Shelf Awareness for Wednesday, June 10, 2009


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

News

Notes: Feds Probe Google Settlement; Shaman Drum to Close

The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division "has sent formal demands to Google Inc. and publishers for information about a deal that would allow the search giant to make millions of books available online," according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported Hachette's CEO David Young "confirmed Tuesday the company received a CID [civil investigative demand] regarding the Google settlement but he declined to comment further."

A New York publishing executive, who preferred to remain anonymous, "said the Justice Department is requesting documents about pricing, digital strategy and conversations with other publishers related to the Google settlement," the Journal reported. "The Justice Department is clearly focused on Google," said this executive. "It's a wide-ranging request for documentation."

The New York Times reported that the Justice Department also sent CIDs to the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. Michael J. Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, who represented the Authors Guild in negotiations with Google, said, "They are asking for a lot of information. It signals that they are serious about the antitrust implications of the settlement."

The Justice Department has been reviewing the settlement Google reached with authors and publishers last fall (Shelf Awareness, October 29, 2008) "after various parties complained that it would give Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of orphan books. Orphans are books still protected by copyrights, but that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found," the Times observed.

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Shaman Drum Bookshop, an Ann Arbor, Mich., institution for nearly 30 years, will close at the end of June. The Ann Arbor News reported that in a statement, owner Karl Pohrt "said the shop is not a sustainable business anymore despite 'a first-rate staff, a fiercely loyal core of customers, a very decent landlord and my own commitment to the community of arts and letters in Ann Arbor.'"

For more than a year, in the face of a dramatically changing book industry, the economic meltdown and declining college textbook sales (Shelf Awareness, February 17, 2009), Pohrt has explored alternatives with the community to find a way to keep his shop alive. These included a move to form a nonprofit literary arts center (Shelf Awareness, February 4, 2008), a search for investors (Shelf Awareness, February 9, 2009), and more recently the formation of a campus/community coalition (Shelf Awareness March 16, 2009).

In his statement, Pohrt "pushed for Ann Arbor area customers to support other local independent book stores. While Pohrt said it was an emotional decision to close the store, he called himself lucky to have to have had 29 good years in the Ann Arbor book-selling business," the News reported.

"I feel like I've had this charmed life to sell books in Ann Arbor for nearly 30 years," Pohrt said. "That's a good run."

He told the News that "he plans to continue with the venture to create the literary arts center. The plan for the center is still in the works and does not have a planned location."

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Conkey’s Bookstore, Appleton, Wis., "a fixture for 113 years, is going out of business," the Post-Crescent reported. In an open letter to the people of the Fox Valley, owner John Zimmerman called the decision a difficult one.

"Nevertheless, as the fifth proprietor of this establishment and as the previous owners before me have done, we have given it our all," he wrote. Earlier this year (Shelf Awareness, March 18, 2009), Conkey’s "lost its on-campus bookstore contract with Fox Valley Technical College to Barnes & Noble, which filed the lowest bid effective July 1. That contract represented about 50% of Conkey’s business," according to the Post-Crescent.

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A "micro-independent" bookshop has opened in Seattle, Wash. The Capitol Hill Seattle blog reported that Pilot Books, which "specializes in journals, poetry and other small-run or small-publisher volumes," features a collection that "is diverse and fascinating, covering the edges of the alterna-mainstream (i.e., quite a few McSweeney's volumes and authors) all the way through to the unimaginably obscure." The blog also noted that the shop has "only been open for a week and a day, and doesn't have a web presence yet that I can find, but word is already burbling on the internet."

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Random House Audio/Listening Library is featuring a pair of promotions for the summer. The Fantasy Road Trip Contest challenges teens to create videos based on an imaginary road trip with characters from one of three fantasy series by authors Libba Bray, Tamora Pierce and Rick Riordan. Three entrants, selected by the authors, will win an 8GB iPod Touch and a collection of signed audiobooks. 
 
Listen Up, Florida! is a regional summer marketing campaign to promote audiobook awareness in the Orlando area, encouraging families to listen to audiobooks during their summer vacation drives. The promotion will be featured on billboards and local radio spots; bookstore shelf talkers and displays; as well as print advertising in the Orlando Sentinel, Winter Haven News Chief and New York Times Book Review.
 
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Verdict: guilty. Sentence: verbal hard labor. The New York Times reported that Dr. Andrew G. Bodnar, a former senior vice president at Bristol-Myers Squibb who admitted "making a false statement about efforts to resolve a patent dispute over a blood thinner," was sentenced to "two years of probation during which he is to write a book about his experience connected to the case. Dr. Bodnar must also pay a $5,000 fine."

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USA Today's celebrity-chasing Lifeline Live blog reported that Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer has announced on her website she is "taking down my bloated MySpace page. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and I really miss the early days when I could hang out with people online. Many of you are hilarious and insightful, and I wish it was easier for me to talk to everyone the way I used to.

"With the MySpace no longer in existence, I can now clearly state that--beside than this website--there is no other outlet where I communicate with people online. I do not have a Facebook page, and I have never had one. I don't do Twitter. So if you're communicating with someone online that you think is me, it's not."

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Illustrator Anthony Browne, "whose picture books have become famous for their brilliantly realised, surreal images of gorillas," was named the U.K.'s new children's laureate, taking over from the poet Michael Rosen. The Guardian reported "Browne said that he would use his two-year stint as laureate to focus on the appreciation of picture books, and the reading of both pictures and words."

"Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older," said Browne. "The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book. Sometimes I hear parents encouraging their children to read what they call proper books (books without pictures), at an earlier and earlier age. This makes me sad, as picture books are perfect for sharing, and not just with the youngest children."


HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


A Lively Launch: Free Speech Leadership Council

Last Wednesday night, some 50 publishers, writers, artists and other First Amendment supporters sipped wine and martinis at the home of former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman. The occasion was the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council, an advocacy arm of the National Coalition Against Censorship, a nonprofit founded in 1974, of which Friedman is chair. The main event was a conversation about censorship between Toni Morrison and Fran Lebowitz. And what a conversation!

Friedman introduced them with a reminiscence about her time at Random House with Morrison, "when we were girls, single mothers." Lebowitz recalled the last time the three of them were together--Stockholm for Morrison's Nobel Prize. Skip Gates and Cornell West were there, too, and "Stockholm will never be the same!" Lebowitz predictably got off some quips--"Librarians censor books. It's like a bartender being a prohibitionist."--and said that we should copy the organizational abilities of Second Amendment proponents. We should be as passionate about defending free speech as they are about the right to carry a gun. Morrison interjected, "The NCAC should be an extreme organization." Lebowitz opined that it would be O.K. to buy a gun if you were required to buy a book at the same time--the new Wal-mart policy.

Her first experience with censorship was at her local library when she was a child--the first time she heard that there were books she couldn't read, when the librarian told her she couldn't check out adult books, an experience echoed by Judy Blume when she tried to read John O'Hara as a teenager. Lebowitz  later said that with the right wing, elitism is bad, being literate is bad. You can be an elite athlete, but not an elite intellectual.

Toni Morrison began at the original beginning, the Garden of Eden and the "profound sin" of knowledge. "Knowledge is bad, it is sinful, it will corrupt you, and you will die." She said that she's a Catholic, but "we didn't read the Bible, we read the little bits [that we were told to read]."

This is not peculiar to Western culture, she said. In all cultures, "to know stuff is a bad thing." But she fortunately came from a family where reading was "an amazing, fun thing," where there was an enormous sacredness attached to reading and enormous power--"If you can read, they can't cheat you; if you can't read, they can defeat you."

She went on to talk about censorship of her own books, particularly in prisons. Song of Solomon was banned at one prison because the warden said it might stir the inmates to riot (or perhaps "write"--we had an acoustical lapse. But "riot" or "write"--which would ultimately be the most dangerous?). A book she edited for Random House 35 years ago, The Black Book (due out in an anniversary edition this November), was popular in prisons, when it was allowed. She received a letter from an inmate asking for three copies, one to give to a friend, one to throw against the wall and one to hold against his heart. "We cannot live the human life without art," Morrison said. "Art is a way to mourn, art is a way to know, art is a way to be in the world, art is a way to remain human."

After that, it seemed almost irreverent to start talking, drinking, gathering coats. But we did and were pleased to be given signed copies of Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word, which Toni Morrison edited (HarperStudio, $16.99, 9780061774003/0061774006)--a great way to relive a marvelous evening.--Marilyn Dahl


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


BEA Children's Book and Author Breakfast

Julie Andrews, hostess of the BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast, may have been onto something: "Wouldn't it have been lovely if this had been a PJ party and we could roll out of bed and on to breakfast?" she asked the crowd who'd arrived at 8 a.m. for the morning's festivities.

Andrews said that being "perceived as a celebrity author, especially in my own country, irritates me." She published her first book, Mandy (Harper & Row, as Julie Edwards), 38 years ago, and this fall will release an anthology called Julie Andrews' Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies (Little, Brown) with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, illustrated by Jim McMullan. Mother and daughter founded the Julie Andrews Collection imprint 12 years ago.

Next came a surprise guest-- Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. He sang the centerpiece of the 1969 Peace March, "Day Is Done," which will be released as a picture book this fall from Sterling, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. He got the entire room singing along with him at (as Jon Scieszka put it at last year's breakfast) "the ass-crack of dawn."

Meg Cabot

"Next year, maybe you could have Bono, so the authors can follow him!" said a deadpan Meg Cabot. She began with a photo of her family and said, "I was raised by the Mod Squad." She and her mother wore matching sweaters, and her father, she explained, was an informer for the mafia. Actually, he taught quantitative analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington. "I can't do long division," she said. "It was sad."

The family moved from the suburbs to "the harsh inner city. No shag carpets, only hardwood floors." This was the inspiration for Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Moving Day (Scholastic, 2008). After Cabot graduated from Indiana ("The only [school] I got into due to my math scores," she explained), she moved to Manhattan and worked for New York University. Since the coeds never woke up before noon, she wrote from 9 a.m.-12 p.m.. When her father died suddenly, Cabot's husband told her to start sending out her stories. Life is too short not to do what you really want to be doing. For three years she received rejection letters.

Then her mother started dating Cabot's teacher. "Disgusting. They're still together, and it's still disgusting," she said. "I had no choice but to write about it." Those stories became The Princess Diaries (HarperCollins, 2000). "I threw in a princess because I like princesses." When she met Andrews, who would star as Genevieve in the film versions, Cabot told her, "I love your books." Take that, British press!

Cabot offered some parting rules for BEA attendees:

  • Never pass a bathroom without going in.
  • Treat other people the way you'd want to be treated.
  • Never give up.


Tomie dePaola

Tomie dePaola said, "Let's get this out of the way," and began singing, "The hills are alive . . . "

He confessed that he and Julie Andrews "spent a night together in our teens." He was a student at Manhattan's prestigious Pratt Institute, sitting in the audience of a Broadway play; she was performing in The Boyfriend (her Broadway debut).

dePaola didn't get his first book contract right after graduation, he said. His agent, Florence Alexander, observed that he had no pictures of "children doing ordinary things, like waving goodbye to trains." The first book he illustrated was for Coward McCann, a science book called Sound. It was only at the urging of Eunice Holzart that he wrote down a story about his bedridden great grandmother, which Barbara Lucas at Putnam read and led to Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs (Putnam, 1973). Soon after, dePaola began thinking about the age-old Porridge Pot story, which--thanks to his Italian genes--morphed into a Pasta Pot and . . . along came Strega Nona (S&S, 1975), which garnered a Caldecott Honor. At last count, there were 15 million copies of dePaola's books in the world.

The author-artist especially thanked Sarah Brandt, a Southern California bookseller, and also Connie Appel and Peggy Holliday from Morgan Hill Bookstore, his local bookstore, for "treat[ing] us like the geniuses we think we are."

How did he exit? You guessed it, the way he entered: "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodnight . . . "

Amy Krouse Rosenthal

On 08/08/08 at 8:08 p.m., Amy Krouse Rosenthal showed up at an appointed rendezvous point in Chicago, Ill., for anyone who had seen her film on YouTube called "17 Things I made" and who wanted to help her make "the 18th Thing." She had no idea if anyone would show up. Hundreds of people came. She filmed the results: They divided into groups, and each accomplished a goal, such as "Make a grand entrance," "Make do with what you have." She ended the film with "Make the most of your time here."

Her talk played with the idea of perception, a fitting theme, given that one of her books this season is Duck? Rabbit!, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Chronicle), in which two offstage characters debate whether an animal they both observe is a duck or a rabbit. Rosenthal said the book was inspired by an idea told to Lichtenheld (who also collaborated with Rosenthal on The OK Book, HarperCollins) by his professor 30 years ago.

Rosenthal loves wordplay. One of the favorites she highlighted: "The greatest earth on show." She guards her time to think and reflect. She said it was hard for her to break into the book business, but then got two yeses at once: Victoria Rock said "yes" to Little Pea, illustrated by Jen Corace (Chronicle, 2005) at the same time that Maria Modugno said "yes" to Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons, illustrated by Jane Dyer (HarperCollins, 2006). Rosenthal collects two things: music boxes and ideas. She brought one of her music boxes with her, which played the melody for "Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey, Chim chim cher-ee!"

Mary Poppins, er, Julie Andrews herself stood to give the closing remarks, evoking the words of Gabriel García Márquez, with whom she'd appeared on a panel--words she said she'd never forget: "Books matter; words count."--Jennifer M. Brown


 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Image of the Day: Alternate BEAtweetup

Some of tweeters in the Boston area who couldn't attend BookExpo America and the BEAtweetup held their own meetup at Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass., on Sunday, May 31. Participants shared social media tips and made new connections. One of the organizers, agent Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency (@BostonBookGirl), shared trends in middle grade and YA fiction. Track the group on twitter at #BostonBEA. From l. to r., back row: John L. Bell, Brendan Halpin, Delia Cabe, Lauren MacLeod, Marie/Boston Bibliophile, Laya Steinberg, Anindita Basu Sempere. Front row: Mitali Perkins, Kathleen Benner Duble.

 


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Home Game

Tomorrow on NPR's On Point: Michael Lewis, author of Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood (Norton, $23.95, 9780393069013/039306901X). He will also appear tomorrow on the Charlie Rose Show.

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Tomorrow on the View: Melissa Gilbert, author of Prairie Tale: A Memoir (Simon Spotlight, $26, 9781416599142/1416599142).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Alex Storozynski, author of The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (St. Martin's, $29.95, 9780312388027/0312388020).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Mary Gaitskill, author of Don't Cry: Stories (Pantheon, $23.95, 9780375424199/0375424199). As the show put it: "The extraordinary levels of empathy and sadness in Mary Gaitskill's new stories provide the basis for this intense discussion of the emotional subtexts of her fiction."

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Tomorrow on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Larry King, author of My Remarkable Journey (Weinstein Books, $27.95, 9781602860865/1602860866). He's also on Tavis Smiley tomorrow.

 


Television: The Pillars of the Earth

Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland have been added to the cast of "a new TV Maxi-series" version of Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth. The production, which will be directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, has already been licensed in Germany, Canada, Spain, Austria and Hungary. Thus far, however, "no broadcast deal is set for the U.S.," according to the Hollywood Reporter, though Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has the DVD rights.

"It's a new world order," said David Zucker, president of Scott Free TV. "Yes, there is more risk at the top, but there's more latitude on the creative side. It's not dissimilar to the indie film biz in this respect. Given how difficult the economy became here, we decided to plow ahead and get funding and casting done before trying to do a licensing deal in the States."

Pillars is scheduled to begin filming June 22 in Hungary and Austria, with a premiere set for the second half of 2010. The cast includes Sewell as Tom Builder, McShane as Waleran, Sutherland as Bartholomew, Matthew Macfadyen as Prior Philip, Sarah Parish as Regan Hamleigh, Hayley Atwell as Aliena, Eddie Redmayne as Jack and Gordon Pinsent as the Archbishop. Cuthbert will be played by John Pielmeier, who also adapted Pillars for the screen.

 


Movies: The Immortality Factor

Science fiction author Ben Bova's B-Four Productions and Red Giant Media will join forces "to develop Bova's The Immortality Factor for feature adaptation," according to Variety. The book, "published by Tor in April, is the uncut version of Bova's 1996 thriller Brothers." Kevin Fox will write the screenplay.

 


Books & Authors

Awards: Red House Children's Book Award

Blood Ties by Sophie McKenzie, "a teen thriller that explores genetic engineering," won the Red House Children's Book Award, the Guardian reported. More than 143,000 children voted in the awards through the Federation of Children's Book Groups. The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Bruce Ingham, took the younger children's category, and Kes Gray's Daisy and the Trouble with Zoos won the younger readers' category.

 


Book Brahmins: Todd Sattersten and Jack Covert

Todd Sattersten and Jack Covert are the authors of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You, published by Portfolio in February. Todd is the president of 800-CEO-READ, the business bookseller with headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis. Jack Covert is the founder of and chief mentor for 800-CEO-READ.

On your nightstand now:

Todd:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (the relatively new paperback edition). It's brilliant, the best "big idea" take I have seen on sociology. Minding the Store edited by Robert Coles and Albert LaFarge, a wonderful anthology of fiction that has business at its center. The New Kings of Non-Fiction edited by Ira Glass. Glass says we are in a golden age for nonfiction writing. I agree. The book benefits 826 Valencia.

Jack:

House of Cards by William D. Cohan, Spade and Archer by Joe Gores and Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews edited by Jonathan Cott.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Todd:

I was a huge fan of the Encyclopedia Brown series. I read every edition that my school library had, and at the time that was probably every one of the series that was in print. Leroy, as his parents referred him to, was a kid that every geek and nerd in the world could find their reflection in. 

Jack:

Dumbo.

Your top five authors:

Todd:

Orson Scott Card, Michael Lewis, Roger Lowenstein, Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly.

Jack:

John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, Charles Fishman, Michael Lewis, John Byrne.   

Book you've faked reading:

Todd:

Don't know if I have. I have no problem telling folks I have never read War and Peace or Pride and Prejudice.

Jack:

The Fifth Discipline
by Peter Senge and Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Todd:

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is a book I have been singing the praises of since I saw the manuscript in 2006. This is a book everyone should read. We are all in the business of influence whether as managers, teachers or leaders. Made to Stick gives some great tools for how to make yourself more effective.

Jack:

Time and Again by Jack Finney and Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Todd:

The Great Ideas series from Penguin. These are selected pieces from important works from Paine to Nietzsche to Orwell. They are works in the public commons, but the debossed covers are beautiful and tactile.  You have to pick them up. They are developed in the U.K. and eventually appear in the U.S. I think they have just come out with the third series of these wonderful little books.

Jack:

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

Book that changed your life:

Todd:

Purple Cow by Seth Godin. In 2003, I was working with my father in his sheet metal fabrication business and trying to create awareness for the company. The subtitle of Grodin's book, Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, was the insight we needed to change our thinking. The market barely knew our little four-person shop existed, and we needed a way to get some attention. We focused our marketing to a single industry segment, developed a remarkable marketing kit and doubled our customer base in 12 months. All that from a book that showed up on my doorstep in a milk carton.

Jack:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig and The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy.

Favorite line from a book:

Todd:

"As for my role, I got him pregnant."--Mel Ziegler speaking of his business partner Bill Rosenzweig as they developed the concept for the Republic of Tea. They later wrote a book by the same name about their interchanges when the initial idea was forming.

Jack:

"Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin's egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the verandah of my farm house in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, 'If you build it, he will come.'"--Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. God, I wish I could write like this!


Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Todd:

That is a tough question. I tend to read something once and not look back. The process of reading a book the second time is hard, because I read too quick, skipping passages, because it seems so familiar. So, I am not sure I have found that book yet.

Jack:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and the Civil War Trilogy by Shelby Foote.

 



Book Review

Book Review: American Adulterer

American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio (Simon & Schuster, $25.00 Hardcover, 9781439115633, July 2009)



Imagine a rich, handsome and charming young man who possesses a powerful yen for beautiful women. After a decade or so of indulging his yen non-stop, he meets a lovely and equally charming young woman. She's different from the others, and the man, no longer so young but still a player, is fascinated enough by her to propose. They marry, appear to all the world to be a picture-book couple and have two adored children. The story does not end there: old habits die hard, and the man's desire to roam and conquer remains enormously strong. Then he is elected President of the United States.

What happens next to the marriage imperiled by the man's raging libido as he finds his footing as a charismatic leader and neophyte statesman? Historians, tabloid journalists and others have mined the public record to tell the story of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, but Kennedy discretion has kept us in the dark about what went on when these two glamorous and complicated people let their hair down in private. Jed Mercurio steps into that vacuum to offer a fictional meditation on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his marriage, health problems, peccadilloes, political achievements and missteps. Skeptics and Camelot loyalists may howl at some fictional liberties Mercurio has taken, but aficionados of the New Frontier will rejoice in this bracingly candid page-turner.

Adopting the approach of a clinician, Mercurio lays out a fascinating timeline based on medical records (even at 43, when we he was elected President, Kennedy was not a well man), the long list of clandestine sexual assignations (his roving eye was constantly alert to potential playmates) and world-changing highpoints of his too-short administration (January 20, 1961-November 22, 1963).

Against all odds, Mercurio has also created the series of plausible private moments we have been craving to supplement the parts of the Kennedy story we already know. A scene in which Kennedy discovers the full extent of Jackie's shopping sprees comes to a tense climax with her simple defense: "You know why I spend, Jack." Oh, yes we do by then! At a later point in the novel, Kennedy's doctors assemble to assess his maladies (Addison's disease, among them) only to reach the stark conclusion of, "I think he's dying." With a story this hot, there will always be a prurient appeal (nobody can ignore the dalliances with Marilyn Monroe, Judith Campbell Exner and others); the surprise here is the huge amount of soul Mercurio conveys about Kennedy as an inspiring President and Kennedy as a complex and flawed man.--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: Skeptics may howl with derision, but Mercurio's storytelling and artistry make American Adulterer an engrossing, illuminating and ultimately affecting novel of the Kennedy years.

 


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