Consuming Books One Page at a Time

Deborah and Joel Shlian are a husband and wife writing team.  They are both retired doctors who practiced together for years and now do medical consulting, along with fiction and non-fiction writing.  Their latest novel is so very timely as it is set in China and will be released in June in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics being held in Bejing.

Rabbit in the Moon (Oceanview Publishing) is a page-turner.  The novel takes place during the two weeks prior to the Tiananmen Square tragedy on June 4, 1989, where protesting students were overrun by Chinese troops, resulting in hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths.

Against that background, the novel tells the story of Lili Quan, the only child of an immigrant mother, who raises her daughter in San Francisco.  Lili is a medical resident when we meet her, working in a Los Angeles hospital.   She is lured to China as a medical researcher, but the Communist government wants Lili more for her connection to her grandfather.   Dr. Cheng, Lili’s grandfather, is hiding a valuable secret from the government.  Throw in a couple of attractive young men, a rogue CIA agent, an American travel group of seniors and you have a fast-paced and steamy story!

Most of the reviews have been very good.  ReviewingtheEvidence.com points out that the authors’ insights into Chinese life and the medical developments in geriatrics will keep the reader engaged. 

Questions have been developed for the novel as Rabbit has been chosen by quite a few reading groups for discussion.  On the Mystery Writers of America website, the book is noted as being “perfect for reading groups.”  Authorsden.com has made available a list of eleven questions.

To have Scott Turow, Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, and Raymon Khoury all blurb your debut novel must be like a dream come true.  But, when the reviewers hail it as a “stunning success” (A.L. Harper, writing for Blogcritics Magazine), “a remarkable debut ” (Andrew Nagorski, Newsweek Web Exclusive), a “runaway train-ride of a crime thriller” (Mary Whipple, Mostly Fiction), and “a propulsve, relentless page-turner” (Sandy Amazeen, Monstersandcritics), what kind of pressure is that?

If Tom Rob Smith’s second novel even approaches the accolades heaped on his first, his writing career will be made.  Not that he doesn’t deserve them.  I could not put this book down.  Even the sections that could have verged on droning were interesting because they echoed the atmosphere of the novel.  Smith depicts the Russian landscape so well that you feel as if you are weighed down by layers of clothing and layers of ice and snow.  His lengthy portrayals of both Moscow early in the novel and Voualsk, a town in the Ural Mountains, reflect the frozen, desolate  and unforgiving existence in which the Russian people live.

The novel is based on the true story of Russian Andre Chikatilo, a sexual sadist, who eventually killed over 50 people. He was tried and found guilty of 52 murders and was executed by a shot to the head on February 14, 1994.

A new genre is emerging in the publishing world.  Nicknamed “geezer lit,” these mysteries feature crime-solving protagonists age 70 and older.  Though I do not like the tag, geezer lit, it is refreshing to see novels written by and with mature characters using their life experiences to solve crime.  Some of the titles are Retirement Homes Are Murder by Mike Befeler; Shooting Star by Cynthia Riggs; The Sudoku Puzzle Murders by Parnell Hall; and, Getting Old Is to Die For by Rita Lakin. 

Cynthia Riggs introduced her 92 year old detective, VictoriaTrumbull, in her first novel, Deadly Nightshade.  Victoria refuses to let the aches and pains of age stop her from solving crimes.  Shooting Star is the seventh novel featuring her sleuth.

Mike Befeler’s sleuth is an octogenarian who suffers from short-term memory loss.  Paul Jacobson becomes a murder suspect when he finds a dead body in the trash chute of a retirement home.  He has to rely on his granddaughter and new friends to help him solve the case.   This is Befeler’s debut novel and he is working on a second Paul Jacobson mystery.

Parnell Hall has been writing mysteries since 1988.  Most of them are in three series:  The Puzzle Lady, Stanley Hastings and Steve Winslow.

Rita Lakin has been writing for years, also.  For 20 years, she wrote for television. working on Mod Squad, Dynasty,  and Peyton Place.  She created The Rookies and Flamingo Road.  Her novel series, Getting Old, stars Gladdy Gold.  Gladdy is Florida’s oldest private eye.  She is aided in crime solving by her Merry Band of Octogenarians.  Getting Old Is to Die For is Lakin’s latest Gladdy Gold novel.

Hitting the big screen on May 16th is the eagerly anticipated Prince Caspian, the second installment in C. S. Lewis’s beloved The Chronicles of Narnia series.

Fugitive Pieces, based on Anne Michaels’ acclaimed 1996 novel, opened May 2. The film tells the story of Jacob Beer, a man whose life is haunted by his childhood experiences during World War II.  Michaels is a Canadian poet and her novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction

The Tracey Fragments, Ellen Page’s post-Juno indie arthouse film, opened May 9.  Based on the 1998 novel by another Canadian author Maureen Medved, this is the story of fifteen-year-old Tracey Berkowitz. Most of the story takes place as Tracey is riding around a pre-blizzard urban wasteland on the back of a city bus, naked except for the tattered curtain she’s wrapped in, and looking for her missing brother, whom she has hypnotized to thinks he’s a dog.  Medved is a playwright and the ‘fragments’ are a series of vignettes.  She also wrote the screenplay.  How quirky does this sound?

Okay, to be upfront about this book, I didn’t read it!  I read the reviews about it!  Herewith are some of the reviews I found for you, so you don’t have to read it either!

Jay McInerney reviewed How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman (Bllomsbury) in the November 11, 2007, issue of The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Listen to the NPR interview with Bayard. 

Read Sam Anderson’s review for New York Books.  Anderson is the winner of the 2007 Balakian Award for Excellence in Reviewing  from the National Book Critics Circle. 

Read Lauren Mechling’s CBC News interview titled Faking It!  Mechling is a young writer, co-author with Laura Moser, of the Tenth Grade Social Climber teen books. 

And my favorite quote on the subject:

“There’s a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word ‘banal’ sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say “underedited,” I say “derivative.” The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.”  Anna Quindlen (author of five best-selling novels: “Object Lessons,” published in 1991; “One True Thing” published in 1994 and made into a movie in 1998 starring Meryl Streep and William Hurt; “Black and Blue,” a selection of Oprah Winfrey’s book club and made into a movie starring Anthony La Paglia and Mary Stuart Masterson, which aired on CBS; ”Blessings,” published in September 2002, and “Rise and Shine,” published in 2006.)

How cool is this site?  Stop, You’re Killing Me (SYKM)  As the tag line says, “A website to die for…if you love mysteries.”  This site is a great resource for lovers of mystery, crime, thriller, spy and suspense books.  They list 2,500 authors, with chronological lists of their books, over 28,000 titles.  They have search options for Award Winners, Location Index, Job Index, Historical Index, Diversity Index, Genre Index, Read-Alikes, Magazines, What We Read, What’s New, and Alphabetical Author and Character.  There’s even a SYKM store that carries a variety of items, including T-shirts, hats and bags, and posters.

Louise Penny worked for many years as an award-winning journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Luckily for us, she quit to write crime fiction. Penny has written three novels, all in the A Three Pines Mystery series.

The first novel, Still Life, sets the scene of the small rural village south of Montreal, Three Pines. The village is not on a tourist map, being off the main road. Pastoral and a little out of step, those that found the village were surprised and then delighted to stop and embrace it.

As with any good cozy or mystery, the main characters are somewhat eccentric. Many are artists, with true talent, and some are self-proclaimed artists, with little talent. Still Life, begins with the death of a local artist, Jane Neal, a beloved figure in the town.  With Jane’s death, comes the introduction of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Gamache is a man of integrity and honor, much to the dismay of those in power at the Sûreté .  Gamache and his team of investigators deeply believe in poking and prodding any and all suspects to find the truth, whether that truth uncovers long-held secrets.  This novel won the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada and the New Blood Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association.  In the U.S., it received the Dilys Award for the book that the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association most enjoyed selling that year. 

The second novel, A Fatal Grace, is about another murder, of course.  This time, the woman murdered, CC de Poitiers, is a newcomer to the town.  The polar opposite of the victim in the first novel, CC is reviled by the townsfolk.  There are many suspects for this murder.  For a hugely funny take on who would be cast if A Fatal Grace was made into a movie, read this excerpt from an interview with Penny.  I was delighted to find out what a great sense of humor she has!

In The Cruelest Month, Penny’s third novel, some of the main characters of the village decide to celebrate Easter with a seance at the Old Hadley House (what’s wrong with hunting eggs, pray tell?).  But, as the saying goes, something wicked this way comes, and one of the participants is killed.  Why and how is Madeleine Favreau scared to death?  Lesa Holstine, a book reviewer for Library Journal and Blogcritics Magazine, calls Penny a master storyteller.  I have to agree.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale is a non-fiction account of a true crime.  Summerscale writes the book in the manner of a Victorian crime novel, reminiscent of Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone.  The crime, the murder of a small boy, stolen from his bed, and his body dumped into a privy, was the most shocking crime of 1860 in England.  The detective assigned to the case, Jonathan (Jack) Whicher, was one of eight men who made up the recently formed Scotland Yard.   Whicher was considered the finest detective at the time, a figure of mystery and glamour.  Charles Dickens (yes, that Dickens), a friend of Whicher’s, lauded Whicher and his colleagues in a series of magazine articles in 1850.

The case, known as the Road Hill Murder (from the name of the house where the murder took place), horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection.  Whicher was brought to the case late; two weeks had passed.   It took him a week to follow the case from the beginning to the end, reviewing all the prior documentation and interviewing everyone involved.  He quickly came to the conclusion that someone within the family had killed three year-old Saville Kent.  Throughout the account of the crime itself, Summerscale weaves in the story of the growing phenomenon of the English detective in fiction.  

The Daily Mail gives the book a great review, calling the murder the “original whodunit, a classic country house mystery, complete with locked doors, a missing weapon and an unfathomable motive.”

Summerscales previous book, The Queen of Whale Cay, won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award.

Lovers of horror will delight in The Ruins, based on the acclaimed thriller by Scott Smith, whose previous novel inspired the 1998 Oscar-nominated crime drama, A Simple Plan. This heart-pounding roller-coaster ride follows six friends who get far more than they bargained for during an archaeological trip to the Mexican jungle. But, according to the NY TImes, the movie doesn’t live up to the book.

Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, Then She Found Me, is about a schoolteacher who longs for a child of her own in the face of her crumbling marriage, the death of her adopted mother and the discovery of her biological one.  The adaptation is from Elinor Lipman’s first novel.  The cast is fabulous:  Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick!

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter premiered on Lifetime Network on April 12th. Dermot Mulroney, Gretchen Mol and Emily Watson bring to life Kim Edward’s heart-wrenching story of a doctor who, upon discovering that one of his newborn twins suffers from Down syndrome, makes an impulsive decision that will forever alter the lives of everyone involved. 

Life Before Her Eyes by Laura Kasischke stars Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, and Oscar Isaac.  The story from Kasischke’s third novel revolves around a school shooting and the impact on one student who survives. 

Children’s Literature: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Press) 

Besides the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, Selznick has won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  His previous work The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins also won a Caldecott Honor.  When Marian Sang won the Robert F. Sibert Honor in 2003.

Selznick combines the elements of picture book, graphic novel and film in Hugo.  He was inspired to write the story after reading a review of Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood.

Children’s Illustrated:  Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity  by Mo Willems (Hyperion Books for Children)

In addition to this year’s Book Sense Book of the Year Award, Mo Willems has won the Caldecott Medal for three picture books, including his latest, Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.  Previous wins were for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and the first Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale.  His Elephant and Piggie series for early readers has won the 2008 Theodor Suess Geisel Medal for There Is a Bird on Your Head (Hyperion).  Willems previously worked as a writer and animator on Sesame Street from 1996-2002 and won six Emmy Awards