Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa died on Sunday at the age of 89. Thanks to Lithub, part of his acceptance speech was published again. It shows how important writing what is in one's heart and mind, especially fiction, is to society:
Without fictions we would be less aware of the importance of freedom for life to be livable, the hell it turns into when it is trampled underfoot by a tyrant, an ideology, or a religion. Let those who doubt that literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression, ask themselves why all regimes determined to control the behavior of citizens from cradle to grave fear it so much they establish systems of censorship to repress it and keep so wary an eye on independent writers. They do this because they know the risk of allowing the imagination to wander free in books, know how seditious fictions become when the reader compares the freedom that makes them possible and is exercised in them with the obscurantism and fear lying in wait in the real world.
In conversations with family this weekend, I was shown how reading is both solace and an act of resistance.
One talk centered on Stephen Graham Jones's latest novel, Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is both a vampire horror novel and an American tragedy horror novel. The bigoted cruelties inflicted on the Blackfeet during the white settlement of Montana, and the slaughter of the buffalo to near extinction because of that racial hatred, are the core of the story. To be able to talk about both the historical tragedy, and its ongoing ramifications, as well as the revenge factor propelling the horror story, was a solid reminder that fighting back against tyranny is a fight for one's humanity. Even when, as in this horror story, one's humanity has been stolen.
The other conversation was about a reader discovering how relaxing reading romance can be -- from madcap comedy stories to spicy, complicated relationship stories. That someone with a heavy-duty job and family obligations can let the world spin by for a spell while getting lost in a story is indeed solace in these trying times.
My own reading continues to jig and jag all over. Once again, old New Yorkers are a balm. I found the John Updike memorial issue from Feb. 9 & 16, 2009. For all its faults of his era, which he often wrote about as naturally as breathing, the return to a time when reading a story about a young man driving his friend's father's car through the night was a satisfying story about realizing one's grown-up life had begun.
While we still have libraries and bookstores with a grand variety of reading material, use them. Take advantage of what we have while we still have them, and while we still fight to keep them.
A smattering of this week's new fiction follows, with links to The Literate Lizard online bookstore and descriptions from the publishers.
Fear is a second skin for the unnamed narrator of Hanne Ørstavik’s Stay With Me. A successful writer at 53, her father may be a frail twig, but the fear from her past, and of her father's rage, still envelopes her.
In urgent prose, the contours of her life emerge: a 12-year marriage, the death of her lover L, her troubled relationship with M — 15 years her junior and vexed with an all-too-familiar rage. We waver between our narrator’s life and the life of Judith, the protagonist of her nascent novel. Judith is a Norwegian costume designer who falls in love with Myrto, a conductor in an orchestra, who she moves with to Minneapolis.
Told through the eyes of a Korean girl adopted into a wealthy white family, this darkly funny debut explores casual racism, privilege, and the complexities of friendship.
Derrymore Academy circa 2007 is home to teenagers who have their eyebrows shaped and their sweet sixteens tented. Their first kisses arrive around the same time as their boating licenses and they celebrate getting their braces off with Mediterranean vacations. It is here that Emery Hooper, adopted at birth into the country club set, thrives.
The one blight on her otherwise perfect life? Lilah Chang. The Chinese American student is the embarrassing epitome of every Asian stereotype Emery despises—and is inexplicably determined to become Emery’s friend.
On the rocky shores of Lake Superior, a piercing story of selfhood and determinism develops: is the future what we’re handed or what we make of it?
It’s 1910, and Theodulf Sauer has finally achieved a position befitting his ego: master lighthouse keeper at a newly commissioned station towering above Lake Superior. When his new wife, Willa, arrives on the first spring ferry, it’s clear her life has taken the opposite turn: after being summoned home from college to Duluth when her father dies, she and her scheming mother find themselves destitute, and Willa is rushed into this ill-suited arranged marriage before she can comprehend her fate.
As the lighthouse station establishes, the new relationship teeters between tense and hostile, with little mutual understanding or tenderness. Willa takes solace in her learned fascination with the cosmos, especially (despite her husband’s suspicion of the event) in viewing the imminent Halley’s Comet. Under ominous night skies, Theodulf stands sentry over the lake, clinging to long-ago and faraway memories of happiness that fill him with longing and shame.
Into this impasse, a clairvoyant girl and her resolute uncle emerge from across the cove. They see through the Sauers’ thin façade and, by turns and in different ways, convey promise, sympathy, and insight that counter Willa’s despair.
Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy.
As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend. Each conversation in the present reveals another layer of his father’s past, another insight into his disappearance. Yet with every revelation, his father becomes more difficult to recognize. And, with every insight, Steve must confront truths about his own life.
In eight short stories, travelers and locals become entangled in situations that send their moral compasses spinning.
A grieving American father visits Dharamsala to investigate the murder of the son he’s never understood and finds himself delving into the mystery of the young man’s life. A Turkish-Cypriot teacher is tasked with making an inventory of household goods in an occupied tourist resort the inhabitants have fled. A Greek sculptor whose marriage is failing covers for a student from the U.S. who, instead of learning the art, engages in an affair. A Buddhist nun enlists the help of a Peace Corps worker to kill a suffering dog. A wannabe eco-activist in Kentucky writes confessional letters to Boyan Slat, the young CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. A woman in a Rajasthan tourist caravan bears helpless witness to a dire culture clash.
New flash fiction collection by Sherrie Flick, coeditor of Flash Fiction America and author of Thank Your Lucky Stars and Whiskey, Etc., a Foreword INDIES bronze prize for best story collection.
I Have Not Considered Consequences delves into the complexities of grief, desire, and a peculiar intersection between humans and bears. Flick’s evocative and thought-provoking stories follow characters like Bobby, a local home inspector who zips into a bear suit on his daily rounds, and a Gen-X couple, Matty and Trudy, navigating the ups and downs of their adult lives, from a dead fish named Patti Smith to dashed dreams of indie rock stardom. Women wander through small-town streets as they ponder love, allegiance, and Edith Wharton.
As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?
aue
- (verb) to cry, howl, groan, wail, bawl.
- (interjection) expression of astonishment or distress
Taukiri was born into sorrow. Aue can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home.
But Taukiri’s brother, Arama, is braver than he looks, and he has a friend, and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sadness.
In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.
Lewis Jones is a party girl for the ages. Confident and cavalier, she seeks freedom and a good time, leaving mayhem in her wake. Strutting between the bohemian demimonde of New York City and the affluent Black community of Detroit, she is supported in her adventures by her husband, Woody, and accompanied by her friend Kitty-Kat, a gay hustler with impeccable style and a knack for finding all the best spots. She guzzles champagne, snorts piles of cocaine, wakes up on silk sheets with a variety of lovers. And then she is upended by the handsome, erudite, often cruel Brook—a man who has his own bevy of admirers. Soon, Lewis and Brook are ensnared in a struggle for dominance that launches them into a shock of violence.
It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week—it being 2004 New York City and all.
“Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market. “People sell everything here,” she’s alleged to have said. “It ain’t all green.”
When Sylvia abruptly disappears the morning after an unexpectedly long night with the Fact Checker, he becomes obsessed with finding her. Did Sylvia discover something unsavory about New Egypt or its messianic owner? Is it possible she had some reason to fear for her safety? Or was it simply something the Fact Checker said?
For Clarence’s mother, life revolves around her young son; she takes him to see specialists to find the cause of his blindness and developmental delays, protects him from the cruelty of other children, and loves him tenderly. But she has her own struggles too. Her sanity is precarious and fractured, making caregiving increasingly difficult.
When her mental health reaches a breaking point, she checks herself into an institution so that she can get better and, she tells herself, be a better mother to Clarence.
Coworkers at a legendary but troubled New York City museum struggle with issues large and small over the course of one extraordinary day in this ... novel in the vein of The White Lotus.
When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a twenty-four hour roller-coaster ride.
Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters: her enigmatic and tireless personal assistant, Chris; the museum’s trusty head of security, Shay; and its general counsel, Henry—a man whose ability to weasel his way out of a jam is matched only by his capacity to avoid learning anything from the experience.
Orbiting Diane is a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation: among them a line cook staring down a huge opportunity he’s not sure he wants; a costume curator stuck in an inescapable rut; and the ambivalent curator of the museum’s film program, whose first day on the job might very well be his last.
On this day of the museum’s annual gala, every plate that Diane has kept spinning will fall and by daybreak, someone will be dead.
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington, for her husband’s research, she expected old-growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the world’s largest lava lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town haunted by its own urban legends.
When a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding the death of his mother, Esme. In Abigail’s search for answers, she enlists the help of a quirky cast of friends to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study. But as she gets closer to the truth, her own life may be in danger, too.
The Wildelings by Lisa Harding
In the vein of The Secret History and Normal People, two childhood best friends are torn apart when they fall under the sway of a charismatic classmate.
When a charismatic older student becomes involved with a young trio of friends just beginning to find themselves at university, their search for the transcendent will leads them down a dangerous path, one they may not be able to return from.
In the present day, Jessica is undergoing therapy after the breakup of her marriage. But she's not interested in dissecting what went wrong in her relationship; instead she believes herself to be undeserving of happiness. Her therapist encourages her to "start from the beginning" -- transporting Jessica back to her first year at Dublin's Wilde College, where she and her best friend Linda met Mark, Jonathan, and Jacques, and formed a quintet that would mark her passage into adulthood.
The girls have a certain dynamic: Jessica is the beautiful, dominant friend, while Linda is content to be Jessica's shadow. However, when they enter university, boys enter their orbit. Jessica and Linda fall in with the Wilde Players, a group of dark, handsome pot-smoking thespians. Jonathan is well-bred and well-fed. The wolfish yet gentle Jacques quickly sweeps Jessica off her feet. And charismatic, manipulative Mark models himself as an "enlightened male"--catching the eye of Linda. As the girls navigate their new romances, Linda begins to cut loose, entrenching herself in Mark's grip, and their friendship evolves into something far more sinister.
Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his reach: autonomy, tenderness, sex.
Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him "like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre," drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.
It’s 2011, and twenty-three-year-old Joan West is not like the rest of her liberal peers in Austin, nor quite like her Tea Party Republican, God-loving family. Sure, she listens to conservative talk radio on her way to and from her internship at the Capitol. But she was once an America-hating leftist who kissed girls at parties, refused to shave, and had plenty of emotionless sex with jazz school friends—that is until a drug-induced mania forced her to return to her senses.
But above all Joan is a writer, an artist, or at least she desperately wants to be. Always in search of inspiration for her novel, she catalogs every detail of her relationships with men—including with her former muse/current arch nemesis Roberto—and mines her very dysfunctional family for material. But when her beloved, credit card debt-racked cousin Wyatt finds himself in crisis, Joan’s worldview is cracked open, and everything comes crashing down.
The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness.
But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Ohio for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an award-winning violist.
When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has died in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, his fledgling marriage and irresistible self-confidence spiraling into a pit of despair.
Serena and Beth are best friends who couldn’t be more different—Beth is an avowed demisexual, who lacks confidence in her career and in her chances at a happy relationship due to her sexual orientation. Serena is a free spirit who oozes with confidence, both in her job and her sexual proclivities. And yet, since the moment they met, they knew they were platonic soulmates.
So, when Beth decides that she officially wants to take charge of her sex life and explore the things that scare her the most, Serena is more than happy to help. Speed-dating, sex therapy, tantra, a perplexed but ultimately very nice escort—it’s all on Beth’s Sexual Odyssey List.
But when Beth’s crush from her old job comes back and Serena’s favorite friend-with-benefits pushes for more than just sex, it throws their whole world into a tailspin. And suddenly, this sexual odyssey is more than a fun gag. It’ll set them down a course that’ll make them so much closer—or end their friendship for good.
Cybertheft leads to a cross-country pursuit as an ambitious, misfit young thief exploits a hacked microchip to rob banks, and learns too late that the wrong people have been watching her
Twenty-six-year-old Ruth excels at microchip design but decides to get rich the old-fashioned way: robbing banks. She becomes a cybercriminal and devotes five years to siphoning more than $250 million out of the banking system using a hacked firewall chip that she created and only she knows how to access. Then one night an alarm goes off and she realizes she’s been discovered.
Five hours later she’s on the run, chased across California and the West by a slew of government agents who see her as both a high-level national security threat and a potential intelligence asset. They’ll catch her dead or alive—whatever it takes to make sure no one else discovers what she knows. Each of these men is obsessed with the woman he’s hunting, certain he knows what makes her tick. But Ruth, always a step ahead, armed with her ironic wit and a reluctant dog, eludes their understanding; can she elude their capture, too?
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