Book Review: In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell

In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell (Soho; 320 pages; $25.95).

Reading Matt Bell’s first novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, I often looked up from the book and blinked furiously in confusion.  I expected to see a house with myriad rooms, a strange sky above me, a lake in the distance, and a wooded green.  Instead, my own familiar environs surrounded me.   That is just how powerful the setting is in Bell’s dreamlike, fabled, and beautiful debut.  The story of a marriage and its collapse become much more as Bell infuses myth, allegory, and symbolism into his story, transforming the work into something else entirely.

A couple marries and, longing to get away from the rest of the world, moves to a bizarre land.  The husband builds them a house, which the wife improves upon not by her hands but with her voice.  If the husband starts building a room, for example, the wife can simply sing the rest of the space into being.  For a time, despite the presence of a bear, a presence that looms over the entire novel, they are harmonious.  Yet, their family is incomplete.

He longs for a child; she tries to give him one, but fulfilling that longing is not easy as her every pregnancy fails.  The wife senses that she and her husband are slowly drifting further and further away from one another.  Determined to save her marriage, the wife sings a son into existence.  When the husband discovers the horrible truth of the child’s origins, he goes in search of his wife and their “foundling.”

As the husband walks through the house his wife built, now abandoned by them, Bell shows us the remnants of a failed marriage.  “And in this room,” Bell writes, “The sound of my wife’s knuckle first sliding beneath the beaten silver of that ring, a sound never before heard, or else forgotten amidst all the other business of our wedding day.”  Behind each door the husband opens is a different and striking scene.  Each room holds a memory, a recollection the husband has long forgotten, but which the wife tucks away.

In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods may seem otherworldly, but the story is actually very familiar and recognizable.  “As her side of our bedchamber grew some few inches, I did what little I could to right our arrangement, tugged hard at the blankets that barely covered the widened bed—until once again all things were distributed evenly, even as they were somehow also further apart.”

The debut is a simple story of love, marriage, parenthood, and aging amplified by mystery, lore, and imagery.  A fabulous and fantastical journey into the heart of a husband and wife and into the unknown, In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods is by turns dark, mysterious, and foreboding.  Bell imbues such imagination and brilliance into this tale.  Bell provides a real insight into ourselves, and therein lies the real beauty of the story.

As the years pass and the couple gets older, the wife can no longer remember her husband or the foundling.  Sadly, she cannot even remember the songs she once sang.  Most arresting to me was the squid the husband turned into as he swam into the depths of the murky lake, his aches and pains and age dissolving away.  Muted passages like these spoke volumes to me and lend the narrative richness and power.

Reminiscent of the work of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell, In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods has already

Matt Bell

garnered attention from the Indie Next list, choosing it as one of its selections for July.  Bell’s lyrical language, his crystal clarity, and his sharp and colorful setting explain what all the fuss is about and herald the arrival of a major new literary talent.

When you open In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, you leave your world behind and enter a shadowy and forbidding landscape.  And you will be so glad you did.

 

Book Review: The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani (Riverhead Books; 400 pages; $27.95).

We’ve all known girls like Thea Atwell—girls who made mistakes so big they were sent away, fast girls, precocious girls, daring girls.  Thea narrates Anton DiSclafani’s debut novel The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, an exquisite period piece and a provocative, passionate, and bold coming-of-age tale. Much more than just a precocious teen, Thea is a magnificently well-drawn character, a trail-blazer, wholly modern, and a feminist (before there was such a thing).  No one who reads this story will be able to forget Thea, one of the most memorable characters in fiction today.

Exiled from her family, from her Florida home, and from her beloved horse, Sasi, Thea is sent to a school for girls in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.  In a voice that is at times worldly and sometimes naïve, Thea reveals, “It was called the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, but it was neither a camp nor a place for girls.  We were supposed to be made ladies here.”

Her place in the family had once been well-defined, but now Thea is displaced and struggling, “a confused, wronged girl” whose parents punish her for a misdeed by banishing her.  Her twin brother, Sam, who commits a transgression of his own, is left unpunished.

DiSclafani uses two story arcs, one present and one past, to tell her story.  The two narratives are like Thea herself—on the cusp of something.  Each story arc leads up to a shuddering climax, while Thea herself is a character also on the cusp, at a crossroads of adulthood, womanhood, and budding sexuality.

Thea slowly comes to realize it is a man’s world.  Whether she is in Florida or in North Carolina, she must obey either her father or the headmaster.  She must obey their rules and abide by their laws.  And she is not alone.  At Yonahlossee, her new friends must also follow the dictates of their fathers and the depressed economy.  Friends like Leona, mistress of the showing arena, who must leave her horse behind when her father can no longer afford his daughter’s tuition.  They are “but daughters.” It’s no wonder these girls ride horses: only in the saddle do they have any semblance of control.

Interestingly, Thea seems to assume the role that others have assigned her at Yonahlossee.  “Did my parents hope I’d been taught a lesson?  They thought they’d sent me somewhere safe.  Away from men, away from cousins…If my parents had kept me home, I might have learned their lesson.”  Thea, though, chafes at convention.  She is a girl who wants too much and who desires desperately, a girl who has been introduced to the world of men and finds she likes this world, even if she does not always understand it.  She is fearless, an attribute that aids her “in the [horse] ring” but “badly in life.”

At fifteen, Thea wants to explore who she is and what and where the boundaries are.  Today, her rebellion is a rite of passage, but it was unusual in 1931 for a girl to behave as risky as Thea does in the novel.  Since her parents have expelled her, she feels that there is nothing left for her to lose.

With reckless abandon, Thea sets her sights on the headmaster, Mr. Holmes.  And what Thea wants, she usually finds a way to get.  She knows “what it was like to want, to desire so intensely” that she is “willing to throw everything else into its fire.”

When DiSclafani reveals both the shocking act that led to Thea’s expulsion and the scandalous way in which she leaves Yonahlossee,

Anton DiSclafani

you are speechless, shaken, and consumed with awe.  DiSclafani writes, “I wanted everything.  I wanted my cousin.  I wanted Mr. Holmes.  I was a girl, I learned, who got what she wanted, but not without sadness, not without cutting a swatch of destruction so wide it consumed my family.  And almost me.  I almost fell into it, with them.  I almost lost myself.”

Yet it is only because of her intense desire and wildness that Thea is able to forge her own path, a place in the ring where she rules supreme and where fathers and headmasters are absent.  Neither her parents nor Thea expected this surprising turn of events when Thea was cast out.   In the end, Yonahlossee shows Thea her life is hers and no one else’s. Thea must “lay claim to it.”

Penetratingly plot-driven, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a literary stunner and will be one of the most talked-about novels of the year.  Get a head start and read it now.

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Matt Bell, Author of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell (Soho Press; 312 pages; $25). 

Jaime Boler: Thank you, Matt, for letting me ask you these questions.  I loved your mythic, fabled novel IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS.  Did you always want to be a writer?

 

Matt Bell

 

Matt Bell: Thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed the book, and I appreciate you talking to me about it.

 

I was always a reader, and did occasionally write, off and on, but I didn’t begin to actively pursue writing seriously until I was twenty or so, right before I went back to college. Not surprisingly, that change happened around the same time I found the first literary writers I truly loved, writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel, and Raymond Carver.

 

JB: How would you describe IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS in ten words or less?

 

MB: It’s not the easiest book to synopsize, is it? Ten words isn’t much—that’s less words than are in the title—but let’s say the book is a “myth about marriage and parenthood—with bear, squid, and maze.”

 

JB: How did you come up with the title?

 

MB: I think I had the title pretty early on. It’s not a particularly tricky title, despite how long it is: It’s really just the setting, right? And I always liked that. Part of what makes the book go is the constrained setting, and I like announcing that in the title.

 

JB: Your story explores “the limits of parenthood and marriage—and of what happens when a marriage’s success is measured solely by the children it produces, or else the sorrow that marks their absence.”  Yet you infuse the tale with allegorical and epic qualities.  Why did you choose to tell the story in this way?  And how different a novel would it be without the myth and enchantment?

 

MB: The story is this way because it’s what the story demanded, more than anything else: I was discovering the events of the story before I knew what they meant, or how they necessarily went together. For me, these thematic concerns emerge from story, not the other way around.

 

JB: Novelist Colum McCann writes, “It’s complicated when you’re talking about voices and trying to create voices, or trying to create an atmosphere around a voice. I think eventually the voice is heard deep, deep into the work. There’s one line there—if you can recognize it, you can bring it back to the beginning. It’s like music, right? You find the right note, the other notes will follow. That’s how the voice things work in a book. You’re like a conductor who goes into the pit and you bring all the magicians and the instruments and you have to strike them up. Most likely you need a few days with them to find the texture of the music you want to play, or perhaps months. And then you find where the actual quality, the actual flavor of the voice is. From there, you hope the music works.”  Is this true for you?  Whose voice did you hear first in your own story?

 

MB: I think this is absolutely the case: Without the voice, there isn’t even any way to continue forward. I often don’t hear it quite right at the beginning—one of the reasons to rewrite so much is to continue to deepen the voice—but I try always to let it push the story forward. I don’t plan first drafts, I don’t try to understand too much, I try to let the speaker dictate where the story goes next. In this case, of course, it was the husband’s voice—and his voice was so loud that it was, for a long time, hard to see the rest of the story from any other perspective but his.

 

JB: You teach creative writing at Northern Michigan University.  Is writing something that can be taught or is it a matter of either you “got it or you don’t”?

 

MB: If I didn’t believe you could teach writing, my job would be a bit of a scam, right? Talent exists, but it’s the least of the qualities a writer needs, and a writer can make up for most any lack he or she has with a powerful work ethic, a voracious reading appetite, and an honest and personal approach to the world, in addition to the study of form and technique. And if any of these aspects of being a writer can’t be taught, they can at least be modeled. I try to do both for my students.

 

JB: Has teaching writing made you a better author?

 

MB: Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to get to talk about stories I love with smart and sensitive young writers, and of course their own work is often surprising and inspiring. A lot of the models I share with my students are stories that were fundamental in my own growth as a writer, but I also share a lot of very new stories from lit mags and new collections that I find interesting. It’s great to get to work through those stories with fifteen smart students, and to see them working day by day to understand their own natural aesthetics, the slice of literature in which they’ll begin to write and work.

 

JB: What is a typical day of writing like for you?

 

MB: Under normal circumstances, I write in the mornings, from the time I get up until I break for lunch at 12 or 1. Then the rest of the day is given to reading and teaching and editing, and of course to friends and family and so on. It’s a surprisingly dull-sounding schedule, perhaps—but I’m very thankful for it.

 

JB: What are some of your favorite books and who are some of your favorite authors?

 

MB: I’m so bad at listing favorites, because the number of writers I might name is far too lengthy for this kind of interview. If you forced me to pick a favorite book, I’d say Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson: I’ve read that book at least once a year for as long as I’ve known it, and it’s gotten better with every single read.

 

 

 

JB: Your debut has already been selected as June Book Club Selections for Powell’s Indiespensable and the Nervous Breakdown.  IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS also has the distinct honor of being chosen as an Indie Next pick for July.  How did you react upon hearing the news?

 

MB: Obviously, each of these was a great honor, unexpected but greatly appreciated. I never thought the response to this novel would be so kind, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the attention it’s received.

 

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS?

 

MB: There isn’t a specific message I want readers to take away, or anything like that. The book isn’t an argument, in that sense. What I hope instead is that readers have an experience with the book, that it draws them in and then makes a space where they might be moved and possibly changed, intellectually or morally or, most importantly, emotionally. That’s what writing the book did for me. It’s what I hope reading the book will do for others.

 

JB: Thanks, Matt, for a wonderful interview, and good luck with the book.

 

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Spotlight on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell

I am reading a truly fabled and mythical novel so rich in language and place that I’m reading it slowly, so as to savor every word.

Coming June 18 from Soho

 

About the Book:

In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife’s beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.
 
This novel, from one of our most exciting young writers, is a powerful exploration of the limits of parenthood and marriage—and of what happens when a marriage’s success is measured solely by the children it produces, or else the sorrow that marks their absence.

About the Author:

My debut novel IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS will be published by Soho Press in Spring 2013. I am also the author of CATACLYSM BABY, a novella, and HOW THEY WERE FOUND, a collection of fiction, as well as three chapbooks, WOLF PARTS, THE COLLECTORS, and HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND. My fiction has appeared in many magazines, including CONJUNCTIONS, HAYDEN’S FERRY REVIEW, GULF COAST, WILLOW SPRINGS, UNSAID, and AMERICAN SHORT FICTION, and has been selected for inclusion in anthologies such as BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES and BEST AMERICAN FANTASY. I teach creative writing at Northern Michigan University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan. I am the senior editor at Dzanc Books, where I also run the literary magazine THE COLLAGIST.     –from Matt Bell’s website

If you are a fan of Karen Russell and/or Aimee Bender, then it’s time you discovered Matt Bell.  His debut has already been selected as the June Book Club Selections for Powell’s Indiespensable and the Nervous Breakdown.  IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS also has the distinct honor of being chosen as an Indie Next pick for July.

When you open IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS, you leave your world and enter a new dark and forbidding landscape.  And you will be so glad you did.

 

Spotlight on The Blood of Heaven by Kent Wascom

I just finished reading a masterful debut by a very promising new novelist.

 

About the Book:

One of the most powerful and impressive debuts Grove/Atlantic has ever published, The Blood of Heaven is an epic novel about the American frontier in the early days of the nineteenth century. Its twenty-six-year-old author, Kent Wascom, was awarded the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for fiction, and this first novel shows the kind of talent rarely seen in any novelist, no matter their age.

The Blood of Heaven is the story of Angel Woolsack, a preacher’s son, who flees the hardscrabble life of his itinerant father, falls in with a charismatic highwayman, then settles with his adopted brothers on the rough frontier of West Florida, where American settlers are carving their place out of lands held by the Spaniards and the French. The novel moves from the bordellos of Natchez, where Angel meets his love Red Kate to the Mississippi River plantations, where the brutal system of slave labor is creating fantastic wealth along with terrible suffering, and finally to the back rooms of New Orleans among schemers, dreamers, and would-be revolutionaries plotting to break away from the young United States and create a new country under the leadership of the renegade founding father Aaron Burr.

The Blood of Heaven is a remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world, a moving love story, and a vivid tale of ambition and political machinations that brilliantly captures the energy and wildness of a young America where anything was possible. It is a startling debut.

About the Author:

Kent Wascom was born in New Orleans in 1986, attended Louisiana State University and received his MFA from Florida State University. He was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction. The Blood of Heaven is his first novel. 

 

 

Spotlight on A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

I’m about to begin reading what many consider to be THE book of the month.  Some even say this is THE NOVEL of the year.  I don’t know about that yet, but we’ll see.

About the Book:

A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.
 
   In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.
   For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

About the Author:

 

Anthony Marra grew up in Washington, DC, and has lived and studied in Russia. His story “Chechnya” won First Place in Narrative’s Spring 2009 Story Contest and received both a Pushcart Prize and the Narrative Prize in 2010. His work has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and in 2013 Marra received the prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award. His debut novel is entitled A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Random House, 2013). Marra is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

There is no doubt that the war-torn country of Chechnya has been in the news of late and I think that might mean even more readers for Marra.  Readers are comparing A Constellation of Vital Phenomena to two of my favorite novels: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife.  I am excited about Marra’s debut.

Book Review: Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian

Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian (Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $25).

           I have never felt fiercely protective of a character before, but the urge to shield Lucy, the main speaker in Julie Sarkissian’s quirky, unique, and weirdly beautiful debut, Dear Lucy, overtook me. And there’s a good reason why: Lucy is developmentally delayed and has issues with behavior and language yet she is filled with determination and love. Lucy is limited, yes, but she looks at the world with wonder and sees it as full of possibility. Lucy is extraordinary and she certainly becomes special to us as her eyes are open to the beauty around her.

“It is time to get the eggs. Time for my best thing,” Lucy says. “I get the eggs for our breakfast. They are alive. When you eat something that is alive you take the life for yourself. You can’t think of it as taking life from another thing, you think of it as giving life to yourself.” This sentiment comes from Lucy’s friend, Samantha. “Samantha knows” because “there is something growing inside of her too.” Samantha, a pregnant teenager, is also one of the narrators in Dear Lucy. She does not want her baby; instead, she plans on giving the child up for adoption.

Sarkissian sets Dear Lucy on an isolated and rather mysterious farm. The setting makes the story dark and desolate and allows a sense of menace to loom over the entire novel. Mister and Missus, owners of the farm, only add to the story’s doom-and-gloom environment. Missus functions as Sarkissian’s third and final narrator.

The author could have told her tale solely from Lucy’s perspective, but then we would not have so many different windows and perceptions of the story, making Dear Lucy richer and more satisfying. Sarkissian writes each narrator in Dear Lucy with vulnerability, though some characters are more defenseless than others. Weakness is sometimes overt, like with Lucy and Samantha; other times, helplessness can be hidden, as it is with Missus, who feels inadequate for not giving her husband a son.

Dear Lucy gives up its secrets slowly yet pleasingly, building mystery and suspense. Especially when Sarkissian reveals the reason why Lucy is on the farm. Lucy gets a thought into her head and cannot let it go. Because she is so single-minded, she can be willful and even prone to violence. Her impulses rule her, leading me to wonder if perhaps her hypothalamus is to blame for her behavior. Lucy’s mother could not handle her daughter any longer and put her in the care of Mister and Missus.

Lucy believes her stay on the farm is temporary and believes her Mum mum will return for her, as she promised. She must listen to Mister and Missus always so they will allow her to stay on the farm, where “Mum mum will know where to find” her. Lucy takes this literally and is loath to even get in a car or go on foot off the farm. She longs for her mother and yearns to be called “Dear Lucy” as Mum mum wraps Lucy in her arms protectively and lovingly.

The farm becomes a haven of sorts for Lucy as she waits for Mum mum. She develops an attachment to Samantha and to the chickens from whom she collects the eggs. Lucy is so happy when Samantha gives birth and decides to keep the son she delivers, but her world comes crashing down when Samantha’s baby is taken from her. Samantha begs Lucy for help.

Lucy then sets out on an adventure like no other, a journey that takes her farther away from the farm than she has ever been. She worries Mum mum will not be able to find her again, but Lucy presses on. She is not alone on her mission. Jennifer, a talking chicken, accompanies her and tells Lucy what to do. Jennifer is everything that Lucy is not: tough, smart, mature, and wise. For me, the chicken was a part of Lucy’s psyche that appeared right when she needed it the most.

Dear Lucy is told in three distinctive and gorgeous voices. Sarkissian’s imagination, originality, and amazing talent captivated me and would not let me go. Eerie and atmospheric, Dear Lucy reads like southern gothic, unsettling and intriguing and at the same time urging the reader and Lucy onward.

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Book Review: Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 336 pages; $24).

Fourteen year old Lorca listens intently to a conversation between her mother, Nancy, and her Aunt Lou.  “What is the best thing you’ve ever eaten?” her aunt asks.  “Masgouf,” Nancy answers, “from an Iraqi restaurant that’s closed now.”  Nancy proclaims masgouf, the national dish of Iraq, “heaven.”

In Jessica Soffer’s lush, flavorful debut, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, food evokes memories of what is lost and of what can never be again. Like masgouf, for instance, or “carp, typically from the Euphrates or Tigris, pulled out of the water, grilled on the banks and prepared with lemon and tamarind and tomatoes.”  However, Islamic leaders placed a fatwah on the fish because of all the dead bodies in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  As Soffer laments, “Baghdad is not what it once was. All the Jews are gone. Their experience of eating masgouf as they once did is very much over.”

In Soffer’s skilled hands, recipes and food become symbols in Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots.  Lorca, starved for her mother’s affection, calls her mother a “cold war” and an “enigma, fickle, unknowable, like a giant fish.”  Nancy is not like most mothers; instead, she only loves Lorca in “fits and spurts,” “warm in flickers and then very cold.”

Only one thing makes Nancy, a chef, happy, and that is food.  Lorca prepares a myriad of dishes in hopes of garnering her mother’s attention.  Nothing works.  When Lorca was 6, she burned her hands while making a birthday cake for her mother.  Lorca imagines “that if my mother had just taken out the ice pack, tucked it into a towel, and held me on her lap, rocking me, whispering in my hair, cooling my fingers, things would have been different.”  But Nancy did none of those things.

Lorca’s yearning for her mother is only lessened through acts of self-harm.  So she does them again and again and again.  Her urge to injure herself is “constant…like a band of moths stuck between the screen and the window” but in her “chest instead.”  Lorca welcomes the sweet agony of pain.  Caught in a dangerous downward spiral, Lorca has been suspended from school for self-cutting when Soffer opens the story.

The masgouf gives Lorca renewed hope.  If she can learn how to prepare masgouf, then perhaps the dish will bring her and her mother closer together.  “Bukra fil mish mish,” (“Tomorrow, apricots may bloom”) she hopes.  Her mother’s wistful recollection of the masgouf compels Lorca to seek out the husband and wife who once owned the Iraqi restaurant.

It is here that Soffer introduces her other main character, Victoria.  Like Lorca, Victoria is hungry for companionship.  She is a widowed Jew from Iraq, whose husband, Joseph, recently passed away.  Joseph’s death left a hole in Victoria’s heart; she grieves for him and also for the daughter they gave up for adoption many years ago.  Victoria agrees to teach Lorca, an almost-orphan, cooking lessons.  Before long, recipes and food bridge the gap between their different generations and different cultures.  Both characters strongly believe that they share a deeper connection.

Soffer tells her tale in the alternating voices of Lorca and Victoria, incredibly well-drawn and vivid narrators.  But Soffer knows the best dishes come from a mix of ingredients so she changes it up a bit by incorporating Joseph’s point of view.  Joseph’s voice provides a new and unexpected window into the story and into the characters.  Soffer further amazes by creating interesting minor characters and subplots that further enhance the novel.  One of the strengths of Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots is the way Soffer effectively puts us into the heads of her main characters.

Food is supposed to provide sustenance and sometimes comfort.  But the body craves things other than nutrients.  We all need love, attention, and companionship.  There is such longing within the pages of Soffer’s story—longing for affection, for the past, for a different present, and for a future that can never be again.  Like food, life can be sweet and sometimes life can be sour.  Sometimes you burn the meatloaf or the shakrlama and sometimes it comes out perfect.  Sometimes we have to make do with the ingredients at hand.

Writing is part of Soffer’s family history. Her grandfather was a scribe in Baghdad, her father was a sculptor and painter, and Soffer is a novelist.  Interestingly, “Soffer,” means “scribe” in Arabic.  Soffer is a born and gifted storyteller whose debut is good enough to eat.

Book Review: The Third Son by Julie Wu

The Third Son by Julie Wu (Algonquin Books; 320 pages; $24.95).

Rocky Balboa had an anthem, and so did Daniel LaRusso.  Saburo, the irresistible protagonist in Julie Wu’s dazzling first novel, The Third Son, does not have an anthem, nor does he have a championship title, trophy, or belt.  But Saburo is just as much an unlikely and humble hero as Rocky and the Karate Kid are.  With a strong will, a big heart, and an indefatigable spirit, Saburo fights to survive and thrive in the midst of a family that deems him unimportant and a country drowning in violence, tumult, and autocracy.

A rich and evocative epic, The Third Son centers on Saburo, a tender and good-hearted underdog who drives Wu’s commanding historical novel.  Wu introduces Saburo when he is eight years old, in 1943, weeks before the Japanese begin bombing Taiwan.  As Saburo recalls in his own distinctive voice, “We all understood Japanese.  Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since 1895.”  The official language of Taiwan is Japanese, and even his family’s last name, Togo, is Japanese.  “But in our heads and in our home,” Saburo explains, “we spoke and were Taiwanese, descendants of the Mainland Chinese….”

Saburo’s life, like Taiwan itself, is complex.  He is the third son, “different, somehow,” from his elder brothers Kazuo and Jiro.  Saburo does not have a mind for his studies or sports.  Instead, it is ” far more interesting” for Saburo, “despite the real and everpresent threat of being struck by” his teacher, “to study the sky outside.”  The third son of the Togo family loves “the sky, its boundless, lovely blue, the translucent ruffled pattern of clouds stretching across it.”

Because his face is forever turned toward the skies, he spots the Japanese planes on the horizon before the air raid sirens sound.  While fleeing Japanese bombers, Saburo meets a young girl, Yoshiko, and is instantly smitten.  After their initial encounter, she suddenly vanishes; her disappearance breaks his young, tender heart.

Wu creates a pattern with the loss of Yoshiko.  Nothing comes easily to Saburo; life, for him, is a struggle.  Throughout The Third Son, Saburo must fight.  He must fight for food, because the majority of food in his household goes to his brothers and not to him.  He must fight to live when sickness threatens to overcome him.  Saburo must even fight to learn and so cherishes reading The Earth, a book his cousin gives him.

Saburo is “fed as much” from his “growing knowledge of the stratosphere, the ionosphere, and the aurora borealis as from the berries and mushrooms and silvery fish” that he collects from the land around him.   “Reading the book” is a “balm” for Saburo, as he witnesses “all the changes in the world outside.”  But even that is taken from him.

As the third son, Saburo must also fight for an education.  His older brothers are given instruction, but not Saburo.  He learns English on his own and studies to be an electrician.  His world is shaken, though, when he sees Yoshiko, after years of trying to find her, in the company of his oldest brother.  If he wants her in his life, then Saburo must fight for love.

As the years pass, and Saburo wrangles for position in his family and in his country, he comes to see that his future is not in Taiwan.  “Saburo,” his cousin tells him, “you have only have one life.  Fight for it.”  This is all the impetus Saburo needs to try to find a place in America, yet he must also fight to study and work in the United States.  That could be the biggest challenge of all.

As Saburo battles his naysayers and fights for a better life, we cannot help but cheer on this beloved underdog.  He maintains a great deal of persistence and perseverance despite the obstacles Wu throws in his path.  Because we watch him grow to be a good and just man, we develop a strong bond with Saburo; he becomes important to us.  Wu forces us to connect emotionally with this character, and the link lasts well beyond finishing the story.

The Third Son is a rich debut featuring a character who I came to see as family.  Saburo is a very special narrator, one who resonates and one who will steal your heart.  Wu’s story is perfect for fans of Samuel Park, Jamie Ford, Janice Y.K. Lee, and Lisa See.  Saburo has so much to teach us about life and about living.

Debut novelist Julie Wu

It’s May–What Should I Read?

May is here, and everything’s coming up books!  And that is indeed a wonderful thing.  There’s lots of variety, meaning there should be something for everyone this month.

Titles To Pick Up Now

Dear Lucy by the extraordinarily talented Julie Sarkissian is available now.  I loved Sarkissian’s debut and feel fiercely protective of her main character, Lucy, who is developmentally delayed.  If you are a fan of Gothic tales, this will be perfect for you.  I spotlighted the book and interviewed Sarkissian.  Book review is coming soon.

I go down the stairs quiet like I am something without any weight. I open the door in the dark and the cold sucks my skin towards it. It is the morning but there is no sun yet, just white light around the edges. It is the time to get the eggs. Time for my best thing. The eggs they shine with their white and I do not need the light to find them. The foxes need no light either. I am a little like the fox, he is a little like me.—From Dear Lucy

Dear Lucy is a very unique book, one that you will be sorry you missed.

 

Another recently-released debut that I am enjoying is  Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley.  Check out my spotlight on the novel.  

A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she’s convinced will follow them wherever they go–her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can’t imagine what the world holds outside their father’s polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley’s abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, AMITY & SORROW is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own.

Riley’s tale is gripping, even from the first page when she introduces readers to sisters who are tied together at the wrist.  Amity & Sorrow is an unflinching, timely, and intriguing look at a fundamentalist cult and a mother who will do anything to save her daughters.

 

Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children, returns with a new novel called The Woman Upstairs.  

Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is on the verge of disappearing. Having abandoned her desire to be an artist, she has become the “woman upstairs,” a reliable friend and tidy neighbour always on the fringe of others’ achievements. Then into her classroom walks a new pupil, Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents–dashing Skandar, a half-Muslim Professor of Ethical History born in Beirut, and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist–have come to America for Skandar to teach at Harvard.  But one afternoon, Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who punch, push and call him a “terrorist,” and Nora is quickly drawn deep into the complex world of the Shahid family. Soon she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora’s happiness explodes her boundaries–until Sirena’s own ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.  Written with intimacy and piercing emotion, this urgently dispatched story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill–and the devastating cost–of giving in to one’s passions. The Woman Upstairs is a masterly story of America today, of being a woman and of the exhilarations of love.

I’m so proud of debut novelist Julie Wu.  Her dazzling historical epic, The Third Son, was featured in May’s O, The Oprah Magazine and chosen as one of Amazon’s best books of May.  The Third Son is a rich debut featuring a character who I came to see as family.  Saburo is a very special character, one who will steal your heart.  Wu’s story is perfect for fans of Samuel Park, Jamie Ford, Janice Y.K. Lee, and Lisa See.  I spotlighted the book and interviewed Wu.  A review is coming soon.

It’s 1943. As air-raid sirens blare in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, eight-year-old Saburo walks through the peach forests of Taoyuan. The least favored son of a Taiwanese politician, Saburo is in no hurry to get home to the taunting and abuse he suffers at the hands of his parents and older brother. In the forest he meets Yoshiko, whose descriptions of her loving family are to Saburo like a glimpse of paradise.  Meeting her is a moment he will remember forever, and for years he will try to find her again. When he finally does, she is by the side of his oldest brother and greatest rival.

Set in a tumultuous and violent period of Taiwanese history—as the Chinese Nationalist Army lays claim to the island and one autocracy replaces another—The Third Son tells the story of lives governed by the inheritance of family and the legacy of culture, and of a young man determined to free himself from both.  In Saburo, author Julie Wu has created an extraordinary character, a gentle soul forced to fight for everything he’s ever wanted: food, an education, and his first love, Yoshiko. A sparkling, evocative debut, it will have readers cheering for this young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.

 

Coming Soon

On May 7, Bloomsbury USA will publish the latest novel from bestselling author Gail Godwin.

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II.At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died.A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories.Flora, her late mother’s twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen.Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo.It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

Caroline’s Leavitt’s tenth novel, Is This Tomorrow, comes out May 7 from Algonquin Books.

 

In 1956, when divorced working-mom Ava Lark rents a house with her twelve-year-old son, Lewis, in a Boston suburb, the neighborhood is less than welcoming. Lewis yearns for his absent father, befriending the only other fatherless kids: Jimmy and Rose. One afternoon, Jimmy goes missing. The neighborhood in the era of the Cold War, bomb scares, and paranoia seizes the opportunity to further ostracize Ava and her son.Lewis never recovers from the disappearance of his childhood friend. By the time he reaches his twenties, he s living a directionless life, a failure in love, estranged from his mother. Rose is now a schoolteacher in another city, watching over children as she was never able to watch over her own brother. Ava is building a new life for herself in a new decade. When the mystery of Jimmy s disappearance is unexpectedly solved, all three must try to reclaim what they have lost.

 

 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra will be released on May 7 by Hogarth.  A resilient doctor risks everything to save the life of a hunted child, in this majestic debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together.  In his brilliant, haunting novel, Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra transports us to a snow-covered village in Chechnya, where eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night, accusing him of aiding Chechen rebels. Across the road their lifelong neighbor and family friend Akhmed has also been watching, fearing the worst when the soldiers set fire to Havaa’s house. But when he finds her hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. He will seek refuge at the abandoned hospital where the sole remaining doctor, Sonja Rabina, treats the wounded.  For the talented, tough-minded Sonja, the arrival of Akhmed and Havaa is an unwelcome surprise. Weary and overburdened, she has no desire to take on additional risk and responsibility. And she has a deeply personal reason for caution: harboring these refugees could easily jeopardize the return of her missing sister. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis and reveal the intricate pattern of connections that weave together the pasts of these three unlikely companions and unexpectedly decides their fate. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

Also on May 7 comes Daniel Wallace’s latest yarn, The Kings and Queens of Roam, from Touchstone.

 

From the celebrated author of Big Fish, an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters and the dark legacy and magical town that entwine them.  Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel beautiful, naïve – and blind. When their parents die an untimely death, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn’t possibly survive on her own … or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down.  In this new novel, Southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall-tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling Big Fish. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a wildly inventive, beautifully written, and big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind

 

Unbridled Books will publish River of Dust by Virginia Pye on May 14.  On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingénue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple’s savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.

 

On May 14, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel, Americanah, hits shelves from Knopf.  From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.  As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.   Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.   Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.

 

Patricia Beard’s A Certain Summer will be ready for your beach bag on May 21.  The publisher is Gallery Books.  “Nothing ever changes at Wauregan.” That mystique is the tradition of the idyllic island colony off the shore of Long Island, the comforting tradition that its summer dwellers have lived by for over half a century. But in the summer of 1948, after a world war has claimed countless men—even those who came home—the time has come to deal with history’s indelible scars.  Helen Wadsworth’s husband, Arthur, was declared missing in action during an OSS operation in France, but the official explanation was mysteriously nebulous. Now raising a teenage son who longs to know the truth about his father, Helen turns to Frank Hartman—her husband’s best friend and his partner on the mission when he disappeared. Frank, however, seems more intent on filling the void in Helen’s life that Arthur’s absence has left. As Helen’s affection for Frank grows, so does her guilt, especially when Peter Gavin, a handsome Marine who was brutally tortured by the Japanese and has returned with a faithful war dog, unexpectedly stirs new desires. With her heart pulled in multiple directions, Helen doesn’t know whom to trust—especially when a shocking discovery forever alters her perception of both love and war.  Part mystery, part love story, and part insider’s view of a very private world, A Certain Summer resonates in the heart long after the last page is turned.

Also published on May 21 is We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo from Reagan Arthur.  Darling is only 10 years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo’s belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America’s famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her–from Zadie Smith to Monica Ali to J.M. Coetzee–while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.

 

 

Riverhead releases what may well be another bestseller for author Khaled Hosseini on May 21, And the Mountains Echoed.  Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.

Who doesn’t love a good thriller?  While I was no fan of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I am looking forward to the release of Inferno, out May 14 from Knopf Doubleday.  As The Lost Symbol showed me, Robert Langdon works best in Europe, and not in America.

In his international blockbusters The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown masterfully fused history, art, codes, and symbols. In this riveting new thriller, Brown returns to his element and has crafted his highest-stakes novel to date.  
In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.  Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

Paperback Releases

If you didn’t catch these amazing reads last year, they are either now available in paperback or are coming out this month.  Don’t miss them!

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is out now from Little, Brown.  Powers was nominated for a National Book Award in fiction for his tale of the Iraq War.

The Yellow Birds is unlike other Iraq War novels.  Powers actually fought in combat so he knows his stuff.  This is fiction, but there are kernels of truth within these pages.  He drives home the point that the War in Iraq has irrevocably changed a whole generation and our country will not ever be the same.  The Yellow Birds is penetrating, poignant, and deeply personal for Powers.  I can’t stop thinking about Bartle and Murph.  This is the debut of the year.  –Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars comes out in paperback May 7 from Vintage.

Hig is an “old man at forty” who lost his wife and their unborn child to the flu.  Hig’s narrative is unconventional as Heller uses flashbacks and sometimes strange streams of consciousness to tell us his story.  After the flu struck, encephalitis felled Hig.  “Two straight weeks of fever, three days 104 to 105,” Hig explains, “I know it cooked my brains.”  There is no pattern to Hig’s thoughts.  They are often jumbled and mish-mashed, often without segue from one thought to the next.  He begins many of his sentences with “and” or “so” and most of his thoughts are fragments.  What Hig has lived through and what he has lost speak to us from the page.  Heller uses a very powerful device, and Hig just would not be Hig without it.–Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

 

On May 7, Vintage releases Maggie Shipstead’s debut, Seating Arrangements, in paperback.  

Seating Arrangments is THE read of the summer, but this is no fluff piece.  Shipstead constructs a many-layered story in the same way a baker creates a layered wedding cake or a designer sews a wedding gown.  There are layers upon layers, and we must peel them back chapter by chapter. There are debut novels, and then there are debut novels.  Messy, disorganized jumbles lacking cohesion.  Unrealized characters with nothing to drive them.  Settings that fall flat.  A plot that isn’t.  This is not one of those debut novels.  –Bookmagnet’s review

 

 

 

 

Lance Weller’s electrifying and shocking debut Wilderness comes out May 14 from Bloomsbury USA.

I interviewed Weller and he had this to say about coming up with the story:

“Abel Truman came to me well before I had any notion whatsoever that Wilderness would become what it ended up becoming.  I wanted to try and write a really excellent dog story and, to that end, started writing a short story about an old man and his dog and what became of them.  Before I really knew it, they were living on the Washington State coast and the old man was an American Civil War veteran and I was beyond the point where it was a short story by a good number of pages.”

–From my interview with Weller

 

Mariner Books will publish Jennifer Miller’s smart debut The Year of the Gadfly May 28.  

Foreshadowing is just one of the plot devices in which Miller shows off her skills.  Traveling to the school with her mother, Iris notices that “the mountainous peaks resembled teeth.  The road stretched between them like a black tongue.  And here we were, in our small vehicle, speeding toward that awful mouth.”  One cannot help but wonder if the school will swallow Iris…I recommend The Year of the Gadfly to fans of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Amber Dermont’s The Starboard Sea, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.  Miller’s story is intelligent, sharp, and eye-opening.  Miller shines as she describes the pain of adolescence and aptly compares high school to the political dealings of a Third World nation.  “In high school,” Miller warns, “you never knew who was your enemy and who was your friend.”  Keep that warning in mind as you readThe Year of the Gadfly.  As in Miller’s novel, our enemies sometimes disguise themselves as our friends.  Iris should be vigilant.  —Bookmagnet’s review