Author: Jennifer Graham

Tender is the Bite, by Spencer Quinn (Forge, 263 pages)

I would say that I am late to the Chet & Bernie series, only I am late in the way you are late to a dentist’s appointment or a barely tolerated neighbor’s cocktail party. That is to say, I’m late primarily because I didn’t want to go.

Sure, the titles are great — Dog on It, The Sound and the Furry, Scents and Sensibility, Heart of Barkness, to name a few — and Stephen King couldn’t be more ebullient, calling Chet & Bernie “the most original mystery series currently available” and saying that author Spencer Quinn “speaks two languages — dog and suspense — fluently.”

That said, the narrator is a dog. And I have an irrational hatred of pen names. (Mr. Quinn, if your books are really that good, wouldn’t you want the world to know that it was Peter Abrahams who wrote them?) And have I mentioned the narrator is a dog?

That said, people lap this stuff up. Since the first book in the series was published in 2008, the author has turned out 10 more and they’re all highly rated on Amazon. So, maybe I was … wrong? You can’t like something if you’ve never tried it.

On to Tender is the Bite, the 11th book in the series that is about the adventures of Bernie Little, a divorced dad who runs a not-especially-profitable detective agency (but still drives a Porsche) and is accompanied everywhere by the lovable Chet, who narrates the story.

Chet admits that he’s not the smartest human in the room, “in fact, not human. I bring other things to the table.” Those would include his senses of smell and hearing, which are much sharper than those of his human, which he is constantly pointing out. For example, when Chet and Bernie are waiting outside someone’s door, Bernie starts to knock for the second time even though his dog has already discerned that a small and possibly barefoot woman was already on the way to open it. “I glanced at Bernie’s ears: not tiny for a human, not at all — and very nice looking in my opinion — but was that all they were for? Just stuck on his head for beauty?”

And with that, they’re off, Bernie trying to solve a case, a modern-day Sherlock with a furry John Watson taking notes, making wry observations, showing his teeth when required, not getting human jokes. Yes, Chet/Quinn/Abrahams is genuinely funny, and yes, it is, as King observed, a fresh way of delivering an old genre. Or was, 13 years ago. Now, however, it seems sort of formulaic, the sort of book that the author can write while he’s cutting the grass and talking on the phone. Open document; insert plot; rewrite the jokes.

In this particular document, Bernie is determined to track down a young woman who had been following his Porsche until he turned the tables and followed her. He learns only that her name is Mavis, before she suddenly turns fearful and bolts, but not before Bernie writes down her license plate number, allowing him to use his network of confidantes (probably illegally) to obtain information to track her down.

From there Chet and Bernie are sucked into a vortex of intrigue that involves two frightened women, a ferret named Griffie, potentially evil Ukrainians and American politicians battling it out for an election that is still a year away. (Quinn shows a deft touch by setting up the political battle with Bernie’s neighbors each putting up opposing yard signs and then offering him one. The nastiness seems vaguely familiar.)

When the humor is good, it is very good indeed, and Chet sometimes seems like a canine David Sedaris, as when he’s musing about a heaven “of the dogs, by the dogs, for the dogs” or making a smart reference to Schrödinger’s cat. But as the mystery unravels it feels more like a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book with expletives than Sherlock Holmes, and Chet’s fawning about how beautiful and smart and wonderful Bernie is — while completely in line with what probably goes on in a dog’s brain — grows wearisome, as does his frequent use of the word “perp.”

The appeal of the series is not a mystery. As the saying goes, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’re going to like. There’s zero chance you will like this series if you’re not as obsessed with dogs as Chet is with Bernie. But the fact that you like dogs, or mysteries, or dogs and mysteries, doesn’t mean you will like Bernie and Chet.

For those who do, however, it’s a glorious year. There’s another book coming in October, one for the holidays. It’s a Wonderful Woof, of course. C

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Book Notes

It’s something of a shock to come across books that are purportedly bestsellers a week or two before they’ve been released, but that’s because of advance sales, which aren’t hard to rack up if you’re Barack Obama or Sean Hannity.

So how are Rodney Habib and Karen Shaw Becker on Amazon’s bestseller list two months before The Forever Dog(Harper Wave, 464 pages) is released? It’s not just because of a compelling cover, which features a dog wearing a Superman-like cape, or even the subject matter, which is how to get the longest possible lifespan for your dog.

Habib is a telegenic “pet influencer” which is to say he has a vast social media following on the subject of pet health, with 3 million followers alone on Facebook, where this week he warns of the dangers of rawhide while recommending dogs have strawberries for snacks. His website gives no academic credentials, but his co-author is a veterinarian. Both are heavily pushing presales on their respective websites; hence, a bestseller is born from two people most people have never heard of, two months in advance.

Only vaguely related to dogs is a new memoir in paperback that’s getting buzz: I Named My Dog Pushkin (And Other Immigrant Tales) by Margarita Gokun Silver (Thread, 266 pages). It’s a comic memoir, “notes from a Soviet girl on becoming an American woman,” and you gotta love any author who dedicates her book to her thesaurus, as Silver did.

Another new paperback worth a look, especially in light of the new United Nations climate report, is Warmth, Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin, 272 pages) by Daniel Sherrell.

Sherrell, recipient of a Fulbright grant in creative nonfiction, gives thoughtful voice to a generation convinced that their future is that of climate refugees because of what he simply calls “the Problem.” Whether you consider Sherrell a kindred soul or an overwrought Cassandra, Warmth appears to be an elegant meditation on living with climate-fueled sense of doom.

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Books

Author events

• JEFF SHARLET Author and journalist will present his books, as part of the Tory Hill Author Series, including his newest, This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sat., Aug. 21, 7 p.m., to be held virtually via Zoom. Tickets are $5. Visit toryhillauthorseries.com/jeff-sharlet.

• AMY MAKECHNIE Author presents her second middle-grade novel Ten Thousand Tries. Sat., Aug. 21, 2 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• SHARON RASK HUNTINGTON Author presents Mirabelle’s Metamorphosis. Joint event with MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the Pillsbury Free Library. Thurs., Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m. Jim Mitchell Community Park, East Main Street, Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• L.R. BERGER New Hampshire poet to hold release party of latest book Indebted to Wind. Sat., Aug. 28, 4 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds of Warner, 16 E. Main St., Warner. Visit mainstreetbookends.com.

• KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

Poetry

• POETRY IN THE MEADOW Featuring readings with poets Chad deNiord, Kylie Gellatly and Samantha DeFlitch. Sun., Aug. 22, 4:30 p.m. The Word Barn Meadow, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter. $5 suggested donation. Visit thewordbarn.com.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Tender is the Bite.

Wayward, by Dana Spiotta (Knopf, 270 pages)

In 2013, New Hampshire author Howard Mansfield published a gorgeous ode to the physical structure that, if we are lucky, we come to see as a home, not a house. Dwelling in Possibility examined what Mansfield called “the soul of shelter,” the nourishment that we get from a pile of lumber, concrete, steel and stone.

Dana Spiotta does this, too, in her new novel Wayward, which is about a woman who, traumatized by the 2016 election, impulsively buys a run-down house and walks out of her marriage.

There were, of course, other catalysts for the decision that are revealed over time. But in setting up a wholly unexpected type of unfaithfulness — a woman falling in love with an illicit house — Spiotta taps into a rarely explored subject: the emotional connection that many people have to their homes, even when, to the world, it may seem irrational. “The house was falling apart. The house was beautiful,” Sam thinks to herself as she falls for a century-old cottage after being the only person to show up for the open house. (Apparently, bored women go to open houses as a form of recreation — who knew?)

She was seduced by its tile-lined fireplace, custom-built storage benches and old wood, which made her own house, with its gas fireplace and perpetually distracted husband, look hopelessly bourgeois.

Sam makes an offer on the house and decides to leave her husband without thinking much about the consequences, only vaguely aware that “saying yes to this version of her life would mean saying no to another version of her life.”

When she tells Matt, he is standing at the blender, making a post-workout smoothie, and doesn’t stop what he is doing, suggesting that Sam is making a bold and empowering decision that will radically improve her life. In fact, life is never that simple.

The decision fractures an already tense relationship with Sam’s 16-year-old daughter, who has just begun a secretive relationship with a much older man. And the complexities of leaving the suburbs and navigating a new life in the city, with a couple of amusingly woke friends, complicates Sam’s life as she attempts to ignore the worsening condition of her own mother, Lily, who has pancreatic cancer.

Meanwhile, her husband seems determined to love her back into the family home, writing Sam checks to cover her expenses, including the full cost of the house (“It’s your money, too,” he tells her) and sending her flowers on the first day she sleeps there. “Dusty peach-colored peonies, her favorite. Her leaving had made him attend her, but he didn’t understand that wasn’t her intention at all. Sam just wanted to be alone in her house.”

Matt’s graciousness thrusts Sam into a place of “phony poverty, fake independence” as her part-time job as a tour guide at the Clara Loomis House couldn’t have paid even her small bills.

The family tensions ramp up to a satisfying crescendo, but the real pleasure in Wayward is Spiotta’s grasp of the mundane, as in her treatment of Sam’s of chronic insomnia (which will be utterly relatable to anyone who has ever bolted awake at 3 a.m. and not been able to get back to sleep) and necessary but painful tensions that both physically and emotionally tear apart older teens and their parents. She also has a shrewd wit that leavens the novel’s serious themes.

“You do seem deranged,” Matt says to Sam as they discuss the election of someone they loathed (a person never mentioned by name, but the novel starts in 2017). She is deranged, but in the way that we all are these days: overwhelmed, underfunded, desperately trying to do right by other people while doing right by ourselves, to stay asleep the whole night, take care of our children, take care of our parents, take care of the planet. This is a thoroughly contemporary novel, with its Facebook groups of outraged women (WWW: Women Won’t Wilt, and Central New York Crones) and soliloquies on higher education and other contemporary frustrations. (Sam sees the college admissions process as a sort of Hunger Games.)

It is also a solidly regional novel; you will learn more than you want to about Syracuse, New York, to include its architecture and history. And apparently Clara Loomis, the namesake of the historical house at which Sam works, is an invention of the author, which is a bit confusing given that she is linked to real people, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. At the end, the novel shape-shifts with letters and journal entries from Loomis, which complicates the work in ways that are not all positive. There is also no obvious resolution to many of the family’s struggles; people who like an ending neatly tied with a ribbon may grumble at the conclusion.

Wayward is not chick lit; it’s too smart a book for that. But it’s definitely a novel for women, and women of a certain age. For that demographic, it’s a slam dunk, especially if the women lean Democrat. A-

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Book Notes

The announcement of book award nominees in the summer is the equivalent of pumpkin-spice products emerging in August. It’s way too early. We still haven’t finished our beach reads.

But the long list for the Booker Prize came out this week, and if nothing else, it’s confirmation of the Hippo’s good taste. Three books on the list were reviewed here and given A’s: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf, 321 pages), No One is Talking About Thisby Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead, 224 pages) and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf, 608 pages).

The award, given each November, is for the best novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The inclusion of American authors is a perennial source of friction in the U.K., although interestingly the British novelist Ishiguro has been supportive of the change, made in 2014. (In addition to his current nomination, Ishiguro won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.)

Besides Lockwood and Shipstead, two other Americans are on the long list this year: Nathan Harris and Richard Powers; Harris for The Sweetness of Water (Little, Brown and Co., 368 pages) and Powers for Bewilderment(W.W. Norton, 288 pages), which hasn’t even been released yet. Its release date is Sept. 21.

Meanwhile, props to the U.K. publication The Guardian, which each year runs a “Not the Booker Prize” contest, because, in its words, “the judges of Britain’s most prestigious literary award pick the wrong book too often.” The readers of The Guardian’s book blog vote on their favorites. Last year’s winner was Hello Friend We Missed You, by Richard Owain Roberts, which was published in the U.S. in paperback this year (Parthian, 200 pages) and is described on Amazon as “bleakly comic.”

Alas, the author only won a Guardian coffee mug. The Booker Prize winner this year, to be announced Nov. 3, will collect $69,000.

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Books

Author events

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents her new novel Count the Ways. Phenix Hall, 38 N. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 5, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• SADIE & CORBIN RAYMOND Authors present 121 Days: The Corbin Raymond Story of Fighting for Life and Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Aug. 10, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• PETER FRIEDRICHS Author presents And the Stars Kept Watch. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., Aug. 17, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• R.W.W. GREENE Sci-fi author presents new novel Twenty-Five to Life. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., Aug. 26, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Wayward.

Noise, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein (Little, Brown Spark, 398 pages)

Five years ago, writing in Harvard Business Review, the esteemed psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman joined with a few other enviably smart people to discuss the concept of noise: not the kind your neighbors make while you’re trying to sleep, but the kind that clouds judgments, sometimes to devastating effect.

This kind of noise, as Kahneman describes it, is the wide variance in outcomes that we might think should be similar but instead are all over the map. One of the most obvious examples of this is in criminal justice, where one person might get a 20-year sentence for a crime, while another gets five years and community service. That makes the criminal justice system particularly noisy, in Kahneman terms.

But even if you don’t plan on going to jail, noise in human judgment probably affects you, as people such as doctors and loan officers also have wide discretion in their decisions. It’s not just unusual — it’s unnervingly common— for physicians to offer different diagnoses a few weeks apart when researchers present them with the exact same case.

And completely unrelated things such as whether people have eaten recently and whether their sports team won over the weekend can affect the decisions they make.

It’s an important subject and one worthy of consideration, more so if you’re in a noisy profession or at the mercy of one. And so fans of Kahneman, whose 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow was universally lauded, might be excited to delve into his latest, Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. Unfortunately, most of us would be better off just reading the Harvard Business Review article from 2016, which lays out the principles of noise without causing the reader unnecessary pain.

Noise is a scholarly book written for a scholarly audience that is at the forefront of the literary conversation only because Thinking, Fast and Slow was so well-received. Had this manuscript fallen into the hands of a publisher who knew nothing of the authors or their past credits, it would have been cut in half or, equally likely, still languish in the slush pile.

To their credit, the authors did try to simplify their subject for a mass audience. Or at least one of them did. You never know, with three authors, who is writing at any given point, and Noise is erratic in its understandability. You might say the book itself is noisy.

Some chapters read like AP psychology, others like an Ivy League dissertation. (Example: “You may have noticed that the decomposition of system noise into level noise and pattern noise follows the same logic as the error equation in the previous chapter, which decomposed error into bias and noise.”) Not that they didn’t give us warning. In the opening to the book, the authors suggest some readers might want to skip the first four parts of the book (there are six) and go straight to Part 5, essentially skipping half the book.

But people who do that will miss some of the book’s interesting content, including how the free-throw averages of NBA players have the wide variability of noise despite the hoop always being 10 feet away and the ball always weighing 22 ounces. That’s because the players are susceptible to the same lottery-like forces that we are in our daily lives. We are not the same people that we were 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago, because of variables such as mood, stress and fatigue. So decisions in ordinary life can be noisy as well, although they can rarely be documented as such.

So what to do about this problem? Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein have some solutions. One is to adopt the social-science concept known as the “wisdom of crowds.” Researchers have shown that while individuals may not be great at guessing things, whether the number of gumballs in a glass bowl or the number of airports in the U.S., as a group we come close, when researchers combine individual guesses into an average or mean. Taking the average of four independent judgments can reduce noise by half, the authors write.

Outside a social-science lab, the best way to leverage this finding in our daily life is to get other people’s opinions (independent ones, not people with the proverbial dog in the fight) and make a decision that best represents the mean. If you don’t have time or inclination to consult others, social science has another solution: create an “inner crowd” by coming up with your own best guess, and then basically challenging your own decision: Assume your first decision is wrong and consider why. Then make a different decision, based on these reasons. Often, the best decision will lie in the space between your first and second choices.

That’s one strategy in creating a personal form of “decision hygiene,” which the authors suggest. But they write about a nebulous topic and concede that it’s nearly impossible to know how good decision hygiene helps. “Correcting a well-identified bias may at least give you a tangible sense of achieving something. But the procedures that reduce noise will not. They will, statistically, prevent many errors. Yet you will never know which errors. Noise is an invisible enemy, and preventing the assault of an invisible enemy can yield only an invisible victory.”

Like Kahneman’s previous work, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 2002, the theories put forth in Noise will be considered groundbreaking and this book will likely win awards that have nothing to do with its readability. Outside the academy, it’s a hard row to hoe, but there’s value in skimming. C

Book Notes

The 2020 Olympic Games, postponed because of the pandemic, kick off this weekend, but don’t feel too sorry for the athletes competing a year late and without spectators.

Things could be worse, and in fact have been, as you will learn in Total Olympics by Jeremy Fuchs (Workman, 336 pages), who promises to reveal “every obscure, hilarious, dramatic and inspiring tale worth knowing.”

The worst in recent memory has to be the 1972 Olympics, the year of the Munich massacre. But in terms of sheer hassle and inconvenience for the athletes, consider 1948, when London finally got around to holding the 1944 games (canceled because of the war). The city was so spent and countries were so broke that this was dubbed the “Austerity Games” with athletes making their own uniforms and bringing their own food. But they pulled it off and let it be known that a Dutch mother of two won four gold medals in track and field and became known internationally as “the Flying Housewife.” It looks to be an entertaining read between commercials.

For a narrower look, specific to track-and-field athletes, check out The Fastest Men on Earth by Neil Duncanson (Welbeck, 384 pages). It’s a new paperback that tells the stories of 25 Olympic sprinters, including superstar Usain Bolt.

Also worth a look: Olympic Pride, American Prejudice by Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher (Atria, 400 pages), billed as “the untold story of 18 African Americans who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.” The hardcover edition came out last year; a paperback will be issued in September.

And for those of you with zero interest in the Olympics, celebrated science writer Sam Kean has a new book out this month. The Icepick Surgeon (Little, Brown and Co., 369 pages) is an entertaining, if deeply disturbing, look at rogue scientists throughout the ages. An introductory quote by Dr. Thomas Rivers sets it up nicely: “All I can say is, it’s against the law to do many things, but the law winks when a reputable man wants to do a scientific experiment.”

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Books

Author events

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents Count the Ways. Toadstool Bookstore, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Sat., July 24, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 924-3543.

• GIGI GEORGES Author presents Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Toadstool Bookstore, Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Route 101A, Nashua. Sat., July 24, 2 to 4 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JESS KIMBALL Author presents My Pseudo-College Experience. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., July 27, 6 to 7 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• KATE SHAFFER & DEREK BISSONNETTE Authors present The Maine Farm Table Cookbook. Outside the Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Aug. 12, 6 p.m. Tickets cost $60 for a small table (two people), $120 for a medium table (four people), $180 for a large table (six people). Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• MONA AWAD Author presents All’s Well. The Music Hall Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Thurs., Sept. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13.75. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

Featured photo: Noise.

The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celedon Books, 320 pages)

Writers, for the most part, live boring lives. We sit at our desks and imagine a world that may or may not exist. The last time we read about a writer having an “adventure” was in Misery by Stephen King.

And we all know how that one turned out — ouch.

Still, writers are my people, they are my tribe and if a fictional suspense thriller comes out where the main protagonist is a writer? I’m in. Such is the case with The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

The plot of The Plot is a bit convoluted, but that’s what makes it so interesting. A one-hit wonder novel writer named Jacob (Jake) Bonner stalls on writing his next book for years. He admits that for a writer, his best days may be behind, which sends him into a depressive spiral. To make money and barely survive he “teaches” (read shows up) at an MFA program for writers.

Part of what Jake teaches about writing fiction is plot. Writers all know that there are only so many plot lines out there. The quest, the voyage and return, coming of age, overcoming the monster, etc. All plots fall within those boundaries and we are taught that no other plot lines exist.

One of his students, a brash, rather uneducated brute, tells Jake his idea for a book. The plot, he insists, is one that has never been written before and is so good that it won’t matter if the writing is not proficient — the book will sell.

Hmm, that must be one heck of a plot.

The student tells Jake his story’s plot and Jake has to agree: It’s a plot line that has never been identified. It’s really good. The student is right to be cocky; he’s going to make a lot of money from the book. Even if it’s poorly written.

After the program, the student moves on and Jake continues to sink into a depression.

Years later, Jake wonders why there has never been any talk about his student’s book with the unique plot. After doing a little research he discovers that his former student had died a few months after the writer’s program. The book was never written.

So Jake writes his student’s story. It’s important to note that he doesn’t plagiarize the words of his student, but he does use the idea of his plot, in much the same way that The Lion King uses the plot of Hamlet. Just like the cocky student predicted, the plot of the story is so good that, especially when done by an accomplished writer, the book zooms to the top of every best seller list. Jake is in hot demand, he’s on TV, a movie by an A-list director is optioned. Everything is wonderful! Jake even finds a supportive fan girlfriend who seems to fill in all the holes in his world. Life is definitely good.

Until Jake gets a mysterious email with the message: “I know what you’ve done, you stole someone else’s story.” This is where the real action starts. We get to watch a writer devolve from guilt (the absolute worst thing you can accuse a writer of is plagiarism, even if technically it’s not true).

The messages keep coming. Jake begins to investigate. If the original student with the plot idea is dead then who is sending the messages? What follows are twists and turns and unexpected happenings that will keep you flipping those pages.

And yes, The Plot is a twist in itself. As it is told, it appears to contain what could be a new plot structure (or at the very least plot device) because at the very end, the one thing that is never supposed to happen in a hero’s tale happens. I literally gasped because we are all taught you just can’t do that.

While you don’t need to be a writer to enjoy this book, having some literary background on plot construction makes it that much more enjoyable.

Short chapters that switch between the current story and the book that Jake wrote work together to weave a series of events that you don’t necessarily know are connected until the very end. While I did suspect something was “wrong” I did not figure out what was going on until it was explained, making this a truly suspenseful read.

I love page-turners and this book was one for me. Started it one evening, finished it the next.

Intelligent, entertaining, swiftly moving — I wouldn’t be surprised if life imitates written art and a movie is made out of this thought-provoking one. A

– Reviewed by Wendy E. N. Thomas

Book Notes

Here’s a tip: If you want to know how a book is really selling, pay no mind to the rating that crops up at the top of the page on Amazon: the one that says a book is No. 1 in a specific category such as “pillow manufacturers for Donald Trump.”

It’s the rating under “Product Details” that tells you how a book is performing, and sometimes this is even more reliable than what the New York Times bestseller list says, a publisher told me this week. No. 1, of course, is best, but anything up to 1,000, give or take a few hundred, is decent.

That said, books that suddenly show up in the top 10, such as last week’s debut of How I Saved The Worldby Jesse Waters (Broadside, 320 pages), can leave some people scratching their heads. If you’re a Fox News viewer, you know Waters as a co-host of The Five; if not, you’ve likely never heard of him.

Similarly, people who vaguely know Bill O’Reilly as someone who was supposed to be disgraced may be surprised to see him holding forth on The New York Times’ bestseller list for the past month with Killing the Mob (co-written with Martin Dugard, St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages).

Fox News did fire O’Reilly in 2017 after charges of sexual harassment, but he now has a podcast and evidently a loyal following for his series of “Killing” books, which include Killing Kennedy, Killing Patton, Killing Jesus, Killing Reagan, Killing Crazy Horse and so forth. The most recent sales show there’s plenty of life left in this series.

Other interesting fare out this month includes a provocative new book by Michael Pollan: This is Your Mind on Plants (Penguin, 288 pages), which is not, as it seems, about a plant-based diet, but about the mind-altering properties of caffeine, opium and mescaline. His latest interest in hallucinogens is a sharp turn from his early, more mainstream books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin, 464 pages) and In Defense of Food (Penguin, 256 pages).

And a novel based on the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, written by director Quentin Tarantino, is out in paperback (Harper Perennial, 400 pages). It’s Tarantino’s first week of fiction and is described by the publisher as “hilarious, delicious and brutal” — just like his films.

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Books

Author events

• MEGAN MIRANDA Author presents Such a Quiet Place. Hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., July 20, 7 p.m. Virtual. Tickets cost $5. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• JOYCE MAYNARD Author presents Count the Ways. Toadstool Bookstore, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Sat., July 24, 11 a.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 924-3543.

• GIGI GEORGES Author presents Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Toadstool Bookstore, Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Route 101A, Nashua. Sat., July 24, 2 to 4 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• JESS KIMBALL Author presents My Pseudo-College Experience. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Tues., July 27, 6 to 7 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

• CATHLEEN ELLE Author presents Shattered Together. Virtual event, hosted by Toadstool Bookstores, located in Nashua, Peterborough and Keene. Thurs., July 29, 6 p.m. Visit toadbooks.com or call 673-1734.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

• SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail slamfreeordie@gmail.com or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Featured photo: Crying in H Mart.