From Marrying The Hangman

“To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.”

— Margaret Atwood, from Marrying The Hangman in “Selected Poems II: 1976-1986″ 

Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach tackles many topics--the Brooklyn Naval Yard, racketeering, the meaning of family. 

In the "shadow" world that Dexter Styles inhabits, Styles is the top of the food chain who can indifferently make people disappear. Eddie Kerrigan is different. When given the order, Styles regretfully shoots Kerrigan.

For every gangster, though, who thinks he is at the top, there is someone else more omnipotent. 

In Dexter's case there's the mysterious Mr. Q and his sons and even someone much closer to home that can change the landscape of Dexter's world.

But this novel is not simply about gangsters. Manhattan Beach is also about the incredible sacrifices families makes for their loved ones.

Mrs. Kerrigan gives up a career she loves with the Ziegfeld Follies to raise her daughters, one of whom is severely disabled.

Eddie Kerrigan chooses to make another sacrifice; one that leaves his favorite daughter, Anna, bereft and angry. 

Anna had always been close to her father. She was his accomplice at twelve when he meets Dexter Styles at his Manhattan beach house.

That incredible meeting is forever seared in Anna's mind and will alter the course of her father's life and her own.

Despite resistance from the top brass, Anna works in the Naval Yard, choosing to dive and repair ships. 

Later, she will make an even riskier dive that will take her to the heart of the mystery of her father's disappearance.

Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon

"The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us...People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this crazy world of mazes...you don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is...When I was twelve years old, in 1964, Zephyr held about fifteen hundred people. There was the Bright Star Cafe, the Woolworth's, and a little Piggly-Wiggly grocery store...My hometown was probably a lot like yours."


Cory Jay Mackenson of Boy's Life

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

Imagine this scenario.

 Chris has just returned from a cross country bike trip with his best friend, Win. He goes on to orientation at Georgia Tech but his best friend never checks in at Dartmouth.

As it turns out, the two got separated at the end of their tension-filled journey. Chris assumed Win went on to Seattle where he was to meet an Uncle. Except the uncle was fictional. That's one of many lies Win told. 

Win also claims to be broke when he actually had $19,000 in cash on hand.

The FBI come to Chris's college and expect him to know where his friend went.  Only he has no idea. Everything he thought he knew about his friend and his life has just shifted.

That's the conundrum Chris finds himself in Jennifer Bradbury's 2012 novel, Shift.

When the boys go on their road trip, for the first time, they feel cool. Win's father is rich yet he doesn't feel supported or loved. The bike trip gives him purpose.

Girls respond by sending both of them postcards. Some of the postcards, however, are signed "Tricksey." 

Chris does not know who the mysterious Tricksey is though its pretty easy for readers to guess. 

One of the best scenes has Win wrestling with Chris, reminiscent of the wrestling match Jacob had with the angel in the Bible.

This is a novel about new starts and about saying goodbye. A powerful debut.  

Additional Jennifer Bradbury books:

Wrapped.

A Moment Comes.

River Runs Deep.

http://www.jennifer-bradbury.com/

All sorrows

All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them--Isak Dinesen.

One solution

Here's what happened in Florida. According to a  Sun Sentinel article by Skyler Swisher, the killer,

"fired more than 100 rounds in a roughly three-minute span, killing 17 and wounding 15 others."

Right after the incident, there was the usual hand-wringing. What can be done? Why is this happening?' 

Gun rights advocates say, of course, its not the gun but the wielder of the gun who is at fault. In this case, however, it wasn't a handgun, it was a high-powered rifle that could fire 100 rounds in three minutes.

Here's a partial solution to a complex issue. Ban the AR-15, the weapon Cruz used. Make it as difficult as possible to obtain weapons that can fire that many rounds that quickly because it isn't a defense weapon.

No one fires that many rounds to defend themselves unless they are in a war. 

Printz Awards

The Michael L. Printz awards are given each year to outstanding young adult literature. 

In 2017, the Printz prize went to John Lewis' March (Book 3). 

This year's award went to Nina LaCour's We Are Okay.

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

C.J. Tudor likes writing mysteries about small towns. As reported in a January 2018 Kirkus interview, Tudor said,

"In small towns, you've got this hothouse for stuff to happen--accusations, for arguments, for fallouts, for resentments...It's the perfect breeding ground for mystery."

Engineering Tables for Public Libraries

Self-directed programming:

For kids, there are engineering tables like the ones Abby Johnson describes in American Libraries. 
bit.ly/2gM4pWc

Engineering Apps:
BOSEbuild Speaker Cube. 

Engineering activities:

Burker, Josh. Invent to Learn. 
Mercer, Bobbi. Junk Drawer Engineering. 

Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer

DCI John Marvel wants to be promoted but he hates the new task his supervisor has given him. Marvel is given the unenviable task of finding his boss' wife's missing poodle. 

The humor of this scene contrasts with the grim details of two other missing cases--that of a male toddler, Daniel, and an twelve-year-old girl, Edie, who vanished in the same vicinity. 

Coincidentally, Anna Buck, the mother of the missing boy, and the supervisor's wife both consult the same "shut eye" or psychic. A natural skeptic, DCI John Marvel calls the "shut eye" a quack.

DCI Marvel is a stereotype who loves stereotypes yet he has a pure heart. He wants to find Edie more than anyone, even if it puts his career in jeopardy.

Ang, who works in a garage with Anna Buck's husband, is an illegal immigrant who tries yet fails to understand Western ways. Like the story cloth his mother made, Ang's tragic story is woven into the unusual events that occur in this novel. 


Belinda Bauer's debut novel Blacklands won a Gold Dagger award.

Virginia Woolf

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."--Virginia Woolf

The Albertine Prize

The Albertine Prize recognizes noteworthy Francophone fiction. 
http://www.albertine.com/

This year's contenders:
Angot, Christine. Incest.
Eduoard, Lewis. The End of Eddy.
Enard, Mathias. Compass.
Garreta, Anne. Not One Day.
Mabanckou, Alain. Black Moses. 



Safe House by Christophe Boltanski won the 2015 Prix Femina, another French literary award. 

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

"You have to take a chance don't you? Its like crossing the road with your eyes shut...you don't know what's going to happen next." --Kitty Finch.

Nina decides that standing near Kitty "was like being near a cork that had just popped out of a bottle." Nina thinks Kitty is a wild, adventurous spirit.

Jurgen wants to marry Kitty; Madeleine Sheridan is afraid of Kitty and thinks she is "mad." Joe thinks she's depressed and a dangerous groupie.

Kitty, a botanist, is unlike any house guest he's ever met. She has stopped taking her medication and sees people walking through walls. 

Kitty is also beautiful with a habit of walking around sans clothes.

Kitty's poem, which she calls a conversation, is called "Swimming Home." In it, she calls the pool a "coffin" so its easy to surmise her intentions. 

Joe who pretends he hasn't read her poem does not want to accept consequences. He warns his daughter not to get in a car with her, but then, surprisingly, he takes Kitty out for drinks at the Negresco.

Maybe its her madness that make her vision clearer, like the fool in King Lear. She gives a spooky foreshadowing of events:

"I know what you're thinking. Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better  and we'll all get home safely. But you tried and you did not get home safely. You did not get home at all. That is why I'm here...I have come to France to save you from your thoughts."

Nothing is as it appears in this novel about two couples vacationing in France. Everything rings true, however. The characters are well-developed and the scenes are well crafted.

This startling novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.  

Skin

A horse's skin is seven times thicker than human skin.

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

Sophie takes her cracked laptop, where her unfinished doctoral thesis resides, with her to Almeria, Spain. She has a Master's degree in Anthropology so everything she sees and does is filtered through that lens. 

Sophie studies everything, including her mother, who is ill and looking for a cure at the Gomez clinic in Spain. 

More than once someone hints that Rose's illness is psychosomatic and that she had entrapped Sophie in her own destructive fantasies. 

Levy does a great job of making Sophie, who is at war with herself, accessible and likable. Though she is 25, Sophie remains child-like and dependent upon her mother. When she meets the irrepressible Ingrid Bauer, however, things begins to shift.

Ingrid is everything Sophie is not; she's bold and selfish. She carries a secret that changes Sophie's view of her. 

Sophie has been abandoned by her father at five, but it one climatic moment Sophie abandons her mother. 

This is a novel for reader's who like psychological, character-driven novels.

One question. Why is it called Hot Milk?

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Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Jack and Jill's backstory, hinted at in Every Heat a Doorway, gets fully realized in Down Among the Sticks and Bones. 

Their parents, Chester and Serena Wolcott, had children for the most selfish of reasons. When the twins weren't what they expected, Chester assigned them stifling gender roles. One of them he dresses as a tomboy, Jill, while the other, Jacqueline, he dresses in finery. 

Unsurprisingly, what their father does has disastrous effects. When they reach the Moors, they reverse roles; Jack becomes self-sufficient and skilled in the sciences while Jill becomes the vain daughter of a vampire. 

This is the 2nd part of the Wayward children series. Though it lacks the spark of the first part, it offers a wonderful depiction of the Moors.