Book Reviews

April 26, 2010 In summer 2008, Ace Atkins, author of three previous thrillers based on historical events, was in Memphis researching a new book. While he was at the courthouse one day, a clerk mentioned having stumbled across the file of George “Machine Gun” Kelly, who was arrested in South Memphis in 1933 after a nation-wide manhunt by the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation. Atkins was intrigued and asked for a copy of the file. By the time he was finished reading, he had set aside the novel he was working on in favor of what would become Infamous, a cinematic true story that reads like classic film noir with a dash of Coen brothers. Atkins will read from the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 26 at 6 p.m.

April 20, 2010 Since Jay McInerney’s emergence as part of the 1980s literary brat-pack, his work has read much like a series of letters from a cultured but slightly deviant friend: the type of person who runs with the too-fast/too-rich set, frequents the hot clubs, and gets invited to all of those parties we imagine as unspeakably glamorous but which are actually full of hopeless vanity. And yet, like our insider friend—whom we both pity and envy; whom we love but aren’t sure we particularly like—we still find ourselves fascinated by these people and their stories. We want to be invited to their parties, even if we don’t really want to attend them, and we’re grateful to have a reliable correspondent to document every excess.

April 19, 2010 Southern writers don’t let their men off easily. Think of Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, and George Singleton, to name just a few: their protagonists are a thick crowd of failed or ridiculously flawed, if infuriatingly likeable, Southern men—men who are more often than not their own worst enemies, men who pilot pickups across modern Southern landscapes that look and feel nothing like the generous front porches and magnolia-scented breezes of Southern Lit as we once knew it. Enter Jack Lang, a modern Southern man whose life crisis is held up, often comically, for observation in This Is Just Exactly Like You, the debut novel from North Carolina writer Drew Perry, who will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 21 at 7 p.m.

April 16, 2010 A page-turner about a Benedictine order of Renaissance nuns may seem like a far-fetched concept, but Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant's latest novel, achieves the remarkable. Ecstasy, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, adolescent rebellion, and romance swirl like trails of incense behind the impenetrable walls of the Italian convent, Santa Caterina. Dunant will discuss the book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 20 at 7 p.m.