If you have read Alice McDermott before, you don’t need me to tell you she is exceptional (1 National Book Award, 3 Pulitzer Prize nominations); her books always seem to make a quiet entrance but an echoing exit.

Alice McDermott’s newest book, Someone, is half Virginia Wolfe, half Betty Smith. The novel follows Marie Commeford, her growing up and aging. Foolish in love. Raising children. Watching her mother die. Like in her other novels, Alice McDermott walks the line with sentimentality. She seems to be telling the story you’ve heard before–girl born in poverty moving into the comfortable middle class by shear force of will–but this story is anything but predictable. The twists are unusually life-like. The characters cursed with physical ailments (a little Flannery O’Connor-esque) that only emphasize their shortcomings.

Marie Commeford is coming of age over and over again. Coming into the realization that we are all fools; our dreams rarely coincide with reality.

I sometimes wonder if all the faith and all the fancy, all the fear, the speculation, all the wild imaginings that go into the study of heaven and hell, don’t shortchange, after all, that other, earlier uncertainty: the darkness before the slow coming to awareness of the first light.              -10

Here at Lemuria we love books. We love everything about them, their look, feel, and smell; we love reading books more than collecting, most of the time. When you come into our shop, as I’m sure you’ve found out first hand, you never know what kind of treasures you’re going to find. We feel the same. Everyday at work it’s like mining for gold, but unlike sifting around in a creek hoping to find a scrap of wealth, treasure hunting at Lemuria is like panning through jewels for jewels. But sometimes you find something just really incredible.

David Foster Wallace anyone? Digging around one of our catacombs the other day we unearthed 4 ARCs of Girl With Curious Hair. [An ARC {advanced reader’s copy} is what publishers send to booksellers etc. prior to its publication.] Girl With Curious Hair, published in 1989, was DFW’s first collection of short stories. It’s really weird thinking of these books sitting in storage, unknown to anyone, for so many years. But how wonderful to have found them after all this time!

They are of course for sale to those lucky enough to get here first. Happy hunting y’all!

Austen passed on A Marker to Measure Drift to me after finishing it himself. This is usually a good sign; Austen is picky with his praise.

A Marker to Measure Drift follows Jacqueline, a refuge from Charles Taylor’s Liberia, wandering Santorini, Greece. Homeless in paradise, Jacqueline is a modern Robinson Crusoe, alone on an island populated by tourists and gyro stands. Jacqueline is saved by the kindness of strangers–a restaurant owner, a cafe waitress, a guide giving tours of a ruined city.

The novel unfolds slowly–we don’t know what she is fleeing, but the horror of her past haunts in remembered images: her sister’s orange cat, her mother in the kitchen slicing oranges, the sun dropping into the sea.

Maksik has created a finely crafted novel–part mystery, part lyrical narrative–it is a pleasure to read. Melancholy will linger, but the truth of the story is worth it:

And maybe that was the way to live. Always in fear of ruin.

Beauty as a form of respect. Of superstition.

Contrary to popular belief, every now and then I read books that are actually written for adults. It’s not all picture books and middle grade frolics for this girl, no sirree. I’m a serious person who reads serious literary books and I can have really super serious adult conversations with you about all of the grown up books that I read.

…So maybe that’s a stretch. I’d like to think of myself as an Oz/adult books liaison here at Lemuria, hopefully able to help you out with both kids and grown up books. And yes, usually that means that my to-read list is a little bit kid heavy, because I can just get through those faster. Every now and then however, there’s a book “from the other side” that I just can’t put down. (Saying “from the other side” makes me feel like it was written by a ghost.)

Ladies and gentlemen — Simon Van Booy is back, and he’s not a ghost. Van Booy’s newest book The Illusion of Separateness was exactly the novel that I needed to help me step eagerly back into the world of adult literature. In a story that follows several different characters and spans many decades, the book delicately intertwines the lives of people who are seemingly not connected to one another at all. There is no such thing as a coincidence in the stories that are woven here; every interaction and all of the conversations that can happen in one moment eventually wander into someone else’s narrative, tying up loose ends and answering questions we didn’t even know we had about the characters.

It is impossible for me to write about all of the characters or general plot of this book because it is so layered, and that is my excuse for the vagueness of the descriptions. This little book (only 208 pages!) reads quickly but also has some heft to it. It sits happily in the middle between beach books and books-so-heavy-they-must-be-taken-with-whiskey. I liked it lots, enough to have a blurb about it printed in the July Indie Next List pamphlet. It’s like, no big deal. Seriously, it’s nothing. Stop asking me about it! Ok fine, I’ll sign yours next time you come in.

Today, Monday 10 June 2013, Kent Wascom will be here at Lemuria to sign and read from his debut novel Blood of Heaven.

The title of this book tells of what you should expect. There is equal parts blood and heaven both in this book – and plenty to spare. I was talking with a fellow coworker the other day (Adie Smith) and she said something to the effect: Mix in a bunch of old religion/religious rites/customs into a good story and I’m sold. I’ve thought about that, and I find I’m the same way. When you bring those, in the case of Wascoms book, old Christian ways into a story that is both unrelenting in its violence, wildness of character, and a truly compelling story, it somehow begins to touch on the real in a way that without those religious elements it could not. Kent with his first novel reminds me of the kind of story you find in Barry Hannah. He doesn’t much write like Hannah but his spirit is found in this novel. Kent’s writing can be a bit difficult at times, though I believe most of it is due to the period, preLouisianapurchase/civilwar, and a little bit to do with the archaic quality he tries to cultivate to assemble a biblical language face, which I believe he does quite spectacularly.

The narrative follows an Angel Woolsack and is set primarily in New Orleans/West Florida. There are plenty of preachers, politicians, whores, slaves, and grotesqueries that keep the heart of this book pumping and in like the reader’s heart as well. Frankly it’s an exciting read and I’m sold on it. It’s the best book I’ve read this year.

I would say that by reading the first paragraph of Blood of Heaven you will know if you’re going to love or hate this book:

 Tonight I went from my wife’s bed to the open window and pissed down blood on Royal Street. She shrieked for me to stop and use the pot, but below I swear the secession revelers, packed to the streetcorners, were giving up their voices, cheering me on. They’re still out there, flying high on nationhood. Suddenly gifted with a new country, they are like children at Christmas. I saw their numbers swelling all the way to Canal, and in this corner of the crammed streets the celebrants were caught and couldn’t escape my red blessing. A herd of broadcloth boys passed under my stream while a whore howled as I further wilted the flowers in her hair and drove her customers off; and yawping stevedores, too drunk to mind, were themselves bloodied even as they tried to shove others in. And if I could I would’ve written out a blessing on all their faces, anointed them with the red, red water from my Holy Sprinkler, and had them pray with me.

If that didn’t convince you, come out tonight @5 for 1dollar beers and a free author reading, can’t beat that.