The new crop: Rocky critics celebrate fresh voices in literature

By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 11, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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This year, the sun shone on debut novelists, as titles by previously unknown authors David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader) and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) rocketed to the top of best-seller lists.

That's to be celebrated in a world where most first-time writers have about as much chance of getting publicity as a cornstalk has growing in Alaska.

But let's face it: There was also a bounty of great debuts you never heard about. New writers in nearly every genre produced exciting work -- most of it, sadly, destined to languish in the shadows. Until now.

Today, we offer our annual Great Debuts issue. Rocky critics spent the year screening nearly 100 first novels. They read the titles we were unable to feature in the regular books pages, stories of all kinds of prose and plot styles. And, as in the past, they uncovered some of the best reading of the year.

As the holidays approach, consider it our gift to you -- a bumper crop of fine reads. We sincerely hope you enjoy the harvest.

Between Here and April

By Deborah Copaken Kogan. Algonquin Books, $23.95.

* Author's background: Kogan is the author of the best-seller Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, an account of her work as a wartime photojournalist. Her writing and photos have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek and many other publications. She was an Emmy Award-winning producer at ABC and for Dateline NBC.

* Plot in a nutshell: Elizabeth has been having fainting spells with no apparent physical cause. With the help of a psychiatrist, she soon connects them to long-buried memories of the sudden disappearance of her 6-year-old childhood friend, April. Elizabeth is puzzled by this at first, because she had only known the girl two months. Yet she vividly recalls people's strange silence on the incident.

Delving more deeply, she learns that April and April's older sister died at the hand of their mother, who also killed herself. But why did their mother take their lives? And why is Elizabeth bothered by this memory so many years later?

As she meets with those connected to April's family scandal, Elizabeth gains insights into her own mother's frailties, as well as Elizabeth's personal failures in marriage and motherhood. Through this terrific, unique novel, the author exposes the thin line all mothers walk in dealing with life issues that spin out of control.

* Sample of prose: "Even then I knew my mother was not like other mothers. That she was slightly damaged inside, like a cracked vase, whose thin veneer of grace would, if held up to the light, reveal a web of spindly fissures. But I always thought her brokenness could be contained in the presence of outsiders. In that I was much less savvy than April, who even at six sensed that attempting to project normalcy to the world would only end in disappointment. A mother was either busy fighting her inner diamonds or she was not."

* Author reminds me of: Kogan has a unique voice sparked by her keen vision as a photojournalist.

* Best reason to read: The author is masterful at showing the fluid state of mothering in all its kaleidoscopic dimensions - the highs and lows, the angry moments counterbalancing affection, and the depths to which some will go to "protect" loved ones. This exceptional, riveting novel will haunt you long after you've reached the end.

-Verna Noel Jones

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Light Fell

By Evan Fallenberg. Soho, $22.

* Author's background: Fallenberg graduated from Georgetown University and the MFA program in creative writing at Vermont College. Originally from Cleveland, he has lived in Israel since 1985.

* Plot in a nutshell: Twenty years ago, professor of literature Joseph Licht fell unexpectedly and wonderfully in love with a distinguished rabbi, Yoel Rosenzweig, a polymath who returns Joseph's feelings. The two men veer between delirious joy and devastating guilt: What are we doing to ourselves? Our wives and children? Our faith and our deity?

Things come to a terrible end when, on the eve of their moving in together in Jerusalem, Yoel commits suicide. For Joseph, there's no way out; he goes on to establish a gay life of his own.

Now Joseph is turning 50, and his birthday wish is to have his five sons together at his table once again. The boys have all taken different paths and the conflicts each son faces mirror Joseph's torture in choosing a life with Yoel rather than with his sons.

* Sample of prose: Oldest son Daniel rages at Joseph for leaving the family: "We bore the brunt of your decision, Father. We are still bearing it. I will never trust a soul again. Ethan's confidence is nonexistent. Noam is loved by everyone but loves no one. Why do you think Gidi and Gavri are so religious? You again . . . How did Gidi come to marry Batya? Damaged goods. She was raped as a girl, and has never been the same since. Gidi is considered damaged goods, too, in the ultra-Orthodox world, with a father like you."

* Author reminds me of: Frederick Busch.

* Best reason to read: For Fallenberg's nuanced picture of Joseph's relationships with each of his sons, and their ambivalence towards him. The brief but sympathetic view of Joseph's former wife is particularly noteworthy, as Fallenberg shrewdly leaves a loose end untied regarding her story until near the end, giving readers an especially tender glimpse into Joseph's tenacious love for his family.

-Christine Jacques

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The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

By Jessica Anya Blau. Harper Perennial, $13.95.

* Author's background: Blau is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University, where she received her master's degree. She lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins.

* Plot in a nutshell: This debut will take any reader who grew up in the '70s reeling back in time. The free- love, hippie days of the 1960s are over, but not for Jamie's family in Santa Barbara. It's 1976, and as the country readies for a big bicentennial summer bash, Jamie - a 14-year-old living in a beach town with her part-time nudist, hippie parents and her disaffected older sister - is coming of age. Embarrassed by their parents' naked swim parties and overall loose lifestyle, both girls seek refuge elsewhere.

Jamie, interested in the town's surfer heartthrob, finds solace in sharing her innocence with him. She has to make up stories about her parents to convince her friend's parents to let them stay at her house. Soon she will be exploring the depths of teenage curiosity as her uptight, prudish feelings give way to the values of two hedonistic parents.

* Sample of prose: "Lying on towels beside the pool, they dribbled baby oil on one another's bodies to increase the intensity of their tans, drank warm Tab that Tammy brought over, read Seventeen magazine, and ate carob almonds out of the glass canister Betty used to store what she considered snack food. . . .

"Debbie was facedown on her towel, reading, her suit untied in the back to prevent a tan line. Jamie shook out her towel to get rid of carob crumbs, then lay on her belly and looked out at the pool, at the magenta flower beds tucked here and there around the pool, at the sky that was so blue and flat and solid-looking that it resembled an endless taut balloon.

" 'Isn't everything perfect?' Jamie said . . . 'I mean, we're young, there's nothing wrong with any of us - you know, no deformities or anything, no acne, we're smart enough - no one's failing school - we're super tan, I mean, we're like as tan as you can be."

* Author reminds me of: A good Beach Boys song, combined with a bit of Carl Hiaasen's humor and The Wonder Years.

* Best reason to read: This is a lighthearted read. If you were a teenager anytime around our country's bicentennial, this story will tempt you to put a bit of iodine into your baby oil and slather up as the memories of your first love and heartbreak - and the innocence of a time when the movie Jaws was as scary as it got - play back in your mind.

-Justin Matott

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Courting Shadows

By Jem Poster. Overlook, $24.95.

* Author's background: Poster has worked as an archaeologist and is a university lecturer in literature at Oxford.

* Plot in a nutshell: In this extraordinary debut, John Stannard, the narrator, is a young, late-Victorian architect commissioned to repair a village church in a small, insular community. Arrogant and insensitive to tradition, centuries of village ties and even human suffering, he charges forward like an automaton, intent only on his own plans.

He soon invokes the ire of the mild-mannered vicar, as well as his two workers, one of whom is seriously injured as a result of Stannard's haste. Later, he inflicts considerable damage to the historic little church, and his misguided encounters with a young woman end tragically.

* Sample of prose: "The moment an employer shows himself to be in any way manipulable, these people will take advantage of him. I don't blame them - that's the way the world works. But anyone who wishes to thrive in such a world would be well advised not to drop his guard."

* Author reminds me of: Thomas Hardy, in his bleak setting and fatalistic outlook.

* Best reason to read: Poster successfully explores the conflicts between reason vs. emotion, progress vs. preservation. Through Stannard's stubborn adherence to his own narrow views, Poster also reveals the folly of self-delusion - all portrayed in meticulously crafted, lean prose.

-Joan Hinkemeyer

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The Outlander

By Gil Adamson. HarperCollins, $25.95.

* Author's background: Toronto resident Adamson has published two poetry books and a collection of short stories.

* Plot in a nutshell: In 1903, 19-year-old Mary Boulton has just killed her husband and is on the run across western Canada, fleeing her in-laws who are out to avenge their brother's death. Tormented by dark memories, mourning the recent death of her infant son and hampered by a privileged upbringing, Mary is neither emotionally nor physically equipped to survive the harsh conditions she faces as she traverses the mountainous landscape. But with the aid of an eccentric cast of characters, including a reclusive woodsman, a preacher and a group of miners, she learns how to survive and grow from a girl to a woman.

Adamson weaves actual events, including the diary entries of woodsman William Moreland, into the story, which brings historical reality into Mary's fictional world.

* Sample of prose: "Tumbled rock lay in her way alongside shattered trees, their branches torn loose or tufted into bouquets. The silhouettes of old root systems reared up before her like warnings, something brainlike in their clogged, venous gnarls, and dangling there amid the damp earth like Christmas ornaments were pebbles and shards."

* Author reminds me of: The plot is reminiscent of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, but Adamson's elegant writing style brings to mind the work of Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient.

* Best reason to read: Take your pick: Those who are fans of suspense novels will be riveted by the book's pacing and a plot so tight it's impossible to guess what will happen to Mary next. Those who admire beautiful writing will be stunned by Adamson's descriptive capabilities and command of the language. Those who like historical novels will be interested in the accurate depictions of life in the mining regions of Canada 100 years ago.

-Vicky Uhland

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The Gargoyle

By Andrew Davidson. Doubleday, $25.95.

* Author's background: Davidson, who lives in Pinawa, Manitoba, has taught English in Japan and writes English lessons for Japanese Web sites.

* Plot in a nutshell: The story opens with the book's narrator, a former handsome porn star, recounting his terrible car crash off a mountainside. He has awoken, after two months in a coma, with awful burns all over his body and a future portending of a lot of pain and a lifetime of recovery. One day, a lovely sculptress of gargoyles comes into the burn unit, claiming to him that they were lovers in medieval times when she was a scribe and he a mercenary. As she recounts their times together in the past, the narrator thinks she surely must be schizophrenic. But she gradually convinces him otherwise as he wonders how she could know so much about him.

* Sample of prose: "She moved to one corner of my bed, where she intoned something in another language. 'Jube, Domine benedicere.' Latin? A short conversation followed, with her talking into thin air, in a language that I couldn't understand, waiting for responses I couldn't hear. After the first imaginary conversation was completed, she bowed deeply and walked to a second corner of the bed to repeat the performance. And then, a third corner. She concluded each conversation the same way she started it - 'Jube, Domine benedicere' - and she returned to her original position, with the look of suspicion gone. 'My Three Masters confirmed that it really is you. It is for you that I've been perfecting my final heart.' "

* Author reminds me of: Nick Bantock, for his ability to weave mystery, fantasy and romance into a fictional story you want to believe is true.

* Best reason to read: Hypnotic and arresting, this novel will hook you in until the very end.

-Verna Noel Jones

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Dear American Airlines

By Jonathan Miles. Houghton Mifflin, $22.

* Author's background: Miles is the cocktails columnist for The New York Times and the books columnist for Men's Journal. His journalism, essays and literary criticism have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, GQ, the New York Observer and the Oxford American.

* Plot in a nutshell: Benjamin Ford is on his way to Los Angeles to attend his estranged daughter's commitment ceremony when he gets stranded at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. This exceptional novel takes the form of a letter this failed father and poet composes to the airline, demanding a refund. His missive is filled with hilarious, scathing commentary on the airport nightmare and his fellow passengers, as well as a detailed history of his less-than-exemplary life, and how he has come to making this tragic last attempt to not screw up for once in his miserable existence.

* Sample of prose: "Most everyone around me is still asleep, but miserably so - curled up on skinny white cots or cardboard mattresses or on the hard blue carpet, contorted in chairs, propped up against the walls and windows with their dry mouths open, like corpses after a shooting rampage."

* Author reminds me of: A lethal combination of a self-lacerating Philip Roth and pop cultural critic and novelist Cintra Wilson.

* Best reason to read: In this story, layered with a healthy dose of rage-filled humor, Miles transforms this unredeemable man into a figure worthy of hope. At 180 pages, it's a quick - and mighty - read.

-Rodney Price

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The Disagreement

By Nick Taylor. Simon & Schuster, $26.

* Author's background: Taylor teaches English and comparative literature at San Jose State University.

* Plot in a nutshell: This unique Civil War novel is set at the University of Virginia Medical School, where 17-year-old John Muro begins his studies. These studies abruptly shift from the theoretical to the intensely practical when wagonloads of injured soldiers pour in, overwhelming the facility and its limited staff.

As narrator, John emerges as a totally dedicated caregiver but also one who falls decidedly short in other interpersonal relationships, such as with family members who work in their failing textile mill in Lynchburg, and with his girlfriend, who impatiently sits by awaiting attention.

* Sample of prose: "I saw that war was not a rational thing, but rather like a fire: unthinking and unfeeling, and heedless of everything but fuel. Once ignited, a conflict such as ours might burn indefinitely - certainly beyond the ability of the combatants to remember their grievances. Thus, the real task in battle was not to win but to finish."

* Author reminds me of: Charles Frazier, whose Cold Mountain depicts not only the Civil War, but also the conflicts the war created among loved ones.

* Best reason to read: This is the Civil War as you've never seen it before. As Muro grapples with the scarcity of resources, readers will marvel at the ingenuity of young medics facing impossible obstacles.

-Joan Hinkemeyer

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Dogface

By Jeff Garigliano. MacAdam/Cage, $23.

* Author's background: Garigliano lives in New York City and is a senior editor at Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served in the Navy for five years before earning a master's degree in journalism.

* Plot in a nutshell: Loren, a 14-year-old military commando wannabe, is tired of his mother's loser boyfriends. After a mission to scare away the latest loser almost lands Loren in jail, his mom sends him to a rehabilitation program for troubled teens, Camp Ascend!, in the hope that six weeks and $17,000 worth of tough love will whip Loren into shape.

But Loren soon discovers that Camp Ascend! is a scam run by an inept con artist nicknamed "the Colonel," his shopping-addicted trophy wife and her dangerously doltish brother. Using his encyclopedic knowledge of military maneuvers, Loren sets out to free himself and his fellow delinquents from Camp Ascend! and outcon the Colonel at the same time.

* Sample of prose: "He has a hunting vest on, and a camouflage expedition hat and shooting gloves. Strapped to his calf is a huge knife with a black plastic handle. He looks like a GI Joe with all the accessories."

* Author reminds me of: Carl Hiaasen meets Louis Sachar (author of Holes).

* Best reason to read: Dogface is dark humor with a heart. Loren and his supporting cast manage to be sly caricatures and real people at the same time. You can't help but love Loren and his efforts to conquer an adult world he doesn't fully understand.

-Vicky Uhland

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The Little Book

By Selden Edwards. Dutton, $25.95.

* Author's background: Edwards spent 33 years writing this book during his career as an English teacher and headmaster of several private schools. He lives in Santa Barbara, Calif.

* Plot in a nutshell: Edwards tells the story of the eccentric Burden family: Wheeler, a 1970s rock star, Harvard baseball phenom and fin de siecle Vienna scholar; his father Dilly, a World War II hero; his grandmother Weezie, a prominent Boston financier and philanthropist; and his mother Flora, a pioneering feminist. Through a dislocation in time, they meet throughout Wheeler's life - growing up on a farm in the Sacramento Valley, at school in Boston and finally in the coffeehouses of 1897 Vienna. Along the way, Wheeler influences historic figures ranging from Sigmund Freud to Buddy Holly to Adolf Hitler, and gives readers the story behind the story on topics as diverse as the Normandy invasion, the birth of IBM and exactly what happens when you apply spit to a fastball.

* Sample of prose: "A Gothic cathedral is like a book, and the stained glass the pages. The people of the time couldn't read, so they built themselves the stories instead of writing them. They intended them to last forever."

* Author reminds me of: In a blog, Edwards said the books The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, My Antonia and The Grapes of Wrath, along with authors E.L. Doctorow, John Irving, Richard Ford and Pat Conroy, were his main influences while writing The Little Book.

* Best reason to read: This is a wordsmith's life work - three decades of tweaking an inventive, imaginary world until the plot and prose are perfect. Part mystery, part science fiction, part romance, part history lesson but mostly just great literature, The Little Book succeeds for one main reason: It's so entertaining that it's almost impossible to stop reading.

-Vicky Uhland

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