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By Sean Clark, on April 14th, 2011 Author: Robert Weintraub
2011, Little, Brown and Company
Filed Under: Nonfiction, Historical.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
Here’s a good reading choice for the start of the baseball season (although I can’t help think that I’m partially to blame for the Red Sox’s abysmal stumbling out the gate by reading a book about the Yankees’ first world series win. Oh well, at least we took 2 out of 3 in the NY series.). Ostensibly about the creation of Yankee Stadium, this is a book about a changing of the guard in baseball, when small ball National League play fell second-fiddle to the power-hitting American League. Weintraub writes like a Yanks fan, but I can’t begrudge him that, since the team is the star of his show. This is a fun and accessible book that takes a look at a just a few years in the long history of baseball. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on April 13th, 2011 Author: Téa Obreht
Random House, 2011
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Fantasy.
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
With all the hype about the New Yorker’s 20 under 40, it’s nice to read a debut novel by one of their young authors that lives up to the marketing. The Tiger’s Wife is a captivating combination of history and fable. In her own life and in her grandfather’s stories, the narrator confronts questions of belief in the face of desire for understanding, for relief, and for release. Rather than resolving the world of the novel into one ruled by magic beyond human comprehension, the book’s fairytale elements only accentuate the challenges inherent in faith and doubt.
Natalia is on her way to a medical mission at an orphanage across the border when she receives news of the strange circumstances surrounding her grandfather’s death. Having lied to his wife about going to meet Natalia on her mission, he dies from an illness he’d long concealed, alone in the small town of Zdrevkov near the coast. Figuring out why he chose to slip away from his family to die among strangers drives his granddaughter out to the coast and into his past, into one story she knows and one she will learn. …
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By Mike Beeman, on January 19th, 2011 Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Small Beer Press, 2010
Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary, Historical, Horror
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Readers familiar with Karen Joy Fowler most likely know her through her best selling novels, The Jane Austen Book Club, Wit’s End, and Sister Noon. But Fowler began her career as a writer of wildly imaginative short stories. Her newest collection is sure to add to this. What I Didn’t See is one of her strongest yet.
For some authors, a short story collections is like a science lab. The stories in this collection, published over a span of nearly two decades, show Fowler experimenting with many different styles and forms distinct from her novels. But no matter the genre or subject, the author retains what makes her full-length books so successful: an attention to detail, an ear for language, and compassion for her characters. For those who have found Fowler through her novels, these stories offer a chance to encounter an imaginative storyteller as she moves from subject to subject. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 17th, 2011 Author: Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
2007, New Directions (English language)
Filed Under: Literary, Historical
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
Despite all the great things I’ve heard about Bolaño, I’d never read anything by him. The Savage Detectives has long been on my to-read list. After reading Amulet, I wish more that I had read The Savage Detectives; these novels share characters and events, so not only do I now realize what great writing I’ve been missing out on, at times I felt I was perhaps lacking a lot of context.
Still, Amulet paints a stunning picture of a time and place; the revolutionary South America described is rendered vividly. The plot is whole and cogent. I never felt lost or like I was picking up where something left off. I’ve done very little investigating into this book’s relationship with Bolaño’s most popular work (I didn’t want to spoil things for myself) but I suspect this is more akin to a side story, something existing in the same circle of characters but unrelated in consequence. …
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By Bilal Ibne Rasheed, on January 13th, 2011 Author: Patrick Suskind, translated from the German by John E. Woods
2001, Vintage
Filed Under: Literary, Historical.
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the protagonist of Patrick Suskind’s début novel is arguably one of the most extraordinary characters in contemporary fiction. This extraordinariness, which lies in his unprecedented and enviable power of smell, is an evident manifestation of the author’s creative genius and is responsible for the immense readability of this novel. Suskind hooks the reader right from the start. The novel begins:
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here.
The initial couple of sentences are enough to convince the reader that there is so much of storytelling to be done. The words like ‘gifted’ and ‘abominable’ intrigue the reader whose curiosity is further increased with the mention of his gifts and ambitions which ‘were restricted to the domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was originally published in German as Das Parfum: Die Geschiechte eines Morders in 1985 and became an international bestseller. Since then it has been translated into several languages and has also been adapted as a film with the same title. The novel tells the story of Grenouille’s quest to make the finest perfume in the world–and in the process of doing so he kills twenty-five virgin girls. …
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By Sean Clark, on December 8th, 2010 Author: Gene Wilder
 2008, St. Martin’s Press
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Romance.
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
Yes, this is the same Gene Wilder who played Willy Wonka and Young Frankenstein. (Note to Gene Wilder: I love you and Young Frankenstein is perhaps my favorite movie ever. Thanks. You can stop reading here.) And yes, he should probably have stayed with acting rather than becoming a novelist. That’s not to say he’s a bad writer by any means. He’s just not a great novelist.
I very much enjoyed Wilder’s last book, My French Whore. It wasn’t deep literature with lasting staying power, but rather a cute, short, at times funny, period romance. The Woman Who Wouldn’t, his second novel, is a cute, short, at times funny, period romance. Both books are worth the read, and you could easily read both in one afternoon. They really are novellas–which is fine, I like novellas–so it’s hard to judge them as novels. …
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By Sean Clark, on August 17th, 2010 Author: Seth Grahame-Smith
2010, Grand Central Publishing
Filed Under: Historical, Horror, Humor
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
Seth Grahame-Smith is the same guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and it shows. This is a good thing, PPZ was excellent–a great mix of classic literature and zombie mayhem. The transition from “literary mash-up” to fake biography was a wise move–the Quirk books after PPZ have been disappointing. I lamented that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (review) wasn’t as good because it was too inventive, and not true enough to its source. But basically I figured that Winters just wasn’t as good as Grahame-Smith. I’m currently about halfway through Android Karenina, also by Winters, and while it’s not all that good either, I’m realizing it’s not so much the author’s lack of talent but lack of novelty: a truly good horror/literary mash-up probably will only work once.
This book is not a drastic departure from its predecessor but it manages to feel fresh. ALVH is made of the same essence; I’d call it respectful parody. This novel is written in the manner of a biography, as if Lincoln’s secret journals fell into Grahame-Smith’s lap. It works well. (He said in an author interview he was inspired to write this because he found it curious seeing a bunch of Abe Lincoln bios sitting beside Twilight on a bookstore bestseller shelf.) …
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By Sean Clark, on July 27th, 2010 Authors: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
 2008, The Dial Press
Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Romance
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (I’m going to call it GLAPPPS from here) is an epistolary novel occurring immediately post World War II. At its heart, it’s a subdued romance, though on the surface it’s a tale of community and friendship and bravery and belonging. Not really my kind of book. Still, I liked it.
Juliet wrote a column for a London newspaper during the war. When she hears of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society, she becomes intrigued by the name alone–as, I admit, I was with the title of this book. She writes letters to a number of the inhabitants of the small British island, and slowly begins to cultivate fondness for, then relationships with, many of them. Most especially the kind and quiet Dawsey Adams (who, I should note, reached out to Juliet and informed her of the society in the first place).
The society originated on the occupied Channel Island as an excuse to have dinner parties under the noses of the Germans. As the occupation stretched, and with it the lack of news from the mainland, the false literary pretense of the group became real, a connection to culture and community. Eventually the pigs they were eating in secret ran out, along with much of the rest of the island’s food. The society continued, with the dinners replaced with the best they could come up with: most creatively, potato peel pie. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on June 29th, 2010  Author: Glenn Taylor
2010, Ecco
Filed under: Literary, Historical
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
The Marrowbone Marble Company is a sprawling, epic novel that spans nearly thirty years, following a man named Ledford as he fights in World War II, raises a family, builds a marble factory with his own hands, and, through it all, fights against racism. Taylor effortlessly constructs a detailed, nuanced world, and a host of characters both stoic and relatable. He also excels at pacing a narrative with such a long story window—each chapter is titled after a month, like “December, 1941,” and he often skips years at a time, but the result feels natural and fluid.
The problems here are more philosophical than technical. If you had to sum up Marrowbone‘s subject matter in one word, it would be: race. The titular marble company isn’t just a company, it’s also a racial safe haven where, in 1949 West Virginia, blacks and whites live and work together in equality and harmony.
Despite loud, sometimes violent protests from nearly everyone around him, Ledford (who is white) insists on racial equality in his business and his life. That’s well and good, if a bit simplistic, but the results stretch believability, to say the least. The way the sides are drawn up is reductive: everybody who’s in favor of Marrowbone (which becomes synonymous with non-discrimination and civil rights) is good and decent; everybody opposed is cowardly, evil, and slimy.
In the end, Marrowbone is more of an exercise in historical race-relations wish-fulfillment than a real drama. That keeps it from being the truly great novel it could’ve been, but it’s still captivating and certainly worth reading. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on June 10th, 2010 [This novel is a C4 Great Read.]
 Author: Edward P. Jones
2003, Amistad
Filed Under Literary, Historical
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
It’s difficult to decide where to start discussing The Known World. The novel opens and closes in 1855 on the plantation of Henry Townsend, a black slave-owner living in Manchester County, Virginia. In between, the narrative casts so far into the past and the future that beginnings and endings seem to merge. The past is ever present, and the future provides historical context for events yet to pass. The Known World begins and ends in nearly every paragraph.
I admit it’s confusing at first. The prose is full of time cues, reminding the reader of where the story is and of the order in which certain events fall. You’ll probably have to reread early passages or even the entire first chapter, but once you get used to the rhythm of it, my guess is you’ll be hooked. Jones’ manages to make all the temporal pointing sound like a refrain, and soon the novel starts to read like a long hymn to history. …
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