The Particular Brilliance of Lemon Cake

The Los Angeles Times said of Aimee Bender that she “…is Hemingway on an acid trip”. She’s not. She’s better than that.

Anyone who’s been reading my blog for any length of time will be aware of how highly I rate Aimee Bender’s work. She’s probably my favourite writer – consistently original, consistently brilliant and consistently mesmerising. She does something that very, very few people are able to do – and that’s to make the fantastic feel familiar – and not only that, she makes it make sense and she makes it affecting. She makes it real.

Her latest book, a novel, ‘The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake‘ is about Rose. Rose, when she’s young, discovers that she can taste emotions in food. So, if the person who’s baked a cake she’s eaten is happy, she’ll feel that when she eats it. If someone was not so happy, then she’ll taste that too.

So there are problems. Problems when the feelings of others can’t be hidden. Problems, even, when the feelings of strangers can’t be hidden either.

But as much as this is a novel about feelings, and perhaps knowing stuff you shouldn’t, I felt it was also a novel about Family. About relationships. About growing up. About growing close to people and about growing away from them. About problems shared and hidden and leaked.

It’s a wonderful book. An exceptional one. I loved it. The characterisation is perfect, its characters convincing and likeable and it has a wonderful tone to it. It reminded me of the sea. Because, no matter what people are going through, the tides still happen, sometimes subtly. And sometimes there are storms.

Click here to see what Aimee had to say when I spoke to her about it a little while ago.

Why I Shouldn’t Put Things Off (Like Bees To Honey)

I don’t know why I do this. Well, I do, and I know I’m wrong, which makes things that little bit worse. (I don’t like being wrong.)

When I get a book I know I’ll like, I put off reading it. I tell myself: ‘Nik, you want to read this when you’ve chance to enjoy it. When there are no distractions.’

There are always distractions. And when I finally decide that enough’s enough, and that I should just get on with reading the book I always love it and wish I’d have just got on with it earlier.

I did it with Caroline Smailes’ ‘In Search of Adam(I talk about it here) and, more recently, her latest, the wonderful ‘Like Bees To Honey’.

So. ‘Like Bees To Honey’ is the story of Nina. A young woman ostracised from her family in Malta because she fell pregnant by a non-Maltese man. The story charts her return to her home island to see her parents again, one last time. But the Malta she finds is somewhat different to the place where she grew up.

Mainly because there are ghosts there.

And Jesus (who’s actually more like Johnny Depp than one might have imagined).

I can honestly say that this is one of the most affecting books I’ve read. It’s beautifully written, deeply moving and very funny in places. It’s the perfect story of understanding, of family, of home, of grief and of healing. And it will probably break your heart.

I’ve said many times on here that I’m rubbish at reviewing books so all I’ll say is that Like Bees To Honey is a wonderful, wonderful book which I wouldn’t hesitate to both recommend and give it a great big five star rating.

You know what to do. Just, you know, do it quicker than me.

Mary Miller Interview

I read ‘Big World’ around about this time last year and I utterly loved it. It’s up there with my favourite short story collections of all time. It’s one of The Incredibles. When I listed, in an interview for the terrific Vulpes Libris, my five favourite short stories ‘Temp’ from ‘Big World’ was one of the first that came to mind. (The interview’s due to go live on Friday, so you’ll have to wait until then to see the others.) It’s that good. And look – it’s little, like mine!

And so I am utterly delighted to welcome ‘Big World’s’ author, the lovely Mary Miller here for a chat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


Welcome to the blog, Mary. It is a huge pleasure to have you here. I utterly loved ‘Big World’ and have even mentioned that one of its stories, ‘Temp’ made in onto the list of my five favourites from living writers. So yes, it’s a real pleasure to have you here.

Yay!  Thanks for having me, Nik.

So, on to the questions! First of all, could you tell us a little about ‘Big World’ – how would you describe it and who would you say it’s for?

I’m terrible at these sorts of descriptions.  I love what Sean Lovelace wrote on his blog (his blog is amazing, btw): “The characters would not bowl. They would watch others, disinterestedly, like observing flies on a windowpane. They would sip from those little crinkly bowling alley cups…they would watch, watch so closely (as in exactly) the pain of others (that they don’t [can’t?] express), that pain a moiling presence, or a caught truth, like hangover sweat seeping through pores…” 

I thought the book would mainly be for girls like me: vain, insecure women who have never stopped thinking of themselves as girls, women who would fail a personality test at Applebee’s (I was proud).  But a lot of men seem to like it, too, which has been nice.    

How would you describe a typical Mary Miller story?

I seem to be best at disintegrating male/female relationship stories.  These are always my best stories.  People ask me to write stories set in the year 2050, funny letters to the editor, etc., but I can’t do these sorts of things well.  I wish I could.

How and why did you start writing?

I was 27, lonely, and unemployed.  It was a way to be someone other than who I was.  It was awesome, actually.  I started writing at a time in my life when I didn’t feel like I had much of anything and it made me feel good about myself, gave me a sense of purpose. 

As a child, were you a big reader? What kinds of books did you like and what sort of stories were you exposed to at school?

I read a lot of Stephen King (I loved The Talisman, which he co-authored with Peter Straub).  And I’d read what I was assigned in school, but I didn’t like any of it.  We were pretty much just memorizing Frost poems, stuff like that.  It was terrible.  I hope schools are doing better jobs of making children into readers now, but somehow I doubt it. 

Was there ever a moment in your writing career where you thought: Yes, I can do this ?

Sure.  There’s a lot of ‘Yes, I can do this,’ but then it can quickly turn into ‘There’s no way I can do this.’  When I sit down to write, I can feel both of these things in a span of ten minutes.  It’s really hard.  There’s a lot of time and energy put into writing hundreds and hundreds of pages of stories that go nowhere and failed novels. 

Your stories are mostly realist. Is that a conscious decision or is that the kind of thing that comes naturally?

I just started reading Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas (I’m late, I know), and I’m so impressed with what he’s able to do.  It’s like he has an actual imagination—an ability to see beyond what’s there and make it real.  I don’t have this ability.  I write about the things I know and see and hear and feel.
   
As I mentioned, ‘Temp’ is one of my all time favourite stories. Could you tell us a little about how it came about? The story behind the story?

Thanks!  That’s really cool, especially since this story is never mentioned as one of the “best” in the collection.  I worked as a temp at a financial office one summer and I was a disaster.  I really would disconnect everyone and jam copiers and give myself paper cuts.  There was also a guy like Jason, who was a bouncer at night.  I didn’t go home with him, though.  And my mother is still alive and I never dated a bad drunk (only medium-bad drunks).  Everything is just pieces of things I’d gathered, some fiction, some non-fiction, and put together. 

My favorite paragraph in the story is the one that starts: “The two of us together can’t even keep small animals alive.”  I remember the dog at the pound that was “old and mangy with a bad hip,” how he looked at me.  I still think about that dog.  

What’s your writing process?

I write as much as possible, which isn’t that terribly much, usually in bed.  I’m trying to write faster, just get things down, and then go back and edit.  The way I’m used to writing, trying to perfect a sentence before moving on, doesn’t work well for longer pieces.

Who is Mary Miller?

A perfectionist, too judgmental, a Mississippian.  Who knows?  I like myself more and more every day. 

What do you think a story needs for it to be great?

Great stories are inexplicable.  There’s no model, no explanation for how to write them.

And advice to any aspiring short story writers who may be reading this?

Read short stories, poetry, novels, everything you can get your hands on.  Don’t try to start at the top.  I know people who have never published who will only send to the very top tier magazines—this is preposterous.  If you consider networking a dirty word, think of it as supporting and being nice to the people you like.  Don’t ever burn bridges because you will always be forced to repair them (it’s a small community).  Support independent bookstores and presses.  Publish online.  When bad things happen to you, remember that at least you can turn your misery and humiliation into a story.  Non-writers, the sorry bastards, don’t have this pleasure.

If you could recommend one book to me, what would it be?

City of Boys by Beth Nugent.  I would like for everyone to read this collection.

What’s next for you?

I’m moving to Austin soon.  I have three years to write and the support the Michener Center at the University of Texas.  If I don’t make something of this, please track me down and knock me over the head.   

Mary Miller is the author of a story collection, Big World, and a chapbook of flash fiction, Less Shiny.  Her stories have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Black Clock, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Mississippi Review, and others. 
***

And, finally, you can buy Big World here. And you should, you know. Because it’s excellent.

Elephants in Our Bedroom

We have another addition to my Incredibles list, folks (ie books that I think are incredibly good).

It’s Elephants in Our Bedroom, by Michael Czyzniejewski.

 

It’s a collection (Michael’s first) of 24 short stories, some very short, some longer, all brilliant. It reminds me of Aimee Bender’s work (and you all know how much I love her), in fact she blurbed it, and the work of Etgar Keret as well (again, you know how much I love him too) in that there are unlikely happenings (a man who, quite literally, keeps an elephant in his bedroom; the death of the colour purple; a man whose lover is hiding old men in her bedroom) but, in all of these stories, with their unlikely situations (which, as it happens, are entirely believable), there are characters who are just as real, just as fragile, just as obnoxious and just as human as us.

 

I know I’m no good at reviews, so to close I’ll type up the notes I made about this a few days ago:

 

Elephants in Our Bedroom’ is fiction as it should be: fun, affecting, intelligent, moving and something that changes, if only slightly, the reader and how one sees the world. It’ll probably change the way I write about it as well. If there’s one thing you might miss, being caught up in these utterly engrossing stories, it’s just how well written, how well crafted each one is. Incredibly good’

 

Which really, I think, says it all.


Oh, and you can buy it here.

Michael Kimball Interview


Every now and again I read a book that knocks my socks off. It is not something that happens very often, which is probably a good thing because it means when I do find one like that it’s rather special. Slaughterhouse 5 knocked my socks off. Aimee Bender’s short story collections knocked my socks off. So did Etgar Keret’s. Caroline Smailes’ Black Boxes knocked my socks off. So did Frankenstein. To name but a few (have a look through the blog for others – most have been labelled The Incredibles).

The most recent socks-knocker-offer was Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball. It’s right up there with the best I’ve read. Ever. It’s clever, sensitive, heart breaking, moving, funny and many, many other wonderful things. I can’t say enough nice things about it. Honestly (like you can’t tell!) I loved it. (Scott Pack reviews it far better than I ever could here. He says: “If you go out and buy this on the back of my review then you won’t be disappointed, and if you are then you need to give yourself a slap.” And I think he’s right.

I was thrilled to be able to tell Michael Kimball how much I loved it. And thrilled also to be able to ask him some questions.

And here are the results:

 

So, let’s begin. Could you tell us a little about Dear Everybody and a little about where it came from?

Dear Everybody started with one short letter, a man apologizing to a woman for standing her up on a date; the man is wondering if they had gone out that night, if maybe his whole life would have been different, better. At first, I didn’t know then who was speaking or that it was a suicide letter, but I did have a strong voice and a skewed way of thinking. That one letter led to a rush of about 100 letters—Jonathon, the main character, apologizing to nearly everybody he has ever known—and the novel opened up from there. Most of the novel is Jonathon’s letters, but it also includes newspaper articles, psychological evaluations, weather reports, a missing person flyer, a eulogy, a last will and testament, and many other fragments, which taken together tell the story of the short life of Jonathon Bender, weatherman.


How much, structurally, was planned?

I didn’t plan the novel, structurally or otherwise. The beginning of it was a surprise to me, one of those happy surprises that sometimes happens during a good bout of writing. And the structure came out of an episode when I printed out all the pieces of the novel, basically one piece to a page, and laid them out in my dining room–all over the dining table, the chairs, any flat surface. I started putting things in a kind of order that way and the chronological structure came out of that.

 

How does Dear Everybody compare to your other books?

Because of the structure, Dear Everybody is different than my first two novels, but there are some similarities. An obvious similarity is that all three novels use multiple narrators—3 in The Way the Family Got Away, 3 in How Much of Us There Was, and a couple of dozen in Dear Everybody.

 

What ingredients are essential in a piece of fiction for it to be great?

It starts with a great sense of language and a particular perspective that somehow creates an original voice. The story, whatever happens, it all comes after that.

 

Has writing the book changed your opinions on mental illness and suicide?

I had a certain sympathy for those suffering from mental illness and/or those who have to deal with suicide, in whatever form, but as much sympathy as I had, I now have more.

 

Tell us about you. Who is Michael Kimball? Does he write letters?

That’s a difficult question. I’m still a writer first, both the novels and the life stories, but I’ve been working with film a lot lately. I don’t write so many letters anymore, but I used to write a lot of them. In fact, it was after I stopped writing letters so much that Dear Everybody came into being.

 

Could you tell us about 60 Writers/60 Places, and postcard life stories?

The postcard life stories (click here to view) — I call it a collaborative art project. I interview people and then write their life stories (on a postcard). I have written postcard life stories for people from the UK, Canada, South Africa, Portugal, Russia, Finland, Uganda, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Greece, China, Italy, and a man who claims to be an alien. Besides people, I have written postcard life stories for two cats, two dogs, an apple, a fictional character, and a literary magazine. One of the things that I have learned is that there are life stories everywhere.


60 WRITERS / 60 PLACES is a film about writers and their writing occupying untraditional spaces, everyday life, everywhere. It begins with the idea of the tableaux vivant, a living picture where the camera never moves, but the writers read a short excerpt of their work instead of silently holding their poses. Blake Butler reads on the subway, Deb Olin Unferth in a Laundromat, Jamie Gaughran – Perez in a beauty salon, Tita Chico in a dressing room, Tao Lin next to a hot dog cart, and Jessica Anya Blau at a swimming pool. The writer and the writing go on no matter what is going on around them.

 

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given?

Cut anything that you don’t absolutely need. That thought continues to guide me.

 

What’s next for you?
I’m finishing a new novel – Friday, Saturday, Sunday – and will keep writing postcard life stories. This fall, there will be a few screenings of
I Will Smash You — a film I made with Luca Dipierro. And Luca and I are almost done shooting 60 Writers/60 Places — and plan to have that ready to screen in the spring.



***

Michael Kimball’s third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, is just out in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). The Believer calls it “a curatorial masterpiece.” Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning.” And the Los Angeles Times says the book is “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” His first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. He is also responsible for the ongoing art project—Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)—and the documentary films, I WILL SMASH YOU (2009) and 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES (2010).

Happy Reading

Mr Postman brought me this a couple of days ago. I had been excited about receiving it for a good while.

And look at what the lovely author wrote in it.
But the question is: did I like it?
And I can tell you, I absolutely loved it. I read it in one go. Front to back, right the way through. That doesn’t happen very often (the last time it did, I think, was Sarah Salway’s Something Beginning With), and then I read it again.
Shaindel Beers has a remarkable talent for making a reader feel something. And she might just be the queen of last lines. There were a number of times when reading her last lines caused me to gasp or (I’ll admit it) nearly cry.
And she’s fearless in what she writes about, and although there are some big themes they never feel sensational. But they do feel honest. And they echo.
I’ll have to go a long, long way to find a poetry collection this good.
***
(And if you like the sound of Shaindel and her work you might want to keep an eye on this blog. I’ve broken off from typing up her interview questions to write this post…)
And here’s a video of her reading HA – which is almost my favourite in the book.

Big World


Wowsers but it’s hot and humid up here in the the north. And it aint something I’m used to. There’s a storm coming soon, I’ve been told, and I’m looking forward to it.

Well, what a week. I’ve barely stopped (and yes, I am much closer to being up to date now, thank goodness). Writing’s been done as has editing and reading. 
And what reading. I’ve been dipping into, and really enjoying, Niki Aguire’s 29 Ways to Drown, which is well worth a look. But mostly I’ve been reading Big World by Mary Miller and, well, it’s gone straight onto my Incredibles list (for those reasonably new to the blog that just means books I think are incredibly good). I’m not going to review it because a) I’ve not finished it (and don’t want to!) and b) I’m not very good at them but I will point you to what Tania Hershman said about it on The Short Review, which was what encouraged me to buy it in the first place.
It’s a wonderful collection of affecting, realist short stories that are brilliantly written and work perfectly.
Thank you Mary Miller and thank you The Short Review.

Book Lovin’ – Does this happen to you?

I’m reading, and utterly loving, Slaughterhouse 5 at the moment. But here’s the thing – it isn’t just the words and story I love. It’s the typeface, the cover, the feel of the book, its weight, its texture, its size. I felt the same about Willful Creatures, by Aimee Bender (seriously, I stroked that book!) among a few others (Leading The Dance, The Time Traveler’s Wife, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Love That Dog) but, I don’t know, there’s just something about Willful Creatures and Slaughterhouse 5 that makes holding them – the thing, thinking about it, almost as enjoyable as reading it.

Is it just me?