Author Archives: palquist

Review: Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

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Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

I was immediately taken aback by Frog Music – and that doesn’t happen very often. The portrayal of the underbelly of San Francisco in the 1870’s, with the raging smallpox epidemic, the underlying racial tension with Chinese immigrants, and the oppressive heat, was fascinating. Donoghue’s characters were unlikeable and flawed but the story she weaves with them is so fascinating. I’ve seen that the book has been marketed as a sort of mystery but I think that’s selling the book a little short and might leaves readers expecting a mystery-thriller disappointed. A great, surprising book!

 

 

Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.

The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny’s murderer to justice–if he doesn’t track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It’s the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.

In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue’s lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.

Lies, First Person Update

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It was two years ago that I advocated for Lies, First Person at Open Letter. And here it is in print! In anticipation of its February publication date I’ll be buying and re-reading Hareven’s first work The Confessions of Noa Weber. I can’t talk this book up any more! See more at Lies, First Person

From the 2010 winner of the Best Translated Book Award comes a harrowing, controversial novel about a woman’s revenge, Jewish identity, and how to talk about Adolf Hitler in today’s world.

Elinor’s comfortable life—popular newspaper column, stable marriage, well-adjusted kids—is totally upended when she finds out that her estranged uncle is coming to Jerusalem to give a speech asking forgiveness for his decades-old book, Hitler, First Person. A shocking novel that galvanized the Jewish diaspora, Hitler, First Person was Aaron Gotthilf’s attempt to understand—and explain—what it would have been like to be Hitler. As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, while writing this controversial novel, Gotthilf stayed in Elinor’s parent’s house and sexually assaulted her “slow” sister.

In the time leading up to Gotthilf’s visit, Elinor will relive the reprehensible events of that time so long ago, over and over, compulsively, while building up the courage—and plan—to avenge her sister in the most conclusive way possible: by murdering Gotthilf, her own personal Hilter. Along the way, Gail Hareven uses an obsessive, circular writing style to raise questions about Elinor’s own mental state. Is it possible that Elinor is following in her uncle’s writerly footpaths, using a first-person narrative to manipulate the reader into forgiving a horrific crime?

Review: The Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Birmingham

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The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham

It’s the centennial of the publication of Dubliners and Joyce seems to be everywhere. The Most Dangerous Book follows the publication history of Ulysses, detailing the book’s severe censorship and period of illegality, Joyce’s diminishing health, and the modernist movement that propelled Ulysses into notoriety. Birmingham is engaging and thorough, documenting the spirit of the age that created and supported Joyce and his work of genius with wonderful profiles of figures like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Beach. The book is immensely readable and gripping and I look forward to Birmingham’s next works of scholarship.

Why Indie Non-Profits?

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On my first day of orientation at Emerson College for my Masters in Publishing I was asked to turn to a person sitting next to me and tell them what I wanted to do with my life. I was expected to spill (in a succinct manner) all of my publishing goals and ambitions to a stranger. Lucky for me, I met Amanda Diehl, a blogger for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Book Riot and all around publishing inspiration (her blog is here: Diary of a Young Semi-Professional ) and to my surprise I had an answer for her. I wanted to work with international literature. Literature in translation. I wanted to be constantly challenged and inspired by deserving and unique literature. I wanted to work with the kinds of presses that do this work. And that means indies and even more specifically it usually means non-profits.

In an industry where most entry-level devotees and interns are looking for the New York City publishing scene, a job at a Big Five press, and the next Hemingway of Fitzgerald to fit into their back pocket I had decided to do the complete opposite. Mainly, because that publishing industry scenario is hardly the norm (actually, it’s bullshit) and because doesn’t working with foreign offices, translators, and presses like Open Letter, New Directions, and Beacon Press sound way more exciting?

I would also argue that these presses do fundamentally important work, The promotion of unique, thought provoking literature, whether it’s international, translated or not, encourages our society to think outside of the narrow spaces brought to us by mainstream media and contemporary popular literature. Indie presses, non-profit presses, they do just that.

They bring something different to the page. 

I couldn’t say it better than this and I encourage anyone that’s interested to read the full article “I Want You To Start Your Own Publishing House.” I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.

There is a real value today in treating readers not merely as consumers but as agents of cultural change, who now have the chance to become deeply invested in your publishing mission as a business as well as a philosophical enterprise. It is in the best interest of every independent publisher to cultivate an engaged readership that will make a lasting impact on our culture in the long run.”

~Will Evans

Review: The Weirdness by Jeremy P. Bushnell

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The Weirdness by Jeremy P. Bushnell

Melville House publishes the coolest books and The Weirdness is no exception. It’s funny, irreverent, and different and might be just one large joke about the lengths people go to to get published. Oh, and those satanic fair trade coffee beans? You can buy them from Melville House’s website.

What do you do when you wake up hung over and late for work only to find a stranger on your couch? And what if that stranger turns out to be an Adversarial Manifestation–like Satan, say–who has brewed you a fresh cup of fair-trade coffee? And what if he offers you your life’s goal of making the bestseller list if only you find his missing Lucky Cat and, you know, sign over your soul?

If you’re Billy Ridgeway, you take the coffee.