Author: Cortney Phillips Meriwether

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Coronavirus Culture

Taking covers: Your social distancing reading list 

The Virginia Festival of the Book may have been cancelled, but the sliver lining is that you can read a book any time, any place. Here are a few suggestions.

With the cancellation of the Virginia Festival of the Book, and recommendations to practice social distancing, there’s never been a better time to pick up some extra reading material. While we’re disappointed that we won’t get to hear from these authors in person, their work and words are still well worth your time. Whether you’re interested in fiction, non-fiction, true crime, or poetry, we have a recommendation to suit your tastes. Here’s a list of books from festival authors to keep you company at home.

Collections

Short stories have the power to open up entire worlds in just a few pages—and the stories within these collections do exactly that. 

  • Midnight at the Organporium by Tara Campbell
  • A Girl Goes Into the Forest by Peg Alford Pursell
  • The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott

Fiction

While history books often overlook the lives and experiences of women, historical fiction brings their stories to life. Pick up any of these novels to experience history alongside strong female characters.  

  • Brides in the Sky by Cary Holladay
  • Ribbons of Scarlet by Laura Kamoie
  • Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera

These two novels embrace characters with disabilities, providing much-needed representation for a community that is often overlooked in contemporary fiction. 

  • Like Wings, Your Hands by Elizabeth Early
  • Flannelwood by Raymond Luczak

Here are three novels that invite you to discover the impacts of contemporary diaspora, both individually and culturally. 

  • Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
  • Travelers by Helon Habila
  • Last of Her Name by Mimi Lok

Explore the personal impacts of war on individuals, families, and communities with these two World War II-era novels. 

  • The Falls of Wyona by David Brendan Hopes
  • How Fires End by Marco Rafalà

Nonfiction

The Flint water crisis is just one example of America’s long history of environmental racism—here are two well-researched books that will enlighten you.

  • The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
  • A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet Washington

More than merely looking back, well-crafted memoirs shine a light forward. These memoirs explore themes of abuse, addiction, race, gender identity, and more. 

  • Black Indian by Shonda Buchanan
  • Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz
  • The Rib Joint by Julia Koets

Best-selling series

There’s a reason the following authors have all spent time on the best-seller list. These are the latest in their respective series, so be prepared to get hooked on the characters. 

  • A Bitter Feast by Deborah Crombie
  • Hi Five: An IQ Novel by Joe Ide
  • In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin

Crime and thrillers

True-crime fans can get lost in these page- turning examinations of violent crimes and how the rural communities where they occurred responded.   

  • Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
  • The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg

If you enjoy beautifully written page-turners that will keep you guessing until the very end, here are three literary thrillers that should be at the top of your list.

  • Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
  • Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
  • Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith

Poetry

With the right words, poets can create music on the page. These three collections promise lyrical language and thought-provoking beauty. 

  • Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
  • What Penelope Chooses by Jeanne Larsen
  • Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo

Poetry written in response to tragedy, violence, adversity, and the complexity of the human experience has the power to combat despair. These three collections demonstrate why there’s no better antidote to despair than art.

  • Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich
  • In the Months of My Son’s Recovery by Kate Daniels
  • The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr

Romance

Even busy professional women need to make time for love. In these three contemporary romance novels, the protagonists attempt to balance work and love.  

  • American Love Story by Adriana Herrera 
  • Dating by the Book by Mary Ann Marlowe
  • Summer on Moonlight Bay by Hope Ramsay

 

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Arts

An accidental signing: Acclaimed author Ann Patchett on her latest novel, and her first trip to Charlottesville

New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett has published 12 books across three genres, won a long list of awards and fellowships—including the Orange Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Guggenheim—appeared on “The Colbert Report” and Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, opened a thriving bookstore in Nashville, and been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

One thing she hasn’t done before? Visited Charlottesville.

That’s about to change: Patchett will be at New Dominion Bookshop on March 3 for a meet-and-greet. It’s not your typical book tour stop; after all, Patchett’s latest novel, The Dutch House, has been out for more than five months. In fact, Patchett’s first trip to Charlottesville initially had nothing to do with books—she’d planned to come to town to see her friend and famed soprano singer Renée Fleming perform at The Paramount Theater, when her publicist suggested she try to sign some books while here.

“You should put that in the article: I’m coming to see Renée Fleming and accidentally sitting in a bookstore for a little while,” Patchett jokes.

Accident or not, Patchett’s reunion with Fleming (who provided the singing voice for the character of Roxane in the movie adaptation of Patchett’s acclaimed novel Bel Canto) is Charlottesville’s gain. And while we may have Fleming to thank for getting her to town, Patchett says the Kardashians actually deserve some credit for the early inspiration for her latest novel.

“I felt like there was this huge celebration of wealth everywhere I turned,” she says. “So, I thought, ‘I really want to write a book about somebody who has everything, has access to everything, and just says, this is not who I am.’”

Though there is a character in The Dutch House who does exactly that, the novel morphed considerably from this initial idea. In fact, Patchett wrote and completed one entire version of the novel, hated it, threw it out, and started again.

“People would say to me, ‘it must be like the death of a child,’ and I said, ‘no, it’s like burning a cake.’ It’s nothing at all like the death of anything,” she says. “When I was young, I think I wouldn’t have known that I was capable of starting over again. I might have felt it as a death. But at this point, you just think ‘Oh well, more work for me.’ And then you go back to work.”

Patchett’s work paid off. The Dutch House, which The Guardian describes as, “a masterful depiction of ruptured family relationships,” has spent more than 20 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Spanning decades, the book tells the story of Danny Conroy and his sister Maeve. The siblings grow up in the graceful mansion that locals refer to as “the Dutch House,” originally built for a couple from the Netherlands. They rely heavily on each other, especially after their mother leaves when Danny is 4 and Maeve 11. When their father remarries, they find themselves at odds with their stepmother—and eventually exiled out of their luxurious childhood home without a penny to their names.

Told from the first-person perspective of Danny, Patchett explains why his viewpoint—which begins in boyhood—was the right one to tell the story: “It is very much a book about Maeve, but Maeve is not the kind of person who would talk about herself,” she says. “I liked the idea of Danny looking at Maeve as opposed to the reader looking through Maeve’s eyes.”

While the house is certainly central to the story, the sibling relationship between Danny and Maeve is the axis upon which everything turns. “I find writing siblings so interesting because you can’t get rid of them,” Patchett says. “I just think no matter how much you hate a sibling, you are yoked to that person for life and, as a novelist, that is just a really great place to work from.”

However, Danny and Maeve are far from typical siblings, especially in times when Maeve serves as more of a surrogate mother to Danny. With elements of both Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, it would be fair to call The Dutch House a lost fairy tale of sorts, where the house takes on a life of its own, both in its continued looming presence and past symbolism. Moving through time in a satisfying non-linear way that expertly mimics memory, the book asks readers to consider questions of how we remember and move on from the past, how we deal with loss, what we deserve, and what we owe one another.

“A lot of people have said to me that this is a book about forgiveness,” Patchett says. “And I think, eh, it’s maybe more a book about making peace with the circumstances of your life.”

We see this theme come up again and again as Danny wrestles to make sense of his own circumstances. In one particularly poignant moment, he asks Maeve, “Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?” As readers bound to his perspective, we’re left to wonder the same thing.

Ann Patchett will sign copies of her latest bestseller and books from her backlist at New Dominion Bookshop on March 3. Go to ndbookshop.com to learn more.

A life in books

Since graduating from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1987, Ann Patchett has published eight novels, three books of nonfiction, and (last year) one children’s book. Almost all have been bestsellers. Here are a few highlights:

The Patron Saint of Liars

Patchett’s first novel, published in 1992, centers on a young, pregnant, married woman in the 1960s seeking to escape her life. Her arresting first line is: “I was somewhere outside of Ludlow, California, headed due east toward Kentucky, when I realized that I would be a liar for the rest of my life.” The ensuing story encompasses a group of Catholic nuns, a home for unwed mothers, and a reputedly miraculous hot spring.

Bel Canto

Published in 2001, Bel Canto was Patchett’s breakout success. Set in South America, the novel charts the unexpected moments and relationships that evolve as a lavish birthday party (featuring a star opera singer) is taken hostage by a band of terrorists. Awarded the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, it was adapted into an opera and a film starring Julianne Moore (with Renée Fleming providing the opera singing).

Truth & Beauty

A deeply compelling work of nonfiction, Truth and Beauty tells the story of
Patchett’s tumultuous, decades-long friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, who died in 2002, and whose own bestselling book, Autobiography of a Face, chronicled her struggles through multiple reconstructive surgeries after losing part
of her jaw to cancer.   

Commonwealth

One of The New York Times’ Best Books of the Year in 2016, Commonwealth draws on Patchett’s own experience of being uprooted from her childhood home in California and “thrown together” with four step-siblings after her parents divorced and her mother remarried. The novel follows the six children of an uneasily blended family across five decades and the unraveling of family secrets.   

   

Categories
Arts

Magic and tech: M.K. England’s second novel blurs sci-fi and fantasy

With Spellhacker, M.K. England delivers a young adult sci-fi/fantasy mash-up. “What I really wanted was a Star Wars book with queer characters in it,” says England.

As the branch manager for the Scottsville Library and a former young adult librarian at the Crozet Library, it’s safe to say local author M.K. England knows books. And when England set out to write a YA novel, it was important that the stories held personal resonance.

“I just wanted fun adventures that had people like me,” says England, whose sophomore novel Spellhacker is out now. “I knew those were the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.”

In Spellhacker, an adventurous young adult sci-fi/fantasy mash-up set in the futuristic city of Kyrkarta, England follows Diz, a talented hacker with communication issues, and her three best friends: Ania, Remi, and Jaesin. In a world where magic—known as “maz”—was once a readily available natural resource, it’s been heavily regulated since an earthquake unleashed a toxic strain, causing a massive spellplague. The four friends combine their unique talents (Ania, a techwitch; Remi, a spellweaver; and Jaesin, brute strength) to run an illegal maz siphoning business, but it’s all coming to an end as Diz’s friends prepare to go to college and leave her behind. They agree to take on one last ultra-dangerous heist but get more than they bargain for when an explosion uncovers a conspiracy—and threatens the future of the world.

Spellhacker is an exciting romp through an artfully crafted world with fascinating technology, captivating magic, and a delightfully diverse cast of characters. And, believe it or not, the idea for the plot came about due to a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

“Something in the game we were playing made me think ‘magic hackers’—but that is not a book,” England says. “That is just the tiniest seed of an idea.”

Yet, it was a seed that would grow into an entire world. England began the work by asking questions to establish the necessary truths that would make these characters and this setting come to life. “I started poking at the idea and all the inherent assumptions,” England said. “That leads me out farther and farther until I have the basic building blocks of the world.”

However, while Spellhacker takes place in a deeply creative and believable world, the novel is driven by the strength of the characters—though England admits to initial concern that audiences wouldn’t connect with Diz.

“One of the things that made me want to tell this story—and want to tell Diz’s story specifically—is that she has some rather unhealthy things in common with me as a teen and early 20s person in that I did not know how to have healthy emotions and express them,” says England. “I knew that might potentially alienate people.”

Yet, despite her frustrating inability to navigate complex emotions, Diz is an acutely relatable narrator and, magic and futuristic technology aside, the impending transition point of her friends leaving for college is one with which many young readers will identify. After all, isn’t that why we’re drawn to fiction: to see reflections of ourselves in the plight of characters? England had this same desire as a young reader of science fiction—and a lack of queer representation helped inspire the types of stories they would go on to write.

“What I really wanted was a Star Wars book with queer characters in it,” England says.

And Spellhacker lives up to this goal. Unlike many other young adult books with queer characters, the story is not defined by queerness. While there is a love story between Diz and Remi, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, neither character’s sexuality or gender identity is ever discussed or utilized as a plot point—a choice that was intentional on England’s behalf.

“The world that I created is extremely queer normalized,” they say. “It is just not a big deal. It’s just part of the world that we don’t need to talk about because it’s not an issue.”

While England recognizes the importance of stories that focus on the modern, pressing issues LGBTQ teens face, both Spellhacker and England’s debut, The Disasters, tell stories of diverse characters simply living their lives. Sure, living their lives also involves trying to save the world, but that’s all part of the fun.

“There’s been a big push in the last few years to make sure we’re also including those stories where people just are who they are—and they also fly around in spaceships and have adventures,” England says.

When it comes to having adventures, Spellhacker certainly delivers. With cheeky dialogue and character chemistry that sizzles on the page, England’s novel explores themes of greed, power, environmentalism, family, love and trust. It begs the universal questions: What makes a family? What matters most? And what’s scarier: a potentially deadly strain of magic…or opening up your heart?

But most importantly, it invites readers to see themselves —even in characters with whom, at first glance, they may not have much in common. “I hope that, as with all books everywhere, readers walk away with greater empathy,” England says.