Dead Girl, by Melanie Thernstrom (Pocket Books, $5.99). A true crime story that breaks all the various molds, from straight reporting to advocacy, it is a multi-layered memoir of a friend and a friendship. Author Thernstom and Roberta Lee, the victim of an abominable crime, had been friends since childhood: two bright, young, serious-minded girls unsure of their place in the world.
In 1984, Lee, who could be ornery and seldom was happy, went off with her boyfriend, Bradley Page, and another girl one Sunday afternoon to go running. Miffed with Page, she took a turn and went off on her own. Page went looking for her, briefly, but came back without her. Weeks later her body was found in a shallow grave. She had been bludgeoned to death. Page confessed but recanted. His first trial for murder ended with a hung jury. His second, for manslaughter, ended with a conviction and a six-year sentence.
Thernstrom suffered through the four years that elapsed between crime and punishment. Her anger and agony are tangible and powerful, and her reporting, though highly subjective, is superb.
– – – Le Mot Juste: A Dictionary of Classical and Foreign Words and Phrases by John Buchanan-Brown and others (Vintage, $8). It`s high time this book was reissued, because my 10-year-old copy is falling apart from almost daily use. Yours will be, too, if you have a suspicious turn of mind when you come across a phrase like bona fide (properly pronounced, on rare occasion, BON-ah FI-day) and meaning good faith; genuine, correct, legitimate, or divertissement (dee- vair-TEES-mon).
Not once in all those years have I read or heard a word or phrase that ought to be in the book that was not.
– – – Idiom`s Delight: Fascinating Phrases and Linguistic Eccentrities, by Suzanne Brock (Vintage, $8). A nifty companion to ”Le Mot Juste” is this book of Spanish, French, Italian and Latin expressions, their counterparts and their often surprising literal meanings. For example, the Spanish version of
”In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” (En tierra de ciegos, el tuerto es rey), the author points out, catches your eye because of el tuerto. ”Were there so many one-eyed men in long-ago Spain that they needed their very own noun?”
The condition, she goes on the say, must have been rampant among the French, whose version is the plural: Au royaume des aveugles, les bornes sont rois. For language buffs, this is pleasant divertissement no matter how you pronounce it.
– – – The Florida Keys: A History and Guide, by Joy Williams (Random House, $12). ”The Keys sparkle downward, warm and bright, full of light and air and a bit of intrigue,” writes Williams. ”The Keys are relaxed, a little reckless. The Keys are water and sky, horizon, daybreak, spectacular sunsets, the cup of night.” Are they ever, and the closest I`ve come to seeing them was reading this book, one of the best, most readable guidebooks I`ve seen, full of startling images, lore, anecdote.
Williams explains, for example, a sign that says ”Absolutely No Dogs Allowed” outside the famous Caribbean Club Bar. Dogs used to wander in and out but not since the owner of a champion pit bull brought the dog in with a few puppies from her recent litter. While the owner drank, the dogs went for a dip.
One puppy, frightened of the water, climbed on the mother`s back and would not let go, drowning her. The owner tried everything to revive her, including mouth-to-mouth rescucitation, but the dog stayed dead. The owner thereupon kicked the puppy to death, and thus did the management decide that dogs in a bar were too much trouble.
