I’m often promoting the short story. I tell people, life is busy and stressful – I put two kids to bed, read bed time stories, and am exhausted, but it helps so much to have one complete reading experience at the end of the day. I can’t sit down and read War and Peace so I read a short story. You read one really great short story and it’s like, ahh… I’ve at least been able to reach some level of reading enjoyment today. The same can be said for novella’s or the short novel. This past weekend Wendy had a sinus infection. I had to do everything for both kids – clothed, bathed, entertained (actually we skipped baths) So I didn’t have much time on my hands. (gee, being a mom must be tough) But Philip Roth’s new novel Nemesis is a short one. I came away from the weekend feeling like I’d had a pretty balanced time – played with the kids and read Nemesis in its entirety.
For the third straight year Roth has released a little book. This one is set in Newark, NJ where either most or all (not sure) of Roth’s novels are set. It’s WW2 and there is a polio outbreak in Newark. Bucky is a young teacher and is the director of the playground. When “his boys” start to become ill Bucky questions himself. Did he do everything he could to protect the boys? He even wonders if he is the carrier.
I’m always questioning why I enjoy reading so much – is it because of a general interest and curiosity about myself and other folks? This is a very human novel. Full of the thoughts, feelings, and pain of a young man. Bucky eventually turns into a very dark and cynical man – oddly enough this brings the reader to a point of questioning, “would I have thought the same way” “would I have reacted diffently” “why?”
Good book – happy reading.

My blog day has rolled around again, and sadly I haven’t finished any books lately.  I am, however, starting on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.

Set in Brooklyn on the brink of World War II, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is about  Joe Kavalier (a refugee from Prague trained in the art of Houdini-style escapism)and aspiring illustrator Sammy Clay, two Jewish cousins, who seize upon their own hopes, dreams, and fears to create the comic book characters the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna Moth.

I’m not far enough into the novel to divulge more than that—plus, why would I want to ruin the book for you?

If you love Chabon and have perhaps already read this particular novel of his, you should take note of the existence of The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist–an actual comic book based on the character that Kavalier and Clay create.  Neat stuff, huh?  -Kaycie

by Kelly Pickerill

When asked to consider how memory works, do you tend to think about how the smell of oatmeal cookies triggers a vivid memory of your grandmother or how a song takes you back to that high school dance? When I think about memory I think of Proust and his madeleines. I think about the nights, as a child after a day at the beach, when I would experience that peculiar physical memory phenomenon that allowed me to feel the ebb and flow of the waves as I fell asleep. I’ve always thought that to have amnesia would be horrifying, and to lose the ability to process long term memory (anyone remember that Adam Sandler movie, 50 First Dates?) even more so. But to have a memory that’s infallible, too, would be just as traumatic. In Jill Price’s memoir The Woman Who Can’t Forget, she writes from her unique perspective of having perfect recall of everything she’s ever seen, thought, read, and experienced. Instead of the flood of bittersweet nostalgia when you heard that song from your prom, what would it be like vividly to remember the awkwardness of the dance with your crush, every inane thing you said to him, or how you stepped on her toe. The beauty of memory is that it’s forgiving and self-preservative, and to that end it has the ability to be selective, to meld an experience into a whole that’s more ideal than the sum of its parts.

Great House, Nicole Krauss’s new novel, while not about memory per se, features characters who are relating past events. There are misunderstandings, misinterpretations, misreadings, yes, but more than that Krauss seems to have used the function of memory as the medium of her story. There are four main narrators, and each simultaneously relates and interprets his story as his memory serves, without the burdensome need to follow a timeline and sometimes even to give the reader much context. Tenuously linking the narratives is a desk — an immense, imposing piece of furniture that contains many drawers — for some of Krauss’s characters it conspicuously represents the very essence of their identity. Most of the characters are writers, though one is in the heights of procrastination on her doctoral thesis, and one shamefully (because of paternal disapproval) and in installments persists in writing a story about a shark who is forced to absorb the nightmares of dreamers hooked up to its tank with tubes. All of the characters are extremely lonely, and sometimes their voices can seem quite small, and they themselves admit it would be a relief to disappear:

Until my eyes adjusted enough to make out the lines of the furniture, or some detail of the previous day came back to me, I hung suspended in the unknown, the unknown which, still loosely tethered to consciousness, slips so easily into the unknowable. A fraction of a second only, a fraction of pure, monstrous existence free of all landmarks, of the most exhilarating terror, stamped out almost immediately by a grasp of reality which I came to think of at such times as blinding, a hat pulled over one’s eyes, since though I knew that without it life would be almost uninhabitable, I resented it nevertheless for all it spared me.

Only memory, in those moments, keeps them from being lost.

Kaycie wrote about The History of Love a few weeks ago, and we talked about how both novels showcase Krauss’s unconventional storytelling. You may remember that Nicole Krauss’s much acclaimed second novel was Lemuria’s First Editions Club pick for June 2005. We recently sold our last signed first edition of The History of Love, but we still have first editions of Great House — look for the front page review in the NYT Book Review tomorrow.

I am now in the midst of reading Andrea Levy’s The Long Song, nominated for the Man Booker Award, which will be announced in London on October 12. Other nominees, which I have also read recently are Tom McCarthy’s C and Emma Donahue’s Room. We at Lemuria are all eager to learn the winner.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy, set in Jamaica in the mid 1800s, explores life on a large sugar cane plantation farmed by Jamaican slaves. When the proper English sister of  an aristocratic planter and slave owner arrives to live  in her brother’s household on the plantation called “Amity”, the story really takes off. The spoiled, unmarried and needy sister spots a nine year old girl, named July, with her large African American mother, and simply plucks  the child from her mother to become a personal servant girl and renames her “Marguerite”.

On page 56, the reader gets a glimpse into the feelings of the newly arrived sister:

And, oh how, Caroline Mortimer had wept in those days. Not in sorrow for the sudden loss of her sister-in-law, nephew and servant girl, for she was scarcely familiar  with any of them. No. She sobbed, ‘I hate this house and I hate this island, Marguerite…What am I doing here?…Did I leave England for this?…My brother hardly knows me…Oh why must I stay?…Because I have no choice, that is why…’ for finding herself with not a companion, nor a friend, in the whole world, let along the wretched island of Jamaica, except one little negro girl named Marguerite.

The very original narrative framework, in which the story is told late in her life  by the aging  July, or Marguerite, works well. Even though her son continues to correct his mother’s memory as she retells the story of her life on the plantation, the interesting narration compels the reader to continue to unravel the complex story. The obvious  love/hate relationship between Caroline and Marguerite exposes the many levels of ever changing attachment between the two women as they both age.

I am not quite half way through with The Long Story, but I am committed to finish reading my third novel nominated for the Man Booker. As any reader would be, I am constantly exploring the possible reasons for this book’s prestigious nomination. I am supposing at this point that the clever dialogue which is dialect predictable with this historical novel may be one reason for its nomination. Another reason may be the expert use of the telling of “the story within a story”, for July, or Marguerite, as an all knowing narrator, speaks to the reader often, actively using this literary device  to involve the reader and make him or her feel like the story is being actually audibly told  scene by scene. As I am reading, I am reminded of how the first African American female poet, Phyllis Wheatley, was educated by her mistress in the United States during pre-Civil War years. The time period is right to make this comparison, even though the locations involve two very different countries.

Author Andrea Levy, English born to Jamaican parents, has written four previous novels, the last one winning the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, as well as the Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best. If she wins the 2010 Man Booker, her novels will become highly read and discussed.  The Long Song, included in the top six on the short list of nominations of this year’s Man Booker, is sure to be talked about. Listen to the live broadcast of the all of the authors’ interviews on October 12.

Click here for Nan’s blog on C.

Here for John’s blog on C.

And here for Kelly’s blog on Room.

-Nan

BOOK!!

1+2 / 3  =  C

Nan really liked this book and has already had a two part post on this book here and here; it took me entirely too long to finish this book, but the fault is mine not the book’s I assure you. For me, often times a good book washes the dust from my veins and lights up places in the grey matter. I was nothing less than glowing when I finished it last night and just sat there for a while thinking, “hell of book.” It is been really good lately to pick up some of these hot contemporary writers that flow into active currents in my mind and give them a powerful charge. What is so good about this work is that McCarthy so artfully presented his themes with great depth and power. Words are just words and they don’t mean anything without a context and he supplies a very sufficient context through which he is able to speak.

There are many that wish they could say what he said but lack the delicate sensibility and craft. A professor can go blue in the face trying to describe the breakdown of man’s communication and the futility of his pursuits and aspirations by digging into the psyche of our perception…but half of those words don’t even mean anything. McCarthy presented a solid work, a must read if your into contemporary post-modern writing. If you get into it and are wondering where his thoughts are, just trust me and keep going.  I loved it throughout but to appreciate what he did it has to be seen as a whole. One of the best books I read all year.

-John P.

I have to admit that this week was a bit of a struggle when it came to what I would blog about  (which is code for “the reading in my life has been slow-going lately”).  Thankfully I had an epiphany this morning while staring at my fiction spinner picks, contemplating how long I could make it without a cup of coffee and eating cheddar cheese rice cakes.

And that epiphany was Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love. I probably read this book in 2006 (and it’s past due for a second reading), but it’s been one of my favorites ever since.  The History of Love is a novel about a novel (also called The History of Love) and its effect on the lives of its author Leo Gursky, his lost love, and his dead son.  This same novel also touches another family, that of fifteen year old Alma Singer (named after a character in Gursky’s The History of Love), her quirky brother Bird, and their recently widowed mother, who has been offered the job of translating The History of Love from Spanish.   These two stories combine as Leo and Alma search for others who may be connected to Gursky’s The History of Love but eventually find each other.

I don’t want to give too much away, but here is one of the passages that has stuck with me for years, and I can’t resist sharing it. This conversation takes place between a young Leo Gursky and the woman he loves.

“If I had a camera,” I said, “I’d take a picture of you every day. That way I’d remember how you looked every single day of your life.” “I look exactly the same.” “No, you don’t. You’re changing all the time. Every day a tiny bit. If I could, I’d keep a record of it all.” “If you’re so smart, how did I change today?” “You got a fraction of a millimeter taller, for one thing.  Your hair grew a fraction of a millimeter longer. And your breasts grew a fraction of a–” “They did not!” “Yes, they did.” “Did NOT.” “Did too.” “What else you big pig?” “You got a little happier and also a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you’re the happiest and the saddest you’ve ever been in your whole life.” (pg. 90-91)

Lovely, yes?  I thought so too.  After you read The History of Love, look for Nicole Krauss’s new book Great House, which comes out on October 5.

P.S. Here’s some literary trivia for you.  Nicole Krauss is married to fellow fiction writer Jonathan Safran Foer.  Cutest literary couple? My vote is yes.  -Kaycie

When I last blogged a couple of weeks ago, I had not finished reading C by Englishman Tom McCarthy. Last night I did!

Since it is short listed for the 2010 Man Booker Award, I am indeed happy that I have now completed this very unusual novel. When the winner is announced on Tuesday, October 12, I will be waiting to see if “my book” wins. (I plan on listening to the live interview with the nominated authors a couple of days before the award is announced. I really, really want to hear what McCarthy says about his novel!) I’m betting C will win!  I have read one other novel which was long listed for the Man Booker this year, Trespass, which is to be published in October. I will review it for my next blog.

Picking up where I left off with C, I can tell you that the novel totally switches directions! Serge, the protagonist, becomes a fighter pilot in WWI. Even though I did not much like this section, titled “Chute” (part II of the novel), I can now see its merit. Section III, is titled “Crash”, and section IV: “Call.”I may not have mentioned that section I is titled “Caul” in my previous blog. Note that each section begins with a “C”, hence one reason for the book’s title: C.

Of course, the sections are all very symbolic of the protagonist’s life, which is continually plagued by the absence of his sister.  Toward the end of the novel Serge visits Egyptian tombs. How does this work into the framework of this novel? I really don’t want to give too much away from this incredibly literary and challenging novel. Streams of consciousness much akin to Joyce or even to Faulkner ebb and flow in this austere novel. No, I would not say it is character or plot driven, but perhaps theme driven.

As I turned the last page, I did realize how all of the plots and subplots did work together to drive home the multi-layered themes of sibling love, depression, intelligence, and exploration, all apparent in the symbols.  How McCarthy did it mystifies me. I think I’ll chalk it up to one word: GENIUS! Even though this was one of the most challenging works of fiction that I have ever read, it was well worth the work. The way that McCarthy puts words together amazed me.  I’m betting McCarty and C will win the 2010 Man Booker Award! I can hardly wait to see~(not intended as a pun!)

Click here for Part 1 of Nan’s blog

-Nan

Back in August we had picked John Brandon’s second novel for our First Editions Club, taking out the remaining stock at the publishers. It was some time for us, and everyone else, before receiving the second printings; but I hope it is not forgotten. The novel is well worth reading. I very much enjoyed meeting Brandon and his family when they came down from Oxford for the signing. It was impressive the amount of hard-working odd jobs the man has gone through to be able to support his family and be able to write at the same time.

I believe his work is paying off and he has given us a solid story showing us twisting minds of the normal (ish) people that we are. He used such a delicate plot that was not abused or manipulated to strum the heart strings as it could have. The story hangs onto you and the intensity of the unsaid is powerful. His sense of the characters involved is a powerful hard copy that illustrates for us the situations and minds of the young and not so old as they are coming of age. He displays such a natural knowledge of the characters and that is definitely one of my favorite things to read. Its going to be exciting to watch this man continue with his work.

-John P.

Everyone was sad to miss Mona Simpson last night.  Her plane was delayed in Memphis–we were lucky to have live music from Ya’ll’s Blues and plenty of drinks in the fridge– but she was at the bookstore this morning signing books. We had such a lovely time visiting with her. Frankly, it was a treat for us booksellers because we had her all to ourselves!

I finished reading My Hollywood a few weeks ago and just loved it. It’s my favorite book for 2010.

Recently, I landed upon Mona’s website and she has a neat section about how she works. One example she shares with us is the research she did with the Department of Labor. Many letters were sent to to the government appealing for better laws and protection for workers during FDR’s presidency. Mona’s website showcases some of the original handwritten letters. These appeals touch on issues that Lola and her nanny friends faced in My Hollywood.

Click here to read more about My Hollywood.

I know, I know.  I’ve already blogged about an Aimee Bender book.  Zita has blogged about her, John P. has blogged about her.  Well, that’s because she’s great.  I recently read her first novel An Invisible Sign of My Own in two afternoons.  This novel is about Mona Gray, a young OCD math teacher who struggles with making a commitment to anything (or anyone) ever since her father came down with a mysterious illness.  As he quits doing the things that he loves, so does Mona.

She’s forced to face her fears after becoming an elementary school math teacher.  For one, a student who latches onto Mona divulges that her own mother is sick with cancer, and for two, Mona begins to fall in love with the young, eccentric science teacher.

My favorite passage in the whole book is the one in which Mona first begins to realize how she feels about the science teacher.  She finds him outside, hiding from parents on Back-to-School-Night, and blowing cigarette smoke-filled bubbles.

I tensed my wrist, and taking the cigarette up to my lips with my other hand, sucked in. The smoke waited, patient, in my mouth, and I raised the swirling bubble with my arm, and released the smoke in a stream into a hold of the wand. It whooshed out of me: white, intimate.

I got ready to seal up the bubble and he was watching. I could feel him waiting, and I felt the bubble wobbling, and smelled the bucket and breathed in the smoke and I knew right then that mine would work. Mine would seal up, take off, and rise over our heads. A beautiful shuddering pearl in a sphere.

I felt him waiting for me, and I wrecked it. (pg. 109-110)

-Kaycie