Welcome to the latest edition of Dust Jackets, our regular feature where Mr B’s booksellers dig through the archives to review excellent backlist books. This month, our latest addition Giuseppe re-reads an American classic, Kate’s off to prison, and Tom revisits the incomparable Richard Brautigan.
Giuseppe joined the Mr B’s bookselling team this week and he has just re-read Jack London‘s 1903 novel The Call of the Wild, a hugely influential tale of a pet dog called Buck who has to learn to survive after being stolen and sold to dog traders.
Giussepe says: “Jack London found me when I had stopped reading and, in many ways, stopped living. In a season of doubt and failed attempts to become someone I was not, The Call of the Wild became more than a novel: Buck’s return to his true nature became my own. It taught me that the deepest calling is not towards comfort or conformity, but towards authenticity. That is why London matters to me, and why he may matter to others: his stories remind us that, beneath the noise of the world, each of us carries a wild voice waiting to be heard.”
Rachel Kushner has long been a fave of the Mr B’s team, with several of us digging her essays and novels. Now Kate has got in on the act, tackling her prison-set Booker-longlisted The Mars Room.
Kate says: “The Mars Room follows Romy, a 29 year-old from San Francisco, as she is imprisoned in a high-security prison for two life sentences. If you’re looking for a feel-good novel, this is not the one for you. However, Kushner’s writing makes this book so compelling and thought provoking – it’s been a few weeks since I read it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Romy.
The story is non-linear and we meet a range of characters, from Romy’s friends and family on the outside to her fellow inmates, some of whom are on death row. It riffs on ideas of America outlined by Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski (better known as the Unabomber), combining the natural and modern through the lens of the prison system.
The fragments of story and feeling lead to an unexpected ending, and while it was an unsettling read, The Mars Room was abundantly well-researched and crafted. For fans of Lucia Berlin, Ben Lerner, and Anna Burns.”
Regular customer and contributor to this feature, Susanne Laws, has been back in touch and has unearthed another gem in Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War…
She says: “The war in question is World War I and the book is set in Rye on the south coast. Beatrice Nash, a young woman whose changed family circumstances means she must now earn her living, arrives to teach Latin at a local boys’ school – not a popular move for many, especially as she turns out to be younger and more attractive than expected. This brings her in contact with the family of a young medical student, but there is a lot more to this book than a romance. Rye wants to do its bit for the war effort so agrees to take in Belgian refugees – but only if they are the nice ones!
So, there is a lot of Austen-esque dialogue and humour skewering the middle-class attitudes and hypocrisy, as well interesting social history which is well written and the research lightly worn.”
Buy The Summer Before the War!
Is a book published in 2024 considered backlist? It’s too hot, I’m not gonna argue. Charlotte has been reading Dizz Tate’s Brutes…
She says: “In Falls Landing, Florida, a group of manic thirteen-year-old girls rally around preacher’s daughter Sammy, who is older, more popular and to the outside world, seemingly unattainable. But then she disappears, and an obsessive quest by the girls to find her reveals a much more sinister truth about the town. Psychological horror meets explorative coming-of-age in this propulsive novel, with Tate’s writing conjuring an undeniable sense of unease and nostalgia. Perhaps it was the heatwave in which I read it, but the language in this book practically simmers with tension, drawing us forward through a blend of eery, present-tense moments from the perspective of the girls to a glimpse into their singular futures. Interrogating ideas of suppressed identity, the tumultuousness of girlhood and what it means to ‘fall behind,’ Brutes is perfect for fans of Jeffrey Eugenides and Eliza Clark.”
Finally, I have spent the sweltering days of the past week in the company of an old favourite – the incomparable Richard Brautigan. The darling of the counterculture movement in the 1960s, Brautigan shot to fame when he published Trout Fishing in America, which became an unlikely bestseller. There followed a handful of brilliant, eccentric, almost childlike novels that captured a moment in time. Brautigan’s story, of course, would end in tragedy, when he took his own life in 1984. Luckily, his legacy has been secured by the scores of fans who have continued to support his work over the decades, and the king-of-the-simile continues to have an influence today.
I read through most of Brautigan’s work a decade or so ago, enlightened by his playfulness, his use of language, and the beguiling naivety he brought to what can seem a cruel world. I was drawn to revisit him by a recent episode of Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast, where he waxed lyrical about Brautigan’s out-of-print collection The Pill Vs The Springfield Mine Disaster. Realising I had never read any of his poetry, I ordered an (expensive!) copy of the book online, and went back to my bookshelves while I was waiting, deciding to revisit Sombrero Fallout, which was on my favourite shelf at Mr B’s when I first started out as a bookseller.
Well, it was an absolute joy to encounter again. This mad book starts with a frozen sombrero falling to the ground in a small town. What seems to be an innocuous, if strange occurrence, soon spirals out of control, leading to rioting, murder, a deadly siege, and Norman Mailer reporting from the front line: ‘It was hell.’
Hilarious, surreal, and moving, this is pure, classic Brautigan at his most playful and witty. If you have never read him before, start here. And if you want to borrow my copy of The Pill vs The Springfield Mine Disaster, hit me up at the shop!
Thanks for reading
Tom