Ron Hogan | USA Character Blog

Top Five: Summer Debut Novels

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Summer can be a great time for new experiences, for trying things you've never done before. And that applies to reading as well--so here are five novels by new writers worth taking a chance on.

From the hoopla of a wartime celebration during a Thanksgiving football game to a divorced woman's gradual fall from grace in Cleveland high society, from a financially struggling ex-punk star coping with the ghosts of her past to young men and women moving in with their parents, these five Character Approved novels will make you think while they entertain you. They'll almost certainly shake up your summer... in the best way. (And, because they're all by writers making their full-length fiction debuts, you'll be able to be among the first to recommend them to your friends!)

[Image: cover to Gilded Age, courtesy Simon & Schuster]

Be Sure to Accept Anne Cherian's Invitation

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:30:00 -0500

When Vikram, Lali, Jay, and Frances met at UCLA more than twenty years ago, they'd all come to America from different parts of India to make a new life for themselves. Now Vic's oldest son has graduated from college, and the proud father is throwing a party and inviting everyone he knows, including his oldest friends. That's the catalyst of Anne Cherian's second novel, The Invitation--the drama lies in whether or not these four former classmates will be able to hide the truth about their lives from each other once the party starts.

Their problems aren't really so horrible, or at least not any more so than anyone else's: Frances and Jay are worried about their precarious financial situation, and their teenage daughter's plummeting grades; Lali is embarrassed because her son is dropping out of college after just one year; Vic is mortified that his son wants to become a chef rather than join the family's computer business. But for them, these are among the most embarrassing scenarios imaginable, and Cherian takes us deep into their status-driven anxieties as the party draws closer. "We all grew up assuming that people never tell the whole truth," Lali explains to her American husband. "Maybe it's because there is so much competition in India, but people are very protective of what they have... People are so used to hearing a partial story that they try to figure out the missing part, and they often think the worst."

There are other troubles, too, bubbling beneath the surface--some will come out before the night is through, while others will continue to eat away at the characters from within. Don't expect any graceful resolutions here: The main strengths of The Invitation are in Anne Cherian's Character Approved portrayal of a first-generation immigrant generation's uneasy balance between the traditional mindset of their homeland and contemporary American values.

[Image: Daphney Duke]

Remembering Ray Bradbury

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Ray Bradbury was probably the most widely read science fiction writer in the United States. If you were born after 1953, when Fahrenheit 451 was first published, there's a good chance you read it in school, maybe along with The Martian Chronicles. Shortly after I learned about Bradbury's death at the age of 91 in his Los Angeles home last week, I wrote about how "[he] showed us--not how to dream, exactly, but a more powerful way of dreaming than we'd previously known." And the stories continued to stay with us, not just long after they were published but long after we encountered them. "Some authors I read and loved as a boy disappointed me as I aged," Neil Gaiman wrote for the Guardian. "Bradbury never did. His horror stories remained as chilling, his dark fantasies as darkly fantastic, his science fiction... as much of an exploration of the sense of wonder, as they had when I was a child."

For Rakesh Satyal, the author of the novel Blue Boy, Bradbury's short story "All Summer in a Day" is a powerful allegory for the inner pain of gay and lesbian youth. Although the story of a young girl whose classmates cruelly deprive her of the rare joy of seeing the sun on a perpetually overcast planet is emotionally tough, Satyal also sees, in the final reactions of those children, a possibility for the hope that things might get better. As President Barack Obama reflected in an official White House statement, "His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values."

Ray Bradbury was, as Neil Gaiman puts it, "a genre on his own, and on his own terms." Some people call his stories science fiction, some people call them literature. They're both right--and you can also call them Character Approved.

[Photo: AP]

Robert McCammon's Early American James Bond

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Matthew Corbett is a professional "problem solver" in colonial Manhattan. He's not quite a private investigator, because the cases he gets himself involved in tend to be bigger, and more bizarre, than simple murders--and The Providence Rider plunges him into his weirdest adventure yet. The mysterious criminal mastermind Professor Fell, whose plans Matthew has already thwarted on more than one occasion, summons his enemy and makes the proverbial offer you can't refuse: Someone in the highest ranks of Fell's underworld network is a traitor, and Matthew must figure out who it is... or those closest to him will suffer Fell's wrath.

This is the fourth novel Robert McCammon has written about Matthew Corbett, so there's no small degree of comfort and familiarity in his handling of the young problem solver and his supporting cast. But you can pick up The Providence Rider without having read any of the earlier books and still follow along perfectly well, just like you don't need to watch the James Bond films in the order they were made to enjoy them. The comparison to Bond is an apt one, too. When Matthew is captured by one of Fell's assassins and brought to his castle on a remote Bermudan island, it's impossible not to think of a supervillain's fortress, right down to the torture chambers and death traps. (The plot Fell wants Matthew to uncover even hinges on the 18th-century equivalent of a futuristic weapon.)

It's great fun to see the action film dynamics play out in McCammon's vividly detailed historical setting, especially with a Character Approved hero like Matthew to root for and a theatrically flamboyant archnemesis like Professor Fell. Best of all, there's a promise at the end that Matthew will have his share of problems to solve in future stories...

[Image: Robert McCammon]