Picks of the Week

DARKNESS AT THE BREAK OF NOON, by Dennis Richard Murphy

(originally posted on May 3, 2009)

What a shame that Murphy did not live to see his one and only novel published, and that he was robbed of writing more. His evocation of Canada's most frozen north is strong enough to chill the bones, and his ability to merge multiple mysteries together in seamless fashion is on par with writers of lengthy series backlists. Obviously, this series stops at one, but instead of being sad about what wasn't to be, let's celebrate what was and make a point of reading this particular novel.

THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins

(originally posted on May 3, 2009)

Finally, finally, I have read this amazing book, which takes its dystopic vision cues from the Middle Ages and transplants them into a future where everyone is watching an annual Survivor-esque reality show on TV - except the stakes are high enough that the teens who fight must do so to the death, with only one victor allowed. There are moral dilemmas, forbidden love, sacrifices made in the name of family, an unforgettable protagonist named Katniss, flamboyant stylists and a cliffhanger that means I have to get the second book in the trilogy as soon as it is out.

BEYOND HEAVING BOSOMS: THE SMART BITCHES' GUIDE TO ROMANCE NOVELS, by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan

(originally posted on May 3, 2009)

The Smart Bitches' guide is like a time warp to my college days, when I hung out on All About Romance and read the genre semi-religiously, picking up the internet slang and learning what was good and what wasn't. And that's the thing: romance readers are discerning and want to read the best, covers be damned, and Wendell and Tan's humor-tinged knack at pinpointing exactly what works, what doesn't, and why snobbery benefits no one is exactly the tonic all readers - of romance or not - should have.

THE LOVE PIRATE AND THE BANDIT'S SON, by Laura James

(originally posted on May 3, 2009)

James, who set the bar on historical true crime blogging, brings her knowledgeable and accessible voice to book form with this rollicking tale of Zeo Zoe Watkins, the woman who always chose money over love, and Jesse James Jr. How their lives intersect makes for fascinating reading and of course it's inevitable things go horribly wrong. The Zeo sections brim a bit more with life, but overall this is exactly what fact crime should be: informative, entertaining and told with the narrative verve of a thriller.

AFTER ETAN, by Lisa R. Cohen

(originally posted on May 3, 2009)

Thirty years ago this month, Etan Patz convinced his mother that at age six, he was old enough to walk to the school bus stop on his own. And he's never been seen since. Cohen, in this remarkable narrative, brings us into the heads of Patz's parents Stan and Julie, the dogged prosecutor Stuart GraBois and the NYPD as they carry on with their lives, investigate what happened to Etan and rightfully fixate on the likeliest suspect. But AFTER ETAN works not just because it is about the boy whose face sears into memory, but of how the plight of missing children became a national concern that will, and should, never fade away.

ALICE FANTASTIC, by Maggie Estep

(originally posted on April 15, 2009)

Words cannot express my joy at a new novel by Maggie Estep, who writes wonderfully warped, weird, off-kilter characters like few authors can. Moving from Queens to an upstate New York town resembling Woodstock, from race tracks to dog parks, Estep looks at the ways in which half-sisters bond with each other, with their shared mother, with their separate and shared demons and with the menangerie of animals and humans they will develop emotional attachments of all hues to. I wouldn't call ALICE FANTASTIC a heartwarming family drama - I suspect Estep would recoil at such a phrase - but a memorable, funny family kaleidescope ought to work.

COLD SKIN, by Albert Sanchez Pinol

(originally posted on April 15, 2009)

This is just about a perfect flight read: a lonely spot at the edge of Antarctica (therefore the edge of the world) a solitary young man traveling by ship to observe the weather for a single year, a mysterious, shaggy surly stranger living in a lighthouse with dire warnings about the outpost, and nightly attacks by something that's hard to name but very, very scary. And yet, COLD SKIN inverts what ought to be straight pulpy horror into something more ruminative about what it means to be a human being, even as it refuses to sacrifice the velocity of a page-turner. Start with this and then move on to the more expansive, even more ambitious PANDORA IN THE CONGO.

THE BIRTH HOUSE, by Ami McKay

(originally posted on April 15, 2009)

Can we call Ami McKay the current-day heir to Lucy Maud Montgomery? Maybe that's a tall order but certainly THE BIRTH HOUSE, with its rural Nova Scotia setting, emphasis on the lives and mores of womenfolk and the effect of the First World War, has a very LMM feel - but the issues Ami McKay tackles are far darker and more sinister than Montgomery ever allowed herself to explore in plain terms. For this is a book about the choices women make about their bodies, whether regarding childbirth, sexuality, and who, in the end, actually has sovereignity - men or women. I wish I had read the novel years ago when it was riding high on Canadian bestseller lists, but I am ever so glad to have done so now.

THE LAST CHILD, by John Hart

(originally posted on April 15, 2009)

I could cap this quickly with the throwaway remark that "John Hart does it again, and even better" but that doesn't seem terribly fair. Still, I remain amazed at how his storytelling ability draws me into his North Carolina gothic tales, where those who shock the most are the ones who have no secrets to keep. In other words, no one is truly innocent - not even 13 year old Johnny Merrimon, ever on the lookout for his long-missing sister Alyssa, smack in the middle of a vortex of sadness and tragedy that permeates his entire town. And yet we understand that somehow, even when things are at their worst, there's still a strong strain of purity and hope that comes through, the rightness of order that peeks out from ever-encompassing chaos.

THE BOOK OF THE UNKNOWN, by Jonathon Keats

(originally posted on April 15, 2009)

The title is a bit of a misnomer: there are only twelve tales, not the full thirty-six recounting souls of all stripes and walks of life who, in their totality, have enough righteousness for an entire universe. And as with all collections, some stories work better than others. But the totality of Keats' work is to remind us of an earlier age of story, taking its time, building on primal emotions, desires and wants that date back to the earliest times of Torah. I really do hope he has enough literary meat for another twenty-four stories.