Fabulous Fiction Firsts #616

Thu, 10/13/2016 - 10:20pm by muffy

The buzz around Brit(tany) Bennett's debut The Mothers * * * is hard to ignore. Vogue and The Washington Post are not alone in their over-the-moon praises, so richly deserved.

A wise and sad coming-of-age story set largely in Oceanside, CA, it is about the tangled destinies of three teens growing up in a tight-knit African-American community. 17 year-old Nadia Turner, smart, pretty, and ambitious is getting out - with a full ride to Michigan, away from her silent father, and away from the grief of losing her mother to suicide; but not before she realizes she is pregnant by the pastor's son, Luke. Her decision to abort creates a web of secrets that will haunt them for decades to come.

Years later when Nadia, now a successful attorney returns home to care for her ailing father, her reunion with Luke threatens his marriage to Aubrey, Nadia's childhood friend as well as the peace of their church community.

Narrated by Nadia and a Greek chorus of gossipy 'Mothers' from the local Upper Room Chapel, who "(f)ar from reliably offering love, protection, and care,...cause all the trouble." (Kirkus Reviews)

"There’s much blame to go around, and Bennett distributes it equally. But she also shows an extraordinary compassion for her flawed characters." (Publishers Weekly).

Brit Bennett (Stanford; MFA University of Michigan), winner of a Hopwood Award as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers, will be at Literati Bookstore at 7 pm on Monday, October 17, 2016 for a reading. Get there early.

* * * = 3 starred reviews

A Look Back, a Step Forward

Sat, 10/08/2016 - 3:23pm by Lucy S

How do you write about recent, disastrous history in a middle-grade book? And why? Jewell Parker Rhodes answers both of these questions in her new book, Towers Falling. This isn't the first book in which she has tackled hard, real life issues. Rhodes won The Coretta Scott King Award for her 2010 book, The Ninth Ward, the story of a girl braving Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In Towers Falling, Rhodes has again created a necessary and captivating book focusing, in part, on the events of September 11th. A class of fifth-graders in a Brooklyn school begins their school year by learning about the missing towers in the New York City landscape they see from their classroom window. As the year is 2016, none of these children were alive on September 11, 2001, and this towerless panorama is the only one they know. Their teacher, Ms. Garcia, uses this cityscape and its significance to begin a dialogue on interconnectedness, and the idea that history is alive. The students eventually come to realize that they are all connected to one another through this living history and therefore linked to the victims and witnesses of September 11.

At the heart of this story is fifth-grader Deja, who has recently moved into a homeless shelter, The Avalon, with her parents and two younger siblings. When asked to do a project about her home, Deja struggles, and then replicates her family instead of her physical dwelling. In so doing, she underscores Ms. Garcia’s message of affinity, the strength of relationships, and the nuanced meanings of family and home.

Deja and her two friends, Saleem and Ben, carry on this conversation and their learning outside of the classroom as they work on a homework assignment together. In creating a study of the “far past” and the “recent past” in America, these three arrive at an understanding of what it might mean to be an American, no matter where you’re from, or how or when you arrived. Deja is African-American, Saleem is Turkish and Ben has Mexican heritage. Their shared experiences make them realize that as part of the “American circle,” they are “different but still American.” “Some histories repeat; some events are unique. There is regional, statewide, and national history. We share all of it in common as Americans.”

Towers Falling is marketed towards 8 to 12 year-olds, and does, eventually provide some striking details from September 11, which are never easy to encounter. Still, this book is important for readers of all ages, teenagers and adults included, who will benefit from learning Deja's story, and grow because of the experience.

Settling Into Fall With Quietly Suspenseful Reads

Fri, 09/23/2016 - 3:44pm by eapearce

Perhaps you recently read The Girl on the Train, in preparation for seeing the soon-to-be-released movie version and are wondering where to turn next to get that tingly feeling of suspense that a mind-bending mystery offers. Or perhaps you’re still looking for something as good as Gone Girl to blow your reading mind. Or maybe you just like to read suspenseful stories in autumn, as I do, and are looking for the perfect one to kick off the season. No matter what the reasoning, the AADL has a slew of great psychological mysteries to send chills up your spine:

In All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda, Nicolette returns to her hometown after ten years away to care for her ailing father. She’d left a decade ago after her best friend disappeared without a trace. The ensuing investigation focused on Nic, her boyfriend, her brother and Corinne’s boyfriend, and since then Nic is the only one who’s left town. When another girl goes missing just days after Nic’s return, she’s determined to figure out what’s going on—and hopefully find out what really happened to Corinne so long ago. The story is told backwards from the date that the girl disappears which makes all the shocking truths that are revealed even more surprising, and plays tricks on the mind that will delight even the most unflappable of readers.

Unbecoming, written by Rebecca Sherm and published last year, offers readers a seemingly tragic story: after two men that she loves attempt to rob a historical mansion and land in prison, a woman flees to Paris to try and start a new life away from them and their memory. Living under an assumed identity and working in a shady antiques-repair shop, readers follow along as her lies unravel and the truth behind her past, the heist and her future plans come to light. Fans of The Girl on the Train will enjoy this one in particular.

Lisa Jewell paints an initially idyllic scene in The Girls in the Garden, of a picturesque communal park in urban London, but the image is quickly shattered when a girl finds her sister’s potentially lifeless body among the rose bushes. The book backs up from this moment, introducing us to the sisters and telling the story of how they and their single mother came to live in one of the small flats by the park. As we make it forward to the night of the attack, readers are introduced to a series of suspicious characters and find out about the disappearance of another teenaged girl who lived by the park twenty years before. Are the crimes linked? Or have two separate criminals graced the park with their presences?

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #615

Sun, 09/18/2016 - 2:31am by muffy

Referred to as The Dollhouse * by the Manhattanites, the Barbizon Hotel for Women is where aspiring models and secretaries who often come from small towns, try to make it on their own in the 1950s.

Darby McLaughlin arrived from Ohio to take up secretarial studies at the Katherine Gibbs School . Compared to the glamorous Eileen Ford housemates, she was plain, self-conscious, and homesick. Befriended by Esme, a Barbizon maid, she was introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs.

Over half-a-century later, journalist Rose Lewin is evicted from one of the Barbizon condos when her divorced boyfriend decides to reunite with his family. Rose is forced to take refuge with her reclusive downstairs neighbor Darby, one of the original tenants. As Rose's life implodes around her, she is consumed with the story behind the rumors that Darby was involved in the grisly death of Esme. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.

"Darby and Rose, in alternating chapters, weave intricate threads into twists and turns that ultimately bring them together; the result is good old-fashioned suspense," (Publishers Weekly) by debut novelist Fiona Davis.

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was based upon her time working at Mademoiselle and living at the Barbizon (called The Amazon in the novel). This historical landmark, built in 1927 is now upscale condos under the name Barbzon 63.

Readalike: Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan (another FFF) and Suzanne Rindell's Three-Martini Lunch will captivate readers with a strong sense of time and place as the authors bring a legendary New York building to life and populates it with memorable characters who find themselves in unusual situations.

* = starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #614

Sun, 09/11/2016 - 5:52pm by muffy

Monterey Bay *, a debut by Lindsay Hatton beautifully re-imagines the last days of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and its memorable characters, real and fictional.

Accompany her entrepreneur father Anders, Margot Fiske arrives in Monterey Bay a confident, self-sufficient (exceedingly tall) 15 year-old, having traveled the world with him, looking after their businesses. An accident in the tide pool brings her into contact with denizens of Cannery Row, where her talent as an artist/illustrator immediately impresses Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist known as Doc, who, against Steinbeck's displeasure, offers her a job to sketch the specimens he collects.

Ricketts, a charismatic, hard-drinking bohemian/scholar, quickly becomes the object of Margot’s fascination and soon her lover. In the meantime, Anders is quietly amassing support for the most ambitious and controversial project to date: the transformation of the Row’s largest cannery into an aquarium, while making himself unpopular with the most powerful family on the peninsula.

Finding herself often alone and at odds with her father, Margot gets to know Steinbeck, Ricketts’s benefactor, who is hiding out from Hollywood; and other locals who would play a crucial role in transforming life in Monterey in the decades to come.

"Hatton, in her first novel, takes up a formidable challenge for herself, setting her story in one of American literature’s most famous locations. She does an excellent job of recreating the Cannery Row that no longer exists, honoring the memory of Steinbeck and Ricketts and all the workers who once toiled there, as seen through the eyes of a precocious teenage heroine." (Publishers Weekly)

Readers will undoubtedly want to revisit Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday, the basis for the 1982 movie adaptation, starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. To find out more about John Steinbeck's legendary voyage with Ed Ricketts that serves as a critical turning point in Hatton's novel, check out the documentary Journey to the Sea of Cortez.

* = starred review

Award Winning Author's Dissection of a Family

Fri, 09/09/2016 - 4:00pm by mansii

In this dissection of a family, award winning author Ann Patchett's newest novel, Commonwealth, follows fifty years of life in the Cousins and Keating households. From the first glimpses of unraveling marriages, to the aftereffects of divorce, to children now grown with families of their own, she examines the effects of time and the ties of family. In an interview for Bookpage Patchett describes fusing families as the experience of being forced into a group of strangers and forming alliances with them by necessity. How does time effect the dynamics between siblings, between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons? How does the lens of the past effect how we see one another? What might forgiveness look like, or healing from dysfunction? Is this even possible? Digging into the starkness of isolation and wrongdoing, while celebrating our unquenchable capacity for love and redemption, Patchett’s semi-autobiographical work is poignantly human. A highly anticipated work just about to hit the shelves, it’s time to re-discover Ann Patchett.

Eleven Hours

Sun, 09/04/2016 - 3:49pm by Lucy S

Pamela Erens’ new novel, Eleven Hours, is the story of two pregnant women whose lives cross paths for a brief time, less than a day. This short book (165 pages) begins with Lore, in the last month of her pregnancy, taking herself to the hospital as she feel the stirrings of labor, a very detailed birth plan in hand. She arrives alone and is attended to by a nurse, Franckline, who is also pregnant, and has seen her fair share of birth plans. In the ensuing eleven hours, Pamela Erens takes us through the moments of a woman’s labor, from start to finish, with precision. Fiction has rarely provided readers such a true account of childbirth.

In these eleven hours, we are exposed to both the exciting and the dull stretches of labor, the ups and downs. Just as one’s mind might wander during any eleven hour period, especially one so full of ebbs and flows as the process of labor, so wander the minds of Franckline, recalling her family in Haiti, her new, second pregnancy; and of Lore, thinking of the failed relationship that has ended in her pregnancy and her being here, alone. Erens’ dexterous writing takes us down different, winding paths to reveal some of each woman’s story. While the lines of their accounts run parallel within the framework of Erens’ novel, these two women, who go through this incredibly intense experience together, never really know each other. Erens combines their narratives beautifully, yet maintains their separateness. They are each important to the other in some way and travel together on this one journey, on this one day, but at the same time, they are alone, with their thoughts, their worries, their histories.

Lore thinks, “how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn’t tell, or told stories that weren’t entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form.”

Erens does not shy away from the mess and panic that childbirth can elicit and so this book is not for the feint of heart, nor, probably, for expectant parents. But Erens is unfailingly honest in giving us a candid picture of this one woman’s experience of childbirth. Despite the fact that certain passages evoke the visceral pain of childbirth, the novel is so well written, the flow of Franckline’s and Lore’s tandem eleven hours so well described, that the book is hard to put down, a striking and gratifying read.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #613

Thu, 09/01/2016 - 9:57pm by muffy

Following in her illustrious parents' footsteps, Irene is a professional spy for a shadowy organization called the The (Invisible) Library * * that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. After wrapping up a most difficult case, she finds herself immediately assigned a new mission - to retrieve a particularly dangerous book in an alternative London while shackled with a new trainee, Kai.

When they arrive, they find the city populated with vampires, werewolves, and Fair Folk, and the book they are after, has already been stolen. Soon they realize several parties are prepared to fight to the death for the tome, one of them a handsome detective named Peregrine Vale. It also becomes clear fo Irene that Kai is hiding secrets, secrets that could prove as deadly as the chaos-filled world they find themselves in.

"Bibliophiles will go wild for this engaging debut, as Genevieve Cogman hits all the high notes for enjoyable fantasy. Intriguing characters and fast-paced action are wrapped up in a spellbinding, well-built world." (Library Journal)

"Reminiscent of the works of Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman, Cogman's novel is a true treat to read." (Publishers Weekly)

I hope you are a fast reader. A much anticipated sequel The Masked City is on its way, and not a minute too soon.

* * = 2 starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #612

Fri, 08/26/2016 - 5:12pm by muffy

A Hundred Thousand Worlds * by Bob Proehl is a mother-son cross-country road trip through the world of comic-cons,

New York actress Valerie Torrey, who has a successful run playing Bethany Fraser in a syndicated X-Files-ish TV show called Anomaly is taking her 9 year-old son Alex on a road trip to LA where his father Andrew lives.

Along the way, Val agrees to make appearances at comic book conventions. From Pittsburgh to Cleveland, from Chicago to Las Vegas they are increasingly being drawn into the lives and drama of the other regulars - artists, writers, agents, publishers and a strange world of "cosplay" (costume play), mostly young women who dress up as comic book characters.

For Alex, this world is a magical place where fiction becomes reality, but as they get closer to their destination, he begins to realize that the story his mother is telling him about their journey might have a very different ending than he imagined.

Debut novelist "Proehl has done an excellent job of integrating all of the story lines and creating memorable characters to populate them. Though not without its melancholy moments, the story is deeply satisfying and will delight both comics fans and general readers." (Booklist)

* = starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #611 Spotlight on Psychological Thrillers

Fri, 08/19/2016 - 7:07pm by muffy

An August pick on Indie Next and LibraryReads lists, and a runaway UK debut bestseller, Behind Closed Doors * by B.A. Paris is one of the most terrifying psychological thriller you are likely to come across.

London attorney Jack Angel - movie-star-handsome and successful, sweeps Grace Harrington off her feet when he offers to dance with Millie, Grace's Down-syndrome younger sister under her care. The first sign that things are not what they seem to be is when Millie tumbles down a flight of stairs on their wedding day. On their honeymoon, Jack made clear his psychopathic plans, using Millie as leverage to ensure Grace's cooperation.

"Debut-novelist Paris adroitly toggles between the recent past and the present in building the suspense of Grace’s increasingly unbearable situation, as time becomes critical and her possible solutions narrow. This is one readers won’t be able to put down." (Booklist)

All the Missing Girls * , the first adult title by YA author Megan Miranda, is about the disappearances of two young women a decade apart. It has been 10 years since Nic(olette) Farrell left Cooley Ridge after her best friend, Corinne Prescott, disappeared without a trace. Now a cryptic note from her dementia-ravaged father brings her home. Within days of her arrival, her young neighbor Annaleise Carter disappears, reawakening the decade-old investigation that focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, and Corinne's boyfriend Jackson.

Told backwards from Day 15 to Day 1 since Annaleise's disappearance, Nic works to unravel the shocking truth about her friends, her family, and ultimately, herself. "Miranda convincingly conjures a haunted setting that serves as a character in its own right, but what really makes this roller-coaster so memorable is her inspired use of reverse chronology, so that each chapter steps further back in time, dramatically shifting the reader’s perspective." (Publishers Weekly)

The Trap by East German debut novelist Melanie Raabe is a fast, twisty read.

Reclusive novelist Linda Conrads hasn't left her home since she discovered her sister's body 11 years earlier. When she sees the face of the murderer on television, the same face that she saw leaving the crime scene, she goes about setting a trap by crafting her next thriller utilizing all the details of her sister's murder. But her careful plan goes horribly awry.

Film rights sold to TriStar Pictures.

* = starred review