Review_FICTION
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ; AUGUST 28, 2017 98
Peter Lovesey and 18 other Soho Crime authors
contribute to The Usual Santas, a Christmas-themed crime anthology (reviewed on p. 104).
; The Safe House
Christophe Boltanski, trans. from the French
by Laura Marris. Univ. of Chicago, $24 (240p)
ISBN 978-0-226-44919-7
As a child, Boltanski lived with his
grandparents in what the French call a
hôtel particulier, a nobleman’s mansion
divided into apartments. But it was particular in the English-language sense as
well: individual, specific, utterly nongeneric. Fittingly, Boltanski tells the story
in a most particular way in this novel that,
according to the translator’s note, “exists
in a borderland between truth and fiction.” The book moves through the large
apartment room by room. This Perec-esque approach lets him jump in time—
sometimes one of the children sleeping on
the floor around his grandparents’ bed is
his father, sometimes it’s him—but it’s the
same room. It allows him to cover events
he wasn’t alive for, particularly the way his
Jewish grandfather survived WWII by
hiding in plain sight. The family functioned as a unit led by Boltanski’s fierce
grandmother, who, undaunted by Nazis
and polio, hid her husband, homeschooled
Boltanski’s father and uncles, and wrote
prolifically. Despite (or because of?—
Boltanski leaves that for the reader to
decide) barely leaving the family home,
two of her sons became prominent
scholars, and the youngest is the artist
Christian Boltanski. Boltanski describes
his family as afraid “of everything, of
nothing, of others, of ourselves,” but
what comes through in this short, smart,
funny book is bravery and toughness,
especially that of his grandmother, who in
a world of imaginary and real terrors kept
the family safe and together. (Oct.)
London and the South-East
David Szalay. Graywolf (FSG, dist.), $16 trade
paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-55597-793-1
This bleak, devastatingly observant novel
from the Booker Prize finalist follows
English ad salesman Paul Rainey. Stuck on
an underperforming team at a dead-end
sales firm, Paul is thrown a life raft by a
former colleague, Eddy, who promises
him a position at his own thriving sales
company in exchange for a betrayal of
Paul’s current one. Paul goes to pains-
taking, embarrassing lengths to orches-
trate this betrayal, recruiting his fellow
salespeople to jump ship with him to
Eddy’s firm, but the plan backfires spec-
tacularly on Paul, costing him his job,
friends, and purpose. After he fails to
secure employment as a gardener and then
as a street sweeper, Paul’s wife, Heather,
finds him a job stocking shelves overnight
at a supermarket. What minor confidence
boost this affords Paul is swiftly eradicated
by another betrayal, leading Paul to devise
a revenge plan so ill-conceived that it circles
around to profound. Written with intense
psychological acuity and inventive detail,
the author turns a humdrum account of
male malaise into an experience far more
affecting—and universal—than it has any
right to be. (Oct.)
; Smile
Roddy Doyle. Viking, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-0-
7352-2444-5
The latest novel from the Booker Prize–
winning author of Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha
explores the intricate psychology and history of a failed Irish writer who has
recently separated from his famous wife.
Having rented a cheap apartment in the
unnamed Irish hometown he’d left behind,
Victor Forde passes his bleary nights at
Donnelly’s, a nondescript local pub where
he soon runs into a forgotten, ornery
schoolmate, Fitzpatrick. From there, the
book’s structure takes some twists and
turns as Fitzpatrick forces Victor through
difficult recollections of his Christian
Brothers school years, his poignant courtship of his celebrity chef wife, and the
controversial pro-choice radio interviews
that made him infamous. A revelation
brings the relationship between Victor and
Fitzpatrick to a violent conclusion, leading
to an ambiguous twist ending sure to
spark debate in readers. Doyle skillfully
depicts the triumphs and tragedies of the
everyday, how the aging process humbles
and ennobles, and how a single hasty decision made in one’s youth can define and
destroy a mind and thus a life. (Oct.)
The Doll’s Alphabet
Camilla Grudova. Coffee House (Consortium,
dist.), $15.95 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-
56689-490-6
Women become wolves, men are born
spiders, Gothic ornaments conquer an
apartment building, and corpses complain in Grudova’s smart, haunting debut
collection. Set in worlds that overlap with
ours—characters listen to Tchaikovsky,
watch Pinocchio, and travel to Europe—
these stories nevertheless render familiar
tropes deeply strange. In the dystopia of
“Rhinoceros,” trains don’t run, food is
scarce, but a young couple survives by
selling drawings of animals they’ve never
seen to a mysterious man in a gray top hat.
The society of “Waxy” sanctions an
extreme form of couplehood: women must
support their men by working in hazardous factories, where they are often
maimed, while men study for exams and
visit cafés. Many objects and images recur
throughout the collection: women remove
their skin to reveal their “true” bodies,
which resemble sewing machines, in
“Unstitching,” and an eight-legged
dandy falls in love with a sewing machine
in “Notes from a Spider,” hiring seam-stresses to keep the machine running at
any cost, even their own lives. A kidnapped mermaid skulks around the house
in “The Mermaid,” while a ship’s wooden
mermaid figurehead gives birth to a little
Fiction
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