THE ALMOST MOONAlice Sebold
AN ARSONIST’S GUIDE TO WRITERS’ HOMES IN NEW ENGLANDBrock Clarke
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The supposedly righteous, unbelievably cold female characters are here in the persons of Pulsifer’s wife and mother; the distant, failed academic father is on hand too, along with a bevy of fiercely withheld yet guessable secrets. And Clarke makes fine use of a supreme genre device, whereby characters prove their verisimilitude by only ever answering a question with an epigrammatic dodge, an empty but telling echo, or another question. It’s a shame, because Clarke has penetrating things to say about the blurred, compromised states of the modern memoir and novel, which resonate with everything from O.J. Simpson to J.T. Leroy. Unfortunately they’re buried beneath a pile of bad faith. —Brian Nemtusak
(Del Rey)
Oscar de Leon loves women. Fat, virginal, and cripplingly nerdy, he’s the unlikely hero of Junot Diaz’s freewheeling first novel whose “wondrous life” is marked by a series of unrequited passions that no mere reality can crush. It’s the hopeful idiocy of Oscar’s love—more, even, than his girth (300-plus pounds) or his geekiness (he gets his nickname when, dressed up like Dr. Who for Halloween, someone tells him he looks like Oscar Wilde)—that sets him in stark opposition to the stereotypical macho Dominican male, whose casual misogyny here is practically an arm of the state.
Diliberto underlines the differences between Isabelle, the good girl who avoids being corrupted by the intrigue and backbiting that surround her, and Chanel, the bold businesswoman with a groundbreaking style and a messy private life. Isabelle, who goes on to live quietly and securely ever after with her war-veteran beau, says of her boss, “She’d rather be dead than poor and ordinary.” The lovingly rendered atmosphere of the era helps make up for not-quite-3-D characters and a dull subplot about stolen toiles and knockoff artists. To readers entranced by fashion these things won’t matter, for Diliberto knows the emotional power that a perfect dress can pack. As Isabelle notes while gazing at a creation she has labored over, “For a moment I forgot my sorrows and deceived myself that the world is a better place than it is.” —Heather Kenny
WATERBABYCris Mazza
Cris Mazza
Mon 11/5, 7 PM, Northeastern Illinois Univ., Golden Eagles Room, 5500 N. Saint Louis, 773-442-4582
Tue 11/6, 4:30 PM (talk), and Wed 11/7, 6 PM (reading), Northwestern Univ., University Hall, 1897 Sheridan, room 201, Evanston, 847-491-7294
Sunday Salon Chicago, Sun 11/18, 7:30 PM, Charleston Bar, 2076 N. Hoyne, 773-489-4757
Series A, Tue 11/20, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520
