Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘debut novel’

Essays |

The Long Hard Slog: From the 2010 AWP Panel “From MFA Thesis to First Novel”

“When I was asked whether I’d be interested in taking part in a panel on turning the MFA thesis into a first book, I said yes right away, but I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. In fact, I felt like a bit of a fraud because my journey from the thesis to the published book was so long and roundabout. But I’ve convinced myself that this is part of what makes my story worth telling here, because long and roundabout might be just as common as quick and straightforward, and my particular kind of roundabout experience makes me feel emboldened to give certain bits of advice.”


Interviews |

New Ways of Looking at Old Questions: An Interview with Heidi Durrow

“I don’t mind that when I’m interviewed I am speaking as a representative of biracial women. I’m heartened that people are interested. I do wonder, though, when the book is critiqued as being not enough about the biracial experience. To that criticism I say, Well, okay, but it’s not a position paper. It’s a story. … I have had a number of people “come out” to me, for lack of a better word, about their blended families, or about their grief, or about simply being a young person struggling against the labels, like geek or nerd, that they’d been assigned by peers. … They’ve connected their own stories to the stories I’ve told and suddenly feel empowered to talk about it.”


Reviews |

Long for This World, by Sonya Chung

by Celeste Ng

The cover of Sonya Chung’s debut novel, Long for This World (Scribner, March 2010), shows a young woman gazing out over a wide ocean, raising a camera to her eye. Chung’s main character is a photographer, but that’s not the only reason this cover is so apt. The novel unfolds like a collection of intimate snapshots, telling a story of loss and unexpected renewal.


Reviews |

Sima's Undergarments for Women, by Ilana Stanger-Ross

by Lee Thomas

In her moving debut novel, Sima’s Undergarments for Women (Overlook, 2009), Ilana Stanger-Ross renders her title character so startlingly real, and with such empathy, that we cannot help but root for her. In the Jewish neighborhood of Boro Park, Brooklyn, Sima and her husband, Lev–both in shuffling middle age–have long accepted (but are forever marked by) the disappointment of not being able to have children. Sima has withdrawn into the world of her shop, away from the shroud of tragedy cast over her marriage. The story begins when a vivacious young Israeli woman, Timna, enters Sima’s shop and changes everything. The story begins when a vivacious young Israeli woman, Timna, enters Sima’s shop and changes everything.


Reviews |

When Autumn Leaves, by Amy S. Foster

Award-winning lyricist, Amy S. Foster–who has written songs for musicians such as Diana Krall, Michael Buble, and Andrea Bocelli–makes an eloquent transition from songwriter to novelist in her debut novel, When Autumn Leaves. Like a well-written song, the novel evokes a powerful atmosphere. Foster’s vivid descriptions bring the charming town of Avening, a magical haven in the Pacific Northwest, to life. And the story captures our attention from the first note, when we meet the title character. Autumn is a member of the Jaen, “an ancient order of women who dedicate their lives to the service of others.” For years, she has guided the people of Avening, a town whose steady undercurrent of magic has attracted a unique citizenry. In the novel’s first chapter, Autumn learns she is being reassigned. She must leave Avening–but before doing so, she must choose her successor.


Interviews |

The Shape of Disaster: An Interview with Margaret Lazarus Dean

Margaret Lazarus Dean’s The Time It Takes to Fall takes place in the early 80’s in Cape Canaveral, a space town, during a time when NASA and shuttle launches were still a part of the American story of success. Jennifer Metsker talks with the author about how the Challenger disaster affected us, the unique ways fiction captures the felt world, writing from the point of view of a child, and why we should allow our characters to misbehave.


Reviews |

Amigoland, by Oscar Casares

“Now he was the one smiling. He knew they were all around the table, he could feel their eyes on him—The One With The Flat Face, The One With The Big Ones, The One With The Worried Face, The Gringo With The Ugly Finger, The One With The White Pants, The One With The Net On His Head—staring at him and waiting for his next move.” There is so much more to Don Fidencio Rosales, the ninety-one year-old protagonist of Oscar Casares’s comedic and heartening first novel, Amigoland (Little, Brown 2009), than simply his age. First and foremost, there’s his […]


Reviews |

The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey

At the start of Samantha Harvey’s debut novel, The Wilderness, which won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize, Jake Jameson, the story’s aging protagonist, is high above the English moors, staring down from a biplane on a landscape he used to know. But when the sight of the pilot’s “thick neck” triggers a disturbing memory…Jake isn’t upset. He’s excited.The reason: Jake has Alzheimer’s. And so begins Harvey’s novel, which centers on Jake’s attempt to look back on his ordinary life through a near impenetrable fog.


Interviews |

Miles from Nowhere: A Conversation with Nami Mun

“Fiction is my default writing mode. Whenever I witness something odd on the streets or hear intriguing dialogue on the trains, my first impulse is to drop these things into my fiction bank. I don’t have a memoir bank. Fiction, to me, is running through the woods rather than running on a treadmill. It’s freedom to make up characters, setting, situations, etc.—and through this freedom I feel better equipped to express and explore my ideas.”


Reviews |

Asta in the Wings, by Jan Elizabeth Watson

by Lee Thomas

In her debut novel, Asta in the Wings (Tin House, 2009), Jan Elizabeth Watson captures the peculiar insightfulness of childhood through her seven-year-old narrator, Asta. Forbidden – ever – to leave the house and left alone during the day, Asta and her brother, Orion, fear a plague that their troubled mother has convinced them lurks outside their locked door and tar-papered windows. As Orion recounts: “The plague started some years ago … in a faraway land … not long after our father died from walking straight into the ocean.” These dark allusions underpin the children’s day as it unfolds in whimsical games amid stark circumstance. Yet when the children are forced to enter the outside world, we become even more fearful for their safety.




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