Help! I'm in Need of my Next Great Read

I was planning on putting out an APB begging readers for a novel recommendation, something I can sink my teeth into after a couple of disappointments. But not a moment too soon, I found an advanced copy of Russell Banks’ “Foregone” on my kindle, fired it up a couple of hours ago, and did not want to break for lunch. I told my sister only a few weeks ago that, though I love Banks and have reviewed several of his novels for Library Journal, this latest book didn’t sound like it would be up my alley. I think I was wrong. Will let you know how I progress.

Meanwhile, I was SO sure I would love Lisa Scottoline’s break out historical fiction attempt, a three-person love affair during the rise of Mussolini’s Fascist government in Rome in the late 1930’s, but “Eternal” did not live up to the hype. Sandro, Marco, and Elizabetta, the young people who had been friends since they could walk, were not fully fleshed out characters and their conversations were stilted to the point of caricature. These faults in the writing made it difficult for me to become invested in their plight. Other readers have raved, however.

 Perhaps I have been spoiled by the phenomenal writing and depth of “Un Village Francais,” (Frederic Krevine) a seven-season film on Amazon prime that has had Don and I mesmerized for weeks. Covering the same period, 1937 – 1945, in France, this outstanding series addresses the extremely complicated workings of a small village just north of the demarcation line between Vichy France and the occupied north, as Germans, collaborators, communists, and resisters all vie for control. We were a bit depressed when the series ended as we had come to care for each of the characters with all their strengths and weaknesses.

Andrea Lee’s “Red Island House” is another recently read novel that left me deeply dissatisfied even though, upon reflection, it might lend itself to a great discussion. The story of a magnificent home built by Senna, an Italian businessman whose source of income is rarely alluded to, on a glorious, spare piece of beachfront land in Madagascar, is laden with magical realism tropes. He and his young wife, African American college professor Shay, seem to morph into different personalities when they inhabit the house and local black magic potions are used and then cast aside, never to appear again, whetting our appetite for an updated version of “House of the Spirits”, then letting us down with just another bad marriage gone sour story.

Lee does write beautifully, painting a vivid picture of Madagascar, an island that readers may not be too familiar with. She also does a great job of pointing out the class distinctions that are particularly difficult for Shay to navigate as a Black woman overseeing her Black employees. Added to the difficulty is Senna’s insistence that they hire a disreputable, rather sinister property manager who spends their money profligately and who deeply resents Shay.

What have you been reading? Any fabulous books you’d like to share with me. I would love to hear from you. I still have plenty of titles to tell you about, gleaned from all the Zoom conferences I’ve been participating in lately. So many publishers, so many titles, but ferreting out the gems? Ah, that’s another matter!

Doerr and Franzen Coming to a Library or Bookstore Near you this Fall

Library Journal’s fiction editor Barbara Hoffert landed two outstanding interviews last week for the virtual Day of Dialog. Lovers of exquisite fiction and big, fat family sagas, have only to wait until fall for two marvelous sounding novels.

Anthony Doerr stole my heart with “All the Light We Cannot See.” Many of us wondered how he could possibly match that Pulitzer Prize-winning debut. According to Barbara, whose instincts I trust completely having worked with her for fifteen or twenty years, “Cloud Cuckoo Land” is “the joyous book we need right now.” And how can you not adore an author who dedicates his work to “the librarians, then, now, and in the years to come.”

From the siege of Constantinople in 1453 to present day Idaho and to a futuristic utopia, Doerr creates a tapestry of interlocking stories, a book within a book, that speaks to the connections between all living things. He told Barbara that he addresses such disparate themes as climate change, science, longing, and mortality with humor and joy, all told through the eyes of children facing complicated, difficult journeys.

Jonathan Franzen surprised me when he admitted to Barbara that he had told his publisher he only had one book left in him. Fortunately, that “one book” will be a trilogy, “A Key to All Mythologies,” which will span the ‘70’s, the mid ‘90’s, and current times. In October, the first volume, “Crossroads,” will hit bookstores and libraries and it sounds fabulous!

I am a sucker for tales of ministers struggling with their faith and apparently Russ Hildebrandt, who Franzen calls “a mass of insecurities,” will be the heart and soul of this novel. A man doomed to play second fiddle as the associate pastor of a mid-Western parish, locked into a troubled marriage, and father to three children he no longer understands.

We all remember the seventies differently. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is the moniker I recall. But Franzen says that he wanted to investigate the small-town private struggles that were always happening under the surface of the lurid headlines, what was going on at kitchen tables all over the country. With the Vietnam war winding down, Watergate, the Black Power movement, and the sexual revolution in its heyday, Russ and his wife will be tested by their young adult children in very differing ways.

But don’t think of “The Corrections” when you meet the Hildebrandts. Franzen says he has changed a lot from the man who wrote that classic of familial dysfunction. He seems to have eschewed an agenda for straight up storytelling and admits that he loved each of the characters he’s introducing us to and tries to treat them all equally. That’s a good thing since he plans to spend five decades with them and I’ve no doubt I will be along for the full ride.

Library Journal's Virtual Day of Dialog - A Resounding Success

Library Journal’s annual Day of Dialog is always a feast for the senses for librarians and book lovers everywhere. This is the second year that it has been presented in a virtual format and I’m shocked to admit this but, except for the joy of visiting New York and Chicago with my traveling buddy Maryellen Woodside, I love seeing my favorite authors on Zoom. It feels as if they are right there in the room with you instead of just a speck on a stage a football field’s length away.

Readers beware! There is a treasure trove of exciting new fiction heading your way in the fall, from debut novels to works from authors you already know and love. Here is just a small sample from the morning’s first panel on literary fiction.

Amor Towles, who wrote one of my favorite novels of all time, “A Gentleman in Moscow,” is back with “The Lincon Highway.” Where “Gentleman…” explored a large life in a very closed space, Towles says that his new book does the opposite, following eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson, recently released from a Kansas work farm for wayward boys, and two of his cronies, as they embark on a ten-day odyssey from the Midwest to New York City.

Do you remember “The Reader” from German author Bernhard Schlink? It was the subject of every book discussion group in the country and was developed into a feature film. After many years Schlink returns with “Olga,” an orphan in turn-of-the-century Prussia. Though raised by a down at heel grandmother, Olga aspires to more, falling in love with a young man from another class, working to become a teacher, yet doomed by the mores of the time to live vicariously through her lover’s global adventures.

Florida writer Lauren Groff, master of the short story, and National Book Award nominee for her brilliant examination of marriage in “Fates and Furies,” has taken a turn toward the historical with “Matrix,” the story of a young woman expelled from the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine because she’s too “rough.” But the seventeen-year-old Marie de France, now in England serving as the matron of a Benedictine Abbey, channels all her thwarted desires into a zealous relationship with her sisters and her God.

Author Margaret Verble make me think I might even be interested in the deep, dark history of Nashville after describing her new novel with one of the best titles of the day. “When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky” introduces Two Feathers, a Cherokee native horse woman who is sent from Oklahoma to work at the Glendale Park Zoo in Nashville where she is part of a dare-devil act, diving on her horse into a pool of water. It’s 1926 and prejudices run high between the townspeople and the zoo workers. How Two Feathers navigates this world will be revealing.

“Say You’re One of Them” was a well-reviewed short story collection from Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan and his debut novel sounds like a winner for any book nerd. “New York, My Village” is apparently a snarky send-up of the publishing industry that, who knows, may reflect Mr. Akpan’s own interactions with that lofty world. If that’s the case, it seems he has overcome the hurdles because this is billed as a brilliant, comedic satire about a Nigerian editor putting together a collection of short stories about the Biafran War while dealing with the smug, self-absorbed, cluelessness of the New Yorkers with whom he’s working. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

In my next post I will treat you to the gist of two inciteful interviews conducted by fiction editor at Library Journal, Barbara Hoffert, with the joyful writer Anthony Doerr and the bad boy trying to redeem himself, Jonathan Franzen.