Dear Readers,

Though never a faithful diarist, I did journal during one especially intense month in high school. At the time, I fancied myself a teen prodigy, tortured by godly gifts of writerly expressiveness (and a totally dramatic life). I’m not sure how those particular entries would hold up today, but there is an exciting creative rawness during adolescence; and once in a blue moon, a histrionic, hormone-addled mind can, rather miraculously, reap uncanny, incandescent art.

That’s how I feel about the funny, lyrical, beautiful Miss American Pie, an astonishingly artful collection of actual diaries kept by Margaret Sartor of Montgomery, Alabama, from 1972 to 1977, ages 12 to 18. As transfixing photos show, Margaret was blond, blue-eyed, pretty enough to actually become Homecoming Queen. She was also smart, free-spirited, and profoundly inquisitive. She relished horseback riding, lolled on a raft on the bayou, entertained and rejected Christian evangelism. In the Deep South, she watched as national issues unfolded locally: desegregation, Vietnam, the sexual revolution, Watergate. She ached as she fell in and out of love (who didn’t?), as her dysfunctional family (whose isn’t?) ebbed and flowed with the humidity. She records it all here vividly with a precocious, Gothic-tinged spontaneity that, to me, reveals an artist on the verge of becoming herself; it’s like Judy Blume fused with Flannery O’Connor, with traces of the idiosyncratic, tragicomic memoirs (Jesus Land, The Glass Castle, Running with Scissors) I’ve always savored. This is an enthralling, read-it-repeatedly work which both belies and embodies the youth of its author.

—Justin Ravitz, Associate Editor, QPB

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Non-fiction needs some lovin' too!  That's why QPB, in addition to its New Voices award for debut fiction, has an annual New Visions award--which bestows $5000 on the previous year's best work of non-fiction.  Unlike our New Voices award, this needn't be a debut work, and can range widely from memoirs to true crime to social/cultural histories and commentary and more.  Herewith are the nominees for this year:

Hung by Scott Poulson-Bryant

The Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan

Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent

The Shame of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol

Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

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Every year at QPB, we nominate about a half-dozen fiction debuts--either first-time novels or short story collections--to vie for our $5000 New Voices Award, which celebrates outstanding, audacious, innovative, unforgettable and emerging talents in the literary world. Past winners have included Yann Martel, Toni Morrison, Mark Danielewski and Colson Whitehead.  Later this month our committee will convene (over a sumptuous feast somewhere--ah, the price of literary excellence!) to choose this year's winner.  And the nominees are . . .

And She Was by Cindy Dyson

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson

Send Me by Patrick Ryan 

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li

Posted by Justin Ravitz at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Readers,

Thomas Friedman, Anthony Bourdain, Graham Greene, Margaret Mead, Henry James, Levi-Strauss, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad...None of these brilliant minds have provided praise for THE NAKED TOURIST (especially not the dead ones). But they’re all kindred spirits of sorts with Lawrence Osborne—an ambidextrous dilettante, traveler, and intellectual with crackingly witty, uncommonly profound observations on the art, commerce, and history of travel, globalization, colonialization, cultural anthropology, shoddy room service, and bumpy Jeep rides.

What’s authentic about tourism in the 21st century, when every corner of the globe’s been theme-parked, luxury-resorted, and set-designed in service of the world’s largest economy?  Not much, says this droll, world-weary travel writer. But our narrator hasn’t given up. He subjects himself to a six-month tour across a section of Southeast Asia mythologized past recognition since the Victorian era. He does it all: affluent resorts, spas, spiritual retreats, sex clubs, “back-to-nature” schleps, enemas, cosmetic surgery…ending up in the primordial forest in Papua, New Guinea, where the natives have supposedly never even seen a tourist. A gifted raconteur and observer with unbelievably funny, vivid adventures I wish I’d been on, Osborne ultimately isn’t as cynical as he thinks. Love it when that happens.

Justin Ravitz, Associate Editor, QPB

Posted by Justin Ravitz at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Reader,

Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country,is not a great novel. It’s Greater-than-Great. Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle and named one of the year’s Books to Remember by the New York Public Library, this debut novel is set during the Oregon migration of 1847 and follows the life of Hudson Bay Company trader James MacLaren. This man’s sanity is nearly destroyed when his Nez Percé wife deserts him and his two young daughters die of smallpox (make sure there are no flies in your room when you read this first chapter—your mouth will be open the whole time trying to catch your breath). Now a broken man filled with sorrow and a certain sense of vengeance, he sets off in search of his wife. On his journey, he will meet Lucy Mitchell, a lonely, remarried widow and mother, who believes that the brooding James is the key to her family’s safe passage along the rugged and dangerous Oregon Trail.

As the lives of these two lost people collide, secrets will be revealed, and obsessions will change the course of their lives forever. Beautifully written, poetic without being sentimental, this is one of my favorite books from over the last two years.

Gary Jansen
Executive Editor, QPB

Posted by Justin Ravitz at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Readers,

Beware of dogs on book titles and covers. Nothing wrong with glossy-coated man’s-best-friend tributes, but the unsentimental, delicately nuanced, crisply delivered Three Dog Life isn’t a baby boomer Old Yeller, even if it does elicit tears. Five years ago, Abby’s husband Rich was hit by a car while walking one of their dogs near their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He suffered traumatic brain injury, rendering him at times catatonic, quasi-cognizant, violent, poetic, maybe even psychic. Abby’s companions since Rich’s accident: three dogs. “I don’t find it ironic that the very reason Rich got hurt is the creature who comforts me,” she writes.

Yet Abby’s solitary new life near Rich’s upstate hospital isn’t pure, canine-coddled grief and anger. Her unpredictable emotional journey is dotted with joy: She relishes her unexpected independence, her awakening as a writer, and a new circle of friends. It’s a bittersweet new existence—of tremendous personal growth and devastating loss—she never expected. All the while, there’s Rich, who still has intermittent flashes of tenderness and lucidity. “I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes,” he blurts during one visit. It’s one of many moments of overwhelming and surreal beauty that Thomas relays with brilliant restraint. Love can’t conquer all, but it survives nonetheless. This is, truly, a wonderful, moving work of art that caught me by surprise. Read it.

Justin Ravitz, Associate Editor, QPB

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