As part of the celebration of books and The Armchair BEA, I’m doing a series on the new books due for publication over the next few months.
Previous Book Buzz Posts:
Today’s Book Buzz is about books due for release this summer.
Next To Love by Ellen Feldman (ISBN 9780812992717) is due for release in July 2o11 through Spiegel & Grau. Way back before I began reviewing books on this blog, I read Feldman’s wonderful novel The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank. I’ve never forgotten it. So seeing another novel slated for publication by this talented author got me excited. Described as “a moving multigenerational novel set during and after World War II,“ Next to Love follows the lives of three young women and their men during the years of WWII, beginning with the men going off to war and ending a generation later, when the men’s lives finally return to normal.
Ellen Feldman is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, and the author of Scottsboro, which was shortlisted last year for the Orange Prize. She has also authored The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. In addition to writing novels, she contributes to several blogs and has lectured extensively in this country, England, and Germany. Learn more about Feldman and her work by visiting the author’s website.
Other Press is planning to release The Oriental Wife by Evelyn Toynton (ISBN 9781590514412) in July 2011. This novel is about two assimilated Jewish children from Nuremberg who flee Hitler’s Germany and struggle to put down roots elsewhere. The publisher writes: “In its portrait of the immigrant experience, and of the tragic gulf between generations, The Oriental Wife illuminates the collision of American ideals of freedom and happiness with certain sterner old world virtues.” Author Louis Begley writes about the novel: “The Oriental Wife is a clear-eyed but tender, always intelligent, and beautifully observed group portrait of German Jews, their lives shattered by the Third Reich, painfully finding their way in England and the New World. A remarkable and virtuous achievement!”
Evelyn Toynton’s last novel, Modern Art, was a NewYork Times Notable Book of the Year and was long-listed for the Ambassador Award of the English-Speaking Union. A frequent contributor to Harper’s, she has also written for The Atlantic, The American Scholar, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review, and her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Rereadings (edited by Anne Fadiman) and Mentors, Muses & Monsters. She lives in Norfolk, England.
Nightfall by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham (ISBN 9780312610432) is due for release by Picador at the end of August 2011. The publisher describes the book as a “poetic and compelling masterpiece” and “a heartbreaking look at a marriage and the way we live now.” Set in Manhattan the novel centers around Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties, denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committee careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. Everything seems to be fine, until Rebecca’s brother comes to visit.
Michael Cunningham’s s novel The Hours won both the Pulitzer Prize and a PEN/Faulkner Award, and became an Academy Award-winning film, starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep. His other novels include A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and Specimen Days. He lives in New York. Read more about Cunningham and his work by visiting the author’s website.
The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson (ISBN 9780062049698) is due for release in August through Harper Collins. This novel caught my eye when I saw it compared to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a novel I loved. The Lantern is set in the countryside of Provence and is described as a “beguiling story of love, scents, secrets, and murder,” and an “evocative and sensuous tale of romantic and psychological suspense set against an exquisite landscape.”
Deborah Lawrenson is the daughter of diplomats, and as such spent her formative years moving around the world, living in Kuwait, China, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Singapore. She studied English at Cambridge University, and has worked as a journalist for various publications in England, including the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, and Woman’s Journal magazine. She is married with a daughter, and lives in Kent, England. The Lantern is her first novel to be published in the United States. Read more about Lawrenson and her work by visiting the author’s website.
