Fiction | Chapter 16

The Invisible Man

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am, a Jewish father tries to prove he really exists

By Sean Kinch | September 12, 2016

here-i-am-foer Jacob Bloch, the central character in Jonathan Safran Foer’s new novel, Here I Am, suffers from existential uncertainty. The heart of this ambitious work of fiction depicts Jacob’s attempt to deserve “the privilege of being alive.” Jonathan Safran Foer will discuss Here I Am at the Nashville Public Library on September 15, 2016, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

Love was an Affliction

Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone depicts a family grappling with a legacy of suicide

By Ed Tarkington | September 9, 2016

In Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett uses multiple points of view to limn the collateral consequences of a father’s suicide and a tight-knit family’s history of depression. Haslett will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16, 2016. Festival events are free and open to the public.

Justice and Peace

A former slave struggles to know what justice might look like after the murder of her son

By Kathryn Justice Leache | September 7, 2016

In The Orphan Mother, Robert Hicks revisits the setting and characters of his debut novel, The Widow of the South, at the dawn of Reconstruction. During the next month, Hicks will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville, Books-a-Million in Mt. Juliet, The Franklin Theatre in Franklin, The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis, and the Southern Festival of Books.

What If?

Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth, asks an age-old question

By Jennifer Puryear | September 6, 2016

Commonwealth HC C Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth, asks a question to keep you up at night, a question to trouble your soul under certain moons: What if? Patchett will read from Commonwealth at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on September 12, 2016, at 6:15 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16. Both events are free and open to the public.

Summoned to Memphis

Novelist Lauren Groff headlines the 2016 Mid-South Book Festival

By Peggy Burch | September 2, 2016

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff’s third novel, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in fiction. Groff will be among seventy writers at the 2016 Mid-South Book Festival, held in Memphis September 9-11, 2016. Today she speaks with Chapter 16 about marriage, the trials of portraying anger and death in fiction, and the pleasures of writing in longhand.

Four Brooklyn Girls

Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn meditates on the nature of friendship, love, and loss

By Erica Ciccarone | August 30, 2016

AnotherBrooklyn HC C With Another Brooklyn, celebrated children’s author Jacqueline Woodson has written her first novel for adult readers in twenty years—the coming-of-age story of four Brooklyn girls determined not to be defined by their family’s tragedies. Woodson will speak at the Nashville Public Library on September 7, 2016, and at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on September 8. Both events are free and open to the public.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning