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The next big thing?: Meet six debut novelists worth watching this summer
REVIEW BY BECKY OHLSEN When you kill off your narrator in the first 10 pages of a novel - and tell readers who the killer is - you'd better have one compelling story up your sleeve. Alice Sebold does.
From up in what she calls "my heaven," Susie watches the repercussions of her death among her friends and family. She sees her broken parents crumble away from each other, her younger sister harden her heart, her classmates cling to each other for comfort. She watches her murderer in the calm aftermath of his awful deed. She longs for the one boy she's ever kissed, knowing she'll never touch him again. She misses her dog. She aches for her parents and siblings, yearning to comfort them but unable to interfere. In her heaven, she's granted all her simplest desires - she has friends and a mother-figure - and she delights in her ability to see everything and everyone in the world. Observing her sister one Christmas, she says, "Lindsey had a cute boy in the kitchen. . . . I was suddenly privy to everything. She never would have told me any of this stuff. . . . She kissed him; it was glorious. I was almost alive again." But watching the world without being among the living isn't enough for Susie. She's 14 forever, and the pain of her unfulfilled promise infuses her voice as she watches her younger brother and sister growing into roles she'll never play. Still, Susie's no wispy, thinly drawn ghost; like nearly every other character in the book, she's a remarkable, complex person who has as much humor and kindness as grief. In the end, what Sebold has accomplished is to find her own inventive way of expressing the universal alienation and powerlessness we all feel, trapped in our own small worlds apart from each other. More than that, she has convinced us that, through love and hope and generosity, these things can be overcome. Becky Ohlsen is a writer in Portland, Oregon.
By Alice Sebold Little, Brown, $21.95 288 pages, ISBN 0316666343
REVIEW BY MARK TARALLO At the opening of The Color Midnight Made, Andrew Winer's moving and funny first novel, 10-year-old Conrad Clay is diagnosed as colorblind by his school doctor. The news distresses our young hero, yet in one sense it is his greatest asset. As one of the few white students at Jack London Primary School in a hardscrabble corner of Alameda, California, Conrad has no trouble blending in with his African-American peers, such as his best friend, Loop. "Loop said I musta been black in a past life," Conrad says, "so it was cool I was hangin' wid the bruthas in this one, since I had prior experience and did not be coming at it on the honky-ass tip." But Conrad faces difficulties that go far beyond imperfect vision. His father loses his shipbuilding job at the Alameda Naval Base, his parents' marriage is crumbling, his beloved grandmother is dying, and his family is facing eviction from their home. Even Loop, drawn to an older boy, seems to be turning against him.
Winer's ear for slang is pitch perfect, and his warm comic way with dialogue is a delight. Here is Bobby, the boyfriend of Loop's mother, chastising a friend for being too romantically aggressive with a woman: "You got to slow your roll, bro . . . you got no shame to your game." Conrad's use of street diction in sharing his thoughts and emotions is striking, but Winer never gets carried away with his own poeticism. The narrative remains tight throughout, with nary a wasted word. Race relations, the destructive effects of working class job flight on family structure, and the persistence of certain communities even in the worst of circumstances are some of the serious themes this novel takes on. But most importantly, it is impossible not to be drawn into Conrad's plight, and readers will root for him to somehow find a way to emerge intact from his brutal environment. Conrad's circumstances may break a few hearts, but his resilience, charm and brio will undoubtedly win them over in the end. Mark Tarallo, a journalist based in Washington, D.C., is at work on his first novel.
By Andrew Winer Washington Square, $24 272 pages, ISBN 0743439902
REVIEW BY ARLENE MCKANIC Claudia, the narrator of Sally MacLeod's Passing Strange, was born ugly, but her unfortunate face represents the most benign species of ugliness in this tragic, gorgeously written first novel. As a teenager, Claudia's very homeliness makes her promiscuous; if boys can't love her looks, they'll love the favors she provides. To everyone's surprise she marries Dan, one of the boys who callously used her as a teenager and who has grown into a handsome, rich, sarcastic lout. His parents, including a mom deliciously named Ping, are dismayed by Claudia's looks, which prompts her to get plastic surgery.
MacLeod's way with language is luminous. This reviewer once heard Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, remark that every saying you've heard once is already a cliche, and MacLeod seems incapable of cliche; every description and metaphor is as fresh and startling as those candy crystals that fizz and pop in the mouth. She's superb at describing the emotional, physical and even financial costs of a major facelift: the discomfort, the frozen tea bag therapy, the salt water rinse, the diet of bland food, and then the shock of a new and lovely face and the unwarranted social acceptance it buys. No one in MacLeod's book is particularly likable, but her talent hooks the reader and keeps you hooked, no matter how distasteful her characters. Passing Strange handles the subjects of looks, and its poisonous subspecies, race, in a new and arresting way. Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica Plains, New York.
By Sally MacLeod Random House, $23.95 288 pages, ISBN 0375506136
REVIEW BY ANNE MORRIS "How much of an artist's life can be seen in an artist's work?" Catherine Cantrell, asks that question in the first paragraph of her debut novel, Constance, then goes on to play with the idea for a couple of hundred pages. Told from the point of view of the editor at a New York publishing house who "discovers" Constance's poetry, the novel introduces the reader bit by bit to this beautiful young literary artist. Whether or not you value the poetry as highly as does Morgan, the editor, you will be intrigued by Constance Chamberlain. She is dedicated to pure art and feels a kinship with Emily Dickinson, but also manages a secret relationship with Lou, a powerful older married man who was once her professor in business school.
The editor's voice as she tells this tale is nonetheless convincing. A lonely young widow, Morgan becomes fascinated by Constance. She finds the young poet refreshing after meeting so many writers who pursue money first, and art, second. Ever tempting the reader to see parallels between herself and Constance, the author gives the protagonist the same double-C initials as her own and a similar background, in upper class Lake Forest, Illinois. Both dedicate their first book simply, "To My Mother." And for both, it's a novel that includes original poems. Brought to the attention of Random House by writer William Styron, Catherine Cantrell seems likely to capture others' attention, too, with this haunting debut. Though the final pages, with their return to Constance's girlhood home, raise many questions, you come away with an answer to the big one. Yes, some artists do put very much of themselves into their art. Anne Morris is a writer in Austin.
By Catherine Cantrell Random House, $22.95 224 pages, ISBN 037550796
REVIEW BY ALICE PELLAND In her first novel, Sharon Wyse skillfully creates the diary of Lou Ann Campbell, an 11-year-old growing up on a wheat farm in northern Texas during the summer of 1960. Beginning when the yellow-green wheat is almost ripe and continuing through the harvest and preparation for the next season's planting, Lou Ann writes poignantly about her coming-of-age summer, during which she makes the painful transition from dolls and imaginary play to adolescent concerns such as sexuality and the status of her family in the outside world. Isolated on a farm a few miles from the Oklahoma border, Lou Ann's only outside contacts are a friend at church, visitors on the Fourth of July and the "wheaties" who come each year to harvest the wheat. Her friends and confidantes are five tiny dolls she keeps hidden in a box, each representing one of her mother's five stillborn children.
Despite her isolation and her dysfunctional family, Lou Ann possesses a remarkable spark of wisdom and inner strength. She marvels at the smell that comes before a rain and knows that she wants to remember it forever. She savors the nights when there are so many stars in the sky she could never count them all. Eventually, the young girl comes to the crucial realization that the past is all we have to prepare ourselves for the future. Most importantly, in this memorable summer, Lou Ann learns what she needs to survive. Alice Pelland came of age in Texas in the 1960s and writes from Hillsborough, North Carolina.
By Sharon Wyse Riverhead, $18.95 160 pages, ISBN 1573222194
REVIEW BY ROGER GATHMAN Americans love frontiers. Unexpectedly, one emerged in Eastern Europe when the Berlin wall fell in 1989. The Gen X crowd went in droves to Prague and Moscow, and in smaller trickles to Budapest, Hungary, the setting for Arthur Phillip's ironically named first novel. The time is 1990, and the gold rush is on for that eminently desirable thing called experience. The action revolves around a group of four Americans who socialize with each other in a select circuit of bars and cafes. In the case of Mark Payton, the American label is a mistake: Mark is actually Canadian. A graduate student, he wants to turn his dissertation about the culture and architecture of nostalgia into a book. For Scott Price, Budapest is a way station on a prolonged therapeutic escape from his family and history, which he blames for all his problems. Much to Scott's displeasure, his younger brother John has followed him to Budapest. John, whose point of view dominates the novel, is 24, an anomalous virgin with the habit common to his generation of turning his personal contradictions into easy ironies. During the course of the novel, while pursuing his obsession with Emily Oliver, an attachÈ to the American ambassador, John will lose his virginity to Nicki, an in-your-face artist with a shaved head.
Although the beginning of the book is a bit bumpy with stage-setting, once we have a sense of Phillips' characters, their trajectories are moving, funny and above all, interesting. They never quite find the experience they're searching for, but in the process they turn a concrete, historically autonomous place like Budapest into a crossroads of peculiarly American schemes and dreams.
Roger Gathman is a freelance writer based in Austin.
By Arthur Phillips Random House, $24.95 448 pages, ISBN 0375507876
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ALICE SEBOLD
"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973," Susie Salmon tells us in the second sentence of The Lovely Bones. She shows us who did it - a neighbor everyone thinks is "weird" - and describes the horrible scene, a brutal assault and dismemberment in an underground hideout in a bleak winter cornfield. Sebold's triumph is in making Susie's voice so immediately compelling that we don't want to let her go, even after she's dead. We want to know what happens next. So does Susie.
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ANDREW WINER
Thus everyday life becomes a tremendous challenge for Conrad, and his attempts to negotiate his troubled world are depicted in scenes by turns hysterical and heart-rending. Luckily, when things look darkest and loneliest, a few allies emerge. B.L.T., an ostracized overweight classmate, turns out to be an inspiration in skateboarding, Conrad's favorite pastime. And Conrad is bolstered by the gritty wisdom of Loop's brother Midnight, a blind oracular figure who makes up for his inability to see by internally supplying color for everything, from people and trees to his own emotions.
SALLY MacLEOD
Claudia's transformation is so complete that she can pass off an old photo of herself as another woman entirely, something that will have disastrous consequences for the future. When Claudia and Dan move to the town of Beasley, North Carolina, things start to crumble in earnest. The South, of course, was long a place where one's looks counted for absolutely everything, and the reader is not surprised by Claudia's quirky fascination with the town's black folk, who still comprise its servant class. Raised in Vermont, Claudia has rarely seen a black person and views them as exotic, friendly animals. When she begins an affair with Calvin, her neighbors' black handyman, you get the feeling she has done so because of, not in spite of, her own racism. At the same time, Claudia and Dan befriend the cream of Beasley society, such as it is, including Debs-Anne, a genteelly racist flibbertigibbet with a mother-in-law named Nan Darlin'. The reader braces early for the book's Gatsby-esque denouement.
CATHERINE CANTRELL
Her professor where? That's right, in business school at Columbia. Don't all poets get an MBA?
SHARON WYSE
Lou Ann has to write in secret and hide her diary carefully each day so her mother won't find it. Clearly, isolation, grief and the unrelenting hard work of the farm have affected Loretta Campbell's abilities as a wife and mother. In a metaphor that describes her family, Lou Ann explains that when termites attack a house, the outside wood can look fine while the inside is being destroyed.
ARTHUR PHILLIPS
John's sensitivity to Hungarian culture doesn't prevent him from being instrumental in ripping it off as part of a scheme cooked up by Charles G·bor, another member of the group. A native of Michigan, Charles actually speaks Hungarian, a linguistic gift he owes to his parents, refugees from the unsuccessful 1956 revolt against the Russians.