Review: Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis

[This is an excerpt from my review on Necessary Fiction 11/3/14. Read the entire review here.] 


At just under 250 pages, Rainey Royal is an intense and at times disturbing story about a girl growing up in New York during the 1970s and ’80s. Her father, a famous jazz musician, allows his groupies the run of their brownstone, leaving Rainey constantly fighting for privacy and some degree of normalcy. Casual sex and permeable boundaries are the hallmarks of her home life. When the novel opens, her mother has been gone already a few years, having taken off to pursue her own vague dreams. Rainey, then, is left with a father who toys with her psychologically and emotionally and leaves her vulnerable to the advances of some of his more sketchy groupies.

The disorder in her home pushes Rainey to try to control her life at school. She’s the girl who makes other girls eat cigarettes and lick unknown substances; she, along with her best friend Tina, causes male teachers to squirm by making suggestive gestures; she uses her body and brittle fake-confidence to make shyer girls cower in corners. And yet, she ultimately must go home each day to Howard Royal and his free-wheeling musician friends, acolytes, and lovers.

[...]

Books to Look For (December): Memoir/Biography

Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography by Mick Fleetwood and Anthony Bozza (Little, Brown and Company, 448 pages, December 16)

Here, Mick Fleetwood recounts his four-decades-long involvement in Fleetwood Mac, as well as his early influences, life as a musician in 1960s London, and the ups and downs of touring. Sounds like a rockin' good read.







The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words by Raymond Chandler and Barry Day (Knopf, 272 pages, December 2)

Taking bits and pieces from Chandler's writings and interviews, Day weaves together a portrait of the brilliant but troubled writer. Put that together with over a hundred photos of Chandler, his contemporaries, and his world during the early 20th century, and you have a fascinating work of literary biography.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood by Gary C. Anderson

This recommendation comes from Shana DuBois. Check out her website and follow her on twitter @booksabound.

Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood (2006) by Gary C. Anderson

"For many decades, historians have chalked up the results of Little Big Horn to Colonel’s Custer’s faulty strategy of attack, and remember Sitting Bull as the lame duck leader who triumphed only because of Custer’s mishap.  Gary Clayton Anderson, in this riveting biography, reveals a new interpretation of this crucial conflict on the high plains."

Review: The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures, ed. Sean Wallace

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures ed. Sean Wallace (Running Press, 2014, 512 pages)


The twenty-five steampunk stories in Sean Wallace’s The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures reveal just how rich and varied the genre can be. From fantasy to hard scifi, historical fiction to diary entries, they show us a whole range of ways to conceptualize and understand our world and many of its alternatives. Included are stories about circuses and mechanical birds, shape-shifters and pterodactyls, “mechanika” uprisings and political intrigue. Oh, and lobsters and golems. You get the picture.

The sheer diversity of this volume comes from authors who’ve either written their story specifically for this book or offered a previously-published tale. From Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Jonathan Wood, and E. Catherine Tobler we get stories written specially for Steampunk Adventures; from A. C. Wise, Cherie Priest, Nisi Shawl, Ken Liu, Tobias S. Buckell, and many others, we have steampunk tales that previously appeared in Electric Velocipede, Subterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and other collections of steampunk fiction.

Review: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, ed. Pamela Smith Hill

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 472 pages)

If, like me, you devoured the Little House books when you were a kid, then you need to get your hands on this book. Not only does it give us Wilder's unadulterated memoir, but it also provides us with a TON of information about everything you ever wanted to know about pioneer life and the Ingalls/Wilder experience.

Hill's exhaustive and detailed introduction explains just how this never-before-published memoir was the basis for all of Wilder's subsequent books for children about frontier life. In 1929 or 1930, after her sister Mary died, Wilder decided to set down on paper everything she could remember about growing up on the move, living at various times in Wisconsin, Dakota territory, Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota. The memoir reads like a series of vivid scenes, many of which were adapted and expanded for the Little House books.

Random Recommendation Guest Post: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

This recommendation comes from Gargimehra. Check out her website and follow her on twitter @gargimehra.

Shades of Grey (2009) by Jasper Fforde

"Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. And Eddie Russet wants to move up. But his plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Juggling inviolable rules, sneaky Yellows, and a risky friendship with an intriguing Grey named Jane who shows Eddie that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself, Eddie finds he must reckon with the cruel regime behind this gaily painted façade."