Book of the Day Roundup: July 15-19, 2024
Ghostwriter
Shakespeare, Literary Landmines, and an Eccentric Patron’s Royal Obsession
Lawrence Wells
University Press of Mississippi
Hardcover $28.00 (176pp)
978-1-4968-5243-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A mix of memoir with literary criticism, Lawrence Wells’s Ghostwriter dives into the Shakespeare authorship debate from the perspective of a skeptic working alongside a staunch believer.
Wells was approached to ghostwrite a book for a wealthy, obsessive, and outlandish woman, Mrs. F., who was convinced not only that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was the true author behind Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, but that de Vere had an affair with Queen Elizabeth I and fathered an illegitimate child. Wells and Mrs. F. became simultaneous allies and adversaries, quarreling over their shared project—a novel recounting de Vere’s life. Mrs. F. funded a research trip to England, where Wells and his wife searched for pieces of the history that Mrs. F. hoped to construct. Fielding Mrs. F.’s constant long-distance calls, Wells struggled to connect with his wife, becoming more consumed by Mrs. F.’s Shakespeare theories.
The book includes several excerpts of the novel, which was meted out in chapters to Mrs. F. The scenes in the manuscript flow in and out of the past and present, with Wells and Mrs. F. reflecting Edward de Vere and Elizabeth respectively. But as Wells travels across England, the different sites he visits take over as the point of contact between his story and de Vere’s. While the personal remains peripheral for long stretches, at last, Wells’s personal life is allowed in during a hike in southwest England.
Mixing the past and present, the facts and fiction, the literary memoir Ghostwriter approaches the history behind a controversial literary theory from an intriguing perspective.
JULIA DILLMAN (June 10, 2024)
Smothermoss
A Novel
Alisa Alering
Tin House
Softcover $17.95 (256pp)
978-1-959030-58-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Alisa Alering’s alluring novel Smothermoss enters the bloodstream of Appalachian storytelling like a fevered dream, unraveling the intergenerational tales of women living on the edge.
Half-sisters born five years apart, Sheila and Angie live in a mountain cabin with their hardworking mother and their aging family matriarch. Angie prepares herself for mushroom clouds and Russian invasions, drawing evocative images on scrying cards; at twelve, she aches to fit in. And Sheila tends to the rabbits that feed her family, feels choked by the memory of childhood violence, and denies herself most of what she hungers for. As Angie practices fighting in the woods, Sheila’s starving body grows weaker; as Angie patches together ideas of what sex might look like, Sheila dreams of resting her head on the shoulder of an appealing classmate, Juanita.
The girls’ home life shifts when two backpackers are murdered on the nearby Appalachian Trail, igniting fear in the local community. As “the rabbit women’s blood-cry works its slow way into the mountain’s core,” Sheila fights to understand what ties her to this land and its women—and which threads she might severe. Meanwhile, Angie plunges into the underbrush, determined to catch the killer on her own.
Enchanting, haunting images pervade the tale: of bloodspotted eyes that see hidden truths; of gold lines coursing through quartz and temporary cracks in mountain shale big enough to slip a girl’s body through. Rabbits take on mystical qualities, hopping through nightmare and redemption scenes alike; Angie’s cards take on a life of their own. But even as the dangers multiply, it comes to seem as though there’s nothing these women can’t overcome.
Smothermoss is a glorious Southern Gothic novel that celebrates women’s innate, powerful magic.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (June 10, 2024)
Yoke of Stars
R. B. Lemberg
Tachyon Publications
Softcover $15.95 (192pp)
978-1-61696-418-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A much-anticipated addition to the mystical, queer-normative world of the Birdverse, R. B. Lemberg’s Yoke of Stars is a moving tale about the transformative power of stories.
Stone Orphan, an apprentice assassin, awaits their first assignment from the School of Assassins; once they complete their first kill, they will receive their cloth of bone. Instead of an assignment, however, Stone Orphan is paired with a charming linguist, Ulín. Initially frustrated, Stone Orphan is eroded by Ulín’s empathetic curiosity; the two resolve to exchange stories and decide who, among three men, should be their target.
The book begins with a primer on the mythology of the Birdverse. The characters explain the nuances of their individual cultures with enough detail to allow the book to stand alone. The lyrical language is jarring in its beauty, with the book focusing on language itself as beautiful. Stone Orphan’s language is without verbs and discourages “I,” reflecting their culture’s collectivism; this clashes with Ulín’s individualistic upbringing. The tension of translation becomes a living, breathing entity: language serves as both a barricade and a bridge, and a “story moves back and forth in translation, and it is remade every time.” And bilingualism, a necessary companion to translation, is explored in a singular manner. While trying to explain their language to Ulín, Stone Orphan considers, “I had to twist my whole being into a new shape to learn to speak like the nameway do,” and later describes being bilingual as “a strangeness that makes you aware, but does not let you simply be.” Elsewhere, Ulín thoughtfully describes translation as “a departure.”
Yoke of Stars is an unforgettable queer fantasy novel about the power—good and bad—that our words hold.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (June 10, 2024)
Civilisation Française
Mary Fleming
Heliotrope Books
Softcover $18.00 (248pp)
978-1-956474-50-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Mary Fleming’s evocative novel Civilisation Française, three women’s lives intersect in 1980s Paris.
Lily moves to Paris in 1982 to study at the Sorbonne. American-born, Lily was raised in London and speaks French quite well; she finds a live-in job helping elderly Amenia, who owns a mansion in Paris’s Marais quarter. Though Lily worries about working for an irritable “old lady,” she’s thrilled to leave her present lodging arrangement—a room in a doctor’s office, amid tongue depressors and antiseptic.
The perspective alternates between Lily and Amenia. While twenty-one-year-old Lily is troubled by a dysfunctional family past, she is determined to enjoy her Paris life. Amenia is often overwhelmed by memories: her upbringing in Wyoming and work as a French literary translator, the Nazi occupation of Paris, and the deaths of her husband and son. Amenia is further anguished by how her increasing blindness forces her to be dependent on others.
Amenia’s kindly Jewish housekeeper, Germaine, is a concentration camp survivor who tries to cover the dehumanizing numbers tattooed on her forearm and walks with a limp from a resultant leg injury. Though Lily is sympathetic, she cannot fully comprehend her elders’ wartime experiences; she views Paris as an enduring yet exciting city, with a promise as “shiny” as her new electric kettle.
The novel is taut and subtle as Lily ventures from the “daunting, domed” Sorbonne to Amenia’s “airy and orderly” home. Lily and Amenia become better acquainted and even work together to manage an unnerving invasion of squatters, but their relationship maintains a sense of mutual reserve and politesse. Amenia is also secretly determined to reclaim some vestiges of autonomy and die on her own terms.
Within its intricate and nuanced portrait of Paris, the novel Civilisation Française explores compelling alliances and experiences.
MEG NOLA (June 10, 2024)
A Party for Florine
Florine Stettheimer and Me
Yevgenia Nayberg
Neal Porter Books
Hardcover $18.99 (40pp)
978-0-8234-5410-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A girl becomes enchanted by American modernist painter Florine Stettheimer in this picture book for budding creatives. On a visit to a museum, the girl is drawn to the Stettheimer self-portrait, whom she bears a resemblance to; she later discovers other commonalities they share, including Jewish heritage. As she learns more about Stettheimer’s world—both on the canvas and in the lavish parties she threw–the girl discovers the transformative power of art to make even the mundane fantastical.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (June 10, 2024)
Kathy Young
