others, with the exception of his one con-
fidant, his grandmother. He wants out, but
he doesn’t really know what he wants, nor
how to find it. A portrait of loneliness, of
trauma, of adolescent uncertainty about
life and self, Cameron’s book is a heart-
breaker with a dose of wry humor, its title
an offer of both truth and hope. — Molly
Templeton
Lippman builds the suspense by writ-
ing about the present, by returning to the
1975 interactions of the family (whose
members each have secrets, one of which
holds the key to the disappearance) and
then by unreeling the various claims and
evidence that police officers, social work-
ers and many others go through as they
deal with the claims of “Heather Bethany.”
Even the smallest character has a weight
and detailed thought process that moves
Lippman beyond her previous writing,
solidly constructed as it has always been.
The creepy light she casts over every
detail works well enough at destabilizing
the reader that though the revelation
seems obvious when one gets there, it’s
not easy to figure out ahead of time. But
unlike some mysteries, What the Dead
Know wouldn’t be ruined even if the read-
er figured it out; that’s how good the writ-
ing is. I admit to being a more hopeful
person and hopeful writer than Lippman
seems to be, and sometimes her take on
human beings feels a bit too painful, but
she’s absolutely convincing both at recre-
ating the atmosphere of the mid-1970s
and at building suspense until the soft
landing of the revelation arrives, puffing
gently but thoroughly at the survivors’
carefully rebuilt lives. — Suzi Steffen
Hunted and Haunted
The Vanished
Sisterhood
VIKING CHILDREN’S BOOKS, 2007. HARDCOVER, $16.99.
WHAT THE DEAD KNOW by Laura
Lippman. WILLIAM MORROW, 2007. HARDCOVER, $24.95.
Readers
familiar
with
Laura
Lippman’s cracking Tess Monaghan
series may be surprised by this stand-
alone mystery, which contains enough
feints
that
even
experienced
mystery/thriller/imposter story readers
may miss some of the clues. The plot
wraps around itself several times, making
for an intricate unwinding: Two sisters
disappear from a Baltimore mall Easter
weekend, and 30 years later, someone
claiming to be the younger sister shows
up again near the very mall where her life
changed drastically. She’s been in a car
accident and avoids responsibility by
focusing the authorities on her claim to
be Heather Bethany, the younger of the
disappeared girls.
I fail to understand why readers aren’t
snapping up everything Elizabeth Wein
can produce, why major movie studios
aren’t investing huge sums in the rights
to her gorgeous, elegant, terrifyingly real
series that covers post-Arthurian politics
and kingdoms in Aksum (modern-day
Ethiopia and Eritrea). Oh wait, I think I
just answered my own question. Sure,
the tales may feature the most incredibly
intricate spy network since Megan Turner
Whalen’s The Thief, not to mention the
complexities of Arthur’s son Medraut
(Mordred), who has essentially deserted
England and thrown his lot in with the
royalty of the kingdom of Aksum, but …
they’re set in Africa. Me, I’d pick Wein’s
intense, emotionally present and tightly
plotted writing over that of any other YA
fantasy I’ve read in the past few years.
The cycle began with The Winter
Prince and continued — and continued to
improve — with A Coalition of Lions and
the high-action, high-tension The
Sunbird, focusing on Medraut’s son
Telemakos. By the time Wein came out
with The Lion Hunter, her rich painting of
political intrigue and her smart chroni-
cling of the effects of trauma (not to
mention the way supposedly royal, sup-
posedly loving adults use and abuse chil-
dren) simply blew any other competition
out of the water. Not that there’s really a
competition; Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is
Rising series and Wein’s Aksum series
top the Arthurian charts. Considering
how much adapters butchered The Dark
Is Rising for this year’s movie, perhaps I
(and Wein) should be grateful there’s
nothing in the works. I suppose this
might be a handsell book for librarians
and booksellers (the cover … eh), and I’d
urge them to do just that. But the com-
plex imagery, tight plots and fascinating
intrigue of Wein’s series should continue
to draw readers for years to come. Will
Telemakos survive the web that contin-
ues to draw around him? If the follow-up,
The Empty Kingdom, doesn’t come to
this desk soon, I’m not sure I will survive
Lion Hunter’s cliffhanger ending, one in
which I screamed at Telemakos, “NO!!
DON’T! NOOOOOOOO!!!!” But as for
THE LION HUNTER by Elizabeth Wein.
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buying the book and its prequels, let me
gently urge young fantasy fans, “Yes! Do!
Yeeeeeessssss!” — Suzi Steffen
Variety is Key
VARIETIES OF DISTURBANCE by
Lydia Davis. FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, 2007. PAPERBACK, $13.
FINALIST, 2007 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION. A NEW
YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2007.
Lydia Davis is dry — very dry — in her
humor, so don’t let the more than 50 short
stories collected in the paperback original
Varieties of Disturbance bring you to the
brink of tears and desperation without a
good laugh. This is life analyzed with an
eye for surprise, attempting to find truth in
the mundane details we all carry with us.
In these often very short stories, Davis is
the anthropologist/psychologist/sociolo-
gist hellbent on deconstructing her char-
acters’ thoughts, actions, artifacts, what-
ever, for the sake of discovery (but not
necessarily revelation or characters suc-
ceeding in the end). Quite often, Davis’
characters neither succeed nor fail but
merely keep on keeping on, and, like
watching a baby wake from a dream to
immediately start wailing, it’s both curious
and heartbreaking to take in.
These are stories that deal with old peo-
ple nearing death, that deal with taking care
of the very young, that finish where their
titles leave off, such as in “Suddenly Afraid,”
with the story completing the thought:
“because she couldn’t write the name of
what she was: a wa wam owm owamn
womn.” Many could be considered prose
poems, such is the lyrical beauty of their
internal rhymes and haiku punctuation.
Then there are the four heavyweight
stories embedded within the collection.
Despite their relative length, these aren’t
necessarily the conventional short stories
amongst a sea of experimental flash fic-
tions. Indeed, “We Miss You: A Study of
Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-
Graders” and “Mrs. D and Her Maids” are
just as lacking in any traditional narrative
as the heavily footnoted, Robbe-Grillet-
inspired “Southward Bound, Reads
Worstward Ho.” Davis has the confidence
to collect the evidence and let the chips
fall where they may. And she just may be
battling Miranda July for the year’s driest
humor. — Chuck Adams
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