Two professors, one of geography and one of political science, both specializing in women’s studies, have compiled a ton of data about the American experience, past and present, in The Real State of America Atlas
Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! published in February by Knopf, has been reviewed by Carl Hiaasen and received quotes from O, The Oprah Magazine; Gary Shteyngart; and (gasp) Stephen King, who called it “Brilliant, funny, original”. Russell previously published a book of short stories St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
This is the story of thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree, alligator wrestler. Ava grew up on an island off the Florida coast called Swamplandia! (yes, with an exclamation mark). Ava’s mother, Hilola Bigtree, was the star of her family’s alligator wrestling show, performed regularly for tourists from the mainland. When Hilola dies from cancer at the young age of thirty-six, the show is in trouble. Tourists stop coming and money runs out. Both Ava’s father, the Chief, and older brother, Kiwi, leave the island in search of money. Kiwi goes to work for their competitor World of Darkness, but where the Chief goes is a mystery. It’s not unusual for him to disappear for a couple of months, but this time her mother isn’t there. She’s left alone with her sixteen-year-old sister, Ossie, who’s recently become a spiritualist and is cavorting with the dead. Ossie spends her nights visiting her ghost…
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This is the posthumous novel by literary giant and author of The Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll. It is the story of Billy Wolfram, a painter and small-time celebrity of the late-eighties New York City art scene.
Last year the NYC art scene seemed to be a hot topic for novels, including Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall and Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty. With books like these, which detail the inner worlds of the creative, it’s difficult not to think they are really a mirror for the author’s own feelings about writing. In The Petting Zoo, the word ‘writer’ could easily replace the word ‘painter’, as the word ‘editor’ could replace the words ‘art dealer’, and ‘novel’ could replace ‘painting’. After achieving fame, Wolfram attends a gallery show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 17th Century Spanish painter Diego Velazquez. He is so struck by the majestic spirituality evident in Velazquez’s work that he doubts his abilities as an artist to produce anything of meaning and to even paint ever again. Much like Carroll, he’s not in it for the money. He wants his art to mean something to people, but he can’t decide whether or not it…
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Last year saw the rise of a young literary star who, surprisingly, happens to be an accomplished physicist. Twenty-eight-year-old Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers, translated from the Italian, was the winner of Italy’s prestigious Premio Strega award, catching the eye of the international publishing community. This debut novel tells the story of Mattia and Alice, beginning in their awkward childhoods and following them through to their uncomfortable adulthoods. When we first meet them, they are each experiencing a trauma that will forever alter their ability to interact with others. Mattia, a young genius who is embarrassed by his mentally handicapped twin sister, makes a grave miscalculation that leaves him incapable of forgiving himself. Alice, a young girl on her way to becoming a professional skier, has an almost fatal accident that shatters her self-confidence. Once the two outcasts lay eyes on one another in adolescence, it’s uncertainty at first sight. Just as a prime number is indivisible by any other number, they are complete in themselves and so can never connect with anyone else. Mattia is incapable of having a relationship and Alice enters into an empty marriage, which she deals with by starving herself. Neither of the two friends are can connect with another human being, but because of this, they are somehow able to relate to one another
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It’s time once again for your Clean-Cut editor to recommend a few books that have surfaced recently. Since we’ll be incorporating a new page into the blog that will list forthcoming books by pub date, the format (and title) of the monthly book post has changed. It will now be a short list of only the most commendable efforts book publishing currently has to show for itself. I sincerely hope this method will be more useful to those of you who like to show off that you’ve read the latest book before your friends have even heard of it.
Enough About Love by Hervé Le Tellier
Jack of all trades, Hervé Le Tellier, is a writer, journalist, mathematician, food critic and teacher. Enough About Love, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter, is his story about two woman, Anna and Louise. They don’t know each other, but their lives begin to mirror one another when both women, happily married, meet and fall in love with other men. With a romantic Parisian backdrop to set the stage, this novel promises to expose the very real and very destructive conflict between desire and responsibility.
Book Review The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman; pub date: 4/6/10; available in paperback as of 1/4/11
First-time novelist Tom Rachman has produced a worthy debut surrounding a moody, but interesting cast of characters. Holed up in the office of an international newspaper in Rome, they see only too much of each other day in and day out. However, as we learn with each narrator, they really know very little about one another. We meet a man whose life is turned upside down by the death of his daughter; a woman who doesn’t think enough of herself to break up with an unappreciative, jobless boyfriend; another woman who is stalking her boss’ ex-boyfriend; and that ex-boyfriend’s mother, who religiously reads the paper cover to cover every day even though she is years behind.
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Book Review
While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut; pub date: 1/25/11
This is a great, fun read, although it deals heavily with moral dilemmas and the sad inability of people to really relate to one another. The collection is part of a treasure trove of old stories that fell by the waste side as short story writing went out of vogue and Vonnegut dedicated his time to novel-writing, according to a recent interview on chuckpahniuk.net with Vonnegut’s longtime business partner and friend Donald Faber.
