Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories
By Joyce Carol Oates
(Ecco, $24.99, 288 pages)
Who is this author?
Book reviewers often joke about Joyce Carol Oates’ phenomenal productivity. Perhaps she has writers locked in her basement churning out page after page after page under her byline? No, of course not…at least, as far as we know. But Oates is nothing if not prolific: short stories, more than 50 novels (some with the bylines Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly), plays, essays, memoir, children’s books, poetry, criticism – you name the genre, she has probably been there – and still finds time to teach at Princeton University. Just contemplating her output – and amazing skill – is overwhelming. Her talent is undeniable: she has won such major literary prizes as the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Humanities Medal, which is America’s highest civilian honor for the arts, the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, to name but a few.
What is this book about?
“Black Dahlia & White Rose” comprises 11 previously uncollected stories, all of which demonstrate Oates’ facility for creating disturbing situations, unreliable narrators who may be hiding crimes from others and from themselves, doomed victims and the dread that lurks in domesticity. The title story is based on fact: there was a murder victim in Hollywood in the 1940s named Elizabeth Short whom the feverish press coverage dubbed “the Black Dahlia,” and her roommate was none other than Norma Jean Baker, soon to be known worldwide as Marilyn Monroe. Other tales are set in the frightening world of a maximum security prison. Still others involve an adulterous wife with a strange, part-hyena lover; a mother reporting abuse who may be the abuser herself, a father who is starting a new life but may be trapped by deeds from his past, and other sketchy situations.
Why you’ll like it:
Oates has an almost mysterious way of presenting ugly situations in beautiful prose. While her subject matter may make some readers uneasy, Oates’s superb writing makes them worth reading. She has the ability to understand and explain, without excusing them, the things people do to get by or get past their worst behavior and its consequences. This collection is not one of supernatural stories, but their effect can be spooky and horrifying nonetheless. You could certainly consider this book a Halloween bagful of literary tricks and treats.
What others are saying:
“The new short story collection from the prolific Oates …contains sinister and charged moments tempered by humor and masterful storytelling. In “Deceit,” a woman must face school authorities to explain the fresh bruises on her daughter’s body, and in “Run Kiss Daddy,” a man is given a second chance at life with a “beautiful new family small and vulnerable as a mouse cupped trembling in the hand,” but is confronted by old ghosts when he takes them to a favorite vacation spot and unearths something morbid. Unsettling, potent, and suspenseful, these well-crafted and haunting stories attest to Oates’ superior imagination and mastery of the craft, and provide a welcome addition to her oeuvre,” says Publishers Weekly.
Says Booklist: “[A] masterfully honed collection of dark tales… With precision and force, the ever-mesmerizing Oates rips open the scrim of ordinariness to expose the chaos that undermines every human notion of control, reason, and sanctuary.”
“Another gallery of grotesquerie from the staggeringly prolific Oates. This latest collection of Oates’ previously published short stories (the sheer range of venues, from Playboy to Ellery Queen, The New Yorker to video game-inspired e-fiction is an indication of her vast reach) showcases her talent for imbuing mundane events with menace and the kind of irony that springs from narrow brushes with disaster… Protagonists are drawn, with equal authority, from the underclass and the self-satisfied professional class ….Narrators can be so subtly unreliable as to force readers to question their own perceptions. …Although her material can be macabre, mawkish and deeply unsettling, Oates’ hypnotic prose ensures that readers will be unable to look away,” says Kirkus Reviews.
When is it available?
You can borrow this book now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Blue Hills or 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!
San Miguel
By T.C. Boyle
(Viking, $27.95, 384 pages)
Who is this author?
Born in New York, now a Californian, T.C. Boyle has written 13 novels, including “World’s End,” which won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award; “Drop City, a National Book Award finalist, and the bestseller “The Women.” He won a PEN/Malmud Award for Excellence in the short story and has published nine collections. You may have read his stories in The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, McSweeney’s, and Playboy. And yes, he also goes by T. Coraghessen (pronounced “kuh-RAGG-issun”) Boyle, having changed his middle name from John when he was 17. The “T” is for Thomas.
What is this book about?
It’s about California dreamin,’ perhaps, but certainly not “that warm California sun.” Set on San Miguel, one of the cold, rainy, windswept Channel Islands off the northern California coast, this novel is somewhat of a prequel to Boyle’s 2011 “When the Killings Done,” also set on those stark shores. Based on historical fact, it is the story of two families who come to live there, about 50 years apart. In 1888, one family arrives to run a sheep farm in the hopes that the ailing wife will be cured by the fresh winds. That’s not likely, and the island also becomes a kind of isolated Alcatraz for their adopted teenage daughter, who wants to escape and become an actress. In 1930, a New York librarian and her restless World War I veteran husband try their luck on San Miguel, with rather more success. Rich with detail and description, the book offers a slice of California history unfamiliar to most readers and a penetrating look at the inner lives of three women.
Why you’ll like it:
Known for his formidable ego, zany humor, equally zany choice of clothing, unusual characters and his deep interest in nature’s unpredictability and mercilessness and man’s often unwitting but nevertheless dire effect on the environment, Boyle is a challenging author. He’s fascinated by anti-heroes and remote locales, and can explore the female mind with as much skill as he uses to describe those harsh, yet entrancing, landscapes.
What others are saying:
“A saga of women, three women brought to the island by men…Boyle has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and exacting…[his] spirited novels are a reckoning with consequence laced with humor, insight, and pathos,” says Terry Tempest Williams in The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The story of two families who lived on the windiest and wildest of the Channel Islands…the layering of these isolated lives, the archeology of human habitation, the different responses to self-sufficiency make this one of the most satisfying novels in Boyle’s canon,” says Susan Salter Reynolds in Los Angeles Magazine.
“In T.C. Boyle’s San Miguel, two strong women generations apart are seduced and mistreated by the same powerful entity – not a man but a starkly beautiful, barely inhabited island off the California coast…Boyle portrays the heartbreaking toll San Miguel takes on these couples in a novel as beguiling as the island itself,” says O The Oprah Magazine
Says Ron Charles in The Washington Post:
“Theatrical as he appears in those outrageous shirts and jackets, in his fiction Boyle never steals the spotlight from his characters, from what they’re wrestling with. His previous novel, “When the Killing’s Done” (2011), took place on the Channel Islands off the coast of California and managed to make the complex issue of environmental reclamation tremendously exciting. His new novel, San Miguel, …again takes place on one of the Channel Islands, but the story’s tone and pace are entirely different. Instead of violently dramatizing a contemporary debate, San Miguel is an absorbing work of historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel Island in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
Ripe with exhaustively researched period detail, Boyle’s epic saga of struggle, loss, and resilience (after “When the Killing’s Done)” tackles Pacific pioneer history with literary verve. The author subtly interweaves the fates of Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Spanish and Italian migrant workers, and Chinese fishermen into the Waters’ and the Lesters’ lives, but the novel is primarily a history of the land itself, unchanging despite its various visitors and residents, and as beautiful, imperfect, and unrelenting as Boyle’s characters,” says Publishers Weekly.
“This latest novel from Boyle…portrays two families living and working on barren San Miguel Island off the coast of California. In 1888 Marantha Waters leaves her comfortable life on mainland California and moves out to San Miguel with her adopted daughter and husband, a steely Civil War veteran convinced that he’ll have success sheep ranching on the island. Marantha is seriously ill, but instead of breathing the clean, restorative air she expected, she must live in a drafty, moldy shack in a damp environment where the sun rarely shines. Years later, in 1930, Elise Lester, newly wed at 38, moves to San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran. Though Herbie has his highs and lows, they are happy, and they have two daughters. The outside world learns of their pioneering ways, and they achieve a celebrity Herbie hopes will translate into additional income. Then World War II arrives, and with war in the Pacific, their insular island location may no longer be a refuge… In this absorbing work, Boyle does an excellent job of describing the desperation and desolation of life on the island. Readers can almost feel the cold and damp seeping into their bones,” says Library Journal.
When is it available?
“San Miguel” is expected to be on the shelves of the Downtown Hartford Public Library as of Oct. 24.
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 Round House
By Louise Erdrich
(HarperCollins, $27.99, 336 pages)
Who is this author?
I am always amazed and saddened when I mention to readers my admiration for novelist Louise Erdrich and hear that they have never heard of her. That is their loss, because Erdrich is without doubt one of the finest American novelists writing today. The author of 14 novels, as well as non-fiction, short stories, poetry and children’s books, she draws deeply on her Chippewa and German heritage to create interconnected characters. Erdrich lives in Minnesota, where she owns an independent bookstore, but sets most of her work in North Dakota, where she grew up. Known best for such novels as “Love Medicine,” “The Beet Queen,” Tracks” and “The Plague of Doves,” she has created over 30 years a world of full- and mixed-breed people who appear and reappear in her fiction as the stories move backwards and forward in time. “The Round House” has just been nominated for a National Book Award in the fiction category.
What is this book about?
It’s 1988 and Joe, a teenager who lives on an Ojibwe reservation in North Darkota, finds his world shattered when his mother, Geraldine, is brutally attacked and raped. Driven deep into depression by this near-murder, she refuses to engage with the world, leaving Joe, and her husband Bazil, who is a tribal judge, to seek justice for her. That’s not easy: there are questions of jurisdiction centering on whether she was attacked on tribal, state or federal property and issues of race – was the assailant white or Ojibwe? Joe, frustrated beyond measure, finds himself relying on his three friends to seek revenge, a risky and reckless business with unforeseen results. Reviewers are likening this book to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” for its brilliantly drawn young characters and the harsh realities of law enforcement hampered by prejudice that protect the white world.
Why you’ll like it:
Erdrich’s stories are vivid, sometimes shocking and often heartbreaking, yet they also thrum with humor that is often ribald and above all they have exquisite lyrical beauty. She creates characters – particularly women – who are so real, so vital, that you sometimes feel you have stepped into an ever-expanding alternate universe. You can enter her world through any of her novels, and I predict that readers who begin with “The Round House” will find that one Erdrich novel is never enough.
What others are saying:
“Erdrich, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, sets her newest in 1988 in an Ojibwe community in North Dakota; the story pulses with urgency as she probes the moral and legal ramifications of a terrible act of violence. As Geraldine becomes enveloped by depression, her husband, Bazil (the tribal judge), and their 13-year-old son, Joe, try desperately to identify her assailant and bring him to justice. The teen quickly grows frustrated with the slow pace of the law, so Joe and three friends take matters into their own hands. But revenge exacts a tragic price, and Joe is jarringly ushered into an adult realm of anguished guilt and ineffable sadness. Through Joe’s narration, which is by turns raunchy and emotionally immediate, Erdrich perceptively chronicles the attack’s disastrous effect on the family’s domestic life, their community, and Joe’s own premature introduction to a violent world,” says Publishers Weekly.
“Likely to be dubbed the Native American “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Louise Erdrich’s moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting new novel tells of a boy’s coming of age in the wake of a brutal, racist attack on his mother. Drawn from real-life statistics about racially inspired attacks on our country’s reservations, this tale is forceful but never preachy, thanks in large part to Erdrich’s understated but glorious prose and her apparent belief in the redemptive power of storytelling,” says Sara Nelson on amazon.com.
“A gripping mystery with a moral twist: Revenge might be the harshest punishment, but only for the victims. A-,” says Entertainment Weekly.
“Erdrich threads a gripping mystery and multilayered portrait of a community through a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel,” says Karen Holt in O, the Oprah Magazine.
Library Journal says:
“Set on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota in 1988, Erdrich’s 14th novel focuses on 13-year-old Joseph. After his mother is brutally raped yet refuses to speak about the experience, Joe must not only cope with her slow physical and mental recovery but also confront his own feelings of anger and helplessness. … Erdrich skillfully makes Joe’s coming-of-age both universal and specific. Like many a teenage boy, he sneaks beer with his buddies, watches Star Trek: The Next Generation, and obsesses about sex. But the story is also ripe with detail about reservation life, and with her rich cast of characters, from Joe’s alcoholic and sometimes violent uncle Whitey and his former-stripper girlfriend Sonja, to the ex-marine priest Father Travis and the gleefully lewd Grandma Thunder, Erdrich provides flavor, humor, and depth.”
When is it available?
“The Round House” can be found at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Camp Field, 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 Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
By Rachel Joyce
(Random House, $25, 336 pages)
Who is this author?
Making her debut as a novelist with this book is British actress and playwright Rachel Joyce, who performed leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and won multiple awards and went on to write more than 20 plays for for BBC Radio 4. She lives in Gloucestershire on a farm with her family.
What is this book about?
Harold Fry is growing old in his home in the English countryside, coping with a complaining wife and boring life. When out of the blue a letter arrives from a woman he knew years ago and is now on the verge of death at a hospice, Harold finds himself impulsively and literally propelled out of his unsatisfying life into a quest to walk the nearly 600 miles to the hospice to deliver his reply to Queenie, an improbable journey that he truly believes will keep her alive. Along the way he meets fascinating characters and unearths moving memories, and of course, also changes his life as he strives to keep Queenie in hers.
Here is what Joyce told Barnes & Noble about her book:
“This story began as a radio play that I wrote (in secret) for my father when I knew he was dying of cancer. I never told my dad I was doing this for him – and I think I knew he would never find out. But I suppose I wanted to write about a man keeping alive a person he cared for, at the point that I was losing someone I very much wanted to keep. I loved making my dad laugh too. He was an extremely witty man. I also wanted to write a story about the things I believe in – about the very simple and complicated business of being human, I suppose.
“I think there is a part in all of us that is looking for something bigger – maybe it is the nature of being human that we seek to make sense of things that don’t make sense at all. I also think that we all know what it means to lose people and things you want to keep. We know what remorse is and we also know how good it feels to connect. Essentially Harold sees himself as ordinary. I think that is true for most of us.”
Why you’ll like it:
While it is undoubtedly sentimental and whimsical in that oh-so-British way, this is an uplifting story that is grounded enough in the realities of growing older (and perhaps wiser) that will appeal to many readers. Here is a man making a grand gesture and plunging back into his past to understand why his present life is what it is. Harold may be over the hill, but he’s brave and determined. Don’t be surprised if his pilgrimage gets adapted for one of those odd little British films so many of us adore.
What others are saying:
“There’s tremendous heart in this debut novel by Rachel Joyce, as she probes questions that are as simple as they are profound: Can we begin to live again, and live truly, as ourselves, even in middle age, when all seems ruined? Can we believe in hope when hope seems to have abandoned us? I found myself laughing through tears, rooting for Harold at every step of his journey. I’m still rooting for him,” says Paula McLain, author of “The Paris Wife.”
“Harold’s journey is ordinary and extraordinary; it is a journey through the self, through modern society, through time and landscape. It is a funny book, a wise book, a charming book—but never cloying. It’s a book with a savage twist—and yet never seems manipulative. Perhaps because Harold himself is just wonderful. . . . I’m telling you now: I love this book.” Says Erica Wagner in The Times (UK).
“Joyce, a former actress and acclaimed BBC scriptwriter here publishing her first novel, depicts Harold’s personal crisis and the extraordinary pilgrimage it generates in masterly fashion, exploring psychological complexities with compassion and insight. The result is a novel of deep beauty and wisdom about the human condition; Harold, a deeply sympathetic protagonist, has much to teach us. … A great novel; essential reading for fans of literary fiction,” says Patrick Sullivan of Manchester Community College, reviewing for Library Journal.
Kirkus Reviews says: “Those with the patience to accompany the protagonist on this meandering journey will receive an emotional payoff at the end. The debut novel by an award-winning British radio playwright (and actor) offers an allegory that requires many leaps of faith, while straddling the line between the charming and cloying (as well as the comic and melodramatic). …On his journey, [Harold] meets a bunch of characters, becomes something of a celebrity and learns a little bit more about the meaning of life. These lessons are articulated in homilies such as “you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary,” and “Maybe it’s what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.” Maybe, but if such sentiments seem akin to those from one of Mitch Albom’s bestselling parables, the novel’s evocation of everyday British reticence, heartbreak and wonder occasionally suggest the depths of the great Graham Swift. The final chapters of the novel resolve the mysteries that have been underlying the rest–how the son divided his parents, why the co-worker had disappeared from Harold’s life–and there’s a powerful resolution in which all’s well that ends well. Manipulative but moving, for readers who don’t mind having their strings pulled.”
“Rachel Joyce’s first novel…sounds twee, but it’s surprisingly steely, even inspiring, the kind of quirky book you want to shepherd into just the right hands. If your friends don’t like it, you may have to stop returning their calls for a little while until you can bring yourself to forgive them…[Joyce] has a lovely sense of the possibilities of redemption. In this bravely unpretentious and unsentimental tale, she’s cleared space where miracles are still possible,” says Ron Charles in The Washington Post.
When is it available?
Make your pilgrimage to get this book now to the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Goodwin 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!
Dead Anyway
By Chris Knopf
(The Permanent Press, $28, 248 pages)
Who is this author?
Chris Knopf was already well-known in Greater Hartford as CEO of Mintz & Hoke, the Avon-based advertising and public relations agency before he started publishing mystery novels. Now he’s well-known nationally, as those novels have gained him rave reviews, including plaudits from The New York Times. His books include two series set in the Hamptons on Long Island, where he has a second home. One series features the crusty investigator Sam Acquillo. In the other, the main character is the feisty lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski. Those books include “The Last Refuge,” “Two Time,” “Head Wounds” (which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery), “Hard Stop,” and “Black Swan.”Another, set on the Jersey Shore (but happily devoid of Snooki and her pals) was “Elysiana.” When he’s not at his day job or writing, which he calls his “night job,” he might be doing some cabinet-making or carpentry or sailing. Here’s what Knopf says about how his interests mesh:
“My night job is writing novels. If I wasn’t a copywriter, I don’t think I could do it. And vice versa. One informs the other and you never get bored.”
His readers don’t get bored, either.
What is this book about?
Arthur Cathcart was living the good life, working as a freelance market researcher and sometime finder of missing people and adoring his gorgeous and successful insurance exec (the book is set in Connecticut) wife. Then one day, he comes home to horror: a gunman threatening to kill them both if Florencia doesn’t give written answers to some mysterious questions. She does; the thug kills her anyway and blasts Arthur, too. He goes into a coma and comes out damaged emotionally and physically, but vowing to find the SOB who has ruined everything. But first, he has to disappear off the grid as well, at least as far as anyone can tell. With the help of his physician sister who declares him dead at his request, a casino worker who becomes his close ally, a grumpy newspaper reporter, a retired cop and a bunch of hilariously drawn Bosnian criminals in Hartford, not to mention some really evil evildoers, Arthur finds out some inconvenient truths and enacts a most satisfying revenge.
Why you’ll like it:
Knopf is master at creating dead-on dialogue and quirky characters, which he does in “Dead Anyway” with great elan. He also gives readers of this book a crash course in computer hacking and cracking, which may seem daunting at first but becomes fascinating as you get into it. Arthur’s a bit flat as a character – largely because his brain has been injured and is slow to heal – but Knopf makes up for that be giving us some dandy sidekicks. Local readers will also find the familiar locale fun to read about. Another fine effort from Knopf that is well-deserving of the starred reviews it has received from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Booklist.
What others are saying:
“Dead Anyway” is one of those deceptive thrillers that seems to suck you in at the beginning and spit you out at the end, leaving you breathless with admiration for a job well done. It s really difficult to write a revenge novel that comes out feeling fresh, but much to my pleasurable surprise, Chris Knopf has managed to do just that… This is not only a great thriller, but also a study manual on how to disappear, find the bad guys, kill the ones you don t like, and prosper,” says the Sacramento Book Review.
“Knopf… reaches a new imaginative peak with market researcher Arthur Cathcart in this outstanding revenge novel. …As he begins the tortuous rehabilitation process and looks into establishing new identities, Cathcart realizes that it’s almost impossible to go off the grid totally and still be able to function effectively, so he has to compromise in inventive ways. Cathcart ingeniously manages to penetrate the world of hired killers and major crime figures in his quest to discover both the who and the why behind the original hit,” says Publishers Weekly.
Library Journal says: “…Angry Arthur has mapped out a strategy to make everyone to think he’s dead, and he’s concocted an elaborate alternative identity plan so he can track down the hit man himself. Since Arthur was a professional researcher, his prowess with online detecting is quite remarkable. His audacious plan is both psychologically chilling and exciting as the plot burrows through the bowels of underworld Connecticut. Running the supreme con, Arthur pulls in his prey. … Knopf’s tale is suspenseful from the get-go, with an intellectual, yet visceral, vigilantism coursing through the pages. In a major change in direction, the author of the “Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mysteries” (Black Swan; Hard Stop) never misses an angle and manages to weave a bit of humor into a storyline that could have been purely dark.”
“Nothing in Knopf’s reflective, quietly loopy Hamptons mysteries starring Sam Acquillo and Jackie Swaitkowski (Ice Cap, 2012, etc.) will have prepared his fans for this taut, streamlined tale of a man investigating his own murder. …Arthur, once he’s erased from the grid, is free to assume the identity of one Alex Rimes and go after the hit man and his employer. He tires easily, he limps badly, and his vision is poor, but his skills as a freelance researcher turn out to be surprisingly useful…The trail to the killers leads through a wary arrangement with a retired FBI agent, an elaborate precious-metals scam and a society party to die for before Arthur finally confronts his quarry in a sequence that manages both to satisfy readers’ bloodlust and to point toward a sequel. An absorbing update of the classic film, D.O.A., that finds its author so completely in the zone that not a word is wasted, and the story seems to unfold itself without human assistance,” says Kirkus Reviews.
When is it available?
You can get this book at these Hartford Public Library branches: Barbour, Dwight, Goodwin, Mark Twain Park and Ropkins or request it for pickup at the Downtown 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!
Miss Me When I’m Gone
Emily Arsenault
(William Morrow, $14.99, 384 pages).
Who is this author?
Emily Arsenault, who grew up in Cheshire, writes novels that revolve around murder mysteries, but go beyond that genre. The first, “The Broken Teaglass,” named a New York Times “notable mystery,” involved notes related to a killing hidden in files at an encyclopedia publisher’s office. The second, “In Search of the Rose Notes,” drew on a series of Time/Life books. Her latest novel quotes liberally from “Tammyland,” a fictional – but fascinating – book on the lives of female country singers. Arsenault, who was one of the high-school student “Fresh Voices” at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington in 1994, is a ’98 Mount Holyoke College graduate, has been a teacher at Coventry High School and a children’s librarian at the Wilton Library and, with her husband, Ross Grant, a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa. They and their daughter now live in Shelburne Falls, MA.
What is this book about?
What we have here is a book within a book, and both are worth reading. When bestselling author Gretchen Waters dies from an apparent fall down the stone steps of a library, she leaves behind a memoir called “Tammyland,” known as a “honky-tonk “Eat, Pray, Love,” which deals her travels to learn all about such country music greats as Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton and their complicated lives. It’s also about Gretchen’s own complex life, including her divorce. She also leaves behind a pile of personal papers and a partly written new book, one that is about male country singers and also about the mysterious death of Gretchen’s biological mother, whose life story would itself have made a good country song. It falls to Jamie, Gretchen’s college roommate, now married and pregnant, to become her literary executor, but as she goes through the papers and manuscript, she begins to realize that Gretchen’s death, and her mother’s, assumed to be accidents, may have been no such thing, and she is driven to learn the truth.
Why you’ll like it:
Arsenault loves playing with multiple stories, whose hidden secrets are revealed in notes, diaries and books, finished and unfinished. While some reviewers (see Kirkus, below) found that technique a bit off-putting here, I found the excerpts from the fictional “Tammyland” to be insightful and fascinating, so much so that I’d happily read the whole book, if only it actually existed. “Miss Me” gives you many female characters: Jamie, Gretchen, her biological mother Shelly and the mother who raised her, Linda, along with other well-drawn women, as well as great portraits of Tammy, Dolly, Loretta and other country divas. The murder mystery is compelling, too, but you can enjoy this book just for the interesting women Arsenault has created.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Arsenault offers a thoughtful reflection on country music, secrets, and relationships with her outstanding third mystery. Pregnant Jamie Madden, recently demoted “from health reporter to part-time night copy editor” at her budget-strapped newspaper, has been named the literary executor for her author friend, Gretchen Waters, who died from a fall down some stairs after giving a reading at a New Hampshire public library. Gretchen made her name with the bestselling “Tammyland “…, but she left behind an unfinished work with a darker tone. As Jamie looks into the manuscript, she finds information on the violent death of Gretchen’s biological mother, and wonders whether the author’s research into the past robbed her of a future. Arsenault’s lyrical, moving prose serves to make this more than just a compelling whodunit.”
“Best friends in college, Jamie and Gretchen drifted apart over the years, but Gretchen’s sudden death leaves Jamie struggling to deal with the loss. When Gretchen’s family asks Jamie to complete her new book, she discovers that her friend, a successful author, wasn’t working on a second, breezy memoir but investigating the murder of her biological mother. As Jamie starts to ask her own questions, discrepancies between what she’s hearing and what’s been written leave her wondering whether Gretchen’s death was truly accidental…. Multiple story lines that take place in multiple time periods and that focus on at least three of the main characters, plus chapters from Gretchen’s published book and unfinished manuscript, all vie for attention, but should pose no problem for an alert reader. The characters come to life nicely, and subtle clues build to a surprising, satisfying conclusion. Readers who enjoyed Arsenault’s first two novels and literary mystery authors like Megan Abbott and Laura Lippman will appreciate this slow-paced but thoughtful tale of how seemingly unimportant choices can bring unexpected consequences,” says Library Journal.
Kirkus Reviews says:
“An uneven mystery about a murdered writer researching the suspicious death of her own mother. When Gretchen Waters dies, it appears to be a tragic accident: She falls down steep library steps after a reading of her memoir “Tammyland.” Her best friend, Jamie, a ripely pregnant journalist, is asked to become Gretchen’s literary executor, which means she’ll be organizing the vast quantities of notebooks, audio recordings and computer files that were to be Gretchen’s next memoir. In this new memoir (“Tammyland” dealt with a divorce-inspired road trip merged with anecdotes of country music’s tragic divas), Gretchen was focusing on the sad circumstances of her own childhood. Shelly was a teenager when she became pregnant with Gretchen, so her older sister, Linda, and her husband raised the baby. Gretchen would visit her mother on the weekends, until one day, Shelly was found beaten to death. Shelly’s drunken boyfriend was acquitted, but everyone in the small New Hampshire town still thinks he did it. Jamie begins by simply organizing all the material, but when her house is broken into (the only things stolen are related to Gretchen) and it becomes clear that Gretchen’s death was not an accident, she becomes an unlikely detective, attempting to piece together the last days of Gretchen’s life. Arsenault builds the framework of a taut mystery–the present crime is directly related to the past–but the novel’s pace is frequently slowed by excerpts from Tammyland and, to a lesser extent, Gretchen’s field notes and rough drafts of the new memoir. Though Arsenault is playing with the idea of constructed realities, of multiple versions of truth, much is peripheral to the mystery and feels like a drag on the excitement being built as Jamie gets closer to the truth, and the murderer gets closer to Jamie. Flawed but affective.”
When is it available?
It’s now in the Downtown Hartford Public Library and the 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!
Miss Me When I’m Gone
Emily Arsenault
(William Morrow, $14.99, 384 pages).
Who is this author?
Emily Arsenault, who grew up in Cheshire, writes novels that revolve around murder mysteries, but go beyond that genre. The first, “The Broken Teaglass,” named a New York Times “notable mystery,” involved notes related to a killing hidden in files at an encyclopedia publisher’s office. The second, “In Search of the Rose Notes,” drew on a series of Time/Life books. Her latest novel quotes liberally from “Tammyland,” a fictional – but fascinating – book on the lives of female country singers. Arsenault, who was one of the high-school student “Fresh Voices” at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in Farmington in 1994, is a ’98 Mount Holyoke College graduate, has been a teacher at Coventry High School and a children’s librarian at the Wilton Library and, with her husband, Ross Grant, a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa. They and their daughter now live in Shelburne Falls, MA.
What is this book about?
What we have here is a book within a book, and both are worth reading. When bestselling author Gretchen Waters dies from an apparent fall down the stone steps of a library, she leaves behind a memoir called “Tammyland,” known as a “honky-tonk “Eat, Pray, Love,” which deals her travels to learn all about such country music greats as Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton and their complicated lives. It’s also about Gretchen’s own complex life, including her divorce. She also leaves behind a pile of personal papers and a partly written new book, one that is about male country singers and also about the mysterious death of Gretchen’s biological mother, whose life story would itself have made a good country song. It falls to Jamie, Gretchen’s college roommate, now married and pregnant, to become her literary executor, but as she goes through the papers and manuscript, she begins to realize that Gretchen’s death, and her mother’s, assumed to be accidents, may have been no such thing, and she is driven to learn the truth.
Why you’ll like it:
Arsenault loves playing with multiple stories, whose hidden secrets are revealed in notes, diaries and books, finished and unfinished. While some reviewers (see Kirkus, below) found that technique a bit off-putting here, I found the excerpts from the fictional “Tammyland” to be insightful and fascinating, so much so that I’d happily read the whole book, if only it actually existed. “Miss Me” gives you many female characters: Jamie, Gretchen, her biological mother Shelly and the mother who raised her, Linda, along with other well-drawn women, as well as great portraits of Tammy, Dolly, Loretta and other country divas. The murder mystery is compelling, too, but you can enjoy this book just for the interesting women Arsenault has created.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Arsenault offers a thoughtful reflection on country music, secrets, and relationships with her outstanding third mystery. Pregnant Jamie Madden, recently demoted “from health reporter to part-time night copy editor” at her budget-strapped newspaper, has been named the literary executor for her author friend, Gretchen Waters, who died from a fall down some stairs after giving a reading at a New Hampshire public library. Gretchen made her name with the bestselling “Tammyland “…, but she left behind an unfinished work with a darker tone. As Jamie looks into the manuscript, she finds information on the violent death of Gretchen’s biological mother, and wonders whether the author’s research into the past robbed her of a future. Arsenault’s lyrical, moving prose serves to make this more than just a compelling whodunit.”
“Best friends in college, Jamie and Gretchen drifted apart over the years, but Gretchen’s sudden death leaves Jamie struggling to deal with the loss. When Gretchen’s family asks Jamie to complete her new book, she discovers that her friend, a successful author, wasn’t working on a second, breezy memoir but investigating the murder of her biological mother. As Jamie starts to ask her own questions, discrepancies between what she’s hearing and what’s been written leave her wondering whether Gretchen’s death was truly accidental…. Multiple story lines that take place in multiple time periods and that focus on at least three of the main characters, plus chapters from Gretchen’s published book and unfinished manuscript, all vie for attention, but should pose no problem for an alert reader. The characters come to life nicely, and subtle clues build to a surprising, satisfying conclusion. Readers who enjoyed Arsenault’s first two novels and literary mystery authors like Megan Abbott and Laura Lippman will appreciate this slow-paced but thoughtful tale of how seemingly unimportant choices can bring unexpected consequences,” says Library Journal.
Kirkus Reviews says:
“An uneven mystery about a murdered writer researching the suspicious death of her own mother. When Gretchen Waters dies, it appears to be a tragic accident: She falls down steep library steps after a reading of her memoir “Tammyland.” Her best friend, Jamie, a ripely pregnant journalist, is asked to become Gretchen’s literary executor, which means she’ll be organizing the vast quantities of notebooks, audio recordings and computer files that were to be Gretchen’s next memoir. In this new memoir (“Tammyland” dealt with a divorce-inspired road trip merged with anecdotes of country music’s tragic divas), Gretchen was focusing on the sad circumstances of her own childhood. Shelly was a teenager when she became pregnant with Gretchen, so her older sister, Linda, and her husband raised the baby. Gretchen would visit her mother on the weekends, until one day, Shelly was found beaten to death. Shelly’s drunken boyfriend was acquitted, but everyone in the small New Hampshire town still thinks he did it. Jamie begins by simply organizing all the material, but when her house is broken into (the only things stolen are related to Gretchen) and it becomes clear that Gretchen’s death was not an accident, she becomes an unlikely detective, attempting to piece together the last days of Gretchen’s life. Arsenault builds the framework of a taut mystery–the present crime is directly related to the past–but the novel’s pace is frequently slowed by excerpts from Tammyland and, to a lesser extent, Gretchen’s field notes and rough drafts of the new memoir. Though Arsenault is playing with the idea of constructed realities, of multiple versions of truth, much is peripheral to the mystery and feels like a drag on the excitement being built as Jamie gets closer to the truth, and the murderer gets closer to Jamie. Flawed but affective.”
When is it available?
It’s now in the Downtown Hartford Public Library and the 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!
This Is How You Lose Her
By Junot Diaz
(Riverhead, $26.95, 224 pages)
Who is this author?
Junot Díaz, whose 2007 mega-prize-winner, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” was the Hartford Public Library’s selection in 2009 for its One Book For Greater Hartford community reading program, is one of the most brilliant of our contemporary writers. And boy, does he like to keep his fervent fans waiting. His debut story collection, “Drown,” a book that literally had me out of my chair, cheering his talent, was published in 1997. It took 11 years for “Oscar Wao,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was named Time’s #1 Fiction Book of 2007, to appear. Now, five years later, we have his second collection, “This Is How You Lose Her,” and it, too, is garnering raves. Diaz has also won a PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Prize and more. A native of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Diaz and his family moved to New Jersey when he was 6. An avid reader, he went on to earn degrees from Rutgers and Cornell universities and is now a professor at MIT. His fiction often parallels his own family’s experiences, and he is admired for his jump-off-the-page dialog and commentary, which mixes English, Spanish, Dominican idioms and a wicked sense of humor into an absolutely unforgettable voice.
What is this book about?
“This Is How” is about love, love, love, love, crazy love. And how to drive away admirable, desirable women by thinking with the manparts, rather than the brain. And about mourning those kicked-away loves with bone-deep remorse, only to let the incorrigibly cheatin’ heart take over again when the next ill-fated romance begins. The stories are narrated by Yunior, the closest thing to an alter-ego that Diaz has, and he’s brutally honest, gaspingly funny and both adorable and despicable: a unique creation who seems utterly real. Many elements of Yunior’s life echo Diaz’s: father issues, mother issues, Domincan political issues, learning to teach, teaching to keep learning, a bad back, broken relationships. The collection of nine stories, some of which were first published in The New Yorker, is not strictly autobiographical, but their real life parallels gives them authenticity. Yunior is a slave to passion, but what he really wants is to be loved, no matter how untrustworthy he can be. Like an addict in and out and in and out of rehab, he keeps making new starts that are ruined by old habits. Yet he’s a remarkably sympathetic character, one with enough self-awareness to tell us an inconvenient truth: “The half-life of love is forever.”
Why you’ll like it:
Yunior is a rogue, but a great one. And part of what makes him…and Diaz’s writing…so appealing is his voice. Here is an excerpt that shows its energy, blend of languages, unapologetic profanity, rueful insights and hilarious ranting:
“Your girl catches you cheating. (Well, actually she’s your fiancée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t matter.) She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two, but as you’re a totally batshit cuero who didn’t ever empty his email trash can, she caught you with fifty! Sure, over a six-year period, but still. Fifty fucking girls? Goddamn. Maybe if you’d been engaged to a super open-minded blanquita you could have survived it—but you’re not engaged to a super openminded blanquita. Your girl is a badass salcedeña who doesn’t believe in open anything; in fact the one thing she warned you about, that she swore she would never forgive, was cheating. I’ll put a machete in you, she promised. And of course you swore you wouldn’t do it. You swore you wouldn’t. You swore you wouldn’t.
“And you did.”
Tell me you don’t want to read more.
What others are saying:
“Junot Díaz writes in an idiom so electrifying and distinct it’s practically an act of aggression, at once enthralling, even erotic in its assertion of sudden intimacy…[It is] a syncopated swagger-step between opacity and transparency, exclusion and inclusion, defiance and desire…His prose style is so irresistible, so sheerly entertaining, it risks blinding readers to its larger offerings. Yet he weds form so ideally to content that instead of blinding us, it becomes the very lens through which we can see the joy and suffering of the signature Díaz subject: what it means to belong to a diaspora, to live out the possibilities and ambiguities of perpetual insider/outsider status,” says The New York Times Book Review.
“Díaz constructs a world of hybrid Latino identity…Homeboy is getting mucho más serio, more lucid, poetic, and deep into your bones than ever. His ventures into second-person narration have such impeccable flow that it’s as if he has let you into a conversation he is having with himself…” says Univision.
“Yunior might some day rank with Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman or John Updike’s Harry Angstrom as an enduring American literary protagonist who embodies the peculiar struggle men face as they make their way through their lives and the lives of the women they implicate in their folly. Yet Diaz inflects this struggle with the complicated particulars of cultural exile, of want and of the bravado that is born of fear. “This Is How You Lose Her” is as funny as it is brutal, as complex as it is candid. It is an engrossing, ambitious book for readers who demand of their fiction both emotional precision and linguistic daring,” says NPR.
“Díaz is America’s best living short-story writer. His gifts of character portrayal and his sui generis writing voice will link his name with the country’s anthologizable greats, from Raymond Carver to John Cheever to Eudora Welty…Díaz’s [has a] singular writing voice, a vernacular Spanglish that runs easily to a kind of jazz poetry,” says The Wall Street Journal .
“Díaz’s standout fiction remains pinpoint, sinuous, gutsy, and imaginative…Each taut tale of unrequited and betrayed love and family crises is electric with passionate observations and off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence…Fast-paced, unflinching, complexly funny, street-talking tough, perfectly made, and deeply sensitive, Díaz’s gripping stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. These are precarious, unappreciated, precious lives in which intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason, and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone,” says Booklist in a starred review.
When is it available?
This is how you find it: it’s available at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Barbour, Blue Hills, Camp Field, Dwight, Goodwin, Mark Twain, Park and Ropkins 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!
NW
By Zadie Smith
(Penguin, $26.95, 416 pages)
Who is this author?
Zadie Smith has one of the brightest younger voices in British literature. Now 36, she has written notable books – the novels “White Teeth,” “The Autograph Man” and “On Beauty” and the essay collection “Changing My Mind,” as well as sharply conceived cultural and arts criticism. She wrote the much-praised “White Teeth” while attending Cambridge and has earned comparisons to no less than Dickens and Rushdie. It won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and she went on to earn other literary honors. Born to a British father and Jamaican mother in an ethnically mixed part of Northwest London – that’s the NW that gives her latest book its title – she was named Sadie, but llater changed it to Zadie because, she told the Guardian newspaper, “it seemed right, exotic, different.” “NW” is her latest, and eagerly awaited, novel. It has earned high praise from many reviewers and has baffled others, but any Zadie Smith book is worth your consideration.
What is this book about?
Four characters are the central focus of this book about people growing up in Northwest London in the Caldwell council estates, which is what the British call public housing, who take widely and wildly divergent paths as adults. Central is Natalie Blake, born Keisha, who has left behind her name and her impoverished family, with its many discontents and failings, and has become a gentrified woman – a barrister married to a wealthy man, with children and all the attendant trappings of success. Some call her a “coconut” – dark outside, white inside – and you probably will not be surprised to learn that wealth and success have not brought her happiness. Since childhood, Natalie/Keisha’s life has been entwined with that of Leah Hanwell, who is white and married to an African hairdresser, Michel. Then there’s Nathan, whom the women have known since childhood and who is barely surviving a drug-filled life, and Felix, who has renounced the druggie life and is looking to move up.
Those are the people, but another important aspect to this book is the fractured story-telling, a Joycean jam of short chapters, numbered sections, shifting tones, juggled chronologies, poetry, online chats and other devices that some will find rewarding to explore, and others, to be honest, will find annoying.
Why you’ll like it:
“NW” is a challenge to the casual reader and a feast for those who admire authors who make them stretch. With its intersecting stories and wide sweep from childhood to adulthood, there is much to savor here, and the deliberate use of different forms and styles of writing serves to engage those willing to make their way into the story. For what it’s worth, I read a chapter that appeared in The New Yorker and found the style quite easy to read.
What others are saying:
“[In] Smith’s excellent and captivating new novel… the lines dividing neighbors from strangers are not always clear or permanent. The book takes place in NW London, where characters intersect and circumvent one another’s lives and, in the process, expose their ethnic distinctions and class transformations, their relationships and their secrets. Leah’s childhood best friend Natalie Blake (formerly Keisha Blake) eventually becomes the primary focus and the contrast between the two women allows for some of the book’s most compelling insights, namely the inevitability of vs. the disinterest in becoming a mother, which Natalie has done and Leah decisively has not. The book’s middle section introduces Felix Cooper, a friend of neither woman, but whose fate will affect them both. Smith’s masterful ability to suspend all these bits and parts in the amber which is London refracts light, history, and the humane beauty of seeing everything at once,” says Publishers Weekly.
Amazon Best Books of the Month for September says: “Zadie Smith’s “NW,” an ode to the neighborhoods of northwest London where the author came of age, feels like a work in progress. For most writers, that would be a detriment. But in this case, the sense of imperfection feels like a privilege: a peek inside the fascinating brain of one of the most interesting writers of her generation. Smith plays extensively with form and style–moving from screenplay-like dialogue to extremely short stories, from the first person to the third–but her characters don’t matter as much as their setting. Smith is a master of literary cinematography. It’s easy to picture her creations, flaws ablaze, as they walk the streets of London.”
“…a complicated novel that’s endlessly fascinating…The impression of Smith’s casual brilliance is what constantly surprises, the way she tosses off insights about parenting and work that you’ve felt in some nebulous way but never been able to articulate. While her own voice can seem crisp and clinical, it’s tinged with irony, and her dialogue ripples off the page in full stereo… Smith makes no accommodation for the distracted reader—or even the reader who demands a clear itinerary. But if you’re willing to let it work on you, to hear all these voices and allow the details to come into focus when Smith wants them to, you’ll be privy to an extraordinary vision of our age,” says Ron Charles in the Washington Post.
When is it available?
You can get to “NW” now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or 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!
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