The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island
Mac Griswold.. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-0-374-26629-5
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell, Author Random $25 (479p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6545-5
Mitchell’s rightly been hailed as a virtuoso genius for his genre-bending, fiercely intelligent novels Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas . Now he takes something of a busman’s holiday with this majestic historical romance set in turn-of-the-19th-century Japan, where young, naïve Jacob de Zoet arrives on the small manmade island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor as part of a contingent of Dutch East Indies officials charged with cleaning up the trading station’s entrenched culture of corruption. Though engaged to be married in the Netherlands, he quickly falls in hopeless love with Orito Aibagawa, a Dutch-trained Japanese midwife and promising student of Marinus, the station’s resident physician. Their “courtship” is strained, as foreigners are prohibited from setting foot on the Japanese mainland, and the only relationships permitted between Japanese women and foreign men on Dejima are of the paid variety. Jacob has larger trouble, though; when he refuses to sign off on a bogus shipping manifest, his stint on Dejima is extended and he’s demoted, stuck in the service of a vengeful fellow clerk. Meanwhile, Orito’s father dies deeply in debt, and her stepmother sells her into service at a mountaintop shrine where her midwife skills are in high demand, she soon learns, because of the extraordinarily sinister rituals going on in the secretive shrine. This is where the slow-to-start plot kicks in, and Mitchell pours on the heat with a rescue attempt by Orito’s first love, Uzaemon, who happens to be Jacob’s translator and confidant. Mitchell’s ventriloquism is as sharp as ever; he conjures men of Eastern and Western science as convincingly as he does the unscrubbed sailor rabble. Though there are more than a few spots of embarrassingly bad writing (“How scandalized Nagasaki shall be, thinks Uzaemon, if the truth is ever known ”), Mitchell’s talent still shines through, particularly in the novel’s riveting final act, a pressure-cooker of tension, character work, and gorgeous set pieces. It’s certainly no Cloud Atlas , but it is a dense and satisfying historical with literary brawn and stylistic panache. (July )
Staff
Jim Knipfel, Author . Simon & Schuster $14 (232p) ISBN 978-1-4391-5412-0
The title of Knipfel's offbeat collection of creepy stories makes one thing immediately clear—this, thankfully, isn't a typical collection of fairy tales. While there are the standard fantastical elements—talking animals, elves, and even a princess thrown in for good measure—these twisted stories horrify the reader, provide ample shots of humor, and, of course, offer lessons: in the title story, it's intimated that a gnome should not be ignored, for he will seek revenge. “Six-Leggity Beasties” makes it clear that people should be nice to their neighbors, because they may need help when cockroaches take over their home. The talking chicken of “The Chicken Who Was Smarter Than Everyone” may think she's smarter than everyone, but she can still be tricked. Funny, sarcastic, and disturbing, Knipfel's stories will cause readers to squirm in their seats and laugh out loud at the same time. (June)
Staff
Michael O'Malley, Author, Roxanne Quimby, Foreword by , foreword by Roxanne Quimby. Portfolio $21.95 (214p) ISBN 978-1-59184-326-9
Social psychologist (and avid beekeeper) O’Malley draws management guidance from the hive in this charming rundown of best business practices. It turns out bees work on the same kinds of problems we are trying to solve in our organizations, including the best strategies for managing short-term vs. long-term gains, stability vs. flexibility, individuality vs. community, and similarity vs. change. O’Malley applies lessons learned from those clever bees to strategies to help organizations survive and grow while wasting as little energy and resources as possible, to expand exploration during low-growth periods, to maintain durability over the long run, to keep energy levels up, to provide ongoing feedback, to avoid overengineering, to discover and use an individual’s specialized talents, and to be objective and data driven. The advice itself is your standard management-lesson fare, but presented in a concise, conversational format with great personality, practicality, and verve. (May)
Staff
A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories
Ray Bradbury, Author, Donn Albright, Editor, Jon Eller, Editor . Subterranean $35 (300p) ISBN 978-1-59606-290-0
Editors Donn Albright and Jon Eller assemble 16 stories that span six decades of Bradbury's extraordinary career in an insightful thematic expansion of his famous 1953 novel of state-sanctioned book burning. The longer, slower stories “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman” are revealing precursors to Fahrenheit 451 itself, but the real gems are the shorter stand-alones, such as “The Reincarnate,” in which a recently dead man experiences a harsh rebirth and desperately seeks out his own widow; in “The Mad Wizards of Mars,” the red planet is inhabited by all the authors and characters from literature destroyed on Earth; and three intense interconnected pieces: “The Dragon Who Ate His Tail,” “Sometime Before Dawn,” and “To the Future.” An essential addition to the bookshelf of every Bradbury fan, the collection is also accessible to curious readers with a taste for the dark, the strange, and the macabre. (Apr.)
Staff
Next
James Hynes, Ma, Author . Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur $28.99 (308p) ISBN 978-0-316-05192-7
In this funny, surprising, and sobering novel, Hynes (Kings of Infinite Space ) follows Kevin Quinn, who has flown to Austin, Tex., for a job interview at the height of a terrorism scare. Kevin, an editor at the University of Michigan, has grown as frustrated by academic politics as he is by his relationship with his shallow girlfriend. On the flight, he sits next to Kelly, a beautiful and enigmatic young woman who reminds him of a great lost love of his youth. With time to kill before his interview, Kevin spends the first half of the novel surreptitiously following Kelly around Austin while reminiscing about his misspent youth and failed relationships. The casual but persistent self-absorption of Kevin's reveries is both funny and off-putting, and when contrasted with the threat of terrorism and his shadowing of the young woman, gives the novel a creepy energy that fully kicks in after Kevin is knocked unconscious, and Hynes pushes the plot into unchartered territory. The final 50 pages are unlike anything in the recent literature of our response to terrorism—a tour de force of people ennobled in the face of random horror. (Mar.)
Staff
Paul Doiron, Author Minotaur $24.99 (324p) ISBN 978-0-312-55846-8
Down East editor-in-chief Doiron takes a provocative look at the ties between fathers and sons, unconditional love, and Maine’s changing landscape in his outstanding debut. Game warden Mike Bowditch, who hasn’t heard from his dad, Jack Bowditch, in two years, wonders what the man wants from him after he comes home late one night and finds Jack has left a cryptic message on his answering machine. Mike later learns Jack is the prime suspect in the shooting murders of a cop and a timber company executive. Jack, a brutal alcoholic, makes his living poaching game, but Mike can’t believe Jack is a cold-blooded killer. Mike’s belief in his father puts his job at risk, alienates him from the police, and drives him further away from the woman he loves. Fans of C.J. Box and Nevada Barr will appreciate the vivid wilderness scenes. Equally a story of relationships and an outdoor adventure, this evocative thriller is sure to put Doiron on several 2010 must-read lists. 100,000 first printing; author tour. (Apr.)
Staff
Helen Simonson, Author . Random $25 (358p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6893-7
In her charming debut novel, Simonson tells the tale of Maj. Ernest Pettigrew, an honor-bound Englishman and widower, and the very embodiment of duty and pride. As the novel opens, the major is mourning the loss of his younger brother, Bertie, and attempting to get his hands on Bertie's antique Churchill shotgun—part of a set that the boys' father split between them, but which Bertie's widow doesn't want to hand over. While the major is eager to reunite the pair for tradition's sake, his son, Roger, has plans to sell the heirloom set to a collector for a tidy sum. As he frets over the guns, the major's friendship with Jasmina Ali—the Pakistani widow of the local food shop owner—takes a turn unexpected by the major (but not by readers). The author's dense, descriptive prose wraps around the reader like a comforting cloak, eventually taking on true page-turner urgency as Simonson nudges the major and Jasmina further along and dangles possibilities about the fate of the major's beloved firearms. This is a vastly enjoyable traipse through the English countryside and the long-held traditions of the British aristocracy. (Mar.)
Staff
Wishing for Tomorrow
Hilary McKay, Author, Nick Maland, Illustrator , illus. by Nick Maland. S&S/McElderry $16.99 (273p) ISBN 978-1-4424-0169-3
Readers may well approach this sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett's timeless novel, A Little Princess , with both skepticism and high expectations. McKay quickly dispels the former and more than fulfills the latter. As she did in The Exiles and its companion stories and in her novels about the Casson clan, the author explores family dynamics—in this case those of the close-knit students left behind at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies after Sara Crewe departs—with humor and insight. “Did they not have a story too? What happens next?” asks McKay's introduction. Now staying in the south of England with her new guardian and maid, Becky, Sara retains a strong presence in these pages, largely through flashbacks and letters to her best friend, Ermengarde (only once, in an emotional scene in which Sara insists that Becky leave her service to marry her beau, does Sara appear in the present). McKay gives vibrant new life to the school's remaining residents. Earnest, conflicted Ermengarde eases her pain at losing Sara by penning lengthy letters to her—most never posted (writing them “was like shedding a heavy cloak. It was like opening a window”). At Sara's request, Ermengarde takes under her wing “stubborn and unsquashable” Lottie, who utters some of the funniest lines; reprimanded for licking the neighbor's cat, she retorts, “He licked me first.” Additions to the roster include a cheeky but good-humored boy next door and the wise, outspoken maid, Alice. Enhanced by Maland's period illustrations, the novel convincingly evokes the Victorian era, even as McKay interjects a contemporary sensibility. A surprising, dramatic denouement caps this droll and heartwarming tale, a very worthy follow-up to a well-loved classic. Ages 8–12. (Jan.)
Staff
Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War
Ted Morgan, Author . Random $35 (722p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6664-3
Pulitzer-winning journalist Morgan (Reds ) synergizes a comprehensive spectrum of overlooked sources in this magisterial analysis of the 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and its consequences. The battle ended French colonial rule in Indochina and set the stage for American involvement in Vietnam, as unwanted initially as it was tragic in the end. The French, in November 1953, decided to establish a base in the remote valley of Dien Bien Phu. They were convinced the garrison could be supplied and supported by air, and Vietminh reaction thwarted by the roadless mountains and impenetrable jungles. Both assumptions were mistaken. Morgan, himself a veteran of the French army, eloquently describes the envelopment, the strangling, and the crushing of the French garrison by “a people's army of Vietnamese peasants” in the face of no less determined defenders. Reframing the battle, often viewed as a French folly, Morgan calls Dien Bien Phu “one of the great epics of military endurance” by both sides. His book is a fitting tribute to the men who wrote that epic. 16 pages of b&w photos, 2 maps. (Feb. 23)
Staff
