Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Stefan Merrill Block
Random House
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at BookPeople.com
Stefan Merrill Block is a talent. Though his debut novel, The Story of Forgetting, sings a bit from the Jonathan Safran Foer hymnal (a precocious teen trying to unravel his family’s tragic history), the Plano native distinguishes himself with inventive plotting and an urbane Texas voice. High Plains settler Millicent Haggard bequeaths her unfortunate descendants the fictional EOA-23 strain of Alzheimer’s, as well as a series of fables about Isidora, a fanciful land where there is no such thing as memory. Tales of this otherworld become a familial coping mechanism to deal with the disease’s early onset—especially the myth that afflicted loved ones who find their way to Isidora are at peace, having forgotten every bad thing in their lives. Block wraps his intricate story line around Abel Haggard, a 68-year-old farmer outside Dallas whose brother had EOA-23, and Seth Waller, a 15-year-old Austin high schooler who decides that determination and research will lead him to a cure for his mother’s Alzheimer’s. Block can write big: By tracing the Haggard-Waller lineage through generations, he gives his narrative scope and power. But it’s the intimate moments—husbands, wives, sons, and daughters devastated by the effects of Alzheimer’s—that make The Story of Forgetting, well, unforgettable. Random House, $24.95
Joe Nick Patoski
Little, Brown
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The first time nine-year-old Booger Red got drunk on beer, he decided, “I had already fucked up more ways than God was going to put up with . . . so I had in mind, the sky’s the limit from here on, I mean I can’t go to hell twice.” Sixty-six years later, veteran Texas journalist Joe Nick Patoski offers Willie Nelson: An Epic Life as a 576-page testament to that Abbott youngster’s journey from badass country boy to besainted one-name legend. Fans who’ve come to believe that Willie-ness is next to godliness may be surprised by the coarser reality of his life, from cotton-picking poverty through an eternity on the road—not to mention the raging lunacy of his Fourth of July picnics and his (well-documented) affinity for smoking dope and rough-edged pistol-packing associates. Patoski declines to judge or analyze, merely chronicling Nelson’s story through the eyes and ears of those who have lived it. Some events could stand more-thorough treatment, particularly the genesis and creation of Red Headed Stranger, those almost 34 minutes of unvarnished country that in 1975 turned the record industry on its ear. But in the end, the biographer’s message is simple and true: Willie does what Willie wants to do, and he does it with a hard-won smile. Little, Brown, $27.99
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The best-selling Houston-based writer sets her new novel, The Palace of Illusions, in the fifth millennium BCE. Based on India’s epic Mahabharat poem, it examines love and war from the perspective of Princess Panchaali. (Read an excerpt.)
What concerns did you have in tackling such a beloved text?
The Mahabharat is so vast and complex—I didn’t want to dilute the feel of that amazing, mythic world. Yet I knew I had to make it accessible and relevant for modern readers.
What parallels would you draw between war in 6000 BCE and 2008?
Unfortunately the human situation hasn’t changed. Palace, I hope, enables readers to see and feel the huge cost of war—in terms of who dies, the guilt and trauma of those who cause death and suffering, and the sorrow of those who must live on when their dear ones are victims.
Will your next novel return to a modern setting?
I’ve been working on a magical trilogy for children. The first book had a contemporary setting, the second went into India’s past, and the third, Shadowland, goes into a dystopian future where the air is brown and unbreathable and two power groups, the magicians and the scientists, are at each other’s throats. Doubleday, $23.95 (Read the full interview.)
The Palace of Illusions: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, published by Doubleday.
