Anne Rice has decided to move to the suburbs in order to “simplify her life.” She also plans to shop more at The Gap, eat more at Denny’s, and spend her afternoons writing at Starbuck’s. Her novels, Rice promised, will retain their mediocrity. The move will also allow Rice to be more in touch with her suburban reading audience.
Okay, something sillier than Ann Beattie’s attempts to intellectualize Leonard or Dwight Garner’s simile-laden minefield. In this Rising Up and Rising Down review, with the exception of the first paragraph, every paragraph begins with “Vollman [verb].” What does The Globe and Mail think book coverage is all about? Five paragraph essays? And Dear Gray Lady, what the hell’s going on this week?
Lord Armstrong, the man who tried to stop Spycatcher from being published, has become president of the Literary Society. The British literary elite is furious. Beyond expressing concerns that the society now has a would-be censor at the head, members are concerned that Armstrong simply isn’t snotty enough, and wouldn’t know Brie from Jarlsburg.
The Times has, predictably enough, a tremendous amount of info and documentation on The Well of Loneliness.
Elmore Leonard talks with the AP about his new novel, Mr. Paradise.
1974 was the year of Gravity’s Rainbow, the first of Robert Caro’s mammoth biographies, the founding of the National Book Critics Circle, and All the President’s Men. So what better way for Auntie Beeb to look back than with an expose on a trashy blockbuster novel?
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. (