Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #243
by muffy
Michael David Lukas's debut novel The Oracle of Stamboul beautifully evokes life in 19th-century Turkey.
Raised by a doting father after her mother's death at childbirth, Eleonora Cohen is recognized as a prodigy (aka The Oracle) at an early age. Unable to endure her stepmother's iron-fisted discipline, Eleonora stows away on the ship that bears her father to Stamboul (modern day Istanbul) on business. When tragedy strikes, Eleonora's extraordinary genius comes to the attention of Sultan Abdul Amid II who is impressed with her shrewd political evaluations, and seeks her advice that might have changed the course of history.
"The exotic sights and sounds of nineteenth-century Turkey spring vividly to life, ... In addition to conducting a delightfully quirky magical mystery tour via an appealingly quirky heroine, Lukas also paints a bold portrait of an empire precariously poised on the chasm between an old and a new world."
Readers intrigued with historic Istanbul might enjoy Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red (audio), translated from the Turkish by Erdağ Göknar. Set in In sixteenth-century Istanbul, a furor erupts when the sultan hires a group of artists to illuminate a great book. An intellectual mystery that will appeal to fans of Umberto Eco, Iain Pears, and Arturo Perez-Reverte.
Also check out The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, first in a mystery series, and the Edgar Award Winner for a First Novel. In 1836, Europe is modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court.
Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate is a "lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in an Ottoman palace where a British sea captain’s daughter is held captive in the sultan’s harem in 16th-century Constantinople.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #242
by muffy
Benjamin Hale's "mischievous debut" The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore * is a love story between the world's first speaking chimpanzee and a primatologist. Just bear with me here, alright?
Born and raised in captivity (no less, at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, famous for its primate house), Bruno is unlike any chimpanzee in the world - precocious, self-conscious and very gifted, and he speaks. Primatologist Dr. Lydia Littlemore takes him into her home to oversee his education and nurture his passion for painting but has a rough time with his more primal urges and outbursts which ultimately cost her her job, and send the unlikely pair on the road.
"Like its protagonist, this novel is big, loud, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and amazingly accomplished.... it goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like to be human -- to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail."
Caution!!!!!! Exuberantly detailed sex between species might offend some readers. Proceed at your own risk.
Benjamin Hale is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he received a Provost's Fellowship to complete this novel, which also went on to win a Michener-Copernicus Award.
Readers who enjoyed Sara Gruen's Ape House and Laurence Gonzales' Lucy (blog) will find this a delight.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #241
by muffy
If you let a snarky remark like "Readable, upmarket, non-mold-breaking escapism" to keep you away from Eleanor Brown's ,The Weird Sisters then it really is a shame.
I am thick in the middle of it and can't put it down but I can't wait until I'm done to blog it either. So here it is, the blurb from the publisher...
"The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected."
So far, I have to agree with one of the reviewers, "There are no false steps in this debut novel: the humor, lyricism, and realism characterizing... will appeal to fans of good modern fiction as well as stories of family and of the Midwest." Oh, BTW, Weird is set in Buckeye territory but we won't hold that against it.
Listen to the NPR review and author interview. And don't be surprised with the buzz around this book big time in the weeks to come.
In the meantime while you are waiting for your copy, read Short Girls - homegrown and Maize-and-Blue all the way.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #240
by muffy
Mr. Chartwell : a novel * is a tragicomic fantasy set in July 1964 when an elderly and retired Winston Churchill summoned Esther Hammerhans, a library clerk at the House of Parliament, to Chartwell, his home in Kent to act as his temporary secretary. Tagging along is Mr. Chartwell, aka Black Pat, "a colossal hound, odoriferous, walking, talking physical mess of an animal, who inexplicably exudes a most charming, seductive manner".
It is not a secret that Churchill struggled with depression - his bête noire as he called it, the "black dog" that accompanied him throughout his life. When widowed Esther decides to rent a room in her London flat to Mr. Chartwell, she has no idea what she's allowing into her solitary life.
One reviewer pleads that we: "Please, willingly suspend disbelief and allow debut author Rebecca Hunt's vivid imagination to take you on this exuberant funhouse ride through a week in the lives of Esther, Winston, two matchmakers, the easygoing love interest, and the buttoned-up library director at the House of Commons".
"Rococo both in its imagination and phrasing", it cleverly combines historical detail, a marvelously subtle sense of humor,and a quirky assortment of characters.
A witty, intelligent curiosity of a novel, longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
* = Starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #239
by muffy
Sara J. Henry's Learning to Swim : a novel (coming out this month) is the first in a projected mystery series.
Freelance writer Troy Chance rescues a child tossed off the back of a passing ferry onto frigid Lake Champlain. Gradually teasing out his story, made difficult by the fact that he only speaks French, Troy comes to understand that the boy, Paul had been kidnapped, held for months. When Troy tracks down Paul's father, successful businessman Philippe Dumond and returns Paul to Ottawa, she soon senses that Paul might still be in danger and in fact, is at the center of a bizarre and violent plot.
"A compelling plot, a pervading sense of foreboding, well-constructed characters..., Henry proves herself to be a smooth and compelling storyteller. And her lead is highly appealing: an athletic, fiercely independent young woman".
A readalike for crime-fiction authors Chevy Stevens, Norman Green and Gillian Flynn whose feisty female protagonists are also capable of making delightfully acerbic observations.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #238
by muffy
Deborah Harkness, a professor of history at the University of Southern California, a Fullbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center scholar/author (The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution) surprised everyone in her circle, including herself when she secretly started writing A Discovery of Witches,* a novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.
While researching in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young Yale scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery but her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and soon a horde of demons, witches, and vampires descends upon the library and she is the only one who can break its spell. Once "neckbiter"-good-kisser, and renowned geneticist Matthew Clairmont enters the scene, well, you can guess what comes next in this literary and sophisticated "bodice-ripper".
Called by reviewers as "one of the better fantasy debuts" in recent memory, it will appeal to fans of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series, as well as fantastic romances such as Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. There are also the faint whispers about Harry Potter and the Twilight saga. Well, I'll let you be the judge.
* = Starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts # 237
by muffy
Readers familiar with "Ava Wrestles the Alligators", the opening story in Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006) will be pleased to find Ava front and center in Swamplandia!* * * , - her "spectacularly crafted" first novel due to hit the market next week.
Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Florida Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, Swamplandia! and all its quirky inhabitants are unmoored.
Some take off for parts unknown, one falls in love with an ancient ghost. To set things right, 13 year-old Ava embarks on an odyssey to the Underworld that is at once spellbinding and terrifying.
"Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air."
"Quirky, outlandish fiction", a phantasmagorical tale of teens left on their own. "To say it's offbeat is to seriously underestimate its weirdness." ~Kirkus Reviews
Selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and the New Yorker's 20 under 40, Karen Russell is an irrepressible new voice in contemporary fiction. You don't want to miss this.
* * * = Starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #236
by muffy
Kathleen Winter's debut novel Annabel, a finalist for Canada's Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers' Trust Award is a luminous and deeply affection portrait of growing up with a secret few would understand, which one family is desperate to hide.
In 1968, into the devastating, spare atmosphere of the remote coastal town of Labrador, Canada, an intersex child is born. Three people hold fast to the secret - the baby's parents, and a trusted midwife/friend, Thomasina. While the father makes the difficult decision to raise the child as a boy named Wayne, the mother continues to quietly nurture the boy’s female side. And as Wayne grows into adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting society of his father, his shadow-self, a girl he thinks of as “Annabel,” is never entirely extinguished and only comes to light after a medical emergency.
"Kathleen Winter has crafted a literary gem about the urge to unveil mysterious truth in a culture that shuns contradiction, and the body’s insistence on coming home. A daringly unusual debut full of unforgettable beauty...".
Since Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002), I cannot think of another novel that treats the subject of androgyne with such insight, sensitivity and humanity. Fearless, moving, and absolutely compelling.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #235
by muffy
4 years after her memoir Kabul Beauty School : an American woman goes behind the veil made a considerable buzz in the publishing world with this "remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom", Deborah Rodriguez is trying her hand at fiction with A Cup of Friendship.
Running a Kabul coffee shop that is patronized by ex-pats and locals, thirtysomething-American Sunny reaches out to a growing circle of new friends including a pregnant rape victim, a wealthy woman who would help others, a journalist with a painful secret and a den mother who is engaged in a complicated affair.
"Rodriguez has a deft hand for detail and the accelerated emotion of the expat existence in war-torn Afghanistan", and will certainly appeal to those with an interest in current events in the Middle East.
For an intimate look at the lives and struggles of women in the insular (to Westerners) Islamic world, readers might try Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh (also available as audiobook).
For cross-cultural tales and the experiences of Middle Eastern ex-pats in America (which mirror those depicted in Cup), I loved The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins and Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #234
by muffy
If you did not read Lisa Genova's debut novel Still Alice, a moving and vivid depiction of an accomplished woman who slowly loses her thoughts and memories to Alzheimer's, only to discover that each day brings a new way of living and loving, then there is one more reason for you to pick up her new novel Left Neglected.
Once again, bringing her expertise in neuroscience (Ph.D. Harvard) Genova introduces Sarah Nickerson who suffers from a little-known neurological syndrome called left neglect that leaves her unable to feel or see anything on her left side, due to injuries sustained in a car accident. As she struggles to recover physically, Sarah also learns to cope with aspects of her life "left neglected" owing to a high-powered job and her busy lifestyle, among them - her relationship with her mother, her young family, and her own happiness.
With a likable character committed to change and growth, a story of hope and strength, and sensitive treatment of a unique medical condition Left Neglected will appeal to Women's Fiction readers.
Readers interested in neuroscience should also try A Beautiful Mind : a biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., which depicts the "mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love". (See the film adaptation, starring Russell Crowe)