Because I can't possibly read every single book that finds its way into my home IMMEDIATELY, though I fully intend to die trying, allow me to show off our most recently acquired precioussssess...
For Review
Marisa Silver
Blue Rider Press
September 2016
Little Nothing is the story of Pavla, a child scorned for her physical deformity, whose passion and salvation lie in her otherworldly ability to transform herself and the world around her.
In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and disgust from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no further than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local doctor and freak sideshow proprietor, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as this outcast woman is hunted down and incarcerated for her desires, her body broken and her identity stripped away until her soul is strong enough to transcend all physical bounds. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly shocking and original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity.
In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and disgust from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no further than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local doctor and freak sideshow proprietor, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as this outcast woman is hunted down and incarcerated for her desires, her body broken and her identity stripped away until her soul is strong enough to transcend all physical bounds. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly shocking and original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity.
*Requested from Publisher for review
Nichoa Barker
Henry Holt
August 2016
To the world, he is Sri Ramakrishna--godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru (who would prefer not to be called a guru), irresistible charmer. To Rani Rashmoni, she of low caste and large inheritance, he is the brahmin fated to defy tradition and preside over the temple she dares to build, six miles north of Calcutta, along the banks of the Hooghly for Ma Kali, goddess of destruction. But to Hriday, his nephew and longtime caretaker, he is just Uncle--maddening, bewildering Uncle, prone to entering ecstatic trances at the most inconvenient of times, known to sneak out to the forest at midnight to perform dangerous acts of self-effacement, who must be vigilantly safeguarded not only against jealous enemies and devotees with ulterior motives, but also against that most treasured yet insidious of sulfur-rich vegetables: the cauliflower.
Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, Barker shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces. The result is a biographical novel viewed through a kaleidoscope. Dazzlingly inventive and brilliantly comic, irreverent and mischievous, The Cauliflower delivers us into the divine playfulness of a 21st-century literary master.
Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, Barker shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces. The result is a biographical novel viewed through a kaleidoscope. Dazzlingly inventive and brilliantly comic, irreverent and mischievous, The Cauliflower delivers us into the divine playfulness of a 21st-century literary master.
*Unsolicited, from publisher for review
Ryan Ridge, Mel Bosworth
Queens Ferry Press
2015
Step into CAMOUFLAGE COUNTRY and meet a nation of misfits only masquerading as such. For these up-and-comers, down-and-outs, and good-for-nothings move through Ryan Ridge’s and Mel Bosworth’s microfictions with a zealousness that obliges rockets and octopus-men, devil babies and light eaters. Yet their earnestness also submits to stories like ‘Dust Bowling,’ ‘The Power of Pie Compels You,’ and ‘Cuckolding Down the Fort,’ which reveal the collection’s swift motion across the hilarious–heartbreaking spectrum. Featuring the illustrations of Jacob Heustis, CAMOUFLAGE COUNTRY is a flipbook of faces incapable of concealment—too original to be overlooked, too distinctive to be forgotten.
*author sent, too old to be an arc, but still
Steve Karas
Whiskey Paper Press
August 2016
A young man falls in love on a train ride from Rome to Sicily; a Greek air guitarist competes in the world championships amid economic and political strife back home; a man tries to understand his father's disappearance to a hidden beachside village. In these five stories, Steve Karas takes us across the Mediterranean, into the lives of characters battling stormy seas, lost between lands, hoping to make it safely to shore.
*From Publisher, For Review
Tricia Dower
Leapfrog Press
October 2016
It wasn't all poodle skirts and rock 'n' roll—in Stony River, the 1950s was a perilous time to come of age. Absent mothers, controlling fathers, teenage longing and small-town pretense abound, with the threat of violence all around: crazy fathers, dirty boys, strange men in strange cars, one dead girl, one never seen, and another gone missing.
*From Publisher, for review
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