Review by Jacob Silverman The campus novel, so synonymous with satire, seems a perfect fit with our age of severe ironic detachment. It’s more difficult, even risky, for the novelist to approach the college setting from a more earnest vantage point, as a place brimming with unlimited potential – along with its corollary, suffocating failure. In his first novel, The Art of Fielding, n+1 magazine co-founder Chad Harbach chooses the latter path. He takes his subject seriously, imbuing it with all the peril of life itself, and ups the degree of difficulty by focusing on the most classically romantic of […]
Buzz Reviews: Birds of Paradise, by Diana Abu-Jaber
Review by Ellen Wernecke After their 13-year-old daughter Felice ran away from home, Brian and Avis Muir threw themselves into their jobs – his as a high-powered real estate lawyer, hers as an award-winning pastry chef. Five years later, they hardly say her name: Avis seeks advice from her next-door neighbor, a Haitian woman with a pet mynah, after her latest attempt to contact Felice ends in disappointment, while Brian indulges in fantasies about his striking new coworker and a sure-thing condo investment being passed around the office. Their son Stanley has followed in their workaholic footsteps, working day and […]
Buzz Reviews: We the Animals, by Justin Torres
Review by Michele Filgate A couple of years ago, Paul Harding set the standard for slender books with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers. It’s appropriate, then, that he wrote a glowing blurb for Justin Torres’ We the Animals, a fiercely gorgeous debut that doesn’t quite crest 150 pages. In startlingly brief chapters, Torres sketches a bold portrait of childhood scars and imprinted memories. He writes of brotherhood, family, sexuality, identity, and innocence lost. Through the vantage point of its unnamed narrator, the novel traces one American family: the narrator and his brothers Manny and Joel, plus Ma (a white woman) […]
Authors: Roth Wins Man Booker International, with Controversy; Nesbo Opening Week Sales; and More
Knopf has been positioning Jo Nesbo‘s THE SNOWMAN as its big summer thriller breakout, and they report selling 20,000 total copies so far of the May 10 release – with digital making up as much as 65 percent, at 13,000 units sold. Since every media outlet under the sun has wondered whether Nesbo is “the next Stieg Larsson,” it’s worth noting that THE SNOWMAN exceeded sales of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by 2,000 units during the same time frame. “The Larsson comp is significant because it demonstrates how much shift there has been in our business in under […]
People: Lotts, Schelling Open New Agencies
Chris Lotts and Christopher Schelling have left Ralph Vicinanza Ltd to open new agencies. The Lotts Agency will continue Lotts’s representation of commercial fiction and targeted upmarket non-fiction in a mix of domestic and foreign rights, working on behalf of Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Connie Willis, Robert J. Sawyer R. Scott Bakker, Stacia Kane and Lia Hable, among many others. At Schelling’s new shop, Selectric Artists, he will continue with authors like Augusten Burroughs, Cinda Williams Chima, John Elder Robison, Louis Bayard, Kim Stanley Robinson and Haven Kimmel, while also expanding his representation into other media, such […]
eNews: BN Seeks Trademark for A “Simple Touch Reader” (And 1 Million Nook Apps); NYPL iPad Apps; and More
With Barnes & Noble‘s new ereader announcement set for 10:00 on Tuesday, May 24, CNet has researched some of the company’s recent trademark filings (which are made through Fission LLC) for clues. They filed to protect the phrase “the simple touch reader” at the end of March in the category of “portable electronic apparatus for reading”–which CNet logically says “we take as a strong indication that the upcoming Nook will be an affordable monochrome e-ink touch-screen model that operates similarly” to the Sony Reader. A more recent filing also seeks to protect MyNook, a web portal service “to remotely manage, […]