I offer more review haikus

Still trying to catch up on reading and reviews:

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfrid Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals***1/2
Wendy Jones
Wilfrid Price, a Welsh undertaker in the early 20th century, is pretty dim where women are concerned, creating a muddle when he proposes to one woman while he's in love with another. It sounds humorous--and parts of it are--but the woman to whom he proposes is in terrible trouble, the kind of trouble that nobody could say out loud in those days. Jones handles the story with an almost Victorian delicacy, except for the colorful idioms about "popping your clogs" (dying) and "farting in a colander" (doing something useless).

Equilateral****
Ken Kalfus
Kalfus is one of the most imaginative writers around, and I wish he would write more books. In this novel, a nutty scientist plans to construct a huge trench in the shape of an equilateral triangle and then set it on fire, thus hailing intelligent life on Mars. The media excitement over the building of the trench begins to turn to terror over what kind of response Earthlings might get from the Martians, proving that humans will expend large amounts of energy on a lot of really dumb and short-sighted notions.

Raylan**1/2
Elmore Leonard
Cowboy noir in which the hero gets laid, which is nice for him, but kind of off-putting for me because my mental image of this character was sort of a cross between Festus on "Gunsmoke" and Columbo. I guess if I'd imagined Timothy Olyphant (who starred in the TV version of this book, "Justified") I might have liked it better.

If You're Not Yet Like Me***
Edan Lepucki
A monologue by a single mother to her unborn daughter. The mother's coarseness and her sad life are well drawn. That she's telling all this to her baby--the title could have been "If You're Not Yet Like Me You Will Be Someday"--is very jarring, and makes it hard to know whether we're meant to sympathize with the narrator or not. And I don't know whether I like this book or not.

The Bees***
LaLine Paull
This book begs comparisons with "Animal Farm" in that it is a dystopian novel that uses animals as stand-ins for humans. This time the animals are bees. Paull clearly did a lot of research on hive behavior and creatively imagines the bees, but you can see where this is going a mile off.

Dear Committee Members****
Julie Schumacher
A selfish, neurotic professor reveals his character, his feuds with his ex-wife and girlfriend, and his attitudes about his students through nothing but letters of recommendation. It's all pretty hilarious, but sadly dated. In these days when a growing number of college faculty are adjuncts humping for a living at two or three institutions, few have the luxury of being cosseted enough to engage in the Ivory Tower tantrums and spite depicted here.

Stoner**
John Williams
Stoner makes an interesting parallel read with "Dear Committee Members" above. Stoner is a medieval literature professor with an awful wife, a sympathetic mistress, and a daughter he loves, but he isn't strong enough to help any of these women. This book replaces "Jude the Obscure" as my standard for depressing books.