And a very happy start to the long weekend! We hope each and every one of you, dear readers, has a delightful holiday weekend, full of good food, good cheer, and plenty of good books. This time of the year is a particularly fruitful one for publishers, as everyone is technically gearing up for the holiday shopping season (already. I know!), and that means that we here at the Library get to reap the rewards of that big push with lots and lots of new books, many of them award winners or nominees, and all of them very eager to be a part of your next upcoming literary adventure! Here are a few that have ambled onto our shelves this week for your reading pleasure:
The Glorious Heresies: The winner of the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction has at last arrived on our fair shores, and critics (and readers) are wasting no time at all singing Irish writer Lisa McInerney’s praises. Her book focuses on Irish society in the immediate aftermath of the global economic collapse, starting with Maureen, an grandmother who inadvertently commits murder when she hits an assumed intruder in her home with a Holy Stone. Her attempts to cover up the incident will quickly embroil five lonely outsiders, from her estranged son Jimmy (who is one of the most feared gangsters in Cork), a fifteen-year old drug dealer and his alcoholic father, their colorful next door neighbor, and a young sex worker who has turned to a born-again sect in order in an attempt to get clean. As bizarre as all of this might sound, McInerney’s huge talent makes each scene of this book compelling, wonderfully relatable, and dryly, acerbically, wonderfully funny, all at the same time. The Economist agrees, cheering, “Lisa McInerney’s first novel takes off like a house on fire and doesn’t stop until it has singed the reader’s heart. Love, crime, and cockeyed redemption meet on a hardscrabble housing estate in County Cork, Ireland, in a rare blend of heartbreak and humour. . . . Ms McInerney is a writer to watch.”
Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art: Richard Bellamy was an enormously influential patron of pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art, and, beginning in the late 1950’s was the owner of the Green Gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street, an institution that gave a number of modern artists their first big break. In this consideration of Bellamy’s life and work, Judith E. Stein doesn’t merely give us a biography, but takes us through the world of modern American art to understand the changes that Bellamy helped to usher in. Through interviews with his friends, fellow movers-and-shakers, and the artists he helped, she also traces the enormous influence that his distinctive eye for art, and unflagging dedication to new artists had on the art world–and on the way we look at images and art today. The New York Times gave this book a glowing review, saying, “With Ms. Stein’s biography . . . the secretive spirit of the ’60s becomes at last a concrete and real person with a permanent place in art history. The character that emerges is of an impossible, improbable, irresponsible, irresistibly innocent sophisticate who many found to be the hero of the masterpiece that was his life.”
War and Turpentine: Urbain Martien was an artist and a veteran of the First World War who died in 1981, leaving behind two notebook filled with memories and records of his life. In this hauntingly beautiful story, Martien’s grandson, Stefan Hertmans recreates Martien’s life through imagination, empathy, and a huge amount of narrative skill that transforms one life into something extraordinary. As Hertmans deals with his grandfather’s life, his loves, his failures, and his successes, he also grapples with his own place in this story, giving us a truly touching and insightful cross-generational story that has been getting attention from critics even before it hit shelves, with Britain’s Sunday Times saying “Wonderful, full of astonishingly vivid moments of powerful imagery. . . . moving moments of mysterious beauty. . . . Hertmans. . .brilliantly captures the intractable reality of a complex man.”
The Perfect Horse: In the last days of the Second World War, with empires crumbling and exhausted soldiers trying to salvage what order they could from the world, a small group of American soldiers captured a German officer, and found in his briefcase a number of photos of stunningly beautiful white horses–which were being stockpiled in Germany in order to make a kind of ‘master race’ of horses. Knowing that abandoned horses could and would be quickly slaughtered for food, these Americans banded together to locate and rescue these horses who were trapped across enemy lines. Elizabeth Letts tells their story with an eye to character and detail, bringing the utterly bizarre landscape of Europe–and all those who were left standing–with vivid descriptions and deep humanity, making this a book for war buffs and animal lovers alike. Kirkus Reviews gave this book a starred review, noting that Letts, “a lifelong equestrienne, eloquently brings together the many facets of this unlikely, poignant story underscoring the love and respect of man for horses. . . . The author’s elegant narrative conveys how the love for these amazing creatures transcends national animosities.”
We Come to Our Senses: Though these stories are works of fiction, each of Odie Lindsey’s tales deal with the very real issues of American veterans, and their experience of returning home…in this case, to the South. From an vet turned office clerk whose petty obsessions and compulsion threaten to derail not only her life, but her death, to issues of assault and the sexual politics of warfare, Lindsay’s incredible humanity and deep empathy makes each of these stories more than records despondency, loss, or alientation. They are alive and funny and very, very real, making for a book that is both necessary and accessible. Booklist gave this work a starred review, saying that Lindsay, “artfully portrays the American South….Lindsey’s lyrical, frenetic prose …imparts a grim and pitying hope to his characters.”