City Lights Books buyer Paul Yamazaki, emcee of yesterday's editors' buzz panel at BEA, credited his longtime goal of understanding editors and what they do with helping to make the San Francisco store the curated literary space it is. At the panel, six editors gave a taste of what they do and why as they discussed one upcoming title each that they are particularly excited about.
"It leapt out of the slush pile and into a bidding war,"
said Denise Roy, senior editor at Dutton, about The Underside of Joy, a debut by Sere Prince Halverson.
In the book, Ella Beene and her husband, Joe, live in Northern California with their two children--until Joe's drowning death uncovers secrets; most notably, that the children's biological mother did not abandon them as Ella had been told. "It's the parallel journey of a mother and stepmother, who was raised by a stepmother," said Roy. "This is no fairy-tale stepmother."
Roy said she was drawn to the story as well as its "magnificent writing." The manuscript arrived as the first anniversary of the editor's husband's death approached. While unable to read any other books that touch on widowhood, Roy said The Underside of Joy called to her like a "siren song."
"I got goosebumps on my face," said Roy. "It begins as a portrait of loss and builds to a celebration of what it means to be alive." Halverson, she said, shows the conflicting parts grief and anger, shame and forgiveness that make up The Underside of Joy.
In her 15 years as an editor, Kathy Pories, senior editor of Algonquin, said she has never been as moved by a book as she was by Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron. Recipient of the Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for books that address social justice issues, Running the Rift opens in Rwanda, where a gifted young runner and Olympic hopeful, Jean Patrick, is naïve to the building racial hatred that will lead to genocide.
Benaron, Pories noted, worked with African refugees in Arizona and was inspired to travel to Rwanda many times. One day walking through a country the author had come to love, she stepped on a human bone. "From that moment on, she wanted to convey the beauty of the country and the tragedy that tore it apart."
As Jean Patrick pursues his Olympic dream, the name-calling from his childhood matures into the naming of names on the radio of those Tutsi to be killed, and the young love of his life opens his eyes to the looming genocide.
Michael Pietsch joked that being the lone man on the panel, he had to bring a baseball book. But anyone who knows Pietsch's literary track record knows baseball would not be the only reason he acquired The Art of Fielding, a debut by Chad Harbach.
The Art of Fielding
chronicles three years in the lives of five people connected to a baseball team
at a small liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Michigan. "This is a
novel about perfecting, about striving, about youth," said Pietsch. "There're
two love stories, a death and a champion season," said Pietsch. "Who
could ask for anything more?"
Alane Salierno, v-p and senior editor at W.W. Norton, said she first came to appreciate the power of indie booksellers when she worked Diana Abu-Jaber's first novel, Arabian Jazz. Salierno said that Abu-Jaber has since won many awards and published to critical acclaim, but she thinks Birds of Paradise offers a "Diana Abu-Jaber like you've never seen before."
Set in Miami, Birds of
Paradise opens with an obsessive pastry chef whose daughter ran away five
years earlier, at the age of 13. Then it shifts to the point of view of the
daughter, living as a squatter caught between wanting her own life and wanting
family.
"It grabs the reader by the throat," said Salierno. "We all leave our families when we grow up, and we deeply want to stay connected," the editor pointed out. "It's about the three most important things in life: family, food and real estate," said Salierno.
Jenna Johnson, senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said the debut work We the Animals by Justin Torres "redefined" what in-house enthusiasm meant. Told in "perfect short chapters" that echo back to all the wonder of childhood, she said, We the Animals tells the story of "three brothers tumbling through life in upstate New York."
Dorothy Allison's Bastard
Out of Carolina saved and changed Torres's life, and Johnson thinks people
will be saying the same about We the
Animals. Torres did not take a direct route to writing, having worked as a farmhand, dog walker, dancer, even in a mental institution.
Dressed all in black with an accent of red--a central element in The Night Circus, a debut by Erin Morgenstern--Alison Callahan, Doubleday executive editor, wrapped up the afternoon's buzz session. The novel is set at the turn of the 19th century in a circus, explained Callahan, "but it is unlike any you've ever been to."
No clowns. No ringmaster. And where you can walk on clouds and bottles uncork to release memories pop up without warning. Underneath it all is the rivalry of two young magicians--Celia and Marco--pitted in a deadly game.
"Reading this novel is like reading 3-D," said Callahan, who likened it to The Time Traveler's Wife and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell.--Bridget Kinsella