Summer Book Quarterly 2011

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

By Sara Gran

mystery

Claire DeWitt, a high-proof Nancy Drew drawn straight from the tradition of an opiated Holmes, washes up in a dirty, battered and equally insane post-Katrina New Orleans fresh from a nervous breakdown. Perhaps more in vino than veritas, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest detective" has been hired to crack a missing-persons case and, in doing so, scratches open more than a few scabs left behind by the storm. The New Orleans painted by Sara Gran's DeWitt isn't pretty: It's a city done in by the storm and its aftermath: depraved, deprived and nigh unredeemable. In fact, the city stands in quite nicely for DeWitt herself, as she struggles with the disappearance not only of her mentor but also of a childhood soulmate, a not-insubstantial addiction to whatever drugs are handy, and a past that swirls into her present. City of the Dead, the first in what's promised to be a series, nails character and setting. While Claire's Crescent City may not be everyone's, it's bracing and flavorful — as are the detective, her omens, and her crew of misfits, lost boys, homeless informants and downtrodden do-gooders. The novel's ploddingly predictable resolution, unfortunately, is a much weaker cocktail. Even so, Gran's girl detective gone bad, with her clues plucked out of portents knocked back with good old-fashioned hard-boiled noir, still makes for a long, refreshing drink on a swampy bayou afternoon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 288 pp., $24, June 2. —Char Vandermeer

East of the West

By Miroslav Penkov

short stories

In 2001, 18-year-old Miroslav Penkov moved to Arkansas from Bulgaria on a college scholarship. By 2008, he'd won the Eudora Welty Fiction Prize, and Salman Rushdie had selected his autobiographical "Buying Lenin" for inclusion in that year's Best American Short Stories anthology. That story closely follows Penkov's real-life move to the U.S., a choice that, as the piece describes, prompted bitter responses from relatives: "You rotten capitalist pig, have a safe flight. Love, Grandpa." There's sharp humor like this throughout the eight stories in East of the West. Jokes echo across generations of Bulgaria's violent, complicated history, making this a fantastic collection that lives up to its audacious subtitle, A Country in Stories. Penkov's writing style is clear and startling, filled with warmth and wisdom. And he's adept at both realism and surrealism. In "Makedonija," a husband worries his wife never loved him. As she recovers from a stroke in a rest home, he thinks, "A man ought to be able to undress his wife from all the years until she lies before him naked in youth again." In "Cross Thieves," we enter bitter, youthful revolutionary territory. The title story, "East of the West," is amusing and heartbreaking, soaring from a moment when "the grownups danced around the fire, then played drunk soccer," to the scene where a boy mourns his dead sister as he stands on the dome of a church sunken beneath a river. Penkov's true focus is how people struggle to preserve their love for each other. These are fearless, gutsy stories with tremendous impact. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 240 pp., $24, June 21. —Matthew Jakubowski

Pigeon English

By Stephen Kelman

fiction

Like many pre-adolescent storytellers, the narrator of Pigeon English isn't particularly concerned with moving the plot forward. Newly immigrated Londoner Harrison Opuku, in his giddily good-natured, charmingly credulous, easily distractible 11-year-old way, is at least as absorbed by his new Diadora trainers, his fledgling romance with sunny-haired Poppy Morgan and fond memories of his days in Ghana as he is with the more sinister realities of life in the gritty housing project he's still enthusiastically exploring. And so are we, at least for a while — Harri's a vivid, likable character, and his scattershot musings, delivered in a plausible if precious register flecked with a peculiar mixture of Ghanaian and British street slang, are consistently entertaining. But linguistic novelty and waggish humor only take first-time novelist Stephen Kelman so far. As it turns out, Pigeon English does have a plot — quite a gripping one, too, once it finally gets going. The book opens with a senseless stabbing murder, which for a while seems like little more than an ominous, incongruous backdrop, but Harri's natural inquisitiveness and hopelessly bumbling attempts at playing detective (informed by "techniques" his friend Dean has learned from American crime TV) eventually have some surprising repercussions. Still, this doesn't exactly qualify as a mystery novel, any more than it truly functions as social criticism, or immigrant narrative, or magical realism. It flirts with all these (the latter perhaps most intriguingly, via the wise, motherly pigeon who becomes Harri's friend and unlikely protector), but in the end, it's a breezy bildungsroman whose darker undercurrents tug against, but never quite unsettle, its bubbly charm. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 263 pp., $24, July 19. —K. Ross Hoffman

Twenty Thirty

By Albert Brooks

fiction/celebrities

For every hundred Snookis, there's one Steve Martin. Somewhere between these celebrity-novelist extremes is director/screenwriter/actor Albert Brooks (Lost in America), whose first novel, Twenty Thirty: The Real Story of What Happens to America, imagines us two decades from now, reeling on the brink of collapse — and it's all 2011's fault. Cancer is cured but health care isn't, and the national debt — coupled with longer life spans and fewer births — makes America a welfare state for senior citizens, or "olds," and the AARP a major political force. When the long-awaited California earthquake levels Los Angeles, President Matt Bernstein can't borrow funds to rebuild, but the now-cuddly Chinese make an offer he can't refuse. Brooks' near future contains both good and bad, a lot like today. Our "I can't pay my mortgage, but look how thin my new phone is!" culture extrapolates predictably: Video wrist phones, self-driving cars and an anti-fat pill are fun, but the unemployed, driven to suicide bombing and youth "resentment gangs" attacking olds, are our new terrorists. Brooks, a snarky filmmaker specializing in dark, incisive comedies (Defending Your Life, Modern Romance), displays none of that flair here. No villains populate Twenty Thirty; in this book — elevated above much better speculative fiction by Brooks' celebrity — the real baddies are us, the people blithely causing America's economic ruin. He doesn't have much of a novel, but he's got a point. St. Martin's, 375 pp., $25.99, May 17. —Mark Cofta

The Devil All the Time

By Donald Ray Pollock

fiction

The random unrelated work-experience line in a novelist's bio, on the rear inside flap of the hardcover edition, has become as conventional as the list of previous works. An eccentric job history establishes the writer as relatable and interesting, and distinguishes him against a faceless sea of fellow M.F.A. program graduates. Donald Ray Pollock's bio pulls this move — laborer at Mead's Chillicothe paper mill — but his credit line is no quirky summer hustle or short-term research gig. He spent 32 years on the line, and right from the opening vignette, Pollock makes it obvious that his talents have nothing in common with those precocious bloodless university-program kids. The Devil All the Time haunts the country roads of southern Ohio and West Virginia, following a series of misfits and no-hopers into the heart of That Old Weird America. Pollock imbeds his characters in struggles of faith and violence, with a couterie that ranges from the perennially disappointed to circus freaks and spider-eating revival preachers. Pollock's imagination gets plenty lurid, sunk in a swamp of sex and death that could sit comfortably alongside Dennis Cooper's or Matthew Stokoe's work. But Devil isn't just pure perversity; Pollock's landscape is soaked in the traditions of the Southern Gothic and his plotting moves with biblical inevitability. For a first novel so soaked in stale sweat and bright fresh blood, Pollock's sweat is well-earned, and his blood is wise. Doubleday, 304 pp., $26.95, July 12. —Justin Bauer

The Psychopath Test

By Jon Ronson

journalism/psychology

Having made a name for himself interviewing men who believe they can kill goats with their minds or that the world is run by giant lizards, British journalist and documentary filmmaker Jon Ronson may set off your bullshit barometer in his latest book when he suddenly realizes he likes to exploit crazy people. Dude. However, the journey to and from that dubious revelation eclipses it nicely in this fascinating exploration of psychology's checkered past and modern gray areas. The Psychopath Test takes its name from the actual checklist being used by psychiatric evaluators to keep people locked up indefinitely. One such person is Tony — maybe you heard his story on This American Life? — a charming young gent who beat up a homeless man and then quoted all kinds of Hollywood villains to land himself in a mental hospital instead of jail. Since then he's spent years trying to prove he's sane, but everything he does or doesn't do is interpreted as evidence to the contrary. More importantly, Tony scores really high on the damn infallible checklist. But so do lots of CEOs. And so might you. After Ronson takes a class on the Psychopath Test, he starts noticing the traits everywhere, including himself. But the point of this grippingly nerdy adventure — in which the author travels to Sweden, Canada and a dozen other places to interview murderers, eccentrics, Scientologists and researchers — isn't to help you ID the crazies, or to tell us we're all nuts. Instead, it's the Western psychiatric system itself that gets a cold, hard look. At least some of these esteemed checklist-makers, med-prescribers, textbook-writers and knee-jerk-diagnosers should be locked up. Riverhead, 288 pp., $25.95, May 12. —Patrick Rapa

The End of Anger

By Ellis Cose

race/history

In 1994, journalist Ellis Cose explored the anger of upwardly mobile blacks in The Rage of a Privileged Class. With his follow-up, The End of Anger: A New Generation's Take on Race and Rage, Cose examines the attitudes of three generations of African-American strivers and their white counterparts. While many point to top-down changes in the past two decades — the emergence of black CEOs and back-to-back secretaries of state, the election of a biracial president and the first African-American attorney general — Cose notes that the increasing gap between rich and poor is leaving many behind. And even as black rage wanes, he warns of the rise of white resentment as overt racism has become less acceptable. For his snapshot of the state of black America, Cose concentrated on the elite: graduates of A Better Chance and Harvard MBAs whose salaries put them far above average Americans of all stripes. While none believes the nation has transcended racism yet, each generation shows more optimism that the glass ceiling is becoming more permeable by the year and that white colleagues are more welcoming than ever. Cose tracks the evolution from the black fighters and white hostiles who clashed in the '60s to the believers and allies who work side-by-side today. It's a fascinating read, and one that might've been split into multiple books. A chapter comparing the experiences of early success stories and their children should've been more fleshed-out; another, on home ownership and subprime loans, is at once out of place and far too short. But these are minor quibbles. The End of Anger is a worthy look at where we are and where we're headed. Ecco, 308 pp., $24.99, May 31. —M.J. Fine

Those Guys Have All the Fun

By James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

sports

Lee Leonard welcomed several thousand viewers to the launch of ESPN in September 1979 by announcing, "If you love sports, if you really love sports, you'll think you've died and gone to sports heaven." But Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN doesn't shy away from the 24-hour sports network's many moments in purgatory. Much attention has already been paid to the sexual revelations in the book (the authors point out that "no fewer than 50 cases of sexual harassment were reported by women on the staff" in the early 1990s). ESPN.com blogger Bill Simmons indicts the remoteness of ESPN's Connecticut locale: "Nothing against Bristol, but I do worry that it becomes a little cultish after a while. You go there and it's ESPN everywhere. ... It's really hard to think out of the box when you're trapped in the box." Those Guys uses the same oral-history format as Shales and Miller's best-selling Saturday Night Live volume Live from New York, but the approach doesn't work quite as well here — the ESPN universe is exponentially larger than SNL's, making it tough to keep track of all the main characters. And the many boardroom anecdotes about mergers and subscriber rates aren't even as fun as paying your monthly cable bill. However, the authors get nearly every major ESPN figure past and present (including Keith Olbermann, whose tenure is worthy of an entire book in itself) to go on the record about the network and its place in today's sports world. It's a comprehensive read, even if you have to check your idealism at the door. Little, Brown, 763 pp., $27.99, May 24. —Andrew Milner

Incognito

By David Eagleman

neuroscience

In Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, neuroscientist David Eagleman asserts that the conscious mind is far more limited than we think. If the brain were a company, the unconscious would consist of all its workers, while consciousness would be the CEO, taking action only when the unconscious stumbles upon a problem. Eagleman suggests that we have multiple minds, that "the brain is a team of rivals" that can disagree internally: Should I eat those tasty French fries or avoid the calories? The book itself seems also to have multiple minds. At the beginning, it's a great beach read, offering examples on how little we know ourselves. It's a little unsettling — are we nothing but a bunch of uncontrollable cells? Then, oddly, the tone changes to treatise. Eagleman makes an extensive case for an overhaul of our legal system. "My dream is to build an evidence-based, neurally compatible social policy." Who is the audience here? The author uses a book seemingly aimed at the public to make legal and scientific points to his peers. Fortunately, Eagleman ends by arguing that we're more than the sum of our parts, and that there's much more to our brains than we can yet hope to know. And even if we are nothing more than our cells, there's room for amazement: The brain "is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us." Pantheon, 290 pp., $26.95, May 31. —Matt Cantor

Go the Fuck to Sleep

By Adam Mansbach, Illustrated by Ricardo Cortés

children's book (for adults)

It might seem excessive to spend 200 words analyzing a 30-page picture book. But this very-much-for-adults story — which hordes of parents and parents-to-be pre-ordered the hell out of, shooting Go the Fuck to Sleep onto Amazon's Top 10 before its release date — is no ordinary book. That's not to say it's all that extraordinary, either. Styled like a kids' book but with NSFW content, Go the Fuck to Sleep is prickly with profanity, each rhyming quatrain laden with growing parental desperation ("I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying./ Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep"). It's easy to be charmed by the concept of a clever bedtime story made for parents, if only it didn't feel so rushed and redundant: Some lines fall short, especially when Mansbach struggles to find words that rhyme with "sleep." Still, the narrator's willingness to try almost anything to coax his youngster into dreamland is earnest. If you've never been a parent it's impossible to fully appreciate the humor, but if you're looking for a perfect Father's Day gift, this could be it. Akashic, 32 pp., $14.95, June 14. —Julia West

Nom De Plume

By Carmela Ciuraru

literature/biography

The 16 authors featured in Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms hail from around the world and wrote some of the most famous works of literature. One trait binds them together: pen names. In an author-by-author series of stand-alone chapters, Ciuraru chronicles how these name change came about. Sometimes, alter egos were just a matter of practicality: In conservative England, the Brontë sisters were oppressed by sexism; their fictional male stand-ins, "brothers" Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell, earned their acclaim for them. Elsewhere, new names allowed authors such as Lewis Carroll (born Charles Dodgson) to protect their personal lives. (Dodgson was an intensely private mathematics scholar and professor who separated his life from his work with a pen name; he even went as far to return letters addressed to Lewis Carroll, refusing to let himself be known as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.) Featuring some of the most beloved authors of all time, Nom de Plume gives quirky insight into the personal and professional lives of the doubly dubbed. HarperCollins, 343 pp., $24.99, June 14. —Emily Apisa

Unlikely Brothers

By John Prendergast and Michael Mattocks

local memoir

Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption is an unlikely memoir from John Prendergast, a Berwyn-raised human rights activist and ex-Clinton White House appointee who's devoted his life to ending genocide in Africa and elsewhere. Shockingly self-invasive and honest, Unlikely Brothers weaves around the unique parallels between his life's work and that of his co-author, Michael Mattocks, whom he mentored through Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Mattocks' drug- and violence-infested life in Washington, D.C., isn't much different, or safer, than Prendergast's battles in African war zones. Their life journeys — one beginning in rags, the other in riches — are equally haunting, and both earn a measure of respect and ultimate redemption. Prendergast deeply reflects on an emotionally scarring relationship with his father, adolescent angst, his time working in Bill Gray's Philadelphia congressional office; and road trips to Philly with Mattocks, now a father of five. A departure from Prendergast's social-policy titles, this read is enormously and enigmatically personal. It's street-level palpable as Prendergast turns the social scalpel on himself. He's spoken beside George Clooney, met with President Obama on Sudan and traveled to the Congo with Angelina Jolie. Now, Prendergast journeys inside his mind and heart with a poignancy that's so personal, he's asked his mother not to read it. Crown, 272 pp., $24, May 17. —J.F. Pirro

Savage Beauty

By Andrew Bolton

fashion

From its transforming lenticular cover (a Damien Hirst-like silver skull that becomes Alexander McQueen's face, with but a tilt) to its in-depth interview with Sarah Burton, creative director of his fashion house, Savage Beauty is an aptly complex if not totally thorough visual examination of the late designer. Like the Met's Costume Institute exhibition that runs through early August, the book is broken down into McQueen's collections: themes of deconstructed romantic decay and death with hints of mythology, splintered theologies, numerology and ideas of Naturalism, Exoticism, Primitivism and something called the Cabinet of Curiosities. McQueen's Union Jack gear questioned roles of class and society. Black-feathered angels and Red Light District ostriches appear through the auspices of McQueen's radical talents that mixed the punctuality of Savile Row tailoring, the delicacies of haute-couture technique and technological innovation. The structural narrative collections — everything from "Jack the Ripper" to "Dante" — were as much art as frocks. It's a shame Savage Beauty didn't dip backward to examine more of McQueen's time at Givenchy or use the designer's now-historical collections such as "Neptune." But for now, this is a swift, epic, awesome-to-behold take on 20th-century fashion's most enigmatic creator. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 240 pp., $45, May 31. —A.D. Amorosi