Gritty

This week's PNW heat wave (temps reached into the 90s) has me feeling a bit gritty. Hence this repost from 2009.

Hearing Richard Price extolled again and again on Fresh Air for his mastery of dialogue, I decided to venture into the section of the library where many of the dust jacket blurbs proclaim “gritty.” I begrudgingly picked up Samaritan and rushed back two days later for Lush Life. 

Samaritan proves you can go home again but may get a severe concussion as a result. Ray Mitchell returns to his home town after a stint as a Hollywood writer and soon ends up in the ICU after being attacked in his apartment. He refuses to name his attacker but a childhood friend, now detective, Nerese Ammons is determined to make an arrest regardless. 

Lush Life takes place on the Lower East Side, where every bartender has a screenplay under the bar and every waiter has a casting call after work. When a mugging goes awry leaving one up and comer dead, detectives aren’t sure who’s telling the real story and who’s just acting the part. 

Can’t afford to go see the latest summer blockbuster? Price provides an action-packed thrill with dialogue you’ll probably be hearing in next summer’s box office hit.

Under the Same Sky, But Different

“The sky was magnificent. I have always loved the sky and I do not take notice of it often enough.”

So writes one of the characters in Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson. But it also aptly describes the past week I’ve spent in Colorado Springs. When not out hiking under brilliant blue skies, listening to cowboy songs under the stars, or exploring the neighborhood under threatening thunderstorms, I found myself dipping in and out of this epistolary novel.

Anders is a Danish curator. Tina is an English farmer’s wife. Tina writes to his museum to inquire after its famous artifact, the Tollund Man, that she remembers studying as a schoolgirl. Although their initial letters explore the history of this amazing find, they soon relate more mundane details of their daily life. The mundane turns profound as Anders reveals he is a widower and Tina shares she is unhappy in her marriage. Over the course of the novel, two strangers grow perilously intimate despite having never met in person. What begins as a curiosity leaves both their worlds irrevocably changed.

Firsts

On my son’s first birthday, he experienced his first ice cream sandwich. I’m sure we have a picture somewhere of his blissful grin in a face covered in melted ice cream and smeared chocolate. The summer my daughter turned seven she rode a bicycle for the first time without training wheels. Since we lived on a hill that descended into a busy street, she was mostly confined to big lazy circles in the street in front of our house. In a few weeks, they will both make their first plane trip, unaccompanied by any adults, to Austin to visit their grandparents.

I heard an excerpt from an interview with Jenny Han the other day where she mentioned something like “Firsts are best because they are beginnings.” That’s partly why she is drawn to writing about teenagers. And why we, as adult readers, are drawn to YA fiction. If you haven’t read Han's trilogy, The Summer I Turned Pretty, start there. Then you can watch the melodramatic, but nonetheless engrossing, series adapted from the books that was just released on Prime.

If you still haven’t gotten your fill of firsts, then I recommend Breathless by Jennifer Niven. Claude and her mother are “banished” to an island off the coast of Georgia the summer after her senior year after her parents separate. With little to no cell service, she can’t rely on the text support of her best friend (who she loves more than “libraries and sunshine and boys with guitars”), so she turns to the other young people in her midst. An encounter with Miah starts off as a welcome distraction, but soon forces her to face her issues with trust and acceptance.

What is your favorite "first" fiction?