Book Review: The Followers, by Rebecca Wait

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

The Followers starts in the "after": Judith is entering a prison to visit her mother, Stephanie, imprisoned for as-yet unknown reasons. Rebecca Wait (The View on the Way Down) then moves skillfully through time to reveal their life "before." The mother works as a waitress to support herself and her young daughter; Stephanie meets Nathaniel, a charming man who takes an interest in her difficulties. Mother and daughter move in with Nathaniel and his "followers" in order to pursue a new life with a new sense of purpose.

Book Review: The Long Run, by Catriona Menzies-Pike

Every once and a while, a book comes along that rings all my bells--and then some. The Long Run is one of those books. Running. Distance running. Trail running, even. Grief. Loss. Meditation. Feminism. History. Feminist history. Memory. Writing. Literature. Books. Here's a book that manages, in the span of a few hundred pages, to talk about dactyls and iambs, trans rights, art history, the Ancients, and distance running without any piece of it feeling out of place. Yes, please, sign me up.

Book Review: Careers for Women, by Joanna Scott

This review modified from a review written for Shelf Awareness for Readers.

Careers for Women is a novel ambitious in scope: Spanning the late 1950s to the present day, Joanna Scott (De Potter's Grand Tour) uses the building of the World Trade Center as a lens through which to examine power, feminism, modernity, progress and the power of dreams to shape a life--or many.

Exploring Poetry: Milk and Honey; Love Her Wild; Delights and Shadows; Mary Oliver

I've long said that I struggle with reading poetry; it's like my brain can't figure out how to look at the words on the page and make them make sense in my head. I've found recently, however, that this is less of an inherent inability than it has been a refusal to slow. down. and read more meaningfully, purposefully. And so I've made a more conscious effort to explore poetry of late. A few stand-outs, in no particular order:

Review: A Line Made by Walking, by Sara Baume

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

A Line Made by Walking, Sara Baume's second novel, takes its title from a 1967 artwork by Richard Long. He walked back and forth in a straight line across a field and photographed the resulting flattened path of grass--a testament to Long's existence. In Baume's novel, Frankie, a young woman struggling with mental illness and an unsettling shift toward adulthood, attempts to find her place in the world--and prove that place and her existence in it have meaning. Even the mud on the stoop left by her boots is comforting in its own way: "so I know I must exist after all--that I must still be here." 

Lyndsay Faye, Sherlock Holmes and The Whole Art of Detection

I'm a long-time fan of Lyndsay Faye's work: her Timothy Wilde trilogy rang all my historical fiction bells, and I loved the cleverness of Jane Steele. And so it was an honor to be able to interview her about her newest book, The Whole Art of Detection, a collection of Sherlockian stories that perfectly capture the essence of Doyle's original tales:

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Interview with Lyndsay Faye

From Shelf Awareness for Readers, March 7th:

Lyndsay Faye has been reading Sherlock stories since she was 10. "I loved them," she says, "and then I never actually stopped reading them. Lacking the Internet, it wasn't until I was a teenager that I discovered there was such a thing as pastiches and fan fiction out there. Then I read as much of the non-canonical material as I could find--probably thousands of stories at this point, no joke." 

Read the rest of the interview...

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Review of The Whole Art of Detection

From Shelf Awareness for Readers, March 31st:

The 15 stories in Lyndsay Faye's The Whole Art of Detection will prove purely delightful for fans of the original adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. With two entirely new stories, and 13 others culled from previous anthologies and magazine contributions, the collection stands as a tribute to Faye's way with words and witticisms, both of which combine to reinvigorate Holmes and Watson (as well as their surrounding casts of miscreants, assistants and unassuming bystanders).

The Stranger in the Woods: Giving Context and Meaning to the Life of a Modern Hermit

Michael Finkel has an interesting past as a journalist. Once a reporter for the New York Times (he was fired after it was revealed that he created a composite subject out of many sources), his first book, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, told the story of a fugitive who used the name "Michael Finkel" as an alias while on the run from police--a true (if stranger than fiction) story. His newest book, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, is once again a true tale that feels stranger than fiction, detailing the solitary life of Christopher Knight, who lived (voluntarily) as a hermit in the Maine woods for 27 years.

Jami Attenberg, Old and New

I recently, entirely accidentally, read two Jami Attenberg books simultaneously: The Middlesteins and All Grown Up. Both were impressive examples of Attenberg's powers of observation and her ability to write about the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary in ways that feel unique, universal, and extraordinary. Both are packed with an emotional depth and honesty that resonated with me in ways I'm still working out.

But at the end of the day, I loved the former and struggled through the latter. I've spent the last week muddling over why, and I still have no clear answer. So I want to know: have you read these both? Did you love them? Hate them? Want to fall into them or throw them against a wall?

A Month in Reading, and Not Reading: January 2017

Well. It has been a month. My heart is heavy with headlines, and I've found myself paralyzed by how overwhelming everything seems right now. I'll be completely honest: in the face of all that's come in recent days, and all I expect will continue to come, I'm finding reading--let alone writing about reading--to be small and mundane and hard to accomplish. But I'm also trying to find some balance, something to hold on to, and books have been a constant source of comfort and strength for me--and so, so many others. And so maybe I'll find my way back to writing about them again. Consider this a practice run.

Of late, I've read mostly things by deadline: review books, author interviews, and book club meetings. There's something about the sense of control that comes from reading on a deadline that is at once comforting and joyless. Some of these have been truly excellent reads: The Young Widower's Hamdbook (out in February; read with tissues nearby); Moons of Jupiter (short but dense and exceptionally powerful short stories by Alice Munro); Destiny of the Republic (I'm finding unexpected comfort in the chaotic annals of American history; perhaps there are lessons there we can apply to the present); The Underground Railroad (yes, I know, I'm the last person on earth to read this, and yes, it lives up to every bit of hype surrounding it); Among the Ruins (the third in the Detective Esa Khattak series, and you bet I'm now going back to read the first two).

Book Expo America: New Books from Old Authors

Last week, I wrote about the buzziest books at Book Expo America. Some of those overlap with this collection of new books from old (as in "previously published") authors I can't wait to get to.

There were only a few books I had on my absolutely-must-pick-up-at-Book-Expo list (I wasn't flying straight from Chicago home, so I limited the number of books I picked up to an extreme few and focused instead on discovering new titles to request later on down the road). One of these was the new Maria Semple book, Today Will Be Different (Little, Brown, October 2016); I was a huge fan of Where'd You Go Bernadette, so will naturally leap at the opportunity to read more of Semple's dry humor. I also adored Amor Towle's debut, Rules of Civility, so have been over here petting his new novel, A Gentleman in Moscow (Viking, September 2016); when I got my copy of this one signed by Towles, he told me he thinks this second novel is better than his first. Yes, please.

Tons of reviewers I know and trust lined up for the new George Saunders novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (Random House, January 2017). I'm only just getting to my first of Saunders' work (The Tenth of December), but based on what I've read so far, I know I'm going to want to read this new novel too. Jennifer Close also has a new novel out (The Hopefuls, Knopf, July 2016), as does Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Am, FSG, September 2016). This marks his first novel since 2005, and first new book since 2010. I'm also squealing with delight for Colson Whitehead's newest book, The Underground Railroad (Doubleday, September 2016)--not least of which because Liberty says it's "omgsogood". So there's that.

I've loved everything Mary Roach has ever written (and yes, I've read all her books), so I nearly jumped for joy when I had the chance to catch up with the lovely Norton folks about Roach's newest scientific study, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (Norton, June 2016). I'm told this is much more about how to keep humans alive and intact during war (versus all of the research that goes into how best to kill), which is just the kind of military science I'd like to know exists. Continuing the non-fiction bent, Rebecca Solnit is releasing a follow-up to her feminist work, Men Explain Things to Me, next year: Silence Is Broken (Haymarket, March 2017).

Oh hey, and ya'll knew there was a new Tearling novel out in November, right?? (The Fate of the Tearling, Harper, November 2016).

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What much-loved authors are you most excited to see new books from this year?

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Two more BEA round-ups to follow this week and next: a spotlight on indie & university presses, and a round-up of the incredibly varied and fascinating non-fiction on the floor. Say hello to some new reading options, Social Justice Book Club.

Book Expo: The Big Round-Up of Books that Buzz

Happy Friday, kittens! Book Expo America (BEA) was a week ago, and it's time to look at some of the books of the show. First up: the buzziest of the buzz books, collected from the show floor, editors' buzz panels, and the chit-chat around which signings had the longest lines.