Carla Jean Whitley

Honor Tait was a Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent during the first half of the 20th century, renowned for her incisive journalism but also recognized for her beauty and romantic entanglements (both real and rumored). Tamara Sim has been asked to write a 4,000-word profile of Honor, who’s now nearing 80, for a highbrow magazine. Too bad Tamara is much more comfortable composing catty 200-word captions and snarky lists of celebrity gaffes. One of Honor’s pieces was among the texts Tamara was to study in college; Tamara didn’t finish the reading. 

When Tamara arrives at Honor’s flat for their interview, it’s hate at first sight. The younger writer is 45 minutes late and clearly hasn’t read much of Honor’s work—not even the forthcoming book that’s the impetus for the interview. When Tamara finally gets Honor talking, Tamara spends most of the interview doodling her interpretations, factual or not, of the scene before her.

As the two women craft their current assignments—Tamara’s on Honor, Honor’s coda to her Pulitzer piece—British novelist Annalena McAfee illustrates the contrast between their work. Though Honor is writing about experiences decades in the past, she relies on fact and reporting. Tamara’s ever-changing narrative of her experiences with Honor becomes a different story every time Tamara puts pen to paper.

The Spoiler recounts the interaction between these women, opening with their disastrous first interview and then following both as they process the thoughts and challenges it instigated. Honor reflects on a career gone by, but Tamara worries that she doesn’t have enough information for a lively story after the initial botched conversation. So she crashes a supper with Honor’s closest confidantes, attends a lecture Honor gives (but fails to take notes on the content), spends days outside of Honor’s house and then follows her on excursions across town, seeking a sexy, scandalous angle for her piece.

A journalist herself, McAfee creates a complete picture of the world in which the two writers exist, giving life to the newspaper office where Tamara works four days a week, and detailing every picture and trinket in Honor’s home. And by the time the twists of this story are untangled, Honor’s and Tamara’s lives are inextricably interwoven.

The Gulf of Mexico is about to birth a storm, and it’s headed straight for Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. But Hurricane Katrina’s approach isn’t the first thing on teenage Esch Batiste’s mind; she’s more concerned about her newly discovered pregnancy and the baby’s father, Manny, who is dating another girl. Her brother Skeetah, on the other hand, is fixated on his pit bull China’s newborn puppies. If they live, the dogs may provide money for the Batiste children, who are living in poverty and fending for themselves as their father drinks to dull the pain of their mother’s death.

There’s an unmistakable contrast between Skeetah’s love for China and the indifference of Manny toward Esch. Manny dotes on his girlfriend but approaches Esch for sex; he pushes her away when she seeks emotional connection. Esch repeatedly draws parallels between her situation and her assigned school reading about the mythological Medea, whose husband Jason betrays her. Manny refuses her, but Esch finds support from her brothers, her father and their friends. “This baby got plenty daddies,” one boy says.

It would be easy for the events of Salvage the Bones to take on a pitying, cloying quality. But Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward’s second novel is a pitch-perfect account of struggle and community in the rural South. No doubt Ward’s own upbringing, in DeLisle, Mississippi, factored into the landscape she paints. The fictional Bois Sauvage is based on Ward’s hometown, where the population is mostly poor, black and uneducated. Ward herself broke out of that cycle with help from her mother’s employer, who paid for her private-school education.

The fictional world Ward creates sings with the speech of uneducated but wise people without stepping into caricature dialect. Though the characters in Salvage the Bones face down Hurricane Katrina, the story isn’t really about the storm. It’s about people facing challenges, and how they band together to overcome adversity.

Jesse Bennett’s life changes dramatically during the summer she’s 13. It’s a difficult age for anyone. But life becomes especially difficult for Jesse when she returns home one day to find neighbors gathered outside her house in the British city of Hull. Her mother has attempted suicide, and after she returns from a stay in a mental institution, the family moves to the nearby seaside town of Midham.

It’s a chance for her mother to start anew in the fresh country air, and Jesse also seizes the chance to recreate herself. She has always been an outcast at school, but in Midham that changes. While waiting for her father outside the town co-op on a rainy day, Jesse meets Amanda, a beautiful, older and clearly popular girl. When Amanda invites Jesse to stand under her umbrella, Jesse is immediately taken with her. She’s even more excited when she meets Tracey, a girl in her own grade, and realizes that the two are sisters, granting Jesse regular access to Amanda.

Another Life Altogether reveals Jesse’s struggle with the challenges of being a teenager: dealing with her parents—particularly dramatic, given her mother’s mental illness; fitting in at school; and coming to terms with her sexuality. And Jesse is often lost to a fantasy world where she and Amanda are romantically involved—a desire she can’t admit, for fear that such a revelation would cost her the social standing she has worked so hard to achieve.

With the release of Another Life Altogether, author Elaine Beale turns from the murder mystery genre of her first effort (1997’s Murder in the Castro, now out of print) to an exploration of psychological development. Though there’s plenty of action in the novel, it is Beale’s examination of Jesse’s relationship with a cast of quirky family members and classmates that propels the worthy story forward. 

Ellie Lerner is devastated when her best friend Lucy is murdered while walking her eight-year-old daughter Sophie to school. Ellie immediately flies from America to London, helps Lucy’s husband plan the funeral and tends to Sophie, her goddaughter who has fallen silent after witnessing her mother’s brutal death.

As she copes with the loss of her best friend, Ellie attaches herself to Sophie, clinging to the child for purpose and meaning in the wake of her best friend’s murder.

Ellie and Sophie find escape in literature, as they read a chapter of The Secret Garden each night before bed. Ellie feels about books the way some do about cooking: sharing them with others is an act of service and love. It’s the act of reading that convinces Sophie to break nearly a week of silence.

But in the process, Ellie neglects her own marriage. There’s already distance between her and Phillip, an emotional remoteness that began when their own child died in utero, and now Ellie adds physical distance to the equation.

Julie Buxbaum crafts a tale filled with the nuance of broken relationships, just as she did in her debut novel The Opposite of Love. And though her first novel was widely acclaimed, Buxbaum’s writing has clearly matured. Her characters possess emotional depth that’s evident from page one, and her storytelling is more streamlined and precise.

While The Opposite of Love danced on the edges of chick lit, After You steps toward literary fiction. It’s a promising move for a young author who sidesteps the sophomore slump.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama.

Harvard psychology professor Dr. Alice Howland is only 50 years old when she begins to experience frequent and unusual memory loss. A BlackBerry forgotten at dinner, a mysterious item on her to-do list and an out-of-town conference she forgot to attend all make Alice wonder what's happening to her.

First-time novelist Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice before the book was picked up by Pocket Books. But the knowledge she has gained from earning a doctorate in neuroscience and serving as an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association, shines throughout this debut, a realistic portrayal of an intelligent, independent woman facing early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

It's painful to witness scene after scene of forgetting, particularly as Alice awaits and then denies her diagnosis. But through those incidents, Alice's plight evokes the reader's sympathy and understanding. Still Alice tracks her mental decline over a two-year period, revealing how early-onset Alzheimer's affects Alice's relationships, career and sense of self. During the disease's rapid progression, she becomes more and more dependent on her husband and three grown children to guide her through each day. Once-mundane tasks become to-do list fodder. Alice makes notes to remind herself to take medication every morning and evening. She's even prone to forget to teach classes.

Alice discovers who she is and what her relationships mean as the disease advances. Memories fall away, but the heart remains. And though the novel is heavy on explanation of the disease's effects, Genova writes in clear language that even the least medically inclined will understand.

Those who have lost a loved one to Alzheimer's will find particular comfort in this sensitive tale. The novel portrays both the patient's and the family's struggle with Alzheimer's disease in a more heart-rending way than medical literature ever could.

Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama.