By Jasper Fforde
The well of Fforde's imagination is bottomless in the delightful third installment of his Thursday Next series. Thursday, who made her debut in 2002's surprise hit The Eyre Affair, is a secret agent in SpecOps, a fanciful English police unit that protects the literary world. When bad guys abduct such characters as Jane Eyre, SpecOps returns them to the stories in which they belong. In retaliation for Thursday's heroics her husband has been eradicated, leaving her alone with her memories.
In need of a break, she spends her maternity leave inside the Well of Lost Plots, the dingy 26-story subbasement of the Great Library, where living books are stored. In the Character Exchange Program, she takes up residence in an unpublished police procedural called Caversham Heights, where she plays sidekick to a hard-drinking detective alongside two "generics," characters without characteristics, who are awaiting assignment to yet-to-be-written novels. Her mission: to save them from literary limbo.
There are inside jokes on just about every page plus nifty new villains such as grammasites, parasitic life-forms that infest books, turning nouns into verbs. Cameos by familiar characters deliver plenty of chuckles—Dickens's Miss Havisham makes an appearance, as does Chitty—Chitty Bang Bang. But what keeps this series humming is Fforde's lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he's created to defend them.
NOVEL
By Andrew Sean Greer
CRITIC'S CHOICE
What sort of curse is it to grow younger with time? Only Dick Clark might have an answer to that question—and Max Tivoli, who, in this peculiar and heartrending novel, "burst[s] into the world as if from the other end of life." In 1871 he appears to be 70, and so he knows early on—do the math—the year he will die. His grandmother even gives him a pendant with 1941 embossed on it. It is a monstrous secret that haunts Max as he tries to become comfortable in his age-reversing skin, encountering the world's horrified, freak-show stares.
The story, beautifully written and inevitably fatalistic, journeys with Max as he meets his best friend, Hughie, who also hides a secret, and falls in love with Alice, the woman his bizarre life cycle will most affect. To end up in the guise of a child and yet possess the painful wisdom of a lifetime is a somber fate. Still, for all its melancholy, this is a rich and mesmerizing fable. Time will not reverse its impact.
NOVEL
By Suzanne O'Malley
Asked by a prison psychiatrist how she felt after killing her five small children, Andrea Yates had a chilling answer: "I am Satan." As investigative reporter O'Malley details how Yates methodically drowned her offspring one by one in a bathtub in 2001, it's hard to get past the monstrousness of her act. But O'Malley lays out the case that Yates is also a victim, a suicidal depressive who didn't get the medical help she needed until it was too late.
The author is far from impartial. Covering the story for The New York Times and other publications, she became so sympathetic to Yates that she helped defense lawyers debunk a prosecution witness who claimed Yates had planned the murders, a tactic that may have saved Yates from the death penalty. Still, O'Malley writes compellingly, especially in her complex portrait of Yates's husband, Rusty. Vilified in the media as an uncaring spouse, he has stood by his wife, who is serving a life term in Texas. "I will continue to love her," he told O'Malley. "Just because there's this horrible tragedy doesn't mean somebody has to hang for it."
TRUE CRIME
By Cheryl Peck
The best of these witty essays and poems recount Peck's traumatic experiences: As a kid, she is robbed of her cherished key collection by her sister ("I wanted to have her X-rayed, but my mother refused"), and as a woman of size, she bares all in the gym's locker room ("I don't believe it' s exercise that keeps fat women out of the gym. I think it's the distance from the bench in front of the locker to the shower and back"). Though some essays meander, Peck usually proves as playful—and poignant—as her title.
ESSAYS
By Hilary de Vries
De Vries has spent 10 years as a Hollywood journalist, gaining access to stars through their gate-keeping publicists. Now, with her first novel, she's imagining life on the other side of that gate. So 5 Minutes Ago follows Alex, a publicist at a sinking Tinseltown firm, as she babysits C-list celebs, grovels to higher-ups and tries to get a date.
Alex is a likable narrator, and this could all be interesting if de Vries gave us some insider insights. She doesn't. Any reader who has seen The Player or read a Hollywood memoir won't be surprised by much here. Showbiz types look out only for themselves? The publicity honchos at Alex's firm might be backstabbers? Say it isn't so! Among other big disclosures: Publicists get their hair blown out.
De Vries tries to ratchet up the drama with a possible ousting at Alex's firm. But readers won't much care about whether one flack will get another fired. As a veteran starlet cautions our heroine, "It's only publicity. It's not like it really matters."
NOVEL
By John Lescroat
It's more than a year after the O.K. Corral-style shootout on a San Francisco pier in Lescroart's previous novel, The First Law. Among the shell-shocked survivors are two good guys on opposing sides: deputy police chief Abe Glitsky, who has a new job that includes fluffy civic functions, and his best friend, criminal lawyer Dismas Hardy. Hardy has become jaded about the system, but after his associate Amy Wu seems to botch the defense of an accused murderer, Hardy joins her as second chair in the hopes that he can rekindle his idealism.
Alternating his focus between Glitsky and Hardy, Lescroart devises realistically flawed people who slog through the muck of criminal justice. At times the complex plot gets as foggy as a July day by the Bay. But if you can stay on top of who's who—ranging from judges to cops, bailiffs to witnesses—Lescroart pulls it all together in the end, as a clutch of seemingly random homicides coheres into a darker pattern.
MYSTERY
By Jane Moore
Prewedding jitters? Faye has 'em so bad that just days before the ceremony, she has a fling. She doesn't know what to make of this alarming sign, but in the course of this delectable novel—in which both she and her intended invite their significant exes to the wedding—she figures it out.
Moore's tale is a fun, fresh read with an underlying sophistication. Faye, a model, usually plays hard to get, knowing that the "treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen" philosophy works. She has settled on Mark because, unlike her former flames, he is neither too gorgeous nor too dull. But he's the typical clueless male. (One friend refers to him and his roommate as Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.)
As the clock ticks down to the wedding hour, the guests conspire, each one hoping to pave a path to romance without getting stuck in a rut. And as Faye's almost brother-in-law puts it, "The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth." Faye has the looks, and this book has the rest—brains and personality.
NOVEL
By Kurt Wenzel
It's 1999, and Kyle Clayton, "America's last great literary fool" (washed-up, tragic), is a fixture of the bar at City, where, Gotham's elite meet. Clayton, a recent convert to Islam, loves the proximity to power. He ogles women (such as a knockout waitress he can't remember bedding), to the annoyance of his Turkish wife, who sneers at his boozing and tries to placate her traditional father-whom Kyle mocks in a short story. Bad idea, pal. A fatwa ensues.
Premillennial Manhattan was awesome, but few writers have dared to try to capture the effervescence of that moment. Maybe Sept. 11 left a lot of novels half finished. But incorporating Islam into the story—like Clayton, Wenzel is a convert—makes it somehow okay. Wenzel can be a bit too sardonic, but he's often charming and bold, especially on religion and money. Gotham Tragic is apt to please connoisseurs of New York stories about writers.
NOVEL
THE DOG LISTENER What is your dog telling you? England's Jan Fennell, 55, who has worked with dogs for over 30 years, says she understands their thoughts in The Dog Listener. She spills Snoopy's secrets to PEOPLE.
UNDERSTAND DOG MOTIVES When Rover chews the furniture while you're away, then slobbers all over you when you walk in, it doesn't mean he misses you. "He's saying, Thank God you're not dead/" says Fennell. "The dog panics if he believes he's responsible for you. He's on duty 24/7."
BE THE BOSS Ignore your tail-wagging pooch when you first come home. "People find this one very hard," Fennell says. "But you need to walk past your dog and wait till it calms down. It's showing the dog you're the leader."
GIVE HIM SPACE Her dog Barmie was so shy that he would hide under tables. "I resisted the temptation to shower him with love and affection," Fennell says. Instead, she let Barmie set his own pace, and even when he began approaching her, Fennell wouldn't touch him. After about a month, he came out of his shell.
EAT FIRST Dogs are pack animals whose leader gets first crack at the grub. So let Rex watch you eat before feeding him. "He is in fact a wolf," Fennell says. "He may be little and shaggy, but he's a wolf."
- Contributors:
- John Freeman,
- Joe Heim,
- J.D. Heyman,
- Allison Lynn,
- Edward Karam,
- Joyce Cohen,
- Ed Nawotka.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
