Autobiographies and semi-autobiographical novels dominate next week's list, with some fantasy entries for adults, for young readers and for children's story-time.
Monday, September 26
Carole Radziwill penned What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, & Love, a memoir of marrying into the iconic Kennedy family, losing her husband, Anthony, and her best friend, Carolyn Bessette. "This would be a heartbreaking story even if it weren't about Anthony Radziwill, nephew of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and about his and Carole's friendship with John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy... Radziwill is a serviceable, if sentimental, writer... She also knows how to convey the essence of a person with small scenes and quotes." —Publishers Weekly
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee is the tale of a photographer who has lost a leg in a bicycling accident, by the 2003 Nobel laureate and two-time Booker winner (for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983, and Disgrace in 1999). "What Coetzee wanted this novel to do—show the ultimately humanizing effect of a crisis of physical frailty—could have been accomplished much more expressly without this exasperating contrivance. Still, Coetzee is a major writer, and this novel will be highly requested." —Brad Hooper, Booklist
Tuesday, September 27
John Berendt's The City of Falling Angels offers "an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice," following the author’s blockbuster Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. "He offers us Venice, another port city full of eccentric citizens and with a long, colorful history. Like the first book, this one has a trial at the its center: the city's famed Fenice opera house burns down during a restoration... By the time the Fenice is rebuilt and reopens, Berendt has delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice, which makes for first-rate travel writing, albeit one that lacks a compelling core story to keep one reading into the night." —Publishers Weekly
The Divide by Nicholas Evans, a novel about the fissures in a marriage, has stirred up pre-publication buzz for its raw portrayal of female and male perspectives on relationships. "Evans demonstrates the same intricacy of plot and depth of characterization that defined his international best-seller The Horse Whisperer... Sure to be a runaway success, this lyrical novel runs the gamut from devastation to despair to deliverance." —Margaret Flanagan, Booklist
Breaking her long decades of silence with an intensely personal memoir, John by Cynthia Lennon reveals the inside story about life with (and without) her legendary ex-husband, and recounts the history of the turbulent first decade in the Beatles' career. "Cynthia has seldom talked in any detail about her marriage and the painful events that followed John’s tragic assassination in 1980. Now she candidly reveals the good and the bad, the loving and the cruel sides of John. She tells of the breakdown of their marriage and the beginning of his relationship with Yoko Ono in more detail than has ever been disclosed before..." (Publisher's release notes)
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