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Worthy shelfmates

By Rob Cline

I hit a new milestone this year. For the first time ever, I’ve reviewed better than 70 books in a calendar year. While it would be my preference that you burst into applause at this news, it seems far more likely to me that you will shake your head and think, “That guy is crazy. He must do nothing but read!”

On the first score, you may well be right. But on the second, you’d be mistaken. I have a few other things going on that distract from my reading time. I have a full-time job at Hancher Auditorium, part-time gigs at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and the Metro Library Network (no, it isn’t a position as staff reader), plus a wife and three kids.

I imagine that leaves you with two questions regarding the reviewing of 70 or more books — for publications including The Gazette, The Source, Art Scene, and, of course, CorridorBuzz.com — in a single year: How? And also, why?

Perhaps the trickiest part of reviewing so many books is making sure that I always have the next book ready after I’ve finished a review. For the most part, I review books by authors coming to the Corridor to read from their work, most often at Prairie Lights or on the University of Iowa campus, but occasionally at other locations as well. I keep a fairly constant stream of e-mails out in the world to publicists ensuring that the books I need to do this keep coming my way.

Then it’s just a matter of reading said books — on my vanpool commute from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City and back, over my lunch hour, before I go to bed, late at night in a coffee shop under the influence of much caffeine, while my youngest child clamors at me for pink milk, etc. I also listen to a sizeable number of unabridged audio books, though in the decade-plus I’ve been writing about books I believe I have reviewed just two that I listened to rather than consumed the traditional way.

Are you wondering whether I read every word of every single book I review? That’s an excellent thing to ask.

As for why I do this, the reason is simple, if twofold. I believe that a community as steeped in literature as this one deserves thoughtful commentary on a wide array of writing and I am egotistical enough to believe I can provide it.

My self-regard was amply supported this year when one of my most loyal readers (okay, it was my mom) said of a novel I had recently reviewed, “That book sounds almost good enough to read.”

Here are some books from 2008 that I believe both meet and surpass that threshold.

NOVELS (A category in which choosing five means leaving out some amazing books)

The End by Salvatore Scibona

The End is a complex novel centered on a single day — August 15, 1953 — in an Italian neighborhood in an Ohio community. Scibona, a graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop, intertwines the stories of six characters — successfully creating a unique voice for each — with his deeply realistic yet highly stylized prose. The book’s complexity is of an appealing variety, fully rewarding the reader’s close attention as the various threads are pulled apart and brought back together. The book contains much sadness leavened with the beauty of Scibona’s craftsmanship.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

The heart of Morrison’s story — set in the America of the 1860s — is a slave’s decision to offer up her daughter, Florens, as payment for her master’s bad debt. The people of Florens’ new isolated household have histories of their own and Morrison illuminates their often dark tales. Unmatched in her ability to explore the emotion of longing, Morrison creates hypnotic, idiosyncratic passages in which Florens tells her story. These are perhaps the strongest moments in a brief book that is very fine throughout.

As a Friend by Forrest Gander

In a book that is as striking as it is slight, Gander delivers a powerful story, built more from emotion than incident. Author of seven collections of poetry, Gander employs the poet’s economy and precision of language to delve into the relationships between the charismatic, talented Les and his friend Clay and girlfriend Sarah. Gander moves steadily from traditional narration to his more abstracted language, and in doing so eases the reader’s passage into the book’s emotional heart.

Lush Life by Richard Price

Richard Price is universally acclaimed as a writer of stunning dialogue — able to both hear and reproduce on the page the hitches, the doubling-back, the misspoken clichés, the fragments that make sense only in context — and Lush Life clearly demonstrates that this skill provides much of the gritty power of his books. But the novel is also strongly plotted and is an impressive police procedural that gets inside the heads of its characters in ways few writers can manage.

The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis by Michael Pritchett

Pritchett has crafted a novel that truly earns that most overused of book reviewing adjectives: the book is compelling. The book’s two protagonists — the explorer Meriwether Lewis and a modern-day biographer named Bill Lewis — suffer from debilitating depression and struggle to come to grips with their respective tasks. Pritchett thrusts his reader inside the head of a troubled leader on an all but impossible mission, providing a captivating gloss on an essential American tale.

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (A category of its own so I wouldn’t have to leave these books out)

One More Year by Sana Krasikov

Krasikov, born in the Ukraine, raised in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and the United States, and a graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop, is quite simply a masterful short story writer. Each story in this collection — well-crafted and well-told tales of émigrés coping with new situations, locations and challenges — is excellent. Neither the subject matter nor the prose is flashy, but One More Year is nonetheless an outstanding debut.

My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides

This isn’t a collection to give your lover. For those up for a detailed and varied look at struggle and heartbreak, Eugenides has put together a remarkable collection, replete with some of the most famous stories of all time and a host of decorated and beloved authors from around the world. Authors with connections to the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop are well represented, as Raymond Carver, Bernard Malamud, Stuart Dybek and Denis Johnson each appear.

The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier

Brockmeier’s stories are devoid of hipster sarcasm, even when one might most expect to encounter that tone. For example, “The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story” — complete with multiple story paths but a single inevitable ending — is a surprisingly effective examination of the quotidian that is never arch even as the ending takes a turn toward the fantastic. The title story is truly exceptional as Brockmeier skillfully and kindly explores a quirky, circumspect life.

Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend

Amend, a graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop, has a talent for creating evocative, atmospheric stories. Her contribution (like that of Gander’s above) isn’t necessarily one of plot, but of emotion. That’s not to say these stories are devoid of interesting incidents. For example, in the moving opening story “Dominion Over Every Erring Thing,” a teacher and her students confront bodies falling from the sky. But it is the tone and emotional depth of these stories that have a stick-to-the-ribs quality.

The Boat by Nam Le

While the sheer range of UI Writers’ Workshop grad Nam Le’s vision is perhaps the first thing that impresses, the confidence that undergirds his prose is similarly astonishing. He takes readers to Columbia, New York City, Hiroshima and Tehran (among other places) in the company of men and women, the young and the old, the historical and the contemporary. Each story in The Boat is gripping and beautifully crafted. The writing has both a muscularity and subtlety that clearly reveals a major talent.

NONFICTION (A category in which I read fewer books but had pretty good luck with this year)

Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein

Epstein’s contribution to the “Icons of America” series is an appreciation — rather than a biography — of Astaire. Considering everything from the dancer’s gift for wearing elegant clothing to his notable, if underappreciated, talent as a singer, Epstein brings his own idiosyncratic style to his subject. Subtlety is not his strong suit but he is a winning raconteur. As a result, the book manages to be both frothy and penetrating, often simultaneously.

Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

Chabon’s first nonfiction book offers a number of pleasures, including his thoughts on a variety of seminal comic strips as well novels and short stories both contemporary and historical. Chabon demonstrates a knack for engendering an anticipatory enthusiasm even as he reveals plot points and provides sweeping interpretation that could, in lesser hands, serve as a substitute for actually reading the works in question. Late in the book, he also engagingly examines various aspects of his own writing career.

Great Expectation by Dan Roche

Roche recounts the months of his wife’s pregnancy — a period replete with joys and hopes as well as tragedies and doubts. Even with the author’s clear awareness of a future audience, he lays bare his emotions — both positive and negative. His honesty is what makes the book work, because it allows his reader to connect his or her own experience (or potential experience) to Roche’s. Many a parent may be jealous of Roche’s foresight and ability to preserve these precious memories.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

Vowell, unsatisfied with the simplistic and often inaccurate way we think about Puritan society, delves into the spiritual, political and military aspects of life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She demonstrates that the image of the Puritan that has become lodged in our national consciousness is shaky at best. The Wordy Shipmates is an eye-opening history text spiced with biting social commentary about late 20th and early 21st century America. It is also often laugh-out-loud funny.

The Oxford Project by Peter Feldstein and Stephen G. Bloom

In 1984, Oxford, Iowa, resident Peter Feldstein decided to photograph all the residents of his town. He took 670 unposed, black and white photos and created surprisingly nuanced portrait of a town. Twenty years later, he did it again. The resulting sets of pictures are amazing. For the second round of photographs, Feldstein invited author Stephen G. Bloom to interview some of his subjects and distill their stories into first person narratives that add another layer of depth to project.