reviews cause she’s falling in love with him. What follows is a series of missed cues as the pair, unsure of each other, stumble toward re-courtship, even as Lucie struggles to jar real memories of her past. But she turns up more than she bargained for, not only about the day she left, but also about her troubled childhood. It may prove more than her already shaky psyche can bear. Shortridge’s love story is cozy and Lucie’s quest for truth keeps the pages turning, but what may be most compelling about this fast read is Lucie’s psychological rebirth. A clean slate personified, she gets the chance to see her faults, errors and shortcomings with neutral eyes, and then, free of the baggage that formed them, she acts to change them. Readers will wonder if they can do the same in their own lives. An engaging journey, Shortridge’s latest should please her fans and earn her new ones. —Sheri bodoh
THE flaMETHroWErs by rachel Kushner Scribner $26.99, 400 pages ISBN 9781439142004 Audio, eBook available
liTErary fiCTion
When Rachel Kushner sat down to write her second novel, she had three images taped to the wall above her desk: A pretty young blonde woman, face painted for war, with an X of tape across her lips, which eventually became the cover image;
Blues By the Numbers…And Other Numbers by Paul Hastings Wilson Blue Atlas Press • $17.95 ISBN 9781456469498
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Remarkable collection: stories ranging from revolution in North Africa to the New Orleans jazz scene.
fiCTion a well-heeled engineer standing with his creation, a 1971 Ducati motorcycle; and two men racing by in a primitive cycle and sidecar, circa World War I. The Flamethrowers, then, is a sort of weaving together of these disparate lives. Set partly in prewar Italy at the dawn of the Futurist movement, partly in the art world of New York in the 1970s, and converging briefly in the riots of the Autonomist movement in 1970s Rome, this is ultimately the story of a young woman called Reno who is reborn again and again through her acts of defiant grace. In this story, art is not just an imitation of life but also life itself. Acts of life begin and end as performance, within the inescapable prison of self-consciousness. But this isn’t boilerplate postmodernism either; it’s a complex tale of youth and the need to escape oneself and one’s past, a story about time and speed and violence, about the roles we play, willingly and unwillingly, in the vast, closed system of the human stage. And it’s about a young woman, confused and yet self-possessed, remarkable in her search for meaning. When Reno meets Sandro Valera, famed sculptor and prodigal heir to Italy’s greatest moto-empire, she has just moved to New York to live as an artist. He takes her in, and through him she meets the art-world elite. Her own work is still nebulous, unformed but for a notion of line and a love of movement. Chance intervenes—or as one of the characters has it, Reno “put herself in the way of life”—and her first serious project begins to take shape. But in The Flamethrowers, momentum has a way of swerving into the ditch. In Italy, on her way to make a film with the Valera race team, events bring Reno crashing down hard. Battered and bruised, she finds herself in a world of violence and anarchism, a brief encounter that is ultimately more positive and humane than the high-flying world she fled. Because life is not simple, nothing meaningful can be easy. And so away we go, this novel seems to say, racing off-road into the future. — W . S . ly o n
Visit BookPage.com to read an interview with Rachel Kushner.
THE sTuD booK by Monica Drake
Hogarth $25, 336 pages ISBN 9780307955524 eBook available
fiCTion
In Monica Drake’s unconventional, satirical second novel, The Stud Book, four longtime female friends grapple with the meaning of motherhood, relationships and their lives. Sarah studies animal behavior at the Oregon Zoo, fascinated by how and why animals mate and reproduce. She longs to have a baby of her own, but after three miscarriages, she’s not sure her dream will ever come true. She is (not so) quietly envious of her friends Georgie, who just had her first baby, and Nyla, who already has two children. Rounding out the group is Dulcet, a free spirit more interested in teaching high school students how not to get pregnant with a radical sex-ed presentation than in planning for a family. While these women are in their late 30s and early 40s, none of them have life quite figured out. Drake probes the nuances of human relationships—mothers and children, husbands and wives, and circles of friends. Much is brewing just under the surface. Sarah will do almost anything to have a baby. Georgie loves her newborn daughter, but her husband is a drunk. Nyla thinks she is managing quite well as a single mother, but her teenage daughter is hiding some dangerous secrets. And while she’s satisfied in her work, Dulcet only seems to find true relief in prescription pills. Set in progressive Portland, Oregon, The Stud Book is a study in happiness (or the lack thereof) and the perils of wanting what we don’t—and maybe can’t—have. One part comedy, two parts tragedy and three parts honest truth, The Stud Book is a wild ride full of dark humor—after all, Drake’s first novel, Clown Girl, had an introduction by Chuck Palahniuk. It’s a story of choices made and not made, human biology, and the bonds of family and friendship. Drake reminds us that we aren’t so different from our animal ancestors: Many of our desires are, and have always
been, primal. What we choose to do with those desires, well, that’s what makes us human. —abby pleSSer
a nEarly PErfECT CoPy by allison amend
Nan A. talese $25.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780385536691 eBook available
liTErary fiCTion
Elm Howells led a charmed life. As a member of the Tinsley family, she found use for her art history degree through employment at the family’s prestigious New York City auction house. She also found joy outside of work: Elm and her husband, Colin, were the parents of son Ronan and daughter Moira. But her life was forever changed during a 2004 vacation to Thailand, when Ronan was swept away by a tsunami. In the years since, his death has colored everything in Elm’s life, including the decisions she makes at work. Meanwhile, Spanish-born painter Gabriel Connois is trying to make a name for himself in Paris’ art scene. His adopted last name is already a success, thanks to his distant ancestor Marcel Connois. Gabriel has taken steps to prove his talent as well: He financed his Parisian art education by forging a Connois painting that belonged to his mother so he could replace it, and then sell the original. When an art dealer approaches Gabriel to paint a number of works “in the style of” famed artists, the money and the opportunity are too good to pass up. Elm is desperate to reduce the pain caused by her son’s death. Gabriel is determined to get his shot at artistic success, no matter the cost. In Allison Amend’s A Nearly Perfect Copy, the lives of these art connoisseurs run along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, paths as Elm and Gabriel go to extremes in their work and personal lives. Amend’s talent is on full display as these smart, complex narratives dance around each other, each capturing the reader’s imagination without ever detracting from the other story. Although she’s received critical acclaim for her work in a number of literary publications and