discover your next great book march 2012
america’s book review
•
OK R
IN • S I D E
Former spy finds peril abroad in The Expats page 11
A richly imagined journey from a ’60s commune to the world beyond
IEWS
page 22
BO
EV
Jodi Picoult’s Lone Wolf leads the pack in fiction
NEW
www.bookpage.com
paperback picks penguin.com
Cold Wind
New York to Dallas
The Icon Thief
Live Wire
When Earl Alden is found dead, his wife Missy is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his much-disliked mother-in-law. All signs point to her being guilty. He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck.
#1 New York Times bestselling author J.D. Robb presents an intense and terrifying new case for New York homicide cop Eve Dallas: one that will take her all the way to the city that named her—and plunge her into the nightmares of her childhood.
A young art buyer is desperate to find a priceless painting by Marcel Duchamp. A gruesome cold case thrusts the FBI into a search for the same painting, with its enigmatic image of a headless nude. And an insidious secret society is intent on reclaiming the painting for reasons of its own—and by any means necessary.
When Myron Bolitar gets involved in the family drama of his former client, he discovers secrets about his own family. As Myron races to locate his missing brother while their father clings to life, he must face the lies that led to their estrangement—including the ones told by Myron himself.
9780451236203 • $9.99
9780451233936 • $9.99
9780425246917 • $9.99
9780425246894 • $7.99
The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne
Nightborn
Spellbound Falls
Dying Wish
Florence Fairbourne’s defiance and Darius Stainthorpe’s demands make it difficult for them to manage one of London’s most eminent auction houses. But their passionate personalities come to terms in an affair—until the devastating truth behind their partnership comes to light, threatening the love they have just begun to share.
The High Lord of the Immortal Darkyn has sent his most trusted warrior, Korvel, to retrieve a coveted scroll that’s rumored to contain maps to Templar treasures and the secrets to eternal life. Uniting with Korvel to recover the dangerous artifact is Simone Derien, the daughter of the scroll’s guardian, and a woman with many deadly secrets…
A newcomer to Spellbound Falls, Maine, Maximilian Oceanus is trying to get a handle on fatherhood. But his newly discovered six-year-old son wants to find his father a wife. Too bad Olivia Baldwin wants nothing to do with the dangerously seductive Mac—especially with all the weird stuff happening all around him…
Jackie Patton has been rescued by the Theronai from her captivity and torture at the hands of the Synestryn—only to learn that she’s a potential match for the Theronai warriors who need a woman to literally save their lives.
9780515150469 • $7.99
9780451413215 • $7.99
9780451236050 • $7.99
9780515150360 • $7.99
National bestselling author of The Russian Concubine, Kate Furnivall spins a tale of war, desperation, and the discovery of love off the coast of Malaya. In 1941 Malaya, Connie Thornton plays her role as a dutiful wife and mother without complaint. She is among the fortunate after all—the British rubber plantation owners reap the benefits of the colonial life. But Connie feels as though she is oppressed, crippled by boredom, sweltering heat, and a loveless marriage. Then, in December, the Japanese invade. Connie and her family flee, sailing south on their yacht toward Singapore. Increasingly desperate and short of food, they are taken over by a pirate craft. When a fighter plane crashes into the sea, they rescue its Japanese pilot. For Connie, that’s when everything changes. And don’t miss Diamonds in the Dust, an exclusive short story set in the same era— only available as a downloadable eSpecial! 9780425241004 • $15.00
BERKLEY
A Penguin Group (USA) Company
contents
march 2012 w w w. B o o k Pa g e . c o m
features
12
11 chris pavone The secret lives of spouses and spies
cover story
lauren groff
In a ’60s-era utopian commune, one extraordinary boy comes of age in Lauren Groff ’s vibrant new novel, Arcadia
14 joe blair On love, family, disaster and rebirth
Cover image © Matt Jordan/Shutterstock
15 travel guides Pounding the pavement in Paris, and more
15 joanne fluke Meet the author of Cinnamon Roll Murder
16 titanic anniversary An unsinkable ship, an unforgettable night
17 women’s history Three women who blazed a new trail
20 catherine chung Exploring the bond between siblings
22 jodi picoult The woman who howled with the wolves
28 lita judge
reviews 18 Fiction
top pick:
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung Carry the One by Carol Anshaw; The Darlings by Cristina Alger; What They Do in the Dark by Amanda Coe; Watergate by Thomas Mallon; The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits; The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont; Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison; The Next Right Thing by Dan Barden; Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult; Girl Reading by Katie Ward also reviewed:
24 NonFiction top pick:
The Great Northern Express by Howard Frank Mosher Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson; The Mark Inside by Amy Reading; Imagine by Jonah Lehrer; Island of Vice by Richard Zacks; All the Money in the World by Laura Vanderkam; Londoners by Craig Taylor; Burn Down the Ground by Kambri Crews; Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith; King Peggy by Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman; The American Way of Eating by Tracie McMillan also reviewed:
29 Children’s
A colorful look at the language of birds
31 ashley wolff Meet the author-illustrator of Baby Bear Sees Blue
columns
top pick:
And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson; Spy School by Stuart Gibbs; The Humming Room by Ellen Potter; The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George; Curveball by Jordan Sonnenblick; My Family for the War by Anne C. Voorhoeve also reviewed:
23
06
20
29
28
19
31
24
04 book fortunes 04 05 06 06 07 08 08 10
author enablers whodunit lifestyles cooking book clubs well read audio romance
advertisING
SUBSCRIPTIONS
To advertise in BookPage, on our website at BookPage.com or in our e-newsletters, visit BookPage.com or call 800.726.4242: Scott Grissom, ext. 36 Julia Steele, ext. 15
Public libraries and bookstores can purchase BookPage in quantity for distribution to their patrons. For information, visit BookPage.com or call 800.726.4242, ext. 34.
read all our reviews online at bookpage.com All material © 2012 by ProMotion, inc.
Individual subscriptions are available for $30 per year. Send payment to: BookPage Subscriptions 2143 Belcourt Avenue Nashville, TN 37212
a m e r i c a’ s b o o k r e v i e w
PUBLISHER
Associate editor
customer service
Editorial Policy
Michael A. Zibart
Eliza Borné
Alice Fitzgibbon
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
PRODUCTION manager
Julia Steele
Sukey Howard
Penny Childress
EDITOR
Contributor
SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER
Lynn L. Green
Roger Bishop
Elizabeth Grace Herbert
Managing EDITOR
children’s books
advertising
BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors evaluate and select for review the best books published each month in a variety of categories. Only books we highly recommend are featured.
Trisha Ping
Allison Hammond
Scott Grissom
Associate EDITOR
Editorial assistant
AD communications
Kate Pritchard
Cat D. Acree
Angela J. Bowman
BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts payment for editorial coverage.
3
columns
Our crystal ball predicts your next great read Reader name: Lynn Hometown: Clarkston, Michigan Favorite genre: fiction Favorite authors: Maggie O’Farrell, Lionel Shriver, Pat Conroy, Philip Roth, John Updike Favorite books: The Vanishing Act of Esmee Lennox, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Prince of Tides Looks like Lynn enjoys literary novels with plenty of tension—even better if it’s family tension. She should try The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst, which is intriguing both for its setup and for the mystery at its heart. The protagonist, writer Octavia Frost, reconnects with her son after he is accused of murder. At the same time, Octavia is in the midst of a provocative new project which provides insight into her past—a book comprised of rewritten endings of all her previous novels. Another winner is Faith by Jennifer Haigh, about a priest at the center of a pedophile scandal and his devout Boston relatives. As a bonus, both of these novels are now available in paperback and would make excellent book club picks. Reader name: Lacey Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota Favorite genres: Literary fiction, short stories, LGBT, children’s/YA Favorite authors: David Mitchell, Don DeLillo, Jeanette Winterson, Flannery O’Connor Favorite books: Cloud Atlas, House of Leaves, Drown, Orlando, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Varmints
4
Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude would be a good choice for Lacey. This sensual jazz-age story is about the relationship between real-life Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka
Book FortuneS
author enablers
by eliza borné
by kathi kamen goldmark & Sam Barry
and her muse, Rafaela, the woman famously depicted in the portrait Beautiful Rafaela. In the realm of short stories, I recommend Adam Haslett’s collection You Are Not a Stranger Here. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, this perceptive and dark book drew praise from our Well Read columnist Robert Weibezahl in 2002: “Haslett is an expert storyteller who draws the reader in with his compassion, then methodically unravels unexpected truths.” Reader name: Tamye Hometown: LaSalle, Ontario Favorite genres: fiction Favorite authors: Emma Donoghue, Jodi Picoult, Lisa Genova Favorite books: Room, My Sister’s Keeper, Left Neglected Tamye’s three favorite novels are impossible to resist because they couple suspense with a fiction lover’s favorite question: What if this terrible thing actually happened? One author who is, of course, a master of this sort of drama is Anita Shreve. The Pilot’s Wife may be her most famous book (What if your husband died in a plane crash—and it turned out he may have led a double life?); I also like A Change in Altitude. (What if a year-long adventure in Africa turned horribly wrong?) Another winner is the expertly paced Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, which will surely prompt fierce discussion in any book club. (What if a home birth took a fatal turn—and the midwife was consequently persecuted?) Finally, you can always count on Sue Miller to provide similar satisfaction and conversation. Her latest, The Lake Shore Limited, is especially good. (What if you planned on leaving your lover on 9/11/2001—the same day he happened to be on an illfated airplane?) For a chance at your own book fortune, email bookfortunes@bookpage.com with your name, hometown and your favorite genre(s), author(s) and book(s). Also, visit bookpage.com/newsletters to sign up for Book of the Day, our daily book recommendation e-newsletter.
Practical advice on writing and publishing for aspiring authors
IT TAKES TWO Dear Author Enablers, I have written a screenplay. I am looking for a writer who could write a novel based on the screenplay. The story is very good (obviously). The screenplay format worked for me (and with the help of my former ESL teacher even my English doesn’t look bad), but writing a novel would be too big a task. Can you give me an idea how to find a partner? Jozef Mak Chicago, Illinois Let’s assume you are planning on paying for a writer’s services. If so, you need to come up with a ballpark figure and advertise in publications that help freelance writers and editors find work, such as Writer’s Digest or Poets and Writers. You can also place an ad on Craigslist, but this tactic seems far less focused, and might result in you being solicited for hot dates, which you may or may not appreciate. If you are hoping to do this as a partnership, meaning you’re not going to pay but you’ll share whatever income results from this work, you should start networking. Ask your local librarian or bookseller about writing groups, writers’ conferences and other gatherings where you might meet the right person. You can also take out ads as described above, if your budget allows.
SETTING THE STAGE Dear Author Enablers, I recently finished reading your book, Write That Book Already. Thank you for your practical honesty. My question regards another issue. You have such great advice for those who want to publish a book of some kind. Do you have any suggestions for someone who writes for the stage? I’ve written, produced and directed four three-act comedies and I think one or two of them might be worth submitting somewhere. I’ve looked at the websites of a few publishers and they will take unsolicited manuscripts if they’ve been produced.
Should I submit my best stuff, should I contact an agent who specializes in scripts or something else? Tim Foutz Bonney Lake, Washington Because there’s not a huge market for people buying plays just to read them, traditional publishers shy away. Leaving aside classics such as Shakespeare or Ibsen, the primary reason people buy plays is to produce them. For a traditional publisher to invest in publishing your plays, at least one of them will have to have been widely produced. Given this fact, it seems most logical for you to keep your focus on producing the plays in as many places as possible. Our friend, playwright Amy Freed (The Bard of Avon and Freedomland), has done very well following this path. Another option is to self-publish your play, which will provide you with copies for selling online, spreading the word and offering for sale to theater groups who want to stage your play.
Craft of Writing Spotlight Les Standiford, a novelist and nonfiction writer (Last Train to Paradise), is also director of the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami. He gave us so many great tips that this will be part one of two. Here, he answers the question “How did you develop your writer’s voice?” “For a long time, when I sat down to write, I really tried hard to WRITE. It took years for me to relax and to try to simply translate to the page the way I tell people’s stories in actual life. When I write a character, I try to become that character, whether evil or good, male or female, etc.” Email your questions about writing to authorenablers@gmail.com. Please include your name and hometown.
Whodunit by Bruce Tierney
Required reading for spy fans Espionage must surely be one of the most difficult fields from which to make a career change. If novels can be believed, spies either meet their ends in a spectacularly gory fashion; get promoted into intelligence admin; or treasonously go to bat for the opposing team. Milo Weaver, the reluctant protagonist of Olen Steinhauer’s An American Spy (Minotaur, $25.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780312622893), opts for none of the above. He wants simply to be left alone, to enjoy the pleasures of family life and to work at some nonlethal sort of livelihood. Alas, it
is not to be. When Weaver becomes aware that his family is in danger, he solicits the help of his diplomat father. Upon returning to his New York apartment, however, Weaver finds his father dead on the living room floor and his family missing without a trace. There are a number of agents in play, any of whom had motive and opportunity to orchestrate the murder and kidnapping, and it is nigh impossible for the reader to determine who is on whose side until the final pages have been turned. Serious, gripping and lightning-paced, An American Spy should be required reading for fans of espionage fiction.
MUST-READ PROCEDURAL I have long held that Scandinavian mystery novels are among the finest on the planet, and Leif G.W. Persson’s police procedural, Another Time, Another Life (Pantheon, $27.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780307377463), strongly supports that assertion. The novel begins in 1975, when a group of terrorists take over the West German Embassy in Stockholm. Their plan literally blows up in their faces and the siege ends
badly—both for the suspects and for two hostages. Fourteen years later, a high-profile murder rocks Stockholm. Detectives Anna Holt and Bo Jarnebring are assigned to the case, but it is grossly mishandled by the powers that be, and the case disappears into the annals of unsolved crimes. Fast forward once again, to 1999, and the shelved investigation is reopened; newly unearthed papers implicate the 1989 murder victim in the West German Embassy case, and once again Holt and Jarnebring are brought aboard. It would be impossible to summarize the complexities of this story here, but I’ll say this: If you enjoy Scandinavian mysteries, this one will be right up your alley. If you haven’t been hooked by the subgenre, Another Time, Another Life should do the trick.
IRISH INVESTIGATIONS Irish author Gerard O’Donovan is back with the much-anticipated follow-up to The Priest, entitled Dublin Dead (Scribner, $26, 288 pages, ISBN 9781451610635). O’Donovan has only improved upon his strengths, developing the characters of National Drugs Unit cop Mike Mulcahy and his sidekick, reporter Siobhan Fallon (with whom Mulcahy has a convoluted and strained relationship, to say the least). This time out, the pair find themselves working on parallel investigations: Mulcahy on a huge cocaine discovery, and Fallon on a missing-persons case that has the look of murder about it. The two storylines give the appearance of meeting as they approach the novel’s climax, and indeed, there is a commonality of “usual suspects” in the twin investigations. So, reluctantly, Mulcahy takes Fallon into his confidence, and together the two begin to tie up loose ends. Problem is, the loose ends aren’t cooperating at all. A quick note: Those who have read The Priest will undoubtedly be queued up to purchase
Tell us what you think!
Dublin Dead on release day. If you haven’t read The Priest, I recommend starting there to provide backstory for O’Donovan’s latest.
TOP PICK IN MYSTERY As Michael Robotham’s Bleed for Me opens, 14-year-old Sienna Hegarty stands accused of patricide. She has denounced her father—a decorated ex-cop—as a pedophile, but she insists that she had nothing to do with his killing. On the other hand, she was covered with his blood, and she has no memory of the time surrounding the event. Or so she says. Hegarty is the best friend of the daughter of clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin— who doesn’t have it easy, either. O’Loughlin suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and every day he can feel the disease increasing its grip on his life, his limbs stage-managed against his will by some malevolent puppeteer. His wife has left him, seemingly taking their family and most of their friends with her as spoils of the separation agreement. But O’Loughlin is drawn to Sienna’s case. Along with retired policeman Vincent Ruiz, he tries to make sense of a convoluted and lethal investigation, with collateral damage at every turn. Bleed for Me works on many levels, combining the insights of a trained psychologist; the savvy street smarts and irreverent observations of a retired cop; and intricate plotting from a first-rate author.
BLEED FOR ME By Michael Robotham Mulholland Books $25.99, 432 pages ISBN 9780316126380 eBook available
SUSPENSE
Take the
BookPage Reader Survey and be entered for a chance to win a Nook Color (and more)! To enter, go to
BookPage.com 5
columns
lifestyles
cooking
by joanna brichetto
b y s y b i l P RATT
A HOME GUIDE TO HERBS
a tavola, per piacere!
Breverton’s Complete Herbal (Lyons Press, $19.95, 386 pages, ISBN 9780762770229) is a new twist on a very old classic. Culpepper’s Complete Herbal, in print since 1653, has helped common folk help themselves for centuries with herbal remedies. Terry Breverton’s version is completely up-to-date. It contains “all the most interesting herbs, spices and associated herb gardens and gardeners,” which means more than 250 plants and herbs, plus entries about floral clocks, plant names in folklore and other fascinating tidbits. The layout features one or two herbs per two-page
Frances Mayes has lived under the Tuscan sun for more than two decades and has opened her home and her heart to us in her best-selling books. Now, with The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $29.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9780307885289), embellished by 150 gorgeous fullcolor photos, she and her husband Ed invite us into their kitchen to share the treasures of la cucina Toscana. The Mayeses have learned about Tuscan food from the inside out, from the locals—friends, neighbors, restaurateurs, butchers, cheese and winemakers—and they’ve acquired the Tuscan obsession with
characteristics; botanical specifics like origins, growing range and habits; and a timeline for historical context. All medical information, including therapeutic uses, is gleaned from “the most current scientific literature and research” and presented along with suggested preparations and precautions. A chart highlights the most common “delivery methods,” such as tea, tincture, pill, food or topical application. Photographs, a glossary and an illustrated plant index complete the reference.
TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
spread, accompanied by botanical illustrations. A typical entry includes common and scientific nomenclature, description, properties, uses (medicine, food, dyeing and so on) and history, and often adds an interesting sidebar. For example, the marginalia for hyssop mentions its use as a butterfly and slug deterrent and a stimulant for grape production. Who knew? As entertaining as it is educative, the guide is fun to simply browse, but be prepared to come away a lot smarter.
HERBS FOR HEALTH
6
Looking for a detailed and dedicated authority for using herbs as medicine? The National Geographic Guide to Medicinal Herbs (National Geographic, $40, 400 pages, ISBN 9781426207006) is the perfect union of botanical and medical expertise. This guide is so authoritative, its aim is to educate not only consumers, but doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals as well. Seventy-two popular herbs are each given a four-page, easy-to-use layout detailing each plant’s distinguishing
Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers for Small Spaces is a scrumptious book. Blogger Gayla Trail, author of You Grow Girl and Grow Great Grub, knows what to share and how to show it so that anyone—from beginners to experienced gardeners—will want to dig right in. She reminds us that most herbs started as weeds, which means “they’ll fit into literally any space you can provide them,” so those of us with less-than-ideal garden sizes, sites or budgets can still grow delicious and beautiful things. She covers all the particulars of “growing a healthy, organic herb garden in a myriad of challenging environments,” introduces more than 200 varieties of herbs and edible flowers and details what we can do with our bounty: how to “gather, preserve and eat” it all. Ten funky DIY projects (like a mini-raised bed made from a discarded drawer) and 35 recipes round out an irresistible resource.
EASY GROWING By Gayla Trail Clarkson Potter $19.99, 208 pages ISBN 9780307886873
GARDENING
the book by region, highlighting the signature dishes that each produces, with a side order of local food lore and intriguing history. In the Coastal Bend area we’re treated to the glory of Galveston Oysters— scalloped, grilled, fried, in nachos and on the half shell—spectacular shrimp dishes and the growing influence of the Cajun Invasion. And so it goes, chapter after tempting chapter, from Goulash and Rehwurst to King Ranch Casserole, Texas Sugo, Texas Pho and Spicy Viet-Tex Mayo. Deep in the heart of Texas there’s a marvelous melting pot of multi-ethnic food.
TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS
food and the joy in preparing and sharing it. Most of the recipes (more than 150) are simple and traditional, ranging from antipasti to dolci, with stops for a passel of perfect pasta—including spaghetti with arugula and pancetta and Orecchiette with Shrimp—and classics like Chicken with Artichokes, Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Chickpeas and Green Beans with Black Olives. Whether Frances is writing recipes, invoking the essence of real extra-virgin olive oil or the “liquid sunlight” of a lemon, she infuses everything with her lyric love of this place in the sun.
REGIONAL RICHES Texas Eats (Ten Speed, $25, 304 pages, ISBN 9780767921503) is Robb Walsh’s unabashedly admiring ode to the many cuisines that call Texas home. Our second largest state has more than 30 ethnic groups that have adapted their specialties to the varied Texan landscape, forming a fabulous hodgepodge of gastronomic hybrids. Though Tex-Mex, now internationally known, is the most famous, Walsh highlights many others, like Czech-Tex. He’s organized
Always passionate about cooking, Crescent Dragonwagon is back with Bean by Bean, a super-celebration of beans, always cheap and now chic, too. She’s collected and concocted more than 200 recipes to demonstrate their virtuosity (all tagged for dietary predilection: vegetarian, vegan, omnivorous, etc). Beans can start a meal (check out the Marrakech Melange), star in soups and salads and serve as amiable entrées in curries, casseroles and, of course, chilis, as well as sensational sides, bread and even dessert, as in Red Bean Ice Cream. Crescent starts with Bean Basics—choosing, using, nutrition and cooking methods, including degassification. As good a writer as she is a cook, her notes and short essays are fun, informative and brimming with her inimitable enthusiasm.
bean by bean By Crescent Dragonwagon Workman $15.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780761132417
HEALTHY
book clubs by julie hale
New paperback releases for reading groups
LAST GASP IN DODGE CITY Expertly crafted and wonderfully authentic, Mary Doria Russell’s novel Doc (Ballantine, $15, 432 pages, ISBN 9780812980004) is a crackerjack account of the life of Doc Holliday. Raised in the South, trained as a dentist—and dying from tuberculosis—Dr. John Henry Holliday, at the age of 22, leaves his Atlanta home for the West in a last-ditch attempt to save his own life. With the hope that the dry air of the frontier will cure what ails him, Doc settles in Dodge City, Kansas, opening a dentist’s office and earn-
ing money as a gambler. When a boy named Johnnie Sanders is found dead, the murder puts lawman Wyatt Earp on high alert. Doc, as it turns out, also has an interest in the crime. The friendship of these two larger-than-life legends is memorably rendered by Russell, who writes expertly about one of the richest chapters in America’s past.
FORBIDDEN LOVE In The Story of Beautiful Girl (Grand Central, $12, 368 pages, ISBN 9780446574457), Rachel Simon offers a stirring tale about two unlikely lovers: Homan, a deaf black man, and developmentally disabled Lynnie, who is young and white. The time is 1968, and the place is the Pennsylvania State School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. In the midst of the school’s oppressive atmosphere, Lynnie and Homan develop serious feelings for one another and decide to escape. When Lynnie gives birth to their baby, she’s forced to leave the infant with a kind widow named Martha. Brought back to the school by authorities, Lynnie
finds herself hopelessly separated from Homan, who gets away safely. Simon skillfully develops their separate stories into a narrative that spans 40 years, tracing the arc of their growth into parents and successful communicators. This is a poignant story with sensitive subject matter at its heart, yet Simon never lapses into sentimentality. Her courageous novel is at once an unforgettable love story and a moving look at the lives of the disabled.
TOP PICK IN BOOK CLUBS Set in Stellar Plains, New Jersey, Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel takes its provocative premise from an ancient Greek play. When high school drama teacher Fran Heller holds rehearsals for Aristophanes’ Lysistrata—in which the women of Greece stop having sex in an effort to end the Peloponnesian War—a mysterious change overcomes the town’s female population. Losing all desire for sex, the women of Stellar Plains distance themselves from their partners. The condition affects long-established couples and new lovers alike, from ardent English instructors Robby and Dory Lang to their young daughter Willa. Matters come to a head when Marissa Clayborn, who plays Lysistrata, begins a personal demonstration against the war in Afghanistan. Providing the reader with plenty of food for thought regarding the impulses that drive both genders, The Uncoupling is a highly illuminating and wonderfully humorous novel.
GREAT READS
NEW IN PAPERBACK THE PIONEER WOMAN’S BESTSELLING MEMOIR “Charming and romantic . . . in a word: delightful.” — Publishers Weekly
A DELICIOUS DEBUT “Beautifully written and quietly wise . . . a story so vividly told, you can (almost) taste the buttercream.” — SARAH JIO
FROM THE AUTHOR OF BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS “Lola Jaye’s voice is refreshing and inspired, and her stories go straight to the heart.” — L O L I TA F I L ES
AN ADDICTIVE TALE “It’s hard not to fall in love with Clementine. . . . You won’t want this story to end.” — J E S S I C A A N YA BL A U
The Uncoupling By Meg Wolitzer Riverhead $15, 304 pages ISBN 9781594485657
EXCELLENT FOR BOOK CLUBS
FICTION
An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
@WilliamMorrowPB
7
columns
well read
audio
by robert Weibezahl
by sukey howard
Through the grapevine
Philip K. Dick and his legacy, 30 years later
8
Philip K. Dick. who died 30 years ago on March 2, 1982, is one of those writers whose readership and reputation have grown steadily after death. He is generally categorized as a science fiction writer, and his work, often featuring futuristic settings, speculative technology and mind-bending realities, for the most part slots into that genre. Yet Dick could be categorized more precisely as a visionary, and that vision was a singular one, steeped in prescient paranoia and distrust. What continues to draw readers to Dick’s dark, unusual novels and stories? (And not just readers— Dick’s work consistently inspires filmmakers and most recently is the basis for last year’s The Adjustment Bureau and remakes of Blade Runner and Total Recall, both due to be released in 2012.) Dick certainly was the master of twisted, unexpected plots, and many of his 45 novels and 121 stories are written with an underlying quirky humor that both belies and amplifies their message. Novelist Jonathan Lethem, who edited the Library of America editions of Dick’s novels, suggests that the work speaks to us because it captures the way we live now. “When we say he was ‘ahead of his time’ what’s meant is that he sensed the implications of the postwar American world—the global triumph of American commercial capitalism, the growth of our present corporate technocratic culture, the dissociative power of technological media,” Lethem has said. “But it wasn’t the future he was seeing, it was the present, already manifesting itself around him in the ’50s and ’60s. We live in the world he saw and described, because it was already being born, but few had his ability to glimpse it so early.” As a central part of the 30th-anniversary commemoration of Philip K. Dick, Mariner Books has begun reissuing many of his novels in handsome, uniform trade paperback editions, and they will continue to
bring out additional titles throughout the year. These include well-known works such as A Scanner Darkly and Ubik—which was named one of Time’s 100 best English-language novels—but also lesser-known novels such as Gather Yourself Together, written when Dick was 24. True aficionados will revel in the recently published The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a single volume edited by Lethem and Pamela Jackson from more than 8,000 pages of notes, mostly handwritten, that Dick took down in a frantic obsession between 1974 and his death. It is a massive, elliptical work of philosophical musings that shares a revelation that came to him in early 1974. Dick suffered from depression and perhaps other undiagnosed mental issues (“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane,” he wrote in Valis, published the year before his death), and this chaotic document offers a unique window into a unique writer’s consciousness. As a curious addendum to this 30th-anniversary publishing activity, David F. Dufty’s How to Build an Android will appear in June from Henry Holt. Billed as popular science, it recounts the true story of the fully functional head of an android replica of Philip K. Dick that was lost in 2006 and has never been recovered. It would be marvelous to know what fiction the master himself might have made of that strange scenario.
The EXEGesIS OF PHILIP K. DICK By Philip K. Dick HMH $40, 976 pages ISBN 9780547549255
literature
Gossip can be dangerous, but it’s always delicious. And Joseph Epstein’s extended essay, Gossip (Tantor, $24.99, 8 hours, ISBN 9781452655468), is truly delectable. It could have been a serious, and seriously dull, treatise on why we gossip and how this often vicious, destructive—though hugely entertaining—activity can also serve worthy purposes. But Epstein has peppered Gossip with so many examples of juicy dirt, and such a rich rogue’s gallery of great gossipers and gossipees, that it makes you feel like you’re in with the in crowd and
his superior’s superior. He’s to investigate the “accidental” drowning of a wealthy captain of industry’s nephew and CFO that may not have been so accidental. Once there, Lynley finds a full cast of family members with motives, including the deceased’s outraged former wife and his gay Iranian lover. Added to this heady mix is a plethora of subplots from the woes of infertility to sociopaths making snuff films. Not Lynleylite, but heavy on non-murderous melodrama.
TOP PICK IN AUDIO
getting great scuttlebutt. The desire to gossip seems to be hardwired in us. Now, it’s an industry and an everlarger part of our everyday lives in this totally connected global village. Epstein, an unabashed connoisseur of gossip, whose preference runs to the literary, “analytical and refined” variety (many delightful examples of his chosen dirty linen are included) doesn’t expect anyone to stop “confessing other people’s sins,” he just advises that we strain the skinny and the scoop that comes our way through “skeptical intelligence.” Arthur Morey reads with such breezy ease that you forget that Epstein isn’t doing the honors himself.
FOUL PLAY OR ACCIDENT? Elizabeth George has outdone herself in Believing the Lie (Penguin Audio, $44.95, 23 hours, ISBN 9781611760408), expertly narrated by Davina Porter, by embedding a super soap opera, awash in scandal, secrets and sexual indiscretions, in her 17th D.I. Thomas Lynley novel. Still grieving for his murdered wife, but embroiled in a steamy affair with his superior officer at New Scotland Yard, Lynley is dispatched to the Lake District at the behest of
Oslo detective Harry Hole, seeking solace in drugs after the Snowman serial killer ordeal, and dragging his Nordic melancholia and heavy emotional baggage with him, is in Hong Kong when he shows up in Jo Nesbø’s latest, relentlessly gripping thriller, The Leopard. Lured back to Norway by a beautiful colleague and a string of grisly killings, Harry falls into a maelstrom of malevolence, murder, torture, psychological manipulation and brutal brushes with death in the icy cold of an avalanche and the humid heat of the warravaged Congo. It’s a tough case; clues are scattered, motives hard to fathom. A nasty police turf war muddies the already murky waters, but the body count and the tension keep rising. Only when Harry sees through the layers of deception and into the timeless power of hate can he focus on the killer. Robin Sachs, who narrated The Snowman with such aplomb, does it again here.
The LEOPARD By Jo Nesbø Random House Audio $45, 21.5 hours ISBN 9780307917607
THRILLER
CAPTIVATING for Every Listener.
“Jane Green surpasses herself in her latest novel, a powerful and moving story of a family on the edge of emotional wreckage, and how love truly can––conquer all.”
Stories
—DANI SHAPIRO, author of Devotion
Third in the award-winning paranormal series that’s “hilarious and heartfelt, sexy and surprising.” —J.R. WARD
“The best spy novel I’ve ever read that wasn’t written by John le Carré.” —STEPHEN KING, Entertainment Weekly on The Tourist
From the New York Times bestselling author of One Good Dog
“Black Site is an amazing thriller from a new all-star in the genre.” —BRAD THOR, #1 bestselling author of Full Black
“Hannah is superb at delving into the characters’ psyches and delineating nuances of feeling.” —The Washington Post on Night Road
“Sure to keep listeners on the edge of their seats.” 186
—Library Journal on A Heartbeat Away
Visit macmillanaudio.com to listen to excerpts. Find us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
“The core of Paris by a phenomenal novelist.” —Elle (France)
by
Novel Reads
HARPERCOLLINS HarperCollins.com • AvonRomance.com And She Was
by Alison Gaylin Missing persons investigator Brenna Spector has a rare neurological disorder that enables her to recall every detail of every day of her life. But it hasn’t helped her solve the mystery that haunts her above all others—and it didn’t lead her to little Iris Neff, who walked away from a barbecue in her small suburban town…and vanished. When a local woman, Carol Wentz, disappears 11 years later, Brenna uncovers bizarre connections between the missing woman, the long-gone little girl…and herself. 9780061878206, $5.99
Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea by Sophia Nash
Alexander Barclay, Duke of Kress, has stumbled upon a perfect opportunity for redemption. Having been exiled to Cornwall by the Prince Regent himself, Barclay discovers lovely Roxanne Vanderhaven clinging to the edge of a cliff, stranded there by her murderous blackguard of a husband…just waiting to be rescued.
columns Spinster Penelope Marbury reconnects with her childhood friend and the man of her dreams in Sarah MacLean’s A Rogue by Any Other Name (Avon, $7.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780062068521). Ten years after losing everything in a card game, the Marquess of Bourne has the opportunity to regain his family’s land— if he marries Lady Penelope. Once wed, Penelope comes to understand that she is part of a larger revenge plot, but that doesn’t deter her from wanting her husband’s heart.
Killer Move
by Michael Marshall
A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean
The Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London’s most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury. He may be a prince of London’s illicit underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them…even her heart. 9780062068521, $7.99
When a Scot Loves a Lady by Katherine Ashe
After years as an agent of the secret Falcon Club, Lord Leam Blackwood knows it’s time to return home to Scotland. One temptation threatens his plans—Kitty Savege, who warms his blood like a dram of fine whiskey. But a dangerous enemy stands in the way of desire, and to beat this foe Leam needs Kitty’s help… 9780062031662, $7.99
All available as eBooks Visit LibraryLoveFest.com for more great reading
10
for more than just one night. But can she accept the wolf inside him? They’re still figuring out their compelling and undeniable attraction when the Dire Wolves’ enemies ramp up their nefarious plans—and Rifter realizes Gwen is somehow involved. Can he do his duty and save the female he’s come to love? Tyler creates a complex paranormal world that wraps the reader in intense emotion and gritty adventure.
TOP PICK IN ROMANCE
9780062022325, $7.99
9780061434433, $7.99
b y c h r i s t i e r i d g way
The best revenge is love
Look for The Art of Duke Hunting also by Sophia Nash, coming in April.
Bill Moore already has a lot, but he wants more…much more. He’s got a lucrative job selling condos in the Florida Keys, a good marriage, a beautiful house…and a five-year plan for super-success that he’s just kicked into high gear. Then one morning he arrives at work to find a card waiting for him with a one-word message: Modified. And Bill’s life begins to change—small, barely detectable differences at first, but soon things begin unwinding rapidly.
romance
Bourne, who regained his wealth through a partnership in a notorious gaming hell, is astounded by proper Penelope’s eagerness to explore his establishment . . . and her own passions. While her adventurous spirit makes him crazy at times, it also draws him closer—but his vow to settle scores keeps getting in the way. Can Bourne let go of his selfish desire to inflict vengeance in order to truly connect with his wife? This is a sensuous story of two lonely people taking a gamble on love.
A DIRE DILEMMA Stephanie Tyler tells an erotic story of epic struggle in Dire Needs (Signet, $7.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780451236234). A handful of immortal werewolves called the Dires, led by King Rifter, must save humans from those who would harm them. Rifter believes there’s no one for him to mate with . . . until he picks up a doctor in a bar—a woman who thinks she’s terminally ill. Something strange happens when Gwen takes Rifter home, though. He not only makes her wish the diagnosis was wrong, but his pull seems to go beyond sex. And Rifter, against his nature, wants the human
Former firefighter (and convicted murderer) Teague Creek has gotten past his San Quentin Prison guards and fled with another violent inmate in Fever by Joan Swan. Taken for someone else, Dr. Alyssa Foster is made his captive. Dragged along as a bargaining chip, she is first terrified, then intrigued, by the singleminded Teague, who will let nothing and no one stand in his way. Early on, Alyssa realizes he’s nothing like his sadistic fellow escapee. Her fascination with Teague grows as he figures out her identity, then it’s just the two of them striving to keep ahead of the law. There’s more than one mystery in Teague’s past, and Alyssa finds herself delving into his history. Teague has felt doubted and forgotten for years, and her burgeoning belief in him reaches his well-defended heart. But before they can truly be together, the pair must outsmart their pursuers and solve the puzzle of old crimes. An exciting, on-the-run romantic suspense tale!
FEVER By Joan Swan Brava $14, 448 pages ISBN 9780758266385 eBook available
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
interview
CHRIS pavone b y j AY M AC D O N A L D
NINA SUBIN
THE SECRET LIFE OF MRS. MOORE
H
ow well do you know your spouse? Or your best friends? Even if the thought never occurred to you, it will by the time you’re halfway through The Expats, Chris Pavone’s clever debut spy novel that’s suspenseful enough for a man yet introspective enough for a woman.
Here’s the setup: Kate Moore has been working undercover for the CIA for 15 years, the last five as a working mother with two young boys. The problem is, she never quite got around to telling her computer geek husband Dexter about it. All these years, he assumed she was working overtime at a mundane administrative job when she was actually begging off social engagements in order to dispatch drug lords in Central America. When Dexter lands a lucrative consulting job in data security for an unnamed bank in Luxembourg, Kate jumps at the chance to quit the Agency, leave her double life behind and start anew as a stay-at-home expat mom. The Moores soon hit it off with charismatic expat couple Bill and Julia, whose past strikes Kate as suspiciously homogenized. Now that Dexter is traveling more, Kate begins to sense something different about him as well. Or is it just her? It turns out you can take the girl out of the spy game but you can’t take the spy out of the girl. The result is that rarity in the genre: a spy novel virtually devoid of espionage (unless you count the domestic variety) and violence (save for flashbacks to Kate’s previous wet work). Instead, the suspense, and an endearing humor that spouses will appreciate, builds almost entirely from Kate’s internal dialogue as she slowly peels back the layers of artifice in her life. The funny thing is, Pavone didn’t set out to write a spy novel. Like Kate, he’d jumped at the chance to experience the expat life. After working half his life as a nonfiction book editor and ghostwriter in New York, Pavone welcomed the news when his wife took a job offer in Luxembourg. “I thought, this is great! I’d never lived anywhere else except New York
and I felt a little disappointed in myself; I didn’t even do a junior year abroad,” he recalls. “I was turning 40, our marriage was turning 10, and I thought, this is a great thing to do, let’s do it.” After a lifetime smothered in manuscripts, Pavone was suddenly Mr. Mom to their twin four-year-old boys in a leafy foreign park filled almost exclusively with expat moms. Having never written or edited fiction before, he began distilling this rich new life into a novel. And it was going nowhere. “As I was writing that book, it bored me,” he says. “I really “I think most liked the setup people have and the charno idea what acters I was their spouses constructing but I just didn’t do all day like the story I long.” found myself telling. There was not enough that I could imagine happening that was going to make it into a satisfying read to me.” Then one day he was sitting on a park bench beside an expat housewife who made very clear that she had no intention of discussing her past. “I got to thinking, what if this woman did something horrible?” Pavone recalls. “I moved abroad because my wife got a job and I was bored and that’s the standard reason, but there could be lots of other reasons to move abroad, to change your life entirely. And it amused me to think that maybe this woman used to be a spy. Which led me to, what if my main character actually was this person with this secret that she was keeping, not only from all of her new friends but also her husband?” As a result of that chance meeting, Pavone revised his work in progress.
Changing Kate into an ex-spy both amped up the plot of The Expats and added layers of meaning to her journey. After all, once her past was a wellguarded secret, the same could apply to her friends and husband as well. “Part of the theme that I hope comes through in the book is that marriage is a continuum of honesty and deception, and the reality of people’s relationships is not something that outsiders can understand,” Pavone says. “I don’t mean to sound dire or dour about marriage; I enjoy mine immensely. But the truth is, I only know what my wife does all day long because we work in the same business. I think most people have no idea what their spouses do all day long. It’s not a question of adultery I’m talking about, but just the reality that you live this life of 40, 50, 60 hours a week doing something completely divorced from your family and it’s possible that it’s just completely not what the other person thought it would be.” Once he’d cracked open the plot, did he consider changing Kate’s gender? “The reason I didn’t want it to be a male was because, if I made the protagonist a male in this book populated by women, then that’s what the book would be about in a lot of readers’ eyes,” he explains. “The whole thing would be about a guy in this women’s world and I didn’t really want that to be what the book is about. It would have
appeared overtly political, either a joke or something too earnest, and I didn’t want it to be either of those things. I wanted it to be a much more universal story.” Pavone says that while Kate will return one day, she won’t be in the follow-up. For now, he’s satisfied to have produced a genre rarity: The Spy Who Came in From the Park. “It is a woman’s spy book in a lot of ways. It’s got a woman on the cover and I hope that women will come to it. I hope that men will read it too because men read the bulk of spy books, but I think that this is a book for women as well.”
THE EXPATS
By Chris Pavone, Crown, $26, 336 pages ISBN 9780307956354, audio, eBook available
11
cover story
lauren groff SARAH MCKUNE
INTERVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE
T
GOING TO ARCADIA, WITH FLOWERS IN THEIR HAIR
hirty-three-year-old Lauren Groff calls herself a “soft-label” Luddite. She thinks the best decision she and her husband made when they moved to Gainesville, Florida, was not to own a television.
She wrote the first drafts of her beautifully chiaroscuro second novel Arcadia in notebooks and on legal pads before reluctantly turning on her computer. She occasionally goes on “digital fasts”—no email, no web surfing, no computer, period— to slow down her brain. On the other hand, she sure likes Twitter. “I’m in a place where I don’t come into contact with other writers almost ever, so I go to Twitter to be part of the conversation,” says Groff, who won critical acclaim for
Arcadia
12
By Lauren Groff, Voice, $25.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781401340872, eBook available
her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton. “I think [connecting with people] is what technology does so well. But you have to be very vigilant of it taking over because it is really seductive.” The skeptical, vigilant part of Groff’s views about technology— along with her desire for community—is shared by the central character of Arcadia, the extraordinarily good-hearted Ridley Sorrel Stone. Called “Bit” since childhood because of his tiny size, he achieves in the novel’s final section, set in 2018 when he is 50 years old, a hard-won equanimity, if not exactly happiness. A smallish example of that is his grudging acceptance of his 14-yearold daughter’s ever-present eReader. The subject of technology is just one slim thread in the novel’s rich tapestry of story exploring how we sustain hope and idealism in a world that presents us with unavoidable sadness and sometimes seems bent on its own annihilation. Groff explains that she began writing Arcadia when she was pregnant with her first son, Beckett, to whom the novel is dedicated. “It came out of an enormous amount of anxiety and guilt about bringing a child into
the world,” says Groff, who recently gave birth to a second son. “In early drafts the novel was much more dystopian than it is in the final draft. But with Beckett’s arrival, I had to have hope. So the book grew as he grew. He is for me inextricable from the character of Bit and lends a lot of his personality and observations to the character. It’s not a single thing, just the whole amazing majesty of little boyhood.” Indeed, Bit is an extraordinary boy. Deeply sensitive, keenly observant and empathetic, he is innocent, without being naïve. When the novel proper opens in 1973, he is a fiveyear-old living with his parents in a hippie commune called Arcadia, located in New York state, not very far, as the imagination flies, from Cooperstown, where Groff grew up. Arcadia is at first an idyllic place. Among the ragamuffin band of commune children, Bit is both a cherished insider and solitary child who wanders in a vividly rendered, forested, fairy-tale landscape that has less to do with Disney than the Brothers Grimm. “There is a lot of mythology and fairy tale in this book and in everything I write,” Groff says. “The
Grimms were my uncles when I was growing up. I loved their horrible stories when I was little, and they form a part of my cultural DNA. Being a bookish, shy teenager in upstate New York, where there is really nothing to do in the summer, I also read a lot of Greek myths . . . so they’re part of my life and they’re associated with that part of the country, too.” “Myths and fairy tales, especially Grimm fairy tales, have a very frank way of looking at the world that has been sanitized in most children’s stories today,” Groff adds. “A sensitive child will pick up on that, especially because life is savage in a lot of ways. Bit in particular responds very deeply to the Grimms because they help him to articulate what is wrong with his world, or at least show him how to read his world.” If what is right about this Utopia is embodied by Bit and his parents, what is wrong is illustrated by the crash-and-burn life of Bit’s best friend and soul mate, Helle, the unloved daughter of the commune’s narcissistic guru, Handy. In Groff’s narrative, the relationship between Bit In Groff ’s novel, and Helle is both sublime a sensitive and achingly boy negotiates painful. “Even the path from though a an idyllic lot of the commune children to the world who come “outside.” out of these communities grow up to be amazing, freethinking, stunning human beings, a lot of them are damaged,” Groff says. “It’s hard not to damage your children just in general, even if you live within society. Living outside of society you surely do some sort of trauma to your kids. It was fascinating for me to think about the impact of something so entirely good-intentioned on innocent people who aren’t yet able to make their own decisions.” Groff’s vibrant depiction of commune life—its light and its darkness—arises from a combination of imagination and research. Groff points out that in the early 19th cen-
See how BookPage is growing for you
®
tury the region of New York where she grew up was a hotbed of social and religious ferment and home to dozens of utopianist communities. During her research Groff visited Oneida, New York, home to the Oneida Community in the 1860s, and The Farm, an ongoing commune founded by 1960s-era hippies in Summertown, Tennessee. “You feel a lower-level boil,” she says of The Farm, now home to a smaller group. “But you can tell what it had been at one point. There’s still a beautiful sense of peace.” Like most real-life, 1960s-era communes, the fictional Arcadia begins to fall apart, a victim of its successes and its excesses, just as Bit is entering the tumult of adolescence. He and the other children carry their confusion and their longing with them as they are forced “Outside,” as they call it. And that mix of emotions—portrayed by Groff with psychological acuity and stylistic daring—roils Bit’s life well into adulthood. “Stories tell you what they need,” Groff says of her decision to continue Bit’s story until he enters his 50s. “And I eventually did realize this story needed to be a man’s story. I knew Bit so deeply as a child and then as an adolescent that I really had no qualms in writing about him as a man.” About the overriding architecture of her carefully structured novel, however, Groff says she had many qualms. “The architecture of fiction is one of the most urgent things for me. I have to find those parallel resonances between structure and story; I have to know the story inside and out before I know the shape of the house around it.” The shape of Arcadia’s house was especially challenging because, Groff says, returning to a recurrent theme of our conversation, “at its base this book is an argument with myself for hope. This is a time when, if you pay enough attention, it sometimes seems naïve to have hope for the future. I fought very deeply with myself to find out how I really believe it will be. It was a long, protracted struggle. And I ended up on the side of transcendence.”
Now you can discover your next great book any time, any place!
NEW! BookPage on the Nook Newsstand BookPage eBooks BookPage iPhone App
E-NEWSLETTERS
SOCIAL MEDIA
BookPageXTRA Book of the Day Children’s Corner
The Book Case Blog Facebook Twitter YouTube
Go to BookPage.com/social for links
13
interview
Joe blair
A debut memoir of love lost and found
I
t’s a first for both of us—Joe Blair’s first time being interviewed and my first time calling an author at a John Deere assembly plant. (Well, technically in the parking lot, where Blair has retreated to his truck because it’s quieter.)
Blair, a writer and HVAC repairman, is, at the time of our conversation, on a job in Waterloo, Iowa, but has taken a break to discuss his new memoir, By the Iowa Sea. Asked if his co-workers know about his double life, he says, “I certainly don’t brag about it. . . . I’m not ashamed or anything, I just don’t talk about it much.” (Though he did inspire one fellow pipefitter to start journaling.) Blair is plainspoken, modest about his success and seems genuinely surprised by his publishing deal, which came about after he wrote a “Modern Love” essay for the New York Times. He compiled the book, in part, from his writings over the years, a process he describes as a “frickin’ nightmare.” “There was no arc,” he says. “I had to create one.” The arc he created carries him on an Odyssean journey across tumultuous seas both real and metaphorical. As a kid, Blair was always drawn to journeys and journeymen. He would contemplate the Easy Rider poster on his wall and entertain fantasies of the open road. As a carefree young man in his early 20s, he set out on his bike, his new bride Deb on the back, never dreaming that the trip would end with them set-
by the iowa sea
14
By Joe Blair, Scribner, $24, 288 pages ISBN 9781451636055, eBook available
tling in Iowa, starting a family and embarking on the conventional path he’d once eschewed. Fifteen years later, Blair finds himself working as an air-conditioning repairman and spending his free time caring for his old house and four children (including one with special needs), and considering (and ultimately engaging in) marital infidelity. All of these stresses are compounded by the unique challenges of parenting Michael, who has a severe form of autism. Blair feels stuck in place, trapped under the oppressive weight of his many responsibilities. Until, that is, the water rises, bringing with it an awakening that upends life as he knows it. “Before the flood hit, it felt to me like I had no choice left,” Blair recalls. “I had my own business, we had this house, we had this family. And I remember thinking, this is it. We can’t move, can’t do anything.” Though the 2008 Iowa flood provides a convenient metaphor for the unraveling of Blair’s marriage and the rebirth that follows, he says it was more than that. “I never really considered the size of that notion until we went through it. And then you realize it’s not just a metaphor, it does change everything. When you’re paddling a canoe through your old neighborhood, over the fence you built, and the whole neighborhood is just roofs and tree limbs, it changes you.” In a sense, the floodwaters loosened him from an inertia that had set in years before. “Until we came to the time of the flood, for instance, I wasn’t equipped to deal with Michael, with my relationship with Michael, on the page because I wasn’t ready to deal with it in real life,” Blair says. “At the time of the flood, I was ready to do it. Just like I was ready to face up to my relation-
ship with my wife. I had to confront many of my deficits, and they expressed themselves in all their glory.” “Genuine” and “honest” are adjectives often applied to Blair’s narrative voice, and with good reason. There’s a rawness and emotional authenticity to his writing that many have likened to the work of Rick Bragg. Blair, however, isn’t entirely comfortable with this kind of praise. “I have a knee-jerk The flood reaction to the provides a word ‘honesty’ because of gometaphor ing through for the the nonfiction unraveling writing program of Blair’s at the Univermarriage sity of Iowa.” (He attended and the rebirth that the workshop for three years in follows. the early ’90s.) “There, ‘honesty’ is a word everyone sneers at.” That said, it’s a quality he strives for in his writing, and he’s found a process for achieving it that works well for him. Each morning, he meets with a longtime writing partner; the two set up their computers, tap away for an hour or more, and then read their work aloud. “When I’ve written something, I don’t think of the writing as good or bad; it’s either closer to the truth or farther away,” Blair says. “And when I veer from the truth, I know it when I read it out loud.” It’s an intimate act, this kind of sharing, as Blair discovered when he began meeting with fellow writer
WILLIAM JENNINGS
by KATHERINE WYRICK
Pamela Bell. The two eventually had an affair, which he recounts with remarkable candor in the book. “It’s a very personal thing and to do it you have to make sure your heart’s in the right place, and with Pamela, my heart didn’t know where it was, so it was easy to fall into infidelity.” On how Deb felt about Blair laying bare the most private, painful parts of their marriage, he concedes, “Some versions of the book she hated. She’d say, ‘I hate these people.’ It really made her angry. Every time she read it, it was like getting beaten up, again and again.” The book went through countless revisions as Blair struggled to “get her right.” Though the memoir deals with many things—the trials of middle age, parenting a disabled child, life in the Midwest, marital hardship— the book is at its heart a combination love story and coming-of-age story. Readers will discover opalescent truths on every page. At the end of our conversation, Blair shares this insight about his son, Michael: “We can’t fix him and neither can anyone else, so what we need to do is to love him. Just like we need to love our other children and each other. And I think that’s what coming of age is. It’s learning how to love. This life, it’s a beautiful thing. And I think it’s a chance for us to have grace. To be a light in the world rather than a shadow.”
TRavel guides by LINDA m. CASTELLITTO
meet JOANNE FLUKE
the title of your new Q: What’s book?
KIMBERLY BUTLER
features
Seeing the sights on foot
T
here’s nothing like a walking tour of a new (or much-beloved) city to experience what it might be like to live there, to see and taste and smell what makes a city great. This trio of new guides will lead you to superb spots in three of Europe’s most beautiful capitals.
LOVELY LONDON The eyes of the world are closely trained on London, thanks to the upcoming Summer Olympic Games. But Christopher Winn has been exploring the city for 20 years via his work as a writer, tour guide, quizmaster and author. In I Never Knew That About London (Thomas Dunne, $24.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781250001511) he gives a guided
tour of London’s past and present via a fact-packed route along the River Thames, “the meandering silver thread of liquid history that runs through the heart of the city.” Graceful illustrations by Mai Osawa, Winn’s wife, accompany descriptions of monuments, gardens, famous people and landmarks. Readers can flip to information about districts of the city, scan the people and places indexes, or simply page through for a more serendipitous experience. From Britain’s first tearoom to London’s first nude statue, there’s something for everyone in this edifying, curiosity-piquing tour.
PERIPATETIC PARIS The table of contents alone will excite Francophiles who pick up Forever Paris: 25 Walks in the Footsteps of the City’s Most Illustrious Figures (Chronicle, $14.95, 108 pages, ISBN 9781452104881), thanks to the promise of retracing the paths of Coco Chanel, Victor Hugo, Josephine Baker, Henri Matisse and 23 other famous sorts who’ve
called the City of Light home. Each entry by author Christina Henry de Tessan includes a brief account of a well-known person’s experiences in Paris, plus a walk to spots where the subject lived, dined or created— and the jaunts even begin and end at Metro stops. “Research” options are included: For example, in Julia Child’s Paris, readers are advised not only to visit E. Dehillerin, Child’s favorite shop, but to book a table at her frequent lunch spot, le Grand Vefour. Henry de Tessan writes that her subjects “in every single case, were transformed and elevated by” Paris; this book is an excellent way for readers to be so inspired, too.
the book in one Q: Describe sentence.
do readers love Hannah Q: Why Swensen?
Q: W hat comes first when you’re thinking up a new book: the murder mystery or the recipes?
you ever thought about opening up your own Cookie Q: HJar avebakery?
RAMBLING ROME Walking Rome: The Best of the City on Foot (National Geographic, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 9781426208720) offers a DIY approach to experiencing the famed city without getting hopelessly lost in its busy, winding streets. This entry in a new series from National Geographic contains a variety of itineraries, from whirlwind trips like “Rome in a Day” or “Rome in a Weekend with Kids,” to in-depth tours of some of the city’s fascinating neighborhoods. One route takes walkers from the Pantheon to the Piazza Navona, with descriptions of churches, markets and historical sites along the way. There’s also expert advice on restaurants, shopping and entertainment. The book’s flexible structure and approach should make it popular with all manner of travelers who want to enjoy the beauty and excitement of Rome.
your favorite dessert? Q: What’s
Q: W ords to live by?
CINNAMON ROLL MURDER
Joanne Fluke was born and raised in a small town in Minnesota, much like the fictional setting of her Hannah Swensen mysteries. In the latest, Cinnamon Roll Murder (Kensington, $24, 304 pages, ISBN 9780758234933), Hannah is determined to find out who killed the keyboardist for the Cinnamon Roll Six jazz band.
15
features
titanic anniversary © Catmando/ shutterstock
by HEATHER SEGGEL
THE TRAGEDY THAT STILL RESONATES, A CENTURY LATER
A
pril 14, 2012, marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and several new books are being published to both mark the centennial and shed new light on the famous disaster. The selections featured here range from straight historical analysis of the event to fiction that uses the sinking ship as a starting place for its characters.
SOULS ON BOARD Voyagers of the Titanic (Morrow, $25.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780061876844) focuses on the ship’s passengers, from first class and its posh surroundings down to those in steerage, some of whom helped to build the ship. Biographer and historian Richard Davenport-Hines finds stories even in the items recovered from the dead: John Jacob Astor IV, the ship’s wealthiest passenger, died with $4,000 cash on his person, while Greek farmworker Vassilios Katavelas carried just a mirror, comb, 10 cents and a train ticket. A gripping chapter dedicated to plotting out the ship’s collision and sinking is where such attention to detail pays
off—having come to know and care about the people on board in a new way makes the poignancy of losing them fresh again.
DISSECTING A DISASTER Maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham begins Titanic Tragedy (Norton, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9780393082401) with biographical sketches of Guglielmo Marconi and Samuel Morse, whose inventions enabled wireless communication between ships. (They seemingly foresaw instant messaging, too: Busy radio operators would dismiss interruptions with “GTH” rather than type “Go to Hell.”) While there were failings in radio communication during the wreck, without it everyone on board would have
perished while awaiting rescue. Maxtone-Graham then shifts focus to bring us inside the shipyard and the building of the ocean There are no liner everybroadly drawn one thought unsinkable, heroes and and captures villains here, the drama of just people its untimely thrown into end without a desperate injecting his opinion. situation for There are which they no broadly are horribly drawn heroes unprepared. and villains here, just people thrown into a desperate situation for which they are horribly unprepared. He reserves his ire for those who have turned historically relevant sites into tourist attractions or housing developments; those locations contain stories yet untold that may never be known to us.
THOSE LEFT BEHIND
16
Andrew Wilson’s Shadow of the Titanic (Atria, $25, 403 pages, ISBN 9781451671568)
looks for meaning in the aftermath of the disaster, following up on survivors “after the glare of attention had dimmed.” It’s both dishy and speculative, and as such very entertaining. White Star Lines Captain Bruce Ismay, long despised for taking a seat in a lifeboat rather than going down with the ship (a scenario eerily relived in the recent sinking of the Costa Concordia), is casually labeled a “masochist” on rather scant evidence. The nervous chatter among some first-class passengers while awaiting rescue is parsed for damning evidence of self-involvement among the idle rich. Shadow of the Titanic nevertheless gives us an interesting new view of the tragedy, including the fact that among survivors, some felt the four days aboard the rescue ship Carpathia were more traumatic than the accident that led them there.
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS Shifting gears, we find a novel that sets sail just in time to crash, at which point things really get interesting. In The Dressmaker (Doubleday, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780385535588), novelist Kate Alcott invents a plucky maid for the very real Lady Lucile Duff Gordon, fashion designer and inventor of the runway show. The story opens with Tess Collins spontaneously hiring on with “Madame” and boarding the doomed ocean liner. By the time boat meets iceberg, she’s already attracted two suitors and begun to assume an inappropriate degree of familiarity with her cruel and capricious new boss. The love triangle plays out as public hearings threaten the Duff Gordon name, and Tess quickly trades in her tea tray for needle and thread as she moves up in the rag trade. The historical backdrop includes a look at the burgeoning movement for women’s suffrage, and some of the dialogue from the hearings is lifted verbatim from Lady Duff Gordon’s actual testimony in a British inquiry. The Dressmaker is a Titanic story, but more than that, a finely stitched work about love and loyalty.
women’s history by DEANNA LARSON
New York Times bestseller
The lives and times of exceptional women
O
ne day, we won’t need to set aside a month to honor women’s contributions to history, since their accomplishments won’t be considered exceptions. Until then, we’ll wait each year for March to bring new histories and biographies to savor. This year, new books highlight the diverse lives of three exceptional women.
ON MADISON AVENUE . . . The Lucky Strike-puffing, martinifueled “mad men” of the glamorous heyday of advertising are sexy again, thanks to the hit TV show. But “mad women” were also making their mark in the testosteronedominated advertising industry of the 1960s and ’70s, producing sharp copy, courting big clients and making shrewd business moves while the other hand slapped away the pinches and grabs. In Mad Women (St. Martin’s, $24.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780312640231), advertising exec Jane Maas dishes the juicy details of a long career that began in 1964 as copywriter at the legendary agency
Ogilvy & Mather. After rising to O&M creative director and moving on to other storied agencies, eventually running her own shop, Maas capped her award-winning career by directing the famous “I Love New York” campaign (she still works as a consultant for the industry). With zany dashes from tidbit to tangent in sections including Sex in the Office, Get the Money Before They Screw You and The Three-Martini Lunch and Other Vices, Maas is the embodiment of Kay Thompson’s character from Funny Face, a woman who can say, “I was the first woman to wear a pantsuit to the office. It was 1965, and I caused quite a stir,” yet doesn’t hesitate to admit that her husband selected all of her clothes for her. Part respectful homage to a glamorous and golden
age, part good gossip over lunch at 21, Mad Women proves that behind every man’s career, another successful woman is pedaling even faster to get where she is today.
. . . AND ON THE FRONT PAGE Privileged and politically connected men controlled the influential newspaper and magazine businesses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. So it was quite surprising to find a woman at the helm of two major English-language papers. Enter The First Lady of Fleet Street (Bantam, $30, 368 pages, ISBN 9780553807431). Rachel Beer’s fascinating story begins as a descendant of the House of Sassoon, a Jewish Indian family that made its fortune in opium and cotton. Born in Bombay in 1858, Rachel Sassoon later moved with her family to England, where they became one of London’s most prominent immigrant families. In “a union of the East and West in flourishing Victorian London,” she married Frederick Beer, whose family came from the Frankfurt ghetto to make their fortune in railroads and telegraphy. Contending with a climate unfriendly to Jews, the families found that “money was a powerful tool for breaking down the barriers of the class system.” Rachel Beer became owner of the Sunday Times and the Observer during the rise of the “so-called New Woman” who emerged on the verge of the 20th century asking for equality and the vote. She ran her papers “with the woman reader in mind,” yet wrote challenging editorials on weighty world affairs—even getting involved
in a scandal of the time—while still fitting in a lavish social life and philanthropic work. With The First Lady of Fleet Street, authors Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren illuminate a small but fascinating period of Jewish and British history.
SCOUTING OUT A NEW PATH There are few American women who didn’t experience formative times as a Brownie or Girl Scout. In the delightful new biography Juliette Gordon Low (Viking, $28.95, 400 pages, ISBN 9780670023301), historian Stacy A. Cordery peeks into the life of a cheerful, imaginative, slightly dotty girl who became an accidental reformer, feminist and leader of one of the most influential organizations of the 20th century. Juliette was the daughter of a proud independent mother and rebel soldier father who moved back and forth between Savannah and Chicago during the Civil War. She grew up to make a bad marriage to philandering British/American aristocrat Willy Low, who died before she could divorce him, then remained in Britain, looking for a way “to do good in the world.” Enter the dashing General Sir Robert BadenPowell, whom she met in 1911 after he left the British army to form the Boy Scouts. His great experiment to teach boys “soldiering” modeled after samurai and chivalry inspired Low to become involved in the British female version, the Girl Guides. She brought the idea home to Savannah the following year, under the name Girl Scouts. Cordery traces how Low’s peripatetic upbringing formed her patriotism, practicality and love of fun, adventure and the outdoors, and her grown-up leadership skills and passion for the potential in all young women made her uniquely poised to embody Scouting values for generations of women around the world.
“An intense and beautiful book . . . Truly unforgettable.” —BookPage www.elmcreek.net Plume A member of Penguin Group (USA)
Let the hunt begin…
New York Times USA Today Bestselling Author
Lynsay Sands AvonRomance.com • LynsaySands.net
17
reviews
FICTION keeping everything—and everyone—together. —Megan Fishmann
Forgotten country
searching for a sister By Lauren Bufferd
The night her sister was born, Janie was warned by her grandmother to take good care of the new baby, since in their family, a sister disappears in every generation. So begins the beautiful debut novel Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung, a masterful exploration of generational tensions within a Korean family on two continents. Janie is a graduate student in mathematics when her sister Hannah disappears from college, cutting off all communication with the family. Their father demands that Janie find her, which is difficult since Hannah’s disappearance is clearly intentional. Haunted by her grandmother’s words, Janie resentfully searches; this is just the latest instance of her sister’s manipulations. However, when a second crisis forces her parents to move back to Korea after 20 years in Michigan, the urgency of contacting Hannah increases. By Catherine Chung, Riverhead At the center of the novel is the legacy of the Japanese occupation’s $25.95, 352 pages, ISBN 9781594488085 violence, the Korean War and the subsequent division of the country. After eBook available the gruesome slaughter of his parents, Janie’s father was raised by an older sister. Janie’s mother lost an older sister under mysterious circumstances that are never discussed. The reactions of Janie and Hannah to their tradition-bound parents—one dutiful, the other rebellious—also follows familiar tropes. It is in the family’s return to Korea that the novel really breaks new ground, as Janie is forced to confront the effects of family history on her own life, and come to terms with her role in Hannah’s filial ambivalence. Recently named one of Granta’s New Voices, Chung is a remarkable writer, willing to dig fearlessly under her characters’ surface motivations. Her style is elegant but never clinical, and her judicious use of Korean folktales amplifies the themes of sacrifice, duty and expectation. Chung is especially successful in the depiction of the intense cauldron of emotion between siblings. The novel ends with a resolution that is satisfying but in no way pat or formulaic, an indication of her extraordinary talent.
carry the one By Carol Anshaw Simon & Schuster $25, 288 pages ISBN 9781451636888 Audio, eBook available
suspense
18
The author of such critically acclaimed books as Aquamarine and Lucky in the Corner, Carol Anshaw returns with a sure-to-be breakout novel, Carry the One. Between the opening, at a country wedding, and the ending, at an unfortunate funeral, Anshaw tells the story of three siblings who are bonded together not only by blood, but also by the tragedy of having accidentally run over an unknown girl. Carry the One begins with Carmen and her spur-of-the-moment
hippie wedding. She is unexpectedly pregnant, yet eager to begin her life with Matt. However, Carmen’s sister Alice and their stoned brother Nick (along with his postal-worker girlfriend Olivia) manage to take the night in a different direction on their ride home, when Olivia (the driver) accidentally strikes and kills a young girl. The ensuing, interlocking stories follow each of them in the aftermath of this catastrophic event. Readers will become invested in Alice, the soon-to-be-famous painter who not only struggles with emerging from the shadow of her misogynist, famous father, but also carries an endless torch for Maude, Matt’s sister. Their battle of a love affair rises and falls over the years, as their careers—Maude’s as an actress and Alice’s as an artist—take turns eclipsing the other person’s role in their lives. While Olivia—after taking the rap and being sent off
to jail—becomes straight edge, it is Nick who is most haunted by the death they inadvertently caused. He squanders his genius in astronomy with endless cycles of alcoholism and addiction. And the eldest, Carmen, struggles to remain true to herself as a political women’s activist in her faltering marriage. These stories perfectly capture the changes within the characters as they grow older, shedding their more light-hearted attitudes toward sex, drugs and work. Tied together by that roadside tragedy, this makeshift family struggles to protect and support one another through heartbreak, addiction and even violence. Anshaw’s prose in Carry the One is delicate and effortless, flowing from one beautifully believable scene to another. Its quiet power lies in her observation of how easy it is to destroy something and how much effort it takes to focus on
the darlings By Cristina Alger Pamela Dorman Books $26.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780670023271 eBook available
debut fiction
There’s an unavoidable risk in basing a novel on recent events like the 2008 financial crisis, since the drama of real life usually outruns the imagination of even the most talented writer. First-time novelist Cristina Alger, who brings to her task stints at Goldman Sachs and an elite law firm, avoids most of those pitfalls to create a credible, fast-paced story out of the collapse of a Bernie Madoff-like investment scam. The Darlings gets off to a leisurely start, but when investment wizard Morty Reis’ Aston Martin is found abandoned on the Tappan Zee Bridge on Thanksgiving Eve 2008, the plot picks up momentum that never flags. Reis has been managing a sizable chunk of socialite Carter Darling’s hedge fund, and his apparent suicide occurs just as an investigation of his Ponzi scheme is about to break. Reis’ disappearance sets in motion a scramble to escape the fraud’s repercussions. Darling, who’s nearing the end of his career and who’s probably guilty of no more than carelessness in failing to investigate his friend’s uncannily consistent investment returns, sees himself being pulled into the vortex. When he turns to his lawyer, Sol Penzell, best known for his skills as a high-powered “fixer,” thoughts of accountability quickly give way to desperate attempts at self-preservation. His business partner and even his son-in-law aren’t safe from his attempt to deflect the blame. Most of the inhabitants of this crumbling world bring to mind the Titanic’s passengers when they first learned
FICTION the ship had hit an iceberg: They sense the danger but somehow can’t bring themselves to accept that disaster lies ahead. Alger’s experiences enable her to create a plausible cast of characters: money managers who measure life’s meaning in dollars, duplicitous attorneys, conscientious civil servants and a loyal secretary who blows the whistle on her longtime boss. Whether it’s a lavishly appointed Park Avenue apartment, a gracious weekend home in East Hampton or an overheated government office conference room, her settings are sketched with equal realism. Alger’s book is no Bonfire of the Vanities-like satire on the misdeeds of the “Masters of the Universe.” Like any good novelist, she’s more interested in the motivations and choices of her characters than in passing judgment. If she aspires to the status of a 21st-century Edith Wharton, chronicling the deeds and
misdeeds of New York’s upper class, she’s off to a respectable start. —Harvey Freedenberg
what they do in the dark By Amanda Coe Norton $24.95, 256 pages ISBN 9780393081381 eBook available
debut fiction
Screenwriter Amanda Coe’s fiction debut, What They Do in the Dark, is distressing. It is also technically impressive, and while its subject matter—the wreckage resulting when adults fail children—is somber, its character portrayals are soaked in the warmth of honesty. Set in a working-class northern town in 1975 England, the book chronicles a
#1 New York Times BesTselliNg AuThor
gloomily pivotal spring/summer in the lives of 10-year-old schoolmates Gemma Barlow and Pauline Bright. The girls are not exactly friends, but are drawn together by their fractured souls. Their fates become hauntingly entwined. Gemma is a good student from a middle-class home, whose perfect Saturdays are brought to a perfect close by watching “It’s Lallie,” the wholesome television vehicle of child star Lallie Paluza, with whom she is obsessed. By contrast, the ironically named Bright household is marked by hopelessness and decay, and abuse and neglect have turned Pauline, already a fearsome bully, into a time bomb of aggression. Their lives intersect when Lallie comes to town, starring in her first feature film as the victim of a pedophile. As the filming progresses, partially at Gemma and Pauline’s school, the girls’ lives change: Gemma’s mother leaves her father, moving her in with a new boy-
Daniel silva
friend, and Pauline’s wretched home life reaches terrible new lows. Points-of-view alternate from Gemma and Pauline to Vera, an aging actress with a small part in the film; Frank, Lallie’s put-upon agent; and Quentin, a neurotic young American woman whose new job as a producer brings back childhood demons. Quentin wants to save Lallie from her apparently toxic stage mother and a future as a Hollywood casualty, but Quentin’s addictions (to chemicals and men) leave her ineffective. At the center of it all is the mystery of Lallie, whose life is surely troubled—the question is how darkly so. A shocking ending breaks the book’s brewing storm but does not bring relief. In Coe’s vivid, wellcrafted character details and expert plotting, the seemingly unimportant—but always enjoyable—proves crucial. The book is shot through with ambiguity and character ambivalence, but despite its lack of an-
pa Now pe iN rb ac k
“This particular book is one of the author’s best, with great characters, a lot of suspense and clever subplots.
I believe he is one of the best writers in this genre today.” —BarBara Taylor Bradford “Will keep you awake at night.” —USa Today “Silva builds tension with breathtaking double
and triple turns of plot.” —People Visit Daniel on
Facebook and
www.danielsilvabooks.com
also available as an e-Book
19
q&a
catherine chung
Sisters, home and sacrifice
swers, it reads even better the second time around. A provocative achievement, What They Do in the Dark stays with you after the last page.
By Lauren Bufferd
D
ebut novelist Catherine Chung talks about her moving first novel Forgotten Country— our Top Pick in Fiction for March.
20
—Sheri Bodoh
© Ayano Hisa
The title of your book is intriguing. Which is the country that is forgotten, Korea or the United States? Or is it a metaphor for what an immigrant has to leave behind? The title worked in a few different ways that I liked. It refers to Korea—not only the Korea that the family in the book leaves behind, but the Korea that was lost when it was divided. In my book, I wanted the break between the sisters to be a kind of echo of that split—and for the family’s exile from their homeland (where they belonged, where they felt whole) to be an echo of the loss of that older Korea. On a metaphorical level, the title also refers to the sisters’ estrangement—so the forgotten country is their childhood closeness, their innocence and the past. You have a degree in mathematics as well as creative writing. What effect, if any, does math have on your writing? It’s funny: When I was a math major in college I wrote stories all the time, and now whenever I write, I’m always sneaking in some math. I love both disciplines because it seems to me that they’re both ultimately about learning how to make sense of the world, trying to organize the chaos and describe and communicate it in a meaningful and beautiful way. Siblings play such an important role in your book. Do you have siblings, and what makes that relationship so special? I have one older brother, and he’s the best. We shared toys and stuffed animals, and we wrote and made books together! The thing about being a younger sibling is that your older sibling is so much more important and large in your world than you are in theirs when you’re kids. Despite my best efforts to be just like him, we’re very different.
reviews Watergate By Thomas Mallon Pantheon $27.95, 448 pages ISBN 9780307378729 Audio, eBook available
historical fiction
Still, all the ways that we’re similar make me feel a sense of belonging that I don’t have with anyone else. He knows where I’m from, and he’s the only one in the world who’s from there too. So I feel lucky and happy to have him. Janie discovers some secrets about an aunt that she thought had died in Korea. This is based on an incident in your own family— can you tell us about it? I found out in college that my father had a sister I’d never known about, and that she had disappeared when he was a child. I still know almost nothing about what really happened. The North Koreans used to raid dorms and kidnap girls, and this is what my father’s family thought had happened to her, but they didn’t talk about it—at least not to us kids. I think my way of exploring that marked-off territory was to make up stories about the parts of it that interested me. I love the way the folktales that are told in the novel reinforce some of its themes, such as obedience and sacrifice. Thanks! Growing up, my parents told me so many stories, night after night—and I loved all of them: folktales, and fairy tales, legends and myths from all different cultures. They shaped my view of the world and my place in it, and they instilled certain expectations and values in me. I still love all those stories, and that’s part of why they’re in the book, but I also wanted to engage with them a little more and push back.
FICTION with unrelenting skill and prowess. Mallon’s big ideas, big names and big events are balanced out by wellcrafted prose, pitch-perfect dialogue and gripping pacing. But perhaps the greatest achievement of Watergate is that it does not have to simplify the implications of the scandal to create a page-turner. Mallon has crafted a fictional reexamination so rich with detail that the events don’t feel as though they happened more than 30 years ago. Watergate feels new and thrilling again in his hands, and that makes this a can’t-miss book for historical fiction fans. —matthew jackson
We’ve seen the Watergate story imagined and re-imagined from every possible angle. After nearly four decades it would seem we’ve run out of new ways to tell this ubiquitous tale of America’s seedy underbelly. Thomas Mallon is here to prove us wrong. Watergate is a bold, sweeping retelling of America’s most famous scandal by a gifted historical novelist, but it’s perhaps more notable for what it’s not. It doesn’t rely on thriller-style twists or far-fetched conspiracy theories to ratchet up the entertainment value. This is character-based historical fiction, a peek behind the walls of power as they’re slowly collapsing. This is a different kind of Watergate novel. Watergate is populated with the characters who committed and witnessed the crimes: Howard Hunt, Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, Fred LaRue, Charles Colson, First Lady Pat Nixon and even President Richard Nixon himself. Using the immense quantity of research material as both inspiration and evidence, Mallon constructs a new version of the story. The players are the same, the events do not change, but the level of depth is astounding. With Watergate, Mallon has constructed a panoramic view of the scandal, with settings throughout the United States and beyond, and dozens of powerful characters. This is no longer a detective story or a parable about American politics. This is an epic, pure and simple, an ambitious novel about the perils of power told
The Vanishers By Heidi Julavits Doubleday $26.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780385523813 Audio, eBook available
FIction
Imagine you had the power to make streetlights dim when you walked beneath them and could probe the innermost secrets of the human mind. This is what life is like for Julia Severn, a young psychic whose mother committed suicide when she was just an infant. Though Julia’s powers are impressive, all attempts to contact her mother beyond the grave have been Heidi unsuccessful. Julavits’ Instead, Julia fourth novel latches onto her mentor, Madame is bold and brazen, but Ackerman, as an interim mother. it is also Alas, Madame one hell of a Ackerman’s powers are waning headtrip. and in a fit of jealousy, she metes out a devastating psychic punishment that cripples Julia and sends her on the run. Despite her resolve to lead a normal life, Julia finds herself fighting to regain her health and her mystical gifts so that
FICTION she can assist in the search for a provocative and elusive artist who just happens to have known her mother. What results is a sinister game of cosmic hide-and-seek in which Julia will be forced to confront her most deadly and dogged pursuer: her own grief. In case the above synopsis does not make it abundantly clear, Heidi Julavits’ fourth novel, The Vanishers, is bold and brazen, but it is also one hell of a headtrip. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to liken it to the mind-bending movies of David Lynch, for this is truly a puzzle wrapped in pages. The plot is serpentine and surreal, facts are fluid and nothing is out of bounds; one must be on perpetual guard, as not even Julia can be trusted in this tale where nothing is as it seems. Some readers will certainly balk at the unconventional narrative leaps that Julavits asks them to take, but to do so would be a mistake. More than a metaphysical mystery, at its core The Vanishers is a stunningly candid examination of the dark side of grief, female rivalries and the critical bond between mothers and daughters. Countless books have already been written on these topics, but by straddling the line between the otherworldly and harsh reality, Julavits manages to take mainstream notions and transform them into something truly unique. —Stephenie Harrison
The starboard sea By Amber Dermont St. Martin’s $24.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780312642808 Audio, eBook available
debut fiction
The privileged and insular society of an Eastern prep school in the 1980s is unveiled and brought vividly to life in Amber Dermont’s emotionally rich debut novel. Jason Prosper has been banned from Kensington, his parents’ prep
school of choice, and is now beginning his senior year at Bellingham Academy—where students who have been “kicked out of better schools for stealing, or having sex, or smoking weed” end up. As Jason walks out of his Manhattan penthouse in September, he realizes the only person he will miss is his doorman. Jason’s father, who looks “more like a member of the British House of Lords” than a dad, drops him off. It’s clear that he cares less about Jason’s happiness than he does about his possible acceptance to Princeton at year’s end. Dermont gradually reveals JaEnter the son’s devastation privileged, and guilt over the suicide junior insular world of an year of Cal, his best friend and East Coast sailing partner prep school at Kensington. in this At Bellingham he reconnects sensitively with sons of his wrought parents’ friends debut. from the past— New England boarding schools being a “small, incestuous world” where everyone knows whose money is oldest, and who vacations in St. Moritz or Tuscany. Though Jason bonds with this predictable mélange of jocks and the sons of investment bankers and fund managers (it’s 1987, and Black Monday looms), he remains as aloof as possible, comparing them to Cal, and hesitant to get close to someone he might lose. He meets Aidan, a girl who’s also carrying troubling baggage to Bellingham, and they forge a special relationship—tentative at first, but gradually deepening as they learn to trust one another with painful secrets from their pasts. At this point, Dermont injects a third element into her tale of coming-of-age in the land of the wealthy—a mystery surrounding the discovery of Aidan’s body on the beach after a violent storm. It’s first ruled an accident, then announced by the dean as suicide—but Jason begins putting together the pieces from that night which lead to a far different verdict—one that involves
his so-called friends. Dermont writes beautifully— about the sea and sailing, about her diverse characters and about the youthful pain of love lost. —Deb Donovan
enchantments By Kathryn Harrison Random House $27, 336 pages ISBN 9781400063475 Audio, eBook available
historical fiction
Perhaps best known for her provocative memoirs, Kathryn Harrison triumphantly returns to her historical fiction roots with Enchantments, the sweeping (and wholly imagined) story of love between two unlikely allies: Maria Rasputin, daughter of “Mad Monk” Grigori Rasputin, and Tsarevich Alexei Romanov, would-be heir to the Russian empire. As with her previous novels Poison and The Binding Chair, Harrison takes a particular moment in time and brings it to stunning life. It is 1917 in St. Petersburg when a diver pulls Grigori Rasputin’s battered body from the Neva River. That much is historical fact, but afterwards Harrison’s story becomes an alternate history: In the wake of their father’s brutal death, Maria—Masha—Rasputin and her sister, Varya, are sent to live with the Romanovs in the royal palace. Before his murder, Rasputin served as a healer to Alexei—here called Alyosha—Romanov, and the Tsar and Tsarina feel compelled to care for his children after his passing. Tsarina Alexandra has other motives, too: Alyosha suffers from hemophilia, and she hopes Masha might care for her son as Grigori did. But when the Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest not two months after the Rasputin sisters arrive, something entirely different happens. Masha and Alyosha become friends and confidants, distracting each other from the world outside and Alyosha’s condition
with stories of their families’ histories, their hopes for the future and the creation of a rich fantasy world only the two of them share. Masha and Alyosha begin to fall in love, but before that love can be fully explored, they are separated—first by distance, then by death. Harrison is strongest when she writes about Masha—not just as Rasputin’s daughter, but as a living, breathing, feeling young woman in an impossible situation. The relationship between Masha and Alyosha is complicated, confusing and often all-consuming, as most young loves are. Much has been written about Rasputin and the Romanovs, but Harrison brings her unique narrative perspective to Enchantments, re-imagining history—and a love story—in a completely new way. — A b b y P l e ss e r
The Next Right Thing By Dan Barden Dial $26, 304 pages ISBN 9780385343404 eBook available
fiction
With The Next Right Thing, author Dan Barden mixes up a cocktail of grit and sentimentality infused with mystery, humor, A.A. philosophy and several drops of California sunshine. This is Barden’s second novel,
Against the Night by Kat Martin MIRA • $7.99 ISBN 9780778313199 John Riggs knows what goes on in the dark and wants to bring the truth to light or die trying.
21
reviews following 1997’s John Wayne, and he gives his readers a complex protagonist in Randy Chalmers, former cop and alcoholic turned home designer and sober A.A. meeting attendee. Having sipped his last alcoholic drink eight years ago, Randy lives a comfortable existence in Laguna Beach with his also-sober yoga-instructor girlfriend, MP. But underneath Randy’s chill exterior and his life of espresso drinking amid lovely walnut furniture, there exists a simmering rage. And when tragedy occurs, that rage emerges as if it had never left. The tragedy in this tale is the shocking death of Randy’s A.A. sponsor and best friend, Terry Elias. Years ago, Terry helped save Randy’s life when it seemed unsalvageable. Not only did he help Randy get sober, he encouraged him in his career
FICTION turnaround after he was kicked off the police force for savagely beating a suspect. Terry was brother, father and mentor to Randy, all rolled up into one. And now he is dead—found in a hotel room, victim of an apparent heroin overdose a good 15 years after going sober. How could this be? To Randy, it seems clear that there was foul play involved. And years after leaving the force, he slips back into his cop persona as he sets out to uncover what could have happened to his friend. Will he be able to accept the final answer? And can he avoid a relapse now that his first real link to the sober world is gone? Randy’s journey is an absorbing one, peppered with an eclectic mix of supporting characters including his hapless friend (and fellow A.A. member) Wade; glamorous lesbian sister, Betsy; angry ex-wife, Jean;
and precocious, beloved teenage daughter, Allison (aka Crash). Told in both present time and a series of flashbacks, the plot moves swiftly and keeps the reader interested in the outcome, even as the sometimes corny dialogue may lead to an eyeroll or two. —Rebecca Stropoli
lone wolf By Jodi Picoult Atria $28, 432 pages ISBN 9781439102749 Audio, eBook available
fiction
The reliably prolific Jodi Picoult
behind the book
returns with Lone Wolf, an absorbing story about an unusual, fractured family. When Luke Warren and his daughter Cara get into a ghastly car wreck, Luke suffers such brain damage that no one knows if he’ll ever recover. The family, including Cara’s remarried mother, stepfather and estranged brother, gather to try and determine if the plug should be pulled or not. The page-turning potential of such a story might be enough for other writers, but Picoult’s focus on her characters makes the story that much more compelling. The story’s second most compelling character is Cara, who, to be blunt, is a thoroughly dislikable brat. Still, as full of self-absorbed teenage angst as she is, the reader sympathizes with her. A child not only of divorce but of familial implosion, she’s the
jodi picoult
WHAT I LEARNED FROM the leader of the pack b y J o d i P i c o u lt
J
odi Picoult thought she had created a unique character in her new novel, Lone Wolf—a man who studies wolves by living with them. Then she met Shaun Ellis, who spent a year living with wolves in the Rockies. During a visit to Ellis’ wildlife park, Picoult got up close and personal with these feared animals.
22
The first thing Shaun taught me was the rankings of a wolf pack. The first wolf you’ll encounter is not the alpha, but a beta—tough, comes rushing up to you, responsible for discipline in the pack. Betas are expendable; they are the thugs in the Mafia family. The alpha will hang back. Wary. The brains of the group, and too valuable to put him or herself in danger—he’s like the king not going into battle. The alpha is the one who tells everyone—including the big tough beta—what to do. An alpha can hear the change in the rhythm of your heart rate from six or seven feet away. An alpha female can terminate her own pregnancy if she feels that it’s not a good time for
breeding in the pack. She can keep the other females from coming into season, so that she is the only one breeding. She can create a phantom pregnancy, which puts all the adult wolves on their best behavior, trying to be picked as nanny—and then when everyone’s acting on their best game, she reveals that she isn’t pregnant at all. Next is the diffuser wolf—the low man on the totem pole, the one who eats last, the one who seemingly is picked on by the other wolves. There’s a tester wolf—the quality control dude. He’s a nervous wolf, always on edge, who makes sure that everyone is doing his job. Then come the numbers wolves, which fill in the pack with
strength of size. One of the things Shaun taught me to do was to howl, so that I could communicate with wolves. Howls are like wolf email. They use them to communicate with other packs, telling them how strong their pack is. Shaun showed me that there are three types of howls: a rallying howl, which is a vocal beacon to bring back a missing member of the pack; a locating howl, which is like a voice message to give the placement of any pack that’s in the area; and finally, a defensive howl, which is used to protect your territory. With my son and my publicist in tow, Shaun taught us the melody that an alpha, a beta and a num-
bers wolf would use. I started as the alpha—a deep intermittent tone, howling for five or six seconds and then listening to make decisions based on what I hear. My son’s beta howl was three times longer than mine—it was all about strength, to let those listening know how tough he was. Finally, my publicist, as the numbers wolf, created the illusion that there were many of her, with a howl that circled and pitched between the tones my son and I were using. The most amazing thing happened: The packs all around us began to howl back. It was the coolest feeling to know that we had “sent” out our position, and were getting responses because we were speaking their language.
FICTION one who insists there’s still hope for her beloved father. Her older brother Edward, on the other hand, would like Luke to end his life with some kind of dignity. Edward parted abruptly, angrily, from their father, and Cara is sure he wants Luke dead out of spite. Edward and Cara’s mother Georgie is, like mothers are, torn between her warring older children as well as her obligations to her new, young family. She also feels some residual obligation to Luke, the man who, she can’t forget, swept her off her feet once upon a time. If Cara is the second most compelling character, Luke is the first. A mountain of a man, he’s gained notoriety for his study and care of wolves; he even spent a couple years living with a pack. The chapters are narrated by different characters, and Luke’s insights into wolf society make his contributions the most intriguing. By the end, you understand Luke’s tragedy: He knew everything about living with wolves, and very little about living with humans. Picoult keeps the reader’s emotions seesawing till the last page. Lone Wolf has much to say about families—both human and animal—and the love, resentment and desperation that come into play during one human family’s time of trouble. —Arlene McKanic
Girl Reading By Katie Ward Scribner $25, 352 pages ISBN 9781451655902 eBook available
debut fiction
Their names are Laura, Ester, Maria, Rosemary, Florence, Gwen, Jeannine, Sincerity and Cloud. Separated by place and defined by the context of history, together their stories weave the rich narrative tapestry of Katie Ward’s debut novel, Girl Reading. Divided into chapters that deal with the trials and triumphs of each particular protagonist, the
novel proves a fascinating testament to the universal themes of art and literature and the spirit of femininity, despite the limitations of time. In each section, Ward imagines the hidden story behind an actual artistic representation Impressive of a woman research and reading. She explores each a dynamic individual’s voice background, combine in dreams and Katie Ward’s personalities— compelling the intimate truths that debut novel, their portraits which tells do not reveal. the stories The birth of the of women Renaissance in seven in Siena marks different eras. the opportunity for a young girl to pose for a triptych. A Dutch maid is desired by her master. In 1775, artist Angelica Kauffman makes a journey to finish a portrait for a reclusive heiress. Victorian England provides the setting for the saga of estranged twin sisters, where photography and mysticism intertwine. A young girl falls in love with Impressionism and an artist during the Great War; a woman in modern London questions her choices in life and love before being snapped reading at a bar by a photographer. And in the near future, the experience of art is reformulated by an artist and engineer, herself troubled by the effervescent nature of technology and truth. With each woman’s story, Ward adds layers of significance and depth, crafting her prose with a beauty and vitality that matches the scale of art entwined in her work. Readers are engulfed in the distinct world of each heroine through extensive detail and rich characterization, enhanced by larger ideas about women’s positions as mothers, lovers, muses, leaders and survivors. Impressive research and a dynamic voice create an unforgettable story that will leave readers pondering the mystical relationships between women, literature and art. — K a t i e Ca r d e n a s
Get a fascinating glimpse of the writing life For almost 25 years, BookPage has interviewed the top voices in literature. Now you can enjoy the best of the best of our author interviews in the first volume of a new eBook series!
BookPage: The Interviews, Volume 1 Conversations with Mary Karr, Dennis Lehane, Audrey Niffenegger, John Updike and more—with all-new introductions and behind-the-scenes details.
AVAILABLE NOW in the NOOK and Kindle stores Just $2.99
Go to
BookPage.com/social for link
23
reviews
NONFICTION poetic beauty, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a book that will surely inspire those who read it to do just that.
THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPRESS
A LITERARY pilgrimage review by henry l. carrigan jr.
As a young boy, Howard Frank Mosher would sit at the knee of his honorary uncle, Reg Bennett, and beg him to tell stories. Bennett promised that when Mosher turned 21, the two would embark on a road trip starting in Robert Frost’s New England. Then they’d strike out for the Great Smoky Mountains of Thomas Wolfe, drop by Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi, check out James T. Farrell’s Chicago and visit its great bookstore, Brentano’s (now long closed), and eventually walk the streets of Raymond Chandler’s L.A. and Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco. Although they never had the chance to make that trip together, Mosher sets off on this long-deferred journey in 2007 after learning he has early-stage prostate cancer. This reminder of his mortality, as well as the publication of his new novel, motivates him to get behind the wheel of his By Howard Frank Mosher, Crown, $25, 256 pages 20-year-old Chevy, which he affectionately calls “The Loser Cruiser,” and ISBN 9780307450692, eBook available set out on the Great American Book Tour, stopping to visit more than 150 of America’s best independent bookstores. In 65 short chapters, Mosher colorfully reflects on his home and family in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, and its lively and eccentric characters, such as the Prof, the old-school, two-fisted school superintendent with whom Mosher gets into a fist fight; and Verna, the Moshers’ first landlady, who made and sold moonshine whiskey and married the federal agent who refused to arrest her when he found her still. He amuses and delights us with tales of his misadventures in the Loser Cruiser, in cheap hotels and greasy spoons across America, and at his many readings and signings at bookstores both large and small, confirming that independent booksellers such as Denver’s Tattered Cover and Oxford’s Square Books are keeping alive the book as we know it. Mosher’s lively humor and his energetic love of books and reading provide us with animated and generous reflections on the people, places and objects that he loves enough to live for.
WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU Could BE NORMAL? By Jeanette Winterson Grove $25, 224 pages ISBN 9780802120106
memoir
24
Ever since the publication of her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, countless readers have wondered just how much of that semi-autobiographical tale Jeanette Winterson drew from her own life. Now with Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Winterson pulls back the veil on her life as she really lived it and shows us that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but more painful and more beautiful as well. Winterson’s newest book is a
searing and candid revelation of her life to date. More than an autobiography, it is a thoughtful rumination on all the things that make life worth living. From her hardscrabble upbringing to her fraught relationships with religion, sexuality and her rancorous adoptive mother; to the way the knowledge of her adoption has always haunted her, teaching her so little about love yet so much about loss; to the fundamental ways in which literature, poetry and words have saved and forged her, Winterson holds nothing back, no matter how painful. The book’s title comes from a pivotal conversation in which she revealed to her adoptive mother that she was in a happy relationship with another girl: “Why be happy when you could be normal?” was her mother’s response. Understandably, those words made an indelible impact on Winterson. Reflecting on her reasons behind writing Oranges
as a work of fiction, she says she did so because at the time it was the only version of her life that she could actually live with, as she could not survive the truth. The glory of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is that it serves as proof that Winterson did survive her “other” life and came out stronger, braver and wiser for it. Reeling from that fateful conversation with her mother, it is clear that every path Winterson has since walked has been in pursuit of this ultimate destination: happiness; yet readers will experience an awful lot of heartbreak and darkness in the pages of this book. Still, if Winterson is anything to go by, perhaps this is not such a bad thing. And while Winterson admits her journey is far from over, she offers us all hope that in life, as in fiction, there is always the possibility of a happy ending, if only we will search for it. Captivating in its content and written with
—Stephenie Harrison
THE MARK INSIDE By Amy Reading Knopf $26.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780307272485 eBook available
TRUE CRIME
Hollywood surely will be calling for the movie rights: The Mark Inside is a natural for an adaptation to the big screen. Author Amy Reading has written a page-turner about the true story of a Texas rancher who loses his life savings to a group of con men, and seeks revenge by turning the con on them. It’s the story of J. Frank Norfleet, who strolled into Dallas one day in 1919 to sell a plot of land, only to lose all his money in a stock market swindle. Five con men pick Norfleet as their mark, weaving an elaborate trap to persuade him to invest his cash in a phony stock market trade. When it’s all over, Norfleet is cheated out of close to $140,000, the equivalent of nearly $1.7 million in today’s dollars. Embarrassed, angry and depressed, Norfleet doesn’t simply return to his ranch to lick his wounds. He decides to capture the crooks using his own bit of subterfuge. He straps on a sidearm, grabs a suitcase full of disguises and spends four years crossing the country on the trail of the offenders, donning phony beards and colorful costumes as he seeks out his enemies. Reading, who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, is adept at tracking down original source material for this real-life story. A key source is Norfleet’s own memoir of the events, but since it seems to contain a number of unlikely happenstances and other exaggerations, Reading finds newspaper articles, police records and legal documents to either set the record straight, or at least offer
NONFICTION a different, and more believable, perspective on aspects of the tale. Additionally, she provides readers with some historical background on con artists and fascinating details of how they run their scams. Reading relishes Norfleet’s entertaining and colorful account of his detective work; though she adds integrity and introspection to the tale, she doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. With her wonderful writing and eye for sensational material, The Mark Inside is a nonfiction book that reads like a work of fiction. Only time will tell whether the movie version will live up to the quality of the book. —J o h n T. S l a n i a
imagine By Jonah Lehrer HMH $26, 304 pages ISBN 9780547386072 Audio, eBook available
psychology
Although Jonah Lehrer discusses brain functions and their connections to different forms of creativity in Imagine: How Creativity Works, the real delights and revelations here are his stories of individuals, companies and cities that fostered new ways of looking at problems and new ways of solving them. Creativity—whether it manifests itself as a Bob Dylan song, a W.H. Auden poem or a new kind of mop—is almost always more than the torrential activity of an isolated mind. Dylan spun songs out of older forms, literary conventions and melodies, but with such particularity of insight that he made them his own. Auden found inspiration in New York City nightlife and the stamina to keep writing through massive consumption of caffeine, nicotine and Benzedrine. Procter and Gamble’s Swiffer mop, which replaced a permanent mop head with a disposable one, took the company and an outside research team three years to conceive and develop.
Companies known for their innovations have contrived ways to cross-pollinate their employees’ best ideas, Lehrer observes. 3M has an annual Tech Forum at which all the company’s scientists present their latest research. When Steve Jobs took over Pixar, he consolidated everything under one roof and then shifted the meeting rooms, cafeteria, coffee shop and even the restrooms to the center of the building—all this to ensure that everyone, regardless of his or her job, would at least bump into everyone else. There’s now even a Pixar University with a curriculum of 110 classes— from juggling to comic improvisation—that’s open to all employees. But the granddaddy of creativity, Lehrer asserts, is the big city, where one is awash in other ideas and cultures whether one wants to be or not. Accommodating these irritating but provocative influences is the grain of sand that produces a pearl. “Once people started living in dense clumps,” Lehrer continues, “they created a kind of settlement capable of reinventing itself, so a city founded on the fur trade could one day give birth to Wall Street, and an island in the Seine chosen for its military advantages might eventually become a place full of avantgarde artists.” This is not a how-to book, and it is obvious that there is no single wellspring of creativity equally accessible to and nourishing for all. But there’s plenty here to think about—which is a good place for creativity to start. —Edward Morris
ISLAND OF VICE By Richard Zacks Doubleday $27.95, 448 pages ISBN 9780385519724 Audio, eBook available
AMERICAN HISTORY
As evident from his book’s subtitle, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New
York,” Richard Zacks has a pleasingly colorful writing style. Luckily it is a style that mirrors, especially at the outset of this little-known and somewhat dappled adventure, the brashness of its central historical figure, Theodore Roosevelt. In the early 1890s, a few short years before the city of Brooklyn joined with New York to become what we now know as the five boroughs of metropolitan New York City, a political and moral reform movement arose in the city, especially among well-heeled (and largely Republican) civic leaders. The city then had a population of roughly two million people, among them 30,000 prostitutes. To summarize in a blander manner than the lively Mr. Zacks: A series of investigations revealed that prostitution had links to police corruption, which in turn had links to Tammany Hall, the largely immigrant, working-class political machine that controlled New York City. The result was that in 1894, voters threw the bums out and installed a reform mayor, who appointed 36-year-old Teddy Roosevelt president of a four-man, bipartisanat-least-in-name police commission to clean things up. The ambitious Roosevelt, who had been wasting away in a Washington, D.C., civil service post, leapt at the chance. At first his vigorous efforts and his widely reported nighttime rambles in the city’s rollicking, viceridden neighborhoods were very popular. But then Roosevelt decided the police should enforce the laws against selling alcohol on Sundays. Roosevelt’s ethical (and valid) point was that allowing police to selectively enforce or ignore the alcohol ban led to favoritism and corruption. The problem was, Sunday was the only day off for working people, and enforcement deprived them of a customary form of entertainment—socializing in the city’s saloons. Meanwhile the law did not prohibit sales of alcohol in hotels and the clubs of wealthy gentlemen. Class warfare? Tammany Democrats thought so, and they used Roosevelt’s efforts to thoroughly whip the city’s Republicans in the next election. For the remaining years of his term,
Roosevelt was mired in grinding conflict with fellow commissioners and undermined by upstate Republican politicians who distanced themselves from him in order to maintain their own political power. He finally sought escape in a political patronage job in Washington. Theodore Roosevelt’s term as police commissioner was, as Zacks entertainingly points out in his layered and well-researched Island of Vice, a significant learning experience for the future president. And probably also for residents of New York City, who never gave their native son a majority of their votes. —Alden Mudge
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD By Laura Vanderkam Portfolio $26.95, 256 pages ISBN 9781591844570 eBook available
PERSONAL FINANCE
When Pablo Picasso said, “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money,” many people probably wrote the statement off as a bit of verbal cubism and forgot it. Author Laura Vanderkam (168 Hours) found wisdom there, and in All the Money in the World she explores how much is enough, and how to derive more joy from what we have by using it wisely. Underlying her look at family size, wedding expenses, backyard chicken ranching and other costly endeavors is the knowledge that while none of us will ever have all the money in the world, many of us have more than we need and don’t realize it. On some level, All the Money in the World is less about money than about using it as a way to clarify one’s priorities. Vanderkam points out that the $5,000 most couples spend on engagement and wedding rings is great if you’re all about the bling, but spend $300 on something less flashy and you can fund a lot of nights out, day trips, bouquets, et cetera, to enrich your relationship
25
reviews over time. One isn’t a better choice than the other; the point is that it is a choice, not a lock-step march to the altar with specific accessories. Vanderkam also plays with the notion of family size, exploring data that suggest once you have one child (and a home and a minivan), the cost per child to add to your family drops considerably, and continues to do so with each additional child. Again, that’s not an inducement to rush out and produce a litter, but the freedom to consider a larger family (which will nevertheless demand sacrifices) if it’s what you want. All of these ideas are held to the light at multiple angles, and while money is often a source of stress and concern, it becomes something fun to toy with here. That’s helpful, because one of the twists one encounters as income increases is a reduction in pleasure when material goods are easier to come by: the so-called hedonic treadmill effect. Getting back to the ability to enjoy them with a sense of abundance and appreciation is at the heart of what Picasso was talking about, and there are numerous tips and a final section dedicated to helping readers explore how to do just that. If you want to earn more, or simply enjoy what you already have, All the Money in the World is a great launch pad. —Heather Seggel
LONDONERS By Craig Taylor Ecco $29.99, 448 pages ISBN 9780062005854 eBook available
hISTORY
26
Buildings and roadways no more define a city than mere walls and aisles could ever define a church. Architecture and infrastructure are byproducts of the human story— embodiments of our historical and present-day sagas captured in rip-rap, wood and stone. In his new book, Londoners, Canadian journalist (now London resident) Craig
NONFICTION Taylor set out to define the city of London and its inhabitants through a collection of ordinary people’s stories. The end product is not a guide or an authoritative historical tome, but a unique 21st-century “snapshot of London here and now.” Londoners has been likened by other reviewers to the oral histories of Studs Terkel, but Taylor’s curation does not frame decades long past; it mines the voices of those now inhabiting London. Over the five years of what he called his “London Chase,” Taylor interviewed more than 200 people from more than 600 square miles of the city environs. He sought not the usual “official” voices, but ordinary people inhabiting London’s “Victorian pubs and chain cafes, sitting rooms and offices.” The result is a sometimes weird, often wonderful and always emotionally resonant narrative of 83 voices telling stories of love, disgust, ennui, lust, delight—tales about being a resident, whether permanently, temporarily or formerly, of today’s London. In sections grouped under quirky headings such as “Arriving,” “Getting on with It” and “Gleaning on the Margins,” Taylor’s interviewees run the gamut of sensibilities, proclivities and eccentricities. There’s a bird’s-eye description of London from on high from a commercial airline pilot; nostalgic reminiscences and incisive observations from Smartie, a London cabbie; bizarre stories of passenger mishaps from Dan, the rickshaw driver; and insights into lustful London from dominatrix Mistress Absolute. And if you’ve ever wondered if the voice intoning “Mind the Gap” in the London Underground stations belongs to a real person, here’s your chance to find out. Londoners is a truly unique “non”-taxonomy. In a departure from his original intention, Taylor never reached an absolute classification of the inhabitants of this iconic city, but instead produced something much better: a true-tolife exploration of the constantly shifting landscapes of people’s hearts and minds, their despairs and desires—all centered on the streets
and structures of foggy London town. Says Smartie, “I like the idea of escaping all the nonsense of London, but . . . my heart and soul are here in the city . . . that’s where I’ll always be.” —Alison Hood
burn down the ground By Kambri Crews Villard $25, 352 pages ISBN 9780345516022 eBook available
memoir
As a PR booker for comedy clubs, Kambri Crews developed the slogan “Life’s Tough. Laugh More.” In her new memoir, Burn Down the Ground, Crews reveals the source of this motto in her hardscrabble childhood in rural Texas with deaf parents. This certainly isn’t a lighthearted story: Crews’ charismatic father, a combination of “Daniel Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley all rolled into one,” is a dangerously attractive figure, prone to violent rages when he drinks. His paranoid jealousy turns to abuse against women, a storyline that frames this memoir, which begins with the adult Crews visiting her father in prison, where he is currently serving a 20-year sentence for the attempted murder of a girlfriend. Not funny at all, but sure proof that life’s tough. The laughter shows up in Crews’ vivid and affectionate depiction of life with two deaf parents (who also happen to be stoner party animals). Crews and her brother, who are both hearing, learn to talk without moving their lips, which allows them to have secret conversations right in front of their parents; Crews wins points with her friends by encouraging them to yell curse words while her father drives the car. Readers interested in the details of growing up as a hearing child within the Deaf community will enjoy anecdotes about Crews’ mother using American Sign Language to sign along with
Fleetwood Mac songs or winning the women’s division of the National Deaf Bowling Association. Burn Down the Ground reads more effectively as a series of sketches than as a fully integrated memoir; the role of Crews’ father’s deafness in his violent behavior is an underdeveloped but compelling theme. Somewhat like Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, Burn Down the Ground interweaves the toughness and laughter of an impoverished Texan childhood with Crews’ struggle to both love and acknowledge her father’s criminal violence and her mother’s inability to protect her from it. Her story is a testament to her resilience, and to the power of recognition and forgiveness to heal childhood wounds. —Catherine Hollis
eisenhower in war and peace By Jean Edward Smith Random House $40, 976 pages ISBN 9781400066933 eBook available
BIOGRAPHY
Who was Dwight Eisenhower? His extraordinary leadership of the Allied forces in Europe led to victory in World War II. Under his presidency the nation enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity. Yet several years after his death, when his widow Mamie was asked whether she felt she had really known him, she replied, “I’m not sure anyone did.” Jean Edward Smith, whose last book was the best-selling FDR, explores the public and personal life of the man he regards, second to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the most successful U.S. president in the 20th century in his absorbing Eisenhower in War and Peace. Eisenhower wrote of himself: “I’m just folks. I come from the people, the ordinary people.” Smith goes behind such statements and perhaps comes as close as a biographer can in capturing those qualities of personality and judgment during his military career that so impressed his
NONFICTION superiors. His affability and common sense enabled him to deal effectively with such strong personalities as Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, his longtime friend George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Early in his career, Eisenhower worked with General John Pershing and General Douglas MacArthur; the latter found Ike so indispensable to him in Washington as a speechwriter and in other ways that he requested that he go with him to duty in the Philippines. Smith emphasizes that Ike was not a battlefield commander, nor a great soldier, but outstanding as a theater commander and military statesman. He also had exceptional ability as an executive and knew how to assume ultimate responsibility and yet delegate to others. Among the many achievements of his life, Smith discusses his crucial role in the formation of NATO, his presidency at Columbia University and his “behind-the-scenes” approach in dealing with Senator Joe McCarthy’s abuse of power. One clue to Eisenhower’s successes comes from his belief that his mother had by far the greatest personal influence on him and his brothers. All four of his remaining brothers (another had died as a child) agreed that Ike was the most like their mother. In contrast to their rather distant father, she was the constant presence who organized their lives, soothed them if necessary, praised their achievements and could often see the humor in virtually every difficult situation. When General Dwight Eisenhower was hailed as an international hero at the end of WWII, a newsman asked her if she was proud of her son. “Which one?” she responded. As president, Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative, but he was not an ideologue of any kind. He was for a balanced budget but also aware of the need for such significant public works projects as the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system, the largest public works project ever attempted. Among other initiatives, he expanded Social Security in 1954 to provide coverage for an additional 10 million self-em-
ployed farmers, doctors and others; he established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and he approved funds to provide the Salk polio vaccine to the nation’s underprivileged children. He said that the decision to send federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the law regarding integration of the schools was the hardest he’d ever had to make except for the decision to go ahead with D-Day. Meticulously researched, Smith’s book gives us a fresh and insightful understanding of the many aspects of Eisenhower’s full life. —Roger Bishop
KING PEGGY By Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman Doubleday $25.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780385534321 Audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
Ever since the Rosie the Riveters of WWII blew the lid off of what was considered “women’s work” and moved with skill and determination into “men’s jobs,” women have been making strides into traditionally male-dominated positions. Today, no one raises an eyebrow at seeing a female doctor, police officer or CEO. But a female king ? Yet that is exactly what Peggielene Bartels, for more than 30 years a secretary at the Embassy of Ghana in Washington, D.C., is asked to become by the elders of Otuam, a small Ghanaian village. Though it sounds the stuff of fairytale and legend, King Peggy is the fascinating true story of her courageous acceptance of this difficult role and her unyielding resolve to help the people of Otuam. An American citizen since 1997, Bartels did have ties to Ghana beyond her work at the Embassy. She was born and raised in Cape Coast and still had relatives there, and her uncle had been king of Otuam until his death at age 90 in 2008. Still, going back for centuries, all the kings had been men, and the idea had
never crossed her mind to aspire to become one. So it was quite a shock when an elder called to tell her she had been one of the final 25 candidates chosen (and the only female), and that when they poured the libations, it was her name which had “steamed up” from the schnapps. The ancestors had chosen her; would she accept? Written with Eleanor Herman, King Peggy reveals how Bartels made her difficult decision and how it not only changed her life, but those of the 7,000 people she came to rule. Faced with daunting obstacles—lack of running water, a crumbling palace and a late king “in the refrigerator” until he can be properly buried (a problem compounded by Ghana’s dicey electricity)—Bartels rises to each calamity with tenacity and dignity. She vows to rule “wisely, with compassion and justice, and to spare no effort in helping Otuam” as she struggles to upgrade the community’s education, healthcare and infrastructure, despite the entrenched corruption she encounters. Full of pathos, humor and insight into a world where poverty mingles with hope and happiness, King Peggy is an inspiration and proof positive that when it comes to challenging roles for women, “We Can Do It!” —Linda Stankard
THE AMERICAN WAY OF EATING By Tracie McMillan Scribner $25, 336 pages ISBN 9781439171950
JOURNALISM
When journalist Tracie McMillan covered a cooking class run by a youth services agency in New York City, she got to know one of the teenage students. Vanessa, who liked fruits and vegetables, knew that she should eat better. But eating healthy was so expensive, and Burger King was so close. McMillan, who has written about
food, poverty and the politics of both for publications such as the New York Times and Harper’s Magazine, got curious. Why can’t everyone get access to the same food? To answer that and other nagging questions, she spent months away from her cozy life as a Brooklynbased writer. Going undercover, she picked peaches and cut garlic in the California heat, stocked produce at a Walmart outside of Detroit and did prep work at a Brooklyn Applebee’s, a pleasant job that had an unfortunate ending. Each time, McMillan lived off the scant wages she earned. Those first-person experiences, along with a heaping portion of facts and figures, are presented in The American Way of Eating. Readers may wish McMillan had stuck to either a straight-ahead investigation or a wide-eyed memoir—the “real life” approach sometimes overwhelms the objectives—but there’s still plenty of meat to chew on. Convenience cooking (e.g., microwave meals) isn’t just bad for you, it’s more expensive than making the meal from scratch; most farm workers, a vocation that can start as early as age 12, typically live in overcrowded housing. In many cities, writes McMillan, Walmart has “little incentive” to drop prices because it’s the “biggest game in town.” What sticks with you about The American Way of Eating isn’t the statistics or the overriding theme of how hard it is to get quality produce—especially if you are overworked and underpaid. It’s that McMillan puts a face on a largely anonymous process. Everything we eat has a story, and it usually involves some kind of woe—from the garlic cutter in a constant uphill battle to reach minimum wage to the server at Applebee’s who’s juggling a baby and college courses with her shifts. McMillan’s covert journey on this less-than-glamorous path reveals that the various laborers involved in our meals pay a higher price than we can imagine— an issue that may even rival the importance of Americans getting fresh, healthful food. —Pete Croatto
27
children’s books
lita judge i n t e r v i e w B y L i n d a M . C a s t e ll i t t o
The secret language of birds
I
f you’ve ever wondered—or tried to explain—what birds are saying as they flit about in trees or preen on their perches, help is here: Lita Judge’s new book, Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why, is a wonderfully illustrated compendium of bird behavior and communication for young readers. The talented author-illustrator of 10 books and counting (including the recent picture books Red Sled and Strange Creatures), Judge knows what our feathered friends are up to—whether a series of caws or a sudden flurry of poop-missiles— thanks to a childhood spent immersed in nature. Born on a small Alaskan island, Judge and her family traveled wherever her father’s soil-scientist jobs took him. Home base was in Wisconsin, where her grandparents, who were both ornithologists, lived on a remote farm with no TV or running water, but plenty of birdcentric chores to be done. “When I was young, I thought everyone had eagles and owls in the house,” she says in an interview from her home in New Hampshire. At age 14, the author was accepted for two summers of work on a dinosaur dig in Canada, and after college, she became a geologist. She eventually quit her geologist job to work as an artist—mostly painting landscapes for galleries—but never stopped feeling a pull toward books. “I always had a huge desire to be a writer and artist, but I didn’t have
Bird Talk
28
By Lita Judge, Roaring Brook, $17.99, 48 pages ISBN 9781596436466, ages 6 to 9
role models to show me it could be done professionally,” Judge says, adding that she spent some time wishing she’d gone to art school. But, she says, “I’ve realized I am who I am because of my past. I believe really strongly my background in science taught me a lot about art.” She explains, “To get birds to look fluid and gestural and come to life when they’re essentially made out of graphite, you have to know anatomy and behavior; you have to spend a lot of time watching them. Geology is a science of observation, and as a kid, I spent hours on the marsh with my grandparents. I would write and draw what I saw, but I didn’t see it as art—more as a contribution to what they were doing.” Her grandparents were “strong disciplinarians, and I spent hours and hours in blinds being absolutely still. To make a book takes so much patience and contemplation, and that training gave me a peaceful stillness and the ability to observe subtle things.” In addition to her childhood adventures, Judge says she draws inspiration from the wildlife that surrounds her home. “I spend a lot of time outside going for hikes, where the inspiration comes, and I do the work in my studio. It’s a regular thoroughfare here because we have feeders everywhere. At any one time, we have 40 wild turkeys circling the house, bears looking right in at us, foxes, bobcats and lots of deer.” The creatures that populate Bird Talk are a delight to behold, from the elegantly arched neck of the Indian Sarus Crane to the tensed body of a striped American Bittern who’s hiding in tall grass—but risking a yellow-eyed peek to see if his ruse is working. And Judge’s eye for color will help young readers connect the fascinat-
Author-illustrator Lita Judge (right) learned about birds during childhood summers spent with her ornithologist grandparents. At the age of 12 (above), she enjoyed the company of an orphaned owl who became a family favorite.
ing images and facts in the book with what they see in real life, whether gazing up at flashes of blue or red in a tree, admiring vivid plumage in the bird-house at a zoo, or clicking through bird photos online. “I wanted every child to have a bird they could identify from their backyards. I also wanted to include those really bizarre things kids just love. So, it’s a healthy mix of birds I’ve seen firsthand and those I remember being thrilled by,” Judge says. The Sage Grouse will not disappoint (think: blowfish with feathers), and the charm of the Blue-Footed Booby belies its name. A bird-guide and glossary, plus a list of references, will aid curious kids in learning more about bird appearance, behavior and habitat. Through her books, Judge says she hopes to convey the thrill—and value—of being around animals and exploring nature. Based on her visits to schools, there is a receptive audience: “The average kid is much more articulate [than kids of decades past] about the consequences we have on the environment.” She adds, “They don’t have to be watching wild animals personally to care about them. I find they’re all
heart and want to make a difference, but at the same time they have a lack of knowledge about just how complex the natural world is. One thing I want to do with this book is hopefully fuel kids’ natural inborn curiosity and love for animals, and give an appreciation of how complex animal behavior is.” Bird Talk is just the vehicle to spark, or enhance, that appreciation: Judge’s expressive illustrations and textual translations add dimension and personality to the feathered creatures we see and hear every day. Her deep knowledge of and affection for nature is evident— not to mention her delight in at last becoming the author and artist she was meant to be. “When I finally switched to children’s books, and to doing what I did as a kid with writing and visuals working together to tell a story . . . it felt like falling into myself,” she says.
reviews
And Then It’s Spring
THE PROMISE OF SPRING REVIEW BY ALICE CARY
In a beautiful new collaboration, writer Julie Fogliano and illustrator Erin E. Stead capture the long, slow season of renewal. Instead of eyepopping flowers and gobs of glorious greens, this picture book begins: “First you have brown, / all around you have brown.” This is the way spring is, especially around my home in New England, where April and even May can be dreary, cold and brown. There’s nothing at all dreary, however, in And Then It’s Spring, as a boy and his dog plant vegetable seeds and wait for them to grow. The story follows the days of endless waiting, worry and hope as the boy and his dog stand patiently in sun and rain, waiting for signs of life. This delicate tale is also filled with immediate, easily accessible fun. A By Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead bevy of animals—including birds, a rabbit, a turtle and even bears—helps Roaring Brook, $16.99, ISBN 9781596436244 keep watch over the seeds’ progress. The woodblock and pencil drawings Ages 4 to 7 by Stead, a Caldecott Award-winning artist, are pitch perfect, full of quiet anticipation. In one scene, Stead shows the boy, his dog and a rabbit with their ears to the ground, while below are labyrinths of activity as ants, worms, mice and chipmunks travel through underground tunnels, and garden seeds sprout deep roots. Finally, of course, after weeks of waiting, there comes that magic day: “but the brown isn’t around / and now you have green, / all around you have green.” The boy lazily swings in a tire swing over his garden, barefoot and with his face turned gleefully upward, being warmed by the lovely spring sun. The garden finally comes to life in this subtle ode to hope, patience and rebirth.
One Dog and His Boy By Eva Ibbotson Scholastic $16.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780545351966 Ages 8 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
All Hal ever wanted was a dog. His wealthy parents give him every toy and gizmo, all hand-wrapped and selected by the professionals at the upscale toy store, but a dog is out of the question. It might shed, make a mess or otherwise disturb the sparkling, germ-free mansion the staff has carefully created. Crestfallen when his 10th birthday yields only a horrifying man dressed as a dog, Hal’s sadness nudges his father to finally get a dog. The catch is, this dog will come from Easy Pets, a dog rental agency. Figuring that a dog will be like every other “toy” in Hal’s life (discarded after a few days), Hal’s father misjudges the
bond between boy and dog—and that’s when this story really gets going. Hal’s attachment to Fleck, as the little mongrel is called, is so instant and so deep that Hal’s anger and depression over his parents’ duplicity sends everyone into a tailspin when his mother returns Fleck without a word of warning. Hal and Fleck are destined to be reunited, however, and in her final book, dog-lover Eva Ibbotson, who died in 2010, has created a reunion worthy of cinema. Hal is convinced that his grandparents in Northumberland will be better parents for him and his dog. New friend and accomplice Pippa, whose family thinks she is at sleepaway camp, joins him on an adventure worthy of The Incredible Journey. Though Ibbotson didn’t live long enough to see this charmer in print, her love of animals comes through on every page. Parents, be careful: One Dog and His Boy will certainly make young readers long for a Fleck of their own. —ROBIN SMITH
Spy School By Stuart Gibbs Simon & Schuster $15.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781442421820 eBook available Ages 8 to 12
middle grade
It was a typical first day at a new school for Ben Ripley. First, he was dragged out of his house by a James Bond lookalike, and no one was allowed to know where he was going. Then he was shot at as he ran for his life up to the front door. Next, he was met by the most beautiful girl in the world, who saved his life at least twice and sent him to make a call from the emergency radio beacon. Finally, he backed his way into what was certainly a trap, and most likely his sudden death, only to be confronted by the principal of the school, telling Ben he had just scored a D-minus on his first test
at Spy School. Wait, that’s not what your first day of school was like? In Spy School, the new novel by Stuart Gibbs, Ben finds out quickly that this school will be nothing like the boring classes he has taken for most of his life. For example, at the CIA’s top secret Academy of Espionage, classes like Geometry and Social Studies are replaced with Introduction to Self-Preservation and Chemistry 102: Poisons and Explosives. Also, in a regular school, you don’t often find out you were admitted as an unqualified, and extremely expendable, decoy in order to draw out a mole in the operation. Ben really likes the change in coursework; he doesn’t much care for the fact that he was brought there to die! Spy School pulls together the best of middle grade writing—action, adventure, awkward romance, plot twists and turns, and of course, unrelenting humor. Gibbs does an excellent job of never quite letting you figure out what is going to happen next, and keeping you on your toes. Ben is a perfect bumbling hero—never quite knowing what to do, but somehow getting things done. Perfect for fans of mysteries, humor or Harry Potter (it does take place in a special school for gifted students, after all), Spy School will keep young readers engrossed from cover to cover. — K e v in D e l e c ki
The Humming Room By Ellen Potter Feiwel & Friends $16.99, 192 pages ISBN 9780312644383 eBook available Ages 9 to 12
middle grade
For anyone who has read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, Ellen Potter’s latest book will feel very familiar. In The Humming Room, Potter has taken the metaphor of wild, neglected garden as wild, neglected child and updated it for a new audience. Like Mary in The Secret Garden,
29
Soar into Spring
with These Must-Have Picture Books! AND THEN IT’S SPRING
by Julie Fogliano Illustrated by Erin E. Stead, Winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal This tender story of anticipation is brought to life by the distinctive illustrations of Erin E. Stead, winner of the Caldecott Medal for A Sick Day for Amos McGee.
5 Starred Reviews! Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press
PIGGY BUNNY
by Rachel Vail Illustrated by Jeremy Tankard
For children who put on a cape or a tutu, who dream of being someone or something different, Piggy Bunny offers a reassuring and fun opportunity to believe in themselves. Feiwel and Friends
THE MONSTER RETURNS by Peter McCarty
Peter McCarty brings his popular monster back in style, with a sequel that will have kids drawing their own little monsters in no time. Henry Holt
Roo finds herself living with people she does not know, in a house that has many secrets. Her estranged uncle has no interest in her and his secretary is cool and efficient, but not loving and kind. Roo is used to being on her own and taking care of herself, so the isolation is welcome and comforting. What is not comforting, however, is the strange humming she can hear through the walls. Where is it coming from? Why hasn’t she been allowed to meet whoever is making those sounds? Roo is not a happy child, nor necessarily a lovable character, but we understand how she thinks and what she needs to feel at peace. When she encounters who it is that is making the humming sound, Roo must learn how to include others in her world, opening her heart in the process. Roo’s connection with the natural world is lovingly portrayed throughout the story, making her discovery and need to revive a lost garden quite understandable. All the wildness in this book—in Roo, in the garden, in the humming room—is not tamed but given room to grow and thrive. A cared-for garden is very much like a cared-for child: Given love and attention, both bloom into wondrous things. This book is not a substitute for Burnett’s, but could be considered a welcome addition, one perhaps better suited for younger readers not yet ready for the fuller complexities of The Secret Garden. —J e n n i f e r B r u e r K i t c h e l
The Difference Between You and Me By Madeleine George Viking $16.99, 256 pages ISBN 9780670011285 eBook available Ages 12 and up
ZERO THE HERO
by Joan Holub Illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld
Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That’s what all the other numbers think of ZERO. But when the other numbers get into trouble, ZERO swoops in to prove that his talents are innumerable.
TEEN
/Henry Holt
30
reviews
Imprints of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group mackids.com
When Jesse and Emily pass in the halls of their high school, they don’t make eye contact, and why would they? Emily is student body vice president, an intern at an important
company with a loyal boyfriend and, it must be said, incredibly perfect hair. Jesse keeps her locks cut short with a pocketknife, favors outsize rubber boots over ballet flats and is the sole member of a radical flyerposting political organization called NOLAW. The Difference Between You and Me would seem to be an understatement, yet every Tuesday afternoon finds these two together in the bathroom at the public library for what Emily calls their “special time,” where those barriers dissolve in the face of an amazing physical connection. Jesse wants to go public with their relationship while Emily feels the need to compartmentalize it with her other extracurricular In this smart, activities, and funny novel, that works two girls for a while. But when the who couldn’t school is dividbe more ed by a big-box different share store’s plans a physical to build in connection town, currying political favor they can’t by sponsoring deny. school activities, a divide is created that forces the two to reevaluate where they stand. Ideology competes with affection, and who wins is anything but clear. Author Madeleine George (Looks) tells this story with humor and wisdom. Jesse is so embarrassed to tell her left-wing activist parents she’s involved with a “normal” girl that they suspect she’s on drugs; she denies it, then realizes the relationship is itself a form of addiction. Emily is genuine and earnest about school, her hometown and her boyfriend, but feels seen by Jesse on a deeper level, and that vulnerability is intoxicating. There’s also a clear and fair-minded look at the positive and negative impacts of urban sprawl on communities. The Difference Between You and Me will prompt heated discussions, and maybe the next wave of photocopied manifestos that challenge the norm. Let’s hope. —Heather Seggel
reviews Curveball
meet ASHLEY WOLFF
My Family for the War
By Jordan Sonnenblick Scholastic $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780545320696 Audio available Ages 12 and up
TEEN
By Anne C. Voorhoeve Translated by Tammi Reichel Dial $17.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780803733602 eBook available Ages 12 and up
TEEN
All through eighth-grade baseball season Peter Friedman hid his mounting, searing pain so that he and his best friend, AJ, could be star pitchers. After finally wearing out his elbow joint and permanently ending his baseball career, Peter enters his freshman year by keeping this crushing news a secret from AJ and wondering if he’ll ever enjoy anything as much as baseball again. Because of his close relationship with his grandfather, a professional photographer, and his mother’s persistent urging, he signs up for one of his high school’s photography classes, where he meets fellow budding photographer Angelika. When the class becomes the yearbook’s default photographers, Angelika volunteers Peter to cover none other than the school’s sports scene. Peter’s biting humor and flirtatious banter with Angelika keep the story both realistic and fresh as he faces his debilitating injury and AJ’s constant reminders about the upcoming spring training, along with one more secret: After noticing his grandfather’s increasing forgetfulness, he can’t help but wonder if his beloved hero is showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. He swears not to divulge his grandfather’s condition, until a life-threatening accident forces him to confront the truth. As Peter learns how to be honest with his friends, family and, most importantly, himself, he also begins to appreciate life’s gifts amidst tragedy. Jordan Sonnenblick scores a home run with Curveball as he continues what he does best: getting to the core of issues that resonate with teens in a style that’s direct and witty. New readers, start lining up Sonnenblick’s previous hits!
The year is 1938 and German Jews are losing their jobs; their children are being forced out of school and harassed on the street. But, 11-yearold Ziska wonders, why should this affect her? Her family converted to Protestantism two generations ago. If her mother loves her, why is she putting Ziska on a children’s train—a kindertransport—to live with strangers in England? Life in England brings many surprises for Ziska. Her host family practices Orthodox Judaism, and Ziska becomes intrigued by their rituals. The family’s son welcomes her immediately, and she also finds friends in a fellow kindertransport passenger and an elderly professor. And although Ziska and her host mother get off to a rocky start, they soon begin to develop a bond that will prove to be tremendously meaningful for both of them. As Ziska’s relationship with her host family develops, so does the war, including bombings and blackouts in London, further evacuations to the countryside and rumors of unspeakable horrors against Jews in German-occupied lands. By the time peace is declared in 1945, Ziska is 18 years old, and both her world and her perspective have changed in ways she could never have imagined. Anne C. Voorhoeve’s historical novel, first published in Germany, raises many questions: What does it mean to be a friend, a daughter, a German or a Jew? Reflecting its wartime setting, the events in My Family for the War are at times harsh and unforgiving. But ultimately, Ziska’s story is about the persistent love of a family . . . and a generation’s hope for better times to come.
—Angela Leeper
— J i l l S . Ra t z a n
BABY BEAR SEES BLUE Ashley Wolff has written and illustrated more than 60 books for children, all of them, she says, “full of animals, children, color and love.” In her latest, Baby Bear Sees Blue (Beach Lane, $16.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9781442413061), a bear cub explores his new surroundings with his mother at his side. Wolff and her husband live in San Francisco.
31
WORDNOOK
By the editors of Merriam-Webster
MELTING TOGETHER Dear Editor, In discussions about immigration, the term melting pot is often used. What exactly is a melting pot, and how and when did the United States come to be called that? M. C. Fairborn, Georgia Melting pot as a literal term means just what you would expect: a vessel for melting something, such as metal. It is synonymous with crucible. By extension, melting pot is used figuratively to mean a place where social, cultural and racial assimilation and amalgamation take place. It has often been applied to big cities that attract immigrants, such as New York City. As you point out, melting pot is also used to mean specifically the United States. The term reflects the image of American society as made up of people from diverse ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds, who come together to form an
integrated whole. This application of melting pot to the United States comes from a 1908 play titled The Melting Pot by English writer Israel Zangwill.
SIMPLE SIMON Dear Editor, While playing the children’s game Simon Says recently, I wondered, who is the Simon referred to? B. K. Springfield, Massachusetts The source of the name of Simon Says, a game played as early as 1853, is uncertain. There are several famous Simons who could have lent their name to the game, including the biblical Simon and Simon Legree, the cruel slaveholder of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It is also possible that the alliteration of “Simon Says” led to the random adoption of the moniker. It is most likely, however, that the name comes from the
nursery rhyme “Simple Simon and the Pieman,” which begins: “Simple Simon met a pieman, / Going to the fair; / Says Simple Simon to the pieman, / Let me taste your ware. / Says the pieman to Simple Simon, / Show me first your penny; / Says Simple Simon to the pieman, / Indeed I have not any.” The frequent use of “says” in the verses—as well as the many commands appearing within them— lend credence to this theory.
STRIKING A BLOW Dear Editor, Why do we call a group’s refusal to work a strike? I guess the use of the word in this sense must be about as old as unions, but how old is that? S. H. Victoria, Texas
now if I could only find my keys ...
across
1 Jon of Mad Men and The Town 5 Spain’s longest river 9 Ad cow since 1936 14 Geometer’s calculation 15 Hair removal product 16 Hit the big time, in sports 17 “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” group 19 Environmentally conscious 20 One way to order sushi 21 “ Denied” (frustrating screen display in many a hacking scene) 22 “ y Plata” (Montana’s motto) 23 Expensive violin, briefly 24 After-hours banking option, for short 27 Tear into, as a movie Miss 29 30 Fictional sleeper Van Winkle 33 Challenge to a gunslinger (Family Guy bar) 35 The Drunken 37 Decrease
1
down
1 “If I nickel for every time . . .” 2 Sea (Amu Darya’s outlet) 3 Table, in Spanish 4 Call from one who’s “it,” in a pool game 5 Intrude (upon), as rights and switch 6 7 Prepare for “The Star-Spangled Banner”
TRY O NE! 2
3
4
5
6
7
8
17
10
level
11
12
13
30
31
32
60
61
HHHHH
16 19
18 21
20 22 25
26
33
23 27
28 35
34
39
29 36
37
40 43 46 51
38
41
42 45
55
9
15
14
24
39 2000 stoner comedy whose last word can be found hiding 14 other times in this grid, going up, down, forwards, backwards, or diagonally 42 What might prevent a boxer from getting into a fight (go crazy) 43 Run 44 Flotsam and Jetsam, in Disney’s The Little Mermaid 45 Crew team’s machine, for short 46 Military training ctr. 48 White lie 50 The Catcher in the 51 Tie worn by Fred on Scooby-Doo 53 Nonverbal affirmation 55 Alfalfa, for one 57 Coconut cookie often purchased during Passover 62 Basketball Hall-of-Famer Robertson 63 One of Bart Simpson’s exasperated catchphrases 64 Glassy-eyed look Rabbit 65 Uncle Remus character, 66 Cause severe injury to 67 Fast runners of the animal world 68 Selection on Deal or No Deal 69 Just a few chips, say
Please send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102
The trade unionism movement began in Great Britain and the United States in the 19th century, though the concept of workers banding
I T ’ S H I P T O BE SQ U A RE WITH CRO SSW O RD S F RO M
freeparking
together in an organized refusal to work is of course much older. The earliest use of strike to describe this refusal was as a verb, first recorded in 1768: “This day the hatters struck and refused to work till their wages are raised.” The related noun was first recorded in 1810. The Oxford English Dictionary shows this sense of strike to be an extension of the sense “to lower, let down, or take down,” which is used to describe the dismantling of tents and camps. In the following 1793 quotation, the phrase struck their poles means (figuratively) “folded their tents” or “quit”: “This day the whole body of chairmen . . . struck their poles, and proceeded in a mutinous manner to Guildhall, respecting the granting of their licenses.”
44
47
48
52
49 53
56
57
50 54
58
59
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
www.workman.com
P U Z Z L E B y N ATA N L A S T
8 Morsel for Fido 9 Brooklyn-y beverage usually made with chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer 10 La casa de Bernarda Alba playwright, Federico García 11 English adaptation of the Japanese anime Mach Go Go Go 12 Furies 13 Billions and billions of years 18 Org. that holds a National Senior Spelling Bee 21 The Braves, on scoreboards 23 “ us are trying to sleep!!” 24 Make muddled, as a mind 25 More factual 26 2005 computer-animated film about Central Park Zoo animals unwittingly shipped to Africa 28 Div. for the Mets 31 Winner of the 2006 World Cup
32 34 36 38 40 41 4 7 49 52 54 5 5 56 57 58 59 60 61 63
In and of itself Scream director Craven One of an octopus’s octet Off-week for a football team “So?” Industry for Aveeno and Olay Rank of KFC’s Sanders Relative of a warthog Fill with fear O’Neill’s field Hebrew for “head” The Thin Man canine Boutros Boutros Monkhouse, girl with a thing for Steve Urkel on Family Matters Smokin’ (2007 film) Its flag features two swords and a dagger Life sentences? Enumerate Lost and Extreme Makeover network
A
H
T
S
S
O
A
R
R
E
E
L
U
D
R
D
T
A
R A C
E R A C
S
S
A G A D
S E
L
A
A R
A
A
H
A S
A C
E
C A
M M
A L O C
H C R A A
A
A R Y
R N E
E C
T E L
F M O R A
N I A B
A C
E O
E S I R
I
A
S
R A
T A
T R O
A R
M Y B
E C G G E
I
M B O R
E R
T O
E M A N
D
B A
L
N
M A
K
M S
T
E R N O
S
O C
S
M A A
W H P
R
B
R
A W M
C
E O
O D
S
E C A R
A C R O L
Y L A T I
E S R E P
D E E P S
S E R I
S N O E