Yagoda, biographer of Will Rogers, presents a spirited account of a form of writing that since its inception has been one of the most contested and most popular. Without dwelling too heavily on the genre's most recent scandals, Yagoda begins with the fifth-century Confessions of Saint Augustine , still cited as a prime example. Autobiography, Yagoda says, helped give rise to the invention of the novel in 1719 when Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe , “written by himself.” While this fictional memoir helped usher in real accounts of, among other things, adventures on the high seas and capture by hostile Indians, it is memoir's fraught relationship with the truth—which implicated both readers (who took Robinson Crusoe to be a true tale) and writers (embellishing or inventing particularly sordid episodes in their lives)—that explains the memoir's longevity, popularity and breadth, says Yagoda. In a fascinating break from his chronological study, Yagoda explores the fluid definition of “truth” and whether, given memory's malleability, it's possible to achieve it in any memoir. With its mixture of literary criticism, cultural history and just enough trivia, Yagoda's survey is sure to appeal to scholars and bibliophiles alike. (Nov.)

Staff
Reviewed on 09/14/2009 | Details & Permalink

Anthropologist Louise Young has turned her nearly two decades working with the indigenous Kuna people of Panama into a compassionate and passion-filled debut novel of a white woman’s journey into this unique culture. Grad student Jenny Dunfrey is an ornithologist studying the harpy eagle when she’s sent off to do her research in a remote area near the Colombian border where she knows neither the language nor the culture. Her only directive: don’t “piss off” the natives. Slowly, as Jenny makes progress on her research of the eagles, so, too, does she learn about the Kuna, who are fascinated with her: a tall, blonde American from Montana. Jenny is an inconsistent character, but Young does an excellent job with the supporting cast. Pedro is a protector; Litos, the devoted friend; Eulogio “the most handsome man” Jenny has ever seen; and Ceferino, the community healer. As Jenny navigates these new friendships—and avoids the one American, a caricature of a violent white missionary—she gets herself into trouble, but also absorbs the culture in many unexpected ways. Young’s narrative is enthralling and entertaining—a decidedly fun, exotic read. (Nov.)

Staff
Reviewed on 09/07/2009 | Details & Permalink

LaCour makes an impressive debut with an emotionally charged young adult novel about friendship and loss. Caitlin begins her junior year in high school bitter and stunned over the recent suicide of her best friend Ingrid, a talented photographer and artist. Afraid to risk new friendships and unable to continue her own artistic endeavors, Caitlin finds herself in a state of paralysis, wrestling with questions that may remain unanswered. Then she discovers Ingrid’s journal, a record of her thoughts during her final days, and reasons for her tragic, perhaps inevitable fate begin to come to light. What is most remarkable about LaCour’s tale is her ability to make the presence of an absent character so deeply felt. The entries and pictures in Ingrid’s journal vibrate with feeling and provide insight into the pain of chronic depression (“the sun stopped shining for me is all. the whole story is: i am sad. i am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can’t get away from it”). Ingrid’s secrets are excruciating to discover, but the ample evidence of her creative force makes it clear that her life had meaning. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)

Staff
Reviewed on 08/31/2009 | Details & Permalink

The U.S. has long lauded itself as a nation of immigrants, but some communities have had considerable difficulty weaving themselves into the American tapestry, notably, Arab-Americans. In this superb snapshot of the Americans of Arab-speaking descent, individuals with roots in Jordan, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon share their stories and demonstrate the extent to which, even as they play football, work assembly lines and hold public office, they remain shut out of the national narrative. With a remarkable ability to capture her subjects' voices, Malek, a Syrian-American civil rights lawyer, sketches illuminating responses to her question: “What does American history look and feel like in the eyes and skin of Arab Americans?” There's the Lebanese-American, too dark for 1960s Birmingham; the Palestinian-American surrounded by anti-Arab violence during the Iranian hostage crisis; the Yemeni-American deployed to Iraq with the Marine Corps. In her effort to demonstrate the impact of foreign affairs on American soil, Malek focuses too heavily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, giving short shrift to other important stories of upheaval, but this is an excellent book, one certain to put right some of the wrongs it catalogues. (Oct.)

Staff
Reviewed on 08/24/2009 | Details & Permalink

Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after the The Poisonwood Bible ), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty ) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). “Employed by the American imagination,” is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist. (Nov.)

Staff
Reviewed on 08/17/2009 | Details & Permalink

Warren’s debut is a promising launch for HarperCollins’s new Angry Robot imprint. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie “Stevie” Searle is more the center of consciousness than the protagonist, narrating as people and moments swirl around her. After a car crash kills her mother and leaves Stevie alone in the family home, the book primarily catalogues the memories that arise as she digs in the backyard, intending to plant jasmine, a smell she associates with dead bodies. Minutely detailed events and conversations are progressively undercut with singsong variations of “This is what should have happened.... This is what did happen.” In the sickening blur of Stevie’s narrative, what “really” happens is both uncertain and obvious; the details she commands so confidently are infinitely mutable, but the gruesome consequences slowly become apparent. With outstanding control, Warren manipulates Stevie’s voice to create a portrait of horror that in no way reads like a first novel. (Oct.)

Staff
Reviewed on 08/10/2009 | Details & Permalink

Before Nabokov's death in 1977, he instructed his wife to burn the unfinished first draft—handwritten on 138 index cards—of what would be his final novel. She did not, and now Nabokov's son, Dmitri, is releasing them to the world, though after reading the book, readers will wonder if the Lolita author is laughing or turning over in his grave.

This very unfinished work reads largely like an outline, full of seeming notes-to-self, references to source material, sentence fragments, commentary and brief flashes of spectacular prose. It would be a mistake for readers to come to this expecting anything resembling a novel, though the few actual scenes here are unmistakably Nabokovian, with cutting wordplay, piercing description and uneasy-making situations—a character named Hubert H. Hubert molesting a girl, a decaying old man's strained attempt at perfunctory sex with his younger wife.

The story appears to be about a woman named Flora (spelled, once, as “FLaura”), who has Lolita-like moments in her childhood and is later the subject of a scandalous novel, Laura , written by a former lover. Mostly, this amounts to a peek inside the author's process and mindset as he neared death. Indeed, mortality, suicide, impotence, a disgust with the male human body—and an appreciation of the fit, young female body—figure prominently.

Nabokov's handwritten index cards are reproduced with a transcription below of each card's contents, generally less than a paragraph. The scanned index cards (perforated so that they can be removed from the book) are what make this book an amazing document; they reveal Nabokov's neat handwriting and his own edits to the text: some lines are blacked out with scribbles, others simply crossed out. Words are inserted, typesetting notes and copyedit symbols pepper the writing, and the reverse of many cards bears a wobbly X. Depending on the reader's eye, the final card is either haunting or the great writer's final sly wink: it's a list of synonyms for “efface”—expunge , erase , delete , rub out , wipe out and, finally, obliterate . (Nov.)

Staff
Reviewed on 08/03/2009 | Details & Permalink

A success story in the headlines, the surge in Iraq was an ordeal of hard fighting and anguished trauma for the American soldiers on the ground, according to this riveting war report. Washington Post correspondent Finkel chronicles the 15-month deployment of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion in Baghdad during 2007 and 2008, when the chaos in Iraq subsided to a manageable uproar. For the 2-16, waning violence still meant wild firefights, nerve-wracking patrols through hostile neighborhoods where every trash pile could hide an IED, and dozens of comrades killed and maimed. At the fraught center of the story is Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, whose dogged can-do optimism—his motto is “It’s all good”—pits itself against declining morale and whispers of mutiny. While vivid and moving, Finkel’s grunt’s-eye view is limited; the soldiers’ perspective is one of constant improvisatory reaction to attacks and crises, and we get little sense of exactly how and why the new American counterinsurgency methods calmed the Iraqi maelstrom. Still, Finkel’s keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq. Photos. (Sept.)

Staff
Reviewed on 07/27/2009 | Details & Permalink

In Cleeves's excellent third Shetland Island thriller (after White Nights ), Insp. Jimmy Perez investigates the shooting death of Mima Wilson, the grandmother of Perez's bumbling if well-meaning underling, Sandy Wilson. While some believe Sandy's cousin Ronald accidentally shot Mima late one night near her croft on Whalsay, a small Shetland island, Perez has his doubts. Mima's land is the site of an archeological excavation led by eager Ph.D. student Hattie James, who recently uncovered a skeleton of indeterminate origin. When another body turns up near the dig site, Perez becomes more suspicious, even though the second death is an apparent suicide. With Sandy's help, he begins to unravel a knot of tall tales and family betrayals that stretches back to a WWII resistance movement known as the Shetland Bus. As in the best traditional English village whodunits, the killer lurks among the townspeople, but his or her identity still comes as a shock. (Sept.)

Staff
Reviewed on 07/20/2009 | Details & Permalink

Hornby returns to his roots—music, manic fandom, messy romance—in his funny and touching latest, dancing between three perspectives on fame: a sycophantic scholar, an appreciative audience member, a fabled singer-songwriter who can't see what all the fuss is about. After cult musician Tucker Crowe vanished from the public eye 20 years ago, his small but devoted fan base built up a mythology around his oeuvre and the people and places associated with his storied life. Self-appointed “Crowologist” Duncan has indoctrinated his girlfriend, Annie, on the wonders of Tucker, but when Annie fails to recognize the genius of a newly released version of Crowe's classic album Juliet, their 15-year relationship quickly crumbles. Meanwhile, Duncan's glowing first review is increasingly de-bated, while Annie's deconstructive essay posted on the same Web site earns her a clandestine e-mail correspondence with the reclusive musician. Soon, their exchanges grow more personal; given that Tucker lives in an American backwater and Annie resides in a remote English town, both view their e-mails as a safe flirtation until the dissolution of Tucker's latest marriage and a crisis with one of his several neglected children brings him to Annie's side of the Atlantic. Through brisk dialogue and quick scene changes, Hornby highlights each character's misconceptions about his or her own life, and though Duncan, Annie and Tucker are consistently ridiculous and often self-destructive, they are portrayed with an extraordinary degree of sympathy. Tucker's status of Dylan by way of Salinger allows for an intriguing critique of celebrity fetishization and of the motives behind the eccentricity that comes along with fame. Obviously, this is a must-read for Hornby's fans, but it also works as a surprisingly thoughtful complement to the piles of musician bios and memoirs. (Sept.)

Staff
Reviewed on 07/13/2009 | Details & Permalink