Review: 'I'd Know You Anywhere'

I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE
By Laura Lippman
Crime Fiction
August 2010
William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0-06-202429-9

What happens to the girl who lives through her kidnapping and the murder of other girls? What made her different? How does she put her life back together? How does her family cope? And what happens if she buries it all but the past comes back to try to reclaim her?

These are some of the questions Laura Lippman addresses in her new standalone novel, I'd Know You Anywhere. That these questions are addressed through the action of the story and by what the characters do shows what a strong book this is, even stronger and more subtle than her brilliant last standalone, Life Sentences.

Upcoming reviews

After finished Laura Lippman's new brilliant novel, I'd Know You Anywhere, it became clear this late summer and fall publications are going to offer some fascinating reading.

A review of Lippman's latest standalone is next up here, while September reviews will include debut novelist John Addiego's Tears of the Mountain from Unbridled Books. October's offerings will include another debut novel, Mr. Toppit, by Charles Elton from Other Press, and the mammoth Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

In Progress: 'Best American Noir'

Not only should short stories not be read one after another after another, without pause for the effect of each one, but noir short stories definitely should be allowed to breathe on their own.

Take Dennis Lehane's entry in the upcoming Best American Noir of the Century (October 2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Although Lehane is best known for his contemporary and historical novels of Boston, his 1999 story "Running Out of Dog" is set in the south. It's a post-Vietnam tale of three friends, Elgin, Blue and Jewel Lut, and how adulthood has not treated them well.

Other Voices: Reading Outside the Comfort Zone

What happened when a male critic went outside his comfort zone, spurred by the New York Times accusations by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner:


http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/all-the-sad-young-literary-women/61821/

Good Words: 'Tinkers'

On occasion, posting an excerpt from an ongoing read is done only to highlight the lovely language. For example, there is this from the early part of Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers:

When he imagined the inside of that clock (an 1801 walnut-cased grandfather's clock), dark and dry and hollow, and the still pendulum hanging down its length, he felt the inside of his own chest and had a sudden panic that it, too, had wound down.

When his grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart. (pp. 33-34)

I love this passage for its haunting portrait in miniature of a man who is dying. This is what it must feel like for someone who knows what is happening to him, and who has lived with love.

Musings: 'Mockingjay'

Mockingjay, the third book in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy, has little choice except to be brilliant, considering the first two books. The third novel, which comes out next week, is bound to be action-filled, since book #2, Catching Fire, ended in a cliffhanger revelation.


What I'm interested in seeing is how much control Katniss has over what happens to her. In both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, she had to react much of the time. She becomes a tribute for the games because her little sister's name was drawn. She agrees to the schemes of her sponsor Haymitch in order to stay alive. She responds to her fellow tribute, Peeta, based on what she thinks he is doing. She agrees to form alliances in the second book in order to achieve her goal of keeping Peeta alive.

Review: 'Past Midnight'

PAST MIDNIGHT
By Mara Purnhagen
YA paranormal
Harlequin Teen
September 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-373-21020-6

I know a lot about ghosts. More than the average person and way, way more than any other seventeen-year-old. Except for Jared and Avery, but most of what they know they learned from me this year, when things got crazy. I know a lot about things going crazy, too, thanks to my parents. They're paranormal researchers, and let's just say they like to bring their work home with them. And sometimess, their work follows them home.

For good.

And so begins the tale of Charlotte, a girl who has been moved around by her parents her entire life while they making documentaries debunking ghost stories. Charlotte, about to begin her senior year, is the quiet one of the family. Her more beautiful older sister, Annalise, is the one who has on-camera experience being a trigger for energy that her parents do believe in, even if they don't believe in ghosts.

But when the family checks out a restaurant in Charleston, S.C., it's Charlotte who the energy seeks. That energy will change what everyone in her family has assumed about their life's work.