In Daniel Fights a Hurricane you meet Daniel Suppleton; a man with an affinity for pipes who has a phobia of Hurricanes and who seems to be losing his grip on reality.  Daniel is living somewhere between the real word and his own dream world.

In the real world Daniel has walked away from his job on a crew building an oil pipeline to the ocean and moved into the woods while his ex-wife searches desperately to find him.

As far as his dream world is concerned,  Daniel is searching for his missing wife and trying to build a pipeline to the ocean before his town’s wells dry up and encounters some amazing characters along the way.  However, as soon as the pipeline is finished a hurricane hits and author Shane Jones takes you on one wild ride.

“SOME DEFINITIONS OF WHAT A HURRICANE MIGHT BE

1.  Monster with sharp teeth

2.  Angry children

3.  A dozen layers of wind stuck together

4.  Black magic

5.  Godlike spirit

6.  Curse

7.  The horizon moving to the other side

8.  Everyone’s vision of death combined

9.  Optical-illusion hologram

10.  Mountain growing from the ocean floor to the sun

That list could be summed up in one word…Fear.”

Author, Shane Jones has an absolutely fantastic imagination and writes like a champ.

by Zita

The title of this post takes the words “great wars” from the epigraph to the book, a quote from Sandra Cisneros.

“Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a baby’s beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.

This is how you lose her.”

This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz’s new book of short stories, takes it title from this ending to a story about Yunior, a Dominican guy whose love life this book sort of traces. It’s a book about the confluence of errors that it takes to learn how to treat people, or, what love looks like when it’s you doing the loving.

The words “this is how you lose her” might seem abrupt for a story’s ending, but no story here is an island. They come together as a book to do what many consider the work of a novel: they chronicle a change in a person. Many of these stories, for that matter, use the pronoun “you” to refer to Yunior, making the change seem all the more relevant, as you cannot possibly prepare for the shock of every instance of the word.

You.

Me?

You.

It’s pretty deep, but don’t be scared.

There are lines that mimic very real, day-to-day speech, and much of the dialogue uses an approachable vernacular—much of it Spanish, Spanglish, probably Dominican, and it all fits seamlessly. The stories are natural, yet they won’t leave you gagging by page four with gratuitous cussing. They just do what they have to do. Each story ends where it wants to. I think that the jacket artist and designer, Rodrigo Corral, captures the grace with which each story allows part of its meaning to be told in the negative space.

I first encountered a story from this book called “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” in the July 23^rd issue of The New Yorker. All I knew up that point were the wonderful things I’d heard about Díaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It is clear that the story was chosen for The New Yorker not because it is the “best” story or for its length, but for its fullness and clarity of the character’s story, despite a fragmented narrative movement. This is representative of the book as a whole. Perhaps Díaz began writing, in both the case of the novel and this book of stories, from the same starting point: the character. It is a patient but uncensored examination of the character’s decisions and how they affect the people around him, and himself, through time.

There is also an expatriate worldview in the pages of this book that reminds me of that of Hemingway’s war-torn characters. But, redeeming the suffering and confusion, there is a somehow optimistic, 21^st-century outlook on love and identity. Yunior is an expatriate Dominican guy in the black-and-white U.S., who has to learn that, in love and all things, you can’t just wake up one day and find yourself—you create the person that you are.

Read on.

You will like this if you liked/reminds me of: Rick Moody’s Demonology, Denis Johnson, Spanish/Spanglish, Dominican Republic, love and relationship stories.

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz, $26.95, Riverhead Books.

Signed copies available at the store.

by Whitney

Eudora was once a society writer–briefly–for the Jackson Daily News, but of course, she mostly wrote wonderful satirical pieces. She knew from local reading that the genre of society writing had its own potential for comedy. One of her favorite writers of society columns was Mrs. Beatrice Boyette, who wrote seriously for the Jackson Daily News for several decades. Eudora often quoted her to my great delight. At some point, Eudora gave me a typed copy of one of Boyette’s columns that she had saved. I’ve chosen one paragraph out of many amazing specimens of Mrs. Boyette’s prose (and Eudora’s delight).

“Splendor emitted atmospheric radiance, as the bride was predominant in white lace sparsed with linen, matching accessories and carnation corsage… The living and dining rooms, redundant with lustrous spring flowers, diffused essence of felicitousness as the bride made incision in the wedding cake, reposing on an incomparable hand-crocheted table cloth.”

-Patti Carr Black

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If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa[at]lemuriabooks[dot]com.

Click here to learn about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Miss Welty series

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We have been working with the Mississippi Children’s Museum to set up  a series of events in celebration of children’s literature. Next week is Once Upon a Fall Festival and it’s open to the public!

The poster below profiles the event for School Field Trips but everyone is welcome to the Public Signings. No reservations are required and the cost for each children’s literature event is listed below.

Parents, teachers and nannies of preschoolers everywhere know just how much the little ones LOVE Llama Llama, the adorable creation of talented author/illustrator Anna Dewdney. He’s oh-so-funny in that Winnie-the-Pooh/Amelia Bedelia/Junie B kind of way–kids can identify with the age appropriate lessons and experiences of the character, and feel slightly superior while enjoying Llama’s antics along the way to a lesson well learned.

What makes Llama special, in my opinion, is the beautiful textured oil paintings that illustrate the series, as well as the sparse, clever (not cloying!) rhyming text that keeps the pages turning and children as young as 2 engaged. Before the release of Dewdney’s sixth book in the series, Llama Llama Time To Share, we were joking at my house about how many more rhymes for llama could possibly be left. But never fear! Nelly Gnu, the new girl (get it?! OK, so I’m easily amused…) in Llama’s neighborhood, is here to save the day and supply a whole new plethora of rhyming possibilities.

Providing his readers with a timely, gentle reminder on the importance of sharing and hospitality, a wary Llama decides that maybe sharing isn’t so bad after all–until he catches Nelly Gnu playing with his favorite dolly! And she didn’t even ask!! Oh, the llama drama! It’s a LLAMAMERGENCY! But as always, with a little help from Mama, Llama finds his way.

by Mandy