Magic, Layoffs, Neon, Clocks
Carriage Return, 1/16/2018
Carriage Return is The Ribbon’s round-up of recent Literati Bookstore staff favorites, as well as an occasional place for useful links and news from around the literary web regarding upcoming events at the store.
Recent Staff Favorites (in Hardcover)
Here is Real Magic, by Nate Staniforth
Performing live in-store, 1/27 at 7pm!
During the early part of his life my father was an amateur magician. HE relished in being clever and entertaining, but what he truly enjoyed was the excitement he created. He knew that magic can transport you from everyday life to a moment of wonder. Here is Real Magic is not a book about tricks and magic shows, but an insightful memoir about human nature and self discovery. Staniforth always wanted to be a magician and worked hard to become good enough to tour throughout the United States. It was great until it wasn’t. Disillusioned, he traveled to India, the home legendary street magicians; he hoped to rekindle his spirit and rediscover “Real Magic.” And… he did, but not where or how he expected. The magic is here. — Sharon
Red Clocks, by Leni Zumas
Leni Zumas’ writing hums with an energy that I can’t quite put my finger on except to say that I didn’t want to put this book down. One could begin to talk about this novel through its premise: abortion has been made illegal, personhood is now declared at conception, in vitro fertilization is also illegal as a result. But it feels truer to start talking about this novel with its characters, to say that Red Clocks is about four women leading their lives in a small town, much the same way that I am leading a life in a small town. Their lives are vastly different from each other’s, but what they share is that they are all in one way or another trapped by their circumstances, longing for freedom under a system defined by the absence of choice. I loved these characters, felt their heartbreak and their frustrations and desires in such a deep way. Brilliant and nuanced, Red Clocks is a fiercely feminist exploration of the multitude of ways in which women seek meaningful lives under the limits of a patriarchal system that is dangerously close to our own. — Kelsey
This Could Hurt, by Jillian Medoff
Despite the millions of people who work in Human Resources departments, I can’t think of any other novels that are mostly set in one. This Could Hurt is about the HR employees in a mid-sized market research company, one still reeling from the last big recession. At its center is long-tenured VP Rosa, a manicured vision in her St. John’s suits and matching pantyhose, and her dedicated seconds Lucy and Leo. The book is punctuated with a few org charts as the department implements “reductions in force” and consolidates job descriptions: the personal losses and self-inflicted embarrassments will be familiar to readers who have survived similar corporate outrages. The heart of this tender but comic novel though is a secret employee conspiracy to save one of their own from a calamity, because “it is easier to ask forgiveness than beg permission.” — Carla
Recent Staff Favorites (in Paperback)
The Girl in Green, by Derek B. Miller
The unlikely heroes, heart, charm, humor, intelligence, and gripping tension of both Miller’s first novel, Norwegian by Night, and now this stunningly powerful and insanely funny second novel, make Miller one of my favorite contemporary novelists. Miller wrote his dissertation on the Iraq civil war of 1991 and writes in the afterword to this book that he knew that he “needed to return to the subject matter through fiction, where a greater range of truths could be explored.” This novel, set mostly in Iraq, but international in scope, is the result. All of the characters are captivating, but I have to single out the American soldier, Arwood Hobbs, as one of the most original, troubled, enigmatic, and hilarious characters ever. I will never forget him. And the man who created Arwood also wrote lines such as this: “There was no topsoil. There was surely a proper reason for this, but Benton imagined that too many feet had walked here for too long in search of too much.” This book which addresses a host of themes with insight, humor, and compassion, will be with me literally and figuratively always. — Jeanne
Neon in Daylight, by Hermione Hoby
There is a point in this book in which a character ruminates on how we may go about viewing ourselves as we view spectacular city skylines. How do we zoom out? How do we separate ourselves from the avenues of our own lives; how do we see ourselves, as one beautiful whole? And how can we know another person if we don’t know ourselves? Hermione Hoby doesn’t answer these questions for us, but she does make us ponder them in a striking, shimmering voice that is all her own. This is no regular New York coming-of-age novel. It is weird and charming and full of that unnamable thing that is just so New York…that those strangers around you could — in an easily missed split-second encounter — change your life forever. This is an electric debut. — Claire
Perfect Little World, by Kevin Wilson
There’s nothing like watching a cast of characters grow up in front of your eyes, every passing year making each person both more or less knowable, until you are as attuned to their idiosyncrasies in nature as to the waxing and waning of your own understanding, delight, and frustration with them. With Wilson’s latest, such growth is near-steroidal as we are presented with not only a cast of ten babies, but also ten pairs of parents, all living together in pursuit of a revolutionary child psychology experiment created by Dr. Preston Grind. Under such extreme circumstances, impossible to imagine, yet, under Wilson’s meticulous hand, magically easy to believe, we follow Isabelle Poole, the only single mom involved in the Infinite Family project, as she tries to stitch together a family out of total strangers. Wilson is the true parent of this sqaulling brood, and he watches over them like any good parent would, never blind to their faults but always, eventually, forgiving of them. I wished that I could live in the imperfect, larger-than-life world that is Wilson’s, forever. I’ll settle for knowing I can visit anytime. — Lillian
