In the Rooms by Tom Shone

Leaving for a short trip to Florida, I went to the library in search of a book to bring along. Something about the spine of In the Rooms caught my attention--a miniaturized version of the cover art, a glass of booze with a pencil as a stirrer--so I took it off the shelf. When I read in the flap copy that it was the story of a literary agent in New York, I thought "this is my kind of book!" and checked it out and took it home to learn more. I enjoyed the first few pages enough to make a commitment to make it my vacation book (yes, I have an eReader - in fact my family has both a Kindle and Nook--and yet...). It did not disappoint, and made for compelling and engaging reading, and kept me busily and happily occupied until the end of the short trip. (I had brought a second book just in case, which I began on the plane ride home.)
Walking to work with a hangover one morning, British transplant Patrick Miller sees a man walking through Washington Square Park who resembles a famous beloved author. He follows the man to see if it is in fact who he thinks it is (it is), and follows him straight into an AA meeting. Patrick's allegedly phony alcoholism, his hunt to put himself on the literary agent map by scoring this new author, and the characters he meets at AA make for an engaging and well-told story. I was disappointed in the final ten pages or so and how he wrapped the story up, but Shone is a good storyteller and I enjoyed the book.

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante (continued)

I finished the book last night, and I still highly recommend it. (See my first blog on the book below.) I didn’t correctly figure out the whodunit, and I was surprised. The end felt a shade contrived to me, but on the whole it’s an excellent book. There are many literary decisions that were made by the author that I applaud. For example the way the author shifts the point of view as the book goes on is very interesting and contributes to the reader’s understanding of the growing sense of alienation caused by the disease. The book is divided into 4 sections, and I like that choice and the reasons for the separation.

The book is very dialogue-heavy, and I especially enjoyed the dialogue. This author writes good dialogue. There was an interesting ( and increasingly common in other books as well) choice made not to use quotation marks.  The main character speaks and makes observations in regular font, and the person or persons to whom she is speaking are in italics, and that is how the reader knows who’s talking. (There were also really big line breaks between lines of dialogue – almost as if they were trying to pad the books’ length!) I’ve seen other authors use this technique recenlty (Nicole Krauss comes to mind), and I wonder why this choice is made. Is it simply too difficult/annoying/time-consuming to type in all those quotation marks when you’re writing? (I have tried to write dialogue, and in fact it is annoying to keep typing the quotes!) Maybe this is another convention that is changing because of computers (like the now frowned-upon habit of putting two spaces after each period). 

But I digress... Read this book!

Back to school!

School started yesterday, both in the Rosemont graduate publishing program (where I work) and for my kids, so summer is officially over! Welcome back to the real world, y'all!

I’ve been staying up late the last few nights reading a great book. It’s called Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. I had read somewhere, I think in Publishers Weekly, that the book was getting good reviews, so I requested it from the library. I am grateful to the reviewers for pointing this book out because I am loving reading it!

The book tells the story of Dr. Jennifer White, a 64 year old woman descending in Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, it is told from her point of view. I think the author does this masterfully, giving us a sense of the confusion of time, the forgetting, the trying to make sense of the world, and the moments of lucidity when she knows what is happening and what she is in the process of losing. 

The crux of the plot is that Jenny’s dear friend Amanda, a slightly older woman and life-long friend who lives three houses down in the same Chicago neighborhood, has been found murdered. She was killed by a blow to the head and, strangely, someone has surgically removed four fingers from one of her hands. Since Jennifer White is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hands, she is the prime suspect. But how to pin a crime on a woman who can’t remember anything and who doesn't from day to day, even remember that Amanda is dead?

As we go through the book, we flash back and forward in Jenny’s life, learning stories and secrets about her husband, who died the year before the book opens, her two adult children, her complicated friendship with Amanda, and about Jennifer herself. As I read, I am of course wondering about the “whodunit” aspect of the book, but for me the more interesting part is the literary peek inside this woman’s mind, and the clever way the author presents memory, experience, and conversation. 

I’m about 50 pages from the end of this book and will be sorry to see it end. Kudos to the author!

A Literary Update and a Great New Book!

I’ve been busy collecting new books to read. Last week I met with the wonderful Erin Lovett of W.W. Norton and talked about some of their very interesting books coming up for Fall ’11. I’m looking forward to reading a new book by Pam Houston (love her!), as well as two other novels, White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby (sounds like a great book for foodies) and Heft by Liz Moore, a Philadelphia author.

Speaking of Philadelphia authors, in October I’ll be launching a new reading series at the Cheltenham Center for the Arts (www.cheltenhamarts.org) called Philly Writes, in which we’ll be featuring local published authors. If you want to save the dates for the first few readings, they will be October 19, November 9, December 14, and January 11. Authors to be announced soon!

And speaking of reading, I read a wonderful first novel in my last meeting of this past spring/summer session of Hot Off the Press called The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai (Viking). I love this book! It’s smart, quirky, fun, unusual, and well-written. Just my kind of book!

If you want to learn more about it go to the author’s website and start by reading an FAQ written by the author. You’ll like her immediately—she’s sharp, funny, and sassy: http://rebeccamakkai.com/the-borrower-faq/

The Borrower borrows its title from a classic children’s book by Mary Norton and tells the story of children’s librarian Lucy Hull, who borrows a ten-year-old boy named Ian Drake for a cross-country road trip where one of them may or may not be kidnapping the other.

The story begins in a Midwestern city that Lucy decides to call Hannibal, MO. Lucy meets Ian during the library story hours she conducts. He is an exceptionally bright child whose reading interests are hampered by his evangelical parents (who may be trying to de-gay him with classes with Pastor Bob). Soon they wind up taking off on a journey that brings them into contact with a host of wacky characters including Lucy’s Russian immigrant father, a pianist (lots of fun to be had with that word!) named Glenn, and more!

The book is fun and playful and clever and you might stop there and never notice (but you should) that beneath its deceptively playful exterior is an examination of a complex array of serious issues (what it means to be an expatriate, running away, the importance of literature...). There are Lolita and Huck Finn parallels and references to a wealth of wonderful children’s (and adult) literature. I highly recommend it!

I GET THE PRIZE!!

I get the prize – not the Nobel, not the Pulitzer – the Patchett! I have now read every single book Ann Patchett ever wrote! I set myself this literary goal and I achieved it! Hurrah for me!

Here’s what I read (Note: I did not read it in chronological order):

Novels

• The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)
• Taft (1994)
• The Magician's Assistant (1997)
• Bel Canto (2001)
• Run (2007)
• State of Wonder (2011)

Nonfiction

• Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (2004)
• What now? (2008)

The final entry on my Patchett reading list was Taft. It was wonderful! In fact, after Bel Canto, it’s my favorite of her novels. It’s the story (I think) of two men struggling to figure out how to be good fathers. The first is John Nickel, a former drummer who manages a bar in Memphis (it takes place late 80s/early 9os). His ex-girlfriend has recently moved to Miami with their nine-year-old son Franklin, and he is struggling with learning how to father the boy from afar, and filled with regret for his perceived past misdeeds, such as not marrying Franklin’s mother, Marion.

Into John’s bar one day walks a young girl named Fay seeking work. Fay brings with her a host of complications, including her brother Carl, and a sad story that slowly unfolds of their father, Taft, who has recently died, and the life they left behind in a “hillbilly” town in eastern Tennessee. As Fay comes to mean more and more to John, he begins to imagine the life of Fay and Carl’s father, and the story begins to cut back and forth between these imaginings (or are they real?) and the present day story, which encompasses the bar, music, love and relationships, family, and some danger. (When John casually mentions, early in the book, the gun left in his desk drawer by the bar’s owner, we must think of Chekov’s warning: when there’s a gun in Act I, it will go off by Act III.)

The book is masterfully written and is, I think, a Patchett gem that should receive more acclaim. Some refer to it as one of her weaker books, but I disagree. I also read somewhere that she doesn’t think it is well-titled. With that I do agree. Nonetheless, if you’re a Patchett fan and haven’t read this one yet, bump it up the list!

Now back to that prize I mentioned. I was chatting yesterday with my friend Debbie Albert, who is also a member of this select club of readers who have conquered the Patchett canon. Debbie thinks we deserve lunch with the author. I think that’s quite an excellent idea. I told her I’d look into it. So as soon as I post this, I’m going to e-mail Ms. Patchett’s publicist at HarperCollins and send her this link. So, Jane, what do you say?

Lorene Cary launches Literally Speaking: Author House Parties

On June 30^th I launched my new event series: Literally Speaking: Author House Parties. My first guest was author Lorene Cary.

Lorene Cary is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of Art Sanctuary, and author of the memoir Black Ice and the novel The Price of a Child, the 2003 selection for One Book, One Philadelphia.

The event featured Cary’s newly-published book, If Sons Then Heirs, which tells a complex story of family, race, and the challenges of reconciling the present with a persistent past. Publishers Weekly says: “Cary pairs generations of loving, and loyal individuals with social history, making for an absorbing and moving tale.”

The book is a compelling read, with lively, likeable characters and fabulous dialogue. Cary’s got a great ear for voices. I particularly liked Selma, the aging matriarch trying to hold together the family farm in South Carolina, fighting off conflicts from family, the law, racism, and a slew of memories from a life lived through a number of controversial periods in American history.

My great thanks to Lorene Cary for making the trip and sharing her time, her warmth, and her insights with the audience at Literally Speaking!

Patchett Again

The other Patchett book I read recently (in addition to the one discussed below, The Patron Saint of Liars) is her newest one, State of Wonder, just out and already on the bestseller lists. Patchett’s publicist calls this book “her best one yet,” but it’s no Bel Canto. Hard to imagine anything can beat Bel Canto. The students in my Hot Off the Press class liked this book, but my feelings are more lukewarm.

It’s a Heart of Darkness of a book, a fraught voyage down the Amazon to a deep, dark outpost where scientists are studying the amazing long-lasting fertility of a particular tribe. To this place goes Dr. Marina Singh, sent by her pharmaceutical company employer (whose president is also her lover) to a) find out what happened to the guy they sent before who never came back (Mr. Kurtz, he dead), and to find out what’s happening on the promised drug development front down there. The company wants a return on its extensive investment!

Why send Marina? Well, because she has to go, of course. That’s how the plot works. Never mind that she’s just some obscure scientist toiling away on researching lipids for a cholesterol drug, hardly an Amazonian warrior. Besides, it turns out (ta da!), that M’s deep dark secret is her mistake in medical school, a botched delivery while studying obstetrics, studying under the fearsome Dr Swenson—the very doctor now ensconced in said Amazonian outpost.

Marina goes, descends Orpheus-like to hell, and lives to tell the tale. On the way we meet doctors and scientists, local tribesmen, gatekeepers and hangers on-ers. An anaconda is wrestled, a baby is successfully and dramatically delivered (to make up for past mistakes), and the missing man’s whereabouts are accounted for. We also chew some tree bark and there’s the requisite Patchett tie-it-all-up-neatly twist near the end, but hey, I’ll leave you a surprise or two.