Mary Miller’s debut novel spills over with good, solid writing. The Last Days of California is about a family road trip starting in Montgomery, Alabama, with its destination California, and possibly even beyond. The Christian rapture is what draws them to California, hoping to save some people along the way, though by page two
we suspect the father is not so holy in spite of his grand scheme. Jess, the 15-year-old narrator, says of her father, “He didn’t really want all 7 billion people on the planet to be saved. We wouldn’t be special then. We wouldn’t be the chosen ones.”
Early on, the reader suspects the family may be up to more than holy pursuits. Though the father is in the driver’s seat, there’s much more going on in the back seat between the two sisters, two years between them, armed with smart phones and convenience store candy. Their mother is the one who collects and receives the trash from all the wrappers and leftovers, staying at least minimally connected to her offspring and her husband, whose appeal seems to have deteriorated over many years of marriage. In the meantime, the two girls share lots of secrets, one being a probable pregnancy proven by several ominous pink strips.
Our narrator, consumed by teenage self-loathing, feelings of inadequacy, and the fact that her sister is beautiful and she is not, fantasizes about how to experience what she has only heard about from her wilder sister. The story moves through spare and perfectly pitched dialogue as the car moves through shoddy towns indecipherable from one another, each with the same big box stores — the equivalent of purgatory, American-style. Days Inns, Waffle Houses, and sundry convenience stores are the landscape that mark the journey. Jess reveals her adolescent longings, fears, hopes, dreams, and envies through a constant inner and outer dialogue that make this book so readable and hard to put down.
As the family continues the journey, they often stop to gorge or pick at meals only the most nutritionally challenged would order. French fries, sundaes, and diet cokes are a great part of the feast. The reader wonders how a man and woman who aren’t working can afford such expenses, especially when they stop at a casino. The questions mount as the journey progresses. Or does not paying the credit card bill make any difference to a family who will be whisked away as the rapture plucks the worthy from all the rest?
This is much more than a story about teenage angst. I see this short novel as a family love story, a sort of “Modern Family” of four. Though the cast is a scripture-deluded father, a rather worn out mother and two daughters who may have lost their tickets to Paradise, Jess will often hold her mother’s hand or ache with a daughter’s sad love for her father and remain forever loyal to her sister. Bravo to you, Mary Miller, our own homegrown Jacksonian.
Join us Thursday, January 30th as Mary Miller presents
The Last Days of California, signing at 5:00, reading at 5:30.
A few years ago, Emma Donoghue wrote a book called Room that was shortlisted by the Man Booker in 2010. I wrote about it 
To say we’re “sneaking a peek” at this book is sort of a misnomer because it came out yesterday, but I’m gonna do it anyway. The first novel by German author Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, was a book club favorite of 2013. A young woman named Julia travels from New York to Burma trying to track down her missing father. Her journey leads her to the small village in which he grew up, where a mysterious stranger who may know something about her father — he certainly seems to know an impossible amount about her — begins to tell her the life story of a boy named Tin Win, a story of her father’s past. This sequel finds Julia ten years later, where again Burma is calling to her, this time to help her out of the funk her life has fallen into. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats was a delightful read — heartwarming and true — and A Well-Tempered Heart promises to be also.
Lemuria is in the process of beefing up our graphic novel section (we want to be cool, after all), so look out for it those of you who are saying “it’s about time.” The first two volumes of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples, are amazing. I will be the first to admit I don’t regularly devour graphic novels, but I loved these. The story is awesome, the characters are awesome, and the art is awesome. The third volume comes out April 1st, and I can’t wait! Even if you don’t normally read graphic novels yourself, come by and see what we have and think about picking up volume one today.
And finally, some short story love. Lorrie Moore’s writing is amazing. I loved her last novel, A Gate at the Stairs, but her short stories are even better. Come out to see her present her new collection, 
Can’t and Won’t
Lost for Words
Summer House with Swimming Pool
New Life, No Instructions
This is one of the tersest novels I’ve read in years, but don’t let the brevity fool you. Juan Pablo Villalobos has created a Mexico full of wonder, adventure, and satire. This compendium is absolutely hilarious from start to finish.
They say not to judge a book by its cover, and then they go and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in the psychology of readers and why we pick books up in the first place. I love judging covers, and you should too! I judged the crap out of The Martian’s cover, and that is because it is absolutely terrifying.
Oh, and finally, the obligatory The Orenda push. This book is absolutely amazing. If you don’t read anything else this year, do yourself a favor and read this book. My good friend Hannah already blogged about it. 
To say that this book might already be my favorite for 2014 might sound a bit like I’m jumping the gun, but I cannot sing its praises enough. Joseph Boyden — an author who I recently learned was a Lemuria First Editions Club pick back in 2005 for his book 
When it comes to young adult literature, I am the greatest of the naysayers. I will say nay to almost every dystopian, leader of the rebellion, one-in-a-million teenage girl with a fighter’s will to survive and a heart that almost doesn’t have room for true love — but only almost.
Mo LeBeau is back, and I’ve never been happier to see her. In this new adventure, Sheila Turnage brings back to life all of the characters that we grew to love in
Edward? What does he mean to Patricia and Boyd? Where has he been and why? The story is just full of this subtle suspense — almost dread. A family that can’t really talk about their history, their problems? How Southern is that.
, 
Cereus Readers book club meets on the fourth Thursday of every month. Unless otherwise stated, the book club meets in the Lemuria’s Dot Com building. We always welcome newcomers and no previous reading experience of Eudora Welty is required.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Houghton Mifflin edition, introduction by Eudora Welty)
THURSDAY, MARCH 27 AT NOON:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 AT NOON:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 AT NOON:
This is a reading group open to all level of readers–anyone interested in learning about Jackson’s most important writer. Eudora Welty considered Lemuria her bookstore, and we want to honor her by discussing her books and authors she loved–meeting in the store where she shopped and signed her books.
“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up with themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them–with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”
This Saturday, December 7th, we will celebrate our love of the physical book and the books of Eudora Welty from 2:00-4:00.
We’re calling Saturday Welty Day. We hope you’ll join us in the spirit of community, in the very community Miss Welty loved so much.