SUMMER BOOK PICKS, CONT.
“The Sisters Grimm” BY MICHAEL BUCKLEY AND PETER FERGUSON
“The Sisters Grimm” series is as good as “Harry Potter,” and we know how popular that one is. The adventures and thrills in the books are captivating, and the losses and gains help you see exactly what the characters go through. Written by Micahel Buckley and illustrated by Peter Ferguson, it is a nine-book series about two girls, Sabrina, 12, and Daphne, 7, whose parents disappeared mysteriously. The orphanage where they live found a grandmother who they thought was dead. The girls go with her to a town called Ferryport Landing, and Sabrina is hostile to her “grandmother.” Those feelings increase when Granny Relda informs them that the Brothers Grimm were not fairy-tale authors, but biographers. These books are probably good for ages 8 and up. —Jasper Potts (this pick appeared in the May issue of our sister publication, Savvy Kids, where 10-year-old Jasper writes a monthly column called “Potts’ Picks”)
“Tinkers” BY PAUL HARDING
THE UNIQUE NEIGHBORHOODS OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS Full of interesting voices and colorful portraits of 17 Little Rock and North Little Rock neighborhoods, this book gives an intimate, block-by-block, native’s view of the place more than 250,000 Arkansans call home. Created from interviews with residents and largely written by writers who actually live in the neighborhoods they’re writing about, the book features over 90 full color photos by Little Rock photographer Brian Chilson.
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JULY 11, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
If a great novel is a rare thing, a great first novel is a thing so exceedingly rare as to be relegated to the land of myth and legend. With notable exceptions, even the best writers can’t seem to hold their liquor the first go round; too ambitious, too immature, too intoxicated by the honeyed milk of language to restrain themselves to the measured sips that truly great novels are made of. Every once in awhile, though, somebody gets in right, and in 2009, Paul Harding got it right with the little debut novel that could, “Tinkers.” Published by the almost unknown Bellevue Literary Press and relatively thin at only 191 small pages, the book’s beautiful prose and mazelike structure won over readers from the start. Against all odds, without even a review by the New York Times, “Tinkers” went on to win the 2010 Pulitzer for Fiction. The book seems simplistic when boiled down to a sentence: the last, delirious hours in the life of elderly Maine clock repairman George Washington Crosby, who lies on his deathbed, the delirium causing him to flip through all the memories of his life like the pages in a book. If that sounds a little weird, it is. If it sounds complicated, ditto. But “Tinkers” is well worth the effort.
While definitely not one for reader faint of heart, it’s a wondrous, marvelous book in practice, full of beautiful prose and deep questions about life, both of which must be sipped, not chugged. —David Koon
“The Southern Cross” BY SKIP HORACK This may be a minority opinion, since there is real joy in going all-in on a big fat novel on the beach, but there’s something about the summer time that brings out the dabbler in me. I reach for the short stories, which at their best pull off emotional punch and poetic verve in the time it takes to finish a cocktail. Skip Horack’s “The Southern Cross,” which came out several years back, is a beautiful example of the form. The book’s 16 stories aren’t connected, but they take place over the course of the year in 2005 and 2006, all set in various spots along the Gulf Coast. There are four stories for each season, beginning with spring, which means that Hurricane Katrina happens right in the middle of the book. Horack doesn’t overplay his hand; the storm shows up at the margins, shadowy portents in the first half, spare remnants in the second. The one story that tackles the hurricane head on, “The Redfish,” is the book’s one masterpiece, an epic in 15 pages. “Southern Cross” is Horack’s debut collection and it has both the fresh energy and the occasional missteps of a first book. But in every story, there is something irresistible about Horack’s prose — it was one of those books I just loved loving. Just about every other page, we’re treated to sentences like this: “They had been high-school lovers — the option quarterback and the queen of the Duck festival.” Horack has a perfect ear for the cadences of speech in the various cities and rural towns along the gulf, the stories are sharply attuned to moments of transcendence and simple human decency, and he’s damn funny to boot. The book is deeply rooted in both the natural and the spiritual worlds: sturgeon and cypress knees, bayou voodoo and redneck Jesus. You might call it Christian humanism — the book’s religious and ex-religious characters go out searching for signs and redemption in a hard world. “Sister, is there anything at all that you would like to pray for?” a Pentecostal preacher asks a stripper displaced from New Orleans. Her response: “I’ll finish you off for fifty bucks. Amen.” — David Ramsey