Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #687
by muffy
Convenience Store Woman * * by Sayaka Murata marks the English-language debut of one of Japan’s most talented contemporary writers. In 2016 she won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and was named a Woman of the Year by Vogue Japan. The author herself worked at a convenience store in Japan and still finds the time to do the occasional shift.
36 year-old Keiko Furukura has been working at the same Tokyo convenience store for literally half of her life. While colleagues and managers come and go, Keiko remains - finding purpose and satisfaction in the routine. Considered since childhood to be peculiar, her work allows Keiko a sense of normalcy. While family and friends continue to pressure Keiko to seek a “proper job” and to marry, she boldly strikes a deal with the lazy, shifty irascible Shiraha.
“Alienation gets deliciously perverse treatment in Convenience Store Woman . . . the book’s true brilliance lies in Murata’s way of subverting our expectations . . . With bracing good humor . . . Murata celebrate(s) the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost of being themselves.” (NPR “Fresh Air”)
The downloadable eAudiobook (through Overdrive) expertly read by the delightful Nancy Wu, will appeal to fans of Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and brings to mind Amelie, a 2001 French romantic comedy.
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #686
by muffy
Apocalyptic Manhattan. 2 debuts giving voice to 2 reluctant heroines.
Severance * * by Ling Ma is “(s)mart, funny, humane, and superbly well-written.” (Kirkus Reviews, check out the interview with the author)
When a pandemic called Shen Fever sweeps New York, decimating its population and threatening to shut down the city, for unknown reasons, Candace Chen is spared. Unfervered, she agrees to remain at the Manhattan book publisher while others flee. Sequestering herself in the office tower except for her daily walk with her camera, she captures the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. On the last day of her contract, Candace commandeers a yellow cab and meets up with a ragtag group of survivors in Pennsylvania, led by the self-appointed leader named Bob who assures them if they make it to the “Facility”(shopping center) near Chicago, they would have all it needs to restart society.
But Candace is carrying a secret that Bob plans to exploit. Imprisoned and isolated, Candace realizes her only option is to escape into the unknown.
“With womb dystopia a hot topic inspired by the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, an already established audience will be eager to discover this work.” (Library Journal)
Suicide Club : a novel about living * by Rachel Heng. “Fans of modern speculative fiction and readers who love stories that warn us to be careful what we wish for will be enthralled by Heng's highly imaginative debut, which deftly asks, "What does it really mean to be alive?" (Library Journal)
Lea Kirino is a "Lifer," which means that if she does everything right, she has the potential to live forever.
At 100, she has a great job, a pedigreed fiancé, and good habits that would optimize her lifespan. But Lea's perfect life is turned upside down when she spots her estranged father on a crowded sidewalk. A misstep marks the beginning of her downfall as she is drawn into his mysterious world of the Suicide Club, a network of powerful individuals and rebels who reject society's pursuit of immortality. Soon Lea is forced to choose between a sanitized immortal existence and a short, bittersweet time with a man she has never really known, but who is the only family she has left in the world.
* * = 2 starred reviews
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #685
by muffy
Author/television writer Rebecca Serle’s young adult novel Famous In Love (2014) has been adapted into a television series. In her first novel for adults The Dinner List, “(t)hemes of love, loss, and forgiveness weave through (an) intriguing mix of the real and the fanciful.” (Booklist)
Arriving at the restaurant for her 30th birthday dinner with her best friend Jessica, Sabrina Nielsen finds 4 other guests seated at the table - the 5 people, dead or alive, she had picked to have dinner with when challenged by Jessica their junior year at USC. There is Audrey Hepburn, her father’s favorite actress (and Sabrina his favorite of Hepburn’s movies); Robert, her father who deserted the family when she was 5 and never looked back; Conrad, her college professor/mentor who has been a steady influence; and Tobias, her ex-fiance and a talented photographer.
Over the course of the dinner, it becomes clear that there's a reason these six people have been gathered together. “Serle alternates chapters of the dinner party with the story of Sabrina and Tobias’ romance, deftly, slowly revealing how and why they broke up.”(Kirkus Reviews) As midnight approaches and the guests depart, Sabrina observes that “This dinner began as a reminder of all I have lost, but as I watch them now, all I can feel is profoundly grateful.”
For fans who delight in the magical realism of One Day, and the life-changing romance of Me Before You.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #684
by muffy
Entertainment Weekly called Confessions of the Fox * *, Jordy Rosenberg’s debut novel “an ambitious work of metafiction, a sexy queer love story, and a rigorously researched and argued piece of scholarship, all rolled into one.”
Jack Sheppard (1702-24) and Bess Edgeworth were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of 18th c. London. Yet no one knows the true story - until 2018, when transgender university professor R. Voth happens upon a manuscript, dated 1724 at a library book sale titled “Confessions of the Fox”. P, born a female was sold into servitude to a carpenter at twelve. Shackled in an attic room, P found an aptitude for picking locks. Roaming the streets at night, P met and fell in love with Bess, a sex worker with links to London’s underworld and the queer subculture. Slight in built and nimble with tools, P fulfilled her desire to live as “Jack” and became one of the most wanted in the city’s criminal history. As Dr. Voth obsessively annotates the manuscript, desperate to find the answer, being drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined, and only a miracle will save them all.
“Even when Rosenberg, a scholar of 18th-century literature and queer/trans theory at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, allows Voth to become pedantic, it’s in the service of this novel’s marvelous ambition: To show how easily marginalized voices are erased from our histories—and that restoring those voices is a disruptive project of devotion….a singular, daring, and thrilling novel: political, sexy, and cunning as a fox.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Fans of Sarah Waters's Fingersmith will find this a good companion-more political and academic, perhaps, but similarly absorbing in period detail” (Library Journal)
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #683
by muffy
Ghosted * is UK author Rosie Walsh’s American debut.
For the past 19 years, successful (and newly single) non-profit entrepreneur Sarah Mackey returns home to spend the month of June with her parents in an idyllic corner of Gloucester. On a blistering hot day, she met Eddie David, coaxing a lost sheep back to pasture. Their connection was instant. After seven blissful days together, Eddie left on a planned vacation and disappeared, despite promises to call and plans made. Her constant email, texts and Facebook posts went unanswered. Rather than simply considered herself “ghosted”, Sarah became increasingly worried as days and weeks went by. But then she discovers she is right. There is a reason for Eddie's disappearance, and it is the one thing they didn't share with each other: the truth.
Told through a combination of letters, texts, voicemail, “Walsh weaves an intricate story of mystery, deception, grief, and forgiveness that begins slowly and builds steam as the plot twists and turns, and steers clear of predictability.” (Library Journal)
“A romantic, sad, and ultimately hopeful book that’s perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes.” (Kirkus Reviews)
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #682 - I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. ~ William Ernest Henley
by muffy
Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One, Raphaëlle Giordano’s debut, already a bestseller in France, will appeal to fans of The Alchemist and Hector and the Search for Happiness.
A flat tire in a thunderstorm on a secluded road at the outskirt of Paris brought Camille to Claude, a successful routinologist. Until that moment, the 38 year-old wife and mother with a good job, did not realize how unhappy she was. Claude deduces that Camille is suffering from a case of acute routinitis - that she’s dissatisfied, unmotivated, and unhappy even though she has everything she needs. Together, they devise an unconventional course of treatment to transform her life - from simple tasks (spring cleaning) to slightly odder ones (a hot air balloon ride), to ones that challenge her understanding of who she is and who she wants to be.
“Giordano has created a quick and light read...A fast, feel-good story about finding happiness.” (Kirkus Reviews). The author, a Paris-based expert in personal development kindly includes a Dictionary of Terms for those of us still waiting to meet our inner routinologist. Book groups will also find the discussion guide useful.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #681
by muffy
Lettie Teague’s article “Will Work for Wine: Oenophiles’ Second Acts”, about how financier, attorney, videogame designer left behind successful careers to pursue their passion in the wine business, in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, brought to mind The Shortest Way Home by Miriam Parker - an accomplished debut (Publishers Weekly) that has been named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Real Simple.
After graduating from Haas MBA program at UC Berkeley, power couple Hannah and boyfriend Ethan are heading back to NYC - she, to a much-coveted job at Goldman Sachs and he, to start a business with friends from MIT. But on a romantic weekend trip to Sonoma (Hannah is sure he is about to propose), she realizes she wants to stay in California, and in particular, Sonoma. At the family-run Bellosguardo Winery, she impulsively accepted a marketing job offer, telling herself and everyone concerned that it is only for the summer. Determined to use her management skills to turn the failing business around, Hannah quickly becomes invaluable to owners Everett and Linda, and inevitably becomes involved in their problematic relationship. Her attraction to their son William, a budding filmmaker, forces Hannah to evaluate her own life choices.
“This debut novel about a young woman following her heart and creating her happiness is engaging and fun.” (Library Journal). Readers might also enjoy Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #680
by muffy
A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder * * by Dianne Freeman
April, 1899. After a year of mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, American heiress Frances Wynn, Countess of Harleigh was finally able to leave the crumbling family manor and money-grubbing in-laws to start a new life for herself and her young daughter in London, just in time to sponsor her younger sister Lily Price for her first London Season. When Inspector Delaney of the Metropolitan Police informed her that her husband’s death was being investigated as a possible murder, she turned to her new neighbor and brother of her best friend, George Hazelton for support.
Then a string of mysterious burglaries, a murder in her garden, and a clumsy attempt on her life convinced Frances that one of her sister’s aristocratic suitors might not be whom he claimed to be, and a killer was in their midst.
"Fans of witty, lighthearted Victorian mysteries will be enthralled." (Publishers Weekly)
A suggested read-alike : A Useful Woman, the first in the Rosalind Thorne series by Darcie Wilde (a pseudonym for Sarah Zettel) is inspired by Jane Austen’s works. It introduces a charming and resourceful heroine,  privy to the secrets of high society—including who among the ton is capable of murder.
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #679
by muffy
A. J. Pearce’s chance discovery of a 1939 women’s magazine is the inspiration behind her debut novel, Dear Mrs. Bird. Among the things she loved most was “The Problem Page” where women would write for advice as they faced “unimaginably difficult situations in the very toughest of times.”
London, 1940. Emmeline Lake, typist by day and a volunteer telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services by night, answered a want-ad for a “junior” at London Evening Chronicle, finally realizing her dream to be a lady war correspondent. In actual fact, she was hired as a junior typist for Mrs. Henrietta Bird, the advice columnist of a weekly women’s magazine in the same building. Emmeline could almost overlook the overbearing and rude Mrs. Bird if not for her long and unreasonable list of UNACCEPTABLE TOPICS that would not be published or responded to. Feeling sorry for these women who were often lonely and faced with difficult decisions, Emmeline began answering their letters in secret.
“Vividly evocative of wartime life, with its descriptions of bombed streets, frantic fire stations, and the desperate gaiety and fortitude of ordinary souls enduring nightly terror, Pearce’s novel lays a light, charming surface over a graver underbelly. With its focus on the challenges and expectations placed on those left behind, it also asks: Who is supporting the women in a world turned upside down by war?” (Kirkus Reviews)
For fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir and Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave Is Forgiven.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #678
by muffy
Second acts for 2 chef/entrepreneurs; a glimpse into the fine-dining industry; and a delight for foodies.
The first in a food-centered series, The Saturday Night Supper Club by RITA Award winner Carla Laureano opens with the hectic kitchen scene at Paisley, one of Denver’s hottest fine-dining restaurants under Chef Rachel Bishop. When a negative review and a subsequent editorial went viral, she was forced out by her business partners.
Guilty and contrite over his part in the whole debacle, essayist Alex Kanin wanted nothing more than a chance to help rebuild Rachel’s career, and urged Rachel into using his gorgeous loft apartment to host an exclusive supper club. As the pair worked together closely, they found their interest in each other was more than business.
“Bright, jovial, and peppered with romance and delectable cuisine, this is a sweet and lively love story.” (Booklist)
The Booklist reviewer called Hot Mess * by Emily Belden, “an exhilarating debut...(f)ull of heart, heat, and passion”.
In this restaurant rom-com, when twentysomething Allie Simon met Benji Zane, Chicago’s young celebrity chef, she was a goner. Charismatic, sexy, and newly clean from a history of drug use, Benji talked Allie into investing her life-saving to open a new restaurant as their future together. Then Benji disappeared, leaving Allie to pick up the pieces just as the restaurant was about to open. “Lost in the mess of it all, she can either crumble completely or fight like hell for the life she wants and the love she deserves.”
*= Starred review