Daniel Lewis’ informative, engrossing, often poetic Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future is a veritable wonderland of fascinating facts.
Did you know that “a mature redwood adds, on average, a ton of wood to its mass every year”? Or that the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) was founded in Arizona in 1937, and there are 100-plus tree ring labs worldwide? Or that, contrary to its unassuming appearance, “a pine needle is akin to a skyscraper, bustling with movement and life,” including air- and water-movement systems not unlike HVAC and plumbing?
Twelve Trees is also an engagingly written experiential memoir of the author’s quest to learn more about the trees he views as crucial to human life—past, present and future. From California (where he’s senior curator for the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library and teaches at Caltech) to Easter Island, central Africa to Amazonian Peru and beyond, Lewis leads readers on an awe-inspiring tour of a dozen trees that, he writes, “have been on long journeys, have many accomplices as well as enemies, and need our help to survive.”
After all, trees “populate our daily lives. They’ve been part of our sight lines and metaphors, our byways, our contexts.” They record our history: At the LTRR, the author learned how bristlecone pine rings bear evidence of drought, flood and fire, thus providing data that scientists and scholars can use to analyze and predict such events. And they can be vital to culture, health and government all at once. In India, the sandalwood tree’s wood is used in important ceremonies; its oil has “helped millions through both folk and modern medicine”; and it is the subject of numerous laws regarding trade, harvesting, poaching and preservation.
Lewis is fiercely protective of and endlessly enthusiastic about the precious leafy entities—eucalyptus, ebony, baobab, olive and more—that enrich our lives and support our very existence. Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected, for better or worse, and urges readers to remember that the “salvation of trees can be the salvation of humans.”
Written with boundless enthusiasm by Daniel Lewis, Twelve Trees offers extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected.
Some of Ben Guterson’s most treasured childhood memories center around two now-defunct grand old department stores in downtown Seattle: Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marché. They “were absolutely places of magic for me,” the author reminisces in a call from his home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
“At Christmastime, I would go to the second floor and take the escalator down to the first floor. . . . [A]ll the decorations, the trees, the glitter, the tinsel, the displays, the lights, the color, everything slowly revealed itself to me and I’d think I was descending into the heart of winter wonderland,” he says. “I fell in love with department stores because of that.”
Guterson’s appreciation of those bygone commerce centers and cultural touchstones is on marvelously magical display in The World-Famous Nine, his inventive, exciting middle grade mystery-adventure novel set in the storied Number Nine Plaza department store (aka “The Nine”).
The Nine is a blend of cleverly cultivated experiences and artfully arranged merchandise all under one roof. Unlike other department stores, that roof is 19 stories in the air and has an enormous Ferris wheel on top of it. The luxurious floors below contain a monorail, a display with a real iceberg and real penguins, an art gallery, rotating restaurants and more.
On the very first page of The World-Famous Nine, 11-year-old Zander Olinga rides an escalator down to the store’s main floor and into an astonishing new chapter of his life. What’s meant to be a fun five-week visit with his glamorous grandmother Zina Winebee, who owns The Nine, while his professor parents go on a research trip, soon turns into something much more thrilling and dangerous. Zander must undertake an urgent quest to unravel long-held family secrets by solving peculiar puzzles and tracking down a lost object that will protect The Nine and everyone in it from a terrible fate.
That’s a tall order for a kid, to say the least, but Zander’s new friend Natasha Novikov is confident the two of them can figure things out. He’s afraid of heights but great at solving puzzles, and she knows the store inside and out. Besides, one of Zander’s hobbies is creating mandalas, which are vital to their mission, if the ten-foot-tall sandstone boulder with “carved elaborate circular patterns” that has pride of place in The Nine is any indication. (Hint: it is.)
Guterson’s own affinity for mandalas—he draws them daily—not only inspired key elements of the complex mystery in The World-Famous Nine but also the artwork that appears within. Kristina Kister’s wonderful illustrations immerse readers in the dazzling world and unique denizens of The Nine, and Guterson’s impressively detailed mandalas grace the book’s pages as well. “I highly recommend it,” Guterson says about drawing mandalas. “It’s a really cool, creative and relaxing thing to do. I don’t want to sound too new-agey here, but . . . to engage in a creative act that’s not verbal or word-oriented in any way, I have found that to be extremely helpful.”
While the mandalas will be new to Guterson’s fans, The World-Famous Nine’s plethora of puzzles and wordplay will feel happily familiar to readers who delighted in the code-cracking, riddle-solving aspects of his previous books: the Winterhouse trilogy (Winterhouse, the first in the series and Guterson’s debut, was an Edgar Award and Agatha Award finalist) and The Einsteins of Vista Point.
Although the author now has multiple mysteries under his writerly belt, he still finds it challenging to strike just the right balance: “You don’t want to make the mystery or the solving of clues so easy that kids can spot it right away and then get frustrated with your hero, like, ‘Why is that main character so dumb when I figured it out already?’” But, he says, “You also don’t want to make it so hard that, when it’s revealed, someone says, ‘No one ever really could’ve figured that out!’”
“I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading.”
Guterson has found that his true satisfaction and joy is writing for middle grade readers. In fact, he’s got even more books on the way: The World-Famous Nine is the first in a series, with its sequel, The Hidden Workshop of Javier Preston forthcoming. After all, he says, “I think when you’re that age and you discover a book or an author that you love, it can just completely solidify a love of reading. I find it really exciting to think that maybe my books . . . could do for a kid what the books I love did for me when I was that age.”
Photo of Ben Guterson by Harvey Photography.
The author incorporates magic and mandalas in The World-Famous Nine.
By the time she was 12, Ámbar Mondragón knew how to treat bullet wounds. When she turned 13, her father, Victor, gave her a sawed-off shotgun plus shooting and hot-wiring lessons. And as Nicolás Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar opens, 15-year-old Ámbar is tending to her father’s latest injury: He’s returned from a night out with a bullet hole in his upper chest and his murdered friend Giovanni’s body in the passenger seat of his car.
To Ámbar, this horrifying turn of events isn’t all that shocking. Rather, it’s just another terrible moment in the life she’s lived since the age of 9, when Grandma Nuria, who cared for Ámbar after her mother abandoned her, had a fatal heart attack. Dad came to get her, and Ámbar since adjusted to an existence rife with violence and loneliness, one where she wonders if she’ll ever feel happy or secure. After all, while the titular “favorite scar” refers to Dad’s tattoo bearing her name, “He might carry my name on his skin, but he never held me in his arms. He chose my name, but he was never around until he didn’t have any other choice.”
Now, Ámbar has to tag along as Dad embarks on a singularly vicious road trip, determined to exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed him and Giovanni. My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic road novel of unrelenting bleakness that takes readers on a hair-raising tour of Argentina’s criminal underworld. The duo stop at bars, burial sites and hideout shacks where Dad delivers interrogations, warnings and beatings as Ámbar plays lookout or getaway driver, often with sawed-off shotgun in hand.
As in Cruz, his first novel translated into English, Ferraro explores the effects of criminals’ choices on children who become unwitting and/or unwilling accomplices. His deftly created suspense builds with every mile driven, every fake ID used, every drop of blood spilled. Will the cycle of violence ever end? Will Ámbar ever be anything but “what other people have left behind”? My Favorite Scar is a pitch-black coming-of-age tale that reverberates with oft-poetically expressed pain and sadness—and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hope.
Nicolas Ferraro’s My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic, hair-raising road trip through Argentina’s criminal underworld.
Number Nine Plaza, most often called “The Nine,” is a uniquely dazzling place: “the largest, most famous, and most extraordinary department store in the entire world.” And Zander Olinga is lucky enough to be the grandson of the woman who owns it, Zina Winebee, who is going to look after him for several weeks while his parents are away on a research trip.
But as 11-year-old Zander soon learns in Ben Guterson’s imaginative and entertaining mystery-adventure novel The World-Famous Nine, his arrival coincides with what Grandma Zina considers “a very challenging time for the store.” It’s the 90th anniversary of the disappearance of a special sandstone slab with a mandala on it that, according to legend, would touch off massive devastation if it fell into the wrong hands.
There’s a Ferris wheel atop this 19-story skyscraper, and the interior contains wonders like a monorail, a Tiffany glass ceiling and a real iceberg. Aside from being gobsmacked by the fabulous scope of The Nine, Zander is determined to solve the mysteries rising up from his family’s past and save the store. Natasha Novikov, the 11-year-old daughter of The Nine’s plumber, decides to help him. Currently spending several hours a week swinging high above the building’s restaurants to entertain their patrons, she loves The Nine and knows almost every inch of the place. It also helps that the artistic Zander was already fascinated with mandalas and puzzles, and Natalie knows where odd inscriptions are hidden around the building.
Guterson, known for his Winterhouse Trilogy and The Einsteins of Vista Point, once again makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults. Readers will breathlessly turn the pages as they wonder: Can the duo solve the mysteries of The Nine in time to save it from those who wish it—and them—ill? Impressive illustrations by Kristina Kister capture the wild grandeur of The Nine, and hand-drawn mandalas by Guterson himself add to the book’s uniquely appealing mystique.
Ben Guterson makes excellent use of his trademark ability to create puzzles and conjure clues in this innovative tale that pits clever and intrepid preteens against dark forces, dodgy family secrets and dastardly adults.
For 10 years, Julius Gong has lived rent-free in 17-year-old Sadie Wen’s head. He’s her school co-captain at Woodvale Academy and “the most prominent source of pain in my life.” The two compete in academics, athletics and anything else possible to compete in. They communicate mainly via taunting, eye-rolling and impatient sighs.
But despite frequently feeling intense animosity toward Julius (“Just seeing him makes me want to put my fist through something hard—ideally, his jaw”), Sadie hardly ever talks about it or any of her other frustrations. Instead, she vents in email drafts addressed to Julius and also people like Rosie, who won last year’s science fair with work she stole from Sadie, and Ms. Johnson, a teacher who refused to round up an 89.5 to a 90.
The secret emails have helped Sadie maintain her amicable persona, but everything changes when the drafts are somehow sent out all at once in the middle of a school day. After years of assiduously avoiding conflict, Sadie’s suddenly faced with a situation she might not be able to fix or apologize for. What is she going to do?
For starters, she’s mortified at the people now mad at her for being mad at them—and shocked when it turns out that not only is her fabulous BFF Abigail on her side, but Julius just might be, too. Is it possible he’s also been hiding some complicated feelings?
Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You and its protagonists’ attempts to find common ground in heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture the two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability. They’ll root for Sadie to consider what she wants rather than devoting her life to being the best people-pleaser ever. Chinese Australian author Ann Liang’s heartfelt third novel (after If You Could See the Sun and This Time It’s Real) is an engaging story steeped in humor and empathy, encouraging readers to consider that relentlessly striving for success might not be the best path to a truly rewarding life.
Fans of rivals-to-lovers romances will delight in I Hope This Doesn’t Find You’s heady will-they-won’t-they scenes that deftly capture two overachievers’ struggles with vulnerability.
Author-illustrator duo Mrs. & Mr. MacLeod kicked off The Grunions series with their wild and whimsical How to Eat a Book. The series continues with the delightfully riotous The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before.
Twins Gerald and Geraldine and their cousin Sheila live in a grand mansion with many, many doors, all artfully rendered in heavy black pen-and-ink with bold splashes of primary colors. Layered paper cutouts create a 3D effect, and shadows bolster the visual drama so that the story pulses with manic energy. After all, there’s so much to explore when it comes to doors, from the swinging double kitchen doors to a trapdoor in the floor. But to the Grunion cousins’ immense frustration, there is one door in the house that just won’t open. Why is it locked, the kids wonder? And what’s on the other side of it?
The trio aren’t shy about expressing their big feelings about the situation, whether through shouts or leaps or open-mouthed indignation. Sheila “studied the splinters and notches, / the nails and latches” while Gerald, who “closed every door he ever found,” secretly decides to protect the huge red door from the boisterous Geraldine, who “shook as she stomped and wriggled around . . . She screamed at the door and fell to the ground.”
A wild scuffle with a hammer results in a big crack in the door—through which a flowering vine emerges and grows at an alarming pace. What will happen when it fills the house and there’s no more room inside for the Grunions? The story’s brisk pace and rhythmic phrasing ramp up the fun suspense as the kids try to escape the vines, with the mysterious door their only possible way out.
Readers will delight in The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten) and high-impact type treatments. They’ll have lots to think and talk about when they encounter the book’s final pages, which reveal what’s beyond the mysterious door and will surely build anticipation for the next rollicking Grunions adventure.
—Linda M. Castellitto
Readers will delight in the The Door That Had Never Been Opened Before’s kinetic and expressive artwork that’s rife with clever details (keep an eye out for the kitten).
If you’ve ever watched TV shows like “The Golden Girls” and “Kate & Allie” or considered super-close friend-duos like J.D. and Turk or Abbi and Ilana and thought, “What a great way to live!” then The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center is for you. Like her pop-culture compatriots before her, debut author Rhaina Cohen understands the preciousness of a deep and abiding platonic relationship—no romance necessary.
That’s not to say Cohen is anti-romance: The NPR producer and editor is a happily married proponent of wedded bliss. But when it comes to relationships, she’s not in support of treasuring only wedded bliss. Instead, she urges readers to cultivate and celebrate “devoted, life-defining friendships.”
Cohen’s fervor for the topic was ignited by her own life-altering bond with a woman named M, who “stretched my understanding of the role a friendship could play in my life” and “made the world pulse with more possibilities for intimacy and support than before, and I wanted others to feel those possibilities for themselves.”
Over years of research, Cohen conducted 70 in-depth interviews with proponents of platonic life partnerships. And in eight chapters written with empathy, curiosity and a clear knack for storytelling, she shares the fascinating and heartwarming tales of several of those duos. They vary by gender, age, religion and sexuality but share a willingness to defy convention. Readers will meet youth pastors Nick and Art, whose platonic life partnership has confounded potential romantic partners; Inez and Barb, coworkers who became helpmeets in retirement; Lynda and Natasha, who went from colleagues to coparents; and more.
Cohen notes that due to societal factors including increased housing costs, decreased birth rates, evolving views on marriage and a growing willingness to home-share later in life, non-marital partnerships are more common, while not yet commonplace. The Other Significant Others offers readers an insightful and intimate look at what life could be like if we broaden our horizons beyond “compulsory coupledom” and welcome the idea that “romantic relationships are not the only unions that can shape our lives.”
Rhaina Cohen’s The Other Significant Others offers an insightful, intimate look at how deep, abiding platonic relationships shape our lives—no romance necessary.
Ann Fraistat’s deliciously creepy, highly inventive YA gothic horror novel A Place for Vanishing has a killer first line: “Days like this made me wish I’d never come back from the dead.” It just gets better from there—at least for readers who revel in cleverly conceived supernatural horror, from scary seances to oodles of sinister, clickety-clackety insects. For 16-year-old Libby Feldman, 13-year-old Vivi and their mom, not so much.
It was certainly a relief that their mom’s childhood home, Madame Clery’s House of Masks—a grand Victorian replete with blue roses and a hedge maze in the backyard—was vacant and available to give the family a fresh start after Libby’s recent suicide attempt. Libby has since been diagnosed with bipolar III disorder and is benefiting from medication and therapy, but newly delicate family dynamics have her on edge, and she’s baffled over why her mom thought moving into a haunted house was a good idea.
Founded in 1894, the House of Masks has been linked to numerous disappearances over the decades, and Libby’s grandparents died there. It’s filled with disturbing sounds and bizarre details, like beautiful but deeply unsettling stained glass windows depicting various insects—ants, moths, cicadas, wasps and more—surrounding human-like figures with voids for eyes.
Despite her doubts, Libby’s determined to ignore the you-should-flee signals her gut is sending, since, “I’d caused a lot of misery lately. I owed it to Mom and Vivi to make them feel good.” But urgent questions soon arise: Why is her mom behaving oddly and drinking cup after cup of blue-rose tea? Are the masks dangling from the windows as weird as she thinks they are, and why is Vivi so casual about wearing one? Handsome neighbor Flynn knows a lot about the house but is reluctant to share details. What is he—and the house—hiding?
As in her Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel, What We Harvest, Fraistat does a masterful job of balancing supernatural goings-on, psychological suspense and complicated relationships. She writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.
Ann Fraistat writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.
Comedy and classicism might seem an unusual pairing, but Natalie Haynes has parlayed her two areas of expertise into a career as a bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction, respected scholar and journalist, and popular podcaster (the BBC’s “Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics”).
Her new book, Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, is a fascinating follow-up to last year’s history of mythological women, Pandora’s Jar. Here, she revisits Greek mythology with an eye to interrogating and reconsidering the stories we’ve long been told—and the roles to which goddesses have been relegated—from a feminist perspective.
Haynes’ passion for her subject is evident whether she’s conveying the results of rigorous research into the works of Homer, Ovid, Sophocles and Aeschylus; explaining how modern pop culture reflects common interpretations of Greek mythology; or describing in vivid detail her experiences of wondrous works of art both ancient and modern (poems, plays, sculptures, paintings, films, music videos and more).
Divine Might begins with the Muses and ends with the Furies; in between are chapters about Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, Hestia and Athena. All have been underestimated, whether in terms of their strength and wisdom, or their vengefulness and anger. As Haynes notes, “We like to be able to separate heroes, villains and victims. It’s convenient for a simple narrative, but it isn’t always reflective of the truth.”
For example, Hestia is not as well known as her counterparts, but as goddess of the hearth she “must have been constantly referred to in daily life, even if not in grand mythological narratives.” And while Artemis is portrayed as “a woodland goddess, riding through mountainous forests with her entourage of wild creatures” we mustn’t forget she revels in “absolute lawlessness, her insistence that everyone subscribes to her view of the world or pays the price.”
With intellectual rigor and contagious enthusiasm, Haynes urges readers to take a second look at contemporary art and society with a new, enlightened appreciation for these mythical women. After all, she writes, “When women make art like men do, their goddesses look divine.”
With intellectual rigor and contagious enthusiasm, Natalie Haynes urges readers to take a more enlightened look at Greek goddesses.
When Granny goes to the market, people give her sidelong glances. After all, they’re selecting pristine produce from carefully curated displays while Granny is scooping up lumpy fruit and bumpy vegetables spilling out from an overflowing dumpster.
But the charming and resourceful star of Tang Wei’s debut picture book, Grandma’s Roof Garden, doesn’t mind the funny looks because she knows something important: This imperfect produce helps her feed her animals and compost her garden, a lush and colorful oasis she’s created atop a tall gray apartment building in the city of Chengdu, in southwest China.
Clucking hens and honking geese, an inquisitive black cat and an impressive array of plants share space in Granny’s rooftop garden. Translator Kelly Zhang maintains the playful punchiness of Wei’s couplets and quatrains in the translation from Chinese to English: “Over each and every one, / Granny proudly cries with a grin: / Look at my gorgeous, / chubby veggie children!”
Not only does Granny commune with nature and get lots of exercise every day, she creates community by sharing her bounty with her neighbors. Even better, she cooks the remaining produce for her family “to make them healthy, strong, and happy.” Wei’s expressive colored pencil drawings perfectly capture the neighbors’ surprise and delight, as well as the warm affection exuded by Granny’s family as they dine together on a host of delicious veggie dishes. A cheery mix of patterns, colors and textures brings visual interest and vibrancy to every page, from a spread overrun with dramatically curving vines to a set piece depicting an action-packed afternoon during which the cat supervises as Granny climbs a ladder, lays brick and tills a patch of dirt. Phew!
In her author’s note, Wei shares that Grandma’s Roof Garden was inspired by a beloved family member who has created her own marvelous roof garden. Readers will be touched to learn there’s a real-life Granny out there living a wonderful veggie-centric life—and perhaps be energized to grow community and good health in their very own gardens too. This heartwarming tale is one to share and treasure.
Tang Wei’s heartwarming tale, punctuated by expressive colored pencil drawings, will energize readers to grow community and good health in their very own gardens too.
Fans of Alex Michaelides’ bestselling thrillers The Silent Patient and The Maidens will be delighted that he’s returned with another notably unreliable narrator: Elliot Chase, a playwright who takes the famous Shakespeare quote “All the world’s a stage” quite literally in The Fury, a tantalizing slow burn murder mystery told as a play in five acts.
As befits an artist of his ilk, Elliot has a flair for the dramatic and an enthusiasm for gossipy speculation. When it comes to his own motivations, however, he is far more elusive—slippery, even—thanks to childhood wounds never fully acknowledged or healed, and present-day jealousies he attempts to stifle, with mixed results.
In The Fury, he has readers’ undivided attention, and he’s going to unapologetically enjoy it. “And before you accuse me of telling my story in a labyrinthine manner, let me remind you this is a true story—and in real life, that’s how we communicate, isn’t it?” Perhaps . . . or this is just a sly form of obfuscation from a seasoned dramatist. After all, he plainly states, “We are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.”
Elliot’s best friend, movie megastar Lana Farrar, owns a remote Greek island named Aura. She hosts Elliot, her husband and son, and her longtime stage actress friend, Kate, for a luxurious Easter holiday. But Aegean winds known as “the fury” batter the island and cut them off from civilization for the duration of the storm. It is then that one of them is murdered, and all of them become suspects.
The British Cypriot Michaelides has cited Greek mythology and Agatha Christie as important influences; in The Fury he draws on elements of both as he creates a darkly immersive atmosphere rife with creeping dread, heightened passion and numerous dubious alibis. There is plenty of paranoid suspense, too, in this inventive take on a locked-room mystery that reminds us people are far more complex than they seem to be—or we would like them to be—for better or (murderously) worse.
Alex Michaelides blends Greek mythology and Agatha Christie to tantalizing effect in The Fury.
In Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, Natalie Haynes shoves aside the male-centric lens through which we’ve long viewed goddesses like Aphrodite, Demeter and Artemis, whether in history, literature, art or music. She steps into that breach armed with a sharpened gaze and copious research as she reveals to readers how these otherworldly women have been misrepresented and misunderstood in the past, and explores the ways in which they inspire and inform us in the present. BookPage asked the acclaimed author/scholar/comedian/broadcaster about her fascinating career and what she thinks we can all learn from the undersung women of the ancient world.
In last year’s Pandora’s Jar, you brought the likes of Medusa and Jocasta to the forefront. And now in this book, you turn to the goddesses in all their power and glory. What drives you to interrogate and explore how women were portrayed in myth and in art?
I can’t imagine not being interested in the portrayal of women: We’re half the world! And since almost all literature and art that survives to us from the ancient world is by men, it provides a fascinating canvas to explore. How did men imagine women, and how did they imagine powerful women, when they knew no such people in real life? What kind of goddesses would these men worship? I really wanted to explore the goddesses, the temples built to them, the stories depicting them, the art embodying them. So that is how Divine Might happened.
What was the most surprising, challenging and/or gratifying thing you discovered in the course of your research, in terms of seeing echoes of the ancient past in our present society and culture? Do you now have a favorite goddess?
The most challenging thing I discovered was just how little impact the goddess Hestia—once central to worship of all the gods in ancient Greece—had made on the modern world. There were so few examples of her in contemporary fiction and art that at the beginning of her chapter, I wasn’t sure I would be able to write it at all. But it turned out to be a really beautiful process, finding her where I could, and trying to explain how and why she had disappeared. I don’t have favorites—I change my mind with every chapter!
“Female anger is frightening to men. Always.”
Artemis may well be the most widely known goddess, with loads of mentions of her female-archer guise in ancient art and current pop culture. But while her strength and skill are routinely celebrated, you assert that at her core, “She is a true predator . . . fixed on death.” Will you share a bit more about what you found to be the most intriguing contradictions in terms of how Artemis has been portrayed and viewed?
I’m interested that Artemis is such a popular goddess here! I always assume Aphrodite/Venus must be the best known, just because of the sheer cultural penetration (and a planet named after her too.). Artemis is a puzzle because she is syncretized with so many other goddesses: every area in the Greek world seems to have known her by a different name and worshiped a different aspect of her. This is how you end up with a goddess who protects young girls, but also shoots and kills them, and a virgin goddess who is closely linked with the goddess of childbirth. I think it’s appropriate that she is so hard to pin down, though. Artemis belongs to the places away from cities and towns: She is a goddess of wild places, forests and mountains. We don’t really belong in her world; she is most at home with wild creatures. So we either accept we can’t understand her, or we become a little wild ourselves.
What differences do you see in art created by men versus women?
I think the more women make art, the more we’ll see different interpretations of what it means to be a woman. I was thinking about it today reading a review of Britney Spears’ new book: How she chooses to present herself seems completely different from how her management/family chose to present her when they controlled so much of her life. There’s a terrible poignancy to how long she has had to wait to be allowed to be her full self. And—more cheeringly—look at the Taylor Swift juggernaut. She remakes herself with each album, sometimes more than once. It’s a master class in depicting powerful womanhood in hugely varied ways. She’s inspiring millions of girls as she does it, so I think we could be in for an exciting time ahead.
You describe in colorfully unflinching detail some of Hera’s “spectacular and creatively unpleasant revenges.” And you note that modern culture often turns this exasperation into fodder for comedy rather than, say, a reasonable explanation for rage. Why do you think—even in myths that spoke plainly about murder, rape and other terrible things—Hera’s and other goddesses’ anger was assiduously avoided and downplayed?
“. . . women’s stories are every bit as valuable and compelling as men’s, every bit as important as I believe them to be.”
Female anger is frightening to men. Always. And it’s much easier to deny that if you claim that it’s irrational, that it comes out of nowhere, that it’s the consequence of being crazy or cruel. Otherwise you’d have to accept that structural inequality is irritating and make an effort to change it for the better. Sometimes I feel like Bruce Banner in The Avengers: “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.” He doesn’t wait for an alien invasion to be mad, he lives there. Well, me too.
Your first book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, was published in 2010, and you’ve since written several books—fiction and nonfiction—that challenge our assumptions about the ancient world. Have you met with any pushback to the new perspectives you’ve offered? How has your work and your life as an author changed since your first book?
I am told by academic friends that I am generally appreciated in their profession for encouraging so many students to pursue classics and ancient history. I’ve no doubt there are some scholars who hate me—that’s just a statistical reality—but I can’t honestly say I give them a moment’s thought. Who has the time?
Comedy + classicism is a pairing that’s worked quite well for you, to say the least! Which came first? When were you first inspired to combine the two? Does your BBC podcast “Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics” inform your books and vice versa?
Ha—I guess I would say I was funny before I was a classicist, but I was a classicist before I was a comedian. I started doing stand-up during my undergrad years. Since then the two have swirled around me most of the time, I suppose. The first few years in comedy were pretty low on classics (not much call for jokes on the ancient world in the late ’90s comedy circuit). But now these two fields have really merged for me. I love doing the live shows and making the BBC podcast. I’m extremely lucky!
What are you most hoping readers take away from this book?
I’m hoping that readers will come away from the book thinking that women’s stories are every bit as valuable and compelling as men’s, every bit as important as I believe them to be. I hope they’ll have a newfound respect for the huge power of these goddesses and the centrality of their role in the ancient world.
Is there anything you’d like to share about what’s next for you, goddess-y or otherwise?
Next up is season 10 of the podcast, I’ll be recording it in the spring. Still choosing who to include. And the new novel is about Medea, so that is going to be an intense time, writing her. But I wrote my dissertation on Euripides’ portrayal of Medea and Hecabe, so I have been squaring up to take on this story for decades. It feels like now is the time. Let’s hope I’m right.
Superstar athlete Arnie “Yash” Yashenko can’t believe it when Principal Carmichael tells him he won’t graduate eighth grade unless he goes to summer school—for gym.
When it comes to sports, Yash is no slouch: He already plays on the high school’s JV teams. But thanks to a change in state requirements, he’s going to be a slug, which is what everyone calls kids in the Physical Education Equivalency summer program (whose super-embarrassing acronym is indeed “PEE”). So, instead of training for high school football with his best friends Hammon and Amir, Yash grouses through gym class with the likes of sweet but super-uncoordinated Kaden; insightful former athlete Cleo; self-righteous wannabe journalist Arabella; twins and sworn enemies Sarah and Stuart; and oft-destructive class clown Jesse.
Slugfest, by beloved and prolific bestselling author Gordon Korman (who published his 100th book, The Fort, in 2022), is a rousing tale filled with hilarity and heart. Readers who love to root for underdogs and unlikely friends—a la The Bad News Bears, School of Rock and The Breakfast Club—will delight in the PEE kids’ gradual transformation from wary individuals tossed together by fate into true teammates who can achieve more together than apart.
Employing multiple perspectives with realistic, appealing voices, Korman explores how biases can take hold and posits that having an open mind can lead to a more fulfilling, fun life. We’ve all got something to offer; we just need to find the right context. This is true of the kids as well as septuagenarian PEE coach Mrs. Finnerty, a former second grade and home economics teacher who plies her charges with an astonishing array of delicious baked goods. Though the slugs scoff at her “kiddie games,” they learn playfulness and badassery are not mutually exclusive.
Whether he’s embodying the exquisite tension of a first date or the no-holds-barred thrills of a citywide flag football tournament, Korman’s gift for breathless play-by-play will have readers cheering for Yash and company to win at summer school and in life—whatever sporty or non-sporty form that victory might take.
Whether he’s embodying the exquisite tension of a first date or the no-holds-barred thrills of a citywide flag football tournament, Gordon Korman’s gift for breathless play-by-play will have readers cheering.
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