Fiction | Chapter 16

Chekhov in Memphis

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

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.

Connecting the Landscape with the Quiet of the Sky

Mr. On the Way Up

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

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.

Christmas with the Nitwitts

By Faye Jones

December 14, 2010

December 14, 2010 After a day of fighting mall crowds in search of this year’s must-have gizmo, there may be no better holiday treat than settling down with a cup of coffee and a Santa cookie and spending a few hours in Second Creek, Mississippi, with Robert Dalby’s A Piggly Wiggly Christmas. Dalby will read from and sign copies of the book this week at public libraries in Crossville, Murfreesboro, Collierville, and Clarksville. Check Chapter 16’s events section for details.

About the Naughty Bits

By Margaret Renkl

November 29, 2010

November 29, 2010 In Great Britain, people take their writers seriously: across the country, bookies lay odds on shortlist favorites for both the Booker Prize and the Nobel with the kind of fervor reserved in the U.S. for March Madness or the Super Bowl. But even in England, the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award inspires a different kind of excitement. Mr. Peanut, by Nashville’s own Adam Ross, is a nominee for the 2010 award, which will be announced tonight in London, and Ross has a few words for Chapter 16 on the subject.