BookPage September 2017

BookPage

®

AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 2017

ADAM & EVE

The first sinners’ enduring story

CELESTE NG

An idyllic town is upended by secrets

DRAMA ON THE QUAD

Our 5 favorite campus novels

A modern morality tale in a strange new America

SALMAN

RUSHDIE

contents

SEPTEMBER 2017

columns 04 04 05 06 08 11 12 13

14

Cooking Lifestyles The Hold List Whodunit Romance Audio Well Read Book Clubs

Salman Rushdie’s operatic American novel, The Golden House, captures the beautiful complexities of the human spirit.

Cover photo by Beowulf Sheehan

book reviews 18 FICTION

We Are All Shipwrecks

by Kelly Grey Carlisle Bored and Brilliant

by Manoush Zomorodi Coming to My Senses

by Alice Waters

t o p p i c k : The World of

features 16 19 21 29

on the cover

Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews

Celeste Ng Wives’ tales Inspirational fiction John Rocco

meet the author 12

Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss Midwinter Break

by Bernard MacLaverty Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward The Burning Girl by Claire Messud The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas Something Like Happy by Eva Woods The Heart’s Invisible Furies

by John Boyne The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones

23 NONFICTION

t o p p i c k : The Rise and Fall of

Adam and Eve

by Stephen Greenblatt

28

27 TEEN

t o p p i c k : They Both Die at the

End by Adam Silvera

Landscape with Invisible Hand

by M.T. Anderson Warcross by Marie Lu

Girls Made of Snow and Glass

by Melissa Bashardoust Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares by Krystal Sutherland

30 CHILDREN’S

An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn The Futilitarians by Anne Gisleson A Disappearance in Damascus

by Deborah Campbell Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard Gorbachev by William Taubman The Choice by Edith Eva Eger The Republic for Which It Stands

by Richard White At the Strangers’ Gate

by Adam Gopnik

t o p p i c k : Patina

by Jason Reynolds

The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC’s (the Hard Way) by Patrick McDonnell On a Magical Do-Nothing Day

by Beatrice Alemagna Tumble & Blue by Cassie Beasley The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas Pablo and Birdy by Alison McGhee and Ana Juan The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

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

Andrew Catá

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. BookPage is editorially independent; only books we highly recommend are featured.

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 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.

All material © 2017 ProMotion, inc.

3

columns

LIFESTYLES

COOKING

B Y S U S A N N A H F E LT S

BY SYBIL PRATT

Help for houseplants

Lessons learned

Ever had a potted plant go kaput? (Related: Are you human?)

Alas, there may be no magic spell to keep all our houseplants happy and healthy, forever after. But armed with the cute new How Not to Kill Your Houseplant: Survival Tips for the Horticulturally Challenged (DK, $14.99, 144 pages, ISBN 9781465463302), I imagine my success rate will tick up a few points. Colorfully illustrated, easy

the Midwest settings of the Little House series. (McDowell recommends reading those books alongside this one.) Two shorter sections advise readers who want to road trip to Wilder’s various homes or grow some of the same plants her family once did.

This book is a well-researched treat for Little House fans, especially those with an abiding love of the natural world.

Jacques Pépin, the consummate charming chef, has taught us to cook everything from the most complex to the simplest dishes.

Now, with A Grandfather’s Lessons: In the Kitchen with Shorey (Rux Martin, $30, 208 pages, ISBN 9780544824393), it’s time for us to meet the next generation in the Pépin clan and share in the master chef’s essential kitchen wisdom alongside his 12-year-

to read and handily condensed, this guide covers 119 plants, all laid out in the first few pages as a visual table of contents. Each of the most common household plants gets a spread with basic tips on location, light, watering and care. Callouts suggest the most likely signs of distress followed by “Save It” advice, and a sidebar lists other plants with which to “Share the Care.” There are also roundups of the top five plants for your desk, bathroom, living room, low-light and sunny spots. I can think of no better housewarming gift, or dash of retail therapy, than a pretty plant and a copy of this book—just in case.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES

old granddaughter, Shorey. In this book, Pépin features dishes that are fun to make and place more emphasis on taste than on presentation. Pépin’s affection for his granddaughter, as abundant as his love of food, is evident in each of these recipes, ranging from hors d’oeuvres to desserts, all introduced with warm, personal header notes. There are cooking lessons embedded in this mix of classic French and family-friendly dishes as well: Soup with Vermicelle uses up all your leftover vegetable bits and salad greens; Arctic Char with Tomato can be cooked by simply covering the pan and allowing steam to do the work; garlic added to the cooking water for mashed potatoes adds flavor; and strawberries and mushrooms can be cut with an egg slicer.

LITTLE HOUSE LOVE Last year, my then-8-year-old daughter hit what I now think of as the Little House stage. She devoured the series, with me reading a few to her, and I was equally enchanted, having missed that stage in my own childhood. Marta McDowell’s The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Timber, $27.95, 390 pages, ISBN 9781604697278) opens up her world in a new way, with a focus on the diverse flora encountered and cultivated by the Ingalls family. Think of it as a deep dive into the real landscapes of that time—part geography, part history lesson and part naturalist guide to

4

In the introduction to City Farmhouse Style (Abrams, $35, 224 pages, ISBN 9781419726507), designer Kim Leggett describes her grandmother’s approach to decorating, which was really no style at all: “I believe it was more about originality and comfort and creating something that comes from the soul and the hands,” she writes. Of her own in-town apartment, she says, “I sought out old pieces with a storied past, mismatched tables and chairs, odd fragments that hung on the wall, and scraps that were never intended to be part of home décor in the first place.” For Leggett, today’s farmhouse style is one that “recognizes no boundaries. It embraces an eclectic mix of periods and aesthetics, combining the traditional farmhouse of decades ago with modern trends of today.” Here, Leggett provides beautiful examples, from a Gothic Revival farmhouse in Tennessee to Brooklyn brownstones and every kind of dwelling in between.

You’ll see how old and new can pair seamlessly and glean ideas for lighting, repurposing furniture, creating art from salvaged pieces and working with small spaces.

Even if you think you’re not a farmhouse type, prepare to dog-ear some pages.

YES, YOU CAN CAN In our new DIY world, easy, time-tested water bath canning should be on everyone’s end-ofsummer to-do list. September is the perfect time to capture the sun-drenched glory of the summer’s last fruit and vegetables. And who better than the makers of Ball canning products to show us how to do it? If you’re new to home canning, Ball Canning Back to Basics (Oxmoor House, $16.99, 192 pages, ISBN 9780848754525) is the perfect

practical guide, and even if you canned with Mom and Grandma, it’s a great refresher course. Before you slice that peach or pit that cherry, Ball Canning Back to Basics gives you an understanding of how canning actually works, the gear you’ll need and how to get started.

Pick from 100 classic recipes for jams, jellies, marmalades, fruit butters, tomato treats from sauces to salsas and chutneys, and crunchy brined and fresh-pack pickles. If you can boil water and follow foolproof recipes, you really can can.

TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS Getting dinner on the table at a decent hour was a motivating concern for Tieghan Gerard as a teenager. One of seven children in a happily chaotic family, she hoped that if she took on preparing dinner, they might eat before 9 p.m. Luckily for us, this led Gerard to become a recipe developer and award-winning food blogger.

Named for her blog, Half Baked Harvest Cookbook: Recipes from My Barn in the Mountains (Potter, $29.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780553496390) is her debut foray into print, with 125 delicious recipes, each served up with one of her stunning photographs. Gerard says she tends to take everything up a notch and enjoys adding her own twists to classics: Bacon Butter tops fluffy Apple Ricotta Pancakes; the Cuban Mojo sauce with mango for Pulled Pork Tacos is topped with a fried egg; Irish French Onion Soup is given an extra zing with Guinness; and a Chocolate Banana Cream Pie is made with coconut milk. Gerard’s collection of recipes is filled with delights for weekday nights and weekend revels.

Each month, BookPage e­ ditors share curated reading lists—our personal favorites, old and new.

Sharpen your pencils Teachers, books, dirty looks—it’s back-to-school season. Maybe your kids are returning to class, or maybe you’re a teacher steeling yourself for another year of bright young minds who don’t appreciate your lesson plan. When you’ve got a spare moment, check out some of our favorite university-set novels. There’s no better setting than a college campus for stirring up drama.

THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt Tartt’s 1992 debut not only established her as a writer to watch but also raised the high-water mark for contemporary collegiate thrillers. Tartt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 novel, The Goldfinch, sets her tale on a Bennington College-esque campus where a group of brilliant, wanton youths keeps deadly secrets. It’s part social satire, part psychological suspense, laced with literary and classical allusions.

THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach Don’t take the comparisons between Harbach’s debut and Moby-Dick lightly—and don’t let them deter you either. Set at a small liberal arts college near Lake Michigan, it explores the lives of several characters, in particular a newly recruited baseball shortstop. This tale of hope, failure, affection and attachment reads as leisurely as an afternoon Triple-A game, but it displays the thematic depth of an American classic.

Top book club picks!

THE HOLD LIST

EVERY LAST LIE Mary Kubica

An exhilarating thriller about a widow who learns the only thing scarier than her husband’s lies is the truth.

FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell Freshman year is tough, especially when you’re burdened with social anxiety. By writing fanfiction about a popular fantasy series called Simon Snow, 18-year-old Cath does her best to avoid dealing with being separated from her twin, the attention of a cute boy and the anti-fanfic opinions of her English professor. After reading this one, check out Rowell’s metafiction Carry On, which continues the oh-so-angsty tales of Simon Snow.

For fans of fast-paced domestic noirs LIE TO ME J.T. Ellison

THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides In simplest terms, Eugenides’ third novel (the first in 10 years after his Pulitzer-winning Middlesex) is a love triangle story. Soon-to-graduate Madeleine spurns the affections of her longtime friend Mitchell, instead falling hard for Leonard, a student in her semiotics seminar. Doomed lovers, spiritual quests, mental illness and more—it’s like a 19th-century Victorian novel for the modern era.

For fans of action-packed suspense

THE IDIOT by Elif Batuman This coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water tale adds a dash of the absurd to the campus novel genre. Filled with deadpan humor and unforgettable characters, Batuman’s semi-autobiographical debut is set in 1995, during endearingly awkward Selin’s freshman year at Harvard. Within this world, the nature of writing is changing—email is brand new—and so begins a tale of love, travel and stumbling through communication.

THIEF’S MARK Carla Neggers

Do we have a story for you!

BookClubbish.com

@BookClubbish

5 17_293_BookPage_BookClubbish_September.indd 1

7/14/17 12:19 PM

columns

WHODUNIT

BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Tracking down dirty secrets inside Switzerland’s banks It is difficult to imagine a more nerve-racking beginning to an adventure than a flight just above the treetops in wartime Europe with snipers below you firing at bombers above you, but that is precisely where Captain Billy Boyle finds himself at the outset of James R. Benn’s gripping World War II mystery The Devouring (Soho Crime, $26.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9781616957735). Billy and his associate, Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz, are en route to Switzerland to investigate the killing of a bank executive amid the systematic looting and subsequent laundering of concentration camp gold. Switzerland, neutral though it may be, will not provide a lot of sanctuary for them. The OSS, predecessor to the CIA, has launched Operation Safehaven to ensure that gold held by Nazi officials in Swiss banks will never be put toward funding a Fourth Reich.

There will be hell to pay if the Nazis

get wind of this, naturally. Within this chaotic milieu Billy and Kaz must conduct their investigation on the down low, assuming they can stay alive long enough to see it through. If you’re in need of a dose

British Secret Service during the height of the Cold War. Fifty-odd years later, he has been summoned out of his quiet retirement in Breton to come to London and explain his involvement in a clan-

of adrenaline, then look no further.

destine operation, code-named Windfall, to a bunch of people too young or too inexperienced to understand its ramifications. This encounter, and the events leading up to it, is chronicled in le Carré’s fascinating new novel, A Legacy of Spies (Viking, $28, 272 pages, ISBN 9780735225114). Guillam is an engaging first-person narrator imbued with insight and humor not dimmed one whit by age. And he uses his not inconsiderable skills as a raconteur to put a whole new spin on the events recounted in le Carré’s 1963 bestseller, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (a book you will most assuredly want to read, or reread, soon after this one).

EXPERT ESPIONAGE If John le Carré is to be believed, then the world of spy craft is very different from the cinematic exploits of James Bond. Take le Carré’s fictional Peter Guillam, for example, who came up through the

BookPage

®

TEXAS RANGER

Discover your next great book online

www.bookpage.com 6

Texas has a reputation as a lawand-order state, after a fashion, at least. And it is the “after a fashion” part that resonates with Darren Mathews, the African-American Texas Ranger who anchors Attica Locke’s atmospheric mystery Bluebird, Bluebird (Mulholland, $26, 320 pages, ISBN 9780316363297).

That is to say, if Mathews has to color outside the lines in pursuit of justice, then so be it. In the past week, two murders—both possible hate crimes—have rocked the tiny East Texas town of Lark. One victim is a prominent black lawyer from Chicago, the other a local young white waitress. Mathews is on suspension when the story opens, but he quickly worms his way into the investigation and, upon being

rebuked for this, plays his trump card: It would look really suspicious if the only black investigator were to be sidelined. Begrudgingly, the powers that be assign him to the case as the sole Texas Ranger investigator. In some ways, the case looks pretty cut and dried: out-of-town lawyer hooks up with local waitress; waitress’ husband (a possible member of the Aryan brotherhood) pulls the plug on both of them, either in person or by proxy. But the truth is much more convoluted, with its roots in age-old Southern racial tensions and modern drug warfare, and it’s all overlaid with a soundtrack of early and raw blues music.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY If you have never heard of a cobrador del frac, then don’t feel left out. Neither had I, and neither, I suspect, will more than a handful of Louise Penny’s readers prior to embarking on her latest suspense novel, Glass Houses (Minotaur, $28.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9781250066190). A cobrador del frac is a debt collector with roots in the Middle Ages; dressed in a top hat and tails, he stalks his prey, hovering always at the periphery of their vision, an unwelcome reminder of their indebtedness.

One such cobrador has stationed himself in the town square of Three Pines, Quebec—the object of his attentions unknown. And although cobradors are nonconfrontational by design, murder follows soon after, leaving Sûreté Chief Superintendent Gamache caught up in the center of a dilemma, trying to balance a homicide investigation with his months-long goal of shutting down a massive drug operation.

Gamache will face life-changing questions about the nature of guilt and innocence and the thin blue line separating law and conscience, leaving the reader contemplating these conundrums well after the final page has been turned.

columns

Sexy autumn reads you won’t want to miss!

Reunited at last Mary Jo Putney delivers a refreshing Regency-era romance in Once a Rebel (Zebra, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9781420140941), the second book in her Rogues Redeemed series. In England, childhood friends Callista Brooke and Gordon Audley try to elope to save Callista from an arranged marriage, but are caught by their fathers and

“Showalter makes romance sizzle on every page!”

“Morgan’s latest is a sensational chick-lit romance.”

—Jill Shalvis

—RT Book Reviews

“Intriguingly sexy.”

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—Lisa Renee Jones

—USATODAY.com

Pick up your copies today!

Harlequin.com

parted under ugly circumstances.

Fifteen years later, Gordon is on a mission to locate a widow trapped in Washington, D.C., during what’s now known as the War of 1812. To his delight, Callie is that widow, and she and Gordon are reunited.

They settle into their old friendship, ignoring the sparks of attraction. More dangers lie ahead as they fight to survive the burning of the city and locate Callie’s family. If the two persevere and return home to England, past and present will collide—and the love of a lifetime may finally be recognized. Filled with action and adventure and spiced with an intriguing glimpse of American history, Once a Rebel is not to be missed.

SUMMER LOVIN’ Soul mates get a second chance in Sarah Morgan’s latest New York City-set romantic comedy, Holiday in the Hamptons (HQN, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780373803996).

Felicity “Fliss” Knight made a mistake 10 years ago, and it shows up in Manhattan to haunt her in the form of her ex-husband, veterinarian Seth Carlyle. In order to avoid him, she hastens to the Hamptons to help her grandmother recover from an accident. But Seth pops up there, too, and though she tries to pass herself off as her twin sister, Harriet, her ex isn’t buying it. And

8 17_282_BookPage_HQN_FallReads.indd 1

ROMANCE B Y C H R I S T I E R I D G WAY

7/20/17 2:27 PM

he isn’t letting her run away from him again either.

Their marriage ended abruptly, and both blame themselves. In Seth’s mind, now is the time to heal the aching wound and see if they can find a future.

It’s what his heart wants— and he thinks she might still love him, too. Morgan’s latest is a tender, enjoyable tale of a couple confronting their past and learning to let go of old hurts to find new happiness.

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE Gripping action meets fiery passion in Going Dark (Berkley, $7.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780399587702)

by Monica McCarty. Known for her historical romances, McCarty dives into contemporary suspense with aplomb. Marine ecologist Annie Henderson travels to the Western Isles of Scotland to protest offshore drilling. During her preparations, she meets Dan, a taciturn boat captain who is both mysterious and strangely compelling. When Annie’s trust in the wrong people steers her toward disaster, it’s the sexy waterman who rescues her and protects her on the run. As they survive one near miss after another, Annie realizes that her rescuer is someone special—his real name is Dean Baylor, and he’s the leader of a Navy SEAL team presumed to be killed in action.

Dean is in even more danger than Annie, and during their search for answers, he’s painfully aware that his involvement with a wanted woman threatens the surviving members of his team and their goal to uncover who set them up. The simplest solution for the romantic pair is to part forever, but it may be too late. Going Dark is an energetic, entertaining and highly recommended read.

NEW FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

SOME SECRETS RUN SO DEEP

Author Photos © Bruce Wilder

THEY’RE WORTH KILLING FOR.

“A particularly ENJOYABLE TREAT for loyal fans and curious new readers alike.”—Booklist MAKE

YOUR PARTNER IN CRIME.

ENTER TO WIN A SIGNED COPY! E N TE R AT B OOK PA GE .C OM/C ONTE S TS

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. OPEN ONLY TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES AND D.C. WHO ARE AGE 21 OR OLDER AND OF THE LEGAL AGE OF MAJORITY. ENTRY PERIOD BEGINS AT 12:00 AM (ET) ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 AND ENDS AT 11:59 PM ET ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2017. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. FOR FULL OFFICIAL RULES, VISIT WWW.BOOKPAGE.COM/CONTESTS. SPONSORED BY ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10010.

www.facebook.com/JDRobbAuthor

columns

AUDIO

BY SUKEY HOWARD

Spying on Big Brother The tale of the defector—his background, his reasons for betraying country and kin—is often the stuff of good spy novels. Put that “stuff” in the hands of a master weaver of intrigue like Joseph Kanon, and you have a sure winner, with all the intricate betrayals, feints and deceptions that agents have used since the beginning of spookdom. His latest, Defectors (Simon & Schuster Audio, 9.5 hours), perfectly narrated by John Bedford Lloyd, is set in 1961, when the Cold War was hot and paranoia

was high. Simon Weeks is in Moscow to see his older brother, Frank, whose defection to the Soviets a dozen years earlier was a Philby-esque cause célèbre. Now, with KGB approval, Frank has written a memoir, which Simon, a New York publisher, is here to edit—or so it seems. Frank and Simon always enjoyed a close relationship, and initially, their bond remains strong. But as the ever-charming Frank draws his brother into his conspiratorial web, Simon must reassess his brother’s motives and look for the double double-cross.

It’s a brilliant portrait of the airless expat-spy scene and of the subversion of brotherly love.

MONEY MATTERS When Anil Jha sells his website for $20 million, he, his wife and their 20-something son scrambling to get an MBA in America are catapulted into a new life. They’re not crazy, Kevin-Kwan rich, but the family’s move from their noisy, nosey-neighbored old apartment block in East Delhi to a mini-mansion in a newer lush, plush suburb puts them in a world of competitive pretension that’s foreign and unsettling to their middle-class mores. Their nearest new neighbors have a copy of the Sistine

Chapel ceiling, with Adam in black shorts, painted in the foyer!

Diksha Basu’s debut novel, The Windfall (Random House Audio, 10.5 hours), follows the Jhas’ leap into the 1 percent with gentle humor and keenly observed detail, offering a window into life in contemporary India and into the universal problems, pressures and panic that can come with sudden wealth.

Soneela Nankani’s lovely, light Indian accent is perfectly suited to this warm comedy of manners.

Welcome to Happily Inc, a wedding destination founded on a fairy tale!

Two touching modern fairy tales that won’t let go of your heart— from the bestselling author of the Fool’s Gold romances.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO Al Franken is funny and irreverent; he can’t help it. But he’s managed to keep his humor and gift for satire under control for the last nine years. When he ran for the Senate, his staff, advisers and anyone else he bumped into told him to cool the “Saturday Night Live” shtick, to break his funny bone and zip his comedic lip. “Be a workhorse not a show horse” was his new mantra. He did it, becoming an exemplary senator for Minnesota and a stalwart champion of progressive causes. In his seventh and most autobiographical book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (Hachette Audio, 12 hours), Franken serves up the story of his life so far: his happy middle-class childhood in a Minneapolis suburb, his heady SNL days, his run for office and win by the narrowest margin in Senate history, and his nine years as a senator. Franken does his own narration, and that’s a real treat. He admits that his inner comedian never really shut down, and the jokes and comic takes here are woven into a strong, serious look at America and American politics today.

Available now!

Pick up your copy today!

Coming September 26 SusanMallery.com • Harlequin.com

11 17_270_BookPage_YouSayItFirst_2.indd 1

6/29/17 11:06 AM

meet JOYCE MAYNARD

the title of your new book?

Q: What’s

Q: Describe the book in one sentence.

one piece of advice would you give to a person facing a Q: What

painful ordeal like yours?

were single for 25 years before you remarried.What do you Q: You wish you could tell your younger self about love and marriage?

your favorite memory of Jim? Q: What’s

do you hope readers will take away from this book?

Q: What

Q: Words to live by?

THE BEST OF US At the age of 59, after being single for almost 25 years, Joyce Maynard married Jim, “the first true partner I had ever known.” Just after their one-year wedding anniversary, Jim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Maynard recounts the 19 months that followed in a poignant and life-affirming memoir, The Best of Us (Bloomsbury, $27, 448 pages, ISBN 9781635570342). The author of 16 books, including the novel Labor Day, Maynard lives in Lafayette, California.

12

columns

WELL READ

BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

A biographer’s memoir What inspires, or dare say, compels someone to become a literary biographer? Ever perched like some highbrow voyeur on the sidelines, required to spend countless hours rooting through dusty letters and journals in far-flung archives, perhaps tracking down and interviewing the disgruntled friends, colleagues or ex-wives of authors— these are hardly the components of the glamorous life. And yet, we are grateful to the men and women who choose to take on these thankless tasks so that the rest of us can better understand the writers whose work we love. James Atlas is one such indefatigable literary detective, the author of critically admired biographies of Saul Bellow and, most notably, Delmore Schwartz—a book, begun when Atlas was still in his mid-20s, that would be nominated for the National Book Award and significantly help restore the poet to the canon.

In his charming new memoir, The Shadow in the Garden (Pantheon, $28.95, 400 pages, ISBN 9781101871690), Atlas recounts his lifelong adventures as a biographer. “Adventures” might seem an odd word choice, but indeed, Atlas has had his share over the 40-some years he has been plying the trade. As a young man, delving into Schwartz’s life with only a partial idea of what he was doing, Atlas was nonetheless able to meet many of his fast-vanishing heroes from the New York literary world who had inspired him to become a critic in the first place: Philip Rahv, Dwight Macdonald, Alfred Kazin— giants who held sway over American culture in a bygone, arguably more literate age. Atlas pointedly takes umbrage with some forgotten novelist’s claim that no one grows up wanting to be a literary critic, declaring quite emphatically that from an early age he actually did

want to be just that.

As Atlas leads us through his own experiences as a biographer, he makes detours into the lives and writings of those biographers who came before him—Plutarch, James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle—to more deeply explore the art of biography itself.

And it clearly is an art, for a great literary biography (Atlas singles out Richard Holmes’ Shelley: The Pursuit) can, and ideally should, sing with the narrative resonance of the great novels or poems that its subject produced. It should capture its subject’s very soul. Biography is also a highly mutable art form, potentially victim to shifting tastes and the ever-present possibility of new information surfacing that could change everything.

Atlas has clearly loved his life as a biographer. Even when facing a hostile or nonforthcoming interview, he is keenly aware of his good fortune in getting the chance to meet someone An arresting who was there book, at once in the trenchpersonal and es with his literary idols. broad in its Atlas’ own purview. intelligence and wit is as pervasive and persuasive as his infectious enthusiasm. The book is rife with footnotes (they average out to almost one per page), and while these often provide fascinating additional information, many of them feel unnecessary and slow down the reading of the main narrative. That is a minor quibble, though. The Shadow in the Garden is an arresting book, at once personal and broad in its purview.

And by exploring the art of biography—why he writes it and why we read it—Atlas bares his own soul a bit, too. “The specialty you choose is your own disease,” he writes, borrowing an adage from psychiatry. “If so, I had chosen my subject wisely.”

BOOK CLUBS

BY JULIE HALE

Through the years Peter Ho Davies’ acclaimed second novel, The Fortunes (Mariner, $14.99, 288 pages, ISBN 9781328745484), is an interconnected quartet of stories exploring the lives of Chinese people in America. Ah Ling arrives in California from China in the mid-1800s.

When he becomes valet to railroad magnate Charles Crocker, Ling inspires a surge in the hiring of Chinese workers. During the 1930s, Chinese actress Anna May Wong fights stereotypes in Hollywood and struggles to make a name for

herself. In 1982 Detroit, Vincent Chin meets a tragic end, becoming an inspirational figure for the Asian-American community. The book’s fourth main character, John Ling Smith, a writer who is half Chinese, travels with his wife to modern-day China to adopt a baby—a journey that provides closure for the novel. Davies writes convincingly from these varied perspectives, delivering a beautifully wrought account of Chinese and Chinese-American culture.

The novel is at once a compelling read and a timely chronicle of the immigrant experience.

ines the weaknesses in the American healthcare system when it comes to providing for the aging and the terminally ill. He also notes improvements in the ways doctors communicate with patients who must make tough choices about treatments and care facilities. Gawande writes about sensitive topics in a manner that’s probing yet sympathetic. As usual, his delivery is lucid and his prose elegant. He has created a discerning, well-rounded survey of an all-too-relevant topic. This important book is a must-read, given today’s healthcare climate.

Fresh New Reads for Fall

The Daughters of Ireland

by Santa Montefiore “Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore.”

—Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The Dress in the Window

by Sophia Grant

“A remarkable story of sewing, sisterhood, reinvention, and redemption.”

—Juliet Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS

Eowyn Ivey’s masterfully crafted second novel, To the Bright Edge of the World (Back Bay, $16.99, 432 pages, ISBN 9780316242837), is told largely through a pair of interwoven journals. The diary of Colonel Allen Forrester documents the 1885 expedition he leads to Alaska’s Wolverine River. The other journal is written by Allen’s wife, Sophie, who lives in Vancouver while he is gone. During their separation, each forms new ways of looking at the world. Sophie, who suffers OPEN HEART a miscarriage, finds an outlet in In his compassionate nonficphotography. Allen, meanwhile, tion book Being Mortal: Medicine contends with the challenges of the expedition and finds a fresh—and and What Matters in the End (Picador, $16, 304 pages, ISBN magical—intensity in the experience of living. Both diaries make 9781250076229), surgeon and celebrated author Atul Gawande their way into contemporary times explores aging, death and the ways through Allen’s great-nephew Walt, in which Americans deal with both. who donates them to a museum, and the contrast between the past Gawande weaves anecdotes from of the journals and the present day his work with dying patients and is decidedly poignant. Ivey’s asstories of his family members into a compelling study of the medical sured novel brims with adventure, industry’s handling of end-of-life history and a little bit of surrealissues. Through interviews with ism, proving that she’s a writer to healthcare professionals, he exam- watch.

The Other Alcott

by Elise Hooper “The Other Alcott is a delightful and memorable debut.”

— Sarah Jio, New York Times bestselling author

Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

“Gone Girl meets The X-Files, a mesmerizing dive into the changeling depths of memory and grief.”

—Carrie La Seur, author of The Home Place

@Morrow_PB

@bookclubgirl

William Morrow

Book Club Girl

13

cover story

SALMAN RUSHDIE

Real people in a cartoonish land

O

ne of the many surprises of Salman Rushdie’s beguiling 14th work of fiction, The Golden House, is that it marks his return to realism.

“My previous novel [Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015)] had been so elaborately fabulist that I thought I had probably pushed that stuff as far as it can go. So the idea was to go in a completely different direction,” Rushdie explains during a call to his home not far from New York City’s Gramercy Park.

Rushdie, who turned 70 in June, has lived in New York for more than 20 years. Since his divorce from television personality Padma Lakshmi in 2007, he has lived alone. His two adult sons live in London, where Rushdie spent much of his early career, and he sees them frequently. He describes his in-home writing studio, where he is taking the call from BookPage, as having floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a working but fragile Remington Rand typewriter (he actually writes in notebooks and on a computer), a very old photograph of the house where he grew up in Bombay and a window that looks out on “big New York trees.”

It was not only the desire to move in a new direction that led

THE GOLDEN HOUSE

By Salman Rushdie

Random House, $28.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780399592805, audio, eBook available

SATIRICAL FICTION

14

Rushdie to a realistic approach to the novel, it was the material itself—the story of the violent, tragic demise of the Golden family, headed by the mysterious, aging patriarch Nero Golden.

“There’s a place for flying carpets,” Rushdie says, laughing, “but, I thought, not in this book. Very often what happens is that I’ll get a kernel of an idea; bits and pieces of a storyline will sit with me for quite a long time. The more I understood Nero’s history and his world, the more I thought this just needs to be told straight.”

Realism, Rushdie notes, is a “broad church,” big enough to include at one end the abstemious prose of Raymond Carver and at the other end the lyricism of James Joyce. In this novel, Rushdie’s own realistic pew seems to be situated in a stylistically inventive aisle where satire and tragedy sit arm in arm.

The action of the novel mostly unfolds in the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens, a place Rushdie describes as “a private, magic little place in the middle of downtown New York.” The houses around the Gardens share an open, communal backyard. “There is something wonderfully theatrical about it as a kind of stage for the action. It has a pleasingly Rear Window echo, where everybody could look out at everybody else’s lives.”

Rushdie’s reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic is hardly casual, as his passion for film is wellknown. As a young man he reportedly seriously considered a career in the movies before determining to become a novelist. And he did write the screenplay for the movie of his Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight’s Children.

In The Golden House, the narrator is René Unterlinden, a young filmmaker and a resident of the Gardens. René decides to make the Goldens the subject of a documen-

tary and becomes dangerously close to Nero, his three sons—Petronius, Apuleius and Dionysus—and to Nero’s second wife, Vasilisa, a young, calculatingly ambitious Russian émigré, whose entry into the household is a catalyst for the tragic events that ensue.

“The moment I realized that René was going to be a young filmmaker, that released me into a whole lot of stuff that I am pleased to get into the book,” “The story Rushdie says.

“The fiddling of New York around with is the story form and of . . . people allowing bits of it to shape coming from into little elsewhere, screenplays, and I thought for example.

It’s the first that’s a story that I can tell.” time in my fiction that I found a way of doing that. When I was first thinking about the book, I thought René would just be a kind of I Am a Camera point of view. But he gradually became more and more central to the story. In a strange way it became as much his book as the Goldens’.”

Readers of Rushdie’s other novels know how stylistically playful he can be and how wide the range of knowledge and references he incorporates into the subflooring of his novels. Here, in addition to film references, he manages to work in literature (of course!), popular and classical music, art, identity politics and ancient Roman history.

© RANDALL SLAVIN

INTERVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE

“I’m afraid this is just the way my mind works. This is just the garbage in my head,” he says, laughing. “It comes out like this because it’s me doing the writing. But I actually do have a lifelong interest in ancient Rome. Certainly not now, but at better moments in America’s recent past, New York has felt like a kind of incarnation of Rome.”

Rushdie, who has spent his life in three gigantic metropolises—Bombay, London and New York—clearly loves the city where he now lives.

He became a United States citizen and voted in his first presidential election in 2016. He talks about his pleasure in walking widely in Manhattan. The New York he portrays in The Golden House is a city of immigrants. “People who are bornand-raised New Yorkers are very proud of the fact. And rightly so,” he says. “That’s the kind of New York novel that is not mine to write.

But I know that most of us who live here were not born here. So much of the story of New York is the story of arrival, the story of people coming from elsewhere, and I thought that’s a story that I can tell. This was a very, very deliberate attempt to write a sort of immigrant novel of New York.”

Rushdie says one of the biggest risks he took in writing the novel was to place the action at a contemporaneous moment in American life. “The physical background

is the Gardens, but the social background is America in these last eight years or so. There is something aesthetically, formally satisfying to move from a moment of optimism and hope of eight years ago to a moment that seems to me the very opposite. And there is something dangerous about writing very close to the contemporary moment. If you get it right, it gives people a kind of recognition that yes, the world is like that now.”

The contemporary world—at least, the contemporary social/ political world Rushdie satirically portrays—is cartoonish. Contrasted with the sonorous tragedy of the Goldens is the buffoonery of national politics. Rushdie writes of Hillary Clinton as a Batwoman character and Donald Trump as a green-haired cackler—the Joker.

“What I was trying to say is that there’s a deterioration. Many people have talked about the reality show aspect of our current politics. I see that. And I also see that the movies have been taken over by cartoons, by Marvel and Dell. It struck me that one way to describe what is going on is to say that America has succumbed to a comic book vision of itself.”

Rushdie continues: “One thing that I think anyone who is a reader of fiction knows is that human nature is complex. Human nature is not homogeneous. It’s heterogeneous and contains many contradictory, even irreconcilable, elements. In that way, the more broadly we understand human nature, the easier it is to find common ground with other people.”

Asked then about a recurrent question in the novel—can people be both good and bad at the same time?—Rushdie says, “The obvious answer is yes. Most of us do things which at some point people in our lives would describe as bad things to have done. And many of us do things that people will see as good things to have done. We’re all broken and confused and contradictory. This ought to be a no-brainer.

But we live in a cartoon universe.

I quite openly wanted to reopen the subject about the complexity of human nature. People are not cartoons.”

15

features

CELESTE NG

The pleasure of watching it burn

A

t first glance, Celeste Ng (pronounced “ing”) may look unassuming, but make no mistake, this petite, bright-eyed writer is a veritable fireball. She starts her books with a bang.

Ng’s narratives reveal families plagued by delicately interwoven secrets and misunderstandings that ultimately yield tragedy.

Her debut bestseller, Everything I Never Told You (2014), begins with devastating news for a Chinese-American family. Her latest novel, the mesmerizing Little Fires Everywhere, starts with an equally provocative lead: “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.”

“That was fun,” Ng says with a grin, referring to her new novel’s incendiary beginning. “In literary fiction, you don’t often get to have explosions. If you think about action movies, Michael Bay gets to blow everything up. And then there are the quiet indie films, and that’s what literary fiction is. So it was fun to get to do that.”

As we talk on a hot summer morning, Ng sits in the corner of a dark cafe near Harvard University, her alma mater. She lives near Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and soon-to-be

LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE

By Celeste Ng

Penguin Press, $27, 352 pages ISBN 9780735224292, audio, eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

16

7-year-old son. The initial idea for Little Fires Everywhere was sparked by a church fire in Cambridge in 2009. “That gave me the idea of a literary fire that might burn everything to the ground,” Ng recalls. She speaks crisply and quickly, her mind overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm.

While Everything I Never Told You takes place in 1970s smalltown Ohio, Ng sets her latest novel in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a wealthy, planned community that prides itself on educational achievement and diversity. Ng spent most of her childhood there, experiencing “that kind of blissful childhood that people think of, where you ride your bike and there are lots of parks and everybody has a front lawn.”

It’s hardly a haven for family arsonists, however.

“I had the idea of a dysfunctional family,” Ng explains. “I started thinking that there’s this one black sheep who is at odds with everything that the family and the community are aligning themselves with. What’s going to happen? How far is that tension going to go?”

Ng’s saga takes place in 1997-98, when Ng herself was a senior in high school, making her the same age as her studious, Yale-bound character, Lexie, the oldest of the four Richardson children. Lexie’s siblings include handsome athlete Trip (a junior); quiet, reflective Moody (a sophomore); and wild Izzy, the fire starter.

Both of Ng’s novels focus on the roles of mothers and daughters and the relationships between the two, but her new book includes a twist. “A lot of times I feel that mothers are supposed to be peacemakers who put out all of the fires,” Ng says, “but in this book, they’re inciting all of the fires.”

At center ring of these mother wars are Mrs. Richardson—a frustrated career woman, local reporter and busybody—and Mia Warren,

an artist and single mother who lives hand to mouth and moves into a rental property belonging to the Richardsons.

Mia and her teenage daughter, Pearl, soon befriend and infiltrate the Richardson family, with everyone helping to stoke the oncoming firestorm. Ng sees no heroes or villains in the story, just women acting “out of fear of losing their children, especially their daughters.”

The result is a deftly woven plot that examines a “Mothers are multitude supposed to be of issues, peacemakers . . . including class, but in this book, wealth, they’re inciting artistic all of the fires.” vision, abortion, race, prejudice and cultural privilege. While all of this could be handled in a heavy-handed way, rest assured that in Ng’s talented hands, the issues arise organically.

Ng’s parents, both scientists, emigrated in their early 20s from Hong Kong to the United States, where they married, pursued graduate studies and raised two daughters.

The family moved from Pittsburgh to Shaker Heights just before Ng turned 10, when her father began working at NASA’s Lewis Research Center and her mom began teaching chemistry and conducting research at Cleveland State University. The move proved to be transformative for Ng. “It was the first time that I had been in a place that wasn’t basically completely white, where I was the only nonwhite person,” Ng says. “Before, in my elementary school, there was one black girl,

© KEVIN DAY PHOTOGRAPHY

INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY

one girl who was Jewish and one Asian girl, who was me.”

A woman ahead of her time, Ng’s mother tried to broaden her daughter’s cultural perspectives through books. “If there was a book that came out in the ’80s or ’90s that has to do with anything in East Asia, I probably had it,” Ng says, laughing.

While race was at the forefront of her first novel, it’s also an important subplot in Little Fires Everywhere, concerning a legal battle between a young Chinese immigrant mom who abandons her baby and a white couple who tries to adopt her child.

Ng, who describes her husband as a “tall white guy,” says she didn’t plan to write about this topic. “But because I’m in a mixed-race marriage and have a biracial child, these issues are just things that are on my mind,” she says. “In Little Fires Everywhere, I wanted to write about it from a different angle. I wanted to show the ways that race is not just an issue for nonwhite people; it’s an issue for everybody.”

As for her next novel, Ng is contemplating two “wildly divergent ideas” and has yet to settle on one. “The best analogy I have is that if you’re walking around a big walled city, you need to keep going around it until you can find a gate.

I’m kind of walking around and trying to find where the gate is.”

No doubt she’ll find it, and readers will follow her in.

STRONG WOMEN

MAKE HISTORY...

Alexander

Hamilton’s wife, Eliza is a fascinating heroine and key figure in one of the most gripping periods in American history.

Here is her story...

The Rogues Redeemed Series

H

istorical romance legend Mary Jo Putney’s

The Seven Brides for Seven Scotsmen Series

“stunning, riveting series” (—LIBRARY JOURNAL)

“I, Eliza Hamilton is going to be your next Hamilton obsession.”

—Bustle.com

T

he New York Times bestselling author’s new series stars the Scottish MacEnroy brothers who’ve come to America for new beginnings... and love.

continues, combining the perfect amount of lush history with dangerous passion.

The 18th Century The Brides of Beadwell Series

The Sutherlands Series

Based on an actual

account by Giacomo Casanova, this lush tale set in Venice offers a little-known portrait of the writer as a young man, and his secret wife’s journey through love and loss to redemption.

T

his new Regency set series trails two sought-after sisters, a slew of suitors—and their vows to hold out for true love.

A

delightful new historical romance series from a Golden Heart winner follows women who’ll risk it all for love.

The 20th Century S

hocking secrets and betrayals collide as two stories intertwine across decades in the highly anticipated new book from the author of What She Left Behind.

“Fans buy book after book because they know they’ll find themselves vividly transported into the past.”

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The Verity Kent Mystery Series

T

he Great War is over, but in this captivating new series from award-winning author Anna Lee Huber, one young widow discovers the real intrigue has only just begun…

ENSINGTONBOOKS.COM

AVA I L A B L E E V E RY W H E R E B O O K S A R E S O L D

The Art Deco Mystery Series

While working for Mayor LaGuardia during the Great Depression in New York City, plucky Lane Sanders must unravel a mystery that reveals decades-old secrets from her own past.

reviews

FICTION

T PI OP CK

is such a writer. After reading his latest, Midwinter Break, you won’t wonder why he was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his 1997 novel, Grace Notes. This tale of two ordinary pensioners satisfies in ways that a really good book THE WORLD OF TOMORROW should: The characters are memorable, the writing is luminous and REVIEW BY TOM DEIGNAN you never want it to end.

New York City on the cusp of World War II is brought to glorious, Did I say the couple in the story messy life in Brendan Mathews’ sprawling debut saga. The Dempsey is ordinary? They are and they brothers—Francis, Michael and Martin—all left Ireland under clouds aren’t. There’s Gerry Gilmore, who of trouble. But Martin has started a new life in New York, marrying was an architect, and his wife, into a powerful political family, with ambitions to become a groundStella, a former schoolteacher. breaking jazz musician. The trouble begins when his brothers come They live in Glasgow, Scotland, calling, and it becomes clear that the past is about to catch up with the and when the book opens they’re Dempsey clan. preparing to go on a four-day winMathews deftly handles a large cast of characters in The World of ter vacation to Amsterdam. Stella Tomorrow. On a collision course with the Dempseys is an IRA killer, is a font of goodness: interested, an ambitious photographer fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe and a quietly intelligent, brimful of love

By Brendan Mathews troubled heiress, among others. Perhaps the most vibrant character of and compassion. Gerry is smart Little, Brown, $28, 560 pages all, however, is New York itself. In hard-boiled prose that ranges from and a bit stodgy. He’s funny and ISBN 9780316382199, audio, eBook available gossipy to poetic, Mathews takes us from humble Bronx homes to loves his wife. He’s also an alcoholrowdy Manhattan jazz clubs, from grimy back alleys to palatial Fifth ic. One of the reasons they’re going DEBUT FICTION Avenue estates. to Amsterdam is for Stella to figure Looming over these interconnected lives is the 1939 World’s Fair, out whether she can keep on living held in Queens and seen by many as a light of hope in an increasingly dark world. But just as Old-World with him. It’s a midwinter break in troubles follow Mathews’ immigrants to the New World, so will the war in Europe inevitably involve Amermore ways than one. ica. Until then, the Dempsey brothers—and all of the characters who’ve become entangled in their lives— MacLaverty is superb when it may have only one choice: kill or be killed. comes to revealing the minutiae of The World of Tomorrow is a sweeping, impressive accomplishment. Perhaps it could have been 50 or so a long-married couple’s life: Stella pages shorter, and the ghostly appearance of an Irish literary icon may push past the cusp of believability. remembering to put in her eye Still, Mathews has written an insightful immigrant epic, not to mention a first-class literary thriller. drops to ease her dry eyes; their custom of chastely kissing in elevators; their bedtime rituals; Gerry two main characters. Like Krauss’ Readers can be forgiven for thinking up ways to hide how FOREST DARK previous books Great House and wondering how much of the much he’s drinking, even though The History of Love, Forest Dark fictional Nicole’s storyline is based the perceptive Stella knows the

By Nicole Krauss on Krauss’ own relationship with slowly builds to a powerful emotruth. MacLaverty layers on these Harper $27.99, 304 pages former husband (and fellow writer) tional crescendo and an ending particulars until we come to deeply ISBN 9780062430991 Jonathan Safran Foer, with whom that feels revelatory. know these people. The reader Audio, eBook available Haunting and reflective, poetic she has two children. But it isn’t begins to think, I hope nothing long before the absorbing fictional and wise, this is another masterful happens that’ll make me not love LITERARY FICTION world Krauss has created drowns work from one of America’s best them! Nothing does, but the reader out any literary gossip. Both writers. does learn of the primal wound Epstein and Nicole encounter enig— T R I S H A P I N G that knocked this relationship just matic strangers who seduce them Nicole Krauss opens her chala bit askew. It happened early in lenging and illuminating fourth with stories: Epstein discovers their marriage, was unforgivably MIDWINTER BREAK novel, Forest Dark, with a disaphe might have ties to the biblical atrocious and not in any way their King David, while Nicole is given a pearance. Jules Epstein, a wealthy, fault. Yet it may have set Gerry to

By Bernard elderly Manhattanite, returns to his suitcase that is said to contain lost his drinking problem and certainly MacLaverty manuscripts of Franz Kafka. These birth city of Tel Aviv on a mysteritroubled Stella’s strong Catholic Norton $24.95, 208 pages ous mission—and vanishes withrevelations place both characters faith.

ISBN 9780393609622 out a trace. In a parallel storyline, a on surprising trajectories.

Midwinter Break is a slim book, Audio, eBook available Though the story at times might novelist and mother of two named which proves you don’t have to Nicole travels to Tel Aviv, hoping to feel meandering, Krauss is always write a Middlemarch-esque doorLITERARY FICTION disappear into fiction. At home in in control. The myriad literary allustopper to produce a masterpiece. sions and her ruminations on the Brooklyn, she’s in a creative slump This quietly passionate, knowing and a foundering marriage, and nature of story and on boundaries It takes a brilliant writer indeed novel is bound to be read and thinks a change of scene might of all sorts—including those of to spin the straw of everyday life savored for years to come. reality—deepen the journeys of her into gold, and Bernard MacLaverty turn things around.

—ARLENE MCKANIC

A pulsating prewar New York

18

FICTION YOUNG JANE YOUNG

By Gabrielle Zevin Algonquin $26.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781616205041 Audio, eBook available

POPULAR FICTION

to develop nonlinearly. She uses brilliantly unusual formats, such as a series of outgoing emails to a pen pal as a way for a precocious teen to speak candidly. The final section is told through a playful choose-your-own-ending format, which, tellingly, only provides one choice—a simple yet profound way to look upon the past.

—LESLIE HINSON

From bestselling novelist Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry) comes a fresh take on a classic theme. Young Jane Young features witty yet compassionate storytelling from four women at different stages of their lives, each relating to the same event that uprooted them in profound and personal ways.

Twenty-year-old Aviva Grossman is a congressional intern in South Florida with a budding career in politics. When her affair with a married congressman is discovered, her name is smeared across media outlets nationwide. In a final display of their uneven power dynamic, the blame of the affair disproportionately falls on Aviva.

The congressman is consistently re-elected, while Aviva struggles to find work even out of state. The scope of her transgressions would never have tarnished her entire adult life if not for the unfortunate timing of the ubiquity of the internet and an anonymous (albeit transparent) blog she kept of the affair. Drawing appropriate parallels to Hester Prynne, Aviva decides to flee South Florida to a remote town in Maine, in the hope of beginning a new life on her own terms.

Through the relatable, entertaining perspectives of Aviva, her mother, Aviva’s teen daughter and the congressman’s wife, Zevin presents a complex and intelligent story without becoming dense. The novel’s readability does nothing to diminish the quality of its themes.

The feminist message is straightforward, from its overt discussion of the topic to the presentation of its male characters, who are the supporting cast to a group of strong, unforgettable leading women.

Zevin works creatively with arrangement, allowing the story

THE CHILD FINDER

By Rene Denfeld Harper $25.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780062659057 Audio, eBook available

SUSPENSE

The Child Finder, Rene Denfeld’s second novel and her most personal to date, is a harrowing story about a young girl living in captivity and the one woman who could possibly find her and bring her home. Naomi Cottle, the titular heroine, has a knack for locating missing children. She’s found 30 of them—but not all of them alive.

Her latest case brings her to the chilling remoteness of Oregon’s mountainous Skookum National Forest, where three years earlier, Madison Culver went missing at the age of 5 while looking for a Christmas tree with her family. Previous search-and-rescue attempts have all failed, largely due to the vast terrain and ice-cold temperatures. But Naomi is not one to give up, and as her investigation proceeds, she believes that Madison’s disappearance can only be the result of an abduction.

Naomi’s personal journey from foster child to adulthood parallels her search for Madison. As Naomi’s fears and sources of determination come to light, the narrative also dips into Madison’s mind, allowing readers to experience her terrifying ordeal at the hands of her captor, known only as Mr. B. Both narratives are expertly intertwined into a deeply moving story of survival and hope.

Denfeld writes in part from personal experience. Her stepfa-

spotlight

WIVES’ TALES

BY LAUREN BUFFERD

Fissures in wedlock

L

ove, fidelity, jealousy and desire are some of the issues explored in two new novels about marriage—one by a seasoned writer known for her brevity and psychological portraits, the other a debut by one of Nigeria’s freshest voices.

Both books examine the easy power of sexual desire and the troubled untangling of domestic ties. And despite the differences in time and place, both novels feature protagonists with a loneliness at their core—acutely aware of what divides them from their family and friends.

Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca may be the ultimate second-wife story, and Lily Tuck uses it as a touchstone for her seventh novel.

Sisters (Atlantic Monthly, $20, 176 pages, ISBN 9780802127112) relates a very personal story of an unnamed narrator, her family—including her husband and stepchildren—and the all-tooreal presence of her husband’s first wife known only as she. It is she that the narrator is fixated on, her marriage, her mothering style, her aptitude at the piano, even her dog. Nothing in the narrator’s experience can equal her husband’s first marriage, his life with her in France, even his affair and subsequent divorce.

With a mixture of curiosity, envy and compulsion, the narrator’s preoccupation with her threatens all current relationships, not just with her husband but with his son and daughter as well.

Tuck eschews a climactic confrontation and prefers to quietly highlight the damage caused by obsession, exposing the risks of paying back betrayal with betrayal. Though the conclusion feels abrupt, the story is elegantly told and the portrait of a marriage unflinching.

Set against the turbulent

politics of Nigeria in the 1980s, Ayobami Adebayo’s debut, Stay with Me (Knopf, $25.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780451494603), tells the story of a marriage that frays under the forces of fidelity and fertility. Yejide and Akin met and fell in love at university. Four years after they married, Yejide is running a successful salon, and Akin is comfortably employed as well. But they remain childless. The couple tries fertility doctors, healers, pilgrimages and charms until, under the pressure of Nigerian ideals of masculinity, Akin’s family insists he take a second wife, going so far as to bring the young woman to their home. To say this causes havoc would be an understatement. Yet, when Yejide finally does get pregnant, the results take an enormous toll on the couple.

Though the tragedies of Stay with Me are melodramatic in scope, Adebayo displays a quiet empathy when the couple confronts the truth of their fertility problems and struggle with sickle cell anemia (an enormous problem in Nigeria, where one in four people is infected). Stay with Me offers a unique look at a couple coping with biological forces that are out of their control and a marriage that is tested almost beyond endurance.

Though very different in style, scope and setting, these two novels are a welcome addition to the exploration of marriage in fiction, examining the boundaries and the limitlessness of love between two—or even three—people.

19

reviews ther was a sexual predator, and she has adopted three kids from foster care. She’s worked as a death penalty investigator and brings depth and understanding to the victims of such crimes as well as the perpetrators.

The Child Finder is a chillingly good read that will stay with you long after you close the book.

—G. ROBERT FRAZIER

SING, UNBURIED, SING

By Jesmyn Ward

Scribner $26, 304 pages ISBN 9781501126062 Audio, eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

From the opening pages of Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward’s (Salvage the Bones) new novel, you know you’re in for a unique experience among the pecan trees and dusty roads of rural Mississippi. This intricately layered story combines mystical elements with a brutal view of racial tensions in the modern-day American South.

Ward shifts perspective among three characters: 13-year-old mixed-race boy Jojo, who lives with his mother and toddler sister, Kayla, in the home of his black grandparents, Mam and Pop; Leonie, Jojo’s black mother, who struggles with drug addiction and sees visions of her murdered brother; and Richie, a young boy who died decades earlier and whom 15-yearold Pop knew when they were at Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

Jojo’s white father, Michael, the son of a man who abhors Leonie because she’s the black woman “his son had babies with,” has been in Parchman for many years. When Leonie learns of Michael’s release, she, Jojo and Kayla drive across Mississippi to pick him up. But the trip, which includes unexpected illnesses and a stop for drugs that Leonie wants to sell, is more eventful than the family had anticipated.

Visitations from dead people, tales of snakes that turn into “scaly birds” whose feathers allow recip-

20

FICTION ients to fly—this material would have felt mannered in the hands of a lesser writer. But Ward skillfully weaves realistic and supernatural elements into a powerful narrative.

The writing, though matter-of-fact in its depiction of prejudice, is poetic throughout, as when Jojo says that, as Michael hugs him after a fight with Leonie, “something in his face was pulled tight, wrong, like underneath his skin he was crisscrossed with tape.”

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an important work from an astute observer of race relations in 21st-century America.

—MICHAEL MAGRAS

Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Jesmyn Ward.

THE BURNING GIRL

By Claire Messud Norton $25.95, 256 pages ISBN 9780393635027 Audio, eBook available

COMING OF AGE

the Evil Morsel. Cassie’s life takes an even darker turn after Anders Shute, the emergency room doctor who cared for her dog bite, begins a relationship with her widowed mother. Are the disturbing changes in Cassie’s behavior—ones that lead her to question what she’s been told about her father’s death in a car accident when she was 11 months old—merely the result of Shute’s strict discipline or something more sinister?

The author of five previous novels, including The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs, Messud masterfully portrays Julia’s mounting dismay at her friend’s choices and the events they set in motion, as the girls are carried far from a time “when we could never have imagined coming unstuck.”

For all the suspense Messud sustains after a desperate Cassie recklessly digs too deeply for the truth about her father’s death, the poignant depiction of the girls’ estrangement—fueled by their inevitable path toward adulthood—is an equally compelling reason to read this haunting novel.

—HARVEY FREEDENBERG

Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes are best friends, enjoying a carefree life on the cusp of adolescence in Royston, a sleepy town in the North Shore of Massachusetts. The unsettling changes that upend their placid existence are the subject of The Burning Girl, veteran novelist Claire Messud’s penetrating psychological thriller about “what it means to be a girl growing up.”

Julia and Cassie spend the summer before seventh grade exploring the environs of Royston, in excursions that take them to a posh country estate turned long-abandoned women’s mental asylum, among other places. But that idyllic summer—one that’s marred only by a dog bite Cassie sustains at the animal shelter where the girls volunteer—marks a turning point in a relationship in which they’ve been “conjoined all their lives,” as Julia, the novel’s narrator, describes it.

As middle school begins, Cassie falls in with a group of girls led by one whom Julia bitterly nicknames

THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY

By Cherise Wolas Flatiron $27.99, 544 pages ISBN 9781250081438 Audio, eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

boys to school and swim lessons.

She tells no one when, during the days while the boys are at school, she comes back to her writing. To her, the act of writing is “exquisitely important, so much like prayer.”

Over nearly a decade, she writes a remarkable novel that she feels sure will signal her return as a force in the literary world.

But the time never seems right to publish. Younger son Eric blossoms into a gifted computer programmer who makes his first million (and many more) while still a teenager. Joan finds herself a stranger in her own home when a gaggle of coders move in seemingly overnight, much to Martin’s delight.

In a family of extraordinarily accomplished people, Joan’s other son, Daniel, struggles to find his identity. After showing early promise as a writer, a well-meaning teacher mentions Daniel’s mother’s fame. Daunted, he sets aside his stories and embarks on an ill-suited career in venture capital.

After a breathtaking betrayal threatens to fracture the family, Joan retreats to India and reclaims a room of her own.

It’s almost impossible to believe that The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is the first novel by Cherise Wolas, a lawyer and film producer.

Gorgeously written and completely captivating, the book spans decades and continents, deftly capturing the tug so many women feel between motherhood and self-identity.

—AMY SCRIBNER

“Children are not on the table,” Joan Ashby tells her future husband, Martin. “I possess no need, primal or otherwise, for motherhood.” This is no surprise, given Joan’s white-hot career as a writer of short stories—and her own lonely childhood with two loveless parents. Yet, when she finds herself pregnant shortly after she and Martin marry, she sets aside her fame to raise one, then two boys in the suburban Virginia town of Rhome.

While Martin’s soaring surgical career takes him around the world, the famous Joan Ashby becomes Joan Manning, a housewife who takes yoga classes and shuttles her

SOMETHING LIKE HAPPY

By Eva Woods

Graydon House $26.99, 432 pages ISBN 9781525811357 Audio, eBook available

POPULAR FICTION

An unusual encounter turns into a serendipitous yet life-changing situation in Eva Woods’ latest uplifting work of women’s fiction.

The last thing Annie Hebden wants is a friend. At 35, Annie is down in the doldrums, having had

FICTION her fair share of troubles in the past and now dealing with her mom, who is in the advanced stages of dementia. Annie is in the middle of sorting out an issue with the hospital staff regarding her mom’s care when a strangely dressed gal named Polly Leonard strikes up a conversation with her. The following morning, Polly shows up on Annie’s doorstep. Polly, who has a brain tumor and only three months to live, insists on brightening Annie’s life by challenging her to experience 100 days of happiness.

Annie is dubious at first, but she is pleasantly surprised when the daily challenges lighten her mood.

Although Annie makes great strides with the project, what remains is whether or not she can complete the challenge before Polly’s time is up.

Inspired by the “100 Happy Days” challenge, Woods presents a hilariously uplifting and heartwarming story of hope in the midst of despair. Her easygoing writing style engages the reader from the get-go, turning a 400-page novel into a light read. While Annie and Polly stand at the forefront, Woods weaves in an interesting, well-developed supportive cast, many of whom act as foils to build up Annie’s character.

Lightly reminiscent of the movie The Bucket List but successfully avoiding hackneyed scenes, Something Like Happy includes a little bit of everything—even the hope of romance. This is an enjoyable read that needs to spread far and wide.

—ANITA LOCK

THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES

By John Boyne

Hogarth $28, 592 pages ISBN 9781524760786 Audio, eBook available

COMING OF AGE

Not long ago, it would have been fantasy that Ireland would have a gay prime minister, but the majority-Catholic country welcomed its first in 2017. The country has evolved from an often hateful hierocracy to a seat of social liberal-

spotlight

INSPIRATIONAL FICTION

BY LONNA UPTON

The power of faith to transform fear

S

eptember brings cooler, crisper air to revive our senses, and these three inspirational works are sure to revive our souls. From Mitford to Paris, Oregon to England, these novels explore the calming nature of faith.

Jennie Pickett, an Oregon frontier woman balancing her family and a dream, stands tall as the heroine of Jane Kirkpatrick’s All She Left Behind (Revell, $15.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780800727000).

Bestselling author of more than 30 books, Kirkpatrick masterfully weaves the ups and downs of Jennie’s life with real events in the late 19th century, creating a story that inspires us while we travel with Jennie down a trail filled with difficulties, decisions and desires.

Gifted in homeopathic remedies, Jennie knows that God has called her to do more with her gift; however, women have limited rights in the 1870s, and Jennie has learning difficulties. She’ll need her faith and ferocity as she handles each obstacle in her way.

Kirkpatrick captivates with a straightforward perspective of the traumatic effects of addiction on a family. Jennie deals with her first husband’s decline into alcohol and drug abuse, doing her best to salvage their marriage and understand her husband’s demons. When the marriage ends in disaster, Jennie rises above her circumstances to begin a new life.

Jennie’s second marriage to a prominent pastor propels her into a journey of self-healing as she works toward her dream of healing others. Kirkpatrick powerfully connects her 19th-century heroine to women of today through descriptions of Jennie’s struggles to find time for both family and career, and the way in which she ultimately finds peace through the power of faith and healing.

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS In her latest novel, The Space

Between Words (Thomas Nelson, $15.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780718086442), Michèle Phoenix beautifully entwines the lives of Jessica, a survivor of the 2015 Paris terror attacks, and Adeline, a victim of Protestant persecution in 17th-century France.

Jessica’s trip to visit her best friend, Patrick, leaves her hollow after she watches dozens of con-

certgoers suffer and die during the horrific shooting. After, she no longer finds joy in her life— only fear. Patrick, never fearful or lacking enthusiasm, encourages her to move past the terror and begin their planned antique treasure hunt in the French countryside.

The journey of healing begins when Jessica finds an antique sewing box—or the box finds her—and she follows centuries-old clues to determine the fate of Adeline’s family. Along the way, Jessica struggles to understand how anyone, at any time in history, can find God in their lives while mired in terror. Mysterious pages from an old Bible keep readers connecting clues from beginning to end, and the depth of Jessica’s despair keeps us rallying for her recovery.

Phoenix’s vivid descriptions of the brutality against French Protestants in the 17th century, as well as Jessica’s recollection of the bloodshed she witnessed at the theater, rivet us with a visceral understanding of the evil

inflicted upon innocents during both eras. Until she can make sense of Adeline’s story, courage, wisdom and faith flutter just beyond Jessica’s grasp, weakening her ability to mend her own brokenness.

OUR FAVORITE FAMILY Jan Karon never disappoints, and readers will devour the 14th book in the bestselling author’s heartwarming Mitford series. To Be Where You Are (Putnam, $28, 464 pages, ISBN 9780399183737) cheerfully takes us back to mingle with the Kavanagh family and the other residents of Mitford, a small Southern town with its share of troubles—which are always manageable through a little love and lots of prayer.

Father Tim Kavanagh—retired, quick-witted prayer partner to Mitford’s residents—and his wife, Cynthia, guide three generations of their family in this inspirational collection of events, all filled with Karon’s loving attention to detail.

Between these pages, Father Kavanagh steps into a new career; the newspaper editor struggles to revive the romance in his marriage; and plans for the Christmas parade, held on a nontraditional date, prove alarming.

Dooley and Lace—newlyweds now handling Meadowgate Farm, a vet practice and their 4-yearold—keep us cheering them on despite the ripple effects of a lost cell phone, stressful emergencies with animals and a building crisis, all while they plan a party to end all parties for their son.

Karon satiates her fans’ craving for more Mitford with these stories of grace and compassion, all told with a dose of humor and humility.

21

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

THE STORIED LIFE OF A. J. FIKRY

YOUNG JANE YOUNG GABRIELLE ZEVIN Smart, funny, and incredibly engaging, Young Jane Young follows three generations of women, perfectly capturing our current political moment and the double standards that affect every aspect of a woman’s life, at any age.

Also Available:

“Vibrant and playful . . .

A witty, strongly drawn group of female voices.” —Booklist Available wherever books and e-books are sold.

reviews ism. Of this evolution, John Boyne’s new novel is an essential witness.

In 1945, the priesthood tears the novel’s narrator, Cyril, as an infant from his mother. A banker and his literary wife, Maude Avery, adopt him. Cyril discovers that he has no interest in girls, instead nursing a crush on his best mate, Julian. Homosexuality in Ireland being both sinful and criminal, Cyril must stay mum. But he confesses his many backroom trysts to a priest, who croaks as a result.

Like many gay men, Cyril marries out of convention, but not before professing his love to Julian. This goes over like a lead balloon, so Cyril finds himself in Amsterdam in Conradian exile.

Dutch mores are more amenable; Cyril meets the love of his life. But even Holland has its hostilities. So the pair ends up in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis.

There Cyril becomes a volunteer in an AIDS clinic, and he and his partner adopt a son after a fashion.

Normalcy is within reach before a homophobe assaults the pair in Central Park.

These are Furies on the visible spectrum. They pursue Cyril back to Ireland, where signs of a thaw are already evident. (Cyril is even propositioned by a bisexual pol aspiring to become prime minister.)

Cyril reconciles with the ghosts of his past, including his estranged wife and biological mother.

More than a coming-of-age story, The Heart’s Invisible Furies is one man’s journey from persecution to toleration. Punctuated with simple dialogue, its nearly 600 pages betray Maude’s dictum that “brevity is the key.” But the novel seldom lags and often delights.

—KENNETH CHAMPEON

THE SALT LINE

By Holly Goddard Jones Putnam $26, 400 pages ISBN 9780735214316 Audio, eBook available

SPECULATIVE FICTION

ALGONQUIN BOOKS In her new novel, The Salt Line,

22

FICTION Holly Goddard Jones welcomes readers to a horrifying vision of a not-so-distant future in which a virulent species of disease-carrying ticks has divided the United States into factions. The well-off find themselves safe and secure “in zone”—behind a menacing wall known as the Salt Line that is meant to keep people locked in and danger out. Only a few thrill-seekers dare venture outside the protection of the Salt Line, signing up for pricey wilderness expeditions that take those with the courage (and the cash) beyond the walled zones to get a taste of America’s remaining purple mountain majesties. Those who return from the excursions promise that it’s the experience of a lifetime, but for one group of travelers, their trek beyond the Salt Line tests their survival skills in ways they never imagined. And it’s more than just the killer ticks; their voyage causes them to question which side of the wall is truly the most dangerous.

Terrifying and bold, The Salt Line is a character-driven thriller with shocking plot twists, jaw-dropping revelations and splashes of horror, sci-fi and romance. Key characters include a pop star and his girlfriend, the young inventor of a financial app and a housewife with veiled intentions. In beautiful turns of phrase that will make readers’ hearts flutter and skin crawl in equal measure, Jones ratchets up the tension with perfect pacing and vivid descriptions of terrible (and terribly sad) experiences.

Jones’ unique riff on dystopian fiction as a platform for examining present-day concerns like climate change, immigration, technology and fundamental human rights offers plenty of surprises, but the most disarming aspect of The Salt Line is the unexpected tenderness expressed by its fully fleshed out, complicated characters who are fighting not just for their lives but for their very humanity.

More than just a high-octane, speculative survivalist tale, The Salt Line is also a powerful meditation on humanity’s fragility and resilience.

—STEPHENIE HARRISON

reviews

NONFICTION

T PI OP CK

THE FUTILITARIANS

By Anne Gisleson

THE RISE AND FALL OF ADAM AND EVE

Of man’s first disobedience

Little, Brown $27, 272 pages ISBN 9780316393904 Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

REVIEW BY HENRY L. CARRIGAN JR.

The story of Adam and Eve occupies two short chapters early in the biblical Book of Genesis and is never mentioned again in the Bible.

But the story, as Stephen Greenblatt so vividly and beautifully points out in The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, lies at the foundation of Western culture’s enduring questions about the origins of human nature and our moral shortcomings.

With his typical eloquence, Greenblatt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Swerve, explores the life of a biblical story that artists, philosophers, theologians and poets have struggled for hundreds of years to understand and interpret. Augustine of Hippo laid out the most famous interpretation of the story by using the tale of Adam and Eve’s transgressions as the centerpiece for his own concept of original sin: We’re born sinners, since the act of sin is transmitted through sexual intercourse. For Augustine, as Greenblatt so felicitously puts

By Stephen Greenblatt it, “human sinfulness is a sexually transmitted disease.” The fourth-­ Norton, $27.95, 432 pages century monk Jerome laid the blame for the couple’s wrongdoings at ISBN 9780393240801, audio, eBook available Eve’s feet, an interpretation that continues to foster mistreatment of LITERATURE women in churches and in society. Greenblatt paints an exquisite portrait of artists such as Albrecht Dürer, who imagined the beauty of the original couple in his engraving “The Fall of Man,” which illustrates, for Greenblatt, a “vision of those perfect bodies that existed before time and labor and mortality began.” In John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” according to Greenblatt, Adam and Eve finally become real, depicting their struggle with freedom and innocence and the tension between the forces of good and evil.

In the end, Greenblatt elegantly concludes that the story of Adam and Eve is a powerful myth that deeply informs our understandings of temptation, innocence, freedom and betrayal, the choice between good and evil.

AN ODYSSEY

By Daniel Mendelsohn

Knopf $26.95, 320 pages ISBN 9780385350594 Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

In the winter of 2011, 81-year-old retired college professor and mathematician Jay Mendelsohn enrolled in Classics 125: The Odyssey of Homer, an undergraduate seminar taught by his son, Daniel, at Bard College. In this insightful, tender book, the younger Mendelsohn gracefully marries literary criticism and memoir to describe how that class launched an intellectual and

personal journey that becomes one of profound discovery for both men.

Father and son are unlikely traveling companions as they embark on this odyssey. Daniel acknowledges an antipathy to the world of hard science to which his prickly father devoted his life, while Jay approaches Homer’s revered work with skepticism born of a conviction that Odysseus was something less than a real hero. “This is going to be a nightmare,” Daniel worries, after his father violates a pledge not to speak even before the first class session ends. But by the time the semester concludes and the Mendelsohns depart for a cruise that retraces Odysseus’ difficult homeward trek, they seem to have reached a well-earned truce, born of their deep engagement with the classic work and their respect for

You might say New Orleans entered an existential crisis after Hurricane Katrina. People across the country weighed in on the city’s future: Should New Orleans rebuild? Or should it accept that life below sea level, on the coast, wasn’t meant to be?

Anne Gisleson and her fellow members of the Existential Crisis Reading Group could relate. In 2012, seven years after the storm, the New Orleanians banded together to read and discuss works that addressed life’s big questions.

Together, they would process through the grief and uncertainty that so often accompany different phases of life.

For Gisleson, grief was not only civic but also deeply personal. In the group’s first month, her father died of cancer. Gisleson’s two youngest sisters, twins Rebecca and Rachel, died by suicide about 15 years earlier, 18 months apart. each other.

“Losing a sibling, especially in Daniel is an artful storyteller youth, is a particular blow, a lateral whose skills are equal to the task loss of shared history and DNA that of weaving Homer’s poem into his lacerates your identity,” Gisleson own life. Most impressive are his writes. “Your old narrative is shattransitions from scholarly contered. Your new narrative becomes sideration of “The Odyssey” to intimate stories of his family life, as shapeless, full of confusion and when the class discussion of Odys- pain. Double that.”

The Futilitarians: Our Year of seus’ reunion with his wife, Penelope, at the end of his 10-year voyage Thinking, Drinking, Grieving, and Reading seamlessly melds home from Troy flows effortlessly into a magical moment, witnessing together Gisleson’s story, New Orleans’ ongoing recovery and Jay as he offers a heartbreakingly beautiful tribute to his wife of more existential discovery. It also serves as something of a guide for readers than six decades. Daniel writes, wrestling with their own struggles, “You never do know, really, where with an appendix of works cited for education will lead; who will be listening and, in certain cases, who further exploration.

Through each month’s reading will be doing the teaching.” That’s and discussion, Gisleson and her only one of the many wise lessons companions engage with big, to be gleaned from this lovely sometimes bleak ideas. And no book.

— H A R V E Y F R E E D E N B E R G matter the grief that drew each of

23

reviews them to the group, they remain focused on a shared goal: living.

“This life is our cross,” one member says during the group’s interpretation of the Stations of the Cross (which they dubbed “The Way of the Crisis”). “Here we are together to engage and discuss, duke it out, support each other in our fight with this cross. Here we have gathered in our own ‘Fight Club.’”

—CARLA JEAN WHITLEY

A DISAPPEARANCE IN DAMASCUS

By Deborah Campbell

Picador $27, 352 pages ISBN 9781250147875 eBook available

CURRENT EVENTS

NONFICTION work together may have contributed to Ahlam’s arrest, Campbell upended her life to try to help her friend. “Caught in a web of fear and suspicion,” she writes, “I wanted to run for cover but knew I had to stay and look for her.” In riveting, heartbreaking detail, Campbell seamlessly weaves together her own search and investigation with Ahlam’s horrific imprisonment and interrogation.

Campbell also provides an excellent primer on how the Middle East’s complex history has contributed to the area’s strife. This is an important, chilling book that explores the ongoing plight of Syria’s citizens and refugees, as well as the perilous struggles of the journalists who deliver their stories to the rest of the world.

—ALICE CARY

AUTUMN Canadian journalist Deborah Campbell traveled to Damascus, Syria, in 2007 to report on the mass exodus of Iraqis into Syria in the wake of sectarian violence after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

There, she met an Iraqi woman named Ahlam who would not only change her life but also draw her into the very story on which she was reporting.

Campbell hired Ahlam as a “fixer,” a local who helps journalists arrange interviews, interprets and provides context to what journalists see and hear. Ahlam was one of the best: A smart, bold and kind mother of two, she spent her life helping others, even starting a school in her apartment for refugee girls. Not only was she an invaluable resource, she quickly became Campbell’s cherished friend.

A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War is the fascinating account of both Ahlam’s story and Campbell’s life posing as a professor while working as an “undercover” journalist in Syria. Although the country’s civil war had yet to start, Syria was a dangerous place. One day, Ahlam was suddenly arrested and imprisoned, whisked away to an uncertain fate. Desperately worried and fearing that their

24

By Karl Ove Knausgaard

Penguin Press $27, 240 pages ISBN 9780399563300 Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

gaard awaited the arrival of his fourth child, Anne, and it serves as a sort of introduction to the material world. Knausgaard offers musings on items encountered during the routine business of living—from plastic bags, bottles and rubber boots to the drum kit he keeps in his office. He also focuses on nature and its power to astonish and on the mysteries of the human body. Whether he’s writing about a rainstorm (“the sound of thunder always heightens the sense of being alive”) or teeth (“miniature white towers in the mouth”), the scrutiny Knausgaard applies to everyday objects renews them for the reader.

The essays in this perceptive collection are no more than a few pages in length, and Knausgaard’s prose style throughout is unembellished and precise. But the book also has an underpinning of tenderness. Of his children, Knausgaard writes, “I want them to relish life and have a sense of its abundance.” In Autumn, he captures that sense—and much more.

—J U L I E H A L E

GORBACHEV

By William Taubman

From obscure author to literary legend—that’s the transition Karl Ove Knausgaard has made in recent years thanks to his acclaimed autobiographical work, My Struggle. In that six-volume series, he delivers a meticulously detailed chronicle of his upbringing in Norway and his life as a writer, husband and father.

Knausgaard has a gift for making the quotidian seem compelling.

His inclusivity and exactitude of detail, along with his tendency to follow narrative tangents to their exhausted ends, allows him to replicate on the page the nature of his own experience in a way that feels both expansive and microscopic.

This effect enlivens his new book, Autumn, the first of four essay compilations, each of which will be named for a season.

Autumn was written as Knaus-

Norton $39.95, 880 pages ISBN 9780393647013 eBook available

BIOGRAPHY

Everybody likes Mikhail Gorbachev, right? All the former Soviet leader did was attempt to bring democracy to an authoritarian system, work for reform and seek to end the Cold War with a bold proposal to abolish nuclear weapons.

But wait, Gorbachev isn’t universally loved? He was hounded from office, and today Russians regard him as the man who gave away their country? How can this be?

William Taubman takes on the complicated life of, as he puts it, “the Soviet system’s gravedigger” in Gorbachev: His Life and Times, a substantial volume that befits a

substantial man, who remains a presence on the world scene at 86.

With a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Nikita Khrushchev to his credit, Taubman is well-positioned to undertake the challenge, and he does so in a clear, direct style.

Gorbachev’s cooperation no doubt helped, but cooperation doesn’t necessarily produce sympathy in this evenhanded work.

Particularly compelling is Gorbachev’s rise from peasant beginnings to the top of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. His ascent is in some ways conventional and in other ways not, but what’s important is what he did once he reached the summit. Was it his intent all along to replace autocracy with democracy, or was it a gradual shift? Did he really mean to let Eastern Europe go so suddenly, or did events simply overtake him?

The narrative is enhanced by a vivid cast of characters, including Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, and ally-turned-rival Boris Yeltsin, not to mention jousting foes such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Rarely seen photos made available by the Gorbachev Foundation add to the experience of reading this important book.

—KEITH HERRELL

THE CHOICE

By Dr. Edith Eva Eger

Scribner $27, 304 pages ISBN 9781501130786 Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

The Choice is more than an eloquent memoir by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Edith Eva Eger. It is an exploration of the healing potential of choice.

When someone chooses to harm us, our sense of self can later be overwhelmed by the memory of that pain. But Eger, who has helped countless trauma patients, believes that we can regain our autonomy by choosing to confront the past—a lesson she learned from

NONFICTION wage labor led to bitter union and management confrontations.

Reformers crusaded for women’s suffrage and Prohibition. Reconstruction brought official gains against slavery, but racism continued against black, Native American and Chinese populations. Contemporaneous historian of the time Henry Adams, from the family of early Adams presidents, believed that by the 1870s, American governance and even democracy itself had failed. The war had extended the role of the federal government, and there was widespread corruption in business and government, while capitalism thrived.

The latest title in the Oxford History of the United States series is the superb The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by acclaimed historian Richard White.

His brilliant and sweeping exploration focuses on the big picture as well as on individuals, including the true stories behind legends like John Henry, Buffalo Bill and another courageous and very impressive Henry Adams, a freed slave who fought racism in Louisiana. White touches on some deeply ingrained myths. “There is probably no greater irony than the emergence of the cowboy as the epitome of American individualism because cattle raising quickly became corporate.”

The American West, often regarded as the heartland of individual— D E B O R A H M A S O N ism, was where some of the first government bureaucracies began.

Railroads also were a symbol of the THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS age, but they proved to be dangerous workplaces where a high

By Richard White number of fatalities occurred in the Oxford University course of routine work. Railroads $35, 968 pages were often in financial distress, and ISBN 9780199735815 by 1895, 25 percent of them were in eBook available receivership.

HISTORY White’s masterful book offers a treasure trove of information about a pivotal time in American history, crafted with a compelling combination of well-written recreations Between the end of the Civil War of events and careful analysis and the beginning of a new centubased on the latest historical ry, a great transformation—techno- research. The Republic for Which logical, economic, social, cultural, It Stands is the best available guide religious and political—took place to the period. in the United States. The rise of —ROGER BISHOP her own experience.

When Eger was 16, Josef Mengele, the abhorrent Auschwitz physician, made horrific choices for her. He chose for Eger to live and sent her parents to die. That same day, he chose Eger to dance “The Blue Danube” for his entertainment. Although a prisoner, Eger infused that dance with all the joy that dancing always brought her.

Mengele gave her a loaf of bread as a reward for her bravura performance. Eger shared the loaf with the other prisoners, and later, a girl who had eaten that bread chose to help Eger, saving her life as a result.

The ability to choose, even though those choices were circumscribed by an electrified fence, gave Eger the strength to survive.

After the war, she repressed these memories to spare others the pain of her experience. Wracked with guilt for having survived when so many perished, Eger watched her marriage crumble. Another choice confronted her: Stay mired in the past, or face it and learn to live in the present. Her journey took her back to Auschwitz, where she unlocked the last and darkest memory of that first day, and forgave not only her tormentors but also, and most importantly, herself.

Eger is not suggesting that she is unscarred by her experience, but that she lives a life filled with grace.

The Choice is not a how-to book; it is, however, an invitation to choose to live life fully.

AT THE STRANGERS’ GATE

By Adam Gopnik

Knopf $26.95, 272 pages ISBN 9781400041800 Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

WE ARE ALL SHIPWRECKS

By Kelly Grey Carlisle

Sourcebooks $24.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781492645207 eBook available

MEMOIR

Adam Gopnik is a flâneur, a voyeur of streetscapes, crowds and singular personalities. He’s a romantic—his wife, Martha, to whom his memoir At the Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals in New York is dedicated, is described with a disarming mixture of wryness and adoration—and he is frequently a cynic and a sentimentalist within the span of a few paragraphs. A sensualist, he often uses food as a metaphor as he reflects on both personal and cultural ambition. He infers, he observes—and then he composes. Because above all else, Gopnik is a writer.

At the Strangers’ Gate is part memoir, part meditation on his (and Martha’s) journey from Montreal to New York, and ultimately to The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer for some 30 years. They came to New York in the 1980s, a decade of upheaval and reinvention, and wondered at it, indulged in it and alternately looked up to and down at its creators. When they move from their tiny uptown basement apartment to another lucky strike, a loft in SoHo, he discovers a village of artists, writers, Bohemians, cobblestones—all of which seems of a piece to his expanding worldview.

Occasionally, Gopnik’s love for the epigram trips the reader up: “Art traps time, but food traps manners. The art lasts, the food rots.” This is his introduction into a recollection of not only his life in SoHo but also his fledgling professional art criticism and gradual breakthrough into the literary universe. At the Strangers’ Gate is a book studded with nuggets of fine prose, best tasted in smaller sections.

Throughout her stunningly powerful memoir, We Are All Shipwrecks, Kelly Grey Carlisle runs a finger over everything, from the tide-pool sea creatures she inspected as a child to photographs of the mother she never met. That thoughtful touch reveals dark complexities and provokes her curiosity, which becomes her lifeboat as she searches for truth.

Raised by Richard, her eccentric, self-absorbed grandfather, and his much younger wife, Marilyn, on a

978-1-62354-521-5 HC $19.99

Take your taste buds south of the border and discover the diversity of flavors, traditions, and cultures of Latin America.

• www.imaginebooks.net

—EVE ZIBART

25

reviews yacht that “looked something like a three-tiered wedding cake” in a run-down California marina, Carlisle knew little about her mother, a 23-year-old prostitute brutally murdered by a killer who was never caught, and even less about her father. Left behind in a motel drawer at 3 weeks of age, Carlisle grew up asking many questions and receiving ever-changing answers. Life with her grandfather was anything but stable, and even succeeding as a competitive swimmer in high school meant little at home: Richard simply missed having her there in time for dinner.

It was the good company of her equally unconventional, often down-and-out neighbors living on the pier that sustained Carlisle and fed her desire to move on from her life on the harbor. Finally, after college, marriage and the birth of her daughter, Carlisle seems to have found the balance she was looking for. Richard once told her, “Blood is

NONFICTION important. Where you come from is important. It’s who you are.” Yet clearly, Carlisle’s pursuit of her past is also about whom she chose to become, and what it took to get her there.

—PRISCILLA KIPP

BORED AND BRILLIANT

By Manoush Zomorodi

St. Martin’s $26.99, 208 pages, ISBN 9781250124951 Audio, eBook available

SELF-HELP

My name is Amy, and I’m a Candy Crush addict.

Whenever I pick up my phone, those brightly colored, glossy squares beckon, and I can easily squander 30 minutes mindlessly

How Seeing the World through

e Lens of Personality Changes Everything

Anne Bogel, blogger at Modern Mrs. Darcy and host of the What Should I Read Next? podcast, helps you discover what makes you uniquely you, what makes the people in your life uniquely them, and why it all matters.

swiping at the screen. It’s soothing—and hugely unproductive.

In Bored and Brilliant, Manoush Zomorodi argues that stepping away from technology is not just healthy, it is essential for creativity and productivity. Research shows that people are now shifting their focus every 45 seconds while working online due to interruptions and competing messages. But being constantly tethered to a phone or tablet is no way to treat our brains if we want to foster new ideas.

Zomorodi, who hosts the popular podcast “Note to Self,” writes, “Creativity—no matter how you define or apply it—needs a push, and boredom, which allows new and different connections to form in our brain, is a most effective muse.” More than 20,000 people around the world signed up when Zomorodi launched the Bored and Brilliant Project, a weeklong challenge to get people to disconnect from their gadgets and tune in to their own thoughts. Challenges like going photo-free for a day are all specifically designed to reconnect us with the world.

In this age of information, Zamorodi’s book seems revolutionary, almost subversive. Sprinkled liberally with research and insights from some of the leading minds in technology and futurism, Bored and Brilliant is an important reminder that we are not beholden to our devices. As for me, I’ve deleted the Candy Crush app from my iPhone . . . for now.

—AMY SCRIBNER

Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Manoush Zomorodi.

COMING TO MY SENSES

By Alice Waters

Potter $27, 320 pages ISBN 9780307718280 Audio, eBook available

Visit ReadingPeopleBook.com to learn more and take the “What’s Your Reading Personality?” quiz!

b 26

MEMOIR

Available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

People often associate Julia Child, who made French food

accessible to the home cook, with Alice Waters, whose restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, was one of the epicenters for the movement toward simple, locavore dining. And the two culinary queens do have much in common, especially as crusaders for what might be called “real food” in a time when most Americans’ dining experiences ran the culinary gamut from A to B, as Dorothy Parker would say.

But while Child and Waters are both legendary free spirits, there are striking differences between the two. Child was a classicist who mastered technique and fine detail, a quirky sophisticate who believed “all things in moderation,” while Waters, a card-carrying advocate of 1960s-style exuberance, is a hedonist, punch-drunk with flavor and scent and texture.

Waters’ new memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, is a reminiscence of an extended adolescence spent not only navigating the enticements of postwar liberation— drinking, sex, art and anti-establishment politics—but also foreign countries, including France, Turkey, Georgia and Greece, to name a few, places that embrace community and kindness as much as food and cooking.

Waters’ memoir, as touching as it sometimes is, can be a little helter-skelter: There are italicized inserts that shoulder into the narrative, supplying details of a person’s biography or offering foreshadowing or philosophical asides.

And there are plenty of famous names dropped, unavoidably, as Waters’ friends are connected to an impressive array of filmmakers, more experienced chefs, artists and writers.

These diary-like passages, and Waters’ almost stream-of-consciousness remarks on the importance of mood, music, visual arts and flowers on the dining experience, come to a head with the hilariously chaotic opening of Chez Panisse in 1971. If the way to counterculture’s heart is through its stomach, Chez Panisse is the start.

—EVE ZIBART

T PI OP CK

TEEN

THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END

Living fully in your final hours REVIEW BY SARAH WEBER

In an alternate present-day New York City, Mateo and Rufus both receive the same call from Death-Cast in the early morning hours, letting them know they’ll be dead by midnight. The two teens have never met, but when they connect on the Last Friend app, they set out to help each other pack the experiences of a lifetime into one last day and form a deep bond that soon goes beyond friendship.

Adam Silvera, bestselling author of More Happy Than Not and History Is All You Left Me, delivers a thought-provoking story about two boys who seize one final opportunity to change their lives. The premise—that we should embrace every day because we don’t know many we’ve got left—may be trite, but Silvera’s take on the cliché is anything but. He renders every moment of their last day with such honesty that readers will feel as though they’re experiencing the same terror, anger and even joy Mateo and Rufus feel as they prowl the city together.

By Adam Silvera HarperTeen, $17.99, 384 pages It’s a risky move, letting the reader know from the get-go that the main ISBN 9780062457790, audio, eBook available characters won’t make it. But these protagonists are impossible to hold Ages 14 and up at arm’s length; Mateo’s crippling shyness and Rufus’ temper are sure to resonate with readers. Both boys are hyperaware of their own shortcomLGBTQ+ FICTION ings, but they’re also bound and determined to overcome their insecurities and live as their ideal selves during Visit BookPage.com to read their final hours. They Both Die at the End is impossible to put down, and a Q&A with Adam Silvera. it’s sure to inspire readers to think about the people they want to be.

LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND

By M.T. Anderson Candlewick $16.99, 160 pages ISBN 9780763687892 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

SCIENCE FICTION

The eternal beauty of science fiction is this: It takes readers to sometime or someplace else to show them the harsh truths of their own world. In Landscape with Invisible Hand, the vuvv—aliens who’ve come to Earth as benevolent colonizers—make way for humanity to destroy itself by the hand of its own greed.

High school junior Adam Costello enjoys painting landscapes of his deteriorating small town when he’s not on the clock earning his

family’s sole income. For cash, he records his saccharine, 1950s-inspired dates with a girlfriend he can barely tolerate just to entertain aliens fascinated with “classic” earth culture. Because the vuvv have descended upon Earth, offering free advanced technology and medicine to the earthlings, the human economy has collapsed as a result. Now the rich hoard wealth behind massive pay walls, leaving regular people to suffer. However, when Adam’s teacher enters his paintings into an intergalactic art competition, he sees a way out. As Adam and his family flounder, he must decide what’s more important: painting pleasantries for profit or making art that captures the truth of humanity’s darkest hour.

In this novella, National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson writes a multilayered and scathing satire of callous economics, wealth disparity and the invisible hand of the market, as well as a metacritical discussion on the worth and

value of art. It’s a bleak but necessary lesson in trying to find the beauty in the disastrous, all while learning to recognize when it’s time to dream a new dream.

—J U S T I N B A R I S I C H

WARCROSS

By Marie Lu

Putnam $18.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780399547966 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

SCIENCE FICTION

Things are not going well for Emika Chen. A bounty hunter in an obsessively digital world, Emika is days away from being evicted from her run-down apartment with no hope of making enough money.

Desperate, she decides to hack into Warcross, the immersive virtual

reality game that has overtaken the world. Emika’s hack works, to a point. Unfortunately, during the heist, she also glitches into the International Warcross Championship in front of billions of viewers.

Emika is convinced she’s going to spend the rest of her life in jail, but then she receives a call from the mysterious (and ridiculously wealthy) creator of Warcross, Hideo Tanaka. He offers Emika a chance to erase her debts and snag the biggest bounty of her life by chasing down a security threat to Warcross. But what Emika uncovers goes beyond the security of an online game.

Taking obvious cues from Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and postmodern tech thrillers, Marie Lu presents an exciting, immersive world with interesting and developed characters the reader will care about. While definitely a can’tmiss for fans of Lu’s Young Elites series, Warcross offers something for readers across all genres.

—KEVIN DELECKI

GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS

By Melissa Bashardoust

Flatiron $18.99, 384 pages ISBN 9781250077738 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

FANTASY

Ever since Lynet’s mother, the last queen, hanged herself, the kingdom of Whitespring has been covered year-round in snow.

Teenage Lynet, next in line for the throne, has never been cold; her Southern stepmother, Mina, has never felt warm. Lynet and Mina have always cared for each other, but when Lynet befriends Whitespring’s new surgeon, Nadia, secrets are revealed and relationships begin to unravel. Why does Lynet look exactly like her dead mother? Why does Mina believe no one can truly love her? What is this connection that Lynet and Nadia seem to share? At first, King Nicholas and Mina’s magician father make all the decisions. But

27

reviews the title of your Q: What’s

new book?

would you describe Q: How

the book?

has been the biggest influence on your work?

Q: Who

the female characters triumph, not by playing by the male characters’ rules but by rewriting them.

This is “Snow White” as it’s never been told before. Fans of “Game of Thrones” will relish the loyalties and betrayals, but author Melissa Bashardoust sidesteps most of the violence that characterizes George R.R. Martin’s work. With elements of the medieval legend of the golem, echoes of the movie Frozen and plenty of magic, Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a feminist fantasy not to be missed.

—J I L L R A T Z A N

GENUINE FRAUD

Q: What was your favorite subject in school? Why?

was your childhood hero?

Q: Who

Delacorte $18.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780385744775 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

one thing would you like to learn to do?

Q: What

message would you like to send to young readers?

Q: What

SPINNING For 10 years, competitive figure skating was Tillie Walden’s life, but major changes—a new school, questions of sexuality, her first love—encouraged her to seek her own voice. Now an awardwinning cartoonist and illustrator, Walden shares her story of coming out and coming of age in her debut graphic memoir, Spinning (First Second, $17.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9781626729407, ages 14 and up). Walden is from Austin, Texas.

as an influence—will sense the story’s chilling trajectory. This isn’t a typical teen novel with clear-cut heroines and antagonists, and yet young readers will identify bits of themselves in these complicated characters. Because, as Jule discovers, the biggest hurdle of adolescence is simply finding out who you are.

— K I M B E R LY G I A R A R T A N O

A SEMI-DEFINITIVE LIST OF WORST NIGHTMARES

By Krystal Sutherland

Putnam $17.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780399546594 Audio, ebook available Ages 14 and up

ROMANCE

An awkward situation turns into a unique opportunity to face fears in Krystal Sutherland’s latest.

Esther Solar and her household are reminiscent of the Addams Family: E. Lockhart’s latest novel opens They are not only riddled with in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where phobias but also cursed because of 18-year-old Jule West Williams Grandpa Reg, who claims to have is spending a month at a luxury met Death. For the last six years, resort. She speaks with a London 17-year-old Esther has attempted accent and makes friends with to reverse their curse by avoiding pretty much anything that the bartender. She swims laps and could kill her. She even created studies Spanish. She’s friendly and outgoing, but always holds “A Semi-Definitive List of Worst something back, and she always Nightmares,” her sacred inventory looks over her shoulder. She is also that was kept under wraps until entirely alone. On the outside, it Jonah Smallwood, a former childwould appear that Jule is a wealthy hood friend, steals it from her at a heiress with time to kill and money bus stop. Although she demands to burn, but on the inside, Jule is that he return it, he cleverly counters with a challenge: If Death is a a self-trained fighter with a shady past. Then, there’s Imogen Sokoloff, person, “we find him, we talk to him, we get him to lift the curse.”

Jule’s charismatic friend who loves Victorian novels and global jaunts.

Sutherland has a distinctive abilBoth Jule and Imogen are orphans, ity to combine extreme concepts but one was adopted into money, and even wackier characters to create a story that is both uproariousand the other most definitely was not. And yet, somehow, their lives ly funny and thought provoking. become impossibly intertwined.

Deftly weaving irony within her To reveal anything else would narrative, Sutherland blends realispoil this deftly plotted and ties of teen life amid the strangest fast-paced narrative told in reof circumstances. Full of surprises verse-chronological order. Howthat culminate in an unexpectedly ever, readers familiar with Patricia sweet romance, A Semi-Definitive Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. List of Worst Nightmares is earRipley—which Lockhart, bestsellmarked to be a classic. ing author of We Were Liars, cites —ANITA LOCK THRILLER

books did you enjoy as a child?

Q: What

28

By E. Lockhart

TEEN

children’s

JOHN ROCCO INTERVIEW BY JULIE DANIELSON

© JOSEPH ZOBOI

A new celebration of a classic

T

his year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Virginia Lee Burton’s classic picture book The Little House, the 1943 Caldecott Medal winner. To say that illustrator John Rocco is excited about his new picture book about Burton (1909-1968), her life and her work is an understatement.

Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton, written by Sherri Duskey Rinker (author of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site) and illustrated by Rocco, is a passion project, one he enthusiastically tells me about via phone.

The new book is focused on the “big machines” of Burton’s work that her two young sons loved the most: the locomotive in Choo Choo; Mary Anne from Mike

secluded. I think that was the genesis of the idea of The Little House.”

If you look at the cover of The Little House, Rocco explains, the house is surrounded by daisies. In Big Machines, Rocco gives Jinnee a skirt with the same flowers. “She is the Little House!”

The Folly Cove that Rocco speaks of was Jinnee and her family’s rural home in Cape Ann on Massachusetts Bay. Here, in the early 20th century, Jinnee created her books, raised her sons, gardened, tended animals, hosted friends and taught art, design and block printing in a group called the Folly Cove Designers.

Rinker lays it all out in Big Machines, describing Jinnee as “quite magical” as she works and plays at her seaside home.

Like many people, Rocco is taken by the creative Illustration copyright © 2017 by John Rocco. Reproduced by powerhouse that Jinnee permission of the publisher, HMH Books for Young Readers. was. “Can you imagine Mulligan and His Steam Shovel; her day-to-day life?” he asks. “She’s Katy, the tractor from Katy and the making books; she’s raising her Big Snow; and the titular vehicle kids; they’ve got sheep [and other] from Maybelle the Cable Car. This, animals they’ve got to take care of; Rocco explains, was Rinker’s smart they’re doing all the daily in-andway of encapsulating some of out of life; and then she hosted all Burton’s best-known books. Howthese parties. She was a dancer, ever, the Little House of Burton’s and she was always making cosaward-winning 1942 book—the tumes and putting on performancstory of a cottage that becomes es. It was full tilt.” surrounded by an encroaching, Both Rocco and Rinker spent bustling city—is a part of Big Matime with Jinnee’s children and their chines as well. Rocco sees Burton, families, including her son, Aris, a known by friends and family as sculptor who lives in Santa Barbara, Jinnee, as a stand-in for the little California. “He had boxes and boxes house itself. of Jinnee’s work,” Rocco recalls.

“How she felt about her life was “Her sketchbooks, her drawings, the the story of The Little House,” Roc- linoleum woodblocks with all the co says. “When they first bought Folly Cove designs. Tons of stuff. I their home in Folly Cove, it was too remember I was rifling through the close to the road. So, they picked boxes, as carefully as I could with it up and moved it back away from all my excitement, and came across the road. They wanted to be more the book dummy for The Little

House in something like a cardboard box.

Sherri and I were both kind of freaking out, having a blast.”

Showing Aris the book dummy for Big Machines, with Rocco’s illustrations, was a similar thrill.

“Aris was beside himself. . . . When I brought him some of the art, he said, ‘Man, it’s like Jinnee is right here in the room.’ ” Rocco says he was given “total freedom” to explore what the illustrations would be. “It took me a while to find the sort of visual through-line,” he says. He was also given the option to reproduce Jinnee’s artwork in the book but was not interested. “This book is not a biography, so much as it is a celebration of her art, and so I was thinking we should celebrate it in a new way.”

Readers see Jinnee in constant motion in the book—much as she was in her life—and as a woman who made the world magical for her children. “I didn’t want to draw her sitting at a desk, making pictures with her two kids looking over her shoulder,” Rocco says. “I wanted her to move in space and show her gracefulness.”

Conscious of doing his best to represent her artwork while also trying to avoid merely copying it, Rocco kept his deep appreciation for her work at the center of his mind. “Where appropriate, I would emulate her style for the different books,” he says. “I laid out the text in the way that Jinnee always did, which was to really have it flow. That was always important to her. You can see from her early book dummies that every line of text was cut out in a

separate little strip of paper, and she’d move them around, trying to get the right design.” Capturing her style while still making the artwork his own was “tricky, obviously, because she has a different style than me, but I was pretty pleased with the way it came out.”

Just as the little house—surrounded by all those big machines—comes to life, so does Jinnee, quite magically.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

BIG MACHINES

By Sherri Duskey Rinker Illustrated by John Rocco HMH, $17.99, 48 pages ISBN 9780544715578, eBook available Ages 4 to 7

PICTURE BOOK

29

reviews T PI OP CK

CHILDREN’S

PATINA

Pound the pavement REVIEW BY DEAN SCHNEIDER

“Down, tears. Down! Hold it together. You are Patina Jones. Daughter of Beverly Jones. No junk. No punk.” Twelve-year-old Patina (Patty) has a lot she could cry about, a lot to hold together. Her father died in his sleep a while back, and her mother lost both legs to “the sugar,” so her Uncle Tony and his white wife (called Momly) are raising Patty, who takes care of her little sister, Maddy. And now, Patty must navigate the halls of a new school. In Patina, she shares her smart, bold, razor-sharp black-girl takes on the rich, white-girl world of Chester Academy, where you only stand a chance as long as your face is always selfie-ready.

Patty feels she has no chance at Chester Academy, though she learns that her view of the world is not always right, and her story becomes less about fitting in than about learning to see people in a more generBy Jason Reynolds ous light.

Caitlyn Dlouhy, $16.99, 240 pages But what Patty is completely clear about is, in a life of loss, she has ISBN 9781481450188, audio, eBook available track. To her, running is “a way to shut people up. A way to . . . I guess, Ages 10 to 14 sometimes even shut myself up. Just turn it all off. Leave everything, MIDDLE GRADE all the hurting stuff, the unregular stuff that seemed so regular to me, in the dust.” She becomes the anchor on her relay team, signifying how she, with the help of Coach, is beginning to think beyond herself and be part of a team. “They needed me. Not just my legs. But my support. My energy. We needed each other.”

As in Ghost, Patina’s story ends before the finish line of the big race. But each novel in this projected four-book series passes the baton to the next, so eager readers will just have to await the third installment. when he meets Bear, Chicken and—what else?—a fire-breathing Dragon, prompting the now-frightened group to all don Glasses, run

By Patrick fast and dream about returning McDonnell Home.

Little, Brown Wordless double-page spreads $17.99, 48 pages ISBN 9780316502467 enhance the action of the chase, which leads to some perilous eBook available Ages 3 to 6 page-turning moments of suspense. As with many McDonnell treasures, there is subtle humor (R In the world of children’s literastands for “restroom”) and surprises sure to delight adults as well as ture, alphabet books abound—is there really room for another? Patkids who will be guessing along rick McDonnell’s latest picture book the way—what will the next letter represent? And more importantly, answers with an emphatic YES! Because his anthropomorphic aniwill the little red cat make it home safely? The last three pages hold mals are so expressive and playful, McDonnell, a Caldecott Honor-win- the answer to that question. ning artist, makes this abecedarian While the letters and what they represent are pretty obvious for book fast paced and high energy— even without using text. most readers, the last page does include a legend.

Out for an innocent walk, the A wordless ABCs book? Sure, it’s little red cat encounters first— surprise!—a chomping Alligator, been done, but probably never in such fast, fun fashion. prompting our hero to run for his life. Along the way, hilarity ensues —SHARON VERBETEN

THE LITTLE RED CAT WHO RAN AWAY AND LEARNED HIS ABC’S (THE HARD WAY)

30

ON A MAGICAL DO-NOTHING DAY

By Beatrice Alemagna

HarperCollins $17.99, 48 pages ISBN 9780062657602 Ages 4 to 8

PICTURE BOOK

Rare is the picture book that grabs as immediately as On a Magical Do-Nothing Day. On the cover, a bespectacled child of indeterminate gender, wearing a neon-orange coat, swings through the air on a tree branch, pulling readers along on a wondrous journey.

Award-winning Italian author-illustrator Beatrice Alemagna tells the story of a child’s transformative day, reminiscent of Aaron Becker’s Journey series. But while Becker’s bored young hero escapes into a fantastical world of imaginary creations, Alemagna’s narrator explores the woods outside a cabin

on a rainy day, eventually seeing the world in a new light.

While Mom writes at her computer, the child grows bored with a video game. The dreary day gets even worse when the narrator goes outside and accidentally drops the game into a pond. Alemagna’s straightforward prose conveys the kid’s misery, while each illustration offers unexpected delights full of texture, swirls and whirls, showing, for instance, the hero’s legs turning into leaden tree trunks. Meanwhile, the orange splash of raincoat shines like a flashlight from scenes of dark greens and grays.

Soon, however, the child begins to notice a world of luminous natural delights, like snails with antennae “as soft as Jell-O” and how digging into the mud reveals “a thousand seeds and pellets, kernels, grains, roots and berries.”

Alemagna’s sense of color, design and artistry is stunning as she manages to convey the delights of the outdoors without being preachy or predictable.

“I felt that there was something special close by. That I was surrounded,” the narrator says. Readers of On a Magical Do-Nothing Day will indeed be surrounded by something special: a masterpiece of narration and art.

—ALICE CARY

TUMBLE & BLUE

By Cassie Beasley Dial $17.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780525428442 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

MIDDLE GRADE

Curses, golden alligators and a blood-red moon form the backdrop for Tumble Wilson (a girl) and Blue Montgomery (a boy), who are searching for their places in life.

The second middle grade novel from Cassie Beasley (Circus Mirandus), set at the edge of the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia, imbues the everyday with mystical and magical elements to captivate readers.

Blue’s family has been cursed for over 200 years. However, their

CHILDREN’S curse is unique, because each member of the family receives a different curse, which can cause conflict. Blue’s father’s curse is to always win, and Blue’s is to always lose. But the curses can be altered: When the rare blood-red moon rises, one person in the family can change his or her curse.

After being dumped by his father at his grandmother’s house for the summer, Blue—feeling resentful, sad and abandoned—expects the worst. But the special moon will soon appear, and his granny’s house becomes overrun with kooky relatives, all hoping to meet the golden alligator named Munch and to change their future.

Meanwhile, Tumble has just moved in down the dirt lane, and she’s determined to be a superhero.

Misfits Tumble and Blue form a fast bond, and eventually they realize Tumble also has a curse—one that will stretch the bonds of family and friendship.

Throughout this magical book, the setting of rural Georgia wends its enigmatic presence to cast a lasting spell.

—LORI K. JOYCE

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF A PET BLACK HOLE

By Michelle Cuevas Dial $16.99, 208 pages ISBN 9780399539138 eBook available Ages 8 to 12

side other iconic Earth sounds—on the Voyager interstellar spacecraft.

On her return home, Stella discovers that she’s picked up a stray—and very hungry—black hole. She soon realizes that the black hole, which she names Larry (short for cosmic singularity), is also starving for companionship.

Stella wonders whether Larry might be her best hope to get rid of now-painful memories and reminders—but when that plan begins to backfire, Stella realizes that perhaps the only way to escape the black hole is to travel through it.

In addition to being a powerful story about how to live with—and through—grief, Stella’s tale is a wild adventure, featuring talking garden gnomes, mutant sweaters, a not-too-annoying little brother and the world’s smelliest hamster.

Just like Larry, this book will absorb pretty much any young reader— whether they are coping with a loss, love scientific speculation or just enjoy an imaginative tale.

their imaginings. But what are they to do when the world they created expands beyond the rules they set for it, and will they ever be able to find their way back home?

With this story, Catherynne M. Valente has created a unique blend of fantasy and historical fiction.

Readers are transported to a land where loyal suitcases turn into hot air balloons to transport their owners, where people are made of all manner of objects, from scraps of lace to writing tablets, and where toy soldiers come to life and fight real battles. But best of all, readers experience all of this whimsy with the young Brontës as their guides, each one’s unique and vibrant personality brought to life by Valente’s exquisite descriptions. This book is a masterful look into the childhood lives of these beloved literary legends, and one that asserts the power of literature and one’s own imagination.

—HANNAH LAMB

—ALICE CARY

—NORAH PIEHL

PABLO AND BIRDY

By Alison McGhee

Illustrated by Ana Juan Caitlyn Dlouhy $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781481470261 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

THE GLASS TOWN GAME

By Catherynne M. Valente Margaret K. McElderry $17.99, 544 pages ISBN 9781481476966 Audio, eBook available Ages 10 and up

MIDDLE GRADE

MIDDLE GRADE

Set in the idyllic seaside tourist town of Isla, a place famed for its talking birds, Pablo and Birdy is a There’s no shortage of books for mystical, fable-like novel that gently young readers about grief, but it’s examines big questions of identity, safe to say that Michelle Cuevas’ family, refugees and freedom. new novel isn’t quite like any of As a baby, Pablo was set adrift at them. Set in the mid-1970s, The sea in a child’s inflatable swimming pool with a parrot named Birdy.

Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole is poignant, funny, inventive After Pablo washed ashore, a souvenir shop owner named Emmanand downright wacky, and at its center (literally!) is an unforgettable uel took him in, helped by other metaphor for the grieving process. shopkeepers who had emigrated from places like Cuba, Haiti and Stella Rodriguez’s world hasn’t been the same since her joke-tellIreland. ing, science-loving dad passed Now, on the eve of his 10th away. As the story opens, she is birthday, it’s no wonder that Pablo swinging by NASA headquarters, is haunted by questions about his hoping to ask them to include a re- past. Just as Pablo is coming to cording of her dad’s laugh—along- terms with his mysterious origins, MIDDLE GRADE

he faces a turning point with his beloved Birdy, long presumed to be flightless and voiceless. Helped by a comic “Committee” of talking birds, Pablo begins to realize that his guardian parrot may be an elusive Seafarer, who according to legend can hear and reproduce every sound ever made.

Pablo hopes that Birdy’s special powers may help reveal his origin story. At the same time, however, he worries that he will be forced to set Birdy free, to return to the ocean on the rare “Winds of Change” that are quickly approaching Isla. As news reporters race to capture a legendary Seafarer, possibly endangering Birdy’s life, Pablo is faced with a gut-wrenching decision.

Pablo and Birdy provides an engaging introduction to an all-important issue: As Emmanuel explains, there are many “in this world who had to leave their homes, for various reasons, and their journeys are long and hard.”

The bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making brings to life the imaginative world of one of the most revered literary families of all time: the Brontës.

Living in a small Yorkshire parsonage, still grieving the deaths of their mother and two eldest sisters, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne use their games in the playroom at the top of the stairs to help them cope with their harsh reality, especially now that Charlotte and Emily are soon returning to boarding school. But when the siblings head to the station for Charlotte and Emily’s departure, they find a different kind of train waiting for them, one that whisks them away to the magical land of

War refugees are nothing new.

Thousands of children were displaced during WWII. Some came to the U.S. on their own.

Leaving wartorn London, Beatrice ends up in sunny Santa Fe….

True Brit

ROSEMARY ZIBART Illustrated by George Lawrence

After fleeing Nazi Germany, Werner struggles to create a new life in New York City.

Winners of the New MexicoArizona Book Award for Historic Fiction and the Silver Nautilus Award n Available from local bookstores, Ingram, Baker & Taylor and Amazon.

31