Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Poisoned Pen Press: A Long Time Gone (Ben Packard #3) by Joshua Moehling

St. Martin's Essentials: The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) about Scripture's Most Controversial Issues by Dan McClellan

St. Martin's Press: Austen at Sea by Natalie Jenner

News

Image of the Day: Banned Books at Bookworm

Laurie Halse Anderson's moving presentation last week during the Children's Author Luncheon at MPIBA's trade show in Denver was inspirational to all the booksellers in attendance, including Besse Lynch, events and marketing coordinator, the Bookworm of Edwards, Edwards, Colo.

"What a moving and inspiring speech!" said Lynch. "Listening to Anderson's talk about the important role booksellers play in defending free speech and the right to read made me feel like we are really part of something revolutionary. Independent booksellers play an important role in fighting censorship."

Bookseller Lianna Nielsen of the Bookworm is pictured below.

 

 

Oni Press: Soma by Fernando Llor, illustrated by Carles Dalmau

Notes: Election Day for B&N Board; Pentagon's Banned Book

Today is the Barnes & Noble board of directors meeting at which shareholders will vote on whether to seat chairman Len Riggio and two allies or an alternate slate that includes dissident shareholder Ron Burkle. They will also vote on whether to overturn B&N's poison pill provision adopted late last year.

While the election is too close to call, several Barnes & Noble booksellers have emphasized that the battle at the top of the company is distracting from problems farther down the food chain.

On his Rocket Bomber blog, Matt Blind used sometimes rough language in discussing the matter. Here are some of the more printable parts: "The battle for ownership of the shares, and all this grumbling and rumbling, is a distraction that *I* certainly didn't need, as much of my energy and both mental and physical effort should have been poured into the bookstore as we prepare for December (and it's tougher this year than any I've worked yet)--and also constitutes an expense for the company." The battle "doesn't do anything to explain, ameliorate, or resolve Problems in Publishing and Book Retail which affect my business but which is due to much larger culture and technological shifts." In the end, Blind supports B&N chairman Len Riggio.

Another B&N employee wrote us and portrayed a picture of stress and disorganization at the store level, where "new management is being put in place who seem to have just one agenda, fire everyone who is not minimum wage" and where "over half of the staff in my bookstore left on their own.... These are people with experience and a real passion for books."

She concluded: "Whoever wins control of Barnes & Noble should be aware that it is booksellers who take the people to the books, recommend books, shelve books, make displays, ring up transactions, and greet customers that are the lifeblood of that store. Whoever wins this war should start feeding the soldiers in the trenches a good solid diet of respect, because they are starving and deserting without it."

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Barnes & Noble plans to close stores in Calabasas and Encino, Calif., by December 31, the Los Angeles Daily News reported, but Morningstar Inc. analyst Peter Wahlstrom predicted that the company, which has about 400 leases up for renewal over the next few years, will try to negotiate lower lease rates rather than close more stores. "They really do have a commitment to the stores, but things can always change on a dime," he said.

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Anthony Shaffer's Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan--and the Path to Victory has now joined the list of banned books, according to the Christian Science Monitor, which reported that 9,500 copies of the Afghanistan war memoir "deemed too sensitive by the Defense Department" (Shelf Awareness, September 10, 2010) were purchased by the Pentagon for $47,000 to be destroyed.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said "military officials last week watched as St. Martin's Press pulped the books to be recycled," the Monitor added.

The Telegraph noted that "the few copies of the book that managed to evade the Pentagon's dragnet are now being exchanged for up to $2,000 on the Internet."

"Pentagon celebrates Banned Books Week by destroying spy memoir" was the Quillblog headline for a piece that observed: "Just in time for Banned Books Week comes news that the Pentagon has overseen the destruction of a book deemed to contain classified information about the war in Afghanistan.... As for the supposedly dangerous secrets contained in the book, they still might see the light of day: apparently, an unknown number of electronic versions of the uncensored first edition have already been sent to reviewers."

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Making a living as an author of literary fiction has never been easy, but the economic bedrock may be shifting even more in the age of e-books. The Wall Street Journal reported that "the digital revolution that is disrupting the economic model of the book industry is having an outsize impact on the careers of literary writers. Priced much lower than hardcovers, many e-books generate less income for publishers. And big retailers are buying fewer titles. As a result, the publishers who nurtured generations of America's top literary-fiction writers are approving fewer book deals and signing fewer new writers. Most of those getting published are receiving smaller advances."

"Advances are down, and there aren't as many debuts as before," said agent Ira Silverberg. "We're all trying to figure out what the business is as it goes through this digital disruption."

Indie publishers are picking up some of the slack "by signing promising literary-fiction writers. But they offer, on average, $1,000 to $5,000 for advances, a fraction of the $50,000 to $100,000 advances that established publishers typically paid in the past for debut literary fiction," the Journal wrote.

Finding literary consumers is a major challenge as well. "We aren't seeing a generation of readers coming along that supports writers today the way that young people supported J. D. Salinger and Philip Roth when they were starting out," said editor Nan Talese of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing observed that the "bar is higher" for new authors and "publishers are buying more selectively, agents are being more selective with choosing clients, and retailers are taking fewer titles."

Literary agent Laurence Kirshbaum said many editors are reluctant to commit to new authors: "Writers like Anne Tyler and Elmore Leonard have to simmer quite a bit before they are going to boil. Publishers no longer have the patience to work through multiple modest successes. There is a real danger that these people could be lost today."

But E.L. Doctorow suggested the current changes might be a blessing in disguise: "Writers come up from nowhere, from the ground up, and nobody is looking for them or asking for them, but there they are. If there is a weeding out that's going to occur because of such difficulties, it may be all to the good."

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In December, Sharp will introduce two Android-based readers "that it collectively hopes will sell a million units within their first year on sale," PC World reported, adding that the "aggressive sales target is matched with an equally aggressive plan to enter the U.S. market in 2011 and compete head-to-head with companies like Amazon, Sony, Samsung and Apple." Pricing won't be announced until closer to launch date.

The initial Galapagos e-readers will be available with either a 5.5-inch or 10-inch LCD screen, and PC World noted that "Sharp's choice of LCD over the grey-ish e-paper screens used in e-readers isn't a surprise--it's one of the world's major LCD makers--but that choice and the Android operating system could see some consumers thinking of them more as tablet PCs."

The brand name itself may be Sharp's biggest obstacle, since Galapagos "is perhaps most often used in the Japanese business world to refer to products or technologies that have evolved differently in Japan from the rest of the world," PC World wrote.

In a statement, the company said "Sharp regards Galapagos as a positive terminology," and the name "will now represent a global-standard tablet terminal with cutting-edge technology and know-how cultivated in Japan, integrated with global de-facto standard technologies."

PC World noted, however, that this "may be Sharp's ambition, but the two e-readers unveiled on Monday and a planned e-book service that will launch in December are based on XMDF (ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format), a format developed by Sharp and largely confined to Japan. Sharp said it will later add support for the ePub format... and other document formats including HTML, the basic language of the text Internet, and Adobe's PDF."

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We'll take the Three Musketeers--candy bar and book versions. New York City's Strand bookstore has installed a new candy counter "on the shelves beneath the 40-foot-long checkout counter at the Union Square used-book mecca. Old-fashioned sweets like $2.95 boxes of Gobstoppers, $1.95 chewable wax lips and three-for-35-cents Pixy Stix convert visitors with no intention of buying books into spenders," the Daily News reported.

"Browsers who come here to kill time wind up buying candy," said store co-owner Fred Bass.

The sweet inventory addition is part of a strategy to "coax cash out of penny-pinchers' pockets with creative measures to help bolster sales in a weak economy," the News wrote.

"We're a bargain book store," Bass added. "Penny-pinchers are our customers.... We're selling five times as much candy as we did 'register books.' Candy is an impulse buy."

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Candy isn't the only non-book lure in the news. The Seattle Times reported that Kristina Barnes, owner of Inner Chapters Bookstore & Café--located near Amazon's new headquarters--sells beer but "there's no wine because the Washington Liquor Control Board decided she doesn't serve enough food to be able to offer wine. Her menu includes bagels, pastries, olive tapenade, salmon cream cheese and hummus."

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Titcomb's Bookshop, East Sandwich, Mass., offered an update on its blog regarding the health of Ben, a Colonial statue that had been standing watch outside the shop for 37 years before it was knocked over by a car in July (Shelf Awareness, August 2, 2010).

Ben is still out of commission, as it "is not an easy thing, apparently, to fix a 37-year-old, painted, wrought iron statue. It really is a work of art, so a simple welding torch job just doesn't cut it. We're excited to tell you that Ted Titcomb, the original creator of the statue back in 1973, has agreed to repair it! The statue will, hopefully, be back on the job in the spring. (I am forecasting a super big party!)"

In the interim, a wood outline of the landmark has been carved by Cape Cod signmaker Paul White and the bookshop's owner, Nancy Titcomb, "is hard at work getting the 'statue stand-in' painted and on the job. You should see him soon."

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Maple Street Book Shop, New Orleans, La., was named 'Favorite Bookstore" by students at Loyola University. The Maroon reported that the bookshop "has been providing the city with books for over 45 years and has also served as the host to several prominent authors such as Loyola's own Walker Percy, Anne Rice and Dave Eggers. The bookstore also has a daily 10% for faculty members and 10% discount for students every Tuesday."

"We are honored to be named the best bookshop in New Orleans by Loyola University and we hope to continue to serve New Orleans for at least another 45 years," said owner Donna Allen.

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Many booksellers love vampire novels, but Drew Sinton, owner of the Haunted Bookshop, Melbourne, Australia, is a "self-styled vampire." He told the Sydney Morning Herald he wasn't surprised "that blood believers were moving south as 'Melbourne is much murkier.' ''

Sinton's resume includes work in advertising and studying to become an Anglican priest. ''I was always a bit of an outsider but then I swapped advertising, a blood-sucking career, for a blood-sucking lifestyle,'' he said.

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A new website will put to the test Ford Madox Ford's contention that you can "open the book to page 99 and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." The Guardian reported that page99test.com launches next month, offering "(courageous) authors and aspiring authors the chance to upload the 99th pages of their works and invite readers to comment on whether they would buy, or like to read, the rest."

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Paz and Associates is holding a two-day workshop retreat called Managing for Love and Profit: The Art & Science of Retail Bookselling November 2-3 in Franklin, Mass. The workshop is intended for current or aspiring bookstore managers and new and prospective bookstore owners.

For more information, go to PazBookBiz.com.

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Book trailer of the day: Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope by Mary Beth Chapman (Revell).

 

G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
Be the first to have an advance copy!
The Guilt Pill
by Saumya Dave
GLOW: Park Row: The Guilt Pill by Saumya Dave

Saumya Dave draws upon her own experience for The Guilt Pill, a taut narrative that calls out the unrealistic standards facing ambitious women. Maya Patel appears to be doing it all: managing her fast-growing self-care company while on maternity leave and giving her all to her husband, baby, and friends. When Maya's life starts to fracture under the pressure, she finds a solution: a pill that removes guilt. Park Row executive editor Annie Chagnot is confident readers will "resonate with so many aspects--racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, the inauthenticity of social media, the overwhelm of modern motherhood, and of course, the heavy burden of female guilt." Like The Push or The Other Black Girl, Dave's novel will have everyone talking, driving the conversation about necessary change. --Sara Beth West

(Park Row, $28.99 hardcover, 9780778368342, April 15, 2025)
CLICK TO ENTER


#ShelfGLOW
Shelf vetted, publisher supported

Media and Movies

Media Heat: Ken Follett on Mitch Albom Show

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Meredith Maran, author of My Lie: A True Story of False Memory (Jossey-Bass, $24.95, 9780470502143/0470502142).

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Today on CBS Evening News: Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't (HarperOne, $14.95, 9780060859527/0060859520).

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Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Bob Woodward, author of Obama's Wars (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781439172490/1439172498). He will also appear tomorrow on MSNBC's Morning Joe and Larry King Live.

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Nicole Richie, author of Priceless: A Novel (Atria, $24.99, 9781439166154/1439166153). She will also appear tomorrow on the View.

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Martin Fletcher, author of Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99, 9780312534813/0312534817).

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Tomorrow on the View: Marlo Thomas, author of Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny (Hyperion, $26.99, 9781401323912/140132391X).

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Tomorrow on ABC Radio's Mitch Albom Show: Ken Follett, author of Fall of Giants (Dutton, $36, 9780525951650/0525951652).

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Tomorrow on NPR's On Point: Thanassis Cambanis, author of A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel (Free Press, $27, 9781439143605/1439143609).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: James Ellroy, author of The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women (Knopf, $24.95, 9780307593504/0307593509).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Linda Polman, author of The Crisis Caravan: What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? (Metropolitan Books, $24, 9780805092905/0805092900).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Steve Rattner, author of Overhaul: An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27, 9780547443218/0547443218).

 

Rowling & Oprah to Discuss Harry's Future

On Friday, J.K. Rowling will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss her life and career, as well as the possibility of another Harry Potter book. Reuters reported that the bestselling author "talked to Winfrey for the first time from Edinburgh, Scotland.... She told Winfrey she realized her books about the boy wizard were popular and her life had changed forever when she saw an enormous line of fans outside a large store during her second U.S. book tour. She said the moment 'felt Beatle-esque.'"

She also recalled that "the cool composure she had displayed at the height of the Harry Potter mania was not quite what it seemed," Reuters wrote.

"You ask about the pressure," Rowling said. "At that point, I kept saying to people, yeah I'm coping... but the truth was there were times when I was barely hanging on by a thread."

 

Television: The Walking Dead

"It's kinetic. It's wild. It's frantic. It's full of fear," Andrew Lincoln (Sheriff Rick Grimes) says in the preview--"a sizzle reel that'll have you reaching for your shotgun"--for AMC's new series The Walking Dead, which is adapted from the critically-acclaimed comic book series by Robert Kirkman about survivors of a zombie plague, the Wrap reported.

 

Movies: New Blood for the Twilight Saga

Maggie Grace (Taken) has joined the cast of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, playing Irina, "a new vampire threat to Kristen Stewart's Bella," Deadline.com reported, noting that Irina is "a member of the Denali coven, considered cousins to the Cullen clan as the only other 'vegetarian' vampire group. When Irina blames the Cullens for the death of her lover, her actions set in motion a terrifying chain of events." The first installment of Breaking Dawn will be released by Summit Entertainment November 18, 2011, with the finale scheduled for November 16, 2012.

 

Books & Authors

Awards: MacArthur Fellows; Independent Booksellers Book Prize

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named 23 new MacArthur Fellows, who will receive $500,000 in "no strings attached" support over the next five years. Included among this year's "genius grant" winners are Yiyun Li, "a fiction writer drawing readers, through spare and understated storytelling, into compelling explorations of her characters' struggles in both China and the United States" and Matthew Carter, "a type designer crafting letterforms of unequaled elegance and precision that span the migration of text from the printed page to computer screens."

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Winners of this year's Independent Booksellers Book Prize--voted for by independent booksellers and their customers in the U.K.--are Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (adult category) and Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo (children's book), Book2Book reported. The authors will be honored at ceremonies in their favorite independent bookshops later this fall.

"Not long ago I did an event in Melrose at the wonderful Mainstreet Trading Company," said Morpurgo. "I found myself plunged into a hive of enthusiasm and expectation. The place simply buzzed with books and people who love them. So to have Running Wild win the Independent Booksellers Book Prize means a very great deal to me. I love being a small part of that buzz. I'm a happy bee today!"

Hilary Mantel observed that her novel "has brought me fans who have never read my books before, and also readers who don't normally go for historical fiction. The support of individual booksellers has been very important in creating that outreach, and over my writing years I've become increasingly aware that a well-run independent bookshop can influence and inspire readers in the area it serves. Now that choice and variety for the reader has dwindled, and a few books dominate the market, the taste and discrimination of independent booksellers are more important than ever in maintaining a lively reading culture."

 

Shelf Starter: A Renegade History of the United States

A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell (Free Press, $27, 9781416571063/141657106X, September 28, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

 

This is a new story.

When American history was first written, it featured and often celebrated politicians, military leaders, inventors, explorers, and other "great men." Textbooks in high school and college credited those goliaths with creating all the distinctive cultural and institutional characteristics if the United States. In this history from the top down, women, Indians, African Americans, immigrants and ordinary workers--in other words most Americans--seldom appeared. In the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of scholars began to place labor leaders, feminists, civil rights activists, and others who spoke on behalf of the people at the center of the story. This became known as history "from the bottom up." Yet more often than not, it seemed to me, the new stars of American history shared many of the cultural values and assumptions of the great men. They not only behaved like "good" Americans but also worked to "correct" the people they claimed to represent. They were not ordinary.

A Renegade History goes deeper. It goes beneath what the new "social history" portrayed as the bottom. It tells the story of "bad" Americans--drunkards, prostitutes, "shiftless" slaves and white slackers, criminals, juvenile delinquents, brazen homosexuals and others who operated beneath American society--and shows how they shaped our world, created new pleasures, and expanded our freedoms. This is history from the gutter up.--selected by Marilyn Dahl

 

 

Book Brahmin Plus: Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl speaks about the pleasures of reading to library, literacy organizations and community groups throughout the world and comments on books regularly on NPR's Morning Edition. She's the author of Book Crush: For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest; Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; and Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (October 1, 2010), all published by Sasquatch Books. Among her many honors and awards are the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and Users Services Association of the American Library Association, "presented to a librarian who has made significant contributions to library adult services"; the 2004 Women's National Book Association Award, given to "a living American woman who... has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation"; and the 1998 Library Journal Fiction Reviewer of the Year award from Library Journal.

Even though she hates being asked questions that limit her answers to a finite number of books, we bribed her with crispy Greek fries and she consented to answer limiting questions.

On your nightstand now:

Exley by Brock Clarke, How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe by Charles Yu, Churchill's Empire by Richard Toye, At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. 

What books you keep close by when you need to lighten up: 

Anything by Georgette Heyer, Jane Haddam, Elizabeth Cadell, D.E. Stevenson, Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold. 

Guilty pleasures author: 

The most embarrassing is Elswyth Thane, who wrote the Willamsburg series-- it's a family saga from the Revolutionary War through WWII, set in America and England. The books are hard to find but I've located sets for both my daughters and my sister. They are sexist, racist, anti-Semitic--everything I hate in books--the characters are so wonderfully romantic, and the relationships are totally unreal, but the books are still absolutely wonderful. 

Your favorite poets: 

Philip Larkin, Howard Moss, Edna St. Vincent Millay, A.E. Housman, Stephen Dunn. 

The funniest books you've read: 

Straight Man by Richard Russo. Then there's Handling Sin by Michael Malone, or Honey Don't by Tim Sandlin. A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel, Farley Mowat's The Dog Who Wouldn't Be and anything by Carl Hiaasen. Roy Lewis's Evolution Man. Everything by Terry Pratchett. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and Connie Willis's homage to the book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. 

Best classic discovered late in life: 

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope, and Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, a brilliant novella. 

Favorite title (as a title): 

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke; The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall; Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer.

Your favorite first line: 

" 'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."--The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay 

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."--Feed by M.T. Anderson 

Do you feel pressure when you read a book? 

I think that I try to avoid that like the plague, but it's true that every time I read a book I try to figure out what kind of reader would like it, and why I do or don't like it myself. When you're talking about books on a professional basis, it changes the nature of your reading--it's no longer a purely personal response. 

What was your most surprising interview with an author? 

What's most surprising and wonderful is how generous some of the writers are in terms of sharing their thoughts and lives. Justin Cronin, Sherman Alexie, Marjane Satrapi, Elinor Lipman, Ann Patchett, Elaine Showalter, David Wroblewski, to name just a few. I don't have a set of questions that I'm going to ask them--I imagine that we're sitting in my living room having a conversation about everything and noting in particular.

Sometimes I'm surprised at where an interview goes. I see these interviews as a chance for the listener to get to know the author, so I'm always happy when the authors veer off into something they really want to talk about. 

What are your biggest gripes about the book business? 

Too many bad books being published and promoted; blurbs by authors I suspect haven't read the book; and cover copy that tries to link two or three totally different but well-known books--the most recent one that had me shaking my head in disbelief: "Reminiscent of The Color Purple as well as the frontier novels of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder." The novel looks good, and I'll probably read it, but jeez louise, give me a break: Cather, Wilder and Walker? 

A book that got you through tough times: 

All the books I read between 1973 and 1993. 

A book you wish everyone would read: 

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. It's a short story in a collection by the same name. It's also found in her collection Pretty Monsters. 

The most difficult question for you to answer: 

What is your favorite book? What books would you take to a desert island? Basically, any question that forces me to limit my response to one or two or 10 books. 

What is your favorite question? 

What books would you like to see put back into print? But no one ever asks me that! So let's start with Last Night at the Ritz and The Girls from the Five Great Valleys by Elizabeth Savage; A Gay and Melancholy Sound by Merle Miller (my favorite book ever); Betty Cavanna's teenage novels; books by Elizabeth Cadell and D.E. Stevenson.

Follow her book thoughts on Twitter: @Nancy_Pearl

 

 

 

Book Review

Book Review: Chalcot Crescent

Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon (Europa Editions, $15.00 Paperback, 9781933372792, September 2010)

In 1985, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil was published, not to universal acclaim. It was just too much for some readers. Others, this reader included, found it the echt revenge novel; none before or since can touch it. Weldon is funny, cynical, sardonic and, best of all, snarky. She lets all of these writerly attributes out to play in Chalcot Crescent.

As a preface, Weldon writes: "Two years after I was born, my mother had a miscarriage. Had she not, I would have grown up with a younger sister. This is the sister's story, set in an alternative universe which closely mirrors our own." A sobering thought, since this is a darkly dystopian portrait of 2013 England, a country where the downhill slide began with "The Shock in 2008, and after that the Crunch, and the Crisis, and the phoney Recovery, like the phoney war--and then the Squeeze and Inflation and now the Bite...." Does all this sound vaguely familiar?

Frances Prideaux, octogenarian, writer, mother and grandmother, is sitting on the stairs of Number 3, Chalcot Crescent, hiding out from the bailiffs pounding on her door to repossess her belongings. She has frittered away her fame and fortune and is now deeply in debt. Her grandson Amos, a junkie and former jailbird, is there with her, with an agenda of his own. Frances is ruminating about her life, the boyfriend she stole from her sister and married, the many men she had in and out of her bed, not "being there" for her best friend's daughter, the interwoven lives and relationships of her lovers and her family. Indeed, it seems that the only people left in England are related to Frances by marriage or blood. And what a bunch they are.

Her grandchildren, invited by Amos, are breaking out the walls of her upper rooms to gain access to the house next door so they can exit out the back and avoid the CiviCam. These young revolutionaries are plotting a coup against NUG, the National Union Government, composed not of politicians but of sociologists and therapists who double-speak in the soothing tones of the lecture hall, not the war room.

Weldon captures perfectly the accommodation powerless and oppressed people go through in order to survive deprivation, rapid change and growing hopelessness. Relief from all this is found in Weldon's recounting of Frances Prideaux's triumphs, mistakes and choices, one of which saves her family.--Valerie Ryan

Shelf Talker: Fay Weldon at her sardonic best, examining dystopian England in the near future, and one family's part in its causes and cures.

 

 

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