Summer Reading: Waiting for Columbus

It's not a sales conference dinner without
dozens of glasses on the table at the end of the night.

(Liz) As I mentioned in my last post, I spent last week attending sales conference at the Random House offices in New York.  One of the cooler things about conference is a dinner with reps and editors.  For nerdy book types, editors can become celebrities themselves.  You know what a Steven Spielberg movie is, and a Martin Scorsese, and a Christopher Nolan, and a Penny Marshall, right?  I know what a Robin Desser book is, and I tend to read, for example, Robin Desser new books because I've previously loved the books she's edited.  (There's a good chance you know what a Robin Desser book is, too, and you just don't know it.  She's edited Cutting for Stone, The Emperor's Children, Please Look After Mom, Wild.  She's edited Jhumpa Lahiri, David Guterson, A.S. Byatt, Jane Smiley, and Sandra Cisneros.)  Editors are the directors of the book world and their tastes emerge in the books they choose to champion.

So last week I sat at a table with Gerry Howard who edits Fight Club author Chuck Pahlaniuk, and Jenny Jackson who bought us Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan and the forthcoming (and amazing) Dog Stars by Peter Heller, and Allison Callahan who edited Ann Patchett before coming to Doubleday and The Night Circus, one of our favorite books of 2011.  While talking to Alison Callahan, I mentioned one of my favorite books she edited, Thomas Trofimuk's Waiting for Columbus.  This book came out a couple of years ago during a fall season with some huge books by authors like Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem.  Alison was and remains passionate about this book, and I know that many of my colleagues loved it too.

Night Circus author Erin Morgenstern
and editor Alison Callahan

One of the frustrating parts of our jobs is that we necessarily have to focus on new books.  We strategize for months on the best ways to position new books when selling them to our bookstore buyers.  We don't, however, have as much time to focus on the thousands of older books that deserve reader love.  If there were any justice in book sales, Waiting for Columbus would sit atop the paperback bestseller lists next to Cutting for Stone and The Kite Runner and every book group in the country would add it to their reading lists, and Alison Callahan, who is a lovely person and great lover of books, would have a belated but worthy bestseller to celebrate.  This pick for summer reading, therefore, is my feeble attempt to begin to spread the word about this great book that almost no one read.

Waiting for Columbus is the story of Christopher Columbus, a man who washes up on shore near Barcelona on the Spanish coast.  He's naked...and he's claiming to be Columbus the explorer even though it's the 21st Century.  Unsurprisingly, Columbus finds himself in a Barcelona mental institution, where he refuses to engage with his psychiatrist and also, well, refuses to wear clothes.  (There's some humor here, see?)  One of the nurses, Consuela, takes a special interest in Columbus because he tells her his stories of wooing the queen in order to fund his expedition to the new world.  Obviously this man isn't the real Christopher Columbus, but who he is and how he ended up inside this asylum is a great mystery that engages Consuela and the reader alike.  Madness, identity, history, the treatment of mental health patients, the bond between nurse and patient, family, nudity (heh), and memory--this is a great book that begs for great conversations.

Holy crap, I love this book.  Have you read it?  Do so, and then let me know what you think.  Spread the word, too.  We have the power to make a bestseller; crazier things have happened.  And then keep an eye out for the next Alison Callahan book.  She edits some terrific ones.

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 18

Gianna:

Harold and Maude

Before anyone gives me a hassle let me just say that I know it was a movie first, then a novel. I don’t care, it's an easy way to get my favorite (well, second favorite movie) in my top five Valentine book list.

Maude is on the left, with the 'fro.

Harold and Maude are the cutest, sweetest, sexiest couple ever (and this novel…well, movie has a great soundtrack, it makes you want to date older….way older).  Editions of this book can be pretty pricey, but you have to have it on your shelf. Okay, don’t read, just see the movie. It’s a win-win.

Also, meet my girlfriend’s Valentine gift from me….Harold and Maude. [I think Gianna's trying to replace Zorro as our official mascot.  I also think that Zorro would destroy Harold and Maude.]

Liz:

Not enough people have read Waiting for Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk.  Seriously, this book should have been a huge bestseller and every book group out there should have read it.  It's not too late.  Find a copy, read it, and then feel free to let me know how grateful you are.

Columbus is a guy who was found floating in the ocean off the coast of Spain, naked, mentally ill, believing that he's the famous explorer.  Except he can't be Christopher Columbus because it's the present day.  He's sent to live in a Barcelona mental hospital and though doctors try to engage him, he's resistant to treatment.  Then he begins to tell his story--or Columbus's story anyway--to Consuela, a nurse there.  (Oh, and he's still naked.  He hates to wear clothes.)  As his story unravels, his real life begins to come forward.

Yeah, this is another Liz-selected book about a mentally ill protagonist, but I swear that there is a love story here.  And it's a terrific read.  I promise.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 14

Well, we certainly ruffled some feathers with our overrated authors list.  I do enjoy a little literary sparring now and again.

Day 14: Favorite Books From (Relatively) Unknown Authors

Gianna:

I will finish with one or two writers that are relatively unknown who I am really high on, but I did want to mention a few others that I love who aren’t exactly household names (yet?).

Amy Bloom has a wonderful book of stories, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, that I sometimes will go back to and re-read one or two stories from. Blind is a good starting place if you haven’t read her. If you prefer a novel, the book Away is excellent.  [Bloom is one of my favorite authors for her psychologically astute writing.  It should be; she's a trained psychoanalyst.]

Daniel Woodrell was recommended to me by our late and greatly missed friend David Thompson. I first read the novel Red Tomato, then Winter’s Bone – both are fantastic and original. Winter’s Bone is a good start (and yes it is the novel that the movie was based on). [Winter's Bone always sounds like a "That's what she said" joke.]

Gillian Flynn is such a fun and creepy read. I love recommending her. She only has two books; start with Sharp Objects.

Why isn’t Aimee Bender super-famous? [She gets lost among the dozens of Kardashians?] Start with her best, which is her latest, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, but An Invisible Sign of My Own is excellent too.

Adam Haslett is truly gifted – You Are Not a Stranger Here is one of the finest collections I have ever read. In fact it is probably the best book in the post. [Gianna has no idea which books I'm going to discuss, so assume this comment is directed to her side of the post.]

Rebecca Hunt, Paul Murray and Suzanne Rivecca are all up and comers who are really original. And you all know how I feel about Gail Caldwell, Dan Chaon, and of course Tea Obreht. I won’t bore you by writing about them yet again. But seriously read The Tiger’s Wife.

There are two young writers who most have not heard of that I am sort of in love with. The first I will mention briefly because I have written about her novel in an earlier blog I believe: 28 year-old Haley Tanner’s Vaclav and Lena. I just think she has written a really lovely, fully realized, commercial novel. A great summer read actually.

My favorite young sort of unknown writer working right now is Stefan Merrill Block. He has written two novels – both based on his family. What I love about Block is he that wrote a really wonderful first novel and then came back with a completely different but really excellent second book. His first book was beautiful and touching, his new book is heartbreaking and dark. The Story of Forgetting and The Storm at the Door … you’ll be happy you discovered him.

Liz:

I feel like there are numerous books I love which fly under the radar and yet not a day goes by without someone walking into a bookstore and complaining that s/he can't find any "good" books.  I feel like I'll never have enough hours in the day to read all of the good books out there.

No book was more beloved by the Random House sales force its season than Thomas Trofimuk's Waiting for Columbus.  Unfortunately, this terrific novel was lost amidst the most incredible fall season I've witnessed since I've worked in books, and with such huge names publishing that year, the unknown author's special book was overshadowed.  The good news is that it's not too late to pick up a copy of Waiting for Columbus, and it's not too late to recommend it to your book group either. 

The story is lovely and mysterious.  A man washes up on short from the Strait of Gibraltar and is taken to a Barcelona mental hospital after he insists that he is Christopher Columbus.  While in the institution the therapists are confounded by Columbus (who also won't wear clothes; I do love nudey head cases), but he begins to tell his story to one of the nurses.  Columbus meets with the Queen, and Columbus falls in love, and eventually Columbus reveals his actual story.  It's a great book.



German children's classic
Struwwelpeter



There's a book that came out several years ago, and I've never actually met anyone else who actually read it.  98 Reasons for Being by Clare Dudman is a brilliant novel of psychological depth...and I don't think it's even still in print.  It's a shame.  The novel focuses on a historical figure, the head of a Frankfurt asylum, and a young Jewish woman committed to his care for nymphomania (Gianna would relate to that....).  In the 1850's treatment for mental disorders involved peppy methods like the application of leeches, but after these conventional treatments fail, the doctor, lacking other options, talks to Hannah.  The reader hears Hannah's thoughts through an interior monologue, and the hospital staff and patients also play roles in the story and doctor/patient relationship.  The doctor, by the way, was an actual person, psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann, and he is best known for writing a children's book called Struwwelpeter (Shock-Headed Peter), and Hoffmann's own troubled past and book weave into Hannah's story.  I loved this book.