Recent Literary Fiction

[SensualPoet]

The Metropolis Case by Matthew Gallaway
Publisher: Crown Publishing, Dec 2010

A somewhat daring first novel, Matthew Gallaway's The Metropolis Case stiches together four lives using Wagner's most revolutionary opera,Tristan und Isolde as its thread. Lucien Marchand is a young man growing up in Europe in the 1840s who aspires to be a singer; Anna Prus, whom we first meet in 1960, is a celebrated Wagnerian singer and later professor at Juilliard; Maria is a late 1970s teenager, growing up in Pittsburgh, whose whole life revolves around opera (making for a somewhat odd childhood but leads her to Juilliard); and Martin, a divorced, gay New York lawyer who, at 41, partly triggered by the events of 9/11 which are played out from his office window, comes to the music of Tristan through the haze of drugs, punk bands and lost loves. Structurally, the novel cycles, chapter by chapter, from one character to the next, unveiling their lives and staging events to knit the players together.

The novel is at its best in the self-contained vignettes where Gallaway relaxes and indulges in wry humour and observations of the scene from the character's point of view; in other places, contrivances stick out unsatisfyingly. The worst case is the gimmick Gallaway relies on finally to bring all four stories to a single place which, I confess, once I saw it coming left me feeling disappointed. Gallaway also relies too often on death to alter circumstances rather than introduce a character with significant flaws to wreck havoc. Our four main characters, in the end, are kinda nice folks ... the story needs a bit more grit.

Notwithstanding, it was an entertaining read as the reviews below reflect. You do not need to be an opera lover, or a Wagnerite to enjoy the story; but you may need to know it has a very gay positive context slathered into these intertwined lives.

Reviews have appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Lambda Literary Review Online.

Available from Amazon and Kobo for $13 - $15; also in HC for $14 to $20; paperback is due Nov 2011. I borrowed my copy from Overdrive.

[BrianWillis]

I love your literary fiction definitions. Well written stories that are not genre pinned

[SensualPoet]

Welcome aboard, Brian! Let us know what you are reading. Cheers!

[SeaBookGuy]

I'll toss in The Imperfectionists - a series of short stories featuring a cast of folks involved with an English language newspaper in Rome. I read it one story at a time over a couple of weeks (Overdrive library download).

I almost closed out this post, but remembered Jane Gardam's Old Filth-- she a brilliant writer, but this one stands out as a real "classic" to me. I started it, thinking it was likely over-rated, but will now gush with the best of them -- it really is that good!

[straygator]

The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht
Random House, March 2011

Interesting structure, and the writing is phenomenal. The Publisher's Weekly write up:

"The sometimes crushing power of myth, story, and memory is explored in the brilliant debut of Obreht, the youngest of the New Yorker's 20-under-40. Natalia Stefanovi, a doctor living (and, in between suspensions, practicing) in an unnamed country that's a ringer for Obreht's native Croatia, crosses the border in search of answers about the death of her beloved grandfather, who raised her on tales from the village he grew up in, and where, following German bombardment in 1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo in a nearby city and befriended a mysterious deaf-mute woman. The evolving story of the tiger's wife, as the deaf-mute becomes known, forms one of three strands that sustain the novel, the other two being Natalia's efforts to care for orphans and a wayward family who, to lift a curse, are searching for the bones of a long-dead relative; and several of her grandfather's stories about Gavran Gailé, the deathless man, whose appearances coincide with catastrophe and who may hold the key to all the stories that ensnare Natalia. Obreht is an expert at depicting history through aftermath, people through the love they inspire, and place through the stories that endure; the reflected world she creates is both immediately recognizable and a legend in its own right. Obreht is talented far beyond her years, and her unsentimental faith in language, dream, and memory is a pleasure."

[apbschmitz]

A couple suggestions — Embers, by Sador Marai. Description: Two very old men Konrad and Henrik, "the General" once the closest of friends, meet in 1940 in the fading splendor of the General's Hungarian castle, after being separated for 41 years, to ponder the events that divided them. This 1942 novel by a forgotten Hungarian novelist, rediscovered and lucidly and beautifully translated, is a brilliant and engrossing tapestry of friendship and betrayal, set against a backdrop of prewar splendor.

And, by David Mitchell, Ghost Written and Cloud Atlas. The New Yorker on Cloud Atlas: Mitchell's virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel.

Unfortunately, all of these are a little pricey in the Kindle editions. But still cheaper than taking the kids to McDonalds.

[SensualPoet]

The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard
Publisher: HarperCollins, Jul 2006

Louis Bayard has written an extraordinary novel in The Pale Blue Eye. Ostensibly, it's a work of historical fiction: the US West Point Academy, on the banks of the Hudson River, and the cadets who toiled there in 1830 are leading characters; Edgar Allan Poe, a cadet that year; Sylvanus Thayer, the commander; Gouverneur Kemble, arms manufacturer; these and other real life figures take roles in this purely fictional murder mystery. It is largely told by Gus Landor, a retired constable from New York City, who is brought in to investigate the grisly murder of one of the young cadets: he has been hanged and his heart cut out and stolen. The second voice is Poe's, a young cadet who is pressed into secret service to detect where Landor cannot tread.

Bayard's facility with prose is often breath-taking, weaving unexpected images into others to describe a scene, a motivation, a memory. It's sometimes funny, too; but most often the smile it evokes is triggered by sheer virtuosity -- can those words really rub elbows, create sparks of recognition? Hidden in the paragraphs, discretely, are enough lost words and forgotten usage to bring to life, particularly in Poe's speech, the somewhat desparate times and lives of those shaping the early years of the Republic when Andrew Jackson was President.

But best of all Bayard has written a cracking good mystery, with many twists and turns, puzzles to work out, puzzles to savour, and a sort of double denouement that must leave your jaw dropping and your rational self cheering ... for the virtuosity and artistry fused. Mistake not: the prose is so good, one could scarcely be bored re-reading the whole thing again, from start-to-finish. Highly recommended.

An early review appeared in the New York Times.

Available in Kindle and Kobo for abt $9.

[SensualPoet]

Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod
Publisher: Biblioasis, October 2010

Shortlisted for both the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2011 Commonwealth Prize, Alexander MacLeod's collection of short stories, Light Lifting, comes by its praises honestly. It is the author’s debut collection (although the stories had already appeared in various literary magazines). One newspaper reviewer called MacLeod "an unexpectedly physical writer" and "an explorer of gritty masculinity and adrenalin-fuelled anger ... he can also be surpassingly delicate".

The seven stories include:
Miracle Mile in which two young men compete with and encourage each other in cross-country track tour;
Wonder About Parents featuring a sick child at Christmas visiting grandparents;
The title tale, Light Lifting, about a young man joining a work crew one summer to lay bricks;
Adult Beginner I in which college kids dare each other and dive from a hotel rooftop into the river;
The Loop, about a twelve year old who delivers prescriptions and other goods from a local pharmacy, meeting an odd collection of regular customers in their homes;
Good Kids, a family of four boys and the integration of a new neighbour into their closed clique;
The Number Three, following an autoworker dealing with a tragic accident that changes his life.

It has to be said there was heavy weather encountered completing this collection. It's not just that the stories are often downbeat; they often end mid-note, crying out for some sort of resolution. Nor is the language gratifying; it is more plodding, scattered even and frequently obtuse for no particularly clear reason. In reflecting on the collection, I asked myself which story sat with me, that I internalised, and perhaps it was "The Loop" that came closest. But for most of them, I barely connected with these lives portrayed that were so grim, so unnecessary, so frankly little engaging. Once back on the shelf, I doubt if this one is coming down again.

Available for Kindle and Kobo for about $10 and $12 respectively; and in paperback for about $17.

[taming]

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, Oct 2009

This has been my favourite read so far this year.

The synopsis from the Kobo site:

It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree medicine woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she grudgingly saw off to war has returned. She leaves her home in the bush of Northern Ontario to retrieve him, only to discover that the one she expected is actually the other. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, gravely wounded and addicted to the army's morphine, hovers somewhere between the living world and that of the dead. As Niska paddles him the three days home, she realizes that all she can offer in her attempt to keep him alive is her words, the stories of her life. In turn, Xavier relates the horrifying years of war in Europe: he and his best friend, Elijah Whiskeyjack, prowled the battlefields of France and Belgium as snipers of enormous skill. As their reputations grew, the two young men, with their hand-sewn moccasins and extraordinary marksmanship, became both the pride and fear of their regiment as they stalked the ripe killing fields of Ypres and the Somme. But what happened to Elijah? As Niska paddles deeper into the wilderness, both she and Xavier confront the devastation that such great conflict leaves in its wake. Inspired in part by real-life World War I Ojibwa hero Francis Pegahmagabow, Three Day Road reinvents the tradition of such Great War epics as Birdsong and All Quiet on the Western Front. Beautifully written and told with unblinking focus, it is a remarkable tale, one of brutality, survival, and rebirth.

It's a Penguin ebook, which means it is expensive in Canada through Kobo $20, and not available through Kindle, but around $10 US in paperback on the Amazon.com site. Most Canadian libraries probably have it, as it was a big prize winner.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by taming

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, Oct 2009

This has been my favourite read so far this year.

It's a Penguin ebook, which means it is expensive in Canada through Kobo $20, and not available through Kindle, but around $10 US in paperback on the Amazon.com site. Most Canadian libraries probably have it, as it was a big prize winner.

It's a Nook book at $14.

[taming]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

It's a Nook book at $14.

It's $13 at Angus and Robinson AU. Of course neither Nook nor A&R are supposed to be available to Canadians.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by pholy

...
SP: If literary fiction is supposed to be ageless and enduring, how can we know about last year's book?

Exactly.

Originally Posted by pholy

I still don't understand this thing called 'literary fiction'. Is it just fiction that doesn't fit any of the usual named genres?

Literary Fiction is what the literati say it is.

Now, who are the literati?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TGS

I've just finished, and would recommend, American Rust by Philipp Meyer. It is interesting written from multiple narrative viewpoints and has been compared favourably with William Faulkner and John Steinbeck.

Excellent. Thank you. Added to my TBR list.

[kennyc]

I think much of David Foster Wallace's work is considered 'literary' in particular - Infinite Jest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace

[SensualPoet]

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud
Publisher: Gaspereau Press, Oct 2009
Winner: 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Winner of the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, arguably Canada's highest literary award, Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalists made headlines, not just as a first novel but for having been effectively out of print when it won. Produced by a small literary press in Nova Scotia (Gaspereau), the only extant copies were printed letterpress and hand bound; only days before the award was announced, Kobo stepped in to facilitate distribution as an ebook. Skibsrud had previously had two volumes of poetry published.

The memories of Napoleon Haskell and his daughter intersect, merge and submerge in a discursive narrative that flips between the final summer of Napoleon's life, her years growing up, and his experiences in Vietnam and later adulthood. The family -- consisting of the daughter, her sister Helen and her mother -- lived a strained existence in upper New York State, and Napoleon left and settled in Fargo when the girls were teenagers. Napoleon's childhood friend, Henry, lives across the St Lawrence near Morrisburg and it is to his home Napoleon retreats in his final days. The area consists of the "Lost Villages of the St Lawrence", where whole towns were flooded for the making of the seaway; the metaphor of submerged memories looms large throughout the story. When Napoleon finally talks to his daughter about the horrendous events, and a specific event in his tour of duty, he is speaking of this for the first time in decades, and the first time to his family. Who was this man she calls father and how much of him is buried inside her?

Though celebrated as a literary achievement, the prose left me frequently befuddled. Fragmentary, discursive, repetitive and obtuse, the moments of dazzle were for me drowned in plodding; other parts felt self-consciously clever and, if many threads remained dangling, it wasn't in order to more fully bring to the surface the main characters. Napoleon, yes, and his daughter to some extent are revealed; but others, such as her mother, wheel-chair bound Henry and his self-inflicted condition, Helen ... all left pretty much on the sidelines. Would it have been too much to actually give a name to the daughter as narrator?

Available for Kindle or Kobo for around $10.