Xandra

A Peculiar Beast

I once knew an editor whose job consisted mainly of wading through the slush pile of fiction submissions. “My job sounds great,” she told me, “but you would be amazed at the number of people who write revenge fiction. The story is just obviously something that happened to them. There is no characterization, plotting, orContinue reading “A Peculiar Beast”

Final Drafts

I once knew a man who believed he was a year away from placing a book on The New York Times best–seller list. “I find that I don’t have to do much revision,” he said confidently. “One draft is usually enough.” He was a rather extreme example of the grandiosity that can accompany creative pursuits.Continue reading “Final Drafts”

Transitions

Even as a teen, I never read much YA. I think I was too busy processing my own angst to live vicariously through fictional scenarios. More recently I have come to appreciate the genre. There is a theory that all literature is about the hero’s journey from innocence to experience. This is certainly true forContinue reading “Transitions”

Ms. Representation

Other than the ubiquitous canon of Jennifer Weiner, most fiction features so-called normal size protagonists. Book publishing is not much better than showbiz when it comes to representation. In a nation that is only sixty percent white, with an average women’s dress size of 12, books still often reflect the Madison Avenue ideal of beauty.Continue reading “Ms. Representation”

Don’t Look Back

Romance is the best-selling category of books. I don’t read much in the genre, but I suspect that its appeal is in the false ideas it promotes. People don’t want to face the truth about male-female relations. It’s just too depressing. A writer like Raven Leilani forces the reader to look at certain uncomfortable truths.Continue reading “Don’t Look Back”

Gone Girl

It’s probably a sign that you liked an adaptation if you immediately read the book on which it is based. Such was the case for me with I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. Last week I watched the terrifying six-episode HBO miniseries based on Michelle McNamera’s book. I finished it with that mild longing thatContinue reading “Gone Girl”

Memory and Forgetting

Memorial Drive is the name of a thoroughfare in Atlanta. The author spent her childhood there and left for good the day her mother died. The title also alludes to the interior process of memory and forgetting that the author spends thirty years working through. Like many trauma victims, she has buried what she doesn’tContinue reading “Memory and Forgetting”

The Half List

Compiling “best of” lists is a bit tricky. I don’t know that books really should be compared to each other. Most fiction works that are traditionally published have reached a baseline of quality, either commercial or artistic, and that in itself is an accomplishment. Beyond that, it really is nothing more than a matter ofContinue reading “The Half List”

Regrets Only

If you could erase a memory from your mind, would you? And would you be the same person without it? This is one of the central questions of Adam Silvera’s More Happy Than Not. Published in 2015, this queer YA novel envisions a distant future in which a company named Leteo offers medical procedures whichContinue reading “Regrets Only”

Second Son

Freddy Trump haunts this memoir every bit as much as if his ghost occupied the second floor of his family home in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Banished to a room in his parents’ home at the end of his brief life, a transistor radio keeping him company, he is denied a final goodbye when his daughterContinue reading “Second Son”