“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
*
“A writer who attempts in the nineteenth century to rehabilitate the ancient legends of the were-wolf and the vampire has set himself a formidable task. Most of the delightful old superstitions of the past have an unhappy way of appearing limp and sickly in the glare of a later day, and in such a story as Dracula, by Bram Stoker, the reader must reluctantly acknowledge that the region of horrors has shifted its ground. Man is no longer in dread of the monstrous and the unnatural, and although Mr. Stoker has tackled his gruesome subject with enthusiasm, the effect is more often grotesque than terrible.
“The Transylvanian site of Castle Dracula is skillfully chosen, and the picturesque region is well described. Count Dracula himself has been in his day a medieval noble, who, by reason of his ‘Vampire’ quilters, is unable to die properly, but from century to century resuscitates his life of the ‘Un-Dead,’ as the author terms it, by nightly droughts of blood from the throats of living victims, with the appalling consequence that those once so bitten must become vampire in their turn.
“The plot is too complicated for reproduction, but it says no little for the authors powers that in spite of its absurdities the reader can follow the story with interest to the end. It is, however, an artistic mistake to fill the whole volume with horrors. A touch of the mysterious, the terrible, or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible.”
Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions, Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Martin Amis’ Inside Story, and Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
1. The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
(Harper)
10 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Cold Millions here
“There’s an election next week that will mark the climax of an exhausting, dramatic year, but if you have the time and head space to read new-release fiction, it would be well spent on The Cold Millions … It’s a tremendous work, a vivid, propulsive, historical novel with a politically explosive backdrop that reverberates through our own … Walter is a Spokane native, and he captures both the depth and breadth of this moment in his hometown’s history … gives us the grand tour, with a bounty of crime and intrigue and adventure anchored by an unforgettable ensemble cast … About half of the novel is narrated in the third person from Rye’s point of view, but Walter brings in a multitude of first-person voices to bring the world roaring to life.”
–Steph Cha (USA Today)
2. Memorial by Bryan Washington
(Riverhead)
9 Rave • 3 Positive
… if you thought Lot was good, Washington’s first novel is a ground-busting masterpiece … From this superficial summary, it’s tempting to think (incorrectly) that Memorial is some kind of slightly headier rom-com. But what takes this novel well beyond just a simplistic story of two lovers who eventually learn how to come together by spending time apart is Washington’s decision to reveal the course of their journey—and the depth of both their problems and love for each other—from each of the characters’ perspectives … We also find out Benson is HIV-positive. (To Washington’s credit, his nuanced portrayal of Benson’s matter-of-fact attitude toward his status is the most accurate I’ve seen in modern literature) … With a book so layered and, frankly, one that succeeds on so many fronts, it can be difficult to pinpoint the one overarching magical quality that sets it apart. In Memorial, Washington’s descriptions of food and cooking, particularly Japanese delicacies such as abura-age, konbu maki, kamaboko and spinach udon, and okonomiyaki, are to be slurped and savored … The myriad screaming matches and sex scenes are compelling too … As a secondary character, Mitsuko is sharp-witted and no-nonsense—and therefore thrilling company. (Her one-liners are priceless) … But what truly makes Memorial extraordinary—especially the final section—is Washington’s uncanny ability to capture the elusive essence of love on nearly every page … if there’s one book you should go out of your way to read in 2020, it should be this one.”
–Alexis Burling (The San Francisco Chronicle)
3. Inside Story by Martin Amis
(Knopf)
1 Rave • 9 Positive • 10 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Inside Story here
“The book is a ‘novelized autobiography’—an unstable and charismatic compound of fact and fiction. Amis revisits stories he told in his memoir Experience. Some other passages have been grafted from his essays and speeches. He reproduces a New Yorker article in its entirety … Amis feels a bit like a beloved vice these days. You read him through your fingers. As a critic, he remains strong and original. His memoir is a model of the form … Inside Story is rife with dreams, sex fantasies and maundering meditations on Jewishness, a longstanding obsession. The book feels built to baffle. It is an orgy of inconsistencies and inexplicable technical choices … Most maddening of all, Inside Story also includes some of Amis’s best writing to date.”
–Parul Sehgal (The New York Times)
4. Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
(Doubleday)
3 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Written with witty prose, Fortune Favors the Dead is and often humorous and fun—nowhere near the stuffy analytical voice of Dr. Watson. Instead, with its cast of suspects (all conveniently listed at the start of the book to help readers keep track), it has the hallmarks of an Agatha Christie mystery, and there’s a delightful dose of noir thrown in for the more hardcore pulp fiction crowd, too … It’s as mysterious and fun a caper as you will ever read, with plenty of misdirection and intrigue to keep you guessing. You don’t need a clairvoyant to realize this duo will be around for years to come.”
–G. Robert Frazier (BookPage)
5. The Tower of Fools by Andrzej Sapkowski
(Orbit)
2 Rave • 3 Positive
“While the sheer amounts of characters, historical names, and untranslated Latin may daunt some readers, Sapkowski’s energetic and satirical prose as well as the unconventional setting makes this a highly enjoyable historical fantasy. Recommended for Sapkowksi’s many existing fans and for fans of historical fantasy in general.”
–Nell Keep (Booklist)
**
1. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
(Knopf)
10 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Red Comet here
“… [an] incandescent, richly researched biography … Red Comet takes us on a literary picaresque, drawing on untapped archives, Plath’s complete correspondence, interviews with surviving members of the couple’s social and professional circles, and, most crucially, on Hughes’ journals and letters. From both perspectives Clark evokes how their common purpose rose and later diverged, invaluable reportage missing from other books … Clark delves deeper than biographers who have gone before: We see the poet as if peering through the Hubble Telescope for the first time, blurred galaxies and nebulas bursting into crystalline detail. Yet this gold standard of a biography does something more: Red Comet is a page-turner, particularly when Clark shifts to Plath’s final two years in England … By centering Plath’s evolving command of craft—by focusing on her peerless lyrical ear—Clark peels away clichéd interpretations much as the poet shed her false selves … A bravura performance, Red Comet is the one we’ve waited for.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
2. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
(Bloomsbury Sigma)
7 Rave • 3 Positive
“If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there’s a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration … What Wragg Sykes has produced in Kindred, after eight years of labor, is masterful. Synthesizing over a century and a half of research, she gives us a vivid feel for a past in which we weren’t the only smart, feeling bipedal primate alive. That feel comes across sometimes in startlingly fresh ways.”
–Barbara King (NPR)
3. Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now by Evan Osnos
(Scribner)
5 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Osnos’s concise biography treads back along the trail of horrendous tragedies, dashed hopes and dramatic implosions that preceded Biden’s improbable third run at the presidency, and gives at least some clues to the kind of leader he will become if he wins … It is impossible to come away from the Osnos’s biography without a sense of awe at what Biden has overcome to arrive at this point, so late in life and so close to achieving a prize he had assumed was lost … Osnos has written a fast-paced biography that draws on extensive interviews with his subject, as well as with Obama and a host of Democratic party heavyweights. In pursuit of brevity it races through the many personal dramas of a tumultuous life and deals only perfunctorily with Biden’s surviving son … This book suggests Biden has the capacity for self-reinvention.”
–Julian Borger (The Guardian)
4. Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation by Peter Cozzens
(Knopf)
2 Rave • 2 Positive
“[An] enthralling, deeply researched dual biography … Cozzens’s cinematic narrative is steeped in Native American culture and laced with vivid battle scenes and character sketches. American history buffs will gain a new appreciation for what these resistance leaders accomplished.”
5. I’ll Be Seeing You: A Memoir by Elizabeth Berg
(Random House)
1 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…her prologue speaks bluntly, but don’t be deterred. Though this book does bear witness to the inevitability of aging and loss, it is nonetheless a small gem shining with Berg’s signature largesse—generous gifts of poetic insight, close observance, vulnerability, honesty, humor and grace … Readers familiar with Berg’s novels know that her stories wonderfully encompass the comforts of beauty and wry humor, but they never sugarcoat life’s hard truths.”
–Alison Hood (BookPage)
Just in time for Halloween, here’s a scary story: You’ve finished the book you were reading. You decide to walk to your local bookstore, to see what’s new, to see what your favorite bookseller recommends to you this time. You’ve got a big cup of coffee in hand, and you can’t wait to go home and cozy up with your next great read. You round the corner, and—oh no. The lights are off.
Truth is: 20% of independent bookstores won’t make it to next year. But not all hope is lost. You can potentially prevent this! Indie bookstores across the nation are rallying together to encourage the public to shop local with their #BoxedOut campaign. Please—PLEASE!—if you can, support small businesses.
Here we have book recommendations from the lovely booksellers at WORD Bookstores (Brooklyn, NY and Jersey City, NJ), Blue Cypress Books (New Orleans, LA), Books and Mortar (Grand Rapids, MI), Lit. on Fire (Peoria, IL), Third House Books (Gainesville, FL), Paulina Springs Books (Sisters, OR), and Avoid the Day Bookstore & Cafe (Rockaway Park, NY). We are so grateful for booksellers like them, booksellers who care, who will take the time out of their busy days to write these love notes for you.
*
Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
(FSG Originals)
This book is straight up weird, and it is as good as weird gets. A team of female scientists enter Area X, a zone of ecological change that is illogical, inescapable, and expanding. The protagonist, the Biologist, has to confront creatures and monsters that defy her scientific mind and bring her to the brink of annihilation. There are so few ways to describe this book in words, so I have no idea how VanderMeer actually wrote it in words. It is brilliant, and you will set the book down feeling slightly insane but also aware of something uncanny, something that you knew all along: this world is changing, fast, and we are changing with it.
–Jenny, Books and Mortar
Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend’s Exorcism
(Quirk Books)
Horror with heart is the best way I can describe Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism. I can’t recommend it enough. This exhilarating novel will keep you on your toes. I went from gasping to laughing to gagging to crying and back again. If you’ve ever been a teenager (and I’m sure most of you have), you’ll understand Abby’s frustration (parents just don’t understand!) and determination in her quest to save her friend from the clutches of darkness. The minute I finished the book, I called my best friend. This book will have you wondering which of your friendships could survive a dance with the devil.
–LeeAnna Callon, Blue Cypress Books
Fernanda Melchor, Hurricane Season
(New Directions)
Fernanda Melchor’s English debut novel is a real treat: it is nonstop journalistic storytelling combined with magic and mystery. While violent and at times grotesque, Melchor’s prose is stunning. It’s the kind of absorbing read that won’t allow you to put it down, and once you finish, you’ll still wonder what exactly happened. This is a phenomenal work that pulled me out of my first reading slump in this pandemic, and despite its dark dealings, it is a gorgeous read that showcases the incredible literature by the Latinx community. Highly recommend it for Latinx heritage month and beyond!
–Heather, Third House Books
Michelle Magorian, Good Night, Mr. Tom
(HarperCollins)
I adored this book, both as an adult and back when I was a younger reader. It tells the story of William and Mister Tom during World War II, two people brought together by chance under difficult circumstances. Though tentative at first, their growing bond helps each one overcome past hardship and open themselves up to the world again. It is a story of love, sadness, and learning to trust and flourish again.
–Marlee, Books and Mortar
Robert Macfarlane, Underland
(W. W. Norton)
It would be easy to let a subject as diverse, complex, and mysterious as the world that exists underground become a sprawling, unfocused, and ultimately uninspiring piece of narrative nonfiction. And in the hands of a less skilled author, that might have been what happened. But in Underland, Macfarlane has created a masterwork that does justice to the richness of that which for most of us exists out of sight and out of mind, never missing an opportunity to evoke the awesome wonder the worlds beneath our feet. Part nature writing and travelogue and part history and philosophy, Underland is a beautiful and epic meditation on the past, present, and future of our planet, and humanity’s place in it.
–Lane Jacobson, Paulina Springs Books
Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
(Grove Press)
This beautiful novel made me stay up too late, ignore my phone, and wake up early before work to finish it. I read a lot, often 2 books a week, sometimes more, and I have to say it’s been years since a book has evoked as much emotion as this one did. As an Anglophile I was brought right back to the London I know so well. I felt I was walking with the characters and wishing I could be more a part of their world and at the same time was so intimately attached to them that it was as if I knew them personally. I would find myself laughing out loud and within a few pages weeping. When a customer asks for a complex narrative about life, sexuality, politics and gender, or for a captivating novel about black women’s stories, this book is the first to come to mind.
–Jianna Heuer, Avoid the Day Bookstore & Cafe
Tara Westover, Educated
(Random House)
I couldn’t put this book down. Tara’s story is so honest and multifaceted. If you are looking for a great memoir, I highly recommend this one. Tara grew up in a hyper-rural community with a Mormon father who becomes more and more obsessed with conspiracy theories over time. As a result, her childhood is filled with unusual situations that often veer into violence and sexism. As she grows older and finds out more about who she is and what she wants, she must make difficult decisions about the role of her family in her life. You will feel everything as you read this book—joy, anger, sadness, grief—and you will come out of it with an intimate sense of who Tara is and what family can mean to someone who has decided to walk their own path.
–Tiffany, Books and Mortar
Amber Sparks, And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges
(Liveright)
Near perfect moments of strange, fascinating, colossal vignettes, with quiet undertones intersecting the mundane—with crescendos that beg you, or rather dare you, to fly. Then sometimes a diminuendo that’s like a strained, hoarse whisper or gasping or choking, even. This collection will draw tears and blood, it will incite laughter and deep, unsatisfied pangs that will hold you in their moments long after the story has ended. My three favorite short stories are near the end—”The Eyes of Saint Lucy”, “Rabbit by Rabbit,” and “Through the Looking Glass”—though some earlier stories got honorable mentions.
–Jessica Stephenson, Lit. on Fire Books
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
(Riverhead)
I’ve struggled to write this recommendation because I’m afraid that I won’t do this book justice. A page-turner—yes. Lyrical—yes. A sharp depiction of the brutal effects of racism and colorism on families and communities, an exploration of what it means to choose—or refuse—an identity, and a delicate, nuanced, fierce prose that probes at the bond between twins and the cascade of events that pour through their separate lives after one twin vanishes from the other—yes, yes, and yes. Bennett’s writing is clear and swift, and I could live in it forever.
–Jackie Kenny, Paulina Springs Books
Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults
(Europa)
While we mostly know Elena Ferrante for her Neapolitan series, or perhaps for not knowing her at all, this departure from Ferrante’s middle aged narrators is a surprising but welcome one. Told from the perspective of teenager Giovanna, this standalone work follows her realizations about truth, lies, family, and growing up. While the themes seem domestic at best, Ferrnate tackles them with the same tenacity as My Brilliant Friend, with spins on family dynamics and adolescence that are both universal and uncanny.
–Heather, Third House Books
Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place
(Penguin)
This novel in stories easily became one of my favorite reads of all time before I was able to get halfway through. Gloria Naylor uses the central setting of Brewster Place, a neglected apartment building in NYC, to highlight the manifold of black women’s lived experiences. I’ve never had the opportunity to embark on such a literary journey that tackled topics of black womanhood, sisterhood, family, belonging, violence, justice, tokenism, misogynoir, generational gaps in understanding and so much more in ways that sat with me months after I turned the last page. Naylor’s debut is not just a tribute to inner-city living, it’s a testament to the pain, love, and impact of black women. It gives layers to the oversimplified tropes constantly bestowed upon black women. It shifts us away from our need to focus on what separates us and instead recognize the interconnectedness we all have but fail to notice. I hope everyone feels compelled to pick this one up, Naylor deserves all the praise and glory.
–Deidre Dumpson, WORD Bookstore
N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season
(Orbit)
If you are looking for your next science fiction series, look no further than the Broken Earth Trilogy, beginning with The Fifth Season. N. K. Jemisin is undoubtedly one of the best science fiction writers of all time, and this series offers everything you could want in a great sci-fi tale: a new world replete with magic and power struggles, a complex set of heroes and villains, mysterious twists and turns, and prescient lessons for a world at war with itself. This book begins with an apocalypse and reveals how members of a race historically enslaved may actually have the power to change everything. You won’t want to put this one down.
–Jenny, Books and Mortar
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
(Bloomsbury)
What is it like to be inside a mind? To be lonely and full of love, to be wanting and curious, to be flooded with a melange of enchantment? The House in Clarke’s Piranesi has similar flavors of infinity, wonder, and madness as Danielewski’s House of Leaves but without the horror; even with its abysmal power, Clarke’s House is always gorgeous, benevolent, and mysterious through the eyes of the unforgettable Piranesi. Here is a maze of marble statues, albatross chicks, dried seaweed, third-story clouds, and shimmering lily-pad lakes in dark hallways. The plot rushes with anticipation and the ending has one of the most beautiful last paragraphs I’ve ever read; it left a glowing cold taste of sea in my mouth. Oh, this book collapses time. You won’t ever be able to leave The House; its Tides will dog your footsteps, its Arches will shadow your dreams.
–Jackie Kenny, Paulina Springs Books
Each month throughout 2020, for your literary listening pleasure, our friends at AudioFile Magazine are bringing us the cream of the audiobook crop.
This month’s haul of outstanding audiobooks includes J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (read by Andy Serkis), Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (read by Carey Mulligan), Alice Hoffman’s Magic Lessons (read by Sutton Foster), and David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet (read by the author).
Fiction
The Searcher by Tana French | Read by Roger Clark
[Penguin Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Roger Clark’s American-Irish-British background makes him uniquely qualified to narrate Tana French’s tense story of a Chicago cop who is trying to solve a mystery far outside his jurisdiction. Divorced and weary with police work, Cal wants nothing more than a quiet retirement in the Irish countryside, fishing and renovating an old cottage. But against his will, he’s drawn into the disappearance of a local youth and soon discovers that his quiet retreat holds many secrets and hidden dangers.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien | Read by Andy Serkis
[Recorded Books]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Narrator Andy Serkis, whom many will recognize as the voice of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies, delivers a magnificent listening experience of the familiar classic. Serkis perfectly captures the nuances of each character, offering an engrossing performance of the story of a hobbit who is averse to adventure journeying with 13 dwarves to reclaim their treasure from a deadly dragon. Both new listeners and old ought not miss this audiobook.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig | Read by Carey Mulligan
[Penguin Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
English actress Carey Mulligan narrates this wondrous audiobook about a woman’s existential journey between life and death. At age 35, Nora Seed attempts suicide. Instead of dying, Nora arrives at a metaphysical library that represents all her possible existences had she made different choices. While the story structure is episodic, Mulligan maintains strong narrative cohesion with her vibrant and humane portrayals of Nora and of the recurring characters who appear in her various lives.
The Neil Gaiman Reader by Neil Gaiman, Marlon James [Fore.] | Read by Neil Gaiman, George Guidall, Lenny Henry, Leon Nixon [Fore.]
[Harper Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
With a natural ease and a British accent, award-winning author Neil Gaiman reads 52 handpicked selections from this darkly comic career-spanning collection. Whether the topic is discovering the Holy Grail in an antique shop; retelling a much creepier, bloodier version of Snow White; or choosing a half-man/half-god to battle a demon on the Scottish Highlands, Gaiman is at his best reimagining and interweaving the broad styles of classic myth, ghost stories, fairy tales, and graphic novels. All these stories sound like they were meant to be read aloud in an old-time parlor with the lights down low.
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman | Read by Sutton Foster
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
Tony Award winner Sutton Foster narrates the prequel to Practical Magic. In 1664, Hannah Owens takes in baby Maria and teaches her the craft. Maria grows up and falls in love but is abandoned. She follows the object of her affection to Salem, Massachusetts, where she invokes the curse that will affect generations, and, in the process, she learns the real rules of magic. Foster sings beautifully and keeps to a steady pace for the descriptive story.
Nonfiction
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough, Jonnie Hughes | Read by David Attenborough
[Hachette Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
David Attenborough is best known for his BBC nature documentaries, with their stunning scenes of wild animals and their habitats around the globe. What this program shows, though, is that he is equally adept at painting vivid scenes with words, a skill that makes this work eminently suitable to audio. The audiobook is part autobiography and part ecology lesson. Most of all, it is Attenborough’s last-ditch plea for humankind to save itself by saving the environment.
The Quiet Americans by Scott Anderson | Read by Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson [Preface, Note]
[Random House Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Two matchless storytellers combine talents in this compelling audiobook history of the Cold War, as told through the adventures and misadventures of four key CIA agents. Scott Anderson is the author of 2013’s Lawrence in Arabia, a favorite among fans of serious nonfiction. Narrator Dean brings the steadiness, focus, and dramatic immediacy required for a long narrative, especially one that maintains four interwoven storylines. This is one of the most provocative, most satisfying nonfiction audiobooks of the year.
The Fragile Earth by David Remnick, Henry Finder [Eds.] | Read by Kaleo Griffith, Gabra Zackman, Cat Gould
[Harper Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Kaleo Griffith, Gabra Zackman, and Cat Gould narrate this timely collection of climate-change nonfiction from THE NEW YORKER magazine with engagement, clarity, and an admirable mix of insistence and calm. Written by many of the magazine’s most well-known authors, the pieces focus on “how we got here, where we are, and what we can do now.” The information they relate is serially eye-opening, terrifying, and riveting. The narrators’ articulate, unruffled readings are essential; they keep us listening to news that must no longer be avoided.
His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham, John Lewis [Afterword] | Read by JD Jackson, Jon Meacham
[Random House Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
This stirring audiobook offers a memorable merging of author, subject, and narrator. JD Jackson voices John Lewis with an authentic and nuanced nod to his rural Alabama roots. He adroitly does the New England intonations of JFK and RFK and the drawls of LBJ and George Wallace. But it is the powerful retelling of John Lewis’s life’s work fighting to bring civil and voting rights to Black Americans that stays with the listener. The late congressman added a fitting afterword to this audiobook.
Once I Was You by Maria Hinojosa | Read by Maria Hinojosa
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
Veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa, anchor and executive producer of NPR’s “Latino USA” and founder of Futuro Media Group, narrates her story of growing up in a Mexican immigrant family and finding her way in life and in her career in the big city as a young adult. Narrating her own work allows Hinojosa to put the most fitting vocal emphases on her text. She reads at a leisurely pace in a lower tone, and one hears her professional bearing.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s Kindred, Talia Levin’s Culture Warlords, Xiaowei Wang’s Blockchain Chicken Farm, Perri Klass’ A Good Time to Be Born, and Julia Zarankin’s Field Notes From an Unintentional Birder all feature among October’s best reviewed science, technology, and nature books.
1. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
(Bloomsbury Sigma)
6 Rave • 3 Positive
“If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there’s a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration … Occasionally the writing bogs down in details overly numerous and technical for a wide readership … Make no mistake, though. What Wragg Sykes has produced in Kindred, after eight years of labor, is masterful. Synthesizing over a century and a half of research, she gives us a vivid feel for a past in which we weren’t the only smart, feeling bipedal primate alive. That feel comes across sometimes in startlingly fresh ways.”
–Barbara J. King (NPR)
2. Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin
(Hachette)
3 Rave 4 Positive
“Lavin does not lack sympathy for the loneliness of incels, for instance. But she does more than most anti-extremists to connect the present fascist right to its predecessors as part of long histories of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and fascist organizing in this country … Though Lavin’s book may lack policy recommendations, her work contains the truth that the fight against emerging fascism is a mass political struggle, not a technical problem for experts to solve. Not everyone can punch Nazis, or dox them. Indeed, recent events have made clear that many of the upholders of white supremacy will not come to us in the reassuringly exotic form of the neo-Nazi. They will arise from the ranks of quotidian supporters of the structures of white supremacy, such as that of the police. It’s going to take much more than guidance programs for the youth and enhanced surveillance to counter the rising tide of the far right.”
–Peter Berard (The Los Angeles Review of Books)
3. Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside by Xiaowei Wang
(FSG Originals)
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“…fascinating … It’s a weird, delightful and unsettling tableau. In Blockchain Chicken Farm Wang introduces us to dozens of such quixotic figures, hopscotching across the country on a mission: to document how technology is transforming the lives of China’s rural poor … Wang has a keen eye for the steampunk-like details of ancient rural areas now shot through with internet opportunity … Wang has written a nuanced and thought-provoking account.”
–Clive Thompson (The New York Times Book Review)
4. A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass
(W. W. Norton & Company)
2 Rave • 2 Positive
“Klass brings exceptional and compassionate writing skills to an exploration of the hazards of early life, using stories of both rich and poor families before the 20th century to show how precarious children’s lives were at that time … The author provides insight into the importance of vaccinations and health checks along with touching upon vital subjects such as child rearing, child safety seats, breastfeeding, and other concerns of childhood that have seen changes over time … Klass masterfully introduces readers to the people coming up with solutions for many of the dangers of childhood and shows how the pediatric specialty over time has worked to improve children’s lives. Essential reading for parents.”
–Margaret Henderson (Library Journal)
5. Field Notes From an Unintentional Birder by Julia Zarankin
(Douglas and McIntyre)
1 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an excerpt from Field Notes From an Unintentional Birder here
“This sense of wonder in the ordinary permeates Field Notes From an Unintentional Birder, a thoughtful, engaging and sometimes humorous memoir that documents Zarankin’s evolution from shy novice birder to confident expert … Her bird descriptions are witty and apt.”
–Laurie Hertzel (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
This week’s quintet of quality reviews includes Joshua Ferris on Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions, Ron Charles on Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Scott W. Stern’s on Talia Lavin’s Culture Warlords, Daphne Merkin on Heather Clark’s Red Comet, and Jess Bergman on Susan Taubes’ Divorcing.
“Jess Walter has fashioned his eighth novel, The Cold Millions, out of the free speech riots that erupted in Spokane, Wash., in the early years of the 20th century … Walter dramatizes the melee and its aftermath with a lively cast of characters both invented and real … Walter’s latest novel is more hybrid beast than those earlier books: not quite fiction and not history but a splicing of the two, so that the invented rises to the occasion of the real and the real guides and determines the fate of the invented … The Cold Millions ends as a eulogy for a certain kind of man: white, fair-minded, nonideological, inclined toward the sidelines. Had Walter inserted a time machine into his book after all, and flown Rye to the current year, it’s hard to imagine even someone so innately neutral looking on passively as history comes for him, too.”
–Joshua Ferris on Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions (The New York Times Book Review)
“Memorial is a profoundly sensitive story about the rough boundaries of love in a multicultural society. In fact, no other novel I’ve read this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America. The range of cultures, races, generations and sexual identities contending with one another in these pages is not a woke argument; it’s the nature of modern family life fully realized … Memorial unfolds as a series of isolated moments, many only a page long, some merely a single line. Told first from Ben’s perspective and then from Mike’s, these moments continually blend past and present, enacting each narrator’s confession as a kind of prose poem … Washington inhabits these two men so naturally that the sophistication of this form is rendered entirely invisible, and their narratives unspool as spontaneously and clearly as late-night conversation … In a disposable society, Memorial is a testament to the permanence of filial connections, a clear-eyed acknowledgment that our relatives don’t always behave nicely, but they’re with us for life.”
–Ron Charles on Bryan Washington’s Memorial (The Washington Post)
“Culture Warlords is not truly a history or an ethnography or a memoir or even really a travelogue from racist site to racist site. It belongs, rather, to an older model of writing. It is a jeremiad, in the very best sense. There may be deeper, more comprehensive studies of the far right, but the value of Culture Warlords is its anger…With her frankness and unapologetic partisanship, Lavin models an activist-journalist-scholar approach, the writer as warrior … Much of the anthropological information Lavin conveys about these white supremacist online communities is, sadly, no longer surprising … But Lavin also reveals less well-known information, which shines a light on the profound unreality of modern racist communities … As Lavin shows, a vital tool in the anti-fascist arsenal is unmasking white supremacists in public, denying them respectability and anonymity.”
–Scott W. Stern’s on Talia Lavin’s Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (The New Republic)
“…just as one is wondering whether there can possibly be anything new to be said, here comes Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath hurtling down the chute, weighing in at more than 1,000 densely printed pages … as Plath and her complex, much analyzed legacy fade with the passing of successive generations, and her work grows more removed from the cultural mainstream, now seems a prime moment to revive her tale and try to bring all of its elements together … Clark is at pains to see Plath clearly, to rescue her from the reductive clichés and distorted readings of her work largely because of the tragedy of her ending … there is no denying the book’s intellectual power and, just as important, its sheer readability. Clark is a felicitous writer and a discerning critic of Plath’s poetry … Instead of depleting my interest in Plath, the book stimulated it further … Clark’s talent for scene-painting and inserting the stray but illustrative detail (‘By January 31, the date of her last surviving check stub, she had only 59 pounds’) contributes to create a harrowing picture of the narrow confines of the London that Plath had moved to with such high hopes.”
–Daphne Merkin on Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (The New York Times Book Review)
“Divorcing’s structural slipperiness earns Taubes comparisons to Renata Adler and Elizabeth Hardwick in the novel’s new publicity copy, but the book’s closest analogue might be the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann’s 1971 novel Malina, another nightmare-haunted portrait of a woman unmoored by what Taubes called ‘the moral catastrophe of the twentieth century,’ a writer who seldom writes and is consumed by a relationship with an enigmatic man (the lovers in the two novels even share a name: Ivan). These similarities are more than incidental: Bachmann’s life, like Taubes’s, had been bifurcated by the war—Taubes was forced to flee her native Budapest for the United States at 11, while Bachmann, the estranged daughter a Nazi soldier, lived for seven years in occupied Carinthia—and her protagonist in Malina evinces the same equivocal relationship to reality as Sophie Blind. It’s possible that Jacob Taubes also sensed an affinity between the two writers: He allegedly enjoyed a brief fling with Bachmann in Rome … Ultimately, Divorcing is a compendium of severance: not just a wife from her husband, but a family from their homeland, and a people from their God … Beneath the surface, the calamity of the Holocaust runs through this fragmented novel like shrapnel … In one of many linkages of the personal and world-historical, Divorcing also provides a more pedestrian image of disintegration in the form of objects that Sophie and Ezra have misplaced over the course of their peripatetic marriage … Consider the novel’s final scene: Sophie wakes from a dream of an imagined journey to embark on an actual one. Or does she? It’s difficult to tell. But Sophie isn’t bothered by the ambiguity of her circumstances … That the simplicity of this conclusion eluded Taubes outside fiction is a tragedy. But she made a life’s work from its absence.”
–Jess Bergman on Susan Taubes’ Divorcing (Jewish Currents)
Les and Tamara Payne’s The Dead Are Arising, Heather Clark’s Red Comet, David Michaelis’ Eleanor, John Birdsall’s The Man Who Ate Too Much, and H. W. Brands’ The Zealot and the Emancipator all feature among October’s best reviewed memoirs and biographies.
1. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
(Liveright)
8 Raves • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Dead Are Arising here
“…this kind of textured attention to Black life and community, whether in Omaha or Boston, Atlanta or Accra, distinguishes Les Payne’s masterful biography, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X … a meticulously researched, compassionately rendered, and fiercely analytical examination of the radical revolutionary as a human being … a portrait that pushes us beyond the adolescent hero worship that many in my generation cling to in our current political moment as we reread Malcolm X, C. L. R. James, Angela Davis, and other Black thinkers … With new information gleaned from decades of research, Payne sheds fresh light on key moments in Malcolm’s political journey … Because Payne takes the memories and views of Black communities seriously—because he never assumes that Malcolm’s Black contemporaries experienced him in the same way that we describe him in the present—The Dead Are Arisingprovides an invaluable glimpse into the mechanics of community mobilization led by Black women … The Dead Are Arising forces us to ask deeper, more complicated questions about the Black people and places from which our heroes come.”
–Kerri Greenidge (The Atlantic)
2. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
(Knopf)
7 Raves • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“… [an] incandescent, richly researched biography … Red Comet takes us on a literary picaresque, drawing on untapped archives, Plath’s complete correspondence, interviews with surviving members of the couple’s social and professional circles, and, most crucially, on Hughes’ journals and letters. From both perspectives Clark evokes how their common purpose rose and later diverged, invaluable reportage missing from other books … Clark delves deeper than biographers who have gone before: We see the poet as if peering through the Hubble Telescope for the first time, blurred galaxies and nebulas bursting into crystalline detail. Yet this gold standard of a biography does something more: Red Comet is a page-turner, particularly when Clark shifts to Plath’s final two years in England … By centering Plath’s evolving command of craft—by focusing on her peerless lyrical ear—Clark peels away clichéd interpretations much as the poet shed her false selves … A bravura performance, Red Comet is the one we’ve waited for.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
3. The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard by John Birdsall
(W. W. Norton & Company)
7 Raves • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“With loving care, Birdsall details the central irony of James’s life: it was his job to share gastronomic pleasure with the public, but he had to keep his own private desires out of sight … Birdsall has established himself as our pioneering writer on the unacknowledged role played by closeted gay men in shaping America’s food culture … Birdsall has done his research with enviable skill … The most admirable food writing—including The Man Who Ate Too Much—reminds us that enjoying food starts with learning about our own tastes. Good food is the food that pleases us, be it new or familiar.”
–Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft (The Los Angeles Review of Books)
4. The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H. W. Brands
4 Raves • 5 Positives
Read an excerpt from The Zealot and the Emancipator here
“‘Brown was a first martyr in the war that freed the slaves, Lincoln one of the last,’ Brands writes in a tale told by a master storyteller, with a momentum and a power appropriate to the subject. In these pages we have the hare (Brown) and the tortoise (Lincoln). In these pages it is no fable, but instead one of the greatest, but surely the bloodiest, American stories.”
–David M. Shribman (The Boston Globe)
5. Eleanor by David Michaelis
(Simon & Schuster)
7 Raves • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“Michaelis details innumerable stories of people and events in Eleanor’s life, from her years as the increasingly engaged first lady to her roles in Democratic Party politics to her work as a newspaper columnist and speaker after Franklin’s death in 1945 … Much of Eleanor will be familiar to many readers, but Michaelis’s rendering is especially bright and a pleasure to read. Few other books reveal the fascinating inner journey that transformed Eleanor from an emotionally choked-off young woman into a mature leader who inspired millions.”
–Joseph Barbato (The New York Journal of Books)
Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to the author of The Witch Hunter, Max Seeck.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Max Seeck: Animal Farm by George Orwell.
BM: Favorite re-read?
MS: Jo Nesbø’s Police.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
MS: Perhaps a book from Lars Kepler or Stephen King.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
MS: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
BS: Last book you read?
MS: Lanny by Max Porter.
BM: A book that made you cry?
MS: Kärlekens Antarktis by Sara Stridsberg.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
MS: The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
MS: Cannot think of any.
BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?
MS: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
MS: Perhaps… A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel.
BM: Classic book you hate?
MS: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?
MS: Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
BM: What’s a book with a really great sex scene?
MS: I don’t know but I’d really like to read one.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
MS: Stoner by John Williams.
BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?
MS: A Little Life.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
MS: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
MS: Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
MS: Mestaritontun seikkailut by Aili Somersalo.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
MS: A Little Life.
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Max Seeck devotes his time to writing professionally. An avid reader of Nordic noir for personal pleasure, he listens to film scores as he writes. His accolades include the Finnish Whodunit Society’s Debut Thriller of the Year Award 2016. Max Seeck has a background in sales and marketing and loves to promote his works, and is fluent in English and German.
Max Seeck’s The Witch Hunter is out now in paperback from Berkley
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H. W. Brands’ The Zealot and the Emancipator, Martin J. Sherwin’s Gambling With Armageddon, Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing, Margaret MacMillan’s War, and Toby Wilkinson’s A World Beneath the Sands all feature among October’s best reviewed history and politics books.
1. The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom by H. W. Brands
(Doubleday Books)
4 Rave • 5 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Zealot and the Emancipator here
“… builds on strengths long evident in Brands’s books, combining expert storytelling with thoughtful interpretation vividly to render major events through the lives of the chief participants. Apart from a biography of U. S. Grant, Brands has until now had surprisingly little to say about the Civil War era, but this book presents a gripping account of the politics that led to Southern secession, war and the abolition of slavery … In line with recent writings by, among others, James Oakes and Sidney Blumenthal, Brands refuses to diminish Lincoln’s antislavery moral commitment because of his politics, any more than he absolves Brown’s uncompromising higher judgments of their untethered recklessness.”
–Sean Wilentz (The New York Times Book Review)
2. Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis by Martin J. Sherwin
(Knopf)
6 Rave
“Benefiting from more than a half century of hindsight, the Pulitzer-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin delivers a well-researched and reasoned analysis of nuclear weapons’ impact from 1945 to 1962 … The book should become the definitive account of its subject … Since the October 1962 near miss of a holocaust, most global leaders have prioritized arms control to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war. Gambling With Armageddon is a useful reminder to their successors to continue the effort.”
–Talmadge Boston (The New York Times Book Review)
3. War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan
(Random House)
3 Rave • 4 Positive
“… richly eclectic … not a long book, only 272 pages of text, but it’s as colorful and tightly woven as a Persian carpet, showing us not just the many ways that men and women make war, but how war makes women and men. In another scholar’s hands, War might come across as a work of dry political theory, but as anyone who has read Paris 1919—her vivid account of the Versailles Conference at the end of World War I—can attest, MacMillan writes with enormous ease, and practically every page of this book is interesting, even entertaining … The greatest pleasures of this book are the historical anecdotes, moments and quotations that MacMillan marshals on nearly every page to illustrate her points. They are bold, arresting and various, and they make the book come alive.”
–Dexter Filkins (The New York Times Book Review)
4. A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology by Toby Wilkinson
(W. W. Norton & Company)
3 Rave • 3 Positive
“Wilkinson’s ambitious focus is the hundred years of Egyptology between Jean-Francois Champollion’s groundbreaking deciphering of the Rosetta stone in 1822 and Howard Carter’s sensational discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922 … The quiet yet salient revelation of Wilkinson’s study—and what makes the story of 19th-century Egyptology relevant now—is how the Anglo-French obsession with Egypt’s past and their frantic bid for control of its future gradually spurred the downtrodden modern Egyptians toward a newfound self-awareness … All the fascinating giants of Egyptology appear here … This is a riveting, sometimes appalling story. I think it’s important to say that Wilkinson’s prose style is so smooth and straight and unadorned as to be nearly nonexistent … Wilkinson is a consummate historian … Rarely do facts speak this clearly.”
–Rosemary Mahoney (The New York Times Book Review)
5. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
(Simon & Schuster)
2 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Rather than focusing on the tension between generations the authors encourage young people to look for an earlier precedent for themselves. They remind us that the problems of today with which the new generations must grapple—the skyrocketing costs of health care, the weakness of environmental regulations, the power of corporate monopolies, and the urgent need for campaign finance reform—are almost exactly the same as those that confronted the original Progressives in their day, even if the solutions to these problems must be new and different ones … magnificent and visionary.”
–Win McCormack (The New Republic)
Scott James’ Trial by Fire is published today. He shares five books to help us understand the rise of Trump, noting, “Trial by Fire recounts the 2003 Station nightclub fire that killed 100 when the rock band Great White set off fireworks to starts its show. As I dug deeper, I realized there was another story that paralleled the whodunit, true crime tragedy—it was about the plight of poor and working class Americans. The victims of the fire, mostly white and blue collar, are betrayed at nearly every turn. When checking the backgrounds of my subjects, more often than not, I discovered they were registered Republicans. That surprised me, since most were partying, free-spirited rock fans from very blue states. When I finished telling the story, I had a better grasp of why working class Americans are drawn to a figure they see as someone who understands how they’ve been spurned by our nation’s institutions. Here are five other books that have nothing to do with Trump, but give us insight into poor and working class Americans who support him. Some are true stories and others are novels. It’s no coincidence many of these books have gained huge readerships in recent years—I’m not alone in a desire to understand how American got to this place.”
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
A local factory sickens residents of a small Massachusetts town and powerful forces try to ensure that no one is held accountable. One man stages a Sisyphean fight on the victims’ behalf that succeeds against all odds, but he is destroyed in the process. When you are poor in America, even when you are right and win, you don’t really win.
Jane Ciabattari: A Civil Action won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction in 1995. It pitted Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer representing families in Woburn, Massachusetts whose children had died of cancer caused by water pollution, against two of the country’s largest corporations. In the opening chapter, when a sheriff has come to repossess Schlichtmann’s Porsche, we learn has poured his energies into the case at the risk of personal bankruptcy. How does Harr’s narrative focus on this flamboyant, risk-taking lawyer help us understand the injustice of the legal system?
Scott James: One of the challenges of writing long-form journalism is transforming the story into something more than just a lengthy newspaper article. Harr’s A Civil Action is a master class. The layers of details are remarkable—something you’d typically get only in a novel—and they’re used in the service of constructing vivid characters we can invest in as readers.
To sustain a whole book, however, you need to go one step further. You need compelling central characters whose storylines can sustain the entire story. Harr could have picked any number of victims as main subjects, and indeed he tells many of their stories, but the lawyer Schlichtmann’s narrative has a clear, compelling beginning, middle and end, plus unexpected twists, including an exposé of the legal system. He’s the thread that ties everyone together, and he’s fascinating.
As the saying goes, you’ve got to get people into the church if you expect them to hear the sermon. Schlichtmann’s journey puts us in the pews, and through storytelling (not preaching), we hear what Harr has to say about injustice.
Educated by Tara Westover
We’ve seen news accounts about right-wing anti-government extremists hunkered down in their compounds waiting for the end times. For Westover, that’s dad.
JC: Westover and her five siblings were raised by fundamentalist Mormon survivalist parents near Buck’s Peak in Idaho, where she was home schooled and worked in her father’s junkyard. She was able to break away at seventeen, going on to study at Brigham Young University and earning a Ph.D. at Cambridge. What insights does her memoir give us about America’s anti-government extremists?
SJ: Westover puts a face on a story that we typically only hear about when it reaches a boiling point, like an armed standoff. The reality is that there are whole swaths of America that live with these thoughts as part of their daily existence. Westover reveals how these alarming views—not supported by facts—are forced by parents onto their children in a type of insidious brainwashing. It makes you wonder if thousands are locked into a hopeless cult of paranoia that feels like mental illness.
Yet Westover herself breaks free, so while illuminating a troubling situation, the story is also inspiring. That combination makes a tough subject easier for readers to grasp. That’s why it’s such a satisfying read.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
You won’t find many characters in fiction that are as poor and disenfranchised as Kya Clark. Society tossed her away as trash, and millions have been glued to the pages to see if she can prevail.
JC: Kya is known as the “Marsh Girl,” abandoned by her family and raising herself amongst wild creatures who live in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. What does she represent for the poor and disenfranchised?
SJ: In America, research has shown that disdain for less educated people is the last acceptable prejudice. Looking down on people based on their race, religion, orientation, gender or economic status is widely condemned, but someone who didn’t finish high school or college? Well, that’s their own damn fault.
The truth is that two-thirds of Americans do not have four-year degrees. Democrats, once the party that represented working class folks, are now seen by many as the party of elites—and Republican pundits (who are no less elite), have successfully smeared Democrats as snobs in many minds.
So it’s no wonder that book readers, who tend to be better educated, (because reading tends to do that) are so fascinated by Kya. She brings us into the world of someone officially uneducated. We quickly learn that Kya is not an idiot, and in some ways is actually quite brilliant—and she resents that others see her as stupid because she did not receive formal schooling. When Trump, an Ivy League graduate, said in 2016, “I love the poorly educated,” his message was aimed at the vast number of Americans in the spectrum that includes Kya. Few politicians have so directly spoken to this group and so effectively connected.
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
This memoir about one man’s journey from an Appalachian holler to Ivy League law was seen as a crystal ball into Trumpian mindsets, and Vance found himself a Fox News fixture.
JC: Vance notes that his grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” when they left Kentucky for a Rust Belt town in Ohio. They carried with them scars that could not be healed. What elements of this legacy links them to Trump’s followers?
SJ: The rise of Donald Trump was in full swing when Hillbilly Elegy was published in June 2016 and conservative writers embraced the book as a venue for understanding why so many Americans felt disenfranchised. Then, after Trump was elected, many wondered why they didn’t see that coming, and turned to the book to gain insight. Vance and his memoir became phenomena.
Hillbilly Elegy showed how our nation’s institutions have continuously failed certain folks, and that has led to deep resentment. Vance explored the tribalism that has existed in the Appalachian communities for generations. Add that to the feelings of betrayal and there’s a political sea change. And these communities tend to dig in their heels. West Virginia, for example, mostly voted for Democrats for president from 1932 to 1996. In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by an astounding 42 points.
In my own book I document how working-class people were failed by institutions that were supposed to protect them. There was enormous rage and people responded in ways that were troubling and sometimes self-destructive. If you push people to their limits, there are consequences.
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by Laura Albert under the name JT LeRoy
This was one of the greatest literary hoaxes of all time, with Albert pretending to be a poor white boy author when it was published. Perhaps so many were duped because they craved an authentic voice from America’s underclass. Despite the scandal, twenty years later this remains a brutal, fictional account of the failed foster care system, poverty, abuse and addiction. People in these situations are looking for a savior.
JC: “JT was an avatar,” Laura Albert says in her presentation for The Moth. She also says, “Oscar Wilde says, ‘Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.'” If you set aside the pseudonym and the hoax, you have a series of linked short stories about a four-year-old boy who is ripped away from foster parents by his mother when she reaches eighteen, launched into a life of neglect and abuse. The hoax worked because narrative voice felt authentic. Which of the stories strikes you as most telling about boys like JT?
SJ: First, let me confess that the hoax worked on me personally. JT LeRoy blurbed my first novel, SoMa (written under the pen name Kemble Scott). We talked on the phone. My writer friends were fascinated that I’d spoken to the mysterious JT and wondered what it was like. I told them, “I couldn’t tell if the person was a man or a woman.” A story was there and I didn’t see it.
That’s because I was among the readers ensnared by the work. I was especially stunned by the subcultural of the “lot lizards” depicted throughout LeRoy’s work. “Lot lizard” is the nickname given to a truck stop prostitute—a world of survival sex work, substance abuse, child neglect and endangerment, and extreme poverty.
The American system isn’t exactly working out for characters like JT. It’s understandable that they reject social norms, and if the world blows up, well, then there’s a chance life could be better for them if everything is thrown out and we all start over from scratch. It evens the playing field.
Trump promised to upend our institutions. In many ways he’s done that, although the results have not exactly benefited the poor and working class. In the pandemic, these are the people who have disproportionately suffered. But many remain hardcore Trump believers, because he’s still speaking to them.
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