CHECK IT OUT

If one can judge a year by its fiction, the one about to end was a

star epoch. From Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut novel to edgy mysteries by

Robert Crais and T. Jefferson Parker, there’s enough great storytelling

in works listed in the “Best Books of 2000” to keep readers eagerly

turning pages throughout 2001.

With a zany tale that takes on race, history and gender politics,

25-year-old Smith serves up an irresistible cast in “White Teeth.” Moving

from London to Turkey and Bangladesh, the epic-scale work interweaves

family histories involving multicultural friendships, unlikely marriages

and separated twin siblings. There’s more cultural commentary than plot

here, but it’s delivered with such droll wit that even the most reluctant

of readers will probably be swept along.

Multiculturalism also pervades “The Human Stain,” Philip Roth’s

inventive offering set against the Clinton impeachment scandal, about a

black man who passes for a white Jewish classicist. After a gaffe in a

lecture forces him to resign, the aging professor gets caught in a

downward spiral, explored in the narrative by Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s

alter mind.

Also spiraling downhill is Michael Reed, Denis Johnson’s

grief-stricken narrator in “The Name of the World,”a slim novel that

merges themes of loss and sorrow with a satire of academia. Four years

after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash, Reed can’t quite

get it together, until he happens upon a free-spirited student who leads

him into unexpected territory.

Two tough female investigators, both mourning the untimely deaths of

their partners, are engaging protagonists in Robert Crais’ “Demolition

Angel” and T. Jefferson Parker’s “Red Light.” Follow bomb squad expert

Carol Starkey on the trail of a maniac intent on blowing up the world in

Crais’ masterful mystery. Join homicide investigator Merci Rayborn in an

office politics-spiked search for a prostitute killer in Parker’s

suspense-filled whodunit.

Faith’s mysteries are probed in Mark Salzman’s “Lying Awake,” a tale

about a Carmelite nun whose brilliant visions and debilitating seizures

are brought on by an operable lesion on her brain.

Other puzzles that involve love are addressed in “Being Dead,” Jim

Crace’s elegant novel that retraces the lives of two zoologists found

murdered on the beach where they had come to rekindle a flame set 30

years earlier.

That everything old can be new again becomes clear in Seamus Heaney’s

new verse translation of “Beowulf.” In a rendering of the English epic

that is also a captivating poem in its own right, the Irish Nobel

laureate delivers a powerful account of battles with monsters and

dragons. It’s all infused with personal understanding of the anguish that

political, religious and social struggles can bring, in the voice of men

who fought actual battles for Ireland.

Check with reference librarians at Newport Beach libraries for titles

of other “Best Books of 2000,” included on lists published by the Los

Angeles Times, The New York Times, Esquire and Barnes & Noble.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public

Library. This week’s column is by Melissa Adams, in collaboration with

Susie Lamb. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by

accessing the catalog at https://www.newportbeachlibrary.org.