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domenica 24 gennaio 2021
L.A. Woman di Eve Babitz (Bompiani)
Sophie ha poco più di vent'anni, stravede per Jim Morrison e vive nella
seducente Los Angeles anni sessanta. Lola invece arriva dalla Germania e
ha scelto di trasferirsi a Hollywood perché, al contrario
dell'irrequieta L.A., è un luogo fuori dal tempo. Due donne che
abbagliano, l'una con la sua promettente giovinezza, l'altra con una
nebbia di nostalgia. Con quel loro stile sfavillante e un po' decadente
entrambe incarnano la quintessenza della donna losangelina. Sophie
finirà per disegnare le copertine dei dischi, da brava groupie che arde
per i suoi idoli, e per un breve periodo si separerà dalla sua amata
L.A. per andare a Parigi, e poi nella Roma di Cinecittà. Nemmeno
l'incanto dell'Europa e gli uomini più seducenti riusciranno a
distoglierla da L.A., il magnete da cui è fatalmente attratta.
Quest'ora sommersa di Emiliano Poddi (Feltrinelli)
A centouno anni Leni Riefenstahl nuota tranquilla sui fondali delle
Maldive: è la sua ultima immersione, l'ultima volta in cui potrà
catturare con i suoi scatti le creature della barriera corallina. Appena
dietro di lei c'è Martha, biologa marina trentanovenne, che ha il
compito di scortarla sott'acqua. In effetti Martha non è lì per caso: da
moltissimo tempo segue Leni, sia pure a distanza. Per anni ha raccolto
notizie sulla “regista di Hitler” e le ha riordinate in schede divise
per argomenti - citazioni, incidenti, abitudini sessuali -, tutti
disperati tentativi di classificazione cui quella donna enigmatica
sfugge sempre. In particolare Martha è ossessionata da Tiefland, un film
che Leni ha girato nel 1941 utilizzando come comparse gli internati -
soprattutto bambini - di un campo per Sinti e Rom. Una volta terminate
le riprese, molti di loro finirono ad Auschwitz. Ora Martha ha
l'occasione di studiare Leni da vicino, di tornare indietro, di starle
addosso. Di scoprire, forse, perché nel '41 ha fatto quello che ha fatto
alla sua famiglia. Quest'ora sommersa mette in scena il confronto tra
due donne diverse per età, origini, indole e scelte etiche. Figura
dolorosa la prima, che sceglie la vita contro la morte, la biologia
contro la storia; autoritaria, manipolatrice, pronta a sacrificare
qualunque cosa all'estetica, la seconda: entrambe immerse in un mondo
liquido dove il respiro e i movimenti seguono altre leggi, dove un'ora
può dilatarsi fino ad abbracciare un secolo.
Il pane perduto di Edith Bruck (La nave di Teseo)
Per non dimenticare e per non far dimenticare, Edith Bruck, a
sessant’anni dal suo primo libro, sorvola sulle ali della memoria eterna
i propri passi, scalza e felice con poco come durante l’infanzia, con
zoccoli di legno per le quattro stagioni, sul suolo della Polonia di
Auschwitz e nella Germania seminata di campi di concentramento.
Miracolosamente sopravvissuta con il sostegno della sorella più grande
Judit, ricomincia l’odissea. Il tentativo di vivere, ma dove, come, con
chi? Dietro di sé vite bruciate, comprese quelle dei genitori, davanti a
sé macerie reali ed emotive. Il mondo le appare estraneo, l’accoglienza
e l’ascolto pari a zero, e decide di fuggire verso un altrove. Che fare
con la propria salvezza? Bruck racconta la sensazione di estraneità
rispetto ai suoi stessi familiari che non hanno fatto esperienza del
lager, il tentativo di insediarsi in Israele e lì di inventarsi una vita
tutta nuova, le fughe, le tournée in giro per l’Europa al seguito di un
corpo di ballo composto di esuli, l’approdo in Italia e la direzione di
un centro estetico frequentato dalla “Roma bene” degli anni Cinquanta,
infine l’incontro fondamentale con il compagno di una vita, il poeta e
regista Nelo Risi, un sodalizio artistico e sentimentale che durerà
oltre sessant’anni. Fino a giungere all’oggi, a una serie di riflessioni
preziosissime sui pericoli dell’attuale ondata xenofoba, e a una
spiazzante lettera finale a Dio, in cui Bruck mostra senza reticenze i
suoi dubbi, le sue speranze e il suo desiderio ancora intatto di
tramandare alle generazioni future un capitolo di storia del Novecento
da raccontare ancora e ancora.
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
A New York Times Bestseller
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
“Askaripour
closes the deal on the first page of this mesmerizing novel, executing a
high wire act full of verve and dark, comic energy.”
—Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys
“A hilarious, gleaming satire as radiant as its author. Askaripour has
announced himself as a major talent of the school of Ralph Ellison, Paul
Beatty, Fran Ross, and Ishmael Reed. Full of quick pacing, frenetic
energy, absurd—yet spot on—twists and turns, and some of the funniest
similes I’ve ever read, this novel is both balm and bomb.”
—Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People
For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a
crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at
stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and
wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.
There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.
An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy
brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live
up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is
content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building,
hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s
home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett
Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup,
results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales
team on the thirty-sixth floor.
After enduring a “hell week” of
training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines
himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and
family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit
rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color
infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that
forever changes the game.
Black Buck is a hilarious,
razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive,
crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a
necessary new vision of the American dream.
The Rib King: A Novel Ladee Hubbard Ladee Hubbard
“Ultimately the reason to read The Rib King is not its
timeliness or its insight into politics or Black culture, but because it
accomplishes what the best fiction sets out to do: It drops you into a
world you could not otherwise visit and makes you care deeply about what
happens there.”--BookPage (starred review)
The acclaimed author of The Talented Ribkins deconstructs painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in early the twentieth century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family.
For fifteen years August
Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who
plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper
is part of the household’s all-black staff, along with “Miss Mamie,” the
talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen
apprentices—the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to
"civilize" boys like August.
But the Barclays fortunes have
fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business
associate proposes selling Miss Mamie’s delicious rib sauce to local
markets under the brand name “The Rib King”—using a caricature of a
wildly grinning August on the label—Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash,
agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated,
August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that
explodes in shocking tragedy.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell
“The lauded Argentine author of What We Lost in the Fire returns with enthralling stories conjured from literary sorcery” (O: The Oprah Magazine), in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.
Mariana
Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and
sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers,
crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy
line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new
collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press
into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness
of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with
the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into
a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an
entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond
correctly to a moral dilemma.
Written against the backdrop of
contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in
pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
The Prophets Robert Jones, Jr. Robert Jones, Jr.
*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
'This
visionary and deeply evocative debut carves a radiant love story out of
the bleakest of landscapes.' Waterstones - Best Books to Look Out For
in 2021
'Rarely is a book this finely wrought, the lives
and histories it holds so tenderly felt, and rendered unforgettably
true' Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
'Robert Jones Jr's forthcoming debut The Prophets is magisterial and will change lives' Courttia Newland in The Guardian
In
this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni
Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the
forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality
threatens the purest form of serenity.
The Halifax
plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the
pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young
enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the
barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is
their haven, a space of radiance and love - away from the blistering
sun and the cruelty of the toubabs - where they can be alone together.
But,
Amos - a fellow slave - has begun to direct suspicion towards the two
men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words
and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the
stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's
gospel, he betrays them.
The culminating pages of The Prophets summon
a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering
humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation.
Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert
Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.
That Old Country Music: Stories Kevin Barry Kevin Barry
'One of the best collections you'll read this year' Sunday Times
'Wild, witty stories . . . Exhilarating' Observer
Since
his landmark debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, and its
award-winning sequel in 2012, Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry has been
acclaimed as one of the world’s most accomplished and gifted short
story writers.
Barry’s lyric intensity, the vitality of his
comedy and the darkness of his vision recall the work of masters of the
genre like Flannery O’Connor and William Trevor, but he has forged a
style which is patently his own.
In this rapturous third
collection, we encounter a ragbag of west of Ireland characters, many on
the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany,
resignation and hope. These stories show an Ireland in a condition of
great flux but also as a place where older rhythms, and an older magic,
somehow persist.
The Liar's Dictionary di Eley Williams
'Made me almost tearful with gratitude that a book as clever as this could give such uncomplicated pleasure ... And when you find a book like this, you grab it, and you hold it close.' JOHN SELF
'A delight ... As funny and vivid as Dickens, as moving and memorable as Nabokov ... An extraordinarily large-hearted work.' THE CRITIC
Picked as a 'Book of the Year' in the Guardian
____________________________________
mountweazel, noun:
a fake entry deliberately inserted into a dictionary or work of
reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.
In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth has reached the letter 'S', toiling away for the much-anticipated and multi-volume Swansby's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary.
Overwhelmed at his desk and increasingly uneasy that his colleagues are
attempting to corral language and regiment facts, Winceworth feels
compelled to assert some sense of individual purpose and exercise
artistic freedom, and begins inserting unauthorised, fictitious entries
into the dictionary.
In the present day, young intern
Mallory is tasked with uncovering these mountweazels as the text of the
dictionary is digitised for modern readers. Through the words and their
definitions she finds she has access to their creator's motivations,
hopes and desires. More pressingly, she must also field daily
threatening anonymous phone calls. Is a suggested change to the
dictionary's definition of marriage (n.) really that
controversial? What power does Mallory have when it comes to words and
knowing how to tell the truth? And does the caller really intend for the
Swansby's staff to 'burn in hell'?
As their two narratives
combine, Winceworth and Mallory must discover how to negotiate the
complexities of an often nonsensical, untrustworthy, hoax-strewn and
undefinable life.
_____________________________________
The Liar's Dictionary
explores themes of trust and creativity, naming the unnameable, and
celebrates the rigidity, fragility and absurdity of language. It is an
exhilarating debut novel from a formidably brilliant young writer.
_____________________________________
'Eley Williams's debut novel, The Liar's Dictionary, is a lexicographical delight.' OBSERVER
'Deft and clever, refreshing and rewarding ... An
assured and satisfying writer, her language rich and intricate and her
characters rounded enough to be sympathetic and lampoonist enough to be
terribly funny.' LITERARY REVIEW
'[The] most exciting of young British writers ... Williams luxuriates in words and wordplay, in definition and precision and invention ...The Liar's Dictionary is a public joy, and Eley Williams a free-spirited literary kook with bags of potential.' BIG ISSUE
'A singular, hilarious, word-drunk novel, which I suspect will be seen in the future as a classic comic novel.' DAVID HAYDEN, IRISH TIMES
'The Liar's Dictionary is the book I was longing for ...
Positively intoxicated with the joy and wonder of language ... Eley
Williams brings erudition and playfulness - and lovely sweetness - to
every page.' BENJAMIN DREYER, New York Times bestselling author of DREYER'S ENGLISH
'This tale of lexical intrigues is an absolute joy to read! It's gloriously inventive and playful, but with just the right amount of heart.' LUCY SCHOLES
sabato 23 gennaio 2021
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