Publishers Weekly – July 29, 2019

56 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019

Review_FICTION

entries, his poor opinion of his companions

just adds to the misery as they face privation

in the wilderness, varied receptions in

villages, and more death along the road.

Readers who enjoy expedition travelogues

or smartly drawn characters will appreciate

Gappah’s winning novel. (Sept.)

Live a Little

Howard Jacobson. Hogarth, $27 (304p)

ISBN 978-1-984824-21-9

Booker-winner Jacobson’s latest is a

deliciously entertaining, rollicking dark

comedy about nonagenarians searching

for meaning while confronting their

deepest fears. Beryl Dusinbery has survived

countless marriages and torrid love affairs

yet finds herself terrified of forgetting

words and being rendered incommunica-

remarkable tale of the transportation of

doctor and missionary David Livingstone’s

body from where he died in what is now

modern-day Zambia in May of 1873 to

Africa’s eastern coast so that it could be

returned to England. The tale of the 285-

day journey is taken up by the sharp-

tongued cook Halima on the night of

Livingstone’s death. She is quick to offer

her opinions on other members of the

group, such as the untrustworthy Chirango

and simpering Ntaoéka. Although she

talks about the evils of African slavers and

a massacre at Manyuema, in chapters that

describe Livingstone’s final months, hers

is the more lighthearted portion of the

narrative. When the self-righteous and

self-important Jacob Wainwright takes

over to tell the tale of the trek in his journal

childhood, and there’s an unexpected death,

the possibility of new friends, and a threat

from a local yokel at the other end of a gun.

The first-person narration has authenticity

and candor. Carr’s novel is both gripping

and timely. (Sept.)

Gun Island

Amitav Ghosh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27

(320p) ISBN 978-0-374-16739-4

Ghosh’s latest (after Flood of Fire) is an

intellectual romp that traces Bengali folk-

lore, modern human trafficking, and the

devastating effects of climate change across

generations and countries. Dinanath Datta,

who goes by the more Americanized Deen,

is an antiques and rare-books dealer in

Brooklyn. While in Calcutta, Deen

encounters the tale of the Bonduki Sadagar,

or the gun merchant, a localized riff on the

familiar Bengali tale of a merchant and

Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes and

poisonous creatures. Intrigued, Deen pays

a visit to the Sundarbans, the borderlands

from which the myth originated. At the

shrine, which is said to be protected by

Manasa Devi, Deen encounters a snake that

bites one of the young men with him, with

nonfatal but mystical consequences. Shaken,

but convinced that it was just a freak coin-

cidence, the rationalist Deen returns to

America, where his trip still haunts him.

A tumultuous year and a half later, under

the patronage of his dear friend Cinta, a

glamorous Italian academic, Deen arrives

in Venice for the book’s second half, where

he befriends the local Bengali community

and further uncovers the tale of the Bonduki

Sadagar as he is drawn into relief efforts for

the refugee crisis. Ghosh writes with deep

intelligence and illuminating clarity about

complex issues. This ambitious novel

memorably draws connections among

history, politics, and mythology. (Sept.)

Out of Darkness, Shining Light

Petina Gappah. Scribner, $27 (320p)

ISBN 978-1-982110-33-8

Gappah (The Book of Memory) uses two

distinct voices to tell her version of the

★ Ducks, Newburyport

Lucy Ellmann. Biblioasis, $19.95 trade paper (728p) ISBN 978-1-77196-307-7

T

his shaggy stream-of-consciousness monologue from

Ellmann (Sweet Desserts) confronts the currents of

contemporary America. On the surface it’s a story of

domestic life, as the unnamed female narrator puts

it: “my life’s all shopping, chopping, slicing, splicing,

spilling.” Her husband, Leo, is a civil engineer; they

have “four greedy, grouchy, unmanageable kids”; she

bakes and sells pies; and nothing more eventful happens

than when she gets a flat tire while making a pie delivery.

Yet plot is secondary to this book’s true subject: the

narrator’s consciousness. Written in rambling hundred-

page sentences, whose clauses each begin with “the fact

that...,” readers are privy to intimate facts (“the fact that I don’t think I really

started to live until Leo loved me”), mundane facts (“the fact that ‘fridge’ has a

D in it, but ‘refrigerator’ doesn’t”), facts thought of in the shower (“the fact that

every murderer must have a barber”), and flights of associative thinking (“Jake’s

baby potty, Howard Hughes’s milk bottles of pee, opioid crisis, red tide”).

Interspersed throughout is the story of a lion mother, separated from her cubs and

ceaselessly searching for them. This jumble of cascading thoughts provides a

remarkable portrait of a woman in contemporary America contemplating her own

life and society’s storm clouds, such as the Flint water crisis, gun violence, and

the Trump presidency. The narrator is a fiercely protective mother trying to raise

her children the only way she knows how, in a rapidly changing and hostile

environment. Ellmann’s work is challenging but undoubtedly brilliant. (Sept.)

Allen Appel

Judy Bates

Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf

Vicki Borah Bloom

Mitzi Brunsdale

Steve Bunche

Donis Casey

Arvyn Cerézo

Oline H. Cogdill

Lynda Brill Comerford

Jessica Daitch

Glen Downey

Bryan Dumas

Elizabeth Foxwell

Erin Fry

Krystyna Poray Goddu

Idris Grey

Marene Gustin

Josephine L. Hao

Tim Hennessy

Katrina Niidas Holm

Zina Hutton

Marc Igler

Shavonne Johnson

Michael M. Jones

Juliet Kahn

Bridget Keown

Cheryl Klein

Adam Lipkin

Sally Lodge

Stephanie Madewell

Sheri Melnick

Elizabeth Morse

Dionne Obeso

Chelle Parker

Leonard Picker

Gwyn Plummer

Fahmida Y. Rashid

Ingrid Roper

Antonia Saxon

Martha Schulman

Drucilla Shultz

David Simms

Lelia Taylor

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