Are you on the list? This is a copy of an email magazine. To get on the list for Boldtype — a monthly review of books worth reading — click below to subscribe.    We will not rent or sell your address. Boldtype complies with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. For more, read our ANTI-SPAM/Privacy Policy.

	subscribe   unsubscribe   boldtype.com   archive   send to a friend
	November 2006:: issue 37
	Books This Month 1. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell 2. Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala 3. Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser 4. The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen 5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl 6. A Berlin Childhood by Aura Rosenberg   Feature Book News Credits/About Us Childhood "When children think up stories," cultural critic Walter Benjamin once wrote, "they are like theater-producers who refuse to be bound by 'sense.'" Such irrepressibly creative visions of the world — found in books about and for kids — are at the heart of our selections this month. Karen Russell evokes the growing pains of adolescents raised by wolves, while Jonathan Franzen chronicles his thoroughly average youth. Uzodinma Iweala's searing novel depicts a West African child soldier's brutal upbringing. Precocious narrators helm both Millhauser's cult novel of childhood genius and Marisha Pessl's charmingly ADD debut novel. We close with a feature on the delicate art of writing and illustrating for kids, through an appreciation of a lost classic called Who Needs Donuts? — because, really, who doesn't? - Toby Warner

Pick a nice spot for your library. The Sony® Reader holds about 80 electronic books, and hundreds more with a removable memory card. It's as easy to carry as a slim paperback and, thanks to electronic paper, easy to read. Are you a Reader? See more at sony.com/reader. Enjoy $50 in eBooks with purchase and registration by December 31, 2006.

FICTION St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell   Published: September 2006   Pages: 246   Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf   Links: Author site Bookbrowse interview   Synopsis This fabulous and quietly beautiful collection of short stories tackles the pain and loneliness of adolescence. Review One seldom encounters a collection of teen and pre-teen narrators who can retain the innocence of childhood and manifest an understanding of the world of adults. Such viewpoints are our guides through Karen Russell's evocative stories, which are set in an unreal fantasy world nonetheless haunted by the very real hopes, fears, and longings of the young people who inhabit it. In "Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" the reader encounters kids with sleeping problems who treat the idea of sleeping as other teenagers treat the idea of sex: it's an illicit thrill and one that's hard to come by. Through this oblique conceit, we can relate to the characters' feelings of inadequacy, of being left behind, and of trying desperately to fit in. Moments of humor are strewn liberally throughout the collection. One narrator imagines that girls' breath smells like perfume, only to conclude: "But Emma smells like dinner. barbecue sauce, the buttery whiff of potato foil. Because it's Emma, it's still sort of hot." Most powerfully, many of the stories deal with separation from parents, which must often occur as one grows up. In the collection's title story, boys and girls raised by werewolf parents are taken away to a boarding school of sorts, where they learn proper behavioral etiquette. Returning home to her family, the narrator is repulsed by the wolf ways of her people. Her inability to relate to them will remind readers of their own first, awkward homecomings. The clash of an insular family existence with one's newfound young adulthood is touching and universal, even if most of us were not raised by wolves. - Kristin Gifford back to top

FICTION Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala   Published: August 2006   Pages: 142   Publisher: Harper Perennial   Links: Morning News interview Center for Global Development interview NY Times first chapter   Synopsis This harrowing debut novel is narrated from the perspective of a West African child kidnapped by a rebel army and forced to fight as a soldier. Review Young Agu is barely old enough to attend school when he is forced to become a rebel soldier in a bleak, unnamed country where guerrilla forces rove through villages, sparing no one in indiscriminate bloodbaths. Kidnapped in the first few pages, Agu (who is too small to hold a gun) is handed a machete and given a choice: die or split a man in half in front of his new troop. First, he panics, while the Commandant threatens him and the enemy pleads for his life. Agu then delves into his subconscious to search for the ability to kill. He reimagines his victim as a goat; he visualizes the man who murdered his father; then small Agu can rip his victim apart. The novel is a force field of tension between what is happening physically and psychologically to its protagonist as he struggles to reconcile his former child-self with the soldier he has become. Raped by the Commandant, dressed in bloody rags, shrinking from starvation, Agu attempts to convince himself that he is not bad, that he is only a soldier, and that God will forgive him. To relay Agu's grisly stories, Uzodinma Iweala constructs a remarkably pure and lucid child's language, built on simplistic repetition and unconjugated verbs — a language of defense and displacement. Over the course of the book, Agu matures in the nether lands of war, where the crafts of obedience, apathy, and murder replace his village's traditional rites of passage to manhood. He knows his childhood is over — "I am knowing I am no more child so if this war is ending I cannot be going back to doing child thing" — but this coming-of-age tale does not quite leave him an adult, either. This is no easy read: it's gory, it's lewd, and neither Agu nor his nation has a chance of turning out all right by the end. Don't read it for pleasure. Instead, read it to see Uzodinma Iweala, a young writer just out of Harvard, emerge with a voice unlike any other in contemporary literature. - McKay McFadden back to top

FICTION Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser   Published: 1996 (1972)   Pages: 305   Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries   Links: Bomb interview Boldtype reviews Enchanted Night Millhauser's Martin Dressler   Synopsis A young genius remembers his departed best friend. Review There are worse fates than that of a writer's writer. A tenured teaching gig, the esteem of one's literary peers, a small but devoted cult of readers, and even a Pulitzer Prize to bring one's older books back into print: what the writer's writer lacks in royalties and recognition, he more than makes up in perks and influence. In Steven Millhauser's case, that influence even extends to the film world: The Illusionist, Edward Norton's latest vehicle, is based on an old short story by Millhauser. But it all began in 1972 with Edwin Mullhouse, Millhauser's first — and still his most revered — novel. At once a pastiche of literary biography, a send-up of the cultishness surrounding artists, and a meticulous portrait of a mid-century American childhood, the novel has a convoluted central conceit. It purports to be a biography of a writer who died far too young, written by an 11-year-old named Jeffrey Cartwright. "Edwin Mullhouse is dead," says Jeffrey of his best friend, in the preface. From the novel's beginning, then, we know its end. As Boswell to Edwin's Johnson, Jeffrey sees Edwin's brief life as a study in the development of artistic genius, culminating in a creative supernova — a novel called Cartoons, completed just before Mullhouse's suicide on his 11th birthday. Jeffrey is Edwin's first mate, his amanuensis, his chief assistant, and his sidekick — in awe of his hero and happy to be along for the ride. But the ordinariness of Edwin's life and work, recounted in minute detail, belies Jeffrey's hagiographical, hyperbolic insistence — which sounds at times like nothing so much as James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio — of his friend's genius. Who's the genius after all, then? In the end, the presence that looms over the novel is not Edwin's but his biographer's. By itself, Edwin's story is mere child's play; it takes Jeffrey's incandescent prose — Nabokovian in its verve and intelligence, its humor and bombast — to make it worth telling, and worth reading. For that we can thank Millhauser, who wouldn't be a writers' writer if more of us read him. This a great place to start. - Chris Parris-Lamb back to top

MEMOIR The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen   Published: September 2006   Pages: 195   Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux   Links: Author site NY Times review New Yorker essay Franzen's The Corrections   Synopsis Novelist and essayist Jonathan Franzen takes a stab at memoir writing. Review "I grew up in the middle of the country in the middle of the golden age of the American middle class," says Jonathan Franzen in the opening essay of his memoir The Discomfort Zone. The pages that follow are a meandering, heart-string-yanking, self-effacingly honest meditation on a life chock-full of commonness. It is a chronicle of the relentlessly average beginnings of a writer whose skills are anything but. Franzen's story of his life begins with the writer as an adult, just after the death of his mother. Alone in his mother's empty home, he starts breaking down and packing up all the framed family photographs in order to "depersonalize the house" before selling it. With this act of stowing away the past (and ultimately facing the inevitability of one's own death), Franzen begins his scintillating exploration of his own life. We meet the young, Peanuts-infatuated Franzen ("I was a small and fundamentally ridiculous person"); the awkward, nonsexual adolescent (a founding member of a nerdy high-school prank club, and an eager participant in an early '70s pseudo-communist Christian youth group); and a first draft of the writer as a young man (learning about sex, German, and Kafka at Swarthmore). The final essay returns to the recent past, tackling his life pre- and post-divorce through an exploration of his interest in birding. This memoir is decidedly nonlinear. Rather, it’s enriched (and held together) by all the associations that glom onto the past , making a collection of fragments from long ago into a living, breathing self. Amidst bittersweet recollections, you'll find an appreciation of the works of Charles Shultz and a funny evaluation of Gore-era environmentalism. Throughout, however, Franzen's knowing irony and mastery of electrifying yet tangential details can make the hairs on your neck stand up. - Stephen Dougherty back to top

FICTION Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl   Published: August 2006   Pages: 514   Publisher: Viking Books   Links: Book site Bookslut interview NY Times review   Synopsis High-schooler Blue van Meer tells the story of her turbulent senior year. Review Working from a table of contents that looks like a syllabus ("Chapter #1: Othello, William Shakespeare"), Marisha Pessl's 500-page debut rolls out the story of her high-school-aged heroine Blue van Meer in annotated chapters that read like research papers. Blue is the young daughter of a widowed political theorist who traverses the country as a perpetual visiting professor. She grows up peerless with The Waste Land committed to memory, reaching her senior year, at the up-market St. Gallway School in North Carolina, with a PhD in precocious awkwardness. But while her protagonist is anxiously attempting to understand herself, Pessl reveals her own unfaltering confidence. The novel drops playful references to subjects popular, obscure, and even imaginary, as Pessl builds her narrative into a charmingly self-conscious novel that leaps right out of its prep school origins. Like any good coming-of-age story, Special Topics in Calamity Physics has two plots, the teenage and the adult. The former involves a predictably irritating high school clique called the Bluebloods and a bit of romance that's never acted upon, while the latter involves the murder of a noirish film studies teacher. Anyone who can extract those themes will ace the multiple-choice exam offered in the book's final pages. As for Pessl herself, she aptly clears the hurdle of preciousness on her way to a promising literary career. - Emily Stone back to top

PHOTOGRAPHY A Berlin Childhood by Aura Rosenberg   Published: 2002   Pages: 176   Publisher: Steidl Publishing   Links: Author site Rosenberg's Head Shots   Synopsis With colorful photography, Aura Rosenberg brings an early-20th-century childhood into the 21st century. Review In the autumn of 1932, the exiled German Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin began writing Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhudert, a chronicle of his early years in the German capital. Berlin Childhood Around 1900, as it is known in English, recalls dozens of buildings, times of day, things, games, and situations that defined his early-20th-century childhood. The bittersweet, intimate vignettes focusing on minutiae (his favorite chocolate bars in pretty foil) and moods (a winter morning, the middle of the night) are the stuff of poetry. Seven years later, Aura Rosenberg's family also left Germany. Rosenberg herself was born in America, but in 1991 she and her new family (a husband, John, and child, Carmen) returned for an extended stay. Through the lenses of her camera and the eyes of her kindergarten-aged child, she re-envisions Benjamin's Berlin. The 160 pictures in A Berlin Childhood are each accompanied by a candid caption and juxtaposed with snippets of Benjamin's original text. Rosenberg wittily finds modern equivalents to the props in Benjamin's story. The phone in the hall, whose ringing jars the Benjamin household, becomes today's ubiquitous cell phone. An amusement based on early photography — a relic called the Kaiserpanorama — becomes a virtual-reality game. Studying the life of a city and its inhabitants, the series reveals equal measures change and stasis. The Siegussaule, a golden monument of an angel where military men once gave victory speeches, has been moved miles and is now where a gay pride parade makes its final stop. However, the community pool (the Krumme Strasse Volksbad) looks much as it did half a century ago, and Rosenberg's daughter shares many of Benjamin's experiences. Carmen also captures butterflies, plays hide-and-seek, and indulges in fairy tales. Rosenberg's tender, layered retelling translates Benjamin for a new generation. - Lauren McKee back to top

FEATURE Who Needs Donuts?   A good author shouldn't talk down to his readers. Even if they're only three feet tall. Whether it's Daniel Handler's adorably horrific yarns or Dr. Seuss' rhyming fireside chats, the best kids' books encourage children to be engaged readers, and bring smiles to adults as well. Mark Alan Stamaty's Who Needs Donuts? is such a book. It's the story of Sam, who leaves the 'burbs and heads to the big city for donuts. He doesn't want just one, but hundreds and hundreds of the confections. The plot, though, is secondary to the pictures. The black-and-white drawings are reminiscent of R. Crumb's illustrations or the cartoon Squigglevision of Dr. Katz, and the scenes are as dense as any Where's Waldo tableau. Mark Alan Stamaty — a Slate author and an illustrator whose comic strip "Washingtoon" has appeared in the Village Voice, TIME, and dozens of other publications — wrote Who Needs Donuts? in 1973. When it was published, the book received raves from the New York Times and was slammed by Publishers Weekly. It went quickly out of print and into cult status. Thankfully, Knopf brought it back in 2003, with a handful of the author's own minor touch-ups. Though it probably couldn't equal the amount of time Stamaty spent drawing them, one would need hours to decode the visual tumult within Donuts' pages. In each, in-jokes (the author and friends appear as characters), quips, puns, and asides abound, both visual and verbal. When you look closely, there are ads and signs in the background that read: "We deliver to your door. If it calls and places an order" and "Taxi. 30% Off Duty." It's the hidden wordplay in this visual maelstrom that allows a parent and child to create interactive responses rather than just passive reading. The eye-catching, zany illustrations will bring adult readers back even years later, when the jokes are more accessible but no less charming. Primers with Dick and Jane may be good for you, but Who Needs Donuts? is enormously filling. - Chris Gage back to top BOOK NEWS A few notable bits of recent book news. Indian-born Desai wins UK Booker Prize (Guardian) While Kiran Desai claims that no one wanted her book originally, Inheritance of Loss has won the 2006 Booker Prize, over a shortlist packed with formidable competition. Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel Prize (Telegraph) The novelist wins the 2006 Nobel Prize, provoking both pride and shame in his native Turkey. Catch up on his oeuvre with the Boldtype reviews of Snow and Istanbul. Give the judge a chance (Guardian) With all the banter and kvetching going on this literary prize season, who's to judge? And how? What the people want (Guardian) Google revealed the top ten most-searched texts from one week in September. These included the Qur'an, Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival (thanks, Hugo!), and instructions for building your own robot. Diary of life under a fatwa (DNA India) Salman Rushdie sells his papers — including his diaries of life under the fatwa — to Emory University. Brits lament their national loss and question whether such papers should leave the country. Fall fiction frenzy (Slate) Check out Slate's fall fiction week, which includes book reviews, an essay arguing for the The Sopranos as great modern fiction, and Gary Shteyngart's thoughts on the novel in the age of instant connectivity. Watch New Yorker Festival footage (New Yorker) If you missed the festival, head to the web to see footage of the highlights, including Steve Martin and George Saunders. back to top

	CREDITS Editors Toby Warner Mark Mangan Paul Laster Jocelyn K. Glei McKay McFadden Nick Merritt Chris Gage Editors-at-Large Larry Weissman Sean McDonald Contributors Stephen Dougherty Kristin Gifford Lauren McKee Chris Parris-Lamb Emily Stone Production & Design Anjuli Ayer Jessica Bauer-Greene Morgan Croney Sascha Lewis Cover Art Loretta Lux "The Fish" (detail), 2003 from Loretta Lux Ilfochrome print Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York © Loretta Lux All Rights Reserved   ABOUT US Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books published by Flavorpill Productions. Our mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading. No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies. In addition to this monthly review of books, Flavorpill also publishes nine other email magazines, covering ART, FASHION, NEWS, MUSIC, and cultural events in five cities — NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO, CHICAGO, and LONDON. MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS Every month, Boldtype presents one exclusive media partner. Click for more information about advertising opportunities on Boldtype and across all Flavorpill publications. FEEDBACK We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism, and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please email us at editor. SUBMISSIONS If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an email to books or mail a copy here: Boldtype c/o Flavorpill Productions 594 Broadway, Suite 1212 New York, NY 10012
	back to top

© 2006 Flavorpill Productions LLC. All rights reserved. ANTI-SPAM/privacy policy subscribe | unsubscribe This is a copy of a Boldtype mailer. Use the link above to subscribe or click to automatically UNSUBSCRIBE. Flavorpill Productions complies with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. For more information, please read our PRIVACY POLICY. If you have any questions about subscription to this list, contact us at subscriptions@ boldtype.com (HQ: 594 Broadway, Ste 1212, NY, NY 10012).