Barcelona

My family and I are off on an adventure to Barcelona!! As much as I love these trips and am so very grateful, there's a little part of me (maybe not so little) that wishes to be at home writing. That said, I realize each of these trips and other things life throws our way, good and bad, enrich my writing soul.

I hope your journeys are marvelous adventures, whether real or fictional.

Peace.

"Echolation" by Myfanwy Collins

is now available for preorder!! Myfanwy is an incredibly talented writer, and I cannot wait for her debut novel!

Read: Recommendations

Here are some books that I've read in the last month or so and loved:

Richard Bausch's "Peace" and his latest short story collection, "Something is Out There." "Peace" is a powerful, slim novel set in Italy during World War II; and I've loved his stories for over a decade and this group is just as elegant, real, masterful, as his previous collections.

"Vida" by Patricia Engel. The language in this novel/novel-in-stories is energetic and lyrical and the narrator is larger than life.

"This is Not Your City" by Caitlin Horrocks. These stories are amazing and tense and the characters are faced with real consequences. The narration is beautiful.

"This Beautiful Life" by Helen Schulman. Timely premise and this writer knows how to create a beautiful sentence.

"Anatomy of a Disappearance" by Hisham Matar. Subtle and powerful, the narrator experiences the disappearance of his father and the narrator is left with all of its implications.

Also, if you're looking for an intelligent nail-biting read:

"Before I Go to Sleep" by S.J.Watson. The narrator loses her memory every night she falls asleep.

"Turn of Mind" by Alice LaPlante. The narrator in this one has Alzhiemer's and she's accused of murder.

Wish Tank

Love the idea and the sentiment of Laura Ellen Scott's new blog Wish Tank

I can't wait to read her book Death Wishing

Read: A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano

“A Good Hard Look” by Ann Napolitano
The Penguin Press
978-1-59420-292-6 July 11, 2011



“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it,” is the epigraphic quote that begins Ann Napolitano’s new novel, “A Good Hard Look.” Even if you haven’t read Flannery O’Connor and experienced her unflinching characterizations and situations rendered with sharp wit, you will feel as if you know her after reading this memorable portrayal. Milledgeville, Georgia, the town in which O’Connor lived, comes to life in Napolitano’s assured hands, and its characters are just as lively and flawed as you’d expect them to be.

One of the women, a pampered belle, is terrified she’ll end up a character in Flannery’s work, an unflattering replica doused with Flannery’s acerbic humor. A boy suffers from crippling anxiety except when he’s around his summer employer. Two women take care of each other’s child and the result is that a girl gets the nurturing she needs and a boy moves too quickly into adulthood. After a wealthy, married man is asked to teach Flannery to drive, they develop a clandestine friendship, and a police man lives for earning a promotion and little else. Firmly in the center are Flannery, hindered by her illness, yet dedicated to her work, her mother Regina, whose devotion to her daughter is deeply affecting, and a flock of raucous peacocks. As in O’Connor’s work, there are larger questions of religion and grace throughout. The people in “A Good Hard Look” are leaning toward self-destruction and one irreversible, calamitous misstep will bring others down like dominoes in its wake.

Napolitano is a gifted storyteller, recreating Milledgeville and its imperfect but well-meaning people, lending a sensibility that’s arguably in keeping with O’Connor’s vision, yet grounded in her own modern voice. In this vein, Napolitano offers us a look at characters on their rough and painful journey toward redemption.

O’Connor once wrote, “I am not afraid the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial.” I imagine Ms. O’Connor would have approved of “A Good Hard Look.”



* Review first published in the August 14th edition of The Pilot of Southern Pines

Read: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
HarperCollins/ June 2011
978-0062049803



Ann Patchett’s latest work, “State of Wonder” has everything I love in a novel: science, exotic locale, mystery and ethical exploration. Marina is a pharmacologist whose boss sends her on a mission to the Amazonian jungle of Brazil to prod and report on the scientist working for his company. She’s also been asked by the wife of her deceased lab partner to learn more about the circumstances of his death and to retrieve his body. What Marina actually finds there in the jungle will delight and intrigue the reader and maybe even elicit a shiver or two.

Dr. Swenson has been working on a fertility drug in the jungle, stringing her employer, Vogel, along for years. She’s as tough and harsh as the environment she inhabits and she’s not about to be pushed. When Marina, who was once her student, meets her again in Brazil, she learns more from her old teacher there than she ever did from her lectures.

A riveting and intelligent story, “State of Wonder” also explores the implications of interfering with indigenous cultures, and underlines the need for maintaining a balance between offering solutions for medical problems and diseases and protecting those social and ecological systems from which solutions are extracted.

Anyone familiar with Ann Patchett’s work will know how skilled she is in creating tense situations which force her characters to react and this book is no exception. The smooth, authoritative writing captivated me from the start, the lush details and fascinating premise kept me engaged, and the last pages were truly wondrous.

*First published in the August 21 edition of The Pilot of Southern Pines

Read: Faith by Jennifer Haigh

Faith by Jennifer Haigh
ISBN: 9780060755805
HarperCollins

These days perhaps few are surprised when they hear of a priest under suspicion of inappropriate behavior—similar stories have made headlines for a couple of decades now. In Jennifer Haigh’s new novel “Faith,” not only do we get the unexpected, but we get a layered, complex, and evocative tale with richly drawn characters as well.

Haigh’s character, Sheila McGann, tells us how her half-brother Art became one of the accused priests and how that accusation destroys his life. The author’s brilliantly controlled structure prevents us from receiving all the facts at once so that we can never be quite sure of how things really went down. Through most of the book we may be wondering, is Sheila’s recounting of what happened reliable? Is she forthcoming with all the information? Does she really know her brother? After all, the attention Father Art lavishes on a lonely boy with an often negligent mother could reasonably appear suspect given the history of similar transgressions within the church. We’re left wondering only until the moment Haigh decides to relieve us of that doubt in one stunning, illuminating scene which arrives near the end of the novel. This new revelation will alter perception of events that transpire before and after. Not all things are as they seem, and Haigh reminds us of this as she skillfully explores the meaning of faith and all of its nuances.

“Faith” is a remarkable novel, both for its strong rendering of place and the salt of the earth people who inhabit that place, and also for its invitation for us to think beyond our assumptions, maybe even discard them altogether. It’s a novel that will not only deliver answers, but will also leave the reader with deep, profound questions.

*Review first published in the July 17th edition of The Pilot.

Read: Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman

When I first read the publisher’s introduction to Francisco Goldman’s “Say Her Name,” I have to admit I was distracted by the fact that the novel appeared to be more truth than fiction. Francisco Goldman really did lose his young wife, who was also a talented writer, to a horrible swimming accident while on vacation in their beloved Mexico. As I was reading, I kept wondering why not simply a grief memoir? Perhaps calling it fiction allowed Goldman the distance he needed to write of such a painful event, perhaps the author strayed from the facts here and there. Eventually, the beauty of Goldman’s lyrical prose convinced me to let go of my questions and trust the writer.

Goldman’s elegant precision in laying out details of the couple’s daily lives is impressive as is his use of metaphor and language. I was also impressed with the design of the book because it was after reading so many details, of the characters’ histories, desires, frailties, each detail described in an exacting, loving manner, that I felt I had come to know these people, thus making the tragedy of Aura’s death all the more affecting. Goldman doesn’t withhold, he freely admits to his failings and he keeps the reader guessing as to why Aura’s family would blame her husband for her death. “Say Her Name” is the perfect example of the kind of alchemy made possible with words and heart. By the time I’d finished, I realized Goldman had not simply written a story of grief, he’d written a love story.

*Review first published in the July 10th edition of The Pilot.

Read "22 Britannia Road" by Amanda Hodgkinson

When Janusz Nowak boards the train to help Poland’s cause in the Second World War, he leaves behind his young wife, Silvana, and their infant son, Aurek. Soon after, the Germans invade Warsaw and Silvana is forced to flee with her child and find refuge in the woods.

Skip ahead a few years and the war is over, but its scars remain. Janusz has relocated to England with every intention of becoming a proper Englishman. Word of his wife’s and son’s survival compels him to send for them in the hopes they can all begin again as a happy family, far removed from Poland’s painful memories. Janusz realizes, however, that starting over isn’t as easy as he imagined when he’s confronted by the war’s changes on his wife and the fact his son is a wild and fearful creature he hardly recognizes.

The premise was intriguing enough to entice me to pick this one up, but Amanda Hodgkinson offers so much more as life-altering secrets held by both Janusz and Silvana are revealed and new complications arise. The narrative is spare and beautiful, and the story, utterly captivating. Alternating between past and present in the voices of Janusz, Silvana, and their fascinating son, Aurek, Hodgkinson has written a complex tale of loss and recovery, love and redemption.

*Review first printed in the June 5 edition of The Pilot.

Read: "Touch" by Alexi Zentner

My review of Alexi Zentner's wonderful debut novel is in this Sunday's edition of The Pilot:

Alexi Zentner’s stunning debut novel “Touch,” begins much as a snowfall might, dropping quiet hints of tragedy and hauntings with a meditative melancholy, then builds in intensity until the reader is buried in the story’s fierce grip. Set deep in the woods of northern British Columbia, in a time when men dream of gold, the fight for survival, whether pitted against man or nature, is still very much relevant.

The novel opens with the narrator reverently describing his father’s skill floating logs down the river, and later, his skill with storytelling. The narrator, now an Anglican Priest, has returned to his boyhood town of Sawgamet to tend to his dying mother. The town, with its history of gold mining gone bust and its life-crushing winters is a character as indelible as the people who settled it. Pierre recounts the stories his father told him, how his father mangled his hand trying to tame the logs and how his grandfather, Jeannot, little more than a boy, walked thousands of miles across the continent to finally settle in an area of woods in spite of the monsters and spirits dwelling there. It was in those dark woods that Flaireur, a dog Jeannot had stolen from a witch, lay down to rest and refused to move except to drink from the river or relieve himself. Later, after he discovered his dog had a keen sense for gold, Jeannot understood before anyone else that gold’s promise of wealth was fleeting and real survival depended on making use of the trees. And it was under the shelter of those trees that Jeannot would fall in love with the woman who haunted him thereafter.

Zentner is a sublime storyteller. Clear, pristine prose and striking imagery make this book a standout. Sprinkled with magical realism, “Touch” is part adventure story, part ghost story, and foremost a love story, a testimony to the unwavering, enduring power of love, a love unhampered by ordinary boundaries of time and space.

Pank

The latest issue of Pank is live and includes three beautiful stories from Michelle Reale, an essay by Lidia Yuknavitch, and among many excellent stories and poems, my story "In the Fall."

The Other Life by Ellen Meister

The Other Life by Ellen Meister
ISBN: 978-0-399-15173-4
G.P. Putnam


Imagine having the ability to second guess your life’s most significant choices. Imagine the ability to go back to the fork in the road and travel down the other path. Would that ability be a gift or a burden?

In Ellen Meister’s new novel, “The Other Life,” Quinn Braverman is living in the suburbs, happily married to her steady and giving husband, mother to a lovely son, and pregnant with her second child. Though she lost her mother to suicide seven years earlier, she has a good relationship with her brother and father, and a friend in the quirky woman who lives next door. Life is good, if not terribly exciting. However, the day she learns that the baby she’s carrying has a serious, and potentially fatal, abnormality, her serenity is shattered.

Quinn has always known about the portals, the openings to another possibility. She’s never actually tested them, though she’s come close out of curiosity. Now, desperation drives her to slip through one of the portals, a crack in her basement wall, to her other life, the one in which she’s remained with her needy, shock jock boyfriend, living a childless, high-powered life in the city. In this alternate reality she can feel relief from the pain of her future and relief from her fear for her unborn daughter. Something else tempts her to keep returning to this other life: in this reality, her mother is still very much alive. After moving back and forth between the two lives, Quinn is forced to make a decision because the portal is closing.

Meister magically makes the impossible believable and keeps the reader guessing right to the end. “The Other Life” is funny, sexy, poignant, and also unflinching in its willingness to tackle subjects some people may find difficult: depression, sexuality, quality of life. “The Other Life” is a stunning story of love, marital love and sibling love, yes, but perhaps more emphatically, the indestructible love between mother and child.

*Review was printed in the May 15th edition of The Pilot.

Off Topic: Editions de Parfums by Frederic Malle

It started out innocently enough. I was researching perfume for a future story. I was not a connoisseur myself, in fact, I even went a few years without wearing any perfume at all. My past perfumes were far from boutique: Ralph, by Ralph Lauren, Happy by Clinique and Aqua di Gio by Armani. All very nice and very safe. All non-orientals because years ago when I was young and foolish I became very ill on too many rum and cokes while wearing Opium. Anyway, two years ago, I tried a sample of Flowerbomb, which was different from any perfume I'd worn and it got me to thinking about perfume, about the people who create them and the people who wear them and also about the people who critique them. So I started checking out the perfume blogs and began my education which, eventually led me to Frederic Malle's boutique collection of scents, all created by a small group of master perfumers.

All the Malle perfumes I've tried so far are indeed masterpieces, though not all are wearable for me. They have completely transformed my expectation of a perfume. There are scents to smell nice, scents to attempt to cover body odor (FYI: it doesn't work people and I do wish you'd stop trying) and then there is the Frederic Malle line. These perfumes are nothing short of wearable art.

The Parisian company is nice enough to send you three free spray samples for 20 euros of shipping cost (or you can go to Barneys and try them there). I've tried Carnal Flower, Lys Mediterranee, Un Fleur de Cassie, En Passant, Iris Poudre, Une Rose, Lipstick Rose and Parfum de Therese. Of these, the only one I had a strong umpleasant reaction to (and I'm hyper-sensitive to smells) was Parfum de Therese as it smelled like rotten meat on me and turned my stomach. Une Rose is too big of a flower for me--it's a big lush Georgia O'Keefe rose and too heady for this time of year, but still, it's beautiful. My favorites are Carnal Flower, En Passant, Lys Mediterranee, and Iris Poudre. Carnal Flower is a lush, green, complex tuberose scent. En Passant is just as described: a bush of white lilac in the rain. The scent smells exactly like the lilacs that grow in my southern yard and less like the ones from New England, but incredibly lovely nonetheless. Lys Mediterranee smells soft and salty sweet, and is intriguingly complex, and Iris Poudre is my winter scent. Less like powder to me and much more like something yummy to eat, this is an amazing iris and vanilla perfume.

In my research, I've learned about notes and noses and sillage, learned the difference between marine and metallic notes, learned about flankers and niche houses. But most surprising to me is that I fell in love with perfume for the first time, truly fell in love.

My favorite and most edifying perfume blog: Now Smell This

West of Here by Jonathan Evison

Jonathan Evison’s “West of Here” is a gritty, full bodied epic set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, Washington. The beginning pulls the reader in with beautiful, assured narration and indelible characters who embody the spirit of the pioneers who ventured west in search of opportunity. These are men who set out to move the course of a river, who imagined selling ice gathered at mountain tops, who envisaged electric stairs, and who dreamed they could save the culture of a people. These are women who believed their voices and actions were valuable; for one woman that meant to send her child away to a better life, for another, to break out of a destructive pattern, and for another, to attempt to stop big-money progress with the power of the written word.

A few chapters in, Evison introduces a whole new set of characters as he travels forward in time to the lives of the descendants of the men and women who settled Port Bonita. The transition comes as a surprise but as the reader comes to know these new characters he won’t mind being ripped from the earlier group. Connecting the two time periods are the Elwha river, the men who tried to tame it and their descendants, the Native American settlement of Jamestown, and an odd shaman-like out-of-body experience in which the Native American boy, Thomas, switches places with a modern day Khallam Indian, Curtis.

The themes are familiar: man versus nature, Native American wisdom versus progress, the tangible versus the mysterious, but Evison’s quality of writing and depth of character take these themes to an enviably high level. By the end, the reader realizes the author has threaded these two disparate sets of characters seamlessly to offer a rich, multi-layered novel that satisfies.


*Review first published in the March 20th edition of The Pilot of Southern Pines, NC

Pacazo by Roy Kesey

Roy Kesey’s “Pacazo” is not a book to be rushed through. It is a work as fine as any classic, meant to be read again and again, slowly, with attention. It is the story of John Segovia (when John was a boy, his father told him he was a descendant of Juan de Segovia), a North American ex-pat historian working in Piura, Peru as an English professor. He’d come to Peru and not only fell in love with his late wife, but seemed to fall in love with the land and all of its quirks, failings and beauty. We meet John after his wife has been brutally raped and has died, disoriented and wounded, in the desert. John spends much of the novel overcoming the urge to seek violent revenge, sometimes while carrying his infant child around in a snuggly. He seems to always be plotting, seeking, and nearly always on the verge of being fired, and though he’s clearly suffering, avenging Pilar’s death seems to give him a purpose, as does diminishing the ill effects of El Nino on comfortable living.

The narration, told in the present tense and from John’s point of view, is a hybrid mix of collage and stream of consciousness. Scene blends into historical discourse which blends into dreams remembered which blend into sensory observations, sometimes within the same paragraph, sometimes within the same sentence. The result of which lends the feeling, at times, of being unmoored thus reflecting the narrator’s state of mind. The novel is laced with humor and packed with startling imagery: pacazo shit raining down on John’s head, whole mountains collapsing, and details of how a stingray’s “barbed spine will plunge in and rip out, taking its plug of flesh.” Not only rich with history and detail, the novel also offers insight on Peruvian manners and customs: for instance if someone pauses before he says yes to an invitation, he’s politely saying no.

John Segovia is a magnificent, lumbering, well-meaning character, and in “Pacazo” the country of Peru is a character just as prominent, just as magnificent. After reading this imaginative, refreshingly unique novel, I feel I know the place and its people enough to hold them both in my mind and heart, almost as if I’d been to Piura, Peru myself.

T.J. Forrester: Interview

T.J., let me begin by telling you how very much I admire your first novel, “Miracles Inc.”". Fast-paced, witty, unflinching, narrated by a unique and unforgettable character, this novel succeeds on so many levels. Congratulations!

A. Thanks so much, Katrina.

Q. How long have you been writing? How long did you work on this novel?

A. I've been writing since 2000.

In 2002, I began work on the novel, but I wasn't capable and frustration got the best of me. I put away the manuscript. When I started getting a handle on the craft, something that happened in 2005, I focused on the story for about a year and still didn't make headway.

Along about that time, I began work on Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, and this is the collection that garnered so much attention when I queried agents. I signed with Leigh Feldman, who is now with Writers House, and she wanted a novel partial to sub with the collection. So, I sent her the first eighty pages of Miracles, Inc. She said the story was cliched. I rewrote another eighty pages, which I didn't send because I didn't like them very much. A few days later I started again, and this time the novel came together from sentence one. (I'll take a shot at explaining why in the answer to the next question.)

From then on, facing a Simon & Schuster deadline, I worked twelve hours a day. It was exhausting, and I had to squeeze in time for exercise and eating right or I couldn't stay alert enough to make progress. If I add up the failed attempts and the tangents that led to nowhere, I wrote somewhere around 300,000 words to come up with the 70,000 that made the final cut.

Q. What came first for “Miracles Inc.,” character or situation?

A. During the writing of this novel, I tried for years to bring the main character to life. I started close to the action, I started far from the action, I gave him different characteristics, and put him in different situations. The chapters turned out bland, bland, and blander. Finally, I woke up one morning understanding that the story begins after the bad thing happens. I put Vernon Oliver on death row, and his voice revealed itself from sentence one. When I heard that voice, that's when I knew I had a character who could carry the novel.

To answer your question, the character and situation were so entwined from the get-go it's impossible to separate the two.

Q. That fact that you take the reader into little known worlds makes this book even more special and fun to read. How were you able to lend such verisimilitude to televangelism and to death row? What was the extent and process of your research?

A. I went to a few faith healing meetings when I was younger, so I have some knowledge of the Pentecostal religion, but I mostly used my imagination to pull off that part of the book.

To research death row, I spent many hours in the library. Still, I wasn't comfortable in trying to precisely portray prison life, so I put my main character in a fictional institution south of the real death row in Florida. This setting, I felt, gave me more freedom to fictionalize his incarceration.

However, research is only the start of lending veracity to fiction. The other part of the equation is writing with significant detail. A word to younger writers: fiction readers rely on their imaginations and if you add too much detail you take away the fun. Too, if you don't put in enough detail the fictive dream never kicks off. The trick is finding the right detail and the right amount of detail. Sometimes it takes revising a scene many times to get it right.

Q. The pacing is break-neck and yet slows down at the right moments. Did you cut anything out to achieve this pacing or did it "fall” out this way?

A. I don't remember making a conscious decision to slow things down or to speed things up. I blame a lot of my writing on intuition. (There is still so much that is mysterious about the process.)


Q. You handle the large and small scale seemingly with ease, widening the lens and narrowing again when necessary. Is this something you were conscious of?

A. That part of my writing comes naturally.


Q. You nailed the voice. You nailed the character. For all the trouble Vernon gets into, his desire appears to be simple: to live comfortably with the woman he loves. This simplicity makes him incredibly likable despite his failings. How did he first show himself to you?

A. I didn't know Vernon had a lover until I began the second chapter, so when he first appeared he was unlikeable. Developing his relationship with Rickie softened him up and added a complexity he wouldn't have otherwise had. I suspect Vernon resonates because we all have desires and what greater desire than one lover for another?

Q. Which do you prefer to write, short stories or novels?

A. I like both genres, see the act of creating a short story as rewriting until I form a narrative that fills a bubble. Hard, but not scary. Writing a novel is a set of train tracks heading across the mountain and is much more intimidating because I never know if I'm angling toward a cliff or a bridge. If pinned down, I like writing novels better than writing short stories. There's something about long term immersion that's attractive to obsessive personalities.

Q. And lastly, what does the L in Vernon's name stand for?

A. Lamar.

Thank you, T.J., for answering these questions and thank you for writing such a dynamic book!

T. J. Forrester comes from a family of four and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. He prefers to sleep on the ground and is no longer scared of bears. His stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, The Literary Review, The MacGuffin, The Mississippi Review, Potomac Review, and Storyglossia.

He wrote Miracles, Inc. while living in Virginia. The attic room was small, chilly in the winter, but his landlord was very kind and fed him when he was without food. His second work, a novel-in-stories titled Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in the spring of 2012.

He blogs at his personal website. tjforrester.com

Pank

My story "In the Fall" will be appearing in Pank in May. I've been an admirer of Roxanne Gay, one of the editors of the journal, for a while now. I've been reading her blog and I'm amazed how gorgeous and meaningful her posts are. She's a natural.

"In the Fall" started out as a 6000+ words story and I kept shaving off the dead areas, again and again, until I ended up with the final piece just under 1200 words.

"Tenderoni"

Writer and blogger Myfanwy Collins reviews Kathy Fish's new chapbook "Tenderoni" here.

I'm looking forward to reading it!