A Semi-True Conversation between Gianna and Liz

This really happened.

Gianna: We should do a few blog posts about Irish writing for St. Patrick’s Day.

Liz: …Okay.  I am drawing a blank though.  I’m not sure that I can think of many Irish writers.

Gianna:  Sheesh.  Of course you can.  Everyone knows at least a few.

Liz: What about Larry McMurtry?

Gianna: Is he Irish?

Liz: MCMurtry—gotta be Irish.  And in Lonesome Dove Captain Call was born in Ireland, and there were the two Irishman—the one bitten by the snakes and the other one who went to the brothel with Newt.  And Gus’s last name is McCrae.  MC-Crae.  And McMurtry is from the Dublin of Texas, Archer City.

Gianna: That sounds about right.  (Sarcasm?)

Liz: Okay, then there’s Cormac McCarthy. 

Joyce is Irish.

Gianna, reading from the internet:  “He renamed himself ‘Cormac’ after the Irish king.”

Liz: Heh.  There are you kings in Ireland.  Queen Liz rules all.

Gianna: You’re going to get us in trouble.

Liz: What about Joyce?

Gianna: Definitely Irish.

Liz: ….Carol Oates.  Upstate New York is just like Ireland.  Tim O'Brien?  Dr. Phil McGraw?

Gianna: You’re getting pale people confused with Irish people.

Liz: I think I hate you.

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Happy Valentine's Day!

Gianna:

I am embarrassed to say that this was just added to my list a week or so ago at my girlfriend’s urging, and of course I knew it had to be number one. And maybe you think it's cheating because I am once again technically choosing a short story, but rules like laws are meant to be broken...like bigamy, sodomy, and stealing beer from the Pump and Munch (it’s a real place).

"The Bear Went Over
the Mountain" was made into
a terrific movie.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage consists of nine extraordinary stories. If you haven’t read Alice Munro, this is a great jumping off point; it's one of her finest collections, and she without doubt is one of the best writers working today (and if you ever meet anyone who disagrees with that, unfriend them on Facebook immediately).

Alice Munro

For this blog I am going to focus on "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," the beautiful story which anchors the book.

Grant and Fiona are at a crossroad. Although they have had an imperfect marriage, (Grant has had short meaningless affairs with students and even a yearlong affair with a colleague’s wife) he does love Fiona.

Gianna's sweetie Natasha

When she begins showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, she finally takes complete control of her life and marriage. She insists on moving to a nursing home when the disease robs her of the ability to care for herself. Grant finally agrees although it is clearly not what he wants. As the story moves forward Fiona begins to change in ways that Grant is not expecting, including falling in love with another man.

Where Alice Munro succeeds the most in her stories is in her complete grasp on humanity. She paints sweeping portraits with such gorgeous concise language that you are convinced that she was born to write.

Natasha's sweetie Gianna.....oy.

Liz:

Now I could have picked a sappy love story or epic lovey dovey saga or poignant tale of tragic love; it is Valentine's Day, after all.  But let's be honest: I ordered pizza tonight and sang "My Furry Valentine" to the cat this morning.  I have to be true to me and my ennui.  I will turn back to my witchy, wordy goddess, my JCO.  She communes with my bleak, soulless interior void.

Zombies are a hot topic these days, just behind vampires in the proliferation of undead books of the last few years.  The Joyce Carol Oates take?  Well, she's dark.  Zombie is about a man's quest for love.  He meets people in bars and invites them home...where he lobotomizes them with an ice pick, turning the victims into zombies.  It's a sick man's way of keeping his lovers from abandoning him (until, of course, the brain trauma knocks them down for good).  Oates based her novella on the Jeffery Dahmer case, her way of trying to understand the mind of a serial killer.


Happy Valentine's Day from Book Land!

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 3

Gianna:

Rita Mae Brown

This one goes out to the ladies. More specifically to the ladies who love ladies. Even more specifically to the ladies who love ladies who love to read about ladies loving ladies. Actually... dudes may like this as well. 
Oh Rita Mae Rita Mae...how you saved my sixteen year old ass with this book. Rubyfruit Jungle was Rita Mae Brown's "It Gets Better" message to me. Molly Bolt is adopted by a poor southern couple who aren't so keen on their unapologetic, smart ass, athletic daughter who also beats up boys. In high school, Molly dated a hot cheerleader and then was thrown out of college for terrible morals (oh but man oh man what a way to get kicked out). Molly eventually  moves to New York and you know how it goes...it gets better. She dates many lovely ladies, pursues a film career and meets other 'mos along the way. Yeah, it go a lot better. Oh, and she never becomes a Yankees fan so this novel is safe to read.

Great gift for your obviously gay daughter. Just give in, Ellen is making everyone gay and there is nothing you can do about it. 

Liz:


One of my all-time favorite writers is Joyce Carol Oates, and one of my all-time favorite books from the prolific Ms. Oates is We Were the Mulvaneys.  Oates is known for exposing the American dream and its shortcomings, often violently.  She is a dark writer, but she also writes with great emotion.  Many of her books are contemporary masterpieces, most are also entertaining, and if there were any justice she'd win a Nobel Prize for her many contributions to the American literary canon. But let's talk about the Mulvaneys.

Joyce Carol Oates

We Were the Mulvaneys actually starts with the All-American family--loving parents and three kids living on a bucolic farm as the kids attend high school, the boys playing football or graduating as valedictorian, and the daughter, Marianne, becoming a popular cheerleader.  They are a family who love each other, would do anything for each other.  And then, on prom night, Marianne is assaulted.


The novel is narrated by the adult youngest child, Judd, as he tries to piece together how his loving family disintegrated into lonely, lost souls.  Marianne is sent away because her father can't overcome the horror of what happened to her.  She takes her beloved cat, her only companion from the life she used to live.  Throughout, she longs for the family she once knew even as she manages to find a sort of peace and resolution.  The farm is gone, the Mulvaneys scattered, but once, once they were a family.

Stay Awake by Dan Chaon

(Gianna)

When I left Random House last year to become sales manager at UT, I failed to give enough thought to one important thing: I wouldn’t be selling Dan Chaon books any longer. [She was mostly focused on getting away from me as fast as possible.  Sigh.] I wouldn’t have an excuse to talk about his story collections Fitting Ends and Among the Missing, or his novels You Remind Me of Me and my favorite book of 2010, Await Your Reply. I mean, I think what I put you poor booksellers through for the past few years, you had to sit there and listen to me again and again talk about Chaon. Frankly I am surprised that no one grabbed me by the shoulders (who am I kidding? the hair) and shook the hell out of me until I shut up. [It's not too late....]

Guess what? It’s not too late. [See? Even she admits it!] Chaon is back with an outstanding collection called Stay Awake (Feb 2012). Fasten your seat belts; I have decided to unofficially sell the hell out of this new book as well. Stay Awake is a reminder of why I was drawn to Chaon in the first place: he is a master of the short story.  You think you don’t like short stories, by the way? This collection can change your mind in the same way Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America brought so many fans to read stores for the first time.

Remember how anxiety-ridden you were with Await Your Reply? Well get that Xanax refill because Stay Awake is haunting. One of my favorite stories is "Bees," in which a father’s life begins to spiral out of control with the onset of his child’s night terrors, and now his own inability to continue to repress the memories of his secret first wife and child that he abandoned so long ago. This story is riveting.

My favorite selection is the title story, "Stay Awake." A young couple gives birth to a baby who has a parasitic twin.  I have long been fascinated by this incredibly rare medical condition (I believe there have been less than a dozen cases) and I have not been able to get the images of this story out of my head. At once heartbreaking and creepy, you won’t be able to shake this story for days. [Twins are creepy!...says the twin.]

If you are a fan of Joyce Carol Oates this book is for you. 

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 28

We are so close to the end.  What are we going to do with our time after the extra-special extended book challenge is over?  Gianna probably will go back to, uh, working the streets.  I will spend an unseemly amount of time pondering Zorro's thoughts and whims.  Any suggestions for our little blog?  I mean, other than more pictures of my cat?

Day 28: Places We're Inspired to Visit Because of Books We've Read

Gianna:

I don’t think my answer to this question will come as a surprise to anyone who knows me or reads our blog on a regular basis.  For me the town that just danced, that absolutely came alive on the page, that to this day I have fantasies about moving there...my choice is gorgeous Eldorado, Texas which some refer to as the “Vienna of Texas."  I recently drove out West and passed this hidden gem – just 20 miles from Sonora, Texas (Sonora seems like a futuristic city compared to Eldorado by the way), but alas I didn’t have time to stop. Had I been lucky enough to build in an extra day or two into my travel plans and stopped by picturesque Eldorado, I am sure I would have found the hot bed of polygamy that Jon Krakauer describes in Under the Banner of Heaven. I just can’t imagine another town where I would be accepted for exactly who I am!

My second choice is Prague.  About a year ago I was shopping in a bookstore in Florida and I happened upon a book of essays by Ivan Klima called The Spirit of Prague and Other Essays. I don’t know why, but I have always been fascinated by and wanted to visit the Czech Republic; it's always been on my top five destinations list (before Alaska and after Eldorado). The highlights of the book are the opening essays about Klima’s childhood in a Nazi concentration camp and then an interview with Phillip Roth (he expresses his feelings about Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera). There is a interesting essay about 1989’s Velvet Revolution. This is a really good primer for the Czech Republic, though I do think too much is packed into a few pages ( I mean, a non-violent overthrow of Communism…you really do want more). [Like some violence?]  If you want to be inspired, read about the Velvet Revolution.

So there it is, Prague and with any luck I hope to be there this year. 

Liz:

I have a long list of destinations for travel, but for the sake of this blog post I'm going to rule out places I wanted to visit before reading about them.  My fascination with Russia is related to St. Basil's Cathedral pictures and an ongoing obsession with totalitarian regimes (Hello Mr. Stalin).  I love Canada in part because of artist Emily Carr's paintings.  Alaska?  The bears.  And the birds.  And the snow.  And Levi Johnston.  

As for book-inspired travel spots, I never really considered going to Niagara Falls until I read Joyce Carol Oates's The Falls.  A groom throws himself over the falls while on his honeymoon within the first few pages of the book?  I'm there.  It's no secret that I love Joyce Carol Oates, and one of the reasons for my super-fan worship is that her writing is so vivid that it makes me interested in topics.  The history of Niagara Falls (and for that matter, scenic Love Canal) is woven throughout the story of the bride whose hubby jumped moments after consummating their marriage.  It may be the ultimate tourist trap, and I doubt Gianna will take me or my sister wives there on our honeymoon, but dammit I want to go there.

My second choice is Beirut.  Really.  Read The Hakawati and ponder those pigeon wars and fantastic tales.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 16

This day is brought to you by Zorro.

Day 16: Favorite Books Featuring Animals

So yeah, I'm obsessed with my cat.  I am.  We're codependent and he's my abusive lover.  But there are many great books with animals in them if you think about it.  What is Jaws without the shark?  What is Moondogs without the blind, cockfighting rooster named Kelog? (Seriously, you people need to read Moondogs.)  What is Moby-Dick without the whale?  Boring, boring, and boring.  Without animals, Rita Mae Brown wouldn't have launched her super successful cat mystery series and have been reduced to writing about lesbians and stuff.

Gianna:

My favorite book about animals is an easy pick. Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature: Includes 32 Delicious Recipes. [Rabbit is tasty.]

Okay, I made up the last part of that title, but even without it…crazy. I had no idea that rabbits were misunderstood. Are they capable of doing things that I don’t know about? I know they are really excellent at pooping on everything but I am excited to hear about possible hidden talents or uses. [You would approve of their procreational propensities.]



Rub my belly. I dare you.



I refuse to write about any book that has talking animals – as it creeps me out (sorry Yann Martel and Daniel Quinn…. I tried). Animal Farm doesn’t count because these guys mean business and are scary. Scary talking animals are okay. If only Cujo could talk.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t read Old Yeller – STOP reading - I don't want to Marley and Me your ass. Ooops.

I have no idea what my favorite book about an animal is (Liz picked this question and I will just assume her cat Zorro had some input). [Zorro is my god.]  I tend to avoid books about animals as I am still recovering from Old Yeller. [G, you should steer clear of The Yearling, then, too.  People eat deer.] I am working my way through the grief process but seem to be stuck on denial. And the sequel starring Yeller’s pup, which I am sure was meant to cheer up the millions of scarred sobbing children.... Well guess what, Fred Gipson, it didn’t work. I just focused on the fact that Old Yeller was killed when she had little babies to care for. Terrible. [Yeller was a bitch?  How did I miss that?]

I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web – I assume it is also devastating. I mean I know the one pig gets to live but..it's a farm and the animal body count is likely to be pretty high. It's best I avoid it.  [Animals talk.  Creepy.  And the spider dies.]

But I am about to get pretty unoriginal because truly the best book I have ever read about an animal is Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. I am not a horse person and certainly not a horse race person (unlike my father who let me know in the bluntest of ways that if I didn’t know the story of Seabiscuit then I didn’t know history at all…awkward). I read Seabiscuit the day my father informed me that I was an idiot. The book is just phenomenal. Hillenbrand is quite simply an incredibly gifted writer; you really will not be able to put this book down. Just the imagery of the thousands of fans travelling for miles, all over the country, to see this horse run is breathtaking. He was the hope of a nation, he helped bring a broken country together in a terrible time; can you imagine that? [Just like Zorro!] A not so good looking horse. Now that is a happy story. If you’ve seen the movie, trust me when I tell you the book is so much better. I also had this on audio, read by Campbell Scott, and it's one of the best audio books I have ever listened to (and yes I am including the Harry Potter books too).  [Campbell Scott is the audio book god, but Zorro is the universe's god.]

It just now occurred to me that when I was a child I loved watching re-runs of Mr. Ed The Talking Horse...does this have anything to do with my disdain of talking animals? Too much Mr. Ed too soon? So curious.

Liz:

Guess what?!  I'm a cat person.  I don't dislike dogs, but since I was seven years old and Fluffinella entered my life, I've related best to cats.  We understand each other and share eccentricities.  Dogs are easy, but you must work to earn the devotion of a cat.  So I'm sticking to books about cats.  They are the most beautiful creatures in the world, after all.



I am cat, destroyer of worlds.
And toys.



The Tiger by John Vaillant features the largest cat in the world, the Siberian Tiger.  Set in post-Soviet Russia, Vaillant recounts the true story of an 800 pound kitty that, out of desperation and revenge, becomes a maneater.  This tiger was shot by a poacher, but wasn't killed.  He tracked down the hunter, waited for him at his hunting cabin, and destroyed him.  The guys who discovered the "body" were able to place the remains in a backpack.  Tigers are highly intelligent and lethal, but they don't normally seek humans for prey.  This particular tiger, though, developed a taste for the other white meat, and several days later killed another woodsman.  The Russian version of a game warden was charged with tracking and removing this tiger hunting the members of a remote village. 

The Tiger details the complexities of this region of Russia, and this period in history (late '90's), as well as the reasons tigers are poached.  This is a humane book about the most dangerous game and the moral ambiguities of an animal lover hunting a cat capable of destroying a person with a swipe of its paw.  It's great adventure writing and it's a great cat story.

At first glance, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates isn't about animals at all.  The book tells the story of a seemingly All-American family that is torn apart one night when the daughter is attacked.  Her father can't cope with the assault on his precious girl and she's sent to live with relatives, then eventually lives on her own.  It's a devastating book about the ways families betray each other, and it's beautifully written.  Why am I mentioning it here?  First, We Were the Mulvaneys is one of my favorite books.  Second, when Marianne Mulvaney is sent away, the only part of her family who accompanies her is her cat.  The cat provides companionship and love in her worst moments.  The cat becomes her family, and Marianne even goes so far as to look into kitty dialysis when her pet's kidneys begin to fail.  I would have done the same for Fluffinella, back in the day.  And let's just all hope that Zorro is immortal.

Yes, I am the world's greatest cat.  Obey me.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 17

Continuing on the size theme...

Day 17: The Shortest Book You've Read

Gianna:

The Laramie Project

101 pages. Although this is a play, it counts because I say so. I remember the murder of Matthew Shepard very clearly and can say it still shocks me. This slim book is the culmination and dramatization of over 200 interviews in the town of Laramie following his brutal murder. I wanted to excerpt just a short section of Dennis Shepard reading a statement to the court after Aaron McKinney was found guilty of murdering Matthew. He is talking about his son being left alone to die:

You Mr. McKinney, with your friend Mr. Henderson left him out there by himself, but he wasn't alone. There were his lifelong friends with him, friends that he had grown up with. First he had the beautiful night sky and the same stars and moon that we used to see through a telescope. Then he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him. And through it all he was breathing in the scent of pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the wind, the ever-present Wyoming wind, for the last time. He had one more friend with him, he had God. And I feel better knowing he wasn't alone.

Dennis Shepard goes on to grant McKinney mercy by not asking for the death penalty.

Liz

First Love by Joyce Carol Oates, illustrated by Barry Moser

This lovely little book measures only 6 inches tall.  Normally I don't like short things (see: LaMorte, Gianna), but I do like both Oates and Moser, so I made an exception and added First Love to my collection.  It sort of gets lost on the shelf though, sandwiched between Faithless and Foxfire in the Joyce Carol Oates section of my bookshelves.  Like Gianna in a crowd...of nine year olds.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 7

Day 7: A Book You Can Quote

Gianna:

Well the Bible obviously. But I have also study quite hard on the Jack Handey Deep Thoughts Trilogy (Deep Thoughts, Deeper Thoughts, and Deepest Thoughts). In all honesty I have a terrible memory so maybe I could throw a quote from some of my favorite books/authors around every now and again...but Mr. Jack Handey, well....I got these down.

Liz:

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

Technically this is a short story, but I'm actually terrible at remembering quotes too.  Other than the Bible and the famous Shakespeare lines I absolutely will not remember either lines or character names from the books I read.  There are a few short stories that I do know quite well, though.  My mother was a high school English teacher and coached UIL Prose, so I know the stories that her readers performed.  I picked my favorite--naturally the most disturbing story one could regularly expose a 10 year old to.  My JCO love started early and with this story.  Give that woman her Nobel Prize already.

Betting on Nobel

This year's Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday and the various book industry news venues are posting almost daily updates speculating on which esteemed writer might win this year's prize.  While I have no doubt that every source is, well, full of it, I do love the annual Nobel Prize build-up because it focuses attention on so many great authors.  And leave it to the Brits to take pleasure in betting on who'll win a literary award.  The British bookmaker Ladbrokes posts the top odds for the world's current literary giants (http://www.ladbrokes.com/lbr_sports?action=go_generic_link&level=EVENT&key=214493738&category=SPECIALS&subtypes=&default_sort=&tab=undefined). 

It's a fascinating list, but really, does the Nobel Prize for Literature mean anything?  I do think that award recipients are worthy, and considering my career I'm always in favor of any event that will generate book sales.  But how does one go about selecting the pinnacle of lifetime literary achievement each year, the one writer whose life work outshines the other six billion people on the planet?  It can't be done, and so the award tends to rotate from country to country, genre to genre, honored as much for the political climate of the year as for the author's body of work.  When Harold Pinter won the prize in 2005, speculation was that the outrage over the US invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's treatment of detainees kept the selection committee from picking the first American since Toni Morrison in 1993.  It's a weird prize that lends itself to stereotyping, a single individual representing a whole group of people, a whole country.  There's the Chinese guy, the Holocaust survivor, the Irish poet, the South African, the Gulag survivor, the African-American woman...it's a little insulting to the talented writers representing their demographics, but the award also calls attention to important works.  Is it a good thing?  Is it wrong?  Maybe it just is.

So who are the bookies picking this year?  The popular choice is for a poet to win since the last decade or so of winners have been novelists or playwrights.  The favorite right now is Tomas Transtromer at 4/1, followed by Adam Zagajewski, Adonis, and Ko Un all at 8/1.  Generally I don't read much poetry and am only familiar with the work of Adonis.  For me the list becomes far more interesting with the 11/1 writer, Haruki Murakami, and then a cluster of my favorite writers hovering at 18/1.  The odds go all the way to the dark horse popular "poet," Bob Dylan, at 150/1.  Here are some highlights from the list of the world's greatest living writers, authors worth reading regardless of whether they ever actually go to Sweden.

• 11/1: Haruki Murakami.  Murakami is the best known Japanese writer in America, a post-modern writer who draws heavily from Western culture and music.  He's also an avid runner and recently completed his first ultra-marathon.  What to read: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which infuses music, the fantastic, and violence around the story of a seemingly boring man whose cat runs away, kicking off a chain of event.s  Also, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami's nonfiction account of his life as a marathoner and triathlete.
• 18/1: A. S. Byatt.  Antonia Byatt is a British writer who won the Booker Prize for Possession.  Her most recent novel, The Children's Book, was one of my favorite books of 2009, a rich, historical novel revolving around a writer and her seven children in turn of the century rural England.  It's a book about family, secrets, love, and the loss of innocence children--and nations--experience as they mature, culminating in the outbreak of World War I. 
• 18/1: Joyce Carol Oates.  Probably the most prolific writer of literary fiction alive today, Oates not only has cranked out dozens of books, essays, and short stories, they almost all been high quality.  She isn't afraid of violence and regularly pursues the darker corners of the "American Dream."  She won the National Book Award for her novel them (and should have won for Blonde, a finalist four decades later).  Oates also wrote my favorite short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"  Check out We Were the Mulvaneys, a moving, dark story about the disintegration of a "perfect" family after the only daughter is attacked one night and her father can't cope with the violation of his daughter.  I also love Blonde, Oates's fictional life of Marilyn Monroe; I had no interest in Monroe at all until reading this book.  The same is true for The Falls, a novel that begins with a new husband committing suicide on his honeymoon at Niagara Falls, a tourist site which also didn't interest me until JCO immersed me in her story.
• 18/1: Margaret Atwood.  I admit that I love Canada and therefore love Margaret Atwood all the more.  Atwood writes great literary fiction, great historical fiction, great speculative fiction set in a dystopian future.  She is known for her social conscience as well as her humor and lately has become an avid Twitter user (Tweeter?  Twitterer?).  Atwood won the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and The Handmaid's Tale is required reading in many high schools and universities.  More recently Atwood has written two linked near-future novels, Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood, that predict apocalyptic catastrophe with the destruction of the environment and rampant genetic engineering.
• 20/1: Cormac McCarthy.  He's dark, he's twisted, he's reclusive, he's Cormac McCarthy.  McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, and literary critic Harold Bloom called his novel Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying."  Two great places to start for readers wanting to try McCarthy--No Country For Old Men, which inspired the Academy Award-winning movie, and All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award.  Both books are superb examples of McCarthy's writing style but aren't quite as bleak as some of his other books.
• 25/1: Maya Angelou.  Poet and memoirist (and cookbook writer) Maya Angelou is best known for her first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her story of growing up in rural Arkansas.  The book is required reading for many grade school students and I feel like it's sometimes dismissed because of the school-aged audience.  The best memoirs, though, seem to come from poets--Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, and also the first of the confessional memoirs, Caged Bird.  Angelou also composed and read a poem at Bill Clinton's first inauguration and is pals with Oprah.
• 45/1: Chinua Achebe.  The Nigerian born Achebe is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart.  The book, about a tribal man whose life is complicated when Christian missionaries arrive in his village, has sold over 8 millions copies and is the most translated work of African fiction in the world.
• 50/1: Ian McEwan.  A crafter of fine characters and stories, McEwan achieved a new level of fame after the release of the movie version of his novel Atonement struck box office gold.  A war story and love story, Atonement centers around a girl misinterpreting an encounter she observes between her older sister and a servant's son, leading to the young man's arrest.  When war erupts across Europe, he leaves to fight.  McEwan also won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam, and his most recent book is a humorous, amoral romp through global climate change called Solar.
• 66/1: Michael Ondaatje.  Ondaatje, another one of my Canadian crushes, won the Booker Prize for The English Patient, which was later made into the Oscar-winning film.  The book is a sweeping love story set before and during World War II, and like most instances, the book is even better than the movie.
• 75/1: Atiq Rahimi.  I admit that I wasn't really familiar with Rahimi until last year, but one of the cool aspects of the Nobel Prize is that it does have the potential to expose audiences to great literature from around the world.  Rahimi is definitely a great writer.  Born in Afghanistan, Rahimi lives and writes in France now, where he works as both a novelist and film-maker.  In 2008, Rahimi's novel The Patience Stone won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award.  The book tells the story of an Afghani woman caring for her wounded husband who lies comatose in a bed as war rages in the streets outside.  She's angry at her husband for deserting her via gunshot wound and slowly begins to tell him about her life for the first time, releasing her frustrations at her life, marriage, and the constraints placed on women in the Taliban-governed country.
• 100/1: Peter Carey.  Australian novelist Peter Carey is one of the most gifted storytellers writing these days.  He's twice won the Booker Prize, for Oscar & Lucinda in 1988 and The True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.  His latest book, a historical novel based on the real-life social critic Alexis de Tocqueville, is entitled Parrot and Olivier in America, and it too is shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Who will win?  I myself think that it's about time a Canadian wins, so I'm crossing my fingers for Atwood, Ondaatje, or short story writer Alice Munro (also at 18/1 odds).  Unlike other prizes such as the National Book Award or Man Booker Prize, we won't have an inkling of the shortlisted books in advance.  In fact, the Nobel Prize doesn't reveal  finalists until 50 years after the presentation of the award.  It really could almost anyone walking away with the 10 million Swedish kroner and medal.

Identity Issues

It's eerie how often Gianna and I agree on books. Considering that we barely knew each other a little over two years ago (she actually walked up to me at Book Expo several years ago before I worked for Random House and I didn't have a clue who she was until she reminded me that we'd met before), we nonetheless seem to love many of the same books. We'll have these discussions where she'll call me and ask if I've read a book that I haven't thought about in years and I'll remember that I loved that book, and it turns out that she loved it too. So when Gianna recommends that I read a book, when she's so enthusiastic that she's sputtering with delight, I KNOW that I must read that title. She doesn't steer me wrong.

Back in January we began to find out what titles Random House planned to publish for this coming fall, and it's a phenomenal list to say the least. Gianna found out that there will be a new book from Dan Chaon, so she called me to see if I had read his previous books, AMONG THE MISSING and YOU REMIND ME OF ME. Of course I had, and of course I loved them. Chaon is one of the best writers out there and in a just world he would be a literary superstar and I would read about him on my cousin's Facebook posts instead of...the gagging drivel she reads and claims is "profownd" (sic). The new book, Gianna told me, was called AWAIT YOUR REPLY. Because it was on her side of the company, and because I needed to read about 15 other books before sales conference, I refrained from diving into the new Chaon book, the dessert to my meal of books that I would actually sell myself. Gianna kept teasing me, though. She sent me the first page of the manuscript, and she constantly asked, "Have you started it yet? You need to read it. I need to talk about it. Read it, read it, read it...."



So finally I read it. Holy crap! I love this book. The early comparisons among the sales force are authors like Patricia Highsmith (Talented Mr. Ripley series) and Flannery O'Connor, and in the acknowledgements Chaon mentions writers who've inspired him such as John Fowles and Joyce Carol Oates. AWAIT YOUR REPLY contains elements of all of these masters of fiction. The novel focuses around identity and what it means to exist (or not) in this world. The opening page Gianna sent me? Let me set the scene for you. A son is cradling his arm and drifting in and out of consciousness. His father is driving the car and trying to reassure the kid that they'll make it to the hospital. And sitting between them in an ice chest is the boy's hand, cut off at the wrist. AND the boy isn't convinced that his father's even taking him to the hospital. Who doesn't want to keep reading a book that starts this way?

There are three stories swirling around each other through AWAIT YOUR REPLY, and what Gianna didn't tell me when she kept harassing me about reading the book is that one story line focuses on a set of twins. Twins are freaky and weird and a bit of an obsession for me and I'll read just about any book that features the multiples. It makes lots of sense that twins feature prominently in Chaon's book, too, since the theme is identity. Without giving away too much of the story, how do you know who you are? Say you don't have your name. Are you the same person? What if I weren't named Liz? Wouldn't I be a totally different person if I went by, say, Stephanie? I would have missed out on all of the elementary school "lizard" names. And people named Liz, in my experience, are smart asses. Nice, vapidly sweet Elizabeths are usually shortened to Beth. I am not a Beth. So twins further complicate self-identification. Here's your carbon copy(if you're identical, but to a lesser extent the same holds true for fraternals), yet you are two distinct people. At the same time, though, you cannot separate your identity from that of your twin. Twins know each other before they even meet their mother and they grow up with a mirror image of themselves against which to measure. Your life is a jumbled mess of identity politics. It's fascinating...and weird...and perfect for Chaon's book.

So, confession, I am a twin. I sometimes hate it, but I cannot imagine my life otherwise, and I hate to think of a world in which my twin no longer exists. I look at her and marvel that we're even siblings (she's an aerospace engineer) and I try to imagine what I would be like if I had followed her course in life. I still respond to her name when someone calls it because growing up people constantly confused us even though we're fraternal and she's friggin' blonde for crying out loud. More often we were just "the Sullivan twins." So I personally related to the parts of AWAIT YOUR REPLY that deal with twin brothers on different paths, seeking each other and running away. What if my twin were a hustler, or a Broadway singer, or Lindsey Lohan? Wouldn't I have a different identity if she were someone else? (The answer is yes.)

Dan Chaon is a terrific writer. I can't emphasize this point enough. This book works on so many levels--literary exploration, character study, thriller--and both Gianna and I are giddily anticipating the publication in August. AWAIT YOUR REPLY may be the best book I read this year.