The Algonquin Reader

Wonderful sampler.....I can't wait to read a few of these titles, especially The Atomic Weight of Love, Welcome Thieves, and Chasing the North Star. Thank you!

Algonquin will soon publish their spring Reader, in which the brightest of their star authors provide excerpts of their new work, as well as essays introducing the topics, themes and inspiration behind them. I was lucky enough to get an early look at it, and consequently raced to put the new books on my shelf. The reader is an excellent way to meet new authors, get a taste of their style, and plan your future reading.

This collection features Security by Gina Wohlsdorf; As Good as Gone by Larry Watson; We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge; Welcome Thieves by Sean Beaudoin; Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan; and The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church.

Security by Gina Wohlsdorf

Security is a thriller that has been compared to The Girl On The Train, set in a luxury hotel when someone is always watching you. The opening scene, excerpted in the collection, introduces some quirky characters and the setting, while leaving a cliffhanger that begs to be read further. Wohlsdorf’s essay details the traumatic (and graphically described) childhood injury that transformed her from a child who feared spaghetti sauce into someone with an “insatiable appetite for the experience of being frightened while cocooned in perfect safety.”

As Good As Gone by Larry Watson

As Good As Gone is one of the books that I might not have considered reading without having read the excerpt. I’m not that interested in cowboys or westerns, so the idea of it being even vaguely related to that put me off. However, the excerpt portrays the main character in such an interesting way – a cowboy who translates Latin in his spare time? A cowboy with grandchildren, dealing with the social rules of the 1960s? Now that sounds interesting. Larry Watson describes the inspiration for his novel as coming from his own grandfather, who “looked nothing like John Wayne or Randolph Scott or Hopalong Cassidy,” but who was a cowboy, having emigrated to the Western Dakotas from Sweden. Consequently, the main character in his novel, Calvin Sidey, is a realistic person who debunks the romantic myths of Westerns. “Yet he does have a code he lives by,” says Watson, “and in that sense resembles them. By transplanting the cowboy from the west into the suburban 1960s, Calvin’s “romantic” cowboy characteristics are thrown into sharp relief: “In that changing cultural climate, his self reliance can look like mere stubbornness, his chivalry can seem sexist, and his independence is of a variety so extreme he has difficulty fitting into human society.”

We Love You Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge

We Love You Charlie Freeman follows an African American family that is tasked with teaching sign language to a chimp, in a purely white (and racist) suburb. The excerpt in the Algonquin Reader almost made me cry; if an author is able to affect my emotions that easily in such a short piece, they deserve some time on a full review. Greenidge discusses how she wanted to use her story to discuss the intricacies of race, memory and history, as well as the eugenics movement of the 1920s. “This book is an attempt,” she says, “to join in the conversation that the United States has had since its founding, our never-ending story and cry and argument about race. It’s an attempt to make peace with the language we have now, in this moment – broken and inadequate and wondrous all at once.”

Welcome Thieves: Stories by Sean Beaudoin

Sean Beaudoin’s titular short story, which was featured in the Reader as a taste of his anthology, Welcome Thieves, was, I thought, one of the weaker pieces in the Algonquin collection. Focusing on the life after football of a star player who is irreparably injured, it seemed a bit fragmented and could use a little tightening up. However, his essay was was the strongest, and I am curious to see how the other stories in the anthology hold up to its promise.

Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan

Chasing the North Star, a novel about two runaway teenaged slaves, hooked me from the first line. Furthermore, the personal story behind its inspiration, in Robert Morgan’s introduction, added a depth of experience and emotion that made me want to read it. I think it may be comparable to Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings. In the novel, says Morgan, “Jonah and Angel learn that to survive they must lean on each other. It is a lesson that all of us, sooner or later, learn, if we are blessed with the good fortune to find someone to lean on.”

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church

The Atomic Weight of Love is a romance steeped in physics, and I appreciated that it was not dumbed-down for readers but rather embraces intellectual ability. It’s an interesting exploration of how men and women of the 1940s-1950s of equal intellectual ability but unequal social mobility interact with each other. Describing her intentions, Church says, “I set out to tell the story of the women who married the men with extraordinary minds, the men who chose their wives in large part because these women were capable of appreciating the intricacies of their chosen fields of study. I wanted to highlight the sacrifices these women made, in the 1950s and onward, so that their husbands could pursue their science. And I wanted to think about how these women came to redefine themselves during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s.” Elizabeth Church’s description of her parents’ relationship, as well as the effects of her own on her dreams and career, was thoroughly convincing: I need to read this book.

With these strong works by debut authors and seasoned veterans, Algonquin’s upcoming books are worth noting.