Literary frame of mind

Maybe you heard something about a literary festival coming to downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock this week. It shows up every year about this time, bringing authors and readers together to celebrate all there is to love about books with interviews, panel discussions, workshops, performances and signings. It’s entertaining, and most of its events, going on Thursday through April 27, are free.

If the Arkansas Literary Festival motivates you to consider picking up a new book or two, there will be plenty there to choose from. In addition, here are some buzzworthy novels and nonfiction works, in no particular order, making their appearances this spring.

HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes

If you’re an Arkansan who’s been around for a few decades, you probably have an opinion about Hillary Rodham Clinton. Whatever experiences you may have had with the Clintons will have a lot to do with your level of interest in HRC, which begins just after Mrs.

Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was defeated by Barack Obama.

She backed out of the public eye for a while. Then she returned. To work for Barack Obama. Because she’s loyal toher party-and expects (demands?) her party to be loyal to her.

Washington-based reporters Allen and Parnes use information gathered from over 200 interviews with Mrs. Clinton’s friends and foes. The results, while mostly sympathetic to their subject, include useful context and insider analysis of what makes Hillary run. In case you don’t already know.

When Men Betray by Webb Hubbell (to be published in May)

Here’s another guy known to many Arkansans as a lawyer, lecturer, consultant and mayor of Little Rock from 1979-1982. Oh, almost forgot-he spent 18 months behind bars in the mid-1990s for bilking his law clients and his former employer, the Rose Law Firm, during the Whitewater land scandal. Wow, that seems like a long time ago.

Hubbell wrote a rather unheralded not-telling-all book about his experiences, Friends in High Places: Our Journey From Little Rock to Washington, D.C., that was published in 1997. Now he returns with a novel of political intrigue set in what’s supposed to be a fictionalized version of Little Rock.

The dialogue-downfall of many a novel-is handled pretty well. It concerns lawyer Jack Patterson, who shows up in Little Rock, which he had long abandoned, to look into the shooting of a U.S. senator on live TV by his old college pal Woody Cole. Be on the lookout for fictional characters and locations that will seem familiar to fans of the state political scene.

Above by Isla Morley

The opening pages waste no time in setting the creepy tone for this compelling and timely chiller: Blythe Hallowell, 16, is abducted by a survivalist intent on repopulating the world after end times. She’s locked in an abandoned missile silo in Eudora, Kan., where she eventually is faced with the terrifying burden of raising a child below ground. Not for everybody. I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia by Su Meck with Daniel de Vise

Amnesia is usually treated like a convenience to get out of responsibilities or as the butt of jokes. Not for Su Meck of Northampton, Ma. In 1988, when she was 22, a ceiling fan fell on her head, a nearly fatal blow that left her with no memories of her husband or her two children. Nor did she have any idea how to conduct basic human activities like brushing her teeth, using a fork, and interacting with others.

Meck never regained memories of those 22 years and for a while was unable to make new ones, needing to be re-informed daily about her family and her own identity. After a three-week hospital stay, she was sent home to a world she didn’t recognize. To cope with the strangeness around her, she became a mimic, basing her behavior on observations and routines, and relearned reading, writing and arithmetic along with her young sons.

She wrote the book to show others the effects of traumatic brain injury. “I died in a way,” Meck writes, “and was reborn, in the same physical form but not the same mind.” John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman

There’s nothing like a celebrity biography to take one’s mind off one’s troubles. Here Eyman, who specializes in telling Hollywood stories, takes on one of America’s Top 10 favorite movie stars (and the only one who’s no longer alive).John Wayne (born Marion Robert Morrison), who from 1949 to 1974 was one of the country’s hottest box-office attractions, rose above routine superstar status by somehow becoming a symbol of America and American masculinity.

From his stunningly successful association with director John Ford to the women in his life (three wives plus a lengthy affair with Marlene Dietrich) to the fuss over his lack of military service during World War II (he made 13 movies during those years and showed up on the front lines of the southwest Pacific during a USO tour), Wayne’s colorful image-for better or for worse-is in the spotlight.

On Earth As It Is in Heaven, by Davide Enia

This hot property of a novel, which was sold in 14 countries while still in manuscript form in 2012, is a sexy, talkative, and resonant multi-generational story of Davidu, a young Sicilian boxer trying to make his way in the ring and on the streets of his hometown of Palermo in the early 1980s. To no one’s surprise, the Mafia has something to do with the kid’s evolution into a champion. Translated from the original Italian by Antony Shugaar.

The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim by Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet

Aribert Heim, a handsome Nazi physician who left a horrific legacy after a mere few months at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria in 1941, managed to escape his past and eventually reinvent himself as a beloved member of a Muslim family living in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo.

He might have remained invisible except for the dogged pursuit of obsessed police investigator Alfred Aedtner and legendary Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal, committed to seeing justice done at almost any cost. Authors Kulish (who reports from East Africa for the New York Times) and Mekhennet (who reports for the Daily Beast, Washington Post and ZDF German television) tell the dramatic story-which often makes fiction seem tame by comparison-with the flair of a riveting mystery.

Golden State by Michelle Richmond

This realistic keep-your-wits-about-you novel is set in near-future San Francisco when politically restive California is on the verge of seceding from the U.S. The story scuttles from present to past and back again (be sure to check the time and date at the beginning of each chapterso you know where you are) in following Alabama native Julie Walker, a physician who has recently divorced her seemingly terrific radio-DJ husband in the aftermath of their loss of a child.

Now Julie’s life is complicated by the arrival of her troublemaking younger sister Heather, an Iraq military veteran who’s about to give birth in the midst of a small-scale yet still terrifying terrorist situation.

Family being what it is, the story may strike a chord with readers who have had to cope with a loved but difficult relative whose behaviors may be be hard to understand, let alone forgive. And the Dark and Sacred Night by Julia Glass

Despite the fact that nothing earth-shattering occurs in this novel by the author of the 2002 National Book Award-winning Three Junes, it’s hard to put down. That’s because the writing, which mostly concerns the thoughts and words of unemployed art historian Kit Noonan, is so simply, elegantly believable. Kit, whose inertia is threatening his marriage (not to mention the necessity of completing household chores and raising twins), is urged by his capable wife to solve the mystery of his father’s identity. Finally motivated to get his backside in gear before his home support system gives him the boot, Kit’s quest leads him to the rustic mountain retreat of his mother’s kindly former husband Jasper. Fans of Three Junes will encounter characters first introduced there.

Fat, Drunk and Stupid: The Inside Story behind the Making of Animal House by Matty Simmons

The newsroom at the Democrat-Gazette has more than its share of denizens who can quote vast chunks of dialogue from Animal House by heart. The classic comedy, filmed in 1977 in Eugene, Ore., and released in 1978, was made for less than $3 million and, much to the shock of Universal Studios, produced revenues of $600 million.

Details of the film’s history are shared here by Simmons (founder of National Lampoon and one of the film’s producers), as are interviews with director John Landis, fellow producer Ivan Reitman, and cast members Karen Allen and Kevin Bacon.

Those hoping to discover previously unreleased material for a possible sequel to the film that made John Belushi a star will be disappointed; there are no amazing revelations or fall-off-your-chair laugh riots. But the cult of true fans, who can never get enough, will discover details of casting, script writing, audience reactions, and the origin of National Lampoon.

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes

The author who brought the sunny, civilized pleasures of Tuscany to a rough-and-ready new world starving for romance takes us back to her early years in Fitzgerald, Ga., by sharing remembrances of her chaotic upbringing and socially significant family. Highly descriptive and poetically crafted, Frances Mayes’ memoir is centered on feelings rather than facts. Tastes, sounds, smells and scenes matter more than who said what to whom.

What surprised her most about writing this book, Mayes says, is “how fresh memory stays. Writing, I can again baptize the dog, feel my graduation pearls unstrung, rolling across the church floor …” You get the idea.

A Million Ways to Die in the West by Seth MacFarlane

The creator of Family Guy (not for the easily offended) and the highest-paid TV writer in history presents his first novel-a spinoff of a coming film comedy-concerning pacifist sheep farmer Albert Stark, whose finds the American frontier of 1882 a bit rough for his gentrified tastes and talents. But when he chickens out of a gunfight and his girlfriend dumps him for his cowardice, Albert decides to fight back. Coming to his aid is a gorgeous cowgirl, unfortunately being pursued by her jealous outlaw lover.

It’s a strange, disheveled story that lurches from century to century and tosses in a lengthy psychedelic trip courtesy of the local Apaches. Fans of McFarlane’s signature brand of humor will come running. For others, it might be best to wait for the movie, coming out May 30. Or not.

Perspective, Pages 77 on 04/20/2014

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