The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’s Library

Jon Fasman

(Thanks Chris & Paulene!)

This book was a bit of a stretch for me; nothing that I would normally pick up to read. Thanks to Mr. Bruno (RIP 2/09) for tearing the pages out of the book that belonged to Chris & Paulene, and me ending up with the damaged one in my possession after buying them a new copy. Since I hated for it collect dust any longer, I thought I’d give it a shot despite a couple of chunks of missing text here and there.

This novel is based around an obituary that is being written by a journalist, Paul Tomm, and the murder he uncovers in the end. Essentially, a reclusive scholar dies under weird circumstances and while Tomm is trying to pursue the deceased’s story, he finds himself involved in a tale of stolen alchemical goods tracing back almost 900 years. Every other chapter is a historical glance at whose hands the articles landed in over the years, mostly in Russia and the Middle East. Names and places were very obscure to me, making these sections really difficult for me to read. However, also the story had a present day plot about Tomm meeting the individuals who help him unravel the story, including (of course) a love story involved.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book, unless you enjoy a bit of a murder mystery/quasi history lesson. In other words, I recommend this book to no one but Adam (if you’re reading this A, get the book. You’d love it!).

“A wife. I have a wife.” In prison I had learned to suppress all thoughts of her; now, warmed by the possibility of return, in my mind she thawed, first slowly and then uncontrollably. As I remembered her hands, her voice, her smell, I began shaking and bawling right there in front of a strange family. I couldn’t bear thinking of her anymore. P.132

Sunday was momentous and unremarkable. Everyone is entitled to one—maybe two—such days in a lifetime: a day spent not in the middle of love but at the beginning of it, maybe, a day that passes like the morning after a snowstorm or a broken fever, when everything seems almost too sharp to bear. Our actual activities that day were prosaic: we rose late; I made toast and fried eggs; we went back to bed; we drove to the New York border and took a long walk along a river; we stopped at a large and empty roadside tavern with the memorable slogan “Flyin’ Darts and Chicken Parts,” where we ate wings and played darts until ten-thirty, when we drove home again. … By the time we got home, we were treading a little less carefully with each other…. P. 176

It was an ideal conversation with an ex: flirtatious enough to produce residual little flutters, but noncommittal enough to avoid trouble; long enough to end with an ellipsis, but not so long that either of us got any ideas; glib, but with a warm and serious turn at the end, but not so serious that either of us brought out the knives. I was feeling ticklish; she tickled, and I went home almost missing her. P. 218

I always seem to read the Acknowledgements section, and this one is certainly very sweet: Finally, a note to my future self: If your son, two months after meeting a girl, tells you he’s headed for a tiny island without electricity, running water, or a way off, with the girl and her brother, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, do not panic. It might turn out okay. Many thanks for George and Paula Krimsky for ensuring that it did, and fo

r countless kindnesses large and small. But thanks to them most of all for raising an extraordinary daughter, without whom I would never have gone to Russia or written this book. The Geographer’s Library is for Alissa. So am I.