Under the Covers

Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

By Thomas Mallon

(Pantheon, $27.95, 480 pages)

Who is this author?

Thomas Mallon, who lives in Washington, D.C., has built a successful career as a writer of novels that are inspired by American history, including such major events as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. In addition to publishing nine novels, he also contributes to major publications, such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic, and he served as literary editor of GQ .Mallon won an American Academy of Arts and Letters award for his prose style and was deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

What is this book about?                              

A savvy, often sardonic look back at the near past and the second term of President Ronald Reagan, which for some readers may seem like ancient history. Set mainly in 1986 and centering on his famous negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev, the book moves back and forth  from Washington to Southern California, sharply delineating major real-life players, such as first lady Nancy Reagan, writer Christopher Hitchens, socialite Pamela Harriman and disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon, and mixing in fictional characters as well, all orbiting the popular but poorly understood Reagan, a genial mystery to friends and foes alike (and soon to be a victim of dementia). It spans the thawing of the Cold War, the burgeoning AIDS epidemic, the twisty machinations of arms-trading with enemies and other political chicanery. It was 30 years ago, but this book makes it as fresh as today’s headlines.

Why you’ll like it:

In the hands of a skilled novelist, historical fiction often can tell readers more about the past than a deeply researched but dry nonfiction book. Mallon has those skilled hands, as well as a compelling prose style, plus years of experience and knowledge of the real-life players he depicts here. The ‘80s were a complex time and Reagan was a complicated man whose presidency began a political polarization that is growing ever more potent. This book will help you make sense of what happened then and how it still affects what is happening now.

What others are saying:

Library Journal says: “Mallon, a longtime master at fictionally realizing history here takes on the “Reagan years,” specifically 1986. A few fictional subplots backdrop the main action, wherein a number of historical figures are given voice: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Christopher Hitchens, even Bette Davis and John Hinckley. Except for Hinckley, the characters are nuanced, not simple paste ups. Take one of the principals, Nancy Reagan: astrology obsessed for sure but also self-aware. . . reflective, and genuinely human. Those who absolutely adore or detest her will probably both be disappointed.. . . The book’s centerpiece is the Iceland disarmament summit with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the tension is manifest. Readers who didn’t experience this time in history—or who aren’t familiar with the myriad luminaries who appear here, from Lindy Boggs through Jeanne Kirkpatrick and from Pat Moynihan to Mort Zuckerman—may feel at sea at times. But it’s worth it for this well-developed snapshot of an important year. Oh, Reagan himself? He comes across as vaguely charming but unreadable to friend and foe alike. As Kirkpatrick “says” to Nixon: “You’re complex, yes, but palpable. Reagan is smoke.”  VERDICT: For all devotees of historical fiction and this time period.

Kirkus says, in a starred review: “Covering a momentous several months in 1986, this is an intriguing, humorous, even catty backstage view of the Reagan presidency from an artisan of the historical novel. . . . Reagan is preparing for his second summit with Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament. His wife, Nancy, who confers with her astrologer about the president’s actions and with Merv Griffin on everything else, wields considerable influence in the White House. Also perfectly coiffed and politically muscular is the $100 million widow of Averell Harriman, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, whose funding and machinations on the Democratic side expose the complex horse-trading ahead of that year’s midterm election. To a four-page list of historical figures, Mallon adds a few fictional ones tied mainly to the Iran-Contra spectacle and Washington’s gay insiders—dubbed the Homintern by Christopher Hitchens. The late journalist, a major character here and a subplot unto himself as he pursues the early inklings of Iran-Contra, was the dedicatee of Mallon’s Watergate and is described in this book’s acknowledgements as a “beloved friend.” The main plot, aside from history itself, concerns a popular president’s sudden faltering amid crises abroad and at home. Mallon doesn’t go far in plumbing the Reagan enigma that has stumped so many, but he creates revealing moments in the first couple’s marriage. Historical fiction at this high level satisfies the appetite for speculation or even titillation through restraint as much as research, and Mallon rarely overdoes it  . . . Mallon’s version of history is close enough to fact to revive faded memories, while his imagining of who thought and said what presents some of the coherence and delights of fiction without the excesses of those “what if” rethinks scribbled by Newt Gingrich et al.

The Christian Science Monitor says: “Thomas Mallon takes this human clay and, after adding a dash of inspired inner dialogue, sculpts characters who embody the folly and frustration of political power. And, for good measure, Mallon’s characters never forget the striving required in the struggle for continued relevancy . . . Mallon has become a master of such political theater . . . What makes Mallon’s novels so much fun is the author’s blend of historical exactitude with imagined reactions and machinations. Many of those machinations play out in the plausible guise of fictional secondary players . . . Mallon fits all of these pieces together, combining broad historical accuracy and fictional verisimilitude with aplomb. Characters historical and fictional alike display bonfires of vanities, and insecurities, galore.”

Says Publishers Weekly: “In this novel, Mallon fixes his wide-angle historical lens on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in particular the events leading up to the exposé of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986. As befitting the author’s usual literary mode, Reagan himself is a minor character in his own story. The major characters include such real-life personalities as rising English journalist Christopher Hitchens, the much-married English socialite Pamela Harriman, and would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. Worked in among these are several fictional characters, including Anders Little, an arms-control expert with a sexual secret; his friend, Anne Macmurray, an anti-nukes advocate; and her dying ex-husband, Peter Cox, a Texas contributor to Republican candidates. And of course, hovering in the background is “tan, rested and ready” Richard Milhouse Nixon in all his tragic Shakespearean glory . . .the novel boasts a telephone book–sized cast of characters and fits them inside a chronicle large enough to encompass the Reagan-era gay revisionism of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and the gossip of Truman Capote’s “La Cote Basque, 1965.” What Mallon does best is dramatize the bizarre ’80s intersection of Hollywood and Washington, D.C, . . a crazy, quilted depiction of a contradiction-filled presidential administration.”

Says the AV Club: “Amid a presidential campaign of stupefying banality, where candidates compete to say the emptiest sentiment in the least insightful way possible, what a pleasure it is to enter the rough-and-tumble politics of Thomas Mallon’s historical novels. The elites of ‘80s government and media didn’t need soundbites: They had passions….Mallon captures that uncertain tenor of the times while portraying the complex drama of high-level politics with real clarity and energy. His take on W. can’t come soon enough.”

When is it available?

Mallon’s grand “Finale” is on the shelf at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

The Children’s Crusade

By Ann Packer

(Scribner, $26.99, 448 pages)

Who is this author?

Ann Packer is a bestselling novelist who lives in California. Her best known novel is The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, for which she won a Kate Chopin Literary Award, one of her many honors. Her other bestselling novel is Songs Without Words, and Packer also has published two short fiction collections, Swim Back to Me and Mendocino and Other Stories. She has written for The New Yorker, and her work has been printed in O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies.

What is this book about?

2015 is a good year for novels that trace characters’ lives going back decades – as in Jonathan Franzen’s Purity and the new trilogy by Jane Smiley – and Ann Packer mines that territory well in The Children’s Crusade.  The story begins in 1954 when Bill Blair buys three woodsy acres south of San Francisco, land that today is known as Silicon Valley. He marries Penny, who becomes a deeply unfulfilled artist and mother of four, and Bill becomes a successful pediatrician. Three of the four Blair children do well and remain in the area: Robert  as a doctor, Rebecca as a psychiatrist and Ryan as a teacher – but black sheep and confirmed wanderer James, the fourth and unplanned child) refuses to settle down.  Ever.  Penny gradually withdraws emotionally from her family, choosing to spend her time in the backyard shed she calls her studio and eventually at an artists’ colony in Taos. When, decades later, Bill dies, the family finally must deal with the fate of the house and their frayed connections.

Why you’ll like it:

Packer writes with style and subtlety, deftly using flashbacks to fully portray her main characters as they age. This is a family saga of the kind that can enmesh readers, whether they find parallels to their own relationships or just become entranced by the plot and people Packer has created.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “Packer begins her well-crafted family saga from the ground up with pediatrician Bill Blair’s Portola Valley, Calif., land purchased in 1954. Bill marries Penny, a young woman eager to have children—but she didn’t count on four kids, which forges her identity as a mother instead of the artist she yearns to become. Her children are intuitively aware of her distance and poignantly try to find a way to bring her closer to them. Their stories unfold through distinctive narrative styles, including both first- and third-person sections, suited to the characters: stressed internist Robert, brilliant psychiatrist Rebecca, dreamy teacher Ryan, and reckless drifter James. The multiple perspectives help render the complicated family fully. Of the siblings, James is the only one to relocate, and he periodically returns over the years. The impetus for his current visit stems from an idea that shocks his siblings, prompting them to examine their childhood to find the answer. “Or rather, I remembered my memory of the moment, because after so long that’s what memory is: the replaying of the filmstrip that’s slightly warped from having gone through the projector so many times,” Rebecca thinks. Packer is an accomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as those you might find around your dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel.”

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette says: “A sublime and intelligent exploration of one family and its mythology of sorts… Ms. Packer is a wonderful portraitist, allowing childhood moments to unfold in all their riveting innocence (including a breathtakingly perfect, terribly sad music recital scene) and following the family as choices beget choices and lives intertwine or unwind… This entertaining, poetic novel layers a multitude of human contradictions, and what is most moving is that even with so much hostility and melancholy, the family story here is one of love. It is about how we return again and again to understand, to make things right, even as we seek to move on from ancient pain.”

An Amazon.com Best Book of April 2015 review says: “Have you ever come across a family with secrets? One that, no matter how educated, well-heeled, and essentially decent, still manages to miss connections, hurt each other and harbor ancient slights for what seems like forever? For you, reading Ann Packer’s new novel may bring you comfort if not joy. (If you’ve never known or been that kind of family. . .well, then you’re either a saint or a liar). Packer lays out the story of the Blair family, father/doctor Bill, his wife Penny and their four children, the last of whom, James (it is obvious from the beginning, if only because he’s the sole sibling with a non-R name) was unexpected, a mistake. Beginning in northern California in 1954 – “long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley” – Packer takes us through five decades in the lives of the Blair family via the voices of its members; but if Robert, Ryan, Rebecca and James are the storytellers here, it is their mother Penny who is the heart of the book. Married to a man who’s almost too perfect to be true, Penny is a would-be artist who chafed at the traditional role society had assigned her and who must, ultimately, make choices on her own behalf. In vigilant detail, Packer chronicles the seemingly tiny ways that personal needs and memories from childhood make us the people we can’t help but be for the rest of our lives.”

In its starred review, Library Journal says: The critically acclaimed Packer has written an engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances. In 1954, Bill Blair, starting his career as a physician, buys wooded property in the hills near Palo Alto, CA, to build a house and start a family. Sadly, in fewer than ten years, his wife, Penny, always moody and distracted, has distanced herself from Bill and their four children: brilliant Robert, headstrong Rebecca, dreamy Ryan, and wild child James. She moves into an outbuilding/pottery studio but soon leaves for an artists’ community in Taos. Eventually, three of the children marry and follow respectable careers, all living near the family home occupied by their father until his death. Bill leaves the house to the children, stipulating that if they sell, they need approval of one other sibling and Penny. Then James, still the rude impetuous problem child and sporadically in touch over the years, shows up needing money. The resulting conflict stirs up heart-wrenching memories and resentments. VERDICT Packer offers a flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest; highly recommended.

Says Kirkus in its stared review: “A young doctor buys a piece of land in a place that will later be known as Silicon Valley, building a house that will shape his family for decades. Packer is an expert at complicated relationships; she likes to show more than two sides to every story. Who’s responsible for the fracturing of the Blair family? The obvious answer is Penny, a woman oppressed by domesticity, who retreats from her husband and four children to spend all her time in the shed—she calls it her studio—where she works on collages and mugs made of too-thick pottery, eventually even sleeping there. Or could her husband, Bill, a pediatrician with endless patience and empathy for kids, have pushed his wife away? Perhaps it was James, the youngest (and unplanned) child, a holy terror from the day he was born, who tipped his family over the edge. In beautifully precise prose, Packer tells the Blairs’ story, alternating chapters between the past, when the children were young, and the present, four years after their father’s death, when they each get a chance to tell their own stories in the first person. While James has bounced around the world, his siblings—Robert, a doctor; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; and Ryan, a teacher—all live near their childhood home, which James wants to sell. Emotions have never had so many shadings as in Packer’s fiction; she can tease apart every degree of ambivalence in her characters, multiplying that exponentially when everyone has different desires and they all worry about finding fulfillment while also caring for each other—except, perhaps, Penny. But though we rarely see Penny’s perspective on why she withdrew from her family, we can fill in the blanks; it’s the 1960s and ’70s, a time when women were searching for a larger role in the world. Packer seems to set Penny up as the villain, but even that view becomes complicated by the end. When you read Packer, you’ll know you’re in the hands of a writer who knows what she’s doing. A marvelously absorbing novel.”

 

 

When is it available?

This engrossing novel can be borrowed from the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Purity

By Jonathan Franzen

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28, 576 pages)

Who is this author?

In the opinion of many critics and readers, Jonathan Franzen is the best of our contemporary American writers, having earned impressive literary honors as well as being featured on the cover of Time magazine (apparently being on a Time cover does not carry the career-diminishing curse attributed to being similarly featured on Sports Illustrated.) His five novels are The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom and his latest,  Purity, and his nonfiction works  are Farther Away, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone – and all have won praise. And not just praise: prizes, including a National Book Award and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Corrections, a searing, bitterly comic family saga. Franzen also contributes to The New Yorker and other major publications.

What is this book about?

For Pip Tyler, life is a mystery with many clues missing. A recent college graduate in Oakland, Calif., she is drowning in student debt and has a difficult relationship with her emotionally ill mother who refused to tell Pip – whose real name is Purity – who or where her missing father is. When Pip leaves her going-nowhere job for an internship in Bolivia with a cultish group called The Sunlight Project, which will remind readers of the real-life WikiLeaks organization, she becomes entangled with its charismatic but dangerous leader, Andreas Wolf, an East German whose goal is to shine some Internet sunlight on all the world’s secrets – possibly including Pip’s. There’s much more to the story, involving world politics, journalism, bad marriages, worse parents, idealism and the eternal search for purity in life, laid out over many decades of character back stories and present-day events. How Franzen manages to handle all these disparate themes is a testament to his writerly prowess and admirable control.

Why you’ll like it:

Franzen is a masterful writer, a truth seeker with uncompromising standards and a wicked sense of dark humor. He first gained wide, and unwanted, fame when he rather primly turned down the chance to have The Corrections be an Oprah Book Club selection (a publicity bonanza authors would normally kill for),  saying he feared it would turn off  male readers, but he later did accept her selection of Freedom for her powerful club. Never one to play to the crowd – I heard him speak once and have never seen an author less comfortable with a live audience – Franzen is nevertheless a brilliant writer with lofty aims, often realized. Purity is the big book this fall: ignore it at your peril.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “Secrets are power, and power corrupts even the most idealistic in Franzen’s exhaustive bildungsroman. Two years out of college, self-conscious, acerbic Purity “Pip” Tyler is saddled with crushing student loans and an overbearing, emotionally disturbed mother who refuses to reveal the identity of Pip’s father. Living in Oakland, Calif., Pip meets and confides in beautiful German activist Annagret, who calls on her former boyfriend, Andreas Wolf, to give Pip an internship working with Wolf’s cultish Sunlight Project, a WikiLeaks-like operation based in Bolivia. Once there, Pip is both flattered by and suspicious of the attention she receives from the magnetic Wolf; when she returns to America to do his bidding in secret, she becomes increasingly attached to people he may want to hurt. Pip strives to retain her integrity, but the world in which she is coming of age is, in Franzen’s view, sick, its people born only to suffer and harm. Mining the connection between Pip and Wolf, Franzen renders half a dozen characters over the course of six decades, via extensive origin stories that plumb their psychological corners. Franzen succeeds more than he fails, but the failures are damning. At first, the mercurial, angry Pip and the arrogant, abrasive Wolf seem drawn to actively challenge the reader’s sympathies. Then there are the novel’s fathers, who are almost all abusive or absent, and its mothers, who are disturbed, cruel, or dumb. Gradually, it becomes clear that Franzen’s greatest strength is his extensive, intricate narrative web—which includes a murder in Berlin, stolen nukes in Amarillo, and a billion-dollar trust. Though the novel lacks resonance, its pieces fit together with stunning craftsmanship.”

Amazon.com Review named it an Amazon Best Book of September 2015: “Purity takes many forms in Franzen’s new novel—to begin with, it is the name of the book’s title character. “Pip,” as she is more commonly known, is not fond of her given name, and when we first meet her she is living in a crowded Oakland house under the burden of colossal college debt. Pip soon becomes involved in “The Sunlight Project,” a WikiLeaks-style group that seeks to uncover secrets and expose them on the web. Run by Andreas Wolf, a charismatic man of renown, who grew up in socialist East Germany, the Sunlight Project becomes the jumping-off point of discovery for Pip, as well as a starting line for Franzen to jump back in time and explore the backgrounds of his primary and secondary characters. There is a point in the book where readers may wonder where this is all headed; but the thoughtfulness and polish of Franzen’s prose should reassure that the journey isn’t in vain. It eventually becomes clear that nearly every character is chasing purity in some form—whether pursuing Pip herself or some platonic ideal—and Franzen ties up the ends in a way that is clean and satisfying but will have you thinking about Purity long after you have finished the book.”

“Franzen may well now be the best American novelist. He has certainly become our most public one, not because he commands Oprah’s interest and is a sovereign presence on the best-seller list-though neither should be discounted-but because, like the great novelists of the past, he convinces us that his vision unmasks the world in which we actually live . . . A good writer will make an effort to purge his prose of clichés. But it takes genius to reanimate them in all their original power and meaning,” says critic Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic.

“As in all Franzen’s novels, and now so very powerfully in Purity, it is the history of his players that matters. Franzen’s exhaustive exploration of their motives, charted oftentimes over decades so as to deliver us to this moment when the plot turns on the past in the seemingly smallest of ways, is what makes him such a fine writer, and his books important. He is a fastidious portrait artist and an epic muralist at once,” says The Boston Globe.

Library Journal says: “Does anyone have truly pure intentions, or are most people motivated by their own needs and desires? This is one of the questions posed by Franzen in his provocative new novel, a book rich with characters searching for roots and meaning in a world of secrets and lies. Pip (Purity) Tyler is burdened with college debt, a minimum-wage job, and a needy yet withholding mother who lives as a recluse under an assumed name. The identity of Pip’s father is a taboo subject. Enter the shadowy, Julian Assange-like CEO of the Sunlight Project, Andreas Wolf, purveyor of all the Internet’s hidden truths. With less than pure objectives, Wolf offers Pip a researcher position at his South American headquarters. An improbable sexual cat-and-mouse game between them causes a temporary drag in the narrative, but once Pip returns stateside and is embedded in the offices of an online journal, Franzen reveals moments of absolute genius. The cathartic power of tennis; the debilitating effects of jealousy; the fickle, fleeting nature of fame; and the slow death of youthful idealism are all beautifully captured. VERDICT National Book Award winner Franzen, who often decries the state of our increasingly materialistic, high-tech society via his essays and novels, this time proffers a more hopeful, sympathetic worldview. “

A starred review from Kirkus says: “A twisty but controlled epic that merges large and small concerns: loose nukes and absent parents, government surveillance and bad sex, gory murder and fine art. Purity “Pip” Tyler, the hero of Franzen’s fifth novel is a bright college grad with limited prospects . . . A German visitor, Annagret, encourages Purity to intern in Bolivia for the Sunlight Project, a WikiLeaks-style hacker group headed by the charismatic Andreas Wolf. Skeptical but cornered, Purity signs on. The names alone—Purity, Wolf—make the essential conflict clear, but that just frames a story in which every character is engaged in complex moral wrestling. Chief among them is Andreas, who killed Annagret’s sexually abusive stepfather and has his own issues with physical and emotional manipulation. But he’s not the only one : Andreas’ friend Tom Aberant is a powerful journalist saddled with self-loathing and a controlling ex-wife who detests her father’s wealth; Tom’s lover (and employee), Leila Helou, is a muckraker skilled enough to report on missing warheads but fumbling at her own failed marriage to Charles Blenheim, a novelist in decline. . . . here, Franzen is burrowing deep into each person’s questionable sense of his or her own goodness and suggests that the moral rot can metastasize to the levels of corporations and government. And yet the novel’s prose never bogs down into lectures, and its various back stories are as forceful as the main tale of Purity’s fate. Franzen is much-mocked for his primacy in the literary landscape (something he himself mocks when Charles grouses about “a plague of literary Jonathans”). But here, he’s admirably determined to think big and write well about our darkest emotional corners. An expansive, brainy, yet inviting novel that leaves few foibles unexplored.”

When is it available?

This much-discussed novel is available now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper

By Hilary Liftin

(Viking/Penguin Publishing Group, $27.95, 352 pages)

Who is this author?

Now enjoying rave reviews for her breakout novel, Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper, author Hilary Liftin paid her writerly dues for years in the anonymous but crucial role of ghostwriter, helping the rich and famous (and incapable of writing) publish  their celebrity memoirs. Based in Los Angeles, of course, Liftin co-wrote 15 celebmems (a word I just made up) and 10 became bestsellers, including Miles to Go by Miley Cyrus;  High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips and Stori Telling by Tori Spelling, which won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for Best Celebrity Autobiography, an award of which I must admit I was totally unaware, and I’ll bet you were, too. She also wrote the memoir Candy and Me and is co-author of Dear Exile, both published under her own name.

What is this book about?

Lifton tells the tale in the form of  – what else – a celebrity memoir, the sad and poignant story of Lizzie Pepper, an America’s Sweetheart kind of actress who marries a superstar movie actor following a whirlwind (and we later learn, orchestrated) romance chronicled by the tabloids and then finds that not every fairy tale has a fairy-tale ending. Evidently being rich, famous, beautiful and worshipped by fans is not enough to ensure happiness, not when your husband is enthralled by a mind-manipulating cult. If this plot somehow reminds you of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes marital debacle, you are not alone in that perception.

Why you’ll like it:

Lifton has the celebmem form down pat, and she is very funny besides. Many reviewers called this engaging novel the beach read of 2015, but if you did not have it on your blanket, you can catch up with it now.  It will take you behind the scenes with a very astute guide to the crazyland that is Hollywood, and in creating Lizzie, Lifton has fashioned the perfect voice to tell this amusing but also cautionary tale.

What others are saying:

Kirkus Reviews says: “This irresistible debut novel from an accomplished celebrity-memoir ghostwriter reads like a behind-the-scenes look at the marriage of a certain former Hollywood it couple. TomKat, is that you? Lizzie Pepper, the disarmingly charming fictional narrator of this engaging faux memoir, is ready to reveal the truth about her tabloid-fodder relationship with her now-ex-husband, mega-movie star Rob Mars. (The author, Liftin, has collaborated on the memoirs of many real celebrities, including Miley Cyrus and Tori Spelling.) A wholesome, young, Midwest-raised actress, best known for playing a girl-next-door type on TV, Lizzie takes a meeting with Mars, who, in addition to being hugely famous and the teen crush of Lizzie’s best friend from home, is also deeply involved in a creepy cultlike religion with a lot of money and Hollywood pull. Lizzie thinks she’s auditioning for Rob’s next film, but she’s actually trying out for a bigger role—the actor’s girlfriend and, eventually, his wife and the mother of his children. Lizzie’s feelings for Rob are real, but how authentic his are for her is a continual topic of speculation in the press and ultimately an open question for Lizzie herself, despite (or perhaps partly because of) moments like the one in which Rob dramatically declares, in front of a phalanx of paparazzi, that Lizzie is “the love of my life”—an incident that goes viral, becoming a YouTube meme and providing talk show joke fodder. “They called him a manufactured brand, a robot attempting to play the role of a man in love,” Lizzie recalls. If these characters and this story don’t sound familiar to you, you miraculously missed out on the world’s collective fascination with the six-year marriage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes—not to mention its dramatic end. But no matter, Liftin’s compelling, highly readable novel—with its sympathetic narrator, suspenseful plot pivots, snappy pace, and dishy details about Hollywood’s inner workings—is likely to engage even readers who remain blissfully unaware of the tabloid characters who may or may not have inspired it. Dishy Hollywood fiction at its finest from an author who traffics in the truth behind tabloid headlines.”

Says Publishers Weekly: “In this novel, Liftin, a ghostwriter/cowriter on numerous celebrity memoirs, including those of Miley Cyrus and Tori Spelling, sheds light on our desire to know every juicy tidbit of celebrities’ private lives. Told as the memoir of Lizzie Pepper, an actress known for girl-next-door roles, the novel reveals her much-discussed relationship with the older and enigmatic Rob Mars (also an actor). From their meet-cute, Rob sweeps Lizzie off her feet with private-island dates, personal jets, and excessive amounts of sweet-talking. Through Rob and his devotion to One Cell—a cult-like meditation group—Lizzie believes she finds the power to take control of her career and her life. But life with a beloved actor reveals itself to be stifling, especially when the illusion of privacy disappears, and long-surviving friendships fall apart. Due to Lizzie’s wide-eyed nature, the reader may give her some leniency for her blindness to Rob and One Cell’s manipulations, which slows the narrative flow. The novel offers a surprisingly poignant look at making yourself the hero of your own story, in a very anti-Cinderella way. Readers will enjoy speculating about the real-life A-list celebrity inspirations, which adds to the already-juicy entertainment of Lizzie’s story.”

Library Journal gives the book a star and says:  “Nothing is as it seems in Hollywood and Lizzie Pepper is about to discover just how true that is. America’s favorite “girl next door” actress thinks she’s auditioning for just another role when in fact she’s trying out for the role of megastar Rob Mars’s next girlfriend. What follows is a romance and marriage that could have been ripped from today’s gossip magazines. Lizzie begins leading a life of “new normal”—fame and wealth—with Rob. Here nothing is private; her cell phone and emails are monitored, and every public appearance is orchestrated, right down to her wardrobe. Rob introduces Lizzie to One Cell, a mind/body/spirit philosophy and practice that he says has shaped him into the actor he is today. Lizzie gets wrapped up in One Cell in which secrets are kept—and shed—and her life takes a turn she never could have imagined. Celebrity ghostwriter Liftin’s debut faux memoir will have you wondering about the real-life inspirations behind the characters. With its fast pace and combination of mystery with juicy celeb details, it’s a surefire hit. VERDICT Fans of the showbiz tales of Sophie Kinsella, Lauren Weisberger, and Rachel Pine will love this book. The beach read of the summer, it will keep you up long after the sun has gone down.”

“In the course of entertaining us with her dishy book Liftin also manages to humanize these public personas, offering backstory and emotions, coloring in imagined details of their day-to-day lives, exploring not just the characters’ truths but all of our truths: Why do we choose whom we choose? What are we most afraid of? What are our secrets? Whom can we really trust? And how do we know when to leave? It all makes for an extremely satisfying read,” says the Los Angeles Daily News.

When is it available?

This faux memoir is on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Above the Waterfall

By Ron rash

(HarperCollins, $26.99, 272 pages)

Who is this author?

Ron Rash, who teaches at Western Carolina University, is a bestselling author who sets his stories in the contemporary South and has won major prizes for his work, including the novels Serena, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight, four story collections, including Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories and three poetry collections. His honors include the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and two O. Henry Prizes.

What is this book about?

Les, a divorced Appalachian sheriff worn out by the horrors wrought by crystal meth addiction and his own problems in a small North Carolina town, is just a month shy of retirement when this story begins. Then his path crosses that of park ranger Becky, who has her own difficult past to overcome. They both revere the beauty of nature in their part of the world, and find themselves caught up – on opposite sides — in the case of a eccentric  old man who may have poisoned a trout stream. Making sense of the case forces them to dig deeply into their own painful pasts, and issues of addiction, ecoterrorism and land disputes reverberate through the novel.

Why you’ll like it:

Rash consistently earns plaudits for his beautiful mastery of style and vivid recreation of life in the deep South. Infused with poetic style, not to mention actual poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins devotee Becky, this is a dark tale told with lyrical loftiness. Fans of Rash’s previous work will be glad to know that his earlier novel, Serena, has been adapted as a soon-to-be-released film starring Jennifer Lawrence, who embodied similar Appalachian angst in her debut star turn in Winter’s Bone.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “Rash’s widely celebrated style lends his Southern Gothic–tinged books a suppleness that verges on prose poetry and, in the case of his new novel, elevates a small-town noir story. Les is a gentle sheriff on the verge of retirement in meth-wracked Appalachia, troubled by the petty rivalries that tear at his North Carolina community and his uncertain love affair with park ranger Becky Lytle. Following a nightmarish raid on a meth house, Les becomes drawn into the case of Gerald Blackwelder, a local eccentric accused of poisoning a trout stream in a land dispute. Gerald’s only advocate is Becky—but as a one-time associate of an infamous ecoterrorist named Richard Pelfrey, she’s been wrong before. Operating on opposing sides of an intrigue that touches on family quarrels and sins of the past, Les and Becky unearth a caper heavy in rich Southern crime and violence, one that’s a cut above the rest. Rash writes prose so beautifully that plot and character can come to seem like mere adornments, and certain touches—such the poems Les writes in his off-hours—feel like showcases. But there’s no denying Rash’s grasp of the North Carolina landscape and its reflection in the oft-tortured souls of its denizens, making this novel one of his most successful ventures into poetic humanism.”

Booklist’s starred review says: “Combining suspense with acute observations and flashing insights, Rash tells a seductive and disquieting tale about our intrinsic attachment to and disastrous abuse of the land and our betrayal of our best selves.”

Says Library Journal:  “Author of the New York Times best-selling novel Serena, coming to the big screen this fall in a film adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence, Rash again takes us to beautiful but hardscrabble Appalachia. A brutal crime brings together longtime sheriff Les, burned out by the impact of crystal meth on his insular community, and a park ranger named Becky who’s trying to forget the past. “

“For his sixth novel, Rash plays a park ranger’s past traumas against a sheriff’s present crises. When Becky Shytle was in elementary school in Virginia, a gunman invaded her school, killing the teacher who had escorted her to safety. For months afterward she couldn’t speak, finding her voice only in the safe haven of her grandparents’ farm. Later, as a park ranger, a relationship ended badly when her boyfriend became an eco-terrorist and was killed. That time, it was the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who saved her soul, along with the anonymous cave painters of Lascaux. In an unnamed town in the North Carolina mountains, Rash’s invariable setting, Becky, now the superintendent of a state park, has found a kindred spirit in the sheriff, Les. He too turned inward after his wife’s suicide attempt led to an exceptionally painful divorce. Les is 51, retiring after 30 years’ hard grind; just two more items of business left. The first is a meth bust, so nightmarish a rookie officer quits on the spot. (Rash on meth-heads is always riveting.) The second involves the poisoning of trout at a fishing resort. The prime suspect is elderly landowner Gerald Blackwelder, a good man but ornery and Becky’s staunch supporter in all things environmental. She alternates as narrator with Les; her Hopkins-infused musings are a counterpoint to Les’ action-oriented segments. There are six players in the poisoning case, so Les has his work cut out for him, and this storyline takes over the novel. An ordinary whodunit seems to have elbowed aside a more spacious novel about characters whose deep affinities with the natural world, and its interpreters, sustain them among unremitting man-made violence. For once this major American writer appears, uncharacteristically, to have veered off course,” says Kirkus Reviews.

When is it available?

Rush’s latest exploration of Appalachia can be found at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs

By Matthew Dicks

(St. Martin’s Press, $24.99, 224 pages)

Who is this author

For Matthew Dicks,  it’s all about “telling stories on the page and on the stage.”

You may have read interviews with Dicks in The Courant; there have been at least three. That’s because Dicks, an elementary school teacher in West Hartford who lives in Newington, has made a successful career as an author and a storyteller, not to mention as a contributor to local publications , The Huffington Post and The Christian Science Monitor,  and as a wedding DJ, life coach and minister. Dicks, who grew up (and into trouble in high school in Blackstone, MA), is also a Moth StorySLAM champion and a co-founder with his wife, Elysha, of Speak Up, is a Hartford-area storytelling organization. His earlier novels are Something Missing, Unexpectedly Milo, and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, which became an international bestseller.

What is this book about?

Wife, mother of grumpy, punky, tattooed teenager Polly and an underappreciated studio and art photographer, shy Caroline Jacobs is an adult still trapped in teenage angst. Long ago, Emily, her best friend rejected her publically in order to fit in better with the “cool kids,” leaving poor unconfident Caroline hurt and abandoned and afraid to speak her mind. Living in this social prison of her own device for 25 years, Caroline seems unlikely to break free, until the obnoxious president of the local PTO pushes her beyond her comfort zone and Caroline surprises her, the other parents and herself by dropping the F bomb and telling her off. This explosion of truth-telling propels Caroline to yank her recalcitrant daughter out of school and set off to her old hometown to finally right the wrong done to her many years ago. When she arrives, she finds many things have changed, but not all. By the time she leaves, many more changes have taken place and no one is more surprised than the newly confident Caroline and her new champion, her daughter Polly.

Why you’ll like it:

Dicks has the gift of understanding what makes people tick, and when those people are not your ordinary folks, he guides us  to understand them, too. His protagonists have included a guy who breaks into homes not to steal things but to leave stuff he thinks  the owners might want or need; a man with OCD who cannot resist that ssssss sound a jar of jelly makes when you open the cap and the imaginary friend of a little boy on the autism spectrum, who saves his young pal from kidnapping with the help of other imaginary friends. Caroline, his first female protagonist, fits right in to this collection of odd but loveable people with her stunted sense of self, and just like Dicks’ other characters, she is headed for a brighter future. Dicks’ books abound with humor, kindness, insight and unusual characters so piquant and poignant that you will not soon forget them.

What others are saying:

Library Journal says: “It all starts with the F-bomb. Quiet, shy pushover Caroline has had enough. Her expletive is directed straight at the PTO president Mrs. Denali, who has been passive-aggressively calling out the parents for not pulling their weight in volunteering. The next day, while Caroline considers how best to apologize to Mrs. Denali, she receives a phone call from the high school. Her 15-year-old daughter Polly has a much stronger backbone; she’s been suspended for punching, of all people, Mrs. Denali’s daughter. On a whim, Caroline decides to break her daughter out of school to drive to her hometown. She hopes to confront her childhood best friend Emily Kaplan, who humiliated her one day in the school cafeteria 25 years ago, forever changing the trajectory of Caroline’s life, or so she thinks. Caroline has placed a great deal of emphasis on her best friend’s betrayal and is now ready to stand up to her bully. But mustering that courage doesn’t come easy. VERDICT Dicks’s fourth novel (after Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend) is for anyone who has wished they’d stood up for themselves or delivered that perfect comeback at just the right time.”

Says Kirkus Reviews: “Just as easily as a middle school friend can turn into an enemy, so can a wallflower turn into a suburban warrior in this tale of a woman seeking the best comeback to a bully. Caroline Jacobs, a happily married photographer, usually keeps quiet, enduring insults, swallowing her pride, keeping out of the limelight. But when Mary Kate Dinali, smug and privileged Parent-Teacher Organization president, tries to bully shy Jessica Trent, Caroline finally stands up. To the shock of the entire PTO, Caroline expels an expletive, and soon her daughter, Polly, is defending her honor in the halls of Benjamin Banneker High School. Rather than face the principal and likely suspension, Caroline takes Polly on a road trip to face down her own demons from the past: specifically, Emily Kaplan, her childhood best friend who unceremoniously dumped Caroline 25 years ago in the middle of the school cafeteria, taking up with the far-more-cool Ellie Randolph. That public rejection ricocheted through Caroline’s life, coloring her understanding of her father’s leaving, her parents’ divorce, their descent into near poverty, and even her younger sister’s death. As the miles to Blackstone, Massachusetts pass under their wheels, Caroline tells Polly the story of her childhood. Polly slowly thaws, letting her mother’s heartache open the lines of communication. Where once punk Polly frostily shut out Caroline, she now begins to assist in the plot to confront Emily—taking things even further than Caroline had anticipated. Dicks (Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, 2012, etc.) well balances Caroline’s caution against Polly’s pluck, Caroline’s passive-aggressiveness against Polly’s outrage, creating a believable mother-daughter relationship. As each secret comes to light, he shapes their initially fraught ties into strong friendship. Heartwarming and often darkly humorous, this road trip for vengeance fairly cries out for filming.”

They say no one ever escapes their high-school insecurities. And Caroline Jacobs, the meek suburban-mom heroine of Dicks’ fourth novel, is no exception. After years of letting people push her around, Caroline feels something snap at a PTA meeting, and she blows up in a tirade of profanity at a popular, preppie parent. At that moment, she realizes exactly when her life went wrong and who is responsible. She pulls her daughter out of school and heads back to the small town where she grew up to confront her teenage nemesis, says the New York Daily News feature, This Week’s Must-Read Books.

When is it available?

You can borrow this funny and tender story from the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Camp Field branch.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Go Set a Watchman

By Harper Lee

(HarperCollins, $27.99, 288 pages)

Who is this author?

Harper Lee, who is now 89, won a Pulitzer Prize for her iconic 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which also won her a permanent place in the hearts of American readers and various lists of classic American books. A 1999 poll by Library Journal named it the Best Novel of the Century and her work earned Lee (whose first name is Nelle) a Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a child, she was a close friend of writer Truman Capote, who was the inspiration for the character Dill in Mockingbird. A descendant of Robert E. Lee and daughter of a lawyer, newspaper editor and state senator in Alabama, Harper Lee wrote one of the most influential novels on race relations in the past century and her book shaped the understanding of its complexities for readers of the Baby Boom generation. Always one to shun publicity, and for years a resident of a nursing home, Lee was thrust back into the literary spotlight this year with the publication of Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid-1950s, before Mockingbird, and never published. It portrays the heretofore-considered saintly Atticus Finch in a much harsher light, and some maintain it was published against her will and ought never to have been.

What is this book about?

Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid-1950s, was Harper Lee’s first attempt at telling the saga of Scout and Jem Finch and their father, Atticus, a small-town Southern lawyer who unexpectedly defends a falsely accused black man. But this manuscript was rejected by her publisher, and Lee later reworked the material to produce Mockingbird.  In Watchman, Scout, now using her given name Jean Louise, is in her 20s and returns from New York to Maycomb, Alabama,  to visit Atticus, at a time when the civil rights movement was beginning to alter America’s beliefs and behavior concerning racial disparities. Jean Louise must confront unpleasant revelations about her father and his political views and question her own values in this troubling but intriguing tale.

Why you’ll like it:

In all honesty, you may not like it at all, if you feel it spoils your affection for To Kill a Mockingbird. And you may be troubled by news reports of the machinations of Lee’s lawyer, who brought the old manuscript to light, perhaps without Lee’s explicit approval, and troubled further by being forced to see the saintly Atticus in a new light. Reviewers are split, but some praise the book for its exploration of the fraught issues of race relations in America, as well as for its wit and graceful writing.  If you loved Mockingbird, curiosity alone should propel you to read this prequel that has become a sequel.

What others are saying:

The San Francisco Chronicle says: “Go Set a Watchman’s greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America’s woeful track record when it comes to racial equality.”

Says Publishers Weekly: “The editor who rejected Lee’s first effort had the right idea. The novel the world has been waiting for is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book’s moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she’s pregnant because she was French-kissed or her losing her falsies at the school dance compelling. The book opens in the 1950s with Jean Louise, a grown-up 26-year-old Scout, returning to Maycomb from New York, where she’s been living as an independent woman. Jean Louise is there to see Atticus, now in his seventies and debilitated by arthritis. She arrives in a town bristling from the NAACP’s actions to desegregate the schools. Her aunt Zandra, the classic Southern gentlewoman, berates Jean Louise for wearing slacks and for considering her longtime friend and Atticus protégé Henry Clinton as a potential husband—Zandra dubs him trash. But the crux of the book is that Atticus and Henry are racist, as is everyone else in Jean Louise’s old life (even her childhood caretaker, Calpurnia, sees the white folks as the enemy). The presentation of the South pushing back against the dictates of the Federal government, utilizing characters from a book that was about justice prevailing in the South through the efforts of an unambiguous hero, is a worthy endeavor. Lee just doesn’t do the job with any aplomb. The theme of the book is basically about not being able to go home again, as Jean Louise sums it up in her confrontation with Atticus: “there’s no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I’ll never be entirely at home anywhere else.” As a picture of the desegregating South, the novel is interesting but heavy-handed, with harsh language and rough sentiments: “Do you want them in our world?” Atticus asks his daughter. The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it’s a little like finding out there’s no Santa Claus.

Library Journal says:  “As every reader knows, Lee’s second novel, from which her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird was spun 55 years ago, has just been published by Harper with considerable excitement and some still-shifting uncertainty, as reported by the New York Times, about how the manuscript was rediscovered. Lee’s original work has feisty 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout as a child and the basis for Mockingbird’s beloved heroine, returning home from New York to Maycomb Junction, AL, post-Brown v. Board of Education and encountering strongly resistant states’-rights, anti-integrationist forces that include boyfriend Henry and, significantly, her father, Atticus Finch, Mockingbird’s moral center. Readers shocked by that revelation must remember that there are now two Atticus Finches; the work in hand is not a sequel but served as source material for Lee’s eventual Pulitzer Prize winner, with such reworked characters a natural part of the writing and editing processes. Even if one can imagine that the seeds of the older Atticus are there in the younger Atticus—and that’s possible—these are different characters and different books. More significantly, the current work stands as you-are-there documentation of a specific time and place, contextualizing both Mockingbird and the very beginnings of the civil rights movement, and for that reason alone it’s invaluable and recommended reading. Mockingbird’s Atticus was right for 1960, just after the Little Rock integration crisis, with his defense of a wrongly accused African American making him a moral beacon and a lesson for all. Yet for many readers, even those who love and admire Mockingbird, it also smacked of white self-congratulation, and the current book is a rawer, more authentic representation of Southern sentiment at a tumultuous time, years removed from the solidly (and safely) segregationist era of Mockingbird. If Watchman is occasionally digressive or a bit much of a lecture, it’s good enough to make one wish that Lee had written a dozen works. It’s also a breathtaking read that will have the reader actively engaged and arguing with every character, including Jean Louise. In the end, despite Jean Louise’s powerful articulation that the court had to rule as it did, that “we [whites] deserve everything we’ve gotten from the NAACP,” and that Negroes (as the novel says) will rise and should rise, it’s unsettling and, yes, disappointing that the confrontation between Jean Louise and Atticus is ultimately an engineered effort to make her stand up for herself and stop worshipping her father. That’s not quite believable, and what’s right gets a little lost in states’ rights, which Jean Louise herself supports. At least she doesn’t run back to New York, but did she really win her argument? The ugly things she hears around her are still being said today. VERDICT Disturbing, important, and not to be compared with Mockingbird; this book is its own signal work.”

Kirkus Reviews says:  “The long-awaited, much-discussed sequel that might have been a prequel—and that makes tolerably good company for its classic predecessor. It’s not To Kill a Mockingbird, and it too often reads like a first draft, but Lee’s story nonetheless has weight and gravity. Scout—that is, Miss Jean Louise Finch—has been living in New York for years. As the story opens, she’s on the way back to Maycomb, Alabama, wearing “gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers,” an outfit calculated to offend her prim and proper aunt. The time is pre-Kennedy; in an early sighting, Atticus Finch, square-jawed crusader for justice, is glaring at a book about Alger Hiss. But is Atticus really on the side of justice? As Scout wanders from porch to porch and parlor to parlor on both the black and white sides of the tracks, she hears stories that complicate her—and our—understanding of her father. To modern eyes, Atticus harbors racist sentiments: “Jean Louise,” he says in one exchange, “Have you ever considered that you can’t have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?” Though Scout is shocked by Atticus’ pronouncements that African-Americans are not yet prepared to enjoy full civil rights, her father is far less a Strom Thurmond-school segregationist than an old-school conservative of evolving views, “a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses,” as her uncle puts it. Perhaps the real revelation is that Scout is sometimes unpleasant and often unpleasantly confrontational, as a young person among oldsters can be. Lee, who is plainly on the side of equality, writes of class, religion, and race, but most affectingly of the clash of generations and traditions, with an Atticus tolerant and approving of Scout’s reformist ways: “I certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.” It’s not To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, but it’s very much worth reading.”

Says the Los Angeles Times: “Don’t let ‘Go Set a Watchman’ change the way you think about Atticus Finch…the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race.”

Says the Washington Post:

“A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions.”

When is it available?

This controversial novel is on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Camp Field, Dwight, Mark Twain and Park branches.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Head of State

By Andrew Marr

(Overlook, $27.95, 384 pages)

Who is this author?

Andrew Marr is one of England’s most respected political journalists: a former editor of the Independent and BBC political editor as well as creator of several popular TV documentary series, including Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain and Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain. He also has published many nonfiction books. Head of State is his fiction debut.

What is this book about?

If you crossed the plots of the movies Wag the Dog and Weekend At Bernie’s, and let a highly intelligent and brilliantly satirical writer run with it, you’d have something approaching Head of State.

What if, this book asks, Great Britain is about to decide by referendum in 2017 whether to stay in the European Union or drop out? And what if, just a few days before the crucial vote that has divided the country, the Prime Minister suddenly – and secretly – drops dead? And what if a powerful group within the government does not want this crucial bit of information to be made public? And what if a prominent political reporter also dies? What sort of skullduggery might ensue, and to what end? Marr provides the answers to these questions and many more in this lively and alarming novel.

Why you’ll like it:

Marr is an insider’s insider, whose many years as a top-notch journalist has made him extraordinarily well-versed in the complex world of British politics.  Here he takes that real-world knowledge and spins it into a very witty and wry novel that offers readers insights that might be lost in a dry and ponderous nonfiction book. Could something like the plot of this book ever actually happen? Has it already happened? Readers will find it rewarding to absorb this sardonic, satiric, intriguing tale and wonder about its provenance.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says: “Former BBC political editor Marr makes his fiction debut with a terrific satirical thriller reminiscent of the movie Wag the Dog. In 2017, the U.K. anxiously awaits the results of a referendum to determine whether it will leave the European Union. Prime Minister Bill Stevenson has made a vote to stay in the union the most important priority of his career, but as the election nears, the outcome is very much in doubt. He’s opposed by his former home secretary, Olivia Kite, who promises the “gift of freedom” if the country votes to leave. Three days before the referendum, investigative reporter Lucien McBryde dies from a fall, ending up in the morgue next to a man’s corpse that lacks hands and a head. Marr gradually reveals the circumstances of both deaths, and how they connect with a nuclear bomb of a conspiracy whose disclosure would all but cinch the vote for one side. Clever dark humor, witty prose, and a rigorously constructed plot add up to a thought-provoking read.

Kirkus Reviews, its starred review, says: “Now that the Scottish independence brouhaha has been settled, the question of the U.K.’s European Union membership is next on the agenda. Marr’s wickedly funny first novel, set in 2017, takes up the battle.The prime minister sees the U.K.’s economic future tied to Europe. Opponents, opposition and ruling party alike, feel Britain must no longer be subject to overweaning continental bureaucracies. The prime minister—once “an intense, wiry-haired young politician” who became a “larger-than-life, principled yet unscrupulous figure” of notoriously “louche private behavior”—is opposed by his former Home Secretary, Olivia Kite, “red hair, pale face and vivid crimson lips” (picture Cate Blanchet as Elizabeth I with the heart of Cromwell). The battle’s followed by pols, pundits and once-grand newspapers where “wise old sacks of human indolence order the young and stupid about.” Some characters are stock: reporter Lucien McBryde, an “an arrogant little sod” running on “marching powder”; and others are sociopathic: “that foul little splodge,” Alois Haydn, regarded as the “notorious Svengali of Number 10.” Marr flashes urbanely sardonic British humor (or humour)—”One of the great things about first-class air travel is that it puts all the crooks together”—and then explodes the narrative with an election-swaying death days prior to the vote. Enter Professional Logistical Services, a coven of former intelligence officers, military types and financial wizards, brought in to apply “advanced research techniques” to the crisis. Peripheral characters like the prime minister’s staff members; government functionaries; a Polish assassin; Myfanwy Davies-Jones, a novelist “with a cloud of yellow hair and a scarlet reputation”; and Lord Briskett, a noted historian from Oxford, “that crowded, clucking duckpond of vanity and ruffled feathers,” run amok while Mr. Haydn traipses about London with a human head in a “Waitrose ‘bag for life.’ ” Witty. Imaginative. Irreverent.”

“The tantalizing sense that the important actions of politics take place just out of sight, hidden from all but a tiny circle of insiders, pervades this novel and is perhaps its true subject. The author, Andrew Marr, is well placed to deliver such a story, being one of his country’s most prominent political journalists,” says The New York Times.”

When is it available?

The Downtown Hartford Public Library has this very funny book.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Dark Rooms

By Lili Anolik

(HarperCollins, $25.99, 336 pages)

Who is this author?

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair who also has written for Harper’s, Elle, and The Believer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. Dark Rooms is being touted as a fine debut novel, but readers should know that Anolik, writing as Lili Peloquin, has also published several YA novels in her Innocents series.

What is this book about?

Local readers take note: this thriller/mystery/coming of age story is set at a ritzy private school in Hartford. When 16-year-old Nica Baker, a beautiful wild child type, is murdered, initial signs point to a rejected classmate who apparently confesses in a suicide note. But Nica’s older sister, Grace, does not believe this all-too-neat resolution and keeps imagining that she sees, hears and talks with Nica after her death. Grace drops out of college to work at the school, where her parents also teach, and not so coincidentally, to search out the real killer. What she finds is more than she, or the reader, bargained for.

Why you’ll like it:

Reviewers are praising Anolik’s use of believable dialogue and complex plotting in this novel, which goes beyond the mystery genre to present a gripping story of a teenage girl coming of age and finding herself as she sets out to discover the truth about who murdered her little sister. Hartford area readers, of course, will enjoy the setting and the opportunity to decide how well Anolik has captured local color and local culture.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “The bullet that snuffs out the life of 16-year-old wild child Nica Baker hits her family like a hollow-point, especially psychologically enmeshed big sister Grace, in this suspenseful, sad, and shattering first novel from Vanity Fair contributing editor Anolik. Only a year older, and the yang to Nica’s yin, good girl Grace had been relying on her sister’s charisma and cool to smooth Grace’s way through the emotional minefields of Chandler Academy, the precious Hartford, Conn., private school where their parents both teach. In fact, Grace just can’t let Nica go, repeatedly seeing, hearing, and talking with her during the grief-swamped, drug-muddled months that follow. When a fellow student’s suicide-confession officially closes the case, Grace doesn’t buy it. Deferring her enrollment at Williams, she sifts through the wreckage of their lives, ostensibly to figure out who really killed Nica, but, even more crucially, to find herself. As she starts to penetrate the myriad lies and secrets, the picture that emerges is far from pretty, with a lengthy list of suspects. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Anolik’s debut will haunt you.

In its starred review, Library Journal says: “Gregarious, fun-loving, and athletic Nica, the younger of two sisters, is murdered near their home on the grounds of a New England private school. The crime is quickly solved, but Grace, who has always lived in Nica’s shadow, is not satisfied with the police’s findings and grows obsessed with catching the true killer. However, the story line just scratches the surface of this insightful, complex novel, which is all about angst: broken relationships, class and social issues, the human psyche. The author skillfully develops Grace as a complicated character, using her perspective to get readers to empathize with her reactions to events around her. The other adolescent characters are equally well drawn. Anolik excels in capturing the nonplussed attitudes of teenagers not fully aware of the ramifications of their actions. VERDICT Despite an ambiguous ending that left this crime fiction fan somewhat dissatisfied, Anolik’s haunting debut is tough to put down and will stay with you for a long time.

Says Kirkus Reviews:  “A young woman becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind her sister’s death in Anolik’s thrilling debut. The idyll of a posh Connecticut boarding school is shattered when 16-year-old Nica Baker—gorgeous, wild and effortlessly cool—is found murdered in the graveyard behind her parents’ house. When another student commits suicide, leaving behind a guilty note and an apology, the police consider the case solved: It was unrequited love gone wrong, the tragedy of the loner boy who killed the beautiful faculty-brat girl who didn’t reciprocate his feelings. For Nica’s older sister Grace, though, something doesn’t quite sit right. Too grief-stricken and drugged to start her freshman year at Williams, Grace is shaken from her haze when she stumbles on some information that calls the official story into question. And so Grace—Grace, who’s always been in Nica’s shadow, Grace, who’s always been high-achieving and risk-averse—finds herself consumed with a murder investigation of her own. What had Nica been doing in the weeks before she died, and more importantly, with whom? Why did she break up with her longtime boyfriend without explanation? Where did the tiny tattoo in her armpit come from? Slowly, Grace begins to untangle a web of secrets and betrayals deeper than she could have possibly imagined. In the process, she begins to find her own identity, an identity that is—for the first time—separate from her sister’s. As much as this is a crime drama, it’s also a coming-of-age novel. The plot is high-suspense, but it’s the strength of the characters—and the strength of Anolik’s hypnotic, unfussy prose—that gives the book its lasting force. Wholly absorbing and emotionally rich, this novel dodges Law & Order: Special Victims Unit clichés to deliver something deeply satisfying.”

When is it available?

It’s not hidden in a dark room. It’s on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Barbour, Dwight and Mark Twain branches.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

The Bookseller

By Cynthia Swanson

(HarperCollins, $25.99, 352 pages)

Who is this author?

Debut novelist Cynthia Swanson is both a writer and a designer who workis in the  mid-century modern style. Her short stories have appeared in such journals as 13th Moon, Kalliope, and Sojourner. Like her protagonist in The Bookseller, Kitty/Katharyn, Swanson lives in Denver.

What is this book about?

If you read my Sept. 8 blog entry on Thomas Pierce – and of course you did! – you’ll recall that one of his short stories involves a woman who lives a double life: with a real-world boyfriend by day and with a totally imaginary dream-world husband by night. Cynthia Swanson’s debut novel plays with the same idea.  Her heroine, Kitty Miller, 38, is living in Denver in 1962, happily running a bookstore with her pal Frieda and enjoying single life, but occasionally regretting that things never worked out with a doctor named Kevin or Lars, the guy who responded to her personal ad but never showed up for their date. Then Kitty begins a series of unusual adventures, in which she is now Katharyn Andersson in 1963 Denver, ecstatically married to a man named Lars, mother of three wonderful kids, living in a dream house: in fact living an actual dream life, as this parallel existence only happens when she is asleep each night. It’s the life she has always dreamed of, but can she – should she?—make it her real life?

Why you’ll like it:

Who has not experienced one of those startlingly true-to-life dreams in which hopes become what seems like reality – until you wake up. What if it were possible to turn that nighttime fantasy into daytime reality?  That’s an intriguing premise for a novel, and Swanson takes this clever idea and runs with it.  This is a romantic novel with an unusual what-if quality; sure to engage readers who have ever wondered what life would be like if they had embarked on the road not taken and what it would cost to finally take that path.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “In 1962, Kitty wakes in Katharyn’s bed next to Katharyn’s husband, Lars. Down the hall are Katharyn’s children: Missy, Mitch, and Michael. In the mirror, Katharyn’s reflection looks exactly like Kitty’s, and Kitty is able to recall specific memories and behaviors of Katharyn’s with disturbing accuracy. But Kitty and Katharyn are not the same—Katharyn is just the woman Kitty becomes in her dreams. In reality, Kitty is single, childless, and owns a floundering bookstore with her best friend, Frieda. She has pursuits and interests that Katharyn’s life has no room for. Initially believing that Katharyn is a figment of her imagination, a pleasant dream showing what married life could have been like, Kitty identifies the one moment that prevented her life from becoming Katharyn’s. Kitty’s uncertainty about which woman’s reality is real consumes her. Swanson masterfully crafts both Kitty’s and Katharyn’s worlds, leaving open the question of which of them is real until the final pages. Swanson’s evocative novel freshly considers the timeless question, “What if?”

Library Journal’s starred review says: “With her freshly painted sunny yellow bedroom in 1962 Denver, Kitty Miller leads a content if solitary life. Running a bookshop with her best friend, Frieda, is a welcome break from teaching school. Everything about Kitty’s life seems benignly commonplace until she begins waking up in another bedroom, in another life: a life in which she is another version of herself. She wakes up as Katharyn Andersson in 1963 Denver, married to Lars, a man who had answered a personal ad 1962 Kitty Miller had placed—but 1962 Lars never showed up for their date. Katharyn and Lars have three children and move in a sphere Kitty doesn’t know about. As Kitty investigates the two worlds of Katharyn and Kitty, she sees parallels and choices, trade-offs and sacrifices. VERDICT This is a stunner of a debut novel, astonishingly tight and fast paced. The 1960s tone is elegant and even, and Kitty/Katharyn’s journey is intriguing, redolent with issues of family, independence, friendship, and free will. This will especially resonate with fans of the movie Sliding Doors and the authors Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve.”

USA Today says: “. . . In what seems to be her “real” life, Kitty is fairly content. She and Frieda agree that as unmarried women, they have “an element of freedom and quirkiness that other women our age do not have.” They have no desire to have children and have all but given up pursuing romantic relationships.

But as Kitty experiences more of her strange dreams, she realizes that Lars is a familiar figure from her waking life. “I feel as if I have been kissing him daily for years,” she says. She recalls that eight years earlier, a man named Lars responded to a personal ad she placed in the local newspaper. They bonded over the telephone, and he seemed eager to meet her — but he failed to show up for their date and she never heard from him again.

To make sense of her increasingly vivid dream life, Kitty digs into newspaper archives, doing research to learn what happened to Lars, her almost-date, and to figure out why they are married in her dreams. Each night, she can’t wait to fall asleep to find out what happens next. (Among other things, she discovers that she’s a decent mother and good at tennis.) By day, though, the “nighttime visions,” as she calls them, begin to torment her: “They are confusing and pathetic,” she says, “and they do me no good whatsoever.”

Of course, as the novel progresses, Kitty’s two lives merge, until one subsumes the other. Both options present her with sacrifices and traumas that she must come to terms with. . . .”

When is it available?

The Bookseller is in the collections of the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.

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