Letters to Lovecraft
Edited by Jesse Bullington
(Stone Skin Press, $13.99, 280 pages)
Who is this author?
Happy Halloween! Bullington and the other contributors are all writers who have received numerous awards and honors, too numerous to name individually here. All write in the horror or speculative fiction genres and were specially chosen to create stories that respond to H.P. Lovecraft, the master of horror fiction whose Victorian era stories still resonate – and also still repel – readers today.
What is this book about?
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,’” wrote Lovecraft in his famous essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” which though written almost 100 years ago, remains a brilliant analysis. (You can also make the case that it holds true for current politics worldwide, but that is another story.) This anthology contains works inspired by quotes from the essay, written by 18 contemporary writers of what is now called weird fiction. Interest in this genre has never flagged, and Cthulhu and the monstrous ancient alien gods conjured up by the Providence, R.I., author still bring a chill even to the most blasé readers.
Why you’ll like it:
Lovecraft, a difficult and not entirely admirable man, is nevertheless considered to be a genius at writing terrifying and horrifying tales, and some 100 years later, still has many aficionados. Tales of terror scare readers; tales of horror evoke disgust, and Lovecraft’s weird stories, many set in the fictional town of Arkham, Mass., do both. His Cthulhu mythology, featuring blind, idiot gods and all manner of human evil, have inspired many other writers of fantasy. If you have a taste for stories that will disturb your sleep for weeks after reading them, this book is a good introduction to Lovecraft, and if you already know and like his work, it will add to your enjoyment of his very peculiar genius.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “Author and first-time editor Bullington explores macabre maestro H.P. Lovecraft’s enduring legacy in this deeply satisfying anthology. Inspired by “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” Lovecraft’s well-known exposition on the genre, Bullington asked his “favorite storytellers” to take a fresh look at Lovecraft’s essay and craft original stories under its influence. The result is a wonderfully disparate collection of works spanning time and place, from writers both established and unfamiliar. Brian Evenson’s terrifying standout, “Past Reno,” describes a young man’s rising anxiety at the desolate landscape framing the journey back to his childhood home. The turn-of-the-last-century human monsters walking through Chesya Burke’s “The Horror at Castle of the Cumberland” are an abomination far worse than the shadows that trail them. A familiar trope gets a chilling twist in David Yale Ardanuy’s “One Last Meal, Before the End.” The stories in this essential compilation are as diverse as the contributors, and together they form a wonderful confluence of criticism and creativity.”
Ipgbook.com says: “. . . while hordes of writers have created works based on Lovecraft’s fiction, never before has an anthology taken its inspiration directly from the literary manifesto behind his entire mythos…until now. Like cultists poring over a forbidden tome, eighteen modern masters of horror have gathered here to engage with Lovecraft’s treatise. Rather than responding with articles of their own, these authors have written new short stories inspired by intriguing quotes from the essay, offering their own whispers to the darkness. They tell of monsters and madmen, of our strange past and our weirder future, of terrors stalking the winter woods, the broiling desert, and eeriest of all, our bustling cities, our family homes. . . .”
Says Sffworld.com: “Jesse’s Introduction [points out] for the uninitiated what the attraction of Lovecraft’s writing was, even whilst acknowledging that some aspects of the man’s personality were not what we would like. It manages that tricky job of being both erudite and yet accessible, of being reasoned and balanced when others might descend into outrage or obsequious fawning.”
Says Koboldpress.com: H.P. Lovecraft wrote horror stories, and he developed a mythos that has oozed its way into literary and now popular culture. . . . Some of these stories are directly influenced by Lovecraft’s quotes, some are written contrary to Lovecraft’s words, and some of the stories use Lovecraft’s words as the entrance to a labyrinth into madness. . . Rather than just writing a Lovecraftian story, these authors had to dig much deeper: they had to embrace Lovecraft’s essay and the observations held within it, then create something magical. And they did.”
Says Arkhamdigest.com: “. . . In his hefty intro, Bullington puts it all on the table. The good, the bad, and the ugly of Lovecraft is laid bare without bias. . . . By looking beyond the superficialities of the Cthulhu Mythos, and bypassing common Lovecraftian themes to look instead at the essay that outlines Lovecraft’s philosophies behind weird horror, Jesse Bullington and his 18 authors have done something truly special. Letters to Lovecraft is easily one of 2014′s best anthologies, and a must read for weird horror fans.”
When is it available?
This unsettling book is lurking on the shelves of the Downtown Hartford Public Library, waiting for you.
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 Palace of Illusions
By Kim Addonizio
(Soft Skull, $15.95, 225 pages)
Who is this author?
A poet, a short story writer, a novelist and an author of several books on writing poetry, Kim Addonizio, who divides her time between New York City and Oakland, Calif., has won many honors for her work. But her literary career is not her only interest: Addonizio also plays harmonica with the music group Nonstop Beautiful Ladies and volunteers for The Hunger Project, which fights hunger and poverty worldwide. Her latest, The Palace of Illusions, is a 14-story collection.
What is this book about?
Kim Addonizio has here collected 14 of her stories, which have previously appeared in various literary journals. All of them share the idea that mystery and misunderstanding often overlay what is taken for reality. Among the stories you will find tales of a girl with a sick grandfather and an overwhelmed mother who finds solace in the family’s many pets, but in a shocking and appalling way; a young woman who is half college student and half-vampire who falls in love; a woman with cancer who gains help and hope through a poetry workshop; a photographer who recalls his past as a carnival illusionist and lover of the owner’s wife.
Why you’ll like it:
A group of dwarfs live not in a tiny house in the forest but a city apartment as they wait for a woman with an apple to save them. Sound familiar? In her story, Ever After, Addonizio plays with an old fairy tale in new and startling ways, a technique she brings to all the stories in her second collection. Imagination is built on, but trumps reality in these stories that display Addonzio’s dark humor, graceful prose (she is a poet, after all) and witty invention. But keep in mind that when she goes into that darkness, she goes deep.
What others are saying:
Says Publishers Weekly: “Once there was a hag who was really a princess, who lived in a storage unit that was really a castle.” In Addonizio’s second collection of short stories, she explores the various ways people interpret the world in order to find peace. In “Beautiful Lady of the Snow,” a little girl punishes and subsequently kills her pets in order to find solace from the stress of living with her depressed mother in a motel. “Night Owls” follows a frustrated teenage vampire who loves a boy but also wants to suck his blood. The title story traces the decline of a young man who trades in his promising future for a love affair with an alcoholic carnie. “Ever After” is a pseudo-fairy tale about dwarves living in an apartment and waiting for a woman to redeem them from their terrible lives with an apple. Though Addonizio’s characters find themselves in unusual predicaments, she nonetheless convincingly renders their psyches. The stories are weighty but unassuming, and readers can identify with the characters whether they’re vampires, carnies, or pet killers. This book is for those who enjoy sardonic humor, forceful narration, and a variety of genres.”
Library Journal says: “The short stories here are so tight and polished that it’s hard to believe that this is only Addonizio’s second collection; she is mainly known as a poet. . . . The characters, from the woman with terminal cancer who takes a poetry workshop to the second grader who hates dancing on her grandpa’s lap to the college student who happens to be half vampire, all exhibit “true grit.” The stories are all strikingly honest depictions of characters trying their best at something, even if that something is not particularly good for them. The latter is true in the case of the title story, in which a man looks back on his youth working as a magician in a traveling carnival and lusting after the carnival owner’s wife. There are also shorter pieces that give us more of a keyhole glimpse into a situation or character, such as “The Other Woman,” “Blown,” and new takes on classic fairy tales, such as “The Hag’s Journey.” VERDICT A highly enjoyable collection with something for everyone; recommended for readers of Lydia Davis or fans of modern fairy tales.”
Kirkus Reviews says: “Poet Addonizio brings her hip, dark sensibility to a second collection of short fiction .In the first story, a second-grade girl kills her goldfish and pet bird in reaction to being sexually exploited by her obese grandfather. In the second, two sleazy young women get drunk and rip off the guy in whose hotel room they’ve spent the night. In the third, a girl takes time during a meditation class to reflect on her dead sister. Abusive relationships, breakups and terminal illness fill out the other 10 stories, but in the most appealing of them, Addonizio doses her basic mix of hopelessness and alienation with cleverness and whimsy. A story about a girl who’s half vampire has several laughs, the title story has fun with its circus setting, and two of the others, “The Hag’s Journey” and “Ever After,” reinvent fairy-tale tropes in ways that would be delightful if they didn’t end so badly. In the latter, the Seven Dwarfs are a ragtag bunch of fellows living in a fifth-floor walk-up: a junkie named Dopey, a teen runaway named Sneezy, a recovering alcoholic named Doc, etc., most employed as faux munchkins at a restaurant called Oz. They’re awaiting the fulfillment of a prophecy they read about in a book found in a Dumpster, one involving a beautiful girl and an apple. Unsurprisingly, things go south. “[M]y name isn’t Grumpy,” said Grumpy. “It’s Carlos….I’m sick of all of you with your fake names and voodoo loser fantasies about some chick who ain’t coming. She ain’t coming, man. Get it through your fat heads.” The worldview of this book is so bleak it might need a warning label.”
“The 14 stories in this new collections range from realist, contemporary narratives to darkly comic fairy tales that subtly complicate the binary oppositions of good versus evil and contentment versus despair.…Addonizio is adept at humanizing monsters or characters that resemble them…The Palace of Illusions is a collection of many delights, its mirrors reflecting and magnifying the contradictions and conflicts inherent in human experience,” says the San Francisco Chronicle.
When is it available?
It’s available now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Once in a Great City
By David Maraniss
(Simon & Schuster, $32.50, 464 pages)
Who is this author?
The last time I wrote about David Maraniss for Under the Covers, in 2012, I said:
“David Maraniss is a journalist’s journalist. By that I mean he is a much respected, diligent researcher, graceful writer and astute interpreter of current events and past occurrences, making it clear how they have affected the lives of the famous people who have been the subjects of his acclaimed biographies. An associate editor at The Washington Post, Maraniss has written bestsellers about Bill Clinton, coach Vince Lombardi, Vietnam and the ‘60s, baseball star Roberto Clemente and the 1960 Rome Olympics. How good is he? Well, Maraniss won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Clinton, was part of a Post team that won the 2007 Pulitzer for coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy and has been a Pulitzer finalist three other times. He’s based in Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wisconsin.”
All of that is still true, and now, in Once in a Great City, Maraniss applies his biographical skills not to an individual but to a whole city, Detroit, showing how it has fallen on hard socio-economic times.
What is this book about?
Fifty or so years ago, Detroit was booming: the auto industry was turning out and selling more cars than ever before and the Motown sound had captured the music industry. Its famous names were illustrious at home and across the country: auto magnates Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca, labor leader Walter Reuther; Motown founder Berry Gordy; the Rev. C.L. Franklin and his daughter, Aretha; Gov. George Romney, and for a time, Martin Luther King Jr., who previewed his iconic I Have A Dream speech there before he gave it in Washington. But the seeds of trouble already had been sown, before the rioting and corruption and neglect and departure of many white citizens and bad weather and labor costs conspired to kick Detroit off its lofty perch. Maraniss reminds us of what the city had, what it lost (and what it kept) and what the Detroit story may portend for other American cities.
Why you’ll like it:
Maraniss, who was born in Detroit, uses his considerable storytelling skills to delineate the rise and fall of what was once a great city, presenting the tale through portraits of its people. That method brings the social and historical facts alive and holds the reader’s interest. And for residents of the Hartford area, another city that once was on top of the world and now is struggling to survive, it offers insights and a cautionary tale about what happens when industries shrink or vanish, corruption infects government and the social fabric is shredded. This is a powerful, attention-demanding book.
What others are saying:
DeadlineDETROIT.com says: “Maraniss . . . who lived on the west side before his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, when he was 6, is a skillful storyteller, and his interpretation of events in Detroit a half century ago is well founded. . . . Maraniss will only add to his reputation with Once in a Great City. It’s a good read if your interest is only to visit Detroit’s remarkable recent past. It’s even a better read if you are interested in the city’s extraordinary devolution. In either case, it’s a story that is haunting, thought-provoking and, in the end, sad.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Hot times in a raucous city. Biographer and Washington Post associate editor Maraniss spent only his first six and a half years in Detroit, so he was surprised when he “choked up” after seeing a car commercial extolling the Motor City. That affection inspired this fast-paced, sprawling, copiously detailed look at 18 months—from 1962 to 1964—in the city’s past. During that time, big things happened in Detroit. Motown burst onto the music scene after the Motortown Revue left the city on a nationwide tour. Ford developed a new car, kept secret except from the prestigious J. Walter Thompson advertising agency; unveiled at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, the Mustang became an instant, bestselling hit. Detroit fought fiercely for the 1968 Olympics, but despite support from native son Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, and Governor George Romney, Detroit lost to Mexico City. Detroit was embroiled in the civil rights movement, as well, with Cavanagh and union head Walter Reuther among many leaders taking a strong stand for racial equality. Reuther even rounded up money to bail out demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, and he never wavered in his commitment to freedom and justice. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an early version of his “I have a dream” speech at the city’s much-publicized Walk to Freedom, in which Reuther, Cavanagh, and 100,000 others marched; it was, said one participant, “a model of peaceful protest and racial cooperation” during a time of national unrest. Although overstuffed with facts . . . and sometimes breaching the city’s boundaries to become a history of the whole country, Maraniss’ brawny narrative evokes a city still “vibrantly alive” and striving for a renaissance. An illuminating history of a golden era in a city desperately seeking to reclaim the glory.”
“Elegiac and richly detailed . . . Maraniss . . . conjures those boom years of his former hometown with novelistic ardor. Using overlapping portraits of Detroiters (from politicians to musicians to auto execs), he creates a mosaiclike picture of the city that has the sort of intimacy and tactile emotion that Larry McMurtry brought to his depictions of the Old West, and the gritty sweep of David Simon’s HBO series “The Wire.” . . . People’s experiences intersect or collide or resonate with one another, and Mr. Maraniss uses them as windows on the larger cultural and political changes convulsing the nation in the ‘60s . . . [Maraniss] succeeds with authoritative, adrenaline-laced flair. . . The result is a buoyant Frederick Lewis Allen-like social history that’s animated by an infectious soundtrack and lots of tactile details, and injected with a keen understanding of larger historical forces at work – both in Detroit and America at large. . . . Maraniss’s evocative book provides a wistful look back at an era when those cracks were only just beginning to show, and the city still seemed a place of “uncommon possibility” and was creating “wondrous and lasting things,” writes Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times.
Publishers Weekly says: “Using a combination of historical eyewitness reports and sketches of larger-than-life figures, Pulitzer-winning reporter Maraniss (Barack Obama: The Story) draws a sprawling portrait of Detroit at a pivotal moment when it was “dying and thriving at the same time.” Given its current turmoil, it is easy to forget the Detroit that once was. . . . But even in this golden age, all was not well in Detroit. Discriminatory housing practices, intended to prevent minorities from entering the toniest neighborhoods, were exacerbating existing racial tensions, and the city’s organized crime could not be cleaned up despite the police commissioner’s best efforts. But for all his exhaustive research and evocative scene-setting, Maraniss never seems to find the zeitgeist of the historical moment he covers, the essential spirit that lifted up but ultimately ruined the Motor City.”
Says The Washington Post: “Captivating . . . Maraniss hears the joyous sound of a city suddenly, improbably filled with hope. . . . Maraniss asks himself what in the city has lasted, a question that often haunts former Detroiters. The songs, he decides. Not the reforms, not the dream of racial justice, not the promise of a Great Society, but the wonderfully exuberant songs that came pouring out of Berry Gordy’s studio. That’s the tragedy at the core of this gracious, generous book. All that remains of the hopeful moment Maraniss so effectively describes is a soundtrack. And that isn’t nearly enough.”
When is it available?
It’s available in our city at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Park 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!
A God In Ruins
By Kate Atkinson
(Little, Brown and Company, $28, 480 pages)
Who is this author?
Kate Atkinson, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, won the Whitbread (now called the Costa) Book of the Year Award for her first novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum,” and became a bestselling author who has more than one million copies of her books in print in the United States alone. Even the titles of her novels are intriguing, such as “Human Croquet,” “Emotionally Weird,” “When Will There Be Good News?” and “Started Early, Took My Dog.” Her novel “Case Histories,” which featured private investigator Jackson Brodie, became a TV series. She also has written a story collection, “Not the End of the World.”
What is this book about?
A follow-up — no, that’s not quite right, it’s a companion novel — to Atkinson’s #1 bestseller Life After Life, told through the younger brother of its heroine, Ursula, who gets to live her life over and over as she witnesses the events of the 20th century. A God In Ruins is the story of a young man who, instead of living over and over until he gets it right, like Ursula, must face having a future when he never expected to see one.
Teddy Todd lives through epic air battles of World War II, always believing his death is imminent, but survives. A hero as an RAF pilot, an amateur as a poet, Teddy must cope with a rapidly changing world as a husband, father and grandfather. His wife dies too young, his unpleasant daughter blames him — very late in the story we learn why — and life limps along. The book deals with four generations of the Todd family and oscillates back and forth in time, presenting an ordinary man in an ordinary British family, yet celebrating the extraordinariness of an individual life. And then, in the final pages, it smacks the reader with a (most likely) unexpected twist.
Why you’ll like it:
Atkinson has a brilliant imagination and gift for storytelling, here solidly undergirded by her research into the British v. German air war in World War II. The switches in time in this book can be dizzying, but they enliven the story. And then there is the surprise ending, sure to create very lively arguments as book clubs discuss this unusual novel from one of Scotland’s finest authors.
What others are saying:
Amazon.com’s Best Book of May 2015 review says: “Talk about being your own tough act to follow! Having accomplished a near miracle with Life After Life, in which she used a literary-do-over trope to tell the story of a British woman living between and after the two World Wars, Kate Atkinson now dares to write a companion novel that focuses on Life’s heroine Ursula Todd’s brother Teddy. Never mind that careful readers of the first book came away with the impression that Teddy most often turned up dead, in this one he’s an old man trying to come to grips with his post-War life and with a modern world and family. Switching back and forth in time (Atkinson can’t seem to help it…) between memories of his childhood and his present, Teddy emerges as a befuddled and somewhat stodgy old-man version of himself, a startlingly oblivious husband to stalwart Nancy and a wittily rueful father to a grown up daughter (“Viola was the solitary arrow they had shot blindly into the future, not knowing where she would land,” Teddy thinks. “They should have aimed better.”) Teddy never quite got over the War and he suspects that the “fact” of his being alive is as arbitrary as Ursula’s demise(s). (“He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future.”) Scenes from his past bring back Ursula and other characters from the earlier book so that readers who’ve come this far with Atkinson will feel a tiny thrill of recognition; but new readers needn’t fear they’re missing the joke. There’s way less gimmick here than in the earlier book, and sometimes I almost longed for more; it was so provocative. But whether read alone or as a follow up, A God in Ruins is a novel to savor, another beautiful, tender and sly Atkinsonian glimpse into the world of a so-called ordinary mid-century British family.”
“This follow up [to Life After Life] tracks Ursula’s brother, Teddy, a favorite son who flies an RAF bomber during the Second World War and remains kind, thoughtful, and patient through a life of quiet sadness…Teddy, unlike his sister, lives only one life, but Atkinson’s deft handling of time, as she jumps from boyhood to old age and back, is impressive,” says The New Yorker.
Says The New York Times Book Review: “…you read a novel like Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, a sprawling, unapologetically ambitious saga that tells the story of postwar Britain through the microcosm of a single family, and you remember what a big, old-school novel can do. Atkinson’s book covers almost a century, tracks four generations, and is almost inexhaustibly rich in scenes and characters and incidents. It deploys the whole realist bag of tricks, and none of it feels fake or embarrassing. In fact, it’s a masterly and frequently exhilarating performance by a novelist who seems utterly undaunted by the imposing challenges she’s set for herself…Atkinson’s a sly and witty observer, with a gift for finding the perfect detail…”
In The New York Times, Janet Maslin writes: “. . . In this one, the main attraction is Teddy, and the way his glorious, hard-won decency withstands so many tests of time. Everything about his boyhood innocence is reshaped by his wartime ordeals, which are rendered with terrifying authenticity thanks to the author’s research into real bombers’ recollections…Ms. Atkinson has one huge trick up her sleeve, but she saves it for the book’s final moments to make it that much more devastating. She gets you to that final moment on faith and through writerly seduction. Just know that every salient detail in A God in Ruins, from the silver hare adorning Teddy’s pram to the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, is here for a fateful reason.”
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “The life expectancy of RAF pilots in World War II was notoriously short, with fewer than half surviving the war. But Teddy Todd—the beloved younger brother of Ursula Todd, whose life in all its variations was the subject of Atkinson’s Life After Life—beats the odds. Inner peace means resuming a life he never expected to have in a now-diminished England. He has nightmares; a wife he loves, although not necessarily enough or in the right way; and, eventually, a daughter who blames him for her mother’s early death and never misses a chance to mention the blood on his hands. As much postwar story as war story, the book is also a depiction of the way past and present mix. Atkinson fans know that she can bend time to her will, and here she effortlessly shifts between Teddy’s flying days and his middle and old age, between his grandchildren and their awful mother, and back again. And, as in Life After Life, Atkinson isn’t just telling a story: she’s deconstructing, taking apart the notion of how we believe stories are told. Using narrative tricks that range from the subtlest sleight of hand to direct address, she makes us feel the power of storytelling not as an intellectual conceit, but as a punch in the gut.”
In its starred review, Kirkus says: “Fresh from the excellent Life After Life (2013), Atkinson takes another sidelong look at the natures of time and reality in this imaginative novel, her ninth. Transpose Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” to the skies over Europe in World War II, and you’ll have some idea of the territory in which Atkinson is working. Ursula Todd, the protagonist of Life After Life, returns, appearing from time to time at just the right moments, in the manner of a chorus. The lead in this story, though, is her brother Teddy, who, having survived both childhood and the air war, is now disillusioned—”The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination”—and suffering from more than a little guilt that he lives while so many others do not. If Bierce might be a silent presence in the proceedings, so too might be The Best Years of Our Lives, which treats just that issue—save that we know how things turned out for the players in William Wyler’s 1946 film, whereas Atkinson constantly keeps us guessing, the story looping over itself in time (“This was when people still believed in the dependable nature of time—a past, a present, a future—the tenses that Western civilization was constructed on”) and presenting numerous possibilities for how Teddy’s life might unfold depending on the choices he makes, to say nothing of things well beyond his control. Atkinson’s narrative is without some of the showy pyrotechnics of its predecessor. Instead, it quietly, sometimes dolefully looks in on the players as, shell-shocked by a war that has dislocated whole generations and nations, they go about trying to refashion their lives and, of course, regretting things done, not done, and undone as they do. But do we really have just one life, as Ursula insists? It’s a point worth pondering. A grown-up, elegant fairy tale, at least of a kind, with a humane vision of people in all their complicated splendor.”
The Telegraph says: “. . . the bad news about reviewing A God in Ruins is that it ends with one of the most devastating twists in recent fiction – one I definitely can’t reveal but which is, as Atkinson’s afterword acknowledges, “the whole raison d’être of the novel”. In the circumstances, about all I can say (apart from urging you not to try to guess it) is that it adds a further level of overwhelming poignancy to an already extraordinarily affecting book.”
When is it available?
This novel is at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Dwight 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!
Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years
By Thomas Mallon
(Pantheon, $27.95, 480 pages)
Who is this author?
Thomas Mallon, who lives in Washington, D.C., has built a successful career as a writer of novels that are inspired by American history, including such major events as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. In addition to publishing nine novels, he also contributes to major publications, such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic, and he served as literary editor of GQ .Mallon won an American Academy of Arts and Letters award for his prose style and was deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
What is this book about?
A savvy, often sardonic look back at the near past and the second term of President Ronald Reagan, which for some readers may seem like ancient history. Set mainly in 1986 and centering on his famous negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev, the book moves back and forth from Washington to Southern California, sharply delineating major real-life players, such as first lady Nancy Reagan, writer Christopher Hitchens, socialite Pamela Harriman and disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon, and mixing in fictional characters as well, all orbiting the popular but poorly understood Reagan, a genial mystery to friends and foes alike (and soon to be a victim of dementia). It spans the thawing of the Cold War, the burgeoning AIDS epidemic, the twisty machinations of arms-trading with enemies and other political chicanery. It was 30 years ago, but this book makes it as fresh as today’s headlines.
Why you’ll like it:
In the hands of a skilled novelist, historical fiction often can tell readers more about the past than a deeply researched but dry nonfiction book. Mallon has those skilled hands, as well as a compelling prose style, plus years of experience and knowledge of the real-life players he depicts here. The ‘80s were a complex time and Reagan was a complicated man whose presidency began a political polarization that is growing ever more potent. This book will help you make sense of what happened then and how it still affects what is happening now.
What others are saying:
Library Journal says: “Mallon, a longtime master at fictionally realizing history here takes on the “Reagan years,” specifically 1986. A few fictional subplots backdrop the main action, wherein a number of historical figures are given voice: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Christopher Hitchens, even Bette Davis and John Hinckley. Except for Hinckley, the characters are nuanced, not simple paste ups. Take one of the principals, Nancy Reagan: astrology obsessed for sure but also self-aware. . . reflective, and genuinely human. Those who absolutely adore or detest her will probably both be disappointed.. . . The book’s centerpiece is the Iceland disarmament summit with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the tension is manifest. Readers who didn’t experience this time in history—or who aren’t familiar with the myriad luminaries who appear here, from Lindy Boggs through Jeanne Kirkpatrick and from Pat Moynihan to Mort Zuckerman—may feel at sea at times. But it’s worth it for this well-developed snapshot of an important year. Oh, Reagan himself? He comes across as vaguely charming but unreadable to friend and foe alike. As Kirkpatrick “says” to Nixon: “You’re complex, yes, but palpable. Reagan is smoke.” VERDICT: For all devotees of historical fiction and this time period.
Kirkus says, in a starred review: “Covering a momentous several months in 1986, this is an intriguing, humorous, even catty backstage view of the Reagan presidency from an artisan of the historical novel. . . . Reagan is preparing for his second summit with Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament. His wife, Nancy, who confers with her astrologer about the president’s actions and with Merv Griffin on everything else, wields considerable influence in the White House. Also perfectly coiffed and politically muscular is the $100 million widow of Averell Harriman, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, whose funding and machinations on the Democratic side expose the complex horse-trading ahead of that year’s midterm election. To a four-page list of historical figures, Mallon adds a few fictional ones tied mainly to the Iran-Contra spectacle and Washington’s gay insiders—dubbed the Homintern by Christopher Hitchens. The late journalist, a major character here and a subplot unto himself as he pursues the early inklings of Iran-Contra, was the dedicatee of Mallon’s Watergate and is described in this book’s acknowledgements as a “beloved friend.” The main plot, aside from history itself, concerns a popular president’s sudden faltering amid crises abroad and at home. Mallon doesn’t go far in plumbing the Reagan enigma that has stumped so many, but he creates revealing moments in the first couple’s marriage. Historical fiction at this high level satisfies the appetite for speculation or even titillation through restraint as much as research, and Mallon rarely overdoes it . . . Mallon’s version of history is close enough to fact to revive faded memories, while his imagining of who thought and said what presents some of the coherence and delights of fiction without the excesses of those “what if” rethinks scribbled by Newt Gingrich et al.
The Christian Science Monitor says: “Thomas Mallon takes this human clay and, after adding a dash of inspired inner dialogue, sculpts characters who embody the folly and frustration of political power. And, for good measure, Mallon’s characters never forget the striving required in the struggle for continued relevancy . . . Mallon has become a master of such political theater . . . What makes Mallon’s novels so much fun is the author’s blend of historical exactitude with imagined reactions and machinations. Many of those machinations play out in the plausible guise of fictional secondary players . . . Mallon fits all of these pieces together, combining broad historical accuracy and fictional verisimilitude with aplomb. Characters historical and fictional alike display bonfires of vanities, and insecurities, galore.”
Says Publishers Weekly: “In this novel, Mallon fixes his wide-angle historical lens on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in particular the events leading up to the exposé of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986. As befitting the author’s usual literary mode, Reagan himself is a minor character in his own story. The major characters include such real-life personalities as rising English journalist Christopher Hitchens, the much-married English socialite Pamela Harriman, and would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. Worked in among these are several fictional characters, including Anders Little, an arms-control expert with a sexual secret; his friend, Anne Macmurray, an anti-nukes advocate; and her dying ex-husband, Peter Cox, a Texas contributor to Republican candidates. And of course, hovering in the background is “tan, rested and ready” Richard Milhouse Nixon in all his tragic Shakespearean glory . . .the novel boasts a telephone book–sized cast of characters and fits them inside a chronicle large enough to encompass the Reagan-era gay revisionism of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and the gossip of Truman Capote’s “La Cote Basque, 1965.” What Mallon does best is dramatize the bizarre ’80s intersection of Hollywood and Washington, D.C, . . a crazy, quilted depiction of a contradiction-filled presidential administration.”
Says the AV Club: “Amid a presidential campaign of stupefying banality, where candidates compete to say the emptiest sentiment in the least insightful way possible, what a pleasure it is to enter the rough-and-tumble politics of Thomas Mallon’s historical novels. The elites of ‘80s government and media didn’t need soundbites: They had passions….Mallon captures that uncertain tenor of the times while portraying the complex drama of high-level politics with real clarity and energy. His take on W. can’t come soon enough.”
When is it available?
Mallon’s grand “Finale” is on the shelf at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Children’s Crusade
By Ann Packer
(Scribner, $26.99, 448 pages)
Who is this author?
Ann Packer is a bestselling novelist who lives in California. Her best known novel is The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, for which she won a Kate Chopin Literary Award, one of her many honors. Her other bestselling novel is Songs Without Words, and Packer also has published two short fiction collections, Swim Back to Me and Mendocino and Other Stories. She has written for The New Yorker, and her work has been printed in O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies.
What is this book about?
2015 is a good year for novels that trace characters’ lives going back decades – as in Jonathan Franzen’s Purity and the new trilogy by Jane Smiley – and Ann Packer mines that territory well in The Children’s Crusade. The story begins in 1954 when Bill Blair buys three woodsy acres south of San Francisco, land that today is known as Silicon Valley. He marries Penny, who becomes a deeply unfulfilled artist and mother of four, and Bill becomes a successful pediatrician. Three of the four Blair children do well and remain in the area: Robert as a doctor, Rebecca as a psychiatrist and Ryan as a teacher – but black sheep and confirmed wanderer James, the fourth and unplanned child) refuses to settle down. Ever. Penny gradually withdraws emotionally from her family, choosing to spend her time in the backyard shed she calls her studio and eventually at an artists’ colony in Taos. When, decades later, Bill dies, the family finally must deal with the fate of the house and their frayed connections.
Why you’ll like it:
Packer writes with style and subtlety, deftly using flashbacks to fully portray her main characters as they age. This is a family saga of the kind that can enmesh readers, whether they find parallels to their own relationships or just become entranced by the plot and people Packer has created.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Packer begins her well-crafted family saga from the ground up with pediatrician Bill Blair’s Portola Valley, Calif., land purchased in 1954. Bill marries Penny, a young woman eager to have children—but she didn’t count on four kids, which forges her identity as a mother instead of the artist she yearns to become. Her children are intuitively aware of her distance and poignantly try to find a way to bring her closer to them. Their stories unfold through distinctive narrative styles, including both first- and third-person sections, suited to the characters: stressed internist Robert, brilliant psychiatrist Rebecca, dreamy teacher Ryan, and reckless drifter James. The multiple perspectives help render the complicated family fully. Of the siblings, James is the only one to relocate, and he periodically returns over the years. The impetus for his current visit stems from an idea that shocks his siblings, prompting them to examine their childhood to find the answer. “Or rather, I remembered my memory of the moment, because after so long that’s what memory is: the replaying of the filmstrip that’s slightly warped from having gone through the projector so many times,” Rebecca thinks. Packer is an accomplished storyteller whose characters are as real as those you might find around your dinner table. Readers will be taken with this vibrant novel.”
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette says: “A sublime and intelligent exploration of one family and its mythology of sorts… Ms. Packer is a wonderful portraitist, allowing childhood moments to unfold in all their riveting innocence (including a breathtakingly perfect, terribly sad music recital scene) and following the family as choices beget choices and lives intertwine or unwind… This entertaining, poetic novel layers a multitude of human contradictions, and what is most moving is that even with so much hostility and melancholy, the family story here is one of love. It is about how we return again and again to understand, to make things right, even as we seek to move on from ancient pain.”
An Amazon.com Best Book of April 2015 review says: “Have you ever come across a family with secrets? One that, no matter how educated, well-heeled, and essentially decent, still manages to miss connections, hurt each other and harbor ancient slights for what seems like forever? For you, reading Ann Packer’s new novel may bring you comfort if not joy. (If you’ve never known or been that kind of family. . .well, then you’re either a saint or a liar). Packer lays out the story of the Blair family, father/doctor Bill, his wife Penny and their four children, the last of whom, James (it is obvious from the beginning, if only because he’s the sole sibling with a non-R name) was unexpected, a mistake. Beginning in northern California in 1954 – “long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley” – Packer takes us through five decades in the lives of the Blair family via the voices of its members; but if Robert, Ryan, Rebecca and James are the storytellers here, it is their mother Penny who is the heart of the book. Married to a man who’s almost too perfect to be true, Penny is a would-be artist who chafed at the traditional role society had assigned her and who must, ultimately, make choices on her own behalf. In vigilant detail, Packer chronicles the seemingly tiny ways that personal needs and memories from childhood make us the people we can’t help but be for the rest of our lives.”
In its starred review, Library Journal says: The critically acclaimed Packer has written an engrossing story of the Blair family, their secrets, wounds, and struggles for second chances. In 1954, Bill Blair, starting his career as a physician, buys wooded property in the hills near Palo Alto, CA, to build a house and start a family. Sadly, in fewer than ten years, his wife, Penny, always moody and distracted, has distanced herself from Bill and their four children: brilliant Robert, headstrong Rebecca, dreamy Ryan, and wild child James. She moves into an outbuilding/pottery studio but soon leaves for an artists’ community in Taos. Eventually, three of the children marry and follow respectable careers, all living near the family home occupied by their father until his death. Bill leaves the house to the children, stipulating that if they sell, they need approval of one other sibling and Penny. Then James, still the rude impetuous problem child and sporadically in touch over the years, shows up needing money. The resulting conflict stirs up heart-wrenching memories and resentments. VERDICT Packer offers a flawless, compassionate portrayal of each family member at both their best and worst and shows what a strong hold the past has on the present. Literary fiction at its finest; highly recommended.
Says Kirkus in its stared review: “A young doctor buys a piece of land in a place that will later be known as Silicon Valley, building a house that will shape his family for decades. Packer is an expert at complicated relationships; she likes to show more than two sides to every story. Who’s responsible for the fracturing of the Blair family? The obvious answer is Penny, a woman oppressed by domesticity, who retreats from her husband and four children to spend all her time in the shed—she calls it her studio—where she works on collages and mugs made of too-thick pottery, eventually even sleeping there. Or could her husband, Bill, a pediatrician with endless patience and empathy for kids, have pushed his wife away? Perhaps it was James, the youngest (and unplanned) child, a holy terror from the day he was born, who tipped his family over the edge. In beautifully precise prose, Packer tells the Blairs’ story, alternating chapters between the past, when the children were young, and the present, four years after their father’s death, when they each get a chance to tell their own stories in the first person. While James has bounced around the world, his siblings—Robert, a doctor; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; and Ryan, a teacher—all live near their childhood home, which James wants to sell. Emotions have never had so many shadings as in Packer’s fiction; she can tease apart every degree of ambivalence in her characters, multiplying that exponentially when everyone has different desires and they all worry about finding fulfillment while also caring for each other—except, perhaps, Penny. But though we rarely see Penny’s perspective on why she withdrew from her family, we can fill in the blanks; it’s the 1960s and ’70s, a time when women were searching for a larger role in the world. Packer seems to set Penny up as the villain, but even that view becomes complicated by the end. When you read Packer, you’ll know you’re in the hands of a writer who knows what she’s doing. A marvelously absorbing novel.”
When is it available?
This engrossing novel can be borrowed from the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Purity
By Jonathan Franzen
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28, 576 pages)
Who is this author?
In the opinion of many critics and readers, Jonathan Franzen is the best of our contemporary American writers, having earned impressive literary honors as well as being featured on the cover of Time magazine (apparently being on a Time cover does not carry the career-diminishing curse attributed to being similarly featured on Sports Illustrated.) His five novels are The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom and his latest, Purity, and his nonfiction works are Farther Away, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone – and all have won praise. And not just praise: prizes, including a National Book Award and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Corrections, a searing, bitterly comic family saga. Franzen also contributes to The New Yorker and other major publications.
What is this book about?
For Pip Tyler, life is a mystery with many clues missing. A recent college graduate in Oakland, Calif., she is drowning in student debt and has a difficult relationship with her emotionally ill mother who refused to tell Pip – whose real name is Purity – who or where her missing father is. When Pip leaves her going-nowhere job for an internship in Bolivia with a cultish group called The Sunlight Project, which will remind readers of the real-life WikiLeaks organization, she becomes entangled with its charismatic but dangerous leader, Andreas Wolf, an East German whose goal is to shine some Internet sunlight on all the world’s secrets – possibly including Pip’s. There’s much more to the story, involving world politics, journalism, bad marriages, worse parents, idealism and the eternal search for purity in life, laid out over many decades of character back stories and present-day events. How Franzen manages to handle all these disparate themes is a testament to his writerly prowess and admirable control.
Why you’ll like it:
Franzen is a masterful writer, a truth seeker with uncompromising standards and a wicked sense of dark humor. He first gained wide, and unwanted, fame when he rather primly turned down the chance to have The Corrections be an Oprah Book Club selection (a publicity bonanza authors would normally kill for), saying he feared it would turn off male readers, but he later did accept her selection of Freedom for her powerful club. Never one to play to the crowd – I heard him speak once and have never seen an author less comfortable with a live audience – Franzen is nevertheless a brilliant writer with lofty aims, often realized. Purity is the big book this fall: ignore it at your peril.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Secrets are power, and power corrupts even the most idealistic in Franzen’s exhaustive bildungsroman. Two years out of college, self-conscious, acerbic Purity “Pip” Tyler is saddled with crushing student loans and an overbearing, emotionally disturbed mother who refuses to reveal the identity of Pip’s father. Living in Oakland, Calif., Pip meets and confides in beautiful German activist Annagret, who calls on her former boyfriend, Andreas Wolf, to give Pip an internship working with Wolf’s cultish Sunlight Project, a WikiLeaks-like operation based in Bolivia. Once there, Pip is both flattered by and suspicious of the attention she receives from the magnetic Wolf; when she returns to America to do his bidding in secret, she becomes increasingly attached to people he may want to hurt. Pip strives to retain her integrity, but the world in which she is coming of age is, in Franzen’s view, sick, its people born only to suffer and harm. Mining the connection between Pip and Wolf, Franzen renders half a dozen characters over the course of six decades, via extensive origin stories that plumb their psychological corners. Franzen succeeds more than he fails, but the failures are damning. At first, the mercurial, angry Pip and the arrogant, abrasive Wolf seem drawn to actively challenge the reader’s sympathies. Then there are the novel’s fathers, who are almost all abusive or absent, and its mothers, who are disturbed, cruel, or dumb. Gradually, it becomes clear that Franzen’s greatest strength is his extensive, intricate narrative web—which includes a murder in Berlin, stolen nukes in Amarillo, and a billion-dollar trust. Though the novel lacks resonance, its pieces fit together with stunning craftsmanship.”
Amazon.com Review named it an Amazon Best Book of September 2015: “Purity takes many forms in Franzen’s new novel—to begin with, it is the name of the book’s title character. “Pip,” as she is more commonly known, is not fond of her given name, and when we first meet her she is living in a crowded Oakland house under the burden of colossal college debt. Pip soon becomes involved in “The Sunlight Project,” a WikiLeaks-style group that seeks to uncover secrets and expose them on the web. Run by Andreas Wolf, a charismatic man of renown, who grew up in socialist East Germany, the Sunlight Project becomes the jumping-off point of discovery for Pip, as well as a starting line for Franzen to jump back in time and explore the backgrounds of his primary and secondary characters. There is a point in the book where readers may wonder where this is all headed; but the thoughtfulness and polish of Franzen’s prose should reassure that the journey isn’t in vain. It eventually becomes clear that nearly every character is chasing purity in some form—whether pursuing Pip herself or some platonic ideal—and Franzen ties up the ends in a way that is clean and satisfying but will have you thinking about Purity long after you have finished the book.”
“Franzen may well now be the best American novelist. He has certainly become our most public one, not because he commands Oprah’s interest and is a sovereign presence on the best-seller list-though neither should be discounted-but because, like the great novelists of the past, he convinces us that his vision unmasks the world in which we actually live . . . A good writer will make an effort to purge his prose of clichés. But it takes genius to reanimate them in all their original power and meaning,” says critic Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic.
“As in all Franzen’s novels, and now so very powerfully in Purity, it is the history of his players that matters. Franzen’s exhaustive exploration of their motives, charted oftentimes over decades so as to deliver us to this moment when the plot turns on the past in the seemingly smallest of ways, is what makes him such a fine writer, and his books important. He is a fastidious portrait artist and an epic muralist at once,” says The Boston Globe.
Library Journal says: “Does anyone have truly pure intentions, or are most people motivated by their own needs and desires? This is one of the questions posed by Franzen in his provocative new novel, a book rich with characters searching for roots and meaning in a world of secrets and lies. Pip (Purity) Tyler is burdened with college debt, a minimum-wage job, and a needy yet withholding mother who lives as a recluse under an assumed name. The identity of Pip’s father is a taboo subject. Enter the shadowy, Julian Assange-like CEO of the Sunlight Project, Andreas Wolf, purveyor of all the Internet’s hidden truths. With less than pure objectives, Wolf offers Pip a researcher position at his South American headquarters. An improbable sexual cat-and-mouse game between them causes a temporary drag in the narrative, but once Pip returns stateside and is embedded in the offices of an online journal, Franzen reveals moments of absolute genius. The cathartic power of tennis; the debilitating effects of jealousy; the fickle, fleeting nature of fame; and the slow death of youthful idealism are all beautifully captured. VERDICT National Book Award winner Franzen, who often decries the state of our increasingly materialistic, high-tech society via his essays and novels, this time proffers a more hopeful, sympathetic worldview. “
A starred review from Kirkus says: “A twisty but controlled epic that merges large and small concerns: loose nukes and absent parents, government surveillance and bad sex, gory murder and fine art. Purity “Pip” Tyler, the hero of Franzen’s fifth novel is a bright college grad with limited prospects . . . A German visitor, Annagret, encourages Purity to intern in Bolivia for the Sunlight Project, a WikiLeaks-style hacker group headed by the charismatic Andreas Wolf. Skeptical but cornered, Purity signs on. The names alone—Purity, Wolf—make the essential conflict clear, but that just frames a story in which every character is engaged in complex moral wrestling. Chief among them is Andreas, who killed Annagret’s sexually abusive stepfather and has his own issues with physical and emotional manipulation. But he’s not the only one : Andreas’ friend Tom Aberant is a powerful journalist saddled with self-loathing and a controlling ex-wife who detests her father’s wealth; Tom’s lover (and employee), Leila Helou, is a muckraker skilled enough to report on missing warheads but fumbling at her own failed marriage to Charles Blenheim, a novelist in decline. . . . here, Franzen is burrowing deep into each person’s questionable sense of his or her own goodness and suggests that the moral rot can metastasize to the levels of corporations and government. And yet the novel’s prose never bogs down into lectures, and its various back stories are as forceful as the main tale of Purity’s fate. Franzen is much-mocked for his primacy in the literary landscape (something he himself mocks when Charles grouses about “a plague of literary Jonathans”). But here, he’s admirably determined to think big and write well about our darkest emotional corners. An expansive, brainy, yet inviting novel that leaves few foibles unexplored.”
When is it available?
This much-discussed novel is available now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper
By Hilary Liftin
(Viking/Penguin Publishing Group, $27.95, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
Now enjoying rave reviews for her breakout novel, Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper, author Hilary Liftin paid her writerly dues for years in the anonymous but crucial role of ghostwriter, helping the rich and famous (and incapable of writing) publish their celebrity memoirs. Based in Los Angeles, of course, Liftin co-wrote 15 celebmems (a word I just made up) and 10 became bestsellers, including Miles to Go by Miley Cyrus; High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips and Stori Telling by Tori Spelling, which won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for Best Celebrity Autobiography, an award of which I must admit I was totally unaware, and I’ll bet you were, too. She also wrote the memoir Candy and Me and is co-author of Dear Exile, both published under her own name.
What is this book about?
Lifton tells the tale in the form of – what else – a celebrity memoir, the sad and poignant story of Lizzie Pepper, an America’s Sweetheart kind of actress who marries a superstar movie actor following a whirlwind (and we later learn, orchestrated) romance chronicled by the tabloids and then finds that not every fairy tale has a fairy-tale ending. Evidently being rich, famous, beautiful and worshipped by fans is not enough to ensure happiness, not when your husband is enthralled by a mind-manipulating cult. If this plot somehow reminds you of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes marital debacle, you are not alone in that perception.
Why you’ll like it:
Lifton has the celebmem form down pat, and she is very funny besides. Many reviewers called this engaging novel the beach read of 2015, but if you did not have it on your blanket, you can catch up with it now. It will take you behind the scenes with a very astute guide to the crazyland that is Hollywood, and in creating Lizzie, Lifton has fashioned the perfect voice to tell this amusing but also cautionary tale.
What others are saying:
Kirkus Reviews says: “This irresistible debut novel from an accomplished celebrity-memoir ghostwriter reads like a behind-the-scenes look at the marriage of a certain former Hollywood it couple. TomKat, is that you? Lizzie Pepper, the disarmingly charming fictional narrator of this engaging faux memoir, is ready to reveal the truth about her tabloid-fodder relationship with her now-ex-husband, mega-movie star Rob Mars. (The author, Liftin, has collaborated on the memoirs of many real celebrities, including Miley Cyrus and Tori Spelling.) A wholesome, young, Midwest-raised actress, best known for playing a girl-next-door type on TV, Lizzie takes a meeting with Mars, who, in addition to being hugely famous and the teen crush of Lizzie’s best friend from home, is also deeply involved in a creepy cultlike religion with a lot of money and Hollywood pull. Lizzie thinks she’s auditioning for Rob’s next film, but she’s actually trying out for a bigger role—the actor’s girlfriend and, eventually, his wife and the mother of his children. Lizzie’s feelings for Rob are real, but how authentic his are for her is a continual topic of speculation in the press and ultimately an open question for Lizzie herself, despite (or perhaps partly because of) moments like the one in which Rob dramatically declares, in front of a phalanx of paparazzi, that Lizzie is “the love of my life”—an incident that goes viral, becoming a YouTube meme and providing talk show joke fodder. “They called him a manufactured brand, a robot attempting to play the role of a man in love,” Lizzie recalls. If these characters and this story don’t sound familiar to you, you miraculously missed out on the world’s collective fascination with the six-year marriage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes—not to mention its dramatic end. But no matter, Liftin’s compelling, highly readable novel—with its sympathetic narrator, suspenseful plot pivots, snappy pace, and dishy details about Hollywood’s inner workings—is likely to engage even readers who remain blissfully unaware of the tabloid characters who may or may not have inspired it. Dishy Hollywood fiction at its finest from an author who traffics in the truth behind tabloid headlines.”
Says Publishers Weekly: “In this novel, Liftin, a ghostwriter/cowriter on numerous celebrity memoirs, including those of Miley Cyrus and Tori Spelling, sheds light on our desire to know every juicy tidbit of celebrities’ private lives. Told as the memoir of Lizzie Pepper, an actress known for girl-next-door roles, the novel reveals her much-discussed relationship with the older and enigmatic Rob Mars (also an actor). From their meet-cute, Rob sweeps Lizzie off her feet with private-island dates, personal jets, and excessive amounts of sweet-talking. Through Rob and his devotion to One Cell—a cult-like meditation group—Lizzie believes she finds the power to take control of her career and her life. But life with a beloved actor reveals itself to be stifling, especially when the illusion of privacy disappears, and long-surviving friendships fall apart. Due to Lizzie’s wide-eyed nature, the reader may give her some leniency for her blindness to Rob and One Cell’s manipulations, which slows the narrative flow. The novel offers a surprisingly poignant look at making yourself the hero of your own story, in a very anti-Cinderella way. Readers will enjoy speculating about the real-life A-list celebrity inspirations, which adds to the already-juicy entertainment of Lizzie’s story.”
Library Journal gives the book a star and says: “Nothing is as it seems in Hollywood and Lizzie Pepper is about to discover just how true that is. America’s favorite “girl next door” actress thinks she’s auditioning for just another role when in fact she’s trying out for the role of megastar Rob Mars’s next girlfriend. What follows is a romance and marriage that could have been ripped from today’s gossip magazines. Lizzie begins leading a life of “new normal”—fame and wealth—with Rob. Here nothing is private; her cell phone and emails are monitored, and every public appearance is orchestrated, right down to her wardrobe. Rob introduces Lizzie to One Cell, a mind/body/spirit philosophy and practice that he says has shaped him into the actor he is today. Lizzie gets wrapped up in One Cell in which secrets are kept—and shed—and her life takes a turn she never could have imagined. Celebrity ghostwriter Liftin’s debut faux memoir will have you wondering about the real-life inspirations behind the characters. With its fast pace and combination of mystery with juicy celeb details, it’s a surefire hit. VERDICT Fans of the showbiz tales of Sophie Kinsella, Lauren Weisberger, and Rachel Pine will love this book. The beach read of the summer, it will keep you up long after the sun has gone down.”
“In the course of entertaining us with her dishy book Liftin also manages to humanize these public personas, offering backstory and emotions, coloring in imagined details of their day-to-day lives, exploring not just the characters’ truths but all of our truths: Why do we choose whom we choose? What are we most afraid of? What are our secrets? Whom can we really trust? And how do we know when to leave? It all makes for an extremely satisfying read,” says the Los Angeles Daily News.
When is it available?
This faux memoir is on the shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
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