April 2023 MBR The General Fiction Shelf

The General Fiction Shelf

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
J. Ryan Stradal
Pamela Dorman Books
c/o Penguin Group (USA)
www.penguin.com
9781984881076, $28.00, HC, 352pp

https://www.amazon.com/Saturday-Night-Lakeside-Supper-Club/dp/1984881078

Synopsis: Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.

Ned is also an heir (to a chain of home-style diners) and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?

Critique: Original, entertaining, and with a very special appeal to readers with an interest in family fiction and the slow disappearance of the iconic midwestern supper club and the 'colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds', with the publication of "Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club", novelist J. Ryan Stradal has created a memorable novel populated by honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they come to terms with love, loss, marriage, and legacy. While unreservedly recommended for community library Contemporary General Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).

Editorial Note: J. Ryan Stradal (http://www.jryanstradal.com) is the author of "Kitchens of the Great Midwest" and "The Lager Queen of Minnesota". His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Granta, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

The Visibility of Things Long Submerged
George Looney
BOA Editions, Ltd.
250 N. Goodman St., Suite 306, Rochester, NY 14607
www.boaeditions.org
9781950774944, $17.00, PB, 184pp

https://www.amazon.com/Visibility-Things-Submerged-American-Reader/dp/1950774945

Synopsis: With the publication of "The Visibility of Things Long Submerged", Boa Editions presents a new short story collection of short story fiction from poet George Looney featuring explorations of the essential nature of faith while plumbing the gritty secrets of the human heart.

With swamps, alligators, revival tents, faith healers, sex, death, guilt, sin and snakes, Looney leads us through a dark landscape brimming with the miraculous and the peculiar alike. A man from a fire shows up on someone's doorstep, covered in ash and barely alive. One man's actions make an entire town question its own violence. A healer is bitten in half by an alligator as a crowd looks on.

Comprised of nine short stories fairly dripping with Southern gothic, "The Visibility of Things Long Submerged" gazes at the obscure and obscene. These are stories that are densely populated with characters that know intimately the trials of life and the restorative powers of love. These are stories are filled with a deep longing for something beyond the restless disquiet.

Critique: Each of the nine impressively crafted short stories anthologized in "The Visibility of Things Long Submerged" is a literary gem and showcases author George Looney's extraordinary storytelling skills. While especially and unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "The Visibility of Things Long Submerged" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).

Editorial Note: George Looney (https://georgelooney.org) is the author of three previous collections of fiction that have won the Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, The Elixir Press Fiction Award, and the Elixir Press Fiction Chapbook Award. He has also published thirteen collections of poetry, including books that won The Bluestem Award, The White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and The Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize. He is Distinguished Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, where he founded the BFA in Creative Writing Program and is editor of Lake Effect and translation editor of Mid-American Review (where he began the ongoing Translation Chapbook Series in 1983). With Phil Terman, he was co-founder of the original Chautauqua Writers' Festival.

The Promise of a Normal Life
Rebecca Kaiser Gibson
Arcade Publishing
www.arcadepub.com
c/o Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018
www.skyhorsepublishing.com
9781956763331, $26.99, HC, 288pp

https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Normal-Life-Novel/dp/1956763333

Synopsis: "The Promise of a Normal Life" is a poet Rebecca Kaiser Gibson's debut as a novelist in a literary work that is so evocative of life as lived that it transports her readers to a time and place they can practically see, touch, and feel.

The unnamed narrator is a fiercely observant, introverted Jewish-American girl who seems to exist in a private and separate realm. She's the child of a first-generation doctor and lawyer (whose own stories have the loud grandeur of family legend) in an America where Jews are excluded from the country club across the street. Her expectations for adulthood are often contradictory. In the changing landscape of the 1960s, she attempts to find her way through the rituals of life, her geography expanding across the country, across the ocean, and into multiple nations.

Along the way, she meets a glamorous hairdresser on a cruise ship to Israel, along with a cast of loopy tarot-card-reading passengers, and Alice-in-Wonderland lawyers in Haifa. Then there is a blue-eyed all-American college boyfriend, a mystified tourist agent in the Lofoten Islands, a handsome eligible rabbi in LA, a righteous and self-absorbed MIT professor, and a clandestine, calculating lover in Boston. Eventually, she finds her own compass, but only after being swept to several distant shores by many winds.

Critique: Fun, fascinating, exceptional, and original, "The Promise of a Normal Life" by Rebecca Kaiser Gibson is one of those works of storytelling literature that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book is finished and set back upon the shelf. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "The Promise of a Normal Life" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $17.99).

Editorial Note: Rebecca Kaiser Gibson (http://rebeccakaisergibson.com) is the author of the poetry collections Girl as Birch and Opinel. Her work has appeared in Slate, Agni, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Northwest Review, the Massachusetts Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Harvard Review, Green Mountain Review, Pleiades, and many other magazines. She taught creative writing at Tufts University for twenty-three years and has received writing fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Black Child to Black Woman
Cheryl Bannerman
Bannerman Books
https://bannermanbooks.com
9781735335209, $12.99, PB, 194pp

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Child-Woman-African-American-Coming/dp/1735335207

Synopsis: When twenty-four-year-old Tara Walker goes home for her brother's funeral, she discovers the secret journal she started when she was eight. As she reads, she is pulled back into her complicated, raw, and often frightening childhood, where drug addiction, alcoholism and predators brought chaos into her privileged, middle-class home.

Through the love and guidance of her hard-working parents, Tara navigated these threats and matures into a smart, strong, young woman. Yet, even as she celebrates small personal victories, she spirals into a dark depression from disturbing family secrets and rejection. Through it all, she journals her changing perspective on the world around her and continues to smile in the face of adversity.

When it's time for Tara to become a mother herself, she must once again conquer her traumatic past to discover the true meaning of life, happiness, family and unconditional love. Tara's gripping, raw and illuminating coming-of-age journey will captivate readers as they watch this intelligent black child grow into an extraordinary black woman.

Critique: Original and compelling, "Black Child to Black Woman" by Cheryl Bannerman is a African-American coming-of- age novel. Exceptionally well written, this is one of those unique stories that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community Contemporary General Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Black Child to Black Woman" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).

Editorial Note: Cheryl Bannerman (https://bannermanbooks.com/about-the-author) is a multi-genre author of nine published works of fiction and originally from New Jersey. After only five years of self-publishing various titles, she won the 2018 Book Excellence Award for her book of poetry, Words Never Spoken, a self-improvement book offering lines for journaling and healing from an abusive relationship.

It Could Never Happen Here
Eithne Shortall
http://eithneshortall.com
Corvus
https://atlantic-books.co.uk/corvus
9781838951870, $15.95, PB, 400pp

https://www.amazon.com/Could-Never-Happen-Here/dp/1838951873

Synopsis: Beverley Franklin will do whatever it takes to protect her local school's reputation. So when a scandal involving her own daughter threatens to derail the annual school musical's appearance on national television, Beverley goes into overdrive. But in her efforts to protect her daughter and keep the musical on track, she misses what's really going, both in her own house and in the insular Glass Lake community -- with dramatic consequences. Glass Lake primary school's reputation is about to be shattered!

Critique: Original, deftly crafted, compelling, entertaining, "It Could Never Happen Here" by author Eithne Shortall will have a very special appeal to readers with an interest in women oriented family life fiction. While also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.49), "It Could Never Happen Here" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists and community library Contemporary General Fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Eithne Shortall (http://eithneshortall.com) studied journalism at Dublin City University and has lived in London, France and America. Now based in Dublin, she is editor of the Home magazine at the Sunday Times Ireland. Her debut novel, Love in Row 27, was a major Irish bestseller, and the follow-up, Grace After Henry, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards and won Best Page Turner at the UK's Big Book Awards. Her third novel, Three Little Truths, was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick.

Zieglitz's Blessing
Michael Goldberg
https://michaelgoldberg.us
Cascade Books
c/o Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 West 8th Avenue, Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401-2960
http://wipfandstock.com
9781666740073, $30.00, HC, 208pp

https://www.amazon.com/Zieglitzs-Blessing-Michael-Goldberg/dp/1666740071

Synopsis: From childhood, Rod Zieglitz questions the truthfulness of his Hebrew name, which means "God will show mercy". Sometimes that name seems fitting. At other times, though, it strikes Zieglitz as a cruel joke. Only on his deathbed, grappling with the challenges he's faced, does Zieglitz rightly understand the notion of God's blessing for the first time.

Critique: With the publication of "Zieglitz's Blessing", author Michael Goldberg has created that rare mix blending a religiously serious fiction with irreverent humor. Original, compelling, thoughtful and thought-provoking, "Zieglitz's Blessing" is one of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Of special appeal to readers with an interest in Jewish Fiction and recommended for both community and academic library Literary Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Zieglitz's Blessing" is also available in a paperback edition (9781666740066, $20.00) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).

Editorial Note: Michael Goldberg (https://michaelgoldberg.us) has been a Jewish Studies professor, management consultant, hospice chaplain, and congregational rabbi. Among his other books are: Jews and Christians, Getting our Stories Straight (1985); Why Should Jews Survive?: Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future (1995); and Raising Spirits: Stories of Suffering and Comfort at Death's Door (2010).

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