The Fall-Winter 2006 Harcourt Adult catalog arrived today. Here are a few titles that caught my eye:
I Heard You Calling in the Night by Thomas Healy. This is the story of a man and the dog that saved him, something that is not really new in the memoir world but coming from a man who was a "drunk, a fighter, sometimes writer, often unemployed, no stranger to the police", it seems to merit a look. Healy is convinced that the dog, Martin, saved his life as he was likely to have been murdered due to the places he drank in and the people he knew. Colm Toibin blurbs it as "likely to become a classic of its kind".
Redemption by Frederick Turner. This is an entry in Turner's Storyville series of detective books, focusing on Francis Muldoon, a Special Detective in the district in 1913. It's early New Orleans, it's graphic, it's "filled with the rich atmosphere of the New Orleans of a century ago." This is only one of several outstanding mysteries that Harcourt is offering this year - if you're a fan of the genre you need to take a look at their upcoming releases.
Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime by Patricia Hampl. Based loosely on the author's attraction for a Matisse painting of a woman gazing at goldfish in a bowl with an unusual Moroccan screen behind her, Hampl uses the picture as a starting off point to explore "the allure of that woman, immersed in leisure, so at odds with the increasing rush of the modern era." She goes from Cote d'Azure to North Africa, considers F Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Mansfield and Eugene Delacroix and returns always to Matisse and his subjects. I can't think of another book like it, and well worth a look.
Chrysalis by Kim Todd. The story of Maria Sibylla Merian and her decision at the age of 50 to travel to the New World on a solo scientific expedition to study insect metamorphosis. The truly startling point is that she lived in the 17th century and managed to produce a well received book upon her return. In the 19th century she was dismissed by scientists who were perhaps threatened by the work of self taught naturalists. Todd is returning Merian to her rightful respected place in history and as I have a thing for exploring woman of earlier eras, I can' t resist this one.
The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. I fell in love with Thomas's earlier book Popco (and reviewed it for Bookslut) so I'm a sucker for her latest. Popco was not the easiest read, but it was one of the more unique stories I've read in absolute ages and it looks like Mr. Y is the same sort of inventive writing. It involves a cursed book, a missing professor, nefarious men in grey suits and a dreamworld called the Troposphere. Ariel Manto is fascinated by 19th century scientists particularly Thomas Lumas who wrote a book called The End of Mr. Y. She finds a copy of the book in a used bookstore that sets her "into an adventure of science and faith, consciousness and death, space and time, and everything in between."
Really - how could you resist that?!
The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin. A mystery built around a 1903 railway man who works the graveyard shift at the South East Railway. The line carries coffins from London to the cemeteries outside the city and while Jim Stringer is thrilled with the job he learns his predecessor disappeared and his coworkers seem to dislike him a great deal. Along with his landlady he seeks to find all the answers at the Necropolis Railway before he ends up with a one-way ticket of his own!
It's 1903, London, trains and coffins. I had no choice here and the lush cover just about put me over the edge.
There's also a very interesting sounding memoir, A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas. After her husband is hit by a car his brain is shattered and he becomes subject to rage, terrors and hallucinations. He must live the rest of his life in an institution and Thomas had to learn to cope. She moved to a small town and formed a new family and life around three dogs, knitting, and friendship. Stephen King blurbs it as "sad, terrifying and scorchingly honest...this book is a punch to the heart. ..read it." I can't imagine this kind of difficult tragedy - losing someone is hard enough but still having them physically present while so mentally transformed is unreal. I imagine this is the memoir a lot of people will be talking about later this year, and I hope it lives up to King's words.
