January 2023 MBR The Literary Fiction Shelf

The Literary Fiction Shelf

Ghost House
Sara Connell
Muse Literary
https://museliterary.com
9781958714034, $24.99 Hardcover/$15.99 Paper/$.99 ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-House-Sara-Connell/dp/1958714038

Ghost House blends occult fiction with literary twists and turns, overlaying its short stories with a sense of psychological depth and feminist inspection. This makes for a delightful collection of diverse perspectives on ghosts and haunted lives. From childhood, Sara Connell has been enthralled by ghosts and the occult. Her early passion for haunts almost got her banned from the sleepover party circuit, as her embellishments and storytelling prowess captured vivid horror scenes that chilled her peers. Thankfully, she never 'grew out' of this fascination for the spiritual realm and its haunting possibilities. Thus, Ghost House represents not just a lifelong pursuit, but a literary collection honed with the trappings of creative horror embellishments and tempered by adult perspectives on traumas that haunt and heal at the same time.

Not every story in this collection features the conventional ghost. One of Connell's talents is to tackle the traditional image of the specter and its haunting capabilities to expand the notion of otherworldly encounters.

The collection opens with the title story 'Ghost House' and the delightful prospect of a new home where the husband buyer sees opportunity and his wife senses adversity. Few buyers are purposely looking for a ghost home. This couple's choice represents not just a bad decision, but good intentions gone awry. Mostly because the ghost does not like Caitlin.

Each story harbors and evolves a different definition of and sense of a ghostly encounter. Each provides readers with a spooky experience laced with a thought-provoking psychologist twist that turns the staid story or anticipated ending upside down. The result is a powerful literary work that offers the delightful juxtaposition of ghosts and unexpected insights and reflections. Libraries that choose Ghost House for its promise of occult entertainment will find the collection evolves beyond the usual supernatural focus. It offers many satisfying points of discussion that book clubs will want to consider, whether they be focused on literature, supernatural fiction, or women's writings, experiences, and issues.

Skins: A Novel
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press
Mail Stop 0166, Reno, NV, 89557-0166
www.unpress.nevada.edu
9781647790226, $22.00, PB, 284pp

https://www.amazon.com/Skins-Novel-Adrian-C-Louis/dp/1647790220

Synopsis: It's the early 1990s and Rudy Yellow Shirt and his brother, Mogie, are living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the legendary Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. Both Vietnam veterans, the men struggle with daily life on the rez. Rudy, a criminal investigator with the Pine Ridge Public Safety Department, must frequently arrest his neighbors and friends, including his brother, who has become a rez wino.

But when Rudy falls and hits his head on a rock while pursuing a suspected murderer, Iktome the trickster enters his brain. Iktome restores Rudy's youthful sexual vigor (long-lost to years of taking high blood pressure pills) and ignites his desire for political revenge via an alter ego, the "Avenging Warrior."

As the Avenging Warrior, Rudy takes direct action to punish local criminals. In a violent act, he torches the local liquor store, nearly burning Mogie alive while he is hiding on the store's roof, plotting to steal booze. Although the brothers reconcile before Mogie dies, he leaves the Avenging Warrior with one final mission: go to Mount Rushmore and blow the nose off George Washington's face.

Critique: By the end of the twentieth century, Adrian C. Louis (1946-2018) had become one of the most powerful voices in the canon of Native American literature. "Skins: A Novel", his best-known work, is now available by the University of Nevada Press with a new foreword by David Pichaske. Louis's critically acclaimed novel was made into a movie in 2002, directed by Chris Eyre. Also now available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $15.55), "Skins" is an acclaimed and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Native American Literary Fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Adrian C. Louis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_C._Louis) was a half-breed member of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe. In addition to Skins, he published over a dozen collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, and posthumously, Ghost Dancers: A Novel. Louis is remembered for his aggressive refusal to romanticize life on or off the reservation.

The Woods: Stories
Janice Obuchowski
University of Iowa Press
100 Kuhl House, 119 West Park Road, Iowa City, IA 52242-1000
www.uiowapress.org
9781609388751, $18.50, PB, 212pp

https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Stories-Short-Fiction-Award/dp/1609388755

Synopsis: With the publication of "The Woods", short story writer Janice Obuchowski explores the lives of people in a small Vermont college town and its surrounding areas -- a place at the edge of the bucolic, where the land begins to shift into something untamed.

In the tradition of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, these stories follow people who carry private griefs but search for contentment. As they try to make sense of their worlds, grappling with problems (worried about their careers, their marriages, their children, their ambitions) they also sift through the happiness they have, and often find deep solace in the landscape.

What do we find in the woods? An uplifting of spirit or a quieting of sorrow. A sense of being haunted by the past. Sometimes rougher, more violent things: abandoned quarries and feral cats, black bears, brothers caught up in an escalating war, a ghost who wishes to pass on her despair, monsters who boom with hollow ecstatic laughter. But also songbirds: the hermit thrush and the winter wren. Rushing rivers glossy with froth. A nineteenth-century inn that's somehow gotten by all these years. And far within, a vegetal twilight and constant dusk that feels outside of time.

This remarkable short story compendium illuminates the ways we all carry within ourselves aspects stark, beautiful, wild, and unknowable.

Critique: Eloquent, erudite, inherently engaging, thought-provoking and fun, "The Woods" is an impressive collection of eleven original short stories by a master of this difficult literary format. While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99), this University of Iowa Press edition of "The Woods" is unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Janice Obuchowski (https://uipress.uiowa.edu/people/janice-obuchowski" is the author of a number of stories that have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, Alaska Quarterly Review, Story, Conjunctions online, and LitHub. Previously a fiction editor at New England Review, she currently resides in Middlebury, Vermont.

Returning from Silence: Jenny's Story
Michele Sarde, author
Rupert Swyer, translator
Swan Isle Press
https://swanislepress.com
9781736189306, $30.00, PB, 418pp

https://www.amazon.com/Returning-Silence-Jennys-Mich%C3%A8le-Sarde/dp/1736189301

Synopsis: Sephardi Jewish culture and language flourished in Salonica for four centuries, but with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, and the sense of troubling times to come, Jenny's family felt impelled to leave their much-loved city and rebuild their lives in France. Their years in France led to change that none could have fully expected, and then, the Holocaust. The trauma lasts well into the post-war period, silencing both mother and daughter in unanticipated ways.

Based upon her own family's history, "Returning from Silence" by novelist Michele Sarde is a powerful saga that reaches deep into Jewish history, opening with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and their settlement in a more tolerant Ottoman Empire.

Born in Brittany on the threshold of World War II, novelist Michele Sarde had long been silent about her origins. After her mother, Jenny, finally shared their family history, Sarde decided to reconstruct Jenny's journey, including her exile from Salonica, move to Paris in 1921, and assimilation in France. The Nazi occupation then forced her and her family to hide and conceal their Jewish identity, and in this retelling, Sarde shows how Jenny fights with everything she has to survive the Holocaust and protect her daughter.

Through this family history, Sarde sensitively raises questions about identity, migration, and assimilation while weaving fiction together with history, research, and testimony to bring the characters' stories to life.

Critique: A deftly crafted and inherently fascinating work of fact-based fiction, "Returning From Silence" by Michele Sarde is ably translated into English for an American readership by Rupert Swyer. An impressive, extraordinary, memorable work of Jewish literary fiction, "Returning From Silence" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community, and academic library Literary Fiction collections.

Editorial Note #1: Michele Sarde (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Sarde) is a novelist, biographer, essayist, and professor emerita at Georgetown University. She has been awarded by the Government of France the prestigious Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Merite and Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres.

Editorial Note #2: Currently residing in Paris, France, Rupert Swyer is an independent translator and journalist. His translations include the works of notable French philosophers, sociologists, and historians. (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/S/R/au168621547.html)

And I Was like November
Rachael Biggs
Independently Published
9798986483801, $19.00, PB, 220pp

https://www.amazon.com/I-was-like-November/dp/B0BHMS257Q

Synopsis: In a world where everything is glossy and it seems that we're triggered or offended by everything, "And I Was like November" by Rachael Biggs is a compendium of fifteen short stories, each of which offers a glimpse of the other side. These are stories of what happens to the women that didn't get their happy ending, the ones who don't believe family is everything, and the women who know that live laugh love isn't the cure all.

Critique: Original, eloquent, erudite, riveting, thought-provoking, and truly memorable, the short stories comprising "And I Was like November" showcase author Rachael Biggs' genuine flair for a riveting and narrative driven storytelling style. While available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $6.99), "And I Was like November" is a strongly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction & Anthology collections.

Editorial Note: Rachael Biggs is an author, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist who divides her time between Vancouver, and Los Angeles. She started writing as soon as she discovered pens and paper and began creating stories and winning contests as early as second grade. (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6883586.Rachael_Biggs)

Artifacts and Other Stories
Ronna Wineberg
www.ronnawineberg.com
Serving House Books
https://servinghousebooks.com
9781947175563, $14.95, PB, 240pp

https://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Other-Stories-Ronna-Wineberg/dp/1947175564

Synopsis: A compendium of fourteen short stories by Ronna Wineberg, "Artifacts and Other Stories" explores the exhilaration, disappointment, and surprises of love and connection. These original short stories portray relationships -- between lovers, spouses, parents and children, and friends.

In these stories, desire, longing, memory, marriage, betrayal, adultery, loss, and fresh starts dominate lives. Men and women navigate their feelings and domestic struggles, wrestle with the shifting tides of affection, aging, and illness. Past and present weave together, spilling into the futures as these vibrant, deeply human characters face unexpected changes in their lives and in themselves.

Critique: Eloquent, erudite, original, entertaining, deftly crafted, inherently fascinating, thought-provoking, and memorable, "Artifacts and Other Stories" showcases author and storyteller Ronna Wineberg's genuine flair for the kind of narrative driven storytelling that holds her reader's rapt attention from cover to cover. While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99), "Artifacts and Other Stories" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction & Short Story Anthology collections.

Editorial Note: The stories of Ronna Wineberg (www.ronnawineberg.com) have appeared in American Way, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North Dakota Quarterly and other literary journals, and have been broadcast on NPR. She was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a scholarship in fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and residencies to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. She is also the founding fiction editor of the Bellevue Literary Review.

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