Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce

Every year the American Library Association, schools, publishers, libraries, and bookstores around the country year Banned Books Week to draw attention to censorship and challenges to freedom of speech. Every year hundreds of books are challenged by people who have (hopefully) good intentions but think that their good intentions outweigh others' ability to make decisions for themselves. Long before I ever worked in the book industry I must have had an inkling of my future; I wrote my freshman high school research paper on the issue of censorship even as my high school refused to teach I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Because this is Banned Books Week, I think it's appropriate to feature the most divisive book I've encountered in quite awhile, Merritt Tierce's debut novel Love Me Back. If it's not being challenged yet, wait a year.

I don't think it's possible to read Love Me Back and not react powerfully. Reviewers have described it as "raw," "blunt," "dark," "uncompromising." It's compulsive reading even when you don't want to follow where it's leading. Sometimes it hits too close to home. Often the book is harrowing. Divisive books, though, are the ones that push us to grow individually and as a society. I thought it was brilliant (and disturbing); I have colleagues whose opinions I value who were repelled.

Here's the deal: Love Me Back is the story of Marie, a waitress working through a series of restaurants in Texas until she lands at a high end steak house in Dallas. She's incredibly good at her job, mechanically serving celebrities and businessmen and sports stars each night. She's also a girl (and I deliberately use "girl" instead of "woman" because Marie seems emotionally stuck after events derailed her college plans) with demons and prone to dangerous behaviors.

Merritt Tierce

In scattered chapters throughout the book, we discover Marie's back story. A good Christian girl growing up in a good Christian home, she participates in a youth mission trip to Mexico. While there, she sleeps with a boy on the trip, and--let's just assume she received the Texas school sex ed--she becomes pregnant. Instead of going to college and fulfilling the track of good white girls from good Texas church-going families, she stays home, marries the boy even though she barely knows him, and has a baby. She's set adrift by the abrupt turn her life has taken and, unable to right the ship, she accepts the restaurant culture of booze, drugs, and sex. Marie is a fractured person, but she still manages to function enough to keep from either breaking down completely or finding help.

Merritt Tierce was named as one of the 5 Under 35 authors to watch, a big deal in the publishing world because it signals that here is a new voice that will challenge readers and the state of books. It's like being named ESPN's #1 high school football recruit with the expectation that the player will become the next Peyton Manning. This recognition will guarantee that critics take Merritt Tierce seriously. She's talented. She deserves that respect. However, what more impresses me is that she is a talented woman who's written a fairly autobiographical novel that challenges a ton of the controversial topics that mostly people attempt to ignore, particularly in the mannered South and Texas.

Photo credit: Getty Images

What is Marie's story if she lived in a place with easy access to birth control and accurate sex ed? What is her story if she lived in a place where sinners aren't shamed and condemned? I think Love Me Back digs in and addresses those questions in a way that hasn't been attempted in a long time. Marie reminded me of girls I knew in high school, girls I knew in college, the women I worked with at almost minimum wage after I graduated and didn't have a career trajectory and felt lost myself. Are there really so many steps from my life now as a moderately successful woman with a house and a cat and a pretty good job and a handful of amazing friends and the Liz that could have been? I worked a crappy restaurant job one summer (fast food, Sonic carhop, no roller skates), and apart from the high school girls working part time for gas money, my coworkers were women in their 50's who'd each had numerous marriages and multiple kids in and out of wedlock and their daughters were then pregnant with their first babies and you could look at them and wonder what they'd dreamed about doing when they were good kids in high school.

Love Me Back is a restaurant book. Merritt Tierce actually worked in the Olive Garden in Abilene where Gianna once locked my keys in the car. Fans of Kitchen Confidential will recognize types like the managers and owners and cooks and wait staff. Love Me Back is a Texas book, rooted in the traditional values of religion and shame. Love Me Back is a feminist book that doesn't flinch from the label. Love Me Back is the kind of book that censors love to hate. Love Me Back is powerful, compulsive, obsessive reading that dares you to flinch. Is this a book that everyone will like? God, I hope not. I think it pushes buttons that need to be pushed and that's going to upset a lot of people. But Love Me Back is also a book I champion. I want it to upset people. Maybe upset people will see the invisible Maries of the world and question how they came to be.

The Sight I Can't Unsee

It's been way too long since our humble little blog has ventured into the, shall we say, scatological, and probably even longer since we've shared an adventure from the road. I don't want to lose our edge, let any of you loyal readers down in terms of topics for future therapy sessions, or let Gianna off the hook. It's been awhile since she's posted and maybe a rapid slide into the gutter might serve as encouragement for her more genteel musings on Book Land.

Going nowhere fast.

I just entered the travel portion of my selling season for the Spring 2015 list. There are some great books coming and it's a pleasure visiting my assorted bookstore pals around my territory. Happy thoughts, etc. I spent Monday and Tuesday morning in New Orleans, and then planned to drive to Jackson, Mississippi, in the afternoon in order to meet with the Lemuria Books staff at 7 pm. I had about five hours to make the three hour journey, so everything was looking good. At 4:35, I had passed a sign saying that Jackson was ten miles away. No problem. Right?

Then the Law of Liz kicked in. I am the source of all woe and ridiculousness in the universe. I-55 is under construction in this stretch of highway, so most of the exits are closed and there are concrete barriers on either side of the two lanes going each direction. I was trapped, in other words, just as a power line fell across the highway a couple of miles in front of me and the whole interstate shut down. GRINDING HALT. I was fine--I always keep water in my car and I still had a couple of hours before my presentation, and I texted my colleague Toni to let her know that I might be late. Mostly I was bored.

I may be ugly, but I didn't go to the trouble to make a
stupid window sign and then misspell "you're."

A few people in front of me hopped out of their cars, walked across the southbound lanes of the highway (which were empty), and then climbed up an embankment to a gas station along the road that crossed over the highway close to where I was parked. I'm assuming they needed to pee. The woman behind me never once hung up her phone. The man in front of me smoked. I listened to an audiobook and stared out the windows.

And then I noticed that there was a homeless man sitting up underneath the overpass. I hadn't noticed him earlier because he wasn't moving. I did notice him, though, when he stood up. I noticed him even more when he turned around and dropped his pants so that I was looking at butt cheeks. And then he proceeded to poop in front of the stalled rush hour traffic. The man obviously didn't suffer from any sort of body shaming. I was sitting there watching a homeless man poop and thinking 1. I can't wait to tell Gianna about this, and 2. I should take a picture and send it to Toni, and 3. I absolutely am putting this shit on the blog...and then the turd started to slide down the concrete embankment. I'm not kidding. Here's the text conversation I was having with Toni at the time:

Coincidentally, a truck full of Port-a-Potties drove across the overpass about two minutes after the Great Pooping of 2014, providing a perfect example of my biggest pet peeve about the South: they are always late for everything. After a good ten minutes, the man did finally cover his cheeks with the pants around his ankles and eventually walked up the side of the highway. He could walk away from the sight. Sadly I could not.

And now I've shared the story with the world. You're welcome.

Testing Belief with Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan, perhaps more than any other writer these days, regularly addresses the moral and On Chesil Beach to the political deceit in his Cold War literary thriller Sweet Tooth, to the sweeping family drama and questioning of perceptions in Atonement, Ian McEwan is going to question how we make decisions and point out that life isn't black and white. That brings me to his newest novel, released this week, The Children Act.
ethical ambiguities of "civilized" society. From the conflicted feelings and revelations exposed to a newly married couple in his pithy, classic

I think The Children Act is McEwan's best work in a decade, and I say that as a fan who has enjoyed most of his books. I also think that The Children Act is shockingly relevant to ethical questions that seem to be becoming the center of the cultural conflicts. It's short, like On Chesil Beach, and there's something to be said with just spending a day or two with a book rather than slogging through, say, Infinite Jest (I feel obligated to remind the world how overrated I find Infinite Jest, lest the world begins to think that I'm a softy and/or aging alterna-teen kid of the 90's). It's also shocking in the way that Atonement pushed boundaries.

Booker Prize winning author
Ian McEwan

The main character: an aging family court judge in the UK named Fiona. Fiona takes her job home with her, pondering cases as well as her childlessness and her relationship over the last 30 years with her husband. Just as the stability in Fiona's personal life is shaken when her husband asks for an open marriage, she finds herself at the center of a court case that challenges her belief in the law.

The case: a 17 year-old boy named Adam is suffering from leukemia and will die without a blood transfusion. With the transfusion, though, the doctors believe he has a good chance at recovering and going into remission. The problem, though, is that Adam is a Jehovah's Witness and his religious faith forbids blood transfusions. He, as teenagers tend to be, is resolute in his absolute belief in the will of God, as are his parents and preacher. The hospital, though, sues to have custodial rights since his life is at stake and he's still a minor. This is the case that Fiona must decide--to side with personal faith or ethical duty.

Fiona and Adam are both remarkable, fully realized characters, and both show a respect for the opposite that are absent in, say, my own furious reaction to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision and anything uttered from the lips of Ted Cruz. Or in the evangelical conservatives' reactions to Obamacare and Terry Shiavo. This is an intimate novel that questions the institutions we rely upon for security, be it a marriage or the law or God. The Children Act looks for that point where divine intervention and human knowledge intersect and then pushes readers to see both sides of an issue with no easy answer. It's a novel that should be read and discussed and challenged. I'm a big, big fan of this book.

You Absolutely MUST Read STATION ELEVEN

Reading shouldn't be a chore. Reading should enlighten. Reading should delight. Reading should expand our worlds. Reading should be entertaining. If you bother to read this blog, either you're a lifelong reader or Gianna has naked pictures of you (not judging). Readers are made when they find books that capture them, usually in childhood, and the greatest pleasure for adult readers comes in hints of that magic again even as grown-ups. For my colleagues at Penguin Random House and me, Station Eleven is that book. We believe in this book. We love this book. We think that you will love it too. Here's why:

1. Station Eleven is dystopian fiction, and yes there are a ton of end-of-the-world books out there, but this one is different. Set 20 years after a global flu pandemic has wiped out much of the population, this book is more about what survives than what's destroyed. 
2. Station Eleven plays with Shakespeare. The whole premise of the narrative is that a girl who was performing in a version of King Lear when the flu hit belongs to a theater troupe whose mission is to bring Shakespeare and music to the communities that have survived. 
3. Station Eleven is therefore a love song to literature and music and the power that can be found in storytelling. I recently watched Monuments Men (not a great movie) about the small group of art historians who scoured Europe to recover the stolen works of art that the Nazis looted in World War II. Why risk your life for a painting? Civilization exists through our arts. To destroy a group of people, destroy their art and music and writing. Station Eleven gets that. 
4. Station Eleven is a great story. The Traveling Symphony moves into a town hoping to rendezvous with two of their members who'd stayed behind a couple of years earlier in order to have a child. When they arrive back in the town, though, they find no sign of their friends and are threatened by the new leader of the community, a man known as The Prophet.

   

   Author Emily St. John Mandel

5. Station Eleven has compelling characters. From Arthur, a Hollywood star whose career has slipped to the point that he's the headliner in a regional production of King Lear, to Jeevan, the paramedic who tries to save Arthur when he collapses on stage, to Kirsten, the girl in the play who ends up joining The Traveling Symphony, to the woman who created "Station Eleven," the graphic novel that pops up throughout the book, to The Prophet. You want to spend time with these people. 
6. Station Eleven is a celebration of what we take for granted everyday, from clean water to electricity to fresh produce in grocery stores to the clothes we wear. What would you miss most if the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow? (I'm guessing your answer is not "this blog.") I think I'd miss reading light in the evening. Flickering light gives me migraines, so I probably wouldn't be able to read by firelight. 
7. Station Eleven captures an idea I think about a lot, that we create our own families and are sustained by these relationships. While I am often comfortable alone, I need other people to pull me out of my head and remind me that the world is bigger than just my own interior craziness and the antics of a spoiled cat. I don't need an apocalypse for me to realize this fact, but I appreciate books that remind me that I can't be the recluse I sometimes fantasize about becoming.
8. Station Eleven is written by a super-talented writer who deserves to have a megahit bestseller. Emily

   

   Emily St. John Mandel dropped by the Penguin Random House
   warehouse to sign copies for our bookstores. She signed a
   few thousand books that day.

   St. John Mandel has been a bookseller favorite for years, but it's time that the rest of the world figures out how incredible she is at spinning a great story.
9. Station Eleven is a book you won't want to end. I rarely say that about any book, but in this case it's the truth.
10. Station Eleven is the book that ALL of my fellow sales reps loved. This never happens. We are a bunch of jaded readers who sometimes slog through books like they are homework rather than recall that we get to read books and work with books all the time. The last time we shared such enthusiasm for a book, it was The Night Circus. The hive mind has been waiting for the release date of Station Eleven for months. It's here. It goes on sale on Tuesday, September 9. 

I implore you to read Station Eleven. I hope you love it as much as I do.

F is for....

Here's the premise: a father has three sons, two (twins) by one woman and a third by another. The boys all live with their moms but he dutifully takes them on outings on the weekends. One Saturday they visit a hypnotist's show, and since the father insists that he can't be hypnotized, of course he is selected to participate. In the course of the show, the father reveals that he's always wanted to write professionally, but familial obligations have held him back. After the show ends and the boys and father are driving home, the father (who may or may not still be hypnotized) basically drops off the boys at one house and disappears from their lives to pursue his writing career. Thus begins the incredible new novel by Daniel Kehlmann, simply titled F.

F is one of those books I can't get out of my head. The novel follows the lives of the three sons and father, all of whom struggle with issues of identity and destiny as they move through the world. That sentence just made it sound tedious, though. I should mention now that it's not weighed down by excruciating, soul searching, stream of consciousness, meandering weirdness that burdens some literary fiction. F is fun.

The father, Arthur, does indeed become a famous writer, but at what cost?

Son #1: Martin's goal is to become the world champion Rubik's Cube master and can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute. While this feat is his life's ambition, though, he finds himself living as a priest...who doesn't believe in God.

Son #2: Eric becomes a financier and makes a huge amount of money, but then watches as his questionable decisions threaten disaster and his family unravels.

Son #3: An artist, Ivan should have had his own successful career as a world renowned painter, but instead he becomes a forger, creating the paintings that make another man famous and for whom he acts as agent.

Daniel Kehlmann

F stands for family, faith, fate, fortune, forgery, fraud. It's at times funny, at times sad, at times tragic, all the time great reading. I love this book. It's the kind of amazing that compels me to go back and read everything Daniel Kehlmann has written because the guy is incredible.

A note about the translator: Daniel Kehlmann is a German writer and this novel was originally written in German. It does not suffer the fate of some translated works, seeming removed from an English-reading audience. I have never actually met Carol Brown Janeway, though she is an editor for Knopf and Pantheon (two of the publishers I represent). I have heard her present titles on the sales conference preparation CD's we receive, though, and the woman comes across sort of like the college professor whose course you audit because you just want to learn everything she has to say even though you didn't think you were interested in the topic. There is no finer translator of German to English that Janeway--you'd never know that the book was written in another language originally, which is the mark of a perfect translation. F is flawless.

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Dear blog readers,

I am writing to you on behalf of Dear Committee Members, the new novel by Julie Schumacher. Simpsons Ever Marathon). I'm guessing that some of you made the same questionable life choices I made and carry similar grudges, so you'll probably enjoy reading Professor Jason Fitger's letters.
Since you have shown a remarkable tendency toward self-abuse by continuing to visit this awful blog, I can only assume that an epistolary novel comprised of various letters of recommendation from a college creative writing professor might appeal to your masochistic tendencies. It's not like you have anything better to do (and yes, I'm including the Every

If you ever want to know what academic department ranks lowest in the academia hierarchy, look no further than Creative Writing. As a graduate of a small, nerdy, liberal arts university, I would like to point out that my alma mater didn't even offer Creative Writing, so I pursued the comparable majors of English and History (with a hell of a lot of Women's Studies to guarantee that I could enter the working world with no job skills whatsoever). As an English major, I looked down upon the Business majors and Pre-Med losers. As a History major, the Social Sciences were one step above Kinesiology. I take my intellectual integrity seriously...as does this novel's letter-writing professor. Is he pissed that the Economics Department's building was remodeled with what he assumes are massage chairs and chandeliers while Creative Writing has leaky walls? Yes, yes he is. Let him write a few dozen letters to the administration about this injustice.

Yeah, the building looks cool and
historic, but I'm not kidding, my
office was a converted bathroom.
(Mood-Bridwell Hall,
Southwestern University)

(Now I think I should mention that as the English Department Student Assistant, my work study job for one year, my office was literally a former bathroom. Also, since my job basically consisted of making mimeograph copies for one of the five professors--and she insisted on mimeographs rather than Xerox copies--about twice a semester, I actually performed about 5 hours of work the whole year. Oh, and there were TWO English Department Student Assistants and I was considered "the good one." I think that meant that I figured out the mimeograph machine before March. Anyway, what was I talking about?)

The book. Jason Fitger is pissed off that he's in a dying department that receives no respect from his peers. He's pissed off that his ex-wife also works at the college and she's sharing her opinions about him with the rest of the faculty and administration. Perhaps he shouldn't have drawn on his own experiences for writing material. He's pissed off that his newest novel tanked and his writing career is on the downward slide. Another complaint: the Creative Writing Department Chair is a Sociology professor. The outrage! Jason just wants to enjoy one success this year, and he thinks this hope resides with his star pupil's retelling of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener. Though he keeps writing letters of recommendation, none of the writing workshops or agents or editors see the book's brilliance. On top of these aggravations, Jason continues to compose an unending number of letters of recommendation for every damn student who crossed into his classroom. Is he honest in his letters? Yes, yes he is.

Julie Schumacher

Jason Fitger is hilarious in his passive aggressive behavior and surprisingly tender and vulnerable. He's a guy who's been kicked in the balls a few too many times, and who brought those metaphorical testicle punts on himself. This short novel is charming and witty, and while the character might be a jerk at times, he comes across as believably human. So, to the lousy former classmates and professors at my alma mater, I implore you to read this book. To those of you nerds who condescended to the inarticulate fools in your classes, this is your book. For people who are their own worst enemies, this book will hit home (and by "home" I mean "testicles").

Seriously, how is Communications even a major? And have you ever heard Philosophy majors whine about their reading load of 20 pages per night? English majors read whole novels! Tom Jones is about 900 pages long and most of those pages are tedious and repetitive. (I was incredibly popular in college.)

Sincerely,

liz

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

I just spent a week in New York at sales conference, which is always an adventure. The best part of the New York sales conference? There's a night when we dine with a group of editors. The absolute biggest fans of books are their editors. It's book nerd heaven. So, here's a post dedicated to a book that an editor, Diana Miller of Knopf, sent me with a "You have to read this!" note about nine months ago. Have I eagerly waited most of a year to begin pimping this novel? YES.

Richard Flanagan is an Australian (Tasmanian) writer with some serious writer credentials. His novel Gould's Book of Fish launched him into the literary world (not to mention utilized beautiful printing techniques for book-as-object enthusiasts). When I discovered that Diana had acquired his latest novel for Knopf, "batshit giddy" was one way to describe my excitement. This novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is, simply, a modern classic. It's incredible.

Here's the premise: a doctor named Dorrigo Evans is captured by the Japanese while fighting for Australia in World War II. He's sent to a POW camp and as the officer and doctor among the POW's, he bears a great weight for the welfare of the soldiers. Also, this particular group of POW's is responsible for constructing the Burma Thailand railroad for the Japanese. If you saw The Bridge on the River Kwai, you know a version of this railroad's story. This was a railroad impossible to build, built by men in the worst physical conditions imaginable. It's known as the Death Railway. Dorrigo is a doctor without medical supplies of any kind, trying to keep men alive as they are wasting away (at best) or rotting from wounds (more likely) or beaten/executed. The Japanese work quotas ramp up even as the strength of the laborers decays. You know those gross scenes of Civil War battle hospitals? Imagine those conditions, but with a significant language/cultural barrier and tropical conditions and extra brutality. It's gripping. It's harrowing.

This isn't just another novel about World War II, though. It's also Dorrigo's love story from both before and after the war. It's a story about trust and betrayal and humanity. It's a book that's special because the Japanese, while captors and brutal, aren't reduced to just being monsters. Like the POW's, they too are men under extreme pressure in impossible circumstances. The title The Narrow Road to the Deep North tips to what Flanagan accomplishes here. This novel shares its name with a collection of poetry by Basho, the most famous haiku poet of Japan's Edo period (and in general). Basho gave up all possessions and traveled throughout the country to experience and capture the world in verse. Like Basho, Flanagan's characters are off the grid and reduced to basic experiences, and like Basho, Flanagan is able to capture majesty in all things.

Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a huge accomplishment. The author's father was a POW in the labor camp in which he framed his story, and this book shows profound respect for all of its players. When I read it those many months ago, I sent an email to a colleague calling this book "super important" and "reads like a classic, and a much older book (but it a timeless, not tired, way)." It's a book that Flanagan has been working toward throughout his career. It's a book on the Man Booker Prize longlist presently and considered a favorite. It's a war story you haven't read before. It's one of the best books of the year, period. It's a must read.