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BOOK REVIEW: The search for a loved one in 'A Far Country'

A young girl sets out on a journey to find her beloved playmate, traveling great distances and undergoing hardship until she finds him. In his second novel, Daniel Mason takes the plot from fairy tales such as "The Snow Queen" but transplants it to a hot, drought-ridden land where snow itself would seem magical and a palace built from ice an unbelievable decadence.

Mason's acclaimed first novel, "The Piano Tuner," also sent a most unlikely candidate on a journey, into the interior of 19th-century Burma. But in his second novel, he trades precision for vague portents. "A Far Country" takes place in an unnamed city in an unnamed country in an area that could be either South America or Southeast Asia. But any weaknesses of plot in this novel can't obscure the abundance of beautiful prose that ultimately creates a compelling parable of poverty and survival.

Isabel grew up in a small northern village that "they would one day name Saint Michael in the Cane." When it rains, the families raise goats and zebu cows

Lethem's New York state of mind-bender

People who live in glass houses shouldn't get stoned. Not if they expect to keep paranoia at bay. And they sure shouldn't get so stoned that they start to see things. Because with all that glass, things just might start looking back. Never mind that after a while the whole world begins to resemble a snow dome or that a giant seems to come along every so often to give it a good shake.

But the state of being stoned seems to be the overriding constant in Jonathan Lethem's smoke-soaked Chronic City , a borough buddy novel.

Set in the vague future, Lethem's story explores big-city politics, the perils of information overload plus the glittery worlds of avant-garde art, the upper classes and celebrities. It includes an endangered female astronaut and an object called a chaldron, which seems to possess high mystical value.

Paintings capture the unseen side of Colombia's war

At first glance, the childlike strokes and bright colors of the paintings of the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art's latest exhibit suggest bucolic scenes of Colombia's countryside: Small, colorful figures fill town squares and farms lie in the shadow of towering mountains or by fast-running rivers.

But a closer look reveals landscapes covered in blood, with camouflage-clad men wielding chain saws against their victims, limbless bodies floating in rivers tinged red with blood, women being raped and entire towns under siege.

The exhibit, called ``The War We Haven't Seen,'' brings together 90 paintings by about 80 former combatants of Colombia's 4-decade-old conflict. ``It's a mix of innocence and horror,'' says Juan Manuel Echavarría, a Colombian artist organized the workshops where the ex-fighters learned to paint.

Full text of President Obama's speech

Remarks of President Barack Obama, As Prepared for Delivery

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They have done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they have done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.

Rich material in Salinger's chosen home

J.D. Salinger supposedly spent the latter half of his life writing for his own pleasure, composing each day in a pine house in the hills that overlooked towering maple trees, plowed hay fields and the neighboring mountains of Vermont.

The author of "The Catcher in the Rye," who died last week at age 91, lived here for more than 50 years and continued to publish throughout his first decade in Cornish, releasing such fiction as "Franny and Zooey" and "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction." But while he surely appreciated a setting that was "nice and peaceful," a wish Holden Caulfield expressed in "Catcher," Salinger was essentially a cosmopolitan author who set much of his fiction on campuses and in his native New York City and the surrounding area.

The book world knows no greater mystery than what Salinger might have written since he stopped sharing his work with the public in the 1960s. Former neighbor Jerry Burt has said, and continues to say, that Salinger told him he was