Collected Miscellany

–> The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa Gabriele

Publishers Weekly

There were never such devoted sisters, or ones so hilariously and heartbreakingly conflicted about loyalty and love as the ones in Gabriele’s brisk second novel (Tempting Faith DiNapoli). Thoughtful, married-mom Georgie Peachy Archer and big-city-girl Beth, her older sister, grow up on a Canadian farm with their hairdressing, Vietnam draft–dodging dad, Lou, and share the pain of their mom’s suicide. But that’s where the similarities end—until the sisters swap lives for a weekend. Walking in Beth’s shoes around New York City, Peachy meets Beth’s discreet doorman, snarky friends and disapproving ex-boyfriend, and gets a crash course in understanding what her brash sister’s really about. Here is a charming, smart and honest story of two sisters who learn to embrace the lives they have. Gabriele’s writing is sharp and her heart is pure gold. This honest tale of passionate, mixed-up and forgiving families is hard to put down.

–> Kerplunk!: Stories by Patrick F. McManus

Publishers Weekly

This gently humorous essay collection by Outdoor Life columnist McManus (The Bear in the Attic) explores hunting and fishing in the Pacific Northwest. As he wryly explains in The Kind of Guy I Am, McManus’s literary persona is an aw-shucks middle-aged married guy with four daughters who dreams of his flies, reels, waders and snowshoes while on vacation with his wife in Venice. Hoping to someday be like Rancid Crabtree, an old man who lives in a slab shack against the mountain and does nothing all day but hunt and fish (The Ideal Life), McManus and his buddy Fenton Quagmire jettison the high-tech camping gear and attempt to rough it Thoreau-style (Back to Basics), with predictably hilarious results. Other tales involve learning how to be patient while fishing (A Dimple in Time) and enlightening one’s fishing partners on how the moon determines the tides (Where’s Mr. Sun?). McManus narrates his woodsy stories with a laid-back style that will earn many smiles of fond recognition from anyone who’s heard a guide say, I know there used to be a trail here.

–> The Isle of Dogs by Daniel Davies

Description

A cool, dark, sexy nightdrive of a novel. . . . A new J.G. Ballard.”-Toby Litt

Jeremy Shepherd has relinquished his London life and moved back home. By day, he has a boring desk job, but Jeremy soon finds a way to break the monotony through illicit sex with strangers in public places. As the police close in, tensions rise.

-> Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind by Margalit Fox

Publishers Weekly
The world of sign languages and cognitive research comes to life in this story of a remote Israeli village that’s become a test bed for understanding how the human brain processes language. New York Times reporter Fox follows researchers, led by University of Haifa professor Wendy Sandler, to the Bedouin village of Al-Sayyid, where isolation, genetics and inbreeding have led to a higher than usual percentage of deafness in the population. In response, the villagers have created a home-brew sign language used by both the hearing and deaf. By studying this unique language, Sandler and her cohort hope to gain deeper insight into how the brain acquires and uses language. Chapters alternate between the painstaking work in Al-Sayyid and a history of sign language itself. Both are gracefully reinforced with vivid examples, from the early insistence of experts that proper sign language must produce words in one-to-one correspondence with spoken language to a lively gathering in Al-Sayyid where conversation flows freely in six languages: English, Hebrew, Arabic, American Sign Language, Israeli Sign Language and the local sign language. Fox takes readers on a fascinating tour of deaf communication, clearly explaining difficult concepts, and effortlessly introducing readers to a silent world where communication is anything but slow and awkward.

-> Duck Duck Wally by Gabe Rotter

Publishers Weekly
Rotter relies heavily on black street slang for comic effect in his zany debut, starting with chizapter 1. Wally Moscowitz, a self-described frumpy, kinda chubby little boring man living in Los Angeles, writes lyrics for rapper Oral B, the current star of Godz-Illa Records. When not penning lyrics full of four-letter words for Oral, Wally also writes dirty bedtime fables for adults, examples of which are sprinkled throughout the novel. Godz-Illa CEO Abraham Dandy Lyons has assured Wally that if anyone ever discovers that Oral B isn’t writing his own lyrics, Wally will end up in a ditch. Soon, Wally’s dog gets ‘napped, goons are trying to kill Wally and everyone rushes to and fro against a backdrop of glitzy L.A. bizness thuggery. Rotter’s a talented writer, though readers who find variations of the same joke funny enough to support the silly plot will be most rewarded.

-> The Tourists by Jeff Hobbs

Publishers Weekly
An unnamed narrator details the post-Yale love triangle of three people much, much wealthier than he in Hobbs’s Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut. Unlike Nick Carraway or the persistent “You” of Bright Lights Big City, the speaker at the heart of this novel is more cipher than seer. A shiftless New York freelancer edging into his 30s, the narrator discovers that his Yalie friend—handsome, gay Ethan Hoevel, famous designer of sleek contemporary furniture—has left his boyfriend, Stanton Vaughn, to pursue a doomed relationship with their fellow alum—the married (and female) Samona Taylor (née Ashley). The narrator still carries a torch for Samona, and renews his friendship with Samona’s husband, the also-Yalie Merrill Lynch trader David Taylor, mostly out of a morbid curiosity about Samona’s philandering. Hobbs spends much of the novel recounting how everyone got where they are in the eight years following college, but the plot picks up in the last third, when Ethan’s ne’er-do-well brother precipitates a crisis, and Ethan and Samona’s affair has its reckoning. Hobbs convincingly portrays young, Ivied New Yorkers with money, but he leaves the narrator’s feelings for Samona (and much else) largely unexplored, making the proceedings feel unresolved.