This fall, we’re seeing a slew of North America’s most poplular literary fiction writers releasing major new books. It’s astounding when you look at the list of names: John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Russo, Pete Dexter… the list goes on and on. But there are also books coming out by authors who have paid their dues and deserve to be card-carrying members of this esteemed club. In fact, the three books I’m featuring here are better than many of the new books by the heavy-hitters (I won’t name names) listed above. This isn’t about which legends are losing their edge, this is about a new generation who deserves to be added to the list of heavy-weights… Here are my 3 nominees to be added to the who’s who of North American Fiction Writers
AWAIT YOUR REPLY by Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon was definitely already on the cusp. AMONG THE MISSING, his 2001 collection of short stories was a National Book Award Finalist, and his novel YOU REMIND ME OF ME enjoyed a fair amount of popularity and became a reading group staple in paperback.
But Dan Chaon has outdone himself with AWAIT YOUR REPLY. Much like Michael Chabon, Mr. Chaon mixes literary artistry with genre conventions. The result? A taut, creepy, page-turning thriller that deserves to be on every year-end best-of and award-nominee list out there. I won’t give too much away, but I will give a vague, basic overview: the novel follows three seemingly disjointed storylines and slowly brings them together in startling and disturbing ways. Focusing primarily on the slippery nature of identity and the elusiveness of all kinds of love, Chaon has crafted a haunting page-turner that has set a new standard.
Not convinced? On page one Chaon introduces us to a father and son racing to a hospital. The son has his left arm raised and is losing consciousness. Between the two men, on ice in a cooler, is the son’s severed hand. Did I mention that’s just page one?
But don’t expect to find out how the son parted ways with his hand right away. Chaon is just too good a storyteller to give it away before it is absolutely essential to the story. Lose yourself in the story, and all will come in due time.
BLAME by Michelle Huneven
Michelle Huneven is slowly establishing herself as one of America’s great writers of realism. BLAME tells the story of Patsy MacLemoore, a young, attractive female history professor with a Ph. D. from Berkeley who struggles with Alcoholism. One day she wakes up in jail after a blackout. This is not a new occurrence: she has experienced many nights that have had to be recounted to her. Occasionally her forgotten shenanigans are funny. Much more often, they are embarrassing.u
But this time, as the police and her lawyer make clear to her, it is much more serios: two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and daughter, were found dead in her driveway, struck by Patsy’s car. And Patsy was passed out at the wheel. To detail the events that transpire in this rich and rewarding novel would give too much away.
The point here is this: Michelle Huneven has her finger on the pulse of the Human Condition (remember that phase from Shakespeare 101?). Her characters and their interactions are as real as any in contemporary fiction. This is a heartbreaking and heartwarming novel by a rising star who still believes that the best fiction revolves around real people struggling with real life. Simply an amazing read.
EVERYTHING MATTERS! by Ron Currie, Jr.
So now we move from a realist to a writer of experimental fiction. I love great experimental fiction. It’s too bad that there is so little out there.
Let me clarify: A good writer of experimental fiction understands how important it is to surprise the reader with literary pratfalls and trapdoors. A good writer of experimental fiction will wow you with their imagination; they will shock you with their inventiveness. They will play the literary shell game with you and you won’t be able to find the ball when all is said and done.
That's good experimental fiction, not great. The problem is, nine times out of ten, they will have no effect on your emotions.
Then there are the great writers of experimental fiction. Not only can they accomplish the wizardry listed above, but they can also move you to tears. They can evoke emotions in their readers that somehow belie the playfulness of their prose. Ron Currie, Jr.’s EVERYTHING MATTERS! is, by my estimation, a truly great piece of experimental fiction.
Our hero (or anti-hero), Junior Thibodeau, has been hearing voices since he was in his mother’s womb. The voices tell him things, explaining the world to him. Often the voices predict the future, and they are never wrong. So, Junior has no reason to doubt that a comet will obliterate the earth roughly 36 years after his birth, because the voices told him so.
I will tell you now, in the context of the novel, you need not doubt the voices either. While the book is surprising in many ways, the earth-shattering comet is one of the simple facts that we need not question. The world will, indeed, end. Which leads Junior to wonder, throughout his life, does anything really matter?
The answer, expressed in the book’s title, is arrived at in many ways, and with such tremendous pathos and gravitas as to make you want to put the book down and weep at times. Yes, Currie is a writer of experimental fiction, but his experiment is a success. EVERYTHING MATTERS! has all the depth, compassion, and verisimilitude you would expect from a master storyteller. Which, I maintain, is exactly what Ron Currie, Jr. is.
-Dave
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