One of the more enticing entries:
Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and A Long Way Down, offers his favourite novel of the past year or so: "Jess Walter's Citizen Vince. It's funny, dark and ingenious; it convinces you that it knows what it's talking about. And it's actually talking about quite a lot, in an attractively unassuming way. Vince has been relocated from N.Y.C. to Spokane, Wash., under a witness-protection program, and he has to work two things out. The first is why someone's trying to kill him; the second is who he should vote for in the 1980 presidential election. One problem is obviously more pressing, but they are given equal consideration. Jess Walter is, I suspect, a novelist to watch."Click here for some other writers' suggestions if you haven't already left for the bookstore.
Citizen Vince also earned a nice recommendation from Maureen Corrigan in the Washington Post
Book World: "Maybe if Aaron Copland had written the score for a film noir starring the Marx Brothers there would be some prototype for Walter's fusion fiction, but he didn't and there isn't."The book won the 2006 Edgar for Best Novel.
Also see yesterday's post at "Pete Lit" about the new Nick Hornby book.
--Marshal Zeringue
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