Even as she wound up a 9-month-long tour for Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger kindly answered the curious questions from an audience of some 35 fans Wednesday evening at our events building. And even as she was about to wrap up a long day of travel and talk, she shared dinner with six of us booksellers–who had all read and loved Symmetry–and her driver and friend Ronzo. To top it all off, I was glad to see that Audrey was able to browse our first editions and rare books.

For her devoted readers, they will be pleased to know that she has started work on a new novel about “a nine-year-old girl named Lizzie Varo who has hypertrichosis (she is covered with hair) and her desire to go to school (she’s been home-schooled by her clever and amusing Aunt Mariella) and what happens when she does go to school (things get weird)” (see Audrey’s website). If you cannot wait that long, don’t forget about her latest visual novel The Night Bookmobile which first appeared in The Guardian and will be coming out in book form in September of this year.

See Kelly and Lisa’s blogs on Her Fearful Symmetry.

i don’t remember the moment someone mentioned this book but soon after our copies started coming in. a few at a time and then each time i checked the order screen, i saw that 5 or 6 more copies were on order. i was looking for something to read and this caught my attention.

emma and dexter meet in july of 1988. july 15 to be exact. one random night. one night it is. there is a connection that is worth noticing but the night stands alone.

until july 15 of the next year..and we will check in to what is happening in the lives of these two. one day each year–july 15. they live in different places, they date other people, their jobs flop, life happens. at times there lives are intertwining, at times they are not in contact. regardless, you may catch emma’s mind floating to dexter but not always at the same time that dexter’s mind floats to emma.

i found myself cheering for them to find one another as they did that first night. i’d give it a year and i would be happy with their admirable friendship.

after finishing, i thought long and hard about focusing in on one day each year of someone’s life, perhaps my own. what would i see? what would be the same? what would be different?

and i think that’s the comforting thought in one day. there is that one person that is consistent in your life. you may not talk every single moment of every day of every year but should something happen and you need someone, you know it is them you want by your side. there are those friends who you need to be glued to your side when you have joys, sorrows, and heartaches in your life.

emma filled that gap for dexter just as dexter filled that gap for emma. em, dex. dex, em.

so i say read it…today…tomorrow…one day.

-quinn

So, I know that both Kelly and Lisa have already gushed about this book, but I really just can’t help but do it again.  If you’re a fan of The Time Traveler’s Wife, then you already know something about Audrey Niffenegger’s work. And for those of you who haven’t yet read The Time Traveler’s Wife (or seen the film), then there’s nothing wrong with just going straight for her newest book  Her Fearful Symmetry.

I read all of this delightful book in about two days, and I’m already itching to read it all over again.  The summary (set near London’s Highgate Cemetary, involves ghosts) might sound too gloomy, but trust me, it’s the good kind of melancholy that you’ll surely want to lose yourself  in on the next rainy day.

So come meet Audrey today at 5PM in our annex building.  We’d love to see you there!

P.S. Read Lisa’s and Kelly’s great blog posts on Her Fearful Symmetry here and here.  -Kaycie

In my last blog, I wrote about how a copy of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet had fallen into my hands and I’d decided to stop everything I was doing and read it.  And I had really high hopes because the reviews were good (especially the New York Times review by Dave Eggers) and I’d read the first chapter and IT was good, and anyway: it’s a fantastic book. I finished it. I loved it!

Honestly, I’m just not sure I have it in me to properly criticize a book by an author in possession of such a vast imagination/brain.  I don’t think that with his latest book, Mitchell has created something perfect, but it sure is a beautiful (!!!), original, great story. I have tried my best to spread the word to customers in the store and now? now I have committed myself to reading all of David Mitchell’s other books: Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Black Swan Green, and Ghostwritten.  In a moment of weakness I just bought them all.

First of all, about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: it has not gotten glowing reviews across the board.  In fact, the first review I read of it was in The Guardian (I love the Guardian online edition, and their culture/books section is great, not to mention I am always interested to see what is being reviewed [and how] in the UK vs what is getting attention in the US).  The Guardian review said that, despite the fact that Mitchell has written five books now, it was still “hard to get a sense of his artistic personality.”  And that’s really the theme of the review: Mitchell HAS no theme, and perhaps it’s time for him to establish one, but in the meantime it’s mostly ok that he keeps writing these wildly varying novels because at the end of the day they’re still very, very good.

Anyway, I read that review and still wanted to go and read Mitchell, in part because: he is described as a “postmodern visionary,” a “master of styles and genres,” “a genius”, capable of writing books described as “brilliantly original fiction.” His books are consistently nominated for significant literary awards.  He has been compared to Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Melville, Salinger, Umberto Eco, Philip K. Dick.

But? I just haven’t noticed him that much before. I was working at a bookstore when Black Swan Green came out. I mean I guess I could have been truly oblivious, there’s a chance, but don’t recall there being much of a fuss about it, even though it got glowing reviews in the US and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time. Of all his titles, Cloud Atlas is the one that has sold the most copies here at Lemuria, but we haven’t sold LOADS. I’m not sure it was even released in hardcover in this country.

I don’t think Mitchell’s writing is too “British” for readers here.  Why he seems capable only of garnering a cult following in the US while achieving literary superstar status in the UK eludes me, but I think that might change with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – I hope so, anyway.  And to go back to that Guardian review, and the New York Times one too- perhaps the difference between the two is significant of the fact the in the UK, readers might be a bit more used to Mitchell, whereas here for some reason many of us (me) are only just now catching on.

Well. Who knows. But what remains an  indisputable fact is that Mitchell is an author whose works have been consistently impressive on a scale not many other current authors seem to be on.

And after all that: here is a lovely article from the NewYork Times that’s more about Mitchell himself. A snippet:

“When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, ‘your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there’s this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing.'”

Susie