As is the case with many book lovers, my “to read” pile is growing way faster than my ability to keep up with it. That means that I’m late to discovering some true gems. One such gem is Donna Gordon’s heartrending début novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me. With compassion, sensitivity, and insight, the novel explores the potentially life-changing power of connecting with others, even though it may first seem that we have nothing in common with them.
This inventive and affecting collection of speculative short stories takes on a wide range of themes, from the power that secrets can hold over us, to the long–and sometimes fraught–reach of motherly love, to the ways we learn to live with loss. The author explores these themes with insight, and a generous dose of humor.
The Last Whaler is a deeply moving novel that meditates on the grieving of parents following the loss of their son in an accident.
The grief of the mother, Astrid, is profound. To her lost child she says, “I long for those first blissful seconds of consciousness each morning when I wake to the thought that you’re alive, that any moment you and Birgita will run through the bedroom door and leap into bed with me and Pappa and snuggle under our warm down coverlet…. Oh, how agonizing that abrupt realization each morning that you are dead.”
Following their son’s death, Astrid insists she accompany her husband, Tor, to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Circle, where he has a whaling station. From mid-April to August the sun shines unceasingly, but in winter darkness rules. There are many dangers, including polar bears, accidents, the brutal cold, ice crevasses, food insecurity, isolation, and the threat of sexual violence implicit in being a lone woman among men.
For these reasons, Tor resists having Astrid accompany him: “‘The point is,” Tor says, “Svalbard can break you.”
“Or heal me,” responds Astrid. “Heal us.”
Since finishing Valerie Nieman’s thrilling, genre-bending novel To the Bones, I’d been hoping for a sequel. So I was delighted to learn of the forthcoming publication of Dead Hand, a sequel that is every bit as suspenseful, engaging, and satisfying as its predecessor. But you don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy this one. Nieman quickly brings readers up to speed on the main plot threads from the first book, preparing them for another heart-stopping ride.
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.