Wonderkid
By Wesley Stace
(Overlook, $26.95, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
You may know him better as musician John Wesley Harding, who released 15 albums and has appeared widely live and on TV, or as the founder of the Cabinet of Wonders variety show on NPR. He also writes for the New York Times. Wesley Stace also is a novelist whose books include Misfortune, a Washington Post and Amazon best novel of the year; By George, a New York Public Library’s 2007 Book To Remember; and Charles Jessold, Considered As a Murderer, a Wall Street Journal’s best fiction book of 2011.
What is this book about?
This is a “be careful what you wish for” story, about a British rock ‘n’ roll group called the Wonderkinds, who long for fame and fortune. In a kind of pact with the devil, they get all that and more….but as a group called the Wonderkids, whose audience is screaming little ones and their doting parents. Well, as Jagger and the guys told us, “You can’t always get what you want…” Led by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear fan Blake Lear, who has renamed himself for his two fave poets, the Wonderkids become hugely successful in the US of A, but calamity lurks, as it is wont to do. The story is told by Sweet, Blake’s adopted son, who may be more of a grown-up than the adults depicted here, and it is one wild ride.
Why you’ll like it:
Sex, drugs, rock and roll, backstage shenanigans, fathers and sons: there is plenty going on here to amuse or confuse the reader. Stace, from his years as Harding, has a deep understanding of the rock scene and showbiz in general, and this novel offers an insider’s view of the ups and inevitable downs of unexpected fame.
What others are saying:
Booklist says: “Musician Blake Lear named himself after his favorite artistic influences, William Blake and Edward Lear. As the lead singer of the British band Wonderkids, Blake utilizes these influences in his songs, a combination of silly and nonsensical yet catchy lyrics that brings Blake and his group more attention than they ever imagined. When the band is offered a lucrative record deal, stardom seems to be just around the corner. The only catch is that their promised adoring audience will be children. The Wonderkids agree to become the combination Beatles/Teletubbies of their generation, wowing screaming kids and their parents in full-to-capacity venues around America. Their story is narrated by Sweet, a young boy Blake adopts who becomes the group’s de facto manager, merchandiser, counselor, and CEO of damage control as the band battles censorship, a drug bust, and various sticky personnel issues. Fast-paced and full of details only a music insider would know, novelist and musician Stace’s latest is a funny, untamed, highly pleasurable read, a wise and witty visit to a world few of us have experienced.”
“Hilarious . . . Winningly dry . . . Marvelously drawn . . . The Wonderkids’ increasingly unhinged antics and eventual . . . flameout, which culminate in Blake’s seeming to expose himself onstage at the “Pack ’n’ Play Festival” (Stace has a marvelous time with names), are entertaining. And there are some absolute gems in the final chapters,” – says The New York Times Book Review.
Library Journal says: “In a novel that is equal parts Almost Famous, That Thing You Do, and The Family Fang, musician and author Stace has taken the unpredictable lifestyle of rock and roll and given it a twist. After years of living in an orphanage and foster home, teenager Edward Sweet finds himself the newly adopted son of a children’s music superstar, Blake Lear. Blake is the front man for the band The Wonderkids, which has found massive success playing nonsensical songs for children. Their concerts are wild performances filled with props, feathers, and toddler mosh pits, but backstage, it’s your stereotypical rock scene filled with drugs, arguments among band members, and sex with mom-groupies. Edward spends his formative teenage years learning the ins and outs of life on tour and, in later years, coping with the dysfunctional relationships formed from these lessons. As Blake’s initially endearing, wacky behavior and ideas eventually start to unravel and become more unstable than genius, the band slowly falls apart. VERDICT After a slow start, the novel gains momentum and its identity as a story of a father-son relationship set in the whirlwind that is rock music fame. Readers who enjoy rock fiction and memoirs will enjoy this outing by a writer who knows the score,”
When is it available?
Wonder no more. You can find this book 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!
No Book but the World
by Leah Hager Cohen
(Riverhead, $27.95, 320 pages)
Who is this author?
Leah Hager Cohen has published 10 books, five each of fiction and nonfiction. Her novels include The Grief of Others, which was nominated for several literary prizes and named a notable or best book of the year by major newspapers. Her nonfiction includes Train Go Sorry and I Don’t Know: In Praise Of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn’t). A professor of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, she also teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University, and regularly writes for the New York Times Book Review. In addition, she writes the blog about death, dying and living, called Love As a Found Object, which she began when her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
What is this book about?
A damaged boy who grows up to be an odd adult and might have committed a serious crime; the sister who loves him but who may have abused him when they were children; a heinous murder and a tale about love, regrets, guilt and innocence: this is a psychological thriller that explores an unconventional family’s history. Ava tells the story as she tries to determine if her beloved brother Fred actually did the crime – kidnapping and killing a little boy – with which he has been charged. Trying to piece it all together, she is thrown back into memories – perhaps not so reliable – of growing up on the grounds of an experimental “free school” with a brother who may be autistic and parents whose educational theories may have been elegant, but not helpful in raising their atypical children. Ava believes that only she can solve this mystery and prove her brother innocent. “No Book but the World” is the story of her quest.
Why you’ll like it:
Hager Cohen is skilled at portraying unusual people caught up in trying circumstances, a valuable and necessary ability for an author of books of this kind. This book has elements of the genres of mystery novels and psychological thrillers, but it is most powerful as a story of family conflicts and the meaning of innocence. Ava may not be the most reliable of narrators, but her willingness to probe her memories to ascertain how the quirks and questionable assumptions of her childhood have contributed to her brother’s current tribulations will engross readers.
What others are saying:
“Ava and Fred, the adult siblings at the heart of Cohen’s (The Grief of Others, 2011) new novel, have been shaped by their unusual upbringing. The children of the founder of a now-defunct experimental school and his much younger wife, they have never quite fit in. Ava is withdrawn and reserved, while Fred, an odd, developmentally disabled child, grew into a man who lives on the fringes of society. When Fred is accused of murdering a 12-year-old boy, Ava tries to piece together what happened and ascertain whether Fred is innocent. Much of the story takes place in the past, peeling back the layers of Ava’s and Fred’s childhoods: their friendship with free spirit Kitty, whose older brother Dennis becomes Ava’s husband, and the fantasy world they created in the woods. Fred’s otherness never falls away, and as an adult, Ava distanced herself from him and her past in an attempt to live a so-called normal life. Cohen offers a complex, tragic examination of how difficult it can be to ever truly know and understand another person,” says Booklist.
The New York Times Book Review says: “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But in fiction it can take on a whole new power—blunderingly obvious or brightly illuminating, depending on how imaginatively it’s applied. Rare is the contemporary novel that doesn’t set out, at least in part, to examine the effects of past behavior on present outcomes. While this can lead to pungent and suspenseful storytelling, it requires a delicate balance, keeping the reader engaged in the narrative momentum of an unknown future that’s already in the past. In her perceptive, empathetic and often emotionally gripping new novel, Leah Hager Cohen…has managed the trick very deftly…No Book but the World has many clear strengths, not least the heart-wrenching picture Cohen paints of Fred, both in childhood and in later life. Readers who grew up before the language of therapy became commonplace are likely to have known children like these—mysteriously disengaged, fretted over by their parents, irritating to their siblings.”
Says Publishers Weekly: Cohen’s fifth novel following The Grief of Others, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize, makes a strong addition to the growing field of novels involving revolutionary parenting philosophies. Ava Robbins looks back, after her parents’ deaths, on the permissive upbringing that she and her brother, Freddy, received, based on the ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She comments, “Much later, in college, when my disillusionment with my father was at its most excruciating… I discovered that the great philosopher, my father’s idol and model, had deposited his own five children in a foundling hospital.” Ava finds her way through the enormous freedom she is given, but Freddy runs greater risks, getting into fights during a brief period at public school and accepting dangerous dares from his friends. Ava realizes Freddy is troubled and possibly autistic, but her parents refuse to acknowledge the fact. In adulthood, following the death of her parents, Ava must decide whether she can or should bring Fred back into her life. Occasionally, Cohen strains to create more mystery than is really needed, but her story’s hard and engaging central questions don’t require suspense to capture the reader.”
Kirkus Reviews says: “A brother and sister with unconventional childhoods grow into adulthood, with predictably quirky results. Ava and Fred Robbins grow up under the tutelage of their parents, June and Neel, the latter of whom had established an experimental school in upstate New York in the late 1940s. Neel is 20 years older than his wife, and they both believe in a Rousseau-ian ideal of freedom for their children as well as for the students in their school. (In fact, the title of the novel comes directly out of a quotation from Emile, Rousseau’s novel of education.) As a consequence, both Ava and Fred grow up making major choices about their own upbringings. As a child, Ava’s best friend is Kitty, whose older brother Dennis becomes enamored of Ava when she’s a coltish 14-year-old, and years later they marry. Ava’s placid domestic life is severely disrupted when she finds out that Fred has been arrested on several charges involving the disappearance and death of a 12-year-old boy named James Ferebee, whose body was recently found. Counsel for Fred is an overworked and underexperienced public defender who can scarcely be bothered with the details of the case, including finding time to visit his client in jail and get his side of the story. Growing up, Fred had always been strange and alienating, exhibiting symptoms of Asperger’s or perhaps something further on the autism spectrum, though Ava can hardly imagine him as a killer. Through substantial flashbacks to their childhoods, adolescences and early adult lives, Ava is always looking to put the family narrative into some kind of meaningful whole, though Fred’s arrest and incarceration severely challenge this attempt to find coherence. Cohen is finely attuned to family dynamics here, both the quiet inner workings of Ava’s successful marriage and her genuine bewilderment about Fred’s fall from grace.”
Novelist Sue Miller, writing in The Boston Globe, says “. . . As information comes to Ava about Freddy’s crime — he’s accused of kidnapping a young boy from the town and taking him into a nearby woods where his bruised, near-naked body is found — Ava keeps returning to her memories of the game she played with Freddy in their woods, a game in which, she suggests to us over and over, something perverse, something dark and shocking was done to him. “I touched you anyway, and you let me . . . I could guide you into the woods . . . Dress you in silks. Cover your eyes. Prick your finger. But I never did that: prick your finger . . . That is one thing we never did.” . . . The resolution of these multiple and often titillating story strands involves some reversals — it turns out there were many things Ava never did to Freddy — and some narrative legerdemain worthy of Ian McEwan. But the more satisfying resolution for Ava comes through the stories she’s been recording in her journal: about Freddy, about herself, about the people who’ve cared for them and loved them, well and less well. And it’s the well-earned discovery about how that storytelling itself has changed her thinking, her feeling about everything in her life, much more than the sometimes artificially suspenseful plot, that resonates most deeply with the reader.”
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!
Providence Rag
By Bruce DeSilva
(Tom Doherty Associates, $25.99, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
If you are a longtime reader of the Hartford Courant, you may recall Bruce DeSilva’s name. He was a reporter and editor there, and also served as the paper’s writing coach (in the dear, departed days when newspapers were healthy and profitable enough to have such positions.) He went on to serve as writing coach world-wide for The Associated Press, where he edited many prestigious prize-winning stories. Earlier, he had been an investigative reporter at The Providence Journal. DeSilva has been a consultant for more than 50 newspapers, taught at the University of Michigan and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lectured at Harvard. His wife is the noted poet Patricia Smith.
Those who benefitted from Bruce’s help are not surprised to learn that after 41 years as a journalist, he has launched a successful career as a writer of mystery novels, featuring Liam Mulligan, an investigative reporter at a dying (of course) newspaper in Rhode Island. The first Mulligan novel, Rogue Island, won the 2011 Edgar and Macavity Awards for Best First Novel. Providence Rag is the third in the series.
What is this book about?
This novel was Inspired by a true story and a journalist’s ethical dilemma. Mulligan and his colleague Mason know that the Rhode Island judicial system, faced with laws saying even vicious killers who murder as juveniles must be released when they turn 21, is getting around the law by letting prison officials repeatedly – and falsely — charge this killer of five people with crimes committed in prison, in order to keep him behind bars. Mulligan and Mason don’t want to see the man freed to kill again, but they can’t condone the false charges that are keeping him locked up. Can they expose this injustice and at the same time find a way to keep the killer behind bars? It’s a fascinating battle between truth and justice: can both be served?
Why you’ll like it:
DeSilva deftly handles the down and dirty details of crime reporting and the toughness of working in a newsroom in this hard-hitting novel. The moral dilemma here will have readers wondering where they stand themselves, as the characters he created seemingly work at cross-purposes to pursue equally worthy, if contradictory, goals. The people are believable, the dialogue is delicious and the dilemma is a real one. If you like Providence Rag, be sure to read the two earlier books in the series, “Rogue Island” and “Cliff Walk.”
What others are saying:
Booklist says in a starred review: “The third entry in this gritty newspaper series spans 20 years, from 1992 to 2012, at the start of which a teenage male commits five gruesome murders, is imprisoned for them, and, years later, becomes the center of a campaign to free prisoners convicted as juveniles. Liam Mulligan, the series hero, is a longtime newspaperman for a Providence, Rhode Island, paper who has witnessed the reduction of resources and the firings of friends, all the while still loving the imperiled business. Mulligan’s coverage of the murders in 1992 was partially responsible for finding the killer. Under the state’s criminal code, the killer should have been released at age 21, but creative fiddling has kept this killer safely behind bars. The son of the paper’s publisher wants to launch an investigation into what he sees as corruption, making the killer’s freedom a looming possibility. The ethical dilemma seems a bit forced, but it does raise the possibility of more mayhem to come. But there is real suspense here. And Mulligan’s character, played off the vicissitudes of his job, is skillfully layered and engaging. DeSilva, who worked for decades at the AP, won an Edgar for Best First Novel for Rogue Island (2010). He knows of what he writes.
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “Edgar-winner DeSilva melds moral dilemmas with a suspenseful plot in his third novel featuring Providence, R.I.–based reporter Liam Mulligan (after 2012’s Cliff Walk), his best yet. In 1992, when Mulligan is still handling the sports beat for the Providence Dispatch, an editor assigns him to help cover a gory double murder. Mulligan succeeds in getting more information from the police about the slaughter of Becky Medeiros and her four-year-old daughter, after the paper’s lead crime reporter fails. Two years later, a similar crime claims three more lives—a mother and her two daughters, ages 8 and 12. Mulligan ends up cracking the case, but the main action concerns the fate of the convicted killer, who is due to be released after six years thanks to a legal fluke. When a colleague discovers that efforts to lengthen the incarceration may have been unethical, Mulligan must find a way to balance his passion for the truth with his desire to protect the public,”
Says Kirkus review: “DeSilva’s third visit to Rhode Island tracks the potentially dire consequences of trying a 15-year-old killer as a juvenile instead of locking him up and throwing away the key. The first time Liam Mulligan (Cliff Walk, 2012, etc.) gets pulled off the sports desk at the Providence Dispatch, he’s sent out to cover the brutal murder of Becky Medeiros and her daughter Jessica, 4, in suburban Warwick. Their killer, not exactly a criminal mastermind, left so much trace evidence at the scene that it’s a simple matter to confirm that he’s the perp when Connie Stuart and her two daughters are slaughtered two years later. Mulligan, who’s made a friend and confidant of Andy Jennings, the cop in charge of the case, provides some sharp observations and asks a few good questions of his own. The result is the arrest and conviction of neighborhood teen Kwame Diggs. Tried as a juvenile, Diggs is supposed to be released when he’s 21. But he’s still in a maximum security cell 18 years later because the prison authorities have found one infraction after another to charge him with. When Edward Anthony Mason III, son of the Dispatch’s publisher, gets it into his crusading head to investigate whether the charges that have extended Diggs’ prison term are on the level, he unleashes a firestorm of protest from right-wing radio firebrand Iggy Rock, thousands of subscribers the struggling Dispatch can ill afford to lose, and of course Mulligan himself, who sees no reason that a sociopath like Diggs should ever be freed, especially now that he’s had nearly two decades to choose his next targets and reflect on the mistakes that got him caught. DeSilva, drawing on a real-life case, pours on the ethical complications with such unrelenting suspense that you’ll be glad you don’t live in Rhode Island. Only the last few chapters are a letdown from the general excellence.”
“Providence Rag” is an unflinching look at how doing the right thing can have dire reverberations. DeSilva’s other novels, including the Edgar-winning “Rogue Island,” have shown Mulligan secure in his career as an investigative reporter, an old-school newspaperman who thrives on the deadline pressure and the chase of a good story covering the nooks and crannies of his hometown, cultivating sources from various strata of society. . . . The remorseless killer was to have been released years earlier because of a legal loophole. But years continue to be added to his sentence because he has assaulted guards numerous time and smuggled in drugs. But Ed Mason, another reporter, believes those new charges have been fabricated by the warden and the prosecutor to keep the killer behind bars. Is the conspiracy real or a ploy by the killer to be released? . . . Mulligan and Mason each want the truth, and both know the consequences of their quests,” says southflorida.com.
When is it available?
This compelling novel is waiting for you 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!
Casebook
By Mona Simpson
(Knopf, $25.95, 336 pages)
Who is this author?
Mona Simpson is the author of many well-regarded novels, including Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, and My Hollywood. Off Keck Road won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, and Simpson has also won a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lila Wallace–-Reader’s Digest Writers Award, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A faculty member at UCLA, she also teaches at Bard College.
Simpson has a fascinating personal history: she was born to an American mother and a father from Syria, who had had another child before they married. They later divorced and Simpson took her stepfather’s last name. She did not meet her brother, who had been given up for adoption, until she was 25, and they became close friends. You may have heard of him: his name was Steve Jobs.
What is this book about?
It’s a book about divorce, seen from a teenage boy’s vantage point, and also about trying to understand love and its impermanence. Here is what Simpson told an interviewer about her latest novel:
“Casebook is about boy named Miles and his best friend, Hector, who spy on Miles’ mother as the family is falling apart. It’s a mystery and it’s also my attempt at a love story. Maybe love stories are all mysteries.
“I’ve tried to give some of the vivid pleasures and discontents of romantic yearning, with its intermittent satisfactions. But at the same time that the book is about love, it’s also about watching love, seeing signs and scraps of it and learning to recognize its force, that it exists and that you can’t control it, that it could hurt you, before it’s even a possibility that you might find it for yourself. Before any of its pleasures are available to you.
“The central question [Miles and his sisters] face from the divorce and from the mystery in this book and its resolution is what position romantic love should have in their lives. Will they live driven by suspicion? Or will they trust the high notes, the lures?
“I don’t think that their parents’ divorce benefits Miles or his sisters; it’s a fact of their life and in understanding the sorrow and confusion it causes them, they eventually gain depth, and an acceptance of different, equally vivid realities. They grow up anyway.”
Why you’ll like it:
Simpson is a thoughtful writer and one who captures the way a young boy feels and thinks in this story. She is divorced, as were here parents, and she has a visceral understanding of how marriage and divorce affect children. Miles is a developed character with a compelling story to tell, and Simpson gives us his story through graceful writing and powerful storytelling, focusing on the events of his life while also examining larger themes of love and loss.
What others are saying:
Amazon.com’s Best Book of the Month, April 2014, review says: “Miles Adler-Rich is a snoop. He admits as much on page one. It starts innocently–eavesdropping, a hidden walkie talkie, a secret phone extension–then expands into digging through drawers, computer files, and email. This likeably sneaky boy is nine when we meet him, and his world is crumbling. His parents split, his mom begins dating an allegedly wealthy “dork” who lives across the country, and then Miles, his mother and sisters–known as Boop One and Boop Two–must move to a new home, outside LA, which he learns is a rental. Miles’s accomplice in spying is his best friend Hector, whose parents have also divorced. Together, the duo uncovers more than they bargained for–about their parents, their parents’ friends, and especially about the loving but evasive boyfriend of Miles’s mom. After discovering love notes, credit card receipts, and even a “sex diary,” Miles realizes, “Espionage had a life of its own. Secrets opened to me when I wasn’t even looking.” Coming-of-age is an oversimplification for this rich and lovable story. Miles is a confused little dude, and learning about his parents’ grown-up woes only adds to his confusion. At one point he joins a gay and lesbian club at school, mainly to torment his homophobic father. But then Miles thinks: maybe I am gay. When some dark truths are finally, inevitably uncovered, Miles and Hector launch themselves into a hilarious revenge mission involving stray cats and dogs. Yet, after their insatiable curiosity leads them to a private investigator, Miles begins to fret: “We’d gone too far.” And looking back on the Sherlock Holmes books and the binoculars he received as gifts, Miles wonders, “Does everyone finally want to be caught?”
Says Publishers Weekly’s starred review: “Simpson’s sixth novel portrays a Santa Monica, Calif., family through the eyes of the only son, Miles Adler-Hart, a habitual eavesdropper who watches his mother, Irene, with great intensity. From an early age, Miles senses the vulnerability of his mother, a recently divorced mathematician, and throughout his childhood and adolescence feels the need to look out for her. When Irene falls in love with Eli Lee, Miles is highly suspicious. He enlists his best friend, Hector, to help him look deep into Eli’s background, going so far as to work with a private investigator. Simpson elevates this world of tree houses and walkie-talkies not only through Miles’s intelligence—“‘Hope for happiness is happiness,’” he tells Hector—but through the startling revelations he uncovers. Simpson tastefully crafts her story in a world of privilege, with private school, show business jobs, and housekeepers all present, but never prevalent details. More remarkable is Simpson’s knowledge of her characters, which is articulated through subtle detail: we are not surprised by the flea market blackboard in the kitchen, nor by the preachy quotation Irene chooses to write on it. Ultimately, this is a story about a son’s love for his mother, and Simpson’s portrayal of utter loyalty is infectious.”
“Simpson’s story unfolds with magnetic force. . . . She handles the passage of Miles’s crucial years through and beyond high school, including awkward relationships with two girls, with finesse. From beginning to end, it’s clear that in everything he does, Miles loves his mother. His indisputable, powerful, and consistent filial love gives ‘Casebook’ enormous emotional power and makes the surprise ending a heart-breaker,” says The Boston Globe.
“The heart of the book is simply the story of an emotional coming-of-age. Simpson’s novel is at its strongest in the quiet, unadorned gray areas where Miles’s childhood neuroses and tender loving impulses for his family mingle painfully with his desire to face up to the truth. . . . It’s the poignancy of a child coming to terms with the irreversible losses and ill-judged compromises of adult life that gives emotional weight to the narrative,” says The Huffington Post.
Says Kirkus Reviews: “A child of divorce turns private eye in the latest well-observed study of domestic dysfunction from Simpson (My Hollywood, 2010, etc.). . . The setup is ingenious on a couple of fronts. First, making the tale a mystery adds a dose of drama to what’s otherwise a stock plot about upper-middle-class divorce. Second, Miles’ snapping to the role of secret eavesdropper and researcher underscores how alienated he is from his mother’s confusion and heartbreak. Simpson presents Miles’ tale as slightly comic; this is a story of teenage misadventures, after all. But as the truth about Eli emerges and Miles gets wise to reality, she shifts into a more serious register. “Everyone had secrets, I understood, now that I did,” Miles explains. “With that one revelation, the world multiplied.” Simpson’s attempts to add a metafictional touch via Hector’s footnote comments feel half-finished, but overall her command of the story is rock-solid. A clever twist on a shopworn theme by a top-shelf novelist.”
When is it available?
“Casebook” is on the shelf at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court
By Mark Twain. Adapted by Seymour Chwast.
(Bloomsbury USA, $22, !44 pages)
Who is this author?
Seymour Chwast is an artist and author and a master of graphic design. He is a founding partner of the celebrated Push Pin Studios, now the Pushpin Group, whose style changed visual communications. His work includes illustrating more than 30 children’s books and three other graphic adaptations of classic works: Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales, and The Odyssey. He lives, of course, in New York City.
What is this book about?
Seymour Chwast knows a good book when he sees one, and while it takes considerable chutzpah (a word Mark Twain didn’t know, but I am betting would have loved) to adapt classics by Homer, Dante and Chaucer, he has the smarts and arts to do it, and do it well.
Now he gives us a somewhat streamlined but still hilarious and powerful retelling of Twain’s popular novel about a practical-minded Yankee appalled by the mess he finds when he wakes up one day in 6th century England, and the clever ways he goes about sprucing things up. The idea of applying contemporary technology to ancient times was funny when Twain wrote his novel in 1889, and it’s still amusing but in new ways, when given the graphic treatment by an artist who really “gets” the author.
Why you’ll like it:
Chwast’s sensibility blends wonderfully with Twain’s, and the reader gets the benefit of combining the talents of a classic and a current master. Chwast has a clean, striking and often delightfully witty visual style that is unusually well-suited to Twain’s prose. We can’t know, of course, what Twain would have thought of this book, but it seems a safe bet that he would have been flattered, intrigued and challenged by Chwast’s re-imagining of his classic tale. Here’s hoping that you are, too.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Adapting Twain is a dangerous thing: too often the old master’s pretend-ramshackle style and tall-tale sensibility gets taken straight, no chaser. Fortunately, Chwast (who previously adapted The Divine Comedy and The Odyssey ) brings just the right puckish tone to Twain’s comedy. Hank Morgan, a 19th-century jack-of-all-trades, is mysteriously transported to 6th century England. Instead of being impressed by the Arthurian pomp and ceremony, the efficiency-minded Protestant Yankee is offended by the superstition, filth, cruelty, and antidemocratic oppression. As the “stranger in a strange England” sets about modernizing the place, forces of reaction (Merlin the magician, the church, knights who don’t like his turning them into advertising billboards) rise up. It’s a tale told more briskly than in the original, with great blocks of plot and background sliced out. But Chwast’s squiggly art, flattened perspectives, and purposeful misspellings bring a curiously innocent and childlike perspective to this complex satire, which, if anything, further highlights Twain’s dark view of human progress.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Design veteran Chwast delivers another streamlined, graphic adaptation of classic literature, this time Mark Twain’s caustic, inventive satire of feudal England. Chwast (Tall City, Wide Country, 2013, etc.) has made hay anachronistically adapting classic texts, whether adding motorcycles to The Canterbury Tales (2011) or rocket ships to The Odyssey (2012), so Twain’s tale of a modern-day (well, 19th-century) engineer dominating medieval times via technology–besting Merlin with blasting powder–is a fastball down the center. (The source material already had knights riding bicycles!) In Chwast’s rendering, bespectacled hero Hank Morgan looks irresistible, plated in armor everywhere except from his bow tie to the top of his bowler hat, sword cocked behind head and pipe clenched in square jaw. Inexplicably sent to sixth-century England by a crowbar to the head, Morgan quickly ascends nothing less than the court of Camelot, initially by drawing on an uncanny knowledge of historical eclipses to present himself as a powerful magician. Knowing the exact date of a celestial event from more than a millennium ago is a stretch, but the charm of Chwast’s minimalistic adaption is that there are soon much better things to dwell on, such as the going views on the church, politics and society, expressed as a chart of literal back-stabbing and including a note that while the upper class may murder without consequence, it’s kill and be killed for commoners and slaves. Morgan uses his new station as “The Boss” to better the primitive populace via telegraph lines, newspapers and steamboats, but it’s the deplorably savage civility of the status quo that he can’t overcome, even with land mines, Gatling guns and an electric fence. The subject of class manipulation–and the power of passion over reason–is achingly relevant, and Chwast’s simple, expressive illustrations resonate with a childlike earnestness, while his brief, pointed annotations add a sly acerbity. His playful mixing of perspectives within single panels gives the work an aesthetic somewhere between medieval tapestry and Colorforms. Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.”
When is it available?
The Chwast-Twain collaboration is on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Blue Hills 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!
In the Memorial Room
By Janet Frame
(Counterpoint, $24, 208 pages)
Who is this author?
The world came close to losing the talents of Janet Frame, the writer now considered to be one of New Zealand’s (and the world’s) finest authors. As a young woman, Frame had schizophrenia and underwent electroshock therapy. Then her doctors recommended a lobotomy as the cure. Luckily for Frame – and readers everywhere – the publication in 1951 of her first story collection, “The Lagoon and Other Stories, at age 27, caused her doctors to drop that drastic idea, and Frame went on to publish 21 books (some posthumously.) Her autobiographical “An Angel at My Table” became a TV series by Jane Campion in 1990. Frame died in 2004. Praised as a worthy compatriot of the great Katherine Mansfield (for whom Frame’s mother worked), she requested that “In the Memorial Room” not be published in her lifetime. Now, here it is at last.
What is this book about?
At once a satire on the way some readers make plaster saints out of certain authors after their death and a witty and poignant exploration of what one gives up and gains by becoming a writer, this book tells the story of a author of historical fiction who wins a fellowship that is “a living memorial” to a poet, Margaret Rose Hurndell. Off Harry Gill goes to Europe, to live and work in a tiny French town where Hurndell lived and worked. But the Memorial Room is hardly suitable – no plumbing, no electricity – and even the beloved poet did not actually write in it. But Harry is expected to, and finds that his eyesight and hearing are dimming and he is losing his sense of self as earnest but irritating Hurndell fans plague him. His fictional dilemma echoes Frame’s own experience as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow in 1973.
Why you’ll like it:
Frame’s novel is clever and cutting, a brilliant sendup of writers, readers and the cult of personality that sometimes springs up around certain authors, obscuring their true talents and humanity. But it has something more: a loving and deep analysis of the nature of writing and the beauty and malleability of words. Though 40 years old, this book feels fresh and contemporary. Readers are doubly lucky that Frame’s abilities were not snuffed out by needless surgery and that this book has finally been published. If you have not yet read Frame, here is a good place to start.
What others are saying:
Library Journal says: “One of New Zealand’s most distinguished writers, Frame (1924–2004) draws upon her own experiences living in Menton, France, to satirize the excessive devotion to or fetishizing of famous authors in this posthumously published novel. Written in 1974, the work is a social commentary and comedy about the fandom surrounding deceased poet Margaret Rose Hurndell, who is meant to represent New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). For this reason, Frame insisted the book not be published until after her death. The experiences of protagonist Harry Gill, a historical fiction writer, parallel the time Frame spent as a Mansfield Fellow in 1973. Gill’s keen observations of the well-intentioned but annoying Hurndell devotees are thoroughly enjoyable, cutting-edge social satire. However, the story is also a beautifully crafted artistic and philosophical creation that explores the nature of communication and exposes Frame’s love of language. VERDICT The author’s literary achievements may not be familiar to American readers, and this is a terrific introduction to an original writer who deserves her own serious league of fans.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “ A strange, resonant, Nabokov-ian novel about the plight of Harry Gill, a New Zealand writer on a six-month fellowship in France, struggling to write his first imaginative fiction. Works by Frame (1924-2004), the New Zealand novelist and autobiographer, continue to appear. Never published during her lifetime, this book is marvelous experimental fiction. Up until now, Harry (his name comes from the title of a William Wordsworth poem) has written historical novels. Receiving the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, and admitting he is not funny or adventurous, he sets out to write a “comic novel in the picaresque tradition.” In fact, he is so shy and compliant as to be almost anonymous. Arriving in Menton, expatriates besiege him; they want to possess the recipient of their little fellowship, created to honor a dead writer who worked in the town. The book Harry writes is this one, a journal about trying to find peace and quiet and time to write a book, a comedy of errors both physical and metaphysical. The local doctor Harry visits, afraid that he is going blind and, again, when he goes deaf, is Dr. Rumor. The good doctor opines that Harry’s symptoms are a species of hysteria: He fears going blind because he’s afraid he is invisible. The humor is bone-dry and crackling. . . . Frame’s sentences are marvels, winding like narrow alleys through hill towns: They open spectacular vistas. Brilliant.”
From the New York Times Sunday Book Review: “This short, funny and often beautifully written novel — completed in the early 1970s but just now being published — provides an excellent occasion for remembering the weird wisdom and genuine talent of Janet Frame, who died in 2004 after a startlingly diverse life. . . . Harry Gill, the protagonist of “In the Memorial Room,” shares many characteristics with Frame: He is awarded an international literary fellowship that takes him to Europe and the dreary, cold and poorly plumbed former home of a deceased writer; he seems glad to leave New Zealand for France; he devotes himself so thoroughly to the writing of his new book that he often ignores the rest of his life. Eventually, he even starts to feel as if that life is vanishing out from under him — or he is vanishing from it. (Possibly both.) He begins to lose contact with the outside world. His sight dims, his hearing fades. In a way, he becomes a world unto himself. . . ..“In the Memorial Room” is filled with terrifyingly beautiful reflections on how writing books (and even reading them) can feel like digging your own grave. It also serves as a sly warning to those of us who obsessively cherish the works of dead writers — even writers as good as Janet Frame. Watch out! The death you memorialize may well be your own.”
When is it available?
It’s on the shelves 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!
Delicious
By Ruth Reichl
(Random House, /427, 400 pages)
Who is this author?
Ruth Reichl once had the considerable power to put a restaurant out of business – or make one a roaring success – simply by reviewing it. As the chief restaurant critic for the New York Times, she was feared and courted in equal measure, which is why she used a wardrobe of wigs and eyeglasses to help avoid being detected. She later became editor in chief of Gourmet magazine (defunct now) and executive producer of the two-time James Beard Award-winning Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie on PBS, as well as editor of the Modern Library Food Series. Reichl also has published three memoirs, all best-sellers: Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires.
Reichl often gives talks about food and culture, and will be the speaker at this year’s gala fundraiser for the Hartford Public Library, “One Big Sizzling Summer Night,” which takes place June 12 at the library, 500 Main St., Hartford. Tickets are $150 and $250. Information and reservations: www.hplct.org or: 860-695-6342
What is this book about?
Billie, a young food enthusiast, leaves California for a dream job at a New York magazine called Delicious!, and a side job at a famous Italian cheese shop, where she meets an interesting man she dubs “Mr. Complainer.” But suddenly, the magazine goes bust, and Billie winds up hanging on to run its complaints hotline. By chance, Billie finds a hidden room in its library and letters from a 12-year-old girl, Lulu, written during World War II to food world icon James Beard. Billie learns a lot from Lulu’s letters, which help her overcome her fears and family problems.
Why you’ll like it:
Just as you will find with foodie websites, such as Yelp, there can be vast differences of opinion about the tastiness of food…and books. Two powerhouse review sites, The New York Times and The Washington Post, call this book a dud and didn’t mince words. Other reviewers have been kinder. I have not yet read “Delicious!” but I did read “Tender At the Bone,” Reichl’s very frank memoir about growing up with a manic-depressive mother who served meals with a heaping helping of food poisoning. That book was a great read, and on that basis, I would give “Delicious!” a try. If you do not find it “delicious!”, do try her memoirs instead.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Former New York Times restaurant critic and Gourmet editor Reichl’s (Tender at the Bone) first foray into fiction is like an iced white cake. It follows a traditional recipe, it is really sweet, and it is dull. A young California woman named Billie Breslin (a barely disguised Reichl) lands a job at a food magazine called Delicious! in New York City just before it is shuttered by budget-minded bigwigs. As part of an interim position fielding calls and correspondence from subscribers, Billie stays on as the lone employee in the old mansion from which the magazine was published for years. A stock character named Sammy, the fey former travel editor for the mag, leads her to a beautiful library on an upstairs floor, where they uncover letters written to the famous James Beard from a girl named Lulu during the Second World War—letters that have been hidden in a secret chamber by a long-gone librarian named Bertie. Billie embarks upon a scavenger hunt for the remaining the letters, and, in the end, on a journey to find their aging author. In order to get in as much foodie language as possible, Reichl has Billie working at a deli in Little Italy on the weekends, where she meets Mr. Complainer, her love interest. Though Reichl is a marvelous food writer, the language used here is often cloying.”
From Dwight Garner’s New York Times review: “Ms. Reichl’s novel, however, is strictly kid stuff. It’s a gauzy ode to the liberating virtues of pleasure, glazed with warmth and uplift, so feebly written and idea free that it will make you wonder if the energy we’ve been putting into food these last few decades hasn’t made us each lose, on average, a dozen I.Q. points. . . .”
“Delicious! is an enjoyable read overall. I just had to take a deep breath, relax and remember this book is supposed to be fun, albeit one where food facts are sprinkled like fleur de sel across a just-sliced, vine-ripened tomato,” says The Chicago Tribune’s Bill Daley, formerly of The Courant.
“Either Reichl respects her readers’ worldliness, or is showing off her vast and varied knowledge just a teensy bit. Probably both. When an older woman tells Billie that time is no more than a trick of the mind — ‘some days, I’m convinced that my young self is still here, somewhere, just walking down a different street’ — the leap to a pensive Reichl, working without her most visible and prestigious platform, isn’t difficult,” says the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Library Journal says: “Not a yummy cookbook or memoir from the former editor in chief of Gourmet, but this first novel is still drenched in food lore and love. Billie Breslin is thrilled to find work at New York’s upscale foodie magazine Delicious, then devastated when it is shut down. Left behind to answer the magazine’s public relations hotline, she finds a letter that makes her rethink her own life.”
Kirkus Reviews says: “Tragedy, war, fairy-tale makeover, trauma resolution, romance and—of course—food are just some of the ingredients in dining critic and celebrated memoirist Reichl’s (Garlic and Sapphires, 2005, etc.) first novel, a bittersweet pudding with some lumps in the batter. Food metaphors irresistibly suggest themselves when considering this author’s flavor-driven debut, set in the New York offices of Delicious!, a magazine not unlike Gourmet, where Reichl was editor in chief. At the fictional magazine, Billie Breslin, 21 and gifted with a prodigious palate, gets a job as editor’s assistant and encounters a kindly cast of foodies, including travel editor Sammy and cheese shop owner Sal. Billie writes emails to her older, prettier, more popular sister, Genie, with whom, implausibly, she set up a successful cake-baking business in California when they were 10 and 11. But Billie’s mysterious past is merely one strand of Reichl’s tenderly written yet overstuffed story, which shifts focus after the magazine is suddenly closed down. A cache of wartime letters from a child named Lulu to famous chef James Beard, which Billie unearths in a hidden room behind the magazine’s library, is used to pull in some odd, heavyweight issues, including World War II injustices against Italian-Americans and the Underground Railroad. Meanwhile, Sammy has encouraged Billie to open up about the secrets of her past, after which it’s time for contact lenses, a cool haircut and a new wardrobe, converting the ugly duckling into a kooky swan. This helps Billie’s attraction to Mr. Complainer—one of Sal’s picky customers and a top-rated architectural historian—take wing. An argument and the search for Lulu prolong the story, but Reichl manages to bring matters comfortingly to rest with a kitchen epiphany and a recipe. Reichl’s first fictional outing is something of a curate’s egg—good in parts.”
Says Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post: “To me the big surprise about “Delicious!” is that there’s so little originality to it. The characters are mostly stereotypes, and the plot is far more contrived and sentimental than one would expect from a writer as outspoken and independent as Reichl . . . The search for Lulu is one of the novel’s several sentimental story lines, two others being Billie’s attachment to Sal Fontanari and his wife, who run an Italian cheese shop in Little Italy and have hearts bigger than all of Bologna, and the mystery of Billie’s beloved older sister, a beauty who “had star power even when we were children, and by the time I was a teenager, every guy we ever met was so busy looking at her slanting violet eyes and curly blond hair they barely noticed me.” But of course noticing Billie is the whole point of “Delicious!,” though how that comes to pass is for you to learn with no further help from me. . . .“Delicious!” is amiable enough and its heart, like the hearts of Sammy the travel writer and the Fontanaris, is certainly in the right place, but it is a surprisingly amateurish performance for a writer as skilled and versatile as Reichl. Whether writing it taught her that fiction is a lot harder than many people believe has not been disclosed, but the evidence she herein presents proves the point.”
When is it available?
Ruth Reichl’s novel is available at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Albany 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 Good Luck of Right Now
By Matthew Quick
(HarperCollins, $25.99, 304 pages)
Who is this author?
You may not know the name Matthew Quick, but you may know about the movie, “The Silver Linings Playbook,” which was an Academy Award-winning film this year. Quick wrote the book on which the film was based, and also has written several young adult novels: “Sorta Like a Rock Star,” “Boy21” and “Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock.” His wife is the novelist and pianist Alicia Bessette.
What is this book about?
Bartholomew, the protagonist of this whimsical novel about synchronicity, coincidence and “the good luck of right now,” is 38 and has never lived alone. When his mom passes away, however, he must finally learn to be on his own. Sort of. Mom was losing it in her final days and calling him “Richard.” When Bart finds a letter in her underwear drawer about joining the cause of freeing Tibet, sent by activist and actor Richard Gere, he begins sending letters to the movie star, deeply revealing letters that explain Bartholomew’s odd personality. And he is far from the only odd one in story: there is a “girlbrarian” he admires from afar, her nutty cat-loving brother, the spirit of Gere himself, a defrocked, bipolar priest, his helpful grief counselor and more. They become entwined and the story becomes a quest narrative involving a road trip to Canada to find the father he has never known, as well as the Cat Parliament.
Why you’ll like it:
Whimsy often does not wear well over the length of a novel, but Quick knows how to handle it in this sweetly sad, or sadly sweet, story. It’s not easy to write about people with emotional problems without being condescending or flip, but Quick avoids those pitfalls and gives readers a poignant story filled with unusual people and, well, silver linings, that most reviewers found well worth their time.
What others are saying:
Says Publishers Weekly:
The newest from The Silver Linings Playbook author Quick is a quirky coming-of-age story about an earnest, guileless 38-year-old man with a dyspeptic stomach. After caring for his mother until her death, Bartholomew Neil begins adding to his writing repertoire—he already keeps an “Interesting Things I Have Learned” notebook—penning letters to Richard Gere when he discovers a “free Tibet” letter from Gere, his mom’s favorite actor, among her things. Told by his grief counselor that Bartholomew should find his flock, he believes coincidence is at play and begins recounting stories from his life to the actor, and soliciting advice as well. Bartholomew’s plan starts small: he wants to have a drink in a bar with a buddy and go on a date with a girl—hopefully the “girlbrarian” at the library where he spends most days reading books about Jung or the Dalai Lama. His motley flock slowly takes form, including the bipolar priest he’s known his whole life, a foulmouthed paranoid grieving for his dead cat, and the paranoid’s depressed sister, who just so happens to be the girlbrarian. Quick writes with an engaging intimacy, capturing his narrator’s innocence and off-kilter philosophy, and the damaged souls in orbit around him.
Kirkus Reviews’s starred review says: “Quirky, feel-good fiction from the author of The Silver Linings Playbook (2008). Bartholomew Neil describes himself as having above-average intelligence, though it’s clear his intelligence is unconventional and idiosyncratic. Neil tells his story in a series of letters he writes to Richard Gere, a figure much admired by Neil’s mother. The novel opens with her death, a great loss for Bartholomew, who has lived with her for 38 years. Now he’s bereft and alone, relying on the ministrations of Wendy, his grief counselor, and Father McNamee, a priest at the church Bartholomew has faithfully attended for his entire life. Although at first it’s not quite clear what his motivation is, McNamee abruptly “defrocks himself” to help take care of Bartholomew. In addition to caring for Bartholomew, he spends much time praying but also drinking a daily bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey, and by the end of the novel, it becomes clear that McNamee has much to atone for. Bartholomew is something of a holy innocent. He becomes enamored with the “Girlbrarian,” a woman he falls platonically in love with at the library he haunts. Through synchronicity (a key concept in the novel), it turns out the Girlbrarian, Elizabeth, has a brother, Max, going through grief counseling for his cat, Alice. Max, who can’t get through a single sentence without using the f-word, links up with Bartholomew through Wendy, and the novel switches to a road trip to Canada, where Bartholomew can supposedly discover a father he has long thought dead and Max can visit the “Cat Parliament” in Ottawa. A whimsical, clever narrative.
Says Wally Lamb: “The Good Luck of Right Now” has everything I relish in a story: a flawed but sympathetic protagonist, a page-turning plot, and a cast of emotionally scarred characters for whom I rooted wholeheartedly. I loved this novel from its quirky and unconventional opening to its poignant, tear-inducing conclusion.”
“Life-affirming….Begins as a character study and morphs into a road novel, blending humorous set pieces-pack a Canadian hotel with UFO abductees and there’s bound to be fun-with poignant revelations about the novel’s main characters. It’s an unabashed tear-jerker,” says the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Library Journal says: “For 40-odd years, Bartholomew Neil has lived quietly in Philadelphia with his aging mother. In her last days, dementia causes her to refer to her son as Richard, presumably after her favorite actor, Richard Gere. In a series of letters to the actor, Bartholomew outlines his isolated life in funny, plaintive, and sometimes darkly obsessive terms. We learn of Father McNamee, a longtime family friend, who suffers from bipolar disorder and moves in with Bartholomew. Life-skills and grief counselors try to assist but have issues of their own. When Bartholomew encounters profane, cat-loving Max in a therapy group, he fulfills a long-term desire to meet the library worker he has admired from his local branch, who happens to be Max’s sister, Elizabeth. Serendipitous events like this help to cement Bartholomew’s growing belief in the phenomenon his mother called “the good luck of right now.” VERDICT Quick (aka “Q”), author of The Silver Linings Playbook, on which the highly acclaimed movie was based, has film rights optioned for several books, including this one. He has a rare skill in portraying characters with mental illness, which, when coupled with his deft hand at humor, produces compelling and important prose. Interest should be high; fans of Wally Lamb, Mark Haddon, or Winston Groom will appreciate [this story].
When is it available?
It’s our good luck right now that this book is available at the Blue Hills and Mark Twain branches of the 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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