Literary Fiction vs. Commercial Fiction

Ran across this on one of my fave podcast sites, Books on the Nightstand, and had to share:

We tackle the difficult task of trying to define literary fiction and commercial fiction. Before getting into those subjects, we define genre fiction which is the term used to describe romance, mystery, and science fiction & fantasy.

 Throughout our discussion we mention several times that the defining characteristics of these fiction types are generalizations and they can easily apply to both fiction categories. Also, none of these properties are meant to imply that one of these categories is better than the other.

Commercial Fiction

• A heavy reliance on plot
• Less interior character development
• Page-turner

Literary Fiction

• Much of the action comes from internal character development (“Nothing happens.”)
• More ups and downs from emotions than events
• More complex writing needed to imply emotional states

The Barkeep by William Lashner

Summary:

Justin Chase is the perfect barkeep, tending bar as he lives his life, in a state of Zen serenity. At least until Birdie Grackle, a yellow-haired, foul-mouthed alcoholic from Texas, walks into his bar, orders a Mojito, and makes a startling confession. Six years ago Justin's life was ripped apart when he discovered his mother's bludgeoned corpse in the foyer of the family home. Now Justin's father is serving a life sentence and Justin, after a stint in an asylum, drowns his emotions in a pool of inner peace. But when Birdie Grackle claims to be the hit man who murdered Justin's mother for the money, Justin is hurled back to the emotions, the past, and, most frightening of all, the father he tried to leave behind.

My take: 2.5 looks

An entertaining read, for sure. I was drawn in from the startling revelation at the end of the first chapter, and held, for the most part, through the majority of the book. While some of the other reviews cite the characters as being flat and stereotypical, I found it to read more like a noir book from Hammett or Cain. I am not comparing the quality to these authors, merely the style.

The one problem I had with the book, and keeping me from a hearty recommendation, was the plot. It became so convoluted and ultimately unbelievable that, if the end was not already in sight, I may have put this one down. I agree with another reviewer that "the plot became overly complicated in an effort to give us surprise twists". As a matter of fact, I am still not sure exactly what happened or who the true murderer was. Unfortunately, I wasn't invested enough to reread to find out.

Since there are so many other great mystery/thrillers available, this one is not recommended.

Can You Keep a Secret? by R.L. Stine

Summary:

Eddie and Emma are high school sweethearts from the wrong side of the tracks. Looking for an escape their dreary lives, they embark on an overnight camping trip in the Fear Street Woods with four friends. As Eddie is carving a heart into a tree, he and Emma discover a bag hidden in the trunk. A bag filled with hundred-dollar bills. Thousands of them. Should they take it? Should they leave the money there? The six teens agree to leave the bag where it is until it's safe to use it. But when tragedy strikes Emma's family, the temptation to skim some money off of the top becomes impossible to fight. There's only one problem. When Emma returns to the woods, the bag of money is gone, and with it, the trust of six friends with a big secret.
My take: 3 looks

An easy read, and probably well-suited for the YA crowd who likes a little bit of a scare, a tad of romance, and an end with a twist. It took me longer to read this one that it should have, but I found it easy to put down. However, it's a good choice for the middle-school set.

The Sisterhood by Helen Bryan

Summary:

Menina Walker was a child of fortune. Rescued after a hurricane in South America, doomed to a life of poverty with a swallow medal as her only legacy, the orphaned toddler was adopted by an American family and taken to a new life. As a beautiful, intelligent woman of nineteen, she is in love, engaged, and excited about the future — until another traumatic event shatters her dreams. Menina flees to Spain to bury her misery in research for her college thesis about a sixteenth-century artist who signed his works with the image of a swallow — the same image as the one on Menina’s medal. But a mugging strands Menina in a musty, isolated Spanish convent. Exploring her surroundings, she discovers the epic sagas of five orphan girls who were hidden from the Spanish Inquisition and received help escaping to the New World. Is Menina’s medal a link to them, or to her own past? Did coincidence lead her to the convent, or fate? Both love story and historical thriller, The Sisterhood is an emotionally charged ride across continents and centuries

My take: 3 looks

Going back and forth in time, this is an epic tale spanning centuries, continents, and lives. It was gripping from the first chapter, and very easy to get lost in the story. However, as the past was explored and a number of characters were introduced, I found myself getting a little confused by the number of nuns, orphans, sea voyages, and nunneries.

 While the story of Menina started the tale, I felt that it quickly took a backseat to the events in the 1500s, including the Spanish Inquisition. I was left with many questions about Menina's life, whether or not she returned to the United States, and the possible estrangement from her adopted family.

On the other hand, I knew all I wanted to know about several nuns and novitiates, and young girls living under the protection of them. Without giving too much away, I felt a little cheated at the end, where time lept to the future, sharing what had become of Menina with little description of how she had traveled much of the path to get there. There were also questions about the suspicious people looking for Menina. What happened to them? What happened to Theo and his family? Did he ever get his comeuppance?

While this was an entertaining historical fiction tale, it left me less than satisfied. I will read one more by Bryan before recommending.

The Restaurant Critic's Wife by Elizabeth LaBan

Summary:

Lila Soto has a master’s degree that’s gathering dust, a work-obsessed husband, two kids, and lots of questions about how exactly she ended up here.

In their new city of Philadelphia, Lila’s husband, Sam, takes his job as a restaurant critic a little too seriously. To protect his professional credibility, he’s determined to remain anonymous. Soon his preoccupation with anonymity takes over their lives as he tries to limit the family’s contact with anyone who might have ties to the foodie world. Meanwhile, Lila craves adult conversation and some relief from the constraints of her homemaker role. With her patience wearing thin, she begins to question everything: her decision to get pregnant again, her break from her career, her marriage—even if leaving her ex-boyfriend was the right thing to do. As Sam becomes more and more fixated on keeping his identity secret, Lila begins to wonder if her own identity has completely disappeared—and what it will take to get it back.

My take: 4 looks

I expected something totally different from this book. I am not sure why. It was a preconceived notion on my part. A completely incorrect preconceived notion. I expected to read a light, fluffy book about the ins and outs of being married to a restaurant critic, long and laborious descriptions of food and locales, and maybe some recipes.

No way. Instead, I read a wonderfully evolving character study of a woman, wife, mother, friend, daughter.

Lila is instantly likable and completely relatable. Which of us moms, at some point in our mothering, have felt that we are the only mom on the planet who does not have her proverbial act together? Who, as a wife, has not been hurt by the feeling that the husband's career is more important than yours, at least in his mind?

I could go on, but the point here is that Lila is everyone of us. To read her journey from career woman to married woman to mother of one, then mother of two ... it is a journey that unfolds as naturally as a rose in June. LaBan hit the mark with me on this one, and it was a delight to read. I was truly sorry it was over, and will read more by her.

Highly recommended.

This book was offered to me by NetGalley.com in exchange for my honest review.

Winter at the Door by Sarah Graves

Summary:

Moving from Boston to remote Bearkill, Maine, isn’t homicide cop Lizzie Snow’s idea of a step up. But breaking away from tragedy and personal betrayal is at least a step in the right direction. Her dead sister’s fate still torments her, as does her long-missing niece’s disappearance. Lizzie hopes to find the mysteriously vanished child here, amid the coming ice and snow. But in the Great North Woods, something darker and more dangerous than punishing winter is also bound for Bearkill.

My take: 2.5 looks

The first in a series, Winter at the Door is an easy book to read. However, I am giving 2.5 because it reads a little sophomoric to me, much like a first novel. It's a combination of teenage feelings given to the adult protagonist, predictable events and outcomes, and some stereotyping, especially of young adults. While the story was simple and easy to follow, the resolution left me a bit flat and wanting more to have happened. Perhaps in the second book these characters are more developed, but I won't be reading another. Not recommended.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Summary:

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

My take: 4 looks

This is historical fiction at its best. Here is a story of bravery, family, adversity, struggle, and at the heart of it all, a father and two sisters. The backdrop is World War II Paris, but WWII by no means takes center stage here.

In a publishing world where WWII and Holocaust books are prevalent, The Nightingale shows the raw humanity and evil on both sides. There are decisions as tough as Sophie's Choice, and brutality as real as Schindler's List. Hannah traverses these roads deftly as the reader is taken into the villages, hillsides, waiting in rationing lines, and seeing everything you've ever loved and worked for pillaged at the hands of the enemy. At the same time, there is hope, there is family, there is love, and there is a driven desire to do what is right.

I wept at the end of this book. I loved every moment of this wonderfully beautiful story. Highly recommended.

2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

Summary:

Madeleine Altimari is a smart-mouthed, precocious nine-year-old and an aspiring jazz singer. As she mourns the recent death of her mother, she doesn’t realize that on Christmas Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day—and night—of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she’s determined to make her on-stage debut. On the same day, her fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene, who’s just moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush, afraid to hope that sparks might fly again. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever, unless someone can find a way to quickly raise the $30,000 that would save it.
My take: 4 looks

Okay, it was a cute story, and I liked how the characters merged and criss-crossed as the story developed. However, this 4 looks comes primarily from the writing, which is clever, sharp, and precise. The characters are on-point and brilliantly drawn and developed. I was firmly rooting for Madeleine, Sarina, and Lorca; and even Principal Randles became a little soft to me at the end. When the novel was over, I wanted more of Ben and Louisa, and was keen to know what happened to Alex. That is the sign of a great novel: to leave the reader wanting more.

I will definitely read more by this author, and will promote this jewel to everyone I know.

Highly recommended.

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

Summary:

Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks.

One day, Simon receives a mysterious book from an antiquarian bookseller; it has been sent to him because it is inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon's grandmother. Simon must unlock the mysteries of the book, and decode his family history, before fate deals its next deadly hand.

My take: 3 looks

Not at all what I expected. It was a blend of mystical realism - dysfunctional family - coming of age rolled into one. It was an easy read, and entertaining, but it didn't quite meet my expectations in the writing.

For example, I was confused by the first-person vs. third-person narration in the book. It may have had rhyme and reason, but it seemed to come and go, not really paving a path that made sense to me. Also, there were characters who I think Swyler intended to evoke compassion, but I found annoying instead. I think the house should have played a more major role, even to the point of becoming one of the characters. Instead it was sent to the side, as a wallflower.

The back and forth in time was a nice touch, and how the past meets the present is interesting, but I lacked too much here to give more than three looks. However, it is recommended.

Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant

Summary:

Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. Dispatches from Pluto is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place.

My take: 4 looks

Laugh-out-loud funny! I am sure my husband was just as glad as I was when I finished this one because I kept interrupting him so I could read him passages aloud.

Unlike other travel books I have read, like Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, Grant's Dispatches dripped, reeked, and sung of honesty. There was no romanticizing the characters, location, flora, or fauna. No pandering to the "natives" or silently looking down on other because of the vast differences in two worlds. The author's respect was as deep as the Delta swamp, and gave this journal a hint of what it's like to be in the deep south at any time of year.

Highly recommended.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

Summary:

A new, small-format edition of one of Edward Gorey's "dark masterpieces of surreal morality" ("Vanity Fair"): a witty, disquieting journey through the alphabet.
My take: 5 looks

Oh. My. Goodness. This is funny like no other. I laughed out loud at some of the pages, and am SO glad that I bought this little treasure. A perfect way to teach Wednesday Addams the alphabet!

Recommended

Murder Run by Shelley Frome

Summary:
In this crime novel, a wayward handyman grapples with the suspicious death of his employer, a fragile choreographer who secluded herself in the Litchfield Hills. As the fallout mounts, the reader is taken to various locales in and around Manhattan, an escapade in Miami Springs and back again to the hills of Connecticut until this twisty conundrum is finally laid to rest.      

My take: 2 looks

I invoked the "100 page rule" on this one. After a little over 100 pages, I still had no earthly idea what I was reading, and put it down. I didn't know Jed or have any insight into him. Sure, I knew what I needed to know about his background and how he arrived to the place in the novel, but there was no depth of character or empathy at all. His drive to tie current events to the past fell flat for me, and offered no level of interest or anxiety.

The antagonists were merely irritating caricatures of know-it-all lawmen, but never raised enough rancor in me to side against them.

Time and again, I got the overall feeling that Frome was trying to go for the staccato noir dialogue and tone of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce or Double Indemnity. Instead, it read like swiss cheese and left out more than it offered.

I cannot recommend this. There are so many others available, like Cain, in this vein that are so much richer and more satisfying.

This book was forwarded to me by the author in exchange for my honest review.

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Summary:
In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research— the distant laboratories of Barbados and New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom and the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy and the warming mountains of central Virginia and the western states—Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent.


My take: 4 looks

This lovely book took me a while to get through because I didn't want to rush the reading, or gloss over all of the marvelous facts Ackerman painstakingly presents.

The author's love and respect for our feathered friends is obvious in her summaries of quirks, personalities, and proclivities of birds. There are scientific facts, anecdotes, summaries, and observations of the level of intelligence and the sheer ingenuity of birds and how they reach their goals.

While this is not a novel, it is very easy to read, and fills your mind with the fluttering and thought processes, which various species of birds go through. As a lay-birdwatcher and ardent feeder- replenisher, I very much enjoyed this and recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

Summary:
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Iverson is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.  Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?

My take: 3 looks

A very nice debut mystery by a new author. While it was a bit predictable, and there was at least one instance where I actually rolled my eyes, the story was very interesting. The premise of a college student interviewing a convicted killer just months before his death was a little reminiscent of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Also, Tennessee William's famous play "The Glass Menagerie" shadows the story, in a less subtle way. While the entire setup of the stories are very individual, I appreciated what I considered a nod from Eskens to both Capote and Williams.

A very fast and satisfying read, I recommend this one.

Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Summary:
Mary Mallon was a courageous, headstrong Irish immigrant woman who bravely came to America alone, fought hard to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic service ladder, and discovered in herself an uncanny, and coveted, talent for cooking. Working in the kitchens of the upper class, she left a trail of disease in her wake, until one enterprising and ruthless "medical engineer" proposed the inconceivable notion of the "asymptomatic carrier" — and from then on Mary Mallon was a hunted woman.
  
In order to keep New York’s citizens safe from Mallon, the Department of Health sent her to North Brother Island where she was kept in isolation from 1907-1910. She was released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. Yet for Mary — spoiled by her status and income and genuinely passionate about cooking—most domestic and factory jobs were heinous. She defied the edict.
 
Bringing early twentieth-century New York alive — the neighborhoods, the bars, the park being carved out of upper Manhattan, the emerging skyscrapers, the boat traffic — Fever is as fiercely compelling as Typhoid Mary herself, an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the hands of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes an extraordinarily dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable character.

My take: 3 looks

I would think that it is a little difficult to write a fictional account of a real event. The author has to make many assumptions and take some literary license with thoughts, feelings, etc. when it comes to fictionalizing an historical figure. I have a feeling that Keane did a pretty good job here with Mary Mallon, better known as "Typhoid Mary".

I found Mary to be an extremely likable character. At first, that is. She was no nonsense, hard-working, respectful, and very talented at her occupation as a cook to the affluent. However, once it was obvious that she was a carrier of typhoid fever, she absolutely refused to believe that it may be true, and do what the authorities asked of  her.

With that said, the book was very easy to read, and compelling. It was factual, as far as Keane could research, and the characters were very realistic. I had no sympathy for Mary, despite the author trying to convey a sense of sympathy in her writing. Nor did I have any sympathy for Mary's partner, Alfred. As a matter of fact, I came to the point of thinking that they deserved one another.

I enjoyed the book, recommend it, and will read more by this author.