[Yale-readings] WRITERS LIVE! at NHFPL FALL 2007 SCHEDULE

[Nancy Kuhl]

>Writers Live! schedule of author appearances at the New Haven Free Public 
>Library fall 2007. Contact john.jessen at nhfpl.org for more info. NHFPL, 133 
>Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06510 946-8130 x212.
>
>
>September 29th @ 3:00pm - Dale Peck author of The Book of Lost and Found
>
>October 13th @ 3:00pm - Yvette Christianse author of The Unconfessed
>
>October 25th @ 6:30pm - Jennifer Gilmore author of Golden Country
>
>November 3rd @ 3:00pm  - Michael C. White author of Soul Catcher
>
>December 8th @ 3:00pm. ­ Justin Evans author of A Good and Happy Child
>
>Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 3:00pm
>Dale Peck  / The Book of Lost and Found
>
>"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.
>
>“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."
>
>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
>
>
>  ***************
>Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 3:00pm
>Yvette Christiansë  / Unconfessed
>
>A fiercely poetic literary debut re-creating the life of an 19th-century 
>slave woman in South Africa.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>
>*************
>
>Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 6:30pm
>Jennifer Gilmore / Golden Country.
>
>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.
>
>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
>
>
>"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
>
>
>"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."
>-Publishers Weekly
>
>
>"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
>
>
>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.
>
>
>*******************
>Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 3:00pm
>Michael White  / Soul Catcher.
>
>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.
>
>Cain is a scarred, but proud man haunted by a terrible skill--the ability 
>to track people who don't want to be found.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>"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
>
>"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."
>-James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom
>
>"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
>
>"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
>
>
>
>*******************
>Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 3:00pm
>Justin Evans / A Good and Happy Child
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>“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)
>
>“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)
>
>“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
>
>  New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street,  New Haven, 
> CT          06510  203-946-8130 x212, john.jessen at nhfpl.org
>
>

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