The Bookseller.com

4th July 2008

Elaine Szewczyk

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".
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Elaine's debut novel, I'm with Stupid, will be published in July by Hachette.

Kept in the dark

07.05.08

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

FICTION

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
UK publisher: Faber (21st August)
US publisher: Henry Holt (18th August)

"Probably Auster's best novel, and a plaintive summa of all the books that--we now see--have gone into its making"

The "parallel worlds" visited and occupied by an aging intellectual's troubled mind and heart assume intriguing metafictional form in Auster's challenging novel. The initially unidentified narrator, an insomniac, lures us into the book with the story he's imagining: that of a noncombatant (Owen Brick) who finds himself pressed into service in a civil war that has violently divided an alternative present-day America. Owen's mission, which he cannot choose to decline, is to enter the war-torn city of Wellington (formerly Worcester, Mass.) and assassinate the amoral recluse who has "invented" the war by dreaming it into being.

Auster's lucid prose and masterly command of his tricky narrative's twists, turns and mirrorings keep us riveted to the pages. Auster pulls it all together brilliantly in a moving denouement.

America America by Ethan Canin
UK publisher: Bloomsbury (7th July)
US publisher:Random (1st July)

"This novel of character, Canin's first since Carry Me Across The Water (2001), is powerful and haunting, a major work"

Narrator Corey Sifter is the middle-aged publisher of a regional daily in upstate New York. In 2006 he attends the funeral of the ancient Henry Bonwiller, former US senator, the last of the liberal lions. After this low-key start we move back to 1971. Corey is 16, son of a plumber. They live in Saline, a company town dominated by the Metareys, one of America's great capitalist families. The original Metarey has been succeeded by his son Liam, a far kinder man, well-liked. Liam sees a disciplined worker in Corey, and hires him as a part-time groundskeeper. Liam is also masterminding the fiercely anti-war Bonwiller's run for the White House; but danger lurks. A young woman has been found in the snow, intoxicated, frozen to death. Bonwiller's name is linked to hers, though nobody knows the details. Corey, in a minor way, participates in a cover-up. Only years later, after the birth of his first daughter, does he realize he'd been involved with "something unforgivably wrong." The novel is not flawless (Liam, the central character, proves elusive) but the detail work is quite wonderful: The rhythms of a great estate, and the dynamics of a landowning family, are captured with Tolstoyan exactitude.

It's the journey, not the arrival, that matters, and the journey is an enthralling one.

The Legal Limit by Martin Clark
US publisher: Knopf (11th July)

"Fine, meaty legal thriller from circuit-court judge Clark"

The author's latest, based on one of his own cases. Gates Hunt is 27 and his kid brother Mason is 24. Their father Curt used to wallop them mercilessly, before finally disappearing. Gates  protected Mason, hence the "visceral, epic connection" between the brothers. That explains why the decent, hardworking Mason covers for the shiftless Gates when he shoots another man dead. Years pass. The no-good Gates is busted for selling drugs to an undercover state cop and draws a long prison term. Mason becomes a successful lawyer in Richmond and marries. It's not until 2003 that the murder case is reopened. Gates, desperate and hoping for a pardon, accuses Mason of the crime; a special prosecutor is appointed, and Mason is indicted. Ultimately, everything pivots on an obscure Latin writ.

A masterful mix of legal arcana and white-knuckle suspense, with a dollop of dirty pork-barrel politicking for good measure.

The Drifter's Wheel by Phillip DePoy
US publisher: St Martin's Minotaur (1st July)

"Storytelling at its best"

Fever Devilin, who reluctantly returned to Blue Mountain, when his Atlanta university excised his folklore department, is visited one night by a man claiming to have killed his own brother. Not recently, mind you, but in the Civil War era. Many stories later this same man claims to have killed his brother again during World War One. Now he's back again to have a third go at him. He sprints away before Devilin can grasp either him or his full story. The next Devilin hears of his visitor, Sheriff Skidmore Needle wants Devilin to identify the man's dead body.

A beguiling mystery that's almost impossible to figure out or put down. And if you're looking for wit, check out the exchanges between Devilin and his pal Winton Andrews.

The Silver Bear by Derek Haas
UK publisher: Hodder (7th August)
US publisher: Pegasus (2nd July)

"Tight, swift debut thriller from the co-screenwriter of the 2007 remake of "3:10 to Yuma" about a crack assassin hired to rub out his father"

Highlights of Haas's cinematic thriller include a cross-country junket, quick reversals, lightning violence and a surprising denouement. On the road goes a "silver bear", the term Russians use for assassins who earn top dollar because their shots never miss, prowling from Boston to Los Angeles. The "bear", using the name Columbus, stalks congressman Abe Mann, who fathered the boy with Amanda B, a black prostitute. After giving birth to Columbus, Amanda turns up dead, stabbed in the neck in circumstances never explained. By telling the story from the assassin's point of view, Haas layers on novelistic texture that a film version may miss. In chilling interior passages echoing The Day of the Jackal, the "bear" explicates the cold-blooded methods that make him a top killer. All the while, Haas stokes sympathy for his anti-hero.

Lean work, with every word counting and adding up to more than most authors land in twice the space.

Everybody Knows this is Nowhere by John McFetridge
US publisher: Harcourt (1st July)

"It's refreshingly hard to tell the good from the no-good in this helping of cops and robbers, Canadian style"

Sharon MacDonald, smart, attractive, a loving mother, wears one of those metallic adornments around her ankle. She's under house arrest for hospitalising some wise guy who got out of line. As the operator of an established Toronto "grow room," Sharon plants and harvests marijuana for profit. Enter Ray, good-looking, immensely appealing to Sharon, with an unnerving proposition likely to make drug kingpin Richard Tremblay unhappy.

Bristling action, a vivid sense of place and nary a plot twist telegraphed. Exceptional work from McFetridge (Dirty Sweet, 2006).

Wifeshopping by Steven Wingate
US publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin (1st July)

"Failed, failing and just-might-make-it romantic relationships are analysed with disarming wit and understated compassion in this debut collection of 13 stories"

The terrain is contemporary America, from Boston to the Arizona desert, with stops in between at quotidian neighborhood gatherings, summer crafts fairs, Florida's beaches and motels—and all the forgettable places where lonely people meet, briefly connect and sometimes remember fondly as sites that became foundations for long-desired life changes. The technique emerges vividly in plaintive miniatures, which present the incompatibility of two strangers who carry too much emotional baggage to generate energy needed to come together ("A Story About Two Prisoners"); and a late-night encounter that dramatises "the copulation waltz of the divorced and depressed, one of America's favorite dances."

Strongly imagined, often deeply moving fiction from a gifted writer who seems to know us better than we know ourselves.

 

NON-FICTION

Why I Came West: A Memoir by Rick Bass
US publisher: Houghton Mifflin (3rd July)

"A nuanced blend of autobiography and environmental advocacy by the well-known novelist and short-story writer".

Bass laments that the hard work of saving his home turf, the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, has kept him from novel and short-story writing. But that's getting ahead of the story a touch, which opens with his discovery of that remarkable landscape, at 1,300 feet a comparative lowland against the nearby Rocky Mountains, its geological history accounting for its extraordinarily dense and diverse carpet of all-devouring greenery. Against a local economy that is extractive and colonial Bass's willingness to live on renewable resources he has to work for is refreshing, even as he acknowledges the "impurity" attendant in being a human in a time of ecological crisis.

"I never wanted to go to war," he concludes. "And the war, I realise, will never end." A welcome summation of Bass's work to date, and a call for action.

Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley
UK publisher: Faber (1st May)
US publisher: Random (8th July)

"Exciting re-creation of the epic mid-16th-century struggle between the encroaching Ottoman Empire and the beleaguered Christian Europeans"

Crowley picks up where he left off in 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West (2005). After the fall of Constantinople to Mehmet the Conqueror and his army of Turks, the author writes, it was only a matter of time before Mehmet's great-grandson Suleiman set out to achieve his own ambition to become "Padishah of the White Sea"—the Mediterranean.

A masterly narrative that captures the religious fervor, brutality and mayhem of this intensive contest for the "center of the world."

The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner
UK publisher: Virgin Books (6th March)
US publisher: Dutton (17th July)

"Entertaining, often jolting account of why trivial risks terrify us, even as we engage in wildly dangerous activities with hardly a qualm"

Horrified by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many Americans stopped flying. Because of this, an additional 1,500 died in auto accidents the following year; none died in plane crashes. Most Americans know flying is safer than driving. In fact, writes Ottawa Citizen contributor Gardner in this lively account of why humans fear the wrong things, if terrorists hijacked and crashed one plane a week in the United States, flying would still be far safer. Studies show that gut loves the illusion of control: Drivers of cars rarely feel helpless; not so airline passengers. Familiarity soothes gut. It's almost impossible to make Americans worry about mass killers like diabetes and obesity, but dramatic, extremely rare maladies like mad-cow disease, West Nile virus and Ebola and fill the media and make us nervous.

Readers may squirm to learn the sheer silliness of so many of their fears. They will squirm again to realise that, despite this knowledge, those fears will persist.

The Film Club by David Gilmour
UK publisher: Ebury (6th March)
US publisher: Twelve (6th May)

"Moviegoing brings a father and son closer together in this dynamic memoir by Canadian novelist Gilmour"

While teenaged Jesse was wilting under pressure at his rigorous high school, the author was feeling every bump on the road to middle age. Having lost a lucrative gig as a TV film critic, Gilmour was professionally adrift, meandering toward bankruptcy and, as a divorced dad, convinced that his inept parenting had brought Jesse to his current predicament. When the boy announced that he was dropping drop out of high school, the author surprised himself by going along with the idea—provided that Jesse agreed to watch at least three films of Gilmour's choosing at home with him every week. This risky, quirky home schooling and bonding scheme superbly binds together Gilmour's heartwarming memoir.

Perfectly balanced recollections, brimming with pathos leavened by sardonic humor.

My Guantánamo Diary by Mahvish Rkhsana Khan
US publisher: PublicAffairs (1st July)

"Gutsy and disturbing"

Based on what she learned as a translator at the notorious detention center, the American-born daughter of Afghan immigrants indicts the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners there.Khan explains how she found her way inside the heavily guarded Guantánamo Bay facility. Her parents had made sure she learned the Pashto language of their homeland, and while she was a law student at the University of Miami she became outraged by what she learned about Guantánamo operations, which she judged "a blatant affront" to American principles. Khan did not assume that all detainees at Guantánamo were innocent of terrorism-related crimes. She did believe, however, that each had the right to a lawyer and a fair hearing on the charges alleged by the federal government.

She holds back little in her searing début, realising that few other observers are in a position to reveal the truth as she found it. A gutsy and disturbing expos of US civilian and military personnel out of control.

The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X Pham
US publisher: Harmony (1st June)

"A Vietnamese family struggles for security as three decades of conflict tear an ancient society to shreds"

Pham, who in 1977 emigrated to California with his parents, won plaudits and awards for a memoir about his personal rediscovery of his heritage, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Journey Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. Now, he deftly recaptures the history of his father, Thong Van Pham. War-torn as it was, a lost world lives again in Thong's recollections of the passions of his life: food, friends, family, romance.

Personal tragedy and triumph, related with amazing perspective against an epic backdrop.

Law and the Long War by Benjamin Wittes
US publisher: Penguin Press (23rd June)

"Levelheaded and full of good sense"

Brookings Institution fellow and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Wittes argues for a new legal framework for combating the terror war. Wittes's premise that the war on terror is real and requires vigorous prosecution will dismay congenital critics of [President George W Bush], just as his call to curb executive authority will unsettle Bush supporters. In an argument of paramount interest to specialists and in prose comprehensible for all (best illustrated by his discussion of the detainees at Guantánamo), Wittes insists that it is past time for Congress to take up its law-making responsibilities, to put an end to the predictable, largely unproductive confrontations between the executive and judiciary on a matter so vital to the country's welfare.

So levelheaded and full of good sense, it's almost certain to be ignored.

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