New Book of the Week
by Olga Ravn
(trans. by Martin Aitken)
A provocative combination of futurism and the mundane from a young Danish writer, The Employees caused a global sensation among literati, was shortlisted for the most recent International Booker Prize, and has at last crossed the Atlantic to reach American readers. Ravn's brief fiction takes the form of discrete interviews with the human and humanoid crew of the Six-Thousand Ship, a spacecraft exploring a distant planet to collect and care for the mysterious, strangely powerful objects found there. Influenced as much by The Office as by Stanislaw Lem, it's concerned with the absurd drudgery of corporate work and politics as well as profound questions of mortality and identity. Odd, unsettling, and open-ended, it lodges itself deep under the skin. —James
New Book of the Week
by Alejandro Zambra
(trans. by Megan McDowell)
For too many Americans, reading fiction in translation is perceived as at best a noble duty and at worst as a chore. Thankfully, they have Alejandro Zambra's new novel to prove that books from abroad are simply, you know, books, providing all the same pleasures as homegrown titles. Chilean Poet, frank, funny, insightful, and with a "just one more chapter" propulsion to its plot, offers many. It's a contemporary love story in every sense, featuring a teenage infatuation between Carla and Gonzalo that evolves into a mature, adult relationship fraught with all manner of complications. The connection between the couple, vital in the beginning, grows ever less important in comparison to our concern for the integrity of the extended family they inadvertently cobble together. Parents pair and partners part and yes, poetry gets published and discussed along the way. Every character involved is recognizable and fully dimensional, and everything works out for them in the end, not perfectly, but with the inevitable rightness of reality. —James
New Book of the Week
by Karolina Ramqvist
(trans. by Saskia Vogel)
Karolina Ramqvist's The Bear Woman chronicles her fascination (perhaps her obsession) with Marguerite de La Rocque, a young woman who in 1541 undertook an expedition from France to North America, fell into a shipboard romance, and was marooned with her lover on a frigid, isolated island as punishment for her sins. Battling deprivation, the elements, and dangerous animals, she outlived her lover and the child she birthed in the wilderness, was rescued after years of solitude, and returned home. It's "a fantastic story," as all Ramqvist's friends tell her, but she frets to do it justice, as the most elusive aspect of the historical record is the woman at the center, hidden in the shadows cast by the powerful men around her. Ramqvist's experiences as a feminist writer of the 21st century add all the illumination necessary and then some. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Angélica Gorodischer
(trans. by Ursula K. Le Guin)
A charming fable of "The Greatest Empire That Never Was," Kalpa Imperial is an epic in mosaic, an intentionally incomplete account of an everlasting series of rising and falling potentates and powers. It treads a perfect line between earnestness and cynicism, between pure imagination and political allegory of our own world. It's a fantasy novel of sorts, though it has more in common with the work of Borges and Calvino, and happily exists beyond the pale of all generic definition. —James
New Book of the Week
by Stéfanie Clermont
(trans. by J.C. Sutcliffe)
A stellar set of connected stories about a group of young women coming of age as the century turns, working odd jobs and working out what and who they want to be. The slightly non-linear progression of the story perfectly matches the rhythm of their fitful march into the future, on which they carry the baggage of youthful trauma and are stymied by the obstacles a misogynistic society places in their path. The Music Game is masterful at capturing a highly specific Millennial milieu, and truly at its best when its characters face the dilemmas of political engagement, self-damned for not caring but frustrated by the seemingly fruitless work of making the world better. I followed them eagerly from the farmers markets of Montreal to the anarchist squats of the San Francisco Bay area and was legitimately heartbroken at the end of their journey together. —James
New Book of the Week
by Olga Tokarczuk
Poland's Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, but we American readers have thus far seen only glimpses of the career that earned her the award. Aspects of her talent were on display in the fractured, anomic anecdotes of Flights and in the sardonic, environmentalist comedy of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, but the range of her work available in English didn't add up to more than a sliver. Until this week, that is, when Jennifer Croft's translation of Tokarczuk's staggeringly accomplished The Books of Jacob was published. It tells of the now-obscure historical figure of Jacob Frank, who in the 18th century undertook a "fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages, and three major religions," roaming central and eastern Europe as well as the Ottoman Empire, hobnobbing with shtetl peasants and Hapsburg emperors, serving as the figurehead of a thriving Messianic sect. As thrillingly magical as One Hundred Years of Solitude and as grippingly realistic as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy, it will no doubt appear on many year-end best lists, including mine. —James
New Book of the Week
by Joe Ide
This is not “a Philip Marlowe novel.” Yes, that claim is made on the cover; and yes, there is a Los Angeles private eye in these pages bearing said moniker. But The Goodbye Coast isn’t a Marlowe yarn in the same way as some other previous works of note. There is no intimate, first-person narration in these pages, and no indelible metaphors. Instead, this book imagines what Raymond Chandler’s infinitely lonely, mid-20th-century gumshoe might be like were he catapulted forward into our distracted and divided era, and asked to solve crimes committed by folks more debased and self-possessed than anyone about whom Chandler ever wrote. The results are uneven and overly complicated at times, yet laudable for the way author Ide sifts in incidental humor and evocative descriptions of L.A. Marlowe’s principal client here is Kendra James, a movie star in whirlwind decline, whose spoiled teenage stepdaughter, Cody, has vanished in the wake of her moviemaker father’s shooting death. Aided by his own reproving pater, Emmet, a wiry, alcoholic ex-cop hollowed out by the loss of his wife, Marlowe finds and then protects Cody, who refuses to return home, blaming Kendra for her dad’s demise. Meanwhile, the P.I. also takes on the case of a boy kidnapped amid a child-custody battle. Eventually, these investigations intersect in madcap antics and hair-triggered bloodshed. Readers new to Marlowe will relish Ide’s piquant dialogue and conflicted character relationships. Chandler purists should try to forget this is supposed to be “a Philip Marlowe novel,” and just appreciate it as proof that classic-style shamus stories need not be a thing of the past. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Hugo Hamilton
The innovative central conceit of The Pages, which involves a classic novel telling the story of how it came to be written and passed from hand to hand through time, is what will (justifiably) draw in most readers. It's the characters who treasure that book, though, an American artist, a Chechnyan refugee, and the great writer Joseph Roth who created it, that will be remembered. This is a rich human and literary drama. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Mircea Cărtărescu
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu is, on one level, about not very much. A young man (also named Mircea) studies the skyline of his native Romanian metropolis and narrates his thoughts: “I used to watch Bucharest through the night from the triple window in my room … I, a thin, sickly adolescent in torn pajamas and a stretched-out vest, would spend the long afternoon perched on the small cabinet in the bedstead, staring, hypnotized, into the eyes of my reflection in the transparent glass.” He can’t make sense of his surroundings without understanding himself, so his thoughts turn inward, the nutshell of his room giving way to the infinite kingdom of his mind. Through memory and speculation he relives his childhood under Communist rule, his parents’ separate lives before they met, and the history of the city itself. Blinding turns out to be about a great many things indeed.
What it’s mostly about is the sheer power of the human imagination. The events and situations the narrator describes have a basis in the external world, but as he continually reminds the reader, they don’t really exist except on the page. Humdrum scenes of domesticity spin off into hallucinatory fantasies of almost unbelievable richness. Thanks to details that remain vivid and concrete, however bizarre they become, there’s something solid and functional underneath it all, and what the story loses in logic it makes up in metaphorical resonance.
To give one example, Mircea recalls a visit to the village of his peasant grandparents, during which he sleepily ponders how his ancestors first made their way into Romania. He envisions an older village in the snowy wilds of Bulgaria, where tradition is disturbed when Romani travelers (called gypsies in those less enlightened times) introduce the residents to the opium poppy. The besotted villagers abandon their chores and descend into orgiastic debauchery, neglecting to make their ritual food offerings to the dead. The starving corpses and their devilish henchmen (“[d]ragons and werewolves, locusts with human heads and humans with fly heads …”) rise from the cemetery in the night, laying waste to the community and forcing a handful of survivors to take refuge in the church, defended by the priest who was the only one to resist the poppy’s charms. He calls down a host of angelic warriors to drive the demons back, and the small party makes its way to salvation across the frozen Danube (the waters of which are stocked with giant aquatic butterflies) into a new country. They create a new life, says the narrator, “all without ever imagining that, in fact, they weren’t building houses, plowing land, or planting seeds on anything more than a gray speck in a great-grandson’s right parietal lobe, and that all their existence and striving in the world was just as fleeting and illusory as that fragment of anatomy in the mind that dreamed them.”
That summary doesn’t come near doing justice to Cărtărescu’s baroque creativity. This set piece, like dozens of others in the novel, is an insane, profane, spectacular performance, like a jazz solo in words. When I finished reading that chapter, I had a strong urge to commission a stand-alone, hand-printed letterpress edition of it, and if Gustav Doré were still alive to illustrate it, I might really have done it.
I know that Blinding won’t be to every taste, as even its author acknowledges: “Maybe, in the heart of this book, there is nothing other than howling, blinding, apocalyptic howling …” But I also know that there’s an audience that will devour it whole, licking up every verbal crumb on its 460-plus pages. Fans of Gabriel Garcia Márquez who aren’t afraid to walk down the the shadier paths of the magical realist garden, perhaps? Or obnoxious literary grad students for whom Pynchon is too, too jejune? Anyone who appreciates that all works of fiction are ultimately nothing more than dream palaces projected in print? Maybe you? —James
New Book of the Week
by Kathryn Schulz
I'll admit that I'm skeptical whenever a memoir is put in front of me. So this happened to you, I think, but why should I read about it? Too many of them don't rise above the level of a family Christmas card. When they're good, though, written by an author with panache and the consciousness that her story is one in a cosmos of a billion equally important and interesting tales, they're the very best books of all. Such is Kathryn Schulz's Lost & Found, which juxtaposes her grief at her father's death with her joy at the start of a new lifelong romance. Her emotional self-analysis is soul-deep, but it's the way her mind connects to the people, places, and things of the wonderful wider world that really set a hook in me. I keep saying I'm not a memoir guy, but I think I'm coming around. —James
New Book of the Week
by Hanya Yanagihara
It's rare that I run a recommendation in our newsletter for a book I haven't yet read, but once in a while it seems fitting to mention the excitement I feel about starting one. In this case I mean the new novel from Hanya Yanagihara. She became a literary rock star after the 2015 publication of A Little Life, which won ardent fans for the intensity of its emotional register but put some readers off for exactly the same reason. Near as I could figure, people reacted to it the way many do to operatic arias—some hear histrionic melodrama, others hear soaring artistry that heightens reality. I didn't know what to make of it and set her work aside as a tantalizing maybe. Her long-awaited follow-up has me off the fence, though. To Paradise braids together three alternate histories of New York families, friends, and lovers, set over the course of two hundred years. The range Yanagihara is showing off, both historical and imaginative, has assuaged all my claustrophobic fears and I can't wait to read it. If you're quick enough to join me, you can still pick up one of our autographed copies. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
by Martha Brockenbrough
In a mystical land that is populated by werebeasts and humans alike lives a princess fighting for a chance to be queen. Also competing for the throne is her brother Albrecht, who is fiercely unfavorable to werebeasts. Princess Ursula—who happens to be a werebear—is determined to prevent her brother from sitting on the throne and to make sure all werebeasts have a fair life. I love the feministic undertones and creative plot line following Ursula, Albrecht, Greta, and Hans through such an interesting world. Anyone who loves the darker side of children’s stories will enjoy this creative fairy tale mashup. (Ages 12 to 17) —Arden
New Book of the Week
by David Guterson
An immensely popular novel brings many rewards to its author, but it also carries with it a kind of curse. However good the books that follow, it can cast a shadow that hides their quality. Given that, I can see why a writer might choose to stay quiet until inspiration arrives that seems likely to stand in the sunshine on its own. I'm not saying that's what David Guterson, author of the beloved Snow Falling on Cedars, has done, but it has been more than a decade since he published a novel, and the reception his new one is getting suggests the wait was wise and worth it. The Final Case harkens back to Snow Falling in some respects—both are set in the Northwest and center on a criminal trial—but is very much its own story. In it, a rigidly devout Skagit County couple has subjected their adopted daughter to a regimen of what they consider tough love, but the rest of the world calls murderous mistreatment. A principled octogenarian lawyer steps forward to defend the otherwise indefensible pair, and requires the assistance of his adult son, who is drawn ever deeper into the case and into his father's life. What begins as a legal thriller develops into a rich character study that could at last eclipse Guterson's debut novel. —James
New Book of the Week
by Elizabeth George
Not every mystery writer can find new things to say after twenty books, but Elizabeth George isn't every mystery writer. The 21st installment of her Inspector Lynley series pairs the crime-solver with other returning characters to investigate a murder in London's Nigerian immigrant community. George's expertise with the mechanics of a whodunit has long been established, but her understanding of human nature and the complex cultural milieux in which those human beings operate continue to grow. If you've been craving a crime novel with literary depth, look no further. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Steve Olson
The Apocalypse Factory is the first complete history of the Hanford nuclear facility, from its beginnings as a glimmer in a few military minds to its successful completion as a top secret project, from the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki all the way through the facility's eventual decline and the environmental disaster that it left behind. Olson grew up in the shadow of the reactors and knows his subject from personal experience as well as the most extensive research ever done on the topic. You can whet your appetite for reading the book by watching Steve's conversation with fellow author Sharma Shields, one of our most popular virtual author events from last year. —James
New Book of the Week
by Stephen Marche
Reading about the likely dissolution of these here United States isn't a cheerful experience, but it's a bracing one that's well worth having, at least with Stephen Marche by your side. We're all aware of the political and cultural fissures that are causing many to question our mutual sense of what America is, but without examining them carefully, we're like the proverbial frog in the ever-heating pot, unaware of how close the boiling point really is. Marche's useful analysis is provocative but well-grounded, based on thorough journalistic investigation of the various groups devoting themselves to either public safety or anti-governmental action. It's his novelist's imagination that makes the book shine, though, as he writes vivid, convincing vignettes about future life in a fractured, rather than fracturing, America. —James
New Book of the Week
by Ryka Aoki
At first blush, the plot of this novel seems absurd (because it is): a once-renowned violinist makes a deal with a demon to exchange fame and glory for the soul of her next apprentice. Meanwhile, nearby in sunny Los Angeles, an undercover, self-exiled alien family struggles to run a failing doughnut shop. Aoki deftly uses the supernatural to get at the core of what it means to be human. What it’s like to feel love and crave love, to be consumed with passion for one’s craft, to create beauty out of hardship and pain. The characters are unforgettable and the prose is breathtaking. This book has immediately become one of my favorites of all time. —Stephanie
New Book of the Week
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Twenty years after it was first published, The Shadow of the Wind remains one of the most beloved novels of its time, an atmospheric intellectual thriller set in Barcelona between the wars and a tribute to the enthralling power of storytelling itself. Ruiz Zafón died last year, but before he passed he meticulously prepared a collection of tales that returns to the setting and recaptures the mood of his best-known work. The City of Mist is sheer delight to read. —James
New Book of the Week
by David Graeber & David Wengrow
One of my favorite non-fiction titles of the year, The Dawn of Everything is a comprehensive study of humankind in the mode of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Harari's Sapiens, but it builds upon and serves as a necessary corrective to those works. What Dawn properly considers that no other such book has is the vast swath of history that's less visible to the eyes of today, the anarchic millennia that preceded civilization's structure and comprise the vast majority of human existence. As Rebecca Solnit says, it "liberat[es] us from the familiar stories about humanity's past that are too often deployed to impose limitations on how we imagine humanity's future." —James
New Book of the Week
by Hervé Le Tellier
A mind-bending cross-genre work ranging from thriller to sci-fi, crime novel to philosophical speculation, Hervé Le Tellier's new novel has a little of each and a lot more. The book opens with biographical sketches of its several protagonists and then moves quickly to a transatlantic Air France flight that runs into severe turbulence as it nears the US. The plane emerges unscathed, but 106 days later a duplicate flight in the same aircraft and with the same passengers repeats the same experience . . . or does it? The entire second set of passengers, crew, and the aircraft are forced to land in New Jersey and is "quarantined" while numerous investigative arms of the government and some university experts are brought in to sort things out. The novel is at its best in its focus on the individual passengers from the first flight who now (aside from 106 days difference in age and experiences) have duplicates on the second. The sorting out of identities, relationships, and indeed lives is fascinating and well done. Imagine meeting yourself in the flesh—bewildering only begins to describe how one might feel. —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Yan Ge
In the contemporary urban landscape of China, odd creatures, distinguishable by idiosyncratic tastes (cravings for ice cream or breakfast cereal) or subtle physical traits (jagged earlobes or scaly ankles), live side-by-side with humans. They exist on the margins of society, their habits sometimes copied in the manner of trend-setting celebrities, more often being exploited like low-caste ethnic minorities. Yan's melancholy fables about them read like allegorical fairy tales for adults, partaking in equal measure of Murakami's alienation and Calvino's sense of wonder. —James
New Book of the Week
by Amy Leach
About ten years ago I stumbled across a small book of essays on the science shelf of my old bookstore. Less imposing than the oh-so-serious larger volumes by its side, it inspired me to open it to a random page and start reading. The first line I saw was, "In the seventeenth century, his holiness the pope adjudged beavers to be fish." That's my kind of nature writing, I thought, brought the book home, and devoured it immediately. I've been waiting almost a decade for more from Amy Leach, and at last The Everybody Ensemble is here, filled with fascinating facts and quirky charm. I don't usually borrow from publisher descriptions, but in this case I will: "an effervescent tonic . . . filled with praise songs, poetry, ingenious critique, soul-lifting philosophy, music theory, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature. Here, you will meet platypuses, Tycho Brahe and his moose, barnacle goslings, medieval mystics, photosynthetic bacteria, and a wholly fresh representation of the biblical Job. Equal parts call to reason and to joy, this book is an irrepressible celebration of our oddball, interconnected world." —James
New Book of the Week
by Heather Tucker
In 2016, Canadian author Heather Tucker made her debut as a novelist with the Indie Next selection The Clay Girl, which introduced readers to an unforgettable heroine, a girl whose inner light remains undimmed despite the epic dysfunction of her circumstances. Ari returns in Cracked Pots, now in her late teens and still in thrall to her troubled family, but approaching escape velocity thanks to the possibilities offered by college and the motley tribe of supporters she's assembled over the years. It's a story that's all too real in terms of the dark places it sometimes visits, but Tucker's narrative voice is so vivacious and big-hearted that the darkness doesn't stand a chance—pure enjoyment is what you'll take from Cracked Pots. And don't worry about starting with the sequel, as that's what I did. It satisfies perfectly on its own, although it will make you want to go back to the beginning, which is what I'm doing next. —James
New Book of the Week
by Freya Marske
This is a queer adult historical fantasy romance, or put another way, Red, White, and Royal Blue set in Edwardian England. Robin, an athlete who has recently lost his truly awful parents and inherited an estate and younger sister, but little money to care for either, is mistakenly put into a bureaucratic job where he discovers a magical world exists alongside ours, unknown (or forgotten) by most. After he is accosted and cursed, Edwin, an intellectual from a dysfunctional magical family who is also employed by the bureaucracy, is stuck working with Robin to discover why he’s been afflicted. Marske makes her setting, along with her many layered characters, feel believable. A, well, I’ll say it, marvelously-done debut novel. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Louise Erdrich
It feels as if Louise Erdrich set herself a lighter task in following her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Night Watchman, as her new novel, The Sentence, takes the form of a fictionalized diary of sorts, a year in the life of a bookseller at the very shop Erdrich owns in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books. What begins as a whimsical lark (it seems that the shop is haunted by the ghost of its most persistent customer) shifts into a deeper gear, though, when pandemic, protest, and personal crisis descend upon the small community of family and friends that keep the bookstore's heart beating. Erdrich balances the humor and pain of her characters so skillfully that her talents appear effortless, which is surely the opposite of the truth. They, like the relationships she describes, are the product of hard, loving work. The Sentence is a treasury of complicated, well-meaning personalities, richer in that respect than anything else I've read this year. —James
New Book of the Week
by Tom McCarthy
Way, way back, when I was a baby barely-bearded bookseller, Tom McCarthy wrote his first novel, Remainder, and my recommendation card for it (well, my series of cards—long story) pushed it all the way to #3 on my store's annual bestseller list, right behind the twin juggernauts of Eat, Pray, Love and Harry Potter and the Whatever It Was That Year. It was an awesome and admittedly weird accomplishment, since McCarthy doesn't push the traditional bestseller buttons. You know, like plot, character, that sort of thing. But like dark chocolate, black coffee, Belgian sour ales, and most other acquired tastes, his idiosyncratic fiction is extremely addictive once it has its hooks in you. In The Making of Incarnation, a team of motion-capture analysts investigate everything from military drones to Olympic bobsleds to human sexual performance, perhaps uncovering along the way a secret movement with the potential to change the world as we know it. McCarthy's meticulous descriptions of process, which elucidate the most complex technologies or defamiliarize activities as simple as a step onto a staircase, are utterly hypnotic. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Jo Walton
If you've read Jo Walton in the past, her most recent novel will strike you as a culmination of all the books she's written before; if she's new to you, it will make a perfect introduction to her smart, sophisticated oeuvre. Or What You Will is a multi-layered fantasia set in an imaginary version of Florence built out of mythical and Shakespearean arcana, a world in which industrial progress has ended but the Renaissance never has. It's also set in the mind of its creator, an often-published author (with a very Waltonesque bibliography) whose stories have always enabled her to escape the harshest truths of the real world. Late in her career, as her physical circumstances become increasingly circumscribed, she widens her fictional vision to write the book we read, and both author and audience are carried away on the same dream of finding a permanent home in a more perfect place. —James
New Book of the Week
A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
by Henry Gee
A not-too-challenging read to broaden the minds of the non-experts among us about the timeline of life on our planet. Taking into account eons-long changes in climate and the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon ratios in the atmosphere, as well as the variable distance from our sun that Earth has experienced, Gee covers the origins of life, the near extinctions, migrations, and more in the early chapters. Then we get to the origins of "higher" multicellular lifeforms. The author is particularly adept at explaining the interconnection between the environment and each phase of evolution from the earliest forms down through the dinosaurs and other reptiles we all know and love. The rise of the hominins is described in greater detail through the second half of the book, showing how some of our pre-human ancestors almost "didn't make it." A delight for non-scientists and even younger readers eager to learn more about how "we" got here. —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Robin McLean
Before I'd even finished reading the first chapter I knew that Robin McLean had made an indelible mark on American literature. Pity the Beast sees an unfaithful and unrepentant wife brutally punished and hounded from her home by family and community, setting off a phantasmagoric, slow-motion chase across the landscape of the West. Linguistically rich and rife with fuliginous humor, it re-excavates the ground worked long before by Shirley Jackson and Cormac McCarthy, but creates something unrecognizably new from the ancient bones buried there. —James
New Book of the Week
by Andrea Camilleri
The last novel from Italian writer Camilleri (1925-2019), who produced more than two dozen wonderful Inspector Montalbano mysteries over the past four decades, this was written years ago as a final installment and locked away until after the author's death. In it, an early morning murder outside a bar becomes immediately complicated. As always with Camilleri there are many speculations about motives, who was truly the mastermind, and how to suss out the suspects. A clever feature of this final book is that Montalbano himself as "The Author" has several cameo appearances. For those not familiar with this terrific series, I'd suggest reading the first one to get familiarized with the comings and goings of the major characters. And happily, the author does not retire or kill off his food-loving and somewhat gruff Inspector. Fans of Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti series from Venice, and of the Aurelio Zen novels by Michael Dibdin, will love these Sicily-based novels as well. —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny
As someone who loves Louise Penny’s Three Pines books, I couldn’t NOT read her new book, co-authored by Hillary Clinton. More of a political thriller than Penny’s standard mystery fare, State of Terror is an action-packed book that takes place over a period of just a few days. Spoiler—the main character is a female Secretary of State appointed by a newly-elected president whose candidacy she had fought against. Their term in office comes after an administration quite similar to, let’s just say, the one before President Biden. After a number of international terrorist attacks, everyone wonders will the U.S. be next? Is the inexperienced Secretary of State up for the job? Is there a traitor in the new administration? And I was wondering, will Chief Inspector Gamache make a cameo appearance? I fully enjoyed this book. My advice: suspend your disbelief, sit back, and enjoy the ride. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Rebecca Solnit
It's fitting that the most lucid political writer of the last century would be the subject for the most lucid political writer of this one. Solnit on Orwell? It's a no-brainer. They're both noted for their clarity of thought and prose, and for their hatred of power politics and lies. They're less noted, though, for what they love, which is the focus of this book. Throughout his life, Orwell was rejuvenated by the natural world, continually returning to his garden after his journalistic expeditions and service in the Spanish Civil War. Solnit writes beautifully about the things that gave him joy and how those informed his political views—he wanted a revolution that would provide people with their necessary bread but also the pleasures of roses. That wasn't easy then and is more difficult now, as Solnit's asides about the exploitative flower industry prove. She writes early on about her wish that in a better world Orwell could have spent more time writing for things rather than against them; I've said the same about Solnit, and this book shines a glimmer of hope in that direction. —James
New Book of the Week
When We Cease to Understand the World
by Benjamin Labatut
The first chapter alone had me reeling. Labatut (whose Spanish has been translated for us by Adrian Nathan West) has staked a claim on a genre of his own with this book, presenting a series of dispassionate factual accounts of physicists, chemists, and mathematicians of the 20th century that together comprise a novel of intense potency. As Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and others (don't worry, I knew next to nothing about these guys before reading the book either), all with the best intentions, unravel the mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum realm, their discoveries lead to unimagined and largely catastrophic consequences. The more closely they study the tapestry of reality, the less it seems to hold together and the more thrilling the book becomes. When We Cease to Understand the World is unparalleled as an education and as an experience. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Chelsea G. Summers
Lean back and savor the unsavory story of Dorothy Daniels (her name is the only mundane thing about her—I haven't met a character who so dominates a novel in a long, long time). She's a charismatic, carnal restaurant critic who holds her audience in absolute thrall from the moment she introduces herself until the cover closes for the last time. On the first page she shows off an expert's knowledge of vintage cocktails, by the second she's revealed a taste for expensive hotel rooms, by the third she's picked up a rich, elegant younger man who will indulge her desire for both, and by the fourth we know she's murdered him. It's already too late to turn away, so don't even try. This villainess casts a hypnotic spell comprising erudition, dark humor, luscious food description, and a carnivorous appetite for pleasure. A Certain Hunger is a juicy, wicked delight. —James
New Book of the Week
by Mike DeCapite
Fuck. I tell myself, not another New York novel. So many of these flash their eyes and their gritty urban charm at me. I fall fast for their bustling energy and their peekaboo views of shady bars too hip to have a name, but that kind of thing isn't substantial, you know? The buzz subsides and most of those bars turn into Duane Reades eventually. I'm safe on my own in the provinces where no one can toy with my emotions like that. Old enough now to know better, right? But then along comes Jacket Weather to give me glimpses of radiant orange sunsets through the girders of a bridge, to drop me into the middle of a workout at the Y where bantering old men are giving each other the business about Italian food and Latin music, and most especially to introduce me to Mike and June, well-seasoned lovers who've been around the block more than once without losing a scintilla of the giddiness that comes with true infatuation. I'm probably going to get my heart broken again, but damn, it's good to feel the real thing for as long as it lasts. —James
New Book of the Week
by Miriam Toews
Three generations of women scrimp, scramble, and squabble in a small Toronto home. That might not sound like the stuff of either high drama or gut-busting comedy, but Fight Night is both of those things and then some. And hooooo, this narrative voice. Who writes like this? Since Grace Paley left us, nobody else I know. —James
New Book of the Week
by Chibundu Onuzo
A mixed-race woman searches for belonging and a sense of self that have previously eluded her, all while fighting to hang on to the past. At a pivotal point in her life—her daughter is grown, her husband was cheating, and her mother has recently died—Anna finds the diary of the West African father she's never known in her white mother’s attic. She learns that he became the dictator of his small homeland, a fact she struggles to reconcile with the likable young man in the diary. When Anna discovers that her father is still alive, she concocts a way to meet him. A marvelous book with a relatable protagonist in an astounding situation. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Becky Chambers
In the early, so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, most books took a positive view of the future, assuming that technology would solve earthly problems and enable interstellar exploration and adventure. Then real-life technology started to catch up with fiction, and these days most SF books take a shadier view, serving as signposts along the road to dystopia. The ones by Becky Chambers, though, are exceptions to the rule. She's anything but blind to the possibility of disaster, but she also sees a safe path ahead. In the future she describes in her new novella, humanity has successfully navigated a number of treacherous philosophical rapids, including the ethics of artificial intelligence. Recognizing the sentience of the robot laborers they've developed, they've chosen to let them pursue their own ends in a massive, protected nature reserve. The two groups have avoided contact for hundreds of years, until one curious robot stumbles across a wandering monk who's starting to doubt their mission. The awkward friendship that the two develop is tremendously engaging, and their story proves that science fiction doesn't have to involve dark predictions or violent conflict. Like A Psalm for the Wild-Built, it can be thoughtful, gentle, encouraging, hopeful, and entertaining. —James
New Book of the Week
by Anthony Doerr
I probably don't need to say much about this long-awaited release from the treasured, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, as we've received more pre-orders for it than any other book in the store's history. I will, however, praise it this way: A grand novel, reminiscent of the past-, present-, and future-spanning writing of David Mitchell. A historical pageant, a depiction of the resilience and wisdom of the young, but mostly a tribute to Homo narrans, humankind as storyteller. —James
New Book of the Week
by Alison Cochrun
What happens when the star of The Bachelor starts to fall for the (male) producer whose only job is to get him to fall in love with the female contestants? The answer is literary magic. Cochrun masterfully crafts a romance that is fairytale-worthy while still being very grounded in real emotions and depictions of mental disorders. The characters are endlessly endearing, nuanced and intensely relatable. Believe it or not, this book is perfect for people who love The Bachelor(ette) AND people who love to hate it. If you loved Red, White & Royal Blue or One to Watch, give this one a try. —Stephanie
New Book of the Week
by Lucy Ellmann
So damn funny! So damn smart! So damn right about everything! —James
New Book of the Week
by Richard Powers
Richard Powers has always been a big picture kind of writer, but he's painted perhaps his most affecting portrait yet on a rather small canvas. Bewilderment depicts a two-person family, headed by a widowed father who fears for his very special son, a young boy whose intense love for the environment makes it impossible for him to cope with the fellow humans who are absent-mindedly destroying it. Hopelessly adrift, the duo turns to the memories of the woman they loved more than any other, and finds in them more than personal solace—her joy may be the only thing that can restore the entire world. Our most ingenuous literary genius, Powers has again written a novel with all the rich intellectual complexity of a modernist masterpiece, but done so with heartfelt directness. —James
New Book of the Week
The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki
Annabelle and her son Benny have a lot to deal with, emotionally and otherwise. Her hold on her job is tenuous while her accumulating piles of stuff have a choking grip on their household; he's suffering the usual teenage indignities, compounded by voices in his head that definitely aren't normal; and they're both suffering the loss of Kenji, the easygoing husband and father who used to glue the cracks in their small family together. Author Ozeki lets each of them tell their own tale, binding them back together in heartwarming fashion with a wonderfully accessible metafictional conceit: allowing her book to speak for itself. —James
New Book of the Week
by Thomas Mullen
Corrosive racism, the civil-rights movement, and the rise of African-American newspapers vie for centerstage in Mullen’s welcome third novel set amid Atlanta, Georgia’s post-World War II experiment in Black policing. It’s now 1956, eight years after the events dramatized in this series’ opening entry, Darktown. Yet the city’s small band of “Negro cops” is still restricted to patrolling “colored neighborhoods”—on foot, since they’re not permitted squad cars. The most progress they can claim is to have finally won workspace inside Atlanta’s police headquarters, though only in its basement. Unwilling to accept such trifles is Tommy Smith, who quit the force for a reporting job with the Atlanta Daily Times, the nation’s only Black daily. He’s in that paper’s offices one night when his publisher, Arthur Bishop, is shot to death. Suspicion falls on Bishop’s purportedly adulterous spouse; but scoop-hungry Smith thinks more than jealousy is involved. Might this murder be linked to his boss’ defense of a young Black man accused of raping a white teenager? Meanwhile, a police probe of the same slaying finds Smith’s former sergeant, Joe McInnes—the sole white officer in their city’s Black precinct—and Smith’s college-educated ex-partner, Lucius Boggs, bumping heads with federal agents, Communist activists, and ubiquitous bigoted white detectives. A powerful, captivating yarn made sadly more relevant by recent political developments. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Laurent Binet (trans. by Sam Taylor)
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, then the horse, then the battle, then the war, or so it has often been said. Laurent Binet's new novel plays intriguingly with this conceit, postulating what kind of world we'd be living in today if a few tiny things had been different. In his counterfactual experiment, 10th-century Viking explorers (well, criminals on the run) travel a good bit farther into the so-called New World than they historically did, all the way to South America. The figurative horseshoe nail they leave behind consists of the knowledge of iron-working, legends of a hammer-wielding thunder god, recessive genes for red hair, and most important, early exposure to European diseases. So armed, the indigenous Americans are later able to resist Columbus's insignificant, harebrained incursion. Within decades, it is instead the Incan emperor Atahualpa who is the first to mount a successful cross-oceanic expedition. Before long, thanks to astute military and political machination, indigenous American culture comes to dominate a Europe riven by sectarian religious conflict. The story, told in the form of of various pseudo-historical documents, is equally fascinating and plausible, decorated with glittering possibilities—a painting by Titian of the Incan discovery of Lisbon, Henry VIII rejecting both Luther and the Pope in favor of the sun god who permits polygamy, and so on. Civilizations is a feast for fans of audacious fiction, but also for straitlaced adherents of Guns, Germs, and Steel who need to loosen their collars. —James
New Book of the Week
by Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff's Matrix is fertile literary ground out of which grows an entire community, a medieval abbey populated by English nuns, a sacred, secure space in which previously unprotected women can accumulate power and express themselves as never before. Its genius loci is the brilliant, unconventional, impassioned Marie de France, a semi-legendary historical figure turned by Groff into a fictional titan as memorable as an Ahab or an Elizabeth Bennet. Marie and Matrix are colossal achievements. —James
New Book of the Week
by Randy Boyagoda
When Original Prin was published back in 2019, I admired it for many reasons, notably its comic brio and the rare seriousness with which it addressed religious faith in the 21st century. Doesn't sound like those two traits could fit together, but they did, beautifully, and I said at the time I hoped to read more about Boyagoda's agonizing protagonist. That hope was a prophecy, as we now have a companion work, Dante's Indiana, that functions both as sequel and stand-alone novel. In it, our old friend, English professor Prin, is estranged from his wife and most everything other aspect of contemporary life. Grasping for the straw that will save his marriage and his sanity, he accepts a job offer from an evangelical millionaire to serve as literary consultant for a Dante's Inferno-themed amusement park under construction in an economically failing Midwestern town. Knowing little about a 700-year-old Italian writer is the least of the problems Prin faces there—his two bosses are paying him to report on each other double agent-style, his wife is being romanced by her Mormon ex-boyfriend, the community is being ravaged by an opioid epidemic, and the project seems hell-bent on running aground on the twin shoals of fundamentalist fanaticism and righteous Black Lives Matter protests. It's an absurd spiral into the depths, a dark night of the soul for a man and for a nation. After I read Original Prin I thought Boyagoda was one of the wittier satirical novelists of the moment, but now I think he may be today's Mark Twain, composing the most important comedic chronicle of this American age. —James
New Book of the Week
by James Clammer
The blurb for this describes it as "a plumber's Mrs. Dalloway," which I think is just about right. It's a beautifully handled interior monologue of a fictional tradesman's day, and the narrative intimacy Clammer achieves alone makes this a fascinating novel. His hero's day is not an ordinary one, though, which makes the book's title all the more ironic. Our noble plumber is unexpectedly confronted by his long-estranged son and must relive the crisis that nearly destroyed his marriage and family, making for an altogether thrilling read. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Norman MacLean
Following the news lately, I can't help but think of this classic piece of non-fiction, an account of an August 1949 wildfire in Montana that claimed the lives of thirteen smokejumpers and permanently changed the way these conflagrations are fought. What seemed to be an easily manageable task turned into tragedy when the fire unexpectedly spread, cutting the firefighters off and forcing them to run for safety up a steep slope. The foreman of the crew that parachuted into the mountains was named Wagner Dodge, and when he realized that they couldn’t outrun the flames, he impulsively started an escape fire, burning the grass around himself to create a barren zone that would be bypassed by the larger blaze. The rest of the men didn’t trust this technique, created literally in the heat of the moment, and didn’t join him in the protective circle, choosing instead to continue their flight. All but two died. MacLean’s book is a vivid piece of history, but it’s also a tribute and an elegy to these brave men and to all young people who are eventually forced to confront their vulnerability. It's MacLean's masterwork, on par with the best from John McPhee, Barry Lopez, or Annie Dillard. —James
Old Book of the Week
by André Alexis
Two Olympian gods are slumming it in a 21st-century mortal tavern, debating whether human intelligence makes those creatures happier than the other animals that lack it, and decide to run an experiment with a bet on the outcome. So fifteen dogs kept in a nearby shelter suddenly achieve consciousness and, empowered by their new acuity, escape to the urban hinterlands to make sense of their existential plight. From this high concept comes high entertainment—I literally stayed awake reading into the wee hours to finish in one sitting. I was compelled for multiple reasons. First, because the dogs (alternately noble and craven, frivolous and focused) are as relatable and as easy to root for as any merely human character in your favorite novel. Further, there's the allegorical element. Their struggle to organize themselves socially, their fitful sense of identity, and their search for meaning inspire all manner of personal reflection, at least in the case of this naked ape. I'm not sure how deep the philosophy really goes, but I didn't sound its depths the first time through, and it made me want to go back for more. Fifteen Dogs is one in a loose series of novels that Alexis calls the Quincunx Cycle and will be completing later this year with the romantic Ring. By the time it's published in late September I should be all caught up. —James
New Book of the Week
by Suleika Jaouad
When Suleika Jaouad is diagnosed with leukemia at age 22, she devotes the next several years to battling the disease. This is not only the story of her fight to survive in the kingdom of the sick, but her re-entry into the kingdom of the well. She spends the first half of the book discussing the rollercoaster ride of a debilitating illness, and the second half detailing a road trip that takes her across the country to meet the people who heard her story and wrote her letters while she was in the hospital. I know, it sounds grim, but it is brimming with gentle kindness and bright moments of joy, delivered through creativity, curiosity, and connection. Although it centers around healing from leukemia, I think what will resonate with many readers is the question the author asks us: how can we create pathways through all the unknowns that scare us? —Hannah
Old Book of the Week
Sailing with Vancouver: A Modern Sea Dog, Antique Charts, and a Voyage Through Time
by Sam McKinney
For sailors and landlubber readers of Raban's Passage to Juneau and Blanchet's The Curve of Time. In this book, the recently retired McKinney buys a sailboat and decides to re-trace the journey of Captain George Vancouver and his crew as they explored the interior waterways of what is now Washington and British Columbia. From the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, naming water and landmarks as he traveled, Vancouver led a thorough exploration and mapping of the area from Olympia in the south the the north end of Vancouver Island. McKinney was not surprised to find that the strange currents and abrupt changes of directions of tides and currents are no different in the 21st century than in Vancouver's time, but they are much more scary in a one-person sailboat than they were for the crews of the two naval vessels in the 1790s. Save for my wish for more detailed maps, this is a delight. —Lloyd
New Paperback of the Week
by Toby Musgrave
He is not as well known as many other British 17th and 18th-century figures, but his impact has been everlasting. Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) arrived in adulthood financially well endowed, and in 1768 basically bought his way aboard Captain James Cook's three-year circumnavigation voyage. His role, something new on any British expedition, was as a scientist, devoted exclusively to the study of the peoples, plants, and animals encountered on the voyage. The then-still-sane George III asked him to bring plants and animals back to aid in the founding of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, just west of London. A further scientific voyage to Iceland ensued, where he became an ally of the local population in their attempts to soften the political control of the Danes over the island, and again, collected in the name of science. He became President of the Royal Society in 1778 and served for more than 40 years, coordinating all manner of expeditions, collections, and surveys of the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia, and Africa. Musgrave writes about Banks in a lively style and also quotes extensively from his voluminous diaries and letters, all of which show the broad shadow he cast over scientific life in London. Highly recommended for those with an interest in what was going on in England during the US War for Independence, as well as for those with a fondness for the history of exploration. —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Virginia Feito
Holy moly, this is quite a novel! It's like watching a train wreck; you can’t stop it, you know it's going to be awful, yet you can’t look away. Mrs. March, as she is called throughout, is “in her head” once she hears that her well-known author husband, whose work she never bothers to read, has based a character in his latest book on her. The trouble is that character is a “whore,” as Mrs. March can only whisper to herself. All of the childhood trauma that she’s managed to bury is brought back to the surface by this trigger, upending her sheltered, privileged, structured New York City life. To watch her devolve is disturbing, yet strangely fascinating. This is an amazing character study. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Mario Levrero
Back in the 1980s, Uruguay's leading writer had a transcendent experience that he desperately wanted to put on paper, creating as he did so a novel that would outshine all others. After a few fitful chapters, he threw up his hands at the impossibility of the task. But then in 2000 he was handed a Guggenheim fellowship that allowed him to devote all his time to finishing his magnum opus. And finish he did, though not in the form intended. The Luminous Novel we have before us (thanks to Annie McDermott's translation) is a diaristic record of his earnest, doomed efforts. Levrero is charmingly hapless, wasting much of his time futzing with his word processor (on good days) or playing Minesweeper (on his bad ones), and almost Bukowskian in his frankness about his failings. Instead of the unimaginable, inchoate book he promised, he left us something better, an infuriating, humorous tour-de-force of the quotidian. —James
New Book of the Week
The Archive of Alternate Endings
by Lindsey Drager
I learned about The Archive of Alternate Endings when it was recommended by the author of one of my favorite books of the year during our virtual event with her. Didn't know quite what it was about, but the praise was so glowing I had to give it a try. Since I mention all this here you're correct to assume that I second the recommendation. Drager's novel covers a thousand years in about 150 pages, looking behind to the Middle Ages and forward into the 24th century, using the appearances of Halley's Comet to punctuate her plot. Back and forth across the centuries, siblings relive in various ways the folktale of Hansel and Gretel, lost in the figurative woods together and trying to find their way home. It's a story about love of all kinds, journeys literal and mental, and about the ways in which stories make us who we are. I was intrigued by its structure and won over by its heart. —James
New Book of the Week
by Ash Davidson
The people on opposing sides of the Northwest timber wars of the late 20th century, environmentalists and loggers, probably didn't realize they were advance scouts for a worldwide conflict that rages on today, pitting so-called economic necessity against climate concerns. Ash Davidson, who grew up in timber country, gives the topic its fictional due in this "intimate, compassionate portrait of a community" that will be one of the most discussed and acclaimed novels of the year. A must-read in our region and a should-read everywhere. —James
New Book of the Week
by Charlotte McConaghy
I listened to this striking novel on Libro.fm and thought the narrator did an amazing job. There’s a mystery and there’s a love interest, but really this is about human nature vs. animal instinct and how both are manifested through kindness and/or brutality. Inti, an Australian badass, has touch of synesthesia, a sensory disorder that causes her to literally feel any pain she sees experienced by either humans or animals. She is heading a project to re-wild (don’t you just love this word?) the Scottish Highlands by reintroducing wolves, her passion, to the area. She’s brought fourteen wolves, a team of experts, and her traumatized, mute twin sister Aggie with her. Many of the people of the town that is the base for her operations are sheep farmers and not on board with having wolves in the area, so tempers are running high. This story packs a punch, so be ready. There is violence (and compassion) from and against both species. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Chuck Wendig
After a (pardon the pun) shocking opening involving the disappearance of a condemned murderer from the electric chair, The Book of Accidents (un)settles down decades later with a family as it moves house into rural Pennsylvania's coal country. Author Wendig has an excellent handle on the details of modern life in the flyover regions, replete with fast food wrappers, broken-down cars, and economic anxieties, but what he's best at is inducing entertaining terror. Before his readers know it, they're immersed in ancient mysteries, dark secrets, and heart-pounding tension. Fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things will want to hurry down to pick up one of our signed copies before they're gone. —James
New Book of the Week
by A.K. Blakemore
Please don’t judge this book solely by its cartoonish cover! Or its subject, the Essex witch trials in 1645. (Am I the only one who didn’t know that England also hung “witches”?) This fabulous novel is a fictionalized account of a group of accused witches in the small town of Manningtree told mostly through the lens of Rebecca West, a young woman trying to figure out how to live in a world when held back by her gender, her outspoken mother, and her poverty. Most of the men in her town are off fighting in the war, but Becca is making it work—she has a best friend, the mischievous Judith, and a potential love, the upstanding clerk, John Edes. Her mother can be embarrassing, but despite their ups and downs, Becca knows she is loved. Then a stranger, the deeply religious Matthew Hopkins, arrives and asks lots of questions about the women of the area, especially those who are poor and alone. After befriending many of the remaining men, including John, Matthew accuses a number of the women, Rebecca and her mother among them, of maleficence and earns the nickname The Witchfinder General. The “witches” are clever and witty, and Blakemore's writing is gorgeous. I was not surprised to read that the author is a poet. I was, however, surprised that this is her first novel. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
by Richard Zenith
Biographies tend to be large, but this one is almost shockingly so. To be fair, it has to be, since it recounts the life of not one, but scores of men. Fernando Pessoa, who was born in 1888 and died in 1935, was one of the greatest European writers of his age and remains the most enigmatic. He subsumed himself into dozens of fictitious personae, writing in different voices from various, sometimes antagonistic perspectives, leaving a tangled publication history that took decades after his death to sort. Richard Zenith, Pessoa's longtime translator, has done an exquisite job teasing out all the threads, following them from the poet's precocious youth through his phase of worldly travel and experience, and best of all, keeping them clearly distinguished during his long, disquieted later years when Pessoa hunkered down in Lisbon's cafes, eschewing personal connections and living almost entirely in his own rich mind. —James
Old Books of the Week
by Jack Cady
I’ve been a Northwesterner for quite a while, more than half my life, but Jack Cady got here long before me. He was born in Ohio in 1932, served in the Coast Guard in Maine, conscientiously objected to the war in Korea, graduated from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, drove trucks and did other blue-collar jobs around the country, won awards for his short fiction, and eventually adopted Port Townsend as his home in the middle 1960s. He was for many years thereafter a highly respected writing instructor at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University, and during this period was one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the region. When I mentioned his name to a bookselling oldtimer at another shop, he immediately recalled the days when Cady was one of the very few Northwest writers under contract with one of the big New York publishing houses. A big deal, in other words.
Despite all this, I’d never heard of the guy until recently. My northern exposure was gradual, and by the time I’d put down roots and really started investigating the literature around me, Cady’s heyday was done–almost all of his novels came out in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and he died in 2004. It took the efforts of the good people at Fairwood Press, who have been re-releasing his work of late, to clue me in. Thanks to them (and to the astute shelf stockers at Watermark Book Company in Anacortes, a place worth missing a ferry for) I finally stumbled across one of his books.
The Jonah Watch caught me first with its cover, a moody seascape ever so tastefully festooned with blood. It promised serious nautical drama with a hint of shock, and it delivered on both counts. The novel takes place almost entirely in the sometimes claustrophobic confines of the Coast Guard cutter Adrian, the crew of which is trying to integrate a new, inexperienced deckhand. The problems faced by the men are at first typical–the tedium of a long voyage, the strain of physical labor, the tension of strong personalities sharing close quarters–but they’re all described with absolutely convincing detail. As I read, safe in my chair on terra firma, I thought I knew what it was to work on the waves, and although I was turning pages in the highest heat of a Pacific summer, I could feel the bitter iciness of the North Atlantic. And then things got really interesting. Sailors are a superstitious bunch, and as the Adrian’s luck turns bad, Cady’s crew starts to believe they’re the victims of malign forces and that their newest seaman is cursed. Whether they’re right or wrong–and the novel leaves that up to the reader–they act on that belief. The denouement is legitimately scary and the whole experience is gripping.
I couldn’t let go of Cady without trying another book, so I picked up a collection of shorter work, Phantoms. It leads off with a bit of non-fiction, an open letter to the IRS in which the author explains why he’s withholding his tax payments. Since I’ve already mentioned Cady’s conscientious objector status, it’s no spoiler to reveal that it was because he didn’t want to support the Vietnam War. He originally delivered the address in open court when various protesters on trial were given an opportunity to explain themselves; when he finished, the room burst into applause and the judge stepped down from the bench to shake his hand. Cady still got dunned for the money, of course. That piece was a highlight, and so were several other stories in the volume. I took a particular fancy to “The Souls of Drowning Mountain,” about a welfare worker assigned to an Appalachian coal mining town, and “The Ghost of Dive Bomber Hill,” in which a long-haul trucker relates some harrowing encounters along the road. These are perhaps the best examples of how good Cady is at capturing the reality of daily life in dialogue and image. He’s especially good on the subject of work, whether it’s done in an office, behind a steering wheel, or in the darkness underground. It all feels so authentic that when something out of the ordinary happens in one of his stories, your belief never wavers.
As it turned out, I saved the best of Cady for last. The Off Season is a novel set in our neck of the woods, a smallish coastal town called Point Vestal that’s an obvious stand-in for Port Townsend. It’s a quiet sort of place, very image-conscious and frowning on decadent, big-city manners, but what the residents don’t like to admit is that it’s built on shaky foundations. As the narrative says from the start, “Every town has an official history. In Point Vestal, an official history is easy come by, but a true history is not.” The starchy town founders hid an awful lot of lust and greed under a veneer of Victorian propriety, and the stately homes they left behind are less stable than they look. These sordid origins have to be reckoned with before the residents of Point Vestal can move into the future. This conflict between eras manifests itself via the presence of innumerable ghosts, which seems only natural in a town so haunted by its past. Living or dead, every character has a distinct and engaging personality, and the story is filled with humor, not horror. It reminds me in many ways of Brian Doyle’s wonderful Mink River.
Both books take a collective look at an entire community, both intermingle the secular with the spiritual, and both cast a sentient animal in a prominent role—Doyle features a talking crow, and Cady includes a cat who can purr in Latin and Chinese, among other languages. Only now, as I’m putting my thoughts about these books together, do I realize how much magic is at work throughout them. Cady is always ready to summon the supernatural, but not to produce cheap thrills. For him, ghosts and miracles, whether light or dark, serve as metaphors for all the unseen forces that affect us at every moment—memory, history, emotion, and so on. Rather than making his fiction more esoteric, his imaginative, inexplicable touches bring the world we know even closer. That’s what good writing can do like nothing else. —James
New Book of the Week
by Miljenko Jergović (trans. by Russell Scott Valentino)
Caveat lector: I write this review without having done more than scratch the surface of this massive book. But bear with me. I first encountered this "dazzling family epic" in a publisher's catalog. It was described as follows: "In this sprawling narrative which spans the entire twentieth century, Miljenko Jergović peers into the dusty corners of his family's past, illuminating them with a tender, poetic precision. Ordinary, forgotten objects—a grandfather's beekeeping journals, a rusty benzene lighter, an army issued raincoat—become the lenses through which Jergovic investigates the joys and sorrows of a family . . . the devastation of the First World War, the Second, the Cold, then the Bosnian war of the 90s; through its changing street names and borders, shifting seasons, through its social rituals at graveyards, operas, weddings, markets—rendering it all in loving, vivid detail." I couldn't say no to that. Still, this was a 900-page novel translated from Croatian, and I wasn't sure how many others would find it as intriguing as I did. I decided I'd order one for the store and if it didn't sell I'd take it home myself. A few finger fumbles later, I'd accidentally ordered an entire carton. When the giant box arrived, I set it aside and made plans to see about returning it. My second mistake was not making it clear that the box wasn't to be opened, and without my noticing, another bookseller did what seemed to be the right thing and added all the books to our inventory. Fate, I figured, and put them on our front table. Next thing I knew we'd sold more than half the copies, allowing Kin to creep onto our weekly bestseller list. This anecdote proves that I still don't know the first thing about bookselling, sure, but also that there's a surprisingly large audience for this engrossing, challenging work. It's on my nightstand now and will be accompanying me for many weeks to come. —James
New Book of the Week
by Brian Hall
Mette is a socially awkward, mathematically inclined young woman who lives with her actress mother Saskia in Brooklyn, though she has far more in common with her estranged father Mark, an astronomy professor in Ithaca, New York. When Mette's first significant romantic relationship founders, she impulsively hightails it out of town via Greyhound bus, first to Seattle and then farther afield, drawing Mark and Saskia together for the first time in decades to bring her home. Their separate journeys evoke memories of generations past and new visions of a future life that can at last bring balance to the artistic and scientific sides of their family. The Stone Loves the World blends ideas and emotions in the manner of the best work from Jonathan Franzen and Richard Powers. —James
New Book of the Week
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream
by Dean Jobb
It was my interest in Jack the Ripper that introduced me years ago to Thomas Neill Cream, a Glasgow-born, Montreal-educated doctor turned serial poisoner. Newspapers reported that as the trap was sprung at Cream’s 1892 hanging, he cried, “I am Jack…” A death-drop confession? Journalist Jobb thinks not, for as he notes in this assiduously researched, altogether consuming chronicle, at the time of the Ripper slayings in 1888, Cream was behind bars in Illinois for having offed his putative mistress’s husband. That was still early in an unsavory career that found Cream preying primarily on women, both those he sought as lovers and those he thought unworthy of mercy (i.e., prostitutes). A foppish, debauched, and self-destructively arrogant sociopath, Cream hid behind his standing as a physician and left behind a string of up to ten victims—most of them done in painfully with strychnine—that stretched from Canada to Chicago to England. That he got away with his predations for so long, and even continued killing in London after his U.S. incarceration for murder, can be largely attributed to the then absence of coordination between police departments and official distrust of female witnesses’s statements. This is the best study of Victorian-era misdeeds and social dysfunction since Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five. —Jeff
Old Book of the Week
Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese
by Patrick Leigh Fermor
It's impossible to overstate Patrick Leigh Fermor's eminence in the world of travel writing. His command of language, his comfortable inhabitation of place, and the sheer force of his charming personality permeate every book he ever wrote. Perhaps the best of these is Mani, set in the rugged, sun-soaked peninsula that forms the southernmost tip of Greece and indeed all of Europe. Fermor loved this landscape like no other, making it the home base to which he would always return from his worldly wanderings, travels that extended from his teenage years until he was in his nineties. Readers of this account can't help but feel the same affection he did. (For me, the imaginative digression he begins over a glass of ouzo on page 40 and ends ten pages later after . . . we're not sure how many other glasses is by itself worth the book's price. The publisher seems to agree, having included it in their best-of collection The Red Thread: Twenty Years of NYRB Classics.) —James
Old Book of the Week
by Tove Jansson (trans. by Thomas Teal)
One might call this a Madison Books "underground hit." It's a timeless book that remains popular in our store season after season, but exactly as the title says, it feels especially right to read when summertime is here. The Summer Book follows a grandmother and her granddaughter through a series of adventures on their small island home in the gulf of Finland. In each chapter of the book we get a glimpse into their daily wanders, as they do everything from contemplating the afterlife, to building their own City of Venice, to learning how to cope with the friends you just can't stand. The book captures the vividness of your favorite nature reads, the whimsy of your favorite beach reads, and the wisdom and fleeting melancholy of both the old and young alike. You'll be smiling along with their unstoppable fun and timeless adventures. —Hannah
Old Book of the Week
by Margarita Liberaki (trans. by Karen Van Dyck)
A classic of European literature unavailable in English for decades, Three Summers is perfectly timeless and perfectly seasonal. Set in the countryside of prewar Greece, it traces the doings and developing identities of a trio of sisters growing into adulthood, each of whom finds a different way to balance her desires for love and freedom. The lush atmosphere of gardens and orchards transports as the best vacation reads do, but the characters, as archetypal in their way as the March girls in Little Women, will make a permanent home in your head. —James
New Book of the Week
by Laurie Frankel
Laurie Frankel is one of the best at depicting family life with all of its comedy and pathos, and I'd say that even if she wasn't a fellow Seattleite. In her latest novel, One Two Three, she's crossed city lines to place her story in the tiny town of Bourne, where the Mitchell triplets, Mirabel, Monday, and Mab, deal with the legacy of a toxic incident from decades before and fight against the chemical company that's trying to bring back the bad old days. This is a book with a big heart, a keen conscience, and an unflagging sense of humor. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jonathan Lee
Sometimes it takes the old world to tell us something about the new. Until I read a review in Manchester's Guardian newspaper, I hadn't even heard of British writer Jonathan Lee's new novel of American history. The great mistake of the title refers to contemporary descriptions of an actual 1898 plan architected by one Andrew Haswell Green to join the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens as a unified New York City. The wisdom of this seems obvious now, but was far less so when the streets weren't paved and wild pigs roamed them. Green, a thinker rather a brawler, faces many struggles in in this fictionalized account, and Lee's delicate portrait of his protagonist's character is balanced by the bold colors and broad strokes of his times. As the Guardian review states, this "is likely to be the best American novel of the year." —James
Kids' Book of the Week
by Andrew Prahin
Cat and Mouse live in the same house, and things are good, with a few exceptions. Mouse wants to eat gingersnaps, and Cat wants to eat Mouse. Mouse wants to lie in the sun, and so does Cat. After eating Mouse, that is. So Mouse loads up the ship-in-a-bottle on the mantel with gingersnaps, rolls out the window into the river, and sets sail for a new place to live. She encounters storms, gingersnap-stealing seagulls, and stomach-rumbling hunger before settling into a quiet home, surrounded by new friends. Plot summary isn't the way to appreciate a picture book, of course. Author-artist Prahin's perfectly simple story achieves its greatest impact through some of the clearest, most colorful, and loveliest images I've seen in a while. (Ages 2 to 7) —James
Old Book of the Week
by Randy Boyagoda
Princely Umbiligoda appears to have it all—a great job as the leading expert on marine imagery in Canadian literature; a loving family consisting of a wife and four Disney-obsessed daughters; and a strong spiritual connection to his Catholic faith. But underneath there's trouble. Trouble at home, trouble at work, trouble in the newspapers, and trouble with his prostate, troubles that lead to troubling doubts about God. And the disturbing reappearance of an old girlfriend. And a career change to . . . suicide bomber? Did I mention this is a comedy? Well, it is, a great comedy with a brisk pace and a delightfully hapless protagonist the likes of whom I've never met before. Original Prin left me eager to read many more of his exploits. Secondary Prin? Tertiary Prin? Bring 'em on. —James [Update: As hoped when this book was first released, there will be a sequel—Dante's Indiana is scheduled for publication in early September.]
Old Book of the Week
by Nicola Griffith
A thousand and more years ago the United Kingdom wasn’t. United, that is. There wasn’t yet a parliament, a monarch, or an England, a Scotland, or a Wales to join together. There was instead a hodgepodge of tribes, all with their own languages and cultures constructed out of various influences—Roman, Pictish, Celtic, Saxon, and who knows what all else—that traded and warred with about equal frequency. At the time there was little to suggest that the island of Great Britain they occupied would one day be the home of a single, coherent society. Perhaps the first glimmering of this idea was a book written in the eighth century by a man we’ve come to know as the Venerable Bede. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People helped promote a sense of national identity that hadn’t previously existed.
One of the most intriguing figures in that book and in the development of that identity gets only a few pages of coverage from Bede. She’s a woman named Hild who was born a pagan, converted to Christianity, and grew to become the founder of abbeys and an advisor to kings, truly striking accomplishments for a woman of her time. To appreciate what kind of talent and presence she must have had, think about how few women get to contribute to today’s power politics, then erase centuries of social progress. She’d make Nancy Pelosi and Angela Merkel look like pushovers.
Nothing at all is known about Hild other than what Bede relates, which makes her story perfect fodder for a writer’s imagination. That writer is Seattleite (and erstwhile Yorkshirewoman) Nicola Griffith, who has painstakingly converted the scant historical record into lavish fiction. Her Hild is a marvel of research, overstuffed (in the best sense) with sensory detail about life in the seventh century. When her characters eat you can taste the herbs, and when they dress you can feel the weight of richly woven fabric. You can feel the weight of expectation on their shoulders, too, especially on Hild’s.
Her story begins in childhood with the announcement of her father’s death. In his absence, her family must rely on the good will of her uncle Edwin, a petty king with designs on greater power. Coached by her mother and making use of her own intelligence and talent for observation, Hild must find a role in his court that will make her essential to him. The wrong sex to wield a sword and too young to be a wife, she learns instead to give advice so wise that she comes to seem uncanny, always mindful that the wrong word may lead to exile or worse. It’s a delicate balance, just like the one Griffith makes between exterior action and private reflection. Hild is a thoughtful person in a tumultuous world, and her namesake novel handles both those elements with equal grace. Weapons clash often enough to stir the blood of adrenaline junkies, and conversation is subtle enough to please the European art film crowd. Sir Walter Scott’s sweep with the sensibility of Austen, in other words.
Set as it is in the relatively unspoiled historical terrain of late antiquity, many reviewers have insisted on reading Hild as a fantasy: “Chain mail? Let’s call it Tolkienesque.” Its immersive, authoritative world-building and occasionally archaic vocabulary will certainly satisfy Game of Thrones fans, but Patrick O'Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series or Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, both resolutely realistic, might be better points of comparison. The only magic here is the hypnotic spell storytellers have always cast, from the time of Beowulf until now. —James
New/Old/Uncategorizable Book of the Week
Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language
by Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco
trans. by Janet Hendrickson
In 1611, a Spanish cleric published the result of many years’ intellectual labor, a comprehensive dictionary of his mother tongue, one of the first such in the world's history. Four centuries on, in our own time, an English translator discovered his idiosyncratic tome (twelve pages alone on a definition of the word "elephant") and has gifted us with a selection of entries from this ancient treasure chest. Presented in this way, a massive work of reference becomes a slim book of amusing, meditative poetry. One sample: "Dragon—For a serpent to become a dragon, it first had to eat many other serpents." Another: "Cry—Crying and laughter are accidents that befall only man. The cry is so forewarned that we cry the moment we are born. Laughter typically occurs forty days after birth." —James
New Book of the Week
by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Many writers have used classic literary works as a lens for examining their own lives, but none have ever given me the visceral thrill that Doireann Ní Ghríofa has. She doesn't meditate on a mysterious 18th-century Irish lament, she wrestles with it, turning it over and over to reveal myriad intimate connections to modern motherhood and marriage. To read A Ghost in the Throat is to hold in your hands a living, beating heart. —James
New Book of the Week
by Lisa Taddeo
A narrator who commands absolute attention, hiding her secrets with an apparent willingness to expose herself entirely. A master study of the inextricable connections between victim and victimizer. Raw and potent. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jessica Anya Blau
We’ll cut to the chase: Jessica Anya Blau may have written one of the best novels of the year, in our opinion. Mary Jane follows its titular character, a 14-year-old girl growing up in 1970s Baltimore who is offered a summer nanny job for the hippie family down the street. Forced to come to terms with her own conservative upbringing, Mary Jane comes of age in the company of a rock star and his movie star wife. This book is a party you’ll want an invitation to . . . and don’t be dissuaded by Mary Jane’s age; this is most certainly a book for adults. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Miklós Bánffy (trans. by Len Rix)
One of the first Old Books of the Week ever featured in our newsletter was The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklós Bánffy, which we described as "the last of the great 19th-century novels . . . a cross between Gone with the Wind and War and Peace with an added dash of paprika." Eying its thousand-plus pages, you may have elected to sample simpler fare, which you can now do in the form of The Enchanted Night, which presents Bánffy's short stories, never before seen in English (as translated by Len Rix). It's a wide-ranging collection that demonstrates its author's facility with multiple literary modes; some tales cast a sharp eye on society during a lost Middle European age riven by class division but also ennobled by tradition, while others harken further back and travel further abroad, showcasing exoticized adventures in the Mediterranean and the Asian east. There's even a proto-environmentalist look into the far future of today. Amusedly omniscient, curious and informative, Bánffy is always surehanded and satisfying. —James
New Book of the Week
by Joan Silber
In this Indie Next List pick for May, a white Manhattan family discovers that their father has for years harbored a secret: a second Thai family in Queens. Some are shocked, some affect to barely notice, but the financial and emotional impacts of this revelation eventually affect a growing circle that encompasses far more than the families involved. No one is better than Joan Silber at revealing the hidden links that connect people, and no one who tries is so wide-ranging in her vision. The small, human details in Secrets of Happiness feel at first like ripples in a pond, but they prove in the end to be mighty waves in an ocean the size of the world. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by David Mitchell
Perhaps the greatest yarn-spinner we have at the moment is the English writer David Mitchell, whose eighth novel (ninth if you count the one being published in 2114) has just appeared in paperback. He's esteemed by literary critics but is as apt to use the techniques and tropes of thriller and SF writers as he is to display the verbal dexterity of his allegedly more highbrow peers. As a result his work is always an ideal blend of mental stimulation and pure page-turning pleasure; Utopia Avenue is no exception. This time out Mitchell draws us into the late-Sixties origin story of an eponymous, fictional band, comprising four musicians from the jazz, folk, and rock worlds. The blend of their diverse backgrounds and personalities seems set to turn them into stars if they can overcome familiar struggles with drugs, romance, politics, and a corrupt industry, not to mention some less expected trials involving metempsychosis and a shadowy group of soul-stealers. Utopia Avenue feels like a real group whose hits tantalize just beyond your memory's reach, and that verisimilitude is enhanced by cameos from David Bowie, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, and other Hall of Famers. If you've never read this author before, you're in for a fresh treat, and if you have you'll be even more rewarded as you piece together the connections between this and his other books. —James
New Book of the Week
by Maggie Shipstead
A magical and immersive piece of literary fiction, Great Circle offers readers a little bit of everything—a coming of age story, sprinkled with adventure, forbidden love, family tension, mystery, and more—without the feeling like any one dial is turned too far up. Maggie Shipstead is an incredible storyteller and this novel defies the norms of typical historical fiction. It is incredibly well-researched and well-written. A must read, this book is already short-listed to be one of the best books I’ve read (or will read) in 2021. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Philip Hoare
Philip Hoare is a poet-historian who inspires as much as he informs. His topic here is the life and work of Albrecht Dürer, the Leonardo of the North, a man who influenced how we look at art and the world as much as anyone who ever lived. Marvelous tidbits from his biography are linked to Thomas Browne, Herman Melville, Marianne Moore, Thomas Mann, W.H. Auden, W.G. Sebald, and David Bowie, among many others. Lavishly illustrated, this is a beautiful vision for the eye and for the mind. —James
New Book of the Week
by David B. Williams
When it comes to books about Seattle and its surroundings, there's one must-read writer as far as I'm concerned, and that's David B. Williams. I've long been telling recent arrivals and lifetime residents alike about such titles as Too High and Too Steep and Seattle Walks, and now I can add another to my recommendation list. Homewaters is the author's most wide-ranging work yet, a comprehensive account of the human and natural history of Puget Sound. From the formation of the land- and seascape by ancient glaciation, through the long years of indigenous stewardship and into the colonial and contemporary eras, the waters of the Salish Sea have been the region's lifeblood, enabling commerce, culture, and connection, and Williams addresses all that's gone before while also looking toward the future. The vital tie between ecology and the progress of people is the string that holds Homewaters together and will, I think, be the most-remembered message of this essential book. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Holly Whitaker
Simply put, this is a smart book about breaking free from alcohol addiction, starting with our culture’s obsession with alcohol and how we collectively downplay the harm booze does to our bodies. But this book is so much more. Holly Whitaker is unafraid to spill the (herbal) tea about her personal struggle with alcohol, in all its mess and misery. She offers astute suggestions for setting boundaries and establishing healthy habits. Pick this book up if you are sober-curious and want to learn about recovery through a modern, female lens. The audiobook is narrated by the author which is a special treat. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Rikki Ducornet
In recent years, the globe-hopping, boundary-breaking writer Rikki Ducornet has made her home in nearby Port Townsend, Washington, which means that I can add local pride to the long list of good feelings her books evoke. Her latest linguistic confection is a highly literate science fiction quest narrative, a 21st-century version of Calvino's Cosmicomics. It stars the artificially-grown but mostly human Quiver and the pop culture-obsessed robot Mic, partners who detour from their astral mineral mining job to seek the heady philosophical and earthy physical pleasures available on the shimmering planet Trafik. What's the point of it all? The text answers by asking a musical question: "[W]as the erotic impulse at the heart of the matter sparking a fundamental, an unstoppable yearning to bring things together, ideas and particles and bodies?" Trafik is a compact singularity that explodes in a Big Bang of creativity. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jonathan Meiburg
A Most Remarkable Creature tells the story, as its subtitle indicates, of The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey. Said creature is the striated caracara, a rarely-encountered member of the falcon family found only in the remotest corners of South America, the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego. Highly social animals with an inquisitive attitude and mischievous manners, they have more in common with crows and parrots than they do their solitary, dive-bombing cousins the peregrines. A book that merely chronicled the caracara's origins and habits would be well worth reading, but there's much more going on here than that. In studying these so-called Johnny rooks, Meiburg asks questions about where they came from and why they are the way they are, questions that lead to ones about why the world is the way it is and why we are the way we are. Real big picture stuff, in other words. He also meets any number of fascinating personalities along the way, people all over the world with insights to share regarding animals, landscape, and the history of human interaction with both. Greater than the sum of its parts, A Most Remarkable Creature has quickly become one of our favorite non-fiction titles of the year, on par with such modern classics as Robert Macfarlane's Underland, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, Charles Mann's 1491, and Diane Ackerman's The Human Age.
New Book of the Week
by Elizabeth Knox
Over a year ago I read one of those reviews that makes you want to drop everything you're doing and rush to the bookstore, even if what you're doing is running a bookstore. Tantalizingly, I couldn't then read the book that inspired such raptures, as it was available only a hemisphere away in New Zealand. It's now been published in the US, and having obtained it at last, I can confirm the initial reports: What a book! The Absolute Book is stuffed full of ideas and images, with enough plot for a series of novels. It starts as a taut thriller, as a young woman stumbles onto a foolproof way to avenge her murdered sister, but it quickly expands across multiple genre boundaries, using myth and fantasy to play a literary game for the highest stakes there are. It's very much a story built out of stories, inspired by similar tales of conspiracies, ancient secrets, and quests for lost objects, but it surpasses almost all of these in scope and style. —James
New Book of the Week
by Vendela Vida
There are few books I've binge-read since quarantine began, but We Run the Tides was a thrilling exception. The story is set in pre-tech boom San Francisco, in a neighborhood where every house has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It follows the journey of Eulabee, an eighth-grader whose world revolves around her private-school clique. Their seemingly unbreakable bond quickly dissolves when they witness an incident on their morning walk to school that Eulabee sees differently from the rest of her friends. This one incident quickly devolves into chaos: a disappearance, a murder, broken friendships, and more unveiled secrets from around the neighborhood. Eulabee's narration is intuitive and darkly funny to a point of charm, but her age creates an uncertainty in her account of the rapidly evolving events that keeps you hooked. You're not sure if you're supposed to believe what she believes, or if what she's seeing is the whole truth, but you want to know more nonetheless. We Run the Tides covers all you need for a quick, but powerful read: the thrill of a mystery, the ups and downs of a coming of age novel, and the power of young friendship. —Hannah
New Book of the Week
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines
by Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernesto Romo's ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a portfolio in prose and pictures that's 100% made up but that I nonetheless believe to be 100% true. It reads like a cross between Yamashita's I Hotel and Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, although saying so does ELADATL a disservice—it stands proudly on its own, a smile on its face and with middle finger raised. If I don't see a young bookseller sporting an ELADATL tattoo within the next couple years, I'll be shocked. —James
New Book of the Week
by Federico Falco (trans. by Jennifer Croft)
When people praise Chekhov, stories like these are what they're thinking of. —James
New Book of the Week
by Roy Jacobsen
When Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen's The Unseen reached American shores in 2020, my first reaction was to say of it, "I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive." His stark portrait (re-colored for English-reading audiences by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw) of a simple fishing community on a remote island hasn't left my mind since, so I couldn't be more pleased to see the Barrøy family reappear in White Shadow. Their story continues into the middle of the 20th century, as their homeland is occupied by the Nazis and their long-unchanged environment is radically altered. Focal character Ingrid in particular faces a crisis and is asked the timeless and timely question of how one makes "the difficult choice between surviving a great evil and working actively against it." Don't hesitate for a second to pick this gripping novel up, whether or not you've read its predecessor. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Penelope Fitzgerald
Born in England in 1916, Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t begin publishing fiction until she was in her sixties, but still produced nine classic novels along with several works of non-fiction and a pair of story collections. Every one is excellent, but I'm particularly fond of Human Voices, her 1980 novel depicting emotional entanglements on the home front during World War Two. London is beset by bombers, and BBC Radio establishes a shelter for its employees so that they can safely continue the work of “saving Britain from despondency and panic” without ever leaving the office. Did I mention that it’s a co-ed shelter? Romance blooms for some, annoyances build between others, and small moments of human interaction stand out against the larger historical backdrop. It’s a can’t-miss winner to please just about anyone. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Luke Brown
A tale of urban life for the under 40s in London at and after the Brexit vote, Brown's book is both light-hearted and darkly grim. Paul works for a small magazine and has a host of issues with family, his living arrangements, and more. He meets Emily, a well-known author, and while dealing with his own problems is swept into her life. There's a largish cast of supplemental characters who cross paths with the main characters and all lead increasingly difficult lives of their own, but the author keeps the humor high and dry and doesn't get us caught up too deeply with the depressing sides of the last decade in London. Brown is a gifted story-teller. —Lloyd
New Paperback of the Week
Recollections of My Nonexistence
by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is one of the best sociopolitical writers we have (she's the coiner of the term "mansplaining") but I like to imagine a better world in which she doesn't feel obligated to take on tyrants, terrorists, and people who occupy more than one seat on the train. Because when she's not making devastatingly cogent arguments in support of truth, justice, and the American way, she's one of the best writers we have, period. Whether the subject is history, travel, architecture, or nature, her limpid prose elevates and illuminates it. In the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, her subject for the first time is herself, the young woman who came of age as a human being and a writer in once-bohemian but increasingly gentrified San Francisco. Since we don't live in the better world of my imagination, this is a political book as well as a personal one, examining the ways in which our culture tries to erase women individually and collectively. It's an essential addition to a body of work for the ages. —James
New Book of the Week
by Chris Whitaker
Characters trapped in a small town, trapped within small expectations, and often trapped in and by a collective past so fixedly delineated as to resist examination propel this complexly plotted, unexpectedly poignant thriller. Walker, or “Walk” (no first name given), is the veteran police chief of Cape Haven, a northern California coastal burg slowly forfeiting its idiosyncrasies to tourist demands. He’s preparing to welcome back a childhood friend, Vincent King, released after spending three decades in prison following the death of a little girl, Sissy Radley. Naïvely, Walk hopes Vincent’s return will bring healing to his town; instead, it brings only hardship. Sissy’s elder sister, the still-beautiful but self-destructive Star—Vincent’s ex-girlfriend and now the neglectful parent to two fatherless children, 13-year-old Duchess and 5-year-old Robin—is murdered in the wake of Vincent’s arrival, and the ex-con appears responsible. However, neither Walk nor the rage-filled, grown-up-too-soon Duchess (who habitually introduces herself as “the outlaw Duchess Day Radley”) accept that explanation, and set out amid hazards to discover the truth behind Vincent’s alleged crimes. Duchess is the more compelling player—both needing and angry at her mother, pugnaciously protective of her brother, and obstinately distrustful of affection. Yet Walk, with his worsening physical ailments and deeply entrenched loneliness, executes a more nuanced, though equally engaging evolution as this stunning tale of loss, dejection, and defiant hope patiently discloses its secrets. Whitaker’s poetic prose only serves to smooth the ride. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Judith Schalansky (trans. by Jackie Smith)
What sort of book is this? Schalansky, a German writer and designer (she designed this starkly beautiful book), loves lists, and in part it is just what the title promises, a list of things that are no longer here: an extinct tiger, a destroyed palace (two, actually), a lost film. But each missing item is accompanied by—well, this is where definitions get tricky—a story of some kind, or an essay. Some are fairly literal excavations, some fanciful (one favorite follows grumpy Greta Garbo around for a day), but what they add up to is less a factual reclamation of these lost things than an emotional reckoning with what it means to lose. The last chapter, in which an old rumor that everything lost on Earth ends up on the moon is confirmed, explained the book best to me: this book is the moon. —Tom (from the Phinney Books newsletter)
New Paperback of the Week
by Rebecca Serle
I picked up this book for the first time a year ago, and recently reread it for a family book club—yes, a reread, can you believe it? I wanted the story to be fresh ahead of our Zoom discussion this weekend. The book was just as moving the second time around. For a quick plot synopsis, a young woman with an air-tight five-year plan briefly finds herself, you guessed it, five years in the future. As much as she wants to dismiss the experience, it becomes even more real for her years later when she meets the man from her “vision.” Grab the tissues—you will certainly need them for this one—but don’t let that scare you away from this charming story about unconditional love, friendship, and fate. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Anne Youngson
Anne Youngson became an instant Madison Books favorite with the release of her 2018 debut novel Meet Me at the Museum, and we've been eagerly anticipating a follow-up ever since. She's at last obliged us with a tale of a trio of women, all of a certain age, drawn together by a shared journey along the English canal system. As we've already become used to with this essential author, her characters are fully dimensional and interact with each other in all the complex ways that real people do. A sweet story that never becomes too treacly, charming but not superficial, The Narrowboat Summer exudes all the warmth of the sunniest season. And as Lloyd reminds me, a novel populated by strong women making decisions about their own futures couldn't be more appropriate for Women's History Month. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Laurie Colwin
This novel, about two inseparable best friends who fall head-over-heels in love at the same time (with two different women, fortunately), was a delight from the moment it was published in 1978, and it's even more so now. What a treat to spend time in a world without cell phones or social media! Colwin's portrait of urban life and romance hasn't aged in any important way, remaining nuanced and observant, and the destinations her characters reach feel natural and earned. It's no exaggeration to compare her to Jane Austen in this regard—she's playing a satisfying game, but one with real stakes. To read her is a permanent pleasure, not an ephemeral one. —James
New Book of the Week
by Eley Williams
Eley Williams is a hoot. In 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, she divides her story equally between the final years of the 19th century and the first years of the 21st. From the 19th, we learn of Peter Winceworth, a compiler of Swansby's Encyclopedic Dictionary, of his life, predilections and proclivities, and the how and why of his beginning to insert bogus definitions (mountweazels) into the dictionary. A descendent of a much earlier Swansby is updating the dictionary in the 21st century with an assignment to find the fake entries. Much hilarity, various explosions and fires, several relationships, and much more ensue in the alternating chapters of this first effort by Londoner Williams, a fellow at the Royal Society of Literature. As Dwight Garner wrote in his review in the New York Times, "Plot is not why a reader should come to The Liar’s Dictionary. One approaches it instead for highly charged neurotic situations and for Williams’s adept word-geekery. Her esotericism is always on cheerful display." —Lloyd
New Books of the Week
by Hermione Lee
by Mark Harris
After a year of struggling with stressful distractions that have threatened to shred my attention span, I've rediscovered the pleasure that reading biographies can bring. Sure, they're often imposing in heft and page count, but when a complicated life is put in order by a skilled writer, a soothing focus is engendered. The best biographies I've found lately are two about glittering intellects from the dramatic world. Hermione Lee, whose taste for her subjects is impeccable—she's authored previous award-winning lives of Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Penelope Fitzgerald, among others—examines the highly fortunate story of Tom Stoppard, who became a pinnacle of playwrights in his twenties with the sensational Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and has enjoyed a steady stream of successes, including the sublime Arcadia, until the present day. Having earned every laurel his profession offers while hobnobbing with A-list actors, directors, and even world leaders, his public life is readily documented, but the real fascination is the more private account of how chance played a role from the beginning. Born as Tomik Straüssler to Jewish parents in pre-war Czechoslovakia, he escaped with his mother and brother to Singapore and India before being thoroughly Anglicized by the stepfather who gave him his now-famous last name. Mike Nichols, whose achievements in comedy, theater, and film are recounted by journalist Mark Harris, husband of another great playwright of our age, Tony Kushner, was also a somewhat closeted war émigré. His Russian-Jewish family fled Germany for the United States, where he had a difficult youth that led him to later acclaim as a performer, writer, and director of such films as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate. The parallels and contrasts between Stoppard's life and Nichols's are instructive, and the sheer star power of both books is wildly entertaining. In case you're wondering, yes, you can find each man's name in the index of the other's biography. —James
New Book of the Week
by Quan Barry
This book came out in hardcover last year, almost at the same moment the country was shutting all its doors. I'm thrilled that it's getting a second chance to be seen now, as it's released in paperback during a more open era. It's the kind of novel that couldn't be kept down for long in any case, irrepressible and plain-old fun. The premise: It's the 1980s in a Massachusetts town outside of Salem, and the high school field hockey team, members of which are direct descendants of the 17th-century witch trials, is fighting its way toward the state championship by hook and by crook. A little sorcery, too? Maybe, but keep it under your pointed hat. Barry's command of the details of the big-hair era is perfect, which will be nostalgic for Gen-Xers, but teen readers will also find this magical, comical story of sporting adventure and female camaraderie utterly appealing. —James
New Book of the Week
by Rudolph Fisher
Published originally in 1932, and said to be the first detective novel by an African-American author, this witty, shrewdly plotted whodunit (recently reissued) was penned by Rudolph Fisher, a New York City radiographer, short-story writer, and musician, active in the Harlem Renaissance. It tosses us onto the hectic scene of a nighttime slaying, the victim being N’Gana Frimbo, an African immigrant and Harvard-educated fortune teller who was mysteriously clobbered with a human femur and gagged while giving a psychic reading at his Harlem apartment. The prospective clients waiting outside his parlor—among them a comically garrulous gumshoe—are all suspects. Investigative responsibilities here fall to police detective Perry Dart and the more erudite Dr. John Archer, a physician neighbor of the deceased. The pair employ perspicacity and science to unmask the killer…only to find their neat theories challenged, and this tale’s puzzle deepened, by Frimbo’s evident resurrection halfway through the book. Through his quirky characters and their slangy, jibing dialogue, Fisher creates a colorful portrait of Depression-era Harlem. Fisher wrote just two novels, Conjure-Man being his sole work of crime fiction. He’d planned a sequel, but died in 1934 at age 37, before it could be written. This edition does, however, include “John Archer’s Nose,” a short story once more featuring Dart and Archer. —Jeff
Kids' Book of the Week
by Cam Montgomery
Torrey, a Black San Francisco State University student in his first year, is looking for a new start and is happy to be away from his home in LA. He misses terribly his late uncle with whom he operated an apiary, or bee farm. Torrey saw his uncle as one of the few positive forces in his life, but has quickly found new friends and an old boyfriend at SF State. When developers want to buy the apiary out from under him, he is torn about whether to stay in school or return to LA to fight gentrification and keep his farm. A delightfully readable book about growing up and out, and learning that there are no pat answers when it comes to making choices for one's own good and that of family and society. —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
Perhaps I’m generalizing, or even projecting, but why don’t we tend to our friendships as we do our romantic relationships? Why do we expect our friendships to just work, when we put zero effort into cultivating healthy communication practices? Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, best friends and business partners, take us deep into the first ten years of their big friendship, pulling back the curtain on how their relationship was formed, challenged, and underappreciated over the course of a decade, and how they came out on the other side. This isn’t only a book about friendship. It’s a book about human connection, and destigmatizing the pain and hurt that can come from our deepest platonic relationships. Consider listening to this book, narrated by the authors themselves. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Walter Mosley
Mosley had a good thing going with his African-American series sleuth, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, when he considered doing away with the man in 2007’s Blonde Faith. Thank goodness he didn’t go through with it, because the novel marking Rawlins’ not-altogether-figurative resurrection, Little Green (2013), and the three that have followed—all set in Los Angeles during the late 1960s—have been particularly penetrating explorations of both the protagonist’s personal depths and the tumultuous era through which he’s living. Blood Grove transports us to the summer of ’69, when our gumshoe hero is approached by a traumatized Vietnam War vet, Craig Kilian, who’s unsure of whether he actually murdered a black man he’d found assaulting a half-naked white woman tied to a tree. Kilian claims he was subsequently knocked out, and could later find no evidence of the fray. While skeptical of Kilian’s tale, Rawlins agrees to help his fellow former soldier, only to soon find himself trapped in a baffling morass of troubles that include a hijacked armored car, manifold double-crosses, intolerant mobsters, and a femme fatale fit to define that term. Rawlins’ ever-expanding cast of stalwart helpers—from the homicidal Mouse and the brilliant Jackson Blue to the captivating Asiette Moulon—weave through this tangled plot, jockeying for attention with the racism Easy confronts at every turn. These are social protest novels disguised as detective yarns, and we’re lucky their run continues. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah strikes again, this time taking readers back to 1934, to the height of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. With striking detail, she paints a picture of the strength, resilience, and courage needed to survive one of the worst economic crises in our country’s history. I had the privilege of speaking with Kristin Hannah and a few other fabulous booksellers a few months ago, prior to the book release, and we talked about the parallels between then and now. How what’s past is prologue, to quote her publisher, and how in our current global pandemic, our limits are tested to the extreme, not unlike what our ancestors experienced nearly 90 years ago. What will we sacrifice, and what is the risk we are willing to take for the promise of a better tomorrow? In true Kristin Hannah fashion, this book will make you think, and it will certainly make you feel. Stay for the Author’s Note at the end, which offers a small slice of the conversation I mentioned above, albeit more eloquently explained by a true master of literature. —Brittany
Old Book of the Week
by Ishmael Reed
This 1972 novel is the secret cornerstone of an important building in a zanier neighborhood of the city of American literature, the one occupied by everyone from Pynchon (who name-drops Ishmael Reed in Gravity's Rainbow) to Robert Coover to Booker-winner Paul Beatty (The Sellout). The madcap postmodern and post-postmodern antics they've been up to for the past fifty years were already fully developed in Mumbo Jumbo, which turns all of Western Civilzation on its head in fewer than 250 pages. Jazz, movies, ancient Egyptian theology, and a mysterious ocean liner swirl together into a conspiratorial plot, at the heart of which sits a charismatic trickster figure, Hoodoo high priest Papa LaBas. Not only is this literature with a capital L, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
by Meena Harris
Inspiring, empowering, and a must-read for all young women (and those who raise them). Meena Harris, New York Times-bestselling author of Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea and niece of Vice President Harris, shows young women how to “reclaim words meant to knock them down.” Personally, I love a good reframing of the narrative, which is exactly what this book does. What if we taught young women that “too confident” means believing in themselves and acknowledging their self worth, and “too proud” means they recognize the value of hard work and progress from themselves and those around them? Just imagine the world we would live in! —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Natalie Haynes
Last year's shortlist for the Women's Prize generated more buzz than most award slates we can remember. It's rare that every book on such a list generates not only critical acclaim but a strong response from readers. The last and one of the most anticipated of these UK novels has finally reached US shores, joining the fit company of literary heavyweights such as Booker Prize-winners Bernardine Evaristo and Hilary Mantel. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes is an epic, feminist retelling of the Trojan War that gives gives center stage to characters kept in the wings for thousands of years. The legendary Helen, whose face was said to launch the armada that gives this book its name, is among them, but so are many others. The Greek and Trojan women on both sides of the conflict have their say, of course, and so do less expected outsiders, the Amazon warriors who join the fray. Haynes's fresh take on tradition recontextualizes one of the most classic tales we have, proving its relevance to the present and carrying it forward for future generations. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by T.J. Klune
I'm always pleased to come across a delightful fantasy story that doesn't involve battles and gore, and this book fills that bill. Linus Baker is a "by-the-book" cog in the The Department of Magical Youth bureaucracy, but is summoned to the offices of the Extremely Upper Management and dispatched to inspect and observe an orphanage where six magical youth are in the charge of one Arthur Parnassus. Upon his arrival, Linus meets each of the residents in turn, and must send weekly reports of his observations back to Extremely Upper Management. We learn each of their backgrounds, proclivities, abilities and "downsides" and over time Linus becomes more and more attached to their various wondrous personalities, most especially that of Arthur. It is clear that, despite his "job description" as master of the orphanage, he loves these beings more than most anyone at the EUM could imagine. Linus reports this, and over time the two of them become fonder and fonder of each other as well. As the time for Linus to depart nears, there's much gnashing of teeth about what might happen as a result of his reports, and the denouement of the novel is warmly surprising. —Lloyd
Old Book of the Week
by Terry Griggs
Set among the ramshackle boom-and-bust towns of the late nineteenth century, The Iconoclast's Journal kicks off with a literal bolt of lightning. Would-be bridegroom Griffith Smolders is shocked out of his hotel room and onto the road, taking the blast as a portent telling him marriage is not in the cards. In hot pursuit is his former fiancee Avice Drinkwater, bent on punishing Griffith but also reveling in her newfound independence. Separately encountering various con-men, zealots, and other grotesques, the two eventually wash up together on the shores of a new century, caught in the light of a newfangled contraption called a motion picture projector. It’s not all high jinks, though. The linguistic pyrotechnics and unexpected plot twists are the vessel for a complex parable about the difficulty and essential strangeness of romance. By the end the two young lovers know themselves and each other a good bit better than they did at the beginning, but it’s Griggs’s readers who learn the most. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Ausma Zehanat Khan
Published in 2014, this extremely well-written crime novel is the first in a series of five books featuring Toronto detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty. Khattak is a second-generation Muslim Canadian who heads the Community Policing Section, a group newly-formed to look specifically at cases involving minorities, especially Muslims, while Sergeant Getty is his trusted partner. The duo is tasked with investigating the supposedly accidental death of businessman Christopher Drayton. Was his fall off a cliff accident, suicide, or murder? Was Drayton actually Drazen Krstic, a war criminal largely responsible for the massacre in Srebrenica? How do his money-grubbing girlfriend and her two daughters fit in? What makes this mystery so compelling is how seamlessly Khan teaches her reader about the atrocities committed during the Bosnian War. She deftly inserts the details of individual horrors while maintaining our interest in the case. Khan also crafts intriguing personal backstories for her detectives and slowly reveals them throughout the novel, with more to come, it seems, in the books to follow. I've already added her next four Getty and Khattak books to my TBR list! —Cindy
Pre-Order of the Week
by Amanda Gorman
(due 9/21)
The unexpected star of this week's inauguration ceremony was a 22-year-old poet from Los Angeles, Amanda Gorman, who will be making her publishing debut later this year. It sounds patronizing, but one can't help commenting on her force and poise, which seem almost preternatural gifts in someone so young, but are no doubt the result of considerable application. Her stirring words lend themselves beautifully to the picture book format, especially with the visual assistance of Loren Long, one of the top illustrators on the planet. Inspiring for young and old alike, Change Sings will likely be read by multiple generations for generations to come. Gorman's other poetry, including the piece she recited at the presidential swearing-in, will be published in a collection called The Hill We Climb on the same day. —James
New Book of the Week
by George Saunders
George Saunders is one of the best short-story writers around—he blew out the doors of the genre back in the '90s and has not rested since—and if you've seen him speak or read his interviews you'll know that he's also one of the wisest givers of advice on the craft and creative process of fiction writing, so it's no surprise that this book is a treat. Based on a class he taught at Syracuse for two decades, it includes seven stories by 19th-century Russian masters (including three by Chekhov, among them the exquisite "Gooseberries," the source of his title), each followed by Saunders's modest, funny, and thoroughly insightful analysis of both the technical and—dare I say it—moral details that make them tick. It's obviously a book for writers, including some exercises at the back that I, who hate writing exercises, might actually try, but it's equally a book for readers, especially those for whom stepping back and examining how art is made just adds to the wonder of its creation. —Tom (from the Phinney Books newsletter)
New Book of the Week
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
by Jacqueline Winspear
Maisie Dobbs fans will absolutely delight in Jacqueline Winspear’s memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing. Winspear’s tales of her parents’ time living with Romany Gypsies and picking hops in Kent with her family will have you wondering if you picked up An Incomplete Revenge, or another one of her best-selling mysteries. I lost myself in the memoir just as I do in her novels, and have been recommending this book to all fans of our favorite investigator and psychologist. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Chelsea G. Summers
Lean back and savor the unsavory story of Dorothy Daniels (her name is the only mundane thing about her—I haven't met a character who so dominates a novel in a long, long time). She's a charismatic, carnal restaurant critic who holds her audience in absolute thrall from the moment she introduces herself until the cover closes for the last time. On the first page she shows off an expert's knowledge of vintage cocktails, by the second she's revealed a taste for expensive hotel rooms, by the third she's picked up a rich, elegant younger man who will indulge her desire for both, and by the fourth we know she's murdered him. It's already too late to turn away, so don't even try. This villainess casts a hypnotic spell comprising erudition, dark humor, luscious food description, and a carnivorous appetite for pleasure. A Certain Hunger is a juicy, wicked delight. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by David Zucchino
2019's hit TV series Watchmen, adapted from Alan Moore's comic of the same name, opened its first season with dramatic scenes of widespread white-on-black violence in 1920s Tulsa, Oklahoma that were so shocking many viewers couldn't believe they were drawn from history. The massacre was all too real, as was an earlier series of events in North Carolina that is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino's most recent book. In the 1890s, Wilmington was the state's largest city, home to a thriving black population whose members owned many of the community's businesses and held a number of political offices. All this effort at post-Civil War Reconstruction was torn down in 1898 after what was sometimes referred to (when discussed at all) as a "race riot." In fact, it was an intentionally orchestrated coup, one of the only occasions in American history when a duly elected government was overthrown by violence. The story of how its perpetrators seized control of the state legislature and destroyed the city is essential, jaw-dropping reading. Like David Grann in his Killers of the Flower Moon, Zucchino performs an invaluable service in uncovering history that's too long been suppressed. Unputdownable. —James
New Books of the Week
by Evie Dunmore
Netflix’s Bridgerton seems to be on everyone’s lips, so allow me this brief moment to refer you to its namesake eight-book series by Julia Quinn. Though if you are looking for an equally titillating escape and willing to surrender yourself to new characters, let me point you in the direction of Evie Dunmore’s “A League of Extraordinary Women” series. I love these Victorian historical romances for their strong and fiercely independent female protagonists, all of whom are fighting relentlessly for women’s rights in 19th century Britain. With two books available now and a third coming next September, there is plenty to read while we all anxiously await news of a second season of Bridgerton. —Brittany
Kids' Book of the Week
by Traci Chee
While this has not always been true, many today are aware of the concentration camps set up by FDR's government to isolate Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans starting in early 1942. Chee's National Book Award-nominated novel follows 14 San Francisco teenagers as they learn of the plans, are shipped off with their families, and cope with the isolation and imprisonment of the camps. Told from various points of view and from various camps and experiences as the teens are separated, questions of loyalty emerge: to each other, to their families, and to the US. This was a two-day read for me—a compelling and essential look at a time that was in some ways different and in some ways very much the same as our own. (Ages 13 and up) —Lloyd
New Book of the Week
by Harald Gilbers (trans. by Alexandra Roesch)
Being a longtime fan of World War II-era crime fiction by Philip Kerr and J. Robert Janes, I was predisposed to enjoy this consuming and tensely plotted tale about a Jewish former police detective who’s recruited by the Nazis to find a serial slayer. Richard Oppenheimer had been one of Berlin’s leading investigators, until the rise of Adolf Hitler and his anti-Semitic policies ended his career. It’s now 1944, and Oppenheimer is several months into a lower-profile job polishing factory machinery, living in a decrepit Berlin apartment with his Aryan wife, retreating regularly to bomb shelters, and gulping methamphetamines to maintain energy. Then one night an SS captain named Vogler abruptly summons him to a World War I memorial, where a young woman has been found brutally murdered. It’s not the first such recent crime, and Vogler wants Oppenheimer, who once nabbed a similar killer, to help him unmask this one, too. At Vogler’s insistence, Oppenheimer sheds his telltale yellow Star of David in order to move more freely among Berliners, then begins digging, raising suspicions around Nazi officials and linking one of the dead women to a breeding program intended to strengthen the Aryan race. As Oppenheimer circles his quarry, he also becomes an obvious sacrifice if the inquiry reveals truths discomfiting to Hitler’s regime. German author Gilbers has penned several Oppenheimer police procedurals over the last decade; let’s hope this won’t be the only one translated. —Jeff
Old Book of the Week
by Molly Peacock
Something (that you can read about below) reminded me of this decade-old biography, and I'm very glad it did. This is a delightful, even inspirational, trip into the past, a jolt of positivity and a celebration of domestic creativity in what's been for all of us a trying year. The Paper Garden brings back to life Mary Delany, a highborn woman of the 18th-century who was married off at a young age to rescue the family fortune. Widowed after many difficult years, she thrived in society as a unique, independent spirit, eventually enjoying a late, contented second marriage. Her real blossoming came in the twilight of her years after the death of her beloved second husband, when she invented for herself a distinctive art form, making highly detailed floral collages with scissors and paper. She was lauded both for the artistry of her work and for its scientific accuracy—her bound collection was long studied by botanists and remains preserved in the British Museum. —James
New Non-Book of the Week
Paper Flowers Cards and Envelopes
by Mary Delany
It was the appearance in a stationery catalog of these cards that brought Mary Delany back to mind, as I mention above. As soon as I saw them I bought literally all that were available. Delany's gorgeously detailed flowers on dramatically dark backgrounds make for an elegant presentation, and her backstory is all the more compelling. Pair these with her biography for a perfect gift, whether to yourself or someone else. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jason Guriel
I was asked recently to submit a favorite overlooked book of 2020 for an article on LitHub. When I chose this one, I promise I didn't think at all about the inadvertent aptness of its title. Published in the fall, it hasn't been out long enough to be truly lost yet, but it's definitely flown under the radar. I didn't see a single review of it, at any rate. Which might be the most brilliant marketing tactic ever, come to think, since Forgotten Work is about a lost artistic maybe-masterpiece. The setup is that a rock band with few resources but big ideas forms in the early 2000s, makes one recording, and then vanishes. A half-century later, in a world dominated by corporate technology, a coterie of vintage fetishists obsess over the band's songs, known to them only through the writing of an obscure music critic. All very meta, concerned with the true meaning of art and authenticity, and crammed with references to the likes of Nabokov and Nick Drake. All very amusing, too, mocking its seriousness as it goes. Oh, and I buried the lede: Forgotten Work is a novel in rhymed verse, heroically unspooling perfect couplets for almost two hundred pages. It's an SF epic poem, an excellent ekphrastic entertainment for English majors, a figment of imagination made real, and the perfect discovery to make for yourself in the hidden corner of your favorite bookstore. —James
New Book of the Week
by Valérie Perrin
Fresh Water for Flowers is one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve ever read. Perrin tells the story of Violette Toussaint, a cemetery caretaker in France, who despite her troubled and tragic past, believes in happiness. Her relationships with mourners and her funerary colleagues will warm your heart, and the quintessentially French meals they share will have you booking the first flight to France post-pandemic. Perrin writes complex and flawed characters whose stories and secrets unravel throughout the course of the book—reminding me a bit of another favorite, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Originally published in French, the translation by Hildegarde Serle does not disappoint, and this book has earned its place as a permanent fixture on my bookshelf. I guarantee I’ll return to it again in the future. —Brittany
New Paperback of the Week
by Brian Doyle
One Long River of Song is a career-spanning retrospective of the work of legendary Northwest writer Brian Doyle; if you’ve read him before you’ll already be running for the door to add it to your collection, and if you haven’t you should run even faster. This is the perfect introduction to an inimitable artist whose writing continues to spread joy and wonder long after his untimely 2017 death. If we ever need to replace the Gideon Bibles in every hotel room in America, I think it should be with this book. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Tove Jansson
Since the day Madison Books first opened, the late Tove Jansson has been one of the steadiest selling authors on our shelves. That's because I love introducing new readers to her consistent literary brilliance, which she manifests in all her books, some for young audiences and some for adults. She's one of those writers sometimes pegged as "minor," since her scale of operations is humble and human, without grand pronouncements about the meaning of it all. Nonetheless, her books are full of meaning, expressed subtly and indelibly. Jansson is probably best known, at least around here, as the author of The Summer Book, but in this season I like to recommend one of her quintessentially wintry novels, The True Deceiver (translated by Thomas Teal, featuring in this edition an introduction by another favorite, Ali Smith). Set in a small Scandinavian village blanketed by snow and only occasionally lighted by short hours of sun, this book, like all her work, explores the compromises that must be made between solitude and community, integrity and ease. It's an ideal companion when you're alone with your thoughts. —James
New Book of the Week
by Cassandra Tate
The violent events that took place near what is now Walla Walla on November 29, 1847 served for at least a century as a creation myth for the state of Washington, a legend of heroic sacrifice to noble ideals. But the traditional story of the Whitman Mission and the attack on its occupants is just that, a myth. The reality, a much more complex account of misplaced ambition and cultural conflict, gets a thorough, long overdue examination in historian Cassandra Tate's compelling new book, Unsettled Ground. It's necessary reading for anyone with even a passing interest in the American frontier experience. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Pierre Michon
This book was a originally a pair of books before translator Ann Jefferson and publisher Yale University Press got hold of them. The two parts are perfectly complementary in their new single volume, each a set of short fictions about obscure historical figures in Ireland and France. These monks and saints exist today as barely more than footnotes in ancient texts, but Pierre Michon treats their lives with the same significance as historians do kings and queens. More to the point, he bestows upon them the same level of attention that Tolstoy gives to Anna Karenina or Dickens to David Copperfield. Not that Michon is anything like as exhaustive as those authors were, but his feelings seem as intense. His imagination has made his characters real again. It’s a further measure of his skills that they seem so despite how odd they remain. They are people whose lives are dedicated to faith and tradition, who see only the barest glimmers of rational enlightenment on the very distant horizon, and their motivations are often alien to modern eyes. Unlike most such characters in historical fiction, however, they’re not designed to allow self-congratulatory dismissal by contemporary readers. Their worldview is as complex and confused as ours, and paints as convincing a picture of medieval and pre-medieval times as I can imagine. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
by Emma Bland Smith
When one of my favorite illustrators, Alison Jay, takes up her brush to paint the true history of one of my favorite (non-)events, I can't very well not tell you about it, can I? Back in 1859, San Juan Island was occupied by a handful of farmers, some British and some American. When a British pig started rooting around in an American garden, an American farmer took justice into his own hands, the pig's British owner took umbrage, accusations started flying, and next thing anyone knew, the navies of both sides had sent in heavily armed ships to encircle the island. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, which teaches a fun historical lesson about picking your battles and learning to get along. (Ages 4 to 10) —James
New Book of the Week
by Elin Hilderbrand
Temperatures are dropping across Seattle, and I’m finding myself craving books set in warmer climates. If you, like me, are looking for books with levity, then you must pick up Elin HIlderbrand’s Winter in Paradise series. Drama, romance and secrets abound in a trilogy of transporting novels (Winter in Paradise, What Happens in Paradise, and the new Troubles in Paradise) set in the Caribbean island of St. John. Hilderbrand’s characters and their environs are as addictive as leftover Halloween candy. Do yourself a favor and buy all three—you won’t want to wait a second between books. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Kaie Kellough
Dominoes at the Crossroads begins with a pitch-perfect chapter (if you want to call this book a novel) or story (if it's instead a linked collection) that introduces, from the purported vantage of a century hence, the work of early 21st-century writer . . . Kaie Kellough. Poet, spoken-word performer, and novelist Kellough, as evidenced by the introduction and the wide range of stories that follow it, proves to be an expert documentarian of his times. Via fictional "jazz musicians, hitchhikers, quiet suburbanites, student radicals, secret agents, historians, and their fugitive ancestors," he creates a universal human chronicle from the highly specified experiences of Black characters, predominantly Caribbean Canadians, past and present. Within this small package are entire worlds that were, that are, and might yet come to be. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jonathan Lethem
Yes, it's another novel set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic America, but hear me out. While the particulars of this altered environment, well articulated though they are, will feel familiar to those already versed in the genre, what's novel here is the comedy of seeing the same old psychological quirks and personality conflicts carry over from the beforetimes. Nebbishy Alexander Duplessis was visiting his sister's New England farming commune when the Arrest trapped him and everyone else in a severely limited, pre-industrial world, but even before that he was trapped by obsession with his failed screenwriting career. His quiet life on the margin of the new dystopic margins is turned upside down by the shocking arrival from Hollywood of an armored, nuclear-powered supercar containing his much more successful former writing partner, Peter Todbaum. He wants to talk about the one project he never could get off the ground, a script about the end of the world as we know it. Might this worldwide catastrophe really have something to do with their unmade movie and the unresolved issues between them? —James
New Book of the Week
by Anthony Horowitz
If you thought Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (2017) was circuitously plotted, wait till you see the puzzles offered in this closely connected sequel. We return here to the company of Susan Ryeland, the London book editor who solved the slaying of one of her authors, Alan Conway, in the previous mystery. Now living in Crete, where she runs an ill-starred inn with her boyfriend, Ryeland is hungry for a change. So when the elderly owners of Branlow Hall, an upscale hotel in Suffolk, ask her to return to England and—for £10,000—help find their missing daughter, Cecily, she can hardly pack fast enough. Cecily vanished shortly after telling her parents that one of Conway’s whodunits, Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, contains a clue proving the innocence of the Romanian maintenance man convicted of bludgeoning a Branlow guest, Frank Parris, eight years earlier, on the day of Cecily’s wedding. Conway had, in fact, visited Branlow after Parris’ murder, and found there the inspiration for Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Although Ryeland’s on-site probing leads nowhere, her familiarity with Conway’s fondness for anagrams and for hiding revealing messages in his text will prove crucial as she compares Conway’s fiction with the circumstances surrounding Parris’ demise, struggling to discover the evidence only Cecily saw. Horowitz’s flawed but congenial protagonist, his use of the story-within-a-story trope, and his fair-play blend of red herrings and tip-offs rank this story among Horowitz’s best. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Bryan Washington
A tale of two lovers, two families, two cities and lots of food, the book opens in Houston where the two protagonists, whose relationship is a few years along, are at one of "those" crossroads. One is local, the other born in Japan but has lived in the US since childhood, and as we read along, their families (each dysfunctional in its own way), jobs (day care and food service), and the cities of Houston and Osaka themselves play very large roles in the story. It is this broadening of the story beyond the couple that so resonated in my reading of the book. Washington has deservedly been lauded for his short story collection Lot, and Memorial is already bringing this young writer even more deserved accolades. —Lloyd
Old Book of the Week
by John M. Ford
It's been said that only a few people bought Lou Reed and Nico's record with the Warhol banana on the cover, but all of them started bands of their own. Which is why the introduction to most recent edition of The Dragon Waiting calls it "the Velvet Underground album of 1980s fantasy novels." It won awards on first release and inspired open-mouthed awe among Ford's fellow writers, but never got the wide recognition it deserved. That's likely because it's in many ways neither fish nor fowl, straddling the line between genres in a way that risks confusing the most literal-minded readers. As a historical novel of courtly medieval intrigue it rivals the likes of Hilary Mantel in accuracy and erudition, but it's an alternative history Ford tells, set in a Europe where the Byzantine Empire never fell and the Christian Church never achieved continental hegemony. The appearance in this world of sorcerers and vampires feels perfectly natural, somehow adding verisimilitude rather than subtracting it. Call it literature; call it fantasy; call it a mash-up of Shakespeare, George R. R. Martin, and Dorothy Dunnett; call it a platypus for all I care. Just read it. —James
New Book of the Week
by Peter Cozzens
If you have (or are) one of those dads who sticks to reading every presidential biography that comes down the pike, here's the perfect chance to sprinkle some some complementary seasoning on that meat-and-potatoes diet. Tecumseh and the Prophet fits neatly into the tradition, thoroughly exploring the leadership qualities and military acumen of an important American historical figure, but it expands the dad-book canon in refreshing fashion. —James
New Book of the Week
by Jess Walter
Jess Walter's fiction has covered comedy, history, crime, character study, and more, but I don't think he's ever put so much into one book before. His most recent novel centers on two brothers, Rye and Gig Dolan, scrabbling for a living as they ride the rails of the Northwest in 1909. Both are caught by a current of social unrest, swept downstream along with a cast of labor organizers, plutocrats, suffragists, vaudeville stars, mobsters, and many humble others. The judicious blend of reality and imagination brings E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime to mind, but as a portrait of the Inland Empire of the Palouse, there's nothing else like it. The Cold Millions is an extravagant, panoramic story told with rumbustious verve, and it's sure as heck going to be on my year's best list. —James
Old Book of the Week
by William Gaddis
This 1975 novel is also a New Book of the Week, having been re-released by New York Review of Books with an introduction by Joy Williams. It won a National Book Award on its initial go-round, and if it were eligible for such prizes now I'd be laying heavy money on its chances. The story, told almost entirely in dialogue, is of perhaps the most elaborate house of cards ever constructed, a paper financial empire conned and swindled into existence by an eleven-year-old boy working from his school's hallway payphone. It's so funny that one has to describe it as satire, but as the years have passed it's grown less and less absurd and more and more wise. —James
New Book of the Week
The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time
by Hugh Raffles
Richard Stark's crime novels are noted for their slam-bang openings. Take his Backflash as an example: “When the car stopped rolling, Parker kicked out the rest of the windshield and crawled through onto the wrinkled hood, Glock first.” Man, that's good stuff—an instant amphetamine rush. But what really gets my reader's heart pounding is a different kind of opening, like the one in Hugh Raffles's The Book of Unconformities. He starts off like Stark, in media res, with a quick description of the unexpected deaths of his two adult sisters. The arresting part is his response to those losses: "Soon after, I started searching for rocks, stones, and other seemingly solid objects as anchors in a world unmoored, ways to make sense of these events through stories far larger than my own, stories that started in the most fundamental and speculative histories—geological, archaeological, histories before history—and opened unmistakably into absences that echo in the world today, absences not only mineral but human and animal, and occasionally vegetable, too." It's like a reverse zoom shot that opens on a human heart and instantly expands to take in a whole world of ideas. I'm a fan of Stark's car crashes and handguns, but if I have to choose sides, I'm on Team Raffles. —James
New Book of the Week
by Karen Russell
Karen Russell is still quite young (the National Book Foundation honored her in 2009 as one of the five best authors under 35, and even now she's only four years past that threshold) but she's already established herself as one of America's most respected writers (she's a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of the MacArthur Foundation's so-called genius grant). Very few others can match her ability to familiarize a reader with the real world through bizarre situations and estranging details. As an NPR reviewer once said of her, "She writes about the supernatural with a straight face; while her imagination is boundless, she anchors her stories in realism, and it lends her stories a real emotional power." Russell's never done this better than she has in her most recent book. Though it was first published in an ebook-only version in 2014, it feels like a brilliantly spontaneous response to the headlines of today.
In Sleep Donation, the world has been afflicted by an epidemic of insomnia that proves fatal to the worst sufferers, who perish at the end of an agonizing, sleepless Last Day that can go on for weeks. Thanks to intensive research, the Gould technique is discovered, a process by which the healthy sleep of the more fortunate is collected and transfused into the minds of the victims, and charitable donation centers are established across the country. It's an uneasy time for Trish Edgewater, the best recruiter that the Slumber Corps has, and the tension soon escalates into a full-blown disaster. One anonymous donor infects thousands with nightmares so indescribably terrible that they refuse further treatment and embrace the lethal insomniac plague. The set-up alone qualifies this as a tight sci-fi thriller, but what really compels is how Russell conveys the mundane experience of doing a tough job at a difficult time, continuing to punch a clock during a crisis. It's perfectly on point, and I'd say that even if I didn't read the whole thing starting at 3:30 in the morning with bloodshot eyes. —James
New Book of the Week
by Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris
A few years ago, Robert Macfarlane, who's something of a patron saint at Madison Books (see our review of 2019 book of the year Underland, now out in paperback) wrote The Lost Words, an ornate linguistic repository intended to preserve the lexicon of the natural world that's literally being removed from dictionaries. Lavishly illustrated by Jackie Morris, it became a publishing phenomenon, inspiring artists, musicians, and teachers to adapt it for their own needs. The talented tandem is back with an even more gorgeous follow-up containing more art and incantations than its predecessor. The Lost Spells is a keepsake volume that will be treasured by readers of all ages. We have a handful of copies autographed by both writer and artist, so don't hesitate—buy one before they're gone. —James
New Paperback of the Week
by Namwali Serpell
"1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond." If that doesn't get your reader's blood pumping, I don't know what will. A sprawling, magical, multigenerational saga with echoes of Midnight's Children and One Hundred Years of Solitude. —James
New Book of the Week
by John Banville
Booker Prize-winning Irish author John Banville has, since 2006, divided his output between literary fiction, published under his own name, and atmospheric crime novels carrying the pseudonym Benjamin Black, most of which take place in 1950s Dublin and star a bibulous pathologist named Quirke. Snow, however, muddies such boundaries. A Banville-credited whodunit, it’s ostensibly set in 1957 (though period details are scant) and even includes mention of Quirke’s status (“He’s on his honeymoon!”). But the sleuth in this case is Detective Inspector St. John (“Sinjun”) Strafford, who’s sent to southeastern Ireland under wintry conditions to probe the brutal, sexually suggestive slaying of a popular, if oft-reprimanded, Catholic priest, Father Tom Lawless. That murder occurred during the cleric’s stay at a country estate owned by Colonel Geoffrey Osborne and his family, whose secrets defy Strafford’s scrutiny. No less likely to frustrate a satisfying result are efforts by the Catholic Church to misrepresent Lawless’ demise as accidental. Banville has ridden his Catholic-bashing hobbyhorse to a froth over the years, but he complicates things nicely by making Strafford a Protestant of aristocratic pedigree, and thus a target of suspicion within the Irish police force. Although the puzzle plot here serves mainly as a frame in which to showcase Ireland’s postwar social ills, Banville’s prose is elegant and his story’s undercurrent of psychological manipulation quite potent. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Brian Dillon
I love it when books strike up a conversation with each other. Only a couple of weeks ago Madison Books hosted Geraldine Woods for a discussion about her 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way, a joyous exploration of the writer's craft. Now along comes Brian Dillon with his new collection of essays expounding on 25 (OK, 27; he couldn't narrow them down) of his favorite sentences in literature. The books sound similar in description, and they certainly have a great deal to say to each other, but they have completely different, complementary personalities. Reading them, whether singly or in combination, is an object lesson in the infinite variety of thought. —James
New Book of the Week
by Curits Sittenfeld
In Rodham, Curtis Sittenfeld explores the life Hillary Rodham would have led had she not married Bill Clinton. I took my time with it at first, perhaps because I was constantly considering whether what I was reading was factually correct, or an imaginative version of Hilary's early adulthood and her law school romance with the good ol' boy from Arkansas. This is not a political book, though Sittenfeld hits on topics that are quite prominent in politics today, like issues of race, gender equality and the #MeToo movement. Sittenfeld also works through the complexities of female friendship, stereotypical gender roles and moral compromise. At times, this is an uncomfortable read, and only in writing this have I really reflected on how important Rodham is in understanding how one seemingly personal decision, like who to marry, can ripple across a nation for years to come. —Brittany
New Book of the Week
by Susanna Clarke
It was more than fifteen years ago that Susanna Clarke built a wing on the edifice of fantasy fiction unlike any seen before in the form of a debut novel called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. After so long I'd be grateful for any new work from her, but I'm unspeakably glad that she's again constructed something entirely new. Piranesi has a smaller footprint than her previous novel, but makes more efficient use of space, cramming an entire unsettling universe into a book far bigger on the inside than it is out. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
by Lev Grossman
In his adult novel The Magicians, Lev Grossman subverted the conventions of fantasy literature and reinvigorated the genre; he's now done much the same for young readers with his entertaining middle-grade escapade The Silver Arrow. From the very amusing beginning, when Kate requests a birthday present from the rich, irresponsible uncle she's never me, and is given a full-sized steam engine ("'Herbert,' [my father] said, 'what the blazes is this?' He didn't really say blazes, but you can't put the word he did say in a book for children.") the story is off to the races and doesn't let up. Fun for comedy fans, fantasy fans, animal lovers, and their parents. (Ages 7 to 12) —James
New Book of the Week
by Andrew Krivak
I meant to read this novel sooner, when it came out as a paperback original right before the world shut down. Waiting until now, when we're all looking at a new future rather than the old past, seems like the right thing to have done. That's because it tells of a father and daughter navigating a beautiful, challenging landscape that's the opposite of primal. In their time, nature has been restored to supremacy and almost all traces of human existence have faded from sight and even memory. Readers who were drawn to Cormac McCarthy's The Road or Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven will be similarly affected by The Bear, while finding in it an altogether new hopefulness that's entirely Krivak's own. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Mark Dunn
The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious. —Senator Albert Beveridge (1862-1927)
The quotation above comes from a toast made to ring in the century that preceded the one we're in now. Strong stuff—patriotism shading over into jingoism. And prescient, as history shows. John Dos Passos cites the remark in the opening pages of his epic U.S.A. trilogy, probably the greatest literature produced by the Lost Generation. Yes, better than Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al., though that’s a subject for another time.
I remembered the reference as soon as I happened across the latest book by Mark Dunn, and happen across it I did. It’s rare that something like this, a work by an author I’ve read and enjoyed before, doesn’t show up on my radar until I see it for sale on a shelf. American Decameron was hard to miss at that point—it has a bold red-white-and-blue patterned cover reminiscent of a quilt from Gee’s Bend, and it’s not exactly small. As its title suggests, it’s something of a riff on Boccaccio’s medieval classic Decameron, in which ten characters spend ten days trading stories, one hundred tales in total.
The project here is grand enough to suit the distinguished former senator from Indiana. Dunn has composed one hundred stories of his own, each taking place in a different year of the twentieth century (he correctly starts with 1901 and finishes with 2000) and set in a different location. Every state in the union has its moment in the sun (Washingtonians will take particular interest when two ladies of a certain age observe a dance marathon in a ballroom along the old Seattle-Tacoma Hi Way) and so do some international sites visited by Americans:
"A girl in Galveston is born on the eve of a great storm and the dawn of the 20th century. Survivors of the Lusitania are accidentally reunited in the North Atlantic. A member of the Bonus Army finds himself face to face with General MacArthur. A failed writer attempts to end his life on the Golden Gate Bridge until an unexpected heroine comes to his rescue, and on the doorstep of a new millennium, as the clock strikes twelve, the stage is set for a stunning denouement as the American century converges upon itself in a Greenwich nursing home, tying together all of the previous tales and the last one hundred years."
Dunn’s goal is obviously to paint a completely comprehensive portrait of our country, or at least come as close as anyone can. The scope may sound daunting, but the book really isn’t. Other than the first and last stories, which are intended to open and close the volume, the tales can be read piecemeal, in any order, and the prevailing tone is breezy, with occasional gusts of bawdiness in tribute to Boccaccio’s original.
It’s only fitting that such a formally ambitious literary work is actually a populist achievement. When you assemble such a disparate group of voices so artfully, you get a chorus instead of a cacophony. That’s how democracy works. —James
New Book of the Week
by Roy Jacobsen
It seems impossible that this short novel of family life on a remote Norwegian island hasn't been handed down for generations. It feels as much like a document for the ages as it does a piece of contemporary fiction, depicting lives filled with toil and reward that might as easily be led in the middle ages as in the 20th century. The Unseen's characters aren't primitives, though, nor are they simple. Jacobsen's uncondescending narration richly individualizes them and grants them the full scope of human expression, from fear and strain and grief to whimsy, desire, and joy. I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive. —James
Old Book of the Week
by David Markson
I'm a little surprised I haven't heard more people mentioning this 1988 novel of late, given that it speaks to the present moment, albeit obliquely, about as well as any fiction can. Its subject and narrator is Kate, the only person living on earth. Having long since passed beyond any attempt to understand her inexplicable situation (and a justifiable period of madness) she occupies herself with the daily drudgery of existence and the memories of the world she once knew. She packs and unpacks the lumber room of her mind, reexamining personal traumas and sorting through a lifetime's worth of cultural knowledge about writers, scientists, artists, and musicians. This is the book in which the late David Markson first mastered his inimitable style, self-described as, "Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like," a book cited by David Foster Wallace as "pretty much the high point of experimental writing in this country." I wouldn't call it an experiment, as that makes it sound chilly and unapproachable. I'd simply say that it's one of the most mordantly funny, moving, and intelligent books I've ever read. —James
New Book of the Week
Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
My gosh, how can you not love Jenny Boylan? As far as I can tell, that's possible only if you haven't read Jenny Boylan. There's no better place to start than with her most recent memoir, the story of "seven crucial moments of growth and transformation" in her life and of the dogs who shepherded her through them, the story of "what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love." Like other Madison Books favorites, Ross Gay's The Book of Delights and well, everything by Brian Doyle, this is a feel-good book that tells it like it is, without any artificial colors or sweeteners. Nothing here but all-natural, grade-A, free-range warmth and illumination. —James
New Book of the Week
by John Lawton
While the mid-’60s are “swinging” for many Brits, Joe Holderness, aka Wilderness—nominally a Royal Air Force flight sergeant but really a roguish MI6 spy—is stuck in northern Finland, posing as a cultural attaché and screening smutty comedy flicks for isolated villagers. This is his penalty for screwing up what should’ve been a simple transfer of secret agents. Even in Lapland, however, Wilderness can’t avoid trouble. Together with two beer-chugging Aussie pilots, he engineers a deal with an old Russian military acquaintance to smuggle black-market Finnish vodka into the USSR in exchange for, of all things, classified Russian documents being used as toilet paper. That swap exposes a reckless weapons program…but one conceived in London, not Moscow. Again on the outs with his superiors, Wilderness is shipped off to Czechoslovakia, where—amid the “Prague Spring” of 1968, and assisted by another Lawton protagonist, ex-Scotland Yarder Frederick Troy—he contrives to win his old lover’s release from the Soviets. Lawton’s complex yarn is packed with ironic humor and multi-dimensional players; and though this is the third Wilderness novel, it can easily be enjoyed on its own. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
by Emily St. John Mandel
Yes, I know that Station Eleven is one of the most brilliant and entertaining books about a pandemic ever written, but I swear, it's a coincidence that I'm recommending another book by Emily St. John Mandel this week. Her latest novel has at last been published, and it's one that I've been waiting a while to be able to tell you about. It has the sort of plot that's the right amount of tricky, not overly complicated but with enough surprises that I don't want to spoil any. Suffice to say that the author has said that her working title for the book was Ghosts and Money, and that the characters within it are haunted by both, metaphorically and just possibly literally. —James
Old Book of the Week
by Steve Olson
I've been thinking a lot lately about crises that have affected the Northwest in memorable ways, events with effects that rippled well beyond the moment they occurred and made lasting changes to everyday life. One of those was the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Even those who weren't alive or living in the region at the time are familiar with it, and I certainly considered myself knowledgeable about it, but I didn't realize how much I didn't know before reading Eruption. It's an excellent account of the eruption itself—the damge it caused, the lives it took, the massive alteration to the environment it caused—but what sets the book apart is the context it creates. What was that landscape like, how was it used and why, who were the people who thrived there? The stage-setting is masterful, with roles played by forester Gifford Pinchot, logging magnate George Weyerhaeuser, and others, and the resulting drama is far more than a mere thrill ride. —James
New Book of the Week
by Eric Nusbaum
Even though I love baseball, I almost didn't pick this one up. For some reason, even before I moved to Seattle and started following the Mariners, I've always been an American League guy. While the Dodgers aren't my least-favorite National League team (that would be the Cardinals) they're pretty close, and a book about how they moved west from Brooklyn in the 1950s and got their stadium built seemed parochial and not worth my time. Swing and a miss. I realized from an excerpt that this is the greatest kind of baseball book, one that puts the sport in its proper place, using it as a framework for talking about larger historical and cultural forces, populated with an entire roster of all-too-human characters. Whether you know how to calculate Sandy Koufax's earned run average or not, it's a remarkable read. —James
New Book of the Week
by Michael Lewis
If you're looking for a book that has something useful to say about the current situation that isn't too, you know, on point, look no further. In previous books (The Big Short, Flash Boys, etc.) Lewis took on the issue of deregulation of the financial markets, but in this, his most recent work, he casts a wider net and does a cost-benefit analysis of government as a whole. Embedding himself in the lives of workers in what he expects will be the most superficially dull and least important sectors of the federal system (Agriculture, Energy, etc.), he finds unsung heroes at every turn, displaying expertise and professionalism essential to the smooth functioning of democracy. When asked by an interviewer last year what it would take to remind Americans about the true importance of those qualities, he said, "For people to suddenly start to value what good government does, I think there will have to be something that threatens a lot of people at once. The problem with a wildfire in California, or a hurricane in Florida, is that for most people it is happening to someone else. I think a pandemic might do it, something that could affect millions of people indiscriminately and from which you could not insulate yourself even if you were rich. I think that might do it." —James
New Book of the Week
by Erik Larson
In the fall of 1940, as Nazi Germany’s nighttime aerial assaults on Great Britain intensified, a young boy in London was asked what he’d like to be when he grew up. A fireman, maybe? A pilot? “Alive,” the tyke responded, echoing the fears of so many sleep-deprived Britons, who only hoped their government could protect them from full-scale invasion. Fortunately, as Larson makes abundantly clear, Winston Churchill had become prime minister shortly before this Blitz began. He brought determination and stubborn courage to his task, and imparted both to his countrymen through soaring speeches. Simultaneously, Churchill courted American aid via heartfelt, sometimes desperate letters to President Franklin Roosevelt. Larson parallels his narrative of the fight against Adolf Hitler’s forces with a more intimate account of how the war affected the prime minister’s family and close associates. His inclusion of eccentric details (Churchill hated whistling, took two baths a day, and favored pink silk underwear) further enlivens an already captivating yarn, and was only made possible thanks to diaries having been kept by many of this story’s principals. —Jeff
Kids' Book of the Week
by Norton Juster
This book deserves a spot in any of our newsletters because it's quite simply one of the best things ever written for a young audience. Juster's creativity, humor, and talent for wordplay are unparalleled. This week, though, seems like the perfect time to share our recommendation for a story about a bored little boy who's apt to get stuck in the Doldrums, where the daily schedule of activities runs like so: "At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend / From 8 to 9 daydreaming. / From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap. / From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay. / From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap. / From 11:30 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch. / From 1:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter. / From 2:00 to 2:30 we we take our early afternoon nap. / From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today. / From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap. / From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner. / From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally. / From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed we waste time." —James
New Book of the Week
On Shirley Hazzard
by Michelle de Kretser
An excellent way to make your scant hundred pages of text feel like a monumental book is to make each of them count more than double. That's what happens when Michelle de Kretser, an acclaimed novelist in her own right, writes about the inspiration she's taken from the late Shirley Hazzard and her work. The story of literary influence accepted and transformed in a contemporary writer's life is a fascinating one, and it's enriched enormously by the presence of so much of Hazzard's own incomparable prose. Whether or not you've heard of either of these two writers before, you'll want to read everything by them once you've finished this. —James
Old Books of the Week
The Great Fire
by Shirley Hazzard
Transit of Venus
by Shirley Hazzard
You could call these novels superb examinations of personal psychology, or clear-eyed studies of the major migrations and conflicts of the 20th century, or you could rank them among the greatest love stories ever told, and you'd be right no matter what. I can't agree more with Emily Eakin of the New York Times Book Review when she says, “I cannot think of a more elegant writer. To me she personifies the word exquisite. . . . It’s the inner landscapes, the kind of minute, almost inevitable gestures and impulses that comprise human interaction that she’s just so brilliant at registering, and in this sense I think she’s truly the heir to Henry James. She’s just such a treat.” —James
Old Book of the Week
People in Glass Houses
by Shirley Hazzard
I'm a sucker for a craftily-constructed, highly realistic but imaginary country—Ruritania, Venusberg, Hav, Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania—a fact attested by a glance at any of my home bookshelves. But there's only one book I know about a fictional supra-national governmental administration, an imaginary United Nations. People in Glass Houses is a story collection by National Book Award-winner Shirley Hazzard that sets its scenes in the offices of a gargantuan Organization (based on her own experiences with the real UN) whose numbing bureaucracy can’t completely quash optimism, humor, and love. There’s even room for some quiet courage among the ranks of the paper-pushers who populate her pages. —James
New Book of the Week
Nature's Mutiny
by Philipp Blom
Are you wondering what changes and hardships might be precipitated by our present-day climate crisis? Perhaps there are clues to be found in the so-called Little Ice Age that began around 1570 and lasted into the early 1700s. As German historian Blom explains, the average global temperature during that period dropped by some 2 degrees Celsius; that doesn’t seem like much, yet it caused torrential rains, brutal frosts, and withering summer droughts. Relentless cold led to food shortages across Europe, which in turn provoked urban uprisings and population shifts, and gave birth to myriad religious doomsayers and wacky suspicions of witchcraft afoot. On the plus side, efforts to understand and combat those long-ago crises inspired greater scientific scholarship, and ushered in the Age of Enlightenment. Reflecting on all of this, Blom warns: “Democracy was born out of ideas first broadly debated during the Little Ice Age. It could easily die or be hollowed out to a mere façade during our own era of climate change, as living conditions for ordinary people become harsher and the very rich take more power for themselves.” —Jeff
New Book of the Week
Recollections of My Nonexistence
by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is one of the best sociopolitical writers we have (she's the coiner of the term "mansplaining") but I like to imagine a better world in which she doesn't feel obligated to take on tyrants, terrorists, and people who occupy more than one seat on the train. Because when she's not making devastatingly cogent arguments in support of truth, justice, and the American way, she's one of the best writers we have, period. Whether the subject is history, travel, architecture, or nature, her limpid prose elevates and illuminates it. In the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, her subject for the first time is herself, the young woman who came of age as a human being and a writer in once-bohemian but increasingly gentrified San Francisco. Since we don't live in the better world of my imagination, this is a political book as well as a personal one, examining the ways in which our culture tries to erase women individually and collectively. It's an essential addition to a body of work for the ages. —James
New Book of the Week
Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels
by Toby Ferris
A 42-year-old writer looks at his young sons, considers the recent death of his 84-year-old father, and tries to make sense of it all in the only natural way: by undertaking a round-the-world quest to see the 42 existing paintings by one of the greatest masters of the Northern Renaissance, Bruegel the Elder. The book that results from this whimsical impulse is a gorgeous object and an even lovelier read, both an account of a physical journey and a tracing of a curious mind at play. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century
by Hugh Aldersley-Williams
Thomas Browne has been called “the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Mind” and that’s an accurate assessment. There was little knowledge about the world back then that he didn’t possess, and he discovered a significant chunk of that information himself. His influence can still be felt in the fields of science, philosophy, religion, and literature. By profession a doctor who studied at colleges in England, France, Italy, and Germany, Browne treated the high- and lowborn alike, using what was then state-of-the-art information. Some of his techniques, which included surgery, the application of medicinal herbs, and the balancing of the body’s humours, seem quaint today, but he was among the first to understand modern details about human anatomy, including the means by which blood circulates through the body. His approach to health care involved treating the whole person rather than just his or her disease, and he had a remarkable appreciation for the limitations of his calling, never standing on the pedestal of his education. He was both an elite practitioner and a theoretician of his trade, something like a vintage version of Atul Gawande or Abraham Verghese, and his writings about his medical experiences remain fascinating.
That’s only the beginning of Browne’s contributions to history. He also kept and studied a menagerie of exotic creatures, conducted experiments in physics and chemistry, and published an encyclopedia that sought to correct every delusion that was common in his time, including the strange belief that elephants had no knees. Among his philosophical investigations was a thorough examination of the five-pointed geometric figure known as the quincunx, and he contemplated such issues as Lazarus’s legal right to reclaim his property from his heirs after his resurrection. He chronicled his endless ideas in unique and engaging style, too. No less a figure than Jorge Luis Borges called him the best prose writer in the English language. Aldersley-Williams surveys the full range of Browne’s accomplishments, discussing them in thematic chapters rather than as a chronological biography, a method that better captures the man’s polymathic restlessness.
Striking as his achievements are, it’s the legacy of Browne as a person that’s important in the 21st century. For all his erudition, he seems to have entirely lacked an inflated ego. He readily admitted what he didn’t know and was open to changing his mind when the facts changed. A royalist at heart, he nonetheless thrived equally during England’s republican years under Cromwell and after the restoration of the monarchy. While he held deeply religious beliefs, he was not shocked by skepticism, and wrote that “I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me.” As such, Aldersey-Williams holds him up as a model we should emulate in our divisive age.
If you enjoyed Stephen Greenblatt’s surprise bestseller The Swerve, you should definitely go adventuring with Sir Thomas Browne, and you may not want to stop there. Browne's most beloved works, Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall, can be found in a single volume from New York Review Books. I think they're amazing, but don't take my word for it. Try them and decide for yourself what you think. That's the way Browne would want it. —James
Old Book of the Week
Women in Black
by Madeleine St. John
I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the bookstore asking for a type of fiction the Guardian has recently dubbed "Uplit." Not escapist fluff to help forget reality, but books to reassure them that reality doesn’t have to be this way. And the hilarious, heartening novel I just finished should be a classic of the genre. With her slightly out-of-the-way locutions, St. John sets a retro-Aussie scene and hits all her marks. She slyly nips at the innocent provincialism of midcentury Sydney, but also helps map the inner topographies of characters who don’t always know how to get where they want. The women who work in Ladies’ Frocks at F.G. Goode’s Department Store may not get a fairy-tale happily-ever-after, but they remind us that—even in the real world—hope is not always misplaced. Full disclosure: I am usually wary of “happy” books, firmly believing that a pessimist is actually a realist who is occasionally pleasantly surprised. But it turns out that some of my favorites of the last year and half have been exactly that. And The Women in Black is so simply perfect that I doubt I’ll read anything better all year ... but then you never know. —Liz (from the Phinney Books newsletter)
Old Book of the Week
Kingdoms of Elfin
by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Imagine reading a New Yorker magazine in the early 1970s and, instead of finding in it a short story about tony suburbanites drinking Scotch, encountering one about fairies. Yes, the traditional kind, with wings and magic wands. What, you think, did I pick up a copy of Highlights by mistake? No mistake. Warner's stories about the courts of fairy royalty are every bit as attuned to social hierarchies as those by Updike or Cheever. More so, in fact, as her ageless characters are capable of carrying a grudge for centuries—slight them at your peril. The cold, amoral, alien intelligence they possess is like nothing else in fiction, fantastical or realistic. This 1977 collection is a work of unique literary genius. —James
New Book of the Week
The King at the Edge of the World
by Arthur Phillips
If you pick up this book without having read Arthur Phillips before, you probably won't realize that he has a reputation for writing high-concept modern novels wrapped in layers of metafictional conceit. Like all his work, The King at the Edge of the World is sharp and brilliantly observed, but this is a historical novel, set in Great Britain during the tense period when old Queen Elizabeth is dying and the Scottish King James—clandestine Catholic or staunch Protestant?—is either the realm's savior or its greatest threat. The nation's secret service must send in a spy to try to plumb the new ruler's conscience and recruits a humble physician, the castoff relic of an Ottoman diplomatic delegation, to their cause. The intrigue and period detail are so good that it might not be until you've closed the book that you start thinking about contemporary parallels and ironies. An atmosphere of paranoia about politics, religious fanaticism, and terroristic violence? A world in which the most rational and secular pragmatist is a Muslim? Plenty of layers to peel back after all. —James
New Book of the Week/ Kids' Book of the Week
The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories
by Emily Winfield Martin
Many books are bad (I can admit that), some books are good, and a few books are great. Even fewer are great at being more than one kind of book at the same time. Oregon's Emily Winfield Martin has long been one of my favorite children's book artists, but she's reached new heights with this, her most recent publication. Imaginaries collects an array (a sequence?) of her evocative, inimitable illustrations, each accompanied by a caption that will delight and perhaps confound kids of all ages, from toddlers to tweens. As a readaloud, this is a neverending story that allows a child's imagination unfettered rein. But adults too, at least those of a creative bent, will be inspired just as much. Is it a picture book? Art book? Guide for seekers of truth and beauty? Imaginaries says yes to all those questions, and to many more. —James
New Book of the Week
Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
Emira (aimless, 25 years old, and black) babysits for Alix (older, wealthier, and white). One night while in a grocery store with Briar, Alix's daughter, Emira is accused by a customer and a security guard of kidnapping the little girl. Things get heated and a third party tapes the interaction, which is eventually defused when Briar's father arrives and explains the situation. Alix feels terrible about the incident and decides it is time to become friends with Emira, regardless of Emira's feelings. This book feels light (I read it in two sittings; thank you, insomnia), but it covers some serious issues, namely racial bias, power dynamics (between boss and employee/mom and caregiver), speaking up in relationships, and even the unspeakable topic of moms who do not enjoy being with their own children. If you're looking to discuss more weighty topics with your friends, this could be a good choice for your book group. —Cindy
New Book of the Week
Such Good Work
by Johannes Lichtman
The publisher calls this "a wisely comic debut novel about a teacher whose efforts to stay sober land him in Sweden, where the refugee crisis forces a very different kind of reckoning." I went to graduate school with Johannes, which makes his descriptions of MFA life in Wilmington, North Carolina especially poignant and personal. I went to Lula's! I know the bike ride to the ocean! I also lived near Front Street! But the story of recovery, the wish to make meaning out of the mess of our lives, feels resonant in a different, deeper, more personal way. I'm so proud to have called Johannes a classmate and so impressed by the power of his first novel. —Erica
New Book of the Week
Judenstaat: The Novel of a Jewish State in Germany
by Simone Zelitch
What if, after the war, a Jewish homeland had been created not in Palestine, but right in the heart of Europe? Simone Zelitch posits the notion of such a state lying in what our world knew as East Germany, uneasily balanced between the Soviet and American spheres of influence as well as between religion and secularism. The provocative concept is what led me to pick the novel up, but it was the plot that kept me going: a young documentarian is tasked to create a film in celebration of the nation's 40th anniversary, but instead becomes embroiled in the mystery of her "Saxon" husband's politically-motivated murder. Blending the atmosphere of Alan Furst's espionage novels with the creative alternate history of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Judenstaat will appeal to a varied audience. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
Simone Zelitch's new paperback Judenstaat reminded me immediately of this Hugo Award-winning novel from 2007, in which Michael Chabon speculates about a Jewish homeland in, of all places, Alaska. The world-building here is more florid and the language more lyrical, but the two books share a noir-ish sensibility, leading their readers down a trail of clues toward the resolution of a crime. Chabon's book serves as kaleidoscopic fantasia, while Zelitch's functions as a more direct allegory for Israeli-Palestinian relations. Their conceits are related, but they're quite different books, both worthy of a spot in your to-be-read pile. —James
New Book of the Week
Wilmington's Lie
by David Zucchino
The hit new TV series Watchmen, adapted from Alan Moore's comic of the same name, opened its first season with dramatic scenes of widespread white-on-black violence in 1920s Tulsa, Oklahoma that were so shocking many viewers couldn't believe they were drawn from history. The massacre was all too real, as was an earlier series of events in North Carolina that is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino's most recent book. In the 1890s, Wilmington was the state's largest city, home to a thriving black population whose members owned many of the community's businesses and held a number of political offices. All this effort at post-Civil War Reconstruction was torn down in 1898 after what was sometimes referred to (when discussed at all) as a "race riot." In fact, it was an intentionally orchestrated coup, one of the only occasions in American history when a duly elected government was overthrown by violence. The story of how its perpetrators seized control of the state legislature and destroyed the city is essential, jaw-dropping reading. Like David Grann in his Killers of the Flower Moon, Zucchino performs an invaluable service in uncovering history that's too long been suppressed. Unputdownable. —James
New Book of the Week
The Revisionaries
by A.R. Moxon
The first week of the new year seems like a good time to run a resolution rather than a review. I almost always talk in this space about known quantities, books I've read and recommend, but now and again it's nice to consider a book the way most of my customers do, as a bright spot on the horizon that I'm eager to approach. The Revisionaries, A.R. Moxon's debut novel, is a fine fat size and looks like a barrel of fun. It's been praised by everyone from language maven Benjamin Dreyer to comedian Patton Oswalt to fantasist par excellence Kelly Link, and it's been compared to the work of Michael Chabon, Jeff VanderMeer, Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others. It's published by Melville House, the same crew that has also brought out recent favorites of mine that include Martin Seay's The Mirror Thief and Howard Rodman's The Great Eastern, so its bona fides are more than solid. I can't wait to get stuck in. —James
Old Book of the Week
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute
by Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop
In 1982 Julio Cortázar and his wife Carol Dunlop embarked on an expedition. After considerable planning, preparation of provisions, and the painstaking packing of their red VW camper van, they left Paris on L'autoroute du Sud heading for Marseille. What for most would be an eight-hour drive took them just over a month. During that time they never once left the highway: each day they broke for lunch at the first rest stop they encountered, fastidiously documented the flora, fauna, and human activity they discovered there, and then continued to the next, where they dined and repeated their pseudo-scientific procedures before calling it a night. Inch by inch (at "camel speed") they made their way toward the Mediterranean coast, exploring with mock gravity their responses to the landscape (what little could be seen of it from the verges of the road), to their art (practiced daily on portable typewriters), and to each other. The diary they left of this journey is charming, ridiculous, and more substantive than anyone has a right to expect. The pen-and-ink illustrations of their campsites, done by Dunlop's son (then a teenager), accentuate the fanciful aspects of the project, but it's their own photography that actually connects to the text. Philosophical discursions are often undercut by intentionally banal shots of open asphalt and souvenir stands, and seemingly insignificant vacation snaps are frequently elevated by apposite captioning. It's as a portrait of a partnership that the imagery is most valuable, though. Two pictures by themselves, the first of the famously tall Cortázar looming over the roof of the van and the second of the petite Dunlop standing on the bumper, bring the couple to life in a way that prose alone never could, and there are dozens more like them in Autonauts. They form a candid, permanent record of a few fleeting weeks when two people tried to slow the calendar down. Within months after the journey ended, Dunlop had succumbed to illness and died at the age of 36. Cortázar had time to eulogize her in a final chapter, written before the book was published in 1983. It was the final work he produced before he too died the following year. —James
New Book of the Week
Marley
by Jon Clinch
Charles Dickens was in a rush when he penned his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, anxious over his literary reputation and money woes, so he might be forgiven for failing to fill in the background of Ebenezer Scrooge’s expired partner, Jacob Marley. Author Clinch—who so memorably fleshed out the life story of Huckleberry Finn’s dissolute dad in 2007’s Finn—has here taken advantage of that lost opportunity to augment Marley’s history in satisfying but often shocking detail. He traces the character’s adolescent introduction to Scrooge, and shows how the entrepreneurial Marley spent the rest of his life manipulating his accountant colleague. He examines Marley’s role in trans-Atlantic slave trading, and how that enterprise both sharpened Scrooge’s skills at fiddling the books and cost him a happy marriage. And he manages to turn Marley—corrupt, merciless, and finally diseased—into a surrogate for rapacious capitalism who, despite it all, isn’t completely bereft of human emotion. This Christmas season, eschew another re-reading of Dickens’ Carol and chain yourself for a time to Marley, instead. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
One Long River of Song
by Brian Doyle
One Long River of Song is a career-spanning retrospective of the work of legendary Northwest writer Brian Doyle; if you've read him before you'll already be running for the door to add it to your collection, and if you haven't you should run even faster. This is the perfect introduction to an inimitable artist whose writing continues to spread joy and wonder long after his untimely 2017 death. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
The Mouse and His Child
by Russell Hoban
The Mouse and His Child tells of a father and son, wind-up mice purchased as a present and later discarded when they wear out. Battered and broken, they’re rescued and partially repaired by a tramp, who sets them wandering in search of a home. Danger finds them in the form of a malicious rat and battling shrews, they find philosophy in the form of a scholarly turtle at the bottom of a pond, and thanks to their persistence, the plot eventually finds them quietly triumphant, with a new family and a place of their own to celebrate the winter season. You’ll normally see this book shelved in a section for middle-grade readers, but it has all the depth and nuance of adult literature. It’s exciting and eventful even while it occasionally touches on dark, melancholy themes—desperate parental love, war, existential angst, and poverty among them. The book begins and ends at Christmastime, and it’s filled with a pure hopefulness that’s not at all maudlin, so I always think of it in December and have ever since I first read it more than thirty years ago. —James
New Book of the Week
The Heavens
by Sandra Newman
For whatever reason (having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that publishing is dominated by intellectually aspirant professionals who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn), the New York novel is a fixture of every publishing season. Some people can’t get enough of them, some find them insufferable, and never the twain shall meet. Until now. In The Heavens, Sandra Newman has finally written one that will satisfy both camps. The meet-cute opening that takes place on an apartment rooftop is quintessentially I❤NY, but brown-skinned Ben and Kate aren’t typical WASPy protagonists, and alert readers will notice that the romantic metropolis they occupy isn’t exactly the one we know and love (or loathe). And then Ben learns about Kate’s recurring dream, in which she’s an Elizabethan noblewoman caught up in a tortuous relationship with a certain obscure playwright. As her nocturnal life grows more and more vivid, the familiar becomes strange and the couple’s grip on daily life weakens. Is Kate going mad, or can her dream actually be altering reality? Beneath its glittering surface, The Heavens asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it. —James
New Book of the Week
The Best Bad Things
by Katrina Carrasco
Nearby Port Townsend, Washington is now a decorous Victorian-era tourist destination, but thanks to its position along coastal trade routes, it was poised in territorial days to become the dominant city in the Northwest. Carrasco's debut novel depicts the place as the bustling boomtown it was, dwelling on the seedier sensory details of the 19th century and braiding skulduggery, sensuality, and violence into a deliciously convoluted tale. The starring role is played by Alma, a badass private investigator who enjoys trading petticoats for twill trousers and trading fisticuffs with friend and foe alike. She's a highly sexed, highly charged character who nearly vibrates off the page with energy; many readers will find her incredibly compelling, though she may not be your grandmother's cup of tea. Definitely your great-great-grandmother's, if she was a glamorous, pugilistic, opium-smoking, Victorian brothel keeper. —James
New Book of the Week
The Man Who Saw Everything
by Deborah Levy
If you like fiction that leads you to unstable ground, you've come to the right place. Levy's latest Booker Prize-listed novel centers on Saul Adler, a charismatic Londoner who travels to East Berlin in the days shortly before the fall of the iron Curtain, ostensibly to do some historical research, but mostly so he can pick up a new sexual partner (or two) in the wake of a breakup back home. In everything except appearance—he's described as having rock-star good looks—Saul is an unlikable figure, superficial and solipsistic, though he does have an interesting, uncanny sense for how the post-Communist political scene is going to develop. It's after his return to England and a flash jump to 2016 that the narrative really takes off, as boundaries blur between East and West, past and present, reality and dream. There's much more to Saul, and to this novel, than a first glance reveals. —James
Kids' Book of the Week
Half-Witch
by John Schoffstall
When 14-year-old Lizbet's father, a well-meaning but fraudulent trickster, is thrown in jail for casting a spell gone wrong, she must embark on a dangerous quest into the unknown world on the other side of the cloud-scraping Montagnes du Monde. There she will find the book that can free him, if it exists, and along the way she will acquire a disgruntled sidekick, a junior witch named Strix. Together they will outwit crude and dangerous human foes, confront the Pope of Storms, and get swept up in a whimsical war between heaven and hell. As a portrait of unlikely friendship between two teen girls, the magical Half-Witch exceeds most kitchen-sink realist fiction; as an example of creative world-building it outshines the collective imaginings in a whole shelf of typical fantasy novels. Suited for precocious middle-grade readers, YA fans, and even fairly jaded grownups, this is one of my favorite books of the year in any category. (ages 12 and up, officially, but see above) —James
New Book of the Week
Palimpsests
by Aleksandra Lun
Maybe it's pretentious to call this a jeu d'esprit, but anyone who thinks so probably wouldn't like this book anyway. Aleksandra Lun is a (deep breath) Polish-born, Spanish-educated, first-time novelist and resident of Belgium who translates from English, French, Italian, Catalan, and Romanian, among other languages, into her mother tongue. That she's turned those experiences into a novel about a writer struggling to tell stories in an unfamiliar tongue isn't a surprise; that the novel is short and sweet (less than 100 pages long) and broadly comic (set in an absurd insane asylum regularly visited by the likes of Nabokov, Beckett, Conrad, Hemingway, and a group of angry Antarctic authors) is an unexpected delight. Being smart doesn't mean you can't be silly. —James
New Book of the Week
Chances Are...
by Richard Russo
Three longtime friends, all graduates of a Connecticut liberal-arts college and now 66 years old, reunite for a final hurrah on Martha’s Vineyard. One is a successful but insecure real-estate agent with a tyrannical father; another is the soul-searching editor of a small religious press; while the third is a still-hard-living rocker. Nostalgia connects these mismatched gents, but so do memories of a fellow student with whom they were all once enamored: well-off wild child Jacy Calloway, who vanished during this foursome’s Memorial Day visit to the Vineyard back in 1971. While that cold-case mystery consumes much of the novel’s latter half, it’s Russo’s exploration of masculinity, male bonding, and the iridescence of unrequited love that really merits applause. His delving here into the blind alleys of male candor and emotions is most satisfying. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
Stay and Fight
by Madeline ffitch
Stay and Fight follows a rotating cast of narrators making do on a plot of land in Appalachia. Although set in the present, the homesteading project they tackle, which includes a lot of acorns and snakes but no running water, would be perfectly recognizable by Laura Ingalls Wilder. What she would make of the non-traditional family they create, or of ffitch's 21st-century feminist sensibility, is another matter. The characters (one of whom is a Seattle expatriate) are fascinating if not exactly likable, and their choice to make their land and lives their own way, instead of abandoning the project, ultimately makes this a story of redemption in a sometimes bleak environment. —Erica
New Book of the Week
Thunder and Light
by Marie-Claire Blais
In 1995, Marie-Claire Blais, a Quebecoise writer living in Florida, published the first in what would become a ten-book series of novels, known in French as the Soifs cycle (in English, Thirstings), a project she completed only last year. They're now being introduced belatedly to American readers, with two volumes, These Festive Nights and Thunder and Light, available so far. Despite their tropical, Key West-like island setting, these novels are anything but breezy vacation fiction. They depict a social scene of Proustian complexity, examining a vast multiracial community of wealthy expats and impoverished locals, and they're narrated in a drifting, circuitous style that, to be frank, many will find dense to the point of impenetrability. Not me, though. I was fascinated by their roving consciousness, reminiscent of brilliancies from Virginia Woolf and Joseph McElroy. If Blais weren't Canadian, if she didn't write in French, if she weren't a woman, these books would already have earned her the widespread acclaim she deserves. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Plover
by Brian Doyle
Are you the type to fall in love at first sight? I’m not, but I do it sometimes anyway. Mostly with books. What makes it happen? Well, shapely plots and well-fleshed characters can draw me in slowly, but it’s playful, expressive language that forges an instant connection. Like when I picked up a copy of Brian Doyle’s The Plover years ago. I started leafing through it to see what it was about, read the first two paragraphs, and then stopped. Not to put it back, but to go find everything else I could that he had written. That brief exposure alone was enough to tell me that he and I were going to be spending an awful lot of time together. I brought home my pile of books, ran through the rest of The Plover, and kept going with the rest of his work. The spark we had most definitely turned into a flame. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Hunters
by James Salter
The young aviation and military history buff who lives in my house has been giving me regular updates about the restoration of the latest acquisition made by the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum up in Everett: a vintage German Me-262 fighter captured by US forces at the end of WWII. This can't help but remind me of one of the great novels of the air, The Hunters by James Salter. Unlike much writing about flight, which focuses on its liberating aspects, The Hunters emphasizes the dangers of the sky. Salter draws heavily on actual experience as a combat pilot during the Korean War, and his depiction of aerial jousting between F-86s and Soviet MiGs is as vivid and accurate as anything you’ll ever read, fictional or not. The book is most memorable, though, as a character study. The threats Salter’s heroes face don’t come only from enemy pilots, but from a self-imposed culture of competition and machismo, patriotism and pride.—James
Kids' Book of the Week
The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming
by J. Anderson Coats
I can't say enough about this book, which is based on the real history of the Mercer Girls, who in the 1860s sailed from the East Coast around the horn to a bustling logging town on Puget Sound. The fictional Jane Deming is an eleven-year-old girl living with her young stepmother and little brother, all of whom are grappling with the Civil War death of the family patriarch. Eager to seek opportunity elsewhere, they head west with stars in their eyes. Initially disillusioned by the muddy streets and rough manners of frontier Seattle, Jane’s self-reliance comes to the fore and she eventually falls in love with her new home. Many Reflections more than withstands comparison with the classic Little House on the Prairie, and the local setting—at one point Jane commutes to school by canoe across Lake Washington—makes it even more special. (ages 8 to 14) —James
Kids' Book of the Week
Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea
by Ben Clanton
Narwhal and his (literally) spineless buddy Jelly are the funniest friends since Elephant and Piggie, George and Martha, Frog and Toad. Their fintastic adventures, told in entry-level graphic novel form, continue through four volumes, but there's no better place to start than with the initial book in the series. It's of course available all by itself, but young readers will love it even more when it's accompanied by plush 3-D incarnations of the protagonists. (ages 4 to 9) —James
Kids' Book of the Week
Zoey & Sassafras #7: Grumplets and Pests
by Asia Citro
The slim volumes in the Zoey & Sassafras series have much more in them than you'd expect—mystery, fantasy, and actual science. In each book, Zoey and her feline sidekick come to the rescue of a new magical creature by using a combination of gumption and smarts, modeling the research and study practices scientists use in the real world. But don't think too much about the educational component, because kids notice only the fun—they're feeding their minds nutrition while they think they're eating potato chips. In the latest installment, Zoey and Sassafras are excited that summer has begun, but the good times aren't rolling, as everyone around them seems to be afflicted by the same bad mood. It's up to our sensible heroes to make sense of things and save the season. It may not be easy, but they haven't failed yet. (ages 6 to 10) —James
Old Book of the Week
The Car Thief
by Theodore Weesner
First published in 1972, The Car Thief was greeted by acclaim from a diverse range of reviewers, including postmodern maximalist Joseph McElroy and contemporary literary gothicist Joyce Carol Oates. All of them, whatever their usual tastes, found something in it as compelling as a thriller, and despite the book's understated style, I discovered exactly the same thing. The book follows alienated teenager Alex Housman as he drifts from one dicey situation into another, only occasionally monitored by those whose care he's in, among them impersonal institutional officers and his affectionate but alcoholic single father. It's fascinating to observe Alex's struggle to access and understand his own motivations, which reminded me of the existential classics of the mid-twentieth century, as if Camus's The Stranger had been rewritten to take place in Flint, Michigan. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Corner That Held Them
by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Who knew that NunLit was a genre with a passionately devoted following? Not me, until I read this unique story about a medieval convent, considered one of its classics. Townsend writes brilliantly about the momentous and mundane with the period detail typical of historical fiction, but without the novelistic reins of character hierarchy or narrative arc to steer your mind in a particular direction. When I started to contemplate (quite nunnishly) her authorial choice, I had an epiphany! She recreates for the reader the same sense of distance with which the nuns experienced life! The sisters are concerned with worldly things but they take the eternally long view: events ebb and flow and everybody and everything are significant and inconsequential at the same time. My favorite of the nuns, Dame Isabel, summed up what I think is the crux of the book: “The world was deeply interesting and a convent was the ideal place in which to meditate on the world. She was twenty-three. If she should live to forty, to sixty, her love of thinking would not be satiated.” NunLit has a new convert! (Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.) —Liz (from the Phinney Books newsletter)
Kids' Book of the Week
Warhead: The True Story of One Teen Who Almost Saved the World
by Jeff Henigson
After being diagnosed with brain cancer as a teen, Seattle writer Jeff Henigson made an unconventional Starlight Children’s Foundation wish. He wanted to (and did) travel to Moscow to talk with Gorbachev about nuclear disarmament. But this memoir is less about cancer and the Cold War than it is about surviving high school and searching for love, affection, and praise from a formal, distant father. As a fiction reader, this is my favorite type of nonfiction: it reads like a novel. A heart-wrenching yet humorous and inspirational page-turner. (ages 12 and up) —Cindy
New Book of the Week
The Line Becomes a River
by Francisco Cantú
If you're hoping for better outcomes for Latinx people crossing the border, joining Customs & Border Patrol as an officer doesn't make sense as the way to go. But that's what Cantú did, and there's no doubt that he offered the people he picked up at the border a better experience than some of his colleagues. That he left and wrote a book about his experiences and the corruption of the patrol is redeeming, the anecdotes harrowing, and the need for action—by all of us—urgent. Cantú dedicates the book to "All those who risk their souls to traverse or patrol an unnatural divide." —Erica
New Book of the Week
Ducks, Newburyport
by Lucy Ellmann
No getting around it, this sounds like a tough sell: 1000 pages of unbroken thought, not a stream of consciousness but a torrential river scouring a mental landscape. But that's how you produce something as deep and broad and beautiful and American as the Grand Canyon. Because this torrent spills from the mind of one ordinary woman (an Ohioan, a wife, a mom, a baker of pies), because she's hilarious, because her doubts and deprecations, her fondnesses and fears, are so mundane and relatable, because she exists as one of the truest-to-life fictional characters you could ever hope to meet, this book probably won't get the credit it deserves, credit for originality, insight, and literary excellence. Which is a shame, because Ducks, Newburyport is a domestic national epic to set beside Moby-Dick, a corrosive comic cultural indictment to compare with William Gaddis's National Book Award-winning J R. Read it and weep from laughter and righteous anger. —James
New Book of the Week
The Testaments
by Margaret Atwood
Unlike most new releases, this isn't one we independent booksellers had the opportunity to read ahead of publication. It's embargoed, as we like to say. Other than the people at the publishing company, the only ones who were allowed to see copies were the Booker Prize judges, and they thought highly enough of it to put it on this year's shortlist, confirming our suspicions that this sequel to The Handmaid's Tale will be one of the most relevant and important books of the year. —James
New Book of the Week
The Red Thread: 20 Years of NYRB Classics
edited by Edwin Frank
I'd never want to restrict myself to reading books from only one publishing imprint, but should some ultra-powerful, literary-minded aliens descend on earth and force me to choose, I'm going with NYRB Classics. Since their inception they've been an inexhaustible source for amazing writing, resuscitating out-of-print works from every era and from almost everywhere around the world. To celebrate their 20th anniversary (and their 500th title), NYRB has collected excerpts from the best of the best in the series, including one suggested by yours truly. Am I excited about this anthology? I'll play it cool and understate drastically—this is one of the books I'm most looking forward to in 2019. In an effort to make you as enthusiastic as I am, Madison Books is making a special offer: Every prepaid preorder we get for The Red Thread in advance of its 9/24 release date will be discounted 20%. Order early and often! —James
New Book of the Week
Terrarium: New and Selected Stories
by Valerie Trueblood
What can I say about the stories in this book? They're "about" ordinary people experiencing ordinary joys and sorrows—marriage, divorce, birth, death—but it's not what they're about that makes them so good. I think it's the exquisite care they take in the telling, attentive to the details of life and language, never ostentatious but always on point. Alice Munro won her Nobel Prize for a career built on exactly the same foundation, and that's not hyperbole. Stockholm may not know Trueblood's name yet, but Seattle should. —James
New Book of the Week
Orange World and Other Stories
by Karen Russell
Orange World is Russell's newest collection of stories. Like her other two brilliant collections, it falls solidly into the genre of magical realism, imagining tornado auctions and partnerships separated by thousands of years. In grappling with our sense of reality, though, Russell makes sharp commentary on the future of our planet, the biases we can choose to leave in the past, and the urgent choices we must make right now. —Erica
Old Book of the Week
The Monkey's Wedding: And Other Stories
by Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken started publishing in 1955 and continued as a working writer until her death in 2004, producing over one hundred novels for children and adults along with copious shorter works that appeared in slicks and pulps of both general and genre interest, even employing pseudonyms on occasion. She was part of a story‐telling tradition that predates MFA programs and quiet epiphanies, and she concerned herself with a snappier brand of narrative entertainment. Her fiction draws on folk and fairy tale traditions but adds a strong dash of irony to freshen the taste, very much like the work of John Collier. In the opening story, a sailor brings home a mermaid in a jar as a gift to his girlfriend, only to find that his exotic treasure is a mere inconvenience: “[Y]ou know I can’t stand things in captivity, I’d never have a canary or a goldfish.” Perhaps the finest stories here are those that feature young couples in conflict/love with each other, including “Red‐Hot Favorite” and “Octopi in the Sky.” They’re exceedingly witty and imaginative, and so lively I couldn’t believe how economical they are. It’s Aiken’s remarkable facility for dialogue that allows her to draw rounded characters with minimal strokes of her brush. William Powell and Myrna Loy needed only ninety minutes to sparkle in The Thin Man, and the good‐natured, prevaricating, meet‐cute stars of “Spur of the Moment” require just twelve pages to showcase their equally impressive bantering skills. —James
New Book of the Week
The Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
You probably don't need me to introduce you to Colson Whitehead (he was on the cover of Time magazine, for gosh sakes) but I'd be remiss if I didn't add to the chorus of praise for his most recent novel. It's that good, that essential. Nickel Boys is set in a barely-fictional Southern reform school during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, and it's a story you slip easily into via the relatable character of Elwood Curtis, a boy with a future as promising as young America itself. Seeing his progress thwarted by a false accusation of car theft and witnessing the cruelties worked on him by an abominably racist institution is incredibly emotional without for one moment seeming overdramatized. This is a potent indictment of our benighted past that just as powerfully confronts our racist present. —James
New Book of the Week
History: A Mess
by Sigrun Palsdottir (translated by Lytton Smith)
To anyone interested in intellectual mystery, the premise is irresistible: a young academic finds evidence in a 17th-century manuscript that will overturn her entire field of study, but as her star rises and her thesis is nearly complete, she discovers it's all based on a misunderstanding. Back home to Iceland from England she goes, frantic to hide her mistake, save her career, and avoid disappointing her friends and family. I expected this to be a broad, juicy social comedy, but was intrigued to find instead a darkly witty investigation of a fragmenting personality. —James
New Book of the Week
The Ghosts of Eden Park
by Karen Abbott
Avarice, lust, revenge, and courtroom theatrics all combine in Abbott’s spirited account of George Remus, a German immigrant who became one of the most successful—and eccentric—criminal celebrities during America’s Prohibition era of the 1920s. A pharmacist turned lawyer turned “King of the Bootleggers,” Remus (a lifelong teetotaler) exploited loopholes in the 1919 Volstead Act to purchase Midwestern distilleries and peddle illegal liquor widely, earning a fortune that he spent on bribes to politicians and Prohibition agents, a gaudy mansion in Cincinnati, and his second wife, Imogene. Remus was finally imprisoned, though, by Mabel Walker Willebrandt, a U.S. assistant attorney general aggressively prosecuting Volstead Act violations. While locked up, Remus learned that Imogene and Willebrandt’s ace investigator, Franklin Dodge, had begun an affair and were robbing him blind—betrayals that led Remus to later murder his spouse, and then defend himself in a high-profile court case questioning his own sanity. A deeply researched work, dramatically presented. —Jeff
New Book of the Week
Lady in the Lake
by Laura Lippman
Edgar Award winner Lippman brings to life 1960s-era Baltimore, and all of the corrosive inequities of that time, in this richly crafted portrayal of Madeline Schwartz, a white, late-30s Jewish housewife who leaves her small family in search of individual identity, only to take up with an African-American cop and become involved in multiple murders. After parlaying her luck at finding the corpse of a missing schoolgirl into an editorial assistant’s job at the local afternoon newspaper, Maddie determines to win a reporter’s post there by investigating the largely ignored death of cocktail waitress Cleo Sherwood, whose body was dumped in a city park lake. Lippman alternates Maddie’s first-person self-discovery story with vivid chapters told from the viewpoints of others, including Cleo’s “ghost.” A sophisticated crime novel that’s as much about female ambition, racism, and newspaper culture as it is about criminality. —Jeff
Old Book of the Week
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
by Barbara Comyns
Like Downton Abbey, this novel is a rich ensemble piece, taking a democratic interest in everyone from the least respected servant to the lord of the manor, but it’s far stranger and funnier than the highly groomed and polished TV series. The Willoweed estate is a decaying wreck ruled by an ancient, tyrannous matriarch, and the entire village is rife with toadying, backstabbing, infidelity, and worse. The book opens with a flood—“The ducks swam through the drawing room windows”—and the crises mount from there. Comyns doesn’t set out to shock, though. She’s so clear in her language and frank about confronting the terrible things that can happen in life (especially when a ridiculous monster like Grandmother Willoweed is in charge) that a sense of absurdity, not horror, wins the day. Macabre it may be, but in a friendly way, like the Addams Family or a fairy tale. —James
Audiobook of the Week
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
I'm not sure if Ocean Vuong's first novel is more intense on the page or in your ear. I took it in the latter way, read in Vuong's own soft, quavering, and forceful voice, which he keeps at such a pitch of high, vulnerable emotion that even his reading of the copyright notice at the end could bring you to tears. But so could any note of his character's story, written as a letter to his immigrant mother in a language she could never read, recounting the losses and fleeting joys (see the title) of their lives with an almost unbearably tender exactness for physical details—the toxins of nail salons, the brush of a farmer's son's teen mustache as they embrace in the barn—and the metaphors they spawn. The traditional immigrant's story charts a growing assimilation in the new culture and estrangement from the old; Vuong's follows no such arc but hovers in the anguish of the middle, sung like a bluesy, bitter lullaby, one of those in which down comes baby, cradle and all. (Order the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm) —Tom (via the Phinney Books newsletter)
New/Old Book of the Week
Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury
by Sigrid Nunez
It was just over twenty years ago that Sigrid Nunez first published this small treasure of a book about the smallest member of a storied literary household. For a few years in the 1930s, the Bloomsbury home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf contained, along with a legendary collection of itinerant writers and artists of genius, a resident marmoset, rescued from imprisonment in a shop window and lovingly nursed back to health. For several seasons, she was a constant companion and the toast of London society, sharing all her family's joys and griefs. By describing the time and place through Mitz's wide animal eyes, Nunez humanizes the Woolfs like nothing else I've ever read. Mitz is a most welcome re-release, a delight for all readers, regardless of how many pages of Mrs. Dalloway they have or haven't turned. —James
New Book of the Week
Hollow Kingdom
by Kira Jane Buxton
Prepare yourself for a wild ride! Told (mostly) from the point of view of a domesticated crow, this is the funny-as-heck, yet also thought-provoking, story of how animals fare during a zombie apocalypse. S.T. is living in Seattle with his human friend, Big Jim, and Big Jim’s hound, Dennis. They watch a lot of bad TV together and enjoy a lot of bad food, including S.T.’s favorite, Cheetos. Then the zombification begins—Big Jim's eyeball falls out and he murderously turns on his corvid companion. S.T. sensibly decides it's time to venture out with Dennis in search of answers. Along with an assortment of other animals both domesticated and wild, they use cunning, teamwork, diligence, and their own super-cool communication methods to navigate their new, post-human world. I laughed, I cried, I cheered. This is one you don’t want to miss. You’ll never look at a crow the same way again! —Cindy
New Book of the Week
Original Prin
by Randy Boyagoda
Princely Umbiligoda appears to have it all—a great job as the leading expert on marine imagery in Canadian literature; a loving family consisting of a wife and four Disney-obsessed daughters; and a strong spiritual connection to his Catholic faith. But underneath there's trouble. Trouble at home, trouble at work, trouble in the newspapers, and trouble with his prostate, troubles that lead to troubling doubts about God. And the disturbing reappearance of an old girlfriend. And a career change to . . . suicide bomber? Did I mention this is a comedy? Well, it is, a great comedy with a brisk pace and a delightfully hapless protagonist the likes of whom I've never met before. Original Prin left me eager to read many more of his exploits. Secondary Prin? Tertiary Prin? Bring 'em on. —James
New Book of the Week
The Salt Path
by Raynor Winn
A bad investment causes fifty-year-old Raynor Winn and her husband Moth to lose their family farm and livelihood. Around the same time, Moth is diagnosed with a terminal degenerative illness that leaves him depressed and in constant pain. Homeless and hopeless, the couple decides to embark on the 630-mile South West Coast Path along the English coast with no preparations and hardly any gear besides a cheap tent and thin sleeping bags. The long walk tests everything they have, including their 32-year relationship, but ultimately changes their lives in ways they never could have expected when they took that first step. Along the way, strangers they meet demonstrate the best and worst qualities in humanity. This uplifting memoir is a great summer read for anyone dreaming of far-off travel adventures. —Haley (via the Phinney Books newsletter)
New Book of the Week
The Road to Grantchester
By James Runcie
Now, during PBS-TV’s latest run of the British mystery series Grantchester, is an ideal time to dive into this prequel novel, which recalls the circuitous path protagonist Sidney Chambers took from being a Cambridge classics student to becoming an Anglican vicar-cum-sleuth. As World War II consumes Europe, Chambers and his irrepressible friend Robert Kendall join the Scots Guards and are sent to the Italian front, where their ability to maintain optimism amid unrelenting carnage is sorely tested. Crucial to Chambers’ efforts is “Rev Nev” Finnie, an Episcopal chaplain with whom he engages in philosophical discussions—talks that prepare him for Kendall’s subsequent battlefield death and his own return home. Back in England, Chambers finds himself guilt-ridden for having survived, and at a loss to deal with Kendall’s coquettish younger sister, Amanda. Others expect Chambers to become a teacher or diplomat, but his search for peace leads him instead into the priesthood. There’s little crime-solving here, but author Runcie excels at evoking the climate of warfare, and his investigations of the human mind and heart will feel familiar to any Grantchester fan. —Jeff
Kids' Book of the Week
The Poison Jungle
by Tui Sutherland
What is probably the best-selling series for young readers that we carry at Madison Books has reached lucky number 13. What more do you need to know? About the only thing we can think to add is a reminder that Tui Sutherland will be a headlining author at the Seattle Children's Book Festival at the end of September. —James
New Book of the Week
Edgar: An Autobiography
by Edgar Martínez
As I'm putting Edgar's book into this week's newsletter, I'm suddenly aware that I may have gone a bit heavy on baseball content over the past few weeks. In my defense, 1) it's summer, so when else am I going to talk about these books?, and 2) this is the week that the greatest DH in history finally made it into the Hall of Fame. There's no better time to celebrate our city's humblest sports superstar. Co-written with longtime Seattle sports columnist Larry Stone, with a foreword by Ken Griffey, Jr., this is the perfect gift for the fan in your life, and it's the perfect excuse for me to watch a replay of The Double for the thousandth time. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Transylvanian Trilogy
by Miklós Bánffy
Though written in the 1930s, the trilogy is both in style and substance the last of the great 19th-century novels, grand and stately and ambitious and utterly immersive. The characters, including the upright Count Abady, the captivating Adrienne with her “flame-colored shift,” and the doomed artist Laszlo, are playthings of their omniscient author but also fully dimensional, and the set pieces they occupy will not soon be forgotten by anyone with the leisure to read them. Hunting parties, parliamentary debates, duels, intrigues, stolen moments of romance, midnight sledge rides through the snow … it’s positively sumptuous. The lush surface enraptures, but there’s also an underlying seriousness that appeals, an insistent moral drumbeat that asks What Is the Right Way to Live? There’s simply too much to this epic to do it proper justice here, so I’ll flippantly call it a cross between Gone with the Wind and War and Peace with an added dash of paprika. —James
Old Book of the Week
Human Voices
by Penelope Fitzgerald
Born in England in 1916, Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t begin publishing fiction until she was in her sixties, but still produced nine classic novels along with several works of non-fiction and a pair of story collections. Every one is excellent, but I'm particularly fond of Human Voices, her 1980 novel depicting emotional entanglements on the home front during World War Two. London is beset by bombers, and BBC Radio establishes a shelter for its employees so that they can safely continue the work of “saving Britain from despondency and panic” without ever leaving the office. Did I mention that it’s a co-ed shelter? Romance blooms for some, annoyances build between others, and small moments of human interaction stand out against the larger historical backdrop. It’s a can’t-miss winner to please just about anyone. —James
New Book of the Week
Joe Country
by Mick Herron
In Herron’s succession of clever, modern spy thrillers, London’s Slough House is where British intelligence agents who’ve botched missions or otherwise disgraced themselves are sent to be forgotten. Jackson Lamb, the politically incorrect and flagrantly flatulent head of that department, is supposed to keep his moping band of misfits in line. Yet they still manage to make trouble. Joe Country, the series’ sixth entry, finds Louisa Guy, one of Lamb’s “slow horses,” searching for Lucas Harper, the missing teenage son of her former married lover—a mission that will lead her and her colleagues into a dicey, protracted chase across frigid Welsh countryside, one step ahead of a rogue American spook. Meanwhile, Slough House has a new member: a putative child-porn addict who may hold the key to exposing a German intelligence operation in the UK. Herron’s waggish dialogue, eccentric players, and political insights have earned him a loyal following. —Jeff
Old Book of the Week
The Iconoclast's Journal
by Terry Griggs
Set among the ramshackle boom-and-bust towns of the late nineteenth century, The Iconoclast's Journal kicks off with a literal bolt of lightning. Would-be bridegroom Griffith Smolders is shocked out of his hotel room and onto the road, taking the blast as a portent telling him marriage is not in the cards. In hot pursuit is his former fiancee Avice Drinkwater, bent on punishing Griffith but also reveling in her newfound independence. Separately encountering various con-men, zealots, and other grotesques, the two eventually wash up together on the shores of a new century, caught in the light of a newfangled contraption called a motion picture projector. It’s not all high jinks, though. The linguistic pyrotechnics and unexpected plot twists are the vessel for a complex parable about the difficulty and essential strangeness of romance. By the end the two young lovers know themselves and each other a good bit better than they did at the beginning, but it’s Griggs’s readers who learn the most. —James
Kids’ Book of the Week
A Ticket to the Pennant
by Mark Holtzen
Every true fan knows that the Golden Age of Baseball is whenever you’re nine years old. That’s when you’re mature enough to understand the sport but young enough to love it unconditionally. Every adult should try to watch a game through those eyes at least occasionally. That’s why I, an alleged grownup, am so fond of A Ticket to the Pennant, written by Seattle’s Mark Holtzen. In just 32 pages he tells the tale of Huey, a ’50s kid who wants nothing more than to get into Sicks Stadium and cheer for his hometown Rainiers. All he needs to do to make it through the turnstiles is find his missing ticket. Thus starts a search through the vibrant, diverse neighborhood around the park, a place brought to life by the incredibly accurate nouveau-retro illustrations of John Skewes, creator of Larry Gets Lost. (ages 4 to 9) —James
New Book of the Week
Feast Your Eyes
by Myla Goldberg
Given how much readers loved Bee Season, I'm not sure why more of a fuss isn't being made about this new novel from Myla Goldberg. It's been almost a decade since she's published one, people! Feast Your Eyes is inventively framed as a series of catalogue notes for an exhibition of photography by the controversial (and completely fictional) Lillian Preston. She's sort of an amalgam of real-life figures Vivian Maier and Sally Mann, working as both a surreptitious street artist and a chronicler of intimate domestic life—her frank depictions of her own daughter see her branded as both America's greatest photographer and worst mother. Goldberg's creative architecture alone would make this worth a look, but it's the portrait of Preston and the emotional legacy she leaves behind that truly compel. —James
New Book of the Week
The Need
by Helen Phillips
It's a commonplace (at least with me) to say that sometimes the best way to describe reality is to distort, enhance, or otherwise defamiliarize it through fantasy and speculation. Helen Phillips seems to agree with me, at least to judge by her intense, somewhat surrealistic fiction. The Need, a thriller about the anxieties of parenthood with more useful things to say on the subject than Dr. Spock, has all the claustrophobia and existential dread of Kafka, but considerably more heart. —James
New Book of the Week
Three Summers
by Margarita Liberaki
A classic of European literature unavailable in English for decades, Three Summers is perfectly timeless and perfectly seasonal. Set in the countryside of prewar Greece, it traces the doings and developing identities of a trio of sisters growing into adulthood, each of whom finds a different way to balance her desires for love and freedom. The lush atmosphere of gardens and orchards transports as the best vacation reads do, but the characters, as archetypal in their way as the March girls in Little Women, will make a permanent home in your head. —James
New Book of the Week
Deep River
by Karl Marlantes
It's been nearly a decade since the release of Marlantes's acclaimed Vietnam War novel Matterhorn, and as of this week readers can at last see what he's been working on all these years. Like its predecessor, Deep River is a massive piece of fiction, heavy when you pick it up but growing lighter in your hands the more the pages turn. It will carry you away immediately as it tells of Scandinavian immigrants, driven out of their homeland by violence and oppression, who wash up on American shores and carve out new lives in the logging camps and growing towns of the Pacific Northwest. The historical interest is obvious—these are the people who built the state we live in today and this is how they did it—but the story has immense relevance to the present day. Dealing with radical politics, religious freedom, women's rights, and the idea of America as a refuge, however imperfect, this novel is perhaps more timely than Marlantes expected when he began it. —James
Old Book of the Week
The Dig
by Cynan Jones
Two characters on their own in the rural landscape of Wales, one a violent, lifelong misfit and the other a humble farmer and would-be family man, are drawn unknowingly toward each other by fate in this brief novel. “Fate” in this case is really the guiding intelligence of author Cynan Jones, who has the knack for getting under the skin of a story and imparting truth about the fundamental nature of things. Brutal and tender by turns, The Dig proceeds at an inexorable pace and once begun, all but insists that the reader follow it all the way to the end. —James
Old Book of the Week
Rock 'n' Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League
by Ian Plenderleith
The success of the US Women's National Team in this year's World Cup has me thinking a lot about soccer and remembering a favorite read from a few years back. This is a far more substantive book than you’d expect from something with such a sensationalist title, but then the NASL was a far more substantive operation than history has acknowledged. If it’s remembered at all these days, it’s for garish disco-era uniforms, gimmicky promotions, and overpaid, over-the-hill stars from overseas. All of that is at best only partly true, as author Ian Plenderleith shows. In fact, the NASL was in many ways well ahead of its time, a league run by visionaries who set the fuse for a later explosion of soccer popularity. Anyone with an interest in the sport, but especially fans of the Northwest’s own Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, and Vancouver Whitecaps, will want to read Rock 'n' Roll Soccer to learn how this part of the world caught football fever. —James
New Book of the Week
Late Migrations
by Margaret Renkl
A brief and beautiful debut work, Late Migrations is, like its cover painting, both an assemblage of intricate pieces and a complete artistic whole. Margaret Renkl's discrete memories of her Alabama childhood are interspersed with adult observations about family and the natural world, each chapter perfectly setting off the next and building an intense emotional effect. Modeling the stillness of the life around her, she becomes an ideal observer ("Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world") and her book a perfect restorative. —James
New Book of the Week
The Five
by Hallie Rubenhold
What has long been considered common knowledge about the women murdered in London by Jack the Ripper during the autumn of 1888—that they were all “just prostitutes”—is wrong, according to British historian Rubenhold. In fact, she writes, only one of those five “canonical victims” set out to make her living in the sex trade. The others harbored loftier goals, and even enjoyed respectable lives, before they were brought low by circumstances disastrous to Victorian-age women: divorce, widowhood, homelessness, and alcoholism. Although the Ripper was never identified, he became an infamous figure of enduring mystery; his victims, meanwhile, have always received considerably less attention. Until now. In this impressively researched book, Rubenhold fleshes out the histories of those unfortunates, as she also examines the cultural challenges facing all women of that time. —Jeff
Kids' Book of the Week
Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire
by John August
The scout troop everyone wishes they could be in! Twelve-year-old Arlo has just moved to a new, tiny town near the mystical Long Woods and joins the local Rangers. But these scouts don’t just learn how to tie knots and build fires, they learn to harness the magic of the Long Woods, creating snapfires and thunderclaps, studying NightMares as well as bears. But there is also danger in the parallel world and that danger seems to be focused on Arlo. He and his two new friends, Wu and Indra, find adventures that test their Ranger Vows of loyalty, bravery, kindness, and truth. This is one of the best middle-grade fantasy books out there, smartly written, fun, and a real page-turner. (ages 8 to 12) —Cindy
New Book of the Week
The Night Tiger
by Yangsze Choo
A long, bright summer day might be the best time to crack open this novel of darkness and dreams. Set in colonial Malaysia before the second world war, it follows the eventually intertwining exploits of a houseboy and a dance hall girl, both of whom are drawn into a murderous mystery. It's a lush and steamy tale infused with Asian myth and legend, about which NPR's Nancy Pearl says, "This is the kind of book that when you read it, you really are transported back to that time and place… [Choo has] captured, in a very atmospheric way, the time period and the superstitions. It’s a pretty wonderful book." —James
New Book of the Week
The Darwin Affair
by Tim Mason
What begins as a story about attempted assassination—Queen Victoria is shot at during an 1860 coach ride through London—quickly becomes a knotty but witty mystery involving Charles Darwin’s recently publicized theory of evolution, high-level political conspiracies, and an elusive, diabolically brutal killer. Responsible for defusing these volatile elements is Scotland Yard Inspector Charles Field, the oft-impetuous inspiration for Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket in Bleak House in (as Field is so often reminded). Supported both by his resourceful spouse and by Victoria’s science-minded husband, Prince Albert, Field must confront Karl Marx and other historical luminaries as he struggles to figure out who’s behind efforts to suppress the democratizing potential of Darwin’s postulations. This may be Mason’s first novel, but it bears the polish of greater experience. —Jeff
Kids' Book of the Week
This Was Our Pact
by Ryan Andrews
Everyone always says that the lanterns they set off during the annual Autumn Equinox Festival eventually turn into stars. This year Ben and a group of friends, accompanied by unwanted tag-along Nathaniel, make a pact to follow the lanterns down the river further than anyone has before to find out if it's true. Only Ben and Nathaniel keep their word to "never look back" and together they embark on an enchanting adventure that is both funny and heartwarming. This Was Our Pact is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel for anyone who loves the quiet kind of magic you can typically find only in a Ghibli movie (ages 10 to 14) —Gabi
Old Books of the Week
Wild Life
by Molly Gloss
Sarah Canary
by Karen Joy Fowler
Tom mentioned Molly Gloss in the most recent Phinney Books newsletter, which reminded me of two things. First, that more people should be reading Molly Gloss, and second, that more people should be reading Karen Joy Fowler. I think of these authors together because both have written about the historic Northwest in riveting fashion, treating with special care the lives of women on what we used to call the frontier. They're also both fully cognizant that said frontier was Main Street for some: neither is neglectful of the non-Western populations that also called the place home. These are already sufficient reasons to take an interest in their novels, but what I particularly love about them is that they aren't afraid to heighten the reality that they work with so well. Gloss's book takes the legend of the Sasquatch as seriously as it does the other elements in her story, and as for Fowler's title character … let's just say she may have come to the Washington territory from much, much farther away than you'd expect. Wild Life and Sarah Canary are perfect mixtures of the made-up and the true. —James
New Book of the Week
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell
by Neal Stephenson
The inimitable Neal Stephenson makes a welcome reappearance with Fall, a book that links in certain ways to his earlier Reamde, but stands solidly upright on its own. All his books do, I suppose, massive as they are—this one clocks in at a characteristic 896 pages. But you'd be hard pressed to decide where you'd want to cut, since Stephenson can make you think (and make you laugh) whether he's talking about eating breakfast cereal or about the social ramifications of radical new technologies. This time around he focuses on an insanely rich game designer who becomes the first person to have his entire self uploaded into the cloud, thereby cheating death. As the tagline says, "An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem …" Well, it wouldn't be much fun to read about if it was, now would it? —James
New Book of the Week
Time After Time
by Lisa Grunwald
As a Lisa Grunwald fan, Jeff is very keen on her newest novel, Time After Time, about a relationship between a railroad worker from Queens and a Manhattan socialite of a different social stratum and generation. Joe Reynolds and Nora Lansing fall for each other in Grand Central Station in 1937, a site that becomes their only possible meeting place as the years go by. Theirs is a magical tale about "a love affair that defies age, class, place, and even time." —James
New Book of the Week
Underland: A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane
This isn't the first time I've talked about Underland and it won't be the last; while 2019 isn't even halfway done, I'm already sure that this will be one of the very best things I read all year. As I've said before (and will say again): "From book to book, Robert Macfarlane has moved from strength to strength, bettering himself every time out. Now he's reached a new peak by delving deep into the earth, exploring literal and metaphorical underworlds both natural and human-built. Fans of history, science, adventure, travel, sociology, and memoir will all latch onto Macfarlane's accessible brilliance."
New Book of the Week
The Great Eastern
by Howard Rodman
The Great Eastern tells the true story of the SS Great Eastern, a technological marvel of the Victorian Age. Designed and built under the direction of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (yes, his real name), it was, at the time of its 1858 launch and for decades afterward, the biggest ship ever to sail. The details of its construction, the disaster of its launch, and its eventual triumphant role in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable make for a gripping read. There’s much more to the novel, though. In addition to being a sober historical account, The Great Eastern is also a fanciful tribute to the greatest tales of adventure from the 19th century. Wrapped around the reality of the monumental steamship is a rip-roaring plot that sees the anti-heroes of Moby-Dick and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea do battle with the fate of civilization at stake. So wait, you’re saying. An obscure English engineer describes his love for metallurgy and manufacturing for pages at a time while Captains Ahab and Nemo make grandiloquent speeches and engage in all manner of creative steampunk-inspired violence? Yes, and it works. Remember how the players in Hamlet said they could perform any kind of drama, discretely or in combination? Author Howard Rodman has taken up their challenge and danced with exquisite grace along the knife edge separating fact and speculation to produce an incomparable tragical-comical-historical-industrial, a brand-new fictional genre of his own devising. He's as fascinating a character himself as the ones in his book, as I found out when I conducted an interview with him via email. You can read our conversation on the Madison Books blog, The Pavilion. —James
New Book of the Week
The Old Drift
by Namwali Serpell
"1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond." If that doesn't get your reader's blood pumping, I don't know what will. A sprawling, magical, multigenerational saga with echoes of Midnight's Children and One Hundred Years of Solitude. —James
New Book of the Week
Lanny
by Max Porter
A family of three (mom, dad, and small son) resides in an English hamlet, a site with historic roots that's now a commuter suburb of London. All the mod cons, but with room for a creative kid to roam in nature and get his hands dirty. Idyllic, except for the old prejudices that some of the inhabitants still harbor, and the ancient mythic spirit who monitors everything best kept hidden. Lanny is contemporary writing that's already timeless, a song, an incantation, a poem of people, place, and power. Porter's village is a world, his characters are all-too-human archetypes, and his novel is a glorious verbal artifact. —James
Kids Book of the Week
The First Rule of Punk
by Celia C. Pérez
Malu finds herself caught between a Mexican mother who wants her to be the perfect señorita and a music-loving father who helped foster her love of all things punk. After their divorce, Malu and her mother move to Chicago from Florida, where Malu has to start a new school and find her place, ultimately discovering that it’s okay not to fit into a specific box. Follow spunky and rebellious Malu as she navigates middle school, forms a band with her fellow misfits, and creates zines to express herself! This book will remind anyone to embrace your eccentricities and love yourself for all of the things that make you unique. You are guaranteed to fall in love with Malu! (ages 9 to 12) —Gabi
New Book of the Week
The Book of Delights
by Ross Gay
Poet Ross Gay tasked himself with what sounds like a job for a Hallmark greeting card writer: he spent a year looking for things that gave him joy, be they people, places, or events big or small. Unlike the sentiments usually found on schmaltzy greeting cards, though, the brief prose essays that Gay has written are rich and real, expressed with humor, charm, and immense verbal dexterity. Whether he's savoring a cup of strong coffee, enjoying the labors of his garden, or celebrating the pleasures of high-fiving a stranger, he cuts right to the heart of the matter with the tenderest scalpel. Benign biopsies of perfect moments? That may sound strange, but I think the author would appreciate the description. (Note for audiobook listeners: don't pass up the chance to hear Ross Gay read aloud. Hop over to our partner site at libro.fm/madisonbooks and download post haste.) —James
New Book of the Week
The Heavens
by Sandra Newman
For whatever reason (having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that publishing is dominated by intellectually aspirant professionals who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn), the New York novel is a fixture of every publishing season. Some people can’t get enough of them, some find them insufferable, and never the twain shall meet. Until now. In The Heavens, Sandra Newman has finally written one that will satisfy both camps. The meet-cute opening that takes place on an apartment rooftop is quintessentially I❤NY, but brown-skinned Ben and Kate aren’t typical WASPy protagonists, and alert readers will notice that the romantic metropolis they occupy isn’t exactly the one we know and love (or loathe). And then Ben learns about Kate’s recurring dream, in which she’s an Elizabethan noblewoman caught up in a tortuous relationship with a certain obscure playwright. As her nocturnal life grows more and more vivid, the familiar becomes strange and the couple’s grip on daily life weakens. Is Kate going mad, or can her dream actually be altering reality? Beneath its glittering surface, The Heavens asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it. —James
Old Book of the Week
John Crow's Devil
by Marlon James
The ferocious energy of Marlon James's prose, the first sign of the literary genius that the Booker judges later recognized in A Brief History of Seven Killings, is immediately evident in this debut novel, which summons into being the Jamaican village of Gibbeah, a community put to the scourge by conflict between two rival preachers. With its rich language and biblical cadence, John Crow's Devil is a Miltonic epic of unrelenting spiritual darkness, but with James's ear for dialogue and knack for earthy humor it flashes with light on a human level. Rarely has a writer's career been announced with a trumpet blast this pure and powerful. —James
New Book of the Week
Man with a Seagull on His Head
by Harriet Paige
Ray Eccles is leading a modest, unassuming existence when he's abruptly struck on the head by a falling bird and finds his whole life changing course. Read Harriet Paige's new novel and you may find yourself similarly affected. The opening of Man with a Seagull on His Head tempts you with its brisk prose and summery seaside setting to pick it up as a momentary diversion, but it quickly establishes powerful links among its many characters, connecting hearts and minds across distance, time, and cultural barriers. By the end it takes them, and you, much further than you'd have ever expected. —James
Kids Book of the Week
The Lost Words
by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
We had heard about this book for a while—it was wildly popular and a "book of the year" in the UK, and Macfarlane, Britain's leading nature writer, is becoming beloved in the States too. But seeing it in person is something else entirely. Macfarlane and Morris have set about reclaiming basic words of nature ("acorn," "heron") that, they noticed, have been taken out of children's dictionaries in favor of tech terms like "broadband." But the book they made is not a dictionary—it's a thing of exquisite beauty, celebrating both these simple, evocative words (with poems of Macfarlane's) and the animals and plants they represent (with Morris's glorious paintings). It's a giant book, and one that both kids and grown-ups are likely to cherish. (Age 3 and up) —Tom
New Book of the Week
The Alehouse at the End of the World
by Stevan Allred
This is a tough one to describe, because as soon as I start I'm afraid I'll scare some of you off. Avian demigods? Fertility goddesses? An epic journey to the Isle of the Dead to recover a lost love? Sure, fantasy fans will hear me out, but the rest of you should, too. Drawing on European, Asian, and North American folk traditions, Stevan Allred plows the oldest narrative field there is, the open commons that existed before anyone thought of subdividing it with genre fences. Pure story, in other words, once-upon-a-time stuff that doesn't seem fringy at all. Turns out that a modern version of ancient myth involving love, death, and talking birds is exactly what we need in these trying times. —James
New Book of the Week
The Order of the Day
by Éric Vuillard
The Prix Goncourt is France's highest award for fiction, and the most recent recipient was Éric Vuillard for The Order of the Day. It's an interesting choice for at least three reasons. First, it's really good, like prize-winning good, written in crystalline sentences ably translated by Mark Polizzotti. Second, it's not a bog-standard war story about generals and infantrymen or even suffering civilians. Instead it focuses on the bureaucrats and businessmen who quietly and cravenly capitulated to a Fascist regime that in the 1930s didn't yet have a stranglehold on power. Over and over again in Vuillard's account, civility outweighs principle, as in the chilling scene where Chamberlain and Ribbentrop linger over a diplomatic dinner while Nazi forces drive unopposed across the German-Austrian border. Every detail marshaled here is devastatingly accurate, which brings us to a final point of interest: this isn't really fiction. Sure, there's creative description on every page, but at its heart, The Order of the Day is history as it was made. As fact-based as it is, it probably wouldn't be eligible for an American fiction prize, but the French don't worry about categories, just beautiful writing. In this case, I'm on their side. —James