Books – Page 19

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean (Tor, 298 pages)

Does the world really need another story about mythical un-human creatures who hide in plain sight among us and need to destroy human beings in order to eat?

Why, yes, as it turns out, we do.

Despite its vague resemblance to Twilight, The Walking Dead and others in popular humans-as-foodstuff genre, Sunyi Dean has penned a marvelous, mind-bending novel about a class of creatures deposited on Earth as a science experiment of sorts. The majority of them don’t eat people, but instead eat books. Yes, that sounds ridiculous and would be garbage in the wrong hands, but Dean — an autistic American-born writer of fantasy novels who now lives in the U.K. — brings a sly wit to the enterprise and has produced a sophisticated fantasy world that will doubtless beget movies and sequels.

The story revolves around Devon, a young mother who is part of six family lines that hide among humans on Earth, their purpose being to absorb human knowledge through eating books and, for some of them, through consumption of human brains. You can’t tell them apart by looking at them; they all look like humans, but book eaters grow “bookteeth” at about age 3, and mind eaters have a mosquito-like proboscis and a serpent-like tongue.

Devon is a book eater. Her 5-year-old son, Cai, is not. And Devon has the choice of watching him starve to death, or bringing home some hapless human whose brain is suitable for consumption about once a month.

This is not a good way of living for either Devon or her son, so she is intent on finding a class of book eaters who possess an elixir called Redemption that can turn brain eaters into book eaters. (It’s not just a question of will, as it was for the Cullens in Twilight.) But there is more to her story than that.

Despite being fed a carefully planned diet of fairy tales as a child, designed to suppress her imagination and keep her from questioning the Family Rules, Devon grew up with a rebellious streak and would sometimes sneak a book she wasn’t supposed to consume. She would even do something that was forbidden — read the book. (Book eaters cannot write, and they are only supposed to consume books, not read them.)

Devon had a happy childhood, however, despite never knowing her mother. Among book eaters, women are precious and rare because of a genetic flaw that causes ovarian failure in their late 20s. Their marriages are both arranged and “enforced” — because of the dangers of inbreeding, the patriarchs of the families must place brides like chess pieces, and so at age 19, Devon had been sent to another family for the requisite term of three years to be a wife and bear a child, after which she is to return to her family of origin.

Book eaters, who drink “inktea” and large amounts of alcohol, are big on ceremony, and the lavish weddings give Dean’s fertile imagination room to run wild: The bountiful spread of food includes a “salad” — “shredded pages of Midsummer Night’s Dream that were dyed different shades of green” along with edible origami made of pages torn from books and made into the shape of swans, and a wedding “cake” in the shape of the biblical Tree of Knowledge, “printed pages carefully shaped into origami apples.” When Devon tastes wine for the first time, she reflects that it tastes a little bit like “a well-crafted romance novel. Complex, sweet, and a little stinging.”

The wedding cake is a metaphor for what is to come: Devon’s knowledge expands first with the consummation of her marriage and then with the birth of her first child. With that birth comes the first of several surprises that alter our perception of what is happening. The shrewd plotting switches constantly from present-day to the past but is easy to follow and reveals Devon’s back story and motivation in slow motion.

Another smart literary device is in the telling of the book eaters’ history in snippets of quotes from a book called Paper and Flesh: A Secret History, written by an unfortunate reporter who tried to infiltrate Devon’s family and paid a price for his interest.

To preserve their secrets, the families must keep distant from humans, whom they largely disdain. But Devon must navigate the human world — and learn the secrets of the other five book eater families — in order to get Redemption for her son, who, as he grows older, will need to eat not just once a month, but once a week.

Like baklava, The Book Eaters has complexity in its many layers: as a jacket blurb says, “Truth is found between the stories we’re fed and the stories we hunger for,” and readers can chew for days on the points the author is trying to make. But at the center of her sharp criticism of patriarchy and the cage of tradition and extended family, is a rollicking good story. Twilight had one, too, but the series was poorly written. The Book Eaters, in contrast,is sophisticated, thought-provoking and as immersive as a quality video game, whether or not you’re a fan of the fantasy genre.

And readers will become conversant with a wonderful, rarely used word: bibliosmia, which means the enjoyment derived from sniffing a good book. A+

Book Events

Author events

• DAMIEN KANE RIGDEN will be at the Toadstool in Nashua on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. for his novella All Manor of Beast and Man.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• BETSY THOMASON will discuss her book Just Breathe Out: Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 2 p.m.

• HUMA ABEDIN The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host Huma Abedin, longtime political advisor and aide for Hillary Clinton, to discuss her bookBoth/Andat the Music Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.Tickets are $15 and include a book voucher.

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

History & lectures

• FRAN LEBOWITZ Author, humorist and social commentator Fran Lebowitz will appear at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord) on Friday, Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $45 to $65, plus fees.

Poetry

• KATHARINE GREGG & HOWARD FAERSTEIN will read from their collections of poetry (Mere Thread by Gregg and Googootz and Other Poems and Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn from Faerstein) at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at noon.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom, 480 pages)

When I first opened Gideon the Ninth, the first of Tamsyn Muir’s “Locked Tomb” series, all I knew was that the book was queer and in a science-fiction fantasy universe, and that was all I needed to soothe my lonely gay heart. And it had cool cover art. So I gave the book a shot.

And I was turned feral. I devoured Gideon the Ninth, then immediately stormed my local bookstore for the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. And after Harrow, I reread Gideon immediately. Then Harrow, again. Reader, you may not know me, but I assure you: This is unusual.

I delight in the writing; Muir selects delicious adjectives that had me re-reading sentences just to taste them again. The protagonists are lovable, equal parts endearing and heartbreaking, and the villains are conniving and charming. The unique genre is refreshing, a mix of dystopia, science fiction, fantasy and squicky horror. I am obsessed with the plot: characters navigating intense relationships within an epic adventure, reminiscent of the multimedia webcomic Homestuck (indeed, fans can find nods to it). The characters’ central struggles are captivating, including acceptance of duty, acceptance of grief, and acceptance that God is actually some guy named John who’s a bit of a jerk. And this is all in a universe that’s unapologetically gay. I think I’ve been transformed.

Now we’re at the third in the series, Nona the Ninth (and last will come Alecto the Ninth, planned for release in 2023). I paced myself through the nearly 500-page novel to try to savor it; I know there will be another long wait before Alecto comes around.

The central question here is: Who the heck is Nona? She’s a brand-new character. We know she’s a soul who has been hitching a ride in another person’s borrowed body for the past six months. She’s guileless, devastatingly cute, hilariously entitled, desperate for attention, and has an intractable case of pica. And she has no idea who she is. I was sucked into every thing Nona did, or said, or thought, trying to suss out who she might be. She is immediately endearing. She is brave and sweet and incredibly concerned for her friends. It was a joy to read about her. The tagline on the cover is true: “You will love Nona, and Nova loves you.”

At the same time that I was getting to know Nona, I was desperate to find out where my favorite protagonists’ souls (or bodies, or both) had ended up. In a similar structure to the last two books, revelations on their whereabouts and other mysteries are tantalizingly interspersed throughout the whole novel, providing rich reward for each chapter. Peppered in are moments of action, which are vibrant in their immediacy and urgency. The novel culminates in an explosive, breathtaking finale that will have you scrambling for the next installment, or to re-read the previous novel with fresh context.

I celebrated some of the reveals in Nona, while others were awful. I asked myself, “Is it possible to wail in delight and horror at the same time? This is probably not what they mean by ‘laughing until you cry.’” But Muir is aware of this emotional weight, and skillfully alternates between sweet tenderness, chilling doom, and irreverent humor.

There are intractable mysteries remaining, though: What do the pictographs at the start of each chapter represent? What clues can be found in the various bible passages that are quoted? Which memes went completely over my head? You can enjoy these novels with a surficial read, but even more can be extracted between the lines. It’s the perfect kind of book to discuss with your friends, whether by sharing your favorite lines or brainstorming the latest fan theories.

Readers used to heavy worldbuilding in science-fiction fantasy a la Brandon Sanderson may be thrown off by the sparsely described setting of this installment, the city (or planet?), which we eventually learn is New Rho. Only what we need to know is supplied. But this brevity does not bring down the story. The true focus in The Locked Tomb are the characters and their relationships. And indeed, Muir plies her trade to good effect. Nona the Ninth made me laugh out loud, cry, seethe with both cheer and horror, and put my heart through a meat grinder. To this I ask: more, please.

For much of Nona, I felt bittersweet pangs for my favorite characters. I wonder: What kind of ending will befall them in Alecto? Will they ever be at peace? At this point, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I have trust that Muir will take them, and us, home. As many have already said: I’ve never read anything like Nona the Ninth. And I fear that when The Locked Tomb series is over, I’ll never read anything like it again. A+

— Alaina Tocci

Book Events

Author events

• YANA TALLON-HICK, therapist, writer and educator, will be at Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) to discuss her book Hot and Unbotheredon Friday, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will discuss her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough; toadbooks.com, 924-3543).

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• BOB BUDERI author of Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub will beat the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 5:30 p.m. for a discussion with special guests C.A. Webb and Liz Hitchcock. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• NINA TOTENBERG The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. to present her newly released memoir Dinners With Ruth, which chronicles her lifelong friendship and conversations with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tickets are $43 and include a book voucher.

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf, 416 pages)

If a great writer is someone who can take a subject like video games — loved by some, maligned by others, inconsequential to the rest — and use it to weave together a story that even the latter two categories of people can appreciate, then Gabrielle Zevin is a great writer.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about love, friendship and, yes, video games. That might sound like the premise of a young adult novel written to entice middle school gamers to put down the controller and pick up a book, but no; this is a beautifully written, emotionally complex story that unravels over the span of 30 years through various characters’ points of view — though mainly protagonists Sam Masur and Sadie Green’s — and in settings that range from hospitals to living rooms that serve as creative epicenters and offices, to inside the world of a video game that Sam creates.

Sam and Sadie met as kids in a hospital, where Sam was recovering from a car accident that killed his mom and Sadie was visiting her sister, who had cancer. Their very first interaction drew me in, with some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read. Sadie walks into the hospital’s game room, where Sam is playing Super Mario Bros. She sits down next to him and watches him play.

“Without looking over at her, he said, ‘You want to play the rest of this life?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘No. You’re doing really well. I can wait until you’re dead.’

The boy nodded. He continued to play, and Sadie continued to watch.

‘Before. I shouldn’t have said that,’ Sadie apologized. ‘I mean, in case you are actually dying. This being a children’s hospital.’

The boy, piloting Mario, climbed up a vine that led to a cloudy, coin-filled area. ‘This being the world, everyone’s dying,’ he said.

‘True,’ Sadie said.

‘But I’m not currently dying.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you dying?’ the boy asked.

‘No,’ Sadie said. ‘Not currently.’

‘What’s wrong with you then?’

‘It’s my sister. She’s sick.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Dysentery.’ Sadie didn’t feel like invoking cancer, the destroyer of natural conversation.”

Thus begins their relationship, though it’s derailed after 14 months when Sam finds out that Sadie has been counting the time she spends with him at the hospital as a community service project: “Their friendship amounted to 609 hours, plus the four hours of the first day, which had not been part of the tally.”

Sam and Sadie reconnect in their college years after a chance meeting at the subway station. They end up collaborating on a video game, Ichigo, which is a huge success and propels them toward future collaborations. Over the years, though, that work is complicated by emotions and miscommunications, deep love and unrequited romantic love, outside forces and other people, like Sam’s roommate, Marx, and Sadie’s professor/lover, Dov. These characters are what make Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow the compelling story that it is, and they’re a big part of the reason why people who don’t like video games can still appreciate this book. These are characters that readers can care about, and get mad at, and grieve with.

Zevin’s writing is exquisite; there are so many passages and sentences in the book that are worth reading more than once — an especially good thing when time jumps and perspective shifts get a little confusing and you need to stop for a moment and reread to make sure you know what’s going on.

There are some people who are not going to be able to get past all the video game references, because there are a lot. There are references to old-school games, and there are some technical aspects related to the behind-the-scenes work of creating a game, like design and programming and graphics engines (I’m still not quite clear on what such an engine does or why it can seemingly make or break the quality of a game, but those details don’t take away from the ability to understand what’s going on). There’s also a whole section that takes place in a video game called Pioneers, and while it wasn’t my favorite part, I can appreciate the depth that it adds to the storyline, as the game becomes an essential part of Sam and Sadie’s relationship.

I haven’t considered rereading a book in years — who has the time when there are so many new books waiting to be read — but this is one that I’m definitely going back to again, to savor the prose, spend more time with the characters and possibly get a better handle on what a graphics engine does — not that it really matters. A

Book Events

Author events

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair in a Literary Lunchtime event at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., 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 [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

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

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Deluxe Edition 1, by Hitoshi Ashinano

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Deluxe Edition 1, by Hitoshi Ashinano (Seven Seas Press, 450 pages)

Originally published in Japan starting in 1994, the manga series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (translated as Yokohama Shopping Log) follows the daily life of Alpha the android running her missing master’s coffee shop. Now the series has made it to the United States after a long wait, collected in this single volume, and publisher Seven Seas has done an excellent job preserving the style of the time in which it was originally published. Most of the pages are black and white with old-school screentones, but there are full-color images and panels as well, bursting with beautiful warm yellowish hues. Both aspects are preserved excellently with no apparent digital tampering. This desire to stay true to the original makes opening the book for the first time akin to rediscovering a long-lost favorite from your shelf.

Typical of manga created in the ’90s and early 2000s, the character designs are big and bubbly with round exaggerated features. There is less focus on realistically rendering the human face and more on amplifying expressions, making emotional beats more easily understood. Whether characters are enjoying a cup of coffee or asking for directions, the reader can get a sense of what they feel in quiet moments.

Yokohama’s art elevates itself past merely entertaining; two incredibly evocative scenes, one of dancing and the other of swimming, capture the nature of each specific movement. There’s a lightness in the renderings of Alpha’s dance at the Neighborhood Association party that shows a character free from worry or judgment by others.

The setting and background art contribute significantly to the reading experience as a whole.

The story takes place after some unknown large-scale ecological disaster, on a strange yet familiar Earth. Throughout the volume, whether Alpha is home or out traveling, there are only a few people, and nature has reclaimed much of the environment. The one local gas station with its single kindly caretaker feels lonely with a wide and empty lot, the asphalt cracked with fault lines. The roads, when they are not flooded, battle against ever-encroaching overgrowth. Flashbacks later in the volume depict the previous lay of the land, so we see how it has changed over time.

Another small but overarching detail is the way Yokohama implements shading in the panels. A chapter where a child plays outside would not be as vivid if the background art did not show the passage of time from a clear summer afternoon into dusk. Instead of using the setting as a vehicle to propel the narrative, it becomes a separate entity to care about all on its own.

There’s not a lot of plot in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. While there is the underlying thread of Alpha waiting for the cafe owner to return, it is rarely anything but an implication. Instead, the narrative is more of a series of vignettes with shared characters connecting them. Going with this larger, more unstructured narrative could have made the reading experience fragmented but, because of the work done in the setting, it is as if the reader is going alongside the characters throughout their day. Chapters consist of everything from trying to get rid of excess watermelon before it spoils to spending the day attempting to take a good picture. There’s the occasional mystery of the setting to ponder, like Alpha’s legendary neighbor the Osprey or watching the sky for a plane that never lands, but these things are passing curiosities, never resolved.

As summarized on the back of the book, the story presents itself as Alpha the android watching the end of the human world, but such an unstructured narrative, focused on the day-to-day, presents more a paring down of the world. What if money stopped mattering? What if there were no job to wake up early in the morning for, and no fear of losing shelter or health care? What would people care about and what would they value? Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a fantasy of kindness, where what matters most to the characters is connecting with others and the environment they live in. For them, there is time to contemplate who they are and what they want to become, and even how they want to experience the world around them.

For a work of fiction to gently remind the reader to open their senses, whether to a swirling storm of clouds or an expansive endless blue, and commit to memory the day that is given, truly is a treasure. A+ — Bethany Fuss

Book Events

Author events

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Book Events

• CAT KID COMIC CLUB: COLLABORATIONS CELEBRATION Toadstool Bookshop (Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St. in Nashua; 673-1734, toadbooks.com) will hold a party to celebrate the release of Dav Pilkey’s newest Cat Kid Comic Club book (Nov. 29) on Saturday, Dec. 3, from 1 to 4 p.m. The afternoon will feature games, puzzles, goodies, raffles and more, according to the website. The book is available for preorder now.

Poetry

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writers groups

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., 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 [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

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

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Return of the Artisan, by Grant McCracken

Return of the Artisan, by Grant McCracken (Simon Element, 207 pages)

Behold the Pop-Tart, the humble toaster pastry introduced in 1964. It’s pretty much the same product as it was when Lyndon Johnson was president, which is to say it was the epitome of unnatural food. Designed to fit a toaster, the Pop-Tart was, Grant McCracken writes, “the ultimate triumph of artifice.”

“You couldn’t tell where it had been farmed, who had farmed it, or what, indeed, was in it. Somehow Pop-Tarts existed sui generis.”

Pop-Tarts, of course, still exist, but the world into which they were first introduced is far different now. In the 1960s, Americans were still enamored with factories and assembly lines and the convenience foods that rolled off them. There were objectors, of course; they were called hippies. As McCracken explains in Return of the Artisan, the ideals of the counterculture granola-eating warriors would ultimately prevail. America, the author believes, is over its ill-advised love affair with the industrial production of goods, and we are finding our way back to a better way of producing and consuming. It’s still capitalism, but we’ve found a better way to do it.

The change has occurred in 10 waves that began with the opening of Alice Waters’ trendy Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, in 1971, continuing with the tide of “foodie” cookbooks and the trend toward “slow” eating and natural foods, which naturally gave way to mixology and craft beer, and ultimately the rise of “fast casual” fare (think Panera and Chipotle) and, of course, Whole Foods. Incredibly, more than half of Americans identify as a “foodie,” someone who takes an inordinate interest in what they eat and how it is prepared. The trend is so significant that even the giants of mass production are trying to present themselves as artisanal; hence, the advent of Wendy’s “natural” fries and the blocks of “handmade” soap you can buy at chain supermarkets.

But this is not just about food. There are more craft fairs than malls these days, and many of the malls that exist are struggling to survive. Even if they don’t have the time and skill to make gifts themselves, most people prefer to give handmade gifts that have (and hold) value more than anything found in a big-box store. “Artisans make gifting easy,” McCracken writes. “Their creations are perfectly gift-proportioned: authentic, human scale, handmade, they are exactly the right size and shape, plus particular and personal in just the way a gift should be. They are Goldilocks valuable: not too precious, not too mere.”

The change to a society where artisans are valued more than industry comes with subtle shifts that are potentially radical. For example, McCracken says that in this new arrangement, the consumer isn’t king, as Charles Coolidge Parlin famously said. Neither are the Mad Men. The artisans, the ones who know what they’re doing, reign. Also, artisans aren’t in it for big profit, although they, too, need to pay their bills, and McCracken argues that the artisanal economy opens up opportunity for many 9-to-5 workers who have retired or lost their jobs, providing both income and community.

“Capitalism lives to optimize. … The artisan is inclined to make the product she thinks is most compelling, for a small audience, not with the cheapest method, but the most crafted one,” McCracken writes.

McCracken, who lives in Connecticut, is a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D., and as co-founder of something called the Artisanal Economies Project he has skin in this game. He is not just observing changes in the American economy but advocating for them, elegantly and convincingly. This is a lovely collection of essays, reminiscent of the thoughtful reflections of Bill McKibben, Howard Mansfield and Alan Lightman.

His most powerful one comes at the end of the book, when he recounts how he came to discover a simple canvas wallet that had been made by his uncle’s mother 65 years earlier. “The wallet was what we might call, after Proust, a ‘Madeleine’ object: an object charged with meaning and power,” he writes.

That wallet “opened a cut on the surface of reality. Something dangerous came spilling into life. … Somehow it managed to be both personal and completely traditional. You could see that it conformed to a traditional pattern to which generations had contributed. But it was also the work of an individual in the throes of a terrible emotion driving the stitches in one direction and then another. There was craft here and there was something craft couldn’t contain.”

There are pleasures to be found in Walmart and McDonald’s, to be sure, but they are thin ones and they make us fat. The return of the artisan, as McCracken sees it, won’t solve all our problems and is a slow work that is still in progress; it took 60 years, for example, for people to start questioning the wisdom of Pop-Tarts and mass-produced boxes of cereal. But there is value in the process, and in simply paying attention to the choices we make, McCracken maintains.

“The artisanal community is a respite precisely in that it allows us to take refuge from the blooming, buzzing world out there. It speaks to us precisely because it is not distracted and complicated by a hundred points of view.”

It remains to be seen whether the premises put forth here are true, but it’s a testament to McCracken’s persuasiveness that we want them to be true at the end. See you at the next craft fair. A

Book Notes

In the publishing world, the most prestigious books are the hardcover ones, and that prejudice trickles down to the masses. It’s mostly hardcover books that get reviewed; some publications won’t even consider paperback books. (For the record, we do on occasion.) While many paperbacks are subsequent editions of hardcovers, plenty aren’t, which means a lot of books aren’t getting reviewers’ attention. According to Publisher’s Weekly, there were twice the number of paperbacks (both trade and mass market) as hardcovers last year.

All that is to say, it’s worth poking around “new releases in paperback” to find gems that were not previously published. One appears to be Animal Joy, A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation (Graywolf, 320 pages) by Nuar Alsadir. Alsadir is an Arab-American poet in New York City, and her first nonfiction book is a lyrical and free-form exploration of the importance of laughter and humor to the human animal.

Two other new paperback titles worth your attention as we approach the end of summer reads:

¡Hola, Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons (Simon & Schuster, 224 pages) is a collection of humorous essays by advice columnist and Substack writer John Paul Brammer.

The author has been called “the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere,” but I’ve read Strayed and Brammer appears to be much funnier.

Equally fun is the novel Love in the Time of Serial of Killers (Berkley, 352 pages) by Alicia Thompson, which is about a Ph.D. candidate obsessed with true crime who goes to Florida to clean out her childhood home after her father’s death and starts suspecting that the next-door neighbor is, in fact, a serial killer.

On a much more serious note, anyone who wants to show support for Salman Rushdie, hospitalized in critical condition after he was attacked during a presentation earlier this month, could purchase his Language of Truth, a collection of the author’s essays between 2003 and 2020, which was released in paperback in July (Random House Trade, 368 pages).

A past winner of the Booker Prize, Rushdie is the author of 14 novels, including The Satanic Verses, the 1988 novel believed to be blasphemous by many Muslims. Ironically, the subject on which Rushdie was speaking at the time of the attack was about how the U.S. is a “safe haven for exiled writers,” The New York Times reported, quoting the CEO of PEN America, who said, “we can think of no comparable incident of a public attack on a literary writer on American soil.”

In the wake of the attack, The Satanic Verses re-emerged on Amazon’s top 10 list of fiction; it’s No. 1 as of this writing. A paperback edition (576 pages) is available from Random House.

Book Events

Author events

• SPENCER QUINN presents Bark to the Future: A Chet & Bernie Mystery on Sunday, Aug. 28, at noon at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600).

• ADAM SCHIFF presents Midnight in Washington at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Aug. 30, at 2:30.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

Poetry

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

Writers groups

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., 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 [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

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

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald

Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury, 242 pages)

When people outside of New England think about Massachusetts, they think about Boston — the history, the sports, the Brahmins.

Isaac Fitzgerald, however, hails from the seamier side of the Commonwealth. His childhood memories include a stint at a homeless shelter in Boston and a generally miserable encampment in a Worcester County town called Athol, which is sometimes irreverently referred to as an expletive that stands in for a body part.

You can’t use that in a book title, however, so Fitzgerald’s memoir is called Dirtbag, Massachusetts.

Subtitled “a confessional,” the book is exactly that, and it’s not just Fitzgerald’s sins that are confessed here, but those of his parents and friends.

“My parents were married when they had me, just to different people,” Fitzgerald begins. It’s a catchy line though somewhat diminished by Fitzgerald’s admission that he’s been saying this to people for much of his adult life; it was a set-up in search of a book-length punchline.

Fitzgerald, who once was the books editor for Buzzfeed and wrote a children’s book called How to Be a Pirate, has the kind of life trajectory that is defiant of its origins. His parents, who were divinity school students when they met and had an affair, were the sort of people who looked good on paper but were a Dumpster fire in reality. And Fitzgerald has no qualms about airing the family’s dirty laundry. While married to other people, for example, his parents would say they were off on “spiritual retreats” while in fact they were meeting for joyous trysts in the White Mountains. (He was conceived on Mount Carrigain.) His mother later told him that she considered getting an abortion and mused, “Maybe it would have been for the best.”

“Telling a child at a very young age, whom you’re raising in the Catholic Church, that he was a miracle conception is a choice,” he writes. “Messy parenting, maybe, but it makes for another good story.”

Dirtbag, Massachusetts is full of good stories, most of which skirt ethical lines, such as Fitzgerald’s father taking him to Red Sox games and usually getting seats “so close you could smell the grass” by telling ushers that it was his son’s first game. (“I must have had a hundred first games.”) There is a roguish charm to the family’s story, not only in the illicit conception, the “happy accident,” but in how hard it seems that Fitzgerald’s parents were trying.

As a young child, the father, who struggled with alcoholism, read him The Hobbit and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The father would let his son accompany him on a bike while he ran along the Charles River. For a time, it was a vibrant little family, one that was intellectually alive. But there was also an ever-present grubby poverty and worsening relationship problems that caused his mother to cry herself to sleep at night and to overshare with her young son. Fitzgerald writes that his parents’ problems — “her sadness, his anger”— became his as well.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald himself was growing up rough around the edges. When he went to confession at age 12, “I told the priest about breaking into houses to raid liquor cabinets, lifting bottles from package stores and cigarettes from grocery stores, trading bottles and cigarettes for weed and mushrooms.” The priest himself could not cast the first stone; the story turns dark when young Isaac confesses a sexual encounter and the priest shows an unusual lurid interest in the details. That segues into a discussion of the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston — for a while, Fitzgerald’s mom worked at the cathedral while Bernard Law (archbishop of Boston from 1984 to 2002) was in charge and she would take him to work. As such, he has stories to tell, one truly concerning, although when his mother much later got around to asking him if he had ever been molested, he could say “no” honestly. But he likely came close.

Fitzgerald is no longer a practicing Catholic; he doesn’t even believe in God but says “I still pray anytime I’m in trouble, or feeling lost, or alone, which is to say I still do it almost daily.” He also has an attachment to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and has a tattoo with an image of the saint, among others. It’s a great metaphor for how any religious upbringing sinks into our pores and stays there, whether we want it there or not.

From there, Fitzgerald takes his substantial comic gifts to describe his stint as a fat kid (although the length of time that he was overweight appears greatly overstated), the joy he found in a high-school “fight club” inspired by the Edward Norton-Brad Pitt movie, and his experience at boarding school, after getting himself admitted on a full scholarship because he was so desperate to leave his dilapidated mill town. When he arrived, he didn’t even have sheets for his bed, or a jacket and tie to wear to the school’s first-night formal dinner. In a poignant moment that seems to sum up the deprivations of his childhood, Fitzgerald explains that he borrowed an overlarge jacket and tie from his Cape Cod roommate and stood there awkwardly, unsure of how to knot the tie. The roommate, who wasn’t a stereotypical prep-school jerk, took notice, and smoothly offered to help. It’s the kind of moment that sticks with you, and one that shows that Fitzgerald has humanity — and appreciates it in others.

There are chapters in the book that don’t work as well. If you’ve never heard of, and don’t care for, the band “The Hold Steady,” you are unlikely to care about them after reading Fitzgerald’s fanboy tribute. (That said, if you love the band, run and get a copy and jump immediately to page 78.) Fitzgerald’s love letter to his favorite bar is best if you, too, have a bar that works double duty as a home. And he abandons all pretenses of chronology after adulthood; jumping back, for example, to an incident at prep school (that I frankly wish were not now in my brain) after relating some stories of international travel.

But none of that prepares us for the discussion of Fitzgerald’s six months of “modeling” for a porn website, which is information I really didn’t want or need. (The book jacket only mentions bartending in San Francisco and smuggling medical supplies into Burma.) TMI. Truly.

After that, however, he slips into sentimental mode for a musing on family that gives hope that even the most messed up families on the planet — or least in Dirtbag, Massachusetts — can end on a sweet note. It’s not the book we want or expect, but maybe it’s a book some of us need. B

Book Notes

When the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer draw near to a close, it’s usually time for a new, highly anticipated, deeply reported book on the New England Patriots to appear, one that will finally be the “definitive story” of the NFL dynasty. Even in the absence of Tom Brady, we had one last year: It’s Better to Be Fearedby Seth Wickersham (Liveright, 528 pages).

This year: crickets. Other than a few self-published guides to fantasy football, there’s not a lot out there. Aside from an upcoming biography of Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson (Swagger, due out in November), the only marquee title welcoming the return of the football season is Rise of the Black Quarterback, What it Means for America by ESPN writer Jason Reid (Andscape, 288 pages). The book begins with the story of the first African American to become an NFL head coach, Fritz Pollard, and works its way up to legends-in-progress like Patrick Mahomes, Colin Kaepernick, Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray.

There’s also a new book on Jim Thorpe, the multisport athlete who was the first Native American to win a gold medal for Team USA in the Olympics. Path Lit By Lightning (Simon & Schuster, 672 pages) is not for anyone with only a casual history in Thorpe and his achievements, but resides in that “definitive history” genre.

It’s by Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss, who chronicles Thorpe’s excellence in football, baseball, basketball and the decathlon while also examining the more sobering realities of his life, such as his struggles with alcoholism. Thorpe is still considered by many to be the world’s greatest athlete, and there’s even a town in Pennsylvania named after him. Publisher’s Weekly calls this an essential work that “restores a legendary figure to his rightful place in history.”

Next, it’s part sports, part business and probably part self-help, but college football fanatics will want to check out The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban (Matt Holt, 256 pages) by John Talty. The book promises an inside look at how Saban, longtime coach of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, became “the greatest ever.” (Lou Holtz might like a word.) Presumably this builds upon Saban’s own inspirational book, How Good Do You Want to Be?, published in 2007, the year he took over at Alabama.

Finally, for those who insist NASCAR is a sport, Kyle Petty is out with Swerve or Die: Life at My Speed in the First Family of NASCAR Racing (St. Martin’s Press, 288 pages). Now retired and a commentator for NBC Sports, Petty is the son of the late NASCAR legend Richard Petty. It’s a gutsy title, given that his driver son, Adam, was killed in a practice run at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon 22 years ago.

Book Events

Author events

• TOM MOORE Andy’s Summer Playhouse (582 Isaac Frye Highway in Wilton; 654-2613, andyssummerplayhouse.org) and Toadstool Bookshop will present an event with Tom Moore, one of the authors of the bookGrease, Tell Me More, Tell Me More: Stories from the Broadway Phenomenon That Started It All on Friday, Aug. 19, at 5 p.m. at Andy’s Summer Playhouse. See andyssummerplayhouse.org/grease to RSVP to the event.

• CAROL BUSBY presents Sailing Against the Tide at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Saturday, Aug. 20, at 2 p.m. Free event; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• SPENCER QUINN presents Bark to the Future: A Chet & Bernie Mysteryat Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Aug. 18, at 6:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Aug. 28, at noon at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600). The Bookery event is BYOD: bring your own dog.

Poetry

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

Writers groups

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., 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 [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

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

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Category: Books

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Deluxe Edition 1, by Hitoshi Ashinano

Return of the Artisan, by Grant McCracken

Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald

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