Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Front Porch Books: January 2019 edition


Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of new and forthcoming booksmainly advance review copies (aka “uncorrected proofs” and “galleys”)I’ve received from publishers. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released. I should also mention that, in nearly every case, I haven’t had a chance to read these books, but they’re definitely going in the to-be-read pile.



I Miss You When I Blink
by Mary Laura Philpott
(Atria Books)

Jacket Copy: Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that? Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you’ll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Philpott has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once—and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.

Opening Lines: It’s the perfect sentence, but I didn’t write it. My six-year-old did.
       I was sitting at the desk in my home office, on a copywriting deadline for a client in the luggage industry, wrestling with a paragraph about suitcases. I leaned forward, as if putting my face closer to the computer could help the words on the screen make garment bags sound exciting. My little boy lay on his belly on the rug, “working” to pass the time until our promised walk to the park. He murmured to himself as he scribbled with a yellow pencil stub on one of my notepads.
       “...and I miss you when I blink...” he said.
       It stopped me mid-thought. “Say that again?”
       “I miss you when I blink,” he answered and looked up, pleased to have caught my attention. He turned back to his notepad, chattering on with his rhyme (I miss you in the sink...I miss you in a skating rink...). When he ripped off the page and tossed it aside, I picked it up and pinned it to the bulletin board on my office wall.

Blurbworthiness:  “I Miss You When I Blink is a delightful, thought-provoking collection of essays, written with such spark and vulnerability that I was alternately laughing out loud and gasp-sighing at its poignancy. Mary Laura Philpott shows us her real, flawed self in these pages, sharing when she’s made mistakes, when she’s been less than charitable, or when she wasn’t sure who she was 'supposed' to be. It’s easy to connect with her honesty, and damn fun to laugh at her jokes. This book is totally irresistible!”  (Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17)



Aerialists
by Mark Mayer
(Bloomsbury)

Jacket Copy:  Welcome to the sublime circus of Mark Mayer’s debut, Aerialists, a fiercely inventive collection of nine stories in which classic carnival characters become ordinary misfits seeking grandeur in a lonely world. Under the luminous tent of Mayer’s prose, we see P.T. Barnum’s caravan remade: A young misogynist finds a confidante in a cable-TV strongwoman. A realtor for the one percent invokes his inner murder clown. A skin-and-bones mathematician and his bearded wife plot revolution. A friendless peach farmer holds a funeral for a beloved elephant. And a model-train hobbyist prepares to throw his miniature world in the trash. The circus has always been a collection of American exaggerations-the bold, the beautiful, the freakish, the big. Aerialists finds these myths living in the everyday. Mayer’s deftly drawn characters illuminate these small-scale spectaculars, and their attempted acts of daring and feats of strength are rendered with humor, generosity, and uncommon grace.

Opening Lines:  A few weeks after my dad moved out, I played a trick on my mom. I asked to give her a hug, and after we held each other a minute, I stuck a sewing needle in the back of her neck. I had it taped between my fingers with invisible tape.

Blurbworthiness:  “Aerialists is a work of great imagination. These stories are always in motion, as characters reach for their better selves and touch them only briefly, in singular, exquisite moments rendered in astounding prose. Mark Mayer is wise and big-hearted, a magician of the American sentence. Each story is its own world, inhabited by characters who are painfully, wonderfully real.”  (Emily Ruskovich, author of Idaho)



Staff Picks
by George Singleton
(Louisiana State University Press)

Jacket Copy:  It’s Father’s Day 1972 and a young boy’s dad takes him to visit a string of unimpressive ex-girlfriends that could have been his mother; the unconventional detective work of a koan-speaking, Kung Fu–loving uncle solves a case of arson during a pancake breakfast; and a former geology professor, recovering from addiction, finds himself sharing a taxicab with specters from a Jim Crow–era lynching. Set in and around the fictional town of Steepleburg, South Carolina, the loosely tied stories in George Singleton’s Staff Picks place sympathetic, oddball characters in absurd, borderline surreal situations that slowly reveal the angst of southern history with humor and bite. In the tradition of Donald Barthelme, T. C. Boyle, Flannery O’Connor, and Raymond Carver, Singleton creates lingering, darkly comedic tales by drawing from those places where familiarity and alienation coexist. A remarkable and distinct effort from an acclaimed chronicler of the South, Staff Picks reaffirms Singleton’s gift for crafting short story collections that both deliver individual gems and shine as a whole.

Opening Lines:  According to the radio station’s rules, the contestants were permitted to place their hands anywhere on the RV they felt comfortable. Staff Puckett chose the Winnebago’s spare tire, which was sheathed in vinyl emblazoned with the image of Mount Rushmore. Staff had considered visiting the granite sculpture, off and on, for twenty years, and now she vowed to herself that soon she’d make her way northwest on mostly back roads to stare down those four faces, whose stony expressions didn’t look much different than her own.
       But first she had to win the RV. She’d been one of the nineteen nineteenth callers during WCRS’s nineteen-day “19th Nervous Breakdown” marathon. Now she and the other eighteen contestants were gathered in the parking lot of State Line RV World, near the border of Georgia and South Carolina. The rules were simple: This was a “hands on” contest. Contestants had to remain in contact with the RV. The last one standing got the keys.
       A man to Staff’s left stuck his hand on the taillight, and a woman with bleached hair reached up high onto the back window, which Staff thought to be a questionable move. The other sixteen contestants—including a doughy, balding man whose shirt blazed with advertising logos—chose the hood, windshield, door handles, random snatches of stripe.
       “Good morning,” the balding man said. While he waited in vain for Staff’s reply, he gave her what seemed to be a sincere smile, which led Staff to believe that he wouldn’t last long.

Blurbworthiness:  “George Singleton’s talent as a humorist is on full display in Staff Picks but don’t let your laughter distract you from the fact that he is also a sly, insightful witness to life in the American South and one of the most dexterous short story writers anywhere. He knows our hurts and fears, our desires and disappointments. He understands better than just about anybody that life can be sublime and heartbreaking and absurd all at once and he holds nothing back in his best collection yet.”  (Michael Knight, author of Eveningland)



Time Song: Journeys in Search of a Submerged Land
by Julia Blackburn
(Pantheon)

Jacket Copy:  Shortly after her husband's death, Julia Blackburn became fascinated with Doggerland, the stretch of land that once connected Great Britain to Europe but is now subsumed by the North Sea. She was driven to explore the lives of the people who lived there--studying its fossil record, as well as human artifacts that have been discovered near the area. Now, she brings her reader along on her journey across Great Britain and parts of Continental Europe, introducing us to the paleontologists, archaeologists, fishermen, and fellow Doggerland enthusiasts she meets along the way. As Doggerland begins to come into focus, what emerges is a profound meditation on time, a sense of infinity as going backwards, and an intimation of the immensity of everything that has already passed through its time on earth and disappeared.

Opening Lines:  I am looking out across the North Sea on a calm day. The surface of the sea is like a covering of grey skin, breathing softly in and out.

Blurbworthiness:  “Species appear and vanish, cultures develop and are annihilated. It sounds depressing, but this is one of the only books I’ve ever read that has made me feel better about climate change. It’s not that we’re not doomed. . . But the end of us doesn’t mean the end of existence altogether. . . but if this book convinces me of anything, it’s that there will always be more life to come.”  (Olivia Laing, in The Guardian)



Earth to Charlie
by Justin Olson
(Simon and Schuster)

Jacket Copy:  A high school outcast spends his life hoping to be abducted by aliens in this funny, quirky novel about finding your footing in a world that sometimes feels like Mars. Convinced his mother has been abducted by aliens, Charlie Dickens spends his nights with an eye out for UFOs, hoping to join her. After all, she said the aliens would come back for him. Charlie will admit that he doesn’t have many reasons to stick around; he doesn’t get along well with his father, he’s constantly bullied at school and at work, and the only friend he has is his 600-pound neighbor Geoffrey, and Geoffrey’s three-legged dog, Tickles. Then Charlie meets popular, easy-going Seth, who shows him what real friendship is all about. For once, he finds himself looking around at the life he’s built, rather than looking up. But sooner than he expected, Charlie has to make a decision: should he stay or should he go?

Opening Lines:  My mind drifts from one thought to the next. My bed sheets are finally warm. I roll to one side, then to the other. After a bit of adjusting, I find myself on my back. My eyes shut.
       I wait restlessly for sleep to find me.
       The house is so deadened of people and activity that the air feels heavy and stagnant. If someone were to walk into my room right now, they’d think it was a tomb.
       And I, the body.



At Briarwood School for Girls
by Michael Knight
(Grove Atlantic)

Jacket Copy:  It’s 1994 and Lenore Littlefield is a junior at Briarwood School for Girls. She plays basketball. She hates her roommate. History is her favorite subject. She has told no one that she’s pregnant. Everything, in other words, is under control. Meanwhile, Disney has announced plans to build a new theme park just up the road, a “Technicolor simulacrum of American History” right in the middle of one of the most history-rich regions of the country. If successful, the development will forever alter the character of Prince William County, Virginia, and have unforeseeable consequences for the school. When the threat of the theme park begins to intrude on the lives of the faculty and students at Briarwood, secrets will be revealed and unexpected alliances will form. Lenore must decide who she can trust--will it be a middle-aged history teacher struggling to find purpose in his humdrum life? A lonely basketball coach tasked with directing the school play? A reclusive playwright still grappling with her own Briarwood legacy? Or a teenage ghost equally adept at communicating with the living via telephone or Ouija board? Following a cast of memorable characters as they reckon with questions about fate, history, and the possibility of happiness, about our responsibilities to each other and to ourselves, At Briarwood School for Girls is a stunning and inventive new work from a master storyteller.

Opening Lines:  All boarding schools are haunted. Not infrequently by suicides. So it was at Briarwood School for Girls.

Blurbworthiness:  “Like a package of sweets sent from home, At Briarwood School for Girls is replete with the familiar, beloved, humorous elements of a boarding school book--old trees and legacies, a headmistress, a ghost, and girls out of uniform--and surprise at what real life offers up. I read the book in an evening--so irresistible and satisfying was it, I kept turning the pages.” (Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywood)



Everything Inside
by Edwidge Danticat
(Knopf)

Jacket Copy:  From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I’m Dying comes a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love. Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant. In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.

Opening Lines:  Elsie was with Gaspard, her live-in renal-failure patient, when her ex-husband called to inform her that his girlfriend, Olivia, had been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.



What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About
Edited by Michele Filgate
(Simon and Schuster)

Jacket Copy:  In the bestselling tradition of The Bitch in the House, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About is an anthology about the powerful and sometimes painful things that we can’t discuss with the person who is supposed to know us and love us the most. In the early 2000s, as an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took many years for her to realize what she was actually trying to write about: the fracture this caused in her relationship with her mother. When her essay, “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About,” was published by Longreads in October of 2017, it went on to become one of the most popular Longreads exclusives of the year, and was shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, Lidia Yuknavitch, and many other writers, some of whom had their own individual codes of silence to be broken. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers an intimate, therapeutic, and universally resonant look at our relationships with our mothers. As Filgate poignantly writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.”

Opening Lines:  Lacuna: an unfilled space or interval; a gap.
       Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them. To know what it was like to have one place where we belonged. Where we fit.
       My mother is hard to know. Or rather, I know her and don’t know her at the same time. I can imagine her long, grayish-brown hair that she refuses to chop off, the vodka and ice in her hand. But if I try to conjure her face, I’m met instead by her laugh, a fake laugh, the kind of laugh that is trying to prove something, a forced happiness.
       Several times a week, she posts tempting photos of food on her Facebook page. Achiote pork tacos with pickled red onions, strips of beef jerky just out of the smoker, slabs of steak that she serves with steamed vegetables. These are the meals of my childhood; sometimes ambitious and sometimes practical. But these meals, for me, call to mind my stepfather: the red of his face, the red of the blood pooled on the plate. He uses a dishtowel to wipe the sweat from his cheeks; his work boots are coated in sawdust. His words puncture me; tines of a fork stuck in a half-deflated balloon.

Blurbworthiness:  “These are the hardest stories in the world to tell, but they are told with absolute grace. You will devour these beautifully written--and very important--tales of honesty, pain, and resilience.” (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love)


Sunday, January 27, 2019

Sunday Sentence: In Memory of Jane Frazer by Geoffrey Hill


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


       She died before the world could stir.
       In March the ice unloosed the brook
       And water ruffled the sun’s hair,
       And a few sprinkled leaves unshook.


“In Memory of Jane Frazer” by Geoffrey Hill
from New Poets of England and America

Friday, January 25, 2019

Friday Freebie: Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman


Congratulations to Sudha Balagopal, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: the new collection of short stories by Kathy Fish, Wild Life.

This week’s giveaway is for Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman and it sounds like a really fun read. Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life, had this to say about the book: “The sharp, smart wit of Elinor Lipman is a treasure and Good Riddance more than delivers with laugh out loud dialogue, wise social commentary, and thoughtful observations about love.”  Keep scrolling for more information on the novel and how to enter the contest...


Daphne Maritch doesn't quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother, who held this relic dear. Too dear. The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of '68 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion, scribbling notes and observations after each one—not always charitably—and noting who overstepped boundaries of many kinds.

If you’d like a chance at winning Good Riddance, simply email your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Jan. 31, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Feb. 1. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


Sunday, January 20, 2019

Sunday Sentence: Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes


Thursday, January 17, 2019

My First Time: Christy Stillwell



My First Encouragement

As a freshman at the University of Georgia, I declared an art major. Winter quarter I was registered for my first studio art class, held in the art building, a warehouse-like place with high ceilings and cement floors. Smelling of chalky paint and turpentine, the place felt exotic and intimidating. We sat at long worktables. A quick glance at the supply list and syllabus revealed what I estimated to be several hundred dollars’ worth of materials. The instructor explained that we would be drawing while she roved the room looking over our shoulders. On Fridays, we would place our work on the easel in the center of the room and submit to peer critique. At that moment I knew I wasn’t as serious as I thought about drawing or painting. I left the class, walked to the registrar, and dropped my major. Standing there with my pencil and my drop/add form, I asked myself, “What do you like to do? What can you see yourself doing—maybe not forever but for the next four years?”

Reading. I liked to read.

Major: English. I signed up for one of the few English classes with spaces left: Creative Writing 101, with Coleman Barks.

I didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t as famous at the time as he was going to become—Coleman Barks, the pre-eminent translator of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic. When my dorm hall monitor explained to me that Barks was a poet and a translator and a “Big Deal,” I shrugged and nodded. To me he was a bearded man with a deep voice who was open to going to the bar with his students, those who were old enough to drink.

Barks’ method of teaching was passive; he didn’t care what we called him, Coleman, Mr. Barks, Dr. Barks. He let us say what we wanted, and write what we wanted. He spoke of poetic moments and gave us examples: Crossing a parking lot he had seen a young woman walking through a row of cars. Each time she passed a window, she turned to look at her reflection. She was compelled to look, it seemed to him. She couldn’t not look, and this struck him as beautifully human, this need for reassurance of her own existence.

Coleman Barks
Midway through the ten-week quarter, just after I had presented my first story, he said something to me that no teacher has said before or since. I waited in my chair until everyone else had left class. I still remember the pit in my stomach, a roiling mix of fear and nausea. I was full of a shameful need. I didn’t know exactly what it was I sought from him, only that I had a burning question to ask. He was looking at me, waiting for what I had to say. I swallowed hard and met his eye. “Am I any good?” I asked, sweating, even more embarrassed now that the question was out. “What do you think? Can I write?”

In truth, I don’t remember exactly how I phrased my question. It’s funny; if this were fiction, I’d have it all—smells, sounds, precise feelings and words. But this is the past and when I write about the past I find poignant feelings and sensations more often than I find actual words. I do, however, recall Coleman’s exact words. He gathered his legal pad and stack of manuscripts. He stuck his pen in his nest of graying hair.

“You’ve got it, if you want it,” he said.

My heart was beating so fast I couldn’t register his words. I barely knew what I was asking, but I certainly had no idea what he meant. What was “it”? Fame and fortune? The writing of books? Anyone could write a book. Anyone could sit down and put the words on paper. What I wanted to know was, was I any good? Should I bother? And the way he phrased that last part, “if you want it.” To me this suggested that “it” whatever it was, might not be something I ought to want.

“Can’t you feel it?” he added, looking at me. “What happens when you read?” He flashed his sad, charming smile and shuffled out the door.

That was all he said. I recall speed walking across campus, filled with adrenaline. I was thrilled. I was besieged with confusion and doubt, but I was thrilled. What he said was a thumbs up, even if it wasn’t a precise thumbs up.

Looking back, I’m shocked by my nerve. I see now that what I wanted, he could not give. I wanted a guarantee. Even at age nineteen I knew that this kind of work was different from, say, banking. I felt the difference when I sat in my dorm room or the library or the coffee shop drafting those stories for his class. Time evaporated. The world around me ceased to be confusing or scary or unwieldy. It ceased to be anything at all.

I can’t say that when I’m drafting fiction, I’m happy. What I am is absent. My ego vanishes. Even in those early years I experienced the space created in my mind as a balm, a consolation. I felt a sense of purpose, and perhaps best of all, meaning. This felt a little naughty to me. It did not feel like a job, or a thing grown-ups pursued. If I was going to pursue it, I’d better be good, and I wanted Coleman to reassure me. To tell me that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, that I would not be wasting my time.

Of course Coleman would leave the hard work to me. The larger question I was asking him, and myself and the universe, was the question asked by every young person since the dawn of time: “What Do I Want?” No one could answer that, least of all Coleman Barks, the man who devoted his life to interpreting the works of Rumi, the spiritual teacher whose poetry explored divinity, the soul, and the pursuit of God. Coleman wrote about him, “Rumi .... wants us to be more alive, to wake up... He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other.”

I wouldn’t have minded if he’d said, Yes Christy. You are brilliant. Keep writing. He might have mentioned how long it would all take, how much rejection would be involved. I’d have loved a hint about that low period in my early thirties, when my first novel was with an agent but didn’t sell and I caught myself reading debut novels and hoping I’d hate them. I wanted others to fail. That was a new low, using other writers’ hard work to confirm that the world was against me.

But if Coleman had said any of that, would it have been encouraging? A writer needs encouragement, maybe more than a banker needs encouragement. Finishing work takes a long time. Publishing takes even longer. Writers can be unstable, insecure people. We need positive feedback as often as we can get it. But thinking back on the koan-like comments from my first teacher, he gave me exactly what I needed, what all writers need even more than they need encouragement. They need the truth.

“Can’t you feel it?” he asked me. The truth was that I could feel it. I read my work that first time and my skin tingled. My guts churned and my scalp burned. I could feel it all right. My classmates, the grad students auditing the course, even my teacher: everybody was listening.


Christy Stillwell is the author of The Wolf Tone and the poetry chapbook Amnesia. She is the winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Prize, a finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Story Contest and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, a residency at Vermont Studio Center and a Wyoming Arts Council Literary Fellowship. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals such as Pearl, River City, Sonora Review, Sou’wester, The Massachusetts Review, and The Tishman Review. Visit her online at ChristyStillwell.com

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. For information on how to contribute, contact David Abrams.


Sunday, January 13, 2019

Sunday Sentence: Christmas by Vladimir Nabokov


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


The outer door resisted at first, then opened with a luscious crunch, and the dazzling frost hit his face.

“Christmas” by Vladimir Nabokov
Christmas Stories


Friday, January 11, 2019

Friday Freebie: Wild Life by Kathy Fish


Congratulations to Jacqueline Isler, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrimur Helgason.

I’m thrilled to announce this week’s giveaway is for the new collection of short-short stories by Kathy Fish, Wild Life. This book, which shares the title of an earlier collection by Fish, adds several new stories and the result is one of the best short-fiction reading experiences I’ve had in years. Wild Life is, in a word, brilliant; in two words: brilliantly illuminating. Kathy Fish has a way of drilling down into the heart of her characters with a speed and economy that by the time you reach the end of the story—often less than two pages—you feel you’ve explored an entire universe in just three paragraphs. Yes, reader, I loved Wild Life, and I think you will, too.

Keep scrolling for more information on the novel and how to enter the contest...


Here’s author Sara Lippmann (Doll Palace) on why she loved Wild Life as much as I did:

For more than a decade, Kathy Fish has been skewering the American landscape to bring us startling, unforgettable stories of people trying to forge a path through this shattered world. Her characters—patchwork families, scrappy siblings, unraveling couples, strangers, neighbors, and women confronting the violent self-annihilation that attends motherhood—are wracked by their actions and inactions. Surreality may be the only way out. If she did not coin the term flash fiction, we have her to thank for singlehandedly growing and elevating the dynamic form, securing its indelible place in the literary canon. With Wild Life, Fish demonstrates time and again why she is one of the most exciting and influential writers we have. Her range is on full display in this brilliant, comprehensive collection, an absolute must for students and teachers, for writers and readers across the genres.

No two stories are alike; each one dazzles in its own surprising way, all of them remarkable gems. Some, like “At Ethel and Harry’s On the Last Night,” contain the astounding scope of a novel in a few compressed pages; others, like “Lioness” open up with a scream. Fish fearlessly explodes structure and upends form with a playfulness and permissiveness that transcends myopic conventions of storytelling.

Devour them, but don’t be deceived by their thumbnail size; her stories are expansive, rife with a complexity that demands a slow, dedicated, and repeated read. Even after a close study, you won’t begin to grasp how she devastates and delights on a single line. This is her inimitable magic. She will gut you with the sheer precision of her emotional restraint. Images don’t just pop but vibrate through the senses. The familiar becomes unfamiliar in exquisite juxtaposition. Through Fish’s deft pen, the wind is never the wind but “the hands of many children clapping.” Rooms smell like creamed corn. Parachutes bloom like jellyfish. A party hat becomes a narwhal’s tooth. The road and clouds press down upon a trapped narrator like two large hands. Every story shatters, unsettling the fractured ground on which we stand, and then somehow invites the reader to gather shards and hold them to the light. That is grace “This broken planet needs a hero,” one of her characters says. My hero, bar none, is Kathy Fish.”

If you’d like a chance at winning Wild Life, simply email your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Jan. 17, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Jan. 18. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


Sunday, January 6, 2019

Sunday Sentence: Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes



Friday, January 4, 2019

Friday Freebie: Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrimur Helgason


Congratulations to Jennifer Oleson Boyd, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna.

This week’s giveaway is for the new paperback Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrimur Helgason. Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites, had this to say about the book: “What a novel! Helgason’s Woman at 1,000 Degrees is a gutsy, brilliant book: I could not tear myself away from it. Octogenarian Herra Björnsson’s dying recollections, as she lies nursing a hand grenade between her legs in an Icelandic garage, hurtle the reader headfirst into an epic narrative of war, loss, desire and survival, across years and continents. Both funny and deeply moving, I finished it utterly dazzled, my ears ringing.” Keep scrolling for more information on the novel and how to enter the contest...



“I live here alone in a garage, together with a laptop computer and an old hand grenade. It’s pretty cozy.”

Herra Björnsson is at the beginning of the end of her life. Oh, she has two weeks left, maybe three—she has booked her cremation appointment, at a crispy 1,000 degrees, so it won’t be long. But until then she has her cigarettes, a World War II–era weapon, some Facebook friends, and her memories to sustain her. And what a life this remarkable eighty-year-old narrator has led. In the internationally bestselling and award-winning Woman at 1,000 Degrees, which has been published in fourteen languages, noted Icelandic novelist Hallgrímur Helgason has created a true literary original. From Herra’s childhood in the remote islands of Iceland, where she was born the granddaughter of Iceland’s first president, to teen years spent living by her wits alone in war-torn Europe while her father fought on the side of the Nazis, to love affairs on several continents, Herra Björnsson moved Zelig-like through the major events and locales of the twentieth century. She wed and lost husbands, had children, fled a war, kissed a Beatle, weathered the Icelandic financial crash, and mastered the Internet. She has experienced luck and betrayal and upheaval and pain, and—with a bawdy, uncompromising spirit—she has survived it all. Now, as she awaits death in a garage in Reykjavík, she shows us a woman unbowed by the forces of history. Each part of Herra’s story is a poignant piece of a puzzle that comes together in the final pages of this remarkable, unpredictable, and enthralling novel.

If you’d like a chance at winning Woman at 1,000 Degrees, simply email your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Jan. 10, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Jan. 11. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Reading Ahead



I do a quick tally of my to-be-read list.

1,981.

I look again at that single-spaced list of books on my computer, that long scroll of titles that, at various times over the past decade, have piqued my interest. One thousand, nine hundred and eighty-one books. That’s a lot of papercuts.

The TBR list ebbs and flows, but mostly flows. For every four titles I add in a zest of anticipation, I know that only one will be read. When all is said and done, there’s a lot more said than done; or, a lot more said than read. Still, the mountain of must-reads, my own Mount NeveRest, grows and grows and grows.

I have no expectation of chopping off very many of feet in elevation during 2019, but I do a have a plan. I will attack Mount NeveRest methodically, judiciously, alphabetically. At least that is my plan on this first day of the year; we’ll see how the other 364 play out.

As some of you who have popped in to my Facebook page already know, I have been making a practice of adding to my TBR list by going through 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich one volume per day (if I’ve already read Mr. Mustich’s suggestion, all the better....but, like I said, that’s about one in four). The 1,000 Books Before You Die roster supplements my already-existing Essentials List. My plan is to alternate reading one book from the top of the list (James Agee, for instance) with one from the bottom (Emile Zola, I’m looking at you!).

Alternating with that system, I intend to take a book off the top of my ebook and “regular” book lists, which means the newer (2018 and 2019 vintage) books which I’ve been hoping to read soon. That way, I can get the best of both classic and modern literature in my diet.

Taking a peek at that latter list, here are the books which have climbed to the top (though they could always be bumped down a notch or two by other shiny new arrivals):

Earth to Charlie by Justin Olson
I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott
The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
The Municipalists by Seth Fried
Veterans Crisis Hotline by Jon Chopan
Little Faith by Nickolas Butler

But first, it’s Agatha Christie. I have a long-standing tradition of making the first book I read in the new year one by Dame Agatha. Last year, it was The Boomerang Clue; the year before that, it was Death in the Air; in 2016, it was Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. I’ve read about half of her prolific output and I’m working on the second half, starting this year with the 1933 mystery Thirteen at Dinner (aka Lord Edgware Dies). Double bonus points for the fact that it’s one of the Dell Mapbacks in my collection. I love these vintage paperbacks for the stylized maps they included, as the name states, on the back cover.


Thirteen at Dinner is a fairly routine, by-the-numbers Christie mystery. So far, nothing outright memorable has reared its bloody head to distinguish it from the many other Christies I have read. But I’m okay with a comfortable, routine investigation at this point. I read Agatha Christie to slow down, to savor, to allow my mind to float, to hover over the scene in the locked drawing room, to dissolve into the clues and to transport myself to the scene of the crime. Harsh cold weather, the bleak midwinter government furlough, the wind-up chattering-teeth noise of news headlines: all of that melts away as Hercule Poirot strokes his mustaches and announces, on page 140 (of 240 pages!!), “I know the truth of the whole affair.”

Of course he does. And now I settle in for the delicious 100-page tease in which I try, and fail and fail again, to match wits with Monsieur Poirot.

It’s a fun game to play: me in my armchair with a book and nothing but time on my hands (thanks to the government furlough) to solve a murder.