam and Vanishing Acts

From the Boston Globe comes this troika of eclectic titles:

Take one dog-loving city dweller--whose border collie loves to herd garbage trucks and buses--add a 42-acre sheep farm in upstate New York and a middle-aged man with a penchant for adventure, and you have Jon Katz's latest salute to animals, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys and Me (Villard, $22.95).

"So ostensibly a book about dogs and dog nature," says Globe staff writer Vicki Hengen, "this somewhere along the line became a book about dogs as spiritual conduit, channel to elsewhere, to being what Katz calls 'a better human.' "

He writes: "I don't see dogs as psychic or telepathic. Nor do I believe that we will meet them in the afterlife, or that mediums can channel their deepest thought. But I do believe that the human-dog relationship can be deeply meaningful. Dogs have a remarkable gift for entering our lives at particular times and weaving themselves in."

Along with his dogs, 16 sheep and 2 donkeys he acquires a ram; then he has 16 pregnant sheep. In the middle of one of the worst winters in local history, 17 lambs are born. He survives the bitter cold, deep snow and rickety knees, and believes himself a better man for it.

"As the winter marches on, Katz does learn much. Working his farm by day and writing by night, be becomes better connected to the town around him, the country life and members of his family. with his dogs as lens and emotive mirror, he discovers much about his parents and his psychic history that allows him to therapeutically dot his i's and cross his t's.

"Thus the book winds down, softly, a slow and thoughtful passage through an undulating psychic landscape--part picaresque, part sermon. The cast of characters and arc of plot are minimalist, to be sure, and kitchen wisdom is dished in heaping helpings.

"But Katz's world--of animals and humans and their combined generosity of spirit--is a place you're glad you've been," says Hengen.

"If we herd sheep for another decade or so, I might make it. I might become a patient man," writes Katz.

Delia Hopkins and her trusty bloodhound are familiar sights in rural New Hampshire where they lend their services for search and rescue missions. Her life is a happy and contented one until she begins having dreams and flashbacks about people and events that stay on the edge of her memory but are still vaguely familiar.

When her father, Andrew, is suddenly arrested and charged with kidnapping his daughter decades earlier, her world tilts and she realizes the 'she' she knows is missing.

Globe correspondent Karen Campbell calls Jodi Picoult's Vanishing Acts (Atria Publishing, $25) "compelling" and "richly textured and engaging."

Andrew is remanded to Arizona and Delia, her daughter, Sophie, and her boyfriend, Eric, move to Arizona for the impending trial.

Each chapter slowly unfolds the complicated puzzle that is Delia's early life and is narrated in the first person by the five main characters.

"...[the] twists and turns... keep the plot from being too predictable," says Campbell. "But ultimately, Vanishing Acts is about the elusive nature of memory."

"Memories are like a still life painting by ten different student artists," writes Picoult. "Some are blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match."

"Recovering those memories of early childhood becomes a kind of emotional/psychological 'search and rescue' whereby Delia not only finds herself, she can finally understand and fully appreciate those she loves," Campbell concludes.