This book had great characters and a number of intriguing running plot lines which all seemed to just trail off at the end. It seemed as if the author just got tired of writing and stopped, without an effort to tie together the plot lines or even to resolve them separately. In the end I felt cheated, like being served a BLT with no bacon inside.

Although I was slow to warm up to "The Man From Saigon", by the time I was well into the narrative, the book was almost impossible to put down. Marti Lembach's writing was so evocative of the suffocating heat found in the Viet Nam jungle that I found myself breaking out into a sweat and getting concerned that I might come down with foot rot This novel is an artful tapestry in which a love story, espionage and historical and political fiction are woven together seamlessly.

"Baking Cakes in Kigale", a first novel by Gaile Parkin, Takes place in Rwanda some years after the civil war. Each chapter is titled after an occasion for which the main character, Angel Tungaraza, has been hired to bake one of her famous cakes. In getting to know the people for whom she is creating her confectionery masterpieces, Angel learns the stories of their lives, some tragic, some full of humor. This is one of those special books that keeps you fully engaged while at the same time infusing the story with an important political message. It bears witness to the terrible tragedies of AIDS, genocide, malaria, poverty and government corruption, and all the while manages to be heartwarming and full of joie de vivre.

I found this book to be well written except for a few tortuous run-on sentences. The writer brought her readers along with her on her journey through Alzheimer's research. The fact the she allowed herself to become a subject of many of the research protocols made the narrative more interesting and real.

As a psychologist who has done some work in the field I was left wondering if the book could be entirely understood by all who might like to read it, as there was a tendency to use medical terminology that is not in common usage. Although disappointing, I find it unfair to fault the author for not revealing a definitive cure for Alzheimer's. What she did do was to give us all a bit of hope.