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Six talented first-time novelists test the literary waters
AMANDA EYRE WARD
"Each novel I write is a shadow life, running like a river beside my own," says Ward, an award-winning short-story writer and reporter for the Austin Chronicle in Austin, Texas. In lean, luminous prose, Ward taps into her own chilling experiences visiting one of the state's women's prisons. Her sharply drawn characters ponder life's capital-letter concepts—Guilt, Vengeance, Forgiveness. As Mills says, while driving to witness Lowens' execution, "The fact is that in the abstract, I do believe in mercy. . . . I believe people make mistakes, and that they should be given a chance to atone. But I also feel that something was taken away from me . . . and that I deserve something back."
Surging swiftly toward the inevitable, Ward's astonishing debut blends pathos and suspense into the rarest of fictional breeds—a literary page-turner. The haunting tale dazzled actress Sandra Bullock, who purchased it for her production company, Fortis Films. She'll need some powerful leading ladies to join her in filling such spirited roles.
By Amanda Eyre Ward MacAdam/Cage, $24 295 pages, ISBN 1931561230
JAMES WHORTON JR.
Don soon decides on a novel response—he will leave first. He takes off "as is," with just the clothes on his back, guided by the muddled notion that his wife will be compelled to stay if he's not there, because otherwise, who would feed the pets? What follows is a circuitous road-trip home, doused at every turn with a liberal quantity of low-budget beer. In this impressive debut novel, Whorton exhibits a dead-on ear for dialogue. The blue collar, work-hard-for-every-dollar Tennesseans he portrays with gentle humor are endearing even when they're behaving in politically incorrect and less-than-reasonable fashion.
This laid-back journey can be infuriating in its lack of direction, but it's a drive worth taking. The trip offers Don the opportunity for self-analysis, and traveling with him gives readers a chance to discover what wisdom there may be in simply waiting.
By James Whorton, Jr. Free Press, $23 224 pages, ISBN 074324446X
LAURA MORIARTY
When we first meet Evelyn, she is 10 years old and exasperated with her single mother Tina, a loving woman who cannot seem to keep a job and is dating a married man, to boot. It quickly becomes clear that Evelyn often acts as the adult in this relationship, and she grows into a studious, serious teenager who doesn't quite fit in with her classmates.
There is, of course, a compelling subset of literature comprised of books that feature a prematurely adult child as the central character. The Center of Everything joins the ranks of those who get it right, because Moriarty is not afraid to make Evelyn fallible. For example, we feel for Evelyn as she naively continues to hope that her friend Travis will return her love, even when it is plain he has fallen for her pretty friend, Deena. And we cheer for Evelyn when, years later, she painfully yet resolutely puts Travis off and informs him that he has chosen the future with Deena he is now trying to avoid. The moments when Moriarty's characters find comfort and beauty in their lives are marked by a lyricism that is woven throughout The Center of Everything. Evelyn's place at the center of everything is, at the outset, both geographical (she lives in the center of Kansas, in the center of the United States) and emotional—she feels overwhelmed, seemingly the hub of the activities of her friends, family and schoolmates. As Evelyn matures, we realize along with her that sometimes, being central to others' lives can be an honor, a source of comfort and confidence we can carry with us as we venture beyond the center of our own small universes.
By Laura Moriarty Hyperion, $22.95 304 pages, ISBN 1401300316
SANDRA NEWMAN
In addition to making abrupt time shifts, Newman ties her characters together with fragile threads of coincidence. When Eddie first meets Denise, she inexplicably has a picture of his father, John Moffat, in her briefcase; we find out later that the two were professional blackjack players (a former profession of the author herself). Denise and Ralph share the same father, but have different mothers, and Ralph doesn't realize Eddie knows Denise until he finds her picture in Eddie's suitcase. While the reader is struggling to keep the dizzying relationships straight, Newman, who was herself adopted and met her biological parents for the first time when she was 25, is focused on how parental love or the lack thereof affects her characters' ability to survive.Readers who enjoy a bit of a challenge will savor Newman's tale of a young woman's identity search and look forward to her next endeavor to see if she retains her unique and inventive style.
By Sandra Newman HarperCollins, $24.95 400 pages, ISBN 0060514981
KEVIN BROCKMEIER
While playing one day in her backyard—with her father busy giving a tour of their historic house, and her mother, Janet, off at an orchestra rehearsal—seven-year-old Celia disappears. One minute she is tightrope-walking along an ancient stone wall, and the next, she is mysteriously gone. A police investigation ensues, and all the right people are questioned, but nothing—not a shred of evidence—turns up.
With beautiful attention to detail ("the water trickled into the cup in two thin strands that joined and spindled about each other") and clear respect for language, Brockmeier has penned an extraordinary first novel. Delving into the toll of grief and pain, he exposes the truths that lie behind life's sometimes horrible realities.
By Kevin Brockmeier Pantheon, $22 240 pages, ISBN 0375421351
MAILE MELOY
Yvettee Santerre, the family's matriarch, keeps many truths hidden from her family with the best intentions, starting, most notably, by claiming her teenage daughter's son Jamie as her own child. Even Teddy, Yvette's husband, is kept in the dark, as the oldest daughter Margot goes to France for a year—ostensibly, to study abroad—while Yvette goes to a convent "to rest" during the course of her supposed pregnancy. But as Jamie grows older, Teddy struggles to connect with his unplanned "son"; Margot marries and tries, unsuccessfully, to have another child; and Jamie's other "sister," Clarissa, suffers from a decaying marriage. As Yvette's children and grandchildren mature, and a shocking relationship develops, the family must begin to unravel its own chain of lies.
Meloy's writing is smooth and often vivid, and she manages to surprise readers, and thus avoid predictability, with an ever-spiraling tale of tragedy, faith and the intersection between the two.
By Maile Meloy Scribner, $24 272 pages, ISBN 0743244354
Allison Block is a writer and editor in La Jolla, California.
Linda Castellitto writes from Rhode Island.
Deborah Donovan is a writer and former librarian in Cincinnati, Ohio.
T.A. Grasso lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Jenn McKee is a writer in Berkley, Michigan.
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Ghost-pale Karen Lowens is a convicted murderer on death row, awaiting execution at a women's prison in Gatestown, Texas. Brassy young Texas librarian Celia Mills is the widow of Karen's last victim. Franny Wren is the kind-hearted physician caring for Karen, who is dying of AIDS. In Sleep Toward Heaven, gifted writer Amanda Eyre Ward intertwines the lives of three women in a poignant tale of benevolence and brutality, whose compelling images resonate long after the final page has been turned.
Although Ward paints a vivid portrait of Lowens' childhood abuse and adult life immersed in a world of prostitution and drugs, her tone is masterfully restrained, impassioned without being preachy, and darkly humorous. When Wren warns a desperately ill Lowens of the dangers of taking too much morphine, the condemned woman responds: "Oh yeah. I might die." Wren battles her own set of demons, including her insistence on a bone marrow treatment for a young cancer patient with no hope for survival. "She could have died in peace," she laments to a stranger at the girl's funeral, "at home, with her family. But I wouldn't let her."
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When Approximately Heaven opens on an ordinary Saturday morning in a small Tennessee town, protagonist Don Brush describes himself as "unemployed and not especially ambitious to improve, and really not mindful of anything in the world" other than the tomato he is about to slice. Without fight or fanfare, his wife, Mary, abruptly announces that she's leaving him—she has an appointment to see a divorce lawyer on Monday. This turn of events slowly spurs Don to action, though not the logical, thought-out kind of action such life-altering words might produce in a more practical sort. His first movements are reactionary: he begins cleaning up, doing chores he has put off for weeks in the hope that this sudden spurt of "things getting done" will change her mind. Mary's mind is made up however; Don's efforts are too little too late, and she still intends to leave.
Don's meandering trip eventually includes an ornery travel buddy who has a hidden agenda for retribution, (and a hidden gun); a dubious mission to deliver an un-stolen sofa; a tour of Mississippi's casinos and beaches; and a chance meeting with a free-to-do-as-she-pleases, attractive woman. It doesn't seem like a good formula for warming a wife's disillusioned heart and fostering a romantic reunion, but there is power in procrastination. As Don explains it: "Sometimes when you're at a moment of crisis, the best thing you can do is become absent."
The Center of Everything is an engaging, intelligent first novel, written in forthright prose studded with moments of poetry. Moriarty's depiction of young Evelyn is intriguing and engaging; the author has created in her a winsome, acutely observant young girl.
Her struggles to find her place in school, in her family, in the world, are sympathetically and realistically depicted. Evelyn possesses wisdom of the beyond-her-years ilk, but she is still a child and encounters the disappointments and feelings of failure that accompany the universal Adolescent Experience.
The reader meets quirky Chrysalis Moffat, narrator of Sandra Newman's enigmatic and rewarding first novel, as she awaits her adoptive mother's funeral. Chrysa was adopted in 1971 when John Moffat, a biochemist working for the CIA in Guatemala, rescued her after the death of her parents. This bare bones information is meted out by the author in crisp chapters, composed in list form, which jump erratically back and forth in time. Gradually Newman fills in the gaps in Chrysa's story, like a painstakingly assembled jigsaw puzzle.
Chrysa's older brother Eddie returns to California for their mother's burial with his guru Ralph in tow. They decide to turn the mansion Eddie has inherited into the Tibetan School of Miracles—and for five months Eddie, Ralph and Chrysa get "college-educated adults to believe chanting made them into good people," thanks to Ralph's prowess at spontaneously spouting "words to live by." Mysteriously Ralph then cracks up, and Eddie leaves to travel and play blackjack with his friend Denise.
In Kevin Brockmeier's first novel, The Truth About Celia, the author uses a mixed palette of genres to paint a world where "there are worse things than being dead." In the guise of his central figure, science-fiction writer Christopher Brooks, Brockmeier intelligently and heartbreakingly weaves together a series of stories that search for the truth about the missing Celia.
Out of desperation, Christopher Brooks turns to his writing to console himself, and at the same time, explore the many repercussions of Celia's disappearance. What he creates—or rather what Brockmeier creates—is truly magical. The stories that make up The Truth About Celia track not just the search for what happened to the missing child, but the reactions of those involved in Celia's life. Brockmeier's prose hauntingly ventures beyond the mundane and into places that only a grieving mind can go.
Author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Half in Love, Maile Meloy now tries her hand at writing a complex multi-generational novel. Liars and Saints has the lively feel of a Catholic soap opera in fast-forward, following the Santerre family through four generations of tangled secrets and deceptions.
Rather than having the narrative follow a linear chronology, Meloy jumps in time, with each chapter focusing on the perspective of a different character. This shifting viewpoint makes it difficult for readers to invest much in any one of the characters—particularly given the fact that the novel covers more than 50 years in the life of this family over the course of a mere 272 pages. At the same time, this quality, along with the high drama that builds and unfolds, makes Liars and Saints a breathtakingly fast-paced read.