The Bookseller.com

4th July 2008

Elaine Szewczyk is the editor of Kirkus Reviews, which previews more than 5,000 books a year, two to three months ahead of publication in the US. In her blog, she will share Kirkus' latest starred reviews of books "of unusual merit".
For more from Kirkus, subscribe here.
Elaine's debut novel, I'm with Stupid, will be published in July by Hachette.

Wicked reviews

05.03.08

Forthcoming books of unusual merit, as featured in the 1st March edition of Kirkus Reviews.

FICTION

Wicked City by Ace Atkins
US publisher: Putnam (1st April 2008)

"A riveting story about how the triumph of evil is forestalled when good men…do something"

Phenix City, Alabama, is a real place. In 1955 Look magazine called it "the Wickedest City in America." Ace Atkins based his novel on a real case that transformed the town. Albert Patterson, elected Alabama's attorney general on the promise of clean-up, was gunned down in a Phenix City alley. For a variety of reasons, the formula that had been unfailingly successful in eradicating reform falls short this time and the killing has the effect of energising a smoldering but hitherto silent majority.

Atkins is clearly in love with his colorful characters—on both sides of the moral divide—and makes them wonderfully believable.

City of Thieves by David Benioff
UK publisher: Sceptre (26th June 2008)
US publisher: Viking (15th May 2008)

"Will, with any luck, propel Benioff into bestseller land"

Novelist and screenwriter David Benioff's glorious second novel is a wild action-packed quest, and much else besides: a coming-of-age story, an odd-couple tale and a juicy footnote to the historic Second World War siege of Leningrad.

It's New Year's Eve, 1941, and Lev Beniov is alone in Leningrad. The 17-year-old's mother and sister were evacuated before the siege began in September; his father, a respected poet, was "removed" by the NKVD in 1937. Despite a 'parade of atrocities', the pace will keep your adrenaline pumping right up to the climactic chess game between Lev and a fiendish Nazi officer.

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
US Publisher: Riverhead (1st May 2008)

"A literary page-turner"

A profoundly moving novel that finds striking parallels between the America of a hundred years ago and now, as an immigrant Bosnian author, straining to come to terms with his identity, returns to his troubled homeland.

The second novel by Hemon, the author of Nowhere Man (published by Picador in the UK), begins in the Chicago of 1908, when a 19-year-old Jewish refugee named Lazarus Averbuch undertakes a mysterious mission to deliver a letter to the city's chief of police. When he attempts to deliver the letter, the chief shoots him, fearing that the stranger is an armed anarchist. A reporter who serves as a mouthpiece for the police spreads the word that the murdered immigrant was actually a murderer, killed in an attempt to assassinate the chief.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
UK publisher: Simon & Schuster (3rd March 2008)
US publisher:Grand Central Publishing (1st May 2008)

"Smashing"

During the terror of Stalin's last days, a secret policeman becomes a detective stalking a serial killer in a debut novel from a shockingly talented 28-year-old Brit.

Skillfully drawing on the only totalitarian milieu more frightening than the Nazis, Smith opens the book in a village of starving kulaks, where two young brothers set out in the snow to trap the last local cat that hasn't been eaten. Myopic young Andrei throws himself on the frantic feline only to have both cat and older brother Pavel snatched by a mysterious man who bags them and disappears, leaving Andrei to stumble home alone.

Nerve-wracking pace and atmosphere camouflage wild coincidences. Smashing.

NON-FICTION

The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938-1940 by Will Swift
US Publisher: Collins (1st May 2008)

"An admirably balanced assessment"

A sympathetic reappraisal of Joseph P Kennedy's controversial tenure as America's ambassador to Britain.

With the European dictators Mussolini and Hitler becoming increasingly belligerent, Kennedy's 1938 appointment to the Court of St James's came at an especially dangerous time. Despite friends' warnings that his background, temperament and talents ill-suited him for the job, Kennedy headed for London intent on keeping the United States neutral in the war everyone feared was approaching.

In a detailed text that never becomes tedious, author Will Swift explains how it all turned sour and how the ambassadorship quickly morphed from a glittering culmination into the sad undoing of Kennedy's public-service career.

The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw
UK publisher: Faber (16th August 2007, pb 7th August 2008)
US publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (6th May 2008)

"The taut, lyric thrum of Greenlaw's prose reflects her poet's skill"

British novelist and poet Lavinia Greenlaw didn't perform daring feats, conquer cancer, start a business or save anyone; most of her adventures involved sitting in bedrooms listening to records. Nonetheless, her achingly sensitive memoir about trying to grow up through, around and within pop music does not fail to amaze. Though decidedly personal, her story will resonate with those who, like the author, experienced firsthand the sea changes of popular music in the 1970s, as well was with those who discovered the era's gems later.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David A Price
US publisher: Knopf (14th May 2008)

"A heck of a yarn"

Brisk history of an entertainment juggernaut that is also the history of computer animation.

Former Disney animator and Pixar founding member John Lasseter, a dreamy California kid obsessed with juvenile Americana, emerges as this story's hero: a tireless, passionate advocate of the possibilities of computer animation who applied the classic Disney lessons of emotional involvement, expressive characterisation and solid storytelling to the new medium and produced such modern classics as "Toy Story", "Finding Nemo" and "Cars". Pixar's relationship with corporate parent Disney provides much of the book's drama.

CHILDREN'S

Big Bad Bunny by Franny Billingsley
US publisher: Richard Jackson/Atheneum (25th March 2008)

"This book works well on every level"

Opening with a point-counterpoint exchange, readers first meet terrifying Big Bad Bunny then see the nurturing Mouse House where Mama's going through comforting naptime rituals with her children. Visual and textual contrapositions build exquisitely till Mama discovers Baby Boo-Boo missing from her wee bed and sets off determinedly to find her. This books works on every level: narrative arc, patterning, graphic-design elements, pacing, illustrations that express the comic mood and natural movement of the story.

The Girl Who Saw Lions by Berlie Doherty
UK publisher: Andersen Press (5th July 2007)
US publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (1st April 2008)

"Inspiring and compelling"

Berlie Doherty artfully plaits parallel stories of two girls from different worlds whose lives ultimately intersect. An only child living in Sheffield, England, 13-year-old Rosa loves ice-skating with her single parent Mum "more than anything else in the world". But when her mother wants to adopt a little girl, Rosa feels hurt and betrayed. Worlds away, nine-year-old Abela lives in a Tanzanian village where she and her mother spend hours each day pounding corn into flour. But Abela's mother has AIDS and nothing Abela does can save her. When her uncle illegally sends her to England, Abela follows her mother's advice to remain strong even though she's alone.

Despite Abela's sometimes distressing and disturbing treatment, this is an inspiring and compelling narrative of how two special girls with a shared heritage become a family.

Help Me, Mr Mutt!: Expert Answers for Dogs with People Problems by Janet Stevens
US publisher: Harcourt (1st April 2008)

"A host of hilarious dog portraits provide further treats"

Joining that other epistle-toting dog LaRue, self-described "Canine Counselor" Mr Mutt fires off savvy solutions for correspondents with a string of doggy dilemmas, from enforced diets and silly costumes to humans who'd rather watch TV than play "fetch". Reminding readers that it's entirely natural for dogs to bark, play and maybe get a little rank, and also that "it's a dog-eat-treat world", Mr Mutt suggests coping strategies, many of which involve some harassment of the local felines.

Comments on this article