On Immunity: an Inoculation / Eula Biss 205 p.

A book as unusual as it is important.  Biss is the author of, among other things, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, which earned a host of accolades and was chosen as Washington University's 2013 First Year Reading Program title for its elegant examination of race and identity in America.  Here Biss takes immunization as a focal point for a discussion of, well, many things: individual rights versus the needs of the group, the boundaries we place on our own bodies, notions of cleanliness and purity, sickness and health.  She is at once provocative and mild, clearly seeking to draw readers into a conversation rather than pushing them away from a hard, bright line.

While Biss writes with delicacy, in the end she is clear about her pro-immunization position.  One senses in her desire not to demonize those who disagree with her a strong wish not to alienate herself from them.  She casts herself over and over as an upper-middle class mother with all the hyper-vigilant concerns that characterize that tribe.  At times she goes overboard here, in statements such as ,"I remember feeling agony when my son drank water for the first time."  Agony?  Either she is grossly exaggerating for the sake of appearing 'balanced' or she is...well, let's just hope she's exaggerating.

You'll Enjoy It When You Get There: the Stories of Elizabeth Taylor / 428 pp.

What a thrill to find this among our new books: an esteemed English novelist and short-story writer from mid-twentieth century whose work has been overlooked in the U.S. in recent years.  (And no, she was never married to Richard Burton; that was another Elizabeth T.)  These stories, written between 1950 and 1975 and many published first in The New Yorker, are, to this reader, fantastic.  They are 'small' stories set in middle-class homes in suburban England, but Taylor's powers of observation are tremendous.  Many critics describe her claustrophobic marriages dark and twisted; I found her descriptions rather compassionate instead.  Consider this description, from Sisters: "...the massive, mottled flesh beneath, creased, as it must be, from its rigid confinement, or the suspender imprints at the top of her tapering legs.  Her navel would be full of talcum powder."  It sounds cruel, but as the story plays out, it's clear that Taylor is beyond mere mockery.  Brilliant and subtle, Elizabeth Taylor gets my vote!