nonfiction

when it feels like its creator is playing at Irvine Welsh-level primitiveness.
A surface read of this confessional invites comparisons
to the transgressive teen drama Skins, but Brooks’ work (Fences,
2009, etc.) feels richer as it explores generational angst and the
blue-black damage of adolescence.
An epistolary novel filled with black humor and fleeting
tenderness.
THEY EAT PUPPIES,
DON’T THEY
Buckley, Christopher
Twelve (352 pp.)
$25.99 | $11.95 e-book
Lg. Prt. $27.99 | May 8, 2012
978-0-4465-4097-1
978-1-4555-1105-1 e-book
978-1-4555-1347-5 Lg. Prt.
The title refers to the supposed culinary
propensities of the Chinese, but as
this novel makes clear, it’s said with more than a twist of irony.
Defense lobbyist Walter “Bird” McIntyre is not having a
good day, for his big push for aerospace contractor Groepping-
Sprunt to secure a multi-billion dollar contract for drones the
size of jumbo jets has fallen through. He retires to his modest
home, which he’s dubbed the Military Industrial Duplex, to
plot a new direction for his life. Fortuitously, he quickly links
up with Angel Templeton, a sexy, frighteningly unsentimental
and ultraconservative pundit—so conservative she’s named
her son Barry Goldwater Templeton—who has a wacko plan
to embarrass the Chinese by claiming their secret service is
planning to assassinate the Dalai Lama. Blindsided by the false
media campaign, the Chinese are caught by surprise but need
to deal with the crisis, artificially induced though it may be.
McIntyre has to balance both domestic and political troubles
when his wife, Myndi, is named to the United States equestrian
team that’s scheduled to have a meet in China, one that might
be canceled owing to the newest Sino-American conflict. And
things get really complicated when, predictably, Bird and Angel
begin an affair—and the Dalai Lama develops pheochromocytoma,
and then dies. Buckley handles all of these strange machinations
with a breezy style and loves mixing the fictional with
the real—for example, by having Angel Templeton engage in a
mano a mano debate on Chris Matthews’ Hardball.
A lively and politically spirited read. (Author tour to New
York, Washington, D.C., Fairfield (Conn.), Columbus, Austin, Denver,
Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle)
A DOG’S JOURNEY
Cameron, W. Bruce
Forge (336 pp.)
$24.99 | May 8, 2012
978-0-7653-3053-6
The second half of a marathon voyage
through the rhythms of life from a
dog’s-eye view.
Cameron’s 2010 bestseller A Dog’s
Purpose recounted the spiritual journey of
a dog as he struggled to find meaning in
his relationships with people. This sequel picks up with Buddy,
the good dog who looked after his master Ethan his whole life.
Shortly before dying, Buddy has a visceral reaction to toddler
Clarity June, causing the pooch to rethink his position: “I loved
CJ as much and in the same way as I had loved Ethan,” the dog,
now reborn as “Molly,” says. “So had I been wrong that my purpose
was to love Ethan” The new poodle shepherds troubled
CJ through the perils of adolescence, from a tango with bulimia
to a romantic triangle. After Molly disappears, we meet Max, a
hyperactive Chihuahua who falls into CJ’s lap. By now, CJ is an
aspiring actress living in New York City who sidelines as (what
else) a dog walker. The novel is an undemanding but harmless
retread up to this point, when it leaps headlong into syrupy storytelling
that makes The Bridge to Terabithia look like Trainspotting
by comparison. CJ suffers a debilitating illness that puts her
into a coma, Max meets his first cat and an old friend reenters
CJ’s life at a critical juncture. No one remains unscathed in the
book’s circuitous second half.
This maudlin sequel is overkill.
A LAND MORE
KIND THAN HOME
Cash, Wiley
Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.)
$24.99 | Apr. 17, 2012
978-0-06-208814-7
Up beyond Asheville, near where
Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee,
evil has come to preach in a house of worship
where venomous snakes and other
poisons are sacraments.
Cash’s debut novel explores Faulkner-O’Connor country, a
place where folks endure a hard life by clinging to God’s truths
echoing from hardscrabble churches. With Southern idiom as
clear as crystal mountain air, Cash weaves the narrative from
multiple threads. Jess Hall is the 9-year-old son of Ben and Julie
and beloved younger brother of gentle Stump, his mute, autistic
sibling. Clem Barefield is county sheriff, a man with a moral
code as tough, weathered and flexible as his gun belt. Adelaide
Lyle, once a midwife, is now community matriarch of simple
faith and solid conscience. Carson Chambliss is pastor of River
Road Church of Christ. He has caught Stump spying, peering
into the bedroom of his mother Julie, while she happened to be
entertaining the amoral pastor. Julie may have lapsed into carnal
sin, but she is also a holy fool. Chambliss convinces Julie to
bring Stump to the church to be cured by the laying on of hands.
There, Stump suffers a terrible fate. Cash’s characters are brilliant:
Chambliss, scarred by burns, is as remorseless as one
of his rattlesnakes; Addie, loyal to the old ways, is still strong
enough to pry the church’s children away from snake-handling
services; Barefield is gentle, empathetic and burdened by tragedy.
Stump’s brother Jess is appealingly rendered—immature,
confused and feeling responsible for and terrified by the evil he
senses and sees around him. As lean and spare as a mountain
ballad, Cash’s novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could
easily have been expanded to epic proportions.
An evocative work about love, fate and redemption.
(Author appearances in Asheville, Jackson, Oxford and Raleigh-Durham.
Agent: Nat Sobel)
THE INVITATION
Cherian, Anne
Norton (288 pp.)
$25.95 | May 14, 2012
978-0-393-08160-2
After 25 years in the United States,
four Indian friends living in California
are forced to re-evaluate their lives in
this novel about the costs and benefits
of assimilation.
Vic, Frances, Jay and Lali, newly arrived
from India, met as graduate students at UCLA. But while they
may have been lumped together as Indian immigrants, they
come from very different regions, religions and socio-economic
classes, and those differences have shaped their experiences in
America. Vic, from a poor farming community he was desperate
to escape, has had the most financial success while remaining
the least assimilated. He returned to India for an arranged
marriage and is unhappy with how Americanized his wife has
In the Shadow of
BABYLON
BY JOHN SCHWARTZ
ISBN: 9781461107132. Paperback: $15.00
CAN A BOOK CHANGE THE WORLD
“Many readers will be convinced that a literary
discovery of this magnitude really might change
the course of contemporary politics, so confident
and convincing is the vision of this novel.”
“A wonderfully written, provocative novel!”
“Lyrical . . . Mystical . . . The prose is something
tobehold...Bestpageturner fashion!”
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