Monday, July 28, 2014

Joe and Marilyn; Terminal City; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

Much like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe's love story captivated the world and burned so hot that they couldn't stay together. C. David Heymann (who passed away a few years ago) examines their lives in "Joe And Marilyn: Legends in Love". When you look at how Joe reacted to her untimely death it's easy to see how much he loved her, and how much he regretted their parting. Supposedly they were planning on getting remarried before she died. I don't know how true that is, but it's all the more tragic that she didn't get that chance at happiness. Joe never married again after Marilyn, and left roses on her grave for 20 years after she died. His last words were about getting to see her again. So very sad.

Linda Fairstein's latest Alex Cooper novel, "Terminal City", takes place mostly in Grand Central Station. I've never seen it, but it must be massive and apparently has a whole city underneath it full of homeless people. In this one, the President is getting ready to make a train stop at Grand Central when a body of a young lady turns up at the Waldorf Plaza. She has mysterious train tracks carved into her thighs. Another body with the same markings turns up near the train tracks a few days later, and then a third body inside the terminal. Cooper, Mercer, and Chapman discover who the killer is, but now they have to find him and stop him before he kills again. As usual, it was pretty tense. I enjoyed it, although Cooper and Chapman's "flirtation" was a bit on the cruel side for me. It always is, it just rings so false to me. At one point in regards to her ballet dancing, Mike tells her that if she spent more time on her back and less on her toes she'd be a much more interesting woman. I would deck a guy if he said that to me, dating or not. Banter like that doesn't seem flirtatious or fun, just mean.

Chris Bohjalian's latest, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands" was so heart breakingly sad. Emily is a teenaged girl living with her alcoholic parents in Vermont. Her parents work at the nuclear power plant, and one day while she's at school the sirens go off. Everyone is evacuated, and Emily learns there was a meltdown at the plant and her parents are dead. Not only that, but everyone in the media is blaming them, specifically her dad, for most likely being drunk on the job even though there's no proof of that. Emily takes off and ends up on the streets, going to shelters, prostituting herself, living under a different name, until she finds a 9 year old boy named Cameron, who is running away from an abusive foster home. Emily tries to take care of him as best she can, but when Cameron gets very ill Emily is forced to take him to a hospital and run so they don't discover who she is. With nowhere left to go, she returns to the Evacuation Zone and sneaks past the guards to live in her family's old home. She is very ill with radiation poisoning when she is finally rescued. It was awful how quickly people jumped to conclusions and how they wanted to place blame not only on Emily's dad but on *Emily*, which is just so wrong and speaks volumes to how twisted our culture has become.

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