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The Hold List: Sophomore stunners

Feature by the editors of BookPage

We’re turning our attention to successful sophomore titles that soared over the high bars set by their authors’ first books.

The Lawrence Browne Affair

Cat Sebastian‘s first romance novel, The Soldier’s Scoundrel, had a pitch-perfect sense of the English Regency period and the dangers of being a gay man in that era. But in her second book, The Lawrence Browne Affair, Sebastian takes the queerness that has always lurked behind within gothic fiction and thrusts it fully into the light. Lawrence Browne, Earl of Radnor, is convinced that he’s going insane due to his difficult family history, his attraction to men and the panic attacks he experiences. When a well-meaning vicar hires him a secretary, Lawrence thinks it will be easy to scare him away with his supposedly “mad” behavior. But Georgie Turner is not a normal secretary: He’s a con man looking for a place to lie low, and the only thing that scares him about Lawrence is the horrendous state of his financial accounts. Sebastian’s wry wit is on full display, and her ability to make the thrills of initial attraction palpably real gives this romance all the wonder of an unexpected second chance.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

Transcendent Kingdom

As a book review editor, to admit that you haven’t read that novel that everyone else and their mother have raved about—well, it doesn’t feel great. For a time, Yaa Gyasi’s bestselling, universally heralded 2016 debut novel, Homegoing, was the source of one of my primary shame spirals. But then September 2020 rolled around and with it her follow-up, Transcendent Kingdom, a tremendous novel of heart, mind and soul. It’s about Gifty, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who grows up in an all-white evangelical Christian community in Alabama, and grapples with the complexities of her family alongside her own experience of moving from the mysteries of faith to the vast, limitless discourse presented by her career as a neuroscientist. As widely as these questions range, the novel is extremely tight, even tidy, and that kind of storytelling is precisely the way to my heart. It sent me hurrying to Homegoing, finally ready for anything and everything Gyasi has to offer.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Stray

Stephanie Danler’s debut novel, Sweetbitter, became a bestseller and was adapted into a television series, launching her career into the stratosphere. Her second book, Stray: A Memoir, published in May 2020, after the U.S. had gone into lockdown but before the publishing world had pivoted to remote book events, so it didn’t receive the same attention as Sweetbitter—despite being emotionally potent, beautifully written and gripping to boot. As Stray opens, Danler has moved back to California, where she grew up with parents who were beautiful, unstable addicts. The treacherous landscape of Laurel Canyon kicks up memories of her painful past while an affair dissolves in the present, and as she weaves between the two, trauma takes on a dreamy, phantasmagoric quality, as ubiquitous as the heat. As far as second books go, this one is a mature achievement. And if you have a thing for devastating dysfunctional family memoirs, Stray can hang with the best of them.

—Christy, Associate Editor

I’ll Give You the Sun

The first thing to know about I’ll Give You the Sun is that it was published four years after Jandy Nelson‘s debut, which is an eternity in YA publishing, where authors typically write a book a year. The second is that, perhaps because Nelson took that time, it’s extraordinary on every level. It’s full of sentences that seem as though Nelson came to an intersection while writing and instead of deciding to turn or go straight, she levitated her car and flew to the moon. And then there’s its structure: two narrators, twins Noah and Jude, and two timelines, when they’re 13 and when they’re 16, before and after a tragedy that altered the paths of their lives. Breathtaking is a word critics like, and it comes close to describing the experience of reading this book. But it’s more like the way a roller coaster feels once your stomach is back where your stomach belongs and you’re careening down the track, relieved and ecstatic to still be alive, nearly weightless, almost in flight.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

The Days of Abandonment

In the decade between Elena Ferrante’s first and second novels, her debut was made into a movie, and still no one knew her identity. During that time, certain literary circles obsessed over knowing who Ferrante really was, but perhaps if they gave The Days of Abandonment a closer reading, they would discover how irrelevant and destructive such a question is. Following a woman, Olga, in the aftermath of her husband’s desertion and infidelity, this sophomore novel shows how closely and precariously identity and reality are linked. We see Olga’s life crumble until she finally reaches a nadir from which the only way forward is up. Being confined inside a narrator’s thoughts during a time of such catastrophe and despair is a specialty of Ferrante’s, and here her powers reach a goosebump-inducing, worldview-shattering peak. While the Neapolitan novels might be considered her masterpiece, The Days of Abandonment has everything one could get from Ferrante.

—Eric, Editorial Intern

The editors of BookPage recommend successful sophomore titles that soared over the high bars set by their authors’ first books.

MemoirBlack History

Exploring the African-American Identity

Feature by Ron Wynn

Most of us who remember when state-imposed segregation was the norm rather than the exception (particularly in the South) remain amazed by the election of Barack Obama as our country’s president. Thus it’s quite appropriate that the question of racial identity and what it truly means is the dominant theme for this year’s survey of books for Black History Month.

There’s no better place to begin than the visually stunning, authoritative volume Freedom in My Heart: Voices From The United States National Slavery Museum, edited by Cynthia Jacobs Carter. With amazing, rare photographs underscoring and reaffirming tales of triumph and achievement chronicled in its 10 chapters, the book begins where the nightmare of enslavement started, in Africa. Rather than simply linger on that horror, however, the opening section has valuable information about that continent’s proud heritage and anthropological importance while also showing how the vicious African slave trade developed. The book continues with stories about rebellion and intimidation, tracing the emergence and evolution of a culture steeped in the African past and shaped by the American present. Freedom in My Heart covers familiar names and obscure figures, venerable institutions and little-known sites in various states while deftly examining slavery’s initial and lingering impact.

Finding a place in society
If any modern television or film producer conceived a story as elaborate and incredible as the one depicted by Martha A. Sandweiss in her remarkable book Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, they would have a hard time finding any studio willing to back it. Sandweiss, a professor of history and American studies at Amherst College, has uncovered the true feats of pioneering scientist, author and brilliant public speaker Clarence King. This same man led a second life as black Pullman porter and steel worker James Todd. He managed for decades to keep these two existences separate, hiding in the process a loving wife and five biracial children. King/Todd darts back and forth between stardom and near poverty, privilege and deprivation, for reasons that still aren’t completely clear despite Sandweiss’ research and storytelling acumen. Not even the deceptive path taken by critic Anatole Broyard or the decision by Walter White to be a champion for legions who distrusted his light-skinned looks compares to this constant juggling and personality switching. The fact that King/Todd did all of this long before there was any hint of radical change coming in America (the late 19th and early 20th centuries) makes what he did even more astonishing and Sandweiss’ work in uncovering it more noteworthy.

By contrast, author and academic Jennifer Baszile’s challenges come in supposedly more enlightened times. The Black Girl Next Door spotlights Baszile’s struggles growing up in an integrated (actually largely upper-class white) California neighborhood and trying to understand who she was, how she felt and what she wanted to do with her life. Constantly pushed to excel by parents anxious not to be judged by stereotypes they fought to escape, Baszile deals with identity problems among the elite and educated. She also describes the turf wars and clashes she experienced as she became the first black female professor at Yale, and how switching surroundings from an affluent community to the Ivy League’s supposed ivory tower didn’t mean she would automatically find happiness, fulfillment or professional respect.

Voices lifted
Finally there’s the epic poem The Children of the Children Keep Coming: An Epic Griotsong from onetime pro football player, Harlem gallery owner and financial backer of Essence magazine Russell Goings. Goings’ piece offers praise, optimism tempered by an understanding of past horrors and upcoming challenges, and the upbeat, rousing vocabulary that’s helped instill in generations not only of black Americans, but oppressed people around the world, the self-esteem and pride necessary to persevere no matter the circumstances.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Most of us who remember when state-imposed segregation was the norm rather than the exception (particularly in the South) remain amazed by the election of Barack Obama as our country’s president. Thus it’s quite appropriate that the question of racial identity and what it truly…

Memoir

Artists and writers share the stories of their lives

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

A quartet of new memoirs provides an eclectic roadmap of personal journeys set in Hollywood, the Brooklyn projects, Philadelphia public housing, Oklahoma, Broadway and beyond.

In Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found  Allegra Huston comes to terms with the convoluted ties of one of Hollywood’s legendary families. “My family was made up of individual people who shared an accident of circumstance,” she explains. She was four when a car accident claimed the life of her mother, a former ballerina and fourth wife of iconic filmmaker John Huston. Sent to live at his Irish estate, she seldom saw him (he was making movies) or her much-older brother and sister. “I was living one of those stories where there aren’t any parents, and the children run free,” she writes.

Today a director of a respected Taos writer’s program, Huston tells her story as it unfolded—recapturing the innocence and confusion of a child grappling with her place in an ever-shifting realm of family and logistics. Often packing her suitcase, she moves from Ireland to Long Island to live with her mother’s parents. At eight she’s off to California, to be with her father and his fifth wife (and a step-sibling). But even when sharing a house with her father, he remains distant and imposing. In a rare “ordinary” moment he reaches out to touch her feverish forehead.

Similarly mythic is big sister Anjelica. A dozen years older and a glamorous model, she will go on to become a compelling actress and filmmaker. But when she takes her little sister under her wing, she is girlfriend to Jack—as in Nicholson. Later she’ll be with Ryan—as in O’Neal. Both men appear through young Allegra’s eyes (not those of a cineaste). Life becomes even dizzier when 12-year-old Allegra learns her real father is a British Lord with whom her mother had an extramarital affair. And what of her late mother? Allegra seeks to make her acquaintance through a scattering of letters and journal entries, but much remains an ethereal mystery in this beautifully written, haunting exploration.

Living for the City
Nelson George grew up in very different surroundings, in the projects of Brownsville in Brooklyn, where he and his sister were raised in a single-parent household. City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success traces George’s ascent to influential journalist, author (books on hip-hop, Motown and more) and filmmaker (he is the writer-director of the HBO movie Life Support, based on his sister’s battle with HIV). In a direct but passionate writing style, George recounts what it was like to be young, black, poor—and driven. 
A voracious reader at nine, and an avid collector of Marvel Comics, at 14, George sent a dollar bill to the Literary Guild and was rewarded with volumes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Wolfe. He wrote and filed away short stories, worked on the high school newspaper and escaped the projects, moving to a near-middle-class neighborhood. He was becoming a student of film (Sidney Poitier was a role model), but music was his passion. George credits the Motorola stereo in the family living room for early on becoming “my passport, not simply to records, but to the vast nation outside New York that the music came from.” He listened and studied the credits of the Stax, Motown and Tamla records in his mother’s collection.

While attending a local college he wrote for a black newspaper and was a Billboard stringer. He also climbed the freelance ladder, by bringing his cultural sensibility to articles on black artists and black sounds, including the explosive hip-hop scene. City Kid puts the reader at the pulsating fault line of the seismic shakeup of black movies and music in the 1980s and 1990s. It also has quiet virtues—including the joy of discovery through reading and writing.

Life with father
Pop culture critic Joe Queenan can get goofy: he once wrote about spending a day talking like Yoda; for a piece on becoming Mickey Rourke, he didn’t bathe for a week. Funny and fearless—and often vitriolic—Queenan reveals how he developed his thick skin in Closing Time, a dark story of emotional survival.

His was an Irish-Catholic childhood, in a Philadelphia housing project in the 1960s. Poverty was a challenge, but Queenan’s father was the true nightmare. A man in perpetual rage, he went from job to job (13 in a single year) and drink to drink, and often came at his children with a belt. Even after they’d retreated to their beds, Queenan and his sisters endured sleepless nights—fearing their father’s destructive behavior would result in setting the house on fire. The public library and the bookmobile provided escape. Still, Queenan sought his father’s love and acceptance. A botched suicide attempt changed all that. Why, he wondered, had he tried so hard for approval from such a person?

Queenan’s father went on to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and, in one of the group’s famous steps, sought to make amends. Though Queenan shook his father’s hand, he also wrote an opinion article for Newsweek entitled, “Too Late to Say ‘I’m Sorry.’” As anyone who reads Queenan’s writing knows, he’s not into clemency.

Fairy-tale ending
Ready for some sunshine? In A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages, the petite, perfection-driven Kristin Chenoweth—known for starring in Broadway’s Wicked, and for appearances on TV shows including “The West Wing” and “Pushing Daisies”—shares her plus-size story of show business fame. Written with Joni Rodgers (herself a gifted memoirist), Chenoweth’s lively, chatty story reveals how faith and family have held her together, offers tips on succeeding in show business, lists the questions she plans to ask God when she meets him (including, “Who is the sadistic genius behind cellulite?”) and shares several shock-and-awe recipes, including one for her “No Calorie Left Behind Butterfinger Pie.” A sweet touch if ever there was one.

A quartet of new memoirs provides an eclectic roadmap of personal journeys set in Hollywood, the Brooklyn projects, Philadelphia public housing, Oklahoma, Broadway and beyond.

In Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found  Allegra Huston comes to terms with the convoluted ties of one…

TechnologyMemoirBusiness & Finance

The good, the bad and the very best

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Business people—and the people who work for them—are forever looking for ways to be more efficient, more inspired, more informed. This quartet of books fits the profile: from the stock market to the Internet, business books to problem-solving, each of these titles will edify and entertain.

Problem-solving primer
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People started out as a book for kids. Ken Watanabe, a Yale- and Harvard-educated management consultant for McKinsey and Company, wrote it in 2007 when the Japanese prime minister announced a focus on education via critical thinking skills instead of memorization. Watanabe felt compelled to do his part and created four case studies, or classes (e.g., Rock Bands and Root Causes, Soccer School Pros and Cons) to show how problem-solving tools can be applied to all manner of situations. Watanabe’s friendly, capable tone makes the book an enjoyable read; “tool boxes” and diagrams add clarity; and cute drawings make problem-solving playful. The book was Japan’s top business bestseller of 2007 and now it’s available in English.

How not to succeed in business
Today, we have Bernie Madoff, stock-fraud mastermind of a Ponzi scheme that robbed investors of a reported $50 billion. In the 1990s, there was Jordan Belfort, head of Stratton Oakmont, a Long Island brokerage firm that specialized in “pump-and-dumps”: using Belfort’s scripts, brokers cold-called potential investors and conjured up stories of demand for stocks. The firm then sold the overvalued shares, causing the price to fall and investors to lose their money. But Belfort and his minions made money and spent millions each month on drugs, prostitutes, cars and parties. Belfort chronicled much of this in The Wolf of Wall Street: Stock Market Multimillionaire at 26, Federal Convict at 36. In his follow-up, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison, he tells more tales of lying, cheating and debauchery—and denies responsibility for just about everything. The key themes of the book: things just happen to him; it wasn’t really stealing; did he mention he was married to a model? Despite his rock-hard abs, Belfort cooperates with the FBI; after depositions and recorded meetings with fellow fraudsters, he goes to prison for 22 months, does easy time and befriends Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong, who encouraged him to write this book). Oh, and did he mention he was married to a model? This might be a cautionary tale if Belfort were sorry for what he’d done; instead, he’s only sorry he got caught.

Business briefs
In keeping with their successful business model for 800-CEO-READ, which markets business books to businesses (the website offers top picks and reviews, plus links to order single or bulk copies), company founder and president Jack Covert and vice president Todd Sattersten have compiled The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You. It’s a busy executive’s dream: must-read titles are categorized so readers can concentrate on books that meet their needs (Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Big Ideas). “Where to Next?” items after each review suggest further reading, and sidebars recommend movies or offer inspiration via quotes. This is an excellent resource for anyone curious about business books but overwhelmed by all the choices.

We’re all friends here
MySpace has been in the news a lot these last few years, from unsigned musicians who found success via its pages to the rise of competitor Facebook. In Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America,  Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin takes readers on a tour of the history and business battles behind the scenes of the cultural phenomenon. Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson launched MySpace in 2003, and sold it to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in mid-2005 for almost $600 million. In the intervening years, the site’s founders and employees alternately struggled and succeeded as they learned how to manage burgeoning popularity (41.8 billion page views per month) and legal issues (spyware, use of the site by minors, and more). Angwin skillfully blends personal sagas with business dramas, which makes for a fascinating, entertaining read.

Business people—and the people who work for them—are forever looking for ways to be more efficient, more inspired, more informed. This quartet of books fits the profile: from the stock market to the Internet, business books to problem-solving, each of these titles will edify and…

NonfictionParentingMemoir

This season’s best reads for the dad in your life

Feature by Howard Shirley

Fatherhood is fascinating, frustrating, frightening and funny—and the wise man appreciates all four aspects. As another Father’s Day rolls around, five books offer insight and interest for fathers of all ages—as well as mothers, sons and daughters, too.

Fathers, sons and the game of golf
At the same time that boys turn into young men, their fathers often reach their own turning points. The boy of 16 is learning what sort of man he may become; the father in his 40s is discovering the difference between the man he thought he’d be and the man he is. In his latest book, A Son of the Game: A Story of Golf, Going Home, and Sharing Life’s Lessons, golf writer and journalist James Dodson weaves together both these journeys, wrapped in a story of homecoming and the love of an ancient game. The tale begins as Dodson, disillusioned with golf journalism, returns to Pinehurst, North Carolina, “the home of golf in America,” to bid goodbye to a dying friend. Set amid the pine-covered sand hills between the mountains and the sea, Pinehurst is a home of sorts to Dodson, a place where he first learned the game of golf from his own father. When an opportunity to join a small regional newspaper arises, Dodson ponders it as a cure for his jaded soul—but worries how his family will respond, in particular his teenage son, Jack. There is conflict for both, but as father and son build a connection on the golf course, the “Pinehurst cure” leads them to a better understanding of themselves and each other. A Son of the Game is a magical memoir of midlife crisis, teenage uncertainty and the power of a legacy gently handed down. Whether you love the game of golf or can’t tell a sand wedge from a six iron, Dodson’s book will put the spell of Pinehurst on your heart—a spell that is simply the call of home.

From one dad to another
Children do not become teenagers overnight, and dads are not 40 in an instant. Fatherhood stretches for many years, and is experienced by men in many different ways. The Book of Dads: Essays on the Joys, Perils and Humiliations of Fatherhood, edited by Ben George, collects essays and memories about fatherhood from an assortment of writers, including Clyde Edgerton and Rick Bragg. Some of the accounts are pure humor, others are poignant, but all offer a fascinating record of ideas, attitudes and approaches to fatherhood. One wishes the collection were somewhat broader—the authors seem to share similar ideologies, with very little diversity in their views—but the essays themselves are well written and fascinating to read.

Lessons for survival
A consistent theme in the previous books is how fathers prepare their children to survive in life. Norman Ollestad’s Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival recounts the author’s experience of his own father’s unconventional approach to parenting, and how it led to the boy’s ability to survive in a situation his father had not planned—the crash of their chartered Cessna into a mountainside. Ollestad cuts back and forth between his travels with his surfer father, his life with his mother and her abusive boyfriend, and his fight for life as the lone survivor of the plane crash. It is a story of both a father’s successes and his failures, and is as much about surviving the actions of child-like adults as about the dangerous descent down the ice-covered mountain. At times beautiful, at times heart-wrenching, Crazy for the Storm is a commanding read—a tale that proves the power of the human spirit can rise against any challenge, and a father’s legacy can be larger than he imagines.

Norman Ollestad didn’t have Hawke’s Green Beret Survival Manual during his mountain ordeal, but he lived the most important part of it: “Never quit!” It is Myke Hawke’s first rule of survival, and his book tells how to apply it in the worst possible situations. Hawke served as a Green Beret for 25 years, rising from enlisted man to officer. His specialty: survival. Hawke’s book is full of techniques and instructions on everything from building shelters to identifying edible plants. And his advice covers situations from surviving the wilderness to dangerous urban environments—including gangs, riots, even a nuclear aftermath—and includes a strong dose of expert philosophy on the nature of survival. Hawke doesn’t just study survival, he has lived it, both as a soldier and as a 14-year-old boy abandoned to the winter streets of urban Virginia. Hawke is a survivor—and if you take his advice, when worse comes to worse, you can be too.

The best of ESPN
Lastly, fatherhood isn’t all about seriousness or survival. It’s also about having fun. And if your father is the type for whom “fun” means “sports,” you could do worse than to give him The ESPN Mighty Book of Sports Knowledgeedited by Steve Wulf. Instead of a collection of stats, this book is a delightful hodgepodge of trivia, essays and tips—like how to throw a Whiffle ball and strategies for winning Rock, Paper, Scissors. There are also accounts of great sports moments, lists of best (and worst) sports movies, and such essential items as a tour of Donovan McNabb’s locker. The contributors range from athletes to coaches, and the stories stretch from the poignant to the peculiar (like the time a lacrosse team fielded a six-foot-five-inch, 600-pound goalie). Fathers and kids (and like-minded mothers) will enjoy this crazy little mix of knowledge. After all, where else can you learn legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s rules for putting on socks? That’s the sort of stuff a father loves to pass on—especially if it drives a kid nuts.

Howard Shirley is a writer who is surviving fatherhood in Franklin, Tennessee.

Fatherhood is fascinating, frustrating, frightening and funny—and the wise man appreciates all four aspects. As another Father’s Day rolls around, five books offer insight and interest for fathers of all ages—as well as mothers, sons and daughters, too.

Fathers, sons and the game…

Memoir

Real life with father

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Father’s Day is not always a Hallmark moment. The reality of family life is usually far from perfection; for some it is farther than others. Take these three authors: children of fathers gone for good, for bad or just gone, and all left with a legacy of regret, guilt, shame or uncertainty. Each book records the drama of adult children struggling to determine who their fathers really were, and at the same time, by the very act of writing, who they are, themselves.

In Either You’re In or You’re In the Way, twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller chronicle their own wild ride of a filmic tribute to their father. The boys were blue-collar to the bone, living from odd job (roofer, bouncer) to even odder job (Abercrombie & Fitch model), trying to make enough to support themselves and their chronically homeless alcoholic dad. But when Mr. Miller suddenly dies during a routine stay in a jail cell, alone and ill, the twins vow to take his story to the world: to make a movie that will help redeem the suffering of a good man. They have never been to film school, written a script, shot a scene, nor have a single contact in the biz, yet within a year, they manage to write, fund, act in and produce a feature film. Despite ridiculous odds, the twins assemble an Academy Award-winning cast and crew with Ed Harris in the lead role. Perversely, it is thanks to the horror of the father’s end that his sons turn tragedy into a triumph of his own making. Either You’re In or You’re In the Way is told in a careening, no-nonsense, seat-of-the-pants style that is no doubt similar to the way the twins actually lived it. By the way, the boys’ movie, Touching Home, has already garnered accolades at a prestigious film festival, and is now making its way to wider audiences.

Then there is the age-old Oedipal story of a boy who literally doesn’t know who his father is. In Go Ask Your Father: One Man’s Obsession with Finding His Origins Through DNA Testing Lennard J. Davis, an English professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, doggedly pursues answers to complicated questions, questions that several key players hoped would never be asked. After a lifetime of ignoring a persistent “underlying murmur” that his dad was not, in fact, his biological father, Davis investigates every possible clue to uncover the truth. What follows is a mix of memoir, genealogical mystery and a concise history of artificial insemination and DNA testing. “Obsession” is an apt word to describe Davis’ pursuit, yet there is no guarantee that even this level of exhausting and exhaustive research will produce all the right answers. Who was his real father: the man he called Dad, his ne’er-do-well uncle, an anonymous sperm donor, or perhaps most shocking, his mother’s gynecologist? Which man would he prefer to turn out to be so? And what does being a “real” father mean? Do genetics truly define us, and if so, to what degree? Toward the end of Go Ask Your Father, one particular family photo speaks a thousand inscrutable words in response.

Danzy Senna’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History is a completely different exploration of personal identity. The 1968 wedding of her parents—a blue-blood Boston Brahmin mother and a Southern black father—would seem a match made in civil rights heaven, but the eight-year union and violent divorce turn out to be domestic hell. As the product of two clashing cultures and colors, Senna is shaped by the labels forced upon her by her own parents, and by the problematic reception America grants a child of mixed-race heritage. It is no accident that both of her novels, Caucasia and Symptomatic, involve a female, biracial protagonist, but now this acclaimed writer hopes to dig beneath fiction for fact. She focuses on her father: a man whose past is anything but clear, even to himself. He is abusive, alcoholic, brilliant, beautiful, drifting, maddening and mysterious. Senna travels South on the trail of contradictory rumors and legal records, negotiating this alien landscape wherein the very nature and definition of family are called into question. Ultimately, her search leads to a reframing of identity for four generations, including her infant son, and the exposure of a complex middle ground of meaning, far from black and white.

Joanna Brichetto writes from Nashville.

Father’s Day is not always a Hallmark moment. The reality of family life is usually far from perfection; for some it is farther than others. Take these three authors: children of fathers gone for good, for bad or just gone, and all left with a…

Memoir

Behind the Book: Hemingway classic restored

Feature by Seán Hemingway

On July 14, 2009, the 45th anniversary of the book’s publication, a restored edition of A Moveable Feast was published by Scribner. Seán Hemingway, a writer and editor who is Ernest Hemingway’s grandson, introduced and edited the new volume. Here, Seán Hemingway talks about this project and his grandfather's legacy.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Most people do not realize that the title of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast was not chosen by my grandfather or that significant revisions to his final manuscript were made after his death in 1961. People do not realize this because the book was presented as completed in 1960. However, it was never finished in Hemingway’s eyes and it is clear that he worked on it practically until his death.

The title, of course, is wonderful. In many ways Mary Hemingway, my grandfather’s widow and my godmother, did a fine job editing the book, but she made changes to the text that we know the author did not want and passed them off as his own. The Restored Edition of A Moveable Feast is based on my grandfather’s last manuscript with his notations and emendations. Even without a final chapter, it is, I believe, a truer representation of the book that he intended to publish.

My favorite title that Hemingway considered for the book is "How Different It Was When You Were There."

Some years ago, my uncle Patrick Hemingway suggested I re-examine the original manuscripts for A Moveable Feast. He always suspected that Mary Hemingway had purposefully deleted parts of the book about his mother, Pauline, downplaying her role as another Mrs. Ernest Hemingway. In a sense, he was right, as readers of the Restored Edition will see, but it is more complicated than that. For example, the order of the chapters was changed and, perhaps most significantly, only part of an ending was re-crafted from one that Hemingway had considered, but decided not to use.

In Paris in the 1920s, Ezra Pound had told Hemingway that writing your memoirs meant you were at the end. Hemingway preferred to write fiction since it allowed a writer of his talents to craft more perfect stories out of his experience and invention. Although Hemingway avowed many times that he would only write about himself as a last resort, he experimented with memoir throughout his life. There is, of course, Green Hills of Africa, which holds a special place among his works for me as the account of my grandfather and grandmother’s safari in East Africa. What distinguishes A Moveable Feast though, and what is more characteristic of memoir, is the significant length of time between what happens in the book and when the author wrote it. My favorite title that Hemingway considered for the book is “How Different It Was When You Were There.” I think that this was a humorous jab—and the humor in Hemingway’s writing is undervalued—at the volumes of writing that had already been published on that historic time in Paris by people who were not there. Our perception is very different in media res and we feel this in Hemingway’s vignettes, which are personal, idiosyncratic recollections, intimate and emotive.

Despite the author’s own comments in the book about the difficulty of the writing process and the need for revisions, many of his first drafts are remarkably clean, poignant testaments to his continued abilities as a writer later in life.

It was thrilling for me to work directly with my grandfather’s manuscripts. Readers of the Restored Edition can share in that excitement since a selection of the actual manuscript pages have been reproduced in the book. Hemingway wrote his first drafts in longhand, and you do not have to be a handwriting analyst from the FBI to appreciate his bold, fluid penmanship. Despite the author’s own comments in the book about the difficulty of the writing process and the need for revisions, many of his first drafts are remarkably clean, poignant testaments to his continued abilities as a writer later in life.

The Restored Edition includes a section with 10 chapters that Hemingway wrote for the book but decided not to include, acting “by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.” These sketches were not finished to the author’s satisfaction, and in several cases it was necessary for me to transcribe them from his handwritten drafts. The additional sketches cover a wide range of experiences that extend beyond the chronological parameters of the book. The final sketch finishes with a particularly moving reflection on the very end of Hemingway’s life—a wrenchingly honest self-appraisal by an embattled genius who sees his faculties slipping away from him. This material was understandably much too raw for Mary Hemingway to include in the first posthumous edition, but knowing what we do—some 50 years later—about the depression and paranoia Hemingway faced in later life, it is a profound, humanizing endnote to Ernest Hemingway, the man who has become an iconic legendary figure.
 

Author photo © Collette C. Hemingway

In a behind the book essay, editor and writer Seán Hemingway talks about his grandfather's legacy and the restored edition of A MOVEABLE FEAST, which he edited and introduced.
NonfictionMemoirCookbooks

Santa’s helpers

Feature by Deanna Larson

Gingerbread and dirty Santas, nativity scenes and maxed-out credit cards: the holidays bring both highs and lows. During this most special time of year, there are cooks cooking, crafters crafting—and people creating wacky Christmases of their own making, as celebrated in these new books.

Strange stories of the season
Count on Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors, A Wolf at the Table) to have a droll but dysfunctional take on the most sacred of holidays. You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas is a stepbrother of sorts to that antidote for forced merriment, David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice. In “Two Eyes Made Out of Coal,” Burroughs attempts to impress his mother with a gingerbread house as seen in a magazine but decides to use “imagination” instead of the chump’s choice—following the recipe—and ends up with less fairy tale castle and more “public housing unit.” The mandatory participation of the holiday season strains Burroughs’ spirits in “Why Do You Reward Me Thus?” as he realizes how much he despises the “sheep shoppers,” the being-with-friends thing and the hijacking of Hanukkah. So he searches Manhattan for Jews, Chinese and others “on the outside of the snow globe” who “don’t give a [expletive] about Christmas either.” In a denouement worthy of O. Henry, he finds bums wanting to talk semiotics and a homeless angel who brings Burroughs out of his despondent drunken stupor with a Puccini aria instead of “The Chipmunk Song.”

It’s the hap-happiest season of all, so take a spin through the holiday madness in The Upside-Down Christmas Tree: And Other Bizarre Yuletide Tales. Authors Delilah Scott and Emma Troy uncover kooky traditions, presents from hell, weird holiday food and drink, unusual decorations and dysfunctional family antics from Christmases around the world. From the festive kiviak—or rotten auk meat—of Greenland and trees decorated in tampon “ornaments” to the clever “divide-and-conquer” in-laws’ Christmas, the “Yankee Swap” created by the original frugal re-gifters and the number of Santas peed on by children (34 percent), this compendium of all things kooky, charming and Christmas will provide plenty of laughs at the holiday table.

Pop-culture writer Hank Stuever enters the world of the Christmas crazy willingly in Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present. Relocating to a Dallas suburb over the course of three years to follow “true holiday believers,” Stuever—an award-winning writer for the Washington Post Style section and author of Off Ramp—creates an utterly charming yet sobering profile of the music, traditions, money, pressure and sheer nuttiness of the city’s seasonal celebration. Traveling with the proprietor of Two Elves with a Twist home trimming service, visiting with homeowners who light up their house so brightly it’s visible from space, meeting collectors of the twee Department 56 miniature villages and witnessing a single mom as she tries to provide a good holiday for her kids, Stuever is part sociologist, part psychologist and always a perceptive observer, placing American holiday rituals in a new light. “Our sense of Christmas is nothing without the narrative of heartbreaking need,” he writes. “Mary needed a place to give birth and nobody would give her one. This need for need exists so that our children can distinguish it from the concept of want.”

Help for the holidays
Hostesses who fear they won’t have the mostest this holiday season only need a few hours with Best of Christmas Ideas to boost their spirits. The editors and stylists of Better Homes and Gardens magazine can be counted on for “fresh, fast and fabulous” ideas for stylish holiday decor, table settings, floral centerpieces, wreaths, cards, wrapping and treats in styles that range from fashion-forward (lime-green tree trimmings, blue velvet stockings) to traditional-contemporary (feather tree decorated with dried orange slices and pine cones). Need fast decorations? A Tiered Meringue Tree of either homemade or store-bought meringue cookies looks like it took hours but only requires a bit of stacking skills. Expecting last-minute guests? Spend an afternoon making and freezing hearty soups—like Smoked Sausage Split Pea—along with easy rolls and ice cream sandwiches (recipes included), and you’ve got dinner-in-a-minute for a crowd. Kids driving you crazy? Put them to work making paper cones stuffed with ornaments or pinecones to decorate the tree. Need quick hostess gifts? Try Herbed Toasted Almonds, or dress up a store-bought red pillar candle by gluing stick peppermints along its base. Each recipe, craft or sewing project is illustrated with full-color pictures and complete instructions and patterns (most only require basic crafting or sewing skills), and a list of sources at the back will help harried cooks or crafters place their overnight orders.

If Mother Earth is on the gift list, Anna Getty’s I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas: Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes That Use Less and Mean More has stylish ideas for celebrating, giving and reflecting on the season that recycle and reuse but still give plenty of joy. Sections on Nesting and Entertaining feature homemade decor and place settings using natural and recycled elements (Recycled Wool Wreath, Newspaper Stocking), and Trimming has ideas for earthy decorations (Sugared Crabapple Ornaments, Twig Stars). The Giving section suggests packaging homemade treats in repurposed containers, such as bamboo steamer baskets. Sophisticated but easy recipes are also included (Cranberry Prosecco Cocktails, Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Ginger and Mascarpone, Pan-Fried Chicken Breasts with Chestnut Stuffing and Port Gravy), and the book is rounded out with lush photographs, “green tips” by famous eco-experts, a resource section listing useful websites and sidebars on green greetings and shipping, recyclable parties, low-impact gift and wrapping ideas and “composting Christmas.”

Bakers who are mystified by royal icing and luster dust will feel merry about the elegant designs in Cookie Craft Christmas. Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer—the bakers behind the Cookie Craft series—have created a tiny treasure of a book complete with full-color illustrations of their bakery-worthy holiday creations ranging from easy to elaborate. A few basic rolled-cookie recipes and lessons on pre- and post-baking decorative techniques are followed by instructions for more than 70 distinctive designs, plus tips on freezing, shipping and swapping home-baked treats. From white reindeer and gingerbread sleighs to sweet treats for New Year’s and Hanukkah, these cookies are designed to create lasting memories.

Deanna Larson writes from Nashville.

Gingerbread and dirty Santas, nativity scenes and maxed-out credit cards: the holidays bring both highs and lows. During this most special time of year, there are cooks cooking, crafters crafting—and people creating wacky Christmases of their own making, as celebrated in these new books.

Strange stories…

Memoir

Bumps in the long and winding road to love

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of this year’s best relationship memoirs.

Dating disasters
Julie Klausner still hasn’t found what she’s looking for, but as the lengthy subtitle of her dating memoir suggests, she’s spent time with a lot of the wrong guys. In I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Other Guys I’ve Dated, Klausner recounts years of dating the wrong guys. She never went through a boys-are-icky phase, instead openly chasing her crush of the moment since childhood. In fact, in the book’s opening pages she boldly declares, “I love men like it is my job.”

Klausner refuses to pussyfoot around her recollections of past lovers, indiscriminately flaunting her dirty laundry and theirs. (This is the kind of memoir an author hopes her parents won’t read.) But what could be an airing of grievances from the pen of another author is, in Klausner’s hands, an entertaining romp through a series of comic sketches. As a writer for VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” Klausner regularly transformed a week’s minutiae into pithy television, and she applies the same droll tone to her own missteps and willful mistakes.

And through failure after dismal failure, Klausner clings to one hope: The right man is out there, somewhere. If she’s got to date all the wrong ones to find him, she’ll do it, enthusiastically.

Matching wits
Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Girl doesn’t give boy the time of day for five years. And then boy’s wildest dreams are fulfilled when girl suddenly decides he is all she wants.

Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn’s relationship is far from a fairytale romance, but it’s a story filled with all the excitement and drama you’d hope for from a couple of writers and actors. They’ve had a lot of experience in telling other stories, after all: For years Gurwitch hosted “Dinner and a Movie” on TBS, and she has written for NPR and The Nation. Kahn wrote for “The Ben Stiller Show” and appeared in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and other films.

In You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, Gurwitch and Kahn bicker as they recount their sometimes-conflicting tales of meeting, courtship, marriage and the journey toward “till death do us part.” And even as their lives turn gravely serious when their son Ezra is born with multiple birth defects, the couple injects humor into their otherwise terrified mindset.

This is definitely not a sweet tale, but couples who love and argue with equal intensity will find solace—and more than a few laughs—in Gurwitch and Kahn’s frank depiction of their relationship.

Something’s cooking
Elizabeth Bard spotted the classic tall, dark and handsome stranger at a conference in London. She was an American beginning a master’s program in art history. He was a Frenchman wrapping up a Ph.D. in computer science. When the opportunity arose, she made a point of meeting him. The bevy of emails that followed led to lunch—and then love—in Paris.

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes doesn’t stop with happily ever after. In fact, Bard’s wedding to the exotic Gwendal takes place halfway through the book. But the challenges of a life in a foreign country are just beginning. On the surface Bard’s life seems like a fairy tale: living in Paris, married to a Frenchman and dining on any number of delicacies. But what’s simple in America is a challenge for an American in Paris. A task as easy as buying curtains can become an all-day event.

A memoir with recipes isn’t a new concept. Amanda Hesser covered that territory well in Cooking for Mr. Latte, and in recent years there’s been an avalanche of relationship-and-recipe books. But if there’s anything that doesn’t get old, it’s a good love story and a good meal—all the better if they are crafted by someone who can both write and cook!

In Lunch in Paris, Bard shares not only her love story but her journey to finding a sense of self in a foreign land with a foreign man. Whether you read it with the love of your life at your side or while dreaming of meeting your own exotic other half, this story and its accompanying recipes will warm your soul.

A new dance
Maria Finn met her husband while salsa dancing. The couple danced their way into a relationship, then marriage. But after she discovers that he’s been cheating on her, salsa dancing has little place in her life.

Finn instead turns to tango, also a seductive Latin dance, but one that allows space for sorrow and loss. She quickly becomes addicted to tango, attending private lessons and dance classes and clearing space on her calendar for frequent milongas (social dances). While dancing, Finn learns to give herself over to a man, to allow herself to be pulled off balance and follow his lead, even while carrying her own weight. The dance carries her from her home in New York City to the dance floors of Argentina, but more importantly, it helps Finn rewrite her understanding of men and her own life.

In Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home, Finn incorporates her deep understanding of tango into the story, revealing its history even as she explores her own relationship with the dance. Unlike many life-after-heartbreak memoirs, this one doesn’t end with the author tangoing into the sunset with a new beau. Instead, Finn repairs her outlook on life and men in general, while finding comfort, challenges and encouragement in the arms of strangers.

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

RELATED CONTENT
Review of the audio version of Cooking with Mr. Latte

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of…

MemoirBusiness & Finance

Lessons for life’s journey

Feature by Deanna Larson

Cap, gown, diploma: now what? Having many options can be as difficult as having none, but the risk-taking and wisdom in these books will help any new grad make the important decisions.

A YEAR OF CAREERS
After graduating from college, Sean Aiken was overcome with pressure to live up to his potential. Still living in his parents’ basement at 25, searching job boards and newspaper ads, he thought: Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what these jobs were like before committing to them? The One-Week Job Project documents Aiken’s brazen, funny and often fascinating search for the job that will make him happy (and pay the bills). Aiken starts by accepting an offer to be a bungee “jump master,” a fit symbol for his plunge into uncertainty. Then, using connections and media buzz to find work, he travels more than 46,000 miles in a year-long journey, taking on 52 jobs from snowshoe guide, florist and dairy farmer to NHL mascot, Air Force recruit and firefighter. Along the way, he notes the salary of each position and what he took away from the experience. In the end, he concludes that a career is “merely a vehicle to fulfill our passion”—and that happiness depends greatly on your co-workers, and the chance to do meaningful work.

SEARCHING FOR SATISFACTION
What do you do with your life when you’re the offspring of a billionaire, expected to use Dad’s money to zoom to the top? If you’re Peter Buffett, son of renowned investor Warren Buffett, you ditch the silver spoon and forge your own path. Buffett, now an Emmy Award-winning producer and composer, details his road to personal and professional accomplishments in Life Is What You Make It. When he reached adulthood, Buffett received a relatively small inheritance (under six figures), along with fatherly advice to find what made him happy and try to help others. The modest sum allowed him to discover a passion for music and spend a few frugal years getting established without worrying about the bills. Buffett shares what he learned working his way up in the competitive world of TV and film composing in thoughtful, inspiring sections including “No One Deserves Anything” and “The Gentle Art of Giving Back.” He believes that anyone can have the “advantages” of discipline, integrity and vision that produce the best careers—and the best lives.

LOST AND FOUND
Like most of us, Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner talked about quitting their jobs (in their case, high-powered New York media jobs) to backpack around the world. The difference: They actually did it. The Lost Girls is the story of their 60,000-mile journey, told from their perspectives as newbie world travelers and searchers. The book places the reader smack-dab in the moment as the three friends hike up for sunrise over Machu Picchu, try to design a volunteer project for orphaned girls in Kenya (their solution is heartwarming) and discover a mystical $4 day spa near a forest temple in Laos. There are amusing and sometimes frightening culture clashes aplenty, but the real appeal of the story is the long road they take together, each supporting the others on a soul-searching quest to create a life that matters.
 

Cap, gown, diploma: now what? Having many options can be as difficult as having none, but the risk-taking and wisdom in these books will help any new grad make the important decisions.

A YEAR OF CAREERS
After graduating from college, Sean Aiken was overcome with…

NonfictionFictionWomen's FictionMemoir

Selections for the sultry season

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Reading in the summertime has a different pace. Life slows down as the weather heats up, leaving readers with more time to savor a special book. Whether you’re heading to the beach, cooling off in the mountains or simply relaxing at home, add one of these recommendations to your summer reading list.

A MASTER OF APPALACHIAN FICTION
Author Sharyn McCrumb has forged a successful career by dipping her pen into the inkwell of Appalachian culture and conveying the region’s stories to the rest of the world. A resident of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains herself, McCrumb has the unique ability to paint mythic portraits from the past and present of the people who call this region home.

Her latest offering, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, skewers folks who distort the truth, notably big-city journalists who have arrived in 1930s rural Virginia to cover a murder trial. The case makes headlines only because it contains sensational elements sure to sell papers: A beautiful, educated young teacher is on trial for killing her coal-miner father.

McCrumb introduces two veteran journalists, Rose Hanelon and Henry Jernigan, as well as their accompanying photographer Shade Baker, as the vultures that promptly descend upon Wise County as soon as the accused, Erma Morton, is booked for the crime. Instead of communicating the facts, these three will relay whatever headlines are most likely to increase the paper’s circulation. In Rose’s own words: “What you emphasized and what you omitted told the viewers what they ought to think of the subject.”

There is one honest, fledgling writer in the ranks of gawkers as the court case unfolds. Newbie reporter Carl Jenkins struggles with separating fact from opinion as he tries to make a name for himself.

Readers may recognize Jenkins’ young cousin, mountain psychic Nora Bonesteel—introduced in McCrumb’s beloved Appalachian Ballad books—who arrives at Carl’s urging to help forecast the trial’s outcome.

McCrumb demonstrates her usual mastery of historical detail and pointed description of place in The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, a finely spun tale where neither guilt nor innocence is evident until the final page is turned.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

A LOVABLE HEROINE FROM ISAACS
Does anyone create more likeable characters than best-selling author Susan Isaacs?

I thought my favorite Isaacs heroine was a toss-up between feisty Amy Lincoln, the investigative reporter in Any Place I Hang My Hat, and suburban amateur detective Judith Singer of Compromising Positions and Long Time No See. But now, after reading Isaacs’ latest, As Husbands Go, there’s a new contender.

Susie B. Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten lives on Long Island with her four-year-old triplets and husband Jonah, a successful plastic surgeon, doting father and devoted husband—which makes it kind of strange when he turns up murdered in the apartment of Manhattan call girl Dorinda Dillon, stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors.

Anxious to solve the high-profile case, detectives quickly determine that Dorinda is the culprit. She’s arrested and charged, but Susie can’t shake the feeling that everyone—police, prosecutors, her own family—is missing some piece of the puzzle. To make matters worse, her high-society mother-in-law has suddenly become Susie’s biggest critic, accusing her of pressuring Jonah to work too hard to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. And neighbors are gleefully (but not subtly) whispering about this unexpected turn of events for what seemed like the perfect family.

With her usual keen eye for detail and humor, Isaacs takes a hard look at the sometimes impenetrable, often absurd social politics of upscale New York. Susie is a winning heroine: wry, smart and self-deprecating. Fast-paced and immensely satisfying, As Husbands Go is a novel about a woman trying to prove that her charmed life was no fairy tale, and in the process learning a lot about herself.

—Amy Scribner

ANOTHER BINCHY WORTH WATCHING
If nice guys always finish last, then David, the hero of Chris Binchy’s American debut, Five Days Apart, is doomed from the start. Sweet and unassuming, he has navigated his college social life by hiding behind his gregarious friend, Alex, an immature heartbreaker who never seems to take anything seriously. Then, at a party just before graduation, David is struck by a woman in a way he never has been before, and he turns to Alex for romantic help. But Alex is as smooth as David is awkward, so he inevitably moves in on Camille himself, leaving David devastated.

David graduates from college and outwardly does everything he should—he gets a job in a bank, earns praise from his superiors and becomes a grown-up. But he can’t forget Camille, and eschews any attempt to get over her or meet anyone else. Meanwhile, Alex and Camille have moved in together, though Alex is sputtering through his stalled college career and can’t seem to make any real commitment either to her or to himself. David isolates himself, from the world and particularly from Alex, and the demise of their lifelong friendship and David’s staggering loneliness is detailed with particular insight.

Binchy—a bestseller in Ireland and the nephew of beloved author Maeve Binchy—tackles the age-old issues of love, friendship, loneliness and ambition with a surprisingly nuanced hand. There are some flaws here—the story is so simple and timeless that it doesn’t always feel completely fresh, and David’s total social paralysis undermines his narrative sympathy at times. But where Binchy excels is his subtle commentary on this new generation, clearly stunted by an unparalleled amount of choice. The ways in which David and Alex treat their freedom—and friendship—is fascinating, far beyond their conflict with Camille, and their dilemma makes this perceptive debut stand out from America’s lackluster lad lit scene.

—Rebecca Shapiro

A LIGHT, DREAMY READ
Francesca, Louise Shaffer’s heroine in Looking for a Love Story, won the publishing jackpot. Yesterday she was an unheard-of writer. Today she is a best-selling author. Now the publisher is panting for a sequel, but when Francesca fires up her laptop, she is met with radio silence. For months. And as that sound of silence becomes all-consuming, her very handsome husband moves out (or on). The only thing sticking by her side is her dutiful dog, Annie, and the few extra pounds inertia brings to someone frozen in fear of failure.

And it is Annie who jumpstarts this tale. After all, a dog that lives in a Manhattan condo must be walked. And fed. So income must come from somewhere, even if the dog’s owner has writer’s block.

After several ill-fated attempts, Francesca finally lands a freelance writing assignment with “Chicky,” an old woman who wants to tell the story of her 1920s vaudevillian forebears. To Francesca, it sounds a bit lame, but a job is a job. Then for some inexplicable reason the characters start to get into Francesca’s blood. Words flow effortlessly onto the page. But Chicky holds a mighty big secret that sets the stage for life lessons that will smack Francesca right between the eyes and, to her delight, squelch that radio silence.

A story all tied up in a pretty bow? No, but you’ll find several real love stories from the past and present smoothly braided together in this light, dreamy read.

—Dee Ann Grand

AN ESSAY COLLECTION WORTH SHARING
No one would call Sloane Crosley’s first essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, juvenile, but her second effort, How Did You Get This Number, is decidedly more grown-up. It matures, say, from a fabric scrunchie to a sleek hair clasp without losing any of the can-you-believe-this-is-actually-happening-to-me moments. Crosley, who lives in New York City and is developing her first book as an HBO series, writes like your enviably witty, completely chic friend who also swears like a sailor when relaying a story.

Crosley begins her essays with captivating leads, the first sentences telling stories of their own. In “Light Pollution,” a small anecdote flourishes and crescendos, taking the reader from an Alaskan car-trip musing to a baby bear’s shocking mercy killing. “An Abbreviated Catalog of Tongues” details her family’s escapades with pets—from a stingray named Herb to a blind bichon frise to a series of birds that died mysterious deaths. And finally, the collection’s title comes from “Off the Back of a Truck,” in which Crosley has a perfect working relationship with a dishonest furniture store worker and a not-so-perfect relationship with a handsome writer named Ben.

Crosley writes like a student of literature, figuring out along the way which techniques work, which words are funny and how seemingly separate storylines parallel. She seems to unravel the morals to her own stories aloud, while the reader almost embarrassingly listens in. Her stories are joyful and nostalgic, but above all, they are really funny. Her new essay collection, like the last one, should be taken on trains and planes, read on the beach, shared and enjoyed. Crosley is going to be around for awhile; best to get on board now and say you knew her back when she bought furniture off the black market and played charades with Portuguese circus clowns in Lisbon.

—Katie Lewis

ANOTHER HIT FROM WEINER
Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home opens with a scandal: a philandering senator caught with a much-younger mistress. But after the familiar headlines fade, a broken family flounders in their wake.

Weiner creates realistic characters in the senator’s wife, Sylvie, and daughters Lizzie and Diana, all central to this story of unraveling and rebuilding relationships. Sylvie, who has long abandoned her personal ambitions to buoy her husband’s political aspirations, faces her newfound independence with a mix of joy and trepidation. She finally has the opportunity to pursue interests like cooking, dating and mothering the daughters she overlooked while trying to be the perfect politician’s wife, but she finds that freedom isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Meanwhile, Lizzie and Diana are dealing with their own set of problems: Lizzie, a recovering addict, tries to prove to her family that she’s not a lifetime screw-up. However, she gets herself into a predicament that could grease the hinges for a relapse. Diana, a successful doctor, wife and mother, struggles to maintain a pristine exterior while her own loveless marriage deteriorates.

While the subject matter is heavy, Fly Away Home isn’t a downer. Weiner’s light touch, especially evident in Diana’s sarcastic dialogue as well as with the amusing Selma, Sylvie’s Jewish, feminist mother who never lacks an opinion, makes this a quick and engaging summer read.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

FOR THE MUSIC GEEK IN ALL OF US
In 1995, Nick Hornby gave a gift to music geeks everywhere with High Fidelity, a charming novel with a hero who somehow knew all the same obscure B-sides that they did. In 2007, music journalist Rob Sheffield picked up where Hornby left off with his heartbreaking memoir, Love is a Mix Tape, about, in equal parts, Nirvana and the crippling loss of his young wife, Renee. Now Sheffield is back with the same encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and touching, resonant prose in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, this time tackling two profoundly painful topics—adolescence and the 1980s.

Growing up a nerdy Catholic boy in a Boston suburb, Sheffield turned to music for the same reasons as everyone else: to fit in, and to be able to talk to girls. He doesn’t really achieve either goal, as a hilariously awkward conversation with one potential conquest attests—she assures him that while he is sadly destined to remain a geek for life, thus giving him no chance with her, one day he will meet “others like him.” It’s an oddly poignant moment, and pinpoints what’s so special about Sheffield’s writing—sheer recognition, for anyone who has ever felt a little bit different.

Amid Sheffield’s adolescent angst, too, is incredible, almost stream-of-consciousness commentary on 1980s music, from total one-hit wonders to the phenomena of David Bowie, Boy George and, of course, Duran Duran. The minutiae of his musical mantras can feel overwrought at times, overwhelming the seemingly effortless charm of his childhood stories, from an idyllic summer job as an ice-cream man to his awe for and helplessness in the face of three younger sisters. But fans will appreciate his total nerddom and value his impressive knowledge of and, above all, raw emotional response to music.

—Rebecca Shapiro

Reading in the summertime has a different pace. Life slows down as the weather heats up, leaving readers with more time to savor a special book. Whether you’re heading to the beach, cooling off in the mountains or simply relaxing at home, add one of…

MemoirBiography

Celebrity sightings

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

The holidays are a perfect time to reach for the stars—of the celebrity kind. This season’s offerings include the cool and the classic.

A COMPLICATED LADY
Before she became a campy caricature as the queen of mean, Joan Crawford was a box office goddess—and one of the hardest-working women in the business. In Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford, veteran Hollywood chronicler Donald Spoto helps restore his subject’s reputation by going film by film through her life. Reminding us of her professionalism, he also counters some of the claims of adopted daughter Christina Crawford, of Mommie Dearest notoriety.

The survivor of a hardscrabble childhood, Crawford came to Hollywood as a dancer during the silent era. The former Lucille Le Sueur—her name was changed in an MGM-sponsored contest—ultimately logged a staggering 87 films. (For comparison’s sake, Julia Roberts has made 40.) Some are classics (Mildred Pierce, Humoresque, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); many are forerunners of today’s “chick flicks.” Most remain watchable.

Married four times, she once said, “I am a woman with a woman’s needs—a husband.” Yet her men were sometimes other women’s husbands, including Jeff Chandler and the director Vincent Sherman. Yes, she was a clean freak and perfectionist, and vodka became a too-frequent companion. But Crawford was a generous performer and a faithful friend, and her adopted twin daughters told Spoto she was a good and caring mother. (Cathy, one of four adopted Crawford children, is the only twin still living.)

A recluse in her final years, Crawford succumbed to cancer in 1977. Time will tell if her movies—or her daughter’s tell-all—will become her legacy.

THE KING OF COOL
Steve McQueen spent his last days in Mexico seeking alternative treatment for cancer. That, and some unfortunate post-mortem photographs, cast a shadow over his death, at age 50, in 1980. But today it’s the man, his movies and his undeniable screen presence that endure.

The coolest of all the cool movie cats, McQueen was also the most contradictory. His characters were calm, collected. But he was tightly coiled, distrustful of women and ultra-protective of his professional turf. In Steve McQueen: The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon, author Marshall Terrill, who has written previous McQueen titles, delves beneath the public persona.

McQueen grew up fatherless, as his hard-drinking mother bounced from man to man. As a kid he was sent to reform school, worked the carny circuit and hopped freight trains. A place called Boy’s Republic turned him around, as did a stint in the Marines.

He trained as an actor in New York, married popular Broadway dancer Neile Adams (they had two children) and came to L.A. He was starring in TV’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” when he was cast in The Magnificent Seven. Sensing an opportunity, he gave a still-compelling taciturn performance, stealing the show from star Yul Brynner. With McQueen, less was always more.

Ensuing hits included The Great Escape, The Sand Pebbles, Bullitt, Junior Bonner and The Getaway. While making the latter he romanced co-star Ali MacGraw—whose husband was the powerful mogul Robert Evans. McQueen and MacGraw later married. While they lasted, glamorous MacGraw stayed home to cook and clean. That’s how McQueen liked his “old lady” to behave—while he tomcatted about.

He could be infuriating, even cruel. And he knew it. While quietly battling cancer, he manned up—seeking out old associates to make amends. And he did it on his terms, cool to the end.

A TALENTED LIFE CUT SHORT
Sal Mineo was 37 when he was stabbed to death in what turned out to be a botched Hollywood robbery. With his 1976 murder came revelations of his closeted homosexuality, and rifts among family and friends who anguished over how he would be remembered.

They needn’t have worried. Sal Mineo: A Biography, written by Michael Gregg Michaud, is a revealing but respectful work that captures his sweetness, likability and artistic passion—and the conflicts fostered by the times in which he lived.

Professionally, Mineo was stuck in a time warp. Though Oscar-nominated for both Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Exodus (1960), he was hampered by his ’50s-era teen idol image, and his mother’s mismanagement of his career.

Personally, his life was a series of private flings with men, and a very public romance with his Exodus co-star-turned-lover-turned-friend to the end, Jill Haworth. Appropriately, the book is dedicated to Haworth as well as Mineo’s longtime male lover, model-actor Courtney Burr. Both gave the author candid, sometimes heartbreaking details about the man they loved.

The book includes some eye-openers, including eyewitness accounts of Mineo’s exploits with a pre-Shindig Bobby Sherman. But Michaud’s delivery is matter-of-fact, not sensational—though he offers plenty of color in capturing the changing eras when rigid mores gave way to the counterculture.

Of course, Mineo will forever be enshrined as Plato, the anguished lonely boy who makes surrogate parents of James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel. Michaud makes a case that Plato was the first gay teenager of the movies. Had he lived, Mineo might have eventually and bravely gone on to acknowledge that, yes, that really was so.

CAINE'S COMEBACK
The Elephant to Hollywood is a celebration of survival. Michael Caine (who grew up in London’s tough Elephant and Castle neighborhood) wrote this follow-up to his 1992 memoir, What’s It All About?, when he realized that the career he thought was over, wasn’t.

He credits Jack Nicholson with helping him find his latter-life footing by coaxing him into co-starring in 1996’s Blood and Wine. Now enjoying a more subdued stardom, largely of the supporting actor kind, Caine has found memorable roles—including his Oscar-winning turn in The Cider House Rules, and the part of Alfred the butler in the new Batman franchise—and takes pleasure in working with new talent.

Caine does some double dipping—repeating/embellishing stories from the past book (such as partying with John Lennon, boozing with Peter O’Toole). But he’s a vivid and compelling raconteur, gentle even when he’s barbed.

THE MAN BEHIND THE MAGIC
Were it not for scribes there’d be no stars. Thus, our shout-out to Hollywood: A Third Memoir, by the prolific novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry. (Earlier McMurtry memoirs were Books and Literary Life.) By his estimation, McMurtry has had about 70 Hollywood gigs via his novels, including The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and Lonesome Dove, and scripts, such as Brokeback Mountain. In recounting how his relationship with Tinseltown unfolded and flourished, McMurtry writes with a sly wink and an ambling tone, to deliver evocative moments about Southern California, glamour, power—and, of course, stars.

The holidays are a perfect time to reach for the stars—of the celebrity kind. This season’s offerings include the cool and the classic.

A COMPLICATED LADY
Before she became a campy caricature as the queen of mean, Joan Crawford was a box office goddess—and one…

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Books to inspire personal change

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Are you ready to make a fresh start in the new year? We’ve lined up a bevy of guidebooks to help you launch 2011 with a renewed sense of purpose and effective new strategies for dealing with life’s challenges. Choose the approach that best suits your lifestyle and take those first steps toward a new and improved you.

LESS IS MORE

Dave Bruno was a success: booming business, loving family, nice home and solid Christian faith. He owned lots of stuff, which led to wanting more stuff, leading to a blog called Stuck in Stuff, where he complained about consumerism but continued to buy—wait for it—more stuff. Finally, all that stuff started to take its toll, and in a quest to examine his consumption more closely, Bruno decided to pare back to just 100 personal items for one year. He chronicles that journey in his inspirational new memoir, The 100 Thing Challenge.

Bruno’s book is often funny, as when he finds a pair of cleats he will never use again but had kept “in case I started to age in reverse.” One-liners like those sometimes steal focus from the project, which is only described in detail halfway through the book. By that time, our attention has been diverted down so many side paths it’s hard to remember what we came for. Thankfully, a detailed appendix will assist readers inspired to try the 100 Thing Challenge themselves, as many apparently have.

After reading about Bruno’s experience—which he says helped him to regain his soul—you’ll never look at the contents of your junk drawer the same way again. And don’t feel too conflicted about buying the book: Bruno counts his whole “library” as one item, a form of cheating any avid reader would wholeheartedly endorse.

—Heather Seggel

CHANGING THE STATUS QUO

Guides to sustainable living bend the shelves at bookstores these days, but David Wann takes sustainability farther than most. In The New Normal, he maps out a future without dependency on fossil fuels, cheap goods or processed food. Because we are all faced with a warming world, he offers steps to deeply transform our resource-dependent routines to self-reliant, more fulfilling lives that are easier on our planet.

Changes in population, technology and available resources have outdistanced our cultural ideals, says Wann. For our “new normal,” we should ditch old status symbols, such as huge McMansions in the suburbs, and instead value actions that build local communities, such as bike-friendly thoroughfares, energy-efficient housing and shorter food and energy supply lines. Wann describes how meeting our needs locally will make life not only sustainable but more meaningful, through closer ties with our family and neighbors.

The New Normal provides both the vision and the actions needed to change the status quo. It is an excellent resource for people who want specific information on creating a sustainable culture where they live—and beyond.

—Marianne Peters

FROM ANXIOUS TO PEACEABLE

Dr. Henry Emmons’ new book, The Chemistry of Calm, offers natural solutions to overcoming anxiety, maintaining that there is an alternative to panic attacks and Prozac. Emmons, a psychiatrist, laid the groundwork for a holistic path to wellness with his last book, The Chemistry of Joy. In this follow-up, Emmons outlines what he calls the Resilience Training Program.

Meditation, diet, exercise and supplements comprise the program. What Emmons lays out is a very doable regimen for readers that begins with self-care and acceptance. Although many other self-help books center on fixing the problem(s), Emmons takes the position that individuals are innately healthy and simply need to refocus.

The shift from anxious to peaceable takes seven steps. Emmons walks readers through each in The Chemistry of Calm, from how to choose better food options at the grocery store, to using dietary supplements linked to brain health, to integrating a routine of meditative exercises.

For Emmons, “Mindfulness” is the key to corralling the thoughts and emotions that ratchet up our anxiety, and The Chemistry of Calm is an in-depth how-to guide that can benefit us all.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR FINDING PEACE

Fifteen years after the phenomenal success of Simple Abundance, which spent a year at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, author Sarah Ban Breathnach admits, “All the money’s gone.” Her new book, Peace and Plenty, explains how she hit bottom and offers an approach perfectly timed for the new year: “a fresh start for all of us: living well, spending less, and appreciating more.”

Ban Breathnach’s writing is therapy on a page as she copes with her monumental losses: multiple homes, nine assistants, extravagant purchases (Isaac Newton’s prayer chapel in England, Marilyn Monroe’s furs) and a thieving husband. In dealing with the aftermath, she uncovers the emotionally volatile relationship women have with money.

Instead of writing another dry investing how-to, Ban Breathnach gives women a guide to finding spiritual and emotional peace after financial loss. Anyone who has suffered financial catastrophe—losing a home to foreclosure, losing a job to the recession, losing it all in a messy divorce—will find reassurance and compassion. With gentle advice, Peace and Plenty helps readers face their guilt about past money mistakes and move forward.

Ban Breathnach brings her Victorian sensibilities to plain-Jane finance; her budget includes a Christmas Club, her cash system creates a pin money stash. Readers rediscover the “thrill of thrift” by cleaning out purses and closets for a fresh start, and pampering themselves with poetry and early bedtime routines.

Ban Breathnach, who popularized the Gratitude Journal, now recommends several more tools for inexpensive self-reflection. The Journal of Well-Spent Moments, the Contentment Chest and the Comfort Companion all focus on finding the positive without spending much money.

Advice and anecdotes from famous women who’ve dealt with their own reversals of fortune are included throughout, but Ban Breathnach is at her best when sharing the deeply personal stories of her own financial foibles. And perhaps her greatest lesson came from the treachery of her English husband: Protect yourself first, she advises.

Sharing tears, laughter and many cups of tea with Ban Breathnach, readers will come away with a new perspective for finding peace.

—Stephanie Gerber

FOLLOWING THE GOLDEN RULE

Everybody knows the world lacks compassion, yet it’s something we deeply desire. To care about others, we must set aside our own egos, which is hard. Toward this end, self-described religious historian Karen Armstrong has written Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, calculated to mirror other 12-step programs and help us “dethrone ourselves from the centre of our worlds.”

Armstrong is the 2008 TED Prize winner and creator of The Charter for Compassion, crafted in 2009 by prominent religious leaders of many faiths and the general public. She believes that all religions are saying the same things, albeit in different ways, and that we must restore compassion to the heart of our religious practices. Considering that her narrative draws from the myths and precepts of many disparate faiths, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, her prose is clear and her concepts surprisingly easy to follow; it’s a warm and, yes, compassionate book. Yet she is still able to convey a sense of urgency: We are hardwired for compassion as well as cruelty, and it’s time to take the high road.

Armstrong’s genius is her ability to distill an impressive amount of information into just over 200 pages, making complex concepts easy to understand. In the end, living compassionately means following the Golden Rule: Always treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. With Armstrong as a guide, we can learn to do just that.

—Linda Leaming

YOUR PERSONAL MONEY TRAINER

If getting your family’s financial house in order seems like an overwhelming task, then Ellie Kay’s The 60-Minute Money Workout is for you. Every topic is broken down into chunks that make paying down debt, planning for retirement and even college planning doable in just one hour a week. From warm up to cool down, Kay acts as your money trainer as you discover your money personality and get on the same page with your partner.

Kay is called America’s Family Financial Expert for good reason. She brings real wisdom from supporting seven children on an annual income of just $55,000. The Kay family pays cash for cars, has no college loans and even paid off $40,000 in debt.

Her head-of-household experience shines in chapters like “Cha Ching Guide to Paying Less” and “Travel and Fun Guide Workout.” She shares loads of family-friendly ways to shop smarter for groceries, clothes and gas, saving time and money that can then be spent on more meaningful family vacations. She addresses other common family money matters with “workouts” for situations from launching a home-based business to determining children’s allowances.

Kay admits to being born thrifty, but she balances it by giving generously. Her 10/10/80 spending budget allocates 10 percent to giving and 10 percent to savings. That’s a hefty chunk for someone overwhelmed with credit card debt. But her Giving Guide Workout challenges you to strengthen your generosity muscle by doing more to share your time, resources and money, promising that you’ll feel and live better. And if you don’t have a dollar to spare, she includes 25 gifts that don’t cost a cent.

—Stephanie Gerber

Before you can start using your brain most effectively, you must understand it. This is the thinking behind Your Creative Brain, which contains the most up-to-date research-based exercises and rules to help you deliver your creative potential. For those who consider themselves “uncreative types” or are too attached to tried-and-true concepts, Your Creative Brain acts as an interactive guide to determine your weaker points and put them to work.

According to Harvard psychologist and researcher Shelley Carson, creativity is not an attribute reserved only for crafty types or inventors. Carson is the first researcher to frame creativity as a set of neurological functions, and Your Creative Brain lets you discover her findings for yourself.

Carson’s research explains the seven “brainsets” of the mind and how you can use those brainsets to increase creativity, productivity and innovation. Quizzes and exercises help you understand how your brain works, determine where your creative comfort zone lies and pinpoint the areas in your creative process which need some beefing up.

From Rorschach tests to association exercises, Your Creative Brain doesn’t simply teach you how to be more creative—it actually starts the process for you.

—Cat D. Acree

THE GIFT OF GRATITUDE

When John Kralik was a boy, his grandfather gave him a silver dollar, along with the promise of another if Kralik would send a thank you note. He wrote the letter and got the second dollar, but Kralik didn’t get the lesson behind it until midlife.
Overwhelmed one New Year’s Day by a series of personal and professional setbacks, he decided to focus on gratitude by sending one thank you note per day for a year, to anyone and everyone: his children, clients of his law firm, an on-and-off girlfriend, even his regular barista at Starbucks. And things did change in Kralik’s life; his work life and home life both improved, he reconnected with old friends and boosted his health and self-esteem, and his focus shifted from the problems in his life to the things that were going right, and deserving of recognition and thanks.

For a small story predicated on a seemingly minor activity, 365 Thank Yous is told with impressive humility, heart and soul. It’s touching when the Starbucks worker explains his reluctance to open Kralik’s note, anticipating another complaint from an entitled three-dollar-latte drinker, only to be pleasantly surprised by the gift of simple appreciation.

Readers will forgive Kralik for taking 15 months to write all 365 notes, and thank him for sharing the fruits of the project in this sweet and uplifting book.

—Heather Seggel

 

 

Are you ready to make a fresh start in the new year? We’ve lined up a bevy of guidebooks to help you launch 2011 with a renewed sense of purpose and effective new strategies for dealing with life’s challenges. Choose the approach that best suits…

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