The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

Published by Doubleday on October 15, 2019

“We are the only creatures that cry from feelings, so far as we can tell. Why we do so is another of life’s many mysteries.” My takeaway from Bill Bryson’s The Body is that medical science is perplexed by the mysteries of the human body. Almost as soon as scientists believe they have discovered something true about our physical containers, the truth turns out to be false. From balancing the body’s humors with leeches to using lobotomies as a cure for headaches, the history of medical science is a history of getting it wrong. Unfortunately, modern scientists are just as apt to be mistaken, although modern doctors are a bit less likely to base deadly treatments on ignorance.

Some of the body’s mysteries are inherent in evolution. The Body makes clear that humans are not the product of intelligent design. Our bodies are largely the product of evolutionary workarounds. Yet evolution is nothing if not mysterious. Zebra fish regrow damaged heart tissue. Humans don’t. Seems like pretty poor planning for an intelligent designer.

Bryson explores the body in enough detail to cause the reader to marvel at its workings, but not in so much detail as to create a multi-volume text. He examines skin and bones, organs (the brain and heart, liver and kidneys, lungs and guts), the neurological system, and cellular biology. He points out the many ways in which the body acts as a factory, producing chemicals that scientists don’t understand or misunderstand until they develop a working theory about their importance — a theory that will probably be subject to wholesale revision a few years later.

Bryson discusses food and how we experience taste before our bodies convert it to fuel. He considers cancer and other diseases, as well as the checkered history of medicine. He examines ever-changing opinions about exercise and conflicting experiences about the need for sleep. Naturally, he takes a look at reproduction, without which there would be no more bodies, and sex, without which there would be no reproduction.

Bryson is nothing if not informative. He explains why ATP (the chemical adenosine triphosphate) is “the most important thing in your body you have never heard of.” He provides miniaturized biographies of scientists who made crucial contributions to the human understanding of the mind and body, only to be undercut in their time or overshadowed by scientists who stole their work.

Some of Bryson’s most interesting paragraphs remind us how science is always at war with profit. When a biochemist in the 1950s reported a clear connection between the high intake of trans fats and clogged arteries, his work was disparaged by lobbyists for the food processing industry. More than 50 years passed before the American Heart Association recognized that correlation and nearly 75 years went by before the FDA stood up to food producers and declared excessive consumption of trans fats to be unsafe.

Bryson reports his findings with good humor, although perhaps with less charm than some of his earlier books. He notes that sex may be biologically unnecessary, given the number of organisms that have abandoned it as a reproductive strategy. Geckos have done away with males altogether. He considers it “a slightly unsettling thought if you are a man” that “what we bring to the reproductive party is easily dispensed with.”

On a more serious note, although this is a pre-pandemic book, Bryson talks about how much risk the human race faces from the rapid spread of disease. If Ebola were a less efficient killer, Bryson notes, it would not strike such panic into communities and would make it easier for afflicted individuals to mingle, allowing it to spread farther and endanger more people. His discussion seems prescient, given the spread of Covid-19.

Bryson’s knack is for communicating a wealth of complex information in digestible morsels that readers who don’t have an M.D. or a PhD in a biological science can comprehend. He engages in storytelling, explaining how scientists stumbled across or misunderstood facts and how their mistakes became part of the medical canon until it became impossible to ignore scientific findings that contradicted them. The information in The Body is a bit overwhelming, but the book’s true value lies in reminding the reader that medical science is constantly improving its knowledge of what makes us tick, and that our current certainties are likely to be replaced by more accurate knowledge tomorrow.

RECOMMENDED

Over My Dead Body by Jeffrey Archer

Published by ‎HarperCollins on October 19, 2021

Over My Dead Body is the latest and best of four novels (with another to come) that chronicle the early career of William Warwick, a British cop who rises quickly through the bureaucracy of Scotland Yard as the series progresses.

Warwick is now a Detective Chief Inspector. He’s about to take charge of a unit that will examine cold case murders. Before that happens, he takes a cruise with his wife and rather handily solves an onboard murder with an assist from a precocious young American named James who attends a high-end prep school in Connecticut and plans to go to Harvard before becoming director of the FBI. William and James get along well, probably because they are both insufferably smug.

James is an American teen but he doesn’t sound like an American or a teen. His belief that American lawyers use the phrase “on the balance of judgement” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt” suggests that James isn’t as smart as he believes himself to be. Or maybe he doesn’t watch American television.

In any event, the main story takes place after Warwick is recalled to England. Warwick’s nemesis throughout the series has been Miles Faulkner, whose crimes involve art and an ongoing attempt to swindle his wife Christina, who either is or isn’t the best friend of Warwick’s wife, depending on Christina’s shifting loyalties. Warwick is again hot on the heels of Faulkner, this time chasing him to Spain.

Jeffrey Archer overcomes the failings of the earlier novels in the latest installment. Warwick and his family have taken great pride in demonstrating the extraordinary refinement and proper behavior of British aristocracy. traits that make them annoying and dull. Fortunately, Warwick’s perfect father and sister play no role in this story, making Over My Dead Body less a novel of manners than the earlier books.

Warwick still has a stick up his bum, as is evidenced by the sole G-rated sex scene. Warwick’s idea of foreplay is to discuss his latest case with his wife while they’re getting undressed. But at least they’re getting undressed, which is an improvement from the earlier novels.

Archer brings a character named Ross to greater prominence in this novel. Ross acts as a counterbalance to “choirboy” Warwick. Having finished his undercover assignment, Ross becomes involved with a former hooker whose loyalty to Ross or to the forces of evil is not immediately clear. When Ross is given reason to seek revenge for an injustice, he does so untroubled by the law. This should give the moralizing Warwick fits, but he sublimates his law-and-order instincts to some degree, allowing a more interesting plot to develop than Archer achieved in the earlier novels.

RECOMMENDED

The Judge's List by John Grisham

Published by ‎ Doubleday on October 19, 2021

Legal thriller fans should expect few thrills in the latest Grisham novel. Nor does the novel have any of the courtroom theatrics that make legal thrillers so compelling. The story’s interest lies in its focus on a lawyer who works for an inconsequential state agency charged with regulating judges, a thankless job that comes with a small budget and little legislative interest in acknowledging that judges ever break the rules.

Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered. The killer was never identified. Jeri has dedicated her life to finding him. She concludes that several other people were victims of the same killer, a conclusion that seem obvious given that the killer strangled each victim with identical lengths of identical rope that he tied around their necks with identical knots. Having identified a pattern that the FBI didn’t notice, Jeri looks for someone who has a connection to every victim. That someone turns out to be Judge Ross Bannick.

Now Jeri could give the FBI a gift-wrapped case, but she instead takes her evidence to Lacy Stoltz, a lawyer at a Florida board that regulates judges. (Lacy was apparently a character in The Whistler, a Grisham novel I haven’t read.) Jeri claims to be worried that the FBI will not protect her from the judge but believes Lacy can safely investigate her complaint if she files it anonymously. Lacy agrees, somewhat reluctantly, and only because the evidence of guilt, although circumstantial, is pretty compelling.

The story tracks Lacy’s investigation, although Jeri has done all the legwork, giving Lacy little to do. Later in the novel, Jeri decides to spice up the plot by taunting the judge, placing herself and Lacy at risk and setting up traditional but low-key thriller scenes. I didn’t buy Jeri’s reckless behavior given how often she tells Laci of her fears and the care she has taken to investigate without being noticed. But then, I didn’t buy the notion of a regulatory agency investigating a judge for murder. I suspect that Grisham contrived this plot as an excuse to revive Lacy as a character.

I give Grisham credit for not overplaying the drama when the judge goes after Jeri and Lacy. Still, the whole story is a bit dull. Tangential plots (Jeri is hoping for an injury settlement, her sketchy brother wants to take advantage of her when it is finalized, Jeri’s relationship with her boyfriend is uncertain) do nothing to enliven the story. I’m not a huge Grisham fan, although he’s certainly done some good work. I wouldn’t put The Judge’s List on my relatively shortlist of good Grisham legal thrillers.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds

First published in Great Britain in 2021; published by Orbit on October 12, 2021

Over the last 20-plus years, Alastair Reynolds has set several books and stories in the Revelation Space Universe, a troubled place where humanity is always at risk of extinction. Inhibitor Phase is the most recent of four novels, beginning with Revelation Space, that tell an ongoing story within that universe. Reynolds claims that Inhibitor Phase can be read as a standalone, but I think a reader who at least reads Revelation Space will find more meaning in Inhibitor Phase. For example, the significance of Conjoiners (humans with neural implants) and the role that Nevil Clavain played in a war between Conjoiners and non-enhanced humans might be puzzling to someone who isn’t familiar with at least some of the novels. For readers who want to begin at the end and don’t mind spoilers, Reynolds includes a chronology at the end of the book that will catch the reader up on Reynolds’ future history of humankind, including events that occur novels outside of this sequence.

Inhibitor Phase begins in the late 28th century with a fellow named Miguel who doesn’t realize he was once a different man, a man named Warren. Now he’s leading a community of humans living beneath the surface of a planet, trying to protect them from Inhibitors by keeping the humans hidden and quiet. Inhibitors, a/k/a Wolves, are machines that want to destroy and assimilate raw materials used by organic races, very much like the Borg of Star Trek fame. Miguel faces an early moral dilemma (is it acceptable to kill more than 5,000 people to keep 5,000 people hidden and safe?) before he’s taken against his will by a formidable woman named Glass. After Glass tweaks Miguel’s brain, he begins to recall that he was once a soldier (a Sky Marshal, actually) who took on the Conjoiners before he battled his brother. That part of the plot isn’t exactly Antigone, but if a writer is going to borrow ideas, borrowing from the classics is usually smart.

Glass has a plan to take the fight to the Wolves. The plan requires traveling to one planet to gather some stones, to another planet to acquire information, and to another planet in search of a ship that carries a secret weapon. Like much space opera, Inhibitor Phase is sort of a Homeric Odyssey (borrowing from the classics again) as each segment of the journey introduces new perils that the hero must overcome.

Some chapters flash back to Warren’s time as a soldier, when he participated in a clandestine invasion of Mars to free his brother, back when they seemed to be on the same side, before Warren became someone else. Later in the novel Warren becomes someone else still before making a final transformation. Identity is a fluid thing in the Revelation Space universe.

Reynolds gives space opera fans the kind of futuristic action they enjoy while adding enough science to make the action plausible. When a ship flies into the “molten shallows” of a star, Reynolds explains how manipulating “the basic informational granularity of local spacetime” to “swindle the incorruptible bookkeeping of classical and quantum thermodynamics” prevents the ship from melting. For all I know (and I don’t know much), this is gibberish, but gibberish is better than ignoring the unendurable heat of even a star’s photosphere. Other imaginative moments include a weapon concealed in blood that the heroes release by bleeding; a water planet inhabited by entities that function collectively as information storage devices; biologically engineered weapons called ninecats (just as fast and even more fierce than regular cats but a lot less cuddly); and a variety of alien races, the most interesting of which builds nests.

The universe is a big place and it’s been around a long time, even if humankind has not (relatively speaking). Inhibitor Phase is a long book, but a small part of a larger story. It doesn’t complete the story of humanity’s clash with the Wolves, or even advance it much. It does provide the surviving characters with an opportunity to take the fight to the Wolves, something that might happen in the next installment.

Still, Inhibitor Phase does the things that space opera should do. Reynolds offers the usual space opera menu of courage, sacrifice, perseverance, and fighting against long odds because that’s what it means to be human. Perhaps because the themes are so familiar in classic science fiction, the story does not seem particularly fresh. Yet Reynolds occasionally makes the story relevant to the reader’s life, as when he describes an alien race that justifies its atrocities by pretending they never happened (or, in the jargon of modern America, by dismissing their transgressions as “fake news”).

Characters are inclined to give inspirational speeches, as is the custom of space opera heroes. The speeches themselves are too predictable to be meaningful, but I did appreciate the development and evolution of Warren’s character. Before or soon after he became Miguel, he blocked his memories of the horrors of war that he endured and inflicted. When he returns to himself, he must confront moral judgments that he made and ask whether they were correct, whether he can find a path to redemption. That’s the kind of dilemma that science fiction, by stripping away the constraints of realism, can confront more directly than most literary fiction. The story works as an action novel, but it also builds depth from the arc of Warren’s life.

RECOMMENDED

The Pessimists by Bethany Ball

Published by Grove Press on October 12, 2021

The Pessimists takes a satirical look at an expensive private grade school in Connecticut and the white suburban parents who send their kids there. Petra School values cooperation over competition (sports are bad), regulates the children’s diets (dairy is bad), doesn’t allow students to look at cellphones or television (screens are bad), and doesn’t seem to teach kids anything, particularly reading (Harry Potter is bad) and math (memorization is bad). The school seems more interested in teaching parents about the school’s philosophy of simplicity than in educating children. The school indoctrinates parents as if they were part of a cult.

This is a novel of relationships, with a primary focus on the interactions of three couples and their varying ties to Petra School. Tripp and Virginia are keeping secrets from each other, although they find it impossible to keep secrets from their 11-year-old daughter Charlotte. Tripp isn’t paying Charlotte’s tuition at Petra because he’s buying guns and combat knives, paying for Krav Maga classes, and taking survivalist seminars. Virginia has breast cancer but refuses to be treated for it or even to mention it to Tripp. “Tripp has never gotten over the fact that stay-at-home mothers stayed at home, even after their kids were old enough to attend school.” That’s one of many reasons they have drifted apart.

Virginia misses the days when she and Tripp liked each other. Only late in the novel does Virginia tumble to the realization that Tripp is more interested in dealing with the apocalypse to come than the apocalypse that is already here. By that point, Virginia is contemplating affairs and ready for a dramatic change. Drama does, in fact, come, although its arrival feels like an arbitrary choice to provide a climax rather than a considered resolution of the issues that drive the story.

Virginia and Rachel used to work together. Rachel does freelance work in the digital world. She’s married to Gunter, a successful and well-paid architect, who reluctantly moved to the US from Stockholm at Rachel’s request. Rachel convinced Gunter to adapt to suburban living. Gunter’s version of adapting is to buy a huge Mercedes and to enjoy the cheap gasoline that Americans regard as a God-given right — although not the environmentally conscious parents who send their kids to Petra.

Gunter initially believes that Petra School is a typically American waste of money, while Rachel initially loves it. When Gunter is later influenced by a parents’ meditation group (he starts to believe he is capable of mysterious things), their positions are reversed. Gunter is strangely attracted to the woman who operates Petra School, despite (or because of) her family’s relationship with the Nazi party.

Margot wants her kids to attend Petra but the kids and her husband Richard resist her decision. Richard is Tripp’s oldest friend. Margot and Richard come across as props who add little to the story, apart from a clever scene in which Margot’s child has to remind her that she already cleaned the cabinets that she is obsessively scouring.

Gunter accuses Americans of being pessimistic, a response to seeing Tripp’s basement full of guns. Tripp likes to show them off when he’s drunk, making it odd that so much time passes with no character alerting Virginia to their existence. The three featured couples are far from a cross-section of America, but most of the adult American characters do seem pessimistic about their futures, and with good reason.

The Pessimists suffers from the familiarity of its subject matter. As a well written and occasionally amusing examination of life in a financially comfortable suburb, the novel might appeal to financially comfortable suburban parents who struggle with choices about educating their children. The story didn’t resonate with me but I’m not in that demographic group. It does seem to be the favorite demograpic of many novelists.

Private schools that don’t educate kids are an easy target, as are survivalists who sacrifice the good of their family for their obsession with weaponry. Bethany Ball sometimes hits the target with her satirical portrayal of Petra School and the parents who treat it like a cult, but at other times she seems to want the reader to take the school seriously. Her attempt to straddle the line between satire and a serious look at private schools isn’t quite satisfying, in part because Ball never asks the reader to engage in more than superficial thought about the merits of private versus public education.

Most of the characters are also unsatisfying. They come across as stereotypes rather than real people. Virginia is the exception. Her struggle and growth during the novel seem authentic. Virginia’s characterization, Ball’s engaging prose style, and a few savage moments of humor account for my recommendation.

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