The Blind Contessa's New Machine

Flower!


Reading The Blind Contessa's New Machine began as a purely I-love-the-cover choice. Isn't that a lovely cover? I'm a bit of a sucker for floral patterns. They might not make me purchase a book but they will always make me pick one up to look at. As usual judging a book by it's cover worked out fine, my friend. So much for what your Mother tells you.

There is the kernel of a true story in Contessa. A kind of prehistoric typewriter was created in Italy in the early 1800's for a blind woman to use as a means of communication. From that slim start author Carey Wallace has written an enchanting love story.

The Contessa is Carolina Fantoni. The town beauty, Carolina has been indulged by her parents all her life. Like almost all historical fiction heroines she has grown up to be intelligent and independent. It is fitting that she will marry the prize of the town, Pietro. As her wedding approaches Carolina realizes that she is going blind. Her parents, her fiance, none of them think that it could possibly be true. It's love, it's a momentary anomaly, it's anything but what it really is. The only person who believes her is her is childhood friend Turri. Before the end of her first year as a wife Carolina is blind.

The best parts of this novel concern Carolina's blindness. Her initial panic and bewilderment. Then her acceptance and efforts to live a productive and fulfilled life. It's fascinating. This is where the author's research and writing skills really pay off. You can understand what a tragedy this is and you know that if it weren't for Carolina's rank her life would have ended with her sight.

In an effort to stay in touch with Carolina, Turri invents the typewriter. With this 'communication machine' she will be able to write letters. She will be able to have a small private space in her life. Turri's eccentric spirit and support are the solace of Carolina's life and soon they are lovers. Of course in any time love triangles and infidelity are dangerous but in historical novels especially they can be deadly.

Wallace has written a surprising fairy tale with it's own humor, darkness and sensuality. Her characters are plausible and charismatic. The Blind Contessa's New Machine can at times be a little married to it's own charm but overall Wallce should be praised for bringing such a light touch to the usual grim detail of historical fiction.

Another marvelous thing about Contessa is that it reminded me of one of my favorite novels ever The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini. A gorgeously written novel about an 18th century Duchess who has been blind and mute (for mysterious reasons) since childhood. Duchess is one of the novels that made me fall in love with historical fiction. The writing is superb and account of life at that time is outstanding.

Happy

As a note to future historical fiction authors: how about a heroine that is semi-accurate to her time instead of ahead of it? How about a woman who is not a genius or independent. I thought that The Blind Contessa's New Machine was great and I truly do love The Silent Duchess. I'm so glad that I read them and I want everyone I know to do the same. But. There are moments when I'm reading other historical fiction novels when I feel like I could play Heroine Shuffle. I could switch any 19th century female main character with her 16th century novel counterpart and never see any difference except in dress.

Rebuttal

Flower. Flower. Flower.

What a world. In yesterday's Guardian, Penguin chief executive, John Markinson disagreed with me. He thinks that  publishers will always be needed by authors. How very parental and wrong. It's certainly not an unpopular or never talked about stance in publishing. It seems to be the norm. Is it an ostrich mentality or just towing the company line?

Want to know his reasons? Check it out. It's worth reading but don't expect anything new.

Happy

So Saith Me

Oh Flower!
I wonder about a lot of things: what I'll have for dinner, if I'll have time for a nap, if girls still like paperdolls, do they still make paperdolls, whether or not the guy in the car ahead of me will ever stop changing radio stations and just drive for goodness sake, etc. There is one thing I wonder about more than any other thing. Where are readers going to come from?

You can't read any publication or listen to any news program without getting information overload about e-readers. They are tearing up and apart the publishing world, it's the death of books, their sales are gigantic, everyone is fighting over the e-rights to backlist titles, bookstores are worried, they will make you a better person, they will make you rot in Hell---whatever. I have yet to hear anything about how they will create new readers. So here's my question. Why is a New And Improved product being created for an already existing product in a no growth market? Riddle me that.

Set aside the iPad. There are too many other uses for that to consider it an e-reader in my opinion. It's more like a tiny laptop, catnip for gadget hounds. Calling an iPad an e-reader would be like saying that your pc or your cell phone is an e-reader. They can be the vehicles by which you download and read books but that is not what people buy them for.

So Kindle? Nook? Created by booksellers to keep their customers. Smart. If e-books are going to be all there is in the future it's better to be in a position to keep the reading consumers that you have now by being able to sell them the next new thing that can only be used at your store. I get it. However, where do Barnes and Noble and Amazon propose to get new customers? Publishers aren't going to provide them. They have no idea how to sell what they make let alone create new, life long readers.

Every few years there are titles that sell like the old hotcakes. Books like Angela's Ashes, The Da Vinci Code and in the separate once in a millennium category the Harry Potter series. Publishers latch onto books like those, hail them as the renaissance of reading and then crank out scads of copycats. No question titles like those pay the rent and put the kids through college but if they also created new, committed readers then books would be raking in the kind of cash that movies do and as we know they do not.

Anyway Publishers have a bigger problem as in who needs them? Do you think that if Stephen King decided to manufacture his own books that he would have any problem finding a distributor to get them to bookstores and bookstores to sell them? No he wouldn't. As for selling his books in the ebook format he could do that in a snap as well. Are there many Stephen Kings in the book world? No, but what he could do any writer could do and as soon as one Big Author jettisons his publisher to control it all himself the flood gates will be open.

So? New readers?

Happy and wondering

And Just Where Have You Been All My Life?

Flower my veggie loving friend!

Are you aware of this?

It's from Sweden. They make this and Saabs over there. Can we move there?

Why am I not finding this on my grocery store shelves? There cannot possibly be FDA issues. Come on those people approved Cheese Whiz for goodness sake.

Think of the options now open to you. Flower, you can now have bacon anytime with no muss no fuss no dirty pan. You can leave a bottle of bacon at work for lunch and emergency needs. Why is this not an everyday condiment choice? Who is trying to deny us this?

Happy

Man Booker 2010

Good Morning Flower!

It's time for my favorite award again.The Man Book Prize Longlist was announced yesterday. Here it is. I have noted (*) what titles are available in the U.S. at the moment and what will be available soon.


*Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Random House) available now in hardcover

*Emma Donoghue Room (Little Brown) on sale 9/13 in hardcover

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)

*Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (McClelland & Stewart) on sale 8/3 in paperback

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

*Andrea Levy The Long Song (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) available now in hardcover

*Tom McCarthy C (Random House) on sale 9/7 in hardcover

*David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House) available now in hardcover

Lisa Moore February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)

*Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Faber & Faber) on sale 8/31 in hardcover and paperback
*Rose Tremain Trespass (Norton) on sale 10/18 in hardcover

*Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Penguin) available now in paperback

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

Two of this years nominees are sequels. That's unusual right? The Betrayal is a sequel to The Siege and The Stars In The Bright Sky to The Sopranos.

At Last! More To Read!

So, Flower, need some more to read? Tons, right?


Bloomsbury Publishing has re-issued more out of print titles in the Bloomsbury Group series. How nice is that? The new titles are: Let's Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady, Henrietta Sees Through It by Joyce Denny and Mrs. Ames by E.F. Benson. They join:  A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson, Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson, Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, and The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson.   

At this moment these books are only available in the U.K. but since the previous four titles in the series were published here you can hold off on the panic. These will be published here as well at some point. Although buying books from the U.K. isn't impossible. The shipping is what can really add up so shop around.

If you visit Bloomsbury's website you can recommend other titles for them to bring back into print. What would I like? hmmmm..... I'd like Random Harvest by James Hilton, Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy, The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Miss Bishop by Bess Streeter Aldrich...

Happy

Let The Thieves Of Manhattan Steal Your Precious Reading Time

Flower!


I am all for books that are... what? What is the common thread? Two things: entertaining and well written. They don't have to be: important, funny, sad, mysterious, romantic, historical, modern or classics but they have to be good storytelling. No, I am not about to tell you that those elements come together once in a great while and here is a book that is one of those books. Well here is a book that is one of those books but I find books that meet my demands all the time. Isn't that wonderful? Some fulfill the requirements more completely than others and The Thieves of Manhattan is one of those books, but in general there are so many terrific books to read.

Okay. Enough with the misty eyed gratitude. The Thieves of Manhattan, right? Right.

What a crack up! Author Adam Langer has taken James Frey, publishing insiders, misery memoirs, the stereotypical Manhattan artist scene and written a funny, funny novel. His hero Ian Minot, a failed writer, is a classic bad luck Shleprock. He can't get anything right and his timing is worst of all. His lack of success is thorough. He can't get his work published and his immigrant Romanian girlfriend, the current darling of the publishing world as a result of her memoir of life under Ceausescu, is about to throw him over for a con-artist author Ian sees as the epitome of all that is wrong in publishing, Blake Markham. Into Ian's trough of self pity and failure comes brilliant editor Jed Roth, himself a rejected author, with a plan. Revenge.

The rest of the plot is Top Secret. Read Thieves yourself and find it out. By the time you finish it you will have had the world's best internship in publishing. The book will not only entertain you but it will also make you think about the voracity of what you read--just because it's in black and white doesn't make it black and white or anywhere near true. The shadier the road to success becomes for Ian the more important the truth is to him. Langer's novel (his 4th) isn't just all mock and no soul. Langer obviously has great affection for his characters and books.

My only dislike in The Thieves of Manhattan is a minor one. I did not enjoy all the fake book slang. Calling a short sentence a Hemingway or an umbrella a Poppins certainly displays Langer's reading credentials, but I found it tiresome and affected. There is even a glossary in the back containing all these terms presumably for all of us who don't get it. So you get the dumbed down explanation instead of the reward for being as well read as the author. Aside from that quibble, Thieves was a pleasure.

And. It's in paperback! And. It's at independent bookstores everywhere! And. If you go to one of those stores as opposed to shopping on line at one you will find tons of other good books to read. Isn't that fabulous?

Happy

P.S. The Cover? Love it.