Tag: New Dominion

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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.   

   

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News

Second act: A new life for used books—and store’s owner

Former UVA professor Daphne Spain is confident about her prospects selling used books in the former home of Read It Again, Sam. Photo by Eze Amos

Amazon has been blamed for the demise of bookstores, but that doesn’t seem to deter people from taking up the retail cause on the Downtown Mall. New Dominion got a new owner in November 2017, and last month the former Read it Again, Sam reopened as 2nd Act Books.

The name comes from both its second-hand retailing and the career path of its owner. “I had been retired for two years and got tired of it,” says Daphne Spain, who taught urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia for 30 years. “So when the space became available, I decided I would give it a try—my second act.”

Read It Again, Sam’s founder, Dave Taylor, owned the business for 20 years until passing away in April 2017. Longtime customer Dennis Kocik then bought the store from Taylor’s widow, hoping to keep it in business, but he closed the store last fall. Landlord Joan Fenton used the space as a holiday pop-up store, and Spain took over in February.

On a visit to the store last month, Spain conscripts a reporter into retrieving a bucket of wine from the loading port. “It’s for a panel of mystery writers,” she says. She’s continuing Taylor’s tradition of holding a crime wave panel for the annual Virginia Festival of the Book

Passing a back room lined with empty shelves, Spain says, “we’re looking to fill these up.” She estimates the building’s total capacity is 10,000 books.

According to Spain, around three-quarters of 2nd Act’s collection is donated. “Donations have given us a head start,” she says, joking that Marie Kondo’s hit show on decluttering has boosted contributions.

Like the books, little in the store is new. Reading areas are furnished with chairs and end tables from Habitat for Humanity, where Spain volunteers every Monday. The building’s green-marble facade at 214 E. Main St. still bears the name of a former tenant, Keller & George. Spain, who volunteered as a book-duster at Read It Again, Sam, retained three of its employees.

Bookstores run in the new owner’s family. “My grandmother owned a bookshop in Sebring, Florida, in the ’50s,” Spain says. “She supported five kids with that store so I spent a lot of time there as a kid.”

2nd Act boasts an expanded children’s section, with child-sized tables and chairs, book buckets, and wooden train sets situated near a lime-green bookshelf stocked with kids books. A book mobile hangs from the ceiling.

“A lot of moms come in and say their children have outgrown certain books,” Spain says of the extensive donations of children’s books she’s received.

Spain is optimistic about her prospects. “Read It Again, Sam was quite successful for the 20 years it was here,” she says. “People want to see another independent bookstore succeed.”

Updated April 18 with additional information from Joan Fenton.

Categories
News

Latest chapter: New lease for New Dominion

Julia Kudravetz is the new owner of New Dominion, one of the last independent bookstores standing. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

New Dominion Bookshop owner Carol Troxell’s sudden death in January sent shock waves through Charlottesville’s literary community—and left some wondering what would become of the downtown institution.

Established in 1924, one of the oldest businesses on the mall is now in the hands of a new generation. Charlottesville native Julia Kudravetz signed the papers November 15 to buy the bookshop, but it didn’t happen the way she might have imagined.

She left Charlottesville for higher education, and returned with an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins, where she taught future neurosurgeons “how to write a sonnet,” she says.

Growing up, Kudravetz, 37, a self-described “mall rat,” was a fixture downtown, where her mother was a founding member of McGuffey Art Center and her father had a law office. “This was always a place I felt most centered,” she says.

At Piedmont Virginia Community College she taught freshman composition, and at William Monroe High School in Greene County, her students learned how to write a five-paragraph essay. She co-founded the Charlottesville Reading Series at the Bridge, and that led in early 2016 to doing social media for Troxell, whose shop was still hand-writing receipts.

“I had talked to her,” says Kudravetz, about some day acquiring the business, but “not in any serious way, because it was hard to imagine the store without Carol.”

“Julia seems meant to take New Dominion Bookshop to its next manifestation,” says writer Jane Barnes. “She knows Charlottesville having grown up here. She has lots of youthful energy, an offbeat sense of humor, a racing brain. She’s ready to try new things.”

Barnes lists Kudravetz scheduling unexpected combinations in the reading series, which has moved to New Dominion, staging Donna Lucey’s reading at Common House “amid exotic cocktails” and playing ’20s jazz great Bix Beiderbecke as background music for Brendan Wolfe’s book signing.

Gift wrapping is still free at New Dominion and the Christmas list is coming, albeit with poetry rather than books on Virginia, says Kudravetz. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

Kudravetz realizes that implementing her vision has to be done “slowly and thoughtfully,” she says. The cash register has been updated with a Square credit card reader, she added cordless phones so staffers could walk around the store, and she’s got Vibethink designing a new website that’s scheduled to launch this week.

And she wants to have more events, particularly for children and young adult readers.

It turns out her experience as an educator has been invaluable for running a bookstore. “Everything’s easier than teaching public school,” she says. Even on the hardest days in the store, “my grumpiest customer is not worse than a 15-year-old having a meltdown.”

Kudravetz is aware there are a lot of stakeholders—and an intense loyalty to the shop. A customer came in recently with a list and ordered hundreds of dollars of books. “It’s never going to be cheaper than ordering from Amazon,” she says. “We offer something different.”

She wants the feeling of the store to stay the same: “thoughtful, comfortable, alive.” But there will be some changes, she warns: “There’s going to be a lot more poetry.”