Favorite New Fiction
from Small and Micro Publishers

Usually, I reserve this website for reviews of others’ fiction. In this case, however, I hope you’ll indulge me as I announce that my new novel, The Inhabitants, will be published in September.

This novel is my grownup take on the types of stories I most liked to write as a kid: tales of haunted spaces, and what happens to those who enter them, intentionally or by circumstance.

Although I’ve long been a fan of ghost stories, that has been perhaps my biggest impediment to writing one as an adult. How, I asked myself, could I possibly create one as chilling and strange as my favorite tale of the supernatural, The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James? The answer, of course, is that I can’t, and didn’t. Yet it was fun to take up the challenge of writing a novel that tries to engage readers on a psychological level, that aims to spark the darkest parts of their imaginations, as James did so brilliantly. In the process, I tried to bear in mind something that Joanna Briscoe observed in The Guardian: “The power of a ghost story lies in what is feared beneath the surface of the narrative, terrors glimpsed or imagined in the cracks, rather than what leaps out of the shadows.”

Recently, I was approached about contributing recommendations to a new book-discovery website, Shepherd, which aims to recreate the experience of visiting a brick-and-mortar bookstore, where patrons can browse at their leisure or get help or advice from a knowledgeable staffer, should they want that.

With Shepherd, you can search for books by topic. Or you can identify books or authors you’ve enjoyed in the past, and the site will recommend books that might appeal to you based on this information.

At the start of Murder in Mennefer, our young hero is set to begin a journey south down a river with a friend. That sounds like a classic American tale, calling to mind Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But the journey does not happen, and this story is not an American one. Rather, Mennefer is what we know as Memphis in ancient Egypt, circa 27th century BCE, not the modern-day city in Tennessee. This is an Egypt so ancient that the pyramids have not yet been built. (Oddly enough, Huck and Jim’s original destination was Cairo, Illinois.)

The title Murder in Mennefer may call to mind an Agatha Christie mystery, and though there is a Hercule Poirot-like figure in the book, this is not a mystery in the sense of Death on the Nile.  Murder in Mennefer is more of a coming-of-age adventure. There’s even a love interest, the baker’s daughter. Sirois deftly balances these various strands. He is having some fun in this novel aimed at young adults, and he’s inviting us along. I’m on board, and you should be, too, whatever your age. It’s a terrific ride.

This insightful, darkly humorous novella starts in an unexpected place for a coming-of-age story: with a murder. But as the story unfolds, the crime itself recedes into the background as we learn how the events–and people–surrounding the murder come to affect both the protagonist, 13-year-old Zinnia Zompa, and her mother. The result is a haunting examination of how others’ choices and behaviors can affect us, perhaps indelibly.

Gerry Wilson is a seventh-generation Mississippian, and she says of That Pinson Girl, “In this novel I return to the myths of my childhood and the rural landscape of north Mississippi. I was born in Pontotoc, a little town nestled in the red clay hills of north Mississippi, thirty miles from William Faulkner’s Oxford and far from just about everywhere else.” Wilson’s prose style is straightforward, but the questions and complexities that run throughout That Pinson Girl will be familiar to those who have read Faulkner. It is appropriate that an early draft of the novel was a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition. 

In this deeply moving and transcendent novel, art–specifically, the work of Henri Matisse–is far from just a diversion, or some relic of the past enjoyed primarily within the confines of a museum or the pages of a book. Instead, for the protagonist, it becomes an increasingly vital way of connecting with others, and of forging a greater understanding of herself. 

Although it’s set in the Gilded Age, this witty and engaging novel explores issues that continue to be deeply relevant, while offering an entertaining and inspiring read. (The novel can be preordered now, and its launch is planned for  October 3rd.)