Martyn Bedford

Martyn Bedford’s first novel for young adults, Flip, won multiple awards in Britain and has been translated into eight languages. His second novel for young adults, Never Ending, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. He has also written five novels for adults, including The Houdini Girl.

Bedford's new YA novel is Twenty Questions for Gloria.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

I’ve been in a reading slump for the past two or three months. Books that I’d normally expect to finish in a couple of days have hung around my bedside table for a week or more. Some books, I’ve abandoned, unfinished – which is almost unheard of, for me. I won’t say which ones because it would be unfair on the authors. The fault is mine, not theirs.

The cause is easy to identify. In the latter part of 2015, I was privileged to be one of the judges for the children’s and young-adult fiction category of the Costa Book Awards, which is one of the top literary prizes in the UK. The three of us on the judging panel had to read more than 150 books in three months, then re-read the 12 longlisted titles before choosing a shortlist and a winner.

I was then asked to join the judging panel for the Costa Book of the Year Award, in which the five category winners – Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography and Children’s/YA – compete for the overall prize. Again, an enormous honour and pleasure ... but, by the time the judging process was over at the end of January, I was completely exhausted with reading. My eyes felt as if they’d been in a pickling jar for months and even the thought of picking up another book, let alone opening it, brought me out in a cold sweat.

For most of February and March, I tried and failed to get my reading mojo back. Close to panic, I wondered if I had gone off books for ever. Was I doomed to spend the rest of my life watching daytime TV or trawling YouTube for pictures of sneezing cats, or whatever it is that non-readers do?

But, just in the past two weeks, a rescue party has arrived. First on the scene was China Miéville, whose brilliantly imaginative steam-punk novel, Railsea, was like a rope thrown to a drowning man. Then Black Widow, a gripping, ingenious British crime thriller by Chris Brookmyre, pulled me ashore.

Now, I have Nell Zink administering the kiss of life with her wonderfully quirky, funny novel, Mislaid. I’m only half-way through this one but I’ve been hooked since the opening page. If you read a lot of fiction over several decades, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a novel that is unlike anything you’ve ever read. But Mislaid is such a book. On the face of it, it’s a family saga that begins with an affair between a college student, Peggy, and her poetry tutor, Lee, and follows the vicissitudes of their lives and loves in the decades that follow.

But it’s so much more than that. Zink, who was famously ‘discovered’ by Jonathan Franzen, takes a slice of recent American history (the mid-1960s onwards) and reshapes it with such linguistic panache, such storytelling virtuosity, such sardonic wit, such sharp social and cultural insight, that it forces you to rethink every assumption you ever had about sex, gender and race . . . and about what a novel might be. As for Peggy, I haven’t even finished the book yet and she is already one of my favourite fictional heroines of all time.

So, thank you, China Miéville. Thank you Chris Brookmyre. And, most of all, thank you, Nell Zink, for pulling me back from the brink of the sneezing cats.

Visit Martyn Bedford's website.

The Page 69 Test: Twenty Questions for Gloria.

--Marshal Zeringue

Deb Caletti

Deb Caletti is an award-winning author and a National Book Award finalist whose YA books—including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; The Queen of Everything; The Secret Life of Prince Charming; The Six Rules of Maybe; Stay; and The Story of Us—are published and translated worldwide. Her novels for adults include He's Gone and The Secrets She Keeps.

Caletti's new new novel for young adults is Essential Maps for the Lost.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

Pirate Hunters, by Robert Kurson

While I read quite a lot of literary fiction, story collections, and memoirs, some of my favorite reading feeds a very large part of myself that is, I swear, a ten-year-old boy. To be clear, Robert Kurson’s fabulous Pirate Hunters is for adults. But it’s for adults like me who hunger for a fascinating and page-turning read about true-life adventures. Fellow swashbucklers, I’m telling you - a pirate ship that goes missing in the 1600’s, and the intrepid divers who try to find it today make for a riveting, suspenseful story. I also loved Kurson’s Shadow Divers, about two deep-sea wreck divers who attempt to identify a WWII U-boat.

The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery

I know, I know! Where is the YA? Where are the novels? I told you, bring me anything about nature and science and exploration and adventure. Volcanoes – I’m in! Shipwrecks, yes, please! Creepy, magnificent creatures – absolutely! And it’s a creepy and magnificent creature indeed, which Sy Montgomery brings us in The Soul of an Octopus. Not only is the book a beautifully written story about a woman who enters the universe of this mysterious and alien animal, it’s chock-full of those cool amazing facts that make you want to tug the sleeves of your friends and say, “Hey, do you know what?!” Anyone who reads my books knows that I have a fascination for the intersection of the human and animal worlds, and this book had me awe-inspired.

H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

In further “intersection of the human and animal world” reading… This gorgeous memoir about grief and the way nature heals. After Helen, a naturalist and falconer, loses her father, she adopts and raises Mabel, a feral goshawk, one of the fiercest predators in the world. This is one of those books that make you feel and think and wonder. It’s all the good, big stuff - life, death, nature, with a delicious hit of something scary-wild in the eyes.

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette, by Hampton Sides

This was one of my favorite reads of last year, and I’ve bought lots and lots of copies to give as gifts. How can you not love this book? First of all, look at that title! “Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage”… Is that not awesome right there? And the book continues to be a relentless, frightening, chilling story of survival. Honestly, if you are feeling burdened with the troubles of daily life, if you are slogging through your own personal storm after just breaking up, spilling your mocha, or getting the car repaired again, you will snap right the heck out of it while reading this tale. Storms, starvation, endurance, and ice, ice, ice! Look what humans can conquer! You will also be tempted to wear your parka until the last page, and perhaps even hoard a few boxes of beef jerky. This book kicked off much historic, disaster-at-sea reading for me.

And, speaking of disaster-at-sea books…

Dead Wake, by Erik Larson

I’m a die-hard Erik Larson fan. He can sweep you into a moment in history, make you feel like you are right there, and cause you to breathlessly turn pages to see what is going to happen when you already know what has happened. His book, The Devil in White City, which chronicles the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and the serial killer in its midst, stayed with me for years, and it appears that Dead Wake, an account of the sinking of the Lusitania, is going to do the same. The exquisite details make a lasting impression, as does Erik’s rich, masterful writing. How, how, how does he craft such a tense, suspenseful nail-biter, when we are all sadly aware of the outcome? I have no idea, but all through this read, I wished for a different ending. These became real people to me, and the ship was a real ship, and this was no longer an event from history class, but a tragedy that broke my heart. Bonus tip: Don’t skip the footnotes.

Visit Deb Caletti's website and Facebook page.

Coffee with a Canine: Deb Caletti and Tucker.

The Page 69 Test: He's Gone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joseph Mazur

Joseph Mazur is an emeritus professor of mathematics at Marlboro College, and the author of several popular mathematics books, including the highly acclaimed Enlightening Symbols: A Short History of Mathematical Notation and Its Hidden Powers and What's Luck Got to Do with It?: The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler's Illusion.

Mazur's new book is Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence.

I just finished the 800-page novel, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, by Kia Corthron. I don’t usually read thick novels, but Ms. Corthron is a friend, and my loyalty to friends extends to reading their works. It does not extend to my opinions. So I can tell you, by what I believe to be a moderately unbiased opinion, that this is the most meaningful novel I’ve read in many years. It is a page-turning piece of American history of race relations that starts in 1941 and ends in 2010. The lives of two black brothers from a small town in Maryland develop alongside the lives of two white brothers from rural Alabama. Those lives collide in an emotional thunderstorm, untold but hinted at for most of the book. I thought I knew something about race before reading Ms. Corthron’s novel. Reading The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter opened the curtain to a new understanding of the complexities of race at the time of my childhood and now. This recently released, easy to read novel should be a contender for a Pulitzer. I hope that will happen.

Visit Joseph Mazur's website and read about his five best books on gambling.

The Page 99 Test: What's Luck Got to Do with It?.

--Marshal Zeringue

Billie Livingston

Billie Livingston is the award-winning author of four novels, a collection of short stories, and a poetry collection. Her novel One Good Hustle, a Globe and Mail Best Book selection, was nominated for the Giller Prize and for the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book Award. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Livingston's latest novel is The Crooked Heart of Mercy.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I have just begun reading a collection of interwoven short stories called Mother of Sorrow by Richard McCann. The book came out in 2006 and I had never heard of it before last week.

A few days ago, I finished a book tour down the west coast of the United States. My last stop was Book Passage in San Francisco. Because The Crooked Heart of Mercy is an American debut for me—and because bookstore readings are notorious for the empty-chair factor—we had a small crowd of five people gathered. And yet it was a wondrous evening. After the reading and talk, the six of us got into a conversation about different faiths, spirit and spiritualism, dying and strange visions. In the front row was a woolly bearded man, slim with silver hair and quiet eyes. He sat clutching one of those emergency foil thermal blankets. He talked about reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead to his dying mother. His mother had been his best friend, he said. He talked about being a 67-year-old gay man and growing up Presbyterian in Kentucky. He'd been living on the streets for many years now.

At the back of the room was a woman from Ottawa who said she had been killing time there in the Ferry Building Marketplace before she had to travel. She saw a poster outside the bookstore advertising the appearance of a fellow Canadian writer— she herself was screenwriter. At the end of the evening, the Kentucky man told me how much the evening had meant to him and that he would love to buy the book but he had no money. Before I could say anything, the Canadian woman called to him from the cash register. She asked him not to leave because she was buying him a copy of Crooked.

As I signed his book, I told him that in the novel, there is a priest named Francis. I explained how Francis was a gay man and that he was often confused and going off the rails and yet he was the character in the book with enormous grace and a way of bringing people together. "Really?" he said, "He is? That’s wonderful. I can't believe this night is happening. I feel like I'm going to cry."

My god. This man was so open and truly graceful himself. Before he left, he suggested that I read a book called, Mother of Sorrows by Richard McCann. "I think you'll like it very much," he said in his gentle drawl. "If you can find it, it seems like a book for you."

I ordered Mother of Sorrows the next day. I’ve just started reading and I think he was right.

Read more about the author and her books at the official Billie Livingston website.

My Book, The Movie: Cease to Blush.

The Page 69 Test: The Crooked Heart of Mercy.

My Book, The Movie: The Crooked Heart of Mercy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Odden

Karen Odden received her PhD in English literature from New York University. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation; and has written introductions for books by Dickens and Trollope. She has worked as an editorial assistant at McGraw-Hill, as a media buyer for Christie’s Auction House, and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, where she learned how to mix a mean martini. She currently serves as an assistant editor for the academic journal Victorian Literature and Culture and resides in Arizona with her husband, two children, and a ridiculously cute beagle named Rosy. A Lady in the Smoke is her first novel.

Recently I asked Odden about what she was reading. Her reply:

I just handed in the manuscript for my next novel, Down a Dark River, to my agent a few weeks ago; until I hear a verdict from him, I binge read like a crazy person, all the books that have piled up on my nightstand. So this past month I’ve read thirteen books. These are five of my favorites, each from a different genre.

First, When Breath Becomes Air. Because everyone is reading it. And because, probably, everyone should be reading it. It’s heartbreaking, empathic, beautifully written; it reaches far beyond the hackneyed message of "make the most of what's left.” The author, a neurosurgeon who died of lung cancer at 36, asks openly, how do we find our values, in the middle of crisis, when life has been upended? And then how do we find them again, the next day, when something else has changed? One of my favorite parts of this book was his acknowledgement, early on, that "a word meant something only between two people, and life's meaning, its virtue had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form." He draws on his undergrad and M.A. in English--he references dozens of authors who wrote about the passage of time, from Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" on--and it adds a depth and reflexive humor to the entire book. Another of my favorite bits, alluding to the "pair of claws” in "Prufrock": "For the last several months, I had striven with every ounce to restore my life to its precancer trajectory, trying to deny cancer any purchase on my life. As desperately as I now wanted to feel triumphant, instead I felt the claws of the crab holding me back. The curse of cancer created a strange and strained existence, challenging me to be neither blind to, nor bound by, death's approach." I think readers who liked Atul Gawande's Being Mortal would appreciate this.

A Matter of Heart by my friend and fellow Arizonan Amy Fellner Dominy. This is authentic, heartfelt YA, about a competitive swimmer who discovers, partway through her sophomore year in high school, that she has a heart condition. The relationships with her parents are drawn beautifully, partly because Dominy sketches the relationship between the two parents as well as Abby's relationship with each; and the coach is neither the usual benevolent or malevolent "type." Wonderfully written, without relying heavily on the overheated prose that seems to be all over YA now. I would recommend to any smart teen girl and will hand it to mine next.

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon. I liked this mystery, the first in a series set in Venice. (My family is heading there in June for a few days, so I enjoyed peering up and down the streets.) This is not a thrilling nail-biter filled with stakes that ratchet up predictably every twenty pages, but--like its protagonist, Guido Brunetti of the Venice police--understated, intelligent, observant. Some of the writing is just marvelous. One of my favorite lines: "The man looked to be about the same age as Paola, though he had clearly had a harder time getting there."

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons. I found the premise hilarious: Henry James, depressed over his sagging book sales, goes to the banks of the Seine, where he plans to throw himself in. (OK, maybe that doesn't sound funny, but wait.) There, he meets Sherlock Holmes, who is depressed because he is beginning to figure out that he's only a character instead of a real person. Add a murder mystery. Add cameos by just about everyone from the late 1800s (Wilkie Collins, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Hay, George McClellan, Mr. Lincoln, etc.), and the World's Fair in Chicago. Twist what you think you know about Professor Moriarty and Irene Adler and Dr. Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Add in the sort of cleverness you find in Shakespeare in Love. (Here's an example: "The turn of the social screw at the dinner party [Henry James] had attended including inviting five couples . . . who were comprised of four of the women having illicit affairs with no fewer than five of the men present.") I wouldn't say this book is a quick and easy read--it's dense and you have to be paying attention--but I totally enjoyed it.

Finally, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. My friend Lucy gave this to me for my birthday, and I'm glad she did because I probably wouldn't have picked this graphic novel up on my own. I'm so word-oriented that it took me a while to get used to switching back and forth between the captions and the illustrations, but it's darn clever. And honest and painful. The "Fun Home" is actually the funeral home (just one example of the Bechdel's playfulness with language) that her father runs. A good deal of the book is about Bechdel’s conflicted and complicated relationship with her father, and I won't spoil by telling why.

Visit Karen Odden's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lucinda Riley

Lucinda Riley's new book is The Storm Sister, the second installment in the seven book series, The Seven Sisters. Riley is the New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid House, The Girl on the Cliff, The Lavender Garden, The Midnight Rose, and The Seven Sisters. Her books have sold more than five million copies in thirty languages She lives in London and the English countryside with her husband and four children.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Riley's reply:

It’s an old adage, but it’s true: in order to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. And I take this to heart; I consume books like a starving tiger devours its prey in the jungle. I have very eclectic taste, devoid of snobbery. In the past year I have read perhaps 40 books, including M. L. Stedman's The Light Between Oceans, the two Wolf Hall books by Hilary Mantel and most recently, the entire twelve book 'Inspector Gamache' series by Louise Penny. Set in the fictional idyllic village of Three Pines in Quebec, Canada, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache solves one ingenious homicide after another. The village has a startlingly high death rate considering its small population, rather like in good old-fashioned detective stories, but I would still love to move there! Penny’s writing delves into the psyche of the characters, and she has an exquisite knack for bringing across their habits and motivations in a witty and visual way. In a genre that is almost over-saturated, Penny can still surprise detective novel connoisseurs.

My research for the fourth book in the Seven Sisters series, CeCe’s story, has led me to discover more about the troubled history of Australia and its First People. Richard Broome’s Aboriginal Australians: A history since 1788 is a very sensitive and lucid portrayal of Australia’s controversial history since its colonization. Broome incorporates the oral stories of Aboriginal people in his scholarship, and writes from their viewpoint – tracing their pre-colonial culture, their survival amidst persecution, and the slow progress towards integration and a new Australia. Having been to the Australian Outback in January for research, it was incredible to experience the raw beauty of the landscape for myself. I cannot wait to begin writing about it.

Visit Lucinda Riley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Storm Sister.

My Book, The Movie: The Storm Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of over one dozen books, including six collections of essays, two nonfiction books, two collections of “proems,” the short story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot, the novella Cat’s Foot, and the novels Mink River and The Plover. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including Ho`olaule`a, a collection of writing about the Pacific islands.

Doyle's new novel is Chicago.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

The usual motley slew – just read the excellent Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby, a very good memoir of his experiences as a prisoner and escapee in WW2 Italy. But the great burst lately has been the terrific Richard Hannay adventure novels of John Buchan. He’s most famous for The 39 Steps, probably because it was made into a fine Hitchcock movie, but that good book is one of five in which he uses the same coterie of characters in spy and espionage and tension stories of rescue and derring-do, set in England and Scotland. Greenmantle, Mister Standfast, The Three Hostages, The Island of Sheep are the others; all of which I really enjoyed for their dash and pace, and for their deep soaking in landscape and time and class and language; Buchan was gifted at atmosphere especially, and I am endlessly curious, as a novelist, how someone better at it does the trick. He is able to push a story along with action and character sketches both, and at the same time soak me in Scottish forests and hills to the point where I can hear curlews and the faint song of the sea beyond the next ridge. He does wander on here and there, and I am sure there are readers who dislike the adventure novel as a form (there must be readers who dislike masterpieces like Stevenson’s Kidnapped or Haggard’s Allen Quartermain novels, though I cannot understand such dislike), but I was thrilled to read them. Then I made the mistake of going one step too far, into a Buchan set in an imaginary country; and there he lost me and himself, for he could not evoke it as he did the actual places he loved. I had to stop, sadly, after 40 pages, and wish him well, and move on.

Read more about Chicago at the publisher's website.

My Book, The Movie: Bin Laden’s Bald Spot.

The Page 69 Test: Mink River.

My Book, The Movie: The Plover.

The Page 69 Test: Chicago.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tessa Arlen

Tessa Arlen, the daughter of a British diplomat, had lived in or visited her parents in Singapore, Cairo, Berlin, the Persian Gulf, Beijing, Delhi and Warsaw by the time she was sixteen. She came to the U.S. in 1980 and worked as an H.R. recruiter for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games, where she interviewed her future husband for a job. She lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Arlen's new novel is Death Sits Down to Dinner.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott.

This great collection of books – there are four volumes to The Jewel in the Crown – has become my go-to for information on the British Raj in India. Beautifully told and remarkably well researched the Raj Quartet, as it is often referred to, was written in the mid-1960s. The over-arching theme relates the end of British rule in India, told through the eyes of the British families who had become mainstays in India for several generations and viewed the British presence in India as absolutely necessary to it continued ‘civilization’. To balance out perspective the story is also told by some of the Indian people who were either politically involved in ousting the British, were independent rulers under their rule, or who merely became the scapegoats of racial tension during this very turbulent time in India’s fight for independence.

The main characters of the story are the outsiders: a young English woman the independent thinking daughter of a British colonel who falls in love with an Indian; a young Indian who grew up and was educated at an English public school all his life and returns to his native country to discover that even though he thinks of himself as English he is ostracized by the English because he looks like an Indian; a young middle class English policeman who clings to the idea of the superiority of the Raj even more fiercely than his patrician Englishman. The four volumes unfold the stories of these people and those they are connected with through the years of the Second World War.

In the end there are no winners, no losers, just the inevitable and unforeseen changes that affected all lives through the violence of war, the riots that surrounded Gandhi’s non-violent fight for India’s freedom and the tragic misunderstandings that existed – and still exists - between East and West.

The writing is superb -- the narrative has the style of non-fiction. But the predicament that is the direct result of colonization, racism and class hatred shine through in every detail, softened by each individual’s stories and their determination to do the right thing and to do it with fairness and for the common good. Never has the maxim: the road to hell is paved with good Intentions run more firmly true to human form! A story of human strife, simple human kindness, compassion and the usual mess up we human beings make even when we intend to do the best we can in a situation fraught with emotion and passion.

Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

My Book, The Movie: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peggy Orenstein

Peggy Orenstein's books include the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting for Daisy; Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World; SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap; and Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. Her new book is Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.

Recently I asked Orenstein about what she was reading. Her reply:

I go back and forth between reading books for adults and YA books, partly because my daughter and I like to read books together and partly because I love YA books. Right now I’m reading what is one of the most beloved books for young people in England but not, I think, especially popular here. It’s called Good Night, Mr. Tom. It’s the story of an abused child who is evacuated from London to the country during World War II to live with a crusty but compassionate elderly man. The boy gradually blooms under Mr. Tom’s loving care and the friendship of the children in the town. That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but apparently the boy eventually is forced to go back to his mother and after months of silence, Mr. Tom goes looking for him. I actually started reading it because I have a memory of another book that I read and loved as a child—it wasn’t this one, which was published while I was in college, I believe—that was about also about an evacuated boy and an elderly man. I’ve always wanted to find that book again but I can’t remember anything else about it, not the title, not the author, not even really the plot. Searching for it on the web, I always ended up with Good Night, Mr. Tom. It’s a great book, and I’m sharing it with my daughter but I still wish I could find the one from my own childhood.

Visit Peggy Orenstein's website.

The Page 69 Test: Waiting for Daisy.

The Page 99 Test: Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kristi Abbott

Kristi Abbott, who also writes as both Eileen Rendahl and Eileen Carr, lives in northern California, although she was born in Ohio like the heroine of her new novel, Kernel of Truth. She loves snack food, crocheting, her kids, and her man, not necessarily in that order.

Recently I asked Abbott about what she was reading. Her reply:

I just finished What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross. I’ll be honest. I don’t remember how it made it onto my TBR list, but it was there and the library had it so voila! I love books that use point of view in interesting ways (maybe it was on a list for that?). Ross does alternating first person point of view chapters. I know that’s not revolutionary, but she pushes the envelope. Each chapter is no more than two to four pages long. While most of the chapters focus on three main characters, there are occasional chapters from characters we’ll never hear from again. Or maybe we’ll hear from them a handful more times. Ross does an amazing job of keeping all those voices distinct and unique. The quick chapters kept the pace of the book moving quickly. It’s a deeply contemplative book and could have dragged without that. As it was, I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

I listen to a lot of audio books. I got in the habit when I was driving a lot for a job and have never given it up. I’m nearing the end of listening to T.C. Boyle’s The Harder They Come. The Harder They Come has three narrators. It’s told in third person so I didn’t get that immediate identification with each character that I got with the Klein book. What’s fascinating to me is how deeply Boyle gets into the minds of these three characters. They’re very different people with very different world views, despite the fact that their lives are intertwined. Boyle has a way of showing how the narrators’ ways of viewing the world and their places in it influence their behavior. Because of the use of third person, the voice of the novel doesn’t really change with each narrator, but each one sees things so distinctly that it’s always clear whose head I’m in. It’s a fascinating read.

I just started Ann Anderson’s Four Chambers. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m loving it. I’m one of those weird grown-ups who likes to read young adult novels. Adolescence is such an intense time of life with so much drama and the genre reflects that. As I said, I’ve only just begun to read Four Chambers, but so far it’s narrator leaps off the page. The voice is terrific. Smart-alecky, self-aware, flawed but lovable. The structure is also very cool. The narrator has just had a heart transplant and each section is named after a part of the heart.

Visit Kristi Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Kernel of Truth.

My Book, the Movie: Kernel of Truth.

--Marshal Zeringue