Reading Life

Followers

Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Review of Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi


Don't miss Donato Carrisi's novel, Lost Girls of Rome.

 Forensic photographer Sandra Vega is still coping with her husband's accidental death. There’s something real and recognizable in Sandra’s grief. Sometimes she forgets he is dead and says, ‘I have to tell David.’

David's bags are in the storeroom at Headquarters. Vega found them too painful to look at. After she gets a call from an Interpol agent, however, she becomes alarmed.


Martyrdom of St Matthew Source: Wikipedia
Searching through his bags, at last, she finds his diary, a two-way radio, and photographs on his favorite camera, a Leica. The camera has photographs of the construction site (where David died) a detail from a Caravaggio painting, and a picture of a man with a scar on his temple. 

Vega finds more items at the construction site, including a recording device, which convinces her that her beloved David was murdered.

Did the man with the scar murder her husband?

The scar is the result of a gunshot wound to the head and it has left the mysterious man, Marcus, with amnesia. Clemente, head of a secret investigative unit, wants him to solve a case, the disappearance of architecture student Lara.  (continued)

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan

Short Nights: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Edward Curtis.

Even though this is non-fiction, because of Curtis' superb writing, it reads like an impossible-to-put-down novel.

Almost immediately readers are drawn into Curtis' world and are fascinated by the odds of a subsistence farmer rising to ranks of super celebrity: all due to Curtis' skill with a camera and business acumen.


After a fall out with his younger brother, Curtis befriends Bird Grinell and launches the "big idea." His idea is to record the vanishing Native American tribes on film and wax recorder, an early recording device.

Curtis gained the trust of Native Americans and given some access to their world. He was not permitted to participate or photograph the Sundance or snake ceremonies (until late in life).
Nonetheless, Curtis was well-liked and given a variety of Indian names and nicknames, including "The Man Who Sleeps on His Breath" because he slept on an air mattress.

Egan offers a fascinating portrait of an ambitious, energetic man who tried to improve perceptions of Native Americans with his camera. 

A digital library of Curtis' life's work, The North American Indian, may be found at, http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/


Blog Archive