The stories in Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking explore the inescapable nature of risk
October 26, 2015 In Colum McCann’s latest story collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking, characters fall prey to unforeseen or unknowable threats, and their efforts to make the world safe and comprehensible fail. McCann will discuss the book at the University of Tennessee’s Hodges Library in Knoxville on November 2, 2015, at 7 p.m.
Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last ponders just how much security is worth
October 12, 2015 Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last takes the very real ills and absurdities of the early twenty-first century—economic recession, for-profit prisons, gated communities, loss of privacy, technology-fueled narcissism, etc.—and gives them the signature Atwood tweak into the realm of speculative fiction. The issues it takes on are serious, but the story itself is a sexy, bitterly comic romp. Atwood will discuss The Heart Goes Last at the Nashville Public Library on October 19, 2015, at 6:15 p.m.
Rafia Zakaria’s memoir, The Upstairs Wife, sets the story of a sad marriage against the torturous history of Pakistan
October 8, 2015 In The Upstairs Wife, Rafia Zakaria nestles the story of her aunt’s difficult marriage within a broadly-sketched account of Pakistan’s torturous past, humanizing the country’s suffering and making its complex political situation more understandable, if no less troubling. Zakaria will discuss the book on October 9, 2015, at 3:30 p.m. in Conference Room 1A-B of the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Southern Festival of Books, is free and open to the public.
Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies is the story of a complicated marriage
September 22, 2015 Lauren Groff’s third novel, Fates and Furies, is part love story, part tragedy, and part black comedy. It surveys the long marriage of a golden boy to a mystery girl and leaves the reader to ponder the possibility that a couple can love profoundly without ever really knowing each other at all. Groff will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.
In Riot, Edwin E. Meek’s photographs document the 1962 mob violence at Ole Miss
September 10, 2015 In the fall of 1962, James Meredith’s arrival at Ole Miss as its first African-American student sparked mob violence that left two people dead and scores injured. Riot: Witness to Anger and Change, a collection of photographs by Edwin E. Meek, documents the violence and the mood of the time that brought it about. Meek will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on September 14, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
Nancy Reisman’s Trompe L’Oeil is the story of a family’s life after loss
August 17, 2015 In Nancy Reisman’s novel Trompe L’Oeil, the horror that befalls an unexceptional, upper-middle-class clan pervades every family member’s consciousness and ripples down the years, creating pain and existential uncertainty even in those not yet born when it happened. Reisman will give three public readings in Nashville: at Parnassus Books on August 20, at Vanderbilt University on September 10, and at the Southern Festival of Books, held October 9-11, 2015.
