TBR: Doll Parts by Penny Zang

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Doll Parts is a dual-timeline suspense novel about two best friends whose past at an women’s college—and a secret club obsessed with Sylvia Plath—comes back to haunt them. It’s also about grief, friendship, and the culture’s obsession with beautiful, dead women.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I most enjoyed creating my character Nikki, a college freshman who is grieving the loss of her mother. She listens to loud music (lots of Courtney Love), wears dark, smeared eyeliner and dresses she stole from her school theater department’s costume room. Every time I thought I knew what she would do next, she surprised me on the page.

 

Characters like this, who are at transition points in their life, are especially fascinating to me because those are periods of my life that seem to linger the most in my memory.

 

The most challenging character for me was writing Nikki’s daughter, Caroline, who appears almost twenty years later in the novel. I wanted Nikki and Caroline to feel and sound different but be similar enough (the ways mothers and daughters often are) that it echoed across the two different timelines. It took a lot of revision!

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The lows: all the rejection and insecurity that came early in the process. It never ends. Even once you have an agent, even after you have a book deal, there are rejections at every stage.

 

The highs: getting the news of my book deal will forever be the best memory because it was the most ordinary day (work, my son’s swim practice, making dinner), but suddenly my world changed. I also got to sign a copy of my book at ThrillerFest in NYC this summer before the book’s release. Such a surreal experience!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite writing advice is to step away. Pause. Take a break. Any version of that advice is what I tell my students and constantly have to tell myself. Things unlock when I walk away, and I know I’m not alone. Also, it isn’t healthy for anyone to sit for too long, staring at a computer screen. We need to move our bodies and tend to our other hobbies, our families, our pets. Every time I find myself getting frustrated with my writing, I remember that walking away, even for five minutes, always helps.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was surprised by how little of my research actually made it into the book. I did so much research on Sylvia Plath, obsessively reading every biography (including the really big ones). It all added to the story in its own way in terms of tone and mood, and Plath’s legacy is very much part of the story, but the actual content of that research is hardly mentioned in the novel at all.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I originally had a different title for this book, and I didn’t think anyone could sway me to change it. When my editor came to me with the title Doll Parts, which is also the title of a song by Hole, I emailed my agent the following sentence: “I kinda love it.” Not only does it feel a little creepy, but it brings forth images of girlhood and resonates with one of the larger themes of the novel: the romanticization of dead women. And for readers who know the song, the 90s vibes are strong.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Well, my characters as college students eat a lot of sour candy and drink a lot of Dr Pepper. If you want an informal recipe for their favorite drink (which was, embarrassingly, also my favorite drink when I was much younger), mix Dr Pepper with coconut rum. It’s that simple. Bonus points if you drink it out of a TGI Friday’s kid’s cup with a lid so you can sneak it into concerts.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.pennyzang.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://bookshop.org/a/83168/9781464228148

 

SUBSTACK: https://pennyzang.substack.com/

 

 

TBR: The Unmapping by Denise S. Robbins

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

A mysterious phenomenon called ‘the unmapping’ causes city streets and neighborhoods to entirely rearrange each day, leading to broken down power grids and other such chaos. Our two main characters, Esme Green and Arjun Varma, work in the New York City Emergency Management Department; Arjun is in love with Esme, but Esme has a fiancé, who disappears on the first day. The book is about climate change, about disasters, and ultimately about humanity. Also, lucid dreaming cults.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I loved writing from Arjun’s perspective. He tries so hard—at his job, at friendship, at love—and fails in ways that are endearing to me and generally brings levity to this disaster story with his particular brand of neuroticism.

 

As for the one that gave me trouble, each chapter features a brief perspective from an unnamed character, and the hardest one to write was one of these side characters known as ‘the wife’. Her husband is a disaster prepper yet he himself goes missing the first day, and the wife, meanwhile, stays locked up at home, full of fear, until she gets pulled into a strange lucid-dreaming cult. At one point, I realized I didn’t know very much about her—who she was before all this. That bothered me, the not-knowing. Then I realized this missing sense of self was actually perfect for the story—that’s the type of person who would get swept away in dangerous ideas. I thought her story was about fear, but I learned it was about a missing selfhood.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Three years elapsed between when I finished the book and when I got the book deal. In that time, as I secured an agent and my agent pitched out The Unmapping, I kept writing madly, finishing two more books: a novel and a novella collection. When I heard that Bindery had put in an offer to publish The Unmapping, it was both a high and a low, because I went back to my draft and realized how much I had changed as a writer, and how much I wanted to change in this book. I’d really grown in three years! Luckily, they were responsive to my wishes to make some pretty massive edits, which were in line with what they wanted, too, so I said yes, then embarked on an utterly insane two months of rewriting. It was the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life, and very difficult, but also wonderful, with my mind always at least one foot in the dreamscape of the novel. Since then it’s only been high after high, working with an amazing team on editing, choosing the cover, and everything else that goes into turning a book from words on a page to a physical reality.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I am a diehard reader of George Saunders’s Substack, Story Club. In many of his essays he talks about the importance of finding and following the energy of a piece. Basically, when you read back what you wrote, what is it that gives off little sparks? Follow that. Let that energy lead the story. Take it as far as it can go.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

Writing this story involved discovery on every level. In a broad sense, when I was first working on this years ago, I didn’t realize I was writing a slanted analogy of climate change. I work in climate change advocacy, but considered my fiction as an escape from reality. Nope. It’s a disaster story very much about our own reality, even as it’s based on an unreal premise, and once I realized this, a lot clicked into place. On a smaller scale, when I was reviewing the book for copy edits I laughed out loud at a joke I’d included in the penultimate chapter—one I’d completely forgotten about. I took that as a good sign that I’d created characters with a life of their own.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I initially called it “Sidewalk n.” I graduated undergrad with a degree in statistics, so this is a super nerdy math reference, because in statistics, instead of solving for “x,” you work with “n,” which is the number of observations in your sample. The idea was that if all the sidewalks rearrange (along with everything else), the one you’re looking at is “n”: it could be anything. Also, the name sort of rhymes with “sidewalk ends.” My husband also loved this title because he’s also a big math nerd, but I secretly knew it was too esoteric, that no one would get it, and right there on the first page people were talking about cities becoming “unmapped,” so it just became obvious that I should name it after that.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

Oh, lord. In this book, people are mostly eating to survive. There are microwaved pizzas and American cheese sandwiches and Oreos and granola bars. Actually, there is one strange scene involving a table full of smoked fish. So maybe make a good bagel with cream cheese and lox while you eat this. That would probably taste better than the cheese sandwich.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://denisesrobbins.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-unmapping-denise-s-robbins/21660442?ean=9781964721064

 

SUBSTACK: https://deniserobbins.substack.com/

 

 

TBR: Behold the Bird in Flight, A Novel of an Abducted Queen by Terri Lewis

 Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Behold the Bird in Flight is a coming-of-age story and a royal love triangle filled with danger and longing and inspired by real historical figures—Isabelle d’Angoulême, her fiancé Hugh de Lusignan, and King John of Magna Carta fame. Set in a period that valued women only for their dowries and childbearing, Isabelle has been mainly erased by men, but the medieval chronicles suggest a woman who developed her own power and wielded it.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Isabelle was an absolute delight. I imagined her as a stubborn young girl with romantic tendencies and let her loose. That stubbornness served her well in a world where women were disregarded; the romantic fantasies got her into trouble. I loved watching her grow into a strong woman capable of acting to save herself and even others.

 

Isabelle’s betrothed, Hugh de Lusignan, was the most difficult. He came to me as a dreamer, not a doer, and under the thumb of his powerful father, but somehow Isabelle had to love him.

 

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I started the novel in 2009 and began to query in 2014. Several agents mentioned a problem with Isabelle’s youth, but she was a real historical figure and I couldn’t just make her older. I set the novel aside to marinate. When I picked it up again, I decided to show how a medieval girl prepared for the world earlier than a modern girl. After another round of queries (87 in all, with seven requests), a friend suggested I try another route. The novel was accepted by She Writes Press two months after submission, a nanosecond in publishing time.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Editing is not rewriting. Polishing the prose won’t fix structural or character issues. Your words may seem engraved on the page, especially if you’ve lived with them for years, but be brave: cut, write new, merge characters. That lesson took me a long time to learn.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was surprised how entertaining I found King John. His reputation as the worst English king is probably earned, but in person he was growly, full of excuses and complaints, oddly insecure, but when he got mad, he let loose. Not the kind of character I’d written before. I mean, swords and threats and swearing. As I wrote, I became convinced he really loved Isabelle and only treated her badly when he felt she didn’t love him alone. Which of course, she didn’t, at least in my telling.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

My title came late. Because religion resonated through the middle ages, I had given each chapter a quasi Biblical quote. Curse Not the King. Suffer the Little Children. Also, Isabelle always noticed birds, not only in the sky and woods, but the hawks men carried, a little chicken she took into her heart. After several misfires, my subconscious handed me Behold the Bird. I added in Flight for her curiosity about the world and her need to flee danger. Voila!

 

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

 

Isabelle has a sweet tooth and loves honey balls. (She uses them to bribe a skinny guard…) She also loves eels which look like a ball of black string licorice. I doubt a modern audience would like the latter, but here’s a recipe to the former, baked not deep fried for ease: https://www.almanac.com/recipe/baked-honey-balls-italian-struffoli

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://TerriLewis1.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Behold-the-Bird-in-Flight/Terri-Lewis/9781647429102

 

SUBSTACK: TerriLewis1.Substack.com

 

           

 

TBR: ARE YOU HAPPY? by Lori Ostlund

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The nine stories in this collection explore class, identity, loneliness, and the specter of violence that looms over women and the LGBTQ+ community. For personal reasons, I spend a lot of time with characters who  try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and notions of self. I often say that I write sad, funny stories, and I think that is true of this collection.

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

The answer to both questions is the same: the final story, which is a short novella entitled “Just Another Family,” gave me the most trouble and the most pleasure, probably for the same reason. That is, when you struggle for a long time with a story, as I did with this one, the pleasure of finally figuring it out is considerable. I don’t know when I started the story, but my records indicate that I got my first rejection in 2015. I kept rewriting and sending it out, and it kept getting rejected. I set it aside finally for around five years, and when I returned to it in late 2022, the voice just kicked in and pulled me along, and the story nearly tripled in length. In the process, the story became more hopeful, the humor darker, the main character more dynamic.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

During the pandemic, my former agent went out with a novel that was not quite ready. She was struggling with the pressures of the pandemic, as we nearly all were, and the submission process fell apart. We had always had a good relationship, so it was with some sadness that I parted ways with her. By this point, I had stopped writing, a fallow period that lasted a couple of years. I wondered whether I would ever write again, but then one day something turned back on, and I sat down at my desk and opened up the novella that I mentioned above. I wrote several more stories, and these combined with stories that I had written and published in journals earlier formed the basis of ARE YOU HAPPY?, which meant that I found myself in the awful position of having to query agents with a story collection. I was lucky enough to secure representation by an agent I had long admired. The process of selling the collection in some ways went smoothly, and in other ways was stressful as hell. I got an offer from Emily Bell, whom I had nearly worked with on my last book. Since then, she had moved from FSG to Zando, and shortly after I accepted the offer for a two-book deal, she moved to Astra House, ultimately taking me with her. There were lots of twists and turns along the way, but that is the tame version.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to write for an audience of one. The advice, on the surface, seems counterintuitive, but the most unusual voices—which is what I am always drawn to—details and observations evolve out of this advice, I think. In my case, if my wife—who is my first and usually only reader—laughs or understands the nuance, I go with it.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

Oh, lots of things surprised me, but one of the things that surprised me only later, when a reader pointed it out during the galleys process, was that there were lots of cats in the book and they were all named Gertrude. I have never had a cat named Gertrude, but I thought it was a funny name for a cat, I guess, and somehow the joke just kept getting retold.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

When I submitted the book to my now agent during the querying process, I had tentatively titled it JUST ANOTHER FAMILY, which was the name of the novella. The title works for the novella, but felt flat as a book title, not memorable. Another story was entitled “The Peeping Toms,” and I had toyed with that as a title also, since some of the stories deal with themes of voyeurism and being or feeling watched. When my agent and I had our first conversation about the book, he said, “Why not call it Are You Happy?” That was the name of another story, yet somehow I had never considered this as a title, but as soon as Henry said it, I knew that this was the title.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

In “Clear as Cake,” several of the scenes take place in a dive bar that I spent a lot of time in during college, and the only food available came from a huge jar that sat on the counter. It was filled with pickled gizzards, which I occasionally sampled. In the story, I went with pickled eggs.

 

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

https://www.loriostlund.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: Either your favorite independent bookstore or Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/are-you-happy-stories-lori-ostlund/21741930

 

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “The Gap Year”:

https://electricliterature.com/the-gap-year-by-lori-ostlund/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ_GixleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFhVmRRTVROd2ZKNmRaSkRNAR6-H4MdyotRY5R41hpOPgBGlEQ_p1fSFIibs7GQObHcrEP28_GPH1WB2LsAlg_aem_b__YCipHXPXDOl6kzDlSlQ

 

TBR: Duet for One by Martha Anne Toll

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Duet for One is a lush and rewarding love story that follows the journey from grief to love within the world of classical music.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I most enjoyed creating three members of the supporting cast. The first is Thaddeus, a cellist who looks and sounds more like a lumberjack. Thaddeus is a person who calls it like it is. He’s an important counterweight to Adam Pearl, as Adam pushes through/and avoids grief following his mother’s death.

 

I also loved fleshing out Yvette, a professor of Caribbean studies at Penn who is humorous and grounded, in contrast to Dara’s tendencies toward seriousness and self-absorption. The same is true for Dara’s old friend Lydia, a fierce pianist whose cynicism masks a compassionate person whose life is filled with struggle.

 

I have worked hard to bring Adam Pearl to the page. Over time, as he’s moved to center stage, it’s been a challenge to render him with nuance. He’s a gifted violinist, who needs to know himself a lot better. He can be angsty but also kind and generous. He’s conflicted, like all of us.  

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

This book took twenty years to get born. There were a lot of lows. Too many rejections to count, including an agent in the distant past. Highs include my yearly revision of Duet for One, a book that is close to my heart and that has grown and thickened with time. Another high has been trying to render music on the page, which will always be a failing proposition, but brings me great joy!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Get your tush in the chair and ignore all writing advice.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I don’t know if it counts as a surprise, but if you would have told me in 2004 that this book was going to be published in twenty years, I would have been surprised on all fronts—that it was getting published and that it would take so long!

 

How do you approach revision?

 

For me, revision is the heart of writing. Everything happens there. I revise a lot as I am in process. I do multiple entire-book revisions where I review character arcs, nuance, interior life, plot, dialogue, and structure structure structure. My last revision is the one where I put every word under a microscope to ensure it has a purpose. Otherwise, that word has to go!

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

I wouldn’t say there are foods associated with this book (other than coffee, there is a lot of caffeine!), but I love to cook and bake and so I commend you on this question!

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.marthaannetoll.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781646036004

 

 

 

TBR: Voices in the Air by Kasia Jaronczyk

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

On April 30, 1982, two women and their families hijack a Polish passenger plane flying from Breslau to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape Martial Law in Communist Poland and find safety in West Berlin. Inspired by real events, Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of four women hijackers: a cotton spinner, whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter, a pregnant fourteen-year-old who has visions of the Virgin Mary, an ambitious young filmmaker, and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. Will they find happiness beyond the Iron Curtain or was the hijacking not worth the risk?

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 

I had the most fun creating the character of Ania, the flight attendant. I immediately loved her irreverent, provocative voice, especially in her interactions with her inhibited and rural cousin, but underneath that bravado was a woman desperately in love with a married man and willing to do anything to be with him. After the hijacking I felt great sympathy for her stubborn belief, in spite of everyone, that her daughter will one day be able to respond to her and communicate.

 

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I struggled with writing about Julia (the filmmaker) the most. I knew that she would be a witness to the hijacking, and that years later she would interview the women involved, but I didn’t know what her story would be. I felt that I already had all the perspectives I needed in the other female characters, until I realized that Julia would have a daughter Zuza who was, in a way, “hijacked” by her grandmother who acted like she was her mother. Julia would have to decide between Zuza and her chance to stay in the West. Julia’s story also required the most research, as the movie industry in Communist Poland was an involved process, complicated by the many levels of censorship involved. The themes of ambiguous morality,  censorship and self-censorship became very important in the novel.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Before I wrote Voices in the Air I had published a short story collection Lemons (Mansfield Press, 2017), edited an anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories, Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017), and wrote another novel, which remains unpublished. I spent a long time querying that first novel, and after receiving no offers, I gave up on it. In the meantime, I wrote Voices in the Air, and again, I had a few full requests from agents, but ultimately it was rejected. I was growing very frustrated and depressed because nobody seemed to want my novels. I switched gears and queried small presses in Canada and some in the US, which one can do without an agent, and with which I’ve had good luck before. I eventually received two offers of publication and accepted one. Palimpsest Press publishes great poetry and stylistically innovative novels, and Aimee Parent Dunn is an amazing editor. A big positive of publishing with a small press is that the author has more influence on the book design, cover and interior, which I appreciate very much.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write first, edit later - the first draft is a bad draft. This lets you actually finish your work without letting the inner critic sabotage the process.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

   

Sometimes during writing your mind spontaneously comes up with an unexpected and yet perfect solution to a problem, or a connection, or something that happens that you know is just right. It is a magical moment and feels amazing. The creative process is hard work; you are consciously inventing characters or a plot, choosing between different possibilities, following different paths that might lead nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, you receive this surprising revelation like a gift from the writing gods.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Titles can be so difficult – they need to indicate what the book is about, the tone of the work, the genre, but at the same time they can’t be too obvious, too obscure, or misleading. The choice becomes even more complicated when the novel in question is written about a different time and culture and the title needs to be more explanatory that it would have been if it were published in the same country and language. Certain phrases and words can have different connotations and be less obvious to a different audience.

 

I had a running list of titles, including Escape to the West; Flight over the Iron Curtain; Escape to Western Paradise; Hijacked to the West, but they all seemed too obvious and too general, plus they implied an action/adventure/thriller genre, which might attract readers who would be disappointed to find out it is a literary novel told from a female perspective.

 

I then came up with Women Hijackers, (which actually would have worked better in Polish, as a single word Hijackers in the feminine form), and finally, The Wives of Hijackers, which seemed an intriguing, sellable title, but perhaps a too gaudy. Air Partisans was too mysterious.

 

It was my writer friends who suggested Voices in the Air. I feel like this title indicates a literary novel, it may be too subtle, but it encompasses the female voices, the plot, the themes of the novel, as well as its unconventional structure which includes documentary film-style interviews with the hijackers. It also evokes a feeling of loss, an echo, and regret, which reflect the mood of the novel.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Voices in the Air is a nostalgic book for me, as it takes place in Poland, where I was born and lived until I was 14 years old, so of course I mention Polish dishes that I particularly love. One of them is pickle soup, made with kosher pickles and cream, and bigos, a thick sauerkraut and cabbage stew with meat, sausages and wild mushrooms. I recommend them both; they are delicious and not that difficult to make. Here are the recipes:

 

https://www.thekitchn.com/polish-pickle-soup-recipe-23628556

 

https://www.polishyourkitchen.com/polish-hunters-stew-bigos/

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kasiajaronczyk.weebly.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://palimpsestpress.ca

 

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/voices-in-the-air-kasia-jaronczyk/

 

 

 

 

2024: Best Books (I Read)

Time for my annual list, along with the accompanying list of caveats: these are, simply put, the best books I read over the course of the year. I try to narrow things down to 10ish books, which is awfully hard. I definitely read (and ADORE!) books by my writer friends, but I try to keep those books off this list. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: ALL lists are subjective. In my personal definition of “best,” I mean some magical alchemy of this book at this time that hit me this way. The order is chronological, so don’t spend time parsing out why one book is first, another last. Also, I had to eliminate some VERY EXCELLENT books to keep my list tidy, and YES, I feel terrible about doing so.

 

THE GUEST by Emma Cline

I pretty much spent the entire year recommending this dark and suspenseful book about an aging “party girl” who needs to find a way to get through a week in the Hamptons now that she has nowhere to live. Crashing parties, making bad decisions, meeting the wrong people, a phone she doesn’t fix…this book isn’t for everyone, as the reader needs some tolerance of characters you’d like to shake sense into. But this book I succeeds extraordinarily at carrying suspense until (literally) the very last word on the page. (And beyond, honestly; I thought about the ending for days.) I could never get enough of Cline’s nuanced—and tart—observations about socio-economic class and girls/women. This book is one of two on this list that earned a place on my Favorite Books bookshelf…which is saying a lot, as that shelf is jam-packed!

  

I AM ONE OF YOU FOREVER by Fred Chappell

Fred Chappell was a beloved North Carolina author, and this book—about growing up in western, rural NC—is possibly his most beloved book. Not exactly a novel, not exactly a collection of stories or essays, reading this book is like listening to a master storyteller weave tales about way back, carrying your mind to a time and place you can’t imagine actually existed even as you utterly believe it did. Flirting with magical realism, using an episodic structure which may not appeal to everyone—but persevere and you’ll be rewarded by delightful humor and insights into human nature. If you’re  a writer, here’s a master class in dialogue. Not to sound obsessed with last words and final lines, but when I mentioned on social media that I was reading this book, at least a dozen people commented that the last line is perfect. They’re right!

 

JAMES by Percival Everett

There should be more awards so this book can win them all. A novel in conversation with Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—but don’t stress if you haven’t read Twain or if it’s been a while because James (aka Jim, the runaway slave in Huck Finn) is his own man here, with his own agenda and agency. This book is smart in every possible way, written with an understated writing style that’s never show-offy, only perfect. Some hard, awful things happen in this book, as one would expect given the subject matter (so be warned), and that understated writing serves to make them all seem more awful. (A master class in writing about trauma.) This book absolutely must be in any conversation about The Great American Novel.

 

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng

Lots of levels to this novel, which I picked up at a used book sale. At first I thought I was getting a juicy story about family dysfunction in the 70s Midwest, complete with a missing girl, but the book expands to ponder secrets and love and women’s roles and racism. Don’t let the five (!) points of view scare you—Ng handles them all with panache. I was utterly immersed in this novel.

  

TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis

I admit that I’m a horrible person for wondering why Charles Portis rated a volume of Collected Works in the Library of America series. I mean, come on! The True Grit guy…really? Then I read this book, and now I know. What a stunner! Great voice, clear vision, funny as hell, so much plot (but not too much), awesome characters down to the minor folks. I hadn’t seen the movie before reading the book (I know…what’s wrong with me?), so then I watched the Jeff Bridges version. That movie gets 5/5 stars for sure, but the book gets 10/5. My husband wearied of my saying, “Well, that scene is much funnier in the book.”

 

LESS by Andrew Sean Greer

I read this on my birthday, which is perfect because at its core, it’s a book about age/aging and love/loving, though it’s also a sparkling, funny book about a writer on a crazy book tour where everything goes wrong, trying to outrun his broken heart. This book won the Pulitzer, which surely is a minor miracle—not because it didn’t deserve the honor, but because those committees are always so Serious & Important. Good for them for finding Serious & Important in the guise of funny and charming.

 

RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles

Anyone who’s been following my lists knows I’m a sucker for this plotline: “girl comes to New York City to work in publishing.” So how could I not love this novel set in 1938 about a working class girl with gumption and sass who charms her way through Manhattan, first in the typing pool before eventually becoming an editor, all the while running with a glamorous crowd? I’m not saying this is the most literary novel ever written, but I found it literary enough with appealing characters. I know Amor Towles is a wildly popular writer, and I certainly understand why.

 

LIGHT YEARS by James Salter

One of those books that writers are always insisting writers should read. I listened to this sage advice and bought the book…so long ago that my copy contains a bookmark that refers to the bookstore in the World Trade Center. (!) All these years later I’ve finally cracked it open to read, and wow! The first paragraph caught me, promising an extraordinary book ahead. While the plot (such as it is) seems basic—the story of a marriage—this book’s ambition is to capture life in all its seasons and complications, which it does exquisitely. Yes, it’s episodic—yes, there’s a weird lack of transitions—yes, I found myself wondering if this book would survive the gauntlet of agents and marketing departments today—yes, this book requires close and careful attention. Yes, this book went straight onto my Favorite Books bookshelf.

 

THE LINE OF BEAUTY by Alan Hollinghurst

Oh, the power of the New York Times Book Review and its list of the 100 best books of the 21^st century. Somehow I had never heard of Alan Hollinghurst, which surprised me as I like to think I’ve at least heard of everything and everyone! (I haven’t, but as I said, I like to think I have.) So, off to the library to check this out, in every sense of the word. I found the going slow at first—too many characters; set in 1980s London, so I lacked a frame of reference for many allusions; the pace felt leisurely aka tediously slow. And yet. Such smart sentences! Such depth of character! I persevered, and about 2/3 of the way through I encountered a brilliant and hilarious chapter (summer holiday in France, if you’ve read the book), followed by another brilliant and even more hilarious chapter (party with Margaret Thatcher), and I was ALL IN to the end, which was so brilliant and perfect that I sobbed. So, I returned the book to the library and bought a duplicate hardback edition from AbeBooks so I could have my own copy forever.

 

TRANSIT by Rachel Cusk

And, again, the power of the New York Times Book Review and its list of the 100 best books of the 21^st century which also included Rachel Cusk. I have heard of her, but I realized that I perpetually confuse her with Rachel Kushner, whose work I’ve read and not connected with. So, I thought I should see what’s what with this other Rachel. Oh, goodness—lots! Zero confusion now! (To be clear, this isn’t the book that was on the NYTBR list, but this is the book the library had.) I found myself admiring the autofictional feel of this novel—the second in a series about a recently divorced writer/mom living in modern Britain, basically getting through modern life (in this book, moving into a new [and awful] flat). But beyond those concrete concerns, the book ponders movement and “transit” in a brainy, thinky way that creates an elegant arc. One of those deceptive writing styles that feels so natural, that’s actually hard AF to pull off.

 

Three endnotes:

 

For my short story book club, I did a presentation on the Irish writer William Trevor, whose stories are stealthily devastating. If you’re not familiar with his work, here are three that will turn you into a fan:

“A Choice of Butchers”

“After Rain”

“A Day”

 ~~~

I have a standing free-flow writing date on Thursday afternoons, and I start each session by reading poetry (a strategy I highly recommend). Here are the books that kept me company throughout 2024 (to be transparent, these are writers I know IRL). If you’re looking for more poetry in your life, I suggest starting here:

 

CHARM OFFENSIVE by Ross White

WHIPSAW by Suzanne Frischkorn

BORN BACKWARDS by Tanya Olson

IF IN SOME CATACLYSM by Anna Leahy

A LITTLE BUMP IN THE EARTH by Tyree Daye

~~~

Finally, I'll indulge myself and mention some recently published novels/story collections/essays by friends that I absolutely ADORED:

 

SEX ROMP GONE WRONG by Julia Ridley Smith

A SEASON OF PERFECT HAPPINESS by Maribeth Fischer

OUR KIND OF GAME by Joanna Copeland

MISS SOUTHEAST by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

THE MARY YEARS by Julie Marie Wade

GREENWOOD by Mark Morrow

~~~

 

Hope your 2025 is filled with good books and a Favorite Books bookshelf that expands an inch or two or ten!

 

 

TBR: The Mary Years by Julie Marie Wade

TBR [to be read], a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The Mary Years is a nonfiction novella that chronicles one young woman’s quarter-century love affair with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Part bildungsroman and part televisual ekphrasis, this is the story of Mary Richards re-seen through the eyes of Julie Marie Wade.

 

Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which essay gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

My students tell me about writing fan fiction, how satisfying it is for them to take characters that exist in books and films and video games and create additional stories, even alternative stories, for their lives. Mistakenly, for years, I’ve thought I didn’t know anything at all about fan fiction, but the truth is, The Mary Years is a work of fan nonfiction, and I think I felt compelled to write it for similar reasons to those that inspire fan fiction: I wanted to explore how a fictional character (many, actually—a cast of fictional characters) can have as much influence over our lives as the real people who live and breathe alongside us.

 

Maybe we all live between real and fictional realms anyway, so this memoir, arranged in chapters that were individually published as “essays in episodes,” is my attempt at showing the ongoing straddle between my personal history and the television show that has been a touchstone for it since The Mary Tyler Moore Show first premiered on Nick at Nite in 1992. I’m not sure if the writing of this collection exemplifies any kind of courage, but I knew I had to write the book after Mary Tyler Moore, the real person who embodied the fictional character who deeply informed my real coming-of-age, passed away in early 2017. The Mary Years is nothing if not an elegy to her and for her as well.

 

I loved writing each essay in episodes, considering my own childhood in an insular Seattle suburb called Fauntlee Hills as an analog to Mary Richards’s Roseburg, the fictional Minnesota town where the character was from (“Fauntlee Hills Was My Roseburg: An Essay in Episodes, Prairie Schooner, 2020); exploring my first residence as an autonomous adult in Pittsburgh, the early years of wondering whether my partner Angie and I would “make it after all” in a place neither of us had ever visited before moving across the country together and starting a new life there (“Pittsburgh Was My Minneapolis: An Essay in Episodes, Tupelo Quarterly, 2018); and of course these more recent years in Miami, my life as a professor and mentor, taking on a kind of work where I might become a role model for others in the way Mary—both the person and the character—became a role model for me (“Miami is My Tipperary: An Essay in Episodes,” The Normal School, 2020). Let’s hope!

 

I might have had the most conspicuous fun writing “Lamonts Might Be My WJM” (Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, 2019) which explored my first real job—the one that wasn’t babysitting or teaching piano lessons or walking neighbors’ dogs—the first job where I earned a proper paycheck on a grainy blue background with those little perforated tabs you have to tear along the sides. The Mary Tyler Moore Show kindled in me a desire not only to work as part of a professional team but a desire for the friendships and camaraderie that might be forged because of working together. At seventeen, just before graduating from high school, I was hired by the (sadly now-defunct) department store Lamonts as a sales associate. Even the title sounded fancy to me! And I started meeting all these people—mostly middle-aged and older women—who had so much life experience in addition to their decades of retail experience, and most of whom were more than willing to share that experience with me. I wanted to bring my initiation into that workplace—but also into that new realm of womanhood—onto the page. I still think so often about my colleagues at Lamonts, who were really mentors, and all that I learned from them. They didn’t seem like Mary Richards, not one of them, but they shaped my life in significant ways, too. And when I finally left that job and moved onto a commissioned position selling shoes for JCPenney, I remember one of my mentors hugged me good-bye in the break room and said, knowing my deep love of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (everyone knew about that!), “We’re going to miss you, our sweet Mary girl.”

 

Probably the hardest part of this book to write was near the end of the essay-chapter “Miami Is My Tipperary,” the night I learned Mary Tyler Moore had died. I was teaching when it happened, which seemed fitting—I was doing the thing I love most—and my phone was filling up with voicemails and texts offering condolences from people across my life. But I didn’t see these messages until hours later. Usually, as a writer with strong commitments to memoir, I’m writing at a distance from my memories, not trying to document events so close to when they actually happened. As I was writing that part of the essay, splicing the messages I hadn’t seen yet with what we were talking about in class—ekphrasis, of all things—writing in response to various kinds of art, including television—I realized I was crying. Tears were pouring down my face as I typed. It may be the first time I have ever experienced such an immediate and intense catharsis while shaping memory into scene on the page.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I’m actually astonished—and so grateful, beyond grateful—that Michael Martone chose this book for the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize in 2023. I don’t remember offhand how many times I circulated the book to various possible publishers—mostly memoir and nonfiction book prizes—or even what possessed me to send The Mary Years to a novella prize. It’s about 40,000 words, so it qualifies as a novella length-wise, but I wasn’t sure if novellas were restricted implicitly to fictional works. Then again, Mary Richards is a fictional character, and WJM is a fictional workplace, so certainly this is a nonfiction work that interacts in a sustained way with fiction—just the fiction of someone else’s creation!

 

I was astonished every time one of the individual essay-chapters found a home in a literary journal (and ultimately, they all did), but I wasn’t sure if the idiosyncratic nature of my project would set it apart from other manuscripts in an enticing way or a limiting way. As writers, we never really know, do we?

 

I circulated this book as a book for far less time than many of my other collections, and I’m used to waiting a long time for a project to find the right home. So I think it was all highs really, the biggest high being the fact that I wrote it, the homage I needed to write, and in the process, I discovered so much about my own history that I would never have learned without my eye poised to the lens of the MTM kaleidoscope.

 

Sometimes people ask memoirists, or those who work broadly in the self-referential arts, how we don’t “run out” of material. I think it’s not about the quantity of material at all but about finding new ways of looking at our lives and considering all the lenses we have available to facilitate that looking.

 

An ekphrastic lens is so exciting and revelatory to me that I’m actually building a multi-genre graduate seminar around this expansive concept. In “The New Ekphrasis,” I want to consider with my students some recent innovative works of contemporary ekphrasis including—but not limited to!—Ander Monson’s Predator: a Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession, Hilary Plum’s Hole Studies (literary ekphrasis), Patricia Smith’s Unshuttered, Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Till They Kill Us (aural ekphrasis), Sibbie O’Sullivan’s My Private Lennon: Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed.

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I’m not sure it was intended specifically as writing advice—maybe as life and writing advice—but when I was graduating from college and preparing to head to my first graduate program, one of the great mentors of my life, Tom Campbell, said this: “Let nothing be wasted on you.” Tom was my undergraduate English professor and advisor, an exemplary teacher who I still channel in my own classrooms.

 

I take his words to mean, simply put, use everything; learn from everything; value everything. If you love a particular television show, write about it. If you have a strange or surprising hobby you think no one would else appreciate, write about it. Whatever is important to you in your life can be shaped for a reading audience. Your reader will care if you care enough and are artful enough in translating your own experience to the page.

 

And in another sense, don’t let rejections and disappointments (which every person and every artist experience) stop you from pursuing what you love. I am thousands of rejections deep in my 21 years of submitting work for publication. I have lost far more contests than I have won or could ever hope to win—as is inevitable—but I work hard to learn from those rejections, to let them spur me forward rather than hold me back.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

Oh, that’s wonderful advice! I’m always surprised when writing. I look forward to being surprised. In The Mary Years, I was surprised by the small things I discovered through sustained attention. For instance, I discovered that WJM, the newsroom where Mary Richards works for all seven seasons on the show, mirrors my own name’s initials, each time I am asked to print my last name first, followed by first and middle. Also, after all those years watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show and reading biographies (and autobiographies!) about her life, I had realized the framed picture on Mary Richards’s table, the one just outside her balcony doors, was a picture of her real-life son, Richie Meeker, but it did not dawn on me until writing this book that her character’s last name Richards was most likely an homage to her son, whose given name was Richard.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

My book’s title—The Mary Years—comes from an idiosyncratic reference that I have used since I first became a devotee of the series as a twelve-year-old. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we meet Mary Richards when the character is 30 years old, and the series ends, seven seasons later, when she is 37. So all those years as I was moving through my adolescence and then through my 20s, I was anticipating my own “Mary years,” wondering what my 30s would be like—and how they would differ from Mary’s. I always talked about people, specifically women, in that age range as being “in their Mary years.”

 

Here’s a sweet story that also appears in the book: when I entered my own Mary years, I was a PhD student living with my long-time partner in Louisville, Kentucky, and some of our friends from my academic program conspired with Angie to surprise me with a Mary-themed birthday party. Our friend Carol hosted, and she served Brandy Alexanders as the signature cocktail—which all you MTM fans will recall is the drink Mary asks for on her job interview with Lou Grant when he insists she have a drink with him. Our friend Elijah listened to the Mary Tyler Moore theme song “Love is All Around” so many times that he learned the song by heart and then brought his band to Carol’s house to play that song as I walked through the door.

 

Then, when I reached the end of my own Mary years, Mary Tyler Moore passed away, and I knew it was time to write—from the other side of that milestone era—what my own journey toward and through “the Mary years” had meant to me.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)  

 

https://www.liquor.com/recipes/brandy-alexander/

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.juliemariewade.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://texasreviewpress.org/submissions/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680033885/the-mary-years/

 

READ A SELECTION FROM THIS BOOK, “PITTSBURGH WAS MY MINNEAPOLIS: An Essay in Episodes”: https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/prose/pittsburgh-was-my-minneapolis-an-essay-in-episodes-by-julie-marie-wade/