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Five Book Friday!

And today, dear patrons, we come to you with some good news to start your weekend off right!  Our Assistant Director, Gerri Guyote, is one of the recipients of the 2016 Mass Literacy Champions Award!  We are as pleased as punch that Gerri is getting recognized for all her hard work, infinite patience, and dedication to literacy programs, and are so thrillled to congratulate her on this significant achievment!  Here is the official photo taken of all the winners:

L-R: Dennis Quinn, Yamaris Rivera, Pesha Black, Gerri Guyote, Sharon Shaloo and Jeantilus Gedeus. Boston Herald Staff Photo by Chitose Suzuki. - See more at: http://www.massliteracy.org/literacy-champions/#sthash.8KPohjY5.dpuf
L-R: Dennis Quinn, Yamaris Rivera, Pesha Black, Gerri Guyote, Sharon Shaloo and Jeantilus Gedeus. Boston Herald Staff Photo by Chitose Suzuki. – See more at: http://www.massliteracy.org/literacy-champions/#sthash.8KPohjY5.dpuf

As described on their own blog, “The Mass Literacy Champions Awards Program enables literacy providers in Massachusetts to share their most promising practices with their peers and serve as ambassadors for Mass Literacy. The program was created in 2002 by Mass Literacy to identify, publicly recognize and reward Massachusetts educators who have shown exceptional commitment and results through their work in literacy education. 76 Mass Literacy Champions have been recognized since 2003, and together they represent the diverse literacy community that makes Massachusetts a national leader in education.”

Each Mass Literacy Champion will receive a $1000 grant for program development, a professionally produced video to promote the work of their organization valued at $1000, and they will serve as a Mass Literacy Adviser. They will each complete an innovative literacy project that will be shared with the statewide literacy community.  YAY!!

And speaking of books, and reading, and long weekends (not that we were, but we certainly are now), let take a look at some of the new books that have climbed up onto our shlves this week, that can’t wait to meet you:

Five Books

3740333Grunt: Mary Roach has made a career out of telling us all about things we never knew we never knew about human bodies, from our own alimentary canals and digestion processes to the secrets of human cadavers, to how the human body can survive in outer space.  This latest book tackles the science of warfare, and how soldiers are kept fed, awake, sane, and cool in some of the most difficult of conditions.  In so doing, she brings to light just how extensive the military complex is–involving fashion designers and movie studios in addition to army bases and foreign clinics.  The result is a book that is illuminating on many levels, surprisingly funny, and genuinely engrossing, that had Booklist referring to Roach as, “A rare literary bird, a best selling science writer…Roach avidly and impishly infiltrates the world of military science….Roach is exuberantly and imaginatively informative and irreverently funny, but she is also in awe of the accomplished and committed military people she meets.”

3743229Hard Light: Remember how we were talking about noir fiction, and how there were so few women who were portrayed as actual human beings in their stories?  Well, ask, and ye shall receive…In this third novel featuring the foul-mouthed, hard-living, occasionally criminal, punk photographer, and utterly wonderful noir antiheroine Cass Neary, who is on the run from cult murderers in Iceland, and has arrived in London to find her long-estranged lover, Quinn.  But Quinn is gone, and before long, Cass finds herseld caught up in the world of eccentric gansters and drug-smugglers that takes her to the wilds of Land’s End, were a fascinating archeological discovery could change the course of human history…if Cass can survive long enough to expose it.   Cara Hoffman provided a sensational blurb for this book, describing Elizabeth Hand’s work as “Brutal, elegant, rich and strange, Hard Light is noir at it’s very best. This fast paced marvel of a book beats with the exultant energy of Punk rock and hums with the mysterious beauty of a Delphic hymn. Elizabeth Hand is not only one of the great American novelists, her influence on a generation has changed the face of Literature. This novel will haunt your dreams.”

3709655The Doll Master and Other Tales of Horror: It’s summer time, and that means that I am on the hunt for books that will keep me up late at night…and this book looks like the perfect place to start.  Joyce Carol Oates is a marvel at creating stories that are as real and as recognizable as our own lives–and them subtley twisting just one or two threads of that story in order to make it something horrifying.  These stories range in setting from the house down the road to the Galapagos Islands, dealing with intruders and secret collections, and are sure to give you goosebumps, even as the temperature outside rises.  Publisher’s Weekly found it downright chilling, remarking that “Oates convincingly demonstrates her mastery of the macabre with this superlative story collection . . . This devil’s half-dozen of dread and suspense is a must read.”

3708737Barren Cove: Ariel S. Winter’s newest novel is about humanity and love and loss, and all those wonderfully human emotions, as seen through the eyes of an antiquated and lonely android named Sapien.  Hoping to find a little comfort for himself, Sapien goes to live in a Victorian manor at Barren Cove–but instead finds himself increasingly fascinated by the family who is also living there, including Beechstone, an enigmatic man who may just have the answers that Sapien has sought for so long.  But there is danger on Barren Cove, as well, and as Sapien beings a quest for understanding, he will also come face to face with the darkness inside his new companions, and in himself, as well.  Fans of Emily Bronte, as well as science fiction fans are going to find a lot to like in this story that, according to Kirkus Reviews “Weaves a uniquely dreamy spell, and a lingering one. Lyrical, unexpected, and curiously affecting…a story that lodges uneasily in the heart and mind.”

3755654The Dragon Behind the Glass: The Asian arowana or “dragon fish”, a holdover from the prehistoric age, and a symbol of good fortune and prsperity, is the world’s most expensive aquarium fish.  Though they are bred in secure farms in Southeast Asia, they have also been declared an endangered species in the United States, creating an even higher demand for this bizarre commodity, and establishing a thriving black market that Emily Voigt penetrates in her engrossing new book.  Her journey takes her from some of the last uncharted wildernesses on this planet to the South Bronx, where arowana fish are sold for astromonical prices, even as scientists declare that fresh water fish are some of the most rapidly declining species around.  This is a story about environmentalism, greed, and about fish, that Publisher’s Weekly devoured, calling it an “engaging tale of obsession and perserverance, jouranlist Voigt chronicles her effort to study and understand its appeal. . . . Voigt’s passion in pursuing her subject is infectious, as is the self-deprecating humor she injects into her enthralling look at the intersection of science, commercialism, and conservationism.”

 

So, until next week, beloved patrons, happy reading!

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Wednesdays @ West: In Search of More Listening

Like my fellow bloggers, I am a huge fan of audiobooks.  I have a long-ish commute to work and without audiobooks I would be lost.  Also, since having twins, audiobooks have become one of the only ways I can sneak in a bit of “reading.”

Our old friend Novelist can be of use to those of us who want or need to listen to our books.  For a refresher on how to use Novelist, reread this post.  It often seems to me that there is no end to the depth of fun available on Novelist.  I could lose entire days to searching its contents if I let myself.

For audiobook fans, there are a few Novelist features you won’t want to miss.   Novelist maintains an ever-changing audiobook page with featured, new and forthcoming and themed lists.  To get there from the Novelist homepage, select “Browse by” and then pick “Audiobooks”browse

Right now, Novelist is featuring audiobooks that share the stories of Holocaust survivors.  Also on this page, you’ll seeing Recommended Reading Lists including picks for fans of mysteries, general fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, history writing, life stories and audiobooks for children and teens.

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Once you’re in an audiobook record in Novelist there are few handy features that can help you narrow your selection before you head to the library or download the file from Overdrive.   One is the Audiobook sample.  I don’t know about you, but for me, the narrator makes a world of difference in an audiobook.  Some books (which shall remain nameless) have been returned to the library unfinished because I simply did not want the narrator’s voice accompanying me on my travels for ten or more hours.  Novelist’s audiobook sample can help you avoid audiobook fails by allowing you to preview the narrator’s voice in advance.

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Another feature I’m a fan of is the review of the audiobook available in audio.  If you want to listen to the book, it makes sense you may wish to listen to its review as well.  These reviews are provided by Audio File Magazine, which, by the way, publishes the annual Audie Awards for excellence in audiobooks.  The “audies” are another wonderful place to find the next book on your To Listen List.

And in case you don’t stumble across them in Novelist, here are a few of my favorite audiobooks:

bostongirlThe Boston Girl by Anita Diamant.  This latest book by the author of The Red Tent has drawn both criticism and praise from West Branch patrons, but personally, I enjoyed the audiobook version.  Perhaps it’s because the narrator sounded like my grandmother telling me stories about her childhood.  Novelist describes The Boston Girl as having a sweeping storyline,  a dramatic tone and an engaging and richly detailed writing style.

nightcircusThe Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  I don’t read or listen to a lot of adult fantasy (teen fantasy is more my speed), but I made an exception for The Night Circus and I’m glad I did.  This story of a dangerous magical competition is set in an intriguing black and white circus and I found it wholly original.  Novelist describes its tone as atmospheric and romantic and its writing style as lush.

belovedworldMy Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor.  This memoir written by the third female and first Hispanic justice to the United States Supreme Court struck me as honest and entertaining.  With her lifetime appointment, Justice Sotomayor’s book lacks the overt political agenda that is present in many memoirs of our public servants.  In keeping with tradition, she does not comment on any cases she has ruled on since joining the high court (in fact the book ends before she claims her seat), which left me hoping she’ll write a second volume of her memoirs once she’s retired.

stalinsdaughterFor now I’ll leave you with just one more: Stalin’s Daughter by Rosemary Sullivan.  This is one I may not have picked up on my own, but it was a pick for the West Branch History Book Group.  It’s a real time commitment as an audio book at 19 hours and 48 minutes, but I was glad I stuck it out.  Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, certainly had an interesting, dramatic and sad life.  She was as complicated a person as you would expect given her parentage and she certainly made her life much harder than it needed to be.  But she remains a largely sympathetic figure and her life as a resident of communist Russia, a defector to the United States and a writer makes for interesting listening.

Happy listening!

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Happy Birthday, Mo Willems!

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Today, the Free For All is positively gleeful to be celebrating the birthday of children’s author, cartoonist, and guy-who-has-all-the-jobs-I-ever-wanted, Mo Willems!

2371232Mo Willems was born today near Chicago, and began drawing when still a toddler.  However, as he noted, even at the age of four, he was monumentally annoyed by grown-ups who pretended to appreciate his work out of respect for his age.  So he started writing funny stories to accompany his drawings, realizing that not even grown-ups could fake a belly laugh.   After graduating from Tisch, he traveled around the world, drawing a cartoon a day (which became a book entitled You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons.

Following his return, Willems became a cartoonist for Sesame Street  and Nickelodeon, while also performing stand-up and recording essays for the BBC (seriously, All The Jobs….).  And while those gigs were all pretty successful, including the show Codename: Kids Next Door, on which Willems served as the head writer for four seasons, he left TV in 2003 in order to focus on his writing career.

2266602Willems’ children’s books have that remarkable ability to appeal not only to their younger target audience, but to adults–and critics, as well.  The New York Times Review of Books called his Pigeon “one of this decade’s contributions to the pantheon of great picture book characters.”  Three of his books have been awarded the Caldecott Honor for “most distinguished American children’s picture book”: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (2004), Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (2005), and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity (2008).  Trixie, the heroine of both Knuffle Bunny books, incidentally, is based on Willems’ own daughter, who was the main drive to get him to find a career which would let him work at home and have lunch with his daughter every day.  “Trixie is funny.”   He observed in an interview with the Springfield News,  “My books aren’t quite as good as her jokes.”

2974151Along with these honors, Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books have also won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award  for “author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year” in 2008 and 2009, and have won honors every year since 2011.  In addition, my goddaughter thinks that they are great, and that, frankly, is the highest praise that I can give to a children’s book.

3463134Anyone who has been anywhere near the Circulation Desk when one of Willems’ books comes in will know that time stops, and we all have to stop for a second and appreciate the delightfully quirky premises,  heartfelt humor, and joyful exuberance that fills the pages of all his works, particularly The Pigeon Needs a Bath! (and this is coming from someone who is slightly terrified of pigeons, so you can imagine what it takes for me to say this).  So, on this somewhat gloomy day, why not take a few moments to savor Mo Willems’ work at the Library, or by perusing the website run by The Pigeon himself!

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The Vegetarian wins the International Man Booker Prize!

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Han Kang and Deborah Smith

In addition to recognizing the best in fiction published in the English language, the good people at the Man Booker Prize have also begun to celebrate translations of works in languages other than English.  In previous years, the International award has gone to an author for their body of work, including Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007, and László Krasznahorkai in 2015.  However, translated fiction is growing considerably in popularity:The volume sales of translated fiction books have grown by 96% from 1.3 million copies in 2001 to 2.5 million in 2015.  Additionally, the role of translator becoming increasingly respected in the publishing and reading worlds, as we really begin to explore what it means to make the heart and soul of a story accessible to a wider and wider audience (see the infographic below for some more information).  Thus, this year, the Booker joined forced with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize to recognize a single work of fiction in a language other than English.

NielsonReportinfographic

 

Last week, that award went to The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (pictured above).  The Vegetarian is a three-part novel that follows the story of Yeong-hye, a dutiful Korean wife who, spurred on by a dream, decides one day to become a vegetarian, a deeply subversive act, not only because it involves giving up meat, but also because it means Yeong-hye is defying her husband and culture in order to make this change in her personal life. This subversive act fractures her family and, as Yeong-hye’s rebellion takes on a number of increasingly bizarre and frightening forms, the real cost of her decisions becomes starkly, hauntingly clear, even as the story itself feels increasingly more and more like a cataclysmic nightmare.  It’s a deeply unsettling, but surprisingly engaging book that is, if nothing else, totally, and completely different from anything else I’ve ever read.

Of the book, The Guardian said: ‘Across the three parts, we are pressed up against a society’s most inflexible structures – expectations of behaviour, the workings of institutions – and we watch them fail one by one…it’s a bracing, visceral, system-shocking addition to the Anglophone reader’s diet. It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions.’

Boyd Tonkin, the chair of the 2016 judging panel, said of Kang’s book:

3690164‘The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, is an unforgettably powerful and original novel that richly deserves to win the Man Booker International Prize 2016…Told in three voices, from three different perspectives, this concise, unsettling and beautifully composed story traces an ordinary woman’s rejection of all the conventions and assumptions that bind her to her home, family and society. In a style both lyrical and lacerating, it reveals the impact of this great refusal both on the heroine herself and on those around her. This compact, exquisite and disturbing book will linger long in the minds, and maybe the dreams, of its readers. Deborah Smith’s perfectly judged translation matches its uncanny blend of beauty and horror at every turn.’

The Free For All is delighted to congratulate Han Kang and Deborah Smith, and is eagerly looking forward to the announcement of the Man Booker Prize Long List in July!

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Saturdays @ the South: On Wanderlust

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When the spring weather starts to turn warm and sunny (a little later this year than most), my feet start to itch. Not so much literally (though in the Italian folklore in which I was raised, a literal foot-itch would mean the same thing), but in the sense of me wanting to get away. For me, the springtime brings on a serious case of wanderlust. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to appease this wanderlust with a small handful of European destinations over the years, but sometimes, as it is for many people, a far-flung trip just isn’t possible.

So what’s a person to do when they have itchy feet and no place to go? Well, I might be a bit biased, but I say go to the library, of course! One of the best ways to cure (or at least quell for a little bit) a case of wanderlust is to read a book that can take you someplace. Whether it’s a work of fiction that has such a good sense of place it can transport you, not only into the story, but to the setting of the book, or following in someone’s footsteps as you vicariously experience the travels of someone who was thoughtful enough to put their experiences on paper; you can “travel by book” anytime with a good, old-fashioned library card.

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We’re no stranger to wanderlust here on the blog and you can find a few city-specific reading lists already in our illustrious pages. We here at the South Branch recognize that the need for wanderlust is often so strong you not only can’t help but read something to ease the pangs, but sometimes, you even want to talk about your armchair (or bed, or blanket fort) travels with others blighted with similar symptoms. Enter, the Wanderlust Book Discussion Group, a monthly group that will meet here at the South Branch, gathering precisely those people. Each month, starting June 9th @ 7PM,  we will travel by a different book and meet to discuss that month’s selection. All are welcome to join in person if you want to talk bookish travel in person, or in spirit if you’d just like to follow along with the selections. You’ll find the Wanderlust Book Group each month on the South Branch’s events calendar with that month’s selection posted.

If all this talk of traveling by book has given you the wanderlust bug, here are a few selections that might help:

2134479In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

This was a natural choice as it’s the first selection of the Wanderlust book Group. If you laughed along with Bryson in A Walk in the Woods, imagine how much trouble he can get into when a surprising proportion of the flora and fauna of an entire subcontinent has the potential to kill him? Follow Bryson’s exploits and misadventures in a better planned, but still curmudgeonly delightful trip to Australia with plenty of history and snark thrown in for good measure.

2017925The Falls by Ian Rankin

This is a work of fiction, but given that Rankin lives, works and frequents several of the pubs in Edinburgh, it feels real enough. While all of Rankin’s books give Edinburgh their due, making the city almost a character in his books, this book in particular gives readers a sense of Edinburgh. The 12th in his Inspector Rebus series, Rebus tries to track down a missing young woman who may or may not be the victim of a serial killer but following clues left scavenger-hunt style throughout the city. Rankin is a master of both plot and place; you may come for the mystery, but you’ll stay to feel like an Edinburgh native.

2671881French Milk by Lucy Knisley

Knisely is a graphic memoirist who gives life to her stories by illustrating them. Don’t let the cartoon-like drawings fool you; the simple style belies the heart and insight in her stories. This one is a delightful exploration of Paris (and her love of the rich, dense, unpasteurized milk that simply doesn’t compare to what you can find in the States) as she spends a month in the City of Light with her mother.  They hit landmarks, wonderful restaurants and occasionally binge on Netflix when the city seems overwhelming. This book is also punctuated with photos taken during that time that ground the narrative in both place and time. (Also, as detailed as it was, her drawing of her Paris-acquired coat didn’t do that lovely article of clothing justice; you just have to see in in the photographs.)

1943010The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Who says that when you travel by book you have to go someplace attainable? Our love for Pratchett’s Discworld series is fairly well-established on the blog, but that’s no reason not to evangelize this great series in a slightly different context. This hysterical novel satirizes the tourist experience as Twoflower, Discworld’s first tourist, voyages to Ankh-Morpork, where he doesn’t speak the language, has no concept of their currency or customs and is blindly trusting of anyone who seems willing to help him. If you’ve ever felt adrift in an unfamiliar place, desired luggage that can’t get lost, or if you simply want to have a laugh at an “ugly tourist’s” expense, this book will instantly strike a chord. If you want to get a solid feel of Discworld, in particular its capital city, then this book is sure to convince you that Discworld is no less real than those places to which you can actually travel.

Tell next week, dear readers, whatever gives you your best sense of place, feel free to enjoy it! You’re never far from adventure when you travel by book.

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Five Book Friday

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So, first and foremost, beloved patrons, I should apologize for the glaring lack of Five Book Friday last week.  NOBLE’s servers were having a bit of a temper tantrum, so we weren’t able to access the blog until the afternoon.  And by then, I was so busy walloping the panic button that I wasn’t paying attention when everything came back online….

fe658423da06ca6685acb7d7fe31c9bcAnyways, everything seems hunky-dory today, and we have lots of super-terrific new bookmarks at the Circulation Desk, courtesy of the American Library Association’s “Libraries Transform” initiative.  Though National LIbrary Week won’t be coming around again until 2017, there’s never a bad time to appreciate libraries, and these bookmarks, these sayings, and these initiatives also emphasize how much we appreciate you, and how important libraries are, and will always be, to our communities.  Check them out while checking out some of the new books on our shelves, why doncha?  Here are some to get your weekend started right!

Five Books

3729880Fellside: This book should have been featured in last week’s Five Book Friday, but since I was reading it at this time last week, you wouldn’t have been able to pry it from my cold little hands.  M.R. Carey is one of those authors who can Write All The Things, and this book only proves that.   It’s a bit of a ghost story, a bit of a gritty, real-life mystery, and it’s an enormous, heartbreaking, oddly hopeful, stunning, and just a little bit overwhelming book that sneaks into your dreams and makes your daily life seem a little dull by comparison.  Jess Moulson never had much to care about in this world, but as she faces the possibility of life in Fellside, an isolated women’s maximum-security prison, for murder, she begins to lose what little hope she had.  But there is more to Fellside than meets the eye…namely, a ghost that only Jess can see…a ghost who looks very much like the boy she murdered.  And he has a message for Jess that will change everything.  I had to email Lady Pole while reading this book to let her know how good it was.  And now I’m telling you: go read it!

3720136The Loney: Andrew Michael Hurley’s debut novel won the Costa First Novel Award earlier this year, and made quite a stir in his native Ireland for its super-eerie atmosphere, and deliciously unsettling narrative.  The discovery of the remains of a childhood on a particularly bleak stretch of the Lancashire coast forces Smith (known as a child as Tonto) to confront his memories of a harrowing ritual that he witnessed some forty years ago, when his mother was trying to find a cure for his disabled brother, Hanny.  This book is one where the setting is as much a character as any, and the growing sense of impending doom that grows up around young Smith, even in his memories, feels like vintage Stephen King, and is guaranteed to keep the pages turning.  Publisher’s Weekly agrees, saying “A palpable pall of menace hangs over British author Hurley’s thrilling first novel…Hurley tantalizes the reader by keeping explanations for what is happening just out of reach, and depicting a natural world beyond understanding. His sensitive portrayal of Tonto and Hanny’s relationship and his insights into religious belief and faith give this eerie tale depth and gravity.”

3742261The 1916 Irish Rebellion: And speaking of Ireland…this is quite possibly the most inaccurate title I’ve ever encountered, as the Easter Rising was actually carried out by a remarkably small group of people, and was not a national event by any stretch of the imagination.  Nevertheless, this book has some sensational photographs of the men and women who sparked one of the most unexpected events of the First World War, challenging the British Empire on the streets of Dublin in 1916.  It also provides some sensational views of the Irish nationalist movement from the turn of the century through to Irish Independence.  Bríona Nic Dhiarmada also wrote and produced a mini-series on the Easter Rising, which we’ll hopefully be bringing to you soon!

3753711Nothing Ever Dies: From Viet Thanh Nguyen, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for his book, The Sympathizer, comes a deeply personal exploration of the memories of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War.  Since the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Vietnam Conflict 2008, there has been a debate brewing about how to commemorate this event, how to remember it appropriate and accurately, and how to handle the lasting scars that still remain.  Nguyen explores literature, film, monuments, memorials, museums, and landscapes in order to understand how this conflict remains with us today, and is still being fought in the minds of hearts of millions around the world.  Booklist gave this one a starred review, saying, “Readers will discover the roots of Nguyen’s powerful fiction in this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated…Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry,…is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.”

3738189 (1)Anatomy of a Soldier: Harry Parker’s startling story of a British soldier who loses his legs when he steps on a buried bomb,  is told through the inanimate objects that touch his broken body.  Though Captain Tom Barnes, i.e., BA5799, is specifically a soldier in Afghanistan, the utterly, devastating humanity of Parker’s 44 chapters makes this a story about war, and the price it always has, and always will exact–Parker should know, since he wrote the book based on his own life experience.  This book is being compared to some of the classics of the war/anti-war genre, with Kirkus hailing, “This debut novel chronicles a soldier’s maiming and recovery with an inventiveness that in no way mitigates war’s searing heartbreak—or the spirit’s indomitability . . . You couldn’t call this novel an antiwar tract . . . But you could certainly label it a pro-understanding work of art—and those may be more in need right now than ever before.”

 

Until next week, beloved patrons–Happy Reading!

 

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Noir and Protest

download (4)I’ve said it before–I love noir fiction.

 

161c052a2e6d1d578f3bcec6f6ee7218I love everything about it–from the original hard-boiled, cynical detective novels, like Sam Spade, to the films of dim, foggy streets, shadows, and moral conundrums, like The Maltese Falcon.  Part of it, I think, is because I am an intensely wordy person (which, I am sure, comes as no surprise here), and the fact that noir fiction, traditionally, manages to cram so much meaning, emotion, and significance into the shortest of sentences is a marvel to me.  I also love the traditional noir hero (and the occasionally heroine, too!) whose heart is usually made of solid gold, but who has been so beaten down by the heartlessness of the world that they end up standing outside it–and, often against it.  There’s a reason why noir protagonists are private detectives, assassins, vampires (no, seriously), and generally loners–there is no place for them in the world, so they have to stand outside it and find a way to challenge it alone.  And while I enjoy the mysteries that make up the plot of many noir novels, I love the deeply personal character development that comes from the character’s almost mythical quest to take on all the darkness of the world around them.

So when I saw this article published in Electric Literature, titled “Noir Is Protest Literature: That’s Why It’s Having a Renaissance” I was thrilled.  It’s absolutely true that noir fiction is having a renaissance–from True Detective and Breaking Bad to popular authors like Charlie Huston, Denies Mina, and Adrian McKinty…but I never really thought about why.

Nicholas Seeley does a magnificent job pointing out that noir fiction has always been a form of protest, first and foremost against the traditional Anglo-American crime novel where a detective of some sort restores order to society that has been disrupted by a crime, and isolates and excises the evil from society.  But, especially in the years after the Second World War, the idea that evil could be expunged seemed ludicrous, and noir fiction directly confronts this.

Noir stories gave the stage to criminals and their motivations, which range from unspeakable passions to a firm conviction that their particular crime serves a greater good. A detective may pursue such a criminal, but noir reveals the line between them to be a product of chance and circumstance—if, indeed, such a line exists at all.

crimefiction2But even as noir rejected ideas of the world as it “should be” in favor of the world as it really was, it still remained the domains of very traditional heroes.  As Seeley notes, “Classic noir presented worlds of corruption and inequality, but it was still primarily inequality between white men. Women remained cutouts…Racial and sexual minorities fared even worse: they were cast mostly as set dressing, or as villains, tempting innocent white people into depravity.”

Thankfully, admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it, and, with the resurgence of noir, there is the potential for making it the truly subversive, defiant genre that it can be, taking on not just issues of white-bred corruption, but themes of race, sex, gender, and class identities.  Once again, to quote Seeley:

Light can slant harshly though Venetian blinds in most any neighborhood on the planet; tough-as-nails private investigators can come in any gender identity or color of the rainbow; doom-driven crooks can ride from first kiss to gas chamber with a member of the same sex as easily as the opposite.

So, in honor of this fantastic article, which you should definitely read in its entirety, and in honor of the wonderfulness that is the noir genre as a whole, that I’d offer you a few atypical noir novels to get you started down your dimly-lit and dangerous path into the world of noir fiction…

2672653The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death: Charlie Huston, as I mentioned above, is a stupendous noir author, who brought the genre into the realm of the paranormal, as well as into the world of blue-collar works.  In this book, habitual slacker Webster Fillmore Goodhue finds  his teaching career destroyed by tragedy and, without any other options, joins the Clean Team, a company assigned to clean up some of L.A.’s grisliest crime scenes.  But when a dead man’s daughter asks for his help, Web finds himself in the middle of a war between urban cowboys and rival cleaning teams that forces him to make the first–and perhaps the most significant–choices of his life.  Huston was actually my first real entrance into noir, but he remains one of my favorite because he’s just so good: he conveys the voices of his diverse and varied cast with pitch-perfect accuracy, and brings the seedy, grim world they inhabit to life so vividly that you really want to wash your hands while reading.

2403661The Song Is You: Megan Abbott was one of the first female authors to tackle the hard-core noir genre (the sensational cover art alone immediately recalls some of the mid-century’s best noir pulp novels), but she remains one of the best, because she doesn’t back down from very modern themes of sexism, violence, and class prejudices.  In this break-out novel, she re-imagines the infamous Black Dahlia case of 1947, as Hollywood publicist Gil “Hop” Hopkins finds himself confronted by a friend of Jean Spangler, a woman who vanished in a presumed murder two years previously.  Driven by guilt (and by the fear of blackmail), and by the persistence of a female journalist on the case, Hop descends into the underbelly of Hollywood in search of answers to Jean’s disappearance–and, inevitably, about himself, as well.  Abbott gets the historical details here to a “T”, but brings a modern sensibility to her work that makes these books feel at once familiar, and endlessly new and inventive.

2698306Black Noir: The sad truth is that there are very few detective novels written by (or, for that matter, about) African Americans.  NPR has offered some theories why, which you are welcome to read, but the fact is that, even though there were authors, as early as 1900 in the case of Pauline E. Hopkins’s tale “Talma Gordon”, they weren’t getting the same audiences or publicity that white authors were.  This anthology marks an attempt to rediscover some of the crime, mystery, and noir fiction composed by African American and Black writers from the 20th century.  While there are some well-known names here, like Walter Mosley and Chester Himes, this collection also gives readers the chance to meet new marvels like Edward P. Jones (whose story “Old Boys, Old Girls” is stunning) and Eleanor Taylor Bland, and is guaranteed to give them a chance to realize the real potential for noir fiction going forward.