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Great expectations
Six first novels sure to make a splash Every year, thousands of struggling writers realize a life-long dream: the publication of a first novel. Accompanied by glowing press releases, these carefully plotted, planned and executed labors of love are launched in hope of becoming the next big thing. But how many of them truly have what it takes to succeed? While the literary waters can be treacherous and unpredictable, these six debut novels stand out. SETH KANTNER REVIEW BY DEBORAH DONOVAN
His narrator Cutuk, white but given an Eskimo name, is five when the novel opens, the youngest child of Abe and a mother who left shortly after he was born. Abe, an artist, moved the family from Chicago to an igloo on the vast Alaskan tundra; Cutuk's older brother Jerry and sister Iris remember the city, cars and lawns, but Cutuk has never seen them. Cutuk matter-of-factly describes their daily routine—the floorboards of their igloo covered with caribou hairs and black mouse turds, their exhaustive hauling of river ice to melt for washing and bathing, the constant hunt for food and their home-schooling, with books delivered by the mail plane.
Interspersed throughout this thought-provoking story are short chapters written in the voices of wolves, either hunted or hunting. Through their eyes Kantner movingly underlines the passion he feels for the Arctic wilderness, to which his alter ego Cutuk eventually returns.
By Seth Kantner Milkweed, $22 312 pages, ISBN 1571310444
DAVID MAINE REVIEW BY AMY SCRIBNER
The power of this tale is why David Maine's outstanding first novel, The Preservationist, a fantastically original take on the classic Old Testament story, is a treat both for believers and those who consider themselves devout only when it comes to discovering good books. Much as Anita Diamant's best-selling The Red Tent did for the biblical story of Jacob and his wives, The Preservationist breathes new life into ancient characters while illuminating the tremendous faith they had in their families and their god.
According to the Old Testament, God brought about the storm to wash the earth clean of rampant sin that had become unbearable. Maine paints a vivid picture of a world run amok, of a culture of violence, greed and lust. Perhaps The Preservationist is so compelling because of its hard-to-ignore parallels to modern times of violence and an increasingly sensational popular culture. It's impossible to miss the similarities between the ancient place Maine describes and the present-day experience, and this book conjures very relevant questions about how traditional notions of God's plan fit in modern society. Then again, you can ignore all that mess and enjoy the book simply for its rich retelling of an epic battle of man versus nature. This is not a book aimed solely—or even mostly—at Christians. It's just a great story, told remarkably well.
By David Maine St. Martin's, $21.95 240 pages, ISBN 0312328478
JONATHAN RAYMOND REVIEW BY IAN SCHWARTZ
Tender, intelligent and mostly afraid, Cookie is an anomaly among the feral frontiersmen who make up an 1820s trapping party lost in Oregon Territory. A violent tragedy results in his clandestine meeting with Henry, a young adventurer who secretly steers Cookie's party to safety. The two part, but meet again later and become boon companions. Fast-forward to the dawn of the Reagan era, where Tina and her newly unemployed mom arrive at an Oregon hippie commune. Tina, a high school student too young to drive but old enough to really want to, falls in with the enigmatic Trixie Volterra, a fellow teen who in her scant years has somehow earned a shadowy past.
Cookie and Tina, the passive partners in their respective relationships, serve as narrators as they follow their alpha comrades into dangerous get-rich-quick schemes and pipe dreams that result in serious consequences. While Cookie accepts being little more than Henry's sidekick, Tina quickly grows to resent giving center stage to the more flamboyant Trixie. Both relationships build to shocking and horrific climaxes that reveal both the brittle frailty and the unquenchable strength of humanity. Raymond, who has also worked as a screen writer, is at his best in his detailed physical descriptions of the Oregon timberland, combining the clinical eye of a naturalist with a poetic lyricism. He is nearly as precise when exploring the mind of a girl on the brink of womanhood, bringing to life her dreams, joys, pains and real and imagined slights. Although slow-moving at times, Raymond's work is an engrossing and evocative cerebral feast, and marks a promising literary beginning.
By Jonathan Raymond Bloomsbury, $23.95 368 pages, ISBN 1582344485
INGRID HILL REVIEW BY JONI RENDON
As the only child of a woman of Finnish descent and her Chinese-American husband, Ursula is the modern-day culmination of the dreams and struggles of two disparate lineages. Ursula's birth was nothing short of a miracle, given the crippling pelvic injuries her mother sustained in a childhood accident. But in one horrible instant, the gift of Ursula's life is almost extinguished as arbitrarily as it was granted.
The great beauty of this novel lies in the hauntingly resonant voices of Ursula's ancestors and the author's skillful weaving of their individual stories into an integrated family history spanning 2,000 years. This vast and prismatic narrative technique shows us that life, indeed, is a miracle, and that history is alive, embodied in the individual triumphs and tragedies that make up the collective human experience. A powerful meditation on origins, Ursula, Under poetically demonstrates how centuries-old connections can reverberate into the present.
By Ingrid Hill Algonquin, $24.95 400 pages, ISBN 1565123883
RACHEL CLINE REVIEW BY ALLISON BLOCK
While Lily may be her biological mother, Denny's world revolves around a quirky agoraphobic named Maureen, the eye in the hurricane of her daily teenage life in the wake of her parents' separation. Fourteen years go by, and Denny, now an aspiring actress in Hollywood, returns to her childhood home to decide "what to keep" before her mother and new stepfather relocate to New York. Unearthing old memories fills Denny with both nostalgia and dread. "She pictures the denuded living room floor. . . . Though she learned to crawl, walk, skip, dance, and God knows what else in that very room, it will soon look like she was never there."
Writers are often instructed to write what they know; Rachel Cline has followed that lesson to the letter. Born to a brainy, distracted mother, she herself did time in the trenches of Hollywood before returning to New York on what she calls "the dark side of thirty-five." Her brisk, refreshingly candid novel will ring true to anyone whose family doesn't quite fit the mold.
By Rachel Cline Random House, $23.95 288 pages, ISBN 1400061830
SCOTT LANDERS REVIEW BY IAN SCHWARTZ
While salvaging their love and spending time together is the ostensible plan, the couple soon find that they are far more interested in striking out on their own. And they do so with a vengeance, exploring their dangerous and sensual new surroundings and the uncharted territory within themselves.
Lucy, the type of woman who underlines passages in guide books and makes copious lists, wishes only to follow her itinerary to the letter. But when she meets a younger female traveler who fuels her competitive nature, she finds herself in compromising situations beyond the pages of her books and notes. This original, notably worthy debut ably toggles between farce, intrigue and tragedy while capturing the disconnection inherent to westerners in unfamiliar stretches of the planet. But it is Lucy's and Conrad's repeated boorish behavior that keeps this fine novel from soaring. As we're guided through Tambralinga by this selfish, dull and shallow pair, the reader can't help but hope the duo stay together . . . if only to avoid exposing others to their toxicity.
By Scott Landers Farrar, Strauss, $24 352 pages, ISBN 0374130213
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Kantner, winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize for this debut novel, was born and raised in northern Alaska; his feelings for the land and the animals that populate it are palpable, spilling onto every page of Ordinary Wolves.
As he grows up, Cutuk begins to understand how different he really is—from mainstream America, certainly, but even from the mostly Eskimo population of Takunak, the nearest village. The family's best friends in town are Eskimo, and Abe usually ignores the occasional town decree forbidding whites to own sled dogs or set under-ice fishing nets. After Jerry leaves for Fairbanks, and Iris follows two years later for college, Cutuk is "stunningly lonesome." He wonders why his mother left—"fewer mouse turds in the oatmeal?"—and if he will ever leave himself. At 22, he embarks on a visit to Anchorage; Kantner's beautifully subtle writing illuminates the conundrum Cutuk faces as he meets civilization for the first time and weighs the good and the bad of what he has missed growing up. He calls Iris, and tells her that the city makes him feel "wrapped in plastic." Jerry visits, and Cutuk realizes how much his brother has changed—they act "like two sled dogs that might have once been litter mates."
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The story of Noah and the flood is so entrenched in our culture that most people at least know the basics: God visits a pious old man and instructs him to build a huge boat that will withstand the storm to end all storms. While you're at it, He says, fill it up with every type of animal you can get your hands on. And then be prepared to be adrift at sea with only your family for company for the foreseeable future. When the floods recede, it will be your duty to repopulate the planet.
The 600-year-old Noah brings together his wife, sons and daughters-in-law to build the ark and collect the animals. Onlookers gather to jeer as the mammoth hull takes shape, but Noah never waivers in his conviction that this is God's plan. His family is another story—they are by turns exasperated and awed by the old man's steadfast determination. Each member of the group takes a turn narrating events, giving readers a vast range of perspectives on this unusual quest, and on the nature of faith.
All friendships are not created equal. Or so Jonathan Raymond illustrates in his thoughtful debut novel, The Half-Life, which takes place in picturesque Oregon and tells two intertwined tales set 150 years apart.
Tying this quartet together is a pair of anonymous skeletons, submerged for scores of years at the bottom of a muddy marsh before their discovery by Neil, the inconsequential owner of the land the commune is built upon. It is upon this palimpsest of mysterious bleached bone and history that Raymond skillfully weaves the parallel stories of Cookie and Henry and Tina and Trixie.
The sprawling, multigenerational debut novel by Ingrid Hill deftly arcs back and forth between past and present to explore the hidden connections in our lives and the fragility of human life. When two-year-old Ursula Wong falls into an abandoned mine shaft, a community is galvanized in a dangerous rescue effort that has far greater significance than anyone present can possibly imagine.
While Ursula's fate hangs in the balance, we travel back in time to trace the extraordinary lives of her ancestors, many of whom also came into being against incredible odds. We encounter a Chinese alchemist in second-century B.C. who fathers a child at age 79, a 16th-century Finnish widow who bravely escapes a leper colony to go in search of her orphaned son, and a host of immigrants struggling for a better life in America, including Ursula's great-grandfather, who dies in a mining accident—eerily presaging her own fall. Each of these links in the chain of Ursula's genetic lineage is bound together by countless little twists of fate to which her own existence is tied.
Denny Roman, the protagonist in Rachel Cline's honest, heartwarming debut novel, may seem like any other preteen in suburban Ohio, preoccupied with boys, bras and a part in the school play. But trouble lurks beneath the girl's bubbly exterior, as she struggles to communicate with her divorced mother Lily, a brilliant neuroscientist utterly devoid of maternal inclinations. Presented in three distinct parts, What to Keep is a smart, wry commentary on "how easy it is to screw things up with the people you love."
A decade later, Denny has moved to Manhattan, where she's taken to writing plays rather than auditioning for them. Days from the opening of her first production on Broadway, she receives news that Maureen has died. When Maureen's 12-year-old son, Luke, appears at her door, Denny ponders the possibility of adopting the young man—to honor the memory of the most pivotal person in her life.
Marriage is often confusing. Sometimes, to find out if it is worth saving, you must crack it open like a Christmas chestnut and inspect it minutely. Or more often, a cure can be something as simple as struggling spouses getting away together. In Scott Landers' debut novel, Coswell's Guide to Tambralinga, Conrad and Lucy Shermer go the latter route, and embark on a lengthy journey through the politically unstable, exotically violent and depressingly tropical regions of Southeast Asia.
Like the man going out for the proverbial pack of cigarettes, Conrad leaves a note and melts into the fringes of the Third World in a tiny fictional country named Tambralinga. Pretty sure that Lucy has cheated on him, he is half looking for a little adventure himself. But a life of American repression makes him little more than a comic bumbler in all sexual regards.