Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel
Anyone who thinks John Banville lacks a sense of humor clearly did not read his serial for the New York Times magazine, available in novella-ish format in July. The story has all the basic crime ingredients - blackmail, adultery, murder, betrayal, that sort of thing - but it is so, so clear how much fun Banville had writing this pseudonymous exercise, loading up sentences filled with bizarre but well-placed metaphors and gently (or not so gently!) lampooning his characters as he moves them around his narrative chess board.
Cassandra Clare: City of Bones
I read this on the flight home from the LA Times Festival of Books and it really is about the perfect airport read: fantastic storytelling, characters whose adventures and melodramas wrap you in their spells and really ass-kicking action scenes involving demons and all manner of underworld types. Sure, Clare clearly owes a huge debt to Buffy and Harry Potter, but dammit, I want to find out what will happen next to Clary, Jace, Simon & co. - and that's exactly the button that's supposed to be pushed.
Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS
Reading this novel was like being transported back to the mid-1990s Montreal I knew during my college years. But it also affords an inside look at the ups and downs, the politics and the dramas, the hookups and breakups endemic to a rising rock band. It's clear, whether told from the vantage point of the young violin prodigy with a boy's name or her bandmate looking to redefine himself outside the orbit of his best friend (and leader) that Kaslik knows this world cold, and we're privileged to share in this knowledge.
Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
I'd recommend this simply based off of the utter gobsmacking brilliance that is LE BAL, one of the most crystalline and shocking novellas I've ever read, but the other three works simply confirm Nemirovsky's literary brilliance. THE COURILOF AFFAIR is a wonderful surprise for mystery readers because it's her version of a spy novel, tackling the moral quandaries of terrorism for a so-called greater good by personalizing the narrator's deeds and misdeeds. In other words, Nemirovsky's entire backlist can't be translated fast enough for me.
Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North
Goddamn, Hall can write, and her chosen dystopian subject matter gives her the chance not only to show off her sentence-by-sentence chops but to demonstrate how few steps removed our current culture is from the apocalyptic fervor of her world, where the reproductive rights of women are trampled on so definitively it takes an army of women to try, however futile the exercise might be, to take some independence back. I can't think of enough good things to say about this except that it should be read, now and years to come.
« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
I mark my upcoming birthday with a post at the Guardian Books Blog on why I'm somewhat dissatisfied with heroines in novels who happen to be age 29. There are a number of them in crime novels, too, but space meant I couldn't mention them all, but still I wonder what's so appealing about that particular age...
Where else do you find a reggae-flavored cover version of the Italian version of the MORK AND MINDY theme song? (thanks, Jaime!)
The saga of PFD has rightfully dominated UK publishing trade press, what with a new managing director, a failed buyout, mass agent exodus lamely disguised as firings, and a new agency, United Agents, in the works to debut in January. So what does David Buchler, Chairman of PFD's parent company CSS Stellar, do now? Set up a company with almost the exact same name as the breakaway agents, reports the Bookseller's Joel Rickett:
CSS Stellar chairman David Buchler has set up a company called United Agents Group, a name almost identical to that chosen by the breakaway PFD agents for their new venture. Buchler's move is believed to be a spoiler tactic to further destabilise the agents, who quit PFD after he took control of parent group CSS Stellar in the summer.
The departed agents, including books chief Caroline Dawnay, incorporated United Agents Ltd at Companies House on 25th September. Its directors include Peter Bennett-Jones, chairman of television producer Tiger Aspect. They are still finalising funding and new premises.
On 9th October another company was registered as United Agents Group Ltd. The address given matches PFD's headquarters on Russell Street WC2, and Buchler has now been appointed as the sole director of United Agents Group. On the documentation the former Tottenham Hotspur FC vice-chairman is described as a chartered accountant; a list of his other directorships includes the English National Opera.
Can we say petty, boys and girls? Oh, I think so. Or as Michael Cader just put it in Publishers Lunch, "sounds like a great way of reassuring the people that PFD is supposedly recruiting to fill all the empty seats that they're going to work for a great guy, doesn't it?" You bet.
Also, I'm on deadline (what else is new?) and I got pretty much nuthin' until tomorrow...
Back in 2006, Mystery Writers of America added an extra codicil for potential Edgar Award submissions. In order to be considered, "all works submitted for consideration must meet the requirements for active membership status as described in the membership guidelines." Also, the new guidelines state that "all publishers submitting work must be on MWA's approved publisher list or otherwise qualify to be added to that list." At face value, the changes make sense - streamlining the submission requirements so that only those meeting the active membership requirement status qualify cuts down on judges' workload, reduces a lot of the so-called chaff and concentrates MWA's efforts on properly published books.
But for the 2008 Edgar Awards, it looks as if these rules will be enforced more rigidly than ever before - and in doing so, takes out of the running books and short stories that should, at least, have a chance to be considered.
The belt-tightening was first brought to my attention when I heard (and which the author confirmed by email) that SONGS OF INNOCENCE by Richard Aleas, the open pseudonym of Charles Ardai, did not qualify for consideration for the Best Paperback Original category. Ardai won the Best Short Story Edgar Award last year for "The Home Front," published in the anthology TILL DEATH DO US PART. His previous novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST (whose first edition was published by Five Star in hardcover), was nominated in the Best First Novel category. And Ardai's co-owned imprint (with Max Phillips) and the books' publisher, Hard Case Crime, has had other titles nominated for various Edgar Awards, and is deemed by MWA to be an approved publisher whose 2007 original titles may be considered for various awards categories.
But SONGS OF INNOCENCE is ineligible because it runs afoul of current interpretations as set forth by MWA:
Among (but not all of) the situations defined as "self-published or cooperatively published" are works by those who have paid all or part of the cost of publication or distribution of the work; works printed and bound by a company that does not place the work in physical (aka brick-and-mortar) bookstores; those works for which the authors were required by the publisher to pay any monies whatsoever before or during publication; those published by "cooperative" publishing or others which require authors to pay for marketing; those published by privately held publishing companies with whom the writer has a familial or personal relationship beyond simply author and publisher; those published by companies or imprints that do not publish other authors; those published by publishing companies in which the writer has a financial interest.
Since Hard Case Crime clearly states that "the line is published as a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Dorchester Publishing" - the latter which is Ardai's company - then any books it publishes by its owners, which includes SONGS OF INNOCENCE, can't qualify. "This decision is no reflection whatsoever on the quality of the book, which many of us on the committee have read and enjoyed," said MWA Awards Chair Lee Goldberg when I contacted him about Ardai's qualification status by email. "In fact, the point of our guidelines is to assure that decisions about Edgar eligibility are made regardless of a work's perceived quality (or lack thereof) or the popularity (or lack thereof) of the author."
Had this interpretation been in place a few years ago, then K.J.A. Wishnia's debut novel 23 SHADES OF BLACK, which was self-published before being picked up by St. Martin's Press, would never have been nominated for an Edgar Award. Other self-published books picked up by major houses would never have a chance for the Edgar because their first (self) publication makes them ineligible, and second ("legitimate") publication makes them ineligible on the grounds that this is a reprint.
Of course, one might argue, so few self-published novels have any literary merit that refusing them entry into award consideration doesn't matter much, and disqualifications such as Ardai's are lamentable exceptions. Except that there's another, potentially more troubling extension of MWA's qualification policy: anthologies containing stories by those who edit them.
If Ardai is disqualified because his novel, which garnered him an advance against royalties, was published by an imprint he co-owns (in cooperation with an approved publisher paying out advances against royalties to several authors other than Ardai) then so too are any anthology editors who made the decision to include one of their stories in said anthology. In other words, every "City Noir" anthology published by Akashic in 2007 cannot submit stories written by said anthologies' editors for consideration in the Short Story category. Which knocks out the following stories:
Olsen, E.J., "SNOW ANGEL" - DETROIT NOIR (edited by Olsen and John Hacking)
Obejas, Achy, "ZENZIZENZIC" - HAVANA NOIR (edited by Obejas)
Rozan, S.J., "HOTHOUSE" - BRONX NOIR (edited by Rozan)Hamilton, Denise, "MIDNIGHT IN SILICON VALLEY" - LA NOIR (edited by Hamilton)
Spiegelman, Peter, "FIVE DAYS AT THE SUNSET" - WALL STREET NOIR (edited by Spiegelman)
Smith, Julie, "LOOT" - NEW ORLEANS NOIR (edited by Smith)
Not to mention that these other stories are now disqualified from consideration:
Hellmann, Libby Fischer, "YOUR SWEET MAN" - CHICAGO BLUES (edited by Hellmann)
Paretsky, Sara, "A FAMILY SUNDAY IN THE PARK" - SISTERS ON THE CASE (edited by Paretsky)
Even though each and every story I've listed currently appears on the submission list for the Short Story category, though they may not by the time the November 30 deadline hits. Now, Edgar Award consideration is likely not high on the list of priorities for anthology editors, but it might make them, and potential publishers, take pause - especially if having said editors write a story was one of the selling points.
Ultimately, the qualification rules and reinterpretations is a way for MWA to stem the ever-increasing flow of submissions. But I can't help but wonder if there's an alternate solution out there, a way for the peer-reviewing judges to assert some means of control over the categories they judge. Why not, like the Booker Prize, have books that can qualify under a "judges' choice" category where the books are called in or specifically requested? Why not have a quota that allows books of "exceptional literary merit" - whatever that is deemed to be - to qualify? Or why not try an idea I haven't thought of yet? Because in the end, the Edgar Awards are about the best books of a given year, and there should be a way to make sure every book that merits inclusion is, in fact, included for consideration.
UPDATE: With regards to the extended comparison I made between Ardai's situation and anthologies of editors published by MWA-approved houses such as Akashic, a clarification is in order: these are considered to be "guest-edited," and so are, in fact, eligible for Edgar consideration.
It's Denise Hamilton's turn to critique John Leake's ENTERING HADES and she likes the book a great deal.
John Updike on dinosaurs for the National Geographic? Of course it's a must-read. (via)
The Sydney Morning Herald asks three questions of Ian Rankin.
Abby Frucht reminisces about Stanley Elkin's teaching methods.
A production of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Whatevers gets scuttled on account of that pesky original title.
Ted Kennedy will get $8 million from Twelve for his new book.
Mark Ruffalo joins the cast of the movie version of SHUTTER ISLAND.
Maxim Jakubowski looks at the links between writing and exercise.
Is "debut" author Caro Peacock really Gillian Linscott? Karen at Eurocrime makes a pretty good case.
The stories behind the stories of some of the best-known novels.
And finally, it never ceases to amaze me about the cruelties inflicted by parents upon children. Actually, cruelties is a serious understatement in this case.
It's just a one-line deal memo and yet it has the weight of a million paragraphs:
"Film director David Cronenberg's first novel, to Nicole Winstanley at Penguin Canada, in a pre-empt, by Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency."
Oh please live up to the promise. Please please please.
UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel movie blog has a few more details, namely that the book won't be published until 2010 and that it is partially set in Toronto. Said Nicole Winstanley, Executive Editor at Penguin Group Canada: "I wrote David Cronenberg several months ago to inquire about whether or not he’d consider writing a novel. His films demonstrate a deep understanding of the human condition that could translate into fiction brilliantly so I’m delighted that he has decided to take this challenge on and I’m really looking forward to working with him."
UPDATE TWO: The Globe & Mail reports that the deal is "believed to be between low and mid-six figures" and that Winstanley bought Canadian rights "on the basis of a few pages."
The full news release is available here, but Anthony Rainone has the general highlights:
"Mystery Writers of America to Honor Kate's Mystery Books & the Library of Congress, Center for the Book at 2008 Edgar® AwardsTwo beacons of the literary community sharing one passion for the crime-writing genre will be honored by Mystery Writers of America (MWA) with the Raven Award for 2008. Kate's Mystery Books and The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress will each be presented with Raven Awards at the 2008 Edgar® Banquet. Established in 1953, the award is bestowed by MWA's Board of Directors for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing. "
Very cool news and much deserved.
New York Magazine presents a handy guide to international sleuths ranging from the Gaza Strip to Tokyo to South Africa to St. Petersburg and back again. I love how male-centric the list is, but then, so is the magazine on the books front...
Reading Janet Maslin's book reviews bears some resemblance to dead horse-beating, mostly because the horse being flogged is wondering why she can't go back to reviewing movies, her real love (I know, she cited burnout upon hanging up her film critic cleats after 20 years with the NYT, but then she also originally turned down the book reviewing post and look how that's turned out.) But today's review of John Leake's ENTERING HADES caught my eye not because she didn't like it - most of the points she raises are pretty fair on that front - but because of this aside:
“Only the toughest and smartest cops could police a city like Los Angeles, with its giant size, ethnic complexity, large amount of crime and chronic shortage of police manpower,” Mr. Leake continues robotically. (Michael Connelly, the Los Angeles police-work aficionado, writes admiring blurbs for many crime stories. “Entering Hades” is not one of them.)
Which tells us what, exactly? That he should have? That by not doing so he's passing silent judgment? That by mentioning the lack of blurb, Maslin's passing not-so-silent judgment? (Guess what door I'm picking.) I can think of any number of reasons for this so-called blurblessness, from not being approached to this being just another manuscript Connelly turned down on principle now that he's not giving nearly as many "admiring blurbs" as he once did. Editorializing on the book is fine; editorializing about the intentions of a writer unrelated to the book is not.
