Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Independent and University Presses FEATURED IN THIS E-MAIL: * "Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies" by Ken Kalfus * "The Book of Happiness" by Nina Berberova * "The Big Banana" by Roberto Quesada * "New Stories from the South" edited by Shannon Ravenel * "Citizen of the World" by Maclin Bocock "Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies" by Ken Kalfus Publisher: Milkweed Editions http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1571310290/entertainmentsit In his second book of short stories, Ken Kalfus takes on the speeding troika that is Russia in the 20th century. It's an astonishing act of literary ventriloquism, displaying a range of subjects and techniques that would be remarkable in any writer, and is that much more so in one working in a tradition not his own. There are not one but many Russias in "Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies": the giddy utopianism of the early Soviet Union; the postwar Stalinist personality cult; the brief thaw of '60s liberalism; and, perhaps most affectingly, the post-Gorbachev state, in which infrastructure crumbles while workers go unpaid. The title story begins with an accident in a nuclear plant and ends in unwitting apocalypse, as a technician dying of radiation poisoning attempts to sell weapons-grade plutonium on the black market. The result is part tragedy, part "Fargo"-style farce, featuring hoodlums so dumb they think they're dealing in drugs: "'What did he call it?' ... 'Plutonium. From Bolivia, he said.'" In "Anzhelika, 13," a young girl is convinced she has caused Stalin's death, while "Salt" is a satiric fairy tale about supply and demand. "Budyonnovsk" finds Viktor Chernomyrdin negotiating not with Chechen hostage-takers but with an exhausted, embattled Russian Everyman, Vasya, who is "old enough to know what a real job is, but not old enough to have ever had one." The final novella, "Peredelkino," follows two writers through an intricate dance of literature, politics, jealousy, and desire, and then closes on a lovely and moving image. The narrator--discredited, disillusioned, his career finished-- stands outside his own house "in the dark nowhere place from where authors always watch their readers." Inside is his wife, to whom he has been repeatedly and flagrantly unfaithful, oblivious to his presence but transfixed by his book: I knew that shortly there would be many explanations to be made, however imperfectly, and then confessions and recriminations, protestations of grief and loss, and then at last hard, practical calculation. Before that, I wanted to absorb, place in words that I would always be able to summon, an image of her like that, the passionate reader. In a sense, that's us he's looking at, absorbed in the book we've just finished. Kalfus is the kind of writer who can tip his hat to the reader--who can acknowledge our complicity--all without ever lifting us out of the world he's created. Most fiction speaks to either the heart or the head; his does both with ease. --Mary Park "The Book of Happiness" by Nina Berberova Publisher: New Directions http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081121401X/entertainmentsit Joy, at least by popular opinion, does not generally make for good reading. After all, as Tolstoy once quipped, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." How fitting that another Russian should prove him wrong--that happiness, when it comes to this novel's long-suffering heroine, should prove as unique, as variable, as interesting as the most melodramatic unhappiness. Unsentimental, possessed of a "dizzying equilibrium," Vera is a breath of fresh air for those used to the feverish, pawnbroker-murdering brand of Russian protagonist. Elegantly translated by Marian Schwartz, her story is told in three parts, each of which corresponds to a love of her life. In the first, the suicide of her oldest friend sends Vera spinning through memories of her idyllic childhood; in the second, she relives her marriage to a tyrannical invalid and their immigration to Paris. "Just imagine someone who is dying of 'life,'" he tells her. "On his forehead is ice, on his chest a bag of oxygen, his hand in someone's dear hand. And here it all is, in you: the ice, the oxygen, and the hand." His love is the opposite of Vera's: she loves not for hysterical transports, but for the simplest and most natural of reasons. What Vera wants, she decides is "not 'peace' or 'freedom' but happiness, the most genuine and impossible happiness"--a state of mind as difficult to find on the page as it is in real life. Fortunately, the third and final section brings a happy ending--very happy, and also good reading. --Mary Park "The Big Banana" by Roberto Quesada Publisher: Arte Publico Press http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558852557/entertainmentsit The hero of Roberto Quesada's "The Big Banana" has appropriately big ambitions: he dreams of becoming a famous movie star. With that intention, Eduardo Lin has come to try his luck in New York City. But as his friend Casagrande points out, it's no simple matter for an undocumented Honduran to make a show-biz splash in "el norte": Imagine a "bananero" in Hollywood? Here's El Gran Banana, The Big Banana, The Big Banana in the Big Manzana, The Big Banana in the Big Apple, see how it doesn't rhyme in English? What do you think? Some time later New York will be invaded by The Big Banana? Are you crazy, huevon? Crazy he may be, but Eduardo is determined to give it a shot. For starters, he rents a room in a Bronx household (inhabited by immigrants from every corner of Latin America) and gets himself hired by a gringo contractor. Eventually, he does realize his dream--after a fashion, anyway--and the novel features cameo appearances by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg and Roger Moore. Yet it is Eduardo's interactions with his friends and his environment that make "The Big Banana" special. Quesada counterbalances the misery and alienation of Eduardo's existence with one picaresque adventure after another. Indeed, his explorations of the high (and low) life place this novel in the tradition of "Tom Jones," "Candide," and "Moll Flanders." True to form, when Eduardo finally discovers love and ultimate meaning, they're not far from his own doorstep. --Margaret Prior "New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999" edited by Shannon Ravenel Publisher: Algonquin Books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156512247X/entertainmentsit As any good Southerner knows, literature written on the sunnier side of the Mason-Dixon is every bit as diverse as literature anywhere else. Doubters need look no further than the latest edition of "New Stories from the South," the acclaimed annual anthology edited by Shannon Ravenel. This year's version features well-known names such as Richard Bausch, Rick DeMarinis, and Clyde Edgerton right alongside up-and-coming talents such as Laura Payne Butler and Heather Sellers. Looking for monkeys? We got your monkey right here, ordered from the back of a comic book in Andrew Alexander's bittersweet short-short, "Little Bitty Pretty One." ("My father, a doctor, would pretend to examine the monkey when we asked him to. 'Have you been a good little boy?' he would say to the monkey over and over, and then answer in a high monkey-voice, 'Yes, I've been a good little boy.'") Naturally, there's a fair selection of Southern-style humor, from Clyde Edgerton's "Lunch at the Piccadilly," about persuading an elderly relative not to drive, to George Singleton's "Caulk," about a painting job taken just a little too far. One time my grandmother on my father's side said it reached 110 and rained simultaneously on Christmas day, 1950, but at that point she'd gone through both radiation and chemotherapy--she liked to pull the top of her dress down and show the cavity where one breast had existed, then say how smoking is bad for you. Both the darkest and the most powerful story in this collection turns out to be Tom Franklin's Edgar Award- winning "Poachers," in which a legendary game warden turns the tables on a trio of half-wild backwoods boys who like to hunt out of season. African parrots and Crimson Tide football, circus animals and reattached feet: so many wild and wonderful tales, and not a stereotype among them. Southerners, the next time someone makes a Bubba joke in your presence, give 'em a copy of this anthology and tell them politely where they can place it. --Mary Park "Citizen of the World" by Maclin Bocock Publisher: Zoland Books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1581950004/entertainmentsit Maclin Bocock is indeed a citizen of the world, and through her stories, the reader travels from Virginia barns to Parisian bedrooms, from autobiography to magical realism and, eventually, to the end of civilization as we know it. It's a long, far-ranging journey, but if the reader can handle a few bumpy transitions--even, in some cases, the literary equivalent of whiplash--they'll find this book well worth the trip. In the first section, nostalgic stories of a Southern girlhood explore the irrevocable divide between black and white worlds. In "The Funeral," for instance, a black servant fakes her own death and tells the narrator she's a witch. ("After midnight, several times a week, she raised her bedroom window and flew about the town doing nice things for people. 'Don't you ever go out the front door?' Aretha thought for a moment. 'No. I got to have the elevation.'") "Play Me 'Stormy Weather,' Please" takes a more tragic turn, as a young girl is forced to renounce an interracial friendship the adult world won't tolerate. The book's subsequent sections veer further and further from these down-home roots, using their dazzling settings (Morocco, Mexico, and France) to show off a variety of techniques, from surrealism to psychological suspense. "The Baker's Daughter" is a Russian fable that contains elements of fairy tale, history, tragedy, and even farce--most notably when the lovers first meet, as the hero's mount drops dead in its tracks: "How many soon-to-be lovers have exchanged their first words over the body of a dead horse?" "La Humanidad" envisions a grim postapocalyptic world, while the title story is a riveting tale of espionage and one woman's search for identity. Simply put, Bocock is never the same writer twice. Not every one of these stories works perfectly, but their very diversity is a commendable feat of courage and imagination. --Chloe Byrne ****** You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Literature & Fiction section at Literature & Fiction
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