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May 2011 Book List
Between Parentheses by Roberto Bolaño
Pub Date: May 30, 2011
Publisher: New Directions
ISBN: 0811218147, Hardcover, $24.95
Having devoured and loved most of his novels (all of which, with the exception of 2666 and The Savage Detectives, were published in English by New Directions and should be on the shelves of every library in America), I had huge expectations for Bolaño’s non-fiction. Many of his novels already act as thinly veiled tours of Central and South American poetry, and the handful of translated speech transcripts floating around the internet were a good warm-up. Whereas the far too brief book of interviews with Bolaño published by Melville House in 2009 was disappointing, this nearly complete collection of non-fiction work is stunning. The essays, speeches, and columns are opinionated and rowdy, and Natasha Wimmer’s translation is superb. If newspapers in this country ran articles like these, perhaps subscription rates wouldn’t look so dire. For lovers of Latin American literature.
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An Empty Room: stories by Mu Xin
Pub Date: May 23, 2011
Publisher: New Directions
ISBN: 0811219224, Paperback, $13.95
Before picking up An Empty Room, I had never read a book by a Chinese writer. This us a gap in my reading I’m excited to correct, and Mu Xin was a wonderful place to begin. The first of Xin’s books to appear in English, An Empty Room explores 20th Century China in short vignettes. The horrors and scars of the Cultural Revolution are ever-present, but on the whole the book offers a subtle and beautiful spirituality, exploring the past without hollow nostalgia and sentimentalism. My favorite story was Quiet Afternoon Tea, a distressing look at memory, domestic life, and old age. I look forward to more of Mu Xin’s work appearing in English.
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Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel
Pub Date: May 31, 2011
Publisher: Siglio
ISBN: 978-979956256, Trade Paper, $35
This blend of collage and intimately thoughtful literature describes the inner workings of a woman, Ruth Greisman. The reader is to believe several things: Ruth is Seydel’s aunt, Ruth was a banker by day, Ruth was friends with Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell, Ruth was an artist. The book is framed as found letters, journal entries, and collages produced by Ruth. She is, essentially, an extension of Seydel’s own personality. The outcome is a masterful and haunting glimpse into the mind of an unknown artist. Seydel himself died suddenly at the beginning of 2011. For fans of Lydia Davis and Gustaf Sobin.
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It Is Almost That ed. by Lisa Pearson
Pub Date: May 31, 2011
Publisher: Siglio
ISBN: 978-0-9799562-6-3, Cloth, $45
This collection of art and prose is designed to more actively incorporate the mind and, more specifically, the imagination of the reader. It is more than this, however. It is a collection of obscure female artists, much of the material dating back to the 1970s, revealing worlds belonging to curious and alive minds. Who are these women? One of my favorite discoveries was an excerpt from Unica Zürn’s The House of Illnesses, produced in 1958 during a jaundice-induced fever. The images she created were surreal anatomical maps and numbered fingers. For example, one has the footnote, “2. I spent a sunny morning in the thumbnail. It was a quiet but festive sojourn.” Also featured are gouaches by Charlotte Salomon, a German Jew living and creating in the 1940s. Upon discovering that both her grandmother and her mother committed suicide, Salomon began examining her family tree and what came of her research was Life? Or Theatre?, whose chapter A Young Girl is featured here. In the prelude to Salomon’s novel she etched out concepts that echo what is found throughout the whole collection: “A person is sitting by the sea. He is painting. A tune suddenly enters his mind. As he starts to hum it, he notices that the tune exactly matches what he is trying to commit to paper. A text forms in his head, and he starts to sing the tune, with his own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete.” For fans of lost and found, feminism, and recovered art.
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Fables by Sarah Goldstein
Pub Date: May 30, 2011
Publisher: Tarpaulin Sky Press
ISBN: 978-0982541661, Paperback, $14
Fables is a series of short and simply written insights about a fabled new world. Goldstein lightly treads up and down the spectrum of delightfully playful to hopelessly grim via vivacious and unsettling possibilities. Two of my favorite mini-tales: 1. three girls long to be and do become mermaids; 2. the narrator is hiding in a sunless, foggy swamp and sees a terrifying image, the narrator’s “jaw shakes to remember it.” An important glimpse into contemporary literature, which blends a new subtle style with both nature and the relatable subversive. For fans of Brothers Grimm, Angela Carter, and César Aira.
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Sensation by Nick Mamatas
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 978-1604863543, Paperback, $14.95
Mamatas’ third book leaves the reader floundering in details of a story whose main crux rests on the reality of a sub-reality, a simulacrum, of wasps and spiders with plans of overthrowing the upper crust of society. Mamatas’ writing makes all the bizarre details and series of events palatable with a conversational and fluid style. This is easily a top-notch, post-pulp, post-fallout breezy read. For fans of Philip K. Dick, Terry Bison and Disinformation.
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Netsuke by Rikki Ducornet
Pub Date: May 3, 2011
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 978-1566892537, Paperback, $14.95
Not for the easily offended, Netsuke is the tale of a wayward psychoanalyst who has sex with his patients. Ducornet is a very good writer, and she crafts a marvelous and disturbing story. Most troubling, for me, was the relationship between the analyst and his wife (“When the very air within one’s marriage grows thin and dim, there is nothing to do but set out to find a richer, brighter air”). If you can stomach the bleak view of intimacy (“A moment’s bliss and then: the mule brays”), this novel is amazing. For fans of Chuck Palahniuk.
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Leche by R. Zamora Linmark
Pub Date: April 12, 2011 (originally May, 2011)
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 978-1566892544, Paperback, $15.95
In Leche, the protagonist, Vince, returns to the Philippines after thirteen years in the United States. Once back in Manila, he wanders through a series of misadventures involving sex, politics, and the haunting memories of his childhood. Amidst the narrative are foreboding ‘tourist tips’ (“Fight leptospirosis: do not wade in flood water; it might be teeming with the bacterial disease transmitted from the urine of infected rats”) and Vince’s acerbic postcards. For fans of international fiction.
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Black Swan by Chris Knopf
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
Publisher: The Permanent Press
ISBN: 978-1579622169, Hardcover, $28
First Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s compelling take on probability and economics, then a Natalie Portman movie, and now the new Sam Acquillo Hamptons mystery – Black Swans are everywhere! It’s been two years since the last Acquillo novel; Black Swan is the fifth book in the series. This time around, we find Sam, his mutt called Eddie van Halen, and his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, sailing from Maine to the Hamptons. Of course, they’re forced off course by a storm and end up on the wealthy Long Island enclave of Fishers Island, where they’re drawn into another murder case. Knopf doesn’t introduce anything radical or new to the genre, but he takes us for a hell of a ride. For fans of Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler.
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For more information about any of these titles, please contact info(at)heysmallpress.org
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.