Welcome to the latest issue of Dust Jackets, where Team B reviews some great books from the archives.
This month Laura takes a deep dive into a crime classic, Sôffi discovers a mini House of Leaves-esque novella, Kate’s found a gem perfect for Ann Patchett and Elizabeth Strout fans, and Rohan returns to an old Pulitzer Prize winner.
First up, Laura has taken a deep dive into Mystic River, by one of America’s greatest crimewriters, Dennis Lehane – first published in 2001, and adapted into a movie in 2003 co-produced by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Laura Linney. Laura says:
“It comes as no surprise to anyone at Mr B’s that detectives from decades past are my jam. I go hunting in forgotten corners of second-hand shops (Hay Cinema Bookshop has perhaps served me best of all throughout the years), car boots, junk sales, house clearances and, most often of all, in between the lines of the books, music and movies I’m already engaging with. What book’s my fave TV gumshoe got taking a ride with him on the dashboard? And in that dorm room of a most disturbed young protagonist hangs a poster of Chinatown and… something suspiciously noiresque from Japan? Where’s the influence, the link? Could it be based on a book? Discarded, beat-up paperbacks on beach towels. Lyrical jousting involving obscure literary references to pool tables, crooked smiles and back rooms decorated with cigar plumes – who is she? My eyes and ears are always open, looking for signposts.
This month I took a trip to the outskirts of Boston with one of the greats, Dennis Lehane. A phenomenal character writer for both page and screen, Lehane’s style is that small-town, coiled energy atmosphere I so enjoy, but embraced by a big city setting. We’re thrown into the childhood hijinx of Sean, Jimmy and Dave, boys from a neighbourhood already divided by income. It’ll only take one day, one moment involving two strangers in a strange car, to change the course of their young lives forever. Fast forward a couple of decades and the three men are still living in the same neighborhood, under the shadow of that day. Jimmy owns a corner store and has a criminal past, Sean works homicide and Dave… Dave is messed up. When Jimmy’s daughter is brutally murdered in the local park, Sean is lead on a case that takes him on an uncomfortable walk down memory lane.
For fans of great character writing, perfect pacing and a tasty payoff, get your hands on Mystic River this summer.”
Sôffi has been creeping herself out with what she’s now calling a ‘mini House of Leaves‘ from Daniel Kehlmann, author of the International Booker Prize Shortlisted novel, The Director. Originally released in 2016, You Should Have Left was later adapted into a movie starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. Sôffi says: “This is an amuse-bouche of haunted house horror, or a man suffering an emotional collapse. Told in the form of a diary, a screenwriter spends a week in the Bavarian alps with his wife and his four-year-old daughter, trying to salvage his failing screenplay. But as his revisions take place and his marriage crumbles, the house begins revising itself and his script with it… Delightfully sinister, it will have you walking backwards out of rooms.”
Kate finally took the plunge with a book published in 2013 that found her at just the right time – The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. Kate says:
“The Interestings had been on my radar for a while, but it wasn’t until I was stranded in a station bookshop with no book on the go that I picked it up. How serendipitous that turned out to be! I read it the whole way home and then couldn’t stop, finishing the whole 460+ pages in two days. It’s now going on my favourites shelf as I felt so connected to each of these characters and the journey they go on.
The book follows a group of six friends, who name themselves The Interestings (ironically, but also not so ironically) as teens. However, after a fateful New Year’s Eve in New York, the group is fractured irreparably, changing the course of each of their lives. The novel starts in 1974 and follows The Interestings over the next 50 years, and in a subtle backdrop we also see Nixon’s resignation, the dawn of the AIDS crisis, 9/11, and the way America changes in the run up to the turn of the century. While this isn’t a plot-heavy book, I loved following the way the characters changed with the decades (and there are one or two twists).
Each of The Interestings are wonderfully drawn – their motivations are clear and the secrets they hide from each other have believable consequences. I loved this gem of a book and would recommend for fans of Ann Patchett, Rebecca Makkai, and Elizabeth Strout.”
Rohan has gone back to the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, with The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a profound novel which explores the legacy of the Vietnam War. Rohan calls it “one of those rare novels that succeeds in being a bit of everything. Episonage, war novel, dark comedy, bildungsroman, romance and cutting political quippery; told with great wit and a truly origional narrator.”
Thanks for reading!
Emma