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Literary Happening: Four authors to speak at the BPL
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Reading T.S. Spivet may be challenging,
but just try to find the Orientation Room in this behemoth.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
This Thursday, four authors of particularly formidable debut novels will be speaking at the Boston Public Library: Reif Larsen, Ceridwen Dovey, Gin Phillips, and Ron Currie.
Of these, Larsen has perhaps made the most public—and divisive—splash. His The Selected Adventures of T.S. Spivet is the 7th bestselling hardcover fiction book in Boston area bookstores, and was reportedly snatched up by Penguin for $1 million after a bidding war between 10 publishing houses. Concerning a precocious twelve-year old cartographer's journey from Montana to Washington D.C., the book is supplemented by all manner of diagrams, drawings, and side notes. These have served as the axis of love or hate for readers. Reviews such as those of The Washington Post Book Review, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, and our own Diane Petryk Bloom have mounded praise on the innovative way Larsen utilizes the margins while writing a good story. But there are those who have found the accompaniments distracting or even irritating, such as television critic Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times Book Review, who writes that the experience of the novel "can be exhausting."
The other panelists are no slouches, despite their absence on the bestseller lists.
South African Ceridwen Dovey's Blood Kin is a cautionary tale about a portraitist, a chef, and a barber who are taken hostage when the president they serve is killed in a coup. It has drawn comparisons to the works of J.M. Coetzee and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Esteemed reviews have poured in everywhere from Entertainment Weekly, to The Oprah Magazine, to The LA Times and Booklist.
Gin Phillips' The Well and the Mine has been highly praised for its engaging and realistic characters. Focusing on a coal mining town in the Depression-era south, the book has led fellow author Vicki Covington (Home Gathering and The Last Hotel for Women) to proclaim Phillips as a chief new voice of the South.
Ron Currie is the only author on the panel to have a second book under his belt. Technically, he is still a debut novelist, but the day of the event will see the release of his sophomore effort, Everything Matters! His first work, a black satire entitled God is Dead, won the NYPL Young Lion Award. It speculates what were to happen if God took human form and then died.
The event will be held June 25th at 6pm in the Orientation Room of the Boston Public Library, Copley Square.
For more info: Visit the BPL page of the event.
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