Silver Alert

A sparkling, serio-comic novel about an ailing wife, her elderly husband, overbearing kids and a manicurist trying to eke out a new life.

Prolific, masterful storyteller Lee Smith (Guests on Earth; Dimestore) returns to the Florida Keys in her sparkling, tender-hearted novel Silver Alert. For 12 years, Key West resident Herb Atlas—gruff, no nonsense and married several times—has been taking “great care” of his “last wife,” Susan—a passionate lover of the arts and an artist herself who started to exhibit symptoms of early-onset dementia at age 58. With Herb now 83 and suffering health problems of his own, and Susan’s condition progressing more rapidly now that she’s 70, Herb hired the upbeat and free-spirited Renee to help out.

Renee, a manicurist who lives in a trailer park, is struggling to escape a dark, secret past and reinvent her life. She becomes a friend and companion to Susan, and her lively presence in Susan’s and Herb’s live reinvigorates the emotional well-being of the Atlases. However, when Herb’s overbearing and domineering adult children and half-children descend on Key West and stage an intervention to help the burdened couple, things take a dramatic, unexpected turn. “Everybody agrees. Susan ought to be in a facility now”—except Herb. Feeling powerless and boxed in by the limits imposed by his obstinate children, who take over and orchestrate decisions for his life and Susan’s care, Herb ultimately rebels. On a lark, he sets off in his prized Porsche sportscar with Renee. The two go on the lam—a wild, liberating road trip that will change their lives forever.

Smith has crafted a remarkably well-rounded, empathetic, serio-comic story. Silver Alert is a novel that takes readers on a deeply meaningful, unforgettable ride brimming with hope.

 

Silver Alert by Lee Smith

Algonquin Books, $27.00 hardcover, 224 pages, 9781643752419

Publishing Date: April 18, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 21, 2023), link HERE

NOTE: To read this review, the original long form review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (March 30, 2023), link HERE

Dinner with Edward

A middle-aged writer and a 93-year-old widower, both facing changes, become friends through the satiating comfort of food.

Two lost souls bond over gourmet feasts in Dinner with Edward, a memoir by investigative journalist Isabel Vincent (Gilded Lily: Lily Safra). Isabel--a middle-aged newspaper reporter transplanted to New York City as her marriage comes undone--meets a dear friend for dinner. The friend's 95-year-old mother has recently died, and she fears her father, Edward, is giving up on life. She asks Isabel to check in on him occasionally, touting Edward's culinary prowess. Isabel's loneliness in a new city ultimately propels her to show up at Edward's apartment on Roosevelt Island, armed with a bottle of wine.

One meal turns into a weekly, culinary rendezvous where meticulous and debonair Edward, a self-trained cook, whips up savory and sweet feasts, paired perfectly with cocktails. "Edward was neither a snob nor an insufferable foodie. He just liked to do things properly." Over dinner, he conveys heartfelt details of his life, his creative pursuits and his enchanted marriage, ultimately becoming something of a teacher and protective father figure to Isabel. He offers wisdom and perspective as Isabel shares her adventures working for the New York Post, her crumbling marriage, difficulties in raising her daughter and her return to dating. 

Dinner with Edward emerges as a beautiful, passionate love story--wholly platonic--about two people whose lives are have undergone change, but who learn how to adapt and truly appreciate life again. Isabel Vincent's rich, perfectly paced narrative is served with as much wonder and gratitude as the deliciously conveyed indulgence of each satisfying, lingering meal. 

Dinner with Edward: A Story of Unexpected Friendship by Isabel Vincent
Algonquin Books, $23.99 Hardcover, 9781616204228, 224 pages
Publication Date: May 24, 2016
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 3, 2016), link HERE 

Book Club Ideas: Historical Fiction

From My Shelf

Orphan Train (paperback, $14.99, Morrow) by Christina Baker Kline remains a book club favorite. This story about the fictional friendship between a young Irish immigrant and a 91-year-old woman ties in with the history of the trains that transported 200,000 abandoned children put up for adoption in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

The aim of historical fiction is to situate characters--sometimes real, sometimes imagined--amid actual events and backdrops that are accurately rich in detail and/or epic in scope. The genre continues to flourish. Here are some other titles worth a closer look:

Isabelle Allende examines the past and present, youth and old age, in The Japanese Lover (paperback $16, Atria, July), a novel about destiny, sacrifice and redemption. The story is set in a senior home, but the details are anchored in 1939, when an eight-year-old Polish girl flees the Nazis and goes to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco. There, the girl makes friends--and eventually falls in love--with a Japanese boy interned in the United States following Pearl Harbor.

Lee Smith sets Guests on Earth (paperback, $14.95, Algonquin) in 1936 in Highland Hospital, a noted psychiatric facility in Asheville, N.C. Smith examines ideas of sanity versus insanity, art and madness via her orphaned, 13-year-old protagonist, Evalina Toussaint. Evalina is institutionalized and falls under the spell of flamboyant Zelda Fitzgerald (wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald) who was an actual patient in the hospital before a tragic, suspicious fire killed her and several other women.

The Civil War and the horrors of slavery infuse The Invention of Wings (paperback, $17, Penguin) by Sue Monk Kidd, a tale inspired by the life of 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist Sarah Grimké. Kidd tackles issues of race, gender, activism, religion and feminism via the creation of two richly drawn characters: the strong-willed daughter of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner and her personal slave whom she seeks to liberate.

Note: This column (published 6/10/16) has been reprinted with the permission of Shelf Awareness: Shelf Awareness for Readers. Link HERE to read the article as it originally appeared.

Heading Out to Wonderful

Secrets are buried in a small town in 1948. In Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife), Charlie Beale, an attractive, athletic 39 year-old loner and veteran of WWII wanders into a quiet community in the Shenandoah Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Charlie is in search of a new life when he arrives in Brownsburg, Virginia carrying only two suitcases - one is packed with all of his worldly possessions, including a set of butcher knives; the other is stuffed with money. Offered a job by the local butcher, Charlie is befriended by the shop owner's family, including his precocious five year-old son, Sam. Charlie and the boy instantly bond, but when Charlie's path intersects with Sylvan Glass, a hillbilly turned stunning teenaged bride of the richest man in town, life for the three main characters will be forever changed by the ache and storm of love.

Goolrick is masterful in ratcheting up the tension in this unforgettable story of lost and displaced souls in search of identity, acceptance and belonging. Charlie longs to put down roots. Sylvan, in a loveless marriage, tries to carve out a persona for herself via images of captivating Hollywood starlets from the Silver Screen. While Sam, drawn away from his safe and secure familial environment, bears witness, many years later, to the all-consuming relationship of the star-crossed lovers. Evocative sensory detail and spiritual overtones infuse the emotional landscape of this powerful, climactic narrative that seeks to define and explore the meaning of love and goodness.

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

Algonquin Books, $24.95, Hardcover, 978156129238, 296 pp

Publication Date: June 12, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please 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 (6/15/12), click HERE.

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

“No person is a cliché. If you actually get to know them (him/her)…there will be many things deep down that are particular to them (each). That’s what I look for.” Lee Smith, interview in the Citizen-Times

The month of May has been declared as National Short Story Month . . . And Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, a book of new and selected stories by Lee Smith, is a perfect way to celebrate. For me, a satisfying short takes a reader on a journey that lasts for only a short time, but the people one meets and the places one visits linger much, much longer.  With that as the criteria, you can sit back and relax with Lee Smith as your literary tour guide.

It's been thirteen years since Smith released a short story collection, and Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (which, by the way, has nothing at all to do with Jane Austen) was surely worth the wait. Smith's dialogue is spot on, and her narrative voice (in first person p-o-v or third) is as strong as her characters and plots.  In each story, Smith peels back layers of the human psyche in order to expose the absurdity of people and situations, entertaining her readers while enlightening them along the way.

I've been a fan of Smith's writing since her first novel, The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed, and I've enjoyed and admired her work ever since. With Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Smith has assembled some of the best stories from her previous collections (Cakewalk, Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, and News of the Spirit), and she's included seven new works. As a whole, the theme of "change" is a thread running through each story. In some instances, change has already been inflicted upon the lives of characters and in other stories, change is about to crest. Smith, a true craftsman of the short form, makes all the right decisions in deciding just where and when to start (and end) each piece. She paints with a full palette to flesh out her smart, quirky characters, and she has an incredible gift for dotting the often sad, bittersweet canvas of life with just the right strokes of humor.

In an interview in Indyweek, Smith recently spoke to that point: "I consider myself a realist; I have always tried to tell the truth as I saw it. Paradoxically, I guess, I have found it easier to do this in fiction than in nonfiction. You can make things up and switch facts around to make your points. But a lot of times, the truth is not pretty—it's hard to bear—I guess that's where the humor comes in. We have to have something to lighten the load a little bit, don't we?"

Most of the stories in Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger focus on women - what it means to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a lover.  In "House Tour," a woman's home is overtaken by a group of boisterous, Red Hat Society matrons who mistake the woman's house for one included on a neighborhood historic house tour. The unpredictable presence of these ladies (they are hilarious!), who push their way into the woman's home and begin to explore the nooks and crannies, ultimately force the protagonist to contemplate a deeper meaning for her own life.

In other stories in the collection, Smith tackles aging ("Happy Memories Club", "Between the Lines"); how some members in families appear to be helpful when they are actually only catering to their own self-interests ("Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger"); what makes for a long and enduring marriage (the outstanding, "Stevie and Mama"); coping amid unraveling relationships ("Bob, A Dog"); and the power of love ("Ultima Thule," where a hospital worker makes a love connection with a psych ward patient).

Smith is often characterized as a "regional" writer.  But in reading (and savoring) the rich gamut of stories and excellent prose presented in Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Lee Smith once again proves that her range far exceeds the constraints implied by that label.  Small towns and close-knit communities--and the challenges fraught therein--are cornerstones of her fiction (the majority of her stories take place in the south). However, in Smith's world, small moments have the potential to change lives. And such moments of personal clarity and revelation serve to broaden the scope of Smith's stories as they open out into more universal themes found in the larger, broader world. 

Going Away Shoes

"I think that I'm writing about people in transition . . . (and) regret and longing are automatically a part of it. The whole process of transition is about both accepting a kind of truce and, by way of that acceptance, being able to let go. What a lot of my characters have in common is that they are trying their best to reach this threshold of change, and some of them I take over the doorway and some are left with it barely in view. But they're all having to cast off a lot of these heavy regrets, angers or frustrations. I'm asking myself as a writer what made this person so timid or so angry."    Jill McCorkle as quoted in Indyweek

What is it like to a walk a mile in the shoes of someone else?  That is the question that author Jill McCorkle explores through writing each of the eleven stories found in her latest collection of shorts.  Going Away Shoes offers a catalog of women in the throes of real life dramas.  Each character is faced with problems, disappointments, and regrets and each expresses the depth of her feelings with a true grit that is refreshingly honest, evocative and extremely entertaining.  

The headline story, "Going Away Shoes," is a Cinderella-like tale about a dutiful daughter who spends her days taking care of an ailing mother (and watching soap operas and longing for the life she could've had) while her shallow sisters let her bear the brunt of the responsibility. 

In "Surrender," the untimely death of a son leaves his mother with a great disconnect from his child, a five year-old little girl who is acting out over the loss with a foul mouth and a very cruel lack of manners toward her grandmother. 

A divorcee and single mom in "Midnight Clear" tries to do right by her two young sons by inviting her ex and his new flame over for drinks one Christmas Eve, only to have the septic system suddenly back up. 

In "Happy Accidents," a lonely school nurse tries to recreate a more appealing picture of her life with the calm, gentle support of PBS art teacher, Bob Ross, via his TV show, The Joy of Painting.

These are just some of the stories in this wonderful collection.  And while I enjoyed them all, three stories in particular lingered in my mind a little longer than the rest. 

"Intervention" appears to be a story about getting help for an addiction, but on a deeper level it evolves into so much more - a story about love and commitment and how forgiveness and the ability to overlook things play such a vital role in the longevity of a marriage.  The writing and structure of this piece is near-perfect, and the short and revealing climactic scene that McCorkle delivers at the end is startlingly brief but deeply resonate.  A truly amazing story!
  
I laughed out-loud while reading "PS," where a woman writes a Dear John letter to her family therapist.  Hilarious!

In "Me and Big Foot," a lonely, single woman wakes to find an unfamilar pickup truck parked outside her house and suddenly, her version of the ideal man takes up residence. 

If you don't already know the work of Jill McCorkle, you'll be in for a real treat with Going Away Shoes.  McCorkle is as clever as clever can be.  In reading her novels and stories for twenty years, I so admire how she is able to strike a balance between action and description. She is truly a master at pairing pain and pathos with good humor.