Fiction picks of 2016

Nobody’s Fool and

Everybody’s Fool 

by Richard Russo

This was a project I was eager to undertake: read straight through Nobody’s Fool from 1996 and Everybody's Fool, the sequel published this year. Separately, Nobody’s Fool stands beautifully on its own. It is during that pitch-perfect run that began with Risk Pool and culminated with Empire Falls. 

It is a sparkling, hilarious tale centered around Donald Sullivan better known as Sully. Unashamedly, I will use the same quote about the character damned near every reviewer has used: "Throughout his life a case study underachiever, Sully -- people still remarked -- was nobody's fool, a phrase that Sully no doubt appreciated without ever sensing its literal application -- that at 60, he was divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable -- all of which he stubbornly confused with independence." Brilliant. Picture him as Paul Newman like I do and you’ve got a fantastic novel (and a pretty decent film starring Paul Newman).

Everybody’s Fool takes us back to North Bath, NY and most of the same characters still populate the town. However, and most importantly, Sully is not our hero though he is still present. That job is filled by Douglas Raymer, a minor character from the first book, who has risen through the ranks to become police chief. Rife with intriguing characters and plentiful sub-plots, it is a Russo tale for certain but the pace is neither as breathless nor as break-neck as the first and that should be expected because it is a slightly different Russo who has written this one. We’re all a little older--Sully, Raymer, Russo and me.

Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Much anticipated, Moonglow pays off. It has all the hallmarks that make Chabon one of the great American authors of the last 25 years but this time he walks a fine line by making Michael Chabon one of the main characters in the book. It is his grandfather though who owns the spotlight. Like most men of his generation, he kept mum for years about himself but in the last two weeks of his life, Chabon’s grandfather reveals more about himself to young Mike than he had ever. 

Grandpa was a shtarker, a tough guy, but with a bent for science. As part of Operation Paperclip, his job was to hunt Nazis after the war and his goal was to capture Wernher Von Braun. Once he returns to the States, he marries a beautiful but troubled French Holocaust survivor with a daughter (Michael’s mom) whom he raises as his own. Typically, Chabon covers a lot of ground that would take too long to summarize and, as always, he teaches us a great deal about any number of subjects that so fascinate him but that often slow the pace. Still, Moonglow is a worthy and customarily uncommon addition to the Chabon canon.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

While a very different book than his outstanding debut, The Rules of Civility, Towles gives us another fantastic novel with sparkling prose and characters you wish you knew. Count Alexander Rostov returned to his homeland as the Revolution began, and after getting his mother to safety, took up residence in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, one of the great Old World hotels. He is a man of generous spirit and bonhomie, well-traveled and educated, and his life at the hotel is a fine one. In 1922, he is stripped of his status for a poem he wrote as a young man that is now deemed subversive. He is sentenced to house arrest at the Metropol for the rest of his life. If he steps outside, he will be shot. He can travel nowhere and within the hotel, he can no longer enjoy the privilege he has known his whole life. This kicks off the next few decades of his life and the “family” he acquires while there. Some may find it twee but I thought it was absolutely charming and a worthy sophomore effort from the author.

Welcome Thieves 

by Sean Beaudoin

A relative newcomer, Beaudoin’s inventive short stories had me laughing out loud, grimacing at all the right moments, and rooting for his protagonists despite their inability to save themselves. I enjoyed All Dreams Are Night Dreams, a story of a fledgling water spectacle a la Cirque du Soleil and a troupe of Welsh travelers. The show is a slog and a dog and never quite reaches the Vegas heights it hopes for but the characters are most memorable. The long-titled You Too Can Graduate in Three Years with a Degree in Contextual Semiotics might make readers think it’s too clever by half but I thought it novel and affecting. Tiffany Marzano’s Got a Record, Hey Monkey Chow, and the title story were other faves in this very strong collection from an author that stood out this year.
                                                                                       

We Are Still Tornadoes 

by Michael Kun and Susan Mullen

Set in the 80’s, Tornadoes chronicles the relationship between childhood friends Cath, who goes off to college, and Scott, who stays behind. It is a touching take on growing up, friendship, and the impermanence of youth while managing to be kind, funny, and thoughtful and that is no small task.

Regular Reed-ers might be sick of me endlessly plugging this marvelous epistolary novel but I loved it and don’t care who knows!

Townie by Andre Dubus III

Dubus' memoir of growing up poor and angry in Massachusetts is a puzzle.  At page 65, I was ready to put it down but I pressed on.  Now having finished Townie, I'm not certain why I did so.  I found it repetitive to the point of pain and the author only somewhat redeemed.  

Dubus III, the son of author Andre Dubus, grew up in depressed former mill towns outside Boston in the 70's.  His parents divorced and he and his sibs mostly fended for themselves while his mother worked, barely making ends meet.  Dubus Pere, was only a few miles away, teaching at a small college, writing, running, and alternately chasing co-eds and marrying them.  He had a rather vaunted presence in the life of his family but was mostly absent, emotionally and financially.  Only later in life do they become better acquainted though as Dubus III recalls, more like drinking buddies than father and son.

For the first third of the book, Dubus spends his time alternating between getting his ass kicked by legions of neighborhood toughs and hating himself for being a coward.  After his sister is raped at knifepoint, he vows never to be a weakling again.  He starts weight training and boxing and attends college and then spends the next third of the book getting into fights with legions of neighborhood toughs but it does little to assuage his rage that has grown out of poverty, daddy issues and a naivete bordering on idiocy (at one point in his early 20s, he describes never having heard of nearby Harvard.  What?)

Finally, he finds--TA DA!--writing! This leads him to growing up some (not enough for me, at least as he portrays himself) and finding ways to put his rage where it belongs.  There are some touching moments with his father but mostly, his family, friends and fellow bar fighters come across as two-dimensional.  As much as I read about his kid brother, Jeb, I never felt like he was a real person and the same can be said of his mother, his best friend, and even his wife.  

There is also a sense of repetition that was maddening.  How many times do we need to hear the nearby rivers smell bad, the local bars are full of smokers exhalations, and of Clay Whelan, the neighbor kid who beat his ass early in the book?  Per Dubus, all too many.  

Finally, here is a recent interview with Dubus and the great Richard Russo about memoir writing (or 'memwah' according to Dubus) from the Daily Beast:


http://goo.gl/JwSaL

Straight Man by Richard Russo

Simply, Straight Man is superb.

To wit, a few examples that left me breathless. Then I will leave you to get your keys, drive to the bookstore (an indie, please), purchase your own copy and get down to reading a brilliant, funny, sad and rewarding work.

This, from page sixteen (!) from a novel almost four hundred pages long about a minor character:

"Looking at Gracie now, you had a hard time remembering the effect of her hiring twenty years ago. She had been like one of those dancers in black fishnet stockings and tails and a top hat, being passed from hand to sweaty hand over the heads of an otherwise all-male revue. As Jacob Rose, then our chair and now our dean, was fond of observing, every man in the college wanted to fuck her, except Finny, who wanted to be her. That was then. I doubt we could hoist her over our heads now. We're not the men we used to be, and Gracie is twice the woman. The sad thing is that anybody has only to look at Gracie (or, in my case, catch a whiff of that perfume) to know she still wants to be that woman. And, hell, we understand. We'd like to be those men."

Four pages later he writes this:
"I had not intended to belittle Gracie. At least not until I got started, after which it felt like the natural thing to do, though I no longer remember why. I don't dislike Gracie. At least I don't dislike here when I think about her. When I'm in one place and she's in another. It's when she's near enough to backhand that backhanding her always seems like a good idea."

 
I had forgotten what a masterful writer Russo is and I hope I never do again.

Now, go find your keys.

A Reed Next Round Up

Greetings all.  I took a couple of weeks off as Mrs. Next was on Spring Break and we spent considerable quality time together.  Lovely, of course, but I'm behind so a couple of quick hits before I post on Howard Norman's upcoming What Is Left the Daughter.

* I Tweeted this just the other day but just love the idea of Keef being at the library.  He would certainly bring a bit of swagger to any collection

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1263492/How-hell-raising-Rolling-Stone-Keith-Richards-wanted-librarian.html 

* Sherman Alexie won the PEN/Faulker aware for War Dances, his last book for Grove, against some serious competition (http://www.penfaulkner.org/news_media.php?id=596)  As an avid Alexie admirer, I enjoyed it though it was obvious he was moving on to another house.  The short stories collected alongside his poems and lists seemed a mix of contractual obligation and permission to "let the kid do as he pleased" as though this was his last summer at home before leaving for school.  Still, that's not to say I didn't love parts.  He can still a turn a phrase and tell a story with the best of them and his ability to create and flesh out little vignettes of human desperation reminds me of Carver, if Carver were funny. 

* Went to a used bookstore for the first time in what seemed like ages.  I had almost forgotten how enjoyable it was to roam the aisles with no real agenda and just allow the books to present themselves.  While I could have spent far more time and money, I was stingy with both and left with Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned, and two Richard Russo titles, Straight Man and Nobody's Fool.

* Happy to report that Reporting At Wit's End is a delight.  St. Clair McKelway's collection of New Yorker pieces from the 1930's through the 1960's show their age at times but the stories are of a time and place we'll never see again told in a way that captures the spirit, soot and savvy of a New York about which we can only smile and reminisce.

Dreaming Deeply with Richard Russo

Just got back from a lovely little affair: a discussion with Pulitzer prize-winning author Richard Russo.   The school where Mrs. Next teaches assigned the brilliant Empire Falls to the eleventh grade and then had him at the school to speak to the kids.  Sadly, I missed his presentation but was able to attend a lunch attended by eight faculty/staff types and Mr. Russo.  While he was peppered with questions, the esteemed author ate a turkey on wheat and pasta salad. 

A few high notes: 

*He just finished editing the next edition of Best American Short Stories.  He spoke highly of work by Wells Tower, Steve Almond, Lauren Groff and Brendan Mathews.

*Work on his next novel begins soon.  That said, it could take him anywhere from a year and a half to six years until it's completed if his track record is examined.

*His daughter is a bookseller at an indie bookstore.  I wish I could explain why this makes me so happy.

*He never pictured Paul Newman as Sully in the HBO adaptation of Empire Falls but as soon as Newman walked toward him on the set, limping in character, he knew it would work out well. 

*A Kindle is a likely purchase for him in the near future.  He's never read a book on one but thinks the ability to have all the books, magazines and papers he reads with him on an upcoming trip to Italy makes sense. 

*After our discussion, he was headed to a local NPR station to be interviewed by Bob Edwards whose featured topic this week is The Future of the Book. http://www.bobedwardsradio.com/

*Favorite quote du jour: "When I read, I want to dream deeply."  

LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL

http://www.observer.com/2009/books/hey-look-all-these-novels-read


Here's a great look ahead at the biggest Fall list in some time. Some BIG names and some BIG books are just around the corner (and a few are already out)--Richard Russo, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger, some guy named Dan Brown (never heard of him), Lethem, Chabon, Eggers. Yoi!

Get ready and start saving your dough.

Post book show buzz

Though I wasn't at BookExpoAmerica, the big book industry trade show this year, here are a couple of good articles about the show, the first from Publishers Weekly, giving a heads up on some of the big books for the fall. From the look of things, I think this is the biggest fall I've seen in a number of years and considering the economy and the state of the book industry, it's a damn good sign. There are books by some big hitters like William Trevor, Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver and Nicholson Baker. Oh, and some guy named Dan Brown. (Dan Brown? Never heard of him.)

As you might imagine, I'm psyched about the new Sherman Alexie, the long-awaited next book from Audrey Niffenegger, and new novels by Richard Russo and Jonathan Lethem.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6661807.html?industryid=49050

This second piece from the Washington Post, is more a look at where things stand right now within the industry. While some say the book biz is as cold as a corpse, I'd say it's closer to tepid. Still, it appears the future is now and the industry might finally be ready to admit it and, more importantly, act on it.


http://snurl.com/j78vk

Independent booksellers pick their books of the year

A bunch of great reads and a few surprises as the American Booksellers Association names the Book Sense 2008 Book of the Year winners and runners-up in four categories (Fiction, Non-fiction, Children's Lit and Children's Illustrated):

http://news.bookweb.org/5922.html

Most of these are bestsellers already but this will give them all a boost. I'm pleased to say more than a few of the winners and runners-up were written up on this very blog.

I'm hoping Hosseini will be able to attend the June awards ceremony at Book Expo America at the LA Convention Center. I'll be at the reception and would love to hear him speak.