I thought it would be fun.

And, as a volunteer judge for this year’s National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award (given to an “outstanding first book in any genre”), I did have fun. At least, I had fun doing the reading.

But as the clock ticked toward the 5 p.m. voting deadline on a January afternoon, I sat in my local public library branch clicking and unclicking boxes on the Google form that served as our ballot. I was confronting a crisis of critical confidence, wrestling with those perennial questions of authority, standards, and taste, as well as the unsettlingly arbitrary nature of literary production and prize-giving. I liked almost all of these books. Voting for just one seemed wrong.

It was 4:45.

¤

In her 2001 book The Forest for the Trees, Betsy Lerner, agent-turned-editor-turned-agent-again, describes one of her first tasks in publishing: writing a reader’s report on an unsolicited manuscript for her superior at the literary agency she’d just joined as an editorial assistant. Lerner labored over a long weekend, teasing apart the themes of the not-very-good book like the diligent grad student she was. Her boss rejected the four-page single-spaced report, asking instead “Did you like it?”

Lerner didn’t. She wrote a simple rejection for the boss to sign.

But the thing that had driven her to spend a couple thousand words and a three-day weekend qualifying and hedging her blunt dislike was the question of authority. Did she have any?

“Who was I, after all, to judge this writer?” Lerner asks, anticipating Pope Francis by a dozen years or so. “Who was I to pass judgment on this Joe Shmo who couldn’t draw a convincing character or punctuate to save his life but who had, after all, written an entire novel?”

Lerner says she lost her “publishing virginity” that day, her first confrontation with the fact that book publishing is something less than a meritocratic enterprise. While prepared to say the book was bad, she hadn’t been prepared to unilaterally snuff out a writer’s dreams — not, at least, without having a superior sign off on the kill.

¤

This year’s Leonard finalists were hardly Lerner’s Shmos. Each had achieved some measure of success: publication, critical acclaim, other awards. But that actually makes the job that much harder. As a paid-up member of the NBCC willing to read each of the six finalists, I was, by the organization’s lights, qualified to cast a ballot. But my month-long, breathless tour of these debuts had me wondering, pace Lerner and the Pope, “who am I to judge?”

As a 39-year-old English professor — white, straight, married with children — who has not yet published a book of his own, I am, demographically, the very model of a modern literary gatekeeper. As such, I tried to be attentive to the various political, gendered, socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic perspectives on offer.

This is not to say I intended an affirmative action program. Rather, that in a prize where the lone criterion — “outstanding” where? Standing out from what? — is fungible, and as such is subject to whim, caprice, mood, and even appetite, I wanted to be mindful of the ways I might be letting familiarity of set, setting, or perspective lead me to favor one writer’s work over another.

Most major prizes are helpfully bounded by genre, giving a judge at least some broad outlines and a canon against which the works in question might be considered. But how does one stack Layli Long Soldier’s book-length poetic interrogation of the United States’ toothless apology to America’s indigenous people up against Carmen Maria Machado’s or Lesley Nneka Arimah’s short stories steeped in magic realism? How do we consider those against Zinzi Clemmons’s autobiographical novel of being a third-culture kid against Julie Buntin’s compelling tragedy of white working class teenagers adrift on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or Gabriel Tallent’s disturbing yet beautifully-written tale of violence and incest in Mendocino County?

I couldn’t vote for Tallent’s My Absolute Darling, even though I couldn’t stop reading it. This psychological portrait of a 14-year-old incest victim offered a compelling answer to the question “why not just leave?” (answer: she loves her father, she is in his thrall), but the scenes of rape and physical abuse crossed some ineffable line from “provocative” to “too disturbing to choose.”

It’s 4:50. The NBCC board member in charge of Leonard Prize voting emails with a reminder that there are 10 minutes until the polls close. Other judges must be in the same boat.

With your more prestigious prizes — your Pulitzers, your National Book Awards, even the “main” NBCC awards themselves — there’s a smaller group of judges, usually past winners or otherwise well-regarded writers, who confer over the selection and arrive at some sort of consensus. In this case, each judge decided in isolation. As one vote among several dozen, I wielded a tiny amount of power in the literary-industrial complex, but it was enough to make me break into a sweat at the prospect of the “wrong” decision.

I may have made that wrong decision in dinging Zinzi Clemmons’s What We Lose — the story of a 20-something African-American woman’s loss of her South African-born mother and the navigation of her own early adulthood. I’m a would-be memoirist with a predilection for nonfiction, and when I realized that Clemmons’s book was largely autobiographical, I felt miffed on behalf of memoir. This was just enough for me to drop it below the remaining four candidates.

Unfair? Totally. Critics are inveterate “on-the-other-hand”ers, able to make our own case while acknowledging the validity of other perspectives. Were I to write a review of Clemmons’s book, I’d register my question — why fictionalize? — even as I admired her use of some collage effects (other documents, photographs) to tell a moving story.

But with under 10 minutes to go in this zero-sum game, I have to start making some distinctions, even arbitrary ones.

I click the box for Buntin. Her Marlena provided a truer portrait of white working class anxiety and precariousness than a thousand elegies for the hillbilly. It’s the best novel I’ve read this year.

I click Machado. Her Body and Other Parties was a National Book Award finalist. She’s in residence at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, where I spent a chunk of my undergraduate career. I’m aware of the possibility that the hype and the tenuous connection to my old school might be weighing too heavily, even as I unclick.

My cursor hovers near Arimah. Her What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky dazzled. There were stories that taught me about the Nigerian diaspora in America and some others with a fantasy/sci-fi tinge that hit with the force of a fable. But I read it first (alphabetical order!), and I can’t help but feel that distance has dulled the shine.

I click on Long Soldier. I read Whereas last. This collection faces the ongoing trauma of Native American loss. I’d had a sneaking suspicion that it would appeal to the English professor in me, with its extended interrogation of the text of the United States’ apology to the native population — especially the codicil declaring that nothing in the policy should be construed as having legal force. Long Soldier’s anger is constrained by the form of the resolution, but her words dance all over the extra-wide pages, (re)claiming territory. I read it one sitting, and then again in another sitting.

Am I succumbing to recency bias? Possibly. I click submit.

¤

In an essay published around the same time as Lerner’s book, the writer Tom Bissell describes his own encounter with wielding power in publishing. He “cannot help but imagine that literature is an airplane.” However, instead of “pilots of skill and accomplishment […] the cockpit is empty” and “the controls are abandoned.” To know this, Bissell says, you need “only to touch them to know how mutable our course.”

Everyone who follows contemporary literature knows the feeling of seeing a previously unknown writer start to pop up everywhere. Prizes attract attention, and sometimes more prizes. Success snowballs into success. I wanted to be part of the literary-industrial machinery, but I quailed when it came time to execute my small mission. I was afraid of somehow making the wrong choice. The odds in publishing are so long, the odds of finding yourself in the running for a major award even longer.

My willingness to vote for any of four other books doesn’t really matter to the writers who would remain finalists. If I’d been in a room with my fellow judges, I’m sure I could have been persuaded to vote for Arimah, Buntin, Clemmons, or Machado — who, in the end, won. It would have felt like cover, if we’d all come to a decision together.

Instead, alone, I’d mashed the key for Long Soldier (who did win the NBCC Award for Poetry), staring directly into the maw of the myth of meritocracy. Each book bore merit. Each was “outstanding” in some fashion. Some confluence of taste, interest, and politics led me to vote for Whereas.

The moral? The next time you come across a shiny sticker on a book’s cover boasting some award or other, look up the finalists, too.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

This is a wonderful debut novel by Julie Buntin. It is a gritty and emotional story of a deep friendship formed during adolescence. The author brings back all the overwhelming feelings developed in our teens. It is amazing that we sometimes cannot remember what we had for dinner two nights ago, but we can recall the friendships and activities from our formative years.

I thought the book was very well written but I could not get into the characters. The relationship of Cat and Marlena did not make much sense to me. I also didn't enjoy the fact that the characters were very troubled and had a lot of internal struggles and problems but I didn't see a point to all of that. Overall it felt like a book about nothing, unless I completely missed the point.

I feel terrible about just getting back to you now - a death in my family prevented me from reading and reviewing the book you so graceiously gave me early access to.

There is not much that will stay with me about this book. The author did a good job with the build up to Marlena's death; however, there was very little else about the story that I enjoyed. Julie's writing style was awesome, and probably the only thing that kept me reading. She is a very talented writer. The story fell short for me though.

The Most Compelling Books of 2017
Reprinted from the Citizen:
It’s time to reflect on the books I read this past year that stayed with me the most, a list I call the Most Compelling Books of 2017.
Delia Ephron’s Siracusa takes readers to the island off the coast of Italy, where two families are vacationing. Both couples have troubled marriages, and a frightening incident unravels them all. Ephron gives you a real sense of place here.

Siracusa
Caroline Angell’s debut novel, All The Time In The World, tells the story of a nanny who becomes entangled in a tragedy of the family she works for. The main character is so relatable, and I felt such a kinship with her, this book broke my heart.

All the Time In The World
Another debut novel that caught my attention is Julie Buntin’s Marlena, a coming-of-age story about the friendship between two teenage girls. Cat moves with her recently divorced mom and brother to rural Michigan and meets Marlena, a troubled teen dealing with a mom who left her with a drug dealing father and a young brother to care for. Buntin nails that time of life for young women, and her characters are unforgettable.

Marlena
Angie Thomas’ debut The Hate U Give has been on the YA best-seller list from day one and it deserves to be. Teenage Starr sees her friend killed by a policeman and it changes her whole life. Each character here is so well drawn, this is a book everyone should read.

The Hate U Give
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is for fans of Turner Classic Movies. When a famous reclusive former movie star (think Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor) plucks an unknown magazine writer to write her biography, it makes for a captivating, and surprisingly deep, tale.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
There are two books here with Irish protagonists. J. Courtney Sullivan’s Saints For All Occasions tells the story of two sisters who emigrate from Ireland to the United States; one marries and raises a family, the other becomes a nun, and a secret they share comes to light years later.

Saints for All Occasions
Alice McDermott has written many novels on the Irish-American experience, and her The Ninth Hour focuses on an order of nuns who care for the people in their Brooklyn neighborhood in the early 20th century. They take in a young widow with a baby, and their compassion and dedication to caring for the sick and poor is life-affirming.

The Ninth Hour
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Another life-affirming novel is Elizabeth Berg’s The Story of Arthur Truluv about an elderly widower, his widow neighbor and the teenage girl they befriend. It’s a lovely story about the connections we make. And in today's world when we hear of men behaving badly, Arthur is one of the good guys.

The Story of Arthur Truluv
On the nonfiction side, “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah’s memoir Born A Crime relates his upbringing as a half-South African, half-white boy in post-aparteid South Africa. It’s funny and touching, and it gives the reader a peek into a world we know little about. I've also heard that the audiobook is fantastic.

Born A Crime
Alyssa Mastromonaco’s Who Thought This Was A Good Idea? is about her life working in the Obama White House as a deputy chief of staff. It immerses you in the breakneck pace of life at the White House and about what it takes to do a job like this and what you give up to do it.

Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?

+2
Nomadland
Nomadland
Jessica Bruder is a journalist who turned a magazine article into a book called Nomadland — Surviving America in the 21st Century. She traveled the country with transient older Americans who have lost their jobs and homes (many during the recession of 2008). They live in campers, RVs, vans and even cars and travel to work at campgrounds, beet fields, spring training baseball stadiums and carnivals to make ends meet.
The most fascinating chapter focuses on their work at an Amazon warehouse and you’ll never order from Amazon again without thinking about these workers. Nomadland is the best nonfiction book of the year, on a topic that is current, and it’s one that I’ll be talking about for a long time.
The best book I read this year is Stay With Me a debut novel by Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo. It tells the story of a young married couple in Nigeria who are having trouble conceiving a baby. When the husband’s family insists on bringing in a second wife, it begins a downward spiral. I cried throughout this stunning novel, and when someone asks me what to read, Stay With Me is it.

Stay With Me
I hope you had a year filled with great reading, and I’d love to hear what you thought was the best book of the year.
Diane La Rue is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and blogs about books athttp://bookchickdi.blogspot.com. You can follow her on Twitter @bookchickdi, and she can be emailed at laruediane2000@yahoo.com.

The writing is superb, the plot is sad and depressing, and I spent the whole book wanting to make the girls feel better. It’s about friendship and family and adolescence and addiction and loneliness and pain both during life and in the wake of death. There were some plot points I wish had been explored more & some that felt superfluous but mostly this book was exactly what it needed to be

Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Marlena. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Marlena is the story of the corruption of an innocent teen, which has repercussions for her entire life. A sudden move to rural Michigan has left Cat in a vulnerable position, as she is lonely and searching for something. Marlena is two years older, worldly and wise in Cat's opinion, so she latches on with both hands. When the unthinkable happens, will Cat be able to climb out of the hole she has dug? Will Cat ever be able to put the past behind her?

Marlena by Julie Buntin was a little to rough and raw for my taste, with a familiar premise and very little character development. The author went for maximum shock value here, showing the decline of two teenagers and the depressive nature of their environment. Neither main character was all that likable, so I never felt fully invested in the story. Marlena was a missed opportunity for me and not a book that I would feel comfortable recommending to others.

Loved this book
Didn't want it to end
Highly recommend

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley.

This might be a case of a book with too much buzz. I had heard a lot about the quality of this book from various sources, so I was excited to crack it open (digitally, of course).
I really did enjoy the writing. The details used to flesh out the characters were vivid, easy to imagine and relate to.

As much as I loved the characters, I struggled with the pace of this book. Nothing much really happened, and when it does, it's recounted as "one time". I understand that this book is meant, in many ways, to be a love letter to Marlena. The book focuses more on describing Marlena's essence, rather than following a typical plot format. Despite this, the book can often feel slow and repetitive.

After all the build up, the actual death part of the book felt glossed over and rushed, as did the meeting with Sal. I would have liked to have felt more in the moment.

What did I think?? This one is a hard one. I wanted to give this book 4 stars, but eventually I decided on 3. The best thing about this book is that it brought back memories of that special adolescent friend that we probably all have in our lives. Fortunately my friend did not have the negative impact that Marlena had on the main character of this book. But, it is a good reminder of the costly influence that we can have on each other. Marlena changed this girl's life forever. I would venture to say in a very negative way.

This is a very raw and real book. There were parts of this book that I would have not wanted to read. However, it is a stark reminder of what children of drug addicts have to live through.

As a Christian, I am reminded that everyone is searching for a feeling, for something to take away pain and guilt. I am thankful that I have found the answer for that emptiness through a relationship with Jesus.

Julie Buntin's debut novel, Marlena, is right in my wheelhouse. I am fascinated by stories about adolescent girls and when they are beautifully written, like this one, I'm thrilled. There is something about friendships at that time in our lives that (though the details may be different) conveys a universal experience that we all can relate to. We all have experiences in adolescence that follow us the rest of our lives.
Butin explores that with an narrative alternating between Cat at fifteen years old in Michigan and twenty years later with Cat in New York.  We know from the first pages that Marlena died a mysterious death twenty years ago and this knowledge spurns us on looking for answers. Both page-turning mystery and  insightful coming of age story, Marlena  ranks right up there with Cat's Eye, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, My Brilliant Friend and The Girls. 

(Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for an ARC in exchange for an honest review)

There's just something interesting about the dynamic of female friendships, isn't there? Marlena is that "bridge jumping" friend your mama warned you about. This book was an interesting read that made me think of my own life & people that have come & gone. They shine so brightly that no matter how long they are in your life, they are always remembered. I enjoyed the journey.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this novel.

During our formative teen years, it's highly possible that one year out of all others will remain with us and shape our lives for better or worse. Cat's year is her fifteenth, having just moved to Northern Michigan with her brother and divorced mom, when she meets the very intriguing, older (17 yo) neighbor girl Marlena. From the outset we know that Marlena's homelife is not typical -- her mother has left, her father is one you wish would go away too, and drug dealers are everywhere. We also know from early on that Marlena's days are numbered, and Cat's narration will slowly reveal how one manages to drown in an inch of water. Cat's loneliness and Marlena's neediness bring them together to form an odd couple-type friendship, but at Cat's young age she is vulnerable and easily immersed in Marlena's world.

From those times in Michigan, Cat moves to New York and is about to meet up with Marlena's brother at his request after many years, sure to dredge up memories of the once vibrant and colorful Marlena. But even without this memory prompt, however, you come to realize how Marlena's life and death are still haunting Cat all these years later. The story itself is haunting, very dark and pervaded with sadness.

This author is one to watch. Her talent is quite evident, and the dialogue and character development are exceptional. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a review copy.

The writing is good, I liked the words the author used to tell the story. However, some things made me raise an eyebrow.

For a person who is so clingy to the past and who can't seem to move past the friendship that lasted less than a year and a half when she was fifteen years old, a friendship that was the basis of her alcohol addiction, Cat sure managed to create a good life. I was surprised that she could not control her drinking problem, but this did not prevent her from making a career, receiving promotions after promotions, getting married and maintaining a relationship for over ten years, and fooling many people around her. Maybe this is possible, but I found it hard to move past and buy into it.

Although it doesn't usually bother me, I wanted to know the year Cat was living in in the present. Because 2016 or 2017 can't be with those mentions of technology. As she is telling the story of what happened with Marlena twenty years before, Cat is almost 36 years old. She mentioned Greg posting a video on YouTube at her prompting back then. YouTube was created in 2005. If she is telling the story in 2016, in 2005 she would have been 23-24 years old, and not 15. This was irksome, however the author kept refering to this aspect.

I can't understand two things: why was the mention of the girl in the library necessary if it led nowhere and why decide to create the whole plot around Sal's upcoming meeting with Cat if the whole meeting turned out to be anticlimactic. I was expecting those two things to reveal something, and it probably would have brought a fresh breath to the plot, since the past retelling got monotonous with all that time wasting, getting drunk and high, and classes skipping. And Sal is so normal, not at all as affected as you would have expected based on Cat's dramatic perspective on things.

Despite all these, I kept reading. It kept me curious, but I wasn't satisfied with where it took the story. The public for this novel is someone with a similar background and life, maybe they would relate better with the characters.

While I do believe that Marlena might be most appreciated by those who understand what it's like to have endured childhood either un-parented or underparented, there's no doubt that author Buntin, in her exquisite debut novel, has captured the life of rural teenagers.

"Probably most teenagers think where they live is boring. But there aren’t words for the catastrophic dreariness of being fifteen in northern Michigan at the tail end of winter, when you haven’t seen the sun in weeks and the snow won’t stop coming and there’s nowhere to go and you’re always cold and everyone you know is broke and the Gaslight Cinema only gets two shitty blockbusters every few weeks and not a single place is open twenty-four hours except a gas station."

Having experienced a combination of all of these elements, I found myself uniquely captivated by the relationship of Cat and Marlena, as well as their relationships with their youthful cohorts and several irresponsible adults, and Buntin's prose is delightful.

One of the elements I love the most is that of Cat sharing her experiences, and this story, later in life; she has been able to gain some distance from her relationship with Marlena, her adolescence, and reframe it in a way that has helped her move forward...but there are certainly parts of the story that continue to hold her back.

In the end, it's the decisions that are made, and connections formed, during this time of our lives that often shape what is to come in the future. Even though Cat acknowledges this, she is also forced to acknowledge the pain she has lived with every day, thanks to the power of her connection with Marlena.

A beautifully-written drama, I thoroughly enjoyed this debut from my list of Top Ten 2017 Debut Novels; if this sounds like a story you can relate to, I definitely recommend that you give it a try.

Cat is in her thirties, has a drinking problem and is trying to save a valued relationship, when she receives a phone call from someone she hasn't seen since he was a child. This takes her back to when she was fifteen, her parents divorced, moved to a new town in rural Michigan with her mom and older brother, worried about fitting in this new life. One night she meets her next door neighbor, Marlena, seventeen and she is so different, seemingly full of life, exciting and against all odds they become friends. This friendship ends in a big tragedy but the effects of this friendship are long reaching and vividly remembered.

An intense friendship, as only those made at that age can be, I so remember this time in my own life. Marlena's life seems exhilarating to Cat, but under the layers it is anything but, full of drugs, sex and things Cat doesn't understand until the end. This is a dark book, intense at times and one can't help but feel for this young girl who lives this life, cannot envision another, sees no way out.

Things that happen in the past, at a time of life when everything seems so dramatic, open ended for some, I could and did identify with this story. It jumps back and forth, from the past to Cat's life now and of course the past story was the most effective. It is beautifully written, but devastating, tragic. How many of is wish we could go back and change things, either for ourselves or for someone we cared about? Understood the full impact of what another person was going through?

As Cat thinks, " Who can recognize the ending as it's happening. What we live, it seems to me, is pretty much always a surprise."

When fifteen year old Cat moves with her older brother Jimmy and newly divorced mother to the remote northern Michigan town of Silver Lake she is miserable in her new environment. Yet she also sees the move as the perfect opportunity to re-make herself into someone daring and bold. Upon her arrival in Silver Lake she meets her neighbor Marlena and they soon become best friends. Seventeen year old Marlena is beautiful, magnetic, mesmerizing, and seriously troubled. Her father cooks meth, her mother is gone, and she and her young brother live in poverty and squalor. In an effort to cope, Marlena frequently uses drugs and does whatever is necessary to obtain them. Cat soon becomes enveloped in Marlena’s world and they take advantage of their youthful freedom; experiencing great pleasure and abandon. “I remember being happy, completely present. I have never felt that thoughtlessly alive again.” As they enjoy that freedom and chase the thrills and adrenaline rush, they expose themselves to ever increasing levels of danger. They make rash and misguided decisions, as teenagers often do, in the belief that rules do not apply to them and there won’t be consequences for their actions. But there are devastating consequences for both Marlena and Cat. Years later, Marlena and the experiences they shared continue to haunt Cat. “We were already growing apart, in the weeks before she died— when I moved to New York, we almost certainly would have lost touch, become just another pair of girls who shared a brief and intense friendship that faded, as friendships usually do, with age and geography. But I believed every one of those old promises. I would have pitied any adult who told me that things would change. For you, I would have thought, but not for us. I was going to leave, yes, but she was supposed to come, too.”

Julie Buntin’s depiction of teenage angst, friendship, and the exciting possibilities and terrifying perils of that age was absolutely remarkable. It’s been a long time since I was a teen, but the vibrancy and immediacy she brings to her writing packs a tremendous emotional punch. I spent days feeling like I was living inside Cat’s head and going through all the overwhelming emotions she was reliving. “Marlena” is powerful, intense, unforgettable, and one of the finest debut novels I’ve read in a long time.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 4/13/17.

Did not like. I'm surprised I even finished it. I didn't hate it it all but it couldn't hold my interest. I generally like books like this. I didn't like the poetic writing style and I felt like there was too many fillers.. not much was happening. I don't even need drama, I'm okay with good dialogue, but the dialogue was little and lacking, in my opinion. The pros are the book felt very realistic, like a true story, author knew the teenage girl mindset very well and probably succeeded in what she was going for with this book.