P-E-effect Books

Meet Ollie Ewin, the young Irish carpenter who narrates this book. Ollie is a troubled lad, who has hallucinations during the day and cannot sleep because of his nightmares. We first meet him as a lowly clerk in a supermarket and are made part of the terrifying past that haunts him. But the details are never spelled out and one can only guess at the outlines. Then Ollie goes to London and the whole story congeals and unfolds. Ollie blames himself for some of the terrible things that happened that time in London while he is unable to understand the others. He is caught in a swamp of vicious crime and it slowly drowns him. The story escalates until it ends in a nasty persiflage of justice.

First of all, the author shows courage in starting a book with events that make little sense, trusting that the reader will not give up on him. Secondly, he shows incredible imagination in placing us into the tortured soul of this young man and succeeding in making us feel it. And, in addition, the language is superb.

This is a must-read!

The voice of Ollie Ewing in Sudden Times is haunting, terrifying. With morbid curiosity and creeping anxiety,the reader follows Ollie's dark journey and witnesses his psychological disintegration.

This is not a novel that I would recommend because I "liked" it; it is a novel that is uniquely constructed and well deserving of recognition. Take a risk. Lock your door. Read Sudden Times....

Stunning in its raw power, this novel, unlike many other Irish novels, draws its power from its simplicity, rather than from lush description or the accumulation of details. Stripping language to the bare bones here, Dermot Healy draws the reader, without embellishment, directly into the confused mind of the main character, a carpenter named Ollie Ewing.

Ollie has just returned to Sligo, almost mute with shock from unspoken, terrible events which have befallen him while in London, where he has been working as a day laborer on construction sites. The narrative shifts back and forth in time and location, revealing Ollie's paranoia through flashbacks, brief scenes, and dialogue, which sometimes seem to have no context other than their revelation of his suffering. He is clearly trying to hang on to his sanity--and is only marginally successful--as he talks to the reader in quiet, almost confessional tones. Using unadorned, simple language, he describes things he sees that are not there and voices that no one else can hear. Never wasting a word, his earnest narrative forces the reader to share his thoughts while interpreting his state of mind.

Gradually, the reader learns of Ollie's almost paralyzing experiences in London, where he lived with a friend, Marty Kilgallon, in a trailer at an old construction site. Through Marty, Ollie learns firsthand about the protection rackets and extortion on construction sites, the common use of murder as a weapon of enforcement, and the unsympathetic judicial system. When his friend disappears and does not return for six weeks, Ollie gets caught in a whirlwind of violence and learns the true meaning of hell.

By the time he returns to Sligo, he has come to believe that there is a "glass sprinkler" machine, operating at night, which sprinkles glass over the streets of London, that the flecks in people's eyes are aliens, and that his own image in a mirror is someone imitating him. Though Healy's style is often difficult to follow, as the reader tries to piece together the events that are responsible for Ollie's current state of mind, Healy's use of detail is stunning. Casually inserted, bizarre observations about common aspects of life help create Ollie's inner life and illustrate his existential helplessness. The essential unfairness life, the power of chance, and Ollie's victimization catch the reader in a whirlwind of emotions, and his plaintive voice, crying out from all this, is unforgettable. Mary Whipple

Dermot Healy is amazingly talented. I have now read three books by him - 'The Bend for Home', 'Sudden Times' and 'A Goats Song' (still my favorite of the three). Each time I read him, I am stunned by how, well - perfect - his writing is. His characters tend to have lost thier minds (madness, drink, drugs,or some combination), and the line between what's 'real' in the novel and what the character is hallucinating is never clear. Why do they go about things the way they do? Well, because people do... Like many of Angela Carter's creations, Healy's characters are appealing and attractive, yet at the same time annoying and almost repulsive... In the end, the reader is offered no explanation of what went on - if the character himself doesn't know, how can he explain it to US? He told it to us the best he knew how, anyway. The books have some very undefineable beauty to them. I don't understand why Dermot Healy is not more widely recognised than he is.

One of the best books I have read this year is Jeffrey Lent's "In the Fall". So when I read the appraisal of this Author's work not only by Mr. Jeffrey Lent, but Roddy Doyle, and others, I thought the chance I was taking on an Author new to me was minimal. The man who wrote this book, Mr. Dermot Healy, has produced a work that will be on any short list of favorites from 2000 I will have. This book is unique and unconventional it is extraordinary. Some of the commercial commentators felt the need to go beyond what the jacket provides, and into events in the book. That decision was unnecessary, but thankfully it in no way detracts from the book. There are no simple explanations for this work, and were the story line known to you, because of the way Mr. Healy delivers his tale, little would be lost. This is a book that can be read and read again.

The book is written in the first person and that is about the only conventional aspect of it. The book is laid out in an eclectic manner. Actually it is presented in a bewildering pattern less structure that initially left me lost. Going back and reading a passage again does not help, because the subject of the book is lost, and the Author puts to paper the thoughts of what a person in the various frames of mind this individual goes through, would look like were thoughts visible. Once you get in step with the Author and his character everything makes sense, what seemed random is not, what was seemingly fragmented becomes perfectly assembled. This book does not say what it is like to feel a certain emotion; it causes the reader to feel as though he or she was experiencing the events themselves. The feeling when the book is read goes beyond the vicarious to something more akin to immersion.

The Author then demonstrates how masterfully and with what range he can craft language, how versatile he is, when, toward the end he lays down courtroom conflict between defense counsel and witnesses that is as well done as any such exchanges I have read. The dialogue is sharp, terse, and delivered in a hyperactive exchange. The Author demonstrates with ease what so many crime story pretenders struggle to produce and generally fail.

The book is brilliant, the Author a writer of incredible range, and he offers a reading experience you will not forget, and one that you will be hard pressed to repeat.

Gender and Health is especially relevant now with the discussions of how to revise our health care system. The book emphasizes the constraints in the organization of such care compared with other industrialized societies to learn why, since we spend more on healthcare than do those societies, our results are worse. Such policies have been called "socialism" by some U.S. politicians. Maternal and child health policy differences are presented in seven clearly written chapters, ideal for students, healthworkers and interested lay people.

This is a wonderful book! The authors have done a tremendous service by pulling together insights and evidence from a remarkably diverse range of literature and science. The result is a clear and straightforward overview and discussion of the complex interplay between forces routinely affecting individuals' and groups' well-being and health. Rather than a laundry list, the authors' review and discussion provides a plausible and easy to understand framework that will help inform choices we all make. Though the book includes discussion of some cutting edge science and policy issues and will be of benefit to scholars and policy makers, it will also be of interest to and enjoyable by readers without any special training or knowledge.

"Gender and Health" is both a vital reference and a good read. The book is well-written, understandable for the lay person and expert alike, and indispensable to any health policy discussion, The authors argue persuasively that gender differences in health can only be explained through an interdisciplinary study of both social and biological factors. They focus on gender-specific social constraints which affect life choices which contribute to differences in disease processes in men and women. The book's explanations and arguments are well-organized and clearly presented. Well-crafted tables and figures add vital information to the narrative.

This book will soon become required reading for researchers, policymakers, and others interested in understanding men's and women's health.

For years I have searched for an excellent book on Gender & Health. Bird & Rieker do an amazing job of analyzing the current literature & setting a framework for future studies. The book is well-written and innovative, a must-read for researchers and students interested in this topic. Professionals from multiple disciplines (demography, sociology, gerontology, health policy, public health, psychology) would benefit greatly from reading this book.

I thought this was an excellent, clearly-written book that provided an interesting discussion on health disparities by gender in a social, cultural, and biological context. It's a great primer for understanding how social policies filter down to individual-level health and behavior. It's often difficult to convey complex topics in a simple and clear manner, but the authors do so effortlessly by providing examples of real-life situations that everyone can easily relate to, making it highly accessible to the general public, as well as health researchers. This is the book to buy if you're interested in gender and health!

While looking for material on the basics of our environment and for definitions of various terms and words I've seen in newspapers and magazines, I came across the ABCS of Environmental Science. It was exactly what I needed - a clear, concise and basic text for a non-science person. Mr. Katz's book explains the various aspects of our environment and the interconnectedness of it all. Each brief chapter discusses and happily (for me) summarizes the topic with a What You Should Remember section at the chapter's end. This book was interesting and informative reading with the salient points clearly emphasized. I recommend it highly for anyone wanting a thorough but clear overview of our environmental resources and what's being done with them - a very relevant subject for us all.

This book was reviewed in the January "99 issue of CHOICE, a journal that reviews books for libraries and schools and general readers. It was an excellent, very favorable review, by M.S.Field of the US Emvironmental Protection Agency

Elaine and Arthur Aron are sociologists, who have accompanied the scientific researches of the Maharishi Effect through the last 20 years. Maharishi Effect is called the phenomenon that a large number of the population (1% or more) practicing Transcendental Meditation can reduce negative tendencies like crime in society. The fascinating synthesis of this book is a perspective of world peace on the solid ground of scientific research. Strongly recommended for all who love life and peace.

I picked this book up in an attitude of utter skepticism. "TM can make a more peaceful society - hogwash!"

Then I read the whole book. It is well-written, well-argued, and based on what seems to be very good research. It looks like there may be some truth to this unbelievable claim - if enough people practice this form of meditation, social indicators improve. Less crime, less "noise" in the society, more coherence.

This is a genuinely hopeful book. I'm glad I read it.

The IPCC-1994 follow up on the first two reports of the IPCC working group one (WG1) reports on climatic change gives a good compendium of our knowledge on anthropogenic (and natural) radiative forcing of the atmosphere and the climate system. The book fills the hole that new findings in the last couple of years have created. It will be mostly for specialists that have to know things before the rest. If you do not belong to this group, wait for the 1995-IPCC report due in the beginning of 1996.

A collection of articles about occupational health hazards or harms from a historical perspective. The focus is on New Jersey, the book being published by the State university press.
The first chapter pertains to neurological shakes among hat-workers during the 19th and early 20th centuries. A mercury-containing compound was used to cure furs into water-resistant felt. Workers breathed mercury vapor caused by a hot workspace. Hatters suffered, across many countries. In 1904, New Jersey enacted a law to require better ventilation for hat-workers exposed to mercury vapor. Mercury continued to be used in hat-making in the US until 1942, when the metal was reserved for military priorities. (Similarly, workers making alkyl-lead to reduce auto engine "knocking" suffered neurological harms.)
Chapter 3 recounts bladder cancers among workers in the synthetic dye industry during the 1920s-50s. Dupont physicians began to recognize the problem in 1932, about 30 years after this phenomena had been discovered in Germany and many had died. OSHA introduced benzidine dye regulations in the 1970s and production shifted outside the US.
Chapter 4 discusses scrotal cancer in petroleum workers who pressed wax, until a new manufacturing technology in 1951 eliminated previous exposure.
Chapter 5 recounts the tragedy of women who painted clock faces with radioactive radium so that they glowed in the dark. In the 1920s, radium was considered good for health, sold as a tonic. Horrors.
Chapter 7 recounts harms to chromium workers.
In general, as a fundamental rule of pharmacology, high exposure to any material can be dangerous. Fortunately, technological evolution has enabled more automation and cleaner workspaces. Occupational health programs have become more advanced and can draw upon vastly more medical knowledge. Protective apparel is more common nowadays.
Despite safer workspaces in modern times, it is welcome to have historical perspectives about past tragedies and how some persisted much too long. This book sheds valuable light on past injustices.

If your a right wing Born again christian, then this would be the book for you, if you can even understand it!!

I found it rather Scary..