Share this  This installment: an amazing conjunction; young
women on their own; mythological creatures manifest; an unusual
“sibling;” adolescent angst graphically portrayed; and a memoir
anatomizing that awkward “sandwich” of teen on one side,
demented elderly mother on the other.      Submergence by J. M.
Ledgard   We first meet James More, undercover CIA operative,
imprisoned in a squalid bathroom in Somalia. Then we make the
acquaintance of Danielle Flinders, a biomathematician who
specializes in investigating the ocean’s depths, at a hotel in
France where the two met and had a brief but intense affair.  At
the book’s end she’s on her way down in a submersible and he’s
possibly released after a nightmarish trek with Jihad
terrorists. Along the way each goes into extensive mental
excursions. His dip into literature, painting and music; hers
involve ruminations on mythology, science and the fate of the
world.  It’s a dizzying compendium of information that sometimes
left me reeling or groping, yet fascinate