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FREEMAN'S

Name: FREEMAN'S
Author: John Freeman
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2441-8

THE BEST NEW WRITING ON ARRIVAL

edited by John Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2015

A diverse and diverting anthology for fans of short fiction, verse, and long-form essays.

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First in a new semiannual series from critic, editor, and author Freeman (Tales of Two Cities, 2014; How to Read a Novelist, 2013).

Freeman’s writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. As the editor of Granta, he worked with writers like Jeanette Winterson, Kenzaburo Oe, and George Saunders. It can safely be said that Freeman is a guide whom a savvy subset of passionate readers trust. His plan for this new project is simple: twice a year, he’ll present “a collection of writing grouped loosely around a theme.” This first installment of poems, stories, and narrative nonfiction does not disappoint. There’s excellent work by literary luminaries and popular favorites—Lydia Davis and Haruki Murakami, Louise Erdrich and Dave Eggers—as well as work from writers who will be new to many. The geographic range represented here is impressive, with authors from such far-flung locales as Iceland, Sudan, and the West Bank. Freeman’s first theme is “arrival,” and part of the pleasure of exploring this volume is discovering the various ways in which contributors interpret the concept. David Mitchell describes an encounter with one of Hiroshima’s ghosts. Garnette Cadogan offers a quietly devastating meditation on wandering the streets of Kingston as a boy and the impossibility of being a black flâneur in America, where the perception that he’s a threat exposes him to real danger every time he steps outside. In Helen Simpson’s “ARIZONA,” an acupuncturist and an academic imagine life beyond menopause. And, in one of the most satisfying entries in this collection, Laura van den Berg tells the story of a woman who becomes unmoored—wonderfully so—when her husband leaves her to sail around the world.

A diverse and diverting anthology for fans of short fiction, verse, and long-form essays.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8021-2441-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: July 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SACRAMENTO NOIR
edited by John Freeman

- BOOK REVIEW
FREEMAN'S
edited by John Freeman

- BOOK REVIEW
THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE
edited by Tracy K. Smith & John Freeman

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.