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In Gail Honeyman’s captivating debut novel, we meet Eleanor Oliphant, a 30-year-old single woman working at a downtown design firm in Glasgow, Scotland. This might seem like the perfect setting for a saucy lifestyle, but Eleanor is less Carrie Bradshaw and more Sophia Petrillo of “The Golden Girls.”

From the outside, Eleanor’s regimented and lonely life—which includes sensible, black Velcro shoes and lots of vodka—might be construed as depressing and that of an outcast. But this is where Honeyman proves us wrong. For all her awkwardness and complete lack of friends, Eleanor is anything but sad or apologetic. Eleanor, in fact, is fine, and sometimes even shockingly hilarious in how she perceives the world.

A change is due, however, when two unexpected incidents force Eleanor to mingle with the rest of the population. First, a love interest, in the form of a musician named Johnnie Lomond, jump-starts her fashion and vanity sensibilities. Second, Raymond, the nerdy IT guy at work, pulls her into various social obligations, despite her best efforts to avoid them.

Hesitant at first, Eleanor eventually finds these interactions to be comforting and full of hope. But old demons are hard to shake, and Eleanor crashes hard into her old ways as she suddenly decides that joy and friendships are not things she deserves.

Honeyman includes some horrific details that make up Eleanor’s past, but somehow they never feel burdening or despairing. Ultimately, this is a feel-good story that will make readers laugh and cheer for Eleanor as she learns that the past doesn’t dictate the future, and that happiness can be hers. This is a must-read for those who love characters with quirks.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Gail Honeyman, author of the 2017 breakout debut, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Gail Honeyman’s captivating debut novel, we meet Eleanor Oliphant, a 30-year-old single woman working at a downtown design firm in Glasgow, Scotland. This might seem like the perfect setting for a saucy lifestyle, but Eleanor is less Carrie Bradshaw and more Sophia Petrillo of “The Golden Girls.” From the outside, Eleanor’s regimented and lonely […]

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the inspiration behind the title of Rakesh Satyal’s second novel, No One Can Pronounce My Name. Having grown up with a name that can be a tongue twister for white Americans, Satyal understands the bewilderment and frustration of his Indian-American characters all too well. Drawing on his own experiences in Middle America, Satyal follows up his award-winning debut, Blue Boy, with an extraordinarily compassionate work of fiction.

Taking readers into the suburbs of Ohio, Satyal chooses an otherwise unremarkable setting to tell a story that is anything but. He introduces us to Harit, a middle-aged bachelor who ineptly works in a department store by day and dresses up in his deceased sister’s sari at night. We also meet Ranjana, a stifled mother who secretly reads romantic thrillers and dreams of publishing her own stories while worrying her husband is having an affair. Finally, there is Prashant, a Princeton student who is struggling with unrequited longing for an Indian classmate, not to mention his desire to switch his major from chemistry to English literature, but he fears disappointing his parents.

At first, these three strangers’ stories are separate, united only by the common thread of their mutual isolation. Geography, race and culture alienate them from the people around them, but even worse, it has estranged them from their own selves. However, their paths gradually intersect, resulting in relationships that force them to throw open the shutters on their sheltered lives and hearts.

Ambitious in scope, No One Can Pronounce My Name dares to tackle life’s biggest questions, irrespective of nationality. Through a successful blend of pathos and humor, Satyal bravely explores themes of intimacy, identity and sexuality, asking his characters—and his readers—to closely examine the inalienable qualities that make us all human. With emotionally charged prose, he masterfully depicts the modern-day immigrant experience in a manner that is both deeply personal and universally relatable, transforming the foreign into the familiar.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Rakesh Satyal for No One Can Pronounce My Name.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Drawing on his own experiences in Middle America, Rakesh Satyal follows up his award-winning debut, Blue Boy, with an extraordinarily compassionate work of fiction.

Neanderthal kills bison. Neanderthal eats bison. Bear eats bison carcass. Birds clean carcass. Worms spread carcass remains. Rain washes remains into river. Algae grows, fed by decomposing bison. River fish eats algae. All life is connected.

Girl knows this cycle well. One of the last Neanderthals, Girl understands that every step of a hunt affects not only her family but also the animals that surround them. They, too, are animals, and they have respect for their role in the cycle.

In the present day, archaeologist Rosamund Gale believes Neanderthals recognized their interconnectivity, but the scientific world isn’t buying into her ideas. It’s a thrilling moment, then, when Rose uncovers Neanderthal and human skeletons lying side by side. They’re positioned as though the two died staring into one another’s eyes.

Modern humans cling to the idea that Neanderthals were a lesser species, and that’s why Homo sapiens prevailed. Rose is convinced her discovery not only places the two in the same time period, but also suggests Neanderthals even interacted with humans.

In The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron expertly intertwines Girl’s and Rose’s stories. Though they are separated by 40,000 years and exist in almost wholly separate worlds, the women are bonded. They face their bodies’ sexual maturation and capability to create life. They’re challenged by the expectations and limitations of being a woman in their respective times. In turn, Cameron challenges the reader to consider his or her own existence. This is an engaging tale that celebrates the search for life’s meaning and its quotidian nature.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron expertly intertwines Girl’s and Rose’s stories. Though they are separated by 40,000 years and exist in almost wholly separate worlds, the women are bonded. They face their bodies’ sexual maturation and capability to create life. They’re challenged by the expectations and limitations of being a woman in their respective times. In turn, Cameron challenges the reader to consider his or her own existence. This is an engaging tale that celebrates the search for life’s meaning and its quotidian nature.

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Fredrik Backman’s heralded debut novel, A Man Called Ove, was a surprise bestseller that rose steadily in worldwide sales after its initial rejection by all but one publisher. Beartown is Backman’s fourth novel, the tale of the eponymous village on the edge of a forest—probably in Backman’s native Sweden—where ice hockey is the favored sport. Actually, it’s the only sport. Hockey is what keeps this small, declining community alive, especially this year, when the junior team is headed for the national semifinals.

The team revolves around Kevin, its 17-year-old star who got his first hockey stick when he was 3. He’s surrounded by a loyal band of teammates, each of whom would do anything for their captain. Backman deftly portrays how all of Beartown is invested in the future of the hockey club, and this loyalty is reflected in the lives of the general manager and the club’s coaches.

Peter is the GM, an ex-professional player who returned to Beartown with his wife, Kira, and their two children after a brief NHL career in Canada. Sune, his childhood mentor and now the A-team coach, is about to be fired and replaced by the younger, highly competitive coach of the illustrious junior team—and as the novel opens, the club’s board is asking Peter to break the news to his friend.

This is the first hint of a schism, many years in the making, between the townsfolk: those who believe hockey’s purpose is to teach its players lifelong values, and those who view the club as the key to the town’s very survival.

This quiet, deceptively simple story suddenly implodes when Peter’s 15-year-old daughter, Maya, is raped. She said/he said arguments cause rifts between young and old, newcomers and old-timers—even between members of the same family. Backman traces the impact of this one violent act, not just on Maya and her family, but on all the inhabitants of Beartown­, and the lingering effects often ignored in the all-too-similar accounts of sexual violence we read in the news almost daily, wherever we live.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fredrik Backman’s heralded debut novel, A Man Called Ove, was a surprise bestseller that rose steadily in worldwide sales after its initial rejection by all but one publisher. Beartown is Backman’s fourth novel, the tale of the eponymous village on the edge of a forest—probably in Backman’s native Sweden—where ice hockey is the favored sport. Actually, it’s the only sport. Hockey is what keeps this small, declining community alive, especially this year, when the junior team is headed for the national semifinals.

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New York City’s renaissance—safer streets, graffiti-free subways, suddenly trendy neighborhoods—has brought with it a nostalgia for grittier times. A wide range of books from Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire to Patti Smith’s Just Kids have explored the drama and poetry of New York’s so-called bad old days. John Freeman Gill’s first novel, The Gargoyle Hunters fits neatly into this subgenre. It unfolds in Manhattan during the mid-1970s when crime was rampant and New York City teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

The book revolves around 13-year-old Griffin Watts, who lives with his mother, sister and various boarders in a dilapidated Manhattan brownstone. That is, when he’s not roaming the city at night with his father, who “liberates”—steals—gargoyles and other architectural ornaments from the city’s aging but beautiful old buildings. Griffin wants so desperately to spend time with his dad that he can’t see the looming danger, both emotional and physical. Scaling a building to swipe another treasure for his dad, Griffin says, “I wasn’t sure whether I felt like a mountain climber or a marionette.”

At a deeper level, Gill—who knows the city intimately and is even a real estate columnist and editor—is wrestling with the nature of change. Cities like New York evolve (for better or worse) the same way people do, and the real danger comes when we ignore that reality. Fans of Richard Russo will appreciate the complex dynamic between needy, young Griffin and his father, whose breezy affability masks profound, even abusive, flaws.

Some of Gill’s dialogue strains to be humorous, and readers outside of New York will have to decide how interested they are in some of Gotham’s long-lost landmarks and sports stars. Overall, though, The Gargoyle Hunters is an absorbing family tale and a wise meditation on aging.

New York City’s renaissance—safer streets, graffiti-free subways, suddenly trendy neighborhoods—has brought with it a nostalgia for grittier times. A wide range of books from Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire to Patti Smith’s Just Kids have explored the drama and poetry of New York’s so-called bad old days. John Freeman Gill’s first novel, The Gargoyle Hunters fits neatly into this subgenre. It unfolds in Manhattan during the mid-1970s when crime was rampant and New York City teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

American involvement in Cambodia during the Vietnam War was often called a “sideshow.” Bombing of the countryside displaced the population and destabilized the government, which paved the way for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Music of the Ghosts by survivor Vaddey Ratner only touches on American culpability, but the grueling, heart-wrenching novel indicts any treatment of Cambodia as mere footnote.

The novel concerns a woman named Teera, who, like the author, lost her father, escaped Cambodia to America and attended Cornell. Teera returns to Cambodia to meet a man known as the Old Musician, who claims to have known her father. The Old Musician—once a pupil of Pol Pot, who was a teacher before becoming leader of the Khmer Rouge—ended up in one of the regime’s prisons, where officials tried to extract confessions to confirm their paranoia. There, the Old Musician often shared a cell with Teera’s father.

The novel thus splits in two. On the one hand are Teera’s impressions of her unknown native country. On the other are the Old Musician’s memories of life under “the Organization.”

Through Teera, Ratner seems keen to show present-day Cambodia as recovered from the war, if nothing else to offer contrast to the book’s darker chapters. Teera admits her time in America has made her a reflexive optimist, but the war keeps dimming her rose-colored glasses. The landscape is scarred by bombs. Social relations remain tense. In an unforgettable passage, Ratner describes a woman whose job is to remove mines, but she later replaces them, as otherwise she’d be out of work. Thus the never-ending parade of amputees perpetuates on Cambodia’s streets.

The novel isn’t unending desolation. On the contrary, it is often very sweet, told with a careful lyricism that sometimes gets the better of the plot. Occasionally calling to mind Things Fall Apart, another novel about collapsed societies, Music of the Ghosts evokes a world with ghosts aplenty, but less apt by Ratner’s hand to be dismissed as a sideshow.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

American involvement in Cambodia during the Vietnam War was often called a “sideshow.” Bombing of the countryside displaced the population and destabilized the government, which paved the way for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Music of the Ghosts by survivor Vaddey Ratner only touches on American culpability, but the grueling, heart-wrenching novel indicts any treatment of Cambodia as mere footnote.

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In Sara Baume’s second novel, A Line Made by Walking, we meet Frankie on the cusp of turning 26, seemingly posed for a conventional coming-of-age story—until she’s unable to swallow, hear or pull herself up off the old carpet.

Frankie, determined if nothing else, hopes to regain her footing and find some artistic inspiration by moving into her grandma’s vacant house in the Irish countryside. Solitary among the green pastures, roaming cows and plenty of dead wild things, Frankie reflects on her life and takes stock of exactly why happiness has eluded her so far.

Throughout her reverie, readers meet Frankie at different ages and phases of life, always surrounded by the loving company of family, friends and a creative community. And in each scenario, she is hopelessly incapable of dwelling in that comfort and that sense of belonging. Artists often hold a divergent view of the same world we share, and Baume takes full advantage of this ethos, using Frankie’s reflections and wavering mental health as a way to keep us guessing whether her perpetual suffering and experiments are a form of art in itself.

There is no denying that A Line Made by Walking is full of sadness and pain, but with captivating writing, a vivid rural landscape and frequent references to famous works of art, Baume creates a layered experience that leaves the reader nurtured and restored. For artists and lovers of art, this will be an extra-special treat.

 

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Sara Baume for A Line Made by Walking.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Sara Baume’s second novel, A Line Made by Walking, we meet Frankie on the cusp of turning 26, seemingly posed for a conventional coming-of-age story—until she’s unable to swallow, hear or pull herself up off the old carpet.

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Bernhard Schlink is best known for his internationally successful novel The Reader (1997), and he returns to the themes of passion and loss in The Woman on the Stairs, about a German lawyer who stumbles onto a nude painting of a woman for whom he once risked his career and who then mysteriously disappeared from his life.

When the nameless protagonist is in Sydney working on a case, he comes across a familiar painting in a local museum. Decades earlier, as a young lawyer in Frankfurt, he became entangled in an affair involving an artist, a woman named Irene and her art collector husband, who commissioned the aforementioned painting of the unfaithful Irene. Hired to mediate a series of conflicts involving damage and restoration of the canvas, the lawyer fell in love with Irene, who in turn convinced him to help her steal the painting, promising she would run away with him if they were successful. The day he helped her was the last day he saw her.

The lawyer is able to locate Irene with the help of a local detective. Living in a remote area outside of Sydney, Irene is now leading a quiet life, assisting her elderly neighbors and growing her own food. It also becomes apparent that she is quite ill. Irene’s life of passion forces the lawyer to come to terms with his own losses and to understand that many of his choices were merely reactions to the coldness that he experienced as a child.

Schlink, a professor of law in both Germany and the United States, writes with lawyerly precision, and his protagonist’s midlife search for meaning is thought-provoking and surprisingly tender, though some of the characters never fully come to life. The Woman on the Stairs will appeal to readers as an exploration of the moral ambiguities of blame and guilt and the ethical issues of ownership.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Bernhard Schlink is best known for his internationally successful novel The Reader (1997), and he returns to the themes of passion and loss in The Woman on the Stairs, about a German lawyer who stumbles onto a nude painting of a woman for whom he once risked his career and who then mysteriously disappeared from his life.

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A lawyer by profession, Phillip Lewis has spent his life and career in North Carolina, and a keen sense of familiarity is the first thing the reader notices as his debut novel, The Barrowfields, opens in the tiny Appalachian mountain town of Old Buckram.

The year is 1939 when Henry Aster is born in this inconsequential place, and he realizes it as such as soon as he teaches himself to read at a very young age. All the books in Old Buckram aren’t enough to contain Henry’s curiosity, and he awaits the day he can leave and make himself into a great writer.

Henry does leave and Henry does write, but his vow never to return home is broken when his mother takes ill. With a pregnant wife and a law degree, Henry moves back to Old Buckram and buys the hauntingly big house on the hill where the irony of his life, his law career and most importantly his unfinished book slowly start to consume him.

Growing up in the meantime is Henry’s son, also called Henry. In awe of his father and his biggest fan, Henry grows up loving all the same things—classical music, piano, books. And just like his father, he too is unable to stray far from the demons he wants to escape.

The Barrowfields is part coming-of-age story, part homecoming and part exploration of unfulfilled dreams. The setting seems both nostalgically old-fashioned and richly immediate. Lewis writes with warmth, depth and honesty about the regrets of fathers and sons and the inexorable pull of home.

A lawyer by profession, Phillip Lewis has spent his life and career in North Carolina, and a keen sense of familiarity is the first thing the reader notices as his debut novel, The Barrowfields, opens in the tiny Appalachian mountain town of Old Buckram.

When Europeans left Africa, many predicted their replacement by tyrants as bad or worse. Several nations found themselves under the thumb of a "Big Man," capricious and cruel. In his novel Taduno's Song, Nigerian author Odafe Atogun imagines such a post-colonial dystopia. Atogun also imagines efforts to resist it.

Taduno is a musician in exile from his native Nigeria. Upon his return, he finds that no one remembers him. This is fantastical, even Kafkaesque. For Taduno had been so beloved that his protest songs had almost toppled the regime. He left behind a girlfriend, Lela, kidnapped by the "gofment" and languishing in prison. He endeavors to reclaim his identity and to free Lela.

But the president has other ideas. He makes the lovers' freedom conditional upon Taduno becoming a mouthpiece for the regime. Rather as in 1984, the president expects not just obeisance, but love. When Taduno resists, he is thrown into prison and almost driven mad. Yet the brutality of his treatment only shows how fearful are his tormentors.

Taduno is thus forced to choose between his love for Lela and his love of country. Taduno yearns (as Vaclav Havel put it) to "live in truth." But he's not immune to the president's many enticements. Atogun doesn't reveal Taduno's choice until the last page of this compact, fable-like novel. But the conclusion shocks all the same.

The above comparisons to Kafka or Orwell aren't idle. Taduno's predicament is desperate. But Atogun is not without Kafka's often humane and comic touches. Like Orwell, Atogun excels in plain language, in reducing situations to their bare essentials. Yet the author resists reducing his characters to mere political symbols. They are compelling as people in their own right.

As Africa's richest country, Nigeria has lately become a cultural powerhouse. Its output runs the gamut from Nollywood films to books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And as a democracy, albeit a fragile one, it may resist the allure of its own Big Men. Atogun's novel is likely to become a small classic of protest literature. It is both a warning and a sign of hope.

When Europeans left Africa, many predicted their replacement by tyrants as bad or worse. Several nations found themselves under the thumb of a "Big Man," capricious and cruel. In his novel Taduno's Song, Nigerian author Odafe Atogun imagines such a post-colonial dystopia. Atogun also imagines efforts to resist it.

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Victor Lodato’s Edgar and Lucy is a strangely alluring saga that, with every turn of the page, lures the reader in with stunning writing and simmering tension.

The novel follows 8-year-old Edgar Allan Fini, a skinny Albino boy who is torn between loving two women in his life: his young mother, Lucy, who, while capable of motherly devotion at times, is trying to figure out her own life surrounded by various “suitors” and impaired by alcohol. Then there’s Florence, Edgar’s traditional Italian grandmother and caregiver who feels broken whenever Edgar is away. All three are bound by the loss of Lucy’s late husband, Frank Fini, who took his own life after suffering from mental illness. Still coping with grief, each member of the trio deals with Frank’s absence in different ways, and each one uses his death as a catalyst for their actions.

When Edgar disappears with a mysterious man, Lucy searches high and low for him, a quest that enraptures his suburban New Jersey hometown. The reader is thrown into the hunt as well, and suddenly, the novel’s 544 pages race by, while touching on such themes as the meaning of family and motherhood, suicide and the afterlife. This is where author Lodato’s background as a playwright becomes invaluable; the action moves with a fluid, nearly perfect pace, and readers may feel as if they are watching a play they can’t step away from.

Lodato, whose 2009 debut novel Mathilda Savitch won the PEN USA Award for Fiction, writes with clarity and punch, making this evocative tale of loss and redemption one you won’t be able to put it down.

Victor Lodato’s Edgar and Lucy is a strangely alluring saga that, with every turn of the page, lures the reader in with stunning writing and simmering tension.

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Hari Kunzru’s fifth novel, White Tears, is a time-bending mystery that focuses on America’s struggles with race and the blues music that grew out of those struggles. 

Seth runs a recording studio in New York City with his best friend, Carter, who is an heir to a billion-dollar family fortune. On a walk around the city, Seth unintentionally records a chess player’s victory chants as he passes by. Upon hearing the playback, Carter becomes obsessed with the recording. While Seth only remembers hearing a snippet of song, the recording reveals five full verses. Carter pairs the vocal with a blues guitar track and tries to sell it as a long-lost recording from the 1920s by Charlie Shaw, a name he made up. When an elderly record collector forcibly pursues the offer, Seth starts to realize that he has stumbled upon a force much larger than coincidence alone. Charlie Shaw was not just someone Carter made up; he was someone trying to find Carter. When the nefarious history of Carter’s family business is revealed, Seth makes a pilgrimage to the South with Carter’s sister to piece together a ghost story and hopefully repay the family debts that have manifested as Charlie Shaw.

Kunzru’s insight into the world of audio production is as impressive as his knowledge of early-20th-century blues artists. He tackles issues such as white privilege through characters that are often less than likable and juxtaposes them with the racial violence of previous decades.

Navigating time and landscape in a way that is subtly disorienting, the novel is instantly engrossing and a definite must-read. 

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Hari Kunzru’s fifth novel, White Tears, is a time-bending mystery that focuses on America’s struggles with race and the blues music that grew out of those struggles. 

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It may not be your biggest fear, but it’s probably in the top five: being buried alive. As a rule, we don’t really celebrate our miners much while they’re around, but when a disaster happens, we’re all over them: the movie The 33, about the San José Mine disaster in Chile; the folk song “The Ballad of Springhill,” about the 1958 Nova Scotia cave-in; the Bee Gees’ first pop hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” about an imaginary tragedy; Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”

Inspired by the notorious Sunshine Mine fire of 1972, novelist Kevin Canty’s The Underworld imagines life in the town from shortly before the disaster to right around the time the real healing begins. 

Somehow it seems particularly appropriate for this book to come along at a point in our national history when miners and their livelihoods are often near the center of public debate. Mining is not glamorous work, but Canty drills beneath the surface stereotype to uncover a rich vein of subterranean complexity.

David Wright, the book’s primary protagonist among a vivid ensemble cast, comes from a mining family that feels the impact of the disaster keenly. Like many from the company town, he’s ambivalent about his home, but he’s taking his first tentative steps to break its gravitational bonds, distinguishing him from most of his peers. It would be easy—and wrong—to portray him as either victor or victim, and Canty does here what he did so well in earlier novels such as Winslow in Love and Everything: He plants himself at the corner of Human and Hero and describes what he sees, a journalist of the soul. 

Canty’s publisher cites Russell Banks and Richard Ford as his esteemed literary antecedents, but Canty’s care with prose recalls Raymond Carver, and his empathy for the common man extends a bloodline that reaches back to the likes of John Steinbeck and William Saroyan. Like his New Yorker colleague John McPhee, Canty has a gift for turning the commonplace into the extraordinary by asking the right questions and allowing the truth to unfold.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It may not be your biggest fear, but it’s probably in the top five: being buried alive. As a rule, we don’t really celebrate our miners much while they’re around, but when a disaster happens, we’re all over them: the movie The 33, about the San José Mine disaster in Chile; the folk song “The Ballad of Springhill,” about the 1958 Nova Scotia cave-in; the Bee Gees’ first pop hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” about an imaginary tragedy; Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John.”

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