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The Absent Sea by Carlos Franz
Pub Date: June 17, 2011
Publisher: McPherson and Company
ISBN: 0-929701-94-1, Hardcover, $25.00
Carlos Franz is one of the most noted writers in South America, but he appears in English for the first time here. The Absent Sea is a novel about memory and responsibility, set in the aftermath of the military dictatorship in Chile. Laura, a judge in exile, returns to Chile to answer her daughter’s question – where were you, Mamá, when all those terrible things were taking place in your city? The book cuts between the present, Laura’s written response to her daughter, and memories of those terrible things. Laura’s letter to her daughter is the highlight of the book. It is always a pleasure to read a novel with a powerful, intelligent female protagonist, and reading the character Laura one is reminded that she is the sort of character missing in the writing of so many other Latin American men. The Absent Sea is a terrifying and mesmerizing novel that succeeds in a similar way to Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife but with a more immediate punch in the gut. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.
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Celebrations of Curious Characters by Ricky Jay
Pub Date: May 24, 2011
Publisher: McSweeney’s
ISBN: 978-1-936365-03-6, Hardcover, $26
McSweeney’s latest is a double whammy of chuckle-worthy story-telling and collected ephemeral art. Ricky Jay is a well known magician and antic-maker, and here we find him telling previous antic-makers’ histories. One of my favorites was about performing pigs who told women their astrological forecasts. Another oddity was the tale of Boai, the chin player, famous for “chin-pounding variations on Rule Britannia“. And yet another about an artifact-collecting dentist who opened a coffee house/museum in England in the late 1600s. Part of what makes this collection so worth it is Jay’s addictive and charming writing style. He is also, reportedly, a library advocate, having curated the Mullholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts. The initial inspiration for Celebrations of Curious Characters came from Ricky Jay’s weekly four-minute spot on L.A.’s NPR station, KCRW. For fans of NPR, jokes, oddities, tricks, and history. This came out in May, but we’re sneaking it into our June list because we liked it so much!
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30 Under 30 ed. by Lily Hoang and Blake Butler
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
Publisher: Starcherone
ISBN: 978-0-9842133-3-7, Paperback, $20
Starcherone’s 30 Under 30 is the weird cousin of the New Yorker’s great but predictable 20 Under 40 anthology. Some of the writers showcased here are familiar to lovers of innovative fiction – most notably, Joshua Cohen – but the amount of new names is refreshing. The writing is also excellent. My favorite story is Black Kids in Lemon Trees by Shane Jones, author of the novel-soon-to-be-a-movie Light Boxes. The story is a bloody but beautiful tale of 200 cops stuck in a cloud, clubbing birds, shooting guns, and trying to get down. If that sounds weird, that’s because it is weird, very weird, but it works. Second on my list is Angi Becker Stevens’ story, Blood, Not Sap, a cute vignette about a woman’s relationship with a tree who becomes a man. Jaclyn Dwyer’s Biography of a Porn Star in Three Parts might be the most touching reflection on hardcore pornography ever written. On the whole, this anthology gives me a lot of hope for the writers of my generation. If you only order one short story anthology this summer, make sure this is it.
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not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them by Jenny Boully
Pub Date: June 21, 2011
Publisher: Tarpaulin Sky
ISBN: 9780982541678, Paperback, $16
I was just having a conversation the other day about the Peter Pan Effect, which is becoming more prevalent in the budding youth of our day. We are witnessing extended adolescences, prolonged concerns about career choices and life paths, resulting often in the clear decision to avoid reality, akin to Peter Pan and his Neverland. What Boully does with J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy is both astonishing and creepy. The book is genius. We follow her footnotes, which is the book’s format more or less. The result is at turns disgusting, dark, humorous and merciless to the original story’s naivety. Boully does a wonderful job of bringing Peter and Wendy home to reality, creating a unique read that, whether intentionally or not, reflects present times all too bluntly. We find ourselves in a cozy make-believe setting, only to see it wrought with human flaws and failures. Sound familiar? For fans of collage and experimental fiction.
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Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya
Pub Date: June 24, 2011
Publisher: New Directions
ISBN: 978-0-8112-1917-4, Paperback, $15.95
Horacio Castellanos Moya’s latest novel is historical fiction about El Salvador in the 1940′s, when the country was ruled by the Warlock, a fascist dictator with a penchant for new age spirituality and torture. The bulk of the book is split between the diaries of Haydée, the wife of a political prisoner, and the misadventures of Clemen (Haydée’s son) and Jimmy, cousins on the run together after a failed coup attempt against the dictator. The sections told by Clemen and Jimmy are often hilarious and would make for an incredible film, with each cousin driving the other crazy as they try to avoid being caught by the police. Haydée’s diary entries detail the politicization of a high society wife forced to confront a world where her husband is in jail and her son is running for his life. The combination of slap-stick adventure story and heart wrenching emotional/political transformation makes for a great novel, and the revelations about Haydée’s husband in the final chapter recast the entire story. For fans of the anti-Magical Realist wing of Latin American literature.
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From the Observatory by Julio Cortázar
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
Publisher: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 978-1-935744-06-1, Paperback, $18.00
Cortázar’s From the Observatory defies genre categories. It’s a combination of poetic prose about the migration of eels and photographs taken by Cortázar at Maharajah Jai Singh’s observatories in Jaipur, Delhi. Jai Singh and his observatory come up in the prose as well. If you have never seen or heard of Jai Singh’s observatories, this book is worth it for the photographs alone. They look like surrealist paintings but are photographs of real structures. Cortázar is Argentina’s best writer after Borges, and as he blends the life cycle of eels with “the ramps of Jai Singh’s dreams” we’re treated to an absolutely unique and gorgeous book. It would be impossible to pick this book up from a library shelf and not check it out.
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The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton
Pub Date: June 7, 2011
Publisher: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 978-1-59017-452-4, Paperback, $15.95
NYRB Classics picks through the out-of-print back catalogs of 20th Century publishing and brings back to life the amazing books that fell through the cracks. Their latest is The Judges of the Secret Court, a novel about John Wilkes Booth, the Civil War, and the assassination of Lincoln. There is a lack of good literary fiction about the Civil War, so the reprinting of Stacton’s novel is an exciting event. The mass violence and transformation of that period is unparalleled in American history, and Stacton brings us into the mind of Booth at the assassination and, later, his mad dash through the brambles of Maryland and Virginia. The Judges of the Secret Court ventures into Great American Novel territory. For fans of historical fiction and Civil War history.
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Celebrity Vinyl by Tom Hamling
Pub Date: June 14, 2011
Publisher: Mark Batty
ISBN: 978-1-935613-25-1, Paperback, $19.95
Measuring in at 9 x 9 inches, Celebrity Vinyl is beautifully designed and hilarious. Tom Hamling provides commentary for dozens of ill-fated albums like Anthony Quinn’s In My Own Way… I Love You (“What he fails to tell us is that this is the worst album ever made.”) or John Travolta’s self-titled LP (“I didn’t know JC Penny turtlenecks came in Dreamboat Blue?”). The Travolta albums are really unbelievable, but my favorite is probably Rodney Dangerfield’s hip hop album Rappin’ Rodney. Yes, Rodney Dangerfield made a hip hop album! After putting this in your library collection, expect a spike in terrible thrift store vinyl purchases by both customers and staff. My only complaint is the lack of LaToya Jackson records; her 1986 release Oops, Oh No! is a must-have for embarrassing celebrity record aficionados.
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House of the Fortunate Buddhas by João Ubaldo Ribeiro
Pub Date: June 2, 2011
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
ISBN: 978-1-564-78-589-3, Paperback, $13.95
House of the Fortunate Buddhas is a book-length monologue told by a woman in 1940′s-60′s Brazil. She talks about books, Brazilian culture, drugs, and sex, as she loses her inhibitions and breaks free from the sexually repressive culture of her time. Her story of personal transformation is punctuated with scenes of literary erotica a la Anaïs Nin. The narrator is also very funny, especially when she comments on foreigners. Writing that focuses on drugs and sex is usually not my cup of tea, but this window into the sexual subcultures of Brazil is a lot of fun. It’s like Boogie Nights, if Boogie Nights was a novel set in 1950′s South America instead of a movie set in 1970′s California. Test your library’s loyalty to freedom of information and get this on the shelf!
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Four Cut-Ups, or, the Case of the Restored Volume by David Lespiau
Pub Date: June 15 2011
Publisher: Burning Deck
ISBN: 978-1-936194-04-0, Paperback, $14
The cut-up poems do not always translate to successfully vibrant and speakable moving pieces. I was, however, quite smitten with Lespiau’s quiet and subtle poems, which have vast style ranges as well as relaying a story. Sometimes it’s softer than all of that. For example: “from the palm-tree / this, to the, that, / which you salvage / conforming to / sea laws / you formulate / is a project / the which we / don’t recall / swims elsewhere / an egg declared / pot, parrot.” Lespiau shape shifts and pronounces newness in the recycled and time-worn. He lovingly embraces and includes the past in his work to create a vaster nomenclature for the poetry eaters of present-day. Props also to be given to his translator from the French, Keith Waldrop, who has written his share of amazing books (namely Several Gravities via Siglio Press and Transcendental Studies, a National Book Award in Poetry winner). For fans of William S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath’s collage poems, and collage in general.
Disclaimer: The books reviewed here, except where noted, are Advance Review Copies (ARCs) sent by publishers — common practice in the industry. We never accept payment in exchange for a review or mention.