July Reads: Liz Moore's latest, Rudy Giuliani's downfall
The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore
Read it if you’re into: Literary fiction, female-centric stories, narratives of class divide
In the early 1960s, a young boy vanishes from the summer camp built on his wealthy family’s vast Adirondack property. Flash forward to 1975, and the boy’s sister (who may or may not have been born solely as a replacement for her lost brother), goes missing from her bunk at the very same camp in the middle of the night.
With a deft and nimble shifting timeline, this book closes in on you slowly but surely, like the forest in which its set. By page 100 I was certain I’ll read anything Liz Moore writes from here on out. While it’s not quite as good as her first novel The Unseen World, it’s more satisfying than her second, Long Bright River. Twists appear in the unlikeliest of places, peppered throughout like forgotten grenades. The sprawling Adirondacks play an integral role of their own (and perhaps make for more compelling reading for those of us who are New Yorkers). It’s also a deeply feminine novel: heavy on the shared perspectives of women regardless of social class. This is that rare mystery that satisfies in both plot and prose, and will ensnare you as quickly as the dense forest about which the campers are warned: Careful, or you’ll be lost in a heartbeat.
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor
by Andrew Kirtzman
Read it if you’re into: New York politics, post-9/11 NYC, media & journalism
How did Rudy Giuliani go from Time’s Person of the Year post-9/11, to the man leaking hair dye during a Trump campaign press conference broadcast from the front of Four Season’s Total Landscaping?
The premise of this book is an interesting one, and one which I was certainly intrigued by. It’s written by a guy who covered Giuliani for years, starting with his mayoral campaign against David Dinkins, then reporting alongside him as he led the city through its response to 9/11. This is a man who is as familiar with Giuliani as any reporter out there, and yet you would not know it to read this story.
This is not a serious book that attempts to explain Giuliani’s Greek-tragedian downfall or tries to reckon with how he went from America’s Mayor to America’s Laughingstock. Instead, it is a compilation of embarrassing moments and 400 pages of “gotcha,” that anybody who has been paying an ounce of attention to political news will find nothing of value in. Certainly anybody who picks up this book is not unaware of Giuliani’s lowest moments — the whole point of this book is meant to be the why, which the author initially assures us he’ll provide. Instead, we are merely treated to the same old what-the-hell-is-happening-here moments that the media, possessed by Schadenfreude, chewed up and spit out a thousand times over. I had hoped the reporter who had covered this controversial man for many years would be able to provide a bit more in the way of nuance and explanation, but alas. Surface level summarization and speculation about the embattled politician’s drinking are all you’ll find here, each paragraph neatly and exhaustingly tied up with the same few (negative) personal opinions from the author. Virtually nothing in this book explains one of the most spectacular political downfalls of our time, but virtually everything reinforces negative stereotypes about reporters.