Up on the porch, Ophelia’s head jerked around, as if she were afraid someone might be sneaking up the back. But there were only carpenter bees, bringing back their satchels of gold, and a woodpecker, drilling for grubs. There was a ground pig in the rumpled grass, and the more Ophelia set and stared, the more she and Fran both saw. A pair of fox kits napping under the laurel. A doe and a fawn teasing runners of bark off young trunks. Even a brown bear, still tufty with last winter’s fur, nosing along the high ridge above the house. While Ophelia sat enspelled on the porch of that dangerous house, Fran curled inward on her couch, waves of heat pouring out of her. Her whole body shook so violently her teeth rattled. Her spyglass fell to the floor. Maybe I am dying, Fran thought, and that is why Ophelia came here.

…

Fran hesitated. “I don’t know where they come from. They aren’t always there. Sometimes they’re…somewhere else. Ma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn’t go home, that they’d been sent off, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don’t know. I expect time works different where they come from. Sometimes they’re gone for years. But they always come back. They’re summer people. That’s just the way it is with summer people.”

When the story ended, I asked myself, “Self? Do you ACTUALLY want to meet the summer people?” I want so badly to know more about them, but it feels like the kind of knowledge that would come at a price. Like, if I knew the secrets of the summer people, I would have to become one of them, or they would tie me up in ivy and bury me in the basement of their rickety house.

It can be excruciating when an author writes too thinly for what feels like the sake of being “literary”; so it’s like finding a diamond in the rough when I stumble across a sparse narrative that begs no further explanation. When it comes to spelling out the premise of the story “The Summer People” from Kelly Link’s new collection, Get In Trouble, I come up empty handed- it is not just a story; it’s an experience. Leading with the strongest, the stories in this collection weave in and out of normalcy. A vampire and woman break up. A hotel holds a conference for superheroes in one room, and dentists in the other. Rich young girls have their parents build them pyramids while hired actors become their public “faces”. A ghost boyfriend slips through the fingers of an eager young lover.

Exploring themes of love (new and fizzled) and a new generation busy getting in trouble, Link’s new collection is truly a force to be reckoned with. Perfect for readers who love Karen Russell, Kevin Wilson, and George Saunders.

Written by Hannah 

We have an entire shelf devoted to Barry Gifford’s prolific career–poetry, novels, memoirs, plays, screenplays. You name it, he’s probably written it (and we have it). And here’s the kicker: he’s pretty much self-taught. (According to the  Paris Review, Gifford was born in a Chicago hotel room to a racketeer father and a beauty-queen mother. “They lived at times in hotels in South Florida, New Orleans, and Havana. Because they moved around so much, Gifford didn’t get much formal education. He learned from late-night noir movies and the strange characters that passed through the hotel lobbies.”)

Gifford was first haunted by the voices of Sailor and Lula in the 1970s and 80s, but the first novel in the series wasn’t published until 1990. The first Sailor and Lula novel, Wild at Heart, jumpstarted Gifford’s career. The young, star-crossed lovers became the Romeo and Juliet of the post-nucleur age–making love in motel rooms, drinking in roadside bars, and evading the law. Flurries of gun fights. Private Eyes and hit-men. Maniacal mothers.

Throughout his writing career, Gifford has returned to Sailor and Lula, tracking them from young love to the birth of their own child, Pace Roscoe Ripley. He’s followed them across the country, from one bad idea to the next. Gifford’s newest (and final) installment released this month–The Up-Down: The almost lost, last Sailor and Lula story, in which their son, Pace Roscoe Ripley, finds his way.

The Up-Down is a neo-noir thriller, packed with doomed romance and a protagonist searching for something to keep him steady. As soon as Roscoe finds somewhere to settle down, right-side up is turned upside down. He falls in and out of love with women of various repute. Bones are broken. Gunshots fired. Children rescued and cursed.

A child of the (late) 80s, I never had the privilege of seeing David Lynch’s movie adaptation of Gifford’s “Wild at Heart.” (For some reason, my parents’ didn’t think the movie was appropriate for a 2 year-old) The film is pretty true to the novel, capturing the quicksand of romantic ambition and the hard edge of an America beyond the reaches of the law.

Reading The Up-down was a whiplash ride; one we recommend so much, we chose it for our first First Editions Club pick of 2015.

Barry Gifford will be at Lemuria January 28th at 5 PM to read and sign from his book. Stop by and have a listen. If you’ve never read Gifford, now might be a great time to start.

Written by Adie 

At Lemuria, most of us that work here have a go-to book that we recommend to customers just a bit too often. This is because not only do we love the book, but also is almost guaranteed to be loved by a large audience. Not many books, no matter how well written, are palpable to many demographics.

I feel like I should get this inevitable blog out of the way. I’m like a kid full to bursting to tell you about my day at school. So as you read, imagine me telling you about this book while screaming and flailing about the room.

So The Secret History  by Donna Tartt is about this college kid, Richard, who is bored in his normal life of suburbia and goes to a fancy college in Vermont called Hampton. He then meets a mysterious group of five college students. They’re attractive, intelligent, wealthy, sophisticated, and above all, mysterious. These students stand out amongst the others at Hampton. After some digging, Richard finds that the group studies Greek classics, but there is only one teacher, and he only accepts five students a year.

How could Richard not be drawn into this beautiful circle? He convinces his way in, and then the story starts and blooms.

This book is filled with references to the Greeks and is like the Greek tragedy in and of itself.

This book is written backwards.

This book is like a modern day The Great Gatsby.

This book is creaky wooden floorboards and frosted windows.

This book is a pince-nez and a black sweater and cigarette smoke.

This book will make you love every character except the protagonist.

This book is 544 pages long, and yet not long enough.

This book is for people who want to read something very thrilling yet smart. If you want to be sucked into exciting events, yet you want to feel like you’re reading something of literary quality; this book is for you.

Written by Nicola 

John Williams died when I was 6 years old.  I have read all 4 of his novels during my 26^th year of breathing.  When I try to sell his books to someone, I never know what to say about them, which seems strange because I like them so much.  Subtle isn’t the right word because I understand them.  Clever isn’t the right word because they are straightforward.  Slow isn’t the right word because I read them in hours-long chunks.  But, all of these words could be used by someone else to describe them.  Maybe I’m being self conscious because they seem so personal to me.  Obviously, he is talented (he won the National Book award in 1972), but more than that, his books seems like a private conversation between me and an author that has fallen out of the canon of must-read classics.

All of his books focus on a central character, and makes your heart ache for that person in simple language that says way more than what is on the page.  The subjects of the books themselves pluck at main nerves in my psyche.  An idiotic kid follows his need to experience the raw, painful beauty found in nature.  A farmer’s son has to abandon his parents to chase the true meaning of English literature and all the knowledge it can impart.  I cannot recommend Stoner or Butcher’s Crossing enough, and I look forward immensely to his other works. I will let Mr. Williams have the last word.

“He went free upon the plain in the western horizon which seemed to stretch without interruption toward the setting sun, and he could not believe that here were towns and cities in it of enough consequence to disturb him.  He felt that wherever he lived, and wherever he would live hereafter, he was leaving the city more and more, withdrawing into the wilderness.  He felt that this was the central meaning that he could find in all his life, and it seemed to him then that all the events of this childhood and his youth had led him unknowingly to this moment upon which he posed, as if before flight.”

-Butcher’s Crossing

Written by Daniel 

alien.  tractor beam.  blaster.  death ray.  dystopia.  first contact.  homeworld.  moonbase.  parallel universe.  worm hole.  time travel.  George Lucas.  Star Wars.  Star Trek.  William Shatner.  Captain Picard.  space:  the final frontier.  blue milk.  sci-fi conventions.  nerds.

Nerds.  NERDS.  (Just kidding—I’m a nerd.)

Here’s the thing:  I’m not a sci-fi reader.  I don’t get space travel.  I don’t get the appeal of a good, sensible person wanting to be torn apart by his molecules and be jettisoned across the cosmos to meet a distant alien race.  I don’t want to have to fight for my life by shooting a blaster in the enemy’s direction.  I would die.  I would straight-up die and not by an alien’s death-ray but by snagging my suit on some branch and popping like a helium-filled balloon at a child’s birthday party.

So, needless to say, I am not a sci-fi reader.  My mind just doesn’t get it.

But, give me a character that I can relate to and a storyline that is feasible and you have me.  See, it’s not that hard.

In The Book of Strange New Things, Michel Faber brings all of this to the reader and then some.  [Faber is most known for his second and most commercially successful novel, The Crimson Petal and the White.] The journey that Faber takes the reader on shows the beauty of a strange new world and the juxtaposition of a failing and disaster-ridden Earth.

Meet Peter Leigh, our protagonist who is about to venture into the unknown.  Peter, a Christian pastor, has been selected by a company called “USIC”  to minister to the native population of a newly colonized planet called Oasis.  Peter will be separated from his wife, Beatrice, by light-years.  Peter leaves behind Bea, their cat, Joshua, his church, and an Earth filled with pre-apocalyptic events taking place every time the reader turns a page.

In The Book of Strange New Things, Faber doesn’t try to stretch the reader’s mind too far.  We have a man, a planet, a cryptic company sending and supplying men with whatever materials are needed, a workforce made up of characters who have dark pasts, a previous minister who has gone missing, and a new alien race.  I appreciate that there are no space wars, no blasters, and nothing to distract me from reading.  It’s as if I know I am reading something similar to science fiction but I’m not actually reading science fiction.  I’m only reminded when Peter and Bea communicate via “shoot,” which is USIC’s version of digitalized messaging, and Bea comments on the travesties that are ensnarling the earth both economically and geographically.

Peter is eager to start his mission (no pun intended).  Yet, it seems that Peter is a bit out of his element at the USIC base, which seems to be filled with people who believe his Christian mission is pointless.  The native civilization, which some members refer to as “Freaktown” or more politically correct, C-2, is some 50 miles away from the USIC base.  Having rested a bit, Peter is ready to meet his new congregation with the help of Grainger, a USIC pharmacist with a troubled past.

Farber describes the natives from Peter’s viewpoint, “Here was a face that was nothing like a face.  Instead, it was a massive whitish-pink walnut kernel.  Or no:  Even more, it resembled a placenta with two fetuses—maybe 3-month-old twins, hairless and blind—nestled head to head, kneed to knee.  Their swollen heads constituted the Oasan’s clefted forehead, so to speak; their puny ribbed backs formed his cheeks, their spindly arms and webbed feet merged in a tangle of translucent flesh that might contain—in some form unrecognizable to him—a mouth, nose, eyes.”  The Oasan’s know some English but have trouble with “s” and “t” pronunciations.  This will prove a challenge later when Peter is transcribing passages.  Their voices are not mellifluous rather they “sounded like a field of brittle reeds and rain-sodden lettuces being cleared by a machete.”

Peter’s one and only goal is to minister to the Oasan’s but he finds, with great surprise and relief, that the natives already know about Jesus and are extremely delighted to find out that Peter has “The Book of Strange New Things,” but dare not call it a Bible.  In reality, Peter, now known as Father Peter, only has to keep the Oasan’s happy and take them further into learning about Christianity.

Over time, Peter cannot empathize with the troubles of Earth nor can he relate to his wife, who only sends him distressing news of events back home.  Gradually, Peter all but stops responding to his wife’s concerns.  In addition, the more time Peter spends with the Oasan’s the more he cannot even relate to those he works with at USIC.  Often, he finds himself not being able to stand loud noises, pointless conversation, and the sterile living quarters of USIC.

I enjoyed the character of Peter and how I could relate to him as a reader.  No, I’ve never gone into space to evangelize to aliens, but I do know what it is like to have an overall goal and to feel distant from others because of what my work entails.  The reader can find themselves in Peter and can empathize, if not religiously, with him on many levels (i.e. human struggle, an incomprehensible goal, the struggle of being away from a loved one, etc.)

Naturally, questions are raised throughout the story.  Are the events of Earth pre-apocalyptic?  What will happen with Bea and Peter?  What happened to the first minister?  Does Peter know that the Oasan’s are truly peaceful?  Is a relationship forming with Grainger?  Does Peter have the desire to even return to Earth?

All are answered in Michel Farber’s The Book of Strange New Things.

(And not a single blaster shot or blue milk spilled.)

Written by Laura