My Mother-In-Law Drinks

By Diego De Silva, translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar. (Europa Editions, 373 pages, $17.)

"Hapless" is a word that promises complications, evoking possible comedy but also the potential for uneasy self-reflection — for don't we all fear that someone may, on perhaps not one of our best days, regard us as hapless?

Vincenzo Malinconico suffers such regard from his kids, his ex-wife, his girlfriend, his fellow lawyers, even from himself. He becomes a fulcrum in a bizarre stunt in which a grieving father turns a grocery store into an impromptu courtroom on live TV to avenge his son's inadvertent murder by a Mafioso, which actually is comedic. When Malinconico's growing sense of haplessness finally erupts into a duel of words that questions both justice and entertainment, the result is a provocative and funny rant that reflects upon how mass media shapes our lives.

This is a rollicking novel in unexpected ways. Malinconico's internal dialogues are droll and maudlin, hilarious and touching. Texting, he says, gives the illusion of having all the time in the world to craft a perfect response, but that's not true. "When you're texting you feel all strategic, but you're simply being impulsive in a whole new way."

Translated from Italian, there are occasional references to Italian celebrities that mean nothing to most readers, but let it go. The resolution of this hapless man's life isn't clear until the final pages, and the journey there holds both laughter and sighs.

Kim Ode

Staff writer

My Life as a Foreign Country

By Brian Turner. (W.W. Norton, 212 pages, $23.95.)

In the glut of recent memoirs and reportage on the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Brian Turner takes the long view, concentrating less on battlefield grit and dark humor and more on the question of what makes men go to war.

Turner, author of two collections of poetry on his war experiences, spent seven years in the Army and led one of the first convoys crossing from Kuwait into Iraq in 2003.

His memoir imagines the experience of war across time and battle lines. He is, in turn, his grandfather fighting in Guam and a Japanese samurai boarding a plane for a kamikaze run, a U.S. soldier passing time in Mosul and a young Iraqi woman strapping on a vest laced with explosives.

Turner traces a family history of war, piecing together his own need to prove himself on a battlefield. "This is part of the intoxication, the pathology of it all," he muses, linking his memories of a laconic grandfather to his own need as a young man to turn wild spaces into battlefields. "These are the experiences that determine the making of a man."

The book is full of resonant scenes that shiver with immediacy and evoke the hallucinatory war writing of Tim O'Brien. It's also a search for answers that digs deep beneath the headlines.

TRISHA COLLOPY

Contributing writer