the bobby gold stories; the final confession of mabel stark; stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers

[May 21st, 2003] the bobby gold stories
by Anthony Bourdain
(Bloomsbury, 165 pages. $19.95)

Bourdain reads Friday, May 23, at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm.

Before filleting fame with the trash-talking, dirt-dishing, malicious, addictive insider epic Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain made his literary bones with a couple of obscure crime novels. Now, unwinding from his globetrotting Cook's Tour book and TV show, the ink-stained chef scampers back to his first mistress.

The titular Bobby Gold is a professional skull-cracker, the sort of guy one turns to when major clients neglect their seafood bills for a few months. Bobby may have eight years of prison on his score sheet, but he knows what overripe camembert smells like. Employment with various New York criminal fraternities takes Bobby into scumbag bars and stressed-out kitchens, environments Bourdain paints, as in Confidential, with foul and funny precision. Eventually, the milieu spits out the girl of Bobby's dreams, a lifer "kitchen bitch" who wins his heart (and other major organs) with a hell-on-wheels risotto.

From the moment love strikes, the plot's as thin as shaved prosciutto, serving to steer Bobby G. from one culinary set piece to the next grisly gangland smackdown. Some reviewers knock Bourdain for sticking too close to Mama's apron, and they may have a point--the man should force himself to write one food-free book before moving on to Kitchen Confidential 2: When Charcuterie Attacks. You can blow through Bobby Gold faster than the Blazers make their annual playoff exit; it's more Mob haiku than Mob thriller. But though the novel may not cement Bourdain as the next Chandler, it's a salty performance worthy of an honorary degree from The Elmore Leonard Low Life Academy. Zach Dundas

the final confession of mabel stark
by Robert Hough
(Atlantic Monthly Press, 428 pages, $24)

Robert Hough has written an excellent novel, a fictional autobiography of Mabel Stark, internationally renowned for her tiger act in circuses in the early part of the 20th century.

The Toronto author avoids the familiar plodding biographical pace by switching backward and forward in time. His treatment deploys believable character development, dramatic scene construction and sensitive description--all expressed through Mabel's wry viewpoint. There is triumph and tragedy, joy and heartbreak, along with refreshingly unconventional sex. The story ends with the poignancy of her 1968 suicide note, which might be a fiction within a fiction.

The author furnishes penetrating insights into the old time circus. We meet real-life personalities Lillian Leitzel, Louis Roth, Al G. Barnes and John and Charles Ringling. Mabel voices contempt for the legendary trainer Clyde Beatty, while we learn the hazardous details of working the big cats, how the big top goes up, how the circus traveled by train to play a different town every night (Portland playdates figure prominently).

Some lore can chill. Crimes against the circus, like stealing money, could be punished by redlighting. This meant being thrown alive from a moving train, leaving the cops to puzzle over widely scattered body parts. The big cats turned rogue when they aged, and the circus secretly sold them to Mexican shows, which pitted them in wild-animal fights.

Hough demonstrates one particularly welcome technical skill. Lately we have seen a vogue, especially locally, of writing "close to the body." This often meant setting a scene and spattering it with extraneous snot and piss. Hough writes very close to the body but employs those details as organic ingredients. Bravo! Art Chenoweth

stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers
By Mary Roach
(Norton, 294 pages, $23.95)

Roach reads Tuesday, May 27, at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm.

Mary Roach's Stiff takes readers on journeys to anatomy classes, crash-test-dummy research labs and plastic-surgery instruction sessions for a look at what happens to bodies once they've been donated to science. Yes, Roach (who first began this project as part of a Salon article) goes into gruesome detail, but she also succeeds in not making the subject at hand too morbid. Still, this book is not for the squeamish.

Roach is an extensive researcher. She visits with airplane-crash inspectors and reveals the way in which these people determine the cause of crashes through the injuries of the victims. She speaks with examiners who test the effects of bullets on cadavers and describes in minute detail the way in which the bodies are prepared for such tests.

Some of the historical material Roach uncovers (such as the 1930s French priest who conducted crucifixion experiments on animals) has a morbid humor, but Roach's own attempts at comedy can be unfortunate. The introductory sentence gives a hint: "The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship." Though she may be attempting to create an atmosphere that is more comfortable with death and the body's often disgusting demise, her jokes distract in an irritating way.

Such personal commentary all too often comes in footnote form. One such footnote sees Roach weighing the philosophic significance of the heart, and then replacing "heart" with "liver" in pop-song lyrics. Though her findings are at times fascinating, these musings are embarrassing and, because of their frequent appearance, make the book hard to finish. Kim Colton