Page 30 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 3 Spring 2014

REVIEWS
Beauty: A Novel
by Frederick Dillen ’64
Simon & Schuster, 256
pages, $25
Reviewed by George
Carlisle, faculty emeritus
Beauty is one of the outstanding novels I
have read in a long, long time. I spent an
entire day fascinated by what was going
on in Elizabeth, the struggling fishing town,
north of Boston. (Gloucester? I think so.)
Dillen knows coastal New England inti-
mately, understanding the dire challenges
the natives face.
Carol MacLean, “from away,” is tough
and determined to succeed. Her new com-
patriot is Ezekiel (Easy) Parsons, whose
family has been fishing for 200 years.
What an unlikely pair to meet the griz-
zled men and women who crowd into the
town meeting and help them decide to
preserve their waterfront from condos
and a hotel. The outsiders pushing for
development do not anticipate The Wives
of the Sea, hardened, ready, and powerful.
Carol receives a crash course in small-
town affairs as she tries to save her own
newly acquired, all-but-dead fish-pro-
cessing plant. She is smart and savvy,
ready for the fight, having worked in the
jungle of corporate finance. For years she
actually had been a part of it, killing off
“orphans,” small struggling, companies,
weak links that found themselves on the
chopping block of corporate buyouts. It
was Carol who fired workers, scraped off
assets, and finally locked the doors.
As her tables turn, she claws her way
through seemingly impenetrable stumbl-
ing blocks to save her “orphan” plant and
save the town as well. She sets in motion
financial and psychological forces that
reach up the ladder to an all-important
judge, who is aiming to be the governor
of Massachusetts.
Dillen shows himself to be an astute
financial writer as well as a novelist,
and his understanding of the details of
business and economics adds to a plot
already successful. Details of corporate
dishonesty, an endangered supply of
fish, and economic reality that endanger
Carol’s attempt to save her old factory
make the story interesting and plausible.
But just as significant is the dire situa-
tion of Elizabeth, with its economy in
tatters, with outside pressure for the
town to abandon its past.
For the 2,000 former students who have
been with me in the classroom, I am giv-
ing you yet one more assignment. Buy this
book and read it. You’ll be glad you did.
For the Benefit of Those
Who See: Dispatches
from the World of the
Blind
by Rosemary Mahoney ’79
Little, Brown and Com-
pany, 304 pages, $27.00
Reviewed by Hannah MacBride
In her new book, Rosemary Mahoney ’79
invites her readers to embrace another
way of experiencing the world – through
the eyes of the blind. The poignant stories
of the blind people she meets through
Braille Without Borders in Tibet and India
give depth and personality to the ample
historical and medical research she pre-
sents. What makes the book so powerful,
however, is the honesty with which
Mahoney explores her own thoughts and
feelings about blindness.
Mahoney begins her story with a candid
confession: she is terrified of losing her
sight. She relates her utter horror as she
recalls a time as a younger woman when
she feared an injury may leave her blind.
Living with the blind offered her a chance
to understand how others could live with-
out their sight. For the Benefit of Those
Who See gives insight into the lives of
blind people from all over the world,
many of whom have been ridiculed,
abused, and sheltered in their home
countries. At Braille Without Borders,
the blind are encouraged to be indepen-
dent and to contribute to society.
Mahoney is at first surprised and later
amazed by her students’ ability to effi-
ciently navigate busy streets and crowded
classrooms, to identify each other and
her without sight, and to perform com-
plex tasks. They, in turn, are amused by
her complete dependence on her sight.
An electricity outage, a nighttime walk
with no flashlight, and a blindfolded tour
of a busy city give Mahoney a chance to
learn from her students.
In effect, the book is, as its title sug-
gests, an invitation to her sighted readers
to reevaluate our own thoughts and feel-
ings about blindness and the blind. De-
scriptive prose and colorful and moving
stories give life to the people to whom we
are introduced, many of them content
and even proud of their distinct perspec-
tive. They understand the world in a
different way from the sighted, but their
experience is no less rich.
The dispatches Mahoney shares will
open your eyes to an entirely new per-
spective and leave you questioning your
own relationship with sight.
Full Fathom Five:
Ocean Warming and
a Father’s Legacy
by Gordon W. Chaplin ’58
Arcade Publishing, 248
pages, $24.95
Reviewed by Henry T. Armistead ’58
The thrust of Full Fathom Five is Gordon
Chaplin’s return, with professional ichthy-
ologists, to the Bahamas, where his father,
Charles C.G. Chaplin (CCGC), did pioneer-
ing studies of reef fishes. The work of his
father serves as a baseline for the ongoing
explorations of Chaplin and crew to de-
termine changes during the ensuing half
century, mostly due to climate change.
Chaplin shared the initial findings of
these studies in “A Return to the Reefs,”
which appeared in the February 2006
issue of Smithsonian.
The diversity is still there, but many 30