| Every fall brings more new book releases than a bibliophile could hope to read. If you’re holing up over the holidays or just looking for a great gift, check out these new and notable fall and winter releases.
One of the biggest novels of the season is Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night: A Confession (McClelland & Stewart, 608 pp.), a labyrinthine Victorian murder mystery the author spent the last 30 years writing. Full of twitchy killers, opium dens and love affairs, Meaning lives up to the hype. For more historical fiction, be sure to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf Canada, 448 pp.), a masterful and horrifying account of the struggle for Biafra’s independence in 1960s Nigeria.
Rather than a mammoth-sized followup to her bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s sophomore effort is a collection of short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu (Bloomsbury UK, 256 pp), odd little fantasies, some of which dip into the world of Jonathan Strange. For more adult-themed fantasy, pick up John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things (Atria, 352 pp.), about a young boy who falls prey to a fictional world in one of his favourite novels, Neverending Story-style.
Fans of Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes and After the Quake have had to wait a long time for a new collection of short stories. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Knopf, 352 pp.) isn’t a new collection per se – some of the tales stretch back to the beginning of his career, while others were sketches that found themselves part of the novels The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. Stephen King fans have probably devoured Lisey’s Story (Scribner, 528 pp.) already, but for those skeptics, other than a few stylistic annoyances, this is a strong return for the author.
For comic lovers, Tony Millionaire returns with another collection of his hilariously twisted strip, Premillennial Maakies (Fantagraphics Books, 256 pp.), the misadventures of an alcoholic bird, monkey captain and other assorted pirates. And Jan Whitaker’s Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class (St. Martins Press, 352 pp.) is an appropriate read as we enter the insanity of the holidays – more a series of historical case stories than polemic, but full of fascinating trivia.
· Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette (HarperCollins Canada, 560 pp.) by Sena Jeter Naslund – If you expected a fictional history with Sophia Coppola’s film (and were horribly disappointed) you’ll love Abundance. Naslund (Ahab’s Wife) has created a thrilling narrative that’s both meticulously researched and modern enough to sustain 500-plus pages. For more on the doomed queen, check out Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (Henry Holt, 432 pp.) by Caroline Weber, juxtaposing the rise and fall of the monarchy with her notorious fashion excesses.
· Notorious C.O.P. (St. Martins Press, 320 pp.) by Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl – An inside look into the murders of Notorious BIG, Jam Master Jay and Tupac, by one of the first self-described hip hop cops. Parker grew up in New York in the ’70s and ’80s amongst the burgeoning hip hop scene. While a detective in the NYPD, he began to see how gang rivalries and drugs infected the lives of the musicians and others and was hired to front a division whose focus was hip hop related crime. The writing is hacky, but full of busts, gossip and conspiracy theories.
· Collected Poems, 1947-1997 (HarperCollins Canada, 1189 pp.) by Allen Ginsberg – I suspect that, aside from a few works by Kenneth Rexroth and Jack Kerouac (and a few assorted other works) that Ginsberg will be the only Beat writer in the future whose work bears close scrutiny. I mean, have you ever read any Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Awful. This new collection contains all of Ginsberg’s poetry – juvenilia through "Howl," "Kaddish" and later works. Still remarkable today, and reading them in their entirety adds greater insight into his intellectual and stylistic evolution.
· The Fighter (Viking Canada, 256 pp.) by Craig Davidson – Davidson’s short story collection Rust and Bone was a surprise hit and his first novel, The Fighter, should please fans with more gritty boxing action. This terse and bloody tale follows two men whose individual angst finds them inside The Barn, an underground club of illegal bare-knuckle boxing. Fast, detailed and full of crushed bones and gristle.
· The Thirteenth Tale (Bond Street Books, 416 pp.) by Diane Setterfield – A beach book for lit lovers. Setterfield weaves a rich, Victorian tale of a famed writer, Vida Winter, who hires a biographer, Margaret, to detail her secret life, the heart of which is a famed missing short story.
· The Decline of the Hollywood Empire (Talonbooks, 160 pp.) by Herve Fischer – It’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time when movies were exciting and groundbreaking. If Fischer’s correct, Hollywood’s history of shady, back-stabbing tactics are coming back to haunt it, ushering in a new era of independents, led by easy access of digital technology. Concise and informative.
· The Interpretation of Murder (Henry Holt, 384 pp.) by Jed Rubenfeld – This one has been getting a lot of buzz, for good reason. An above-average thriller in the bestselling vein, Murder takes Sigmund Freud’s short and only visit to America and twists it into a Sherlock Holmes-like tale of a serial killer stalking New York. Nice nasty tidbits and well researched.
· The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived (HarperCollins Canada, 317 pp.) by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jeremy Salter – This should open up some arguments between culture nerds. The authors attempt to explain their reasoning behind the list, but raise more questions than answers. Some of the choices are fairly obvious – Big Brother, Hamlet – others, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bambi, I dunno.
· Farewell Summer (William Morrow & Company, 224 pp.) by Ray Bradbury — Dandelion Wine is one of Bradbury’s earliest and unique works – absent are the fantasy, ghouls and goblins, instead replaced by sadness for a lost, pre-Second World War America. At that time, he had already planned to write a sequel. Now, 55 years later, it has been released. Fans of Wine and Bradbury’s unique, haunting Americana style will want to check this out – much darker and unsettling.
· The Helmet of Horror (Knopf Canada, 288 pp.) by Victor Pelevin – Along with David Grossman’s Lion’s Honey and Alexander McCall-Smith’s Dream Angus, Horror is the latest release in the Myths Series (that also included Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight). Pelevin’s decided to take on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Rather than playing with the characters in their original historical context, Pelevin has put his in the Internet, serving as the great labyrinth where the Minotaur is now a more sinister, conniving monster. Written like an online chat (a dubious stylistic choice), Helmet does find an interesting parallel in the Internet’s ability for anyone to self-mythologize themselves.
· U2 by U2 (HarperCollins Canada, 352 pp.) by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen JR – Like U2? This huge tome is the story of the band in their own words, from their origins as a bratty teen rock band to stadium behemoth. Self-serving, yes (Bono, truly and strangely, I think always knew he’d become some sort of pop god) but full of gorgeous photographs (when have these guys not looked hilarious/iconic? Why does The Edge always wear stupid hats – even on his wedding day?) and great commentary on their better moments (The Joshua Tree) and explanations of their worst (everything after Achtung Baby).
· The Road (Knopf Canada, 256 pp.) by Cormac McCarthy – I’m a huge fan of McCarthy (Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses) but his last, No Country for Old Men, left me cold, his characteristic sparse and brutal esthetic too self-conscious, making the simple plot strangely complicated and unexplored. The Road is fantastic. Aside from a couple of odd, anachronistic, scripture-like passages, this story of a boy and his father wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland is vintage McCarthy – unsparing and nihilistic. |
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