author:
KATHRYN STOCKETT

Fiction
464 pages
Putnam Adult

In the Deep South of the early 1960s the civil rights movements gained force and the institutions that had held back African Americans for generations fought to keep their laws and traditions in place. It was a time and place of assassinations, lynching, riots, and demonstrations. It was also a place where regular people dealt with racism in everyday lives. This is the Jackson, Mississippi, of The Help, the story of three women, the quiet constraints on them, and the measures they take to rebel.

Skeeter is just back from college and expected to marry, though she chafes under the control of her parents and her upright Junior League friends. Aibileen, a maid, has lost her own child and finds that she can’t raise her white charges after they are old enough to echo their parents’ casual racism. Minny might be the best cook in the city, but her short mouth and temper prevent her from keeping jobs even as she struggles to raise her own children and avoid an abusive husband.

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author:
KATIE KITAMURA

Fiction
208 pages
Free Press

I will not lie, I bought this book because it had tattoos on the cover and the author and I had the same name. Pathetic criteria for selecting reading material but we all have our methods, and thankfully they led me to this novel. It had been a long time since I read a book so gripping that after I finished I spent the rest of the afternoon continuously re-reading the last thirty pages or so thinking that by some miracle there would magically be more book left to read.

This is Katie Kitamura’s first novel and without a doubt not her last. While her writing style has been compared to the beautiful simplicity brought to literature by the great Ernest Hemingway, I don’t see it. With her there is more of an edge; a greater intensity in her storytelling.

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author:
MARY ROACH

Non-fiction
320 pages
W.W. Norton & Co.

Nonfiction author Mary Roach tackles the science of the afterlife in Spook, a New York Times bestseller when published back in 2005. Spook is less an examination of the evidence of the afterlife as a historiography of the scientific study of the afterlife, from the 21 grams theory of Dr. Duncan Macdougall, introduced in the early twentieth century, to present studies on out-of-body or near-death experiences at the University of Virginia Hospital. Along the way, Roach touches upon reincarnation, spiritualism, EMFs and telecommunications, ectoplasm, mediums, and the formation of the soul.

Despite all this cool stuff to get into, the book doesn’t quite hit the level of examination or humor that it promises. There’s nothing immediate at fault: Roach’s writing style is breezy and entertaining (her footnotes, encompassing topics such as the underestimation of the sea urchin, the breadth of research topics funded at Harvard, and Occam’s editing pencil, are a complete hoot and reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s liberal use of the device), the chapters are all on interesting subjects, and the flow is quick and light. The problem is simply that the topic coverage was simply too wide: I could have done without the chapters on reincarnation and the soul-weighing but done much more with spiritualism as a religious phenomenon, ectoplasm, and mediums. This is a matter of personal taste, surely, and others will feel different.

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author:
JONATHAN CARROLL

Fiction
320 pages
Tor Books

According to Benjamin Franklin, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” And though it’s highly unlikely that author Jonathan Carroll would tackle the latter in one of his novels, he does seem to have a preoccupation with the former. Many of his long-form works deal explicitly with death, but it is in The Ghost in Love, Carroll’s 17th book, that the concept of death itself is turned on its head.

Right off the bat, Carroll does something remarkable in making us care about a protagonist who is a complete dick, and care enough to keep following him through to the end. Ben Gould slips on some ice, hits his head, and is supposed to die, but doesn’t; more weirdness follows, leading to a breakup with his girlfriend. Ben’s ghost, who is supposed to escort him to the afterlife and clean up any unfinished business, must stick around to see what happens next. Ben’s ex-girlfriend, German Landis, keeps coming back into his life, caught up in the side effects of his non-death (including meeting her past selves). Ben’s dog Pilot has the ability to talk (a favorite trope of Carroll’s). The Angel of Death is a plate of runny eggs.

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