Summer Books Part 3 of 3
Tropic of Night (William Morrow) by Michael Gruber
Following her sister's murder, Jane Doe, a young anthropologist who has spent years researching African shamanism, fears for her life. So she fakes her own suicide and goes into hiding in Miami. But the ritualistic killings of pregnant women convince Doe that her ex-husband, a poet-turned-sanguinary sorcerer, is following her and becoming more powerful with each murder. At the same time, a Cuban-American police detective named Iago "Jimmy" Paz is investigating the Miami slayings, but finds that eyewitnesses don't remember much -- except that the killer looks a lot like Paz himself. An odd but engrossing first novel.
The True Account: A Novel of the Lewis & Clark & Kinneson Expeditions (Houghton Mifflin) by Howard Frank Mosher
Any American (even those millions who suffered through inferior history courses) knows about Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their 1803-05 explorations through what would become the western United States. But who's ever heard of the competing expedition mounted by True Teague Kinneson? It's taken Howard Frank Mosher (A Stranger in the Kingdom) to finally bring that adventure to the reading public, in a novel that will remind readers of George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman" stories. Kinneson, we're told, was an inventor, soldier, schoolteacher and daily cannabis user from Vermont who wrote to President Thomas Jefferson, hoping to accompany the famous Corps of Discovery west from St. Louis. Though he was turned down, Kinneson was hardly turned off to the exploring idea, and with his teenage nephew, Ticonderoga, embarked for the Pacific Ocean himself. Along the way, Ti and his uncle (who sports a copper helmet and an Elizabethan codpiece) meet Daniel Boone's arousing daughter, save Lewis and Clark from cannibalistic Indians, and enjoy a wealth of other oddball misadventures. A charming counterpoint to several other novels that have been published to coincide with the Corps of Discovery bicentennial, The True Account plays history for humor.
The Wandering Hill (Simon & Schuster) by Larry McMurtry
Ever since Lonesome Dove (1985), McMurtry's western historical fiction has been wildly uneven -- from the high drama of Comanche Moon to the lesser adventure of Boone's Lick. But the man knows to tell a story, no doubt about that. And he always does it with a combination of humor and human feeling. The Wandering Hill, a follow-up to last year's Sin Killer, finds the eccentric, wealthy, argumentative and very English Berrybender family hold up for the winter of 1833 in a trading post at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. While they wait to return to the business of hunting, the Berrybenders contend with each other under conditions that are nowhere near spacious enough to accommodate their egos. Marital conflict, the loss of sanity and Indian attacks all ensue, with a strangely restless hill adding mystery to the frontier scenes. McMurtry is worth reading if only for the spirited cadence of his prose.
When She Was Electric (Polestar) by Andrea MacPherson
The first two chapters are dense and convoluted enough that you'll want to throw it in the sand, but wait it out. This debut novel by a former January Magazine contributing editor grows more elegant and eloquent with every page that passes, almost as though MacPherson gained confidence as she successfully tucked chapters under her belt. By the time she approaches mid-book, MacPherson has hit her stride and seems not to look back. Set in rural British Columbia in the middle of the last century, When She Was Electric is the story of three generations of woman: a formidable matriarch, her two very different daughters and her granddaughter, Ana, through whose voice much of the story is told. While one could argue that more editing might not have been a bad idea here -- particularly for those early segments -- it's delightful to witness the debut of an important new voice. Delightful and, of course, electric.
Windfallen (William Morrow) by Jojo Moyes
They're calling her the "heir-apparent to Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher." Read that: a Brit with a knack for bringing out the warmth in the human condition. And while Moyes' books couldn't properly be called Aga Sagas, there's definitely the scent of dreams fulfilled and wishes realized around Windfallen. Moyes' second novel entwines the lives of two women through Arcadia, a lovely seaside house. Lottie inherits Arcadia in the middle of the 20th century. Almost 50 years later, designer Daisy Parsons arrives to convert the deserted house into a hotel. The friendship between these two women is as unpredictable as it is warming.
Wonder When You'll Miss Me (William Morrow) by Amanda Davis
The title of Amanda Davis' novel turned out to be all too prophetic: just as her debut novel was being launched last spring, Davis and her parents were killed in a small plane crash. Though it's always sad when the world loses a creative force, the timing here touched the book world completely. Davis was just 32 years old, and her debut work, Wonder When You'll Miss Me, was breathtaking, a brutally honest and completely touching look at female adolescence. Outcast Faith strikes back after a physical attack, then runs away to join the circus where she begins to heal.
Friday, June 27, 2003
Summer Books cont. part 2 of 3
Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (William Morrow) by Christopher Moore
Nathan Quinn's work as a marine biologist has produced spectacularly lackluster results over the years. Each winter Nathan and his team cruise Hawaiian waters recording the songs of the humpback whales and then attempt to translate them electronically. But all of his years of research have produced nothing much. Then, one day, Nathan sees -- and documents -- a whale with "Bite Me" written across his tail. Nathan's peaceful life promptly turns into an episode of The X Files complete with high-level conspiracies, military intrusion and a megalomaniacal underseas ruler. Christopher Moore is a crazy person. His books -- including Lamb and Practical Demonkeeping -- are well-executed works of delicious lunacy. He's not Douglas Adams but, in his more lucid moments, he's close.
The Grasshopper King (Coffee House Press) by Jordan Ellenberg
The Grasshopper King is an exceptionally silly book. It's also quite brilliant. Those two things might sound mutually exclusive but, in mathematics professor and genius Jordan Ellenberg's hands, they're simply delightful. A professor at a middling university gains international prominence, marries the dean's daughter and stops talking. To anyone. With the idea that the professor is silently contemplating some earth-shattering ideas, a language student is hired to dog his steps and become the professor's shadow -- just in case he starts talking again. The two develop a silent bond and deeper truths emerge ... eventually and quietly.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Raincoast Canada) by J.K. Rowling
In a way, it seems silly to mention this book here, because the only way you won't have heard that the latest installment in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga was launched on the first day of summer is if you've been hiding under a rock, or tuning out all the brouhaha because you really don't care. But since Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been a bestseller ever since the book's publication was announced back in January, it seems likely that the novel will be filling out a lot of beach bags this summer. And filling out just about covers it: at well over 700 pages (the UK and Canadian editions are 766 pages, the U.S. edition is 896) Order of the Phoenix is breaking the records set by its predecessors. With all eyes watching, author Rowling doesn't disappoint. Book five in the series has all of the twists, turns and magic that Potter fans have come to expect.
The Kite Runner (Doubleday) by Khaled Hosseini
In Afghanistan in 1975, Amir watches helplessly while his friend, Hassan, is brutalized, an act that will reverberate across both of their lives for decades. In 2001, with the Taliban in full power, Amir -- now an American -- revisits his birthplace and his personal ghosts and ends up trying to rescue a boy who has been orphaned by violence. The Kite Runner is an almost impossibly beautiful book -- a compelling story, well told. It also brings us modern Afghanistan in a way we've seldom seen. Hosseini knows this turf: born in Kabul, he came to the United States with his family in 1980. A brilliant debut.
A Man to Call My Own (Atria) by Johanna Lindsey
Though the title is facile, it does scream, Take me to the beach! As a ranking historical romance maven, many of Johanna Lindsey's novels -- more than 54 million copies in 12 languages -- get read in peaceful places. The titles evoke the mood Lindsey creates: Captive Bride, Tender Rebel, Gentle Rogue and on and on and on. In A Man to Call My Own, twin New England heiresses Amanda and Marian are shipped off to live with their aunt after their father dies. The twins soon meet -- and compete for -- neighboring cowboy Chad Kinkaid of the masculine good looks and teetering testosterone. As always, Lindsey delivers an engaging, human story with her distinctive blend of romance, sensuality and humor.
People of the Owl (Forge) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Four thousand years before there's a Louisiana -- or a United States to put it in -- a boy in that area called Salamander inherits his brother's two wives: women who, it turns out, have been instructed to kill him. People of the Owl is the 11th installment in Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear's First North Americans series, which they began in 1990 with People of the Wolf. Historical fictionists in the tradition of Jean Auel and James Michener, the Gears -- both of whom are archaeologists -- reconstruct their histories with equal parts technical accuracy and talented storytelling.
Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins) by Samuel Ligon
This debut novel opens with what you'd think would be the ultimate spoiler: the untimely and undignified death of the protagonist. Yet Samuel Ligon's storytelling skills provide us with a novel that is both starkly beautiful and frankly suspenseful. Perfectly rendered characters and a relentless series of plot twists make Safe in Heaven Dead an intensely satisfying read. Ligon's career is off to an auspicious start.
Sheet Music (Ballantine) by M.J. Rose
Cosmopolitan called M.J. Rose's last two books sizzling summer reads. We'll get on the bandwagon with that, for at times Rose's novels seem absolutely meant for the beach -- best read during an undisturbed chunk of time, the better to enjoy the sensual prose and plot lines that are invariably present in this writer's work. In Rose's latest work, Sheet Music, sensuality is everywhere: food-related scenes that read like foreplay, the lush background of an oceanfront estate and a soundtrack of classical music that seems to permeate every corner of the novel. Journalist Justine Pagett travels to the estate of celebrity composer-conductor Sophie DeLyon to do a series of interviews for an article. However, upon her arrival, Justine finds that Sophie has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile, Justine herself is receiving threats intended to dissuade her from writing her piece.
Sweet Hush (Little, Brown) by Deborah Smith
An apple orchard in Georgia is the setting for Sweet Hush, the ninth novel from Deborah Smith (A Place to Call Home, On Bear Mountain, The Stone Flower Garden). Hush McGillen brings her family's apple business from the brink of disaster and turns it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. She's successful enough to send her son to Harvard, where that son meets, impregnates and marries the daughter of the president of the United States. When the star-crossed lovers flee to Sweet Hush farms to elude the Secret Service, Hush meets secret assassin Nick Jakobek who turns out to be more sexy than sinister. Sound improbable? Well ... OK. But for summer reading, this plot adds up to four stars and half a brain. What could be sweeter?
Trading Up (Hyperion) by Candace Bushnell
The author of Sex and the City and 4 Blondes seems never to venture far from her home turf: the seamy, sexy underside of some of the better-heeled portions of the Big Apple. And, when speaking of better-heeled and Candace Bushnell in the same sentence, the former is meant quite literally. As the PR material that accompanies Trading Up promises, Bushnell has "changed forever how we view New York City, female friendships, and the love of a good pair of Manolos." In Trading Up we follow the adventures of Janey Wilcox -- first met in 4 Blondes -- a "model/actress/whatever" with better (and still better) things on her mind. Trading Up is Bushnell's first full-length novel and, while entertaining, it's also somewhat empty -- as is Janey. But, never mind: expect it to be filling out more than its share of beach bags this summer.
Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (William Morrow) by Christopher Moore
Nathan Quinn's work as a marine biologist has produced spectacularly lackluster results over the years. Each winter Nathan and his team cruise Hawaiian waters recording the songs of the humpback whales and then attempt to translate them electronically. But all of his years of research have produced nothing much. Then, one day, Nathan sees -- and documents -- a whale with "Bite Me" written across his tail. Nathan's peaceful life promptly turns into an episode of The X Files complete with high-level conspiracies, military intrusion and a megalomaniacal underseas ruler. Christopher Moore is a crazy person. His books -- including Lamb and Practical Demonkeeping -- are well-executed works of delicious lunacy. He's not Douglas Adams but, in his more lucid moments, he's close.
The Grasshopper King (Coffee House Press) by Jordan Ellenberg
The Grasshopper King is an exceptionally silly book. It's also quite brilliant. Those two things might sound mutually exclusive but, in mathematics professor and genius Jordan Ellenberg's hands, they're simply delightful. A professor at a middling university gains international prominence, marries the dean's daughter and stops talking. To anyone. With the idea that the professor is silently contemplating some earth-shattering ideas, a language student is hired to dog his steps and become the professor's shadow -- just in case he starts talking again. The two develop a silent bond and deeper truths emerge ... eventually and quietly.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Raincoast Canada) by J.K. Rowling
In a way, it seems silly to mention this book here, because the only way you won't have heard that the latest installment in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga was launched on the first day of summer is if you've been hiding under a rock, or tuning out all the brouhaha because you really don't care. But since Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been a bestseller ever since the book's publication was announced back in January, it seems likely that the novel will be filling out a lot of beach bags this summer. And filling out just about covers it: at well over 700 pages (the UK and Canadian editions are 766 pages, the U.S. edition is 896) Order of the Phoenix is breaking the records set by its predecessors. With all eyes watching, author Rowling doesn't disappoint. Book five in the series has all of the twists, turns and magic that Potter fans have come to expect.
The Kite Runner (Doubleday) by Khaled Hosseini
In Afghanistan in 1975, Amir watches helplessly while his friend, Hassan, is brutalized, an act that will reverberate across both of their lives for decades. In 2001, with the Taliban in full power, Amir -- now an American -- revisits his birthplace and his personal ghosts and ends up trying to rescue a boy who has been orphaned by violence. The Kite Runner is an almost impossibly beautiful book -- a compelling story, well told. It also brings us modern Afghanistan in a way we've seldom seen. Hosseini knows this turf: born in Kabul, he came to the United States with his family in 1980. A brilliant debut.
A Man to Call My Own (Atria) by Johanna Lindsey
Though the title is facile, it does scream, Take me to the beach! As a ranking historical romance maven, many of Johanna Lindsey's novels -- more than 54 million copies in 12 languages -- get read in peaceful places. The titles evoke the mood Lindsey creates: Captive Bride, Tender Rebel, Gentle Rogue and on and on and on. In A Man to Call My Own, twin New England heiresses Amanda and Marian are shipped off to live with their aunt after their father dies. The twins soon meet -- and compete for -- neighboring cowboy Chad Kinkaid of the masculine good looks and teetering testosterone. As always, Lindsey delivers an engaging, human story with her distinctive blend of romance, sensuality and humor.
People of the Owl (Forge) by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear
Four thousand years before there's a Louisiana -- or a United States to put it in -- a boy in that area called Salamander inherits his brother's two wives: women who, it turns out, have been instructed to kill him. People of the Owl is the 11th installment in Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear's First North Americans series, which they began in 1990 with People of the Wolf. Historical fictionists in the tradition of Jean Auel and James Michener, the Gears -- both of whom are archaeologists -- reconstruct their histories with equal parts technical accuracy and talented storytelling.
Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins) by Samuel Ligon
This debut novel opens with what you'd think would be the ultimate spoiler: the untimely and undignified death of the protagonist. Yet Samuel Ligon's storytelling skills provide us with a novel that is both starkly beautiful and frankly suspenseful. Perfectly rendered characters and a relentless series of plot twists make Safe in Heaven Dead an intensely satisfying read. Ligon's career is off to an auspicious start.
Sheet Music (Ballantine) by M.J. Rose
Cosmopolitan called M.J. Rose's last two books sizzling summer reads. We'll get on the bandwagon with that, for at times Rose's novels seem absolutely meant for the beach -- best read during an undisturbed chunk of time, the better to enjoy the sensual prose and plot lines that are invariably present in this writer's work. In Rose's latest work, Sheet Music, sensuality is everywhere: food-related scenes that read like foreplay, the lush background of an oceanfront estate and a soundtrack of classical music that seems to permeate every corner of the novel. Journalist Justine Pagett travels to the estate of celebrity composer-conductor Sophie DeLyon to do a series of interviews for an article. However, upon her arrival, Justine finds that Sophie has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile, Justine herself is receiving threats intended to dissuade her from writing her piece.
Sweet Hush (Little, Brown) by Deborah Smith
An apple orchard in Georgia is the setting for Sweet Hush, the ninth novel from Deborah Smith (A Place to Call Home, On Bear Mountain, The Stone Flower Garden). Hush McGillen brings her family's apple business from the brink of disaster and turns it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. She's successful enough to send her son to Harvard, where that son meets, impregnates and marries the daughter of the president of the United States. When the star-crossed lovers flee to Sweet Hush farms to elude the Secret Service, Hush meets secret assassin Nick Jakobek who turns out to be more sexy than sinister. Sound improbable? Well ... OK. But for summer reading, this plot adds up to four stars and half a brain. What could be sweeter?
Trading Up (Hyperion) by Candace Bushnell
The author of Sex and the City and 4 Blondes seems never to venture far from her home turf: the seamy, sexy underside of some of the better-heeled portions of the Big Apple. And, when speaking of better-heeled and Candace Bushnell in the same sentence, the former is meant quite literally. As the PR material that accompanies Trading Up promises, Bushnell has "changed forever how we view New York City, female friendships, and the love of a good pair of Manolos." In Trading Up we follow the adventures of Janey Wilcox -- first met in 4 Blondes -- a "model/actress/whatever" with better (and still better) things on her mind. Trading Up is Bushnell's first full-length novel and, while entertaining, it's also somewhat empty -- as is Janey. But, never mind: expect it to be filling out more than its share of beach bags this summer.
Some of the Summer Fiction from January Magazine (Part 1 of 3)
All Over Creation (Viking) by Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki (My Year of Meats) goes from meat to potatoes with All Over Creation, a story that is as warm and engaging as it is fascinating and -- ultimately -- frightening. When she was just 15, Yumi Fuller ran away from her potato farmer father and her Japanese war bride mother: she hasn't been back in 25 years. Now her father is dying and her mother can barely tell the fridge from the alarm clock. Yumi has to come back and help them sort things out. While she was gone, her mother and father started a small business, growing, harvesting and selling heirloom seeds. Just as Yumi turns up at her childhood home in Power County, Idaho, a group of militant environmentalists called the Seeds of Resistance get wind of what Yumi's father has been trying to do, hail him as a prophet, and determine to spend some time in the great man's shadow. All Over Creation is a delicate patchwork of thoughts and ideas that Ozeki blends together to create a novel that's smart and touching, as well as terribly informative in terms of agribusiness and genetic manipulation. Read this just before tackling Margaret Atwood's latest, Oryx and Crake, and you'll never look at food in the same way again.
Candy (Back Bay Books) by Mian Mian
With her first novel newly translated into English, Mian Mian does for China what Irvine Welsh did for Scotland: it ain't pretty, but it's hard to look away. Like Trainspotting, Candy is a look at parts of a country that the travel brochures go to great lengths to cover up. Here are sex, drugs and general vice talked about with a youthful exuberance that is often raw and mostly compelling. Candy is narrated by Hong, a teenage runaway who falls in love with a musician and becomes enmeshed in a world of physical and spiritual excess. Mian, a writer as well as the only female dance party promoter in China, lives in Shanghai where, according to her Web site, "She has become a cultural icon to a generation of Chinese youth who value her authenticity and honesty in portraying the new face of Shanghai."
The Corner Garden (Penguin Canada) by Lesley Kruger
What happens when exuberant though slightly confused youth meets ancient and well-tended evil? In The Corner Garden, Lesley Kruger's third novel, youth takes the form of Jessie Barfoot, a likable 15-year-old whose single mom marries, causing Jessie confusion and upset at a crucial point in her young life. It is just at this juncture that Jessie and her mother and stepfather move into a house in a new neighborhood. There, Jessie meets Martha van Tellingen, the "witch" next door: an old Dutch woman who has been harboring a secret ever since she came to Canada six decades before. Jessie's dismayed mother can do little besides watch as her daughter slides from being a fairly directed and functional young woman to becoming a "troubled teen" -- a statistic. What Jessie's mom has no way of knowing is that her unwitting daughter is being schooled by van Tellingen in ways familiar to her from her own Nazi youth. The Corner Garden is told in three voices: through diary entries written in Jessie's energetic lilt, letters composed by the crusty van Tellingen to her late father, and diary entries from Martha's own Nazi-influenced youth. Kruger takes some interesting ideas, builds some believable characters, then has them interact in unexpected ways.
The Darkness That Comes Before (Penguin Canada) by R. Scott Bakker
Fans of the fantasy genre will want to take note of R. Scott Bakker. Though currently difficult to find outside of Bakker's native Canada, his debut novel, The Darkness That Comes Before, has all the earmarks of a classic, including a well-executed world, clearly defined characters and an obvious desire to push boundaries established by the genre's best-loved authors. The Darkness That Comes Before is the first installment in Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series and is entirely too involved to even begin to synopsize it here. Suffice it to say that this student of literature, history, philosophy and ancient languages -- currently completing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Vanderbilt University -- has spared none of his considerable talent in executing the first novel in what we predict will ultimately become a series important to the genre.
The Dirty Girls Social Club (St. Martin's Press) by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
It's been called the "Latina Wating to Exhale," and not without some justification. But if we're looking for comparisons to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's debut novel, some others hold water, as well. The Dirty Girls Social Club belongs in the ranks with the very best of contemporary chick lit. It possesses some of the cheerful lunacy of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books as well as the stark emotional honesty found in Rebecca Wells' Ya-Ya Sisterhood series. Six young Latina women make up the Buena Sucia Social Club. They met while attending Boston University and pledged to meet "twice a year, every year, for the rest of our lives." Told in the voices of each of the women, The Dirty Girls Social Club invites comparison. And defies it. Unsurprisingly (considering the comparison company it's in) a film version is already in the works.
The Dogs of Babel (Little, Brown) by Carolyn Parkhurst
Linguist Paul Iverson is devastated when his wife, Lexy, dies in a mysterious fall, the only witness being the couple's dog, Lorelei. As time passes, the mystery surrounding Lexy's death deepens. Determined to discover what really happened that fateful day, Paul begins a series of experiments aimed at teaching his faithful canine how to communicate what she knows. The Dogs of Babel isn't really, however, an animal story. Nor are Paul's experiments aimed at inviting laughter. In many ways, The Dogs of Babel is an examination of the psychology of relationships: how we come to understand -- and misunderstand -- each other and how grief can alter everything. Parkhurst's debut novel is a winner.
Fidelity (Anchor Canada) by Michael Redhill
Michael Redhill's debut novel, Martin Sloane, caused enough of a sensation in his native Canada -- not to mention winning a very nice nod from The New York Times Book Review -- that this writer's trajectory bears a close watch. Martin Sloane won a wheelbarrow full of prizes for the poet-turned-playwright-turned-novelist in 2001. If anything, Redhill's short stories are better. Stronger. And certainly more finely honed. The 10 stories in Fidelity are startlingly spare and strikingly beautiful, with the emphasis -- as it was in Martin Sloane -- on the internal life of his characters.
All Over Creation (Viking) by Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki (My Year of Meats) goes from meat to potatoes with All Over Creation, a story that is as warm and engaging as it is fascinating and -- ultimately -- frightening. When she was just 15, Yumi Fuller ran away from her potato farmer father and her Japanese war bride mother: she hasn't been back in 25 years. Now her father is dying and her mother can barely tell the fridge from the alarm clock. Yumi has to come back and help them sort things out. While she was gone, her mother and father started a small business, growing, harvesting and selling heirloom seeds. Just as Yumi turns up at her childhood home in Power County, Idaho, a group of militant environmentalists called the Seeds of Resistance get wind of what Yumi's father has been trying to do, hail him as a prophet, and determine to spend some time in the great man's shadow. All Over Creation is a delicate patchwork of thoughts and ideas that Ozeki blends together to create a novel that's smart and touching, as well as terribly informative in terms of agribusiness and genetic manipulation. Read this just before tackling Margaret Atwood's latest, Oryx and Crake, and you'll never look at food in the same way again.
Candy (Back Bay Books) by Mian Mian
With her first novel newly translated into English, Mian Mian does for China what Irvine Welsh did for Scotland: it ain't pretty, but it's hard to look away. Like Trainspotting, Candy is a look at parts of a country that the travel brochures go to great lengths to cover up. Here are sex, drugs and general vice talked about with a youthful exuberance that is often raw and mostly compelling. Candy is narrated by Hong, a teenage runaway who falls in love with a musician and becomes enmeshed in a world of physical and spiritual excess. Mian, a writer as well as the only female dance party promoter in China, lives in Shanghai where, according to her Web site, "She has become a cultural icon to a generation of Chinese youth who value her authenticity and honesty in portraying the new face of Shanghai."
The Corner Garden (Penguin Canada) by Lesley Kruger
What happens when exuberant though slightly confused youth meets ancient and well-tended evil? In The Corner Garden, Lesley Kruger's third novel, youth takes the form of Jessie Barfoot, a likable 15-year-old whose single mom marries, causing Jessie confusion and upset at a crucial point in her young life. It is just at this juncture that Jessie and her mother and stepfather move into a house in a new neighborhood. There, Jessie meets Martha van Tellingen, the "witch" next door: an old Dutch woman who has been harboring a secret ever since she came to Canada six decades before. Jessie's dismayed mother can do little besides watch as her daughter slides from being a fairly directed and functional young woman to becoming a "troubled teen" -- a statistic. What Jessie's mom has no way of knowing is that her unwitting daughter is being schooled by van Tellingen in ways familiar to her from her own Nazi youth. The Corner Garden is told in three voices: through diary entries written in Jessie's energetic lilt, letters composed by the crusty van Tellingen to her late father, and diary entries from Martha's own Nazi-influenced youth. Kruger takes some interesting ideas, builds some believable characters, then has them interact in unexpected ways.
The Darkness That Comes Before (Penguin Canada) by R. Scott Bakker
Fans of the fantasy genre will want to take note of R. Scott Bakker. Though currently difficult to find outside of Bakker's native Canada, his debut novel, The Darkness That Comes Before, has all the earmarks of a classic, including a well-executed world, clearly defined characters and an obvious desire to push boundaries established by the genre's best-loved authors. The Darkness That Comes Before is the first installment in Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series and is entirely too involved to even begin to synopsize it here. Suffice it to say that this student of literature, history, philosophy and ancient languages -- currently completing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Vanderbilt University -- has spared none of his considerable talent in executing the first novel in what we predict will ultimately become a series important to the genre.
The Dirty Girls Social Club (St. Martin's Press) by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
It's been called the "Latina Wating to Exhale," and not without some justification. But if we're looking for comparisons to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's debut novel, some others hold water, as well. The Dirty Girls Social Club belongs in the ranks with the very best of contemporary chick lit. It possesses some of the cheerful lunacy of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books as well as the stark emotional honesty found in Rebecca Wells' Ya-Ya Sisterhood series. Six young Latina women make up the Buena Sucia Social Club. They met while attending Boston University and pledged to meet "twice a year, every year, for the rest of our lives." Told in the voices of each of the women, The Dirty Girls Social Club invites comparison. And defies it. Unsurprisingly (considering the comparison company it's in) a film version is already in the works.
The Dogs of Babel (Little, Brown) by Carolyn Parkhurst
Linguist Paul Iverson is devastated when his wife, Lexy, dies in a mysterious fall, the only witness being the couple's dog, Lorelei. As time passes, the mystery surrounding Lexy's death deepens. Determined to discover what really happened that fateful day, Paul begins a series of experiments aimed at teaching his faithful canine how to communicate what she knows. The Dogs of Babel isn't really, however, an animal story. Nor are Paul's experiments aimed at inviting laughter. In many ways, The Dogs of Babel is an examination of the psychology of relationships: how we come to understand -- and misunderstand -- each other and how grief can alter everything. Parkhurst's debut novel is a winner.
Fidelity (Anchor Canada) by Michael Redhill
Michael Redhill's debut novel, Martin Sloane, caused enough of a sensation in his native Canada -- not to mention winning a very nice nod from The New York Times Book Review -- that this writer's trajectory bears a close watch. Martin Sloane won a wheelbarrow full of prizes for the poet-turned-playwright-turned-novelist in 2001. If anything, Redhill's short stories are better. Stronger. And certainly more finely honed. The 10 stories in Fidelity are startlingly spare and strikingly beautiful, with the emphasis -- as it was in Martin Sloane -- on the internal life of his characters.
Monday, June 23, 2003
More Books for Summer Reading from THE NEW YORK TIMES
(Page 5 of 7)
SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME. By Ignacio Padilla. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$22.) Four first-person narrators share the work in this somber,
sometimes sinister novel of 1916 and its portents in Europe; three
of them are chess players, lost in a maze of history and demonic
invention; the fourth seems to be the devil.
A SHIP MADE OF PAPER. By Scott Spencer. (Ecco/HarperCollins,
$24.95.) Spencer's eighth novel reprises the theme of consuming
love, this time in the form of an affair between well-adjusted
adults told from both perspectives, and asks whether that love isn't
worth the suffering it causes to those around them.
SHROUD. By John Banville. (Knopf, $25.) The protagonist of
''Shroud,'' based on Paul de Man, the posthumously disgraced star of
deconstructive criticism, dreads his exposure in his own lifetime as
the author of Nazi-era anti-Semitic journalism; the worst of it is
that he didn't really write that stuff, though he is living under
the name of the man who did.
THE SONGS OF THE KINGS. By Barry Unsworth. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
$26.) A modern retelling of Euripides' ''Iphigenia in Aulis,'' in
which seers struggle to see what god is holding up the invasion of
Troy while Odysseus, a scheming political animal, works to unite the
Greek army to preserve his chance of looting Troy and dying rich.
THAT OLD ACE IN THE HOLE. By Annie Proulx. (Scribner, $26.) Proulx's
new novel follows the destiny of Bob Dollar, abandoned at 8 on a
Denver doorstep, through the high plains of Texas and Oklahoma,
where he seeks locations for hog factories until he encounters the
real folks who live there and is caught up in their yarns and
legends.
THE TIME OF OUR SINGING. By Richard Powers. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $27.) This dazzling, difficult novel, Powers's eighth,
follows the lives of a talented mixed (he Jewish, she black) couple
in America from about 1939 on; their sufferings are reflected in
musical and scientific developments.
THE VOICE AT 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late & New Poems. By Charles Simic.
(Harcourt, $25.) Tidy, blunt verses whose moral vision is rooted in
an appreciation of the absurd; a surrealism of a sort that is always
in position to raise existential questions about daily life.
WE PIERCE. By Andrew Huebner. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) Rooted in the
author's family history, a novel of the 1991 gulf war follows a
young Army sergeant as he gradually perfects the emotional
hollowness that allows him to live with all that he has seen and
done in Iraq, as well as with the exquisite awareness of his own
expendability.
WHAT I LOVED. By Siri Hustvedt. (Holt, $25.) A generous, engaged
philosophical novel, set in the New York art world with its vanities
and corruptions, and developing such propositions as the impress of
one personality on another, the instability of sexual identity, the
passage of the world through people's thoughts and lives.
WHEN THE WOMEN COME OUT TO DANCE: Stories. By Elmore Leonard.
(Morrow, $24.95.) All of Leonard's talents for hard-boiled fiction
-- the sadism, the sex and especially the deadpan vernacular -- are
on display in his second collection of short fiction.
A WHISTLING WOMAN. By A. S. Byatt. (Knopf, $26.) The bookish
Frederica Potter, protagonist of this fourth novel in a series that
began 25 years ago, lives by interviewing many and various savants
on television, allowing the entry of much arcane information into
the novel and unleashing the author's satirical powers in all
directions.
THE WIFE. By Meg Wolitzer. (Scribner, $23.) A light-footed,
streamlined novel that rushes in to shed new heat on old themes like
gender, writing and identity; Joan Castleman gives up her writing
career to service that of her husband, Joe, a jerk of many flavors,
and Wolitzer deploys a calm, seamless humor over the agony.
MYSTERY
HEX. By Maggie Estep. (Three Rivers, paper, $14.) Ruby Murphy, the
Coney Island drifter whose free spirit accounts for the ravishing
originality of this idiosyncratic first mystery, falls for a perfect
stranger's sob story and goes undercover as a stablehand at Belmont
Park to keep tabs on a stable groom with sexy eyes and a mysterious
past.
Continued
(Page 5 of 7)
SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME. By Ignacio Padilla. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$22.) Four first-person narrators share the work in this somber,
sometimes sinister novel of 1916 and its portents in Europe; three
of them are chess players, lost in a maze of history and demonic
invention; the fourth seems to be the devil.
A SHIP MADE OF PAPER. By Scott Spencer. (Ecco/HarperCollins,
$24.95.) Spencer's eighth novel reprises the theme of consuming
love, this time in the form of an affair between well-adjusted
adults told from both perspectives, and asks whether that love isn't
worth the suffering it causes to those around them.
SHROUD. By John Banville. (Knopf, $25.) The protagonist of
''Shroud,'' based on Paul de Man, the posthumously disgraced star of
deconstructive criticism, dreads his exposure in his own lifetime as
the author of Nazi-era anti-Semitic journalism; the worst of it is
that he didn't really write that stuff, though he is living under
the name of the man who did.
THE SONGS OF THE KINGS. By Barry Unsworth. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
$26.) A modern retelling of Euripides' ''Iphigenia in Aulis,'' in
which seers struggle to see what god is holding up the invasion of
Troy while Odysseus, a scheming political animal, works to unite the
Greek army to preserve his chance of looting Troy and dying rich.
THAT OLD ACE IN THE HOLE. By Annie Proulx. (Scribner, $26.) Proulx's
new novel follows the destiny of Bob Dollar, abandoned at 8 on a
Denver doorstep, through the high plains of Texas and Oklahoma,
where he seeks locations for hog factories until he encounters the
real folks who live there and is caught up in their yarns and
legends.
THE TIME OF OUR SINGING. By Richard Powers. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $27.) This dazzling, difficult novel, Powers's eighth,
follows the lives of a talented mixed (he Jewish, she black) couple
in America from about 1939 on; their sufferings are reflected in
musical and scientific developments.
THE VOICE AT 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late & New Poems. By Charles Simic.
(Harcourt, $25.) Tidy, blunt verses whose moral vision is rooted in
an appreciation of the absurd; a surrealism of a sort that is always
in position to raise existential questions about daily life.
WE PIERCE. By Andrew Huebner. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) Rooted in the
author's family history, a novel of the 1991 gulf war follows a
young Army sergeant as he gradually perfects the emotional
hollowness that allows him to live with all that he has seen and
done in Iraq, as well as with the exquisite awareness of his own
expendability.
WHAT I LOVED. By Siri Hustvedt. (Holt, $25.) A generous, engaged
philosophical novel, set in the New York art world with its vanities
and corruptions, and developing such propositions as the impress of
one personality on another, the instability of sexual identity, the
passage of the world through people's thoughts and lives.
WHEN THE WOMEN COME OUT TO DANCE: Stories. By Elmore Leonard.
(Morrow, $24.95.) All of Leonard's talents for hard-boiled fiction
-- the sadism, the sex and especially the deadpan vernacular -- are
on display in his second collection of short fiction.
A WHISTLING WOMAN. By A. S. Byatt. (Knopf, $26.) The bookish
Frederica Potter, protagonist of this fourth novel in a series that
began 25 years ago, lives by interviewing many and various savants
on television, allowing the entry of much arcane information into
the novel and unleashing the author's satirical powers in all
directions.
THE WIFE. By Meg Wolitzer. (Scribner, $23.) A light-footed,
streamlined novel that rushes in to shed new heat on old themes like
gender, writing and identity; Joan Castleman gives up her writing
career to service that of her husband, Joe, a jerk of many flavors,
and Wolitzer deploys a calm, seamless humor over the agony.
MYSTERY
HEX. By Maggie Estep. (Three Rivers, paper, $14.) Ruby Murphy, the
Coney Island drifter whose free spirit accounts for the ravishing
originality of this idiosyncratic first mystery, falls for a perfect
stranger's sob story and goes undercover as a stablehand at Belmont
Park to keep tabs on a stable groom with sexy eyes and a mysterious
past.
Continued
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
This is great!
END OF LINE. industrial-strength non sequiturs. now even crunchier!
"Quote of the day
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
To me, this quote encapsulates the struggle to shatter the barrier of writer's block.
y6h76rtf7708jhlk.j;lkjdfser
—K A Bedford, author of Orbital Burn
end of line."
END OF LINE. industrial-strength non sequiturs. now even crunchier!
"Quote of the day
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
To me, this quote encapsulates the struggle to shatter the barrier of writer's block.
y6h76rtf7708jhlk.j;lkjdfser
—K A Bedford, author of Orbital Burn
end of line."
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
More New York Times Books for Summer Reading
THE MONSTERS OF ST. HELENA. By Brooks Hansen. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $24.) The island chosen for Napoleon's final exile lends its
hermetic isolation to Hansen's novel, in which a defeated,
domesticated Bonaparte plays with children and writes his memoirs
while his presence intrudes on the local haunt, a Portuguese traitor
stranded many years before.
MORENGA. By Uwe Timm. (New Directions, $25.95.) An intriguing,
impressionistic novel of colonial warfare, published in Germany in
1978 and set in Germany's former African empire, where the
suppression of the rebellious Herero tribe by a kind of
state-sponsored genocide in 1904 seems to anticipate the Holocaust.
OFFICE OF INNOCENCE. By Thomas Keneally. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
$25.) This fictional chronicle of the sentimental education of a
priest mixes elements of melodrama, murder mystery and theological
treatise, all of them swirling around an earnest young curate whose
indiscretions bring scandal to the church and a killer to his
confessional box.
ORYX AND CRAKE. By Margaret Atwood. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.)
Atwood returns to a dystopian future in this bleak novel about a man
who may be the last human remaining on postapocalyptic earth.
PATTERN RECOGNITION. By William Gibson. (Putnam, $25.95.) Gibson's
elegant, entrancing seventh novel concerns a supersmart woman, a
freelance marketing consultant who covers the globe looking for the
next big salable fad, meanwhile trying to solve the disappearance of
her father, a retired C.I.A. man, in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
THE PIECES FROM BERLIN. By Michael Pye. (Knopf, $24.) A tough,
mature, difficult but brilliantly paced novel in which a woman in
Nazi Berlin accepts Jews' valuable possessions to safeguard them,
then appropriates them and slopes off to Switzerland. Nemesis
arrives 60 years later when a woman spots and remembers a piece of
family furniture.
THE POINT OF RETURN. By Siddhartha Deb. (Ecco/HarperCollins,
$24.95.) A first novel whose hero, an Indian veterinarian and public
servant, a true believer in progress and public works, finds himself
repeatedly on the wrong side of history in the intolerant,
irrational and corrupt nation of real life.
PROPERTY. By Valerie Martin. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $23.95.) In
and around antebellum New Orleans, this novel turns on sexual
rivalry and power struggle among a boorish planter, his enraged
wife, who hates him, and an accomplished, beautiful slave woman who
belongs to the wife but has borne a child to the husband.
THE QUALITY OF LIFE REPORT. By Meghan Daum. (Viking, $24.95.) A fine
comic first novel in which misguided fantasy betrays a young New
York television journalist, first by sending her to the Midwest,
where folks are simple and good, then by orders from New York to do
a lifestyle series on the simple, good folk.
THE ROMANTIC. By Barbara Gowdy. (Metropolitan/Holt, $24.) Obsession
knows no greater exponent than Louise, narrator and protagonist of
this adroit novel that refuses to honor the claims of adulthood.
Abandoned by her mother at 9, Louise soon falls madly in love with
another family's mother, then with that mother's adopted son, and
remains consciously faithful to her doomed love ever after.
RUMPOLE RESTS HIS CASE. By John Mortimer. (Viking, $24.95.) Horace
Rumpole, Mortimer's curmudgeonly London barrister, may have breathed
his last in this collection, in which Rumpole defends his usual
assortment of eccentric clients.
SAMARITAN. By Richard Price. (Knopf, $25.) A sprawling cast of
cinematic characters, often little people who command feeling for a
moment, then vanish, surrounds the two chief characters of this
urban North Jersey novel, in which the beating of a television
writer is investigated by an old neighborhood friend turned police
detective.
SAPPHO'S LEAP. By Erica Jong. (Norton, $24.95.) A historical fantasy
about the virtually prehistoric Greek erotic poet Sappho, a woman
much mistrusted by ancient thinkers for her uppityness and her
comprehension of sexual desire, but reimagined here as an updated
compilation of the heroines of Jong's greatest hits.
SET THIS HOUSE IN ORDER: A Romance of Souls. By Matt Ruff.
(HarperCollins, $25.95.) A heavily populated novel (its two
principal characters, Andrew and Penny, suffer from multiple
personality disorder). When Andrew's personalities begin to riot, he
and they hit the dangerous road for his childhood home while Penny
does her best to keep up.
Continued
THE MONSTERS OF ST. HELENA. By Brooks Hansen. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $24.) The island chosen for Napoleon's final exile lends its
hermetic isolation to Hansen's novel, in which a defeated,
domesticated Bonaparte plays with children and writes his memoirs
while his presence intrudes on the local haunt, a Portuguese traitor
stranded many years before.
MORENGA. By Uwe Timm. (New Directions, $25.95.) An intriguing,
impressionistic novel of colonial warfare, published in Germany in
1978 and set in Germany's former African empire, where the
suppression of the rebellious Herero tribe by a kind of
state-sponsored genocide in 1904 seems to anticipate the Holocaust.
OFFICE OF INNOCENCE. By Thomas Keneally. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
$25.) This fictional chronicle of the sentimental education of a
priest mixes elements of melodrama, murder mystery and theological
treatise, all of them swirling around an earnest young curate whose
indiscretions bring scandal to the church and a killer to his
confessional box.
ORYX AND CRAKE. By Margaret Atwood. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.)
Atwood returns to a dystopian future in this bleak novel about a man
who may be the last human remaining on postapocalyptic earth.
PATTERN RECOGNITION. By William Gibson. (Putnam, $25.95.) Gibson's
elegant, entrancing seventh novel concerns a supersmart woman, a
freelance marketing consultant who covers the globe looking for the
next big salable fad, meanwhile trying to solve the disappearance of
her father, a retired C.I.A. man, in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
THE PIECES FROM BERLIN. By Michael Pye. (Knopf, $24.) A tough,
mature, difficult but brilliantly paced novel in which a woman in
Nazi Berlin accepts Jews' valuable possessions to safeguard them,
then appropriates them and slopes off to Switzerland. Nemesis
arrives 60 years later when a woman spots and remembers a piece of
family furniture.
THE POINT OF RETURN. By Siddhartha Deb. (Ecco/HarperCollins,
$24.95.) A first novel whose hero, an Indian veterinarian and public
servant, a true believer in progress and public works, finds himself
repeatedly on the wrong side of history in the intolerant,
irrational and corrupt nation of real life.
PROPERTY. By Valerie Martin. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $23.95.) In
and around antebellum New Orleans, this novel turns on sexual
rivalry and power struggle among a boorish planter, his enraged
wife, who hates him, and an accomplished, beautiful slave woman who
belongs to the wife but has borne a child to the husband.
THE QUALITY OF LIFE REPORT. By Meghan Daum. (Viking, $24.95.) A fine
comic first novel in which misguided fantasy betrays a young New
York television journalist, first by sending her to the Midwest,
where folks are simple and good, then by orders from New York to do
a lifestyle series on the simple, good folk.
THE ROMANTIC. By Barbara Gowdy. (Metropolitan/Holt, $24.) Obsession
knows no greater exponent than Louise, narrator and protagonist of
this adroit novel that refuses to honor the claims of adulthood.
Abandoned by her mother at 9, Louise soon falls madly in love with
another family's mother, then with that mother's adopted son, and
remains consciously faithful to her doomed love ever after.
RUMPOLE RESTS HIS CASE. By John Mortimer. (Viking, $24.95.) Horace
Rumpole, Mortimer's curmudgeonly London barrister, may have breathed
his last in this collection, in which Rumpole defends his usual
assortment of eccentric clients.
SAMARITAN. By Richard Price. (Knopf, $25.) A sprawling cast of
cinematic characters, often little people who command feeling for a
moment, then vanish, surrounds the two chief characters of this
urban North Jersey novel, in which the beating of a television
writer is investigated by an old neighborhood friend turned police
detective.
SAPPHO'S LEAP. By Erica Jong. (Norton, $24.95.) A historical fantasy
about the virtually prehistoric Greek erotic poet Sappho, a woman
much mistrusted by ancient thinkers for her uppityness and her
comprehension of sexual desire, but reimagined here as an updated
compilation of the heroines of Jong's greatest hits.
SET THIS HOUSE IN ORDER: A Romance of Souls. By Matt Ruff.
(HarperCollins, $25.95.) A heavily populated novel (its two
principal characters, Andrew and Penny, suffer from multiple
personality disorder). When Andrew's personalities begin to riot, he
and they hit the dangerous road for his childhood home while Penny
does her best to keep up.
Continued
Monday, June 16, 2003
Hardcover Fiction This Week on the NEW YORK TIMES:
"1 THE DA VINCI CODE, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday, $24.95.) The murder of a curator at the Louvre leads to a trail of clues found in the work of Leonardo and to the discovery of a centuries-old secret society.
2 NAKED PREY, by John Sandford. (Putnam, $26.95.) In his new job as a troubleshooter for the governor of Minnesota, Lucas Davenport investigates the apparent lynching of a black man and a white woman.
3 THE GUARDIAN, by Nicholas Sparks. (Warner, $24.95.) While trying to choose between two suitors, a young widow realizes that her life is in danger.
4 THE FACE, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam, $26.95.) A police officer turned security chief must protect a handsome Hollywood star whose life has been threatened by a mysterious killer.
5 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, by Lauren Weisberger. (Doubleday, $21.95.) A young woman acquires a job at a fashion magazine, along with the boss from hell.
6 THE LOVELY BONES, by Alice Sebold. (Little, Brown, $21.95.) A 14-year-old girl looks down from heaven as she describes what happens in the aftermath of her kidnapping and murder.
7 ARMAGEDDON, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (Tyndale, $24.99.) The 11th volume of the "Left Behind" series, in which the forces of good battle the forces of evil after the rapture of the saved.
8 THE SINISTER PIG, by Tony Hillerman. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and his retired mentor, Joe Leaphorn, investigate the murder of an undercover agent.
9 THE SECOND TIME AROUND, by Mary Higgins Clark. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) After the head of a medical research company goes missing, a magazine columnist finds herself the target of a sinister cabal.
10 DEAD RINGER, by Lisa Scottoline. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) A Philadelphia lawyer searches for a woman who is impersonating her and for a murderer."
"1 THE DA VINCI CODE, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday, $24.95.) The murder of a curator at the Louvre leads to a trail of clues found in the work of Leonardo and to the discovery of a centuries-old secret society.
2 NAKED PREY, by John Sandford. (Putnam, $26.95.) In his new job as a troubleshooter for the governor of Minnesota, Lucas Davenport investigates the apparent lynching of a black man and a white woman.
3 THE GUARDIAN, by Nicholas Sparks. (Warner, $24.95.) While trying to choose between two suitors, a young widow realizes that her life is in danger.
4 THE FACE, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam, $26.95.) A police officer turned security chief must protect a handsome Hollywood star whose life has been threatened by a mysterious killer.
5 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, by Lauren Weisberger. (Doubleday, $21.95.) A young woman acquires a job at a fashion magazine, along with the boss from hell.
6 THE LOVELY BONES, by Alice Sebold. (Little, Brown, $21.95.) A 14-year-old girl looks down from heaven as she describes what happens in the aftermath of her kidnapping and murder.
7 ARMAGEDDON, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (Tyndale, $24.99.) The 11th volume of the "Left Behind" series, in which the forces of good battle the forces of evil after the rapture of the saved.
8 THE SINISTER PIG, by Tony Hillerman. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and his retired mentor, Joe Leaphorn, investigate the murder of an undercover agent.
9 THE SECOND TIME AROUND, by Mary Higgins Clark. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) After the head of a medical research company goes missing, a magazine columnist finds herself the target of a sinister cabal.
10 DEAD RINGER, by Lisa Scottoline. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) A Philadelphia lawyer searches for a woman who is impersonating her and for a murderer."
Thursday, June 05, 2003
Duh!! She doesn't know about cites? Also, heading said she apologized - but then later in the article, it says she doesn't apologize. Harvard? Can you hear this?
Valedictorian apologizes for failing to attribute in columns
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press Writer
June 4, 2003, 7:33 PM EDT
"CHERRY HILL, N.J. -- A high school student who won a lawsuit to be named sole valedictorian has admitted she did not properly attribute information in three articles and two essays she wrote for the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill.
Blair L. Hornstine, 18, explained her actions in a column published in the newspaper Tuesday, but she did not apologize.
"I am not a professional journalist. I was a 17-year-old with no experience in writing newspaper articles," she wrote. "Upon reflection, I am now cognizant that proper citation allows scholars of the future to constantly re-evaluate and re-examine academic works."
Hornstine borrowed liberally from several sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions and President Clinton, the newspaper said. One essay contained whole paragraphs nearly identical to a Clinton proclamation.
One essay in question, published in March on nuclear tensions in North Korea, was named best essay of the month by the Courier-Post.
Warren Faulk, a lawyer who consulted with Hornstine after she was told her writings were not properly attributed, said she was not given a copy of the ethics standards the Courier-Post claims she violated.
However, Courier-Post executive editor Derek Osenenko said Hornstine had signed a work agreement with the newspaper that said she would only submit original work.
Courier-Post spokesman Carl Lovern Jr., said the newspaper learned of the problems with Hornstine's writing when a reporter read the articles as part of research for a story about the teenager.
The paper told Hornstine that it would consider running a column in which she explained her actions. Her letter was published in the weekly teen section, Static _ the same place the articles in question were published.
The newspaper also ran an editors note listing the pieces in which she did not attribute her sources.
"After very careful analysis in this case, we believe key information in these articles and essays needed such attribution," Courier-Post executive editor Derek Osenenko said Wednesday.
Lovern said Hornstine's writings came before she sued the Moorestown public school district in federal court last month to prevent two other students from being named valedictorian along with her.
Hornstine, who completed many of her courses over the last two years with tutors because of an immune deficiency, argued that she should be the only valedictorian because she has the highest grades.
The school district argued that the shared honors were fair because Hornstine took many classes at home did not take courses required by non-disabled students, such as gym.
Hornstine prevailed in that lawsuit. A $2.7 million lawsuit against the school district is still pending in state court for punitive damages, legal fees and costs.
The lawsuits have not done much for Hornstine's popularity in the town. Her family has told police they have received death threats and their home has been vandalized.
She also faces controversy at Harvard University, where she has been accepted and intends to enroll next fall. She has been a frequent target of critical columns in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
Nearly 1,400 people _ some of whom say they are associated with the university _ have signed an online petition asking Harvard to rescind its offer to admit Hornstine.
Harvard admissions officials did not respond to a message left Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Hornstine's father, state Superior Court Judge Louis F. Hornstine, said Wednesday that his daughter was out of town. He declined to comment.
Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., the lawyer representing Blair Hornstine in her case against the school district, said there's nothing to the lack of attribution in her newspaper pieces.
"It was a whole lot of nothing. She wrote some fluff pieces for a kid-chat column," he said. He said his client explained her mistakes in Tuesday's paper and there's nothing more to it.
"We have more important things to deal with," he said."
Notice I put the story in quotes - because I didn't write it!
Valedictorian apologizes for failing to attribute in columns
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press Writer
June 4, 2003, 7:33 PM EDT
"CHERRY HILL, N.J. -- A high school student who won a lawsuit to be named sole valedictorian has admitted she did not properly attribute information in three articles and two essays she wrote for the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill.
Blair L. Hornstine, 18, explained her actions in a column published in the newspaper Tuesday, but she did not apologize.
"I am not a professional journalist. I was a 17-year-old with no experience in writing newspaper articles," she wrote. "Upon reflection, I am now cognizant that proper citation allows scholars of the future to constantly re-evaluate and re-examine academic works."
Hornstine borrowed liberally from several sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions and President Clinton, the newspaper said. One essay contained whole paragraphs nearly identical to a Clinton proclamation.
One essay in question, published in March on nuclear tensions in North Korea, was named best essay of the month by the Courier-Post.
Warren Faulk, a lawyer who consulted with Hornstine after she was told her writings were not properly attributed, said she was not given a copy of the ethics standards the Courier-Post claims she violated.
However, Courier-Post executive editor Derek Osenenko said Hornstine had signed a work agreement with the newspaper that said she would only submit original work.
Courier-Post spokesman Carl Lovern Jr., said the newspaper learned of the problems with Hornstine's writing when a reporter read the articles as part of research for a story about the teenager.
The paper told Hornstine that it would consider running a column in which she explained her actions. Her letter was published in the weekly teen section, Static _ the same place the articles in question were published.
The newspaper also ran an editors note listing the pieces in which she did not attribute her sources.
"After very careful analysis in this case, we believe key information in these articles and essays needed such attribution," Courier-Post executive editor Derek Osenenko said Wednesday.
Lovern said Hornstine's writings came before she sued the Moorestown public school district in federal court last month to prevent two other students from being named valedictorian along with her.
Hornstine, who completed many of her courses over the last two years with tutors because of an immune deficiency, argued that she should be the only valedictorian because she has the highest grades.
The school district argued that the shared honors were fair because Hornstine took many classes at home did not take courses required by non-disabled students, such as gym.
Hornstine prevailed in that lawsuit. A $2.7 million lawsuit against the school district is still pending in state court for punitive damages, legal fees and costs.
The lawsuits have not done much for Hornstine's popularity in the town. Her family has told police they have received death threats and their home has been vandalized.
She also faces controversy at Harvard University, where she has been accepted and intends to enroll next fall. She has been a frequent target of critical columns in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
Nearly 1,400 people _ some of whom say they are associated with the university _ have signed an online petition asking Harvard to rescind its offer to admit Hornstine.
Harvard admissions officials did not respond to a message left Wednesday by The Associated Press.
Hornstine's father, state Superior Court Judge Louis F. Hornstine, said Wednesday that his daughter was out of town. He declined to comment.
Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., the lawyer representing Blair Hornstine in her case against the school district, said there's nothing to the lack of attribution in her newspaper pieces.
"It was a whole lot of nothing. She wrote some fluff pieces for a kid-chat column," he said. He said his client explained her mistakes in Tuesday's paper and there's nothing more to it.
"We have more important things to deal with," he said."
Notice I put the story in quotes - because I didn't write it!
From the New York Times:
Books for Summer Reading
"THE INQUISITORS' MANUAL. By António Lobo Antunes. (Grove, $25.)
Portugal's long fascist regime haunts this novel as it anatomizes a
society permeated by meanness and arrogance; the fall of the regime
happens over and over from the viewpoints of many characters, each
of them complementing or contradicting the rest.
JENNIFER GOVERNMENT. By Max Barry. (Doubleday, $19.95.) In this
clever satirical novel set in the near future, corporations are so
mighty that people take their names from their employers. Jennifer
Government is the agent assigned by a reduced institution to pursue
a marketing ploy that kills people to sell shoes.
KILL TWO BIRDS AND GET STONED. By Kinky Friedman. (Morrow, $24.95.)
The Kinkster is back -- in spirit if not in name -- in this
multilayered novel about a self-involved writer in crisis trying to
develop a new project while cavorting with crazy strangers.
THE KING IN THE TREE: Three Novellas. By Steven Millhauser. (Knopf,
$23.) Stories whose characters are endangered by imagination as it
fosters creative bitterness, illicit love, romantic triangles and
jealousy in locations from a modern marriage to the legendary court
of Cornwall, where Tristan and Ysolt destroy their lives and those
of others.
THE LIGHT OF DAY. By Graham Swift. (Knopf, $24.) Told in a
police-blotter argot so spare it reads like a sort of gumshoe haiku,
this moody novel about severed connections might be summarized thus:
Woman kills husband. / Private eye falls hard for her: / Two lives
held in check.
LITTLE INFAMIES: Stories. By Panos Karnezis. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $24.) Love, loss and skulduggery not long after World War II
in a kind of Greek Brigadoon, an impoverished village, full of
gothic and mythical elements, that is bound to vanish when
consumerism and modern media arrive.
LOOT: And Other Stories. By Nadine Gordimer. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $23.) Death and the complicated burden of loss are the
dominant themes of this structurally diverse collection, Gordimer's
first since 1991, the year she won the Nobel Prize.
MAKING THINGS BETTER. By Anita Brookner. (Random House, $23.95.)
Brookner's protagonist, Julius Herz, has been left stranded by the
deaths in his family; now he can think of nothing to do in his life
or with it. He courts a woman he knows to be selfish and unable to
love, and on Brookner's austere scale of passivity this may be
counted as a kind of victory; but she is far too honest to say.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE SEA. By Jane Alison. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$24.) An intricate, elegant novel that ponders the connections among
love, illusion and fidelity in the permutations of eight central
characters behaving in two romantic and romanticized cities, New
Orleans and Venice.
THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB. By Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins,
$25.95.) Erdrich's latest novel revisits the fictional town of
Argus, N.D., and the familiar themes of love, death and redemption,
but shifts the focus from the town's Indians to its German, Polish
and Scandinavian citizens.
A MEMORY OF WAR. By Frederick Busch. (Norton, $25.95.) Ambitious to
deal with large themes, Busch has written a novel whose characters
are plagued by World War II's aftershocks 40 years later; the chief
victim is a Manhattan psychologist whose new patient, a scholar
specializing in Holocaust denial, claims to be his half brother.
MIDDLE EARTH. By Henri Cole. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.)
Self-portrait poems in this collection survey the shape of a life
from a great, forgiving distance; closer up, the poems reflect on
their own voices and ambiguities of gender. At book's end, the
Christian ideal of self-abnegation is fused with the inner-life
urgencies of sexuality.
THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK. By Steven Sherrill. (Picador
USA, paper, $14.) A tender first novel that spans two weeks in the
life of the Minotaur, thousands of years after the Theseus caper,
living in a North Carolina trailer park and cooking at a steakhouse,
awkward with humans but no longer devouring virgins.
MONKEY HUNTING. By Cristina García. (Knopf, $23.) A withdrawn,
melancholy novel set in Havana's Barrio Chino and concerned with how
the biggest Chinatown in Latin America came to be and then to pass
away with Castro's restrictions on private property; by a
Cuban-American writer who is a natural student of families scattered
around the earth."
Continued
Books for Summer Reading
"THE INQUISITORS' MANUAL. By António Lobo Antunes. (Grove, $25.)
Portugal's long fascist regime haunts this novel as it anatomizes a
society permeated by meanness and arrogance; the fall of the regime
happens over and over from the viewpoints of many characters, each
of them complementing or contradicting the rest.
JENNIFER GOVERNMENT. By Max Barry. (Doubleday, $19.95.) In this
clever satirical novel set in the near future, corporations are so
mighty that people take their names from their employers. Jennifer
Government is the agent assigned by a reduced institution to pursue
a marketing ploy that kills people to sell shoes.
KILL TWO BIRDS AND GET STONED. By Kinky Friedman. (Morrow, $24.95.)
The Kinkster is back -- in spirit if not in name -- in this
multilayered novel about a self-involved writer in crisis trying to
develop a new project while cavorting with crazy strangers.
THE KING IN THE TREE: Three Novellas. By Steven Millhauser. (Knopf,
$23.) Stories whose characters are endangered by imagination as it
fosters creative bitterness, illicit love, romantic triangles and
jealousy in locations from a modern marriage to the legendary court
of Cornwall, where Tristan and Ysolt destroy their lives and those
of others.
THE LIGHT OF DAY. By Graham Swift. (Knopf, $24.) Told in a
police-blotter argot so spare it reads like a sort of gumshoe haiku,
this moody novel about severed connections might be summarized thus:
Woman kills husband. / Private eye falls hard for her: / Two lives
held in check.
LITTLE INFAMIES: Stories. By Panos Karnezis. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $24.) Love, loss and skulduggery not long after World War II
in a kind of Greek Brigadoon, an impoverished village, full of
gothic and mythical elements, that is bound to vanish when
consumerism and modern media arrive.
LOOT: And Other Stories. By Nadine Gordimer. (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, $23.) Death and the complicated burden of loss are the
dominant themes of this structurally diverse collection, Gordimer's
first since 1991, the year she won the Nobel Prize.
MAKING THINGS BETTER. By Anita Brookner. (Random House, $23.95.)
Brookner's protagonist, Julius Herz, has been left stranded by the
deaths in his family; now he can think of nothing to do in his life
or with it. He courts a woman he knows to be selfish and unable to
love, and on Brookner's austere scale of passivity this may be
counted as a kind of victory; but she is far too honest to say.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE SEA. By Jane Alison. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$24.) An intricate, elegant novel that ponders the connections among
love, illusion and fidelity in the permutations of eight central
characters behaving in two romantic and romanticized cities, New
Orleans and Venice.
THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB. By Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins,
$25.95.) Erdrich's latest novel revisits the fictional town of
Argus, N.D., and the familiar themes of love, death and redemption,
but shifts the focus from the town's Indians to its German, Polish
and Scandinavian citizens.
A MEMORY OF WAR. By Frederick Busch. (Norton, $25.95.) Ambitious to
deal with large themes, Busch has written a novel whose characters
are plagued by World War II's aftershocks 40 years later; the chief
victim is a Manhattan psychologist whose new patient, a scholar
specializing in Holocaust denial, claims to be his half brother.
MIDDLE EARTH. By Henri Cole. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.)
Self-portrait poems in this collection survey the shape of a life
from a great, forgiving distance; closer up, the poems reflect on
their own voices and ambiguities of gender. At book's end, the
Christian ideal of self-abnegation is fused with the inner-life
urgencies of sexuality.
THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK. By Steven Sherrill. (Picador
USA, paper, $14.) A tender first novel that spans two weeks in the
life of the Minotaur, thousands of years after the Theseus caper,
living in a North Carolina trailer park and cooking at a steakhouse,
awkward with humans but no longer devouring virgins.
MONKEY HUNTING. By Cristina García. (Knopf, $23.) A withdrawn,
melancholy novel set in Havana's Barrio Chino and concerned with how
the biggest Chinatown in Latin America came to be and then to pass
away with Castro's restrictions on private property; by a
Cuban-American writer who is a natural student of families scattered
around the earth."
Continued
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Books for Summer ReadingJune 1, 2003
Continued from the New York Times
"DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE. By ZZ Packer. (Riverhead, $24.95.) A
first collection of short stories about characters who are apt to be
struggling, under thick layers of stereotype, to make their presence
felt in the world as black women, often engaged with old-time
religion and hemmed in by passivity learned early in segregated
daily life.
DROP CITY. By T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Viking, $25.95.) This novel's
late-blooming hippies in a Northern California commune, sensing that
the end is near (or maybe even behind them), migrate to Alaska,
where they encounter some tough real isolates who wonder aloud about
the virtues of face paint and LSD.
THE FALL. By Simon Mawer. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) Mountaineering as
a metaphor for life still clings to its perch in this fine novel
that extends back through half a century and two families of
climbers, souls ruled by passions for the mountains and for each
other, producing a tangle of erotic connections and a great deal of
physical precision in dangerous attitudes.
FEATHERSTONE. By Kirsty Gunn. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) Exploring the
effects of rural flight on those left behind, Gunn creates a small
town that is eerily alive and full of old-fashioned people and
old-fashioned epiphanies, though every small-town clichŽ applies,
including a promiscuous barmaid and a village idiot.
A FEW SHORT NOTES ON TROPICAL BUTTERFLIES: Stories. By John Murray.
(HarperCollins, $24.95.) Stories by a doctor whose understated
authorial presence and gift for description are strong enough to
sustain an occasionally underconstructed narrative.
THE GANGSTER WE ARE ALL LOOKING FOR. By Le Thi Diem Thuy. (Knopf,
$18.) The father of the anonymous narrator is the ''gangster'' of
the title; he may have been a black-market operator long ago before
escaping to America with his daughter. The story itself is a tale of
persecution, tragedy and gritty determination, told with a poetic
sensibility and a sharp eye for the matter of everyday life.
GETTING MOTHER'S BODY. By Suzan-Lori Parks. (Random House, $23.95.)
This first novel by the Pulitzer-winning African-American playwright
takes a cheerful tack across deep Faulknerian waters, relating the
fortunes of the survivors of a woman who was buried (as people
think) in some very expensive jewelry.
GILLIGAN'S WAKE. By Tom Carson. (Picador, $25.) A loopy, exuberant
novel-type prose event that sees 20th-century America through the
lives of the castaways on ''Gilligan's Island.'' The originals are
augmented by culturally significant characters, from Amelia Earhart
and Holden Caulfield to Richard Nixon and Maggie the Cat.
GOOD FAITH. By Jane Smiley. (Knopf, $26.) Joe Stratford, narrator
and protagonist of this subtly polemical novel (it is against
greed), rests reasonably content with his life as a real estate
agent. It doesn't last; the prospect of big money opens before him,
and a former I.R.S. agent, now some kind of wise guy, enmeshes him
in unblessed doings.
GREAT NECK. By Jay Cantor. (Knopf, $27.95.) Cantor's ambition in his
immense (703 pages), teeming new novel is to capture the American
scene of the late 1960's and bring it to life through six
characters, all privileged Long Island teenagers, who are bound
together by a Klan murder in Mississippi and by the antiwar
movement.
THE GURU OF LOVE. By Samrat Upadhyay. (Houghton Mifflin, $23.) A
terse, understated first novel, concerned with universal
middle-class anxieties and set in Katmandu, Nepal, where its
protagonist, Ramchandra, worries all the time about money and
worries even more about his adulterous love affair, which his wife
knows all about.
THE HAZARDS OF GOOD BREEDING. By Jessica Shattuck. (Norton, $23.95.)
An astute first novel whose blue-blooded inhabitants have occupied
the same house in Concord, Mass., for 254 years (with one temporary
exception). The appearance of social stasis that comforts them
proves, however, to be an illusion.
HEAVEN'S EDGE. By Romesh Gunesekera. (Grove, $24.) A fictional
reworking of the myth of Eden, its dignity enlarged by its awareness
that there is no recovery; it takes place in a nameless tropical
landscape that much resembles the author's native country, Sri
Lanka.
THE HILLS AT HOME. By Nancy Clark. (Pantheon, $25.) Clark's funny,
intelligent first novel reveals a special and particular kind of
life, that of an extended old New England family in their
200-year-old clapboard homestead, where they survive miracles of
inconvenience, eat tuna wiggle or fish sticks and express invincible
opinions about everything."
Continued tomorrow
Continued from the New York Times
"DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE. By ZZ Packer. (Riverhead, $24.95.) A
first collection of short stories about characters who are apt to be
struggling, under thick layers of stereotype, to make their presence
felt in the world as black women, often engaged with old-time
religion and hemmed in by passivity learned early in segregated
daily life.
DROP CITY. By T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Viking, $25.95.) This novel's
late-blooming hippies in a Northern California commune, sensing that
the end is near (or maybe even behind them), migrate to Alaska,
where they encounter some tough real isolates who wonder aloud about
the virtues of face paint and LSD.
THE FALL. By Simon Mawer. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) Mountaineering as
a metaphor for life still clings to its perch in this fine novel
that extends back through half a century and two families of
climbers, souls ruled by passions for the mountains and for each
other, producing a tangle of erotic connections and a great deal of
physical precision in dangerous attitudes.
FEATHERSTONE. By Kirsty Gunn. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) Exploring the
effects of rural flight on those left behind, Gunn creates a small
town that is eerily alive and full of old-fashioned people and
old-fashioned epiphanies, though every small-town clichŽ applies,
including a promiscuous barmaid and a village idiot.
A FEW SHORT NOTES ON TROPICAL BUTTERFLIES: Stories. By John Murray.
(HarperCollins, $24.95.) Stories by a doctor whose understated
authorial presence and gift for description are strong enough to
sustain an occasionally underconstructed narrative.
THE GANGSTER WE ARE ALL LOOKING FOR. By Le Thi Diem Thuy. (Knopf,
$18.) The father of the anonymous narrator is the ''gangster'' of
the title; he may have been a black-market operator long ago before
escaping to America with his daughter. The story itself is a tale of
persecution, tragedy and gritty determination, told with a poetic
sensibility and a sharp eye for the matter of everyday life.
GETTING MOTHER'S BODY. By Suzan-Lori Parks. (Random House, $23.95.)
This first novel by the Pulitzer-winning African-American playwright
takes a cheerful tack across deep Faulknerian waters, relating the
fortunes of the survivors of a woman who was buried (as people
think) in some very expensive jewelry.
GILLIGAN'S WAKE. By Tom Carson. (Picador, $25.) A loopy, exuberant
novel-type prose event that sees 20th-century America through the
lives of the castaways on ''Gilligan's Island.'' The originals are
augmented by culturally significant characters, from Amelia Earhart
and Holden Caulfield to Richard Nixon and Maggie the Cat.
GOOD FAITH. By Jane Smiley. (Knopf, $26.) Joe Stratford, narrator
and protagonist of this subtly polemical novel (it is against
greed), rests reasonably content with his life as a real estate
agent. It doesn't last; the prospect of big money opens before him,
and a former I.R.S. agent, now some kind of wise guy, enmeshes him
in unblessed doings.
GREAT NECK. By Jay Cantor. (Knopf, $27.95.) Cantor's ambition in his
immense (703 pages), teeming new novel is to capture the American
scene of the late 1960's and bring it to life through six
characters, all privileged Long Island teenagers, who are bound
together by a Klan murder in Mississippi and by the antiwar
movement.
THE GURU OF LOVE. By Samrat Upadhyay. (Houghton Mifflin, $23.) A
terse, understated first novel, concerned with universal
middle-class anxieties and set in Katmandu, Nepal, where its
protagonist, Ramchandra, worries all the time about money and
worries even more about his adulterous love affair, which his wife
knows all about.
THE HAZARDS OF GOOD BREEDING. By Jessica Shattuck. (Norton, $23.95.)
An astute first novel whose blue-blooded inhabitants have occupied
the same house in Concord, Mass., for 254 years (with one temporary
exception). The appearance of social stasis that comforts them
proves, however, to be an illusion.
HEAVEN'S EDGE. By Romesh Gunesekera. (Grove, $24.) A fictional
reworking of the myth of Eden, its dignity enlarged by its awareness
that there is no recovery; it takes place in a nameless tropical
landscape that much resembles the author's native country, Sri
Lanka.
THE HILLS AT HOME. By Nancy Clark. (Pantheon, $25.) Clark's funny,
intelligent first novel reveals a special and particular kind of
life, that of an extended old New England family in their
200-year-old clapboard homestead, where they survive miracles of
inconvenience, eat tuna wiggle or fish sticks and express invincible
opinions about everything."
Continued tomorrow
Monday, June 02, 2003
Books for Summer ReadingJune 1, 2003
From the NYTimes.com
FICTION & POETRY
ABANDON: A Romance. By Pico Iyer. (Knopf, $24.) A graceful novel
whose hero, an English graduate student of Sufi mystical poetry who
hopes to uncover that within himself which passeth show, heads first
for California and later for Iran, where he and the woman he is
traveling with improve their understanding of mystical poetry and of
themselves.
ALL OVER CREATION. By Ruth Ozeki. (Viking, $24.95.) A sophisticated
novel in which dread and hope coexist and the end of nature is
envisioned through the impact of genetically modified crops on a
family and the many players who descend on their Idaho potato farm.
ANY HUMAN HEART. By William Boyd. (Knopf, $24.95.) A novel whose
hero, a minor British writer and art dealer (and secret agent),
becomes a sort of stoic Everyman for the 20th century, meeting
almost everyone (Ian Fleming, Picasso, Hemingway, the Duke of
Windsor, Virginia Woolf) and traveling to almost everywhere; he has
many successes in life, each one closely attended by yet another
fall.
BAY OF SOULS. By Robert Stone. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A highly
concentrated (for this author), wholly unnerving novel whose hero,
an unhappy professor of English specializing in literary
''vitalism,'' becomes desperately involved with an exotically
attractive woman who thinks she has lost her soul and hopes to
retrieve it in a voodoo rite.
THE BOOK OF SALT. By Monique Truong. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) A
lush, fascinating, expansive first novel about exile, concerning a
gay Vietnamese cook who works for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
in Paris; he Frenchifies their apple pie while observing with an
aching heart how much better adapted to expatriation they are than
he is.
A BOX OF MATCHES. By Nicholson Baker. (Random House, $19.95.) Baker
employs his specialty as a novelist, the exhibition of life where no
life seems to be, to explore the consciousness of a man who rises
early, lights a fire and sits around in a mindful state every
morning till his matches are all spent.
CLARA. By Janice Galloway. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) The virtuoso
pianist Clara Schumann (wife of the composer Robert, mother of
eight) left 47 volumes of diaries. Undaunted, Galloway imagines a
way into Clara's life in this novel whose up-to-date concerns don't
obstruct its heroine's passionate voice.
THE COFFEE TRADER. By David Liss. (Random House, $24.95.) A
historical novel and an economically detailed romance of capitalism,
in which a young Jew in 17th-century Amsterdam seeks to evade
censure from the Jewish authorities and to build a personal fortune
by exploiting the rising popularity of coffee, which he intends to
buy cheap and sell dear.
THE COMMISSARIAT OF ENLIGHTENMENT. By Ken Kalfus.
(Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.95.) Nobody listens to anyone else or looks
anyone in the eye in this novel by an author interested in the force
of ideas and the power of images over life; the first half of the
book is full of people whose concern is taking some personal
advantage from the impending death of Tolstoy.
COSMOPOLIS. By Don DeLillo. (Scribner, $25.) An all-day (and
book-length) chauffeured trip across midtown Manhattan exposes
DeLillo's cool, New Economy protagonist to an assortment of
characters in this critique of hypercapitalism.
CRABWALK. By Günter Grass. (Harcourt, $25.) Grass's lifelong
analysis of Germany's past and present centers, in this new novel,
on a refugee ship sunk by a Russian submarine with the loss of 9,000
lives; the story is told through three generations of a family, all
marked, one way or another, by the ship's fate.
THE CUTTING ROOM. By Louise Welsh. (Canongate, $24.) This
accomplished first novel's hard-bitten hero is a Glasgow auction
house employee who must assess the belongings of a newly dead man, a
task that leads him into the city's darkest corners of commercial
sex and criminal glamour.
THE DEEP: And Other Stories. By Mary Swan. (Random House, $23.95.)
The first book by a promising Canadian writer who devises and
explores different forms with interesting results; the 68-page story
at the heart of this volume probes World War I by seeing what it
does to a 26-year-old pair of twin sisters who have volunteered to
work in France.
DOMINO. By Ross King. (Walker, $26.) This intricate novel is a
meditation on appearance and reality in 18th-century Europe;
everybody is dressed up as something else in a narrative that
follows a murderer who wants to be a society portraitist and a
Venetian castrato pursuing a career in England.
Continued tomorrow.
From the NYTimes.com
FICTION & POETRY
ABANDON: A Romance. By Pico Iyer. (Knopf, $24.) A graceful novel
whose hero, an English graduate student of Sufi mystical poetry who
hopes to uncover that within himself which passeth show, heads first
for California and later for Iran, where he and the woman he is
traveling with improve their understanding of mystical poetry and of
themselves.
ALL OVER CREATION. By Ruth Ozeki. (Viking, $24.95.) A sophisticated
novel in which dread and hope coexist and the end of nature is
envisioned through the impact of genetically modified crops on a
family and the many players who descend on their Idaho potato farm.
ANY HUMAN HEART. By William Boyd. (Knopf, $24.95.) A novel whose
hero, a minor British writer and art dealer (and secret agent),
becomes a sort of stoic Everyman for the 20th century, meeting
almost everyone (Ian Fleming, Picasso, Hemingway, the Duke of
Windsor, Virginia Woolf) and traveling to almost everywhere; he has
many successes in life, each one closely attended by yet another
fall.
BAY OF SOULS. By Robert Stone. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A highly
concentrated (for this author), wholly unnerving novel whose hero,
an unhappy professor of English specializing in literary
''vitalism,'' becomes desperately involved with an exotically
attractive woman who thinks she has lost her soul and hopes to
retrieve it in a voodoo rite.
THE BOOK OF SALT. By Monique Truong. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) A
lush, fascinating, expansive first novel about exile, concerning a
gay Vietnamese cook who works for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
in Paris; he Frenchifies their apple pie while observing with an
aching heart how much better adapted to expatriation they are than
he is.
A BOX OF MATCHES. By Nicholson Baker. (Random House, $19.95.) Baker
employs his specialty as a novelist, the exhibition of life where no
life seems to be, to explore the consciousness of a man who rises
early, lights a fire and sits around in a mindful state every
morning till his matches are all spent.
CLARA. By Janice Galloway. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) The virtuoso
pianist Clara Schumann (wife of the composer Robert, mother of
eight) left 47 volumes of diaries. Undaunted, Galloway imagines a
way into Clara's life in this novel whose up-to-date concerns don't
obstruct its heroine's passionate voice.
THE COFFEE TRADER. By David Liss. (Random House, $24.95.) A
historical novel and an economically detailed romance of capitalism,
in which a young Jew in 17th-century Amsterdam seeks to evade
censure from the Jewish authorities and to build a personal fortune
by exploiting the rising popularity of coffee, which he intends to
buy cheap and sell dear.
THE COMMISSARIAT OF ENLIGHTENMENT. By Ken Kalfus.
(Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.95.) Nobody listens to anyone else or looks
anyone in the eye in this novel by an author interested in the force
of ideas and the power of images over life; the first half of the
book is full of people whose concern is taking some personal
advantage from the impending death of Tolstoy.
COSMOPOLIS. By Don DeLillo. (Scribner, $25.) An all-day (and
book-length) chauffeured trip across midtown Manhattan exposes
DeLillo's cool, New Economy protagonist to an assortment of
characters in this critique of hypercapitalism.
CRABWALK. By Günter Grass. (Harcourt, $25.) Grass's lifelong
analysis of Germany's past and present centers, in this new novel,
on a refugee ship sunk by a Russian submarine with the loss of 9,000
lives; the story is told through three generations of a family, all
marked, one way or another, by the ship's fate.
THE CUTTING ROOM. By Louise Welsh. (Canongate, $24.) This
accomplished first novel's hard-bitten hero is a Glasgow auction
house employee who must assess the belongings of a newly dead man, a
task that leads him into the city's darkest corners of commercial
sex and criminal glamour.
THE DEEP: And Other Stories. By Mary Swan. (Random House, $23.95.)
The first book by a promising Canadian writer who devises and
explores different forms with interesting results; the 68-page story
at the heart of this volume probes World War I by seeing what it
does to a 26-year-old pair of twin sisters who have volunteered to
work in France.
DOMINO. By Ross King. (Walker, $26.) This intricate novel is a
meditation on appearance and reality in 18th-century Europe;
everybody is dressed up as something else in a narrative that
follows a murderer who wants to be a society portraitist and a
Venetian castrato pursuing a career in England.
Continued tomorrow.
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