What-I'm-Reading-Wednesday: Jean Rhys, The Complete Novels

Twentieth century Caribbean novelist Jean Rhys is perhaps best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, but her work spanned her entire lifetime and included many other novels, short stories, essays, and autobiographical works. This collection of Rhys' novels includes Wide Sargasso Sea, as well as Voyage in the Dark, Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, and Good Morning, Midnight. The collection also includes photographs by Brassaï to accompany the novels.

Rhys often drew on her own experiences for the foundations of her novels, writing frequently of her childhood on the island of Dominica in the British West Indies, and her subsequent young adult years at a boarding school in England. Voyage in the Dark is thought to be mostly autobiographical, detailing a young woman's experience of migrating from the West Indies and being lured into a life of "modeling" which led to prostitution. Her depictions of Caribbean life are equally as vivid as the portrait she paints of life on the London streets.

Violence toward and the exploitation of women were common themes in Rhys' work. She was acutely aware of the fragile balancing act involved in emotional and sexual relationships between men and women, particularly in early twentieth century Britain. Her writing often featured domestic abuse, the dominance of men over women, and the dependence of women upon men. In Wide Sargasso Sea, an award-winning work of speculative fiction, she brings to light the first Mrs. Rochester, the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre, giving a voice to a character critical to the classic work but mostly unheard.

Request Jean Rhys, The Complete Novels from the Library catalog. Click on the "Availability" link on the catalog record, then click on the yellow "Request" button. Log in using your 14-digit Library barcode number (located on your University ID), and your last name. You will then be able to select your pick-up location. The Library will notify you via email when your book has arrived for pick-up. If you need assistance with this process, please contact the Circulation Desk at 301-687-4395.

What I'm Reading Wednesday: Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane

In Neil Gaiman's adult novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the narrator arrives in his childhood hometown in Sussex, England to attend a funeral and takes a break between the funeral and the wake to visit the neighborhood in which he group up. He finds himself at the farmhouse at the end of the lane where he once knew an 11-year-old girl named Lettie Hempstock and her unusual mother and grandmother. Though Lettie is not there, he finds himself sitting on a bench by her pond revisiting some traumatic and difficult to explain events from his childhood.

The narrator, who remains nameless throughout the novel, begins to remember a fantastical story of other worlds, light and dark, mythological creatures, and strange magic. Fans of Gaiman's novel Stardust will appreciate the masterful storytelling, humor, and truth in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. At 181 pages, it is a quick but worthwhile read.

If you are interested in checking this out for yourself, you can request this item from the Ort Library catalog here: http://catalog.umd.edu/docno=004292077.
Click on "Availability", then click on the yellow "Request" button, and log in using your last name and 14-digit Library barcode number on your ID. If you need assistance, please contact the Circulation Desk at 301-687-4395.

Use the hastag #whatimreadingwednesday to post your own book reviews online. We would love to see what you're reading!

What-I'm-Reading-Wednesday: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

At 834 pages, Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries may seem more like a cinder block than a novel, but inside this huge book is a lush and sweeping historical saga full of mystery and brilliant writing. Set in the 1866 gold rush in New Zealand, Catton tells a series of intricate stories interwoven through a cast of interesting and unusual characters all centered around several mysterious occurrences that take place on the same night. When the young Englishman, Walter Moody, arrives in town after a harrowing sea voyage, he finds himself in the midst of strange company at the local hotel. Twelve men have converged in the hotel's smoking room to discuss their involvement, or sworn lack thereof, in the death of the town hermit, the disappearance of a young man recently rich from the gold mines, and the near suicide of the town's most desirable prostitute, all of which occurred two weeks prior. As Moody is slowly welcomed into the group of men, he begins to attempt to unravel the complex mysteries of not just the events being discussed but of the men themselves.

Catton's work is reminiscient of Dickens in its plot twists and intricacies. As the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize, she is certainly someone to watch as well as read.

Place a request for The Luminaries by going to the Library catalog: http://catalog.umd.edu/docno=004347434. Click on "Availability", then click on the yellow "Request" button, and log in using your last name and 14-digit Library barcode number on your ID. If you need assistance, please contact the Circulation Desk at 301-687-4395.

Already read The Luminaries? Leave us a comment below and let us know what you thought! (No spoilers, please!)

#whatimreadingwednesday

FOR, Apr 25: Small Press Distribution

Featured Online Resource for the week of Apr. 25

Small Press Distribution

SPD is the only national distributor dedicated solely to small presses. It's based in Berkeley and its web site affords an airport hangar full--a whole naval base full--of information on the latest work from small presses.

Books of all genres are found here, as well as a list of all publishers who distribute through SPD--if you're looking for small presses, find them here.

Notable New Titles featured on SPD include

Pamela Lu's Ambient Parking Lot, coming in May from Kenning Editions

Michael Stewart's The Hieroglyphics, a "novel(la) in prose poems" out now from Mud Luscious Press

Joel Steven Kuszai's Accidency, forthcoming poetry from Roof Books

Artist Sessions at Studio 35, edited by Robert Goodnough/ Soberscove Press

Kazim Ali's Fasting For Ramadan: Notes on a Spiritual Practice, just released by Tupelo Press

Jaimy Gordon Heads Up National Book Award Winners

Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule takes prize for fiction.

At Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, the National Book Awards were sprinkled upon the delighted recipients last night, including Jaimy Gordon, a professor at Western Michigan University, for her independently-published novel Lord of Misrule.

Other winners:

Poetry: Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, Penguin Books

Nonfiction: Patti Smith, Just Kids, Ecco

Young People's Literature: Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbrid, Philomel

Lord of Misrule is set at a West Virginia horse-racing track in the early 1970s. Newcomer Tommy Hansel attempts to win some quick cash with a few of his ponies and get out, but becomes entangled with local gangsters.

The book was hurried into publication by Bruce McPherson, owner and editor McPherson & Co., who wanted to nominate it for the NBA. Two days after making final corrections, Gordon learned that an earlier draft of the manuscript had won the nomination.

Please do not confuse the novel with Rachel Caine's vampire adventure of the same title: it did not win the national book award.

Book of the Week for June 1

B▫O▫W▫ book of the week
for June 1, 2009

Lark and Termite Jayne Ann Phillips. Knopf. 2009
PS3566.H479 L37 2009

Veteran wordsmith Phillips weaves together two stories, one in West Virginia in 1959 and one in wartime North Korea, the same days, nine years earlier. In the former, a meek and perceptive teen, Lark, tends to her brother, Termite, who lacks speech, who can't walk and is pulled everywhere in a wagon. Corporal Robert Leavitt, whose connection to Lark and Termite emerges during the narrative, is wounded and dying during the Korean War.

It is a story of ontology and of origins, of characters acutely aware of the present, the right-now present, while many elements of their past, they cannot access.

Phillips's prose is urgent, her characters intricately drawn and sympathetic.

The book earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly; in a back-cover blurb, Alice Munro says, "This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light."