Fall Books: A Harvest of Good Reading

John Marshall
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

   The leaves are turning and the bookstores are filling.
   It has to be fall, prime season for new books. Other seasons see their share of new releases, but fall continues to remain the undisputed champ, the one season when publishers unload their biggest new offerings as visions of holiday sugar plums and profits dance in their heads.
   Fall 2002 got off to an early rush in bookdom, as publishers released more than 150 titles to commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. That crush of related titles sent booksellers scrambling for shelf space, but reader interest proved short-lived, waning soon after the passing of the anniversary.
   So, it’s now back to book business as usual, with the usual fall downpour of more traditional offerings, from the most promoted first novels to the next best sellers by publishing heavyweights. And autumn bookstore nights are alive once again with touring authors reading and reflecting on their new titles, with last fall’s host of travel-related cancellations now a distant memory that, one hopes, will never be repeated.
   What follows are this critic’s recommendations of some of this bounteous fall’s most promising offerings in a variety of subject areas and genres.    Put a log in the fireplace as the chill descends, and commence autumn reading.

   Current Affairs
“High and Mighty,’’ Keith Bradsher (Public Affairs, 441 pages,)
   The former Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times pens a withering indictment of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and the corporate greed, deceptions and coverups involved in turning these made-over pickup trucks into the kings of the American road. Not since Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at any Speed’’ has there been such a critical look at the U.S. auto industry, or one that is more timely.
   As Bradsher writes, “SUVs represent the biggest menace to public safety and the environment that the auto industry has produced since the bad old days of the 1960s, before the advent of most safety and pollution control devices in cars. They have already killed thousands of Americans who would still be alive today if the automakers had sold cars instead.’’
   “A Bed for the Night,’’ David Rieff (Simon & Schuster, 335 pages)
   A veteran war correspondent, who has had a close-up view of the world’s gravest trouble spots in the past decade, turns a critical eye toward humanitarian groups and their efforts around the globe. Rieff argues that these do-good groups have forsaken much of their supposed neutrality in recent conflicts and thus have often become stalking horses for the superpowers. This is a startling wake-up call of a book, sure to spark arguments.
   “The Gate Keepers,’’ Jacques Steinberg (Viking, 284 pages)
   The New York Times national education correspondent provides a penetrating inside examination of the admissions process at an elite college (Wesleyan University in Connecticut), with eight months of unfettered access to an admissions officer and six high school students on the cusp of the most important decision of their young lives.  Steinberg’s fascinating report from the admissions front lines goes far beyond college guidebooks, providing must-reading for parents and high schoolers alike in this intensely competitive arena.

   Literary Fiction
   “July, July,’’ Tim O’Brien (Houghton Mifflin, 322 pages)
   The master chronicler of the Vietnam War expands his scope with a powerful novel that examines the generation that came of age in that time of tumult. The plot vehicle is reminiscent of “The Big Chill,’’ as members of the Class of 1969 at a fictional Minnesota college come together for a 30th reunion, that traditional measuring time of dreams and realities, and never more so than with a generation so acutely self-possessed.
   O’Brien’s remarkable talent for storytelling is enhanced here with his strongest collection ever of female characters.
   “Things You Should Know,’’ A.M. Homes (HarperCollins, 211 pages)
   One of the young masters of the short story demonstrates her devastating touch with her first story collection in the 12 years since her much-noticed “The Safety of Objects.’’ Homes’ stories often have a dark, eerie, edgy resonance showcasing her artistic intent: “I write the things we think to ourselves, but never say aloud; I write the things we don’t admit.’’
   “In the River Sweet,’’ Patricia Henley (Pantheon, 291 pages)
   A Midwest woman’s comfortable middle-class life at midlife comes undone when she receives a dreaded e-mail from a long-lost son who was the result of a liaison in Saigon when she was a volunteer in a French convent during the war. Henley, who lived in Washington for a decade, follows her much-praised debut novel (“Hummingbird House’’), a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award, with an atmospheric and involving drama of family, belief and moral quandaries.
   “The Resurrectionists,’’ Michael Collins (Scribner, 304 pages)
   The Irish immigrant now living here — whose last novel was a finalist for Britain’s Booker Prize — crafts another gripping look at the middle-American dream gone awry. This time, Collins’ first-person narrator is a flawed middle-age man returning with his family to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where his parents died in a fire in his youth and his uncle recently was murdered.
   “I felt like maybe I was making a big mistake going back, walking into trouble like that,’’ the narrator says. “But that feeling lasted only a few seconds.’’
   “Bare,’’ Elisabeth Eaves (Alfred A. Knopf, 295 pages)
   Seattle’s Lusty Lady peep show gets its Boswell, or at least its Mary Karr, in the person of a fine journalist who recounts her stripping days in her mid-20s at the famed Seattle skin emporium. Eaves, a University of Washington graduate from Vancouver, B.C., writes an unflinching account of her activities and her reactions, along with profiles of several of her stripping compatriots. This is more memoir than sociological study, but does provide a fascinating glimpse into why one educated woman would say of stripping: “There had been no place else to put the volatile mix I had inside: desire and vanity, seductiveness and anger, exhibitionism and self-consciousness.’’
   “Lullaby,’’ Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday, 260 pages)
   “Fight Club’’ may have brought its fervent fans to this hard-edged author, but “Lullaby’’ looks as though it will be his national breakout beyond the film-fueled underground. Palahniuk’s black humor is still much in evidence, but his storytelling has been turned up a notch with this tale of a 40-ish widower reporter on the trail of sudden infant death syndrome that leads to a shocking discovery — a popular African lullaby is causing immediate death whenever it is repeated. Thus begins a gripping cross-country odyssey into the weird world of Palahniuk land, a place of laughter with a purpose.
   “When the Emperor Was Divine,’’ Julie Otsuka (Alfred A. Knopf, 144 pages)
   A California native, now living in New York, crafts a crystalline little account of the Japanese American experience in internment camps during World War II. Each chapter in this heartbreaking debut is devoted to the observations of one member from a Berkeley family as they endure lives interrupted, vilified, imprisoned behind barbed wire, all because of their ancestry and a presumption of possible disloyalty.
   “The rules about the fence,’’ Otsuka writes in the chapter about the son, “were simple: You could not go over it, you could not go under it, you could not go around it, you could not go through it. And if your kite got stuck on it? That was an easy one. You let the kite go.’’
   “The Heaven of Mercury,’’ Brad Watson (W.W. Norton, 333 pages)
   The Southern novel, with its ear for the music of words and its delight in off-kilter characters, returns with gale force in the pages of this sparkling debut by the author of a prize-winning collection of stories. Watson tracks decades in the small town of Mercury, Miss. (based upon his hometown of Meridian), spinning indelible tales and characters with magic, poetry, empathy and sour mash.
   “The Last Good Chance,’’ Tom Barbash (Picador USA, 440 pages)
   Small-town life in upstate New York has been the province in recent years of Richard Russo, winner of last year’s Pulitzer Prize for “Empire Falls.’’ Enter Tom Barbash, grad of prestigious writing programs, former newspaper reporter, who pens a captivating debut smack dab in Russo territory. Barbash’s novel concerns two friends in a small town, a newspaper reporter and the director of planning, a recently returned Ivy Leaguer intent on remaking Lakeland. Unexpected developments, public and private, test their friendship and their loyalty.

   Real Lives
   “Blue Latitudes,’’ Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt, 444 pages)
   The author of the best-selling “Confederates in the Attic’’ turns globetrotter in this delightful account of his 18 months following the routes explored by Capt. James Cook, starting with a week aboard a replica of Cook’s “Endeavor’’ as it plies waters in the Northwest, from Gig Harbor to Vancouver, B.C.
   Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is an observant traveler, with an eye for both the oddball and the salient. He also has the good sense to enlist the services of a madcap Aussie traveling companion, who is determined to make certain that any journey, to be worth its salt, must include plenty of misadventures.
   “Choosing Naia,’’ Mitchell Zuckoff (Beacon Press, 278 pages)
   A veteran Boston Globe reporter turns a prize-winning newspaper series into a compelling book, as he tracks a husband and wife facing one of those agonizing life dilemmas of this modern age — whether to proceed with a pregnancy when prenatal tests indicate that the child will be suffering from a heart defect and, in all likelihood, Down syndrome. Zuckoff documents the choice made by Greg and Tierney Fairchild with sensitivity and insight.
   “The Country Under My Skin,’’ Gioconda Belli (Alfred A. Knopf, 371 pages)
   An acclaimed novelist and poet from Nicaragua pens an exemplary memoir of her activist years in her country’s Sandinista revolution, and how she managed to live as two different women — artist with upper-class roots and political revolutionary, followed by her unlikely marriage to an American radio correspondent and her subsequent move to the United States. “I dare say, after the life I have lived,’’ Belli summarizes, “that there is nothing quixotic or romantic about wanting to change the world. It is possible. It is the age-old vocation of all humanity.’’

Headline Fiction
   “Reversible Errors,’’ Scott Turow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 434 pages)
   Three years have passed and it’s time to return once again to the fascinating confines of Kindle County, that Chicago-like world where lawyer Turow has set a series of legal page-turners par excellence. The case in the new novel is one with particular relevance, a man on death row nearing execution whose appeal in a triple murder has fallen to a court-appointed attorney more at home with corporate cases. The pending appointment with execution seems inevitable until the attorney receives word of possible new evidence to exonerate his client.
   Turow’s background makes this thriller more than just entertainment, since he served as one of 14 people appointed to a special state commission to study the death penalty in Illinois and provided pro bono counsel in some death penalty cases.
   “The Last Girls,’’ Lee Smith (Algonquin Books, 384 pages)
   The popular North Carolina author has spun another engrossing reading experience out of “Big Chill’’ country, this time focusing on a dozen college women who raft the Mississippi River, then flashing 35 years forward when four of the rafters reunite, on a ritzy riverboat instead, to reminisce about their lives and scatter the ashes of one of their adventurous cohorts. Here is a compelling novel about the ebb and flow of real life.
   “Blue Shoe,’’ Anne Lamott (Riverhead Books, 291 pages)
   The beloved author from the Bay Area threatens to break out of cult favoritedom with this witty and wise account of a newly divorced mother struggling with the shifting terrain of her new life. This is hardly pioneering plot territory, but Lamott displays a marvelous, empathetic understanding of her ensemble cast, as well as enough quirkiness to lift her material well beyond clich to something approaching truth.