“She knows that she is the obvious — the inevitable — literary agent for this project. And there’s also one very obvious acquiring editor for the manuscript, a close friend who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, no matter how ludicrous, no matter what level of lunatic the author. He used to have impressive success with this type of book, even by some of his less rational authors; there’s apparently a good-size book-buying audience out there that inhabits a space beyond the margins of sane discourse. He’ll be motivated to publish another. Especially this one, about these people.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (APR 6, 2014)

Isabel Reed, a literary agent for ATM, spends all night reading, The Accident by Anonymous, the new manuscript from her assistant Alexis who was very enthusiastic about it. The book has startling information about Charlie Wolfe, a major media figure with major political connections that is hoping to run for office himself. The information in the manuscript, if true, would certainly end Wolfe’s career as it describes a crime he apparently covered up while a student at Cornell University.

Isabel’s agency and the book business in general have not been doing well, and she knows immediately that this new book is one that will make a lot of money for everyone. She also knows she needs to be careful with whom she works with or it could get out from under her control. She therefore goes to one of her best friends, Jeff Fielder, an editor for McNally & Sons, Inc. Soon after meeting with Jeff, Isabel visits her assistant Alexis to make sure she has not given away the manuscript but she finds her dead in her apartment. This leads Isabel to fear that the wrong people may be working to assure The Accident is never published.

The author of The Accident is very intent on assuring the book is published and has gone to many lengths to stay hidden and to assure that the book is given to the right people. Slowly throughout this novel, more and more information is given about the author, his life and what he has done to assure the story about Charlie Wolfe is revealed. Some of what is revealed is not that surprising while others are major twists that only add to making this an even more enjoyable read.

Hayden Gray, a CIA operative apparently working on his own time, is working with Charlie Wolfe to assure that The Accident is never published. He seems willing to take whatever means are necessary to find out who and where the author of the book is and to eliminate all copies of the manuscript. These conflicting objectives and challenges lead Isabel Reed, Jeff Fielder and many others on one long adventurous day in this very entertaining book.

Pavone includes a lot of characters in the book, along with lots of twists and really you need notes to keep track. I normally do this when reading a book I’m reviewing, but if you are not one to do it, you will need to do it for this one or you probably will get lost. Pavone also likes to change the point of view through many of these characters as well. He rewards the reader with a great story if you can keep up, but otherwise you may be frustrated. Pavone also uses his many years in the book business to provide a realistic and interesting portrayal of the people and difficulties they face.

I was fortunate to meet Chris Pavone in Bouchercon in Albany last year, but at the time I did not know anything about him, although I certainly enjoyed my time talking to him. I was impressed though that he, along with a few other authors, were volunteering in the Concierge area where I was also volunteering. I was happy to see later that he won the Anthony for The Expats, his first novel and that I was able to obtain a copy of The Accident in my Bouchercon book bag. (As as a Boucheron volunteer, I obtained a few extra books and I made sure this was one of them.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 98 readers
PUBLISHER:	Crown; First Edition edition (March 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Chris Pavone
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of another murder story: Death of a Writer by Michael Collins

Bibliography:

• The Expats (2012)  / 
• The Accident (March 2014)

“The Interestings,” said Ash. “That works.”

So it was decided. “From this day forward, because we are clearly the most interesting people who ever fucking lived,” said Ethan, “because we are just so fucking compelling, our brains swollen with intellectual thoughts, let us be known as the Interestings. And let everyone who meets us fall down dead in our path from just how fucking interesting we are.” In a ludicrously ceremonial moment they lifted paper cups and joints. “

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 24, 2014)

The greatest gift that any writer can give her readers is providing them with a fictional world they can immerse – and ultimately lose – themselves in.

That’s precisely what Meg Wolitzer achieves in The Interestings, surely the most fully-realized and satisfying book of her career.

This panoramic saga focuses on a group of Baby Boomers from the time they meet at a camp for the creatively gifted as teenagers through middle age. The bond that draws these divergent characters together is powerful and special; they dub themselves “The Interestings.” And the bond, for the most part, is stretched, sustained, and redefined as they age.

There is Jules, the key character, an aspiring comic actress-turned-therapist who attended the camp on scholarship . Her best friend is Ash – she and her twin Goodman have lived a charmed and fortunate life – and eventually marries their mutual friend Ethan. Ethan, the creator of an animated series called Figland, becomes successful beyond their wildest dreams. And then there is Jonah, the son of a Judy Collins type songwriter, who must navigate the boundaries of attachment at the start of the AIDS era.

At the core of this novel, there is an exploration of what it means to be special. As one character ultimately says about the camp that brought them together, “It made you feel special. What do I know – maybe it actually made you special. And specialness – everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren’t talented. So what are they supposed to do – kill themselves?”

The spotlight is squarely on two couples – Jules and her ultrasound technician husband Dennis and their friends Ash and Ethan – as the lure of money and fame threaten to place them in different stratospheres. The themes center on longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success…and how the definition of what it means to be “interesting” changes as life goes on. Jules says to Dennis,..meeting in childhood can seem like it’s the best thing – everyone’s equal, and you form bonds based only on how much you like each other. But later on, having met in childhood can turn out to have been the worst thing, because you and your friends might have nothing to say to each other anymore…”

The Interestings is cemented in a transformative time, touching on many of the milestones of a unique generation: the rise of feminism, the confusion and terror of being gay at the cusp of the AIDS era, and perhaps most of all, being alive during that tipping point when “portfolios” shifted meaning from art portfolios to financial portfolios. It’s authentic, it’s genuine, and it’s so good I didn’t want it to end.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1003 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (March 25, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Meg Wolitzer
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Uncoupling

Bibliography:

• Sleepwalking (1982)
• Hidden Pictures (1986)
• This Is Your Life (1988)
• Friends for Life (1994)
• Surrender, Dorothy (1998)
• The Wife (2003)
• The Position (2005)
• The Ten-Year Nap (2008)
• The Uncoupling (2011)
• The Interestings (April 2013)

Movies from books:

• This is My Life (1992)
• Surrender, Dorothy (2006)

“If a woman chooses the wrong person, he was always going to be the wrong person: that was all.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (MAR 18, 2014)

Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel of domestic angst, You Should Have Known, is the story of Grace Reinhart Sachs. She is a therapist who, for fifteen years, has specialized in helping couples mend or sever their relationships as painlessly as possible. In addition, Grace’s publicist has arranged interviews and television appearances to stimulate interest in Grace’s forthcoming work of non-fiction. It cautions women to be on the lookout for warning signs that should give them pause before they invest time, energy, and emotional resources in a serious relationship. Her message is that when women fall in love, they are sometimes dazzled by what they perceive as instant chemistry. Consequently, they may not pay close attention to their partners’ flaws; only when it is too late do they realize that should have been more circumspect.

Grace considers herself fortunate to be wed to the handsome and charming Jonathan, a dedicated pediatric oncologist. The couple has a twelve-year-old son, Henry, who attends an exclusive private school and studies the violin with a top-notch teacher. One day, Grace learns some shocking secrets that prove how vulnerable even a trained professional may be to the blindness that she describes in her soon-to-be-released book. She realizes that her stable and blessed life is actually built on a foundation of lies.

The protagonist is a likeable character who, although a bit too clueless (hence, the irony), is an unselfish, kind, and loving mother. Her resilient and realistic attitude helps her and her son rebound from a series of horrendous setbacks. In addition, the author accurately portrays the entitled, affluent, and self-congratulatory parents who enjoy the good life in Manhattan with their cherished progeny. Korelitz insightfully explores how one handles unpleasant truths that have been carefully hidden from them for years. Do they break down and look to their friends and loved ones to bail them out? Do they run away? Or do they use whatever resources they have to get on with their lives? These are the dilemmas that face a thoroughly chastened Grace, who finally acknowledges how little she really knew about the man she married. You Should Have Known is timely, although it is marred by excessive length, several contrived plot elements, and a too-neat conclusion. Nevertheless, most readers will find Grace appealing enough to follow her struggles with interest and empathy.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 14 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grand Central Publishing (March 18, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jean Hanff Korelitz
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Admission

Bibliography:

• A Jury of Her Peers (1996)
• The Sabbathaday River (1999)
• The White Rose (2005)
• Admission (2009)
• You Should Have Known (March 2014)

Movies from books:

• Admission (2013)

“All he knew with sure was that his thoughts now converged around the idea of flying home to Nigeria to spirit away Ngene and sell the deity to Mr. Gruels. At first, the thought had scandalized him. He had tried to rebuke himself; he upbraided himself in all the stern silent languages he knew. In spite of his effort, he had found the temptation impossible to shake off. His waking hours were now often preoccupied with speculating what price the deity might command? He peered into what he always took to be his soul. He reminded himself how unlike him it was to peel away at all considerations until all that remained was the vulgar question of dollars and cents. Still his resolve was unyielding.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (FEB 15, 2014)

Foreign Gods Inc. by Ndibe is one of those rare books that has you laughing and crying at different intervals. It is well-written, excellently characterized and the story line is near perfect. I enjoyed this reading experience immensely.

Ike (pronounced E-Kay) is a Nigerian in America, a graduate of the elite Amherst College who has been driving cab in New York City for thirteen years because he can not get a job despite graduating cum laude and majoring in economics. He is told at job interview after job interview that his accent is too thick and he is not a good candidate for a public relations or financial position. He is at his wits end. His bills are overdue, his ex has taken him for everything he has, and he is now up to his ears in gambling debts.

As the book opens, Ike has the idea of going to a gallery called Foreign Gods Inc. and trying to sell them a statue, one that resides in his home village of Utonki. The statue is of the God of War, Ngene, a powerful god of war that served his people for centuries. At this time, Ike’s uncle is its protector. Ike believes that Negene is very powerful and will get him hundreds of thousands of dollars and take him out of debt. His mother has been begging him for money as has his sister. He has not sent them any support money for years.

Ike talks to Mark Gruel, the owner of Foreign Gods Inc. who tells Ike that he must bring the statue to him before he can tell how much it is worth. Ike decides to go back to his hometown in Nigeria and steal the statue and bring it back to New York. It is in Nigeria that a comedy of errors occurs and the reader is given the amazing history of the old and new Nigeria, the collision of the christian beliefs with the traditional religion. Ike is caught in the middle and ultimately we are left to wonder “Did he have the guts to snatch the statue of Ngene and sell it?”

The story unwinds slowly and resolutely, leading the reader from New York to Nigeria and back to New York again. We follow Ike with all of his conflicting beliefs and moral ambiguity. He is a complex and intelligent man trying to make a life for himself and for his family, while at the same time that life may end up destroying the very family he is trying to save.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Press (January 14, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Okey Ndibe
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin

Bibliography:

• Foreign Gods, Inc. (January 2014)

“Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.

Maybe your next-door neighbor found one of his movies in an old box in her attic and never entered a dark room alone again.  Or, your boyfriend bragged he’d discovered a contraband copy of At Night All Birds Are Black on the Internet and after watching, refused to speak of it, as if it were a horrific ordeal he’d barely survived.  

Whatever your opinion of Cordova, however obsessed with his work or indifferent—-he’s there to react against.  He’s a crevice, a black hole, an unspecified danger, a relentless outbreak of the unknown in our overexposed world.  He’s underground, looming unseen in the corners of the dark.  He’s down under the railway bridge in the river with all the missing evidence, and the answers that will never see the light of day. 

He’s a myth, a monster, and a mortal man.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (JAN 11, 2014)

This psychological, genre-bursting/ busting literary thriller took me on a high-speed chase into a Byzantine rabbit hole into the quirkiest, eeriest, darkest parts of the soul. Investigative reporter Scott McGrath is on a quest to exhume the facts of a young piano prodigy’s tragic end. Ashley Cordova, 24, daughter of cult-horror film director, Stanislav Cordova, was found dead–allegedly a suicide. The now reclusive director (30 years isolated from known whereabouts) is the reason for McGrath’s ruined reputation five years ago, and Scott is hungry to turn things around, upside down, and inside out to pursue Cordova again and save himself. And to disinter the “truth,” which itself can be an illusory concept in this cat and mouse thriller.

Along the way, McGrath assembles a motley group of two with their own agendas for chasing after the true story of Ashley’s death. It’s almost unbelievable that Scott would let these potential loose cannons join up with him, a virtual loner, but Pessl gives it cred by keeping the reader in an ever-tunneling and tumbling maze of intellectual, emotional, and horror-filled murk. Whatever mental notes you take as the narrative builds, the ever-widening cast and real, random, red herring, or suspect clues keep you from perseverating too long on the questionable partnerships. Each untangled knot corkscrews around to create ropier more entangled ones.

Mind games and magic, or mind games vs magic, is explored in a way that transports you to the most subterranean reaches of the human psyche. Pessl’s penetrating use of symbolism, allegory, literary allusion, and metaphor saturates the story with a weighty unease and anxiety that reflect her incomparable understanding of the human condition–(not to mention a rarefied channeling of hallucinogenic experiences). In Night Film, mind over matter is a daring question with a dangerous reckoning.

Pessl is obviously familiar with Hitchcock’s work, as well as the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrik. Additionally, the iconic 40’s noir films infuse Night Film with oblique shadows and moral ambiguity and imbue it with mixed media from the Internet age. Throw in a little Stephen King to the mix, too. However, Pessl’s use of pastiche is brushed and buffed into her own variegated style, with a voice that is strikingly poetic. She winks at and pays homage more than she mimics.

The gritty and shadowy streets, railway tracks, bridges, and warehouses of New York; the dark silhouette of the Adirondacks against a night sky; mansions sitting like a pit bull on a bluff; the mist obscuring the hand or a face or the gnarled limb of a tree–all Pessl’s ethereal images suffuse the story with an almost sepulchral ambiance. There were times I jumped while reading, certain I heard a cup rattling on a shelf, or saw a light flickering behind a curtain. At other times, my heart melted, especially when Scott would successfully enlist his five-year-old daughter to help his investigation. She was uncannily guileless but aware and persuasive.

The overriding theme can be found in the first lines of the book, a quote from Stanislav Cordova that begins the prologue:

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?”

What happens when we break through our cocoon and walk to the edge and back? Are we blinding ourselves to our true nature, and to the nature of others, when we attempt to hold desperately onto those we love?

“Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing down.”

This is at turns comical, disturbing, terrifying, tragic, tender, and spiritually poetic. The pace is breakneck and pitch-perfect electric, despite its florid and exuberant sentences, and the prose is evocative, aphoristic, savvy. It’s relentless and addictive, no time to catch your breath before you are falling through another black hole.

If you prefer a straight-up horror or crime-solving genre, this may not please you. Pessl breaks the rules and the mold, and the narrative is as much philosophy and metaphysics as it is mystery and mysticism. I was chasing shadows and rainbows in equal measure.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 562 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (August 20, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Marisha Pessl
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Bibliography:

• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006)
• Night Film (August 2013)

“Telling Sandro these things collapsed the layers between me as woman and me as child. Sandro saw both, loved both. He understood they were not the same. It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things happened to you.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (JAN 1, 2014)

There isn’t much plot in this novel, but it is a hell of story/Bildungsroman of a young woman known as just Reno, an art studies graduate in 1977 who dared to race her Moto Valera motorcycle at high-speed velocities to create land art. Land art was a “traceless art” created from leaving an almost invisible line in the road from surging speeds at over 110 mph. “Racing was drawing in time.” Literally and figuratively.

This era generated a seminal movement in New York where artistic expression in the subversive sect was animate, inflamed, ephemeral, breathing — a mix of temporal and performance art and the avant-garde/punk scene. This was also an age of conceptual art, which grew out of minimalism and stressed the artist’s concept rather than the object itself. Time was the concept of Reno’s art, something to be acted upon.

“You have time. Meaning, don’t use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don’t rush to meet it. Be a conduit…I felt this to be true. Some people might consider this passivity but I did not. I considered it living.”

The novel, narrated by Reno, is all about her observation and experiences as she comes of age in a revolutionary time. She lives in a shabby, run-down hole in the wall in New York–“blank and empty as my new life, with its layers upon layers of white paint like a plaster death mask over the two rooms, giving them an ancient urban feeling.”

As she gets caught up with the underground movement in the East Village, called Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers, and later with the Red Brigades of Rome, Reno is herself a conduit for the people she meets and gets involved with, such as her older, rebellious boyfriend, Sandro Valera, son of the Fascist-friendly mogul of Valera motorbikes.

Reno came to New York by way of Nevada, eager to demonstrate her art through photography and motorbikes. She’s “shopping for experience.” Sometime after a particularly moving one-night stand, and attempting to navigate her life and bridge her isolation and loneliness, she meets sculptor Sandro Valera and his friends, a group of radicals and artists who offer her exposure to working-class insurrection in this “mecca of individual points, longings, all merging into one great light-pulsing mesh, and you simply found your pulse, your place.”

Reno was looking for a sense of identity, and she wanted enchantment.

“Enchantment means to want something and also to know, somewhere inside yourself, not an obvious place, that you aren’t going to get it.”

The bridge between life and art, and Reno’s invigorating speed of 148 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, (where she went with her new friends to make land art), demonstrates the crossover between gestures and reality, and a liberating energy that was “an acute case of the present tense. Nothing mattered but the milliseconds of life at that speed.”

On the one hand, Reno seeks self-sovereignty, but on the other hand, she inhabits a male-dominated and often misogynistic landscape where men exploit women for artistic and political gain. When she visits Sandro’s family in Italy, she is subjected to derision by Sandro’s misanthropic brother and his sneering mother.

In another scene, a male photographer asks women to punch themselves in the face until they are battered, and then pose for him. Reno narrates this with an unemotional but subtle raillery, noting the incongruity of women on a pretense of independence. She acutely observes that “certain acts, even as they are real, are also merely gestures.” And, in Rome, the question of feminine mystique versus male dominance is addressed by a Red Brigade revolutionary radio broadcaster, when he states to women that “Men connect you to the world, but not with your own self.”

Are women “meant to speed past, just a blur” as Reno speculates? And the more I think about that line, the more paradox it evokes.

Artists, dreamers, terrorists, comrades, iconoclasts, all populate this novel, replete with iconic images and fallen debris in a swirl of electrical momentum. New York and Rome aren’t just scenic backdrops; they come alive as provocateurs– firebrand cities with flame-throwing agitators.

Kushner is a heavyweight writer, a dense, volatile and sensuous portraitist of the iconographic and the obscure. Arch and decisive moments throughout the novel heighten the ominous tension that rumbles below the surface, and the reader wholly inhabits the spaces of Reno’s consciousness, and those of the people she meets.

“All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment…And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulder like a stinking vulture…we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom. That is how we’ll take the future and occupy it like an empty warehouse. It’s an act of love, pure love. It isn’t prophecy. It’s hope.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 194 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (April 2, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Rachel Kushner
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt Interview with Rachel Kushner On writing Flamethrowers
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Hard to find anything similar, but will mention this one anyway: My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru

Bibliography:

• Telex from Cuba (2008)
• The Flamethrowers (2013)

“Who is more of an outlaw than a saint?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (NOV 30, 2011)

Like its predecessor, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Urrea’s sequel, Queen of America is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It starts where the first book left off, and can be read as a stand-alone, according to the marketing and product description. However, I stoutly recommend that readers read The Hummingbird’s Daughter first. The two stories are part of a heroic saga; you shouldn’t cut off the head to apprehend the tale. You cannot capture the incipient magic and allure of Teresita without her roots in the first (and better) book. Urrea spent twenty years researching his family history, border unrest, guerrilla violence in the post-Civil War southwest, and revolution, so poignantly rendered in his first masterpiece.

At the center of both stories is the enigmatic and beautiful heroine, Teresita Urrea, named the Saint of Cabora by her legion of followers, when at sixteen, she was sexually assaulted, died, and subsequently rose from her coffin at her wake. She was denounced as a heretic by the Catholic Church but declared a saint by her devotees. An accomplished horsewoman and botanical shaman, she discovered the miracle of healing with her hands. Vanquishing pain and suffering with touch, Teresita has embodied her role with dignity, and sometimes despair, as she sacrifices her personal desires in order to combat social injustice and conquer disease.

Solitude is impossible, as she is followed by humble pilgrims and pursued by the Mexican government, greedy henchmen and dangerous lackeys. In the sequel, Teresita continues her journey and evolvement, with the primary question and theme of her life– whether a saint can find her life’s purpose and also fall in love. Along the way, she is entangled in conflicts between celebrity and simplicity, material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Although she is idolized as a saint, she is, alas, human, with human emotions—such as lust, love, sorrow, pain, temptation. She makes mistakes, and is periodically confused and conflicted. It’s hard to be a saint when you’re made of flesh and blood and hormones.

After the Tomochic rebellion in Mexico in 1891, Teresita Urrea flees to the United States with her aging but ripe swashbuckler father, Tomas, known as Sky Catcher. She experiences romantic and cataclysmic love with an Indian mystic and warrior, eventually causing a serious breach with her father. When events spiral out of control, Teresita’s journey takes her further and further from her homeland.

From Tucson, to El Paso, St. Louis, San Francisco, New York, and places everywhere in-between, this sequel is a journey from poverty and pestilence to an unknown, glittering, bustling, and modern America, a place that offers new opportunities for immigrant Teresita—-prosperity, new romance, and celebrity. She is hunted by assassins, who claim she is the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution; harassed by profiteers, who want to arrange a consortium to exploit her healing abilities; and haunted daily by pilgrims everywhere, begging her to cure their ills.

Dickensian in scope, this ribald novel is peopled by the humble and the haughty, the meek and the mighty—pilgrims, prostitutes, yeoman, warriors, cowboys, vaqueros, royalty, revolutionaries, financial exploiters, gamblers, tycoons, corrupt politicians, drunks, rogues, and outlaws. It’s gritty, bawdy, tender, and tumultuous, and sometimes turgid, as it meanders down several long and winding paths. When it stalls at intervals, patience and the love of prose and colorful character will keep the reader fastened. This will appeal to fans of high adventure, mixed with folktale wisdom and mystical fantasy. Big, vast skies and rough and tumble travel, this is an unforgettable story of love, purpose, and redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; Import edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Luis Alberto Urrea
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Highway Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

Bibliography:

• In Search of Snow (1994)
• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction (2002)
• The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005)
• Mr Mendoza’s Paintbrush (2009)
• Into the Beautiful North (2009)
• Queen of America (December 2011)

The Border Trilogy Memoirs:

• Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993)
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border (1996)
• Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life (1998)

More Nonfiction:

• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (2004)

“Mo was tired of the bellicose, lachrymose religion the attack had birthed, was sickened by the fundamentalists who defended it by declaring the day sacred, the place sacred, the victims sacred, the feelings of their survivors sacred – so much sacredness, no limit to the profanity justified to preserve it.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (OCT 25, 2011)

Ten years have gone by since the Twin Towers came down on 9/11, and through those years, a wide array of talented fiction writers have attempted to make sense of that pivotal experience: Lynn Sharon Schwartz, John Updike, Jonathan Safran Foer, Claire Messud, to name just a few.

The brilliance of Amy Waldman’s book is that she does not try to apply logic to why 9/11 occurred, nor does she attempt to recreate the complex and traumatic emotions that most Americans felt that day. Instead, she explores something broader: the fallout of a country confused, divided, and sick with fear, clamoring to make sense of the insensible.

The book begins with an ambiguous title: The Submission. On a concrete level, the submission refers to anonymous submissions by architects – in the best democratic tradition – who vie for the right to build an enduring memorial to Ground Zero. But read those words again, and the meaning is far deeper. Is Waldman referring to the submission of Muslims to Qur’an law, forcing them into outsider positions? Or is she writing of the submission of too many Americans to their deepest fears?

A bit of all three interpretations exist, but it becomes increasingly evident that it is the latter that Amy Waldman is most interested in. The skeleton of the story is this: the winner of the submission is an American Muslim, Mohammad Khan, whose true religion is his vaulting ambition. (At a later point, Mo’s lover will say to him, “Now I see that it was about you: your design, your reputation, your place in history.”) Raised in the United States since birth, Mo (as he is universally called) has barely set foot in a mosque his entire life. His design – a garden – is comforting and soothing, particularly to the sole member of the selection jury who is also the widow of a 9/11 victim.

Once Mo’s identity is leaked as the winner, the fervor begins. He is called, among other things, “decadent, abstinent, deviant, violent, insolent, abhorrent, aberrant, and typical.” Amy Waldman, the former bureau chief of the New York Times, knows this territory intimately: the ambitious reporter who will do anything for a scoop (including defecting to the New York Post, which traffics in sensationalism), the equally ambitious governor who strives for reelection while inflaming public sentiment, the radio talk show host who plays into his audience’s prejudices. Before too long, the garden is being depicted as an “Islamic victory garden,” Mo is being called by his full name, and his loyalty to the U.S. is being questioned on all fronts.

Amy Waldman characters are nearly always fully realized: whether she’s writing about Mo, Claire – the wealthy widow and key juror on the selection committee – or a seemingly bit player who is propelled to center stage, the Bangladeshi widow Asma, whose husband, an illegal immigrant, worked as a janitor and was killed in the attack.

Although the author’s point of view is not hard to discern, to her credit, she reveals all sides and that is never clearer than during the scene when the public weighs in about the design. The question becomes: “What history do you want to write with this memorial?” Every side is represented, from the professor of Middle Eastern studies who states, “…Achieving that paradise through martyrdom – murder suicide – has become the obsession of Islamic extremists, the ultimate submission to God: to the author on Islamic gardens who asks, “Since when did we become so afraid of learning from other cultures?”

The pretentious artistic debates… the cynical political showboating… the tactical moves of special-interest groups… the media that fuels rumors rather than reports news – all are depicted here. This well-written, thought-provoking, and nuanced book will appeal to many different kinds of readers. With all the posturing, the truth is often found in just letting go. Or, as Mo eventually discovers, “He had forgotten himself, and this was the truest submission.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 197 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 16, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amy Waldman
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Terrorist by John Updike Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

Bibliography:

• The Submission (August 2011)

“If you take any event and isolate it, blow it up huge so you can study its slightest grain, there’d be a million tiny impossibilities worming every which way across the landscape, all the unlikely variables, all of the unaccounted-for seconds, all of the chance collisions falling too perfectly into place. That’s what life is.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (SEP 19, 2011)

Lightning People is an electrifying book, a high voltage tightrope of five 30-something characters that are walking the edge in the post 9/11 New York City. It’s a book about true connections, missed connections and downright parasitic connections. Its energy strikes and surges randomly, briefly illuminating, sometimes plunging back into the darkness. And by the end, it leaves the reader rubbing eyes as he or she emerges back into a transformed light.

In crucial ways, its theme is similar to the Oscar-winning movie Crash. One of the key characters in that movie said: “In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”

Move the setting from L.A. to New York. An ensemble of rootless characters crash into each other as they struggle to find meaningful interactions. There is the actor Joseph Giteau, who left his Ohio home and his reclusive and conspiracy-obsessed mother, newly married to Del Kousavos, a snake expert at a city zoo who is on a work visa from Greece. In the aftermath of 9/11, he finds himself at thriving prisonerofearth conspiracy meetings, trying to take stock and make sense of his life.

Joseph and Del are surrounded by others: Raj, Del’s exotic and not-yet-forgotten former lover and his sister Madi, Del’s best friend, an executive at a company outsourcing jobs to India. And lastly, there is William Asternathy, whose career is on permanent hiatus, on “fast live-wire current circulating through the city.”

All of these characters try to remake their fate and their destiny in that shining yet alienated city of re-creation, New York. Del considers: ”The whole city was pulsating with electricity. It had been all of the light that had first attracted her to New York, had brought all of the fresh arrivals beating around the same shine. But what happens when her eyes finally adjusted to the light?” And William thinks, “No one in New York has parents. Or families for that matter. We’re all pretty much immigrants taking shelter here.”

As the action pulsates forward, secrets emerge or remain hidden, and it’s very important for each reader to experience the arc of these secrets individually. Among the questions raised are, “Will a generational health secret derail Joseph and Del’s marriage and end Joseph’s life prematurely? How will William’s dark self-destructive streak affect those around him and what damage will it do? And are the conspiracy theories – deriving from the Latin phrase “breathe together” – a shared paranoia or are they self-fulfilling prophecies?”

As these characters brush against each other – sometimes willingly, sometimes inadvertently – sparks are set off. “Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice until it does,” muses Joe. Coincidences are packed into coincidences, but that is the fabric of the novel; how our lives all intersect and how one shocking personal tragedy can alter our paths, individually and collectively.

This is an intricate novel, beautifully plotted, brimming with high-stakes paranoia and calamity and angst, narrated with vigor and flashes of insight. It is difficult to believe this is a debut novel and it certainly goes on my Top Ten list for 2011.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soft Skull Press; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Christopher Bollen
EXTRAS:	Interview with the author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Handbook of Lightning Survivors by Michele Young-Stone The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

Bibliography:

• Lightning People (August 2011)

“I’m afraid I’ve made more than a few mistakes along the way”

“Well, then, unmake them. That’s what life is about—making and unmaking mistakes, getting back on the track and moving on. The problem with mistakes is that they have the habit of growing into such big, fat, lovely excuses.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 17, 2011)

Thirty-one year old William Dysart should be on top of the world. He is a successful attorney, lives in a beautiful home, and is married to Arabella, a stunner who turns heads wherever she goes. Gregory Murphy looks beneath the veneer of the Dysarts’ seemingly enviable life in Incognito.

William is growing tired of doing the bidding of Phil Havering, the managing partner at his law firm. In addition, he has become disenchanted with his wife who, in spite of her great beauty, is insecure and demanding. After six years of marriage, the couple is childless, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that Arabella is a social-climbing, vain, and shallow individual who is more interested in material possessions and status than she is in her relationship with William. “It was rare now that their conversations did not end in a quarrel.”

This is Edith Wharton country —- New York society in 1911 -— and, for the most part, Murphy mines this fertile territory effectively. The premise is intriguing: William is dispatched by his boss to Long Island to convince the lovely Sybil Curtis that it would be in her best interest to sell her five-acre property to Lydia Billings, a fabulously wealthy widow who wants to augment her two-thousand acre estate. William is surprised to learn that Sybil is a self-possessed and independent young woman who is not interested in selling her home, even for the princely sum of ten thousand dollars. Dysart senses that there is ill-will between Lydia and Sybil that goes far deeper than the matter at hand. As the weeks pass, the attorney finds himself sympathizing with Sybil, while Havering is furious that William cannot convince Sybil to accept Lydia’s offer.

Incognito effectively unmasks the hypocrisy of affluent, prominent, and degenerate people who carefully hide their vices behind a veneer of respectability. William and Arabella spend a great deal of time attending charity functions, dinner parties, and other lavish events, and although Arabella is in her element, William is becoming bored with the strain of keeping up appearances. It is painful to observe his deteriorating marriage, and in flashback, we eventually learn why William settled for this loveless union instead of seeking a partner with more depth and character. This is a touching study of men and women at cross purposes. Although William is anxious to bring about a rapprochement between Sybil and Lydia, until he finds out why there is bad blood between them, he is powerless to accomplish his mission.

Murphy stumbles, however, when he makes some labored points about the pettiness, prejudice, and selfishness of those who occupied the highest strata of New York society. They socialize compulsively, spend money lavishly, and care little about such issues as the rights of women and the oppressed. Sybil is a mysterious and provocative character who is less than candid about her tragic past. William is at heart a good man who knows that he will never be content unless he makes some fundamental changes in his life. The book’s main flaw is that, as it progresses, the narrative becomes heavy-handed and melodramatic, with too many revelations, ugly confrontations, and a conclusion that is a bit too pat. Although most of us would agree that the keys to happiness are fulfilling relationships, meaningful work, and peace of mind, Murphy might have conveyed this message with a bit more subtlety. As it stands, Incognito has some powerful scenes, an appealing protagonist in William Dysart and, for the most part, a story that keeps us turning pages, wanting to know what will happen next.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 19 readers
PUBLISHER:	Berkley Trade; 1 edition (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gregory Murphy
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Bibliography:

• Incognito (July 2011)
• Maisie Villiers