Monday's Reviews Today: Meek's 'Descent' & E. coli Explored
-- Publishers Weekly, 2/14/2008 1:53:00 PM
In James Meek's new novel about a frustrated author sidetracked by 9/11 and an affair with an American journalist abroad, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, an unfortunately "muddled narrative line" is redeemed by a "masterful crafting of character and setting." And in Carl Zimmer's Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, the author explores the varieties of the titular bacteria and its significane on science as a whole, "in elegant, even poetic prose."
We Are Now Beginning Our Descent
James Meek. Canongate, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-1-84767-176-9
The author of The People’s Act of Love returns with the midlife deconstruction of a reluctant war correspondent working in post-9/11 Afghanistan. What Scots journalist Adam Kellas truly wants is to be a bestselling novelist, but he watches aghast on 9/11 as the planned climax of his latest thriller-in-the-works becomes reality in lower Manhattan. Disappointed, he puts down his manuscript, takes an assignment in Afghanistan covering the subsequent war and falls for an American journalist, Astrid, who leads him into a dangerous blurring of the lines between observer and participant. On his return to the U.K., these conflicts boil over when Kellas attends a dinner party with his poet school chum Patrick M’Gurgan. The fallout—combined with a large advance offered on his next thriller (an imagined war between America and Europe)—leads Kellas on a wild journey to see Astrid, who’s living near Chesapeake Bay. Meek’s novel exhibits some irritating tendencies—a muddled narrative line, a romance with a few cloying moments and overindulgent digressions into philosophy—but Kellas’s unraveling is deliciously enjoyable, and Meek’s crafting of character and setting is often masterful. The result is a book that demands much patience from the reader, but delivers rewards in return. (May)
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life
Carl Zimmer. Pantheon, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-375-42430-4
When most readers hear the words E. coli, they think tainted hamburger or toxic spinach. Noted science writer Zimmer says there are in fact many different strains of E. coli, some coexisting quite happily with us in our digestive tracts. These rod-shaped bacteria were among the first organisms to have their genome mapped, and today they are the toolbox of the genetic engineering industry and even of high school scientists. Zimmer (Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea) explains that by scrutinizing the bacteria’s genome, scientists have discovered that genes can jump from one species to another and how virus DNA has become tightly intertwined with the genes of living creatures all the way up the tree of life to humans. Studying starving E. coli has taught us about how our own cells age. Advocates of intelligent design often produce the E. coli flagellum as Exhibit A, but the author shows how new research has shed light on the possible evolutionary arc of the flagellum. Zimmer devotes a chapter to the ethical debates surrounding genetic engineering. Written in elegant, even poetic prose, Zimmer’s well-crafted exploration should be required reading for all well-educated readers. (May 6)
