Same Old Story - Best Books List Snubs Female Writers

This blog post at Politics Weekly is a good addition to the flap in the blogosphere about the Publisher's Weekly list of 10 Best Books of 2009 that didn't include a single book by a woman. The people at PW said it just happened that way...they were as surprised as anyone!
The Women in Letters and Literary Arts have started a wiki where excellent 2009 books by female authors are being listed. You might want to check out some of the suggested titles there, as well as the books on the Publisher's Weekly list.

A Gate at the Stairs

Lorrie Moore’s first novel in many years is worth the wait. A Gate at the Stairs, like much of the author’s writing, can make you laugh out loud in places, bring you to tears in others, and sometimes makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Tassie Keltjin, a half-Jewish Midwestern farm girl turned college student, is studying random humanities courses in the made-up Midwestern town of Troy when she is jolted from a childlike passivity into a sad adulthood by a series of unexpected shocks.
Though a typically self-absorbed college student, Tassie is also a sharp observer of others. As she is looking for a babysitting job:

“One forty-ish pregnant woman after another hung up my coat, sat me in her living room, then waddled out to the kitchen, got my tea, and waddled back in, clutching her back, slopping tea onto the saucer, and asking me questions. “What would you do if our little baby started crying and wouldn’t stop? Are you available evenings? What do you think of as a useful educational activity for a small child?” I had no idea. I had never seen so many pregnant women in such a short period of time—five in all. It alarmed me. They did not look radiant. They looked reddened with high blood pressure and frightened.”

Tassie -- the narrator of the story -- is a musician, a songwriter, and a lover of language. Some reviewers complain that too many jokes and too much wordplay detract from the seriousness of A Gate at the Stairs. But sometimes you have to laugh or else you’re just going to cry all the time.

Check availability in Old Colony Library Network.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

At age 17, Quentin has gone through the Brooklyn school system, sorted and separated by smarts into the “nerdiest of the nerds” group, and is unenthusiastically headed for Princeton when he finds himself taking an entrance exam for an entirely different kind of post-secondary education—at a school of magic.
A secret lover of the children’s series about the magical land of Fillory (a Narnia-like place that human children can only find at the most unexpected times), Quentin knows all the stories by heart but never expected to find real magic existing in the world, hidden from all but the most gifted and singled-out of humans.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman (author of The Codex) is the perfect novel for anyone who, like Quentin, ever wished as a child that magic was real and is, still, maybe even a little disappointed not to have been the one selected to go through the looking-glass, to travel to the land inside the wardrobe, or to find the Indian in the cupboard. But be forewarned. The Magicians is no light-hearted frolic into fantasy, a la Terry Pratchett or Jasper Fforde. Talented Quentin Coldwater has a depressive streak that even his wildest dream coming true doesn’t erase, and so does this novel.
Readers of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke should enjoy this completely different take on magicians.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

A creepy one for October, Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box is one you won't want to sit up alone at night reading. When an aging heavy-metal star makes the impulsive online purchase of a ghost to add to his collection of oddities and perversities, he gets more than a dead man's suit in a heart-shaped box. Instead of getting ripped off as he expected, he gets well and truly haunted, as his past comes homes to roost.
The son of horror master Stephen King, Joe Hill inherited his father's talent for telling a scary story. The New York Times called Heart-Shaped Box "a valentine from hell."

Blame by Michele Huneven

Blame -- Michele Huneven's third novel -- grips you with its guilt-laden plausibility, especially if you've ever known a smart, capable addict whose self-destructive behavior seems unstoppable.
Patsy MacLemoore is a smart, functioning alcoholic -- a professor at Hallen College in Altadena, California -- known for loud, lascivious behavior at faculty parties and for missing the occasional class after a night of drinking and pills. She plays the odds, partying when she knows she shouldn't, until her luck runs out. Patsy, who has a suspended license, is arrested and jailed for killing a mother and daughter – Jehovah’s Witnesses -- in her own driveway. She remembers nothing about the accident, but has to live with the guilt and remorse, facing the bereft husband and brother in court.
The hard, manual labor and indignities of almost two years in jail come as a relief to Patsy, but the desire for a drink never leaves her.
If you like literary novels by authors like Sue Miller or Ian McEwan, you should discover Michele Huneven ASAP.
Michele Huneven talks with Publishers' Weekly here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6671669.html&

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

Richard Russo must have had fun writing That Old Cape Magic — a thinking person's beach book. No, it's not Empire Falls or The Bridge of Sighs, but it's not intended to be.
Instead of sitting down and opening a vein, as writers are said to do, author Richard Russo might have sat down at his computer and opened a bottle of locally brewed Shipyard beer to launch himself into the story of ex-screenwriter Jack Griffin. Griffin's marriage unravels on Cape Cod, in Truro, where he and his wife, Joy, celebrated their honeymoon many years before. The story jumps around—from Griffin’s childhood with two eccentric academic parents to the early years of Griffin’s marriage to his parents’ declining years and Griffin’s own daughter’s eventual wedding—succeeding in the neat trick of making you muse about the nature of marriage and parenthood while you laugh…and wince. A perfect end-of-summer read.
In an entertaining Q&A on Knopf's Web site, Russo says his two daughters were both married during the period in which he wrote That Old Cape Magic, confessing that he imagined a disastrous wedding scene for the book as a way of warding off catastrophe in real life. (His ploy worked.)
Richard Russo talks on tape with New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus here.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I was surprised by Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker article about To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Is it fair to judge the actions and sensibilities of characters in a novel from a different time by the standards of today?
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch, as seen through the eyes of his young daughter, Scout, was willing to stand up in court and defend a black man against the charge of raping a white woman -- an unpopular move and one that was doomed to failure. Mr. Gladwell seems to be arguing that Atticus Finch shouldn't be held up as a hero because his defense largely rested on asking the jury to make moral distinctions rather than racial distinctions, and because he accepted the reality of the status quo in his small Southern town. Mr. Gladwell thinks Atticus should have been angry at the jury's unjust verdict although he would have known from the start what the outcome would be, because he knew the racial prejudice of the jury. He faults Atticus for being too tolerant of his fellow townspeople's intolerance, and seems to miss the point of the book almost entirely in his zeal to present it in a new light.
To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. I think it stands up well almost 50 years later as a testament to a single individual's principled attempt to act as he would have others act.