Blog Post
Anything is Possible
by mansii
Returning to the heartbeat of the small town Midwest after a detour to New York City life, Elizabeth Strout revisits the characters of her successful narrative My Name is Lucy Barton in her emotionally barring new work: Anything is Possible. Through a network of short stories that hold their own yet weave into one another, this work explores how single moments hold lasting sway over our futures. An "invisible" school janitor's faith in a small girl propels her forward as a successful writer--now his good faith in people is being tested. When a child is shocked with the image of her mother's affair, it opens lifelong caverns of insecurity; now she has the opportunity to see past her pain in being a catalyst for good in the life of a new generation. Those who felt a kinship with Lucy Barton will find their understanding of this character enlarged and will feel the significance of each person that passes through the life of another, no matter how brief the stay. What do we run away from, and how do we arrange our escape? How often are we torn apart by the two-edged sword of love and hate, and yet how often do we hold the keys to small miracles in our own two hands? This long established, Pulitzer winning author richly explores what it is to be a soul in a world of souls.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #634
by muffy
In Marlena * *, Julie Buntin's "(s)ensitive and smart and arrestingly beautiful debut" (Kirkus Reviews), 15 year-old Cathy (now calling herself Cat), arrived at Silver Lake, a small rural community in Northern Michigan with her newly divorced mother and older brother, determined to shed her good-girl image and reinvent herself, and was immediately drawn to the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena, her next door neighbor.
Over the course of the coming weeks, the girls turned the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground - skipping school, running feral as Marlena introduced Cat to a new world of drinking and pills and sex and also friendship, the depth of which neither girl has experienced before. Within the year, Marlena was dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby.
Decades later, Cat is married, and a New York City public librarian. She seemingly had move on, now enjoying a close relationship with her mother, until a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, forcing Cat to examine her role and "the pain at the utter core of me” in losing Marlena.
"The novel is poignant and unforgettable, a sustained eulogy for Marlena’s “glow... that lives in lost things, that sets apart the gone forever.” (Publishers Weekly)
"In this, Marlena joins a glut of recent novels that pair a retrospective female narrator with an extravagantly charismatic but troubled friend. Emma Cline’s novel The Girls loosely reimagines the Manson family murders from the perspective of a 14-year-old named Evie in 1969, who becomes besotted with an older teenager named Suzanne. Emily Bitto’s The Strays is recounted by Lily, a young Australian girl drawn into the 1930s bohemian family of her classmate, Eva. Like Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, these novels consider the fierce complexity of female friendship, and the particular agony of innocence that yearns to be shed. They examine the allure of danger from a space of safety: It’s inevitable which girl will careen toward catastrophe, and which girl will watch, wistfully, from the sidelines.” Read the full review in The Atlantic.
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
War in America
by Lucy S
Imagine that entire portions of this country have disappeared under water and that the use of fossil fuels has been outlawed in many states. And then imagine that these events have sparked a second civil war in the United States and that this war sets off a disastrous plague. This is the scenario created by Omar El Akkad in his debut novel, American War. El Akkad comes to fiction writing after many years as a journalist covering stories on the war in Afghanistan, military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the effects of climate change along the southern coast of the US. His deep understanding of these real world conflicts seems to greatly inform and sustain American War. El Akkad brings us to the 2070s when the United States is embroiled in another civil war, brought about less by political differences or racial divides, than by climate and science, creating a refugee situation and a need to fight over remaining land. Fossil fuels are the biggest divider as the North no longer uses or allows them and the South won’t let them go. El Akkad’s plot seems entirely plausible given our present-day events. So much of what is in American War, biological warfare, drones, suicide bombs, torture, refugee camps, can be found in any source of news today.
While his book makes a strong commentary on current political, ecological, and social situations, at it’s heart the story really belongs to El Akkad’s main character, Sarat. We meet Sarat Chestnut as a 6 year old living in Louisiana and follow her through refugee camps, imprisonment and a life after the war set on revenge. In an interview in Bookpage, El Akkad said, “I never intended to write a book about America or war; I intended to write a book about the universality of revenge. I wanted to explore the idea that when people are broken by war, broken by injustice, broken by mistreatment, they become broken in the same way.”
The tragic events in Sarat's family life and the horrors of war that surround her entire existence leave her so thoroughly broken that she has no choice but to seek revenge. The question this powerful novel then asks is, how much revenge will be enough?
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #633
by muffy
An April 2017 LibraryReads, Kate Eberlen's engaging debut Miss You * brings to mind One Day by David Nicholls, where two souls that are meant to be, crisscross each other for years without connecting, after a chance meeting as 18 year-olds.
Tess and (An)Gus first met in a dim church in Florence and bumped into each other on the Ponte Vecchio while on holiday, before heading off to university in London.
Gus would read medicine, fulfilling the family wish. Tess never made it to university. Her mother's untimely death and the brute of a father meant she would stay home and raise her special-need younger sister, Hope.
Over the course of the next 16 years, as they individually fumbled through failed romances and marriage, balancing family and professional demands, the two narrowly missed one another several more times - while queuing up at Selfridge's one Christmas Eve; at a posh country wedding; at a frenzy Stones' concert where Gus, now a physician, attended to an unconscious Tess.
"Eberlen, who has written historical fiction and chick lit under the name Imogen Parker, excels in creating realistic characters whom readers will adore—including Tess’ unusual sister, Hope; Tess’ sassy best friend, Dolly; and Gus’ impulsive college pal, Nash. Eberlen also shines at keeping the story moving through 16 years of friendship, purpose, and love. Swoon-worthy." (Booklist)
Will appeal to fans of Jojo Moyes and Marian Keyes.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
New Midwestern Fiction: Nickolas Butler's The Hearts of Men
by eapearce
As a Michigan native, I find it refreshing to read books set in the heartland rather than in the bustling worlds of the coasts, at least from time to time. Nickolas Butler’s first book, Shotgun Lovesongs, perfectly captured life in small-town Wisconsin and his book of short stories, Beneath the Bonfire, spanned the entire Midwest , depicting the unglamorous yet deeply moving lives of farmers, factory workers, bartenders, truck drivers, miners and their families. Both books strike an aching chord with anyone who has lived in the rural Midwest. In his newest novel, The Hearts of Men, Butler again sets readers down in rural Wisconsin, over a time period of over five decades. The book follows the lives of two men, Nelson and Jonathan, who first meet as boys at Boy Scout camp in the 1960s. Their lives take vastly different directions; Nelson fights in Vietnam and eventually becomes the director of the very same Boy Scout camp, while Jonathan becomes a successful businessman with an unhappy marriage. It’s clear that Butler writes from experience—he grew up in Wisconsin and still lives outside of Eau Claire with his family. Nelson and Jonathan seem like more than just characters, but men that he has known, or could know.
The Hearts of Men explores the influence that age-old American institutions like the Boy Scouts have on a person’s life, and deals with the moral and ethical quandaries that we all face over the course of a lifetime. The book reads quickly and smoothly, and is highly recommended by this reader for anyone from the Midwest looking for a novel about home.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #632 "(D)espite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before..." ~ Georges Perec
by muffy
Author Caite Dolan-Leach's clever title for her debut Dead Letters * references the obvious, but also its alternate definition.
Graduate student Ava Antipova made her way home to upstate New York when news of her estranged twin Zelda's death reached her in Paris. They have not spoken for 2 years after a bitter betrayal.
Arriving at Seneca Lake where the family's failing vineyard Silenus, was located, Ava immediately stepped into caring for their ailing mother and estranged father who long ago, abandoned them for a sunnier vineyard, wealthier wife, and a younger family in California. Almost immediately, even before the Police suspected foul play, Ava began receiving cryptic emails and social media messages from Zelda.
Arranged in 26 chapters, each beginning with a letter of the alphabet and recounting the games the twins played as children, Zelda led Ava on a scavenger-hunt, delivering "a lock-room mystery with flavors of Perec", which as it became increasingly obvious, was also a taunt for the Edgar Allan Poe scholar (subject of Ava's dissertation) and the OuLiPo Movement - writers obsessed with mysteries and literary games.
"In this, her startling debut novel, Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie, the wit of Dorothy Parker, and the inebriated Gothic of Eugene O’Neill." (Kirkus Reviews)
For readers who enjoyed Sister by Rosamund Lupton, and The Widow by Fiona Barton.
* = starred review
Blog Post
A Coming of Age Adventure
by Lucy S
"The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is one part Quentin Tarantino, one part Scheherazade, and twelve parts wild innovation.” Ann Patchett
Hannah Tinti’s notable, gritty, first novel, The Good Thief was very well received in 2008 and those who have been waiting for more from her will not be disappointed with her second accomplishment, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley.
Samuel Hawley is a lifetime criminal who realizes he needs to change his felonious ways when his daughter, Loo, reaches adolescence and starts acting the part of a delinquent as well. Though Loo is happy to follow her father in all he does, Samuel feels compelled to settle down for her sake. When Samuel and Loo move to Olympus, Massachusetts, the town where Loo’s mother lived, Loo becomes curious about how her mother died. All Loo knows of her mother are the relics that her father carries and sets up in a shrine wherever they relocate. Loo has trouble letting go of the old, peripatetic ways and adapting to life in Olympus. “She began to dread the moves but a part of her also itched for them, because it meant that she could stop trying to fit in and simply slip into the place where she belonged: the passenger seat of her father’s truck as they barreled down the highway.”
Instead of making friends in Olympus, Loo sets out to learn more about what really happened to her mother. As she unravels the mystery of her mother’s past she becomes more deeply involved in her father’s present. Loo starts to comprehend what the twelve scars on her father’s body truly indicate about who he is and the life he’s led.
Interspersed with the chapters that tell of Loo’s adolescence and adjustment to her new home, are chapters set in earlier times that tell us of the harrowing adventures that comprise “the twelve lives of Samuel Hawley,” one chapter for each bullet that has left its mark on his scarred body. The chapters alternate between past and present in a wide setting that spans the entire United States, from Alaska to Massachusetts.
In an interview at the end of the book, Tinti explains how she created Samuel Hawley. She imagined a man blemished by bullets, and as he appeared to her bullet hole by bullet hole she created her story. Each of the chapters describing one of Hawley's wounds contains similar thematic elements. Tinti was influenced by Greek mythology and builds for Hawley a set of Herculean tasks, essentially, twelve different ways of getting shot. Loo, as she matures, is also on an odyssey. Each “first” in her life lies in a chapter sandwiched between the details of her father’s escapades. Her experiences, from her first fight, to her first crime, bring her closer to her father and to understanding the intentions of the people around her. “Their hearts were all cycling through the same madness - the discovery, the bliss, the loss, the despair - like planets taking turns in orbit around the sun.”
Tinti interweaves violence and compassion in this book that is part mystery, part quest for truth, and part love story. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is a gunslinging tale of adventure dovetailed with a powerful account of a father’s love as Samuel Hawley struggles with whether to teach his daughter by word or deed. “It was like they were one person, not two. When he thought, Loo acted.”
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #631
by muffy
Borrowing the title from one of Dostoyevsky's famous novel, Elif Batuman's debut novel The Idiot * * * is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale, set in 1995, that "delightfully captures the hyperstimulation and absurdity of the first-year university experience." (Library Journal)
Selin Karada, daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard eager and open to new experiences. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, and is intrigued with email, newly available on campus. In Russian class, Selin is befriended by Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb and, almost by accident, begins exchanging email with Ivan, a senior from Hungary. With each email they exchange, her feelings for Ivan intensifies, even knowing that he has a serious girlfriend.
At the end of the school year, after spending 2 weeks in Paris with Svetlana, Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside to teach English, hoping to meet up with Ivan on weekends, where the unfamiliar language gives rise to a succession of seemingly random but mild misadventures with her various host families.
“Selin is delightful company. She’s smart enough to know the ways in which she is dumb, and her off-kilter relationship to the world around her is revelatory and, often, mordantly hilarious... Self-aware, cerebral, and delightful.” (Kirkus Reviews)
Author Elif Batuman, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor. She is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University.
* * * = 3 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #630
by muffy
The Woman Next Door, the U.S. debut of Yewande Omotoso is "an intimate, frequently hilarious look at the lives of two extraordinary women set in post-apartheid South Africa." (Booklist)
Nicknamed each other "Hortensia the Horrible" and "Marion the Vulture", these prickly octogenarians have been next-door neighbors for over 2 decades in Cape Town's upscale Katterijn community. Seeing beyond the obvious (one is black and one is white), they have a lot in common. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Opinionated, widowed and living alone, they both take a keen interest in community affairs, often the source of their friction.
When an unexpected event impacts both of their well-being, Hortensia and Marion are forced to take tiny steps toward civility. With conversations over time, each reflecting upon choices made, dreams deferred, and lost chances at connection, these proud, feisty women must decide whether to expend waning energy on their feud or call a truce.
Born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, Omotoso won the South African Literary Award in 2011 for her debut novel, Bom Boy. In 2013 she was a finalist for the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she has her own architectural practice. Listen to the NPR podcast with the author.
"Like Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which also depicts the wisdom found in aging, this novel will have universal appeal." (Library Journal)
Blog Post
Fairy Tale to Full-Length Novel: The Snow Child
by ballybeg
Once upon a time, there lived an older, childless couple trying to homestead in the harsh, frozen north of Alaska. Mabel and Jack both live with deep longings, for the wide possibilities of a new life in the pristine north, and for a child, to bestow their love and devotion upon. There is a deep melancholy that enfolds them at the beginning of this enchanting story, but, through great trial and faith, they find the home, friendships, and the child, which they are seeking. Faina, the feral child of the woods, appears suddenly after the first snow of the first winter after they move to their farm. Strange and ethereal, she only stays for the winter and no one else sees her but Jack and Mabel. Is she real? Or some elusive maiden of snow and ice who is an imaginative figment of their desperate longing. Will she return when the snow flies again, and will she ever stay? If wishing makes it so, hopes Mabel.
Alaska native, Eowyn Ivey, tells the story of The Snow Child, based on the Russian tale of The Snow Maiden, with great beauty and loving attention to the characters and the wild, but magical, landscape in which she places them. Mabel is at the heart of the tale, her sadness transformed through the course of the book by finding purpose on the farm, developing precious friendships with her closest neighbors, and loving Faina. What binds the characters into a whole, and raises them out of the sad places in which they begin, is the transforming and redeeming power of love, the hope which endures through great trials, and the constancy of a parent’s devotion, which are always at the core of a fairy tale.
The Snow Child was a finalist in 2013 for the Pulitzer Prize, and received universal praise from reviewers and readers.
The retelling of fairy tales as full-length fiction is a legitimate and well-represented genre. For lists of other books to try in this genre, look here, and here, and here, and here.