Above the Waterfall
By Ron rash
(HarperCollins, $26.99, 272 pages)
Who is this author?
Ron Rash, who teaches at Western Carolina University, is a bestselling author who sets his stories in the contemporary South and has won major prizes for his work, including the novels Serena, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight, four story collections, including Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories and three poetry collections. His honors include the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and two O. Henry Prizes.
What is this book about?
Les, a divorced Appalachian sheriff worn out by the horrors wrought by crystal meth addiction and his own problems in a small North Carolina town, is just a month shy of retirement when this story begins. Then his path crosses that of park ranger Becky, who has her own difficult past to overcome. They both revere the beauty of nature in their part of the world, and find themselves caught up – on opposite sides — in the case of a eccentric old man who may have poisoned a trout stream. Making sense of the case forces them to dig deeply into their own painful pasts, and issues of addiction, ecoterrorism and land disputes reverberate through the novel.
Why you’ll like it:
Rash consistently earns plaudits for his beautiful mastery of style and vivid recreation of life in the deep South. Infused with poetic style, not to mention actual poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins devotee Becky, this is a dark tale told with lyrical loftiness. Fans of Rash’s previous work will be glad to know that his earlier novel, Serena, has been adapted as a soon-to-be-released film starring Jennifer Lawrence, who embodied similar Appalachian angst in her debut star turn in Winter’s Bone.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Rash’s widely celebrated style lends his Southern Gothic–tinged books a suppleness that verges on prose poetry and, in the case of his new novel, elevates a small-town noir story. Les is a gentle sheriff on the verge of retirement in meth-wracked Appalachia, troubled by the petty rivalries that tear at his North Carolina community and his uncertain love affair with park ranger Becky Lytle. Following a nightmarish raid on a meth house, Les becomes drawn into the case of Gerald Blackwelder, a local eccentric accused of poisoning a trout stream in a land dispute. Gerald’s only advocate is Becky—but as a one-time associate of an infamous ecoterrorist named Richard Pelfrey, she’s been wrong before. Operating on opposing sides of an intrigue that touches on family quarrels and sins of the past, Les and Becky unearth a caper heavy in rich Southern crime and violence, one that’s a cut above the rest. Rash writes prose so beautifully that plot and character can come to seem like mere adornments, and certain touches—such the poems Les writes in his off-hours—feel like showcases. But there’s no denying Rash’s grasp of the North Carolina landscape and its reflection in the oft-tortured souls of its denizens, making this novel one of his most successful ventures into poetic humanism.”
Booklist’s starred review says: “Combining suspense with acute observations and flashing insights, Rash tells a seductive and disquieting tale about our intrinsic attachment to and disastrous abuse of the land and our betrayal of our best selves.”
Says Library Journal: “Author of the New York Times best-selling novel Serena, coming to the big screen this fall in a film adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence, Rash again takes us to beautiful but hardscrabble Appalachia. A brutal crime brings together longtime sheriff Les, burned out by the impact of crystal meth on his insular community, and a park ranger named Becky who’s trying to forget the past. “
“For his sixth novel, Rash plays a park ranger’s past traumas against a sheriff’s present crises. When Becky Shytle was in elementary school in Virginia, a gunman invaded her school, killing the teacher who had escorted her to safety. For months afterward she couldn’t speak, finding her voice only in the safe haven of her grandparents’ farm. Later, as a park ranger, a relationship ended badly when her boyfriend became an eco-terrorist and was killed. That time, it was the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who saved her soul, along with the anonymous cave painters of Lascaux. In an unnamed town in the North Carolina mountains, Rash’s invariable setting, Becky, now the superintendent of a state park, has found a kindred spirit in the sheriff, Les. He too turned inward after his wife’s suicide attempt led to an exceptionally painful divorce. Les is 51, retiring after 30 years’ hard grind; just two more items of business left. The first is a meth bust, so nightmarish a rookie officer quits on the spot. (Rash on meth-heads is always riveting.) The second involves the poisoning of trout at a fishing resort. The prime suspect is elderly landowner Gerald Blackwelder, a good man but ornery and Becky’s staunch supporter in all things environmental. She alternates as narrator with Les; her Hopkins-infused musings are a counterpoint to Les’ action-oriented segments. There are six players in the poisoning case, so Les has his work cut out for him, and this storyline takes over the novel. An ordinary whodunit seems to have elbowed aside a more spacious novel about characters whose deep affinities with the natural world, and its interpreters, sustain them among unremitting man-made violence. For once this major American writer appears, uncharacteristically, to have veered off course,” says Kirkus Reviews.
When is it available?
Rush’s latest exploration of Appalachia can be found at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs
By Matthew Dicks
(St. Martin’s Press, $24.99, 224 pages)
Who is this author
For Matthew Dicks, it’s all about “telling stories on the page and on the stage.”
You may have read interviews with Dicks in The Courant; there have been at least three. That’s because Dicks, an elementary school teacher in West Hartford who lives in Newington, has made a successful career as an author and a storyteller, not to mention as a contributor to local publications , The Huffington Post and The Christian Science Monitor, and as a wedding DJ, life coach and minister. Dicks, who grew up (and into trouble in high school in Blackstone, MA), is also a Moth StorySLAM champion and a co-founder with his wife, Elysha, of Speak Up, is a Hartford-area storytelling organization. His earlier novels are Something Missing, Unexpectedly Milo, and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, which became an international bestseller.
What is this book about?
Wife, mother of grumpy, punky, tattooed teenager Polly and an underappreciated studio and art photographer, shy Caroline Jacobs is an adult still trapped in teenage angst. Long ago, Emily, her best friend rejected her publically in order to fit in better with the “cool kids,” leaving poor unconfident Caroline hurt and abandoned and afraid to speak her mind. Living in this social prison of her own device for 25 years, Caroline seems unlikely to break free, until the obnoxious president of the local PTO pushes her beyond her comfort zone and Caroline surprises her, the other parents and herself by dropping the F bomb and telling her off. This explosion of truth-telling propels Caroline to yank her recalcitrant daughter out of school and set off to her old hometown to finally right the wrong done to her many years ago. When she arrives, she finds many things have changed, but not all. By the time she leaves, many more changes have taken place and no one is more surprised than the newly confident Caroline and her new champion, her daughter Polly.
Why you’ll like it:
Dicks has the gift of understanding what makes people tick, and when those people are not your ordinary folks, he guides us to understand them, too. His protagonists have included a guy who breaks into homes not to steal things but to leave stuff he thinks the owners might want or need; a man with OCD who cannot resist that ssssss sound a jar of jelly makes when you open the cap and the imaginary friend of a little boy on the autism spectrum, who saves his young pal from kidnapping with the help of other imaginary friends. Caroline, his first female protagonist, fits right in to this collection of odd but loveable people with her stunted sense of self, and just like Dicks’ other characters, she is headed for a brighter future. Dicks’ books abound with humor, kindness, insight and unusual characters so piquant and poignant that you will not soon forget them.
What others are saying:
Library Journal says: “It all starts with the F-bomb. Quiet, shy pushover Caroline has had enough. Her expletive is directed straight at the PTO president Mrs. Denali, who has been passive-aggressively calling out the parents for not pulling their weight in volunteering. The next day, while Caroline considers how best to apologize to Mrs. Denali, she receives a phone call from the high school. Her 15-year-old daughter Polly has a much stronger backbone; she’s been suspended for punching, of all people, Mrs. Denali’s daughter. On a whim, Caroline decides to break her daughter out of school to drive to her hometown. She hopes to confront her childhood best friend Emily Kaplan, who humiliated her one day in the school cafeteria 25 years ago, forever changing the trajectory of Caroline’s life, or so she thinks. Caroline has placed a great deal of emphasis on her best friend’s betrayal and is now ready to stand up to her bully. But mustering that courage doesn’t come easy. VERDICT Dicks’s fourth novel (after Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend) is for anyone who has wished they’d stood up for themselves or delivered that perfect comeback at just the right time.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Just as easily as a middle school friend can turn into an enemy, so can a wallflower turn into a suburban warrior in this tale of a woman seeking the best comeback to a bully. Caroline Jacobs, a happily married photographer, usually keeps quiet, enduring insults, swallowing her pride, keeping out of the limelight. But when Mary Kate Dinali, smug and privileged Parent-Teacher Organization president, tries to bully shy Jessica Trent, Caroline finally stands up. To the shock of the entire PTO, Caroline expels an expletive, and soon her daughter, Polly, is defending her honor in the halls of Benjamin Banneker High School. Rather than face the principal and likely suspension, Caroline takes Polly on a road trip to face down her own demons from the past: specifically, Emily Kaplan, her childhood best friend who unceremoniously dumped Caroline 25 years ago in the middle of the school cafeteria, taking up with the far-more-cool Ellie Randolph. That public rejection ricocheted through Caroline’s life, coloring her understanding of her father’s leaving, her parents’ divorce, their descent into near poverty, and even her younger sister’s death. As the miles to Blackstone, Massachusetts pass under their wheels, Caroline tells Polly the story of her childhood. Polly slowly thaws, letting her mother’s heartache open the lines of communication. Where once punk Polly frostily shut out Caroline, she now begins to assist in the plot to confront Emily—taking things even further than Caroline had anticipated. Dicks (Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, 2012, etc.) well balances Caroline’s caution against Polly’s pluck, Caroline’s passive-aggressiveness against Polly’s outrage, creating a believable mother-daughter relationship. As each secret comes to light, he shapes their initially fraught ties into strong friendship. Heartwarming and often darkly humorous, this road trip for vengeance fairly cries out for filming.”
They say no one ever escapes their high-school insecurities. And Caroline Jacobs, the meek suburban-mom heroine of Dicks’ fourth novel, is no exception. After years of letting people push her around, Caroline feels something snap at a PTA meeting, and she blows up in a tirade of profanity at a popular, preppie parent. At that moment, she realizes exactly when her life went wrong and who is responsible. She pulls her daughter out of school and heads back to the small town where she grew up to confront her teenage nemesis, says the New York Daily News feature, This Week’s Must-Read Books.
When is it available?
You can borrow this funny and tender story from the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Camp Field branch.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Go Set a Watchman
By Harper Lee
(HarperCollins, $27.99, 288 pages)
Who is this author?
Harper Lee, who is now 89, won a Pulitzer Prize for her iconic 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which also won her a permanent place in the hearts of American readers and various lists of classic American books. A 1999 poll by Library Journal named it the Best Novel of the Century and her work earned Lee (whose first name is Nelle) a Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a child, she was a close friend of writer Truman Capote, who was the inspiration for the character Dill in Mockingbird. A descendant of Robert E. Lee and daughter of a lawyer, newspaper editor and state senator in Alabama, Harper Lee wrote one of the most influential novels on race relations in the past century and her book shaped the understanding of its complexities for readers of the Baby Boom generation. Always one to shun publicity, and for years a resident of a nursing home, Lee was thrust back into the literary spotlight this year with the publication of Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid-1950s, before Mockingbird, and never published. It portrays the heretofore-considered saintly Atticus Finch in a much harsher light, and some maintain it was published against her will and ought never to have been.
What is this book about?
Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid-1950s, was Harper Lee’s first attempt at telling the saga of Scout and Jem Finch and their father, Atticus, a small-town Southern lawyer who unexpectedly defends a falsely accused black man. But this manuscript was rejected by her publisher, and Lee later reworked the material to produce Mockingbird. In Watchman, Scout, now using her given name Jean Louise, is in her 20s and returns from New York to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit Atticus, at a time when the civil rights movement was beginning to alter America’s beliefs and behavior concerning racial disparities. Jean Louise must confront unpleasant revelations about her father and his political views and question her own values in this troubling but intriguing tale.
Why you’ll like it:
In all honesty, you may not like it at all, if you feel it spoils your affection for To Kill a Mockingbird. And you may be troubled by news reports of the machinations of Lee’s lawyer, who brought the old manuscript to light, perhaps without Lee’s explicit approval, and troubled further by being forced to see the saintly Atticus in a new light. Reviewers are split, but some praise the book for its exploration of the fraught issues of race relations in America, as well as for its wit and graceful writing. If you loved Mockingbird, curiosity alone should propel you to read this prequel that has become a sequel.
What others are saying:
The San Francisco Chronicle says: “Go Set a Watchman’s greatest asset may be its role in sparking frank discussion about America’s woeful track record when it comes to racial equality.”
Says Publishers Weekly: “The editor who rejected Lee’s first effort had the right idea. The novel the world has been waiting for is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book’s moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she’s pregnant because she was French-kissed or her losing her falsies at the school dance compelling. The book opens in the 1950s with Jean Louise, a grown-up 26-year-old Scout, returning to Maycomb from New York, where she’s been living as an independent woman. Jean Louise is there to see Atticus, now in his seventies and debilitated by arthritis. She arrives in a town bristling from the NAACP’s actions to desegregate the schools. Her aunt Zandra, the classic Southern gentlewoman, berates Jean Louise for wearing slacks and for considering her longtime friend and Atticus protégé Henry Clinton as a potential husband—Zandra dubs him trash. But the crux of the book is that Atticus and Henry are racist, as is everyone else in Jean Louise’s old life (even her childhood caretaker, Calpurnia, sees the white folks as the enemy). The presentation of the South pushing back against the dictates of the Federal government, utilizing characters from a book that was about justice prevailing in the South through the efforts of an unambiguous hero, is a worthy endeavor. Lee just doesn’t do the job with any aplomb. The theme of the book is basically about not being able to go home again, as Jean Louise sums it up in her confrontation with Atticus: “there’s no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I’ll never be entirely at home anywhere else.” As a picture of the desegregating South, the novel is interesting but heavy-handed, with harsh language and rough sentiments: “Do you want them in our world?” Atticus asks his daughter. The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it’s a little like finding out there’s no Santa Claus.
Library Journal says: “As every reader knows, Lee’s second novel, from which her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird was spun 55 years ago, has just been published by Harper with considerable excitement and some still-shifting uncertainty, as reported by the New York Times, about how the manuscript was rediscovered. Lee’s original work has feisty 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout as a child and the basis for Mockingbird’s beloved heroine, returning home from New York to Maycomb Junction, AL, post-Brown v. Board of Education and encountering strongly resistant states’-rights, anti-integrationist forces that include boyfriend Henry and, significantly, her father, Atticus Finch, Mockingbird’s moral center. Readers shocked by that revelation must remember that there are now two Atticus Finches; the work in hand is not a sequel but served as source material for Lee’s eventual Pulitzer Prize winner, with such reworked characters a natural part of the writing and editing processes. Even if one can imagine that the seeds of the older Atticus are there in the younger Atticus—and that’s possible—these are different characters and different books. More significantly, the current work stands as you-are-there documentation of a specific time and place, contextualizing both Mockingbird and the very beginnings of the civil rights movement, and for that reason alone it’s invaluable and recommended reading. Mockingbird’s Atticus was right for 1960, just after the Little Rock integration crisis, with his defense of a wrongly accused African American making him a moral beacon and a lesson for all. Yet for many readers, even those who love and admire Mockingbird, it also smacked of white self-congratulation, and the current book is a rawer, more authentic representation of Southern sentiment at a tumultuous time, years removed from the solidly (and safely) segregationist era of Mockingbird. If Watchman is occasionally digressive or a bit much of a lecture, it’s good enough to make one wish that Lee had written a dozen works. It’s also a breathtaking read that will have the reader actively engaged and arguing with every character, including Jean Louise. In the end, despite Jean Louise’s powerful articulation that the court had to rule as it did, that “we [whites] deserve everything we’ve gotten from the NAACP,” and that Negroes (as the novel says) will rise and should rise, it’s unsettling and, yes, disappointing that the confrontation between Jean Louise and Atticus is ultimately an engineered effort to make her stand up for herself and stop worshipping her father. That’s not quite believable, and what’s right gets a little lost in states’ rights, which Jean Louise herself supports. At least she doesn’t run back to New York, but did she really win her argument? The ugly things she hears around her are still being said today. VERDICT Disturbing, important, and not to be compared with Mockingbird; this book is its own signal work.”
Kirkus Reviews says: “The long-awaited, much-discussed sequel that might have been a prequel—and that makes tolerably good company for its classic predecessor. It’s not To Kill a Mockingbird, and it too often reads like a first draft, but Lee’s story nonetheless has weight and gravity. Scout—that is, Miss Jean Louise Finch—has been living in New York for years. As the story opens, she’s on the way back to Maycomb, Alabama, wearing “gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers,” an outfit calculated to offend her prim and proper aunt. The time is pre-Kennedy; in an early sighting, Atticus Finch, square-jawed crusader for justice, is glaring at a book about Alger Hiss. But is Atticus really on the side of justice? As Scout wanders from porch to porch and parlor to parlor on both the black and white sides of the tracks, she hears stories that complicate her—and our—understanding of her father. To modern eyes, Atticus harbors racist sentiments: “Jean Louise,” he says in one exchange, “Have you ever considered that you can’t have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?” Though Scout is shocked by Atticus’ pronouncements that African-Americans are not yet prepared to enjoy full civil rights, her father is far less a Strom Thurmond-school segregationist than an old-school conservative of evolving views, “a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses,” as her uncle puts it. Perhaps the real revelation is that Scout is sometimes unpleasant and often unpleasantly confrontational, as a young person among oldsters can be. Lee, who is plainly on the side of equality, writes of class, religion, and race, but most affectingly of the clash of generations and traditions, with an Atticus tolerant and approving of Scout’s reformist ways: “I certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.” It’s not To Kill a Mockingbird, yes, but it’s very much worth reading.”
Says the Los Angeles Times: “Don’t let ‘Go Set a Watchman’ change the way you think about Atticus Finch…the hard truth is that a man such as Atticus, born barely a decade after Reconstruction to a family of Southern gentry, would have had a complicated and tortuous history with race.”
Says the Washington Post:
“A significant aspect of this novel is that it asks us to see Atticus now not merely as a hero, a god, but as a flesh-and-blood man with shortcomings and moral failing, enabling us to see ourselves for all our complexities and contradictions.”
When is it available?
This controversial novel is on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Camp Field, Dwight, Mark Twain and Park branches.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Head of State
By Andrew Marr
(Overlook, $27.95, 384 pages)
Who is this author?
Andrew Marr is one of England’s most respected political journalists: a former editor of the Independent and BBC political editor as well as creator of several popular TV documentary series, including Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain and Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain. He also has published many nonfiction books. Head of State is his fiction debut.
What is this book about?
If you crossed the plots of the movies Wag the Dog and Weekend At Bernie’s, and let a highly intelligent and brilliantly satirical writer run with it, you’d have something approaching Head of State.
What if, this book asks, Great Britain is about to decide by referendum in 2017 whether to stay in the European Union or drop out? And what if, just a few days before the crucial vote that has divided the country, the Prime Minister suddenly – and secretly – drops dead? And what if a powerful group within the government does not want this crucial bit of information to be made public? And what if a prominent political reporter also dies? What sort of skullduggery might ensue, and to what end? Marr provides the answers to these questions and many more in this lively and alarming novel.
Why you’ll like it:
Marr is an insider’s insider, whose many years as a top-notch journalist has made him extraordinarily well-versed in the complex world of British politics. Here he takes that real-world knowledge and spins it into a very witty and wry novel that offers readers insights that might be lost in a dry and ponderous nonfiction book. Could something like the plot of this book ever actually happen? Has it already happened? Readers will find it rewarding to absorb this sardonic, satiric, intriguing tale and wonder about its provenance.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, says: “Former BBC political editor Marr makes his fiction debut with a terrific satirical thriller reminiscent of the movie Wag the Dog. In 2017, the U.K. anxiously awaits the results of a referendum to determine whether it will leave the European Union. Prime Minister Bill Stevenson has made a vote to stay in the union the most important priority of his career, but as the election nears, the outcome is very much in doubt. He’s opposed by his former home secretary, Olivia Kite, who promises the “gift of freedom” if the country votes to leave. Three days before the referendum, investigative reporter Lucien McBryde dies from a fall, ending up in the morgue next to a man’s corpse that lacks hands and a head. Marr gradually reveals the circumstances of both deaths, and how they connect with a nuclear bomb of a conspiracy whose disclosure would all but cinch the vote for one side. Clever dark humor, witty prose, and a rigorously constructed plot add up to a thought-provoking read.
Kirkus Reviews, its starred review, says: “Now that the Scottish independence brouhaha has been settled, the question of the U.K.’s European Union membership is next on the agenda. Marr’s wickedly funny first novel, set in 2017, takes up the battle.The prime minister sees the U.K.’s economic future tied to Europe. Opponents, opposition and ruling party alike, feel Britain must no longer be subject to overweaning continental bureaucracies. The prime minister—once “an intense, wiry-haired young politician” who became a “larger-than-life, principled yet unscrupulous figure” of notoriously “louche private behavior”—is opposed by his former Home Secretary, Olivia Kite, “red hair, pale face and vivid crimson lips” (picture Cate Blanchet as Elizabeth I with the heart of Cromwell). The battle’s followed by pols, pundits and once-grand newspapers where “wise old sacks of human indolence order the young and stupid about.” Some characters are stock: reporter Lucien McBryde, an “an arrogant little sod” running on “marching powder”; and others are sociopathic: “that foul little splodge,” Alois Haydn, regarded as the “notorious Svengali of Number 10.” Marr flashes urbanely sardonic British humor (or humour)—”One of the great things about first-class air travel is that it puts all the crooks together”—and then explodes the narrative with an election-swaying death days prior to the vote. Enter Professional Logistical Services, a coven of former intelligence officers, military types and financial wizards, brought in to apply “advanced research techniques” to the crisis. Peripheral characters like the prime minister’s staff members; government functionaries; a Polish assassin; Myfanwy Davies-Jones, a novelist “with a cloud of yellow hair and a scarlet reputation”; and Lord Briskett, a noted historian from Oxford, “that crowded, clucking duckpond of vanity and ruffled feathers,” run amok while Mr. Haydn traipses about London with a human head in a “Waitrose ‘bag for life.’ ” Witty. Imaginative. Irreverent.”
“The tantalizing sense that the important actions of politics take place just out of sight, hidden from all but a tiny circle of insiders, pervades this novel and is perhaps its true subject. The author, Andrew Marr, is well placed to deliver such a story, being one of his country’s most prominent political journalists,” says The New York Times.”
When is it available?
The Downtown Hartford Public Library has this very funny book.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Dark Rooms
By Lili Anolik
(HarperCollins, $25.99, 336 pages)
Who is this author?
Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair who also has written for Harper’s, Elle, and The Believer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. Dark Rooms is being touted as a fine debut novel, but readers should know that Anolik, writing as Lili Peloquin, has also published several YA novels in her Innocents series.
What is this book about?
Local readers take note: this thriller/mystery/coming of age story is set at a ritzy private school in Hartford. When 16-year-old Nica Baker, a beautiful wild child type, is murdered, initial signs point to a rejected classmate who apparently confesses in a suicide note. But Nica’s older sister, Grace, does not believe this all-too-neat resolution and keeps imagining that she sees, hears and talks with Nica after her death. Grace drops out of college to work at the school, where her parents also teach, and not so coincidentally, to search out the real killer. What she finds is more than she, or the reader, bargained for.
Why you’ll like it:
Reviewers are praising Anolik’s use of believable dialogue and complex plotting in this novel, which goes beyond the mystery genre to present a gripping story of a teenage girl coming of age and finding herself as she sets out to discover the truth about who murdered her little sister. Hartford area readers, of course, will enjoy the setting and the opportunity to decide how well Anolik has captured local color and local culture.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “The bullet that snuffs out the life of 16-year-old wild child Nica Baker hits her family like a hollow-point, especially psychologically enmeshed big sister Grace, in this suspenseful, sad, and shattering first novel from Vanity Fair contributing editor Anolik. Only a year older, and the yang to Nica’s yin, good girl Grace had been relying on her sister’s charisma and cool to smooth Grace’s way through the emotional minefields of Chandler Academy, the precious Hartford, Conn., private school where their parents both teach. In fact, Grace just can’t let Nica go, repeatedly seeing, hearing, and talking with her during the grief-swamped, drug-muddled months that follow. When a fellow student’s suicide-confession officially closes the case, Grace doesn’t buy it. Deferring her enrollment at Williams, she sifts through the wreckage of their lives, ostensibly to figure out who really killed Nica, but, even more crucially, to find herself. As she starts to penetrate the myriad lies and secrets, the picture that emerges is far from pretty, with a lengthy list of suspects. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Anolik’s debut will haunt you.
In its starred review, Library Journal says: “Gregarious, fun-loving, and athletic Nica, the younger of two sisters, is murdered near their home on the grounds of a New England private school. The crime is quickly solved, but Grace, who has always lived in Nica’s shadow, is not satisfied with the police’s findings and grows obsessed with catching the true killer. However, the story line just scratches the surface of this insightful, complex novel, which is all about angst: broken relationships, class and social issues, the human psyche. The author skillfully develops Grace as a complicated character, using her perspective to get readers to empathize with her reactions to events around her. The other adolescent characters are equally well drawn. Anolik excels in capturing the nonplussed attitudes of teenagers not fully aware of the ramifications of their actions. VERDICT Despite an ambiguous ending that left this crime fiction fan somewhat dissatisfied, Anolik’s haunting debut is tough to put down and will stay with you for a long time.
Says Kirkus Reviews: “A young woman becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind her sister’s death in Anolik’s thrilling debut. The idyll of a posh Connecticut boarding school is shattered when 16-year-old Nica Baker—gorgeous, wild and effortlessly cool—is found murdered in the graveyard behind her parents’ house. When another student commits suicide, leaving behind a guilty note and an apology, the police consider the case solved: It was unrequited love gone wrong, the tragedy of the loner boy who killed the beautiful faculty-brat girl who didn’t reciprocate his feelings. For Nica’s older sister Grace, though, something doesn’t quite sit right. Too grief-stricken and drugged to start her freshman year at Williams, Grace is shaken from her haze when she stumbles on some information that calls the official story into question. And so Grace—Grace, who’s always been in Nica’s shadow, Grace, who’s always been high-achieving and risk-averse—finds herself consumed with a murder investigation of her own. What had Nica been doing in the weeks before she died, and more importantly, with whom? Why did she break up with her longtime boyfriend without explanation? Where did the tiny tattoo in her armpit come from? Slowly, Grace begins to untangle a web of secrets and betrayals deeper than she could have possibly imagined. In the process, she begins to find her own identity, an identity that is—for the first time—separate from her sister’s. As much as this is a crime drama, it’s also a coming-of-age novel. The plot is high-suspense, but it’s the strength of the characters—and the strength of Anolik’s hypnotic, unfussy prose—that gives the book its lasting force. Wholly absorbing and emotionally rich, this novel dodges Law & Order: Special Victims Unit clichés to deliver something deeply satisfying.”
When is it available?
It’s not hidden in a dark room. It’s on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Barbour, Dwight and Mark Twain branches.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Bookseller
By Cynthia Swanson
(HarperCollins, $25.99, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
Debut novelist Cynthia Swanson is both a writer and a designer who workis in the mid-century modern style. Her short stories have appeared in such journals as 13th Moon, Kalliope, and Sojourner. Like her protagonist in The Bookseller, Kitty/Katharyn, Swanson lives in Denver.
What is this book about?
If you read my Sept. 8 blog entry on Thomas Pierce – and of course you did! – you’ll recall that one of his short stories involves a woman who lives a double life: with a real-world boyfriend by day and with a totally imaginary dream-world husband by night. Cynthia Swanson’s debut novel plays with the same idea. Her heroine, Kitty Miller, 38, is living in Denver in 1962, happily running a bookstore with her pal Frieda and enjoying single life, but occasionally regretting that things never worked out with a doctor named Kevin or Lars, the guy who responded to her personal ad but never showed up for their date. Then Kitty begins a series of unusual adventures, in which she is now Katharyn Andersson in 1963 Denver, ecstatically married to a man named Lars, mother of three wonderful kids, living in a dream house: in fact living an actual dream life, as this parallel existence only happens when she is asleep each night. It’s the life she has always dreamed of, but can she – should she?—make it her real life?
Why you’ll like it:
Who has not experienced one of those startlingly true-to-life dreams in which hopes become what seems like reality – until you wake up. What if it were possible to turn that nighttime fantasy into daytime reality? That’s an intriguing premise for a novel, and Swanson takes this clever idea and runs with it. This is a romantic novel with an unusual what-if quality; sure to engage readers who have ever wondered what life would be like if they had embarked on the road not taken and what it would cost to finally take that path.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “In 1962, Kitty wakes in Katharyn’s bed next to Katharyn’s husband, Lars. Down the hall are Katharyn’s children: Missy, Mitch, and Michael. In the mirror, Katharyn’s reflection looks exactly like Kitty’s, and Kitty is able to recall specific memories and behaviors of Katharyn’s with disturbing accuracy. But Kitty and Katharyn are not the same—Katharyn is just the woman Kitty becomes in her dreams. In reality, Kitty is single, childless, and owns a floundering bookstore with her best friend, Frieda. She has pursuits and interests that Katharyn’s life has no room for. Initially believing that Katharyn is a figment of her imagination, a pleasant dream showing what married life could have been like, Kitty identifies the one moment that prevented her life from becoming Katharyn’s. Kitty’s uncertainty about which woman’s reality is real consumes her. Swanson masterfully crafts both Kitty’s and Katharyn’s worlds, leaving open the question of which of them is real until the final pages. Swanson’s evocative novel freshly considers the timeless question, “What if?”
Library Journal’s starred review says: “With her freshly painted sunny yellow bedroom in 1962 Denver, Kitty Miller leads a content if solitary life. Running a bookshop with her best friend, Frieda, is a welcome break from teaching school. Everything about Kitty’s life seems benignly commonplace until she begins waking up in another bedroom, in another life: a life in which she is another version of herself. She wakes up as Katharyn Andersson in 1963 Denver, married to Lars, a man who had answered a personal ad 1962 Kitty Miller had placed—but 1962 Lars never showed up for their date. Katharyn and Lars have three children and move in a sphere Kitty doesn’t know about. As Kitty investigates the two worlds of Katharyn and Kitty, she sees parallels and choices, trade-offs and sacrifices. VERDICT This is a stunner of a debut novel, astonishingly tight and fast paced. The 1960s tone is elegant and even, and Kitty/Katharyn’s journey is intriguing, redolent with issues of family, independence, friendship, and free will. This will especially resonate with fans of the movie Sliding Doors and the authors Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve.”
USA Today says: “. . . In what seems to be her “real” life, Kitty is fairly content. She and Frieda agree that as unmarried women, they have “an element of freedom and quirkiness that other women our age do not have.” They have no desire to have children and have all but given up pursuing romantic relationships.
But as Kitty experiences more of her strange dreams, she realizes that Lars is a familiar figure from her waking life. “I feel as if I have been kissing him daily for years,” she says. She recalls that eight years earlier, a man named Lars responded to a personal ad she placed in the local newspaper. They bonded over the telephone, and he seemed eager to meet her — but he failed to show up for their date and she never heard from him again.
To make sense of her increasingly vivid dream life, Kitty digs into newspaper archives, doing research to learn what happened to Lars, her almost-date, and to figure out why they are married in her dreams. Each night, she can’t wait to fall asleep to find out what happens next. (Among other things, she discovers that she’s a decent mother and good at tennis.) By day, though, the “nighttime visions,” as she calls them, begin to torment her: “They are confusing and pathetic,” she says, “and they do me no good whatsoever.”
Of course, as the novel progresses, Kitty’s two lives merge, until one subsumes the other. Both options present her with sacrifices and traumas that she must come to terms with. . . .”
When is it available?
The Bookseller is in the collections of the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.
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!
Hall of Small Mammals
By Thomas Pierce
(Penguin, $27.95, 304 pages)
Who is this author?
Thomas Pierce, who hails from South Carolina and now lives in Virginia, is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s creative writing program. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and other prestigious magazines, and now he has published his debut collection, Hall of Small Mammals.
What is this book about?
So: You are the host of a reality TV show that features tiny cloned versions of extinct beasts, and you park a recently resurrected woolly mini-mammoth in your mama’s laundry room to hide it and have it benefit from her warm Southern hospitality. Will mama be flummoxed by her new, unruly house pet, or does she have the faith it takes to handle this decidedly unusual task? That is the kind of question Thomas Pierce poses in “Shirley Temple Three,” the first in his debut collection of a dozen brain-tickling stories. In another, a physicist seeks a mysterious particle and enjoys life with her boyfriend – and also with her totally imaginary husband. Another involves the skull of a dead possum that haunts a couple. Yet another sets up the dilemma of a man whose quarantined brother’s body gets caught up in international intrigue and tests his ideas about the soul. What happens when a father takes his son to a cultish summer camp? Should dinosaur bones become a circus exhibit? Good questions all, and Pierce provides answers that will amuse and amaze.
Why you’ll like it:
All the stories in Hall of Small Mammals raise interesting and provocative questions about belief of all sorts, but the witty and wildly imaginative Pierce is never preachy. The stories’ premises are often quirky, but the final impact of each one is powerful and thought-provoking. It’s always thrilling to encounter a new and promising talent, and this strong debut, set in the American South, offers readers entry into an unusual mind and considerable literary talent.
What others are saying:
Says Bookslut: “Hall of Small Mammals is a skilled collection of explorations on what it means to believe. Pierce teases faith and science out into myriad scenarios, and highlights our principal desire to put our belief into worldviews that make sense of what we see. Each story is a journey into a different kind of observation. Hall of Small Mammals shows us that it might be our need to explain which makes us most human.”
“This arresting debut collection of short fiction from a gifted new writer gracefully renders the textures of the American South and the indefatigable people who live there…. Thomas Pierce’s debut collection, Hall of Small Mammals, taps the aquifer of Southern literature but blends in supernatural elements with a light, deft touch, echoes of García Márquez among the biscuits and magnolias…. Pierce knows his people well, connecting their conflicts to a deeper narrative about the human condition…. With its elegant prose and revelatory insights, Hall of Small Mammals announces a vivid and engaging new voice,” says the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
In The New York Times , Janet Maslin says: “Ridiculously good…These stories never drift vaguely off into the ether. They are beautifully built, and [Pierce] has an especially deft way of finding just the right final flourish. He also has, without exactly linking the stories, let characters and places overlap…These references strengthen the feeling of being inside a bubble while reading Mr. Pierce, and it is a bubble you won’t want to leave. This is such a fine collection that there’s not a stinker in the bunch…Mr. Pierce’s originality, inventiveness, questing spiritual intelligence and animal fixation aren’t easy to do justice to in the limited space here. But they’re irrefutably good reasons to discover him for yourself.”
In its starred review, Publishers Weekly says: “Pierce’s first short story collection is full of compulsively addictive and delightfully strange fare. Some of the 12 offerings are new, others are culled from the New Yorker, the Oxford American, and elsewhere; each takes a mundane experience and adds an element of the extra weird. In “Shirley Temple Three,” the opening, a mother begrudgingly agrees to hide a cloned prehistoric miniature woolly mammoth in her laundry room as a favor to her son, who is a reality show host. The protagonist of “The Real Alan Gass” becomes jealous when his girlfriend reveals that she’s happily married to another man in her dreams. “Videos of People Falling Down,” which is about just that, is a funny, yet quietly poignant interconnected series of vignettes that showcase characters at their most vulnerable. Echoing an old ghost story, the wicked “Saint Possy” shuttles a couple to their wits end as the skull of a dead possum (maybe) simultaneously haunts and taunts them. In “More Soon,” a dead man, quarantined and shipped around the world on a barge following a highly contagious infection, prompts his brother to contemplate where the soul resides. Pierce’s menagerie of colorful characters equally inspires and amuses. The book is expertly paced (there isn’t a dud in this eclectic bunch) and many of the stories’ endings—some sinister, some melancholic, others heartfelt—prompt momentary reflection, though thankfully not always in ways that are expected.”
Says Library Journal: “Pierce, whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker and the Atlantic, offers a particularly satisfying first collection, with each story not just a glimpse but a fully developed idea often ending on a somewhat puzzled tone—appropriately, as life doesn’t always easily resolve. A woman cares for the miniature mammoth her feckless TV scientist son has helped clone; a man tries to help his son emerge from his shell by taking him to the cultish Grasshoppers Camp, with uncertain results. VERDICT Quirky but real; for all readers.’
Kirkus Reviews says: “People get uncomfortably close to their primal tendencies in this debut story collection that highlights the quirky and uncanny. Pierce’s stories feel like they’re set within spitting distance of George Saundersville and occupied by residents whose need for normalcy is complicated by the inescapable strangeness of our natures. In “Shirley Temple Three,” the host of a TV show dedicated to reviving extinct animals deposits a surreptitiously freed “dwarf mammoth” with his mother. When the host goes AWOL, his mother is forced to see how well her maternal instincts will work with the creature, and the story becomes funny but surprisingly touching as well. Pierce persistently tests the ways that creatures shed light on our own inscrutability: In “Saint Possy,” an animal skull of unknown provenance unsettles a relationship; in the title story, a zoo exhibit is supposed to help the narrator connect with his girlfriend’s son but does the opposite; and “We of the Present Age” is a historical tale about a naturalist who’s propositioned to present his discovery of dinosaur bones as a lurid and highly unscientific circus attraction. But Pierce can stick with Homo sapiens to convey his perspective on humanity. In “More Soon,” the collection’s strongest story, a man awaits the delivery of his dead brother’s body, which has become entangled in the bureaucracy of an international crisis; Pierce finds the dark humor in officialese (“R has been declared a biological weapon. Will call with more after Thanksgiving”) while exploring the more sober tension of seeking closure after loss. Not every story is successfully provocative—”Felix Not Arriving” is a relatively conventional squabble-during-a-family-visit tale, while “Videos of People Falling Down” is an overly loose set of sketches questioning our urge to mock others’ online foibles. But Pierce clearly has talent to burn. A promising debut that studies hard-luck types from new and provocative perspectives.”
“A debut collection that reads like the work of a much older, established fiction master. The stories in Pierce’s book explore the ordinary in the otherworldly, the surreal in the mundane, and the results are stunning and unexpected….There isn’t a weak story in Hall of Small Mammals, and Pierce is an endlessly incisive and engaging writer. It’s a book full of wisdom and emotion, with stories that explore what it means to live and die in a world filled with invisible things,” says NPR.org
When is it available?
Pierce’s intriguing book is 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!
Crazy Love You
By Lisa Unger
(Touchstone, $25.99, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
Lisa Unger, who was born in New Haven and grew up in New Jersey, where her mother was a librarian, now lives in Florida . She is an award-winning New York Times and internationally bestselling author. Whose 13 novels have so far sold more than two million copies and have been translated into 26 languages. Her psychological thrillers have won critical praise for their literary qualities as well as commercial success for their gripping plots and memorable characters.
What is this book about?
As a boy growing up in The Hollows in upstate New York, Ian is the fat kid whom his peers torment, and his unhappy life is made worse by his murderous mother’s mental illness. Then Priss moves to town and becomes Ian’s avenger and confidant. Ian grows up to become a successful graphic novelist, whose Fatboy and Priss books hark back to his miserable childhood. Ian, now an adult, maintains a relationship with Priss, who continues to manipulate his life, leading him into a world of drinking, drugs and kinky sex. It’s a dark path, and when Ian meets the sweet and lovely Megan, he sees a better life awaiting him. But will the obsessive and dominating Priss let him go? Can he let her go? And by the way, is Priss at all what she seems? On that question hangs the resolution of this chilling tale.
Why you’ll like it:
Unger knows how to create compelling characters caught up in frightening relationships and dangerous behaviors, as well as stories that engage the reader and offer complex, twisty endings.
Here is some of what she told a Big Thrill Magazine interviewer :
“At its core, CRAZY LOVE YOU is about obsessive love, the twisting nature of reality and fiction, and going down the rabbit hole of addiction . . .”
And here is what she has said about The Hollows, the setting for several of her novels:
“The Hollows is a very interesting and unique place. It started out simply as the setting, a fictional town I created, for my novel Fragile. But, over the years, it has become much more. . . .The Hollows is, in some sense, how I see life. It has an endless number of shades and layers, and it shows various parts of itself to everyone. The Hollows is someplace different for Jones Cooper than it is for Eloise Montgomery than it is for Ian Paine. They all see what they want to see in the place, and they all take away a unique experience. Jones, who is a very practical, feet-on-the-ground type of guy, views The Hollows as he would view any other place. Eloise sees — and hears — a totally other perspective, something beyond the buildings and trees. Someone like Ian — troubled, addicted, sensitive — is having another experience yet again. They are all acting upon and being acted upon by The Hollows in different ways. Like life, The Hollows is exactly what you expect it to be, exactly what you put into it — and yet there are many elements that are totally out of your control.”
What others are saying:
The Providence Journal says: “A simmering tale of romantic obsession and angst in the tradition of Body Heat or Fatal Attraction, laced with the noirish spirit of James M. Cain. Wonderfully crafted and beautifully executed.”
Booklist’s starred review says: “Ian is an overweight, very unhappy little boy growing up in the Hollows, a small town in upstate New York that is as creepy as it sounds. His mother has killed his baby sister during a severe bout of postpartum depression and is confined to an institution. Ian grows up bullied and prone to bouts of explosive anger; his only solace is a young girl named Priss, who shows up in his yard one day and befriends him—and later defends him. Fast-forward to Ian’s successful life as a graphic artist in New York City, where he is struggling with drugs and alcohol and a toxic relationship with Priss. Then he meets Megan, a young woman from a fine family, and they fall in love. Ian wants to be a better person for Megan, and he decides to stop using drugs. Megan wants to meet Priss, but Ian can’t let that happen. Priss is very jealous and keeps moving in and out of his life, leaving all sorts of damage in her wake. As the narrative weaves back and forth between Ian’s childhood and his adulthood, and his relationships with Megan and with Priss, the story becomes more entangled and more riveting. Is Priss real, imaginary, or a ghost? Does Ian have anger issues, or is it Priss doing all the damage? This is a complex, intricate story, yet the pages fly by as Ian, the most unreliable narrator since Nick Dunne in Gone Girl, leads us on a wild ride in this superb psychological thriller. Unger is at the top of her game here.”
“Sharply drawn characters and occasional rest breaks of humor . . . Unger is adept at evoking the eerie, but she’s also capable of droll sociological commentary on the urban scene. . . . After reading Unger’s sinister thriller, anyone cavalier enough to think they can easily put the past to rest (and even live companionably with the dead) will think again,” says Maureen Corrigan in The Washington Post.
Publishers Weekly says: “Bestseller Unger’s suspenseful fourth Hollows thriller (after 2014’s In the Blood) focuses on Ian Paine, a graphic novelist in New York City, who draws on his unhappy childhood growing up in the Hollows, N.Y., for his successful series Fatboy and Priss. Fatboy was the name Ian was called by the schoolmates who viciously tormented him; Priss was his only friend, a girl who wrought revenge on anyone who hurt Ian. When Ian begins a relationship with Megan, a beautiful, caring woman, the resentful Priss sets out to lure Ian back into the destructive patterns he developed before meeting Megan—patterns that included long work sessions followed by heavy drinking and drug use. Ian is soon keeping company with inappropriate companions and engaging in promiscuous sex and various crimes. The tug-of-war between the two women to gain control of Ian will keep readers hooked, but some will find the lengthy ending unsatisfying.”
In its starred review, Library Journal says: “Ian Paine is a successful graphic novelist, but as a child, his life was filled with heartbreak and turmoil. From his beloved mother’s descent into madness to the merciless bullying he endured at the hands of his classmates, life dealt Ian a difficult hand. But when a young girl named Priss arrived in town, she became his loyal defender and his close friend. Now an adult, Ian can’t turn his back on Priss, even though his friendship with her has taken a destructive turn, drawing him into a life of drinking and pill popping. When he falls in love with the kind and caring Megan, Ian resolves to free himself of his drug habit, but Priss makes it clear that she isn’t going to let go. VERDICT Unger’s skillful portrayal of complex and traumatized characters make her latest psychological thriller one that will keep readers engaged from start to finish. Fans of mystery and suspense, along with Unger aficionados, will enjoy this imaginative tale, which may be the author’s best work yet.”
“Unger takes her loyal readers back to The Hollows, a creepy town about 100 miles from New York City, in this tale of love gone awry. Ian Paine writes and illustrates graphic novels and has become quite a success. His series—Fatboy and Priss—chronicles the adventures of a nerdy outcast and his gorgeous, red-haired avenger, the amoral Priss, who makes certain that no slight to Fatboy goes unpunished. Originally from The Hollows, where otherworldly events are common, Ian was the original Fatboy. He led a miserable life after his mother lost her grip on reality and smothered his baby sister, then led him to the bathtub, perhaps planning to drown him. Escaping from his mom, Ian ran into the woods, where he met Priss, a strange child with red hair; as time passed, she became his only friend. Ian was the school joke, but with weight loss and artistic success, he eventually made a new life for himself in the city. Now he’s fallen in love with a woman named Megan, and she’s accepted his proposal of marriage. But when his editor tells him it’s time to kill off Fatboy and Priss and start another series, he finds that Priss, who has both haunted and defended him, isn’t going to go without a fight, and that fight can get very, very ugly. Though fans may wonder why, given its history, anyone would live in The Hollows, the big question for readers will be whether or not Priss is real or simply a manifestation of a disturbed young man’s imagination. Unger’s complex novel can at times get a little confusing, with the action constantly shifting from place to place and back and forth in time, but Unger knows what her fans like and scores another bull’s eye with this one. Classic Unger and a surefire hit with her followers,” says Kirkus Reviews.
When is it available?
You can find this thriller at the Goodwin 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!
Unrivaled: UConn, Tennessee, and the Twelve Years that Transcended Women’s Basketball
By Jeff Goldberg
(University of Nebraska Press, $27.95, 234 pages)
Who is this author?
Jeff Goldberg (and if you are curious, yes, he is my son) was The Courant’s UConn women’s basketball beat writer from 2001 to 2006, a period that included championship seasons in 2002, 2003 and 2004. He also wrote three championship commemorative sections, including a commemorative book, “Excellence 3″ in 2004, and earlier, was The Courant’s UConn basketball on-line columnist from 1997 to 2001. Unrivaled is his second book on UConn women’s basketball. In 2001, he published Bird at the Buzzer: UConn, Notre Dame, and a Women’s Basketball Classic, a narrative of what many think was the single best women’s college basketball game ever played. From 2006 to 2008, he was the paper’s Red Sox beat writer. Since leaving The Courant in 2008, Jeff has been an editorial producer for MLB.com and general manager of editorial content for Football Nation, LLC, as well as a sports freelancer in the Boston area. In August, he and his wife relocated to San Diego.
What is this book about?
Fans of UConn’s women’s basketball team – and for that matter, of women’s college basketball in general — know that the rivalry between UConn and Tennessee was something special: a continuing source of great games, along with arguments and ill feelings. The teams began playing one another some 20 years ago and continued until 2007, when Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt abruptly canceled the series with no explanation from her or from UConn coach Geno Auriemma. Unrivaled takes a deep dive into that history and all the controversies it generated while helping to make the women’s game a national phenomenon. The two coaches respected each other, but apparently did not like each other. The book offers intriguing theories on what happened to cause the end of their competition, from serious issues involving recruitment to misunderstood attempts at humor. Now that Summitt is sadly suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, her version will never be known, but this book offers the most detailed explanation so far of what went wrong and why.
Why you’ll like it:
Goldberg writes with insight, clarity, insider knowledge, humor and empathy about this complex interaction of coaches, players and fans. He uses his extensive background in daily sports journalism and his personal connections to coaches and players to give authority and authenticity to this compelling story. The book also offers two other voices that will be of great interest to UConn fans: Rebecca Lobo, a basketball analyst for ESPN who played for the UConn team and on three WNBA teams, wrote its foreword, and Auriemma’s daughter Alyssa, who wrote a touching and widely read blog post about Summitt in 2012, wrote the book’s afterword.
What others are saying:
“There were many memorable moments in the UConn–Tennessee rivalry. The author captures them all in exquisite detail, plus many more. This is a must-read for any women’s basketball fan, let alone those who follow the Huskies and Lady Vols,” says Mel Greenberg, Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee former women’s basketball writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and creator of the weekly Associated Press women’s basketball poll.
Says Library Journal: “Goldberg (Bird at the Buzzer) delivers the story of one of sports’ greatest rivalries, the 12-year feud between the University of Connecticut (UConn) and University of Tennessee women’s basketball teams. This title gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the drama on and off the court as the two teams ushered women’s basketball into the mainstream, as well as the highly publicized conflicts between coaches Geno Auriemma and Pat Summitt. While the author has an obvious connection to Connecticut through his former role as the women’s basketball writer at the Hartford Courant and his published book on UConn player Sue Bird, he uses game summaries and quotes from parties on both sides of the battle line to present an unbiased account, a quality especially pertinent as the rivalry turned ugly toward the end. The volume expands upon Richard Kent’s Lady Vols and UConn, chronicling the competition to its controversial end and beyond to Tennessee’s legendary Coach Summitt’s retirement. VERDICT Because Goldberg includes detailed game summaries and basketball jargon, readers unfamiliar with the sport may find the book challenging, but it is highly recommended for basketball and collegiate sports fans as well as readers interested in learning about this important era in women’s history.”
When is it available?
It’s a slam dunk that you’ll find this book at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Camp Field, Mark Twain and Park branches.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
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