Book Reviews

September 16, 2014 With Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle, singer and lyricist for The Mountain Goats, has produced an LP of a novel that delves into the damaged psyche of a disfigured young man who retreats into a role-playing game he has invented, a fantasy world where he—and others—can feel safe. Darnielle will discuss Wolf in White Van at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 24, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

September 11, 2014 In The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories, seasoned anthology editor Michael Sims has compiled a book sure to send a shiver down the spine of even the most skeptical reader. Included are all the standard tropes of the genre: haunted houses, the walking dead, cursed objects, and eerie landscapes, as well as the expected Victorian flourishes of fainting females and their brave but clueless male champions. Sims will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

September 10, 2014 Huddy Marr, the protagonist of Stephen Schottenfeld’s Bluff City Pawn, knows guns—and gold, and guitars, and jewelry. He also knows that the blood bank replacing the liquor store next door to his pawn shop signals the last, irreversible step in the decline of his particular neck of a slumping city. In his debut novel, Schottenfeld capably shows Memphis as the home of a different kind of blues. Schottenfeld will appear at the University of Memphis on September 16, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Bluff Room of the University Center. He will also appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. Both events are free and open to the public.

September 8, 2014 A novel with enormous scope and an ambitious time-jumping structure, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven paints its post-apocalyptic world in both bold brushstrokes and tiny points of background detail. Mandel will discuss Station Eleven at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on Oct. 10-12.

September 5, 2014 The Story of Land and Sea, Katy Simpson Smith’s debut novel, considers parental love, faith, and friendship in coastal North Carolina at the end of the American Revolution. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 11, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.