Mr. Tall

Aspects of human frailty and damaged psyches permeate the stories in Mr. Tall, the latest collection of short fiction by Tony Earley.  Earley's work (Jim the Boy and Here We Are in Paradise) delves into the lives of ordinary people and addresses complex themes in a pared-down style. This time around, Earley tackles stories about characters that include, in "Yard Art," a divorced 28-year-old midwife and a rough-around-the-edges, bluegrass-singing plumber who spend an afternoon searching for what may or may not be a valuable piece of sculpture. "Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands" explores the relationship of a North Carolina couple forced to come to terms with the state of their marriage now that their daughter has left for college. Four taut scenes frame "Just Married," a beautiful story about a recently wed older couple that bears witness to the intersection of random events and memory. An isolated, elderly Nashville widow becomes rapt by the disappearance of a seventh grader in "Have You Seen the Stolen Girl?" The incident conjures remembrances of the widow's own child and Jesse James, who legend says once lived for a time at the woman's address. "The Cryptozoologist" centers on a widow who believes she has spied a "skunk ape," a type of Bigfoot creature, wandering outside her home. The presence of the wildly elusive beast compels her to reconcile her past and her true feelings for her misunderstood artist husband.

Elements of the surreal resurface in the novella, "Jack and the Mad Dog," a story about how a young man's misdeeds come back to bite him via a talking dog and a clever play on the Jack and the Beanstalk fable. And in "Mr. Tall," the most suspenseful story of the collection, a young woman living in the 1930s marries a man who whisks her away from her family into a new life filled with uncertainty. Amid loneliness, the young wife is drawn to a mysteriously widowed, reclusive neighbor nicknamed Mr. Tall, who inhabits the only other farmhouse nearby. The young wife is warned to stay away, but can she resist learning more about this man's past?

Earley's vivid, well-crafted short stories speak volumes about the startling realities of life and the complexities of human relationships. He deftly compresses whole life histories into just a few pages that successfully blend humor and poignancy, reality and myth. All of the stories feature Southeastern locales and characters who are ripped from the familiarity of their lives--the comfort, however good or bad, they know and depend upon--only to be thrust, oftentimes unwillingly, into new realities. Along the way, unearthed secrets and epiphanies lead to revelatory moments infused with regret and grace.

Mr.Tall  by Tony Earley

Little, Brown and Company, $25.00 Hardcover, 9780316246125, 256 pp

Publication Date: August 26, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Book Trade (8/1/14), click HERE

Jill Paton Walsh: The Legacy of Dorothy L. Sayers

The Writer's Life

Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the greatest mystery writers of the 20th century. Her most notable creation was the aristocratic, eccentric sleuth Lord Peter--and later, Harriet Vane, the hyper-intelligent writer of detective novels who would become Lord Peter's wife. In 1936, Sayers abandoned the series. After her death in 1957, a partial manuscript and notes for a Lord Peter novel--what would become Thrones, Dominations, were found. It wasn't until many years later that Sayers's literary trustees commissioned Jill Paton Walsh--at the suggestion of Hope Dellon, an editor at St. Martin's Press--to complete the novel, which was published in 1998.

Walsh, the Booker Prize-nominated and Whitbread Prize-winning author of many novels for adults and children, has since written three additional books in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, including A Presumption of Death and The Attenbury Emeralds. In The Late Scholar (published by Minotaur), Peter and Harriet once again return to the page, post-World War II. In this installment, Peter is asked by his alma mater, St. Severin's College, Oxford University, to help resolve a dispute involving a valuable rare manuscript that needs to be sold in order to raise funds. But when the clever couple arrive at the college, they are faced with a string of mysterious deaths of faculty members.

Were you always a fan of Dorothy Sayers's work? What was your first experience with her writing?
My first experience with Sayers's work was when I was about 14 years old. I read Even the Parrot, a book for children, and managed to like it, though it's very patronizing. Then I moved on and fell in love with Lord Peter. When I read Strong Poison, the first Lord Peter book that features Harriet Vane, I noticed the unusual attitude of Lord Peter to a clever woman. I gave him my heart at once, and he helped inoculate me against the attentions of the men in my generation who wanted a woman chiefly to iron their shirts.

Were you intimidated by taking over the writing of the very successful Lord Peter series?
Yes, of course, I was intimidated... I still am. But it has been an irresistible challenge to my technical skills.

With Thrones, Dominations, you are considered a "co-author" with Dorothy Sayers. Were the notes she left behind easy to follow in finishing the story?
The materials left by Sayers consisted of about one-fifth of the length of the finished novel, in chapters not numbered in order. There were several versions of some of the scenes. There was a plot diagram, down a single page, showing a line for Peter and Harriet and a line for Murderer and Victim. It was annotated with the words "Moves and countermoves as many as may be necessary" and "little bump of emotional development leads to solution." The written part left behind did not get as far as the murder. It was not easy to decipher.

How much influence do the literary trustees of the Dorothy Sayers Society have over the content of each book? Have they ever asked you to rework or rewrite parts of the story?
The trustees are lawyers advised by a literary agent. They have not offered any literary comment or advice, and I would not agree to work under such supervision. But the publisher also has discretion to publish or not to publish, and I accept editorial advice from the publisher as I would with a work entirely my own.

How do you research each book, especially The Late Scholar, which is set mostly on the campus of your alma mater, Oxford University?
Each book is different. They all require some research into the historical setting. The Late Scholar needed very little research, just some checking, because it is set somewhere in 1952-1953, and I went to Oxford in 1955. Peter's life and mine nearly overlap there.

What's the most challenging part of continuing the series? What's the most enjoyable and rewarding?
Writing about someone else's characters imposes a duty to correctness about what is already written about them, as though they were real people. Peter is the most entertaining man possible to imagine, talking in my inner world. He's just fun.

Do you have a favorite book in the Lord Peter series?
Gaudy Night is my favorite--it would be, it's about Oxford, and it's about women with professional careers. But I think the best of the series is The Nine Tailors, even though it had no Harriet Vane for me to identify with.

How hard is it to keep updating the series with recurrent characters, now aging, and moving into a more contemporary, post-World War II era?
It's easier, actually, than writing about characters who do not grow and change. Characters need to be real to me before I can make them real to anybody else, and real people change over time.

Why do you think Lord Peter and Harriet Vane have gained and retained such a loyal and devoted following throughout the years?
Peter is very unusual in needing an intellectual equal for his wife. I can think of two others in literature: Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing and Ralph Touchett in A Portrait of a Lady. Sayers produced a picture of a deeply desirable relationship between a man and a woman--clever, passionate and mutually respectful.

If someone has never read a Lord Peter novel, which one do you suggest they read first? And what do you foresee for the future of the Lord Peter series?
I'd suggest Strong Poison--if someone likes this book, they will like them all. And in terms of Lord Peter's future, he seems to be immortal. Really, doesn't he?

Will there be another Imogen Quy novel? Also, will you write another children's book?
Yes, I do plan to return to the Imogen Quy series. I would also love to get a good idea for another children's book. But my own children are now in their 50s, and my grandchildren are growing up in Australia. I haven't enough contact with children to know in my bones what they like reading... just the same, I'd grab the chance if something promising occurred to me.

If you could meet Dorothy Sayers, what would you like to say to her?
I would be rather afraid of her--such a sharp and clever woman. But I would ask why she abandoned Thrones, Dominations.

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A on Shelf Awareness (6/17/14), click HERE

Five Year Anniversary

August 7, 2009 - August 7, 2014

Reading Between the Lines

is proud to 

celebrate

five years!

Thank you for reading along!

Share your thoughts about the blog and be entered to win a $25 Amazon Gift card!

Email: katgerard@aol.com  - write the phrase "Five Years" in the subject line

Winner will be announced on August 14, 2014 

UPDATE 8/15/14:  Appreciate all the kind and thoughtful emails!  Thank you!!

Winner of the $25 Amazon GC is Sheila N. of Yakima, WA
(Winner selected at random)

Link HERE to read the post that launched the blog on August 7, 2009

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir

Sometimes you have to leave a place in order to appreciate it. Such was the case for Frances Mayes, who charts and examines her formative years before she wrote her blockbuster memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun. As a child, Mayes longed to escape her hometown of Fitzgerald, Georgia; she lived most of her adult life in Italy and California. But a trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for a book signing served as a conversion moment for Mayes. She and her husband relocated to Hillsborough, North Carolina, a small, historical enclave on the Eno River where many writers and artists reside.

"Often, seemingly spontaneous acts come from a deep, unacknowledged place," Mayes writes in Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir, as she re-imagines and re-creates the solitary, bookish, willful childhood she had in the pre-civil rights South. Mayes's unhurried, stream-of-consciousness narrative provides an intimate look into her upbringing, an "intense microcosm" of family, friends and a home where pride seemed to prevail over realism.

"Secretive, inverted things informed my childhood," writes Mayes, as she traces the complex connections of a small town. She renders the trajectory of her life story—the people and the places she's fled—via pivotal scenes infused with colorful characters and sensory imagery. In describing one of the first funerals she ever attended, Mayes writes, "The smell of roses feels so heavy it's as if we've stepped inside a flower. Pink shades on hanging lamps make the room glow like inside a shell." Such vivid, poetic prose serves to enhance the bittersweet journey of a natural-born storyteller who rediscovers and reclaims her Southern roots.

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes

Crown, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780307885913, 336 pp

Publication Date: April 1, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/11/14), click HERE

Selling a Camera, Assessing a Life

Opinion:  Bringing the relationship with my camera into focus

"It's not what you look at...it's what you see"

Friday, August 1, 2014

Opinion/Editorial: "Other Views" (Section A-19)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

To read the article in its entirety, click on the highlighted title above