BOOKMARK: The History of Now, Death Vows, and The Disappearance

Co-author of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction humor book Plato and A Platypus Walk Into a Bar, Daniel Klein has turned his talents toward fiction with The History of Now. In this contemporary and historical novel that moves through time and space as well as the quaint New England village of Grandville (suspiciously reminiscent of Great Barrington, Massachusetts), sixty-five-year-old projectionist Wendell deVries encounters love unexpectedly just as his grown daughter, Franny, meets a stranger interested in her play, and his granddaughter, Lila, pursues the possibility that she has African American ancestry. While the novel may seem a bit crammed with story lines, Klein’s wise, knowing, light touch pulls it off.
   
Becket, Massachusetts, writer Richard Stevenson (aka Richard Lipez) has resurrected his gay private eye Donald Strachey series in his latest, Death Vows, which explores, among other things, the ramifications of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The rat-tat-tat pace of Stevenson’s stellar dialogue and incessant wit make this novel one of the best hammock choices
of the upcoming season.

In a much more somber vein is The Disappearance by another Great Barrington writer, Efrem Sigel. Reminiscent of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones or Frederick Reiken’s The Odd Sea, Sigel’s novel, his second work of fiction after a thirty-five-year hiatus, deals with the aftermath of the disappearance of Daniel, fourteen-year-old son of Joshua and Nathalie Sandler, from a small, western Massachusetts town. But unlike those other novels, there is no ambiguity in Sigel’s satisfying resolution. (MAY 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GOODS

The History of Now
By Daniel Klein
The Permanent Press
www.thepermanentpress.com

Death Vows
By Richard Stevenson
MLR Press
www.mlrpress.com

The Disappearance
By Efrem Sigel
The Permanent Press
www.thepermanentpress.com