Contemporary Fiction Views: An Inner West voice lauded

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Tuesday October 14, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/10/14 · 17:00

From a man who has been dead for hundreds of years, trying to capture whole days or moments that made him feel vibrantly alive, to the man who loses his only daughter to fast-talking, looking-in-his-hat Joseph Smith, the men in Shawn Vestal's Godforsaken Idaho both embody and rail against the two things that one of them says turn the world -- greed and vanity.

The stories in Godforsaken Idaho, which this fall won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, display an array of characters in settings that range from an eternal cafeteria, which is the bleakest version of heaven around, to the living room of an angry landlord whose heart gave up on him out on the street.

That cafeteria is in the opening story, "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death", a story that brings to mind the more fantastical stories in George Saunders's brilliant Tenth of December. The narrator talks in a matter-of-fact way about how whatever you can imagine is what you experience again in this version of an afterlife. But the only things you can experience now are things that you have already experienced. Food, for example, is only food that you remember eating. You can spend as long or as little as you like reliving certain times, certain moments.

Seeking out the memories worth going over again wears thin soon. When his ex-wife arrives, he talks to her. He talks to his son, who died at a much older age and who doesn't want much to do with a dad who left when he was young. Trying to gather a nuclear family for a meal in that cafeteria leads to complications that he didn't envision. What the narrator realizes is that:

If you want peace, you have to find it in the life you left behind.

bookgirl

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Tuesday October 07, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/10/07 · 17:00

The weather is finally starting to turn here in the valley. It's still nearly 80 degrees most days, but the sun is taking longer to make its appearance and there is the faintest hint of a chill in the early evenings. Summer has gone. And it turned out to be the perfect time to read an entertainment set in summer both chronologically and psychologically for many of its characters.

The Vacationers by Emma Straub chronicles two summer weeks for the Post family. Franny, a travel and food writer, made the arrangements for everyone to go to Mallorca before she discovered that her husband, magazine editor Jim, had done the unthinkable after decades of marriage. He slept with an editorial assistant. Not just any young, attractive editorial assistant, but the daughter of a member of the board. Jim is now jobless and perhaps about to take the last family vacation of his life.

Their youngest, Sylvia, is weeks away from beginning college. She's grateful to be leaving, since she found out the boy she liked hooked up with her best friend, and Sylvia spent the next party kissing every boy around. Social media, of course, has memorialized the event.

Her brother Bobby, about 10 years older, is coming from Miami. He's bringing his older girlfriend. None of them like Carmen; she's a trainer and none of them are gym rats.

The group also will include Franny's oldest friend, Charles, and his husband, Lawrence, who have been together for ages and who have easy-going relationships with all of the Posts.

Admittedly, this wouldn't sound stimulating to some readers. Even after beginning the book, which was breezing along at a breezy clip, I was about as engaged as when watching a TV show. But then something kicked in.

bookgirl

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Tuesday September 30, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/30 · 17:00

I must confess. I adore luxuriating in the reading life. Whether print or digital, but especially print, I am surrounded by books. My home has thousands of volumes. There are in every room; even the interior wall of the garage is covered by bookcases. I can't sleep in a room without books. None are of interest to collectors and so are not of much interest to most of the world, as they have little monetary value.

But they matter to me. They have helped make me who I am, and I am getter better at that all the time.

Although it appears that retreating into reading is retreating from the world, I've found the opposite to be true. Brecht's diary last Friday, his return to Books Go Boom! is a perfect rumination on why reading matters. Falling in love with fiction shows me more about how complex we are, how different we can be from each other in how we view anything and how we feel, even though there are so many things that can bring us together if we would only let ourselves listen and be heard. They help me make my way into and through the world, and they reinforce the ways in which I see where other people are coming from and how we are connected as human beings.

It's a good thing there is fiction. Let's face it, if there were only the utterings of people under daily stress, the news and internet comments, I couldn't make those connections. And I'd be tempted to become a hermit.

And it's not as if I think I have high expectations. I'm usually open to seeing where a book will take me, even one that doesn't initially sound intriguing. Last week's diary on Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a case in point. I didn't want to read it when first hearing its premise but within two pages of giving it a go, well, I'm grateful for the experience.

bookgirl

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Tuesday September 23, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/23 · 17:00

Not every book that makes it on the Man Booker Prize shortlist, let alone the longlist, is one that clearly deserves the extra attention. In this year, with the eligibility expanded to include American writers published in Great Britain, well, nearly anything might have been placed on the list as this year's panel of judges made its way through the new rules.

What I did not expect was that two American books would end up on the shortlist and that both would be books I feel richer for having read.

First up was the latest Joshua Ferris novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (perhaps I keep mentioning it because I want it to get a wide readership). Karen Joy Fowler's We are All Completely Beside Ourselves is not a novel I expected to savor. The description felt like a high-concept gimmick: Girl is raised with a chimp for a sister and tells the story of her family. Oh puh-lease. There are animals. It's bound to be quirky. It will have to end badly.

Well, yes and no. And it was worth it.

bookgirl

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Monday September 22, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/22 · 17:00

When a mystery series has survived until its 16th book, it might be expected to show its age. Not in the case of the Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James mysteries by Deborah Crombie. To Dwell in Darkness is as engaging as any book in this series has been and, just as importantly, moves the characters to a place where a reader wonders what will happen next and how they will respond to whatever they are up against.

Kincaid and Gemma have gone from colleagues to friends to lovers to a married couple. Their family has grown to include Kincaid's son from an earlier marriage, who is now 14, her little son Toby and a foster daughter who they are looking to adopt.

Both coppers loved their jobs. Kincaid at Scotland Yard has always been the model of a calm policeman who looks at the people he comes across in the murder investigations assigned to him. People have always mattered. Gemma James has grown from a single mother trying to make ends meet, doing well at a job she loves while insisting on putting her son first, into an even stronger police investigator and juggler of duties.

But now Kincaid has been reassigned from his beloved Scotland Yard and away from his trusted sergeant to another station. He's not sure of his new team any more than they are sure of him, including at least one highly wound woman who should have had a promotion to his job. Kincaid knows there's something going on behind the scenes, but exactly what and who is behind it remain as murky as ever. His wife also has a new assignment, but it's a plummy job, and her trusted number two, Melody Talbot. Kincaid wonders if this was done in part to keep him quiet.

bookgirl

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Tuesday September 16, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/16 · 17:00

This year's Man Booker Prize is the first since a rule change allowed novelists from nations other than Great Britain and the Commonwealth to be considered as the top British novel of the year. And there are two Americans on the shortlist who may win the award.

Joshua Ferris's To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a remarkable book. As I wrote earlier, just when it looks like it may be going completely off the tracks and into the woods, Ferris turns this story of a quirky, loner dentist trying to be normal into a story of lost love and identity, and how it may be possible to find a loving, welcoming place in the world when one least expects it.

The other American entry is Karen Joy Fowler's We are All Completely Beside Ourselves. It's the story of a young woman whose sister just happened to be a chimp. But we don't know that when we first meet Rosemary. What we know is that she used to talk a lot but now rarely does, and that her brother and sister are both gone. The story is revealed in a looping narrative. And, in the early pages of the novel, I can report Rosemary excels in sarcasm that is as deprecating toward herself as it is toward her family.

Another book on the shortlist I plan to tackle is the heart-wrenching one by Richard Flanagan. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the story of a man in charge of getting Australian POWs ready to work on the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway in the 1940s. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles compares its effect on him to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The novel is a personal one to Flanagan. His father survived the brutal horror, which claimed more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. Flanagan has written about a colonial prisoner in Van Dieman's Land before in his Gould's Book of Fish, a brilliant story about forgeries, survival and how different cultures get each other completely wrong. Between wild wisdom in his earlier book and the family connection, I think this one will be worth the subject, which is certain to be hard to read but important to not forget.

bookgirl

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Tuesday September 09, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/09 · 17:00

Haruki Murakami is one of the world's best-known and best-loved authors. After reading his latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, I think one of the reasons why this could be is because his work often explores a character who is not known by many and loved, or even highly regarded, by fewer still.

It's not that the characters are unloveable, let alone monsters, but that they are quiet, unassuming, seeking ways to avoid calling attention to themselves. But within those quiet characters are loudly beating hearts. And the world is filled with people like this.

Tsukuru, whose name means "grey" spelled one way and "someone who makes things" when spelled another way, once was part of a tightly knit group of friends. He and the four others went through high school together as if they were one, like points on a star that stay in balance. The two girls and two other boys in the group all have names that mean colors. Tsukuru feels thrilled that they include him. When it's time for university, Tsukuru is the only one who lives their city. He and his friends fall into their old routine whenever he's home on holidays. Until one visit, when all of them refuse to see him or talk to him. No one will tell him why.

bookgirl

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Tuesday September 02, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/09/02 · 17:00

When the world looks like it is trying even harder this week than last to fall apart, looking for solace to be able to go back out there and do one's best is now called self-care. I call it reading. And I found another novel that provided comfort.

History of the Rain by Niall Williams is on the Man Booker longlist this year. It's the story of young Ruth, confined to her bed upstairs, trying to find her father in the books he left. It's the story of their family, going back generations on both sides, and the story of how the Irish in one small village view themselves. It's also the story of salmon and the river and how one thing always leads to another.

But more than anything, History of the Rain is a story of how love of words and poetry and reading and writing are the stuff of life itself, of our hopes and dreams and loves and sorrows.

Now, all that may sound like a downer to some of you. Channeling Ruth, I can almost see some of you rolling your eyes and clicking your tongues. Hang on though.

bookgirl

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Tuesday August 26, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/08/26 · 17:00

We all have comfort reads, or at least seek out certain types of books, especially to fit certain moods. But some of my most rewarding reading experiences have come from allowing a willingness to see what happens, then realizing that I've imprinted connections onto what I thought was a blank slate.

That's what happened reading Paul Theroux's story "Action" in the Aug. 4 issue of The New Yorker (available here online). First, I had to set aside reservations about the author. And I'll get into that later. But first, the story.

The protagonist, teenage Albert, is a blank slate. His widower father is raising him and keeps him close by. Albert hasn't experienced much. He spends long, dreary afternoons and weekends at his father's shoe shop, counting inventory while the old man naps. Albert's father, he reports, is "a suspicious man" who even sniffs Albert's head like a melon in case anything like cigarette smoke or a girl's perfume has clung to that innocent boy.

About the only times Albert gets out are school and doing the occasional errand for his father. He's often sent to go through Boston to a warehouse to pick up a single pair of shoes. One day, he ran into a neighborhood friend out and about, a slightly older, slightly bad boy with an even older girlfriend. Albert remembers where that young woman lived and finds her at home, ironing in her one-room apartment.

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Contemporary Fiction Views: Life in a grey city

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Tuesday August 19, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/08/19 · 17:00

One of the great strengths of literary fiction is that it is able to discourse on any number of issues and philosophies. When done well, the fiction that can do that, while not broadcasting from the rooftops its frantically beating heart because it's also telling an entertaining story, is fiction that deserves to be shouted about from great heights.

Last week's diary on Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson is such a book. Toby Ball's Invisible Streets is right up there as well, especially when considered with his two earlier books in the same setting.

Ball's third novel set in a fictional City that resembles the Big Apple, Invisible Streets stands alone from The Vaults and Scorch City, and is set in another time jump from the second novel, to the 1960s. Yet it has some familiar characters and themes for readers of the first two books. (The cameos come right as they are needed for this novel and include the one most anticipated at a crucial time.)

Invisible Streets follows the paths of three men involved in different ways with a huge remodeling project in the City. The New City Project is changing the shape of town, decimating old ethnic neighborhoods, moving the haves farther away from the have-nots, and having a far greater sociological impact on the population than its creator, Nathan Canada, may have ever imagined or cared about. Canada, who resembles Robert Moses, is a take-no-prisoners urban developer with contacts above and below regular commerce and political structures.

bookgirl

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Tuesday August 12, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/08/12 · 17:00

Since discovering I need to be offline today and part of tomorrow, there won't be a diary tonight. However, next week's is ready already and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you.

See you Wednesday at cfk's Bookflurries and next week here.

Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule:

DAY	TIME (EST/EDT)	Series Name	Editor(s)
SUN	6:00 PM	Young Reader's Pavilion	The Book Bear
Sun (occasional)	9:30 PM	SciFi/Fantasy Book Club	quarkstomper
MON	1:00 PM	Grokking Republicans	Mokurai
Mon	8:00 PM	Monday Murder Mystery	michelewln, Susan from 29
TUE - alternate weeks	8:00 AM	LGBT Literature	Texdude50, Dave in Northridge
Tue - alternate weeks	8:00 AM	All Things Bookstore	Dave in Northridge
Tue	5:00 PM	Indigo Kalliope: Poems from the Left	Kit RMP, bigjacbigjacbigjac
Tue	8:00 PM	Contemporary Fiction Views	bookgirl
WED	7:30 AM	WAYR?	plf515
Wed	2:00 PM	e-books	Susan from 29
Wed	8:00 PM	Bookflurries Bookchat	cfk
THU	8:00 PM	Write On!	SensibleShoes
Thu (first each month)	11:00 AM	Monthly Bookpost	AdmiralNaismith
FRI	8:00 AM	Books That Changed My Life	Diana in NoVa
alternate Fridays	8:00 PM	Books Go Boom!	Brecht
SAT	12:00 PM	You Can't Read That! Paul's Book Reviews	pwoodford
Sat	9:00 PM	Books So Bad They're Good	Ellid

Contemporary Fiction Views: At the dawn of the Reagan era, innocents in the West

bookgirl

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Tuesday August 05, 2014 · 5:00 PM PDT

2014/08/05 · 17:00

The American West has long been a haven for people who want to be left alone and those who despair of society. And, as throughout the world, there are people who just cannot seem to handle the most basic aspects of daily life, whether it's because of physical or psychological limitations, often with addiction's ruthless grasp.

But loners and misfits aren't always alone. Sometimes they have families and those families have children -- children who may be loved or who may be barely endured, but either way, they can be children who are not cared for.

Pete Stone is a social worker assigned to a vast territory in the northwest corner of Montana, with sparsely settled pockets not of civilization, but of small towns or places out in the woods. He's like a lot of those people. His marriage is broken, his teenage daughter is sullen and doesn't get much attention from a father with a demanding job, and he drinks. A lot. His successes trying to help children and listen to the adults purportedly caring for them are few but he still plugs away at it.

Between other hard-luck cases, Pete is called when a wild child appears at a school one day. Even in the pre-computerized days of the late '70s and early '80s, the dawn of the Reagan era, it's unusual for a boy like that to have no presence in the system. The boy, Benjamin, doesn't consider himself neglected. He and his pa live in the woods off the land. Headed up toward camp, Benjamin's father warns Pete away, obviously willing to shoot him.

That father is the fabled Jeremiah Pearl, who knows the end times are coming. His dearly loved wife saw the signs coming and had the whole troop of Pearls, including all the young ones, leave Indiana and head for the woods where they might have a chance to survive.

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Contemporary Fiction Views: An Inner West voice lauded

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Contemporary Fiction Views: What parents to do children, and other animal stories

Monday Murder Mystery: An engaging, enduring series

Contemporary Fiction Views: 2014 Man Booker shortlist

Contemporary Fiction Views: Murakami's searching characters

Contemporary Fiction Views: Solace in the flow of books and family

Contemporary Fiction Views: The slate is no longer blank

Contemporary Fiction Views: Life in a grey city

Contemporary Fiction Views: Had to reschedule

Contemporary Fiction Views: At the dawn of the Reagan era, innocents in the West