Too Woo or Not to Woo - Love in Literature: Part the Third

On Valentine's Day, back in 2012, I had some fun with the whole hallmark holiday gush-fest and recommended some left-of-center love stories to you guys. Then in 2014, I invited some of our review contributors to join in on the mushy-gushy lovefest. 

And so it seems we are baaaaaack, like a bad poltergeist remake, and bringing forth the books we think are most fitting for this, the rosiest, silkiest, smoothiest of all canned holidays. Talking up love in literature, TNBBC style:



Melanie Page's Literary Love Picks:

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore

This is a novel about dude love that knows no bounds. Sure, one of them is Jesus and the other is his best friend Biff, but when you get into the meat of the novel, you realize that there is no way that Biff could ever abandon his BFF. After Biff is reincarnated to write more stories for the Bible, you can just sense his unease, sense that something is missing. It’s not the girl he loves; it’s his buddy.

If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

One of the best lovemaking scenes I’ve ever read was in this novel. Despite the agony of knowing Fonny is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Baldwin’s words make me want to be young Tish, a woman who knows Fonny’s love and carries his warmth around like fur-lined coat. Another beautiful aspect of the novel is that the relationship begins in friendship; Fonny and Tish have known each other since childhood and have personally committed to always protecting one another.

Bridget Jones’s Diary(the trilogy), by Helen Fielding

If I’m being honest with myself, when I want to read about someone who makes fairly stupid decisions at every turn and yet has great encounters with sexy British men, I’ll turn to BJ. I think everyone, male or female, wants someone to say, “I like you very much. Just as you are.” I also like to watch the mess that BJ is: her obsessive calorie/alcoholic units/cigarette counting, weighing herself, trying to avoid certain people (workaholics, alcoholics, people with girlfriends or wives, etc.) so she doesn’t get dragged under with them. She makes me feel cooler.

My Life in France,by Julia Child

While this book is largely about Child learning to cook in France and her three-way partnership that resulted in one of the most popular cookbooks ever, you’ll also discover that Child had a beautiful love story. Julia and husband Paul never had children, so their lives focus entirely on their ambitions and one another. They were funny, too; every Valentine’s Day the couple would send out very sexy cards to all their friends!

Currency, by Zoe Zolbrod

Robin is a tourist in Thailand, and Piv is her guide and lover. When these two get involved in trafficking animal products internationally, you know things aren’t going to end well. In the meantime, though, their trust in one another is a beautiful thing to watch develop, which made me want to trust in anything and everything just to feel that sense of falling into safe arms.

The Dangerous Husband, by Jane Shapiro

I have to confess, this book confuses my students every time I teach it. I mean, how could a fictitious couple with seem so perfect for one another (and they’re getting older—tick tock, folks!) have problems? Like, is Dennis trying to kill his wife, or is he just the clumsiest man ever? And, in her fear and doubt, is the wife trying to preemptively kill Dennis? And they’re such a great match!

What the Body Requires: A Symphonic Novel, by Debra DiBlasi

A woman heads to Europe to kill her husband for taking a lover, but his doppelganger surprises her instead. This new man she did not expect is enamored with the American woman on the war path for revenge; she brings light to his lightless life. Some moments involve hi stakes situations and a bit of mystery, though I’d never call What the Body Requires a genre novel. This book is highly sexual, but never cliched. DiBlasi just kills it.



Lindsey Lewis Smithson's Literary Love Picks:

In no particular order, read these with someone you love. Some are sexy, a little racy, while others are quiet and meditative. All of them will get you thinking a little more about that person you’ve given your heart to.

“Folie à Deux Ménage à Trois” from Harlotby Jill Alexander Essbaum

The book is called Harlotand there is a woman hugging a penis on the cover. Nothing could say Valentine’s Day more. This particular poem is full of great rhymes, word play, a killer use of form, plus, as the speaker says “we teeter on the precipice of this suggestions, the three of us.”

“to love” from Shattered Sonnets Love Cards and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Davis’ “to love” reads like both a breathless declaration of love and a well thought out letter trying to convince another of love. The poem mixes progressive tense verbs and mashed together meanings with meticulous line breaks that leave many things open to interpretation. No matter how you read it though, the speaker is clearly in love.

“Recipe for a Long, Happy Marriage” from Charlotte Bronte, You Ruined My Life by Barbara Louise Ungar

There is a lot of tongue in cheek humor in “Charlotte Bronte, You Ruined My Life,” which Ungar uses to make her message of love, unrealistic expectations and loss so palatable. Instead of an over effusion of romance “Recipe for a Long, Happy Marriage” literally boils the whole thing down to a few simple steps, and the only ingredient is “Find the right person.” 

“Rise”from Interior with Sudden Joy by Brenda Shaughnessy

Like Barbara Louise Ungar’s “Recipe for a Long, Happy Marriage” Shaughnessy mixes food and love in “Rise.” Instead of a simple formula this poem is laced with double or triple meanings and dark sexy word choices. Depending on your mood you either leave this poem a little turned on, or considering death. 

“Love at First Sight” from Miracle Fair: Selected Poems by Wisława Szymborska

“Love at First Sight” is a beautiful, thoughtful, made-for-TV romance of a poem. Szymborska mediates on the loveliness of chance in life and how the most unsuspecting moments may be the ones that change your life; “Every beginning, after all,/is nothing but a sequel,/and the book of events/is always open in the middle.”

“Letter to a Lover” from Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

“Letter to a Lover,” which appears in Matthew Zapruder’s third collection, Come on All Your Ghosts,illustrates love in every life instead of grand sweeping moments. The speaker opens by saying “Today I am going to pick you up at the beige airport” and then proceeds to list the day-to-day things he is excited to share with the girl. Most love happens around the mundane things, like airport pick ups, but there is something heartwarming in the careful way Zapruder makes these moments shine.

“Ignatz in August” fromIgnatz by Monica Youn

Monica Youn’s “Ignatz in August,” which is one of a series of poems inspired by the character Ignatz Mouse from the Krazy Kat cartoons, doesn’t sound like something that would initially spark romance or ove, but this short poem is surprising.  Consisting of only six lines, this visceral piece begs to be read between people in love, opening with  “you arch/up off me.”

“Torch Song for Ophelia” from Torch Song Tango Choir by Julie Sophia Paegle

For the reader in search of a smooth talking man, or who for the woman is just got dumped, “Torch Song for Ophelia” is a Valentine’s Day anthem.  “Forget/about Hamlet./He required too much: air,/ Purgatory, his harpy/whore,/ revenge,/stories” Paegle writes, and then her speaker sweeps Ophelia off of her feet with profusions of love, sex and appreciation.

“places of happiness” from Forever Will End on Thursday by Nic Sebastian

Despite some tension between the two speakers in “places of happiness,” by Nic Sebsastian, this poem shows two people who really do care about each other.  They travel together, ask about the other’s work, and in the end “on the road to Chittagong/you covered me with your jacket and held/my hand.” This simple gesture, among the unique locations and vivid details, is what makes this poem, and most of the book, special.

“The Knowing” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 by Sharon Olds

That post coitus snuggle moment, when you (hopefully) amaze at the person you are with is touchingly described in Sharon Olds “The Knowing.” This speaker is in love, in lust, and in like with the person she has just slept with and gladly shares this with the reader in heartfelt detail. At the end of the poem Olds expresses the sentiment I hope we can all share on Valentine’s day:  “I am so lucky that I can know him.”






Lori's Literary Love Picks:

Love is everywhere, in everyone. Sometimes that love is so strong and intense that it's borderline breaking-the-law obsessive. Other times it's muffled and hidden for fear of having our feelings hurt. In these selections, you'll find some of the funniest, sickest, and more deranged looks at love:

Romance for Delinquents by Michael Wayne Hampton
Love is for suckers. Or at least it sometimes feels that way, don't it? We've all fallen for the new, naive love that births a billion butterflies in our chest. But what about when it becomes an angry and unreciprocated love, the kind that forces those fluttery little creatures down, one by one, into your stomach, where they churn and dissolve in your acidic emotions? Or how about the curious, borderline obsessive love that clouds our senses and causes us to act in strange and sometimes dangerous ways. Watch out that it doesn't turn into a jealous love, one that, as we begin to rage and howl, darkens those clouds and blinds our vision.In Michael Wayne Hampton's Romance for Delinquents, we are judge, jury, and witness to love in all of its extremes

Elegantly Naked in my Sexy Mental Illness by Heather Fowler
The stories in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness, Heather Fowler's fourth collection, hold a scalpel to the brain of each of its protagonists, in an attempt to differentiate true mental illness from what is natural and normal. When does a simple crush become an obsessive desire? At what point do we decide that these paranoid thoughts in our head are no longer innocent, no longer healthy? After you read her stories, your guard will be up. Your eyes will turn their suspicious gaze left and right, left and right, all day long. You'll automatically diagnose everyone around you, and begin to keep your distance. But I promise it won't last long. Because the unease will wear off. The routine will suck you back in. The familiarity with these people, the trust, it will all return. And in a few week's time, it'll be as if you never looked at them any differently. And that's ok. Because it's the norm. And because sometimes, we find mental illness a little thrilling, a little sexy.

The Bones of Us by J Bradley
J Bradley's poetry is stark and sharp and gutting. It's not for the recently heartbroken. It's a suicide partner; a deflating raft in an ocean of sharks. It won't help you heal your wounds. Oh no. It will seek out the wounds you were certain had healed and it will tear them wide open again. It will pour lemon juice and salt into them and smile a sadistic smile. It will draw fine, faint lines across your skin with its nails and teeth and lick its lips as the blood beads on the surface. A powerful, poignant reminder of how fleeting and fragile our love is, The Bones of Us is a breath taken, and held, for fear that if we let it out, it'll blow away all we came to care about. 

Please Don't Leave Me Scarlett Johansson by Thomas Patrick Levy

Stalker alert! This chapbook is the perfect Valentine read for those suffering a broken heart or those who are in the midst of a crazy-ass obsess-fest. It takes the idea of celebrity fandom and throws it on its back, taping its mouth shut and sniffing its neck in the backseat of a kidnap-van. 

Panic Attack, USA by Nate Slawson
This is everything that poetry should be and never was until now. Honest and naked. Sensitive to the point of sappy but with a surprisingly hard core edge. Nate Slawson's words punch you in the gut with their beauty. They make you wish your boyfriend/husband/partner pined for you in such painfully raw and inspiring ways. This book touched me in places I shouldn't have enjoyed but did. I love it's naughty, raunchy little heart. If Panic Attack, USA were a person, I would kidnap it and hold it hostage in my closet and make it whisper its dirty little poems to me every night.

Rod KcKuen - his entire collection
I was incredibly saddened when I heard about Rod's passing this year. I have loved his poetry ever since I first discovered him, back in college. His poems are so beautiful, full of love, and loss, and so tired, and so awake. They are heartbreaking and breath taking. And you should become acquainted with them. 

Lindsey Reviews: They Speak of Fruit

They Speak of Fruit by Gary L. McDowell

Pages: 29

Publisher: Cooper Dillon Books

Released: 2009

Dog Eared Review by Lindsey Lewis Smithson (review contributor)

Reviewing chapbooks is often a different task than looking at a full collection of poems, and Gary L. McDowell’s The Speak of Fruit was no exception. Just like writing a short poem where every single word has to count and carry one, sometimes two meanings, the same can be said for forming a chapbook. In longer poems, longer collections, and often times in prose, there is space to slow down, let some images punch and others just linger. There can be no lingering in good chapbooks, only a series of punches that must land. I may only dog ear one or two pages in a full collection of poems and still love it, but in a chapbook I find, more often than not, that the better books have the most folded down corners. I bent up my copy of They Speak of Fruit badly.

The second poem in the collection, “Nectar,” feels like the actual beginning of the book, with the first, “All Stones are Broken Stones,” merely a preface. McDowell starts out strong, demonstrating the real power of good line breaks, writing “I found my history in the tiny,” and again later in the final stanza

                        And for that, I offer a prayer:

                        hummingbird, fly in to my mouth and lay

                        your head under my tongue

                        Let me turn your death

                        against my teeth

                        and weigh it, and weigh myself.

If the reader keeps that final stanza in mind while reading the entire collection each poem that follows becomes more meaningful. There is power in the small, the insects, the fruit, the quiet moments in life: “weight it, and weight myself.”

Another stand out moment in the collection is the speaker’s question, “Where have we been and how is it we’ve never lost our way?” This question appears “Blackbirds,” where the complex relationship between the speaker, his father, his grandfather, a rifle and the blackbirds they hunt is played out. A similar thought is expressed in “Yellow Jackets,” with the speaker, who is spying on a hive of bees says, “I’ve come to see the Queen’s chambers/[…]/so I can tell her that I am/what I seem, but the hive is jumping/and there is not language to convince her.” This awe at the outside world and how we are a part of it, separate from it, and all equally subjected to it makes They Speak of Fruit an image driven collection that puts the day to day business of life into perspective.

Dog Eared Pages: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29

Lindsey Lewis Smithson is the Editor of Straight Forward Poetry. Some of her poetry has appeared on The Nervous Breakdown, This Zine Will Change Your Life, The Cossack Review, and Every Writer’s Resource: Everyday Poems.

Where Writers Write: JF Riordan

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is J.F. Riordan.

She is the author of North of the Tension Line, the first of a new series published by Beaufort Books.

Where JF Riordan Writes

My book, North of the Tension Line, is set primarily on Washington Island, located in Lake Michigan about 4 miles off the tip of Door County Wisconsin. I often tell people that I live in exile from the Island, which they tend to assume is a joke. But the truth is that whatever magic the place weaves has utterly ensnared me, and when I am not there I am thinking about being there, imagining being there, and, well, writing about being there.

So while I do write from my home office while I’m in exile, the best writing for me is when I escape to the Island. Those times are concentrated writing. I hardly know anyone, and there’s nothing much to do except write and take long walks, so I get a lot done there. 

This is a picture of where I write. It’s a dining table in a big open room with a skylight above. The first thing I do when I arrive is remove the lazy-susan from the table and set up my computer. Sometimes, depending on where I am in the process, I bring my printer, too, but it’s a nuisance in a small car with two big dogs, and I consider the dogs more essential equipment than the printer.

The items on the desk are other essentials. The big blue book is the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, the best thesaurus in the world, I’m pretty sure. It was a gift from my husband, and I couldn’t write without it. I always bring a million pairs of glasses because I’m always losing them or breaking them. It’s a thing. Not quite visible here is my lined Canson notebook which goes everywhere with me, used for random notes for the book, grocery and to-do lists, secret bad poetry, and for keeping track of how many words and pages I’ve written each day. These notebooks are ridiculously hard to find, and scouring the earth for them has become one of my pastimes. There is also a half cup of cold coffee. Not essential, but inevitable.

This is my grocery bag plot timeline. I know. But grocery bags are big, inexpensive, and I always have one handy. I use my jar of sharpies to color code themes and plot turns on my grocery bag, shown here with amateur photoshopping so as not to prematurely reveal the details of my new book, just in case my scribbling is actually legible.

Immediately next to the computer is a detail of the scenes from a particular plot line, color coded to match the plot and theme colors on the grocery bag. It’s also photoshopped.  Near at hand is a bag of un-retouched kale chips to stave off carb cravings. Next to it is a plate of toast crumbs with whole cherry preserves because kale is no substitute for toast. You will see the case for one of the million pairs of glasses. Next to it is a Jambox which is only for plotting. I can’t listen to music when I write. It distracts me.

On the other side, in addition to the Worlds’ Best Thesaurus, is a selection of books that I refer to while writing. My readers will know why a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is there, but there is also—in no particular order—a book of election advice written by Quintus Tullius Cicero in 64 B.C.;  a collection of Willa Cather short stories; Dostoevsky’s The Idiot; William Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating, and On Poetry and Craft by Theodore Roethke. I’m not actually sure if they’re for reference or companionship.

This is a hyacinth I brought with me because it was about to bloom and I figured my husband wouldn’t appreciate it.

You will see in this photo my credenza, with one of the essential dogs. That’s Pete. He sleeps on the credenza pretty much all day except for when we eat or go for walks. You’ll note that the credenza resembles a bed, which is useful for sleeping dogs.

On the floor within my field of vision is Moses, the other essential dog. His job, as he sees it, is to lie in wait for any sign that I may be stirring, and nag me into taking walks or possibly playing ball in the house. He is a remarkably astute observer of my behavior and can always tell when I’ve finished a section. He is also an effective aid to procrastination.

I close with some photos that should be sufficient explanation for why I write where I do.

And it’s always best in winter.

Pamela Alex DiFrancesco's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. 

Pamela Alex DiFrancesco's

Would You Rather

Would you rather start every sentence in your book with ‘And’ or end every sentence with ‘but’?
I'd have to go with "and" because it seems more affirmative and easier to build off of.



Would you rather write in an isolated cabin that was infested with spiders or in a noisy coffee shop with bad musak?
 I wrote most of my novel in a somewhat isolated cabin in Saugerties, New York, but it definitely wasn't infested with spiders. As a person who's lived in New York City for over a decade, I feel pretty comfortable writing in coffee shops, and can tune out most of what's going on around me (or even find inspiration in it). So I guess I'd have to go with the latter.



Would you rather think in a language you could understand but write in one you couldn’t read, or think in a language you couldn’t understand but write in one you could read?
I'm more attached to the things that I write than half of the thoughts that go through my head, so I'd pick thinking in a language I couldn't understand and writing in one I could read.




Would you rather write the best book of your career and never publish it or publish a bunch of books that leave you feeling unsatisfied?
I guess this is a bad example, because it was eventually published, but the novel House of Leaves had a fine life as a book before ever seeing publication. I think you can write something beautiful and pass it around organically and satisfy your need for readership. I guess the only difference would be the money, which is a concern when writing is part of your income. So in the end, it would matter if I was really broke, or if I could focus entirely on the artistic beauty of the novel.



Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?
This is a funny question to me, because I often find myself narrating things in my head that are happening as if I will write them down (and sometimes I do). I wouldn't mind an internal narrator; in fact, it wouldn't seem so strange at all.



Would you rather your books be bound and covered with human skin or made out of tissue paper?
Tissue paper!



Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?
This makes me nervous to even think about, as I'm about to do the launch for my first book, and either option is terror-inspiring. I guess naked to a packed house would be more fruitful than clothed to no one, though.



Would you rather your book incite the world’s largest riot or be used as tinder in everyone’s fireplace?
As someone who's studied a lot of radical history and done a lot of protesting, I don't think a riot is necessarily a bad thing--in fact, it can change things if done the right way (for example, the Watts riots caused Martin Luther King, Jr., to deepen his understanding of the environmental injustices that caused expressions of anger such as the riots and bring that with him in his quest for justice; the 1999 Battle in Seattle brought a broader understanding of opposition to the World Trade Organization to the greater American public). So if I wrote something that genuinely stuck a chord deep enough to incite a riot that brought about a positive change, I would be pretty happy with that.



Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?
I would love to go back to just using a pen and paper. I would do all my research at the New York Public Library instead of on the internet, and write more letters.



Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?
Tattooed. Great writing in audio format wouldn't allow me to do any of my own writing.



Would you rather meet your favorite author and have them turn out to be a total jerkwad or hate a book written by an author you are really close to?
I don't expect good books to necessarily be written by good people, so I think the first would cause less social discomfort.




Would you rather your book have an awesome title with a really ugly cover or an awesome cover with a really bad title?
Another writers' nightmare choice! I would choose a bad cover, because that can change when new editions come out, but you're stuck with the title forever.




Would you rather write beautiful prose with no point or write the perfect story badly?
Beautiful prose with no point. I don't believe that you need to have traditional structures of plot or even characters to write a wonderful book.



Would you rather write only embarrassingly truthful essays or write nothing at all?
I wouldn't be able to give up writing, so I would have to pick the former.



Would you rather your book become an instant best seller that burns out quickly and is forgotten forever or be met with mediocre criticism but continue to sell well after you’re gone?
As someone who works in a bookstore, I see a million books that were bestsellers and were forgotten shortly afterwards (we often put them on the dollar rack), and I always feel so bad for those books. My unshakable belief in the feelings of inanimate objects would make me want that little guy to do well even if I'm not around to see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pamela Alex DiFrancesco is a queer activist, a writer of (mostly) fiction, and a bookseller at NYC's legendary Strand Bookstore. Their debut novel, The Devils That Have Come to Stay, is a radical Acid Western that completely flips the American Western on its head, and is available from Medallion Press. They are married to award-winning musician Mya Byrne, and the two live in Queens with their cat, Sylvia Rivera-Katz. They have most recently published short stories in The Carolina Quarterly (who nominated their story for Best American Writing), The New Ohio Review, and Monkeybicycle.

Kate reviews: Cheap as Beasts

Cheap as Beasts by Jon Wilson

5 stars - Highly Recommended by Kate

Pages: 242

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books

Released: Feb 2015

Guest review by Kate Vane

Declan Colette is a private investigator in 1950s LA. When a young woman is killed on her way to an appointment with him, he comes under suspicion. To extricate himself, he must solve the mystery of her death, while entangling himself with a powerful family, obstructive police, resentful rivals and local gangsters. And a redhead. But the redhead is male.

This is the setup for Cheap as Beasts. It’s classic noir in the Chandler vein and yet it isn’t. It faces the eternal challenge for the genre novel – give us what we know, what we want, but give us something surprising, moving, new. And for me this book really does.

Everything about it is subtle. The prose is clever and laconic. The characters are all fluent in subtext. Colette has the obligatory world-weary take on the world. People may think they can take him in, but he’ll work out what’s going on. When he quotes Shakespeare he doesn’t stop to explain it. You’ll get it. Or you can look it up. (I had to look it up.)

It’s clear that, whatever Colette is telling you, there’s a lot more he’s keeping back. Colette’s ironic detachment comes, you sense, from a feeling that he’s living in a world he no longer believes in.

The book takes on themes that are controversial or ambiguous or sublimated in Chandler. When Colette sees a black lawn jockey, an image taken from Chandler’s The High Window (okay, I had to look that up too), he thinks of the humiliation of the black servant who has to polish it. It’s the same world, but from a different perspective.

Ideas of masculinity are questioned. Men judge each other, not only on their words or their strength, but on their war record. Colette’s sexuality is acknowledged, with varying degrees of acceptance – as long as he can pass those other tests.

World War Two and its aftermath are at the heart of this story. The man Colette loved was killed in the war. Clubs and bars are renamed to conceal their Japanese ownership. The case Colette is investigating turns in on itself, testing family alliances against wartime bonds. War and loss subtly suffuse everything.

Chandler himself wrote about how he struggled against the constraints of genre. This book, in turn, takes on Chandler and creates something new.

Kate Vane writes crime and literary fiction. Her latest novel is Not the End. She lives on the Devon coast in the UK.

  

Book Review: The Only Ones

Read 1/28/15 - 2/2/15

4 Stars - Strongly recommended to fans of unique voices, dystopian pandy's, and unexpected motherhood

Pages: 354

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Releases: March 2015

In the near future, wave after wave of infections and viruses have greatly reduced the world's population. Many of those who survive are rendered incapable of having children on their own and require the services of "Donors" and "Hosts" -  women who allow their eggs to be harvested or agree to become surrogate mothers for money. 

Inez, our narrator, is one such woman. Immune to infection, Inez understands her status as a "hardy" makes her a hot commodity and when we are first introduced to her, she's busy selling her blood, eggs, and teeth on the streets of New York to make ends meet. She's amazingly naive and unfazed by danger, treating her body as nothing more than a borrowed shell to loan out to strangers for payment. Her "let's see what happens" attitude eventually finds her in the company of a guy named Rauden. He runs a farm - not an "old MacDonald had a" farm, but one that specializes in experimental "product" trafficking. The baby-making-stuffs. Before she can fully grasp what's happening, Inez participates in a battery of experimental tests and agrees to donate her eggs and skin samples to a wealthy, grieving "client" who is desperate to replace her recently deceased children. 

After multiple failed attempts to genetically engineer a baby for hosting purposes, Rauden and his team finally break new ground. They successfully produce the world's first batch of clones from Inez's genetic material. During the tank-gestation period, they lose all but one baby and at the very last minute, the client backs out, leaving a reluctant Inez in charge of the infant she helped to create. 

Now forced to forage for two, and on the run from horseback-riding religious vigilantes, Inez must protect the secret of the farm and the truth about her daughter Ani at all costs. 

God, did I get lost in Carola Dibbell's vision of dystopian New York City. Coupons replace cash; swipes and spit tests replace photo ID's; phone calls and messages are received on Boards (which are both personal devices and outdoor, ATM-like machines); and public transportation consists of bubble cars, unreliable wind-powered trams and boats, and hovering magnetized trains. Giant domes encapsulate wealthy neighborhoods as a feeble attempt to protect against the threat of death that lives in every breath. It's a stark and gritty world where babies are conceived in basement laboratories and sold as "viables" in the global underground market.  

The Only Ones was one of many post-pandemic novels I was itching to get my hands on this year. It hinges itself on more than just surviving the unsurvivable. It tackles more than just rebuilding society. Dibbell's novel sticks its hands into the evolutionary food chain and calls into question the roles of man and god. 

It's a story about understanding your worth and overcoming your "heritage". It's about embracing motherhood, even if you don't know what that is, and the near-obsessive desire to give your children a better childhood than you had.  

I loved the language of the book. And Carola eases us into it so smoothly, it's like we've been talking her lingo all along.

Inez's apparent ignorance regarding the world around her is both refreshing and grating. With her, what you see is what you get. She is incredibly human, unrepentantly stubborn, and proud of her faults. Yet as her daughter begins to develop her own personality, full of flaws, Inez's certainty in things starts to falter. She worries and fears that Ani is damaged, that these might be signs of anomaly, defects due to Ani's method of creation. 

The way Inez reacted to Ani throughout the novel was simultaneously humorous and maddening. The initial pride she took in keeping her alive as a baby was sweet. "Does she breathe? She does breathe. Still alive." The joy she took in the odd things Ani did as a baby was adorable. "The sofa cover got loose ... she took a big bite of the foam! With the big bite in her mouth she hopped one two three to the mirror and spit out the foam. Man! What was she thinking?" But her ever-growing confusion over Ani's wide range of emotions and her obsession over the influence her "environmental factors" might have on Ani became exasperating in that "new mother who always has to tell you about what their kid is doing and saying every single second of the day in very explicit detail" way.  

Though ultimately, all of that aside, the change we witness in Inez over the years, from naive reckless young woman to determined and protective mother, the selfless decisions she makes, and the things she is prepared to do as Ani learned how to become her own woman left me breathless more often than I'd like to admit. 

The Only Ones is not a novel you read. It's a novel you experience. 

Indie Book Buzz: Rose Metal Press

We're trying to bring back the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. If you are a small press publishing house and want to spread the word about some upcoming titles you are most excited about releasing, you know what to do!

This week's pick is brought you by Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney, 

co-founders and editors of Rose Metal Press

In the Circus of You: An Illustrated Novel-in-Poems 
by Nicelle Davis and Cheryl Gross

Release Date: March 25, 2015

What It’s About:The poems and their accompanying images take a circus freak show as the lens through which to view and understand both the self as an individual and its place in the world. As Nicelle and Cheryl put it in their note on the making of the book: “In the Circus of You is an intimate view of loss—the loss of love and the prescribed narrative. The images and poems were created spontaneously and simultaneously through a yearlong email exchange—the art became a sort of conversation between two women who were rummaging through the wreckage of their failed marriages. Together we discovered what remains after hopes and dreams are demolished. We created dreams and hopes unfettered by others’ expectations of ‘normal’ and ‘correct’—we

found our own story (strange as it may be).”

Why You Should Read It: Because as Liz Bradfield, the editor of Broadsided Press who teamed Nicelle and Cheryl up in the first place, writes in her introduction to In the Circus of You: “The parallel stories of destruction (of a marriage, of a self ) and creation (of a grotesquerie of inner figures, of a new self ) drive the book and amplify it. While the poems might move toward reconciliation, the art never backs off; the frisson of presentation and deep self are exposed. As Davis writes, ‘Conjoined with twine, bones of the first arrange with this new / pigeon. Two heads. Four wings. Gorge- /ous arrangement of lines. I make from them a necklace’.”

Plus the beautiful combination of poetry and art and imagination and reality will both delight and haunt you. For a preview of those many dualities at play, check out the book trailer for In the Circus of You here.

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Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney are the cofounders and editors of Rose Metal Press, a non-profit publisher dedicated to the publication and promotion of hybrid genres. Find out more about each of them and Rose Metal Press here. 

Where Writers Write: Lynn Sloan

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Lynn Sloan. 

Lynn is a writer and a photographer. She grew up as an Air Force brat, graduated from Northwestern University, earned a master’s degree in photography at The Institute of Design and taught photography at Columbia College Chicago. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been awarded several Ragdale fellowships, and served for a time as an assistant fiction editor for StoryQuarterly. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals, including American Literary Review, The Literary Review, Nimrod, and Sou’wester, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Principles of Navigationis her first novel. Her website is http://www.lynnsloan.com

Where Lynn Sloan Writes

I write best at home. Coffee shops are fine, but I like having lots of stuff around me—paper scraps for questions to answer later and to-do lists, Post-it notes, easy access to frequent, free cups of tea.

I like to keep reference books near by. For a quick fact or spell check, I use the Internet, but old dictionaries, old thesauruses, and old usage guides invariably give me interesting and unexpected ideas. A half hour spent chasing down the origins of a word I don’t even use seems like a better use of my time than a half hour catching up on Facebook or the news, which is what I do once I go online.

My workspace was originally a sleeping porch. The cottage I live in was built a hundred years ago. Sometime in the last century the screens were replaced by windows, and the walls were insulated, inadequately. In the winter I must layer up and haul out a portable radiator that smells of oil.

Once someone gave me a book of feng shui. Everything about my workspace is wrong. Sitting at my desk, my back faces the door—an intruder or evil spirits can attack me—and I look out the windows—a drain on energy and focus, but when I’m writing, nothing interrupts my concentration. If someone asks me a question, the words fly past me. I hear, but don’t register, the phone’s ring. If I come to a place in my writing where I’m stumped, I look out the window and find an absorbing diversion—a boy shooting baskets, a teenager across the alley smoking a joint on the roof outside his window, squirrels scurrying along the tree branches, clouds passing. After a few minutes, I’m ready to get back to writing.