A Valentine's Day Letter to Gianna

Dear Gianna,

Gianna, where has our love gone?

It's that time of year again when your girlfriend texts me looking for gift ideas for you on that day for lovers and then refuses to accept "Zorro, gift wrapped" as a legitimate suggestion. It's also a time to reflect on my state of loneliness in this cruel world. You used to at least fake-attempt to find me a companion to suffer through the world's miseries together. You don't seem to care at all anymore. And I'm so lonely! I should just give away the cat and end this struggle against my existential angst. Gianna, I know that your girlfriend says that you wouldn't want a cat for Valentine's Day, but he's a special cat.

Since you want me to suffer alone, I decided that I should embrace my solitude with the appropriate Friday night, Valentine's Day reading. I'd watch a Girls marathon on TV, but those ladies have friends. Sigh. I'm a ship adrift. Gianna, I thought you were going to set up an OKCupid profile for me. Maybe this will help inspire you.

Five books to read on Valentine's Day if you're as pathetic as Liz:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Here's the story of a kid who graduates college, gives away all of his possessions, and wanders around the country in search of authenticity. He ends up in a broken down bus in Denali National Park. Spoiler: he dies. Happy Valentine's Day!

I loved Hotel World by Ali Smith. One reason I loved it is because the main character falls to her death in the dumb waiter shaft at the hotel where she works. Yep, she's dead for the whole book. It's similar to The Lovely Bones, but better written.

Sometimes it's good to keep things in perspective. At least this isn't a post-apocalyptic world in which it's just you and your kid wandering down a road and trying to avoid the gangs of cannibals roaming for meat (you). Thanks Cormac McCarthy. You always know how to cheer me up. For one thing, at least I don't have a kid. The Road is a feel good read if ever there was one.

Gianna, why can't you find me a soul mate like the couple in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go? Their love is timeless, beautiful, and even though they are clones being harvested for their organs in a near future dystopia (spoiler!), they never stop loving each other.

You know what book I love? Revolutionary Road. This is the story of a perfect match. There are so many broken dreams and mounting disappointments, much like our relationship, dear Gianna, that I don't know where to start. Remember when we were happy, before you forced me to settle for motherhood and thought that one more kid, the one I didn't want, would make us happy? I am the Kate to your Leonardo, or something.

Happy Valentine's Day, dear friend.

Love,

liz

Valentine's Day, Liz Style

Even Jane Seymour's incredibly
tacky jewelry is more appropriate
for Valentine's Day
than these (admittedly great) books.

Ah, love. When talking about what we would post this week, Gianna suggested that we feature our publishers' best-selling titles for the lovers' holiday. After hanging up the phone, though, I realized that, having hugged two different people over the weekend (old friends visiting), I am emotionally spent and have little to offer you lovers. I'm going to sit here in my lonely house with my box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars and think about books that tell that special someone that you really, really (don't) care.

Ten Books You'd Be an Idiot to Give to Your Sweetheart for Valentine's Day (But Are Nonetheless Really, Really Good)

1. Revolutionary Road. I love this book and I was even the token fan of the movie, but seriously, if you gave this book to your wife, she'd probably take the dog and move in with her sister that night. Frank and April Wheeler have high aspirations of creative genius until they move to the suburbs, sell out for Frank's boring job and Mad Men-esque two kids, and April loses her acting career and will to live. This book blows a 1.7 blood/alcohol level, and, yeah, (spoiler alert) there's a botched abortion.

2. The White Hotel. D.M. Thomas wrote an erotic tale full of illicit love...between Sigmund Freud's son and a hysterical woman. Freud is the woman's therapist, she may be making the whole thing up, and really it's about the horrors of the Holocaust.

3. The Bottle Factory Outing. I love Beryl Bainbridge, and particularly this book. Brenda and Frida work in a factory that bottles Italian wine. The company has a picnic, and while one of the women is a born victim, the other is a brash fighter who wants to find romance and love. But instead she's killed and stuffed in a wine barrel. (Yeah, that's a spoiler too.)

4. Sophie's Choice. First: Holocaust. Second: A mother has to choose which of her children will survive. Need I say more?

5. The Virgin Suicides. What's creepier--the parents who smother their daughters so much that they begin to kill themselves one by one, or the boys watching across the street who silently witness the family's demise?

Oh my god!
They shot Bambi!

6. The Road. I think The Road is the standard bearer for bleak reads. Cormac McCarthy is one dark dude, so his version of the post-apocalyptic future involves a man and his son walking down a road, hiding from cannibals, and saving the bullets in that gun for the right moment.

7. Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, Old Yeller. Nothing says "I'm not getting laid tonight" like giving your sweetie one of these classics about losing the family pet(s).

8. The Handmaid's Tale. Saunter up to your lady, wrap your arm around her, and then...read her the scene in Margaret Atwood's feminist dystopian novel in which the protagonist, Offred, fulfills her handmaid duty by having sex with Fred and his barren wife. Guess who's sleeping alone tonight! You are, hot shot!

9. American Psycho. Patrick Bateman? He gets off by admiring himself, fixating on the mass consumerism of 80's culture, and, you know, killing women. On the other hand, Christian Bale is naked in the movie version.

The cover is red!
It's perfect for V Day!
(No, it is not.)

10. Push. Sapphire's novel which became the movie Precious is all about an inner city girl learning to read. Also, she was sexually abused by both parents, has a child with Down Symdrome she named Mongo (short for "mongoloid"), and is pregnant with another child. She's on welfare and her mother beats her. And when she finally escapes...yeah, she has AIDS.

What's crazy about this list is that I really like these books (except for American Psycho, which isn't my preferred version of depressing). They are great reads (as long as the date isn't February 14th).

And yes, I'm still single.

Generally Horrible Questions: Andrew Porter

A couple of years ago, I (Liz) discovered a short story collection called A Theory of Light and Matter by Andrew Porter.  I was hooked.  In Theory, I discovered an incredible writer, an old school writer in the best sense.  It didn't hurt at all when I learned that the author lived in Texas, and that one of my publishers, Vintage, picked up the paperback rights to Theory.  Jump forward a year, to sales conference and a dinner with editors at which I sat beside Andrew Porter's editor.  She began to tell me about the novel Knopf would be publishing, and I was bouncing around giddily (if internally).  That novel, In Between Days, lived up to my expectations.  Set in Houston and centered on a family in crisis, it's a marvel of a classic, literary novel--wonderful prose, well-written characters, and a gripping plot.  The parents have split after years of marriage, and their older child has just graduated from college and is searching for himself and his voice as a writer.  His younger sister, Chloe, has been in college in the Northeast, but she is sent home from school and isn't talking about the reasons.  Her arrival sets the novel in motion.  In Between Days went on sale this week, so now seemed like the perfect time to submit Andrew Porter to our horrible questions (might as well harass 'em before they are too big for us and they realize they can say no, right?).

Here you go--generally horrible questions for Andrew Porter:

1. You won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction for your short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter. What exactly is the prize? Did you win a peacock? What’d you name your peacock?

Skippy is a lovely name for a peacock.

No, I didn’t get a peacock, but I got the next best thing. After winning the award, the University of Georgia Press (who sponsor the contest) flew me to Flannery O’Connor’s hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia to give a reading and visit her farm. The property itself is enormous and pretty amazing. You can see the barn where that famous scene in “Good Country People” takes place, the small house where the immigrant couple in “The Displaced Person” lived, and, of course, you can also see a bunch of peacocks! [...So...you stole the peacock?  That's excellent.]

2. Describe your literary odyssey—how did you become a writer?
Well, that’s probably too long a story to tell in detail here, so I’ll give you the short version. Like a lot of writers, I caught the writing bug in a college fiction workshop. Soon after, I abandoned my dreams of becoming a filmmaker, pursued an MFA at the University of Iowa, and then spent the next eight years or so looking for ways to support myself financially (mostly through teaching) while I finished my first book. It’s not an uncommon path these days, and it certainly wasn’t an easy path, but that’s the one I took.

3. I’ve never read _____________ and I’m so ashamed.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My students reference this book constantly in class, and I always feel embarrassed that I haven’t read it. I know it’s a short book, and having read a lot of his other novels, there’s really no excuse other than the fact that I have an eleventh-month-old daughter now and not nearly enough time to read.

For shame!

4. I’ve read ________________ and I’m so ashamed.
I’m going to plead the fifth here! [New rule in Book Land: "the fifth" is code for Fifty Shades of Grey.]

5. Your new novel, In Between Days, is set in the Houston neighborhood of Montrose. What is your connection to Houston and this neighborhood?
I lived in the Montrose area of Houston for one year on two separate occasions in the late ‘90s. I have a deep affinity for that area of Houston, in particular, and still think of my time there, and the city in general, very fondly.

6. On a sales call, we heard from your editor something to the effect that you actually lost your work and gave up writing for awhile (sorry I’m fuzzy on the details—it’s been months since I heard the story). Tell us about it?
During my second year in Houston, my apartment was robbed, my computer and back-up disks were stolen, and I lost the vast majority of everything I’d written up until that point in my life, including a nearly completed manuscript of my first book. I came very close to throwing in the towel at that point, but fortunately stuck with it and (eight years later) finally published my first book. [Recently my house was burgled and the thief/thieves ignored everything except my TV and Wii.  Did you have a note on your computer case that said "the good stuff's in here?"  I'm insulted that my thieves ignored my books and such.]

Andrew Porter

7. You teach at Trinity University in San Antonio. Liz attended Southwestern University in Georgetown. The two schools are rivals to the extent that Division III schools can be rivals. Why does Trinity suck so much?
Well, for Liz’s sake, I wish I could say that it does, but the truth is I’ve loved every minute I’ve spent at Trinity. Sorry, Liz! [I'm reworking my best book of the year list based entirely on this answer.]

8. The action in In Between Days is set in motion when the daughter of a family is sent home from college under mysterious circumstances. Did you start writing knowing what the issue would be, or did it come to you while in the process of developing the characters?
I actually made a conscious decision not to decide why Chloe was sent home from college until I was about ¾ of the way through the novel. I figured that if I knew the answer to this question I’d inadvertently give it away to the reader, so, the truth is, the moment the reader finds out what happened at her college is the same moment I found out myself.

Wrong Grail.
Prepare to age horribly.

9. Liz or Gianna? (This is a question we ask everyone, and the catch is that there is a correct answer. Choose wisely. Imagine you’re Indiana Jones and one of us is your Holy Grail.)
That’s like asking me to choose Lennon or McCartney, Gilbert or Sullivan, Bogie or Bacall. Can we call it a tie? [No.  The correct answer is always "Liz."  You have chosen poorly.]

10. What book(s) changed your life?
Where I’m Calling From (the collected stories of Raymond Carver), The Collected Stories of John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Crime and Punishment, Drown by Junot Diaz, The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek, and, most recently, all of Maile Meloy’s books. [We love everything about this list!]

11. What book do you think is woefully under-read, and why?

Great pick!

One of my all-time favorite short story collections is Sweet Talk by Stephanie Vaughn. For over a decade it was out of print, but fortunately it was republished last February by Other Press. Everyone who loves short stories should read that book! [And this is a great pick.  Are you trying to make up for liking Trinity?]

12. What do you think distinguishes Houston as a setting for stories?
Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with the history of Houston, in particular the oil boom of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and of course the subsequent crash. I think the prosperity and tragedy of those years really defined the city in certain ways and also greatly affected many of the people who lived through them. So, as a backdrop for fiction, Houston (and that period of time in particular) has always appealed to me. On top of that, I think the city, in general, is incredibly diverse, and as a fiction writer that gives you a lot of freedom to explore a lot of different types of characters from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds living in pretty close proximity to each other. Of course, there are many other reasons, but those are just a few.

13. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “I don’t follow baseball and therefore don’t understand the question” and 10 being “I’m so outraged that I’m in the midst of a hunger strike,” how upset are you about the Astros’ switch to the American League next year? (We’re big baseball fans, so we often ask baseball related questions. Gianna roots for the Cubs and therefore will be in therapy for many, many years trying to come to terms with her unending disappoint, and Liz is a lifelong Astros fan.)
Though I’m a lifelong Pirates fan, and therefore (like Gianna) constantly heartbroken, I do have a fondness for the Astros and strongly believe they should stay in the National League. So I’ll say an “8.” [According to our scale, 8 equates to "Bud Selig is the Anti-Christ."  That's acceptable.]

14. What are you working on presently? Care to give us a sneak peak? I (Liz) am your number one fan! Misery references are deliberate, Mr. Man.
I’d love to give you a sneak peak, but everything I’m working on right now is pretty rough. To be more specific, though, I have the beginnings of a new novel project and also a couple of new short stories in the works.

Don't be surprised if you meet Liz and she looks
like this!  

Thanks so much for the questions and your interest in my work. This has been a lot of fun!

Thank you!  Texas people--Andrew Porter is going to be reading and signing at BookPeople in Austin on Monday, September 10, at Brazos Bookstore in Houston on September 12, and at The Twig Bookshop in San Antonio on September 22.  We don't think it would be inappropriate to dust off the VW van and follow him around like he's the Grateful Dead.  I'm sure he likes tie-dye.

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 4

Gianna:

I think that if you are making a list of romantic books, as devastating as she can be, you must include at least one Amy Bloom book. My Amy Bloom book is the epic tale Away.

Amy Bloom

Lillian Leyb’s parents, husband, and presumably her three-year-old daughter Sophie were brutally killed in Russia. Lillian escapes from Russia to New York in 1924 where she finds work as a seamstress in a Yiddish theatre. She soon becomes lovers with the lead actor of the troupe and his powerful father. After whispers that her daughter may still be alive and living in Russia, Lillian begins planning her trip back home. With little help, she begins an epic journey across the country: a train to Chicago, then to Washington, culminating with her walk across the Alaskan wilderness to find her daughter.  This novel is incredibly rich with full three-dimensional characters that you won’t be able to forget. Away is one of the most powerful, well-written novels I have read, yet completely accessible. This novel may not be romantic in a Valentine sort of way, but trust me, it is romantic in a bold way.

Side note: Away was inspired by Lillian Alling who attempted to walk home to Russia from New York in 1927. 

Liz:

Ah, Cormac McCarthy.  No one tells a love story quite like you.  You're a modern Jane Austen.  Who else could take a story of the bleakest post-apocalyptic world ever written and turn it into a love story?  The Road is full of beautiful writing, charming scenery like that basement full of half-dead zombie people, passionate interactions with roving bands of humans who love romantic dinners of humans (mmm....cannabalism....), and the most wonderful ode to a soda ever written.  Trust me, this novel is great.  At its center are a father and son walking along a road with only a gun and two bullets to save them from true horrors.  In spite of the bleak setting, The Road actually really is an uplifting story of parental love...even if you'll want to use that last bullet on yourself after reading it, it's just that upbeat.

The End of the World As I Know It

I confess that I have a fondness for apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. The creepier the end-world scenario, the better--and what makes them creepy? The creepiest novels are the ones that seem eerily possible. Twenty years ago, Margaret Atwood predicted that a hyper-fundamentalist theocracy would begin to brainwash the country, subjugating women. And today, driving to Mississippi, I eavesdropped on a conversation at a convenience store that involved a woman telling a man that the reason a mutual acquaintance was still single was "'Cause she's lazy and she won't cook. How's she ever going to get a man if she can't cook?" I am pretty sure that religious cults insist that women know how to cook...writes the single woman who absolutely refuses to spend her free time in the kitchen. Pot? Kettle.

Anyway, there's a lot to fear in the near future, and here are a few of my favorite alternative, probably bleak, novels.

NEVER LET ME GO--Kazuo Ishiguro's terrific novel about exceptional teens raised in a "special" school will soon debut nationwide as the new film starrng Kiera Knightley. Ishiguro is a Booker Prize-winning writer, the story rivals all the great love sagas of literature, and then there's the creepy truth about these kids' lives and their special value to society. I can't wait for the movie.


CLOUD ATLAS--If you asked me what my favorite book of the decade was, it would be this experimental novel by the brilliant David Mitchell. CLOUD ATLAS ingeniously blends together six separate stories, from a Patrick O'Brien-esque naval tale to a "China Symdrome" nuclear threat to a dystopian future akin to Kevin Costner's "Waterworld," all centering on the theme of free will and independence. This book reaffirmed my desire to stay in the book business when I was considering graduate school. Books are just more fun.

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD--No one manages to blend literary prestige with speculative fiction like Margaret Atwood, and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD is her most recent stroll into the near future. The events of YEAR OF THE FLOOD are the same as those in ORYX & CRAKE, both book looking at what will happen if we continue to destroy the environment and tamper with potentially dangerous genetic engineering of the food supply. Killer viruses, a hippie gardening cult, and strippers make THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD highly entertaining as well as scary.

THE UNIT--Swedish authors are hot right now, with the Stieg Larsson trilogy dominating all of the top spots on the NYT Bestseller List, but don't think that Stieg is the only Swedish author out there. THE UNIT, by Ninni Holmqvist, is set in the near future and centers around Dorrit, a woman-of-a-certain-age who, upon turning 50, moves into a retirement community of sorts with other aging, childless singles. It's like a seniors mixer/party in a dorm facility, with classes and dances...and organ harvesting. THE UNIT questions a person's worth beyond one's ability to reproduce. Maybe if Dorrit had learned to cook and moved to Mississippi she'd have found a man....

THE ROAD--Cormac McCarthy's novel of a father and son trying to survive after global catastrophe, with cannibals roaming around and horrors around every corner, received a big push when Oprah picked it for her book group a few years ago. It's a bleak book to be sure, but also a moving portrait of love in the face of adversity.

THINGS WE DIDN'T SEE COMING--How could you not be curious about a book written by a guy who used to be a psychiatric nurse and then moved to Australia? These linked stories assume that the global shutdown foretold with Y2K does transpire and the world is thrown into chaos and famine. It could have happened.

THE RAPTURE--This creepy thriller centers around the daughter of religious fundamentalists who predicts the future...a future that involves 1,000 foot tidal waves destroying the earth. The cause of the waves? An offshore oil rig disturbs the dangerously volatile frozen methane at the bottom of the ocean, creating a massive explosion. You know, sort of like the recent gulf oil spill.

All of these books open lots of room for discussion, making them ideal for book groups.