Carla Jean Whitley

FictionSatire

The ultimate pageant mom

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Power comes from being in the limelight. That’s the lesson Miranda Ford takes away from her second-runner-up win at the 18th annual Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant. As the winner and first-runner-up involuntarily step aside, Miranda becomes queen—a position she’s determined never to lose.

Two decades, a husband and three children later, Miranda Ford Miller wants her 9-year-old daughter, Bailey, to take center stage. Nothing will get in Miranda’s way—not Bailey’s growing disinterest in pageants, husband Ray’s hectic schedule with two full-time jobs or the expenses the family’s 14 credit cards can barely accommodate.

Or will it? In the rip-roaring Pretty Ugly, Emmy-nominated writer and producer Kirker Butler writes of the Southern child-pageant circuit with all the acerbic, snarky wit he’s brought to shows such as “Family Guy.”

Butler turns a gimlet eye to each family member’s motivation and conflict. Miranda pours everything into Bailey’s career, including purchasing a gym membership complete with private pole-dancing lessons. However, Bailey is ready to retire from the pageant circuit, and so she sabotages her mom’s efforts by binge-eating. Ray’s nursing and hospice jobs allow him easy access to all the pills he can pop, as well as a young mistress. Miranda’s mom, seventh-grade-educated Joan, homeschools the boys to save them from the horrors of public education. Miranda, meanwhile, is sure that the daughter she now carries will be the answer to everything.

Butler’s debut novel is a smart, sarcastic portrayal of a dysfunctional American family—one that’s sure to have readers eager for more.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Power comes from being in the limelight. That’s the lesson Miranda Ford takes away from her second-runner-up win at the 18th annual Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant. As the winner and first-runner-up involuntarily step aside, Miranda becomes queen—a position she’s determined never to lose.
FictionDebut Fiction

Looking down the road not taken

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Kitty Miller is living the dream. OK, so maybe her life isn’t picture-perfect according to society’s standards; it’s 1962, and she’s an unmarried woman. But after a failed long-term relationship, Kitty has come to accept that life isn’t always meant to be as we imagine. Instead of being married with kids, she and her best friend, Frieda, own a bookshop in Denver. They’re not rich—in fact, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet—but the pair is so close they refer to one another as Sister. It’s a good life.

Or is Katharyn Anderson living the dream? Although Katharyn once ran a successful business with Frieda, she has traded the nickname Kitty for the more grown-up Katharyn, and ceded her independence for a suburban home, husband and children. It seems she has it all.

In The Bookseller, debut novelist Cynthia Swanson portrays one character in two distinctive lives. When she goes to sleep each night, Kitty leaves her world as a bookseller and slides almost seamlessly into her dream life as Katharyn, aka Mrs. Anderson. But the more time Kitty spends in this other life, the clearer its imperfections become. Although she has the love of her life and a beautiful family, she has lost a lot along the way. 

“Living,” Swanson writes, “is not made up of details, but rather of highlights.” In The Bookseller, she combines the two to answer the question we so often ask ourselves: What if?

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kitty Miller is living the dream. OK, so maybe her life isn’t picture-perfect according to society’s standards; it’s 1962, and she’s an unmarried woman. But after a failed long-term relationship, Kitty has come to accept that life isn’t always meant to be as we imagine. Instead of being married with kids, she and her best friend, Frieda, own a bookshop in Denver. They’re not rich—in fact, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet—but the pair is so close they refer to one another as Sister. It’s a good life.
FictionPopular Fiction

Striking out and shaking up an era of London showbiz

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Nick Hornby is an expert story-teller who reveals the nuances of his characters’ lives, and in the process, allows readers to understand a world unlike their own. His expert lens is most often trained on male characters, although 2001’s How to Be Good is an exception, and the male protagonists in 2009’s Juliet, Naked, share pages with a strong woman who goes beyond love interest.

Hornby’s latest novel, Funny Girl, treads in less familiar territory. Not only is it centered on a woman, it’s also set in the past. He has entrenched his female protagonist in a man’s world: that of comedic actors in the 1960s. Today, Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler stand out among their peers; in the world of Funny Girl’s Barbara Parker, Lucille Ball is the aspiring actress’ only role model.

But Barbara is determined to move ahead, no matter the cost. After earning the title of Miss Blackpool 1964, she realizes the crown is only a guarantee that she’ll be stuck in Blackpool indefinitely. So Barbara packs her bags, moves to London and ultimately transforms herself into Sophie Straw, a darling of the silver screen.

The novel feels bloated at times, as it traverses decades of Sophie’s eventful life. But as Hornby chronicles Sophie’s development as an actress and the ways class and age influence life and love, he reveals a portrait of an era—and of a woman crafting a lasting legacy.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Nick Hornby is an expert story-teller who reveals the nuances of his characters’ lives, and in the process, allows readers to understand a world unlike their own. His expert lens is most often trained on male characters, although 2001’s How to Be Good is an exception, and the male protagonists in 2009’s Juliet, Naked, share pages with a strong woman who goes beyond love interest.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Iconic music, tumultuous times

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

A moment can change everything. Nat Weary learns that in a hurry. One minute, he was a World War II veteran on bended knee, proposing to his sweetheart during a concert in their hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. The next, Weary spots several men armed with pipes heading toward the performer, his childhood friend Nat “King” Cole.

Before his girl can utter a response, Weary leaps from the auditorium’s colored balcony and runs on stage to defend his friend. By cracking one of the men over the head with a microphone stand, Weary saves Nat’s life—and ensures he’ll spend the next 10 years of his own in prison.

In Driving the King, gifted novelist Ravi Howard uses glimpses of Weary’s post-prison life to give weight and hope to all he lost during a decade locked up. Weary finds a second chance and much-needed distance from Montgomery by becoming Cole’s driver and trusted friend in Los Angeles. Howard weaves historical events through this fictional retelling, using them as key plot points and context for Weary’s internal turmoil. The Montgomery bus boycott is central, and Howard also introduces readers to a young Martin Luther King Jr.

In reality, Cole never returned to perform in the South after being attacked during a 1956 performance in Birmingham and was resented by some black people for performing in front of segregated audiences (resentment that continued even after Cole revealed his financial support of the Montgomery bus boycott).

This novel follows in the thematic footsteps of Howard’s debut, Like Trees, Walking, which recounted a lynching in Mobile, Alabama. Through unfussy language and well-formed characters, Howard takes readers of all races, ages and classes into the world of pre-civil rights era black people, offering insight on and understanding of one of our country’s most tumultuous periods.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A moment can change everything. Nat Weary learns that in a hurry. One minute, he was a World War II veteran on bended knee, proposing to his sweetheart during a concert in their hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. The next, Weary spots several men armed with pipes heading toward the performer, his childhood friend Nat “King” Cole.
FictionComing of Age

Pop culture and ties that bind

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The stories we consume in youth—whether through books, television, film or song—often become the defining narrative of our lives. A shared affection draws people together, and a mention of a character or a trace of a lyric can immediately transport us to another place and time.

Throughout In Some Other World, Maybe, the driving force is the 1992 movie adaptation of the comic books Eons & Empires. Adam is dead set on getting out of his small Florida hometown, and seeing the movie with a longtime crush is one of the last memories he’ll make there. In Cincinnati, Sharon skips school so she can see the film alone—twice. Phoebe and Ollie make a trip to their suburban Chicago movie theater on their first date, and all of their friends join in. Each trip is, on the surface, a typical high school vignette.

But in the two decades that follow, Eons & Empires remains a benchmark for Adam, Sharon and Phoebe—and it becomes the tie that draws them together.

With the numerous ways the characters’ stories interact and nearly intersect, the story could have easily turned hokey. But in Shari Goldhagen’s skilled narrative, these twists reveal themselves naturally in a sort of fictional six degrees of separation.

Much history occurs during the course of In Some Other World, Maybe—with international news events cluing the reader in to how time has progressed—but the outside world isn’t really the point. As the characters grow from teenagers to confused college-age kids to more established adults, Eons & Empires serves as a touchstone for each. The result is a compelling tale that leaves readers pondering what is and, had life taken another direction, what could have been.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The stories we consume in youth—whether through books, television, film or song—often become the defining narrative of our lives. A shared affection draws people together, and a mention of a character or a trace of a lyric can immediately transport us to another place and time.
FictionDebut Fiction

Life through film

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Life may not be going according to plan for Ceinwen Reilly, but she’s determined to find the cinema-worthy thread in her 1980s Lower East Side life. That may be easier said than done, given her retail job at a vintage shop and her shabby Avenue C apartment.

But this Mississippi transplant and film buff finds the romantic in everything, from saving for a particularly stunning pair of earrings to the antics of her two male roommates. So Ceinwen is easily bewitched by her elderly neighbor Miriam’s stories of working as a seamstress in Hollywood, which inspire a search for a long-lost silent film.

Film critic and blogger (“The Self-Styled Siren”) Farran Smith Nehme packs the story with tidbits of classic movie knowledge that are sure to delight cinema lovers. Set against a backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and a down-on-its-luck neighborhood, Missing Reels offers a fresh take on the traditional coming-of-age in New York story.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Life may not be going according to plan for Ceinwen Reilly, but she’s determined to find the cinema-worthy thread in her 1980s Lower East Side life. That may be easier said than done, given her retail job at a vintage shop and her shabby Avenue C apartment.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Investigating a curious collective

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The Settlement is a community of about 100 people who live outside of the view of the rest of America, tucked away on a patch of land near Egypt, Maine. This curious collective, the focus of Carolyn Chute’s latest novel, Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves, is not altogether unlike the one inhabited by Chute herself. The author and her husband live off the grid in Parsonfield, Maine, where they run the 2nd Maine Militia and rely on the community around them for sustenance.

In Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves, the story pings from one character to another so often that icons and an appendix help readers keep tabs on who’s who. Those notations are also a helpful reference for those who have read Chute’s previous novel in this planned “four-ojilly,” The School on Heart’s Content Road, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Those who haven’t yet dived in shouldn’t worry, though; in a brief foreword, Chute notes that each of these four books will stand alone, with some characters playing more prominent roles in one story than another.

Ivy Morelli takes center stage here. She is determined to uncover the truth about charges of physical and sexual abose that tipsters have lobbed at Gordon St. Onge, the charismatic heart of the Settlement. The 20-something reporter tails St. Onge with dogged determination, noting his every move as well as details about who he’s with, what he’s wearing, even whether or not his companions are buckled up as she tails them in a car. 

Chute’s odd cadence makes for a memorable read, her stories unfolding like a train of thought. Fans of the author’s previous work will find much to like here, as Chute dives into St. Onge’s mysterious dealings while leaving plenty to ponder in the series’ two forthcoming books.

The Settlement is a community of about 100 people who live outside of the view of the rest of America, tucked away on a patch of land near Egypt, Maine. This curious collective, the focus of Carolyn Chute’s latest novel, Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves, is not altogether unlike the one inhabited by Chute herself. The author and her husband live off the grid in Parsonfield, Maine, where they run the 2nd Maine Militia and rely on the community around them for sustenance.

FictionDebut Fiction

A gamer’s need for escape

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Who is Sean Phillips? And how did he end up like this?

That’s the central conceit of John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van, a compact but wide-ranging novel that follows Sean’s development from unpopular teenager to reclusive adult.

Sean is the founder of Focus Games, and while he has several works to his credit, he’s best known for Trace Italian. The concept for the game came to him while he was hospitalized after suffering a gunshot wound as a teen. The noise surrounding Sean—both in his head and coming from an endless stream of doctors, social workers and his well-meaning parents—was difficult to block out. To escape, Sean retreated into himself, envisioning a desolate Midwestern landscape and a treasure that beckons.

Upon leaving the hospital, Sean creates a roleplay-by-mail game, which allows him a livelihood even while he hides his disfigured face from the world. Players select their moves and send Sean directives in letters, carefully considering their options even as they become increasingly entangled in the fictional world of his imagination.

Fans of other game-oriented novels, such as Ready Player One, may be drawn to this intriguing tale, as it too focuses on an enthralling game and how it affects both its players and creator. But the parallels stop there. Perhaps mimicking Trace Italian, first-time novelist and musician Darnielle (Mountain Goats) carries readers through a labyrinthine unveiling of events. As he writes, Darnielle peels back layers to reveal Sean’s character, the game’s play and the storylines that have developed around his game. The result is a tale as complex as the songs for which Darnielle is loved.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Who is Sean Phillips? And how did he end up like this? That’s the central conceit of John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van, a compact but wide-ranging novel that follows -Sean’s development from unpopular teenager to reclusive adult.
NonfictionSports

Bragging rights on the gridiron

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Who cares that the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Florida State University won the 2013 Bowl Championship Series college football championship? The Southeastern Conference ran away with the previous seven consecutive titles, saw a conference member finish second in the 2013 series and pitted conference members head-to-head for the 2011 title.

Does all of this sound like a foreign language? Then proceed to the next book review. But if your knee-jerk reaction to the SEC’s accolades is to argue that your conference is unquestionably the best, then bump to the top of your reading list My Conference Can Beat Your Conference: Why the SEC Still Rules College Football by Paul Finebaum and Gene Wojciechowski.

The first chapter is enough to get an SEC fan’s adrenaline pumping as Finebaum spouts statistics and cites games and championships that support his claim of the conference’s dominance. It’s also likely to ignite the ire of fans of non-SEC teams, with the possible exception of Florida State. (The reigning national champion, Finebaum notes, isn’t a member of the SEC, but the team is closely modeled on that conference. In fact, he notes several times in the book that FSU would be a better fit in the SEC than in its current home, the Atlantic Coast Conference.)

It’s this ability to control the blood pressure of football fans that earned the then-Birmingham-based Paul Finebaum Radio Network acclaim from Sports Illustrated, garnered Finebaum a 2012 profile in the New Yorker and ultimately landed him at ESPN’s soon-to-debut SEC Network (which launches August 14, days after this book’s release). My Conference Can Beat Your Conference may, at a glance, seem like a piece of network propaganda. Though it’s certainly well timed, the book dives deeply into the details of SEC history. Finebaum doesn’t shy from the SEC’s controversies, but neither does he back down on his assertion that it stands head and shoulders above the rest of college football. 

The book’s pacing is sometimes awkward as it regularly switches between the narrative of Finebaum’s career trajectory and his analysis of recent football seasons. There may be more in-depth recollection of the 2013 college football season than anyone but a die-hard fan could care for. But die-hard fans are Finebaum’s audience, and they’ll thrill at every page of My Conference Can Beat Your Conference. It’s the perfect book to tide readers over until kickoff.

 

Carla Jean Whitley actually cares very much indeed about Florida State’s 2013 national championship; she graduated from the university with a bachelor’s in communication in 2002. But as a University of Alabama alumna (M.A. ’04), she also wholeheartedly agrees with Finebaum’s assertion that the SEC is the best.

Who cares that the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Florida State University won the 2013 Bowl Championship Series college football championship? The Southeastern Conference ran away with the previous seven consecutive titles, saw a conference member finish second in the 2013 series and pitted conference members head-to-head for the 2011 title.
FictionDebut Fiction

A 10-year-old chases her jazz club dreams

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

It’s 7 a.m. on December 23, and Madeleine Altimari is shimmying. In 30-second intervals, the girl attempts to perfect her moves, pausing in between for a quick drag from a cigarette. After each interval, she rates her work on a school-letter scale. She has yet to check off the day’s other rehearsal tasks: singing, scales, guitar.

Madeleine is two days shy of 10.

She doesn’t know it yet, but Madeleine is about to embark on one of the most sensational days of her young life. She dreams of life as a jazz singer, and after a particularly challenging day at her Philadelphia Catholic school, Madeleine will set out to make that dream a reality. She may have to break some rules and step on some toes in the process, but Madeline doesn’t mind; her heart is set on song.

Across town, Madeleine’s fifth-grade teacher, Sarina Greene, is preparing a special day for her students and anticipating a dinner party that will reunite her with high school friends. Meanwhile, Jack Lorca faces a fine that could lead to the demise of the Cat’s Pajamas, the legendary jazz club he inherited from his father. As the minutes tick past, their individual paths become intertwined.

2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, the debut novel by One Story editor Marie-Helene Bertino, chronicles the ordinary moments that add up to one memorable day in the lives of Madeleine and those around her. Bertino’s prose easily dips in and out of the lives of her characters as she weaves them together, including insight into secondary figures at each turn. With vivid description and great character development, Bertino brings Philadelphia and its inhabitants to life in an unforgettable tale.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s 7 a.m. on December 23, and Madeleine Altimari is shimmying. In 30-second intervals, the girl attempts to perfect her moves, pausing in between for a quick drag from a cigarette. After each interval, she rates her work on a school-letter scale. She has yet to check off the day’s other rehearsal tasks: singing, scales, guitar.
FictionDebut Fiction

Expectation vs. reality

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Emily Gould has built a career as a blogger for her own Emily Magazine and Gawker, as well as the part owner of Emily Books. She is also author of the memoir, And the Heart Says Whatever. With her first novel, Friendship, Gould turns her eye toward the spectacle of female adulthood friendships.

For years, Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have faced New York City together. They met while working in low-level publishing jobs. But they became best friends when Amy moved into her tiny Brooklyn apartment below the BQE, and Bev stopped by to keep her from feeling lonely.

In the years since, the differences between the women’s childhoods and current goals have become more noticeable. Amy, an East-Coast girl, became temporarily prominent while blogging for a celebrity gossip site. Although she has since been fired and moved on to other work—work she considers beneath her—Amy still expects a career that will return her to the spotlight.

Midwesterner Bev, on the other hand, has found herself in a string of unsatisfying temp jobs. Her primary goal each day is to find enough down time to talk to Amy on Google Chat. That also happens to be Amy’s biggest dream for Bev.

As the women make their way into their 30s, still living in tiny New York apartments and seeking something more out of work and life, their expectations become divisive. Amy can’t understand how Bev’s Midwestern upbringing influences the decisions she makes now. Bev can’t convince Amy that sometimes she just needs to accept a job with a living wage, rather than worrying about whether it will bring her the media attention Amy believes she deserves.

In Friendship, Emily Gould examines how adulthood and maturity—or a lack thereof—influence female friendships. The dialogue is snappy and true to two still-early career women. Ultimately, Gould’s work is an exploration of how people change with age, and how that affects the relationships and people around them.

Emily Gould has built a career as a blogger for her own Emily Magazine and Gawker, as well as the part owner of Emily Books. She is also author of the memoir, And the Heart Says Whatever. With her first novel, Friendship, Gould turns her eye toward the spectacle of female adulthood friendships.
FictionDebut Fiction

To win back a lost love

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Richard Haddon has screwed up royally with his wife, and he’ll do anything to get her back.

Richard, a British contemporary artist, met his near-perfect French wife while enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. From the moment he spotted Anne-Laure de Bourigeaud, Richard was convinced that she was the woman for him. Shortly after they married, Anne became pregnant, and their relationship served as the inspiration for one of Richard’s greatest paintings, “The Blue Bear.”

But seven years have passed, and while Richard hasn’t fallen out of love with his wife, his gaze has certainly wandered. So too has his focus on art; while Richard once used his art as a statement, he has now resorted to commercial paintings—and has sold “The Blue Bear,” which once meant so much to the couple. As his first solo show opens in a Parisian gallery, the distance between Richard and Anne is noticeable, although he’s the only half of the couple who knows the full extent of his dalliance. Anne seems to be patiently waiting for her husband to return his focus to their marriage.

When she uncovers Richard’s relationship with an American, though, Anne sends her husband packing and resolves not to let her sadness show. Richard, meanwhile, is determined to demonstrate his remorse and regret in the hope of recovering what the couple once had.

The basic plotline of this story—a couple falls in love, one cheats and then they struggle to determine what comes next—isn’t unusual. But in I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, first-time novelist Courtney Maum has crafted the story of a relationship so believable, so realistic that readers will be left wondering until the last minute whether the couple will reunite.

Maum, whose years in France (and marriage to a Frenchman) color the book, is a brand strategist and humor columnist. But the razor-sharp writing and character insights of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You suggest that readers have much to look forward to from this talented storyteller.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Richard Haddon has screwed up royally with his wife, and he’ll do anything to get her back.

Richard, a British contemporary artist, met his near-perfect French wife while enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. From the moment he spotted Anne-Laure de Bourigeaud, Richard was convinced that she was the woman for him.

FictionDebut Fiction

Boutique bonds

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

In Vintage, author and secondhand store enthusiast Susan Gloss weaves together the lives of three very different women in a story filled with humor and heart.

Violet Turner, the 30-something proprietor of Hourglass Vintage, has a passion for making something out of the hand life has dealt. Growing up in small-town Wisconsin, she was always a bit offbeat but found safety in dating a popular boy. With dogged determination, Violet continued to live the life she thought she should live. But when she realized that she wanted more from life and that her husband was a good-for-nothing alcoholic, Violet took off for the state capital and a new life.

That’s exactly what she’s found in Madison, with her vintage-focused consignment shop drawing clientele from the university and the city’s eclectic professional community alike. It also draws in 18-year-old high-school graduate April Morgan, who is five months pregnant and is selling the vintage wedding dress she won’t need after breaking things off with her fiancé. April seems an unlikely companion for Violet, but regular customer Betsy, an elderly woman whose friendship with Violet is nearly familial, sees that the pair needs each other. Indian immigrant Amithi Singh also finds comfort in the shop and its proprietor, following a betrayal that has left her questioning her adult life.

Vintage is a sweet and comforting debut that celebrates the families we make. It will remind readers not only that they are never alone, but also that happiness often returns when it seems all hope is gone.

In Vintage, author and secondhand store enthusiast Susan Gloss weaves together the lives of three very different women in a story filled with humor and heart.

Violet Turner, the 30-something proprietor of Hourglass Vintage, has a passion for making something out of the hand life has dealt.

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