<html>
<body>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Writers Live! schedule of author
appearances at the New Haven Free Public Library fall 2007. Contact
john.jessen@nhfpl.org for more info. NHFPL, 133 Elm Street, New Haven, CT
06510 946-8130 x212.<br><br>
<br>
September 29th @ 3:00pm - Dale Peck author of The Book of Lost and
Found<br><br>
October 13th @ 3:00pm - Yvette Christianse author of The
Unconfessed<br><br>
October 25th @ 6:30pm - Jennifer Gilmore author of Golden
Country<br><br>
November 3rd @ 3:00pm - Michael C. White author of Soul
Catcher<br><br>
December 8th @ 3:00pm. Justin Evans author of A Good and Happy
Child<br><br>
Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 3:00pm<br>
Dale Peck / The Book of Lost and Found<br><br>
"New York novelist Peck has published four previous books (Martin
and Dale and most recently a memoir, What We Lost, in 2003), but none of
them has achieved the notoriety of his acid reviews of contemporary
fiction writers: Hatchet Jobs: Cutting through Contemporary
Literature. Heidi Julavits, co-editor of The Believer, castigated
Peck for his "snark" in a widely read manifesto, and James
Atlas wrote a quizzical, marveling profile of Peck for the New York Times
Magazine. For the latter feature, and now this book's cover, Peck was
photographed provocatively la Carrie Nation, ax in hand, and indeed there
are overtones of both the Puritan and the temperance worker in
Peck.<br><br>
“The present volume collects the best of these negative reviews.
According to Peck's chronology, the trouble with literature began a
quarter of a century ago, roughly around the time Thomas Pynchon
published Gravity's Rainbow and begat a whole slew of heartless,
indulgent "masterpieces." The modernist moment over, writing
has flirted with postmodern trappings while remaining secretly affianced
to the worst excesses of Victorian narrative and description. "Now,
what one hears hailed as an emerging new genre of writing usually turns
out to be nothing more than a standard realist text inflected by a
preoccupation with something or other."<br><br>
Peck's criticism of individual writers and marketing trends is
wonderfully cogent and invective-filled; dropped into a discussion of
Julian Barnes's minimalism, Peck asserts that the novels of Ian McEwan
"smell worse than newspaper wrapped around old fish." In
"The Moody Blues," Peck calls Rick Moody "the worst
novelist of his generation," while How Stella Got Her Groove Back by
Terry McMillan is a "panting, gasping, protracted death rattle-four
hundred pages of unpunctuated run-on sentences about virtually
nothing." Just when the reader tires of vitriol, Peck turns around
and delivers a clearheaded analysis of a novel he likes, in this case
Rebecca Brown's Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary, bringing to
the task those qualities of sensitivity, tact and generosity he has often
been accused of lacking. Peck has said that he has written his last slam,
this is it, we're not going to get any more "hatchet jobs," and
that's a pity on the one hand, but great news for the emperor and all his
new clothes." - Publishers Weekly<br><br>
<br>
***************<br>
Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 3:00pm<br>
Yvette Christiansë / Unconfessed<br><br>
A fiercely poetic literary debut re-creating the life of an 19th-century
slave woman in South Africa.<br><br>
Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayedand never with
such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual
19th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour
de force. They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave woman of Jacobus
Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay, South Africa. A woman moved
from master to master, farm to farm, anddriven by the horrors of slavery
to commit an unspeakable crimefrom prison to prison. A woman fit for
hanging . . . condemned to death on April 30, 1823, but whose sentence
the English, having recently wrested authority from the Dutch settlers,
saw fit to commute to a lengthy term on the notorious Robben
Island.<br><br>
Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape
Town’s streets and walls. She remembers the day her childhood ended, when
slave catchers came “whipping the air and the ground and we were like
deer whipped into the smaller and smaller circle of our fear.” Sila
remembers her masters, especially Oumiesies (“old Missus”), who in her
will granted Sila her freedom, but Theron, Oumiesies’ vicious and
mercenary son, destroys the will and with it Sila’s life. Sila remembers
her children, with joy and with pain, and imagines herself a great bird
that could sweep them up in her wings and set them safely on a branch
above all harm. Unconfessed is an epic novel that connects the reader to
the unimaginable through the force of poetry and a far-reaching
imagination.<br><br>
Yvette Christiansë was born in South Africa under apartheid and
immigrated with her family via Swaziland to Australia at the age of
eighteen. She is the author of the 1999 poetry collection Castaway. She
teaches English and postcolonial studies at Fordham University and lives
in New York City. Unconfessed, her first novel, was honored as a 2006
PEN/Hemingway Award finalist.<br><br>
<br>
*************<br><br>
Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 6:30pm<br>
Jennifer Gilmore / Golden Country.<br><br>
Golden Country vividly brings to life the intertwining stories of three
immigrants seeking their fortunes: the handsome and ambitious Seymour, a
salesman turned gangster turned Broadway producer; the gentle and
pragmatic Joseph, a door-to-door salesman who is driven to invent a
cleanser effective enough to wipe away the shame of his brother’s mob
connections; and the irresistible Frances Gold, who grows up in Brooklyn,
stars in Seymour’s first show, and marries the man who invents
television. Their three families, though inextricably connected for
years, are brought together for the first time by the engagement of
Seymour’s son and Joseph’s daughter. David and Miriam’s marriage must
endure the inheritance of not only their parents’ wealth but also the
burdens of their pasts.<br><br>
Spanning the first half of the twentieth century, Golden Country captures
the exuberance of the American dream while exposing its
underbellydisillusionment, greed, and the disaffection bred by success.
-from the publisher<br><br>
<br>
"At its best, however, Golden Country is an ingeniously plotted
family yarn. Gilmore’s careful planning results in a satisfying blend of
story lines, and her refusal to settle on one simple perspective enlivens
the myth of the American Dream." -Allegra Goodman - The New York
Times<br><br>
<br>
"In a powerfully moving and ambitious debut, Gilmore follows the
lives of three immigrant families, the Brodskys, the Verdoniks and the
Blooms, who all begin their American journeys in shtetl-like Brooklyn and
end up somewhere unexpected between the 1920s and the 1960s. . .
She also delves into the daily goings-on in three generations of families
as they are forged in the 20th-century crucible. Talented and
compassionate, Gilmore is a writer to watch."<br>
-Publishers Weekly<br><br>
<br>
"With major political debate focusing on immigration, Gilmore's
affecting debut seems particularly timely. The narrative explicates the
travails of two Jewish immigrant families, the Blooms and the Brodskys,
as it assesses the reality the "golden country" offered them in
the early to mid-20th century. . . . While assimilation, from nose jobs
to New England colleges, comes into play, Gilmore's sweeping narrative
goes much further, covering the political and social markers of almost
five decades. Gender relations, as well as the impact of class ascendance
on both individuals and families, are deftly and sensitively covered.
Although these are not new themes, the novel's historical backdrop-the
lure of the Mafia in Brooklyn's impoverished Williamsburg community, the
Great Depression, the 1939 World's Fair, the invention of television, the
magic of Broadway musicals-makes this a memorable and often powerful
book. Highly recommended for all contemporary fiction collections."
-Library Journal<br><br>
<br>
Jennifer Gilmore’s work has appeared in magazines, journals, and
anthologies, including the New York Times Magazine, Allure, Nerve, and
Salon. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.<br><br>
<br>
*******************<br>
Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 3:00pm<br>
Michael White / Soul Catcher.<br><br>
In the tradition of Cold Mountain and Widow of The South comes an epic
novel of love, freedom and a country on the brink of war.<br><br>
Cain is a scarred, but proud man haunted by a terrible skill--the ability
to track people who don't want to be found.<br><br>
Rosetta is a runaway slave fueled by the passion and determination only a
mother can feel. And she will risk everything for the promise of
freedom.<br><br>
In the perilous years before the Civil War, their fates will intertwine
in an extraordinary adventure--one of hardship and redemption that will
take them from Virginia to Boston and back. it is an odyssey that will
change them forever.<br><br>
"Soul Catcher is a break-out book and a natural movie. It has a very
dramatic narrative and is as richly detailed and beautifully written as
the best Civil War era novels. But while Soul Catcher reads like an
adventure story, it has its own impressive weight. Slavery and its
effects are clearly and effectively portrayed as the worm in the American
apple, and that gives Cain's personal journey a metaphorical heft similar
to Huck Finn's. It's an important book." -Richard Russo,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls<br><br>
"This powerful narrative of a slave catcher's odyssey from South to
North and back again just before the Civil War chronicles a physical and
emotional journey of epic proportions. A story of tragedy and triumph,
Soul Catcher is a novel that the reader cannot put down."<br>
-James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of
Freedom<br><br>
"Soul Catcher is a terrific novel about a chapter in our history we
have all but forgotten, the pursuit of runaway slaves by bounty hunters
in pre-Civil War America. Michael White is a wonderful story teller, and
his work is long on atmosphere, and packed with action." -Kevin
Baker<br><br>
"A richly imagined, high-voltage epic. This wonderfully researched
book is teeming with incident, peopled by passionate abolitionists and
canny slaves, and brings to life the very dark heart of that 'peculiar
institution.' This is an essential novel for any reader interested in
slavery and race." -Shirlee Haizlip, author of The Sweeter the
Juice<br><br>
<br><br>
*******************<br>
Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 3:00pm<br>
Justin Evans / A Good and Happy Child<br><br>
Thirty-year-old George Davies can’t bring himself to hold his newborn
son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his
wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George,
desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father
and husband, reluctantly agrees.<br><br>
As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he
hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations
come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before
he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s
death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him
secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was
real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were
happening.<br><br>
Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what
really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his
ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken
child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the
trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues,
who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the
supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later,
George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed,
remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himselfand
his young family.<br><br>
A psychological thriller in the tradition of Donna Tartt’s The Secret
Historywith shades of The Exorcistthe smart and suspenseful A Good and
Happy Child leaves you questioning the things you remember and
frightened of the things you’ve forgotten.<br>
<br>
“This stunning novel marks the debut of a serious talent… The
intelligence and humanity of this thriller should help launch it onto
bestseller lists.” -Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)<br>
<br>
“This debut novel grips readers from the first chapter. Is George really
possessed by a demon, or is he just losing his mind? Evans delivers a
creepy and entertaining story full of perfectly written characters.” -
Library Journal (Starred Review)<br>
<br>
“A psychological thriller that keeps the reader on edge until the last
page. With occasional echoes of The Exorcist this is a haunting story of
guilt, denial and the possibility of demonic possession.” -Kirkus
Reviews<br>
<br>
New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street, New Haven,
CT 06510
203-946-8130 x212, john.jessen@nhfpl.org<br><br>
</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
The Yale-Readings Listserv is sponsored by the Yale Collection of
American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. To post
announcements about poetry and fiction readings, send the full text of
the announcement, including contact information, to
<a href="http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/yale-readings">
nancy.kuhl at yale.edu.</a> Messages sent directly to the Yale-Readings
list may not be posted. <br><br>
For more information about Poetry at the Beinecke Library, visit:
<a href="https://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/" eudora="autourl">
https://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com</a> </body>
</html>