An engaging introduction to philosophy

Sophie's World is an interesting hybrid. The subtitle calls it "A Novel About the History of Philosophy." It was written by Jostein Gaarder, a Norwegian philosophy teacher, translated by Paulette Møller, and published in 1994. It begins, "Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school."

Sophie is almost fifteen years old, lives with her mother in Lillesand, a real small town on the south coast of Norway. Her father is an oil tanker captain and away for long periods of time. On page 4 Sophie receives a mysterious envelope that contains a slip of paper on which is written, "Who are you?" On page 6, another envelope, paper, and question: "Where does the world come from?" On page 8, she receives birthday greetings to a Hilde Møller Knag c/o Sophie. Sophie has no idea who has sent the questions or the greetings.

The questions were sent by Alberto Knox who begins a "Course in Philosophy" printed in separate sanserif typeface to set off the lectures on Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and the Existentialists. It would be possible to read only the sanserif sections for a decent, if limited, introduction to philosophy.

Because there are any number of decent, if limited, introductions to philosophy available, and because Gaarder wanted to sugar-coat the lessons, he embedded them in a story about Sophie and Hilde. We learn that Hilde also has a fifteenth birthday, lives in Lillesand, and her father is also absent. He is part of a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Part of the book's pleasure is seeing how the author plays with philosophical concepts "outside" of the lectures. For example, a some point, the reader realizes that Sophie is a fiction that Hilde is reading about—but of course Hilde is a fiction we readers read about. The book's first question, "Who are you" becomes much more interesting. (It reminded me of the Chinese philosopher's question: "Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?")

If you know nothing about philosophy and want a relatively painless introduction to the major figures, the essence of their major theories, and how questions—and the theories—about truth, reality, and consciousness have changed over the centuries Sophie's World  is a good place to start.

If you took a couple semesters of introductory philosophy years ago, the book is a useful review.

If you want to trace the way Gaarder uses different philosophical ideas in novel in which the lessons are embedded, that could give certain readers pleasure.

If you want a couple hours' diversion, however, look elsewhere. Gaarder is a teacher and the point of Sophie's World is to teach. Readers who take the book seriously will learn something.

A novel that should avoid the Young Adult label

A young friend whose taste in quality writing is impressive gave me Carol Rifka Brunt's debut novel, Tell the Wolves I'm Home. Because the narrator is a precocious fourteen-year-old girl and because she comes to understand some profound life lessons by the last page, I am afraid the book will be slotted into the "young-adult, coming-of-age" ghetto and readers who avoid young-adult, coming-of-age stories (I'm one of them) will miss an insightful and moving experience.

June Elbus lives in Westchester County, north of New York City, with her accountant parents and sixteen-year-old sister, Greta. The girls are the nieces of Finn Weiss, a prominent artist who, although he has shown nothing for ten years, is painting a dual portrait of the girls when the book opens in 1986.

June has no intimate school friends and Greta, for reasons June does not understand, has her own teen-age angst. June is closest to her uncle Finn, her godfather, confidant, and best friend, so she is devastated when he dies of AIDS. Finn does manage to finish the painting, which the family hangs in their living room. After Finn's death a story about him and the portrait—"its current location unknown"—appears in the New York Times. A Sotheby's expert estimates that, based on Finn's past sales and that this is apparently his last work, the painting, titled "Tell the Wolves I'm Home" could sell for $700,000. Or more.

June was not the only person who loved Finn, however. A stranger shows up at Finn's funeral—a stranger to June but not to her mother who says the man is the person who murdered her brother.

As June comes to realize Toby was her uncle's lover. And while she assumes some of her mother's attitude, she slowly, slowly—and plausibly—comes to befriend Toby.

Toby lives in Finn's apartment. Toby and Finn had a life together that June knew nothing about. Toby and June help each other come to terms over their grief at Finn's death—without, of course, letting June's mother know.

In addition to an interesting narrative to pull the reader through, Brunt writes wonderfully well. Here is a quick description of a bank's room in which safe deposit customers can look in their boxes privately: "The room had a rich look about it, with dark red wallpaper that went only halfway up the wall and curvy molding around the ceiling that looked old fashioned. It was like the bank wanted your valuable stuff to feel at home in its new little room, far away from its real home."

I was impressed by Brunt's ability to convey June's grief: "I started to walk away, but then I turned back. I decided to stop even trying to hold back the tears. I decided to stand there under an awning on Madison Avenue and let Toby see me. Let him understand that I missed Finn just as much as he did. And once I started, there was no way of stopping. Everything that had been squashed down and pressed into a hard tight ball int he center of my heart came undone. I stood there, shaking and heaving on Madison Avenue in front of Toby, waiting for him to run away or shove me into a taxi, but he didn't. He stepped in, put his long arms around me, and leaned his head on my shoulder . . . "

Tell the Wolves I'm Home held my interest throughout. And while in retrospect it feels as if fourteen-year-old June is perceptive beyond her years, I didn't feel that while I was reading. While I was reading, I was immersed in June's world, in her perceptions, her experiences, her thoughts—and thoroughly enjoying myself.

Sheriff Longmire fights the weather and crime

Walt Longmire, the fictional sheriff of the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming, is the creation of Craig Johnson who now lives in a small Wyoming town that would be in Absaroka County if it existed.

Johnson says of his background in law enforcement, "It was a large, metropolitan department in the east, which gave me an insight into the procedural aspects of law enforcement that makes writing this kind of novel a little easier. Walking a beat in a city is very different from sheriffing a county the size of Vermont, but there are similarities. I spent a lot of time with another good friend, Sheriff Larry Kirkpatrick of Johnson County, refitting my experiences to a more rural jurisdiction. I rode around with Larry a lot; herding cattle off the highway with a cruiser is a real talent."

Death Without Company, published in 2006, is the second Longmire mystery; there are now more than 11 and a TV series based on the books.

Among the book's many pleasures: Longmire tells his own story. We never shift point of view to one of the other characters. We have a real sense of his foul-mouthed deputy Victoria (Vic) Moretti, former sheriff Lucian Connally, and Walt's Cheyenne friend Henry Standing Bear. Even the minor characters—an elderly doctor, the Sheriff's Department secretary, a female bank inspector from out of town, and a huge methamphetamine addict—come alive.

Another pleasure: A sense that the novel's winter landscape is exactly as Johnson describes. (Wyoming has barriers ready to block the interstate to all traffic when a blizzard roars across the high plains.) Indeed, the landscape is as important to the novel as any one of the characters.

Finally—although I could go on—Johnson writes wonderfully functional dialogue. Example: Vic asks Walt what he's going to do about dinner:
    "I don't know, maybe go down to the Bee." The Busy Bee was in a small concrete-block building that clung to the banks of Clear Creek through the tenacity of its owner and the strenght of its biscuits and spiced gravy. Dorothy Caldwell had owned and operated the Bee since Christ had been a cowboy. I ate there frequently and, due to its proximity to the jail, so had our infrequent lodgers.
     "I bet she's gone home."
      "I'll take my chances. If worse come to worse, I can always catch the pepper steak over at the Home for Assisted Living."
     She made a face. "That sounds appealing."
     "Better than a plastic-wrapped burrito from the Kum and Go."
     "Boy, you know all the hot spots, don't you?"
     "I have been known to show a girl a good time, yes."

Death Without Company (from a Basque proverb: 'A life without friends means a death without company') gets rolling when an elderly woman dies in the Durant Home for Assisted Living, hardly an unusual or unexpected occurrence. And then the new, young, hotshot medical examiner establishes that she was poisoned.

Walt begins investigating. Why would someone kill a 74-year-old woman of Basque extraction? Who would kill her? What happened to her long-gone husband? Is there any connection between the woman's death and the guy who tries to kill Walt? Between the old woman's death and an attack on her granddaughter? And why would someone tamper with the brakes of the kindly old assisted living home doctor's classic Mercedes?

We follow Walt as he talks to people, runs down leads, and gradually comes to understand the history and the circumstances that led to the murder. All in all, satisfying, complex, and plausible.