Fiction Addict

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Touchstone Books

Publication Date: August 2010

Anne Barnhill’s Review:

Susan Gilbert-Collins’ debut novel, Starting from Scratch, promises to examine grief and give the reader “insight into the grieving process itself,” according to the promotional materials. That’s a lot of weight for this first novel to carry.

The book begins when Olivia Tschetter, the youngest of four children raised in South Dakota, passes her dissertation defense, yet keeps her achievement a secret from her family.  Only her mother knew Olivia was going to defend, but her mother dies suddenly on the very day Olivia completes her ordeal.  With the funeral and her own grief to manage, Olivia never gets around to letting the others know that she has successfully defended her dissertation, though they keep badgering her about completing it.  The more her brother, Dave, and her sisters, Annie and Ruby, badger, the less Olivia wants to tell them she’s already finished the hard part.

This family of intellectuals is an interesting mix, high-achievers all.  Olivia, the youngest, still has a lot to prove to herself.  After her mother’s death, she stays with her father, cooking him meals from her mom’s old recipes.  She also takes it upon herself to complete her mother’s last newsletter, an epistle which is part-Hints-from-Heloise and part-Dear-Abby.  As Olivia begins to piece together the final edition, she makes a shattering discovery about her mother and the rest of her family.

As Olivia tries to find out the details of this, heretofore, unknown episode in her family’s history, she learns to look at herself and her siblings in a new way.  Rather than whine about being the youngest in the family, which she does throughout the novel, she begins to appreciate herself and the others.

The sections of the novel dealing with food preparation and the inclusion of recipes add to the story.  Gilbert-Collins’ use of mid-western dialect and culture seems authentic.  However, there are a few problems with the book. First, to begin a novel discussing an arcane dissertation does not produce a page-turner.  The bits about the scholarly life fall particularly flat.  But the main problem with the novel is Olivia herself.  She tells the reader over and over how sad she is about losing her mother.  However, there is not real evidence of her grief in the story itself.  It doesn’t feel real.  What is more palpable is the resentment Olivia harbors against all of her siblings, an anger that seems whiny and childish.  Vivian, Olivia’s mother, is the most carefully drawn character in the book and she’s dead–not a good balance.

However, there is much here to be commended as well: believable dialogue, interesting relationships among the siblings, and a setting that is unusual.  It will be interesting to see what Gilbert-Collins does next.

Jaci Miller’s Review:

Olivia Tschetter just finished her doctoral dissertation early and can’t wait to share the news with her family. But a phone call cracks her world apart like a broken egg. Vivian, her mother, has died of a stroke.

As she struggles with her grief, her three overachieving older siblings push her to return to the world of academia. Instead Olivia finds comfort in her mother’s recipes. Stalling for time, she finds a part-time job at a Meals-on-Wheels center and continues work on her mother’s unfinished cooking newsletter. In the process, Olivia uncovers old family secrets and faces new surprises from her siblings. Ultimately, this family “baby” must find the strength to cope and to grow into her place in the family.

Starting from Scratch by Susan Gilbert-Collins transports readers from the world of academia to the gentler, familial world of food—a shift as healing as it is heartening. At the same time, the novel tackles issues of grieving, pain and family dynamics. A very full plate for one novel but Gilbert-Collins handles it smoothly and gracefully. Softly literary and lacking in pretension, the narrative and tone soften as Olivia’s character similarly softens.

Refreshing language lights this book without becoming self-absorbed in flowery prose. Gilbert-Collins offers a fine example on pages 79-80. “Doris … reminded Olivia of the pioneer women she had had to study growing up: large-boned, spare-fleshed women with humorless lips and the grim light of survival in their eyes, with gaunt cheeks and big strong hands that could build log cabins and beat out prairie fires and toss rattlers out of their babies’ beds. Women who could do anything as long as it was hard enough: shoe a horse, or shoot one, or eat one, as circumstances demanded.”

The book also includes recipes of some of the dishes discussed within its pages, written in the style of Vivian’s newsletter.

Review copies provided by Touchstone.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Riverhead

Released: July 2009

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

For Maile Meloy’s newest collection of short stories, the epigraph (by A. R. Ammons) says it all: “One can’t have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.” Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is a collection of eleven short stories, and while the stories feature different characters, settings, and situations, they are thematically linked through longing and ambivalence.

I’ll start by saying that Meloy’s writing is fantastic. I mentioned in an earlier review that I think the best writing is seamless, and the effect of reading the best writing is similar to watching a great magic act: you marvel that magic has taken place under your careful observation, and there’s little you can say toward explanation. That’s how I felt in reading each of Meloy’s stories in Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. The prose is unadorned, at times seemingly flat. The sentences seem like ordinary sentences. But it is the author’s genius of craft that takes these everyday materials and creates something of beauty.

Beauty may seem distant from the subject matter of this collection—most of the stories deal with longing and discontent in general, and many of them focus on adultery in particular. Yet despite the sometimes sordid material and the many unlikable characters doing unlikable things, Meloy achieves beauty by forging empathy.

One of the best examples of this is the story “Two-Step.” The story opens with two women talking, the first woman speculating that her husband is having an affair. The second woman, a coworker of the first woman’s husband, tries to reassure her that he probably isn’t. Through their conversation, several facts are gradually revealed to the reader: the husband is having an affair; the first woman is the man’s second wife, and the man left his previous wife to marry her; and the second woman is the woman the husband is currently having an affair with. This scenario doesn’t seem to leave room for much empathy, since all three characters in the story are cheaters. But Meloy’s skill is such that the broader emotions—what it feels like when we are betrayed, or when we unintentionally hurt others by pursuing our own desires, or when we want so badly to have both stability and change—are what come through in spite of the particulars.

Ambivalence is another consistent thread through this collection, and it is perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the story “The Children.” A man in the midst of an affair decides it’s time to tell his wife that he’s leaving her. But breaking up is hard to do. He finally realizes what a mess he’s in, what leaving his wife (and the titular children) will mean. He is at the fork of two competing desires, both equally strong, and he realizes that he can’t have it both ways.

And that is illustrative of the situations that Meloy describes so well in Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. Life is not full of having cake and eating, too—despite what we are shown on television. Meloy presents the many places where life is a strict dichotomy, an either-or. In some cases a decision may be delayed, but ultimately a decision must be made. These decisions are sometimes costly and sometimes plain disastrous, and many times they are the result of our own errant desires. As illustrated in “Two-Step,” cheating is a double-edged sword: a union sown in subterfuge and deceit is likely to reap the same. Meloy’s book, while helping the reader empathize with its characters and carefully and beautifully delineating dilemmas, is also a warning against the situations its characters find themselves in. As a reader, I see that the characters are in a tough spot and I empathize, but I also will do whatever I can not to put myself into their situations in the first place.

I should mention that there are a few moments of levity in the collection, stories not as intense or gloomy as the others. “Spy vs. Spy,” for example, believably (and humorously) describes a dysfunctional family and the ambivalence that comes with some family relationships, equal measures love and hate. “O Tannenbaum,” while the tension in the air is thick, is an enjoyable story of the unexpected adventures that befall a family on the way home from the supposedly joyous endeavor of choosing a Christmas tree. But perhaps the lightest story in the collection, and also my favorite, is “Liliana,” in which a man’s dead wealthy grandmother comes to stay with his family in their lower-middle-class home to determine if he’s a worthy heir for her fortune.

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It proves that Maile Meloy is certainly a writer to watch. The stories, while containing adult situations and language, nevertheless succeed in being beautiful, even magical.

Review copy provided by Riverhead.

Genre: Historical, Adventure, Literary

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Released: March 2010

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

“How is this night different from all other nights?” This night, Passover 1862, is the night Jacob Rappaport will assassinate his uncle.

Rappaport, in order to escape an arranged marriage to the daughter of one of his father’s business associates, joins the Union Army. But when his senior officers discover that he is related to Harry Hyams, a man plotting to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, they exploit his family tie and send him to New Orleans to infiltrate his uncle’s Passover seder and poison him at the table. Having successfully dispatched this mission, Rappaport is given what might be his most dangerous mission yet: marriage to Confederate beauty, actress, escape artist, and spy Eugenia Levy. But when Jacob’s personal life and professional duty are so intertwined, where will his loyalty lie?

All Other Nights raises issues of faith, family, and fidelity with wisdom and wit, and it does so without getting bogged down in needless discursions or overabundant details. Dara Horn is adept at plotting her novel, keeping things moving but also allowing the reader to become attached to the characters. She earns the reader’s attention and desire to continue. While the chapters are fairly short, enabling unintentional over reading, they are also engrossing, making the most schedule-conscious readers reconsider whether they have time for another before errands call them elsewhere. She is able to keep the reader’s attention without using tricks and gimmicks, teasing interest without being coy. (For an example of the coy way to keep readers’ attention, I remember reading the Goosebumps series when I was younger, and almost every chapter ended with an ellipsis—keeping the reader fettered to the book by withholding information.)

What separates All Other Nights from many other plot-driven books is the author’s craft in the details. Forming a plot can become a macro enterprise, often at the expense of the micro, creating a book intended to be consumed in one sitting and never revisited. But Dara Horn has done both. Not only does she keep the plot moving, but each individual sentence shows that it has received the author’s attention. The result is a well-written novel that is enjoyable on the first read, but deep enough to merit rereading. It combines the best of adventure fiction with the careful observations characteristic of literary fiction, and the result is a success.

All Other Nights also succeeds in capturing interesting historical details by creating a believable atmosphere for the novel’s setting. In order to enjoy a novel, and perhaps especially a historical novel, the reader must trust the author to have done her homework. Anachronisms and faulty phrases disrupt the flow of the story, but more importantly they break readers’ trust, forcing readers to contemplate the details with closer scrutiny rather than allowing them to become engrossed in the reading experience. Thankfully, Horn establishes trust early in the book and maintains that trust throughout. The author’s note following the story reveals the painstaking research Horn has done to bring this book into being. Not only will casual readers appreciate Horn’s research, but Civil War buffs should be placated as well.

Dara Horn’s All Other Nights is worthy of attention, and I’m glad I read it. I will be seeking her other books out in the future.

Review copy provided by W. W. Norton & Co.

Genre: Romance, Suspense, Literary

Publisher: Moody Publishers

Publication Date: September 2009

Reviewed by Shaun Stevenson

I will admit I didn’t know where The Familiar Stranger was going to take me. After reading the plot synopsis on the back, I kept thinking, “Hmm… is this going to really grab me… or is it just going to play out like a Christian soap opera?” Thankfully, it didn’t take me very long before I realized that new author Christina Berry had put together some very suspenseful ideas with Melody Carlson-esque characters. And I definitely couldn’t stop reading.

The plot opens out simply enough: typical all-American family: Craig’s a dentist; Denise is a home maker caring for their two sons. They go to church, they have a nice house, and of course the marriage has its rocky moments. But then Denise gets a phone call during church saying that there’s been a terrible accident. Her husband is in the hospital and in a coma. The family rushes to his side, and that’s when things start twisting: Craig’s lost his memory completely. And as they start to figure out his life from the ground up, they both start discovering that their typical all-American family is not quite what they all thought it was…

The writing is pretty crisp and things move along at just about the right speed — Berry gives us enough mystery to keep us wanting to figure it out, and enough of the raw emotions to keep pages turning. Actually, that’s the one place Berry really shines: in the emotions. The characters are fully formed, and the pain that Craig and Denise work through as they re-discover their lives feels real. And with some truly creepy plot twists, there’s enough to keep things interesting.

The only thing I was really worried about going in was the unique story structure. Each chapter is split into scenes from His point of view and Her point of view — sometimes the same time period being covered by both of them to give us both sides of an exchange. At first, I thought I was going to be confused or annoyed reading the book that way — but after the first chapter I got used to it, and actually found myself enjoying the uniqueness of the whole idea.

Overall, The Familiar Stranger is definitely a strong debut from Berry. And if she keeps writing such vulnerable characters dealing with such real heartaches, she will be an author to keep an eye on in the future.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Picador

Released: September 2009

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

What does it mean to be home in Gilead, Iowa? For Glory Boughton, it signifies a coming down in the world, a broken engagement, a forced retirement from teaching, and caring for her father—a retired Presbyterian minister—in his last days. For Glory’s prodigal brother Jack, whose return to Gilead after twenty years sets the town quietly abuzz, Gilead is a place of last hope, where grace might be found and new life begun.

Readers familiar with Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead will already know the basic plot of the Orange Prize–winning Home. Home takes place over the same time period as Gilead, and in the same place, but it follows different characters than the earlier book. Whereas Gilead was Reverend John Ames’s first-person account of the events surrounding Jack’s return, a letter of sorts written to his young son, Home is a third-person account specifically following Glory Boughton, a minor player in Ames’s record.

Readers desiring a plot-driven narrative may be bored with Home. But what Home lacks in plot it makes up for in rich characterization. The characters are slowly, methodically drawn. Robinson’s gift for subtle observation and nuance gives the characters a weight that convinces the reader of their reality. But much like relationships in the real world, the reader’s getting to know the characters is not a quick process. The reader must inhabit Gilead in order to understand its people. Robinson does not allow for snap judgments or easy dismissals; she lets the reader know her characters in all their humanity. For this reason, it is impossible to read Home quickly. It is a book that must be savored.

And the savoring brings its own rewards. For much of the book, I liked what I was reading, was interested in the relationships that were forming, and cared about the characters. But I didn’t realize how much I cared until the final third of the book. I found myself feeling the characters’ grief, laughing with them, and desiring their good ends. It is to Robinson’s credit that she was able to produce such emotion discreetly, without the manipulative methods we’re familiar with from Hallmark commercials and many human interest stories, which seek to manufacture sentimental feelings in brief snapshots. In contrast, the feelings that Robinson conjures are the direct product of her painstaking catalogue of the characters’ lives.

The book must also be savored because of its wisdom. Home explores what it means for the prodigal to come home. Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son tells us much about his heavenly Father, but how might the story look in an earthly context? In Robinson’s book we have a loving father, worn out from twenty years of waiting, still happy to have his son back but battling his own feelings of bitterness and regret. We have a son who, while trying to enjoy the pleasures of home, still hears the siren call of the world and feels the urge to continue his travels in a distant land. We have those outside the family who know the prodigal’s transgressions, and we have their reactions to his return. And we have a younger sister, the one who didn’t leave, who still has her inheritance, but who is able to bestow the grace that seemed out of the older brother’s reach in Jesus’ parable. Robinson’s novel is a multi-layered and powerful meditation on what it means to be lost and (possibly) found.

Home is a work of genuine beauty, but in some ways an ordinary beauty. It is an escape from the fast-paced world we live in, a reminder of an earlier time, but also a reminder that we inhabit a world of ordinary graces, where the magnificent suffuses the mundane, where we can appreciate the comforts of home.

Review copy provided by Picador.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Europa Editions

Publication Date: March 2010

Reviewed by Ashley Barrett

At seventeen, Sascha Naiman has two goals in life: to tell the world about her mother’s life and death in a book and to kill her stepfather, Vadim, who brutally murdered her mother. While choosing the how and why of her stepfather’s murder, Sascha and her two younger siblings live a pretty normal life. Sascha is torn between her murderous hatred for Vadim (and the self-destruction that comes with it) and moving on after her mother’s death and escaping the terrible circumstances of her youth.

Overall, Broken Glass Park was a powerful read, somewhat similar to Steven King’s short story, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” Sascha is smart, engaging and her story resonated with me and lingered in my mind several days after reading it.

However, any readers who are sensitive to strong language, violence or sexuality should avoid this book. I found the graphic content necessary for readers to grasp the horrors of Sascha’s life.

Alina Bronsky’s German novel, Scherbenpark, was published in 2008. Tim Mohr translated it into Broken Glass Park in 2010. I look forward to reading more books by this author as they are translated into English. Sascha’s struggle is totally believable and this book vividly reminded me of the destructive power of revenge and the ever-present quality of hope.

Review copy provided by Regal Literary.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

Released: April 2010

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

Henry is an author whose last book—a fantastical story involving animals—was both a critical and popular success, garnering literary awards and huge sales. Five years later, Henry has written a flip-book, one side of which is a novel and the other side an essay, both concerning the Holocaust. Despite the wild popularity of Henry’s previous book, the publishers dismiss Henry’s new manuscript, and Henry, distraught, moves with his wife to “one of those great cities of the world that is a world unto itself.”

It is in this great city that Henry receives an enigmatic note from an even more enigmatic taxidermist: “Dear Sir, I read your book and much admired it. I need your help.” Enclosed with this note are a short story by Flaubert and the first scene of a play the taxidermist is composing, a play with two characters, Beatrice and Virgil. Unable to check his curiosity, Henry finds the taxidermist and begins a journey that will change the way he looks at suffering and at the nature of storytelling.

(Beatrice and Virgil, aside from being the namesakes of Dante’s guides through The Divine Comedy, are a donkey and a howler monkey, respectively, who the taxidermist explains are his “guides through hell.”)

Beatrice and Virgil—an interesting blend of fiction and nonfiction, using the modes of novel, short story, play, essay, and “games for Gustav”—is the newest book from Booker Prize–winning author Yann Martel.

The fiction/nonfiction blend is apparent in the book’s main character, Henry, who  purposely leaves the reader wondering how much of Beatrice and Virgil is autobiographical. Martel’s last book, Life of Pi, was also a fantastical story involving animals, lauded by readers and critics alike. Beatrice and Virgil was released nearly nine years after Life of Pi—perhaps due to wary publishers? And the novel’s subject, the Holocaust, is a subject perhaps most frequently treated in nonfiction accounts.

One of the effective images Martel uses to explain Henry’s (his own?) method is a suitcase. History is often forgotten because it fails to resonate with the masses. Art, on the other hand, packs the essentials of history into a format that has the power to deeply affect its participants. He writes of other artists, “[they] had taken a vast, sprawling tragedy, had found its heart, and had represented it in a nonliteral and compact way. The unwieldy encumbrance of history was reduced and packed into a suitcase. Art as suitcase, light, portable, essential.” Of Henry’s flip-book, Martel writes, “Was such a treatment not possible, indeed, was it not necessary, with the greatest tragedy of Europe’s Jews?”

While such a treatment might be possible (as evidenced by other fictions of the Holocaust), and while Beatrice and Virgil itself is well written, the book struggles in its overburdened format—stuffing too much into an already packed suitcase—and lacks the magic we know the author is capable of from Life of Pi. The book felt by turns either too heavy handed (“This is what I’m doing, and you must pay attention to this Important Symbol!”) or too obscure (“This is certainly symbolic, but I won’t tell you what it means!”).

The fiction I find most enjoyable is seamless. The author is performing magic before your eyes, but you don’t always know how he’s doing it. The constituent words are there—you can see them, say them—but at the end of the story, you are baffled at the rabbit’s being pulled from the hat. You have the impression that great magic has been done behind the scenes without knowing how the trick was performed. Reading Beatrice and Virgil felt like being at a magic show where the magician was either narrating every action as he was doing it, so that the rabbit’s appearance was no surprise, or performing the trick behind a curtain, so that you couldn’t see the rabbit even if it did appear. Despite the magician’s talent, without these aspects of showmanship and craft, it makes it difficult to be swept away in the story.

That said, I like the ideas that Martel engages in Beatrice and Virgil. It’s true that the most enduring histories are the ones we put into narratives because humans are essentially storytellers. I even liked the multiple methods he used to tell this story. But I found myself wishing that Martel had written Henry’s flip-book rather than the genre cocktail of Beatrice and Virgil. Fact and fiction are related, and it may be valuable for readers to be reminded of this. But in this case it seemed like the story was made to serve the ideas rather than the ideas serving the story. The result is a mainly cerebral experience, one that while “good for you” is not one you’re likely to repeat.

Beatrice and Virgil provides a novel way to think about the Holocaust and the limits we face in putting human suffering into language. While Martel’s goal of creating a suitcase for the Holocaust is noble, it is yet to be seen whether Martel’s suitcase will survive the test of time, and readers might be better served by taking different luggage on the trip.

Review copy provided by Spiegel & Grau.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Released: February 2010

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor comprises fifteen stories of love, loss, and longing. While Taylor’s precocious talent is unquestionable, this collection ultimately feels as purposeless as the characters it portrays.

The stories in the collection address different aspects of young adult life—first love, feelings of being trapped in a place, trying to fit in, leaving the parents’ faith, “finding yourself,” etc. The stories are more descriptions, vignettes, sketches than fleshed-out stories. Readers looking for a driving plot are best served looking elsewhere (though this in itself is not a criticism). The hardest thing to handle in these stories for me is that the characters are static, starting and finishing in roughly the same place with no growth. (Perhaps this is how the author views adolescence, as a state of indefinite limbo until someone or something drags you out.)

For example, “In My Heart I Am Already Gone” starts with Kyle not liking living at home, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Sara, is “we date and we break up and date, and there have been others, for both of us . . . but as the years have moved our old friends away, married them off, or put them in their graves, our rediscoveries have lasted longer and longer.” They stay with each other mostly out of habit, even though they don’t seem to care for each other. The world moves around them, but they are stuck. The story’s conclusion finds Kyle in the exact same place, saying, “I will never escape this town.” While this stasis can be an effective storytelling technique occasionally (even the decision to stay the same or surrender is still a decision, an act of will), it loses its power with continual use.

Malaise and angst pervade the entire book. I found that this is best illustrated by an ambiguous statement Rose, the narrator in “Weekend Away,” makes: “Every day of your life is getting something you never asked for.” This sentence, obviously, can be taken multiple ways. One doesn’t ask to be born; every day is a gift, something to be celebrated. Rose, however—and most other characters in this collection—see this on the other side. “I can never have what I really want”; every day is an affliction, something to be endured. Since you can never have what you really want, why not snatch what happiness you can get? Thus, the characters behave more like wanton children than adults. They are self-centered, unfaithful, and unconcerned with the consequences of their actions. They exploit sexual relationships and drugs (both graphically described), only thinking of themselves. Their lives seem purposeless and empty, and it leaves the reader feeling that way, too.  The characters imagine that getting out of their current situation will change their lives; they don’t realize that the problem may not be their environment, but themselves and their own selfishness.

That Taylor’s writing is so promising makes the emptiness of the collection that much harder to bear. Style is an important factor for me, but especially in a literary collection like this one, where plot is not the driving force, there needs to be substance as well. As it is, the collection feels much like the list of the Abu Ghraib tortures that the narrator makes in “Jewels Flashing in the Light of Time”—a catalogue of vices designed for mere titillation. These vices, like the characters, are well described, but they lack a guiding principle, an insight that tells us why we should care. Taylor is very good at writing the sentences, not so with the paragraphs.

Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever does have its high points and will certainly connect with “unmoored” twenty-somethings like the characters in these stories, and Taylor is certainly a writer to watch with interest. But as for me, I think I’ll wait until he has something to say before I read anything else he writes.

Review copy provided by Harper Perennial

Genre: Literary, Adventure

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Publication Date:  February 2010

Marianne Peters’ Review:

Most high school students have read the story of Odysseus, his long journey from the fields of Troy to his home in Ithaca and his adventures along the way. Zachary Mason’s version, as he says in the Preface, is a “translation” of the story before it was canonized, when “the Homeric material was formless, fluid, its elements shuffled into new narratives like cards in a deck.”

Reading Mason’s debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, is like looking through the other end of the telescope. Each chapter answers the question, “What if?” What if we had the Cyclops’ side of the story? What if Penelope wasn’t faithful to her long-absent husband? What if Helen of Troy never married Menelaus? What if Achilles had died a natural death as a traveling beggar? The familiar landmarks of Homer’s tale disappear, and the effect is both fascinating and disconcerting. Odysseus himself has a reputation as a smooth-talking, truth-bending survivor. Truth is a slippery commodity in this novel. Each chapter’s story, each one just a fragment or episode, makes us wonder what truth looks like. Is it one story, or is it made up of many stories? And what of history? With so many points of view, how do we decide what really happened?

It’s helpful to have read Homer’s Odyssey recently, or a synopsis of it, to appreciate Mason’s interpretation. His references to Greek mythology are sometimes explained by footnotes, but as with everything in this novel, the reliability of these references is up for grabs. Even if your last reading of Odyssey is a distant memory, there’s so much to enjoy about this novel. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes ironic, sometimes even poignant, Mason’s playful interpretation of this classic is a delightful read. It’s like seeing a familiar company of players asked to read a different script, reminding us that stories are always open to interpretation.

“I hope that this translation reflects the haunted light of Homer’s older islands, “ Mason writes, “where the familiar characters are arranged in a new tableaux, but soon become restless, mercurial – they turn their backs, forget their names, move on.”

Jonathan Schindler’s Review:

The Iliad and Odyssey, we are told, circulated in oral tradition before they were ever fixed in written form. Homer is given credit for writing them down, but his epics are really the product of nameless bards reciting and refining the stories over time. As Zachary Mason notes in his preface to The Lost Books of the Odyssey, before the Odyssey was written down, “the Homeric material was formless, fluid, its elements shuffled into new narratives like cards in a deck.” It is this fluidity that provides the context for Mason’s book.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey is a collection of forty-four variations on the traditional Homeric stories, each lasting between one and eleven pages. The preface explains that these variations were unearthed in Egypt and just now translated by the author. Mason carries this conceit throughout the book with footnotes that explain “translation” choices, but which mostly fill in necessary information for those less familiar with Homer’s epics than the author.

Mason’s variations range from the standard deviations—What if Odysseus came home to find that Penelope hadn’t waited for him? What if Penelope was already dead? What if Odysseus decided to stay with Calypso?—to the more creative, bizarre ones—What if the story of Odysseus’s exploits and return to Ithaca was invented by the blinded cyclops or a cowardly Odysseus? What if Odysseus had a doppelganger? What if the Homeric epics are really just aids for memorizing an ancient chess primer? He also explores ideas in between, like, What does a fighting man do once there’s no more fighting to do? What is the nature of storytelling? What side adventures might Odysseus have had? Mason’s variations, whatever tangent they follow from the story, are well written, well thought out, and most of all engaging.

Mason’s main strength in The Lost Books of the Odyssey is not the writing—though this is top-notch and Mason is an adept storyteller. Mason’s greatest strength is his restraint—knowing just how much of a story to tell and no more. He doesn’t belabor any point (indeed, a 228-page book comprising 44 variations of the Homeric epics cannot be accused of verbosity), and he doesn’t provide bullying details that restrict the reader. Instead, he allows the reader’s imagination to do the main work. He provides the skeleton and the muscles, but it is up to the reader to flesh out each tale. Mason’s restraint works and pays dividends: many of his variations could (but hopefully won’t) become full texts in their own right, and after finishing the book I feel almost as if I’ve read these full texts.

Another aspect of The Lost Books of the Odyssey that I enjoyed is Mason’s wit in handling the source material. He doesn’t treat the Homeric epics as hallowed texts (as his preface makes clear), and he uses some of the gaps in the source as a springboard into new explorations of it. For example, in one of my favorite variations, “The Myrmidon Golem,” Agamemnon forces Odysseus to recruit Achilles for the Trojan War. Odysseus reluctantly agrees and goes ashore to convince Achilles to join, only to find that Achilles is already dead, “bitten on the heel by an adder.” Odysseus fears Agamemnon’s unpredictable rage and sculpts a clay Achilles to join in the war against Troy and fool Agamemnon. Now, this story is a bit far-fetched, but it provides an interesting (and entertaining) window into why Achilles, a key player in the Iliad, acts like he’s made of stone and is almost completely unlikable.

Not everyone will enjoy The Lost Books of the Odyssey, and reading the Iliad and Odyssey is probably prerequisite for enjoying Mason’s book. Nevertheless, for those who are captivated by Odysseus’s adventures in particular or Greek mythology in general, The Lost Books of the Odyssey will be a welcome addition to your library.

Review copies provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Europa Editions

Publication Date: September 2008

Reviewed by Jaci Miller

Renee Michel, a homely 54-year-old hotel concierge, is determined to hide her intelligence from the residents of the rue de Grenelle, as befits her position. A self-taught lover of culture, she despises the superficial lives of the inferiors around her. Paloma Josse, a 12-year-old resident with concealed superior intelligence, observes and journals the goings-on of her family. Disillusioned with her life, she decides to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. Then filmmaker Kakuro Ozu moves in and begins to unravel the hidden facets of both Renee and Paloma.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery was a bestseller first in France, and now in its English translation in America. However, it is a highly intellectual, slowly-paced book and not one to read for sheer pleasure. Unless the reader has an interest in philosophy, whole passages of the book read dully as Renee waxes eloquent on her learnings.

Hedgehog offers a fascinating concept—our hidden identities and why we create them—but the book comes across as snobbish as its main characters. The characters, while fairly disagreeable, are still fascinating, but be prepared for the tedium of wading through pages of Kant and Marx in search of Renee’s and Paloma’s story. This is not to scoff at intelligent fiction, but excess for its own sake is unacceptable. If a reader wants a philosophical treatise, he will go find one by the actual philosopher. Fiction’s first priority is to provide a story.

On the whole, the book feels self-indulgent, a pedestal for airing private views. Readers who adore philosophy will value this book, but for those in search of an engaging tale, look elsewhere.

Review copy provided by Europa Editions.

Genre: Classic s Revisited

Publisher:  Quirk Classics

Publication Date:  March 2010

Reviewed by Jennifer Roman

In a take on the classic Pride and Prejudice, Hockensmith takes a leap from the original Bennet saga and turns the privileged family into zombie-killing warriors.  While the proper Mrs. Bennet fusses and frets, Mr. Bennet transforms his five daughters from silly, socialite girls into nunchuk-wielding, sword-bearing, killing machines.

At a local man’s funeral, the girls notice that the “deceased” is actually coming back to life as a zombie.  Their father rushes to the front of the church and cuts off the “dreadful’s” head before he can do more harm, but this change from dead to undead announces the coming of many more undead.  Knowing what the future holds, Oscar Bennet enlists the help of his five daughters: Elizabeth, Jane, Kitty, Mary, and Lydia.  He also summons help from the King’s Army, which arrives just in time to train for the battle of its life.  The ensuing training and killing are actually quite hilarious.  In one scene, the girls awaken in the middle of the night because they hear a noise.  Thinking it is a zombie, they rush down the hall just in time to catch their mother trying to enter their father’s bedchamber for a romantic interlude.  After realizing what they interrupted, they are more mortified than if they HAD seen a zombie.

There are some parallels to the original Pride and Prejudice, but the changes turn the once-classic into a campy romp of fun and hilarity.  While keeping some of the same style of language, Hockensmith manages to update the text and make it a pleasant, quick read.  The reader gets to see the English propriety as somewhat silly and frivolous: Mrs. Bennet and her “high society” friends get into a disagreement over the girls’ training.  There is to be a ball, and it is Elizabeth’s début.  Because of her “scandalous” training, however, the hostess of the ball refuses to invite her.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is innocuous for just about any reader.  Keeping with English propriety, there is no foul language.  In fact, the girls are not allowed to say the word “zombie” because it is improper.  Instead they call them “the Zed word.”  There are allusions to sex, but only in the vaguest form.  There are descriptions of beheading and the cutting off of limbs, but not in a grisly, raw manner.  Even those with the weakest of stomachs should be able to handle that.

Hockensmith manages to combine the old with the new in PP&Z with wit and humor.  He makes fun of late 1800s English propriety and throws in some political satire as well.  The story is quirky and fun, and most of all, an easy read.  Those looking for some fun and humor should enjoy this off-the-wall tale.

Genre: Psychological, Literary

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: January 2010

Reviewed by Marianne Peters

Tim Farnsworth seems to be a lucky man, with a wife and daughter, a thriving law practice, and a large home in the suburbs. Lucky except for one thing: periodically, inexplicably, he begins to walk.  He walks until he collapses, and then his wife Jane comes to find him wherever he has ended up, asleep, sometimes frostbitten or injured. After he sleeps, the walking starts again. He sees doctors, psychologists, even gurus, but no one can fix his problem. To explain his absences from work, he tells his puzzled partners at the law firm that his wife has terminal cancer.

Joshua Ferris, author of the novel Then We Came to the End, has penned a heartbreaking story about a family in the midst of a mysterious health crisis. Farnsworth’s illness is never named or cured. It goes into sudden remission, and then starts up again just as suddenly. While he copes with the distressing realities of walking himself into exhaustion, his wife Jane and daughter Becka cope with their own fear, guilt, anger and frustration – ambivalent feelings that would be familiar to anyone caring for a chronically ill loved one.

Tim and Jane Farnsworth also struggle to maintain their affection for each other, playing out their roles as husband and wife, but also as impaired person and caregiver. When does he decide to abandon treatment? When does she decide that enough is enough?

The Unnamed is not a cheery read, but it is a mesmerizing one. Joshua Ferris’ lucid writing lifts his characters from the page until they are flesh and blood, and we find ourselves asking, would I do the same thing? Would I give up or hang on? The walking itself is a device, the difficult circumstance that allows these characters to demonstrate their strengths and their loyalties, while simultaneously forcing them to expose their weaknesses to themselves and to each other. The truth about them – about us – is painful, but redemptive. We all have weaknesses that hardship will reveal. And once everything is revealed, the only thing left to do is to keep walking.

Review copy provided by Little, Brown and Company.

Genre: Literary

Publisher: Random House

Released: June 2009

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin tells bit by bit the stories of transplant and native New Yorkers in the 1970s as their lives intersect and connect in unexpected ways, mostly through the common experience of a single event: Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center’s towers in 1974. Despite the characters’ varying backgrounds—an Irish friar and his brother, a streetwalking mother-daughter pair, a Park Avenue judge and his wife, to name a few—they are all bound together by what they’ve witnessed. And directly or indirectly, their lives are forever changed as a result.

The book’s plot is hard to describe because all of the characters are so interconnected—where one plotline seems to be winding down, another is just getting started. McCann’s weaving all these lives together could have easily become convoluted or contrived, but it is to McCann’s credit that it is not so. Characters walk in and out of each other’s stories in a way you imagine they would do in real life. The characters don’t feel like symbols, archetypes, ideas; they appear as real people do and exist in all the paradoxes of humanity. McCann has created a cast of diverse and believable characters and deftly intones the voice of each, each section being narrated by or around a single character. He avoids focusing on a single group and instead provides a true city cross-section, literally from the bottom up—from the prostitutes on the street to the very height of the World Trade Center. The diversity in the cast allows McCann to explore the spectrum of human emotions, opportunities, and relationships. (It also means that the book has a fair amount of adult content, especially language, so sensitive readers should be cautious.)

The characters in Let the Great World Spin are what make this book worth reading. They are believable and sympathetic, and when they hurt or are dealing with crisis, it is easy to become entangled in their lives. Characters face violence, imprisonment, prejudice, grief, doubt, sacrifice, and death, but above all this walks Petit on his tightrope, seemingly oblivious of the world spinning out of control below him. Petit’s stunning and beautiful act points to a great truth, one worthy of being at the center of a book like this: The world is a difficult place to live in, full of pain, but it is also full of beauty and thus provides a reason to hope.

Let the Great World Spin is readable and well written (though there are occasional flashes of distracting literariness), and the descriptions appeal to the reader’s senses, allowing for an immersive reading experience. Let the Great World Spin is truly a beautiful book, deserving of its National Book Award win.

Review copy provided by Random House

Genre: Literary/Fantasy

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Publication Date: January 2010

Reviewed by Jaci Miller

Midas Crook is a young loner, happier to photograph life than to live it. Scarred by an emotionally estranged father and a mentally distant mother, Midas is unprepared when he meets Ida McLaird, a strange girl determined to live life fully. Soon, Midas learns of Ida’s horrifying condition—she is slowly turning to glass. Despite his issues with his past, he soon falls for Ida and the two struggle to find a cure for Ida’s strange illness before she becomes wholly transformed.

In this magical tale, author Ali Shaw crafts a world sprinkled with the strange that somehow feels completely at home; the magical elements in the story seem as though they could occur in ordinary life to anyone. St. Hauda’s Land, the setting for The Girl with Glass Feet, could easily be a real island in the frigid, far north. Shaw’s lyrical style paints beautiful pictures of this fictional land while fresh and innovative language characterizes this quiet tale. It’s a book meant to be read slowly and savored, much like Sue Monk Kidd’s work.

However, Shaw appears to love words more than his story. At times, lovely language takes precedence over storytelling and the pacing of the tale suffers for it. Sadly, I felt a strong desire to skim sections of the book as they could have been shortened with no real loss of plot. The author clearly establishes setting and tone so his need for a full description of each setting at the outset of each chapter pulled the story down.

As a first-time novelist, Shaw succeeds in making the mysterious premise of glass metamorphosis plausible to the reader and is clearly a master wordsmith. The book is a strong effort that would benefit from a few editorial snips.

Review copy provided by Henry Holt and Company.

Genre: Literary, Historical Fiction

Publisher: New American Library

Publication Date: May 2009

Reviewed by Jaci Miller

Pasha, a teenager in 1970s Iran, falls in love with Zari, the girl next door who happens to be betrothed to Doctor, a counterculture philosopher and a friend of Pasha’s. When Pasha accidentally reveals Doctor’s hiding place to the Shah’s secret police, Pasha feels racked by guilt. As he and his friends grieve, they grow to hate the secret police even more. Then, on the day of the Shah’s birthday, Zari makes a drastic choice born of this grief that thrusts the group of friends apart.

In Rooftops of Tehran, Mahbod Seraji attempts to take the reader into the world of a turbulent region but ultimately falls short. The reader expects to be transported to another culture—to smell, feel, taste, hear Iran—and instead remains in his living room watching wooden characters being puppeted through the action. Seraji violates “show, don’t tell,” the mantra of great writers, with his explanations and adverbs. He steps outside of the story to paint a setting instead of interweaving it into the book and he has Pasha, as narrator, explore lengthy tangents from a melodramatic point-of-view.

Portions of the plotline ring false and feel unfounded, while teen angst seems to dominate the narrative. While a measure of this is acceptable in a coming-of-age tale, it’s monotonous to bemoan heartbrokenness, the cruelty of God and the pain in one’s soul in each chapter.

Rooftops of Tehran offers a golden opportunity to present a truly unique culture and worldview but falls far short of the sweeping drama promised by the book’s cover copy. The Reader’s Guide in the back is far more interesting as it reveals Seraji’s personal journey and experiences. Seraji shines in his discussion there and may be better suited to writing memoir.

Review copy provided by New American Library publishers.

Genre: Literary, Historical Fiction

Publisher: Hawthorne Books/Riverhead Books

Publication Date: 2007

Reviewed by Jaci Miller

The Moores are a coal-mining family in Depression-era Alabama. Tess, the middle of the family’s three children, witnesses a frightening event—a strange woman dropping an infant into the family’s well. When the police investigation reveals little, Tess and her older sister, Virgie, search for the mother of the infant among the women in their town.

The girls’ parents, Albert and Leta, both work desperately hard—Albert on the farm and in the mine, and Leta at home—to provide for their family. They grow very concerned when Tess begins having nightmares about the dead infant. Then Jack, the youngest child, is involved in a severe accident, straining the family even further. As the Moores struggle emotionally, financially and physically, friendships are tested and the truth about the infant in the well is revealed.

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips is an understated account of family, struggle, race relations and growing up. What could easily become a story with a sensationalistic plot remains believable and honest. The tone is as down-to-earth as Phillips’s characters and readers find themselves feeling right at home in the mine, on the country roads and in the Moores’ small house. Told from the point-of-view of each family member in turn, readers view the full family dynamic at work: Albert’s work ethic, Leta’s self-sacrifice, Virgie’s tentative adolescence, Tess’s joyfulness and Jack’s memories of childhood all combine into a humble work of beautiful family life.

Genre: Literary, Current Events

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Released: June 2008

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler

Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them, released in 2008 and brought to popular attention through its recent inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club, comprises three short stories and two novellas, all set in Africa and all told either about or through the eyes of children. It is by no means an easy book to get through, though Akpan is to be applauded for his writing ability. The subject matter is what makes this book a difficult, albeit eye-opening, read.

The stories in this collection treat issues of child prostitution, human trafficking, religious persecution, and genocide, among other things, all in their relation to children. It is difficult to read about child suffering, but in Akpan’s capable hands, this sordid subject matter is simultaneously viewed with unflinching candor and indomitable hope. Thus, though he tells us these stories and forces our eyes open, he shows the resilience of children and the grace that is present even in seemingly hopeless situations. He is an adept Virgil, guiding us through hell and bringing us out the other side.

Take “Luxurious Hearses,” one of the two novellas, which has as its setting the religious persecution of northern and southern Nigeria. Jubril, a Muslim boy, flees from the north after his Muslim friends turn on him for having a Christian father and brother (or, perhaps more to the point, because they owe him money). After hiding in the home of a compassionate Muslim, Jubril gets on a bus full of Christians bound for southern Nigeria, where his father lives. The Muslims hate the Christians and the Christians hate the Muslims, but there are flashes of grace on either side—Muslims harboring Christians in the north and Christians hiding Muslims in the south.

Say You’re One of Them’s title comes from the final story in the collection, “My Parents’ Bedroom,” but it really could be the banner written over any of them. The children in each story are caught in the hazy boundary between two worlds—Christian and Muslim, north and south, Hutu and Tutsi—and the easiest way to make it out of their situation is to pretend to belong to the group in power. The lines are fuzzy, and the labels placed on the characters are not always clear-cut or how those characters might self-identify.

Akpan’s stories are distinctly religious, owing to his being a Jesuit priest. The epigraphs he chose for the book, Daniel 3:17-18 and Micah 6:8, are fitting, giving the reader a framework for human suffering while also calling him to do what he can for the cause of justice. He does an excellent job throughout this collection of pointing out religious hypocrisy and double standards. For example, in “Fattening for Gabon,” Fofo Kpee, who has entered into an agreement to sell his niece and nephew, often uses the Bible to justify his decision. Or in “Luxurious Hearses,” the reader feels for the Christians forced to flee from the north, but it is later revealed that the Muslims are facing similar persecution in the south. There are no easy answers in Akpan’s stories. The picture he paints is nuanced, and it forces the reader to sharply consider his own faith. But while Akpan’s portrayal of religion is not entirely positive, his purpose in writing seems more to rebuild rather than destroy.

I think what makes Say You’re One of Them such an effective collection of stories is that while the setting, dialect, and situation of the story are distinctly African, the truth they reveal is universal. And while the characters’ dialects are at times hard to understand, the stories themselves force readers to look deep into their souls for their answers to tough questions. In America we may not worry about genocide, but who hasn’t been tempted to side with the powerful? Maybe we haven’t thought of selling children into slavery, but who hasn’t been tempted to do what is wrong by the lure of money? Many of us would chafe at the idea of justifying human trafficking using Scripture, but who hasn’t sought to rationalize their behavior before the like-minded? And who hasn’t preferred expedient solutions to righteous ones?

While Say You’re One of Them is not for the faint of heart (or, in some cases, stomach), it is an enlightening and engaging, if not enjoyable, read. It is an exercise in empathy and a call to action. Just as eyes cannot unsee, once you have read Say You’re One of Them, you can’t unread it—you will be changed.