Fabulous Fiction Firsts #338

Tue, 06/19/2012 - 6:13pm by muffy

If I had to pick a favorite this publishing season, it would have to be debut author Francesca Segal's The Innocents * * , a captivating recast of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, set this time in Temple Fortune, a swanky, and close-knit Jewish enclave in North West London.

28 year-old Adam Newman considers himself very lucky - newly engaged to sweet Rachel Gilbert with her traditional values, embraced by her loving family, and assured as heir-apparent in her father's prestigious law firm. Turning his world upside down is Rachel's younger cousin Ellie who arrives from New York discredited (Columbia University), disgraced (for the less than above-board arrangements with a married man), and scandalized (for her starring role in an "art house" film).

Adam does try to keep clear of Ellie but their mutual attraction and Ellie's fiercely independent thinking and reckless behavior keep drawing them together. "While the basic plot will not surprise Wharton readers, this new version of a classic is appealingly fresh and brisk, taking on issues of love, community, and compromise as unforeseen events alter the courses of lives", coming most appropriately on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edith Wharton.

Francesca Segal "writes elegantly and thoughtfully about Adam's growing sense of entrapment... (and) ties in family Holocaust lore and high-holiday gatherings to show that those long-standing bonds are tough to break. Even if the plot and themes are second-hand, this is an emotionally and intellectually astute debut." Francesca was born in London and studied at Oxford and Harvard University before becoming a journalist and critic. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, and The Observer. She is daughter of author Erich Segal.

Flying lower on the media radar is another Edith Wharton recast this summer - Gilded Age: A Novel by another debut novelist Claire McMillan, inspired by The House of Mirth, and set in contemporary Cleveland. A little darker and more demanding, but engaging just the same. Former English majors should feast on them.

* * =Starred reviews

AADL Talks to Delia Ephron

Wed, 06/13/2012 - 11:20am by muffy

If you missed Delia Ephron's program here at the AADL on a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, here is a chance to meet her as she sat down with us before the program for a lively discussion.

Her parents Henry and Phoebe Ephron were both Hollywood screenwriters. We asked her about growing up in Beverly Hills in the shadow of the film industry, and how her parents might have influenced her as a writer. She also talked about coming East for college, living in the Village and getting published.

We asked how she came up with the topic for her first published work (under the name Delia Ephron) How to Eat Like a Child and Other Lessons in Not Being a Grown-up? and how different it is writing teen and adult fiction.

Then we went on to the very important topic of wardrobe (not fashion but wardrobe!)

Her play Love, Loss and What I Wore which she co-wrote with sister Nora, based on a book by Ilene Beckerman is about women's relationships and wardrobes. The off-Broadway production won several very important awards. Speaking of jeans, she shared the secrets of her favorite brand, and when we posed the Desert Island question - she was happy to comply.

Don't miss our conversation with Delia. It was open, warm and full of humor. And if you haven't read her latest novel, out this spring The Lion is In ,like the author, it is a real treat.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #331

Tue, 05/22/2012 - 4:27pm by muffy

Wife 22 * * is "smart, fresh, entertaining, moving and incredibly funny" (I can't say it any better) and perhaps, one of the best Women's Fiction">Women's Fiction titles this year.

Let's see how YOU would answer the following questions:

#10 Do you believe love can last?
#44 What do you believe should NOT be done in public?
#50 If your spouse gave you one free pass to have sex with another person, who would you choose?
#80 Define passion in one sentence
#88 Has your life turned out the way you would hoped it would?

Like these? Thankfully, debut novelist Melanie Gideon (author of The Slippery Year: A meditation on happily ever after: a memoir, and 2 YA novels: Pucker and The Map That Breathed) provides in an appendix these 110 questions - some survey-generic, some philosophical & probing, some downright invasive but all seriously provocative.

Alice Buckle: spouse of William, mother to Zoe and Peter, part-time drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions is also "Wife 22". Readers will be privy to her honest and witty response to an anonymous survey on marital satisfaction. Over time, her correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn, and soon, she comes dangerously close to making a decision that will affect more than her happiness.

Rights sold to 19 countries and optioned for film. Perfect escapism and a breezy, delightful summer read.

* * = starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #330

Sun, 05/13/2012 - 5:15pm by muffy

Joining a recent crop of fictional biographies of famous women and their little-known love affairs such as The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott and Romancing Miss Brontë is Rosie Sultan's Helen Keller in Love.

No doubt we are all familiar with Helen Keller's early education as depicted in The Miracle Worker, a play by William Gibson (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, and adapted into an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962), but we are less likely to remember her for her strong interest in women's rights, universal suffrage, and social activism. Very little is written about her private and emotional life.

This debut novel imagines a 30-something Helen's love affair with Peter Fagan, a brass young journalist hired to step in as her secretary when Annie Sullivan was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Their daily sensual interactions of signing and lip-reading with hands and fingers quickly set in motion a liberating, passionate, and clandestine affair, which was met with stern disapproval from her family and Annie. Helen is caught between the expectations of the people who love her and her most intimate desires.

"Richly textured and deeply sympathetic", it vividly depicts Helen's inner life and her feelings of utter dependence and loneliness and her desperate desire to be treated as a woman.

Rosie Sultan (website), winner of a PEN Discovery Award for fiction, has taught writing at Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Suffolk University. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

New Book Clubs to Go - April 2012

Thu, 04/05/2012 - 12:42pm by muffy

Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out a large number of new Book Clubs to Go. It is a mix of classics (you asked for them), literary and popular fiction, among them a couple of award winners. We did not forget our nonfiction readers either.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Traces the fortunes of four generations of one family as they attempt to build a life for themselves in the American West. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1971, Angle of Repose has also been selected by the editorial board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Forging a deep friendship with a Wampanoag chieftain's son on the Great Harbor settlement where her minister father is working to convert the tribe, Bethia follows his subsequent ivy league education and efforts to bridge cultures among the colonial elite. New York Times bestselling tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure from the Pulitzer Prize winning author.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
Chronicles the author's year spent testing the edicts of conventional wisdom to assess their potential for improving life, describing various activities ranging from getting more sleep and singing to her children to starting a blog and imitating a spiritual master.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he is caught up in the patriotism of World War II.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
In 1974 Manhattan, a radical young Irish monk struggles with personal demons while making his home among Bronx prostitutes, a group of mothers shares grief over their lost Vietnam soldier sons, and a young grandmother attempts to prove her worth. The 2009 National Book Award for Fiction, and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
Descending on a family beach house won in a bet years earlier, three generations of women gradually impart difficult respective secrets including a pregnancy, a terrible crush and a deeply held resentment for past misdeeds.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
Ten years of infertility issues culminate in the destruction of music therapist Zoe Baxter's marriage, after which she falls in love with another woman and wants to start a family, but her ex-husband, Max, stands in the way.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh must step out of her comfort zone when she is sent into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
A novel that circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. It is about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. The 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and The National Book Critics Circle 2010 prize for fiction.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #318

Fri, 03/09/2012 - 5:15pm by muffy

Debut novelist Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country * * is praised by reviewers as "superb", "elegantly written, stunningly powerful, simply masterful", "darkly luminous"; endorsed and favorably compared to works by Amy Tan, Eugenia Kim, Lisa See, and Chang-Rae Lee. And I was not disappointed.

Janie (Jeehyun), bookish, dutify and the older of two girls from an immigrant Korean family must set aside her academic pursuits (University of Chicago) to returm home to Michigan to care for her father who has just been diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer. More pressing still is her parents' insistance that she finds her younger sister Hannah (Haejin), who disappeared over a year ago. Janie is resentful because of their prickly relationship and the rivalry, but also fearful because of her knowledge of the family's legacy that for three generations they have lost a daughter, circumstances often shrouded in mystery.

When her father decides to seek experimental treatment, the family returns to Korea, a homecoming that is both bittersweet and illuminating, making clear the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier. Like invisible threads, the fragile and implacable bonds of shared history could hold a family together even across the seemingly impassable chasm of different cultures and changing generations.

The jacket cover mentioned that the author lived in Michigan and the character Janie attended the University of Michigan. I was curious and contacted Catherine Chung (author website). Here is what she wrote:

"My family moved to Okemos, Michigan when I was eight years old, and I grew up and went to school there. My father was a professor at Michigan State--I don't have any official connection to Ann Arbor: I just had a lot of friends who went to school there and visited often!"

For further reading on the Asian immigrant experience, try Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation and Bich Minh Nguyen's Short Girls (also set in Michigan and Ann Arbor).

* * =Starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #312

Wed, 02/08/2012 - 4:08pm by muffy

Seré Prince Halverson's debut novel - The Underside of Joy quietly and immediately draws the reader in with : “For three years, I did back flips in the deep end of happiness. The joy was palpable and often loud. Other times it softened..... I also know now, years later, something else: The most genuine happiness cannot be so pure, so deep, and so blind."

Ella Beene's back flips in happiness are named Joe, Annie and Zach. She met Joe as she stopped at Elbow, a small, funky town along the Redwoods River in North California and never left, becoming stepmother to Joe's children when they married. When Joe died, Ella's grief was compounded with Paige, the children's biological mother showing up at the funeral.

As a bitter custody battle raged between the two women, long-buried secrets which Joe took great pains to hide from Ella came to light. Joe's once close-knit Italian-American family initially supportive, took sides, leaving Ella feeling abandoned.

"Weaving a rich fictional tapestry abundantly alive with the glorious natural beauty of the novel's setting, Halverson is a captivating guide through the flora and fauna of human emotion-grief and anger, shame and forgiveness, happiness and its shadow complement . . . the underside of joy."

'A poignant debut about mothers, secrets and sacrifices. "

Readers who enjoyed Jacquelyn Mitchard's A Theory of Relativity (2001); Marisa De Los Santo's Love Walked In (2006) and Belong to Me (2008); and Caroline Leavitt's Pictures of You (2011) will find much to like with this debut novel.

Winners in Genre Fiction - RUSA’s 2012 Reading List

Thu, 01/26/2012 - 7:51pm by muffy

The American Library Association's Reading List Council have selected their top picks for 2012 in eight popular genres. Among the winners (and the shortlists) are some of the best by first-time novelists.

ADRENALINE
Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson. (See FFF blog)
Each morning, Christine wakes with no memory. From the clues she left herself, she tries to piece together her identity and sort lies from the truth. The unrelenting pace thrusts the reader into the confusion of a waking nightmare in which revelations of her past lead to a frantic crescendo.

FANTASY
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (See FFF blog)
Le Cirque des Rêves is utterly unique, disappearing at dawn in one town only to mysteriously reappear in another. At the heart of the circus are two young magicians, involved in a competition neither completely understands. The dreamlike atmosphere and vivid imagery make this fantasy unforgettable.

HISTORICAL FICTION
Doc by Mary Doria Russell
In the early days of Dodge City, a genteel, tubercular Southern dentist forges a friendship with the infamous Earp brothers. Combining historical details and lyrical language, this gritty psychological portrait of gunslinger Doc Holliday reveals how the man became the legend.

HORROR
The Ridge by Michael Koryta
The unexplained death of an eccentric lighthouse keeper in the isolated Kentucky woods, followed by a mysterious threat to a nearby large cat sanctuary prompt an investigation by a journalist and the local sheriff. Palpable evil and a sense of dread drive this chilling tale.

MYSTERY
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (See FFF blog)
An introverted mathematician matches wits with a brilliant former colleague to protect the neighbor he secretly adores from a murder charge. Although the reader knows the murderer’s identity from the beginning, this unconventional Japanese mystery remains a taut psychological puzzle.

ROMANCE
Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase
Ambitious dressmaker Marcelline Noirot will do almost anything to secure the patronage of the Duke of Clevendon’s intended bride. Neither her calculated business plan nor his campaign of seduction can withstand the force of their mutual attraction. Witty banter and strong-willed characters make this a memorable tale.

SCIENCE FICTION
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
The missions of a jaded cop and a dedicated ice hauler officer collide as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. A mystery adds a noir touch to this space opera featuring deeply flawed yet heroic characters, non-stop action and Earth versus Mars politics.

WOMEN'S FICTION
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (See FFF blog)
A former foster child struggles to overcome a past filled with abuse, neglect and anger. Communication through the Victorian language of flowers allows her to discover hope, redemption and a capacity for love. Damaged, authentic characters create an emotional tension in this profoundly moving story.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #307: Spotlight on Korea

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 5:18pm by muffy

Please Look After Mom a novel by Kyung-sook S(h)in (translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim) is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.
Currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City and one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists, Sin has been honored with many literary prizes including France’s Prix de l’Inaperçu. Please Look After Mom is her first book to appear in English.

Chosen as one of the 9 Kirkus Reviews' New and Notable Fiction Debuts for 2011, Chicago author Samuel Park's This Burns My Heart is narrated by Soo-Ja, a woman struggling to provide a good life for her daughter in spite of her own unhappy marriage and a culture that grants no rights to women, the situation made even more difficult when her long-lost true love Dr. Yul returns.

Considered by critics and reviewers to be his break-out work, The Orphan Master's Son * * * by Adam Johnson (Stanford, Creative Writing) is not to be missed. I am sure some of you would not hesitate to point out that this is NOT his first novel. But how many of you had read Parasites Like Us (2003)? I thought so.

Pak Jun Do's father runs Long Tomorrows, a North Korean work camp for orphans where he is given his first taste of power. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, he rises through the ranks to become a valuable instrument of the state as a professional kidnapper. To stay alive, he must navigate and endure the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands from those in command, until he boldly takes on a treacherous role in order to save the woman he loves.

"Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master's Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love."

Adam Johnson will be in Ann Arbor Tuesday, January 24th, 7pm at Nicola's Books. Get there early.

* * * = Starred Reviews

New Book Clubs to Go (January 2012)

Wed, 01/04/2012 - 7:43pm by muffy

The following new Book Clubs to Go kits have been added to our collection:

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman with a troubled past has advertised for a reliable wife; and his ad is answered by Catherine Land, a woman who makes every effort to hide her own dark secrets.

City of Thieves by David Benioff
A captivating novel about war, courage, survival-and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered in Seattle, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.

Room by Emma Donoghue
A 5-year-old narrates a riveting story about his life growing up in a single room where his mother aims to protect him from the man who has held her prisoner for seven years since she was a teenager.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Dagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her everyday life as her concept of self gradually slips away.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer, was buried in an unmarked grave sixty years ago. Yet her cells -- taken without her knowledge, grown in culture and bought and sold by the billions -- became one of the most important tools in medical research.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
The stories of a small Cape Cod postmistress and an American radio reporter stationed in London collide on the eve of the United States's entrance into World War II, a meeting that is shaped by a broken promise to deliver a letter.

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
When their seven-year-old daughter goes missing, Antonia evaluates her decision to stay in a loveless marriage that caused her child to withdraw into silence, while Martin confronts an uncomfortable aspect of his own personality.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
Unwillingly brought together to care for their ailing mother, three sisters who were named after famous Shakespearean characters discover that everything they have been avoiding may prove more worthwhile than expected.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
An alternate historical work based on a premise that Alaska became the Jewish homeland after World War II finds detective Meyer Landsman investigating a heroin-addicted chess prodigy's murder, a case with ties to an extremist Orthodox sect.