Fiction
-- Publishers Weekly, 3/19/2007
Boxed and starred reviews indicate books of outstanding quality.
Boxed, unstarred reviews indicate books of special interest.
[Signature] Reviewed by Allegra Goodman Young writers are often told to write about what they know. In his 1999 collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander spun the material of his orthodox Jewish background into marvelous fiction. But the real trick to writing about what you know is to make sure you know more as you mature. Englander's first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, conjures a world far removed from "The Gilgul of Second Avenue." The novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina's "dirty war." Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta, son of a whore, earns a meager living defacing gravestones of Jewish whores and pimps whose more respectable children want to erase their immigrant parents' names and forget their shameful activities. Kaddish labors in the Jewish cemetery at night. His hardworking wife, Lillian, toils in an insurance agency by day, and their idealistic son, Pato, attends college, goes to concerts and smokes pot with his friends. When Pato is taken from home, Kaddish learns what it really means to erase identity, because no one in authority will admit Pato has been arrested. No one will even acknowledge that Pato existed. As Lillian and Kaddish attempt to penetrate the Ministry of Special Cases, Englander's novel takes on an epic quality in which Jewish parents descend into the underworld and journey through circles of hell. Gogol, I.B. Singer and Orwell all come to mind, but Englander's book is unique in its layering of Jewish tradition and totalitarian obliteration. At times Englander's motifs seem forced. Kaddish, whose very name evokes the memory of the dead, chisels out the name of a plastic surgeon's disreputable father, and in lieu of cash receives nose jobs for himself and his wife. Lillian's nose job is at first unsuccessful, and her nose slides off her face. One form of defacement pays for another. Kaddish fights with his son in the cemetery and accidentally slices off the tip of Pato's finger. Attempting to erase a letter, Kaddish blights a digit. But the fight seems staged, Pato's presence unwarranted except for Englander's schema. Other scenes are haunting: Lillian confronting bureaucrats; Kaddish appealing to a rabbi to learn if it is possible for a Jew to have a funeral without a body; Kaddish picking an embarrassing embroidered name off the velvet curtain in front of the ark in the synagogue. When he picks off the gold thread, the name stands out even more prominently because the velvet underneath the embroidery is unfaded, darker than the rest of the fabric. Englander writes with increasing power and authority in the second half of his book; he probes deeper and deeper, looking at what absence means, reading the shadow letters on history's curtain. (May) Allegra Goodman is the author of five books, including Intuition. For this anthology of the literature of Sanjania, a fictitious North Atlantic island, Marche (Raymond and Hannah) creates a Sanjanian dialect and embeds it in an authentically alien atmosphere, as in the two stories that represent 19th century pamphlet literature, "The Destruction of Marlyebone, the Pirate King" and "Pigeon Blackhat." The stories have commonplace plots, but their twisted diction is brilliant: "In that time, no sailor on Sanjan Island did not know of the Beacham house and Pigeon Blackhat, I say it to my shame." As Sanjania goes through an independence movement and postcolonial dictatorship during the 20th century, the writing styles reflect international fashion, from the Hemingway-influenced "clean writing" movement of Blessed Shirley to the supposed magical realism of covetown life in, for instance, "A Wedding in Restitution" (later made into a festsival-sweeping film). In keeping with the academic anthology structure, Marche provides a preface, an index of author biographies and a selection of Sanjanian criticism—all straight-faced, and all perfect. Marche's concept is fascinating, but Sanjanian literature gets noticably worse the further one gets into the 20th century—perhaps Marche's sly comment on declining national hopes, Sanjanian and otherwise. (Aug.) German writer Löhr resurrects a chess-playing automaton in his generously imagined debut novel. Set in 1770, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen of Hungary, anxious to win the favor of Empress Maria Theresia, builds an engineering marvel: the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton. The Turk, though, isn't exactly as it seems; hidden inside is Italian chess prodigy (and dwarf) Tibor Scardenelli, hired by Kempelen to secretly control the contraption during its debut match in front of the empress. Tibor, a devout Catholic, is hesitant to partake in the scam and insists he will quit after the match. The game goes off without a glitch, but Court Mechanician Frederich Knaus is suspicious of the Turk and convinces his lover, Galatea, to spy on Kempelen. Tension mounts as the Turk gains notoriety and is requested to perform at a ball celebrating the union of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Tibor agrees to a repeat performance (at a higher fee), but when a baroness is found dead after the match and traces of her rouge are found on the Turk, rumors of the "Curse of the Turk" spread and may be Kempelen's undoing. Though the narrative could use a light pruning, Löhr's eye for period detail and cast of eccentrics create an immersive and mirthful experience. (July) A series of vignettes depicting aspiring artists, hustling executives, the alternative underground and stage parents, the debut by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Moore misses the high mark it aspires to. Her characters, painted in broad strokes, follow the conventions of their type and are variously connected by corporate behemoth Titan Records. Theo, a talent scout in his mid-20s desperate to prove his legitimacy, discovers the Burn, a band that could be the next big thing. His aching self-importance is juxtaposed against the cool calm of Siobhan, the band's singer, who harbors deep pain rooted in her mother's death and Kurt Cobain's suicide. The Burn tours as the opening act for Titan's superstar Tommy Mays, who struggles to balance new fatherhood with life on the road. Several loose plot lines are woven throughout, but discovering how each character relates to the others provides the narrative's only consistent enticement, though to diminishing returns. By sacrificing a degree of realism, however, Moore comes close to creating a fantasyland where anything is possible. While the gimmicks overpower the work, there are moments that hint at Moore's novelistic ability. (July) This is Hickam's third WWII action saga featuring Capt. Josh Thurlow, an officer exhibiting military insight and preternatural fighting abilities. The book opens in 1943 as an American fleet assembles off Tarawa, and the Marines prepare to land. Observing from the deck of a transport, Thurlow points out flaws in the attack plan and predicts the disaster that follows. Although only a spectator, Thurlow cannot resist the lure of battle; he leaps into a landing craft, struggles to shore and rallies the few surviving Marines until reinforcements arrive. Wounded during the melee, Thurlow loses consciousness only to awaken in a caravan of outriggers with a beautiful young nun, a dozen Polynesians and three nondescript Marines. The nun and her flock had endured the invasion as prisoners of the Japanese and are returning to the Far Reaches, their home islands, now occupied by Japanese troops. The nun has near-impossible plans in mind for Thurlow and a painful secret of her own; fans of the genre will know what to expect. Hickam (Rocket Boys; The Ambassador's Son) keeps the stakes high and the tension taut in this fast-moving historical. (June) Booker and Whitbread prize–winner Lively begins her 14th novel, a multigenerational love story, in a London park in 1935, ends it nearly 70 years later after covering several lifetimes of love and heartbreak. The story starts when Lorna Bradley and Matt Faraday meet in St. James Park; they are instantly drawn to one another despite her upper-crust upbringing and Matt's "tradesman" profession. After their marriage, they settle in the country where Matt works as an engraver and Lorna fulfills her domestic role as a wife and mother to their daughter, Molly. It is an idyllic situation until Matt is drafted and sent to Egypt, where he is killed in action. Lorna and young Molly relocate to London, and Lorna works with Matt's friend Lucas at his small printing press. Predictably, Lucas and Lorna marry, but she dies giving birth to Simon. The narrative diverges as grown-up Molly finds employment as a library assistant and has an affair with a wealthy man who fathers her child, Ruth. Grown and with children of her own, Ruth's curiosity about her ancestors sends her on a journey that brings the novel full circle. Lively (A Stitch in Time; Moon Tiger) has crafted a fine novel: intricate, heartbreaking and redemptive. (June) A breezy, melancholic humor graces British author Greenwood's debut novel. The narrative travels back and forth between 2004, when Amy Marsham, who claims to be suffering from "an excess of happiness," visits a shrink named Patrick McIlhenny, and a decade earlier, when Amy is struggling with ambivalence about her unexpected pregnancy; her husband, James; his best friend, Archie (whom Amy has a possibly innocent crush on); her twin sister, Thea; and her general sense of dissatisfaction. Although the visits to Patrick at first seem like contrived interruptions in the main narrative, it soon becomes clear that he also played a role in 1994, when James, suffering from anxiety attacks, seeks Patrick's help. Archie, meanwhile, approaches his 40th birthday with his business floundering, his girlfriend dumping him, and a possible malignant tumor. Amy contemplates her attraction to Archie and her desire to do something with her life. Thea, a Hollywood media attorney, returns to London, forcing Amy to deal with their rivalry. As the story advances, the reader is treated to a confidently wrought if sometimes tedious collage of modulating friendships and romantic relationships among a set of 30-somethings with long shared histories. Though not all pieces of the mosaic are equally impressive, the bigger picture is worth looking at. (June) In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore (One Last Look) examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women's prison. Sloatsburg Correctional Institution, a former sanitarium on the west bank of the Hudson, is dangerous, understaffed, underfinanced and overwhelmingly grim. The place epitomizes what's wrong with our nation's prison system and stands as a warning about our growing mental health crisis. Moore deftly shifts perspective among her principal characters—Dr. Louise Forrest, Sloatsburg's psychiatry chief; Helen Nash, a suicidal inmate who's been convicted of killing her children; Capt. Henry "Ike" Bradshaw, a corrections officer who's in love with Louise; and Angie Mills, a Hollywood actress (and Louise's ex-husband's girlfriend), whom Helen believes is her long-lost sister—as the action hurtles to an oddly satisfying resolution. Reading this heartbreaker is like watching a train wreck while dialing for help on your cellphone. You can't turn away. 75,000 printing; author tour. (May) A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg's nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice. Hoping her boyfriend, Julian, will propose before shipping out to the Pacific, beautiful redhead Kitty Heaney discovers not only is she not engaged, but she's enlisted as the delivery person for her sister Louise's engagement ring from Michael, her boyfriend, who has departed for the European front. Distance makes Louise's and Michael's hearts grow fonder while Kitty discovers independence through her job at a bomber factory. As the months go by, Louise learns she is pregnant and Kitty meets an attractive soldier (one of many the girls encounter) at a USO dance. As the young soldiers offer a range of feelings about war from humor to anger, wonder to despair, Berg (We Are All Welcome Here; The Handmaid and the Carpenter; 2000 Oprah pick Open House) captures changing attitudes toward working women and single mothers in this sentimental celebration of a bygone era. (May) A picaresque set on the fictional Caribbean island of San Carlos in 1942, Channer's rewarding and tense novella follows the journey of fishing village outcast Estrella Thompson, a precocious 14-year-old with a woman's body who seeks shoes, employment and acceptance in the capital city of Seville after being excommunicated from her village. Along the way, she meets sundry men, some of whom offer to help her and almost none of whom ought to be trusted. Estrella comes of age practically by the hour, learning what to expect of others, what to value in herself and how to make her own demands. Channer writes with an intriguing, lyrical blend of English and Caribbean patois and uses simple language and crisp imagery (a woman's face is "as plain and inexpressive as an egg"; beach sand is "so white that on the coolest days you had to squint to see it"). While Channer's earlier work engaged the psyche of Caribbean diaspora in less subtle narratives (Waiting in Vain; Satisfy My Soul), this novella—a moral fable, Russell Banks notes in his afterword—signals the arrival of a talent matured. (May) Set in 1946, Lucarelli's taut middle volume of his De Luca trilogy (after Carte Blanche) finds Commissario De Luca, who was a police officer during the Mussolini regime, in a perilous position. Under an assumed name, De Luca is just trying to survive any way he can when a member of the Partisan Police catches him in the woods outside Ravenna and drags him into an investigation of a triple homicide. Despite his instincts for self-preservation, De Luca can't refrain from making observations that display his professional expertise. When he's seduced by the local strongman's girlfriend, De Luca finds himself further at risk. While many authors have written of the conflicts faced by honest police officers in Nazi Germany, few American readers will be familiar with the aftermath of WWII in Italy, and Lucarelli excels at portraying fear and suspicion in a country struggling to recover from its national trauma. (May) Italian journalist Cappellani aspires to emulate Elmore Leonard's darkly humorous books about Mafia life in his first novel with indifferent results. Lou Sciortino, a young member of a New York organized crime family, is tapped to head a new movie studio intended to be a cash cow for the organization. After a rival mob family derails that plan with a fatal bombing of the studio's offices, Lou's bosses send him to Sicily. That island proves no haven either after a botched robbery that kills an Italian policeman turns up the heat on the Sicilian Mafia. The brutal, sometimes cartoonish violence undercuts the author's efforts at black comedy, while the overbroad characterizations fall short of the standard of Leonard's more sophisticated crime fiction. (May) A rare, annotated draft of the U.S. Constitution is at the heart of Martin's entertaining third novel to feature antiquarian book dealer Peter Fallon. As in Harvard Yard (2003), Martin tells two stories. The first chronicles the loss and recovery of the document at the time of the constitutional convention, where young Will Pike attends Massachusetts delegate Rufus King, and its passing through generations of the Pike family to the present. The second traces Fallon's search against deadly competition to find the draft. Throughout, Martin makes clear that people have always tried to use the Constitution for their own purposes, including right-wing Christian fanatics, survivalist gun nuts, liberal gun-banners and greedy entrepreneurs now seeking the lost draft. The Pike family motto: "In America, we get up in the morning, we go to work, and we solve our problems" serves as a unifying theme, and Martin also makes clear that the Constitution—drafts and all—was intended as a unifying agent. This is a good mystery, a better examination of constitutional issues and a superb paean to New England, its people, natural beauty and resources. Author tour. (May) Fans of bestseller Smith's ancient Egyptian series will welcome the fourth book in the saga, which picks up where Warlock (2001) left off. The powerful magus Taita and his loyal ally, Col. Meren Cambyses, have returned to Egypt after a journey of many years only to find the country beset by a series of plagues that include giant flesh-eating toads and river water turned to blood. Pharaoh Nefer Seti asks the pair to find—and eliminate—the source of his country's torment, a mission that sends Taita and Meren on a perilous quest in which they must contend with fierce creatures both natural and supernatural. Once again Smith deftly blends history, fantasy and mythology, but newcomers should be prepared for grisly deaths and mutilations. 225,000 printing. (May) Set in contemporary Hollywood, Straw's slick debut opens with a promising setup. Bonnie Quinn, the difficult star of TV's Thanks for Sharing, goes missing just before shooting the show's 100th episode, which will ensure a fortune in syndication. For help in finding Quinn, the program's producer turns to a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist named Hardwick, who has taken to the sordid world of paparazzi journalism with gusto after getting in hock to loan sharks. Hardwick is surprised to discover that pictures he takes of Quinn's "dressing room–cum–residence" show lots of books by such authors as Dickens, Tolstoy, Joyce, Hemingway and Faulkner ("Most I recognized as the first editions I drooled over in the rare book shops near the Beverly Center"). But despite a hero with excellent literary taste, Straw, himself a Hollywood writer and director, delivers a routine thriller that reads more like a screenplay than a novel. (May) In Wilson's pleasantly creepy debut novel, Owen Patterson, a Southern California software manual writer, believes that the "soil" of his marriage has been "poisoned" by the aftereffects of his brother-in-law's murder. The killer, Henry Joseph Raven, murdered CJ while Owen and Patty were on their honeymoon. Raven received a "twenty-odd-year" sentence, but Patty and her parents, a year later, are still in mourning. Owen, meanwhile, comes up with a convoluted plan for revenge: he creates alter ego Lily Hazelton, a lovelorn teacher's aide whose identity is a morass of tortured bits from Owen's past—chiefly his infatuation with now-dead cousin (and first love and sexual partner) Eileen—and writes to Raven in prison. Though the plan is never quite concrete, Owen aims to use Lily to seduce Raven through an exchange of letters, and then deny him the object of his desire, thus destroying Raven as CJ was destroyed. But as Owen gets more involved, it becomes apparent the scheme has more to do with Eileen than CJ. Though the plot takes some predictable turns as Owen's obsession darkens and the James Cain–style ending is telegraphed from the opening pages, the pathos, delusion and hope festering within Owen will carry readers through. (May) The title of the captivating latest by the Hugo-winning author of Dhalgren is also the title of a book of poems written by the novel's poet protagonist, Arnold Hawley. That might strike one as a more straightforward setup than that of Pale Fire. But given that Delany is a poet who gave up writing poetry for a more financially rewarding career writing sci-fi and memoir, and that the fictional Hawley is the same age as Delany and is also black and gay, the reader familiar with Delany's work soon feels that these "dark reflections" form a fascinatingly structured experiment in alternative autobiography—what if Delany had remained a poet and not turned to prose? Hawley's career as a semisuccessful poet istold in reverse, its three sections take the poet from obscure old age to the dawning of youthful ambition. In contrast to the exuberant explorations of the East Village's sexual underworld in Delany's memoirs, poor Hawley's sexual career never really gets off the ground—"what if" for Delany had not come to terms with his sexuality during early 1960s? Delany transforms poetry's status as the most ignored field of American letters into a devastating and beautifully written study of the loneliness and despair that so often accompany the life of the mind in America. (May) A 73-year-old translator of Czech and German living in Cambridge, Mass., in early September 2001, Jiri Posselt is trying to recover after a series of strokes six months before. As part of the therapy to sharpen his memory, Jiri fills notebooks with flashbacks from his past, focusing on the 1942 Lidice massacre, which claimed the lives of his family along with those of their neighbors in reprisal for the Resistance killing of SS General Heydrich. Jiri and his wife, Anna, have befriended their neighbor Tika LaFond, a wide-eyed photography student with a big heart and a loose grasp of world history ("Why did the Nazis do it?" she asks) who mourns her parents' breakup and her tennis ace father's subsequent death in a car crash. As Jiri pieces together his painful past and Tika frets over her roommate's affair with a married man, a murderer stalks Tika. Although Tika is an anemic character compared to Jiri, and Hurka's (Fields of Light) motives for setting this novel on the eve of 9/11 are confounding (the timing also adds awkward symbolic weight to a bevy of plot elements), the novel offers a refreshing perspective on aging, identity and intergenerational bonds. (May) In this impressive debut, Wiersema crafts an intelligent, contemplative supernatural thriller replete with well-rounded characters, artless dialogue and a plot that, while imbued with the unexplained, develops organically, revealing its secrets at just the right pace. In the novel's opening pages, three-year-old Sherry Barrett, an only child, is rendered comatose in a hit and run accident. What follows could have been a typical thriller full of cartoonish villains and escalating peril; it also could have been a treacly fairy tale about God's miraculous healing power. Happily, Wiersema steers clear of these well-traveled roads and, by way of multiple first-person narratives, tells an engrossing story of flawed but genuinely good people who must bear up under the stress of loss, betrayal, unwarranted miracles and unconventional spiritual warfare. Particularly well-imagined is the purgatory of sorts that Henry, the truck driver, must endure after he fails to come forward after the accident. Reminiscent of Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire, Henry's nature, longings and environs paint a poignant picture of souls in need of redemption. While some readers may find one of the novel's final revelations less original than the rest of the story, Wiersema gets nearly everything else right, and the result is an engaging, emotionally resonant read. (May) A Tel Aviv interior designer specializing in closed rooms and clients' privacy, 40-year-old Shlomtzion Drore closed herself off emotionally after her childhood sweetheart, Yair, broke off their engagement when his rabbi refused them his blessing. A rebound marriage, pregnancy and divorce quickly followed, as did an abandonment of the religious nationalism at the center of her relationship with Yair. Now it's the eve of Rabin's assassination in 1995, and Shlomtzion is a secular leftist who supports the Oslo peace accords and the dismantling of the controversial West Bank settlements. But when her daughter, Maya, undergoes a religious awakening and becomes engaged to Yair's son, Shlomtzion is forced to confront her old flame at his West Bank settlement home, and her pentup venom threatens to poison their children's happiness. West Bank resident Elon limns a vivid and dignified portrait of the Israeli religious minority, although at times her characters spout political rhetoric and Shlomtzion's overwritten obsession with Yair and their children's coincidental romance fails to suspend disbelief. (May) Martin's earnestly beat novel tracks homely, studious Alma Price—resigned to being forgettable—as she disappears from her affluent Austin, Tex., home to trace her Mexican roots. Alma deferred her freshman year at Harvard hoping to go to Spain, only to have her parents insist that if she doesn't go off to Harvard, she enroll at the University of Texas. Instead, Alma is determined to figure out how her chilly, beautiful Mexican mother, Hermelinda, managed to transform herself from a maid's daughter into a rich dot-com wife. Armed with a year of Spanish, a lot of moxie and a cache of letters sent to her mother by her grandfather from Mexico City, Alma chops off her hair, assumes the moniker "The Kid" and joins a gang of young American men headed for the border whorehouses. Alma's perspective emerges in a winning torrent of observations, and though a transvestite prostitute discovers her secret, she makes a pretty good boy. Alternate chapters clarify Hermelinda's motivations for leaving Mexico and her secret tenderness for her troubled daughter, as Hermelinda and her husband (and Alma's father), Truitt, trace Alma's route to Mexico City with a detective's help. Part bildungs-road novel, part family saga and part identity lit, Martin's third novel is all heart. (May) The eighth novel from Wolitzer (The Doctor's Daughter) opens as Alyssa (Lissy) Snyder—trophy second wife, reluctant stepmom, and major dyslexic—hosts a summer book discussion group. She's hoping to catch the attention of Ardith Templeton, who initiated the group and who, with her husband Larry, commands center stage in the tony Hamptons social scene. Retired English professor Angela Graves conducts the group, assigns the readings and tries to inspire her charges to take life lessons from the likes of Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary. Lissy gamely tries to read enough pages (or search out enough online commentary) to appear prepared—but Ardith rarely shows up. Meanwhile, Lissy's husband dotes on his children and begins spending time with his first wife. First-person chapters alternate among Lissy, Angela (who picks over old regrets), and Michelle Cutty, a young local who works as Lissy's summer maid and who provides some class-based frisson. There are small pleasures, but the trio of pretty endings is too hurried (and in Lissy's case too unearned) to be satisfying. (May) This disappointing prequel to Girzone's bestseller Joshua imagines Christ's childhood in a contemporary setting. In the town of Sharon, a poor family moves into a ramshackle house. Joseph, the father, is a master carpenter; Miriam is the mother whose "whole life centered around her two men"; and Joshua is the kind, obedient 11-year-old son, wise beyond his years. Joshua realizes he is different from other boys when he turns water into wine, walks on water, heals an injured friend and mysteriously knows the best fishing spots. Girzone's characters ponder the sadness of war, the folly of taking God out of schools and rampant drug use among adolescents. These plot elements never catch fire, however. Repetitive phrases and contradictions vie with platitudes ("For people who have little, the simplest surprise fills their hearts with gladness") and ponderous observations ("That afternoon and evening was a time in their lives they would not soon forget"). Even readers who loved Joshua will be hard pressed to find this bland story worthwhile. (May) This bestselling Indian import feels more like a half-baked business-inspirational tract than a novel, as if a washed-up motivational speaker wrote a spec script for The Office and set it in an Indian call center. The prologue sets up the novel as a story told to the author by a fellow passenger on an overnight train to Delhi. Perennially put-upon narrator Shyam Mehra is denied a promotion and learns his ex-girlfriend and current officemate Priyanka has agreed to an arranged marriage with a man in Seattle. Another friend and colleague, Vroom, hates the job and their boss, but likes the money. Co-worker Rhadhika's marriage crumbles after she learns of her husband's affair. And Esha feels guilty about what she's done in pursuit of her dream of being a model. Meanwhile, they learn that the company they work for has decided to lay off workers and that their boss is taking credit for work they've done. And then, the hook: God calls, offering the crew a four-point plan for success. Lackluster writing and a preachy tone cripple what could have been an interesting premise. (May) Teddy Mathison, the hero of Goldstein's unabashedly cloying second novel (after All That Matters), is an ambitious California senatorial candidate called home to Nantucket because his Alzheimer-afflicted mother, world-famous artist Kate Longley Mathison, is nearing death. Teddy reluctantly flies back east for one last visit with his estranged mother, and campaign manager Judith Mackey conceives of the reunion as a shot at increasing the divorced Teddy's family values appeal. Accompanied by his moody 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, Teddy arrives in Nantucket prepared for the ultimate confrontation with his formidable mother, but is shocked by her withered condition. Before long, Teddy blows off the campaign in favor of helping his mother paint her last canvas, bonding with a self-mutilating Zoe and romancing Liza Swain, a local waitress/photographer with a tragic past. When Judith shows up on the island to remind him of his campaign responsibilities, Teddy is forced to choose between becoming the senator from California or the "Prince of Nantucket." If you think you know how it ends, you're right. But if you think you won't get at least a little weepy, you're wrong. (May) Magazine junkies who remember the original Jane will devour this cheeky roman à clef by Jane Pratt's former assistant of nine years. Unlike Anna Wintour's alter ego in The Devil Wears Prada, Yampolsky's alter ex-boss is an off-the-rack heroine. Raised on a commune by inattentive hippie parents, Georgia girl Jill White was an outcast at her New England prep school before a predictably eye-opening stint at Bennington. After Jill descends on New York, a succession of magazine gigs leads her to editing Cheeky (i.e., '90s grrrl glossy Sassy) and, eventually, Jill. At that eponymous publication, idealistic Jill goes up against bottom-line obsessed Nestrom Media (a thinly veiled Condé Nast). Fictionalizations of Pratt's personal and professional moments as editor-in-chief add frisson: Sassy's skewering profile of actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen becomes Cheeky's roasting of "Kelli Hyer-Burke"; there are plenty of other cameos. In the end, Jill comes off as a sometimes selfish but mostly likable woman who gets beat by corporate magazine land. Survivors of the era, however, may question Jill's claim that she "coined the term grunge." (May)
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea
The Ministry of Special Cases
Nathan Englander. Knopf, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-0-375-40493-1
Stephen Marche. Riverhead, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59448-941-9
Robert Löhr, trans. f rom the german by Anthea Bell. Penguin Press, $24.95 (344p) ISBN 978-1-59420-126-4
Liz Moore. Broadway, $12.95 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-7679-2642-3
Homer Hickam. St. Martin's/Dunne, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-33475-8
Penelope Lively. Viking, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-670-03856-5
Gillian Greenwood. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-307-35138-8
The Big Girls
Susanna Moore. Knopf, $24 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4190-9
Elizabeth Berg. Random, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6510-3
Colin Channer. Akashic, $12.95 paper (172p) ISBN 978-1-933354-26-2
Carlo Lucarelli, trans. from the Italian by Michael Reynolds. Europa (Consortium, dist.), $14.95 paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-933372-27-3
Ottavio Cappellani, trans. from the Italian by Howard Curtis. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $13 paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-374-28981-2
William Martin. Forge, $24.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-765-31538-0
Wilbur Smith. St. Martin's/Dunne, $27.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-312-31842-0
Tom Straw. Carroll & Graf, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-78671-878-8
Antoine Wilson. Other Press/Handsel, $13.95 paper (276p) ISBN 978-1-59051-263-0
Samuel R. Delany. Carroll & Graf, $15.95 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-78671-947-1
Joseph Hurka. St. Martin's/Dunne, $23.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-312-35990-4
Robert J. Wiersema. St. Martin's, $21.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-36318-5
Emuna Elon, trans. from the Hebrew by David Hazony. Toby, $14.95 paper (236p) ISBN 978-1-59264-145-1
Eric B. Martin. MacAdam/Cage, $25 (250p) ISBN 978-1-59692-210-5
Hilma Wolitzer. Ballantine, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-345-48586-1
Joseph Girzone. Doubleday, $19.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-385-51714-0
Chetan Bhagat. Ballantine, $13.95 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-345-49832-8
Jan Goldstein. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $24 (256p) ISBN 978-0-307-34590-5
Karen Yampolsky. Kensington, $19.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7582-1700-4
