BOOKNOTES, the newsletter of THE ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

Fiction

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski (Ecco)

Edgar Sawtelle came into this world in a farmhouse in Wisconsin completely silent. He was born mute—the only other creature in that landscape that could hear his wailing was Almondine, a dog of rare lineage. An instant and transcendent connection was made, and the two became inseparable. Entering into this idyllic world with almost instant malevolence is Edgar's uncle, Claude, and soon Edgar's father is dead and Edgar takes to wandering, three pups in tow. It is a novel of the beauty of silence written with almost whispered words by one of the most gifted debut writers of this year. -C. Joyner

Man in the Dark
by Paul Auster (Henry Holt)

The latest from this contemporary master of dreamlike fiction is a harrowing portrait of loss and grieving. The narrator is elderly and infirm, suffering from an unrelenting bout of insomnia. To pass the time, he creates a story whose protagonist, Owen Brick, has passed into an alternate reality where America is in the grips of a civil war whose origin is the disputed 2000 presidential election. Owen is there recruited to return to his own reality and assassinate the narrator, our surrogate author, in whose head the war exists. Through the story and its frequent digressions, Auster examines the debilitating aftermath of hostilities both real and imagined. -C. Sabatini

Something to Tell You
by Hanif Kureishi (Scribner)

In Something to Tell You, Jamal, a Freudian psychoanalyst, reveals not only his own middle-aged anxieties and obsessions but those of his good friend Henry, a theater director, and his eccentric sister Miriam, as well as a bevy of other characters. Kureishi's novel is serious, hilarious, and very humane in revealing his characters' foibles and passions and the polyglot nature of contemporary London. Jamal says of his patients at one point that most regret that they had not "sinned" more and taken better care of their teeth—Kureishi's characters “sin” with exuberance—we should all be so lucky. -G. Berry

Real World
by Natsuo Kirino (Knopf)

In a hot, crowded Tokyo suburb, four high school girls spend their time in endless cram sessions trying to get into a good college. A neighbor is found murdered, and from that point on the girls' lives are forever altered. Focusing on these four characters, Kirino portrays the blatant as well as subtle acts of violence done to and by teenagers as well as evoking the tedium, pressure, and angst her characters suffer.

Psychologically intricate and unflinching, Real World is a searing and eye-opening portrait of teenage life in contemporary Japan. Think The O.C. meets the Manson Family. -M. Voss

The Enchantress of Florence
by Salman Rushdie (Random House)

Returning to his much-praised magic realism roots, Salman Rushdie has crafted a sweeping epic with The Enchantress of Florence. A young traveler calling himself Mogor dell'Amore has a potent secret that will link two of the great power centers of the Renaissance period—the Mughal Empire of Akbar the Great and Medici-ruled Florence. He will recount the tale of Qara Koz, the magical princess, and her doppelgänger, The Mirror, and their harrowing journey from Persia to India and finally to Machiavelli's Italy. A grand story of East and West, Rushdie's newest is his best in many a year. -J. Reiner

The Gargoyle
by Andrew Davidson (Doubleday)

When many readers pick up a book and notice that it is a love story, they will put it back so fast that it is as though they just picked up a rock to find a rattlesnake underneath. Indeed, it seems that the genre has grown stagnant and cliché, waiting for a fresh literary voice to restore its beauty and magic. Ladies and gentlemen ... the wait is over. Enter a misanthropic, drug-addled pornographer with a terrifically dry, witty narrative voice; a schizophrenic sculptress; some nuns; a medieval Japanese glass blower; and a gay Viking, all wrapped up in an homage to Dante's Commedia! -J. Zaidi

Love Today
by Maxim Biller (Simon & Schuster)

German author Maxim Biller's collection of short stories, set mainly in Germany and the Czech Republic, is a spare and unsettling look at the vagaries of romantic love. In "The Architect," an artist named Splash and his Lebanese lover spy on a neighbor; in "Yellow Sandals," a woman's feet become the object of obsession and hold the only hope for intimacy; in "It's a Sad Story," a telephone sex worker knows more about the caller than he realized. Biller explores the tremble of hope, the weight of regret, and the power of desire in these twenty-seven masterful vignettes. -L. Paus

Occupational Hazards
by Jonathan Segura (Simon & Schuster)

Meet Bernard Cockburn, racing to expose a corrupt real estate ring while attempting to outrun demons of his own. This is noir fiction for the twenty-first century, and the style is as expertly executed as it is hilarious. "Burn" is a wiseass reporter for a hack weekly newspaper in Omaha, a proud underachiever who wants nothing more out of life than a good shoeshine and two fingers of whiskey, neat. But when his domestic situation turns on him, he pours himself into his work, and the resulting drug-addled investigation is a romp through filth with the greatest antihero in recent memory. -C. Sabatini

Good-bye
by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)

While the American underground comix movement was just getting under way in the '60s, Tatsumi had already spent the last decade edging away from mainstream manga with his gekiga (literally, dramatic pictures) style in Japan. The stories in Good-bye, his third collection to be translated into English, were originally published in the early '70s and reflect the political and social unrest of the period. But not all the stories deal with the aftermath of war. They also cover the subjects where Tatsumi truly excels, the everyday lives of the dispirited, downcast, and depraved of the city's underbelly. -P. Davis

The Crow Road
by Iain Banks (MacAdam Cage)

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." So begins The Crow Road. First published in the United Kingdom in 1993, the book took over fifteen years to be released on this side of the pond, but it was worth the wait.

Before she dies (and subsequently explodes) Prentice McHoan's grandmother Margot asks Prentice to find out what happened to his uncle Rory, a magician who mysteriously vanished eight years ago. In what is part murder mystery, part family saga, and part coming-of-age story, Banks manages to balance the disparate elements perfectly while injecting romance, adventure, and a dark humor that makes the story feel real. -P. Egan

Vermeer's Milkmaid
by Manuel Rivas (Overlook)

Rivas manages to pack in as much human longing and folly in these miniature epics as Cervantes. These sixteen stories, altogether no more than 120 pages, are a mix of folk and fantasy, gentleness and violence. In "Butterfly's Tongue," a young student witnesses the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the loss of his innocence when he implicates his beloved schoolteacher as a traitor. In "The Objects," household fixtures witness a murder and ruminate over the culprit's actions. These masterful stories prove what fiction is capable of, even in such a small space. -M. Woolbright

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
by Xiaolu Guo (Nan A. Talese)

Praised as one of the leading artists in modern Chinese film and fiction, Xiaolu Guo will charm readers with a style reminiscent of Salinger, plenty of never-heard-before Chinese slang phrases humorously translated into English, a wonderful lead character, and a pricelessly unique narrative on the changing landscape of China.

At seventeen, Fenfang Wang travels across the country from the sweet potato fields where she was fated to live and die to a life as a film extra in Beijing. As her experience of urban freedom wears thin and her love life dwindles, Fenfang cuts through the chaos into a belief in her own strange perspective. -T. Radebaugh

A Manuscript of Ashes
by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Harcourt)

Fleeing the police for political reasons, Minaya retreats to his uncle's country estate to write his thesis on a virtually unknown poet named Jacinto Solana. Uncovering the mysterious, solitary life of the poet, Minaya finds his uncle and Solana were in love with the same woman, who was shot on the night of her wedding. As Minaya hunts for Solana's missing masterpiece, Beatus Ille, he discovers the truth behind the murder. As haunting as the title sounds, Antonio Muñoz Molina has shaped a perfectly paced novel with spell-casting sentences that suck the reader into a sweet hypnotic trance. -J. Stark

One More Year
by Sana Krasikov (Spiegel & Grau)

Sana Krasikov has a serious knack for writing characters so realistic you feel like you are watching them. Nearly everybody in this collection of short stories has found themselves dealing with the complexities of living in a new or changed place, and while that struggle plays an integral part in the book as a whole, what resonates most profoundly about One More Year are the ways in which the characters attempt to connect to one another; they search for familiarity where it will not be found, and the familiar appears in the place they had avoided or where they never thought to look. -J. Wells

Siren of the Waters
by Michael Genelin (Soho)

Jana is a commander in the Slovak police force. She is called to the scene of what first appears to be a motor accident. Many of the victims are young women who turn out to be prostitutes. Jana suspects that this may be more than an accident; in fact, murder could be a more accurate description of the crime scene, with much greater implications. She must deal with a recalcitrant and corrupt bureaucracy in following the facts of the case. This leads her down the path of a criminal mastermind. Genelin captures the crime and the setting of Eastern Europe perfectly. -G. Berry

Zoe's Tale: An Old Man's War Novel
by John Scalzi (Tor)

Sci-fi author John Scalzi has turned his attention to the young adult genre with Zoe's Tale. A stand-alone novel set in the Old Man's War universe, the book focuses on Zoe, the teenage daughter of two intergalactic heroes.

Zoe is easily embarrassed by her parents, her mouth gets her into trouble from time to time, and she's addicted to her PDA, but she's far from ordinary. Zoe belongs to a new human colony struggling to survive on an unforgiving faraway planet. She also happens to be revered and worshipped by a race of aliens. It's a long story, but a thrilling one. –C. Stryer

The Nightingales of Troy
by Alice Fulton (Norton)

Reading the stories in this amazing debut fiction collection from poet and professor Alice Fulton is like looking at photos in the Flynn-Garrahan's family album, four generations of the mothers, aunts, nieces, daughters, and sisters that populate the family spanning almost the entire twentieth century. The family is infused with the depth of time and the expanse of place. Each character is shaped by the traditions, habits, and eccentricities of the previous generations while they are equally influenced and differentiated by their own eras of American culture. -J. Wells

Gossip of the Starlings
by Nina de Gramont (Algonquin)

Catherine Morrow is a bad girl who wants to be good, but Skye Butterfield is a good girl who wants to be bad. Nina de Gramont's enthralling first novel, Gossip of the Starlings, follows the dramatic friendship of Catherine and Skye at their boarding school, the Ester Percy School for Girls, as they get themselves into typical and not-so-typical schoolgirl trouble. Helplessly held spellbound by the ever-scheming Skye, the glamorous daughter of an even more glamorous politician father, Catherine foresees tragedy for everyone Skye encounters and entangles in her twisted world. -B. Reynolds

Nonfiction

How Fiction Works
by James Wood (Farrar Straus & Giroux)

Esteemed literary critic James Wood has written a primer that asks fundamental questions about "how fiction works." Wood writes about fiction clearly and concisely, using examples from both classic and contemporary novels to make his points, all of which were readily at hand in his own library: such writers as James, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Foster Wallace. The resulting book is eminently readable and likely to be of great interest to the avid fiction reader, adding a layer of understanding to the reading experience. It would not surprise me if How Fiction Works becomes the standard commentary on the art of fiction. -G. Berry

The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
by Sarah Lyall (Norton)

New York Times writer and expatriate American Sarah Lyall digs deep and spares no one in this hilarious, enlightening, and entertaining look at a very American preoccupation: Who are the English, really? After living in London for over a decade with her English husband, she's ready to answer questions we're too polite to ask.

What actually happens at the Man Booker Prize award ceremonies? Are the rules of cricket random? Are honesty, hostile service, sexist politicians, heavy drinking, creepy hotels, and the English language really English (or American)? You might disagree, but you will laugh. -K.M. Allman

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running
by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

As its title implies, this first autobiographical work by the internationally celebrated Japanese author is primarily a discussion of long-distance running. Yet, in Murakami's hands, this simple subject divulges a multitude of subtly inspiring life lessons. Gleaned from journal entries he wrote during training sessions for several long-distance races, the book is a collection of reminiscences of personal triumphs and failures, his views on how running can be a metaphor for life, and, yes, even a little about writing. Overall, this is less a window into the mind of the author and more a look at the heart of the man. -J. Zaidi

Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City
by Mark Kingwell (Viking)

What do our built environments reveal about the workings of the human mind, our ideas about self and others, our deepest desires, and our sense of responsibility to other human beings? This fascinating investigation discusses our love/hate relationship with concrete; how it represents modern urban life with all its utilitarian ugliness, but also fluidity and possibility (Kingwell calls it "the stuff of dreams"); the way chaos and order are expressed in the "dance" of New York pedestrians; how Shanghai is the "city of tomorrow"; and in the end, how the city builds us as much as we build it. -C. Schwennsen

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan)

Barbara Ehrenreich is mad as darn and she's not going to take it anymore. In this surprising follow-up to Dancing in the Streets, the sociologist of the working class takes a wide-scope view of U.S. culture. The result is a buckshot of caustic vitriol on the entire gamut of political and economic issues: health care, the minimum wage, gated communities, and corporate malevolence, among others. In sixty-two column-style diatribes, she presents a portrait of a country in which the downtrodden are continually put upon to increase the fortunes of the already affluent, and a situation so dire that the only recourse may be to leave. -C. Sabatini

Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East—Young, Sexy and Devout
by Allegra Stratton (Melville House)

Allegra Stratton is intrigued by the rising youth population in the Middle East. Imagining an "Arab Haight-Ashbury" in the making, the young BBC producer sets off to discover who they are. What she finds is a world not as polarized between the moderate versus fundamentalist debate as the Western perspective allows; a lively mix of contradictions lies between MTV-beach-house-style music videos, underground hip hop, bohemian art, and "muhajababes"—veiled yet sexily dressed young women. Stratton's frank and outspoken style and the engaging and active people she meets provide a fascinating survey of a youth culture taking its shape. -M. Woolbright

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin)

Sweeping changes have occurred in the thirty years since Paul Theroux invented the modern travel narrative in his book The Great Railway Bazaar, and in his new book, he repeats the odyssey that took him from Eastern Europe to Asia. These changes are both political and personal in nature; while the Soviet Union fell and China became a nation on the rise, Theroux lived half a lifetime and saw one marriage dissipate and a new relationship flourish. Fans of Theroux's prolific career are sure to appreciate his most recent effort—he writes with as much imagination and sense of adventure as ever. -E. Ehrlich

The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner
by Jay Rayner (Henry Holt)

The restaurant critic from The London Observer visits high-end establishments worldwide to taste the finest food and define the best fine dining experience, and his first stop is ... Las Vegas! Yes, that's where top chefs like Thomas Keller and Jöel Robuchon now open restaurants, but, as our guide shows us, the best meals aren't found where you expect them and definitions of great meals vary. Sea urchin, anyone?

Oh to be the audience of one in a sushi chef's tiny room in Tokyo or to share a bottle of the best with this most entertaining, funny, and delightfully misanthropic writer. -K.M. Allman

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
by Fernando Bál=; (Atlas & Company)

Perhaps the best argument against war is proved when we see the arrogance and global cruelty of intentionally annihilating or, as in the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, refusing to protect an entire written history of a culture. What assumptions drive biblioclasts? Who are the heroic bibliophiles of world history? This is the only compiled history of all that has been destroyed, and it shows a modern trend of censorship replacing dramatic book burnings. Venezuelan historian Fernando Báez inspires readers to fight for the whole story of the world, one book at a time. -T. Radebaugh

The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten History, and a Sense of Home
by Sadia Shepard (Penguin)

A young girl's exploration of her grandmother's jewelry chest leads to the rediscovery of a hidden family history in Sadia Shepard's exquisite and powerful memoir. The American child of a white Episcopalian American father and a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, Shepard discovers that her maternal grandmother is a descendant of a tiny Jewish community in India, the Bene Israel. Years later, with a Fulbright scholarship, a bag full of cameras, and some old addresses of family and friends, Shepard travels to Bombay to find out the truth about her grandmother's people and about her own place in the world. -K.M. Allman

Why I Came West
by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin)

Rick Bass's memoir explores the deep shifts that took place in his life when he moved out to the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana. Bass grew up in the flat suburbs of Houston, but while away at college in Utah he fell in love with the rugged mountains. After college, Bass spent eight years working as geologist in Mississippi until he felt the call of the wild. In the Yaak, Bass grew into the writer, hunter, and environmental activist that he is today. This book is raw, refreshing, and full of respect for the vulnerable wilderness of the Yaak Valley. -J. Stark

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
by Daniel J. Levitin (Dutton)

In The World in Six Songs, Daniel J. Levitin, musician, professor of psychology and author of This is Your Brain on Music, presents the theory that through six basic song types (friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love) music has "paved the way" for complex human behavior like language and helped develop human emotion and the ability to reason. It's a provocative theory and an ambitious undertaking, but Levitin is up to the task. Through interviews with musicians and evolutionary biologists and his own scientific research, Levitin forms a compelling argument. As important as this work is, Levitin keeps things light. The result is a tremendously fun yet thought-provoking book. -P. Egan

The Suicide Index
by Joan Wickersham (Harcourt)

How do you cope when you discover that the person you loved is someone you only thought you knew? In this deeply affecting memoir, Wickersham peels back the layers of her enigmatic father's life and eventual death by suicide. Charting her path toward understanding via an index (act of, anger about, attitude toward...), the author struggles with the most difficult of questions, chief among them "Were we to blame for being insufficient, or was he to blame for finding us so?" Wickersham's chronicle is a loving elegy, an anguishing emotional journey, and a gift to those who must ask themselves the same hard questions. -L. Paus

The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars
by Andrew X. Pham (Schwartz & Wade)

Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala, a modern classic about an exile's return to his home country, this time tells a very different story, that of his father's life in Vietnam. Told from his father's point of view and written in collaboration with him, The Eaves of Heaven is both the story of one man's life from the French occupation through the war with the United States and a window into the history of the shifting fortunes of his country. Part interpreter, part witness, Pham tells his father's story with compassion and grace. -K.M. Allman

Children's

Alvin Ho
by Lenore Look
illus. by LeUyen Pham (Schwartz & Wade)

"I was so allergic to school, but I was even more allergic to girls," says Alvin Ho in Lenore Look's charming new chapter book. Alvin is entering the second grade, and he's afraid of, or allergic to, almost everything. He loves his family, but what Alvin wishes most is to have friends. So far his only friend is his desk buddy, Flea, but she's a girl! "Girls are no good at robbery and mayhem," says Alvin. In a book akin to Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Alvin's second-grade struggles are hilariously captured through LeUyen Pham's illustrations. -C. Stryer

Encyclopedia Mythologica: Fairies and Magical Creatures
by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda (Candlewick)

Titania, Shakespearean queen of the fairies, welcomes lovers of pop-up books to a world of magic! In a book filled with enchanting creatures of a delightfully impish nature, Titania shares the secrets of the fairy world. Some are benevolent—the origins of the kind and gentle tooth fairy are revealed—but watch out, others are devilish! Fairies in medieval England captured infants and replaced them with demon changelings, and only in pop-up can this transformation take place before your eyes. Filled with fascinating information about the origins of fairies and fairy tales, this pop-up book is bound to amaze. -E. Ehrlich

ghostgirl
by Tonya Hurley (Little, Brown)

Charlotte Usher has always dreamed of being popular. She starts the new school year with a makeover and a plan to capture the attention of Hawthorne High's cutest jock, Damen Dylan. Before Charlotte's popularity plan really begins, however, she chokes on a gummy bear and dies. Death isn't much different from life for Charlotte. She still attends Hawthorne High, although she now reports to room 1313 for Dead Ed; she's still invisible to her classmates; and she's still determined to be popular.

Based on an award-winning website, Tonya Hurley's debut will appeal to teens looking for a quirky, satirical summer read. -D. Cronin

Goodnight Goon
by Michael Rex (Putnam)

For the kids who might enjoy The Munsters over Leave It to Beaver, this amusing new picture book creates a "petrifying parody" of the classic bedtime story Goodnight Moon. Here, hush-a-bye bunnies in a soothing room are replaced with howling werewolves in a cold gray tomb.

But just as our little monster prepares to go to sleep, saying goodnight to all the creepy crawlies and strange artifacts that adorn his bedroom crypt, a mischievous and naughty goon comes out and wreaks havoc everywhere. This hilarious and haunting new spin is sure to have young mummies in stitches. -D. Hsieh

Listening In

by Holly Myers

David Sedaris has probably the most recognizable voice in radio, and it's hard not to insert it into your own mind when reading his essays. You can go straight to the source and enjoy his wicked humor and nasal intonation while listening to audio of any his books, including his newest collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Hachette Audio). Listening to audio books isn't meant to replace the experience of reading a book. Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird (Caedmon) has been read for generations, but the experience of the book is enhanced immeasurably by listening to actress Sissy Spacek's gentle distinctions of accent as she interprets the beloved voices of Jem, Scout, Dill, and Atticus. What is nice about listening to a book is you can multitask—wash dishes, paint the living room, enliven your commute—but be warned if you start Revenge of the Witch (HarperChildren'sAudio), book one of the Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney. You may find the water has turned cold, the paint has become goopy, or you have been sitting in your driveway for three-quarters of an hour because the story and the sensational vocal styling of narrator Christopher Evan Welch are so riveting. If you have a goal to learn something while listening, there is no more pleasant task than A Short History of Nearly Everything read by author Bill Bryson (Random House Audio). Here, he adroitly introduces everything from geology to quantum mechanics with his hallmark wry eloquence. Not to worry, the audio is abridged.

Have a listen; you'd be surprised what you might hear.