Atlanta Novelists—A Tradition Continues

The South has a rich literary tradition, from author Flannery O’Connor to William Faulkner. Though I was born and raised in the Midwest, for almost 20 years as a Georgia girl, I’ve been blown away by the writing chops of the many authors who also make metro-Atlanta their home.

        
   

I'm with Lynn Cullen at FoxTale Book Shoppe

Today is Halloween, so let’s begin with Lynn Cullen whose literary historical fiction earned her a spot as a guest expert on PBS’s recent American Masters TV episode, Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive. Cullen had undertaken exhaustive research for her 2014 bestselling novel, MRS. POE.

            

        A few years before, Vanity Fair magazine featured a few of our fair city’s women authors—from thriller writer Karin Slaughter and debut superstar Kathryn Stockett to Joshilyn Jackson with her unforgettable voice and Emily Giffin who's got legions of fans. You gotta love how the ladies are all fitted out in dazzling belle attire.

     

        Audible fans will find Atlanta authors to love, too. There's Martha Hall Kelly’s THE LILAC GIRLS: A NOVEL, a fictionalized story surrounding real New York socialite Caroline Ferriday during WWII. Kelly’s debut has been compared to Kristin Hannah’s book club phenomenon, THE NIGHTINGALE. 

        I also enjoyed Susan Rebecca White’s A PLACE AT THE TABLE, a beautifully written, touching story about an African-American woman who suffered from racism growing up and a gay man in Georgia who’s ostracized by his own family.
        
        Of course, my blog post would not be complete without highlighting an Atlanta author's novel that alternates between the past and present.

Karen White is prolific in writing novels that shift between time periods. I first got hooked on her books in 2009 when I came upon THE LOST HOURS. Here are the book's opening lines: “When I was twelve, I helped my granddaddy bury a box in the back garden of our Savannah house. I didn’t ask him what was in it. The box belonged to my grandmother….” Who can resist reading on? Not me.

            
        To learn more about authors who reside around Atlanta—or other authors who flock for the city’s many literary events or even for books with stories set in this region—I highly recommend Alison Law’s new podcast series, Literary Atlanta. Check it out!

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Appreciating Art Through Fiction

I still remember seeing Girl With A Pearl Earring displayed at Barnes & Noble many years ago. One look at that cover, and as a lover of historical fiction, I had to snap the book right off the shelf and head for the cashier. During that period, I also discovered Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, another novel that imagines a Vermeer painting. This story traces a portrait’s ownership back in time to WWII and ultimately to Amsterdam when the artist created it. I was saddened to learn Vreeland died last month—and shocked to hear she’d passed the same day I presented my spare copy of her novel to a friend as a gift.

Tracy Chevalier and Susan Vreeland spurred my love of novels about art and artists. What is it about these books that fascinates me (and other readers) so much?

  In the Historical Novels Society's (HNS) series called Art in Historical Fiction, Stephanie Renee Dos Santos interviewed Vreeland some time back. The author had this to say about fiction that ties in art: “While an art history can give us an appreciation of a painter’s work, the view is from the onlooker, while fiction invites us into the artist’s inner nature, takes us to his bosom, and makes us feel the artist’s strong emotions for ourselves.” 

I would add that feeling strong emotion as we read also holds true when getting in the head of someone obsessed with an artwork, such as with the protagonist of The Goldfinch. 

           Vreeland went on to say, “Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it’s a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.”

HNS asked Cascade author Maryanne O’Hara why fiction about art matters to readers. “The contemplation of art enriches fiction, I think. And to quote Alice Walker: ‘If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.’”

  

I’ve been captivated by books that take me into a painter’s studio centuries ago. I’ve been enlightened by stories that reveal the horrors committed against Jews—and the fate of their stolen treasures. I’ve been swept away by novels of lost masterpieces, of women who dared to hold the brush rather than pose for the master, and of forgeries and muses and love.

           Novels that alternate between the past and present are fertile ground for stories about artists and masterworks, as well, from Lauren Willig's That Summer to Jojo Moyes' The Girl You Left Behind. 

           To explore books that deal with art, check out some that are pictured from my collection. Also, you might find the following online articles of interest: 11 Novels Every Art History-Lover Should Pick Up and 10 Great Fictional Artists in Literature. The latter piece is written by Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara De Vos—my top pick as posted on this blog last March.

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Joshilyn Jackson's Latest and Greatest

Psst. Here’s a secret. I don’t come to a Joshilyn Jackson book for its plot, though there’s always plenty of that. I come for the author’s voice. I come for her plucky characters that are so real, I feel as if I might turn my head at a stoplight and find them winking at me from the next car over.

I come to revel in the way Jackson takes the 26 letters of the alphabet and strings together words that vary from juicy, colorful, or frail, to sharp, witty, or lyrical. Sometimes her words are saucy and other times they’re words she creates herself. (Sometimes even both.) Jackson’s writing often reminds me of critically acclaimed T.C. Boyle. Each author has prose so original you don’t read it as much as you chew it. And I love the way it tastes. 

THE ALMOST SISTERS is my favorite Joshilyn Jackson novel to date. It’s brilliantly simple in conception: everyone has an origin story. No matter if it’s a comic book hero like Batman or an old woman rocking on her porch in small town Bama.

While the novel is not strictly a multi-period piece, the characters’ pasts smolder beneath every breath, threatening to spew out any minute. There’s Leia’s one-night stand that leaves her carrying the child she almost didn’t know she wanted. There’s her goody-goody stepsister, Rachel, whose marriage has just imploded (her marriage, that is, with JJ—I mean Jake—who’s got a hush-hush history with Leia). Then there’s Southern matriarch, Birchie, and her bestie, Miss Wattie . . . who together have somethin’ hidden in a locked attic trunk.

     Indeed, I can always count on Jackson’s stories to bring big-time conflict. And where there’s conflict, I know that when her protagonist finally releases a piece of her mind, the stinging, digging, cathartic, and ass-kicking bitch-session may go on for a full delicious page or longer (while in the back of my brain, I’m rooting, “You go, girl!”).

     THE ALMOST SISTERS is the kind of novel that once you close the cover, you close your eyes as well. You let the story’s themes—themes which are uncomfortable illuminations arising from the characters and plot (yup, the same plot you hadn’t thought you'd come for in the first place)—sink in and in and in.

     I’ll not forget this book’s characters. I’ll not forget the connections Jackson makes with the origin story that we all in today’s society share.

POSTSCRIPT:  At Joshilyn Jackson’s recent book launch party for THE ALMOST SISTERS. Pictured here, I’m the one wearing glasses, standing in back beside the author (who’s got on glasses and a green scarf)—alongside other loyal fans from her novel workshop earlier this year in Decatur, Georgia.

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Best Love Story Ever

This week marks my 40^th wedding anniversary, so for this post, I googled the greatest love stories of all time. Guess what stories appear in the "Top 3" of most lists? Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, and Wuthering Heights. Some lists also include Gone with the Wind and Casablanca.

     Note any trends? What is it that draws us to stories where love is unrequited or the couple is doomed?

     One theory is it’s because human beings yearn to find love and to glory in its fledgling state—and we long for stories of others with whom we can identify. Yet, the best literature is built on conflict and tension. The top-rated stories certainly have that. 

     What of Pride and Prejudice, you may ask. Sure enough, that novel also appears on virtually every internet list for the greatest love stories of all time. It's got conflict, no doubt, but noting how the would-be lovers end up happily engaged, it’s a wonder the story isn’t categorized with Cinderella instead. Perhaps the key difference between the fairytale and Jane Austen’s classic is that Darcy doesn’t just swoop in and save Elizabeth. Rather, the female protagonist’s feelings and intellect are central to her and Darcy uniting.

     For a literary, modern retelling of the Austen classic with a happy ending, I recommend Eligible. I was impressed by author Curtis Sittenfeld’s reinterpretation for today’s readers (and not only because the bulk of the story is set in Cincinnati, city of my birth, nor how I “occasionally” have the guilty pleasure of watching The Bachelor on TV in hopes of seeing someone fall in love).

     Novels that alternate between the past and present are good for those who crave tales of undying love, where even several centuries do not stop two lovers from being together. There's the beloved Outlander series, of course, but I also offer up a 1972 book that spent six months on the New York Times Best Seller list: Green Darkness. 

     Now, my own love story has survived for four decades . . . but given the literature that's also stood the test of time, mine may not be the stuff of legend. My husband and I haven't met with a tragic separation or found each other in the 1600s. Still, I’m often asked how we've enjoyed such happiness and longevity. Brace yourself. The irony is, it’s not all about love. We actually like each other, too. It’s about shared family values and practical give-and-take and a pride in having come so far as people and as a couple since the day we said “I do.”

      Over the years, we've taken pleasure together in viewing the tragic love stories on the big screen, from Titanic to the more recent box office smash, Wonder Woman. At the theater, it’s hard to beat a good lump in the throat, shared with the person you love.

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On the Storied Campus of Yale University

I’ve loved traveling to historical places for vacation ever since my dad let me choose Jamestown, Virginia over Disneyland when I was 10. This year, I got a bonus: I combined my love of history and my love of books by attending a summer writers’ conference at Yale University. There I learned from some of today’s most celebrated novelists—and I got to wander the shaded greens and hallowed buildings of one of our country’s oldest institutions.
     Author Chris Bohjalian’s master class was certainly a highlight. I’ve read several of his 19 books, and perhaps my favorite is his historical novel, Skeletons at the Feast. The story centers on 18-year-old Anna, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats, toward the end of WWII. Anna and others flee from Eastern Europe as Russian soldiers advance to Berlin. Bohjalian said, “I must invite readers into the story soon. And, when my books work best, they are about dread for readers.” Skeletons introduces a character we care about—as well as high tension—on page one, and there is a palpable sense that things will only get worse.
     Readers who enjoy lush, epic novels that shift between the past and the present should check out The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee, another instructor I had the honor of meeting. In Chee’s 2016 bestseller, Lilliet Berne is an opera singer in nineteenth-century Paris. Just when she thinks she may achieve her chance at immortality—a role that no other diva has ever performed—she discovers the composer’s material is based on her own life’s deepest secret. Of the four people who know about her hidden past, who will be the one to betray her? Chee’s goal with this book was to “grab the reader by the collar and not let them go.” He added, “To build a story, write with a chain of consequences. This happened because this happened because….” I loved the gritty protagonist in Chee’s novel, and I loved her twisting, turning story.

     Then there was author Lily King whose historical novel Euphoria captivated me. I only wonder why I waited to so long to pick it up. Inspired by the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the book is a masterwork of creating characters in conflict—conflict internal to themselves, and conflict that drives an unforgettable love triangle. About her writing, King said, “I don’t ‘think’ when I write. I’m more like a blind worm on the ground, feeling my way around. It’s not an intellectual process. Writers must be true to what’s inside; it wants to come out. Writers must listen.”

     My week was filled with other joys, too, everything from browsing 16^th-century paintings at the Yale University Art Gallery to curling up in a leather love seat at Sterling Library (a breathtaking structure in the Gothic style) and studying fiction projects by the talented classmates from my small group workshop. We were led by Terra Elan McVoy, whose many novels have kept her young adult readers up late into the night to see how her ever-so-relatable stories end. Terra shared with us her insights from a lifetime of reading and studying craft. Because of her caring instruction, I left my summer vacation not only as a stronger reader, but as a woman filled with even more creative inspiration.

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Calling All Audiobook Listeners

     Call me old-fashioned, but I rarely read books on Kindle. I like running my fingers across an embossed cover or up and down a deckled edge, and, as I’ve posted before, I jot notes throughout the chapters using my own key words and symbols.

     Yet, there is one exception to my old-fashionedness when it comes to reading novels: audiobooks.

     A dear friend recommended books on tape five years ago, and for me, there was no turning back. Oh, how much time I had wasted in a car! I commute to my job in the city for 50 minutes a day, each way. Now, I actually welcome traffic jams. (Okay, that might be a stretch.) But, true to what my friend had predicted, when I’m alone, I listen to snippets en route to the grocery, the gym, and the nail salon.

     Eventually, I graduated from shuffling 10-CD box sets to Amazon Audible. (Love. It.) While at a stoplight in rush hour, I can download a book from my wish list with one click on my iPhone and be “reading" a new story by the time my foot pushes the pedal.

     I find unexpected joy in listening to books being read to me. Perhaps it’s some subconscious throw-back to when I was a girl, to when my Memaw read me MADELINE. With audiobooks, a professional narrator often adds something that heightens my experience. This can be the varied character voices or a story interpretation—with the pauses, the cadence, the emphasis, the tone. The sounds of the words strung together by the author make music to my ears that my classic rock radio simply cannot.

     At times I have read a “real book” and listened to it, too (sometimes during the same period, other times years apart). The best of both worlds!

Here are two of my favorite audiobooks with stories that shift between the past and present:

Other awesome audiobooks you might enjoy:

You've heard of a TBR (To Be Read) List. Here are a couple of books I loved reading, and now they're on my "TBL" List. As in Yangsze Choo's audiobook above, the narrators for the books below are the authors!




What audiobooks are your favorites? 

True Confessions: I Crease the Spines of My Books

     Some people open a novel just far enough to read it. Heaven forbid they would ever bend back the wings of a hardcover book until the glue in the binding crunches. Nor would they ever permit deep vertical creases to mar the spines of paperbacks on their shelves. I get it. Books are works of art. To purists, bending back covers is akin to taking a Depression glass plate and purposely chipping off a shard from its rim.

     Warning to purists: when I read, I've been known to open a novel until it can lie flat on a table like a placemat. At minimum, I bend the cover back until I can comfortably hold it in one hand and read while in bed or while lounging by the pool. And no, I don’t fuss with bookmarks when dog-eared corners will do.

     I also write in my books. (Gasp.) I keep a mechanical pencil clipped to the top edge of a hardbound book’s jacket, so it’s handy when I need it. The edges of my trade paperback covers are frayed and cottony from fastening and unfastening my pencil for three hundred pages. I study the craft of writing fiction, so I underscore first lines that hooked me on page one. I mark lyrical sentences and beautiful sensory details. I note passages with tension and twists and character change.

     To me, the works of art that line my bookcases are keepsakes from where I’ve been. A book represents an interactive experience I’ve had—be it for learning or be it an escape—an experience that evokes memories like photos in an album I keep from a trip.

     Last weekend, I read—correction, I was enthralled by—Christina Baker Kline's A PIECE OF THE WORLD. 

Like her wildly popular ORPHAN TRAIN, her latest novel alternates between the past and the present. Blending fact and fiction, the book is about Christina Olson, the figure in a famous painting with a New England farmhouse and a field of gold. In the story, the main character is a friend of artist Andrew Wyeth and observes this about him:

All the things that most people fret about, Andy likes. The scratches made by the dog on the blue shed door. The cracks in the white teapot. The frayed lace curtains and the cobwebbed glass in the windows…. There’s more grandeur in the bleached bones of a storm-rubbed house, he declares, than in drab tidiness.

Aren’t the words of the last sentence true for a well-worn, well-loved, hard-read book?

     Purists might argue that books are meant to last beyond the life of the reader. I agree; that’s one of the things I love most about books. Yet, when I’m gone, no one will find first editions in mint condition for collectors, nor pristine tomes bearing the faint scent of old ink presses. They will find books that compare more to my Barbie from 1963, a doll with torn fingers from so much fun play—not a cold Barbie preserved in the original box that was bought from the store.

      They will find books that show a smudge of chocolate or drops of red wine on page 232. They will find smiley faces by paragraphs and know that in that moment, I laughed. They will see annotations such as “Oh!” by a scene that surprised me or “Tears!” where I cried.

      They will find books that were a part of my life and discover more about me.