The Box Is Hot 08/25/2010
Riverhead Books set my mailbox ablaze a few days ago with three ARCs set to be released over the next three months. It didn't occur to me until I got my package that Riverhead boasts a mean number of literary fiction by authors of color on including two of my new faves Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok and The Book of Night Women by Marlon James.  Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self Danielle Evans Hardcover, 240 pages ISBN13: 9781594487699 ISBN: 1594487693 September 23, 2010 This electric debut story collection focuses on African-American and mixed-race teens, women, and men struggling to find their place. Striking in their emotional immediacy, the tales are based in a world where insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family are the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.  How to Read the Air Dinaw Mengestu Hardcover, 320 pages ISBN13: 9781594487705 ISBN: 1594487707 October 14, 2010 From the prizewinning international literary star: the searing and powerful story of one man's search for redemption. Dinaw Mengestu's first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, earned the young writer comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald, and Naipaul, and garnered ecstatic critical praise and awards around the world for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience. Now Mengestu enriches the themes that defined his debut with a heartbreaking literary masterwork about love, family, and the power of imagination, which confirms his reputation as one of the brightest talents of his generation. One early September afternoon, Yosef and Mariam, young Ethiopian immigrants who have spent all but their first year of marriage apart, set off on a road trip from their new home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of a new identity as an American couple. Soon, their son, Jonas, will be born in Illinois. Thirty years later, Yosef has died, and Jonas needs to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. How can he envision his future without knowing what has come before? Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas sets out to retrace his mother and father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today, a story-real or invented- that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.  The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey Walter Mosley Hardcover, 288 pages ISBN13: 9781594487729 ISBN: 1594487723 November 11, 2010 A masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the true literary icons of our time. Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand-nephew, Ptolemy's only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece's seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew's funeral. But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy's hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won't live to see age ninety- two but that he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew's death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley captures the compromised state of his protagonist's mind with profound sensitivity and insight, and creates an unforgettable pair of characters at the center of a novel that is sure to become a true contemporary classic. CommentsThe Last Days of Ptolemy Grey sounds interesting, very unique (like everything else Walter Mosley does). I'll definitely keep my eye out for your thoughts on that book. goddesspt2 08/26/2010 2:38am
Looking forward to the Mosley and Mengestu. Good reading for the Fall. Comments are closed. | Authors and publishers feel free to check out my review policy and contact me regarding review requests.
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