This February, T.C. Boyle returns with “a socially conscious, richly humane tale regarding the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world.” When the Killing’s Done (Viking) is set off the coast of Santa Barbara, and follows a National Park Service biologist who is trying to keep invasive, non-native species from killing off the island’s endangered native creatures. Her task is complicated by a local businessman and his folksinger girlfriend, who don’t think that the non-native species should be eliminated.
This isn’t Boyle’s first foray into environmental fiction: his 2000 novel, A Friend of the Earth [read our review] is set in the future (2025, to be exact) in the wake of a massive species extinction.
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
NAL Trade • $15.00 • First published in 1992
Terry McMillan’s Getting to Happy came out yesterday—but before I start that I have some catching up to do. Luckily, I’ve been meaning to crack my copy of Waiting to Exhale for a while, and Labor Day weekend seemed like the perfect opportunity. (Getting to Happy takes place 15 years after Waiting to Exhale ends.)
Waiting to Exhale is about Savannah, Bernadine, Robin and Gloria—four successful black women living in Phoenix and looking for love. When it was published in 1992, it was a huge hit. Terry McMillan’s website explains the significance of the novel’s reception:
Waiting to Exhale took the publishing world by storm. No one predicted the droves of women and black people who would line the streets hoping to hear Terry read and sign their books. Nobody in main stream publishing got the memo that these were demographics who not only read books, but paid good money too.
As we all know, McMillan went on to achieve even more success, writing (to date) five more books, including How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
Here’s an excerpt from Waiting to Exhale—which I would recommend if you haven’t already read it: it’s funny, lively and a page-turner.
Times have damn sure changed.
And I can’t lie. Now I worry. I worry about if and when I’ll ever find the right man, if I’ll ever be able to exhale. The more I try not to think about it, the more I think about it. This morning, I was drinking a cup of coffee, when it occurred to me that my life is half over. Never in a million years would I have ever believed that I would be thirty-six years old and still childless and single. But here I am.
And just for fun (and to take you back to 1995), watch the trailer for the movie adaptation starring Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston: Read the rest of this entry »
Ape House, the new novel by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen, came out today—and I know many of you are pumped: Ape House is BookPage’s top fiction pick for September and the movie version of Water for Elephants is due out this spring.
BookPage reviewer Deborah Donovan loved Ape House, praising Gruen’s exploration of the “mysterious and emotionally powerful human-animal bond.” Here’s more on the plot:
[Gruen portrays] a group of six bonobo apes housed in the fictional Great Ape Language Lab in Kansas City and the humans who either come to love them or seek to profit from their surprisingly advanced communication skills.
To prepare for writing Ape House, Gruen visited the real-life Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. This book trailer captures her friendship with a bonobo and gives some more information on the book. (Book description starts at about the 4-minute mark.)
Anyone had a chance to start Ape House?
Also, if you’re interested in bonobos, don’t miss Vanessa Woods’ Bonobo Handshake, which came out in June.
This just in—everyone’s favorite genre-bending writer, Jasper Fforde, has another Thursday Next book coming out . . . March next. March 8, 2011, to be exact.
Sounds like things are just as twisted as usual in Thursday’s world, from this publisher description:
All-out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a heroine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday. The Council wants her to pretend to be the real Thursday and travel as a peacekeeping emissary to the warring factions.
Confused yet? At least we can be sure that uncertainty still reigns in BookWorld.
Many of us go through phases with authors, and lately I have been on a major Julia Glass kick. I re-read Three Junesto prepare for my interview with Glass about The Widower’s Tale, remembered how much I like her writing, then went on to read The Whole World Over and I See You Everywhere. After this delightful adventure in reading, I just have one question: is anyone better at telling a story from multiple points of view?
After posting an excerpt from The Widower’s Tale a few weeks back, I know I’m preaching to the choir. Commenters praised Glass’s “detail and imagery” and “delicate and precise language,” and many of you said the book—about a 70-year-old man who experiences some unexpected life changes—is on your TBR list.
The Widower’s Tale goes on sale this week, and we’re giving away one copy to a lucky reader. To enter the contest, leave a comment right here on the blog about why you want to read this novel. (A good starting point would be BookPage’s interview, excerpted below.)
The fear of and yearning for change
Fans of Julia Glass’ beloved Three Junes will feel a sense of familiarity when they dive into The Widower’s Tale, the author’s fourth novel. The stories share similar plot points: in both, the matriarch of a family dies young, leaving a husband and children behind. In both, a widower unexpectedly falls for another woman. In both, Glass creates a slowly unfolding, yet fully rendered, portrait of a family.
But don’t think this book is just a rehash of past work. The tone is more satiric—you can look forward to amusing passages on everything from freeganism to “books as bytes.” And the protagonist, 70-year-old Percy Darling, is distinct from Paul McLeod, the widower of Three Junes.
In a telephone conversation from her home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Glass said, “When I started writing The Widower’s Tale, I was trying to describe Percy’s character, and I said he’s like a cross between Paul McLeod and Malachy Burns. He has that razor edge to his wit.” Never matter if you haven’t read Glass’s National Book Award-winning debut from 2002—although if you have, you’ll understand why that combination will be a delight to fans.
Did you know that FSG is publishing a graphic novel of A Wrinkle in Time? I didn’t, so I was interested to read cartoonist Hope Larson’s take on adapting the children’s classic to a new medium:
I knew when I signed on to Wrinkle, before I even started writing the script, that the book was going to be a monster. It’s 200 pages of prose, and when you’re working with such a beloved story you can’t go in and start cutting and abridging as you please. [Continue reading.]
We’ve already shared our excitement about Karen Russell’s first novel, Swamplandia! (Feb., Knopf). Galleys recently hit the BookPage office, and I’m tempted to nab it for my Labor Day weekend reading if our fiction editor is feeling generous. Here’s a sneak peek at the opening lines, which provide a great example of Russell’s unique voice and give a glimpse into the mysterious world of the book’s eponymous Everglades theme park.
Chapter One: The Beginning of the End
Our mother performed in starlight. Whose innovation this was I never discovered. Probably it was Chief Bigtree’s idea, and it was a good one—to blank the follow spot and let a sharp moon cut across the sky, unchaperoned; to kill the microphone; to leave the stage lights’ tin eyelids scrolled and give the tourists in the stands a chance to enjoy the darkness of our island; to encourage the whole stadium to gulp air along with Swamplandia!’s star performer, the world-famous alligator wrestler Hilola Bigtree. Four times a week, our mother climbed the ladder above the Gator Pit in a green two-piece bathing suit and stood on the edge of the diving board, breathing. If it was windy, her long hair flew around her face, but the rest of her stayed motionless. Nights in the swamp were dark and star-lepered—our island was thirty-odd miles off the grid of mainland lights—and although your naked eye could easily find the ball of Venus and the sapphire hairs of the Pleiades, our mother’s body was just lines, a smudge against the palm trees.
We're giving away TWO copies of Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Capture. Keep reading to find out how to win!
Three weeks from today, a movie version of Kathryn Lasky’s bestselling Guardians of Ga’Hoole series—about a brave young owl’s magical journey—will hit theaters. From the looks of the trailer, I think it’ll be quite a show (and it’s in 3D!).
To get you pumped up for the release, BookPage asked Lasky to answer a few questions about her role in the adaptation and impressions of the movie.
What was your reaction when you saw the movie version of Guardians of Ga’Hoole? Is the adaptation faithful to the spirit of your books?
I have not seen the movie in its entirety yet. In July I saw a rough cut and not in 3D and not fully animated. But the ninety minutes of what I saw was honestly the most spectacular ninety minutes of animation I have ever seen in my life! The scenes of flying—and mind you as I said this was not 3D yet—were absolutely breathtaking.
What came across loud and clear was how faithful this adaptation is to the spirit of the books and the characters. For nearly 10 years I have lived with these characters’ voices in my head and now to hear them and hear them voiced by such great actors like Jim Sturgess, Helen Mirren and Sam Neil was overwhelming to me. I started crying.
All I could think was ‘all this stuff in my head for so long and now it’s out there.’ This is strange to say but I almost felt as if I had been away—lonely and away for a long time and I was now back and being welcomed by long lost friends—even the bad guys! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not sure why, but I had Annie Proulx set firmly in the anti-memoir crowd. Maybe it’s because looking back on one’s life is a luxury that her hard-working, taciturn characters would either not have time for, or sneer at. Maybe it’s because she is so private that she (politely) insisted that her 2002 interview with us be conducted by email. Whatever the reason for my impression, it was a false one: Proulx is set to publish a memoir, Bird Cloud, with Scribner in January.
“Part autobiography, part natural history, Bird Cloud is the glorious story of Annie Proulx’s piece of the Wyoming landscape and her home there.”
Early reviews make the book sound like more of a family history and cultural exploration than a memoir, so maybe my initial impression wasn’t too far off the mark after all. Billed as a book for anyone who loves the West, it includes stories about the building of her home near the North Platte River and about her great-great-grandfather, who worked on a riverboat and met the likes of Mark Twain.
It’s published by a Macmillan imprint (St. Martin’s, FSG, Henry Holt).
The last hardcover Book Club pick was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski—which we all know has been very successful.
It has the ISBN prefix of a St. Martin’s Press book, although St. Martin’s hardcover prices usually end in “.99.” Is Macmillan tricking us?
Any predictions? Early guesses include Nelson Mandela’s Conversations with Myself, which has a foreword by President Obama, or Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange & Ifa Bayeza. (The pub date would have to be changed for the first guess, and the price would have to be changed for the second. So . . . maybe we need to come up with some more guesses.)
Do you pick out books based on the Oprah sticker? While I’m not crazy about having the logo on a book in my collection, I have loved many of Oprah’s past choices: She’s Come Undone, The Poisonwood Bible, Daughter of Fortune, Middlesex. . . And that “Summer of Faulkner” box set sure came in handy during my Faulkner seminar in college!
Eat like a president with this delicious dessert recipe from The Perfect Finish (Norton), a new cookbook by White House Pastry Chef Bill Yossas. In her review, Sybil Pratt says that each of these desserts “deserves your full attention” and I think you’ll agree once you read the following. Bon appetit!
Soft Almond Cake with Fresh Raspberries
Makes 1 (9-inch) cake to serve 8
An adaptation of the tender, very buttery little almond flour cakes called financiers, this is a dessert I learned to make while working at Au Vieux Four, an old wood-fired bakery in Tours, France. The owner, a ninth-generation baker named Jacques Mahou, who mentored me, primarily made bread, but he had a little sideline of super desserts, including this one. It’s very much the type of straightforward, quickly mixed dessert a French bread maker bakes along with the bread. Before serving, it is garnished with fresh fruit, which makes this very transportable dessert colorful and light at any time of year. Replace the raspberries used here with seasonal fruits in the spring, summer, and fall, or with imported tropical fruits in the winter.
It’s always a thrill to see one of our contributors publish works of their own. The most recent BookPage writer to add something to the bookshelves of the world is Michael Alec Rose, a Vanderbilt professor and composer whose collection of essays on music, Audible Signs, has just been published by Continuum. Below, Rose explains the inspiration behind his collection.
How I Found My Musical Ground
guest post by Michael Alec Rose
I wrote Audible Signs for anybody who loves music, for everybody who feels passionately that this love can be investigated but never fully explained, for all who seek (like me) new ways of conversing intelligently about music, new strategies to honor both its exceptional clarity of feeling and its irreducible mystery.
The impetus to compose these “Essays from a Musical Ground” goes back to 1991, when I launched a newsletter called Musings, my way of keeping in musical touch with far-flung friends, some of whom play an active role in Audible Signs (I couldn’t have written the book without them). Musings ran to a single issue: Marriage, commissions for new musical works, parenthood, all intervened. But that essay—Vol. 1, No. 1—haunted me down the years and led to further essays, some for my students at Vanderbilt University, others for concertgoers in Nashville who enjoy grand opera at least as much as the Grand Old Opry. The lone issue of Musings now serves its turn in Audible Signs: it has been revised, expanded and mounted as one piece of artillery in my fourfold assault (Chapter 4) on Alex Ross’ best-selling book on 20th-century music, The Rest Is Noise.
Rushed through Mockingjay and don’t have anyone to talk to? Or: Want to listen to other reactions on the fate of Panem, President Snow and that pesky little Gale vs. Peeta plotline?
Trisha (Web Editor), Kate (Nonfiction Editor) and I (Eliza—Assistant Web Editor) discuss all things Mockingjay in a brand new podcast. We talk about the major points of tension in the book, how Katniss’s character has progressed in the series, and where Mockingjay rates in terms of violence and romance. Toward the end of our conversation we chat about the Hunger Games movie and speculate on the “next big thing” in teen fiction.
There are major plot spoilers in this podcast, but they don’t start until the 9-minute mark. (There’s also some major word fumbling in the first minute or so of the recording, but what can I say? It’s hard to keep your thoughts straight when you’re talking about something as exciting as a Suzanne Collins book.) The 35-minute mark ’til the end is free of spoilers.
Listen away, and share your reactions in the comments section.
Wicked Appetiteby Janet Evanovich
St. Martin’s Press • $27.99 • September 14, 2010
Some people would say this is a sin, but somehow I have never read a novel by Janet Evanovich. I’ve always been interested in spunky bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, but I was overwhelmed by the thought of catching up on 16 books. When I heard that Evanovich was starting the Unmentionable series with Wicked Appetite, I figured it was a good time to jump in.
Wicked Appetite stars Lizzy, a cupcake baker with a certain skill important to two different men: Diesel (imagine an “unkempt ruler of the pride”) and Wulf (“scary in a sexy vampire sort of way”).
The dialogue is snappy and the action fast-paced. You’ll just have to read the novel yourself to figure out why Lizzy is special! (Although there’s a hint in the excerpt below.)
“I work for that governing body,” Diesel said. “I’m commissioned to pull the plug on Unmentionables who abuse their power.”
I saw this as registering high on my bull-crap-o-meter, but I was curious all the same.
“How do you pull the plug?” I asked.
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Diesel said.
I’d heard that line before and always knew it was a line. This time I wasn’t sure.
“Why do you need my help?” I asked him.
“You’re one of us. You’re an Unmentionable, and you have a skill I lack. I can find people. You can find empowered objects.”
I was speechless. He actually looked serious. “That’s ridiculous,” I finally said.
Diesel turned off Lafayette Street. “Yeah, and I’m stuck with it. Nothing personal, but you’re not my first choice for a partner.”
Posted by Trisha
This just in—everyone’s favorite genre-bending writer, Jasper Fforde, has another Thursday Next book coming out . . . March next. March 8, 2011, to be exact.
