Pg. 69: Samantha Wilde's "This Little Mommy Stayed Home"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: This Little Mommy Stayed Home by Samantha Wilde.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Mother of all Motherhood novels.

In this riotously funny, ruefully honest, and irresistibly warmhearted debut, Samantha Wilde writes about one new mother who discovers the wonders and terrors of motherhood—one hilarious crisis at a time. For new moms, potential moms-to-be, and anyone who just wants to (wisely) live the experience vicariously…

New mom Joy McGuire hasn’t changed her sweatpants since her baby was born. Of course she’s crazy about her newborn son; it’s her distracted, work-obsessed husband and his impossible mother she can’t stand. Joy turns to her own mom for support, but she’s too busy planning her fourth wedding to a suspicious self-help guru. Sure, Joy’s a woman on the brink, but it’s nothing a little sleep, sanity, and chocolate can’t fix.

Until her old college boyfriend shows up at their ten-year reunion. The one she was still in love with when she married her husband. It must be the lack of sleep, because Joy is starting to think she might have ended up with the wrong man. Not to mention she’s obsessed with her sexy yoga instructor, who might just be interested in her. Joy used to be single, skinny, and able to speak in complete sentences, but who is she now? As she’s trying to figure that out, her husband goes missing….

Frank, bawdy, and full of keenly self-aware observations, this novel tells the story of one new mother, three men, one marriage, and the baby love that keeps us up at night.

Preview This Little Mommy Stayed Home, and learn more about the book and author at Samantha Wilde's website.

The Page 69 Test: This Little Mommy Stayed Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Renée Rosen reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Renée Rosen, author of Every Crooked Pot.

Her entry begins:

My reading tastes have been all over the board the past few months, with a mixture of old and new. I’ve also been very intrigued by the use of voice, especially multiple voices, which is what I found so captivating about Andre DuBus III’s House of Sand and Fog. I became completely engrossed with these different voices. Each character took on a life of his or her own and the suspense kept me turning pages, despite the story’s darkness.

Now I’m reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, an impressive debut novel that...[read on]

Among the praise for Every Crooked Pot:

"Every Crooked Pot is a beautifully nuanced tale about an extraordinary family and even more extraordinary young woman. Not since Myla Goldberg's Bee Season has a first novel so deftly captured the complexities, joys, and frustrations of daughters and their families. It's hard to believe this is a debut -- Rosen's voice is already as good as it gets. Keep an eye out for this rising star."
--Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants

Read an excerpt from Every Crooked Pot and learn more about the novel at Renée Rosen's website.

The Page 99 Test: Every Crooked Pot.

Writers Read: Renée Rosen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best novels about novelists

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best novels about novelists.

One book on the list:

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

Boyd's novel consists of the journals of Logan Mountstuart, a novelist whose inventiveness diminishes as he gives more and more of his energy to disastrous affairs and the cultivation of celebrities. Even as his own fiction dries up, he meets Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway and Waugh, and donates ideas for their novels to them.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Mary Anna Evans' "Floodgates"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Floodgates by Mary Anna Evans.

About the book, from the Booklist review:

Archaeologist Faye Longchamp is taking a break from her doctoral studies to do some fieldwork in New Orleans. She is working at the site of the Revolutionary War’s Battle of New Orleans when a park ranger offers to show her a neighborhood destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Volunteers cleaning up a damaged home find a body there. The police think that it’s another drowning victim, but Faye notices that the debris piled on the corpse is all wrong. A young female detective brings Faye and her fiancé, Joe Wolf Mantooth, into the case because their archaeological expertise will be useful in sorting out what happened. They soon discover that the victim, Shelly Broussard, played an important role in the poststorm rescue work but may have made some serious enemies in the process. Evans has written a fascinating tale linking the history of New Orleans’ levee system to the present and weaving into the story aspects of the city’s widely diverse cultures. Voodoo, Native American spirituality, greed, and corruption all play roles in what is easily the best installment yet in a too-little-known series.

Read an excerpt from Floodgates, and learn more about the author and her work at Mary Anna Evans' website.

The Page 69 Test: Floodgates.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a Canine: Steven D. Hales & Sophie

The current feature at Coffee with a Canine: Steven D. Hales & Sophie.

Steven D. Hales is a Professor of Philosophy at at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of many scholarly articles and books, including What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Dog, What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Cat, and Beer and Philosophy.

Among the topics addressed in What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Dog:

* Do dogs live in the same world that we do?
* What's your dog thinking about?
* Are dogs extensions of the human mind?
* If dogs are our best friends, why do we assume we can have them neutered?
* Do dogs use logic?

The origins of Sophie's name are linked to Hales' professional interests:

I wanted to name our daughter "Sophie" but got outvoted in favor of "Holly." However, I got to name the dog. "Sophia" is Greek for wisdom, and is one of the root words for "philosophy." A much better name for the dog would have been "Houdini." Sophie could escape from a supermax prison. It practically takes landmines and concertina wire to keep her in the yard; our 11 acres just isn't big enough for a dog with the wanderlust of Columbus. And she always heads straight for the muddy creek with her buddy Wiley, the big black dog next door.

Read--Coffee with a canine: Steven D. Hales & Sophie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel E. Sutherland's "A Savage Conflict"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War by Daniel E. Sutherland.

About the book, from the publisher:

The American Civil War is famous for epic battles involving massive armies outfitted in blue and gray uniforms, details that characterize conventional warfare. A Savage Conflict is the first work to treat guerrilla warfare as critical to understanding the course and outcome of the Civil War. Daniel Sutherland argues that irregular warfare took a large toll on the Confederate war effort by weakening support for state and national governments and diminishing the trust citizens had in their officials to protect them.

Sutherland points out that early in the war Confederate military and political leaders embraced guerrilla tactics. They knew that "partizan" fighters had helped to win the American Revolution. As the war dragged on and defense of the remote spaces of the Confederate territory became more tenuous, guerrilla activity spiraled out of state control. It was adopted by parties who had interests other than Confederate victory, including southern Unionists, violent bands of deserters and draft dodgers, and criminals who saw the war as an opportunity for plunder. Sutherland considers not only the implications such activity had for military strategy but also its effects on people and their attitudes toward the war. Once vital to southern hopes for victory, the guerrilla combatants proved a significant factor in the Confederacy's final collapse.

Learn more about A Savage Conflict at the publisher's website, and visit Daniel Sutherland's faculty webpage.

The Page 99 Test: A Savage Conflict.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Helen Benedict reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Helen Benedict, author most recently of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq and The Edge of Eden, a forthcoming novel.

One book from her entry:

I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody by Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi novelist and film maker who now lives in the U.S., was published by City Lights Books in 2007. All things Iraqi fascinate me now, as I have just finished a nonfiction book about the Iraq War and am now writing a novel set in Iraq, too. Iraqi literature has a totally different tone and approach to Western literature, and often seems both experimental and ancient at the same time. This book plays with language and explores politics, but indirectly, as it is told through the voice of a man imprisoned under Saddam for writing an objectionable poem. It feels like reading a fever dream, one that is both meandering and bizarre yet strikingly clear at the same time. At times I was reminded of the formality and floridness of ancient Turkish poetry; at other times of Kafka. But either way, the novel gives you a clear sense of what it is like to seethe and squirm under...[read on]

Helen Benedict is the author of five novels and five books of nonfiction. Her new nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq came out from Beacon Press in April 2009. Benedict's play based on the book, The Lonely Soldier Monologues, was performed in New York City at The Theater for the New City from March 5–22, and at La MaMa on March 17. It will be performed again this coming fall, dates to be arranged.

One of her articles on the subject, "The Private War of Women Soldiers" (Salon, March 2007) was awarded The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. She has since written other articles on women soldiers that have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Ms., In These Times, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Benedict's newest novel, The Edge of Eden, set in Seychelles in 1960, is to be published by Soho Press in November, 2009.

Learn more about Helen Benedict and her work at her official website.

Writers Read: Helen Benedict.

--Marshal Zeringue

Oprah: 7 books for dog lovers

Oprah and associates came up with 7 books for dog lovers.

One work of fiction on the list:

Nose Down, Eyes Up
by Merrill Markoe
320 pages; Villard

Gil, the growly, slovenly, haplessly divorced fellow in Merrill Markoe's Nose Down, Eyes Up, is clueless about human relationships; frankly, he's a bit of an animal. Listening in as his favorite dog, Jimmy, counsels his fellow canines on life and love ("It's the big emotion behind snack time"), Gil bumbles through comic misadventures with his bouncy girlfriend, Sara, and his sexpot ex-wife, Eden. Read this novel for its nose-to-the-ground wisdom, its unsentimental take on family, and for the funniest, furriest pack of jokesters this side of the Marx Brothers.
—Cathleen Medwick

Read about another book on the list.

Visit Merrill Markoe's website.

The Page 69 Test: Nose Down, Eyes Up.

Also see: Five best books about dogs and Five best books for your canine, and you.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Tess Callahan's "April & Oliver"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: April and Oliver by Tess Callahan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Best friends since childhood, the sexual tension between April and Oliver has always been palpable. Years after being completely inseparable, they become strangers, but the wildly different paths of their lives cross once again with the sudden death of April's brother. Oliver, the responsible, newly engaged law student finds himself drawn more than ever to the reckless, mystifying April - and cracks begin to appear in his carefully constructed life. Even as Oliver attempts to "save" his childhood friend from her grief, her menacing boyfriend and herself, it soon becomes apparent that Oliver has some secrets of his own--secrets he hasn't shared with anyone, even his fiancé. But April knows, and her reappearance in his life derails him. Is it really April's life that is unraveling, or is it his own? The answer awaits at the end of a downward spiral...towards salvation.

Read an excerpt from April & Oliver, and learn more about the novel and author at Tess Callahan's website.

The Page 69 Test: April and Oliver.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marie Brennan's "In Ashes Lie," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Marie Brennan's In Ashes Lie and Midnight Never Come.

The entry begins:

I'm very bad at visualizing faces, so I do occasionally try to "cast" my characters, in order to have a reference point to work from. In my Onyx Court series of London-based historical fantasies -- installments so far are the Elizabethan Midnight Never Come and Civil War-era In Ashes Lie -- I've had variable luck with finding suitable choices.

Michael Deven, the human protagonist of Midnight, was the first one I cast. My choice for him is a younger James Purefoy, whom I first saw playing Edward, the Black Prince, in A Knight's Tale. (Without the scar he sported in that movie, though.) Good-looking, but not excessively Hollywood-pretty, and unlike some actors, he doesn't look weird in a historical context. Lune, the faerie protagonist, took much longer; it's hard to find a human with the right kind of delicacy. I only recently settled on Olivia Wilde, most famous as Thirteen on House M.D. She's got an austere beauty that's pretty close to what I had in mind. As for Invidiana, the cruel faerie Queen, I've never found anyone suitable at all. Strangely, Hollywood seems to have a shortage of women who are both inhumanly gorgeous and utterly terrifying. If you dressed up Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent in Elizabethan clothing, though, you'd come close.

For the sequel, In Ashes Lie, I knew even before I wrote Jack Ellin that he looked like...[read on]

Learn more about the books and author at Marie Brennan's website.

My Book, The Movie: In Ashes Lie and Midnight Never Come.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Mathews' "Chicle"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley by Jennifer P. Mathews.

About the book, from the publisher:

Although Juicy Fruit® gum was introduced to North Americans in 1893, Native Americans in Mesoamerica were chewing gum thousands of years earlier. And although in the last decade “biographies” have been devoted to salt, spices, chocolate, coffee, and other staples of modern life, until now there has never been a full history of chewing gum. Chicle is a history in four acts, all of them focused on the sticky white substance that seeps from the sapodilla tree when its bark is cut. First, Jennifer Mathews recounts the story of chicle and its earliest-known adherents, the Maya and Aztecs. Second, with the assistance of botanist Gillian Schultz, Mathews examines the sapodilla tree itself, an extraordinarily hardy plant that is native only to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Third, Mathews presents the fascinating story of the chicle and chewing gum industry over the last hundred plus years, a tale (like so many twentieth-century tales) of greed, growth, and collapse. In closing, Mathews considers the plight of the chicleros, the “extractors” who often work by themselves tapping trees deep in the forests, and how they have emerged as icons of local pop culture—portrayed as fearless, hard-drinking brawlers, people to be respected as well as feared. Before Dentyne® and Chiclets®, before bubble gum comic strips and the Doublemint® twins, there was gum, oozing from jungle trees like melting candle wax under the slash of a machete. Chicle tells us everything that happened next. It is a spellbinding story.

Read an excerpt from Chicle, and listen to a National Public Radio interview with Jennifer P. Mathews.

Visit Jennifer P. Mathews' website.

The Page 99 Test: Chicle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: novels about immigrants in America

Matthew Kaminski, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, named his five favorite novels about immigrants in America for his newspaper.

One title on the list:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
Riverhead, 2007

The eponymous hero of Junot Diaz’s breakout novel is a fat, warm, complex, lonely, sex-starved, sci-fi-obsessed New Jersey kid who happens to be a Dominican. We’re in Philip Roth ­territory here. Wao’s angst is that of an adolescent (where does he, a ­Dominican “GhettoNerd,” fit in?) and of an immigrant (ditto). Diaz peppers his book with Spanish phrases and ­pop-dweeb trivia without explaining ­either, which in no way hurts the book. As for sections of the novel set back in the native land of Oscar’s mother, extended footnotes are provided “for those of you who missed your ­mandatory two seconds of Dominican history.” The novel is a rare ­accomplishment, a serious literary work with “street” appeal.

Read about another book on Kaminski's list.

Also see Junot Díaz's most important books and the Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Whitney Terrell reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Whitney Terrell, author of the award winning novels The Huntsman and The King of Kings County.

His entry begins:

Of late, I have been reading Updike, Updike, Updike. This is a jag that began with his death which spurred me, as I suspect it did many people, to go back and actually read his work again, rather than dealing with him as an idea, a “great author,” a brand name. I began with the third and best of the Rabbit books, Rabbit is Rich, and read back from there to Redux and finally to Run. I was shocked and abashed by how much he achieved in these books, how serious and consistent their purpose seemed, and how far they exceeded the achievement I’d granted them in my memory. The fault was all mine, not his. In the encomiums that followed Updike’s death, many spoke of his writing about sex, the titillating aspects of his work, as well as his majestic prose. But in the Rabbit books, he seems to me, more than any writer I can think of, the great American poet of...[read on]

Whitney Terrell is the New Letters Writer-in-Residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The Huntsman was a New York Times notable book and was selected as a best book of 2001 by The Kansas City Star and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The King of Kings County won the William Rockhill Nelson award from The Kansas City Star and was selected as a best book of 2005 by the Christian Science Monitor. In 2006, he was named one of 20 “writers to watch” under 40 by members of the National Book Critics Circle.

His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Details, The New York Observer, The Kansas City Star, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Recently, he embedded with the 22nd infantry in Baghdad, an experience he covered for the Washington Post Magazine.

Visit Terrell's website to learn more about the author, his novels, and his non-fiction.

The Page 99 Test: The King of Kings County.

Writers Read: Whitney Terrell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hyatt Bass' "The Embers"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Embers by Hyatt Bass.

About the book, from the publisher:

A once-charmed family is forced to confront the devastating tragedy that struck it years ago in this fiercely tender tale of betrayal and reconciliation

It’s the fall of 2007, and Emily Ascher should be celebrating: she just got engaged to the man she loves, her job is moving in new and fulfilling directions, and her once-rocky relationship with her mother, Laura, has finally mellowed into an easy give-and-take. But with the promise of new love

Settling into old comes a difficult look at how her family has been torn apart in the many years since her brother died. Her parents have long since divorced, and her father, Joe, a famous actor and playwright who has been paralyzed with grief since the tragedy, carries the blame for his son’s death—but what really happened on that winter night? Why has he been unable to clear his name, or even discuss that evening with Laura and Emily?

As spring looms—and with it Emily’s wedding in the Berkshires and an unveiling of Joe’s new play—each Ascher begins to reevaluate the events of long ago, finally facing the truth of his or her own culpability in them. Moving between past and present over the course of sixteen years, The Embers is a skillfully structured debut novel of buried secrets and deep regrets that crush a family while bonding its members irrevocably.

Read an excerpt from The Embers, and view the video trailer.

Learn more about the book and author at Hyatt Bass' website.

The Page 69 Test: The Embers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Schickel's 5 best show-biz biographies

Richard Schickel is a film critic, documentary film maker and movie historian, who has written over 30 books, including Elia Kazan: A Biography.

A few years ago he named his five favorite show-biz biographies for the Wall Street Journal. One book on the list:

"A Life" by Elia Kazan (Knopf, 1988).

Common consent holds that this may be the greatest of all showbiz autobiographies and, for once, the conventional wisdom is correct. Kazan emerged from his fervent, apprentice years with the Group Theater determined to revolutionize American acting and theatrical writing by infusing it with greater realism. In the 1940s and '50s he did just that, in the process becoming our greatest stage director and one of our greatest movie directors. He was also a frenzied womanizer, a controversially engaged political figure and a man with passionate loves and hatreds for everyone he knew and worked with. All of that rambunctiously hangs out in this wounding, wounded and powerfully truthful and affecting book.

Read about another biography on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Nicholas Griffin & Otto

The current feature at Coffee with a Canine: Nicholas Griffin & Otto.

Griffin's books include the historical novels The Requiem Shark and House of Sight and Shadow and the nonfiction work, Caucasus. His latest novel is Dizzy City.

Read an excerpt from Dizzy City and learn more about the book and author at Nicholas Griffin's website.

Griffin on Otto the city dog:

He loves the dog parks, I’m not so keen. A French bulldog took a bite out of his ear last week so he came home, shook his head and redecorated the kitchen in blood. Every now and then, when I take him to the country, he tries to make friends with anyone who walks past hoping to be adopted and spared a return to a life of concrete and peeing against piles of trash. Last week, out of the city, he surreptitiously crept into someone’s golf cart while I was talking to them and almost made it to a life of grass and trees. I like to think of him as a canine Steve McQueen and we’re serving our time in the city together.

The Page 99 Test: Dizzy City.

Writers Read: Nicholas Griffin.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Nicholas Griffin & Otto.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Anna Stilz's "Liberal Loyalty"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Liberal Loyalty: Freedom, Obligation, and the State by Anna Stilz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship.

Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights.

Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds.

Read an excerpt from Liberal Loyalty, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

Anna Stilz is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.

The Page 99 Test: Liberal Loyalty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Buckley's best books

Novelist, editor, and humorist Christopher Buckley's most recent book is the memoir Losing Mum and Pup.

Back in 2002 he named a best books list for The Week. One title on the list:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (Little, Brown & Co., $14).

Probably the only book I’ve read a half dozen times and hope to another half dozen before my time is up. A very great masterpiece of style, wit, satire, manners, and meaning, to say nothing of a godsend, since 1981, to the Yorkshire tourist economy. (It was filmed at Castle Howard.)

Read about another book on Buckley's list.

Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn, recently reviewed Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup and shared a few anecdotes about the William F. Buckley-Evelyn Waugh relationship.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Blake Crouch's "Abandon"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Blake Crouch's Abandon.

About the book, from the publisher:

On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer—as the town is rumored to be haunted. A party that tried to explore the town years ago was never heard from again. What this crew is about to discover is that twenty miles from civilization, with a blizzard bearing down, they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.

Read an excerpt from Abandon, and learn more about the book and author at Blake Crouch's website.

Blake Crouch is also the author of Desert Places and Locked Doors.

The Page 69 Test: Abandon.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Maile Meloy reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Maile Meloy, author of the acclaimed new short story collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

Her entry begins:

I just finished The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman. It’s the fourth and last of the Sally Lockhart mysteries, all set in the 19th century with a plucky heroine who falls into the detective business. They’re as wonderful as Pullman’s His Dark Materials, with history (exciting, fascinating history) in place of magic. When I was a kid, I read all of the Trixie Belden mysteries, to my grandmother’s dismay—she thought I should be reading something more edifying—and I loved them. I hadn’t read many mysteries since, so I think Sally Lockhart has answered a deep, forgotten need.

In the first book....[read on]

Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection Half in Love, and the novels Liars and Saints, shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize, and A Family Daughter. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best American Novelists under 35.

Among the early praise for Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It:

“Though it might seem strange to praise a writer for the things she doesn’t do, what really sets Meloy apart is her restraint. She is impressively concise, disciplined in length and scope. And she’s balanced in her approach to character, neither blinded by love for her creations, nor abusive toward them.... She’s such a talented and unpredictable writer that I’m officially joining her fan club; whatever she writes next, I’ll gladly read it.”
—Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Book Review

Visit Maile Meloy's website.

Writers Read: Maile Meloy (March 2008).

The Page 99 Test: A Family Daughter.

Writers Read: Maile Meloy.

--Marshal Zeringue