Book Reviews

April 12, 2013 When Sidney Marsh gets a plum assignment at the travel agency where she works—a long “familiarization” trip to Africa—she thinks she’s in for nothing but spa luxury, open bars, and quality time with her colleague and best friend. Then a leopard dines on a fellow traveler. Moore, a Memphis resident, will discuss Game Drive at 6 p.m. on April 15 at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis.

April 2, 2013 There is little danger that Jamie Quatro’s stunning debut collection, I Want to Show You More will ever be shelved with science fiction. The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, and many other publications have hailed Quatro as a significant new voice in American literature and rightly so. Yet her odd and beautiful stories are built on the devices of science fiction: a couple who sleep in a bed divided by the decomposing corpse of the wife’s distant lover, a runner who must carry a heavy government-provided trophy through a marathon, a young athlete with a whirlpool in his heart. On April 11 at 6:30 p.m., Jamie Quatro will discuss I Want to Show You More at Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she will appear with Jessica Francis Kane, author of This Close. Quatro will also appear on April 18 at the Chattanooga Public Library on April 18 at 9 a.m. as part of the Celebration of Southern Literature, and on April 27 at 2 p.m. at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville.

April 2, 2013 In a combination of stand-alone pieces and linked stories, Jessica Francis Kane presents an eclectic band of characters whose idiosyncrasies, concerns, and desires feel entirely true to life. She writes of loyal but alienated marriages, mothers physically present with but estranged from their children, and of neighbors whose literal proximity allows them to hear each other sneeze even as their emotional distance and judgment of one another make real connection far beyond reach. Kane will read from her new story collection, This Close, on April 11 at 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville. She will appear with Jamie Quatro, who will discuss her own story collection, I Want to Show You More.