Dystel & Goderich Literary Management :: Staff Recommendations

Hearing the story behind THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY – that author Mary Ann Shafer, a first time novelist, got ill toward the end of the writing process and her niece Annie Barrows, a children’s book writer, helped complete it – I was intrigued. And so I started reading – and I absolutely fell in love.

Normally I hate epistolary anything. I find the form difficult to read and follow. That, however, is not at all true with this lovely novel. It is beautifully written with wonderfully memorable characters and a well crafted story. The authors’ ability to tell a very sad tale in a clever and sometimes humorous way is engrossing and I found the book difficult to put down every time I had to. It is an absolute delight, and I recommend it highly.

I love well executed historical fiction, and I’m a big fan of well plotted, original mysteries with strong protagonists you want to follow from one book to the next. MAISIE DOBBS by Jacqueline Winspear is both a precisely imagined work of historical fiction and a compelling mystery which both conforms to and thwarts the category’s formula. Maisie is a literary delight. Her life circumstances might have been invented by Dickens if the old Victorian could have brought himself to make a woman a hero. She is also thoroughly modern in her yearning for the intellectual and physical freedoms that men have always had but also very much a product of her post WWI society. A contradictory, brilliant, and quietly passionate character, you find yourself wanting to sit down with Maisie Dobbs over tea and a biscuit for an extended conversation.

Michael Bourret recommends:

Since I got my Kindle, I've been doing more nonfiction reading lately – something I don't get to do enough of. The book I most recently finished was Dave Cullen's COLUMBINE. The book is utterly compelling, almost too much so. I found myself reading it when I intended to be doing other things: checking email, calling friends, making dinner. The book is consuming in a way that I haven't experienced in a long time. Cullen strips away all the assumptions, rumors, myths and misconceptions, leaving a clear, stark, sobering account of what happened. Emotionally gripping from page one, I recommend the book to anyone who thinks they can handle it. They won't be disappointed.

I’ll admit it – one of the perks of working in book publishing is getting books for free. So I’m sometimes surprised when I walk into a bookstore and pick up a book that compels me to buy it. This happened recently with Ruth Reichl’s new memoir, NOT BECOMING MY MOTHER. I loved the opening anecdote so much that I bought the book. She’s a lovely writer and the book beautifully captures the essence of the complex woman her mother was. But I know what I’ll come back to again and again is that opening story about the moldy chocolate pudding. It’s a classic in the making.

Jim McCarthy recommends:

When I first heard the plot of Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES (a bunch of teens are selected to battle each other to the death—on television!), it sounded derivative of Battle Royale and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. It also seemed like it would be impossible to pull off in a satisfactory way that was also appropriate for its young adult target audience. That the book succeeds so completely is a testament to Collins’ ability to confound expectations, her ability to create wholly realized, deeply sympathetic characters, and the sheer scope of her imagination. I hate that the next book in the series isn’t out yet.

I just read Margaret Atwood’s engrossing, disturbing and brilliant YEAR OF THE FLOOD, in which she returns to the post-apocalyptic landscape she mapped in Oryx and Crake, this time looking at a cult of extreme urban homesteaders known as Gardeners, whose gospels reconcile science and faith in ways that would render both Richard Dawkins and Jerry Falwell apoplectic. Atwood is so celebrated and her books so anticipated that she hardly needs my voice added to the chorus of praise, but I do think it’s worth noting how, in an increasingly category-bound marketplace, literary works of “speculative fiction” can be sold outside of genre. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and the less well-known but the wonderfully weird Under the Skin by Michel Faber, all books I loved, rely squarely on the conventions of science fiction and yet are successfully marketed to a mainstream literary market. Perhaps these are the exceptions that prove the rule, or maybe (as I like to think) they are demonstration that really good books are bigger than the categories we assign to them.

Anyone looking for daring, fun, and well executed fiction should check out Josh Bazell’s BEAT THE REAPER. It’s darkly comic, at times a bit nauseatingly graphic, and definitely edgy, with a driving plot that will get you to the end of the book in a sitting or two. A thriller featuring subplots about Auschwitz and child sex slaves doesn’t sound like a laugh riot, but somehow it is, and Bazell doesn’t hesitate to go to some uncomfortable and potentially offensive places. The climax of the book features what must be the most disgusting scene I’ve ever read—if “read” still applies when half looking at the page out of the corner of your eye while peering through your fingers—and yet somehow it still works. Even the moments you can anticipate knocked me off balance a bit. A fantastic and surprising read.

Chasya Milgrom recommends:

I recently read the much lauded LUSH LIFE by Richard Price, and the book certainly lives up to all the hype. It is a remarkable meditation on the real-life consequences of a single act of violence and richly captures and reveals the colliding worlds of the Lower East Side. Price, who wrote for the critically acclaimed television show The Wire, is a master at spot-on dialogue and is able to really capture all walks of life in the most authentic and compelling way. This is a rare book that will leave you impressed with his remarkable storytelling ability.

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO. Strange and heartbreaking, the book is the retrospective retelling of the adolescence of three kids at Hailsham, a school for “special” children. It’s an incredibly fast, suspenseful read for a book that’s stylistically sparse and withheld, and what makes the students “special” is actually quite shocking. In many ways this book is storytelling at its most genuine – little detail is given about each character and yet I became so invested in their fates that I found myself crying in public when things began to go awry. The narrator’s stoicism certainly added to the emotional weight, and despite out-of-this-world elements the story was very easy to personally connect to. It’s really my favorite kind of writing – straightforward and concise, everything explained to you as if you are an innocent and uninformed visitor from another planet.