Fireflies in the labyrinth

Lisa L. Hannett’s Bluegrass Symphony

I’m incredibly hung over, as one should be the day after a book launch, but I’m absolutely bursting with excitement to tell you all about Lisa Hannett’s amazing first collection of short stories, Bluegrass Symphony. 

Lisa and I became good friends while doing battle with our Phds, and I’ve been waiting almost a year to have this gorgeous book in my hands (and it really is gorgeous - Lisa’s not only an incredibly talented writer, she’s also one of those annoyingly gifted arty types and she worked with the publisher to design her own cover).

I can’t wait to start reading as soon as my head stops pounding enough for me to make sense of the words, and if Lisa’s earlier stories are anything to go by I’m in for a spine-tinglingly-awesome treat. Lisa only started writing about three years ago (though she’s been a prolific, life-long reader), and since then her stories have been published in magazines, journals and anthologies all over the world, including Clarkesworld Magazine and The Year’s Australian Best Fantasy & Horror 2010. Earlier this year she won an Aurealis award for her short story ‘The February Dragon’ (co-written with Angela Slatter). However, trying to describe what genre Lisa writes in is difficult. It’s fantasy, but not high fantasy. It’s creepy and unnerving, but not quite gory enough to be horror. Some of the places and people she writes about are incredibly ‘real’ but there’s too much of the supernatural for it to be straight literature. The best way I can think of to describe her writing is  Flannery O’Connor meets Annie Proulx meets Margo Lanagan, with a little somethin’ somethin’ thrown in besides. 

I know what you’re thinking: Margot, she’s one of your good friends, you’d probably sing Lisa’s praises if she just mashed the keyboard. Alright, yeah, I probably would. BUT as an objective academic who’s spent the last eight (
I know, it’s depressing) years studying literature and the craft of writing, I can honestly say Lisa’s writing is better than Laduree macaroons. If you don’t believe me, here’s what some others had to say:

Blugrass Symphony  ”plays like a country music album composed in the darker places of imagination, the little corners that you don’t want to look in as you tap-tap your foot to the catchy beat. Coolly beautiful, then coldly brutal, this is one of the most unnerving debuts in years.” - Robert Sherman

“Take a scruff of minotaur hair and a handful of mermaid scales, mix them with mothdust and the bloody feathers of a murdered oracle, and you might get a taste of the strange and dream-soaked magic that Lisa Hannett conjured with this remarkable debut collection. Bluegrass Symphony introduces a rare and original voice whose stories linger, dark and luscious and bold as tarnished brass, long after you have finished reading them” - Kirstyn McDermott

Bluegrass Symphony is published by Ticonderoga Publications and is available from Indie Books Online for $25.

You can also read more about Lisa and her writing on her website. 

As for me, I’m off for some water, aspirin and a good read!

YA Recommendations?

My YA to read pile is looking a little small. I LOVE LOVE LOVE John Green (esp. Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns), Jay Asher’s Thirteen Rasons Why, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Gabrielle Zevin’s Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, and everything by Sonya Hartnett and Margo Lanagan. Any suggestions about what to read next?

Book Reviews Demystified

reblogged from Full Stop.Net: 

Eric Jett & Alex Shephard | 04 August 2011 

To misquote Big Daddy Kane, reviewing ain’t easy. Books are long. Deadlines are short. Pay, if you’re lucky enough to receive it, is small and usually at least 6 months late. As a result, reviewers often resort to shorthand. But many readers come from outside the literary community’s gilded sanctum and struggle to understand its strange customs or its love of the wordverisimilitude.

To combat these difficulties, we have compiled and translated some of our favorite clichés.

ambitious: I did not finish this book.

at once/by turns ___ and ___: ATTN Publisher: please select this sentence for a blurb (back cover, if possible).

authentic dialogue: what’s a badunkadunk?

beautifully wrought: people are compared to clouds; clouds are compared to birds.

Carveresque: formerly Hemingwayesque; short sentences about drunk people watching their neighbors.

confirms ___ as one of America’s most ___ authors: this is the third book by an author you’ve never heard of.

darkly funny: the word cripple appears more than once.

dazzling: the writer has an MFA from a top 100 program.

deft: the writer has an MFA from a top 20 program.

disappointing: the author slept with my spouse before we were married.

epic in scope: the author needs a better editor.

finely tuned: short sentences about sober people watching their neighbors.

flawed: this book is similar to the book I was planning to write.

fully realized: there is a paragraph devoted to a piece of furniture, probably made of mahogany.

funhouse: the author has wasted my precious time.

gripping: I read this book on the toilet.

gritty: someone gets murdered with a tire iron.

heavyweight: refers to an accomplished but elderly author who is far from fighting shape.

in the tradition of ___: I finally read War & Peace, and I want everyone to know.

just as poignant today as it was when it was written: I know nothing about the period in which this novel is set; a mule is a main character.

Kafkaesque: see Kafkaesque.

masculine: the author isn’t misogynistic–the characters are!

not since ___ has ___ been so ___ly ___: see in the tradition of.

ostensibly (“while ostensibly about ___, the book is actually about ___”): I don’t know anything about the subject of this book, so I’m going to talk about myself, instead.

our greatest living prose stylist: the review is of a so-so book by an old author, or it is appearing in the New York Times.

overwrought: the author slept with my spouse while we were married.

pitch perfect: I have asked the author to blurb my upcoming book.

puts a magnifying glass to contemporary society: the book mentions Twitter or terrorism.

the first great novel of the ___: I’m already tired of talking about this book.

timely: see puts a magnifying glass to contemporary society.

tour de force: I can’t remember all the characters’ names, but I think there was a murder and maybe something about magic.

unputdownable: I ride the subway.

We would also like to honor the following words for their years of dedicated service to the review community by making them the inaugural class of the Full Stop Review Cliché Hall of Fame:preeminent, prose stylist, simulacrum, and verisimilitude. We hope they enjoy their retirement!

Max Rivlin-Nadler and Jesse Montgomery also contributed to this post

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Story: Long ago there was a war. The inhabitable part of the US, now Panem, is divided into 12 Districts overseen by the Captiol. Each year, as a reminder of the Districts’ subservience to the Capitol there are the Hunger Games: an extreme reality TV series in which two teenage tributes from each District face off in a booby-trapped arena. The last tribute left alive is the victor.

When Katniss Everdeen’s kid sister, Prim, is selected as a tribute for District 12, Katniss, offers to take her place. As preparations for the Games get underway, the District 12 publicity team concoct a romance between Katniss and fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark to give them the viewers’ sympathy in the arena.

In the arena things get bloody. Katniss realises that there’s far more at stake than just her life. If she and Peeta can form a real alliance, they have the power to stand up against more than just the other tributes.
Let the Games begin.

And Why is it Brilliant? On a basic level, this is a pacey, action-packed story. I sat down with it one afternoon and literally did not look up until I’d finished. The world Collins creates is fascinating and all-consuming. It’s also incredibly violent. The Games are survival of the fittest, and Collins doesn’t sugar coat that.
Katniss is a gutsy, well-rounded character. She’s got plenty of flaws; she’s stubborn, brash and not afraid to defend herself, but that’s what makes her engaging. What’s more, she’s far more interesting than certain other YA heroines (who shall remain nameless) who mope around waiting for a knight in shining armour to turn up and fight all their battles for them. 
On a deeper level, The Hunger Games offers an intelligent critique of ‘reality’ TV, media censorship and totalitarian governments without hitting readers over the head with political diatribe.

More Like This?
The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy and the proceeding volumes,Catching
Fire and Mockingjay are equally awesome.
The series reminded me of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four. On speed. And if you haven’t read this classic, I’d highly recommend it, it’s one of those books that will change your life.

Stylistically, it was similar to John Marsden’s Tomorrow serries, and Katniss reminded me a lot of Marsden’s protagonist, Ellie. I love, love luuurved these books the first time I read them, and when I get a moment, I’ll definitely be rereading them and chucking some reviews up!

Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan

 
  The Story: There are ten actually, all a little bit quirky   and more than a little unsettling. Giants steal children   from their beds, toys come to life, all-powerful spirits   possess the bodies of birds and school bullies take       the form of terrifying monsters in this collection of       stories that ventures beyond the ordinary, right down   to the very gates of hell.

  And Why is it Brilliant? You have to twist your             thinking to get inside these stories. You also need to     pay attention. It can be difficult to ‘get’ some of           Lanagan’s tales, but when you do, it’s worth the work.   They’re incredibly imaginative, and, more often than     not, deeply disturbing. There’s not a word wasted,       and none of the dull passages of exposition you get     from so many fantasy authors, just sharp dialogue       and blow-your-mind-up images.

More Like this? This is the first thing of Langan’s I’ve read, but I hear her first collection of stories, Black Juice and her latest novel, Tender Morsels are pretty specky.
Lanagan was recommended to me by L. L. Hannett, who writes some of the most chilling short stories I’ve ever read. They’ve mostly appeared in literary mags, and there’s a lot of them. Check them out on her website: www.lisahannett.com
Angela Carter has also has a similar style. I particularly loveThe Magic Toyshop. 

Paper Towns by John Green

 The Story: Q is in love with the girl next door. But,  though they were once childhood friends, the  beautiful, daring, so-much-larger-than-life-she’s-  practically-mythic Margo Roth-Spiegelman is now  the most popular girl in school and seemingly well  beyond the reach of the nerdy Q. That is until the  night she climbs through his window dressed as a  ninja with a list of things they need To Do before  morning.

 While Q hopes this night of epic pranks will be the  beginning of something gooey-wonderful between  them, he soon discovers Margo intended it as a  grand finale. She isn’t in school the next day, or the  day after that. In fact, Margo Roth-Spiegelman has  disappeared.

 Spurred by the memory of their one kiss, Q sets out  to follow the cryptic clues Margo has left behind,  and enlisting his few friends to launch a rescue mission that will take them to places far darker than they ever could have imagined. 

And Why is it Brilliant? Everything that John Green writes is a-frickin-mazing, but I think Paper Towns is his best yet. On the surface it’s very funny and quirky, at least to begin with, but underneath it’s incredibly, despairingly dark and left me pondering Big Questions. Margo and Q are complex, flawed and funny characters that I absolutely fell in love with and the ending is both cathartic and unsettling. There are no easy answers in this book, no preachy ‘voices of adult authority,’ just a story I want to hold tight against my chest and never let go.

More Like This? John Green has two other novels, An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska, as well as Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. He also writes short stories and is the mastermind behind Nerdfighters: http://nerdfighters.ning.com Hopefully he’s busy writing more books because I seriously cannot get enough of this guy. SO FRICKIN’ AWESOME!
Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why has a similar feel, and I lurve luuurve luuuureved it!
Scarlett Thomas’s Going Out, PopCo and The End of Mr. Y – also very witty, lots of word play, puzzles and Big Ideas and just really fun to read.
Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, although the excessive intertextuality is more than a little befuddling.
Simmone Howell’s Notes from the Teenage Underground and Everything Beautiful have a similar style, but the endings are a bit preachy for my liking.