From the New Shelf

The Anthologist
Nicholson Baker

Baker has a gift for writing novels about the unlikeliest of subjects. In his first novel, The Mezzanine, he wrote about buying new shoelaces, while Vox concerned an intimate phone conversation. His newest work of fiction is about poetry. The narrator, Paul Chowder, is a poet who is struggling to write the introduction to an anthology of rhyming poems he's collected. He's also trying to win back Roz, the woman who has just left him. These dilemmas make for some enlightening, absorbing reflections on poetry, the creative process, and life itself. While Chowder admits that he despises teaching, the narrative offers a wonderful explanation of what poetry is and the relationship between form and meaning. In the process, Chowder comes to understand himself better and pulls out of a slump. The novel's subtle sense of humor comes through as Chowder deals with injured fingers, a misbehaving dog, and the perils of reading his poetry in public.
Library Journal Review; August 2009.

The Day the Falls Stood Still
Cathy Marie Buchanan

Buchanan's first novel illuminates the beginnings of hydroelectric power in Canada during World War I. Fortunes are made and lost on electricity supplied by Niagara Falls, and Bess's family suffers particularly--her father loses his job at the local electric powerhouse, and her sister Isabel loses both her rich fiance and her life, drowning in the river. Bess and her mother turn to tailoring to make ends meet, and Bess continues with her work when her naturalist husband, Tom, goes off to fight. Returning from the war, Tom goes to work for the electric company to support the family, although he deplores the effect of the generators on the Niagara River. In the end, this conflict between the natural world and progress leads to tragedy. Historical fiction readers will appreciate the excellent period detail, especially the depiction of the era's social mores, and the romance between Bess and Tom is also a high point.
Library Journal Review; September 2009.

The Guinea Pig Diaries
A J Jacobs

Jacobs, the author of The Know-It-All (2004) and The Year of Living Biblically (2007), could be the funniest nonfiction writer this side of Bill Bryson. His latest book comprises a collection of experiments: living according to George Washington's 110 rules of civility; following the tenets of Radical Honesty; outsourcing pretty much his entire life to Bangalore, India; unitasking (doing only one thing at a time); and so on. The experiments themselves are fascinating and lead to genuinely surprising conclusions--you can't really predict, for example, what will happen when you decide to tell the unvarnished truth all the time--and Jacobs' storytelling is lighthearted and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. With the publication of his first two books, he carved for himself a niche as a journalist who undertakes mammoth projects (reading the Encyclopedia Britannica cover to cover; living according to the tenets of the Bible); here he demonstrates that he's an eager and willing subject for pretty much any sort of journalistic experiment, even one as potentially humiliating as having his photograph taken, in the nude, for Esquire. There aren't a lot of nonfiction books you want to read over and over, but this is certainly one of them.

Booklist Review; July 2009.

Ransom
David Malouf

Revisiting scenes from The Iliad and delving into the hearts of two ancient heroes, Malouf (Remembering Babylon) evokes the final days of the Trojan War with cinematic vividness. After Achilles withdraws his forces from combat, a move that cripples the Greek army, his best friend, Patroclus, persuades Achilles to let him take the Myrmidons back into combat and to wear Achilles' armor. After Trojan king Priam's beloved son, Hector, kills Patroclus, guilt, rage and grief drives Achilles on a frenzied quest for revenge that sees him slay Hector and then tie Hector's corpse to his chariot and drag it around the besieged city. Priam, desperate to stop the desecration, decides to visit the enemy camp and offer money in exchange for Hector's body. He hires a humble cart driver and, aided by Hermes, they set out on a journey that takes Priam into the unknown and toward a meeting with Achilles. Though Malouf's sparingly deployed details, vigorous language and sly wit humanizes these tragic heroes, the story is unmistakably epic and certainly the stuff of legend.
Publishers Weekly Review; October 2009.

The Affinity Bridge
George Mann

In this intriguingly bizarre version of 1901 London, Sir Maurice Newbury, ostensibly an academic, is a trusted agent of the Crown. The ailing Victoria charges him and his assistant, Veronica Hobbes, with discovering the cause of an airship crash, which may be linked to innovative automata now acting as servants all over London. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is dealing with numerous strangulations perpetrated by a glowing policeman and an outbreak of a 'revenant plague' that turns people into mindless, murderous zombies. Readers should not be put off by the introduction of several apparently unrelated investigative threads; Mann brings them together and ratchets up the action as the story progresses. Although the imagery is occasionally repetitive and some loose ends are tied up rather abruptly, overall, this series launch by the editor of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction is a strong addition to the 'steampunk' subgenre and one that creates a lively alternative world.
Library Journal Review; June 2009.

The Invisible Mountain
Carolina De Robertis

The history of Uruguay through the 20th century sparks personal tragedies amid political intrigues and cultural upheavals in this enchanting, funny and heartbreaking debut novel. Three generations of women populate this sweeping saga: Pajarita, the miracle child who at the dawn of the new century disappears and then reappears in a tree, born twice, as the residents of her small town say; Eva, Pajarita's daughter, who suffers a cruel childhood and learns to spin her painful experiences into a new life of art and adventure as a poet; and Salome, seduced by communism and nearly losing everything fighting for the cause she believes will save her country. This novel is beautifully written yet deliberate in its storytelling. It gains momentum as the women's lives spin increasingly out of control while Uruguay sinks into war, economic instability and revolution. An extraordinary first effort whose epic scope and deft handling reverberate with the deep pull of ancestry, the powerful influence of one's country and the sacrifices of reinvention.
Publishers Weekly Review; June 2009.

The Corner Booth Chronicles
Mimi Thebo

Eudora, a quintessentially Middle-American small town, teems with the sort of characters who value both convention and predictability. Polite, patriotic, and plainspoken, they take pains to preserve a patina of peace among the populace. But change nevertheless arrives in Eudora. Recent immigration has given the town a Latino mayor, and old verities and customary social order can no longer be taken for granted. When the first copies of a novel by one of Eudora's native daughters arrive, inbred aversion to public scrutiny competes with equally irresistible curiosity and lust for celebrity as townspeople try to identify themselves among the fictional characters. Thebo sketches her characters as if an artist in a portrait gallery, showing not only their external appearance but also the conflicted emotions and impulses that seethe just below the skin and cannot be indefinitely suppressed.
Booklist Review; June 2009.

The Kids are All Right
Dan Welch

'We all wanted to go home, but none of us could because we had no home to go to.' Like Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), this frank, wry, aching memoir follows children of privilege in the 1980s who lose everything after the sudden deaths of both parents. In alternating narratives, four siblings describe life after their father is killed in a car crash and, months later, their mother dies from cancer. After being shuttled off to different East Coast homes and colleges, they try to maintain their connection, particularly with the youngest child, Diana. As the authors build on each other's memories, they find contradictions: 'Actually . . . the grapefruit-size tumor came later,' says Amanda as she tracks their mother's illness. 'I don't remember any of that,' says Liz, after Amanda finds her grieving and barefoot, surrounded by shards of a broken bathroom mirror. Starting with the title's pun, this unusual account will leave readers musing over memory's slippery nature; the imperfect, enduring bonds of family; and the human heart's remarkable resilience.
Booklist Review; September 2009.