Book Reviews

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.

April 15, 2010 is the author of two earlier novels: The Illuminator, set in England during the fourteenth century, and The Mercy Seller, set in fifteenth-century Prague. With The Heretic’s Wife, she brings her characters and readers into the relatively modern age of early sixteenth-century England. Henry VIII is king, and Vantrease’s main protagonist is the beautiful Kate Gough, a descendent of characters first introduced in The Illuminator. A former Nashville teacher and school librarian, Vantrease once again returns to the theme of censorship and faith, this time conveying the intensity and danger of the Tudor period. She appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 15 at 7 p.m.

One thing all nursing homes have in common is that no one really wants to be there—not the residents, not the employees, and not the visitors. It’s hard to imagine anything especially cheering or life-affirming happening in a nursing home, no matter how well it’s marketed. Novelist Todd Johnson doesn’t shy away from this desolation in The Sweet By and By, but he also shows how those at life’s end can still find meaning in their days. Johnson appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 13 at 6 p.m.