AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW
JUNE 2017
BEACH READS
Soak up the sun with our oceanfront roundup
SHERMAN ALEXIE
Moving memories of a Native American childhood
DAD’S CHOICE 5 great gift ideas for Father’s Day
JULIA GLASS In this luminous novel from a National Book Award winner, an artist’s untimely death creates a complicated legacy
63 NEW BOOKS
JUST FOR YOU
! R E M M U S O DIVE INT And keep summer slide at bay with super boredom-busters from Nat Geo Kids!
Explore the world in the most popular kids’ almanac on the planet, packed with news, facts, photos, and fun. And check out the 2018 Almanac Newsmaker Challenge to Save Our Sharks at natgeokids.com/almanac.
What happens to the 4 million tons of waste the world generates each day? Find out in this fascinating book, all about the amazing science of garbage.
From coolest pools and bizarre beaches to radical robots and wacky inventions, everything is awesome in this picture-packed top 8 list book.
Because it’s never too early for kids to start dreaming about and planning for the future.
“An enthusiastic invitation to be a low-waste warrior.” —Kirkus
This keepsake book, loaded with adorable animal photos, makes it easy to say thanks with 30 pullout postcards, tips on how to write a thank-you note, and activities.
Now kids can be weird 365 days a year with this wacky and wonderful write-in planner.
Travel back in time to find out which dinosaurs ruled in cool categories—biggest, smallest, weirdest, deadliest, most intriguing, and more!
These days, being able to ferret out the truth is a valuable skill! Can you spot a phony photo or a tall tale? Kids can test their skills in this zany book.
AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD ● ShopNG.com/KidsBooks © 2017 National Geographic Partners, LLC.
contents
JUNE 2017
columns 04 05 06 08 09 09 11 13
16
Well Read The Hold List Whodunit Romance Cooking Lifestyles Book Clubs Audio
Complicated relationships thrum at the heart of Julia Glass’ latest novel, A House Among the Trees. Author photo © Dennis Cowley
book reviews 22 FICTION
features 14 18 19 21 23 29
on the cover
Welcome to charming Silver Springs, California, where even the hardest hearts can learn to love again…
The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs American Eclipse by David Baron
t o p p i c k : The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Audio Month Sherman Alexie Father’s Day Beach reads Westerns Sandhya Menon
meet the author 04
Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny The Alice Network by Kate Quinn Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin The Heirs by Susan Rieger Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton Augustown by Kei Miller Touch by Courtney Maum
26 NONFICTION
t o p p i c k : Theft by Finding
by David Sedaris
Daring to Drive by Manal al-Sharif The Loyal Son by Daniel Mark Epstein Popular by Mitch Prinstein
28 TEEN
t o p p i c k : Midnight at the
Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Flame in the Mist by Renée Ahdieh Once and for All by Sarah Dessen One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
30 CHILDREN’S
t o p p i c k : Roll by Darcy Miller
Secrets I Know by Kallie George and Paola Zakimi The Quest for Z by Greg Pizzoli Joplin, Wishing by Diane Stanley York by Laura Ruby Quicksand Pond by Janet Taylor Lisle
“Once you visit Silver Springs, you’ll never want to leave.” —Robyn Carr,
31
#1 New York Times bestselling author
“Brenda Novak is always a joy to read.” —Debbie Macomber, A M E R I C A’ S B O O K R E V I E W ASSISTANT EDITOR
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
Lily McLemore
Sukey Howard
Elizabeth Grace Herbert
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
ASSISTANT EDITOR
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Julia Steele
Hilli Levin
EDITOR
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
PUBLISHER Michael A. Zibart
Lynn L. Green
Savanna Walker
DEPUTY EDITOR
EDITORIAL INTERN
Cat Acree
Lily Norton
Allison Hammond
ADVERTISING OPERATIONS Sada Stipe
CONTRIBUTOR Roger Bishop
PRODUCTION MANAGER Penny Childress
MARKETING Mary Claire Zibart
CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy
EDITORIAL POLICY BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors evaluate and select for review the best books published in a variety of categories. Only books we highly recommend are featured. BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts payment for editorial coverage.
SUBSCRIPTIONS Public libraries and bookstores can purchase BookPage in quantity. For information, visit BookPage.com or call 615.292.8926, ext. 34.
B O O K PA G E . C O M
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Start reading today!
Individual subscriptions are available for $30 per year. Send payment to: BookPage Subscriptions 2143 Belcourt Avenue Nashville, TN 37212 Subscriptions are also available on Kindle and NOOK.
ADVERTISING To advertise in print, online or in our e-newsletters, visit BookPage .com or call 615.292.8926, ext. 37.
BrendaNovak.com • Harlequin.com
All material © 2017 ProMotion, inc.
3 17_181_BookPage_NoOneButYou_2.indd 1 2017-04-10 1:21 PM
meet DANIEL WALLACE
the title of your new book? Q: What’s
Q: Describe the book in one sentence.
us three things readers would find interesting about Q: Tell Edsel Bronfman, the novel’s hapless leading character.
Q: If you won a free trip, where would you want to go?
Q: At one time, you designed refrigerator magnets—which one was your favorite?
Q: If you were an animal, which animal would you want to be? Q: Words to live by?
EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES Daniel Wallace, author of the bestseller Big Fish —adapt ed for film by Tim Burton—turns to the subject of love and romance, or the lack thereof, in his latest novel, Extraordinary Adventures (St. Martin’s, $25.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781250118455). When lonely Edsel Bronf man wins a free week at the beach, the requirement that he bring a guest upends his life. Wallace is a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina.
4
columns
WELL READ BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL
A poet’s roots John Ashbery, who turns 90 in July, is one of America’s most venerable, if challenging, poets. His work—which has won nearly every major poetry honor, beginning with the Yale Younger Poets Prize for his first book, Some Trees—is at once lyrical and disjunctive, as epi grammatic as it is puzzling. Karin Roffman opens a welcoming door way into this poet’s life and work with her engaging, in-depth biog raphy of Ashbery’s early life, The Songs We Know Best (FSG, $30, 336 pages, ISBN 9780374293840). A professor and literary critic, Roffman befriended Ashbery in 2005, and the book is drawn from hours of conversation with the poet as well as the unprec edented access he granted her to personal papers dating back to his childhood. The Songs We Know Best spans the first 28 years of Ashbery’s life, from his birth in 1927 until 1955, the year his first book was accept ed for publication and he left for France to begin a Fulbright. By concentrating on these early years, Roffman has shaped her study around the youthful concerns and conflicts that formed the man and his poetry. Given her direct relationship with her subject, she is able to provide a remarkable quantity of detail—not merely the external facts, but also the internal thoughts and struggles of the artist as a young man. Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up on a fruit farm in nearby Sodus. His father was an inveterate farmer, and Ashbery’s paternal grandfather was a professor. Education and culture were valued by his grandfather especially, and young John showed great intelligence and talent from the start—he appeared on the national radio show “Quiz Kids” at age 14—and knew from an early
age that he was meant for some thing more far-reaching than the family busi ness. Ashbery’s relationship with his father was complicated, often contentious, although one gets the sense from Roffman’s telling that the father valued his son, even if he did not fully understand him. The tragic death from leukemia of Ashbery’s 9-year-old younger brother, Richard, whom their fa ther favored, had a lasting effect on the family and the future poet. A key element Roffman explores throughout this coming-of-age narrative is Ashbery’s growing awareness of his homosexuality. As with many young gay people— most certainly in the mid-20th cen tury—this sexual awakening was a process that began with confusion touched by shame, but ultimately Ashbery embraced his identity and drew upon it for his work. Roffman sensitively mines these themes in the poet’s earliest writing, in cluding previously unpublished juvenilia. Ashbery’s intellectual preoccupations, poetic sensibilities and romantic desires grew stron ger at Deerfield Academy (where he was a scholarship student) and then at Harvard, where he made such indelible friends as fellow poet Frank O’Hara and Barbara Ep stein, co-founder of The New York Review of Books. Roffman’s lively portrait of Ashbery’s post-college bohemian years in New York City in the early 1950s captures the artistic energy and youthful ambition of his impressive circle of friends and fellow artists. Many poets draw on their per sonal experiences in their art, and Roffman convincingly shows that “even in his earliest writing, Ash bery is drawn to specific moments when one’s understanding trans forms.” With its sharp, informed and unsentimental insight into both the man and his work, The Songs We Know Best is an in valuable biography of a masterful artist.
BookPage e ditors share curated lists of the best books—old and new—on a variety of subjects. Feed your TBR!
When the tale is over So you’ve read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, binge-watched the small-screen adaptation and are hungry for more of the chilling same. We’ve chosen five more novels featuring strong females in alarmingly probable dystopias to add to your reading list.
CALIFORNIA by Edan Lepucki In Edan Lepucki’s debut, threats posed by a harsh landscape pale in comparison to the dangers of a strange and secretive community. Cal and Frida have fled the ruined city of Los Angeles and found refuge in the wilderness of California. But when Frida realizes she’s pregnant, the couple must seek help from a nearby community, and it soon becomes clear that the denizens of this outpost are harboring dark secrets.
GOLD FAME CITRUS by Claire Vaye Watkins California is apparently a hotbed of dystopian disaster, as Gold Fame Citrus also begins in a devastated LA, this one utterly transformed by drought. Luz and her boyfriend, Ray, together with a toddler they’ve adopted, flee the city, traveling into the massive desert that has swal lowed the Western states. As they attempt to cross the arid wasteland and find civilization on the other side, they’re met with myriad dangers—the biggest threat being other people.
Top book club picks!
THE HOLD LIST
IN THIS MOMENT Karma Brown
A riveting and emotionally infused exploration of one woman’s guilt over an unexpected— yet avoidable—tragedy.
THE HEART GOES LAST by Margaret Atwood If you can’t get enough Atwood, her most recent dystopian novel is filled with absurdity and dark humor. To escape the instability of a near-fu ture world, a couple moves to a gated, surveilled community where they alternate between living in a house for one month and a prison the next. It’s a high price to pay, but the security is worth it—until the couple real izes that freedom and autonomy are worth far more than they thought.
For fans of urban fantasy featuring fearless heroines SPECTACLE Rachel Vincent
WHEN SHE WOKE by Hillary Jordan This thrilling twist on The Scarlet Letter takes place in a theocratic future America where, instead of going to prison, a criminal’s skin is dyed to match their crime. A woman named Hannah struggles to survive in this world with skin dyed red as punishment for undergoing an illegal abortion. While carrying this stigma, she begins to question everything society has taught her.
For moms everywhere looking for a good laugh
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro Close friends Kathy, Ruth and Tommy seem like normal kids attending an artsy English boarding school known as Halisham. But as they grow older, details about their true purpose, who really owns their bodies and the outside world begin to creep in, drastically altering the reader’s per ception of their seemingly idyllic lives. Kazuo Ishiguro earned a spot on the 2005 Booker Prize shortlist for this quiet, spellbinding science-fiction novel that asks incredibly tough questions about humankind.
CONFESSIONS OF A DOMESTIC FAILURE Bunmi Laditan
Do we have a story for you!
BookClubbish.com
@BookClubbish
5 17_127_BookPage_BookClubbish_June.indd 1
2017-04-12 10:23 AM
columns
WHODUNIT BY BRUCE TIERNEY
A plucky French detective in the middle of a holy war Of all the police inspectors in all the precincts around the world, Bruno, chief of police of tiny St. Denis, France, is the one I would most like to hang out with. He is quite the gourmet cook, an avid horseman, a born mediator and something of a historian in matters pertaining to France. In his latest adventure, The Templars’ Last Secret (Knopf, $25.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9781101946800), a newly dis covered cave, last used during the Crusades, promises to offer enlight enment on matters both spiritual and temporal. This discovery has not gone unnoticed by warring factions in the Middle East, each looking for evidence to support their historical claims to the Holy Land. It’s not often that a village police chief must match wits with Israel’s Mossad as well as splinter groups of radical Islamic terrorists. Still, Bruno takes it in stride—as
he does everything, with a mixture of bumbling and panache, scarce ly missing a beat. Martin Walker includes more violence here than is customary in his Bruno novels, and it remains unclear until the final pages which characters will remain standing after the smoke from the gunfire blows away.
has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. This slightly fictionalized look at a true crime follows the deeds, arrest and prosecution of Peter Manuel, Scotland’s most notorious serial killer. The narrative centers on a peculiar interaction between Manuel and William Watt—a man suspected in the murder of
SCOTLAND’S SERIAL KILLER
his wife, their young daughter and his wife’s sister. Watt loudly, although not always believably, maintains his innocence; the police, for their part, are sure Watt was guilty but can never obtain definitive evidence. Watt becomes convinced that Manuel is the killer and decides to take matters into his own hands. Through a mutual acquaintance, Watt sets up a meet ing with Manuel, and they embark on an all-night bender. The tenor of their conversation can only be imagined, but Mina imagines it persuasively and calls into ques tion whether Watt may have been complicit in the murders for which he was long suspected.
Denise Mina’s standalone thriller The Long Drop (Little, Brown, $26, 240 pages, ISBN 9780316380577)
Embark on the breathtaking romantic adventures of
The Lady Travelers Society
#1 New York Times bestselling author
VICTORIA ALEXANDER
COLD CASE REOPENED
THE LADY TRAVELERS GUIDE TO
Scoundrels & Other Gentlemen
HQNBooks.com VictoriaAlexander.com
Pick up your copy today!
Even the most jaded suspense fan would scarcely expect evidence of a mysterious killing to be dug up by feral hogs, but that is precisely what transpires in the opening pages of Paul Doiron’s Knife Creek (Minotaur, $25.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9781250102355). The plot thickens when this forensic evidence(the recently buried remains of a new born) coupled with a familiar red head in a ramshackle cabin nearby, suggests a link between the infant and a young woman who disap peared several years earlier after a group rafting trip. Two lawmen are on the case: Mike Bowditch, the game warden who found the remains and made the visual ID of
6 17_149_BookPage_LadyTravelersGuide.indd 1
2017-03-24 10:18 AM
the miss ing-andpresumeddead girl spotted in the cabin, and retired police detective Tony Menario, who worked the missing persons case. But here’s the catch: The time frame for a missing person to be declared dead is about to be met, and Menario is confident that he is in possession of sufficient circum stantial evidence to put his suspect behind bars, but only if a murder has indeed been committed. If, as Mike believes, there is evidence to suggest that the once abducted girl may still be alive, then Menario’s suspect is free to enact more vio lence. The tension between the two investigators is palpable, with each convinced of the ultimate rightness of his surmise, and of course the two scenarios are mutually exclu sive—only one can be right.
TOP PICK IN MYSTERY Semiretired police officer Hanne Wilhelmsen conducts her investi gations from the confinement of a wheelchair, a computer mon itor her primary window to the world. Although her body has been sidelined by a bullet to the spinal column, her mind is as sharp as ever in her ninth adventure, Odd Numbers (Scribner, $27, 336 pages, ISBN 9781451634730). Hanne’s caseload is varied this time: a critical new look at the 1996 dis appearance of a teenage girl and a series of crimes after the fact, plus a present-day bombing at the Oslo office of the Islamic Cooperation Council. In the midst of all this, the army reports that a quantity of C4 has gone missing from their stockpile. And as the celebration of the Norwegian constitution draws closer, suspicions increase that the AWOL C4 will make an unwanted reappearance in conjunction with that event. As is always the case with Anne Holt’s books, the plot ting is well-paced, the characters and their interactions are in every way plausible, and the story is very much of the moment.
INTRODUCING A NEW SERIES
with a remarkable heroine certain to become an icon of suspense from
“Koontz writes FIRST-RATE SUSPENSE, SCARY AND STYLISH.”* “There is no one who can match Dean Koontz for pure excitement when writing HIGHLY CHARGED THRILLERS.”**
s ork Time Y w e N 1 # g author n i l l e s t s be
“KOONTZ IS A MASTER of the edge-of-your-seat, paranoid thriller.”***
A NO VE LO FS PE
ger
k Star-Led
NS E
deankoontz.com | Bantam Books
US
ON SALE 6.20.17
es *Los Angel
Th Times **
ar st *** New e Denver Po
columns
ROMANCE B Y C H R I S T I E R I D G WAY
Dangerous passion
The CHASE
Romance and suspense entwine at a sprawling ranch and upscale resort in Come Sundown (St. Martin’s, $27.99, 480 pages, ISBN 9781250123077) by Nora Roberts. Bodine Longbow’s family has lived and worked in western Montana for generations, and she currently runs their luxurious resort. When old friend Callen Skinner returns to the area and gets a job at the resort’s ranch, he and Bodine
T H E IC ON T R I L O GY
Will she risk it all for a priceless desire? U S A TO DAY BE S T S E L L I NG AU T HOR
VAN E SSA F EW I NG S “An intriguingly sexy and masterful beginning to the ICON series.” —New York Times bestselling author
Lisa Renee Jones
Pick up your copy today! HQNBooks.com
VanessaFewings.com
www.HQNBooks.com
start circling each other. Romance is in the air, but so is danger. Twenty-five years ago, Bodine’s aunt ran off and never returned. Now young women in the area are disappearing—and then turning up dead. Bodine, her family and Callen continue providing leisure activities for their guests, but the beautiful countryside now contains a new menace. Roberts’ latest is an engrossing read that celebrates family ties, Western landscapes and, as always, the love between a man and a woman.
PUPPY LOVE Going home again means new romance in About a Dog (Berkley, $7.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780399584718), the first book in Jenn McKinlay’s new Bluff Point se ries. Mackenzie “Mac” Harris takes a two-week break from her job in Chicago to attend the festivities of her best friend’s wedding in their Maine hometown. Reconnecting with the past means facing up to being left at the altar seven years before—and trying to forget her unhappiness in the arms of her best friend’s younger brother, Gavin Tolliver. He’s now the town vet, and while Mac thinks seeing him again might be awkward, she can’t deny the attraction running
8 17_148_BookPage_TheChase.indd 1
2017-03-23 9:54 AM
between them. She battles suc cumbing to it as they at tend several prenuptial events, but soon they are enjoying each other’s company and that of a rescued dog, Tulip. Gavin’s the first to declare his love, but before Mac can reciprocate, the wedding day is upon them. There are more obstacles to happiness following the vows, and Mac must work for her forever. About a Dog is a cozy yet sexy romance with a puppy on the side—what’s not to enjoy?
TOP PICK IN ROMANCE A brooding aristocrat ponders revenge in the first tale of Madeline Hunter’s Decadent Dukes Society, The Most Dangerous Duke in London (Zebra, $7.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781420143904). Adam Penrose, Duke of Stratton, returns to Lon don from Paris after dueling to up hold his family’s honor. Called back to England by the king, he faces more gossip but doesn’t let it deter him from investigating the source of rumors about his father’s disloy alty. He visits a neighboring estate at the matriarch’s request and is offered her granddaughter in mar riage as a way to settle an old feud. Unfortunately, his interest is in stantly captured when he sees her other granddaughter. In pursuing the spirited Lady Clara Cheswick, he gets closer and closer to the truth he seeks, but will vengeance smother the burgeoning, fiery love he feels for the beauty? Can Clara trust that Adam wants her enough to allow her the independence she craves? This is a historical romance to savor, and readers will root for the pair of lovers and the justice they seek.
COOKING
LIFESTYLES
BY SYBIL PRATT
B Y S U S A N N A H F E LT S
Beyond the basics I’m always a little leery when I see “New Way” in a cookbook title, especially if it’s a baking book. If you don’t get the proportions right, your crumbly shortbread cookies might be as dry as dust and your blueberry muffins disastrously dense. So I looked through A New Way to Bake (Potter, $26, 320 pag es, ISBN 9780307954718) from the editors of Martha Stewart Living with a wary eye. What’s new here
is the expanded, innovative array of ingredients that you can use to add pizzazz to classic favorites— the basic baking techniques have stayed the same. Now you can cradle your spiced pumpkin filling in a Crisp Rice Crust, add pureed beets to a chocolate cake to make it extra moist and fudgy, start the day with protein-packed Quinoa Pancakes or savory, gluten-free Chickpea-Vegetable Pancakes and use barley flour in an Orange-Bar ley Pound Cake to enhance its tenderness. There’s the wealth of tips you’d expect from the Martha Stewart kitchens, plus all the DIY info you’ll need for making your own yogurt, nut milks and but ters, as well as sections about fats, dairy, flours and grains from wheat to millet.
ULTIMATE VEGAN Vivid, vibrant and visionary aren’t words usually used to de scribe vegan cooking. To be totally honest, I’ve mostly stayed away from vegan cookbooks. But Vegan: The Cookbook (Phaidon, $49.95, 584 pages, ISBN 9780714873916), Jean-Christian Jury’s globally sourced, 450-recipe salute to this plant-based cuisine, has made me reconsider my prejudice. He’s gathered an amazing repertoire of dishes from appetizers to desserts that will appeal to and satisfy
Foraged, no chaser
everyone— vegan to omnivore— including dishes from places like Latvia (Wild Mushroom and Potato Soup) and New Caledonia (Green Plantain Curry). Though many of these recipes were served at Jury’s now defunct vegan restaurant La Mano Verde in Berlin, his step-bystep instruc tions ensure that home cooks can get great re sults in their own kitchens. Try it, give meat a pass and expand your culinary horizons.
If you think the artisan food trend has gone too far, this is not the book for you. But adventur ous cocktail connoisseurs with a love for the outdoors should peruse with great appetite the pages of The Wildcrafted Cocktail (Storey, $18.95, 240 pages, ISBN 9781612127422). For starters, Ellen Zachos explains how to make juices from wild grapes and silver berries (an invasive shrub in the
TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS
eastern United States), which she says is “one of my favorite foraged fruits, and not because it’s high in vitamin C and lycopene, an antiox idant.” Then there are sodas made from sumac, elderberry (not flow er!) and nettle. You’ll learn the best tools for foraging—paper bags are best for collecting mushrooms— and tips for the bar (don’t muddle; herbs should be spanked by hand). The number of foraged plants that can be pickled may surprise you: daylily buds, fiddlehead ferns, garlic bulbs, crab apples and more. Enchanting drink recipes follow, such as A Butterfly Kiss, made with vodka, Milkweed Flower Syrup and seltzer. Cheers!
When the new crop of grilling and barbecue books begin to arrive, I know that spring is here and summer is on its way. One of the friendliest new titles to appear so far is Red, White, and ’Que: Farm-Fresh Foods for the American Grill (Running Press, $25, 244 pages, ISBN 9780762461295), the latest from Karen Adler and Judith Fertig, aka the BBQ Queens. Their relaxed, enthusiastic style marries innovation with time-honored traditions, and they offer just enough info on technique—basics and a bit more, like the skinny on utensils, gas and charcoal grills and American woods that can give your food that special taste of place—to make new grillers happy and keep scorched old-hands in terested. These grilling gals really know their stuff, from appetizers like Big Easy Blackened Okra to serve with your Grilled Lemon Whisky Sours, to Grilled Radicchio Wedges and Grilled Kale Bundles, Smoky Brisket Burgers and Veggie Sliders, Corn Husk-Wrapped Turkey Breast and a party-perfect Chars and Stripes Vegetable Platter to go with your Cherry Chipotle Pork Butt or Planked Salmon. And please, leave room for the Choco latier’s Crostini.
GETTING MINIMAL In the beginning of Goodbye, Things (Norton, $21.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780393609035), Fumio Sasaki explains that step two in his journey toward peak minimalism was “I got rid of all my books.” Instantly, I knew I’d never be a member of that club. But I kept reading, because it can’t hurt to live with less, and Sasaki’s view is that it can in fact profoundly help. His guide to discarding most of what you own to achieve great er contentment and happiness clearly rides the coattails of the Marie Kondo craze, with Chapter
3 offering a tidy list of 55 tips that should help any one learn the art of throwing things away. Thing is, the principles of minimalism go so profoundly against everything contemporary American life is built upon that it’s sort of puzzling to imagine U.S. readers following Sa saki’s advice. But we may be the ones who need this book most—provided we then give it away. Chapter 2, “Why did we accumulate so much in the first place?” is an especially enlighten ing read.
TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES There are a few things I didn’t know before reading Yumi Sakugawa’s The Little Book of Life Hacks (St. Martin’s, $19.99, 208 pages, ISBN 9781250092250): Lemon juice is a perfectly good substitute for salt; white vinegar subs for lemon; crayons can be turned into lipstick; milk can remove your eye makeup; there’s a better way to slice a cake; speak only when necessary to exude confidence; washi tape makes a great low-maintenance pedicure. OK, I’m not so sure about that last one. But there are loads of truly useful tips in this adorable book, all of them presented in hand-let tered, hand-illustrated glory. Know someone graduating from college or moving into their first apartment? This is the book to buy them. Sure, some of S akugawa’s advice is regular magazine (or internet) fare; indeed, the book is a spinoff of her popular website, The Secret Yumiverse. But I was surprised by how often it surprised me, and the original presentation and wide range of “hacks” makes the book a fun browse. Cute, help ful, upbeat—you can’t go wrong.
9
Great Novels for
Summer Escapes “An inspiration....
“One of Rice’s most imaginative tales yet.”
Gyasi’s characters are so fully realized…drawing not just a lineage of two sisters, but two related peoples.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
One of the Best Books of the Year
“Anne Rice is the queen of sexy vampire fiction.”
The New York Times, NPR, and more
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle/John Leonard Prize
—Cosmopolitan
“More brilliant than it has any right to be....
“Captivating....
A riveting page-turner about two couples…and the toll one pair’s success takes on the other.”
Suspenseful, dazzlingly clever and gravely profound.” —The Washington Post
—Entertainment Weekly
From the Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement
“Quietly affecting…. Mellow, earnest, almost elegiac.” —The New Yorker
From the author of Bright Lights, Big City
VINTAGE
“Endearing, amusing,
and speckled with truths.” —The Dallas Morning News
New in paperback Read excerpts, print reading group guides, find original essays and more at ReadingGroupCenter.com
ANCHOR
columns
BOOK CLUBS BY JULIE HALE
Finding comfort in art Selected as a best book of the year by NPR and Newsweek, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Picador, $18, 336 pages, ISBN 9781250118035) is a smart, com passionate work of nonfiction that probes the meaning of connec tion in the modern world. Laing moves to New York from England to be with her boyfriend. When
their relationship ends, she’s left with feelings of displacement and defeat and finds solace in art. Over the course of the book, she consid ers the lives and creative prac tices of six masters whose works resonate with her solitary mindset, including Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol. Examining the links between everyday intimacy—or a lack thereof—and acts of creation, she writes with fluency and a sense of poeticism that suit her subject matter. Laing herself grew up in a troubled household with a mother who was secretly gay. She draws upon personal experiences, mixing memoir with art criticism and social history to produce a moving narrative that speaks to the current era.
LOVING AND LETTING GO By turns humorous and heart breaking, Steven Rowley’s debut novel, Lily and the Octopus (Simon & Schuster, $16, 336 pages, ISBN 9781501126239), is a poi gnant portrayal of the enduring link between man and dog. Ted Flask is a struggling writer who lives in Los Angeles with Lily, a 12-year-old dachshund. Ted, who is single, has turned to the internet to meet other men. Lily is his con stant companion, and in a narra tive conceit that Rowley pulls off
beautifully, the two are able to com municate (they play Monop oly and share pizza). When Lily is diagnosed with a brain tumor (the octopus of the book’s title), Ted is despondent. As Lily yields to her illness, he faces the fact that he will lose her. But he also comes to re alize that he has hidden behind her in order to keep life— and other relationships—at a distance. Rowley, who lost his own dog, writes with tenderness and delicacy about the bond between canines and humans. Lily and the Octopus is a moving exploration of love and loss.
TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS In the powerful novel Mischling (Back Bay, $16.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9780316308090), Affinity Konar tells the story of 12-year-old sisters Stasha and Pearl, prisoners at Aus chwitz who are subjected to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s inhumane experiments on twins. Close com panions before their arrival at the camp, the sisters are separated at Auschwitz and suffer hideous pun ishments. After the war, when the camp is liberated, Pearl is looked after by Miri, a Jewish physician who was made to work as Mengele’s aide. Stasha, meanwhile, journeys through ravaged postwar Poland with a fellow twin named Feliks, driven by a desire to find Mengele and get revenge. Narrated in turns by Stasha and Pearl, this gripping novel is a beautifully rendered yet devastating narrative of survival. Konar’s chronicle of the twins’ expe riences draws on factual accounts from the war. This is a bleak yet mesmerizing book that is sure to inspire dialogue among readers.
Hot Book Club Picks for Summer
A House Without Windows by Shilpi Somaya Gowda A moving look at the lives of modern Afghan women, A House Without Windows is astonishing, frightening, and triumphant.
The Alice Network
by Kate Quinn
“Both funny and heartbreaking, this epic journey of two courageous women is an unforgettable tale of little-known wartime glory and sacrifice.” —Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling author
It Happens in the Hamptons by Holly Peterson
“Hugely entertaining! Put this on your list of guilty pleasures this summer.” —Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Identicals
The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson
A riveting glimpse of life and love during and after the war, The Marriage Bureau is a heart-warming, touching and thoroughly absorbing account of a world gone by.
@Morrow_PB
@bookclubgirl
William Morrow
Book Club Girl
11
columns
AUDIO BY SUKEY HOWARD
A doomed lagoon Earthly Remains (Recorded Books, 10.5 hours) is Donna Leon’s 26th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery. Read by David Colacci, who has become the voice and soul of the commissario, it’s as evoca tive, engaging and thoughtful as all the other books in this acclaimed series. If you’ve met Brunetti, his family, his comrades in arms and his foes at the Venice Questura be fore, you know that there won’t be any shootouts and that the com
missario is as comfortable reading Pliny as he is questioning a murder suspect. Given a chance to take a stress-induced leave, Brunetti sets out to spend two weeks on Sant’Erasmo, an island in the Vene tian Lagoon. His plan is to row with Davide, a beekeeper and the elder ly caretaker of the villa he’s staying in. But as they skim the waterways, Brunetti learns that reckless dump ing has poisoned Davide’s serene Laguna and the bees he cherishes. When Davide dies during a storm, Brunetti must determine if it’s an accident or a crime linked to the old man’s former life and to the despair shrouding him since the death of his beloved wife.
THE SPOOK GAME After the woman he loved was murdered by his Russian counter part, Alexander Minasian, Thomas Kell decided that he was done with MI6, done with “the life.” But re venge is a powerful lure, and when a former colleague tells Kell that he saw Minasian having a lover’s spat with a gay German man in Egypt, Kell is hellbent on using this info to turn Minasian into a double agent for the Brits. So begins Charles Cumming’s A Divided Spy (Mac millan Audio, 11.5 hours), his latest intriguingly convoluted thriller, read by Jot Davies, who gets all the accents just right. But as these men
play their high-stakes game, they begin to reveal some of their inner doubts, their shared concerns that years of spying and lying can eat your soul, that spies lead a “divided life,” always edged by loyalty and betrayal. As the intricate plot un folds, with backstories galore and a searing subplot taken from the headlines, you can’t help but be caught up in the story, rooting for Kell, but not really wanting to lose Minasian. I hope they’ll turn up again.
s d n u o Sof Suspense FROM MACMILLAN AUDIO
“Taut narration, spot-on dialogue, and sharply etched action sequences.” —Stephen King
READ BY ARI FLIAKOS
"A top-notch military thriller, combining politics, suspense, and action.” —Booklist on Into the Fire READ BY HENRY LEYVA
TOP PICK IN AUDIO It’s become a cliché to say that a book or an article should be re quired reading. But Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (Random House Audio, 1 hour) should be manda tory for everyone, even if feminism is not a term you’re comfortable with. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s manifesto began as a letter to a friend who asked her how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Her response is not feminism light or feminism doctrinaire—it’s a solid, piercingly provocative take on the often unnoticed ways we trans mit cultural norms, like gender inequality. Before we even get to the suggestions, Adichie wants you to understand that her feminism is always contextual and that her first “solid, unbending” premise is “I matter equally. Full stop.” Adichie’s ideas, as they are laid out here in her engaging, witty style, form a map of her feminist thinking, and that map is important for all women and the men who love them. It might change the way you view yourself and your world. January LaVoy reads with just the right emotional understanding and nuance.
“A fascinating hybrid of true crime and memoir, The Fact of a Body is intricately constructed, emotionally raw, and unflinching.” —Tom Perrotta READ BY THE AUTHOR
READ BY HENRY LEYVA
“Narrator Henry Leyva keeps listeners on the edge of their seats.” —AudioFile on The Precipice
READ BY GEORGIA MAGUIRE
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Behind Closed Doors
VISIT UNABRIDGEDACCESS.COM TO LISTEN TO EXCERPTS
13
features
AUDIO MONTH
A chorus of celebrity voices gives life to an author’s words
W
hen I finally finished writing my collection of essays and poetry, You Don’t Look Your Age . . . and Other Fairy Tales, I realized there would be an audio version, and it would have to be read. But the thought of reading my own book, admitting my own stories, telling my secrets, was more than I could handle.
I discussed this problem fero ciously with my friends and even let my psychiatrist in. The conclu sion was that rather than keeping the audiobook so close to myself, I should ask others to read it. So who were these others to be and where would I find them? It all started at the 80th birthday party for playwright and gay rights hero Larry Kramer. The party was in my home, and actress Christine Baranski came to celebrate this great man. A flash occurred! Why not read a poem from the book to Larry (“The Larry Kramer”) and see if he liked it, and at the same time, ensnare Christine into reading it for the audio? “What a good idea,” I thought. “How terrifying!” At first, I read parts of the poem to Larry’s husband, David Web ster: “I loved that he fought to get healthy, defying odds once again. I will not die, he seemed to say, I will not be forgotten, he seemed to say. Yet death hovered and he was challenged. . . .” David teared up and said it seemed fine and that I should give the whole poem to Larry to read. I saw Larry quietly seated, eating his birthday cake alone. I walked over to him, gave him a big kiss and handed him the entire poem. He read it and sweetly
smiled. He said that he liked what I had written, that he was flattered. I kissed him again. I then took another deep breath and got the courage to find the beautiful Chris tine. She loves Larry as I do. I asked her if she would read my poem about Larry for the audiobook. She said of course she would! And then a bell went off in my head. “I never If the likes of called an Larry liked agent, I never my poem, and the likes called a of Christine manager. would read my I went direct. poem, maybe I could get And one by other celebri one, almost ties to read my all said yes.” stories. This would dis tance the book from me, give me a role as Madame Le Directeur, and hopefully be something special to present. And so it began, this long jour ney seeking stardom. Why not the great Rosie O’Donnell, why not the revered gossip columnist Liz Smith, why not the authentic Alan Alda, why not the actress of all actresses, Ellen Burstyn? Why not even dare to ask Meryl Streep?
The cast of audio narrators includes Meryl Streep, Edie Falco, Alan Alda and Christine Baranski.
14
© JOSEPHINE SITTENFELD
BY SHEILA NEVINS
And so I did— by email, by phone, by letter—ask these lumi naries to be part of my first book and tell a part of my written and imaginary life. I never called an agent, I Sheila Nevins in the recording studio during production of her audiobook. never called a manager. I went direct. And one by one, almost all The president of HBO Documentary said yes. And one by one, I record Films, Sheila Nevins has produced ed, nervously directed and always more than a thousand documentafelt grateful as these special folk ries, many of which have been hongave life to my musings. ored with Academy Awards, Emmy This is how it came to be, this Awards and Peabody Awards. Her audiobook narrated by 25 stars, wry and poignant autobiographincluding: Bob Balaban, Kathy ical collection, You Don’t Look Bates, Glenn Close, Katie Couric, Your Age . . . and Other Fairy Tales, Blythe Danner, Lena Dunham, Edie charts her course from Barnard Falco, Tovah Feldshuh, Diane von College to Hollywood with candid Furstenberg, Whoopi Goldberg, reflections on face-lifts, frenemies Gayle King, Diane Lane, Sandra and many other topics. Lee, Judith Light, Jenna Lyons, Audra McDonald, Janet Mock, YOU DON’T LOOK YOUR AGE . . . RuPaul, Lesley Stahl, Martha Stew AND OTHER FAIRY TALES art, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tom lin, Gloria Steinem and Gloria Vanderbilt. I hope this performance audio gives life to the book. I hope this feels like a the atrical presentation of the spoken word, with orig inal music by the genius Michael Bacon and the audio perked to perfec tion by Scott Sherratt and By Sheila Nevins my colleague Rob Forlenza. Macmillan Audio, 5 hours I present my orchestrated audiobook. ESSAYS Here it is! Voila!
Impossible to read just one!
So we’re giving you a chance to win all six. Go to BookPage.com/Contests to enter.
Sweepstakes ends at 11:59 PM (EDT) on June 30, 2017. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. The Sweepstakes is open to all legal residents of the United States 18 years of age and older at the time of entry. Entries must be received no later than 6/30/17 (11:59 PM EDT). ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER will receive one (1) Summer Prize Pack and a copy of each of the books advertised. The total approximate retail value of all prizes is $366.00 USD. Limit one entry per person. Void where prohibited or restricted by law. For the official rules, go to BookPage.com/Contests.
Pick up or download your copies today!
cover story
JULIA GLASS
The rewards of a literary detour
W
hen Julia Glass’ publisher sends her the very first copy of a novel she’s written, she experiences a magical moment. “I lift the book out of the box and wonder, when did this get written?” she says. “It’s as if I had a baby without knowing I was pregnant.” By now she’s had more than a few of these transcendent moments. A self-described late-bloomer, she published her first novel, Three Junes, in her mid-40s, only to see it win the 2002 National Book Award for fiction. Since then, she’s published five more novels, and now there’s an other, A House Among the Trees, a rich new literary feast for her fans to cozy up with and savor. The house in the title belongs to renowned children’s illustrator and author Mort Lear, who dies after a dramatic fall, unexpect edly bequeathing his home, art and literary affairs to his longtime assistant, Tomasina Daulair, known as Tommy. Meanwhile, museum curator Meredith Galarza feels jilted by Lear, who had led her to believe the museum would inherit his artwork. And British celebrity Nick Greene, who’s been cast to play the illustrator in a biopic, struggles to deal with many unan swered questions. Glass reflects on this cast of characters while sitting in a cafe window seat in the picturesque
A HOUSE AMONG THE TREES
By Julia Glass
Pantheon, $27.95, 368 pages, ISBN 9781101870365, audio, eBook available
FICTION
16
seaside town of Marblehead, Mas sachusetts, where she lives with her husband (a photographer) and their two sons. Friendly and chatty, Glass shares story after story, rem iniscent of her books, which brim with details, flashbacks and insight. “My previous books have grown out of a single character who came to me in some way,” she says. “And when I look back, I can see how those characters have emerged from my own psyche, some part of myself that I’m not so fond of. I like writing about characters who are in some ways misfits. “Disagreeable is too strong a word,” she adds, “but characters the reader has to grow comfort able with. I prefer characters who improve upon acquaintance.” Glass notes that her new novel began in a very different way. “I was actually working on another novel,” she says. “So this book rep resents, for me, an act of infidelity.” She’d written more than 200 pag es when that manuscript began to present challenges. As is her usual routine, she started one writing day by playing recreational badminton (which she does year-round, in doors). Afterwards, at home in the shower, she began thinking about completely different characters, and decided to try writing about them. Before long, they took over, forcing her to call her agent. “I have good news and bad news,” Glass told her. “I seem to have stopped working on the novel I’m contracted to write. But the good news is I’m writing another one that I’m really enjoying.” The new storyline had slowly sprouted from several inspirational seeds. About a year earlier, Glass had read a New York Times article about the estate of children’s book icon Maurice Sendak, which he had left in the hands of his longtime caretaker, leaving a stunned Phila delphia museum out of the loop.
“I thought to myself,” Glass recalls, “what would it be like to be that woman, to not only be left with this enormous responsibility, but to have public opinion come down on you after leading this very monastic kind of life dedicated to the life and work of this great man?” That dilemma stayed in the back of her mind, perco lating. Meanwhile, she was watching movies with her older son, Alec, a Bard College student with a passion for acting. Before the Academy “I prefer Awards in characters who 2015, Glass listened to a improve upon acquaintance.” roundtable discus sion with the best-actor contenders, many of whom had portrayed a real person (such as Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing). “Suddenly these two ideas came together for me,” Glass explains. “I thought, what if you had a situa tion where this great man dies very suddenly? His estate is complicat ed and he was about to be played in a movie.” Glass’ fictitious children’s author is the fascinating heart and soul of A House Among the Trees, the cre ative sun around which the other characters orbit. “At first the char acters of Tommy and Nick were there,” Glass says. “But because my books are so steeped in the past— they’re so flashback heavy, as one person has said—I should have known that the character of Mort Lear would become an important
© DENNIS COWLEY
INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY
character, even though he’s dead on page one.” At its heart, she says, the book is about relationships. Did she do research on Sendak? “Not one bit,” Glass says. “It is not a novel about Maurice Sendak.” She quickly adds, “It would be insulting to Sendak to say that. Re ally, that story about the assistant, that’s the only thing. . . . I worry a little bit that people will think that I’m writing about Maurice Sendak, but I’m not.” That said, it’s nearly impossible not to make comparisons, not to think about Where the Wild Things Are and its hero Max while reading about Mort Lear. Glass has created a character who sprang to fame with Colorquake, a picture book about a boy named Ivo whose artistic world magically explodes during an earthquake. And while Sendak’s assistant began working for the illustrator at age 19, Glass has 12-year-old Tommy meet Lear at a playground while babysitting her younger brother, who unknow ingly becomes Lear’s model for Ivo. “I surprised myself by creating fictitious children’s books,” Glass admits. “A couple of my early readers have said, ‘Why aren’t you writing children’s books?’ That’s because I don’t have that kind of
mojo. I wish I did. We’ll leave that to the pros.” Although never an illustrator, Glass is hardly a stranger to the art world. She majored in the subject at Yale, painted in Paris for a year on a fellowship and spent much of her 20s painting in New York City while doing copy editing work. “I did large, expressive oil paint ings, very colorful, some of which hang in my house,” she reminisces, “but I also did very meticulous, monochromatic pencil drawings. And I sold a lot of those drawings— portraits, still lives. The amount of time it took was absurd, so it wasn’t a money-making enterprise.” Growing up in Lincoln, Massa chusetts, Glass had always been a bookworm, working in Lincoln’s public library from fifth grade through college. She compares her years as a painter to time spent abroad, calling her return to writ ing akin to a homecoming, adding, “Writing is my native creative language.” Glass’ career switch from paint ing to writing has certainly paid off, and winning the National Book Award for Three Junes as a new comer signaled a major shift in her life. “Seismic,” she says. “Talk about quakes. “Nobody knew me. It was like Julia who? Three what? I am quite aware that but for this particular confluence of judges at that partic ular moment in time—do I think I wrote the best novel of 2002? Of course I don’t. But I was certainly put into people’s awareness in the book world. For about a year I was invited to every literary gala. . . . And I enjoyed that year of being the flavor of the moment.” Unlike some writers, Glass looks forward to publicizing her work. “I enjoy the public part of being an author,” she says. “I’m not some monastic introvert. I love doing events. I love meeting readers. It’s like old-home month when I get to go on tour and visit my favorite booksellers.” Meanwhile, what about that poor novel that she abandoned? Will she return to it? “We’re in couple’s counseling,” she says with a grin, “if it will take me back.”
Travel The World This Summer With These
Riveting Reads…
In a deeply personal story of redemption, a woman untangles her father’s complicated past as a soldier in the segregated South of WWII America.
Set in beautiful Sardinia, this stunning historical fiction debut follows the ill-fated romance of a dashing American lieutenant and an Italian farm girl in post-World War II Italy.
“Page-turning, beautifully written.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW
“Will leave readers riveted until the explosive conclusion.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Available Everywhere Books Are Sold
Follow a family of German immigrants who trade city living for the harsh realities of Pennsylvania farm life in a deeply moving portrait of family—its hardships, triumphs, and passions.
“Stunning, Verna creates a poignant, beautifully told story of love and courage.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL on Daughter of Australia
ENSINGTONBOOKS.COM
17
features
SHERMAN ALEXIE
Empathy, if not forgiveness
S
herman Alexie doesn’t yet know if writing a fierce, wrenching memoir about his deeply troubled relationship with his beautiful and abusive mother, Lillian, has been cathartic.
“I performed the audiobook a couple of weeks ago over the course of five days, and it was hard. Hard,” Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian and award-winning author of 26 books of poetry and fiction, says during a call to his home in Seattle. He lives there with his wife, an administrator at Seattle University who was born on Turtle Mountain Reservation, and their two sons, ages 19 and 15. Usually he works out of an office he de scribes as “a studio apartment that looks like a bookstore exploded.” But today he is at home, anticipat ing the publication of You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. “What I’m realizing now,” he says, “is that the writing of the book was just the first half of the cere mony. Now I’m entering into the second half of the ceremony, bring ing it to the public, starting to talk about my mother, and hearing the stories of other people’s mothers.” Lillian Alexie died at the age of 78 in 2015. For the previous 20 or so years, whenever possible, Sherman avoided visiting her at the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit,
YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME
By Sherman Alexie
Little, Brown, $30, 560 pages ISBN 9780316396776, audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
18
Washington, where he and his wit ty twin sisters grew up in poverty. He believes he inherited his bipolar disorder, diagnosed in 2010, from her. She was a complicated wom an—generous to many, withhold ing or worse to Sherman, loved or despised by family members and neighbors. She was a brilliant quilt maker who wouldn’t sleep under her own quilts (“Quilting was her philosophy,” Alexie writes)—or teach her native language to her children. In a heartrending chapter Alexie decided to include only at the last moment, he writes that he has not worn a pair of moccasins in 40 years because of her behavior at a powwow in Arlee, Montana. “That was an incredibly trau matic experience,” Alexie says with some anguish. “I find myself won dering, what do I do as an Indian when some of our most sacred moments—like a powwow—aggra vate my PTSD?” Lillian’s death unleashed a torrent of poems. “They came first without bidding and without structure. They just came. I would just write and write and write,” he says. He thought the resulting work would be a book of poetry. “Then I realized that I had more stories to tell, stories that needed to be told in nonfiction form. I thought the structure of the book was going to be framed by the first chapter of her being diagnosed and the last chapter of her dying. I just assumed it was going to be a much more traditional structure. But as I started writing the non fiction, it started arriving in much more improvisational fashion. And I realized that the way my mother and I lived our lives, and the way our tribal culture works, and my mother’s cosmology and our own mental illnesses, shared and sepa rate, that the very construction of the book—this back-and-forth in time, back-and-forth in emotion— was going to match the way it felt to be her son.”
Alexie’s approach to the structure of the book results in an emotionally powerful read. His skills as a poet may go unac knowledged by some, but they are evident here. “One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed is that the forms that use repeated lines, repeated phrases, sound tribal. They very much sound like our traditional songs and ceremonies. And in grief ceremonies in all cultures, repetition is omnipres ent.” Alexie’s improvisational ap proach also allows him to “I don’t write mean know that I ingfully about the context forgive my of his and his mother for mother’s lives. her crimes Reaching back into the history against me. of his tribe, But I think for example, I’ve come to a he writes about the place where I understand impact of the construction them.” of the Grand Coulee Dam, which cut off his people’s access to wild salmon, an essential element of the culture. “The loss of wild salmon for us, the environmental destruction for us, directly affected our souls. Often this doesn’t get addressed.” Alexie also writes that on the reservation, loneliness is a natural cause of death, endemic to reservation life. “I think we live in a constant funeral,” he says. And yet, You Don’t Have to Say You Loved Me and the reservation life it portrays bubble with humor. In conversation and on the page, Alexie is often quite funny, dis proving the stereotypcial view of Native Americans as being closedmouthed stoics.
© WILL AUSTIN
INTERVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE
“I think my whole life has been based on people being shocked by my personality, what they expect ed to see versus who I am,” Alexie says. “To this day, people often think that I am an anomaly—the way in which I’m loud and emo tional and funny and profane and dirty and unabashed. But that’s the culture I grew up in. The stoic part about Indians? That’s our armor. I always tell white folks if you’re around Indians and they’re not making fun of you, then they don’t like you. In our culture, we are incredibly verbose and funny. And constant storytellers.” Returning to the subject of his mother, Alexie says, “I don’t know that I forgive my mother for her crimes against me. But I think I’ve come to a place where I under stand them. I can’t forget what she did to me as an individual. But in terms of the lives of Native-Amer ican women of her generation, I can completely understand why it happened the way it did. So if not forgiveness, I certainly have empa thy. And for me to be empathetic toward my mother might be the bigger thing.” He adds, “As I say in the book, even though the book is negative, very negative about her in parts, she would have loved being the subject of this. Oh gosh, she would have sat right beside me and signed the book.”
FATHER’S DAY BY KEITH HERRELL
Clueless about Dad’s gift? There’s hope
W
ith Father’s Day approaching, it’s time to wrap that present you’ve had hidden away for months. Wait, you have nothing hidden away and no idea what to buy Dad? Here are five books that will be even more welcome than a box of golf balls. What Father’s Day list is com plete without an unabashedly sentimental—yet realistic—look at the father-son relationship from first-person experience? Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me (Little, Brown, $27, 288 pages, ISBN 9780316231596), by Rafe Bar tholomew, fills that bill admirably. It also serves as a history of Mc Sorley’s Old Ale House, a 163-yearold institution in New York’s East Village, as well as a compendium of anecdotes about things that can only happen at a beloved neighborhood bar (nowadays, alas, also a frequent tourist stop). Bartholomew, a sports writer and editor, writes lovingly of his father, known as “Bart” over the course of his 45-year bartending career, and also gives us some of his own com ing-of-age glimpses along the way. If you can survive St. Patrick’s Day at McSorley’s, we learn, you can survive just about anything. But just when you think this is strictly a fathers-and-sons book, some of the best writing appears in the chapter dealing with the author’s mother, Patricia, who conquered alcoholism only to find life had an even bigger punch in store for her.
BROTHERS IN ARMS Fatherhood takes a back seat to brotherhood in The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home (Simon & Schuster, $28, 608 pages, ISBN 9781501104145), but the family ties are just as strong. They extend to the author, Sally Mott Freeman, a former speechwriter and pub lic relations executive who is the daughter of one of the brothers. Her curiosity piqued by a family argument, she sought to unravel the story of her uncle Barton’s life as an MIA naval ensign during World War II (it’s no spoiler to note that he was actually a prisoner
of war) and the efforts of his two brothers—also Navy men—to find and rescue him even as they fight their own battles. Meanwhile, the home fires are tended by a tena cious mother who never hesitates to pick up her pen and give the powers that be—all the way up to President Roosevelt—a piece of her mind. Tenacious in her own way, Freeman uses archives, interviews and diaries to uncover Barton’s tragic story along with those of his brothers and fellow prisoners, who endured unspeakable horrors in Japanese prison camps as war raged in the Pacific.
TEAMS AT THE TOP Want to see Dad exercise his long-dormant debating skills? Just give him a copy of The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams (Random House, $28, 352 pages, ISBN 9780812997194) and watch him search for his favorite team in author Sam Walker’s Tier One ranking. He’ll hunt in vain for base ball’s Big Red Machine Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s, or the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. (Hint: He’ll find Jordan in the chapter titled “False Idols.”) Rest assured, the New York Yankees (1949-53 edition) did make the cut, along with the Collingwood Magpies of Aussie Rules football and 14 other teams. If your team isn’t on the list, Walker is ready with the reason
ing for the snub (for example, the lack of a “true championship,” i.e., Super Bowl, for part of their existence kept the 1960s Green Bay Packers from Valhalla). And perhaps not surprisingly, given Walker’s background at The Wall Street Journal (he founded its daily sports report), the book doubles as a guide to success in business, with pointed commentary on what makes leaders effective or ineffec tive (go easy on the vitriol directed at teammates, Mr. Jordan).
eating the flesh of the Greenland shark, which contains compounds used in the nerve gas trimethyl amine oxide.) Ranging over a full year, the quest for more than a nibble yields satisfying insights into friendship, aspirations and the thrill of the chase. When the end comes, it’s almost anticlimactic.
CLIMBING HIGH
Warning: Reading The Push: A Climber’s Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits (Viking, $27, 336 pages, ISBN 9780399562709) can be a queasy experience, for at least a couple of reasons. For starters, the author of this absorbing memoir, expert rock climber Tommy Caldwell, spends a fair amount of time thousands (yes, thousands) of feet above ground level, protected only by a web of ropes, attempting WHAT A CATCH to conquer the Next Big Climb. Dad can get in touch with his in His targets include El Capitan’s ner Walter Mitty with Shark Drunk: 3,000-foot Dawn Wall in Yosemite The Art of Catching a Large Shark National Park, which he conquers in 2015 with climbing partner from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in Kevin Jorgeson. But Caldwell’s rela a Big Ocean (Knopf, $26.95, 320 tionship with his gung-ho, adven pages, ISBN 9780451493484). The ture-guide father is also cringe-in seemingly sane author, Morten ducing and provides insight into Strøksnes, and an eccentric artist his motivations and doubts, along friend decide they want to haul with at least one failed relation up a Greenland shark—bigger ship. If Caldwell’s name rings a than the great white, and thus bell, it’s possibly because one of his the world’s largest flesh-eating international expeditions ended shark—from the oceanic depths with him and his companions— off the coast of Norway. Think Moby-Dick, but shorter and fun including the woman who would become his first wife—being held nier with enough random factoids to fill a whale’s belly. Waiting for a hostage by militants in Kyrgyzstan shark to bite (the line, that is) gives in 2000, escaping only when Cald Strøksnes plenty of time to muse well pushed a captor off a nearly on such topics as Norwegian histo sheer dropoff. Somehow the captor ry and mythology, seafaring tales, survived, but it’s clear the incident space exploration and even the still haunts Caldwell. Between the shark itself. (The “drunkenness” thrills, this book will haunt the referred to in the title comes from reader, too.
19
features
BEACH READS BY SAVANNA WALKER
Pages crinkled by salt and sun
W
hether your toes are buried in the sand or you’re looking for a story to transport you to sunny climes, these lighthearted novels of family secrets and life-changing summers are the best beach reads of the season. 432 pages, ISBN 9780316375191). Identical twins Tabitha and Harper Frost are separated by the 11 miles of water between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. When circum stances require them to switch islands and take over each other’s responsibilities, the twins, who haven’t spoken in more than a
Summer in New England means blue skies and charming villages dotted along an endless coastline. Jamie Brenner’s The Forever Summer (Little, Brown, $26, 368 pages, ISBN 9780316394871) takes readers to Provincetown, Massachusetts, for an exceptionally expansive, warmhearted take on familiar beach-read tropes: a long-awaited family reunion and surpris ing revelations about parentage. Nick Cabral fa thered not one, but two daughters before his untimely death, a secret that isn’t uncovered until half- sisters Rachel and Marin are adults. The Forever Summer’s secret weapon is the older generation of women: Nick’s mother, Amelia; Amelia’s wife, Kelly; and Marin’s mother, Blythe. A former ballerina who gave up her artistic dreams when she married a powerful lawyer, Blythe is haunted by her own demons but utterly devoted to her daughter’s well-being. And Amelia and Kelly’s idyllic marriage is overshadowed by the sacrifices they’ve made to be with one another. Brenner provides a poignant look at the gay commu nity of Provincetown by fleshing out Amelia and Kelly’s circle of friends—many of whom are in their twilight years, endeavoring to spend their last days experiencing all the happiness they were robbed of by oppression and disease. Brenner’s willingness to engage with grief and loss and her ability to braid them with the hesitant joy of a new family coming together make The Forever Summer a satis fying read.
decade, find themselves embroiled in romantic entanglements and long-delayed confrontations. The setup is a bit contrived, and a narration from the voice of the islands’ collective population can be distracting. But it’s impossible to resist Hilderbrand’s gift for char acterization and building satisfying drama. Tabitha’s daughter, Ainsley, who originally seems like an exag gerated nightmare of a teenage girl, is a standout character. Tenderly portrayed, she’s privileged and lonely—old enough to act out, but still young enough to crave her mother’s affection. Hilderbrand deftly lays the groundwork for the reveal of what drove the twins apart. She paces the novel’s revelations just right, balancing them against careful character development so that when all is revealed, the reader may not agree with Tabitha’s and Harper’s decisions, but they can’t help but deeply empathize.
ISLANDS APART
CHILDREN OF CELEBRITY
Elin Hilderbrand is one of the queens of beach reads, and she continues her reign with The Identicals (Little, Brown, $28,
Another set of estranged sisters take tentative steps toward each other in Jane Green’s The Sunshine Sisters (Berkley, $26, 384
pages, ISBN 9780399583315), set in Westport, Connecticut. The three daughters of Hollywood starlet Ronni Sunshine have all adapted to their mother’s cruel behavior in different ways, growing away from each other as a result. But when Ronni announces that she has a terminal illness, the daughters
her grandmother’s beachside hotel in Palermo, Florida. While there’s no shortage of interesting characters in Maeve’s orbit, Taylor zeroes in on Maeve’s development almost exclusive ly. It’s a decision that enriches the book to a great extent: With Maeve as the clear protagonist, the beachside locale isn’t glamorous window dressing but a constant reminder of the core purpose of Maeve’s life. Ultimately, all of Maeve’s choices relate back to the sea and her history with it, from her complicated relationships with two love interests to her reaction to her brother’s novel. The Shark Club stays true to the logical, calm nature of its protagonist, but still evokes the subtle pain and thrill of being unmoored.
GIRL GONE WILD must return home to her, and to each other. The novel opens with scenes from the sisters’ childhoods, giving the reader each character’s per spective and making the clashes between the sisters much more affecting. All three are impressively well drawn, and Green isn’t afraid to give them some ugly traits. Liz zy’s single-minded pursuit of her own ambitions could have been monstrous if Green didn’t make her such an effervescent presence. And while her sister Nell’s aloof nature has given her admirable restraint when dealing with their moth er, Green also shows how Nell’s withdrawal from life has robbed her sisters of a protector—and may stand in the way of a surprising, affecting romance.
TREADING WATER Maeve Donnelly’s life revolves around sharks, and her frequent trips to study her beloved preda tors have allowed long-simmering conflicts to fall by the wayside. In Ann Kidd Taylor’s The Shark Club (Viking, $26, 288 pages, ISBN 9780735221475), those conflicts come to a head when Maeve visits
We’re off to Taormi na, Italy, for an utterly deranged mélange of The Bling Ring and The Parent Trap. Chloé Esposito’s de but, Mad (Dutton, $26, 352 pages, ISBN 9781101985991), is escapist fare that not only leaves behind the boundaries of the United States but also any semblance of morality. It’s awash in gorgeous Italian men and designer clothes, and both get more than a little bloodstained. Esposito’s protagonist, the re cently unemployed Alvina Knightly, accepts an invitation from her twin sister, Beth, to visit her Sicilian beachside mansion. Enraptured with and jealous of Beth’s lavish lifestyle, not to mention her ex tremely handsome husband, Alvina allows herself to be talked into impersonating her sister for one afternoon, kicking off a wild ride of murder and mayhem. Alvina runs headlong into her sister’s shadowy and dangerous world, getting increasingly in over her head as her outrageously misplaced self-confi dence grows. The first in a trilogy, Mad is deliciously over-the-top, with a protagonist you’ll never forget and an ending that promises more chaos to come.
21
reviews T PI OP CK
FICTION
THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS
Arundhati Roy’s return REVIEW BY KENNETH CHAMPEON
The sophomore effort of a novelist whose debut made a splash is fraught with high expectations that all too often go unmet. Arundhati Roy presents a special case. It’s been two decades since she won the Booker Prize and wide acclaim for The God of Small Things. But in the intervening years her nonfiction and activism have drawn com parisons to Noam Chomsky and Vandana Shiva. Her new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, underscores this veer toward politics. The novel is one of the most polemical in recent memory, and the characters act as animators of these polemics. Expressed with her usual musical precision, Roy’s anger has many targets. The rise of the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi is one bête noire. Another is India’s continued possession of the Muslim-majority Kashmir region. Roy’s first novel arrived weeks before India’s first nuclear test— By Arundhati Roy which she condemned—and commentators saw the novel and the Knopf, $28.95, 464 pages test as assertions of a rising India. Her second novel is an indictment ISBN 9781524733155, audio, eBook available of an India drunk on power, mistreating its poor and minorities. Ever the contrarian, Roy defends Kashmiris who seek self-determination. WORLD FICTION To Roy this is a matter not only of justice but also of survival—of In dia as a heterogeneous, secular state and of South Asian civilization. Experts consider Kashmir to be the most likely flashpoint for a nuclear war. More a mosaic than a traditional, coherent story, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness sometimes resem bles James Joyce’s Ulysses. Even in style it ramifies, and Roy’s characters are a jumble—similar to India’s welter of competing adversities, which V.S. Naipaul described as a “million mutinies.” The God of Small Things was a lively, virtuosic performance. In its successor, disgust is a recurring theme, and Indian media will likely pan it for anti-Indian propensities. But Roy’s love for the people of India is clear. She doesn’t hate India; what she hates is oppression.
DO NOT BECOME ALARMED By Maile Meloy
Riverhead $27, 352 pages ISBN 9780735216525 Audio, eBook available
FAMILY SAGA
Maile Meloy specializes in writ ing short fiction about privileged but emotionally fragile characters who are self-aware to an almost destructive degree, and who can be startled by their own dark thoughts. Meloy delves deeply and expertly into these personalities, plumbing the repercussions of var ious events in their worlds. In her new novel, she takes that approach and revs it up to top speed. Do Not Become Alarmed starts
22
chapter. Meloy skillfully analyzes as two cousins and their fami lies are setting out on a cruise to each person’s reaction to his or her South America. At first everything situation in remarkably efficient prose that never scrimps on detail is pleasantly relaxing, but things quickly begin to go wrong. Persuad or emotional impact. It’s a grim story told with a light touch, and ed to take a day off the ship, the two families are divided: The men it’s completely addictive. go golfing, while the women take —BECKY OHLSEN their kids on a zip-line tour. Almost immediately, complications arise STANDARD DEVIATION for the zip-lining crew. Their vehicle breaks down, and when they go for By Katherine Heiny Knopf a swim at a nearby beach, the kids $25.95, 336 pages disappear. It’s any parent’s worst ISBN 9780385353816 nightmare: You’ve lost your kids, Audio, eBook available and it’s your fault. The book moves at a rapid-fire COMIC FICTION pace through the events that fol low, as the kids get into deeper and deeper trouble and their parents become ever more distraught. In Katherine Heiny’s debut nov The story is told from as many el, Standard Deviation, we meet viewpoints as there are characters, Graham and Audra Cavanaugh, and everyone gets at least one a typical New York couple with a
city condo, a kid and a busy social life. Stylish, youngish and always saying outrageous things, Audra is a firecracker who delights and em barrasses all at once. Graham, her much older husband of 12 years, is quieter and more filtered. He loves Audra as she is, but he often finds himself wondering how this marriage of opposites has worked out so well over the years. In statistics, standard deviation is defined as a measure of how far a number diverges from the group as a whole. The same can be said about Heiny’s novel, as she intro duces characters and situations that make Audra and Graham’s relationship appear less and less normal. Among them is Graham’s ex-wife, Elspeth, whom Graham hasn’t talked to in years, but an unexpected run-in rekindles a rela tionship and leaves him question ing his marriage to Audra. There is also the parenting of Graham and Audra’s 10-year-old son, Matthew, who has Asperger’s syndrome and an obsession with origami. A slew of other interesting and peculiar acquaintances compose a veritable parade through the couple’s living room, adding perspective to their marriage with a bit of comedy mixed in. Heiny offers a fun read about family dynamics as she sidesteps too much seriousness with quick wit and humorous dialogue. —CHIKA GUJARATHI
THE ALICE NETWORK By Kate Quinn
Morrow $16.99, 528 pages ISBN 9780062654199 Audio, eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
Historical fiction is all about blending the original with the familiar, about those delicate new stitches woven into the tapestry. The best practitioners of this often subtle art can sew those new threads without ever breaking the pattern, until the new and the old, the real and the fictional, are one and the same. With her latest novel,
FICTION Kate Quinn announces herself as one of the best artists of the genre. The Alice Network jumps deftly and briskly between two tumultu ous periods of European history: 1947, in the wake of the second world war; and 1915, in the heat of the first. After World War II, Charlie St. Clair—a young American wom an being shuffled off to Europe by her family due to a surprise preg nancy—is searching for her lost French cousin, and her quest leads her to the London doorstep of a prickly, drunken woman named Eve Gardiner. In 1915, a much younger Eve is working as a file girl for the war effort when her multilingual skills and ability to go unnoticed (helped by her stammer) earn her the opportunity to work as a spy in German-occupied France. Eve wants to be on the front lines, but she may be unprepared for how far she’ll have to go. Quinn’s novel links the two wom en across time, as it becomes clear that something from Eve’s dark past lingers in Charlie’s present. The plotting is seamless, the pace breathtaking, and the prose is both vivid and laced with just the right amount of detail. Charlie is a fiercely entertaining narrator, and Eve is one of the most complex and rewarding characters you’ll find in a new novel this year. Fans of historical fiction, spy fiction and thrilling drama will love every moment of The Alice Network. It’s a masterful novel that will leave you craving more. —MATTHEW JACKSON
GRIEF COTTAGE By Gail Godwin
Bloomsbury $27, 336 pages ISBN 9781632867049 eBook available
GOTHIC FICTION
Grief Cottage, Gail Godwin’s latest novel, opens with a newly orphaned boy grappling with his mother’s fatal accident. As his late mother never revealed the identity of his father, 11-year-
old Marcus is sent to an island off the coast of South Carolina to live with his great-aunt Charlotte, a reclusive artist whose paintings of seascapes and rustic summer cottages are popular with tourists. With an empty month to fill before school begins, Marcus is engaged by the safe hatching of sea turtles as they make their arduous jour neys to the ocean. But his attention is also drawn to a desolate, aban doned house—the Grief Cottage, where an adolescent boy and his parents vanished during a hurri cane half a century before. With Charlotte holed up in her studio and drinking heavily, Mar cus is left increasingly on his own. He is convinced that the ghost of the dead boy is trying to contact him and visits the cottage daily, un til finally the spirit reveals himself. At the same time, Marcus befriends several of the island’s most notable residents, who fill in details of the island’s history and provide context to the story of the ill-fated family. Like Henry James’ classic The Turn of the Screw, Grief Cottage is less a paranormal thriller than an exploration of the psyche’s cre ative tactics to survive trauma. The closer Marcus gets to the truth, the more the stories of past and pres ent merge, until the dead are able to provide answers for the living. Marcus’ precociousness occa sionally requires a suspension of disbelief as total as any faith in the supernatural. Despite that, Godwin shows she is still at the top of her craft, using the fragile link between living and spirit to illuminate a young man’s coming of age in this keenly observed, powerful novel. —LAUREN BUFFERD
THE HEIRS By Susan Rieger
Crown $26, 272 pages ISBN 9781101904718 Audio, eBook available
FAMILY SAGA
Susan Rieger’s insightful second novel, following her acclaimed 2014 debut, The Divorce Papers,
spotlight
WESTERNS BY AMY SCRIBNER
Land of lawlessness
T
wo historical novels offer searingly good stories set in the raw and dangerous American West.
Set in 1876 Wyoming, Dragon Teeth (Harper, $28.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780062473356) is a “found” manuscript from the great Michael Crichton, who died in 2008. Not a typ ical Crichton blockbuster, it draws from the best of Western fiction. (Think shootouts and a villain whose entrance makes the saloon music halt.) On a foolish bet, sheltered Yale student William John son joins a summer expedition to Wyoming, where he assists a paleontologist digging up dinosaur bones. They hit the jackpot, unearthing a previous ly undiscovered skeleton. But Native Americans, water buffalo herds and a scheming, rival pa leontologist send the expedition packing. Johnson is separated from the group and finds himself in a rough town with the deli ciously perfect name of Dead wood. On his first morning, he steps outside the hotel to find a body in the street. “Flies buzzed around the body; three or four loungers stood over it, smoking cigars and discussing its former owner, but no one made any attempt to move the corpse, and the passing teams of horses just wheeled past it.” This is, needless to say, a long way from the rari fied air of New Haven. Burdened with crates of fossils he feels compelled to protect, Johnson is challenged for the first time in his life to survive on his own wits, not his parents’ money. Full of twists and a cool ap pearance by the Earp brothers, Dragon Teeth is both thrilling and thought-provoking. Also fighting for survival is
Dulcy Remfrey, the heroine of Jamie Harrison’s debut, The Widow Nash (Counterpoint, $26, 352 pages, ISBN 9781619029286), set in turn-of-the-century Washing ton and Montana. Dulcy is flee ing her abusive ex-fiancé, Victor, but two factors complicate her efforts: One, Victor is her father’s busi ness partner, and two, her dear father has just died after suffering for years from syphilis. While accompany ing her father’s body on a train from Seattle to New York, Dulcy disappears—or so it seems. Actually, Dulcy fakes her own suicide and slips off the train in windy Livingston, Montana, where she becomes Maria Nash, a recent widow. Although she tries to keep to herself in this “place where she’d stopped being herself,” Dulcy gradually becomes part of the colorful Livingston community, with its corrupt police, promiscuous inn keeper and gossipy women. After a lifetime of attending to her fa ther while he searched the globe for a cure for his illness, this is the first time Dulcy has been truly alone. She buys a home and plants a garden, reads stacks of books and quietly starts a tenta tive romance with a writer. “She had finally peeled off her old life, lost her ability to fret over secrets before this new one,” Harrison writes. But a slipup in Dulcy’s carefully cultivated new life could lead Victor right to her door. Richly descriptive, The Widow Nash is the luminous story of a woman suspended between two worlds, one promising, the other catastrophic.
23
Spellbinding Novels from
KATE MORTON
“Perfect books for just about every reader.”
—Library Journal
reviews succeeds as a thoroughly engaging family saga and an incisive probe into the upper crust of Manhattan society—a slice of Edith Wharton transported to the 21st century. Rupert Falkes is the patriarch of Rieger’s wealthy and privileged clan, and as the novel opens, he is dying of cancer. His marriage to Eleanor Phipps—from one of “New York’s Four Hundred families”— was a marriage “not of conve nience, exactly, more of mutual benefit,” and love seemed to be too much for either of them to expect. The couple raised five sons in quick succession: Harry, a Colum bia law professor; Will, a successful Hollywood talent agent; Sam, a researcher of infectious disease; Jack, an accomplished jazz trum peter; and Tom, a federal prosecu tor. When Rupert dies, his sizable estate goes to these five, but then a woman from Rupert’s past comes forward to claim that he fathered her two grown sons, who also should be included in his estate. Rieger delves into the back grounds of her main characters, moving back and forth in time, gradually revealing snippets from their pasts. Each family member reacts in his or her own way to the possibility of two additional heirs—including Eleanor, who, without knowing the validity of the claim, feels that somehow the family “should do something for them.” Not all of Eleanor’s sons agree, and there is talk of DNA tests and hints of family secrets. Rieger’s intimate look at this intriguing family is an erudite and witty take on a social circle that most readers can only imagine. —DEBORAH DONOVAN
LILLI DE JONG By Janet Benton
Pick up your copies today! Proudly published by
Nan A. Talese $26.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780385541459 Audio, eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
erable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnan cy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence. Twenty-two-year-old Lilli discovers she is pregnant after her lover leaves for Pittsburgh in search of better employment. Though he has promised to send for her, Lilli is fearful of being shunned from her close-knit Quaker community and leaves home, taking refuge in a charity residence for unwed mothers in urban Philadelphia. After her daughter is born, she decides to keep the baby, a highly unusual decision in the late-19th century, when finding acceptance and shelter was nearly impossible for an unmarried mother. Desperate for employment, Lilli is hired as a wet nurse for a wealthy family, at the financial and emotional expense of boarding her own daughter, with catastrophic results. Again and again, circum stances force Lilli to choose be tween her moral ideals and harsh social realities. The novel is styled as a first-per son diary, and Lilli’s eloquent self-expression is a product of her Quaker education and training as a teacher. Her clear-eyed view of her situation and her fearless questioning of a repressive system make for exhilarating reading, but even her spirit can’t always com pete with the hardships of a culture where even wealthy white women had little economic agency. It is a testament to Benton as a writer that this novel wears its considerable historical detail so lightly, although the narrative does get bogged down with repetitive descriptions of nursing and a few hard-to-believe deus ex machinas. But in its depiction of a mother’s fierce attachment to her child, Lilli de Jong has real resonance in today’s battles over women’s reproductive health and the rights of working mothers. —LAUREN BUFFERD
AT R I A
Atria-Books.com
24
Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her consid
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Janet Benton.
FICTION AUGUSTOWN By Kei Miller
Pantheon $25.95, 256 pages ISBN 9781101871614 eBook available
WORLD FICTION
TOUCH By Courtney Maum Putnam $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780735212121 Audio, eBook available
SATIRICAL FICTION
The smells are the tip-off that something bad is about to happen. To use the Jamaican slang from Augustown, Kei Miller’s excellent new novel, the April 1982 day in which a calamitous event is about to occur is “the day of the auto claps,” a day of impending disas ter, trouble on top of trouble. At first, the day doesn’t seem un usual, but the woman at the center of this novel set in the poor, epon ymous Jamaican town certainly is. Ganja-smoking Ma Taffy was blinded many years earlier when hundreds of rats crashed through her ceiling and attacked her eyes. The injury heightened her sense of smell: She can detect ripening mangoes and Otaheite apples as well as the tragedy that will involve her great-nephew, 6-year-old Kaia, and a group known as Babylon. Kaia comes home from school one day—he lives with Ma Taffy and his mother, Gina—with his dreadlocks cut off. His teacher, a stern man who struggles to comb out his afro and fears his move to the city will result in “the weaken ing of his moral fortitude,” hacked off the Rastafarian boy’s dreads. This act of violence sets off a series of events and recollections, including the story of Alexander Bedward, the 1920s town preacher who claimed that he could fly; and the school’s modern-day princi pal, a wealthy white woman who hires Gina to be her housekeeper without knowing the secret behind the black woman’s connection to her family. If the novel’s tone is inconsis tent, Augustown is nonetheless an accomplished and riveting work, with traces of magical realism. And its central theme is, sadly, all too relevant: Generations change, but prejudices persist.
There’s no shortage of recent nonfiction works lamenting that our obsession with digital devic es could turn our world into one where most human connection is a distant memory. For all the science proferred to support that thesis, leave it to a work of fiction—Court ney Maum’s razor-sharp Touch— to bring this vexing issue into focus with compassion and wit. Sloane Jacobsen is a brilliant trend forecaster who’s been hired by consumer electronics compa ny Mammoth (think Apple meets Amazon) to help develop a line of products aimed at childless couples. Instead of stimulating Sloane’s predictive gift, that as signment brings to light the state of her rapidly cooling domestic relationship with Roman Bellard, a self-styled public intellectual who’s taken to wearing a bizarre full-body outfit that makes Sloane think of him as a “Lycra-suit ed zombie.” It doesn’t help that Sloane’s vision of a world in which “touch could come back to peo ple’s lives” clashes with Roman’s enthusiasm for a virtual “post-sex ual world,” a pronouncement that goes viral with the publication of a New York Times op-ed. Maum deftly manipulates this tantalizing setup to raise provoc ative questions about why so many of us seem to be happier tapping and swiping than we are in encounters with real human beings and what it might take to change that behavior. It’s prema ture to predict whether our world will evolve toward more intimate interactions or greater absorption with our ever more sophisticated smart phones and tablets. What ever may happen, Touch provides an entertaining frame for what will continue to be a lively debate.
—MICHAEL MAGRAS
—HARVEY FREEDENBERG
Midlife Crisis? Look at the Sun: A story of contemporaneous parallel journeys – a poignant passage through a difficult chapter of life and a breathtaking trek through Central America, a dreamy but dangerous world of beauty and color. A subtle, yet insightful, examination of the boundaries of free thought. Based on the author’s real travel experiences.
ISBN: 978-1-48359-209-1 eBook: 978-1-48359-210-7
25
reviews
NONFICTION
T PI OP CK
ward by the tiniest of increments. — S A R A H M CC R A W C R O W
THE LOYAL SON
THEFT BY FINDING
Journaling to the heart of it all R E V I E W B Y K E L LY B L E W E T T
In Theft by Finding, David Sedaris, best known for his eight bestsell ing books as well as his contributions to “This American Life,” The New Yorker and Esquire, offers a glimpse into the most unruly of writing: his diaries from the years 1977-2002. Sedaris notes in the introduction that he does not expect readers to plow through this 528-page tome in linear fashion, but instead to dip in at random. I suspect he would approve of my own manner of reading the book, which was to see what Sedaris was up to on my birthday each year. However, his (edited) diaries are too interesting to limit oneself only to birthday entries—I wound up reading the whole thing, laughing frequently and earmarking many memorable passages. These diaries reveal the development of Sedaris’ aesthetic, filled with rich and un failingly sharp observations—portraits of people he saw on the street, By David Sedaris overheard snippets of dialogue, accounts of interactions with everyone Little, Brown, $28, 528 pages from cabdrivers to his irrepressible siblings. ISBN 9780316154727, audio, eBook available For Sedaris fans, the diaries offer a backstage tour of books like Me MEMOIR Talk Pretty One Day (his initial observations of his French teacher, es says he wrote in response to homework prompts) and Holidays on Ice (accounts of locker-room exchanges between men working as Macy’s holiday elves). There are moments of sadness, such as the unexpected death of his mother and the slow decline of his sister Tiffany, who would later commit suicide. But this is not a sad book; instead, it’s a gloriously weird one. Sedaris lists Christmas presents received every year, shares recipes and constantly suggests to the reader to keep going, just for one more page. “If nothing else, a diary teaches you what you’re interested in,” Sedaris writes. This is a diary that shows us how Sedaris’ powers of observation and his intense investment in his own perspective have enriched his life and, by extension, ours.
DARING TO DRIVE By Manal al-Sharif Simon & Schuster $26, 304 pages ISBN 9781476793023 Audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
Manal al-Sharif’s memoir Daring to Drive opens with a chilling sentence: “The secret police came for me at two in the morn ing.” Al-Sharif is questioned for hours and then jailed in a filthy, overcrowded women’s prison. Her crime: driving her brother’s Hyundai, because in Saudi Arabia, women do not drive. Without a male guardian, Saudi women can’t rent an apartment, take out a loan,
26
get an ID or register a child for school—and they can never drive, not even to take a sick child to the ER. Saudi religious police enforce a harsh array of laws and customs— women must cover their bodies completely, and unrelated men and women must never mix. Al-Sharif gives a compelling account of her impoverished, sometimes violent upbringing in Mecca, and of her schooling, where teachers beat students for trivial infractions and religious studies were paramount. She describes the wave of fundamentalist fervor that swept through Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s, imposing increas ing limits on women. It is within this rule-bound atmosphere that al-Sharif transforms from funda mentalist teen to a college student studying computer science. She then becomes the first woman in
information security at Aramco, the Saudi oil company (originally an American consortium). At Ar amco, she interacts with men and lives in Western-style housing. It is her work at Aramco, along with an exchange year in New Hampshire, where she learns to drive and be friends non-Muslims, that leads to her quest to drive in Saudi Arabia and eventually to her calling as a women’s rights activist. Al-Sharif writes with simplicity, and despite its bleak moments, Daring to Drive moves along quickly. She shares some lovely moments, such as her childhood visits to her rural grandparents, whose lives seemed far freer than her own, and the sports she secret ly played in college. She shares her hopeful motto—“the rain begins with a single drop”—which also de scribes a nation that’s moving for
By Daniel Mark Epstein
Ballantine $30, 464 pages ISBN 9780345544216 Audio, eBook available
HISTORY
Benjamin Franklin’s public life as scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher and author, among other activities, is well known. His private life, however, is another matter. Franklin had a complex relationship with his family, and while in his 20s and married, he fa thered an illegitimate son, William, whom he adopted. They enjoyed a close relationship for many years, the son assisting his father with scientific and diplomatic matters, performing admirably in the mili tary and impressing many with his intelligence and charm. Their relationship changed dra matically with the coming of the American Revolution. As Daniel Mark Epstein demonstrates in his well-researched and absorbing The Loyal Son, their decisions to support opposite sides in the con flict led to an irreparable break. By 1776, William was Royal Governor of New Jersey, a post he did not want to give up, and Benjamin had many important responsibilities in the years ahead, including the chairmanship of the Continental Congress’ Committee of Secret Correspondence, the “first CIA.” William was imprisoned for a significant period, under difficult circumstances, but was eventually released thanks to the efforts of Benjamin’s friends and allies. Even then, William volunteered for addi tional efforts for the Empire. Epstein, the author of many books, including the acclaimed The Lincolns, offers a balanced, nuanced study, sympathetic to but not uncritical of either man. Short ly before he died, Benjamin wrote to his son, “nothing has ever hurt
NONFICTION me so much . . . as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake.” The gripping narrative illustrates the public issues that drove the father and son apart and illumi nates in detail the agonizing cost to each man. —ROGER BISHOP
POPULAR By Mitch Prinstein Viking $27, 288 pages ISBN 9780399563737 eBook available
PSYCHOLOGY
that the lure of status—especially the kind of easy but ephemeral visibility conferred through social media—may compromise “our ability to distinguish between good and bad.” Obviously, we don’t begin life knowing all this. So from infancy onward, we may find ourselves socially marginalized by our phys ical appearance, aggressiveness, defensiveness, inability to interpret social cues or kindred forms of maladjustments. While these flaws are by no means fatal to our future success, Prinstein concludes that they will almost certainly take a toll on our health, happiness and often our professional advance ment. The good news, he says, is that once we realize the negative impact these traits are exerting on us, we have ample opportunities to change how we react and, thus, make course corrections toward a sunnier horizon. —EDWARD MORRIS
Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prin stein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally. Now a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein confesses to having been a social outsider himself as a teenager—and one who, like most of us, strove mightily to achieve peer acceptance. The drive to be popular is part of our evolutionary engine, he maintains. But popularity comes in differ ent guises. It may arise from status (dominant personality, wealth, athletic prowess, physical beauty, extraordinary intelligence, etc.) or from simple likability (character ized by openness, friendliness, an interest in others, a willingness to share or following the rules). Of these two types, Prinstein says, “likability continues to be relevant to us throughout our lives and has been shown to be the most pow erful kind of popularity there is.” Status is a shakier foundation on which to build. Indeed, he worries
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Mitch Prinstein.
THE BRIGHT HOUR By Nina Riggs
Simon & Schuster $25, 320 pages ISBN 9781501169359 Audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
“The beautiful, vibrant, living world goes on.” Nina Riggs, who died in February, realized this truth during a mundane moment: While teaching her son to ride his bike, she stumbles and releases him. As Benny rides forward, he shouts be hind him, checking on his mother. It’s a simple moment, but to Riggs, whose triple negative breast cancer had been deemed terminal, it encapsulated so much more. When she was diagnosed at age 37, doctors expected her disease to be curable. It was one small spot of cancer, that was all. But it metas tasized and, by age 38, Riggs knew the disease would kill her.
Riggs’ husband, John, longs for a return to normalcy. “I have to love these days in the same way I love any other. There might not be a ‘normal’ from here on out,” she responds. “These days are days. We choose how we hold them.” As she endures chemotherapy and radiation, Riggs faces those days with a clear-eyed determi nation to fully live. Riggs, herself a poet, examines her impending death through her own lyrical per spective, informed by the writings of her great-great-great-grand father, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and French philosopher Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Part of living, though, is death. Riggs must face it even before her own cancer is deemed ter minal: Her mother’s multiple myeloma is fatal. The family concludes her mother’s funeral with an open-ended moment of silence, which Riggs struggles with. Shouldn’t they sound a gong or otherwise give those gathered permission to leave? No, her brother says. “It’s about honoring the unknowing and the awkwardness and the mystery of dying. It’s unsettling—and that’s okay.” Through this warmhearted memoir, Riggs writes her way to accepting her own death and the uncertainty that follows it. The Bright Hour is an introspective, well-considered tribute to life. As Riggs’ famed ancestor Emerson writes, “That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World.” —CARLA JEAN WHITLEY
AMERICAN ECLIPSE By David Baron
Liveright $27.95, 352 pages ISBN 9781631490163 Audio, eBook available
SCIENCE
In American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of
the Moon and Win the Glory of the World, self-professed umbraphile (eclipse chaser) and author David Baron tells the tale of an eclipse that briefly darkened Denver and other parts of the American West in July 1878. As Baron acknowledges, a total solar eclipse, “in which the moon completely obscures the face of the sun, is exceptional.” Passing over any given location on earth just once every 400 years, it provides an experience that is “otherworldly.” Baron neatly weaves together the stories of three scientific visionar ies of the period: famous inventor Thomas Edison and astronomers James Craig Watson and Maria Mitchell. Edison hoped to use the eclipse to test his latest invention, a tasimeter (designed to measure the heat emanating from the sun’s corona), and promote his scien tific and creative reputation in the process. Watson was seeking to discover the elusive and mysteri ous planet Vulcan, which was said to lie between Mercury and the sun. Mitchell, a progressive trail blazer and professor of astronomy at Vassar, with a group of female students in tow, sought to prove that women were viable scientists and to expand women’s limited opportunities. In vivid detail, Baron unfolds their backstories and reveals what led each of them to make their way to the still unsettled Wild West to view this phenomenon. He deftly communicates the significance of the event within the era. It was the midst of the Gilded Age, and Americans were desperately trying to show the world they were com petitive and powerful. As Baron points out, “advancing science in the United States required con vincing the populace of the value of research—that it was worth promotion and investment.” American Eclipse will undoubt edly spur scores of readers to desire their own total solar eclipse experience. How auspicious that such an event takes place in Amer ica on August 21—the first total so lar eclipse to travel across America in 99 years. Baron will undoubtedly be watching. —BECKY LIBOUREL DIAMOND
27
reviews T PI OP CK
TEEN
MIDNIGHT AT THE ELECTRIC
Shifting between future and past REVIEW BY ANITA LOCK
A teenager gets a blast from her past as she faces the future in Jodi Lynn Anderson’s latest novel, Midnight at the Electric. The year is 2065. Sixteen-year-old Adri Ortiz has been chosen to join a group of young scientists who will be living and working on Mars. As an only child who was orphaned at an early age, Adri is surprised to learn that her distant cousin, 107-year-old Lily Vega, would love to have her stay in her Kansas home during Adri’s three months of train ing for the mission. Adri is skeptical about her relationship with this kindly old woman until she finds a journal and letters from more than a century ago. Anderson divides her plot into sections, contrasting Adri’s life against the lives of two women from different eras: Cathy Godspeed, who experienced both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, and Lenore Allstock, who lived during the aftermath of By Jodi Lynn Anderson HarperTeen, $17.99, 272 pages World War I. Although completely engrossed in Cathy’s journal entries ISBN 9780062393548, audio, eBook available and Lenore’s letters, Adri doesn’t anticipate the impact these women Ages 12 and up will make on her own life. Although Adri is a talented, burgeoning scientist, she can often FICTION be apathetic. But Anderson plops her protagonist into emotional, three-dimensional stories that expand her heart and connect her to her lineage. Anderson seamlessly shifts between all three narratives as she connects the dots and draws her audience into an engaging, inventive story. This charming coming-of-age tale will have readers hooked from beginning to end.
FLAME IN THE MIST By Renée Ahdieh Putnam $17.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780399171635 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
HISTORICAL FICTION
Set in feudal Japan, Flame in the Mist unveils the dark secrets of notorious families, narrates their bloody battles and follows the jour ney of one young woman with the power to alter the empire. Mariko is the only daughter of the noble and prominent Hattori family. And at 17, she’s off to the imperial city to meet her future husband—the emperor’s son— for their arranged marriage. But Mariko’s caravan is attacked in the dark forest by the infamous bandits known as the Black Clan, and they
28
slay everyone except for her—their target. Mariko manages to escape, both with her life and a newfound thirst for revenge. After tracking the Black Clan for days, Mariko disguises herself as a young farm boy and gains their trust. She’s de termined to learn why they wanted her dead, find their weaknesses and destroy them from within. But she never expected the Black Clan to value her intellect or offer her the freedom she’s never had. She also didn’t expect to fall in love with a ruthless murderer. As author Renée Ahdieh did with her debut, The Wrath & the Dawn, Flame in the Mist explores a young woman’s power and strength to effect great change in a patriarchal society. And the realistic stories, fascinating culture and complex relationships of Ahdieh’s fictional characters—explored in actual, historical settings—are completely enrapturing. —J U S T I N B A R I S I C H
ONCE AND FOR ALL By Sarah Dessen Viking $19.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780425290330 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
ROMANCE
As the daughter of the most in-demand wedding planner in town, Louna Barrett is an expert on romance. When it comes to love, however, tragedy has left her closed off to the possibility. But when a client’s obnoxious yet charming brother, Ambrose, joins the wedding-planning team, he encourages Louna to give epic love another chance. Bestselling author Sarah Dessen is known for her captivating stories of self-discovery, resilience and
first love. In Once and for All, she creates a rich cast of characters and a vivid backdrop, deftly por traying not only budding romances but also evolving friend and family relationships. The real magic of the novel is the tug of war between the whimsy of Louna’s summer job orchestrating lavish weddings and her grief for her lost first love. While there are Easter eggs sprinkled throughout for longtime fans (an appearance from Auden West, visits to Jump Java), Once and for All stands on its own, promising to delight first-time Dessen readers as Louna learns to believe in second chances. —SARAH WEBER
ONE OF US IS LYING By Karen M. McManus
Delacorte $17.99, 368 pages ISBN 9781524714680 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up
MYSTERY
If John Hughes turned The Breakfast Club into a murder mystery, it would be this delicious page-turner. Five teens enter detention, but only four come out. Simon, who runs a gossip app, dies from a suspiciously timed aller gic reaction. He has made a lot of enemies in his San Diego suburb, but none with more motive than these four: Bronwyn, the straight-A good girl; Cooper, the unassuming baseball star; Nate, the drug-deal ing slacker; and Addy, the enviable pretty girl. At first glance, they seem like high school clichés, but each is hiding a life-altering secret they’d do anything to protect. Ei ther they’re all innocent, or one of them is lying, and it’s up to readers to find out. Told in four alternating points of view, One of Us Is Lying is more than just a feisty whodunit—it’s an insightful look at high school life. Nothing drags in this fast-paced story, so give it to even the most reluctant reader and dare them not to devour it in one sitting. — K I M B E R LY G I A R R A T A N O
features
SANDHYA MENON
When first love collides with tradition
F
ans of romantic comedies love a meet cute, and in her young adult debut, Sandhya Menon adds an Indian tradition to this time-tested trope: Her characters’ parents have arranged their marriage.
As When Dimple Met Rishi opens, 18-year-old Dimple Shah has graduated from high school and been accepted to Stanford. She loves iced coffee and coding, but not her mother’s incessant harping about her appearance and future wifehood. She’s thrilled when her parents send her to Insomnia Con, a summer program for budding coders at San Francisco State Uni versity. On the first day, Dimple sits on the SFSU campus, eyes closed, sipping iced coffee and feeling hopeful that maybe, just maybe, her parents were “finally beginning to realize she was her own person, with a divergent, more modern belief system.” But her tranquility is shattered when she hears a friendly male voice say, “Hello, future wife.” A horrified shriek and an iced-coffeeflying-through-the-air later, Rishi Patel is left dripping, and Dimple (fleeing at a dead sprint) is worried she has a stalker. This doesn’t seem like an auspi cious beginning to a beautiful rela
WHEN DIMPLE MET RISHI
By Sandhya Menon
Simon Pulse, $17.99, 384 pages ISBN 9781481478687, audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
ROMANCE
tionship, but—thanks to Menon’s warm, funny characters and a story that sensitively and evenhandedly explores what happens when tra ditional values and modern ideas collide—readers know better. At first, though, Dimple doesn’t. She’s spent so many years defend ing herself against her relentlessly overbearing mother that’s she’s un derstandably twitchy about dating. Besides, she’s at Insomnia Con to code! Rishi, who’s been accepted to MIT, is there to code, too—but also because his and Dimple’s parents plotted to throw them together and nudge them toward marriage. “I think arranged marriage is still fairly misunderstood in America,” Menon says from Colorado, where she lives with her husband and two children. “On TV, you usually see really old guys marrying helpless, vulnerable women, but that’s not what it’s like in my family and the families I knew growing up. I want ed to portray arranged marriage as it’s more commonly found in middle-class India.” Menon grew up in India and came to America at age 15. While her marriage wasn’t arranged, she says, “Pretty much all of my rela tives’ were, so it’s pretty normal for me to think about it.” In Dimple and Rishi’s case, the two have more in common than they realize: Just as Dimple always feels like she’s not good enough for her parents, Rishi feels dis tant from his own. His dad urges him toward a practical business education, despite Rishi’s love for drawing comics. However, Rishi is more in tune with his parents when it comes to marriage: He trusts them and believes in the importance of tradition. Of course, because he’s male, he hasn’t experienced a lifetime of being told to wear more makeup and to stop caring about
school so he can focus on becoming marriage material. Menon notes that in Indian culture, espe cially for daughters, it can be “hard to see past your mother constantly telling you how you should be, how things should be, what you should change. It’s hard to see that as coming from a place of love, or that it’s the only way they know how to com municate [that] they want you to end up in a good place in life.” For Menon, this divide was a crucial addition to the story. “It’s a very universal experience for “There is a anyone with magic to . . . a controlling parent,” she finding says. “In the the perfect end, Dimple’s person. mom was real ly proud of her Even if your and wanted parents what was best preordain for her, even if it—that still that was com municated in helps you a convoluted find love.” way.” As in any good rom-com, time passes and the two get to know each other, allowing perspectives to shift and defenses to weaken. Dimple real izes that Rishi is a good, talented person who stands up for her when it matters. (It doesn’t hurt that he’s handsome, too.) And Rishi acknowledges that fierce, lovely Dimple has been experiencing arranged-marriage pressure in a very different, demoralizing way— and that perhaps it’s OK to pursue something he’s passionate about.
© TIMOTHY FALLS
INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO
Menon’s own experience of feel ing torn between Indian traditions and American social mores is one of the main reasons why she loved writing this book. “I know what it’s like to grapple with the question, how much Indian am I?” She explains that it got easier in college. “People came to assume I’d been born here . . . and I started to find my place a bit more. I start ed writing more and expressing myself through art. It was a really freeing thing for me to do—to feel like there’s this thing I can share with people, and they can accept that, even if they can’t accept every part of me just yet.” When asked if she’s more like practical Dimple or romantic Rishi, Menon laughs and denies being a romantic. “I love to write [romance] and read it and watch it in Bollywood movies, but in my personal life I’m much more prac tical,” she says. “I do think there’s a kind of magic to love. My super-logical brain says it’s all chemistry . . . but there is a magic to true love and finding the perfect person. Even if your parents preordain it—that still helps you find love.”
29
reviews T PI OP CK
CHILDREN’S
ROLL
A summer on the wing REVIEW BY DEBORAH HOPKINSON
Eleven-year-old Lauren Hall is short. And a geek. And also a boy stuck with a girl’s name. That might not be so bad if, like the grandfa ther for whom he was named, Ren was athletic. And so, even though he’d rather be reading comic books, Ren wakes up early every day to train for the upcoming cross-country team tryouts. If only he liked to run. To make matters worse, Ren and his parents have moved into his late grandparents’ house, eight miles away from town and his best friend, Aiden. Aiden isn’t just growing taller; he seems ready to outgrow their friendship, too. All in all, summer’s a disappointment—until the morning Ren sees By Darcy Miller pigeons tumbling through the sky above the neighboring farmhouse. HarperCollins, $16.99, 224 pages The birds belong to his new neighbor, Sutton Davies. Sutton has ISBN 9780062461223, eBook available bright, dyed-red hair and a fierce determination to make her Birming Ages 8 to 12 ham Roller pigeons into champions. It won’t be easy to train the kit MIDDLE GRADE of pigeons to execute in unison the distinctive backward somersault, especially now that her dad is in the hospital after a car accident. But maybe Ren can help. Darcy Miller’s middle grade debut features a rural setting in southern Minnesota and engaging charac ters; especially welcome is a boy narrator navigating shifting social dynamics. Don’t be surprised if readers want to return to the library, eager to find out more about those fascinating birds known as Birmingham Rollers. Roll is a great summer book for pigeon fanciers—or any young reader who fancies a good story.
SECRETS I KNOW By Kallie George Illustrated by Paola Zakimi
Schwartz & Wade $17.99, 32 pages ISBN 9781101938935 Ages 3 to 7
In her raincoat and boots, an eager girl and her puppy are ready to follow the breezes in their back yard. After rain sends her scamper ing for shelter, leftover puddles are just the beginning of an adventure. Following her imagination and un fazed by the changing weather, she hosts a seashell tea party, sends her toys on a mini nautical adventure and eventually recruits a friend for one final quest. Told in first person with simple words, Secrets I Know lets imag inations flourish. Kallie George makes good use of personification and metaphors, lending an extra bit of poetic enchantment. Paola
30
Zakimi illustrates with a zoomedin intensity, drawing readers deep within the tale through scenes that are as lush and soft as the best-kept gardens. Varying shades of green recall our own childhood memo ries, when everything was bigger and more wondrous. Each page is worth exploring, with wild animals, toys and tucked-away bicycles. Secrets I Know feels both time less and fresh, like an old classic that has faded just enough without losing its sense of wonder. —J I L L L O R E N Z I N I
THE QUEST FOR Z By Greg Pizzoli
Viking $17.99, 48 pages ISBN 9780670016532 eBook available Ages 7 to 10
PICTURE BOOK
The Quest for Z brings young
readers the story of Percy Fawcett’s early 20th-century explorations in the Amazon, where he hoped to find the fabled, ancient city of “Z.” Readers know from 2015’s Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower that Greg Pizzoli writes about complicated people with honesty and never condescends to young readers. More than half of this book provides context and insight into scientific exploration at that time, from Fawcett’s obsession with ex ploring new lands to details about the Royal Geographical Society, then and now. Pizzoli includes background on Fawcett’s family, his training, his expeditions to South America from 1906 to 1924 and the dangers he faced. (There’s an ana conda fright as only Pizzoli could illustrate it.) Ultimately, after set ting out in 1925 to find the lost city, Fawcett and his men disappeared and were never heard from again. Sidebars expound further on
certain topics, and Pizzoli’s bold mixed-media illustrations are uncluttered and informative. It all adds up to a complex and intriguing look at a man for whom European imperialism was unsuccessful— certainly a topic rarely addressed in most K-12 curricula. In a closing author’s note, Pizzoli discusses how his own trip to Central America in spired him to finish the book: “I felt overcome by how old the world is, how much there is to see, and how many people have come before us.” This is an unusual biography of a complicated man. —J U L I E D A N I E L S O N
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Greg Pizzoli.
JOPLIN, WISHING By Diane Stanley HarperCollins $16.99, 272 pages ISBN 9780062423702 eBook available Ages 8 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
Twelve-year-old Joplin lives with her divorced mom and her mom’s friend, Jen, in a basement apart ment in New York. She’s bullied at school, and even worse, her best friend has dumped her. The death of Joplin’s famous grandfather— and the spreading of some unsa vory publicity about him—gives her peers a golden opportunity to tease her, leaving her devastated and lonely. In her grandfather’s room, Joplin discovers a metal tin crammed with pieces of an old ceramic plat ter. The plate, depicting a young girl standing by a pond and a wind mill, is repaired and hung in her room. Joplin wishes the girl would be her friend, and the next day, the girl vanishes from the platter and waits for Joplin in the garden, where she introduces herself as Sophie. Around the same time, Joplin befriends Barrett, a boy from school. Suddenly Joplin has two friends, and together they try to return Sophie to being a flesh-andblood girl in Holland. Their quest takes a sinister turn when they
discover they are being stalked by a man who knows Sophie’s secret. Joplin’s struggle to find her place after her grandfather’s death, both at home and at school, will ring true to readers. The magical platter offers an engaging vehicle to help Joplin sort fact from fantasy, reality from longing, and to learn the true meaning of friendship. —BILLIE B. LITTLE
YORK By Laura Ruby
Walden Pond $17.99, 496 pages ISBN 9780062306937 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
Before there was New York with its towering skyscrapers, solarbus es, robot crews and even mechan ical snails to clean windows, there was the Old York of wealthy twin geniuses Theresa and Theodore Morningstarr. And before their mysterious disappearance in 1855, the eccentric pair left behind a puzzle that remains unsolved. In award-winning author Laura Ruby’s York, a modern steampunk mystery for tweens, three sev enth-graders accept the challenge of the Old York Cipher. Jewish twins Tess and Theo Bie dermann, named after the legend ary cipherists, and Cuban-Ameri can Jaime Cruz all live in one of the original Morningstarr buildings. When a sleazy real-estate develop er buys the property and gives res idents 30 days to vacate, the young sleuths decide to solve the cipher to find its treasure and save their homes. Chapters told from their various perspectives reveal each tween’s personality and strengths, from intuitive Tess’ “catastroph isizing” to Theo’s logical mind to artistic Jaime’s fascination with superheroes. The search for clues takes these clever kids through forgotten parts of the city and into heart-racing adventures. Readers learn more about how codes and ciphers work along with the sleuths, who can’t help but wonder if the cipher is
manipulating them. Enthralling de tails and nonstop action will draw fans to this series opener.
meet JENNIFER BLACK REINHARDT the title of your Q: What’s new book?
ELIZA PHOTOGRAPHY
CHILDREN’S
—ANGELA LEEPER
QUICKSAND POND
would you describe Q: How the book?
By Janet Taylor Lisle Atheneum $16.99, 256 pages ISBN 9781481472227 Audio, eBook available Ages 10 and up
MIDDLE GRADE
Quicksand Pond, hidden off the Rhode Island coast, is a place of lingering mystery and illumination for a pair of 12-year-old girls. When Jessie Kettel arrives with her family to spend the summer in a rental cottage, she finds an old raft and meets Terri Carr, who tells her about two boys who drowned there and a long-ago murder in a huge house on the edge of the pond. The daughter of those murdered parents survived, and old lady Henrietta Cutting still lives in the house. Jessie learns that the wrong person was imprisoned for the murders: Terri’s great-great-grand father. The consequences of this injustice continue to the present, as Terri’s family is still considered “no good.” When Terri is forced to hide from her abusive father in a makeshift camp on the edge of the pond, she and Jessie form a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn-type friendship. Meanwhile, Henrietta watches the pair through binoculars, struggling to find a way to make her long-ig nored voice heard. Gradually, Jessie finds herself becoming “sucked into” Terri’s messy, difficult life, and so she retreats from her friend just when she is needed most. Quick sand is everywhere, it seems. When Terri is accused of setting fire to the Cutting home, history seems to be repeating itself. Jessie learns some wrenching lessons about discrimination and judg ment, and her testimony becomes crucial to her friend’s future. Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle has written a riveting chronicle of a monumental sum mer, one with no easy answers. —ALICE CARY
has been the biggest influence on your work? Q: Who
was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What
Q: Who was your childhood hero?
books did you enjoy as a child? Q: What
one thing would you like to learn to do? Q: What
message would you like to send to young readers? Q: What
BLUE ETHEL Jennifer Black Reinhardt has illustrated several books for children throughout her 25-year artistic career. Her latest picture book, Blue Ethel (FSG/Margaret Ferguson, $17.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780374303822, ages 4 to 6), is the hilarious tale of a black-and-white cat who suddenly finds herself blue. Reinhardt lives in Iowa City, Iowa, with her family and a big white poodle.
31
WORDNOOK
BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER
THE GREATEST GENERATION
Dear Editor: I frequently hear my parents’ generation described as stoic, having lived through the hardships of the 1930s and ’40s. It makes me wonder, how old is the word stoic? C. T. Macon, Georgia The story of stoic begins about the year 300 B.C., when the Athe nian philosopher Zeno started teaching a doctrine that spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Zeno lectured at a public hall called the Stoa Poikile (“Paint ed Colonnade”), and his philo sophical school became known as the Stoa. He taught that happiness and well-being do not depend on wealth or station but on reason, through which one can emulate the calm and order of the universe by learning to accept events with a stern and tranquil mind. Zeno’s Greek followers elaborated on his teachings, which were later popularized by the Roman Stoics
Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Au relius. By the 14th century, English speakers were using the word stoic for anyone who could face adversi ty calmly and without excess emo tion, and by the 15th century as an adjective meaning “not affected by or showing passion or feeling.”
class. In 1832, the socialist philos opher Pierre Leroux first used the French noun proletariat to refer to this class. The concept of the pro letariat was refined by Karl Marx, and French proletariat was bor rowed into nearly every language of Europe, including English.
CLASS WARFARE
INSIDE JOKE
Dear Editor: Can you tell me where the word proletariat comes from? Did Karl Marx coin it? S. N. Hamden, Connecticut The Latin adjective proletarius, meaning “pertaining to the lowest class of citizens,” was a derivative of proles, “offspring, progeny,” the Roman belief apparently being that the humblest citizens had nothing to contribute to the state but their offspring. Proletarius was borrowed into French as prolé taire, which in the writing of early French socialists such as Saint- Simon was applied to the working
Dear Editor: I assume that OK must have once been an abbreviation for something, but I can’t come up with a likely explanation. Can you help me? G. N. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania OK arose in the late 1830s from a journalistic fad for reducing phras es to abbreviations, not unlike our current use of abbreviations like “LOL” and “brb” in electronic com munication. It became fashionable to alter some of the abbreviations on the basis of pseudo-uneducated misspellings, so that A.R. for “all right” was transformed to O.W.
on the basis of “oll wright,” and N.G. for “no-go” to K.G. Hence OK, when it appeared in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839— the earliest known printed occur rence—stands for “oll korrect,” presumably a deliberate misspell ing of “all correct.” OK might well have passed into oblivion with other such initialisms, but in the 1840 American presidential cam paign it became associated with the Democratic O.K. Club, in which O.K. stood for “Old Kinderhook,” after Kinderhook, New York—the birthplace of the Democrat candi date Martin Van Buren. Humorous expansions of OK, including “oll korrect,” were bandied back and forth by both political parties. By 1841, OK had gone beyond the political arena to become an equiv alent for “all right!”
Send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102