BOOKFINDS

The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith

I realized how wide-reaching and eclectic the world of young adult literature could be when I picked up Kirsten Smith’s novel, THE GEOGRAPHY OF GIRLHOOD. Written entirely in poetry, this “novel” offers some of the most perceptive and insightful glimpses into the mind of a young girl stuck smack dab in the middle of teenage angst. She is lost and confused and trying to make sense of it all through her poetry. It is an absolute gem of a book and many of the poems stayed with me for a long time. It is also unlike anything I have ever read and was such a joy! Here is an excerpt:

One day, I’ll find my way away from here

and go somewhere real

and do something great

and be someone wonderful.

One day, I will be standing at the shore

of a completely different body of water

and it will be big and wild and dangerous

and it will be like this one

never even existed.

This is the first poem from the book and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt an immediate connection with the protagonist Penny Morrow and the confusion she felt with her life. What more do teenagers dream of doing than living a life far bigger than the one they are currently living?

When I read the author’s biography and discovered that she was the cowriter of Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, I was pleasantly surprised. The poem that Julia Stiles reads at the end of 10 Things was one of my favorite moments in that movie and that’s exactly what reading this book was like.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF GIRLHOOD came out a few years ago, but I just had to weigh in on this incredible tale.

Update: I just checked out Kirsten Smith’s website and it looks like she also wrote THE UGLY TRUTH, which is out now with Katherine Heigl…I think I know what I will be doing this weekend!

Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin

I initially read about Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire in Elle Magazine. They ran a glowing review that truly captivated me and had me running to read this book! It sounded unlike anything I had ever read.

Lila Nova is a recently divorced 32- year-old ad woman who’s too traumatized even to dip her toe into the dating scene. She has retreated to a characterless studio apartment on Manhattan’s Union Square with “no memories trapped in the walls or the floorboards. No arguments or harrowing scenes of unrequited love staring at me from the bathroom mirror.” Then she catches her boss in a revolting act of Peeping Tomism at a supermodel ad shoot. But this sad-sack everywoman could just as easily have been christened India Jones by first-time novelist Margot Berwin in her shameless guilty pleasure of a romp, Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire ( Pantheon), because soon one David Exley, a gorgeously rough-hewn plant-seller dude at the local greenmarket, takes Lila down a rabbit hole into an adventure combining the kinetic, cinematic razzle- dazzle of a Spielberg fantasia with the Mesoamerican metaphysical mojo of Carlos Castaneda, who provides the novel’s epigraph and a good deal of its botanically hallucinatory, shape-shifting animal spirits.

True, the whole enterprise has a faintly schematic, paraliterary air about it, until the mysterious Armand, who runs a plantfestooned Laundromat on First Avenue, lures Lila into an increasingly desperate rare-plant expedition and vision quest in Mexico’s Yucatán that involves black panthers, poisonous snakes, scorpions, and— putting Lila in a very sticky situation—both Mr. Exley and the Adonis-like son of a Huichol Indian shaman. The question of who’s using who here opens onto a bewildering hall of mirrors as Lila finds she must draw on her untapped spiritual strengths to extricate herself from a fatally compromised, and compromising, position.

Berwin is a former ad copywriter who spent a spell in a rural village in the Yucatán and in fact has a friend who owns a Laundromat stuffed with plants, as well as a pal named Armand (the book is dedicated to him). She contends that all resemblances to persons living or dead pretty much stop there. And I have no idea what she was smoking when she cooked up this sultry, psychedelic summer soufflé of a read, to which Julia Roberts has already snapped up the film rights, but…I’ll have some of that!

As I was reading the book, I discovered that Christina Schwartz, author of Drowning Ruth, All is Vanity, and So Long at the Fair, had written a superb review of the book on Amazon. com. She had me at “lush and steamy summer read.”

Debut novelist Margot Berwin gives her fecund imagination free play in this lush and steamy summer read. Recently divorced and craving a blank slate, 30-something advertising copywriter Lila Nova moves into a new studio apartment “with absolutely no character” on Union Square. Lila, the sort of contemporary heroine given to amusing self-deflating wisecracks, is not, however, destined to inhabit a clean, white box for long. Within a few chapters, packed with romantic betrayal, plant lore and a couple of visits to a surreal Laundromat in the East Village, she’s on her way to “high adventure” in the Yucatan rain forest, where she’ll encounter ancient magic, poisonous creatures, a murderous exotic plant dealer, and, yes, true love. A wildly inventive novel as vivid and colorful as a jungle flower.

So with all this buildup I was worried that the book would not live up to the expectations. It more than exceeded my expectations! I was so absorbed in the world created by Berwin that I had to consciously pull myself out in order to get anything done. Berwin has written a stunning debut that is filled with adventure, love, betrayal, and an entire world of plants.

The story is told in first person and it resonates beautifully with the personal discovery theme of the novel. I found myself pulling quotes from the novel and frantically scribbling them down trying not to disrupt my rapture with the novel. Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire has already been acquired by Julia Roberts to produce and star in the film version.

This is such a great summer read and I’m sure Margot Berwin will have a long and successful career! I am eagerly anticipating her next release.

EX Miss California Signs Book Deal

Carrie Prejean was stripped of the Miss California title last month, but don’t worry she has a new job: Author. Prejean will publish a memoir titled “Still Standing” with Regency, a conservative publisher. Prejean is best known for drawing the ire of blogger Perez Hilton saying she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. Prejean believes that her beliefs cost her the crown, but really she was skipping events and speaking out against gay marriage in public.

Last Days With Farrah

Alana Stewart is publishing a diary she kept during her time with Farrah Fawcett. “My Journey with Farrah” will be released in August by William Morrow, a divison of HarperCollins. Some of the proceeds will go to the Farrah Fawcett Foundation for cancer research.

Barnes & Noble and the Plastic Logic

Top bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. yesterday launched the world’s largest online bookstore, with over 700,000 titles that can be read on various platforms including Apple’s iPhone and personal computers. Barnes & Noble will also be the exclusive provider of digital books on the Plastic Logic e-reader, an ultra-thin, 8.5-by-11-inch wireless device, due next year.

The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham

The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham

The Gatecrasher has been on my “to be read” list for so long that I had almost given up on it completely. I’m so glad that I didn’t! The moment I started reading Madeleine Wickham’s modern day novel of manners, I was hooked! The story has humor, suspense and questions morality that kept me flipping pages at a non-stop pace.

I loved the breezy, upbeat manner in which Ms. Wickham chose to tell the story. It was so fluid that it almost played out like a movie. Wickham, who also writes under the enormously popular pseudonym Sophie Kinsella (of Shopaholic fame) wrote The Gatecrasher in third person as opposed to the Shopaholic’s intimate first. This distance allowed me to understand each characters’ personal obstacles in relation to to each other with equal sympathy. Even Fleur Daxeny, the central character of the novel who makes her living swindling wealthy widowers, becomes sympathetic and a character I really enjoyed reading about.

Wickham did a wonderful job developing her characters while keeping the plot moving forward. The Gatecrasher is a marvelous book for a rainy day or a trip to the sunny beach!

Another Critic Gets Bashed

It’s open season on book critics apparently. On the heels of the Alice Hoffman-Roberta Silman feud, Alain de Botton is upset with the fact that Caleb Crain gave his book, The Pleasures of Sorrow and Work, a bad review. De Botton commented on Crain’s blog:

Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.

Geesh. Hoffman’s remarks pale in comparison but are still pretty bad. Hoffman got a lukewarm review for her new novel, The Story Sisters, in the Boston Globe by critic Roberta Silman. Hoffman on her twitter called Silman a moron and an idiot. She also insulted the Globe and the city of Boston. Hoffman goes on to give out Silman’s email address and phone number. Hoffman apologized and took down her twitter account but was mad at the fact that Sillman, gave away the plot of her novel. Memoirist Diane Joseph said that Hoffman’s apology was pretty passive aggressive.

Mary Elizabeth Williams has great article in Salon about Hoffman and past author-critic feuds. There are some good ones. Stanley Crouch vs. Dale Peck. Caleb Carr vs. Laura Miller. Richard Ford vs. Colson Whitehead and ironically Alice Hoffman was once the in the critic’s place when she gave Richard Ford a bad review for The Sportswriter. Mrs. and Mrs. Ford went out back and shot copies of Hoffman’s book with a gun.

Touché!

{image courtesy of Salon.com}

The Power of Book Clubs

Great article at The Daily Beast on the power of book clubs to boost an author’s success. Many fiction writers are marketing themselves to book clubs to enhance their brand and promote their work.

Penguin’s Watercooler Invites Jane Green

Penguin is hosting bestselling author, Jane Green, at a live chat over at The Water Cooler, July 6th at 2pm EST. Head over there to ask Jane your pressing questions.

Not only do I love Jane’s books (I typically devour them the minute they are released) but I also love that she is so active on the internet. She blogs, Tweets, and updates her Facebook page regularly. She also posts personal photos, like the inside of her living room at Christmas, on a frequent basis. I love when authors invite readers into their lives. I will be posting a review to DUNE ROAD in the very near future. I am absolutely adoring it, so stay tuned!

Jennifer Weiner Weighs in on Alice Hoffman

Jennifer Weiner’s newest book, BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, will be releasing this month. As an author, she must be eagerly anticipating her own reviews surfacing over the next few weeks and months. As a human being with feelings and emotions, she is probably filled with intense fear. Great reviews can boost you up and send your soul soaring. Negative reviews can leave you in a curled-up ball of emotions. Best selling novelist, Alice Hoffman, recently defended her recent release, THE STORY SISTERS, against a negative review that ran in The Boston Globe. The story about Alice’s rantings spread like wildfire across the internet. Jennifer weighs in on Alice’s unfortunate headline-grabbing actions over at The Huffington Post.