Carole Goldberg
Ettta and Otto and Russell and James
By Emma Hooper
(Simon & Schuster, $26, 320 pages)
Who is this author?
Emma Hooper grew up in Canada, but moved to England, where she studied music and literature, earning a doctorate in Musico-Literary studies at the University of East-Anglia. She now lectures at Bath Spa University and performs solo as the musician Waitress for the Bees as well as playing with English bands. And while she has never walked across Canada, she does go back to cross-country ski from time to time. Etta and Otto and Russell and James is her debut novel.
What is this book about?
This is a kind of contemporary fairy tale, with a questing hero, a faithful companion and stories of lost and enduring love. What’s different is that the heroine, Etta, is 83 years old and her quest is to see the ocean, which requires her to walk across Canada from Saskatchewan in the west to the east coast. Her loyal accompanying friend is James, a coyote with whom Etta has long and revealing conversations, and her loves are her husband, Otto, and his almost-brother Russell, who was Etta’s lover many years ago. As Etta makes her thousand-mile journey, with a shotgun and a few provisions, she acquires the attention of a reporter and many fans. Back home, Otto cooks from the recipes Etta has left him and makes papier-mache animals. Russell sets out to find Etta, but he learns that each has a solo journey to complete. And James? He speaks for himself, which is miracle enough.
Why you’ll like it:
Whimsical without being silly, otherworldly without being fey, this is a touching love story that spans most of the 20th century and is enriched, rather than burdened, by its magical realism. The narrative draws on letters exchanged by Etta and Otto when he was fighting in World War II as it chronicles the long relationship between them, with its ups and downs. Both poignant and poetic, this is one of the most unusual books of the year.
What others are saying:
Kirkus says, in a starred review: “Hooper’s debut is a novel of memory and longing and desires too long denied. On Saskatchewan’s Great Plains grew 15 Vogel children. When Otto Vogel was still a child, half-orphaned Russell joined the brood. The Great Depression burned on, crops failed, and schooling was casual. One of the teachers was Etta, no older than Otto and Russell. World War II came. Otto left. Russell, broken leg improperly mended, could not. As Hooper’s shifting narrative opens, now-83-year-old Etta awakens, intending to walk to Canada’s east coast, leaving a brief note for her husband, Otto. She carries a bit of food, a rifle, and a note of her identity and home. To a Cormac McCarthy-like narrative—sans quotation marks, featuring crisp, concise conversations—Hooper adds magical realism: Etta’s joined by a talking coyote she names James, who serves as guide and sounding board. With Etta absent, Otto begins baking from her recipes, his companion a guinea pig, always silent. Soon Otto becomes obsessed with constructing a menagerie of papier-mâché wildlife. Russell, shy lifelong bachelor and Etta’s wartime lover, follows her, finds her, only to hear her urge him to seek his own quest “because you want to and you’re allowed to and you can. You could have if you wanted to enough”—the novel’s thematic heart. Russell disappears into flashbacks. Hooper reveals more of Etta and Otto in letters exchanged during World War II, where Otto by turns is terrified, sickened and enthralled. Otto marries Etta on return, a less than perfect union shadowed by damaged Otto striking out at Etta. With beautifully crafted descriptions—derelict farm machinery as “gently stagnant machines”—Hooper immerses herself in characters, each shaped by the Depression. The book ends with sheer poetry, stunning and powerful, multiple short chapters where identities and dreams, longings and memories shift and cling to one character and then another within the “long loop of existence.” A masterful near homage to Pilgrim’s Progress: souls redeemed through struggle.”
In its starred review, Library Journal says: “Eighty-three-year-old Etta embarks on a 3,200-kilometer journey walking from Saskatchewan to Halifax in order to see the ocean for the first time. Along the way, she befriends a talking coyote named James, a reporter who decides she’d rather walk with Etta than report, and throngs of fans who follow her progress from town to town. Her husband, Otto, passes the time until her return by writing Etta letters he never mails, learning to bake from her ancient recipe cards, and creating papier-mâché animal sculptures. Russell, who lives on the neighboring farm, goes after Etta, and, in the process, decides that it’s time to begin his own journey. Each character carries heavy memories: tragic pregnancies, the horrors of World War II, a broken heart, an injured limb. And over all, the dust of drought settles, the lack of water a constant pall, the search for water a means of redemption. VERDICT Debut novelist Hooper’s spare, evocative prose dips in and out of reality and travels between past and present creating what Etta tells Otto is “just a long loop.” This is a quietly powerful story whose dreamlike quality lingers long after the last page is turned. For literary fiction fans.“
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “Hooper’s arresting debut novel, with its spare, evocative prose, seamlessly interweaves accounts of the present-day lives of its eponymous main characters with the stories of their pasts and how they first connected with each other. The book starts with a note that Etta leaves for her husband: “Otto, I’ve gone. I’ve never seen the water, so I’ve gone there. Don’t worry, I’ve left you the truck. I can walk. I will try to remember to come back.” Thus begins elderly Etta’s journey from Saskatchewan to the coast, and the same ocean that once took her dear husband overseas to fight in WWII. She is armed with minor provisions, some clothes, and a sheet of paper with names on it, starting with “You: Etta Gloria Kinnick of Deerdale farm. 83 years old in August.” Along the way, Etta meets a coyote she names James; she considers him her friend and they have many long conversations as they travel together. As Etta walks thousands of miles to her destination, three touching stories unfold: those of Otto, from a family of 14 brothers and sisters; Russell, the abandoned boy who lived next door to Otto and becomes a de facto part of his family; and Etta, who lost her sister at a young age. Hooper, with great insight, explores the interactions and connections between spouses and friends—the rivalries, the camaraderie, the joys and tragedies—and reveals the extraordinary lengths to which people will go in the name of love.”
“Hooper has conjured a character who is a gift… As the lines blur between Etta’s and Otto’s memories, and even between their physical bodies, readers emerge with a deeper appreciation for life and for its suffering against its backdrop of majesty,” says the Dallas Morning News.
When is it available?
This unusual love story is available 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 Boy Who Killed Demons
By Dave Zeltserman
(Overlook, $24.95, 288 pages)
Who is this author?
Dave Zeltserman, who lives in the Boston area, has published 10 horror and crime novels, to much acclaim. His books include Monster, which was a Booklist Top 10 Horror Fiction selection; The Caretaker of Lorne Field, which was shortlisted by the American Library Association for best horror novel of 2010 and named a Horror Gem by Library Journal and A Killer’s Essence, a crime novel that, like Zelserman’s Outsourced, has been optioned for film.
What is this book about?
And you thought that kid who could see dead people had problems.
In The Boy Who Killed Demons, you will meet a teenager from the upscale suburb of Newton, Mass., who develops the sudden and unwanted ability to see demons. These demons are complete with horns and red skin, yellow eyes, twisted faces, horns: the works.. . .and they also are Henry’s neighbors. And he thinks they are catching on to his ability to see beyond their human masks as they plot to destroy the world. Is Henry crazy? He does some research and concludes he is not. Is Henry going to ignore his new and unwelcome talent? He can’t, not when he learns that little kids are being prepped for ritual sacrifice. He gives up sports and girls, even the alluring Sally Freeman, and devotes himself to learning ancient languages, the better to read up on how to kill demons. Worst of all, he can’t tell anyone, especially his parents, for fear of being called crazy and sent to an institution. Not a bad setup for a novel, and Zeltserman follows through.
Why you’ll like it:
Zeltserman has pulled off a neat trick here: this coming-of-age novel is genuinely scary and genuinely funny, two things that do not often work together. You could, I suppose, read the whole story as an allegory about the shock and horror so many teens experience when they figure out just how nasty adolescence and adulthood can be, or you can just take it for what it is: boy meets demons, boy fights demons, boy triumphs. Either way, it’s a fascinating tale. And the devils are in the details.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “Henry Dudlow is a boy with a terrible affliction. Either the world is about to be invaded by demons, or Henry has completely lost his mind. His efforts to find answers unfold in his diary, which holds the confidences of a young man isolated from his family and peers by an ability he can neither control nor deny. Henry’s conviction that the rising demon threat is real leads him to ever more dangerous behaviors, even as he connects with people who are sympathetic to his plight. Henry is denied the proof he needs to feel completely confident in his actions, and yet must continue to take action due to the terrible consequences his inaction could bring, so he bravely become something bad, in order to prevent something far worse. The sympathy that Zeltserman (Monster) invokes on behalf of Henry is heartbreaking, and readers will fully believe in both the madness and the greatness of his tragic young hero.
Says Library Journal: “If when you were 13 years old you discovered that you had suddenly acquired the unsettling ability to see evil people as hideous demons, what would you do? Author Zeltserman introduces Henry Dudlow, now 15, and well along the path he has chosen for himself as a result of being endowed with this particular sixth sense. Fearing that his parents will decide that he is suffering from mental illness—a possibility he has already explored—and insist that he be institutionalized, Henry has chosen to keep his trait a secret from everyone. But he feels a duty to use his peculiar faculty for the good of mankind by hunting and eventually slaying the demons in our midst. To this end he studies self-defense, teaches himself to read ancient texts on demonology, and avoids opportunities to interact with his peers, worrying they will discover his secret. Verdict: Despite the ever-heightening suspense as Henry pursues and conquers his first quarry, the sense of this teen’s isolation often overrides the heroics of his quest. Heroes need allies as well as adversaries. Still, Henry’s fortitude and single-mindedness will stir the hearts of adult and YA action fantasy fans.
Kirkus Reviews says: Humor outweighs the horror in this amusing look at a 15-year-old saving the world. Henry Dudlow is a typical upper-middle-class teenager. His father is a lawyer, his mother’s a marketing executive, and they live a very comfortable life in Waban, Massachusetts, where “you don’t find too many kids shoveling snow or mowing lawns to earn money.” That was BSD, or Before Seeing Demons. Where most people see normal humans, Henry sees “flaming red skin, yellow eyes, horns, grotesque faces with twisted misshapen noses” all around him. He becomes obsessed with learning the demons’ wicked ways, teaching himself German and Italian to read medieval texts and conducting experiments to track them at various places around Boston. Enter Sally Freeman, a first crush from grade school who moves to Henry’s high school and fans the flames of adolescence to high heat. Henry is now obsessed with both Sally and the demons he’s hunting. Children nearing their fourth birthdays go missing, and Henry makes the connection to a gruesome find in a warehouse in Brooklyn where 39 kids were found caged in some unspeakable ritual. The pattern is repeating in Boston. Henry embraces his calling, drops Sally—temporarily—and commits to saving the children and the world from the gates of hell. The story is told in the form of Henry’s journal, where he keeps a record in case he doesn’t survive. Zeltserman manages the voice of a teenager deftly, and the adolescent angst rings true. The demons are almost background to a tale about growing up. Zeltserman has written an entertaining novel but not one that will keep you from turning off the lights.”
When is it available?
Don’t be scared. It’s waiting for readers 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!
Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation
By Laura Kipnis
(Henry Holt/Metropolitan, $25, 224 pages)
Who is this author?
Laura Kipnis is a critic and essayist who writes about contemporary culture, a professor who teaches film making in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, a former video artist and the author of How to Become a Scandal, Against Love, and The Female Thing. She is fascinated by sexual politics, bad behaviors, emotions and the way people act out. She has written for such magazines as in Slate, Harpers, The Nation, Playboy, and The New York Times. Kipnis divides her time between Chicago and New York.
What is this book about?
Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? In Laura Kipnis’ case, the answer is, “write about them.”
In her latest book, she takes a look at men behaving badly and why she is fascinated by them, in public life and in her own private life. She takes a clear-eyed look at cheaters, “humiliation artists,” “trespassers” and haters, such as sports stars whose private lives have dismayed their fans, politicians whose sexual escapades have disgraced them and other men who have gravely disappointed their families, friends and fans. She asks, what’s going on?. And she provides some provocative answers in this collection of essays. Avoiding clichés, employing her considerable intellectual gifts and cutting through the simplistic explanations often offered to explain such self-defeating behavior, Kipnis brings an astringent wit and fresh perceptions to her exploration of why some men do the awful things they do.
Why you’ll like it:
Kipnis has a smart, sharply witty and sharply worded way about her, and while she comes from the academic world, her writing is anything but academic in the fussy, pedantic sense. She uses plenty of examples and anecdotes from her own life to enliven the text of Men, and her real-world examples of bad behavior give a sturdy grounding to her theories.
Here, to give you a sense of her writing style and choice of subjects, is a portion of her essay on Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine:
“. . . So there I was, a self-appointed expert on all things Hustler, seated across from the founding father himself in his thickly carpeted penthouse emporium atop the huge kidney-shaped office tower on Wilshire Boulevard, the one with his name emblazoned on the roof in towering letters that you can see for miles. If the magazine is a battleground of sex and vulgarity, Flynt’s office was no less an assault on the senses: Tiffany lamps dueling with garish rococo furniture, gold and velvet-covered clashing everything—it looked like armies of rival interior decorators had fought and died on the job. The surprisingly charming Flynt presided over this expensive-looking mishmash from his famous gold-plated wheelchair (a long-ago assassination attempt by a professed white supremacist enraged by Hustler’s interracial pictorials had left him paralyzed from the waist down2). All those years in the chair have given him an extreme case of middle-aged spread: his face has a melted quality, with only a hint of the self-confident cockiness from old pictures. Newly image-conscious with Forman’s biopic about to be released, he told me immediately that he was on a diet. “I may be a cripple, but I don’t have to be a fat cripple,” he chortled hoarsely.”
What others are saying:
The New York Times Book Review says: “…Men feels like something written by your most hyper-verbal friend, the sort of person who can turn even logistical planning into witty and dexterous prose…The patriarchal world, through Kipnis’s eyes, is consistently and quietly funny…At a time of trigger warnings and Twitter backlashes, when the media landscape can seem tripwired for even the most well-intentioned and accidentally insensitive of public figures (and civilians), Kipnis’s coolheaded, ironical assessments of modern masculinity read like perfectly-timed eye rolls.
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “Kipnis’s gifts are on full display in this irresistible collection of essays, in which she weaves together complex and penetrating insights about gender into provocative treatises. Though the book is putatively about men, Northwestern University professor Kipnis takes an appreciably unique angle on her subjects. Each chapter, save one, is devoted to an archetype of masculinity. Kipnis’s arguments are never predictable: for example, her chapter on “juicers,” ostensibly about steroid-abusing male athletes, evolves into a profound soliloquy about writing, plagiarism, and labor markets. Her examination of modern manhood sheds as much light on male vulnerability as it does on male privilege, entitlement, and abuse. If the book has a failing, it can be found in its unfortunate proclivity for armchair psychoanalysis, on display in the digression about Naomi Wolf’s story of sexual harassment at the hands of a male professor and the tale of a male writer who was the victim of stalking. In spite of this drawback, Kipnis has given us a necessary, and often witty, book that shows a brilliant, agile mind at work.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Feisty, unapologetic forays into the messiness of gender relations. In these essays, most previously published, outspoken feminist Kipnis fashions a fitting companion to her previous, self-described “conflicted” work on femininity, The Female Thing (2006). Male types—e.g., “the Con Man,” “the Manly Man”—fascinate the author and offer a way inside the male psyche in order to find out what men really think of women—and why we should care. Refreshingly, Kipnis operates by plunging into her subject, getting her hands dirty, her critics be damned—for example, reading back issues of Hustler magazine before interviewing publisher Larry Flynt—”the Scumbag”—which director Milos Foreman would not do when he made his film The People vs. Larry Flynt. Declaring the contents of the porn rag downright “Rabelaisian,” however gross, Kipnis offers some admiration that Flynt built his empire from the idea of fighting sexual repression. The author provides lively examples for each of her “types”: “humiliation artists,” like recently disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, are really all variations of the eponymous shame-seeking hero of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. “Cheaters,” like Tiger Woods, can only operate successfully due to the phalanx of women who possess “willing self-abnegation.” “The Trespasser” of Jackie Onassis’ privacy, photographer Ron Galella, is now elevated as an “artist,” and his aggressive stalking of his muse has been airbrushed. Kipnis reserves the final section for “Haters,” namely critics like Dale Peck, right-wing biographers of Hillary Clinton and even radical feminist icon Andrea Dworkin. Unafraid of offending the cause of political correctness, Kipnis is the kind of unfettered, freethinking observer who even questioned the nature of “unwanted sexual advances” at her school’s harassment workshop: “But how do you know they’re unwanted until you try?” Dynamite examples rendered in funny, spirited writing.”
When is it available?
The Downtown Hartford Public Library has “Men” on the new books shelf.
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!
Spoiled Brats
By Simon Rich
(Little, Brown and Company, $25, 224 pages)
Who is this author?
Simon Rich is a professional funny guy, and if you think that is easy, think again. He has written for “Saturday Night Live,” as one of the youngest comedy writers ever on the iconic show, and Rich also was a staff writer for Pixar. His books include two novels and three collections of humor: The Last Girlfriend on Earth, What in God’s Name, Ant Farm, Free-Range Chickens, and Elliot Allagash, and his short fiction and humor pieces frequently appear in The New Yorker. Rich is the son of well-known critic and essayist Frank Rich of New York Times and New Yorker fame. He lives in Brooklyn, the current hotbed of American literature.
What is this book about?
In these 13 stories, you will hear many voices: a Polish immigrant recently awakened from 100 years of suspended animation in a barrel of pickle brine; the father in an unfortunate family of neglected hamsters in a private school classroom; a college girl in a study abroad program on Saturn (she hates the food) and a passel of self-absorbed narcissists and the parents who spawned them. Rich gets us to take a serious look at some of the nuttier phenomena of current American culture by skewering its excesses with his mordant sense of humor. That can be a risky approach for a writer with ordinary skills, but Rich has the talent and imagination to make it work, and work well.
Why you’ll like it:
This is high-grade, professionally polished snark, presented with panache by one of America’s funniest contemporary humorists. Rich is 30 and has an innate understanding of what we’re calling the millennial generation (for lack of a better name.) Rich is especially good at coming at familiar situations from weirdly skewed but brilliant perspectives, which gives us stories that are highly comic and occasionally poignant: a powerful mix that is sure to entertain.
What others are saying:
Says Publishers Weekly: “In his newest story collection, humorist and screenwriter uses space travel, weird science, and talking animals to knock narcissistic millennials and New York high society down to size. In the futuristic “Semester Abroad,” a college student studying on Saturn (where the food “tastes like straight ass”) obsesses about her boyfriend while an interplanetary war decimates her host society. In “Rip,” a brilliant retelling of the Rip Van Winkle fable, a 27-year-old low-life and aspiring blogger falls asleep for three years and wakes to find that his friends have become sashimi-eating yuppies. Two of the best entries feature a character named Simon Rich, usually in the role of brat-villain. “Animals” centers on a hamster whose family Rich, the “class clown” at a hoity-toity New York elementary school, has neglected to feed. And the novella-length “Sell Out” tells the story of a Polish immigrant who, after being preserved in brining fluid for a century, wakes in present-day Brooklyn and, with no help from his self-obsessed great-great-grandson Simon, becomes an overnight hipster celebrity. Throughout the collection, Rich skewers helicopter parenting, Gen-Me technophilia, and late-capitalist malaise with cruel precision. His occasionally stereotypical female characters and hackneyed resolutions are counterbalanced by on-point details—a club used to maul unhip elders, a post-genocide round of “Never Have I Ever”—that pierce the heart.
Kirkus Reviews says: “Humorist Rich’s latest collection is predictably funny, though sometimes digs deeper. Imagine a petty, oft-rejected writer complaining to his girlfriend about the “literary establishment”: “They hate that I’m trying to do something new—it terrifies them!” It’s a familiar rant to the girlfriend, who leaves, feigning frustration, only to place a call as soon as she hits the sidewalk, whispering, “He’s onto us,” and then…well, never mind. This review shouldn’t ruin the punch line of Rich’s “Distractions,” for the pleasure of this and other pieces comes from watching each joke unfold. Unfortunately, this also suggests the book’s larger hindrance: There’s not much here besides the jokes. The result is amusing, sure, but slight, like watching an uneven episode of Saturday Night Live (where Rich once worked as a writer) in which some skits stick the landing, some provoke mild chuckles, and some offer the opportunity to use the bathroom or play with your phone. The nearly 80-page novella Sell Out suggests something much different, however. In it, a hardworking immigrant in early-20th-century Brooklyn is accidentally preserved in pickle brine, only to awaken 100 years later. He tracks down his great-great-grandson, the author himself, a self-absorbed, neurotic disappointment. This story is funny, but it gestures toward something deeper about the dreams we foist upon our family members and icons and also the ensuing disappointments. Elsewhere, Rich puts his jokes first, but in Sell Out, the characters are paramount, and readers ought to return to this story. Otherwise, once is the right amount of times to read most of these pieces—and given Rich’s breezy style, once won’t be a chore at all. Humor comes easily to Rich, but he’s at his best when he pushes against the boundaries of his jokes.”
Library Journal says: “Rich, former Harvard Lampoon president and former Saturday Night Live staffer, as well as an established author and New Yorker contributor, has penned a collection of stories about the narcissistic millennial generation and how they got that way. His hilarious characters include a family of hamsters trying to survive in the fifth-grade classroom of a private school, a chimp who longs to see the world, a demon who just wants to be himself, a pickle maker who is revived after fermenting for 100 years in brine, and the devil himself. Settings vary from Saturn to sewers to the North Pole. Yet every story rings true and provides a rueful reminder of how helicopter moms and conservative dads contribute to the success of their children. The stories parody life in the 21st century and clearly explain where we all went wrong. VERDICT Recommended as funny and insightful reading.”
“What you can expect from Rich’s writing is to be transported to a place that is at its core, fundamentally familiar, but at the same time, utterly confusing. It’s like entering your childhood home through a secret passage no one ever told you about. It’s these different approaches that make Rich’s writing so enjoyable, because his stories are absurd without being entirely fantastical. They are relatable, more than anything,” says MTV.com.
“Ridiculous in the very best way… Spoiled Brats mocks its protagonists without being mean; we find ourselves sympathizing and relating with these characters even as we laugh at them. Straight-up cynicism feels a little cruel, but Rich stays away from that, and his stories make the same old tropes feel fresh and funny and new again… Spoiled Brats is undeniably funny, but its real genius is that, like the best comedy, it encourages introspection as well,” says Bookpage.
When is it available?
You can borrow this one from the Blue Hills branch of the Hartford Public Library, unless some spoiled brat has beaten you to it.
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 Emerald Light in the Air: Stories
by Donald Antrim
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $22, 176
Who is this author?
Donald Antrim is hailed by literary critics as one of the finest contemporary American authors. His novels include Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist, and his memoir, The Afterlife, memorialized his talented and tragic mother and her indelible effect on his life. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, where all the stories in The Emerald Light In the Air first appeared, and he is an associate professor in the writing program at Columbia University. He won a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, known informally as a “genius grant.” Emerald was named as a Best Book of 2014 by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement and The Independent.
What is this book about?
It’s about ordinary people doing ordinary things, but described in the most extraordinary fashion. This is a compilation of pieces Antrim has written over the past 17 years, and each captures emotionally fragile people at a turning point, and not necessarily a good one. His characters do simple things like trying to buy flowers, taking a walk through the city, coupling and uncoupling, driving through a forest: but nothing ever is simple in an Antrim story. He writes with amazing control and insight, and this collection will add additional gloss to his already shining reputation.
Why you’ll like it:
In 1999, Antrim made the prestigious New Yorker list of the 20 best writers under age 40. Today, he would undoubtedly make any list of 20 best writers over that age. He has been called “one of our period’s true artists of anxiety,” a description you will understand if you read his new collection. He presents deeply flawed people in a unsparing yet empathetic way: you feel for these people, fear for them and hope, with fingers crossed, that they will survive their richly detailed experience intact. Antrim has himself suffered emotional breakdowns and knows the bleak and dangerous territory of anxiety all too well. That he can take such raw and painful material and turn it into such delicately powerful stories is a testament to his considerable talent.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “The seven gripping stories gathered in Antrim’s long-awaited debut collection showcase the author’s ability to employ surreal and traditional modes to describe the emotional demons plaguing his characters. The opening story, “An Actor Prepares,” is about a dean at a “small liberal-arts institution” who shares his creepy experiences directing a twisted version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The quietly troubling “Pond, With Mud” draws out an awkward chance encounter between a man and his girlfriend’s son’s biological father in a train station. The remaining five stories speak to each other to form a sort of thematic saga, which portrays the nuanced connections between flawed but sympathetic characters. “Solace” highlights the pleasant early stages of a relationship, and follows a couple’s romantic rendezvous in their friends’ New York apartments; more seasoned pairs are entangled and on the brink of collapse, but maneuver around each other to achieve temporary harmony in “Another Manhattan,” “He Knew,” and “Ever Since.” Antrim is well attuned to the idiosyncracies that define the rhythm of a relationship, and is particularly adept at giving shape to the complications that inevitably arise between lovers. A collection of great depth to be read, reread, and above all, relished.”
“In the last few years one of my favorite novelists, Donald Antrim, has devoted himself to short stories—not as finger exercises, but with a combined intensity, delicacy, and feeling for tradition that set him apart from any writer of his generation . . . What is it about Antrim? He writes as if prose were his native language: his sentences have the matter-of-fact pathos and absurdity of dreams . . . His themes are the Chekhovian classics—ambivalence toward the life at hand; yearning for the life that might have been—and he evokes unhappy love with a sensuousness and a subtle, plausible magic that recall Cheever at his best,” says Lorin Stein in The Paris Review Daily.
“No one writes more eloquently about the male crack-up and the depths of loneliness than Donald Antrim; the stories in The Emerald Light in the Air, hopscotching between the surreal and ordinary, comic and heartbreaking, are dazzling,” says Vanity Fair.
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Couples unravel and anxieties are revealed in this batch of urbane, wry and interior stories enlivened by Antrim’s talent for gamesmanship with words. Antrim’s debut story collection—his first book of fiction since The Verificationist (2000) — sticks to a remarkably narrow set of premises. In “Pond, With Mud,” a hard-drinking New Yorker is losing his grip on reality and growing distant from his fiancée and young would-be stepson; in “Another Manhattan,” a mentally ill New Yorker is failing at the simple act of buying his wife some flowers before dinner; in “Ever Since,” a couple grows strained at a boozy New York literary party. This repetition of setups would be tiring were Antrim not so capable of conjuring a variety of tones and surprising amount of subtlety from these common predicaments. In “Another Manhattan,” for instance, the man’s illness is slowly and powerfully revealed by his inability to stop the florist from adding more and more flowers to the bouquet; as the gift absurdly blossoms, his despair falls into sharp relief. “An Actor Prepares” is a more surrealist look at emotional fissures narrated by a college acting teacher whose guidance to his cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream reveals both his sexual fixations and romantic failures. And in the closing title story, a man left suicidal by a broken relationship heads back home and, through a series of misadventures, winds up navigating his car through a forest. “The Emerald Light in the Air” refers to the sickly tint in the air before a storm, which captures the overall mood of these stories, where bad news seems to be just about ready to come raining down. But there’s wisdom and humor here, too; Antrim is attuned to the way couples struggle to make themselves heard or obscure their true feelings. A deceptively spiky set of meditations on romantic failure.”
Library Journal says: The stories in Antrim’s engaging new collection have been published . . . in The New Yorker. Many are set in Manhattan, but they are not stereotypically brittle New York stories. Antrim’s city dwellers are perpetual renters of fifth-floor walk-ups with careers they cannot sustain as lawyers or painters or actors. They drink more than they should (one story is called “Another Manhattan”), fall easily into infidelities, have a taste for fine clothing they cannot afford, and check themselves in and out of the city’s psychiatric wards. At the outset of a story called “He Knew,” a husband feels that “he might soon be coming out of the Dread.” He leads his chronically panicked wife on their ritual walk along Madison Avenue, stopping first at Bergdorf Goodman and then working their way “north through the East Sixties and Seventies, into the low Eighties, touring the expensive shops.” The whole story happens as they walk, worry, and lose each other along the way, and we worry right along with them. VERDICT Master storyteller Antrim has an original voice and an acute sensitivity to the spectrum of human emotion. These are stories this reviewer won’t soon forget.”
When is it available?
Antrim’s fine collection of stories is available at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
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The Story Hour
By Thrity Umrigar
(Harper, $25.99, 336 pages)
Who is this author?
Born in India and educated there and in Ohio at Ohio State University and Kent State University, Thrity Umrigar is both a journalist and an author, whose five previous novels are The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time. She also wrote a memoir, First Darling of the Morning. As a journalist, she has written for the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Huffington Post and other newspapers. Her awards include a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize. Umrigar is a professor of English at Case Western Reserve University and lives in Cleveland.
What is this book about?
A psychologist, who knows that it goes against professional ethics to befriend a patient, nevertheless finds herself so caught up in one woman’s problems that they do become close, and that closeness brings with it both good and bad results. That basic outline may sound like a dry case study in the dangers of attachments, but in Umrigar’s capable hands, it is a very moving, human story.
Maggie, a black woman married to an Indian man, is the doctor. Lakshmi, an Indian woman trapped in a bleak arranged marriage, is the suicidal patient. As they become friends they let down barriers, and while the openness and caring are truly therapeutic for Lakshmi, they risk setting up expectations that perhaps are unrealistic, as it turns out that the doctor has some secrets of her own that shock the patient and vice versa. Can forgiveness and willingness to honor second chances win out when the foundations of a relationship are shaken?
Why you’ll like it:
Umrigar makes a strong case here for human compassion and connectedness, for the power of genuine friendship to enlarge the people involved and for the realization that reaching out can sometimes result in painful choices. You will learn from it, and, according to what Umrigar told an NPR interviewer, so did she:
“What happened to me in the course of writing this book is that I came to a new understanding of what the stock therapy model actually means. And it made me realize that it’s really a tribute to the act of storytelling — that it is in telling different stories about ourselves one central narrative emerges, and once that happens, there is potential then to play with that narrative and change it, and that is how personal transformation can perhaps begin to occur, which, of course, is the ultimate goal of therapy. And I do believe there is something extremely valuable and cathartic about telling each other our life stories.”
What others are saying:
Says Publishers Weekly: “The sixth novel from Umrigar is a deeply moving portrait of connection, disconnection, and missed connections set in an unnamed Northeastern university city. Maggie Bose is a black psychologist married to an Indian man; when an Indian woman, Lakshmi, is admitted to the hospital after a suicide attempt, Maggie is assigned the case. She understands the woman’s sense of isolation, and offers to treat her pro bono. Lakshmi is lonely, married to a man who doesn’t love her, and she works without pay in his grocery store and restaurant. Maggie tries to befriend Lakshmi by telling her stories about her life. When Lakshmi brings food as thanks, Maggie and her husband encourage the patient to accept catering jobs in order to earn her own money. Soon, the lines blur between patient and friend. A secret from Lakshmi’s past and the impulsive action that follows her discovery of Maggie’s affair change their lives. Although Umrigar is sometimes heavy-handed, this compassionate and memorable novel is remarkable for the depth and complexity of its characters.”
Library Journal’s starred review says: “Maggie is normally very careful to maintain professional boundaries in her clinical practice. Yet when she begins treating Lakshmi, a young Indian woman who has been hospitalized after attempting suicide, the woman’s loneliness strikes a chord in the African American psychologist, and Maggie realizes that what she needs more than therapy is a friend.
“What starts out as a project of sorts for Maggie to get Lakshmi to value her own worth develops into a true friendship. The narrative alternates by chapter between the two women as a bond between them develops despite cultural and educational differences – that is, until a revealed secret threatens to destroy how they view each other. Critically acclaimed Indian American writer Umrigar’s most recent novel explores cross-cultural friendships, troubled marriages, love, loss, and forgiveness with her characteristic wisdom, humor, and warmth. VERDICT This satisfying, psychologically complex story will appeal to a wide range of readers. Because its characters are both smart and likable without being sentimental or idealized, it may appeal to the chick lit crowd as much as to readers who enjoy multicultural literary fiction.”
Kirkus Reviews says: “Umrigar’s novel begins as a small domestic drama and develops into a forceful examination of identity, cultural isolation and the power of storytelling. When Dr. Maggie Bose first meets Lakshmi after the young woman’s suicide attempt, she can already guess at Lakshmi’s story—abusive husband, familial separation, cultural isolation—a life in America that is so like those of the many other immigrant women she’s treated. They begin weekly therapy sessions, though Lakshmi seems unaware of the purpose—are they not new friends, simply sharing their stories? Lakshmi’s tales of her Indian village, of the time she saved the landowner’s son, her care for the village elephant, her pride at a hard-won education, are shadowed by her current life in a cold Midwestern college town. Her husband treats her with contempt, demands she work long hours at his restaurant and, perhaps worse, forbids contact with her family in India. Maggie suspects Lakshmi is less in need of psychotherapy than autonomy. Maggie and her husband, Sudhir (an Indian math professor, a fact that delights Lakshmi), begin promoting her as a caterer to their friends. Maggie teaches her to drive. Lakshmi’s independence even improves her marriage. And then Lakshmi tells Maggie a story that rewrites her whole narrative; she did a shocking thing, and for these six years in America, she has been the villain and her husband, the victim. Maggie is now repelled, though she has her own secrets. Despite 30 years of happy marriage to Sudhir, she is having a reckless affair. When Lakshmi finds out, this destroys the story of Maggie and Sudhir’s enviable marriage, and so Lakshmi takes revenge. The novel begins with a suicide attempt and ends with the regenerating possibilities of storytelling as a means of healing, of shaping identity, of endlessly re-creating the world. An impressive writer, Umrigar delivers another smart, compulsively readable work. “
Says the Boston Globe: “A taut, suspenseful page-turner with depth, heart, and psychological credibility whose believable and enduring characters ponder the meaning of friendship, the challenges of marriage, and the value of storytelling itself.”
When is it available?
It’s on the shelves of 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 Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory
By Anne Farrow
(Wesleyan University Press, $27.95, 208 pages)
Who is this author?
Anne Farrow, a former editor and reporter for the Cape Cod Times and The Courant and itsNortheast Magazine, where she joined colleagues in publishing the 2005 bestseller Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery, now writes about Connecticut’s history in the 18th and 19th centuries and how trading in ivory and slaves connected the state to Africa. Farrow lives in Haddam.
What is this book about?
In Logbooks, Farrow links two true and seemingly disparate stories: how a famous and wealthy Connecticut family profited for many years from the slave trade and how her mother’s life was destroyed by dementia. The unexpected link is the slippery and elusive quality of memory: Farrow writes that if we cannot remember things – if our understanding of our own history is not complete – then we cannot hope to know who we really are. She chronicles how Saltonstall family ships sailed from Connecticut to Sierra Leone in the mid-1700s to pick up fresh water and slaves, all duly noted in logbooks kept by young Dudley Saltonstall, son of the owner, that document three such voyages. Citing other writers, historians and psychologists, Farrow explores how it is possible to lose or just ignore recollections, and how that capacity for forgetting worked efficiently to hide memories of Connecticut’s complicity in the slave trade and thereby dull the guilt that should have remained sharp.
Why you’ll like it:
Farrow says: “. . .the 80 handwritten pages of Dudley Saltonstall’s logbooks offer a painful glimpse of a vanished past. They are an emissary from that time, proof of something that really happened. They are a powerful form of evidence.”
She provides plenty of evidence in this painstakingly researched and well-written exploration of history and memory. Here are more of her thoughts, written during the troubles in Ferguson, Mo., for www.philly.com:
“Slavery in America was not a footnote, not “the sad chapter” of our history but the cornerstone of our making. Three generations of eminent historians have documented the astonishing scope, duration, economic importance, and savagery of bondage in America, but this key piece of our past still is not prominent in the narrative of our nation.
“In studying a set of 18th-century ships’ logs linking Connecticut and the slave trade, I saw that when we made stolen black labor our national bedrock and created a system where inferiority was identifiable by color, we doomed ourselves to the present day and a nation where justice and parity for black people have not been achieved.
“The best and most educated people owned slaves, promulgated its benefits, and enjoyed the wealth slavery created – the keeper of my Connecticut logbooks was not an obscure mariner but a Saltonstall and the scion of an aristocratic family.
“This comfort level with the omnipresence of human bondage became a cascading series of accepted and pathological untruths: Black people were designed for slavery; they didn’t mind being enslaved; they weren’t really human; and they didn’t recognize degradation and injustice.
“If, as a country, we truly understood the extraordinary human catastrophe we created when we became economically dependent on the oppression of black people, if we took this in all its terrible dimensions into our hearts and then our history, we would not be scratching our heads over Ferguson. We would understand exactly why the legacy of enslavement is raging through our cities and begin to do something about it.”
What others are saying:
For www.truthdig.com, Paul von Blum writes:
“This especially engaging book examines the impact of the logbooks she discovered in 2004, written by 18-year-old Dudley Saltonstall, a crewman on three voyages of sailing ships owned by an affluent Connecticut merchant in the mid-18th century. Saltonstall and his fellow crew members were on a mission to West Africa to purchase black people as slaves—as he noted in the logbooks, “to take on slaves, wood, and water”—and to sell them to England’s colonial possessions in the Caribbean.
“Some of the residual human “cargo” returned to New England, where their unwilling abduction and forced labor created the foundation of wealth both in that region and in America. These voyages were an integral part of the broader transatlantic slave trade that has forever despoiled Western history and inextricably links American racial politics of the present and recent past to its historical roots. . . .
“Farrow’s inclusion of her mother’s dementia in her book, however, goes far beyond a personal story alone. It is inextricably linked to the broader theme: memory and history. By addressing her mother’s loss of memory, and thus the loss of her personal identity, the author encourages her readers to move from the micro to the macro. The achingly human consequences of dementia transform memory and history from an abstraction into something powerfully human and concrete. By juxtaposing her mother’s story with the logbooks of Dudley Saltonstall, she underscores her central premise: Americans still fundamentally lack a meaningful memory of a slave labor system that held millions of people in savage bondage.”
“A powerful story, heartbreaking, revealing, and redemptive. The Logbooks invites us to join a voyage of discovery into the ‘triangles’ of the trans-Atlantic slave trade—a deeply personal and empathetic exploration of history, memory, and identity. To lose our grasp on the past, Farrow reminds us, is to become unmoored from our selves,” says John Wood Sweet of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Anne Farrow has been on a remarkable journey over the past several years, and this book is a record of that sojourn. In a sense, it is itself a logbook. Farrow’s strong and passionate voice, her deep, even fierce empathy, comes through powerfully as she leads the reader along the path that she took toward a personal engagement with Connecticut’s involvement with slavery—and the slave trade—challenging the reader to really see this aspect of our history as ‘not a chapter but the book itself,’” says author and historian Robert P. Forbes.
“Anne Farrow’s book is courageous, captivating, and necessary. Once again, Farrow has demonstrated that she is a masterful historian, educator, and storyteller, guiding readers through yesterday’s hard truths and making connections to today,” says Olivia S. White, executive director, The Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
When is it available?
This important book is widely available in the Hartford Library system and can be borrowed from the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Camp Field, Goodwin, 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!
African American Connecticut Explored
Edited by Elizabeth J. Normen with Katherine J. Harris, Stacey K. Close and Wm. Frank Mitchell
(Wesleyan, University Press, $40, 452 pages)
Who is this author?
Elizabeth J. Normen is publisher of Connecticut Explored, the nonprofit magazine of Connecticut history, which is created with input from 30 heritage, arts and educational organizations across the state. She lives in West Hartford and holds degrees from Smith College and Trinity College, and has worked in arts management for Hartford area museums, including the Wadsworth Atheneum and Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington and the nonprofit arts-funding Ann T. Roberts Foundation.
On Wednesday, Feb. 18, at 7 p.m., Normen and Stacey Close, professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University, will give a free Director’s College Series talk at Farmington Library, 6 Monteith Dr., Farmington. Advance registration is required: 860-673-6791 or http://www.farmingtonlibraries.org.
What is this book about?
Did you know that in the nearly 400 years of its existence, Connecticut allowed slavery for 205 years, until abolishing it in 1848? That is just one of the myriad facts you will learn in African American Connecticut Explored, a book of essays by prominent state historians and others. The subjects include the Black Governors of Connecticut, nationally important black abolitionists such as clergymen Amos Beman and James Pennington, the African American community’s response to the Amistad trial, the letters of Joseph O. Cross of the 29th Regiment of Colored Volunteers in the Civil War and the Civil Rights work of baseball great Jackie Robinson. Singer Marion Anderson and author Ann Petry, as well as business people, community leaders, educators and others are profiled.The book also documents the daily life of African Americans over time, including communities that formed in the early1800s. This book is a collaboration of Connecticut Explored and the Amistad Center for Art & Culture, with support from the State Historic Preservation Office and Connecticut’s Freedom Trail.
The contributing writers are Billie M. Anthony, Christopher Baker, Whitney Bayers, Barbara Beeching, Andra Chantim, Stacey K. Close, Jessica Colebrook, Christopher Collier, Hildegard Cummings, Barbara Donahue, Mary M. Donohue, Nancy Finlay, Jessica A. Gresko, Katherine J. Harris, Charles (Ben) Hawley, Peter Hinks, Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Eileen Hurst, Dawn Byron Hutchins, Carolyn B. Ivanoff, Joan Jacobs, Mark H. Jones, Joel Lang, Melonae’ McLean, Wm. Frank Mitchell, Hilary Moss, Cora Murray, Elizabeth J. Normen, Elisabeth Petry, Cynthia Reik, Ann Y. Smith, John Wood Sweet, Charles A. Teale Sr., Barbara M. Tucker, Tamara Verrett, Liz Warner, David O. White, and Yohuru Williams.
Why you’ll like it:
Here in one volume, told in many different voices, is an aspect of Connecticut’s history too long unknown or ignored by many of its residents. African American Connecticut history is, of course, everyone’s Connecticut history, as events and issues concerning that community did not arise in a vacuum. Some readers may know some of the facts and stories in this book, but it’s likely that few know all of them. Readers in Connecticut or in any state, for that matter, will learn a great deal from this richly researched and well-told account.
What others are saying:
“African American Connecticut Explored is an ambitious and important book that covers the broad arc of Connecticut’s African American history from the colonial era through the mid-twentieth century. This is a welcomed addition to early African Americana,” says Erica Armstrong Dunbar, associate professor of black American studies and history at the University of Delaware.
Says historian and author Jeremy Brecher: “This is the first publication that brings the entire arc of Connecticut African American history together in a single volume based on serious scholarship and a comprehensive, social history-oriented perspective. It is a rich compendium of information and insight.”
When is it available?
This book is available 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 Ways of the Dead
By Neely Tucker
(Viking, $27.95, 288 pages)
Who is this author?
Neely Tucker is a seventh-generation Mississippian who was the top journalism student in his class at the University of Mississippi. He went on to a stellar career as a reporter, working for Florida Today, Gannett News Service, the Miami Herald, and the Detroit Free Press, for whom he ran the paper’s European Bureau in 1993. He’s been at the Washington Post for the past 14 years and was a foreign correspondent in Zimbabwe, where he and his wife adopted a daughter (they also have 4-year-old twin sons). Publishers Weekly chose his 2004 memoir, Love in the Driest Season, as one of the Best 25 Books of the Year. His reporting has taken him to more than 60 countries or territories around the world. The family has a big Rottweiler named Sully, which, probably not coincidentally, is also the name of the hero of his new novel, a journalist investigating a murder in Washington, D.C.
What is this book about?
The daughter of a Washington judge is found dead in a slum and three black youths are accused, but a veteran (and hard-drinking, of course) reporter looking into the case believes the killing is connected instead to several under-investigated cold cases and the disappearance of a student. This first in what is planned as a series of crime novels is based on an actual case in the 1990s known as the Princeton Place murders. The city wants a quick conviction, but Sully, despite pressure from the government, cops and his own bosses, just wants the truth. That he may be risking his own life to reveal it just adds to the tension and excitement.
Why you’ll like it:
It takes a veteran newsman to conjure up a credible veteran newsman, and Tucker has the chops to do it with style as well as substance. He also captures the days before the Internet began sapping the strength and power of print. Readers of his work for the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine know that he is an exhilarating wordsmith, and if you are not already familiar with his work, you will enjoy making the acquaintance of this captivating writer.
What others are saying:
Booklist’s starred review says: “Sarah Reese was murdered in a bad neighborhood in Washington, D.C., while waiting for her mother to pick her up from dance class. She was not the first girl to die in the area, but she was the first white girl, setting off a storm of media attention. Three young African American men had been taunting her before she ran off, and they were easy arrests for the police anxious to solve the case. Reporter Sully Carter, however, pieces together—based on the number of young women missing and dead in the area—a more likely scenario involving a serial killer. The police and Carter’s bosses at the paper don’t agree, but he sticks to his guns and does his own investigation, fighting authority all the way. If this story sounds familiar, it should—it’s based on the Princeton Place murders that occurred in Washington in the late 1990s. By placing the novel in that same era, when newspapers, rather than the Internet, were still the primary source for news, journalist Tucker is free to use the newsroom as the focus for his story. He has a great protagonist, too, in Carter, a hard-bitten reporter carrying plenty of baggage—just right for a series lead. With the emphasis on gritty urban life in a city rife with racism and blight, the novel evokes the Washington, D.C., of George Pelecanos. This riveting debut novel should spawn a terrific series.”
Says Publishers Weekly: “Foreign correspondent Tucker uses the real-life Princeton Place murders in Washington, D.C., during the 1990s as background for his exciting fiction debut. The murder of Sarah Reese, the 15-year-old daughter of a politically connected Washington judge, turns unwanted attention to the predominately black neighborhood where she was killed. But newspaper reporter Sully Carter sees a larger story about several missing area women and a murdered prostitute. Sully turns to neighborhood crime boss Sly Hastings for help when politicians, the police, and his own editors don’t care about these cold cases, which he believes are linked to the teenager’s death. The quick arrest of three young black men for Sarah’s murder makes Sully suspicious. The brisk plot is punctuated by an insightful view of journalism and manipulative editors, shady politicians, and apathetic cops, while also showing residents working to create a better neighborhood. Readers will be pleased that Tucker leaves room for a sequel.”
A starred review from Kirkus says: “Clinton-era Washington, D.C., provides the squalid, menacing backdrop for this crisp, crafty and sharply observed debut by a seasoned reporter. As the curtain’s about to fall on the 20th century, Sully Carter, a one-time war correspondent weighed down with physical and psychological scars, finds himself working the crime beat in Washington, D.C., at a time when criminal behavior is all but taken for granted at opposite ends of the sociopolitical spectrum. For all of Sully’s battle-hardened professionalism, his bosses don’t think he’s quite stable—or sober—enough to cover the murder of a teenage girl near a convenience store, especially since the victim is the daughter of a high-profile federal judge with whom Sully’s had (let’s say) negative history. Nevertheless, Sully works as if he’s in a war zone and eventually connects this murder with a series of cold cases involving dead and missing young women in the same at-risk neighborhood. Tucker, a 25-year newspaper veteran who’s spent most of his career at the Washington Post, writes with rueful authority and caustic familiarity about the District’s criminal and working classes as well as the dreary anxiety of working for a fin-de-siècle big-city newspaper. Along with an ear for inner-city argot almost as finely tuned as those of Elmore Leonard and fellow D.C. crime writer George Pelacanos, Tucker has a knack for ingenious plotting that jolts his narrative into unexpected directions. The shocks resound with acrid, illuminating insights into the District’s nettlesome intersections of race and class at the hinge of the millennium. Rich yet taut description, edgy storytelling, rock-and-rolling dialogue, and a deeply flawed but compelling hero add up to a luminous first novel.”
Library Journal’s starred review says: “Sarah Reese, the white teenage daughter of a prominent judge, is found murdered behind a convenience store in Washington, DC. Three young black guys are fingered for the murder simply because they had pestered her earlier. Thus begins a late 1990s-set, headlines-grabbing story that Sully Carter, a Mississippi-born veteran reporter, is covering. Although former Bosnian war correspondent Sully suffers from PTSD and alcoholism, he still knows how to go behind enemy lines. By using a local “warlord,” Sully worms his way deeper into the truth of this girl’s death and how it connects with a disturbing pattern of unsolved murders or disappearances of neighborhood women. Trouble is Sully may have set himself up for a fall in the process. VERDICT Journalist-turned-novelist Tucker has crafted an addictive, twisty debut, proving that crimes involving politics and sex can still surprise and thrill us. The slightly detached and cynical air will resonate with George Pelecanos readers and yet there’s a whiff of Elmore Leonard, too.
“Setting his tale in the 1990s . . . gives Tucker the chance to show how much newspapers have changed. The 24-hour Internet news cycle hasn’t yet taken root, tomorrow’s front page is still more important than getting the story online immediately and good reporters are dependent on door knocks, land lines and library research rather than e-mail, cellphones and Google. Tucker pulls off a neat, double-twist ending . . . There’s a lot to like in Tucker’s storytelling,” says The Washington Post, where Tucker works.
When is it available?
This gritty crime drama can be found at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Blue Hills 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!
Mermaids In Paradise
By Lydia Millet
(Norton, $25.95, 304 pages)
Who is this author?
Lydia Millet knows her way around satire and the fraught relationship between humans and the natural world, an ongoing theme in her writing. She has published nine novels, a story collection and books for younger readers. She’s been a finalist for National Book Critics Circle, Los Angeles Times and Pulitzer Prize awards for fiction, and her novel, My Happy Life, won the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. Born in Boston, educated at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holder of a master’s degree from Duke University in environmental science, she now lives in Arizona with her children.
What is this book about?
There’s trouble in Paradise. Also, mermaids.
The story begins when a newlywed couple – Chip is a jock who loves outdoor adventures; Deb is a born skeptic who narrates the tale – arrive at their honeymoon destination, a resort on an island in the Caribbean. There they meet a marine biologist who claims she has seen mermaids frolicking around a nearby coral reef.
Here’s how Millet describes them: “Their hair floated in clouds behind them, long, weightless-looking swaths, like seaweed, as did their tails, which moved up and down slowly as the tails of dolphins move, not side to side like the tails of fish. These tails were graceful, beautiful muscles, scales shining silver in rows and rows of small coins.”
In no time, the company that owns the resort starts plans to exploit the heretofore mythological maids of the sea, and Deb and Chip, with help from an ex-Navy SEAL and a Japanese hipster, set out to stop those plans.
Why you’ll like it:
Millet can write very sharp satire and has a wonderfully whimsical imagination, but her writing also employs empathy and a real concern for the natural world that so many seem bent on exploiting. While, at first, this novel seems as though it could have sprung from the hard drives of such tropical wits as Dave Barry or Carl Hiaasen, Millet displays her own very powerful style. Mermaids in Paradise is kind of a Free Willy for grown-ups, with plenty of laughs and a serious underpinning., a comic thriller that raises some very serious issues while it entertains. As Deb says: “. . . it had taken our ancestors four million years to figure out fire. It took them another five million years to develop writing. And then, in a great acceleration — just a brief, screaming handful of seasons — we got electricity, nukes, commercial air travel, trips to the moon. Overnight the white sands of the parrotfish were running out. Here went the poles, melting, and here, at last, went paradise.”
What others are saying:
In a starred review, Kirkus says: “A Caribbean honeymoon turns into a media circus over a mermaid sighting in this laser-focused satire from Millet. Deborah, the narrator of Millet’s smart and funny novel, her ninth, is an LA woman who’s snarky to the core: She’s skeptical of her fiance’s hard-core workout regimen, of the rituals of bachelorette parties, even of her best friend’s own snark. So when her new husband, Chip, proposes a honeymoon in the British Virgin Islands, she’s suspicious of tourism’s virtues. Deb’s early interactions seem to justify her defensiveness: One man gets the wrong idea when she accidentally brushes her foot against his leg over drinks: “He made me feel like my toes were prostitutes,” she tells her husband. “Like my toes, Chip, were dolled up in Frederick’s of Hollywood.” The comic, unbelieving tone Millet gives Deb helps sell what happens next: Roped into a scuba dive by an aquatic researcher, she and a small group spot a bunch of mermaids at a nearby reef. Despite the group’s efforts to keep the discovery hidden, the resort gets the news and rushes to capitalize on it, while Deb and her cohorts are eager to preserve the sole example of unadulterated wonder the 21st century has offered them. The novel has the shape and pace of a thriller—Deb is held by corporate goons, the researcher goes mysteriously missing, paramilitary men are called in—and it thrives on Deb’s witty, wise narration. Millet means to criticize a rapacious culture that wants to simplify and categorize everything, from the resort profiteers to churchy types who see the mermaids as symbols of godlessness. The ending underscores the consequences of such blinkered mindsets without losing its essential comedy. An admirable example of a funny novel with a serious message that works swimmingly. Dive in.”
Library Journal’s starred review says: “World-class worrier Deb is a quietly hilarious observer of and cautious participant in life, especially her life with new husband Chip, an über-friendly gamer addicted to extreme sports. When the couple settles on a tropical island for a honeymoon, Deb reluctantly agrees to a scuba-diving adventure arranged by Chip and Nancy, a parrotfish expert Chip meets. A sighting of real mermaids, Nancy’s wish to videotape them for scientific study, and the spiraling viral insanity of social media soon unleash all the hellhounds of today’s polarized society. When corporate powers using militarized thugs plan to “theme park” the mermaids, Deb, Chip, and Nancy rally a crew of defenders, including an ex-Navy SEAL and a brilliant, gorgeous Tokyo videojournalist. Throw in a possible murder and a kidnapping and thus is born a wonderfully comedic, poignant thriller that will have you believing in the existence of mermaids. VERDICT Deb’s endearing insecurity, unexamined courage, and unwavering love for her husband allow for a charming, albeit uncomfortable, examination of the power of skewed worldviews running off the rails, fueled by ignorance and fear, while smarter, cooler heads push back. Brilliant and wildly funny, with well-placed sharp jolts of sobering reality; Pulitzer Prize finalist Millet is pure genius.”
Says The New York Times Book Review – “It’s a bold move to make mermaids the center of a grown-up story, even in a novel as hilariously funny as this one. But Lydia Millet’s novels raise the bar for boldness. Through the window of the unlikeliest events or plot twists, she poses the questions many contemporary writers shy away from, or simply skirt…Millet’s writing—witty, colorful, sometimes poetic—is, line by line, a joy to read, and her storytelling is immensely compelling. But there’s always an equally compelling philosophical discussion humming beneath everything. In Mermaids in Paradise that discussion is about the different ways people see the world, and how perceptions form belief…In her most original way, Millet dares us to examine how we ever know when to be “hard core,” or when it’s safe to let down our guard. It’s a testament to her novel’s power that these mermaids retain their mystery, and that the ending of Mermaids in Paradise is one of the most luminous and unsettling in recent fiction.”
When is it available?
You can find Mermaids 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!
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