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

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I hated Ernest Hemingway all the way through high school and college.  (I place the blame on a bad experience with a 9th grade research paper on A Farewell to Arms) I have, however, decided to give Mr. Hemingway another chance to impress me, and this time I think he just might have succeeded.  I’m about halfway finished withThe Garden of Eden, a posthumously published novel about the relationship between American writer David Bourne and his young wife Catherine.

This novel examines interchangeability of gender roles, which for Catherine and David takes a dangerous turn when they both fall in love with the same woman.  That grabbed your attention, didn’t it?  There is, of course, much more to say about the themes in this novel (as well as the controversy over its editing), but for your sake,  I’m going to spare you my tendency to be a literature geek and let you explore these themes yourself. If you’re a Hemingway fan, and you haven’t read this yet, give it a try.  If you’re not a Hemingway fan, maybe this will win you over like it did me.   As soon as I’m finished with this novel, I can’t wait to get my hands on the newest edition of A Moveable Feast (See Lisa’s blog on that here)

Also be sure to check out our valuable Hemingway first editions. 

-Kaycie

I have read one chapter of David Mitchell’s new book and I’ve now put everything else down to finish it.  This is a big deal for me because I have lots of things to read; lots of things to do; a limited amount of time before I go back to school in the fall and thus a finite time to indulge in ‘fun’ reading; also because I’ve never read David Mitchell before.  And it’s kind of a long book.

But The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has garnered some very nice attention – you’ll spot it on the front page of the New York Times Book review this weekend, a lovely review by Dave Eggers – and David Mitchell’s work (Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, Ghostwritten) has been so highly praised in the past (“Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything” wrote the NYT book review after Cloud Atlas came out) that I feel compelled to read him.

Already (one chapter!) I’m overwhelmed by the scope of Mitchell’s imagination. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is set in 1799 in Japan – specifically a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor named Dejima – and tells the story of a young Dutch clerk (our Jacob) who plans on making his way as a bookkeeper in Dejima for a while before returning to Holland to marry his fiancee.  And that’s really all I know.  Read Eggers’ review to find out more.  But it doesn’t even matter, does it?  Nine pages in and I can tell that for the next 460 of them, I will be happily immersed in a really, really good story, set in, for all I know about Japan circa 1799, another world.

So……..even though we’re shut today (Happy 4th July), come and check it out.  We are, by the way, open tomorrow.

Susie

Set in the 1950s in Dublin, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne has just been re-released. Made into a movie in 1987, the story is timeless and appeals to good readers who love a psychological examination of characters’ motives and expectations. Judith (Judy), a lonely middle aged woman, who moves from one boarding house to another searching for love and friendship, pulls at the reader’s heartstrings. A piano teacher and a seamstress, she is essentially a woman who has fallen from society and has very little money left to buy food or clothing. As an orphaned young girl, her aged aunt took Judy in, and as years went by, Judy cared for her senile aunt, while giving up her own life and refusing to put the crazed aunt “away”.

The novel opens as Judy moves into another boarding house and immediately falls for the new man, a native Dubliner, who had lived in NY for numerous years, and who has just moved back to Dublin to live in his sister’s boarding  house. Judy thinks he is THE man and that he is quite wealthy, and that he is the one for whom she is meant and immediately falls for him.  The reader learns that he is indeed not wealthy but thinks that Judy is because of the way she dresses and acts.  Essentially, each wants the others money which does not really exist.

Haunted by her aunt’s photo on her mantel, as well as a photo of “The Sacred Heart” which hangs above her bed, Judy, a deeply devout Catholic, doubts her faith as she is jilted by the NY man. Sinking deeper and deeper into depression and delusional thinking, Judy turns to alcohol for escape. The son of the boarding house owner, offers comic relief and amusement, which adds to the overall intrigue.

In the notes following the conclusion of this well written tiny novel, a classic in Ireland, references to James Joyce and allusions to Ulysses and the character Leopold Bloom are quite interesting. I wish I had read this afterword before I had read this novel. Having suffered through reading Ulysses while in graduate school, it was nice to revisit an Irish novel. For lovers of Joyce, who died only 15 years before this novel was first published, as well as for those readers who like a good Irish  novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is captivating.  Liz at Random House recommended this little find to me, and I’m glad.The cover alone of this unusual novel will be enough to entice many readers!

-Nan

I have started reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender and I am very much diggin’ it (that’s how a dude says that he “loves it”… gotta be careful what you say with these light colored books with curly font). I haven’t read any of Bender’s previous works but I definitely will, Willful Creatures seems particularly intriguing. I picked up this one because my co-worker Zita is all about it, and she also wrote a blog about it a bit ago. In the bookstore it is always nice to be able to feed off each others thoughts and excitement about books. It is also fun to see a book come out, pick-up, gain speed and take off. It’s getting great reviews and feedback wherever it is read and is currently on both the CBS Early Show and Good Morning America’s list of hot books this summer.

For me, though I am in the beginnings, the substance of this novel is already pressing on me. It is very pleasant to see an author not get bogged down in a beautifully good idea, like having a nine-year-old girl who is suddenly able to taste the condition of a person’s soul in food they have prepared, but to take the idea and be able to say something powerful through it. As Yann Martel said in his latest, these clever ideas are used to open people’s eyes and ears so they can better listen and see what the sayer is trying to illuminate. When authors are able to use this tool well, they seem to be able throw you off just enough to create a gap in your breastplate and have their way with our hearts. With her keen eye and seemingly perfect descriptions, I believe I trust Ms. Bender and can’t wait to finish this book and see the full picture that she is painting.

-John P.

When I think of Her Fearful Symmetry, I think of it in terms of couples.

Robert who mourns the death of his wife, Elspeth. Edie who must confront decisions made long ago with her twin, Elspeth. Martin whose mental illness isolates him from his wife, Marijke. And finally, the twenty-one-year-old twins who inherit their Aunt Elspeth’s flat in London, next door to Highgate Cemetery.

Open since Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1839, Highgate Cemetery seems a never-ending study as Robert writes his PhD thesis and provides guided tours to visitors of the cemetery: “. . . the Victorians had created Highgate Cemetery as a theatre of mourning, a stage set of eternal repose. But as he did the research Robert was seduced by the personalities of the people buried in the cemetery . . .” (53).

As Kelly wrote in her blog not long after the novel’s hardback release in September of 09, Her Fearful Symmetry is a book about identity:

How much of the identity of a twin is dictated by her sister?  How much are any of us defined by our family or our work or who we surround ourselves with?  How much should we work at protecting that identity so that we don’t begin, as Valentina finds herself doing, fading away?  And how difficult would it really be, if one were determined enough, to slip into another person’s identity?

Her Fearful Symmetry is many things: a ghost story, a family saga, a coming of age story, and an exploration of what makes us unique.

Many readers may know Audrey Niffenegger through the very popular novel Time Traveler’s Wife, which was made into a movie this past fall. I urge fans to not miss this second novel. And for those of us who have never read Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey has written a mesmerizing, “unputdownable” tale in Her Fearful Symmetry. Often times it is one character that grabs my heart in a novel, but in Symmetry so many of them were endearing. I still think about them, especially Martin–and you’ll have to read the book to find out why.

You may not know that Audrey is also a visual artist and her original approach to the story of a time traveler and his wife was through a visual novel. She has two visual novels in publication: The Adventuress and The Three Incestuous Sisters. Years ago, Lynd Ward’s God’s Man was an inspiration for Audrey and she adopted the term visual novel from him. Audrey also designed a beautiful limited edition of Her Fearful Symmetry. A true lover of books, she has been known to write, hand-print, and bind her own books.

Come meet Audrey! She will be here Wednesday, July 21st for a signing and reading  at 5:00 and 5:30. (The signing and reading will be held at our events building next door to Banner Hall.)

Audrey Niffenegger’s official website

My brother has been telling me to read Bret Easton Ellis for a long time now.  He has recommended that I read American Psycho, then teasingly taken back the recommendation – maybe it’s too gory for me, he says (I have seen the movie – surely not more gory than that? apparently it is?).   So sometime last fall I found a copy of The Rules of Attraction in my hands, and it took all of about one afternoon to read.  I wasn’t sure what I thought of the book, wasn’t sure what I’d taken away from it.  I’m still not?

But when Imperial Bedrooms came out earlier in the month, I bought a copy, along with a copy of Less Than Zero, which is Ellis’s debut novel, and the novel to which Imperial Bedrooms is the sequel.  Incredibly, Ellis wrote Less Than Zero (also a movie I haven’t seen, but which is referenced in Imperial Bedrooms) when he was 20.  I read it yesterday in a few hours.  If American Psycho is disturbing, well, I can’t see how Less Than Zero is much less disturbing; without the gore, perhaps, but disturbing nonetheless.  It’s a window into this alien world (to me, and I felt so naive reading it, my cat curled in my lap and a cup of tea next to me – all rather distant from Ellis’s characters, who snort mountains of cocaine first thing in the morning), which is set in LA, where everybody’s young and tan and rich and nobody has any sense of what is right, or if they do, they don’t show it, and they all seem so horribly bored and drugged and indifferent – I’ve never read anything like it.  It is one thing to imagine being so indifferent to the world; it’s another to read Ellis’s brilliantly-crafted dialogue and realize that it had to have come from SOMEWHERE.  Creepy.

Anyway, I finished Less Than Zero and wondered if, as the author of the book, Ellis had experienced, even fractionally, the life in LA he set out for his characters – and if he had, then how, um, was he still alive? hadn’t he died of a drug overdose yet? or crashed a car while driving drunk? or contracted some sort of disease from…anything, needles, strangers?

Well: not only is Ellis still alive, but lots of his characters from Less Than Zero are too – and Imperial Bedrooms is all about them.  It’s a much more plot-driven book than its predecessor.  I like that.  It’s a thriller, too (apt that he quotes Raymond Chandler at the beginning of the book).  Once again, it’s set in LA, and all our morally decrepit characters from L.T.Z. are middle aged but, in many cases, surgically altered so that they don’t look like it.  They’re still tan, maybe not doing as much cocaine?, and at various stages either are or are not talking to each other over issues pertaining largely to sex and drugs.  Nothing’s changed for these guys except now they use iPhones instead of payphones.

Ellis’s characters are bad people.  And bad things happen to them.  But Ellis writes great dialogue and his books are revealing and exciting.  Imperial Bedrooms utilizes the same formula of sex, drugs, and ambivalence as Less Than Zero (and The Rules of Attraction, for that matter), but what keeps it from being tiresome is the thrill of its plot.  It’s just a pity that it took Ellis four years to write – and isn’t quite 170 pages long.

Susie