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Mistaken – A Novel About The Entwined Lives Of two Dubliners by Neil Jordan

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:34:24 +0000

“I had been mistaken for him so many times that when I heard he had died it was as if part of myself had died too.” So begins Mistaken, the new bestselling novel from the master of gothic fiction, Neil Jordan.

Kevin and Gerald were two boys growing up on opposite sides of the Dublin economic divide. Though they had never met, they shared a growing awareness of each other through episodes of mistaken identity. Yet Kevin was doubly haunted, living next door to the one-time residence of Bram Stoker, and the shadow of both a vampire and Gerald stretch far across his early years. For a time, the boys’ doppelganger paths would cross innocently enough—one stealing the other’s unwitting girlfriend, or being called out to in the street–until a family tragedy sends them both down a much darker path.

About Neil Jordan

Born in 1950 in Sligo, Ireland, Neil Jordan’s early career began as a writer. After setting up The Irish Writers’ Cooperative in 1974, he went on to win The Guardian Fiction Prize for his book of short stories NIGHT IN TUNISIA (1976). Since then he has gone on to publish three novels, THE PAST (1979), THE DREAM OF A BEAST (1983) and most recently SUNRISE WITH SEA MONSTER (1994). Jordan’s published fiction has been translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish and Japanese.

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Editorial Review

They’re the same age. They look almost the same. Yet their backgrounds are strikingly different. Kevin Thunder, the narrator, lives on Dublin’s impoverished northside, while Gerry Spain is from the well-heeled southside; the class antagonisms are raw. Kevin’s father is a bookie; Jerry’s is a lawyer, later a judge. Kevin’s rough-and-tumble schooling is far inferior to Jerry’s fancy private school. Their lives, however, will overlap for some 40 years, from their adolescence in the 1960s to Jerry’s death in his mid 50s (his funeral opens and closes the novel). Kevin finds himself being mistaken for Gerry: ejected from a store for shoplifting, approached invitingly by a girlfriend. Amid the confusion he has one dependable ally: his beloved mother, the caretaker of their building’s apartments. His father is often away, and Kevin is happy to replace him (there are Oedipal overtones). Mother and son go swimming together until one day, alone, she drowns. Jordan is at his best depicting their tender solicitude and Kevin’s coming-of-age encounters with Gerry’s girls. His touch is less sure with Kevin/Gerry. They eventually meet in a series of edgy encounters. By now Gerry is an undergraduate at well-manicured Trinity, while Kevin’s at a trade school; Gerry, shy and insecure, uses Kevin’s name for his published stories. The ladies still get them confused. “Were we…the light and shade of the same person?” It’s the classic dilemma posed by the genre. Jordan plays with it, offsetting Kevin’s weak light against the increasingly dark, addicted, adulterous Jerry, but years pass before he ratchets up the tension. The climax, flashy and camera-ready, involves impersonation and murder in Manhattan, but it seems less ordained than arbitrary. – Kirkus Reviews

Double Take - Film Director Neil Jordan’s Novel ‘Mistaken’

The New York Times Book Review – February 3, 2012 (Excerpt)

Vampires, secrets, the mysteries of identity: the obsessions that run through the director Neil Jordan’s films are at the center of his beautifully enigmatic fifth novel. “I grew up . . . under the shadow of a vampire,” says the narrator, a man whose childhood home in Dublin was next door to a house where Bram Stoker, the author of “Dracula,” once lived. Although Jordan’s screen monsters are visible — he directed “Interview With the Vampire” and is now shooting “Byzantium,” about mother-daughter vampires — in this novel vampirism becomes the perfect metaphor for the story of two look-alike men who feed off each other’s souls all their crisscrossed lives.

“Mistaken” begins with the narrator, Kevin Thunder, at the funeral of Gerald Spain, a troubled, once famous writer dead in his mid-50s. (Surely Jordan knows these names have a Dickensian distance from reality; his literary references here include Poe and Joyce, one the icon of the haunted, the other of emotionally tortured men traipsing around Dublin.) At the cemetery, Kevin meets Gerald’s grown daughter, Emily, and some mysteries take shape as others begin to unravel. Emily befriends Kevin — she says some animal scent on his body reminds her of her father — and we begin to wonder. Will Kevin become Emily’s lover? Will he be more like a father? Could he actually be her father? [Read the full article...]

Raylan: The New U.S. Marshal Givens Novel by Elmore Leonard

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:10:38 +0000

The revered New York Times bestselling author, recognized as “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek), brings back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the mesmerizing hero of Pronto, Riding the Rap, and the hit FX series Justified.

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross $300,000, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece.

So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But Raylan isn’t your average marshal; he’s the laconic, Stetson-wearing, fast-drawing lawman who juggles dozens of cases at a time and always shoots to kill. But by the time Raylan finds out who’s making the cuts, he’s lying naked in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.

The bad guys are mostly gals this time around: Layla, the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand a piece; Carol Conlan, a hard-charging coal-mine executive not above ordering a cohort to shoot point-blank a man who’s standing in her way; and Jackie Nevada, a beautiful sometime college student who can outplay anyone at the poker table and who suddenly finds herself being tracked by a handsome U.S. marshal.

Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.

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About Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard has written more than 40 books during his highly successful writing career, including the bestsellers Road Dogs, Up in Honey’s Room, The Hot Kid, Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories, When the Women Come Out to Dance. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Be Cool. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.

Editorial Review

The first and most successful of the stories complicates Raylan’s apprehension of marijuana trader Angel Arenas with the discovery that the dealers with whom Angel was meeting left with his money, his grass and his kidneys, which they propose to sell back to him for $100,000 (the price they demand for either one or both). Raylan’s questioning of Pervis Crowe, eastern Kentucky’s top marijuana grower, soon leads him to a transplant nurse known, for excellent reasons, as Layla the Dragon Lady. Their encounter ends with a sizable body count and Pervis’s oath of vengeance. Raylan’s second adventure pits him against Carol Conlan, a law-school–trained vice president of M-T Mining, whose skills in dealing with the problems that beset her employer extend far beyond the courtroom. After their conflict ends in a standoff, Leonard introduces still another strong woman, poker-playing Butler College student Jackie Nevada, who’s staked by aging horseman Harry Burgoyne, who’d appeared more briefly in the first tale. The villain of this third piece, Delroy Lewis, forces three of his female acquaintances to rob banks and then gets mighty annoyed when one of them ends up with an exploding dye packet. The fadeout finds Leonard acting as if he’s wrapped everything up, but you have to wonder.

A master’s valedictory canter around a familiar track—an unimpressive job of carpentry that’s still treasurable for Leonard’s patented dialogue and some truly loopy situations handled with deadpan brio. – Kirkus Reviews

Back on the Case

The New York Times Book Review – February 2, 2012 (Excerpt)

In an essay that appeared in The New York Times in 2001, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle,” Elmore Leonard listed his 10 rules of writing. The final one — No. 11, actually — the “most important rule . . . that sums up the 10,” is “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” It’s a terrific rule. In fact, I liked it so much that I passed it on to a creative-writing class I once taught. However, there’s more to it, which I didn’t pass on: “Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

Jazzy prose that occasionally lets go of “proper usage” is Leonard’s trademark. He’s a stylist of forward motion, placing narrative acceleration above inconveniences like pronouns and helping verbs. While this creates in most readers a heightened sense of excitement, newcomers may find the transition from complete sentences daunting; it may take a little time to accept Leonard’s prose before you allow it to do its work on you. I’ll admit to having to make such an adjustment when beginning “Raylan.” At the same time, I’m also a novelist who lives in fear of my copy editor; being such a coward, I can’t help respecting Leonard’s grammatical bravery.

While relatively new to Leonard’s novels, I’m not new to the subject matter here. The titular character, Raylan Givens, is also the protagonist of an excellent FX television series, “Justified,” which is based on Leonard’s novella “Fire in the Hole,” originally published as an e-book in 2000. Givens appeared in two earlier books — “Pronto” and “Riding the Rap” — but the success of “Justified” has prompted Leonard to put him back on the job. [Read the full article...]

The Miseducation of Cameron Post – A Lesbian Coming-Of-Age Novel by Emily M. Danforth

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:49:04 +0000

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship—one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she’s not exactly sure who that is.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

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About Emily M. Danforth

Emily M. Danforth was born and raised in Miles City, Montana. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she’s worked as the assistant director of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at Rhode Island College and is coeditor of The Cupboard. This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

“Danforth’s narrative of a bruised young woman finding her feet in a complicated world is a tremendous achievement: strikingly unsentimental, and full of characters who feel entirely rounded and real. A story of love, desire, pain, loss—and, above all, of survival. An inspiring read.” (Sarah Waters, author of THE LITTLE STRANGER )

“This novel is a joy—one of the best and most honest portraits of a young lesbian I’ve read in years—lively, funny, brash, and oh, so true! An absorbing, suspenseful, and important book.” (Nancy Garden, author of ANNIE ON MY MIND )

“A beautifully told story that is at once engaging and thoughtful. THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST is an important book—one that can change lives. ” (Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author of AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER and HUSH )

Not Just for Kids: ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – February 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

There’s something about the open spaces of the Great Plains that make the exploration of nascent homosexuality even more alienating and risky than the same experience in a big city or suburb. At least that’s the story detailed in Emily Danforth’s young adult debut, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a book that reads like a literary response to the Katy Perry hit “I Kissed a Girl” if it took place under a big Montana sky.

Cameron Post is just 12 when she kisses her best girl friend on a dare — ostensibly as practice for future liaisons with boys. “No one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, [but] nobody had to,” Cameron writes in a novel penned from her perspective. “It was guys and girls who kissed in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world. That’s how it worked.”

Yet Cameron not only kissed a girl. She liked it.

That realization is followed a few hours later by the news Cameron’s parents were killed in a car crash, but the sorrow she feels at her parents’ death is tempered with even greater relief that no one knew about her more-than-friendly lip lock in a hay loft — and guilt that the crash may have been God’s punishment. That juxtaposition of emotions speaks volumes about shame and the societal taboo of lesbianism, especially in a small Christian community. It also forms the emotional core of this powerful novel exploring the nature of sexual identity and whether it’s a choice. [Read the full article...]

Bond Girl: Breaking Into The Male-Dominated World Of Bond Trading by Erin Duffy

Wilfried F. Voss — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:55:40 +0000

When other little girls were dreaming about becoming doctors or lawyers, Alex Garrett set her sights on conquering the high-powered world of Wall Street. And though she’s prepared to fight her way into an elitist boys’ club, or duck the occasional errant football, she quickly realizes she’s in over her head when she’s relegated to a kiddie-size folding chair with her new moniker—Girlie—inscribed in Wite-Out across the back.

No matter. She’s determined to make it in bond sales at Cromwell Pierce, one of the Street’s most esteemed brokerage firms. Keeping her eyes on the prize, the low Girlie on the totem pole will endure whatever comes her way—whether trekking to the Bronx for a $1,000 wheel of Parmesan cheese; discovering a secretary’s secret Friday night slumber/dance party in the conference room; fielding a constant barrage of “friendly” practical jokes; learning the ropes from Chick, her unpredictable, slightly scary, loyalty-demanding boss; babysitting a colleague while he consumes the contents of a vending machine on a $28,000 bet; or eluding the advances of a corporate stalker who’s also one of the firm’s biggest clients.

Ignoring her friends’ pleas to quit, Alex excels (while learning how to roll with the punches and laugh at herself) and soon advances from lowly analyst to slightly-less-lowly associate. Suddenly, she’s addressed by her real name, and the impenetrable boys’ club has transformed into forty older brothers and one possible boyfriend. Then the apocalypse hits, and Alex is forced to choose between sticking with Cromwell Pierce as it teeters on the brink of disaster or kicking off her Jimmy Choos and running for higher ground.

Fast-paced, funny, and thoroughly addictive, Bond Girl will leave you cheering for Alex: a feisty, ambitious woman with the spirit to stand up to the best (and worst) of the boys on the Street—and ultimately rise above them all.

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About Erin Duffy

Erin Duffy graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 with a B.A. in English and went on to spend more than a decade working in fixed-income sales on Wall Street. Bond Girl is her first novel.

Editorial Review

Inspired by her father’s long career in finance, Alex Garrett knew from an early age that she would end up working on the Street. So when top brokerage firm Cromwell Pierce recruits her right out of college, she feels a certain sense of destiny. Her optimism fades, naturally, when she arrives at the chaotic bond-trading floor to discover that she does not have a desk, just a folding chair. Her gruff boss Ed “Chick” Ciccone dubs her “Girlie” and makes it clear that she might be logging years as an indentured servant (aka analyst) for the team before the possibility of actually selling any bonds. Her duties include fetching coffees and lunches while trying to learn the super-complex workings of the finance business. The hours are grueling and the hazing never stops—at least until a new victim arrives. As punishment for showing up late one day, she is dispatched to the Bronx to procure meatball heroes and a 50-pound wheel of parmesan—and is stuck with the $1,200 lunch tab. Still, there is an absurd amount of money to be made, as she discovers when she is given a $110,000 bonus after her first full year with the company. Alex’s good looks also attract the attention of colleagues and clients alike, and she begins a clandestine relationship with office cutie Will Patrick, a seemingly nice guy who mysteriously goes missing every weekend. At the same time, married (and filthy rich) hedge-fund manager Rick Kieriakis takes a shine to her, peppering her with unwanted, stalker-like messages. His behavior crosses the line, but knowing that it is her word against his, Alex grits her teeth and tolerates him—to a point. Then the 2008 financial crisis arrives, throwing the whole industry into a tailspin and prompting Alex to choose between money and self-respect. Finance veteran Duffy’s topical fly-on-the-wall debut skirts the darker issues of Wall Street’s role in the world, but still makes for a compelling, fun read. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: In ‘Bond Girl’ by Erin Duffy, a woman takes on high finance

The Washington Post Book Review – January 31, 2012 (Excerpt)

It’s about time chick lit made a move to occupy Wall Street, a slice of Manhattan real estate chock-a-block with men, money and more money. In her first novel, “Bond Girl,” Georgetown grad Erin Duffy deftly raises that tent. But don’t expect to arm pump your way through a take-down of Wall Street greed. If anything, Duffy — herself a veteran of the Street — is sympathetic to entry-level financial employees, who’ve endured public outrage since their high-flying bosses trashed the American economy. “Bond Girl” is invested in the genre of supposedly glamorous workplaces that are actually little slices of hell. Sort of “The Devil Trades Government Bonds.”

The novel revolves around recent University of Virginia grad Alex Garrett, a child of suburban Connecticut privilege who has always longed to follow her father’s footsteps to the Street. And she does, landing a job at prestigious Cromwell Pierce, where she is assigned to the 40-person government bond desk on the fixed-income trading floor. Unfortunately, being the new kid on this team is less like joining a profession and more like joining a fraternity, hazing included. And if you’re a woman, well, just that much more scope for hazing opportunities. [Read the full article...]

A Tribute to William Brockedon, Man Of Many Talents

Peter Carroll — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:22:57 +0000

Peter Carroll is the author of Queen of Misfortune – A Lady Jane Grey Novel. For more information, see his website.

When I first looked at William Brockedon who was born in Totnes, Devon in 1787- in the light of his worthiness of my writing a piece about him - I almost let it go, the first mention of him being the son of a popular watchmaker in Totnes who’s family owned a local mill and other property since the reign of Henry IV-who carried on his father’s business there for five years after his death, did not seem to accrue a lot of interest, but then reading on: how fascinating it was to learn that not only was he a painter, and an inventor, but also he became an author describing in text accompanied by his own drawings. the route Hannibal took across the alps, which he took almost step by step himself and which, remarkably he repeated no less than sixty times, culminating in the publication of his first book published in 1827 entitled Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps followed by two more ongoing publications containing beautiful drawings by the author

He studied drawing and the fine arts at the Royal Academy and during 1809-1815 exhibited there and at the British Institution and quickly became an elected member of Academy of Rome and Florence where he was greatly admired.

That in itself was an achievement to behold but his active mind was forever sparking his inventiveness until he died in 1854 – coming up with among other things, something we all take for granted when we pick up our prescriptions from the chemist – the pre-dosed medical compound having been compressed into capsule, lozenge and tablet form following the patent of his tablet press in 1843. This followed his invention for the conversion of lead dust for pencil making along with a new form of bottle corks, and several new applications concerning the making and application of vulcanized India rubber, used by firearms manufacturers who were greatly impressed, and it is he who coined the word “vulcanization.”

Since the early beginning of medicine there had been a dire need for convenient dosage forms – to enable the safe taking of fluids, whether solutions, suspensions or emulsions – Brockedon came up with the perfect remedy, so simple and so easy and thus avoiding overdose sometimes resulting in fatalities.

It is all the more fascinating to think the watchmakers’ son had no connection whatsoever with medicine. We surely owe him much and I wonder how long it would have taken for someone else to come up with the idea. He certainly revolutionized medical and pharmaceutical practices

His travel writings and such also brought him to the attention of Charles Dickens with whom he became acquainted and who said of him “he knows a good deal about some curious places – is very ingenious – and may be very useful.”

In his later years he would fill his study with countless scientific books and his tool shed with implements then used in everyday life, and consider a new scientific approach, some inevitably failed but others succeeded and much of his attention to minute detail could arguably be attributed to the influence of his father being a watchmaker and who supplemented his son’s education and instilled in him an early leaning for scientific and mechanical matters.

His father prematurely died when William was fifteen and he found himself taking charge of the clock making business with the backing of his mother but his need to eventually move on became apparent but he had the backing of his mother who became very proud of him.

He married in 1821 Elizabeth Graham, who tragically died in childbirth when she was forty on 23 July 1829, leaving two children, Philip North, born at Florence on 27 April 1822, and Mary, married to Joseph H. Baxendale, the head of the removal firm of Pickford & Co. The son, who was educated as a civil engineer, became the favourite pupil of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but died of consumption at the age of 28, on 13 November 1849. On 8 May 1839 Brockedon married for the second time the widow of Captain Farwell of Totnes, who survived him, and by whom he had no children.

Cat’s Eye – The Story Of A Controversial Painter by Margaret Atwood

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:57:52 +0000

Cat’s Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman–but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat’s Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.

About Margaret Atwood

MARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; and her most recent, Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

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Editorial Reviews

Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself. Atwood’s portrayal of the friendship gives the novel its fraught and mysterious center, but her critical assessment of Cordelia and the “whole world of girls and their doings” also takes the measure of a coercive, conformist society (not quite as extreme as in the futuristic The Handmaid’s Tale ). Emerging “the stronger” for her latecoming understanding of herself, Risley in the final pages rises above the ties that bound her, transcendently alive to the possibilities of “light, shining out in the midst of nothing.” – Publishers Weekly

When Elaine Risley returns to her hometown, Toronto, for a retrospective show of her paintings, she finds more than critical acclaim. Local streets, long-gone landmarks, and elements in the paintings themselves trigger memories of her transient childhood traveling across Canada with her entomologist father; of adolescence marred by the cruel teasing of three friends; and of love affairs with her first art teacher and mentor, and with Jon, her first husband. In addition, Elaine is haunted by thoughts of her chief tormentor/best friend, Cordelia, whom she last saw years ago in a mental institution. Atwood’s focus on the inner landscape of Elaine’s youth and early adult years will appeal to older teenagers. - Alice Conlon, University of Houston for School Library Journal

Teen Girls, Mean Girls: A Tale Of Karmic Revenge

NPR Book Review – January 30, 1012 (Excerpt)

Anyone familiar with upstate New York knows its formidable ice-greased winters, where the backs of your thighs sear and chap, and your teeth clatter like rickety marionettes. But the first time I saw my soon-to-be best friend, she wore only a flimsy poncho, short skirt, no pantyhose and, most amazingly, open-toed shoes.

Both in our early 20s, enrolled at the same university as grad students, we spent years synchronizing our tastes. She tattooed her arm in the exact same spot as mine. I began to sport cleavage just like her. She dyed her hair dark; I highlighted mine. But what began in enchantment eventually ended in disillusionment. She’d inform me of people who didn’t “like” me and spared me none of the snarky put-downs supposedly said behind my back by a mutual friend. I’ll never know if those comments were true — only that they wounded me.

In the wake of this friendship’s demise, another friend recommended Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. “Very few books explore female friendship at this level of intensity,” she said. “It will help you.”

I devoured it within two sleepless nights. Then I read it again, slowly, this time to savor it. [Read the full article...]

Running the Rift – A Novel About A Young Rwandan Runner by Naomi Benaron

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:36:20 +0000

Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions. Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it’s impossible to stay apolitical—where the man who used to sell you gifts for your family now spews hatred, where the girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refuses to look at you, where your Hutu coach is secretly training the very soldiers who will hunt down your family. Yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda’s first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence. When the killing begins, Jean Patrick is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life.

This is the third Bellwether Prize winner published by Algonquin. The Bellwether Prize is awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice and was previously awarded to The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and Mudbound.

About Naomi Benaron

Naomi Benaron earned an MFA from Antioch University and an MS in earth sciences from Scripps Institute of Oceanography. She teaches at Pima Community College and online through the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. An advocate for African refugees in her community, she has worked extensively with genocide survivor groups in Rwanda. She has won the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction and the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. She is also an Ironman triathlete.

Editorial Reviews

“This well written and well researched novel is an impressive debut.”—The Seattle Times
“An auspicious debut . . . Having worked extensively with genocide survivor groups in Rwanda, Benaron clearly acquired a very lucid sense of her characters’ lives and of the horrors they endured. Her story tells, with compelling clarity, of Rwandan Tutsi youth, Jean Patrick Nkuba–who dreams of becoming Rwanda’s first Olympic medalist. It’s a dream he must postpone for more than a decade as the internecine savagery, Hutu vs. Tutsi, slaughters millions and derails the lives of countless others. While it would be counterintuitive to pronounce this a winning, feel-good story, there is something to be said for hope restored. And Naomi Benaron’s characters say it well.”—The Daily Beast

“This debut novel set against the backdrop of Rwanda’s ethnic conflict is a powerful coming-of-age story that highlights the best and worst of human nature.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Benaron’s focus on this one young man is part of the book’s brilliance . . . Benaron writes beautifully about the pain and exhilaration of being an Olympic-level runner (she’s a triathlete) . . . It’s unbearable, Benaron’s genius is that we read on despite it.” —BookPage

Book World: Naomi Benaron’s ‘Running the Rift’

The Washington Post Book Review – January 30, 2012 (Excerpt)

I remember hearing a joke on French radio in 1994. The rock singer Johnny Hallyday — not the brightest spark — was being sent up by a couple of comics. The one playing Johnny was asked what he thought of the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis. He replied that he liked U2’s latest album and he thought Dustin Hoffman was very good in the movie — so what was there to get upset about? Loud laughter. It was the sort of ghoulish playground joke that is made around the world as a knee-jerk response to some catastrophe, celebrity death or hideous accident, but it must have been aired before the full horror of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was revealed. As the news began to emerge about what really had happened in the small central African country from April to July, it became clear that the world had witnessed another shocking example of man’s easy inhumanity to man. All jokes died on people’s lips.

Most of us are familiar with the so-called Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” I hadn’t realized until recently that there was a follow-up to it that goes (I paraphrase): “And may you come to the attention of powerful people.” These bland phrases resonated in my mind as I read Naomi Benaron’s audacious and compelling first novel, “Running the Rift.” It’s the story of a young man’s coming of age set against the background of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, during which the overwhelmingly dominant ethnic group in Rwanda, the Hutus, set out to exterminate the minority, the Tutsis. It’s impossible to count the number of Tutsi deaths that took place over the course of the rampage — there was no documentation, unlike with the Nazi or the Khmer Rouge genocides — but the final figure that most authorities agree on is somewhere around 800,000. [Read the full article...]

Unputdownable! – Promotion In The World Of Book Reviews

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:12:51 +0000

Wilfried F. Voss is the author of The Bleeding Hills. For more information see his website at http://wilfriedvoss.com.

Have you noticed that almost every new movie that is being released lately comes with the tag “One of the best movies of the year”? And when you release a movie on January 1, you may truly call it “The best movie of the year so far!”

Sometimes you wonder about those people who are in the business of promoting movies and their display of lack of originality. It’s in the same class as, for instance, “But wait! If you order within the next five minutes…” My point is, those slogans, as much as they did their job the first few times, are being overused and thus lose their effectiveness to a point that they might as well read as “Handle with caution!” Now, there is a slogan that didn’t lose its verve…

Another new term, that is in the same danger of being annoyingly overused, is… Unputdownable!

Well, by maintaining this very website I am in the business of posting numerous book reviews during the day, and this term… Unputdownable… has come up more and more frequently.

Unputdownable…

Is this one of those unique and ingenious American-made terms that will have the same impact on a customer as a whole sentence (or even two) in previous times? Is it one of those modern-world words out of the management dictionary that (like manager, suicide, midlife crisis, flat rate, and more) will make it into the Duden, the German equivalent of Webster’s Dictionary? Should the person, who invented the word, trademark it? Think of the guy who trademarked “Are you ready to rumble?”

Unputdownable…

Just sit down, relax, close your eyes, and discover the emotions that evolve when you think of… Unputdownable…

Does it create a shiver of excitement that slowly and teasingly spirals down your spine? Or does it create an involuntary cramping of your stomach followed by pulsing, acid reflexes, and the desire to run into the kitchen to get some TUMS?

But, after all, it’s all a matter of taste, and I would be thrilled if you found my post “unputdownable.” But on second thought… Nuh! I will just thrive in humble delight, knowing you read my blabbering, and hoping you pass it on to a friend or even to somebody you don’t like.

The Silent Oligarch – A Spy Story From The Bowels Of The Russian Government by Christopher Morgan Jones

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:26:41 +0000

Racing between London and Moscow, Kazakstan and the Caymans, The Silent Oligarch reveals a sinister unexplored world where the wealthy buy the justice they want—and the silence they need. Here private spy agencies duel for dominance, governments eagerly defer to the highest bidder, and colossal wealth is amassed through shadowy networks of companies. But where the money actually flows—and who benefits from such corruption—is something necessarily hidden, sometimes in plain sight.

Behind the imposing splendor of the Kremlin rises a run-down office building, home to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources. A nondescript bureaucrat in a drab government agency, Konstanin Malin secretly controls a vast business that dominates the nation’s oil industry, making him one of the most feared and wealthy men in Russia. Over the years Malin has siphoned billions from the state and poured them into his private empire, hiding what he owns offshore.

The man who has done the hiding is Richard Lock, a diffident English lawyer whose life in Moscow is falling apart: criss-crossing the world administering his master’s affairs, he has seen his relationships with his estranged family and highly practical mistress slowly deteriorating. Lock is bound to Malin by marriage, complacency, greed, and most of all by a complex lie that neither can escape. But slowly, Lock is beginning to realize that the lie will not always hold.

Once an idealistic young journalist, Benjamin Webster now works as an investigator at a London corporate intelligence firm, a mercenary spy for the rich and powerful. Webster’s cynicism and anger were born when he witnessed a colleague murdered in Russia for asking too many tough questions; now, ten years later, he may finally be able to avenge her unsolved murder. Hired by a client to ruin Malin, he discovers that this shadowy figure may have arranged his friend’s gruesome death—to hide a terrible secret buried at the heart of his criminal empire.

Soon Webster realizes that Lock is Malin’s great weakness; and when he starts to apply pressure, Lock’s fragile world begins to crack. His colleagues begin dying mysteriously, his relationship with Malin turns ominously ice-cold. The police begin asking questions, the newspapers smell blood in the water, and Webster’s investigators close in on the truth. Suddenly Lock is running for his life—though from Malin or Webster, the law or his own past, he couldn’t say.

A heart-pounding hunt around the world, through opulent boardrooms and anonymous hotels, The Silent Oligarch is a chilling and unforgettable novel of our time.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Christopher Morgan Jones

For eleven years CHRIS MORGAN JONES worked at the world’s largest business intelligence agency. He has advised Middle Eastern governments, Russian oligarchs, New York banks, London hedge funds, and African mining companies. The Silent Oligarch is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

“This is a happy partner to the work of Deighton, Archer, and le Carré… Mysterious men, cryptic of speech and beautifully tailored, move through glittery settings-seacoasts, grand hotels, swank neighborhoods-carried on craftily understated prose that approaches cold poetry. Rows of massive buildings “bullied all the leaves off the bare limes and left the trees cowering in the middle of the road.” Ben Webster is a snoop employed by a London corporate espionage firm. His boss” client has hired the company to bring down a Kremlin functionary, the toadlike Malin, whose manipulation of Russia”s oil industry is making him a trillionaire. Webster attempts to get at the toad through his dithering money launderer, Richard Lock. Reader identification is complete. We”d like to be Webster-tough, smart-but we know we”re really more like Lock, not as bright and strong as we wish. Men are betrayed. Drugged. Kidnapped. Tossed off buildings. Downed by snipers. If the good guys win, it”s at such a cost they”re left wondering if they accomplished anything. They did. They were part of a first-class novel.” - Booklist

“Fans of thrillers, especially those set in present-day Russia, will welcome the supernova that has burst onto the spy and suspense scene . . With a mysterious, complex plot and terrific local color, this novel resonates to the pounding heartbeats of the boldly drawn main characters. John le Carré, Martin Cruz Smith, and Brent Ghelfi will be inching over in the book display so readers in search of erudite, elegant international intrigue can spot the newcomer.” – Library Journal

“Jones sketches of all that is good and bad about London, Moscow, Berlin seem dead-on, right down to his marvelous detailing of the decadent lifestyle of the new Russian oligarchy, a group where school children receive Ferraris as birthday presents. His bad guy, Malin, “impermeable” eyes “dark brown and heavy, neither curious nor passive,” is thoroughly sinister. The author also is adept at constructing and explaining the complicated post-Soviet Russia ambiance. Told in the third person, his narrative moves forward with an aura of malevolence to a conclusion too close to reality to be anything but believable. Minimal gun-flourishing, minimal violence, maximum moral quandary.” – Kirkus

“The Silent Oligarch,” by Chris Morgan Jones

The Washington Post Book Review – January 29, 2012 (Excerpt)

If a 21st-century version of Monopoly or Risk were invented, players wouldn’t acquire and trade Park Place and Marvin Gardens, or even corporations like Microsoft and Deutsche Bank. The real money is in faceless corporations with bland and non-revealing names: organizations with purposes purposely unclear, registered in secretive countries such as Russia and Liechtenstein, with boards of directors and shareholders who may or may not have anything to do with the company — indeed, who may not even exist. They’re billion-dollar corporate webs constructed not of strings of silk but of something much stronger and stickier: strings of legalese.

A massive tangle of such corporations is the nucleus of “The Silent Oligarch,” Chris Morgan Jones’s debut novel, a story of quiet suspense and international espionage. Overseeing this particular corporate tangle is Richard Lock, a divorced Brit who manages the holdings of Konstantin Malin, a Russian “silent oligarch” engaged in an elaborate money-laundering operation: Money goes out of Russia, money comes back, and a percentage of it ends up in Malin’s pockets, untraceable and untouchable. With the corporate machine in place and his own name rather than Malin’s on many of the papers, Lock has become a wealthy man. He has little to do except sun himself in Monaco — “avoiding responsibility and tax in the paradises of the world” with his girlfriend of the moment — while thinking wistfully about the ex-wife and daughter he left behind in London. [Read the full article...]

Jack Holmes and His Friend – A Bittersweet Gay Love Story by Edmund White

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:58:39 +0000

BUY THE BOOK AT

Many straight men and gay men are best friends, but if the phenomenon is an urban commonplace it has never been treated before as the focus of a major novel.

Jack Holmes is in love, but the man he loves never shares his bed. The other men Jack sleeps with never last long and he dallies with several women. He sees a shrink and practices extreme discretion about his gay adventures since the book begins in the 1960s, before gay liberation, and ends after the advent of AIDS in the 1980s. Jack’s friend, Will Wright, comes from old stock, has aspirations to be a writer, and like Jack works on the Northern Review, a staid cultural quarterly. Will is shy and lonely-and Jack introduces him to the beautiful, brittle young woman he will marry. Over the years Will discovers his sensuality and almost destroys his marriage in doing so. Towards the end of the 1970s Jack’s and Will’s lives merge as they both become accomplished libertines.

Jack Holmes and his Friend deploys Edmund White’s wonderful perceptions of American society to dazzling effect, as character after character is delicately and colourfully rendered and one social milieu after another glows in the reader’s mind. He is a connoisseur of the nuances of personality and mood, and here unveils his very human cast in all their radical individuality. New York itself is a principle character with its old society and its bohemians rich and poor, with its sleek European immigrants and its rough-and-tumble transplanted Midwesterners. With narrative daring and a gifted sense of the rueful submerged drama of life, the novel is a beautifully sculpted exploration of sexuality and sensibility.

About Edmund White

Edmund White is the author of many novels, including A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony, and, most recently, Hotel de Dream. His nonfiction includes City Boy and other memoirs;The Flâneur, about Paris; and literary biographies and essays. White lives in New York and teaches at Princeton.

Editorial Review

Top-flight novelist White (City Boy, 2009, etc.) returns with a bittersweet story of the love that dared not speak its name until about the winter of 1963.

The chronology is a little fuzzy, but the author situates the opening of his latest novel safely in the cozy prep-school world of the late 1950s. Jack Holmes is a glorious son of a Rust Belt then brilliantly agleam, tall and blonde and “with stomach muscles as hard as a turtle’s shell,” popular with everyone. It would be easy for him to coast, to live a superficial life, but Jack is a person of depth and complexity. So we learn when, after college, our Gatsby makes his way east and pitches his tent among the bohemians of Greenwich Village. His intelligence soon land him on the staff of a high-culture magazine where, “over-caffeinated, overdressed, and under-instructed,” he wrangles with an editor who’s smarter than Susan Sontag and more frustrated than Portnoy. At the same time, he enjoys an increasingly catholic diet of friends and bedmates, including, eventually, a promising young novelist named Will Wright—the name is suggestive—who emerges, over the chapters and decades, as Jack’s soul mate. This is not all to the good, for White’s story takes in not just the time of innocence and Camelot, but also the very first inklings of the “gay plague” that was first known as GRID, later as AIDS; Will’s final dedication to Jack reads, “Our libertine days are over.” So they are. White’s bookembraces a classic love story, but it is much more: It offers something of a cultural history of gay life in New York in the closeted era before Stonewall. In the sometimes facetious, sometimes mutually uncomprehending, sometimes blazingly intelligent interplay of people of all sorts of orientations, gay and straight and in between, and all sorts of backgrounds and nationalities, White’s narrative is sometimes reminiscent of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories—which is no small praise. But White’s chief characters are all-American types, which one supposes is the point: Though Jack’s psychiatrist may scold him for “acting out,” and though they were subject to criminal prosecution in their day, his desires and passions are utterly normal. White’s writing, of course, is not. – Kirkus Reviews

Agent 6 – A Novel Filled With Intrigue From Behind The Old Iron Curtain by Tom Rob Smith

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:58:18 +0000

THREE DECADES.
TWO MURDERS.
ONE CONSPIRACY.

WHO IS AGENT 6?

Tom Rob Smith’s debut, Child 44, was an immediate publishing sensation and marked the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction. Named one of top 100 thrillers of all time by NPR, it hit bestseller lists around the world, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

In this spellbinding new novel, Tom Rob Smith probes the tenuous border between love and obsession as Leo Demidov struggles to untangle the threads of a devastating conspiracy that shatters everything he holds dear. Deftly capturing the claustrophobic intensity of the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it’s at once a heart-pounding thriller and a richly atmospheric novel of extraordinary depth….

AGENT 6

Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow’s secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a “Peace Tour” to New York City, he is immediately suspicious.

Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy.

In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world–from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York–in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6.

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About Tom Rob Smith

Tom Rob Smith graduated from Cambridge University in 2001 and lives in London. His first novel, Child 44, was a New York Times bestseller and an international publishing sensation. Among its many honors, Child 44 won the ITW 2009 Thriller Award for Best First Novel, The Strand Magazine 2008 Critics Award for Best First Novel, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Tom invites you to visit his website www.TomRobSmith.com and follow @tomrobsmith on Twitter.

Editorial Reviews

“When a trilogy is as unpredictable and riveting as Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 series, set as it is both in the harsh Russian landscape and the dense thicket of the human soul, expectations quickly evaporate in a page-turning frenzy….Smith, a young British screenwriter turned best-selling novelist, has created in Leo Demidov a Kafkaesque modern hero for our times, a good man trapped in a corrupt, manipulative system, forced to choose between loyalties to family, country and conscience. With a cinematographer’s eye for settings and historical detail, Smith uses Leo’s journey to examine larger issues, especially the political, social and religious systems that both unite and divide us.”
(BookPage )

“Fortified by formidable details of Soviet history, Smith’s closing volume of the Leo Demidov trilogy (Child 44; The Secret Speech) knits together iconic characters and elements…Fans of Smith’s first two books will avidly seek out the final chapter, though this one stands on its own as well. The Afghan interlude is a searing echo of today’s headlines, while the buildup of suspense over several decades is the armchair equivalent of a jaw-jarringly extreme ride at an amusement park.” (Library Journal )

“Agent 6 has all the elements that made the first two books in the series hits: relentless action, a flawed but fascinating protagonist and a clear-eyed view of the absolute brutality of an authoritarian government.” (Dallas Morning News )

Book review: ‘Agent 6′ by Tom Rob Smith

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – January 26, 2012 (Excerpt)

Four years ago, “Child 44,” Tom Rob Smith’s debut thriller set in Stalinist Russia, was a literary sensation.

An edgy, intense portrait of Russia’s secret police and the lengths they would go to to protect their country’s image as a crime-free society, “Child 44″ managed to straddle a fine line between well-researched, absorbing historical fiction and propulsive thriller that would earn the book universal praise, sales of more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and a place on the Man Booker Prize’s longlist (unusual recognition for a work of genre fiction).

“Child 44″ introduced 30-year-old Leo Demidov, a fanatically loyal agent with the MGB, the Soviet secret agency that was a precursor to the KGB, and his wife, Raisa, a beautiful schoolteacher. One pleasure of reading that book and the follow-up, “The Secret Speech” — set amid the turmoil after Stalin’s death — was witnessing Leo’s transformation from tool of the state into a man who fiercely loves and values his wife and family.

Now comes “Agent 6,” the final installment in what Smith had reportedly always planned as a trilogy. Stepping outside the Soviet bloc for the first time, “Agent 6″ is Smith’s most ambitious book, covering some 30 years and the USSR’s engagement with “The Main Adversary” during the Cold War and its disastrous misadventures in Afghanistan with rebel fighters. [Read the full article...]

The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963: A Children’s Novel by Christopher Paul Curtis

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:53:09 +0000

A wonderful middle-grade novel narrated by Kenny, 9, about his middle-class black family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. When Kenny’s 13-year-old brother, Byron, gets to be too much trouble, they head South to Birmingham to visit Grandma, the one person who can shape him up. And they happen to be in Birmingham when Grandma’s church is blown up.

About Christopher Paul Curtis

Christopher Paul Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan, and grew up there. Bud, Not Buddy, his second novel, winner of the 2000 Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award, is available in a Delacorte hardcover edition.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

The year is 1963, and self-important Byron Watson is the bane of his younger brother Kenny’s existence. Constantly in trouble for one thing or another, from straightening his hair into a “conk” to lighting fires to freezing his lips to the mirror of the new family car, Byron finally pushes his family too far. Before this “official juvenile delinquent” can cut school or steal change one more time, Momma and Dad finally make good on their threat to send him to the deep south to spend the summer with his tiny, strict grandmother. Soon the whole family is packed up, ready to make the drive from Flint, Michigan, straight into one of the most chilling moments in America’s history: the burning of the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church with four little girls inside.

Christopher Paul Curtis’s alternately hilarious and deeply moving novel, winner of the Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Honor, blends the fictional account of an African American family with the factual events of the violent summer of 1963. Fourth grader Kenny is an innocent and sincere narrator; his ingenuousness lends authenticity to the story and invites readers of all ages into his world, even as it changes before his eyes. Curtis is also the acclaimed author of Bud, Not Buddy, winner of the Newbery Medal. (Ages 9 to 12) –Emilie Coulter, Amazon.Com Review

Grade 5-8-In the only Newbery Honor book to make my list, the weighty issues and historical perspectives don’t get in the way of a very funny family. Byron plays some awful tricks on his younger brother Kenny, but readers can’t help but laugh at some of his less harmful teasing. He tells a convincing story to little sister Joey about how garbage trucks scoop up frozen Southern folks who don’t dress warmly enough, and half-fools Kenny with his tall tale. While the boys supply many of the laughs, it’s clear that they get their sense of humor from their dad. His gentle teasing and tongue-in-cheek exaggerations can be hilarious. Laughter and Tears Award: More than any other book on my list, the humor in The Watsons shifts to near tragedy and many thought-provoking developments. The serious stuff succeeds in part because readers grow so close to this family through the humor that comes earlier in the book. – Library Journal

‘Birmingham’: A Family Tale In The Civil Rights Era

NPR Book Review – January 26, 2012 (Excerpt)

Welcome to the fourth installment of NPR’s Backseat Book Club, where we select a book for young readers — and invite them to read along with us and share their thoughts and questions with the author.

Our selection for January — The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis — describes the civil rights era from the perspective of a young (and extremely mischievous) boy and his family.

When young Byron Watson becomes too much to handle, his family decides to send him from Flint, Mich. to his legendarily tough Grandma Sands in Birmingham, Ala. — that incendiary year of 1963 when tensions over school desegregation were roiling.

Daphne Kunin from Lancaster, Pa. wanted to know if Curtis based any of the scenes from the book on his own life — like the episode with the “Nazi flame thrower of death” — when Byron lights toilet paper parachutes on fire over the toilet and flushes them away.

Curtis says that the particular scene is actually the most autobiographical moment in the book.

“It was based on me,” says Curtis tells NPR’s Michele Norris. “I just threw matches in the toilet. I liked the sound they made when they hit the water.” When Curtis tried to get away with burning the matches by locking the bathroom door, his mother kicked the door down and lifted him in the air by the collar, much as it happens in the book. [Read the full article...]

Broadway Baby – A Novel Of An Obsessed Mother by Alan Shapiro

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:22:55 +0000

As a little girl growing up in Boston, Miriam Bluestein fantasized about a life lived on stage, specifically in a musical. Get married, have a family—sure, maybe she’d do those things, too, but first and foremost there was her career. As a woman, she is both tormented and consoled by those dreams in her day-to-day existence with her family, including a short-tempered husband, a cranky mother, and three demanding children, one of whom, Ethan, shows real talent for the stage.

It is through Ethan that Miriam strives to realize her dreams. As she pushes him to make the most of his talent, the rest of her life gradually comes undone, with her husband becoming increasingly frustrated and her other two children—Sam, a mass of quirks and idiosyncrasies, and Julie, hostile and bitter—withdrawing into their own worlds. Still Miriam dreams, praying for that big finale, which, when it comes, is nothing that she ever could have imagined.

Broadway Baby marks the fiction debut of a nationally acclaimed award-winning memoirist and poet, “an acute observer of moments, people, art and language [who] packs even seemingly simple stories with many layers of meaning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

About Alan Shapiro

Alan Shapiro is the author of ten volumes of poetry and two memoirs, one of which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, among other honors. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Find him online at www.alanshapiro.org.

Book World: ‘Broadway Baby,’ by Alan Shapiro

The Washington Post Book Review – January 26, 2012 (Excerpt)

The world can be divided into people who have impossible mothers and those who don’t. These two groups will never understand each other. Those with loving mothers will never get it. A mother, after all, is supposed to be capable of the highest, strongest love; it beats brotherly love by a mile, God knows. If we’re perishing in a burning building, our mothers are supposed to drop whatever they’re doing and run in to pull us out.

But what if Mom set the fire? What if she looks over one balmy summer evening, as my mother once did to my little sister, and utters the decisive words, “You make me sick.”

The children of women like these are doomed to spend a lot of their lives figuring out their mothers — or trying to. But they’re an enigma. Alan Shapiro, a prize-winning poet with 10 volumes of verse and two memoirs behind him, tackles the problem in his first novel, “Broadway Baby.” He sketches a bereft little girl, Miriam, with an awful mother who’s taken her to see a Broadway musical. Miriam decides immediately that life is far better behind the footlights than out in the seats. After all, life in a musical comedy is clean and easy to explain. She grows up in the 1940s to the music of “Oklahoma!” and lives for many months taking on the persona of Julie, the tragic mulatto from “Show Boat” as her avatar, her protector, her Blessed Mother. [Read the full article...]

The Fear Index – A Novel About Machines Becoming Conscious by Robert Harris

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:09:57 +0000

At the nexus of high finance and sophisticated computer programming, a terrifying future may be unfolding even now.

Dr. Alex Hoffmann’s name is carefully guarded from the general public, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultrarich he is a legend. He has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion, and so begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him.

Fiendishly smart and suspenseful, The Fear Index gives us a searing glimpse into an all-too-recognizable world of greed and panic. It is a novel that forces us to confront the question of what it means to be human—and it is Robert Harris’s most spellbinding and audacious novel to date.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Robert Harris

Robert Harris is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children.

Editorial Reviews

“Unputdownable . . . Harris has achieved the impossible, or at least the improbable: an explanation of the extravagantly esoteric nature of hedge funds, which normal people can understand . . . I gorged myself, devouring his dystopian vision of free markets enslaved by a sinister artificial intelligence in one breakneck sitting.” —The Daily Telegraph

“Reminiscent of everyone from Michael Crichton to Ian Fleming, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock.” —Financial Times

“A virtuoso specimen . . . Inventively exploiting current anxieties about algorithmic trading to update the Frankenstein story, The Fear Index is both cutting edge and keenly conscious of its literary predecessors . . . A tour de force.” —The Sunday Times

Trust the Computer at Your Own Risk

The New York Times Book Review – January 26, 2012 (Excerpt)

The title of Robert Harris’s new thriller, “The Fear Index,” comes from the volatility index, or VIX — also known as the “fear index” — which measures expectations of violent swings in the market, as Wall Street watchers know from the harrowing meltdown of 2008. This fleet-footed, if sometimes hokey, novel takes place in the rarefied world of hedge funds, featuring one that has achieved huge returns by short-selling and using trading algorithms that “thrive on panic.”

It’s an energetically researched tale based on one of the back stories to the crash of 2008: bankers’ hiring of physicists to devise hugely complex trading programs that few really understand, and those new strategies running dangerously amok. It’s also a familiar story of hubris and its fallout.

In fact, “The Fear Index” — like such recent novels as Kevin Guilfoile’s “Cast of Shadows” (2005) and Laurence Gonzales’s “Lucy” (2010) — is a variation on that ever-popular template, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Once again, we’re introduced to a scientist who dares to play God by creating a new form of life (in this case, a computer program named VIXAL that evolves into a form of artificial intelligence). Once again, that new being leaves a spiral of havoc in its wake. [Read the full article...]

Another Woman: A Novel About A Thicket Of Family Secrets And Betrayals by Penny Vincenzi

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:51:07 +0000

Penny Vincenzi, queen of riveting family drama, delivers her most page-turning saga yet in this novel of intrigue, sure to please her legions of fans. The night before her lavish wedding, Cressida Forrest went to bed serene and happy. By morning she had vanished–without apparent cause, and without a trace. Shocked, anxious, and uncomprehending, the two families face a long day of revelations, as a complex, fragile web of sexual, marital, and financial secrets is ripped apart by Cressida’s disappearance.

About Penny Vincenzi

PENNY VINCENZI before becoming a novelist, worked at such magazines as Vogue, Tatler, and Cosmopolitan. She is the author of The Dilemma, Almost a Crime, No Angel, Something Dangerous, Into Temptation, Sheer Abandon, An Absolute Scandal, An Outrageous Affair, Windfall, and Forbidden Places.

Editorial Review

Set in 1990s England (and originally published in 1994), this novel features several situations that could only exist in an era without ubiquitous cell phones. When Cressida, delicate daughter of society gynecologist James Forrest, disappears the morning of her wedding day, she’s well and truly incommunicado. Unfolding over two days, the Cressida debacle wreaks no end of recriminations (and accompanying flashbacks) among James’ overprivileged and ingrown circle of family and friends. James himself is at the epicenter—his only brush with malpractice resulted in the birth of Ottoline (now 20, a supermodel, and for reasons that defy cursory explanation, a wedding guest) and the stillbirth of her twin sister. Cressida’s older sister Harriet has always resented her—for being their parents’ favorite and for causing Harriet’s banishment to a bleak boarding school. Now Harriet’s fashion business teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. James’ oldest friend Theo, a billionaire, unwittingly abetted Cressida’s escape by paying for her flying lessons, and was, until his marriage to fifth wife Sasha, carrying on an affair with Harriet. Their mutual attraction lingers. Elderly but still vital godparents, world traveler Sir Merlin and French sophisticate Janine, attempt unsuccessfully to lighten the prevailing gloom. The younger generation, including Theo’s dissolute son Mungo, Rufus, son of James and his long-term mistress Susie, and Oliver, the American groom left at the altar, are as mired in melodrama as their elders. Facts emerge revealing Cressida to be less English rose than shrewd operator. As the search for Cressida intensifies, we learn interesting information about the other characters. – Kirkus Reviews

Blueprints of the Afterlife – The End Of The World As We Know It by Ryan Boudinot

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:13:51 +0000

From the “wickedly talented” (Boston Globe) and “darkly funny” (New York Times Book Review) Ryan Boudinot, Blueprints of the Afterlife is a tour de force.

It is the Afterlife. The end of the world is a distant, distorted memory called “the Age of F***ed Up Shit.” A sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America. Medical care is supplied by open-source nanotechnology, and human nervous systems can be hacked.

Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not really her own. She may be right. Al Skinner is a former mercenary for the Boeing Army, who’s been dragging his war baggage behind him for nearly a century. Woo-jin Kan is a virtuoso dishwasher with the Hotel and Restaurant Management Olympics medals to prove it. Over them all hovers a mysterious man named Dirk Bickle, who sends all these characters to a full-scale replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound. An ambitious novel that writes large the hopes and anxieties of our time—climate change, social strife, the depersonalization of the digital age—Blueprints of the Afterlife will establish Ryan Boudinot as an exceptional novelist of great daring.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Ryan Boudinot

Ryan Boudinot is the author of BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE (Grove Atlantic/Black Cat, 2012); MISCONCEPTION (Grove Atlantic/Black Cat, 2009), a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award; and THE LITTLEST HITLER (Counterpoint, 2006), a Publishers Weekly and Amazon.com Best Book of 2006. His work has appeared in MCSWEENEY’S, THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING, NERVE, BLACK BOOK, and other anthologies and journals. He teaches creative writing at Goddard College’s MFA program in Port Townsend, Washington, and blogs about film at therumpus.net. He lives in Seattle.

Editorial Reviews

“[Ryan Boudinot] is a second- or even third-generation slipstreamer himself, and it’s interesting to see how easily the mode fits him. . . . His work illustrates the dictum that to channel the zeitgeist accurately, you need to go pretty much round the bend of sanity, logic, and good taste. . . . Boudinot’s style is light, breezy, and colloquial, hiding much craft and thought behind its addictive surface. . . . With its leitmotif of ‘superposition,’ the physics riff most familiar from the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, this novel pinwheels out multivalent explanations for almost everything, demanding that the reader navigate his or her own best-determined path of causality through the sly and shifting narrative. . . . Blueprints of the Afterlife exists in a shining lineage that extends right back ultimately to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the novel that taught us all how to conflate esoteric conspiracy theory with history with lowbrow pop culture with surrealism and absurdity with transgressive assaults on propriety and the bourgeoisie. . . . Boudinot’s novel, with near-Neal Stephensonian intricacy and panache, is a brave attempt to forecast the ‘afterlife’ subsequent to our culture’s imminent, nigh-inevitable collapse. Yet it’s no preachy tract, but rather a glorious carnival of errors, terrors, and numinous possibilities.”—Paul Di Filippo,Barnes & Noble Review (online)

“Blueprints of the Afterlife is strange, frequently mystifying, entertaining, bizarre, and very well written. . . . This book is to the typical novel what cubism is to art. . . . There’s a brilliant aliveness to this book, a joyful throwing together of extrapolated pop culture, really cool ideas about medicine and technology, a preapocalyptic vision of the current world and a bizarrely livable postapocalyptic afterworld, and a near total lack of genre boundaries. . . . When we get to the end, there’s the impression that we have been given a glimpse of a world, rather than being told its whole story. It’s a strange, overly colorful, scary, shallow, complicated glimpse, and it’s full of things so weird that they kind of force a sense of the sublime that sci-fi is always reaching for. Blueprints of the Afterlife feels like something new while maintaining that perfect balance between wildly different and recognizable. It’s hard to describe, but it’s easy to read, easy to get involved with. It’s artful, it’s affecting, and it’s more than worth the read, so long as you’re willing to go along for the ride. Do not fight this book: Let it take you where it’s going, and let it show you what it wants to show you. You’ll be glad you did.”—Samantha Holloway, New York Journal of Books

All Sorts of Strange Stuff Happens When You Destroy the World

The New York Times Book Review – January 25, 2012 (Excerpt)

Near the end of Ryan Boudinot’s bracingly weird new novel a man asks his girlfriend, an editor, about the book that she’s working on.

“It’s about the beginning of a new world,” she says. “There’s a rampaging glacier in it. Clones. Giant heads that appear in the sky.”

Her companion responds, “One of those.” “Blueprints of the Afterlife” has within it, in fact, all of those things. Its dystopian plot also has a world-champion dishwasher whose sister’s body is being used to grow and harvest donor tissues. (Penises are growing on her breasts.) Corporations have extended their product lines in ways that allow Mr. Boudinot to write sentences like “His hand crawled inside his jacket to flip the safety on his Coca-Cola.”

This novel is, in a word, freaky. Woo-jin, the dishwasher, finds a young woman’s body. It is taken away by the police, and he finds it again. But the first body is still in the morgue. [Read the full article...]

Mary Wesley: A Different Kind Of Author – An Essay by Peter Carroll

Peter Carroll — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:14:47 +0000

Peter Carroll is the author of Queen of Misfortune – A Lady Jane Grey Novel. For more information, see his website.

It is recorded that famous English author, Mary Wesley who lived out her last days in a small cottage in Totnes, Devon, was once reputed to be a wild woman. In her autobiography she has no qualms about being very promiscuous in her early life – which is more in keeping with numerous modern lifestyle’s -given the freedom of the sexes. Arguably she was ahead of her time saying she often waked wondering who was sleeping on the pillow next to her. “Let’s see who it is this time!”

She hailed from Englefield Green in Surrey but like so many of her contemporaries ended up in beautiful South Devon. A very attractive woman, she drew many admirers in her lifetime.

When I read of her rampant lifestyle during the second world war I was truly taken back – knowing how in my generation, such going’s on would have been frowned upon and regarded as highly dreadful. I can remember my Grandmother using phases like ‘Free Love’ and ‘Living in sin’ when she dismissed one of my aunt’s from the family circle because she went to live ‘unlawfully’ with a man.

Mary was one of the upper classes, being a descendent of the Duke of Wellington , her parents decided not to send her to school because she was not expected to work, perhaps in fact, such ‘depravity’ was rampant only in the upper classes and the poorer rarely indulged in such goings on. Well not openly anyway.

But I find myself relating to her, not so much to her avid lifestyle -because I was only an 11 years old when the second war broke out – and she was 28! But like so many others of my generation, we were brought up given strict Victorian values, and in many ways we were repressed in the days when the adage: ‘children should be seen and not heard’ still rings in my ears and the swish of the cane coming down on my knuckles simply for muttering during lessons in school.

Mary’s point was that during those uncertain times, when nobody knew when their time would be up, then why not make the best of it and enjoy life to the full, with no holds barred. She loved parties and drinking and playing the field – but eventually realizing her wartime lifestyle had become too excessive, in her words; “too many lovers, too much drink” she knew she was turning into a nasty person, so she settled down into a steady going sort of woman and got herself married.

When she agreed to her biography being written by Patrick Marnham , an English writer, journalist and biographer, she made him promise that he would not publish until after her death. When her son, Toby Eady read the book, he was flabbergasted, and commented that he never really knew his mother – and he didn’t speak to anyone for a week.

It is incredible; Mary Wesley’s first novel wasn’t published until she was 70 and even then it was just by chance, being persuaded by her best friend Antonia White to send it to a publisher. And then, in common with many great writers, several publishers rejected it, until eventually she found an agent, Tessa Sale who was convinced her works were good enough for publication and at last, else we may never had heard of ‘Jumping the Queue’ or her most famous book, The Camomile Lawn, James Hale of Macmillan publishers took it on and the rest is history.

Mary had found a niche that so many writers since have tried to emulate concentrating her viewpoint in a mindful and imaginative way rather than the physical descriptive narrative, she was a different sort 0f writer – and it paid off. Soon she was rich beyond her dreams but it didn’t make any difference to her simple lifestyle.

What did make a difference is the loss of her second husband, playwright and journalist Eric Siepmann in1970, she’d lived happily with him in Cullaford Bridge on the edge of Dartmoor but moved to Totnes after his death where she spent the rest of her days.

Her autobiography is certainly well worth a good read. One can see in her stories how she drew so much from her life working in intelligence in MI5 during the war helping to break German enigma codes.. She felt she could have done much more with her life when she read the obituaries of friends who had died younger than she, who’s lives had been crammed with ‘doing’ – saying she had spent too much time dreaming

Her family didn’t approve of her books. But she paid no attention and continued to write them regardless, Her brother called what she wrote “filth” and her sister, with whom she was no longer on speaking terms, strongly objected to The Camomile Lawn, claiming that some of the characters were based on their parents.

Her biographer spent many days with her during the last six months of her life and has given good account of her. She said in so many words; it was a great pleasure to converse with such an intelligent man and wished she was young enough to take him into her bed.

She certainly made her mark having achieved writing 13 novels in all and had the pleasure of seeing The Camomile Lawn made into a movie and three others filmed for TV.

Proudly she received a CBE in 1995

She was known to be an eccentric and kept her religious beliefs mainly to herself, had a coffin made especially for ‘the day whence it came’ painted red apparently and placed in her sitting room for good keeping. Her late beloved Eric converted to Catholicism only when being reassured that dogs could enter heaven. But is doesn’t stop there because there were pointers that Mary also believed the next world would be frequented by all manner of animals not to mention past lovers, friends and husbands.

Mary Wesley (Mary Aline Mynars Siepmann ) born 24 June 1912 died on December 30 2002 aged 90.

I wonder just how much more novels she would have written if she’d been discovered earlier, it is sacrilege to think that so much of her work ended up in her dustbin.

Dead Low Tide: A Murder Mystery Novel by Bret Lott

Wilfried F. Voss — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:14:01 +0000

In this long-awaited sequel to The Hunt Club, set in the swampy South Carolina Lowcountry, New York Times bestselling author Bret Lott returns with a literary page-turner about murder and family secrets. Though Dead Low Tide continues the story of Huger Dillard, this haunting work of fiction brilliantly stands on its own. No longer a teenager and now a young man, Huger must come to terms with and confront the truth about his community, his past, and the mysterious place he calls home.

While most of the residents in the wealthy, historic Charleston enclave of Landgrave Hall are asleep at two-thirty in the morning, Huger Dillard and his father, “Unc,” are heading, via jonboat, to the adjoining golf course. Blinded by a terrible accident that killed his wife, Unc prefers to practice his golf game when no one is watching. But before anyone can even tee off, Huger makes a grisly find: a woman’s body, anchored deep in the mud at the water’s low tide.

The discovery sets off a chain of events that puts Huger and his family up against secret military forces, old friends, longtime neighbors, lost loves, and shadowy global networks. The only thing connecting them all is Landgrave Hall—and the treacherous reason why this area is so important to so many people.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Bret Lott

Bret Lott is the author of the novels Ancient Highway, A Song I Knew by Heart, Jewel (an Oprah’s Book Club selection), The Hunt Club, Reed’s Beach, A Stranger’s House, and The Man Who Owned Vermont; and the story collections A Dream of Old Leaves, How to Get Home, and The Difference Between Women and Men; the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers; and the writing guide Before We Get Started. Formerly editor of The Southern Review, he was appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 2006. Bret Lott lives with his wife, Melanie, in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

“The best book Bret Lott has ever written—by far. He creates a Charleston that has never been written about in the history of that remarkable city. It is a literary thriller of the highest order—like something John Le Carré would write. I couldn’t put it down.”—Pat Conroy, author of South of Broad

“Dead Low Tide should be retitled High Water Mark. Bret Lott is a combination of James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard but with the grace and poise of Pat Conroy. Not a word is out of place. Reading this book is like listening to good music—as you reach the end, you want to start all over again. Dead Low Tide has made me a Bret Lott lifer. I’m going back and reading everything he’s written, and I’ll be first in line when the next comes out.”—Ridley Pearson, author of In Harm’s Way

“Bret Lott has done it again: linked a small family drama to a matter of national importance. Though he tells his tale, as always, with a lyric sweetness, terror—both private and public—is the subject here.”—Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

Book World: Bret Lott’s ‘Dead Low Tide’ is a swamp of murder, mystery

The Washington Post Book Review – January 24, 2012 (Excerpt)

A compelling premise kick-starts Bret Lott’s “Dead Low Tide”: Landing a johnboat in the marsh just off a Charleston golf community, 27 -year-old college dropout Huger Dillard — “smack in the middle of wasting my life” — and his blind father, Unc , discover a woman’s body buried in the mud. Their innocent expedition for some night golf quickly becomes a tense standoff among club security, the Department of Natural Resources and heavily armed sailors from the nearby Naval Weapons Station .

That setup pushes “Dead Low Tide” toward an ambitious series of twists: another corpse, military intrigue, illegal poker, dark family secrets, friendships betrayed, even terrorists on U.S. soil. While Charleston might conjure up moonlight and magnolias, one of the novel’s strengths is its evocation of the region’s dense military presence. [Read the full article...]

Buddha: Transfiguration Of A Prince – An Essay by Joy J. Kaimaparamban

Joy J. Kaimaparamban — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:34:24 +0000

A Contribution by Joy J. Kaimaparamban, author of The Ayurvedic Healer. For more information see also his website at http://www.kaimaparamban.com/.

Gauthama who had been known as Buddha and Siddhartha after getting ‘Light of Knowledge’ was born in Lumbini. It is in Kapilavassthu, which is situating in the north part of Basthi district in Uthar Pradesh. He took birth as the son of the King Suddhodana.

From the very childhood Gauthama showed the mood of a very thinker. King Suddhodana was very anxious about his son. He made Gauthama in his sixteenth old, the husband of a beautiful princes Yasodhara. She tried to do her level best for making the prince happy.

Suddhodana had taken great care for not witnessing Gauthama any inauspicious event Suddhodana thought that such things would make his son more contemplative and nervous.

One day while the prince was travelling in a horse cart, he saw a group coming against him carrying something. He had never seen such a scene before. The servant who had been travelling upon a horse tried to transfer the attention of the prince from it, in futile. Gauthama wanted to know the fact. Looking at the passing crowd, the servant told the prince that it was an old man’s dead body and his relatives and friends were taking it to a burial place. From the words of servant Gauthama was grasping a truth, all the people would die when they become old. The servant revealed about the death of younger people due to illness.

The heart of the prince filled with unlimited sadness. He felt that all the things of the world being mortal and perishable. Many people were suffering from poverty and ailments. Love and compassion had become rare among the rich people. Gauthama had fallen into a dilemma. He did not know what to do. Every night bloomed before him with shivering giving bad dreams. Yasodhara tried to console her darling-mate by telling smooth words. In fact all her words were falling in scorched loose sand. She bewailed in her solitidues.

Suddhodana and his queen were in endless grief seeing their son’s growing gloominess and thoughts. They too tried for his happiness in vain.

Once Gauthama saw a man with long whiskers and hair. He had worn only necessary clothes for covering his body. The prince ordered the horse carter for stopping the cart. Then he approached the man and asked him about him. The stranger introduced himself as a Rishi or an Ascetic who had left all the worldly pleasures for doing the works of the Almighty. While talking with him Gauthama felt as a river of calmness and happiness smooching his soul.

With a contentful heart, he returned to his palace. Seeing change Yasodhara became happy. She thought that it would be a stagnant mood.

The prince had decided to assume the lifestyle of a Rishi throwing away all his worldly comforts and happiness. But he did not divulge the fact before his wife. He had been in his age of twenty nine. And in that time he had a child in Yasodhara.

One midnight when his wife Yasodhara and son Raahulan and the total world were in sound sleep Gauthama left the place with the aim of finding out the ‘Eternal Truth’.

He wished to have a preceptor for guiding him the correct way. But his effort had become fruitless. So he was forced to reach the aim by his own exertion. He went to the city of ‘Uruvela’ and sat under a huge fig tree in meditation for six years. From there he could get the ‘Light of Knowledge’. He decided to pour it into the souls of other people. He believed that by that dealing he would be able to release them from all kinds of sufferings. He advised them ‘Ashtaamgamaargam’. His first disciples were three brothers who had converted into ‘Budhism’, openly. Followers began to increase and Gauthama sent them all over the world for propagating his ideas. Even his son Raahulan had approached Buddha and he too was recognized a disciple.

Not only common people but also great men as King Suddhodana become the followers of Siddardha. Disseminating ‘Dharma’ (Charity) he travelled all over the world for forty five years. At last covering Naalanda he reached at Vaisaali and stayed in the house of a famous ‘Devadaasi’. Then he went to the City of Kusi where he stayed under a Banyan tree. In BC 544 on a Vaisaakhapournami day his soul left the cage of his body.

Need You Now: A Novel Of A Madoff-Like Character Pilfering Billions by James Grippando

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:34:33 +0000

The New York Times bestselling author returns with a gripping, new stand-alone novel ripped from the headlines, in which a young financial advisor and his girlfriend uncover a conspiracy that reaches from Wall Street deep into the halls of government.

Abe Cushman, the evil genius behind a $60 billion Ponzi scheme, has killed himself and taken his secrets to the grave.

For Patrick Lloyd, a young Wall Street advisor at the world’s largest Swiss bank, Cushman’s fall has unexpected—and deadly—repercussions. Lloyd’s girlfriend, Lilly, is directly tied to billions of dollars in losses suffered by Cushman’s most dangerous victims, a group of powerful investors whose identities and dirty finances are well hidden. What Lilly knows can get her and Patrick killed, and now the pair are in a run for their lives that leads to the heart of a clandestine operation, and to a cabal of powerful officials determined to keep their agenda hidden from the public.

With nowhere to turn and no one to trust, Patrick and Lilly must uncover the truth before they become collateral damage in a “financial war” in which casualties are no longer measured in dollars and cents.

About James Grippando

James Grippando is the New York Times bestselling author of nineteen previous novels, including Afraid of the Dark, Money to Burn, Intent to Kill, Born to Run, Last Call, Lying with Strangers, When Darkness Falls, and Got the Look. He lives in Florida, where he was a trial lawyer.

Editorial Review

Abe Cushman was the hot-from-the-headlines Ponzi purveyor who pulled a Houdini with $60 billion. Now his suicide has left the money lost in the shadows. Patrick Lloyd is a young financial analyst for the International Bank of Switzerland, a too-big-to-fail institution luxuriating on huge accounts accessible only by code numbers. The SEC is hamstrung, but the FBI isn’t. Patrick is persuaded by an FBI agent to seek assignment in Singapore. He agrees for selfish reasons. In Singapore, Patrick met and bedded Lilly Scanlon, another BOS analyst. Lilly was the agent for the electronic transfers of $2 billion flowing between Cushman and Gerry Collins’ GC Investments in Florida, one of the scheme’s feeder funds. Now Collins has been garroted, and Lilly is on the lam. Tony Martin, a witness-protected mobster bilked by Collins, confessed to the murder, but there are other bad actors involved. One is Manu Robledo, an Argentine with connections to South America’s Tri-Border region, a lawless outpost where guns and drugs are sold and terrorists find warm welcome. Lilly lands in New York seeking Patrick’s help, and as they investigate, the innocent and the guilty are kidnapped, tortured and killed. A complex and mind-dizzying shell game, Grippando’s tale is heavy on action and filled with the stereotypical characters necessary to keep pages turning. The new BOS chief is a former Treasury official who must find the money or lose more than his career. There’s Mongoose, a one-time covert agent. And then there’s a lowly quantitative analyst, a “quant,” who diagrammed a plot tracing the billions through a mysterious project code-named BAQ and into hawalas, a worldwide informal banking and money-transfer system often used by the wrong kind of people.

Agreeably entertaining, Grippando’s novel adds up the collateral damage when billions belonging to the wrong kind of people go missing. – Kirkus Reviews

James Grippando’s financial thriller “Need You Now”

The Washington Post Book Review – January 22, 2012 (Excerpt)

If you’re going to read James Grippando’s new financial thriller, “Need You Now,” be prepared to scatter bread crumbs. Otherwise, you’ll never find your way back home after wandering through the thicket of aliases, double crosses, back stories and red herrings that litter the narrative path. Indeed, late in the novel, one of the characters resorts to drawing a “plot map” of sorts all over the walls of his one-room New York apartment. Here’s what it looks like:

“Scores of unframed photographs dotted the walls from floor to ceiling, each connected by a thick hand-drawn line. The lines were in various colors — red, blue, green, and yellow — and sometimes more than one colored line connected one photograph to another. . . .Hand-drawn arrows directed the flow from left to right, from the kitchen, past the window, around the door, and then back to the kitchen — a three-hundred-sixty-degree flowchart of some sort.” [Read the full article...]

The Flight of Gemma Hardy: A Novel In Jane Eyre’s Footsteps by Margot Livesey

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:25:51 +0000

When her widower father drowns at sea, Gemma Hardy is taken from her native Iceland to Scotland to live with her kind uncle and his family. But the death of her doting guardian leaves Gemma under the care of her resentful aunt, and it soon becomes clear that she is nothing more than an unwelcome guest at Yew House. When she receives a scholarship to a private school, ten-year-old Gemma believes she’s found the perfect solution and eagerly sets out again to a new home. However, at Claypoole she finds herself treated as an unpaid servant.

To Gemma’s delight, the school goes bankrupt, and she takes a job as an au pair on the Orkney Islands. The remote Blackbird Hall belongs to Mr. Sinclair, a London businessman; his eight-year-old niece is Gemma’s charge. Even before their first meeting, Gemma is, like everyone on the island, intrigued by Mr. Sinclair. Rich (by Gemma’s standards), single, flying in from London when he pleases, Hugh Sinclair fills the house with life. An unlikely couple, the two are drawn to each other, but Gemma’s biggest trial is about to begin: a journey of passion and betrayal, redemption and discovery, that will lead her to a life of which she’s never dreamed.

Set in Scotland and Iceland in the 1950s and ’60s, The Flight of Gemma Hardy—a captivating homage to Charlotte BrontË’s Jane Eyre—is a sweeping saga that resurrects the timeless themes of the original but is destined to become a classic all its own.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Margot Livesey

Margot Livesey is the acclaimed author of the novels The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals, and Homework. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Atlantic, and she is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. The House on Fortune Street won the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Livesey was born in Scotland and grew up on the edge of the Highlands. She lives in the Boston area and is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.

Editorial Reviews

“The portrait of a delicate, iron-willed girl, an orphan and a heroine in the grand tradition…. Here as in all of Livesey’s novels, the real treasure is her gift for exploring the unreduced human psyche with all its radiant contradictions, mercurial insights, and desperate generosities.” (David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle )

“The fabulous Margot Livesey has written a book steeped in remote landscapes, secret histories, and great love. Orphan Gemma is a modern day Jane Eyre, thoroughly engaging and bracingly unsentimental. The prose is meticulous, the tale transporting. Trust me, you will love this book.” (Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wit’s End )

“Enchanting, from the first page to the last. Reading The Flight of Gemma Hardy reminded me of that way we fall into certain novels when we’re younger, with utter absorption and concentration, the outside world disappearing entirely as the spell of a fictional world takes hold.” (Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and Servants of the Map )

In Jane Eyre’s Footsteps

The New York Times Book Review – January 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

When Margot Livesey was 9 years old, growing up motherless and lonely in Scotland, a book on her father’s shelf caught her eye: “Jane Eyre.” Livesey’s discovery of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece was transformative. The promised friend between the covers, a character whose indomitable spirit has consoled and inspired readers for over a century and a half, allowed Livesey to understand that “life is change.” “Like Jane’s, my life had changed for the worse,” Livesey wrote in an essay a few years ago, “and like hers, it could also change for the better. Time would, irrevocably, carry me to a new place.”

And back again. “The Flight of Gemma Hardy,” Livesey’s appealing new novel, is, as she has explained, a kind of continued conversation, a “recasting” of both “Jane Eyre” and Livesey’s own childhood. Set mostly in Scotland in the late 1950s and ’60s, the narrative follows the fortunes of a young girl, Gemma Hardy, who is beset by bad luck. Born to a Scottish mother and an Icelandic father, she was orphaned by the age of 3, when she was taken from Iceland to Scotland by her mother’s brother. There her original Icelandic name was discarded. [Read the full article...]

An Available Man: A Novel Of A Widower Trapped In Mourning by Hilma Wolitzer

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:03:38 +0000

In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around. When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. Even an attractive married neighbor offers herself to him.

The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching. But then his stepchildren surprise him by placing a personal ad in The New York Review of Books on his behalf. Soon the letters flood in, and Edward is torn between his loyalty to Bee’s memory and his growing longing for connection. Gradually, reluctantly, he begins dating (“dating after death,” as one correspondent puts it), and his encounters are variously startling, comical, and sad. Just when Edward thinks he has the game figured out, a chance meeting proves that love always arrives when it’s least expected.

With wit, warmth, and a keen understanding of the heart, An Available Man explores aspects of loneliness and togetherness, and the difference in the options open to men and women of a certain age. Most of all, the novel celebrates the endurance of love, and its thrilling capacity to bloom anew.

About Hilma Wolitzer

Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including Summer Reading, The Doctor’s Daughter, Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University.

Editorial Reviews

“I absolutely loved An Available Man (and not, I swear, because I’m partial to widowers). For a start, Edward Schuyler is someone I desperately wish I could invite to my next dinner party (and not, I swear, because there are half a dozen women I’d like him to meet). This is a book to savor page by page, filled with astute detail, both comic and mournful, about what it’s like to be middle-aged and lonely yet not give up on the search for love.”—Julia Glass, author of The Widower’s Tale and the National Book Award-winning Three Junes

“Wolitzer [writes] of the pain of losing a partner and its aftermath . . . with remarkable insight, grace, and humor. A warm, keenly incisive view of life’s vicissitudes by a writer too seldom heard from.”—Booklist

“Comic, tender, and delicious, in An Available Man, the broken-hearted rise again to heal and find love anew. Hilma Wolitzer is a national treasure, and she’s at her best here in the story of Edward Schuyler, a grieving widower who must put down his binoculars to see the world with new eyes. You will love it!”—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and Very Valentine

A Widower Hits the Dating Scene

The New York Times Book Review – January 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

In the opening lines of Hilma Wolitzer’s wonderful new novel, the recently widowed Edward Schuyler stands in his living room, ironing, when the telephone rings. He picks it up to hear the clamorous, intrusive voice of a female suitor, attempting to break in on his grief. But he’d rather iron the blouses of his deceased wife, Bee, “as a way of reconnecting with her when she was so irrevocably gone” than date any of the women now scurrying in his direction. Bee, on her deathbed, had predicted this fate: “Look at you. They’ll be crawling out of the woodwork.”

And so they do, but who can blame them? Edward is a catch — or will be, once he’s returned from the Underworld. A 62-year-old teacher, he’s a “Science Guy. Erudite and kind, balding but handsome,” according to the personal ad placed, unbeknown to him, by his stepdaughter and stepdaughter-in-law in The New York Review of Books. Despite his horror at this gesture, he cares for Bee’s children, and for the other survivors she has bequeathed him: a failing 15-year-old dog and an ancient mother-in-law who calls herself “the wreck of the Hesperus” but hasn’t lost a marble yet — indeed, wishes she could forget, “just a little,” to mitigate her own grief. [Read the full article...]

‘An Available Man’: Love After Loss

NPR Book Review – January 30, 2012 (Excerpt)

In my family, we referred to them as “the brisket brigade” — those single ladies of a certain age who began bombarding my brother-in-law with casseroles and commiseration soon after my sister-in-law died. It’s a cruel fact of life that nobody plies widows with months of home-cooked meals and baked goods; as Jonathan Swift might have modestly proposed, widows might as well eat each other — there’s a surplus supply of them, anyway. But a new widower gets the Crock-Pots and the romantic fantasies all fired up.

The main character of Hilma Wolitzer’s charming new novel, An Available Man, is a 62-year-old science teacher named Edward Schuyler, who gets his first casserole lobbed into his freezer right after his wife’s funeral. It’s a “Tuna Surprise” that turns out to have “a single, coarse black hair at its defrosted center.” Upon making this discovery, Edward immediately thinks of his beloved wife, Bee, who would have said something witty like, “Ah, the surprise!” Clever Bee, however, is no longer there: After decades of a happy marriage, she has been taken away, quickly, by pancreatic cancer, and Edward is left fending for himself — as well as fending off unwelcome phone calls from single strangers; ambush “setup” dates at dinner parties; and, in time, the well-meaning interventions of his adult stepchildren, who’ve placed an ad for him in the personals section of The New York Review of Books. It reads, in part: “Science Guy. Erudite and kind, balding but handsome. Our widowed dad is the real thing for the right woman.” [Read the full article...]

The Quality of Mercy: A Novel Of Greed And Human Rights by Barry Unsworth

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:50:55 +0000

Barry Unsworth returns to the terrain of his Booker Prize-winning novel Sacred Hunger, this time following Sullivan, the Irish fiddler, and Erasmus Kemp, son of a Liverpool slave ship owner who hanged himself. It is the spring of 1767, and to avenge his father’s death, Erasmus Kemp has had the rebellious sailors of his father’s ship, including Sullivan, brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. But as the novel opens, a blithe Sullivan has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing as he goes and sleeping where he can.

His destination is Thorpe in the East Durham coalfields, where his dead shipmate, Billy Blair, lived: he has pledged to tell the family how Billy met his end.

In this village, Billy’s sister, Nan, and her miner husband, James Bordon, live with their three sons, all destined to follow their father down the pit. The youngest, only seven, is enjoying his last summer aboveground.

Meanwhile, in London, a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, gets involved in a second case relating to the lost ship. Erasmus Kemp wants compensation for the cargo of sick slaves who were thrown overboard to drown, and Ashton is representing the insurers who dispute his claim. Despite their polarized views on slavery, Ashton’s beautiful sister, Jane, encounters Erasmus Kemp and finds herself powerfully attracted to him.

Lord Spenton, who owns coal mines in East-Durham, has extravagant habits and is pressed for money. When he applies to the Kemp merchant bank for a loan, Erasmus sees a business opportunity of the kind he has long been hoping for, a way of gaining entry into Britain’s rapidly developing and highly profitable coal and steel industries.
Thus he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for . . .

With historical sweep and deep pathos, Unsworth explores the struggles of the powerless and the captive against the rich and the powerful, and what weight mercy may throw on the scales of justice.

About Barry Unsworth

BARRY UNSWORTH, who won the Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, was a Booker finalist for Pascali’s Island and Morality Play and was long-listed for the Booker Prize for The Ruby in Her Navel. His other works include The Songs of the Kings, After Hannibal, Losing Nelson, and Land of Marvels.

Editorial Reviews

“Deeply moving. . . . Unsworth brings his characters together with authority and grace. As with all of his historical novels, he conveys the sights, sounds and smells of life in another century without the slightest hint of pedantry.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“The Quality of Mercy is the work of one who is both artist and craftsman. There is not a page without interest, not a sentence that rings false. It is gripping and moving, a novel about justice which is worthy of that theme. In short, it is a tremendous achievement, as good as anything this great novelist has written.”
—The Scotsman

“Unsworth’s is a vigorous, clear-eyed approach to history, electrified by his complete feel for the period, his neat bathetic wit and his natural gift for storytelling.”
—The Telegraph

A Monster in the Age of Abolition

The New York Times Book Review – January 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

Few of its readers are likely to forget Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger,” a co-winner of the Booker Prize in 1992. The novel contains a vision of hell on earth unlike any in contemporary fiction, largely because its account of the unimaginable cruelties of the slave trade is told in the well-wrought prose of an old-fashioned 19th-century novel with an omniscient narrator. The effect is uncanny: its intelligent, controlled and immensely readable sentences glow with a deathly pallor.

“Old-fashioned” may be misleading. Unsworth knows very well that novels are not about “reality” but about “realities,” competing versions of the real. The difference between the sort of novels he writes and, say, those of David Foster Wallace, is that Wallace internalizes those competing versions in the form of paranoid self-consciousness, which paralyzes behavior, whereas Unsworth holds his characters’ actions up to inherited moral templates and examines the slippage.

Moral templates change. In “Sacred Hunger,” the abolition of slavery isn’t even an issue, and the treatment of human beings as property is all the more disturbing for being taken for granted. Now Unsworth has written a sequel, “The Quality of Mercy,” in which that treatment is contested. The new novel picks up where “Sacred Hunger” left off. Erasmus Kemp, the son of a Liverpool merchant whose slave ship was presumed lost in the Atlantic, has returned to England, having captured the surviving members of its crew: for 12 years they had been living with the slaves from that same ship, “free and equal in a state of nature,” on the coast of Florida. Now it is 1767, and they are imprisoned in Newgate awaiting trial for mutiny and piracy. But resistance to the slave trade has grown in England, and Kemp is being opposed by Frederick Ashton, a zealous abolitionist. Meanwhile, one of the crew, the Irish fiddler Michael Sullivan, has escaped from Newgate and is on his way north to County Durham to inform a fellow crew member’s family, the Bordons, of his death. The novel braids three stories: the clash between Kemp and Ashton in London; Sullivan’s journey to Durham; and the fortunes there of the Bordon family, who are miners. The stories converge when Kemp decides to purchase the lease of the mine. [Read the full article...]

‘The Quality of Mercy’ review: Sequel to ‘Sacred Hunger’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – February 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Sacred Hunger,” which won a half-share in the 1992 Man Booker Prize for Barry Unsworth (the co-winner was Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient”), tracks the adventures of the crew of the slave ship the Liverpool Merchant, that mutinies and establishes an egalitarian community in the Florida swamps. The novel is a parable about the capitalist impulse, about man’s lust for “profit, which justifies everything, sanctifies any purposes.”

“Sacred Hunger” has a message, but that message is delivered through a richly imagined universe. Fiction lives in the details, and in “Sacred Hunger” many of those details are indelible.

Unsworth’s new novel, “The Quality of Mercy,” takes up where “Sacred Hunger” left off. His English publishers describe the book as a “standalone sequel,” a quirky marketing tag wisely dropped from the U.S. edition. But we get the drift. What’s on offer here is instantly compelling and impeccably written, and likely to make more sense if the reader has some familiarity with the earlier novel. Unsworth does extend his ambitions, however: In taking the book’s action off the ship and back to the teeming streets and highways of 18th century England, he offers a broader social picture of capitalism’s realities. [Read the full article...]

Never Eighteen – A Novel About A Boy Dying Of Leukemia by Megan Bostic

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:06:59 +0000

Austin Parker is on a journey to bring truth, beauty, and meaning to his life.

Austin Parker is never going to see his eighteenth birthday. At the rate he’s going, he probably won’t even see the end of the year. The doctors say his chances of surviving are slim to none even with treatment, so he’s decided it’s time to let go.

But before he goes, Austin wants to mend the broken fences in his life. So with the help of his best friend, Kaylee, Austin visits every person in his life who touched him in a special way. He journeys to places he’s loved and those he’s never seen. And what starts as a way to say goodbye turns into a personal journey that brings love, acceptance, and meaning to Austin’s life.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

From Megan Bostic

I am just a mere human girl trying to make it in this crazy world. I’m the mother of two crazy beautiful girls, living in the rainy, but lovely Pacific Northwest. Novelist, blogger, amateur poet, total flirt, self-proclaimed Facebook addict, and all around great girl, I also love making videos. I’ve done a chronicle of my writing journey on youtube.

Editorial Review

A boy decides he wants to live the last weeks of his life helping others get their own lives into better shape.

Unless they read the back cover of the book, readers won’t learn until late in the story that 17-year-old Austin is dying of leukemia. Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly clear that Austin, thin and weak, has embarked on some kind of mission. Because he never got his driver’s license, he enlists best friend Kaylee to drive him around the Seattle area as he meets with people whom he knows have problems. While Kaylee waits in the car, Austin tries to talk them into making better decisions in their lives. He also treats Kaylee to some Seattle sights and an expensive dinner. Underneath it all, however, Austin looks for the courage to tell Kaylee that he loves her as more than a friend. But will he have time? Bostic writes this graceful, affecting tale without pretension, simply by focusing on Austin himself. She avoids the maudlin, merely writing a boy who knows what he wants and showing his family and his friends as they move toward the final scenes. Perhaps it’s because of that simplicity that the story concludes with such a powerful emotional punch. – Kirkus Reviews

Breaking and Entering: A Novel Exploring Issues Of Family, Religion And Politics by Eileen Pollack

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:47:10 +0000

Set against the tragic events of the Oklahoma City bombings, Breaking and Entering follows Christian/Jewish couple Louise and Richard Shapiro as they move from California to rural Michigan with their daughter Molly in an attempt to save their marriage. They find their core beliefs about life and love tested as school counselor Louise’s students blame Satan for their homosexuality while Richard’s new buddies gather arms to defend themselves against enemies at home and abroad. Pollack’s America is divided and splintered, yet she writes with hope and humor…Breaking and Entering challenges the stereotypes we hold about our fellow Americans, reminding us of the unexpected bonds that can form across the divide between so-called Red and Blue states.

About Eileen Pollack

Award-winning novelist EILEEN POLLACK is the Zell Director of the University of Michigan’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Editorial Reviews

Eileen Pollack’s new novel, “Breaking and Entering,” takes place in rural Michigan in 1995 — the epicenter and high point of the militia movement, before increased scrutiny and revulsion at the Oklahoma City bombing put some militia groups out of business and sent others underground. (Though not a militiaman, the bomber Timothy McVeigh attended their meetings and spent time on a Michigan farm with his fellow conspirator Terry Nichols.) The Oklahoma City attack comes about a third of the way through Pollack’s book, a real-world event that informs and shadows the fictional ones. …Quite a lot of bad things happen in “Breaking and Entering.” Pollack is an engaging writer with a first-rate eye for the telling sociological detail…. Since the author’s intent is to explore intolerance, hatred and evil, it is not enough that these forces merely simmer and self-perpetuate. The stakes are raised, and escalating consequences play out. …–Jean Thompson, The New York Times Book Review

A compassionate, humorous new novel about the ambiguities of modern life. After his patient commits suicide, a shattered Richard Shapiro and his wife, Louise, both therapists, move from upscale, liberal Marin County, California, to a rural Michigan village in 1995. But so much for the great escape: Louise takes up with a magnetic married minister, and Richard befriends members of the local militia, which has ties to the Oklahoma City bomber. Set against the backdrop of a divided America, Breaking and Entering by Eileen Pollack is a novel laced with compassion, humor and wisdom about the ambiguities of modern life. –Lynn Schnurnberger, More Magazine

Louise Shapiro is thoroughly beset in this thorny, lucid novel. Her bad luck begins in California, where her husband abandons his psychology practice and takes a job in a rural Michigan prison. Louise struggles to adjust to the heartland, which seems overpopulated with religious nuts and militia members. Her husband drifts away into a rebellious, gun-toting fugue, and the lover she takes becomes remote in his own way. … Her increasingly nuanced view of the sociopolitical divide is reflected in Pollack’s sensitive portrayals of both liberal Louise and her ilk, and their conservative counterparts. Weaving the personal with the political, Pollack… creates an encompassing haze of dissatisfaction and misdirected passion. Despite the unrelenting misfortune, though, the tone is more solemn than dark; there’s a beautiful contemplativeness, and a believable sense of redemption in the end. –Publisher’s Weekly