Books in the Mirror

Nine Below Zero
   Kevin Canty
   Doubleday

   A novel of bleak cold and attempts of reconciliation. Stammering souls trying to reach out and find enunciation and ease. Haunted men and women in Montana exploring whether or not they are still able to make music. Quiet in its strength, tensely fleshed. Vulnerable tunes throughout. —Scott Wannberg

Another World
   Pat Barker
   Farrar, Straus & Giroux

   In Another World, Pat Barker shows us that there were dysfunctional families long before the term was coined. Fratricide is either committed or attempted not once, not twice, but three times in the course of the book. In addition to the familial woes, the horrors of World War I (this is Pat Barker, after all) cast a long gloomy shadow over the contemporary story. This novel is not as dense as Barker’s Regeneration/Eye in the Door/Ghost Road trilogy, and it is told more dispassionately, but it too will keep you turning the pages. This is the perfect read if you’re in the mood to eschew fluffy summertime novels. This is a chilling, fascinating work.

—Cheryl Clark

The World and Other Places
   Jeanette Winterson
   Random House

Jeanette Winterson’s inimitable river of meticulously crafted vision roams from one wandering human to the next in these stories that are aesthetically lovely packages of existential searching.

—Eileen Lynch

Chump Change
   David Eddie
   Putnam

   A very funny novel about the trials and tribulations of a young professional (and this term can be interpreted loosely). Our hero, fed up with life in Manhattan, heads back to his hometown in Canada. Broke, unemployed, single and scraggly, he is met by anything but open arms. An entertaining read.

—Julie Fiedler

Advice to Writers
   compiled and edited by Jon Winokur
   Pantheon

   “Keep it simple. Be clear. Think of your readers, not yourself. Cheer up.”

—Roger Angell

“Follow the accident. Fear the fixed plan -- that is the rule."

—John Fowles

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

—Maya Angelou

Wonderful words of wisdom from Advice to Writers, compiled an edited by Jon Minokur. A gem of a book with chapters on subjects such as agents, punctuation, writer’s block and the writer’s life.

—Lise Friedman