Word on the street is that Australian writer David Francis, once part of Mark’s Three Minute Interview series, will be in the Bay Area reading from his novel, The Great Inland Sea. He’ll be at the Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 3 at 1:00 PM, Black Oak Books in Berkeley on August 3 at 7:30 PM, and the Capitola Book Cafe on August 4 at 7:30 PM. (Apparently, Mr. Francis is intimidated by my hometown and won’t be making a stop here. Which is too bad, as the Young, Roving Correspondent would have been happy to talk with him. His loss. He missed out on a vodka-soaked kiss from Mr. Segundo too.)
But since he’s Australian and Mr. Sarvas insists that he’s “a bitchin’ literary fiction novelist” (which we believe translates into “No Banville, but he’ll do in a pinch”), we figured that giving him a holler wouldn’t harm anyone, save the other Australian novelists who we’ll now have to plug. Dammit.
Okay, so the new deal is this: If you’re an Australian novelist and you plan on being in the Bay Area, it is now this site’s policy to plug you.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (