Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #150
by muffy
It is 1962, Jackson, Mississippi. 22 year-old Skeeter has a college degree but it worries her mother that she does not have a ring on her finger. Aibileen, a black maid, is heartsick over losing her son but no one could doubt her devotion to yet another white child she is raising. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short and sassy, with a sharp tongue that gets her fired left and right. But boy, could she cook!
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk.
In pitch-perfect voices, debut novelist Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town; and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, and friends view one another.
"A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't".
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #147
by muffy
In the summer of 1978, Natalia Keim abandons her husband for another man, leaving Jack to raise their girls alone. Eva, seventeen, plunges into an affair with her married high school teacher while nine-year-old Sissy escapes to a world of imagination. Down the street, ten-year-old Vicki Anderson rides her bike to the local park and is never seen again.
When Natalia unexpectedly returns, the Keims are forced to piece together their complicated pasts and commitments to each other.
"In this haunting, atmospheric debut, Sandra Novack examines loss, loyalty, and a family in crisis. Lyrical and elegiac, Precious* attempts to make sense of the volatility that surrounds and consumes us, and explores our ability, even during the most trying times, to remember and hold on to those we love most." A lovely read to curl up with.
Readers might also try Leah Hager Cohen's gorgeous and lyrical Heat Lightning.
* = Starred Review
Blog Post
Happy Birthday Alice Walker!
by darla
Happy Birthday to one of my favorite writers, Alice Walker. Born February 9, 1944, she is best known as the author of The Color Purple, which won her a Pulitzer Prize. A self-proclaimed "womanist", she is politically active in several different areas that often surface in her work: civil rights, the anti-nuclear movement, the environment, the women’s movement, and the movement to protect indigenous peoples. Her fight to end female circumcision in Africa is discussed in Warrior Marks : Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, as well two of her fictional works The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy. Walker was the editor of I love myself when I am laughing ... and then again when I am looking mean and impressive : a Zora Neale Hurston reader and was instrumental in bringing Hurston's work back into print. She has published an impressive amount of her own work as well, including novels, short story collections, poetry, children's books, essays, and autobiographical reflections. Click here to watch Alice Walker share a poem she wrote to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama, and to see her speak with legendary 93-year-old civil rights activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #139
by muffy
Debut novelist Tiffany Baker's The Little Giant of Aberdeen County* is a MUST!!! on your new year reading list. (I was lucky enough to score a publisher's preview copy).
With the feel of a "New England Gothic folklore", Little Giant is the story of Truly Plaice of rural Aberdeen (New York) - a giantess from birth, orphaned at 12 and sister to beautiful Serena Jane, and an unconventional heroine with a huge heart to match her size. Haunting the margins of Truly's story is that of Tabitha Dyerson, a rumored witch whose secrets might hold great promise for Truly.
Little Giant has "all the earmarks of a hit — infectious and lovable narrator, a dash of magic, an impressive sweep and a heartrending but not treacly family drama." This brilliant debut is a great readalike for Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House : a romance (1996).
* = Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #132
by muffy
Her first novel to be translated into English, Chilean author/journalist Elizabeth Subercaseaux's A Week in October* is "intense and engrossing". Hard to believe since it delves deeply into the troubled psyche of a woman dying of cancer.
Clara Griffin begins a fictionalized journal that her husband will secretly read and agonize over - it is an intimate roman à clef about her coming death, her troubled marriage, her husband's longstanding secret affair, and her own erotic adventures. Whether this is her way of instilling desire, exacting vengeance or simply finding happiness, Clara's notebook digs into the slippery, treacherous nature of love, deception, truth, guilt and loyalty.
This "slim, elegant novel deftly blends nuance and suspense", and introduces literary fiction readers to a noteworthy author to watch.
* = *Starred Review*
Blog Post
Fiction Firsts #129
by muffy
The Jewel of Medina (copies on order) will be released in early October in the United States ahead of schedule by Beaufort Books. This fictional account of the life of Aisha, a wife of the Prophet Muhammad was originally to be published in August by Random House but was dropped after University of Texas Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies Denise Spellberg warned the publisher the book would incite violence by Muslim extremists.
Born Aisha bint Abi Bakr in 7th century Saudi Arabia, Aisha would become one of the most revered women in the Muslim faith. "Extensively researched and elegantly crafted, The Jewel presents the beauty and harsh realities of life in an age long past, during a time of war, enlightenment, and upheaval".
Late last week, the north London home of the UK publisher of The Jewel - Gibson Square was firebombed in what is being treated as a terrorist attack. Read more about the Medina controversy.
Award-winning journalist Sherry Jones is currently the Montana and Idaho correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs and correspondent for Women's e-News. This is her first novel.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #111
by muffy
The History of Lucy’s Love Life in Ten and a Half Chapters is fun, fluffy and fantastical.
29 year-old commitment-phobic Lucy is staring at the prospect of a perfect life with dishy and nice Anthony (with whom she had 400 plus one-night stands) and chucks it all, wondering if there’s something better on the horizon.
Sacked from her pointless job and bored, an errant time machine sends Lucy on a dating frenzy with bad boy Lord Byron, Leonardo da Vinci, Ovid and Casanova (a sweet guy, really). It’s a thrill ride but there’s also a lesson to be learned. The question is… Is Lucy ready for it?
This British chick lit./fantasy/romantic comedy is the first to be published in the United States by Deborah Wright, a graduate of Oxford University with three best-selling novels in the U.K.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #109
by muffy
In Girls in Trucks we first meet Sarah Walters and her Camellia (Society) girls at the Charleston Cotillion School for future debutantes. Then come the Ivy League college days and the decade as single girls in the big city. We watch as they make consistent bad choices about men, drugs and alcohol, falling short of the Camellia Society ideal (no riding in shiny red trucks with boys), and in danger of totally missing out on a chance for happiness.
Told in the linked-short-story format, Katie Crouch’s “exceptional, stylish debut” is distinguished by its “gentle humor and sharp observation couched in straightforward prose with none of the preening preciosity so often seen in Southern fiction.”
Fresh, heartwarming and engaging, it reminds one of Melissa Bank’s The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Last Girls by Lee Smith.