16 Books to Watch for in January 2012
A coming-of-age novel about a mesmerized Muslim boy, a literary thriller set in North Korea, a rollicking account of one woman's search for a new best friend, and more. Start off the new year by cozying up to one of these captivating reads.
Photo: Lara Robby/Studio D
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The Odditorium
By Melissa Pritchard
252 pages;
Bellevue Literary Press
In
this collection of eight vivid stories, Melissa Pritchard introduces
you to the most fascinating people you've never heard of, placed in
situations that seem stolen from fairy tale...except that they really
happened. For example, meet Norbert Pearlroth, the researcher for Robert
LeRoy Ripley (as in: Ripley's Believe it or Not) who spent a lifetime
in the New York Public Library, leafing through 364,000 books into order
to come up with earthy splendors like a timetelling horse and a world
champion chicken picker. Or Pelagia Ivanovna Surin Serebrenikova, a 19th
century holy "fool" of a girl who spun around Russia, raising her
skirts to every man in town (only to become, later, a local saint). The
star of the book, however. is ho-hum Captain Brown who is put in charge
of the Royal Victoria Hospital during the invasion of Normandy in World
World II—a mammoth dinosaur of a building with therapeutic swimming
pools and a museum-quality taxidermy collection, but no heat or
medication. Brown's efforts to save not just the American and English
wounded, but also the life of a female French Resistance Fighter—end up
presenting him with the hardest kind choices: to love or not to love, to
be courageous or sit by. Though all the stories in the collection
display the whimsy and intelligence of a writer at the height of her
powers, there is novel in the short tale of Captain Brown, one that
illustrates how even the most ordinary feelings are sufficiently
fantastical to transform a life.
— Leigh Newman
Published 12/26/2011