A Mouthful of Air
By Amy Koppelman (MacAdam/Cage, 212 pages, $23).
Author’s background: Koppelman’s writing has
appeared in The New York Observer and Lilith
magazine. She lives in New York with her husband, filmmaker Brian
Koppelman, and their two children.
Plot in a nutshell: This is a tragic, touching tale of
a privileged young woman desperately trying to regain herself. Julie is
just home from a suicide attempt, due to post partum depression and
long-harbored familial guilt and anger. From the outside looking in,
Julie has an enviable lifestyle: a doting, understanding husband, a
nanny, a joyous baby son — yet she feels totally unworthy of any
of it. Haunting memories of her father prevent her from believing that
her husband can be a good and faithful man, and, even more importantly,
accept her. When Julie becomes pregnant with her second child, she
secretly forgoes her anti-depression drugs to breastfeed and bond with
her new daughter. Taking her hopeless depression in hand, she
tragically betrays those she loves.
Sample of prose: "But what Julie wants to do is walk
over to him with her head held high. She wants to tell him that
she’s happily married, that she loves Ethan, that she’s
survived. She wants him, her father, to lift her in his arms, to hold
her as he had when she was a little girl. She wants him to tell her
that it’s okay: okay for her to be happily married, to love her
husband, to live a life separate from him."
Author reminds me of: Jane Hamilton, in The Book
of Ruth and A Map of the World.
Best reason to read: Written in skillful prose, this cautionary tale
will haunt readers with Julie’s constant inner dialogue and doubt.
Koppelman draws her audience in and never lets loose. — Justin
Matott
A Walking Guide
By Alan S. Cowell (Simon & Schuster, 298 pages, $23).
Author’s background: Cowell has been a foreign
correspondent for Reuters and The New York Times for
nearly three decades.
Plot in a nutshell: Joe Selby is one of the top war
correspondents in the world. He’s also been told that he’s
terminally ill, and the use of his extremities is starting to go. He
decides to have one last hurrah, and climb England’s highest
mountain one more time. Meanwhile, he’s torn between two
women.
Sample of prose: "As an itinerant freelancer, owning
little more than a laptop and a sleeping bag, he hitchhiked and bussed
himself across Anatolia and the Levant and southern Africa,
accumulating a sheaf of articles about unpleasant events in unsavory
places that became his portfolio, established his credentials. Simply
by traveling on the cheap he saw things the bigtime reporters did not
see in their business class airplanes and chartered trucks. It gave him
a cachet but did not make him popular with his peers....he was an
Englishman, writing for American readers from countries that wiser
people on either side of the Atlantic would happily avoid...Here, on
the approaches to Scafell Pike, with his limbs weakening, lay his true
battle, to be fought on his home turf..."
Author reminds me of: David Czuchlewski, author of
The Muse Asylum and Empires of Light.
Best reason to read: For its three truly memorable
characters, Selby and the two women who love him.
Ed Halloran
Calpurnia
By Anne Scott (Alfred A. Knopf, 294 pages, $14).
Author’s background: Scott, a native New Yorker,
has a degree in medical anthropology and has worked for the New York
City Transit Police.
Plot in a nutshell: When Maribel Archibald Davies
dies, her family hires Elizabeth to organize an estate sale to sell
Maribel’s paintings and all the fine furnishings in Calpurnia, a
once-grand old house near Philadelphia. The novel’s shifting
narrative voices enable readers to see the vested interests of the
various remaining family members and their suspicions regarding the
circumstances of Maribel’s death.
Sample of prose: "On the cassette deck virtue triumphs
at last and Scarpia goes to his noisy death just as Elizabeth makes her
turn into the parking lot. The fountain in the driveway turnaround
purls on and on in the summer night, its lily pads glassy with
moonlight, as she pulls the key from the ignition, wishing that her
life to date had entitled her to say, like Tosca, that she had lived
for art; because at the end of the day it’s art or nothing,
isn’t it? What else is there left in the record, when all the
chips are down, considering how rarely any real woman...can ever
truthfully say she has lived for love?"
Author reminds me of: Debbie Lee Wessleman’s
Trutor and the Balloonist, because inanimate objects
left behind by the deceased lead to a secret and enable the deceased to
assume a role as significant as that of other characters.
Best reason to read: For Scott’s clear-eyed view
of reality and her portraits of Maribel’s diverse family members
and acquaintances.
Joan Hinkemeyer
Chasing Lightning
By Rachel York (Kensington Books, 448 pages, paper, $15).
Author’s background: York was born in a small
town in Texas and educated in the U.S. and Europe. While studying
languages and anthropology at the University of Madrid, she supported
herself by doing commercials for Spanish television. She has traveled
extensively, and currently resides in Los Angeles, where she writes
screenplays and children’s books under another name.
Plot in a nutshell: Scarlett Faye Turner, the child of
a dysfunctional marriage in a small Pennsylvania town, wants to get
out, and devotes her entire childhood to guaranteeing that she will. By
the time she graduates from high school in 1964, she’s landed a
full college scholarship and is well on her way to becoming a
world-class poet. She’s also launched on a lifelong voyage of
self-discovery, greatly complicated by conflicts dealing with her love
for her former high school classmate, Gina.
Scarlett achieves her goal of becoming a famous writer early on, with
the publication of her Poems For Lovers of a Different Kind, under the
name of Georgia Hill, in 1967. On the personal front, however, her
problems have not been resolved.
Author reminds me of: John Steinbeck, for his ability
to capture American places and voices.
Sample of prose: "What was she anyway? Straight like
Jonathan was suggesting? She doubted it. She enjoyed being with women
too much...If you considered yourself heterosexual and suddenly found
yourself in bed with someone of your own sex, did that make you gay?
And vice-versa? Perhaps the words ‘homosexual’ and
‘heterosexual’ were descriptive only of an act rather than a
state of being. After all, people were a collection of widely varying
impulses and attractions. What they did today they might not want to do
tomorrow. So what did that make anyone? ...Was it your heart that
determined your sexuality or the gender of the person with whom you
shared your bed? If your heart was the ultimate arbiter, then a lot of
people were lying, decided Scarlett. Perhaps love was the equation
after all."
Best reason to read: For Scarlett’s gripping
story. A word of warning: Begin reading it early in the day. I made the
mistake of starting it in the evening and was exhausted at work the
next day!
Ed Halloran
Grass Roof, Tin Roof
By Dao Strom (Mariner Books, 240 pages, $13).
Author’s background: Born in Saigon in 1973,
Strom’s mother fled the country with her when she was a baby; her
father stayed behind and was later sent to re-education camps. Strom
was raised in California by her mother and stepfather. She is a
graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Plot in a nutshell: This book doesn’t lend itself
to a standard plot summation. The author moves in what appears to be at
times a random pattern, going into the minds of the members of a family
with complicated interpersonal relationships. Their stories deal with
the issues faced by Vietnamese refugees, and their children and
siblings who were born in the U.S.
Sample of prose: "I was a morbid teenager. A part of
me was attracted to the apocalyptic. Is it the lackadaisical,
capricious weather of California that breeds this? Is it television? Or
is it the simple, not unusal, adolescent urge to flirt with nihilism? I
was a science fiction junkie; I entertained scenarios of nuclear
holocaust and imagined who might survive it with me; I fantasized about
terrorists infiltrating our high school pep rallies. In short, I
enjoyed imagining the familiar routine of the world overcome —
violently disrupted, evaporated — and the possible ensuing freedom
of chaos, of annihilation. I exalted the romance of desolation. In my
mind I held clearly an image of a ruined city, rubble and bricks and
splintered wood and dilapidated buildings under a cloudy purple-black
sky, with no people in sight: some place of necessary primal living I
was trying to get back to."
Author reminds me of: Heninrich Boll, because of
Strom’s ability to give voices to peoples’ inner minds, and
Malcolm X , because of her vivid and accurate descriptions of
contemporary U.S. society, as seen by "outsiders" who also happen to be
citizens.
Best reason to read: Strom has written a virtually
flawless book. Her characters’ stories will likely remain in your
thoughts for some time to come. Ordinarily, I’m not fond of
sequels, but these are people whom I’d like to "see" again.
Ed Halloran
Haunted Ground
By Erin Hart (Scribner, 352 pages, $24).
Author’s background: Hart is a former
communications director of the Minnesota State Arts Board. She lives in
Minneapolis.
Plot in a nutshell: A perfectly preserved head is
found in an Ireland peat bog. The pretty, mysterious redhead’s
story must be uncovered. The enigma of where her body is and why her
head and body are separated is just the beginning of this
mystery.
Cormac Maguire, a local archaeologist, and Nora Gavin, an American
anatomist lecturing at a nearby school, come together to investigate
the redheaded woman’s story, which could date back eons, since
peat bogs can preserve items trapped in them for centuries. At the same
time, the village suspects one of its own of foul play in the earlier
disappearance of his wife and son. The stories intertwine, involving
some of the seedier townspeople, and Cormac and Nora delve in to solve
the mystery.
Sample of prose: "The surface of stone had begun to
break apart beneath the steady scouring of the stone, but Nora
didn’t seem to notice until her fingers brushed against a tuft of
ragged cloth that stuck up from the loosened soil. As Cormac watched,
she brushed away the soil to uncover a bundle of what looked like
rough-textured woolen homespun. When she carefully lifted the top layer
of frayed and moth-eaten fabric, a tiny, fragile-looking skull lay
exposed on the surface of the soil, its empty sockets upturned toward
the sky."
Author reminds me of: A more literary Patricia
Cornwell, when Cornwell is on the top of her game.
Best reason to read: This novel is a fascinating combination of
history, forensics, suspense, archaeology and skilled
storytelling.
Justin Matott
Hunger
By Elise Blackwell (Little, Brown, 133 pages, $16.95).
Author’s background: Blackwell, the daughter of
botanists, holds an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of
California, Irvine.
Plot summary: In the winter of 1941 when vast numbers
of Leningrad’s citizens starved to death during the German
blockade, the book’s narrator and a few of his colleagues
struggled to save a rare collection of seeds stored at the Institute of
Plant Industry. He describes how some remained true to their principles
while others resorted to deception for their own arrival.
Sample of prose: "I watched a woman just down the
shore washing clothes on the rock. Unlike cheap travel paintings of
boisterous women working and gossiping and splashing together, she was
straight-faced and alone. She washed her family’s clothes not as a
social event but because they needed to be cleaned....People did
anything to feed their children. They killed and cooked beloved pets.
They stole, connived and killed. They starved their spouses. They
starved themselves."
Author reminds me of: Meloy Maile, in her disciplined
economy of prose that enables her to write a complex story in concise,
lean chapters.
Best reason to read: Blackwell probes the degree to
which people adhere to their principles with her taut minimalist style,
using only the telling detail. The juxtaposition of passages exploding
with the fertile images of Babylonia’s famed Hanging Gardens
against the sterility of a life where even tree bark is a luxury gives
a heightened intensity and human face to a historical story.
Joan Hinkemeyer
Judge
By Dwight Allen (Shannon Ravenel/Algonquin, 320 pages, $24.95).
Author’s background: Allen is a graduate of the
University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. He worked at the New
Yorker for ten years, and has published The Green Suit, a collection of
short stories.
Plot in a nutshell: Judge William Dupree has died at
82, leaving a somewhat dysfunctional family and Lucy, his long-time law
clerk, to cope without him. The book moves effortlessly back and forth
through time, and the Judge, even after death, makes appearances every
now and again to check up on things.
Sample of prose: "Crawford twisted off the cap of his
second bottle of beer. Michelle’s voice was soft and forgiving, a
snowbank he could dump his head into. When he’d married her,
he’d known this much about her: that she wouldn’t ride him
for his weaknesses, if he permitted her hers, such as they were. She
ate junk food on the sly, she liked musicals, she believed the most
beautiful place in the world was a certain lake in the north woods of
Wisconsin, where she’d spent her childhood summers. She was happy
in a canoe, she was comfortable in a flannel shirt, she had sung
bedtime tunes to her children in a tenderhearted voice....Crawford
sometimes thought he had picked Michelle, following his unsuccessful
first marriage, because she would let him get away with being loving
only when the mood was upon him. And he had rewarded her, if that was
the right term, with thirteen years of almost complete loyalty. He had
slipped only once, and even then it was only a bobble."
Author reminds me of: Darin Strauss, author of
Chang and Eng.
Best reason to read: For its richly drawn, thoroughly
memorable characters.
Ed Halloran
Liverpool Fantasy,
By Larry Kirwan (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 304 pages, paper,
$14.95).
Author’s background: Kirwan is the leader of the
Irish-American rock band Black 47. He has also released a solo album
and has had a collection of his plays published.
Plot in a nutshell: It’s 1987, 25 years after
John Lennon stormed out of a recording studio, followed by George
Harrison and Ringo Starr. Lennon disagrees with their label’s
demands that they follow up Love Me Do, their first hit, with Till
There Was You, instead of Please Please Me. (Note: If you’re of a
"certain age," you’re cringing at the very thought of this
fictional sacrilege committed by the record company.) John, rather than
"selling out," wants to go back to Liverpool and wait for another
company to pick up the Beatles.
A quarter of a century later, he’s still waiting, and is known
locally as "Looney Lennon." He plays gigs at local clubs, i.e., when he
can get them. George is Father George Harrison, SJ, experiencing a
crisis of faith, and Ringo is still drumming, with John, among others,
but is largely supported by his wife, Maureen, who runs a small chain
of beauty salons. Paul, long since removed to the U.S., where he is a
major pop star known as "Paul Montana,"is competing with Wayne Newton
for primacy in Vegas.
Paul, who somehow has managed not to bring the rest of the Beatles into
his world, experiences a sudden career crisis, and decides he needs to
go back to Liverpool and reunite with them. There are a number of
complications, not the least of which is a growing fascist movement in
England, whose prime mover in Liverpool is Julian Lennon.
Sample of prose: (John Lennon speaking):
"It’s all a nightmare now, and who the hell cares if we never made
it anyway? I care! I f---ing care! I care more than anything in this
s-hole of a world! And twenty-five years ago, every punter this side of
the Mersey cared; but that was then, and this is now. Eventually, they
all slipped back into their lifetime fellowship of the livin’
dead. Oh yeah, for a couple of years, scrubbers still looked at me like
I was somethin’; then, it all flushed away down the toilet, and
the Beatles ended up on your granny’s mantelpiece: another
sepia-toned memory."
Author reminds me of: Nik Cohn; specifically, his
nonfiction, Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other
England.
Best reason to read: In this book, there was no
"British Invasion," as record companies refused to take on any other
British rock groups after the "trouble" with the Beatles. It’s
both frightening and fascinating to contemplate what the world would be
like without the Beatles, Stones, and even Gerry and the Pacemakers,
whose leader is a prominent character in this excellent novel.
Ed Halloran
Mrs. Sartoris
By Elke Schmitter; translated by Carol Brown Janeway (Alfred A. Knopf,
240 pages, $19.95).
Author’s background: Schmitter, a Berliner,
studied philosophy in Munich and has been an editor and a freelance
writer for several major German newspapers.
Plot in a nutshell: Mrs. Sartoris, a 40-something
provincial German woman, bourgeois wife and mother, holds a secret
dream and longtime resentments dating back to youthful rejection by a
wealthy young man. When she falls madly and obsessively in love with a
married man, she hopes her humdrum existence will metamorphose into one
of glamour. Darker forces challenge her dreams, unfortunately.
Author reminds me of: Although Mrs. Sartoris is more
elliptical in style, the protagonist is reminiscent of Madame Bovary in
that she also is a provincial dreamer and romantic who succumbs to
histrionics when thwarted by romance — and makes others miserable
in her blind obsessive pursuit of illusions.
Sample of prose: "I didn’t want to go back to S.
(Schmitter often uses abbreviations to indicate people and places) at
my parents’ side as an old maid, to my married cousins with their
conversations about their children and holidays in Tyrol and their long
established jealousy of me — beautiful, popular Margarethe —
who could draw and sing and dance and wanted to go to drama school and
who still hadn’t done any more than be an office girl abandoned by
her boyfriend with a nervous breakdown."
Best reason to read: For the sheer elegance of
language, that is ably maintained by Janeway’s translations, and
the tautness of the plot that reveals the construction and
deconstruction of the foolish Margarethe Sartoris.
Joan Hinkemeyer
My Sister Jill
By Patricia Cornelius (St. Martin’s Press, 224 pages,
$22.95).
Author’s background: Cornelius lives in
Melbourne, Australia, where she is an award-winning playwright and a
founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre.
Plot in a nutshell: Jack Wheatley is a World War II
veteran who spent more than three years as a prisoner of war. He
returns home to Australia and, in an attempt to restore his life,
marries and has six children. But Jack is a shattered man who
can’t control his pain and rage, choosing instead to abuse
alcohol, his wife and his family. In a story told by an unnamed
sibling, each of the children learns to cope and grow in a
dysfunctional, impoverished family. Jill is the fighter, Johnnie the
escapist, Door and Mouse the identical twins, May the opportunist and
Christine the enabler. The story traces the beautifully drawn
characters to adulthood, examining the themes of commitment to family
and country and, ultimately, the betrayal associated with both.
Sample of prose: "There is one thing we do feel great
about though. Us and war. We think we’re great soldiers, the best
fighters, the bravest in battle. I was sucked in, that’s for sure.
Jack, my father, had been a soldier in the Second World War. Not only
had he fought but also he had spent three and a half years in a
prisoner-of-war camp. It’s the thing that I thought redeemed us,
dragged us out of the s---, saved my family and me. My father was a war
hero, he’d given everything for his country, he’d endured the
most horrendous conditions and survived. Surely this had to
count."
Author reminds me of:This is a unique voice, which is
what makes the book so appealing.
Best reason to read: This book could have easily been
a whiny rant about a dysfunctional family or the toll of war. Instead,
it thoroughly examines each parent and child — no small feat when
there are eight main characters. The draw of the book is that each
character is multi-dimensional, particularly Jack, and the reader is
unable to box any character neatly into a convenient category. My
Sister Jill is an insightful look at abuse and survival on all levels
— mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually — that
ultimately and paradoxically leaves the reader with hope and
peace.
Vicky Uhland
The Mushroom Man
By Sophie Powell (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 208 pages, $23.95).
Author’s background: Powell was born in London in
1980, graduated from Cambridge University and currently is in the MFA
program at New York University.
Plot in a nutshell: When six-year-old Lily and her
mother, Charlotte, leave their wealthy London home to visit
Charlotte’s down-to-earth sister, Beth, and her children at their
Welsh farm, Lily becomes fixated by a fairy tale one of her cousins
creates for her entertainment. The cousin describes the magical powers
of a Mushroom Man and Princess Fairymostbeautiful so vividly that Lily
believes them.
When she mysteriously disappears, the adults suspect an abductor, and
they and the police search fruitlessly. The cousins though, thinking
that the fairy tale just might be true, resort to procedures employed
in "Peter Pan" to bring about a happy ending.
Sample of prose: "Amy cannot sleep. Her head aches and
she is worried sick about Lily. She sits up in bed and looks out the
window at the stars twinkling like diamonds and the banana moon
dangling above the forest. She thinks she can see a female face in the
night sky, smiling and winking sideways at her: her sunny smile is the
banana moon, and her winking eyes are the brightest diamond
stars."
Author reminds me of: The tone of the adult section is
similar to Anne Ursu’s Disappearance of James, but it
becomes reminiscent of Victorian children’s stories and parts of
Peter Pan when the focus is on the children.
Best reason to read: Deftly straddling the worlds of
adults and children, this whimsical novel offers rewards on every page,
whether in the hilarious dialogue and antics of the children or the
serious concerns of the adults for the missing child. Rapid scene
shifts make for a fast pace and enable the reader to be omni-present. A
delightful escape for times of stress.
— Joan Hinkemeyer
On This Day
By Nathaniel Bellows (HarperCollins, 272 pages, $24.95).
Author’s background: Bellows was born in
Massachusetts in 1972, and now resides in Manhattan. He’s a
published poet and a former intern at the New Yorker.
Plot in a nutshell: Warren is 18. He and his
20-year-old sister, Joan, have recently been orphaned. Their father
died of cancer, and their mother committed suicide. Money isn’t
really an issue, but nearly everything else is, as they attempt to cope
with life in a small coastal town in New England. Warren’s eyes,
and, equally important, his ears, enable us to follow the
siblings’ struggle to make it clear to their world and themselves,
precisely who they are.
Sample of prose: "I could see her face; the shadow of
her hair concealed her eyes and expression. Her skin was blue,
luminous. I imagined she was looking at me in the way I knew best, the
way I had known since I was born, with her entire range of ire and
disabled joy, with willfulness and patience. Her face showed concern
for me. It showed annoyance. I saw her face in tears and confusion; it
was enlightened, amorous. It was a child’s face, a woman’s. I
looked at her through the scrim of evening....I saw her completely. She
was looking at me. The light was failing us. We didn’t say a
thing. There was no need. We were in agreement....."
Author reminds me of: Darin Strauss (Chang and
Eng), and Peter Gent (North Dallas Forty).
Best reason to read: There isn’t a person in the
town whom you won’t readily recognize, and it’s intriguing to
watch and listen to them. Better yet, you’ll also have the
opportunity to "be" Warren, and, while it can be confusing and even a
little frightening at times, it is ultimately a positive
experience.
Ed Halloran
Red Stag
By Guy De Valdene (The Lyons Press, 304 pages, $22.95).
Author’s background: De Valdene has written for
Sports Afield, and Field & Stream, among other
publications.
Plot in a nutshell: It’s Normandy in the 1960s,
and Vincent, the bastard child of a French woman and a German military
man, is now 19. His favorite uncle has been tortured to death by deer
poachers, and Vincent is coming to grips with his love for Nichole, the
daughter of the count who is the town’s most prominent
person.
Sample of prose: "Ragondin started to roll a cigarette
but the effects of the cognacs had gathered him into a different world.
He put the yellow corn paper full of tobacco on the bar top, rested his
forehead on his wrists, and told Vincent about his newest acquisition.
The nudist magazines that he had been buying from the Arabs in Dreux
came mostly out of Africa and of late, Vincent had been complaining
about the lack of anatomical definition. Ragondin assured him that this
latest issue, from Sweden, offered startling clarity. Vincent smiled,
but any pleasure he may have derived from the cavorting of nymphets on
the pages of a magazine had been overshadowed by the return of the
young mistress of the castle."
Author reminds me of: Ivan Turgenev, specifically, his
novella, First Love.
Best reason to read: This marvelous book evokes
memories of other first-rate European novels.
Ed Halloran
Single Wife
By Nina Solomon (Algonquin Books, 307 pages, $23.95).
Author’s background: Solomon received her MA from
Columbia University. She lives in Manhattan with her son,
Nathaniel.
Plot in a nutshell: Grace Brookman’s husband Laz
goes missing periodically, but this time he leaves little reason to
believe he is coming back anytime soon. A member of the upper class,
Grace begins to put on a show for appearance sake, convincing friends,
family, her housekeeper and even the doorman that all is well. (For
example, Grace secretly delivers a cup of coffee and pastry to the
doorman each day, as did her husband, in order to sustain the charade.)
Grace spends so much time faking Laz’s presence that she begins to
lose her own identity. And as she begins to discover some of Laz’s
secrets, Grace comes to realize that she is the one who has vanished
within her marriage.
Sample of prose: "The moth fluttered against the
shade, coming in and out of focus through the fabric, looming surreally
larger as it pressed its wings against the shade. It reminded Grace of
a giant Woodstock balloon that had crashed through her window. She
struck the shade with a magazine, and the moth fell to the nightstand
and lay motionless. She struck it again, and then once more just to be
sure, surprising herself with her spirit of retaliation. The room
suddenly grew bright, and Grace saw Francine and Bert in the doorway.
Francine’s mouth fell open as she digested the scene.
"‘Bert’s Painted Lady!’ she cried. ‘Grace, you just
killed Bert’s prized butterfly!’"
Author reminds me of: Margaret Atwood, Anne Rivers
Siddons and Alice Hoffman.
Best reason to read: For its great examination of
lives lived for others, fine character development and lively, fresh
writing.
Justin Matott
Well
By Matthew McIntosh (Grove Press, 288 pages, $24).
Author’s background: McIntosh, 26, has written
for Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol and
Playboy.
Plot in a nutshell: A series of slices of life featuring people who,
for the most part, reside in the blue collar Seattle suburb of Federal
Way.
Sample of prose: "The pharmacist cleared her throat
and dialed 911. She had remembered his face. Nicely dressed. He was
black but that didn’t matter; what mattered was that he was back.
She hoped he wouldn’t get scared and leave. The woman on the line
told her to stall him until the police arrived.
"...What did they talk about? Later, when people would ask, and later,
when she was alone, she wouldn’t be able to recall.
"That they talked about the elections, and the consequences of the
current drought. They talked about the weather, and the cold, and about
how dark it was so early now. He’d been on the boats up into
Alaska, and he’d seen the weeks and the months when the sun
wouldn’t rise at all. It stayed hidden just below the horizon for
so long, and of course there were the Northern Lights, and as he shook,
as he shook and drew quick breaths, and as his eyes watered and he
cleared his throat and cracked his joints...The pharmacist nodded and
stepped back and looked to the floor. Let’s go. The cops took the
man out, past the makeup aisle and checkout lanes and people standing
in lines; they led him out, one on each side. Sat him in the back of
the squad car. Now, sit tight. No need for handcuffs, no need to pat
him down. He was old and tired and well-dressed. They went back inside
and interviewed the pharmacist...One of the cops wanted to take the
pharmacist home and make her. She was sexy as hell. The other was
remembering something significant that had happened to him as a child,
something that had only recently resurfaced during therapy, something
he hoped no one else in the world would ever know..."
Author reminds me of: Hubert Selby, Jr. and his novel,
Last Exit to Brooklyn. Also, Studs Terkel and his nonfiction
book Working.
Best reason to read: If you’ve spent any time at
all on life’s seamier side, there isn’t a person in this book
you won’t recognize. This is a compelling read.
Ed Halloran
Wonder When You’ll Miss Me
By Amanda Davis (William Morrow, 272 pages, $24.95.
Author’s background: Davis, who has written the
highly praised collection of short stories Circling the Drain,
died in a plane crash in March in North Carolina.
Plot in a nutshell: When 16-year-old Faith returns to
high school after having spent time in rehab following her suicide
attempt after a gang rape, she has lost 48 pounds and is prepared for
life to be better. Her alter ego, a smart-mouthed "fat girl" visible
only to Faith, propels Faith into brutally attacking one of the boys,
after which Faith runs away from home. Her search for a friend she once
had leads her to a small traveling circus, where she lands a job as a
stable hand and ultimately finds herself — and loses "the fat
girl" – in the closely-knit non-judgmental circus family.
Sample of prose: "The fat girl and I were all angles
with each other. We were on speaking terms, but just barely. She
didn’t understand why I wanted to be left alone. Why I wanted to
pretend I had no past. But, of course, if I had no past, then there was
no fat girl, and she didn’t like that one bit."
Author reminds me of: Grace Paley, who employs the
same quirky, humorous voice while creating characters both resilient
and vulnerable.
Best reason to read: With her central character, Davis
offers a fresh take on the adolescent search for identity. Although the
circus-as-escape theme is as old as Toby Tyler, the classic
children’s story, Davis avoids both a saccharine portrayal and the
sleeze factor as she creates fully dimensional characters. Her
controlled lyricism, audacious wit and tenderness toward her characters
in this novel of hope and struggle make this novel a winner. It makes
her death in March all the more tragic.
Joan Hinkemeyer
Honorable Mention
Beemer tm, by Glenn Gaslin (Soho Press, 272 pages, $23). This is what Lewis Carroll might have written, if he had mixed up his ideas in Alice in Wonderland with those of early T. C. Boyle and Douglas Coupland, sending Alice tripping down a rabbit hole as an aging Generation Xer who stopped in our present day in H. G. Wells’ Time Machine. The future is scary, automated and seemingly will turn us all into consuming, materialistic clones. At least a good imagination like Gaslin’s can add some humor to what some might deem bleak, pseudo-realistic, not-so-futuristic fiction. — Justin Matott
Cold Water, by Gwendoline Riley (Carroll & Graf, 160 pages, $20). A 20-year-old bartender in Manchester, England drifts and dreams, bringing the Gen X themes of displacement, hopelessness and longing into the new millennium. This is a book for those who miss the angst, humor, youth and volatility of the ’80s British punk scene. — Vicky Uhland
Elegance, by Kathleen Tessaro (William Morrow, 320 pages, $23.95). This is a frequently funny story about a woman who is in the process of turning her life around. Her plan is based an old guide to style, Elegance, by Madame Dariaux, and that book is quoted regularly, to good advantage. — Ed Halloran
For Matrimonial Purposes, by Kavita Daswani (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 288 pages, $23.95). A girl raised in a traditional Indian family has trouble making the marriage her parents and society desire, so she moves to America, where she learns the freedom of a different culture. An entertaining and informative look at expectations for today’s middle class Indian women. — Vicky Uhland
Long For This World, by Michael Byers (Houghton Mifflin, 400 pages, $24). Dr. Henry Moss studies children with Hickman Syndrome, which causes them to age rapidly and die in their teens. Suddenly, there may be a cure, but the risks are enormous, professionally and personally. — Ed Halloran
Lucky Wander Boy, by D.B. Weiss (Plume, 288 pages, $13). A 20-something software geek is obsessed with cataloguing every video game ever played. While searching for more information about his favorite game, the obscure Japanese import Lucky Wander Boy, he journeys to a literal and figurative place he’s never been before. An imaginative, fun, thoughtful book. — Vicky Uhland
The Midwife’s Tale, by Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Dial Press, 304 pages, $23.95). Elizabeth Whitely is the last in a long line of midwives. Set in the early 1900s in Appalachia, this book not only gives lessons in midwifery and West Virginia history, but is also a compelling story about Elizabeth’s struggles with love and childlessness. — Vicky Uhland
Safe in Heaven Dead, by Samuel Ligon (HarperCollins, 256 pages, $23.95). Not only does this book have an interesting plot structure - the protagonist dies on the first page - it’s suspenseful and smoothly written. It tells the story of antihero Robert Elgin, who fights corruption through embezzlement, and attempts to heal his family by abandoning them. — Vicky Uhland
Wanderlust, by Chris Dyer (Plume, 288 pages, $13). A flat-out fun fantasy of a book featuring Kate Bogart, a sophisticated, smart and beautiful travel writer who constantly journeys to exotic locations, meets fabulous men who adore her, and communicates solely by e-mail. Witty, inventive and charmingly unbelievable. — Vicky Uhland
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