The only thing worse that an eltist blogger asshole who thinks literary fiction hung the moon (see post below) is when humorless columnists threaten to sue bloggers who poke fun at them. So take a second from adding the profusion of comments below, and post a comment at Ed's place in support of him, so that overly litigious crybabies think twice before making threats. Then you can come back here and vent all you like ...
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August 26, 2006
August 25, 2006
WHEN THE BAR HAS NO LOWER TO GO ... CHOICES*
Adult readers, it appears, crave the comforts of young adult (YA) reading.
Lisa Santamaria is a college student who also enjoys YA fiction, particularly fantasy, which she said is often more imaginative than fantasy books written for older readers. Santamaria runs the children's department of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Willow Grove, where many adults come in and ask for books for themselves.
"Children's books have a more upbeat ending, and a lot of people are looking for that," Santamaria said.
"They want something a little more entertaining or fluffy, so they come to the kids' section, only to find out that these books are not necessarily fluffy at all. Like Harry Potter - it makes you think."
It does, indeed. Mostly, it makes us think about how blindingly wealthy J.K. Rowling has become. Still, on the one hand, we remind ourselves that any number of great, enduring works started out as intended for children. (The Little Prince leaps to mind, although even that's probably open to argument.)
On the other hand, it does ever so slightly feel like yet another stone of the great edifice of Grownupland has been gleefully kicked out from underneath us. And there aren't many of those suckers left ...
* In deference to Cecil Castelucci's comments (see comments box), we've changed the title of this post to be a slightly more accurate, less incendiary reflection of our intentions.
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August 24, 2006
NEXT STOP, COUPLES THERAPY
Over at the LA Weekly, Claire Messud - whose new novel The Emperor's Children gets the glowing front page of the New York Times Book Review this Sunday - is the subject of this very interesting Q&A conducted by Michelle Huneven (Jamesland).
Just out of curiosity, how do you write with a literary critic in the house?
It’s perfectly easy for me. I show him stuff, and I want him to be my loving husband and the honest literary critic at the same time. It’s not a problem for me, it’s a problem for him, he has to negotiate that one. I have to say, it does seem an incredible gift in life to spend so much time with somebody who cares so much about the same things I care about.
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MAHFOUZ IMPROVES
Naguib Mahfouz's condition - initially reported as "dire" - is now being classified as "on the mend" ...
Egyptian Nobel Literature Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz, reported critically ill last week, was on his way to a recovery, a friend of the writer said in Cairo Wednesday. According to the report, Mahfouz was breathing on his own, although still being fed artificially, and was aware of his surroundings.
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BUT ISN'T THAT THE WHOLE POINT OF A BOOK TOUR?
Irvine Welsh, who just passed through town, tells Reuters that his wild days are behind him.
It's been more than a decade since he touched heroin, Welsh says, and these days the dread of an impending hangover tends to keep him from indulging too much in other intoxicants.
"You just get to the point where you see the hangover," he told Reuters while sipping green tea at a Manhattan hotel.
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FISKETJON HONORED
Gary Fisketjon, Vice President and Editor-at-Large at Alfred A. Knopf, has been awarded the 2006 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction. No link but release details below:
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2006 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction is Gary Fisketjon, Vice President and Editor-at-Large at Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Maxwell E. Perkins, of Scribner’s, was one of the most important editors in American literary history. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Ernest Hemingway are the best known of the many writers he nurtured and supported over his long career, and he is considered by many to be the most admired book editor in the world. This award, named in his honor, recognizes an editor, publisher, or agent who over the course of his or her career has discovered, nurtured, and championed writers of fiction in the United States.
Fisketjon has been chosen because of his impressive work as an editor at Random House and Vintage Books from 1980 to 1986, where he created the Vintage Contemporaries Series, as Editorial Director of the Atlantic Monthly Press from 1986 to 1990, and since then as Editor-at-Large and Vice President of Alfred A. Knopf. Among the writers he has worked with are Julian Barnes, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Peter Carey, Raymond Carver, Martin Clark, Jonathan Coe, Nik Cohn, Annie Dillard, Andre Dubus, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Ford, Tim Gautreaux, Martha Gellhorn, Kent Haruf, Patricia Highsmith, Michel Houellebecq, William Kittredge, Beverly Lowry, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas McGuane, Allan Gurganus, Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami, Alix Ohlin, Jonathan Raban, Richard Russo, Jim Shepard, Mona Simpson, Mark Spragg, Graham Swift, Donna Tartt, Rupert Thomson, Gore Vidal, Joy Williams, Jeanette Winterson, Geoffrey Wolff, Tobias Wolff, Stephen Wright, and Steve Yarbrough. Their honors include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award.
In announcing the 2006 winner Noreen Tomassi, Executive Director of the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, said,“The creation of the Vintage Contemporaries series was a landmark event in fiction publishing in America, and Gary also has an incredible track record working with some of the finest American writers. The Maxwell Perkins Award was presented for the first time last year to Nan A. Talese, and we can’t imagine a more appropriate recipient for the second award than Gary Fisketjon.”
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SHOULD HAVE KEPT HIS DAY JOB
Cambrensis*, one of Wales' leading literary publications, has closed up shop after nearly 20 years.
Cambrensis - a periodical collection of short stories - is having to go out of production due to its editor Arthur Smith retiring because of ill health.
The 79-year-old set up the publication after quitting his job as an electricity meter reader in 1987.
* Which appears to take its name from him.
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BIRNBAUM v. JUNGER
The ever-busy Robert Birnbaum gets comfy with Sebastian Junger, as the two chat about the origins of Junger's new book, lynching in America, nailing down factuality, turning the readers into a jury, the brilliance of the jury system or the "wisdom of the average", the evolution of the law, the intrusiveness of journalism, what a stank publication the glossy magazine in Boston is, whether bad reviews hurt a book, war zone journalists, Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, war junkies, how to become a foreign correspondent, a meditation on doubt, Alan Dershowitz, Afghanistan, and movie feelers.
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August 23, 2006
SHAME ON YOU, GUYS
Fiction novelists? So they're not actually novelists, then - right?
We're taking a personal day today - SOTEV (yes, that's Sister of TEV - or, "The Successful One" as our parents like to say) is making a rare west coast appearance down in Carlsbad, so we're getting behind the wheel and braving the 405. Literary crankiness resumes tomorrow.
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August 22, 2006
TEV GUEST REVIEW: BUTTERFLY BOY
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
By Rigoberto González
The University of Wisconsin Press
207 pp. (hardcover)
$24.95
GUEST REVIEW BY DANIEL OLIVAS
What makes a writer?
This seemingly simple question can elicit many complex answers and even more questions. Case in point: Rigoberto González's poetic and heartbreaking memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa. González is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction and children's books. He is also a book critic contributing regularly to the El Paso Times.
How did González, the son of migrant farmworkers whose first language was Spanish, become González the writer? Answers begin to emerge from his painful assertion of himself as a gay man in a culture steeped in machismo. González tells of his journey into adulthood and a life of literature in a nonlinear fashion, moving back and forth from childhood to adulthood, Mexico to the United States, self-loathing to self-revelatory empowerment.
The book begins in Riverside, Calif., in 1990. González, as a college student at the Riverside campus of the University of California, has fallen in love with an older man who, as symbolized by painful yet beautiful "butterfly" marks he places upon González, brings both tenderness and brutality to the relationship. The unnamed lover cheats on González and doesn't hesitate to beat him up to establish his superiority over his young man. At times, González believes he deserves such brutality.
Other times, he is grateful to have escaped the oppressiveness of his family and its legacy of dropping out of high school to work in the fields. The escape comes in the form of literature. A sometimes-callous, sometimes-tender teacher named Dolly lends the young González a poetry book and works with him to subjugate his accent. And the fire is lit: "I became a closet reader at first, taking my book with me to the back of the landlord's house or into my parents' room, where I would mouth the syllables softly, creating my own muted music."
González then suffers the death of his mother when he is only 12. Compounding this loss, he is shipped off to live with his tyrannical grandfather. His own father -- who abuses alcohol and carouses with women --eventually starts another family, further alienating González. Again, books prove to be González's salvation, eventually leading to his surreptitious and successful application to college.
González remains closeted in both his sexuality and intellect, realizing that neither facet of his identity would be understood or appreciated by his family. In the midst of scenes from his college life in Riverside and his adolescent exploration of sex and literature, González recounts a long and agonizing bus trip with his father. He leaves Riverside and travels to Indio, where his father lives, so they can begin their journey "into México, into the state of Michoacán, into the town of Zacapu, where my father was born, where my mother was raised, and where I grew up." This passage home takes on a special aura because González will turn 20 while there. Throughout the trip, González longs for his lover while seething with an almost uncontrollable anger toward his father. Throughout, he wonders if this trip was a mistake or a necessary part of becoming an adult.
What makes a writer? Obviously, talent is a necessary ingredient. And in the case of González, add to the mix hard work and a burning desire to be heard. Ultimately, it is a mysterious alchemy. In any case, Butterfly Boy is a potent and poetic coming-of-age story about one man's acceptance of himself. There's no mystery in that.
Daniel A. Olivas is the author of four books including Devil Talk: Stories (Bilingual Press, 2004). He is the editor of Latinos in Lotus Land: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, to be published by Bilingual Press in 2007. His Web site is www.danielolivas.com and he may be reached at [email protected]. This book review first appeared in the El Paso Times.
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WORTHY READINGS
TEV DEFINED
The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
RECOMMENDED
- Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen
This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it. - Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
- Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
- Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
- The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
- Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
- Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
- The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch
Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
- The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio
The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
- The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier *Now in Paperback*
What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
- Ticknor by Sheila Heti
When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
- The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
- The Sea by John Banville
John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
- Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger
We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
- Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines & The Man Who Knew Too Much (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Athena (Boldtype)
- Dictation: A Quartet (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Foreskin's Lament (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Here Is Where We Meet (Boldtype)
- His Illegal Self (Dallas Morning News)
- Hunk City (New York Times Book Review)
- I Love You, Beth Cooper (New York Times Book Review)
- In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars (Truthdig)
- In the Kitchen (Barnes & Noble Review)
- Indignation (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Out of My Skin (Bookforum)
- Personal Days (New York Times Book Review)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (The Modern Word)
- The End of Mr. Y (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- The God of War (Barnes and Noble Review)
- The Northern Clemency (Barnes & Noble Review)
- The Raw Shark Texts (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Ticknor (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Tom Stoppard's Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon (Threepenny Review)
- Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (Los Angeles Review)
SECOND LOOK
- The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
- The Rider by Tim Krabbe
Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
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