Fiction | Chapter 16

Big Enough to Block Out the Sun

Michael Knight’s rich new novel The Typist is much more than the sum of its parts

By Ed Tarkington | December 29, 2010

December 29, 2010 At 185 pages, Michael Knight’s new novel, The Typist, could easily be considered a novella or even a long story—unsurprising, given that Knight has earned his greatest acclaim as an author of short stories. But despite its brevity, The Typist encompasses a variety of richly drawn characters, themes, and emotions typically associated with much longer, denser, more ostensibly “ambitious” novels. In this small book, Knight manages to veer through a variety of complications involving love, betrayal, black-market intrigue, and political maneuvering, all set against the backdrop of Japan’s national humiliation during the occupation years following World War II. The book appears on The Huffington Post‘s top-ten list of the best novels of 2010.

Hebrew Lessons

Memphis author Steve Stern spins the tale of a cryogenic rabbi into an exploration of truth, fantasy, tradition, and trial

By Paul V. Griffith | December 27, 2010

December 27, 2010 Rummaging through the family deep freeze, fifteen-year-old Bernie Karp finds pork tenderloins and an ancient rabbi frozen in a block of ice. The rabbi’s journey from nineteenth-century Poland to freezer and beyond—and his effect on those he meets—is the stuff of Memphis native Steve Stern’s latest novel, The Frozen Rabbi, a hilarious, poignant romp through the Jewish diaspora to the very firmament itself. The book is on the San Francisco Chronicle‘s list of best books for 2010.

Chekhov in Memphis

Novelist Richard Bausch adds the Dayton Literary Peace Prize to a shelf full of awards

By Clay Risen | December 23, 2010

December 23, 2010 When novelist Richard Bausch was a child, his father would tell him about his days in the army, many of them spent slogging alongside hundreds of thousands of other Allied soldiers up the Italian Peninsula during World War II. These weren’t bedtime stories: what was supposed to be a quick conquest took nearly two years to complete, and 60,000 Allied soldiers, 50,000 Germans, and 50,000 Italian soldiers and partisans died in the process. It was the bloodiest theater in Western Europe. One of those stories became the basis for Bausch’s latest novel, Peace, which is dedicated to his father and which won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Connecting the Landscape with the Quiet of the Sky

Amy Greene talks with Chapter 16 about her gorgeous new novel, Bloodroot

By Margaret Renkl | December 22, 2010

December 22, 2010 Amy Greene’s first novel—a multigenerational epic called Bloodroot—is getting the kind of attention that most debut novelists can only dream about, garnering reviews in publications as far-flung as The Boston Gobe and Entertainment Weekly. Greene found time in her eighteen-city tour to answer a few questions from Chapter 16.

Mr. On the Way Up

Chapter 16 talks with Adam Ross about the most talked-about debut novel of the year

By Margaret Renkl | December 21, 2010

December 21, 2010 By the time Knopf announced last winter—in an open letter to booksellers by legendary editor Gary Fisketjon, no less—that it would launch Nashville novelist Adam Ross’s debut book, Mr. Peanut, with a print run of 60,000 copies, and that it would be published in fourteen countries, chatter in the book world had already begun. The book officially hit shelves in June, by which time the chatter had grown to a roar, with Michiko Kakutani calling it “dark, dazzling” and Ross himself “an audacious new writer.” Ross took time to discuss his novel with Chapter 16 before the launch event at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville.

Ties That Bind

Author-physician Abraham Verghese talks with Chapter 16 about his dual career and his latest novel, Cutting For Stone

By Paul V. Griffith | December 20, 2010

December 20, 2010 An accomplished physician and teacher, Abraham Verghese put his life on hold to attend the celebrated Iowa Writers Workshop. Since graduating from the program in 1991, he’s balanced his day job with a writing career, publishing two nonfiction books and contributing to the likes of Esquire and The Atlantic Monthly. In his first novel, Cutting For Stone, Verghese tells the story of Marion Stone, an orphaned twin conceived of an illicit affair between an Indian nun and a dashing but volatile British surgeon. With wise and compelling prose, the epic tale weaves its themes of love, betrayal, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice together with the destinies of a country and a proud yet fractured family. Verghese appears February 26 at noon in 208 Light Hall on the Vanderbilt University campus, and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on February 27 at 2 p.m.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly