Memphis Reads Archive

Fiction

Beth reviews HOTHOUSE FLOWER AND THE NINE PLANTS OF DESIRE by Margot Berwin (Pantheon, 2009)

As you may remember I am often drawn to books by their covers and this one was no exception—the bold colors, the gold printed title. It drew me to it, and once I read the jacket flap, I was sold. (My interest in plants didn’t hurt either.)

Ad executive Lila Nova is recently divorced and living in an all-white box of a studio apartment with large windows. She is trying to understand how her life came to this—living alone with “no pets, no plants, no people, no problems.” Deciding that adding some greenery wouldn’t hurt, she heads out and meets David Exley, a guy who sells plants.

Exley is everything an outdoorsman should be—streaky blonde hair, a dirt-colored tan, and sexy. After a short-sell, Lila is the proud owner of a bird-of-paradise plant. She won’t have this plant die like her marriage died, and as the plant flourishes under her careful care, so does her interest in tropical plants.

After a troubling day at work Lila heads to her favorite bar, and on the way there she spies an amazing tropical plant hanging in the window of a Laundromat. Drawn inside, she enters a new world. The floor is soft moss, grass grows from the tops of machines, and best of all are the tropical plants. The heat and humidity of the Laundromat makes it the perfect home for these plants.

Armand, the Laundromat’s owner, is as mystical and strange as his business. Armand gives Lila a cutting from the fire fern that originally brought her in, and he encourages her to grow it. If the fern grows he will show her the “nine plants of desire” he keeps secretly in the back of the Laundromat.

With the fire fern in her apartment, Lila realizes that her place is still bare and needs more plants. Exley is happy to sell her two more. When Exley delivers them to her apartment, Lila invites him to dinner the next week. He cancels on the same night that her fire fern grows roots.

Lila is overcome with joy and makes plans to visit Armand, but suddenly, she grows suspicious of him. Instead of going to Armand she visits Exley, and asks him if the fern is authentic. Exley craves the exotic plant and all the money it could potentially bring him. Lila is now suspicious of Exley, but she also wants a share of the money. She agrees to be Exley’s go-between, with the goal of bringing him more of Armand’s exotic plants.

Lila takes a new plant cutting to Exley and he invites her to dinner. He wines and dines her into showing him the Laundromat. A few days later, Lila discovers that the Laundromat plants are gone--along with Exley. Lila feels responsible for the theft, and Armand easily talks her into a crazy trip to the Yucatan to hunt for replacements. In Mexico, Lila finds more than she bargained for with Armand—adventure, romance and much more!

Beth, Highland Branch Library

Labels: Adventure, Reviews by Beth, Romance

Fiction/Adventure

Jessie Marshall reviews THE PROMETHEUS DECEPTION by Robert Ludlum (St. Martin's Press, 2000)

At the opening of this action-driven story, the reader meets Nick Bryson, an agent for the top-secret Directorate, an organization unknown to all but the highest-level people in the Federal Government.

Unbeknownst to him, Bryson is on his final mission for the Directorate. After devoting years and risking his life countless times in the service of his country, he is retired from duty and is given a new identity as Jonas Barett, a professor of Byzantine history at Woodbridge College. All is well for several years, until one day, a CIA agent shows up on campus looking for him.

As he learns new truths about his past, Bryson begins to question his entire previous life. He is drawn into a web of intrigue where he finds that he was really a dupe; all of his years as an agent were spent working against the United States instead of for it. It seems that the Directorate is really a Russian intelligence operation, and Edmund Waller, Bryson’s mentor, is a Russian agent.

Bryson determines to make amends for any harm that he has done and to put things right. He begins to search out his former Directorate contacts, only to find that wherever he goes, destruction follows. At one point, to Bryson's surprise, Waller rescues him and tells him about Prometheus, an organization comprised of business executives and powerful international politicians who are trying to enact the Treaty of Surveillance. This treaty would create an international, all-powerful FBI type of organization. The members of Prometheus would be able to monitor virtually all world information and, therefore, would gain tremendous power.

Throughout the story, Bryson struggles with deciding who is telling him the truth. Who can he trust? What part of this is true, and what part is a lie? Finally, all the facts come into focus for him, and he is able to go about thwarting the Prometheus plan for gaining world control.


Jessie Marshall, Business and Science Department

Labels: Adventure, Reviews by Jessie Marshall

Fiction/Adventure

Dean Moore reviews THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy (Naval Institute Press, 1984)

Imagine a fully loaded missile submarine with enough fire power to destroy 200 cities. The name of this powerful submarine is Red October.

The Hunt for Red October begins with the launch of Russia’s newest and largest submarine. The newly appointed captain of this crown jewel is Marko Ramius. He secretly plots to defect to the West, planning to take his senior crew and new commission with him. The entire Soviet Navy and the U.S. Armed Services begin to hunt for the submarine, each for their own reasons. This game of cat-and-mouse becomes an extremely intense conflict between the two superpowers.

The Russian Navy is given orders to destroy Red October, while the U.S. Armed Services and secret intelligence agencies are in the hunt for national security reasons and technical military secrets. The plot moves beyond exciting tactical submarine operations to strained international relationships, espionage and deception.

This is a detailed, slow-paced adventure. The chapters are short and move back and forth between characters on different ships as the story develops. The Hunt for Red October is filled with much more description than dialogue. The technical details of the book are impressive. The story keeps the reader on edge from beginning to end, and gives an inside view of U.S. intelligence operations and executive decision making. Adventure readers are sure to enjoy this submarine drama.


Dean Moore, Frayser Branch Library

Labels: Adventure, Reviews by Dean Moore

Fiction/Adventure

Jesse Pool reviews ZORRO by Isabelle Allende (Harper Collins, 2005)

Zorro is a name that nearly everyone knows. But how much do you actually know about the swashbuckling hero? Zorro tells the story of how Diego de la Vega’s parents—a Spanish war hero and a Shoshone Indian war chief—meet during an attack on a Spanish mission: Diego’s father defending the mission from attack and Diego’s mother leading the assault. From there, we follow Diego’s life as he grows up, eventually becoming the familiar masked hero known as Zorro.

Raised between two cultures, Diego learns about honor, justice, respect, dignity and courage. His father raises him to be a Spanish gentleman and his Shoshone mother and grandmother secretly teach him and his adopted brother Bernardo Indian virtues as well. By fifteen, Diego has learned to fence and has had a vision quest where he finds his spirit guide—the zorro, which is Spanish for fox. After several adventures in his homeland, Diego and Bernardo set sail for Spain so that Diego may get a quality education. It is in Spain that Diego’s transformation into Zorro begins. He picks up several mentors, joins a secret society dedicated to justice, and encounters his arch nemesis, Rafael Moncada.

By the end of the book, we see Diego transformed from the boy he was in the beginning to the hero many people are familiar with today. Along the way, he’s outwitted or out-fought bullies, soldiers, sailors, pirates, gypsies, gamblers, and others, often picking up their tricks and skills. Also, no swashbuckling story would be complete without a tragic romance or two, and this one does not disappoint.

Labels: Adventure, Reviews by Jesse Pool